Chapter 24: The Bully with a Blindfold

When Rude came with Reno to Arien's apartment that night, she was already home, changed, and in the kitchen. Reno simply opened the lock with a key as if he had always lived there - Rude was a bit surprised at that - and then simply hollered, "got the booze!"

She came out to see the two, and raised an eyebrow after smiling at the taller man. "Just how much are you going to drink tonight?" She asked warily. "Did you buy out the entire shop?"

"Ha!" Reno said cheerfully. "You wish."

"Whatever." Then, to Rude: "Have you eaten? I'm making something."

Rude was slightly taken aback by the domesticity that permeated the air. Reno was taking his shoes off after handing his purchases to the woman. The entire flat, from what he had seen so far, screamed of woman. There was nothing cold about this flat; all warm, welcoming, harmonious, and Reno stood right in middle of it without a concern, throwing the jacket onto the sofa. It really was a woman thing to ask the guest if he was hungry; the instinct to feed must be quite particular to females, since Rude had never asked that to anyone, nor had he been asked by any of his friends.

Reno padded into the kitchen, his white shirt untucked, and opened the fridge. "How was 'Laney?" He asked as he stuck his head inside and pulled out cans of beer. He tossed one to Rude, who caught it with a slap. The beer was cold against the palm; the tiny droplets of moisture immediately formed as Rude pulled the top with a crack.

"She did fine," Arien replied as she opened the oven door. "Good thing we have the chaperone system, though."

Rude turned his head from the sofa. "Oh?"

"She was attacked. Like I was." She pulled out rows of baked courgettes in a tray. Rude had a sudden impression that Arien really was a sixteen-year-old. A really rebellious sixteen-year-old who knew but wasn't aware of how the world worked. But same could be said of the redhead. Rebellious from the tip of his hair all the way to his footwear, the redhead just couldn't seem to conform to rules.

Two teenagers playing house. With money. That was what this looked like. These two probably couldn't keep their life together under terms of what normal people called "normal", let alone together. But for some reason, it seemed to be working.

Weird.

In the meanwhile, Reno had nearly knocked over a crystal figurine on a cabinet with his errant sleeve, caught it just in time, and was looking around furtively as if someone was coming to scold him. No one was coming, but Reno still looked around anyway. Rude raised an eyebrow; the flavour of hop spread out through his mouth. Arien - or Reno, probably, she didn't look like the type to keep beer in the fridge - had good taste. There was already a plate on the table, loaded with what looked like toast with some paste on it. Reno took one and bit in, spreading crumbs everywhere. "Shrimp," he noted. "This is actually good." Arien just came in, and nodded at Rude.

"Go on, it's for you."

Rude took one. The taste of toasted shrimp, light-flavoured cheese, buttery toast and parsley was a good combination with the bitterness of the beverage, giving just the right balance against the rich flavour of hop. There were some fried parcels too, stuffed with tomatoes and cheese. They were excellent.

The two continued to drink throughout dinner; Arien had thrown together an excellent meal. The zucchinis were stuffed with crumbs and cheese from Junon, which were baked to just the right crispiness.

"Pass me the salt," Reno muttered as he reached over and knocked a wine bottle onto the floor. White wine went everywhere, and Arien glared. "What?"

"That was my wine, you idiot!"

"Here's tequila. The best of the best!"

"You're doing tequila shots? How are you not hammered?" Arien wondered as she got up to get a rag. Reno was shovelling paella into his mouth at an alarming rate; he was eating even more than Rude, who seemed to know as much manners as Reno did not. She could tell the tall man appreciated the food, since they were disappearing at a constant pace, but Reno outpaced him. By a large margin. Which made sense, once she thought about it; Reno was still healing, and his body was using up energy at an abnormal pace as it was, without adding recuperation to it. After giving up on soaking up any more wine from the carpet, she threw the rag into the sink and went to the fridge to pull another bottle out. The bottle was nicely chilled, and Rude opened it, Arien not really trusting Reno with the bottle opener.

Eventually, Reno fell asleep on the floor; they had finished the dessert of strawberries in syrup and the redhead had finished off the dessert wine before stretching out onto the floor. Rude watched as Arien threw a blanket on him; he looked younger than his age with his eyes closed, his hair spread in a wild mess. Arien was stacking the plates.

"So he lives here now?" Rude asked slowly as he slowly shook the whiskey in a tumbler glass. Arien stopped, looking somehow confused.

