Old Friends and New Friends and Even A Bear.
Jul 27, 2021 19:29:25 GMT -5
𝗖𝗢𝗥𝗘𝗬 𝗕𝗟𝗔𝗖𝗞, Max f'n Daemon, and 1 more like this
Post by Downfall on Jul 27, 2021 19:29:25 GMT -5
It's been hours after Tokyo Fite. The streets of Harajuku have not quieted; they still remain as bright, colorful and alien, but the salarymen have started filtering out of the bars and are on their way to the subway, leaving most of the neon, cyberpunk street littered with the otaku, the cosplayers and the J-Pop stans. Dion is standing by the curb, taking in the bright-pink gleam off the puddles in the street, as the rain falls lightly on them. Of all things, his eye is caught, curiously, by someone wearing a giant stuffed Kumamon cosplay, the bear's round, mischievous eyes gazing back into his as the bear waves at him.
"Dion?" she says from his elbow. Dionysus blinks, and looks down at the blonde in the business suit walking up to him to stand next to him at the curb.
"Sorry, I was just reflecting," he indicated Kumamon, the mascot doing a happy shuffle and wave to some giggling Harajuku girls in Sailor Scout dress. "Something about that bear makes me nostalgic."
Michelle smiles wryly. Towering over her, Dionysus offers her the umbrella he's standing under. Michelle gives him a thankful look, and extracts a cigarette to light before offering him one. He shakes his head.
"I never got a chance to thank you," Michelle says, eyebrows raised.
"Thank me? Why?" Dion seems surprised, looking at her now. "I didn't even think you liked me... there was a time, months ago, when you told Daniel we were never on the same page."
Michelle looks serious. "You weren't... in February. But I think your opponents, beating us over the head with that talk this week, overlooked that fact."
"We still lost," Dion grumbles, "And I was the one that Dandy targeted as holding Daniel back."
Michelle takes a drag, blows out the smoke and shrugs. "Daniel's still inside at the bar. I'm glad he isn't in a dojo, punching a wall, myself. So again, I have to thank you."
Dion smirks. "He takes it hard."
"He thinks he failed," Michelle says quietly. "He thinks he failed you. Dion, a year ago, neither one of you would ever have cared if the other one was in front of a gun, now Danny's punishing himself for not diving in the way. I can't state it too much, this is major." Flicking the ash off, she continues.
"I managed the stable of the Inner Circle to four Tag Team championships. Danny won two of those. In that, he never was the guy to give enough of a shit about his partner to worry about whether or not their career came up with his. Mostly he just hired a bunch of empty-headed mercenaries he could order around. But he chose you. He wants to win the Tag belts with you. He's changing." Something in Michelle's voice is pensive, as if this is not expected.
Dionysus nods a little, then looks at Michelle. He sees it.
Michelle reaches over to grip his bicep. "And you're stepping up too. You are far from the weakest link. You beat Dandy. You did that. You got yourself to Havoc. You did that. You and Danny have beaten every team set in front of you, there was no process that pushed you to that, it was all you. Don't forget that, okay?"
Dion hails a cab as the rain starts falling in Harajuku in earnest, spattering the sidewalk and turning the neon glare from a hundred signs into a haze; The Kumamon mascot ducks into a nearby shop.
Dion looks at Michelle as the cab comes, he's headed back to his hotel to work with his foundation people. Still, he can't help but to look back at her, curiously. "What are you here for, then? Manager? Support?"
She shakes her head, "I'm not trying to go back to being a road-wife... yet. People treat Zooey and Jenna Bauer pretty rough, after all."
"Yeah, but I think now Jenna Bauer is actually a murderer."
"That's true, Jenna Bauer killed some guys. Hm..." Their playful banter dies, and Michelle nods as she sees him off. With the unspoken, but I'll be here for you guys hanging between them.
As the cab drives off in the rain, Michelle flicks her cigarette. Getting increasingly soaked, she hitches her collar over her hair and dashes under an awning. Lit by the neon, and by spaced-out strings of lights wrapped around the struts, she finds Danny, standing there.
