Chapter Text
Three Michelin stars and five more on Yelp.
Shimada sushi was a name that struck fear into the hearts of wholesome, decent, family restaurant owners everywhere. Every day, there was a line out the door, twisting around the block and winding down the street for what seemed like miles. The city actually shut down the bus stop just to make room for the crowd.
Shimada brought in that sweet tourist money, after all. So what if honest, working class folk had to walk a mile, now, to get to the bus? Who would ever give a damn about them when the president ate at that sushi place? Hell, when the president of Russia ate there, too?
That restaurant was a fucking cash cow: the eighth Wonder of the World, apparently, from the way people were treating it. Jesse didn’t understand. Hell, he didn’t want to understand.
Nothing beyond one very pressing question, anyway - What in the world was so special about raw fish on rice?!
Any idiot could cut up a piece of salmon, slap it on a cube of Uncle Ben’s, and call it a day - but what Mrs. Martinez had done, right down the street? That was art. Her pot of menudo had been stewing for three years. She and her husband had just replaced the ingredients as they went. Maybe it wasn’t as ‘pure’ or as ‘healthy’ as salmon on Uncle Ben’s, but that soup had formed a truly unique flavor profile that captured the heart and soul of their bustling barrio.
…Or at the very least, it had, before the governor jacked up the rent of their state-owned housing and turned their colorful, little community into a cheap imitation of every other upper-middle class suburb. Sure, their barrio hadn’t been the cleanest or the safest place around, but at the very least, it had personality. Jesse would take graffiti and broken windows over perfect, renovated houses all made up of ticky-tacky any day of the week.
Not like there was any point to fighting a losing battle. The Martinez family – and everyone else, really – had already moved out. The McCree family restaurant was the only original building from their old barrio left standing. Everything else had been painted and modified beyond all recognition.
They were the last of their neighborhood, the last remnant of a dying community… but now, even they were struggling to make ends meet. Of course they were, with that fancy sushi restaurant located right across the street.
Wistfully, Jesse gazed out the window, watching as the employees closed up shop. For most of the day, he’d been keeping track of how many people they’d served, but sometime around the lunch rush, he’d already lost count.
…On the other hand, Jesse knew exactly how many people had eaten at Blackwatch Tacos that day. He’d counted each and every customer with his fingers, considering how rare and precious they were, nowadays.
On March third of that year, Blackwatch Tacos served five customers. Five. Not fifty, not five hundred. Five. At this point, it was costing his family more money to keep the lights on than they could ever hope to earn back in profits by running that joint in the first place.
“I’m headin’ out early, Mamá,” he muttered, throwing off his apron. He couldn’t bear to look at her, with her eyes all red, swollen from crying – or perhaps from all the sleepless nights, worrying herself sick. “This can’t go on. I gotta have a talk with the sushi guys across the street.”
His sister, who had been guilted by their mother to help out after school, only scoffed with a glaring lack of love for the business that had been in their family for over three generations - “You wanna ‘talk’ to them? What’re you expecting, Jesse? You want them to close their restaurant? As if.”
“Hell, maybe I do,” he snapped, putting on his hat, “Maybe I think those Shimada guys should move to a place where they ain’t runnin’ mom and pop restaurants out of business. If they want to open some fancy-ass sushi joint, they ought to do it in New York, or LA, or all the other places where rich assholes live.”
“Mijo, please,” his mother begged, in a quivering tone that tore his heart to pieces, “Everybody here is only trying to earn a living. Please, don’t start any arguments. The last thing that we need now are enemies.”
“’Don’t start a fight?’ Ha. Like those yuppies ever fought a goddamn day in their lives.”
“Might as well stop trying, Mom,” his sister sighed, rolling her eyes, “Jesse wants to be a ‘tough guy’ again. …Loser.”
He wasn’t about to dignify that with a response. Slamming the door shut, with his sister’s irritating little comment still ringing in his ears, he stormed across the street towards enemy turf. Though the sushi place had already turned over their little door placard to read ‘closed’ in both English and Japanese – they were too good for neon signs, apparently – Jesse shoved the door open as though he had a personal vendetta against the hinges.
