Work Text:
“Hi, welcome to Pig Boy! Can I get you anything?” asked the young waitress, pulling a pen from behind her choppy brown hair. Kuzuryuu looked at her and raised a brow, closing the laminated menu decorated in cartoon pigs.
“Yeah, I’ll get a burger, nothing on it, medium rare,” he answered, holding out the menu for her to take. She nodded and jotted down the order before tucking the menu under her arm and walking away with a smile. As Kuzuryuu waited for his meal, he pulled his phone out of his pocket, sending a quick text to Pekoyama to ask if they would be meeting up for dinner that night or not. Probably not. They were pretty busy hanging out with Sonia.
A tiny pinging noise alerted him to an incoming text right as his own to Peko sent; he swiped his screen and pulled up a conversation with his sister.
Natsumi
hey u @ pig boy rn?
Yeah why
whos ur w8tress
Um, brown hair, hazel eyes maybe? Didn’t catch her name
tell hr she has a cute 3
A 3?
ass
What the fuck no
She looks like she’s still in high school holy shit
dw its komaru
Komaru? Your girlfriend, Komaru?
ya
so u can tell her she has a nice 3
say its from natsu
….I am not telling your girlfriend she has a nice ass
fine will u tell the hot busboy
when he cleans up ur table
Let me guess, it’s Yuta
Either way the answer is no
pls tell him he needs 2 kno
I’m gonna stop texting you now
I’ll call you when I get home alright
Kuzuryuu rolled his eyes and put his phone back in his pocket. Just in time, too - Komaru came jogging back to his table, looking a little flustered as she pushed her hair behind her ear. “Hey, haha, hi!” she greeted. Without waiting for him to answer, she pressed on. “Okay, so, I totally forgot to take your drink order, and, um, if my boss finds out I’m gonna be in trouble, so, um, what do you want to drink? Unless you don’t want anything to drink. But I have to ask anyway. So can I get you anything to drink?”
Kuzuryuu let himself give a huff of laughter. “It’s alright, I won’t tell, alright? But, uh, I’ll take an iced tea. As much sugar in it as you can legally get away with serving me.”
“Okay!” Komaru was smiling from ear to ear, clasping her hands together in front of her chin. A moment passed and then she leaned in, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper and cupping her hands around her mouth to ensure nobody else heard. “But, uh, the drink thing stays between us, right? I totally don’t wanna lose my job, my girlfriend would never let me let it go!”
Grinning, Kuzuryuu nodded. “Yeah, Natsu would never.”
The waitress’s mouth dropped. “You know Natsumi?” A beat, and then she straightened up, pointing at him accusingly with her free hand on her hip. “Oh, I know! You’re her brother! I should’ve known the moment you walked in!” Her arm lowered and she smiled. “You have the same eyes, you know!”
He shrugged. “Yeah, heard it a few times before.”
“Once or twice?” Komaru teased.
A nod. “Yeah, once or twice.”
“Well!” she said brightly, “I should go get you that sweet iced tea, huh?” Again, without waiting for an answer, she bounded off, hair bouncing as she jogged. Kuzuryuu watched her go and then turned his gaze out the window to the streets outside.
A college town on a Saturday afternoon shouldn’t have been this empty, he thought. As he watched, a beat-up green Volkswagen Beetle with sparkle decals on the sides cruised past, and Kuzuryuu perked up at the sight of grey braids in the passenger seat.
And deflated at the telltale yellow bead bracelet on the wrist gripping the steering wheel.
Of course Peko was out with Sonia.
Not that he minded; they were his sibling, and they spent way too much time around him, so it was good that they were getting out and making friends - not more than that, though, because Sonia and Peko were not dating and if they were he’d have to make that blonde promise at gunpoint that she would never hurt his sibling, make her write it in her own blood, because nobody hurt Peko - and he was totally not jealous. At all. It had nothing to do with the fact that Peko was his best friend. That was stupid.
