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 Posted: Thu Jun 16, 2011 2:54 am
No, it wasn't too late in the evening, as really, the parlor was open as long as the owner was awake, though Nanami fully understood that her active hours were much more limited. Afterall, who really wanted to get a tattoo late at night? Other than drunk people, of course, and Nanami resisted doing service with obviously intoxicated people. It was just against her moral code. And so the woman was sitting alone in her little tattoo parlor, going through papers and sorting them on top of her desk. She tried to do this once a season, and she had finally gotten around to organizing the stacks of papers that covered her desk.
Usually she was completely alone during these moments, as Raiden wasn't required to work for as long as Seven Seas was open (she'd go bankrupt otherwise) and Haruka was off doing her own things. That's why Nanami was so startled to hear the door open with a loud clang, and even more surprised to look up and see Raiden standing there, his clothes at his feet. "Raiden!" she exclaimed, leaping to her feet. At first, she was completely bewildered, completely unsure of what was going on. But after looking at his face for another moment, she realized that something was off. She had been around enough drunk people to recognize the signs. Her receptionist had been drinking, a lot. "What's wrong? What happened?" She was in Mother Mode already, and naturally, she assumed the worst. There was no possible scenario that could explain why he was like this, or why he had come here, but she could only imagine it was bad.
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Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2011 3:25 am
  Raiden was banging his head against the door with little force when he heard someone exclaim his name. He didn't even have to tilt his head forward to know that voice. "Nanami." He stated and then let his head fall forward. The rum was coming back around after the initial shock and he was beginning to float again. "Y'know. Nanami, Niami. They're soooo similar, and... and that's my last name." His hands fell loosely from holding his knees so tightly and hung on the floor beside him. His legs collapsed to the floor just in time to not allow his spread knees to become awkward. He looked up to her once he could clearly see her and smiled. "A last name. It's pretty funny, huh? A guy can't give a guy his last name. I mean, what straight man would want to anyway. Certainly not me." It was then that something caught in his throat, for he shut up. His drunken ramblings wouldn't go on because he was finally coming to terms with it.
Raiden's eyes quickly fell back to the ground when the tears started rolling. What had all of this been? He knew he cared for Dante. Otherwise, he wouldn't be crying. But... had it ever been more? Was the shattered attempt at a man in love? Could that have been real? Surely it wasn't... Surely it was all just something his mind conjured up on one of his many drunken nights. There probably wasn't even a real person even named Dante in this city. The alcohol had caused all of this. It had caused this pain in his chest that wouldn't go away. It caused the STD that he had smiled about so long ago... The alcohol forced him to hit it. Yes, it all made sense now. But, he had to make sure. He struggled, through his tears, to speak again. "Nanami. Do you know a Dante Tepes?" The water in his eyes really accentuated the blue as he looked back up at her. "Please... please say you don't. Say... say he's not..." His voice lowered as more tears came, "...real..." He hovered back over, pulling his knees up to give him some comfort as the rest of the tears came. If only the real man in him could see how pathetic he looked right now.
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Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2011 4:05 am
Nanami had seen people at the bar get drunk before, really drunk. But for some reason, this was different. Maybe it was because she knew Raiden, saw how he usually was, and compared to drunk Raiden, rambling on about names and unable to stand up properly, it was startling. She stood silently, though she still held out a supportive hand (what was there for her to do?) and she glanced towards the door that separated the tattoo parlor and her house. She was thankful it was closed. Raiden really wasn't making any efforts to be quiet, though he had no reason to, and it surely would have attracted her daughter's attention if there hadn't been a thick piece of wood separating them. And Haruka had seen her share of drunkenness, but Nanami knew that the girl would be scared to see her friend acting like this.
