Disclaimer: I don't own The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.
Tablecloths
Posted May Thirteenth, 2008
Taniguchi shelves book after book, orders row after row, pauses to take a moment's rest in the summer heat. He's working as many shifts as he can before Golden Week is over, filtering through textbooks and manga with the contented air of a boy who has nothing he would rather do. Saving, he says with a grin to everyone who passes by, for a date.
His first hour is a mixture of instruction and demonstration, and it's about what he expects. He can't work the register until he's proven himself worthy, so he's assigned to make sure each category is in order by author and title and subject. It's tedious, but easy. The fantasy of that special someone, the giddy feeling of new experiences, the smell of coffee and ink, these are the things he takes with him as he walks towards the station after hours, uniform clothed in a plastic bag and slug over his shoulder in a mimic of school days.
xxxx
Once, he's thumbing through magazines - adjusting and readjusting placement, shuffling them from here to there. The small shop doesn't have air conditioning, so the door is open and a fan has been placed by the register in vain. It rotates, ruffling his hair, the stacks and stacks of magazines shuffling noisily.
His fingers are slick with sweat, and he wipes them on his shorts absentmindedly as he fixes the dog-eared corner of a girly magazine.
Ice cream would be good. Hand-in-hand with his crush, sweets being eaten as they walk along the beach, letting the cold of the ocean waves lap against their toes while wasting time in the haze of an afternoon. He's too absorbed in his ideal to watch what he's doing, and accidentally slices his finger against an unforgiving edge of paper. The blood is a slow, slow trail of red dribbling down his wrist, and he licks it before it has the chance to drip onto the glossy cover currently in front of him.
Later, the bandage is pink and flowery: a picture of the Hello Kitty smiles up at him from his fingertip, and he sighs in despair. Kyon, he knows for an absolute fact, isn't exactly obsessed with cartoon cats. Taniguchi shelves another issue of Asuka Monthly and waits for Sunday, thinking of paychecks and kisses on the cheek.
xxxx
The day he learns to work the register is the day Kunikida stops by, appearing from nowhere with a pile of homework to complete and earbuds dangling around his neck. He's been doing his own during lunch breaks and hours with no customers, but admittedly there are more doodles than words covering his pages. He greets his classmate with a tired yawn, and dangles a styrofoam cup in from of his face when the boy moves to place his backpack underneath the café table.
"Coffee?"
Taniguchi sits behind the counter and sips his lemonade, which has become disgustingly warm from sitting on the tabletop all afternoon. Probably, he thinks as he stares at the lead smudges on his notebook paper, he only came here because he thought he might need help. Cicadas chirp annoyingly off in the distance, and he wonders, for a moment.
"Hey. Where's Kyon?"
Kunikida looks up, vaguely surprised. He swallows a mouthful of his drink, unhurried, and sets his pencil down on the worn surface of the desk. Stretches. Words spoken off-handedly, as if he's thinking of something far into the distance. As if he's years and years away.
"...Visiting family or something, I guess. He always does that."
"How dull."
But, still. When his shift is over they leave together, homework finished and drinks thrown away. It's only been days - but he wishes it were the other boy walking beside him, a slight smile on his face as they part ways at the train station.
xxxx
The first rule of working here, his manager told him the day he was hired, is to always be moving. If he's not helping a customer he's restocking or cleaning or counting, and by the end of the day his limbs are sore and his feet drag half-heartedly against the ground. Shoes scuffing against the cement as the humid air all but chokes him, he wishes for nothing except sleep. But he's making good money - more than he was before, anyway - and so he suffers through it, despite the fact that the other employees don't share his work ethic. Today is the last day of his vacation, after all.
He had been hoping, somehow, that Kyon would show up much like Kunikida had. Frowning, seeming slightly out-of-place among the books and advertisements. He would have welcomed him, said come, sit down and eyes would have lingered on his waist, his hands, his lips. Taniguchi shakes his head - trying to clear his thoughts because they're heading in a direction he really shouldn't be going into, not here and now.
He wonders - not for the first time - if his classmate's seen through his rating system, yet.
But the day comes and goes, and at the end of his hours he is handed money in a small, brown envelope. This is the total of his week, time compressed into multi-coloured slips of paper, and it feels infinitely light in the grasp of his hand. The first-year tucks it into his pocket with a grin. He'll see Kyon tomorrow, after all.
xxxx
"Part-time job, all the way." Taniguchi informs him proudly, and they're close enough to bump shoulders on the morning walk to school. With the days of absence the hill seems more like a mountain, and he watches Kyon sweat deliciously as they climb higher.
His own uniform is mussed; he doesn't care.
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Written for a kink meme. Original prompt:
Taniguchi/Kyon, fluff.