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Atsushi sighs quietly. The cafe bustles around them, and Lucy sits across from him, fiddling with her braided pigtails. Atsushi absently notes that her cheeks are adorably pink, but then feels embarrassed enough by the thought that he thinks his own cheeks are warming up, and oh gosh why can’t he just say something-
Lucy clears her throat. “Anyways, I called you here because I think you,” her face is nearly the same color as her hair, “I think you need a break!”
Atsushi’s eyes widen at Lucy’s slightly raised volume. “What? Lucy, do you think I’m… overworking myself? I’m trying to keep the Agency running, that’s all! And besides, since we got everything sorted out with the Decay of Angels, things have calmed down a lot, so I don’t think I’ve been working that much, have I?”
Lucy shakes her head furiously. “You need to learn to relax, Tabby Cat,” she reaches over as if to flick him, but seems to change her mind. She pats him once on the head, and Atsushi pathetically thinks that he’d like her to do that again. His heart swells. “Besides, even if you do relax, it’s always with someone else, not me!”
It’s true—he comes to the cafe fairly often with the other members of the Agency, and sometimes he and Kyouka, or he and Dazai, go somewhere not on a job, but it would probably be different with Lucy. In fact, due to his growing crush on the girl, he could almost think of it as a date. That would be sweet, if it could be a date, with all kinds of date activities, whatever those would be.
Oh. Is she asking him on a date?
“Huh?” is all he gets out in response to her, and Lucy promptly buries her face in her hands.
“No, no, no, I mean, I see you working all the time, you’re going to get burnt out, and- And-!” Her hair moves from side to side with the way her head shakes. Atsushi thinks that it looks unbelievably soft. But, more importantly, it’s… probably not a date. And he should probably stop her from being so flustered.
“I’ll go somewhere with you!” he says, quickly. “I wasn’t trying to make you uncomfortable, I was just surprised, that’s all!” He doesn’t mention the fantasizing about it being a date, and for good reason. “Where were you thinking of going? I’m guessing not here,” he gestures around the cafe and nervously meets Lucy’s blue eyes as they peek between her fingers.
“Of course not,” she takes a deep breath. “I was thinking, maybe, near the ocean.” She rests her elbows on the table and sinks down a bit. “I haven’t actually ever been to the ocean for fun, so you’d better make it fun, okay?”
Atsushi grins at her. “I’ll try, how about that?”
On the day of their not-date, Atsushi feels nervous. Way too nervous.
“You said it’s not a date,” Kyouka is sitting on her futon and providing helpful advice as Atsushi stresses. “And you’re not even going into the water.”
“Yes, but-!” Atsushi wants it to be nice for Lucy, if nothing else. What he really wants is to buy her something, flowers or food or anything that would tell Lucy his feelings without revealing just how strong they are, but he knows that’s a bit of a stretch.
Kyouka looks at him and smiles at him. Atsushi decides on the spot that she’s getting too much amusement out of his pain. She’d be a terrible wingman, too, so he definitely should not count on her to help him.
Hence why Atsushi leaves her with a anxious wave and doesn’t get her to join him by the door when the doorbell rings. He and Lucy had worked out the details quickly after the outing was announced, with rules to keep them relaxed.
(No swimming was one of those, which Lucy said was to “make sure you—we!—won’t be uncomfortable with people looking at our scars.” Atsushi thought it was a pretty reasonable request, but the way she hid her eyes made him think she was embarrassed by it, which he had immediately tried to comfort her from. It hadn’t worked.)
Otherwise, it was just a normal time and place figuring out, in which Lucy insisted that she’d come to his dorm, because neither of them was leaving work at the time they’d be going, so going to the cafe would be stupid. Atsushi cheerfully agreed with that, so the two of them ended up here, on either side of Atsushi’s doorway. Atsushi smiles.
“Hi,” he says, and it feels utterly lame coming out of his mouth.
“I’m glad you agreed to this,” Lucy says, and it sounds so much nicer than what he came up with. Her face has a soft smile on it, and her hands are curled among the folds in her skirt. “Now, let’s get going.” She turns and starts to lead him away without waiting for his reply, and Atsushi follows her happily.
“Of course! I know you said this was to get me to relax, but I hope that it’s fun for you, too!”
