Come Back Home

[toobigtohandle]

WHO: Kenta, Jirou and Fai (+various)
WHERE: Jirou's apartment
WHEN: Different dates in August when Fai and Jirou come back from their team assignements.
WHAT: Kenta was left behind when Jirou left to go adventuring. Now he gets his BFF back, except banged up and with more muscles? And Fai uses the occasion to play matchmaker.
WARNINGS: Some nudity and kisses.

[Ever since Jirou left to go do whatever Retrospec told him to do, Kenta has been camped on his friend's couch with the dog on his lap, his phone right at hand to make sure he doesn't miss any messages and the TV switched on to a news channel at low volume - news channel that is actually not very informative because as some other Retrospec users have said, everyone not on the app seems to find the presence of monsters like a normal, if slightly inconvenient thing.

After what seems like hours where he's done nothing but fret, Kenti suddenly wakes up on his lap and starts squirming and that can only mean one thing.]

Jirou!?

Comments

[sakeplz]

After sharing some messages with Fai to determine that his friend would be sleeping at his place until all of this was over, Jirou headed back to his place when he could. Not only did he want more wine but he really wanted sake. Plus the idea of resting at the university seemed miserable when there was nothing else to do but to wait for monsters to show up.

Bruised and tired, he headed to his place figuring that Fai would show up when he could. And upon opening the door, his dog came rushing to the door to greet him with bouncy kisses. Giggling, he knelt down to pick him up and accept all of the love from him.

"Hi baby! Mommy missed you too! Did you keep daddy company?"

Oh look. There was daddy. "Hi, Kenta! I'm back!" And filthy.

[toobigtohandle]

Filthy and banged up and... Kenta gaped for a second before rushing towards Jirou and grabbing him into a fierce hug.

"Jirou! You're back!"

And what could have happened to his friend that he was in that state? His clothes were ripped, he was dirty, and... those were definitely scratches and bruises.

"What happened to you?"

[sakeplz]

"Ouchouchouch!"

He was a liiiittle sore from his explorations. Probably the fault of bruises and scrapes. Jirou really couldn't say but he knew that being hugged hard was a touch painful.

Still, he laughed lightly.

"I fought monsters!"

[toobigtohandle]

As soon as Jirou yelped, Kenta let go, afraid of having hurt his friend more. At least he was still standing... and laughing about fighting monsters.

"Why did you even go?! You can't even fight! You could have gotten hurt even worse...!"

He suddenly stopped mid-sentence. Yes, Jirou could have been hurt worse but he wasn't and he was here and alive and things were going to be alright. Maybe.

"Sit down. I'll get you something to drink."

Priorities. Now Kenta had a mission so he needed to go through it step by step.

[sakeplz]

Well that was easy. Jirou went and plopped his butt down on the couch and enjoyed the soft feel of Kenti's fur. So pretty and white...

"Oh I fought these things that had swords. And it turns out I did that before and I became really dangerous when sober! It was a really weird time to get one of those memories."

It kind of resulted in him being thrown against a wall buuuuut hooray for memory?

"Sake please!"

[toobigtohandle]

"Yes, I know."

He would have gone for Sake anyway when other people would go for water. he knew Jirou well enough.

"... You did that before? Fight with a sword? And you remembered it?"

Did this mean that his friend could now actually fight when he'd been pretty useless in that department before?

He came back with a full glass and the open bottle, because one glass wouldn't be enough for Jirou.

"You are going to need a shower... and then we'll need to look at those cuts and bruises."

[sakeplz]

"I might have had a sword? I mostly remember that the things in the memory I was fighting had swords."

Jirou felt that memory was something of a blur because it had happened in the middle of a fight and everything had been so...sudden. All at once. Like he was living the memory as well as living in the moment.

When he saw the glass, he beamed and took the sake and immediately started to drain it the second it hit his lips.

He'd reply to that part about the cleaning up part in a bit. He was busy.

[toobigtohandle]

So Jirou had regained a memory of fighting with swords... and that meant that he could now fight with one as well.

That made about as much sense as anything else that had happened so far, but Kenta was too glad to have Jirou back in one piece right now to even dispute the rest.

He watched Jirou knock back the first glass and picked up the bottle to pour him a second one... then just took the glass from Jirou's hands and handed him the bottle instead. That would be faster, since he would finish it anyway.

