Big Trouble In Little Florists- Chapter Seven

Title- Big Trouble In Little Florists
Author- BittenKitten
Chapter- Seven
Genre- Angst, Humour, Yaoi, Drama 
Warnings- NC17 for sex, violence, swearing and dark themes.

Please note- As always all the characters are over 18 and the vast majority are over 21.

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Omi woke up and tried to die. Dying would be preferable to feeling like this, as though his head was going to split open and his insides explode out of his navel.

Groaning and begging for mercy he slid onto his side and waited to either feel better or for some benevolent deity to euthanize him with a lightening bolt. He knew that this couldn’t still be the hangover from Yohji’s vodka because that had been two nights since. It was a moment before he remembered what it must be.

Schuldig’s face leered out from the mission and Omi remembered his head hitting concrete like a bottle launching an ocean liner. That, and Schuldig’s mind rape, explained the headache. Omi groped for some painkillers.

Now. The nausea. What was that about?

Oh.

Yes.

Nagi.

Nagi, whose mouth had seemed to stay behind on Omi’s lips even after the hug had ended and Nagi had extricated himself and left. He had looked disturbed as he went.

‘Was being kissed by me so terrible?’ Omi wondered, miserably.

Because he had liked kissing Nagi. Liked it enough to explain the roiling anxiety masquerading as sickness in his stomach.

Omi sighed and tried to stand up. He needed to find Nagi. Not to talk about the kiss; if Nagi hadn’t liked it then wild horses weren’t going to make Omi bring it up, but to talk about something far worse. Something that Omi would have told him about the night before if that surge of...need hadn’t wiped it clean from Omi’s mind.

The need pounding away in Omi’s chest, the pure sense of recognition that there was something in Nagi suited to Omi. That Nagi understood. It was even more worrying than the kissing. ‘I can’t be falling for Nagi,’ Omi told himself firmly, ‘falling for an enemy is the sort of thing that Yohji might do. Not me.’

He deliberately stubbed his toe on the way out of his bedroom to try and shock himself into focus. Out in the corridor he staggered blearily in the vague direction of the bathroom, hoping to at least be physically got together before facing Nagi, but luck was not on Omi’s side.

Luck had pissed off weeks ago it seemed.

Nagi came out of the guest room just as Omi was about to walk past it and they both froze and stared at each other and then the floor and then, disconcertingly, at each others’ lips.

Omi felt sure that his were kiss raw. He started blushing with a horrible inevitability.

“Good...morning.” Nagi said, eventually. He looked inexpressibly uncomfortable. He kept chewing his lip anxiously.

‘I shouldn’t kiss people,’ Omi thought, ‘It never ends well. They either turn out to be related to me of I just completely freak them out.’ He realised that Nagi had been hoping for a reply to his greeting and hadn’t got one.

“There was something that I should have told you last night,” Omi blurted. Nagi tensed visibly, his body beginning to take on that statue like deathly stillness that had used to be all that Omi could see of him. Voices approached up the stairs and Omi decided that he didn’t want an audience for this. He was already past humiliated at giving away so much to Schuldig.

He took Nagi’s stiff arm and guided him back into Omi’s bedroom. In some ways this was a bad idea. They both immediately began to think about what had happened in this room the night before.

Nagi’s skinny arms around him. That sense that this was what they had been waiting for since the first time they fought.

The heat of it.

Omi swallowed and hoped that his eyes hadn’t glazed over the way Nagi’s just had.

“On last night’s mission,” Omi forced the words out, desperate to get it over with, “I encountered Schuldig.”

Nagi’s eyes narrowed at once. Nearby something on Omi’s desk began to rattle.

“He got into my mind. He showed me things.” Omi couldn’t help noticing that the rattling sound was getting louder.

“I know this.” Nagi said, tersely, his eyes staring relentlessly into Omi’s, “You told me this last night.”

‘He knows,’ Omi thought, ‘he knows that I’ve endangered him. He can sense it.’

A pencil fell off Omi’s desk.

Then a book fell off the bookcase.

“I...” Omi’s eyes were wide. Every second since Schuldig’s name had been spoken Nagi’s expression had hardened more. “You know what I’m going to say, don’t you.”

