Mix-Up Manor

Verity stared at him, still confused before the message sunk in. Oh. That made more sense. "You could have suggested that it was about the door! What am I supposed to think?" she grumbled. Unfortunately before she could actually tell him her plan he had already disappeared off into space...well the shower more likely. The girl shrugged before exiting out the empty arch where the door once was. Her plan was simple. Ask the landlady nicely for a door. The psycho lived fairly close to the landlady and so within a few minutes she arrived even when walking. Unlike her previous entrance, Vera was cool, dignified and calm. At least she thought so. In reality, she barged in without knocking and strode straight towards her landlady before slamming her hand on the lady's desk much to the horror of some. Simply put she was neither dignified, cool nor calm, instead she had most likely interrupted an important meeting in the loudest way possible.

The visitors looked at her not blinking and swiveled their heads around to look at the landlady. "Ms Winters, who is this young lady?" The landlady smiled through gritted teeth. "Give me a second. I'll be back soon," She got stiffly out from her chair and pulled Vera to the outside. "I apologise for the mishap, okay? Now don't go interrupting my business!" she hissed. The blonde stared at her. For a second she was about to tell her what she honestly thought. However, she refrained. Instead she quirked her eyebrows up. "Really? You apologise?" she tried to ask smoothly. The landlady seemed to know what her game was. "What do you want?" she grumbled. Verity was shocked. How had she read her so fast? "Don't look surprised, usually when you blunder in you and attempt to lie your intentions, you want something. Do you want a replacement window?" she spat the last words out with venom.

Vera was pleased she didn't have to elaborate so simply shook her head with a smile. "No, this time I need a door! And someone to fix it in place! The door should fit Tatsuma's front door," The other woman looked at her unimpressed. "So you broke another person's property. Geez you're talented," she said dryly but giving her a phone number to follow. "Call that and I'll handle the rest,"

Soon enough the blonde was waiting outside for the door to arrive with the handy man...or handy boy. When the door arrived it appeared they thought the person most suitable for the job was some trainee apprentice. She stood up about to say some instructions when the trainee moved straight past her and into the house. "Now where is this broken door?" She looked at him deadpan. Even she wasn't that stupid. She followed after him more slowly. She was about to turn a corner when she heard a high pitch scream coming from some room. She sighed. What did that boy do? She entered the room to where the scream was locate-okayyy. Great. Verity immediately averted her eyes.

At first when the guy came through the door Tatsu thought... well..that it was a guy. Then, after seeing that someone was in the shower and the guy screamed like a girl. Confused as to what was going on he stepped out only to see Verity follow in shortly after the guy. His first thought was "Threesome?" although once he realized for sure that the other person was in fact a guy he was very much against that concept... plus it was Verity, she didn't seem very oriented toward sexcapades with one person let alone two.

With a shrug he wrapped the towel around himself and looked at Verity, ignoring the screaming man/woman.
"Okay... why is there a strange guy hanging out in our apartment with me in the shower screaming like he's a five year old princess who just saw a spider?" He asked her, fully prepared to further torment the girl... and friend, by removing the towel. He reserved this for only the most extremely dumb answers because he didn't want to hear the guy screaming again. This was not exactly how he had wanted his shower to end either.
"And please tell me it's not that you were trying to prove a point." He said with his eyes closed as he massaged the bridge of his nose.

Verity continued looking at the ceiling like it was the most interesting thing in the world. She could feel her cheeks beginning to burn. Meanwhile, the boy had fainted. This rendered any initial thought of Tatsuma's to be useless. Unless, of course, he had a thing for unconscious people. She heard him ask why there was a strange guy in their apartment. She was about to respond when something he said struck her the wrong way. Her eyes flashed with annoyance and she snapped her head back.

"Exactly how would this be proving a point..." The blonde trailed off her sentence, her tone becoming less annoyed at the end.

The first thing she noticed was that he'd be really heavy. Not the standard heavy but the really really heavy heavy kind. Basically he wasn't lacking in the abs or muscle department. The second thing she noticed was that she was staring. Normally she didn't care but this time it was kind of different. She turned her gaze to the floor, aware she was getting more red in the cheeks.

