Kung Jin read about that. (houseofkung) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2015-06-21 12:56:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, kung jin, kyu sugardust, yue katou |
Who: Kung Jin, Katou, Kyu.
When: Saturday, 05/23.
Where: The club where Jin works / dive bar.
What: Katou gets introduced to Jin.
Warnings/Rating: PG-13 for swearing.
Status: Complete!
Katou didn’t want to admit that he was nervous, but, well, he was a little nervous. Not just to meet this supposedly hot bouncer, but the fact that he was meeting some dude, and what if someone saw him? Not that he was intending to do anything gay in public or something like that, but… well, it was weird. It was really weird, and he was beginning to wonder why he had decided to go along with this in the first place - not just go along with it, but practically initiate it.
He had decided to wear the sleeveless black-leather zip-up vest he had received from his dreams not long ago. For one, he looked pretty damn hot in it, if he did say so himself (not that he was trying to look hot or anything. Really), and for another all of his t-shirts had holes or stains or both. His pretty much exclusively wore a pair of tight, low-rise men’s jeans, but he made sure to pick the ones that had the least tears in them - only one of the knees had a hole in it. To complete his look, he had his Doc Marten’s combat boots. He waited a little down the block from the club Kyu had told him to meet her at, leaning against the wall and smoking a cigarette, certain that if she came from the other direction he’d probably be able to see her bright pink hair from a mile away.
Her bright pink hair was subtly glittery from flying earlier. Apparently love fairies were oath bound to be sparkly? Whatever. Kyu rounded the corner in a nearly obscenely short dress and heels, waving and running over to him. “Oh, holy shit, you look amazing!”
Katou blushed a little bit, and hoped it would be dark enough that she wouldn’t notice. Then he cleared his throat. “Well, the Dreams finally decided to give me some clothes I’d actually wear.” The vest had come with leather pants and fingerless gloves too, but he figured it was probably too hot to wear either of those. “You’re very… sparkly,” he said. “Looks good though.” He snuffed the cigarette off on the bottom of his boots, and then put the half-smoked butt back in his cigarette pack. He offered her his arm, because why the hell not, he could be fucking classy if he wanted to be. “Shall we?”
“Can’t help it, the wings do it whenever I fly. I’m like a strip club all over, I swear.” She shrugged and took his arm, appreciating that he seemed to be in good health. After his planned sickness, she’d worried about him, but knew he wasn’t the sort to appreciate being fussed after. Kyu might not have been the smartest person in the world in terms of books, but she knew people.
As the walked toward the club, she nodded at a tall, well-built guy in a white t-shirt and jeans at the door. “That’s him, his name’s Jin.”
Okay, wow. He hadn’t actually expected the bouncer to be so incredibly attractive. His mouth went a little bit dry, which didn’t make much sense because he never felt nervous when he was picking up ladies. Granted, he normally picked up girls on the basis of ‘who can I have sex with without putting in any effort’ or ‘this chick is dating my friend so I should probably go for it’ as opposed to ‘wow, that chick is hot,’ but still.
He thought he did a pretty good job at keeping his nervousness off his face at least. “Well, I guess we might as well get this over with,” he said, in a nonchalant kind of voice. “S’up?” he said, giving Jin a bit of a nod once the two of them got closer.
Jin smiled wanly as he looked over their IDs, smiling and wrapping wristbands around both of their wrists. “Have fun, you two. But not too much - oh, hey, Kyu.” Clearly, they’d hung out before.
Kyu smiled sweetly, detaching herself from Katou. “I’ll go get us sodas!”
Katou watched her go with an almost panicked look on his face, and wondered what good sodas would do, because what he needed right now was whiskey, and probably a lot of it.
“Uh. So. You know Kyu, huh?” Katou said, moving to the side so that he wasn’t in the way of anyone else coming into the club.
Jin looked at Katou, someone he was a bit taller than, and grinned. “Yeah. Kept a guy from perving on her the first time she came here. She’s a good girl, even though the bartender’s going to get fired for giving her booze. How do you know her?” Jin figured he’d pretend that he didn’t know he was being set up.
“We work together,” Katou said, and then after a brief pause he corrected himself with “worked.” He might not have officially given up on dealing yet, but he wasn’t planning on picking up again after he was out of product. It seemed a little counterintuitive to continue doing that line of work when he was trying to get clean. “You work here long?” It really wasn’t one of the places Katou ever frequented - he prefered places that didn’t have bouncers, both because of the fact that he was underage and because of his proclivity toward starting fights (which, now that he thought about it, wasn’t something he had really done in sometime, mostly because Wendy worried after him when he came home with a busted up face, and it felt weird having someone worrying about him. It wasn’t a feeling he particularly enjoyed).
