A/N: Somebody said "weird kinks" around me at the same time I had "shop AU" as a BSDopoly prompt and here we are.
"My thesis is on here and I never backed it up and if I lose three months worth of work I'll die. Literally die, I'll-"
"What happened to the computer," asks the repairman with the pretty aging face and the muscular exposed arms and the hands that Ranpo is trying not to let distract him from the absolutely dire situation he's in. He might lose his thesis, he thinks at the hands, pleading. He might have to suffer through all those boring required citations again, hands. He might have to play games less. He has to focus!
"I was just finishing the last citation - citations are so stupid, you know? This stuff is obvious, why do I need to prove-"
"And then?"
"And then the screen shut off!"
The repairman doesn't look as upset as he should. He can't bribe a black screen to work! That's scary!
"Did anything happen between the citation and the screen shutting off."
"Uhhh I maybe spilled some Coke?"
It was hard to remember, he was busy and then his screen shut off.
"Where did you spill the Coke."
"On the keyboard."
"How much Coke."
"I don't know? Maybe like half a bottle?"
"Half of a…"
"Two-liter."
The man still doesn't blink. He does sigh, very subtly, then holds out his hand for the laptop cradled in Ranpo's arms like an injured child.
He hands it over carefully and tries to stay calm. He thinks about the Coke. It would be nice to have that Coke right now, actually; he could use the boost. He's been waiting outside for the shop to open since his laptop made a sad little noise and died at five in the morning and now the world has gotten hazy. Maybe he shouldn't have stayed up the night before last. Or the night before the night before last. Or the night bef-
"You can go, I'll be done by noon." The man's voice sounds like chocolate mousse and Ranpo almost agrees to leave his precious Coke-stained thesis behind. Damn the guy's persuasive body.
"I'll wait here!" Ranpo plunks himself down into the hard-backed chair in front of the desk.
Gray-white eyebrows raise at him.
Ranpo will not be distracted by his pretty face.
The man sighs again, running one of his distracting hands through his hair. "At least it's summer," he mumbles, and gets to work.
He has big hands. Really big. Really really really big. They dwarf Ranpo's laptop, his fingers reaching halfway across it when he turns it over so he can get at the screws on the back.
Long fingers pluck up a red-handled phillips-head screwdriver and slide the bit into the grooves in the first tiny screw. A little catch, a little stick, and the screw gives way, his fingers twirling to wind it out. The screw goes off to the side and the screwdriver returns, quick and efficient. Stick, twirl, set, stick, twirl, set. He's methodical and practiced, not waiting for the laptop to react, sure he's got it right. Would the laptop react? It couldn't, could it?
Ranpo thinks about how nice it would be to have screws this guy could take out.
Fukuzawa, the shop certificate on the wall says. He's probably the Fukuzawa in question since nobody's in town over break, students and hired help alike. He's got pretty eyes and pretty hair and pretty lines on his face that make him look… what is it the liberal arts kids say? Extinguished?
Ranpo wouldn't mind this guy extinguishing all over him.
Fukuzawa picks up a blue stick with a flat end and Ranpo wonders where that's going.
Answer: it slides between the perfect seal on the plastic shell around the computery innards. Fukuzawa twists the stick and doesn't flinch at the harsh snap that sounds through the shop. Is it supposed to do that? It's kinda hot.
Ranpo blinks. He tries to trace where his thoughts have been and can't remember anything but stick, snap. His tongue feels thick in his mouth. His eyes feel weird the way they do when people tell him his pupils are big.
"You spilled Coke."
Fukuzawa's looking at him and he hopes his face has been this red since he walked in.
"Yuh-huh."
Something in the shop sure likes buzzing. It buzz buzz buzzes while Fukuzawa flips the laptop upside down like it weighs nothing in his big, strong hands and lets the crumbs and nerds and rainbow sprinkles rain to his desk. He taps the side so more fall out when it looks like it's done.
"The Coke was what killed it."
Fukuzawa snorts quietly, fishing a plastic box out of a drawer and sliding it onto the table beside his other tools. Then he pulls out a bottle of some unknown liquid and pours it into a plastic cup.
He sinks another screwdriver into the laptop's guts and Ranpo's mind goes fuzzy. Stick, stick, stick, he plucks screws from the unnamed bits of the laptop's insides and drops them into the cup. Something's building up on his screwdriver and every so often he wipes it on a rag by his side. Is that the Coke? Is that why people say it's bad for him? Will Fukuzawa reach inside him and clean it out of him, too?
Ranpo crosses his legs, hypnotized by sure fingers using far less care than he thought was required to handle spinny things and copper things and boards and chips. Then the laptop is all in pieces on the table, and Ranpo may as well be.
