Title: Memento
Summary: So he contented himself with these little tokens he gave to her, hoping that she kept at least a few of them.
Word Count: 461
It began, as the majority of their most cherished (at least on his end) rituals, did: accidentally and out of much silliness.
One day he swiped her receipt, just to annoy her (which it did, even though she tired to hide it). Because it worked so well, he began to regularly swipe her receipts. Sometimes he gave them back. And most times when he did, he pulled a pen out of his pocket and scribbled something on the receipt. Whatever he scribbled on the receipt varied; most of the time, he just doodled something in the corners (like: a wolf; a little man in a rough approximation of the MPD uniform; a woman with shapely legs wearing a business suit with an enticingly short skirt; a bowl of soba with kanji above it reading "Better than curry"), though once he did a rough sketch of her face over the majority of the receipt that he thought was pretty good. He thought she might have thought it was pretty good too, just because of the way she blushed and then shoved it into her purse when he gave it back to her.
It took her a while, but she eventually got used to it, and she even started making suggestions on what he should do with the receipt today, which is what led to a few Hangman and Tic-Tac-Toe games. Sometimes she asked him to doodle Shiori, or something at random from the menu ("Not soba, you jerk," she'd say when he said he knew what he was going to draw), but most of the time, when he'd decided he was going to doodle on her receipt, she was content to let him do whatever he wanted.
Every once in a while he thought about scribbling his number on the receipt, but there was something so very forward about that that made him uncomfortable. Besides, he didn't think he'd be able to ignore the disappointment he'd feel when she didn't call him.
So he contented himself with these little tokens he gave to her, hoping that she kept at least a few of them.
Then one day he happened to glance over at her when she was digging through her billfold for the yen so they could resolve another one of their inane arguments, and saw the slightly crumpled but otherwise pristine receipt that he'd sketched her on in there, clearly visible to whoever looked into the billfold, and it was the first time in seven years he thought he might actually have a shot.
It was also when he started to think about writing his number on her receipts again with any seriousness.
She'd kept a sketch he'd done for her five years ago, after all.
That had to mean something.