SLACKJAW

The office snickers in your mind. In reality, it’s near-empty considering most of Public Safety had fucked off for most of the day. Today’s mission involved all hands on deck, and for once, Makima was generous. Despite this, you stayed along with Aki, invading his space in his own office. He doesn’t know why. When he looks at you, his knuckles blanch, but his lips barely part, flickering at the corners.

“Focus on your work.” His command lands with all the affection of a slammed door. “Reports aren’t gonna write themselves.”

“I’m done,” you snort. You’re tired of papers, the staleness of the office. Even the smell of toner is starting to poison your sinuses, you think. 

“Then why are you still here?” he snaps. You raise a brow.

“What’s crawled up your ass, Captain? You should be thankful I even decided to help with the paperwork.”

“I didn’t need your help,” he scoffs.

“Oh, right. You would’ve done it all by yourself because you’re more than willing to do anything Makima says. You’re basically her bitch.”

You toss your head toward the window and watch the sun lower through the sad office glass. The orange rays are already getting obscured by every skyscraper. You blink back at him and find his cheeks pink, teeth gritted for a rebuttal. You beat him to it before he opens his mouth.

“It’s not a crime to want approval. You shouldn’t make it everyone else’s problem, though.” You let the words marinate in the air. He clicks his tongue with irritation.

Aki sets his coffee down with mechanical care, then aligns the rim to the edge of his paperwork before looking at you again. His eyes are bleak, almost nuclear in their concentration.

“You’re insubordinate,” he says flatly.

“So fire me.” You lean back until your chair shrieks, stretching your arms out. “Or are you so desperate for company?”

Aki’s jaw spasms. You want to see if he’ll punch something. Instead, he withdraws into silence like he always does. Most people would drop it. You make it an art to keep poking, to see how far a man like him can bend before he breaks.

You watch him make three passes through the room, never facing you head-on. He collates, scans, scans again, page edges bristling. It’s thrilling how easy it is to set his nerves singing. You start narrating his steps in your head, imagining what could force that mask to slip. The nascent thought is seductive: if you keep prodding, maybe he’ll shatter into a spectacular mess.

“Do you want to fire me?” Your voice is modulated. Cruelty only simmers under the surface, but you decide to be more merciful about it. You know you’re poking the bear. You’ve mastered the art of it ever since you joined Public Safety.

“I’m not HR,” Aki mutters bitterly and waves you off. “Just go home. Or do whatever you want.”

You do. You stand, spine stretching, and make a leisurely show of collecting your papers in a heap, ignoring the stutter in his gaze as you approach his desk. Aki lifts his eyes only when he can’t avoid them, and you can feel the challenge there, a simmer he refuses to name. You plant your palms on Aki’s table, leaning in just so. 

If you were at a bar with him, had a shot or two, you’d probably be showing off, cleavage on display just to taunt him. Being around him for the past ten hours or so forced you to behave for most of the day. Your necktie is loosened against your collar, along with an open button. Casual enough, not too indecent, you think. The way his eyes scan your form says otherwise. It almost makes you giddy.

“You’re lousy at hiding it, you know,” you murmur.

“Hiding what?” 

“You want something to take the edge off.” The corner of your mouth quirks. “You just don’t want to admit it.”

Aki’s eyes go sharp, slitting, but he doesn’t move away. If anything, the tension ratchets between your bodies.

“I want you to do your job.”

Your thumb finds the seam of his paperwork and deliberately cocks the neat stack askew. “You sure?” you ask. “There’s more you could ask of me, Captain. Unless you’re scared you’ll owe me.”

Now the mask fractures. Ever so slightly, Aki’s composure shifts: a flare in the nostrils, a dilation in the pupils. His hands curl around the mug. You nearly expect it to shatter in his grip.

“If you’re done with your work, you can go,” he says blankly.

There are a dozen ways you can escalate, and you pick the meanest, most juvenile: sliding into his space, a little too close, until the surface tension of your nearness draws a subtle, involuntary recoil in his posture.

“I could go home, sure,” you murmur, following him, “or I could stay until you tell me to my face what you want.”

Aki’s mouth stiffens. You can see his shoulders tense from behind. For a moment, it seems he’ll try the silent treatment again, choke you with indifference, but then his gaze returns to yours, unwavering, and for once he doesn’t bother to look away.

