Work Text:
Hayakawa Aki likes his job just fine. The pay is good, the coffee that splutters out of the machine downstairs is decent enough, and his colleagues are… entertaining, at the very least. The office is conveniently located as well, only a two-minute walk from the train station and up five floors in an enthusiastically air-conditioned elevator. It’s fulfilling work, too, and Aki never gets quite bored with it.
The people he works with make sure of that.
But his coworkers aside, he’s perfectly content to be where he is, nothing more, nothing less. Having grown up without his family has made him cherish his present state and also, potentially, placate him into accepting whatever comes at him. Perhaps there will be no great, tremendous joy of his life for which he will shape the remainder of his years around, like a fantastic lover or a thrilling hobby such as hiking the Himalayas. Personally, he believes that immense happiness can be built on the insignificant scraps of pleasure he picks up daily.
He likes his life, which is what he means to say. Even when his colleagues are frankly assholes and his boss is playing favorites and he has the craving for cigarettes, though he knows he has to stop. Even when Makima hires a new employee, much different from Denji and Power but an equal level of infuriating, and assigns him to the desk right beside Aki.
The seat beside Aki’s had only been vacant for two weeks before Makima whisked in to occupy it with a fresh body. “I’m assigning him as your partner so you can keep an eye on him,” she had told him earlier in the morning in her office, clasping her hands together and smiling up at him in that indifferent manner of hers. “He shows good potential, but he appears to be, ah, a little unmotivated when it comes to work.”
“If I may ask, then why did you hire him?” Aki had asked.
She only smiled mysteriously again. “As I said, there is great potential. He only needs the right incentive to get him off his feet, and I’m hoping that incentive will be you, Aki.”
Aki had left feeling a little dazed from the indirect praise and also the sense that Makima hands off whoever she views as troublesome onto him because she knows that he won’t turn her down, and here he is, accepting her orders as per usual.
But it can’t be that bad. From what it sounds like, the new guy is merely lazy, which he’ll accept rather than the overexcited lunacy that Denji and Power bring to the office. Motivation is a tricky thing, but as long as his new partner isn’t only in it because he stubbornly believes he exists in a workplace romance novel and can seduce his boss, then it should be tolerable. The devil knows that Aki already tolerates too much.
At nine on the dot, the desk remains empty. Twenty minutes later, nobody has arrived. At a quarter til, Aki checks the time on his monitor and frowns.
One hour and seventeen minutes after the work day has begun, Makima walks into the office. (He knows because Denji suddenly straightens and begins typing noisily at his desk.) Behind her is a shorter man with a shock of auburn hair. Aki can’t see much other than that—his new coworker is rather short—until the two of them stop before their desks, Makima stepping aside to reveal the man.
“This is Angel,” she says. “Aki, your new partner.”
Aki would be lying if he said he wasn’t a little surprised the first time he saw Angel in full. Angel is awfully pretty—long hair that dangles over his shoulders and sweeps into bangs, big eyes, and soft features that make him look like something tender. His work bag, Aki notices, looks to be subtly expensive, shiny black leather straps digging into his long-sleeved shoulder.
“Hello,” Aki says. “You’re late.”
“I didn’t want to come in,” Angel says. Makima smiles once at Aki, and then she leaves.
Great.
“That’s not the kind of attitude you should have around here,” Aki says, turning back to his monitor. If Angel isn’t going to entertain him with any sort of niceties, then he won’t either. “We work for the government. What we do affects a significant portion of the population.”
“I don’t care about most of the population,” says Angel. Startled, Aki looks over. Angel has his hand cupped in one palm, the other lazily logging onto his computer, character by character. He has these eyes that only add to his aloofness. Long eyelashes and heavy lids. They droop in the bottom corners, making him look tired of the conversation.
“Then why are you even here?” Aki says, affronted.
Angel heaves a sigh. “Because Makima asked me,” he says gloomily. “She’ll stop bothering me about other stuff if I do this. And being unemployed is boring. But so is working.”
Aki unabashedly stares at him. He’s never met anybody like him in his life, and he doesn’t mean that in the way most people do when they say that. “Unfortunately for you, Makima assigned me to supervise your work for the time being. There’s a meeting at eleven.”
Angel slouches into his chair, blinking slowly at his computer screen. It’s still on the loading screen. “I hate being ordered around, and I don’t like meetings. I’m not very fond of people.”
“Then what are you doing in a governmental job looking after the welfare of the people?” Aki says incredulously, feeling as though his mind is going to explode.
“I told you,” Angel says, not looking at him, “Makima asked me to. Weren’t you listening?”
Aki cannot possibly get along with this guy.
“What do you think about the new guy?” Denji says around a mouthful of food. Aki silently pushes a napkin in his face, which Denji waves to the side. Power chases it fluttering in the air.
(He lives with his coworkers because—well, there really is no good explanation for it, nor did Makima provide one, but he’s learned not to mind so much.)
“He’ll be gone soon,” Power says, shredding the napkin in her lap. There’s a bit of gravy on her nose that neither Aki nor Denji has pointed out, and all of her vegetables are left on her plate. She makes a face. “No one stays. I wonder why.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have opinions on him,” Denji says. “Even if he’ll be gone in two weeks. I mean, Aki, don’t you have an opinion on the guy? I know you do.”
“I did not interact with him long enough to form an opinion,” Aki says, studiously picking through the rice grains in his bowl.
