Onnagata

Saitoh x Aoshi In Progress fic

My head pounded like a hyperactive two-year-old banging on a soup pot in his mother's kitchen. The smell of nam pla clogged up in my nostrils, mingled with the sour taste of rye in the back of my throat, nudging me with the reminder that I must've passed out in my office, two floors above the Old City's most dubious Thai restaurant.

In peeling gold leaf on the door, largely illegible in any language, I could read my name, backwards, through the wavy glass. At any rate, I hoped it was the glass that was wavy and not my whiskey-soaked vision.

"Saitoh Hajime, Private Investigator."

I hadn't realized I'd read it out loud until a voice as smooth as an autumn pond knocked me out of my chair. "That's what it says on the door. I certainly hope you're him… and not some wino looking to get out of the rain?" it murmured as I picked myself up off the dirty linoleum.

In the dark corner, she stood, illuminated by the blinking echoes of Ginza neon like the Amida Kannon in a shrine. Out of the flickering shadows she stepped, giving the impression of fine black calligraphy on the whitest paper - artfully deconstructed. Ink black hair falling in feathered tendrils across teacup-pale cheeks, eyes hidden behind them, her clothes some rustling, silken darkness.

"I guess it depends on whether you're here to hire me or not." I answered smoothly, patting down the pocket of my rumpled suit, for an even more distressed package of smokes. "Cigarette, Miss…..?"

"Shinomori." There was a soft ripple of sound that could've only been a laugh - one that could easily be missed. The way she moved was fixating. Spare and catlike, but every nuance as feminine as I could've ever imagined a woman being. She sat down in the battered leather chair across the old mahogany plain of my desk, her coat draping like a courtesan's robe as she did. I caught a glimpse of her eyes as she tipped her head. They were green.. not some tawdry emerald's sparkle, but jade, just translucent enough to hint at the secrets lit behind them.

It was a woman the likes of which I'd never seen before, and that meant only one thing.

Trouble.

"I don't smoke." She was continuing, glossing over my gape-mouthed silent musings. "Someone's trying to kill me." One long leg crossed the other as she leaned forward with a whisper of silk. "I want you to find out who it is.. and stop them."

I tapped out my wasted cigarette, unsmoked and burned to the filter, and found myself leaning forward to meet her. "Why don't you just go to the police?" It was a stock question. People who came to people like me, weren't people who went to the cops.

I should know. I used to be one.

"That would be… importune." She added a graceful turn to the stock answer I was expecting. "The police are disinclined to help someone in my profession."

"Not to make assumptions, Miss Shinomori, but you wouldn't happen to be a... companion for hire, would you?" Somehow, none of the other words that had sprang to mind stuck, too commonplace for me to attach to someone like her.

"Far worse, Mr. Saitoh. I'm an actor."

…..

I must've been staring for longer than I thought, because a graceful hand, white and smelling faintly of sake and peaches, reached out for me and gently pushed my jaw closed. The touch burned electric cool on my chin as the words settled back through the remainder of the whiskey slurry in my brain. As the words fought through the haze, the static tingle of her fingers, even for that brief second, set off sparklers in my peripheral nervous system, condensing somewhere south of the waistband of my 799¥ poly-wool blend trousers.

Then it hit.

"You're an actor."

Under the Shogunate's law, that could only mean one thing, and I struggled for too many painfully long moments to make a connection between the beguiling creature sitting before me and the one thing she had to be.

A man.

"You're a …." I mumbled, trying to get the words to make their way down from my Suntory-soaked cortex into my voicebox.

"…an actor." She.. he.. finished helpfully, with the faintest touch of sarcasm. Deflated, I sat back. This new information was unfortunately taking it's good sweet time getting to my groin, and I shifted with an acute sense of embarrassment to cover up that fact. "Is that a problem, Mr. Saitoh? I've heard you're an investigator of great acuity... and justice. Despite what the newspaper articles in Kyoto said."

