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The exhaustion wears so heavy on his limbs it’s like a thick layer of fuzziness pressed into his body. His head is so light it might just float away, yet his eyelids are like lead, wanting so badly to just droop and fall back into the warm, gentle flow of rest awaiting him…
“NYO SLACKING OFF! If you can’t even take responsibility for the messes you made in a darn kitchen, how are you going to survive a day in the real world, you nyo good, lazy, good-for-nyothing LAYABOUT!”
He jolts upwards so fast he almost hits his head on a cabinet, as the voice rakes over his ears for the umpteenth time. He feels the long bandage on his leg creak and groan with the sudden movement, the wound starting to faintly sting again. Several hours had passed when Kutsuki-san came into the kitchen for a snack, and several hours have passed since then. If he were to guess… maybe it’s 4am? Time no longer flows, but feels like a continual drag, something he’s aware of mentally going on somewhere in the distance. But not here, the clock outside, just outside, the kitchen he’s been confined to.
He thought he’d get let off when he’d scrubbed all the darn cabinets, but the weird not-Nyanus-anymore had met his plea with a sneer, and pointed down at the floor below. So now his trousers are chafing his knees as he kneels down on the floor, devoting himself to the monotonous, hazy process of scrubbing the tiles. Scrubbing, scrubbing scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing, motions slower, the effort seeping from his body, yelling, more frenzied scrubbing.
And then he starts to hear it.
Suddenly, something in his tired mind flashes. A desperate grasping for any kind of respite, the kind done by someone backed into a corner and thoroughly run ragged. His mind starts to wander, not off to sleep, but into thoughts. Suddenly, it feels like there’s another person in the room, not Kutsuki-san, not that damned cat, not even someone to save him, like Himari. No, he envisions this person taller, more well-put together, a sneer gracing her teal-painted lips.
“Is that really the best you can do, Okabe?”
He swallows, his heart beat pulsing. He knows there’s no one there, but part of him wants there to be so badly, so he lets himself keep going with the train of thought.
So, that shadow behind him looms closer.
“Frankly, it’s pathetic. A comedian, once worthy of even my attention, reduced to a lowly, snivelling dish boy.”
A small, pitiful sound escapes from his mouth, a bead of sweat going down his neck. He forces his aching limbs to scrub faster, harder. He doesn’t want her to leave, the desperate fantasies of his brain taking more and more shape, as his exhausted mind practically falls into them.
He envisions her taking a step forwards, two, the resounding clicks of her heels against the tiles. (She doesn’t slip on the wet floor, like he probably would, because she’s elegant like that.)
He hears the cat yell at him again, and he shrieks a little, but as the mind processes the words, they’re re-processed, reformed into a more sultry, melodious voice.
“You’ve been scrubbing at the same point for the past few minutes, Okabe. Reduced to the dregs of lowly labour, and yet you still find a way to be disappointing. Perhaps you aren’t worth me paying attention to, after all…”
“O-Ogasawara-san, please…” The quiet words rustle out of his throat, jolted to attention for a second as he realises he said it out loud, the quietness of the kitchen ringing all the more louder. Thankfully the cat didn’t notice, but a sheepishness prickles in his limbs, his eyes darting around.
After a few moments of shifting forward awkwardly, he finds a new spot, and lets himself sink back fully into the thoughts, until enough time has passed for them to flow naturally and shamelessly to him again.
“Hm.” He hears her voice, and for her it’s something close to approval, and that’s good enough for him.
His limbs feel like they’re burning, flickers of embers erupting within them every time he moves, yet his head feels like a pool of water, waves sloshing resoundingly within it. Body weightless, and yet a heavy stone simultaneously, all the worst feelings of both. There’s the faint drummings of a headache in the back of his skull, and it all makes him desperately flee to any visage of her voice. Say something again, he begs, anything, please.
She, deliciously cruel, looking down on him, does not say anything at first. If his thoughts were guiding, puppeteering her from behind the curtain at first, she’s breaking free, everything he knows about her (particularly from the past few days) forming into a more natural flowing imitation of her. It’s still a fantasy of his thoughts, and yet somehow she’s taking on her own words, writing her own parts in the script. He shifts forward again, making his scrubbings longer, covering more ground with each one.
“You’re running out of soap.” Her voice rings out. “Go get more.”
“R-Right!” He cries out, almost tripping over the bucket of water he was using in the process. But he manages not to. Wicked.
