So grac and I have been threatening each other to start a thread of joint stories or some such for a while, and we've finally gotten down to doing it. Crack is involved. These stories may or may not be canon. Shit happens. Enjoy the ride.
And so,
gracula and
Estrea presents....
A SERIES OF DISCONNECTED EVENTS=================================================================================
One Night in AsaFujimoto Miki was
not drunk.
Not even after the copious amounts of medical alcohol that should probably have been used for scrubbing unspeakable surfaces chockful of various germs. The kind that could scour a toilet clean. Without even a brush.
Yeah, that shit burns going down, but damn was it a fast wake up call, and it kept her warm in this sudden typhoon-like breeze. She chucked the empty bottle somewhere into the bushes, where it rolled aimlessly before
tinking over a curb and getting wedged in a drain. Probably the next unfortunate soul to step on it would have a pierced sole and a bleeding foot. Good thing the bottle held disinfectant before. At least no wily bacteria could survive in the wound.
What was it with sudden weather shifts anyway? Miki did not believe in global warming. Typhoon season wasn't in, and no amount of errant hot air could suddenly make the sky swirl and churn and the temperature drop ten degrees without warning.
As it began gusting, Miki stepped up her pace. She didn't know where the hell she was going. Brothel (uh,
house of pleasure) off the left turn and down the alley, Asa UH on the right and a fricking long sprint down an unlit boardwalk up a hill (cheapskate town council not fixing the busted lights...do they want accidents to happen on the way to a fucking hospital? Of couse they do. That's what the damn hospital was for. To up her workload and
shiiiiit, so not in the mood for another shift right fucking now).
Hills didn't agree with her anyway. She just had three rounds of kendama with Yui-chan back at Asa, courtesy of her lapdog, um, intern. She reached into her coat and rattled her inside pocket. Only one bottle of medicinal alcohol left. Damn, she should have swiped more before heading out on a stroll.
Finding a drink seemed to be the first order of business. However, she would need a taxi to get to the better watering spots downtown. It was a miracle that a brothel was even within jogging distance of the hospital. Then again, it made perfect sense. They did need to come for regular health checks, so why not locate themselves near a hospital? Plus, all the male patrons could always come by after their sessions to make sure their...parts...were still in good working order.
Or before, even. There might be a booming underground trade in Viagra. This
is a hospital. Miki
is a doctor. She might or might not have prescribed enhancement drugs. Male health products though...tis the gift that keeps on giving. Her study loan, you see.
No taxi seemed immediately forthcoming, and she had left her damned phone back in the dorms. Bad move there. Well, there was always the third option of just going straight ahead past the park and into no man's land before hitting the next road after the bridge. There should be more traffic that were not ambulances there.
Her decision made, Dr. Fujimoto set off at a brisk pace even as the wind picked up speed, the clouds forming a spiral network almost directly overhead like the herald of a deadly storm.
Lightning flashed, but there was no fire. Just a neon sign.
The Bar is Open.~*~*~*~
Tanaka Reina was getting smashed. The sour
baba behind the counter had muttered something about 'fresh young things again' when she first sat her ass down at the counter, but had promptly served up whatever it was that Reina wanted.
The place was not deserted, but it was quiet enough to count as a slow night. A suspiciously shady janitor swept the area around the dilapidated jukebox mechanically. Repetitively. Actually, Reina hadn't actually seen him move further than three feet from the same area since she got there an hour ago. The guy gave her the creeps. And what kind of janitor had slicked back hair and dressed like a wannabe punk rocker from a bygone era?
She hadn't seen her girl in a week.
Shit. She slung back another shot. She was not fucking needy, damnit.
Just that the sex was damn good and going solo was nowhere near as fun. Deprived she can handle. Just not needy. Never needy, ok? Tanaka fucking Reina was a strong independent woman who could swallow six shots in a row and still walk in a straight line. Not a pansy, for certain.
The queen-sized bed they shared was just so empty with only her in it, even though she did get to hog all the covers for once without that infuriating woman fighting her for it. They fought a lot over simple things. Fighting was kind of like foreplay for them. Half the time it felt like they fought just to get to the kissing and making up. It seemed only like yesterday when Reina had asked the love of her life, one Takahashi Ai, to move in with her.
That was two years ago.
