Chapter Text
It’s late. It’s probably past ten, but Keigo refuses to check the clock in his cubicle out of principle. He knows it’s been a while since he last looked at the hands ticking into the night, but after a point every hour feels the same; exhausting and unbearable.
Through the glass walls of Tsutsumi’s office, right across the hall, he can see Tokyo lit up against the velvet sky, all the sad-sack workers just like him staying late on a Friday.
It’s nothing new. Keigo can’t remember the last time he started his weekend on time.
He has a headache from the blue light glare of his computer screen, but if he turns the brightness down any lower he can’t read the words, so he just resigns himself to squinting through the pain and fantasising about the painkillers he’s going to take when he’s finally home. One email in front of the other. Maybe if he finally manages to rearrange that MSBY Black Jackal interview, like Tsutsumi’s demanding he does despite the fact that the Jackals are on a very tight press circuit, she’ll let him go home.
“Takami-san, are you trying to starve me?” Tsutsumi’s cool, detached voice tears Keigo from his stupor and his head jerks up, like a puppet on a string.
He rockets to standing, half scrambling into Tsutsumi’s office. The fact that her walls are made of glass doesn’t do anything to ease the anxiety of scurrying through her office door and standing to attention in front of her desk.
“No, Tsutsumi-san,” Keigo says, rapid, guilty. He blinks and his email template swims in front of his eyes. God, he needs to go to bed.
“I’m hungry,” Tsutsumi Kaina says. She leans back in her expensive office chair and crosses her arms over her chest. Her face is washed blue in the light of her three computer screens, rendering her sharpest points even sharper and her darkest points even darker. She’s a spectre. She’s an assassin. She’s hangry.
Keigo gulps. “Uh, I’m not sure—”
Tsutsumi’s face casts into a foul glare. Keigo looks away and laughs, a little nervously.
She’s scary in her best moods, but now, just the two of them left in the office and the lights reflecting eerily off the planes of her face, Keigo wouldn’t put murder past her. She could have a rifle hidden up her blazer sleeve. How else does it retain such a crisp edge after fifteen hours at her desk?
“I mean, I can sort that for you,” Keigo says hurriedly. “Of course. Right away.”
Tsutsumi taps a pen against the edge of her desk. The noise sends shivers up Keigo’s spine.
“I want that dish from that restaurant,” she says. “The one that’s definitely a front for money laundering, but their food is too good to report them. Not the one with the orange chicken. The other one.”
“Yes, Tsutsumi-san,” Keigo says. He knows the place. He hates that he knows the place with so little to go off. He needs to get out more, but maybe it’s not his fault, and maybe Tsutsumi should stop making him accompany her to interview lunches so he can test every dish for poison before she eats it.
“And get me to ten thousand steps,” she says, tossing him her smartwatch. Keigo only catches it by virtue of the fact that this is not the first time his boss has thrown something at him, and it certainly won’t be the last. “I don’t want the Commission’s media team thinking I’ve been skimping on my daily goals when I meet with them next week.”
“Yes, Tsutsumi-san,” Takami says. “Of course.”
He has to wonder, running back and forth between the cubicles as he pants Tsutsumi’s order into the phone, how much of this is worth it.
The watch steadily racks up steps; Keigo steadily loses his will to live, and the food is going to take forty minutes to arrive, which means Tsutsumi’s mood is only going to grow more foul. It’s a miracle they were open at all. Keigo has to remember to count his blessings where he can get them.
He deposits Tsutsumi’s smartwatch back on her desk once it buzzes with a cheery Congratulations!, sweat beading on his forehead and the food still ten minutes away. She doesn’t say thank you. She probably thinks Keigo should be thanking her for the exercise.
Keigo checks his notepad as he catches his breath, trying to push his sweaty hair off his forehead without drawing attention to it. He’s caught in Tsutsumi’s laser stare, so he offers his most confident smile and jumps into Monday’s schedule.
“I managed to move the Jackals interview to Monday morning, and we’re set to run Kurogiri’s piece in the afternoon. I have that scheduled to go out at three but I can shift—”
“Don’t run the Kurogiri article yet,” Tsutsumi interrupts, not looking away from her computer screens. “He writes like a criminal. Ghastly stuff. It needs a full rewrite – tell him that verbatim.”
