Work Text:
Citron Yoshishould have been in bed. They knew that. Of course they knew that, their brain wouldn’t shut up about it at all. They knew they were supposed to be responsible, they were supposed to make good decisions, reasonable decisions, smart decisions. Decisions you would expect out of a person who was 30. They were not supposed to act like some 20-year-old college student who just went and truly partied for the first time.
There was a good reason for why Citron was doing this, not that it made them any less anxious about how they were conducting themself. Citron was always in a cycle of good and bad, fortune and misfortune. Right now, they were still feeling the misfortune of getting fired by those assholes at their last IT job. Stupid budget cuts. They had a new job, but even that wasn’t the total silver lining it should have been because now they had to go and develop a stupid little crush on their frustratingly but alluringly demanding boss that made them feel like a damned high school student.
They couldn’t stop thinking about about Hotaru Tsukiki. She had been the one to hire Citron, to give them the job in accounting they were working now, at the Happy Hanakamu restaurant. The job was something, at least, though Citron had hoped to be fully done with restaurant work of any kind when they’d gotten their first professional sit-down-at-a-desk-and-work-with-a-computer job. Another point of anxiety is how Citron now felt like they hadn’t progressed at all since graduating college.
To cope, they had began to drink hard again, far harder than they had while working IT. Losing out on a job held for seven years would do that to a person. It wasn’t a healthy coping mechanism, they knew from endless experience and constantly kicked themself about it. It was an expensive one, too.
The bar put out the last call for drinks, and Citron checked their phone. 1:45 a.m.
“Shit,” they grumbled, standing up and leaving money to pay for the tab. The buses and light rail would be closed already, so their options for getting home were extremely limited. Yet another reason to feel anxious beyond words.
Hotaru Tsukiki was more than ready to get home. Assistant manager at the Happy Hanakamu, she was used to late nights, but even still, tonight had been later than most. The things I do for Hana Akikura , she thought humorously as she waited at a red light. It wasn’t solid red, just blinking on and off due to how late it was, but there was no traffic urging her to go, so she took the moment to breathe deep and unwind a little.
It was at this blinking red light at this uncrowded intersection where Hotaru sat waiting without a need to that she saw her employee, Citron Yoshi , stumbling out of a building, which she put together was a bar. They were visibly drunk. It always surprised Hotaru that Citron was such a heavy drinker. They seemed like too much of a laid-back goofball to fit the picture Hotaru always had for heavy drinkers. At least, most of the time they did.
Hotaru was the one who hired Citron . She knew that they were fired from a stable, well-paying job they’d held for the better part of a decade. She knew there was some pain, some frustration, with it. She also knew they held some level of self-doubt or self-hatred. They hadn’t said anything to her directly before, but a collection of things they’d said to others or even themself had, in conjunction, made it clear. They felt like they had, in some way, failed. They had a steady IT job at some big office and made a six figure salary. Then they got fired, and hired by Hotaru for the Happy Hanakamu. They were more than grateful for the job, but it was still not six figures by any means, only being just above half of that. With that kind of drop, it made sense why Citron would be upset.
And it was restaurant work. Even if Citron was the accountant, they still felt like they hadn’t progressed much being 30 and still working in a restaurant. Hotaru couldn’t relate on a personal level, she was 33 and didn’t feel like a failure, but she was assistant manager, and management was a different story presumably. She wondered what Citron would think if they were in a management position instead. Unfortunately, she could just change their job like that.
Hotaru pulled to the side of the road. She couldn’t just leave Citron walking alone to who knows where without any transportation. For all her thoughts about how silly Citron could be, she still valued them. She cared, maybe more than she should. And frankly, Citron's silly behaviors made them endearingly cute. She didn’t want something bad to happen to them.
When Citron woke up, she wasn’t in a place she recognized. It was well put together, nicely cleaned, with a light blue wall and a floor made of smooth-looking wood. She was in clean room in a house that, if the size of this room was anything to go by, was bigger than any place she’d ever lived in before. The room wasn’t fancy, but it was as big as the living room in her parents’ apartment. It was bigger than the studio apartment she’d lived in while working her old tech job.
