Work Text:
Enokida walked into the cafe, sat down at the table and took out his laptop right away. He opened it and started booting it up. His phone buzzed with a notification so he looked at it but it wasn’t anything important.
“So, what is it?” he asked only once his computer was ready to use, scanning his email out of habit before looking up at the person sitting opposite him.
Lin was scowling at him as if Enokida had done something bad. He was wearing a dark blue dress with a white collar and drinking some pink concoction in a glass, as if to make himself look even more like a girl.
“You know things, right, mushroom?” he asked.
Enokida sighed. From a distance it might have seemed to the onlookers that he was on a date with a cute girl but that was not the case at all. Lin was as rude to him as always.
“Yes, I’m an informant,” he said. “Is there something you wanted to ask, Lin-kun? You know you could have just given me a call like always? Or asked through Banba? I saw him just this morning.”
“It’s not that kind of thing.”
“What kind?” Enokida asked, his attention briefly drawn to another email he just got.
“It’s not for work.”
“Ah, then what can it possibly be?”
The waiter came over and Enokida ordered a coffee, though he didn’t plan on staying long.
“If you repeat to anyone what I asked you about, I will rip you apart with my own two hands, you understand, mushroom?” Lin asked grimly.
“Sure, except you haven’t asked me anything,” Enokida pointed out.
Someone spoke up in a chatroom Enokida was in.
“Do you think Banba likes me?” Lin asked.
Enokida quickly typed his reply before looking up at Lin again.
“Of course he likes you,” he said matter-of-factly. “He lives with you.”
“Does he like me, mushroom, but not as a friend?” Lin clarified, growing ever more annoyed.
Enokida’s attention moved to him fully then and he was briefly astonished at this happening. Martinez had been right, he thought, looking at Lin, who was staring at him expectantly, as if he really imagined him to be able to just answer that kind of question. Of course, Enokida wasn’t blind when he saw Lin and Banba together but why had Lin come for that kind of advice to him, instead of their friends who were actually gay, was beyond him.
He shut the laptop’s lid and laughed, which might not have been the reaction Lin expected.
“You seriously think I can answer that?” he asked.
Lin paled.
“I’m sorry,” Enokida said quickly. “But what can I tell you that you wouldn’t know? The most I could do is try to obtain that information from Banba himself.”
“How?”
“Well, thankfully I’m friends with him. To an extent, at least. It’s not something the two of us usually do together, but maybe he’d agree to go drink with me and then a heartfelt conversation could happen, theoretically. I’m a good listener if I want to be. I can hack his phone, too, I suppose. But it’s not even a smartphone and do you honestly think he has unsent messages on it that say ‘Lin-chan, you’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen’?”
“Do it.” Lin said right away, as if he was determined to go along with whatever Enokida might have suggested once he’d made the decision to consult him in the first place.
“Sure.” Enokida nodded. “But you know what’s the simple way? Surely you must have considered that. Ask him.”
Lin looked away and out of the window by his side before he spoke up.
“He’ll throw me out of his place if I ask him something like that and he’ll think it’s gross,” he said softly.
“Well, at least you’ll know.”
“But it wouldn’t be worth it if I had to go.”
“That’s awfully romantic,” Enokida remarked with a sigh. “You know what my prices are, Lin-kun.”
“I’ll pay you.”
“There will be a surcharge. He knows my methods already. I’d have to be extra careful and inventive.”
“You’re just greedy, mushroom.” Lin turned back to look at Enokida and instantly sounded annoyed again.
Enokida supposed that when Lin wasn’t like that, like a moment ago, he actually had his charm. What Banba was really thinking was a mystery to Enokida, though. Not that he'd ever cared much. He’d considered the possibility that something had been going on already behind closed doors of course but since it apparently hadn’t, what was Banba’s point in not making a move for all this time? Unless he wasn’t interested in the end or he cherished what him and Lin already had too much to risk it, just like Lin.
Thankfully, this kind of stuff wasn’t what Enokida usually had to deal with, because it was making his head hurt.
“I’ll get on it,” he said.
Lin nodded.
“Pay for my coffee.” Enokida put a few banknotes on the table, collected his things and left.
That was going to be one unusual job, he thought.