Oneshot - Waiting for Ghosts
Title: Waiting for Ghosts
Pairing: MaruDa (yikes no RyoDa, what's wrong with me! :P)
Genre: General, AU
Rating: PG
Summary: A quiet coffee shop and an absent co-owner in a picture frame by the cash register...
A/N: I figured at take a shot at writing some pairings other than RyoDa but I can't really not write about Ueda now can I? I'm not stepping away from RyoDa completely, but a few oneshots with alternate pairings feels like a nice new idea. Besides, I quite like the idea of MaruDa, and Koki actually seems convinced it's real anyway if last year's Mini Music Station before they performed Keep the Faith is anything to go by :P
EDIT: I've read through and fixed all the god forsaken typos now, I hate typos and I want to kick myself when I make silly mistakes, so they should all be fixed now.
Douzo: .
WAITING FOR GHOSTS
He’d never seen that place before, it must have opened recently, it certainly wasn’t part of any big name chain store, no, this was a privately owned place, and somehow that made it all the more appealing, it made the place look handmade, peaceful, calm, welcoming, genuine.
Almost without thinking he walked towards the place. Where he had been heading before he couldn’t quite remember, and he didn’t really care, not where he was going, or the fact that the reason had fluttered out of his head like an injured butterfly. All he knew was that he wanted to go inside.
From outside he could see old but attractive armchairs, sofas at the back beneath what appeared to be a kind of landing or balcony, there were ordinary tables and chairs too, but mostly comfy looking seats you could sink into, leaving any stress or worry at the surface. Along the right hand side ran the counter, behind which were machines and pots and tins and such.
He pushed open the door.
There was a faint but discernable jingle that sounded like a couple of bars of a song he had heard before, but he quickly dismissed it. From behind the counter a man a little shorter than him, drying out a plain white mug with a blue dishtowel looked up and smiled a wide and sweet smile at him. On his duck yellow apron was the logo of the place he had seen on the sign as he had walked by on the street.
“Welcome, can I help you?” blinking he approached the counter and noticed there was a name tag pinned near the strap, high on the left hand side: Nishikido Ryo. He smiled up at the man, who appeared just a little younger than him perhaps, taking in his soft black bangs falling over his forehead and threatening to invade his eyes.
Realising he hadn’t given him an answer yet he looked up at the hand written board nailed to the wall above the machines behind Nishikido Ryo. They sure offered a lot here…
“Ah…just a regular black coffee please,” Nishikido smiled and nodded.
“Coming right up, feel free to take a seat,” he found himself smiling back and was about to turn away before he caught sight of something sitting on the counter, beside the cash register. He had thought at first that the covered clear plastic display of cake slices and the register were the only things there. The cake display was roughly a metre long and reached from the end of the counter to a point around two feet from where the register sat, the rest of the counter was clear in favour of resting completed orders there for people to either collect themselves, or for some other worker to take to their chosen seat, there were a couple of stools but it seemed most people preferred the squashy chairs. Now he realised that on the side of the register farthest from the little cake display was a framed photograph, quite small and turned back enough so that it could be seen from behind the counter, but anyone standing near it on the customer’s side of the counter could see it too.
The picture inside the simple black frame depicted a person who seemed to also be about his age, soft chestnut brown hair waved and curled over this persons head, licking its way over his neck and ears, curling up a little at the ends, an organised mess of bangs and fringe falling over most of his forehead and almost into his left eye, from beneath the waves of soft brown on the left side a single dangling earring was visible, consisting of three small interlinked circles. This man also, was wearing an apron bearing the shops logo, but the apron was a soft blue, the colour of the sky on a spring afternoon as evening draws close. Beneath the apron he wore a long sleeved, wide necked white top and dark blue jeans, but below his hips he disappeared into the frame.
On his face was a beautiful smile, and as he leaned back on the counter, resting his right elbow on it, seemingly having been facing the row of coffee-making machines, he looked over at the camera and raised his left hand in a peace sign, laughter spilling from his eyes.
Why was this picture here…?
