Work Text:
PRESENT:
Isagi has a massive fucking problem, and it isn't his growing rent bill. It isn't his friends, that insist on reminding him that he's currently twenty-two years old and hasn't gone on a date since high school, and make fun of his purported unattractiveness, while Isagi reminds them that he has been asked out before. Mainly by his coworkers, but the fact remains that he's rejected them. All of them.
They tell Isagi that that's the funny part - that Isagi is so stubborn on ignoring every suitor that comes his way in favor of spending more time working for (with, he keeps correcting them, with) that man.
That man, by the way, is Michael fucking Kaiser, sitting on Isagi's desk like it's a throne.
"Hello, Yoichi." Kaiser is grinning like a psycho, but he's still impeccably put-together for six in the morning. Isagi almost resorts to asking the blonde how he's gotten rid of the dark circles under his eyes when both of them have been working overtime for the past week, but he won't descend to that level. Yet.
This is, of course, assuming that Kaiser doesn't have a robot lookalike that he assigns to work on budget proposals at two AM and annoy Isagi, while the real Kaiser prances around Tokyo with bags under his eyes like everyone else.
Isagi glares at Kaiser's poreless skin. He has to be a robot, or else Kaiser just happens to be born perfect, and Isagi might go crazier than he already has if that's the case.
Isagi takes another sip of his (frankly, disgusting) coffee before speaking.
"Fuck off."
Kaiser just smiles even wider; a smile that could put the Joker to shame.
(In that moment, Isagi quietly thanks Kunigami for forcing him to watch all of those superhero movies. It's that much easier to distance himself from Kaiser when he thinks of the blonde as a villain.)
"Aren't you wondering how I removed the bags under my eyes?"
"Not really."
He is. He absolutely is, and from the smile that's plastered onto the blonde's face, Kaiser had likely noticed the lingering looks.
Instead of just telling Isagi what brand of concealer he uses, Kaiser stays silent for a moment. Letting the tension stretch until it's about to recoil and sting the both of them in the backlash.
"Have you ever thought about being promoted, Yoichi?"
Isagi is going to kill Kaiser, painfully and excruciatingly slowly.
Of course he's thought about being promoted. He's dreamed of it for far too long - to work in a prestigious position in the field he's studied for the last six years. Ego hadn't said it aloud, but even Rin acknowledged that if anyone in the office would be chosen to fill the empty slot (Hugo had finally quit, claiming that working in Blue Lock wasn't his true destiny), it would be Isagi.
Isagi was hopeful, for the first time, that every single insult he had endured from people his entire life would be worth it. That this promotion was what he had been waiting for, and it would stifle the needling voice inside of him that told him that he'd wasted the first twenty years of his life slaving away for nothing.
Isagi could've been satisfied, or at least that is what he tells himself. It is easier to blame the disappointment on Ego, or Kaiser, or fate rather than his own inadequacy. If he had been nicer - If he had worked late that one night - there were too many mistakes to count, and so he starts thinking of everything that went wrong that was out of his own control.
If Ego hadn't called up Noa for the first time in years to pair their proteges together.
If Noa hadn't agreed.
But Isagi will not know this until years in the future, so for now, he thinks:
If Kaiser had never come here in the first place, I could've been content with the life that I had.
Surprisingly, he means these words with all of his heart.
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Ego issued the challenge of creating a grant proposal that is not only passable, but exceedingly well written for their client - the prestigious corporation known as Bastard München. Which Kaiser just so happens to be a part of, and working at in the same position that Isagi was vying to get at his own company.
Isagi doesn't hold grudges for irrational purposes, but it's hard not to feel a touch of resentment when Kaiser is practically jumping up and down and waving his enviable position right in front of Isagi's face.
"I have thought about being promoted, but only because I've heard that incompetent people hold the position. Especially in European countries," he responds, and relishes the sight of Kaiser's neck blushing a faint pink and clapping a hand over it to cover up his embarrassment. Anger. Whatever emotion it is that makes him so flustered around Isagi.
"You're so sweet, Yoichi!" The blonde's smile, Isagi can tell, is forced. He's going to make Kaiser frown - just once today would be enough. The satisfaction from doing so would make up for Isagi's lack of sleep ten times over; getting him through the day with only a couple naps.
"I actually don't use concealer, but it's a pity that you have to." Kaiser lightly taps the underside of Isagi's eyes with a finger, and retracts them before he can grab the blonde's fingers, and -
Well. Perhaps it's better for both of them that Kaiser has better reflexes.
"If you pity me so much, then stop coming by my desk. No one is forcing your sorry ass to come over here just to harass me."
The smile relaxes, turns into a grin that is wide and carefree and real. Isagi's heart startles and trips over itself at the sight.
"We're partners, Yoichi. How could I not?"
"Work partners," Isagi clarifies, but Kaiser's already whistling and walking away.
"Work partners!" he repeats; yelling over his shoulder, and the blonde just laughs and laughs, the sound tapering off - until Isagi throws a stapler at him.
Kaiser comes stomping back to him, lecturing Isagi about 'workplace ethics' and 'I'm superior in position to you, Yoichi, show some respect,' and Isagi thinks about how much better his aim has gotten since he's started throwing office supplies at Kaiser. His middle school soccer coach would be proud.
"Good hit," Isagi mutters under his breath, and Kaiser flinches. Strange.