"Anyways...fixing...door...you said......I'm incapable.....things.....handy man....fix the door....fishy landlady," Half of the words she said were mumbled incoherently before she dashed back out as quickly as humanely possible. She concluded that the handy boy, whatever his name was, had probably fainted either because he got too embarrassed...or...that or maybe he just couldn't take it. Anyways, she was out now. Vera almost felt tempted to fan her face. She was feeling pretty uncomfortable. If she lived there, she really hoped she wouldn't have another encounter like that again.

Tatsu was getting ready to answer Vera's question when suddenly she started stammering. He had seen guys do that around girls, hell he had just gotten out of the habit a few months ago. Still, it was kind of flattering to see she had the same problem, and it was funny that he happened to be the cause of it. He exited the bathroom, leaving the guy on the floor, and headed out into the common area. Out of habit he had forgotten to grab clothing to take to the shower room with him, but he did still have the towel wrapped around himself.

Once he got out to his dresser he simply dropped the towel and started getting his clothes out. It was fairly entertaining to see her reaction, though he did get dressed at a reasonable pace.
"Well I guess when he wakes up we can have him fix the door then? I dunno about leaving him laying on the bathroom floor though. What about you? Are you alright?" He asked half sincere, but mostly just continuing to mess with her, though by the time he finished asking if she was alright he had his pants on and was working on putting the shirt on. Then he started to wonder how he would react in the same situation were the roles reversed.

The way Verity saw it, she could either stare blatantly or avoid even looking at him adamantly. He just had to forget his frickin' clothes to take to the bathroom with him did he? The girl had closed her eyes immediately after he'd come inside and was now figuring what she should  do. She was still tossing up the first two options in her mind. They didn't seem like very good options. The first one, even she knew that it was kind of rude to stare at people dressing. Although she didn't think it'd make him feel uncomfortable. The second one she wasn't keen either. She wasn't going to give him the pleasure of thinking she couldn't handle eye contact. So for better or worse, Vera decided she'd meditate...ish.

Inner peace and all that right? It was hardly a new thing she'd picked up. She always attempted meditating except she could never keep still. Today, she was keen on trying. The best way she found so far was sitting upside down and so the girl flipped herself in the aforementioned position and tried to concentrate. Honestly it wasn't working. There wasn't enough height. And so, with great regret, the blonde changed into a lying down position where she just let her eyes wander wherever they heck they wanted to.

She didn't actually purposely stare so much that it would be uncomfortable but she definitely noticed he was taking his dressing up at a reasonable pace. Thank goodness. She heard his question and did her best to shrug her shoulders on the ground. Disinterest was soo totally the right word to describe her demeanor in her next actions. "Y-yeah probably. He should...you know, wake up soon...and yeah, I'm fine...I think." She said, trailing off because she was not kind of preoccupied in whatever her gaze was lingering at, which was also sooo obviously not Tatsuma since he actually put his pants thus becoming safe in her opinion to examine like a specimen. After her sentence, she closed her eyes and shifted onto her back so she was facing the ceiling. "Maybe you should start taking your clothes with you when you have a shower...talking about clothes I don't think my stuff has come yet," It was a good idea in her opinion. It was just plain awkward (for at least) if he was walking around naked in a towel because he left his clothes elsewhere.

He briefly considered calling her out on her staring contest, but chose not to based on the fact she seemed uncomfortable enough for one day.
"I suppose I could start doing that. Although if you got used to my forgetting them it would be easier." He half teased. Seriously though, he wondered if the guy was just going to get up and get to work or if he was just kind of out a door for a while. He considered going to wake the guy up, but a thought occurred to him.
"I mean if you forgot your clothes I would be fine with that." He said with a small semi-nervous laugh. It occurred to him right at the moment that maybe he wouldn't be okay with it. Still, there were other matters at hand besides tormenting his new room mate.

Now fully dressed he went to go wake the guy up. Decidedly the method of choice in this case was going to be pouring cold water on his face since he had conveniently passed out in the bathroom to begin with. After he dumped it all out he simply walked off, letting him get up and leave the bathroom at his leisure.

