RP Log: Niou & Ryoma
Nov. 26th, 2006 09:59 pmDate: Baaaackdated to... um, sometime a while ago, like within the last month-ish. Definitely before the 14th. ^^;
Rating: G
Summary: Niou's been sneaking off to the gym at night, and Ryoma follows to see what he's up to.
Niou could hardly bring himself to move. He wasn't even tired, so much as just... lead-weighted all over. At exactly one in the morning, it was dark and silent and he knew if he lay there, watching Ryoma's sleeping face long enough, it'd be dawn without time having felt like passing. Which wouldn't be a bad thing, and his muscles'd thank him for it. But...
The alternative was rolling over through the wall, and out of the apartment like he had for the last handful of weeks or so. He knew that if he didn't get his ass moving within the next thirty-two seconds, it would be 1:01am, and his chain of determination would be broken. Stubborn being the single solitary thing that Niou was more than lazy, he waited 'til 1:00:58 before making his move.
Silent as always, so as not to disturb Ryoma or wake Karupin, he donned a tee and trackpants, padding from the faculty apartment blocks on bare, phased feet that took him down to the gym on groggy autopilot.
At 1:22:58am, Ryoma blinked tiredly a few times and rolled over, squinting at the alarm clock in the dark before noting that he'd woken up later than he'd meant. He'd spent enough time practicing with Niou's internal clock that he could get it fairly well on his own, synched or not (which was strange, but he wasn't going to question it) but he usually woke up later than planned when the phaser wandered out of his shielded range sometime in the middle of the process.
Which only confirmed a point that needed no further confirmation: Niou was gone, and Ryoma wanted to know what he was up to, because presumably he'd been up to it for a while now and Ryoma wasn't going to pass up a challenge like the one that had been issued. Getting out of bed and swapping his pajama shirt for a real one, he gave Karupin an apologetic scratch and headed out the door, letting his internal senses guide more than his external ones, using his eyes only to navigate the hall and his gut to tell him which direction to go. Niou wasn't far - just across campus... in the gym? Hm... interesting; it didn't take long to get there and it didn't take much to extend his range to encompass the phaser and slip up half-phased against the doorframe and take a look.
Niou might've noticed, had his concentration been any less focused on the task at hand. As it was, he stared blankly at the panel on the treadmill. One generally didn't think that mere walking (powerwalking, the phaser would've corrected) could require that much attention. But it did: that much concentration – and that much endurance. The machine hummed quietly, and Niou swung his arms (and weighted wrists), striding along – at a fair bloody clip thank you.
It took energy to get everything moving at a regular human pace – arms, legs, muscles and heartbeat, let alone an exercising human's pace – but the greater challenge was maintaining it all. Twenty-six minutes of it, and Niou felt about ready to curl up and implode. But that, as usual, could wait until the half-hour mark <3
Ryoma just watched, an amused-proud-sort of transfixed, for a few moments. It looked like he'd caught Niou towards the end of his "walk" - just as Ryoma was starting to think about ways he might approach the other in such a state, the treadmill beeped and slowed. And not a moment too soon, by the look of things - though he'd only been at a fairly fast walk, Niou looked about ready to collapse. Honestly, Ryoma didn't think he'd ever seen the phaser do anything that quickly, so it was obvious that he was trying to build his endurance for exactly that.
Well, it was a better time to interrupt than it would otherwise have been; Ryoma dropped the phase entirely and stepped fully inside the room, expression a pleased sort of neutral because really, this didn't require smirking. He was actually pretty impressed. He knew that once Niou put his mind to something, he'd get it done if it killed him - and in this case, though there was no real danger (Ryoma hoped), it looked like he was coming metaphorically pretty damned close. "You don't exercise well with the other kids?" he asked, voice loud enough to carry, but soft enough not to startle. Niou'd been staring pretty completely at that treadmill monitor.
"Haa~" the phaser wheezed, entirely too dead to bother with a flashy riposte. "Funny </3" He curled up slowly on the ground and rolled around a bit, like a drunken toy (experience taught that one did not just collapse, or one merely hurt more the next day).