“He knows,” Nagi hissed, clenching his fists, “He knows that I’m here.”

The chair in front of Omi’s desk fell over with a crash.

“No, he only knows that you are with Kritiker,” Omi hastily reassured him, backing away a little, “He seemed to assume that we wouldn’t be stupid enough to keep you with us. He thinks that you are in a Kritiker hospital or safe house.”

Nagi remained silent as several items in the room began to shake. Omi couldn’t see Nagi’s rising panic in those blank eyes but he could certainly feel it when the bedside clock hurtled by at head level and smashed fatally into the door.

As the shaking in the room got louder, as the bed began to screech and skitter across the floor, Omi knew that he needed to calm Nagi down before there was nothing left of the Koneko.

“I’ll never get away from him.” Nagi was saying, dully, as the bed jolted and surged against the teetering book case.

Omi reached out.



Five minutes later the room was calmer but Omi most decidedly wasn’t.

As their lips parted Omi sighed despairingly.

Nagi leaned back a little and raised a hand to stroke Omi’s hair. His eyes were no longer blank. They were something that, to Omi’s mind, was far more dangerous than a telekinetic about to blow up.

They were affectionate.

The room was eerily silent. They were staring at each other. Omi felt caught by what he saw in Nagi’s face, felt in his fingers running through his hair. The wanting in them, the lust. Omi knew instinctively exactly what Nagi ached to do to him.

And that he would bloody well let Nagi do it.

The last of Omi’s sexual innocence felt as though it was seeping out of his pores.
This was serious now.

‘Touch me,’ he thought, frantically, ‘touch me.’ He would have reached out himself but he seemed too paralysed at this precise moment to do more than stare. Nagi breathed out shakily and,

And the fucking phone rang.

They both jumped about a foot in the air and the moment was brutally shattered. The shrill bell went on and on and Omi swore violently and went to answer it.

The mobile that was ringing was one of two that Omi owned. One was for his Koneko life, his Weiss life, and the other was an untraceable pre-pay phone so that he had a number for college, so that he could give it out and put it on networking sites and use it to pretend to be a normal student.

As he picked up he was painfully aware of two things. One, that Nagi was stood by the door, and two, that Omi might be in for a bollocking from his supervisor because he was late with two essays and had skipped a couple of seminars. He didn’t think that, ‘I’m having trouble in my other, secret identity,’ would be considered a valid excuse somehow.

But it was a female voice when he picked up.

“Is that Omi?” She asked. She sounded terrible, as though all the hordes of hell were after her. Omi heard people that sounded like that a lot, in his professional capacity. Weiss rarely met happy people.

“Yes. Kagura?” He couldn’t keep the surprise out of his voice.

“I’m sorry to phone you like this but...I need your help, Omi. I need someone’s help and you’ve always seemed,” She ground to a halt, probably not aware herself of why she had called Omi and not someone else.

Omi’s heart sank. No matter how much he tried to seem ordinary, tried to blend in, he still got people turning to him like this, with hysteria in their voices. As though those in crisis sensed his other self.

“Where are you?” He asked. Her breath was thready, the audible edge of someone who had been living in a state of fear for too long and had now cracked.

Omi got that a lot too.

“I don’t know if I can get away,” Her voice dropped to a strangled whisper, “They watch me all the time.”

“We’ve got a lecture together today,” Omi pointed out, “No one would be suspicious if we talked then.”

“I’ve got to go. They think I’m in the toilet but I climbed out of the window and found,”

There was a beep and then she was gone. Omi hoped that the payphone had given out on her and that it wasn’t something worse.

“Trouble?” Nagi asked, sounding almost grateful for the interruption.

Omi wished that he could also claim to be relieved. He ought to regard the phone call as a blessing because it had stopped them doing...what they had been about to do. But instead fear and disappointment were happy slapping each other in the pit of his stomach until fear gained a narrow upper hand.

“Maybe I’m still concussed,” Omi blurted, turning around. Nagi gave him a very direct look. “I don’t think I’m quite myself.” Omi added, shame running down the back of his neck like a cold sweat. He was trying to wriggle out of whatever it was that was happening between them and Nagi must know that.

“OK,” Nagi said, coolly, “Whatever you want.”

