Title: A Winter's Tale
Chapter Title: December 22
Author: Nina/TechnicolorNina
Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh!: GX
Genre: Humour/Romance/General
Pairing/Characters: Jyuudai, Yubel, Asuka, Fubuki, Johan
Word Count: 5 624
Spoilers: Post-series.
Story Rating: PG-13
Chapter Rating: PG-13
Story Summary: The folks with nowhere else to go all gather at Asuka's for Christmas. It transpires that Yubel doesn't know what Christmas is, Asuka's pile of term papers just keeps growing, and something odd is going on with Fubuki and Johan . . . who just wants to get away from jet lag and Edo Phoenix.
Chapter Summary: The gang is snowed in. Fubuki takes a trip. Asuka and Jyuudai talk, and everyone sits down to watch a movie.
Notes: None
Feedback: There may be something out there that's better than a review containing concrit, but if there is, I haven't found it yet. So if you have two minutes and you wouldn't mind? Please? Arigatou. (And concrit is cool. Flames are not.)
Special Thanks/Dedications: This chapter is for Drea, at whose house half of it was written.
Oh, my love, we've had our share of tears
Oh, my friend, we've had our hopes and fears
Oh, my friends, it's been a long hard year
But now it's Christmas
Yes it's Christmas
Thank God it's Christmas -- "Thank God It's Christmas," Queen
Jyuudai wakes up late—not exactly an unusual situation, but Yubel has let him sleep, and that much is unusual. He yawns and stretches and then tries to look out the window—"tries" being the operative word. His view is hampered by a wall of snow packed tightly against the glass.
"What time is it?"
"Late," he hears Yubel's voice say aloud, and when he turns she's sitting on the bed behind him. "She went to her office. Her brother said he was going to try to find the car."
"Find the car?" Jyuudai blinks.
"He said it was snowed in. I heard an engine about an hour ago, so I assume he found it."
Jyuudai stretches, then pulls off his pyjama top and reaches for a turtleneck. "How'd Asuka get to her office if it's snowed in that bad?"
"The campus was already cleared. Apparently some students are staying here for the break."
"Oh." He thinks of Johan's stories about North School. "I guess that makes sense." He considers changing out of the sweatpants he slept in and decides it can wait until after breakfast. "Is there food?"
"I hadn't looked."
"Then—" Jyuudai grins. "Let's go find out."
Asuka unlocks the door with a sigh. Getting to her office was far more of a challenge than it ought to have been—although the sidewalks were cleared, nobody had bothered with salt or cinders—and getting back with fresh snow to overlay the ice had been even worse. Still, she'd gotten what she went for, and that is some small comfort. She slips off her shoes, then sets her laptop case down on the coffee table and makes for the kitchen. She has no doubt Jyuudai and Johan have demolished the rest of the cinnamon buns between the two of them, but with luck there might still be coffee.
"I don't know if Asuka will believe me, but I can probably talk to Johan if he wakes up before Fubuki gets back," Jyuudai's voice says. Asuka tilts her head a little, wondering who on earth Jyuudai is talking to if not Johan or her brother. Then she wonders how she could be so foolish—Jyuudai is not technologically inclined, but he does have a mobile. There's nothing to keep him from making a phone call.
She slips into the kitchen, massaging the back of one sore leg, and glances up at the table to say hello. Then she gasps.
Jyuudai is not on his mobile. There's a cinnamon bun and part of an orange in front of him, but his attention is instead on the winged creature, easily twice his size, sitting to his left. Both his head and the creature's jerk up, both looking fearful and guilty, as though she's caught them doing far more in her kitchen than holding hands. Asuka sees those giant wings flare in alarm and holds up the one hand not currently involved in pulling her sock back up her leg.
"No—"
It occurs to her suddenly just what—or rather, just who—is sitting in her kitchen alongside one of her best friends, and in the flash of a second she thinks she will have, she speaks again. "Stay."
The wings relax, but that wary, watchful look on the face does not. Asuka straightens up and flexes her foot to try making the muscles in her legs relax. "I was just coming in for coffee."
Jyuudai nods. Then his eyes flicker, first to the large, inhuman hand he is holding and then back to Asuka's face. "I—guess you guys haven't really met. Yet. In person, I mean."