The white box opens with a snap, but one that's less hot than the laptop was. He pulls out a cloth that moves like jelly and Ranpo feels his ears heat.
Quickly and efficiently he wipes down the parts that don't have tiny pointy bits or crevices. It's fine, Ranpo's not that turned on watching his wide palms slide over stuff. Definitely. But then he plays dirty and pulls out a few dozen Q-tips and why is that worse, what is wrong with him-
Fukuzawa braces the first Q-tip the way Ranpo can never brace pens, stable and perfectly controlled. Ranpo tries to memorize how he's done it but his brain flatlines when the soft tip slides into some kind of pipe.
It's just big enough to admit the Q-tip, the plush bit pressed flat, the other end braced on Fukuzawa's pinky so he can slide it deeper and deeper. Ranpo squeezes his thighs together and swallows. Fukuzawa twists the Q-tip, then pulls it out and repeats the process with another. Ranpo nearly wimpers.
Ranpo doesn't have a body anymore when he's finished. He's left it to inhabit the computer. Maybe the computer feels tired and hungry and horny, but not him, no, he feels cracked open and manhandled and touched all over and through. Fukuzawa has no mercy on his new body, cleaning out ports and drying off chips and plucking at keys one by one. He never looks up but that's because there is no Ranpo, there is only Fukuzawa and the thing Fukuzawa's handling that happens to have had a human brain at one point.
Ranpo bites his lip when the first keys clack clack clack back into place, each one a little jolt of pleasure up his spine. He dries a few pieces with canned air and then fishes the screws from their watery gave, wiping those off and spinning them back into place. Everything fits back in so easily, too fast, and soon he's flipping the laptop over and opening it up a changed being.
A little whir interrupts the rush of blood in Ranpo's ears.
Fukuzawa's face does something of interest. Ranpo - the laptop that is him - has pleased Fukuzawa.
Then the screen turns around and he's flung back into the body he left by looking at himself.
"Your thesis?"
"My what?"
Fukuzawa stares at his far less impressive human form over the big bold title of his thesis, Sexbots: Design and Testing of Artificial Genitalia.
"The," Fukuzawa pauses. His eyes are sharp suddenly, sweeping down Ranpo's sleep-wrinkled clothes, lingering where his hands have taken up residence covering his lap. "The thing you would die without. Honestly…" he pinches the bridge of his nose, blushing faintly.
"Oh. Yeah. Thanks," Ranpo blinks at the words on the screen and wonders about them. Doesn't he know those words? Doesn't he know words?
Fukuzawa pushes himself up out of his chair and Ranpo doesn't want to do the same. His body is all warm and touched and if he moves the wind of moving will take his heat away the way it does at four in the morning, he can feel it.
"Eighty dollars."
"What? That's it?" Did Coke negotiate a discount with Fukuzawa's shop? Ranpo spilled Pepsi on his computer in undergrad and had to pay three hundred just for it to fizzle every time he turned it on for the rest of the year.
"Off season discount." Fukuzawa thrusts a brick of a card reader in his face and Ranpo reluctantly moves one hand off his crotch to get his wallet. He winces. His pants are wetter than the laptop now and his cock is angry as a swarm of bees forced to stay in a jar when they wanted to sting. He doesn't meet Fukuzawa's eyes. The card reader chimes and Fukuzawa waits for the useless pieces of paper to print.
Ranpo struggles to his feet, picking up his laptop - which he will not be able to look at normally for at least three weeks, Fukuzawa might be cleaning something thicker and stickier than Coke out of it before long - and holding it low to hide the tent in his wrinkled khakis.
"Uh, well, thanks."
"Your receipt."
"I don't need-"
"Your receipt."
Fukuzawa is very tall. He'd sort of noticed but the shop ceiling is higher than his apartment's and Fukuzawa was sitting most of the time so it wasn't as obvious until he had to crane his head a little to look at him. He holds out the receipt and Ranpo can see him thirty years younger in a leather jacket with a switchblade in its place.
"Um. Ok." He takes the paper as he might have taken the blade from the sharp end.
Fukuzawa returns to his seat and Ranpo shuffles out of the shop in a daze, the laptop burning through his fingers. Maybe he should do more on weird kinks in his next research paper.
He dumps the laptop on the dirty counter when he gets home and chucks the receipt beside it, loosening his pants - and stops.
The receipt landed upside down. The corner soaks up a splotch of water from beside the leaky kitchen faucet. Below that, in strong, sharp strokes, is the name Fukuzawa Yukichi and a ten-digit number.
Ranpo has his phone in his hand two seconds later.