(no subject)
Title: Treasure
Series: Original
Genre: Humor/Romance/Drama/Mystery
Pairing(s): None for now
Rating/Warnings: T for language, violence, and theft.
Summary: So say you're a 20-year-old guy who has a flirtatious current roommate who wants to take you out. Why not take him up on it?
Notes: I know I said I was reworking Treasure. Well, here, have the fruits of that reworking, liberally helped by NaNoWriMo 2010. The chapters I'm posting here are unbeta'd, but should be free of plot holes- I can't shut my inner editor away, apparently she's an amature lock picker. If anyone feels up to the monumental task of reading my fail here, feel free to message me or something, or provide concrit in a comment. I want to improve this.
It was a job done, if not well then at least passably. Agni hadn’t had a room to clean, hadn’t had stuff beyond clothes to clean, in so long, he’d almost forgotten all the little trivialities of the job, like dusting under the coffee pot or scrubbing the ashes from the old gas stove that obviously only worked as a grill at this point. He wasn’t entirely sure how Mneme lived like this, really, but he would just have to deal with it for a few more days. The scrapes on his arm and leg were healing nicely, though the bruising was pretty severe. Still, he mused as he checked the remaining damage in the bathroom mirror self-consciously, at least they were so dark his tattoo was hard to discern. He finished re-bandaging the arm and carted the clothes he’d just washed in the old bathtub to the back garden, several feet of rope strung between a couple of old twisted scraps of rebar to make a clothesline. He’d set this up his second day there.
Agni had to wonder what Mneme had used to dry his clothes before, then decided he probably didn’t want to know. The few trees around the old hovel were shaking pretty rough, and chill was starting to permeate the single room. With a sigh, Agni twisted the tail of his skirt into a knot about his knees, hoisted the old basket up on his hip, and sallied on outside, ignoring the temperature. He had finally gotten some of his own clothes the previous day, and now he could give Mneme his clothes back.
Pity, he rather liked being able to smell his scent without much effort or subterfuge.
He could hear the door slam closed in the front, and edged toward an old chunk of two-by-four he kept nearby when he was outside. Ever since he’d had to chase out other thugs on his first day there, he didn’t trust slamming doors, and this raised the question again of how Mneme lived like this, but that was for another time. “That you, Mneme?” he asked.
“Agni, you out back?” It was his favorite blond guy! Agni untucked the knot, fought to keep the laundry basket stable, and replied.
“Yeah, you’re home early today!” Mneme came outside, and Agni smiled happily. “Welcome home.”
Mneme, for his part, was stunned. It was something he had only seen his mother do, hang laundry on a line. For his part he just hung it over the old shower-curtain rod in front of the old stove he used as a heater in the winter. He never had the time, what with working and trying to stay alive. But here was Agni, outside in his cross-dressed glory, hanging laundry like he was a freaking housewife who wasn’t bruised seven ways to Sunday… The blond rushed over and yanked the laundry basket away over Agni’s protests. “No buts, I told you to take it easy and heal.”
“It’s a goddamn bruise, Mneme, it won’t kill me to do a little work. Besides, I feel bad for freeloading off you. And there was laundry to be done, so DON’T SET THAT IN THE DIRT!” Agni looked ready to have a panic attack, but Mneme just set the basket in the dust and started hauling clothes out to hang up.
“I’m helping. Besides, I got the pay for that job, I thought you might like to go get something to eat, celebrate surviving. And getting Ray to never associate with those people again. Yeah,” he said as Agni stared in shock, a t-shirt hanging from his hands, “I… I got mad. I mean, shit, you could have gotten killed, and getting used to another person, that’d kill me. I’ve got your quirks down now, I know what to keep you away from, and I like having Acqua NOT after my blood.”
Mneme kept hanging clothes while Agni reeled. So did this mean Mneme liked him? Maybe not as much as Agni liked him, but it was a step up from the utter aggression that he’d shown not too long ago! Now maybe if he just kept hanging around… “One thing, though.” Mneme said quietly.
