Chocolate Fic for astrangerenters
To: astrangerenters
From: literarylemming
Title: Watermelon
Pairing: Tokita Shuntaro/Mizuno Asuka (Lucky Seven)
Rating: PG
Summary: Asuka is judging which of the men in the office has the best seduction technique. Shuntaro doesn't think she knows what she's talking about.
A/N: Oh my gosh, when I got my assignment I nearly fainted. So many of my own favorite pairings to choose from! And from one of my own favorite authors, too! It was an embarrassment of riches! This particular story is one that I've had kicking around in the back of my brain for a while, so it was a pleasure to finally put it down on paper (so to speak). I hope you'll enjoy it!
--------
When Tokita Shuntaro arrived at the Lucky Seven Detective Agency on Monday morning, he found that he'd walked right into the middle of an argument amongst his fellow detectives.
Nitta Teru, his irritating occasional partner, and Mizuno Asuka, his equally irritating desk mate, were standing by Nitta's desk facing Asahi Junpei, who stood alone on his side with a look of abject disbelief on his face. “Say that again?” he was saying as Shuntaro hung up his jacket.
“Nitta,” Asuka responded, clearly repeating an earlier comment. Nitta grinned.
“Eh? Why not me?”
“Because you're old and creepy, Junpei-san.”
“Oi!”
“What's going on?” Shuntaro whispered to Kayano Mei, who was curled up in a chair in front of her computer as usual.
“Junpei-san and Nitta made a bet about which of them would be better at seduction,” the mousy computer whiz muttered in her usual blunt manner. “They asked Asuka to judge their technique.”
“And she chose Nitta?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Shuntaro-kun, get over here and tell these two that I am excellent at seduction!” Junpei ordered.
“Why do you want me to lie, Junpei-san?” Shuntaro asked with an innocent expression as he settled down at his desk.
“Oi!”
“Face it, Junpei-san, you're just not seductive,” Nitta observed, sitting down and kicking his feet up on Shuntaro's desk.
“I don't think you are either, Nitta,” Shuntaro added, shoving the other man's feet away.
“Eh?” Back went the feet onto Shuntaro's desk.
“He's kind of right, Nitta,” Asuka agreed, rounding the grouping of desks on the way to her own chair and stealing Shuntaro's coffee as she passed.
“Give me that!”
“Oi!” Nitta protested, ignoring Shuntaro's flailing attempts to reclaim his coffee from the young woman. “You just said I was good!”
Asuka shrugged, ducking under Shuntaro's arm as he made a swipe for the coffee. “No, I said you were better than Junpei-san. That's not really a high bar, ne, Mei-chan?”
“Hai,” the other young woman agreed. The two gave each other an air fist bump.
“Not you, too, Mei-chan!” Junpei half groaned, half wailed as he slumped into his chair.
“There there,” Asuka soothed, patting the older man on the back. “I'm sure if you were hitting on older women-”
“I'm not old!”
“-say in their fifties or sixties-”
“OI!”
“-your dance card would be full 24/7/365.” She gave him an impish smile and sipped Shuntaro's coffee, then made a face of disgust. “Oh, BLEH! This is awful!”
“No it is NOT,” Shuntaro griped, snatching the cup away from her. “It's premium French Roast, one sugar, no cream.”
“It's like drinking caffeinated mud,” Asuka complained, taking a brightly-colored lollipop from the pen cup next to her monitor and popping it into her mouth to dispel the taste.
“Well next time you can buy your own instead of stealing someone else's,” Shuntaro snapped. “Then you can get whatever frilly, girly, frou-frou crap you want.”
“Spoilsport.”
“Brat.”
Junpei watched the little altercation with amusement. “So Asuka-chan,” he asked, his earlier disappointment forgotten. “What do you think of Shuntaro-kun's seduction technique?”
“I think he's an idiot who should thank his lucky stars any woman would so much as give him the time of day,” she grumbled, glaring across the desk at the man in question.
“You only say that because no one's ever seduced you properly,” Shuntaro argued with a smug smile, leaning forward in his seat and arching an eyebrow.
“Oh, you think so?”
“I know so.”
“Shows how much you know. I've been seduced plenty of times. Part of the job.”
“I didn't say you hadn't been seduced. Just that you hadn't been seduced properly.”
“And you're going to show me how it's done?”
“Yep.”
