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On Amamiya’s first day at Big Beef Bowl Shop, he brings a cat.
“You can’t have that here,” Goro says immediately. “That’s a health hazard, and it’ll bug the customers.”
Amamiya shrugs before glancing at the tiny creature. The cat’s settled into his bag – isn’t that heavy? – with a little black-and-white face poking out.
“You heard him,” Amamiya says. “Shift ends at eight. See ya then.”
The cat meows before hopping out of the bag and strutting out of the store. Goro hopes it gets hit by a car.
When the shift ends and the cat comes back, eight on the dot, and Amamiya’s clean of any grease or grossness that normally plagues Goro throughout the night, Goro hopes they both get hit by a car.
On Amamiya’s fifth day at Big Beef Bowl Shop, he brings “friends.”
One is uncannily familiar and the other is Goro's classmate. Both of them are beautiful, and Goro wonders for a moment why the fuck they’d hang out with some dipshit Big Beef Bowl Shop employee when they’re clearly loaded. Amamiya’s pretty, but he’s not that pretty. Barely talks, either.
Ms. Uncannily Familiar, with the fluffy hair and the pink sweater, speaks in an annoyingly high voice that reminds Goro of his own time as the Detective Prince and he hates her. The other one he already hates on virtue of her being his classmate, and anyone who studies law is a corrupt shithead trying to take advantage of a broken system and deserves it.
Amamiya laughs with them between shifts, and his cat comes in through the window – why is his cat coming in through the window – to lay on Fluffy Hair’s lap and loudly join the conversation.
“Get the fucking cat outta here,” Goro hisses at Amamiya, “and tell your girlfriends to buy something if they’re gonna hang around this long.”
Amamiya fiddles with his bangs, the bangs that Goro fantasizes about cutting with a pair a kitchen shears every time Amamiya looks at him, and sighs.
“Nobody’s here and Morgana’s not bothering anybody.”
“’Morgana’ is a health hazard.”
“You not wearing a hair net is a health hazard.”
“You not washing your hair is a health hazard.”
“Spending half your savings on fresh breeze coconut hibiscus shampoo does not excuse you from a hair net.”
“Listen, you fucking rookie, nobody’s allergic to my hair. Plenty of people are allergic to cats. Get it out.”
“You didn’t prepare the guy with the nut allergy’s stuff in the allergen-free zone,” Amamiya points out, and Goro’s hand twitches.
He’s not going to punch him while on clock. He’s going to wait until their shifts end.
“He was a politician,” Goro says.
Amamiya’s eyebrow quirks.
“You didn’t strike me as the political type,” Amamiya says.
Goro literally assassinated Japan’s would-be prime minister two years ago, but Amamiya could go off, he guessed.
“And you didn’t strike me as someone capable of having friends,” Goro retorts.
“Well, now you’re just projecting,” Amamiya says, swiftly turning on his heel and waltzing back to the girls.
Goro wonders which one Amamiya’s dating. He bets they both suck in bed.
On Amamiya’s eighth day at the Big Beef Bowl Shop, an American-looking man sucking on a lollipop struts in, decked out in full military gear. Obviously yakuza.
Goro wonders if his past has finally caught up with him when Amamiya smirks.
“Mune-mune, what can I get you?” he practically purrs. The man rolls his eyes before ordering some generic takeout for two, and Goro forces himself not to stare.
What the fuck? Was Amamiya a prostitute? Is that why those girls were hanging out with him? A yakuza prostitute? Was Amamiya going to go to this man’s yakuza house after his shift and eat the shitty takeout and then get fucked by this giant blond-American yakuza man? Why the hell was Amamiya even working here? Doesn’t the yakuza pay well?
Wait, scratch that. The yakuza extorts money from minors to force them into prostitution. Right.
God, Amamiya was a fucking idiot. Who the hell would fall for that? What kind of dent could he possibly hope to make in his debt working at Big Beef Bowl Shop?
Goro wonders how much he’d have to pay Amamiya to sleep with him as Amamiya cheerfully packs the food and slides it across the counter.
On Amamiya’s ninth day, he looks a little extra tired so Goro gives him the most difficult customers to deal with. Something in his eyes screams murder as a man in a suit lectures him on why he wants low-sodium soy sauce, and despite it being a busy Saturday night, Amamiya still somehow sneaks in time to rearrange the sauce packets by the cash register so Goro always grabs the wrong one on first try because Amamiya’s a bitch and lives to spite Goro.