“Yes?”
“Pants. Please, for the love of god, wear. Pants. You can call it what you want so long as you’re not in a skirt or a dress.” Well. Dammit. Agni sighed and got back to work; there went that outfit he’d been planning. “You get to choose this time.”
“Huh?”
“Last time.” Those glorious mismatched eyes stared at him as if he were crazy. “Tabletop barbeque. I chose then, you choose now.”
Agni started; how had he forgotten that one? “Oh! Uhm… I think there’s this really nice place a little further uptown. A half-mile from Ray’s. They serve seafood, I think. You’re not allergic to shrimp, are you?”
“I don’t think so…” Mneme said. He couldn’t remember if he’d ever actually had shrimp; even though fishing was a viable industry in the town, it didn’t make the prices go down any. Even run-of-the-mill catfish was precious, and as for shrimp, forget it. “I mean, I’ve eaten crab once, and it didn’t do anything… they’re in the same family, right?”
“When did you get hold of crab… you know what, never mind, yes, they’re in the same family, let’s have shrimp tonight. They sell it on the cheap.” Agni laughed, and kept working, sending Mneme trotting back inside with the basket once it was emptied. He needed to do a mini victory dance. Alone.
--
Mneme was not only not allergic to shrimp, he was downright addicted to them. If Agni hadn’t known the owner of the little bar, Mneme’s entire paycheck for the smuggling job would have been gone down his gullet. As it was Agni was paying for the drinks (he’d insisted, after seeing how fast Mneme shoveled the shellfish into his mouth after that initial try), so he figured he could at least have as much as he wanted. That had been about eight that night.
It was now eleven, and Agni was, for lack of better word, shitfaced.
“A-aaaan’ aaaaall this time, I-I-I’d been thinkin’ ya hated me for some reason!” the redhead slurred, leaning heavily on Mneme and nuzzling his arm. Mneme fought back a laugh- he hadn’t known that Agni was going to get so messed up, but he was glad he’d made him wear pants, otherwise the entirety of the back of the bar would be able to see that no matter how girly he looked, he was indeed a male. “Whu’sso funny?”
“You’re drunk.” Mneme said, unable to keep from at least smiling; he’d had a few drinks himself, but to see Agni like this, it was starting to get hilarious. “Totally completely drunk.”
“Well, I h’ven’t been to play in a while, I’ve been bein’ a good househu-husb’nd an’ keepin’ folks outta your home an’ cleanin’ and keepin’ my head down. Can’t I g’t jus’ a li’l drunk?” It was hard to say no to that face, pink and pouty and pretty in a delicate way. Mneme just waved their waiter over and paid the bill, even sliding the right amount for the drinks onto the table and putting the rest back in Agni’s pocket (that got a giggle, a bright blush, and a furious explanation from the blond that no matter what he thought, no, Agni, he was not trying to be a perv) before he hoisted the redhead to his shoulder and walked from the restaurant. It was a long trip back, but Agni wasn’t one to keep silent, talking about any and everything on his mind at the moment. Mneme needed to file this knowledge away, and was trying to do so (alcohol didn’t help him think any at all, it seemed), when Agni spoke up quietly.
“Hey, Mneme?”
“Yeah, Agni?”
“Could I stay with you?” One eyebrow shot straight to his hairline, and Mneme almost stopped walking.
“You already are, remember?”
“No, I mean for longer. Like for always. I like your place,” he muttered quietly, “it’s quiet, and easy to keep clean, and I don’t mind the work, really. I like it better than stealing.” The arm around his waist tightened, less of Agni’s need to keep steady on his feet and more of a need to keep steady in his resolve. “At least doing this I don’t have to worry about someone trying to shoot me up with something… or just shoot me.”