“Okay.” She sat up straight, lollipop stick protruding coquettishly from the corner of her mouth. “Do your worst.”
He stood up and slowly circled around until he could sit on the edge of her desk. “You mean my best, Asuka-chan,” he purred, his dark eyes warm and wicked. “I don't have a worst.” With an elegant motion he plucked the lollipop out of her mouth and popped it into his own.
“Hey!” she protested, hopping to her feet and trying to grab it back.
Shuntaro caught her hand mid-grab and laced their fingers. “Mm,” he hummed, sucking thoughtfully on the sweet before pulling it from his mouth with a soft pop!.
“Watermelon,” he murmured, and Asuka's eyes widened as he leaned into her personal space until their noses were nearly touching.
“Do you like watermelon candy?” he asked with a soft smile. “It suits you.”
“Don't be an idiot,” she muttered, trying to steal back her lollipop.
He held it stubbornly out of her reach. “It does. Watermelons are colorful. Other fruits are all one color, ne? Raspberries and strawberries are red. Oranges are orange. Bananas are yellow. But watermelons are red and white and green, with black, slippery seeds.”
He tilted his head to nuzzle at the pulse point that fluttered at the base of Asuka's jaw. She swallowed hard.
“Asuka-chan is colorful, too,” he murmured, his breath warm against her throat. “So many different colors. I bet your wardrobe looks like sherbet, or a fresh fruit salad.” His mouth moved closer to her ear.
“Mmm... juicy,” he whispered.
-------
Asuka shivered, keenly aware of Shuntaro's body very close to her own. “You think that's working?” she snorted. “I'm not feeling very seduced. But I am getting hungry. Way to go.”
He laughed. “That's how else Asuka-chan is like watermelon,” he observed, raising his head to look her straight in the eye. “Once you get through the tough skin, the inside is so, so sweet. But if you aren't careful, you'll go too far and sink your teeth into that sour rind. You have to be careful not to go too far.”
“You're trying to tell me I'm sour? That's your idea of seduction?”
“Are you sour?” he asked in response.
“No!”
“You sure?”
“Stop being an idiot, of course I'm su-UMF!” The rest of her response was muffled when he kissed her.
It wasn't a deep kiss. It wasn't a passionate kiss. It wasn't even a terribly long kiss. But for all that it was not, what it was was so fundamentally good that for a moment Asuka let herself forget that this was just a silly game and allowed herself to enjoy it. It had been a long time since someone had kissed her, let alone kissed her like he meant it instead of as a formality.
She laid her free hand on his shoulder and tilted her head, settling into the kiss on her own terms. As she felt him start to pull away her fingers curled around the back of his neck, holding him in place. A warm pressure at the base of her spine was quickly identified as his hand, pulling her closer to stand between his knees as the kiss continued.
How long this lasted she wasn't sure, but eventually she became aware of someone clearing their throat back in the Real World. “Asuka-chan, I need to borrow Shuntaro-kun.”
Oh God, Fujisaki-san! She pulled away from Shuntaro, stumbling backwards a step and raising a hand to her hair in case it looked as off-kilter as the rest of her felt. “Oh, hai. Hai, boss, sure. Um, we were just... practicing.”
The older woman gave her a knowing smile from the door of her office, her eyes twinkling. “Shuntaro-kun, if you will,” she said, addressing the man in question. “I need your opinion on something.” The chief detective disappeared back into her office.
Shuntaro stood up and Asuka became suddenly aware that she was blushing a bright, burning shade of red. She forced herself to look at him, daring him to mention her flushed cheeks or swollen lips. “Sorry, I still pick Nitta,” she said haughtily, puffing a stray lock of hair out of her eyes.
“I don't,” Mei observed from her computer.
“Shut up, Mei-chan.”
Shuntaro grinned. “Oh well. Guess I have to admit when I'm beaten.” He raised her lollipop between them. “Here, you can have it back.”
“It's got your gross, coffee-flavored spit all over it,” she complained as she took it back.
“Sorry. I'll buy you another one.” He glanced at her collection of lollipops and grabbed a green one from the pen cup. “I like apple best.” He tossed the wrapper in her trash bin and tucked the lollipop into his mouth, then swatted playfully at her dangly earring before turning on his heel to join Fujisaki in her office, closing the door behind him.