Goro’s still kinda wondering how to ask a prostitute to bed when the store reaches closing and a disgruntled woman in a maid outfit shows up with a bag of laundry under her arm. She beelines for Amamiya.
“What the fuck,” Goro lets himself say aloud. Just once.
“Master,” the maid says, “the bag unfortunately tore since it’s not designed for the kinds of things you needed washed, so I’m just going to leave everything on the counter here, okay? Maybe your cute little coworker will help you carry things home~”
“Sensei,” Amamiya says, “can’t you just help me carry it?”
“What the fuck,” Goro lets himself say aloud again.
“I have another client in fifteen minutes, Amamiya. You’re lucky I bothered coming all the way across town to drop this off for you,” she hisses, crossing her arms under her breasts.
“…So no massage tonight?”
“If you want a massage, Master, you need to schedule ahead! Becky’s pretty busy right now,” the maid says. And then she spins on her heel and marches out.
Amamiya sighs before examining the giant tear in the bag and pulling out a literal fucking spacesuit covered in jagged edges. And then a magician suit. And then a wig and a punishment cop uniform.
“What the fuck,” Goro says again. This is the last time he’ll say it.
“Yeah, none of these little button things are even sharp,” Amamiya agrees. “How could it slice through the bag? I think she’s just mad at me.”
“Why would your maid be mad at you?” Goro asks, as if he hadn’t found a thousand reasons to be mad at Amamiya within the first five minutes of knowing him.
“I skipped her class the other day.”
Goro blinks. That’s why she looked familiar. She taught fucking Japanese literature at Tokyo University.
What the fuck. Amamiya went to the same college as him?
Amamiya sighs again as he pulls out an extremely revealing American Navajo costume.
“I don’t think you’d pull that one off,” Goro comments.
“I don’t look good in cultural appropriation,” Amamiya agrees.
On Amamiya’s twelfth day at the Big Beef Bowl Shop, a tiny girl with long blonde hair carrying a book shows up and sits at the front counter. She whispers in hushed tones to Amamiya, often sweetly smiling and laughing at whatever it is he retorts, and Goro would consider calling the cops on his coworker if he didn’t know the force was purposely incompetent at any case involving pedophiles.
“Amamiya,” he says after a while, because he may be okay with murder but draws the line at abusing children, “who is that?”
“Oh,” Amamiya says, “that’s Lavenza. She’s studying theology.”
Goro blinks.
“She’s twenty-four. On her master’s degree,” Amamiya adds.
“That’s a useless degree,” Goro says after a moment.
“I dunno. She’s got a job lined up as some juvenile detention rehabilitation worker thing,” Amamiya says. He grabs a cup of water and returns to talking with her.
On Amamiya’s fifteenth day, a girl with dyed orange hair claims the corner booth and covers the table in laptops and textbooks, fingers flying across a keyboard as she skims the pages in front of her.
Goro goes up to take her order but she refuses to take off her headphones and otherwise acknowledge his existence.
Amamiya comes up behind him and gently shoves him out of the way.
“Futaba, is there anything you want?”
“Just noodles.” She doesn’t look up or adjust her headphones.
“Okay. Are you going to talk to Sojiro about it?”
“No.”
“Alright.”
She doesn’t pay or leave the entire double shift, and Goro gets bored of her lack of responses quickly to instead focus on preventing Amamiya on getting any studying done between rushes. It looks like the dumbass is studying neuroscience and behavior or some other equally stupid shit that will not help his life whatsoever as a prostitute.
At the end of the shift, Amamiya walks over to the girl. Goro’s holding a ketchup bottle under the refill station, picturing the viscous red condiment is Amamiya’s blood after he’s been shot in the head, while he listens.
“I’ll talk to him,” she grumbles.
“I’m proud of you,” Amamiya says, as if she did anything other than sit there and type for ten hours straight, probably writing fanfiction or some stupid shit, and pats her head. Her face turns scarlet, and Goro crushes his ketchup bottle.
On Amamiya’s sixteenth day, it’s a slow Sunday morning and he’s brought a nice wooded case with him. After the few customers present are taken care of, he opens it up in the corner and pulls out a board.
His shoulders slump.
“You’re smart enough to play chess?” Goro says, because they made it almost an entire hour without antagonizing each other and he can’t carry on pretending not to hate the yakuza-maid-prostitute.
“I ordered a shogi board,” Amamiya mutters.
“You’re smart enough to play shogi?” Goro asks. “I mean, doesn’t even look like you know what it is.”
“I knew I shouldn’t have ordered anything from Tanaka,” Amamiya says. He looks up at Goro. “Wanna play chess?”
