Chapter Text
“You’ve got this, Izayoi.”
Yeah right. Like Tōga saying that was going to stop her from pacing. Or worrying. Or thinking about how much of a failure she was because she totally forgot to calculate the cost comparison if they went with sustainable lumber instead of recycled materials for the shelves.
Tōga should know that Izayoi didn’t sleep. How could she? He was the lump on the other side of the bed, the muscular gorgeous lump whose breaths came steadily as the night progressed. And he had turned his back to her, as if begging her to stare at him and drool all night. Moonlight was meant to create incredible romance, and desperate longing. It just was. And it was moonlight that reflected off of the halo of Tōga’s hair so that it glowed. As if Izayoi were sleeping in a bed with a God of the Moon. Who would be able to fall asleep with a God of the Moon as your bedfellow? One with superior hearing (for things like snoring), and a superior sense of smell (for morning breath), and superior… everything?
“Maybe you should do it,” Izayoi turned desperately to the shimmering golden eyes of her partner. “You are so good with words and with the smile and—”
“Let me go get you a coffee,” Tōga narrowed his eyes at Izayoi. “And maybe something to eat. You… didn’t eat breakfast.”
Izayoi didn’t know how to tell him that the adrenaline that had been coursing through her since the morning—since Tōga only in a towel and dripping with water—was doing far more than enough to sustain her. Adrenaline was sort of like caffeine; it helped Izayoi focus on the pitch (well, more precisely at the moment, at failing the pitch).
Suddenly two hands were cupped around Izayoi’s face, and her field of view filled with silver eyelashes and golden eyes.
“Listen to me,” Tōga pleaded. “You are going to do amazing. You know how I know? Because I’ve listened to you practice. You know the in and out of every detail, so much so that even when Tsubaki was acting like a swamp witch and trying to find fault in your plan, she couldn’t!” He was close—so very close. “You’re amazing, Izayoi. When you walk into a room it fills with light. When you smile, you make the room smile too. And when you square your shoulders for a fight? Everyone better watch out because you’re going to win.”
“B—but…” Izayoi tried to say something but words failed her. Tōga had full lips and cerulean stripes on his face that… sparkled. Just like all the rest of him.
“But nothing,” Tōga reassured. “Being around you makes Mō-Mō lively. Shooting the shit with you about your ideas and mine, dreaming up this library together, I… I wouldn’t trade it for anything. So, go in there, and do what I know you can do. What we can do. And let’s show them the library of Musashi’s dreams!”
He thought she was… amazing? Tōga Taisho? The novelist and marketing savant that looked like a Greek god descended from Mt. Olympus to bless humans with a mere glimpse of him? Who actually glowed in the moonlight?
“I want you to have as much faith in yourself as I have in you,” Tōga whispered, then leaned close and pressed the lightest of kisses to Izayoi’s nose. “Believe in yourself, Izayoi.”
Nothing about that moment was special, or life-changing. It was just a nose kiss. Just a pep talk. Just a show of faith in the partner that he had been working with. But, in that moment, something inside of Izayoi’s mind crashed. As if the no office romance barrier had been nothing but a dam crumbling from the constant flux of emotions pressing against it.
A dam that just broke.
Tōga’s lips were softer than she expected, and he shook off his shock surprisingly fast, matching her kiss with his.
In a flash it was over, and all Izayoi could see was the gold of Tōga’s eyes, wide and reeling from what just happened. A stillness had come over her; the surge of everything had wiped the slate clean, letting the roiling river free, serene yet unstoppable.
“I’ve got this.” Izayoi took one of Tōga’s hands and pressed a kiss to its palm, then turned and headed in.
Everything was going to be okay. Izayoi didn’t understand why she was so certain, when only minutes earlier she was boiling over with anxiety, but when Tōga kissed her nose, she just knew.
They were going to win this bid.
And they were going to violate the hell out of the no office romance policy.
“You were spectacular.” Tōga was hugging her. He was wrapped around her and his face was so close to hers. “You were sensational; you destroyed that pitch!”
“They said they would let us know as soon as they see all the presentations,” Izayoi monotoned. Her mind was still blank from whatever astral sphere it now inhabited. The one that had answered every question that the Musashi city manager had thrown at her. The one that had been able to seamlessly defer to Tōga then pick right back up where she was needed. The one that threw that confident and reassuring smile his way when the board had stumbled onto his most outlandish idea (they really really didn’t need an aquarium, but now they wanted one, so Mō-Mō would give them one.)