She frowned as she noticed a tear run down the man's cheek, and now she took a few long steps to crouch down next to him. He had stopped moving, seemed to be steady sitting against the door, and she peered at his face with a concerned expression. "Raiden," she addressed him firmly, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder. It was one thing for him to be undressed and drunk, but crying? That put an extra, confusing spin on the situation. She was silent for another moment. So it was about Dante. Had something happened between the two of them? When she had met Dante, he seemed quite happy in his relationship with Raiden, but after the... offers the man had made, she didn't think that it was serious. But something that had happened had pushed Raiden to tears, and she had to push back the alarmed concern that permeated her expression. "Did something happen with Dante?" She sounded a lot like she had had the last time someone close to her had been this distraught, when Haruka was a little girl and had lost her beloved stuffed fox toy. But that was eight year old Haruka, it was different, and so there was a little more urgency in her voice. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to... But what happened to you?" she added, as if aware that he may not be in the mind to tell. Her words probably didn't mean much at this point anyway.
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Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2011 5:22 am
He straightened his back and rested his head against the door. "So, I'm drunk and we have sex. Well, I didn't know we had sex until I woke up and he was in my house, cooking and cleaning and such. So, I get him to leave eventually and it just kept happening. So, I'd keep drinking until the point that I never knew when we were sleeping together. There was always just little hints like when he gave me a ******** STD." He hit his head against the door with that point in the story. If only he realized how dumb it was to cuss in front of his employer. Right now, she was just a friend. But, it seemed so normal. "But, tonight was different. For some reason, I wasn't all gone and I went to... do it... Well like how God intended it, y'know? and I realized he didn't have anything there for me to do. So I ran. I ran as fast as I could and I wound up here. Don't ask me why, but here I am. And I'm a worthless shell of a man crying because I just found out that I've been a homosexual for 2 years and something. That's just... not right." He refused to look at her at this point. He had no idea why he had just told her all of that; he hoped that it was just the alcohol talking and not his need of someone to confide in. Because real men didn't need people to confide in. Well, real men don't plug other guys in the a** either.
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Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2011 5:54 am
Even though Nanami had been expecting the worst, nothing could have prepared her for the story Raiden was telling her. Her expression had been concerned before, worried about the state her employee, her friend, was in. But as Raiden spoke, it quickly turned startled. Just... startled. Then puzzled. She hadn't thought he'd tell her everything so freely. She never would have thought he would be so open about things like this. Maybe it was the alcohol. Maybe it was just the shock of the evening. And his bluntness made her slightly uncomfortable, and she cleared her throat at the mention of the STD. Well, after something like that, anyone would be torn up! She listened quietly, unable to move, even though her legs began to ache under the weight of her body as she squatted.
When he was done, she removed her hand from his shoulder and sat down next to him, stretching out her legs in front of her as she stared up at the ceiling thoughtfully. How in the world was she supposed to react to something like this? Her years as a mother had made advice-giving easy for her, but that didn't mean that she was an endless supply of good advice. She had never had the problems Raiden had had. But, she had to remind herself, he probably hadn't shown up at work because he wanted answers, or a solution. He probably just wanted someone to reassure him.
"...That certainly is tricky..." Nanami finally murmured, but it felt like she was oversimplifying things. It felt like she was walking on ice. His crying had lessened, it seemed, but that didn't mean that he was feeling better. He wasn't thinking clearly, so she had to be careful. "Obviously, it wasn't great that you had to be drunk to sleep with him. In fact, the whole situation really isn't great, either." She thought back to the time at the bar. Who knew that the man she had spoken to would be the cause of this? But upon second thought, a small thought formed in her head, and she wondered if it really had much to do with Dante at all. Well, of course it did, but Raiden didn't seem upset with him, he seemed upset with himself.