Denji frowns. “That has to be a lie. I saw that look on your face.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” says Aki, closing his eyes.
“Eh, whatever. My opinion is that he’s kinda hot, but he’s a guy, so I guess it doesn’t count. Does that cancel out? Isn’t that what math says? So, does that mean that he’s not hot then? But objectively he’s good-looking. Aki, what do you think?”
“I think that makes you gay,” Power offers, slurping noisily on a chicken bone. When Aki opens his eyes again, he sees her with one knee hiked up on the cushion, leaning her arm against it.
“It doesn’t,” Denji says stubbornly, “because I said it cancels out. Power, wouldn’t you say that Makima is a total babe?”
Power shrugs. “I want to drink everyone’s blood, regardless of their attractiveness. If I cared about that, then I wouldn’t want to drink from your veins, would I?”
“Wait—”
“Eat your vegetables, Power,” Aki says tiredly, picking up a piece of cabbage and tossing it into her open mouth.
She spits it out mutinously, tossing the chicken bone at his head in retaliation. “Denji asked you a question, you know. Do you think the new guy is hot?”
“It doesn’t matter if he is,” Aki says darkly, his chopsticks creaking in his tense hold, “if all he’s good for is being a fucking deadweight.”
“Aha,” says Denji. “I knew you had an opinion. Also, you basically just admitted that you think he’s hot.”
The only reason that Denji can make any assumptions about Aki and his opinions of Angel is that their office is almost offensively small. Power is right; their turnover rates are exceptionally high, and it’s usually not because of any issues with the job itself, but with the people. It is a sector composed of rather questionable individuals. That only means that their office space has been consolidated since there are few long-term employees, which means that Denji and Power are, at maximum, only three desks away at all times. As if being their fucking roommate isn’t bad enough.
“He’s late again,” Denji remarks.
The three of them glance simultaneously at the desk beside Aki. It’s not the first time this week. There actually hasn’t been a day since Angel started working that he has shown up on time, if he bothers to clock in before lunch at all. It infuriates Aki in a way that he would never have expected. Turns out that what gets on his nerves more than the wrong motivation is a lack of motivation at all.
“He’s kind of funny for that,” Power says, talking around a lollipop in her mouth. “He does whatever he wants. I like coming in because they have snacks, though.”
“I don’t see why he wouldn’t want to come into work to see Makima,” Denji says quite seriously. “It’s why I do.” He means it; Aki knows it for a fact. Sometimes he’ll catch him humming to himself in the mirror when he shaves in the morning.
“Some people are not meant to be anything but lost causes,” Aki says curtly. “If he is cut loose, then let it be so. No matter what mysterious value he seems to offer to Makima, even she cannot tolerate it for very long if he continues to squander it. It doesn’t affect me. I doubt I will ever get along with him.”
“But you think that he’s hot,” Denji says, squinting at him. “Though I have recently discovered that matters of physical sensuality mean more if you also like the person.”
“For the last time, Denji,” Aki says, “I never said that!”
Denji shrugs. “But you still never deny it.”
Aki smarts. “Because it is a frivolous statement to have to disprove. If I cannot get over an inherent clash of values with Angel, then I do not see how I could feel—”
“Hello,” Angel says, dropping into his chair. It takes a self-composure that had taken years to develop for Aki not to flinch violently and everything else in his power not to flush in humiliation. Nobody likes to be caught talking about somebody else. Even if they deserved it.
“You must know multiple Angel’s,” continues Angel. “Funny, I thought my name was pretty unique.”
“Um,” says Aki.
Angel waves a hand. “I don’t care if you were talking about me.”
Aki watches him warily from the corner of his eye. “You don’t care about much, do you?”
To his credit, Angel’s expression doesn’t even change, remaining the same solemn, indifferent impassivity that gets on Aki’s nerves. He wonders if the other is even possible of breaking. “You’re starting to catch on.”
“There’s new data from Division Four. They’ve asked that you begin the work on tracking the target.”
Angel says, “If I feel like it.”
Before Aki can even begin to bristle, Denji pops his head over the cubicle, resting his chin on his folded arms as he stares down at them. After a moment, with genuine curiosity in his voice, he asks, “So what kind of woman do you think is hot, Angel?”
“He can’t do his assignment if you ask him inane questions, Denji,” Aki says through gritted teeth. He’s tired of working in this office. It’s a shame that Makima insists on hiring such peculiar individuals. Then again, who would hire someone like Denji if not her?
“That’s alright,” Angel says, blinking slowly up at both of them. He has such wide eyes. The kind that look all beautifully blown-out and innocent. “I wasn’t planning on doing work anyway.”
Aki grits his teeth. With this new habit of his, he might end up grinding his molars down to the root.
Denji taps his finger against his arm. “So, what’s the answer then?”
Denji must be extremely bored, Aki thinks, if he’s stirring shit up like this for no reason. He better be on track when Aki checks over his progress later today. Or, when Denji’s eyes slowly shift over to Aki, he realizes that he’s not bored, he’s plotting. And that’s even worse.
Denji never has good ideas. He famously makes horrible decisions all the time.
“The answer is that we should all focus on the task at hand so we don’t have to put in overtime,” Aki says, rising out of his seat to swat Denji on the forehead. Denji swings back, but Aki automatically ducks, already used to his antics. If he lets it get on too much, then Power will want to join in on the fight for no reason at all, and then the entire day will be wasted.