Asuka shakes her head before letting her own eyes flicker back to the winged creature—the dragon? Is this really what a dragon looks like?—sitting beside her friend. "Tenjouin Asuka," she says. "I hope you'll forgive me. I had a hard time getting across campus and . . . " She trails off, trying to determine whether there is a way to explain her reluctance to let go of the oven to shake hands without admitting she fell and may be nursing a pulled muscle. The last thing she wants is her brother fussing and worrying over something a heating pad and a few days will heal. The dragon-creature waves her—its?—free hand lazily.
"And humans weren't made for walking on ice," she finishes in Asuka's place. "Yubel, late of Amneth in Delain."
Asuka nods and takes a tentative step toward the coffeemaker. Pain flares dully in her leg, but does not stab the way a serious injury would. She reaches for a coffee cup. "I . . . didn't know duel spirits could take on a form in this world without holograms," she says at last.
"Most can't," Jyuudai says.
"But he's the Haou," Yubel injects.
"I can do a lot of stuff most duelists can't," Jyuudai finishes with a sheepish smile. It's almost eerie hearing the way their conversation flickers back and forth, and Asuka is reminded suddenly, almost forcibly, of times as children when she and Fubuki did nearly the same thing. Then she rests her weight on her left leg to reach for the coffeepot, and nearly drops the cup in her other hand. Jyuudai's hand is suddenly on her back.
"Sit down," he says. "I can get it."
Asuka is tempted to argue until she realises Jyuudai has already taken the cup out of her hand. At last she makes her way to the table and sits. Jyuudai pours her a cup, looking at her out of the corner of his eye.
"Are you okay?"
Asuka nods and reaches for a cinnamon bun. "I fell getting back here. I put deicer on the steps, but there's none on the campus . . . not that it'd do much in this kind of snow anyway." She takes a bite and lets the icing dissolve, enjoying the sweet and spice all mixed. "Don't tell Fubuki," she says, almost pleading, and Jyuudai chuckles.
"Take it easy for a day or two and I won't," he promises, pushing the butter in her direction. Asuka considers turning it down and then spreads some on her bun, instead. "Did you get what you were after or do you want me to go?"
"I got my laptop and the final exam papers for my third-years," she says. "The second-years can wait until after Christmas. I didn't invite you all here so I could work the whole time."
Jyuudai smiles, and out of the corner of her eye she sees him squeeze Yubel's hand. Then Yubel speaks.
"What is this Christmas? Some kind of solstice festival?"
Asuka opens her mouth, but for a moment nothing will come out. "Well, it's—the Solstice is on the twenty-first, and Christmas is . . . it started as a religious holiday, but—"
"And by 'religious' you mean it has some significance to those who worship the gods of this dimension?" Yubel cuts in.
"Only the Christian god. But over time, because Christianity was so widespread at one point, it started to be a secular holiday too—"
"And this Christian god of yours is Santa Claus?"
"No, the Christian god is God," Jyuudai breaks in. "He doesn't have a name. I don't think."
"Yahweh," Asuka answers absently. "One of my Jewish students told me. Santa Claus is the secular figurehead—or—he was religious at one point, too, I think, but—"
"—believe this!" another voice breaks in from the living room. There is a heavy sound, and then Fubuki's voice calls her name a split second before he appears in the doorway.
Asuka sees his eyes widen, and she jumps to her feet before her brother can find himself on the wrong end of an attack he surely won't come out on top of. Behind her she feels a breeze as those giant wings flare again, and then her leg gives out beneath her as she tries to take a step forward. Instead of getting between Yubel and Fubuki, she instead ends up falling directly into her brother's arms.
"What did you do?"
Asuka puts a hand on his shoulder and pushes herself upright before he can swear some kind of bloody and misplaced vengeance. "I slid outside," she says, amending the truth just enough to keep him from swinging her into his arms and carrying her off to the sofa. "I'll be all right. I just landed wrong when I stood up." She turns around and sees Jyuudai standing in front of Yubel, an almost comic gesture of protection when his size is compared to hers. Even with her wings pulled tightly back against her sides, she's easily twice Jyuudai's size. "Fubuki, this is—"
Then she realises she's gesturing to thin air. In front of the place Yubel was sitting only a moment before, Jyuudai is standing with his head cocked. Then he looks sheepish.
