damned_institute | Day 40: Lunch

*hobble wobble*

"Damn that SCOURGE!" Starscream cried out, the slowly-filling cafeteria producing a jarring echo of his raspy voice. His limping, already bad enough from not knowing how to properly use his crutches, was now exacerbated from the injuries he'd received the shift prior. Despite the gauges in his non-casted leg so lovingly provided by the aforementioned 'patient', Starscream could still put some weight on it, but not so much that he could really stop and rest; relieving the soreness under his arms was out of the question. The nurse that walked behind him with his tray, already upset at having to deal with yet another troublesome inmate, was growing rather impatient as his charge slowly made his way down the food line.

"Just...give me a standard serving of the aquatic creature's flesh, some of those fried potato slices, two bananas, and three bottles of juice," Starscream sighed, his anger from just a moment ago assuaged by the physical exertion needed to move the way he did. "I'm going to sit down here...bring it to me when you're done."

He was hardly surprised to find that one of the bananas was completely bruised along its inner curve, or that the handful of 'chips' on his plate were all on the small side. Tired and frustrated as he was, however, he could barely muster a 'damned flesh-creature' before moving his fingers to the plate, picking one of the longer 'chips' and shoving it into his mouth listlessly.

There was an unusually high concentration of sodium chloride crystals on it. Of COURSE.

[For Tony Stark]

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There was hope for his senpai after all. "Che. Fucking monsters. Well, I'm sure other opportunities will present themselves."

Speaking of opportunities, Junpei remembered the real reason he wanted to talk to Akihiko. It wasn't so much that he wanted to as much as he needed to talk to someone and without the pimp master himself around, Akihiko had to do.

"So... senpai... Um... So the real reason I needed to talk to you is because of last night..." Junpei rubbed his goatee a little nervously.

Akihiko laughed off the first statement just a little bit. "Heh. We'll see, I guess." Not likely if she ever catches wind of this conversation...

"What happened last night?", he asked, raising an eyebrow in concern. The real question was what it had to do with the prior topics of conversation, but he had a feeling he would find that out soon enough.

"Nothing happened, really. We got the metal and stuff, got soaked by nasty water, and chilled in her room the rest of the night," Junpei replied. He fidgeted a little.

"She's been, uh, reading the board a lot, I guess. One of the ones about a certain kind of bird that only likes a certain kind of person..."

"I see," Akihiko said, but the momentary flash of 'oh phew everything's fine' didn't last too long. He had to fight the urge to smack his forehead at that last sentence, in addition to suddenly wishing the bulletin board would just be wiped of everything right now. It was causing far too many awkward situations for his liking.

"Oh, geez. Those again? So I'm guessing she's worried about them."

"...yeah."

Junpei pushed his food around his place for a moment.

"She wants us to... you know. And I want to... but I'm all worried that she only wants to because of those birds, so I told her she needed to think more about it and stuff," he muttered. "If this had been a couple months ago, I'd a totally not even bothered to make sure it's what she really wanted, but with the whole love thing it makes it a different thing altogether."

He glanced up. "Does that make me weird? I don't lose my guy card because of it, do I?"

Okay. What would he say? Oh, who'm I kidding, he'd be all eloquent about it. Well, here goes nothing.

"I don't think you lose your guy card because of it. In fact, it probably gets you a lot of points." He nodded, as if almost reassuring himself of what he was saying.

"I think you did the right thing by giving her time to think and to figure out what she really wants. I've gotta say, I'm impressed." That much was true - he wouldn't have expected that kind of thinking from the junior. "So don't worry too much about it. She'll figure it out."

Junpei gave a nervous laugh. "You're forgetting who my girl is," he said. "But you're probably right."

He glanced around. "Uh... you're not gonna tell anyone about this?"

"I bet she'll come around," he said, with a nod. "And of course I'm not going to tell anyone about this. I don't particularly feel like testing the limits of executions, nor do I feel like having another talk about all of this with Ken. Seriously, of all the things to have that kind of curiosity about..." Akihiko shook his head, trying not to think about it too much. That conversation was definitely one he didn't want to relive.

"Oh, I see," Junpei replied, a grin spreading across his face.

"You choked, didn't you? On the birds and bees talk." His grin grew.

"No. I just...well, you answer questions about that from an 11-year-old who's too smart for his own good and just keeps coming up with stuff you never -- okay, maybe you would have, but most people wouldn't come up with," he answered, glaring across the table.

"Okay. I'll talk to him and answers the questions you fail at," Junpei replied. Clearly, he knew more than Akihiko did. He'd certainly be experiencing it sooner than his senpai anyways.

...unless Mitsuru decided to take matters into her own hands.

Nah.

"I don't think that will be necessary," Akihiko snapped back. "Somehow I get the feeling you'd only encourage him to ask even more questions on the bulletin board. And does anyone really need more hard questions on the board?"

At the mention of questions on the board, Junpei looked sufficiently humbled, as if he knew something very poignant about the board.

"Uh... no. I was planning on being a good senpai to him," Junpei replied. "He doesn't have any family, you know. Someone's gotta explain this stuff to him." And wasn't going to be all awkward and shit like Akihiko obviously had been.

Fail, senpai, fail.

"Oh, it's been explained. With diagrams and everything." Though, really, the entire world would be better off thinking that diagram never existed in the first place. "Which led to a mess on the board the likes of which the world has never seen before."

He shook his head, trying not to think too hard about the mess of sticky paperwork that those two posts on the board had made. "So, really. I don't think it needs explaining again."

Clearly, Junpei had missed something and was sufficiently disappointed.

"...alright. I'll just let him know if he has questions, I can answer them, but he'll have to ask me in person. That work better?"

"No, I'm not explaining what you missed," Akihiko said, catching that disappointed look. "Neither is anyone else, I suspect, so it's not worth it to ask."

He sighed a little, looking a bit resigned to that being the best he could get. "All right. Fair enough."

Day 40: Lunch

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