Work Text:
.: gorgeous :.
ocean blue eyes
lookin' in mine
i feel like i might sink and drown and die
The last three days had been, in a word, weird.
Kaoru had, for the better part of the last five years, known exactly how to function in her world. She had done her best to keep everything as manageable as possible, despite the inevitable trouble that seemed to follow her—them?—him—everywhere. Then, three days ago, she uprooted the entirety of her existence in a haze of self-righteousness that Megumi had, generously, recontextualized as intuition. Really, really generously.
If she were to be honest with herself, Kaoru knew that this had been a long time coming despite her unwillingness to want to admit it to herself or anyone else. She had been—was still—in love with a man who treated her well, supported her in all things, and loved her in return. Unfortunately, for reasons increasingly incomprehensible to Kaoru, Kenshin just seemed to love his sadness a little bit more.
Shame is a strange bedfellow, but Kaoru was convinced that given time and compassion she would wrench Kenshin free of its alluring and masochistic appeal. She was a fixer, a lover, a caretaker of strays of the human and animal variety both; she was going to save him, damnit. But the harder she pulled the both of them towards the light, the more entrenched he became in his self-loathing. Shame became not just a bedfellow, but a full-time live-in romantic partner, and soon the bed had no room for Kaoru.
So here she was, that first Friday night as a single woman, mulling over the horrifying prospect of unlimited social opportunities when all she really, truly wanted was to go home and watch B-grade movies until she succumbed to an early sleep like most other Friday nights over the past several years. But there was no home to go to, just a spare bedroom in a house that no longer felt like hers. And there were questions to consider, important issues to process—What about Yahiko?—I need to find a place to live.—I literally just renewed my driver’s license and now I’ll have to go back to the DMV.
The only thing that was going to approximate a balm for both the insult and the injury was coffee.
----
Her extended foray in graduate school had made her well-known in most every independent coffee shop within a ten mile radius, and this was not an emotional state that Kaoru wanted to share with anyone she might even remotely know. So that’s how she found herself in the parking lot of a small strip mall, staring down the tiny coffee shop like it was a dangerous mirage. She drove by this shopping center on a fairly regular basis but had never known this place to exist. Seemingly, it had been conjured up by her intense desire for caffeinated anonymity and somehow made its way to Google Maps.
Whatever. The universe owed her this—and probably about a dozen other favors.
----
The place was a hipster’s dream. It was as if someone had asked the interior designer to create a smoking lounge set in a hobbit hole ensconced in an upper-class summer camp. Everything was made of dark wood; everything that couldn’t be made of wood was dark leather. She didn’t have to look at the walls to see if they were painted a forest green; she just knew. Her students often threw around the word aesthetic in an ironic sense—this place overly-qualified the sentiment and was probably referenced in its Urban Dictionary entry.
The coffee smelled good, at least.
----
Kaoru took a booth in the back. Normally, she’d reserve such important coffee shop real estate for people with friends, but she was in a mood and wanted space. Lots of it. Scattering her papers, books, and computer across the table she strived to create an environment of productivity even if all she ultimately did was stare blankly and stave off tiredness.
She found herself becoming dimly aware of the aura—and vocal cords—of the woman in the booth opposite the aisle. Kaoru poked at the cookie she ordered in a half-hearted attempt to engage in eating solid food and tried not to stare as she took in the state of the girl’s table, which was covered with more than a handful of glasses containing various, decidedly non-coffee, liquids.
“Sorry for all the yelling; I bet it’s hard to get all that work done. I’ll try to keep it down.”
Kaoru grimaced and blushed appropriately. “It’s not a library, don’t worry about it. Whatever it is, it looks way more fun than what I’m doing.” She gave the other girl a polite look meant to appease and end the conversation. It didn’t work.
“My friend is the bartender and I was just offering up my opinion on some new concoctions of his. You want to try?”
“Bartender?” Kaoru stared into the top of her latte, becoming more entrenched in her opinion that this was nothing more than a fever dream that she had absolutely no control over, that none of this was actually happening and she was actually asleep in her running car somewhere and breathing in the fumes.
