With You
Summary:Mimi has a secret admirer; Taichi makes it his problem. [taichi x mimi]
And if I should fall so deep and true
And if I should fall so deep
May it be with you
"With You" by Valerie June
It begins with a bouquet of red tulips, a flower she detests. Holding back a dramatic eye roll, she flicks to the camera app on her phone, takes a few shots, and selects the version that best exaggerates their tacky color.
Is this you?
?
no?
wait shit
is it your birthday or something?
Taichi, you were at my birthday party.
Last month.
oh right
lol
still no
She trims the stems under running water, fills a cylindrical vase, and brings the arrangement to work with her—and freezes mid-step when she sees the box of candies on her desk, wrapped in a curly blue ribbon. Floating next to her chair is a tied bundle of confetti-filled balloons that spell out her given name.
"Courier just brought them up," giggles her assistant, spinning with laugher in her rolling chair. "You've got a secret admirer!"
"Um—," stammers Mimi, still gripping the vase in both hands.
Someone else walks up behind her, knocking a friendly shoulder into hers. "Bet you get things like this all the time."
She's polite enough to deny the accurate observation, but it's more important then that her employees don't get the wrong impression, or, worse, distracted on inventory day over something so silly. Flustered, and waving the others aside, she sets the flowers off to the side of the desk and opens the box. It's an assortment of pastel colored chocolate almonds and chocolate peanut nougat bars. She does not like mixed nuts, especially not when they're coated in dark chocolate. With a sigh, she takes another picture.
What's this then?
a box of yum
Taichi, this is very embarrassing for me.
All my employees saw.
Knock it off.
lol
already told you
i'm not pranking you
The morning continues without further interruption, until about an hour before noon and she has to donate a basket of exotic seasonal fruits to the rest of the gifts she'd piled in the breakroom. Her employees are equal parts hungry and thrilled. All hope for a normal workday is gone, and she has lost control of the room. She ignores their gossiping chatter in favor of punching out an increasingly irritated string of messages on her phone.
Seriously? A fruit basket?
…fruit?
never heard of it
Everyone's talking about these deliveries.
It's so annoying!
what's annoying about a crush?
i'd be flattered
maybe it's the intern
First off, that would be very inappropriate.
And I don't pay him enough for him to afford all this.
exactly
he wants a sugar mama
wish i'd known about that option
What would you do with a sugar mama?
wouldn't you like to know
She leaves the office for a quick coffee break and returns to a gift set of scented coconut wax candles and a thinking-of-you musical card that breaks the shredder when she tries to destroy it, and now the gaudy tune is stuck in her aching head. The intern ends up having to call tech support, entirely too cheerful about the task, or really getting to do any task on an otherwise slow workday. When Mimi's caught staring unblinkingly at him for the third time in a row, she barricades herself within her clear glass walled office as everyone, intern included, gape in bewilderment at their once prim and proper boss. She hides behind her computer monitor.
It's not the intern.
office runner?
She's not here yet.
well it'd be really obvi if she was delivering you the gifts she was sending you
or actually secretly brilliant
fuck i'm kinda impressed now
It's not my runner.
don't worry
taichi's on the case
but taichi's also starving
lunch at the food trucks?
Taco?
kinda feeling bao actually
get it
bao
because of your bao day
like a bad day
mimi
do you get it
Grow up.
nah
Today he's in dark jeans, brown loafers with no socks, and a salmon pink button-up rolled to his elbows, a look that she spends an indecently long time thinking about. She misses her mouth when he rakes tanned fingers through his hair and his sleeve's fabric stretches over his biceps just so, and he steals the rest of her spicy pork bao in the time it takes her to scrub the sauce from her chin.
"Well, it's clearly someone who knows nothing about you."
She shudders. "Why would you ruin perfectly good chocolate by putting nuts in it?"
He leans over to help himself to a large gulp of her cherry lime cola, a gesture that brings him close enough for his cologne to invade her senses, and she snaps her head back so hard she almost throws out her neck. "What about your ex?"
"Can't be." She inches away. "He had a peanut allergy, and that ribbon was definitely hand-tied."
"Speaking of—,"
She pulls the box from her purse and hands it to him, and her grievous complaints about the entire situation disappear at the sight of him sucking the chocolate off one of the candied almonds. Her whimper is loud enough for him to glance at her; she pretends to still be struggling with the spice level of the last pork bao.
He sucks another almond, tongue between his lips. She croaks out, "I've got to head back."
Taichi swallows a nougat bar whole, glancing at his wristwatch. "Already?"
A lickable crumb of chocolate is stuck to the lickable corner of his mouth, and her head is too full of a string of despairing curses to come up with a better excuse. So she blurts, "I have to check on the intern."
"Okay, cougar."