No. “I’ll kick your ass at it,” Goro says simply.
“Well, I don’t even know how to play,” Amamiya says, “because I ordered a shogi board to practice shogi.”
“Why?”
Amamiya shrugs, cheeks darkening.
“What, to impress another girlfriend?” Goro demands.
“Another? What?”
“You know what I mean,” Goro snaps.
“Uh,” Amamiya says. “I’m single.”
Right as he says that, some drunk woman stumbles in, eyes glassy and cheeks hazy. Her eyes immediately fixate on the black-haired dumbass.
“Fuck,” Amamiya corrects, and Goro snorts.
They watch as she makes her way over to Amamiya with great difficulty, leaning over the counter to smash her lips against his cheek, giggling loudly.
“Ohya, it’s 11am,” Amamiya protests, gently pushing her off of him.
“But… but Lala-chan said you weren’t in the show tonight!! After all those… those costumes we got you, too!” Goro blinks. Did Amamiya…?
“I’m working a double here today and have an assignment due at midnight,” Amamiya states. “I’ll be at next week’s. Akechi, can you get some water?”
“For your girlfriend?” Goro asks sweetly.
“Girlfriend?” the drunk exclaims. “Girlfriend?? You finally… you’re finally saying yes? I’m not-“ she hiccups – “too old?”
“No, just too drunk,” Amamiya says kindly while Goro, with all the grace he can muster, fetches a cup of water.
“What, back when you were in high school you just said it was age,” she grumbles. “Whatever. I’ll clean up eventually. Say, you got any juicy stories about your school these days? You were such a good little bird about that whole volleyball thing. And-and the Shi-”
“Nothing interesting happens in my life anymore, Ohya,” Amamiya sighs, as if Goro’s not the most interesting possible thing that could happen to anyone.
Ohya rests her head on the counter and grumbles something incomprehensible and remains there until Amamiya has to carry her into the bathroom so she can throw up in the toilet.
Goro quietly searches the web for “lala-chan” and “drag bars” until Ohya is safely sent on her way in the care of the most intimidating drag queen he’s ever seen. He wonders how he would need to dress to sneak in unnoticed by Amamiya at a show.
On Amamiya’s twentieth day, a pair of blond ditzes stroll in and bicker so loudly that Goro can’t decide if he’d rather gouge his eardrums out with a chopstick or cut their tongues out with a plastic knife. Of course they’re friends with Amamiya, and the boy shouts “FOR REAL?!” at everything Amamiya says, and the girl twirls her hair and eats the last piece of cake that Goro was hoping to save for himself.
For a second he thought the two were dating, but then he figures that it’s actually the girl dating Amamiya because she smiles too much at everything he says and he talks more to her than he seems to talk to anybody, so really, it just makes sense.
“There’s no way she’s the shogi girlfriend,” Goro says after they leave.
“Hey, Ann’s smart. And I told you. I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“So the yakuza guy is fucking you then,” Goro says. He fucking knew it.
Amamiya looks at him for a moment like he’s insane. “What?”
“The American dude who came in a couple weeks ago.”
“Oh, Mune? No. He’s more of a bottom, actually.”
Goro chokes.
“I’m kidding. He just sells me guns.”
On Amamiya’s twenty second day, Hifumi Togo brings in a shogi game and Amamiya plays between rounds. Goro purposely fucks up her food and angrily wonders why Amamiya hasn’t brought in the chess board again. Probably scared of getting beat. Fucking coward.
On Amamiya’s twenty ninth day, a blue-haired boy with the deepest voice Goro has ever heard shows up with an easel and fucking paints his stupid coworker.
“He’s just doing it for practice,” Amamiya mutters, as if something finally managed to embarrass him. “Trying to catch the emotion of day-to-day life.”
“So he paints you working at Big fucking Beef Bowl Shop?” Goro demands.
“It was this or the drag bar,” Amamiya mutters, almost too quiet for Goro to hear. Except Goro’s already seen Amamiya in drag, because he snuck and watched the show last night from the back corner and has been incapable of thinking about anything other than Amamiya in a punishment cop costume since.
“Does Hifumi know you work in a drag bar?” Goro mumbles bitterly.
“What?”
Why the fuck does Amamiya say what so much?
“You heard me.”
“Do I seriously need to clarify for you that every woman I interact with is not my girlfriend?” Amamiya snaps, suddenly pissed. Hot. “Why do you even care?”
“Because everyone you interact with is fucking annoying!” Goro argues.
“You’re just fucking jealous!” Amamiya snaps back.
