masanari | [Futurelandia] An Eventful Valentines and beyond (happy new year)

But you don't want it enough to be okay with the way things are right now, do you?

[There's Masaomi and Yamato, there's the fact that she isn't ever leaving that house unless Masaomi does - even Yamato is going to one day realize that she isn't meant to leave permanently. But that's a problem which has taken a new shape with her brother.]

I already told you that I can't be without Masaomi, and that hasn't changed.

[So they're back at a familiar impasse: Is he going to insist that she somehow leave the family she's built up for twenty years, or will he learn to adjust the way she had to in October?]

[ She's the one asking to stay the night, she's the one who designed this house's interior decoration to her specifications - she's the reason he's literally got a fucking picket fence. This was her dream house, he always knew it was - some modest thing she could live with her husband in who cherished her in suburbia. What else is he supposed to understand from those signals? How else can he interpret it?

And yet.

She was happy, but she was also unhappy. She had been and seemed so unhappy there for a spell, even if he had supported Masaomi in the end. He groans, and he runs his hand down his face again, tugging at the beard on the end of it. He really, really needs to shave. ]

Nariko.. [ He whines that out, childishly. ] Don't put words in my mouth, come on.

[If that's what he's taken from all of this then he really is looking way, way too into it. Did she like this house? Of course? Did she have fun decorating it? Absolutely. Did she still feel vaguely exasperated that neither of her mates would ever be satisfied with that kind of life? Only in passing, and mostly just for laughs. That's really all there is to it.

And he does need to shave it's a shame to hide his face under all that. Besides, there are only two men with beards she's appreciated and one of them is Joshua. The other one is running a dojo.]

I don't think I put anything in there, you pretty much spouted it yourself.

[So now he has to deal with it, and she's too old to coddle him, so he'll have to eventually get to the root of this.]

[ Wow mom, come on.

.. Nariko is his sister. Nariko was also his mother. His first love. His most beloved. His idol, his standard. She's so, so many things, and he can't just...

he exhales hard. ]

I wanted to meet your family, and to have a real family... I didn't know what to expect going in, even after meeting that mate of yours, but the whole thing is really different. I don't even know how you adapted. But you did change a lot, so... it's impressive.

[All of that is incredibly nice to hear, but it doesn't tell her what they're going to do about each other, about the state he's in. She considers remaining quiet for a bit and then finally decides to go with:]

I don't know how I did either, except that I loved everyone involved more than I feared changing, I guess.

[None of it was easy, and she still doesn't know if she's handling everything with Yamato and Masaomi right, but, still.]

Yeah, I can tell. Because that's the biggest change, really - you've always loved really strongly when you allowed yourself to, but right now you're being loved so much that it's changed how you do it. It's a lot more natural now, and I think... it looks a little less painful for you now.

[ If he's honest, he's almost jealous.

He's looking at her now, but he's looking through her a little, trying to see himself. ]

[... Should she push him? Or let him keep mulling? It's hard to know what the right decision is.]

It's a lot less painful.

[But confusion isn't often painful, so there you go.] It probably wouldn't hurt at all if you would let me love you.

[Man, let's hope she doesn't fuck this up.]

[ . . . ]

You don't already, Nariko?

[ Or did love morph int a euphemism somewhere in there. He meant it sincerely. ]

Of course I do.

[More than she could find words to tell him, because he's her brother but he was far more than that, too.]

I love you enough to figure out how to put it all together, even though it will probably be awkward and difficult.

[Especially since Masaomi validly worries about leaving her alone with him. If this becomes a real thing they're definitely going to have to talk about those pills, but that's a little farther ahead.]

[ But Mom---

Not really though. The man sighs, hanging his head again and knowing he's letting out too much scent now. He can't evn hold it, particularly after being told that he -- apparently!! -- never even fucking had to in the first place. The man groans, and he shakes his head, looking down at the the little coffee table between them. He should have sat on the couch next to her. But no, that would be awkward. ]

I always wanted to be more mature and be helpful to you or more together or something. But I've really never, never been able to.

