((Thank you. I'm trying to deliver the best product, so please just bear with me while I do my best to meet your expectations. Short but important chapter. I know you guys hate it when I do this but it's necessary to create my end goal. Life isn't easy. Love isn't always sappy and romantic and misunderstandings are more often that not NOT easily solved. Naru is essentially a very proud and very emotianally repressed person. MY take on his love for Mai is that he doens't know how to handle it well so he can't really cope with his ego being hurt what he's heard. He left her for three years last time. He opened up and now feels used and unwanted. Someone with that much ego won't handle it well. But there's an end goal and it's insight for me now. So please hang in with me and reviews are needed to see if it make sense somewhere but my head. As always-
I own nothing.))
When Lin pulled up the the house early the next morning he was hoping that Noll and Mia had been able to spend a few moments alone and perhaps bond. He wasn't quite expecting Noll to make any large romantic overtures, but he was hoping that he perhaps he'd made a small one. If what Lin suspected had happened to her had then she needed quite a lot of patience and care so that she could recover and grow into the woman she was supposed to be.
While there was no doubt that Noll loved the young woman, Lin did have his doubts about the fool's ability to deal with emotions. While he tended to ignore his own to the degree that it took him three years to return to the woman he desperately loved, Mai tended to wear her heart on her sleeve. It was not, Lin feared, going to be easy to help Noll and the object of his affections form a romantic relationship.
Sex was one thing, but true understanding was another. Taking a deep breath Lin left the relative safety of the van and sent his shiki ahead while he picked his was back to base. He got five very conflicting reports. 1. reported that his young charge was in a foul mood and his aura was storming. 2. Said that Mai's bed was scattered and that certain incriminating articles of Noll's clothing were under it while there was genetic material from both of them on the sheets. Shiki 3 said that Mai was crying in her shower and that she was radiating confusion and pain. His fourth was giggling about something and he didn't feel like dealing with the idiot spirit and the moment and while the first four had him bothered, it was the fifth's report that had Lin the most upset. That one, his oldest and strongest was reporting that there was an incoming danger.
Pushing away the first four as important but not the most pressing he tried to find the source of the incoming danger and as he hit the base he turned in time with Noll to hear a very angry voice screaming from the front door. His charges features were darker than he'd ever seen, even after he'd seen Gene murdered. Whatever had happened was epically bad and the psychogenic energy rippling from him was spiking wildly. When Lin reached out a hand to stop him from going towards David Hines he was bitten by a shock of the extreme power that was coursing just under the surface.
Pulling his hand away he let him go. Whatever else had happened right now no one in their right mind would mess with Oliver Davis. Not if they valued their lives.
When Lin reached the base Oliver knew that he'd be forced to deal with the fall out from his night of making love with Mai. Making love he smirked. Well for him it had been. She had evidently just been using him as a substitute for Eugene. He glared at the screen and waiting for his friend to say something but instead he heard something that really pissed him off. David Hines was home early and was calling him from the front door. He could hear the Hines children starting to cry and his wife stammering now that dear ol' dad was home. He would deal with this.
When Lin tried to stop him Oliver walked past him like he didn't exist. He had a pretty good idea of what David Hines was doing in this home to cause his family to be so afraid and the poltergeist activity. While he couldn't prove it yet, the idea of it was so terrible he wouldn't voice it until he was absolutely sure. Combined with his emotional injury a few hours ago it the knowledge turned him into a powder keg.
He had never truly let loose on anyone but if David Hines wanted to push this issue Oliver; in his current mood would be more than happy to oblige the man. When he reached the top of the stairs he could see Mai's face peeking out from Adia Hines's room. The small child's face buried into her shoulder. He noticed that Mai's own eyes were red ringed and he spared a moment to wonder why she'd been crying before reminding himself that she had spent the night having sex with her dead love's stand in. She looked like she wanted to say something to him but he barely acknowledged her making her face twist in more pain. He felt like a bastard but what was he supposed to do? The only woman he'd ever loved had used him in the worst way possible. He couldn't face her right now.
When he spotted David Hines the man seemed to be scared of whatever it was he saw in his face. He stopped for a second before turning his tirade towards Oliver.
"I want you people out now. Take that huge Chinese freak and the fuck out of my house." He was stomping around to look at the camera's and measurement meters that were stationed throughout the house. When he saw Mai holding his older child the man's angry face went from red to purple. "And get your whore off of my baby." That did it.
Oliver closed the distance between him and the older man. He stopped a few inches from his face and the man seemed to reconsider his current tirade. Whatever Mai was she wasn't a whore. While he had his own issues with her he still desperately loved her and he wouldn't allow someone like David Hines to hurt her.
"Not another word. I'll leave, for now, but don't you dare open your filthy mouth about her or my friend again." He dropped his voice so only the other man could hear what he was saying, "I know what you're doing here. I will prove it and i will end you." He turned away and walked towards the base. "We're done here." he told his team.
Lin sat very uncomfortably in the van wondering at the tension between his two passengers. Noll had sat up front, his eyes never leaving the horizon of the road as they drove in silence. Mai had laid down across the back seat looking quite emotionally wrung out. Every so often new tears would silently run down her cheeks. All in all Lin felt like he'd done something very terrible by leaving them alone together.
When he'd gone to Mai's room to collect her bag it was very obvious that the two had spent the night together. Lin wanted to ask what had gone so wrong in the span of twelve hours that had taken them from having sex to not speaking. When Mai and briefly fallen asleep he had asked what was wrong and was rewarded with an icy glare.
"Drop her off at her apartment then we'll go back to the office. She's not apart of SPR and we don't need her the equipment." Was all Noll had said.
As he pulled up in front of Mai's building he saw a rather frantic looking Monk and Miko also getting out of a cab. He made eye contact with the monk who looked like he'd just swam home from his island honeymoon.
Noll made no move to help Mai with her bag and hadn't left the vehicle at all so Lin did. When Mai walked around towards her tired friends she'd paused at Noll's window and they looked at each other through the glass. The three older adults looked between their miserable faces but said nothing. Ayako broke the moment by taking Mai by the shoulder and gently leading her towards the building. No one had said a word, but the silent looks that Takigawa and Lin shared spoke volumes. He waited until the three were in their building before he turned back and took his seat in the van. When Mai had disappeared from view Lin had seen how Oliver's shoulders dropped and he leaned back against the seat closing his eyes.
Without opening them, "Can you please just take me home. We can worry about the equipment later. I really need to just be alone." Lin said nothing but knew that it was a significant request. He'd never seen anything matter but work to Oliver Davis. Whatever had happened to the young man was significant. As he pulled away into the streets of Tokyo he wondered if he should call Madoka to come over and try and help. She was much better with the emotional than Lin was. He furrowed his brow and gripped the wheel with his white knuckled hands. He's leave a shiki with each of the two youn adults. Maybe when they'd gotten some time alone he would be able to make sense of whatever mess was there now.