He waits until she's turned the corner and safely out of eyesight to flip the candy box over, almonds scattering the sidewalk. Pigeons start flocking, irritating some people on the next bench, but he ignores it. All that's on the bottom of the lined packaging is her handwritten name, in a script he doesn't recognize. Okay. So it's not one of their friends, either. This should be a relief, but his stomach is still tight. He orders two more bao buns and wolfs them down on the walk back to his building, thinking about every single detail of the list of gifts she'd received so far, trying to work out the mystery for himself. He had to. He hadn't waited for her this long to lose now.
He's just heading into the firm's conference room when she texts him a picture of a teddy bear with a heart-shaped tummy to match its heart-shaped beady glass eyes. He stupidly misremembers a simple statistic during his presentation, and his colleagues are unimpressed. First chance he gets, which is annoyingly almost an hour later, he texts her back.
aw
I'm going to beary it.
Get it.
ew
Now you know how you sound.
He spends his next meeting scrolling through her tagged social media posts, holding his phone under the table and nodding along to the droning of whoever was leading the team talk. He stops, blinks, and grunts something unintelligible when he sees her unmistakable, pretty doe-eyed smile in the background of a cropped picture of a bonfire beach party, someone's disembodied arm slung affectionately around her shoulders. Too affectionately. He grunts again, or maybe growls, or even whines. Unfortunately, he makes this noise at precisely the time when the VP asked for a volunteer to lead next month's project.
Fuck.
After the workday ends, Mimi tells him another bouquet of flowers arrived just as she got home. This time, they're a tasteful arrangement of apple blossoms dotted with cornflowers, two of her favorites. She didn't send a snarky message about it, either, just coos a These are so much prettier, right?
Fuck.
He waits until he's on the subway home to text her back. He doesn't know he's scowling until no one sits near him. Well. It's been a weird day. Being alone is best now.
that's twice to your house
we're getting into stalker territory
There's a note this time, not just my name.
With a poem.
It's not original or anything, but it's sweet.
boring
I like poetry.
you like the idea of poetry
you fell asleep at that reading we went to
everyone saw
Because you posted a picture of me!
needed proof that you drool
I do not!
buckets and buckets
You're so mean.
and you're disgusting
seriously
see a doctor or something
you think that's the last one?
I don't know.
You tell me.
mimi i swear it's not me
my pranks are not this pathetic or desperate
and when i like someone i tell them straight out
And how's that working out for you?
A nearby toddler bursts into tears at the flash of frustration that winds his eyebrows together. He's apologetic, guilty even, trying to soothe out the wrinkles of his face, but the damage has been done. He gets off at his stop and trudges to his apartment. It's clear he needs help. Or something to kick. Like himself. Why did he wait so long?
He sinks onto the couch in his work clothes and toggles the phone back on again.
about as well as your sleuthing skills
There's a link at the end.
Of the poem.
To a playlist.
let me guess
it's indie love ballads
no
obscure garage metal
instrumental covers of children's theme songs
poetry readings to put you specifically to sleep
I just feel like none of this makes any sense.
Nothing matches, and there's no theme to it.
Lines of poetry and a kitschy teddy bear?
Coconut wax candles and confetti balloons?
Dark chocolate candies and exotic fruit?
ok but that last one sort of goes together?
Not for me! Gross.
I mean, the differences in the flowers alone!
Plus that ugly musical card, and now this playlist?
Too weird.
All of it's too weird.
Right?
unless your stalker is just eclectic
what's the playlist of
send it to me
mimi you there?
Um.
Okay.
Just sent it.
wait
mimi
what the hell
mimi
what is this
You tell me.
He stops answering. She suspects he's on his way, in fact, to kill them all. Not that she can blame him. It's the most ridiculous gambit. She wonders who sent which ridiculous gift. Miyako, the teddy bear, maybe; Daisuke, the musical card. Yamato, the homemade candies, for sure. Takeru, the balloons. Sora, the beautiful second flower arrangement, and Jou, the completely lame first one. Iori could have selected something like the fruit basket, and Ken's been known to have opinions about the safest type of candle wax, if she recalls correctly. That leaves…Hikari for the poem, maybe? Koushiro for the playlist? Those two would have to team up to orchestrate everything to this precise moment, knowing either of them as well as they do. They all do.
She's hiccupping, delirious, listening to the playlist over and over, each of their voices stitched together in a single edited audio track: "Never gonna give you up. Never gonna let you down. Never gonna run around and desert you to another year of pining over each other thinking the rest of us are too dumb to notice. It's sick. You're both sickening. Please, ask each other out. We're all dying."
Mimi stops the recording and weeps into her hands. She loves her friends. She will have her revenge.
The doorbell rings and she answers it still out of breath. Much like Taichi, who'd run here, looks like, almost flying from the kick in the pants that was their nosy, irritatingly obvious, totally soon-to-be dead group of friends.
"They're all dying," she tells him.
"I know," he breathes. "Because I'm gonna kill them."
"Me, too. What's the plan?" she asks.
That's the thing, though. Taichi had had a plan. He had had it all planned out. What he'd say to her, how he'd tell her. The setting, the timing. Everything.
He kisses her. He couldn't have planned it better. "I'm in love with you."
Mimi laughs, "So they tell me."