Chapter Text
If there’s one thing Obi’s sure of, it’s that this is Hisame’s fault.
Not the lockdown– though honestly, he wouldn’t put it past the bastard if it meant having things go his way– but everything else. This fucking party. That stupid fake dating plan. The kiss.
He scrapes a hand down his face. This whole ‘day trip’ is turning right into a disaster weekend and god, if he had the ability to fly right back to DC right now, he would. But instead he’s trapped here, in the middle of the New Mexican desert, in the Smart House of some elusive and shady billionaire. He must have kicked a puppy in the last life– no, bags of puppies– if the universe is exerting this level of karmic violence on him.
His back hits the door. He needs like, five minutes. Just until he learns how to breathe again.
Which he’s not going to do, if he keeps replaying that kiss in his head. You know, the only thing he’s been doing for the past twenty-four hours, including breakfast, where Rougis just stared at him with that grin on his face. Like he knew. Like he could somehow see every last mortifying second of his dreams last night, and thought it was funny.
Doc’s informed him this whole pandemic thing is serious, that there’s stuff with r’s and knots and things being close to two. He is tangentially aware aware of how a logarithmic scale works, and he’d never wish anyone actually sick, but– if Hisame could just shuffle off this mortal coil in the next few hours, that would really pluck one of the bigger monkeys off his back.
He takes a deep breath– more like a deep hiccup, honestly– and lets the tension fall out of him. It’s fine. He doesn’t have time to stand here and freestyle mental scream. He has to work on getting them back home. Which means getting this Rugilia guy to sign off on funding.
And then he can hop on a plane, pandemic permitting, and get instantly fired for kissing his boss’s girlfriend. Bingo bango bongo. Job well done.
God, it would be just great if he could resist fucking up just one good thing in his life. At least Ryuu will still write.
Right, no time for catastrophizing. They’ve got a billionaire to woo. Or something.
He swings open his door– no, it’s her door, but also his, because switching rooms seemed prudent when the guy holding all the keys spent a night trying to get Doc alone in a garden– only to run into Doc. Literally. Right there. In her borrowed pajamas.
Whatever intel Rugilia had on her was clearly not as good as his, since Doc is really a matching pajama sets kind of girl, and not–
Well, after living with her for three years, Obi can firmly say he’s never seen a cotton teddy. At least, not on Doc herself.
He could get used to it, though.
“Oh, Obi!” She blinks, taking a step back. Adjusts her glasses, too. Tugs at a hem that is not going to get any lower, no matter how much she tries. “I was just coming to see you.”
“Ah.” He scrubs at the back of his head; it gives him as good an excuse as any for looking anywhere else. If he gives her more than a glance he’ll start counting freckles, and well– they have separate rooms for a reason “Me, too. I was thinking–”
“The room thing isn’t going to work.”
He blinks. Blinks again.
“I mean…” Her cheeks bloom to a pale pink, the start of what’s sure to be a painful blush. “We should be sharing a room.”
He hopes there’s an actual, medical doctor in this group of useless socialites, because he’s about to have a cardiac event, and Doc doesn’t have the right alphabet soup to handle that kind of thing. “UH.”
“No, no!” She waves her hands, and god, they’re so close her fingertips practically brush his chest. Which wouldn’t be a problem if she didn’t follow up with, “I just mean, we should be sleeping together.”
Oh, it’s too late for medical intervention now; he’s already dead. “Ah, Doc–?”
“I just mean,” she yelps, fingers fluttering nervously between them, making it real hard to not look down and get some solid ideas about her cup size. “I know we switched rooms. For safety.”
“For safety,” he echoes dumbly, because that’s the level of thought he’s at right now. Or at least, the level he can safely be at without risking a real containment breach on all the things he’s not allowed to think when Doc’s around, wearing almost nothing, and telling him they need to put their bodies in close, horizontal proximity.
“But if we’re trying to be a couple, I don’t think…” Her tongue pokes out, pink and spongy, and draws his eyes right to the lips he definitely shouldn’t be staring at. “Well, I just don’t think that we– that you– that it looks–?”
“You mean,” he says, so slow, like she’s a rogue possum and he’s animal control, “I don’t look like the kind of guy who wouldn’t be taking advantage of a king bed and silk sheets?”
“Ah…” She’s the one that blinks now, eyelashes fluttering against red cheeks that are begging him to take their temperature. “Not– not the way you were, um…”
She lets the implication hand in the air, and god, fuck Rougis for putting that fucking idea in his head, for even allowing the memory of her against him like that, sighing into his mouth–
“I thought we were supposed to be keeping it on the down low,” he says, leaning in with a grin. “Since you’re slumming it with the help.”
