Little Red Dog (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
madreen_rua) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
bakerstreet2020-08-06 06:06 pm
madreen_rua) wrote in bakerstreet2020-08-06 06:06 pm
Entry tags:
Pic prompts (Reverse/text friendly)
the picture prompt meme
— Comment with your character and preferences, prompts optional
— Others will respond
— Reply to them with a setting or text thread based on the picture.
— Link to any pictures that are NSFW, please.
— Be aware that this meme will be image-heavy.
no subject
He doesn't, of course. Things are tenuous enough as it is. One wrong step, and his foot would go straight through the floor of this conversation. He's not ready to let go of being used quite yet. He isn't sure if he would ever be ready.
Kiryu answers his questions still, at least, despite how little he actually says. He glances up again, but says nothing. An old name from Sunflower was asking around about Kiryu, and now a package had shown up on his doorstep. There was nothing else to be said. Nishiki heads back for the table and sits by it, pulling the box into his lap. He eases himself back, and then... hesitates.
The box sits in his lap. Kiryu's address was indeed written in black ink on the paper wrapping. He doesn't feel anything from inside - he supposes that's a promising start. He gives it another shake, tests its weight again, presses his ear against it. He leans back up once he's satisfied with what he hears - nothing. Nishiki fixes Kiryu with one more baleful look, and then snips the twine and pulls it apart. He cuts through the paper wrap. A white envelope waits.
Nishiki takes it between his thumb and forefinger and, wordlessly, slides it to Kiryu. ]
no subject
Nishiki slid a white envelope towards him.
He picked it up, wordlessly, and opened it with his thumbnail, ripping the seam, and then-
And then in a stupid, dumb, impulsive move that Nishiki would probably hate he stood up, and promptly walked around to the other side of the table, and then sat as close to Nishiki as he dared - hoping against hope that he wouldn't be shoved away - before he pulled out the sheet and started to read.]
Taro-san's getting married.
[That was the first thing he noticed.]
no subject
[ Maybe if Taro-san wanted Nishiki to care about his wedding, he should have reached out.
But it isn't any surprise that Kiryu had been his contact. Nishiki expected he was hardly the only one who had once sought out his attention. Kiryu was a friend to all of Kamurocho. He had names in every corner of the city. He's just one of the many, as it'd always been. Even when he was too young to understand it.
The bitterness is bleeding over, and he knows that's part of his souring, he hardly remembered Taro-san and his coke-bottle glasses. That was fine. Once he opened this, he could steal some reprieve until the next time Kiryu had use of him. Kiryu can keep his letter from Taro-san. He could keep whatever was in this stupid package too.
He doesn't get up, but he does allow himself to turn a little, shoulders shifting just slightly, twisting to stab the blade of his scissors into the taped-up little void in the cardboard. He slices through the tape and peels the four cardboard sheets back.
He sees what's inside. The air leaves his lungs. ]
no subject
And then he looked in the box.
The air left his lungs as well, in a slower exhale, like he had just been punched and was slowly starting to collapse. Which was how he felt. Of all the things he had expected, it wasn't their old gunpla.
The stickers were still on some of them. Most. He was almost afraid to touch them in case they were some kind of...hallucination.]
This takes me back.
[Understatement.]
You were always better at putting these together than I was.
no subject
The box is a robot graveyard. Gunpla from a decade ago are packed inside with the occasional little rattle of a knocked-off limb or snapped bit of plastic. He looks at a bright red thing, with smooth and bulky limbs, and he wishes he hadn't in a tide of eleventh-hour memories swelling in his chest. Holding a flashlight between his teeth and defying curfew to wash layer after layer of bright, bright red over the plastic shell until he was dizzy.
Not even Kiryu could taint what he had in his lap. He sits just as transfixed as Nishiki is. His gaze slides over, catches the barest hint of his face, and then slides away again. He almost sees the past in him. ]
I could never tell what you were shittier at.
[ The ghost of something much fonder sneaks into his voice as he sighs it out, scooping a one-armed RX-78 in his hand and carefully wresting it from the stiff limbs of the other abandoned models inside. It's still crusted with globby paint and whitish glue. ]
Putting them together, or painting them.
no subject
...actually, what was he afraid of, exactly?]