Keigo jots it down on his notepad, a succinct make kurogiri cry that he circles twice.
“I need fresh eyes,” Tsutsumi sighs, mostly to herself. and Keigo bites back the instinct to shout HELLO, ME, I’M RIGHT HERE! at her. He elects instead to return to his to-do list, chewing on his lip as he runs down the rest of the news he has to deliver.
“Uh, you also have personal RSVPs to answer for Kayama-san’s baby shower, Kamiji-san’s engagement party, Hakamada-san’s wedding anniversary party, and Sosaki-san’s—”
“Cancel them,” Tsutsumi says. “I don’t have time for any of that trivial shit. It’s like none of them have ever heard of putting in the work.”
Keigo bites his tongue. He bites his tongue so hard that he swears he can taste blood, but he just nods like Tsutsumi’s dropped the next greatest nugget of wisdom and aggressively scribbles crosses all over the RSVP notes.
“What are you still doing here?” Tsutsumi asks. “Leave.”
“Of course,” Keigo says, dipping his head. He turns his back to her and makes it to the threshold of her office before the headache and the exhaustion and the ten thousand steps catch up to him. “Actually, Tsutsumi-san…”
He turns back around. She’s looking at him like he’s just sprouted a second head, her fingers frozen over her keyboard.
“You need fresh eyes, right?” Keigo says. His heart is pounding so hard in his chest that he swears he’s going to throw it up right on the floor. Tsutsumi has a stare like a sharpshooter; she can definitely pinpoint exactly where to make him hurt. “I – I can help? I have a couple of ideas.”
“You?” Tsutsumi says. It’s not a familiar, welcoming you – it’s accusatory, incredulous. “Ideas?”
“Uh-huh,” Keigo says, emboldened by her not immediately shutting him down. “There’s this one piece in particular – it’s inspired by the Fukuoka Hawks, actually, they have a player who’s had a super interesting career trajectory. He was picked up really young by a training facility, and I want to explore agency in sports and the skew towards younger and younger players in recent years, so maybe…"
He runs out of steam when Tsutsumi doesn’t do anything except stare at him, her face blank and unmoved.
“Or not,” he tacks on. “It’s just a silly idea.”
“How much have you written?” Tsutsumi asks.
“...Nothing yet,” Keigo admits. “But! I’m totally passionate about getting it written. If you just give me a little time, I can—”
Tsutsumi holds up a hand, and Keigo shuts his mouth so fast he hears his teeth clack together.
“I am not interested in bandying about articles that have not even seen a first draft, Takami-san. And, quite frankly, I don’t think anybody is interested in reading about the dwindling ages of our sports stars. Now, fetch me my food.”
Deep breath in. Deep breath out.
“Yes, Tsutsumi-san,” Keigo says, and droops all the way down to the lobby, where his phone cheerfully tells him his rider is waiting for him.
It’s late. It’s eighteen minutes past ten, and Touya knows this because he’s been aggressively checking his watch every minute for the past twenty minutes while he waits for Chisaki to finish up at the gentlemen’s club.
He has a headache from the fumes of the city at night, but if he scarpers then Chisaki’s definitely going to hand him his ass on a platter. The taxi has been idling for ten minutes; Touya doesn’t know how much longer he can convince the taxi driver to wait, but a periodic handing over of crisp banknotes seems to be working so far.
Once more, he approaches the cordoned-off door to the club only to be met with the unsympathetic bulk of the bouncer, stepping in front of him before he can think to do something ghastly, like touch the handle with his peasant assistant hands.
“Members only,” the bodyguard states.
“I’m with Chisaki Kai,” Touya says coolly. The bodyguard doesn’t budge. “You know, best investment banker in the city? Thirty under 30? Secured the Shie Hassaikai deal of the century?”
“Get away from me, kid,” the bodyguard says.
Touya curses and spins on his heel, striding back into the street with his suit jacket flapping around him. Chisaki’s taking his sweet time, and Touya’s an hour late to Shigaraki’s come over text, and he’s growing increasingly more agitated with every passing minute.
He ducks away from the entrance, from the eyes of the bodyguard, and pulls Shigaraki’s contact information up. He pinches the bridge of his nose as the line rings, trying to alleviate his goddamn headache.
Shigaraki only picks up on the last ring.
