Uh shit -yeah- this story is overdone. That's the fucking point. The only reason I started writing this was so that I could play around with language and experiment with original phrases and sayings and curses. I wanted to write something really different and I wanted my Ken to be a weird-mouthed, sarcastic dumbass with Aya acting like a shy fraff. This is meant to be an Aya/Ken story that is original and different. If your brain can't handle it and you think it's too "confusing" and "overdone" or think I'm "murdering" the language then oh yeah don't read it. There's an idea! I'm not changing my approach so tough fucking luck.
But to everyone else who's read and actually liked this drama, you guys are awesome...like the brainy sort who'd never wear shorts on Hot Pants Day. :)
~*~Chapter 6~*~
It really is a thorny business to try and expound upon the subtle differences between a silence that is content in nature, ie two comfortable companions indulging in a breather after garbling on conversationally and a silence that is just fugging awkward, ie me and Aya after the fern fiasco. I'm telling you, the look on Aya's face when I broke his crunchy leaf scrap suggested something akin to severe cranial lacerations. He didn't even look that pissed when trying to chuck Takatori the ol' heave-ho into Lah Lah Land.
Hence the long-suffering silence that was more rancid then last Beach Day's pork udon.
It wasn't easy, trying to needlepoint when exactly things began to curdle between me and Aya, but if pressed I guess I'd hafta say something like...oh mayhap...three and a half nanoseconds after my schnozzle squirted. In any case, by the time we were sitting in the Aya's Porsche, things were well into the putrefaction process.
I tried very hard not to grouse but hooplas above, if the seconds on my Antibiotical Avenger Illuminator wristwatch went any slower, they'd be going backwards.
But I ask you this, can I truly be blamed? What is there left to say to the guy who attempts revenge upon my personage with a bit of poisoned fernery? For indeed, after much ricking and racking of the cerebral cortex, that certainly is the conclusion I've concluded upon. It all adds up, much in the manner of the Quadratic Equation only instead of giving me two roots, I got three leaf pieces.
Heh heh little joke there.
It was very apparent to see what was going on. I know it because I'm not of the 'easily fooled' variety. Make all the shit-cracks you want to but the bottom brush is this: Hidaka Ken knows. I may not be any He-Man when it comes to the dating scope of things but frankly I don't think being overcome with desire to stuff my head into the carburettor of a diesel truck constitutes as normal adolescent sentiments. If a guy's gonna gimme some scrunged up bit of fennery and call it Christmas in Hawaii...well needless to say you won't see me partaking in any of that old shit. I've always been on the hearty side, call it good breeding it you will, and if a no-show piece of foliage scrap can bust a spray out my snout then for sudorific sakes, there just had to be villainy afoot.
And let's face the aria shall we, it's not like Aya was just any kinda moron. The guy was as crafty as a bunny toilet paper holder made out of wooden dowels and pipe cleaner. He hadn't been recruited by Birman for nothing, that much was for sure. He had some brains and was obviously putting them to use to exact a cutting approach of revenge upon my hapless person. I should have been pouring over the runes of that drama the moment I caught the updrift.
Aya had always seemed of the asexual brand to me...and then oh look ho-ho he's willing to ham it up on a date with me? As in wining and dining and all that archaic crappy Yohji blathers on about? Yeah that's the golden trophy for sure. It was definitely fishy business. Clearly I had let the need to throw Omi and Yohji off my ass enshadow my innate powers of deductive development. Under normal circumstances I would have been onto Aya like Masafumi at the kidney black market but even I have off days and what with all the theatrics the Yoj and co. have put me through, well is it any bleeding wonder my senses have been a tad decrepit lately?
Beside me, Aya made some sort of grunt at me then, as though indicating I should turn my attentions to him.
I narrowed my eyes. Yes, he'd always been a most shifty sort. Well I was now in full knowledge of his nefarious stratagems and he would have to act swift if he wanted to pull the old 'one-two-four' ever me.
"Have any preference?"
"Say what now?" I boomed heartily. Above all, I couldn't let him know that I knew. I would have to act natural. Luckily I can play the part of the Renaissance Man quite well when the occasion warrants. "Whachootalkin'bout?"
"Of where to eat," he clarified in sulky tones. He gave me a glance that suggested I wasn't rowing with both oars in the public park pond.
"Of where to eat hah hah hah a fine question by any standards!" I sniggered luridly and slapped my thigh for added, obnoxious effect. Inside my mind the old cogs were really having a rotation. Where was an appropriate scene to scarf some sassafras down our gullets? A locale where Aya wouldn't risk trying to disgorge me or some other high drama? It was a quandary of a risk, asking me to choose the place of eatery but I wasn't about to blow it, if Aya was stupid enough to dud it up like that.
