[Log][Jiraiya & Orochimaru] IDK MY BFF OROCHIMARU?
With The Man Who Sold The World'>
Goddamn, was this what it felt like to be sober?
He paused.
No, this was different. Jiraiya knew why, but kept making up excuses as to why his stomach was turning the way it was...
He turned the corner and was met with a large, panoramic pane glass window. Cue the coffee shop. The open layout of the interior gave him a perfect view, even here, to see where that guy was sitting, his back turned, but with pale, dead fingers wrapped around his coffee cup. Was this how safe he felt? Just out in the open like this? All that confidence. His stomach did it's thing again.
Enter the coffee shop. Why was he even here? Dressed normally, looking more human than he had in... fuck, who even knows. He saw there was a cup of hot coffee already waiting for him, and then lit up a smoke and wordlessly took a seat across from the other man. Time to play chess with Death, he thought sourly.
Orochimaru had every reason to be confident, as he picked up his coffee mug and took a sip from it. Sure, Jiraiya was influential as well, but Orochimaru almost literally owned this town. And if the other man was foolish enough to try anything against him, even out in the open like this, there would be swift and violent retribution. And he knew as well as anyone that Jiraiya wasn't that stupid, even if he was somewhat of an oaf.
As the other man took a seat across from him, a corner of his mouth turned up into a smile. "Good morning, Jiraiya," he said simply, taking another sip from his cup of coffee. "Perhaps you would be kind enough to lend me a smoke as well?" All courtesy, accompanied by that cold gaze, and his pale skin.
He hadn't said anything yet, but sucked in the smoke from his cigarette harshly and exhaled it from between a tightened jaw. So cool. Of course, Jiraiya would never have been the one to try anything-- he didn't care that much, or, he tried to convince himself of that. Regardless, he knew how to play it cool, too, and he pushed that twisting in his stomach deep down and his shoulders slackened.
"What's up, fucker." He returned breathily; informally. At the request, he pulled another from his shirt pocket and pushed it vertically, filter side up across the table. Coffee for him, smoke for the other, and neither would have been stupid enough or childishly fictional enough to have done something so capricious as poison the others charitable gesture.
He confidently took a sip. He had to give it to Orochimaru, still remembering how he liked his coffee-- like his women-- thick, black, and bitter.
He took the proffered cigarette, holding it between two fingers on his left hand, pulling a lighter out of his pocket with the right, and igniting it, taking a drag from it before sliding the lighter back into his pocket. "Just enjoying the morning, old friend," he replied, before yet another sip from his coffee. The insult was ignored; it was Jiraiya's style, even when the two of them had actually been friends. It could be annoying sometimes, but for the most part, it was never considered a breach of etiquette.
"This is quite a change from normal for you," he continued, another drag of the cigarette. "I thought you didn't understand the concept of 'before noon'. I see I misjudged you."
He leaned back and threw out his arms, always a little bit sarcastically mocking, and smiled, cigarette precariously hanging in his mouth. "Hey, bro, you know me," he shrugged. "If there's one thing that's consistent about me it's how inconsistent I am."
The ease with which the words came to him pained him upon realization, knowing just how easy it was to slip back into conversation with someone he'd known for so long, but who was so very clear to him a wolf in sheep's clothing.
"That is true," he replied. "I do know you. Quite well." Orochimaru had known Jiraiya for years; so both of them were almost experts on the other. However, the fact that he knew so much about Jiraiya merely annoyed Orochimaru now, as he would certainly prefer to not know him at all anymore. Granted, a lot of the reasons for that were Orochimaru's own fault, but her certainly wouldn't admit that.
"I'm surprised to see you back here. From what I had heard, you'd left town."
"Well, you know what they say about absence and the heart, right?" Jiraiya laughed and then hunched forward, his long arms taking up nearly half of the table. His fingers played absently with his cup.
"Don't you just wish I stayed that way?" He instigated, slyly grinning. You see, Orochimaru had this habit of saying one thing, but very clearly meaning another. Surprise usually implied a certain amount of displeasure. At this moment, that amount of displeasure, to such an old friend, may as well have been palpable. "And knowing you," he laughed, "when you say town, you really mean 'your town.'" He took a long sip of his coffee and then pulled a tiny metal flask from his pant pocket, then proceeded to pour some of the cloudy, milky liquid into his cup.
"You're always so indirect with your threats. Can't you just tell me you're gonna fuck me up if I get in your way?" He idly stirred his drink with a nearby spoon; such a casual act in contrast to the subject of conversation. Wasn't it always his way? For anybody else, picking out the nuances in Orochimaru's ticks and expressions might have been hard, but catching the soft wrinkles around his eyes go taut, or seeing his pallor lips gently purse only gave him confidence in that his presence still made his skill crawl.
