Chapter Text
Taako was actually grinning as he dropped the last box into his exceptionally shitty new apartment. It was run down and not on a great side of the neighborhood and the hallway outside of his apartment smelled distinctly of not all that great kush, but it was his.
As soon as the door shut behind him he went over to the couch that came with the place and flopped down face first. As soon as he did he grimaced, quickly rolling onto his back and making a mental note to get a new couch with his first paycheck. And a new bed. And some dishes and dish soap for the dishes once he had them.
Okay, there was a lot of stuff he needed to get on his first paycheck. And his second. And basically capitalism was a never-ending pit that Taako wasn’t super thrilled about being thrust into, but he could make it work. He was figuring this out, and shitty apartment or not, it sure as fuck beat the streets.
There was a long moment where he lay there, staring up at the ceiling. There were stains up there, but he couldn’t quite make anything out of the shapes of them yet. Eventually he got tired of trying and sighed, pulling out his phone.
There were only two contacts in, and one of them was for the new job. He ignored that one for now, going to send a text to the other.
Hey lup
Finally moved into the new place. You won’t believe how fucking shitty it is, but hey rent’s cheap as hell.
Already told you that I’m starting the bakery job on monday, I’ll let you know how that goes once it actually happens. It’ll be sweet as fuck though having a job that’ll let me cook.
I need to get some furniture for this place. I’ll send you some pics once its a little less sad looking. If that actually happens.
…
I miss you lulu.
There wasn’t any response, just like there wasn’t ever any response. It was probably stupid of him to keep texting this number. She clearly didn’t have it anymore. If she ever actually had it in the first place. No one did now for sure, or else he would have gotten some complaints by now. He was just sending a running dialog of his life to no one and pretending that there was some possibility his sister would see it and get back to him.
It was pointless, but there was no way he could bring himself to actually stop.
Before he could do anything else he quickly put his phone away. Almost as soon as it was in his pocket it buzzed, and Taako felt his heart leap out of his chest as he scrambled to pull it back out and see who it was. He told himself he was wrong, there was no way it was… but he’d just been texting her, maybe…
It was Ren, sending him his official schedule for next week and wishing him good luck on his first day. It was good, and Taako tried to ignore the way his heart had plummeted again. It was fucking stupid to hope that out of the blue after all the time she would just respond.
After laying on the couch for way too long Taako finally forced himself to get up. He told himself that he deserved the extra long break, he had to enjoy them while he could since he was about to jump head first into a full time job. Plus, he’d spent all morning moving. If he wanted to spend several hours staring up at the ceiling and slowly starting to interpret the splotches into designs, he could.
Eventually though he got too hungry to keep lying there definitely not wallowing, and he forced himself to get up and head over to the kitchen. It was as shitty and small as the rest of the apartment, but Taako had been sure to check that everything actually worked before deciding on this one. He could make due with a bad kitchen, and he could make due with broken appliances if he had to, but he sure as fuck didn’t want to.
He wasn’t exactly feeling up to making anything super fancy tonight though. Instead he just ended up making some cheap pasta. A lot of it, so that he would have more for later and wouldn’t have to cook again today if he didn’t want to.
Taako told himself this was nice. This was his own place, and he’d worked for it all on his own, and it was only the first stepping stone. In a year when the lease was up he’d have enough saved up to go somewhere better. Maybe in a few more he’d be able to open up his own place instead of having to work at someone else’s. Someday soon he would be able to have his own restaurant, and he would make a name for himself. Soon, everyone would know exactly who Taako is.
And maybe then he could finally find Lup. If she saw him on TV or something maybe it would be enough and she would be able to find him. He told himself that she had to still be looking too. It’d been years, but there was no way she would have given up either. They’d just been unlucky so far. Soon enough something had to give.
Taako had been kind of worried that the apartment would be too quiet. That he would get bored and lonely there on his own, even though that had never been a problem before. Usually he could not get enough alone time no matter how much he tried.
The good news was, he definitely didn’t have to worry about it being too quiet. Within his first few days there Taako had gotten a pretty good idea of most of the apartments around his own. The couple upstairs were always fighting, that or what sounded like very angry vacuuming. The old man next door listened to his TV way too fucking loud, Taako could clearly make out exactly what episode of Storage Wars he was on. He fucking swore the kids who lived below him had a goddamn garage band or some shit they were setting up. Not a very good one either, in Taako’s personal opinion. That, or they were hobby construction workers with surprising accidental melody.
