How to Succeed in Shredding (Without Really Trying)
Title: How to Succeed in Shredding (Without Really Trying)
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Matsumoto Jun/Sakurai Sho; Aiba Masaki
Summary: “Look at it go!” Sakurai shouted over the sound of the motor. “Go go go!”
Notes/Warnings: For the Drabble-a-thon at sakumoto. Request from quartered who wanted Sho and Jun in an office setting. Some of us love Sakurai Sho because for all that he is smart, he can be surprisingly weird and latches on to strange things. He had his fail garden in D no Arashi, everything about T no Arashi, his wisdom teeth that sit in jars on his shelf at home, and recently enough, his obsession with that blinking light in the Crazy Moon behind the scenes video. It is THIS aspect of Sho's personality I'm highlighting here. I love this man.
The guy flicked on the light, and Jun frowned at the sad state of the office he was assigned for today.
There was a table (not a desk) with a phone and a stapler. And then there was bin after bin after bin of paper. “We don’t have enough in the budget now to send out to a records management company,” the guy, Sakurai, explained as he set down the heavy, industrial-strength shredder beside the desk chair. “So if you could separate everything post-2007 and get those by date, those get kept. And then anything pre-oh-seven you can shred.”
Jun pursed his lips. He had to find a real job. Temping sucked.
Sho saw his disappointment. “Yeah, um. I’ll be back. I’ll get you some garbage bags.”
The office door closed after the man in his well-tailored suit, and Jun sat down in the chair with a huff. He’d gotten laid off from the party planning company a month earlier - with the recession, there weren’t exactly a lot of people planning parties, and Jun had been the newest hire and thus the easiest to put on the chopping block.
Now he was working for peanuts just so he could pay the rent (and shredding paper for eight hours was not really how he preferred to pay to put food on the table). At least Sakurai was nice. He’d done a receptionist gig for the past two weeks and got treated like crap. Sakurai had actually asked Jun what his name was.
He returned with a box full of black garbage bags. “The cleaning staff will put these out with recycling, so just leave them by the wall.” He smiled, and Jun suddenly wanted to shred every last pre-oh-seven with enthusiasm enough to impress Sakurai-san. Sort of.
“You got it,” Jun answered agreeably. Sakurai’s phone vibrated in its little holster attached to his belt.
“Ah, I have to take this. I’ll be back to check on how you’re doing,” he said, running a hand through his well-tended hair as he left the room. Jun didn’t know how much babysitting Sakurai really had to do here - he was separating papers and shredding most of them. It wasn’t exactly difficult work.
Sakurai left, and Jun got busy. The first box was just copies of quarterly sales results from 2003-2004. He plugged in the fancy shredder and started feeding reports through, and damn the thing was noisy. No wonder Sakurai had stuck him in this empty back office and away from people doing actual work. Since there was absolutely nothing that could hold his attention or entertain him in the room, he hummed and chatted to himself as he fed things through.
He was through three boxes before Sakurai showed up - it had only been forty-five minutes. He’d brought coffee for the both of them, and Jun was surprised when he sat down on the floor in his nice suit and started digging through boxes.
“Thanks,” Jun said as he brought the coffee to his lips.
“Welcome,” Sakurai said, picking up some old papers. He looked up, and Jun could only describe his eyes as wicked. “Isn’t this shredder amazing?”
Jun slid from the chair, joining Sakurai on the floor, putting some 2008 records in a file folder. “It’s just a shredder isn’t it?”
But Sakurai was fascinated, taking a thick stack of papers between his fingers and lining it up neatly over the top of the shredder. “Watch. Matsumoto-san, are you watching?”
He had to hold back a smile as Sakurai fed the papers through, the sound enough to make someone deaf, and the guy’s face was blissful.
“Look at it go!” Sakurai shouted over the sound of the motor. “Go go go!”
It was a damn shredder, Jun thought. Was it really this exciting? He fed a few things through himself, Sakurai’s eyes glued to the paper disappearing inside. The guy was good looking, probably made more money in a week than Jun would all month, but he sure was fixated on shredding paper.
Jun liked him a little too much for only having known him an hour. Then his phone vibrated again, and Sakurai’s face fell.