Aya stopped at a stoplight and glanced at me again.
Oh hell why didn't he just get a friggin' telescope? Then maybe he could watch my pores secrete! Keep looking at me all day would he...and this coming from the guy who didn't know the meaning of the word 'eye contact'. Sheesh. "What?" I demanded testily.
Aya huffed, his eyes taking on that familiar moody cast. "Where do you want to eat?" he enunciated slowly, as though speaking to some addled-brain duffer.
Oh yeah.
"Well anywhere's fine with me man!" I enthused. One half a second after proclaiming that rumpus, it occurred to me what I'd just said.
Apparently Aya wasn't the only who was stupid enough to dud it up like that.
Inwardly I fumed. Damn that Aya to the chambers of Beelzebub! So he thought he was sly like a monkey did he, making me forget what I was thinking? Well humphh I wasn't about to take this by being some recumbent dicktard. Let it not be known that Hidaka Ken lay aside like cast-off lawn furniture for the greater glory of Fujimiya Aya.
"Hey wait a minute, yeah I know a good place we should go to!"
"Where?"
Desperately, I jabbed my finger in some random direction. "Over there!"
Aya followed my finger. "You want to eat at that sidewalk vendor?"
Oh ugh, Tokyo sidewalk vendors. Even homeless people didn't eat at those disease-on-wheels. Hastily I glanced about for signs of any other nearby food emporium but there were none to be seen. There were only clothing shops. Rows and rows of scrappy clothing shops all displaying tiny pink T-shirts with Hello Kitty emblazed on the front. I jerked my gaze from those horrors and tried to look aflame. "Mmm mmm beat the street while we eat!"
Aya's face was sour. "That's unhygienic."
I looked out the window and scowled. Oh so now all of a sudden the guy was worried about my hygiene was he? What was he gonna do next, floss my bicuspids and then try to pull a Yohji around my trachea? Yeah nice try sorry we're closed keep the change Fujimiya.
I went on the aggressive. "Well where would you rather eat at?"
Aya shrugged in a would-be casual way, too bad he was as stiff as Yohji's brain, and his ears turned red. I didn't think it was from the glow of his hair. Had to be his conscious catching up with him, the lousy lout-face. "I thought we could, if you wanted to, get some bento boxes from that Hibachi place down the street? It's your favourite place to eat, isn't it? That's what Omi told me."
My stomach gave a big lurch. I loved Hibachi; their bento boxes were to kill for. Then the rest of what Aya had said sank in. So. The guy was porking it up with Omi was he? Wanted to take me out to my favourite restaurant did he? Uh huh. Well. You weren't gonna see me falling prey to such obvious bamboozlement. I knew what he wanted to do. His mouldy plan was to take me to a familiar setting and then, when I was maxed and relaxed, he'd toss onto me his skulky heap of vengeance.
How much more 'clear as mud' could the guy get? Talk about your basic foolio and a half.
I steeled my vertebrae. "I wanna eat over there," I trilled in peppy tones.
"But it's unhygienic," Aya chuntered churlishly. "Those vendors sell disgusting rotten foods. Each year thousands of people get food poisoning from unsanitary vendors. In fact, just in Tokyo alone there are approx-"
"Tell me more stats man," I grumped, getting annoyed. Hell I didn't need to be reminded of all the grisliness that came from eating at those ratfests. I hated street vendors, they sold brain tumours on shishkebob sticks. The memory of me getting food poisoning when I'd been five after eating bad chicken from a street stall was still as fresh as the food vendors didn't sell.
But sometimes, when you needed to fob off a hell-bent weirdo who
was diabolical enough to come up with a contaminated brown bit of fennery, you
just had to scarf down some filthy snacks. It just might be the only way, sad
enough to say. I certainly didn't relish driving about hither and thither
scouting for more food places while smothering in that long, stiff silence.
"Ken-"
"I know that place it's good." Oh how it hurt me to say those words but say them I had to.
Aya gave me another look but thankfully didn't try to fact it up anymore. He carefully parked his Porsche, made a huge ceremony of checking all the windows and locking all the doors and then off we headed. I tried hard not to think of how I was most likely going to be poisoned for a second time that day...this time of my own accord. Oh how the fates were heckling at me.
And indeed they were...heckling at me that is. The food vendor looked like he'd ran for ten years through the Amazon, took a swim for five in the holy pollution of Ganges river and then dried off with a yak herd in Upper Mongolia. I couldn't tell if it was him omitting that cheesy odour of foot pungency or his food, most of which was a brown puce hybrid and festering in bright, amber-speckled puddles of oil. In any case, that many flies couldn't be wrong could they? The man grinned at us and I saw with no great surprise that his gums were of a spotted, black variety; his remaining teeth the colour of old butter.
