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He gives her flowers every time he sees her.
She's running out of room to keep all of them. When she tells him as much he shrugs and says “move in with me.” Her own apartment is tiny, about as small as it can be with out breaking civil code and being considered uninhabitable. It's a one room, and ever surface that isn't taken up by something useful is taken up by jars and glasses and vases filled with the flowers Denji keeps giving her.
“That's such a stupid solution.” Because it is. “You don't think things through.” Because he doesn't. He lives with three other people right now. Not counting the occasional drunken sleepovers of other 4th division members. Aki's apartment isn't that big either. Not that she takes up a lot of space but.
“Who cares.” Reze does, because it's ridiculous. “Move in with me.”
“I'm fine, thanks.” She's not used to being around a lot of people, and she's good at performative niceness because that's what was beaten into her since she was born but she only ever wanted to do it for a short while. She didn't actually have to be nice to Denji at all, not at this point, but she wanted to be.
That's what mattered.
It was a choice she was making.
Still, though, she definitely didn't want to move in with him. Maybe if he lived alone, and even then a big maybe, but with Power and Aki and Angel who she is pretty sure tried to stab her- all of them tried to stab her. It's not personal. They just all seem to be unbelievably insufferable people.
“Can I come over to your place?” He asks when they're at the office and she's standing in front of Makima's bullshit coffee nightmare contraption. It's American, Makima had told her gleefully. It's new. The implication is that there was a normal coffee machine and then Reze was press ganged into the 4th division and now there is an American coffee machine. Just for her.
“Why?”
“I don't know.” He says and leans over the counter. “I want to spend time with you.”
“You already spend time with me.” She has the daisy he gave her today tucked behind her ear. “You're spending time with me right now.”
“Yeah.” And then he reaches over the counter and takes her hand.
“Be horny when I don't have boiling liquid in my hand.” He doesn't let go anyway.
Well, when Power shrieks right in her ear and the coffee goes flying directly into Denji's face she can hardly be blamed for anything at all.
…
Denji takes her on a date.
“I have to.” He insists. “Because you already took me out.”
“I did try to kill you, I was there.” Denji shrugs, an established 'who hasn't' that goes unsaid. “You know I don't care right? Because I don't like you.”
“Sure.” He says and rolls his eyes. He keeps getting bolder. It makes her smile somewhat. Good. Good for him. “But like, it was nice. Uh, normal or whatever. I want to take you somewhere normal.”
She remembers the realization, that he didn't do school. That he barely knew how to read. She knew a lot of things, obviously, because she's very good at her job, as her government keeps trying to insist isn't true which is how everyone can tell that it is. She knew how to read, and was fluent in eleven languages.
But it's not like she did school either.
It felt like a bucket of ice water was dumped over her head. She knew, obviously she knew, that the way she was treated wasn't normal- but it was so much easier to rationalize it through Denji.
“Fine.” She says. “Take me to an aquarium.”
“Huh?” He startles like it hadn't even occurred to him. “That's like, a whole fucking trip.”
“Did you think I'd be satisfied with some breaking and entering?”
They already did that, after all.
“I'll go!” He's quick to say. “I mean, I'll take you.”
He does take her, in a week, when he begs off on a Thursday and Mikami stares at her through the glass of her office the entire time. Denji's into her too, which is so insulting it's unbelievable. But then, she sighs and glances down at her paperwork. Who isn't. The allure of sociopathy is clearly wide spread in this office.
It's a quiet day, kind of gloomy and cold- or she guesses it's cold because Denji shivers from time to time. Cold isn't a thing for her.
It's fine, all in all. They stare at fish and fail to make deep conversation because they're both deeply fucked up and end up making fun of other couples. Aki and Angel are there too, probably because Mikami told them to keep an eye on her. Or to keep Denji from doing something stupid like falling for a spy or an enemy insurgent or something like that.
That shark devilman that seems so found of Denji is enjoying himself at the very least.
“You know you don't have to do this right?” Reze sits beside him while a breeze picks up slowly. They got ice cream. She can barely taste it.
“I want to.” He says and shivers again. She pulls her jacket off and slides it over his shoulders.
“You're a moron.”
“Maybe.” He says. “You're the one who agreed to spend time with me though. What does that make you?”
“Who can say.” They're not far from the ocean, maybe a few blocks. She takes his hand and drags him until the salt air starts sticking to her skin. “You remember how to swim right?” She's already tugging her dress off. There's no one else out, but who gives a shit.
“Of course I do.” Off goes his shirt. “You're a great teacher.”
Well, who's going to argue with that.
She rushes into the water and he tackles her into the waves until the two of them are laughing like idiots and it's like it was before she blew up half the town and he tried to drown her a little. They stay in the water until his lips turn blue, and even then, instead of crawling out he just curls around her.
She thunks him on the head.
He just grins up at her.
