Chapter Text
You’re starting to feel sort of worried about the strange homeless man you see hanging out in the alleyways near your apartment.
You live in a city, so it’s not unusual to see strange characters loitering around corners, and you’re sure you probably passed this particular man at least a dozen times before you actually paid him any mind. He’s not actually as weird as some of the people you’ve run into on your walk home from work at night. The weirdest thing about it him is that he always seems to have a cat or two trailing after him as he staggers into an alley or down the sidewalk.
But after you noticed him that first time, watching him pass you while holding a little orange cat with funny looking glasses, you just kept noticing him.
At first it wasn’t even obvious he was homeless. But every time you saw him, he looked a little more unkempt, his dark hair a little more messy, the bags under his eyes a little darker, his purple hoodie bearing a few more tears. Homelessness was really the only thing that explained his increasingly worrying appearance. He even started looking a little thinner, you think – wasn’t he somewhat chubby the first time you saw him? His round face even looked sort of sunken because of how malnourished he became.
It got to the point where you would pass him on the street and wonder if he was alright. Of course his situation wasn’t a healthy one, and you never felt good about seeing someone stuck on the streets, but… did he have somewhere relatively safe to sleep? Could he scrounge up the cash for food? There’s all kinds of diseases on the streets too, and even though he’s usually wearing a face mask, he could still catch something, and there’s no way he could afford that, right?
Then the weather started to get cold, and, well… what were you supposed to do? Just walk past him and let him shiver to death?
So when you see him duck into an alleyway, pulling his arms towards his body and hunching his shoulders against the chill, you follow him, completely disregarding any potential danger. You find him crouched down in front of a cat, pulling what looks like cat food out of the plastic bag he always seems to be carrying around.
“Oi,” he says, gruffly, and it startles you badly enough to make you jump. You’ve never heard him speak before, and he doesn’t even turn around to face you, but there’s no one else here so he’s definitely talking to you or the cat. There’s a long, heavy silence before he continues. “It’s dangerous to be following weird men into dark alleys, you know.”
“You looked cold,” you explain, a little timidly.
“So what?” he asks, swiveling his head to look at you. He glances up and down – not eyeing you up, just observing.
“So… I thought maybe the least I could do is buy you something warm.”
He turns away and back to the cat. “I don’t need charity.”
You fidget nervously, trying to think of a way to get him to accept your offer. Normally you’d just leave it at that and scurry off, but something is keeping you rooted to the spot. You fail to think of a decent excuse, and you feel like lying and saying it’s not charity somehow would just make him madder. So you just settle on a lame, “please.”
The man stands up, swaying a little, and turns around to face you fully. His eyes looks sort of glazed over, and you wonder if they’ve always looked like that. You never really looked him in the eye before.
“Why do you wanna help me?”
“Because you’re cold.”
He scoffs. “I got that part, dummy. I’m saying there’s no reason why you should care if human filth is cold or not.”
You shift uneasily on your feet. The answer is obvious, isn’t it? Who can watch a person suffer and feel nothing? “Human filth is still human, right?”
He stares blankly at you, and after another heavy silence, he shuffles closer, grumbling, “Fine, whatever.”
So you lead him to the nearby café you like, the one you know will be open even at the relatively late hour, and ask him if he’d like hot chocolate, coffee, or tea. His cheap plastic sandals squeak a little as he falls into step beside you, and you try not to notice how his exposed toes are almost blue.
He ends up opting for a black coffee, and you buy him a large one without him asking you to. You order a drink for yourself as well. You sit awkwardly with him at a table in the corner.
He takes a sip of his drink and makes a face of disgust.
“You don’t like it?” you ask.
“Not really…” he mumbles, looking off at the few scattered patrons in the café. “I don’t usually drink plain coffee.”
You frown at him. “Then why’d you tell me to order that, then?”
“It was the least expensive thing,” he says, blandly. “Why’d you take me to a café, anyway? A hot drink from a vending machine would’ve been cheaper.”
“Vending machines don’t have a warm indoors place to sit,” you tell him.
He grunts and keeps his gaze planted firmly on the ground.
You take the opportunity to size him up without him staring back at you. He’s definitely skinnier than before, you decide. He’s still not exactly thin, but he’s smaller around the middle than he used to be. His skin is kind of dull and unhealthy looking, too. You can’t help but wonder what he’d look like happy and healthy.
You glance down at the plastic bag he was carrying before, now plopped onto the floor. He glances at you and you nod at the bag. “What’s in there, anyway?”
He looks away again. “Cat food.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“Bought it.”
You nearly blanch. “You had money and you spent it on food for cats instead of food for yourself?”
“There’s a lot of strays in this area. No one else is feeding them,” he says, like that’s all the explanation you need.
“Oh my god, you moron. Feed yourself first.”
He shoots you a scathing look. “No one else is feeding them,” he says again. “There’s not enough natural prey to hunt, if they even know how to hunt at all. If I don’t feed them, they’ll starve.”
“They’ll starve anyway if the idiot feeding them dies from hunger before they do!”
The look drops off his face and is replaced by a sheepish one as he relents and slouches into his seat. After a bit, he mumbles, “It’s partly my fault, though. Some of them followed me here. I made the problem worse.”
You don’t respond and just let the subject go. He sounds sort of defeated and you feel like you’ve made your point well enough. You’re both quiet again, but the silence isn’t as heavy now. Maybe it’s just because of the ambient sounds of the café, but you like to think it’s because you’ve gotten through to him a little.