He was startled out of his reverie by someone opening a door he had not noticed before. The counter did indeed run the length of most of the left side, but directly on line with it was a metal spiral staircase up to the balcony which proved to be heaving with books. Behind the very end of the counter was a door, painted the same deep plum shade as the rest of the wall, and from it had appeared two more people, one who was shrugging into a red apron and another who was rolling his eyes and immediately circled around to the customers’ side of the counter, tugging out a stool and sliding onto it.
“Pi, you’re so mean!” the man in the red apron said, reaching up to tie back some of his fluffy, wavy brown hair, letting the rest fall against his neck. The other man, seemingly ‘Pi’ only continued to roll his eyes.
“Jin, if you spring something like that on him, of course Kame-chan is going to get annoyed, you really don’t think sometimes, unless it’s with the head in your jeans,” Jin pouted and from the work surface running along the wall behind the counter he picked up a note pad and slipped it into the large front pocket of his apron.
“I didn’t mean to, I was thinking out loud! He didn’t have to get so defensive! I said I was sorry-Ow!” as he came to the end of his sentence, a much smaller man, with a criminally pretty face, in a baby pink apron whapped him over the head with his own notepad.
“Bakanishi, stop moping and get to work, I’m not mad at you,” he said, not seeing the glistening eyes of the man behind him, not noticing his approach until his arms were around his waist, to which he squeaked and blushed.
“Jin! Get off; I’m trying to work here!” Jin only grinned.
“What work Kazu? You don’t have any customers,” suddenly the smaller man looked right at him.
“Yes I do! See?” suddenly the man in the yellow apron, Nishikido Ryo spoke up from where he was pouring coffee into a purple mug.
“Actually I’m taking care of him, but Bakanishi, if you don’t stop groping my employees you’re fired,” Jin promptly let go.
“Ryo-chan, I was only playing and he’s not just your employee!”
“Well, the Hime isn’t here to pass his judgement so I’m doing it for him,” the man named ‘Pi’ had been watching all this with amusement. Now he leant forward.
“Oi, Ryo-chan, what do I have to do to get a cup of coffee around here?”
“Pay for it?” Ryo suggested without missing a beat, Pi scoffed.
“When in the last five years have you ever made me pay here?” Ryo just grinned and poured the remainder of the batch of coffee into a red mug, added milk and passed it over before turning back to his waiting customer.
At first he didn’t notice he was being addressed again, he was looking at the name tags attached to the red and pink aprons. Then he realised he was being spoken to.
“Oh! I’m sorry; I was in my own world for a moment there!” Nishikido grinned.
“We get a little crazy every so often, if you come back I’d hope you’d get used to it in time,” he found himself smiling at that, overwhelmed with the urge to return before he had even thought about leaving.
“I’m sure you already read from the tag but, I’m Nishikido Ryo, pleased to meet you, this moron here is Akanishi Jin, feel free to call him Bakanishi when he deserves it,” Ryo seemed to ignore the pouty protest from his employee and continued. “This is Kamenashi Kazuya, he’s sweeter than he lets on; and this guy doesn’t work here but he might as well live here with us, his name’s Yamashita Tomohisa, but we tend to call him Yamapi,”
Smiling he nodded to all of them, closing his hands around the purple mug that had been placed on the counter in front of him.
“Nakamaru Yuichi, nice to meet you,”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Yuichi sat at the counter beside Yamapi while he drank his coffee and talked with the three employees and their friend. After about ten minutes the door opened, playing that little jingle again and he glanced around to see a man with deliberately tousled black hair, two silver studs in one ear, wearing cargo pants, trainers, a hoodie, and a huge smile.
“Yo! Sorry I’m a little late!” Ryo rolled his eyes.
“You’re not sorry at all Tanaka, just get moving!” Tanaka grinned and slid behind the counter, taking off his hoodie to reveal a white t-shirt emblazoned with red capitals declaring EASIER SAID THAN DONE, what they referred to was anyone’s guess. He too donned an apron, this one also yellow but darker, more vivid than Ryo’s. Ryo turned back to Yuichi as he set to work on preparing another batch of coffee.
