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strawwritesfic · 7 months

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Takeshi Yamamoto x Female!Reader: But Uh-Oh Those Summer Nights [Ch. 8]

Summary: “Summer lovin’ had me a blast / summer lovin’ happened so fast.”

Challenge: “10 Summer Events” by someone on Lunaescence Archives.

Ratings/Warnings/Tags: T (Sexual humor; sexual dialogue; summer vacation; comedy; fluff; eccentric grandparents; Grease references; Takeshi & Hayato & Tsuna; Takeshi & Hayato & Tsuna & Reader; Reborn & Tsuna; Reborn & Reader; Original Character & Reader)

Pairings: Takeshi Yamamoto/Reader

Tag List: @imaginesfire

Master List

Chapter 8: Nighttime Summer Carnival

The crowd teemed endlessly all around you. Carnival goers jostled you left and right as they went from stand to stand. You tried your best to force your way through the throng, but this last festival of the summer was obviously a popular one. A sea of people separated you from your friends.

It might have been easier to find them if you hadn't arrived so late. Unfortunately, your grandmother had insisted on you wearing an entirely different yukata to this particular festival--and not just any yukata. She wanted you to wear hers. The modifications she attempted, however, had made the once-beautiful fabric into nothing but an expensive mess. This required an emergency trip to the store to find you something appropriate to be seen in in public. Now wearing a completely unnecessary outfit that included a mask strapped to your head, you despaired of finding the one person your grandmother had gone to all this effort for.

“[Name]!”

You looked up at Tsuna’s voice. It took you a little bit longer than usual to find him. There he was, standing by the chocolate banana stand.

“Tsuna!” you said as you shoved your way to him. “Reborn’s not making you sell things again, is he?”

“Not that I know of. But I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“Me either. That baby is crazy.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Well, sorry I’m late. Grandma, um, had a heart attack.”

This was, of course, an outright lie. She just didn’t want the boys you’d spent your whole vacation with thinking less of her sewing abilities. And if the alternative to spouting this story to anyone who asked was her mailing Takeshi a pair of your undergarments, well...

“Is she all right?”

Of course Tsuna would buy it hook, line, and sinker. “She’s fine now. She just has to watch her red meat intake.”

“Oh.”

“Anyway, why are you here by yourself? Where are Hayato and Takeshi?”

“I don’t know!” Tsuna looked close to tearing his own hair out. “I came by the banana stand thinking Reborn had set them to work again, but they’re not here either.”

You chewed at your lip as you cast your eyes about the fast-moving river of people before you. Hayato missing was a blessing, really, but you only had a few days left. So much for somehow geting Takeshi away from the other two for a few minutes. Not that you minded Tsuna’s company, but

Speaking of the Tsuna, his anxiety only appeared to be growing. Then it hit you:

“Where’s Reborn?”

“That’s what I’m worried about!” he wailed.

“It’s okay. Calm down. Maybe he’s hanging out with Kyoya.” That thought didn’t comfort you much either. On the other hand...“Well, no probably not. He’s probably stalking us.”

“What?”

“It seems to be a hobby of his. Anyway, if Reborn hasn’t done anything yet, he’ll probably wait at least a few more minutes. Let’s go find Takeshi and Hayato, okay?”

Tsuna did not look terribly enthusiastic about your suggestion. Nonetheless, he gave you hesitant nod before following you back into the current. You had to shout to get him to hear over the chatter all around you:

“So where do you think they’ll be?”

“What?”

“I said, ‘Where do you think they’ll be?’”

“Oh! I don’t know. Takeshi usually plays the throwing games, but I didn’t see him there earlier, and–”

“Perfect!” You could have kissed him on the forehead. Instead, you settled for waving and shouting, “Let’s split up! You look for Hayato, and I’ll look for Takeshi! Bye, Tsuna!”

There was no way of telling if he actually heard you before the crowd swept him away, but you had to hope so. Otherwise, Hayato might have been lost forever. Wouldn’t that have just been such a crying shame?

Luckily, the crowd around you soon began to thin. The sun had set entirely, leaving only the bulbs hanging on thin strands crisscrossing the paths to light your way. You caught snatches of conversations that involved the word “fireworks.” Maybe everyone was headed to a better viewing spot.