“What,” Shigaraki says. He sounds so pissed. Touya’s a dead man either way; he’s trying to decide if it would be better by Chisaki’s or Shigaraki’s hand. He might as well walk in front of a car now.
“I’m held up,” Touya grits out. He doesn’t let go of the bridge of his nose. He needs the strength, needs the structure before he collapses right on the pavement from stress-induced arrhythmia. “I’m gonna be another half hour, at least.”
“You're a dickhead,” Shigaraki says, as unsympathetic as ever. “Why can’t you ever just—”
The door to the gentlemen’s club slams open and Touya hastily hangs up on Shigaraki as Chisaki strides out, pulling his fur-lined jacket around his shoulders despite the fact that it’s a gentle, late-spring night.
Touya can see that Chisaki’s glowering over the black line of his face mask. Touya can recognise every expression in his face from just his eyes. God knows he’s had enough practice.
“How was your evening, Chisaki-san?” Touya asks, falling into step behind him.
“Have you disinfected the seats?” Chisaki asks instead, stopping at the taxi door. Touya hurries to open it for him.
“Yes,” he sighs. It’s its own kind of humiliation to have to explain to any taxi driver that Touya has to crawl over the backseats and use Chisaki’s approved disinfectant spray on the fabric before Chisaki will even step foot inside. The things Touya does for his goddamn job. He can’t believe he’s here, waiting on Chisaki’s ruthless, ungrateful ass when Shigaraki could be sticking his dick in him instead.
“Would you like me to order you some dinner?” Touya asks, thumbing at the pristine edge of his phone screen. A new notification from Shigaraki flickers down from the top of the screen. Touya bites back a sigh and clears it so he can navigate to the delivery app.
“Why would I want food?” Chisaki asks blandly.
Touya hesitates. He could tell Chisaki the truth. He could say that Chisaki always does this, that he acts like he’s above functions like eating and then twenty minutes later decides to take it out on Touya when his body reminds him that it needs food to do things like look at spreadsheets and rake in money.
“No reason,” Touya chooses to say instead.
Chisaki finally eases into the taxi, once he’s snapped on his usual pair of thick black gloves.
Touya goes to slam the door and send Chisaki on his merry way back to the office, but Chisaki levels him with a deeply unimpressed look from the body of the backseat.
“What are you doing?” Chisaki asks, in the tone that implies that whatever Touya’s about to reply, it’s definitely going to be wrong.
“Uh, going home?” Touya checks his watch for the millionth time that hour. “It’s—”
“I don’t care,” Chisaki says. “You’re coming back to the office with me.”
Touya counts to three, and then counts to three again, just for good measure. He’s become very practised at controlling the biblical amount of rage Chisaki brings out in him.
“Yes, Chisaki-san,” Touya says through gritted teeth. He clambers into the taxi and seethes the whole way back to the office, watching the city and any chances of getting dicked down slip away into the night, the bright lights smudging through the window of the taxi. He pulls at the collar of his already-dishevelled button-up, the shirt crumpling under his fingers.
Chisaki doesn’t say anything about Touya’s mess. He never does.
They make it all the way back to the office building, a skyscraper right in the heart of the business district, and all the way up to Chisaki’s office on the fortieth floor when Touya’s premonition senses start tingling. He’s been at his desk for two minutes. This might be a new personal record.
He stops typing his email just in time for Chisaki to storm out of his office, rage evident in the knit of his eyebrows. He’s still wearing the face mask even though it’s just him and Touya left; Touya’s desk, situated right outside Chisaki’s close-walled office, offers him a view of every cubicle on the floor, and they’re all depressingly empty.
“Where’s my food?” Chisaki demands.
Touya rises from his chair on instinct, snatching his glasses from his face. He hovers for a second before he straightens, setting his glasses on the desk with a clatter. It takes him a moment to orient himself after squinting at the monitor for so long, and he doesn’t like what he finds when he gets there.
He closes his eyes briefly, begs for strength, and starts, “I thought—”
He cuts himself off when Chisaki’s glare turns red-hot enough to burn right into the side of Touya’s head. He holds his breath as Chisaki’s anger turns cool and collected.
“I need some fucking food,” Chisaki says, icy. “Fetch it. Now.”
Chisaki storms back into his office without another word, slamming the door shut behind him.