“A while, yeah. Funny thing is that I really hate places like this.” Jin looked down at the guy and smiled. “You know she’s trying to set us up, right?” He figured he’d let the guy know that he was in on it, just so he didn’t feel tricked or forced.”
“You hate bars in general, or just ones like this?” Katou asked. Loud, annoying bars filled bar-stars, douchebags, and terrible music Katou could probably do without. At the mention of them being set up, Katou rubbed the side of his neck. “Yeah, I know,” he muttered. “I uh… don’t really do this sorta thing often,” ever, “though.”
“Just ones like this. I just sort of prefer quiet places in general.” Jin smiled at Katou, chuckling at the blushing. “Me either. I’m not in the closet, per se, but I don’t feel the need to tell everyone I meet who I’m attracted to.” Well. He wasn’t in the closet to anyone but his parents, but stages. Baby steps toward the terrifying thing.
Katou wasn’t even really sure if he could consider himself in the closet. Maybe just recently walked into it. “I uh… just kinda admitted it to myself not long ago,” he muttered. “Let alone anyone else. Kyu’s got this…” he paused, pretty sure saying ‘magical gaydar’ was going to make him sound insane. “She just kinda sussed it out on her own,” he amended.
“That girl’s the nosiest person I’ve ever met, but somehow she makes it cute,” Jin mused aloud. He smiled at Katou, then looked down at his watch. “Well, my shift just ended, wanna go get a beer somewhere else?”
“Kyu’s a good kid,” Katou said, despite the fact that she was older than he was. “Oh fuck yes,” Katou said, in reference to going someplace else. “Anywhere in mind? I’ve got a few regular joints, but they’re kinda shitholes.” Katou didn’t mind shitholes, in fact, he kind of prefered them - he had lived in an old abandoned warehouse for two years after all - but he knew that other people generally didn’t.
“Shitholes are fine,” Jin grinned. “Let me just grab my jacket from inside.” He ducked into the club for a moment and then reemerged wearing a battered leather jacket. “Okay, set. She probably figured on this sort of thing, huh.”
Katou could never quite understand how leather jackets always managed to make people look hotter than they normally did, even when they had no right to. “I’ll shoot her a text,” Katou said, already halfway through writing one on a shitty flip phone which had the battery hanging in with a strip of duct tape along the back. were taking off. stay safe, call me if you need me. He wasn’t normally the worrying type, but, well, it had been kind of dangerous lately, and he considered Kyu a friend.
The place Katou started walking toward wasn’t his regular dive bar, but it was one that he had gone to a couple of times before. He didn’t drive, so he usually made sure the places he intended to go were easy to walk to. Maybe now that he was turning his life around he should consider getting his motorcycle license. “So whaddya do for fun?” Katou asked.
Jin liked how considerate Katou was, and that got him points in his favor. “For fun? Read, mostly. I’m going to school soon to get my degree in being a librarian. Yes, you need a degree for that.” He smiled at Katou and shrugged. “I’m kind of a homebody. Netflix is my best friend. What about you?”
Well, no one had ever thought Katou was considerate before, that was for sure. “I dunno,” Katou said, shrugging. “I’m uh… kinda going through a couplea big life changes at the moment? What I used to do for fun isn’t really… something I’m planning on doing anymore, so I don’t really know what there is to do. I don’t tend to read much though. The last little bit I’ve been doing a lot of studying and practicing my guitar and shit.” Not that studying was fun. It was probably the furthest thing from ‘fun’ that Katou had ever forced himself to do. “What on earth do you need a degree to be a librarian for? Isn’t it just like… knowing how to put shit away alphabetically and kicking people off the computers?”
“What do you study? And it’s more about managing a library in a business sense, I think. How to manage the various programs and things. If it was just knowing the Dewey decimal system, I could already do it.” Jin smiled lopsidedly. “I tried to play guitar when I was a kid. I kind of suck at things that aren’t reading or hitting people. Or archery.”
“The usual stuff,” Katou said, shrugging. “History and math and English and shit. It’s all real boring.” He imagined learning about how to run the business side of a library wouldn’t exactly be riveting either. “I’m pretty good at hitting people too. Guitar ain’t so hard if you wanna learn it. Hell, I figured it out. Though I guess I play punk music. You don’t actually need to know how to play anything to play punk music.” He grinned to show that he was joking, though there was some truth to his words. “And archery, huh? As far as old weapons go, you can’t go wrong with a sword.”