"And I'm supposed to be predictable, right?"
Orochimaru couldn't help but laugh at the other man's words. After all, Jiraiya was exactly right. As much as Orochimaru knew Jiraiya, the same could be said for the other - Jiraiya knew him just as well. Orochimaru's eyes narrowed slightly, but then loosened, as he took another sip from his coffee. The cigarette was extinguished on the table; it had been long since forgotten. "I suppose that I could admit that your continued existence irks me to no end," he replied, "But that's obvious, isn't it? And there's no need for direct threats; do you really consider yourself someone who would back off if I told you that I would fuck you up, as you say, if you got in my way? I know you better than that. So there's no need to waste the effort on you."
Both of them had a tone of voice that to an outside observer, would make it sound like a friendly conversation. But both of them knew that it was far deeper than that.
He just sat there smiling, staring at the other and batting gently at the spoon in his coffee for what seemed like minutes on end, like something two lovers might do. To some degree, their familiarity with each other reached that level of intimacy, so to speak, but as their eyes locked there was nothing but each man studying their mutual intent.
"Your right!" He breathed, and sat back. "You'rerightyou'rerightyou'reright."
Jiraiya laughed softly and rubbed gently at his temple, diverting his gaze. "So," he paused, "you know me, and I know you." Hinting, of course, at the stalemate between the two of them. For every action there was an equal and opposite reaction. They knew that. But what made Jiraiya so dangerous, and Orochimaru knew, was the other's disregard for his own life in exchange for another... and Orochimaru valued his own existence too much to be able to say the same. The question then became: just how far could Orochimaru go before too much was just too much.
"So, what do we do about that?"
"An interesting problem," Orochimaru replied, finishing his coffee, and setting the empty cup down on the side of the table, to indicate to the waitress that he needed another cup. "I would prefer not to know you at this point, but you're just enough of an annoyance that that is not an option," he continued. "And I could offer you money or other compensation to keep out of my way, but I know as well as you do that you wouldn't accept any sort of offer like that. And wasting any more effort or money to try to kill you will just end up backfiring at me, as it always does, so that's not an option either." He sighed as the waitress refilled his cup of coffee, then took a sip from it.
"And I'm certainly not going to leave town, or kill myself, either, so we do happen to be stuck at quite an impasse," he continued. "Any suggestions from your end? I'm feeling rather charitable."
"Twelve." He indicated to the waitress as she refreshed his cup.
"I'm sorry...?"
"Inches." He added. "Now, would you like a refill?"
He was answered with an indignant gasp and a hurried step. He looked back over to Orochimaru and shrugged his shoulders, an off-center pucker to his lips. "Women, right?"
At a table, headlights out on the street streamed by to and fro: business people, families going on vacations, people living normal lives who have never used guns to kill people, never experienced physical violence, some who have never been stolen from and never steal. Two abnormal men surrounded on all sides by this flow of normalcy.
"We're sittin' here," he took a moment to give it thought, "like a coupla regular fellas. You do what you do. I do what I gotta do. What happens if I'm there and I gotta put you away?" Jiraiya paused. It was a possibility that was more like an inevitability, really. These two men who were once friends.
"I won't like it." He admitted. "But, these people? I happen to like some of them. And if it's between you and some poor bastard whose wife you're going to make a widow, brother, you are gonna go down. Cause you don't have to be there. You coulda gone and been a... a mailman."
"Women indeed," he replied with a slight nod. Even he could find some sort of amusement in Jiraiya's antics. He sipped from his coffee as Jiraiya spoke, giving him all his attention. "I'm going to go down?" he asked once Jiraiya had finished speaking. "Oh, you mean like how you saved Dan that one time...oh, wait." The corners of his mouth turned up into a smile. Orochimaru had genuinely liked Dan, and he had been somewhat dismayed that the man had had to meet his end, but...he was a dire threat to Orochimaru's entire operation. The kind of threat that once it had gained a foothold, would be impossible to get rid of. And so, regrettably, Orochimaru had had to organize a car accident.
"I like some of them too. It would be bad for business if I went about offing people who worked for one of my enterprises." He shrugged. "So, what, are you asking me to not kill anyone? I suppose I could hold myself to that...but what do I get in return?"
The moment his name was mentioned was enough to drain color from his face; raise the hackles on his neck. It was dangerous to talk about Dan, Orochimaru knew, but then... one good turn always deserved another, right?
