Work Text:
Amon’s desk is on the way to hers. Akira passes it every morning and evening when she enters and exits the office, and after a certain accusation lodges itself in her brain, she lets this cycle begin one more time, to prove the strength of her sentiment.
And then she waits.
Word spreads. Everyone leaves her alone. The way conversations quiet in her vicinity is suffocating. More than once, she finds herself thinking things like, Why hasn’t Takizawa come by to bother me yet, or, When is Amon going to send me more information already, and each of these thoughts, when they creep in, feel like they gouge out a hunk of meat from her chest.
She breathes.
She waits.
Soon, everyone from the office leaves. The last person asks if she’ll turn off the lights, and bows lightly, and calls out a well-meaning “Don’t overexert yourself,” to which Akira responds with a smile and wave. Then she reaches for the flattened cardboard box beneath her desk, and un-collapses it, and walks. She sets the empty box on Amon’s chair, and begins filling it up.
:::
Pens that he held.
Files. Folders.
Scraps of paper with his handwriting. (She squints. They are all case notes.)
A paper cup with a little bit of tea still left in it.
She tells herself that the dearth of personal items shouldn’t be surprising. (Amon’s devotion to his work overshadows everyon — everything.) What isn’t trash can be re-organized back into storage or office supplies.
It takes sooner than she expects to pack it all up, and to wipe away the last of his fingerprints. She gives everything one last look-over, and sees a drawer that she missed — a shallow, narrow one, the kind that’s perfect for storing paper clips or sticky notes. She tugs it open, and her throat knots.
Neatly folded into the drawer is a houndstooth tie.
:::
One day, Arima calls her in.
He gives her a suitcase, and Akira gazes down at it, and can only think that this just more, painful evidence. My father is dead.
The second thing he gives her is a partner, and for weeks Akira can’t stand to look at him at all.
:::
(It’s so funny — she feels exactly the way she did before.)
(There’s no way I can work with him.)
:::
“Mado-san,” Sasaki calls quietly.
“Sasaki-kun,” Akira replies. He isn’t dissuaded by the sharpness of her voice.
“Are you…okay?”
“Of course,” she replies. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
He shifts in his seat. “Um,” he says, “because you’re bleeding,” and Akira blinks and pulls back her sleeves. Sure enough, one of her bandages is soaked through.
“How did you—” she starts, and stops, because of course he knows. He’s a ghoul.
And he’s retrieving a first aid kit.
Mastering Fueguchi One is a pain, in more ways than one. She has yet to (intentionally) hit a single target. She frowns and stiffly offers her arm so Sasaki can undo the bandage and dab blood from the ruptured sutures that were given to her just this morning.
“You’ve got a lot of spine,” Sasaki says shyly, and it’s only afterward that she realizes it.
I smiled back at him.
Her stomach churns.
“He’s ready,” she tells Arima at their next meeting, and he looks up at her, over his glasses. Her back straightens.
“I trust your judgment,” Arima says, looking away and back down to papers on his desk. “But I want to remind you that it’s perfectly acceptable to take your time. Haise shouldn’t be using his kagune yet. Your partner will die if he isn’t ready.”
Of all the words in the world that he could have said.
“So,” Sasaki says, the next time he is bandaging up her wounds. “How did everything go?”
“You need to work harder,” Akira tells him, and he sighs, but with a smile.
“Understood. Please do your best as well, Mado-san.”
Later that night, Fueguchi One almost slices off her finger.
:::
Just as he did the previous year, Sasaki asks if she’d like him to come with her, and just as she did the year before, she tells him no.
“But I’ll bring you back some kushikatsu,” she says.
It’s a joke.
He thanks her.
I should have let him, Akira thinks later, three-quarters of the way into her beer. She’s only eaten half of one of her skewers, and the meat weighs in her belly like stones.
I should have let him.
If only she’d allowed herself to have more time with them, before the end. Didn’t she learn anything?
She’s so stupid.
She starts her second drink. Alcohol permeates her brain, loosens up the folds and knots of it, lets rise everything she’s tried to drown. The ache of her jaw that had persisted for weeks when she found out she’d been assigned to him. The cold stiffness of his hand on her lips when he’d clapped it to her face. His fingers had trembled on her cheeks, a little.
She isn’t sure why she’s pining away for what never happened when it’s not like it ever would have.
:::
There’s a downpour outside. She doesn’t want to wade through it, doesn’t want to go home and leave the buzz of people eating and laughing around her. She raises her hand from her pocket to call for another beer. The houndstooth tie is tugged out from her coat a bit; she stuffs it back in and straightens it up again.
:::
That night, she has a dream.
Her body is pressed up all against him; he’s carrying her, and his back is so big that it feels like her own body barely covers it. Akira fumbles; she finds the key, and hands it to him, and it clinks as he works it into the knob. Her apartment door creaks open, and Maris Stella makes a disgruntled burble as she flees the droplets of water scattering from their clothing.