"I thought she might say something, but I think she's kind of sulking," he says. "She didn't get the rest of the orange peel."
"Orange . . . peel . . . ?"
Jyuudai nods and sits down to go to work on his cinnamon bun. "She really likes them for some reason. I guess they were some kind of sweet in Delain. You know, the country she was from before . . . "
Asuka nods, then realises her brother is trying to manoeuvre her back to the table. "Fubuki, I'm fine," she protests, and then she is sitting and he is at the sink, reaching for one of her clean washcloths.
"You will be if you put heat on that," he answers. "Otherwise it's going to feel like hell two days from now." He runs a washcloth under the tap, squeezes it, folds it, and brings it back to the table, pressing it in place against her calf before letting her take it. She smiles in spite of herself.
"Thank you."
Fubuki waves it off and looks back up at Jyuudai. "What was she doing here?"
"We were just having breakfast," Jyuudai answers, and beneath his even tone Asuka can hear a hint of anger. "We don't get to share very often."
Any further discussion on the subject is cut off when Johan appears in the doorway wearing a pair of cuffed pyjama bottoms and a very old T-shirt with a silkscreen of a white-haired boy holding a bird out to a girl in a ballet costume on the front. He scrubs one hand across his face and then peers at the group in the kitchen out of one eye.
"Time's it?" he murmurs. Jyuudai looks at his wristwatch.
"Three—wait—"
"A quarter to twelve," Asuka says. "I told Fubuki to let you sleep."
Johan nods and yawns, heading sleepily for the table. Jyuudai pushes the pan of cinnamon buns toward him. "Have one."
Johan takes one out of the pan, spreads some butter over it, and nibbles while he makes for the coffeepot. "'S good."
"You sleep okay?" Fubuki asks. Johan holds up the hand with the cinnamon bun in it while he finishes his rather large swallow of coffee.
"Fantastic," he answers. "What's the weather like?"
"How long can you tread snow?"
Johan snorts laughter into his coffee cup. "That bad, huh?"
"Yeah." Fubuki gestures to the sliding glass door leading onto Asuka's small patio. "Get it open and you'll be way ahead of me."
Johan looks at the snow piled against the door, then shakes his head. "Should it be cleared off? You know, so the glass doesn't crack?"
"I'll get to it after the breakfast dishes—" Asuka begins. Fubuki cuts her off.
"Not a chance, sis. Not with that leg." He reaches for the coffeepot and refills Johan's cup. Jyuudai waves at him a little.
"Me too? Please?"
Fubuki tops off Jyuudai's coffee, gestures at Asuka with the pot, and puts it back when she shakes her head. Then he sits down with a cup of his own and reaches for a cinnamon bun.
"I called the airport. No luck on your bag," he says. Johan shakes his head.
"My name isn't listed as Johan Andersen," he says. "I learned that lesson after someone stole my bag going to Belgium. I think they were looking for my deck."
Fubuki whistles between his teeth. "What did you have it tagged as?"
"Bjørn Rasmussen," Johan answers. "It's my mum's dad's name."
Fubuki nods and takes another bite of his bun. "I can call again sometime today."
Johan shakes his head, then yawns so widely his jaw looks momentarily dislocated even from behind the hand he tries to stifle it with. "I can do it."
Fubuki looks back out the patio door, then down at his coffee and up at Asuka. "Hey sis, is that movie-rental place still around?"
"The one in the student centre?"
"Yeah."
"I think so," she answers. "I don't go down there often."
"I can check after I get the snow off. See if we can get anything to watch," he suggests. Asuka just nods.
She already has the feeling it's going to be a very interesting evening.
"What did you get?"
Asuka listens to the conversation as she simmers milk to make hot chocolate. Some movie-musical from the 1980s . . . The Dark Knight, almost certainly a pick for Jyuudai . . . something else she doesn't catch.
"Is that the one that came out a couple of years ago about the barber who—"
"Yeah. You want to watch that one?"
"Yeah!"
