Anonymous
Jul 10, 2012 23:51:15 GMT -6
Post by Deleted on Jul 10, 2012 23:51:15 GMT -6
Jin Ho flushed a little.
"I think you should ask this g...person out but do it a place where you can be yourself... You seem like a good guy so if they don't like you it's their loss. Fish. Sea. Plenty. You get the idea."
Smiling a little, the metalbender nodded. "We're going to dinner," he said. "At Narook's, which I like. So I think it will be okay. At least, I hope so." As for the rest of it, Jin Ho didn't think there were plenty of fish in the sea in his situation. He wasn't as... comfortable with going to bars and dancing and anyway, it wasn't socially acceptable really. He wasn't very good at casual conversation when he was really attracted to someone, apparently. That was something he'd only recently learned about himself.
"You seem pretty casual now, and this bartender of yours can't cost you your job."
The young man blanched, which was odd considering how pale he already was. Jin Ho would like to think that being homosexual wouldn't cost him his job. It wasn't in the rule book, anyway. "Well," he said, "I hope not." The nightmares and terrors, now that might cost him his job — he'd have to keep that even more under wraps. Hating to think about it, Jin Ho rubbed the back of his neck and sighed.
"You couldn't possibly make as big an ass of yourself as I do on a daily basis. At least there's that."
At that, Jin Ho laughed. His green eyes were bright when he laughed, small smile lines already forming near the corners. "Thanks," he said. "It's really nice of you to try and cheer me up. I really appreciate it, you know?" He set his glass back down. "I would give you some advice, but I'm obviously not really qualified. I think if you are honest, though, and polite that that usually goes a long way. I'm sure she's already excited to have met someone who is understanding. That kind of thing means a lot."
Speaking from experience.
Anonymous
Jul 11, 2012 0:58:14 GMT -6
Post by Deleted on Jul 11, 2012 0:58:14 GMT -6
Hangetsu's shameful feelings of overstepping his bounds and displaying his odd sense of humor dispersed when Jin Ho laughed. His braided cop's laugh as a benediction that washed away verbal sins. Minor ones, anyway. Hangetsu didn't want to push things.
The last thing expected of the rookie rat viper was thanked. Sincerely and earnestly. Sincere thanks from a cop. What was even more awe-inspiring was Jin Ho's odd theory that Ren was excited to be have met him.
"I'm only exciting compared to guys who spend their days meditating and making cake...which I find strange since I don't know how to make cake. Those guys have one up on me."
The way Jin Ho rubbed his neck forced a battle between his curiosity and his desire mind his own business. Scars. No desire to go beyond foot patrol. An appreciation for understanding.
These three things added up produced a number of answers, none of which Hangetsu could narrow down. Not for the first time since meeting Jin Ho did Hangetsu wish that his detective skills were on par with his grandmother or his new partner.
Acing his detective exam hardly seemed something worth bragging about anymore.
He wished he could have slept on it. Dreams pointed him in the right direction every so often, so did the right amount of inebriation. He envied Tae-yeon for her deductive reasoning that didn't involve altered states of consciousness.
Hangetsu knew that there was a source of shame tied in with Jin Ho's scars which kept the other man with his feet firmly planted on the ground.
Though he knew he shouldn't probe further, Hangetsu felt his grandmother's blood within rush at the prospect of solving a mystery.
With a gesture Hangetsu slid the refrigerator back into the position it rested in before he had accidentally moved it before searching the room. The squeal of it's motion had an almost automobile quality to it. Like straining breaks.
Anonymous
Jul 13, 2012 13:12:08 GMT -6
Post by Deleted on Jul 13, 2012 13:12:08 GMT -6
"... I don't know how to make cake. Those guys have one up on me."
"Oh, I know how to make cake," said Jin Ho. "Really, if you can follow a recipe you can —"
Just then, Hangetsu chose to use his metalbending to put the refrigerator back to its original position.
Across the floor.
Right behind him.
The squealing sound, so much like the brakes of a satomobile, set Jin Ho's teeth on edge. It had sounded as if a satomobile was avoiding running into him! The reaction was so instant and so visceral that Jin Ho didn't even have time to consider that Hangetsu had done it on purpose. Anxiety bloomed in him like blood dropped into water. The grip on his water glass tightened until his knuckles were white as the room began to seem smaller than it had a moment before. Jin Ho tried to take in a deep breath, but felt as if his armor pressed against his torso like a vise. His breathing instead became faster, shallow.