“I’ll come check again soon.”
--
Soon ended up being an hour, and Jun spent that hour alone. He hadn’t done much shredding - instead he’d gone through boxes that were labeled 2008 and 2009 on purpose. He got things in order, examining the piles he was creating again and again until they were to his satisfaction in terms of being even and organized.
It seemed like the whole room brightened as the door opened, and Sakurai entered, madly typing up a message on his phone. “I’m telling my friend Aiba in marketing about this shredder. He’s got meetings all day, so he wants me to take a video of it working.”
“Okay,” Jun responded, unsure of what Sakurai was expecting in response to that.
He held up the phone, looking at Jun a bit impatiently.
“Oh, you’re doing the video now,” he mumbled. He grabbed some 2002 HR files and got ready. He didn’t really like the idea of Sakurai videoing him here and sending it to some random co-worker, but the guy was watching him so intensely that he felt his cheeks growing hot. Then again, Sakurai was probably hot and bothered about the shredder - not about him.
“Yeah, you can start.”
Jun made sure to send a really thick stack of paper through, and Sakurai could barely keep the phone steady as he recorded the shredding. “So cool, so cool, so cool!” Sakurai was mumbling when the motor shut off after completing its job.
Jun sat there, watching Sakurai get the video sent to his co-worker. The company clearly didn’t miss him if he was free to come in and bother the temps all day. Sakurai’s enthusiasm was infectious. Jun never wanted him to leave, even if it would cost him this day’s productivity.
This time when his phone buzzed, he answered it right there in the room. “Aiba-chan, Aiba-chan, wasn’t that awesome?”
Jun could hear a noisy, even more excited voice over the other line as he tried to hide a smile. He divided out more 2009 papers while Sakurai and his co-worker gabbed.
“Yeah. Oh that’s a great idea,” Sakurai murmured. “Yeah, I’ll get back to you. Good luck with the presentation.” He hung up and reholstered the phone like some gunslinger. “Jun.”
He looked up, astonished at the casual use of his first name. “Sakurai-san?”
The other man opened a 1994 box that was still lying around and dug out an arm full of paper. “Let’s see how many we can do at one time.”
--
They had to borrow a new shredder from a different department around noon after the motor died on the first. The record had to stand at 92 pages simultaneously.
--
It was mid-afternoon, and Sho (he was Sho now, after so much time bonding over the shredding of unnecessary paper) had finally taken off his jacket and loosened his tie. He’d called his secretary to cancel all his remaining appointments. Sho had called in lunch for them both, and the sleepy-eyed delivery guy had looked pretty impressed with the shredder, but “no, I have other deliveries” he’d said, so he couldn’t join in.
Sho’s friend in marketing, Aiba, had said he would pay for the next shredder if it broke - so long as they tried to shred CDs with it. Jun was just finishing up the sandwich Sho had paid for when the guy came in with a few jewel cases.
“Just old Powerpoints and things,” he declared as he set them down on the floor between them.
Jun hated to admit it, but he was having fun. A lot of fun. Stuff was getting shredded - they had bags full to prove it, so he didn’t feel all that guilty. Besides, he was under Sho’s direct supervision, so he wouldn’t be getting in trouble or anything.
He picked up the first CD case and frowned. “But what if things come flying? I wouldn’t want a sliver of CD to get in my eye.”
Sho snatched the case away and opened it, eyes wide like a little boy’s. “That’s just the risk we have to take.”
Yeah, Jun thought, but you can probably afford to go to the hospital now. Jun backed up, balling up his empty sandwich wrapper and tossing it in the trash as Sho stood with the CD over the shredder’s mouth.
“Did you want to video this one?” Jun asked. ‘You know, for science?”
Sho pointed at him and smiled. “You’re smart. I like you.” He took the phone from the holster and tossed it. “Just hit the video button when you flip it open.”
He opened Sho’s phone to find a strange wallpaper - it was a field of lettuce? Maybe his parents owned a farm. Maybe Sho just liked lettuce. He didn’t think too hard about that since Sho was expecting his cooperation.
Jun clicked the button as ordered. “Recording.”