[ Including now, he means.

Ugh. ]

[He doesn't have to hold back anything but she certainly does. There's no sense in reacting until he can give her a concrete, defined answer, so no matter where he sits she's going to stay where she is and keep one leg folded over the other.]

It's not as if you needed to be. [She was, by nature, an incredibly dominating person without someone reigning her in consciously or subconsciously.] If you want to be, then that's up to you.

[What else can she say? He's old enough to be what he wants, after all.]

If only. I'm still not sure it's really in my nature, because I still use those fucking pills and they still make me feel special. Sure it's a better supplier, a better model of them, but it's not like that wasn't the kink Irina and I were using all the time and it felt good.

[ And yet. ]

I'm so glad to have a family I wanted a family I still do want a family.

[ That was so incoherent and he knows it. He puts his face in his hands, because right now he's both pitying himself and justifying himself. Really, he's making a mess of it - nowhere near the controlled sort of person he wanted to be in the first place and could present himself as being at the best of times. It's true that Nariko might have pushed him away, but it's not like he wouldn't have imploded even if she didn't. He was something now, even if he didn't feel like it sometimes.

But then, he was conditioned to think all he could do was fail. He was raised that way, after all. ]

[This is incredibly incoherent so, again, she doesn't really know what to say. Of course some of it has to do with the mention of those pills and the fact that she doesn't know how to deal with that at all. It's even more difficult to wrap her head around the fact that Irina was apparently perfectly fine with taking it for him.]

You know if there's some reason you can't have a family then it's completely beyond me.

[At this point she's just saying the first thing that comes to mind, otherwise she's going to sit here and be confused, and go back to thinking that he was wrong, and there was no way that he could or should have any sort of interest in her.]

[ He...

He needs to stop. He inhales deep, through his mouth, trying to prevent his lungs from failing on him as he scrambles to make sense of the world. The man is way, way too old for this, and they both know it. He runs his hand once more down his face and finally... ]

Especially because you're here and your family just walked out. I'm not sure I'm cut out to serve under Masaomi but I want to be a part of your life and the lives of the three kids and even him too so... so yeah, there's no reason. So -

[ . . . ] I don't want to hurt that.

[Well, that's easier ground to stand on, if nothing else.]

I wouldn't let anything hurt it to begin with. [Now that things are evened out, now that they all know where they each stand, for as strange as it is? Nariko won't let go of it, and that's something to pay for much later on.]

There's a way to make it work without anyone suffering or feeling uncomfortable. There are parts that will take time, but it's nothing compared to being separated for over a decade.

[Masaomi really does have to feel comfortable with Nathan, after all, Nariko wouldn't ask him to suck that up, so Nathan would have to face that one way or another, but -]

[ . . . But all the same, he can't - he can't say that he's innocent in all this. He can't say that he was someone who looked at things in a way which was right by most people's standard. But maybe it was normal for them. Nathan hangs his head and... ]

I love you, Nariko. I don't think I love you right.

[ But was that just their Mother's Right? After all... ] and I'm looking forward to fitting in here.

It's not really a question of whether it's right or not.

[But he wanted to fit in here. He wanted to have some working relationship with Masaomi. It wasn't ... Right of her to end up sabotaging that. She rubs the back of her neck, finds the strength to get up from the couch to walk over to him and lift his hand, pushing his hair out of the way so she could kiss his forehead. It's an incredibly old gesture, something she'd done to him since the very day he was born.]

I love you, too, but stop worrying about it for now. It's enough for you to be here.

[In the end, it seems like the original decision was the right one, albeit for completely different reasons, so what's the use in going around in circles about it?]

[ Nathan feels ashamed to have brought them to this point. What did they intend to do in the first place...? He doesn't know. But he knows that he looks up and is wide-eyed as he feels her pressing her lips to his forehead. And he reaches out now to brush his hands over th back of his neck, running his hands through her hair, gently, coaxing --

He wants to ...