The fact still hung between them that they had kissed twice in the last two days, that Omi had started it both times, and that it had been about to rage out of control when Kagura rang.

“So,” Nagi crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. There was no sign now of the narrowly averted meltdown but Omi vowed to never mention Schuldig to Nagi again unless the man was literally at the door about to kill them. “Is your girlfriend in trouble?”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Omi corrected, too eagerly, too hastily, earning him a raised eyebrow, “And yes, she probably is in trouble. I think it might be to do with a special study group that she attends at the university. She’s been odd ever since she started it. She wanted me to join too but,”

“But it felt wrong.” Nagi finished for him.

Omi nodded, “Just an instinct, I suppose.”

“They’re so naive,” Nagi snorted, “They don’t know half of what’s out there. They just go blundering in.”

‘They,’ Omi noted. ‘They’ meaning everyone else, everyone but Weiss and Schwartz and the assassins, the psychopaths, the freaks. Omi envied the others their ignorance. Nagi, on the other hand, seemed to have nothing but contempt for them.

“Don’t you pity them?” Omi asked.

“Pity is weakness. Innocence is weakness,” Nagi sounded as though he was quoting words that he had heard many times, “All that Schwartz respects is strength.”

“But you’re not in Schwartz any more.” Omi pointed out, trying to reconcile this man with the one that had been stroking his hair.

A high colour rose up Nagi’s cheekbones. “You don’t leave Schwartz,” he said, “You just try to.”

“You still expect to die, don’t you?” The ache in Omi’s chest was about more than arousal this time.

“Sooner or later.” Nagi shrugged.

Omi wanted to say, ‘I’ll protect you. I won’t let them come for you.’ But he had done a pretty shit job of protecting Nagi so far, hadn’t he? Getting distracted by unconscionable feelings and desires, giving away secrets to Schuldig.

“I had better get ready for college,” he said.

“Take me with you.” Nagi demanded.

“What? No!”

“Maybe my help could be useful for Kagura-who-isn’t-your-girlfriend.”

Omi glared, “It’s not safe. Now, more than ever they will be looking for you.”

“You succeeded in your mission last night, didn’t you? Schwartz failed?”

“Yes, and?”

Nagi smiled grimly, “If they failed then they will be punished today. At length.”

Omi swallowed. It was hard to think of a punishment that at least one member of Schwartz wouldn’t enjoy, so their employers must be very creative.

He pushed aside the surge of rage that anyone would punish Nagi.

“But what about spies, people on the payroll?”

Nagi waved a hand dismissively, “They’re nothing to worry about. I can handle it if we run into any minor operative.”

‘Just not Schuldig and the others,’ Omi thought.

He had to admit that he was tempted. Every day when he walked away from the Koneko he felt guiltier about leaving Nagi there, a virtual prisoner, alone and having read all his books.

“I’ll OK it with Aya.” He said, and then put down the little glow that tried to spark at the way Nagi looked actually happy for a moment, at the thought of getting out.

“Why bother?” Nagi enquired, “You don’t answer to Aya, do you?”

“No,” Omi sighed, “But convincing him first prevents all the glaring later on.”



Forty five minutes later Omi had showered and dressed (all while stoically not thinking about kissing) and was stood in the kitchen watching Aya make tea. It was something that Omi loved to watch. The precision of it was so satisfying.

He wasn’t sure if Aya was in the mood to be amenable. He couldn’t stop thinking about their last conversation here in the kitchen and how hideously that had turned out for all of them.

However in the end Aya seemed to have other things on his mind and was surprisingly easy to bring round to the idea of allowing Nagi out on a private investigation. He even stared into space while stirring his tea and said thoughtfully,

“So, Schwartz get punished when their missions fail....Interesting.”

‘Don’t get any ideas,’ Omi thought.

“I don’t know how motivating that actually is,” Omi said, hoisting his backpack further up his shoulder, “I expect they enjoy it.”

“They are perverted.” Aya agreed.

Omi remembered those visions that had been forced into his head by Schuldig. He kept trying to forget them but he couldn’t. He was so sickened by the thought that Schuldig had done those things to Nagi that it made him want to never let Nagi out of his sight again.

It made him what to tear Schuldig’s tongue out and then feed it to him.

