om_main | Nathan and Noriko

Wherein Noriko kinda breaks Nathan's heart...

The party had been going on for a couple hours, and Noriko had long since ditched the jacket and the mask. Her pants were tighter than anything she usually wore, but she liked it with the boots, and all of her clothes were clearly nicer than the ones she usually wore (read: new). She'd opened the waistcoat, unbuttoned the top of her shirt and rolled up her sleeves, though (her gauntlets were nearby in case she needed them), because it was a hot night, and she'd just bounced along to a couple of songs. So she grabbed herself a coke and headed for Nathan when she saw him a little way off.

"Hey," she greeted him with a smile (she had been drinking more than just soda; it was hard to say no to Shinobi). "I'm sure you've been hearing it all night, but - freaking amazing facepaint."

Nathan had got down to the last few drags of his fag, cigarette ash dropping between his orange Converse unnoticed as he mostly let the gratuitous whiskey he'd been supplying himself with do its trick, watching the rest of the dance spin its lights around him. He'd similarly severely relaxed his look from when he'd arrived for the evening, plaid orange tie hanging loose and limp across the back of his neck, black shirt untucked from his trousers, gloves shoved into his tiny waistcoat pocket, his jacket slung beside where he sat on the ample rim of a stone topiary planter with his top hat at a rakish angle. His painted skeletal lips (a bit smudged at this stage, as they were) curled a smile at her from around the butt of his cigarette.

"Wouldn't you know it, but that, the - the kid, the emo, artsy one? - well, once you've got him with facepaints, he gets so on... He forgot to even whinge about blahblah deathtouchforeveralone blahblah while he put my face on," he rambled amiably, exhaling a plume of smoke.

Noriko wasn't surprised one bit that the skeleton was Kevin's work, and she quirked her lips into an amused smile. "Yeah, he's like that about art," she stated, and parked her butt beside his. "Who picked your outfit?"

Nathan seemed as likely to have pulled it off as she was to have picked hers.

"Who else? Th' posh girl who got stuck with three juvenile delinquents who know fuckall about fashion..." He stopped himself, realizing he was letting his cigarette burn on like incense, and that he was probably done with it anyway. He offered it over to Nori. "That's counting Curtis. The Curtisesses. Are we counting them?" Because if so, maybe he needed more.

"Thanks." Noriko hadn't realized how much she'd welcome a smoke until she took the first drag, and smiled at the added buzz to her tipsiness. "I think they just count for one," she stated after a thoughtful pause.

Nathan watched her smoke with drink-heavy hazel eyes. He'd seen it before, of course, seeing as he was apparently her primary source of cigarettes when she wanted to bum one. But he didn't really look look when she did before, it was just, whatever. He blamed the whiskey for making him drunk enough to be interested in no-nothing little things like how she put the short jut of the cigarette tip to her lips to suck and blow, smoke curling 'round where she smiled at him. Less edgy, more... Uh.

"You cleaned up rather nice," he offered quietly, very carefully casual, smiling a little himself under his makeup. Not that she looked all that different from her usual self, was the funny thing. He kind of liked that she wasn't piling on make-up and curling up her hair or all that how most of the girls had done. "What's it with you lifting my smokes, eh? S' like...catnip for you or something?"

"You offered, jerk," Noriko pointed out, the insult more of an affectionate nickname, with him, the way she was with Pietro, too. Relaxed, especially right now, and carefully not thinking about how much she wanted a pill. Different buzz, but she was still aching for them. She shifted her shoulders, took another drag. She looked down at what she was wearing, belatedly reacting to his first comment. "If it was up to me, I wouldn't wear any of this again." Not even the boots, although she had to admit they looked good.

"Dossn' matter. You look cute, and everyone's seen. Damage done." The liquid heat in his gut shifted 'round a bit, the garden wavering briefly before setting itself right and almost solid again. Whoa there.

