Work Text:
An izakaya on an amber-glowing, rainy street, Domino City, still likely located in Japan
Another shift slowly comes to an end, and Hiroto Honda pushes along a cart that has one squeaky, stubborn wheel. First he goes along the bar and picks up the delicate, short and wide and tall and slender glasses, placing them in a special bin on top of the cart. Then he goes about being less and less cautious with each subsequent part of the job, cleaning up after another night of professionals, young and old, and their dates and coworkers finding a social life after work, away from home. The scent of the remnants of sake mixed with other kinds of alcohol burn at the inside of his nose and he inhales sharply, fighting the urge to sneeze.
Some of the other smells are considerably better – like the pleasant char of chicken on a skewer or delicate pieces of skirt steak in a black, sweet sauce. He isn’t about to steal table scraps, though. He is making a living, and if he wants some of it, he’ll make it and pay for it himself.
Somehow, the thought almost immediately puts him off his appetite. When he has almost finished cleaning up after the last round of customers, he takes a moment and leans with his back against a wall, just to the side of a door where there are no decorations or chairs blocking the way. He looks down along the length of the bar toward the door and down at the low tables across from it. It’s late and very nearly quiet on the street outside.
He’ll be back in school soon – going to college when no one would have ever expected it of him.
He just hopes it isn’t all some big, stupid mistake. It already seems like it might be. A place like this, doing a job like this, seems like the height of where he belongs. And yet, he wants more than that. He looks down and flexes his fingers, feeling a pull here and there where the skin has dried enough to nearly crack – water and dishsoap more a match than some people he has come to blows with.
- - -
An apartment complex on the economical side
On his way home, he is a little startled by the sight of a familiar silhouette outside his apartment. He lives on the third floor of an apartment building, and it’s still pretty bare. He doesn’t know many of his neighbors, and he has been working hard to make sure that he keeps his job once school starts. He has heard that it’s easier than the exams were, but he still doesn’t quite believe that someone isn’t going to show up one day and tell him he didn’t pass after all.
He hangs back just a little as he looks down at Anzu who has sat herself against the half-height wall that makes up the little exterior hallway that leads along the third floor. Her face is illuminated by the blue-white glow of her phone, and she appears to be concentrating on something with a slight furrow to her forehead. Honda’s mind races as he tries to figure out why she might be here so late at night. Most of the things that come to mind are pretty bad. Why wouldn’t she – they – call or text him instead?
He straightens his shoulders and walks along, treading carefully. Over the past couple of years, his life has been strange enough to warrant a certain kind of apprehension when approaching anything out of the ordinary.
“Anzu,” he says, warm and restrained into a whisper at once, making into something of an awkward wheeze. “Are you… are you hurt?” he asks, almost afraid to know the answer. Somehow, that seems like one of the most reasonable explanations for why she would come, alone, in the middle of the night in the first place.
Anzu looks up at him, pupils contracted in the eerie glow of her phone screen until, abruptly, she locks it and it goes black.
“I’m not hurt,” she assures him. “Why would you ask me that?” she asks as she pushes back a little against the retaining wall to her back and gets to her feet. She looks around behind herself and brushes her hand against the back of her skirt and jacket.
“I just figured if you were coming to me , you know, specifically in the middle of the night that… maybe…”
Anzu makes a bit of a face at him, incredulous and a little cool around her eyes.
He lifts his hands, fingers spread apart a little – surrender.
“I don’t mean it in a creepy way,” he says. Her expression doesn’t immediately change. “... A pervy way?” he tries to correct himself.
“No. It’s just—” She shakes her head and runs her thumb underneath the strap of her bag that rests on her shoulder. She looks toward his door and seems to clear the expression away like he clears the floors of the izakaya at night.
“Wait,” Honda says with a slight widening of his eyes. His hands are up again, and he isn’t sure if he ever lowered them down completely. He feels a little bit numb and hot but only right at the back of his head. “ You didn’t come here for a pervy reason, did you?”
“No!” Anzu says, pushing back against his shoulder hard. “I came over here to make sure you’re ready for next week,” she finally announces clearly and decisively. It’s a little loud for his neighbors, and he winces, but he sure wishes that she had said that in the first place. Then he wouldn’t look like as much of an idiot.
“Yeah, okay,” he says, still wincing as he fumbles for his keys and reaches down to unlock the door.
He glances back and forth just over the threshold as he kicks off his shoes in the appropriate spot. He hopes there’s nothing inside that a girl would judge him for. Not that there’s much in general.
Upon entering and kicking off her shoes, Anzu marches into the center of the singular room that makes up most of the apartment and looks at him expectantly.
