summary: while you talk about a case, date admires the view...
“i know this might be a crazy idea, but if the killer really did do this, then this might explain the inconsistencies! and if i'm right, then it would narrow our list of suspects down significantly–!”
for the last couple minutes, you've been pointing towards the pin board with all the evidence for your current case, while rambling on about your theories. yet when you turned around, date was just staring at you. he didn't look confused, nor amused. he just… stared.
“what is it…?” you asked, feeling a little uncertain now. “do you not like the theory? i know it might sound far fetched, but–”
“no, nothing wrong with the theory!” date assured you, finally speaking up. he looked at you with a soft smile, before shaking his head a little.
and that only confused you more.
“do i have something on my face then? you're being strange, date. in fact, even more strange than usual!”
date laughed softly, not taking your little insult to heart. instead, he grinned playfully and leaned forward, his eyes glued to your face, as he spoke.
“i just couldn't help but admire the view. you look damn cute when you ramble like that! all worked up about the case… it's pretty sexy!”
you roll your eyes in response, trying not to let date see your amused smile.
[Summary: Date treats you colder than your other coworkers, and despite how much you don’t want to admit it, it drove you insane. (Not necessarily romantic, but may get there in later parts)
Warnings: Mentions of pornography (this IS Date we’re talking about), AI:The Somnium Files spoilers, I’m ignoring the mask thing (That’s just his face to me), mentions of murder and violence, swearing, alcohol
Request: No request. Just me getting back into the fanfiction brainrot now that I’m not super sick anymore. Request here through my survey! (https://forms.gle/D9rsJtkERoBPaKvv8)]
You weren’t sure what to think of Kaname Date when you first started at ABIS. Boss told you that he was good at what he did, but… well, her exact words were “He’s got quite the personality”. Eventually, you were fairly certain that you had a decent handle on who he was. He was thorough and determined enough that you understood Ryuki’s admiration of him. He genuinely was a good detective with a strong sense of justice. Though, you couldn’t say that Mizuki and Aiba were wrong to call him a “pervert” and roll their eyes at some of his ridiculous behavior. Your own AI partner had informed you of his strange response to pornographic magazines. It had helped you out in a fight or two, but that didn’t mean you didn’t find it strange.
But more than his cleverness and less than appropriate habits, you noticed that he was kind. You heard him reassure Ryuki when the rookie messed things up. You saw how he went out of his way to protect Iris and Mizuki. He really did treat Mizuki like his own kid. Something in their constant bickering just felt like familial love. The same could be said about his interactions with Aiba, though you only got to see one side of that bickering usually.
Despite that, his kindness rarely seemed to be directed at you. In fact, he rarely spoke to you when he could avoid it.
“Focus,” Tsuki, your AI partner, reminded you. Their voice sounded in your mind like it was your own. It was quite the adjustment when you had first started working for ABIS, but it was beginning to feel natural. “You’re here on a case. You can complain about Date later.”
“Shut up,” you responded in your own head, turning back to the crime scene that you and Date were meant to be investigating. We already had three bodies from a new serial killer, and Boss decided you needed some extra eyes. And who better than Date, right?
“Have you figured out what they’re using?” Date asked, looking down at the body in front of him. They were clearly shot, it happened in broad daylight, but no one had seen any suspects when it happened. Normally that would point towards a long range rifle, but there weren't any rifling markings on the bullet.
“I have Pewter seeing if he can figure out a way to design a long ranged rifle without any rifling. That’s the only thing that makes sense with the situation,” you respended, trying to hide your irritation. The same irritation that arose in your chest whenever Date spoke to you. Why did he treat you so coldly? What the fuck did he have against you?
“If he can figure that out it might help us track the weapon,” Date replied. If he had noticed the sharpness in your tone, he didn’t acknowledge it. “Any other leads?”
“Both of the earlier victims went to the same grocery store the day before. Tsuki confirmed that our newest victim’s phone location record puts her there yesterday, too. My guess is that’s where our killer is finding new victims. We can check it out, but it's a big place. I don’t have a ton of hope of finding something helpful there. I also want to talk to Mama and the Kumakura’s to see if they know anything about the weapon that we’re looking for. You have an in with the chairman of the Kumakura’s, right?”