“By the way,” Aya’s calm voice cut into Omi’s revenge fantasy, “You were wrong about Yohji.”

‘Shit, shit, shit!’ Omi thought, ‘Don’t say anything, don’t make it worse.’

“Yohji doesn’t lust after me at all.” Aya announced.

“How...how do you know that?” Omi asked, tentative, aware that he should end this dangerous conversation but wanting to find some way of turning it to Yohji’s advantage.

Aya gave him a very straight look and Omi couldn’t help squirming.

“Let’s just say that he didn’t take the opportunity that was offered. Yohji is not a man to turn down something he wants. Therefore, he can not have wanted it. You must have been mistaken.”

Omi couldn’t deny Aya’s logic. It was just a shame that that logic was based on a total misreading of Yohji’s character.

Omi bit his lip. There was a way out here for Yohji’s dignity, a way for Omi to undo the damage he had done, but...but Yohji had said that it was better to have it all out in the open. Would it really be easier for Yohji to go back to that awful silent strangle where everything was unspoken?

“I don’t think that you understand Yohji as well as you think you do.” He said, at last, before leaving the kitchen and a suddenly thoughtful looking Aya.

Omi was quite proud of how he had just danced on that particular knife edge.

Now, he could only leave it to Aya.



Nagi was quiet on the journey in so Omi was able to obsess over something that had been niggling at the back of his mind since Kagura rang.

Why wasn’t he more worked up by the fact that she was in trouble?

Sure, part of it was slipping into the cool, calculated mission mode, and Omi was consequently not one to run around waving his arms in a panic, but shouldn’t he be more scared for her? Angry? Concerned? Shouldn’t he have rushed to her?

Instead he had had a shower and spent ten minutes watching Aya make tea.

He was concerned, he was worried, but he wasn’t reacting as he should.

In fact his mind was far more fixated on Nagi and the terrible things that had been done to him...



For awhile Nagi was overwhelmed to be outside and to be surrounded by so many people. He stared around the campus with wide, envious eyes, at the rush of humanity, the posers, the academics, the spoilt brats.

“I wanted to take a degree.” He said, as they climbed the steps into the history department.

“What in?” Omi asked, trying to imagine Schwartz letting Nagi go off to college every day, away from them, away from their control.

“Computer science, maths, anything.”

Omi tried not to see the sadness in Nagi’s eyes, tried not to feel the urge to comfort him.

Omi sighed. Censoring his own thoughts like this was turning into a full time job and it was exhausting.

It wasn’t until they walked into the lecture hall that Omi realised what was about to happen. Nagi was about to meet Kagura. The reality of how much everything had changed hit him like a sandbag to the face.

‘Where was I when I stopped hating Nagi and started trusting him? To trust him enough to introduce him to the girl that I’m supposed to have a crush on? To let him into the private non-Weiss part of my world? Not even Yohji has been given that honour.’

It was alarming, to say the least.

They sat at the back and Omi glanced around for Kagura. No sign of her yet. He drummed his fingers on the desk.

“Are you always this nervous when you see her?” Nagi enquired, leaning back in his chair and stretching, for all the world as though he owned the place.

“Shut up.”

Nagi grinned mirthlessly.

When Kagura finally came in she was with a gaggle of other girls all of whom had eyes just a little too bright, smiles just a little too wide. Kagura, on the other had, was unsmiling and pale. She caught Omi’s eye for a desperate, wordless plea, before she was shepherded to a desk near the front. The other girls spread out around her like a phalanx. It could have been the usual girlish tribal clinging, but it felt far more sinister than that. Kagura looked lone and trapped, staring glazed at the lecturer when he came in.

Omi wondered how on earth they could get her alone to talk but it seemed that Kagura was way ahead of him. When the lecturer asked for a volunteer to distribute the handouts her arm shot into the air, much to the dismay of her rabid bunny entourage.

Omi couldn’t stop thinking of them as such. There was something maddened to their big eyes and bouncy demeanour.

Kagura now had an opportunity to approach Omi without her ‘friends’ in tow. It would have looked strange if they had followed her around the hall.

As she passed Omi’s desk she whispered, “Behave badly, get yourself kept behind after.”

Then she was gone.