"Well, I guess? Maybe?" The silverware fell into the tray with loud tinkle. "I'm not sure. He comes back here when the day's over, but I think he's still registered under the apartment upstairs in the files." She stood up and took the tray of plates over to the kitchen then came back and sat down again, sipping the sweet dessert wine that was still in the glass. The colour was honey-golden, and Arien's eyes looked green through it.

"He can be filed at any address," Rude intoned. "Doesn't mean he lives anywhere."

"True."

"He looks comfortable here," Rude continued when he realised Arien wasn't going to say much else. "More so than what I've seen of him at his own place."

Arien glanced at the sleeping redhead. "I guess, but I don't think that means it's okay for him to just keep coming back to my place or making free with my…"

"Does it bother you that much?"

The woman paused; Reno muttered as he rolled over. His face was relaxed, far more relaxed than Rude had ever seen; his long lashes cast shadows onto the red marks on his cheeks. Even in slumber, Reno looked like a cat. "No, not really," she admitted. "I guess I'm just not comfortable."

"With what?"

"Well, I always had a lot of personal space," she said, finishing the glass of sweet wine. She took a piece of chocolate and carried it to her mouth. "People gave me wide berth. And Reno… well, he does intrude in my space. Not always, but he's stepped farther then anyone else. And I mean, we're dating, and I suppose he has more of a right to me than anyone else, but-"

Rude raised an eyebrow. He didn't like where this was going. "Right?"

She shrugged, looking uncomfortable as well. "I… guess? Sort of? I don't know, Rude. I don't understand him. He seems to be fine with stepping well within my boundaries, which is new to me."

Rude sensed that Reno had stepped far more boundaries than the one Arien had set up about herself. He realised that the redhead had slept with her, and that this had left a mark on him as much as it had to her; this was new. Reno, to his knowledge, had never dated a coworker; it really was just asking for trouble. But Reno had known the risk, had taken it. Did he value her that much to risk things like his livelihood to enter a relationship with this tall woman? And if so, why?

"But you don't mind Reno," Rude stated. A question in form of a declaration.

"I do," came back the answer immediately. "He's annoying. And I probably annoy him. Pardon my language, but he's an asshole sometimes."

Well, there was no denying that. Rude heard Reno mumble, "I ain't a hole," and saw Arien crack a smile.

"But?"

"But," she continued, "I don't always have to be the leader around him, or even someone competent. That's a relief."

And this was the heart of her problem. On one hand, Arien didn't want to be reliant on anybody; she was the Gunslinger, after all, the ace of the Intelligence, competent, determined. But on the other hand, she was a woman, and Rude knew that a woman working in a man's field had to work twice as hard to earn the same respect men automatically did. It was a pre-determined race, and Arien had ran through it all her life. And then, in came Reno, who didn't care, who just viewed her as a woman, gave her some slack for underperforming… and telling her that doing her best was necessary, but doing the best wasn't, that's why they were a team, not solo.

"And if proximity means he'd be around, I don't mind," she was saying.

Rude put down the glass. "So you don't mind Reno in your territory, but you don't feel comfortable with anyone being close to you."

"Is it that obvious?"

"To anyone who can watch and listen, yes. Something bothers you when anyone gets too close, and you put up a barrier. Most respect it or sense it, but Reno seems to have an amazing lack of such sensitivity."

Arien smiled; Rude was a quiet man, but he was observant, and when he needed to say it, he did. This was also quite possibly the most she had heard Rude say in a single sitting, work or no. Quite a feat.

"I-"

Rude shifted, leaning forward, indicating that she had his ears, giving her time to collect her thoughts and compose herself before she said anything. She could not see his eyes - did he ever remove his sunglasses? - but he rested his chin on his clasped hands, telling her without words that she had his time, as much as she needed.

Reno had a good friend.

"I guess…" She thought again for a moment. "I guess I'm scared of him leaving me. I'm scared of losing myself. I don't like change, and people who get close to you change you. Break you, sometimes. That's the last thing I need."

Rude thought about it for a moment; he knew what she was talking about. After all, hadn't Chelsea changed him? Wounded him even? He mulled over it for a few moments.

"Okay," he said.

Silence.

Arien jerked, her face looking incredulous, which was something, considering she was ever expressionless. "That's it?" she asked. "Just okay? Nothing else?"

Rude straightened a little. Reno rolled over again, nearly knocked a wine glass off from the table. His hand shot out to catch it. Even with his current position, his bulk and size made the woman look small and fragile.

"People are always afraid," he said quietly. "Reno was afraid. It's normal to be scared of things you've no control over, and that's what loving someone does to you sometimes. Deprive you of control."