Once again did the girl find that the roof was, indeed, a very interesting object to observe. By the time she'd be finished with the ceiling, she bet she'd have remembered every single detail there was to remember about it. She sucked the insides of her bottom lip when she heard him speak. "I guess I could..." She said with a deadpan expression. She rolled on her side to face him. He was nearly fully dressed now. Good. While she was practically back to having what she considered, her 'normal' emotional range (which while rather expansive, did not contain watching people dress and staring), she'd prefer it if he was you know, dressed and not being distracting. Upon hearing his comment, she quirked a single eyebrow. Maybe her normal emotional range was not back yet.

Before she could comment though, he left the room. She sighed in disappointment. She didn't particularly like people who purposefully screwed with her mind. She got the feeling from the last few minutes that he had been doing just that to her. So, the girl thought, why not try and torment him too? One-sided was rough. Two-sided became better. No sided was generally better. This depended on the thing one was talking about. After Tatsuma came back, the girl pushed herself up from the floor. She pulled her knees up and hugged herself, beginning to rock. "You know how you were saying if I forgot my clothes that'd be fine for you?" She started off nonchalantly. What would someone say next? "Are you really sure?" She mentally thought that it sounded like she was putting off her point. She racked her brains for something else to say. Something that might make him really uncomfortable. "We can experiment if you want," If she hadn't been such a great actress she might have used an exclamation mark as if she had hit the lottery. Instead, she said it with a perfectly controlled facial expression. Of course she wasn't actually meaning what she said. If she had she'd have already stripped.

About clothes, she couldn't even remember what she was wearing. She looked down at herself. Right. Her running clothes because she hadn't bothered to change. Meh. She still wasn't bothered to change. She leaned her head against the wall and put her knees back down on the floor. When was her things coming? Even this was a little slow for her landlady...well former. Now she was freeloading. She smiled faintly at this thought.

Tatsu gawked at her. Seriously? When he said that he had never imagined she would actually take him up on it. Come to think of it, he still doubted she was actually going to take him up on it. Still, she was very physically attractive, and he wanted to play this out and see where it went. He thought about calling her out for but a second, then changed his mind and instead opted to approach her, seeing how she would react.
"I would be perfectly happy with experimenting because I absolutely meant it. There's no reason to be uncomfortable with our bodies." He said, using the same mentality he often reached for when around other girls. The truth was though that he hadn't really seen any of them naked.. or gone any further than making out so it would be a novel experience. His heart rate sped up, he was glad she couldn't hear it, but externally he was pretty collected. Plus he didn't mind the idea of experimenting with her... though part of him wondered just how far this was going to go.

It made it more exciting at the moment, they were waiting for the apparent handyman to wake up and he didn't want him to interrupt, so he thought about going to lock him in the bathroom for a minute, but that could end up being a colossal waste of time given the fact he still didn't believe she was actually going to do anything, but he thought it would be fun to push the issue, thus he took a step closer to her, looking into her eyes.
"I could even help if you want." He said softly.

Cha-ching! She got a gawk. Priceless! She would have started a happy dance when...woah. Okay. That went a teensy weensy, little bit wayyyyy too far. Hmmm. How was she going to stop this psycho? She mused this highly important question. He was psycho but this was psycho to the max. He was more psycho than a crazy dark mage. She would keep on making psycho comparisons but that wouldn't help her. Well she could very well scare him off by saying 'YOU'RE A PSYCHO' really loudly in his ear, like reaally really loudly. Maybe his eardrums would split. She heard that people could only take 80 dBs of noise till their hearing began to degrade. Not that she knew what 80 dBs were. She probably wasn't even listening to him half the time due to her somewhat murderous thoughts and looked at him clueless when he came closer to her. Well he was definitely looking to be a in a somewhat seductive mood.

She decided to smile and fake it. Fake it till you make it. Sounded like a great plan. On seconds thought, mission aborted. She'd had her moment with the gawking. That was good enough for her...for now...she'd fine other ways. "I think I'm fine," she said cheerfully without knowing the context, her demeanor changing entirely. Probably worked in her favour though.