“Oh yeah, at six the cocktail menu becomes available!” The girl grinned, read whatever there was to find in Kaoru’s facial expression, and then softened. “But they’ll still keep slinging coffee, too.”
For the first time, Kaoru made eye contact with the girl making her acquaintance. She really, really just wanted to be left alone to drown in her own confusion and self-pity but got the distinct impression that this woman had never in her life met a stranger. She had a friendly face, large eyes imbued with curiosity, and exuded positive energy. Kaoru smiled despite herself.
“My name is Misao. I used to work here a while back, so I know everyone who works here and most of the customers, too. You must be new.”
“Yeah, I actually had no idea this place existed until tonight. I just wanted a coffee shop that was open late.” She blinked at Misao’s continuing expectant look, which stretched on for a long moment. “Oh—oh, yeah, my name is Kaoru.”
Misao grinned. “It’s great to meet you!” And Kaoru felt like she meant it.
----
Kaoru had actually gotten more done than she had anticipated, benefitting from the kindness emanating from Misao, who had stuck to her word and was quietly working on her laptop. When one of them hit a stuck point and glanced around aimlessly, the other would feel it and make comforting eye contact. Kaoru felt an immediate, nonsensical, probably unhealthy kinship with the woman. Then again, the occasional warm smile was more social validation than she had gotten in the last three days combined.
So it wasn’t as jarring as it should have been when Misao seemed to pop up, like a prairie dog, on the other side of Kaoru’s booth sporting a smile that was both apologetic and beseeching. Wordlessly, she slid an index card across the table.
‘I’m so sorry—my ex just walked in with his new girlfriend, and my table was in their line of sight. Do you mind if I sit here with you for a bit?’
Kaoru knew, right then and there and apropos of nothing, that she would hide a body if Misao asked her to. What had Megumi called it—intuition?
‘Of course! I’m so, so sorry. That’s so awkward. Want me to key his car?’ Kaoru slid the index card back to Misao and lit up at the girl’s delighted giggle.
“I appreciate it, but damn, girl—who hurt you?” It was a teasing, loving question asked in a whisper.
“Men.” They shared a knowing look and nodded in solidarity. “Also, could they be any louder?” Before Misao had come to sit down with her, Kaoru was wondering why two people had to nearly yell at each other about their excitement for moving in together. It all made a sick, sadistic kind of sense now.
----
As the night progressed, Kaoru learned a few things about Misao: She was a few years younger than Kaoru, worked in accounting, was very excited about the prospect of a new dating partner in her life (preferably, one who appreciated the artistry of the film Midsommar, unlike someone), and had a strong penchant for craft beer. Accordingly, Kaoru shared about the breakup, her cat, her current housing predicament, and the folly of going to graduate school when she could have studied something profitable out of college—like accounting.
Eventually, Misao moved back to her own table, which allowed her to see the door and wave at everyone she knew who walked in—which, as promised, was nearly everyone. It was getting fairly busy then, most people imbibing while Kaoru sipped away at her third latte. Kaoru had never been to a coffee shop that allowed her to start a tab before and found she really liked a situation where she could tell a barista to “keep ‘em coming” like the jaded and exhausted student she was.
“Sorry, need to do this again.” Misao sat down across from Kaoru and didn’t bother to pitch her voice so only she could hear. Granted, it was loud in there, but it was almost as if Misao wanted whatever had provoked her to know that she was agitated.
“Welcome back. What’s going on? I’ve still got keys and an urge to destroy physical property.”
“I’d normally say yes, but don’t bother. Yukishiro is rich enough—he’d just leave the car here and go buy another one. You can’t get a rise out of him.” Misao rolled her eyes. “Must be nice, eh?”
“I can’t afford anything more than a studio apartment in a gross part of town, and this guy can just go Carvana himself a new ride from a vending machine tonight? That just makes me want to key it more. And maybe take out a few tires while I’m at it.” Kaoru was leaning in hard to anti-male tendencies she didn’t even know she had in her. Breakup songs were starting to make a lot more sense, now. She craned her neck to see the offending character, but the room was so full and dimly lit that it was impossible to make out one hipster from the next.