[sakeplz]

"It was weird though. That's the second fight memory I've gotten. Apparently I was a fighter but now I just get my butt kicked!"

He laughed and finished the second glass only to see the bottle replace it. Eyes lighting up, he gladly drank directly from the bottle, his cheeks pink with utter delight.

"So goooood."

Fai

[toobigtohandle]

Another message and off they went again before Kenta could protest. And there he was left alone again and feeling useless.

He hadn't really slept in any of the beds since this had started, unless Jirou had been there. He'd only gone back to his place to get some clothes and some food from the fridge, but apart from that, he'd been camping on Jirou's couch pretty much the whole time, monitoring the news and keeping his phone close at hand. He hadn't even attempted going to school or to work, and so far no one had called him to yell at him about where he was so he supposed they had bigger problems as well.

At least there were the animals to take care of. That took some time since they all needed to be brushed, and they seemed to sense that he was fretting because they'd barely left his side. He was constantly escorted anywhere by the three fluffballs and that was strangely comforting.

And that is how he ended up crashing on the couch with Kenti in his arms, one cat nestled next to his head and the other behind his knees.

post hospital - CW for vague mention of substance abuse

[flowrite]

[Following the events of this thread.]

The hospital had insisted on keeping Fai for observation overnight, even though once the gouge on his arm was bandaged and once it had been determined that there was no internal bleeding, there wasn't much more they could do for him. His options as far as the several broken ribs were concerned were either surgery to pin titanium rods to his ribs, or to let them heal on their own. As much as months of slow healing and pain didn't appeal, the thought of major surgery was far, far worse. Major surgery would demand painkillers.

And they'd already pumped him full of painkillers, while he'd been too out of it to realize. As soon as he'd woken up in the hospital bed and realized what was going on he'd immediately denied consent for more, much to the staff's dismay, but he couldn't go down that road again. With monsters flooding the city and so many of his friends missing--with Seto missing--he didn't think he could resist the temptation. He'd spiral again, destroying whatever remained of the nice little life he'd managed to build for himself recently.

The taxi dropped him off at Jirou's condo after they'd finally agreed to release him, and Fai picked his way carefully toward the door, trying to jar his busted body as little as possible. The maximum strength ibuprofen they'd given him just wasn't cutting it.

He let himself in with the key and crept slowly inside, pausing as soon as he caught sight of Kenta covered in small furry animals. Despite the beating he'd taken over the last twenty four hours, Fai couldn't help but smile. What little noise he'd made managed to rouse Soel, the white cat, who stretched lazily behind Kenta's knees before jumping over the sleeping man to pad toward her owner.

"Sorry baby," Fai said softly in French. "Daddy's too broken to pet you right now."

[toobigtohandle]

The first cat getting up hadn't roused Kenta, but Kenti fretting to be let go did. He opened bleary eyes and held out a head to scratch the other cat between the ears in a way that seemed to show this had become a sort of habit.

"Fai...You're back!"

The taller man got up and let Kenti go, the small dog following his new cat friend to go and trot around Fai's feet. It didn't take him more than a few seconds of looking at Fai and how stiffly he was holding himself to realize something was wrong.

"You're hurt. Come and sit. I have some food that's ready you can eat, if you're feeling up to it."

He really hoped Fai was up to it because then I would give him something to do and he wouldn't feel so completely useless. Driving Jirou to the hospital and then back had left him rather drained, hence the crashing on the couch, but he was full of nervous energy that he didn't know how to let out. If he'd listened to himself he'd have gone out to pound a few monsters, but he still had enough common sense to know that this would be a very bad idea.

"Seems like this time was a lot more rough... I had to take Jirou to the hospital this time. He's sleeping right now."

[flowrite]

The thought of non-hospital food was tempting. Eating didn't really hurt as much as, say, breathing, and none of Fai's injuries had really affected his appetite at all. He was just trying to work up the motivation to start moving again, after having paused for so long in one place, when Kenta mentioned Jirou and hospital in the same sentence.

He couldn't help it, he didn't even think about it. Fai sucked in a sharp breath in surprise and then closed his eyes in a wince at the ripple of pain that spread across his torso as a result. A small whimper might have escaped him, he wasn't really sure. When enough of the pain had abated to think straight again he opened his eyes and looked back at Kenta.

