"This is Romeo. If thou art a friend, my one wish is that this machine should capture your voice, so we might talk ere long; if thou art not, kindly leave me in peace."

BEEEEEEP.


[OOC: In creating this journal, the author has assumed the identity of a fictional person for use in the role-playing game fandomhigh, for the sole purpose of entertainment, without intending to obtain a benefit or to injure or defraud either the person who created the fictional person, or any reader of this content. The author does not purport to be the creator of the fictional person, or to be affiliated with the creator, or with any person or entity with an interest in the fictional person. The author does not claim to be the person who is being used as the graphical representation of that fictional person, nor intend to obtain a benefit or to injure or defraud that person by use of their image.]

Romeo's nineteenth birthday started with a package from his father containing a collection of Lord Byron's works, a dagger that was about twice as elaborate as anything Romeo had any business carrying, and a letter that suggested -- in a polite, backhanded, and elaborate way -- that Romeo was missed and should make it his business to visit Verona sooner rather than later.

There was also a large box of chocolates. They were good. Romeo ate the caramels as his breakfast. He should have been reading about the equilibrium point in supply and demand, but that kept turning into perusal of the poetry. Really, the poetry struck him as more relevant.

[OOC: For the girlfriend, or for birthday emails/calls/texts/homing pigeons.]

Romeo's college required he take a business ethics course. It wasn't such a bad idea, really. In Verona, showing up with a few bodyguards and asking pointed questions about how attached a rival was to his cars was considered a reasonable opening salvo. He flipped through the text with a highlighter in hand, occasionally shooting worried glances at the door.

Yurika wasn't saying anything, but he could tell something at work was troubling her. A friend had died; that was as much as she'd told him, and that was worry enough.

He reread the passage on ethical hiring practices and hoped she'd be home soon.

[OOC: For the hime and calls/emails/texts.]

Romeo wasn't a girl anymore, and Monday meant that Yurika's need to at least put in a guest appearance at her office put an end to their Romeo-isn't-a-girl-anymore celebrations.

So he'd gotten out of bed, gone to the bookstore to get his textbooks, stopped at a noodle bar for lunch, and was now back home. There was nothing on television except a cartoon about pixies who solved teenager's romantic problems, and that was a little sappy even for Romeo. He turned the TV off and started copying kanji out of his beginner's penmanship book.

He had lovely handwriting when he was writing English. The problem was getting that to carry over.

[OOC: Open for phone calls, texts, girlfriends who may wander home, etc.]

Wrapped snug on a futon in their new apartment in Tokyo and with nothing particular calling him into the day, Romeo could have slept the day away if it hadn't been for the singing.

...close my eyes and the flashback starts
I'm standing there
On a balcony in summer air

See the lights, see the party, the ball gowns
I see you make your way through the crowd
and say hello

A girl's voice -- and not, though he loved the sound of it, Yurika's -- was coming from the spare bedroom. Romeo yanked on a t-shirt and carefully crept toward the song. "Who is there," he asked from the doorway, "and wherefore?"

The young woman who turned to see him was exceptionally beautiful, with flowing blonde ringlets. She balanced a guitar on her lap. "Oh, Romeo, thou hast found me!" she said, as if she'd known him for years. She launched herself at him reaching for his left hand. "I half thought myself forgotten, shut as I was in this dreary room. Now I see thine love lives on and hast drawn thee to me."

Romeo, very intelligently, stared. "Who art thee?" he asked, slipping into his old tongue and ignoring the persistent tug on his hand. "I can tell thou art of Verona, yet I know you not."

The girl's laugh was of silver and bells. "Of course thou knowest me. I am the wedding ring thou set to the side for so long, given this happy shape so I might bring a song to you." She held up her wrist to show a bracelet tattoo of rough crosses with 'Romeo + Juliet' tattooed underneath. "Thou cannot have forgotten me."

As the girl talked on -- and, somehow, Romeo found himself believing the story -- he winced. This was going to be an interesting one to explain to Yurika.

[OOC: Open for SP/phone calls/what have you! And yes, I'm earworming you. Mwah ha ha.]

And so it was that after a good party, a last bout in the Salle, a frantic trip to the post office to send off most of his boxes (and why was overnight, cross-universe shipping to Tokyo so expensive? It was a good thing Romeo didn't care about money or he'd be rather peeved), a quick visit to the church where he never spent nearly as much time as he should, and a last mocha with extra chocolate sauce at the Perk, Romeo Montague came to wait for the portal that would take Yurika and him off to Tokyo.

