Disclaimer: Don't own; don't sue.

Warning: The language will get stronger in this chapter, but only because certain characters are venting their frustrations.

Blondes Are for the Birds

Chapter 2: Dinner and a Bad Movie

If Leon had been cloned, his younger carbon copy would have been Kagamine Len with greener eyes. Rin tilted her head a little to get a better look at him.

Where Leon smiled, his son scowled. While his father sported a purple button-down, shined leather shoes, and nice slacks, Len looked as if he could care less what he looked like.

He stuck his hands deeply inside the pockets of his zip-up hoodie, as if to avoid shaking Rin's hand, and shifted his weight from one leg to the other in his scuffed jeans. His uncut hair was pulled back into a messy stub of a ponytail, and his mouth was turned down into a grimace.

Even though Leon had just introduced them to each other, Len looked everywhere but at Rin: towards his father's face, around the front hallway of the Akita home, and up and down her mother's figure. His calculating stare made Rin's face heat up. She didn't like how he seemed to be evaluating her family as if it was some car that his father planned on buying.

Deciding to be the bigger person, Rin struggled to stretch her face into a polite smile and extended a hand towards the newcomer. "It's very nice to meet you, Len-san."

He made no move to take the hand she offered and looked down at the petite fingers as if they were grass snakes.

Leon cleared his throat apologetically and tried to break the tense silence his son had created. "Well, since it's already 7, we might want to start heading downtown so that we have enough time to drop Len and Rin-san off and make our reservation."

"Yes, yes," Neru quickly agreed, taking her daughter's arm and looking sweetly towards her boyfriend's son. "What movie are you going to see with Rin?"

Since Len did not reply, his father answered for him. "I think it's a sci-fi adventure called 'Second Earth.' It's about a government agent exploring the possibilities of a second dimension. It had good reviews, and Len said that he thought Rin-san would like it."

Rin's pupils dilated. Only an idiot would think that a girl would like that movie!

Teto-chan had gone with her older brother, Ted, and apparently the whole movie was a testosterone rush on steroids. It featured high paced action scenes that would put any sane girl to sleep, glaring plot-holes, and actresses with playboy-worthy curves hanging out of skimpy clothing.

Rin would much rather see a romantic comedy, but she didn't have the energy to try and drag this sulky boy into "Fool Me Twice," a flick about an ex-boyfriend and girlfriend falling in love for the second time.

On the car ride to the mall, Neru chatted happily with Leon while Rin stewed in Len's boiling-hot aura in the back seat. The fresh new car smell and the cold weather outside couldn't dampen the heat and humidity of the atmosphere. Now she was almost glad that Len never looked her way; otherwise, his burning stare that was currently piercing holes in Leon's seat would have set her on fire.

Trying to understand where he was coming from, she admitted to herself that she wasn't completely comfortable with this setup either, but Leon didn't seem like a bad person. His intentions were good; he just wanted to introduce his girlfriend and her daughter to his family, albeit in an extremely awkward way.

Her silent seatmate had turned his death glare towards Neru. Rin bitterly wondered what part of her cheerful, loving mother seemed repugnant to Len. Also, why did he refuse to look Rin in the face? It wasn't like she was going to sprout fangs and go all Medusa on him, turning him to stone!

Rin stopped to pause in that train of thought and considered its possibilities. Honestly, a granite statue of Len might have been easier to have around than this brooding teenager.

His bad attitude was contagious, and Rin could feel herself slowly becoming more and more irritated with the situation. Since her mother was busy talking with her boyfriend, there was no escape from the oppressive silence.

Just when she could barely take it any longer and was ready to open the door and fling herself out of the car, they reached the mall. Len and Rin stepped out of the car, and Leon began to drive away.

Waving goodbye to Leon and her mother, Rin turned to follow Len, only to find that he had disappeared. At first, she just stood there, dazed and confused. Having no idea where he had gone, she decided to start looking around the mall's movie theater first.

Sprinting in the general direction of the theater, she tossed her head left and right, searching through hundreds of shoppers and trying to spot his blonde head of hair. After she had passed the movie theater, a flash of yellow drew her gaze, moving quickly towards the exit on the opposite side of the mall.

She ran to close the distance between them, panting with exertion. Rin bitterly wished that she had exercised during offseason for volleyball, but it had been too cold this January to take her morning jogs. She was out of shape, and it showed. It didn't help that her jeweled flats were murdering her feet with blisters.

When Len was almost in reach, she stopped and yelled, "Wait up!"

A few shoppers stopped to look at the loud girl now bent over double, breathing heavily with her hands on her knees. Len paused mid-stride and spun around to face Rin.

Her face began to spread into a grin of relief, and she opened her mouth to say something. Then she saw the dark look on his face.

"Fuck off."