In spite of my resolve, I was certain that the expression on my face mirrored Aya's. Ughfest '99 and all that bubo. I couldn't do it. Not even to frib off Aya and his mad plottings. "Uh wrong place," I muttered weakly, avoiding the seller's smarmy face. He kept grinning at me in a way that reminded me of that creepy Ronaldo McDonaldo character.
Aya was never really a guy for excess emotions but even I could see the relief drizzling onto his pale face.
"Deals deals deals," the man suddenly chanted, his voice as greasy as his wares. "Five for two, five for two!"
Five of those piles for two hundred yen? One alone would be enough to send anyone hearty of hale straight into cardiac arrest!
"More like none for nothing," I couldn't help but snort.
The pre-packaged grin dropped right off that guy's face, probably similar in manner to anyone who's ever eaten his victual diarrhoea. "You gettin' wordy with me champ?"
Lousy scuzzfest. His slimy attitude gave me a hankering a la violence for my claws. Those ladies would rupture him a new shabu shabu, if I had anything to say about it...and I always had a plethora of shit to spew.
"Who you calling champ?" I growled in a voice so ferocious a flock of nearby pigeons took flight. "I'll get as damn wordy as I want to, crotch rot!" I smirked with an abundance of satisfaction. I knew I was putting the fear of Buddha into buddy's cholesterol-caked carcass. I knew my brutal tones were enough to really get a fear on. I knew that when it came time-
"Quit snivelling," Aya snarled at me. He narrowed his eyes at Shinjuku-ku Lard Face over there but the dud didn't seem to notice, being as he was too busy brandishing a pair of ill-sniffing, sauce-slathered tongs at my brain.
"You best not be gettin' arty-smarty with me asshole," the man sneered, still displaying the remainder of his dripping teeth to full advantage. "I'll get that Fat Fujisawa from down the docks to bust up your ass and then you're-"
"And I'll get the Board of Sanitation to bust up your ass!" I shouted, enraged. "You're not allowed to re-sell trash, retardo!" Threaten me will he? Try to poison me with a leaf piece, will he? Try to get me a bimbo girlfriend will they? Suddenly there was a whole heap of pissed off pissiness straining to froth out my mouth and it was all aimed at vendor's cavernous proboscis. "I'll show you some real meat jerk, not those shrivelled dog legs you're passing off as mutton cubes!"
Vendor looked like a seizure was coming on. His hairy-choked limbs twitched while his beady eyes grew in diameter. Talk about epilepsy. Talk about d=2r. "Candy chunkass, my food is the freshest grub this side of the fucking forest! I'll murder your head and your father too for this dishonourable insult!"
My mouth was open to let out a stinging insult, something along the edge of his food being flakes of Psoriasis and his mother being a whore, but Aya decided to add a pinch of cilantro by participating.
His voice was like that icy blast, breath freshener gum that came in hard white squares. "You threaten my boyfriend again and I'll disembowel you!"
My chin dropped.
Aya was fuming as he yanked his fingers around my wrist and heaved me up the street. Over my shoulder I saw the vendor pick his ear with a grimy shishkebob stick. He glared at me with revulsion plastered all over his head.
"Boyfriend?" I managed to squeak out in a very high-pitched octave. I cleared my throat loudly. "Uh boyfriend?" I tried again in a much more manly inflexion.
Surprise number 2: Aya reddened so profusely that his entire head looked like a pomegranate with purple eyes poking out.
"I meant date," Aya muttered, quickly letting go of my wrist.
"Oh did you now?" Ah yes, it was all so very apparent. That Aya and his Machiavellian type ways. He was for sure trying to pull an ugly orange turtleneck over my face but damn it all if I couldn't see through the cheapo cross-weave stitchery. Aya didn't dent a dinar about foul-faced vendors and the like...he was just trying to catch me off guard with his simpering sweet-talk so that he could really give it to me. He was a brainy sort; he probably had resigned himself to the fact that he wouldn't be getting me to Hibachi anytime soon. So now he was frantic and obviously had decided to hoof a short-cut to my heart via flowery language and verbose dialogue.
Well now, when two tangoed one had to lead.
I grabbed hold of Aya's arm and hugged it hard. I shoved my beaming face onto his shoulder so that my mug was right there. Then I began to wax on enthusiastic. "Aya you know what you just did? You saved me from that lard guy! You're like the hero I never wanted!"
Aya's face remained rash-red. "You can't go about getting into scuffles with innocent people. That's the antithesis of what we do."
"Innocent?" I sputtered. What was this hullabaloo he was talking? "Are you blind? Didn't you see that guy's 'molester's moustache'?"
