ax_main | Shinobi and Nolan

Nolan finally confronts Shinobi about outing him to Caduceus.

Nolan was very grateful for Shaun's continued support, but now that he found himself standing outside the door to Shinobi's apartment, part of him did wish that his boyfriend's brand of emotional support did not involve pointing out that a conversation with Shinobi was becoming necessary, as Shinobi seemed unable to pick up on Nolan's upset - or, a worse option to consider, but entirely too possible to ignore - did not seem to care about it. But it had been two weeks, and with the Thanksgiving deadline fast approaching (never mind the other significance of the day, this year), Shaun was of course right. Nolan deserved an explanation, if nothing else.

So here was Nolan, dressed in the sort of sharp suits he usually reserved for board rooms, knocking on Shinobi's door, features schooled into the same mask of cold distance he had worn around his friend - former friend? - ever since they had left Caduceus Clay's uncommon home.

After a few moments, Shinobi's face ghosted through the door. A moment more, and the distracted expression he wore was replace with a beaming smile. "Nolan! Ohayou gozaimasu! It feels like it's been ages." He looked the other teen up and down critically for a moment, noting the unusually sober mode of dress. "Are you on your way somewhere important? You look as though you might be on your way somewhere important."

There were quite a few things Nolan might have replied to Shinobi, but he swallowed them back and gave him one of the dry smiles he usually reserved for the likes of the Graysons. The same dryness as his regular smiles, but none of the softness. "Are you going to invite me inside?"

One dark eyebrow quirked in puzzlement. "I had no idea an invitation was necessary," Shinobi admitted. "But, if we are going to observe the usual tiresome formalities ..." He disappeared back inside, the door swinging open almost immediately afterward. In black silk pajamas and a luxurious red velvet robe, the half-Japanese mutant offered a bow and gestured toward the interior of his small apartment. "Irasshaimase."

"Osoreirimasu," Nolan answered dryly as he walked in, as if opening one's own door was actually all that tiresome. One of many Japanese phrases he had learned over the course of his acquaintance with Shinobi. Usually, his dryness would have been tempered by fond amusement, but it had not been in his few interactions with Shinobi over the past couple of weeks, and it wasn't now.

He stopped in the middle of the living room, and turned back to Shinobi, waiting for him to close the door before speaking up again. "It hasn't been ages," he remarked, coldly. "It has been two weeks. Since our visit to Oregon."

"Has it?" Shinobi shrugged. "Well, it certainly seems like an age ago. Or I may just be trying to put some distance between myself and that entire experience--much more Twilight Zone than I normally prefer in a day trip." He cocked his head, cinching up his robe as he regarded Nolan inquisitively.

"Your ability to precisely designate the timing makes me wonder if there might not be some special significance that I'm missing."

"It's about the time your selective blindness to other people's feelings stopped being amusing," Nolan confirmed, punctuating the sentence with another dry, cutting smile. "Please, tell me you have no idea why I might possibly be upset."

"Sou desu ne. Just waiting to see if you'd ever bring it up directly. Forgive for thinking that if, after two weeks, the subject was never broached, it must be a non-issue after all."

Just waiting to see... Nolan plastered on the dryest of smiles. "Yes, of course. You wouldn't want to volunteer an explanation unprompted, or worse yet, an apology. Much too gauche for you. I'm sorry I kept you waiting all this time."

Shinobi's expression was a strange combination of satisfaction and disappointment. "So. You do feel an apology is warranted. That's unfortunate, but I wish you had told me as much sooner." He cocked his head slightly, curious. "Are you angry? I didn't expect that. I don't think you've ever actually been angry with me before."

Nolan looked aside, clearly reining in a flare of temper. He sighed, then asked, evenly, "Why did you do it?"

"I don't think you're going to like the answer ..." Shinobi hedged, then sighed and continued. "But all right. Over the last year or so, you seem to have, if not mastered your mutation, at least come up with a way to manage the most deleterious side-effects. Yet you continue to keep it largely secret, even with our insular mutant community. I suppose I wanted to gauge just how dire a secret it was--Clay seems harmless, and I'm not certain he picked up on my casual allusion, in any case."

Nolan hardly thought that it had been an allusion, much as it had been casual. "And you chose to find out by betraying my secret rather than ask me because...?"

"Force of habit, I suppose," he said. "Combined with poor impulse-control. I didn't set out to put us in that position, honestly. But the opportunity arose, and I failed utterly to resist it. You seemed fairly unperturbed, in the moment, actually. I even thought for a while I'd overestimated the significance of the matter."

Nolan smiled again, cold and dry. "Well, you didn't." That made clear, Nolan turned to head out the door. If he stayed, he thought he might actually lose his temper and start shouting.

"Gomenasai," Shinobi told Nolan's retreating back. "For what it's worth."

The apology felt like too little, too late, after those two weeks, after this entire conversation, just another instance of Japanese Shinobi liked to sprinkle his speech with. And yet Nolan stopped by the door and looked back at his friend, no longer bothering to hide the hurt from his gaze. "Are you?"

For possibly the first time since Nolan had known him, Shinobi looked taken aback. "Have I ever lied to you before? Particularly when it was important?"

"You never betrayed one of my secrets to a near a stranger either," Nolan remarked, and dryly added, "There's a first time for everything."

"Sou ka," was his initial, numb reply, then he shook his head ruefully. "I suppose I failed to take that into consideration. Too caught up in my own perceived cleverness, no doubt."

"No doubt." Nolan shook his head slightly, composing himself. "I've, er. I've e-mailed you the latest on the interior design options for the café. If you have notes you want to pass along to Caduceus."

Clasping his hands behind his back, Shinobi nodded. "I've never suffered from an excess of shyness when it comes to sharing my opinions on projects of this nature," he said. "I will look them over and convey my general feelings to the rest of you within the next hour or so."

"Good, thank you," Nolan stated with a nod, and turned away again.

"Dou itashimashite," he murmured, inclining his head toward Nolan's back. Beyond that, Shinobi wasn't sure what else he could add; Nolan was angry with him, and that was territory he had no experience navigating whatsoever. Apprehension over speaking amiss again kept his mouth closed, for once. Obviously, he would have to devise a way to make this up to him. Whether any gesture he could offer at this point would actually return their relationship to something resembling its former state, however, was very much open to question.