"What happened? Is he okay?"

[toobigtohandle]

Kenta immediately looked concerned. He hadn't meant to make Fai worry more but he was tired and admittedly not thinking very straight right now.

He held out a hand to catch Fai's and gently pull him towards the sofa and fluffed up some cushions to make it easier on his ribs. He could recognize bruised or broken ribs just from that noise, really.

"He's fine. He got treated and he's fine. It was..."

He'd been about to say it wasn't that serious, but he also realized his concept of 'not serious' when it came to wounds was not exactly the same as most people's.

"He got some sort of chemical burn on his side. It wasn't something I could do anything for myself. Someone brought him home and I drove him to the hospital right after. They did what they had to do and he's fine."

Honestly, Fai looked a lot worse off right now.

"Did you break your ribs? Do you have anything for the pain? Did someone wrap them for you?"

[flowrite]

Chemical burns? Pretty Jirou with chemical burns? "Oh god...." Fai let himself be led to the sofa without complaint, though his movements were slow and he couldn't help but wince again as he lowered himself down onto the cushions. He believed Kenta when the other man said that Jirou was fine, but... god, none of this was fair. Jirou shouldn't have had to fight in the first place.

"Broken, yeah." He settled back against the cushions and nodded. "A lot of them. It's... not very pretty. Lot of bruises."

He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. "I took something. I'll be fine."

For the record, he does not look 'fine.'

[toobigtohandle]

"You don't look fine."

But he wasn't going to insist, unless Fai started to really look like he was a lot of pain.

"I can help you wrap your ribs if you need to. I would normally give you an ice pack for a break, but you probably have a lot of bruised muscles under it and they won't like the cold, so heat pad it is."

He went to the kitchen to start and reheat some light miso soup. That would be warm and easy to eat and Fai could then get put to bed, probably with Jirou."

"Jirou's fine, really. I called his mom. She's been rousing the whole town to make sure he doesn't get a scar."

[flowrite]

Fai just smiled through Kenta's first remark, though the smile turned a little more genuine and he let out a slow breath afterward. "A heating pad sounds like heaven, honestly. And... I guess if you think wrapping would help, I wouldn't say no? It's really not pretty though."

After the way his friends had comforted him after his past had been laid bare by the gossip rags around the city, he probably shouldn't have worried so much about how they'd react to hearing about his problem with painkillers... but Fai was too used to hiding those things about himself. He didn't think he'd ever really be comfortable telling even close friends that he'd been an addict, even if it was only prescription painkillers and not something harder. There were so many ways he'd failed to measure up, eventually one of them would be the one to break the camel's back and ruin everything.

"I'm glad. How's he taking it?" Knowing Jirou, as long as he had a steady supply of alcohol and Kenta nearby, he couldn't be too unhappy.

Jirou, Fynn, Kenta

[sakeplz]

After sending a message to Kenta to tell him he was on his way home, he relaxed as Fynn drove him home after that incident with acid demon. Kenta's shirt was back on but there was going to be no hiding the fact that he was hurt. Not when the acid had eaten a nice hole into it. Still, he was able to ignore the pain for the most part by continuing to drink and chat away with his new cop friend.

But that didn't stop him from finally just leaning on Fynn as he fumbled with his keys. Between drink and exhaustion and pain, he was something of a mess.

And then he dropped the keys because leaning on someone and supporting a large sword and trying to unlock a door was hard. "...oops..."

[rygdea]

A faint chuckle escapes Fynn once Jirou drops the keys. "Hang on a sec." He mumbles as he makes sure to lean the poor drunk against the wall before dipping low to scoop up the keys. Normally he would be aggravated by this display of drunkenness but he's not. Instead, the cop just accepts that Jirou is indeed drunk and quickly grabs the keys.

His back hurts a little so he stands up slowly with care. Jirou isn't the only one sporting some kind of fatigue here. Poor Fynn is tired, really tired,

"Let's try this again." He says with an exasperated sigh as he offers the keys to Jirou. "We should've taken you to a hospital. You might be really hurt--" Fynn is fretting again. He hasn't stopped fretting since he made Jirou his responsibility.