Nanami exhaled loudly and leaned her head against the wall, like Raiden was. "It's scary discovering new sides of yourself," she said, continuing to stare up at the ceiling. "I remember when I was nineteen, I really liked one of my coworkers. It was the first time I had ever been attracted to a woman," she explained. Maybe telling a similar story would make him feel better? In any case, she wasn't sure what she was doing or where she was going, so she just talked. "I had never thought of myself as someone who would be in a same-sex relationship, and it made me anxious. What if we were ostracized? How would the relationship work? How would Haruka react? Would we even be able to provide a normal family life for her? It was too much to think about, and I got sick from the stress." She smiled slightly at the memory. How odd it was to think back to her days of relative naivety. "Poor Haruka cried for days, she thought I was dying." She paused to laugh, remembering five year old Haruka pulling out her stuffed animals to make her feel better, piling them on the foot of the bed. "I was freaked out. But eventually I figured out that it was a part of me that I couldn't change, and I accepted it. I appreciate it now." She paused to think about what she was going to say next. Maybe it was the absurdity of the moment, but she was having trouble keeping track of her words.
"We think we know ourselves better than anyone else. That's why it's startling to find out something new. But it's not like you suddenly developed this side to you, Raiden. You're still the same guy you have been. You just weren't aware of it." Nanami glanced at him hesitantly. Had she said something wrong? Something right? Something completely irrelevant? She couldn't tell, she was just grasping straws at this point. "Look, it's a shock. You've been through a lot tonight. If you want, you can spend the night here, talk about it in the morning?" she proposed with a hopeful smile. Maybe after a good night's sleep and some sobering up, he'd feel better. Or at least in a better mind to figure things out.
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Posted: Sun Jun 19, 2011 2:03 am
He straightened his back and wiped the remainder of tears from his face onto his arm. It hadn't really sunk in at all that he still didn't have his clothes on until this point. But, it really didn't matter much. It's not like she hadn't already seen it in the time they had been talking. He moved his hand and grasped his clothes in a tight fist. "That sounds nice. Thanks Nanami. You're a big help." He patted her shoulder in a way that seemed perfectly fine to him in the moment. He then stood up, grabbed his pile of clothes with him, and walked over to his desk. He crawled under his desk and used his clothes as a pillow to try and sleep off what his current mind would not let him erase.
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Posted: Sun Jun 19, 2011 2:30 am
....Okay. So it hadn't been a complete hit. Nanami probably shouldn't have been trying to match up his story anyway. He was too upset, too drunk for her to really reach him. But she was sure that he would feel better about it soon. He was a good guy, he had just had a rough night. This is what she told herself to make herself feel more at ease. She had forgotten what it was like to try to console someone like this. It made her wish that she had a magic wand she could wave and make everything better. Raiden would be back on his feet, just as cheerful and laidback as ever, and things would be better from now on. But that wasn't even remotely possible, and so all she could do was listen to him talk and pat him gently on the head. She had to remember that he wasn't her son, though, and so it didn't last long.
"It's no problem at all. It's why I'm here," she replied with a smile. Maybe she had the boss/employee relationship a little off, but it made her happy to be able to help. She stood up shortly after he did, watching him with startled curiosity as he crawled under the desk. "You know, we have a guest room -- ahh, forget it, you're fine there," she waved it off with a sigh. He was terribly drunk, so he could probably fall asleep practically anywhere. Besides, maybe it was for the best. Less of a chance of awkward run-ins. And so the woman left him there to go inside the house, but upon second thought, she grabbed an extra blanket and pillow from the linen closet and returned to the sunroom. She knelt next to the desk. "Here, before you fall asleep," she said softly as she set about doing motherly things, like covering him with the blanket and moving the pillow over by his head, taking his clothes so she could wash them. You know, in case Haruka decided to come out early in the morning, she wouldn't have to find a naked Raiden like this. "Good night, Raiden," she said finally, with a sympathetic smile, before standing up again. Then, she locked the doors (no reason to stay open) and turned out the lights before going inside the house.
