psychoshenanigans | Court // Canon

Between them, Rin and Nel can concoct more than a vague idea of where Robin goes to roost. He should enjoy his peace while he has it, because soon enough Rin is knocking on the door. She won't just barge in, although Nel might.

"Robin?"

Nel can wait, because he is a docile and unhurried enough creature for it. He also doesn't see a need to fret here. He's just plain confused. Anything deeper than that has been more than shuffled off to the back of his head.

So, he just dithers at Rin's side, getting distracted by picking at loosening threads on his sleeve.

He looks up, notes the familiar ping of blood coming from the other side of the door, and shuts his book. He's still unsuspecting. In fact, he remains oblivious to any problems up until the point where he walks over, opens the door, and sees the both of them standing there.

"...Hi, guys. Come on in?"

"Hi."

She looks up, tries to smile, holds it for a second, and then it kind of doesn't stick. She's trying to be relaxed, but she's getting anxious for some reason. Still, she slips around Robin and makes for whatever little seating arrangement there is in the room.

Maybe it's the prospect of having to talk about things that has him preemptively tired. Because his choice of seating is to wander right over to the bed and flop down onto it with a big, weary sigh.

Huff, life is so complicated sometimes.

Robin tries to get a read off of Nel as to what the problem is--but he is very quickly no help to him at all. He stays standing while the other two drop uneasily into their places, and any hopes he might of had of this being a weird coincidence are quickly put back in their place. Six feet under.

"Okay, why are you guys acting like you're about to stage an intervention or something?"

Great. They can just rip the awkward bandaid right off.

"So... Nel told me he's gonna be working for you? Doing what?"

Oh.

His eyes narrow and he brings his fingers up towards his mouth--an idle gesture while he thinks very carefully about what he thinks is happening, here. Tek would maybe be proud.

"Whatever he's comfortable with. What did he tell you?"

"Well, it was more like a lot of vague implications." She is also watching Robin very carefully, and that's pretty clearly an evasive response. "Can you be more specific?"

And Nel is just watching like he's eavesdropping on a conversation about someone else--not being spoken over about delicate topics.

"I want him to figure out what his objectives are," he explains, easily this time, "It'll give him something to do."

Surely Rin will have at least caught on that Nel turns into kind of a wreck when he has nothing to do. Or maybe she hasn't. Maybe he should explain. But how does he explain that Nel can't function like a normal human being?

"In return, I'll get him whatever he needs, since he can't hold onto money very well on his own. No offense, Nel."

Okay.

"Are you two..." She raises her hand, waves it briefly. "... in a... you know, a relationship?"

That isn't quite what he was expecting. Rin doesn't know it, but Robin is one of the worst people that could have been picked to answer this question.

He hesitates, again, starting to look confused. "...I take it you don't mean a professional relationship."

"No, I mean... a romantic relationship. A romantic one." She's starting to talk a little faster, like a biker preparing for a big jump - building up momentum. "I was just wondering, because I can tell you're kind of not telling me something. Also, Nel told me that one of your objectives was sex. I mean a particular kind of sex? Sex with the mouth. Mouth sex. And, I mean, how would he know that? Unless you'd told him? Or unless you'd had sex? With each other."

All that blurted out she fidgets around uncomfortably. Her cheeks are beginning to turn red.

Staring at Rin, her cheeks glowing through his sixth sense, he distinctly remembers talking to Euri one morning, years ago, back at the tower. She'd blushed about contraceptives. She'd was baffled when Robin explained that he'd slept with other men before. She'd been vehemently against the idea of an open, casual relationship. Rin was starting to remind him of her.

Because people like Rin are an anomaly to him. A tiny, radical sliver of the normal population. In the Underground, she would have been called a prude before she got a chance to take a breath--and Robin may have been considered unusually kind and patient, by their standards, a context that wouldn't help Rin even if she knew it.

"Rin... It's okay." He puts his hands up and... lowers them, slowly, in what he only hopes is a calming motion. "Yes, Nel and I have had sex."

She settles down. Gonna power through it. She's still embarrassed, but homosexual relationships happen to at least some degree in Japan, so she has a cultural context for it.

"That's what I thought. So what aren't you telling me now?"

"...I don't understand."

What could she possibly still be digging for? He doesn't think he's done anything wrong. He tries to think from her point of view, but... The only connection he can manage to make is...

"Wait, you don't think my asking you to be my servant is some plot to get you to have sex with me, do you?"

"I was wondering." Which is unfair, but also true - especially since talking to Nel, even if it was just a short time ago. A certain engrained wariness of the motivations of men has been useful for her in the past, anyway. Plenty of the men she met at home had predatory and generally unpleasant designs on her.

Then, abruptly, she looks at Nel. "How are you going to be working for Robin?"

He startles out of his detached, eavesdropping state as he's suddenly yanked into the conversation as an active participant.

"Uh..." He glances between the two of them, like he does when he's waiting for direction, but that direction has pretty much already been given. It's pretty clear. He's on his own here.

"However he wants me to? ...Like, going and getting objectives done with people. So he can be queen... right?"

"Yes..." Robin looks between both of them, resurfacing, quickly back into the rhythm of treading water. He's starting to see the holes here, the problems. "...But he doesn't have to do anything he doesn't want to, as long as he tells me."

But in saying that, he realizes he could open up a whole other mess. He looks at Nel.

"You know that, right? I don't want you doing anything that bothers you."

He... just nods in that vague way that means nothing. And, judging by the way the look on his face is subtly changing, his confusion might be growing.

She looks... back and forth between them... and then lifts her hands and rubs her face a bit. Men... are so dense sometimes...

"Nel, if you'll do whatever Robin wants you to do, and Robin only wants you to do the things you want to do, what are you actually going to do?"

Oh, well now he looks definitely more confused. And avoidant tension starts visibly building up.

"I don't know... he's my new boss, so..."

He shrugs, trailing off to avoid explaining that he assumes it would be like any other time that he's been owned by someone else, and the fact that the original proposition had rolled right into a request for sexual favors.

So, it's maybe understandable that he's kind of receiving mixed signals here.

"So I'm going to take care of him, all right?"

There's something in his words--an insistence that wasn't there before.

"Nel is my friend, Rin. I'd never do anything to hurt him. Friends don't do that."

But the tension that creeps into his voice leaves and his shoulders sink with the weight of something else, something he'd rather have forgotten about, pretended it never happened. "He almost died once. Do you know that? Before I even knew him, I dragged him out of it and put him back together. I didn't pull him through half a year and a ruined world just to treat him like dirt here."

"I believe you," and she does, basically, at least on this front. Now she just looks stressed, sinking into herself a little, rubbing her forehead again.

"But, Nel, that means you do what you want. Kind of." To some degree. "So what do you want to do?"

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