om_main | Philip and Noriko - backdated to 10/01

Summary: Philip and Noriko set the bar for awkward again

Noriko always looked forward to whatever little time Philip and she could set aside for each other, whether it was lunch in the cafeteria or spending time in the City. But she had a personal preference for their movie nights in his room, because he always came up with the worst - and consequently best - movies ever, and she liked it when he geeked all over them. Seeing the guy under the man with a mission almost made her want to climb into his lap, although she rarely enough indulged.

She knocked on his door on the hour, bringing a couple of cans and some snacks from the kitchen.

Philip opened the door, he always did, he was not a 'come in' sort of person. But he smiled when he saw Noriko and stepped back to let her in. "Hi," he said. "Right on time. I'm debating bad horror or bad sci-fi tonight."

"Bad sci-fi," Noriko decided on a whim, as she walked in. They tended to be more creative in the WTF department, and that was always fun.

Philip just.. smirked at that. "Have you ever heard of something called They Live?

"Nope," she confirmed as she set the cans and snacks down on his desk. But given that smirk of his, it looked particularly WTF, and she couldn't stop her lips from twitching up a little. "How bad?"

"There's a twenty minute long wrestling scene in the middle of it," Philip said, entirely straight-faced.

Twenty minutes? Impressive. "Definite winner," Noriko confirmed.

Philip nodded and went to queue up the movie. He paused once things were set up and he'd settled back onto his bed. "Ah, I talked to Abby the other day."

Noriko had popped open her energy drink by then, and dropped a bag of chips on the bed. "Yeah?" she prompted after looking over at Philip. She took a cautious sip of her drink, assuming he had something more to say on the subject. Unless he just wanted her to know he had.

"She's open to helping you train. There was some mis-communication there, it seems like. I think it would be a good idea," Philip said.

"There was a hell of a lot of miscommunication," Noriko confirmed evenly, and took a seat beside him on the bed, frowning. "I don't know that I want to learn anything from her. I know, I could use it," she added before he could say it. "But I'm not sure it wouldn't be just more of that same miscommunication." In fact, she was pretty sure it would be, unless Abby was very different when teaching somebody. "And the fact that you're telling me this, and not her - not exactly encouraging."

"No, I already talked to her," Philip said. "She stopped by after you guys talked, she hadn't quite understood the..." he waved a hand in a vague way. "What Scott was trying to do and what your group is doing."

"She was too busy judging to even try and understand," Noriko assessed. She had been judging even before she had any idea what the teams were. It was a good thing that she knew who she was and didn't care what Abby thought, but she didn't like the thought of her behaving this way with other kids.

"Abby's always been on the prickly side, she likes to push, but she has valuable input," Philip said with a shrug. "She can be as evasive as I can, she just goes abrasive instead of nondescript."

"She comes off like a bully," Noriko retorted mercilessly, searching Philip's eyes. Her phrasing was deliberate, wondering if she only came off as one. If Philip could convince her, she'd give Abby the benefit of the doubt. Because he was Philip, and she trusted him.

"Like I said, she pushes and tests. And has minimal social graces," Philip added dryly. "And I think it's reasonable to want to know that someone wanting to learn the very dangerous skill set she has isn't doing it to screw around. Noriko, the biggest difference between Abby and me is that she's overt, where I'm not. Besides that, we've got a lot of the same kind of skewed outlook on life."

"My issue isn't with her outlook on life, whatever it is," Noriko assured him. "And I'd have been surprised and worried if she hadn't asked me what I wanted to learn that stuff for. But it's possible to have zero social graces and not spend your time trying to make others feel like shit." Which was, really, what bullies did. But Noriko could take it, at least, which meant that she thought it over for a couple more seconds, holding Philip's gaze, before asking. "How much would I benefit from what she can teach me?" She'd take it, if he thought it was worth it, and if Abby really was open to teaching her after all. She wouldn't trust that until she heard it from her.

"Abby's almost as good as I am," Philip said. "And she's more suited to what you guys are trying to do with the teams. It's not going to be easy and she'd run you ragged, think drill instructor."

"I don't mind that," Noriko shook her head. "I can take it, whatever she throws at me." It'd be harder to take her attitude, but that would be just as important training, about keeping her cool and thinking through things rationally. "I wanna take it, if it's gonna make me better prepared."