Ryoma knew the real reason, anyway: the phaser would get zero respect like this (possibly a negative figure, given the fine amounts he sometimes seemed to trade with as-is), from his class of hyperactive, superstrong teenage males. Pity the world had a black sense of humour.
Okay, so Ryoma didn't exactly blame Niou for not wanting to work on his already subhuman endurance with a class of people who for the most part possessed superhuman strength. Ryoma wouldn'tve wanted to either, if he hadn't been able to just synch Aoi or Momo to keep up with them the days he attended their workout sessions.
"You know," Ryoma said, approaching the figure on the floor as he suppressed an amused grin, "most people just walk slower to cool down." Niou wasn't most people, though, so in the end he could hardly fault the phaser for not wanting to walk any more than he already had. "You been doin' this every night?" He slept pretty soundly, and Niou was nothing if not good at sneaking around. Ryoma remembered when Niou had first mentioned his desire to build his endurance back up from nothing, but he didn't know how long the other'd been at it.
He sat on the edge of the now-still treadmill, waiting for Niou to finish his amusing little cool-down routine and roll in his direction before parting damp white bangs and wondering if he had ever actually seen Niou sweat before.
The phaser put on his best puppy pout face (which didn't usually work so well, given the natural slant of his eyes, but was backed up this time by his actually feeling somewhat miserable). Ryoma's hand was actually cool by his face, and he nuzzled into it a bit, before flopping over across the treadmill by the other's side. Angst. Sigh </3
"Dead..." Niou reiterated instead, still breathing hard. His body liked to take its own sweet time cooling down too, which was irritating. Phasing to drop temperatures faster only meant passing out from lack of oxygen... Skipping the question for now <3 "You follow~ed... after all? Didn't catch'ya..." Obviously. But Ryoma could keep talking. Please <3
That pout was so pathetic Ryoma had to bite his lip to keep from laughing - because that wouldn't be nice when Niou was dead, now would it? Niou felt warm - which made sense, he supposed, because sweating indicated heat and Niou had just been powerwalking, after all. It was strange, though, because he didn't usually (and never when Ryoma wasn't synched); once Niou'd flopped on the treadmill Ryoma finished brushing the hair out of Niou's face before poking his nose, lightly.
"Well. I said I was a ninja," was his smug answer for a moment. "Though I guess you prolly woulda if you hadn't been staring at the treadmill so much." That was all right, though - Ryoma much preferred Niou not to be pancaked on the wall after tripping on the treadmill, thanks. "Maybe you c'n graduate to reading books an' stuff while you're walking. Someday." That's what regular people did at the gym, right? Though, speaking of 'regular people'...
"S'your month trial up yet, by the way?" That was a simple yes or no question it wouldn't kill Niou to answer (given the state of his breath or otherwise). The phaser had said he'd give things a try for a month with his regular no-sleep schedule; Ryoma wondered if maybe a change was worth considering.
Niou gave a half-assed nip at the fingers by his face. "Yeah. Done like a double-baked donut," he sighed (or almost sighed. Niou Masaharu did not sigh </3), and rolled over a bit, to meet Ryoma's eyes. The wry grin returned: now that somebody was actually quizzing his mild insanity, the bubble of intention that kept it afloat was quite gone. One eye closed. "But that still doesn't mean you're gonna teach me how to sleep." All courtesy aside, the phaser figured it wouldn't hurt to do things his own way, for a little self-satisfaction, once in a while <3
"Oh, I think you got the sleepin' down just fine on your own," Ryoma conceded with a grin - Niou had certainly demonstrated that sleeping was something he excelled at. "It's the waking up you need to practice." But that was just it - Niou had a point, he needed to practice it on his own. Without help. And as long as he wouldn't be out for six months at a time, Ryoma had no problem letting him. "But I think you'll manage." Because he was sure Niou would.