“I don’t want anything,” he says, voice stripped raw. You know that his walls are crumbling, but his stare remains calculated. It’s something you’ve always admired about him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

You snort. “Seriously? You’re more pent up than a horned-up priest. It’s sad, honestly.”

It scrapes the nerve. He puts his pen down with an audible click and stands, looming by the desk corner, his height a failed intimidation since you remain unmoved. The gap between your bodies is just a dare now.

“What do you want from me, huh?” he hisses. “To see how far you can push me, how much you can get away with?”

You smile, slow and indulgent, chin tipped up. You take a step closer to him.

“I want you to stop pretending you’re not attracted to me,” you drawl. The gamble lands heavy between you, and for a moment, even the clack of traffic outside seems to hush. You think that if it weren’t for the air conditioning blasting, you might be able to hear the erratic rhythm of his heartbeat.

His gaze is brighter than the sun, somehow. Hot in anger, though there’s a warmth in his blue iris that gives away something else. He’s never easy to read, but you know he’s affected, at least a little bit. Something about this knowledge makes your pulse behave badly. You’ve always wanted to know what he’d be like without all the protocol. How much of himself he’d let in if you shone a light on him.

“I’m not,” he seethes, voice thin, “attracted to you. You’re fucking delusional.”

You make a sound that’s not quite a laugh. More like a scoff, but it’s cruel regardless. 

“That’s a good answer to save face. You really care about this job, huh?”

He doesn’t answer. He still won’t look at you.

“It’s too bad, though. What if I said I wanted you too, Captain?”

He flinches at that. It’s the most overt form of emotion he’s shown in regards to you, which makes you drunk on possibility. The silence is thick as marrow.

“You don’t seem to have many attachments,” you continue, your voice low and lilting. “Disciplined to a fault. It’s admirable, really. But it’s also extremely lonely. I’ve noticed that about you.”

He sets his jaw, but he’s shaky on the next inhale. You catch his eyes, keep them with an honest edge. He rolls his eyes.

“What, you’re trying to seduce me now? Your superior?”

“I’m suggesting that you should take a break, Hayakawa.” You murmur it right at the hollow of his tension, close enough that he could count your lashes if he tried. You lean in, reckless, feeling the heat off his face  — the way he’s holding still, even as his breath has gone ragged.

“I don’t need a break,” he asserts. The softness in his gait says otherwise. His lack of resistance surprises you, given the tension. You settle a hand on his chest and lift yourself to brush his ear.

“C’mon. You scared of me?”

His laugh is short, dry bark. “Worried you’ll get yourself in trouble,” he rasps, “Or is that what you want?”

You let your lips skim the place right above his shirt collar, intoxicating yourself on the clean musk of his scent. “You can punish me if I do, Hayakawa-san.”

You tug at his tie the same time you press your mouth chastely to his jaw. The restraint in him snaps. In a flash, Aki’s mouth is on yours. His hand is rough at your jaw as he angles it, as if he’s terrified you’ll peel away if not properly secured. The force of his mouth is almost an apology for how long he’s starved himself of this, and you let yourself taste the bitterness from his morning coffee, now gone cold on his tongue. You sink your teeth into his lower lip and feel the full-body shudder it drags from him.

Your hands tangle in his shirt, yanking him in by the collar so hard it creases the fabric. His control is gone, emotional architecture razed, and a gasp muffles against your neck. You brace against the desk, shoving his paperwork to the floor with a sweep and vault yourself onto the edge. His thigh slots intuitively between yours.

He kisses you the way he hates, with all that pent-up vitriol from his teeth-grinding and his sleeplessness. The pragmatic rhythm of routine replaced with something elemental. You feel in the tremble of his hands.

“You’re making a mess,” you tease, breaking away just long enough to see the raw cut of his cheekbones and the shaken state of his tie. “Not very professional.”

“Not on duty,” he breathes, already pressing greedy, open kisses to your throat, the curve of your jaw. Frantic with teeth. You choke out a laugh, ecstatic.

The slapdash pile of files hits the floor beside your heel. You don’t stop him as his hands chase up your thighs, clumsily rucking your skirt up. There’s no mistaking how badly he wanted an excuse to fold you in half and wreck the careful increment of his routine right here in the middle of the drab, yellow-lit office.

Aki makes a low noise as he takes inventory of the territory you’re offering him, all boundaries warped. His tongue flicks at the line of your jaw, and one palm traces the frantic shiver under your shirt, flat against your ribs.