Your heart dropped a bit at the thought. Perhaps it was silly, but you still wanted to watch them with Takeshi, since you hadn’t go to last time. That plan was beginning to look more and more impossible, though. If you couldn’t find your boyfriend, you couldn’t watch anything with him.

“Oh no! No! Not all my wares! I beg you!”

A sudden cry brought you to a standstill. The voice did not belong to Takeshi, but you stopped at the obvious horror in the words. And of course, who should be there but Reborn coldly ruining some shopkeeper’s life?

“Just put it in the bag,” he said, though the man running the stand remained groveling.

“Hi, Reborn,” you said.

He looked up from his place at the shooting stand, then gave you a quick nod as he cocked the gun. “Good evening, [Name].”

“Tsuna’s afraid you’re looking for him, by the way.”

“Paranoia can be a helpful quality in a boss.” Another bullet zoomed through the obstacles. “If you’re looking for Yamamoto, he’s a few stands over.”

“Thanks.” You darted off again, as you were eager to get away before the game manager started crying again. Sure enough, just as you sprinted around another corner, you heard more sobbing. “Jeez, Reborn can’t be nice to anyone, can he?”

“Oh. There you are.”

You froze and looked up. Headed right toward you was a tall, grinning boy. Despite the fact the pair of you had been dating for several weeks, you could not stop your heart rate from picking up a bit as you answered with a sheepish smile:

“Here I am.”

“I’m glad I found you! The festival is almost over!”

“Yeah, my grandma, she–”

You stopped. Takeshi lifted one arm, the hand of which was wrapped loosely around a fluffy-looking stuffed cat.

“What’s this?” you asked.

“I won it for you,” he explained, “in case you weren’t able to make it. Well, I guess I would have tried to win it anyway, but–”

You cut him off with a hug, then tugged it from his hand. “I love it.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Good. Now you have something to remember me by.”

You had nothing to say to that. At the beginning of the summer, you’d thought you weren’t going to find a single friend. All you had wanted to do was leave Japan as soon as possible. Now you had Tsuna, Takeshi, even Hayato. The thought of going home made you feel ill.

Maybe Takeshi sensed how you were feeling, because the next thing he did was push you away slightly and say, “Hey. Let’s go watch those fireworks.”

Slowly, you nodded. Then, with the hand not wrapped around the cat’s neck, you grabbed his hand.

Takeshi grinned and patted you on the head. “It’ll be okay.”

You took a deep breath, smiled, and looked toward the sky.

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justfollowmyhansel · 5 years

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Bowie Museum Pt. 2 — May 17th through May 19th, 2018

When I was initially planning my spring vacations, it was largely around a monthly cycle of Bowie Exhibit and Mattachine experiences. Since the Exhibit was scheduled to run from early March to the middle of July and since I had been enamored of Bowie the majority of my life, this was an expense I was more than willing to take on. In fact, now that David was no longer alive, this would be the closest I would be able to get to seeing him perform live — a pale comparison, I was certain to actually being in the same venue as the man….

But…as with the last travel experience, plans change. They have to. Either by a change in financial status, a change in emotional status, or a change of larger plans. For me, larger plans meant going to Australia to see John. By this time, four of the five dates had been announced and the tickets released for purchase. The first and second being the absolute bookends for the trip with Adelaide and Brisbane. Naturally I had tickets to all of them, but I knew that when push came to shove, I’d have to pick whichever grouping of dates gave me the most concentrated amount of shows for the least amount of time. I didn’t think that I had been with my current job long enough to justify taking that much time off — even with the explicit reassurance that I knew perfectly well that I would be taking a significant part of that time as unpaid. Even if I had been with that job long enough to justify taking what would amount to five weeks, I wasn’t sure that I would want to.

So plane tickets were booked and budgets adjusted around the understanding that my first show would be on July 6th in Sydney and I would have what more or less amounted to a show a week for three weeks (even if they weren’t quite spaced like that.)

