"So, listen, Taka... If ya just tell me the truth, I won't judge ya. Do you have a drinking problem, or what?"
"I told you not to call me that!" Kiyotaka snapped. He was glaring out of the window at the quickly-darkening sky and not thinking about what Mondo would look like on a motorcyle in that jacket. Or maybe in just the jacket. ...God dammit. "And as I already told you, Oowada, the car seized up without any prompting from me. It's just a coincidence."
"Whatever ya say. ...I told ya to just call me Mondo, though."
"Why should I obey your requests if you're just going to ignore mine and call me whatever you like?!"
"But you're the one who told me to call ya Taka."
"When?! I have no recollection of that!"
"Of course ya don't. Y'said the only thing you could remember was the edge of my diamond tat. ...I like Taka better for ya, though. 'S cute. N' you're cute."
Oh. Kiyotaka flattened, slightly, in his seat, moving his gaze forward to stare out of the windshield.
He really didn't remember much of anything about the night that they'd met. Maybe that explained why Mondo was so overly familiar, why he acted like he knew what Kiyotaka was thinking... because, perhaps, Kiyotaka had told him a great deal more about himself and his thought processes than he should have.
Deep down, he had always liked being called Taka, but no one had called him that in years. Not since his parents had started hating him. So it had always felt like a strange thing to ask for. But he'd apparently asked Mondo, so... the man knew a lot more than he was letting on.
...Wait, did he seriously just call me cute? Kiyotaka shook his head to dismiss that thought. He had been hearing things. Or Mondo had been making fun of him. Probably the latter, since he seemed to so enjoy getting a rise out of him. ...In more ways than one.
"...Y'gonna quit bein' grouchy now, or do I have to stop so you can take a nap?" Mondo asked. He seemed like he was only half-joking. Kiyotaka must have looked very plainly tired.
"Where are your cigarettes?" Kiyotaka asked, dodging the question. The little shelf near the ashtray was empty. Mondo smiled.
"I don't keep 'em with me on off days so I won't get tempted."
"Off days?"
"Yeah. I'm down to one every other day."
"Oh. That's... That's good. That's great, actually."
Mondo nodded, clearly proud of himself. Something was kind of endearing about that. He didn't try to dismiss the compliment, and that was fair and made sense, because he'd earned it. It was a kind of authenticity that very few people had. It was nice that he was genuinely proud of his own progress.
"When did you start wearin' glasses?"
"A-Ah." Kiyotaka took them off and put them away in his breast pocket as soon as he realized. "Just a couple of weeks ago. My eyesight is starting to go, but I don't need to wear them all the time... Just for things like reading and driving."
He couldn't help but blush. He didn't like wearing the glasses. He was already self-conscious about his eyes and his strong brow, and the frames drew even more attention to those problem features. For some reason, Mondo frowned at their absence.
"...I like 'em. They suit ya," he insisted. Kiyotaka snorted and shook his head.
"Don't bother."
Mondo snickered.
"Whatever ya say, your highness." Mondo was distracted by the glow of his phone screen, but he didn't pick it up. He gestured at Kiyotaka. "Check that message for me, will ya?"
Kiyotaka thought it was a little strange to trust a near-stranger with one's phone, but understood why a professional truck driver wouldn't want to check his messages while on the road. He opened up the screen and looked at the text message.
"...It's from a woman named Akane," he said plainly, "and she says she's ready and waiting at the garage."
"You're in luck, then," Mondo said. "Akane's the best mechanic we've got. If anybody can fix your fucked-up car, it's her."
"Is that the woman who changed my tire last time? Her contact picture looks vaguely familiar."
"The very same," Mondo confirmed. "She's a good friend. We get along great so long as I don't try'n get her to share food. We do karaoke together, n' sometimes we hit up the sports bar. ...I try not to drink too much, of course, but that place has good food and always has a game on, so it's alright. I know the bartender. He knows when to cut me off." He made a weird face for a second, like he'd said something he didn't intend to and questioned why he'd added that bit, and then changed the subject back to Akane. "It's a shame ya don't remember, but she's the one I sent with ya in the taxi. She said she had to half-drag ya up the stairs."
Kiyotaka hid his face in his hands and groaned. Chihiro had said something about Mondo paying a friend to take him back to his home (and God knows what the three of them had had to go through to figure out where he lived). It was this Akane— she had kept Kiyotaka company in some taxi in the middle of the night, and then she'd taken him back to his apartment, getting him safely up the stairs and down the hall and through the door. Even if she had been motivated by money, he owed her his thanks. ...If he could overcome his embarrassment and face her properly, that is.
In some effort to avoid his discomfort, Kiyotaka studied Mondo's lock screen. It was a photo of a bunch of dogs lying together on a couch— or, rather, three dogs lying on top of a bigger dog that happened to be on a couch.
When Chihiro had mentioned seeing Mondo walking his dogs in the park, Kiyotaka had assumed he had a pack of Pit Bulls, or maybe a Husky or something. Instead, Mondo appeared to have a Boxer, a Maltese, and two Miniature Pinschers. The three smaller dogs carelessly used their bigger Boxer sibling as a bed. He didn't seem to mind it, though.
