In Another World

Ice Cream for Your Gender?

Angel stared at Aki Hayakawa, his mouth dropped. "What?"

"I was wondering if I could get you that ice cream now?" Aki repeated, standing in the doorway.

Angel had never felt so goddamn crusty in his entire life. He hadn't bathed in a couple of days, he was wearing yesterday's clothing, and he hadn't even brushed his hair for the day. He had honestly expected Aki to leave him alone after everything that had happened between them, but it seemed like that had only made Aki more interested in him. He swallowed heavily, feeling his face beginning to burn.

"Um... I... I'm not ready. Can you come back in an hour?" Angel asked, his knees quivering more than he would care to admit.

"Sure. I'll come back at around two, is that okay with you?" Aki asked.

"Yeah, yeah, absolutely," Angel said, his voice cracking before closing the door. He turned and slammed his back up against the door, his chest heaving. He hadn't felt this panicked in a long, long time. He hadn't been able to get his mind off Aki since they met at the convenience store, even having dreams about the man where they seemed to be coworkers at some sort of government job.

Angel ran to his bedroom, picking out some skinny jeans with another oversized sweater. He ran to the bathroom, cleaning himself desperately, before combing his hair out, trying to get all the knots out. He was generally horrifically lazy, and so his moving this fast was very unusual. He even noticed it and felt somewhat embarrassed by how desperate he was acting.

Angel did not want to get close to Aki, but at the same time, he wanted to get to know him much better. His heart was screaming at him that this was dangerous, that if he didn't want to get hurt again, he should say he changed his mind and not go to the ice cream shop with this man, but he couldn't stop thinking about it. He wanted so desperately to have that form of human connection, even if he was scared. It had been ten damn years, and while he felt he was a walking contradiction, he wanted to do this.

Angel didn't finish drying his hair by the time Aki knocked again, so he said forget it and walked over to the door, opening it. Once again, Aki was there, but this time his sleeves were slightly rolled up, revealing the muscle on them. Angel wanted to puke, he was so insanely attracted to this asshole. However, after all this time, he was very good at keeping a poker face. Nobody could tell what he was thinking, and that's the way he liked it.

"Are you ready?" Aki asked.

"Yeah," Angel said blandly, walking out of his apartment and locking it behind himself.

As they walked down the hall and made their way down the stairs, Angel tried his best not to stare at Aki. However, he could feel the glances that kept coming his way. He wanted to broach some sort of topic of conversation, but he had no idea what to say. What do people even talk about? The weather, right? Well, it was cloudy, not like it was going to storm or anything, so that wasn't very interesting.

"So, Akuma," Aki said, breaking Angel out of his nervous thoughts. "What do you do for work?"

Oh, that was not a safe topic.

"Uh... I draw," Angel said, trying to be as vague as possible.

"Oh? What do you draw?" Aki asked, glancing down at him as they walked out of their apartment building.

"Um... characters," Angel said.

"Characters? Like who?" Aki asked.

Well, he was the one asking. "I draw porn, Hayakawa."

Aki stopped walking for a second, staring openly at the other man. Angel stopped and looked back at him, an eyebrow lifted. After a moment of collecting himself, with only his ears now burning red, he nodded and walked forward, quickly catching up with the smaller man.