"He wasn't a dark beast of tomorrow that we have to stalk."
"Of course he wasn't a beast, any beasts around here he killed off and fried in that rotten meat sauce." I let go of Aya's arm and instead held his hand. It was a chancy gamble. I mean, me walk down the street holding Aya's hand? It was a scandal. What if I saw someone I knew? I guess it was a good thing I didn't know anyone then.
"Well you wanted to eat there," Aya reproached moodily. He didn't even try to extract his skin from mine...yeah real accommodating while he's chewing me out. "What did you expect from a place like that?"
"Oh so now we're playing the blame game are we?" I snapped, tightening my fingers around his in annoyance. Like I'd have wanted to eat at that dung bunion if Aya hadn't been planning to gank me at fucking Hibachi. "Well maybe I wouldn't have wanted to go there if you hadn't wanted to go to Hibachi to get bentos!"
"That's your favourite place to eat!" Aya argued hotly, stomping on the sidewalk. "Since you wanted to date me, I'd have assumed that you'd want to eat at your favourite place!"
"Well don't assume because it makes an ASS out of U and me!"
"You don't need to assume since you're already an ass."
I wrenched my hand from his. "If you're going to call me names then I don't want to hold your hand anymore!"
"You're making me mad," Aya warned in pissy accents.
"Aya mad, oh sheesh well imagine my friggin' surprise!" What audacity the guy had! Like he wasn't always stamping about, huffing at this and that. "What're you gonna do, gimme another poisoned leaf crumb?"
"Poisoned?"
Uh oops.
Aya's face now matched his eye colour...only more puce in hue. "That wasn't poisoned. How could it be? It was a damn fern leaf!"
I was outraged. "It made me sneeze!"
"What are you, stuck in the Middle Ages? Sneezes nowadays don't mean death stupid!"
It occurred to me then that I'd never heard Aya speak so volubly about something other then missions and plant advice to customers. He must have been some desperate, to try and fool me...once again. I could easily see what he was doing. It was no grunting effort, that was for sure. His every move was as see-through as Yohji bumbling around on the PC for "mission stuff". Aya was trying to get me into a right fume so I'd ditch him so that he could then rethink his shambling strategies. I'll bet he never expected me to lay bare his stupid plots and then counter his every move. He must have been some damn flummoxed that I'd guessed his toxic foliage scheme. Crafty bastardo. Well I wasn't going to let him win, no way, not a chance come high tide or holy schism. Letting him know that I knew about the noxious leaf had been a mistake, true that, but I could make up for it. Not problem at all, not in this day and age of penicillin and epidurals.
"Oh let's stop all this pointless tiffing," I proclaimed floridly. I beamed his head. "This kinda stuff is supposed to happen after all the magic is gone from our relationship."
Aya blushed.
I rolled my eyes. Seriously, what was this guy, a girl? What was he gonna do next, start stammering and poking his cheek? Talk about padding the part. Like I was fooled. He must have been taking some serious tips from those fruffy bints who came around the shop each day...hamming it up with feminine wiles and whatnot like that.
Aya stopped. He'd planned this move so that he was standing picturesquely beneath a flowering, hearty specimen of tree. His uneasy, vaguely hopeful expression was of a fine thespian assortment. He may have been one of few words but his talents were many. Funny how he'd managed to scrounge around some emotion for this little rouse.
"Are you saying...I mean you actually... " He blinked hard a few times. "You want a...a relationship? With me?"
"Yeah man yeah sure why not?"
The leaves rustled over Aya's head while he looked at me with blank eyes. He seemed stumped at my readily eager, over-the-top-obnoxious agreement. "Today's only our first date though," Aya said slowly.
Hah hah sucker, the guy had no clue where to lay his shabby cards now! "Oh well I've liked you've for ages now," I lied breezily. "I've been PLOTTING ," Here I gave him a deep and meaningful look so as to display that I was indeed onto his diabolic fashions, "to be with you for a LONG time. That's just how the love shack crumbles, you know what I'm sayin'?"
"Uh yeah. Right then." He scrubbed at his cheek. "So...what do you want to do now?"
Hook line and motherfucking sinker! I gloated heavily. This joker wasn't going to get away from me to scheme it up again. If I'd ruined his plans then it was going to be all improv from wence to hence baby. I wasn't about to let Aya make an ass out of me just because Yohji and Omi were too retardo to get that I didn't want no damn girlfriend.
"I thought we were gonna find a place to eat," I said loudly, still gloating.
Aya gave me a suspicious look. "I better pick the place this time."
Oh shut up you smug dickwad. Like my senses hadn't also been affected by those brown, oily lumps in pottage.
"Ken."
"Yeah what's up what're you sayin'?"
"You just stepped on that ladybug."