"You managed so far without any sleep, anyway. Think how much better it'd be if you did." He was impressed, though, and leaned down slowly to press lips teasingly against Niou's, taking care to stay only a few seconds so the out-of-breath phaser wouldn't die all over again. He tasted like salt. "An' please tell me you shower before you get back into bed with me," he joked now, because otherwise Niou would find himself washing the bedsheets more often than he cared to.
"You know I cover my tracks <3" Niou chuckled in return, making a show of wrinkling his nose. "The smell alone would've been a dead giveaway." Not to say that he cared more about image than hygiene, but...
At the moment, both were quite irrelevant. He sat up, and vaguely licked his lips. (This always happened. And Ryoma had reminded him without even saying anything.) "I'm hungry." Phasing his hands, he dropped the wrist weights to the floor, and nudged them under the edge of the treadmill. Grinned. He'd learned the where and what of Ryuhana's kitchens shortly after starting these escapades (being unable to raid the apartment's kitchen, since that would've betrayed him in no time)... and certain things were better in bulk anyway. "Ice-cream~?"
It was a night of firsts, apparently. Even as he broke into an amused little grin at Niou's quip about not smelling, Ryoma didn't think that he'd ever heard the word 'hungry' come out of Niou's mouth, let alone of his own volition. That was something that deserved encouraging, if ever there was. And like he was going to turn down ice cream at two in the morning? Not a chance. (As long as he was sure it wasn’t drugged.) "Lead the way."
Of course, that required standing. Hoping Niou's wrists weren't still phased – lest this be the least-effective helping hand upright in the history of mankind – Ryoma stood and made to take Niou's wrists to pull him up after.
It... didn't work.
The phaser couldn't say it wasn't his fault – he'd practically been able to see it coming, after all – but neither could he say he was particularly sorry. Falling backwards on his ass, Ryoma looked so cute just-a-little-surprised (because even just-a-little happened so rarely, after all) <3
Niou pounced before his teddycat could grump though, hands going to Ryoma's shoulders, abusing momentum to pin him back against the floor. He grinned, almost laughing, and nipped the other's neck just lightly, in return for the kiss before. Metabolism death aside, there was certainly something to be said for a lack of lethargy...
Ryoma had been taken just a little off-guard when he'd landed on his rear - okay, so he hadn't actually expected Niou's wrists to be phased or he wouldn'tve tried to help the other up - but he definitely hadn't been expecting to be pounced and toppled over immediately after. He blinked even as he felt teeth scrape his neck playfully, somehow amusedly playful himself now that Niou was acting more like a normal human being.
Not that Niou didn't act like a normal human being. Just... usually a bit more slowly; it had been even worse when he'd been eating less than a bedridden three-year-old. Things felt much better this way. Though Niou's hands were still cold, he thought, before licking the ear poking out from shaggy white hair only to nip it in return a moment later. "You cheated."
"Mm~ did I, now?" the phaser purred, chuckling. "Wouldn't that mean I used something you couldn't?" He turned to kiss Ryoma's chin, and laced their fingers with a wink. "Avoiding me in return should've been as easy for the likes of you <3"
Borrowing a bit of the other's benevolence, Niou rocked back and stood, making to pull his teddycat up in return. (And half hoping that Ryoma wasn't going to phase back, or this'd go on all night. There was ice-cream to be had, after all <3)
.... Damn. He had a point. Ryoma shook his head, mostly at the fact that the thought hadn't occurred to him. Sure, he was good with Niou's phases, but he didn't treat them quite the same way the other did. Made sense - Ryoma didn't have it all the time, so using it wasn't quite so subconscious - but... yeah. He could've avoided that if he'd wanted to.
Well, it didn't matter much now. "I'll remember that," he informed, casting a grin up as the attempt to pull to their feet, though somewhat reversed from the last, actually worked this time. Niou'd said he was hungry, after all, and they certainly couldn't have that. "Let's go before you decide you're not hungry after all," he said, tugging gently on the hand Niou held, pulling the other alongside him and starting off in the direction of the cafeteria (since now that he thought about it, any food-filching Niou would have been doing had to be from there, or Ryoma would’ve noticed).
