the pact (chainsaw man, aki/reader fanfiction)

chapter 4: avoidance

6:30AM. Your sleep is interrupted by the blaring alarm coming from your phone. You didn't sleep peacefully at all throughout the night, constantly tossing and turning, your brain racked with the events from the previous evening.

Three things were true:

1. Aki Hayakawa, your new supervisor at Public Safety, was some sort of boss in the rankings of the Yakuza;
2. You absolutely hated his guts; and
3. You were unequivocally attracted to him.

The new revelation was enough to make your blood boil—his watching you without your knowledge, his seeing right through your pretense, his show of egotism. You were convinced he'd set the whole thing up and planned to have you wrapped around his finger by the end of the night. What made you even more enraged is how close he was to being successful in doing so. Aki was a magician with his hands and no matter how angry you were, you wanted more of him. You also knew how foolish that was considering how disrespectful he was to you... how he treated you like a piece of meat to be bought... but nothing about this situation was sensible anymore.

No matter, you grudgingly roll out of bed and start your morning routine. This morning you paid special attention to your appearance. Your plan was to avoid Aki as much as possible; frankly, you had no way of knowing what he would or wouldn't try at work. And although you planned to have as little interaction with him as possible, you might as well look good doing it.

~~

When you arrive at headquarters, Makima, your division members, and the crime-boss-by-night are standing in the lobby as if they were waiting for you. Power and Denji apparently lived with Aki, but you figured that the Fiend and the Fiend-adjacent on your new team were not smart or ambitious enough to uncover his dirty little secret. He seemed to be incredibly discreet in his extraprofessional affairs thus far.

The team gives you details on the mission: track and neutralize a Devil that had been abducting children in a nearby neighborhood. The entire time you are debriefed, you notice Aki staring you down, much more intensely and purposefully than he had done just yesterday. You were convinced he was searching for what your nude, curvy body looked like under this daylight. Your eyes lower to avoid meeting his gaze, but your heart betrays you as it begins to pump faster.

As Power and Denji walk towards the glass doors to exit the building, Aki stays a few paces behind them to create space between you and him and the other two members of your division. He holds the door open and you try to walk through, carrying the intention of your plans to ignore him. Of course, he found a way to engage you anyway. His fingertips slightly graze the shoulder of your blazer as you go through the doors and onto the street.

"We need to talk, you know. About last night," Aki mouths into your ear when you go past him, sending a wave of heat down your back.

"Not now," you snap through tight lips. "Just let me do my job, Aki." You hear a chuckle from behind, almost like he knew the effect he was having on you.

You quickly widen the distance between you and Aki to disregard the brief exchange you just had with him and how it was making you feel.

"Wait up!" you call out to Power and Denji. You jog to catch them and soon hear Aki's footsteps not too far behind. You listen to him give some additional details about the Devil you were to be hunting. Power had an especially keen sense of smell, so you figured the tracking part would be very easy but you had no idea how much of a threat the Devil would be. The group turns a corner. You were only a few blocks away from the neighborhood where you would be investigating.

To your annoyance, Aki was now walking right beside you at the same pace, with little distance, attempting some small talk. You could almost feel the heat radiating off him and the smell of his cologne blend with the crisp Fall air. A sign he was entirely too close for your comfort. You knew he was purposely getting this close to you as a way to thicken the tension he'd already caused with his previous actions.