“Right away, Chisaki-san,” Touya mutters to himself, sneering at his computer screen. The half-written email blinks innocuously back at him. Touya locks the monitor with more force than is probably necessary, muttering, “Shit.”
The lights from the other office buildings wink innocuously through the windows stretching by Touya’s desk. It’s nearly eleven; nowhere’s going to be open, let alone anywhere that fits Chisaki’s impossible standards.
“Shit,” Touya repeats.
He paces the floor for a couple of seconds before deciding to just head downstairs. Maybe somewhere’ll be open. God forbid he has to get Chisaki something from the twenty-four hour convenience store, but maybe he can play it off. It’s the only way he’s survived thus far; being able to outsmart Chisaki when it matters most.
He hustles to the elevators. The journey down to the ground floor is the longest reprieve he’s had all night; the long blink he takes between the fortieth floor and the lobby could probably count as a power nap.
When the elevator doors slide open, Touya’s fully decided on power-walking to the 7/11, doing unspeakable things to some pre-packaged tuna onigiri, and living another day, when a commotion just outside the building’s doors catches his attention.
Touya loves a commotion, and when he spots the branded jacket of the delivery driver, he’s there like a bloodhound, powering down on a singular snatch of scent.
Desperate times, desperate measures. Touya’s about to make someone’s life hell, and he’s going to enjoy it.
“Come on,” Keigo pleads. “I’ll literally get down on my knees. I’ll beg. You know me. You’re here three times a week. I have access to every credit card under the sun. Please.”
The delivery driver is stony faced and unbudging. Keigo can smell the food in the paper delivery bags. He’s so close. “Cash only.”
Keigo’s going to die. That’s the only possible outcome for this encounter. He doesn’t have an ounce of cash on him, not even at his desk, and he’s not going to get Tsutsumi’s food and she’s finally going to kill him herself. The smell taunts Keigo. He’s going to smell it in his nightmares.
“My life is on the line,” Keigo says. He’d be close to tears if three years as Tsutsumi Kaina’s lowly assistant hadn’t already squashed all forms of genuine human emotion out of him.
He gives a pathetic sniffle, just for the sympathy vote, starts thinking about how much his head hurts and how he’s long missed the date he planned for this evening and how he’s never going to get anywhere in life. The misery oozes out of him in waves.
The delivery driver is unmoved. “It’s cash only.”
“Yo,” a new voice says from behind Keigo, a raspy, languid voice. “Is that food? Can I have it?”
Keigo whirls around. A guy in a slate-grey suit has slouched up behind him, standing with his hands in his pockets like he hasn’t just interrupted Keigo’s death sentence.
His dark hair shadows his face, making him look gaunt and haunted. Just a regular office worker, albeit one with a messy sense of self, but it’s nearly eleven on a Friday and Keigo would sympathise with the bedraggled vibe if he wasn’t still sweating from running around with Tsutsumi’s smartwatch.
“No, you can’t have it,” Keigo says, aghast, at the same time the delivery driver shrugs and says, “It’s yours if you’ve got cash.”
“I’ve got cash,” the guy says, springing into action. He pulls a wallet out of his pocket, thumbing through the bills with a frantic precision. “I’ve got loads of cash. Here.”
Keigo can only watch as the betrayal unfolds right in front of him, mouth hanging open as the guy swoops in and steals Tsutsumi’s food.
“Pleasure doing business with you,” the guy says, exchanging the wad of bills for Keigo’s hard-earned dinner order.
Keigo gapes. The guy doesn’t even look at him, too busy cracking open the bags to check what spoils he’s just reaped. The delivery driver scarpers as soon as he’s pocketed the money. Keigo thought they were on the same side. He mourns their acquaintanceship that he seems to have made up in his head.
“You can’t do that,” Keigo splutters, thunderstruck.
The guy just shrugs, unsympathetic to Keigo’s meltdown. “Bring cash next time.”
He spins on his heel and heads back towards the building’s doors. Keigo looks up to the heavens, briefly, before running after him. He’s not going down without a fight.
He skids to a halt in front of the guy. The guy stops in his tracks, looks at Keigo in a distinctly unimpressed manner. Keigo holds his arms out either side of him, like that’s going to work, but the guy doesn’t make a move to barge past him just yet.