Asuka looks behind her, just in time to see Jyuudai select a box of crackers from the top shelf and Yubel flicker into tangibility so she can reach up to pull it down. There's something oddly graceful about the pair, she thinks—the way they work together and the way they somehow don't seem in the least mismatched in spite of the disparity in their heights and Yubel's appearance in general.
"Go ahead and get anything you think looks good," she suggests, offering Yubel a quiet smile when she's the first to turn. As long as nobody is raising havoc, Asuka doesn't mind adding a fifth to the group. "We can always put back what we don't eat."
:"If you suggest such a thing to Jyuudai, there won't be anything to put back," Yubel says. Asuka stifles a chuckle, then turns off the burner and pours the milk off into four cups. She pauses, hesitates, then directs a question back over her shoulder.
"Do you—want a cup? Yubel?"
"We can share," Jyuudai answers. Asuka nods and tops off the four she's already made, then runs water into the pan to keep it from filming over. Fubuki strolls into the kitchen, leaving Johan to figure out the DVD player.
"Need help, sis?"
"Can you just take two of these?" She gestures to the mugs on the counter. Fubuki reaches for a pair of them with his usual grin and pecks her on the cheek.
"Looks great."
"It's powder and milk, Fubuki," she points out, but he's already on his way back to the living room. Asuka sighs, takes the remaining two mugs, and follows, hearing someone open the fridge behind her and paying little attention.
"I think you have to hit the—that one," Fubuki says over Johan's shoulder, pointing at something on the DVD remote control. Johan hits a button, and suddenly Fubuki in glasses pops up on the screen.
"Wilson Keegan is a very ordinary man," says the unmistakeable Hollywood Trailer Voiceover Man, and Fubuki groans.
"Aww, hit it again. That movie is . . . " he trails off and reaches for the button, but not before music plays and a gypsy woman announces "I am Madame Rue" in a thick Slavic accent.
"Oh, hey, is this the one they asked me to duel you for?" Johan asks—nearly chirps, really. "With all the girls chasing that—"
A fancy sound effect announces another scene change, and a very shirtless-and-possibly-more Fubuki appears in bed next to an equally topless redhead.
"Now, his problems aren't so ordinary," the droll voice of Hollywood Trailer Voiceover Man says, and Asuka closes her eyes.
"Just what I needed to see before bedtime. Thank you, Fubuki."
"Not my fault what timeslots they put these commercials in, sis. It's—there!" The peppy soundtrack disappears, replaced after a moment by some kind of remixed Broadway. Asuka opens her eyes and is confronted with the image of a glowering, slightly unkempt man holding a straight razor.
"Definitely what I wanted to see right before bed," she says, as Jyuudai plunks down in a chair behind her. "Johnny Depp murdering people."
"Johnny Depp is a great thing to see right before bed," Johan tells her. "Especially if he's not being dubbed over by that one Norwegian guy who sounds drugged all the time. I'd rather just get subtitles if I can't follow."
Asuka rolls her eyes and sits, passing Jyuudai his hot chocolate before looking for Yubel. "Did she go back in—?"
"She's right here, thank you," says a prickly voice from the vicinity of Jyuudai's knees, and a wing unfolds enough for Asuka to see the scaled head resting on Jyuudai's thigh. "Just because I can blend doesn't mean I'm not in the room."
Asuka feels Fubuki getting ready to retort and seats herself, reaching for the remote before a nasty argument can break out. "I'm sorry. You just do hide well. Especially in the dark."
Yubel refolds her wings with a quiet fluttering noise and stares hard at the remote. "I thought you shut off the television."
"It's a different remote," Johan says from his place next to Fubuki on the sofa. Asuka can't help admiring how even his voice is, given the history he has with the dragon-woman on the floor. "We're watching a movie on a disk you can play any time, instead of television where you 're limited by the TV schedule. You can still use a remote for a DVD player, just not the same one."
Yubel lays her head back against Jyuudai's knee. Asuka watches Jyuudai rest his hand on top of her head, then turns back to the television. She presses play, and a ship appears on the screen.