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Posted: Tue Jun 21, 2011 8:45 pm
Raiden was kicking about as he normally does in his sleep when he kicked a little too hard against the edge of the desk and in turn crashed his head against the other side of the desk. "Ehhum.... Frekk... eh. What the ********> He leaned his head down closer to his chest and rubbed the top of it. "Where in the ******** am I?" He looked around and then poked his head from underneath the desk to see the familiar surroundings of the tattoo parlor. "What in the..." He began crawling out and stood up. He looked around to make sure he wasn't being held against his will or something, but then he noticed he was naked. Well, only wearing boxers. It wasn't at all odd for him to wake up like that because that was how he slept, but what made it odd was where he was. He looked down under the desk to see a blanket and pillow that didn't belong to him. Obviously whoever brought him here had prepared it. He then looked around some more, not spotting his clothes anywhere. "Hellooooooooooooooo?" He screamed as loud as he could. He could tell by looking outside that it was at least morning. The sun was out, so that meant they shouldn't be mad that he was yelling. After all, it wasn't his fault he was here.
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Posted: Tue Jun 21, 2011 11:16 pm
Haruka had woken up that morning to find a note attached to her forehead, a favorite tactic of her mother's that meant that something important was going on in the house. A 'before-you-open-your-door-become-aware-of-the-possible-consequences' note. It was usually used when Nanami left the island for work reasons, or, back when the redhead actually dated, when a significant other was there in the morning. Mostly, though, Nanami found it fun, and Haruka couldn't help but roll her eyes when she awoke to find that something was wrong.
Really, all it had said was that Raiden had had a rough night and spent the night in the sunroom, so be quiet. Haruka was confused, but like most things regarding her mother, she just chalked it up to "she must have been drinking". She kept bottles of alcohol right by the parlor door, so it wasn't too farfetched. Anyway, the teenager had been going through her normal routine, getting ready, cooking, cleaning up before her mother came down and ruined everything, when she had heard a scream coming from the tattoo parlor. At first it scared her, she had forgotten that Raiden was there, but then she remembered. And so she opened the door between the house and the tattoo parlor widely.
"Uhm, good mornin--hooah!" Haruka had stepped into the parlor expecting to see Raiden, yes, but not in his underwear, and it startled her so badly that her legs buckled and she flopped against the door jamb, and she let out a strange cry. She stared at his bare chest for one stupefied moment, and then she cleared her throat and focused elsewhere... Yes, his hair was a good choice. She liked his hair, it was a pretty color--NO, she was not going to get distracted. The longer she gawked at him, the more of an idiot she seemed. "Errr.... Hello! Mom told me you had spent the night... Did you sleep okay? Are you hungry?" Anything, anything at all to distract herself from looking down. Stay focused on the hair, stay focused on the hair...
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Posted: Wed Jun 22, 2011 12:25 am
He was so caught up in his embarrassment and awkwardness that he almost forgot that he had no recollection of showing up here. "You said your mom said I stayed over? Uhh... Did she happen to say why? Because I honestly don't know..." He knew that that sounded awful, but maybe she wouldn't conclude that he was a drunk from that. Hopefully she'd see the good in his quirky smile. Hopefully she wouldn't second guess his better judgement.. even though she should. He just smiled at her, hoping that she had the answer to that too.
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Posted: Wed Jun 22, 2011 12:52 am
Haruka wasn't sure if she should be relieved or embarrassed that Raiden seemed to be dealing with this a lot better than she was, but when was she ever the more composed one? It gave her an excuse to shove away her anxiousness, yet she still clung to the door jamb as if letting go would cause her to fall flat on her face. Hey, it wasn't too impossible, knowing her. "...Oh, are those your clothes?" She rotated where she stood to glance inside at the washing machine and dryer that were tucked away in the hallway. She had found some clothes in the dryer, and folded them, leaving them on top. They looked like men's clothes, but her mother had left them, and hey, it wasn't her job to judge. She stepped back into the house and grabbed the clothes, moving back into the sunroom, and actually going down the steps this time. As she walked, she forgot her determination to only look at his hair, and glanced him over again. If she could, she would have slapped her hand, but instead she stopped dead in her tracks and tossed the clothes over.