For the first time in years Jiraiya regarded him seriously. The only one who would be able to tell was sitting across from him right now, but at that moment he was a much harsher man. "Dan." He stopped. He had trouble saying the name, it was no secret. "Dan was a better guy than the two of us combined, and I know you know that."
"We should just be forgotten, you an' me. These kids have enough of our generation's sins to deal with without us makin' more." He seemed sad. After all, not once during did Jiraiya give the impression that he was speaking exclusively to Orochimaru, with the exception of the following moment. His eyes for just a moment were those of a much younger, angrier man.
"But, you ever mention him again, and I'll come over that table and neither of us are gonna have to worry about the consequences afterwards."
Jiraiya bit down on the filter of his cigarette and sucked in, and just like that the cloud had passed. "And what do you get?" And therein lay the rub. "We both get to keep doin' what we're doin'."
Orochimaru smiled in amusement. Despite everything, the veiled threats, the not-so-veiled threats, they would remain in the status quo. Orochimaru figured that that was acceptable to him. After all, the status quo had made him fantastically wealthy, wealthy enough for it to be odd for him to be in a coffee house like this. But it was no matter. He downed the rest of his coffee. "Those terms sound acceptable to me," he said, ignoring the other man's threat about Dan. He had only brought him up to make a point.
"When we're gone, they'll commit just as many sins as we have, and probably more," he said, as he stood up from the table. "But that will be something for them to decide. Until then, this is still my town. And no one should forget that." With one last nod to Jiraiya, he turned and left the coffee shop, after depositing a pair of $100 bills on the table. After all, it paid to be generous to the people at his favorite coffee shop.
Jiraiya stared momentarily, a mix of astonishment and disgust, and still spry for his age, stood smoothly in a single motion. With the faintest slight of hand, he'd pocketed the two hundreds and slipped a mangled twenty in it's place. As his old friend watched, he walked abreast of him and shook his head disapprovingly. "What a faggot," He scoffed. For a moment, beside each other, the two could have been easily mistaken for friends.
Outside, the wind bit in response to their arrival, and Jiraiya pulled the collar of his jacket high around his neck. Autumn approached. From behind, a quickened breath and a hurried step caught their attention; an effeminate man, clasping a notepad and pen tightly in shaking hands. He began before either could stop him. "E-Excuse me... are you..."
The two passed each other an unamused glance, and scrutinized the young man for only a moment before simultaneously cutting him off with a curt "No."
Leaving him behind, the men walked separate ways.
Goddamn, was this what it felt like to be sober?
He paused.
No, this was different. Jiraiya knew why, but kept making up excuses as to why his stomach was turning the way it was...
He turned the corner and was met with a large, panoramic pane glass window. Cue the coffee shop. The open layout of the interior gave him a perfect view, even here, to see where that guy was sitting, his back turned, but with pale, dead fingers wrapped around his coffee cup. Was this how safe he felt? Just out in the open like this? All that confidence. His stomach did it's thing again.
Enter the coffee shop. Why was he even here? Dressed normally, looking more human than he had in... fuck, who even knows. He saw there was a cup of hot coffee already waiting for him, and then lit up a smoke and wordlessly took a seat across from the other man. Time to play chess with Death, he thought sourly.
Orochimaru had every reason to be confident, as he picked up his coffee mug and took a sip from it. Sure, Jiraiya was influential as well, but Orochimaru almost literally owned this town. And if the other man was foolish enough to try anything against him, even out in the open like this, there would be swift and violent retribution. And he knew as well as anyone that Jiraiya wasn't that stupid, even if he was somewhat of an oaf.
As the other man took a seat across from him, a corner of his mouth turned up into a smile. "Good morning, Jiraiya," he said simply, taking another sip from his cup of coffee. "Perhaps you would be kind enough to lend me a smoke as well?" All courtesy, accompanied by that cold gaze, and his pale skin.
He hadn't said anything yet, but sucked in the smoke from his cigarette harshly and exhaled it from between a tightened jaw. So cool. Of course, Jiraiya would never have been the one to try anything-- he didn't care that much, or, he tried to convince himself of that. Regardless, he knew how to play it cool, too, and he pushed that twisting in his stomach deep down and his shoulders slackened.
"What's up, fucker." He returned breathily; informally. At the request, he pulled another from his shirt pocket and pushed it vertically, filter side up across the table. Coffee for him, smoke for the other, and neither would have been stupid enough or childishly fictional enough to have done something so capricious as poison the others charitable gesture.
He confidently took a sip. He had to give it to Orochimaru, still remembering how he liked his coffee-- like his women-- thick, black, and bitter.