Ten seconds later, Jun couldn’t help his own exclamation of surprise as the CD went noisily through the shredder. The motor made a grinding, sputtering sound, but he moved over with the phone as Sho took the top off of the shredder to reveal the neatly chopped slices of what was once a CD amongst the strips of paper.
He barely got the video setting turned off before Sho was embracing him and jumping up and down like he’d just won the lottery.
“We did it we did it we did it!”
Suddenly, temp work wasn’t so bad.
--
“Masaki thinks it won’t shred paper clips,” Sho was slurring as he pulled Jun through his apartment doorway by the belt loops on his pants. “Says they’re too small.”
“We’ll show him,” Jun said, encouraging Sho’s fumbling fingers to his fly.
“Yeah!” Sho declared to the dark living room. “Yeah, we’ll show him!”
His supervisor was on his knees, and Jun was back against the door, ready to praise temp work and paper shredding to high heaven when Sho paused, hand on Jun’s zipper.
“Wait…do you think it would shred a whole stack of post-it notes?”
--
Sho was nearly bouncing as they stood in the line at the 24-hour store, brand new giant shredder in tow. Jun mostly wanted to shred Sho’s clothes at this point.
Sakurai had his cell phone precariously balanced between his shoulder and his ear as the queue shuffled forward. “Masaki, seriously, I’ll just use the company card. Business expense.”
Jun sighed. The shopping basket Sho was making him carry had post-it notes, a package of file folders, cassette tapes, lunch meat, and a pair of scissors. Jun intended to hide behind Sho’s couch when it was time for the scissors.
“A stapler?” Sho was complaining. “Don’t be an idiot, that won’t shred.” Jun set the basket down on the little check-out conveyor belt. It was pretty obvious he wasn’t having sex tonight. “No, you may not come over and fiddle with the motor. Remember when you tried to fix your garbage disposal?” Sho covered the phone’s mouthpiece. “You think a stapler would really work?”
Was this his life now? He was seeing what would go into a paper shredder with the boss from his temp assignment? What else would he have to shred until Sho’s curiosity was satisfied? What else would he have to shred before he got to see what Sho looked like under his clothes?
Jun left the basket there. “You know what? I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Wait!” Sho called after him. “Jun, wait! What if we tried a flattened aluminum can? Jun!”
--
Sho looked kind of disappointed with him when he came in the next morning, seeing Jun still separating things into piles.
“I really wish you would have stayed,” Sakurai said, voice laced with sadness. “It’s not much fun without you.”
“Uh huh.”
Sho crouched down next to where Jun had organized things on the floor. “I really like you…”
“Uh huh.”
“I know we just met, Jun, and I realize that I’m your superior here,” Sho continued, still trying to get his attention. The cologne and the designer silk tie and the way Sho said his first name were helping, but he wasn’t sure it was enough. “I…I don’t want to let the shredding thing come between us…”
“I’m just a temp, you know,” he replied, finally looking up to see Sho’s eyes. The ones that had fluttered closed when Jun had let his fingers dance over the man’s belt in the elevator last night - until Sho’s attention had gone elsewhere. “When we finish this stuff in here, I’ll get a different assignment.”
Sho yanked the folder he was working on away and threw it aside, making Jun cringe as the papers fluttered out and got out of order, their precious order!
“I want to hire you.”
“Excuse me?”
Sho nodded. “I want to hire you. I’ve already talked to my boss, who is talking to his boss. You’ve got good work ethic.”
From the look in his eyes, Sho was probably thinking more about Jun’s skillful tongue and the things it had done (and could have done) last night instead of his work ethic. Jun smirked. “What’s the HR policy on workplace romance?”
Sho grinned. “Well, you see, I’m not in marketing. Aiba-chan is, and he’s really excited to get someone to help out in his department. He went and found a whole ton of old stuff - apparently, his boss doesn’t clean out his office, like, ever. So once you get transferred there, we can hang out all the time. I can bring the shredder over to your new cubicle and…”
“Wait…”
Sho’s phone vibrated again. “Ah, gotta take this. I’ll be back soon, okay?”
The door slammed shut, and Jun was left to ponder his fate in life.
Shredding.
Nothing but shredding assignments and supervisors who were really (really) attractive but really (really) weird.