“You love baiting me,” he accuses, and you think maybe you do, if this is the result.

It goes wet and heated fast. You hook your ankles behind his knees, pulling him against the press of you, grinding his thigh where you want friction most. He bites the thin skin under your earlobe until you gasp, and then he soothes it with his tongue. 

“I could have you written up for this,” you pant, head tipping back as his mouth works its way lower.

“You’d have to report it first. You’re the one who put your mouth on me.” He rasps against your collarbone, and the simmering violence in it practically splits you in two.

His thumb traces circles on the inside of your knee, just shy of where you’re aching most, and you squirm, needy, until he props your leg onto his hip. He angles his hand up, testing how wet you are over your underwear.

“I knew you wanted it,” he grits out. “From the beginning. Showing off in front of everyone. Acting innocent. Figured you were bluffing, but you’re just begging for it, huh?”

“Says the most repressed person I’ve ever met,” you mutter, and then you sob a laugh because he’s already obliging, shifting cotton aside and pressing the heel of his palm right up against your clit, tight and good and not enough.

You arch. Fluorescent lights fracture against the ceiling. You drag him by the tie so your mouths meet, teeth clanging. You wonder if anyone would come in right now, whether the frosted glass in the door is enough to blur out what you’re doing, and then you decide you don’t give a shit, because Aki scissoring his fingers inside you like this is worth every single second of exposure.

He works you methodically, alternating the pressure on your clit. You want him to claw his way into you, make a home of your body. You shiver as his hips subtly grind against your own. When you gasp into the sharp bones of his shoulder, he crooks his fingers just so, and you’re shaking, desperate not to come apart too quickly.

“You like it here?” His voice is a razor near your ear. “Making a mess in my office?”

You roll your hips shamelessly onto his hand, chasing the high and whimpering.

You answer with your body rather than words; the slumping roll of your hips, the grind that smears desperate heat across his knuckles. Aki doesn’t let up, won’t accept a single inch of slack between you. Every movement says, This is what you wanted. This is what happens when you taunt me. A slipstream of obscene noises spills from where his fingers disappear beneath your skirt, the squelch and catch only punctuated by the sound of his breath in your ear.

He slides a second finger in, stretching you in exquisite tandem with callused pressure at your clit. It’s almost violent, the way he moves. Clockwork tight. You feel yourself crest helplessly, so close you could claw yourself apart. Your nails leave neat little crescents in his shirt, and you know he’ll find them later, tiny punctures in his pressed exterior.

“Shit, you’re soaking my fucking hand–”

“Aki,” you gasp, and he flinches. His name sounds good on your tongue, with none of the barbs you usually lace through your voice. You meet his eyes, and in them is a scorched, hungry wonder. He’s transfixed, like he wants to memorize the exact cadence of your falling apart.

“Say it again,” he mutters. 

Instead, you whimper it: “Aki — fuck, Aki — please.”

That breaks him. He captures your mouth, swallowing your moans as his hand doubles its rhythm. You ride his palm, starving for friction until your orgasm detonates.

You clamp down around him with a sharp gasp, and suddenly you’re arching off the desk. You never heard yourself make a sound like that before, and by the look of awe on his face, neither has he.

It would be perfect to go limp, to bask. But Aki doesn’t give you time. He yanks you upright, arms steel-hard in their grip, and pivots to press you spine-first against the bookshelf, scattering records and training manuals to the floor. His hips are flush against your own, and you feel the punishing line of his cock underneath his pants, rutting against you in a way that’s as angry as it is needy.

Your hands fumble at his belt with zero finesse, managing to drag the zipper down just enough to free him. He’s hard and angry and leaking in your palm, and you can’t resist stroking him, just for the smug jolt it sends through his frame. He nips your lower lip in retaliation, dragging your wrist away to pin it above your head with one twist of his hand.

“Don’t – wait –”

“What,” you huff, impatient.

“We can’t – I don’t have a condom, you fucking idiot–”

“I don’t care.”

He scowls, but does nothing as you hike your skirt higher and grasp his dick, leading it towards you until it slides home in one bruising thrust. He chokes out, his hips slamming yours, grinding you into the splintering wood of the shelf. There’s no time for gentleness.

“Jesus,” he grits out. “You feel—”

You gasp, the air gone from your lungs with the force of it. A brutal, beautiful fullness, far thicker than you’d braced for, and you struggle against the hold that pins your wrist overhead, trying to reclaim some modicum of control. To grab at him. But Aki’s got your entire center of gravity in his palm and a knee anchoring you open, and when he reels back to thrust again, your vision whites out at the edges. 