“Eh, I don’t know, I never wanted to learn about how to use those. I was pretty much raised in martial arts, and my older brothers both went sword, so maybe it’s why I didn’t.” Jin blinked. “Do you know how to use a sword?” Had Kyu mentioned that Jin had weird dreams and was now way better at the punching and shooting?
“Really?” Katou asked. “That sounds pretty cool. I never had no formal training for fighting, but I think I can hold my own. I’ve never really used a sword but…” He frowned. “Uh… do you Dream?” he asked. “I mean, not like, normal dreams,” because whenever someone asked him that before he started Dreaming, he was always pretty confused, “but like… dreams from another life?”
“Yeah, I do.” Jin breathed a little more easily. “I was scared you wouldn’t. Why, what are yours like?”
Katou couldn't help but laugh at the question, because he wasn't entirely sure how to describe them. "I dunno, I like 'em for the most part. They're pretty intense and weird, and I've died four times. The first time I got cut down by this real big sword. And then I got sucked into this war between Heaven and Hell? I mean, the war's just brewing, it ain't started yet. But a ton of the angels and shit have swords too, and I've got this cross rod that I kinda use like one. They're pretty cool. What about yours? Your dreams okay?"
“Yeah, there’s lots of death in mine too. I’m Special Forces, got recruited to go to this other planet called Outworld and do recon. My cousin saved us from being taken over by them once, so I guess the government hopes it’ll run in the family?” Jealousy of Kung Lao wasn’t hard for Jin to come by, even in dreams.
“So you got the whole like, alien invasion thing going on?” Katou asked. “That sounds exciting too.” He wasn’t unfamiliar with the concept of jealousy toward family members, really. “But hey, I bet you’ll do it like, ten times better than your cousin.”
Jin nodded. “Well, thank you. And we do sometimes? Mostly Outworld keeps to Outworld and Earthrealm keeps to Earthrealm, but every now and again some asshole demon is all ‘blah blah interdimensional conquest blah blah’.”
“Oh yes, of course. Interdimensional conquest. Who could not want to be the ruler of multiple dimensions,” Katou snorted. “I mean, it seems like a bit too much work for me. But if you want to be beyond stressed out for the rest of your life, it seems like a great plan.”
They were coming upon the bar now. It definitely looked like a dive bar, complete with a boarded up window and a plywood door. “This is the place,” Katou said. “I mean, it ain’t much, but the booze is cheap and they don’t card.”
“Oh, they were less about ruling and more about slavery and using Earth for the resources.” Jin rolled his eyes. “Like we wouldn’t rebel. No planet ever has just gone ‘oh, you want to enslave us? Sounds great!’ before.”
The bar made Jin chuckle. He liked the lack of pretension - they were serving booze, not there to look fancy. “I’m of age, so the not carding thing isn’t an issue.”
Katou couldn’t help but laugh. “It’s like they’ve never seen a movie before. I’m pretty sure ‘humans will not lie down and take this, and we will surprise everyone’ is the plot of every sci-fi and fantasy movie out there.” There was a pause. “Wait, do your dreams have movies and shit?”
Katou’s strong suite really wasn’t romantic first date locations, which might be one of the reasons he had never kept a girlfriend for more than a month (well, that and the fact that he was gay). But when he really thought about it, there was no need to make an extra good impression with anyone. He’d act like himself, and if they didn’t like it then he knew not to waste his time with them. What was the point in acting like someone who he wasn’t when he first met someone, and that included going to the diviest dive bars. He would, however, buy the first round because why the hell not. “Whaddya want?”
“Yes, we have movies and shit. One of my COs is an ex-movie star, actually.” Jin ambled toward the bar, moving to tie his hair back with an elastic he’d found in his coat pocket. “Just a beer, thanks.” Jin wasn’t really a heavy drinker, but he liked a cold one as much as the next guy. And hell, Katou was turning out to be a fun person to hang out with. If sparks didn’t fly (which Jin didn’t think was a thing that happened anyway, not outside of movies), he had a new friend. He could always use those.
Katou ordered the drinks - a beer for Jin and a glass of whiskey for himself. “That’s neat. My dreams … had movies in them. When I was on Earth. I don’t think there’s TVs in Heaven or Hell though. Definitely ain’t seen none.” Not that he was looking too hard. Katou was growing to like this Jin guy. For one, he was pretty fucking hot if Katou had to admit to something like that. And for another he wasn’t campy as hell, which is kind of what Katou expected all gay dudes to be like. Now that he thought about it though, that was a pretty stupid assumption to make given that he wasn’t.
