Work Text:
The bell announced someone’s arrival in the cafe. I swear, Lucy thought nastily, if it’s Dazai or the siblings again I will lose it-
“I thought you worked here…” Atsushi mumbled as he pushed open the door, but his sentence nearly became inaudible after seeing the scowl on Lucy’s face. Why did she seem mad? He would never know. Did he disturb her? Maybe?
Lucy wasn’t really working, to be honest. She sat in the far corner of the cafe, by the large windows, with a book open in her hand. The cover’s colour was faded as if it sat on a shelf for too long and had a hazy silhouette of a teenage girl in uniform, standing at the beach...
Lucy also didn’t wear her apron and her white bandana that she usually had during her shifts. Maybe today, she’s a customer. At least Atsushi guessed so. But she didn’t seem to order anything— the table was bare.
“Day off today. But I don’t really have anywhere to go,” She told him, her scowl slowly dissolving, replaced with a light smirk after realizing who it was, “Why are you here, then? Slacking?”
“Nothing’s really happening,” Atsushi gave an awkward laugh, clearly lying, as he slid into the cushion opposite Lucy.
“When I looked out of the window this morning, it was raining candy,” Lucy pressed on in a sarcastic tone, closing her book abruptly, “A normal day at the agency is throwing candy out the window, yes?”
“How can I put this…” Atsushi muttered, still forcing a smile, “Err… Ranpo-san wanted candy… And err he told everyone. Kenji-san wanted to help because Yosano-san was busy ‘fixing’ Kyouka-chan and the siblings… so uhm… Dazai-san was somewhere, nobody knew where, though… Kunikida-san he err…”
“Basically, everyone else was busy, right?” Lucy concluded, “Did Kenji-san accidentally order too much?”
Atsushi nodded, with a rather exasperated look on his face, “The agency is flooded with candy, so I got shooed out by Kunikida-san. He told me to deal with the candy that fell out the window…”
Lucy let out a sigh. Then they sat there in silence, hearing weird noises from the agency above. Someone was screaming angrily and someone was screaming out of pain. The former would be Kunikida-san. The latter could be either one of the siblings with Yosano-san. They smiled at each other knowingly.
Silence slipped in and took over the room in a heartbeat.
“How did you deal with the falling candy?” Lucy looked out the window curiously, trying to stop the weird silence.
“I built a makeshift tent-like structure to catch the candy,” Atsushi said while nodding, “It looks a bit funny but it works... Have you seen it?”
"I saw you putting it up just now, through the window," Lucy pointed out, "But I thought you'd go back up instead of coming here,"
"Oh right," Atsushi shrugged.
Silence came back once more.
“Today feels so boring…” Lucy groaned, then looked around the cafe, as if trying to find anything, ANYTHING that seemed remotely interesting.
Silence began parading, triumphant of its reign over this enclosed space. Until Lucy deliberately broke it once more.
“Maybe… Maybe we could go out…” Lucy looked at Atsushi with a certain flicker in her eyes, as if expecting something, “I heard, you’ve brought Kyouka-san out on a date before,”
“Huh? No I - I- I was showing her around!” Atsushi looked as if he were zapped, and began stammering.
“You’ve also gone on many adventures with that Port Mafia dude. The one who coughs a lot. What’s his name? Aku- aku something… I heard you two went on a cart ride,” Lucy prompted.
“It was a minecart… And we were chasing some… err… bad guys…” Atsushi sighed, “Where did you get this kind of information?”
“Sometimes Dazai-san walks in, collapses everywhere he likes, begs the waitress for a double-suicide with froth coming out his mouth. He'll always be muttering about red mushrooms and stories about how you were better than his other boy and this writer called ‘Oda’ and about how annoying a guy named ‘Chuuya’ lost a dare. Then he ends it by repeating ‘shin soukoku’ over and over and over. OR he gets into a heated argument with the air, whom he calls his ‘Beast Counterpart’ about how ‘punishment’ is the opposite of ‘crime’,” Lucy described the whole thing with exaggerated tone, rolling her eyes as she ended with an amused ‘hmph’.
“That’s not accurate at all! Riding a cart ride with the Port Mafia is diabolical…” Atsushi slumped his shoulders, wishing he could melt into a puddle.
“It’s really funny to hear them! But I wanna hear them from you…” Lucy went on, her eyes wide open, imploring for the dense person sitting across her to realize what she’s going on and on about.
“It’s not exciting, really…” Atsushi trailed off.
Lucy eyed him. She waited for a few seconds, hopeful, before frowning slightly, mumbling crossly in English, half to herself, “Clueless ball of fur,”
“Sorry, what?” Atsushi tilted his head in confusion.