“You… are officially nuts. How the hell do you feel safe in the ghetto?” Mneme laughed, even as Agni buried his head into his shoulder. “…fine. Sure. You can stay as long as you like.” It was quiet for a bit, and if Agni hadn’t been pulling his weight (or as much of it as his drunken legs could hold), Mneme would have thought he was asleep. It wasn’t until they crossed the threshold of the building and Agni immediately started stripping that Mneme figured out that he wasn’t quite asleep yet, but before he could work himself into a proper panic over this and how in the hell he was going to sleep by Agni if the man got naked, the redhead fell over asleep on the floor, down to his button up shirt and underwear.
Well, that made it a little less awkward at least. Sighing, leaving the clothes on the floor (he’d wash them himself if necessary, but it was too late for this kind of crap), he picked Agni up and set him on the bed, the man’s tiny, slender frame automatically snuggling into the relative comfort of the old mattress. When the opposite side dipped under Mneme’s weight, Agni rolled over with it, curling into the warmth and latching on like a leech. Mneme made a note to himself to never let his partner-in-crime get this drunk again; now there was no cure for it but sleep.
--
Every bone in Agni’s body hurt, it seemed. His head was pounding, and he vaguely remembered some kind of shellfish dinner last night. And if there had been shellfish, then he’d have been all up in the liquor. There was a tang in his mouth, the bite of lime, and he groaned. How much had he blown on beer? The warm something against him stirred, and Agni realized with a start that it was Mneme, rolling over and waking up to get ready for work.
And here he was in pretty much nothing.
Mneme rolled his eyes as Agni pulled the blanket over himself as if he were trying to hide. “Please, like you’ve got anything I haven’t seen before. What’s your problem?”
“We didn’t… you didn’t… I wasn’t… did we?” Agni couldn’t even get the question fully out, but Mneme understood the connotation well enough.
“We didn’t do anything, you passed out while you were stripping.” Agni looked mildly stunned. “Promise.”
“So… absolutely nothing?”
“Absolutely nothing.” Mneme said, swinging his legs out of the bed. He’d just pretend he hadn’t heard that snap from behind him. Just the floorboards. Yep. Agni’s muffled voice sounded behind him.
“But I can stay here, right? You promised.” Mneme’s head whipped around, his blue eye staring at Agni over his shoulder. “You said I could stay as long as I liked.” Well, he’d been considering denying that he ever said such a thing, but Agni looked rather pathetic. So he sighed, turned his head back forward, and finally got out of bed.
“Yeah, I meant it. Don’t go out today, it’s supposed to rain.”
--
“So, how are you liking being back at work?” Acqua asked. She’d drafted Agni, on his first day back from his forced vacation, to help her in her never-ending quest to sort everything in the basement, now made more urgent by the fact that within the month Mneme was expected to start work replacing old boards and joists for the first floor. Naturally, she’d obsessed over the bruising and remaining wounds from the heist for about a half-hour, then they’d gotten to work, but that wasn’t the point.
“Oh, I’m just so happy I could die,” Agni groused, the expression on his face unrelated to the day-glo yellow sweater in his hand, one he made the executive decision to throw into the ‘no way in hell we could sell this’ pile. Acqua knew Agni would rather not be a thief, not be working in the shop every day of the week that he didn’t have a heist, but she also knew that life was too expensive to not work, not with how things were. “The one good thing that came out of this hell was that Mneme said I could live with him, and the merits of that are debatable.”
Acqua tilted her head, even as she threw a moth-eaten brown sweater over her shoulder into the ‘we couldn’t even give this away’ pile. “But I thought you liked Mneme.”
“I do.” Agni sighed, folding another sweater and setting atop a pile of things he thought they could sell. “I really do. And I’m glad I’m not going to be bringing trouble to you and Ray anymore, but now I have to worry for him.”
Acqua sighed, and got to her feet. Big sis needed to chill, and maybe eat something. As she headed for the stairs, she rested her hand on Agni’s shoulder, smiling down at him. “Come on, big sis. He’s tough. He can take care of himself- I know you wouldn’t fall for some wuss of a guy!” Agni stared up at the blue-eyed girl, before breaking into a nervous smile himself.
“Yeah. I sure hope I wouldn’t.” And secretly, he certainly hoped Mneme would be able to take care of himself if they decided to come for him.