“I don’t think I can answer your question without either sounding like an incel or gay,” Angel says to Denji, completely ignoring Aki.
“So, which is it?” Denji asks, popping up again. “Are you an incel or are you gay?” Angel’s eyes flick up to Denji, looking bored. He’s so unflappable it seems put on. Aki wants to crack open that mask of his and see what he can do to make him care.
“Me? Oh, I’m gay,” Angel says.
Aki almost chokes on absolutely nothing. He wasn’t even sipping his morning coffee to have an excuse for it. He valiantly holds it in through his sheer unwillingness for Angel to pick up on any abnormal reactions from him, though he thinks a muscle in his jaw pops from the effort. It’s not even such an out of pocket statement in today’s society. Aki has no reason to respond with anything other than calm acceptance, perhaps reaffirm that the office’s policies are tolerant of all people. It doesn’t even matter to Aki what Angel’s sexual orientation is.
Denji nods thoughtfully. “Aki won’t answer the question when I ask him, so I think that might mean that he’s an incel.”
“It means,” Aki grinds out, “that this isn’t an appropriate line of inquiry for work.”
“Or that he’s not out of the closet,” Power chimes in.
“Hey, but I asked you at home, too,” Denji says to Aki.
“Home?” Angel asks. He looks between the two of them. “Are you… roommates?”
Aki sighs, running a hand over his face. “The three of us, yes. Unfortunately.”
Angel looks at him as if he’s grown a second head, which is a little unfair. It’s not as if Aki chose this arrangement. “With your colleagues? That’s a little strange.”
“It’s not as if the word colleague means anything to you if you don’t do any work in the first place,” Aki retorts. “You may as well be a loiterer rather than our coworker.”
Angel’s eyes flick to the ceiling, chewing on his lip as if he’s actually considering it. “I’d quit, but the break room has free ice cream.”
Aki makes a mental note to hide the ice cream and see if that improves Angel’s work ethic or whether he would actually quit. At least if he quits, Makima can fill the role with somebody who will actually contribute to the division. But if he thinks about it, it would be annoying to have to get accustomed to a whole new partner when he’s only just gotten used to the shock of Angel’s red hair and his drowsy eyes.
Denji props his chin against his arms, now peering down at Aki. “Hey, can we buy ice cream on our way back home? I won our wrestling match a few days ago, so you owe me.”
“That wasn’t a wrestling match,” Aki says, disgruntled, “you attacked me when I was in bed because it was six in the morning.”
“I still won,” Denji says, shrugging.
“Roommates with your coworkers,” Angel repeats. “So strange.”
“If you ignore the fact that this guy is such a stickler he could be the dad I never had, it’s not so bad,” Denji says to him, pointing one finger at Aki. “You should come over.”
“It’s not your apartment to be inviting people over to,” Aki says immediately, hackles rising.
“It gets boring because Aki won’t let me see what happens if I set off a firework in the kitchen,” Denji says, ignoring Aki.
“Because the building will explode,” says Aki.
“Sure, I’ll visit,” Angel says.
Aki swears to god that if there were a god, he surely would have bailed Aki out by now.
“I think Angel’s coming home with us from work today,” Denji says from the desk opposite Aki’s.
“He’s not,” Aki says without sparing a glance for the cubicle beside him. “I’m betting that he’s not coming into work today.”
“And how would you know?” Power counters, leering. “You text him or something?”
“He’s been suspiciously on time for the past week,” Aki says. “There’s no way he can keep the streak up.”
As it turns out, Aki is right—Angel never clocks in, and the day progresses as it usually does with him, which is to say that he never gets much done in the first place. But when they trudge home together to Aki’s apartment—he had once tried to ditch the two by sneaking out early to catch an earlier train, but they always managed to rush into his car—Angel is sitting on the steps of the apartment building, fiddling with a strand of his bangs and looking bored.
Aki presses one hand against his face. “I’m done with taking in strays.”
Angel merely stares up at the three of them, his eyes sleepy-looking. Power peers at him, eyes squinted. “I invited him,” Denji says in Angel’s defense.
Slowly, Angel picks himself off the doorstep, brushing dust off his pants. Even though he hadn’t shown up during the day, he’s still wearing his work outfit—or perhaps he has no other clothes. Aki can’t imagine why he’d want to wear the stuffy button-up when he doesn’t have to, fastened to the throat and tucked into his long pants.
“I’m not a stray if I was specifically brought in by Makima,” Angel points out, tilting his head to the side. “It’s only because of her company that I’m here in the city.”
“He’s new to the city! You have to let him in,” Denji says. They all stand waiting for Aki to make a decision since Aki decided long ago that he doesn’t trust either Denji or Power with a spare copy of the apartment key. If he plays this right, he can time the elevator so they can’t make it in, and they won’t have the card to be able to go to their floor…
There is something awfully intimate about showing somebody the interior of your apartment. How you live, the habits you adopt, all of it is sprawled in plain sight. The coffee mugs with stained espresso rings in the drying rack. The pack of cigarettes in the kitchen drawer. The jackets hung on the wall, the toothbrushes in the bathroom, his undone bed in the room over with his sleep shirt still lying mussed on the mattress.
