generalflirt | ~♥NINETEEN♥~

~♥NINETEEN♥~

[Voice / Action]

[This morning Mikado is gone.

More pressingly, his computer and most of the things in his room are gone too. Masaomi stares at it for a long while through the hole in the wall (covered by a sheet) dividing their two rooms when he went to check on Mikado today. As it stands... well. Well. There's a few possible conclusions, and they all fly into his head: kidnapped, kidnapped by someone else? Seduced-? all of them leave a foul taste in his mouth. Thus, eventually, he flips open the journal. His tone is flat, with an unhidden hint of threat in it-]

Have any of you seen Mikado Ryuugamine?

[... But he's too antsy to focus on just that. Instead, he's going to hit up all the likely hang outs- he's going to hit up all of the friends of Mikado's he knows the house/apart numbers of. Archie Kennedy, Anne, Shuri, Selphie. For good measure, he then will go to people he wonders might be useful - the clinic to see if he can't find Law-san or someone else there and then around to look for Shikamaru, even though he doesn't know where he lives. By the end of the day, he's just going to be looking in the windows of all the houses he can, and then going to the apartment doors of everyone he can and knocking on their door... progressively feeling more and more like hitting someone or something.

SO UH. Run unto him wherever ! He's feeling insane]

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Ah, I guess I did. [There may or may not have been other fights, but he did indeed turn off the safety, that much is true. It didn't feel... right. Without him taking blows too]

[No, she is not happy. She fixed the really dangerous part. If he's going to be like this, maybe she should just leave the wound to serve him right and remind him...

...but if he's trying to punish himself, he's already hurting enough. Katara steps to the side and crouches down.]

...roll up your shirt.

[He does on better - mostly to test the use of his arms and because the hoodie - now with some blood spots on it - feels weird to wear, he instead just rolls it off him entirely. He takes it in hand and tosses it over to the ground next to him. That leaves him with the tanktop under the hoodie, which he also takes off ~~to show off his muscles~~ because he felt like it.

...It stirs a memory though, one unbidden and he's not even sure- of course it was false, but it's secondhand. Mostly faded. He frowns. Which is unusual, given he's now shirtless in a girl's room]

[Really, he'd stand out more among the guys that she knows if he was scrawny. After spending a month nursing Zuko back to health, she barely even blinks at the sight of his well-muscled chest. The nicks and scars on it, though - those are a cause for concern. As is the rapidly darkening bruise on his side. She breathes out his name, filled with worry, tinged with disappointment that he'd done this to himself, and bends the water so that it covers both hands before she lays them on his chest gently covering the bruise.]

This won't take too long.

[As she works, the lucidity of his thoughts - well, it deepens. Had she done this in the other world, he wondered? Would he have anyone to fight then? He doesn't know - he hadn't thought about it, maybe, or...

He needs to focus on something else, he looks at her. So much skin exposed-]

...You used to have tattoos, didn't you?

[But now he's not sure if that too was false or not]

[Her gaze flicks up to his and she swallows. There's something almost familiar in the way he's looking at her. Hello.

And she wasn't expecting this - the return to her memories of her family-that-wasn't, and her focus momentarily shifts from the here and now to false and pleasant memories, painful now that they're known to be untrue.]

On my shoulder. And around my arm. [She doesn't look away, although some faint instinct warns her that would be best.] My ears were pierced, too.

Ah, did you? [He doesn't remember them specifically, but when he summons up the image of how she was dressed for that night... she did, didn't she? He considers this a moment, and then brushes the hair (wow, it's getting longer) which is covering his own ears out of the way. His ears of course pierced - he has a stud earring in both ear - but.]

...I remember thinking both of those were pretty. Or maybe that's just what I think now?

[He doesn't break contact with her. Now he's still... studying? Admiring? Both? her]

[Katara, for her part, still doesn't look away. She's watching him with interest and caution and not a small amount of 'what is this, this feels...']

I liked them. Trafalgar did them...

[Her attention is focused so entirely on him that the memories she's relating seem to become both less painful and less relevant. What is he... what is she... Her lips part ever-so-slightly as she tries to identify what feels so different, but she doesn't shift her gaze or her wide eyes from him just yet.]

I don't remember if you liked them or not.

[In the 'back then' that hadn't actually happened, and she hadn't given that much thought that week - her tattoos had just been a part of her, and a part she had missed when they disappeared.]

Mm. That's not surprising. [Because he doubts he would have- well no, she would have heard him sing her praises. Somewhere, somehow, he "remembers" (or maybe he just imagines) a younger her with the first tattoo done. He imagines a younger him (perhaps without his hair dyed) telling her how cool it looked, how much it complimented the rest of her features, how... pretty it was.

It's a nice "memory." In fact, as he feels right now - lonely, lost, broken - he wishes that it were a real one. Hell, he wishes it could be a fake one, not just some phantom his imagination.]