“So… you wanted to make sure that I had school supplies in the middle of the night?” he asks.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Anzu replies. She steadies her bag against the front of her body and rifles through it, looking through papers she has apparently been carrying everywhere since they received them at their orientation meetings. They share a lot of the same classes for the first year, at least.
“You don’t think I can do it, do you?” Honda asks, figuring that it is the only reason she would worry enough to stay awake and make her way all the way from her parents’ to this side of town. He sighs and pushes himself up onto the counter next to his refrigerator.
“What?” Anzu replies – politely, he guesses.
“You don’t think I’m smart enough... I don’t blame you,” Honda admits, kicking his feet lightly. He looks at his dark socks at the way the material reflects the low light in tiny, silvery lines.
“It’s not that…” Anzu says, but he hears a hesitation in her voice that he figures is hard to explain any other way. He keeps watching the slow movement of his own feet. He only realizes that they had still been in the dark when Anzu goes over and switches on the one lamp he has set on his one, small desk/table/flat surface near his bedroll that’s still laid out in the corner. He blinks at her and the light. “I just… didn’t think you would be the one – the only one, I mean – I was getting ready to do this with,” she admits as she takes a few steps closer to him and the counter.
“You and me…” he muses, an echo as he thinks through what she must mean, frowning a little. He clears his throat as he takes another stab at it. “You… mean that Yugi and Jounouchi decided not to go,” he finally concludes.
“Yeah,” she replies softly, her gaze softening with it. She seems relieved that that he said it for her. He gets it. She probably feels a little less like she’s saying she’s disappointed that it’s him that way. Her shoulders drop, but he smiles against it.
“I surprised me too,” he says with some amount of weak, possibly ironic pride.
“I just always thought Yugi and I would…” Anzu says. She trails off, and Honda thinks she might be embarrassed. If she is, he doesn’t really get why. She knows what she wants, and everyone else knows what she wants. He figures that might actually be a nice feeling. He thinks about it for a moment. He tries to think of something to say to finish it for her.
“Do everything together?” he asks. It isn’t meant to be suggestive. Instead, it’s all-encompassing and with a little bit of cautious hope. She gives him another look, and he can see her searching more seriously. After a moment, she stopped looking like she might reach out and take a swipe at him.
“... Yeah,” she says. She looks back at his barren apartment, and he stops thinking so much that she’s looking for something to nitpick about his hardly necessary housekeeping. “Can I stay here tonight?” she asks.
Honda widens his eyes. He slides down from sitting atop his counter and his feet hit hard against the half of the apartment floor that’s covered in vinyl. He opens the refrigerator as casually as he can and snatches out a bottle of soda. He touches it against the side of his neck. It’s shockingly cold, but it is something to do with his hands.
“Sorry, Anzu. I’m… really sorry, but am I getting mixed signals here?” he asks. He swallows hard.
“No,” Anzu says. He thinks she’s aiming to give him the singular signal of giving him a heart attack when she drops her bag to the floor with her back to him and begins removing some part of her clothes. He exhales again when he realizes it was just a sweater. “I can sleep on the floor,” she says, mercifully oblivious to his crisis of faith. “You’ve got room,” she remarks, a little dryly.
“... Yeah,” Honda agrees. “Yeah, I do,” he repeats. He feels almost a little giddy for a moment. “Why, though?” he asks when he remembers what an odd request it is and that he has the power to grant it.
Anzu starts to fold her sweater into a roll and slides down against the wall, more than an arm’s length away from his bedroll.
“No, you can… take that and I’ll take… the pillow?” Honda offers, walking quickly over to the bedroll and taking up his pillow by the corner of its case in compromise. Anzu pushes herself up again and gives him a skeptical look.
“You sure it’s clean enough? I don’t want to sleep in a week-old puddle of your drool,” she remarks.
“It’s clean!” he promises. “Besides, you’re the one who wanted to stay. I’m trying to be gentlemanly,” he explains with a soft touch to his chest.
“Okay,” she agrees, sitting down on the bedroll and twisting at her waist as she manipulates her sweater into a pillow of sorts. “... I just don’t want to go home,” she says.
Honda remembers his first suspicions that Anzu would only show up if there was something wrong - something a person like he was wired to be could fix. He shimmies down the wall with his pillow and hugs it for a second. He watches her and wonders if he should ask, but judging by the determined look on her face, he decides not to risk it.
“You can have the bathroom first if you want to,” he offers – still trying to be nice to her, gentlemanly or not. “You know, in case you have to do lady things.”
“Like what? Wash my face?” Anzu asks as she rifles through her bag.
“Yeah, lady things like that,” Honda agrees. He gets a sly smirk on his face. “You know, so it’ll be nice and clean when you drool on your sweater.”
Anzu rolls her eyes, and he isn’t sure if he sees a tightening of her little fist or a rude gesture as she closes the bathroom door behind her.