For Mattie, who requested "a modern day fugen fanfic with mugen being a badass and fuu being all amazing as she is." Sorry in advance: Mugen didn't end up being much of a badass. But Fuu turned out pretty damn amazing, so... it works out?
Warning: Lots and lots of swearing.
Wisdom
He's more than a little offended when someone suggests the remedial reading program. He's twenty-fucking-two - way too old a dog to be taught new tricks. But the manager of the construction company is willing to give him a full-time position if he learns to read, and he's well and truly fucked in this town if he doesn't manage to land a steady job, so he agrees to sit down for a few company-funded spelling lessons. He reassures himself that anything nerds can do must be easy. The hard lessons he learned as a kid had to be way tougher than the shit they taught in school.
So there he is, sitting at the darkest table in the farthest corner of the diner, squinting at a grade-school grammar primer he's hidden inside a shitty dumpster Playboy, when the waitress walks up.
"You know, I think you're the first guy I've actually seen read it for the articles."
He jumps and slams the magazine shut on the table, his hands spreading out to cover as much of the evidence as possible. She's young-looking and decently pretty, with big round eyes and a messy ponytail of straight brown hair, which only makes him all the more embarrassed. She raises her eyebrows at him as she sets his beer on the table.
"What?!" he demands, acutely aware of how red his face must be and defiantly pissed off as a result.
She looks at him like he has three heads, and the expression makes her very unattractive. He notices now that she's flat as a board, and that gratifies him a little bit. "Your magazine?" she says, the words acidic on her tongue. "You were mouthing the words as you read."
His gratification immediately fizzles out. His face burns. Goddammit, he is so fucking stupid. Fuck this town. Fuck construction. He's too fucking dumb for this. He moves to push past her.
But her wary expression has morphed into an "o" of understanding. "I get it now." She wrinkles her nose at him. "You're one of those guys who doesn't want people to know he reads the articles, aren't you?"
He stops, stares at her. She has no idea. It takes a moment for him to form words. "Yeah," he says. His voice is raspy. He clears his throat and reaches for his beer, averting his eyes. "Yeah, that's it."
She rolls her eyes, her tray dropping to her hip. "I don't see what the big deal is. It's still Playboy. Not like you've been caught reading Oprah or something."
He chokes on the liquor, spitting all over himself and the table. Goddammit, his face is burning again. He's sputtering like a fucking idiot, and the waitress is covering her mouth in shock and asking if he's okay (of course he's not fucking okay, he wants to tell her, does he look like he's fucking okay?). She grabs a wad of paper towels from God knows where (he realizes belatedly that they are in fact napkins, from the napkin dispenser on his table), wiping his face and apologizing, apologizing, apologizing; and he's so flustered by the attention that it doesn't even occur to him to tell her not to touch his fucking stuff you goddamn bitch until she's already got the sodden magazine half-off the soaking table, and by then the grammar booklet has already fallen onto the floor, drops of beer plip plip plipping onto the cover.
She stares at the primer, both hands holding the Playboy as if it might fall apart if she let go.
His face is on fire. If he was red before, he must be fucking neon now. His hands trembling with indignation, he swipes the booklet off the floor and stuffs it into his jacket. He snatches the Playboy before she can react and stuffs that in, too. He's halfway across the diner and out the door before she catches his sleeve.
"Wait!" she pleads, dragging on his jacket. "Wait. I'm sorry. Please."
"Let go, you stupid bitch!" he snarls, and she does, and that shouldn't make him feel guilty.
"I'm sorry," she repeats feebly. He doesn't dignify her with an answer as he storms off into the night.
The next day he wakes up to five a.m. birdsong and her worried, childish face hovering over him. He yelps and scrambles backward, his sleeping bag swishing against the park bench. "What the fuck?!" he sputters, clutching the nylon up to his chin like it could protect him from bullets.
She seems startled by his reaction, as if he should respond calmly to total strangers watching him while he sleeps. But no - his anger seems to confirm something for her, and it is that something which surprises her. She uncovers her mouth. "Is this where you live?" she whispers, like it's some kind of horrible secret.
His face is burning again - she has a knack, he realizes, for making him feel ashamed of the simple facts of his existence. "Did you follow me?" he hisses, turning the embarrassment around on her.
