Framed in Fortune (Arc/Lani, Painters)(NSFW)

Takumi was quite a bit more embarrassed than would have been required for him to not be able to bring himself to speak, to get her to stop playing with the knife. Thus, he sat in silence slowly eating his food while trying his best to ignore the sound and her presence. Not that the latter was possible.

Eventually, the sound was too much, even for her, and she switched to just eating. It was a slow process, but she eventually managed it, stacking her garbage together and waiting until he was ready to go. Somehow, she even made it through all of her drinks.

Takumi didn't take too much longer than she did, even though he came down to the hall a short while after her. He stood up to take the bowl and other bits to where they needed to go.

Rin followed along after him like a puppy, not looking up the whole while. She seemed unsure of what to do with herself, and especially her hands, once they were empty.

Takumi knew exactly what he wanted to do with his hands, now that the issue of not being together was gone, but he didn't quite know how to go about it. In the end, while walking, he ended up taking a leaf out of Rin's book; he simply put his hand out to his side.

She didn't quite pay enough attention at first, but when her focus did manage to return to reality, she reached out and took his hand. The warmth of it felt different, now, and she wasn't quite sure what to do about it.

Takumi gave Rin's hand a quick squeeze when she took it, smiling as he looked down to the floor blushing. It was so much better now...

Despite the development in their... relationship... Rin still didn't seem to have quite the amount of confidence required to look back at him. They had things to do, now, at least, including retrieving her spool and starting their hunt. This was going to be an awfully "fun" mission. She was actually a bit concerned at the likelihood of them trying to kidnap her, be it for the less savory side of the trade or the eating kind. Neither was particularly appealing, and she wasn't keen on letting Takumi make the same realization she had...

Once at the room, Takumi rather reluctantly let go of Rin's hand so that he could put on his coat and hat. He was more than used to wearing them in hot weather, so it wasn't an issue in the least.

Rin dashed around the room cleaning things up and locking away their personal belongings, her own back basically impossible to break into. Besides, it had a tracker in it anyway; call her paranoid. It would be an accurate assumption. With her spool attached to her hip, her phone mounted on her upper arm (with her bluetooth attached to her ear), and her wallet secured in a pocket, she seemed finally ready to go. Pulling out a map from the desk, she took one of the hotel pens and began jotting down known appearances from memory.

Takumi didn't have nearly as much gear to put on, so he ended up watching Rin don her own; although he did make sure to not be obvious about it lest she forget something because of him. When she got a map and started writing things on it he got curious, walking up and looking over her shoulder.

When he moved over to her, she began saying things aloud, clarifying what she was doing and how she was tracking them. She hadn't quite established a plan of attack yet, though she had ideas. Rin purposely avoided mentioning "bait" as a potential option. "Since it's just the two of us, it'd be difficult to do a full blitz attack... but we could go in stealthfully or make a scene..." Rin had already contacted local branch members, DWMA affiliates, that is, about her plans to take out the group, so they had back-up if it was needed. The meister just knew better than to bother with local law enforcement as, when a group got this big, they were bound to have connections that would see to it that her plan failed.

"We can paint a hole or door in the side of any building and come at them from any angle," Takumi said, referencing their Soul Resonance, which he figured could be used in this way if it make a hole in the ground, "But we'd need to know where they are working from for that. Do we?"

Rin nodded, tapping the pen against the desk thoughtfully as she tried to figure a way around both needing backup and being bait. They really weren't appealing options to her. Most of this mission was made of unappealing options. Except for Takumi.... Wait, what? No! Nononononono! Back on trackbackontrack! Her face started heating up the second the spontaneous thought had entered her mind, and she was right and thoroughly frustrated enough to not be able to explain the idea of simply capture and interrogate a member of their ranks.

"Why don't we catch one and make them tell us where their hideout is?" Takumi asked, leaning a bit closer to get a better look at the map, now almost as clueless as Rin usually was since he was focused entirely on something else.

She jumped back from the desk, hands up in surrender before almost flailing wildly and immediately falling to her sides after. Her fists balled as she looked away from him, staring pointedly at a nondescript portion of the carpet that was somewhat behind her, putting him completely out of her current field of view.

Takumi was a little startled by her jumping away from the desk, though after the surprise wore off he was just confused. He approached her, moving around towards the general area she was looking. "W-whats wrong?"

Rin started grumbling, swinging her head to the completely opposite direction, like those little dolls that "refused" to be fed, head turning by force of magnets. She had zero intentions of explaining herself, but she was also now too stubborn to move further away from him, other than keeping her head on a swivel.

Each time Rin turned her head, Takumi would step towards the other side of her. Each time it would end with him inadvertently stepping closer. He was still pretty oblivious in his state of worry, repeating the question once more.

Eventually, he got close enough to her that she simply toppled over, falling on the floor in an uncoordinated mess, her bandages flying out but finding nothing with which to stabilize her...

....except for Takumi.

Takumi let out one yelp for when he saw the bandages fly at him and when they grabbed him and inevitably pulled on him strongly enough to make him fall, too. On top of Rin. He was even less coordinated than she was, tangling himself in the bandages more when he realised what was going on and turned into a somewhat flailing, definitely red mess.

As best she could, Rin retracted the bandages back onto their spool to try to make it easier for him to get up. She just was kind of... really hoping that he would get up, or else things would get even more awkward. The thought made her blush from the tips of her ears to her chest.

With the lack of bandages now binding him, he managed to calm down enough to actually find somewhere to put his hands that wasn't on Rin. He didn't want to do anything, even accidentally, that might get him killed. Well, after he had a somewhere safe to push off of he basically shot back up to standing, looking around the room awkwardly at anything that wasn't Rin. "I'msorryIdidn'tmeantodothat..!" he blurted out after a moment.

Rin shifted, pushing herself up incompletely, leaning back against her arms with her chest bowed back towards the floor. Her face was still flushed, looking towards the AC unit of the hotel and trying, unsuccessfully, to hide her face enough to make the blushing less obvious.

"W-what were we talking about? Uh..." Takumi said, trying his best to pretend like that all never happened, and trying to pretend like Rin wasn't in a pretty.... Well, iffy position. He wasn't doing all too good a job, so he went back to looking at the map. "W-was it catching one of the Eggs? S-should we do that?"