Archive of Our Own ^beta

Waka slams his foot into his opponent’s gut. The unlucky bastard is thrown into the air, dropping heavily onto the concrete some distance away. He doesn’t get up again. Another body added to a blooming collection with Waka at its eye. A pretty picture, if he does say so himself.

“Commander!” he hears, and ducks away just in time from a punch that might’ve cleaved his head right off his shoulders if it’d landed.

“Today’s the day I beat your pretty little face in, ‘White Leopard’!” a too familiar voice roars.

Waka sneers. Yes, it was about time he showed up. “Fuckin’ try it, ‘Redcliff’! I’m gonna send ya cryin’ to your mum!”

Waka’s brought twelve gangs to heel. Every ego that has dared to stand in his path he has crushed, effortlessly. East Kantou belongs to him now. It’s only logical for the rest of Kantou to fall in line. Ragnarok may be formidable and its iron-fisted commander “undefeated”, but that’s only because they’ve yet to go up against Waka… or so he thought. Months later, Arashi “Redcliff” Keizou remains the stubborn obstacle in his path. The goddamn bane of his existence.

Because it’s not enough for Arashi to simply be the immovable wall between him and his ambitions. He also has to be the most intolerable person Waka has ever met. Waka can’t stand his fucking face, his jawline, or his fucking voice, always booming in Waka’s ears even through the other shouts and noises of their battlegrounds. Does the guy know how to talk at a normal volume? 

Perhaps worst of all is how fucking huge he is. No, Waka isn’t tall, but Arashi makes him feel like a grade schooler again with the angle he has to tilt his head lest he end up staring into the other boy’s toned chest. And that’s yet another fucking thing that infuriates him about Arashi. Right below “indoor voice” on the list of things Arashi has clearly never heard of is “shirts”. Not even on the chilliest day has Waka seen him even button up that garishly red jacket. 

What the fuck? Who is he trying to show off for? Sure, Arashi puts on muscle better than anyone their age has the right to and Waka can admit those tattoos are a little cool, but all he’s really doing is looking more like the stupid asshole Waka already knows he is.

Waka cannot wait for the day he never has to see, hear, or think about Arashi Keizou ever again. And the first step to doing that is to kick his goddamn ass.

“Die, bitch!”

Waka goes high, aiming a kick at that stupid fucking face. Arashi throws himself back and reaches to catch Waka’s leg in mid-air as it passes. Waka brings his other leg up, smashing it into Arashi’s arm, raised in defence. As always, it’s like kicking a brick wall, except a brick wall has more give.

Waka spins, falling back to earth. He finds his lips pulled into a grin. He knows without looking that Arashi’s teeth are similarly bared.

With all the things Waka hates about Arashi, it’s easier to name what he doesn’t. The only such thing is this: the mad glint in his eyes as he swings, as he blocks, as he plows through his opponents. A mirror to Waka’s own in a fight.

They are to this life as fish are to sea. Waka will never feel more alive than when he’s trading blows, blood speckling his face. And he can’t say he’s ever tired of beating the shit out of people, but a challenge, for once, isn’t exactly unwelcome. Sometimes he is almost, and only almost, not unhappy to see Arashi.

“You’re losing your touch, li’l kitty! That barely fuckin’ tickled!”

“You never shut up, do ya, rocks-for-brains!”

Oh, but Waka will shut him up. A challenge Arashi may pose, but it is Waka who will emerge the victor. The king of Kantou is him and him alone. He has tolerated sharing his throne with another for long enough.

Today is the day he puts Arashi Keizou down for good. He’s going to throw him into the dirt as he had all others. He’s going to look at him smugly from above and savour his expression of frustration and defeat. And maybe, if Arashi begs him real nice, he’ll even be so kind as to let him into Koudou Rengou as one of his underlings. He’s going to—

*

Waka gives the bowl one last rinse in the sink.

“That’s all of ‘em,” he drawls and adds it to the stack for Keizou to dry. 

Another evening after another long day—the gym, of course, and Takeomi running them ragged on top of that, sending them all over the city on Brahman business. Tyrant. Waka stifles a yawn. Sometimes, watching Senju bounce around them with still too much energy to spare, he almost misses being a teenager.

“Kei,” he says, quietly enough that the man beside him, toweling off the dishes, has to lean in to hear.

“Hm?” Keizou murmurs distractedly, doing exactly that.

Waka swoops in to catch Keizou’s lips with his own. He runs his hands lazily over his close-cropped hair and down to cup his face. Keizou kisses back, mouth moving against his, open and inviting. 

Unfair that Waka can’t kiss him at his leisure. They spend nearly every minute together—Takeomi has the good graces, at least, never to separate them—and maybe that should be enough, having your life partner at your side to enjoy all of a day’s highs, lows, and mundane with. Waka’s always been a tad greedy. Territory and blood he may have outgrown, but some things—a person in particular—he will never have enough of.