“He’s probably the reason you can’t afford anything other than a studio. He made his money in the most capitalist way possible.” Misao paused for dramatic effect. “He’s a landlord. He only rents out properties in the uber-wealthy parts of town, but you know what they say about trickle-down and all that.”
“We’re treading dangerously into sugar-in-the-gas-tank territory, Misao.”
“I can tell you’re new to the role of jaded bitch—that’s a myth, it won’t do much.”
They both laughed; Kaoru hadn’t felt this kind of genuine joy and camaraderie for a long time. But wait—
“Misao, how do you know that?”
She flashed Kaoru a knowing smile as they both collapsed into giggles again.
----
At some point in the evening, Misao had set a beer in front of Kaoru and she hadn’t looked back. Fully caffeinated and approximating tipsiness, Kaoru was having a good time following Misao around as she introduced Kaoru to everyone she knew. Misao attracted friendly people and had a knack for involving everyone in conversation, so the decidedly summer camp feel Kaoru had picked up on earlier was now apt in a much more pleasant way. Kaoru had been trapped in the perfectionistic, Type-A-Personality hell of graduate school for so long that she had forgotten that most people were usually affable. She had been trapped in her relationship and its requisite sadness for so long that she forgot that she could be affable, too.
Misao had left her side to go to the bathroom when it happened.
She heard a voice say something—she didn’t know what—and she was captivated by the strong, strange desire to hear that voice say more. It was not an accent she could readily identify; it sounded like a combination of several accents, potentially. Whatever the source, he was decidedly not from here. To her overwhelmed and mostly-drunk senses, it was the best sound she had ever heard. The voice had eyes—beautiful eyes, actually—and they were trained on her.
She had seen her own blue eyes staring back at her in the mirror every morning for the last thirty years. He didn’t have blue eyes. She was pretty sure Mediterranean coastlines had nothing on the color of his eyes. She’d be glad to drown in them if only he just never stopped talking.
Was he staring at her? Why was he staring at her? She stared back, unabashedly. She had seen beautiful men—up until a few days ago, she was partnered with one—but he was beautiful and carried himself with the aggressive aura of a man who knew what he wanted and stopped at nothing to go after it. It was not a trait she normally found attractive, but after several years of being in a relationship with a man who had convinced himself he deserved nothing, it was refreshing to see life on that particular planet.
“Kaoru, I see you’ve met Enishi Yukishiro.” Misao stepped in front of Kaoru, her tone artificially light but her eyes saying something akin to, ‘What the hell did I tell you?’
“Yes, she was about to tell me about her dissertation. I overheard her mention of it earlier.” He smirked, leaning off of his stool just so in order to regain eye contact with Kaoru. Oh, her awareness dimly chimed in. That must be why he was staring; he had asked her a question and it had gone completely unnoticed.
“Oh, you don’t really want to hear about that.” Kaoru wasn’t feigning modesty; she truly couldn’t fathom why anyone would want to hear about it. She was pretty sure her faculty committee didn’t want to hear about it, either.
“I’m drinking scotch alone in this bar on a Friday night. Clearly I’m not here to be amused. I’m merely curious.” He was the embodiment of disinterest and Kaoru felt the familiar and comfortable pull of wanting to do anything to get reinforcement via attention. The part of her that laid claim to her self-respect—the sober part—was dissociating, leaving Kaoru’s pain and insecurity to fend for itself in this situation.
“Curious about dissertations?”
“Yes, what brings you here tonight, Enishi?”
Both questions came at once. He answered neither for a long moment, draining his scotch and motioning for another one before turning to Kaoru.
“I have a doctorate in history; it’s an exercise in commiseration.” He pointedly ignored Misao and her question, handed the bartender a twenty dollar bill, and wrapped his hand around his refilled glass. Kaoru noticed that the bartender did not return with change, that Enishi had not expected or wanted change, and felt immediately overcome with anger, if anger also wanted to see that same hand roam across her body.