Aki doesn’t enjoy crossing his personal and his work life, but he hasn’t been given much of a choice. Now it’s intruded into everything. All of his lines have crossed, tying his feet where he is. And he doesn’t—hate it, not exactly. It’s like being a child again and having people to share the household. It really is much too cramped for three people, but it’s nice to have others to sit at the dinner table.
Now that he knows what it means to toe the line, he’s reluctant to let another person in. His normal, as unfortunate as it is, is now integrated with the chaos that Power and Denji bring to it. He shouldn’t want to disrupt the careful balance he has—when has he ever before been able to boast of stability? And yet part of him, so easily, wants to let Angel through the door.
Aki’s hand finds the key in his pocket. It’s not as if he has a choice, here. He’s not going to send Angel back. Perhaps he has gotten soft.
“Whatever,” Aki says, stepping past them and opening the door. He turns over his shoulder with a gaze he hopes is as sharp as he’s getting at. “But I won’t be cooking tonight for four. I’ll order in.”
Aki’s apartment isn’t fit to hold four people, but Angel is awfully limber, seemingly accustomed to tucking himself into small spaces. He hardly takes up much of the corner he’s sat himself in, legs folded and his hands tucked neatly in his lap. Aki has noticed this before, this tendency to withdraw from the nearest touch and reject the natural physicality of easy camaraderie, ducking out of handshakes and removing himself from any of Denji and Power’s mock fights. Aki has never thought to ask about it before. Maybe now that Angel is in his apartment, he can ask.
Not that it matters much to him. The gall of this guy to skip out on work and come over for a social invitation.
For all the space that Angel saves by curling into himself, Denji and Power take advantage of it by waving their hands all over the place, passing dishes around, reaching over the table to shove each other on the shoulders. Aki observes it all from the far side of the dining table, deciding to let them be for once instead of attempting to wrangle them back into civility. If they don’t want to behave themselves even in front of a guest, then so be it.
Angel doesn’t look particularly bothered by it anyway, watching them all with his hooded gaze. From time to time, he looks out the window on his right gazing out into the street, watching the skyline as if it’s a sight unfamiliar to him. It makes sense if he really did come from the countryside. The shiny high rises, which he has long taken for granted, are new to those who are used to the glossy wind-swept grasses of the countryside.
“This is normal to you?” Angel asks Aki. He speaks softly enough that he doesn’t attract the attention of the other two.
Aki looks at him. “What is?”
Angel waves a hand over the scene before him. “Living with your coworkers. Do you not find it strange?”
“Of course I did,” Aki says, fiddling with a cigarette that he’s just pulled out of his pocket. “I’ve lived alone since I was a child. But Makima said that I needed to take them in, and besides Power’s vegetable aversion, they’re not too picky with how they live.”
“And you just listen to whatever Makima says?”
Aki doesn’t answer for a moment, reaching over Angel to crack open the window so he can light his cigarette. Angel pulls away from his arm ever so slightly, but the movement is large enough that he still recognizes it for what it is—a shrinkage, avoidance, two magnets of similar polarity pushing away from each other. He can feel Angel’s eyes on him as if testing him.
Aki withdraws and flicks on his lighter. The curl of smoke immediately lightens the pressure in his chest. “I only do what I consider to be a reasonable enough request. Out of the many things required of me for a governmental job, this was not the most absurd.”
He hadn’t even really minded it in the beginning. Aki had completely forgotten the foreign sensation of hearing another person’s voice bounce off the walls, even the quiet intimacy of listening to someone else’s snores vibrate through the room. It’s nice that he isn’t the only one washing the dishes all the time now. He doesn’t spend weeks eating through one bag of apples. And as terrible as his nicotine habit is, he understands why Himeko had first imparted the addiction onto him, for the company. For loneliness makes somebody more human than not.
Angel side eyes him. “You’re not making me want to work this job anymore.”
That almost startles a small laugh out of Aki, but he holds it in. Angel encompasses a certain beguilement that he’s not familiar with. He doesn’t want to be pulled in by him. Instead, he wants to push until he can feel out where he ends, the meat of him. What can he do to make him put in some effort? To reach for it? Aki is always catching him shrinking away; how can he reverse the motion?
“Why don’t you want to work, anyway?” He brings the cigarette to his lips.
“Are we really going to talk about work in your home?”
“Humor me,” says Aki.
“It’s boring. I don’t like to be bored. I’m bored by this city and it’s endless gray. It’s like every building wants to be the tallest. I don’t want that; I was happy where I was in the weeds. Out in the country. I like my own company, not the useless meetings I’m forced into. I hate being supervised, and that’s all you do to me, watching over me. I’d like you a lot more if you didn’t look at me like I’m a bomb whose explosion you’re patiently waiting for so you can clean up the inevitable mess.
“And I’m not leaving,” says Angel, “because of Makima.”
He says it as if he’s been thinking about it for a long time. Aki blinks, slightly startled, the wisp of smoke between his fingers stalling in the cool air. It’s the most he’s ever learned of the other so far, and they hadn’t even gotten very far. Aki still knows next to nothing about Angel. Maybe, like how it was with Denji and Power, it’s worth a try.
“Makima told me to keep an eye on you because you have a tendency to slack off, and she isn’t exactly wrong,” Aki says.
“Makima also told you that we are to be partners, didn’t she?” Angel returns smoothly.
