Work Text:
As far as Hina knew, Ankh knew only how to get what he wanted.
Unless that thing for for Eiji to stop talking.
A cold morning in April found Ankh bundled in a single sheet of shimmering red satin in his loft. However sleep had not taken him due to the faint but defined incessant chattering of his stubborn ally down below, in the diner. He was no doubt entertaining Chiyoko with stories of his travels abroad, painting verbal pictures which Ankh only found dull. He shifted. He turned to face away from the wall only to set eyes upon a glowing Hina.
"Well you're in a mood." She swatted away a stray hair from her face and fixed it behind her ear. Today, she was dressed in a tacky sailor costume due to Chiyoko's prolonged insistence upon a marine theme for the week.
"Well you look ridiculous." Ankh squinted as he eyed her up and down, guffawing at the cheaply made satin scarf around her neck, the tag showing unflatteringly in the front. Had this girl even looked in the mirror.
"You aren't looking too fantastic yourself. Now, get up. We have a lot of decorating to do and need your help before opening."
Ankh opened his mouth but didn't have time to form a stubborn response before his silky red refuge was ripped from his body and Hina was pulling him from his perch by his wrist.
"Ow- ow- hey!" The greeed grunted in pain, ripping his arm from her grasp.
"Ankh-! Sorry I-" Hina clamped a hand over her mouth, mortified by her ignorant haste. "I didn't mean to."
A loud peal of laughter from the diner below with Eiji's voice raised above everyone else's caused Ankh to pointlessly punch at the wall in annoyance. "God, can you just smother him with a pillow already?"
"Ankh!" Hina's brow furrowed.
"Sorry. Can you PLEASE just smother him with a pillow?" He sat up and jumped down from the loft, finding a place beside the window (farther away from the plague of Eiji's laughter).
Hina set the crumpled red fabric she held on Ankh's nest, meaning to straighten it up later. "Eiji's just having fun. I wish you would do the same." She approached him, mirroring him on the other side of the window and leaning against a stack of dusty crates.
Ankh just gave a curt huff and continuing staring hard out the window.
Hina hummed as she looked around the room. Chipping paint covered the wall opposite of the window. Books and unused diner decor were scattered about on the scratched up floor. Forgotten recipe books flooded the one tiny bookcase in the room.
"Forget decorating the diner, you're actually going to help me clean up this mess."
"Huh?" Ankh raised his eyebrows in genuine disbelief.
"You can start by seeing what's in those boxes under the window, put it over here if it's trash," Hina rolled up the rug and propped it against the bookcase, pointing to a spot next to the bed. "And anything worth keeping, put it in those crates over there."
Ankh's response was merely to nudge an unopened cardboard box towards the spot Hina pointed with his foot.
"Ankh..." Hina sighed, looking up at him from crouching at the bookcase. Dusting her hands off on a painter's cloth that hung below the loft, she sat on the floor in front of the box. "Hey. Chiyoko lets you stay here with Eiji doing all your work. Personally, I think that's unfair-"
"-Who said anything about it needing to be fair?"
"What I'm saying is if you don't want me to keep bothering you about working then at least make your room look livable." She set her sailor cap on the floor next to her and fastened her hair in a ponytail with the rubber band on her wrist. "So if you don't want me to make you go down into the diner by force and work with Eiji-"
Ankh squirmed annoyedly at the mention of his name.
"Then you will sit down here and help me sort boxes."
A moment of silence hung between them. Dust fell silently and danced like little fairies in front of the gleaming window.
"Then I want 3 more boxes of ice candy per week." Ankh demanded, pushing a box over to Hina and sitting down before it.
Hina smiled giddily, not being able to suppress a small feeling of victory. "Done."
The two had worked out a system of Ankh shoving boxes over to Hina who opened them and sorted their contents, the pile of trash in the center of the room grew and the clutter at the edges of the room disappeared. Hina laughed as she watched Ankh dig through a box, hiding his confusion with anger as he couldn't figure out what humans found valuable in it. His child-like thought processes sometimes amused her even if she couldn't even really read his mind. He pushed the box over with a frustrated thrust of his hand which was only met with the sound of shattering ceramic. The look of shock on Ankh's face forced Hina to stifle a laugh as he closed up the box quickly to mask his mistake.
"It's okay. That box is just some old dishes that Chiyoko probably will never use again." Hina nudged the box to the trash pile and knelt down in front of Ankh, who sat cross legged on the floor in front of the window. A thoughtful look crossed her face as though she were trying to figure out how to word a difficult sentence. "Can I be honest for a second?"
Ankh stared at her with an unreadable gaze as he shrugged ever so slightly.