As a person who had never gotten drunk, even a little buzzed, Haruka at first didn't understand why Raiden didn't remember what had happened. "Not really. She just said that you had a rough evening and needed to crash here. Did something happen?" she questioned, but then realized that there was a chance that Raiden didn't even remember why he had come there. "...Sorry," she added. If her mother hadn't come in to wake her up and gossip, it must have been relatively serious.
Haruka flashed him a small smile, a little unsure of what to do now. She had decided that focusing on his hair wasn't working, so she made eye contact, but she soon frowned. "...Are you okay? Your eyes are kind of red," she stated, pointing to her own eyes.
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Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2011 7:21 pm
He left his shirt and socks on the desk and thought about how he ended up here. What had happened? He looked over her shoulder, hoping that it'd be easier to think if not being caught up in her eyes. Wow, that sounded really corny. What was with that weird ting he felt around Haruka? But, anyway, while looking over her shoulder he caught glimpse of himself and what looked like the biggest, puffiest eyes ever. "Hold up." He said to Haruka, not stopping to look at her as he ran up to the window and stared at his reflection. He had been crying, that's so weird. what in the world would have caused him to cry? Where had he gone last ni--- "Dante." He turned away from the window and looked back at Haruka. That made this all that much more awkward... He blushed a bright red and began scratching his neck. "Uhh.. no nothing happened. Yeah, yeah I'm fine. I was pretty upset, I guess some crying happened. I mean look at this puffy s**t and the headache, but that's all okay." He was staring at the floor so hard right now. He had no idea whether she had even turned to look at him, but he was just rambling on. Surely she wouldn't remember that his ramblings meant that he was horribly embarrassed... "Are you okay? I'm sorry to be here like this. It must be weird for you... I'm sorry." His blush grew with each word he forcibly mumbled out. Anything was better than talking about him crying. This was his weird defense mechanism used to cover up something he had said. Surely if he rambled on long enough she'd forget what he said about the crying. Surely.
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Posted: Mon Jun 27, 2011 1:36 am
Haruka really should have stared off at the paneling above one of the large windows that circled through the sunroom walls or something as Raiden pulled on his pants. That was the polite, normal thing to do, but she wasn't really capable of being polite or normal in this situation, and so she continued to stare at him like the socially clueless girl that she was. She was incredibly uncomfortable, but she only imagined it was worse for him. Even more so when he went off to look at his reflection to see what she was talking about. For a moment, she felt guilty. Maybe she shouldn't have pointed it out. Whatever it was, maybe it was something he didn't want to talk about.
The guilt quickly turned to surprise when Raiden explained what had happened the night before. Namely, he had cried. That struck Haruka more than anything else. She always looked up to him as a put together adult, for the most part, but to think that he would cry? She thought she had heard the name Dante -- her mother had mentioned that name before, quite recently actually. She was too confused to piece together the larger picture, and so she just stared at Raiden with a bewildered expression. How was she even supposed to react to something like that?
She stayed silent until he addressed her directly. He apologized. Haruka could feel her heart leap up into the back of her throat, only it wasn't so much because he was looking at her, which was the usual cause of that feeling, but because he had apologized for making her feel "weird". And she was fully dressed, and hadn't spent the night before drunkenly crying! "What the hell are you apologizing to me for?" she replied, more harshly than she had intended. "Besides, if it me feeling weird that you're worried about, then you should be apologizing every time we see each other--" At the end of her sentence, she realized her mistake and firmly shut her mouth, giving him a look that practically screamed 'Oh s**t, did I say that out loud?' She paused to clear her throat and tuck her hair behind her ears a few times, as she had glanced down, and her hair kept slipping forward. Eventually she regained her composure, and decided to try it again.
"Wait, I'm sorry. What I meant to say is, if you want to talk or something, I'd be okay with that," she corrected herself, her voice getting slightly smaller with every word. "I mean, no matter what, I think you're really cool. Like one of the coolest people I know." Her face was perfectly calm, albeit a tad concerned, but her ears were beginning to turn red. "You're really cool, so, you know, I'd like to hear your problems... If you don't mind..."
