twistedkitsune

There was leftover seaweed salad in the fridge, and stuff for fried rice. Azu ate the hijiki first, then started on the fried rice, figuring if he put hot breakfast on the table Sei couldn’t complain too much. The sound of the shower going upstairs was a relief— Sei’s showers always seemed to take twice as long as Azu’s.

Azu cracked a couple eggs, whisking them together in a bowl before dumping them into the frying pan over some sizzling oil. He always eyeballed the measurements, and today was no exception. The rice was what was left in the fridge, the salmon was what looked like a reasonable amount. The scallions turned out to be bad, so he just added more garlic.

A whine from the next room nearly started Azu into burning himself.

“Shut up, I already fed you,” Azu hissed, turning off the stove and storming over to the closed door to the fox’s enclosure.

“But it smells good…” Another high noise, like a fussy baby. “Later?”

The shower shut off upstairs, and Azu tensed. “Fine, later, whatever, just shut up!”

He quickly returned to the stove, grabbed a bowl and spooned out a hearty portion, sitting down at the table with his meal just in the nick of time as he heard footsteps on the stairs.

“Azu?” Sei yawned, stretching one arm over his head while he lazily attempted to towel dry his hair with the other. “Why are you up so early?”

“Why do you think? The fox wouldn’t shut up so I had to come down and feed it.” Azu jerked his head at the stove. “Breakfast is ready, get it while it’s hot.”

“Fried rice again?” Sei sighed, making Azu’s eyebrow twitch. “It’s getting kind of boring…”

“If you don’t want it,” Azu said shortly, “you can make your own breakfast.”

“I didn’t say that. Don’t be so defensive, Azu.” Sei peered into the pan. “I wish you’d make it with shrimp, though—“

“I can’t use ingredients we don’t have. If you want shrimp, you go out there and pay for it.” Azu was aware that he sounded crabby, but Sei was the one who’d decided to come in and complain as though Azu was making food to order for him instead of just throwing together a meal from what was available because Azu also needed to fucking eat.

“Well, maybe I will. It’s not like there’s any use talking to you when you’re in one of your moods.”

Seriously? And now you’re just going to walk out on me?

Azu stood up to block Sei’s path. “I got up before dawn to feed the fox you decided to make our new roommate. The least you can do is go in there and check on it before you fuck off and leave me in charge again.”

Sei frowned. Was that the slightest twinge of guilt in his eyes, or was it wishful thinking on Azu’s part? “…All right,” he said, unexpectedly. “I owe you that much, don’t I? I’m sorry if I haven’t been more sensitive to your concerns.”

This was not exactly apology of the year, but it was an apology, and Azu was tired, so he just nodded, muttered, “It’s fine,” even though it wasn’t, and sat back down to eat his food in peace as Sei opened the door to the office now functioning as a fox prison.

That peace lasted exactly five seconds.

“What is that SMELL?!”

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The door slammed open, and suddenly Azu was blinking back against the bright lights of the dining room.

“Azu, what happened?!” It was Sei, and he sounded terrified and accusatory all at once, but Azu couldn’t look away from the fox, lying on the floor completely still. Too still.

“The fox…” There! Movement! It was breathing! “It’s still alive, it’s okay…” He couldn’t keep the utter relief out of his voice.

It’s my fault. I made him do that.

“What happened?!” Sei demanded.

“It…” He had to lie, he realized immediately. Or at least shortcut past the parts of the truth he didn’t want Sei to know. “It threw itself against the cage wall. When I was about to leave, after… after I finished cleaning up.”

“Well, it’s not very bright, is it? It should’ve known that would hurt.” Sei sighed. “But why did you scream?”

“Me?” Azu was confused. “The fox screamed.”

Sei sighed. “Never mind. Let’s get you out of here. The fox isn’t going anywhere.”

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“You can talk!” Azu blurted out, even though it made the fox give him a look that was, frankly, both judgmental and unimpressed. “I mean… shit, that means you really are youkai, aren’t you?”

The fox snorted, rising up on its front legs, to its full intimidating height. “Obviously. And not some common two-tailed nogitsune, either! You can’t tell me you’ve ever seen a fox like me before.”

“Uh, definitely not. But…” Azu swallowed. “That means… Masao wasn’t necessarily wrong about you.”

The fox bristled, baring teeth. “In what way?”

“Well…” he hesitated, not wanting to anger a possibly-evil ancient youkai. “That whole thing about Masao’s family hunting you for generations…”

Laughter, though the fox’s jaw appeared closed. “Well, I can’t say I noticed them until recently. Most humans can’t tell foxes apart, you know.” It sat back down on its haunches, absently grooming its nearest tail. “But you didn’t answer my question.”

“What question?” Azu couldn’t remember being asked one.