Well, it was still better than retail.
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Matsumoto Jun/Sakurai Sho; Aiba Masaki
Summary: “Look at it go!” Sakurai shouted over the sound of the motor. “Go go go!”
Notes/Warnings: For the Drabble-a-thon at sakumoto. Request from quartered who wanted Sho and Jun in an office setting. Some of us love Sakurai Sho because for all that he is smart, he can be surprisingly weird and latches on to strange things. He had his fail garden in D no Arashi, everything about T no Arashi, his wisdom teeth that sit in jars on his shelf at home, and recently enough, his obsession with that blinking light in the Crazy Moon behind the scenes video. It is THIS aspect of Sho's personality I'm highlighting here. I love this man.
The guy flicked on the light, and Jun frowned at the sad state of the office he was assigned for today.
There was a table (not a desk) with a phone and a stapler. And then there was bin after bin after bin of paper. “We don’t have enough in the budget now to send out to a records management company,” the guy, Sakurai, explained as he set down the heavy, industrial-strength shredder beside the desk chair. “So if you could separate everything post-2007 and get those by date, those get kept. And then anything pre-oh-seven you can shred.”
Jun pursed his lips. He had to find a real job. Temping sucked.
Sho saw his disappointment. “Yeah, um. I’ll be back. I’ll get you some garbage bags.”
The office door closed after the man in his well-tailored suit, and Jun sat down in the chair with a huff. He’d gotten laid off from the party planning company a month earlier - with the recession, there weren’t exactly a lot of people planning parties, and Jun had been the newest hire and thus the easiest to put on the chopping block.
Now he was working for peanuts just so he could pay the rent (and shredding paper for eight hours was not really how he preferred to pay to put food on the table). At least Sakurai was nice. He’d done a receptionist gig for the past two weeks and got treated like crap. Sakurai had actually asked Jun what his name was.
He returned with a box full of black garbage bags. “The cleaning staff will put these out with recycling, so just leave them by the wall.” He smiled, and Jun suddenly wanted to shred every last pre-oh-seven with enthusiasm enough to impress Sakurai-san. Sort of.
“You got it,” Jun answered agreeably. Sakurai’s phone vibrated in its little holster attached to his belt.
“Ah, I have to take this. I’ll be back to check on how you’re doing,” he said, running a hand through his well-tended hair as he left the room. Jun didn’t know how much babysitting Sakurai really had to do here - he was separating papers and shredding most of them. It wasn’t exactly difficult work.
Sakurai left, and Jun got busy. The first box was just copies of quarterly sales results from 2003-2004. He plugged in the fancy shredder and started feeding reports through, and damn the thing was noisy. No wonder Sakurai had stuck him in this empty back office and away from people doing actual work. Since there was absolutely nothing that could hold his attention or entertain him in the room, he hummed and chatted to himself as he fed things through.
He was through three boxes before Sakurai showed up - it had only been forty-five minutes. He’d brought coffee for the both of them, and Jun was surprised when he sat down on the floor in his nice suit and started digging through boxes.
“Thanks,” Jun said as he brought the coffee to his lips.
“Welcome,” Sakurai said, picking up some old papers. He looked up, and Jun could only describe his eyes as wicked. “Isn’t this shredder amazing?”
Jun slid from the chair, joining Sakurai on the floor, putting some 2008 records in a file folder. “It’s just a shredder isn’t it?”
But Sakurai was fascinated, taking a thick stack of papers between his fingers and lining it up neatly over the top of the shredder. “Watch. Matsumoto-san, are you watching?”
He had to hold back a smile as Sakurai fed the papers through, the sound enough to make someone deaf, and the guy’s face was blissful.
“Look at it go!” Sakurai shouted over the sound of the motor. “Go go go!”
It was a damn shredder, Jun thought. Was it really this exciting? He fed a few things through himself, Sakurai’s eyes glued to the paper disappearing inside. The guy was good looking, probably made more money in a week than Jun would all month, but he sure was fixated on shredding paper.
Jun liked him a little too much for only having known him an hour. Then his phone vibrated again, and Sakurai’s face fell.
“I’ll come check again soon.”