Series: Original
Genre: Humor/Romance/Drama/Mystery
Pairing(s): None for now
Rating/Warnings: T for language, violence, and theft.
Summary: So say you're a 20-year-old guy who has a flirtatious current roommate who wants to take you out. Why not take him up on it?
Notes: I know I said I was reworking Treasure. Well, here, have the fruits of that reworking, liberally helped by NaNoWriMo 2010. The chapters I'm posting here are unbeta'd, but should be free of plot holes- I can't shut my inner editor away, apparently she's an amature lock picker. If anyone feels up to the monumental task of reading my fail here, feel free to message me or something, or provide concrit in a comment. I want to improve this.
It was a job done, if not well then at least passably. Agni hadn’t had a room to clean, hadn’t had stuff beyond clothes to clean, in so long, he’d almost forgotten all the little trivialities of the job, like dusting under the coffee pot or scrubbing the ashes from the old gas stove that obviously only worked as a grill at this point. He wasn’t entirely sure how Mneme lived like this, really, but he would just have to deal with it for a few more days. The scrapes on his arm and leg were healing nicely, though the bruising was pretty severe. Still, he mused as he checked the remaining damage in the bathroom mirror self-consciously, at least they were so dark his tattoo was hard to discern. He finished re-bandaging the arm and carted the clothes he’d just washed in the old bathtub to the back garden, several feet of rope strung between a couple of old twisted scraps of rebar to make a clothesline. He’d set this up his second day there.
Agni had to wonder what Mneme had used to dry his clothes before, then decided he probably didn’t want to know. The few trees around the old hovel were shaking pretty rough, and chill was starting to permeate the single room. With a sigh, Agni twisted the tail of his skirt into a knot about his knees, hoisted the old basket up on his hip, and sallied on outside, ignoring the temperature. He had finally gotten some of his own clothes the previous day, and now he could give Mneme his clothes back.
Pity, he rather liked being able to smell his scent without much effort or subterfuge.
He could hear the door slam closed in the front, and edged toward an old chunk of two-by-four he kept nearby when he was outside. Ever since he’d had to chase out other thugs on his first day there, he didn’t trust slamming doors, and this raised the question again of how Mneme lived like this, but that was for another time. “That you, Mneme?” he asked.
“Agni, you out back?” It was his favorite blond guy! Agni untucked the knot, fought to keep the laundry basket stable, and replied.
“Yeah, you’re home early today!” Mneme came outside, and Agni smiled happily. “Welcome home.”
Mneme, for his part, was stunned. It was something he had only seen his mother do, hang laundry on a line. For his part he just hung it over the old shower-curtain rod in front of the old stove he used as a heater in the winter. He never had the time, what with working and trying to stay alive. But here was Agni, outside in his cross-dressed glory, hanging laundry like he was a freaking housewife who wasn’t bruised seven ways to Sunday… The blond rushed over and yanked the laundry basket away over Agni’s protests. “No buts, I told you to take it easy and heal.”
“It’s a goddamn bruise, Mneme, it won’t kill me to do a little work. Besides, I feel bad for freeloading off you. And there was laundry to be done, so DON’T SET THAT IN THE DIRT!” Agni looked ready to have a panic attack, but Mneme just set the basket in the dust and started hauling clothes out to hang up.
“I’m helping. Besides, I got the pay for that job, I thought you might like to go get something to eat, celebrate surviving. And getting Ray to never associate with those people again. Yeah,” he said as Agni stared in shock, a t-shirt hanging from his hands, “I… I got mad. I mean, shit, you could have gotten killed, and getting used to another person, that’d kill me. I’ve got your quirks down now, I know what to keep you away from, and I like having Acqua NOT after my blood.”
Mneme kept hanging clothes while Agni reeled. So did this mean Mneme liked him? Maybe not as much as Agni liked him, but it was a step up from the utter aggression that he’d shown not too long ago! Now maybe if he just kept hanging around… “One thing, though.” Mneme said quietly.
“Yes?”