The golden bell hanging over the door went crazy, ringing loud enough to wake a sleeping giant. Immediately, Jesse had the urge to grab that stupid thing and tear it to the ground – along with everything else in that restaurant.
“Didn’t you see the sign? We’re closed, man…” mumbled a ridiculous employee with green hair, who was just finishing up counting the till. Jesse couldn’t help but stare down at all of the hundred dollar bills, crisp and bright, positively overflowing from the drawer... “Come back tomorrow.”
“…It is alright, Genji. We can serve one more patron,” insisted a deeper voice, slow and steady, coming from somewhere beneath the little sushi bar.
It was then that Jesse truly allowed himself the time to take in the ornate decor. …There were tatami mats, little paper doors, but as for the seating arrangements…
Jesse couldn’t believe it.
That fucking sushi shop was running them out of business with only one table: a bar with six chairs.
“I want to go home, Anija,” whined Green-Hair, “Angela’s waiting for me.”
“Then go,” the deeper voice insisted, as its owner still rifled beneath the bar, “I can finish up on my own.”
Jesse coughed into his fist, preparing his gruffest, meanest tone, just itching for an argument – “Now, hold on, partner. I didn’t come here to –”
…He froze mid-sentence. Mouth agape, eyes wide, skin clammy, toes tingling, heart pounding, head throbbing.
Shot through the heart.
As the sushi chef – nay, the sushi angel - rose from behind the counter, Jesse was certain that he’d never seen a lovelier sight in all the world: from the Grand Canyon to Yellowstone Park, from his mother’s smile to her sprawling garden…
“...Table for one, please.”
“Here. Please sit,” the angel offered, gesturing towards the seat furthest from the entrance.
In his rush to draw closer, Jesse stumbled over his own feet, catching himself only with the help of the man with green hair.
“…You sure you want to make sushi for this guy, Anija? I think he’s drunk.”
“I-I’m not drunk!” Jesse exclaimed, desperate to keep his seat in the holy pews of the sushi gods, “I-I just… I am… so excited to be here. There’s been a line all day, you know.”
The young man only stared with his eyes half-lidded. “Yeah… Sure thing, buddy. …Well, whatever- ”
As he twirled his car keys around his fingers, Green-Hair left the shop with a cheerful farewell – “Don’t come crying to me when you’re cleaning puke off of your kimono, Anija. …I’ll see you tomorrow if you don’t have a stroke.”
Putting on his smoothest smile, Jesse slid into his seat and leaned over the table. “Anija, huh? Is that your name, Pumpkin?”
The angel, working faster than a machine, set a plate, containing two pieces of sushi, right in front of him.
…
…
…No response.
Hot sweat ran down Jesse’s neck in bullets. Perhaps his sushi angel had been so absorbed in his work that he hadn’t heard him. …Did he need to repeat himself? Or… what if he would take offense to that? What if he tried to rephrase it, what if he –
“You should eat the sushi as soon as it is presented before you. The longer that you allow it to sit, the more muddled its flavor will become.”
“I-I… didn’t order anything yet, Sunshine,” he chuckled, breaking eye contact with his angel for just a moment, to glance down at the sushi with what he hoped wasn’t obvious disgust. In truth, Jesse was a bit unadventurous when it came to food. He liked American, and Mexican, and… that was about it. He’d certainly never ventured into the realm of raw meats before.
…What if he got sick?
What if that fish was cold?
The thought of it repelled him…
“Patrons of this establishment do not place orders. Here at Shimada, we offer only one selection: the omakase tasting menu,” the sushi angel explained, with his shimmering, golden ribbon draped over his shoulder, “…Does this not please you?”
“No, it’s great!” Jesse was quick to lie, “It’s… fantastic. This is… This is real great.” He stared down at the raw fish and resisted the urge to prod at it in morbid curiosity.
“Well… here I go,” he reached for the ornate chopsticks… and fumbled, making a goddamn fool of himself, as the angel visibly grew more and more irritated by the second. Nervously, Jesse dared to glance up at his beautiful face – only to see his fuzzy little brows knitted together in confusion and… oh no, was that disgust? It was disgust… “Ha ha… haah… I don’t reckon you have a fork, Sunshine?”