“This is Tanaka Koki, don’t let that face fool you, he’s a trouble maker but the biggest softie I’ve ever met,” Jin grinned and looked up from drying mugs to smirk at his friend and employer.
“Besides yourself Ryo-chan?” Ryo sent him a shut-up-or-I’ll-put-that-mug-somewhere-unpleasant look and continued with his tasks.
Finally unable to resist his curiosity Yuichi pointed at the small photograph in its simple black frame.
“Um…who’s that?” Ryo looked over his shoulder to see what Yuichi was pointing at, seeing the picture he smiled fondly.
“That’s Tatsuya, Ueda Tatsuya, he’s not here,” taking that to mean something bad Yuichi bit his lip.
“Oh, sorry,” he was immediately met with laughter from Pi.
“Not ‘not here’ like that! He’s just gone away for a while; he’ll be back next week, where did he say he was going Ryo-chan?” Ryo paused in his actions, looking up at the ceiling.
“Hokkaido I think,”
“He better bring back souvenirs!” Jin said, Kamenashi rolled his eyes and picked up the two hot chocolates he had just made and carried them over to the two university students sitting on one of the couches at the back of the shop. When he came back he whapped Jin over the head with his notepad again.
“Don’t you think he should be focusing on work Jin?” he said with a sigh.
“What’s the job this time?” Koki asked. Ryo sighed.
“A representative from a company in Canada is visiting to make negotiations, but that all started about…three days ago, they should be done tomorrow, hopefully Hime will be back by the day after,” Kamenashi suddenly looked up.
“Ah! That’s a Sunday! We can close early and have a welcome back party!” he said enthusiastically, gripping a green mug in his delicate hands. Tanaka rolled his eyes and set down the mug he had been drying.
“Another one? You know how long it took to clean up last time!” Kamenashi pouted.
“It’ll be fun, it always is, and Tat-chan likes it!” Tanaka scoffed.
“Sure, he just thinks it’s cute you insist on welcoming him back like that every time,” Kamenashi stuck out his tongue and Yuichi took the opportunity to speak up again.
“What is he doing, if it’s okay to ask?” Ryo turned away from the coffee and shoved his hands in his pocket.
“Me and Tatsuya co-own this place, and I employed Jin and he employed Kazuya and Koki, but we needed a start up fund, which he got from his parents because his dad runs a major company, in exchange for the money and not following his dad into the company he does interpretation work from time to time when his dad needs it, his parents had him learn English, French, Chinese, Korean and some Spanish, and he’s pretty good at it, so he acts as an interpreter when they have contact with foreign companies. About a week ago his dad rang to say a French businessman was coming to the Hokkaido branch so he should be there to interpret their negotiations,” Ryo paused and looked out the front window of the shop and bitter look on his face.
“I just think his dad is dragging him around away from here for the hell of it, old bastard,” Jin and Koki nodded thoughtfully, seeming to agree while Pi sighed just as thoughtfully before leaning over the counter and poking Ryo’s shoulder.
“Careful there Ryo-chan, you’re going to make me think you love Ueda-kun more than me!” Yuichi raised one eyebrow at that comment. So not only were Akanishi and Kamenashi an item, but Yamapi and Ryo too.
Ryo grabbed Pi’s hand and squeezed deliberately a little too hard.
“Don’t talk crap Pi,” he glanced at Yuichi, feeling the need to explain.
“Me and Tatsuya have known each other since high school, but we used to hate each other,”
“You still argue like a married couple all the time Nishikido!” Koki said, smirking. Kamenashi rolled his eyes and moved to take the order of a customer who had just arrived.
“Try living with them Koki,” he said drily. Yuichi had already learnt that Jin, Kamenashi, and Ryo lived in an apartment above the shop, so this Ueda Tatsuya lived here too. Ryo leant back against the work surface, looking pensively at the ceiling.
“We met Jin and Pi at university, and Kame-chan showed up a year later with this moron and Taguchi,” Ryo said nodded absently at Koki who just stuck his tongue out at him. Yuichi looked mildly puzzled.