Keizou pecks him on the side of his mouth and pulls away, turning back to the remaining wet dishes. “I’m almost—”

Wordlessly, Waka takes the dishes and deposits them gracefully onto his other side, outside of Keizou’s reach.

Keizou raises one brow. Seriously?

The corner of Waka’s lips quirks up. He cocks his head. So? What’re you gonna do about it?

Keizou gives a light huff, but Waka can see him fighting the upward twitch of his own smile. Though it may have taken them a little longer than most, they’ve learned that it’s easier to give in to what you want. Some battles can end with two winners. Keizou wraps his large hands around Waka’s hips and picks him up, as easily as a younger Waka used to secretly and angrily fantasize about. Waka’s own hands land on Keizou’s shoulders and his loose hair falls to frame their faces.

Yeah, he can tell that younger Waka, Arashi Keizou is strong and he is big. He can love as he fights, rough and passionate. But his hands on your skin can also be gentle, his kisses sweet. He cooks dinner when you’re tired and helps you massage out the knots in your back. He gives the best hugs, engulfing and warm; in them, you’ve never felt more settled or less alone. He has a nice voice, actually. It startled you to notice that the first time you two had an almost normal conversation. It’s the voice that greets you first in the morning and the last you hear before you sleep. You can pick him out blind and among hundreds.

He enjoys his coffee sweeter than you do. His childhood dream job was to be a fireman. He likes the mochi at the little family-run shop a little out of the way between Brahman’s main headquarters and the apartment; you pick some up for him every so often. He has bouts of insomnia; he’s good at not waking you despite you being a light sleeper, but sometimes you crawl up after him to watch mindless action flicks together with the volume on low. He has a special fondness for dogs, though cats, he’s told you, have grown on him.

These are not things you thought you would know about Ragnarok’s “Redcliff”, nor would ever want to. While never aloud to a living soul under the worst torture, you could admit to yourself that he was… attractive. And his skill as a fighter was. Respectable. And, you noticed smugly, if the way he eyed you up at times said anything, he thought the same of you. 

You didn’t expect to like him.

Shinichirou was kind to a fault and had an unusually large heart, but there was no pretending that Takeomi wasn’t his favourite. It meant you and Keizou were each other’s company more often than not, and Shinichirou made the saddest puppy eyes whenever kicks and punches were thrown. With gritted teeth, you challenged one another by other means. Sports. Karaoke. Every game in the arcade, from the races to DDR. 

“Here,” Keizou said and, after the long minute he’d spent frowning down at it, handed you the plush he’d just won from defeating you at a festival shooting game.

“Huh?” You stared at the plush in your arms, taken aback. You couldn’t understand how it got there. “Why are you giving it to me?”

“What else am I supposed to do with it?” Keizou asked, tightly. It was just the two of you, wandering side-by-side between the lantern-lit booths. Shinichirou and Takeomi were nowhere to be found. You hadn’t noticed when you’d lost them.

You looked into the beady eyes of the large stuffed white feline later that night. ‘What the fuck?’ you mouthed to it. It smiled back at you vacantly.

Maybe you were spending too much time with someone you professed to loathe. But as that shocking revelation crossed your mind, another followed: you didn’t want to stop. 

You enjoyed besting him, obviously. And the shit-talking, the fast food meals, all those in-between lulls—you didn’t dislike them. It was getting harder, as time passed, to ignore that being with Keizou felt easy, and that perhaps it wasn’t only his brute strength that’d made him the leader of the once largest gang in the nation. He had an infectious grin. A tendency to take new kids under his wing, the ones that you’d silently noted could use a little watching over. Rather than a wall, you thought of a rock jutting out of a river, steady and reliable despite the current. And when he decided someone was one of his own, he stuck by them to the end.

Arashi Keizou can pick you up, but more important is that he won’t let you fall.

It’s then, Waka poised on the counter and their hands on and under each other’s clothes, that they’re drawn apart by an all too familiar ringtone. It’s Keizou’s phone, because Takeomi knows Waka would leave his own to ring unanswered.

“Think he does this on purpose?” Waka asks wryly.

“It could be important,” Keizou says, more loyally.

“Doesn’t mean it can’t wait until morning.”

Keizou shrugs, his brow creased with more concern than disappointment. Waka unwinds his arms from around him and lets him go with a soft sigh. He doesn’t begrudge him, because it could be important. More likely, Takeomi just needs an ear that isn’t his teenage sister’s. Takeomi gets lonely, Waka thinks.

A life of violence is a gamble. An easy one to make when you’re a kid, invincible and eager for belonging. Waka gambled. Came out blessed with a lot more than most. 