Date nodded, agreeing that those were probably good places to start. The two of you decided to head out together, both riding in Date’s car. It was old fashioned, but you kind of liked it. It looked cool. Not that you would ever admit that to Date, willingly. The car ride was awkward and quiet, but you were used to it. It was always like this with you and Date.
- - - - -
By the end of the day, you hadn’t gotten much further. You had a list of grocery store employees with anger management problems to look over, but with former employees and regular customers added, even Aiba and Tsuki would take a while to look through that all. Moma and Mama had nothing new for you on the weapon, and Pewter was still figuring it out, though he was making progress. And both Aiba and Tsuki needed to charge, leaving just you and Date. There wasn’t much more you could do at that point until the AI-balls were done charging, and frankly both of you were getting a little annoyed with having nothing to go on.
“At least with the New Cyclops case, everything was all connected,” Date muttered, pulling the eyepatch over his left eye. You opted for a non-AI prosthetic when Tsuki was out of commission. “This one just seems all over the place. I need a drink.”
“I can agree with you there,” you sighed. You were planning to go back to Marble and complain to Mama. She was a good listener and the drinks were good. And you needed a break.
“Where am I dropping you off?” Date asked, getting back into his car after your stop.
“Ugh, just drop me at Marble. I’ll get myself a cab when I’m ready to go. I’m going to think myself to death if I try to just go home and sleep,” you said, shaking your head at the thought of trying to just relax. You supposed this was why Date, Ryuki, and Boss had all started to make a habit out of this.
“Might as well just go with then, since I was planning to do the same thing,” Date said, his voice still a little measured, like he was reluctant to grab a drink with you. Despite going out with just about all of your other coworkers. You weren’t crazy for taking it personally, you reassured yourself. But truthfully, you were too exhausted from digging around and finding nothing that you couldn’t bother being too annoyed.
- - - - -
Mama greeted you again when you got to Marble, taking the chance to tease about just how many times in a day you’ve visited her. She gave you both the same drinks as usual without asking, knowing full well that neither of you were in the mood to try anything new. You never were when a case was going badly. Neither you nor Date said much, besides a little bit of chitchat with Mama. Despite not talking to each other, you couldn’t help but study Date a little. You wouldn’t admit this while you had Tsuki, but you didn’t hate him. You wanted to dislike him, but you just couldn’t. And that’s what made the distance that he puts between you all the more frustrating. You didn’t know why. You couldn’t think of anything that you did to offend him. Yet, he treats you with all of the distance of a stranger.
He was deep in thought, but neither of you said anything as you downed a few drinks. Mama kept handing you more as you sat in silence, eyeing you like the tension between you was something entertaining. You supposed she always loved a little drama. It made sense that she could tell something was up, and you were sure she was plenty curious. She didn’t say anything as you drank in silence, though, and you were glad for that.
It wasn’t long before your mind started to feel a bit fuzzy, though. A bit too fuzzy for you to keep up your mask of distance. Date seemed a bit better off than you, but you were sure that the drinks were getting to him too.
“I know I’m good looking, but the staring could be a little subtler,” he said, snapping you out of the blurry fog that you had sunk into. You hadn’t even realized how blatantly you were staring. You looked away quickly, causing your head to spin a little. Hopefully the blush you could feel rising on your cheeks could believably be blamed on the drinking.
“Don’t let it go to your head,” you replied, trying to salvage your pride even a little, “I was just thinking and happened to space out in that direction.”
“About what?”
“Huh?”
“What were you thinking about?”
You sat for a minute, one that felt like an hour, trying to decide what you wanted to say. How much did you want to admit? Was now the time to ask? Was there ever going to be a time?
“Did I do something?” You asked, eventually, deciding that if you ruined things, you could always just blame the drinks. Ryuki got away with saying a lot when he was drunk, so you supposed you could try the same excuse.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you treat me so differently than everyone else and I can't figure out why. I don’t remember doing something to make you keep me at an arm’s length, but there had to be something. So what am I missing? What did I do?”