He shifted his bags hand to hand a little impatiently. Mostly, he wanted all of this goodbying to be over. He'd miss everyone; he knew that. But having so many last things was wearing on him.

Homecoming wasn't so very far away, was it?

[Last post in Fandom for Romeo & Dojima! dojima_hime modded with permission. If you want a call inviting you to come see one or both of them off, well, you got it!]

It had been an interesting night last night in the common room, and a more interesting morning on the roof. The island was playing with Romeo's hormones, Ender said; Romeo wasn't honestly sure he would have figured out anything was especially wrong without that discussion.

For now, he was going to lie back on his bed with his journal, and will very hard that his girlfriend psychically sense his, ahem, time of need before he'd filled the whole thing with the sorts of odes to girls' hair he thought he had outgrown years before.

[OOC: For one, please! And NWS. I know, you're stunned.]

For my characters who have been around for a while.

( Emo redhead the first )

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( Emo redhead the second )

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( Emo blond poet boy )

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( Occasionally slightly emo blonde spy )

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( Not that emo at all brunet anarchist )

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( The me: Um, my hair's kind of light brown-ish... )

Reno, Romeo thought wryly as he took a seat in one of the plush chairs in his father's office, could be trusted with many things. They included Romeo's life; it also included finding the best bar wherever he happened to be. The dive they'd ended up in after dinner the night before was down a street Romeo had never even noticed in the 17 years he spent in Verona, and the one-handed bartender was not stingy with the whiskey.

Romeo still felt it, more than a little. He shifted in his seat and tried to focus on his father. Reno, spared this particular display of family awkwardness, had taken Balthazar and Benvolio to the same bar; Romeo tried not to wish he was with them.

( How does this day find thee, my son? )

He didn't know which would win.

[OOC: NFB. Reno modded with permission. Happy birthday, Mr. Shakespeare.]

As soon as he could escape from his Heroing final, Romeo dashed back to his room to pick up his overnight bag, then went to the causeway to wait for Reno and their portal back to Verona Beach. He couldn't help but pace a little nervously; not only did he have his concerns about what his father would have to say, but he wanted Reno to like his home.

And, he thought ruefully, he wanted his home -- because Verona was home, even if he lived in Fandom or Tokyo all the rest of his life -- to appreciate Reno.

[OOC: For the person going with him.]

Romeo was done putting together his bag for his trip to Verona, and now he was sitting on his bed, frowning at the rest of his room a bit.

He was seeing it clearly, now; the room was all but brimming with sixteen months worth of books and papers and clothes and the odd bit of rubbish that had never quite made it into a bin. When Teyla lived there, he'd been neater about his things, but now that she didn't he only had to be tidy enough that Dojima wouldn't flee screaming when she visited.

And, soon enough, it would all need to be boxed up and discarded, sent home to Verona, or shipped off to Tokyo.

He thought about doing some of the organizing tonight, but, ultimately, settled in with his journal. There were things on his mind.

[OOC: Open door -- I just felt like posting him]

Inside the hotel room, Romeo and Yurika slept the sleep of those with quiet(-ish) minds, aided by everclear in the punch and certain ... other ... get-to-sleep activities. In the midst of a dream, Romeo brought his hand to rest on the small of Yurika's back; that was as much movement as there was inside the room.

Outside the hotel room, a small blond boy and an even smaller blond girl were poking at the hotel room door and chattering in an excited mix of English and Japanese.

"Hana, remember, I showed you how to pick this kind of lock!" Kazuki Montague informed his sister. "You poke the pin, and you just jiggle."

Hana watched with wide eyes and fingers in her mouth. She was only three, and thought her eight-year-old brother was about the smartest person in the world.

As Kaz kept trying to pick the lock, his putative parents slept on. Kaz knew they'd be so surprised to see him again.

[OOC: For dojima_hime and for SP.]

The day was yet young, but Romeo felt much older than he had been at dawn as he returned to his room, not bothering to close the door behind him.

Reno. Dojima. Gone to him, almost as surely as Mercutio or Juliet were. He badly wanted to break his promise to Arthur and go out alone again to kill or to be killed. It was much the same to him.

Friar Laurence's voice rose through his mind. Thy noble shape is but a form of wax, digressing from the valour of a man ... A pack of blessings lights up upon thy back.

He felt no pack of blessings just then, but he did need to be a man. Or to try. Somehow. Letting himself be taken would be of no use to anyone; he had to center himself on that fact, as badly as everything in him shouted that the sleep of death or undeath would be but a relief.

