notes – this was written as a gift but ultimately seems like a present from me to myself since I really like ten years later!hyouka fic

this, he means

"It's getting late. I'm going now or I'll miss the last train."

"Why don't you just stay over?"

Mayaka jerks upright, her face heating up as the magazine crinkles under her hands. "Wh-what are you trying to say?" she asks the floor, attempting to pass her embarrassment off as anger.

Satoshi ducks his head out of the bathroom, a bright yellow toothbrush in hand. "Whatever you want me to say," he answers easily.

"Your bed is too small." Mayaka points at the pathetic single size. In fact, Satoshi's entire living space is pathetically small. It's a tiny apartment with an even tinier kitchenette and a cramped bathroom. Satoshi gets by with the closet, bookshelf and TV he's squeezed in. And though the wide, empty space underneath the bed is spacious enough for Mayaka herself to fit under (probably), he refuses to store his bags there. Instead, they hang off some plastic hooks hammered into the walls. It reminds her of his old room, though the limited number of drawstring pouches, briefcases and ordinary bags pale in comparison to the collection he used to have.

Houtarou must have had a bitch of a time helping him move in. Mayaka smiles gleefully at the thought.

"I can sleep on the floor. It's fine," Satoshi says as he reenters the room.

Mayaka looks at him, narrowing her eyes. He can't possibly mean it.

As he bends over to pick up the things scattered on the floor – books and the TV's remote – he reads her expression with a casual glance. "I mean it," Satoshi chimes, keen on proving her wrong.

Mayaka doesn't like it when someone does that (which is one of the many, many reasons why she never grew fond of Houtarou) but she unclenches her hands and decides to let him win this time.

She needs to stop doing that or she'll make a habit of it – but, ah, she remembers being fifteen and letting him copy her math notes, and being eighteen and staying up till 2am to talk to him on the phone, and being twenty and telling him how to tackle his research project, and being thirteen and smiling when he'd helped pick up her pencil from the classroom floor.

The more she thinks about it, the more she realises that she's been letting Satoshi win for the longest time.

"You can sleep on the bed. I'll sleep on the floor," she decides, shifting from the mattress to the carpet as the words leave her mouth.

Satoshi's face twists at her. "Mayaka," he says, and she can't help but like how much her name means when he says it in that tone of voice. It's frustrating how he has always said her name that way, and it's frustrating how happy she can feel, and just then, she knows that she has to pack her things and leave.

"I'm going after all." She stands and zips up her bag, gluing her eyes to the floor because she can't afford to look at Satoshi now. If she does, she'll forget her brakes, forget that she has tomorrow's breakfast in her own fridge, and forget what it's like to sleep alone, and what does that really mean?

"Are you sure?" Satoshi's footsteps patter behind her as she walks towards the door.

Mayaka has always been sure of herself. She keeps a scheduler in her bag, colour-coordinated, with highlighters and post-it reminders. She alphabetises her manga collection. She replenishes the amount in her train card before it drops below 1,000 yen. She'd known Satoshi was a person she could love, ever since her middle school days.

Satoshi has never been as certain. He's always changing from one thing to the next – his handphone wallpaper or the topic of conversation or what he wants to eat for dinner, and Mayaka is perplexed by how much he cannot make up his mind. She doesn't understand how he can stand that, because the thought of not being sure of anything is something that unnerves her.

Yet, why is Satoshi always so sure just when she's not?

The handle of the door is cool and hard underneath her hand, and she halts just there with her bare feet. She thinks about what kind of person she is. Mayaka's hand slowly falls from the handle as she turns and frowns and looks up to him. Satoshi remains quiet, the look on his face is patient, and Mayaka doesn't know if she should be glad or worried that he knows her so well.

"I'm not sure," she finally admits.

With a familiar tilt of his head, Satoshi offers a smile as the only response and takes her hand as if it were the most natural thing to do.

Mayaka yields. He is one of the things she has always been sure about.

Satoshi leads her back to the bed. They sit on the covers and talk and complain about work and watch TV and when she falls asleep, it is without a second thought.

A wrapped gift sits in the middle of his pillow.

Satoshi stares at the chocolate before whipping his eyes to the date on his handphone. He dashes into the kitchen and double-checks the calendar held on the front of the fridge by the cartoon magnets. It's not Valentine's Day, or Christmas, or his birthday. It's the middle of summer. He goes back to his bedside and checks the sky outside the window. It's bright and sunny, the perfect day for a bike ride across town or an unplanned trip to the zoo, the sort of day Houtarou would spend indoors.

Dropping onto his knees, he grips the edge of the bed and lowers his head until he's at eye level with the box. It's square-shaped, with a transparent cover. The small, round sweets inside have to be chocolates.

When did Mayaka come in and put this here? Of course, it has to be Mayaka. No one else owns a spare key to his apartment. No one else would do this for him. Did she sneak in when he was showering? Or did she leave this here yesterday night? No, he would have noticed the box poking into his back when he'd been sleeping, if that were the case.