As he lathers more soap onto the sponge, he can feel her eyes burning into the back of his neck. She’s standing tall, firm, unperturbed, as he accidentally dribbles sponge water onto his trouser leg.
“A nyo good mess-”
“A mess,” Her voice takes over, again, “How on earth did you ever have your life in order enough to perform on Yume TV, when you stumble around like a newborn foal?”
It’s all things his brain has said to him before, that cat has said to him before in sentiment, biting and unpleasant. But from her, it zips adrenaline through his limbs. The pulse of his heart beating faster, faster, blood rushing to his face. He doesn’t know how to explain it, the way it amps him up rather than deflates him, but it’s way too early in the morning for him to ever hope to do so anyways.
He practically falls to the ground as he resumes his original position, one knee getting soggy when it falls on a place he’s already scrubbed, pulling it away with a quick yank. For a split second he wonders if Ogasawara-san is here, where Shiraki-san is, but quickly discards that thought from the fantasy as unnecessary.
She steps closer to him. Closer, closer, until he can feel her hovering right behind him, swears he can feel the shadow she casts over his hunched body, even if he can’t see it.
“Hiroshi.” She says, and he almost lets out a stuttered gasp in response. The use of his first name, but not out of friendship or familiarity, but dominance, grasping beyond his family name to address him, take hold of him specifically. The moment is theirs, and she is the one reigning over it.
He has to bite his lip to stifle her name.
And then, her hand is pressing into his back. Through the layers of his jacket, through his shirt, the touch echoing through the fabric until it graciously reaches his skin. Her palm, pressed down, the fingers splaying outwards. It’s not really happening, but as he focuses his mind on the hovering spot, really envisions the weight of her hand, the more he can feel the ghost of its form against his skin. The more desperately he imagines her, the more tangible she feels.
He shifts forwards to scrub at a new spot, and she follows elegantly. Fingers trickling up to his collar.
He swallows. Pleads, silently. Exhausted eyes wide open, body tense in anticipation.
She toys around it, skimming her fingertips around the edge of it. He remains in his original place, obedient, in the hopes that she’ll give him more. When he has to move again to be able to clean more of the floor, instead of shifting forwards, he turns, closer to the side she’s on.
Her fingers brush against his neck.
He lets out a shrill cry, muffling himself half way through.
“What’s with the noises, hm? Utterly pitiful… in an almost cute way.” The chiming of laughter begins to fill her throat, a gentler version of that laugh he heard during that one dinner, more akin to the one she usually does on her weather show, oh god, her laugh…
Her hand trickles up his neck, until it hits the bottom of his scalp, curling easily through the strands of his hair. His face flushes darker still, the inside of his shirt having a stifling warmth.
“Perhaps, once we get out of here, I’ll employ you for this. Forced to scrub my dishes, my floors, my cabinets, all day, every day, in hopes of getting even a slither of my attention. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
Half-delirious from sleep deprivation he nods, eagerly.
And that’s the right answer, because her hand starts to navigate higher, fingertips following the curl of his skull upwards. Until her hand is splayed out, resting on the back of his head. He can hear his breath, loud, the pounding in his ears, as she fixes his gaze upon him fully. He scrubs, as fervently as when the cat first caught him and forced him to, but that’s an eternity away from him now.
Her grasp starts to tighten, firm on his scalp.
“On your hands and knees… and it wouldn’t matter how tired you’d be. Because the way I’d treat you… this night would seem merciful in comparison.”
“Oh g-god”, he gasps out, his words spilling out into the air. “O-Ogasawara-san.”
And she tips her head back, room erupting with the full force of her wondrous laughter.
=====
6am comes, and he’s finally released. The floor is practically sparkling, his fingers numb. Maybe it’s because it’s when he often (sometimes) gets up, but with the hour a greater clarity, energy, fills his body, as he’s finally able to look at the clock. The fuzziness lingers, but it has receded to the edges of his mind, rather than pressing into every part of it.
He stumbles out, not sure what even to do, except to get away from that damned, good-for-nothing, asshole, no-good (did he say that already?) cat. The memories of what he’d been thinking about, vividly, in the hours before come back to him. He tucks them quietly away back in his mind, to be replayed over and over when he has some private, alone time. Then, he practically throws open the door of the cafeteria after his body stumbles into it.
And on the other side of it, just as the elevator doors close behind her, is Ogasawara-san.
He blinks. Stares for a second, mouth slightly agape. Before his body propels himself forward to follow after her.