A grin splits his face. "I still can't believe you came all the way to Tokyo, kid." He searches her face with a mixture of wonder, love and shock. "Why?"
She looks away. "We do have a lot to talk about."
"Just tell me you've finally left Ted's apartment."
She sighs, "Yes, Danny, god, let that go. No, I'm... actually living out of a yurt, most of my big possessions are in a storage container, I... this is a big change, but it's... Bracing. Freeing, really."
"A yurt? Michelle, a goddamn yurt?"
Michelle looks past his incredulous sneer, out over the street and the bustle of foot traffic. "Do you really want to pick on me about not being tied down to a lease, or do you want to talk about us?"
He sidles up next to her, hands gripping the rail. "Is that so bad, though? Being... tied down?"
Michelle looks over at him. "You suck at being subtle."
"I'm not, I - Michelle, we've been off and on for... almost eight years, kid. The last year, we were mostly off."
"Right. Because I didn't like who you were becoming." She looks at him frankly. "Because you went from mister arrogant asshole, no indy fed can match my price to... someone I didn't recognize anymore. To a criminal - "
"Hey, listen, the Lost Breed, MS-13 stuff, that was - "
"To someone I... wasn't comfortable with being around." She clutches her elbows, in a securing herself way, bracing against herself.
"I know, and I've tried to - "
"Danny... I just didn't like who you were becoming. I didn't want any part of that. So I left. Yes, I had already left Ted, but I just needed that time, of moving my stuff out, of living in a yurt and showering at the Y while I worked on my school stuff. It calmed me."
He's quiet. "You weren't the only one who left in that period. I pushed away everyone. You, Alec... Serenity was gone."
Michelle, knowingly, looks at him. "Right... and now, Danny. This crusade to join up with Dion. This... super focus on doing right by him. On doing good for him. What do you think motivated that, from the start?"
He looks uncomfortably off from her, not ever liking being probed on his motivations, especially altruistic ones. "...I just wanted to do the right thing for someone sometime."
"Right, but why?" she needles him, "Do you think it has anything to do with losing Serenity? To her going to the dark side with Jason, and being out there somewhere?"
He breathes, angrily. He hasn't forgotten. There's a three-inch wide, barely healed scar in the meat of his left shoulder blade where Ren stabbed him to remind him.
To remind him that he failed someone, because he was too wrapped up in himself.
He looks over at Michelle, and he nods a little, motioning with his hands that there's something to her premise. "Okay, yeah."
He looks on, not at her. "I did go all in on teaming with Dion and taking him on as a partner because I want to do right by someone."
"And do you think that work is done just because you lost one match, or - "
"No," he says quietly, then his eyebrows knit in an angry manner and he blurts "Fuck no, not by a longshot... If I walked away from this team right now I'd be admitting that Dandy fucking Divito has any kind of say in what I do with my career, or that Sam Kidsgrove's douchey, out of touch baby attempt at trash talk rattled me when really all either of them did was piss me off by their opprobrious presumptions. This ain't done because that was not a payoff to our months of running roughshod over this tag division. This ain't done because I won't let us have gone through this for nothing, I'm not having that."
Michelle smiles. "Right. There you are. And because... you aren't finished doing the right thing."
"Dion still deserves his moment, yeah."
"Not Dion... Serenity. Serenity is still out there, she's lost. She's hurt. And she needs someone to find her. Say, someone walking a road to redemption."
They walk side by side for a little bit, passing food trucks emblazoned with unreadable kanji and neon bar signs. "You're really good at this moral compass thing... you bucking for a job offer?"
She smirks wryly, "Why, you think Dion's foundation has enough money to hire you a life coach?"
"Pfft, never that, all his meetings with weird investors and interests in wrestling schools aside, I think he's broke."
"Oh, well, there's always investing in Dogecoin."