"Before I met you I was happy. Very happy. It was just Shingo and I. We didn't need anyone else or... I didn't need anyone else." Hina traced circles in the dust while Ankh watched her fingers move lazily. "And then you came along and he disappeared from me. It was a horrible feeling that I thought I could never feel to the same level again." Hina breathed through a shuddery sigh and pushed back the bangs that fell in front of her eyes. "But when you disappeared, I felt the same way. The same- emptiness. A void that couldn't be filled."
Ankh continued staring hard at her and her shaky fingers tapping on the floor. Hina laughed softly to herself.
"I HATED you, Ankh. More than anything. Because you took away what mattered to me most. Twice."
Ankh looked at her through a furrowed brow, digesting what she was saying but not understanding hardly any of it. Hina dropped her eyes to her lap.
"And what might that be?" Came Ankh's slow and measured question.
"Family." The young woman murmured, hands on her knees, clenching at one another as though for dear life. "Ever since Eiji came smiling in through these diner doors with you at his side, you were one of us. Part of us."
"So that was my biggest mistake." Ankh scoffed jokingly. Hina playfully pinched his forearm, this time he didn't complain.
Hina looked up at him through her bangs, once again brushing them to the side. "Meaning: don't think you can walk out of our lives so easily. I spent so damn long missing you and I don't want that to happen again." She clenched her dress until it wrinkled.
Ankh was taken aback by her mild swearing, offering a small laugh of amusement.
"You know, it's funny. You look exactly like you did five years ago when you disappeared. Shingo has aged. His smile is tired and his eyes aren't as bright as they used to be but you..." Hina reached a hand out, letting it hover apprehensively over Ankh's left cheek. "It seems so impossible that you are so different from him."
"No damn way." Ankh sarcastically stated. Yet, Ankh tried to ignore the obvious differences to Hina as well. Her hair had grown longer and her face had matured, she dressed more plainly when in normal clothes. A sudden thought came to Ankh that he never gave much attention to: Hina would grow old and Eiji would too and while they were on their rockers slowly and shakily sipping tea and counting the days they had to live, Ankh would still have the face of a young detective. They would one day die, and he could change his appearance and continue on with his unending life.
Suddenly Ankh found himself leaning into Hina's palm. Her warm pulse beating through his cheek. A flame that, to him, would soon be extinguished. Hina's eyes looked shocked- frightened even. Ankh wondered what the damned girl was so spooked about, then he realized that his cheeks were damp. His tears betrayed his cold façade. Hina, unsure of what to do, sat there with her thumb ghosting over his cheek. She pulled him close, arms wrapped around his torso as she rested her head on his shoulder. He tensed up at this, but she could still feel his shoulders shudder from the traitorous tears.
"Hey... what's wrong? What did I do?" Hina muttered, fingers gliding slowly over the greeed's leather jacket.
Ankh didn't know what to tell her. He couldn't tell her. That soon enough she, like he was, would vanish? His only family gone to the sands of time- except unlike his death, her's would be permanent? All he knew to do was to keep his idiots close until that time. He wrapped his arms loosely around her in return. Hina was toying with a loose curl on Ankh's blond head, letting it bounce and spring back to place.
They sat there on the floor, embracing for minutes, hours, days it seemed. Each drawn to one another for different, and yet, the same reasons.
Hina pulled away first, looking into Ankh's eyed that held so much time inside of them, and a soul so dark one could not simply peer into it from the outside. She gingerly wiped off his cheeks, drying them with the sleeve of her costume.
"Ow-" Ankh grunted, holding the cheek that was assaulted with the cheap, rough fabric of Hina's sailor top.
"Sorry," She giggled, dropping her sleeve and brushing his cheek with her fingertips. She began to stand, brushing off her skirt and setting her sailor cap back in place. "Well I should get going, we open in about an hour-"
A hand caught her arm and pulled her back to the ground, his hands took her face in his palms. Monstrous scales greeted her left cheek as he brought his face to hers, brushing his lips against her forehead in a feathery kiss that lingered there. He brought his hands to her neck and a nervous inhale showed her fear at what she thought would happen. Ankh untied the cheap scarf around her neck and turned it over, retying it so the tag faced down.
"There, that's been bothering me this whole time."
Hina's eyes were squinted tight in an unreadable expression- fear? Embarrassment? Ankh smirked at her twisted face and patted her head like a pet before offering to help her stand.
"Yeah um- I- uh- gotta- yeah- help and- and-" Hina brushed off her skirt, looking down to try to mask her flustered blush. "Bye." She caught the red scaly hand in hers and gave it the slightest squeeze possible before bursting out the attic and down the stairs.
Ankh looked around at the rest of the room. It was still very much a pigsty despite their combined (but mostly Hina's) efforts. "Well," he sighed, climbing back onto his perch. "I guess spring cleaning will have to wait until another day."