And it only took them six months after the fact to get Friday'd. Not bad for a couple who couldn't exactly keep their hands off each other. At least they weren't caught in the act. Not exactly anyway. It was just one little kiss in public, and some intuitive paparazzi stalking them back to the apartment. It didn't take much to invent an article with lewd headlines like "Female idols caught in scandalous relationship!" or "More than just friends?!".
The allegations were true anyway.
Some press control later (mostly, admitting the truth...Reina might have kissed Ai again in public, with the cameras rolling), the ReinAi couple was basically the poster children for LGBT rights in Japan. It felt good to be out, even if part of their fanbase turned against them. They did gain another, even more rabidly dedicated combined fanbase that defended the "ideal" couple, since it was a "pure" love.
Reina snickered. If only those fans knew how
impure things could get in bed for them...
They were on a break now though, which was why Reina was here getting her brains pickled instead of booking the next flight to New York to chase down her errant girlfriend.
It wasn't even that big of a fight. Ai had things she wanted to do, dreams she wanted to pursue. Goals that lay outside of Japan. Reina's ambitions weren't quite in the same direction, though they were no less large. There might have been some words exchanged over any kind of separation. Voices may have been raised. Furniture toppled. Doors slamming.
Landing on the couch for one night was not fun, and even less fun was waking up to see a note, breakfast, and the fact that Ai and one of her suitcases was gone. Double fucking shit. No goodbye sex even? Seriously?
Reina might have yelled over the phone at Ai to 'get her ass back home'. The woman hung up on her. She
hung up. Shit. Maybe she shouldn't have called Ai a selfish bitch the night before. Damn her mouth for running away on its own.
Reina did at least try to avoid her usual clubs and hangout spots from her...wilder days. She didn't want to be seen pickling her brains at some hotspot where the unwitting often got their pictures snapped and the pictures splashed all over some gossip rag with an (in)appropriate headline. She didn't need the press sniffing around on her relationship, thank you very much. Even if they were pretty much a high-profile couple. Especially so, really. The paparazzi would have a field day if news that the fairytale lesbian pair was having trouble in paradise.
So here she was. She didn't even recognize this place. Must be new...so she thought, until she walked in and everything clashed, a haphazard mix of old and new, futuristic and vintage meeting in a timeless clash of culture and architectural design. Gothic fused with space age, retro western with 80s disco. The dartboard had an electronic scoreboard. And VR glasses.
And the dancefloor was a holographic kaledeiscope of universes trailing across the sea of existence. Complete with a disco ball rotating with funky laser lights bouncing off every shiny facet. Everything was simultaneously bright yet cast in shadow, lending an appropriate intimacy to every individual. A row of sputtering gaslights lit the private booths on one side.
The place was bigger than it looked from the outside, Reina mused, her head heavy from the unidentifiable shots she had been slinging back with a fury. What was she drinking again?
The sound of someone's bum hitting the stool next to her made her look up in a bleary haze. She attempted to glower. Glowering was second nature to her. It had basically zero effect on her neighbour, who not only ignored her glower, but also the bitter gaze of the stick-in-the-ass bartender, who probably needed to get laid, given how bitter she was towards hot young women.
And her neighbour was hot. Kinda. In a I-don't-give-a-fuck kind of way.
Reina was drunk enough to notice, not care, ok, kind of care since she was sexually deprived and missing her life partner AND...coordinationally challenged. Which expressed itself in the drunken slur that escaped her lips.
"Where th' hell did ya come from?" The accent was strong with this one.
The woman in the coat flipped her eye, shot her a look, raised an eyebrow, and drawled.
"I thought you were supposed to be on shift with the rest of the babies?"
"What the fuck are ye talkin' about?" Reina growled, alcohol lending her more spite and courage to pick a fight with some random stranger. A random, hot stranger. Who was not her Ai. Was definitely not even anywhere like her Ai. Damn she missed Ai.
"Don't talk back to me, junior." The tag on her coat read FUJIMOTO. Reina squinted, but couldn't really read it in the lighting. The alcohol didn't help either. Miki downed three shots in quick succession. The bartender, despite the surly scowling, was actually really efficient. And unobtrusive. She left them alone.
"Do you even know who I am?" Reina puffed up self-importantly. Miki rolled her eyes.
"Tanaka Reina, intern to my big-boobed colleague that you're not sleeping - having sex with." Miki lit a cigarette, puffing out a smoke ring as she exhaled. "And you're a snot-nosed brat on top of that."