The blonde scowls at him. Isagi feels as though his stomach has erupted in butterflies; as if his heart has started beating at a thousand times per minute (and possibly, it has). Maybe it's a red flag, Isagi wonders, that Kaiser showing any real emotion at all is the highlight of his day.
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TWO WEEKS AGO:
Noa raises an eyebrow at the caller. EGO JINPACHI, it says. In the contact description, there are simply three words. DO NOT ANSWER.
Noa answers the call anyways.
"Why did you call?"
In the Blue Lock control room, Ego has seven screens open: the first five, displaying Isagi working together peacefully with wholly unreasonable people (in one, Nagi is even going to the effort to make him a cup of coffee, and Isagi accepts the beverage. Five minutes later, he takes a sip and pours it out into the potted plant as soon as Nagi's back is turned).
In the sixth, Kaiser is shown presenting in front of a grant proposal committee in a suit and tie, charming the audience. In the last clip, he is sucker-punching Sae Itoshi in the mouth in a rare, and brief collaboration between BM and Re Al.
Instead of watching the clips, Ego sits in the corner, tapping away at his gadgets.
Noa can hear the obnoxious clacking over the line, and thinks that just maybe, Ego is doing it to annoy him. Pretending like calling Noa is something they do on the regular when they haven't spoken in fifteen years. "Isn't it obvious?"
Noa waits a moment for the black-haired man over the phone to realize that whatever 'it' is, it is not obvious to anyone other than Ego himself.
"I thought it would be an interesting experiment." Ego finally stops typing, and Noa can hear the sharp intake of breath over the line. "What do you think happens when someone who is focused on adaptation meets an anomaly?"
"An anomaly?" Noa echoes. "As in, something unidentified?"
Ego doesn't respond for a moment, considering the answer. "More like something unidentifiable. Something like," Ego adds, nodding towards Kaiser on the screen. "A blue rose. Something impossible."
"I thought you didn't believe in doing the impossible?" In doing the unrepeatable?
"I don't. But," Ego continues, and Noa can actually sense the grin in his voice. "I think I have someone who might."
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PRESENT:
Isagi doesn't throw things at Kaiser very often. He's not insane. After all, Ego would fire Isagi if he kept wasting money via replacements for staplers, pens, and once, a chair. (He still stands by the argument that if Kaiser didn't want a chair thrown at him, he shouldn't be such a dickhead all the time. Ego just sighed, like what're you gonna do? I don't make the rules. Except Ego does make the rules, and he's decided in his usual cryptic fashion that Isagi and Kaiser will produce the ideal result.
Now, Isagi's thing, his 'ego' that Ego insists is a talent is adaptation. Learning the rhythms to his partners' working styles, analyzing them, and 'evolving' it into something that is more efficient, quicker, more innovative - overall, a better cog of the corporate machine.
Every worker at Blue Lock has a different ego. Reo's is the always useful jack-of-all-trades, while Chigiri is impossibly quick to finish his work. Bachira is a morale booster in general, but his creative ideas and innovation are what keep him on the team.
What Isagi cannot abide is a self-contradictory person, and someone who defies all logic he has set. Then he has nothing to build off of for his experiments and hypotheses, not when someone (Kaiser) keeps overturning all of his previous assumptions the next day, without a regard for how inconvenient it is for him.
Isagi's tried explaining this to his closest friends (to Rin and Bachira, he means), that Kaiser is impossible. They respond with a shrug and a smile, a 'Well, Isagi, certainly sounds like you have a crush on him, don't you?'
Rin just scowls, so the 'people' that Isagi talks to now only consists of Bachira. His other coworkers like him, he's sure, but he doesn't think he'll be able to revert to a version that they all like. The version that they have grown accustomed to, with the Isagi that he has made himself into around them.
Barou's version is unnecessarily combative a lot of the time, while Kunigami's is sweet and selfless. Isagi is sure that he is (hopefully) some combination of all of these, but the only people he doesn't 'filter' himself in front of are Rin, Bachira, and as he realizes, Kaiser. This is his talent. This is his ego, and yet, the man Ego always sighs after seeing how Isagi has adapted to his partners. The sighs, Isagi noticed, had grown louder and more aggravating as time passed - at least until Kaiser came, and Ego couldn't seem to wipe the self-satisfied smirk off of his face.
Ego says that Kaiser and Isagi will make an interesting 'chemical reaction.' Isagi may not know exactly what that means, but from the look on Ego's face, he knew that he would have to keep working with Kaiser, no matter the complaints he may have about the blonde.
As always, he starts typologizing.
Whenever Isagi finds anything or anyone new, he takes note of small facts and bigger ones, but they are often interlinked.
For example, Barou has a deeply rooted aversion to dirty cups scattered around the counter that Isagi later realized tied back to his need for everything to be tidy. So Isagi learned how to create clean diagrams in their presentations, and Barou finally stopped throwing pens at him during work. See? Cooperation.
Isagi starts his list of facts for Kaiser, but as he realizes, the blonde reveals so little of himself that the few scraps Isagi that can find do not make a cohesive portrait of the person himself. What that really means is this: That Isagi cannot make himself into a compatible partner for Kaiser when there is not enough of Kaiser to base the new Isagi off of, so where does that leave them?
Fucked, is where it leaves them. Completely and utterly fucked.