“Pants. Please, for the love of god, wear. Pants. You can call it what you want so long as you’re not in a skirt or a dress.” Well. Dammit. Agni sighed and got back to work; there went that outfit he’d been planning. “You get to choose this time.”
“Huh?”
“Last time.” Those glorious mismatched eyes stared at him as if he were crazy. “Tabletop barbeque. I chose then, you choose now.”
Agni started; how had he forgotten that one? “Oh! Uhm… I think there’s this really nice place a little further uptown. A half-mile from Ray’s. They serve seafood, I think. You’re not allergic to shrimp, are you?”
“I don’t think so…” Mneme said. He couldn’t remember if he’d ever actually had shrimp; even though fishing was a viable industry in the town, it didn’t make the prices go down any. Even run-of-the-mill catfish was precious, and as for shrimp, forget it. “I mean, I’ve eaten crab once, and it didn’t do anything… they’re in the same family, right?”
“When did you get hold of crab… you know what, never mind, yes, they’re in the same family, let’s have shrimp tonight. They sell it on the cheap.” Agni laughed, and kept working, sending Mneme trotting back inside with the basket once it was emptied. He needed to do a mini victory dance. Alone.
--
Mneme was not only not allergic to shrimp, he was downright addicted to them. If Agni hadn’t known the owner of the little bar, Mneme’s entire paycheck for the smuggling job would have been gone down his gullet. As it was Agni was paying for the drinks (he’d insisted, after seeing how fast Mneme shoveled the shellfish into his mouth after that initial try), so he figured he could at least have as much as he wanted. That had been about eight that night.
It was now eleven, and Agni was, for lack of better word, shitfaced.
“A-aaaan’ aaaaall this time, I-I-I’d been thinkin’ ya hated me for some reason!” the redhead slurred, leaning heavily on Mneme and nuzzling his arm. Mneme fought back a laugh- he hadn’t known that Agni was going to get so messed up, but he was glad he’d made him wear pants, otherwise the entirety of the back of the bar would be able to see that no matter how girly he looked, he was indeed a male. “Whu’sso funny?”
“You’re drunk.” Mneme said, unable to keep from at least smiling; he’d had a few drinks himself, but to see Agni like this, it was starting to get hilarious. “Totally completely drunk.”
“Well, I h’ven’t been to play in a while, I’ve been bein’ a good househu-husb’nd an’ keepin’ folks outta your home an’ cleanin’ and keepin’ my head down. Can’t I g’t jus’ a li’l drunk?” It was hard to say no to that face, pink and pouty and pretty in a delicate way. Mneme just waved their waiter over and paid the bill, even sliding the right amount for the drinks onto the table and putting the rest back in Agni’s pocket (that got a giggle, a bright blush, and a furious explanation from the blond that no matter what he thought, no, Agni, he was not trying to be a perv) before he hoisted the redhead to his shoulder and walked from the restaurant. It was a long trip back, but Agni wasn’t one to keep silent, talking about any and everything on his mind at the moment. Mneme needed to file this knowledge away, and was trying to do so (alcohol didn’t help him think any at all, it seemed), when Agni spoke up quietly.
“Hey, Mneme?”
“Yeah, Agni?”
“Could I stay with you?” One eyebrow shot straight to his hairline, and Mneme almost stopped walking.
“You already are, remember?”
“No, I mean for longer. Like for always. I like your place,” he muttered quietly, “it’s quiet, and easy to keep clean, and I don’t mind the work, really. I like it better than stealing.” The arm around his waist tightened, less of Agni’s need to keep steady on his feet and more of a need to keep steady in his resolve. “At least doing this I don’t have to worry about someone trying to shoot me up with something… or just shoot me.”