“Have you got anywhere to sleep tonight?” you ask.
“Not sure yet,” he says.
You look at the dark circles under his eyes. “Where do you usually sleep?”
“If I have the money for it, I sleep in an internet café.”
“And if you don’t? Is there a shelter nearby?”
“No.”
So… he sleeps on the ground outside, probably. You decide not to press him about it any further.
But, you’re not really satisfied leaving it at that, either.
“You… could stay at my place tonight, if you want,” you tell him.
His reply is immediate. “That’s too much.”
“What do you mean?”
He takes another anguished sip of his coffee. “I appreciate you troubling yourself by buying me a drink. But letting me stay with you is too much. I could steal your things, or hurt you. What kind of person are you, inviting trash into your home?” His brow is furrowed and he almost looks angry. “You just trust anyone who looks a little bit pitiful?”
You take a moment to think about it. “No, I trust fools who buy food for stray animals before they buy themselves a meal.”
He makes a “tch” sound, one hand gripping his coffee and the other forming a tight fist on top of the table.
There’s another silence as you let him consider your offer. Eventually, you check your phone for the time, and realize it’s pretty late.
You stand up abruptly, your mostly empty drink in your hand. “I need to get home,” you tell him. “Are you coming with me?”
The young man stares at you, breathing heavily and mostly looking like he wants to bolt. Then he looks outside, at the dark streets and the hard concrete and the looming danger. When he looks back to you, the look in his eyes tells you he’s finally realized that you’re a lot softer and safer than the alternative.
So he nods.
As you set your new friend up with a spare futon you keep in case of guests (even though your apartment is barely big enough to accommodate a single guest in the first place), you ask if he has any possessions aside from the clothes on his back.
“I used to,” he says, but he leaves it at that.
You imagine he probably had things once, maybe a couple changes of clothes, but they were stolen or lost. It’s probably not easy to keep much living the way that he does.
“What’s it matter anyway?” he asks.
“Well, I thought I could wash your clothes for you.” Out of convenience’s sake, you have a compact plug-in washer and dryer for when you don’t want to go to the laundromat for just a few items. It’s big enough to fit all his clothes. “If you don’t have anything to change into, I probably have a t-shirt and sweatpants somewhere that would fit you. Or you could just wear my bathrobe.”
“Not the bathrobe,” he says, hastily.
You laugh and spend a good while digging through your things while he waits patiently on the futon, glancing around your room. Eventually you find some things that would fit him, and he takes the clothes from you to go change in your bathroom.
When he comes out, you hold your hands out to take his dirty clothes, but he flushes a little and shakes his head.
“I’d rather do it myself. If that’s okay.”
You oblige him, showing him how to work the washer. He also asks if you’ve got a sewing kit and you dig one up. He fingers the spools of thread, trying to decide which one best matches his hoodie while he waits for the wash cycle to finish.
You don’t have much in terms of a kitchen, but you have a hotplate and a rice cooker, and that’s enough to give both of you a warm meal. He sets the sewing kit aside, tucking into the food voraciously, not even bothering to pay attention to the small TV you’ve turned on. To be honest you don’t pay much attention to it either, much more interested in watching him eat your poorly-cooked food like it’s the best meal he’s ever had. The color is starting to come back to his cheeks, and he looks a little livelier.
He catches you staring and flushes a deep pink. “What?” he mumbles around a full mouth.
“Sorry!” You’re sure you’re blushing too. “I just… it’s good to see you eating. You looked sort of sad and sick before, but now you look a little more… I don’t know. More like how you’re supposed to be.”
He looks away and swallows thickly, curling into himself a little more. You hope that didn’t sound too weird.
“Look,” he starts, “thanks for all this.” He’s staring down into what’s left of his food. He opens his mouth like there’s more he has to say, but nothing comes out and he ends up just closing it again. He keeps swallowing hard and blinking rapidly and –
Are those tears pricking in the corner of his eyes?
You’re crawling over to him in an instant, your thumbs brushing away the wetness, and he’s insisting, “I’m not crying. I’m not. Shut up!” even though he is crying and you’re not even saying anything.
You place one hand on his shoulder as he calms down, wiping away the last of his tears with your other hand. He looks at your neck, avoiding your gaze. You soothingly rub a thumb in circles over his shoulder, and you can’t help but notice it’s kind of nice to feel someone else’s body beneath the familiar fabric of your clothes.
You can hear his breath rasping as he relaxes into your touch. He goes limp, weakly grasping at your shirt with one hand. Then he pitches forward suddenly, his forehead landing on your shoulder, his face turned towards your neck.
The washer beeps somewhere in the room. Suddenly, the intimacy of this moment strikes you, a stranger in your home, wearing your clothes, eating your food, touching your body…
Touching your body.
His other hand has slid up the inside of your shirt, resting idly against your back. It shocks you when you realize it’s there, but he’s not actually doing anything. No attempt to grope you or even really take your clothes off. Just the skin of his palm touching your skin. You realize that this is probably another luxury he hasn’t had access to – basic human contact.
You wrap your arms around him fully, rocking him back and forth, and you can tell by the way his breath catches and stutters that he’s on the verge of full-on sobbing. You just hold him and rock while he works it out of his system. He doesn’t cry like before, but he spends a long time just breathing, trying to force himself back into his default, bland, straightforward demeanor.
Once he’s under control again, you can hear his gravelly voice next to your ear, now sounding even more raw because of the exertion of emotion.
“I’m Ichimatsu Matsuno, by the way.”