Putting them together. [He said it with force and confidence, knowing that the actual truth was that he was shitty when it came to all of it.] I was never patient enough. You usually had to hold me back from accidentally breaking it, or covering it in enough glue we'd have to find a knife to cut it off.
[And there was his Zaku, sitting in the box. Kiryu had fucked it up, he remembered this, and somehow Nishiki had taken red paint and turned it into something...good. At least he thought it was good. Even now, looking at it, he thought it was good.
And he bowed to inevitability.]
I know you hate me, and I know I haven't been a good friend to you: I'm sorry.
no subject
Excuse me.
[ It's a crisp and mercifully short stride to privacy - minus the moment he takes to steady himself after a particularly unfortunately placed gunpla catches under his foot and skates it sharply to his left. Beyond that, a few quick, almost soundless steps to the bathroom tucked up near the entryway, and he could breathe again. He disappears partway down the corridor, his fingers curled tight around the old Gundam model.
The door can be heard sliding open, and then shut again. ]
no subject
[But Nishiki was gone, bitterly quick, down the corridor and into his bathroom. In another lifetime- hell, a few short years ago, Kiryu would have immediately followed, and, if he hadn't heard the sounds of piss, might have opened the door and followed him into the bathroom.
Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid. He had always been the stupider of the two of them.
He followed anyway, a bit slower, warier, down the corridor and to the bathroom. And there he...sat. Kiryu sat, back against the door, thunking his head against the door as he did to make a point: I'm here, I'm outside, if you open the door too quickly I'm going to fall on my back.
Thunk.]
I come up with excuses to see you because if I just show up I'm afraid you'll shut the door in my face.
[He didn't know if Nishiki was listening, or could even hear him in the first place, but it didn't matter: thunk. He was going to say it just for the sake of getting it off of his chest. Surgery, one way or another.]
no subject
He holds that with him as he cuts the room in half with his passage. He clutches it close to him until it digs into his flesh like the sharp-limbed robot in his hand. Just a few more steps.
Nishiki entertains the idea of the bathtub on the way there. That was the first plan his brain glued together - he would climb into the bathtub and cover his ears and wait for Kiryu to find his silent and empty apartment unbearable enough to leave. It wouldn't work, of course - Kiryu had always had a selective thick-headedness about him, something which kept him infuriatingly oblivious, numb and out of reach - but the thought of it was a comfort enough. He could stand with being trapped by its smooth edges for awhile.
Air assaults him almost as soon as he shuts the door. The second he's sealed off from Kiryu, his shoulder finds the wall. He feels the image of himself in the mirror behind him, imperiously pitiful. He can't turn around. He focuses on his hand against the door, pushing it so firmly in place that it begins to tremble.
A moment passes. Nothing in the apartment moves. He doesn't know what he feels besides hollowed out. His arm eases from the door. He sinks down slowly, like something dying.
Nishiki hears Kiryu eventually, slowly and carefully moving through his place, a space that he could always sense was one not made for him. His finger traces the gunpla's empty arm socket as he hears him draw nearer. His presence is so ostentatious that it even creeps under the door - two shadows blotting out the light. He freezes.
Something hisses against the door. Those two blots become one.
Thunk.
It hums against his palm. Nishiki pulls his hand back, startled. It presses into the floor instead and he stares at his knuckles, free of Kiryu until he speaks. Nishiki wonders just how determined he is to suffocate him.
He says nothing, because he can't breathe, because he can't stand to give Kiryu one more piece of him.
But if he listens closely, he might hear a short, gasping hiccup of a breath. ]
no subject
Anything he had heard was incidental. Anything he had felt was incidental.]
I have scissors, Nishiki. Somewhere. And even if I didn't there's five 100-yen shops between you and me, and I could've just gone to one to get a new pair. I'm broke, but not that broke.
[Kiryu half-turned his head, listened for a moment. Waited. Thunk.]
I did want your help, but that's because you're smarter than I am, not because I didn't know how to get scissors. If it was just me I would've opened it up without thinking. I'm stubborn and good in a fight: you know that. And more than that I wanted to see you. If you helped me then I could get you dinner, and we could pretend like we were still okay.
[...]
Hit the door twice if you want me to leave.
no subject