The fox paused, shaking itself off before turning its attention to a different tail. “I suppose I should try to remember the other one’s name… and before you call me nosy, allow me to point out that I’ve scarcely been supplied with anything else to do except pay attention to my surroundings. Which, until very recently, was nothing but this cage and the pack of idiots who were always throwing cloth over it. So understand, I ask this with the utmost bored detachment: why is it you allow Sei such sway over your life and person?”

Azu felt his jaw tighten. “Were you always this much of a chatterbox?”

“Probably,” the fox said indifferently. “Though I have been unable to have a real conversation for some time now…” And just as Azu was feeling guilty, the fox added, “Did I strike a nerve?”

“No,” Azu snapped. “I’m just wondering how the hell you kept silent up until now, given how much you clearly love to hear yourself talk!”

“As I said, it was beyond my control. The fact that I can speak in a language your kind understands once more, well, that’s your fault.” It was hard to be completely sure, but Azu felt certain that the look the fox was giving him was downright mischievous. Two of his tails curved in the direction of where Azu had stood to deposit the chicken…

…where Azu now saw one of the charms had fallen off the cage and torn, clearly under Azu’s blood-stained foot.

“Shit!”

“Don’t worry. All it was good for was keeping me silent. Mostly.” The fox let Azu see his teeth again, letting out a strange little chittering sound that sounded unnervingly like laughter before settling back on his haunches. “Believe me, if that were all it took to set me free, I would have broken out of this cage long before being handed over to you and Sei.”

“Great…” That didn’t exactly make Azu feel better. “You know I don’t trust you, right?”

“Of course. I don’t trust you, either.” The fox yawned, settling down further. “Your kind love to throw around silly words like ‘good’ and ‘evil’, but the definitions always seem to change according to your own desires. I don’t care which you think you are, Azu, but the one thing I cannot abide is those who do not stand up for themselves.”

Rage boiled in Azu’s stomach. “You don’t know shit,” he bit out, clenching his fists. “If I walked out on the deal in the warehouse, they’d have killed me. And then you’d still be in this cage, with nobody to talk to and no one around who feels even the slightest bit sorry for you!”

The fox blinked sleepily, resting its snout on its tails. “And Sei? Am I to believe he would have ripped your throat out if you refused him sex that you obviously derived very little pleasure from?”

Azu flushed. “What the hell do you care about that?!”

“I told you, I’m bored. Very bored.” Another slow blink. “You taught him the wrong lesson. Now he thinks you secretly enjoy being browbeaten and humiliated. As long as it serves him to ignore your thoughts and feelings, he will.”

“Fuck you!” Azu grabbed a paperweight off the desk and hurled it at the fox’s cage. It bounced harmlessly off the bars, but the fox’s ears flattened at the noise, which was at least a little bit satisfying.

“By all means, stay angry,” the fox said, infuriatingly calm. “But do something with that anger, or your life will never change.”

“Oh yeah, because I’m definitely going to take life advice from a magic fox who got himself captured by humans!” Azu snarled. “All you’ve got now are your words! And I could easily get a new charm to shut you back up again tomorrow! But you know that, don’t you? You waited until Sei left to speak up! You’re talking to me because you think I’m a softer target!”

Silence.

For a long, uncomfortable moment, Azu wondered if he’d just snapped back to reality. The fox continued to stare at him, but the longer it was quiet, the more Azu felt sure that he couldn’t have really heard its voice. That he was just tired, or too upset to distinguish reality from—

“I’m not the only one here who lives in a cage.” The fox’s golden eyes gleamed in the dark, and for a moment its entire form glowed with that sickly pale blue light again. “Think on it. Before you return to his bed.”

Azu’s stomach turned over. “What the hell kind of response is that?!” he demanded.

But the fox had closed his eyes and stopped glowing, making Azu that much more aware of the filthy chaos that surrounded them. After another long, uncomfortable moment, Azu left the room to get cleaning supplies from the kitchen, his heart pounding.

The front door creaked and the fox paused in its grooming routine.

“That’ll be Sei, I guess,” Azu muttered. The fox lifted its head, sniffing the air.

“Azu, can you come out of there and help me with all this?”

Azu blew out an irritated breath but got up anyway, leaving the fox to resume cleaning itself in peace.

He was not prepared to find Sei hauling in an entire fridge on another dolly, with a fishing rod strapped to the side.

“What the hell is this?”

“The fox’s meal plan,” Sei said grimly. “Help me get it to the kitchen and plug it in.”

Underneath the clear glass sliding doors, it was clear the fridge was full of what looked like enough vacuum-packed meat to feed an entire lion pride.

“And is Masao going to pay our electric bill for the month too?”

Azu had meant it sarcastically but Sei just nodded, visibly exhausted. So for the time being he kept his mouth shut and just did what had been asked of him.