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The first fact that Isagi learns about Kaiser is that he is not from Japan. This was obvious from the fact that Kaiser speaks German fluently; whenever he gets frustrated, he starts cussing (presumably, cussing) in a language that he knows Isagi cannot understand.
So it was the language that Isagi had noted down, yes, but another notable point was Kaiser's tattoos - eye-catching and scandalous, even; winding around his neck and torso. Not to mention his hair; which never would've been allowed within fifty yards of Isagi's school (or most places of work, for that matter, but Ego couldn't care less about their appearances).
Bachira had gone to the same school as Rin and Isagi, so both of them knew how the little bee had been given dirty looks for an entire year after getting highlights. Isagi hated school, but at least he was average enough, in both grades and appearance, to pass under the radar if he dyed his hair black.
(Funnily enough, no one had ever given Rin shit for his turquoise hair. Isagi personally felt that it had to do less with Rin's status as the star of the soccer team, and more to do with his stubbornness and supermodel-worthy looks. Now that Isagi thought about it more, neither Rin, nor Bachira, nor any of his peculiar friends had ever been bothered much by what people thought of them.)
Isagi doesn't mind anyone else's hair. He constantly braids Kurona's, combs Chigiri's, and will tie up Bachira's for him if the boy is in the middle of one of his painting projects. Kaiser is just so extra about it. He's like the sun - annoyingly bright and scorching whoever comes near.
At least Rin's hair is natural, but Kaiser's hair is more ostentatious than that. His is long, blonde locks that look as though they have been dyed the color of the sky itself - and Kaiser not only refreshes the dye every week; but keeps his hair down so that everyone who walks by has to witness it.
And it must be because Kaiser's hair is this showy that Isagi finds his eyes drawn to it. He constantly watches the slow, hypnotic wave of it billowing in the breeze of the crappy AC; dancing and fluttering distractingly until Isagi has no choice but to prop his head up on his hands and just look.
Sometimes, Kaiser puts it up in a bun. Only when he's too tired, or when Isagi is finally focused on his work. It's clearly an intimidation tactic; to seem vulnerable long enough to trick Isagi into thinking that he actually is. (Isagi still hasn't quite given up on the robot idea.)
(Kaiser must be as smart as he claims he is, and as much as Isagi counters Kaiser's claims, he does like the bun. Likes how it exposes the sharp planes of Kaiser's face; likes how the newly exposed nape of his neck flashes a bright, angry red whenever Isagi argues with him. And if he squints especially hard; he can imagine that Kaiser is just another boy who Isagi might've met in a library before Blue Lock, the edges faded by time and memory.
=====
One lazy afternoon, Isagi had been too hot to work, and had been listening to Kaiser type furiously over the whirring of the fan.
Kaiser pops his head over the cubicle, about to ask Isagi if he had done any work. Kaiser's hair is messily pinned up in a bun, and strands fall in disarray across his collar and neckline. Isagi realizes that this means that Kaiser is having a 'bad day,' but his urge to bother Kaiser in an imperfect state seems more pressing than the matter of self-preservation.
"Yoichi."
"Yes?" he responds, and Kaiser's eye starts twitching. This is fun, he realizes, and the thought compels him to continue.
"You're not doing any of your work," Kaiser finally says, and Isagi has to bite his lip to stop himself from laughing. Kaiser goes red.
"Why do you care?"
Isagi has never flirted; never picked a fight before now, but he can see why Kaiser loves to. It's exhilarating.
"Why do I care about anything?" Isagi starts picking at his nails, even though they both know that he couldn't care less about his cuticles. "Clearly, you don't."
Now, Isagi knows that this is untrue. He notices when Kaiser skips lunch to work in the communal lounge; has a weary look in his eyes that even the makeup can't cover.
He also knows that Kaiser would rather die than admit that he, the Emperor, actually puts effort into his work.
"I - I - " Kaiser's eye has started twitching. It's hilarious, and Isagi kind of wants to reach over and smooth out the wrinkles in his skin. But he won't. Obviously.
Kaiser gets up and walks off, and this should be a win for Isagi. It is - but he can't stop staring at that windblown blonde hair, fluttering in the wind.
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On the tenth day of working with him, Isagi had finally brought up the elephant in the room.
"My hair isn't stupid," he repeated, for the twentieth time. "My 'sprout' is not weird. It's hair, Kaiser."
And for the twentieth time, Kaiser responded, saying, "Yes, well, I'm sure that they never intended for humans to become one with nature like you have."
"You have vines on your fucking arms, Kaiser."
The blonde pauses, as if he hadn't expected Isagi to bring up the blatantly displayed tattoos depicting blue roses, winding up his body in spirals.
"At least my tattoos are attractive."
"Are they, really?" Isagi uses the same tactic that Kaiser had on the very first day of them meeting - leaning in close, and tipping up the blonde's chin with a single finger.
Kaiser's face is as cool as ever except for two tiny patches of pink that are slowly expanding. Isagi expects him to warm up to the touch; maybe even come closer.
Why exactly had Isagi done this again? Too late now, he supposes, and asks the question that's been in his mind for the past three days.
"Tell me, Kaiser. Why did you get these tattoos?"
Isagi was expecting Kaiser to crack under the pressure and confess that the tattoos were inked on for a dare in college; were drawn on by Ness (God, he would love it if the ever-sympathetic Ness would mess up, just once.).
"I got them in memoriam."
"Someone died?"
Kaiser's face is a mask of calm, and his neck has returned to its original shade of white. "Someone did."
