#i also meant to mention either mitsuhide or hisame in here but just never got it to flow right

[sabraeal]

Les Liaisons Juridique

A shirakiki fic in honor of @krispy-kream’s birthday, inspired what is probably her own failure to realize she was on a date YOU WERE ON A DATE SHARON

Shirayuki is getting this job.

“You’re getting this job,” Dr. Weise -- Shidan, he corrected her earlier with a smile, Doctor Weise was my father -- tells her, sitting back in a leather office chair that must have been paid for out of his grant money. “You’re more qualified than any other candidate; you shower, thank god; and Garrack called me up to personally call me a -- how did she put it? Fuckwad if I let you pass me by.

“And let me tell you, Doctor Roos.” He leans forward with a conspiratorial smile. “I am not a fuckwad.”

“I...wouldn’t imagine you were, sir,” she manages faintly, more than a little light headed. She’s been worrying around this interview for a month, and just -- she has it. She’s...going to be a post-doc.

Shidan’s smile widens into a grin. “You see? Already doing better than half the idiots in this lab.”

But that’s only half of why she’s getting this job. The good half, because the other half --

“You’re getting this job,” her HR liaison -- Zen -- tells her as he pierces the seal on his juice. He says he’s her handler, which is a much more appealing title than the reality, which is babysitter. “I’ve been doing the processing for Shidan’s other candidates, and you’re really just top of the stack material. Real talent, you know?”

She does know; MIT doesn’t hand out PhDs for the asking. Still it’s a nice enough sentiment, and even if she’s starting to get the, ah, vibe that maybe Zen is getting a little more personally invested in her hire than is professional appropriate -- well, she’ll take it. Tenure track doesn’t grow on trees.

“Yo, Zen!” A collection of limbs folds itself into the plastic chair next to her handler, teeth broad and white in the bronze of his face. “Is this the interviewee?”

“Obi,” Zen remarks mildly. “I didn’t realize you’d be coming to lunch this early.”

“And we didn’t realize that you would be taking your handler duties so strictly,” another voice wryly observes. Its owner followers, and --

And Shirayuki doesn’t really keep up with celebrity gossip, doesn’t really look at the covers of magazines unless one of the tag lines boasts something like 10 SPF 80 Sunblocks That Really Work! so she doesn’t really know anything about models, but --

But she’s pretty sure that they aren’t supposed to work in academic labs, even if those labs are in California.

“Kiki,” Zen says, voice only mildly filled with dread. “You’re here too.”

“I am, willingly or not.” Her ice blue eyes shoot him a look that would freeze most men on the spot. “We thought you’d be eating alone. Though I’m glad to see you’re enjoying the...perks of your position.”

Zen flushes red from collar to hairline, and Shirayuki feels a pang of sympathy. It’s not easy having a crush with pale skin. “Prospective employees have a fully paid lunch scheduled into their day --”

“You know, you never personally showed me how the voucher system works,” Obi complains, eyelashes fluttering. They’re long for a man. They’d make him pretty, if he didn’t have a shiny scar right over his eyebrow. “Should I be hurt? I think I should be.”

Zen murmurs something, and over the din of the cafeteria Shiryuki can’t quite make it out, but it sounds like, I think you should shut up. But that doesn’t sound very Human Relations-y to her.

“You know, I’m pretty too,” Obi forges on, grin getting sharper with every word. “Aren’t I, Kiki?”

Kiki spears a cucumber in her salad. “No.”

“Striking.”

It takes her a full minute, and all of them staring, to realize it was her that spoke.

“I mean, you’re more striking than -- than pretty.” She swallows, eyes darting towards the other woman at the table. “And Kiki is...”

Words fail her. Beautiful is something you say when you look at a sunset, or someone’s kid in a prom dress; Kiki is --

“Sublime.” Oh god, who let her mouth do word things. She was certainly not telling it to do them!

Kiki’s mouth ticks up at the corner. “Well, that certainly is a new one.”