"Good morning. Could have sworn it sounded like there was a car in here."
The muscles in Jin Ho's shoulders tensed up and his head snapped up, startled by the sudden entrance of a young woman. Staring at her out of bright green eyes, pupils constricted with the fight-or-flight response, he found he didn't recognize her at all. He really had to get out of there now. The best thing to do would be to go to the toilets and count to ten over and over and over until it passed. In normal circumstances, he would have recognized her, perhaps greeted her by name. There weren't that many female officers.
But these were far from normal circumstances. The therapist his parents had sent him to years ago had called it 'stress syndrome'. Sounds or smells or feelings triggered flashbacks of the accident itself — things he tried to avoid, like satomobiles, air ships, and trains — brought on a feeling of rising panic, chest pain, inability to breathe, and an odd, fuzzy state of reality. Jin Ho had been using guided imagery for a long time to try and deal with the problem, with mild success. But no one had ever made it sound like a car was hitting its brakes right behind him before. The incident filled him with terror.
He didn't even register the smell of the baked goods, something he normally would have loved. "I — I should —" he gasped, looking panic-stricken. "I have to go." That is, if he could get himself to move. He'd go hide in the toilets for hours if necessary, going over 'mental happy places' and trying to breathe deeply.
Anonymous
Jul 13, 2012 16:08:46 GMT -6
Post by Deleted on Jul 13, 2012 16:08:46 GMT -6
Jin's panick-stricken face made the pieces in Hangetsu's mind fit together as well as make him feel like a horrible person. Every so often getting answer took precedence over other's feelings.
"Sorry, sorry. I didn't mean to startle you. Just needed to move the refigerator back," he said in a hurry after Jin excused himself. In no way did Hangetsu want the longest conversation he had with one of his fellow officers to end. He felt so close to having an actual friend.
Only a lie and a blatant truth felt like they could help.
"So, as I was saying I can't earthbend at will. Funny, huh?"
There it was, the sentence that could end his career.
The smell of fresly baked muffins somehow took Hangetsu's mind off of spending the rest of his life jobless and friendless. He could even smile at Izumi.
"Thank you," he said as he took the first muffin his hand gravitated towards.
He tilted his head toward the most uncomfortable officer in the room and introduced him, followed by the second most uncomfortable.
"That's Jin Ho I'm Hangetsu Tsukishima. Foot patrol and Internal Affairs, respectively." The more he introduced himself along with his position the less deserving of hate he seemed. Maybe it was Jin Ho's attitude at work.
"Either of you want coffee?"
Stashed in one of the shelves like contraband was a bag of specially purchased coffee beans finely ground. As the Republic City Police Department spared every expense it could on it's coffee machine Hangestu knew the quality wouldn't be up to his usual standard.
The one-two punch combo of muffins and coffee were something Hangetsu knew would make himself stay, and hoped that Jin Ho was the same.
Anonymous
Jul 16, 2012 22:16:46 GMT -6
Post by Deleted on Jul 16, 2012 22:16:46 GMT -6
Jin Ho could barely stand it. He felt sick and hot and he needed to get his uniform off — at least the armour. To do that he needed to bow gracefully out of the breakroom... but he didn't think he was capable of grace just then.
"So, as I was saying I can't earthbend at will. Funny, huh?"
"Obviously," said Jin Ho, "you can." The woman was smiling at him, but Jin Ho didn't really hear what she said. What was her name? He knew he'd met her before. He knew most everyone on Foot Patrol, at least in passing. Didn't he?
"Are you alright?"
That was it. He had to leave. Pushing back his chair, Jin Ho stood quickly. He could make it to the toilets, where maybe cold water and deep breathing would chase away the panic. "I — I'll be right back," he said, gasping a little. He practically bolted from the breakroom, bursting into the bathroom. He turned on the cold water and splashed it over his face. After a moment he let out a shaking breath and made his way to a stall, going in and locking it.
Quickly, Jin Ho divested himself of his armour. The cooler air hit him, and he leaned on the wall, closing his eyes.
One, two, three, four... five, six, seven, eight...
He counted very softly, without saying the words — rather he mouthed them, the sound coming out mostly just that of air. Nine, ten, one, two, three...
It took five passes of counting to ten before his heart rate began to slow down, and another two more before he felt his breath returning to normal. The faint sheen of sweat was drying, and Jin Ho felt better. More relaxed. Clear headed, for the most part. He needed to return to the breakroom and apologize to the woman.
