[FIN] Less Than Ideal Conditions

[Suudonym]

With November's chill setting in, it was sort of a bad time to be living out of one's car. At the same time, however, the temperature provided an excellent stimulus to keep drowsy minds awake and active, and that was the primary reason Nate had decided to take care of his banking outside instead of in the cozy, coffee-scented warmth of that nearby cafe oh Arceus could he ever go for a macchiato.

The little courtesy overnight parking lot, occupied by only a few mostly unattended cars, was filled with music blasting from the rolled down windows of one silver sedan. Nate, elbows propped against the wheel of the car with a few banking papers spread out on the dashboard in front of him, sang along boisterously to distract himself from the late autumn cold,

"Now you'll see how it feels
To live like a bee
Always searching, for what's honey
And the veins made some stains
When they burst from your legs
Your anxiety is a tapestry"  

[Akira Midoriyama]

Breath escaping his mouth in little clouds of steam, a brunet bundled in a green woolen coat and a thick scarf pushed his way into the chilly night outside the cafe. The first thing to catch his attention was, of course, the music, but when he turned his head, he found to his surprise that the inside of the vehicle was illuminated enough for him to make out an occupant.

Said occupant looked somewhat familiar in profile and a head of white hair supported said suspicion. However, Akira couldn't imagine for the life of him what Nate would have been doing in Camphoreon this late. He would have expected him to be at least half-way back to Ambergris by then. A little too dubious to go up to the person only to find a random stranger, Akira kept his gaze on the vehicle's occupant as he automatically took out his phone and began to text Nate.

[Nate, where are you?]

 

[Suudonym]

His phone buzzed out a notification from his pocket, and Nate switched from singing to whistling as he withdrew the device and checked the screen, tapping out a brief reply: "Camph, why"  

[Akira Midoriyama]

[Why are you here? Shouldn't you be in Ambergris this late?] he typed back, in disbelief. He had half a mind to go over to the sedan about now, but he didn't want to startle the guy.  

[Suudonym]

An eyebrow raised, he tapped out his response: "got work in the morning, it's a waste of time to go back"  

[Akira Midoriyama]

Akira didn't even bother with a text response this time. After replacing his phone in his pocket, he folded his arms across his chest to warm his frozen hands and yelled at Nate through his open windows as he approached the vehicle. So much for not wanting to startle him. "Are you stupid?! You seriously just stay to save time? Why did you even get a job here in the first place, then? You're going to catch your death out here with your windows down."

He paused. Something wasn't quite right. "Why are you here, anyway? It's getting late." If he planned on staying in Camphoreon, likely he'd be rooming with a friend somewhere. "Are you waiting on someone?" he asked, glancing back at the cafe.  

[Suudonym]

"Aah what the hell?!"

Nate brandished the pen in his hand like a weapon - something something pen mightier than sword, after all - and frowned, bewildered, at the source of the yelling. As recognition came to him, he lowered the pen, though the frown remained, "First of all what the hell. Second of all yes, I'd like to see you drive back to Ambergris after an evening shift and then drive back to Camphoreon for a morning shift - pro tip, you'd get like two hours of sleep tops. Third, I know you ain't terribly familiar with Kodo but there's not exactly an abundance of work in Ambergris. You get a choice between Camphoreon and Jinko if you wanna work, so I chose Camphoreon because it's where the-- the nightlife and s**t is." He didn't really care to bring his sister into the conversation - conversation? he still wasn't entirely sure where all this had come from.

"Furthermore," he was getting his bearings by now, a more comfortable tone of voice carrying his words, "if you think I'm gonna die from a little cold, I'm gonna have to contest that. Besides, it's not like I'm gonna leave my windows down all night." He frowned mildly at Akira's assumption, less displeased with the conclusion itself and more with the idea of it. "It's an overnight parking lot," he said matter-of-factly. "Guess."  

[Akira Midoriyama]

The realization he'd surprised the younger guy stopped Akira in his tracks for a moment. Then, seeing his pen at the ready, he had to smile. "Sorry; you always act so laid back and savvy about things I half-expected you to already know I was here." Tilting his head slightly as he listened to Nate's explanation, he sighed. The white-haired young man's pause hadn't escaped the brunet's notice, but at the moment that wasn't the worst of his worries.

The casual manner of speaking that had begun to creep back into Nate's tone started to annoy Akira for some unknown reason. Perhaps it was because he was acting like everything was fine when it so clearly was not. "If you catch a cold and you get a fever, you could very well die from it, so don't give me that." The 'windows down all night' comment caused him to cease his scolding as the implications of this ran though his mind. The latter comment simply confirmed things.

"Oh, no. Oh, no no no no," he scolded sternly, hardly realizing he was taking on a parental stance as he used to with Sera. "You are not spending the night out here. Tell me you're not sleeping in your car!" He'd heard of being short on rent, but this was appalling even by commoner standards. "What is the matter with you? Does your family know? Your friends?" Surely they wouldn't have approved of this if they did.  

[Suudonym]

"Assume for a moment," Nate replied, his expression deadpan and his hand rotating on his wrist as if to imitate the turning of gears in one's mind, "that I did catch a cold from being a little chilly - which sounds very sketchy scientifically, by the way. And assume that this cold, the common rhinovirus I remind you, did escalate into a fever. Do you really think that fever would go high enough to kill someone? It's just a cold - a cold that I don't even have yet; we're talking hypotheses here."

Nate narrowed his eyes at the pseudo lecture, resting an elbow on the wheel of the car and propping his face against his hand. "What are you, my mom? Actually, no, even my mom wouldn't throw such a fit. What's the big deal? I'm saving time and gas money. Worst that can happen is I wake up a little stiff."  