“Oh, I like her,” Obi says. “I’m gonna tell Shidan we’ve got to hire you.”

Shirayuki, of course, promptly forgets about all that. Hiring takes months, and between applications, interviews, and straining to make ends meet -- she is never going to quit on the spot like that again, she can tell you that much -- she forgets the specifics, just remembers when she gets the call that, yes she liked this place very much.

Yes, she would very much like to be hired.

It’s a decision she only half regrets later, when she turns a corner at the end of her first week, and runs straight into Zen.

“I told you you’d get hired,” he says, teeth Crest ad bright. “And here you are!”

She bites down on the fact that she knew it too, that Shidan told her straight out that she’d get the job and that his request just had to chug through HR’s red tape. It seems like a defensive thing to say, especially to a guy who works in HR, and especially to a guy that probably filed most of the paperwork.

“Ha ha, yeah,” she goes with instead, so smooth. Guys like Zen always intimidate her; that whole combo of handsome and confident is just...overwhelming. “Here I am.”

He leans against the wall, all casual-like, and her heart kicks up in her chest. Oh no. He’s going to do that thing. That thing handsome and confident guys do.

“We should go out sometime,” he says, oblivious to the copious sweating she is doing. “You know, for coffee. To celebrate --”

“Sorry!” she yelps, too loud for this size of corridor. “I like girls!”

She completes this stunning feat of social prowess by bolting down the hall like there’s fire on her heels and doesn’t stop until she’s half a building away. Which is the exact opposite way she should be, if she wants to be at the vending machine that sells cinnamon buns for ten cents cheaper.

Wow, this whole acting like a normal person thing -- really starting off strong. Go team.

“Hey.”

Shirayuki’s chin snaps up as she hurries into her bay, feeling like everyone knows what just happened, even though it’s impossible; rumor works fast but it can’t possibly be that fast. Obi’s there waiting, all tense with some tortured expression on his face, and for a long minute she worries what sort of bad news could have him this knotted up, whether he’s about to tell he’s moving bays -- which would be terrible, since having him as a bay-mate was one of the best surprises this week --

“You’re gay?”

Oh, nope, this is worse. Way worse.

She draws herself up, still only coming to his chin, and says, “Ye--”

“Oh, awesome.” His whole face lights up, and he presses a hand to his chest. “I’m bi! Or well, pan? I really don’t know what the difference is, to be completely fucking honest. Probably pan.”

“Oh my god.” All the wind goes out of her, and she gets that light-headed feeling, like she might pass out, only like, from relief. “Me too!”

He cocks his head, like a curious bird. “You too?”

“I’m bi,” she says. “Or -- well I don’t think I’m pan? From what I understand? I don’t know.” She hesitates. “I maybe I need to brush up on the literature.”

“Let’s just call it part of the bisexual experience.” he laughs. “But wait, I thought you told Zen you were into girls?”

“Ohhh.” Right, this would be the, uh, sticky part. Obi and Zen are friends; close enough that in the fifteen minutes it took her to take a walk around the building and mentally scream, Obi had managed to get a blow-by-blow of their two minute conversation. “I...um...”

“No judgement here,” he assures her. “He’s my friend, but like, I get it. If he asks me, I will say you are full on into the ladies.”

“I...” She doesn’t really know how to handle that sort of thing, the whole...loyalty deal. She’s never really had anyone like that. “I’m just like, um...a Kinsey Scale five, honestly.”

Obi blinks. “I feel like this is a terrible thing to admit, but I know shit about, you know, the academic gayness.” He grimaces. “I hope that doesn’t lower your opinion of my academic or gay credentials.”

That surprises a laugh out of her. “No, it’s fine, I just -- labels helped when I was trying to tell my grandparents. Just being able to quantify on a scale was easier than trying to, you know, explain everything.”

“I feel it.” He twists back to his computer, typing with his loud hunt-and-peck style.