Date looked surprised for a second, and for a moment you wondered if you were just imagining things. Maybe you just saw his regular behavior as rude because you wanted to be closer? Maybe it was all you after all?
“You didn’t do anything,” he said, after a little thought, “... It’s just complicated. And I’m not sure you want to hear the whole explanation.”
“Try me.”
He sighed, running a hand through his hair. It took him a little bit before he spoke again, clearly mulling over how he wanted to say what he needed to say. He grabbed you hand before you realized it, pulling you along with him until you ended up somewhere quiet. Your head was still fuzzy enough that you weren’t sure how you got there. You were too focused on the hand gripping your own as he pulled you along. You assumed you had to have taken a cab, since you ended up far away from Marble. You weren’t sure where exactly you ended up, but it had to be Date’s apartment. You both sat on the couch, unsure what to say, until eventually he launched into an explanation.
He told you about who he was before he was Date. About Falco and the Kumakuras. About Hitomi and Iris and the little family that they started to build. He told you about Saito and Rohan and the bodyswapping that he was never supposed to talk about. You assumed that one was why he had dragged you away from Marble. It was stuff you had heard hinted at before around the office, but this was your first time hearing him lay it all out, and you hung on every word. This was the most Date had ever shared with you and you were not about to take that for granted.
He told you about his six years of amnesia, where he knew nothing about all of the things that he had just told you about. About the friends that he made. Taking in Mizuki after befriending Renju. And then he told you about the New Cyclops case. You knew the gist of the case, but the details were something you only really got to hear from Date, so you had never heard them before.
“Why are you telling me all of this,” you asked eventually, unsure of why you were getting all of this background. Unsure of what that had to do with you.
“I’ll get there. Just trust me,” He said. “Hitomi and I couldn’t get back together after all of that. She wanted to, but I wasn’t really the same person anymore. And I couldn’t risk putting her in danger like that again. I didn’t want to risk putting anyone in danger like that again. Iris, Hitomi, and Mizuki all almost died because they were close to me. And Renju and Shoko did.”
“You can’t blame yourself for that,” You said.
“Why not? I was the one that got Saito Sojima involved. And it was all because of Falco. Because I got too caught up in my idea of ‘justice’ that I got myself into trouble. And then I brought that trouble home,” He sighed. You weren’t sure if you had ever seen him be this vulnerable with anyone. It seemed odd, seeing the strong, confident Agent Date talk about himself like that. “I won’t let that happen again.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t want you getting close to me. I’m not a good person. There’s nothing I can do about Mizuki anymore besides make sure that she can defend herself, and Ryuki is too much like me to just let him go off on his own, but you’re different. You don’t need to be involved in my mess, and I’m certainly not worth it.”
“God, you’re stupid,” you blurted out before you could stop yourself. “You don’t get to choose if people like you just because you think you don’t deserve it. If you genuinely didn’t deserve it, you wouldn’t have to push people away to get them to not be close to you.”
“That’s probably the nicest reason I’ve been called stupid,” He chuckled. “But I’m really not worth the trouble.”
“Isn’t that up to me?” You asked. “Maybe I like trouble.”
“Alright, you’re definitely drunk.”
“Because I’m flirting with you?”
“Uh-huh. You need sleep. Mizuki is staying with a friend, so you can crash on the couch if you want.”
“Fine…” You sighed, admitting to yourself that you were starting to feel a bit tired. “But we’re talking about this later.”
“Sure,” You could tell that Date was hoping you’d forget by the morning, and you two could go back to your awkward tension.
But you wouldn’t. Now that you’d seen a hint of the real Date, of the reason that he treated you so coldly, there was no way in hell you were letting that go.
Date-san von Yakuza if you read this im free on Friday night and would like to hang out. Please respond to this and then hang out with me on Friday night when I’m free.