What is it like to live as Angel does, so unaccustomed to the city and its oppressive heat, the hierarchical sky bearing down on its squirming subjects? Aki is so used to being dutiful because it has served him well so far. But it doesn’t serve everybody. He knows that. He wants rote service to be the very thing it promises to be, that one day he will succeed, escape the machine after performing his days as the cog.
“We can be partners if you are willing to work for it,” Aki says.
“And if you agree to do the same.”
“Do you think I haven’t been?”
Angel regards him for a long while, tilting his head to the side. The city shifts with it through the cracked open window behind him, the clouds drifting by through the directionless expanse of blue sky. “Maybe you think you have been.”
What is Aki supposed to do with that? “Maybe you need to be more open-minded.”
“Maybe you need to make my job more interesting, Aki,” Angel says, staring straight at him, and his gaze combined with his words, ever so slightly out of congruence with his actions so far, and the use of his name for the first time from Angel’s lips—because he would have remembered if he’d ever heard it before—is doing strange things to his brain.
“I,” Aki begins to say, but he doesn’t get very far until something smacks him flatly across the cheek and drops to the floor with a small thud. A dishwashing glove. When he turns to the side, Power is watching him with a bored expression on her face, and she puts one hand up in a wave.
“The food is here,” she says instead of telling him that in the first place like a normal person, and beside her, Denji nods solemnly.
Aki looks at the limp and slightly wet glove beside him and briefly contemplates what would happen to him if he quit his job, and then he decides he can’t do that because he needs the livelihood and he still thinks the work is important even though it’s hard and what’s more, apparently he has to make it interesting for Angel.
So he will just have to endure.
“What do you define as interesting?” Aki asks the next week at work, eyeing Angel, who has just sat down at his desk. He’s on time for once, even pulling out his computer with a swiftness that surprises Aki.
“It’s not fun if you don’t put in the effort to find out,” Angel says promptly, which tells Aki all he needs to know—that this is yet another game for Angel, but at least this time, Aki can find a way to benefit as well.
He remembers that Angel had mentioned the ice cream in the break room, so he sets that as the first incentive. If Angel can clear the first five tasks in his assignments, then he’ll be rewarded. What he quickly discovers is that even though Angel has a frankly terrifying capacity to down frozen dessert, it doesn’t make him act as if he wants to be there anymore.
“Boring,” Angel says when Aki shows up with a collection of Chiikawa figurines he’d bought from the convenience store with the intention of lining them up on his desk.
He says the same thing the next day when Aki seats him beside Denji for a shift, incorrectly thinking that the strangest employee in the division could entertain him.
“Try again,” says Angel when Aki hauls in a collection of sensory toys specifically designed for those with attention deficit issues. He raises one eyebrow at the overload of bright rainbow colors and props his head against one fist, staring solemnly up at Aki with those sleepy eyes of his. “I’ll give you a hint. My commute to work is so boring, I can barely get myself out of the door when I have to spend so much time on the train.”
“So pick up a book,” Aki says, his fist tightening. He doesn’t even know why he’s afforded this guy so much patience.
“It gets so lonely,” Angel muses, gaze drifting to the ceiling.
“Maybe you would benefit from a podcast.”
“I’ll send you my address later,” Angel says, swiveling in his chair to finally turn to his computer for the first time that day. “See you in the morning.”
Aki will be damned if he takes Angel to work like an escort. It’s time that his coworkers learn that he won’t obey every one of their whims simply on the presumption that he likes them, or something.
Aki shows up outside Angel’s apartment building at the time of morning when he should be standing on his balcony, smoking his first cigarette of the day.
He doesn’t even really know why he’s here. He’d woken up earlier, shouldered on his work outfit, and told Denji and Power not to wait on him because he had an errand to run before clocking in, all in a state of confusion. On the train ride over to Angel’s apartment, earlier than the first mad rush of the metro, he still hadn’t figured out why he agreed so easily.
The door creaks open, and Aki looks up from his watch.
“You actually came,” Angel says.
“I hope you don’t expect me to entertain you for the entire half hour,” Aki says, already turning on his heel back toward the station.
“The fact that you’re here is amusing enough to me, don’t worry,” Angel says, his voice a few distant paces away, but when Aki glances over, he’s caught up already, strolling alongside him with his hands in his pockets.
And that’s how Aki comes to accompany Angel to work every day.
At least this means that Angel actually makes it to work every day, and on time to boot. Aki can grudgingly accept that, especially since Makima had specifically tasked him with ensuring that Angel does his job. He hadn’t expected the responsibility to take even more time out of his morning, but Angel doesn’t expect him to talk during their silent commute to the office, so he doesn’t mind as much as he could have. To be clear, he does mind, but he still finds himself with one foot out the door forty-five minutes earlier than he has to be.
It’s peaceful. Or maybe Aki is convincing himself of that, but how else can he describe the quiet train rides to work, so different from the ones full of chatter with his roommates surrounding him? Angel isn’t any more chatty out of work than he is during his shift, preferring to spend most of the ride with one arm wrapped around a pole and his eyes closed. Like this, Aki can see how he keeps to himself, back straight and politely folded into himself. The way that he shies away from touch fascinates him. He wonders what it would take to break through it.
Nobody blinks at them arriving at the office together until the first week in, though if Kobeni’s ducked gaze says anything, she’d realized from the beginning. Denji no longer makes a fuss when Aki leaves the apartment before them, accepting Aki’s new arrangement with more ease than even Aki himself.