"Mm, yeah, don't know what that is." A beat, "But - "
Michelle sighs a little, "Danny, I - I want to... that's why I... took the invite... and got on the plane. But I can't commit to being the on-screen manager type anymore. For starters, TV execs don't look at the face of a 40 year old woman and want her out there in the tube tops and leather pants I used to wear. They want some cute little twentysomething bimbo with perky tits and empty thoughts."
"You're beautiful," he says, too forcefully, "As beautiful now as the day I met you in Mr. Chen's bodega -"
A gentle face touch, a smile. "You're sweet, babe. But, two... this is always the problem with us, isn't it. We're the lighthouse in my globe, we swirl together when you shake it up, we make the world move for a little while... But then..."
"But then?..." he looks pained.
"But then you start tapping into your dark side. But then I get scared. But then you get distant, push me away. And I can't keep getting pushed away by you forever."
They look at each other, rain starting to run rivulets down her skin, plastering his hair to his brow.
"But you got on the plane, and you came to see me." He pushes.
"Right, now, but - " she throws her hands up, "and maybe it's good right now, but - "
"You threw everything in your life away, kid. You burned it all down, got out of living the safe, secure life with the executive whatever he did and left your cozy house in the suburbs to go... live out of a yurt in the woods. You upended everything."
"I did, I know - "
"And you did it again when you came all the way to Tokyo after a phone call I made in the middle of the night, because you saw that I was changing... that I was throwing away everything that wasn't working for me. Lost Breed, egotistical attitude, same old asshole Downfall - all of that. You took that chance. That leap of faith."
He reaches into the pocket of his torn, DIY leather cut. Extruding the totem again. He unwraps it for her, and her eyes go down to the glimmer of the neon light over the gold circle that's laying like a prize pearl in the crumpled up old photo.
"A long time ago I bought this ring for you, when I was just a 19-year old living in Japan. Before the world crept in. Before things started getting dark. It was going to be a promise, that you and I would always be bound. Eternal. Like a gold circle, just never-ending."
She looks from the promise ring, up to his face. Pinks and blues washing over her face, her eyes large as her wet hair frames her.
"I put it aside; Left it in San Fransisco, in the little hovel that I slept in for six months in Chinatown, the first stop I made when I came home. Where I brooded and stewed in the darkness and emerged as something ugly. I left the ring hidden there because I -" he looks away from her, "Because I wanted it to be one small, hidden part of how I really felt about you, away from the nasty, punk kid I thought I had to be. It was..."
"It was wrong. It was the arrogance and cowardice of youth."
He hands the ring over to her. "And when I went to find you in New York, and we started our new lives, starting new... it was without that piece. But Michelle... I don't wanna live without that piece in me anymore. That piece that wants something eternal, never-ending."
She holds the ring, fingers trembling.
"Maybe the old me never would've gone to retrieve the ring. Maybe the old me never would've bothered calling you and hoping you'd come to Japan to see this, to see me and me new team in what (I thought) was gonna be our moment of triumph. Maybe I never thought I'd be in a position where I... wanted someone to see I was doing something good, and wanted them to be proud of me."
Her voice is a tense, hoarse croak, but she looks like she's about to cry. "You should be proud of yourself, first."
He laughs, harshly, scoffing at himself. "I still need to work on that."
She puts the ring back in his hand, enfolding it in the crumpled up old photograph, and closing it. But holding the hand, and clutching it to her chest. "Keep it."
He looks sad, then cranes his head up, looking at the city rising past them. "So..... I guess... what time does your plane leave then, if you're going back to your- Your yurt thing?"
Michelle leans up on tiptoes, kissing him passionately in the rain.
"I think I'm going to stay," she says.
They kiss again, a few times, parting now and again only to meet.
As they break, she smiles. Does a turn, and she walks a few steps in front of him, laughing. He laughs, too, and just in this moment they're like two kids.
"So does this mean you're going to be our life coach?"
"Mmm, dunno about that... but... if any of these charities Dion has needs an office manager, maybe..." She smiles, "Maybe I'll stay. I'll have to get my work clothes out of storage, though."
"Do you still have the tube top?" He says, knowing he's being a little shit. She punches him. "What, you said 'work clothes'..."
