[closed] job or no job, you can't tell me that i'm not;
WHO: Badou Nails (smokesplz) and Heine Rammsteiner (cerberus_cortex) AKA the BFFs4EVA.
WHAT: Badou needs picking up.
WHERE: Dooocks.
WHEN: Now~
( let me tell you a secret~ )
WHAT: Badou needs picking up.
WHERE: Dooocks.
WHEN: Now~
( let me tell you a secret~ )
All right, well, in truth happy was a bit of an overstatement. But it was sort of a relief to know that Badou was in the city. After all, Heine hadn't really found a lot here he cared to do here so far. Aside from a curiosity about the circumstances of his previous "death" (not so much the idea that he'd had one as the idea that he did not, in fact, remember it), and the passing suggestion that he investigate with the help of some other red-haired guy who wore an eye patch, Heine had been a bit adrift.
He just didn't have anyone to talk to here. Or, more to the point, to not talk to in just that sort of way that you didn't talk when you had more important things to do, like shoot at crap, or eat lunch, or just fucking sit in silence and you both damn well knew it. Anyway, the point was that if Heine was going to not talk to someone, he would rather it be Badou than some other red-haired eye patch guy.
Under the current circumstances, though, it was possible that they were actually going to need to do a fair bit of talking, just to make some sense of what the hell was going on.
Coming down to the docks from the boardwalk, Heine saw the telltale red of Badou's hair before he even got close, and he could tell from his posture and the lack of a smoke trail that his fuse must be burning dangerously short. He made a mental note of that fact as he stepped up to interrupt the glaring contest that was brewing between Badou and one of the guards. "You planning to just stand here by the ships all day?" he asked neutrally. "Doubt they're gonna let you back on."
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Just on the edge of everything, Heine was just what Badou needed. A bit of cool bastardly Heine to calm his fire or something just as corny and gay, but it was okay. On this damned island, with all of these really honest to god strange people and then Badou. And Heine. Not a lot made much sense at all right now, but that little bit of clarity and familiarity went a damn long way in keeping Badou from flying off his handle.
So he kept grinning like a loon, probably the first time he had in a long while without a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. "So, you wanna tell me about the doublemint twins and this Giovanni or what?"
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But he only paused his steps for a second, slowing long enough to allow Badou the opportunity to fall into instep beside him, and then turned them in the direction of the market district. He didn't need to ask (and assumed that Badou wouldn't need to either) about where they needed to go first: there had to be cigarettes, or at least tobacco, somewhere in this city. He'd seen people writing about it in the journals-some spice shop or something, wasn't it? Whatever. Place wasn't that big, they were bound to find it eventually. Could tour the fallout of the bombings while they did.
"You got that this place is fucking weird, right?" he said casually, before answering Badou's question, because however you cut it, the answer was going to sound bizarre and he wanted Badou to know that he knew that. "The twins, Luki and Noki, or whatever. You and I fought them. Along with that Naoto woman, she was with us too. They showed up right after we started that party with our piggy-faced friends. I remember all that shit, and stuff that happened after it too, like going back to the church and… Well, look, I don't know why you can't remember it but it seems to happen here. I don't think the Priest remembers everything that I do either."
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He knew something wasn't right, saw it in the stupidly casual way Heine was talking, turned and fixed him with a stare, anxious and unsettled. "And Giovanni? He anything special?" he said, shoving his hands into the pockets of his canvas jacket and absently felt around for any loose smokes, put away for a rainy day or some shit, not that he ever really concerned himself with anything but the present, coming up with gold, digging the cigarette out from the depths of his pocket and lighting it in a smooth movement before he muttered, "Found one," around it as he took a drag.
He remembered Naoto, the kinda scary hot chick that followed them outta Grannie's place right into a battlefield, but mostly, he remembered jumping out behind that pillar after Heine's seriously disturbing wink. Then, here. Shit.
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Giovanni. Well, that was harder. Especially with Badou looking at him like that, like he wanted an actual answer.
Heine watched him light the slightly battered cigarette and waited till he'd taken a good long drag off of it, almost as though the nicotine could be a balm on his own tension by proxy. "No," he said, avoiding Badou's eyes with a discomfort he couldn't quite hide. And then, "He's like me," which he knew was actually a pretty blatant contradiction of not being special.
There was a beat before he added, "And the Priest."
He wasn't even sure why he said it like that. He just turned as though to just keep on walking, as though he hadn't dropped what was probably the biggest bombshell he had right in Badou's lap with all the nonchalance of a delivery boy tossing the morning newspaper onto the front stoop. Maybe even talking about the Priest and who he really was-something that no one else even knew that Heine knew-was still easier than trying to explain Giovanni. Heine wasn't even sure he could explain Giovanni to himself right now.
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