“You… are officially nuts. How the hell do you feel safe in the ghetto?” Mneme laughed, even as Agni buried his head into his shoulder. “…fine. Sure. You can stay as long as you like.” It was quiet for a bit, and if Agni hadn’t been pulling his weight (or as much of it as his drunken legs could hold), Mneme would have thought he was asleep. It wasn’t until they crossed the threshold of the building and Agni immediately started stripping that Mneme figured out that he wasn’t quite asleep yet, but before he could work himself into a proper panic over this and how in the hell he was going to sleep by Agni if the man got naked, the redhead fell over asleep on the floor, down to his button up shirt and underwear.
Well, that made it a little less awkward at least. Sighing, leaving the clothes on the floor (he’d wash them himself if necessary, but it was too late for this kind of crap), he picked Agni up and set him on the bed, the man’s tiny, slender frame automatically snuggling into the relative comfort of the old mattress. When the opposite side dipped under Mneme’s weight, Agni rolled over with it, curling into the warmth and latching on like a leech. Mneme made a note to himself to never let his partner-in-crime get this drunk again; now there was no cure for it but sleep.
--
Every bone in Agni’s body hurt, it seemed. His head was pounding, and he vaguely remembered some kind of shellfish dinner last night. And if there had been shellfish, then he’d have been all up in the liquor. There was a tang in his mouth, the bite of lime, and he groaned. How much had he blown on beer? The warm something against him stirred, and Agni realized with a start that it was Mneme, rolling over and waking up to get ready for work.
And here he was in pretty much nothing.
Mneme rolled his eyes as Agni pulled the blanket over himself as if he were trying to hide. “Please, like you’ve got anything I haven’t seen before. What’s your problem?”
“We didn’t… you didn’t… I wasn’t… did we?” Agni couldn’t even get the question fully out, but Mneme understood the connotation well enough.
“We didn’t do anything, you passed out while you were stripping.” Agni looked mildly stunned. “Promise.”
“So… absolutely nothing?”
“Absolutely nothing.” Mneme said, swinging his legs out of the bed. He’d just pretend he hadn’t heard that snap from behind him. Just the floorboards. Yep. Agni’s muffled voice sounded behind him.
“But I can stay here, right? You promised.” Mneme’s head whipped around, his blue eye staring at Agni over his shoulder. “You said I could stay as long as I liked.” Well, he’d been considering denying that he ever said such a thing, but Agni looked rather pathetic. So he sighed, turned his head back forward, and finally got out of bed.
“Yeah, I meant it. Don’t go out today, it’s supposed to rain.”
--
“So, how are you liking being back at work?” Acqua asked. She’d drafted Agni, on his first day back from his forced vacation, to help her in her never-ending quest to sort everything in the basement, now made more urgent by the fact that within the month Mneme was expected to start work replacing old boards and joists for the first floor. Naturally, she’d obsessed over the bruising and remaining wounds from the heist for about a half-hour, then they’d gotten to work, but that wasn’t the point.
“Oh, I’m just so happy I could die,” Agni groused, the expression on his face unrelated to the day-glo yellow sweater in his hand, one he made the executive decision to throw into the ‘no way in hell we could sell this’ pile. Acqua knew Agni would rather not be a thief, not be working in the shop every day of the week that he didn’t have a heist, but she also knew that life was too expensive to not work, not with how things were. “The one good thing that came out of this hell was that Mneme said I could live with him, and the merits of that are debatable.”
Acqua tilted her head, even as she threw a moth-eaten brown sweater over her shoulder into the ‘we couldn’t even give this away’ pile. “But I thought you liked Mneme.”
“I do.” Agni sighed, folding another sweater and setting atop a pile of things he thought they could sell. “I really do. And I’m glad I’m not going to be bringing trouble to you and Ray anymore, but now I have to worry for him.”
Acqua sighed, and got to her feet. Big sis needed to chill, and maybe eat something. As she headed for the stairs, she rested her hand on Agni’s shoulder, smiling down at him. “Come on, big sis. He’s tough. He can take care of himself- I know you wouldn’t fall for some wuss of a guy!” Agni stared up at the blue-eyed girl, before breaking into a nervous smile himself.
“Yeah. I sure hope I wouldn’t.” And secretly, he certainly hoped Mneme would be able to take care of himself if they decided to come for him.