--
Soon ended up being an hour, and Jun spent that hour alone. He hadn’t done much shredding - instead he’d gone through boxes that were labeled 2008 and 2009 on purpose. He got things in order, examining the piles he was creating again and again until they were to his satisfaction in terms of being even and organized.
It seemed like the whole room brightened as the door opened, and Sakurai entered, madly typing up a message on his phone. “I’m telling my friend Aiba in marketing about this shredder. He’s got meetings all day, so he wants me to take a video of it working.”
“Okay,” Jun responded, unsure of what Sakurai was expecting in response to that.
He held up the phone, looking at Jun a bit impatiently.
“Oh, you’re doing the video now,” he mumbled. He grabbed some 2002 HR files and got ready. He didn’t really like the idea of Sakurai videoing him here and sending it to some random co-worker, but the guy was watching him so intensely that he felt his cheeks growing hot. Then again, Sakurai was probably hot and bothered about the shredder - not about him.
“Yeah, you can start.”
Jun made sure to send a really thick stack of paper through, and Sakurai could barely keep the phone steady as he recorded the shredding. “So cool, so cool, so cool!” Sakurai was mumbling when the motor shut off after completing its job.
Jun sat there, watching Sakurai get the video sent to his co-worker. The company clearly didn’t miss him if he was free to come in and bother the temps all day. Sakurai’s enthusiasm was infectious. Jun never wanted him to leave, even if it would cost him this day’s productivity.
This time when his phone buzzed, he answered it right there in the room. “Aiba-chan, Aiba-chan, wasn’t that awesome?”
Jun could hear a noisy, even more excited voice over the other line as he tried to hide a smile. He divided out more 2009 papers while Sakurai and his co-worker gabbed.
“Yeah. Oh that’s a great idea,” Sakurai murmured. “Yeah, I’ll get back to you. Good luck with the presentation.” He hung up and reholstered the phone like some gunslinger. “Jun.”
He looked up, astonished at the casual use of his first name. “Sakurai-san?”
The other man opened a 1994 box that was still lying around and dug out an arm full of paper. “Let’s see how many we can do at one time.”
--
They had to borrow a new shredder from a different department around noon after the motor died on the first. The record had to stand at 92 pages simultaneously.
--
It was mid-afternoon, and Sho (he was Sho now, after so much time bonding over the shredding of unnecessary paper) had finally taken off his jacket and loosened his tie. He’d called his secretary to cancel all his remaining appointments. Sho had called in lunch for them both, and the sleepy-eyed delivery guy had looked pretty impressed with the shredder, but “no, I have other deliveries” he’d said, so he couldn’t join in.
Sho’s friend in marketing, Aiba, had said he would pay for the next shredder if it broke - so long as they tried to shred CDs with it. Jun was just finishing up the sandwich Sho had paid for when the guy came in with a few jewel cases.
“Just old Powerpoints and things,” he declared as he set them down on the floor between them.
Jun hated to admit it, but he was having fun. A lot of fun. Stuff was getting shredded - they had bags full to prove it, so he didn’t feel all that guilty. Besides, he was under Sho’s direct supervision, so he wouldn’t be getting in trouble or anything.
He picked up the first CD case and frowned. “But what if things come flying? I wouldn’t want a sliver of CD to get in my eye.”
Sho snatched the case away and opened it, eyes wide like a little boy’s. “That’s just the risk we have to take.”
Yeah, Jun thought, but you can probably afford to go to the hospital now. Jun backed up, balling up his empty sandwich wrapper and tossing it in the trash as Sho stood with the CD over the shredder’s mouth.
“Did you want to video this one?” Jun asked. ‘You know, for science?”
Sho pointed at him and smiled. “You’re smart. I like you.” He took the phone from the holster and tossed it. “Just hit the video button when you flip it open.”
He opened Sho’s phone to find a strange wallpaper - it was a field of lettuce? Maybe his parents owned a farm. Maybe Sho just liked lettuce. He didn’t think too hard about that since Sho was expecting his cooperation.
Jun clicked the button as ordered. “Recording.”
