Nightshift 38: M81-90 Hallway

[toxicspiderman]

Well-behaved. Fuck that noise. An image sprung briefly to mind -- Tess, wandering around in the old kitchen, pre-morning caffeine, in flannel pants and a T-shirt reading "Well-behaved women seldom make history" in letters that were slowly peeling off. He'd offered her coffee and she'd about taken his head off. Some sort of detox crap about

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[mayomanoflove]

The silence was excruciating: painful and long. A full minute had already passed by since either of them had spoken, the immensity of what they were about to face between then...the deepness of the wound and its implications splitting them apart as a wide divide.

Finally, he spoke.

"You...you aren't really..."

Kondo nodded, sighing heavily and expression solemn. "Yes...I'm afraid the rumors were true, Toshi."

Hijikata could only stare, aghast, uncomprehending not because he couldn't but because he didn't want to. Didn't want to believe that...!

"Then...you really are..."

Kondo nodded again. "Engaged, Toshi. To the Prince Barabarabossu from the Planet of Apenuts. Not only have I fully accepted my destiny as a proper gorilla, Toshi--I have become gay."

"But, Kondo-san...you're the only undeniably straight man in the series. You may be a gorilla, but you are also our Commander! We've prom--You can't j--"

"--there comes a time in every ma--no, gorilla's life when he must decide between doing the right thing and the

[mayomanoflove]

He got back up again what felt like hours later, unable to catch a single wink. There was something wrong with the bed. Hijikata's eyes practically creaked open, but as they adjusted to the dark, he began to notice that either a) the alcohol'd affected his depth perception, or that b) this futon was a lot higher off the ground than he was used to. Growling to himself as he kicked off the covers, Hijikata swung a leg over the side of the bed, confirming his suspicion when it hit cold, slippery ground.

This wasn't his room. Okay. Fine. Stranger things had happened before, and while Hijikata didn't wake up in weird beds often, it did happen. The question now was where he was--a question that'd probably be a lot easier to answer if he wasn't battling against the harsh pounding in his skull. He didn't want to turn on the lights, so he relied instead on touch to tell him where he was. Here the foot of the bed, here a chair and--ow! there something like a table

[mayomanoflove]

That was strange. For a second he almost thought the door'd hit something.

Hijikata scowled into the light, sheer stubbornness keeping him from closing his eyes again. When his eyes adjusted, he found himself in a somewhat drab and monochromatic hallway. Turning to the left, he say gray and blackness: the right, the same. Finally, he refocused his vision on what was directly in front of him, finding...more nothing.

Great. Not only had Hijikata blown his cash on this dump of a love hotel, but the love hotel had some kind of (hospital? corporate?) institutional theme. Really, what in hell was wrong with those "new wave" designers? Whatever happened to the beach themes, or the underwater castles, or the high-in-the-sky heaven designs with the busty angel girls in skimpy gowns and wing

[mayomanoflove]

"Seventeen, huh?" So his first guess had been right. He felt no real triumph at having been proven correct; it was said that a society was worth only as much as the quality of its youth, after all, and even if Hijikata'd long known just what a breeding hole for corruption and general amoral shit Edo was, it was still annoying each time to have it rubbed in his face. This kid didn't even look the part. He even had a natural perm, and with the exception of that damn diabetic freelancer everyone knew there were no bad guys among those with natural perms

[mayomanoflove]

His cigarettes were nowhere to be found. He must have left them in his uniform when he changed into these pajamas. Hijikata shot a glare down at the smiley face on the shirt and wondered just how trashed he must have gotten to have voluntarily worn the thing.

Not trashed enough not to be almost completely sober now, apparently. "Minor what" indeed. Damn, he really needed a cigarette right now. Or at least something that'd get him either relaxed or high enough to deal with this

[mayomanoflove]

The kid still seemed embarrassed, but kids nowadays could fake just about anything once they had their mind on it. He was seriously starting to reevaulate his reasons for getting out of bed in the first place, but it was too late for that kind of thinking; Hijikata really didn't have the time to go with some teenager to meet some yankee buddy of his, but something about the way the boy said "sinister" triggered alarm bells deep inside the part of his head labeled "DEMON VICE COMMANDER," and whatever Hijikata was, he was not the sort of man who betrayed his own instincts.

"...fine," Hijikata said, giving up on finding his cigarettes.

"But on one condition."

He turned a bit to the side, starting to walk in the direction the boy'd been traveling in, trusting Keman would follow. It was as much a test as a simple gesture; if the boy attacked Hijikata now, while the man had his back to him, then the "friend" they were going to meet probably wasn't worth seeing.

"A love hotel isn't a brothel, kid. And the women in brothels are far