Work Text:
Jiroushin’s first clue that something was wrong was when he realized that he had spent almost the entire day wondering what it would be like to spend overtime together with Kanzeon, going over paperwork and discussing tomorrow’s schedule. He ended up spending the last few hours of work zooming through the items on his to-do list, panicking over a possible backlog that would spill over the rest of the work week, and silently berating himself for wasting company time.
His next clue that something was wrong was the fact that he now had a drawer in his steel pedestal completely dedicated to his ever-growing collection of paperclips and sticky notes from all the documents that Kanzeon had ever handled. He told himself that he was saving them to be reused. He ignored the fact that his collection kept growing instead of dwindling.
What really drove home the fact that he had a problem was when the new intern, Nataku, began enabling him. As an intern, one of Nataku’s jobs was to clean up the bulletin board they used for announcements, taking down old notices and pictures from previous company events and putting up the new ones. Nataku had begun leaving pictures that had Kanzeon in them on Jiroushin’s desk, stacked neatly in a corner (thankfully face-down). Every time it happened, Jiroushin told himself he would put a stop to it. Instead, he now had a photo collection in a separate drawer.
At this point, Jiroushin was seriously considering reporting himself to HR for inappropriate workplace conduct, but the thought of actually saying out loud what was happening was enough to give him a stress ulcer. If he didn’t tell anyone that he maybe had a small—very small, very tiny—crush on his boss, then it didn’t exist. It didn’t really matter that company policy allowed interoffice romances, acting on his feelings (which weren’t there) was completely out of the question.
*****
When Kanzeon found Jiroushin’s hoard, they were absolutely delighted.
It wasn’t like they were looking for anything interesting in Jiroushin’s files, they were just looking for a printout of last quarter’s budget. The last time they’d seen it, Jiroushin had tucked it safely away with a lot of other important paperwork in his steel pedestal. But Jiroushin was on sick leave today and though Kanzeon sent out a mental apology to him, they were also pleased to have an excuse to poke around Jiroushin’s things.
It was probably for the best that Jiroushin was out—the smile that slowly spread across Kanzeon’s face would have given him palpitations.
Jiroushin was intelligent, diligent, and probably the most competent person in the company. But more importantly, he was so amusing. It was so easy to get him worked up and he got the most adorable wrinkle right between his eyebrows when he was worrying over some minute detail that nobody really cared about. Kanzeon knew they probably shouldn’t tease Jiroushin so much, but they just couldn’t help it. Now that they knew that Jiroushin was interested, it was time for them to make a move.
Jiroushin would be back to work tomorrow and was set to go over some reports with Kanzeon in the morning. It would be the perfect time for Kanzeon to snap him up.
*****
Jiroushin had taken one look at his collection of sticky notes and immediately knew that someone had gone through them. Whoever it was had tried to put everything back properly but Jiroushin always organized his things just so and it was obvious that someone had opened his pedestal.
And the only other person who had keys to it was Kanzeon.
He didn’t know how he could possibly face them right now, but they had a meeting and he couldn’t not do his job even though he wanted to fall off the face of the earth. Gathering the relevant reports and walking to Kanzeon’s office felt like he was making his way to his own execution.
“There you are,” they said, grinning when Jiroushin entered the room and closed the door behind him. There was something a bit sharper about the expression on their face. Oh god, he was about to get fired.
Jiroushin practically collapsed into the chair in front of Kanzeon’s desk, palms sweaty and knees weak. Maybe if he begged they would settle for transferring him to a different department.
Kanzeon leaned across their desk, right into Jiroushin’s personal space. “Let’s begin, shall we?”
*****
Nataku knocked on Kanzeon’s door, a thick stack of photocopied documents held against his chest. When they didn’t respond after a few seconds, he knocked again. Still nothing, which was weird since he was pretty sure Kanzeon was in their office with Jiroushin. He tried the doorknob, found that it was unlocked and poked his head inside the room.
He regretted it immediately.
“I’m blind!”
“Oh, dear lord—!”
“Ah. Forgot to put up the sign.”
Nataku stumbled backwards, slamming the door shut. Before he could go back to breathing normally, the door opened a crack, Kanzeon’s well-manicured hand sneaking out to hang a Do Not Disturb sign on the doorknob before disappearing back inside.
Nataku practically ran to his desk. He’d been rooting for Jiroushin but that didn’t mean he wanted to see anything! He was definitely going to demand some sort of hazard pay from HR.