"You think I look cute," Noriko echoed, tone filled with her usual wry amusement. "Watch out, it almost sounded like a compliment." And usually he tacked on insults to the back of those. Not that she minded, but this struck her as particularly funny right then. Funny enough to take her mind off of those damn pills.

"It almost was one," he agreed lightly enough. "You've got to know I fancy you, a little," he tried to pick his sloppy words carefully, though they just sort of slid out sideways and it still sounded like he could be teasing. Even if his heart was suddenly banging about like a jackhammer, sweat glands going like they had a place to be in a hurry. Ohfuckthatcameoutloud.

"Y'know, you've got..." Before he could remind himself not to, Nathan tried to shut up his rush of nerves, reaching for a lock of blue hair that had curled well into Noriko's face quite carefully really, to tuck it back behind her ear out of the way. Out of the way of... Oh no. She'd probably send a million volts through his testicles and kick his corpse with her dress boots for good measure. But so help him, he wanted to.

Noriko was honestly so surprised by his words that she forgot to bat his hand away before it reached her hair. By the time his hand had retreated, so had her incredulity, because she'd realized that it was just Nathan being Nathan - more slowly than she usually would have, but again, alcohol. Plus, cigarette, which she took a drag off of before she replied, smoke wafting out with her words. "You gotta work on your lines, leprechaun."

She didn't think he was worth taking seriously at all, Nathan realised, watching her puff. Not that he could blame her, really. He probably wouldn't believe him, if he wasn't himself to begin. Did he even believe him? He just sort of sat there half-tense for a beat, watching her with a curiously thoughtful expression. Would he? Because this would be the moment to laugh it off and leave it be.

Well. Fortune favoured the ballsy, didn't it?

Once Noriko's hand with the cigarette came away at rest, Nathan shifted, his attention moving from her eyes to her lips where he leaned in deliberately to try and catch the seeming softness of her lips under his own for a kiss.

Noriko barely had time to move the hell away before his lips could touch hers, without paying any attention to what the burning cherry of the cigarette might have touched when she shifted. She was off the pot in a hurry, a little unsteady on her feet for a second or two, and then she was glaring, fingers clenching, cigarette all but forgotten. "What was that?"

"AughshitHEY!" Nathan had flinched back to grab one side of his burned cheek, caught glancingly by the red business end of the cigarette. He found himself flopping backwards into the depression of the planter with the jerk backwards, top hat tumbling between his knees, him and the topiary having their own rudely intimate contact all of a sudden. "Well we were about to have a totally epic makeout session that would end you for all other lovers, until you went and got all tongue-shy!"

"Shit!" Noriko cried out even before he finished talking, because she'd just realized that she still had a cigarette, and that she'd burned him with it, and she put it out in the pot, grounding it into the earth. "Are you okay?" She hadn't meant to burn him, and she pulled him back out of the pot by the shirt to have a look at his cheek.

"I...think?" Nathan pulled his hand away from his face, looking at it - useless as that was, only coming away with a smear of black and white face paint on his fingers. "My pride stings more'n my face," he grumbled, woozily righting himself on his feet again and looking back at Noriko where she'd apparently fished him out of the foliage with a frown.

Noriko peered at his cheek and, only once she was certain that he was, in fact, okay, told him, "Then you got this coming," and punched him in the shoulder. Hard enough to be felt, hopefully not enough to leave a bruise - that wasn't her game. "What the fuck, Nathan!"

"OW! Why can't you hurt with evil, catty words an' just leave emotional scars like the other girls?!" Nathan sulked where he reached to rub out his shoulder, not quite looking at her anymore. "I thought... I thought that maybe..." But words were difficult at the moment, drink making them all blur together. He was starting to feel sick. "If you could electrocute me already and put us, the both of us out of our misery, that'd be grand."

"You're..." Noriko's frown had changed, from one of outrage and anger to something like incredulity and, maybe, a little sympathy. But really, mostly incredulity. "Are you being serious?"