"...You've got a whole family of dogs," he commented. Mondo's eyes lit up, and he smiled affectionately at the picture.
"Oh, that? Those are my babies."
"...Your babies?" Kiyotaka tried not to laugh, as he didn't want Mondo to get away with thinking that Kiyotaka liked talking to him.
"Mm-hm. The big guy is Tyson— get it? Boxer?— n' the fluffy one is Chuck. The bi-colored pin with the lil' eyebrows is Biscuit— people tend t'think she's a boy, but she isn't— and the blonde-reddish-ish one is Gigi. They're sisters."
Kiyotaka more closely studied each dog now that each one had a name.
Biscuit looked like a stretched-out puppy with wide and paranoid eyes, but her perked-up ears and tail in mid-wag told him that she was doing alright. Even if her fur was... was it damaged, or was it falling out? She had some nearly-bald patches, which likely meant that she got cold often, so she was bundled in a little coat. Gigi, in a similarly damaged fashion, was missing so many teeth that her tongue dangled out. She also looked like she needed to lose a few pounds. There was a rounded shape to her body, and she had a couple of rolls of fat at the neck, so she didn't seem to be wearing a collar. Kiyotaka thought that Mondo probably took good care of his pets, so he imagined that the loss of teeth and fur had occurred before they'd been in his care.
Chuck the Maltese posed like a model and looked like he'd been taken from a magazine or something for how picturesque and perfectly groomed he was, but there was a mischievous glint in his eye. He was the leader of the pack. Kiyotaka knew this, somehow, just by looking at him.
Tyson was big, especially compared to his siblings, but he looked to be the most gentle of the group. If his eyes were any hint of his demeanor, anyway. They were big and warm and gentle, and he didn't seem bothered by having three other dogs laying on him. The tip of one of his ears was missing. Wasn't that some kind of dogfighting mark? The poor thing had probably been used for sport. But he had a loving family now, and that was the important thing.
"...Kind of a motley crew, aren't they?" Kiyotaka mused aloud. Mondo chuckled fondly.
"Well, three of 'em are shelter rescues. I had Chuck before I got the rest of 'em. We just kinda found him one day. And he wasn't chipped or anything, so we kept 'im. As for the others... Gigi got kicked in the face, Biscuit got ditched n' thrown on the street in a box when she was still just a baby, n' Tyson was taken away by the cops during some dog fightin' raid. Thankfully he hadn't seen the inside of a ring yet."
"Who throws out a puppy?!"
"You'd be surprised. ...She n' Gigi got to the shelter at the same time, and Gigi took her in. Maternal instincts, I guess."
"You said they were sisters."
"They are! They came as a pair!" He sighed and tried to think of how to better explain what he meant. Mondo was strangely serious about his dogs and their relationships. "...I had Chuck already, n' I got Tyson so he'd have another dog to play with. Then I went back to the shelter lookin' for a third and those two caught my eye. Shelter wouldn't lemme take one without the other. ...So, yeah, they're sisters. They're always together."
Kiyotaka looked at the picture again, paying special attention to the Pinschers. It was obvious that they hadn't come from the same litter, looking at them, because Gigi looked like she might have been a mixed breed (a little too fuzzy to be only a Pinscher), but maybe that didn't really matter. They were sisters in spirit. That was just as nice.
"Anyway," Mondo continued, "those two stick together and just wanna sleep n' cuddle all day, n' Chuck bosses everybody around. He thinks he owns the place 'cuz he was there first and he's the oldest. And I think Tyson thinks he's everybody's mom? He'll tuck 'em into their blankets and everything."
"...Really?!"
"Oh, totally. Boxers are jus' oversized lapdogs."
"So, you... take care of them all? By yourself?"
Kiyotaka was unexpectedly touched. The man did talk about his dogs like they were his kids. It was a sweeter, more gentle side of the man that he hadn't expected to find, and he had to admit that it was cute. Mondo shrugged.
"Well, before, it was me n' Daiya and his girlfriend, but he moved out to go live with her. It's been harder with the place all to myself. I keep a sitter on call. He doesn't charge me too much, though, 'cuz he thinks I'm a decent guy. I fix his car for free if he needs it and we call it even."
Kiyotaka noticed that Mondo sounded a little resentful towards Daiya's girlfriend. Maybe he didn't like her very much. It could simply have been the fact that he didn't like living alone, though, and that he blamed the woman for whisking his brother away. If he and Daiya were really so close, of course it would be hard to live apart for the first time.
Just as he'd made up his mind to ask about what Daiya was like, he spotted the repair shop in the distance. Mondo returned to work mode, leaning in as he pulled the truck into the parking lot. And Kiyotaka couldn't deny it this time: he was disappointed that the conversation had to end. He tried not to contemplate what that meant as he followed his rescuer into the building.
————
A/N: (pssst the dog sitter is totally naegi. and also two of the dogs were inspired by mine irl. if you remember them being different before, no you don't. (jk— i changed them from being EXACTLY mine bc i don't want people to figure out who i am in real life from reading this fic. i wasn't expecting it to hit like 20k combined reads between here and ao3 lmao.).