Thank you, Non. What an absolute joy to be writing for our lovely detective man that deserves the world. I’m sorry if it feels rough in places, it’s been this kind of day, but I really wanted to do this request bc hnghn Date-san.... Hope you enjoy nevertheless and have a nice day today! ♥
FROM FLIRTING TO DATING WITH DATE
This man seems to not realize you are flirting with him for months and it has become the biggest meme amongst his coworkers who, willingly or not, are in on the whole thing. After all, perception is in their job requirement. And surprisingly enough, Date is no different. What may come off as him being naive, is actually his fully conscious choice to ignore your slightly confusing behaviour. He just doesn’t think that kind of relationship possible and would rather think you are just being quirky this way, than consider it as you showing your romantic interest in him. Sometimes he even wonders if it’s some kind of a bet you are very adamant on winning, that’s how bad it is. He’s still got a lot to work through after the tough parting with his wife.
At some point he finds being dismissive extremely tiring, especially if it actually gets through to him that you may be serious about the whole thing. So, to make it easier on himself, he starts to bite back. He tries to keep it mild, no commitment so far, just checking the waters a bit. Whatever he says sounds a bit rehearsed, definitely very stiff at first. Date is clearly not on top of his game, his lines rusty and borderlining dad jokes every now and then, but if nothing else the obvious effort he puts into entertaining you is very endearing. With time and practice, he slowly finds himself more comfortable in this flirty bickering that starts flowing seamlessly between the two of you, dad jokes are still a thing though. It is almost as though neither you nor anyone surrounding you can’t remember these times, when the two of you weren’t joined at the hip. And honestly, others are enjoying this vibe. It’s good to see Date so animated again.
Past this point, there is nothing stopping the two of you from going on a proper date! If you give him enough space, he’ll take his time to figure out how to approach the relationship in the best way. He wants to make absolutely sure that he is not going to squander another shot at having something good with you. Date needs to feel like he knows how to treat you right before taking you out and his whole team, possibly Kiryu and Haruka too, will support his attempts to come up with a strong date plan.
This man has got a whole schedule written down, carries it around on a piece of paper in his pocket for a whole week before it is finally time to ask you out and it goes surprisingly smoothly. He doesn’t stammer, mix up words or sentences and somehow manages to not make any silly jokes that would make his request come across as insincere. So far so good.
Date is dead set on going by the schedule to the point where he doesn’t even consider that you may have some other ideas of your own that you would like to contribute to the date plan! And it is visible, very very visible. He is as straight as a string from the moment you meet for the first part of the schedule, the funky vibe you keep between you suddenly gone. It feels so stuffy and unlike him, that you simply cannot help but bring it up. Honestly, he is so taken aback when you speak up that he forgets all about the plan in an instant. In that moment you just seem so marvelous that he doesn’t dare to interrupt you.
You both end up laughing this bizarre situation off and the paper schedule promptly ends up in the closest trash bin. Date is back to his normal self, with flirty jokes and witty comebacks, as he gingerly holds your hand going wherever life will take you. After all it doesn’t matter where he is, as long as it’s with you!
summary: you discover your co-workers tinder profile and find the contents of it rather amusing
tags: silly & wholesome fluff, date is on tinder, teasing & banter between reader & date, implied romantic feelings (mutual)
"date…?"
the two of you had sat in silence for a while in the office, scrolling through your phones, while waiting for boss to give the two of you some work, until you said the man's name, causing him to look up from his phone for the first time in minutes.
"what?"
you held your phone towards him, showing what you were currently looking at; you had the tinder app open with his profile on it!
"what about it? you shouldn't be so surprised that i'm looking for love online! you're the one who always mocks me for still being single…"
date huffed at you, before leaning back in his chair, attempting to go back to what he was doing on his phone.
"yeah, but this isn't actually you!"
you pointed out, before starting to read out loud some of the things from his profile.
"i like long walks at the beach" "i'm great with children" "i'm a caring and sensitive guy"
you raised an eyebrow, stopping after just a few sentences.