“It’s when --”

“No, no!” He holds up a hand over his shoulder. “I’m googling it. I’m educating myself.” He squints at the screen. “Only incidentally heterosexual, huh?”

It feels like a lot to get into to, trying to explain how incidental a lot of her attraction feels, that it took her a lot of googling and staring up at the ceiling to even get her a number, so she just says, “Yeah.”

His mouth peels back in a grin. “And Zen wasn’t the incident.”

She wants to glare, but -- god, she needs to remember that. “No,” she manages around a giggle. “Boys are okay, but you know...girls.”

He laughs, settling back into his chair with a groan. “You make an excellent point.”

It’s hard to shake the feeling, at first, that the other shoe is about to drop, that just like last time her dream job is going to be wrenched out of her hands by some...some idiot with a trust fund, but --

But two days after her disastrous I like girls word vomit, Obi mentions they need to gay up this place. She thinks he’s joking, up until he sends her links to etsy shops that sell desk tchotchkes with the bi pride flag on them, asking her whether they’re going for understated or opulent.

“You don’t think people will get weird?” Everyone here has been nice, but everyone at her old work was nice too, right up until it became inconvenient.

“Kazaha works here,” he tells her, “people are already weird.”

“No, I just mean...” There’s no good way to say, do you think we’ll get fired. “People, could, um...”

“I’ll punch ‘em,” Yuzuri’s disembodied voice offers through the bench. Shirayuki can see her just on the other side, a blur of blonde and neon. “If anyone gives you any trouble, you let me know, and I’ll go straight to Shidan and raise hell about it.”

For a minute, her chest gets tight, and it’s -- it’s nice to know that someone has her back, but there’s a part of her that wants to say, but I don’t want to need your help. She doesn’t want there to be a problem in the first place, doesn’t want to have someone have to speak up for her because of who she is --

But she’s grateful too. That someone would. It’s a...weird feeling, being angry and touched all at the same time.

Yuzuri stomps around the end of the bench, fists sitting high on her hips. “If Suzu can keep his dolls around, there’s no reason anyone should give you trouble for flags or whatever.”

“Uh, first off, they are collectable figurines,” Suzu says following after her, like always. “And second, Cardcaptor Sakura is an institution.”

“They’re dolls,” Yuzuri tells him. “Cute dolls, but still dolls. Also, not really the point.”

“Oh, right.” Suzu distinctly grims up. “It’s your bay, decorate it however you want. We’ll all back you up. You can put up porn for all I --”

“Please don’t put up porn,” Ryuu says, the loudest she’s ever heard him.

This is, of course, the worst time for Shidan to walk in. “Who is putting up porn?”

Shirayuki drops her head to her desk. Well this will certainly be a new thing to get fired for.

Shirayuki’s been at the lab two months and one very excruciating discussion about workplace pornography (re: not even once), when Shidan catches her in the hall, looking sheepish. She nearly bolts right then -- the last time he looked like that, she suddenly found herself as the new lab safety officer, and she does not need to interface with Mihaya from EHS ever again, thank you -- but he says, “I need to ask you a favor, for Ryuu.”

This is dirty pool and there’s no way Shidan doesn’t know it, giving her that look. Ryuu may have his PhD, but he’s just a baby; she’s not precisely sure how old, but considering how he keeps forgetting he’s old enough to come to happy hour, she’s guessing not very.

“You know that the university is very excited about his new paper --?”

Of course, everyone in the department does. He’s -- well, he’s no where near having to worry about thirty, and his first paper as a post-doc is getting published in Nature. It’s been all anyone can talk about for the past two weeks.

“Well, they want a press release,” he explains, looking guiltier by the second. “And we don’t really have a...PR department, per se, so we have to write them ourselves...”

Shirayuki sees the writing on the wall. “And you want me to write it.”

Shidan deflates in relief. “Yes.”

“I’ve never done anything like that before.” Not for real, at least. She’d had to practice writing a fake one, way back for her undergrad writing course, but -- something that actual people with journalism degrees would see? Never. “I don’t even know where to start.”