Her cheeks pink a little. "Well, excuse me for wanting to make sure you were okay!" she snaps, folding her arms across her nonexistent chest. She huffs out a breath. "Geez, can't even do a good deed without pissing someone off anymore."
That sends him over the edge. "Good deed?!" he demands, lurching forward a little. "You call making me feel like a fucking idiot a good deed?!"
She shrinks back a little, and he suddenly processes that her arms are, in fact, folded around a book. He hesitates, and she takes the opportunity to gather herself and shove it into his hands defiantly.
Blinking, he stares at the cover. He has no idea what it says, the picture - a surprised-looking kid and a pissed-off dog with a watch wedged into its side - doesn't give him any clues, and for once his own worthlessness doesn't inspire any anger in him. He holds it back out for her.
"You didn't even look at it!" she protests, tossing her arms in frustration.
"I don't want it," he mumbles.
"How can you know if you don't at least read the title?!" she retorts.
"I can't read the fucking title!" he roars back, but he deflates as soon as the confession leaves him. "Bitch," he adds sullenly.
He can't bear to look at her, because his face is burning and he just knows she's looking at him sadly, and he can't stand to be pitied. If he glares into the distance long enough, at some point she'll get uncomfortable and leave, and then he can skip town as soon as he finds an unlocked car door.
But to his surprise, she sits next to him on the bench. "It's The Phantom Tollbooth."
He blinks at her, but she's staring off at the barest tendrils of light reaching up from the horizon. "What?" he says.
"The book. It's called The Phantom Tollbooth." She doesn't look at him, but she sort of tips her head in his direction. "My mom used to read it to me when I was little." She pulls her legs up onto the bench and tucks her nose between her knees. "I read it a lot after she died, and... it gets better when you're older, basically. It's a children's book, but it's written so you can appreciate it more when you go back to it later." She rests her temple on her knees and smiles at him softly. "I figured it'd be a good book to learn from as an adult."
He looks at her, her face just barely lit by the hint of the sunrise. He looks at the book with its cracked spine and worn blue cover. He looks at the tip of the sun cresting the horizon. Then, as reverently as he can manage, he lays the book on the bench and slides it across the space between them so that it butts up against her hip.
She lets her legs drop and slides it back, turning her body towards him. "I want you to have it."
"I'm not taking your mom's special fucking book." He pushes it back forcefully, banging it against her thigh.
She studies him for a moment. "Okay." She picks up the book and puts it in her bag. "Then I want you to come over to my house for breakfast."
"What?" She's looking at him expectantly. "No." He shakes his head to emphasize it. "No. Why?"
She wrinkles her nose at him. "So you can start reading it while I make you waffles. Duh."
Her nonchalance pisses him off. "Look, I am not your fucking charity case, okay?" He paws at his sleeping bag, trying to find the zipper. "I'm not your good deed of the day or whatever. I don't need any help." He finds the zipper. It hisses open, and he's suddenly aware of how threadbare his clothes are underneath the nylon. He glares at her to compensate. "So are you gonna let it go, or what?"
Pursing her lips, she sighs and digs through her bag. "Tell you what." She produces a coin from the bottom of her purse and holds it up for him to see. "Heads, you can leave, and I forget all about this whole thing." She turns it over. "Tails, you come stay with me until you learn to read." She turns it back once more. "Deal?"
He frowns at her for a moment. Then he snatches the coin out of her hand and flings it into the air.
END
Basically, unless you ask specifically for Jin, I'm probably not going to include him in things.
But you totally CAN ask specifically for Jin, because I am taking one-shot requests! This is my first completed request (SweetlySpicey and Luv4Uncas: The Rough Men/Seaglass perspective flip is on its way; meru-chan: I'm considering possibilities for what could follow Seaglass).
Anyway, I was exposed to The Phantom Tollbooth for the first time when I was 17, heading off to college, and I thought it was pretty good stuff from an adult perspective. It's a little high-level for Mugen at this point, but he'll probably take it as a challenge and plow through it once the coin comes up tails.
At any rate, let me know what you think, send me your requests (and thank Mattie for this one!), and as always, thanks for reading!