And then, finally, the rain coming down on the street slows. They look up, laughing.
Michelle peers over his shoulder, suddenly curious. "You know," she says, pointing at the Kumamon corporate mascot, emerging from his hiding place and dancing on the street, "I never got the whole story, what's with the bear?"
He laughs ruefully, and shakes his head, "Who knows, man, Japan is fucking weird."
Laughing still, they exit down the street, before the rain picks up again.
"Dion?" she says from his elbow. Dionysus blinks, and looks down at the blonde in the business suit walking up to him to stand next to him at the curb.
"Sorry, I was just reflecting," he indicated Kumamon, the mascot doing a happy shuffle and wave to some giggling Harajuku girls in Sailor Scout dress. "Something about that bear makes me nostalgic."
Michelle smiles wryly. Towering over her, Dionysus offers her the umbrella he's standing under. Michelle gives him a thankful look, and extracts a cigarette to light before offering him one. He shakes his head.
"I never got a chance to thank you," Michelle says, eyebrows raised.
"Thank me? Why?" Dion seems surprised, looking at her now. "I didn't even think you liked me... there was a time, months ago, when you told Daniel we were never on the same page."
Michelle looks serious. "You weren't... in February. But I think your opponents, beating us over the head with that talk this week, overlooked that fact."
"We still lost," Dion grumbles, "And I was the one that Dandy targeted as holding Daniel back."
Michelle takes a drag, blows out the smoke and shrugs. "Daniel's still inside at the bar. I'm glad he isn't in a dojo, punching a wall, myself. So again, I have to thank you."
Dion smirks. "He takes it hard."
"He thinks he failed," Michelle says quietly. "He thinks he failed you. Dion, a year ago, neither one of you would ever have cared if the other one was in front of a gun, now Danny's punishing himself for not diving in the way. I can't state it too much, this is major." Flicking the ash off, she continues.
"I managed the stable of the Inner Circle to four Tag Team championships. Danny won two of those. In that, he never was the guy to give enough of a shit about his partner to worry about whether or not their career came up with his. Mostly he just hired a bunch of empty-headed mercenaries he could order around. But he chose you. He wants to win the Tag belts with you. He's changing." Something in Michelle's voice is pensive, as if this is not expected.
Dionysus nods a little, then looks at Michelle. He sees it.
Michelle reaches over to grip his bicep. "And you're stepping up too. You are far from the weakest link. You beat Dandy. You did that. You got yourself to Havoc. You did that. You and Danny have beaten every team set in front of you, there was no process that pushed you to that, it was all you. Don't forget that, okay?"
Dion hails a cab as the rain starts falling in Harajuku in earnest, spattering the sidewalk and turning the neon glare from a hundred signs into a haze; The Kumamon mascot ducks into a nearby shop.
Dion looks at Michelle as the cab comes, he's headed back to his hotel to work with his foundation people. Still, he can't help but to look back at her, curiously. "What are you here for, then? Manager? Support?"
She shakes her head, "I'm not trying to go back to being a road-wife... yet. People treat Zooey and Jenna Bauer pretty rough, after all."
"Yeah, but I think now Jenna Bauer is actually a murderer."
"That's true, Jenna Bauer killed some guys. Hm..." Their playful banter dies, and Michelle nods as she sees him off. With the unspoken, but I'll be here for you guys hanging between them.
As the cab drives off in the rain, Michelle flicks her cigarette. Getting increasingly soaked, she hitches her collar over her hair and dashes under an awning. Lit by the neon, and by spaced-out strings of lights wrapped around the struts, she finds Danny, standing there.
A grin splits his face. "I still can't believe you came all the way to Tokyo, kid." He searches her face with a mixture of wonder, love and shock. "Why?"
She looks away. "We do have a lot to talk about."
"Just tell me you've finally left Ted's apartment."
She sighs, "Yes, Danny, god, let that go. No, I'm... actually living out of a yurt, most of my big possessions are in a storage container, I... this is a big change, but it's... Bracing. Freeing, really."
