Work Text:
“I found another movie!”
Ryoko parades triumphantly into Yasuke’s office, holding a DVD case aloft in one hand, a bright grin on her face. She narrowly dodges the scalpel thrown at her face and hides behind the DVD case. “Don’t! You’ll break the case, and I borrowed this from the library, and I’m pretty sure if you break it, then I have to pay for the whole thing, and you wouldn’t want me to pay for the whole thing, would you?”
“You say that like I care.” Yasuke doesn’t even look up from his manga, just turns another page and keeps reading. “Why would you think I want to see a movie with an ugly girl like you?”
“Well, I was reading in my notebook, and it said we already saw that Christmas movie together,” Ryoko says, brow furrowing. She pulls her notebook out and flips through the pages. “See? Right here!” She points to it. Then she frowns. “It also says that you wouldn’t see it with me again. Which is mean because I don’t remember it. But I thought—”
“That was your first problem,” Yasuke interrupts.
Ryoko blinks twice and looks up. “Huh?”
“Trying to think.”
“If you teach me to think better, I’ll do that!” Ryoko exclaims, holding her notebook and the DVD case closer to her chest. “I can be whatever you want me to be, if you’ll just tell me!”
Yasuke just rolls his eyes. “You can’t fix your ugly, and no matter what I do, I can’t fix your brain, so no. You’ll just forget whatever I tell you, and it’s a waste of my time to tell you over and over again.”
“W-w-well, I can write it in my notebook!” Ryoko opens her notebook again, this time to the first clean page. “I’ll just write it….” Her brow furrows. She stares at the DVD case. “What’s this?” She turns back a page, reads, and then holds the DVD case aloft again. “Yasuke, I found us a movie to—”
“I got it.” Suddenly, Yasuke is standing in front of her (when did he get there?), and he taps his nearly closed manga on her forehead. He doesn’t seem to notice as Ryoko blushes; instead, he focuses on the DVD in her hands, neatly taking it away from her and reading the cover. He grimaces. “Blair Witch Project? This is a horror movie.”
Ryoko forgets the blush and nods rapidly. “Yes! I thought….” She glances down to her notebook again, and a magazine page drops out. When she snatches it up, she grins. “See? This article here: If you want to spend quality time with your boyfriend, see a scary movie! He’ll get all protective of you when you get scared!” She flushes again. “I…I mean, we’re not, you’re not my—”
“Let me see that.” Yasuke snatches the magazine page out of her fingertips. His eyes narrow as he reads. “You little ass—”
“What’s wrong?”
Yasuke crumples the magazine page up and tosses it in his wastebasket. “I hate horror movies.”
Ryoko blinks twice. “Oh.” She starts to write it down—
“Don’t write that down!”
“But I have to take that movie back!” Ryoko exclaims, reaching out for the DVD Yasuke’d taken from her. “I have to take it back, and I have to know to not get a horror movie because you don’t like them, and then I can find a better movie from the library, and I can bring it back, and we can—”
Yasuke taps his manga atop her head again, and Ryoko quiets. “It’s okay,” he says as she glances up. “You can see it with me.” His voice sounds all soft, but it’s gone in a moment when he continues, “Just don’t expect me to pay attention. Got it? My book is better than that stupid thing.”
“Okay!” Ryoko beams up at him.
Ryoko spends the entire movie hiding against a Yasuke who is adamantly not paying attention. It absolutely does not help that she keeps forgetting what’s going on as the movie continues, which honestly makes the whole thing more terrifying. She quivers and scoots closer to him, and when the whole thing is over, she says, “You have to let me stay with you tonight! I’m going to have nightmares, and only being with you will help!”
“You’ll forget the whole thing by the time you go to sleep.” Yasuke scoots away from her. “And I don’t want your ugly smelly face around. I’ve had enough of you.”
“You’re so mean!”