Asuka plunked down in her chair and tried to ignore the stares from the two men by the window. She would have killed for Masayoshi-san to be there to say something businesslike and break the tension. But of course their seasoned office manager was on vacation this week. It was like the universe was conspiring against her to give her a miserable day.
“Don't say it,” she snapped when she heard Junpei take a breath to speak.
“You don't know what I was going to say,” he protested.
“I can guess. Don't do it.”
“I need a cigarette now,” Nitta observed.
“Shut up, Nitta.”
“I do, too,” Mei agreed.
“Shut up, Mei-chan.”
She opened her email for something to distract her and began avidly reading the first thing in her inbox, which happened to be from a Nigerian prince who needed her help getting money out of his country.
Idiot, she grumbled internally as her eyes passed over the lines of the email without absorbing their content. The green ones are LIME, not apple.
Shuntaro's fiddling had dislodged the hook of her earring just enough to be irritating. With a grunt of aggravation Asuka reached up to adjust it into a more comfortable position, and her hand froze.
She blinked, then laughed.
------
Shuntaro was the last to leave the office that night. Fujisaki had given him a solo assignment to track down information on a family of apparent con artists. The first step was to trace their activities through news accounts, so he'd spent most of his day buried in old news archives online. By the time he shut off his computer to head home the sun had been down for hours already, and the night was lit with dirty orange and harsh white street lamps.
It had been a long, mentally taxing day. All he wanted was to get home, eat a bowl of something, and sleep for a hundred years. His earlier interlude with Asuka was the furthest thing from his mind.
At least it was until he put on his coat.
As he left the office, careful to lock it behind him, he tucked a hand into his pocket and frowned to feel something hard and bulky there. He hadn't left anything in his pockets; his cellphone was tucked in the front pocket of his jeans, as was his wallet. Curious, he withdrew the object to examine what it could possibly be.
His eyes crinkled as he grinned at the dangly earring shaped like a round, rosy apple that rested in his palm.
A slip of paper had been speared onto the hook and he slipped it off. When he unfolded it he saw that it was a note.
Okay. You win.
:3 Asuka
“Told you so,” Shuntaro chuckled, still grinning. “Teach you to doubt me. Baka.”
He tucked the earring and note back into his pocket and went home, wondering if tomorrow would be as good as today.
THE END
From: literarylemming
Title: Watermelon
Pairing: Tokita Shuntaro/Mizuno Asuka (Lucky Seven)
Rating: PG
Summary: Asuka is judging which of the men in the office has the best seduction technique. Shuntaro doesn't think she knows what she's talking about.
A/N: Oh my gosh, when I got my assignment I nearly fainted. So many of my own favorite pairings to choose from! And from one of my own favorite authors, too! It was an embarrassment of riches! This particular story is one that I've had kicking around in the back of my brain for a while, so it was a pleasure to finally put it down on paper (so to speak). I hope you'll enjoy it!
--------
When Tokita Shuntaro arrived at the Lucky Seven Detective Agency on Monday morning, he found that he'd walked right into the middle of an argument amongst his fellow detectives.
Nitta Teru, his irritating occasional partner, and Mizuno Asuka, his equally irritating desk mate, were standing by Nitta's desk facing Asahi Junpei, who stood alone on his side with a look of abject disbelief on his face. “Say that again?” he was saying as Shuntaro hung up his jacket.
“Nitta,” Asuka responded, clearly repeating an earlier comment. Nitta grinned.
“Eh? Why not me?”
“Because you're old and creepy, Junpei-san.”
“Oi!”
“What's going on?” Shuntaro whispered to Kayano Mei, who was curled up in a chair in front of her computer as usual.
“Junpei-san and Nitta made a bet about which of them would be better at seduction,” the mousy computer whiz muttered in her usual blunt manner. “They asked Asuka to judge their technique.”
“And she chose Nitta?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Shuntaro-kun, get over here and tell these two that I am excellent at seduction!” Junpei ordered.
“Why do you want me to lie, Junpei-san?” Shuntaro asked with an innocent expression as he settled down at his desk.
“Oi!”
“Face it, Junpei-san, you're just not seductive,” Nitta observed, sitting down and kicking his feet up on Shuntaro's desk.
“I don't think you are either, Nitta,” Shuntaro added, shoving the other man's feet away.
“Eh?” Back went the feet onto Shuntaro's desk.