Their first order of business is going by the beach for a walk, or so suggests Atsushi. Lucy’s braids are pulled at by the winds as they walk, and after some time, Atsushi starts laughing slightly when one of them goes in front of her mouth while she talks and she’s forced to stop in place and hold them back. He then immediately feels bad about laughing.
He shoots her a glance, only to find her stifling her own laughter, which miraculously gets Atsushi to stop feeling so self conscious about his own. Instead, a warm feeling blooms inside of him. Butterflies appear in his stomach, flitting about.
“Guess you don’t have to deal with getting your hair in your mouth, huh? You’re hair is so short, except for,” she looks over pointedly at his one longer strand, “that.”
“Hey!” Atsushi takes his longer strand in his hand, tugging at it slightly. “My hair isn’t that bad! Why does everyone comment on it…”
“Well I think it’s cute!” Lucy says, and Atsushi suddenly feels as if he’s going to overheat. It’s already a warm day, but getting complimented by Lucy? It might be too much.
“Thank you!” he replies, trying to be sincere with his voice without revealing his feelings, but he thinks his face is giving everything away. Cute…
There’s a pause. Lucy’s hand goes from holding back her hair to covering her mouth, and Atsushi can barely hear her when she mumbles, “You’re welcome.” Atsushi looks at how her red braids are continuing to fly around with the heavy wind by the beach, and he stands there for a moment contemplating his suggestion until he decides to just go for it.
“Maybe I could braid your hair into something less loose? And we could sit here for now, and enjoy the beach?”
Lucy blinks her blue eyes at him momentarily. “Well, if you think it’s best, Tabby Cat, I guess you can.” She takes off her sunhat and places it on her lap as she sits down, and Atsushi follows her in that, waiting for her to turn so he could take out her braids.
When she does, she starts to take off her shoes, something that Atsushi blinks at before realizing that that’s probably what most people would do at the beach. The people around them certainly are.
Lucy’s hair ties are, interestingly enough, different colors. Each braid has two, which to Atsushi seems like overkill. But then again, he’s never had long enough hair to braid it like her’s, so he can’t exactly say anything. As he takes them out, he sits on his feet and brushes the braids out into their individual strands, running them through with his fingers for lack of a brush. He thinks Lucy shivers slightly under his fingers.
“I wish that I had gone to beaches back in Canada,” Lucy sighs, softly, as he works. “Then I’d be able to know just how much worse this one is. They wouldn’t take us, at the orphanage, let alone take me.”
Atsushi swallows. He’s not sure if he should comment on the last part or not. “I don’t know why you think those ones would be worse,” he says. “But, I think anyone would be lucky to go to the beach with you.”
He can’t see Lucy’s face, but he feels the way her head tilts forwards, pressing slightly into her knees. “You’re right, it’d probably be pretty horrible compared to here. But I think that’s mostly because of who I’m with. It wasn’t nearly this nice when I was working with the Guild.”
“Who you’re… with?”
Atsushi begins to separate her hair again, pulling each strand and crossing over the next. One, two, three. One, two, three. His heart feels like it’s beating overly fast.
Lucy turns her head just enough that Atsushi can see part of it, and he pauses in his braiding. He notices, due to their proximity, that she has freckles that he hadn’t noticed before. “I thought you, of all people, would understand. With the Guild, it was my job. When I kept that Half-Pint’s papers away from her, it was jealousy of you two, for having everything,” she sighs. “But even that was better than before, when it was just,” she wrinkles her nose, "all about the Guild."
“I get it,” he replies. “I mean, everything I’ve done for the Agency is better than it would have been if I was doing it for someone else. I think it’s just… Caring about people.”
Lucy turns back, waving a hand at him without looking, and he continues to work. “Caring about people is good. And helping the Agency is too. They’re good for you, even I can tell that, especially after what happened with the Decay of Angels.” She sounds distant, and Atsushi imagines that she’s staring at the ocean.
Atsushi smiles, and his heart feels warm. He barely pauses as he decides his next words.
“They could be good for you too, I think. If you ever want to quit the cafe, your ability and your skills would always be welcome at the Agency. I think everyone knows how helpful you’ve been. And, saving people would fit you too. We aren’t like the Guild.”
Lucy pauses, then scoffs. “I’ll think on it.”
Thinking back on it, the fight with the Decay of Angels, with Lucy and Kyouka by his side, was when Atsushi figured out his feelings for Lucy. She wasn’t just helpful, or amazing, though she was both of those things too, but she was also passionate and strong. They both understood each other despite their different experiences, despite how they went through it all on opposite sides of an ocean. The Agency could be a home for so many people, and if Lucy wanted to be included in that, then Atsushi would welcome her warmly.
