recolle | [ Closed ]

[ Closed ]

WHO: Yogi, Kasen
WHERE: Yogi's apartment
WHEN: Late evening on the 9th
WHAT: Yogi needs a hug after a nightmare
WARNINGS: N/A

Even having been up for hours, Yogi didn't mind staying up a bit more if Kasen was going to come over. He found the other man's presence soothing, and he was easy to talk to, even if he found himself blushing a lot around the other. He supposed he should have felt silly, Kasen coming over because of his bad dreams, but it felt nice that Kasen would offer to come over at all.

A large stuffed rabbit sat on the couch where he left it, having been cuddling it earlier as he didn't much feel like going back to bed after his jaunt. He went to the kitchen, pulling down his best cups and putting on some tea. He really shouldn't have coffee right now anyways, and Kasen seemed the type to like tea better - or so he thought. He hoped he wasn't wrong. Should he pull out a snack? Not that he really had tea snacks...

Okay, just stop overthinking and make the tea and try not to lose it when Kasen came over.

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Kasen had been so preoccupied with his own frustrations and anger at their current situation, little as he expressed it on most days, that he still couldn't help but feel guilty that he hadn't even noticed when his friends were stressing out, too. He was falling back into old, toxic habits, stewing in his own little perspective and disregarding the souls of those he cared about. Yogi wasn't a muse or object of mere fascination. He wasn't...

He wasn't like Fai. He refused to treat him like he had done Fai. He couldn't go back to that. Progress forward. Be the better man his friends knew he could be.

Not that... he'd really let Yogi in on that whole conflict, either. Maybe they'd discuss it someday, but things were still so fresh with the young man. The least he could do at the moment, or perhaps the most depending on how one looked at it, was to be a warm presence in a cold, lonely night. He could manage that much, he thought.

Taking in a deep breath, slowly exhaling, he knocked. Be a warm presence... in a cold night...

Yogi jumped when he heard the knock, lost in watching the tea steep, his mind a hundred miles away as he turned over the nightmare for the hundredth time. He kept trying to glean more from it, to understand it, but it felt more like a movie than a memory.

He set the mugs on the small bar he had just off the kitchen and hurried to the door to open it, giving a relieved smile to the other. Only then did he wish he had dressed better instead of keeping himself in the simple hunter green shirt and distressed jeans he had chucked on earlier for his jaunt through the city at midnight.

“Thanks for coming,” he said, stepping back for Kasen to enter. “I made some tea.” Even as he said it he realized this was the first time Kasen had come to his little apartment too; and he suddenly wished he had it more in order rather than the gentle mess of a college student with a job and a sport.

“Please, make yourself comfortable.”

To Yogi's benefit, Kasen pretty much had zero expectations. The apartment, his clothes, not a bit of it really registered on him as worthy of note, but that tired, distracted look mattered far more.

"It smells lovely," Kasen gently closed the door behind him, finding his way to the sofa. "You've got me all night, if you need it, by the way. All of my gallery work is cancelled at the moment, since, well...," No one to run the galleries.

"Yeah. I keep going to school, but it's mostly to work, and the shop just feels... to quiet," he admitted, bringing over the mugs and handing one to Kasen before sitting beside him on the couch, blowing on the liquid. He sat a bit closer than he had initially thought to dare, but the truth was he could use some human contact - a touch, a hug, anything. He had always been a tactile person, and somehow just having someone close was enough to at least make the nightmare feel less dark, less insurmountable.

"Hopefully I'm not fired when this is all fixed," he laughed softly.

The closeness didn't bother Kasen, at least not really. It did make him slightly more nervous... They hadn't exactly broken the physicality barrier, yet, after all. But he could distract himself with taking slow, warm sips of the tea, offering conversation. He was here to be a presence. He didn't need to feel pressure to be anything else.

"Oh I wouldn't worry... Even if you are, I can probably find you a job somewhere. I've got the connections."

"Wow, really?" he asked, looking to Kasen with that quiet amazement he seemed to always look at the other with. "I mean - thank you. I hope it doesn't come to that. I like the shop. But it's nice to know there's a backup just in case."

He took a longer sip of his tea this time and looked down at the mug as the liquid settled, licking his lips in the way of someone thinking and not sure what to say.

"It feels weird. I was in such a mad rush to finish that project, and how it all seems to just have come to a mad halt. I feel like I hit my nose on a wall."

"I can empathize, really... I've been in similar positions before, thought not because of people literally disappearing. A lot of my career in the early stages was filled with 'hurry up and wait' situations. Or worse, 'hurry up and fail'," he sighed, taking another long sip.

"But... I suppose this is that much more frustrating. It's not like you can move on to the next gig..."

"Just gives me to much time to think," he sighed, leaning back into the couch, somewhat slouching, cradling his cup against his chest, one long finger brushing around the edge. "Thinking to much about my pieces and what I could do different, which is probably the wrong way to go about it all."

He was quiet for a few beats, biting at his lip. "Do you know a lot about swords, Kasen?" Kasen had said he was one, somehow, but he didn't want to just assume he was an expert! That seemed rude, and possibly silly.

That seemed a bit out of the blue, Kasen blinking a bit in response, but soon took another sip of his tea, gathering his thoughts.

"Well... Not as much as I probably should, despite my nature. I've tried to learn more, since those memories came to me, though."

"Do you think you could help me figure out what type of sword something is, if I drew it?" He asked, looking up at Kasen hopefully.