Ten seconds later, Jun couldn’t help his own exclamation of surprise as the CD went noisily through the shredder. The motor made a grinding, sputtering sound, but he moved over with the phone as Sho took the top off of the shredder to reveal the neatly chopped slices of what was once a CD amongst the strips of paper.
He barely got the video setting turned off before Sho was embracing him and jumping up and down like he’d just won the lottery.
“We did it we did it we did it!”
Suddenly, temp work wasn’t so bad.
--
“Masaki thinks it won’t shred paper clips,” Sho was slurring as he pulled Jun through his apartment doorway by the belt loops on his pants. “Says they’re too small.”
“We’ll show him,” Jun said, encouraging Sho’s fumbling fingers to his fly.
“Yeah!” Sho declared to the dark living room. “Yeah, we’ll show him!”
His supervisor was on his knees, and Jun was back against the door, ready to praise temp work and paper shredding to high heaven when Sho paused, hand on Jun’s zipper.
“Wait…do you think it would shred a whole stack of post-it notes?”
--
Sho was nearly bouncing as they stood in the line at the 24-hour store, brand new giant shredder in tow. Jun mostly wanted to shred Sho’s clothes at this point.
Sakurai had his cell phone precariously balanced between his shoulder and his ear as the queue shuffled forward. “Masaki, seriously, I’ll just use the company card. Business expense.”
Jun sighed. The shopping basket Sho was making him carry had post-it notes, a package of file folders, cassette tapes, lunch meat, and a pair of scissors. Jun intended to hide behind Sho’s couch when it was time for the scissors.
“A stapler?” Sho was complaining. “Don’t be an idiot, that won’t shred.” Jun set the basket down on the little check-out conveyor belt. It was pretty obvious he wasn’t having sex tonight. “No, you may not come over and fiddle with the motor. Remember when you tried to fix your garbage disposal?” Sho covered the phone’s mouthpiece. “You think a stapler would really work?”
Was this his life now? He was seeing what would go into a paper shredder with the boss from his temp assignment? What else would he have to shred until Sho’s curiosity was satisfied? What else would he have to shred before he got to see what Sho looked like under his clothes?
Jun left the basket there. “You know what? I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Wait!” Sho called after him. “Jun, wait! What if we tried a flattened aluminum can? Jun!”
--
Sho looked kind of disappointed with him when he came in the next morning, seeing Jun still separating things into piles.
“I really wish you would have stayed,” Sakurai said, voice laced with sadness. “It’s not much fun without you.”
“Uh huh.”
Sho crouched down next to where Jun had organized things on the floor. “I really like you…”
“Uh huh.”
“I know we just met, Jun, and I realize that I’m your superior here,” Sho continued, still trying to get his attention. The cologne and the designer silk tie and the way Sho said his first name were helping, but he wasn’t sure it was enough. “I…I don’t want to let the shredding thing come between us…”
“I’m just a temp, you know,” he replied, finally looking up to see Sho’s eyes. The ones that had fluttered closed when Jun had let his fingers dance over the man’s belt in the elevator last night - until Sho’s attention had gone elsewhere. “When we finish this stuff in here, I’ll get a different assignment.”
Sho yanked the folder he was working on away and threw it aside, making Jun cringe as the papers fluttered out and got out of order, their precious order!
“I want to hire you.”
“Excuse me?”
Sho nodded. “I want to hire you. I’ve already talked to my boss, who is talking to his boss. You’ve got good work ethic.”
From the look in his eyes, Sho was probably thinking more about Jun’s skillful tongue and the things it had done (and could have done) last night instead of his work ethic. Jun smirked. “What’s the HR policy on workplace romance?”
Sho grinned. “Well, you see, I’m not in marketing. Aiba-chan is, and he’s really excited to get someone to help out in his department. He went and found a whole ton of old stuff - apparently, his boss doesn’t clean out his office, like, ever. So once you get transferred there, we can hang out all the time. I can bring the shredder over to your new cubicle and…”
“Wait…”
Sho’s phone vibrated again. “Ah, gotta take this. I’ll be back soon, okay?”
The door slammed shut, and Jun was left to ponder his fate in life.
Shredding.
Nothing but shredding assignments and supervisors who were really (really) attractive but really (really) weird.
Well, it was still better than retail.