“Oh, really? Is it Dr. Yukishiro then? My apologies.” Kaoru smiled ruefully, locking eyes with Misao as she exaggeratedly whispered a Hail Mary before walking away with a gaze that said, ‘Good luck—I warned you.’
“Not at all. Those years were an indulgent whim. I work in real estate.” Kaoru wondered what kind of person finished a doctorate on an indulgent whim and she wanted, quite terribly, to find out.
“Oh, yes, Misao mentioned that. The real estate bit, I mean.”
He did not look like a person who laughed; she imagined the amused expression he gave her was the closest he ever got. “Oh, I bet she did.”
“How did you go from history to real estate?” Kaoru felt an allegiance to Misao and had no interest in their dislike for each other. However, as an academic who was dragging her heels through the last six months of her degree program, she did have a legitimate interest in the idea that she, too, could embark on a completely new career trajectory once it was over.
“I really enjoyed learning. As it turned out, I had no taste—or talent—for sharing that knowledge with eighteen year old children.”
Kaoru laughed at that—a genuine laugh, with no pretense of flirting or whatever it was the primal part of her brain was trying to engage in. “Yeah, I really thought academia was going to be more noble than it is. It feels like all I ever do is remind students to cite their sources and pray I don’t read an assignment egregious enough to warrant an academic integrity report.”
He tilted his glass towards her. “A toast to the plight of the underpaid adjunct professor.”
She touched her bottle to his glass and gave him a wry smile. “You make real estate sound better and better.”
“It pays the bills. It’s quiet. It’s completely self-reliant. I couldn’t recommend it more.”
After a beat, Kaoru’s sensical brain once again made itself scarce for more base considerations. “Where are you from originally?”
“Wherever the crude oil supply was most abundant at any particular time.” It was an evasive non-answer to her particular question, but it answered other questions she hadn’t thought to have—like where he found the investment capital to start a real estate business from scratch.
“There’s no crude oil supply in middle America, as far as I know.”
“My benefactors wanted to be rid of me and sent me to a boarding school in Jersey. From there I went to the University of Chicago, flitted about some academic appointments, and settled where I saw a need for land development.”
Kaoru’s mind leap-frogged between benefactors, boarding school, and the University of Chicago on what felt like an endless loop. Somehow, miraculously, the words that came out of her mouth made syntactical sense. “You must’ve really pissed them off if their solution was to relegate you to New Jersey.”
She was wrong; he could laugh, and he did at that. “You’re not inaccurate. The school also had a reputation for turning a blind eye to the idiosyncrasies of the children of mob bosses and other unsavory multibillionaires. So it was convenient on multiple counts.”
Kaoru thought back to the tall tales of the guys she met in bars in her early twenties, but Enishi spoke with a confidence and sincerity that convinced her, in her bones, that he was in no way exaggerating. He didn’t even appear to be trying to show off.
“I went to barely accredited public schools. I can’t even imagine your academic experience.” Kaoru tried to keep her awe in check and was only minimally successful. She was no stranger to imposter syndrome, but this was not even a fabrication of the most self-deprecating corners of her mind. This man was from a completely different world, in more ways than one, and she was fascinated on an anthropological level. That he was beautiful to look at and listen to just enhanced her curiosity. Was this what Margaret Mead felt like in Bali?
“Eh. The most educational moment I had there was in learning about the intricacies of the social hierarchy of the Ukranian crime syndicate.” He shrugged, and motioned to the bartender for another glass of scotch. Kaoru just stared and noted that—again—he paid in cash. What landlord carried that much cash?
“My roommate came back from holiday break one year having been beaten half to death with a baseball bat in Kyiv. He kissed the wrong girl, and hell broke loose.”
Ukranian crime syndicate. Her mind couldn’t let go of that, but blessedly her tongue was several steps ahead. “I’m decently familiar with the concept of restorative justice in the adolescent male.”
“Then it sounds like your academic background is on par with mine.”