It's sometime around the point Sweeney Todd is holding his razor to the insane pie-woman's throat and telling her he'll come back when she has judge on the menu that Asuka hears a sigh and a quiet murmur of nonsense she can't understand. She looks to her left and puts a hand to her mouth so she won't just burst out laughing at the sight of Johan cuddled up against her brother's side, very clearly asleep and very clearly dreaming. Fubuki looks away from the screen long enough to bring his left hand to his lips: shhh. Asuka looks down before she nods, afraid of laughing anyway before she can look back to the screen. She glances right, instead, sharing a wry smile with Jyuudai before looking back at the screen.
She skips most of the second half of the movie, preferring to make the cookie dough she hasn't yet finished instead of watching Sweeney Todd slit people's throats one after the other. After awhile Jyuudai comes out to put his cup in the sink and get a glass of water. Asuka nods back toward the living room.
"She's still out there?"
"She won't hurt them," Jyuudai says. Asuka shakes her head.
"I was just wondering if she was that interested."
"Yubel . . . doesn't watch movies like normal people do," he answers slowly, almost as though he hasn't much thought of it before. "It's more like . . . almost like she's trying to figure out what people here are like by listening to the stories we tell."
"What's she come up with so far?"
"That people on Earth are a bunch of unimaginative, sex-obsessed maniacal idiots who like destroying things, actually," Jyuudai admits. He sounds rather sheepish about it. "I think she gets a little homesick sometimes. But . . . "
"How do you help someone whose home is thousands of years in the past?" Asuka finishes for him, and he nods.
"Pretty much." He takes his water and heads back to the living room. Asuka looks down at her sugar cookie recipe and sighs. The dough is easy to make, but that means she can lengthen her stay in the kitchen by perhaps five minutes more—if she's lucky. She divides the dough, rolls it out, wraps it in waxed paper, ties off the ends, and puts it in the refrigerator.
By the grace of some benevolent god, the movie ends just as she walks back into the living room. Johan is stirring against Fubuki's shoulder, finally sitting up and reaching one hand out, looking confused as it touches only thin air. Asuka realises with no small amount of amusement that he's looking for his alarm clock.
"It's only ten at night here, Johan," she tells him, and he blinks at her.
"Mmmnn?"
Fubuki chuckles. Johan stretches.
"I don't remember how it ended—"
"You fell asleep," Fubuki says. "You missed the entire last half."
Johan grumbles a little. "I liked it till then . . . "
"We can probably watch the rest again—"
"Not tonight we're not," Asuka says. "I reached my gore quota an hour ago."
Fubuki opens his mouth to protest and is interrupted by a loud, rhythmic rumbling noise. Asuka looks up, wondering if the pipes are about to burst, and then at Jyuudai. No, the pipes aren't making some odd noise—just the dragon.
Yubel is still kneeling on the floor, her head in Jyuudai's lap, eyes tightly shut, purring as his fingers comb through her hair. She looks and sounds to Asuka like a giant winged housecat.
"Is she—?"
"Asleep," Jyuudai says. Asuka thinks she can hear amusement mixed in with the clear affection in his voice. "She won't usually purr if she's awake."
"Duel spirits purr?" Fubuki cranes his neck to look.
"I don't know if they do or not, but dragons do," Jyuudai answers. "Yubel isn't really a duel spirit."
"She's in a card," Fubuki says. Jyuudai shrugs.
"It's complicated." He runs his fingers through her hair again, almost cradling her head in his palm as he does, scratching her scalp lightly and drawing an even louder series of sounds before he goes back to simply stroking her hair and watching her sleep.
"I'm surprised she's sleeping with other people around," Asuka admits, and Jyuudai offers her a sunny smile.
"It's not so surprising when you think about it, really," he says. "This is probably the safest place in the world right now."
"The safest . . . ?"
"There are four components that make up the universe," Jyuudai says, and in the split second before he continues Asuka ponders how strange it is to hear a word like "components" out of Jyuudai's mouth before he continues. "Two are dark and two are light. One of each is creative and one of each is destructive, and all but one of them always have a living representative. Those three representatives are sitting in this room . . . and so is someone who's been affected by the fourth one. The Light of Destruction. By all of us being here all at the same time, we kind of . . . cancel each other out." Jyuudai shrugs. "We've essentially created a perfect isotonic environment over a few-mile radius."