Come to think of it, he had thought he'd heard something outside when he was showering. It must have been the door opening.

Satoshi cups his chin as he walks to the front door and takes a cursory scan outside. The corridor is empty. He inspects his doormat, releasing a triumphant "ah ha!" when he notices that it's been placed neatly in front of the entrance. Mayaka is the only one who would bother straightening it like that.

But, something still doesn't seem right. He can't fight the growing smile as he returns into the apartment. He's on the verge of a breakthrough, he can feel it. Satoshi tugs on the short fringe of his hair, like a lucky charm, and sweeps his gaze across the entire room. There must be something he's missing.

Mayaka is not the kind of person to just come and go. She would be deliberate and serious and forceful in that honest way of hers; she'd want her presence felt. Satoshi looks at the chocolate again – this isn't Mayaka's best effort. So, Satoshi begins searching the entire room for a clue. He scrutinizes the bookshelf, the interior of his closet, behind the small TV. He stares hard at the ceiling and checks each of his bags and takes a quick glance under the bed –

Mayaka looks up from reading on her handphone, nearly banging her head against the bottom of the mattress. The light from the phonescreen makes her eyelashes look soft.

"Hi."

"I found you!" Satoshi shouts, jumping up and punching a fist in the air.

The woman crawls out from underneath the bed, pulling her shoes out along with her. "See, I told you there's a lot of space you aren't using," she tells him pointedly as she stands and brushes the dust off herself.

Satoshi is still smiling, even when the bewilderment catches up to him. "But, what were you doing there, Mayaka?"

Mayaka inhales sharply at the question. "R-reading my emails," she says with a sputter.

He laughs and grabs her wrist and pulls her down so that they're sitting on the floor. "I can't solve the whole mystery myself. Tell me," he says to her in his most earnest voice.

Mayaka's cheeks go that special shade of pink. She tucks her hair behind her ear before speaking, "I… I happened to make some chocolate. But there was no reason to give them to you, so I thought I could – argh, nevermind. It was silly of me! Forget about it!"

Oh. Satoshi loosens his grip around her wrist. He remembers being ten years younger and refusing to accept anything from Mayaka. He'd thought he deserved none of it. He remembers her determined, unswaying expression, and how her hands would clench, brave and girlish, as she pushed things into his arms on holidays. She'd told him he could never decline them on his birthday or Valentine's or Christmas because she had a valid reason to give him the gifts.

"… Mayaka." He holds her hands.

"What?" she snaps at him, fierce but loving, the only way she knows how to be.

"Thank you."

Mayaka stiffens, and, instead of blushing or smiling, she shakes his hands off, snatches a pillow from the bed, and slams it onto him in one sharp motion. He falls onto his back and Mayaka is sitting on him the next second, burying her face in the pillow.

The biggest mystery is still Mayaka Ibara.

Satoshi straightens his arms as he looks down at her. Even in the dim moonlight shining in through the glided windows, Mayaka can make out the angle of his chin and the curve in his smile. Beyond that, if she maybe squints or kisses a little harder, she can see his recklessness in the circles his hands make on her skin and in the sharp corners of his body. Satoshi is headstrong but hardly ever reckless and when Mayaka presses her nose against his neck she thinks about middle school and high school and university and countless times of 'I'm sorry' and 'You deserve better' and then her teeth run over the groove of his collarbone.

Satoshi freezes and a loud, vulnerable sort of whine escapes and Mayaka's toes curl in response. She remembers days avoiding him in the school's corridors and nights where she'd purposely wait for one whole hour before deigning to reply to a text message from him.

Mayaka pushes up at his shoulders and combs a hand through his hair. She plants kisses down the outline of his jaw, gently for once, and she cannot forget how it feels to have her heart broken.

Satoshi brushes the hair out of her eyes with his thumb, and she cannot forget how she feels when he does that either.

Mayaka blinks, adjusting. "… Your bed is too small," she breathes out, and it feels like déjà vu. One of her legs is dangling off the side. Her left arm is elbowing the wall.

He chuckles, smiling as his hand settles like a butterfly on a flower over her knuckles. Mayaka knows that apologetic smile and knows that he doesn't really mean it. Satoshi catches the look on her face and laughs again. He rests his forehead against hers. It's warm and it's close enough for her to feel his heart beating.

This, he means.

"You haven't changed your bedsheets this week!" is the first thing Mayaka says when she steps into his apartment one day. She turns around and stares at him hard, hands flying to her hips, creasing her blouse.

"Haha, sorry, I've been busy with work," he says, grinning at her, and he can immediately tell that Mayaka's defences weaken at that. Her eyelashes lower and she frowns a little, but it's not an angry frown. He wonders how long more his smile will have that effect.

She drapes her coat on the empty hanger at the closet and rolls up her long sleeves while approaching the bed. "Come on, then." She gestures at him to help.