"You do your homework." I had to give him credit for that, despite the unpleasant memories those few words caused to surge to the surface. It made me look harder at him, searching out tell-tale masculine signs, but the harder I looked, the more disturbingly beautiful he appeared.

"I try. In any endeavour it pays to be well informed. Will you take the case, or am I too… unsavory for you?" There was a hint of challenge in his last words, and the graceful white hands settled on his knee. What could I say? Since my …enforced early retirement from the Kyoto Metropolitan Police Force, I had taken cases from a collection of lowlifes and degenerates that would make a sailor turn red.

How could I turn down the unearthly being sitting across from me?

Besides. He looked like he was good for the dough.

I rattled off what I thought would be a ridiculous amount of cash to test that theory, and Shinomori's porcelain-doll face didn't even blink. He simply reached down next to the chair, and produced a bookend-sized wad of crisp bills with the Shogun's rheumy face rendered lovingly in three-color engraving and set it down on the desk. "Consider this a retainer. The rest upon completion of the investigation and my continued well being. Your employment starts now."

~~~~~~~~~~

The next thing I knew, I was driving my new client back to his apartment outside of Yoshiwara. The rumble of the Toyoda Powerglide engine in my big old hunk of prime Aichi-prefecture iron filled in the space where conversation was normally held.

After I while, even I couldn't stand it. "Alright. I give up. Why me, Shinomori?" I asked as late night traffic snarled around man-powered noodle cart.

"I already told you.. the police…" He started, but I cut off the words with a gun of the engine, wedging in between the taxis and the remains of the evening's fun-seekers.

"Yeah, yeah, the police. But let's be real. Sleazebag detectives are a yen a dozen in this burg." I didn't want to look at him, partially because I didn't want to get into an accident, but partly because I didn't think I could handle looking into those green eyes again just yet.

"Like you said earlier, Mr. Saitoh… I do my homework." Shinomori purred softly, one hand brushing across mine on the steering wheel. I almost plowed into a hooker on the sidewalk when he did. She shrieked in some unrecognizable gaijin pidgin and flung her shoe at the car as I got us back on the road.

"Don't do that again." I snarled at him, catching the unrepentant enigmatic little smile gracing his doll's face. "You're going to get us both killed."

"My apologies." He said in a voice that conveyed pretty much the direct opposite. "That's exactly what I don't want. And as I was saying, of all the…sleazebag detectives in this city… you are the one I trust."

"You shouldn't." I heard myself say under my breath, as I parked in front of the featureless façade of Shinomori's building.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Whatever I'd expected it to look like, somehow it wasn't it. But the elegantly Spartan interior of the apartment was much more fitting than the expectation I'd built up in my mind. I watched as Shinomori slipped off the voluminous black coat, leaving just a slender figure in even more black.

"Can I get you anything, Mr. Saitoh?" He asked in that maddening purr. "I'm afraid I don't have any whiskey, but I'm sure…"

"This isn't a date, Shinomori." I growled out before I could say 'yes.' "We need to talk about what's been happening so I can get a feel as to where to start." I looked around the pristine room with it's white walls.. it's white carpet.. even it's white furniture, and Shinomori standing there like a dark angel in the middle of it all. A calculated contrast.

"But I could seriously use a bathroom right now." I belched by way of punctuation, feeling the remains of my buzz evaporating.

"It's down the hall." He said to me, dismissively with a wave of that pale hand. "Just don't vomit on anything, all right?"

I could've sworn the little bastard was laughing at me.

Truth of the matter was, I didn't need to use the can. My ex-wife always said, you could learn a lot about a person from their bathroom. She's right. She was always right about stuff like that.

Including why she got away from me while the getting was good.

Shinomori's bathroom was as sterile-looking as the living room. I sensed a trend here. Carefully, I opened up his cabinets, poking through the bottles of shampoo, skin creams, potions for which no man in his right mind would ever let touch his skin…I expected to find diet pills.. valium.. something.. but either Shinomori hid them very well, or didn't indulge like so many actors were famous for.