“I need that food,” Keigo says, and he’d be embarrassed at the way his voice shakes if he wasn’t so vividly imagining Tsutsumi’s cold wrath if he returns empty-handed. “I’m serious. My boss is going to kill me if I don’t get her the food she wants.”
“Hm,” the guy says. He shakes the bags, considering. “Who paid for it? Oh, right – me. So it’s mine. My boss is hungry and I’m getting fired in the next five minutes if I don’t bring him something.”
“That is literally not my problem,” Keigo says. “You should’ve been more organised. Please give me that food, I’ll pay you back, I swear.”
“Nope,” the guy says. He shoves past Keigo. “Bye.”
Keigo practically throws himself under the guy’s feet to catch up with him before he enters the lobby. He’s imagining his death played out in gruesome detail. The smell of the food is haunting him.
“Dude,” Keigo says. He knows he looks a mess; he feels it. He probably appears insane, in his jeans and sweater and running shoes, his hair all in disarray. It’s not his fault Tsutsumi hates seeing people her junior wearing suits, but now Keigo would probably be hard pressed to prove he even works in the building with how his clothes don’t measure up to the guy’s suit. “We’ll split it, okay?”
He manages to snatch the bags from the guy’s hand, sinking to his haunches as he digs through the contents.
He divides the selection in two; he’s such a peacemaker, and he regrets everything so much, but he’d rather turn up with just one portion of something than nothing at all.
“I’m taking the pad thai,” Keigo says emphatically, waving the plastic box with Tsutsumi’s food in the guy’s face. “And you can take the fried chicken.”
“Fried chicken?” the guy sneers. He looks at the steaming tub of chicken like it’s personally killed his whole family in front of him. “You’re kidding. I can’t give my boss fried chicken.”
“Fine,” Keigo snaps, finally at his tether. He tears open the box containing the side salad, tips a hearty dash of lettuce and kale over the chicken that was going to be his dinner. “Gourmet chicken in breadcrumbs, interspersed with local greenery. I’m taking the fries, though.”
“Asshole,” the guy scoffs, and that’s rich. “I’m not giving him chicken without a side of fries. Are you insane?”
He snatches the box of fries from Keigo’s hand. Keigo knows he’s losing the war.
It’s not worth it, Keigo thinks, eyes flickering over the guy’s rumpled suit and dark undereye bags. Everybody’s fighting their own demons. Too bad this guy’s demons seem to exclusively be assholery.
Keigo just takes the pad thai and the rest of the side salad and storms back inside. He is the bigger person. He’s not going to get into a petty squabble over someone who stole half his food.
Keigo can hear the guy following him back inside, towards the elevators, his shoes heavy over the tiles. Keigo veers off to the bank of elevators on the left side of the hallway; the guy takes an open elevator on the right.
“You’d better pay me back,” the guy calls, his voice echoing eerily off the cavernous, empty lobby walls.
“I will,” Keigo replies, a little huffily. Does this guy not think Keigo has integrity? Of course he’s going to pay him back.
“I’m charging eight percent interest on that cash,” the guy says, pointing at Keigo. “Per day.”
Keigo gapes. “Do you think I can afford interest? Look at me, man.”
Keigo doesn’t miss the slow, derisive once-over the guy gives him. Keigo stomps into the elevator when the doors slide open, presses the button to the forty-first floor with more force than warranted.
“Maybe you should learn to keep cash on you,” the guy calls across the hallway, as both of their elevator doors start to close. Keigo meets his eyes, a brilliant blue even with the distance. “By the way, I lied! The fries were for me!”
He offers Keigo a nasty, twisted grin. The elevator doors hush shut. Keigo ascends to the forty-first floor and seethes.
Touya makes it to Shigaraki’s place at half past eleven.
Shigaraki stopped picking up his calls afree eleven, but he’s leaving Touya’s texts on read so Touya knows he’s still awake. He sags against the intercom, his finger pressed to the buzzer for Shigaraki’s apartment. He can hear the tinny echo of it ringing, and he nearly gives up when Shigaraki jumps on the line.
“Go away,” Shigaraki says.