“Oh, Taguchi is Koki and Tatsuya’s friend; apparently they knew each other in middle school,” Yuichi nodded, taking in all the information.
“Me and Uepi used to eat lunch on the roof and play cards and skip classes! Fun times,” a voice suddenly came from behind Yuichi’s right shoulder and he jumped, turning to see a tall man with lightly waving black hair that lapped his ears and reached down the nape of his neck, parting in short curtains over his forehead. He wore a smile so wide it creased his eyes into a thin line.
“Taguchi! When did you get here?” Koki spun toward him, eyes wide.
“I thought I’d come see you, I’ve got nothing to do today,” Taguchi said, his smile never having moved an inch. Koki raised one eyebrow and set about making his friend a cup of coffee.
“Didn’t you have a job to go to today?” Taguchi shrugged and took the stool beside Yuichi, gratefully receiving the coffee and emptying two packets of sugar into it.
“I did, but apparently the client got their days mixed up, since I’m free tomorrow they want me to come back then,” he turned to Yuichi, his smile brightening instantly as he extended a free hand.
“Taguchi Junnosuke, nice to meet you,”
“Nakamaru Yuichi,”
Picking up a tray with two English teas and two slices of cake Ryo called over as he went to deliver the orders.
“Taguchi is an interior designer,” he supplied, smiling at his customers and placing their orders on the table, not noticing their sparkling eyes following him back behind the counter. Pi noticed though and rolled his eyes.
“You ought to be more careful with that smile Ryo-chan you’re breaking hearts right left and centre,” Ryo clicked his tongue and rolled his eyes leaning back against the counter.
“Tatsuya is worse, this picture alone is enough to make half our customers faint!” he said, gesturing vaguely towards the framed picture beside the cash register. “He smiles at everyone and they practically forget how to drink!” Jin laughed and Kazuya grinned, agreeing. Yuichi, simply from having seen the picture felt like he wanted to agree too. This man was intriguing him more and more.
“What’s he like, Ueda-kun I mean?”
“Odd,” Pi said without missing a beat, dodging Kazuya’s notepad as he leaned over to hit him. Kazuya then turned to Yuichi with a better description of his friend and employer.
“He’s a little unpredictable, he’s scary when he’s mad or in a bad mood, but generally…he’s quiet and sombre half the time and childish and playful the other half,”
“But he’s always a total mother hen, always trying to take care of us,” Jin said, grinning. Ryo rolled his eyes and threw a wadded up paper towel at him.
“That’s because you’re a complete idiot who always needs taking care of! Bakanishi!” Pi and Koki laughed as Jin pouted. Ryo suddenly poked at the picture frame.
“Oi, Kame-chan, I’m changing the picture tomorrow,” Kazuya glanced up.
“Oh yeah? Which are you changing it to?”
“The one with Eri,” Yuichi blinked, feeling strangely struck by the mention of another person.
“Who’s Eri?” he asked tentatively. Ryo grinned.
“Hime’s dog, a golden retriever, she sometimes lies behind the counter with us when Kame-chan’s not working, she’s sleeping upstairs right now,” Kazuya made a face.
“You shouldn’t have a dog in a café Nishikido,” he muttered. Ryo rolled his eyes, still playing with the picture frame.
“It’s not like she licks all the cakes and sheds in the coffee Kame-chan, the princess pampers her too much, I’ve never known that dog to shed, ever!” Kazuya just rolled his eyes and moved to take the order of the four customers who had just arrived. Pi swigged the last of his coffee and stood up.
“I have to head to work Ryo-chan, I left the accounts on the kitchen table upstairs, they’re all done, and I left the ordering lists for the new books as well, there’s the numbers for the buyers for the old ones too,” he leaned over the counter, and Ryo stepped forward to kiss him, smiling into his mouth. Jin rolled his eyes and, while Ryo wasn’t paying attention he snaked his hand around Kazuya’s waist, earning an eye roll and a grin in response. Pi pulled back and grinned.