The smell of food cooking—particularly bacon, eggs, and sausage—wafted into the bedroom she was in, and despite still being tired as can be, she got out of bed to follow the scent. Frankly, she wasn’t entirely sure what she’d find. She didn’t remember much from last night. As Citron stepped off the bed fully, she stumbled a little. It wasn’t until getting up that she noticed how much her head hurt, or how much the light around her burned her eyes.
It wasn’t an unfamiliar feeling—she’d had hangovers before—but this one felt particularly nasty. She looked around for her bag, a small backpack she typically carried with her when not at work. It was sitting next to the door. Getting over to it felt like a monumental task, but she managed to do so without tripping. In it, she grabbed a pair of sunglasses, a water bottle, and two ibuprofen pills. After putting the glasses on and washing down the painkillers, she felt far better equipped to follow her nose to the source of the delicious smell.
Outside of the bedroom, Citron found herself in a sparsely decorated but entirely spotless hallway. The floor was different, seeming more plastered on than actual wood might be, and the walls would have been a blinding white if not for Citron's sunglasses. Leaning against the wall for support, Citron made her way through the hall and into an equally clean—and equally undecorated, leading her to wonder if the person who lived here actually spent much time in the house at all—foyer. Or living room, though Citron couldn’t tell due to the lack of any distinct markers or furnishings. Opposite the foyer or living room or some such similar room, behind Citron, was a staircase leading up.
An archway on the other side of the room opened to a kitchen (as she’d assumed from the fridge visible through the threshold) that Citron couldn’t see all of but which looked far more used than the bedroom she’d been in, hallway she’d walked through, and foyer or living room, combined.
Stumbling over to the kitchen, she finally learned whose home she had been in. Standing over a flat top griddle with her back turned was none other than her boss Hotaru, the frustratingly beautiful and altogether endearing hardass that hired her. The lack of furnishings made sense now, as Citron had always seen Hotaru as a busybody at work, she likely didn’t spend much time at home outside of the kitchen and her bedroom.
Citron made her way over to her boss and hugged her from behind, which seemed to startle the woman. She planted some kisses on Hotaru's cheek and neck before resting her head on her shoulder. Citron breathed deep, inhaling both the scent of the food and her apparent savior from the night before. After a minute of just standing there with her arms around Hotaru, Citron finally spoke.
“You’re up early, aren’t you?”
In truth, Hotaru hadn’t been up early at all. When Citron had asked, it had been 11:30 a.m. and she was still in her pajamas. That little tidbit had slipped her mind, however, thanks to the cuddly, kissy behavior Citron had showed.
She really is just a silly little goofball, isn’t she? Hotaru had found herself thinking.
Hotaru wasn’t the best cook in the world, but the breakfast she’d made for Hotaru and herself—consisting of pancake, bacon, sausage, eggs, and hashbrowns—was enjoyable enough to at least temporarily distract Citron from her hangover.
Citron was still tired when they finished eating. Tired and presumably hungover. Hotaru helped her back to the guest bedroom on the first floor. Frankly, she wouldn’t mind getting a little more sleep herself, but she knew she’d have a shift to get ready for shortly, so she’d settle for living vicariously through Citron where matters of getting extra sleep during the daytime were concerned.
After tucking Citron in, Hotaru sat on the other side of the bed and watched as Citron quickly feel back asleep. She brushed Citron's hair softly with her hand.
“Mmh… You just keep getting yourself in to trouble, don’t you?” She hummed idly. She looked so peaceful while asleep. Hotaru leaned down and placed a soft, brief kiss on Hotaru's forehead. “But then, that’s what I love about you, isn’t it?”
Hotaru didn’t wait for an answer. With a quiet sigh, she left the room, closing the door behind her, to get ready for work.