By now, her mind was reeling. Although it just sounded like an awkward stream of words, to Haruka, she had just poured out her heart. It was practically a confession! And at this point, it wasn't just her ears that were burning red, her chest was also beginning to turn pink, though it wasn't noticeable. Give her a few more minutes and she would probably be entirely red, from her nose to her fingers, and so she decided to make a run for it. "I just wanted you to know that. And now you know! So, err, I have to go now. Breakfast and work. You know, adult stuff. ...Okay, bye." And with that, she turned on her heel and hurried back inside to continue her chores, or, you know, bang her head against her bedroom wall a few hundred times.
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Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2011 7:52 pm
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Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2011 8:25 pm
The enemy was in that room.
'Enemy' was probably an exaggeration. Raiden really hadn't done anything wrong, afterall, and it was more of her own problems than anything else, but that had been the way she had decided to view things. You see, Haruka hadn't really spoken to Raiden much since Valentine's Day. She was so confused and conflicted, of course, but mostly embarrassed, and so she had done her best to avoid thinking about it until she could go over the festival's events without wanting to throw herself off the roof in humiliation. She probably looked so stupid, and even though she was happy that Raiden felt the same, she was too busy trying to regain her composure to act on it. After about a season, she had been able to be in the same room as him, but she still avoided staying around him long, in case he decided to talk her beyond smalltalk. Nearly a year had passed since the last time they had had a normal conversation (normal for them, at least), much to Haruka's disbelief. How had so much time passed without her noticing? And so, her embarrassment was replaced with a new feeling -- panic. What if he changed his mind? Of course he changed his mind. Why would you continue to be interested in a girl who was obviously avoiding you? She didn't want to hear it, and so the avoiding continued. She was probably digging herself further into her own grave; if she was just upfront with everything, perhaps she wouldn't have to worry, but by this point, it had become a well-established fact that Haruka was an awkward person who had trouble being honest.
Today she was taking that step.
In her head, she could imagine it perfectly -- she'd come downstairs, looking fabulous and gorgeous, comfortable in her new sense of adulthood (she was twenty now, afterall), and casually inform Raiden that she was sorry for being childish before. But now she's a full-fledged adult, who doesn't worry over silly things like crushes, and if he still wants to give things a shot, she could pencil him in. (That seemed like an especially grown up thing to say, even though it probably wasn't appropriate.) But when it actually came around to putting this plan into action, things didn't go exactly as planned -- she looked less like a confident, radiant adult, and more like she was feeling ill. And upon reaching the stairs, she decided that a better use of her time would be to bake a batch of muffins. By the time she realized what she was doing was silly, and she wasn't going to get anywhere by avoiding her problems, the muffins were already in the oven, so she might as well just stick around.
And so now Haruka stood by the doorway leading to the tattoo parlor, peeking through a crack in the door, holding a plate filled with muffins. The day had gone by faster than she thought, and her makeup had smudged slightly over the course of the day, and there was flour in her hair and on her clothes. She hadn't noticed, she was too focused on her impending doom, and so she quietly crept into the tattoo parlor.
Raiden sat at his desk, alone, as Nanami was off running errands or something. Haruka walked silently behind Raiden, stopping a short ways behind his desk. She summoned up her courage, stared at the back of his head, and attempted to speak. She opened her mouth silently a few times, and when sound did come out, it was loud and unnatural. "H-Hello!" she greeted him before circling around the desk so she was facing him, on the other side of the table. She stared him down for another moment before continuing. She could do this... possibly. "I'm manning up now!" she cried. Huh, that didn't sound as cool or casual as it did in her head. Quick, a diversion! She took the plate of muffins and went to set them down on the desktop, but she kind of ended up slamming it down loudly. She was being way too intense, in her nervousness. One of the muffins on the end bounced up with the force of the plate hitting the desktop, and it rolled off across the desk. Haruka watched it with a stunned look on her face, before biting her lip to hold back laughter, or tears. It could really go either way at this point, she had no control over anything her body was doing anymore.
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