“…There are no forks in this restaurant.”
Jesse brushed away his bangs and realized that his neck wasn’t the only part of him that was sweaty.
He was breathing hard. He realized, just then, that he had a hole in his sock. He couldn’t stop staring at the sushi and imagining the fish still swimming around in the back.
“Pick up the sushi with your thumb and middle finger,” the angel instructed, “Hold it gently, so that the rice maintains its shape. It is more delicate than many people would presume.”
Jesse followed those words like scripture. This was a dance, after all – a dance to impress this… angry sushi chef who was likely cursing his very existence right at that moment. Gathering his courage and shoving the sushi into his mouth, Jesse tried his damnest to stop himself from puking.
Oh, God, it was slippery, and slimy, and… ugh.
His eyes began to water.
“Are you feeling alright?” the angel asked, with notable concern – concern that made Jesse’s heart skip a beat, “…Are you choking?”
“N-No,” Jesse remarked with his mouth full, as he forced himself to swallow down that gooey abomination. “It was just… That was so good.”
…His lies were met only with an incredulous stare, cold and hard as iron. “…Would you care for a cup of tea?”
“Oh, please. I-I mean… that’d be nice,” he laughed, trying to ignore that fishy smell in his breath… When his angel set the cup in front of him, however, Jesse only peered inside of it, squinting. “…It’s green.”
“…Were you expecting something else?”
“I mean… whenever my mamá makes tea, it’s brown and… sweet,” he muttered with slowly waning confidence as the angel’s frown grew deeper and deeper.
“Have you never tasted green tea?” Though the sushi angel didn’t say anything further, Jesse was certain that his next question would have been: ‘Are you a caveman or merely an uncultured swine?’
Hesitantly, Jesse brought the cup to his lips… and immediately gagged as the smell of a freshly mowed lawn assaulted his nose like a machine gun.
“Oh, gee, this sure is hot,” Jesse exclaimed, trying to find any excuse not to drink that grassy swill.
“This tea is brewed to precisely fifty-five degrees Celsius to bring forth the full depth of its flavor.”
“Fifty-five you say? Dang, that’s hot.” …Or was it? Hell, it wasn’t like Jesse knew how much a ‘Celsius’ was. Coughing into his fist, he swallowed down the second piece of sushi and prayed that the ‘meal’ was over… only to soon find himself saddled with another plate with another two pieces…
Oh, God, please -
“S-So…” he began, eager to make smalltalk, as he quickly brainstormed ways to get rid of the sushi without actually eating it. …Perhaps when his angel turned around, he could dump it into that bamboo pot, or maybe he could just drop it into his soy sauce like an idiot – “…You didn’t answer my question earlier, Sunshine. Is your name ‘Anija’ or -”
“Shimada. My name… is Shimada.”
He must have been the owner, then, considering the fact that he shared his name with the restaurant. In truth, ever since Shimada’s sushi shop had opened across from his taco shack, the name “Shimada” nauseated him, making bile rise up from the pit of stomach.
Only now could he see its beauty.
Shi-ma-da.
Dignity and grace. A somber beauty, despite all of the… testosterone.
It was only then that Jesse truly thought about the fact that Shimada was a man. A manly man, with a beard, and greying hair, and thick muscles, bulging from the sleeves of his ornate dress… robe… thing.
Jesse had never thought of himself as gay, but… perhaps he didn’t mind if it was with Shimada. He wondered what the sex would be like -
“Are you going to eat the sushi?” the angel asked with audible irritation, “If not, then I would like to begin cleaning up for the evening.”
“Oh, right. Sorry, Pumpkin. …Shimada.”
Unwilling to hold his angel hostage for any longer than he already had, Jesse ate up the rest of the sushi – all twenty courses - as quickly as humanly possible, finding, strangely enough, that the more he ate, the more he actually… liked it. The slime wasn’t a constant. There were different textures, different flavors. He liked some more than others.