“That’s fine.” Shidan waves a hand, as if her protests are nothing more than technicalities. “Legal’s got someone who did PR. They send her around whenever one of us has to write up a brief. I told her she could wait by your bench.”

“She’s here now?” Shirayuki blinks. “You want me to do this now? I have --”

“Just to get the ball rolling!” he promises. “It won’t take more than a couple of minutes.” He gives her a knowing look. “It’s for Ryuu, after all.”

She lets out a soft sigh. “All right. I can -- I can take a few minutes.”

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Shirayuki starts, swinging around the corner of her bay, restraining herself from adding, but Shidan didn’t tell me I should be expecting you. “I was just --”

Her eyes catch on the impeccably tailored suit, the sharply pulled back ponytail, the whole towering blonde in heels thing --

It’s Kiki. Here. In her bay.

And Obi’s nowhere in sight.

“Hnn.” She shakes herself. “I mean, sorry, I don’t think Obi’s here -- maybe he’s already in the cafeteria? -- I just thought you were -- Shidan told me --”

Her mouth quirks at the corner, and it’s -- it’s a lot. “I’m not here for Obi.“

“N-no?” Shirayuki grips at her bench. It’s the only way to keep her legs from wobbling.

“No.” Her teeth flash, perfect and white, between her lips. “I’m here for you.”

Pretty girls like Kiki really shouldn’t say things like that to her, her heart can’t really take it.

Kiki taps something in her pen holder. “I like your flag, by the way.”

She nearly asks what flag? when it occurs to her -- her bi flag, the one Obi had shoved in next to all her ballpoints as he’d waved his own, pink, yellow and blue, saying well, it’s more impressive if they’re different.

“Oh!” she shrills, suddenly very aware of how very...colorful her whole desk is. “Thank you! But...you....um....have something...that I...uh....?”

“Didn’t Shidan tell you?” Kiki smiles. “I’m your liaison from legal.”

“Did she say she liked my flag too?” Obi asks, much later, concerned.

“I don’t -- no?” She blinks. “That’s what you took away from this conversation?”

“I’m just saying!” he gestures toward his desk. “The pan flag is nice too! If she likes one, she should like the other!”

“Okay.” She pats his arm. “I’m going tell you this story again, but I’m gonna need you to focus.”

“But --!”

“Focus.”

It becomes a -- a thing.

“Shirayuki,” Shidan calls out from his office as she passes. “Kazaha is having something printed up in Science. Do you think you could liaise with Legal --?”

“Hey, Shirayuki.” Yuzuri waves her over in the cafeteria. “This newspaper wants a quote, do you think you could run this by Legal --?”

“Yo, Red,” Obi leans back in his chair as she trudges in from the imaging room. “Ryuu says he’s confused by the wording on some of that press release. Do you think you could look over these edits and then send the new one --”

“Onto Legal?” she asks wearily. “Yeah, I can handle that.”

“Rough day?” he asks. “I’d thought you’d be excited. You and Kiki are buddies now, right?”

“Yeah, it’s just...” She shrugs. “I just have my own work.”

“Oh, I see.” He waggles his eyebrows. “You want to be passing your own press releases past Legal.”

Heat bursts across her cheeks. “I mean, yes! I’d like to be promoting my own research.”

Obi’s mouth splits into a grin she does not like, not one bit. “You mean, you want to be showing Kiki how smart you are, and not everyone else.”

He -- how? -- that’s not -- “That doesn’t have anything to do with --”

“Shirayuki!”

“Kiki!” She jolts up, chair rolling back into the shelves beside her desk. She winces, but Kiki only smiles.

“Obi, is that a new sticker?” She nods her head toward his laptop, where a round, pink sticker reads STEMINIST. It sit next to another, more worn one that reads I’m going to have to SCIENCE THE SHIT out of this.

“Oh, yeah!” He grins, flipping down the cover so she can see it better. “I saw it on twitter and was like, that is mine, you know?”

