Work Text:
"Beautiful," Seigi said with a sigh. "He's just... beautiful."
"Say what?" Shimomura asked, forehead wrinkling in confusion.
"My new boss," Seigi clarified.
Shimomura poked at his curry with mild interest. "Are his looks what's important? I'm more concerned you've quit your guard job to go work for some foreigner you've just met."
"For the last time, Shimomura, I wasn't given any weird drugs, I'm not being blackmailed, and I'm definitely not in any trouble." Unless having an outsize crush on your boss counted as being in trouble. Which it didn't. Crushes came and crushes went.
Seigi didn't think he'd ever had a crush on anyone so beautiful, though. His type was the person-next-door, cute and honest and real. Richard embodied idealistic, ethereal beauty with every line of his body, every gesture, every facial expression. He operated on a completely different level from Seigi. So this wasn't so much a crush as hopeless admiration of a work of art.
But Seigi's ring bore a rose-coloured stone mined in Ratnapura, the hometown of Richard's grandmother. Even though Seigi's grandmother had stolen it, it was his now: Miyashita-san had given it to him. He owned - and had always held onto - an item tied by a thin, thin thread to Richard's family across the ocean. Wasn't that a sign that fate was somehow involved here? That the universe put those drunken louts into that alley at the same time as Richard and Seigi so the two of them could meet?
Right, don't forget that bag of chips made with Hokkaido potatoes in your kitchen, and my great-grandpa who grew up in Sapporo. It must mean you and I are also tied by the red string of fate, opined the Shimomura in Seigi's mind. Seigi shook his head very slightly. Bad enough that he was daydreaming in public; he didn't need to be having conversations with an imaginary Shimomura when the real one was right there, tucking into the last of his curry katsu dinner.
"Anyway," Seigi said. "I start tomorrow."
"Want me to come along so he knows you have friends around? I've read that con artists target people without a support network--"
"He's not a con artist," Seigi interrupted, starting to feel a little irritated. Why were people so quick to judge someone they'd never even met? "Seriously, I'm fine. I'll take you to meet him one day, just not on my first day of work, all right?"
*
What if he is a con artist?
The thought pursued Seigi all the way home, but it just didn't add up. Richard himself had lectured Seigi about how looks were nothing to go by, and how the jewelry industry was by nature full of crooks and scoundrels. Seigi wasn't some country bumpkin fresh off the back of a potato cart; he knew that beauty didn't equal purity or goodness, but he hadn't just looked at Richard. They'd spent hours together during their bullet train journey to Kobe and back: granted, Richard had spent most of that time asleep, leaving Seigi with little to do except--.
Okay, so maybe most of Seigi's time with Richard had been spent staring, but honestly, who wouldn't? He was so gorgeous, it was a sin to look away. And would a scoundrel trust a virtual stranger so easily that he fell asleep next to him on a train? At some point between Maibara and Nagoya on the return trip, Richard's head had tilted towards Seigi, and for five whole minutes he'd sat so very still, almost wishing for that weight on his shoulder. But Richard awoke just long enough to straighten his neck again, and the next time, his body leaned in the opposite direction.
Anyway, they'd talked a lot at Richard's office, and sure, Seigi was young, but he was an adult, and he hadn't spent his life up until then in a bubble. So he was younger than Richard and not so worldly or fashion-conscious -- so what? He had spent his whole life around other people, and he knew he could trust his own judgment. Richard was a good person. Not very forthcoming with personal details and weirdly obsessed with royal milk tea, sure, but who didn't have eccentricities?
Seigi soaked in the bathtub, watching shadows of tree branches sway outside the tiny, frosted-glass window. His apartment building was old, and the bathroom had a window to the outside: the long-ago alternative to panel ventilation. He wondered if Richard took a bath every night. He'd read that in some foreign countries, people just showered and didn't soak afterwards, but he couldn't remember which countries those were or if Britain was one of them.
Richard had grown up somewhere completely different from the world Seigi knew. Usually, knowing that would have made Seigi reluctant to reach out for fear of saying or doing the wrong thing and causing offense. It wasn't like he avoided the foreign students in the same classes as him; he'd just never tried to approach them first. But with Richard, it felt different. Despite how much Richard stood out in every room he entered, Seigi wanted to be standing next to him.
As his loyal employee. Obviously.
*
He hears the shower turn on and opens his eyes.
"Hiromi?" he calls into the darkness that's slowly coming into focus around him. It's absurd; Hiromi doesn't even have keys to his apartment, and even if she did, she has no reason to shower here when her own place has a modern, sparkling bathroom with proper ventilation and everything.
He gets up out of bed, shivering a little -- despite the spring season, the nights in Tokyo are still quite cold -- and half-jogs towards the bathroom. The accordion door is half-open, and the light inside glows softly against the twilight shadows. The steam-puffs wafting out into the corridor smell like jasmine tea.
Seigi pushes the door open and finds Richard there, dressed in a dark blue three-piece suit, his hair soaked but the rest of him completely dry. He turns swiftly to face Seigi, sending a cascade of water droplets arcing to the floor from his hair.
"Would you please show me how to work this faucet?" Richard asks, all business. "The plumbing is different in my country."
Seigi blinks, and then Richard's suit is gone, replaced by a pink terrycloth towel fastened around his upper chest, covering everything above mid-thigh. His hair is no longer wet. The scent of jasmine tea grows overpowering in the heat. Richard stretches forth a pale arm, languid and graceful, his perfect blue eyes glittering with unspoken promise.
"Come here."
*
Seigi took a deep, deep breath and opened the door to Jewelry Etranger. He had spent half the night dreaming about Richard in ways that really weren't appropriate; surely for an employee to have such brazenly suggestive dreams about his boss betrayed the employee's lack of respect to say the very least.
What the hell was that dream? Seigi had looked up information about British bathrooms online, and plumbing was in fact different in the older buildings there -- they had two faucets, one for cold water and one for hot -- but Seigi had never known that before looking it up, so why had Richard mentioned it in his dream? Was it another sign that the two of them shared some kind of special, cosmic connection?
Don't be silly. This isn't a shoujo manga.
He'd barely paid any attention in his lectures all day, both dreading this moment and -- helplessly -- anticipating seeing Richard's face again.
Seigi was sure that Richard would see his guilt -- and all the thoughts (and dreams) leading up to it -- plainly written on his face and send him packing. Not that Seigi would blame him.
"Good afternoon," Richard said as Seigi entered, favouring him with a slight, benign smile that made his eyes soften and sparkle.
Seigi smiled back, reflexively, heart pounding in his temples, realising that he had told a very big lie to Shimomura at dinner yesterday when he'd said he wasn't in any trouble.
He was definitely, without question, in an entire world of trouble.
[end]