"A yurt? Michelle, a goddamn yurt?"
Michelle looks past his incredulous sneer, out over the street and the bustle of foot traffic. "Do you really want to pick on me about not being tied down to a lease, or do you want to talk about us?"
He sidles up next to her, hands gripping the rail. "Is that so bad, though? Being... tied down?"
Michelle looks over at him. "You suck at being subtle."
"I'm not, I - Michelle, we've been off and on for... almost eight years, kid. The last year, we were mostly off."
"Right. Because I didn't like who you were becoming." She looks at him frankly. "Because you went from mister arrogant asshole, no indy fed can match my price to... someone I didn't recognize anymore. To a criminal - "
"Hey, listen, the Lost Breed, MS-13 stuff, that was - "
"To someone I... wasn't comfortable with being around." She clutches her elbows, in a securing herself way, bracing against herself.
"I know, and I've tried to - "
"Danny... I just didn't like who you were becoming. I didn't want any part of that. So I left. Yes, I had already left Ted, but I just needed that time, of moving my stuff out, of living in a yurt and showering at the Y while I worked on my school stuff. It calmed me."
He's quiet. "You weren't the only one who left in that period. I pushed away everyone. You, Alec... Serenity was gone."
Michelle, knowingly, looks at him. "Right... and now, Danny. This crusade to join up with Dion. This... super focus on doing right by him. On doing good for him. What do you think motivated that, from the start?"
He looks uncomfortably off from her, not ever liking being probed on his motivations, especially altruistic ones. "...I just wanted to do the right thing for someone sometime."
"Right, but why?" she needles him, "Do you think it has anything to do with losing Serenity? To her going to the dark side with Jason, and being out there somewhere?"
He breathes, angrily. He hasn't forgotten. There's a three-inch wide, barely healed scar in the meat of his left shoulder blade where Ren stabbed him to remind him.
To remind him that he failed someone, because he was too wrapped up in himself.
He looks over at Michelle, and he nods a little, motioning with his hands that there's something to her premise. "Okay, yeah."
He looks on, not at her. "I did go all in on teaming with Dion and taking him on as a partner because I want to do right by someone."
"And do you think that work is done just because you lost one match, or - "
"No," he says quietly, then his eyebrows knit in an angry manner and he blurts "Fuck no, not by a longshot... If I walked away from this team right now I'd be admitting that Dandy fucking Divito has any kind of say in what I do with my career, or that Sam Kidsgrove's douchey, out of touch baby attempt at trash talk rattled me when really all either of them did was piss me off by their opprobrious presumptions. This ain't done because that was not a payoff to our months of running roughshod over this tag division. This ain't done because I won't let us have gone through this for nothing, I'm not having that."
Michelle smiles. "Right. There you are. And because... you aren't finished doing the right thing."
"Dion still deserves his moment, yeah."
"Not Dion... Serenity. Serenity is still out there, she's lost. She's hurt. And she needs someone to find her. Say, someone walking a road to redemption."
They walk side by side for a little bit, passing food trucks emblazoned with unreadable kanji and neon bar signs. "You're really good at this moral compass thing... you bucking for a job offer?"
She smirks wryly, "Why, you think Dion's foundation has enough money to hire you a life coach?"
"Pfft, never that, all his meetings with weird investors and interests in wrestling schools aside, I think he's broke."
"Oh, well, there's always investing in Dogecoin."
"Mm, yeah, don't know what that is." A beat, "But - "
Michelle sighs a little, "Danny, I - I want to... that's why I... took the invite... and got on the plane. But I can't commit to being the on-screen manager type anymore. For starters, TV execs don't look at the face of a 40 year old woman and want her out there in the tube tops and leather pants I used to wear. They want some cute little twentysomething bimbo with perky tits and empty thoughts."
"You're beautiful," he says, too forcefully, "As beautiful now as the day I met you in Mr. Chen's bodega -"
A gentle face touch, a smile. "You're sweet, babe. But, two... this is always the problem with us, isn't it. We're the lighthouse in my globe, we swirl together when you shake it up, we make the world move for a little while... But then..."