The words fell like a bucket of ice water dumped over her head, and she made a small sound of surprise, "Wha…?"

He snorted and turned his back to her again. "You heard me. Get lost."

Recovering from her shock, she tightened her jaw and followed after him. Even though she was only about an inch shorter than he was, his natural gait was long and purposeful. She had to take two steps for each one of his strides.

"Hey!" she demanded as soon as she had matched his pace. "Hey, stop!"

Len just kept walking. Desperate and angry, she grabbed his shoulder with an aggression that clashed with her normally passive nature, forcing Len to look at her. Gosh, she thought as he finally stopped, she had barely known the guy an hour, and he already brought out the worst in her.

Wondering what exactly had set him off earlier, she asked, "What did I do to you?"

He glanced at her with a nonchalance that only made her angrier.

"Fine," she said, "be that way. But I'm not going to let you ditch me here."

Her mother had warned her about a recent increase in gang violence in the area, and Neru had said that Rin could not go to the mall alone. Rin knew that her mother was not the flighty overprotective type, so Rin usually took Neru's warnings seriously. Her fear of real danger trumped her apprehension of this boy's possible wrath.

She stuck out her chin and gave him one command, "For the next two hours, you are staying in this mall."

Len's questioning look gave Rin the impression that he was not used to people ordering him around, and the sudden gleam of humor in his eyes warned her that he was not one to take women seriously.

With a matter-of-fact tone to her voice, Rin went into "business" mode, giving him a list of options, "Okay. We obviously have a problem here. I don't know what you were planning, but I don't want to go to 'Second Earth,' and I'm pretty sure that you don't want to see 'Fool Me Twice.'"

Len snorted at this preposterous notion, and Rin resisted the urge to strangle him.

"So let's try to come to a happy medium," she hissed through gritted teeth. "How about 'Double Time?'"

She hoped that Len would take the carrot she was waving in front of his face. "Double Time" was a foreign flick about two soldiers who had tried to desert the navy and landed on a Pacific island during World War II. It was a comedy, and it didn't have enough gore in it to make her sick. Plus, movie-junkie Teto had liked it. That alone was reason enough to see it, even if it wasn't her first choice.

At first, it appeared as if Len was seriously considering her offer, but then he flat out said, "No."

She shouldn't have been surprised this time, but she couldn't believe his irrational behavior. "Why not?"

"Do I need a reason?" he asked.

Rin wanted to fight against this, then she realized that it was a hopeless case. Who could argue with person who had no motive behind their decisions?

"Maybe you don't, but I do," she insisted, making her move in their battle of wills.

After a five second stare-off, Len relented. "Fine."

He casually gave her an once-over, and Rin instinctively crossed her arms over her chest.

"You're ugly and annoying."

Red-hot blood rushed from her neck to her hairline. "Are you a kindergartener? What kind of reason is that?"

The indifferent shrug of his shoulders spoke volumes.

Before she could think through the consequences of her words, she snapped, "If you're trying to make me angry, you've succeeded."

This brought a smile of triumph to his face, and Rin mentally kicked herself for her stupidity. While she inwardly berated herself, Len just stood there smugly, as if he was waiting for her to say something else she would regret.

Resentment boiled in her chest as she mentally evaluated the verbal weapons in her arsenal. She decided that cursing like a sailor would fail to shock this toilet-mouthed jerk into submission, and sweet-talking him probably would not work either. So she settled on her third option: guilt trip.

"Leon-san and my mom just wanted us to get to know each other." Her eyebrows drew together, and she tilted her head, trying to figure him out. "Do you hate your dad or something?"

Even though it was shot in the dark, her words hit home.

"No. I don't," he snarled, and Rin took a step back. "It's just your mom is a dumbass who can't see how fucked up their relationship is."

Rin's blue eyes grew wide and uncomprehending. Her legs trembled. "I…I don't understand."

How could Len have known about her mom's strange taste in men? Or was there some other reason? Was Leon already cheating on her mom? Or…

Her companion made a low growl in his throat, and Rin felt her pulse quicken as she went into a "flight-or-fight" response. Stepping forward and looming over her, Len's body blocked out the florescent light of the mall and covered them both in shadow, like cloud cover before a thunderstorm.

"Your babaa looks just like her."

Seeing that Rin was not following his words, he explained himself. "My mom, before she left my dad, had your mom's face."

Rin's immediate reaction to this was disbelief. "You're a liar!" How could Leon-san be the same as her mother, longing for his old wife? Rin's mind went blank. It was too ironic to be true. "And how could you know what she looks like? She left you when you were a child!"

Maybe she was harsher than she should have been, but Len's cutting words had left an open wound. All the ugliness stored in her heart rushed out in gushes, but Len took all of her vile words and threw them back in her face.

"At least she's alive. She didn't go and kill herself."