"When did you start using words like 'isotonic'?" Fubuki asks. Jyuudai grins.
"Well, see, I spent a week in the eighth dimension, which is this really freaky place where a week is actually about eleven days long and you can do things like turning a basketball inside out without puncturing it first—"
"You know what, forget I asked."
"What are you getting her for Christmas?" Asuka asks, watching the sleeping dragon. With her head snuggled against Jyuudai's knees, eyes shut, wings draped loosely around his legs, it's almost hard to believe she came within seconds of being the cause of the destruction of all universes as their respective inhabitants know them. Jyuudai, on the other hand, jumps and then looks mildly chagrined.
"Shit. I didn't even think about that." He ponders the idea for a moment, then looks worried. "How would I even get her something without her knowing I was doing it?"
"I could take her card for an afternoon?" Johan offers. "It'd probably annoy the hell out of her, but . . . "
"You'd enjoy that too much," Jyuudai says, not without amusement. "But even if I don't have her card, her soul is part of mine. She's always with me."
"I could pick something out downtown," Asuka offers. "There are a few nice shops there and I have to try to get to the grocery store tomorrow anyway."
"Yeah, but . . . " Jyuudai looks uncomfortable. "Then it'd be from you, not me, wouldn't it?"
"Tell me what you'd like her to have and I can look for something," she answers. "It's your first Christmas together, isn't it?"
"The first one we're celebrating," Jyuudai confirms. "Last year we were in Taiwan and I didn't even realise it was Christmas until two days after it was over."
"You should have come to Trondheim," Johan says. "I'm always up for somebody to celebrate with." He reaches out to shut off the DVD menu, and the room fills with the unmistakeable jingle of a sing-songy Christmas commercial urging its viewers to buy little Bill or Sally that scooter that's all they really want this Christmas. Johan frowns at it, then glances out the window. "What do you suppose the temperature is?"
"About two below," Asuka answers. "It's snowy, but not all that cold. Why?"
"Am I going to bother anyone if I go for a walk?"
Fubuki raises his eyebrows. Asuka shakes her head.
"If you're going through campus I might actually go with you. Someone needs to do a room-check for the girls who are still here to see who's here and who's not."
"I can do it if you have a roster," Johan says. "I did it for my kids after a long weekend in October and I've got my ID tag with me."
Asuka smiles at him a little. "You're sure you want to go take a trip through Planet Female?"
"I don't believe in cooties."
Asuka and Fubuki both start laughing at exactly the same moment. Jyuudai chuckles. Yubel raises her head, looking a little irritable.
"I have the roster in here," Asuka says at last, leaning forward to open her briefcase. "If anybody asks, you're visiting faculty."
"No problem. Hey, Jyuudai, want to come?" Johan is already heading for the front door to put his shoes on, perhaps hoping to expend some energy and get onto Colorado time. Jyuudai shakes his head.
"I'm probably going to hit the sack soon, but thanks." He reaches for Yubel's hand to pull her to her feet. Asuka finds her roster clipboard and hands it to Johan. Fubuki yawns.
"Bed sounds like a great idea," he chips in. "Think I'm gonna call it a night, sis." He gives Asuka a one-armed squeeze as the front door closes. Then he nods to Jyuudai and ambles off down the short hallway.
Asuka looks at Jyuudai. Jyuudai looks at Asuka.
Both of them head for the kitchen.
"What do you think?" Asuka asks, as they sit together over mugs of tea. "I've never seen him stay that still for that long. Usually he's at least playing with a stress ball or something like that."
"All the answers you wanted were in his right hand," Yubel cuts in, and they both look at her. "I can't help you if you didn't see it for yourself."
"That was the arm he had over the back of the sofa," Jyuudai protests. "What's he supposed to be doing with that?"
"If 'having it over the back of the sofa' is as close as you can get, Jyuudai, I despair for the future of the human race." Yubel reaches for a piece of the orange peel in front of Jyuudai and nibbles it. "You need to learn to be more observant."
