Cold-Blooded: A DC Universe Fanfiction (#Wattys2015)

Chapter 29: Slade: Grilling

By this time, Slade was quite amused by the situation. Yamato's general shamed-dog expression clearly wasn't new, and all in all, the man looked the very definition of whipped. "Won't you join us?" he invited.

"Oh, no", Haruko waved off the suggestion. "We couldn't impose—."

"Please," Yukie offered, though whether she was saying 'Please do join us' or 'Please go away' was open to question.

"If you truly want us to—," Haruko wasn't about to refuse twice. "Oh, Nee-chan, it's been so long .and I've missed you so much!"

"I missed you too," Yukie said, with a little catch in her voice.

"This makes me so happy." Haruko slipped into a chair. "I want to hear about everything. Go get the waitress to bring our food over here," she ordered Yamato.

Yukie looked half ready to bolt, and he reached out to place his hand over hers. "Chin up," he told her. "We'll just have to trust he doesn't throw food on the floor and shout in public."

"He hasn't done that since the first week we were married," Haruko grinned triumphantly. "I let it lay where he threw it and walked out of the house while he was still shouting at me. He had to clean it up. It was drawing bugs and mice by then. Where you went wrong, Yukie-chan, was that you cared. I never did. What could he do? Divorce me? Not without paying back seventy million yen. After all, our parents didn't have any more daughters for him to marry."

Rose's eyes popped a little at that, and she looked back and forth between the sisters, but she didn't say anything. Good girl; she was learning when to be quiet and just listen.

Yamato returned, trailed by the waitress, and he folded himself into his chair with a sigh. Clearly all the spine had gone out of him years ago.

So he divorced the gentle one and married the shrew. There may be some justice in the world after all.

"So, tell me, where have you been and what have you been doing all this time?" Haruko asked, spearing a slice of meat and laying it on the grill. "Nobody had any idea whether you were alive or dead until Great-uncle came back from America saying he had seen you at an illegal Jian Wu match, about to duel this one-eyed—. Oh! Was that—that must have been you!" she turned to Slade.

He reached over to squeeze Yukie's hand again. "That was how we met," he informed her.

"Amazing!" Haruko wondered, and then asked, "But surely duelling is not all you do?"

"No, for the last twelve years I have worked in the cryonics field, while Slade is a security consultant-." Rose had shared what she told the girls at the shrine, and it was as good a cover story as any.

For a while the conversation revolved around banalities. Yamato found a position with an importer of Italian food and wine after he lost the brewery, while Haruko was a free-lance feature writer who supplied articles to several magazines under pseudonyms. She produced her phone, and Yukie dutifully admired photos of her nieces and nephew. All the conversation was provided by Yukie's sister, whose spouse was silent except for the occasional grunt of agreement accompanied by a nod. The only person he actually spoke to was the waitress.

Slade studied him. The man did not look to be in the best of health; a fine webbing of broken capillaries around cheekbones and nose spoke of alcoholism, and under that ruddiness, his skin had a tinge of grey. He also looked to be over sixty, but ill health might make him look older than he actually was. Hitting him was out of the question. No matter how Slade pulled his punch, he might kill the man without meaning to.

In the meantime, Yukie had lost the hunted-doe look, relaxed and warmed to the conversation. "How are Mother and Father?" she asked.

"Very well, thank you. No. No, I'm not going to keep up appearances, not with you. Something is wrong. It's not their health and it's not money. I have no idea what it is, but they are both...nervous. Worse than nervous," Haruko explained. "They are frightened. Very frightened. Yet they deny everything when I try to find out why." She suddenly smiled. "Mother will never believe it when I tell her who we had dinner with tonight!" Picking up her phone, she snapped a picture of her sister. The smile vanished. "Unless you don't want me to tell them."