365 Days of Starshipping (Part 2)

Busy Holidays

11/30/19

They'd gotten a couple offers to hang out by various random friends of theirs, considering it was almost full-swing into the holiday season, but they both were a bit too busy to actually be able to do so. Yusei's classes were all ending in roughly two weeks, which meant that he therefore also had finals to deal with (though he really wasn't too worried about it), while Judai had a couple work events he had to go to so he was definitely not able to go and would probably be too busy recuperating from it at home.

"Man, this sucks," Judai sighed, stabbing his next bite of egg a little too harshly and causing the fork to make a loud clang against the plate, "Oops..."

"Well, think of it this way - we'll both be cleared out a couple weeks from now, and then we'll still have almost a full two weeks to celebrate and do whatever we want," Yusei said, nudging his legs gently under the table with a smile, "It won't be that bad."

"I know, I know... I just hate having so many work days clumped together like this, especially when they're all basically all-day events," Judai explained, nudging him back and returning the smile, "I do enjoy coming back home to a certain someone, though."

Yusei chuckled, feeling like he was getting some major deja-vu all of a sudden, "I swear I once said something along those lines, it's like we've swapped positions now."

Judai laughed, pausing for a moment to drink a bit of water and swallow the bite he was in the middle of chewing to make sure he didn't choke on it before replying, "You're right, but if I suddenly start pulling all-nighters working on menus or something please set me straight."

That got a snort out of him, and they both laughed before continuing to eat - Yusei really had come a long way from how he'd been in the beginning, and so had Judai. Both cared a lot more about themselves as a result of caring about the other, and it'd done nothing but good things for them.

"Speaking of all-nighters though..." Yusei mused, thinking about how the next few weeks would probably play out, "If I try to pull one while studying, make sure to knock some sense into me, please."

"Well, half the battle is recognizing that it's a bad thing, isn't? I think you'll be fine," Judai pointed out, waving his fork around at him with a smile, "The fact that you're even studying at all is good, just don't go overboard or it backfires. Wisdom straight from Haou, of course, because you know just how great of a student I was..." He seemed to listen to something that was said to him, making a face afterwards and pouting a little, which Yusei could only assume meant his not-very-good track record as a student was definitely brought up, before continuing, "Anyway, you get the point. I wouldn't let you skip sleep anyway, especially if I'm going to be working a lot."

"Very true," Yusei agreed, smiling fondly at him - he fully expected to be forcefully dragged off to bed on a few of the nights that Judai got home from work, mainly because he wouldn't be getting back until much, much later at night than usual. It's not his fault that the events happened to be scheduled to last until midnight, or even past midnight, with food needing to be made the entire evening so he couldn't leave early like some of the ones he worked at, but both of them simply weren't used to staying up that late anymore; if they ever did, like that one time recently where Yusei had finished up a school project overnight after not being able to all day, they either really felt it in the morning or slept through until the afternoon.

No longer could some cups of coffee be all he needed to run on, and honestly, Yusei was glad for it. He felt a lot better overall and never wanted to go back to that kind of lifestyle because every time he got a little taste of it again, he just felt awful and tired beyond belief.

They ate in peaceful silence for a little while, occasionally looking out the open window of the kitchen and enjoying the sunlight that'd finally come back around for a bit - it was scheduled to snow again later in the week, but for now they had clear weather and sunshine, along with it being cold enough for the snow that was already there to not melt at all. It was nice and cool, and Yusei had had quite a bit of fun simply people-watching whenever he was on break or eating lunch between classes. The main quad area of the college was filled with various snowmen and walls from people having snowball fights, and he amused himself by betting on which side would win whenever a group decided to go through with it, along with whether any passerby would get caught up in it on accident.

It'd happened before, but luckily there hadn't been any furious reactions yet. He assumed that the second a snowball hit someone who was holding their binders or laptop instead of putting them in their bag was when that kind of reaction would be brought forth, though, since it'd get those all wet in the process.

"Hey, Yus," Judai suddenly spoke up, leaning his head on one hand on the table now that he'd finished his breakfast, "When you get back from class today, do you think you'll want to go out anywhere? I kinda want to go out to the arcade again and see what stuff they've changed for the holidays."

"I'm up for that," Yusei said after a moment to think about it, "It's all just lectures today, so actually doing something sounds nice. Maybe we could just ride around and look at all the holiday decorations too, they've all been getting put up recently and we haven't exactly been out in the city at night since then."

"It's a date, then!~"

"That it is..."

As Judai started talking about what kinds of stuff he imagined the arcade could've done for the holidays, Yusei ate the rest of his breakfast, a content smile stuck on his face as he listened to him fondly.