"But then?..." he looks pained.
"But then you start tapping into your dark side. But then I get scared. But then you get distant, push me away. And I can't keep getting pushed away by you forever."
They look at each other, rain starting to run rivulets down her skin, plastering his hair to his brow.
"But you got on the plane, and you came to see me." He pushes.
"Right, now, but - " she throws her hands up, "and maybe it's good right now, but - "
"You threw everything in your life away, kid. You burned it all down, got out of living the safe, secure life with the executive whatever he did and left your cozy house in the suburbs to go... live out of a yurt in the woods. You upended everything."
"I did, I know - "
"And you did it again when you came all the way to Tokyo after a phone call I made in the middle of the night, because you saw that I was changing... that I was throwing away everything that wasn't working for me. Lost Breed, egotistical attitude, same old asshole Downfall - all of that. You took that chance. That leap of faith."
He reaches into the pocket of his torn, DIY leather cut. Extruding the totem again. He unwraps it for her, and her eyes go down to the glimmer of the neon light over the gold circle that's laying like a prize pearl in the crumpled up old photo.
"A long time ago I bought this ring for you, when I was just a 19-year old living in Japan. Before the world crept in. Before things started getting dark. It was going to be a promise, that you and I would always be bound. Eternal. Like a gold circle, just never-ending."
She looks from the promise ring, up to his face. Pinks and blues washing over her face, her eyes large as her wet hair frames her.
"I put it aside; Left it in San Fransisco, in the little hovel that I slept in for six months in Chinatown, the first stop I made when I came home. Where I brooded and stewed in the darkness and emerged as something ugly. I left the ring hidden there because I -" he looks away from her, "Because I wanted it to be one small, hidden part of how I really felt about you, away from the nasty, punk kid I thought I had to be. It was..."
"It was wrong. It was the arrogance and cowardice of youth."
He hands the ring over to her. "And when I went to find you in New York, and we started our new lives, starting new... it was without that piece. But Michelle... I don't wanna live without that piece in me anymore. That piece that wants something eternal, never-ending."
She holds the ring, fingers trembling.
"Maybe the old me never would've gone to retrieve the ring. Maybe the old me never would've bothered calling you and hoping you'd come to Japan to see this, to see me and me new team in what (I thought) was gonna be our moment of triumph. Maybe I never thought I'd be in a position where I... wanted someone to see I was doing something good, and wanted them to be proud of me."
Her voice is a tense, hoarse croak, but she looks like she's about to cry. "You should be proud of yourself, first."
He laughs, harshly, scoffing at himself. "I still need to work on that."
She puts the ring back in his hand, enfolding it in the crumpled up old photograph, and closing it. But holding the hand, and clutching it to her chest. "Keep it."
He looks sad, then cranes his head up, looking at the city rising past them. "So..... I guess... what time does your plane leave then, if you're going back to your- Your yurt thing?"
Michelle leans up on tiptoes, kissing him passionately in the rain.
"I think I'm going to stay," she says.
They kiss again, a few times, parting now and again only to meet.
As they break, she smiles. Does a turn, and she walks a few steps in front of him, laughing. He laughs, too, and just in this moment they're like two kids.
"So does this mean you're going to be our life coach?"
"Mmm, dunno about that... but... if any of these charities Dion has needs an office manager, maybe..." She smiles, "Maybe I'll stay. I'll have to get my work clothes out of storage, though."
"Do you still have the tube top?" He says, knowing he's being a little shit. She punches him. "What, you said 'work clothes'..."
And then, finally, the rain coming down on the street slows. They look up, laughing.
Michelle peers over his shoulder, suddenly curious. "You know," she says, pointing at the Kumamon corporate mascot, emerging from his hiding place and dancing on the street, "I never got the whole story, what's with the bear?"
He laughs ruefully, and shakes his head, "Who knows, man, Japan is fucking weird."
Laughing still, they exit down the street, before the rain picks up again.