Izumi. He did know her name, now that he had a moment to think about it. Taking another breath, he pushed out of the stall, though he did not put his armour back on. Quietly Jin Ho made his way back to the breakroom, where he could now smell delicious baked goods and the acid of coffee. He pushed through the door, carefully setting his armour down. "Sorry," he said, "I have been awake for far too long, I think." Was that a good enough excuse?
He hoped so.
Anonymous
Jul 18, 2012 13:30:12 GMT -6
Post by Deleted on Jul 18, 2012 13:30:12 GMT -6
His grandmother Han once told a young Hangetsu that an observant person could tell a lot by how people acted when pushed out of their comfort zone. All Hangetsu could tell was that he could be an abrasive jackass at times.
Things were awkward which caused Hangetsu to pretend he was unusually absorbed in watching the coffee percolate. Once it was done absorption need not have been faked. He poured three measured cups of coffee and one of heated milk. He carefully poured the milk until white circles appeared within the dark caffeinated depths.
Using a toothpick he placed coffee dots in the milk circles and drew arches beneath them until each of the three cups had a smiling face inside.
He placed the mood-inappropriate cups in front of each of his fellow officers as well as himself.
Jin Ho's flimsy excuse sounded much better than "subjected to psychological torture by this two-faced bastard here". The Jin Ho in the break-room was much more pleasant than the Jin Ho that occupied Hangetsu's mind.
Having a cup of coffee to hold and blow into made things less awkward. Keeping his hands busy had that effect.
A good subject for discussion did not appear in Hangetsu's coffee no mater how intensely he stared into it. He assumed there was a reason no one ever used coffee for scrying.
"So...'Zubi ...how long have you been here...in the department?" He dipped his head in embarrassment. "Sorry. I didn't mean to call you that. My sister's name is Izumi so it just came out. See, I used to call her 'Zubi' as a child since...never mind.
He hoped that scalding hot coffee would keep him from babbling. If not he hoped it would at least punish his mouth for speaking out of turn.
Anonymous
Jul 18, 2012 23:45:53 GMT -6
Post by Deleted on Jul 18, 2012 23:45:53 GMT -6
Jin Ho hated to think ill of anyone, but he was now utterly convinced that Hangetsu had scared him on purpose. It was a painful realization: he couldn't trust that man. And to think, he'd been so nice to him earlier! He couldn't believe how quickly he had fallen into the man's trap. Now, more than ever, Jin Ho realized he had to be guarded about what he said at work and how much of himself he let slip. Maybe Hangetsu really was after his job.
It seemed that dropping personal information about himself was a tactic that Hangetsu used to disarm people. Jin Ho hated to think of someone this way, but his nerves were still so rattled — he had been so easily led into conversation with this man, charmed by that nervous demeanour and some seemingly personal information. He wondered, shamefully, how much of it was even true. Not wishing the young woman to meet the same very frightful fate he had, Jin Ho was determined to sit out a little more conversation.
He sank back down at the table after taking a muffin and looked down into the coffee cup's smiling face. Normally Jin Ho was just as smiling as the milk in the coffee. Shaking his head a little, he looked up at Izumi. She was asking how long he'd been a policeman. Jin Ho laughed. "I remember you," he said, "from when you first got on foot patrol." Jin Ho was thought of in the department as a 'man's man' — pleasant, efficient, bright enough to be useful but not really a threat to anyone, always willing to help out. As such, he was often used to help train new recruits because of his patient nature. "I've been on the force for... six years, now?"
Biting into the muffin, he seemed surprised. "Did you bring these?" he asked, after swallowing. "They're delicious!"
Anonymous
Jul 19, 2012 23:32:49 GMT -6
Post by Deleted on Jul 19, 2012 23:32:49 GMT -6
Being the only rookie in the room was nothing new for Hangetsu. It was a little awkward but it beat being the most hated man in the room.
He almost laughed into his coffee when he compared the experience of the people in the room.
Not even two months for me. Almost as soon as I started I needed to take a leave of absence because of my bending. I just passed my metalbending test less than a month ago. Internal Affairs is my first assignment."
Jin Ho had since lost his usual look to take on the countenance of the ever-growing fraternity of police officers that exerted a great deal of effort to not punch him in the face. It didn't even take any detective skill just simple arithmetic. Internal Affairs plus exploiting trauma equaled the kind of person the unholy child of Koh the face stealer and Fire Lord Ozai would hold in contempt.
Apologizing about what he did would only bring to light Jin's secret in front of Izumi. He needed to say something, preferably something that wouldn't alienate him from Jin Ho even further.