“Excuse me, I have your burger?”
Kuzuryuu was snapped out of his thoughts at Komaru’s words, and he turned back to see a juicy, dripping burger, nothing on it, already on the table with a metal cup of steak fries on the plate next to it.
“I thought you had to order the fries separately,” he said.
Komaru’s face pinkened and she looked down at her toes. “Um, you seemed a little sad? I was waiting there for, like, a minute, so I thought I’d give you some fries on the house? Fries make everything better, right?”
He shrugged. “I guess we’ll see,” he responded flippantly, picking out a fry and shoving it into his mouth with all the grace of an elephant seal. Komaru was eagerly watching his face as he chewed and swallowed, bouncing up and down on her heels as he nodded and reached for another. “Thanks. You gonna be off work soon? If you wanna see Natsu, she’s at home, and she’d be pretty happy to see you.”
Tongue poking out from between her lips, Komaru nodded. “Yeah, um, my shift ends in twenty minutes! Do you wanna hang around until then, or, um, you probably have better things to after you ea-”
Kuzuryuu cut her off with a hand. “I’ll stick around. Do you have any more tables to work?”
A shake of the head.
“Then maybe you can sit with me. Eat some fries.”
And so Komaru Naegi found herself sitting on glossy blood-red pleather surrounded by wallpaper images of cartoon pigs. From this spot, they were overwhelming. And she thought she had a hard enough time walking past all of them every day. Sitting there, surrounded by them, consumed by pigs… It was a fate she wouldn’t wish on anybody. But it was almost tolerable when she was sitting across from her girlfriend’s older brother, talking about high school and finals and her job babysitting the Utsugi family’s daughter. When asked what she did for fun, she pulled out a pastel pink gaming system covered in dog stickers and proudly displayed it, opening it up and turning it on to display the loading screen for Animal Crossing: New Leaf.
Kuzuryuu took the console and turned it around a bit, inspecting it closely before turning his attention to the screen. “Uh huh…. What’s this?” he asked.
Komaru explained the mechanics of the game to him and took the 3DS, tapping the screen a few times and then leaning over the table to show him around her village. She explained that she was nearly done paying off her debt to Tom Nook, but she’d only gotten the game a week ago, and she’d exhausted most of her funds several times over while donating to the in-game campaign for a new bridge. But, she lamented, her debt cast a shadow over every financial decision she made regarding her village.
“Shank him,” suggested Kuzuryuu.
Komaru looked at him with her mouth agape.
“What?”
“You can’t shank Tom Nook!”
“Why not?”
“You just… You just can’t! That’s not how the game works!”
“Huh.” He shrugged and ate another fry. “I guess Nintendo’s promoting legality and morality now.”
Komaru puffed out her cheeks.
The boy’s arm rose up as he checked his watch; he wet his lips and then pushed himself out of the booth. “Hey, your shift’s over. Wanna go see Natsumi?”
“Yeah!” Komaru grinned and hopped out of her side, smoothing down her skirt and then self-consciously fixing her hair. “Do I look okay though?”
“Yeah, yeah, you look great,” Kuzuryuu said fondly. “Don’t look too good though. My sister’s a virgin and it’s gonna stay that way.”
Komaru blushed and smiled a little too big. “Yeah. Right. Let’s go!”
Leaving no time for Kuzuryuu to wonder about that statement, Komaru led the way out of Pig Boy and into the parking lot, shouting behind her as she opened the door, “Bye, Yuta! Love you! I’ll give Natsu a kiss for you!”
A tall, handsome boy with messy brown hair hip-checked the kitchen door open and leaned backwards, looking at her upside-down with sparkling eyes and a carefree smile. “See ya, ‘Maru!” he called after her.
As soon as they were settled in the car, Kuzuryuu behind the wheel and Komaru strapping herself into the passenger seat, he locked the doors and turned to face her.
“So what were you sayin’ about Natsumi not bein’ a virgin?”