So yeah, definitely not too quiet. It was certainly frustrating, but Taako bought himself some ear plugs to sleep and told himself he could deal with the rest. He was only gonna be here for a year at most. The good news was this building definitely didn’t seem to be the type where the neighbors tried to get all chummy with you. So far he’d barely seen another person in the apartment, and the ones he did happen upon in the hallways seemed perfectly content to not make eye contact and go about with their days.
Taako was pretty thankful that the next few days ended up going at a decently fast pace. Before he knew it his alarm was going off way too goddamn early to signal it was time for him to get to work. It was a little bit earlier than he actually had to wake up, but he figured it was best to be safe on his first day. He really fucking needed this job, he was not about to blow it right out of the gate.
He did his best to make himself both presentable and professional. Taako knew the place had aprons, but they were allowed to wear whatever they wanted as long as it was appropriate for cooking underneath. He put on a pretty simple purple button up short sleeve shirt and black slacks. A bit more subdued from his normal fashion sense, but decent for a real person job. He put his long hair into a braid, twisting it up into a bun afterwards to make sure it was fully out of the way for cooking.
Giving himself a look over in the mirror, he nodded and figured it was good enough. He could spend hours trying to fuss and make everything perfect, but he didn’t have time for that.
Grabbing his phone off the counter, Taako intended to just shove it in his pocket and go gather the last of his stuff to leave. He paused beforehand though, debating for half a second before giving in. Taking a quick selfie, he sent the image to the contact he had for Lup with a short message.
First day at work, you better fucking wish me luck.
He didn’t wait to see if there would be any response. Even still, he found himself pulling the phone back out of his pocket as he left the apartment. He wasn’t surprised to find there was nothing. He couldn’t even bring himself to be disappointed anymore. It was just a fact. Lup hadn’t responded.
Taako swore he’d tried to leave early. He did leave early. Even still he felt panicked as he ran to catch his bus. Then he felt panicked as he bus slowly made its way through the city, each stop feeling like it was taking a million goddamn years. He kept checking his phone, and he knew he had the time, he made sure he’d have the time for all of this bullshit, but it still felt like he didn’t.
After what felt like an eternity it finally came to his stop, and it was only a two block walk from there to the bakery. Taako might have sprinted most of the way there, but he’d been right. He wasn’t late, he had twelve minutes before his shift actually started. He could probably relax a little bit in the coming days, but at the very least he knew it was possible for him to get here early now and that he didn’t have to kill himself trying to get a car so he wouldn’t have to rely on the bus.
He didn’t stand around waiting outside, even though he had the extra time. Maybe once he had been here for a while he could start looking around at some of the other places. See if there was anywhere around here that had some good coffee for breakfast or something. It felt pointless looking for other breakfast things, since he was literally working at a bakery. The best breakfast stuff was going to be here from now on, now that they had hired Taako.
Today though, he headed straight in. He didn’t typically give that much of a shit about being early, but he was not about to lose this job as soon as he got it. The bell above the door jangled as he came in and there weren’t any customers inside yet. Technically they didn’t open for another half hour or so. He wasn’t alone though, Ren looking up and smiling at him at the sound of the bell.
“Taako! Morning, you ready for your first day?” she asked, sounding way too peppy for this early in the morning. Still, Taako forced himself to smile, moving to go join her behind the counter.
“That’s why I’m here. Just tell me where to start and point me in the right direction,” he said. There were aprons hanging behind the counter, and Taako grabbed one, tying it around his waist. Ren seemed to approve, moving to wash her hands as she nodded at his apparent enthusiasm.
“You got it. It’s your first day, so congrats! I’m not gonna make you work the register,” she said, and Taako tried not to let it show how much that was actually kind of a relief. He was good at math, he just hated having to do it. Also, he didn’t get hired here to do math, he wanted to be able to cook.
“Sounds good, sounds good,” he said, following Ren as she started towards the back of the bakery.
“I’m gonna have to teach you how to use it eventually of course, but it’s not urgent right now. I figured today you can help with the baking and dishes when it’s slow,” she said. It sounded good enough to Taako, and he nodded, a big grin on his face.
“That’s the shit I’m good at, lemme at it,” he said. Ren chuckled a little but didn’t disagree, going to start showing him a few of the recipes and where everything was in the kitchen. He didn’t have a lot of time to learn. She went over the recipes with him once, pointed out the supplies, and said she trusted him to do a great job. Then she had to get back up front to finish setting up everything else before the doors opened.
With that, Taako was left alone in the back of the bakery. There was a short moment where he stood there, staring down at all of the supplies in front of him while his brain tried to catch up with the situation at hand. It all felt like it was moving real fast, even though this was probably a relatively normal pace.
