Born to Fly

Nagi sat down in his office chair at home, and pulled his glasses off to rub at his face. What the hell did I do to deserve Takatori Mamoru as a patient?

His assistant and room mate came in shortly afterwards with a cup of tea. "Rough day?" he asked, coming around to rub at Nagi's shoulders. Nagi shrugged, leaning into the touch.

"You remember Takatori Mamoru, don't you Jei?" The tone in his voice was harsh, and he did his best to moderate it. The white-haired man looked thoughtful for a moment.

"He used to be called Tsukiyono Omi, didn't he? He's an actor now."

"He's a dying actor," Nagi said bitterly. "And he's all too ready to go. And determined to piss as many people off on the way there as he can." Jei's shoulder rubbing turned into a full-fledged massage as he turned his attention to working the knots of tension out of Nagi's shoulders.

There was a few moments of peaceful silence, broken only by Nagi's sighs. "He's dying," Jei said quietly. "Can you help him?"

Nagi laughed bitterly. "The question is can I bring myself to help him? He's an asshole now. I wonder what happened to the sweet little boy we used to try and kill."

"Life happened," Jei offered. "A bad life, from what I've heard. All his friends are dead, right?" Nagi finished the tea, and stood. Jei moved back to give him room.

"Let's go sit in the living room. It's more comfortable in there." They relocated, Nagi curling up on his chair with another cup of tea, and Jei settled himself in his seat with the newspaper and his coffee. "They're dead?" Nagi asked, picking up the trail of conversation from earlier.

"You didn't know?" Jei was surprised; he still kept up with the doings of the underworld, even if he didn't have any affect on them himself any more. He was content as Nagi's aide, living a quieter life than the one he'd been leading as a youth. "I heard Fujimiya was stabbed and left on the street to die; a hit, I thought, for revenge. Police ruled it random violence, and buried him in the public cemetary. Hidaka was drowned in a face full of bleach in prison, and Kudou was in a car accident with his family. We took out Kritiker when Schwarz was still together, and then Mamoru vanished, only to reappear a year later in a movie. He was an instant success if I recall rightly; local girls flocked to him at that flower shop, and women everywhere flocked to him after that movie."

"Did you know that one of the Kritiker agents is still alive? She's acting as his manager now. She seemed a little off, though."

"Takaoka Kyoko," Jei said after a moment of searching through his encyclopedic memory. "She lost her memory in the explosion of Kritiker's HQ, and couldn't quite shake the knowledge that she'd known Mamoru. He took her in to keep her close to him, and they've been a pair ever since."

Nagi looked started. "A pair? They're sleeping together?"

"If the rumour mill is to believed, Mamoru is inclined towards members of his own sex," Jei said, shrugging. Nagi absorbed this in silence, and then turned to his book. They sat in companionable silence until they retired to bed, each with his own thoughts.

*

Nagi stared down at the name on his paper in dismay. He'd only been on shift for five minutes, and already the day was looking down. Taking a deep breath, he opened the door. Mamoru sat idly on the chair, smoking.

"Please do not smoke inside the hospital," Nagi ground out politely. He received a face full of smoke by way of reply, and then reached out with his gift and smashed the cigarette to bits, effectively putting it out.

"Bastard," Mamoru commented lightly, pulling another one from his pocket without lighting it.

"My parents were married when I was born, which is more than I can say for you." He didn't mean for the words to come out; the other boy had always brought out the worst in him, and ten years separation made no difference.

Mamoru shrugged the jibe off with a laugh. "So you do have claws," he remarked. "I was beginning to wonder if you ever said anything worth listening to."

"It's five in the morning, why are you in here?" Nagi's patience was dangling by a thread, and he had a feeling that Mamoru was playing with scissors.

"I couldn't sleep," was all he said. Nagi felt the thread beginning to fray.
"Nyquil!" he barked. "It's helpful!" He regretted the words almost immediately, watching the way Mamoru's eyes lit up.

"Ooh, can I have some? Kyoko won't let me take the stuff; I'm deathly allergic to it." It took every last ounce of his self control not to give into old habits and just toss the older man out through the wall.

"No, if you're allergic to it, I'm not prescribing nyquil. Why couldn't you sleep?" Nagi settled himself in the other chair, examining his patient from a distance. There were dark circles under his eyes, proof that he hadn't been sleeping well in a long time. His face was gaunt, his cheeks hollow. He looked like death warmed over, and Nagi wondered if he was saveable. He didn't want his one time nemesis to be the first patient he'd ever had die on him, he couldn't let Mamoru one-up him that way. He vowed to save him, to give him his life back.

"I had a headache," Mamoru said tritely. Nagi pulled patience from somewhere he'd never reached into before, his compassion as a doctor taking over for his intense personal dislike of the man in front of him. "It started here," he pointed to his head, behind his ear. "And within half an hour, it had taken over my entire head. Nothing took the pain away. Kyoko's rationed my pills, because she's afraid I'll take the bottle one day and not wake up." He looked haggard all of a sudden, and old. Nagi realized that behind the front he was putting up - he was always putting up a front, always hiding, had since he was a child, Nagi'd known that! Had known that the rude exterior was hiding something sensitive within it. Nagi berated himself mentally for forgetting who he was dealing with. He wasn't Fujimiya who hid behind an icy mask until he burned it away with rage, or Kudou who agonized over things long dead, and especially not Hidaka who'd worn his feelings on his sleeve. This was Tsukiyono, the one who put on a happy face no matter what hid behind it.

This illness was taking it's toll on him, and no one could get far enough past the brash exterior to find out just how hard it was on him. Nagi felt something flare to life, something he'd thought extinguished long ago.

He felt pity for the young man before him.

(TBC)