In lieu of the extra couple of weeks in Australia, when it was announced that Mason and Mimi would be bringing back their Taboo staging, I jumped at the chance to go again. I confirmed the tickets were available and then a couple of days later booked the plane ticket. The first time the show had sold out, but only within a couple of days of the actual date. I had felt confident that it wouldn’t sell out that quickly this time and that I could secure a good rate for the plane tickets before purchasing the show tickets. When I went to book them though, something had come up. The original link that had been posted for the tickets routed to a dead end that wouldn’t allow the tickets to be finalized and the website for both the venue and the production company had been all but scrubbed of the existence of a second show.

I thought about cancelling the trip, refunding the money, and having more money to play with when I got back to Australia. But instead, Risa and I planned a trip that would be an extended stay at David Bowie Is where we would take a full afternoon at the show, bringing both Advil and water into the exhibit and then later take in a live talk with one of David’s most prominent designers. The one that had designed the first outfit you saw when walking in. And the second day, instead of being spent seeing Mason would be spent taking an informal tour of Hedwig history, one where we would visit the now-remodeled Jane Hotel, the Belasco, the West Village that featured so prominently in JCM’s videos, but not Mattachine now that the ticket had been booked for the week before the Thursday we were expecting it to be.

This time going up to New York, I came into the Philadelphia airport and witnessed a much longer drive up to Brooklyn. The flight in had free wifi for the majority — a pleasant surprise given that a child on the plane was having what sounded like the worst experience of its young life. Instead of screaming baby, I was able to listen to nonstop David Bowie music. Just the thing to set the mood for the afternoon.

Risa and I took great pains to stress that we were capable of walking to the museum ourselves. The last time, we had been a little…escorted and given that we were both adults within the very safe confines of a museum, we were safe in the assertion that we got this. The only thing to call that into question was my nice new, still weeping thumb scar — a product of my being relatively careless with a craft knife while shaping a custom Funko Pop doll.

After we convinced her parents, we went upstairs to the exhibit. This time having untimed tickets, we were able to go in whenever we pleased. I checked the time on my phone and deemed it far enough away from the start of a fifteen minute block to go in. We received our headphones, but this time paid significantly less attention to them. Being the Bowie enthusiast of the pair of us, I gave Risa a mini-tour, filling in some of the information left off of the exhibit cards, disputing information that rang false (which given that the exhibit was put together from Bowie’s archives, but not his fact checkers was necessary at times), and tying things back not only to Hedwig and John, but to other cultural touchstones that Risa might have known.

Without the urging of her parents to take less time exploring the minutiae, we spent more time examining the video footage and getting close to the items we wanted to see. And since we had already been there before, we were able to be more confident that we were seeing every section of the show as opposed to passing over rooms due to crowd movement.

We left after inching our way through the exhibit, we made our way out to the gift shop. I took the chance to ask what the difference was between the hardbound and softbound versions of the catalogue other than the obvious one was hardbound and the other wasn’t. It took two different exhibit workers to get an answer but apparently in terms of content, they were the same. I had a list of memorabilia that I had purchased the last time and a list of things I had wanted to buy the first time, but they had run out. Originally, I had placed a $300+ order through the website, but it had been cancelled after a few days due to a high volume of sales.

After the last time, the lady in charge of upstairs merchandising recognized me. I wasn’t sure if it was the fussiness of asking over a $1.50 button or the amount that I had spent. This time, she helped me find a record that I had rethought my position on buying and telling me the price of a t-shirt that was significantly higher than the other ones the exhibit had on offer. After some difficulty getting checked out, we exited.

Immediately getting into the more traditional museum fair, it felt like the building’s fever had broken. We sat down in the relative coolness. Risa texted her parents that we were out and I texted my mom. Her parents wanted to know what we were going to do for lunch as they were going to come and get us if we were going someone. The last time we had eaten in Brooklyn, it took us close to forty minutes to find a restaurant that wasn’t crowded and even then, it wasn’t one that I had an easy time finding something to eat at. My position was that Risa and I could find one on our own. And we did, agreeing that Popeye’s sounded nice as we passed a gentleman eating a box of chicken in the downstairs café.

Her parents thought it was too far to walk compared to the time we had to be back for the talk. Regardless of whether it was or not, after significant back and forth over what to do it became too late to leave the museum for food at all, let alone to leave and come back for dessert like had been my plan.