"An' then we're takin' a shower."
Rating: G
Summary: Niou's been sneaking off to the gym at night, and Ryoma follows to see what he's up to.
Niou could hardly bring himself to move. He wasn't even tired, so much as just... lead-weighted all over. At exactly one in the morning, it was dark and silent and he knew if he lay there, watching Ryoma's sleeping face long enough, it'd be dawn without time having felt like passing. Which wouldn't be a bad thing, and his muscles'd thank him for it. But...
The alternative was rolling over through the wall, and out of the apartment like he had for the last handful of weeks or so. He knew that if he didn't get his ass moving within the next thirty-two seconds, it would be 1:01am, and his chain of determination would be broken. Stubborn being the single solitary thing that Niou was more than lazy, he waited 'til 1:00:58 before making his move.
Silent as always, so as not to disturb Ryoma or wake Karupin, he donned a tee and trackpants, padding from the faculty apartment blocks on bare, phased feet that took him down to the gym on groggy autopilot.
At 1:22:58am, Ryoma blinked tiredly a few times and rolled over, squinting at the alarm clock in the dark before noting that he'd woken up later than he'd meant. He'd spent enough time practicing with Niou's internal clock that he could get it fairly well on his own, synched or not (which was strange, but he wasn't going to question it) but he usually woke up later than planned when the phaser wandered out of his shielded range sometime in the middle of the process.
Which only confirmed a point that needed no further confirmation: Niou was gone, and Ryoma wanted to know what he was up to, because presumably he'd been up to it for a while now and Ryoma wasn't going to pass up a challenge like the one that had been issued. Getting out of bed and swapping his pajama shirt for a real one, he gave Karupin an apologetic scratch and headed out the door, letting his internal senses guide more than his external ones, using his eyes only to navigate the hall and his gut to tell him which direction to go. Niou wasn't far - just across campus... in the gym? Hm... interesting; it didn't take long to get there and it didn't take much to extend his range to encompass the phaser and slip up half-phased against the doorframe and take a look.
Niou might've noticed, had his concentration been any less focused on the task at hand. As it was, he stared blankly at the panel on the treadmill. One generally didn't think that mere walking (powerwalking, the phaser would've corrected) could require that much attention. But it did: that much concentration – and that much endurance. The machine hummed quietly, and Niou swung his arms (and weighted wrists), striding along – at a fair bloody clip thank you.
It took energy to get everything moving at a regular human pace – arms, legs, muscles and heartbeat, let alone an exercising human's pace – but the greater challenge was maintaining it all. Twenty-six minutes of it, and Niou felt about ready to curl up and implode. But that, as usual, could wait until the half-hour mark <3
Ryoma just watched, an amused-proud-sort of transfixed, for a few moments. It looked like he'd caught Niou towards the end of his "walk" - just as Ryoma was starting to think about ways he might approach the other in such a state, the treadmill beeped and slowed. And not a moment too soon, by the look of things - though he'd only been at a fairly fast walk, Niou looked about ready to collapse. Honestly, Ryoma didn't think he'd ever seen the phaser do anything that quickly, so it was obvious that he was trying to build his endurance for exactly that.
Well, it was a better time to interrupt than it would otherwise have been; Ryoma dropped the phase entirely and stepped fully inside the room, expression a pleased sort of neutral because really, this didn't require smirking. He was actually pretty impressed. He knew that once Niou put his mind to something, he'd get it done if it killed him - and in this case, though there was no real danger (Ryoma hoped), it looked like he was coming metaphorically pretty damned close. "You don't exercise well with the other kids?" he asked, voice loud enough to carry, but soft enough not to startle. Niou'd been staring pretty completely at that treadmill monitor.
"Haa~" the phaser wheezed, entirely too dead to bother with a flashy riposte. "Funny </3" He curled up slowly on the ground and rolled around a bit, like a drunken toy (experience taught that one did not just collapse, or one merely hurt more the next day).