Omi understood what she was planning. And he knew just how badly he would have to behave for the lecturer to care. On the whole the university didn’t discipline students. They were expected to behave like adults.

Plus, Omi wasn’t actually very good at this sort of thing.

Nagi nudged him and their eyes met. Nagi, who had clearly heard what Kagura said, smiled evilly.

Nagi, who as it turned out, was very good at this sort of thing.



Just under an hour later the rest of the class had been dismissed and Omi and Nagi were being screamed at by the lecturer, whose eyes were bulging with rage and whose whole manner was that of a man about to rupture something significant. Kagura, who had seen to it that she would be kept behind by talking loudly about lap dancing and trying to light a cigarette, caught an occasional barrage of retribution but it was mostly directed at Nagi and Omi.

“I have never read such an obscene, perverted, degenerate conversation in my life!” The lecturer was nearly screaming now, “I don’t even know the technical terms for some of the acts that you two refer to in that note!”

Omi reminded himself again how very creepy it was that Nagi could forge his hand writing so well.

“If you three are the future of this country then we are in serious, serious trouble!” The lecturer concluded, puffing like an old steam train to the extent that he had fogged up his glasses. “Especially you two!” Glaring at Omi and Nagi again.

“Well, take comfort,” Nagi said, sweetly, “Based on that note we’re unlikely to reproduce.”

Omi couldn’t contain the snort of laughter.

It had to be wrong that part of him was enjoying this. It was definitely wrong that he was keen to read the note and, based on the lecturer’s’ lurid references, try out some of it. He hadn’t actually read the offending piece of paper himself. Nagi had simply written it and then waved it about conspicuously until it got confiscated.

Omi hoped that he would be able to get the lecturer to forgive him in due course and wouldn’t spend the next two terms getting funny looks from him.

It also seemed that Omi had been effectively outed. Maybe that had been Nagi’s plan all along.

‘He could have least have waited until I had decided that I was gay,’ Omi sulked.

“Now,” The lecturer took a few deep breaths to calm himself down, “The three of you will stay here for the next half hour and think of how you have shamed your parents, your ancestors, the Gods and the emperor! I would keep you in here longer but there is another lecture at eleven.” The lecturer gathered up his books, “And to make sure that you don’t leave I will be standing outside the door.” His need to get away from their perverted presence was palpable. The door slammed behind him but his back remained visible through the smoked glass.

“Excellent,” Nagi said, lounging into a chair, “Your gaggle of girls won’t try and get past him.”

Omi turned to Kagura. She looked about to cry and before he knew it she had rushed into his arms, all warmth and softness and nice smells.

So...he cleared his throat nervously...not completely gay then.

He could feel Nagi’s eyes boring into the back of his neck.

After Kagura had cried into Omi’s shirt for a few minutes he gently detached himself and said, “So...what’s going on?”

Kagura dissolved again but in fits and starts of soggy whispering they were eventually able to piece together a story.

It was indeed the study group that was the cause of her current hysteria. It had started out well. The university’s cleverest students had been gathered so that they could enjoy teaching that was pitched to their level. It had been nice, Kagura said, not to be held back by the rest of the class. But after awhile their professor, Saitou, had started to dispense pills. He had claimed that they were vitamins of his own recipe.

Kagura had however thought it weird that a university professor would hand out pills to students and had thrown hers away.

Gradually the nature of the classes had changed as had their frequency. Almost every day now they would meet to be told, sometimes for hours at a time, that they were special, that they were better than other people, destined for greatness. What frightened Kagura more than anything was that the power of these classes, the shining fanatical eyes of her professor, actually did make her believe it.

The euphoria always wore off and she would swear not to go again. Unfortunately it appeared that some of Professor Saitou’s special people had been naive enough to take the pills and they had changed. They had become so single minded, so driven, and so breathtakingly arrogant that Kagura, who had know several of them since childhood, didn’t recognise them anymore. They terrified her with their cheerful, relentless, constant presence. She couldn’t get away.

She had considered dropping out of university completely but she had a feeling that they were watching her at home too.

Most of all she was convinced that they knew that she wasn’t taking the pills. One other boy who had seemed to be holding out had recently disappeared.