"Not with a reception like that, m'not, no," Nathan muttered testily, bracing his hands on the planter's rim when his knees felt wobbly. "You know what, you're not even that hot anyway. Have we moved on to the part...where, y'know, the part we can move along and forget this ever happened? Are we there yet?"

Holy shit, Noriko thought he might really be serious. Apart from how he wanted to drop it then and there without even telling her that he was, serious, but she figured that might just be him being him. She hesitated for a second, then frowned a little harder, and finally shrugged. "Sure." Best way to handle it whether he had actually been serious or not, was what she told herself. Right. But he probably hadn't been, really. "But if you stop giving me cigarettes because I won't make out with you, I'm going to hurt you again."

Which was, absolutely, a joke, although she didn't sound like it at all.

"Yeah, great, terrific. You could work on your rejection for the next idiot, though," he rambled, his forgotten top hat on the ground catching his eye. He definitely had to pick that up. That was important, because Alisha would kill him if he lost it now. He let his knees bend, still gripping the edge of the planter to avoid a spill over, and picked up his hat. ...Into which he was promptly sick.

Noriko's nose wrinkled as she took an instinctive step back. He was this drunk? Shit. So it wasn't serious after all, and that was good to know, although she sort of wanted to hit him again for making her feel bad about it, when he was just drunk. She settled with rolling her eyes, for now. "Thank you for sparing the boots. Let's get you back to your room to sleep it off," she offered, meaning to help get him there.

Nathan made his own face at the inside of his hat. "Your hors d'oeuvres don't look so fancy now, do they, party planning committee?" He carefully hauled himself back up onto his feet after a moment, carrying the ruined hat. He looked around, trying to decide where - ah. That'd do. He carefully took the hat over to the statue of some water carrying maiden nymph lady whatever, stepping up on the pedestal and reaching - careful, caaaaaareful - to deposit the soiled hat in the bend of one arm. "There," he determined, dropping back down to his feet again. "I feel better already, thanks to Our Lady of Embarrassing Indiscretions."

"I'm pretty sure the moment you start puking is the moment you should hit the sack," Noriko pointed out, a hand on her hip in the typical stance she had taken up since the gauntlets had prevented her from putting her hands in her pockets.

"I've had worse, mum," Nathan told her, stopping to recollect his jacket and drape it back over one shoulder before having a last look at Noriko. Actually, he did feel a bit better, getting the anxiety as much as the alcohol out of his guts. "Now I bet you really wish you'd got that kiss while the getting was good, eh? ...Fine, fine, I'll see myself in," he moved around her in the direction of the dorm rooms. "Go break some more hearts out there, slugger."

"Nathan!" she called out, turning around as he went, and now that he had stopped walking away... well, she had no clue what to say to him. Everything seemed lame, or something you didn't say to Nathan, or something she wouldn't say ever. What she did end up saying (asking) wasn't something she'd planned on, and it slipped past her lips before she could help it, even though she'd decided it had just been the alcohol. Even though when he answered, if he answered, it could, or would, still be the alcohol. "Did you mean it?"

He'd stopped at the yelling to look back, and Nathan finally shrugged at Noriko after a beat. "At the end of the day...d'you really want to know?"

"Yeah," she answered without thinking about it, although she thought maybe his answer had already told her everything she needed to know. There was no point saying I'm sorry, and still friends? would have been downright cruel. She could feel it start to build in her brain; she needed her gauntlets.

"You know, I think I did," he admitted after a pause. "But it's...whatever. Won't happen again, all right? And now, I've plans to vigorously tongue a bottle of mouthwash," he turned again to go.

Noriko really wanted to say something, anything, to make it right between them, because this felt unresolved, and she felt completely off balance. Whether that was the cause of or partly caused by the sudden need for her gauntlets, she had no idea, but thoughts were starting to stumble in on themselves in her brain, and before she could settle on anything to say, Nathan had already gone. She stood there, looking at his retreating back with a frown, then turned to go get her backpack.