She rubs a finger over the word and grins. “I like it.”

“I’ll send you the link.”

“Would you?”

“Definitely.” He swings it open, already typing. “They have it in blue too, but like, what’s the point, you know? Pink all the way.”

“Right.” She turns her attention over to Shirayuki, and her mouth softens into a smile. “Did you get your hair cut, Shirayuki?”

“J-just a trim!” she squeaks, curling a strand around her finger. “It was starting to get in the way --”

“She almost lit it up on a Bunsen burner,” Obi translates helpfully, the traitor.

“It was starting to get in the way,” she starts again, darting a glare in his direction, “and so I either had to, you know, commit to growing it out, or get it cut, so...”

There’s a tug on her hair, right by her ear -- a brush really -- and -- and--

Kiki is touching her.

“It’s cute,” she says, with a tilt of her head. “It looks good on you.”

“Thanks,” Shirayuki manages, in a range that only dogs can hear.

“I was just stopping by about the press release.” Kiki leans a hip against her bench, a long fingered hand wrapping around her waist. “Ryuu sent me the changes he requested --”

“He did? I thought...” Shirayuki darts a glance at Obi, who looks equally surprised. “Never mind.”

“I’m having a hard time understanding what he’s trying to say, I was hoping you could explain it to me.”

“Oh sure --”

“Maybe over lunch tomorrow?” Kiki raises her eyebrows expectantly. “I’ll swing by around twleve.”

“Obi. Obi!” she hisses, whacking at his arm. “Did you see that?”

“I did,” Obi admits. “I’m not sure what I saw, but I was definitely here the whole time to see it.”

“She said my hair was cute!”

“I know, I was here.” He leans back in his chair. “Also, that was what you took away from that?”

“She touched it.”

“She also said my sticker was nice.” He smiles at his laptop. “I wonder if she’s going to get the blue or the pink one. I should tell her pink so we m --”

“Obi!” she shrills. “We are talking about my hair right now.”

He stares. “You’re right, I’m sorry. This is about you.”

She nods. “Thank you.”

“You and your ginormous crush.”

Her jaw drops. “That’s...I’m not...we are...” She coughs. “We are professional colleagues.”

“Shirayuki, come on. You’re gay.” Obi sweeps a hand towards the door. “And Kiki looks like that.”

Shirayuki stares at him, stares at the door.

Flight is the only option. “I’m going to go get cookies from the vending machine.”

Obi’s smile is far too self-satisfied. “Cookies can’t drown out your gay panic.”

“I. Am. Getting. Cookies.”

He grins, calling out after her. “You’ll still be gay when you come back.”

“That’s not -- I’m not--” She huffs. “I just like cookies!”

Lunch is supposed to be a quiet table in the cafeteria with both of them picking over their salads; Shirayuki with a Caesar salad without the dressing but double the chicken and croutons, and Kiki with -- well, whatever she liked on her salad. She seems like maybe a baby corn and avocado person. Lemon poppy seed dressing? That seems...right. It’s supposed to be quick food and work between them, not --

Not the nice little diner down the way, made to look like it’s all down-home even though it’s right next to a Dick’s and a Starbucks in the center of a strip mall ten minutes down the road from their building. Shirayuki’s still looking for the salads when Kiki orders a Belgian waffle with fresh fruit, and with a sigh a relief she orders a set of “mouse-themed” pancakes.

“It’s just Mickey Mouse,” Kiki tells her, “but this way, no one gets tempted to sue.”

Shirayuki, for the first time in her life, is torn between telling her, I know about copyright law, and --and --

Just playing entirely dumb, if only so that Kiki would keep talking to her like this. Ever since they walked in, Kiki’s been -- well, animated, at least more than she usually is. She’s explained about four different features that are the result of class-action lawsuits, asked what she liked to eat before recommending at least two different dishes, and now, well --

“Do you want dessert?”

Shirayuki blinks up from her empty plate. “Dessert?”