"Find anything interesting, Mr. Saitoh?" The soft voice behind me made me jump, whacking my head on the undersink cabinet.

"GODDAMNIT! OW!" He looked unrepentant when I turned to glare at him, covering up my own guilt at snooping. "Don't DO that."

He had the nerve to offer me a hand up after that. "You can learn a lot from people by poking around in their bathrooms." He said with a faint smirk.

I tried not to think about it. "yeah. You can. So, you want to tell me what's been going on?"

Shinomori leaned against the doorframe as I got up without his assistance. "Last week, a lighting rig missed me by a few inches. One of our stage crew grabbed me out of the way. After that, a black sedan tried to run me over coming out of rehearsals… I feel like I'm being followed at night when I leave after performances.."

"It could just be coincidence." I said, finding myself watching his face as he spoke, one white hand idly toying with a raven-black strand of hair. I realized that in this light, he didn't look like a woman. Not really. But he didn't look like a man either. Some creature poised in between the two. Yeah, I think he was being followed at night all right… by some lovesick, crazed-samurai groupie.

It might have been some glint in my peripheral vision or some sound out of place in the murmur of evening traffic outside, but my gut instinct told me all of a sudden to get down, and I grabbed Shinomori just as the bathroom window shattered with the kiss of a bullet, spraying glass against my back.

"Coincidence?" He asked, breathless underneath me, when both our hearts restarted from the shock. I was surprised at his composure until I looked into those translucent green eyes, to see the ghost of fear peeking out from behind his blasé façade.

"Ok. So, maybe not." I got up slowly, unholstering my gun. Glass sparkled on the white floor like ice-dust, Shinomori's slender black form a shadow beneath me. The body that I'd covered with my own was definitely not a woman's - not a trace of softness hid in the stylish dark clothes. Part of me actually felt ashamed for making bodily contact with him. Part of me enjoyed it.

Enjoyed it too much.

"Well." He sat up. "Earning your keep already." He made light of it, but there was tight concern in his voice. I kept between him and the window as he stood, trying to listen for more danger.

"Yeah. You'd better be good for the rest." I helped him up, clicking off the light switch with my elbow as I backed us out into the hallway. "Look, Shinomori. It's definitely not safe for you here tonight. Grab some stuff. Quickly. I'll get you somewhere safe for the night."

I squinted into the darkness outside, but by then, the lowlife had already taken off into the night. Still, I didn't think it was a good idea to be lingering around.

We were in the car fifteen minutes later. I have to say, I was surprised by his ability to pack quickly. I would've thought someone like Shinomori would've spent at least an hour agonizing over which pair of Italian leather shoes to bring.

"Where are we going?" He asked once we were away from the apartment, before the police could respond to the inevitable call from the neighbors from the gunshot. It might have been a trick of the flickering, passing light, but I could've sworn he looked lost for a moment. It was a dangerous way for him to look, pricking at some protective instinct I thought I'd squashed years ago.

It was gone when I looked at him fully, though. "We're going to my place. Not many windows, and the building's safe. I made sure of that." I kept looking in the rearviews, but I couldn't see any sign of a tail. Which made me wonder how serious Shinomori's potential murderer actually was.

"You sound smug." He said blandly, turning to look at the night passing outside the sedan's window.

"Phht. What do you know about it?" I said, driving us into the Old City's underbelly. He didn't say another word.

~~~~~~~~~

I'd never really thought of my place as a rathole, until I'd had a glimpse of Shinomori's stark heaven. He didn't make any comment about my beer bottle and underwear motif though, as I locked the deadbolts behind us.

"You can take my bed. In the morning I'll start poking around. You got anyone you could think of would wanna kill you?" There were always stories in the morning rags about whacko Samurai theatre fanboys lopping off hunks of flesh to offer to their favorite actors, a practice I couldn't wrap my brain around. But even when I was a cop in Kyoto, I couldn't remember any cases of fans trying to kill the objects of their affections - anonymously, at least.