He only let himself stay there for a few seconds though, before taking in a deep breath and starting to move. Immediately he grabbed out bags of flour and fruit and everything else he needed, starting to portion the ingredients into bowls and such. He wasn’t lying before, this was what he was good at. It didn’t take long before he started to get into a groove, rolling out dough and cutting it into strips and pockets and filling it with the correct fillings. He wasn’t moving as fast as he could, because he wanted to be sure these came out perfect for his first try.
This was going to be good. He was going to make it good.
——
Fuck fuck fuck this wasn’t good.
Lup cursed under her breath as she tore apart her dorm room. The only thing good about this situation was that she had decided to shell out for the single dorm. So she didn’t have to worry about any roommates coming back later and getting pissed at the disaster zone. It was kind of hard to focus on that though, trying to figure out where the hell she’d put her textbook.
She was already late for class, and this was not how she wanted to start off her whole college career. Later on, when she was more firmly established and everyone knew exactly what she was capable of, then she would be chill to roll into class twenty minutes late and toss the professor a starbucks drink as penance. She couldn’t come right out the gate with that kind of energy though, not as a freshman. She was self aware enough to know that would only result in making her look like a total douche.
Finally she found the book she’d been looking for. It was in one of the kitchen cabinets, and Lup huffed in annoyance at her past self when she finally spotted it. She didn’t waste anymore time though, grabbing it and shoving the thing back into her bag. With that she quickly headed towards the door, turning to look back at the dorm room for only a moment.
It was a small dorm, barely a kitchen and bathroom attached to a bedroom. The cheapest single apartment style one they had, and it was currently a fucking disaster area from her frantic search. She’d lost track of the time again, went and put her shit where it didn’t belong without remembering.
Turning away, she told herself she could fix the mess later. She definitely didn’t have the time for it now. She still had to get across campus and class had started oh, about a minute and a half ago.
Thankfully, it didn’t actually take very long for her to sprint across campus, and she’d already had the forethought to figure out where all her classes were ahead of time. She was only about five minutes late when she managed to crack the door open as quietly as she could, attempting to sneak in while causing the least amount of disturbance as possible.
It wasn’t one of those giant lecture hall classes, so she was definitely noticed. Still, it wasn’t like five people either, and the professor didn’t seem inclined to call her out on the tardiness. He met her eyes, and when Lup gave him an apologetic nod he nodded back and continued to explain what the class was about. Lup was having a hard time paying attention, immediately going to the nearest available seat and slumping down.
Once she had a moment to catch her breath Lup pulled out the textbook she spent so long looking for, and a notebook. From a quick glance around she realized that the professor had already passed out the syllabus. Instead of interrupting the class more to ask for one she opened up her notebook. She could at least look like she was trying to pay attention that way, and then grab an extra syllabus before she left.
She didn’t get very far into that plan before a stapled pack of papers was slid towards her. Next to her was some nerdy nervous looking dork, who had moved his syllabus between the two of them.
“If you wanna follow along,” he whispered, not quite meeting her eyes. Lup didn’t mind that, nodding and moving her textbook to the side so that she could get a clearer look at the paper.
“Thanks babe,” she whispered back, unable to keep from smiling a bit more at the increased look of panic on this guy's face at that. Turning towards the syllabus it seemed pretty standard. Or at least standard for what Lup imagined one would be, considering this was her first class. Still, it had a layout of the topics for the next ten weeks, along with the dates for the midterms and final, and some of the professor’s guidelines and standards and junk. Lup had honestly been pretty hyped to get this class right out of the gate. Neurological Biology. She managed to get her base bio class credit transferred over from the AP courses she took in high school.
So yeah, she’d been looking forward to this class, but it seemed that the first session was going to be kind of a snooze fest. A lot of going over what they would be learning instead of actually jumping right into it. It was an hour long class though, so they might jump in during the second half or something. Lup had always been impatient and hearing someone talk about the cool things they were gonna do was nowhere near as interesting as actually doing them.
Figuring she’d start paying attention again once something worth paying attention to started happening, Lup turned to a new page in her notebook.
Hey bro,
So, first day of class hasn’t exactly gone perfect so far. I fucking swear all I needed was a piece of toast to shove in my mouth and I would be the perfect late anime protagonist. I should have actually done that, at least then the disaster would show some signs of being self aware.
But yeah, it was basically exactly what you image. Overslept, lost my books, late for my first class. The whole shebang. Figured I’d knock out all the cliches early so that I won’t have to deal with them later.
