Secretly, Ginji doesn't like hotels.

Oh, the beds are nice, and the food is good; it's good to be able to stretch out completely, uncramped by the tiny car. He likes the fact that being in a hotel means that they've been successful at work -- they're not begging for scraps, even if it's only for night.

But in a hotel, he can't roll over and be inches away from Ban's sleeping face; if he reaches out in the middle of the night, all he finds are cool sheets under his fingers.

At least they've never been able to afford separate rooms. If he holds very still, he can hear the sound of Ban breathing, but ... it's just not the same. There's no closeness to it, no tobacco and dust smell, which lingers around Ban even when he's freshly-showered.

And Ban loves hotels -- he loves their cleanness, their space, and when they have the money, they go to Western-style hotels and they buy sushi, sake, and Ban just grins and grins. Even if the desk attendant isn't a pretty girl, it doesn't dampen his enthusiasm.

"This is only a first step," he says, toasting Ginji. "Sooner or later, Ginji, we'll get the money we're worth, and then we can be like this every night."

And he has to admit, it seems like a good idea, living in comfort all the time, especially when he's spent his entire life in the slums and worse, but there's a part of Ginji that's still reserved, not quite certain he likes the idea.

When he sleeps in a hotel bed, he's lonely. The air of the room isn't close and warm and cramped; it doesn't smell of old cigarettes and stale food. If he has a nightmare, he wakes to his own gasping, not Ban's hand on his head, telling him he's being stupid, and he needs to quiet down and just sleep.

If they someday have the money for an apartment, they'll have separate rooms. And Ban might bring home girls, or he might just be content to sit with Ginji in their living room and eat sushi, fighting over who'd get the last piece. Whether he does or not, though, he'll sleep somewhere else, and he'll be there, but he won't, at the same time.

He thinks it might be nice to sleep in an actual bed on a regular basis; he thinks it'd be nice to be able to afford meat for dinner every night. Sushi could be a special thing. It would be nice to have a place that was their own, where he didn't have to sleep with one eye open, waiting just in case someone tried to slink out of the shadows and come after them.

But they've got the Ladybug, and while she's not the biggest or best of accommodations, she's where they belong.

So when they spend the night in hotels, Ginji rolls around and around in the cool sheets, and listens to Ban breathing, and thinks, We'll be going home soon.