It seemed that Leon was just as open with his son as Neru was with Rin. Len had already crossed a line before this point, but now he had invaded a part of Rin's life that she never spoke of, not even to her mother. "My dad didn't commit suicide! We…we couldn't afford full treatment, and even if he had done chemo, he still would have died!"

"Cancer," an ugly word that her mother never used. It had been lung cancer that had taken her father away from her.

Rin felt herself pushed to the brink of tears and weakened under the pressure. Her voice grew soft as she defended the man she had never really known. "He wanted to spend more time with us and not in the hospital, so instead of dying for eleven months, he lived for three."

"But you can't even remember that, can you?" Len demanded. "How old were you, five? So why didn't he man up and fight for his life, for you and your mom?"

"I don't know!" Rin screamed.

She knew that they were making a scene, but she didn't care. Let them look; let them stare. If she was going to make a spectacle of herself, she was going to speak her mind. "I could ask you the same thing. Why didn't your mom stay?"

Len seemed to have worn himself out fighting her, and with weary eyes he whispered, "I don't know."

Emotionally bruised and bleeding, the two stood together in silence, looking down at their feet. Rin was trying her best not to cry.

Then Len remembered something. "You still don't believe me, do you?" His smile was bitter and accusing. "About our moms."

Rin neither affirmed nor denied this, so he reached in his pocket, got out his wallet, and handed her a small picture. "Here. This is my mother."

Wordlessly, she took the photo and held it before her eyes. From the exaggerated pose and trendy clothing, Rin guessed that the picture had come from a modeling shoot. Kagamine Haku was a beautiful woman, tall and slender with flowing hair that was prematurely white, and she wore red eye contacts. She had probably added these odd colors to her features to make herself stand out from other models. The strange crimson eyes and bleached hair didn't resemble Rin's mother in the slightest, but when Rin squinted at Haku's face, she gasped.

It was as if Neru had a twin sister. Their noses, their mouths, even the olive shape of their eyes were exactly alike.

"Why did you tell me this?" Usually, Rin would have cried, but her anger left no room for tears. "You…you asshole!"

For the first time in her life, Rin slapped a boy clean across the face. Len took the blow head-on, but acted as if it hadn't hurt him at all. As if he wanted her to slap him.

As his cheek reddened and swelled, he shrugged. "Now you know what I'm going through."

His face spread into a self-indulgent grin, as if he enjoyed spreading his unhappiness. Rin felt violated and hated herself for responding to his aggravation. It was as if she had contracted his ugly emotional disease.

Her mouth opened, ready to spit out the truth, to let him know that she already had to deal with a parent who looked for her dead spouse in her partners, but she held her tongue. She would not stoop to his level. That would just betray her weakness and give him the upper hand.

Trying to compose herself, she spun around, took a few deep breaths, and turned back to face Len once more. But he was already gone.

In the aftermath of their shouting fest, Rin was emotionally spent. She succumbed to the pressure of the salt water bottled up in her chest and bawled her eyes out. Luckily, before some miscreant decided to take advantage of the situation, Rin suddenly remembered Teto. Tearfully, she called her friend.

Within fifteen minutes, Teto had arrived at the mall after riding in the back of her brother's yellow car, which he had gotten during his first year of college. When Teto's outrageously pink hair and curly pigtails came into view with her brother Ted close behind her, Rin threw herself into her friend's arms.

"I'm so glad you're not blonde!" Rin wailed, and Teto comfortingly rubbed her back while Ted gave Rin weird looks.

"What's so bad about blondes?" he asked.

Teto shushed him.

The next few days were a one sided cat-and-mouse game for Rin. Whenever possible, she would avoid anything remotely Kagamine, always saying no when Leon invited Neru and Rin over to his apartment and distancing herself from her mother's boyfriend and his moody son. Fortunately, Neru and Leon never asked their teenagers to have another "bonding session," seeing how badly the first one had gone.

As the weeks dragged into months, and the months into nearly a year, Neru finally managed to drag Rin over to the Kagamine's apartment. Rin braced herself for another confrontation, but Len never showed up, and Leon said that his son had "other plans."

It turned out that Len was better at this evasion game than she was, and even after her mother came home one day with a sparkling engagement ring on her finger, Rin never heard or saw her to-be stepbrother.

She would not see Len again until the day of her mother's wedding rehearsal.

AN: Wow! Really didn't expect Len and Rin to vent that much. There was a reason why Len acted like such a jerk, but I'm not going to tell you what it is yet. :)

Notice a connection between the movie titles? All of them have something to do with "two," and I made them all up. "Double Time" is loosely based off of a true WWII story that my grandfather told me. Also, "babaa," the word that Len calls Neru, roughly translates to "old woman," "old hag," or "bitch." I used Japanese because I didn't think the idea would be as well expressed in English.

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