He and Keizou cashed in their chips. They settled together into the sort of quiet life that would’ve disgusted their younger selves. Once, Waka had chased fights—bruises and blood and broken bones—with a wild fervor. An addict and his high. He couldn’t pinpoint when the shine had begun to wear off, only that one day, leaping into another of his signature high kicks, it struck him that he was terribly bored.

“Nobody left that’s any challenge,” Keizou had reasoned. There’d been recognition in his eyes when Waka had brought it up. Waka shouldn’t have been surprised. They’d always been two sides of the same coin.

“True,” he’d agreed easily. It wasn’t bragging when it was fact.

He thought that he should miss it. That rush, and that desire for it, had been intrinsic to him. But he didn’t feel as if he was less himself. If he had to describe it, he’d say it was more like he’d been hungry then, and he wasn’t anymore. Like he’d found what he’d wanted. 

The two of them shut that chapter of their lives. Mornings and evenings in the sanctuary of a home built with a loved one. A steady job—hell, a business of their own, with a few hours a week dedicated to classes for children in need of an outlet the way they once did. Date nights that didn’t end with someone bleeding, most of the time. He and Keizou still sparred regularly, and that contented any lingering restlessness in him. The world they’d used to stand at the centre of grew far away, confined to hearsay from old friends and the kids that would visit Shinichirou’s shop before that night. It moved past them, or they moved past it.

But when the invitation to Brahman came, it was never a question what their answer would be. They weren’t going to leave Senju and Takeomi on their own. Senju, their little protégé, who is braver, stronger, and more driven than most men double her age, but young, still, and not immune to that brand of recklessness. Takeomi, who is their friend before they are two of the strongest pieces on his board. Takeomi, who loved Shinichirou the most. Who will watch out for those two, if not them?

In the next room, Keizou’s voice rumbles evenly and without urgency. Waka moves the remaining dishes on the counter to the rack after a cursory wipe and then goes to lounge with him on the couch. Keizou lifts an arm and wraps it around him when Waka scoots into his side and pillows his head on Keizou’s shoulder.

“Benkei!” Shinichirou coined the name with delight, remarkably unaffected under the weight of twin looks of murder. 

Did the guy think he was being clever? A name like Imaushi Wakasa meant Waka had, in his short life, heard enough Ushiwaka jokes to make his ears bleed. Where the great warrior went, of course, his faithful companion followed. “Where’s your Benkei?” he’d been teased since he’d been a toddler playing in sandboxes. 

Waka was at his best without anyone holding him back. And if the title must belong to someone, it would certainly not be to his mortal enemy.

But, to their mutual horror, there was more to the nickname than just Shinichirou’s shitty sense of humour. The ‘kei’ kanji in Arashi Keizou was, in fact, Benkei’s ‘kei’. An absurd and terrible coincidence that someone was bound to notice, even if Shinichirou hadn’t.

“This is your fault. Change your name,” Waka demanded.

“You change your name,” Keizou bit back. “Who the hell calls their kid ‘Ushiwaka’, anyway?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Waka fumed, even though he agreed.

“It’s like you were meant for each other,” Shinichirou laughed. No one who’d stood a second in their vicinity would think to say that, but Shinichirou always saw the world differently from the rest of them.

The nickname caught on, despite both their attempts to quash it.

“Benkei-kun,” people called Keizou.

“Waka and Benkei,” they said. “Benkei and Waka.”

“You cool with that?” Waka asked, eventually, after they’d stopped correcting them. 

They were far from the well-oiled machine they are now, the veteran dance partners, but even then Waka had an inkling of where Keizou would step during a fight before he did. He knew when to provide cover and when his back was safe. This was when they would sneak off together, trying to be slick, while Takeomi gave them narrow-eyed looks of suspicion.

“It means we’re a set,” he elaborated. He fiddled with his cigarette, feeling unusually nervous. It means our names, together in the same breath. It means the two of us, linked, always. Because where there was a Benkei, there was a Ushiwaka. Ushiwaka and Benkei was a legend of two enemies turned lifelong comrades. Of loyalty unto death.

“Do you have a problem with that?” Keizou asked back. His hands flexed, the way they did, Waka had come to learn, when Keizou was a little anxious himself.

Waka let out a breath. “No,” he told him.

It felt, then, like a promise, and if it was, then it’s a promise that has weathered over a decade. That has outlasted even the odd and beloved man that had brought them together. Remained strong through calm and turbulence and tragedy. And in another decade, in several decades more, Waka is certain of where he wants to be.

Waka twines their fingers together, then nudges Keizou to put Takeomi on speaker. Their friend can likely use another listening ear, and Waka and Keizou are a two-man team; they don’t go separately.