She leaned back into the wall and started to think. "Hey...do you kno-" "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH" The scream caught her attention and she jumped, startled. "I think he woke up," she said, walking towards the bathroom. "And now I better get that door," The blonde wondered what on earth happened to the handy man this time and saw him on the floor. "M-my reflection!" He was pointing to the reflection in the mirror. Verity was confused by this new source of scaredness for the handyman. As a result she stood by as the boy/man ran past her, tears in his eyes and entered the room where she had been previously. She really needed to have a talk to her landlady. And so, she went back to the room...to be met by the weirdest sight ever.

The handy man had obviously taken a liking to the psycho since he was currently attempting to tackle him. "YOU'RE HOUSE IS STRANGE!" He cried. Verity wondered if this was her imagination.

Well his call about Vera bluffing had been on the money, and she had backed out so he counted it as a win for himself. Still, he was rather disappointed about the fact that she had backed out, and somehow at the same time relieved... At least until he heard the scream. Vera went to check it out, which personally he kind of wanted to advise against. Still when she ran in, the handyman ran out and decided to try to tackle Tatsu.
"Nope!" He said as he grabbed the guy's wrist and turned him around, pulling his arm back to lock him forward and then shoving him up to the front door before he finally let go.
"Seriously, the broken door is right here. I have no idea why you walked past the entry point to the apartment that had NO DOOR, but seriously just fix the door and go before any neighbors start coming over here to see if I'm torturing someone." He said, calmly but sternly. Somehow this was Verity's fault, it could all be linked back to her, but more than anything he was annoyed with the repair guy who was apparently mentally handicapped. All he wanted was a door was that so much to ask?

After getting onto the handyman he turned to Vera who had somehow avoided the guy's attentions.
"Well this is going to be a very interesting living arrangement..." He said while he shook his head slowly.

No, apparently this was not her imagination. It was very much happening. She watched as the psycho easily stopped the guys tackle and sent him towards the front door. “Oh,” The handyman said as the younger boy pointed out his frustrations towards the other’s mental intelligence. “Oh,” he said again before turning back around to face Tatsuma. “Thanks for pointing out the door. I’m Joseph,” he said putting out his hand. “Usually I’m not this scared of things. It was just that I had a pretty rough morning. My trainer was all DO THIS and DO THAT that by the time I came for my job I was beat. And then at that job there was some crazy ol’ lady who scared the bejesus out of me. By the time I came here, you might be able to picture my mental state. And then I kind of cracked when I saw you in the shower. It’s scary! How many naked guys with abs do you see coming out of the shower who look relatively annoyed? And with your hair like that, it’s easy to assume your some kind of weirdo gang member!” Joseph was babbling, eyes wide with hand gestures. She had to admit, he definitely had some valid points which caused the girl to snigger into the palm of her hands. For someone who was kind of annoyed at his current situation, it wasn’t a great idea to talk to them. However, Joseph seemed to get social cues even less than her and she was beginning to grow a little concerned for his safety.

The blonde walked up to him and placed her hands firmly on his shoulders. She then proceeded to turn him back around to face the door. The guy seemed to get the message and immediately went to it. In the meantime, the girl walked outside the room and shook her head in disagreement to the blonde boy’s previous statement. “No, it already is a very interesting living arrangement. There is a tree in the middle of your apartment!” She argued, gesturing back to the tree.

Vera sighed when she saw there was still no bag of hers outside. She walked back to the tree and leaned against it. “You’d think that after all this time they’d have finally gotten my belongings here.” She said not to anybody in particular, looking up to the ceiling above.

Tatsuma spend the entire confession rubbing the bridge of his nose with his eyes closed. He honestly didn't care about the guy's job dissatisfaction.
"Okay look, i'm sorry you've had a bad day, but can you please just fix the door and leave." He said, trying to keep his annoyance to a minimum.

Once that was addressed, Verity spoke and he turned to her.
"Okay fair point, but I like it. I like it better with the door though." He said, shaking his head as he stepped over to his bed, falling over on it. He would have fallen asleep, but with the decidedly creepy guy who had been hired for a simple job and had failed to accomplish it thus far, he was definitely not falling asleep.
"So about that door can you get something... unbreakable. I'd love to have some extra security since Vera's going to be having our child. I know we're young, but I mean it kind of just happened." He said as he sat up, now in the mood to screw with both of them. His target was the handyman more than her, though he imagined she was probably going to blush at least. Plus the notion of going through the process of making his little white lie a story of truth was a fun one to have.