“So weird that you dream of Heaven and Hell just so casually,” Jin chuckled. He sat down on a barstool, tentatively testing it to make sure it could hold him up. Hey, dive bars - he figured he’d better be careful. “Then again, interdimensional soldier here, so I guess not so weird.”
“Yeah, it’s weird. It ain’t nothing I ever really put that much thought into?” Katou said, shrugging. If they existed, well, he’d cross that bridge when he died. Which more or less what happened in his dream world. “But I mean, even if I had put some thought into it, it ain’t really like nothing I would have imagined. Interdimensional soldier is a pretty solid title though.” He grinned. “I’m not sure if any of these dreams are normal. I was talking to this dude who dreams of… shit, what was it again.” Katou paused. It had been so friggin’ bizarre that he thought it would stick in his head better. “His brother was like, this stretchy dog thing? That got bitten by a lumpy thing and was turned into a lumpy zombie werewolf, but got cured by sitting on a ball?”
Jin just blinked. “A... ball. Are you sure that’s not more Freudian than you think?”
Katou choked a little on the sip of whiskey he had just taken (look at him, being a gentleman and not downing the whole thing in a couple of gulps). “I definitely didn’t think of that,” he said. “But that’s kinda hilarious.”
“I’m just saying, sitting on a ball? That’s weird.” Jin grinned, amused that he’d made Katou almost spittake.
“When you say it that way, it seems pretty obvious. I wonder if what’s-his-face made the connection.”
“Hopefully that’ll happen sometime soon,” Jin quipped.
Katou grinned. “Hopefully,” he said. “It’s so fucking weird how some Dreams can be so normal, and others so fucking bizarre.” Katou kind of considered his dreams to be in the fucking bizarre category, though they seemed to make sense more than some of the other one’s he had heard about. At least, he assumed they’d make more sense if he actually paid attention to the things that didn’t immediately affect him and his friends. “Ya don’t ever consider being a special ops dude here?” he asked. He had no idea what kind of training it took to become special ops, but it just seemed like such a dissonance to be a librarian here and a special ops kind of guy in the dreams. Katou wanted to be as much like his dream self as possible.
“I almost miss those weird dreams where I just ate a lot of food and took a nap, or showed up naked to a job interview, or told my fifth grade English teacher he was really handsome.” Jin shrugged off his jacket, shaking his head. “I don’t know, I don’t think I have the skills to do SpecOps things here. In my dreams, they recruited me through the monastery. I was the librarian there too."
"Monasteries have libraries?" Katou asked, feeling first surprised and then a little foolish. He wasn't entirely sure why he was surprised by that, since he guessed monks probably had to do something besides train in martial arts and spend a bunch of time in quiet contemplation like all the martial arts movies showed. He wondered what kind of books they'd have. 'How to Appear Dead in Twelve Easy Steps' or maybe 'So You Came Back As A Cockroach, You Poor Fucker.' He chose to bit his tongue instead of managing to embarrassing himself further though.
“Yeah, I was a Shaolin monk,” Jin smiled. He felt kind of proud of that, even though it wasn’t really him that had done it. It was still pretty awesome. “Reading’s part of the training, working out both the mind and the body. It’s kind of weird, though, since I’m a fan of old school kung fu movies.”
"No shit?" Katou grinned. "That's fucking badass. I wish I dreamed of being an interdimensional special ops Shaolin Monk. I think your dreams might beat out mine for 'coolest dreams ever.'" That sounded like it could be the greatest movie of all time. That, or terrible yet hilarious. "Old school Kung Fu movies are pretty great. You ever seen Drunken Master?"
Jin chuckled and nodded. “Yeah, that one’s amazing. I’m also really fond of Duel to the Death. Weird, but amazing.” Jin happened to be a smartass who appreciated off the wall things. “Maybe someday another dimension will open up here, or something, and I can introduce you to the creepy things I read about being in Outworld. Haven’t gone yet in my dreams, but the books make it sound awful.”
“Duel to the Death?” Katou asked. “I don’t think I’ve seen that one. And you know, I really wouldn’t be surprised if some other dimension opened up here to Outworld.” Katou was actually pretty sure that there was nothing that could surprise him anymore. “Maybe we get together and watch some old kung fu movies until it happens.”
“Yeah, that’d be awesome,” Jin smiled. “I’ve got Duel to the Death on DVD if you want to watch that one.” Jin was always down with new friends.
"That would be great," Katou said, grinning. "I can bring by some beers." It had been a while since he had sat and watched some movies with a friend.
“Awesome,” Jin grinned brightly. It was always nice to meet new people, especially chill ones with common interests.