“Come on,” Touya protests. “Look, I know I’m two and a half hours late but Chisaki needed me to—”
“Why don’t you go fuck Chisaki, if he needs you that badly?” Shigaraki says without inflection, and Touya bites back a sigh. He slouches further into the wall, resting his head against the cool metal plate of the apartment buzzers. He’s too tired to even care about the germs. Besides, he doesn’t want to turn into Chisaki; if the world makes him filthy, so let it. “I’m not interested anymore.”
“Well, I am,” Touya says, and has it really gotten to the point that he’s begging for sex? Apparently. How the mighty fall. How they fall so, so hard. “You don’t even have to do anything. I can take care of you. I can do that thing with my tongue that you like.”
A static crackle. At least Shigaraki hasn’t hung up on Touya yet; that’s something. There’s still an infinitesimal sliver of hope.
“I have to be up at five for a shoot,” Shigaraki says. “I’m already in bed. I’m going to sleep.”
And then he hangs up.
Touya groans and gently knocks his forehead against the intercom panel. What a fucking bust. Touya’s not even horny anymore; Chisaki’s iron fist quickly dampened any flickers of interest that Shigaraki’s text generated, but Touya also hasn’t seen his boyfriend in about two weeks and it was going to be good. They were going to bitch at each other and order takeout and Touya was going to blow Shigaraki’s dick and his mind, but not anymore.
The moon follows Touya home as he trudges back to his apartment in the dark. He peels his suit jacket off, just to feel the whisper of the cold and shiver. He deserves it. His life is the worst life that anyone has ever lived, and it’s all Chisaki Kai’s fault.
Touya doesn’t know how much more he has in him. Working under Chisaki is going to give him the step up the ladder into investment banking that he needs. It’s nights like this that he’s forced to wonder whether he fucked up in ostracising himself from the Todoroki business; if he just sat quietly and let his father hand him an investment banker job, he’d be rolling in it by now.
Too bad his father’s a sack of shit and Touya never wants to work for him or his dirty money. But now it means that Touya has to prove that he can do it by himself; three years as Chisaki Kai’s assistant and the promotion’s going to come any day, Touya can smell it, but until then, he’s a failure. He’s a miserable excuse for a Todoroki child and his father’s going to sneer over the fact that he was right and Touya was wrong, and Touya’s never going to amount to anything in Todoroki Enji’s eyes.
He’s worked himself into a truly sour mood by the time he reaches his apartment and slams inside.
He kicks off his suit trousers at the same time as he removes his shoes, and he ghosts over to the fridge in just his underwear and his button-up, cursing his heritage and cursing his petty revenge and cursing the fries he ate that have him feeling bloated and greasy.
“You’re back early,” Bubaigawara’s disembodied voice comes from the dark. Touya swears and slams the fridge door in his surprise. “Actually, you’re usually back earlier than this, right?”
“Shit, how long have you been there?” Touya spits. “Why are you sitting in the fucking dark?”
He fumbles over to the light switch that illuminates their open kitchen-living room space. Bubaigawara’s slouched into the couch, his blond hair ratty in the shitty lightbulb, his eyes huge in his face.
“Can’t sleep,” Bubaigawara says, and Touya wants to chime in with a yeah, it’s obvious, looking at the grey scruff on Bubaigawara’s cheeks and his frankly ungodly eyebags. “Well, I can sleep, but I’ve got work to do.”
“School art show?” Touya asks absently, slumping into the armchair opposite the couch.
If he and Bubaigawara both stretched their feet out, they’d end up in a footsie war. Touya pointedly tucks his legs up in front of him, shielding his crotch from Bubaigawara’s gaze. His trousers are too far away. He’s not putting them back on.
“Yeah,” Bubaigawara says. “No. Well, kinda! I’m helpin’ one of the schizophrenic kids with his pieces, think the prize money’ll get him some of that sweet support he needs.”
“That’s nice,” Touya says absently. “I got an intern fired today because he breathed too heavily near Chisaki’s office door.”
“You’re changin’ the world, my man,” Bubaigawara says. “Well, not really, but thought sayin’ it would make you feel better. Once you’re promoted and you’re rakin’ in the dough, you can actually do something good with your life.”
Touya doesn’t know how he ended up becoming roommates with a thirty-something-year-old middle school teacher determined to change the world, but it certainly doesn’t do anything to alleviate his sour mood, hearing Bubaigawara’s efforts to save the children and whatever the fuck else he gets up to during his days while Touya plugs pointless numbers into pointless spreadsheets so someone on the other side of the world can get rich.
