Chapter Text
The crash is always the worst part.
The sun feels like it’s high in the sky when Lupin finally cracks an eyelid warily. The makeup spread across the coffee table tells him that he and Fujiko successfully made it back in one piece from the last club. His shirt is slung haphazardly over the back of her lounge chair. It looks like it’s one gentle breeze away from collapsing on the floor in a shiny heap.
A bit like him really.
He’s present, physically, lying on the sofa - even if he feels like he’s still floating on ecstasy and liquor from the night before.
The door to Fujiko’s bedroom is shut, but she won’t mind if he sneaks past to use the bathroom. He tries to recall if she took the same number of pills as he did. If she did, she might still be dead to the world.
The curtains are drawn and her breathing is even when he slinks into the room. She doesn’t even stir until he turns on the sink - when he hears a soft groan from the other side of the ensuite wall.
“C’mere girl,” she mumbles when he sticks his head around the corner of the doorway. She pats the pillow beside her.
He slides under the covers, trying not to jostle her too much.
“How are you feeling?”
Fujiko lets out a half hearted giggle, “like shit. You?”
Lupin stretches out beside her. After a few hours on the sofa, Fujiko's soft bed was like heaven. She always did have the best taste in homewares, even when they were together. Finally his back cracks.
“Bit shit, yeah.”
“I think we’re getting too old for week-long benders, Lupin.”
“We’re barely thirty Fujicakes!”
She pokes him in the side, making him wince, “and not getting any younger.”
He rolls over to face her, and avoids her sharp nails a second time. She grins at him.
“When’s the last time we managed a whole week?”
Lupin thinks back. It’s certainly been a while. He’d been with Al for four years. Then there were those two years of nothing while Fujiko jetted off for overseas study and left him stranded on the continent like the worst best friend in the world.
“Uni?” she offers, inspecting a chipped nail.
He scratches his head, “It’d have to be around then. That’s so long ago.”
“Mmmm,” Fujiko stretches now, and Lupin realises with the vaguest sense of interest that she’s gone to bed in just her lingerie. They might be getting older, but she’s staying just as beautiful.
“You weren’t” she motions vaguely, “You weren’t even, y’know - out then.”
She’s right.
“Neither were you,” he counters with a wiggle of his eyebrows that he knows will make her giggle, then groan.
She does exactly that and her predictability makes him smile.
“Now look at us, two queers in a bed, still doing the same old shit.”
“Older, more beautiful, and yet somehow worse at picking up people than we were at twenty.”
Fujiko laughs. Her hangover mustn't be half as bad as his own.
“You shoulda worn the dress babe. I told you that. It made your ass look so good. I mean, the jacket and slacks is a classic, but you really did rock that neckline.”
Lupin lets his head sag back onto the pillow. “Ugh, I know. Next time, maybe.”
She mumbles something half into her pillow.
“I didn’t quite catch that.”
She flicks an errant strand of hair out of her eyes with a huff. She wriggles into his personal space and snakes an arm around his waist, pulling him close.
“Hold me, and let’s pretend we’re twenty again. Hopefully we’ll wake up without hangovers.”
Lupin chuckles, “I think that ship has well and truly sailed.”
He acquiesces her though, and when he closes his eyes the illusion almost works. Fujiko’s been using the same shampoo since they were fifteen, and she’s always fit so neatly into his embraces whether they’ve been dating or not.
The same way he fits so neatly into hers. They’ve always been made for each other in a way, he thinks. She’s been there for so long that he can barely imagine life without her now.
He breathes in the mild sweet smell of her conditioner and he’s twenty-two again. He and Fujiko have broken up for about the millionth time, only this time it feels a little more permanent than before. Not because they don’t love each other, but because they do.
Because Fujiko looks at him for the first time in weeks with a level gaze and says, “Lupin, I don’t think you’re a man, and I don’t mean that as an insult, I mean it as a compliment, but you’re never going to explore that while you’re with me and I think you need to.”
She says it in the same tone that she says, “I think I like women too. Sometimes I think I like them more than men. Then other times I think I don’t like anything, or maybe it’s everything. I want to figure it out. I need to, for me.”
