raspberryturk | Room 429, Tuesday Afternoon

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Room 429, Tuesday Afternoon

"--And you don't even smell that bad," Reno said, holding his ferret in his arms. He'd been going on like this since he'd woken up and decided to strike up a friendly rapport with his pet. "Kinda like sour somethin'-or-other or kinda gunky feet or somethin'. I've smelled worse, yo. I mean, like, I smelled worse, Mako. You should'a seen the kinda junk we had to wade through as Turks. And, I mean, Midgar. There was a city that stank. I miss Midgar. And here I am talkin' to you like a nut. You know, I shouldn't even have a pet? I only agreed to gettin' you when Rikku dragged me to the pet shop 'cause I crave some kinda companionship that ain't gonna leave me just because they find out I'm some kinda heartless government tool--"

That was about the point where he furrowed his eyebrows and frowned.

"And you don't care. You're some kinda weasel thing. So why am I tellin' you this?"

Mako blinked up at Reno lazily, and then set his chin down on his lap and attempted to sleep. Snoozing was hard when someone kept trying to strike up a conversation with you, after all.

[Open door is open!]

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"So what am I?" Romeo asked. "I ... perhaps should go home, not that Verona's as broken, but I'm not. Am I low?"

"What's your head count, Romeo?" Reno looked up tiredly at that. "How many people you dragged away from their families to be tortured or experimented on or forced into military service before? You ever looked a monster in the eye who you could swear used to be human, and you could swear you could place the face, man?"

He frowned.

"Thousands of people, all at once, because there was a chance there were some terrorists hangin' out underneath, Romeo. Women an' children, and we blamed it on the terrorists. We could get away with it. We were the heroes, zoto." A long pause. "And I fuckin' missed. On top of all of it, I missed the fuckin' terrorists. You met 'em. Cloud, Tifa. You don't have to go back to Verona ever again. Go be with Doji. You deserve it."

"Cloud and Tifa are terrorists?" Romeo didn't understand. "I hate your world. I think it's Hell, with demons, and children -- you were a child, Reno, even if you thought yourself not one -- forced to kill other children. I think you should buy a corner of it, set it up to be a green space for those you love, and then come back here. Or come back with them."

"Cloud and Tifa were part of a group called AVALANCHE, which they named after a different AVALANCHE that was even worse," Reno replied. "They'd run around Midgar, settin' bombs in the reactors that fed power to the city. Blowin' up the factories and the people in 'em all at once. Anything to hurt ShinRa."

He swallowed at the lump that he was trying damn hard to keep from forming in his throat.

"You know they wouldn't come back. Am I supposed to pack up Tseng and Rude and Elena and tell 'em they're comin' with me? It might be hell, Romeo. Yeah, there's demons and worse runnin' around the place. But it's still home."

"But it's awful. It made you kill to have half a chance in life," Romeo shot back. "I feel like I'm sending you off to a death camp, and I'm mad at you for being so noble, and mad at myself for ... not being."

"I'm not being noble, Romeo! I can't sleep at night! I keep hearin' people screamin' and cryin', and metal twisting, and their eyes stare at me every time I close my own. I'm nowhere near noble. I just can't breathe no more. It's too damn heavy."

Excellent. Now he was getting all mushy.

"You're not sendin' me anywhere. You're tryin'. I understand that. If it was anyone else wantin' to go there, I'd be doin' the same."

He winced.

"Rikku wants to go."

"No." Romeo said, and to hell with being consistent, he was not Rikku and Midgar was not Tokyo. "Will you let her? I know she says she's a guardian, but she's ... she's strong but she's an innocent. Just Yurika's trial almost broke her. She thinks jail is funny."

He took another sip of tequila. "How long would you go home for?"

"I don't want to leave her behind." There came that lump in his throat, which Reno was going to wash down with another swig of scotch, straight from the bottle. "I should. I mean, I'm afraid of a million things. That she'll get hurt. That someone comin' after me is gonna go after her just to make a point. I'm scared of the monsters bein' too big or someone else tryin' to end the world. I don't wanna lose her like I lost the other Turks, to some giant creature that some new psycho decided to summon just to get his way. I gotta go and she wants to follow, and I might stay forever, and I might not, and what scares me most- and this is real fuckin' shallow, go me- is that she's gonna see what I did and she's gonna hate me."