Touya snorts, appropriately bitter and jaded. “Sure. I was also meant to see Shigaraki tonight, but Chisaki made me stay late instead. God, I hate his fucking guts. I can’t deal with him anymore.”
“Yeah, I hate Shigaraki’s guts too,” Bubaigawara says easily. “Dump his ass. Or don’t. Your choice. But I totally hate him.”
“I’m talking about Chisaki, asshole,” Touya says. “What’s your deal with Shigaraki?”
Bubaigawara holds up a hand. Touya can only sit and watch as he starts counting off on his fingers in an erratic pattern that follows no order. “He walks all over you, he’s rude to everyone, he ain't got any respect for your time, he never puts in the effort—”
“Have you considered,” Touya interrupts, holding up two fingers in retaliation. “One, he’s a model, and two, the sex is great.”
Bubaigawara just shakes his head mournfully. “Maybe stop thinkin’ with your dick for once, and start using your brain. Just kidding, you ain’t got a brain.”
“Ugh,” Touya says emphatically. He sighs and sinks further into the chair, his eyelids growing heavier. The week is pressing down on the top of his head with enough force to cleave his skull in two, and he wants to sleep his headache off so bad. “I don’t wanna hear it. Tell me again another night, when I’ve actually left work on time and gotten laid. I’m going to bed.”
Bubaigawara asks him to turn the light back off when Touya hauls himself out of the armchair. Touya shrugs and does it, because it’s not his business why Bubaigawara’s exhibiting creepy behaviour in the living room. More fool him.
He navigates to his bedroom in the dark. He doesn’t turn the light on, because the cheap grey sheets and half-broken dresser and grey walls depress the fuck out of him, so he just wrestles out of his shirt in the still, dim quiet and crawls into bed like a starving man seeking the comfort of a hot meal. He doesn’t even care that the duvet rubs raw over his face, along the healed-over scars on his bare skin. He’s used to the feeling. He’s used to every night ending like this, spat out by a fifteen hour work day and being too tired to even be grumpy about it.
The sheets are cold and empty. Touya falls asleep splayed on his stomach, the blue light of the moon streaking through the blinds like a gentle touch.
Keigo’s finally home at half past eleven, nursing a beer and his favourite sweatpants and the same headache that resisted the magic of paracetamol, when Rumi and Yu tumble through the front door, laughing with the silliness of two people drunker than they intended to be at the start of the night.
“Keigo!” Rumi cries, spotting Keigo slobbed out on the couch. She nearly overbalances as she pulls her shoes off, and it’s only Yu’s reflexes that stop her face-planting right into the floor. “You’re back early! How was your date?”
“Oh, it was perfect,” Keigo sighs, leaning his head against the back of the couch. Rumi doesn’t notice the wry touch to his smile; Keigo practically wears it like a second skin these days. “We had great banter, he didn’t mind that I was competitive, and he paid the bill.”
Rumi’s expression does something a little melty. She stumbles over to the couch and flops down next to Keigo, going mostly limp as Yu follows and tries to wrestle her out of her jacket.
“Really?” she asks. She rests her face on her arm on the back of the couch, grins sloppily at Keigo. Her hair has mostly escaped her ponytail, cascading over her cheeks. “That’s amazing! I’m so happy for you.”
“I didn’t get to go on my date,” Keigo says, finally deciding to break the news. Playing into the illusion isn’t very fun at all, when he thinks about it. It’s just sad. Rumi’s face falls. “I had to stay late at work. Again.”
“Dude, your boss is a total slavedriver,” Yu says sympathetically. She perches on the arm of the couch; Rumi immediately gravitates towards her lap, flopping over her legs. Yu indulges her, running her hand through Rumi’s messy hair as Rumi gets comfortable. “That’s, what, the fifth date you’ve had to cancel in the past couple of months?”
“I just want you to be loved, Kei,” Rumi warbles. Yu smooths her hair out of her face and makes delicate shushing noises. “You deserve a nice guy who’ll sweep you off your feet.”
Keigo snorts. He picks at the label on his beer bottle, and the slight buzz turns a little sour. “Unless he literally moves into the cubicle next to mine, I don’t see that happening anytime soon.”
Even Keigo’s relentless optimism is starting to take a battering.