"I honestly don't have a clue, Mr. Saitoh." He said quietly, looking around my apartment with well-veiled distaste. "But you can never tell in the theatre, what true emotions people's hearts hide."

True enough, I figured, fishing out a beer from the icebox. "You want one?" I wagged a bottle of Sapporo at him.

"This isn't a date, remember?" He quirked an eyebrow at me, but took it anyways, popping off the top on the edge of my kitchen counter like a pro.

"You're an interesting guy, Shinomori." I found myself saying as I watched the movement of his throat as he tossed back the beer. "You had enough beauty products to make every woman in Edo jealous - but you drink beer like a longshoreman."

He laughed then, a short but genuine sounding chuckle. "People expect actors to appear a certain way, Mr. Saitoh. Part of my job is to maintain that appearance. After all, no one is going to want to pay to see some haggard old shrew on stage, correct?" He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and set the bottle down. "But there's no one here but you to watch me drink this beer. I would guess you don't care whether or not I drink it as a lady should."

Had to give him credit for that one there. But somehow, I didn't think "haggard old shrew" could apply to him even on the worst of all possible days.

"So. What made you become an actor, anways?" I asked as he hopped up to sit on my counter, one long-black-clad leg crossing over the other as I offered him another beer. It never hurt to learn more about a client's background. Especially in cases like this.

"I was discovered by the great Kanryuu in Kyoto when I was younger." He sounded almost coy, lingering over his beer. I almost choked on mine. Kanryuu was a name I recognized, but not from any theatre marquee.

His full name was Kanryuu Tashikawa XV, the latest in the long and illustrious line of Kabuki actors. It had been something else before his adoption into the Kanryuu family, but that was a closely guarded secret. I'd come across his file in my rookie days, after the strange and untimely disappearance of Kanryuu Tashikawa XIV. The whole case had been hushed up from on high, though, and the file had mysteriously sprouted legs and walked off.

"Kanryuu, huh?" Something else started to bother me. Something from that file that was just outside of the reach of my long term memory. "How come you don't have the name, then?"

"I'm an Onnagata, Mr. Saitoh. The Kanryuu line doesn't accept my role, only that of fierce heroes." He took a swig of beer with that, pale pink lips lingering on the gleaming brown neck of the bottle long enough for the uncomfortable surge to start in my shorts again.

"You can just call me Saitoh, you know. Everyone else does." I found other things to look at in the kitchen, trying to focus on something else other than the implied seduction Shinomori was attempting.

"Saitoh." He said as if he were reciting a line from a play, full of scripted emotion. "I'm going to turn in, I think. It's been an eventful evening." He slid off the counter with a whisper of silk and vanished into my bedroom like a ghost.

I stood there for a long time, just watching the closed door, before I could get my feet to move, and I picked up the receiver on the heavy black phone on the counter. "Operator? Kyoto 554 please." I tried to whisper, not wanting him to hear, even though I could hear the water in my bathroom start to run.

"One moment please, sir." There was a brief crackle-hiss, and then it started to ring.

"Come on Cho, you useless radish. Pick up." It must've worked, because there was a weary "Whaddyawan?" on the other end.

"Cho. It's me. Saitoh." Cho had been my second partner on the Kyoto Metropolitan Police…after Okita. I pushed THAT thought out of my mind, instead picturing Cho's ugly face and blonde brush cut when I closed my eyes.

"Saitoh. Buddha in a handbasket. Do you know what time it is?" He definitely didn't sound happy to hear from me. "This’d better be damn good."

"I need you to find something for me." There was a barely disguised grunt of displeasure on the other end.

"What now, old Wolf? You know if I help you, my ass is in a sling." Yep. Definitely displeased.

"I need you to find the Kanryuu file." There was a "clunk" as Cho dropped the phone, then scrambled to pick it up again. That got his attention.

"You want me to do WHAT?"