…
The thing about being extremely strong and dangerous is that no one really wheels her out unless they don't give a shit about collateral damage.
Sure, Denji's a nightmare, and Power is just as reckless, but she's the big-
Well.
She was only out on patrol with them today, it wasn't meant to be a big thing or a show of strength or anything like that. Denji and Power are at each other's throats, trying to see who can shout louder than the other or something.
Denji alternates between trying to hold her hand and to strangle Power so she takes to walking a little behind them. People brush past them occasionally but it's all mundane and boring. She still thinks Denji should have run off with her.
And around that moment is when the giant ant comes crashing through a building.
“Ew.” The three of them say at the same time and she almost makes a face before Power is biting into her hand and bolting after it with a new massive hammer. “You need any help?”
“Nah. I can murder a bug.”
“I believe in you.” She says and settles on a bench to wait. The roar of his chainsaw makes her chest feel tight.
She should not, as it turns out, have believed in him.
Mostly because it wasn't just the one bug, but also because it's Denji of all people.
Half the block is already gone by the time she gets up in earnest, only to hear the sound of some one being swallowed. Well, she sighs. Never a dull day.
She yanks on her rip chord, and flings her empty head straight at the devil before there's a loud pop and most of her suit is scattered to the nine winds. Whatever, she hated that thing anyway. It's easier to move like this. Her body isn't really hers, which is why she can shove it around with a degree of recklessness she expects to see from the others.
“Reze-” That's Denji, somewhere in a pile of centipedes and spiders with massive teeth the size of her arm. “Fuck them up! Fuck them up so fucking bad!”
“Yeah.” She says and breaks of her pinky before she flings it at the pile of writhing chitin. “You don't need to tell me twice.”
They come at her quickly, something stupid enough to not know who she is, what she is. To not hear Bomb and run away screaming and crying. She's a fucking monster- get with the program already. She's the biggest monster most things will ever get to see in their miserable fucking lives. She could snap her fingers and annihilate towns if she wanted too. Maybe she fucking does. So apologize and beg for forgiveness for trying to eat her stupid boyfr-
She snaps her hand of at the wrist and shoves it down an ant's maw.
They're not dating, it's not a thing.
The explosion totals a city block, her apron whipping in the wind. Everything wreaks of sharp oxygen and gasoline.
Power is fine, sprawled out on a roof on the other side of the street. Denji's saw is half retracted and he's staring up at her with big big eyes. She holds out her stump of an arm and lets him guzzle the blood that drips from it.
“You're hot.” He says.
“I'm aware.”
“You're literally smoking hot.”
“I'm aware of that too.” The edges of her apron, the fuses, are sparking like fire crackers.
“Can I kiss you?”
“I don't have a mouth right now.” He gets up- she has to lift half a ton off of him, but he gets up and presses a kiss against where her mouth would be. She doesn't feel it, obviously. “Well?”
“Cold.” He says and licks his lips. “Coppery.”
“Everything you've ever dreamed of?”
“Better than vomit.” He says and smiles wide like that absolute nonsense is supposed to mean anything to her. “Hey so when you go all-” He makes an explosion sound with his mouth.”When does your human head come back?”
“When I want it too.”
“Ugh.” He says and leans his head on her chest, against her oily apron. “You're so cool.”
That's one way of putting it, sure.
…
“It's so small.” Reze invited him on a lark.
“I told you I was running out of space.” The flowers are still growing, though some of the first once she got are starting to wilt. “You didn't listen.”
“I didn't know you meant like, literally.”
“How else was I supposed to mean it?”
“Dunno. You could throw them out.”
“Yeah, sure could.” She sits down on the couch- it's bad and springy and it came with the apartment. She liked sleeping on it sometimes because she could stare out the window. “You're the first person to give me gifts you know?”
“Oh shit, really? But you're cute.”
“I grew up in a basement.” In a lab, ten floors underground, but that's basically a basement.
“Oh.” He says and shrugs and sits next to her. “When I was a kid my shit was fucked up too.”
“Yeah?” He tells her about the debts, about the work and hours he powered into trying to make anything in his life better. About the surgeries and the odd jobs and the devil hunting that got him in this mess in the first place. She gets up in the middle of it and makes him lunch because it hurts to hear him talk about how he starved himself. No wonder his standards are so low.
She tells him about work so classified that if anyone else found out they'd be launched into orbit without a spacesuit.
“They shouldn't have treated you like that.” He says, and there are crumbs everywhere.
“I know. We're both fucked up.”
“Is that why you like me?”
“I don't like you.” She says and kisses him. “And I think your boss is a sociopath who's praying on your vulnerability and lack of common sense.” She kisses him again, and bites his lip this time. “And you should have left with me.”
“But I didn't.” He whispers, like it's somehow a secret between the two of them.
She sighs.
“But you didn't.”