All of his free time has been swallowed by work. When he took the assistant position for famed sports journalist Tsutsumi Kaina three years ago, he thought he’d be there for a year, maximum, before moving up into the writing team. Wishful thinking on his part, clearly.
He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to become a sports writer and meet someone while working under Tsutsumi’s iron fist.
He admires her so much. She’s whip-smart and bull-headed and has written some of the most respected pieces of sports journalism this decade. He’s lucky to be working for her, to get to see her machinations up close, but the long hours and the outlandish requests and her short tether for bullshit have been wearing him down.
He can admit that he’s lonely and adrift. His job doesn’t do it for him anymore. All he wants is a little company, someone to bitch about his work day with and maybe feed him between complaints. Simple stuff.
Rumi and Yu bid him goodnight as Keigo sinks into his sulk. He tries to offer a cheery smile, and it’s only by virtue of them being tipsy that they don’t notice how strained it is.
It’s been so long since Keigo’s been on a date that he’s not sure he knows how to anymore. It’s been even longer since he’s kissed someone, and it’s practically been a century since he’s had sex.
Rumi would probably tell him that he needs to get laid and that’ll cheer him up, but the issue with that plan is that Keigo would actually need time to hook up with someone without Tsutsumi blowing his phone up. The mental image of Tsutsumi calling him while he has his dick in someone fills him with such a peculiar horror that it puts him off having sex until he dies. Or until he gets a new job. Whichever comes first.
Keigo’s pulled from his stupor by a shriek in the direction of Rumi’s room. He bolts upright, nearly upending the last of his beer, and stumbles down the hallway.
“What is it?” he pants, expecting to see an intruder or a fatal wound or a spider. His eyes quickly scan for a pool of blood. “What happened?”
He isn’t expecting to see Rumi down on one knee, one of Yu's long-fingered hands held in her grip. Keigo skids to a halt in the doorway and stares.
“You’re kidding,” he says.
“I said no,” Yu laughs. At Keigo’s bug-eyed stare, she pulls her left hand out of Rumi’s grip to display the sparkling band on her ring finger. “I’m joking, of course I said yes!”
“Oh,” Keigo says. The noise falls from his lips without him thinking. The situation sinks in, so he repeats, “Oh! That’s – that’s amazing! Aren’t we a little young to be getting married, though?”
“Kei, we’re twenty-seven,” Rumi says. “I’m practically a pensioner.”
“Oh, baby,” Yu croons. “You still have the stamina of a college student.”
Keigo’s still reeling from the realisation that people his age, people he knows and loves, are doing grown-up things like getting engaged. Nevertheless, he smiles his first true smile of the day, bounding over to the two of them and wrapping them in a clumsy hug.
“I’m so happy for you!” he exclaims, and even though it’s true, it also doesn’t negate the ugly sting of watching romance happen to everyone but him. The two aren’t mutually exclusive. He quashes his bitter musings by cranking his grin up a couple more watts.
Rumi’s hair tickles his cheek, and Yu's perfume wafts floral and sharp over him, and Keigo enjoys the moment, him and his best friend and her fiancée. It’s nice to have a hug, sue him, especially when he’s squashed between them and his chest is a little tight.
“This is gonna be so fun,” Rumi says, muffled in Keigo’s shoulder.
Yu laughs. “I can’t believe you were crazy enough to propose while I was taking my socks off.”
“It’s when you look most beautiful,” Rumi replies, and that’s Keigo’s cue to extract himself from the hug, wriggling out of the fold while Rumi and Yu can do nothing but hold each other and giggle, indulging in the last of the evening’s tipsiness.
He watches as Rumi takes Yu's face in her hands and kisses her enthusiastically, their laughter periodically disrupting her attempts. Keigo’s third-wheeling so aggressively that it’s painful, so he pointedly wishes them goodnight, to no response, and shuts Rumi’s bedroom door as he leaves.
Keigo goes to bed shortly after with his headphones on, to give them some privacy.
He cranks slow pop while he stares at his bedroom ceiling, the moon casting blue smears through the gap in his curtains. He feels tired but not sleepy, but he soon drifts off in a muddle of exhausted thoughts, the music holding him close.
If he pretends hard enough, it’s like someone else is in the bed with him, crooning sweet nothings.