It would be a step, maybe. He wasn't to sure why he chose to focus on that part of the memory, but it seemed the safest part right now - focusing on the things he had, on the physicality of himself rather than what was going on around him.

Kasen didn't have to ask, knowing it was a pretty safe assumption that it was something from Yogi's memories that was bothering him. But at the same time...

"I can't promise I'll be able to, but for your sake, I will at least try."

“Thank you,” he said in a grateful breath before jumping up and going to his workroom.

He came back a moment later with a pad and some pencils. He sat back down beside Kasen again and quickly began to sketch. Luckily the shape wasn’t very hard - if was an epee, a long thin blade that tapered to a point, though the guard was more fanciful: a basket of thorns.

“I’m holding two of these in my... memory,” he said after a pause, still having a hard time coming to terms with it. “Using them. I think when I do my little intro speech I might have them sometimes too.”

"Well... Western swords are far from my specialty, but I think these are either epee or rapier. I don't really know enough to know the distinguishing differences between them."

He gave it his best shot, at least.

Biffy had guessed something like that earlier too, but having someone else say the same thing more or less cemented it for him. He thought a rapier was more for combat than an epee, but what did he really know? It wasn't like he had ever picked one up before!

He considered the paper for a moment before looking up at Kasen.

"Do you think it would be silly if I wanted to take sword lessons?" he asked him. "I mean, if my other self used swords, maybe it would help if I tried to as well."

"Not at all," Kasen shook his head, chuckling.

"You want to know more about your other self, right? This is a way to explore who they might have been. There's no shame in it."

He seemed relieved to have the other's approval, relaxing some as he considered the rapier - was it epee? They didn't look different! - he had drawn. It didn't look like a scary sort of sword. The handle - thorns, he now realized - were beautiful rather than threatening. He liked to think, then, that his other self was similar too.

"I suppose I'll have to wait til everyone comes back. I don't know if anyone on Retrospec would be able to teach me," he said, setting the paper down and taking his mug back up, sipping to quell the strange feeling in his stomach. "But I'll do it. I think it will unlock some important things. Or at least get me closer to the important things."

Kasen took another long sip of his tea, letting out a sigh before setting his mug down on the coffee table, leaning back in his seat, though also a bit closer to Yogi, letting his arm rest along the cushion behind Yogi, not quite touching his shoulders yet.

"I hope it does, at any rate. And I hope it pleases you, whatever it is you discover."

Yogi was not quite so oblivious that he missed the motion of Kasen's arm, the way it stretched behind. He didn't make any movement to close more of the distance, though he could feel his chest heat, trying not to work up things to much in his head. Was this really a time for those kinds of thoughts anyways?

"Have your memories pleased you?" he asked him, shifting a little so his body faced Kasen more openly. "Was it strange, learning you were the spirit of a sword?" Oh, he hoped that wasn't to personal, but it was out there now, wasn't it?

Kasen didn't respond for a moment, a thoughtful silence settling in as he sifted through his thoughts, putting them to words. After a moment, he parted his lips, but hesitated again...

Well. No sense in not being open about it.

"Not all of them have been. Swords are tools designed for only one purpose. I've... had to spend quite a bit of time ruminating over what this means to me." His words are solemn, and heavy.

A dark flush ran across Yogi's cheeks, thinking he must have stirred up dark memories in Kasen. Oh, well, he was making a mess of this wasn't he? He turned his cup in his hands slowly, shifting to bring one knee up and rest his chin on the top. He glanced at the drawing he had made of his own sword, sharp and delicate.

"It sounds like a lot of responsibility," he said after his own moment of quiet. Because a sword, it seemed to him, while it was true it had one function, it did not mean it had but one purpose. But he did not think he was at a place with Kasen where he could so brashly say such things.

There's another moment of silence, another sigh.

"My former master, Tadaoki Hosokawa, used me to execute 36 innocent people, just to make a point to his son about the weight of power..."

Yogi was quiet for a moment at that. He certainly hadn't expected Kasen to share something like that, and he didn't want to respond with something flippant.

"But I think that says more about your master, than it does you," he said at last. "You didn't choose to do that, after all."

"I've tried to take that line of thought, but I am not so certain... Tadaoki Hosokawa, his madness, is a part of me. I was his tool, and his will worked through me," Kasen's stare went off into the middle distance, not particularly looking at anything, his thoughts miring about like morning fog.

"What my other self became is a result of choices he did not make, I suppose. But it is still what they became, and thus all of that is part of this self before you, as well."

"Maybe. I can't say if I'm much like my other self yet or not. I don't have enough memories," Yogi said quietly, watching Kasen. "But I also think that, even if they are part of us, or we're connected to them in some way, even if the unpleasant pieces are part of us, they do not define us either."

He paused for another moment, wanting to gather his words properly so he didn't insult Kasen.

"You don't belong to this Hosokawa anymore either. You're your own person. So even if his madness was worked through you, a part of you, in some way, you don't have to be what he used you for anymore either."

Kasen once more fell into silence. Yogi wasn't exactly telling him anything new... A few others had reflected similar sentiments. But even so, it never seemed to sit with Kasen as 'true'. But maybe that was his own fault...

Either way, he found himself not really wanting to dwell on it any further. The arm that had been resting on the cushion behind Yogi edged downward, resting on the other's shoulders and without much more thought, he drew him in closer.

"What I am is what I am... Whatever that makes me become in the future is a poem not yet written, so sitting here trying to decipher the meaning of its verse is pointless."

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