[toobigtohandle]

Thankfully, the noise at the door has alerted Kenta to the fact that someone is here and he opens the door to see someone he doesn't recognize there... and then Jirou on the side. Which means the stranger is promptly ignored in favor of his boyfriend who looks drunk - normal - and hurt - not normal at all.

"Jirou! What happened? What did you do?... Is that a sword? Where are you hurt?"

All said as he steps out to gather Jirou in his arms as delicately as possible while scanning him for injuries. Those are not things he can treat with a first-aid kit, he can tell that at first glance. So the decision is quickly made.

"I'm taking you to the hospital! Why didn't you call me?"

[sakeplz]

Jirou was about to try the door again when it opened. He blinked a few times at the keys like they were magic (he was a toooooouch drunker than usual) before realizing that it was his boyfriend gathering him up. "Oh hiiiii Kenta!"

He kissed his cheek then broke into giggles.

"I found a sword and was cool with it!" More giggles and then he waved at Fynn. "This...hic!...is mah boyfriend! He's to preeeeeeeeetty! And big! So big."

Yeah, he really had been drinking more than usual because it was easy to forget how bad his side hurt that way.

[rygdea]

Fynn couldn't help but be somewhat surprised when the door opened but then he's oddly grateful for it once this "Kenta" fellow rushes over to carry Jirou inside. "Must be nice." He mutters more to himself than to the lovesick duo.

His love life is a mess, honestly. Fynn's profession makes dating quite difficult since no one ever wants to date a cop. Ever since Freya, Fynn somewhat stayed away from the dating scene. Sure he would sometimes hangout bars and lounges but nothing ever happens, nothing good. Maybe it's bad luck or maybe it's just fate, either way Fynn isn't going to dwell on it much. Life as a bachelor has it's perks even if he can't really see any.

"Yeah, he's pretty big..." Fynn says with an awkward laugh. Is everyone in this town around six foot? Like even the women in Recollé are pretty damn tall. Freya is probably close to five foot seven and the same for others. It's mildly concerning since five foot ten isn't short but Fynn definitely feels short.

"I think you had too much sake this time, hero." Fynn jokes as he strolls inside like some curious pup. Don't mind him, he's just surveying the place.

[toobigtohandle]

The place is basically one huge and very luxurious condo with all the latest in home decor and electronics everywhere.

Kenta is mindful of Jirou's hurts side as he brings him inside and sits him on the couch. The two cats that were lounging there jump off and trot away to perch somewhere where they can observe, while the little white Pomeramian has to actually be restrained by Kenta before he can jump on Jirou's lap.

When Jirou addresses the third person here, Kenta seems to realize they're not alone and turns to face the guy.

"Who are you? What happened?"

And then back to Jirou again.

"I can't treat this here. I need my car keys... and where do you keep Kenti's carrier?"

[sakeplz]

"That's F-F...Fy. Mm. Hic!"

More giggling and then he waved at Fynn. The man would find that the place was huge. Not only had the building screamed money but so did Jirou's place. This was someone who was loaded and it showed.

"He's a pup pup. Exploring. Cutest pup pup."

Jirou pointed suddenly to his dog. "That's...hic...Kenti! I'm his mommy!"

Oh Kenta was talking. "...um...dresses?"

He meant the dress closet.

[rygdea]

An exasperated sigh escapes Fynn as he glances over at the pair. Jirou must have drunk a whole bottle of sake in order to dull the pain. Makes sense but that's quite reckless to do something like that. The last time Fynn drunk sake, it knocked him on his ass.

"Fynn Izunia." He introduces properly after the overgrown drunk gets his name wrong yet again. "I'm one of the volunteers from the 'Team Brandywine' fiasco. Seems that Retrospec organized several groups to help with the anomalies that taken place." That's as far as he's willing to state right now. Fynn needs a break from all the heavy stuff. "Nice apartment, I must say. Definitely looks like it costs more than my salary can afford." He mumbles as he wanders near all the fancy tech. This man has a love for technology and shiny things, Kenta. He admires your good tastes.

"Huh? I'm not a pup!" Well, just look at that. Fynn actually turns a little red around the cheeks. "Quit it, hero. You're lucky I let you call me 'Fy'." He chuckles quietly once he catches a glimpse of the pets.

"That gotta be the fluffiest dog I ever seen--"