"Fucking damnit ALAN!" Gareth grouches as he stalks across Sherman Park. He's tired himself out approaching random men called Alan who clearly think he's mad, at least one of whom threatened to call the cops on him, and he finally drops down onto a bench staring up at the sky. "Fuck now I feel like an idiot," he mutters to himself. "who the fuck runs around a park yelling 'Alan'???"
"You do," Ji-Ho says as he moves around from the back of the bench to stand a few feet away from Gareth with the poised and wary watchfulness of wildlife. "Apparently. Look, you're the guy who was with Darwin, right? It was a big misunderstanding. We cleared it up. Everything is fine now. Move along."
The tome of his voice was last heard from Sir Alec Guinness in Star Wars.
Gareth jumps nearly a foot into the air. "Holy *fuck!*" he yelps as Ji-ho makes his presence known. "Fuck man, you move quietly," he says, standing quickly to glare at Ji-ho, his brain sloooowly catching up with his words, his anger melting into confusion. "You did? That message was pretty uncool, man, making it sound like you were going to *stalk* people." says the P.I. who stalks people professionally.
"I wasn't _stalking anyone_," says Ji-Ho, who was definitely stalking people, in a tone of deeply aggrieved offense. He jams his hands into his pockets and rounds his shoulder at Gareth with eyes narrowed and suspicion.
He smells like Too Much cologne.
"I was _warning Darwin_ that he is making it _very easy_ for people to stalk other people," Ji-Ho says with the air of a wounded martyr.
"How?" Gareth wants to know, mirroring Ji-Ho's pose and shoving his hands into his pockets *pointedly*. "By existing? Dude it's really easy to stalk people if you know who they are."
Ji-Ho's jaw sets. His expression is stubborn. "I don't have to explain to you, and I'm not going to. But you don't need to run around shouting 'Alan' anymore."
"Sure, *Alan*," Gareth says, just short of sticking his tongue out at Ji-Ho before maturity wins out. Briefly. He frees a hand to rub at his face. "No more yelling."
"So. You were gonna find me and destroy me, right?" Ji-Ho casts a glance over Gareth that is all too clearly appraising of his chicken leg status. "Should I start running?"
Gareth narrows his eyes at Ji-Ho. "Depends, do you have a warrant out on you? Any unpaid parking tickets I can tell the cops about?"
Ji-Ho gives Gareth just the sliver of a smile. "You should definitely search for warrants for Alan."
Gareth snorts, allowing the smallest of smiles to creep onto his face. "Okay *fine*, I haven't got much to start on with you, but... hey, dude," he says with a heavy sigh. "Don't mess with Darwin, yeah? He's like the sweetest guy around, wouldn't hurt a fly. If you're gonna mess with people, mess with assholes who deserve it."
"Are you serious? _Sweet_? //That guy//?" Ji-Ho's smile fades beneath a startled, blank look, wide-eyed and disbelieving as he searches Gareth's expression. "No, I mean it. Are you serious? There is like nothing sweet about him. He ran me down, shook me like a -- I don't know, something. Like it was my fault! And he's absolutely reckless."
"What? Are you sure we're talking about the same guy?" Gareth asks, looking really confused. "Okay, reckless, yeah, he literaly *ate* a chicken bone who the fuck does that?" he allows. "But the dude saved my life once and he's looked out for me ever since. He's a good guy!"
Ji-Ho looks deeply suspicious as he studies Gareth, his eyes dark and hooded. "How'd he save your life?"
"Y'know, I don't really remember," admits gareth. "I was helping him out with a thing and I got in the middle of a tussle and he pulled me out of it and got me to hospital, gave me a place to crash while I slept off the concussion."
"You don't remember." Ji-Ho's voice is flat. If anything, his suspicion _deepens_ as he studies Gareth. "He got you into shit, and you say he saved your life just because he didn't leave you for dead?" He looks profoundly troubled by this!! "I gotta warn Miel or something," he murmurs.
"No!" Gareth says quickly, looking exasperated. "ONe of the kids he teaches went missing, and he hired me to look for him," he explains. "And I ended up on the wrong side of town in the middle of a gang fight or something." (It was something). "Dar was with me and he pulled me out. Nothing to do with him, it was my bad, dude. Wait, you know Miel?"
"What? Yeah. I mean -- sort of. Uh." Ji-Ho pauses. It's long. It's awkward. "Why?"
"I dunno, I was just asking, like, the guy's living on Darwin's couch, see? Would a *bad guy* just let some random stranger crash on his couch, no. QED," Gareth says, crossing his arms.
"Yes, actually. There are lots of reasons a _bad guy_--" The scorn in Ji-Ho's voice is rich, THICK. "--would let someone crash on their couch, and none of the reasons end up good for the someone who doesn't have anywhere else to go. I mean -- maybe he's not after Miel's kidneys or whatever, but it's really easy for people to end up exploited by something that seems like kindness."
"I mean *yes*," allows Gareth, he's allowing a lot of these through. "But has *Miel* suggested that he's being exploited by Darwin at all, huh?" he points out.
"Oh, yeah, because everyone being exploited is always perfectly aware of it and knows all the time that the person they trust is gonna turn on them," Ji-Ho says, arms folded.
Gareth scoffs. "Turn on him? What do you think Darwin's gonna do, *eat* him or something? if you're so worried about your friend why don't you offer him your couch, huh?"
Ji-Ho rolls his eyes. He looks ruffled, and his hair fluffs with the tousle of his hand as he pushes back through it and tugs on the roots in an irritated little yank. HAIR PULL. AUGH. "Fine. I don't need to convince you." He jerks his chin up in an acknowledging gesture. "They're still doing planting things if you want to head back over. Just wanted to call you off the hunt."
"Oh, they're still going? Good, I felt a bit like an ass wandering off like that," Gareth says, perking up, looking perhaps a *little* smug that he's *annoyed* Ji-Ho, turning to brush past him. "Also, dude, ease up on the scent, you smell like a fucking YMCA locker room."
Ji-Ho looks not only annoyed, but flustered. His cheeks pink as he sidestep slips out of Gareth's way. "A bottle broke," he lies, like a lying liar. "I don't normally smell like this!"
Gareth pauses to consider Ji-Ho. "Yeah? What do you normally smell like?" he wants to know. The question seems oddly genuine.
"Sss--." The sound hisses on Ji-Ho's tongue as he thinks about it. He looks baffled, further off-balance, like he doesn't know what to _do_ with the question. "--soap? That's a weird question." It's not, really, in this context. It's the context that is weird, and that's pretty much all Ji-Ho's fault. "Which I'm gonna go get. So I stop smelling like this."
Gareth reaches up to try and pat Ji-Ho's shoulder as he goes past. "I mean, I mostly smell like tea-tree and *very occasionally* lavender," he offers, like that makes some kind of sense.
Ji-Ho eels out of patting range, leaning back. NO TOUCHIE. "Okay. Well." He pauses a beat. "Have fun smelling like dirt instead. I'm gonna--." He hooks his thumb in a point over his shoulder and slips back one step, two. Then two more.
"Bye Alan!" Gareth says cheerfully over his shoulder, intercepting Darwin at some point along the way and returning to help with the gardening.
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