“They have a display,” Kiki tells her, nodding towards the counter. “It rotates.”

“Oh!” She cranes her head over her shoulder, trying to catch a glimpse. “Just like a real diner.”

When she turns back, Kiki’s just...amused, one eyebrow arched in question. “Oh, is that what makes a real diner?”

“N-no!” She can feel her cheeks burning, and she wishes she wasn’t so -- so pale. “It’s just that, I, um, well...”

“Obi said you were from a small town,” Kiki tells her. “And you had opinions on diners.”

Namely that California didn’t have any real ones, yes. Though this place comes close, if it has a rotating display. “Are there pies?”

Kiki smiles. “The last time I checked. Do you want to go look?”

Shirayuki traipses up to the display, watching as key lime and lemon meringue spin around the top tier, with a half dozen choices of cakes and cheesecakes below it.

“Ohhh,” she murmurs, hand pressed to the glass. “These look so good.”

“Let’s get one,” Kiki says, leaning on the counter beside her. “We can split it.”

Shirayuki stares up at her, wide-eyed. “Really?”

“Yeah, pick what you like.”

She blinks. “But what if you don’t like it?”

Kiki smiles warmly. “I’m sure I’ll like whatever you pick, Shirayuki.”

“O-okay!” She peers at the display, trying to figure out which pie has the most meringue. “I think I’ll pick --”

To this day, she’s not quite sure how it happens. She reaches out a hand, gently slides the door --

And the glass shatters, sprinkling shards onto the floor, onto her shoes, and worst of all, right onto the perfect slice of lemon meringue pie.

“You are a disaster,” Obi laughs, voice muffled through his hands. “You broke a glass door?”

“The owner said it wasn’t my fault!” she protests. “The glass on those doors is just -- just faulty!”

“Uh-huh,” Obi hums, unconvinced.

“It’s true!” she insists. “And Kiki even gave me her number, in case something happens!”

“Wait, roll that back,” Yuzuri says through the shelving. Shirayuki hears the patter of Yuzuri’s flats before she pokes around the corner. “She gave you her number? Are you sure this was a business lunch?”

Shirayuki blinks. “What else would it have been?”

Yuzuri stares at her. “A date?”

“W-what?” Shirayuki can feel her face going red, can feel the heat practically searing her freckles. “N-no, that’s not -- not --”

“She asked you to lunch outside. She tried to impress you with her legal know-how.” Yuzuri ticks the points off on her fingers, expression showing her dry annoyance. “She gave you her personal phone number. Did she pay for lunch too?”

“Only because --” Shirayuki hesitates. “Obi, is Kiki straight?”

He stares back at her, equally lost. “She had a boyfriend.”

Shirayuki waves her hands, as if to say see?

Yuzuri remains unimpressed. “You’re both bi!”

“Well,” Obi hedges. “Actually, I think I’m more p...”

She looks at him. He looks at her.

“Oh my god, she could like both,” he says.

“Oh my god,” she agrees, feeling the blood drained from her face. Kiki may not have been asking her out to business lunch but -- but --

Yuzuri throws up her hands. “Did you both forget bi people exist? Is that a thing that just happened?”

“I mean,” Obi coughs, pink riding high on his cheekbones. “It’s not, you know, a common thing --”

She lets out a huff, annoyed. “There’s two of you in this lab alone! We only have twenty people!”

He shrugs. “Statistical anomaly.”

“I...” Shirayuki turns back to her desk. “I think I have to -- email?”

“Text?” Obi offers.

“Text! Yes.” Shirayuki nods. “Text. I must -- text --”

Hi. It’s Shirayuki. You gave me your number.

Yes, I remember :) Is there something I can do for you?

I just wanted to thank you for lunch. And I’m sorry about breaking the glass. And stuff.

Don’t worry about it It was cute

GREAT. Sorry, I accidentally put capslock on. Also I was wondering if you’d like to go to dinner. As a date. Officially.

I’d love to ...but wasn’t today an official date?