Her mouth goes from sexy to scowl. “I’m not slumming it with anyone.”
“Right, right, I know that,” he assure her, “but Rugilia–”
“No.” It’s loud enough that he flinches, because fuck, he can pretend to be normal all the live long day, but the second a voice raises– “Oh, Obi, sorry, I didn’t–” her palm wraps warmly around his arm, thumb rubbing over the cotton of his sleeve– “I just meant that I’m not– it’s not– being with you isn’t slumming.”
It’s all a little much having her so close, having so little of her be clothed, and smell so good as she does. She must have taken a shower or something before rushing out here to make herself his own personal problem. In any case, all he manages is a half-dubious, half-distracted hum.
“Besides,” she adds, one of her eyebrows rounding in a teasing arch, “as far as I was aware, doctors and lawyers were considered the same pay grade.”
Obi coughs on his own spit. “I’m not a lawyer.”
“And I’m not that kind of doctor.” Her arms fold neatly– distractingly– beneath her breasts, A cups giving off a distinctly B-cup vibe. “But Eisetsu doesn’t know that. I told him I was here about a vaccine, and you said you were here to keep me out of trouble.”
And with a man used to dealing with pharma rather than the academic side, the legal representation would be implied. Obi scrubs a hand through his hair, staring down at his silk pajama set, and tries to discern what about him says ‘went to a four-year college,’ let alone law school. “Me?”
“Well…” She really shouldn’t look at him like that, all coy from the corner of those big eyes, if he can’t give her a repeat performance of last night. “It only makes sense. I mean, who else does Zen hang out with.”
Now, that– that gives him pause. Mitsuhide, lawyer. Kiki, lawyer. Doc, doctor, but Not That Kind. Him–
“Fuck me,” he breathes, “that actually makes sense.”
“It does,” she agrees primly. “I’d thought the keeping it quiet angle was more along the line of, uh, conflict of interest, rather than, um, other reasons.”
Other reasons, like that half of his other aliases were on No Fly lists. “Conflict of Interest?”
“Well, um…” Her flush is brighter this time, spilling over her cheeks and down her neck, flirting with the lace edging her neckline, and he certainly is feeling both conflicted and interested about how far it might go– “There’s probably fraternization rules.”
He blinks. “Fraternization?”
“You know,” she says slowly, taking a step back, right into the doorway of her– his room. “That employees can’t date or, um–” her skin’s barely a shade lighter than her hair– “do other stuff. At least without clearing with HR first.”
It shouldn’t be so cute that a woman with a doctorate can’t say sex, but this is it, this is his type now.
“Other stuff, hm?” He steps close, their toes sharing the jamb. So close that when she sucks in a breath, shallow and quick, her chest brushes against his. “If we’re supposed to be fraternizing in this room tonight, a few things are going to have to change.”
She shuffles back, an arm’s length–one of hers, at least– toes curling on the carpet. “O-oh?”
The thing is: Obi can’t resist a good joke. It’s why he works so good with the boss-man; no matter how transparent, how dumb it is, all his teasing crawls right under that lily-white thin skin of his and sends Wisteria climbing right up the wall. It’s satisfying.
So when he closes the gap between them with a single long stride, he expects Doc to just– tell him to quit it. Yelp maybe. Slap his chest. Scold him, if he’s lucky.
But instead she just peers up at him, chest quivering, and doesn’t get the joke. By the way she’s looking at him, she–
Ah, well, it doesn’t look like she minds overly much either. Which is going to make this Not Funny real quick in a southerly direction.
Strange, he doesn’t feel much like laughing either.
“The bed.” His hips guide her back a step, then two. “For one.”
She really needs to stop him, to put her foot down, to really get it through to the parts of him below the belt that she’s not interested in bringing some realism to this little show they’re putting on.
Instead, she lets him herd her four more steps back, body following every slow, rolling suggestion of his. “Bed?”
“Yeah.” Her knees hit the edge of the mattress– well, considering how tall these beds are, her waist. She wobbles, hands bracing on his chest. “We need to get this bed messy.”
Her breath sighs into the air between them, eyes so round, so dark, and–
She realizes what he’s about to do five seconds too late. “Obi, n–!”
Feathers fly everywhere. Damn, this Rugilia guy really did spare no expense.
There’s a long, quiet moment, Shirayuki staring up at him with confusion and betrayal warring in her eyes, and she– she laughs. It’s all the warning he gets before he’s blind-sided, pillow knocking him to his knees, and god, she’s going to regret starting a fight with–
Tap tap. Tap tap.
They both freeze, staring at one another. That was on the door. Her door. No, his door.
“It’s Eisetsu,” comes the soft voice through it. “Can we talk?”