Players:
Summary: Daisuke and Nathaniel chat for a bit as they're new roommates.
Date: December 14, 2009
Log Title Emotions and Roommates
Rating: PG
//Xavier Mansion - Daisuke and Nathaniel's Room //
Daisuke's side of the room is a bit cluttered but still neat as he has a few drawing pads piled up on his desk along with his art supplies along with a few pictures of his grandmother, brother and mother taped on the wall along with a poster from Cowboy Bebop. A drum pad sits folded up at the end of his bed. His desk has stacks of text books, CD's and a laptop on it. There are a few small chibi style anime figures on his desk and end-table.
It's later in the evening and since Daisuke doesn't have any homework, since he's graduated, he's was trying to find something to keep himself busy until he's ready to crash out. He's decided to try to draw for a bit but there's something that just isn't coming out right. He's sketching on a piece of paper at the moment, but there are about a half dozen balled of pices of paper on the floor in front of his bed.
Nathaniel has just gotten back from one of his usual aimless walks around the grounds of the school, unlocking the door with a click and slipping inside. He locks the door again out of habit and turns towards the room, the cold of the evening clinging to his frame. Brushing his hair away from his forehead, he lifts his chin to Daisuke, voice smooth and absentminded, "Hey, Daisuke." He glances at the balled up pieces of paper with some amusement, picking his way over to his own bed and dropping onto it heavily. While he shoulders free of his coat, he continues, "Having trouble drawing?"
Daisuke turns on his bed and looks over at Nathaniel and smiles. "Hey Nathaniel, and yeah, just can't seem to get what's in my head on the paper." He says running his hand through his hair. "I think it's also cause I have a lot on my mind combined with being a bit bored that I'm just not as focused as I should be."
Nathaniel kicks off his shoes and tosses his coat over the back of a desk chair before he stretches out comfortably on his bed, folding his arms beneath his head and shifting slightly, "A lot on your mind? Want to talk about it?" His eyebrows lifted, he does what he often does in social situations to make up for his lack of emotional intelligence: his power reaches out, tendrils plucking at the emotions surrounding Daisuke to get a 'feel' for, well, how he feels.
There's a lot of emotions running through Daisuke at the moment, boredom being one, frustration, a lost feeling but yet at the same time there's a bit of excitement, which is definately out of place. "Yeah, I just know I have to leave this place soon, I can't keep hanging around like a lost puppy and I think that's pretty much what I am. A lost puppy. Sorry, I shouldn't be talking about this with you and putting my issues on your shoulders."
"Your issues are my issues, brother," Nathaniel says with a vague grin, ruffling his fingers through his hair again before closing his eyes and relaxing, folding one of his legs over the other at the knee, "I don't think it's a matter of hanging around like a lost puppy. Teens always have an issue going out on their own in the world; teens like us? It's not an easy prospect. You're not talking about just leaving a boarding school, but the primary spot of acceptance and understanding. That can be a hard gig."
"It's not just a school, like you said. It's the first place that feels like a home. That I'm not afraid to come home too. A place where you're constantly walking on eggshells and waiting for the other shoe to drop isn't home." Daisuke just has developed so much socially in the past few years here. He can't help but chuckle at Nathan calling him brother. "I think I'm also getting anxious to leave here for a week."
Nathaniel turns onto his side, propping his head on his hand and staring at Daisuke curiously, "Where are you going…? …and I don't need to know about fucked up homes. I definitely prefer this place to where I used to be." He fidgets with the top blanket on his bed, twisting and plucking at it absentmindedly, ever the fidgety youth.
Daisuke waves his hand. "I don't really dwell on my fucked up home, it's in the past and it's not going to rule over who I am now." Daisuke says and the therepy really helped there, though he still tends to get nightmares in regards to it. "I'm going to Japan to visit my Grandmother. As much as I want to be with Jared and Eddie, I miss my Grandmother a lot."
Nathaniel just smirks slightly, shifting his head down further so his hand buries in his hair, "I didn't say I was, either. I just understand it." He nods his head in understanding of the visit to Japan as well, though he ventures to ask, curiously, "Why don't they come with you?"
"I…want to go alone. They have their Dad's and their family and I know I'd be welcome to join them I just know I'd feel weird. Even though Eddie had it rough too, he has parents now and it'll just remind me that I don't really have family." Daisuke says with a shrug. "I have my Grandmother, and we're close but she's in Japan and I just want to spend the holiday with family for once. She's really been there for me."
Nathaniel holds up a hand as if to stave off an attack before twisting yet again to flop onto his back, "I meant going to Japan with them, not spending time with their families." He studies the ceiling for a long time before his brow knits and he continues, "Wow, I didn't even think about the holidays. I don't know what I'm going to do."
"Sorry if I drifted, I guess I was trying to say, I just want it to go alone. I think it'll help me relax and just get away from everyone." With him and his Grandmother, it'll allow Daisuke to just feel normal for a bit. "I think maybe in the spring I'll take Jared to meet my Grandmother and show him Kyoto in the spring."
"I can understand that and I imagine he'll enjoy that," Nathaniel says simply, pushing himself into a sitting position so that he can roll to the foot of his bed and dig around underneath it. Coming out with his own drawing pad, he scoots back a pace to settle against his lumped up pillows and sets the pad on his knee, sliding free the mechanical pencil and long eraser tucked into the spines.
"I forgot you draw too." Daisuke says smiling. "I have tons of art stuff if you ever want to borrow anything. Paper, pencils, coloured pencils, oil crayons, charcoal, just let me know. I kind of have an addiction to buying new art supplies." After all getting a fresh pad and christing the first page with a drawing is always a great feeling.