"What the hell does that mean?!"
The blonde cracks a faint smile, the first one since the conversation has started. This one is crooked and isn't, Isagi realizes, yet another variation on the classic PR smile.
"I know you like to read, Yoichi."
Does he? I do, Isagi remembers, but it takes him a while to collect his thoughts into a coherent sentence. The room is suddenly stiflingly, unbearably hot, and it is difficult to think when the words keep dissolving in his mind whenever he tries to speak.
"The king is dead," Kaiser starts, but Isagi finishes the phrase for him. He hasn't read in years, but the phrase was common enough in the war strategy fantasies he frequented.
"Long live the king," Isagi murmurs. Kaiser's mouth opens up in a full, wide grin, a teasing tone sneaking its way into his voice.
"Very good, Yoichi - although I'd argue that an emperor is better than a king."
"My name means emperor, did you know that?" Kaiser adds. He knows that Isagi has; has seen the blue-haired boy feverishly Googling the name 'Michael Kaiser,' and a few times, what the name means.
The first time Isagi had seen the definition - emperor chosen by God - he had laughed, and Kaiser frowned down at his phone in the corner of the cafeteria.
The second time, Isagi had scrolled through any alternate meanings, muttering to himself and looking almost as insane as Kaiser does sometimes when he's speaking to his mother - hair mussed and rapidly blinking eyes, as if he cannot comprehend that what he is witnessing is true.
The third time, Isagi threw the phone across the room and Itoshi practically ran to retrieve it.
So forgive Kaiser his fun; this one time that he acknowledges the evidence of their mutual fixations, when he asks: "What do you think of an emperor, in comparison to a king?"
Isagi looks Kaiser up and down, pretending to assess him and make a judgement when he already knows what he's going to say. Kaiser's long limbs; shockingly blue-tinted hair and eyes; his twisted smile that Isagi had decided that he hates, only to look back on it again and reconsider what hate must be if it makes him want to pull the object of his hatred closer. He closes his eyes, and can see Kaiser in every setting without ever needing to open that.
"I think you're alright."
"That's not the question I asked," Kaiser murmurs, but he is fully grinning now. It was worth it, Isagi thinks, to do this if it makes Kaiser this happy. He thinks it's worth it and believes in the words for the first time in ages.
"I'm alright, huh?"
"Shut up." Isagi rolls his eyes, but he doesn't regret saying it. "You're not bad."
"I'm good, then."
"One does not imply the other, Kaiser, but think whatever you need to to fall asleep at night."
Isagi replays the conversation in his head, but he keeps snagging on Kaiser telling, not asking Isagi if he read. Like he had already known; had paid attention to Isagi outside of work.
He recalls, later, that he had been excited over a recent release from his favorite author, and had left the book on his desk.
It takes him another half an hour to remember that he had only brought the book a week ago; on Kaiser's third day.
On Kaiser's third day here, Isagi thinks, he had been significant enough for Kaiser to memorize such a trivial fact about him and be able to recollect it a week later.
Isagi still doesn't get any work done that day.
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The second fact that Isagi has learned about Kaiser is that he is temperamental. Happy; bubbling and overflowing with life one moment, flirting with Isagi and practically everyone else in the office. (Isagi likes those moments - likes to store them in the back of his mind as a fond memory of Kaiser not being the most irritating man he's ever met, and saves the stutters in his heartbeat to think about for another day.)
At other times, he's touchy and liable to snapping at any moment. Isagi can usually tell by the way he talks to Ness - cackling and filled with mirth are 'the good days', and the ones where he's irritable; and every word comes out like a swear in his rapid-fire German; the bad ones.
Today is a bad day.
"Nein, mutter," Kaiser is hissing, and Isagi has taken enough introductory German classes to know that he's saying No, mother.
Bachira had placed an introductory pamphlet on Isagi's desk the very day after he had complained to them about Kaiser's rants, and Isagi had ignored it for the first week until Kaiser had started swearing at him in German, knowing that Isagi wouldn't be able to understand him.
"German, he says, like it's my duty to know every single language. I'm not even from Germany."
"I know," Rin replied, stabbing the chopsticks into his donburi. "You've told me this." He recoils at the sight of a pickled plum. "Sour. Ew."
Isagi ignores the blatant waste of food, and keeps talking.
"Right, and then - "
"And then he tells you that 'being bilingual is a talent, and not only is he bilingual, he's actually trilingual, because he learned Japanese just for you, Yoichi.'"
Isagi cringes at the sound of his first name coming out of Rin's mouth.
"Only Kaiser calls me that," and he hates how it sounds like an admonishment in favor of the blonde.
Rin notices. Of course he does. He's been Isagi's best friend since middle school; when Isagi was just another soccer fan and Rin was the best in the region; when Isagi was unpopular and Rin was the school's golden boy, despite his getting into hot water with reporters and defiling the school name.
Now, Isagi openly laughs at how the tables have turned. Rin is still in demand as one of the most efficient workers, and Isagi can say as his friend that Rin is attractive. Him and Bachira are dating, and Isagi had been quietly concerned at how their dynamic might change - but it stayed the same. Rin is still the tough guy with a fierce protectiveness for Bachira and Isagi; Bachira is the same ball of sunshine that he's always been; and Isagi is the same as normal.