“He's kind of right, Nitta,” Asuka agreed, rounding the grouping of desks on the way to her own chair and stealing Shuntaro's coffee as she passed.
“Give me that!”
“Oi!” Nitta protested, ignoring Shuntaro's flailing attempts to reclaim his coffee from the young woman. “You just said I was good!”
Asuka shrugged, ducking under Shuntaro's arm as he made a swipe for the coffee. “No, I said you were better than Junpei-san. That's not really a high bar, ne, Mei-chan?”
“Hai,” the other young woman agreed. The two gave each other an air fist bump.
“Not you, too, Mei-chan!” Junpei half groaned, half wailed as he slumped into his chair.
“There there,” Asuka soothed, patting the older man on the back. “I'm sure if you were hitting on older women-”
“I'm not old!”
“-say in their fifties or sixties-”
“OI!”
“-your dance card would be full 24/7/365.” She gave him an impish smile and sipped Shuntaro's coffee, then made a face of disgust. “Oh, BLEH! This is awful!”
“No it is NOT,” Shuntaro griped, snatching the cup away from her. “It's premium French Roast, one sugar, no cream.”
“It's like drinking caffeinated mud,” Asuka complained, taking a brightly-colored lollipop from the pen cup next to her monitor and popping it into her mouth to dispel the taste.
“Well next time you can buy your own instead of stealing someone else's,” Shuntaro snapped. “Then you can get whatever frilly, girly, frou-frou crap you want.”
“Spoilsport.”
“Brat.”
Junpei watched the little altercation with amusement. “So Asuka-chan,” he asked, his earlier disappointment forgotten. “What do you think of Shuntaro-kun's seduction technique?”
“I think he's an idiot who should thank his lucky stars any woman would so much as give him the time of day,” she grumbled, glaring across the desk at the man in question.
“You only say that because no one's ever seduced you properly,” Shuntaro argued with a smug smile, leaning forward in his seat and arching an eyebrow.
“Oh, you think so?”
“I know so.”
“Shows how much you know. I've been seduced plenty of times. Part of the job.”
“I didn't say you hadn't been seduced. Just that you hadn't been seduced properly.”
“And you're going to show me how it's done?”
“Yep.”
“Okay.” She sat up straight, lollipop stick protruding coquettishly from the corner of her mouth. “Do your worst.”
He stood up and slowly circled around until he could sit on the edge of her desk. “You mean my best, Asuka-chan,” he purred, his dark eyes warm and wicked. “I don't have a worst.” With an elegant motion he plucked the lollipop out of her mouth and popped it into his own.
“Hey!” she protested, hopping to her feet and trying to grab it back.
Shuntaro caught her hand mid-grab and laced their fingers. “Mm,” he hummed, sucking thoughtfully on the sweet before pulling it from his mouth with a soft pop!.
“Watermelon,” he murmured, and Asuka's eyes widened as he leaned into her personal space until their noses were nearly touching.
“Do you like watermelon candy?” he asked with a soft smile. “It suits you.”
“Don't be an idiot,” she muttered, trying to steal back her lollipop.
He held it stubbornly out of her reach. “It does. Watermelons are colorful. Other fruits are all one color, ne? Raspberries and strawberries are red. Oranges are orange. Bananas are yellow. But watermelons are red and white and green, with black, slippery seeds.”
He tilted his head to nuzzle at the pulse point that fluttered at the base of Asuka's jaw. She swallowed hard.
“Asuka-chan is colorful, too,” he murmured, his breath warm against her throat. “So many different colors. I bet your wardrobe looks like sherbet, or a fresh fruit salad.” His mouth moved closer to her ear.
“Mmm... juicy,” he whispered.
-------
Asuka shivered, keenly aware of Shuntaro's body very close to her own. “You think that's working?” she snorted. “I'm not feeling very seduced. But I am getting hungry. Way to go.”
He laughed. “That's how else Asuka-chan is like watermelon,” he observed, raising his head to look her straight in the eye. “Once you get through the tough skin, the inside is so, so sweet. But if you aren't careful, you'll go too far and sink your teeth into that sour rind. You have to be careful not to go too far.”
“You're trying to tell me I'm sour? That's your idea of seduction?”
“Are you sour?” he asked in response.
“No!”
“You sure?”
“Stop being an idiot, of course I'm su-UMF!” The rest of her response was muffled when he kissed her.