Once the fridge was plugged in and cool air was clearly circulating to keep the meat from rotting too quickly (horrible thought) Azu said, “So when’s the next mealtime, and how the hell is this supposed to work?”

Sei sighed, pulling out what looked like some netting from his jacket pocket. “We open up one of the packages, put it in the net raw, hook the net on the fishing rod and use it to drop the meat in the cage. Two or three times a day, depending on how much of a fuss it puts up.”

“Great. So we don’t even have a real schedule?”

“Let’s just have our own dinner before worrying about it,” Sei said irritably, turning away.

Azu found he didn’t have much of an appetite, even before the fox started screaming. He was oddly relieved for the excuse to jump up and leave the room, telling Sei he’d make sure nothing was actually wrong.

He walked in mid-scream, saw there was nothing out of the ordinary and yelled back “WHAT?”

The fox abruptly stopped and went still, staring at Azu for a moment. Then it began to pace back and forth, tails lashing around it though its jaws remained shut apart from the occasional, frustrated sounding whine.

Azu frowned, stepping closer to the cage than was probably wise. “Ok, if you understand me, you understand I can’t let you out. So we’ll go through the things I can do for you, and you’ll… give me some sort of sign for yes or no?”

That made the fox pause again. Its golden eyes seemed to be assessing Azu, and Azu was more certain than ever that it was actually listening to him.

“Okay, uh… if the answer is yes, move your head down like this,” Azu mimed a big nod, “and up again. And if the answer is no… stomp both your front paws? Is that okay?”

The fox let out an irritable whine and looked away for a long moment. Then, just when Azu was starting to wonder if he was losing his mind, the fox looked at him again… and slowly lowered its snout to the floor.

Holy fucking shit.

Azu realized his mouth was hanging open, and quickly shut it. “Okay! Good! So, first question! Do you need me to bring you something?”

The fox’s ears pricked up, and he quickly bobbed his head in another nod.

“Is it the litterbox?”

The fox bared his teeth and rose up on his hind legs, emphatically stomping his two front paws: No.

“Okay… is it food?”

The fox’s tails fanned out, and he bobbed his head again, and a second time for good measure.

Azu sighed, relieved. “Okay, that’s fine. I’ll be right back with your dinner, okay?”

This is an idea I had kicking around the back of my mind for a while, in response to a conversation about role reversal AUs. At first I thought it wasn't possible to do a role reversal of the main story that still kept the major characters recognizably themselves, but then I started thinking about what the "roles" really were, and I was much more interested in flipping the power dynamics than in say, changing anyone's species. This also meant a setting change (much closer to modern day, though I haven't decided exactly what decade yet except it's somewhere between 1965 and 1999) some fairly major changes to Azu and Sei's history (both individually and regarding each other) and the addition of some new characters.

My main priority is still very much finishing the main story first! But this has been a fun exercise and I thought it might be fun to share too.

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It was supposed to be an easy job this time, not that Azu had believed it even before Sei explained the details. Technically, they no longer worked for Masao, or at least that had been the deal until Masao decided he needed somewhere to stash stolen goods in case one of his places got raided, and apparently he still had enough of a hold on Sei for Sei to accept the new deal without consulting Azu first.

And much as Azu wanted to walk out, he had to admit that Masao’s rackets still paid better than any of Azu’s perfectly legal part-time jobs.

So, due to a combination of lack of funds and Sei’s most pleading expression, even though Azu knew better than to trust anything Masao said when he wanted a favor, here he and Sei were, standing in a shady warehouse waiting for the inevitable shitstorm to begin.

“Have I mentioned that I think this is a bad idea?” Azu glanced around at the lack of windows.

“Yes, repeatedly,” Sei said tersely. “You can stop saying it any time now. It doesn’t make a difference.”

Azu’s misgivings doubled when he saw the size of the crate that Masao’s men were hauling out of the shadows. At least, he hoped it was a crate. It was sort of hard to tell with the tarp hanging over it.

Evidently Sei was having similar thoughts, because he immediately snapped, “You didn’t tell me it was too big for the two of us to carry on our own!”

Well, not exactly what I was thinking, but… yeah, how are we supposed to get that thing into our place, whatever it is?

“Relax, princess.” Masao leered at Sei as he took another drag on his cigarette, strolling much too close for comfort. The man lumbered like a bull, all muscle and ego, yet the most intimidating thing about him was that Azu had never seen that powerful body exert itself for more than a couple minutes. “I’ve got it all arranged. The boys’ll load up the truck, follow you back home and unload it when you get there. All you’ve got to do is keep watch over it until I find a buyer. And I mean watch it, because there’ll be hell to pay if you two fuck this up.”

Beneath the tarp, something rattled. Azu’s heart jumped into his throat.

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