...After all, you had them for quite a while. I'm sure I had time to praise them which wasn't that week.

[And if he says it, maybe it'll be true. In spite of himself, in this lull, still looking at her face - watching her lips, a hand of his reaches out to lightly brush at her shoulder, where he vaguely recalls one of them was. He's not even sure why he does it.]

[His touch is a shock which causes her to breathe out sharply and brings Katara back to herself, a sick knot of guilt beginning to form in her stomach, to mix nicely with the confusion and spoiled - something. She drops her gaze, but other than that doesn't react to the touch. Innocent as it is, she lets him trace the half-remembered image against her bare shoulder, fully expecting him to pull back when he's finished.]

Maybe. Who knows? [She swallows, tries to shift the conversation away from anything personal, and concentrates on keeping her tone normal - even mostly succeeds.] I'm already starting to forget what they looked like.

...That's a shame.

[Isn't it? He thinks it is. His fingers trace on her shoulder just a moment longer, and then he pulls them off, looking at his hand oddly as if just realizing what he had been doing. ...It's not fair, in any case - he "dated" her, her "broke up" with her for reasons he can't even remember. He can't even remember any kisses or the like firsthand. Just secondhand memories, phantoms within phantoms. The only emotion left with him is... regret.

So much regret.]

I guess. [...his bruise is healed. She takes her hands off him and shifts back on her heels before looking up at him.]

There were some good memories, but if I ever do anything like that I want it to be because I chose it.

[So no, she's not trying to hold on to those memories. Tattooed, with Zoro, or Trafalgar... or even with him. But she's not denying that they were real, and that they still.. meant something.]

Mm. I guess that's better.

[There's no heart in that though. Truth be told, he's rather just fall into all of these "memories" and live like that. It would be a lot less painful than what he's left with now, and hearing Katara's- man, she really is much stronger than him]

[She looks up at him, taking in the other remnants of the fight, thinking about how he must have felt today - how he must still be feeling...]

I'm sorry. I know it hurts when people we care about go home. I wish it didn't happen this way.

So do I.

[There's a hard edge in his voice again, but one glance down on her makes it falter. His eyes are still filled with rage but... he's tired now. He worked himself to the bone today, and the fatigue is showing]

[She stands, frowning a little in concern - she's not sure she's ever seen him just tired before. He's usually full to the obnoxious point of energy.]

You need to get some rest.

Ah, are you offering your bed, Katara?

[He tries hard to make this flippant, but it just comes out wrong. Too... something. Tired maybe]

[...Katara just slants him a look. She can't believe he actually means that as disrespectfully as it sounds - he's got to know she'd take that kind of insult to her honor seriously.]

I meant that you should get back to Gold's and get some sleep.

[At least you can't feel anything when you're sleeping.

And she bends down to retrieve his sweatshirt and undershirt and hold it out to him.]

Mm. I knew you meant that.

[But he doesn't want to go back there- he knows he'd just stare at that flap between his and Mikado's rooms. All the same, he's pushing his luck here, so he resigns himself to that fact. He stands at the same time he accepts the undershirt from her, deftly putting it on before bending himself to get the hoodie]

...it doesn't get any easier for a long time. But after a while, it hurts a little less. Sleep helps.

[She waits until he's gotten his hoodie on before she just - steps forward and hugs him. The hug will be brief, unless he manages to catch her there.]

[He does catch her there, to make a long story short. Reflex is all over him right now because he's a ball of nerves, and at her closing in his first instinct is actually to shove her away. But when she makes the hug, a second one kicks in, and he wraps his own arms around her. ...Tightly, actually.

Probably too much, given the context, but all the same]

[Well, at least one of them is fully dressed. The tightness of his embrace makes Katara a little uncomfortable, but she senses pain and desperation behind it so she doesn't resist or try to pull away. She lets him hold her, and she holds him back. And providing holding is all he does, Katara allows the hug to go on, if not for as long as he needs, then for a good thirty seconds longer than she intended before leans back lightly on his arms in a cue to let her go.]

[He gets that signal too. When she backs off, he does too, and then just stands there awkwardly. He could go for the door or window... well, he came in the window, so he might as well go out there. He won't cry again - it was bad enough he got tears out in front of Frey. And now he just... heads for the window and then outside]

[Katara just stands there for a moment, a bit - awkwardly uncertain at his silent response. When he moves to go, she lets him, but he hasn't gone too far before she moves over and plants her hands on the window frame, leaning out slightly.]

Masaomi. [She calls out his name softly just to make she has his attention.] I'll see you tomorrow.

[You're not alone here.]

Ah. [He tries to put on a sheepish grin. It almost works, but it doesn't reach his eyes, so he only glances back]

I'll look forward to it.

[And then he turns, waving a bit, as he walks off]

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~♥NINETEEN♥~

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