It’s… weird how easily everybody around them accepts it. Makima doesn’t even blink the one morning they catch her in the lobby, she already standing by the elevator and the two of them walking through the door together. She’d only smiled and given a little nod.
And then once they make it to their desks, Aki is able to get Angel started on a task for at least half an hour before his attention diverts, at which point he turns to him and begins asking for ridiculous things, like crossword puzzles or an extra long four hour break or even a bedtime story on one day he’d looked especially sleepy. And Aki doesn’t like it, but he gets used to working alongside Angel.
That doesn’t mean he doesn’t think the other is still kind of strange, though.
“What do you do for lunch?” Angel asks him, swiveling in his chair for the thirtieth time in the past ten minutes. Aki feels nauseous just looking at him.
“Family Mart around the corner,” Aki says, pointing to his right. “Bento box.”
Angel screws his nose up at him. “That’s no fun. You eat that every day?”
“It’s convenient and quick, so I can get back to work,” says Aki.
“Weirdo,” Angel mutters at a volume still loud enough for him to hear. “Who wants to get back to work?” He puts one foot on the ground, stilling his twirling. “I have an idea. Let’s go to a restaurant and have the company pay for it. If it’s not listed in our employee benefits, then I’ll make it part of it.”
Aki looks at him for a long moment. “That makes it sound as if I’m going with you.”
“Because you are,” Angel says in a tone that suggests this is a natural and simple conclusion to come to. “I thought the deal was that you make my job more interesting.”
“Our lunch break is not part of the job.”
“You just said that you cut yours short in order to work more,” Angel points out, “and besides, it’s during the work day. Unless you want me to do nothing at all… which is also fine with me.”
Aki grits his teeth, closing his eyes briefly to prepare himself. “Fine. We will go. But you’re not going to bother anyone about getting it covered. I’ll just pay.”
“I mean, if you’d really like to do that,” Angel says doubtfully, but he doesn’t have the integrity to argue the point.
In the curry restaurant that Angel ends up dragging him to, only half of the tables are occupied, most of its occupants being individuals in similar suits as theirs, likely also on their lunch breaks. They end up seated at a booth, where Angel reads the menu front to back like a newspaper while Aki picks his usual with a half-glance.
Service is quick, fast enough that they don’t have to deal with idle talk while they wait for their food. In fact, over the steaming plates of rice sloshed with thick curry studded with carrots and potatoes, Aki finds that there isn’t really anything to say to begin with. His apartment is so loud that he’s almost entirely forgotten what it’s like to take a meal in silence, not counting his rushed konbini bentos at his desk.
It’s peaceful, which is new to him—he’d never associated that with work before, and certainly not with the company he keeps. Angel isn’t the most forthcoming individual to begin with, and he’s relatively easy to placate. When they’re both finished, he leaves a couple of bills on the table and they slide out of the booth.
Aki lights up a cigarette while Angel peers inside a nearby vending machine, perusing the different ice creams. “Do you have any yen?” he asks, then turns, making a face when he sees the smoke curling in the air. “Yuck. Way to spoil my appetite.”
Aki sucks in the nicotine, feeling it burn its way through his chest. “You can clog your arteries while I blacken my lungs. Here.” He takes a rumpled note from his pocket and hands it to Angel, who inserts it into the machine before picking out his treat with obvious glee. Then, pacified, they both make their way back to the office.
Like many other routines, their lunches become a habit before Aki even realizes it. The same goes for their morning commute to the office. Sometimes, on the rare occasion, Angel will come over to their apartment, but that’s only in rare scenarios in which Denji orders too much fried chicken for them to possibly eat and they need to call in support to help finish it.
These things are normal to him now. It’s the same as how he got roped into letting Denji and Power live with him—it simply happened, and over time, he got accustomed to it. For better or for worse. Or like his smoking habit, which he only picked up from an old coworker who moved on to another company, but not without leaving him a pack of cigarettes and a faded lighter.
The ways that his life has shifted have all been gradual—you have to graduate into change. And it’s strange. He thinks about one of the first things that Angel ever said to him when they were talking about how he lives with his coworkers. This is normal to you? he’d said.
After some contemplation, he could say the same of the timid friendship he struck up with Angel. Is that normal? He remembers being utterly unimpressed when they first met. Angel also happens to be the exact kind of guy, pretty and slender, that Aki has trouble getting out of his head. Attraction to a coworker, while commonplace, is not necessarily normal. Solo lunches with a coworker, which are ordinary, become less so when you factor in that same attraction.
Not that it even matters. Aki’s only role is to ensure that Angel is fulfilling his responsibilities, and that’s all Makima asked of him. It would likely be rather untoward of him to harbor desire for a fellow employee. It’s only that he ends up in these strange situations for these relationships to blossom.
Like his apartment. He was perfectly content living alone, but now a stranger looking in might venture to say that he’s friends with Denji and Power. It’s not too far off to assume that he’s also friends with Angel. The problem with being friends with Angel is that Aki also wants to put his tongue down his throat, and let it be known that he carries none of the same sentiments for Denji and Power.
He doesn’t like Angel, though. It’s merely sexual attraction and nothing more. They hardly agree on anything and their personalities are entirely different. The only thing he likes with Angel is their silence. And as long as nobody thinks that they’re anything more than loose friends, nothing is of consequence.
“I want to have sex with somebody,” Denji says out of the blue.
“Let’s keep our comments work-friendly,” Aki replies immediately, in the middle of typing an email.