“Let’s go for a walk.” Tōga had let her go, and grabbed her hand and tugged. Izayoi followed without resistance.
So they had kissed. That was a fact of the universe. It started with a pep talk, and ended with Izayoi knowing the way that the maple syrup on Azusa House’s pancakes tasted because of Tōga’s tongue and her tongue finding each other.
She tried to freak out. Shouldn’t she be freaking out right now? That holding hands with her was her pink slip just waiting? That Tōtōsai was going to have a conniption when the two of them got back and declared that they were dating?
Were they dating now?
Or just work colleagues who kissed and really (...really really…) liked kissing and wanted to do it a lot more?
Was Izayoi the only work colleague who really liked kissing and wanted to do it a lot more?
A bench dappled in shade was just ahead of them: Tōga’s destination. It was out of the way of ordinary foot traffic, but had a clear view of city hall.
It was a bench made for incognito meetings.
Before she knew it, Izayoi was sitting and facing Tōga on the clandestine bench.
Artwork commission by sayuri-watanabe
“I… want to kiss you again,” Tōga leaned forward, close enough that Izayoi could feel the warmth of his breath. He always was one who was outstanding at getting to the point. “I just want to know if that was the pitch talking or if—” He took a breath; Izayoi had never seen him look nervous before. “If there’s something here.”
Wow. Okay. Tōga felt it too. The lingering glances and the charming smiles and the slightest lean into her personal space and the glasses and Lord of the Rings and the teasing… it was there; it had been there, all along.
As if there was even the slightest possibility of a playlist holding back the silver-haired tide.
“Oh.” Apparently Izayoi had used all her eloquence and mastery of rhetoric in the pitch, leaving exactly zero for this conversation with Tōga. She couldn’t speak, and thinking was doing her no favors. So Izayoi just stared into Tōga’s golden eyes, and she let herself lean forward, closer, so close, to him. Until her words returned, actions would do. She brushed her nose against his and smiled, willing her thoughts to the perfect answer, toward the answer they were heading toward. Toward…
“Yes.”
The softness of his lips hadn’t been a fluke. Nor the way his hands found the way to her face to stroke her jaw as if she was the most cherished in the world.
“I… had almost given up hope…” Tōga’s voice tickled her ear. “Almost accepted that the way I felt was one-sided…” Suddenly the wet of his tongue danced against its lobe; Izayoi shuddered. “Izayoi.”
The whisper of her name snapped Izayoi out of the moment. God she wanted to date him. She wanted to march right into Tōtōsai’s office and tell him that he was ridiculous and that you couldn’t put a stopper on true love. She wanted to listen to Kaede, that what he doesn’t know can’t hurt him… Yet, pragmatism reared its ugly head. Tōga was a dream, but Tōga might be ephemeral. Izayoi’s job was the only thing that shielded her from the so much worse that would come if she lost it.
“W—wait,” she pressed her finger to Tōga’s chest, pushing him away from her. “We can’t.” She hated this—hated this. “We can’t do this.”
“Why not?” Tōga was still leaning in so close that the bangs of his silver hair brushed Izayoi’s forehead.
Because Izayoi needed her job. More than anything. More even than this chance at love. It was a cruel reality of fate, that she would meet a man such as Tōga in this impossible circumstance.
It wasn’t fair.
It wasn’t fair.
“Izayoi, please tell me what’s wrong,” Tōga’s hand touched her cheek, brushing something away. “You’re crying.”
“Why?!” The adrenaline crash meant Izayoi had lost any semblance of control she once had over her emotions. There were tears, and those were not going to stop. And she could feel the words bubbling under the surface. The ones she had tried so desperately to suppress. The ones that were on their way out. “Why does stupid Mō-Mō have the rule about romance? I have been so good and just… why are you so perfect? Can’t you turn your amazingness down a notch? I need my job so so much and seeing you and liking… you has made it so hard!” Yup. Good old pent up emotions that had been pent up far too long. “And then the glasses and Lord of the Rings? It’s like you exist solely for me to get fired!”
“Izayoi…”
“Why do you think I had Kaede make that playlist? Because just looking at you makes me think all sorts of things! And that little sneak of a best friend added Unchained Melody to mess with me? What was I supposed to do?”
“Izayoi…”
“I am fine. It’s not like I spend every hour daydreaming about you, it’s a healthy amount! One that I can just look at the little post-it that says No Office Romances and be done with. And it’s not like anyone needs to know that I—”
“Izayoi—” Tōga finally put his thumb on her lip, abruptly stopping the most embarrassing stream-of-consciousness of her life. “Hold those thoughts for just a second.”