A few more moments of quibbling over whether or not we’d want to actually at the overpriced café, the overpriced café with items specifically designed to go along with this exhibit, we just stood up and decided it would be then or never. Good timing because if we had waited any longer, we would have missed out on that night’s talk for sure.

In the café, we ordered a Blackstar cake — a dark chocolate cake with chocolate mousse and an orange glaze with little dark chocolate cookies spelling out David’s name in the Blackstar font — and a Thin White Duke drink for me that comprised a coconut rum, vodka, lime juice, and a cherry. We were both thrilled with the food selection and the well-timed service of our very nice waiter.

Just on time, or perhaps a touch late, we went down to the auditorium where the talk was being held. Kansai Yamamoto, the designer we were seeing, had more than a few antidotes memorized in English that he told at the start of the talk with impeccable timing. He was less interested in answering the host’s questions and more interested in delivering interesting stories tangentially related or on topics that he wanted the audience to know about. He told us about his design history outside of working with David, what his inspirations were, how proud he was of his daughter…. He talked about his first impressions of David and the ones he held later as they worked together on more projects. He talked about hosting David when both of their children were small and showed a photo of Duncan with his own daughter.

After the part that he had preprepared, he turned the English talking over to his translator, a very attractive and funny man in his own right to whom he had been introduced to only that morning. While he was able to understand the majority of the English around him, he explained that his brain wasn’t fast enough to translate the sentences he wanted to say, which was why he used the translator. Kansai also admitted that he was answering the questions in ways that interested him over more straight forward answers.

At the end of the speech, Risa and I chose to wander around the museum looking for things of interest. They were having a Bowie ball of sorts with dozens and dozens of people dressed up. We walked past where they were setting up and when we ran into him, personally thanked the translator for what he added to the talk.

Walking around, we looked at exhibits centering around Egypt, again with less than impressive captions and saw the tiniest mummy figure, a miniature dildo, and some of the pages of the Book of the Dead. That was the sort of thing that if I knew more about Egyptology, I would have been highly interested in studying at length.

We meandered our way downstairs, checking out the final part of the museum that had caught our eyes — the exhibit on Korea. That one again the captions were lacking, but added context that in terms of how anthropologists looked at Korea, they have only recently started to have their own cultural relevancy with the majority of their history being under the reign of China, Japan, or other Asian forces that had invaded them over the years.

We went downstairs and caught up with Risa’s parents. While we were seeing Kansai Yamamoto’s talk, they saw the free talk downstairs talking about David’s influence in fashion. Both had sounded appealing. The last thing we bought at the exhibit was a grapefruit margarita that Risa bought for me before we headed back to her car. The majority of our things were already in the car from earlier, which made a very easy post-event depositing into the car.

On the way back, we got McDonald’s and once we were back at Risa’s house further discussed David and the museum, this time with added youtube links for songs and photos that hadn’t been exhibited when we went to go see. Another few hours and we didn’t even make it out of the 70s in terms of content.

The next day, we chose to sleep in late. I hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before the flight and was up more or less for 24 hours before I was able to get into bed. Plus after the lack of agency we had at the museum, I wasn’t exactly thrilled to take a New York tour that very much would have to be guided by her parents.

Instead, we chose to go to Risa’s favourite Asian market. Knowing my fondness for the Asian grocers near me, Risa was eager to show off the shopping plaza that she and her anime group often went to. I agreed and late in the afternoon, we left for Mitsuwa.

Once we arrived, we got lunch and I found one of the things I had been missing most from Japan — coffee jelly. The coffee jelly in Japan was cut up into cubes and placed into a nice milky base as if the cubes were acting like ice cubes in a drink. The one here was a denser selection of jelly with soft serve ice cream swirled on top.

Among the other food I purchased was three additional drinks I’d never had before with the idea that three was reasonably the limit I could get through before going home, a bag of gummy lychee candies because I’d wanted to try them for awhile, and a box of my other favourite Japanese food, raisin sands.

We looked at the makeup, cookware, booze, and other sections of the store, sometimes with me explaining what a product was or could be used for and other times with Risa pointing out that she had seen something before or that it was something she had tried at the anime mart. We found no end to things that would have to be tried later either for a lack of immediate funds or, more often, a lack of time in which to do it.