Ryoma knew the real reason, anyway: the phaser would get zero respect like this (possibly a negative figure, given the fine amounts he sometimes seemed to trade with as-is), from his class of hyperactive, superstrong teenage males. Pity the world had a black sense of humour.
Okay, so Ryoma didn't exactly blame Niou for not wanting to work on his already subhuman endurance with a class of people who for the most part possessed superhuman strength. Ryoma wouldn'tve wanted to either, if he hadn't been able to just synch Aoi or Momo to keep up with them the days he attended their workout sessions.
"You know," Ryoma said, approaching the figure on the floor as he suppressed an amused grin, "most people just walk slower to cool down." Niou wasn't most people, though, so in the end he could hardly fault the phaser for not wanting to walk any more than he already had. "You been doin' this every night?" He slept pretty soundly, and Niou was nothing if not good at sneaking around. Ryoma remembered when Niou had first mentioned his desire to build his endurance back up from nothing, but he didn't know how long the other'd been at it.
He sat on the edge of the now-still treadmill, waiting for Niou to finish his amusing little cool-down routine and roll in his direction before parting damp white bangs and wondering if he had ever actually seen Niou sweat before.
The phaser put on his best puppy pout face (which didn't usually work so well, given the natural slant of his eyes, but was backed up this time by his actually feeling somewhat miserable). Ryoma's hand was actually cool by his face, and he nuzzled into it a bit, before flopping over across the treadmill by the other's side. Angst. Sigh </3
"Dead..." Niou reiterated instead, still breathing hard. His body liked to take its own sweet time cooling down too, which was irritating. Phasing to drop temperatures faster only meant passing out from lack of oxygen... Skipping the question for now <3 "You follow~ed... after all? Didn't catch'ya..." Obviously. But Ryoma could keep talking. Please <3
That pout was so pathetic Ryoma had to bite his lip to keep from laughing - because that wouldn't be nice when Niou was dead, now would it? Niou felt warm - which made sense, he supposed, because sweating indicated heat and Niou had just been powerwalking, after all. It was strange, though, because he didn't usually (and never when Ryoma wasn't synched); once Niou'd flopped on the treadmill Ryoma finished brushing the hair out of Niou's face before poking his nose, lightly.
"Well. I said I was a ninja," was his smug answer for a moment. "Though I guess you prolly woulda if you hadn't been staring at the treadmill so much." That was all right, though - Ryoma much preferred Niou not to be pancaked on the wall after tripping on the treadmill, thanks. "Maybe you c'n graduate to reading books an' stuff while you're walking. Someday." That's what regular people did at the gym, right? Though, speaking of 'regular people'...
"S'your month trial up yet, by the way?" That was a simple yes or no question it wouldn't kill Niou to answer (given the state of his breath or otherwise). The phaser had said he'd give things a try for a month with his regular no-sleep schedule; Ryoma wondered if maybe a change was worth considering.
Niou gave a half-assed nip at the fingers by his face. "Yeah. Done like a double-baked donut," he sighed (or almost sighed. Niou Masaharu did not sigh </3), and rolled over a bit, to meet Ryoma's eyes. The wry grin returned: now that somebody was actually quizzing his mild insanity, the bubble of intention that kept it afloat was quite gone. One eye closed. "But that still doesn't mean you're gonna teach me how to sleep." All courtesy aside, the phaser figured it wouldn't hurt to do things his own way, for a little self-satisfaction, once in a while <3
"Oh, I think you got the sleepin' down just fine on your own," Ryoma conceded with a grin - Niou had certainly demonstrated that sleeping was something he excelled at. "It's the waking up you need to practice." But that was just it - Niou had a point, he needed to practice it on his own. Without help. And as long as he wouldn't be out for six months at a time, Ryoma had no problem letting him. "But I think you'll manage." Because he was sure Niou would.