Tōga pulled his phone out of his pocket, opened his email app and started typing.
“What—” Izayoi tried to speak, but was immediately shushed.
Izayoi wanted to crawl into some alternate dimension to hide. She wanted to send an emergency text to Kaede to say she was needed urgently anywhere-but-here, anywhere where she had not almost shared her nighttime Tōga thoughts with Tōga.
Except those kisses. If she went to that alternate dimension, there would be no more kisses. No more one-more-night-then-back-to-reality fantasies.
Though… if Izayoi were honest with herself, would it actually end with one night?
Could a night of passionate sex with the demon Adonis really be enough to satisfy her?
Could she really turn away from the glasses and the Tolkien love and go to work every day knowing that she had chosen her job over a chance with him?
It was getting hard to breathe.
“It’s done.” Tōga’s phone made a characteristic ‘email sent’ noise. “Two weeks from today, I will no longer be an employee of Mō-Mō Construction.”
“Wait…” Izayoi’s ability to breathe was back, unfortunately it was via hyperventilation. “What did you just—”
“I quit,” Tōga smirked.
“N-n-n-no… you can’t just—quit!” Izayoi gasped. “That job is so important to—”
“My book got picked up.” Tōga pressed his thumb to Izayoi’s lower lip one more time. “Months ago. So really—heh—this was kind of… overdue.” His golden eyes were smoldering again, keeping Izayoi silent. “I took the Mō-Mō job partially as a favor to Tōtōsai, a longtime family friend. And then—well…” Oh god, was Tōga blushing? “There you were.”
There. you. were.
Did Tōga really mean her?
“You have no idea how agonizing it has been waiting for you.” Tōga broke eye contact. “Wondering if I was missing something or seeing something.” Then, a chuckle. “And before I knew it, I was showing up to work because you were there. Dealing with traffic because maybe you’d giggle at my joke. Putting off my book tour because Tōtōsai gave this assignment to us, and I just—I couldn’t miss out on… being alone with you.”
Izayoi may have understood the words that were rushing out of Tōga’s mouth, but she definitely was not getting their meaning. Because, if she took those words they would mean that Tōga was working at Mō-Mō so that he could see her.
And the world’s sexiest demon and man book author Tolkien fan Adonis didn’t keep working a job he didn’t need for her.
“N—No… no, wait. What?” Izayoi’s brain had definitely short-circuited.
“You need to stop being the most adorable thing I’ve ever met or I’m going to ask you to marry me, Izayoi,” Tōga sighed. It was probably an attempt to lighten the mood, but it backfired. “You seriously created the world’s least sexy playlist to keep my hands off of you?”
“To keep my hands off of you!” Izayoi snorted; somehow the idea that she would think that Tōga would do even the slightest untoward thing toward her had restarted the logic engine inside her brain. “You would never do something like that.”
Suddenly Tōga’s head whipped backward and the small park boomed with his laughter.
“God, I’m already hopeless.” Tōga leaned in, letting his hand gently embrace Izayoi’s. “Go out with me, Izayoi.”
Well, after all they had already kissed. They’d shared a bed too. And listening to yodeling and banjo music together.
He liked Tolkien and wrote books.
And… she wanted him.
She wanted him so so much.
And now she could have him.
“Hey, Tōga…” Kaede would be proud of how coquettish Izayoi could sound (okay fine more that her voice was not currently cracking from the attempt). “We—we have that B&B booked one more night, right?”
She had never seen that much enthusiasm in Tōga’s eyes before.
“We sure do.” Tōga leaned in and kissed Izayoi again. But this time, the kiss showed no hesitation. It was the type of deep and longing kiss that two lovers separated by time and circumstance kissed when they were finally able to meet each other again.
Time stopped, and Unchained Melody echoed in Izayoi’s mind as she finally got to run her hands through Tōga’s hair (it was as silky as she imagined it would be), and got to test her tongue against his fang (delightfully sharp), and got to press her body flush against his, absorbing all of his warmth. All the things that they had wanted so desperately from each other for so long.
Congratulations! Mō-Mō Construction has been chosen to create the library! showing up in their inbox not even ten minutes later was just icing on the delicious (no-longer-forbidden) fruit.
Izayoi would also never question Kaede’s talent at creating playlists ever again.