He brings her in. Sets her on her bed. His face is blurry; she reaches for it and her fingers miss and miss and then finally rest on flesh so hot it feels feverish. His face — his shoulders — his chest — solid, solid, solid. She smooths water from the lines of his face. She blinks rapidly, trying to focus on him through a haze of tears, and dizziness, and stabbing elation.
“Amon,” she whispers. “You’re alright.” She feels her mouth twisting out into a smile that feels grotesquely huge. (It’s okay. It’s just a dream.)
His Adam’s apple bobs. He opens his mouth, and then closes it. The one eye of his that she can see is reddish, and the skin beneath it dark and wrinkled, and he turns away from her scrutiny and she grabs his face and makes him look at her again.
“You’re alive,” she breathes.
It’s a miracle. (A wonderful, wonderful dream. She can’t waste it. Not anymore.)
This time, she asks.
“Can I kiss you?”
His Adam’s apple bobs. He opens his mouth, and then leans.
She always thought kissing a guy like him would be chaste, sweet, efficient — but the moment their lips meet he emits a strangled, harsh noise. He grabs her, fingers digging into her upper arms, and she gasps as his kiss deepens, strengthens. Their teeth click. He sucks her lower lip, her tongue.
(Even though this is a dream, she feels faint.)
“Amon,” she sighs, “Amon,” and she rakes her hands over his face, and up, through his damp, dark hair. He sighs — his body trembles, quakes — and he presses further against her, and then topples her over, lies across her. Her legs spread around his hips, further apart than she expected. His weight falls on her, delicious, heavy, rolling the breath from her, the ache.
His hands rove over her body, gripping every centimeter. Everywhere he touches blooms. Akira growls as her clothing becomes tight and constricting and awful and she thrashes until Amon braces himself on his arms above her, giving her space to roll off her waterlogged tights, and everything else. They pile into a wet clump beside the bed, and soon the tatters covering him follow too, revealing living muscle. A broad and heaving chest. A brow beaded with water, and maybe a little sweat.
He looks across her body, and groans, and presses a hand against his eye. Her chest tightens.
“Are you alright,” she asks, (what’s happening, is this not a dream but actually a nightmare,) she tries to see but he grabs her hand before she can try and uncover him. And then, with an arm on her waist, he turns her onto her stomach.
Ah — his body —
Is so encompassing. Is so warm. The heat of his firm belly against her back fills her to her toes. His muscles knead her as he kisses the dips of her neck and shoulder blades, his breathing rough, the wet lave of his tongue alternating with tickling scrapes of his teeth. Akira moans, back arching up, in vain — he’s unmovable — his hands enfold hers and squeeze as she claws at her blankets.
He makes his way down, down — along all of her tiny human vertebra. (She didn’t think she had enough imagination for an Amon like this, so unabashedly loud with his ministrations of her, and so hungry, like he wants to eat her alive.) Every noise and little contact he makes drives her even further out of her mind. By the time he is nibbling into the small of her back he is far enough off her that she can bend her knees, and raise her ass right up against his erection.
Another little fumble — and then he groans, and thrusts in, or at least tries to, he’s so big, Akira whines and as he meets resistance he sucks at her skin, and caresses her breast, and then thrusts again, a slower, longer stroke that is followed by yet another. One more centimeter. One more centimeter. One more, one more, more, more…
Finally the whole quivering length of him is in. Akira inhales, exhales, falters. Her knees collapse just a little as he shifts against her, and he circles her waist with one arm to stabilize her as he thrusts again, again, again, the motions easy now, and slick, and so, so good. She shoves her head into her blankets as he stirs up every nerve in her, as her muscles bunch and coil. She climaxes with her voice smothered into a mouthful of bedsheets, and she feels his cock throb inside her as he comes as well.
(What a detailed dream.)
(The moist slap of his hips against her — the lovely drag of his dark nails — the biting salt of his sweat as he turns her over again, and kisses her. Soon her hips are bucking up against him once more, and though his eyes are pinched shut, her pleas guide his drifting hand to exactly where she needs it again.)
:::
(How long has this desperate pervert been hiding inside her?)
:::
Waking up vaguely hung over and completely naked is uncommon, but not really a new thing.
What is new is that that houndstooth tie is somehow still around her neck.
She looks down at it, and huffs.
Well.
It wasn’t a memory, but it certainly was pleasant.
:::
“Good morning, Akira-san,” Sasaki calls brightly. “Where’s my kushikatsu?”
“Ah,” Akira says. “I forgot. Sorry.”
“Haha, that’s okay. How are you doing?”
“Good,” she tells him, and is surprised when she realizes this is the truth. She gulps down the rest of her tea, and then regards the empty cup.
“Do you want to train with me?” she asks, and Sasaki starts and stands so quickly that the legs of his chair screech.
“Yes!”
She retrieves Fueguchi One, and they head to the training area, and, for once, she enters and feels only her current partner beside her. She dodges all of Fueguchi One’s wild backlashes. Evening comes, and she swings, and for the first time she slices her target clean in half.
“I — I did it,” she gasps, and Sasaki cheers, and applauds.
“Let’s go drinking to celebrate!” he offers, and she agrees.