We stepped outside of the food market portion of Mitsuwa and back into the food court. Risa insisted that I try a fish shaped waffle with red bean paste called taiyaki. I was surprised at how well the flavours went together.

The next place we went was the bookstore. At the very back of the store was a separate paper and stationary store set up not unlike how Borders used to have their stationary, but with greater detail and actual variety of items and not just casings. I could have bought the entire tiny store with its brightly coloured papers, meticulously lined notepads, rainbow of ink selections in gel and ballpoint and all manner of cute. I limited myself to a floral plastic folder for papers, a small lined notebook to make my attempts at learning Japanese and Korean seem more authentic—and so that my letters didn’t dwarf the page, and a small corn shaped eraser for my mother since it reminded me of the Dekalb corn signs that she’s so fond of.

In the outer bookstore, there was less of interest. It was a beautiful store, but given that whatever I bought I would have to carry on my back back to Kansas and the high prices in a real bookstore as opposed to my usual used bookstores, there were automatically less appealing options. I did find two books on Yuri!!! On Ice, one of which I bought to make up for the lack of show merch I was able to find when I was in Japan.

Last was the general items store. Again, Risa and I spent a long time looking over times like sushi themed socks and cute luggage that might have made travelling easier had I not already had my obnoxiously unique purple hearted luggage. We stayed until the store was ready to close, apologizing that we hadn’t realized that it would be closing so soon and I picked up another button for my coat jacket — a pink Hello Kitty produced by a drink company I was familiar with. It soon found a spot next to the Bowie pin and the clay Hedwig pin that I had bought off of Etsy.

We went back to Risa’s, me eating on some of the food I had acquired at the Asian market and carefully trying to balance starting a new drink so that I could have a different new one at Rocky Horror and the last in the morning before my flight.

For evening plans, Risa’s mom had suggested either a live performance of Cabaret, which neither Risa nor I was super enthused about or a shadow cast version of Rocky Horror. We opted for the Rocky Horror experience.

In between goings on, I created a new punk/glam makeup look, applied a fake tattoo to my stomach, and changed into the blue Origin of Love shirt I had brought with me. I figured why not combine my two favourite musicals?

We drove out slightly past midnight to a dead looking strip mall movie theatre. Risa’s mom dropped us off and said to text her when the film was over knowing from past experience that the show started at eleven, but the actual film could start anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half later than that.

We bought our tickets and another pin for my jacket and Risa and I went to sit down. We picked the back row, naturally.

The show started and they had an “impromptu dance party” that lasted a few seconds, a Rocky Horror baptism where they placed rice on the new baby of two former shadow cast members, and a few quick announcements before having their virgin activity and starting the show. The shadow casters and the audience weren’t exactly the stuff of legend that I’d been hearing about for over a decade in regards to Rocky fandom. The cast didn’t know their lines and the audience seemed to be going through the motions of “this is what we do on Friday night.”

So I decided it was a sing along. And I decided that whichever songs I wanted to get up and dance to, I would. I shouted a few new things or things I’d read in my Rocky Horror books to liven up our experience with the showing. For the most part, it didn’t interfere with the other movie goers since we were seated so far back and the things people did observe were met well. We left very happy and I felt like I had mentally reclaimed a film that had been tarnished by a bad experience with an ex and the atrocity that was Fox’s attempt at a remake.

We went back to Risa’s house again for a few hours before we all had to leave for the early morning flight back to KC. Given how much trouble we had had getting me back the first time, we left extra early to make sure I actually got on the damned plane the first time around. Naturally, I was almost through security as soon as I got there.

For airport food, I chose a coffee and some Popeye’s fries and during my layover, I grabbed a bagel and lox. From the moment I got off the plane in Kansas City, I would have to be up and awake until at least one in the morning due to volunteering to take the late-late shift to avoid missing any work. It took until I got back to Kansas City since the airport one was only serving breakfast, but I finally got the Popeye’s I had wanted for three days.

#bowie museum pt. 2 #New new New New New New New New NEW New York #travel diary #travel diary new york #new york day 1 #new york trip 2 #new york trip 2 day 1

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