"What do you mean?"

"You pretended not to care, because that meant Reno had no power over you. You didn't care what he thought. But you admitted it, and now he has power over what you feel. Fear. Happiness."

Love means you give up your power to someone else. The person you love becomes your god, and you the petitioner, awaiting judgement.

Wasn't that the line from LOVELESS? When Arien had first heard it, she had thought it was bunch of garbage. How could loving someone mean yielding power? But she realised she had known all along, and had just refused to admit it until now. Until Rude had neatly framed it into sentences and put it up on her wall, so to speak.

"… What should I do?" She said, almost inaudibly.

"I don't know what's going to happen any more than you do." The whiskey was gone; Arien passed over the bottle. "Reno is a partner and a friend, but he's unpredictable. I've no idea what he'll do."

A sigh.

"I don't think I can handle being alone again," she admitted, almost to herself. "After opening myself up… I'm pretty raw at the moment. Emotionally."

"Why are you always going on about him leaving you?" Rude screwed the cap on after filling his glass. "Are you so dead set on him that you're sure you'll never want to leave him?"

Rude's query seemed to strike a chord with her. She blinked. This was true, wasn't it? She'd never considered it, but leaving Reno was an option for her. Did she truly love him, or was this some sort of demented possessiveness? What was it about the redhead that made her so feel differently about him? Why not Axil? Or Zen? Why him? For that matter, why not Rude? Rude was a far better choice. By about million times. Well, not that she ever thought he was interested in her anyway, but the question still remained: why Renaldo Miller?

"… That's true, isn't it?" Arien said, almost laughing. "I can be the one leaving him."

"What do you mean?"

She was laughing now. "I was so terrified of him leaving me that the other possibility never occurred to me until now. But I can leave him too, can I?"

That might shatter him, and I'm not going to patch him up again, Rude thought. Reno had been shattered once, although that had been about work, not his personal life; but still, a mess was a mess, and Reno in a mess was about three hundred times worse than anyone else in a mess. Rude had seen it first hand, and had done his part to set him on the right track again, but that had nearly cost him his eye. Nope, not doing it.

"Is that why you were so on guard around him?"

"Was it that obvious?"

"It was hard to miss," the bald man admitted. Arien nodded to affirm his suspicions. "And that's about the long and short of what I've been hearing from you anyway."

What this woman did not know, however, was that she had just as much power to hurt him as he did over her. A single word, a cursory glance… that was all it was going to take to make him spiral out of his tenuous hold on his balance and into the fetid degeneracy. That darkness always lurked in him, far more closely than anyone else Rude knew.

She needed to know. To make an informed decision. Now, or in the future.

"Arien," he started, "you need to understand."

"Understand what?" she asked with a raised eyebrow that spoke of suspicion. Curiosity. And unawareness.

"The way a woman loves a man… is different from a way a man loves a woman," he said slowly. "A woman grows, matures as she loves someone. A man… not so much."

"Are we talking about Reno in particular?" Arien asked.

How was he to know? He'd never seen the redhead loving anyone except himself. He wasn't even sure he loved her. But it was the farthest he had allowed anyone in as well; and that counted for something, didn't it?

"Men become twenty again, every time he falls in love," Rude explained. "Yes, even him." That was to her incredulous "funny joke" look. "You become twenty again, suffer as twenty-year-olds suffer, with all the irrational decisions. Stupid mistakes. We stand amazed every time a woman takes her clothes off and can't meet us in the eye. We violate the sacred."

"Women are sacred?"

The man shrugged. "Motherhood is sacred. And all mothers are women.

"Reno is aware of that. He's twenty again. Standing in awe."

"Are we talking about the same person?"

Sarcasm was Arien's way of buffeting away the raw emotions, of accepting Reno's interest, it seemed. Make a joke of it, and suddenly it wasn't real anymore. But she needed to understand that Reno would make mistakes, and that he was fighting himself for control too. This wasn't just her battle. It was her hard purity that had attracted him, but with it came the ignorance that could stab as much as a knife. And possibly kill in the process.

How easy it would have been, if this had been just a simple fling with a buxom girl of loose morals. But Arien wasn't, and Reno knew she wasn't, and he'd gone for it anyway, and the chase and turned into a hunt. Rude glanced at the redhead as Arien stood up to take the wineglass to the kitchen, his face strangely pure. Snow was falling outside, a soft flutter of white petals that threatened to drown all in Lethe. But he knew Arien would remember this conversation. He'd have to trust her.