“I can’t help it,” Denji bemoans, his arms sprawling across his desk as he lays his head along the surface. “I always feel this way.”
God. Too much information. “Then you should always be quiet,” Aki says, which is a reasonable enough request.
Denji sniffs at him, looking hurt before it quickly passes through his face. “I mean, don’t you ever feel that way?”
Aki’s typing stills for a moment before he remembers himself with a sigh. He’s supposed to remember that whatever Denji has to say is likely to be impertinent. He picks back through his email: Affirmative, Tuesday at 14:00 will be fine. I wanted to ask…
“What did I just say about work-friendly conversations?”
Denji rolls his eyes. “It’s kinda related to work.”
Aki cannot fathom a single scenario in which sex has anything to do with governmental-level public safety. “I heavily doubt it.”
“Well, it’s related to work if it’s about someone that we work with,” Denji says in an annoying voice that suggests whatever he’s getting at should be obvious to Aki.
Aki feels a sense of dread swell within him. He puts his hand over his stomach. “I hope you’re not talking about Makima-san, or else I’ll report you.”
“I’m talking about you,” says Denji, “and Angel. Don’t you want to have sex with him?”
Aki, in all of his valiant attempts to ignore the man across from him and continue with his email, accidentally types …if you would be amenable to have sex with Angel.
Fuck. He smashes the delete button as vigorously as he can, then, for good measure, deletes the entire email draft with a groan. He looks up from his screen slowly to Denji, blinking at him innocently. “How on earth did you come to that conclusion?” Though it’s phrased as a question, it doesn’t come across as one.
Denji looks at him. “You guys aren’t dating?”
Aki feels the inexplicable urge to punch Denji square across the mouth. “Are you stupid?”
Denji blinks at him one more time, and then he begins laughing. Good lord. Aki hates that sound, especially when it’s directed at him. Especially when the subject at hand is not humorous whatsoever.
“Ohoho,” he says. (Aki thinks Denji has a stupid laugh.) “Don’t tell me you don’t know.”
There’s a tick in Aki’s forehead that he resists the urge to smooth out. Feeling irritable around Denji, or any of his coworkers for that matter, is not necessarily an abnormal state of mind, but it’s particularly worse today. He’s annoyed by his laugh and his ridiculous questions. He’s vexed by the implication that Denji can pick up on Aki’s desire. Above all, he might go out of his mind at the insinuation that Denji knows something that Aki doesn’t—that Denji, in any sense of the meaning, holds the upper hand.
“There’s nothing to know,” he says, lowering his gaze so that the only thing within his line of vision is his computer screen. It should be an effective end to the conversation, except Denji leans over the space between their desks to stick his head in his face.
“The entire office knows that you guys are practically dating,” he says, nonsensically. “Kobeni asked me the other day if I would ask you two to tone down the PDA.”
“PDA?” Aki echoes, feeling as though his mind might explode. “What sort of visions are everybody hallucinating? Is everybody on drugs and I’m unaware of it?”
“I think you gave him a handkerchief?” Denji says, scratching his chin. “Y’know, in public.”
Ridiculous. Aki wouldn’t be able to connect a jacket to a hanger with such a measly hint. “I suppose I shouldn’t look at anybody now,” he says, not without a heavy dose of sarcasm.
“It’s ‘cause he said he’s gay,” Denji points out. “And you keep getting lunch with him. We all thought those were dates.”
“Who is ‘we,’” Aki says, mainly because he’s curious and also so he doesn’t have to think about the fact that their lunches could be perceived as anything other than simple meals. Because he’s had that thought before, and it’s not a pleasant one to dwell on when he’s trying to convince himself otherwise.
“Everyone?” Denji says questioningly.
What the fuck? “You can get the idea out of your head,” Aki tells him gruffly. “And tell everybody else the same thing if they bring it up.”
“Hey,” Angel says, dropping into the seat beside Aki. He doesn’t stiffen, but it’s a near thing. Angel drops his head onto the desk, his cheek on his arm with his face turned toward Aki. “Can I come home with you today?”
Denji raises his eyebrow. For fuck’s sake. Aki cleanly tosses a crumpled piece of paper straight into Denji’s face without a blink, ignoring his startled cry. “No.”
“What? Why not?”
Aki is sure as hell not going to tell him the real reason. “I’m not running a charity. I already cover lunch.”
Angel stretches his arms nimbly above his head, his suit just lifting around his waist. “I told you, I can take care of that.”
“Your idea of taking care of it is bothering Makima,” says Aki.
A shrug. “This really is on you,” he tells Aki. “Well, it was worth a try. I don’t feel like cooking tonight, but I also don’t feel like spending my hard-earned paycheck on delivery, so I might as well just starve.”
It’s the kind of searching statement that Aki doesn’t deem worthy of response, so instead he reaches over and turns on Angel’s computer for him, an obvious command to get to work. And Angel merely sighs, his breath warmly misting across Aki’s bare wrist.
Later, he pulls out his phone.
Come over.
Angel’s reply comes seconds after.
knew you cared too much to let me starve
At dinner, Angel seated beside Aki, his two loud roommates clamoring over the last drumstick in the box, Angel briefly presses the back of his hand against Aki’s midsection to get him to lean back so that he can reach across the table and pluck a napkin. Aki, lulled into the easy rhythm of silent domesticity that Angel so cleverly spun him into, realizes this with all the force of a fist pounding his stomach.