“Later,”
Yuichi couldn’t suppress the grin as Ryo’s eyes followed Pi out of the shop for a moment before turning his attention back to the shop.
He ended up staying until past closing time, chatting away with Ryo and his friends. He and Taguchi sat on one side of the counter while Jin, Kazuya, Ryo and Koki stood on the other. He found he had an instant rapport with Koki and Jin, and Kazuya really was quite sweet and Ryo was more of a softie than he let on, and Taguchi was a walking grin, an infectious walking grin. Eventually he and Taguchi made the move to leave and Jin and Kazuya headed upstairs to their apartment. As he made to exit the coffee shop Ryo called out to him.
“Come back soon Yuichi-kun!” he grinned and nodded, following Taguchi from the store.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~*~*~*~*~*~*~
After two days of coming to the shop after work in the afternoons Yuichi realised that The Man in the Photo Frame, Ueda Tatsuya, was supposed to have returned by now.
Today, after closing, instead of leaving he and Taguchi and Pi had been invited up to the apartment over the shop. It was fairly simple. From the door at the top of the stairs opened a small entranceway off which was the door to the bathroom and straight ahead was the opening to the wide living room and on one side were the doors to two bedrooms and on the other side were the doors to another two bedrooms and the kitchen.
Ryo explained wryly that they had once all had separate rooms until Jin and Kazuya had hooked up and begun sharing a room. They had moved Kazuya’s bed into Jin’s room because his was a little bigger, shoving them together to make one big double bed, and Kazuya’s room now served as a study/music room and held three guitars, a desk with a computer, a tiny battered sofa and a bookcase. In the living room sat a bigger sofa, two armchairs a TV and interestingly, a piano. Tatsuya had apparently brought it from his parents’ house when they had all moved in.
As they all sat around the kitchen table, drinking beer and playing cards Yuichi asked why Tatsuya wasn’t back yet. Ryo sighed.
“There was a storm last night and his plane was grounded, he’s coming back by train, he should be here the day after tomorrow I think,”
Yuichi had noticed the change in picture on the counter in the shop the previous day. This one was of Tatsuya sitting in the bay window beyond the piano in the living room, staring out of the window, with his dog’s head on his lap, stroking behind her ears, quite possibly unaware of the camera when the photo was taken. Kazuya had asked Jin, as he was pouring out three cups of coffee for their customers where and when they had even gotten that picture. Jin had grinned and replied that it was back when he had gotten a new camera and was taking random shots around their apartment. Noticing Tatsuya sitting in his own world, as he was apparently often wont to do, he had taken the opportunity to snap a picture of him that way.
“It came out looking all artistic and professional, and he looks pretty that way,” Ryo had grinned at that, Kazuya rolling his eyes as usual.
As he left their apartment that night he found himself eagerly anticipating the next day when he would meet the man who had been sitting motionless on the counter in the coffee shop.
It didn’t happen though. When he got there the next day the air was thick with annoyance.
Apparently Tatsuya’s final train, from Kanagawa to Tokyo had been cancelled because the driver had pulled out at the last minute due to ‘family issues’. There were no other trains to Tokyo that day for some reason so Tatsuya was staying in a hotel and making his way back to Tokyo the next day, the first train he could get a seat on was in the late afternoon so he wouldn’t be back until quite late.
“A whole four days late coming home, I hope his father is happy,” Kazuya growled, slamming down a pink mug and picking up an orange one to dry, glaring into the middle distance. Yuichi sighed and turned his mug of coffee in his hands. For some reason he felt like he was being held back from something important. He couldn’t quell the intense feeling that he wanted to meet this person. Ueda Tatsuya. Glancing out of the front window of the shop at the slowly receding daylight he sighed.
Hurry home Tatsuya-kun…
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
When he got to the coffee shop two days later he noticed the picture frame on the counter had been taken down. He felt a smile drawing across his face as he sat down, not having to say anything before a mug of black coffee was set down in front of him.
“He’s back then?” he asked. Ryo grinned at him.