You feel the head of his cock batter your sweet spot, relentless. He doesn’t pace himself, doesn’t try for finesse: the rhythm is punishing, jackhammer desperate, Captain Hayakawa forcibly reacquainting himself with the animal disasters he’s hidden inside of him.

“God, you’re tight,” he mutters, voice so unlike his normal register you barely process that it’s him. “So fucking—” He doesn’t finish, bites off his own words as your free hand yanks his hair, nails scraping the sweat-prickled nape of his neck.

“Big,” you whimper. He hisses an expletive under his breath in reaction. The stretch feels amazing – more than you’d imagined. You angle his face toward yours and catch him in a kiss, filthy, teeth colliding.

You brace your heels on either side of his hips and ride him back, rolling your pelvis so the shelf behind you shudders against the partition wall. He likes it messy, apparently, likes the sound of your body clapping raw against his. Somewhere in the blizzard of friction and heat, his hand abandons your wrist only to seize your throat, thumb pressed under the line of your jaw, holding you in place while he rams himself deeper, deeper, forcing every ounce of his weight into you.

“Captain,” you gasp, as a particularly vicious stroke has your toes curling, “Oh, fuck–”

You expect a snarl, another denial, but what comes out of him is dangerously close to a moan. His eyes are half-lidded, grown glassy and wild.

“Should have– hah,” he grates, punctuating the words with a thrust so deep you lose them entirely in your next gasp, “done this the first time you talked back.”

“Would’ve made it easier to listen,” you pant, hand trying to grip at the edge of the shelf for purchase but finding only space.

He fucks you harder at that, hips slapping, the wood behind you creaking, the muscles in his biceps flexing as he wrings your waist with both hands like he could snap you in two. You feel reduced, atomized: nerve endings all down your thighs and up your spine singed by friction, pressure, bliss. You want him to use you, just a little.

You mumble, “Harder,” and he obliges, teeth bared, each slick slam obliterating whatever vestige of shame you might have left. You’re a smear, wet and blooming. He has free rein to ram every repressed longing into the way he fucks you against this wall. There’s nothing staid or managerial left: only a pressure, a piston as the world flickers around your vision.

“Is this what it takes?” Aki pants. “This what I have to do to get you to behave?”

You mewl. “Mmm– keep going– I’ll be good, just keep going, please–”

He lets out a sharp huff of a laugh. “You’re actually begging.”

He lets go of your throat to brace both arms against either side of the shelf, caging you completely. The smell of him is sharp. Sweat mixed with cordite, trigger-happy. All the neatness he strives for is gone; his shirt rumpled and untucked, his tie dangling like a leash between your chests. His hair falls in his eyes, sweat-ankled, and he stares at the place your bodies join like he wants to watch you fuse into one mass.

Every time he thrusts, you flex your thighs, grind yourself closer, force him to bottom out, make him see the greedy, shameless mess he’s made you. You never expected to want him like this. Now, you could die of it.

“Your cock feels so good,” you mumble.

He groans, forehead to your collar. The sound almost tapers into a whine. “Don’t say shit like that to me.”

He’s panting, rhythm unbroken, driving you up and up and up. Then he reaches between you to thumb your clit, punishing and precise, and your head knocks back against the wall so hard you hear your pulse in your ears. You’re barely coherent; you cuss, unspeakable, and Aki just snarls in response, focusing all his frustrated affection into the way he works you on his cock.

It hits you all at once — a release that crunches every vertebrae, makes your arms and legs a storm of spasms. You come a second time, messy, the proof of it slick on his hand and dripping down your thighs. He lets out a low, shocked noise at the way you clamp down, the way your body bears down on him, milking every inch.

“God, fuck—” His control crumbles. He pulls out just as he comes, hot and sudden, splattering your thigh and skirt and maybe three ruined files on the carpet. He sags against you, forehead pressed to yours, jaw slack, the two of you locked there with every illusion of decorum gone.

You both stay like that, panting, heights of your bodies trembling, the overhead lights flickering against the wreckage. Every muscle in your body sings. You take inventory: the shredded underwear, the agony-ecstasy ache in your cunt, the rucked skirt and canted hips.  Good. You want to remember all of it.