After making a single phone call -- she needed to know, and he kept his words simple so he wouldn't choke on them and give himself away -- he settled back on his bed and permitted himself the unmanly luxury of tears.

He was still crying when his phone rang.

[OOC: Mostly establishy, but his door is open.]

Romeo had, it was true, said several times yesterday that he wouldn't go looking for a fight.

And he wasn't. Honest. But it was a rainy day, and there was a particular and rather inaccessible corner of the beach that he liked especially well when he was trying to write. He couldn't imagine many zombies would be out yet; if they were, he was armed.

Sitting on a rock, he stared moodily into the ocean and thought about death that was not death.

[OOC: For two zombies in particular and then someone else. Thanks!]

The weekend had been kind to young master Montague. There had been mud fights and muffins and even two birthday parties. And, when it got quite terribly late -- 9 o'clock at least -- he drifted back to his room with Yurika by the hand. They watched cartoons until they fell asleep on the bed like a pair of puppies, TV still droning away.

When Romeo first woke up on Monday, it took him a moment to feel as if anything beyond gratitude to be his proper size again, followed by annoyance at the grit of mud behind his ears and in other places his five-year-old self had forgotten to wash. He'd seen that shock of blonde hair in the morning many times.

Then he realized he hadn't so much, lately. Drawing away to get a better look, he held his breath. He was going to savor these moments until she (perhaps inevitably, he thought) made her excuses and left him alone again -- or at least tried to.

[OOC: For the taller and modded-with-permission birthday princess. Also, he's very unlikely to get around to opening Pixie Dust today -- drop me an email if you have a desperate need to shop there and we'll work something out. Also, going NWS because reunion sex is awesome.]

After work -- and the shop really couldn't close too soon for his tastes -- Romeo made a quick stop at Taste of Thai for takeout, then dashed back to his room. He neatened things, just because he liked to live in hope, before going up to the roof and arranging a picnic blanket, iPod and speakers, and the food.

And then there was nothing to do but dress himself (dress shirt, suit jacket, no tie, and he actually brushed his hair so it would stay out of his eyes) and collect his lady.

He drew a deep breath as he tapped on the door of 503.

[OOC: For the girl. Note, the roof is a public space but Romeo will oh-so-cleverly put a sign on the door when he and Dojima get there.]

As bad idea marriages went, it was saying something that marrying Angela was actually only the second worst nuptial idea Romeo'd had in his young life.

At least no one was likely to die this time?

Not that he was thinking about that, or about much of anything, really, beyond "champagne bubbles FUN" as he stumbled over to the counter, Angela beside him, and started trying to fill in the paperwork.

"Angela, darling, dearest bride, how do you spell Montenegro?"

After an afternoon drinking by the pool and an evening watching a movie and doing some more drinking, Romeo tried to make his slightly addled way back to his cabin. Somehow, stumbling turned into bumbling turned into being on the bow, at the base of the mast.

Romeo looked up. And up. And then he started to climb until he was as high on the bow as he could get. The view from that vantage point was so breathtaking, there was only one thing Romeo could say:

"I'M THE KING OF THE WORLD!"

And then there was rather a lot of hooting and whooping as the very patient cruise staff started to try to coax him down.

[OOC: People are ENABLERS. Totally open for reactions, and yes, he is a dork.]

After talking to Edward and fighting a whale in management class, Romeo went back to his room to lounge on his bed with his Japanese notebook.

He was trying very hard not to think about ... well, about anything he and Edward had spoken of. It had been an unsettling conversation.

[OOC: For one, but open before her!]

It wasn't like Luke Brower was actually surprised when he woke up in a room he didn't recognize. Sure, the Seavers seemed like really cool people, but he wasn't the first foster kid to think he had a good thing going right until he got the "this isn't working out" speech. Maybe they had just skipped the speech and gone right to taking him to the new place. And, hey, it saved him saying goodbye. He wasn't going to bother getting mad.

Besides, the new room was way awesome. The bed was huge and soft, and while the room was full of somebody else's stuff, the other person seemed to have taken off. Luke showered -- fancy soap in the bathroom -- and yanked on a pair of khakis that were only a little too big and a long-sleeved t-shirt before he headed out to find food and somebody who could tell him where the Seavers had dumped him.

[OOC: 'Stablishy, though you can catch him here if you really want. He is Luke Brower from Growing Pains. Leo was 16-17 and looked about 13 when he played the part, so the effect is very "Romeo's little brother."]