Asuka sighs and shakes her head and turns off the radio, pitched just low enough that the strains of sleigh bells ring-a-ling, ting-ting-ting-a-ling too can annoy her enough to take notice. "I feel like I almost had it and then missed it," she says. "I shouldn't have spent the entire last half in the kitchen."
"You didn't miss much," Jyuudai assures her. "That's one movie I don't think they could show on TV even back home."
"And Fubuki's going to want to watch it again tomorrow," she shudders. "Let's all hope they come out with something else sometime soon that isn't intended to break a world record for 'most fake blood used on a single movie set.'"
Jyuudai laughs, trying to keep his voice low. The front door opens, and Asuka hears the low jangle of her keys a few moments before Johan appears in the kitchen.
"Jamie Thompson's room mate said she changed her mind at the last minute when her boyfriend's family invited her to Florida and Darla Sullivan has a note on her whiteboard that she went home with LaTeesha and anyone who needs her can call her cell phone," he says, flipping a couple of the pages on the clipboard. "I'm guessing that's LaTeesha Morgan. Also, Beth DuBartell got permission from Tanya Cordell's room mate to use her bed over break, so she's in 149 instead of 147. Everybody else who's staying was hanging out in 214 having a pyjama party. I asked to do a check for alcohol after I did a headcount and they said no problem. They're up there watching Christmas specials and playing Twister now."
"Then as long as nobody has problems over break, they're set," Asuka says, breathing what sounds a little like a sigh of relief. "Good. Thank you, Johan."
"No problem. I wish my kids were that easy to work with," he adds. "Doing a contraband check on the boys' dorm is hell. I always end up coming out with two or three garbage bags full of stuff they're not supposed to have, and that's without asking the over-agers to lift the mattresses. I'm not sure I want to know what some of them have stuffed under the box springs."
"I'm not sure I'd want to, either," Asuka agrees, taking the clipboard. Jyuudai laughs a little, then yawns. Johan pours a cup of tea for himself and adds sugar. Yubel finishes Jyuudai's orange peel and puts her arm around his shoulders. Johan takes a sip of his tea.
"Do you mind if I make a couple of phone calls tomorrow morning, actually?" he asks. "I have one student who's missing four assignments and one of my advisees had a family situation that took her out of school for six weeks."
"Not at all. I can take you over to my office if you want to use a landline," Asuka offers. Johan shakes his head.
"Both of them know my mobile number. I don't know if she'd pick up to a strange number, but he definitely won't. But thanks."
"Not a problem," she assures him as she puts her cup in the sink. "I'm going to call it a night."
"Me too," Jyuudai says. "Sleep good, okay?" He drains his cup before giving Johan a tight hug.
"You too. Don't let the dragons bite," Johan answers. Yubel gives him a look.
"Never on weeknights," she tells him, and disappears. Jyuudai snickers. Johan rolls his eyes.
"She's always got to have the last word, doesn't she?"
Asuka just shakes her head and slips out to the living room. Jyuudai follows her and catches her arm just before she can reach the hallway on the other side.
"Hey."
"Mm?" She looks up at him, aware in some back corner of her mind that he's grown since leaving school; not so very long ago, it was him looking up at her. Jyuudai shrugs and smiles, looking sheepish.
"I just wanted to say thanks. We don't get all that much time together." The smile flashes brighter. "You letting her be here . . . it means a lot."
"What else would I do?" she asks him, not really expecting an answer. "I invited everyone here to be together, not to keep people apart."
"Yeah, but . . . I know you guys really don't have any reason to do each other any favours. It's nice to get the chance to just be . . . us. If I go to a movie or something, we're together, sure, but you see everyone else sitting together holding hands and it's . . . " Jyuudai shrugs.
"Not the same," Asuka finishes, and he nods.
"Yeah. It's nice to be with people I can actually tell about her. My parents aren't too wild about it."
"If you're happy, they should be happy for you," Asuka says. "I am."
Jyuudai pulls her into a hug so tight she thinks she can feel her ribs move. "Thanks."
"For doing what any real friend would do? Don't be silly."
The smile flashes again. "Sleep good, okay?"
Asuka resists the urge to correct him. There are far more important things to worry about than Jyuudai's grammar, like the task she set herself this afternoon and still has every intention of accomplishing.
"You too."