Reina didn't know what to say. She decided to pass it off as the alcohol talking. When in doubt, blame it on the alcohol. Deciding that the line of conversation was going nowhere, she switched topics with the ease that only the really drunk could manage.
"I'm only sleepin -- having sex with Aichan, 'cept there isn't much of that going on now that she's not around and I'm not gonna fuckin call her unless she calls me first and I miss her so bad but no way am I going to beg her to come back and why the fuck am I telling you all this?"
Miki's eyebrow twitched experimentally upward. "You're sleeping with Takahashi?" She made a mental note to ask the Two Top how they managed to miss that tasty morsel of information. Hell, she'd go one better and sell the info to them. It'd kill their professional pride AND net her some extra cash. Win-win scenario for all.
"Of course I'm sleeping with Takahashi...she's my girl and no one else had better touch her or I'd break their fuckin hands..." Reina took another swig from the bottle that had magically appeared in front of her.
"Last I heard, you were more interested in sleeping with your boss..." Miki wondered if it was too late to adjust her terms in the betting pool. Why had she forgotten her cellphone again?
"Ew." Reina made a face. "Why would I do that?" She muttered something about middle-aged men with potbellies and punchable noses. Miki didn't hear her. She was busy taking another drink from her own mysteriously appearing bottle. She checked the label. Nope, never seen this vintage anywhere before.
"I want Ai back." Reina whined miserably, her chin flopping foward onto the counter as she sprawled in an undignified heap. "Why won't she come back?"
"Just go to her, not like you don't know where she is." Miki pondered. Probably being paged for as Dr. Bukkake on the emergency floor right now. Miki shrugged, feeling a moment of humanity at the sheer waves of misery wafting off Reina next to her. Or was it the waves of alcohol? Whatever. And shit, whatever was in that bottle had a real kick to it. Her brain felt like someone decided to flip it through a salad spinner.
"She left me first." Reina pouted, appearing remarkably like a petulant child as she stamped her feet in indignation. Miki rolled her eyes, standing abruptly and hauling the drunkass Reina onto her unsteady feet as well.
"Giddy up junior, gotta get you back on shift where you belong. I need my fucken phone anyway so let's saddle up, stat."
Reina was in no shape to disagree. Miki paid for both their tabs with Reina's credit card (since when did interns have that many cards?).
When they walked (Reina stumbled in an ungainly fashion) out of the bar, Miki didn't even question through her pounding headache that they had exited basically right outside Asa UH. On top of the hill. Past the unlit boardwalk. And that there was no door behind them. Details, details.
They entered the hospital. Miki dumped Reina at Emergency where she was supposed to be, then left to grab her phone. Reina wandered, had clipboards and coats shoved at her, mysteriously gained a stethoscope, and ran into a doppleganger.
Who she proceeded to beat the shit out of. Cos, you know, she had to be dreaming, and there's only one Reina in the world, and that had to be her. And that was that.
Still in a drunken haze, she might have accidentally saved a couple of lives (watching the code teams actually successfully resuscitate someone), skipped out on the DOAs, before finally finding her way unerringly to one very harried looking Takahashi Ai, who had dark circles under her eyes as she was nearing the end of her 22-hour shift and was basically dead on her feet.
"Oh hi Reina, how are y--mmmfff"
The nurses ignored them. Graveyard shifts were uniformly insane, and said nurses working them had an uncanny ability to filter out anything that wasn't immediate in their job description. A gurney trundled past. Ai barely had time to come up for air before Reina dragged her into the nearest unoccupied room. Which happened to be for X-rays.
Ai found herself stripped to her underwear before she could even blink (this Reina did have years of practice), and managed to get in a:
"Um Reina, I know I like you in a sex way but isn't this too fas--"
"Shut up."
There were some very interesting X-rays taken in that room for the next hour or so.
Miki discovered a very bruised and unconscious Reina in a consultation room and proceeded to slap her awake (adding more bruises in the process). They continue the shift. Meanwhile, Miki has already placed a call to Tsuji, who was offduty and was actually able to answer the phone in a very grumpy way (wouldn't you, being woken up at ungodly hours when you actually get to sleep for once). The news that Tanaka was sleeping with Takahashi would be all over Asa UH before dawn. News travels fast. Especially bad news...
"USOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!"
Three guesses who said that.
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Yay crossovers. Yay insanity. Yay crack. Posted with full permission from grac, who might have suggested the beating up of OnCall!Reina by NR!Reina.
THIS IS NOT CANON. Maybe. Who knows?