Was he trying to flatter her? Was that thickly veiled sarcasm? She found that she could not understand if he was genuinely interested in her and what she had to say or if this was a protracted social experiment designed to debase her. She didn’t think she was that drunk—was this how he intentionally interacted with everyone?
“I didn’t answer your friend’s question before,” he started, eyeing her intently. “This bar is within walking distance of a home I’m renovating. What brings you here?”
“Google.”
“Come again?”
“Google. Also, why did you say it like that? I would argue I belong here more than you.” She bristled, like someone who wasn’t sure if she had put her own foot in her mouth or if she had reserved it for kicking him in the shins.
“Misao doesn’t make a habit of parading around every new patron like a show-and-tell project.” He shrugged—was it possible to shrug in a calculated way? If it was, he had done so. Any warmth and familiarity from their banter was quickly fading. He was sizing her up and she was dimly trying to do the same, but he could function better on much more scotch than she could with the few drinks she’d had.
“I wanted a coffee shop that was open late.” He looked at her like he didn’t believe her and, though she knew her truth, she could understand how preposterous it sounded to have aimlessly wandered into a random coffee shop in a town full of them. “To get some work done.”
“And has it been a productive evening?” The glint in his eyes gave the impression of a double entendre but she wasn’t sure what base that idea had in reality. Wishful thinking? Misao’s cautionary tale roared in her head and Kaoru felt helpless. All at once, everything came crashing into horrendous focus and then boiled down to the reality that she was absolutely terrified—of the future, of what she just left behind, of how sad and existentially overwhelmed she felt, of never feeling desirable to anyone again… of being made to feel even smaller by a man so gorgeous and out of her league they weren’t even playing the same sport.
Kaoru didn’t know how to date, or flirt, or play games. But maybe it was time to learn.
The bartender shouted for last call. She had closed out the bar with this guy. Yes, it was only ten at night. Yes, the bar was also a coffee shop. Yes, she had every intention of going back to her guest bedroom and crying herself to sleep. But damnit, she had closed out a bar for the first time since she stumbled into her relationship with Kenshin. She had successfully-ish maintained a conversation with an attractive male stranger. She made a friend. These were the first of the firsts she was going to experience in this new era of her life, an indication that there was, somehow, life after Kenshin.
“You tell me—was it a productive evening?” She laid the implication on thickly. Are you going to give me your number, or not? She wasn’t even sure she wanted it as much as she just wanted to figure him out, wanted to continue practicing this weird pseudo-mating ritual with a person she didn’t actually ever have to see again. Besides this blip in the cosmos, their social circles would never have need to intersect. It was blessedly perfect.
“I’m meeting with two of my associates tomorrow at the lobby bar at the Fairmont. Six thirty.” Kaoru blinked; the only part of this response that made sense to her was that, yes, he seemed like he would belong more at the Fairmont than he ever did in this place.
“They’re also academics. You’ll like them. In this town, there are so few truly intelligent people that it’s shameful not to introduce them to each other.”
Kaoru tilted her head to one side, internally debating whether this was evidence of some level of fondness or if he was taking one last opportunity to come off as an insufferable prick.
With a nod and a knowing glance, he left her to her musings and exited the building without so much as exchanging phone numbers.
“Holy shit, Kaoru.” Her reverie was broken by Misao, who came up beside her and grabbed her hand.
“Misao, I’m so sorry—I don’t even know what I was thinking, I just kind of got… swept away.”
“Are you gonna go?” She seemed almost mystified.
“No!” It was a little too vehement a reaction. “Maybe? I don’t know. I don’t think I should, right? You told me yourself, he’s a dick.”
“If ever there was a woman who could humble him, you might be it. I knew there was something special about you.” She rummaged through her purse and pulled out her phone. “Gimme your number. Either we’re going to hang out tomorrow night, or you’re going to text me updates about how this all goes down because I am intrigued.”
Whatever happened tomorrow, Kaoru stumbled into the cool night air laughing with Misao and knew that the universe owed her one less favor than it had before.