Fuck, he thinks to himself. Angel’s touch disappears, and Aki finds himself leaning into it. Fuck.
The next Monday, Angel tells Aki he wants pancakes. After scouring the nearby streets for a place that still serves breakfast during lunch hours, they end up at a Western-style diner, fitted into red leather booths. Angel slurps coffee noisily across from him, an unknown amount of creamer bleaching the cup. Before them sits an egregious amount of pancakes topped with an egregious amount of butter. On the side, a single serving of scrambled eggs.
Angel braces his fork like a pitchfork, staring at the plate. “There have to be at least seven layers on this thing.”
“You did order the deluxe slammer buckaroo.”
Aki isn’t too keen on taking unnecessary risks, but his job always seems to involve him in some unforeseen threat. In the same vein, he’s not overly eager to acquaint himself with his pain-in-the-ass company, but they always seem to be around anyway, and he doesn’t really have the heart to shoo them away.
“Maybe eight,” Angel says contemplatively. He sticks one prong of his utensil into one of the thick layers, lifting it curiously. It falls back onto itself with a damp sort of heavy thud. Leaving a greasy trail in its wake, the slab of butter slides to the lip of the plate.
“You can’t eat all of that, can you?”
The booth creaks when Angel turns in his seat. “Do you think they have ice cream back there?”
Perhaps Aki’s fatal flaw is that nearly anybody can grow on him given enough proximity. It’s simply true. He nearly kicked Denji and Power out of his apartment enough times to grow uncomfortable with the silence. Even Makima with her enigmatic beauty had appeared strange to him the first time he met her. And smoking, too, after many years of generally intending to live a long life, had only taken him a few drags before he was hooked. Now here is Angel. Sitting across from him in the booth. Dragging his feet along the sidewalk on the walk to his apartment from the train station, slippery fingers balancing a sweaty canned coffee. Everywhere, in each place Aki precisely did not want him to occupy, because he knows how difficult it is to evict someone he cares about.
Every time he swallows with a throat so dry it feels as though he could choke on it is a betrayal of his intentions. Still, cotton-mouthed, he says, “You already get enough of that at the office.”
“Aki,” Angel says, turning back to him and tapping his fork lightly in the air in his general direction, “I don’t know if that is a true statement.”
“Are we dating?” Aki asks. Angel stares at him. On the plate, the butter sits in a slow-widening pool of golden fat threatening to drip onto the table. “People at work seem to think so.”
“Ah,” Angel says. “People?”
“Denji,” Aki says. “Kobeni, apparently.”
Carefully, Angel sets the fork down on the table so deliberately that it makes no sound, like the afternoon they’ve conjured before them is so delicate it could burst with a singular prong. “And those two were enough to make you ask?”
“I was thinking about how they could have come to that conclusion,” Aki says. “And I couldn’t exactly convince myself otherwise.”
“In other words, you thought that maybe they were right,” Angel says.
Aki swallows again, almost chokes on the action again, looks again at Angel blinking slowly at him across the table and realizes once more why people could be driven to desperation by craving. It’s as if nothing else could take over his mind. Like the hunger that hollows your stomach after an early morning run.
“Yes.”
Angel hums thoughtfully and leans back in the booth. “I don’t like proving people’s assumptions about me correct. And I don’t care for big declarations, either.”
“It’s not a declaration,” Aki says. “The question is rather simple.”
Angel says, “I guess I can’t win them all. Maybe you’re all right, and we’re dating after all. This is a date, too, isn’t it? I don’t mind it.” He considers that. “No, I don’t mind it at all.”
Though he doesn’t let it show, Aki heaves a sigh so large it’s as if his body allows him to filter air again after being deprived, a little lightheaded with it. The melting butter finally drips down onto the table in a fat glob, and Angel makes a displeased sound, taking his napkin to rub it into the woodwork.
Aki thinks that anybody else would be offended if Angel were to say he wouldn’t mind dating them, but it doesn’t matter much to him. Neither does he mind it.
“Hey, is that why you insist on paying for our lunches?” Angel says suddenly. He raises his utensils again, finally cutting through the teetering stack of pancakes.
“That’s still because we shouldn’t bother Makima with it,” Aki says, frowning. “Paying out of pocket is better than the alternative.”
“Do you think there’s a clause in my contract that says I’m not allowed to date a coworker?” Angel says, abruptly interested. “They’ll have to fire me then.”
Aki rubs his temples with his fingers. “Please don’t sound so excited about the prospect of being fired.”
“We can stop dating, then, to protect my position.”
“You wouldn’t get any more free lunches,” Aki notes.
“Damn. You’re right. Guess I’ll have to stay.” Angel pushes the plate of pancakes closer to Aki’s side of the table, nodding in his direction. The fork he proffers is sticky with syrup dripping down the handle. Aki watches as a drop falls onto his finger.
Angel puts down the fork. Angel places his finger in his mouth and sucks, tongue swiping around the sweetness. Angel stares at Aki. It has to be purposeful. “Want any?” It definitely is.
The diner pancakes are much too sugary for his liking, but he can see the appeal, Angel watching him across the booth, elbows on the table and chin perched gently in his hands, the coppery spread of his hair spilling just so across his shoulders, the faint exhale of his sweet breath. The light from the glass skitters delicately across the table like so many flashing suns.