He wants a lot. ]

It's... true. [ . . . ] I guess it really doesn't matter right now.

[If two people loved each other and were as incredibly incapable of letting go of one another as both she and Nathan were then it stood to reason that something might happen, right? Or, in the end, it was probably just what she had wanted even if she couldn't quite voice it out loud. In December it had seemed like the issue was her family, but apparently she'd gotten that wrong. Or something.

Who knows, man, she's literally upset at not being able to bang her own little brother so, really, this is not a Sanity Parade in the least. Especially not when hearing him agree nearly kills her.]

Well, come on. We were here all day but we didn't get much of your room set up for obvious reasons.

[It's still rather early but Nathan's been a mess since he got here so of course she figures he just needs to sleep. Tomorrow they'll go back to pretending nothing meaningful at all was said.]

[ So did she...?

Did he?

That said, he does stand, maybe even leaning on her a little as he does, because being lead to his room does seem like the right thing to do now. It didn't matter about their histories or whatever things both of them were hung up now, right? They just needed to connect and they needed to reconnect and they needed to figure out what they meant to each other in light of her family and this new world he had entered into.

He was a mess.

He still wanted to shove those pills in his bathroom down her throat. But he knows that wouldn't produce the reality he wants, it wouldn't be the loving embrace... ]

Yeah, let's use it.

[ And he sounds ... a little excited. ]

[She doesn't think anything of being leaned on, though his apparent excitement about getting his bed set up is a little weird. Nariko doesn't question it too much since she'd probably sooner throw half her closet at Masaomi before he was allowed to take her pillow. People have little oddities about them!

Considering that she decorated most of this house it's no real surprise that she knows which room is his, or that she knows which box has the sheets in them, either.]

... I don't even know what your favorite color is anymore.

[But she'd picked a blue and white set all the same, one thousand thread count sheets, pillows covers, a matching comforter - the whole thing.] Well, you can always change it if you want to. The guest rooms are kind of similar, just different colors.

[And since she'd be sleeping over that would need arranging too, but one step at a time.]

[ His favorite color, huh? Well, that's of course something more like, ] It's blue, still. It's pretty much always been blue, of course.

[ That said...

Once they're in the room, he looks hard at her, and then he shifts his position to be up in front of her. Once they're face to face, he doesn't hesitate - he brushes back some of her hair and leans forward to lock lips with her. He's not really thinking right now, and in all honesty he was barely even listening to her. He just was doing, following the deep instinct that he wanted to follow. His scent was already going nuts and if it didn't matter-

He loved her. ]

Mm.

[But people changed, right? It was only natural for some stuff to move around as you got older and saw more of the world - that went doubly for Nathan because, as he'd said, he had seen far more of the world at large than her. She looked up at him when he came near her, overwhelming her with his scent and ... Well, apparently also kissing her.

Didn't she just tell him not to worry about this? To not deal with it? And now he was - he -- ... Fuck it. Nariko let get of herself and weathered through the vague scent of repression until her own scent rang clear, she put her arms around and kissed him back, pressing in so close that she might force him to stumble.

Seriously, fuck all the logic of it, this was so, so much easier.]

[ He is forced to stumble - he's pulled in by her scent and more than a little bit addicted to it. He shoots his own out, trying to answer her as he rings true. His lips part a bit, and he works his tongue out. He leans further in, running his hands down her sides and up into her hair. She feels so soft against him - she feels so warm against him-

Fuck.

Fuck he wants to feel her ]

[There's nothing stopping him now!

Apparently they're just going to do whatever they want and go for it and that feels perfectly fine, so they might as well go all in here. It's the combination of the events, the history, as well as good old fashioned hormones that make her feel more desperate than she might usually be, her lips part and their tongues meet, and she gets a hand up his shirt and along his spine, just so she has some way to feel him and know it's not a pregnant-lust induced dream.]

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