"I'm glad," Philip said and he smiled but this one was a little... something. Wistful maybe, or a little sad. "I think a lot of what she has to teach would be more appropriate in the long run."

"That makes one of us," Noriko stated wryly, because she wouldn't exactly use the word 'glad' about how she felt at the thought of learning from Abby. 'Necessary' was about all she had. But there was something else in Philip's tone, and she frowned a little. "What?"

Philip let his head thump back against the wall with a sigh. He had to bring this up sometime... "It's just, I got reminded of something a little while ago and I don't know what'll happen with it and it's a little related to what we're talking about. We're going to end up going in different directions, Nori, it's just a question of when."

Noriko tried to find a hidden something in what he was saying, something she wouldn't have thought about already, but it seemed pretty cut and dry. "Yeah," she confirmed. Because... "You're... you. And I'm - not like that."

"That's not a bad thing, you know. It's part of why I want Abby to help train you. You've got it in you to really help people, Noriko and you've got an incredibly strong sense of doing things because they're right." It wasn't wrong what she said, but he wasn't about to let her belittle what Philip thought was one of her greatest strengths.

Noriko still didn't have any clue where he was going with this - if anywhere at all - but she'd certainly never seen it as a bad thing either. It was just what it was. But... "I think that's the most compliments you've ever paid me at once." Which was very much her way of saying that she appreciated the hell out of it, and of asking if there was a 'but' coming along.

He was so incredibly bad at this, Philip knew. Really, really bad. "I don't know how to say it without sounding like an ass," he admitted. "I just got reminded that it's not going to be able to be long term, most likely."

Noriko's lips twitched up into a small smile. What could she say - he cared, and that made her happy. "Yeah," she confirmed, because he was right, of course. Then again, she couldn't have imagined long term even if they had been on the same path, so... "So let's enjoy the now while we can?"

"Yeah, that sounds like a plan," Philip said. "At the risk of sounding even worse, I wouldn't keep it a secret if something changed, you know?"

"How is that supposed to sound bad?" Noriko asked with raised eyebrows, and reached over with her free hand, laying it on his forearm. For no real reason other than she wanted to be touching him.

"Because it seems like it is? It just feels like I'm not being very fair to you about it," Philip said with a shrug. "I'm also an idiot sometimes, my experiences with this sort of thing weren't any more normal than the rest of my life. I have bad role models," he said wryly.

"Yeah, I can see why someone with your life experience would think promising honesty's a bad thing to do," Noriko wryly commented. It was a playful tease, though, nothing else, and he knew her well enough by now to recognize that in her tone, if nothing else. She put her drink down on the bedside table to take off her gauntlets, because she wanted to be really touching him. She dropped them on the bed beside him, then took one of his hands in hers. "How bad do you feel about the fact that we're not gonna last?"

Part of her didn't want to be asking - but she also wanted to know.

"Pretty bad," Philip admitted. "It's one of those, if things were different, you know? But they aren't and I've seen how it works out." Not every time, his Aunt Sara was an exception, his dad had been too, in a way but those were two tiny outliers in a sea of data. "And you," he said, squeezing her hand, "have much too much potential to waste trying to mash yourself into a square hole."

"I'm not gonna try, anyway," Noriko assured him simply, lacing their fingers together. She was who she was, and that involved not being cut out for the kind of life he envisioned. It just wasn't her, and she was fine with that. "And I stopped doing what-ifs a while back," she added with a small, sad smile. "But let me rephrase - do you feel bad enough about it that you'd rather call it quits now?"

That was what she'd really been asking, although her heart was beating harder in her chest from actually putting it that way. She really didn't want him to say yes. Whether they were gonna last didn't have any impact on, say, the simple pleasure of feeling his fingers slide between hers, to stick to PG-13 things she didn't want to give up on before she had to. But just because she worked that way didn't mean that he would.

"Not yet," Philip said as he squeezed her fingers again. "Unless you think it'd make things easier."

Relief untangled something in her chest and she nodded, then gave him a hint of a smile - no sadness in it, now, just her usual wry humor. "I'm not big on making things easier." And she leaned in to kiss him. It felt like a kissing moment, whatever.

Philip slid an arm around her back, hugging close as he returned the kiss. He'd miss this, when things finally happened. Noriko had made him more like a regular person, in a way.