He took the proffered cigarette, holding it between two fingers on his left hand, pulling a lighter out of his pocket with the right, and igniting it, taking a drag from it before sliding the lighter back into his pocket. "Just enjoying the morning, old friend," he replied, before yet another sip from his coffee. The insult was ignored; it was Jiraiya's style, even when the two of them had actually been friends. It could be annoying sometimes, but for the most part, it was never considered a breach of etiquette.
"This is quite a change from normal for you," he continued, another drag of the cigarette. "I thought you didn't understand the concept of 'before noon'. I see I misjudged you."
He leaned back and threw out his arms, always a little bit sarcastically mocking, and smiled, cigarette precariously hanging in his mouth. "Hey, bro, you know me," he shrugged. "If there's one thing that's consistent about me it's how inconsistent I am."
The ease with which the words came to him pained him upon realization, knowing just how easy it was to slip back into conversation with someone he'd known for so long, but who was so very clear to him a wolf in sheep's clothing.
"That is true," he replied. "I do know you. Quite well." Orochimaru had known Jiraiya for years; so both of them were almost experts on the other. However, the fact that he knew so much about Jiraiya merely annoyed Orochimaru now, as he would certainly prefer to not know him at all anymore. Granted, a lot of the reasons for that were Orochimaru's own fault, but her certainly wouldn't admit that.
"I'm surprised to see you back here. From what I had heard, you'd left town."
"Well, you know what they say about absence and the heart, right?" Jiraiya laughed and then hunched forward, his long arms taking up nearly half of the table. His fingers played absently with his cup.
"Don't you just wish I stayed that way?" He instigated, slyly grinning. You see, Orochimaru had this habit of saying one thing, but very clearly meaning another. Surprise usually implied a certain amount of displeasure. At this moment, that amount of displeasure, to such an old friend, may as well have been palpable. "And knowing you," he laughed, "when you say town, you really mean 'your town.'" He took a long sip of his coffee and then pulled a tiny metal flask from his pant pocket, then proceeded to pour some of the cloudy, milky liquid into his cup.
"You're always so indirect with your threats. Can't you just tell me you're gonna fuck me up if I get in your way?" He idly stirred his drink with a nearby spoon; such a casual act in contrast to the subject of conversation. Wasn't it always his way? For anybody else, picking out the nuances in Orochimaru's ticks and expressions might have been hard, but catching the soft wrinkles around his eyes go taut, or seeing his pallor lips gently purse only gave him confidence in that his presence still made his skill crawl.
"And I'm supposed to be predictable, right?"
Orochimaru couldn't help but laugh at the other man's words. After all, Jiraiya was exactly right. As much as Orochimaru knew Jiraiya, the same could be said for the other - Jiraiya knew him just as well. Orochimaru's eyes narrowed slightly, but then loosened, as he took another sip from his coffee. The cigarette was extinguished on the table; it had been long since forgotten. "I suppose that I could admit that your continued existence irks me to no end," he replied, "But that's obvious, isn't it? And there's no need for direct threats; do you really consider yourself someone who would back off if I told you that I would fuck you up, as you say, if you got in my way? I know you better than that. So there's no need to waste the effort on you."
Both of them had a tone of voice that to an outside observer, would make it sound like a friendly conversation. But both of them knew that it was far deeper than that.
He just sat there smiling, staring at the other and batting gently at the spoon in his coffee for what seemed like minutes on end, like something two lovers might do. To some degree, their familiarity with each other reached that level of intimacy, so to speak, but as their eyes locked there was nothing but each man studying their mutual intent.
"Your right!" He breathed, and sat back. "You'rerightyou'rerightyou'reright."
Jiraiya laughed softly and rubbed gently at his temple, diverting his gaze. "So," he paused, "you know me, and I know you." Hinting, of course, at the stalemate between the two of them. For every action there was an equal and opposite reaction. They knew that. But what made Jiraiya so dangerous, and Orochimaru knew, was the other's disregard for his own life in exchange for another... and Orochimaru valued his own existence too much to be able to say the same. The question then became: just how far could Orochimaru go before too much was just too much.
"So, what do we do about that?"
"An interesting problem," Orochimaru replied, finishing his coffee, and setting the empty cup down on the side of the table, to indicate to the waitress that he needed another cup. "I would prefer not to know you at this point, but you're just enough of an annoyance that that is not an option," he continued. "And I could offer you money or other compensation to keep out of my way, but I know as well as you do that you wouldn't accept any sort of offer like that. And wasting any more effort or money to try to kill you will just end up backfiring at me, as it always does, so that's not an option either." He sighed as the waitress refilled his cup of coffee, then took a sip from it.