Joseph, who had been in the process of setting up a stool so he could reach the physical parameters of the door, immediately lost his footing and stumbled onto the ground. “She’s what?” The poor bloke spluttered, completely caught off guard. He looked at the blonde leaning on the tree.  “She doesn’t seem pregnant!” Before the current moment, Vera was off in dreamland and missed Tatsu’s statement. She repaid attention upon hearing the word pregnant. She straightened up. “Who’s pregnant?” She asked eyes alarmed. The handyman didn’t understand. He pointed a shaky finger towards Tatsuma on the bed “He said...was pregnant,” He changed his finger direction to Vera. He was shaking in fear again. The girl, of course, misinterpreted this. “Huh? He said I made him pregnant? That's impossible. If that had happened I'd be the one pregnant," She frowned in confusion. Why would Tatsuma say that? Then it dawned on her. "HE MUST BE LYING...unless..." She yelled before looking suspiciously at the handyman. She had to get her facts right. "Are you sure he said he's pregnant?" The handyman nodded, unsure of what was happening. Verity jumped up in her blaze of glorious intelligence. "SERIOUSLY? HE’S PREGNANT? IF YOU SAY HE SAID THAT THEN IT MUST BE TRUE!...BUT THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE ISN'T IT?! I MEAN HE’S A GUY!” She exclaimed in surprise before narrowing her eyes and shifting their gaze to the psycho. “Unless you’re not a guy!”

Coming from someone who had sort of seen him naked, it was a pretty dumb thing to say. The blonde realised this and frowned. “Hmmm…but you can’t be a girl…Or I guess you could just be a really flat chested...Or maybe you're just a strange guy!” She started her speculations and raised her hands. “Oh wait! When was your birthday? I’ve heard that some people have been switched at birth so maybe you’re not even human AND in your race it’s the guys who give birth!” It sounded like it could work except…”Hmmm but that doesn’t sound right either. Otherwise you wouldn’t look very human without clothes on…." She went back to thinking about her original point about him being a strange guy...or "I know! Maybe you’re one of those males who can give birth! Like those unique ones! I can’t remember the classification but that would make so much more sense!” She gasped with this revelation, clapping her hands together. She smiled smugly. “I’ve read before that it can happen so don’t say it can't,”

This was, of course, assuming that Tatsuma was actually pregnant…despite him never saying he was. In fact, technically speaking he was the one who said she was with child. Meanwhile, Vera’s babbling didn’t serve to make the handyman any less confused. He stared at the pair trying to process the information he was receiving. “Uhhh…” Poor Joseph.

For the first time in a while Tatsu was at a loss for words. He had to admit Vera had turned it around on him, if for no other reason than the fact that her statement had gone on for a fairly long time and he was beyond trying to spin it back around to his favor. At the very least she was going to be fun to have back and forth games like this with, whether she was doing it on accident or not. As Joseph looked at Tatsu, the dragon slayer only shook his head and pointed at the door which the handyman finally started to work on. After that he looked at Vera and make the same head shaking motion.
"Alright you can supervise him, I'm going to the roof and I'll get you a key made tomorrow." He said as he headed for the tree, inserting the key into a small keyhole on the truck and climbing up to the roof.

It had been an interesting day, a lot of back and forth banter, he had made up with an old acquaintance that he could foresee a possible future friendship with, and had managed to finally make some memories in his new apartment. Plus he had come to the conclusion he had completely misjudged Vera to begin with... well either that or she had changed since the time of their first meeting. When he played back over everything in his head he chuckled, and as he got to the roof he couldn't help but to continue smiling. At least not until he realized that he might start forming an attachment. He didn't like that idea, he actually hadn't thought everything through, but as he realized just how jaded he had been, he wasn't extremely worried about it. She probably wasn't going to be a permanent fixture or fall for him any more than he was likely to fall for her right?

[END]