“I give up. We’re going on a date. A platonic friend date. You've already taken two people on dates and you still don’t realize that they’re fun trips out and-” Lucy cut herself off, irritated, her flaming red braids swishing with every movement, “C’mon! Today, we’ll pretend to be different people and enjoy ourselves,”
She got up, dragged Atsushi by the hand and whisked him out the cafe, “Today, call me Cordelia, from Canada. I’ll be a happy girl, with supportive parents, and my only worries are petty ones like whether I should eat truffle or caviar for dinner,”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss Cordelia,” Atsushi played along, rather poorly, “I’m Li Zheng, from China, and I want to become a poet,”
“Really, Tiger-Cat, that’s all you can think of?” Lucy teased.
“I read this character… from somewhere… a book I can’t remember… but still, though we aren’t similar, there’s something about him that just calls…”
“Well then, hello Li *Xian Sheng. Let’s be bosom friends and tell everything and anything to each other!” Lucy announced grandly, dramatically surveying the area, “Where to?”
* Xian Sheng (先生) means ‘sir’/ ‘mr’ in chinese for this scenario
“Second to the right, then straight on till morning!” Atsushi joked, feeling a surprising sense of bravery, as if he were a character born from a book, right there and then.
“Today, we will be tourists from distant lands, best friends and have happy lives,” Lucy announced grandly, before suppressing mirthful giggles bubbling up her throat. So they went.
They checked out every tourist hotspot Yokohama could offer, and spent their wallets clean, full of goodies and treats and and AND They chatted about everything. About their adventures, about their likes and dislikes and of course…
“I never had this experience growing up,” Lucy mumbled with a mouthful of food. They were sitting on a wooden bench, holding street food bought from Chinatown. A little girl rocking her legs happily was sharing dumplings with her parents. She was waving her hands in the air, all lively and thrilled, describing something with much dramatic effect. Her father listened, and told her to eat. Her mother kept putting more into the girls’ plate, looking as if she were chiding her to eat more, but in a loving way.
Lucy's eyes were wistful,
shimmering,
distant
and Atsushi could not deny that it must be amazing to have a family.
“I never knew what it’s like for parents to take care of you and bring you to fun places and…” She began with a rather despondently, but stopped herself.
Then, Lucy looked at Atsushi with a pained smile, “I’m sorry… I’m supposed to be Cordelia, with a happy family and-”
“No,”
Atsushi blurted, with a pained expression,
“You aren’t Cordelia. I’m not Li Zheng,” He continued, slower, fixing his eyes onto Lucy’s sad, glassy, emerald ones.
“You are Montgomery-chan, and you always will be,” Atsushi said, firmly, placing down his food at the end of the bench, clasping one of her hands in his.
“I am Atsushi, and I will always be me,” He tried to explain, tongue-tied, “So… We can’t escape from the past. It may be painful. It may be bad. But... err... it has built us! No... It has made us grow stronger! They only thing we can do now, is to move forward,”
Lucy blinked a few times, stunned.
"-And... well... To me, the Armed Detective Agency is practically family! We might be rather tense towards each other at times, but we're always there for each other," Atsushi went on, "Maybe, you've felt some kind of belonging to the cafe, or to the people around you, too?"
“I didn’t know you were so… inspirational… Tiger-Cat,” Lucy nodded slowly, as if deep in thought. Her voice had a hint of sarcasm to it, but it also had a trace of something else, something different. Could it be called hope?
Atsushi flushed and retracted his hands, “Well… So… How ‘bout instead… I’ll be Atsushi. And you can be Montgomery-chan. We’ll be friends rediscovering Yokohama together,”
Lucy paused for a moment, before breaking into laughter, “Aren’t we already friends?”
“Yes. We're bosom-friends,” Atsushi let out a content hum. The red lanterns hung above all lit simultaneously in fiery crimson, announcing that the sky was growing dark soon, leaving everything in a warm glow, the crowd, the food, the souvenirs… basically, everything!
“Kindred spirits,” Lucy added, staring at the lanterns in awe, then grinned at Atsushi.
“Kindred spirits,” Atsushi agreed, looking at her.
_
Now, they were walking back to the agency, with overpriced souvenirs.
“Today was fun,” Lucy gazed at the setting sun, now in swirls of gold and scarlet, clutching the sides of her skirt subconsiously. Atsushi gave a satisfied ‘mhm’. They kept a lazy pace, strolling side by side, and the red brick building inching into their view.
“Maybe we can do this another day,” The red haired girl stopped in front of the cafe. Atsushi stopped too, pondering how to reply.
“Maybe we could,” He answered.
“See you tomorrow, probably,” Lucy turned her head to side eyed him, a slight tilt at the corner of her lips.
“See you tomorrow, Montgomery-Chan,” Atsushi gave a small wave.
Something flitted across her mind and seemed to leave a twinkle in those emerald eyes. She looked at him intently and earnestly, gripping her ruffled skirt with a faint excited blush blooming across her cheeks, practically beaming.
She offered,
“Call me Lucy,”