"And I'm certainly not going to leave town, or kill myself, either, so we do happen to be stuck at quite an impasse," he continued. "Any suggestions from your end? I'm feeling rather charitable."
"Twelve." He indicated to the waitress as she refreshed his cup.
"I'm sorry...?"
"Inches." He added. "Now, would you like a refill?"
He was answered with an indignant gasp and a hurried step. He looked back over to Orochimaru and shrugged his shoulders, an off-center pucker to his lips. "Women, right?"
At a table, headlights out on the street streamed by to and fro: business people, families going on vacations, people living normal lives who have never used guns to kill people, never experienced physical violence, some who have never been stolen from and never steal. Two abnormal men surrounded on all sides by this flow of normalcy.
"We're sittin' here," he took a moment to give it thought, "like a coupla regular fellas. You do what you do. I do what I gotta do. What happens if I'm there and I gotta put you away?" Jiraiya paused. It was a possibility that was more like an inevitability, really. These two men who were once friends.
"I won't like it." He admitted. "But, these people? I happen to like some of them. And if it's between you and some poor bastard whose wife you're going to make a widow, brother, you are gonna go down. Cause you don't have to be there. You coulda gone and been a... a mailman."
"Women indeed," he replied with a slight nod. Even he could find some sort of amusement in Jiraiya's antics. He sipped from his coffee as Jiraiya spoke, giving him all his attention. "I'm going to go down?" he asked once Jiraiya had finished speaking. "Oh, you mean like how you saved Dan that one time...oh, wait." The corners of his mouth turned up into a smile. Orochimaru had genuinely liked Dan, and he had been somewhat dismayed that the man had had to meet his end, but...he was a dire threat to Orochimaru's entire operation. The kind of threat that once it had gained a foothold, would be impossible to get rid of. And so, regrettably, Orochimaru had had to organize a car accident.
"I like some of them too. It would be bad for business if I went about offing people who worked for one of my enterprises." He shrugged. "So, what, are you asking me to not kill anyone? I suppose I could hold myself to that...but what do I get in return?"
The moment his name was mentioned was enough to drain color from his face; raise the hackles on his neck. It was dangerous to talk about Dan, Orochimaru knew, but then... one good turn always deserved another, right?
For the first time in years Jiraiya regarded him seriously. The only one who would be able to tell was sitting across from him right now, but at that moment he was a much harsher man. "Dan." He stopped. He had trouble saying the name, it was no secret. "Dan was a better guy than the two of us combined, and I know you know that."
"We should just be forgotten, you an' me. These kids have enough of our generation's sins to deal with without us makin' more." He seemed sad. After all, not once during did Jiraiya give the impression that he was speaking exclusively to Orochimaru, with the exception of the following moment. His eyes for just a moment were those of a much younger, angrier man.
"But, you ever mention him again, and I'll come over that table and neither of us are gonna have to worry about the consequences afterwards."
Jiraiya bit down on the filter of his cigarette and sucked in, and just like that the cloud had passed. "And what do you get?" And therein lay the rub. "We both get to keep doin' what we're doin'."
Orochimaru smiled in amusement. Despite everything, the veiled threats, the not-so-veiled threats, they would remain in the status quo. Orochimaru figured that that was acceptable to him. After all, the status quo had made him fantastically wealthy, wealthy enough for it to be odd for him to be in a coffee house like this. But it was no matter. He downed the rest of his coffee. "Those terms sound acceptable to me," he said, ignoring the other man's threat about Dan. He had only brought him up to make a point.
"When we're gone, they'll commit just as many sins as we have, and probably more," he said, as he stood up from the table. "But that will be something for them to decide. Until then, this is still my town. And no one should forget that." With one last nod to Jiraiya, he turned and left the coffee shop, after depositing a pair of $100 bills on the table. After all, it paid to be generous to the people at his favorite coffee shop.
Jiraiya stared momentarily, a mix of astonishment and disgust, and still spry for his age, stood smoothly in a single motion. With the faintest slight of hand, he'd pocketed the two hundreds and slipped a mangled twenty in it's place. As his old friend watched, he walked abreast of him and shook his head disapprovingly. "What a faggot," He scoffed. For a moment, beside each other, the two could have been easily mistaken for friends.
Outside, the wind bit in response to their arrival, and Jiraiya pulled the collar of his jacket high around his neck. Autumn approached. From behind, a quickened breath and a hurried step caught their attention; an effeminate man, clasping a notepad and pen tightly in shaking hands. He began before either could stop him. "E-Excuse me... are you..."
The two passed each other an unamused glance, and scrutinized the young man for only a moment before simultaneously cutting him off with a curt "No."
Leaving him behind, the men walked separate ways.