[Akira Midoriyama]

"People die from the common cold all the time!" Akira cried, though he sounded just a bit uncertain of himself. "And even if not a fever, you could catch all sorts of other things, like - like hypothermia or something." Not that he knew what that sickness really even consisted of; only that it had something to do with being really cold. "It's better to be safe than sorry. Anyway, that's not the main issue here! You're missing the point!"

Nate's leisurely pose made Akira want to hit him, but he kept his frigid hands tucked stiffly under his arms. "You're avoiding my questions!" he retorted, frustration rising as his cheeks grew ruddy with emotion and cold. "And that's not true! You can wake up to someone - or a gang - breaking into your car to try to steal it. Maybe they'll decide to overpower and kill you. Maybe you just won't wake up at all!"

Reaching for the door handle to the driver's seat, he attempted to pry it open. "What, is it that you don't want to bother your friends?"  

[Suudonym]

Nate narrowed his eyes further. "Yoooouu don't actually know anything about the common cold, do you?" Never in his life had he heard of anyone dying from the common cold. Even pneumonia had to be very severe for a very long time before it could be considered truly life-threatening.

"What were the questions?" he replied, raising a brow quizzically. "If my family and friends know? They don't, but if I told them they'd be like 'why are you telling us that.' Except probably Ashton and Cory, but Ash lives in Sandalwood and Cory's got his own s**t going on."

He wasn't really sure where all of this franticness was coming from, and as Akira reached for the door handle he slid his hand up to push the lock into place, maintaining his nonchalance, "Help. Police. Someone's trying to break into my car." A faint smirk emerged in his expression. "It's an overnight lot. I'm sure they've got cameras and s**t around the area, and I've got my cell. It's not like I've never done this before."

"I'm not gonna be a couch bum, that's for damn sure," he said, shrugging. "By the time winter rolls around I'll have saved up enough for an apartment, so it's whatever. You ever slept in a car? It's not nearly as bad as you seem to think it is." Not that it was especially pleasant either, especially compared to a bed, but hey, it was a place to sleep.  

[Kitomyx]

"I..." Nope, not really. Only that there was no cure and that sounded bad, combined with what he'd read from old fairy tales he used to read to his sisters that involved people dying of high fevers in winter. Evidently modern medicine had destroyed that possibility. If it had ever even existed in the first place. "...like I said, that's not the point, here! The point is you should be sleeping some place proper, not your damn car!"

Listening to Nate, Akira's frown deepend. Somehow he imagined that commoners would be more...accommodating friends than upper-class ones, but it seemed that wasn't the case. Indifferent and selfish people seemed to be everywhere. Or maybe he really was making a bigger deal of this than he realized. "...Do people often sleep in their cars and I just haven't noticed? Why wouldn't your friends care if they were really your friends?!"

He cast him an incredulous look as Nate locked the door on him. But then his eyes widened and he exhaled sharply, expelling a large cloud of steam. "You've done this before?!" he yelped. "Nate - Arceus, what's your problem?" He frantically began tugging on the locked door handle. "Open the damn door! I don't care about what you do when winter rolls around, you are not sleeping in this car tonight! Not if I can help it."

"And you don't have to be a - a 'couch bum', either! That's my thing, anyway. You can have my bed," he offered. "C'mon, it's not far from here!" Akira huffed, not wanting to think about having to sleep in a car. Even if he wanted to be a commoner, even if he had given up all his old luxuries, sleeping in a car in the cold all alone in a city overnight parking lot just rubbed him the wrong way.

It may have been something instilled deep in him when he'd been wealthier, he feared, but he felt that such living conditions would have been degrading, especially when he could afford otherwise. It sounded like something a desperate homeless person would resort to and he doubted Nate was either of those things. "My roommate is a little...eh...but I don't think he'll mind." Akira murmured.  

[Suudonym]

An almost fiendish grin spread in his features at Akira's reply - or lack of reply - as Nate shut down that much of the argument. At the question to follow, he made a point of looking out across the parking lot, gesturing, "This whole lot is for people who need to crash in their cars for the night, and there are other places throughout the city. It's a pretty common way to crash when you're away from home. My friends don't care because it ain't something to care about." He could just hear Will's 'lol sucks for you' now.

"Son, you need to work on un-rustling those jimmies," he said, wagging a finger. "Calm your tits. It is nowhere near that big of a deal. What are you so worked up about anyway?"  

[Akira Midoriyama]

"Good to know. But you have other options," the brunet answered. "What about taking showers and the convenience of bathrooms and blankets and pillows? Do you have a problem with accepting help?" Hesitating at Nate's comment, he raised a brow. "...'Jimmies'?" he repeated, clearly clueless.

With an exasperated sigh, he reached up to tug on his bangs. "I can't stand the thought of you out here on your own sleeping in a car like a homeless person when there's a perfectly good bed at my apartment that no one uses. Do you prefer your car?"  

[Suudonym]

"Public restrooms are practically everywhere, I got a blanket and pillow in the backseat, and for like ten bucks a month - which is a hell of a lot cheaper than gas, by the way - you can pick up a gym membership and just use their showers." It sort of was like being homeless, but Nate didn't really mind it so much. Adventure or something. His life wasn't such that he could hope for things to be simple and enjoyable anyway. "Havin' your jimmies rustled, gettin' your panties in a twist, et cetera et cetera," he explained briefly, waving a hand to dismiss it. "And for your information I do have a problem with accepting help, especially when I'm perfectly capable of self-subsistence."