Man, Ko I was excited about this class but this professor seems dry as sidewalk chalk. I was five minutes late and it’s been ten minutes since then and he won’t stop droning on. I thought people said college was exciting and the professors were all expies of Bill Nye the science guy and Miss Frizzle. Instead I’m stuck with Mike Myers as Lorne Michaels having a stroke over here. I swear he’s just getting sadder and sadder before my eyes.
Lup paused in her writing when the dude next to her suddenly snorted. It was quiet enough thankfully that she was pretty sure no one was bothered enough to try and figure out what it was about. When she looked over he very quickly looked away again, staring straight towards the professor still droning on. His face instantly got a bit redder as Lup stared at him, and she couldn’t help but smirk a bit at that, turning away to start writing in her notebook again.
Well, looks like I’m gonna have to finish this one up later, sorry bro. It seems that close quarter college desks aren’t super great for privacy.
Miss you,
Lup.
She signed off on the letter, not bothering the flip over to the next page afterwards. It took a little while, but she was able to tell when the guy sitting next to her finally gave in and tried to read the rest of her page. She knew that because whatever composure he’d managed to build up before then immediately dissolved, the guy basically turning into mush next to her. It was pretty damn satisfying.
They did end up getting more into the actual meat of the lesson in the second half of the class, like she hoped. The professor remained just as boring, but at least the topic was interesting, even if the first day seemed to be a pretty easy overview of the basics. Still, it was enough that Lup flipped off of the letter page and actually started taking notes for the class. The quarters here were only ten weeks long. Which would be great for classes she didn’t like, but would feel pretty fast for the ones she did.
The professor ended up calling class about fifteen minutes early for the first day, which seemed reasonable enough. Lup quickly started putting everything back into her bag, wanting to be able to go up and snatch a copy of the syllabus before the professor dipped.
“Hey, uh,” a nervous voice said, and it didn’t take a lot of brain power for Lup to realize who was talking to her. The nerdy guy from before was doing everything he could to avoid looking at her directly as he spoke. “I just, um, I wanted to- sorry. About reading your uh, notes, and stuff,” he managed to stutter out, and Lup actually snorted in laughter at that. She couldn’t tell if that made this guy more or less nervous though honestly.
“Don’t worry about it, I was just putting you on blast,” she said with a grin. The guy nodded, not looking like he was all that sure what she meant by that. She didn’t bother sticking around to elaborate though, instead giving him a grin and a wink before slinging her bag over her shoulder and turning away. “Thanks for sharing the syllabus,” she added. She could hear the guy try to stutter out something behind her, but she was already leaving.
Thankfully she managed to get down to the professor before he left. Mostly it seemed because he’d already gotten stopped by a few other students wanting to clarify this or that or get added to the class. Lup didn’t even try and talk to him, instead slipping in, snatching up one of the extra syllabuses on the desk, and quickly maneuvering back out.
Once she had that she headed outside, looking around until she managed to find an empty bench. It took a bit longer than she figured would be normal, the place busy as fuck for the first week of classes. Still, after a few minutes she found a place to sit and pulled her notebook back out. Turning to the page with her latest letter, she stayed there for a while, just staring at it. She couldn’t think of what to add, so with a sigh she tore it out of the book. Digging around in her bookbag, she found the envelope she had stuck in there earlier. It was starting to get pretty full, and Lup folded up the most recent letter and stuffed it inside with the ten or so others.
It seemed like a pretty good time to try and send it. She was running out of room in this one, and first day of class seemed like a good stopping point. Decisively she licked the envelope, pressing and sealing it afterwards. One that was done she stayed there for a good long moment, just staring at the blank envelope.
She had no address to send it to. They didn’t have last names, at least not official ones. Or at least, not one she could remember. She knew sending this letter wouldn’t actually get it to the person she needed to see it, but she’d been searching for so long now. She didn’t know where else to look, and it didn’t help that her brain liked to fizz out on her sometimes. Make her forget simple things like time or where she was or her own damn name.
Even if they didn’t actually get to him, writing these letters made her feel better. Sending them made it seem like she was at least doing something.
Pulling out a pen, across the blank side of the envelope she wrote in large handwriting ‘To: Taako~’
There was a mail room on campus. Lup had been sure to check that out pretty early on. She still had plenty of time before her next class, so she headed over. There was an outgoing mailbox there, and without any hesitation she opened it and dropped the letter inside.
She just had to keep believing that one day, one of these damn letters would actually find him.