There’s momentary silence between them as Atsushi and her, and Atsushi finds that he’s nearing the end of the singular braid he’s making. “Good!” he says, pausing awkwardly, unsure of where to go from there. “Also, um, by the way, do you have freckles?”
Lucy laughs sharply. “Yeah, I do. I’m surprised someone like you noticed.”
“Someone like me?” he asks, blinking. “I’m a detective!”
“Just because you’re a detective doesn’t mean that you notice everything all the time,” she says haughtily as he slips two of the hair ties around the finished braid. It’s still quite long, but it should be tight enough to not blow into her face, he thinks.
“I guess?” Atsushi shifts his legs under him on the sand, pushing himself back up to his feet. “Anyway, I’m done with the braid. Did I do it well enough?”
Lucy reaches back to feel her hair, standing up as well with her shoes and hat in her other hand. She puts the sunhat back on and turns around to face Atsushi, and, like he thought, it doesn’t move in the wind quite so much. “It’s fine,” she replies. “We should keep walking.”
Atsushi stops her before she can turn with a hand on her arm, and she stops to look at him with wide blue eyes. The sun is directly overhead, and Lucy’s beige colored hat casts a shadow over her face. He takes her hand and presses the unused hair ties into them, smiling nervously as he touches her cool skin.
“I didn’t end up needing these for your braid.”
Lucy blinks at him as he self consciously pulls his hand back, suddenly aware that he’d basically been holding her hand. Was he too awkward in giving them back?
Lucy suddenly looks away, and Atsushi tilts his head only to realize that an embarrassed blush is spreading over her face. They pause like that, and Atsushi can’t help but stare at her.
“I need to ask you something,” she says, suddenly.
“Huh? What?” Atsushi watches as she bites her lip, glancing at him and pushing her bangs out of her face under her hat. Her face is really red, and Atsushi starts to wonder if she’s okay. Maybe the weather is getting to her. He’d try to help her, but he’s not sure what to do.
“I just… You mean a lot to me, okay? When you talk to me about your detective stuff it becomes the best part of my day, b-because,” she seems to swallow around her stutter, breathing out steadily and puffing up in a show of confidence that Atsushi thinks she doesn’t really feel.
Atsushi thinks his face is burning, and not from the sun.
“You’ve got a great life, and I wasn’t wrong to be jealous,” Lucy continues, looking down at her feet as she wiggles her toes in the sand. “But, I mean, you could’ve just left me behind without trying to help, but you didn’t, and…”
“Lucy,” Atsushi tries to start, reaching out a hand to touch her shoulder, hoping that Lucy understands how much he cares for her, “you don’t have to thank me, I know already. You’ve helped me too.”
Lucy looks like she wants to hide from him, or throw something and run away, but evidently decides that her shoes aren’t exactly the best things to throw when she drops them into the sand again. She furrows her eyebrows “I wanted to ask if this could be a date, but you’re just so nice and oblivious,” she says, chagrined, and time seems to freeze between them.
“Ah.”
“Oh. Oh no.” She’s staring at him, and her eyes are wider than he remembers seeing them ever be.
Joy sparks within Atsushi’s chest, and with his hand still on her shoulder, he grasps lightly at her sleeve to keep her from running away. “Y-yes! Yes, of course! I was, I wasn’t sure if you liked me but I’ve liked you for, for probably longer than I’ve known about it.” He beams at her.
Lucy pulls her hat over her face. “Okay, I-I’m glad that this is a d-date, but you’re embarrassing me.” She pushes her hat back up, and though her face is still the color of her hair, she steels herself as she leans down to pick up her shoes again. She then smiles confidently and shrugs, but her breath is shaky. “Well, alright, let’s go walk by the water. That’s what I took my shoes off for, you know. Then we can go to the stores. How’s that for a first date?”
“That sounds really good,” Atsushi feels giddy, really, that she likes him just as he does. He lets go of her sleeve to take her hand, in a burst of confidence, hoping that it’s okay. If it isn’t, though, she’ll just… let him know. It’s fine.
And it is, because Lucy’s smile softens and her eyes meet his as she leads him to the water with the two hair ties trapped between their palms. It’s not bad at all, for a first date.