Nathaniel shrugs casually as he taps the back of his pencil against his forehead, "I should be all right. I'm not as poor as I used to be, either for the sake of providence or hard work, so I can generally get my own supplies. I'm sort of anal like that." He shakes his head idly, quirking a faint grin and glancing sidelong at Daisuke, "Honestly, I think Leo's the only one who really knows me, and I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not. Still, at least it makes me cool and mysterious, natch?"
"Well who fully knows anyone, well I mean that, no I don't know you too well and not many people know me that well." There's the side Daisuke shows to people but there's a lot hidden he keeps secret. "Jared, Eddie and Skyler are the three I've really opened up too. I don't know if it's bad or good, but it's what ever is good for you. And I don't know about cool but maybe mysterious." He teases.
That response has Nathan sticking his tongue out at Daisuke, shaking his head, "I just find it funny that I can still confuse him. It's hard for me to get over the idea that not everyone has this thing in their head, you know?" He taps his temple, then shrugs, resting his hands comfortably on his stomach, "I'm not good at communicating some things on my own, and I forget that people can't pick up on how I feel, so I run into conversational roadblocks sometimes without a clue how I got there. It's weird."
"Yeah, I kinda feel bad they stuck you with me." Daisuke says in regards to Nathaniel's powers. "I know I'm an emotional…well I don't want to say mess but that's the only word I can really think of." Like anyone he has his good days and his bad days. "I will never claim to be good at reading people. Though if you ever wanna just talk, I will listen."
Nathaniel smirks slightly, cocking a brow at Daisuke, "Emotional? I live in a building full of teenagers, Dai, half of whom come from broken families. I can think of at least three who have the urge to slit their wrists on a weekly basis. You're really not as disruptive as you'd think." He bends his knee, fidgeting with his hands, twirling his drawing pencil through his fingers, "It's… I can talk all day long, but expressing myself is difficult. I appreciate the offer, though."
"That's one thing you won't have to worry about, I've never been suicidal." After his brother's death, Daisuke never really wanted to do that to himself. He's always had a will to live. "I use art to get out emotions that are bottled up. It's how I used to deal with my depression." He still goes through the occasional bought of it though.
"I know," Nathan says with a bemused, wry smile, twirling the pencil faster between his fingers, "Like you said - we're roomies now. I'm pretty much privy to all your mood swings, whether I want to be or not. I've gotten pretty good at projection, but what I draw in is still hard to cut off completely."
"And you're going to be privy to all of my music." Daisuke says with a chuckle as he tends to listen to it often, and fairly loudly. "I don't practice druming in the room." He says with a chuckle. "Well to me, drawing is a way to express my emotions and a way to keep them from bottling up inside. I don't draw for others to enjoy it, or to be famous, I draw cause it helps me. I miss my brother, doing something as simple of drawing what I remember helps."
Nathaniel shakes his head again, but without any particular feeling behind it, "Music doesn't bother me. I listen to loud rock, generally. It helps fuzz things up a little." He leans over again, this time reaching under his bed and to the left, behind the small dresser that acts as a side table. It takes him a couple seconds, but then he takes out what looks like a CapriSun, jamming the straw in and sitting up to properly sip at it. Satisfied, he looks back over at Daisuke, "I was talking about empathy, not art. I'm glad the art does something for you, though. That's been the general idea for centuries, after all."
"I really don't know much about Empathy at all. I really don't envy your power." Daisuke admits. If he had something like empathy, he's afraid he'd be driven nuts. "You must be really strong to be able to deal with it all. "That's what I listen to rock, and loud. A good part of it is Japanese but even though I grew up in America we were raised being Japanese first."
Nathaniel shrugs rather offhandedly, rubbing the back of his neck for a second and sucking on the straw of his drink. When he pulls away, he speaks in a low, rambling tone, "Well… I was pretty emotionally cut off as a kid. When you're already good at repressing, it can be easier to take things in, I guess. When I had my first power explosion, though, I drove both of my parents crazy for a while - they had to go to an institution. It gives me headaches, mostly." He slurps on his drink some more while Daisuke is talking, nodding emphatically, "Yeah, I got that impression."
"I was the younger brother, so I think Shuya let me be a little bit more emotional and he was the stronger one, for me." Daisuke says with a bit of a guilty feeling behind it. "I just have the sonics, super powered metabolism and I can detect weaknesses in things but at least I can control them. As you can probablly feel, I'm not great at repressing."
Nathaniel studies Daisuke thoughtfully for a while before he says, "I don't understand why you'd feel guilty about that. It's sort of insulting, considering he loved you enough to go that far. Being a shield means being appreciated, which means never allowing yourself to regret his actions or feel guilty about them, just to be grateful for him." It's a very logical approach to a very emotional problem, but he did say that was part of his problem. Either way, he sucks on the straw a few seconds longer, then continues slowly, "No, not really, but you're not that bad. Most people aren't that good at repressing, really."
Daisuke takes a deep breath as it's weird not being able to hide anything. "I guess sometimes I wonder, if I was able to be strong for him, like he was for me, maybe he'd still be alive." That's the hardest thing for Daisuke, fully getting over his brother's death. "I'm glad that he did that for me, and Shu was more than a brother to me, he really was…I…think I'm gonna go give my Grandmother a call quick before going to bed. Let her know the plans." He says feeling bad about Nathaniel having to feel what he's feeling during the particular topic and he does actually need to talk to his Grandmother so it's not a lie.
Nathaniel smiles enigmatically this time, a few stray locks of light hair falling over his forehead, and he nods slightly, "Ah, sure thing. I'll see you later… and, you know, worrying about whether or not he'd still be alive? You shouldn't. What is is, and worrying about the past will just drive you crazy. Trust me - I know." That said, he turns to his doodling and sipping, leaving Daisuke to his own thoughts.