When he asked his lovely Shimada for more of “the red one,” he only replied, with a subtle smile, that “maguro” was his favorite, as well.
They had so much in common!
They both ran restaurants, they both had beards, they both liked “the red one” –
“You know, this is actually my first time eatin’ Japanese food,” Jesse stated, eager to make conversation – eager to learn all that he could about his sushi prince.
“As I presumed. May I state that it was… a rather bold move, to choose Shimada as your first experience with sushi, considering the price.”
“Yeah, well, the president ate here, so I figured –”
Wait a second… The price. The price! In all of his excitement, Jesse had actually forgotten that he had to pay for this food! Fearfully, he pushed himself up on his chair, staring down at the little pile of plates stacked up on Shimada’s side of the bar.
He hadn’t even asked about the price!
Now, if Jesse had to admit one thing about that restaurant, it was that Shimada sushi was fancy. Like stepping into an old-world samurai movie. The presentation was impeccable. The food was so fresh, he could practically taste the saltwater. …And unlike Blackwatch Tacos, the tables weren’t even sticky. There wasn’t a single fly in the building, the floors weren’t wet, there wasn’t a single stain on Shimada’s uniform.
…And most impressive of all was how that restaurant’s sushi chef was so attractive that Jesse would have eaten dog shit just for the privilege of sitting there, at that bar, in front of him.
But could he even afford to sit there? In the end, that was the question.
“Uh… how much do I owe you, Pumpkin?” Jesse replied, finally, with a warm and loving – and hopefully disarming - smile.
“Three hundred dollars, including tax. I accept only paper bills in denominations no smaller than twenty. Tips are not accepted, though the sentiment is appreciated.”
…Jesse didn’t even have three hundred dollars in his bank account, much less in his wallet. The color drained from his face. He opened up his cheap, torn little wallet – purchased from Walmart - and could have sworn that he saw a puff of dust rise up from the sad and empty folds.
“…I have forty dollars,” Jesse mumbled as a cold, miserable chill ran down his spine.
“Pardon?” asked his executioner, in a siren’s voice, sickeningly sweet, guiding him towards the jagged rocks.
“I have forty dollars… in fives and singles.”
Right then and there, he saw his angel fall – shedding snow-white feathers by the bunches, his little halo, cracked and shattered. Within an instant, Shimada’s calm, dignified features twisted into the deepest, ugliest scowl that Jesse had ever seen in his entire life. The sheer, overwhelming force of the man’s disgust sent Jesse shrinking down into his seat, pressing his back against the chair and wishing, at that moment, that a sinkhole would simply crack open beneath him and swallow him up right then and there.
“…You forced me to work past our closing time for forty dollars in fives and singles.”
“I am so fuckin’ sorry. I fucked up big time. I -”
“You… ate my sushi… for forty dollars in fives and singles.”
“I’m sorry! I… Oh, shit – please don’t call the cops. I have a record; they’ll toss me in prison and throw away the key!”
“When I am finished with you… you will wish that I had called the police.”
“Oh, God, what’re gonna do to me?!”
Shimada reached behind the counter for what he was certain was a gun… only to pull out a matching uniform – throwing it at him.
“Give me your cellphone. I am holding it as collateral until your debt is repaid. Now, then… listen carefully: you will arrive at this restaurant at six o’clock in the morning tomorrow.”
“I-I’ll be here at… six in the mornin’,” Jesse parroted, trembling in sorrow at having ruined his one chance of sleeping with the handsomest man in the world.
“You will wash dishes. You will unpack the fish and transport the rice.”
“I’ll wash dishes and… and move fish and shit. Rice. I’ll… move rice.” He fumbled with his phone, flinching back as Shimada tore it out of his grasp.
“You will not complain. You will work hard. You will obey my orders without question.”
“Yes, Sir, Shimada, sir.”
“Shimada-sama.”
“H-Hold up… Shimada-sama. I just got one question –”
“…Very well. Speak.”
This was his one chance to make amends. He had to phrase this carefully, he had to –
“Do I really have to wear the dress?”
And just like that, Jesse saw the very last traces of Shimada’s hope for him as an employee - and a lover - fizzle out and die.