"What's the coolest thing you've seen on patrol? For me, I saw a sub-basement to a warehouse with glass walls under water. It was like a giant fish tank."
He sipped his coffee again.
"I got beaten up and my feet looked like something found in a dead demon's stomach but it was an interesting experience."
"The two of you have probably seen some incredible things in your time. What about you, Izumi? Surely, you've seen something more exciting than the usual purse snatchers and drunken brawls."
He hoped that a tale of a three-headed dog choking up human fingers or whatever Izumi would add would give Jin some sort of distraction.
Anonymous
Jul 23, 2012 17:15:54 GMT -6
Post by Deleted on Jul 23, 2012 17:15:54 GMT -6
Jin Ho smiled pleasantly at Izumi, and it had the effect of making his gaze quite warm. He was unaware of how attractive the few female officers he knew found him — even if he had known he would have brushed it off as a reaction to him being nicer than others. As she surveyed his face his smile brightened, a way of covering a little embarrassment. Was there something on his face? But then she spoke, recognizing him. Perhaps she'd only been trying to place him in her mind. Jin Ho toyed with the end of his braid and nodded. "I help train new foot patrol officers a lot," he explained, "because I really don't mind." In fact, he found it fun. It was interesting to try and turn everything into a learning experience, and like his father Jin Ho was very good at teaching solid foundations of bending and ethics.
He avoided looking at Hangetsu for very long at a time, but not in such a way that it seemed obvious or impolite. He simply relegated the man to the place of all strangers: common courtesy, but not personal interest. Jin Ho found it difficult to keep people at arms' length for very long, but he was certain that Hangetsu's spite would make it an easy job for him.
"Your mother made the muffins?" The young man seemed delighted. They were very good, perfectly moist. The taste of muffin and coffee blended together perfectly. "Does your family own a bakery?" Jin Ho thought that must be wonderful. He enjoyed baking and he especially enjoyed the smell of baked goods. "I love the way bakeries smell. And it's satisfying to make something others enjoy."
Her story about the man falling into women's undergarments made Jin Ho chuckle. "I don't like telling sad stories," he said. "I think those memories stay with us long enough without calling them back up...." he drew a little smiley-face on the tabletop with a long index finger before looking back up and smiling again. "So I'll tell you my favourite story. I was brand new on the job, out on a routine traffic stop for people entering the city. My mentor — an older man, retired now, and a bit heavy then — walks up to a satomobile filled with a family obviously on a vacation. He starts cracking up as soon as he gets to the window." Jin Ho laughed a little, remembering it. "I was so confused! He came back over to me, still laughing, but didn't explain anything. So finally I couldn't take it and asked him what happened, of course."
He could still see that portly officer in his uniform, beard half-grey. Jin Ho had really enjoyed his time with his mentor, and had learned a lot from him. Mr. Choi had worked with Jin Ho's father before he retired, and he had treated Jin Ho as if he were his son, too. "After I asked, he told me "As I walked up, the little kid in the back seat says real loud 'That's not a big fat turkey, daddy. That's a policeman!""
Anonymous
Jul 24, 2012 20:39:40 GMT -6
Post by Deleted on Jul 24, 2012 20:39:40 GMT -6
Jin Ho's gaze was warm and inviting but obviously avoiding certain areas. It was like a cloud drifting in front of the sun an a cold day. One that passes only for the sun to shine on someone else. Hangetsu thought that his grandfather's sense of empathy and grandmother's observational skills would be useful in dealing with other people but they only served to emphasize just how bad he was at dealing with people at times. Not only could he noticed he hurt Jin Ho but he could also feel it. Empathy combined with an inconsistent sense of social propriety was a terrible thing.
Izumi, on the other hand hadn't spent the minutes necessary with Hangetsu for him to alienate her...as of yet.
"We were trading career inspiration stories, baking tips and dating advice earlier."
He gestured to Jin Ho. ""He was made for this line of work while I joined in order to romance a certain Chief of Police. What about you, Izumi?" He toyed with his last bit of muffin.
Immediately after finishing his muffin Hangetsu thought of grabbing another. He was sure that they were meant to be spread around to as many officers as possible but then Hangetsu remembered that officers presently outside of the breakroom were jerks.
He took another muffin which turned out to be lychee nut.
"Why leave a place with muffins as good as this for a place with bad coffee and worse baked goods? It can't be the chance to bask in my august company. That's worth half a stale, pentapus-flavored muffin at most."