In spite, or perhaps because of their history together, Rin is annoyingly protective when it comes to Isagi. Maybe he's trying to make up for Sae's neglect by taking care of Isagi, but it's horribly inconvenient.
Historically, Rin has clashed with Barou (their stocks manager), Hugo (an admittedly touchy foreign partner, who Rin had scared off by 'accidentally' knocking his coffee onto his laptop. Thrice), and even Nagi.
Nagi has a somewhat special place in Isagi's heart as the one person who hadn't openly antagonized him, but Rin disapproved of the man's laziness.
"How the hell is he going to cook for you?" he had asked, glaring at Isagi with the fury of an overprotective parent. "Because I know that he's surely not going to do any laundry, or dishes, or chores at all."
Now, there is Kaiser.
Kaiser irritates him most of all, and somehow Rin has taken this as a personal insult.
"Because Kaiser has an exclusive place in your heart now?"
"No, because he's, you know." Isagi gesticulates wildly, and Rin looks annoyed.
"You aren't making any sense." The teal-haired man keeps picking out the plums in his rice, and Isagi might have to kill him just for wasting so much food. Shit. Maybe he has been thinking about Kaiser too much, and by extension, Isagi's occasionally violent thoughts have turned into a tendency. "You constantly tell me that you like pretty boys - "
"You're a pretty boy," Isagi points out, and the both of them cringe at the implication. "Bad example, but you get it."
"Pretty boys." Rin ponders this for a moment, and his eyes darken. "Like Sae?"
"No, not like Sae. Like Yukimiya."
Yukimiya is one of his more tolerable colleagues, but Rin bristles at the suggestion.
"You like him?"
Isagi loves his friends, he really does, but trying to talk to them sometimes is like throwing a match onto wet, or rotten wood. It either doesn't catch, or burns the whole building down. Not talk, he corrects himself. Argue.
"You just don't understand," Isagi points out. "You've literally never spoken to Kaiser. You have no idea how annoying he is."
Rin scoffs, finally placing his chopsticks down. "Yes, Isagi. Because he spends every moment of his work time talking to you."
"That's not true!"
Rin pauses for a moment. "Well," Rin adds thoughtfully, "I'm sure he spends time talking to that lukewarm friend of his. The purple-haired one."
"Don't you guys talk to him? Or doesn't he talk to you?"
This must be some kind of prank show, because there is only a minuscule possibility that Kaiser has actually singled Isagi out for teasing like a high school bully and his crush. His crush.
Rin, likely sensing that Isagi was uncomfortable, had changed the subject to Shidou. This was familiar terrain for the both of them, and so Isagi listened while Rin complained about the man and his relationship with Sae.
"Beating up the roach is my new life goal," Rin finishes, packing up the last bits of his lunch, including the umeboshi; sour plums.
Isagi cocks his head in a silent ask. I thought you didn't eat leftovers?
Rin smiles softly, fondly at the bento box. "Bachira likes umeboshi."
"I want someone who saves me umeboshi," Isagi complains, and Rin smiles like it's a funny, funny joke that Isagi has made.
Isagi is fine, as he had thought earlier. Just a little lonelier each time Bachira and Rin show casual displays of affection, but that isn't something to worry them; or even complain about. Not when he sees Rin smile, and has someone to think about; a certain blonde who flirts like a devil and beams like an angel. He keeps the face blurred, though, because it feels safer that way. If he blurs the lines between fantasy and reality so that Isagi can believe that he will waltz right in, magicking away the nights when the other side of the bed is empty and conjuring up a prince.
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The day after he had spoken with Rin, Isagi had then meticulously scanned the pamphlet for research. This was normal, he told himself. He had spent a week learning basic French to speak with Hugo, but he'd had no interest in the language and quickly forgot it.
At first, he'd pored over the pamphlet for any cuss words, and found that Kaiser had created a new word in reference to him - scheißerchen - which roughly translated to 'annoying little shit.' Isagi didn't need to translate the other words he had meticulously copied down - why would he? Only masochism could drive him to do that.
Despite how much he had complained to Rin, Isagi had become absorbed by the language - its intricacies and portmanteaus (words made from other words, which was a whole other category of vocabulary to explore), and had spent the entire night a week before learning German.
Now, instead of tracking down the rest of the conversation for Google to interpret (his German is rudimentary , at best), Isagi is stunned by the admittance of having parents at all.
Kaiser has a mother?
"Ich werde mich nicht um ihn kümmern."
A low, annoyed sigh from him, and a following, higher-pitched one from the other end of the line.
"Es ist mir egal, wie viel du mir zahlst."
Isagi can't understand anything except for a few basic words - I, him, and not going to.
Kaiser hangs up mid-conversation, and looks up to find Isagi almost tipping over the divider between their cubicles.
"What the fuck?"
Funnily enough, this is the first time he has heard Kaiser curse, or show any actual anger. Isagi doesn't feel as victorious as he thought he might have.
"I was just wondering, you know." Isagi can't seem to form words, and is ashamed at how many hours he has spent learning German, and yet he cannot speak legibly in English. "Who you were talking to."
He figures that this is a safe place to start. If Kaiser doesn't want to speak about the topic, he'll deflect.
Instead, Kaiser's lips curl up into a bitter smile.
"Why do you want to know?"
Why indeed.
Isagi chooses to speak a half-truth. "I like to know more about my work partners."
"So you're saying you do this with everyone?"
"You always do this."