“He got back about two hours ago, he’s out right now though, Kame-chan insisted on his welcome home party and he and Jin wasted most of the food in the apartment, failing to cook anything even remotely edible so he and Taguchi went grocery shopping,” Ryo rolled his eyes, moving to complete the order he had been making when Yuichi arrived, sliding a slice of chocolate cake onto a plate on a tray already bearing two mugs of coffee.
“I told him he should send Jin, since he just got back, but does that Hime ever listen to me?” Yuichi smiled at the fond tone in Ryo’s voice, sipping at his coffee. Pi came down from the apartment upstairs a few minutes later and the three of them sat and chatted for a while before the little jingle from the door alerted them to Taguchi’s arrival. Ryo blinked at him.
“Taguchi? Where’s Tatsuya?”
“He took the back stairs because he wanted to put some stuff in the freezer before it melted, and before Jin saw it,” Pi grinned.
“Ice-cream?” he guessed, and Taguchi grinned back. He held up a grey-green messenger bag in one hand.
“He left this in my car though; I have to get to work, could you pass it along Nishikido-kun? I’ll be back in a few hours for his welcome back party,” Ryo laughed and took the bag from him.
“Sure, see you later Taguchi,”
Almost as soon as Taguchi had left a small crowd of high school girls filtered into the shop, Ryo winced slightly in anticipation. He turned almost pleadingly to Yuichi, seeming reluctant to step any closer to the students.
“Yuichi, can you do me a favour and go get Jin and Kame-chan for me? Oh, can you take Hime’s bag too?” Yuichi smiled, trying not to literally jump off his tool.
“No problem!” he replied brightly, taking the bag and moving towards the door. Ryo and Pi smiled knowingly after him.
Upstairs, after toeing off his shoes he stepped into the living room to find Jin holding Kazuya’s notepad up out of his reach.
“Jin, quit being a child and give it back,” Jin stuck his tongue out.
“Admit that you think I have sexy hips and I’ll think about it!” Kazuya rolled his eyes and suddenly lunged for Jin’s collarbone, provoking a high pitched squeal as Jin dropped the notepad. Yuichi laughed as Jin shrank back from his boyfriend who was smirking triumphantly as he pocketed the book.
“Uh, guys, Nishikido needs your help downstairs, you have a lot of customers all of a sudden,” Kazuya grinned sheepishly at being caught fooling around, but straightened his pink apron and moved towards the door. Jin, moving to follow him noticed the bag in Yuichi’s hand.
“Isn’t that Tat-chan’s?” he asked.
“Yeah, apparently he left it in Taguchi’s car,”
“Oh, well, he’s in the kitchen,”
Jin was gone before Yuichi could respond, and then it hit him that he and Tatsuya were now alone in the apartment.
Taking a deep breath he stepped towards the kitchen and stopped just inside the doorway.
Withdrawing his hand from one of four large plastic bags, the man from the photos, with his soft chocolate truffle brown hair falling in lazy waves over his head, around his ears and down the nape of his neck, now wearing a dark grey cardigan and grey jeans, reached up, standing slightly on his toes to place a can of something in a cupboard. As he turned Yuichi caught sight of a white v-necked t-shirt before Tatsuya looked up and his deep, almost-black eyes suddenly locked onto him and he felt his breath catch in his chest.
In person Ueda Tatsuya was a thousand times more stunning than either of the photos he had seen.
“Uh, hi, we haven’t met, but Taguchi asked that your bag be passed on, you left it in his car,” he held out the bag and, recognising it and his own mistake, Tatsuya lightly smacked his own forehead before reaching out to receive the bag.
“Th-Thanks,” he said, his voice slightly dazed. He swallowed and put the bag down on the kitchen table before reaching into another of the plastic bags.
“Are you a friend of Ryo? Or Kame?” Yuichi nodded.
“Y-Yeah, I only really met them last week though,” Tatsuya nodded in understanding, opening the fridge to put away a pint of milk. Yuichi felt heat creeping up his neck, feeling like a high school kid, a very stupid high school kid.