"Just do it, Cho. It's important. I'll really owe you one." I dangled that in front of him, knowing the idiot was always running some scam of his own on the side.

"Damn straight you will. Fine. I'll see what I can find. But I'm gonna own you for this one." He didn't sound as sour as he normally would've. "I'll call you later."

And that, as they say, was that.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I don't know how long I'd been asleep on the couch for, busted spring digging into my kidney, when I awoke to the creepy sensation of someone staring at me. I started to reach for my gun when Shinomori's soft voice shivered down the back of my neck.

"It's only me, Saitoh." I craned my aching neck to see him standing in a sliver of moonlight. He was wearing one of my shirts and held the blanket off the bed like a little kid might. I couldn't see his face in the shadows, just the silver edges of his hair, the faint glow of the white shirt on white skin. Once again, he was a creature poised in between gender and age.

I was struck by the sudden wondering if Kanryuu "discovered" him like this. It made me feel surprisingly crabby.

"I didn't mean to startle you. I'm.. having some difficulty sleeping." He said offhandedly, coming to sit on the floor next to where I laid on the couch.

"Getting shot at has a tendency to do that in the beginning." It came out brusquer than I'd intended it to, and I almost regretted it. He *was* my client, after all.

"ho ho ho." He drew the blanket around him and leaned his head back on the couch next to me. I could follow the line of sight down his pale throat, graceful like a woman's, but I was surprised by what was presented against the open front of my appropriated shirt.

Scars. The ugliest looking scars I could ever remember seeing on a living person. "That's something I sure didn't expect." I said out loud without really realizing it.

He looked at me with that enigmatic jade-green gaze for a long moment. "In the theatre, nothing is ever as it appears, Mr. Saitoh." He reached up to stroke my cheek. We were close enough for me to taste the remains of the Sapporo on his breath and my own caught because my heart had suddenly decided to start pounding double time.

"Shinomori…" The cramped quarters on the couch made it impossible for me to move away from him. At least without sitting up.

"My name is Aoshi." He lifted his chin enough for those pale lips to brush mine, and the brief contact was enough to almost send me through the ceiling. As it was, I sat bolt upright and pushed him back.

"That's enough of that." I couldn't make my hands let go of his upper arms, though, despite the fact that my brain was screaming at them to let go. "Just go back to bed, Shinomori."

His china-doll's face was almost amused. "You don't like me?" I was finally able to make my hands release, and I fisted them on my knees to prevent that from happening again.

"I don't know you well enough to have an opinion of you beyond the fact that you're a transvestite with a lot of dough that hired me to protect him." Ouch. That definitely came out harsher than I had wanted it to. There was a brief flicker of… something in his eyes and he got up with that same catlike grace that had caught my attention earlier.

"You're honest. That's good." He said as the blanket slipped to the floor with a soft shushing sound and he turned, retreating from me back to the other room.

"Shinomori……"

"Good night, Mr. Saitoh. I feel much safer with you in my employ." The chill in his words lingered even after the door shut with a solid click.

~~~~~~~~~~~

The sun stabbed through the dusty blinds and into my eyes like a deranged pixie hell-bent for vengance. I got up with an aching back, a screaming neck and a very guilty conscience.

The bedroom door was still shut firmly, and I stared at it for some time until resolve settled on my shoulders and a cigarette found it's way into my mouth, and I opened it as quietly as I could.

"…Aoshi…?" I whispered, poking my head into the room filled with the same dusty sunlight.

And nothing else except my furniture.

"Aw.. sonovabitch."

~~~~~~~~~~

I waited for him for one hour, three cups of coffee and four smokes before I finally gave up and drove over to the theatre Kanryuu's troupe performed at. It seemed logical enough that Shinomori'd show up here, and besides, I needed to ask some questions.

He'd paid me enough for that.

So I kept telling myself.

The theatre was a bustle of activity, sets and lighting moving about, the actors in their enormous, elaborate costumes jostling about, walking through their paces, and in the middle of it all, a rather small, rodent-looking fellow.