"Always do what?"
He's really going to keep playing dumb? Alright, then.
"You act like being coworkers is something exclusive. Like I, personally, have asked for you to be my partner."
"You didn't?"
At this, Kaiser looks genuinely stunned.
"Why would I?" Isagi can't imagine a single scenario in which he would ask Ego to pair him with the most insufferable person on the planet.
"But Noa said you wanted the successor!"
Noa? Isagi remembers the name - Noel Noa, the head of Bastard München, and the number one name on the list of people that Anri had compiled as 'not to be mentioned around Ego.' Noa's name was circled in red sharpie, highlighted in yellow, and underlined in black pen like some freakish McDonalds color combination, and in smaller letters, Ego had found the list and written a whole string of adjectives relating to the man.
These included, but were not limited to: dumbass, blonde dumbass, Noah of the motherfucking Ark, and so many others that Isagi hadn't the time to read.
"I didn't ask for you to be paired with me." Isagi frowns, only now registering the second part of the sentence. "And you're his successor?"
Kaiser just waves his hand dismissively. "Not important."
"I happen to think that it is. I don't want to work with a fucking nepo baby."
Kaiser starts choking and wheezes over, coughing. Well, shit.
Isagi stands behind Kaiser, interlinking his hands and placing them onto the blonde's stomach, pulling him backwards in a motion that is supposed to expel whatever he's choking on, but just leads to Isagi pulling back Kaiser into a strange thrusting motion.
It probably works the more that he does it, but Isagi still doesn't want to get caught in a weird position. He's not trying to get demoted - the opposite, actually.
So he bends Kaiser over onto the desk, front-facing up, and starts stomach compressions. Isagi's in an awkward position to do the Heimlich, and maneuvers his legs so that he's standing over the blonde instead of by his side. Kaiser still isn't breathing, and his eyes are glazed over. Isagi had been zoning out through the entirety of the mandatory resuscitation course, but not breathing does seem to be a bad sign. He keeps going, because Michael Kaiser is not going to die on his watch, and Isagi is going to get his fucking promotion with Kaiser there to watch it happen.
The stomach compressions aren't working, and Isagi moves up the blonde's body inch by inch, until he realizes that he's essentially doing CPR. Again, he hadn't paid a lot of attention, but he's pretty sure that CPR isn't part of the Heimlich.
He moves up to the throat - food gets stuck in the throat after all, right? - and almost reaches down to start the procedure before Kaiser blinks back into existence, grabbing both of Isagi's arms.
"What the fuck?!" Kaiser asks, but it should be Isagi who is asking the question. He'd been trying to revive the blonde for the past five minutes, and - wait. Five minutes? Isagi is terrible with muscle memory, but he always remembers facts. One significant fact he remembered is that death by choking occurs after four minutes, so that meant that Kaiser had been faking it.
"You sadistic bastard!" Isagi leans forward, unsure whether he's going to kiss or kill the man (kill, obviously kill, what's gotten into him?), when Rin and Bachira walk in.
"Isagi-kun?" Bachira's ever-present smile is wavering slightly, as if he isn't quite sure whether he's dreaming up the situation in front of him.
His 'Isagi-kun' is currently straddling Kaiser, arms almost pinning the blonde against the desk except for Kaiser gripping his wrists barely an inch above the surface. Both of their eyes are wild, and even though Bachira had wanted them to get close, he didn't want them to get that close.
Probably his fault. He should've specified, because every single other one of Isagi's coworkers fell a little bit in love with him along the way.
"Bachira!" Isagi looks relieved to see him. Bachira feels a slight release in his chest, because he really didn't know what he would do if his friend became one of those guys who were completely absorbed by their newest boyfriend. Not Isagi, though; so nice and accommodating.
Kaiser is currently staring up at Yoichi, who's instead turned towards the bee, even while straddling him. (He can feel his heart clenching in the grip that Yoichi has on him. He's useless to do anything, while Yoichi talks to Bachira companionably, his tone perfectly calm.)
"Oh, Bachira, that reminds me." Isagi has gotten very, very good at faking nonchalance in front of Kaiser. He pulls out his phone, opening up whatever app pops up first. "Did you want to get food at the convenience store before heading back?"
Bachira doesn't answer, instead tapping Rin on the shoulder. "Rin? Okay?"
Rin doesn't respond, glaring at Kaiser with the rare level of intensity that he affords Sae.
"You are dead, rattails."
Out of everyone, Bachira thinks, Kaiser might be the most shocked by all of this. His eyes are blown wide, wider than 'Sagi's, even, and that's an impressive feat.
"The fuck?" Kaiser means to croak, but somewhere between being bent over against the table and being pinned down against it (okay, now he sees how dirty it sounds, but it wasn't as if he'd taken the initiative to pin down Yoichi, so why the fuck was the lashes boy glaring at him?!), his voice had gotten lost along the way.
In other words, he had meant to say, "The fuck?", but it came out as more of a moan than a groan.
Instead, Kaiser says, "The fuck?" and it sounds like he's asking Rin whether he's mad that Kaiser is fucking Isagi.
"Fuck," Kaiser repeats, and this time, not even Isagi can stop Rin from lunging to punch Kaiser in the face, but had Isagi forgotten already? (Kaiser hadn't told him, but too late for that now)
Kaiser is quick; quick enough to skip between stalls in his youth and more than quick enough to evade the younger Itoshi brother. It only makes sense that he's fast enough to then sock Rin in the nose, and run away with the blood on his hands.