"Coming, coming," Satoshi drawls as his bag hits the floor. He trails after her, silently disappointed that dinner will have to wait for a while longer. He'd been planning to cook his favourite type of fish and everything. What better way to celebrate a Friday night?

Mayaka works with an efficiency that must come with being a manga artist. He's seen her juggling up to five different tasks at a time during her busier periods. She makes short work of the old bedsheets. As he gathers them up to send to the communal laundry tomorrow morning, she's already rummaging through the drawers on the other side of the room. She picks a pattern, holding up a handful to show him.

"This one?" the woman asks. Satoshi nods compliantly.

He's still folding the sheets as Mayaka takes out the new covers and throws them over the bed.

"You're very fast," Satoshi observes.

"No, this bed is just tiny," she quips back and smiles because it's become a running joke now.

Mayaka finishes fitting the yellow-coloured bedsheets at the corners and gets off the bed. She doesn't spare herself a break, and as Satoshi watches her walk past, he sees that her next destination the kitchen. Moments after she disappears out of sight, he hears the fridge opening.

"There aren't enough vegetables here!" she calls out.

Satoshi thinks: if there is such a thing as being too responsible for someone else, Mayaka has it. Bad. He remembers how she used to care more about his homework than he did, and how she'd needed to remind him to close his windows during winter, since trivial stuff like that slipped his mind all the time. But, if she's too responsible, it's just another way of saying he isn't responsible enough.

After ten years, some things haven't changed.

Mayaka takes a minute to inspect the contents of his kitchen. When she returns into the main room, she glares accusingly at him.

Satoshi shrugs his shoulders and grins.

It proves less effective than he'd hoped. The corner of Mayaka's mouth tugs itself down as she folds her arms. "I'm going to tell Eru-chan to give you some from her latest harvest," is Mayaka's unforgiving reply. She takes out her phone from the pocket of her jeans and presses at it.

"Eru-san always gives too much when you ask her," he tells her.

"Exactly." Mayaka looks satisfied.

Satoshi lets his head drop and imagines a rain cloud appearing over him. He finishes piling the old bedsheets to one side of the room and trudges into the kitchen to prepare dinner. It's been awhile since they could have a meal together, what with Mayaka's erratic schedule. She'd submitted her latest manuscript at eight in the morning yesterday. It's pretty funny how an organised person like her can have such an unorganised routine.

"It's been a while since you've cooked something," Mayaka says as she appears beside him. She has to stand on her toes to grab a pan hanging overhead.

"It's okay. I'm not that rusty so there's no need to help with cooking."

"I feel like eating curry today," Mayaka tells him as she inspects the things he's laid out. "Besides, I make it better than you," she says plainly.

Under the running tap, she washes her hands before drying them on the cloth by the sink. The afterimage remains in Satoshi's mind – Mayaka's dainty hands, rinsed and ready to begin work. It makes him think about a hot afternoon on the school field at Kamiyama High, Houtarou distantly shouting, Chitanda's dark hair tamed into a ponytail, a small green pinafore, and the smell of kakiage-don in the air.

When the frying pan clunks against the stove, Satoshi is back in the present. As Mayaka washes the vegetables, there is a stern focus in her eyes, the exact same one she'd had during Wildfire. It's heartening.

And it's true that the flavour of her curry is much better than his. "Alright, I look forward to it."

With two of them occupying the kitchen, the space to move around is smaller than usual. They bump elbows and Mayaka has to move out of the way as Satoshi retrieves the cooking oil, amongst other things, from the cupboard at her feet. Mayaka nearly bangs into him when she turns around, reaching out for the fridge.

She makes a short, contemplative noise as Satoshi lurches back. "Satoshi, when are you planning to move out of this place?"

"Hm?" He gives her a puzzled expression.

"It's not like you can't stay here or anything but– " Mayaka pauses, her brow knotting as she searches for what she wants to say.

As he checks on the fish, he nods at her to continue.

"I've already told you before, you always forget to do things by yourself, and there's an extra room at my place, and for some reason the girls always work better when you're around and… ! – oh shit, the curry!" Mayaka interrupts herself when she notices the lid over the pan of curry trembling.

Satoshi can't help but laugh as she lowers the flames and blows anxiously over the curry, urging it to simmer.

"What I'm trying to say is…" Mayaka tapers off. She glances up at him briefly before diverting her attention to the curry. Satoshi doesn't think she's going to finish her sentence, but he more or less knows what she's telling him.

"Thanks, Mayaka."

The young woman purses her lips. "That's not an answer," she says sourly. "What do you like about this place, anyway?"

But he really likes this place. He likes this place with the simmering curry, with the ceiling light that's fine on most nights, with the hooks on the top of the walls he bought for 400 yen each and the shelf filled to the brim with books that smell like home and books like smell like a story he needs to read.

Most of all, he likes this place next to Mayaka.