He was going to choke, now. Not on the words. Just, if he didn't choke on it, he was going to do something stupid like hiccup, and if he did that, then there were going to be tears, and he was being stupid right then, dammit.

Edited 2009-02-04 02:37 (UTC)

Romeo flailed. "I have no idea what to say," he said quietly. "You're right to be afraid. I would offer to kiss you in hopes that would help you forget, but I haven't even a party to blame that on."

"But I don't think Rikku could ever hate you. She's loved you too long."

"Party or no, man, if you kiss me, I ain't never lettin' you within three meters of my face ever again," Reno replied.

And really, it had to be true, right?

"I... Don't know what to do anymore. I don't even want to go back to Gaia. I just wouldn't be able to live with myself if I didn't. And that means she wants to follow me, and I don't know if that's worse."

"You don't like boys at all?" Romeo clarified. "All right, then, no kissing. I don't think I love you that way anyhow."

He peeled a loose bit of paper on the tequila bottle. "Could you go back but only for a bit, with a goal in mind? Though, even as I say that I think it sounds impossible."

"I don't have a problem with guys. I just don't really lean that way. I mean. Some guys are hot or whatever. Shit. You're hot, yo. But I don't wanna kiss you, man. You're my best friend. It'd be weird. And I like tits too much to look the other way."

That earned a facepalm.

"I could try. Pick a goal. Somethin' to fix. Fix it, an' then run like hell. I don't know if it would be enough. I guess... It'd be impossible to ever find enough, for what I did. I'm gonna have to suck it up and draw a line, yo."

"I was in love with Mercutio," Romeo said quietly. "It took being a girl to get me to admit that, but it's there. It's ... a different thing, with you, and I'd rather not talk about it, ever."

"Maybe you should draw a line in days, rather than in things done?"

"I love you in a purely platonic kinda way that would see me totally losin' my friggin' head if anything ever happened to you." A pause. "You're on-par with Rude, man. I never thought I'd ever say that about anyone, yo."

"And how do I know how many days is enough? I give myself a year, by the end of it I'll be convincin' myself that I should've made it two, instead."

"You're more blood to me than my own kin.," Romeo said, matter-of-factly. "I don't need to go about adopting siblings, but I'd call you my brother and mean it."

"And if you say a year you'll make it two, and if you say clean up one neighborhood you'll make it three. Maybe you'll know when to leave without a goal."

"Blood never meant nothin' to me. But brother, comin' from you? That does mean a lot." A pause. "I... think I'd do the same. You're family, man. The kinda family I can be proud of havin'. Am proud of havin'."

Dammit, they were getting all mushy an' shit.

"Maybe I'll just get chased outta town," Reno noted, eyeing the bottle in his hands, and then shrugging and drinking down the last swallow before setting it down. "Time to go when the locals sniff me out and threaten to put me down like a sick dog."

"I'm going to start to cry," Romeo cautioned. "The locals will be happy to have the help, from whatever corner. And if they aren't ... you run well."

He was, sadly, drunk enough to think that might be comforting.

"I run real damn good," Reno agreed. "And I already almost started to cry a few times. I don't like cryin', you know. I'm pretty damn good and swallowin' it down. But the conversation's been rough, today."

A pause. A kind of lopsided grin.

"Dammit, Romeo. At this rate, we're gonna have to crack open the whiskey, too."

"Or we could go for a walk and get some fresh air," Romeo suggested. "Your liver would thank me, and I could use the motion. The ocean might help, too, it always makes me feel better."

"The ocean, huh?" Reno stretched, tilted his head, considered. "Yeah, man. I think we need to walk. It's the sky that does it for me, though. It's huge, but I ain't gonna drown in it, yo."

A pause.

"I kinda learned how to swim, so the ocean's not all that bad. We walk?"

"We walk," Romeo agreed, standing and holding out a hand to help Reno up. "We walk and we talk and I probably moan about Yurika some more, and I worry about you. And then there are waves."

He liked waves.

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Room 429, Tuesday Afternoon

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