He isn't quick-thinking enough, though, to not anticipate that Isagi would follow.
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The third fact that Isagi has learned is that Kaiser is an excellent at running. A fourth, he supposes, is that Kaiser can be stopped when Isagi pulls on those bright blue rattails and calls him by his nickname.
"Michael."
Kaiser keeps running, swerving around cubicles and even jumping over his office chairs. The blood hasn't dried, Kaiser notices, and he feels sick to his stomach at the memories that come with the sensation of fresh gore dripping from his fists. From his skin.
"Michael," only his father calls called him that, and it was never for a good reason. "Good hit," he would mutter, and Kaiser couldn't tell if it was a self-congratulatory pat on the back or something for Kaiser to be proud of. His old man may be abusive, but at least he stayed like a man and could still hit like one.
"Michael," Noa had said, and then frowned. 'Kaiser,' he corrected, christening Kaiser anew and easing the transition into a new life with a former shit-bag's name - both his father and the rulers of old. If a name is all it takes to make him into someone new, then he can be different. Sharper. Crueler, maybe, but he's only reciprocating what he's learned.
"Michael," his father had croaked out on the hospital bed, and Kaiser couldn't help but recoil. His father smiled, and perhaps that was when Kaiser learned about the power of gritting his teeth for all the world to see to show them that he is fine; he is unbroken. "Piece of shit, I knew you couldn't even remember the name I'd given you."
Kaiser's father is still curled up inside of his own skin. The sagging unnerves Kaiser to the point where he can't even be in the hospital anymore, no matter how much his mother begs for him to take care of his father. (To take care of the mess that he is, she means, but no amount of money could make him go back to that.)
Kaiser is cruel, and so he does not go back there.
"Kaiser," Yoichi says, and the sound of his real name being spoken jolts Kaiser back into his own body.
He stops dead in his tracks, and Yoichi comes crashing into him - Kaiser landing flat on his front with the blue-haired man draped over his back, unharmed. An apt metaphor for his life, he supposes, along with the familiar hurts forming that he can already tell are bruises.
He touches the spots tenderly, but he knows better than to wince. This one is a four out of ten on the scale, so it's already forming , it'll be a melancholy purple, sat between two of his ribs. In four to five days, it'll be a darker shade of turquoise, the color of the sky and just a little greener than Yoichi's eyes. On day eight -
"Kaiser, focus on me." He can never focus on anyone but Yoichi, it seems, and the only effect it's had is to sway him off-balance.
"Kaiser." A sharp, eye-watering tug at his hair, and even though he knows logically that it must be Yoichi, there's that old instinct to pull back from the gesture.
"Sieh mich an." Look at me.
"Ich wusste nicht, dass du Deutsch kannst." I didn't know you knew German. Kaiser's lips unwillingly curve up into a smile. "Hast du es nur für mich gelernt?"
Did you learn it just for me?
Yoichi's biting his lip. It's distracting Kaiser, again, and that blush creeps up his cheeks.
"Fuck off, Yoichi." The bruises need to be iced, but Kaiser doesn't need anyone to see his scars that lie under them. Yoichi is annoyingly persistent, meaning that he won't go unless Kaiser effectively puts him down. "I don't need you to take care of me."
He emphasizes the 'you' part - as if he would allow anyone to come near him so intimately. Leave.
The silence grows heavy; stifling, and Kaiser takes this as his sign to leave. That is, until Isagi grabs him by the hair once more and yanks him backwards. Kaiser whips around -
"What the fuck, Yoichi, you gör - "
You brat. He's flustered enough to revert back into German, but that's all right, he has a dozen other insults in stock for Yoichi. He'll improvise.
Soft lips press against his, barely chapped and tasting of blueberries.
Well, Kaiser, he thinks, as Yoichi presses him against the ground. It's surprisingly soft as well, and Kaiser thanks someone up there for saving everything tender for this point in his life. How are you going to worm your way out of this one?
He doesn't. It's Isagi who finally pulls away, staring at the man in front of him.
"You're still red." It would be just like Kaiser, to be mad at him even though they'd just been making out.
"No shit, Sherlock." Kaiser's covering the lower half of his face with that large, dexterous hand that had just been grabbing Isagi by the -
Focus. The small portion of his brain that is thinking sensibly wants him to interrogate the blond. Why does he flinch when you touch him? Why is he still blushing?
(Why didn't he pull away?)
"Fucking hell." Kaiser runs a hand through his hair, and it's still mesmerizing to watch as the strands fall into disarray. "How stupid are you, Yoichi?" He sighs in mock disappointment, but there are still angry dots of red on his cheeks. "It's almost a turnoff."
"Aren't you blushing?"
"Yes." He glances at Isagi with tired eyes. "People blush when they get turned on."
When they get 'turned on'?
"So that means - " Every time he'd mocked Kaiser, that had been fucking kinky?
"I don't want to talk about it."
"I was bullying you." Isagi quirks an eyebrow. "Did you think that everyone has a degradation kink?"
When Kaiser smiles, Isagi is sure that despite the kisses and the bruises, he is the same person as Isagi has always known.
"From the way you stammered at my teasing, I thought that at least you did."
Kaiser is impossible, but Isagi really couldn't care less.