“Alley. After work. I swear to fucking god, Amamiya.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
“I completed it!” the idiot painter says with delight. “Truly, you two show such intriguing passion. The pain of slaving away at a minimum wage job with a coworker you feel so strongly for… Thank you for this glimpse into your worlds.”
Amamiya nods and offers him a free beef bowl, which Goro makes a mental note to write him up for, and the painter leaves.
They both pointedly stare at the clock, occasionally shoving each other out of the way, until their shifts end and they walk out back and immediately start pummeling the shit out of each other.
On Amamiya’s thirtieth day, they’re both wearing makeup and purposely bumping elbows, trying to get the other to drop a bowl and pour shit all over the floor. Amamiya trips Goro, Goro steps on Amamiya’s foot, Amamiya beats Goro to taking the couple that always tips well’s orders, Goro purposely splashes soda on Amamiya’s face, forcing him to remove some of the concealer he’d tried to smear over his black eye.
They hate each other. They hate each other so much.
They’re on closing shift, and as their night comes to an end, Goro ends up throwing a chair at Ren, which pushes Ren to dump an entire untouched beef bowl directly on Goro’s head.
They clean up, go outside, and immediately start pummeling the shit out of each other. They don’t do it as long for this time, though, because it’s twenty minutes until the last train and they’re still a bit sore from yesterday and Goro’s got a test in the morning.
On Amamiya’s fortieth day, it’s the third year anniversary of Goro’s bitch father’s death and the news in the corner is playing a brief special on him for some godforsaken reason.
“I wish he hadn’t died,” Amamiya stupidly states as they finish reviewing how the Phantom Thieves exposed all his crimes.
“He literally hired hitmen to kill people in exchange for favors,” Goro says. “Why the fuck wouldn’t you want him dead?”
“Because he’s a goddamn egomaniac and the best thing you can do to an egomaniac is make them live in a world where everyone clearly despises them and thinks they’re incapable and incompetent,” Amamiya says, and while Goro actually agrees, the bruise on his ribs that have yet to fade requires him to argue.
“Or he can just be dead so nobody has to worry about it anymore.”
“If only the Phantom Thieves had leaked the data just one week earlier… it would’ve been done before his death and he could’ve rotted in jail for a while.”
“Well, they’re fucking cowards for one, and if they said anything beforehand they might’ve actually faced consequences instead of getting away scot-free for slandering a dead man.”
“Or maybe they were working as fast as they could and just faced poor timing. They slandered a lot of other powerful people too, you know. It wasn’t like the world just let them go.”
“And yet none of them were caught. That wouldn’t have been the case if Shido lived, and they knew it.”
Amamiya snorted. “So you think they weren’t pursued? You think they still aren’t being pursued?”
“Oh, of course they were pursued. Just by incompetent cops who gave up after a week since there was no politician pushing them to keep searching.”
“You’re quite jaded,” Amamiya comments.
“Did you even watch the news segment? What, a shitbag like that becomes Prime Minister and after his death a bunch of attention-seeking wannabe vigilantes illegally dox him?”
“Wannabe vigilantes? Do you have a problem with what they did?”
“I have a problem with some group of dipshits thinking they understood a single goddamn thing about that man and thinking they knew best about what the public should know!”
“And what was there to understand that they didn’t? Pray tell me, Akechi, what did the Phantom Thieves miss?!”
“The fact that he was dead, and the world wanted to move the fuck on!”
“You think the world should’ve just carried on believing the miserable lie that he would’ve saved them all from the government’s corruption?”
“You think knowing a piece of the truth made the government any less corrupt?” Goro’s voice is scratchy, but he regains his composure to study the boy before him.
Amamiya seems angry.
So angry that he doesn’t even stay after closing to punch Goro in the gut. He just leaves.
On Amamiya’s fiftieth day, Sae shows up.
“Oh,” she says, her eyes widening in that kindly shocked manner. “I didn’t know you both worked here, now. Makoto just told me you were here, Ren-kun.”
“Yep,” Goro says tersely. “We’re loving every second of it.” And that’s not even a lie. At least not for him.
“I see,” Sae says. “Well, I was just going to pick up some takeout for Makoto and myself. Neither of us had time to cook, and we burnt through all our leftovers yesterday.”
“What’ll it be?” Amamiya says at the same time as Goro, and they glare at each other for a moment before turning back to Sae.
“A medium barbecue bowl and a medium curry bowl,” Sae says. “Though, I suppose the curry at Leblanc probably tastes better…”
“Nothing beats Sojiro’s blend,” Amamiya agrees.