"You managed so far without any sleep, anyway. Think how much better it'd be if you did." He was impressed, though, and leaned down slowly to press lips teasingly against Niou's, taking care to stay only a few seconds so the out-of-breath phaser wouldn't die all over again. He tasted like salt. "An' please tell me you shower before you get back into bed with me," he joked now, because otherwise Niou would find himself washing the bedsheets more often than he cared to.
"You know I cover my tracks <3" Niou chuckled in return, making a show of wrinkling his nose. "The smell alone would've been a dead giveaway." Not to say that he cared more about image than hygiene, but...
At the moment, both were quite irrelevant. He sat up, and vaguely licked his lips. (This always happened. And Ryoma had reminded him without even saying anything.) "I'm hungry." Phasing his hands, he dropped the wrist weights to the floor, and nudged them under the edge of the treadmill. Grinned. He'd learned the where and what of Ryuhana's kitchens shortly after starting these escapades (being unable to raid the apartment's kitchen, since that would've betrayed him in no time)... and certain things were better in bulk anyway. "Ice-cream~?"
It was a night of firsts, apparently. Even as he broke into an amused little grin at Niou's quip about not smelling, Ryoma didn't think that he'd ever heard the word 'hungry' come out of Niou's mouth, let alone of his own volition. That was something that deserved encouraging, if ever there was. And like he was going to turn down ice cream at two in the morning? Not a chance. (As long as he was sure it wasn’t drugged.) "Lead the way."
Of course, that required standing. Hoping Niou's wrists weren't still phased – lest this be the least-effective helping hand upright in the history of mankind – Ryoma stood and made to take Niou's wrists to pull him up after.
It... didn't work.
The phaser couldn't say it wasn't his fault – he'd practically been able to see it coming, after all – but neither could he say he was particularly sorry. Falling backwards on his ass, Ryoma looked so cute just-a-little-surprised (because even just-a-little happened so rarely, after all) <3
Niou pounced before his teddycat could grump though, hands going to Ryoma's shoulders, abusing momentum to pin him back against the floor. He grinned, almost laughing, and nipped the other's neck just lightly, in return for the kiss before. Metabolism death aside, there was certainly something to be said for a lack of lethargy...
Ryoma had been taken just a little off-guard when he'd landed on his rear - okay, so he hadn't actually expected Niou's wrists to be phased or he wouldn'tve tried to help the other up - but he definitely hadn't been expecting to be pounced and toppled over immediately after. He blinked even as he felt teeth scrape his neck playfully, somehow amusedly playful himself now that Niou was acting more like a normal human being.
Not that Niou didn't act like a normal human being. Just... usually a bit more slowly; it had been even worse when he'd been eating less than a bedridden three-year-old. Things felt much better this way. Though Niou's hands were still cold, he thought, before licking the ear poking out from shaggy white hair only to nip it in return a moment later. "You cheated."
"Mm~ did I, now?" the phaser purred, chuckling. "Wouldn't that mean I used something you couldn't?" He turned to kiss Ryoma's chin, and laced their fingers with a wink. "Avoiding me in return should've been as easy for the likes of you <3"
Borrowing a bit of the other's benevolence, Niou rocked back and stood, making to pull his teddycat up in return. (And half hoping that Ryoma wasn't going to phase back, or this'd go on all night. There was ice-cream to be had, after all <3)
.... Damn. He had a point. Ryoma shook his head, mostly at the fact that the thought hadn't occurred to him. Sure, he was good with Niou's phases, but he didn't treat them quite the same way the other did. Made sense - Ryoma didn't have it all the time, so using it wasn't quite so subconscious - but... yeah. He could've avoided that if he'd wanted to.
Well, it didn't matter much now. "I'll remember that," he informed, casting a grin up as the attempt to pull to their feet, though somewhat reversed from the last, actually worked this time. Niou'd said he was hungry, after all, and they certainly couldn't have that. "Let's go before you decide you're not hungry after all," he said, tugging gently on the hand Niou held, pulling the other alongside him and starting off in the direction of the cafeteria (since now that he thought about it, any food-filching Niou would have been doing had to be from there, or Ryoma would’ve noticed).
"An' then we're takin' a shower."