It took me a couple of moments to realize it was the Great Kanryuu.

"You look smaller without the wig." I offered as I made my way through the crowd to him. He peered over his glasses at me.

"And just who are you? Who let this….. person in here?" he shrieked at the stagehands, who scattered. He looked back at me with the expression of someone trying to remember a face.

"My name's Saitoh. I'm investigating the recent attempts on Shinomori Aoshi's life?" I took an extra long drag on my smoke, trying to put the hurt look in Shinomori's eyes out of my mind.

"Do you know where that little drama queen is, *Mr.* Saitoh?" Kanryuu groused at me. "He's holding up rehearsals!" Fierce hero indeed. The little rodent waved his script at me. "We've got afternoon performances!"

"I'm here, sir. I'm sorry, I got held up in traffic today." The soft voice behind me was startling and I wheeled around to see Shinomori standing in the stage doorway, the morning light giving him a glow. I wondered if he was always so calculating with how he entered a room.

"Get your ass into makeup!" Kanryuu flung the script at him in a fit, and stalked off, pausing to look at me once more. "And you! YOU! Get the hell off my stage!"

"Shinomori…" I started, but he walked past me as if I wasn't even there. "Shinomori!" I grabbed his arm and he froze.

"We don't have anything else to talk about, Mr. Saitoh." He murmured without looking at me, and I let my hand drop.

"I'm sorry about last night..I.." I couldn't believe I was apologizing. My ex-wife would be having laughing fits if she'd been around to see.

"You were a total jackass, Mr. Saitoh, if you don't mind me saying so. But I believe you were being honest." The purr was muted in his voice, replaced by an unfortunate dullness that I felt like a heel for producing.

"Well, if you hadn't gone and kissed me…" I stopped right there, suddenly aware of the fact that all other conversation in the theatre had completely stopped.

In that moment, Shinomori had the expression of every woman I've managed to piss off in my 40 some odd years of life, and in the next, the world was spinning because he'd just clocked me upside the head with his duffle bag.

"Jackass."

~~~~~~~~~~~

"You ok, sir?" Someone was talking to me, and I blinked, looking around at the once-again bustling theatre.

"Yeah, I'll live." It was a kid with a brush of dark hair and a cocky-bastard look to him that immediately reminded me of Cho. "Who the hell are you?"

He offered me a hand up. "Aoshi hit you pretty hard, I see. " He laughed at me. "Name's Sagara.. I'm one of the crew. I heard you talking to Kanryuu about Aoshi before.." He grew more serious and cocked his head. "I was the one who saved him from the lighting fall."

"Oh yeah?" The whole left side of my face still throbbed, but my interest was piqued. I'd been dismissed by Shinomori, but I didn't feel like I was ready to let this go yet. “So, what can you tell me about all this, kid?”

“I think.. someone’s really trying to kill him. I mean, sometimes, when an actor’s…. approval rating…” he scratched his jaw, leaning against some prop scenery. “drops… they’ll stage, whaddyawannacallit… media ops, get their names in the dailies again… but Aoshi’s not like that.”

He must’ve felt my trying to look inside his head, because the kid turned red and waved me off. “It’s not like that, ok?” he grouched at me. “He’s not… nice, y’know? But he treats everyone with, I dunno.. respect. Which is really rare in this business…” He paused as an actor with an elaborate Oni mask threw his wooden geta at one of the wardrobe staff. “Ya know?”

“So he’s a prince among men.” I rubbed my jaw again, more out of irritation. “So why would anyone want to kill him?” Sagara wouldn’t look me in the eye as I asked.

“Look. We gotta start rehearsals. Why dontcha stick around?” He stuffed his hands in his pockets and retreated from me like I was spitting fire at him. Through the tangles of ropes and wires across the backstage area, I could see Kanryuu… his weaselly gaze watching Sagara walk away, before fixing on me.

God, I hated the theater.