Work Text:
Yamaguchi Tadashi has been dragged in here by his own conscience. He knows it's 11:00 a.m. He knows he should be at work right now. He knows that coming here got him nothing and will get him nothing.
He just wants a drink.
That won't be singular for long.
Music blares at him even through the door. It's not his favorite, but he's urgent. He enters.
The moment he steps in, the blast of the AC hits his face, followed by a hot steam of wind, undeniably smelling of human. Yamaguchi is not very good with humans. But it will only be a drink. It will only be a drink, and then he will be out of this place, feeling considerably better. Yes, he'd feel better by then. And then he'd go home. Now, there's a clear plan in his mind, and he's ready to enter. So he does.
Why do people love drinking in the daytime so much? Yamaguchi thinks as people close up on him from all sides, which he realizes is quite ironic.
His clothes, very unfit for the occasion and far too unrevealing compared to everybody else's, cling to him like a man on the edge of a cliff. He's already sweating, and the thought of himself sweating only increases his perspiration.
It's so warm in here, Yamaguchi blames, trying to ignore the fact that it's so obviously his lack of social communication with other beings that's causing his sweating.
When was the last time I actually talked to a person for more than two minutes? He knows the answer right away. Tsukishima Kei, from ten years ago, now nowhere to be seen. Everything had gone wrong since they had gotten together. Both of them kept getting upset because they didn't know how to love each other. They broke up when they turned 19. Yamaguchi only hoped that Tsukishima didn't regret it as much as he did. Yamaguchi only hoped that Tsukishima didn't realize the truth as late as he did.
Yamaguchi has forgotten what he had been doing. There was a plan. Except that plan was now deleted from his mind. And now a person is handing him a glass of what looks like water. He takes it. He needs some refreshments right now.
But when the liquid touches his tongue, it burns. Well, it doesn't really burn before it goes down his throat. But it was so bitter that it felt like a burn. What he just drank was not water. Yamaguchi wants to spit it out, but there's too many people watching, and it would be too rude to ruin this.. this... floor? It seems like concrete, but before he can determine the quality of the material he's standing on, the drink's in his guts, and he's offered another drink.
Yamaguchi is not good at drinking. Nor is he good at refusing. Even though he doesn't know who's handing him what, he takes it anyway. There might as well be poison in these consistently water-like drinks that he's chugging down, and Yamaguchi'd be too polite to not take a sip.
The world starts to blur too quickly. One drink becomes two, two becomes four, and four becomes a number he can't count with his fingers. Or can he? He can't think for more than two seconds. It's too loud for that. The drinks keep slipping down his throat, and all thoughts of a plan are erased.
The blurred world around him suddenly rises and offers him more drinks, now in fancier glasses and with more pigment. However, this time is different. This time, he's being pushed onto a stage he didn't know was there and being cheered on by everybody in the room.
It's far too loud.
Yamaguchi breaks with the glass.
All of a sudden, it's hushed—quiet as morning. But Yamaguchi can't notice what's wrong as his mind is screaming at him as loud as it was just a few seconds ago. He can't breathe. He can't see. The world has ran away from him.
Oh god, they're all looking at me, aren't they, Yamaguchi silently screams at himself. As if to compensate for his lack of thinking earlier, thoughts flood his mind. His breath catches too frequently, too hard. Like the shards of glass on the floor.
He's not sober, per se. Sober people don't suddenly run out of breath. Sober people don't drag themselves to the wall like they aren't in control of their body. Sober people, most of all, don't fear other people looking at them.
Sober people don't bring this upon themselves, like Yamaguchi did.
It takes a while for him to calm down, and by the time he has, everybody has forgotten about him. He's cold because all the copious amounts of sweat he's released have dried up, and so he's balled up on the corner of the people-filled room, trying to preserve as much body temperature as possible. He notices again how cold the air conditioner is. It also takes him a while to notice he's shuddering. But it's not from the cold.
People come and go. Some find interest in Yamaguchi, maybe even try to hoist him up. He doesn't budge no matter what they do to him, not as a form of refusal, but as a denial that he actually exists in his own body anymore.
No more drinks are offered to him. Yamaguchi doesn't know how to feel about that. He doesn't know how to feel about anything at the moment. His mind wanders into endless nothingness. And out of it. And back in again. And out and in and out and in and out and...
"What are you doing here?" A man, not even half as wasted as Yamaguchi, sits down next to him, and he is forced back to his own flesh and bones. Yamaguchi wants anything but more people acknowledging him, but he lets this one through because his voice is soothing. Cold, yes, but soothing.
"I don't know," Yamaguchi mumbles. And after a heavy sigh, he says, "I had a plan."
"I can tell it wasn't kept."
Yamaguchi scoffs. That one sound drains all the leftover energy from him.
"I kind of do need to go to work right now," He confesses.
The man blows a raspberry and says, "I guess it's a bit late for that. It's already dinner time."
Time had, apparently, stolen itself from Yamaguchi. The shock of that new information sets his mouth loose. He hoped this person would listen.
"I... when I was in high school, I had this friend who... I kinda crushed on. We got together, but then we weren't great because nothing in our relationship had actually changed. Only after I broke up with him did I realize that nothing changed because we loved each other the same. I regretted it. So after that I didn't make relationships, really. Better at zero than below it, I guess."
The man stays still for a few seconds. Yamaguchi's ready to repeat it again when the man says,
"You didn't forget me, then."
"..Tsukki?"
A glass of something clear was offered to him. It was real water this time.