Chapter 8- #14- Radio-Casette Player
Whee, another one! Wrote it on the same day as the last chapter, but I wanted to draw it out a little. XD More stream-of-consciousness git 'er done writing, hope you enjoy.
I actually wrote this without music, wow! I must've been so absorbed in it that I forgot to press the play button on my keyboard, lol. I recommend "Rin and Sesshoumaru" (cuz they have their own song) from the Inuyasha soundtrack, it actually goes with this little one-shot quit nicely. ;P Fancy that.
Rin is twenty something, Sesshoumaru is thirty something.
Modern day AU, youkai do not exist.
It was a bright morning in mid-July, the kind of morning where everyone is happy to awake to the Summer sun until they remember that with the sun comes heat, shortly followed by sweat and the desire to plant oneself directly in front of the air conditioner. The weather report touted ninety-eight degrees as the high of the day, remaining in the mid eighties until noon. Those who were outside before noon would have to disagree.
Sweat clung to one runner's body as he loped along the trail in central park, wiping his forehead with the back of his arm. He skipped through songs on his iPod until finally settling on a Brahms piece. He inhaled as the music began to play, feeling refreshed, and picked up the pace a bit, ready to head home. As he bounded around the curve he looked down, adjusting the volume, and smacked straight into another runner.
The man squinted at the sun hanging just above him and slowly tried to comprehend how he had ended up lying on his back on the white gravel path. The sharp movement of an elbow against his abdomen alerted him to the source of the problem.
"Are you okay?"
The elbow removed itself from the pit of his stomach and the body it was connected to wriggled to its feet.
"Here, let me help you," said the woman who was now hovering above him, a large dark blot on the face of the sun. He swatted her hand away and got to his feet, flicking chunks of gravel off his bare knees.
"Are you okay?" the woman repeated. He flashed her his best look of utter boredom.
"I'm sorry I ran into you, it's just there's this branch here, heh: they oughta trim this thing, I swear!" The man looked at her warily as she spoke. She was attractive as far as he could tell: she was sweaty and wearing no make-up so he could not be certain about her face, though her sweaty-tanktop-incased figure did seem rather alluring.
All in all, he decided he'd spent too much time listening to the woman's incessant babbling, and so he turned away from her and took off in a sprint.
Which somehow landed him on the ground again, this time with a burning sensation on the inside of his ears.
"Ouch, god!" squealed the woman who was, yet again, sprawled out nearby. "Jesus, that nearly ripped my ear off!" She cried, sitting up and wincing as she massaged her pinna. It was then the man realized that their earphones had somehow become tangled during their first altercation, so that when he took off running, both sets of earphones were wrenched from their respective owner's ears.
"… Can you hear me? Sir? Sir?" the woman was hovering in front of the sun again.
"Yes, yes: I am fine," the man snapped, standing again and adjusting his sleeveless tee.
"Here, I think these are yours," said the woman, untangling his black earphones from her neon yellow ones. "There ya go!" She dropped them in his hand.
The man eyed her resentfully as he plugged the earphones back into his iPod, ignoring her cheerful chatter and plentiful laughter as she shook bits of gravel from her hair. He then noticed her mp3 player, or rather what should have been an mp3 player.
"Is that a cassette player?" He blurted.
The woman stopped babbling about whatever she was babbling about and smiled the world's friendliest smile at him. "Mhmm! It's my baby, I've had it since I was three. Everybody says I should chuck it and get an iPod but I just can't let it go." Then she actually kissed the little yellow piece of plastic. He glimpsed the cassette through the window and shook his head.
"Waltzes? Are you really listening to waltzes?" He knew his own voice well enough to understand when he sounded accusing, and at that moment he sounded borderline disgusted, but she didn't seem to care.
"Yeah, gives me a steady beat to run to. What about you?"
"Symphonies. Brahms at the moment." He said haughtily. She laughed.
"Brahms? What're you trying to fall asleep while you jog?"
He glared at her reproachfully, trying to convey his best look of ireful scorn, but it had no effect; she just kept laughing. He was not one to be laughed at.
"Perhaps if your music player was not so archaic or your vision so impaired you would have seen me coming and we could have avoided this all together." He hissed.
The woman laughed, shocked. "Well, you're quite the feisty one aren't you, Sunshine?" She asked with a smile, "maybe if you hadn't been staring at your little new-fangled screen you would've seen me comin'!"
"Do not call me such a childish name!" He said indignantly: never before had he met someone so inconsolably cheerful as the woman standing before him.
"I like you hair," she said suddenly, gesturing to the steely-gray mess he kept cut close to the neck. He quirked an eyebrow at her, baffled.
"Tell you what, stranger: I'll race you to the café across the lawn over there, see it? First one to a table wins. Loser buys the winner water, winner gets bragging rights and a pet name of their choice. Unless you what to tell me your real name…?"
"Sesshoumaru," he snipped.
She smiled. "I'm Rin; pleased to meet you. You ready?"
He nodded.
"Count with me," she said. So he did.
"One…two…three!"
And they were off.
Lol, I need to get off the one-liner bandwagon again.
Please review!