So they separate in one way, but not in others - and Lupin discovers that maybe he does enjoy actually trying on dresses with Fujiko instead of just watching her try them on.
And maybe it does send a small thrill through his sometimes when Fujiko refers to him as her ‘girlfriend’ when they go out.
They never get back together after that. Not officially anyway. They slept together on very odd occasions, but it was different now. They were closer. They didn’t sex to bring them together anymore.
Even the four recent years they’d spent without seeing each other hadn’t broken their bond. Lupin had turned up on Fujiko’s doorstep exactly two weeks ago today, with nothing but a suitcase and a bus ticket to his name. Four years with Al, down the drain - washed away with petty arguments and final fight that nailed that coffin shut for that relationship for good. Fujiko hadn’t even questioned him. She’d just grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him in with the same love she’d always given him.
“Stay with me love, as long as you need.”
She’d been the one holding him those first few nights. A bit like he was holding her now.
Tight to her chest while he cried into her T-shirt like a child. While he choked out the last four years, and tried to articulate where it had all gone wrong.
“It’s alright babe,” she’d murmured into his hair, “You don’t need him anyway. We’ll find you a new man. A better one. Maybe a woman? Want to try a woman again? She can’t be prettier than me though…”
She made him laugh and cooked him breakfast and he loved her. In a world where everything was falling down, Fujiko was still there for him, and she always would be.
His musing is interrupted by Fujiko wriggling in his arms. She gives him a quick peck on the lips before tucking her head into his shoulder.
“I love you, but I’m so tired. I’ll see you in a few hou-”
The yawn that cuts off her last word is contagious. When Lupin relaxes his head into the pillow a second time, he doesn’t find himself held in the present any longer. Fujiko’s sofa is comfortable enough, she doesn’t skimp on homewares, but it’s not a real bed. He’s asleep in minutes, and it’s well into the afternoon when they both stumble out of bed for real this time.
“Why don’t you put your degree to some use?” Fujiko asks over coffee with an indecent amount of vodka in it for the time of day.
“What, Bachelor of Fine Arts - where’s that going to get me a job?”
Lupin’s coffee has less vodka in it, but he suspects his headache might be worse.
“Bachelor of Fine Arts, minoring in…”
“That was two subjects, Fujiko,” Lupin’s coffee dangles precariously as he gestures, “I’m hardly a florist.”
Fujiko juts her chin out, the way she does when she’s convinced she’s right.
“But you were good at it, and we always said we would, remember?”
Of course she would remember a stupid pipe dream detail like wanting to run a flower shop when she could barely remember the items on her grocery list.
“Maybe, I guess.”
Fujiko makes a pleased hum as she ducks down behind the counter, “my boss has a place for rent you know. He might do you a deal. He’s got a thing for strays.”
Lupin huffs, but it just makes Fujiko giggle.
“I’m hardly a stray.”
She shrugs, “just telling it like it is. But really, how hard could it be?”
Lupin stares at her when she resurfaces, hairbrush now located, “It’s a business Fujiko, it could be very hard.”
She shrugs again, unperturbed.
“You’re smart, I’m sure you’ll figure it out. Now, do you want to come to work with me tomorrow or not?”
Lupin thinks it over as Fujiko brushes out knots and glitter until the kitchen counter sparkles. A ten-minute conversation in the middle of exam period about how it might be nice to own a flower shop is hardly a decent basis for prospective job selection. Not to mention his family would never -
Fujiko’s coffee cup hits the counter with a click, and at the same time something else clicks.
He’s disowned.
He doesn’t have to do something because his family wants it anymore.
He doesn’t have a large bank account, but he’d been saving for years while he was with Al, and that was something that hadn’t been taken from him in the fallout.
There was nothing stopping him from starting a flower shop.
A tiny giggle tickled the back of his throat, bubbling up into a laugh that hardly sounded like it came from him at all. Fujiko raised an eyebrow, and it barely registered how bizarre he must look right now, laughing at nothing.
“Are you sure you didn’t take something after we got home?”
Lupin shakes his head. His chest feels lighter than it’s done in weeks. He can do what he wants, when he wants.
He’s disowned.
He’s free .