When Aki finally releases your waist, he’s careful. He doesn’t summon the usual sharpness, not even as he blots at your thigh with the inside of his ruined cuff. You laugh at the futility of it and watch his face color up to his hairline.

You fumble yourself back together, graceless.

You feel hungover and high, as if every nerve were firing fresh instructions. Aki fastidiously restricts himself to straightening his shirt and surveying the carnage; you, on the other hand, have the animal confidence of someone who just smudged their DNA across the entire precinct. The musk of it turns subatomic, baked into every fiber of your skin.

You move, slightly, your pelvis a dull, throbbing bruise. There’s an ache between your legs, and you love it. It’s proof. Evidence against Aki’s permanent record, right beside the discreet glisten painting your thigh. The room is too bright for the debris you’ve left. You tuck the thought into your chest, add it to the collection of things you never tell anyone.

It should be awkward. It is, technically: your panties gone or at least functionally destroyed, a puddle staining the carpet tiles where the old, dog-eared code of conduct landed face-down. You half-remember a time when rules ever meant shit to you. Judging by the way Aki is policing the floor for spatters, you suspect he feels differently.

He regathers his voice before you. “We’re never doing this again,” he intones, still breath-flayed, “Not in this office, not—” You don’t buy it. The caution lines in his tone set something reckless stirring in you. You plop into his chair, legs splayed and skirt bunched, and snatch his mug; whatever is left in it is tepid, bitter, but it makes your pulse jolt when you tongue the rim, knowing it’s been where he just was.

“I don’t know,” you counter, “Wasn’t so bad.”

He glances at you, then away. You wonder whether he wants to shove you through the wall or fold you into the desk drawers and keep you in there, neat and flat. He seems paralyzed by the range of options.

You rest your chin on your fist, shoot him a look that says, Unclench, Hayakawa-san. He is, of course, immediately re-clenching, the line at the corner of his mouth as precise as a knife wound. If anyone walked in now, you’d both be dead or demoted — all the more reason to linger.

The tension shifts. Aki sidles past you, probably aiming for the photocopier, but you intercept him with a foot hooked around his knee. He stops, the residual flush on his neck involuntarily deepening.

“You’re real good at aftercare, aren’t you?

His eyes widen a fraction. “Oh. Did I, uh, hurt you? Was I too rough?”

“No.” You smile coyly. “I liked it.”

He hangs in the moment, uncertainty radiating off him, so unlike any version of Aki you’ve seen before. He almost fumbles his next words.

“Good. I didn’t want to—” He aborts the sentence. The steel in his jaw slackens and he shakes his head, breaking eye contact, fingers raking hair off his forehead. You don’t let him slink off, not now when he’s finally unspooled. You pull your foot back, tilting it so the toe of your shoe trails up his shin before you drop it. 

“You look like you want to pretend it never happened,” you say, voice velveted with afterglow. “But I don’t.”

“You never do,” he says, milder than you expect. He half-smiles, but it’s a sad thing.

“Don’t look so tragic, Captain,” you say, propping your chin again. You want to reach for him, so you do, snagging two fingers in his loosened tie. “You liked it too.”

Aki’s mouth opens and closes. He shifts, circling the desk rather than approaching directly, like a cat who can’t decide if it wants to be affectionate or if it wants to bite. When he speaks, it’s with all the cautiousness of someone unwrapping a bomb.

He circles once, twice, as if buying time for a decision to calcify. 

“What happens next?” Aki’s voice is soft. A sanded-down version of his usual. “You’ll talk shit about it in the smoking area? Tell Denji I lost it and took it out on you?” It’s not an accusation so much as panic peeking out from him.

You laugh, deliberately snarky, because you want to see what it stirs. “You think I’d let you off that easy? C’mon. This—” you wave at the carnage of your mutual undoing, “—is leverage. I’ve got you now, Hayakawa.”

He looks up, and you feel something shift in him — a tremor as he realizes you’re not going to erase what just happened. That you will carry it, parade it, god, maybe even ask for seconds. You watch his lips move, hesitating on the ledge of resolve.

“I’ll meet you tomorrow,” he says, each word a careful grenade. It’s so shy you almost laugh again. “Somewhere outside of work. If you want.”

“Buy me a drink and maybe I’ll let you fuck me someplace people can’t see through the glass,” you say, savoring the taste of possibility. He registers it with a minute twitch at the eyelid — a betrayal, if you didn’t already know his body’s every little tell.