"you are none of those things! this isn't actually you, date. you're just listing those things because you're desperate to get some matches"
"hey, that's not true! i already got tons of matches!"
date huffed at you, visibly offended that you thought he wouldn't have any women interested in him. however, you were actually spot on…
"just change your profile… seriously, you'll have more luck with women if you're honest! i for one like the real you more than this fabricated version of yourself…"
"wait… you like me? and here i was, thinking you found me annoying~"
date had a goofy smile on his lips, happy to hear that you actually enjoyed his company.
"i do… and hey, if you change your profile, i might even be willing to swipe right on you~"
summary: none of his co-workers believe kaname date when he tells them he is dating you..
tags: wholesome & silly fluff, established romantic relationship, date's colleagues are here (boss, ryuki + mizuki), late to a date
"i'm telling you, she's real!"
date scrolled through pictures on his phone, showing off his s/o other to his co-workers, who just shook their heads in disbelief.
"are you sure that those aren't just some pictures you got off the internet, date?"
boss raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms in front of her chest, as she stared at the pictures on date's phone. that girl seemed way out of his league, so it was hard to believe date was really dating her.
"not you too, boss…"
date sighed defeated.
"mizuki has said the same thing! she accused me of taking this picture of a girl from the cabaret club… but i promise, she's a completely normal and real girl!"
ryuki wasn't completely convinced by date's story yet, but he wanted to believe him. or at least try to believe him!
"when are we going to meet her then?"
ryuki asked, taking a sip out of his coffee and leaning back in his chair. date glanced at his phone again, calculating the time in his head until you'd arrive at his workplace.
"she wanted to pick me up after work for a date" he lets his colleagues know, grinning excitedly. "so she should be here in a couple minutes!"
despite date saying it was going to take just a couple minutes, it ended up taking much longer. after ten minutes you still hadn't arrived, nor had you answered his calls. half an hour later, it started to get embarrassing and the first few people had already given up and were heading home. it took another fifteen minutes on top of that for you to finally show up – by that point nobody was waiting for you anymore. everyone had just assumed that date lied and went home.
when you parked your car in front of the police station and stepped out, you greeted date with a short kiss.
"sorry i'm so late, i've gotten into a traffic jam…"
you sighed and took your boyfriend's hand, softly smiling at him.
"i hope it wasn't too bad waiting for me…"
date just forced a smile on his lips as he recalled the faces of his co-workers as they headed home one by one, all giving up on him that pitiful look…
summary: you end up in the hospital after being shot and your girlfriend mizuki pays you a visit!
tags: established relationship, worried!mizuki, use of y/n, mizuki hugging reader, crying!mizuki, angst with happy ending
mizuki was blaming herself for what happened to you. if she had only gone with you on that mission, this could've been avoided! if only she could've held you in her arms when you were injured and scared, she could have comforted you. but she was miles away at the office, not even aware of the mission boss had sent you on.
as soon as she had heard the news from boss, mizuki had grabbed her scooter and drove off, without even knowing where exactly she needed to be. did she have to drive to a hospital? or the place you got shot at? luckily, she had aiba with her, who had all the needed informations ready and quickly navigated mizuki to the hospital the paramedics had brought you to.
once there, mizuki rushed into the room you were in, without even knocking, where you were laying on a lone bed, still conscious.
"y/n!"
mizuki cried out your name as she saw you, sprinting towards you and wrapping her arms around you way too tight, before hearing you wince in pain and pulling back.
"don't ever scare me like that again, you idiot! i was so worried about you…"
mizuki tried her hardest to hold back her tears as she scolded you, but a wave of relief washed over her as she saw you laying there, still alive and well, that made it impossible for her to not tear up a little.
"i'm sorry, 'zuki… i promise i'll be more careful next time!"
you tried to comfort your girlfriend, gently holding her hand, even though you barely had the strength for that.
"you better be… from now on, you'll have to tell me about those missions, so i can accompany you! got it?"
you smiled softly. mizuki was still trying to act tough, but she barely managed to keep it together, sniffling softly and wiping away all tears as soon as they threatened to roll down her cheeks.