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TWO MONTHS LATER:
Rin's lip curls, but not as much as it used to. He's gotten better at hiding the grimace after Bachira lectured him.
"You're certainly early today - " Blonde? The one person that Isagi seems to tolerate?
Kaiser returns the gesture. "Likewise, junior."
"Guys," Isagi says, laying his head on the table. Kaiser starts taking off his sweater to turn into a makeshift pillow, but Isagi waves him away. "It cannot be this hard to choose a slideshow theme."
Ego had had the 'genius' idea to partner Kaiser, Rin, and Isagi together with the latter as the mediator. Often, Bachira had to step in as well to physically hold Rin back. Isagi had appreciated the effort, but even Bachira's interference couldn't stop the two from arguing over every little detail.
"Junior here doesn't appreciate innovation," Kaiser complains, leaning his head on Isagi's shoulder. Now that he feels comfortable enough with intimacy, he's constantly hugging or leaning against Isagi like a particularly affectionate cat.
The first time that Isagi had kissed him hello after coming back from work (their end-times were different, now that they weren't working together), Kaiser had stood still for a moment. As if he were afraid that the comfort couldn't come without a consequence afterwards.
"Isagi, can you get this barnacle off of your side?" Rin wrinkles his nose at the sight, and Isagi remembers him picking out umeboshi for Bachira. Someone necessary for the people he needs, but wholly distasteful to Rin himself.
"Kann ich ihn töten?" Kaiser mutters. Can I kill him?
"Wir töten unsere Freunde nicht, Kaiser." We don't kill our friends, Kaiser.
"Our friends?" Kaiser reels back at the very idea.
"Perhaps I could explain this concept to your small little mind - "
"Nothing about me is small," Kaiser declares, and Isagi snickers.
"Showing off your dick size to other guys already, huh? Thought you would last longer than that," Rin snarls.
You couldn't tell from Kaiser's expression, but he stiffens imperceptibly. Isagi places a hand on his shoulder.
There are little triggers they don't speak about. Kaiser isn't ready yet to explain why he flinches at infidelity, being offered drinks (not just alcohol, but milk as well), but Isagi will wait. He makes sure that there are pockets of silence in the moments before they sleep and before they fully rise; leaves openings in their conversations for Kaiser to bring up the topic himself.
"Let's not do that, Rin."
Both of their gazes land on him.
"Rin, stop acting like Kaiser is here to take me away to a foreign land. I know," Isagi adds quickly, before Rin can interject, "That he is from a foreign land, but he's here to stay."
Here to stay.
"And Kaiser - " He turns to the blonde. "Stop arguing with our friends."
"They're not our friends - "
"How do you know that he's not going to kidnap you, Isagi? How do you know?!"
In Rin, he sees something like fear. Something that takes Rin over whenever anyone so much as mentions Sae. To be left without a word; that is Rin Itoshi's worst nightmare
"I'm staying, Rin." Isagi jerks a finger back at Kaiser. "We are staying, okay?"
There is a moment of beautiful quiet, and then Rin's stomach grumbles. Isagi pulls out a Tupperware of kintsuba.
"Eat, Rin."
The teal-haired boy glares at him.
"Eat before I tell Bachira that you forgot to."
Rin hesitantly picks up a piece and takes a bite. His eyes widen in silent appreciation.
"Kaiser made it."
Rin makes a move to spit it out, but hesitates. He forces it down with a few gulps of water.
"I don't like you," Rin starts, glancing at Kaiser.
"Great way to begin this."
"Kaiser, be quiet."
Rin stares Isagi dead in the eye.
"He saves you umeboshi, doesn't he?"
"Kintsuba." Isagi smiles, softly. "He makes me kintsuba." From hand, actually, after Kaiser insisted that the ones from the convenience store weren't good enough. Isagi had to bite back a grin each time he saw Kaiser frowning at an overly complicated recipe for kintsuba, trying to find the perfect one.
"I suppose, then, that he is adequate." Rin has to force out the words, as unsentimental as they are.
"Thank you for those kind words, junior."
Bachira comes storming in with a box of donuts and paint smeared on his overalls. He leans over to peck Rin on the cheek before noticing the relatively odd peace in a room that contains Rin and Kaiser. Simultaneously.
"Isagi-kun, what happened to them?"
Rin pulls Bachira down, grabbing the pastries as gently as he can and setting them down on the table.
"He found someone who saves him umeboshi."
"Oh!" Bachira lights up, and this is one of those moments when Isagi is so grateful. Even though he works in the same company (Ego had given Isagi a raise after his successful project with Kaiser), he is bursting with gratitude at having friends who will fight to the death and be happy for him. For him, and not some construct that they had built up of him in their minds.
"Isagi-kun, you're in love?"
"I am," he responds, and Kaiser kisses him. Kaiser's blonde hair creates a curtain for them, closing them off from Rin and Bachira's line of sight. Kaiser's hair, Isagi thinks, has never been more beautiful.
======
"I am," he promises, when they're face-to-face and tangled in between the sheets and each other.
"You promise?"
"I am."
=====
"I am," he whispers in Kaiser's ear. From the way that the blonde pulls Isagi closer, it's almost like Kaiser heard him in his sleep.
"I'm in love with you."
Kaiser waits for Isagi to fall asleep. He loves, he is in love, has been so for quite a while - but it will take him another two months and the sugar high from too much Coca Cola for him to say it while they are both conscious.
"I am, too."