It wasn't a deep kiss. It wasn't a passionate kiss. It wasn't even a terribly long kiss. But for all that it was not, what it was was so fundamentally good that for a moment Asuka let herself forget that this was just a silly game and allowed herself to enjoy it. It had been a long time since someone had kissed her, let alone kissed her like he meant it instead of as a formality.
She laid her free hand on his shoulder and tilted her head, settling into the kiss on her own terms. As she felt him start to pull away her fingers curled around the back of his neck, holding him in place. A warm pressure at the base of her spine was quickly identified as his hand, pulling her closer to stand between his knees as the kiss continued.
How long this lasted she wasn't sure, but eventually she became aware of someone clearing their throat back in the Real World. “Asuka-chan, I need to borrow Shuntaro-kun.”
Oh God, Fujisaki-san! She pulled away from Shuntaro, stumbling backwards a step and raising a hand to her hair in case it looked as off-kilter as the rest of her felt. “Oh, hai. Hai, boss, sure. Um, we were just... practicing.”
The older woman gave her a knowing smile from the door of her office, her eyes twinkling. “Shuntaro-kun, if you will,” she said, addressing the man in question. “I need your opinion on something.” The chief detective disappeared back into her office.
Shuntaro stood up and Asuka became suddenly aware that she was blushing a bright, burning shade of red. She forced herself to look at him, daring him to mention her flushed cheeks or swollen lips. “Sorry, I still pick Nitta,” she said haughtily, puffing a stray lock of hair out of her eyes.
“I don't,” Mei observed from her computer.
“Shut up, Mei-chan.”
Shuntaro grinned. “Oh well. Guess I have to admit when I'm beaten.” He raised her lollipop between them. “Here, you can have it back.”
“It's got your gross, coffee-flavored spit all over it,” she complained as she took it back.
“Sorry. I'll buy you another one.” He glanced at her collection of lollipops and grabbed a green one from the pen cup. “I like apple best.” He tossed the wrapper in her trash bin and tucked the lollipop into his mouth, then swatted playfully at her dangly earring before turning on his heel to join Fujisaki in her office, closing the door behind him.
Asuka plunked down in her chair and tried to ignore the stares from the two men by the window. She would have killed for Masayoshi-san to be there to say something businesslike and break the tension. But of course their seasoned office manager was on vacation this week. It was like the universe was conspiring against her to give her a miserable day.
“Don't say it,” she snapped when she heard Junpei take a breath to speak.
“You don't know what I was going to say,” he protested.
“I can guess. Don't do it.”
“I need a cigarette now,” Nitta observed.
“Shut up, Nitta.”
“I do, too,” Mei agreed.
“Shut up, Mei-chan.”
She opened her email for something to distract her and began avidly reading the first thing in her inbox, which happened to be from a Nigerian prince who needed her help getting money out of his country.
Idiot, she grumbled internally as her eyes passed over the lines of the email without absorbing their content. The green ones are LIME, not apple.
Shuntaro's fiddling had dislodged the hook of her earring just enough to be irritating. With a grunt of aggravation Asuka reached up to adjust it into a more comfortable position, and her hand froze.
She blinked, then laughed.
------
Shuntaro was the last to leave the office that night. Fujisaki had given him a solo assignment to track down information on a family of apparent con artists. The first step was to trace their activities through news accounts, so he'd spent most of his day buried in old news archives online. By the time he shut off his computer to head home the sun had been down for hours already, and the night was lit with dirty orange and harsh white street lamps.
It had been a long, mentally taxing day. All he wanted was to get home, eat a bowl of something, and sleep for a hundred years. His earlier interlude with Asuka was the furthest thing from his mind.
At least it was until he put on his coat.
As he left the office, careful to lock it behind him, he tucked a hand into his pocket and frowned to feel something hard and bulky there. He hadn't left anything in his pockets; his cellphone was tucked in the front pocket of his jeans, as was his wallet. Curious, he withdrew the object to examine what it could possibly be.
His eyes crinkled as he grinned at the dangly earring shaped like a round, rosy apple that rested in his palm.
A slip of paper had been speared onto the hook and he slipped it off. When he unfolded it he saw that it was a note.
Okay. You win.
:3 Asuka
“Told you so,” Shuntaro chuckled, still grinning. “Teach you to doubt me. Baka.”
He tucked the earring and note back into his pocket and went home, wondering if tomorrow would be as good as today.
THE END