“If I don’t give in soon,” She sobbed, “I’ll be next. One day they’ll get me and do to me whatever they did to him.”

Omi patted her shoulder, awkwardly, “We won’t let that happen.” He promised.

One day he would learn to stop making those sorts of promises.

The half hour was soon over and Omi had still failed to convince Kagura to come and stay at the Koneko where she would be safer.

“And what about my mother? What will happen to her if I disappear and Saitou fears that he’s been discovered? Can you protect everyone that I care about? No, I’m going to carry on as if nothing has even happened. I might even try and pretend that I’m converting.” Kagura blew her nose, seeming braver now that the storm of crying had passed.

When the lecturer came into tell them that they could go Omi immediately caught sight of several of Saitou’s students waiting for Kagura in the corridor. It feel wrong to let her go with them but she was correct when she said that Omi (even Weiss, had she known about them) couldn’t protect everyone that she cared about if Saitou chose to get vengeful.

Omi watched her disappear out the door, a sense of dread washing over him.



Having escaped the disgusted eye of the lecturer Omi took Nagi to one of the department’s computer rooms.

It was time to look up Professor Saitou.

They sat in a corner and logged in. Omi used one of several dummy logins that he had set up when he hacked the university network on his first day, and he was about to give Nagi one when Nagi calmly ran a gentle hand over the modem and the machine whirred into life. Omi tried not to stare but he couldn’t help it. It had been almost magical.

“What? It’s easy enough to get into a common network like this,” Nagi snapped, defensively, “Or are you thinking what a freak I am?”

“Stop that,” Omi said, opening a search engine.

“Stop what?”

“Stop assuming that you know what I’m thinking.”

Nagi went quiet for awhile.

They started with the staff system including the private files kept by the chancellor but found nothing about Professor Saitou. Nor, somewhat unusually, did they find a home address. What sort of university employed a staff member and didn’t even ask for his address? Omi brought up the police mainframe. It was more extensive than Weiss’ but it did mean trawling through petty vandalism records and burglaries. Weiss mainframe devoted itself to bigger players. The real freaks and monsters. It did however have a tendency to miss the little people.

Omi had a feeling that Saitou was one of those. There was something so...inept and almost childlike about what he was doing. Getting a bunch of over-achiever teenagers whacked out on chemicals and then brain washing them as a personal secret army?

Omi was unimpressed.

“Did you notice that Kagura didn’t even ask who I was and what I was doing there?” Nagi commented, suddenly.

Omi glanced at him but he was staring fixedly at the screen.

Omi hoped that no one would notice that Nagi didn’t even have to use the mouse.

“Yes,” Omi conceded, but he had put it down to her distraught state.

“I’m good at not being noticed,” Nagi remarked, glumly.

‘I’ve always noticed you,’ Omi thought.

Then he saw it.

“Oh...crap.” he sighed, slumping back in his chair.

“Found him?” Nagi leaned over. He scanned the screen. “Oh.”

Saitou had no criminal record. He had never even been arrested, but he had some years before been accountant to Wunder X, the man who Ken referred to as ‘the crazy music man.’ He had used music to distort reality. Listeners became murderers, went insane, threw themselves off buildings. Of course, all of that had stopped pretty terminally when Wunder X had encountered Aya.

“It looks like Wunder X made a big impression on Saitou,” Nagi mused, “he’s clearly decided that mind control is the way to go.”

“We’ve got one big problem though.” Omi pointed out.

“Oh really? Just one?”

“This man had no criminal record and we have no evidence that he’s actually doing anything wrong. Kagura could just be very paranoid. That’s what Kritiker will say if I ask permission to go after Saitou.”

“Permission,” Nagi sneered, “You people are such bureaucrats.”

“Look,” Omi grabbed Nagi’s chair and pulled him closer, whispering so that they couldn’t be overheard by all the other students who were checking their email and looking for porn, “We’re already keeping you from Kritiker. When they find out that we’ve had you all this time and not told them...It’s going to be unpleasant. So I don’t want to add unauthorised missions to that. OK?”

Nagi nodded and lowered his eyes, “Why haven’t you told Kritiker about me yet?”

“Because they would hand you over to doctors.”

“Why should you care about my nightmares?”

Omi shrugged.

It would be far too risky to answer that.