radiosilence | Cell Block Tango (PG; Hikaru no Go)

Cell Block Tango

Sometimes, it really sucks to be Waya Yoshitaka.

Waya contemplates this thought silently for a moment before accepting it as hard-and-fast truth: yes, as matters stand, he would pay large sums of money, in unmarked bills, for someone to kill him (or, alternatively and perhaps preferably) Shindou Hikaru, right now.

The thing is, the thing is, while Waya appreciates a good Congratulations-on-not-totally-getting-your-ass-kicked-but-hey-you-still-lost-moron-what-about-that-small-kiema-in-the-upper-left? party as much as the next man (the next man being, at this point in time, Isumi, who keeps almost spilling his drink in Waya's lap and looking vaguely pleased with himself about it all) they do tend to have their drawbacks. And while Hikaru is one of Waya's best friends, he also does tend to drink too much—usually while glaring at Ogata and Ogata's growing pile of sake bottles (or, on one memorable occasion, shot glasses. Waya curses the Juudan's high alcohol tolerance). And when Hikaru drinks too much his mouth tends to run.

And when Hikaru's mouth starts running, Waya always, always ends up hearing things he'd really rather never hear, with 'never' being defined as “within the lifetime of several thousand burning suns, or Kuwabara Honinbou, whichever proves longer”.

“The thing is,” Hikaru is saying, on Waya’s other side, “the thing is, what if Akira thinks I'm weird? I mean, you can't just walk up to someone and kiss them, can you?” Waya tries to stand but finds his arm caught in Hikaru's suddenly vice-like grip, while the expression on Hikaru's face would seem to indicate that someone had just run over his cat, possibly with a lawnmower. “Waya!” he shriek-hisses, “Waya, I've never kissed anyone before! Well, except my mom but that totally doesn't count! What if I suck at it and he never wants me to kiss him again?” He pauses for a moment before turning to look at Waya in a glazed, purposeful sort of way.

“Waya,” he starts, “you're my friend, right?”

“I swear to god,” Waya says, leaning back and away and probably into Isumi's lap but really. “I swear to god, if you kiss me they will never find your body.”

“But Waya,” Hikaru whines, and from behind him Waya hears the voice attached to the next person up on his personal hire-a-hitman list.

“Shindou,” the voice (or rather, Touya Akira) says, “What the hell are you doing?”

At which point Hikaru turns a peculiar shade of green not found in nature and proceeds to lose all of the alcohol he had put so much effort into consuming, all over Waya's lap.

Yes, Waya thinks, almost resigned, if only he knew someone with ties to the yakuza and owned a ratty briefcase.

Maybe, he ponders, through Hikaru's retching and Touya's worried questions and frantic, girly hand-waving, maybe Isumi knows someone, a friend-of-a-friend sort of thing.

For one, he wouldn't peg that Yang Hai person as being above anything.