“Uh, do you…need any help,” and then that bright, dazzling smile, that smile that should have been illegal as Yuichi was sure his heart had just stopped, that smile was directed at him as its owner reached back into the plastic bag again.
“No, it’s okay, don’t worry about it,” Yuichi nodded shakily and began to back out of the room, but as he turned the voice he had been waiting almost a week to hear, low and musical and smooth, reached his ears again.
“Wait a second, I didn’t get your name,” he turned back hesitantly.
“Of course, sorry, I’m Nakamaru Yuichi,” ah, he’s smiling at me again!
“I guess Ryo and the others would have told you my name by now, so you can call me Tatsuya,” Yuichi nodded and felt himself smiling back at the beautiful creature before him.
“Okay…Tatsuya, then you can all me Yuichi,” Tatsuya suddenly tilted his head onto one side and stepped closer, until they were less than a metre apart.
“Why is it…I feel like I know you a little already…” he murmured and Yuichi was sure he felt the bottom drop out of his stomach as his heart spun in his chest. He swallowed before he attempted to answer.
“I…kind of wish I did know you already,” he said, and his words brought out that smile again.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
After remaining upstairs to chat with Tatsuya for almost an hour Ryo and Pi appeared in the kitchen doorway to see the two of them sitting at the kitchen table drinking iced tea and chatting easily, smiling at each other.
Somehow after only a few minutes talking to Tatsuya had become strangely fluid and easy, like second nature, and they couldn’t stop talking to each other, even when they and Ryo and Pi started the preparations for the ‘party’ Kazuya as still insisting on.
As promised Taguchi returned an hour later, Koki in tow, Jin and Ryo closed the shop early and all eight of them settled at the kitchen table to eat and drink the wide selection Ryo and Tatsuya had managed to create.
Later on they moved into the living room where Yuichi found himself curled into one of the armchairs, Tatsuya sitting in front of him, leaning back against the chair, a bottle of beer dangling from his fingers, his other hand resting on his dogs head.
After a while Taguchi and Koki left, as Taguchi had a job the next day and Ryo had warned Koki that if he was late tomorrow he’d dock his pay, and less than a half hour later Jin half carried Kazuya into their shared room and Pi left too, reluctantly declining Ryo’s offer that he stay over as he had to work earlier than usual tomorrow.
After Pi left Ryo decided that he should go to bed too as he would have to open the shop tomorrow.
“Eh? Tomorrow is my turn!” Tatusya protested. Ryo shook his head.
“You should get some rest Hime,”
“I’ve had four days extra away from the shop Ryo, I should open it!” but Ryo simply stuck his fingers in his ears and wandered off towards his bedroom insisting in a sing song voice that he would be the one to open the coffee shop.
Tatsuya sighed in defeat as Yuichi stood from his seat grinning at the friends’ antics.
“I’d better get going too I guess,” Tatsuya smiled at him for the hundredth time that night.
“Sure, I’ll walk you down,” and Yuichi couldn’t make himself object.
At the door to the shop he turned to look at the person he had been waiting to meet for almost a week, and as he opened his mouth to say goodbye Tatsuya suddenly stepped forward and placed a finger gently against his lips before leaning up, closing the short distance between their mouths and pressing his mouth over Yuichi’s in a sweet kiss.
After a moment Yuichi responded, wrapping his arms around Tatsuya’s waist and kissing him back, faintly noting Tatsuya’s arms sliding around his neck as he deepened the kiss a little. When he pulled back he blinked, feeling slightly dazed as Tatsuya smiled up at him and reluctantly moved backwards out of the warm circle of Yuichi’s arms.
“Come back soon okay, Yuichi?” Yuichi smiled, wondering if he was definitely still standing on earth.
“Definitely, see you later, Tatsuya,” Tatsuya nodded and watched him leave before going back upstairs.
Outside on the street Yuichi walked slowly, unable to wipe the euphoric smile from his face as he raised a hand to his mouth in wonder, turning his gaze up to the night sky. He decided, shoving his hands into his pockets, still smiling as he walked, that Tatsuya had definitely been worth the wait.