“I hear you’re becoming quite the curry chef, too. I don’t suppose you can work some of that magic into the curry here?”
“We don’t have the right ingredients here,” Amamiya shrugs. “I can try, though. No promises on the result.”
Amamiya vanishes to prepare the dishes in his constant need to outperform Goro, but Goro doesn’t really want to talk to Sae and explain how he went from Detective Prince to part-time beef bowler, so he busies himself with arranging the sauce packets that Amamiya fucked up again.
“It’s good to see you,” Sae says, because she’s incapable of telling when he doesn’t want to be spoken to. Or doesn’t care. Probably doesn’t care.
“It seems you’ve stayed in good health,” Goro says pleasantly. “How have things been going in the unit?”
“Same as always,” Sae sighs. “Lots has changed in the past couple years, but it’s never enough. I’ve been busier than ever, but at least Makoto’s off in college, now.” Sae laughs. “I always worried I disappointed her with how absent I was.”
“But now she’s absent from you!” Goro exclaims with false warmth.
“I… suppose that’s one way of putting it, yes. But it seems she’s been enjoying school. I believe you two are in the same university?”
“Possibly. Tokyo University is big, so I don’t really recognize my classmates too much.”
“Ah. Yes, that’s the place. I’m glad that you chose to continue studying law. We would love to have you back once you graduate. Or even if you’d like an internship – there’s plenty of work we could have you doing over breaks.”
“I assume you offered the same to Makoto?”
“I would if she wanted it. She’s certainly bright enough, but she’s far more interested in defense and domestic cases with kids.”
“That’s beautiful,” Goro lies.
“She has a strong sense of justice, for sure. I’m honestly proud how strongly she’s stuck to her morals.”
Yeah, bet you wish you could say the fucking same, huh? “It’s a rarity these days, for sure.”
But Sae’s not looking at Goro. She’s looking at Amamiya, who’s tiredly making hand motions to his cat who’s standing on the fucking windowsill again while the beef bowls simmer.
“Perhaps. But it may be more common than you think, Goro-kun. I know life hasn’t been the most fair to you, but I hope you make the most of it. I’m glad you’ve met Ren. Given your pasts, you two would be good together.”
Yeah, good kicking each other’s teeth in.
“I’m not sure he swings that way,” Goro says, hoping his purposeful misinterpretation and implications would at least catch her off guard.
Sae surprises him instead. “Well, I didn’t quite mean together like that. But now that you mention it, I’m surprised you haven’t noticed he likes men. He dated that painter boy for quite a while, and I think he does dra- well, I suppose it’s not my place to say. But you do too, don’t you, Goro-kun?”
Goro chokes, but it’s fine because Amamiya chooses that exact moment to have the food prepared and send Sae on her way.
“Alley time?” Amamiya asks an hour later, but Goro still hasn’t found anything to say.
“Not tonight,” he mutters.
Amamiya looks disappointed.
On Amamiya’s sixty first day, the blond boy comes in and starts yelling about it being some anniversary of the Phantom Thieves. Amamiya tries to convince him to shut up, and Goro blinks as about twenty different things fall into place.
On Amamiya’s sixty second day, Goro comes in early to put an old recording of a special playing a while back about the Phantom Thieves into the TV to have playing.
Amamiya stares at the screen for a while.
“Why isn’t today’s news playing?” he asks. “I’m pretty sure I saw this exact segment on a month ago.”
“They’re just doing a rerun, I suppose. In honor of some anniversary of the Phantom Thieves.”
“Oh.” Amamiya’s face is scarily neutral. “What anniversary, precisely?”
Goro shrugs and masks his sudden uncertainty. “They didn’t say.”
“Right.”
They go without talking for a while, and Goro’s about ready to sneak the kid sitting at a booth a permanent marker just to make Amamiya clean it up later when he speaks again.
“I know that you put on that recording,” Amamiya says. “Why? I thought you didn’t like the Phantom Thieves.”
“Well, I sure don’t like you,” Goro says.
“The feeling’s mutual,” Amamiya states, purposely ignoring Goro’s implication.
The topic isn’t touched for the rest of their shift, but Amamiya’s started his habit of leaving the dirty table rags in a heap next to the sink again, and Goro’s relieved at the slight return to normalcy that was shattered the day the topic was brought up.
On Amamiya’s sixty ninth day, Goro has him backed up against the wall, right hand dug into Amamiya’s shirt collar while the left is pulled back and ready to strike, when he realizes something.
He can kiss him.
And so he does.