give me reasons - chapter one
a joji/female y/n fic
I've never written a fan fic before but joji tags are kinda dry so... bear with me
no tws so far and it might be slow burn idk idk
joji: give me a reason to hate this girl immediately
Kenny 🥁: lol who??
joji: you know who
joji: the midnight Mafia
Kenny 🥁: oh shit
Joji picked up the call on the first ring. Kenny was already laughing.
"Brother please, I need you to convince me not to crush on her," George "Joji" Miller lamented to the voice on the other line.
"I can't, man, she's pretty cool. What got you down so bad?" A pause for the realization.
"Wait, you just met her this morning didn't you??"
Earlier that day
George walked into the studio early. It was a light traffic day for LA, something he and his Uber driver weren't prepared for so he ended up arriving embarrassingly ahead of the rest of the group. It was a private, rented-out-permanently kind of studio, so all he needed was the key code for the door to get in. He figured he could get settled and order coffee before the guys and their mystery producer arrived.
Before he could extract the code from his email, a text from his friend - also a producer - popped up.
Kenny 🥁: yo you in a session with midnight today?
joji: yeah how'd you know
Kenny 🥁: ran into her last night, she mentioned it. you'll like her she's fuckin chill. and weird. like you.
Her. Interesting. Not that it mattered, music is music. But George didn't find himself working with women on the production side very often. Plus, he knew Midnight Mafia's beats went extra hard - he'd spent more than a few scrolls in their, or her, ASCAP catalog.
He punched in the code and the door pushed open automatically, with a heavy hydraulic swing that caused him to side step awkwardly to avoid getting clocked by it.
"Fuck, I'm so sorry...," a soft voice called out to him as he stumbled. "There's usually a sign warning people that it opens outward but the cleaning people keep removing it."
George felt a hand grip at his bicep, attempting to correct him before he fell, but he's got it. He hates being touched like that but the gesture is kind and his usual gruffness stays below the surface. The girl lets go when she realizes he's fine.
"Sorry, my bad, didn't want you to fall," she says, walking back into the darkness of the studio so he will follow. "I'm y/n, good to meet you." She sits at the board, leaving the other chair to him and holding out her hand in greeting.
George takes her offered hand, a second touch, but he doesn't sit. "Hi I'm George. You, uh, the Midnight Mafia?"
The girl winces at the title. "Yeah, yeah I am but please, call me y/n, it's so much less awkward." She pauses, then laughs. "George, Joji...I get it. I don't know why I didn't get it before."
"What do you mean?"
"Joji is Japanese for George. It was so obvious."
"You speak Japanese?"
y/n shakes her head. "No no, not really. I lived there for like 9 months and learned a little bit through osmosis, but I'm generally horrible at speaking and understanding it. I'm okay at reading it though."
George is intrigued, as he always is at Americans who have spent any time in his home country. "Where did you live?"
"Well," she laughs, "we started out like amateurs in Akihabara, which is very cool if you want to shop, but it was a lot for me. Like, I'm born and raised in dirty ass Los Angeles and it was still too much city for me. So after about two weeks we went south. It was much more chill."
His eyebrow raised. "Where south?"
"Um, Suminoe-ku? Nanko... in Osaka. I liked it better there, though I might be biased because it was a lot cheaper and really close to Universal Studios."
Neither of them had noticed George's phone lighting up in his hand.
"What did you like about Osaka?"
To this, y/n laughed. "Honestly, it's very random, but my producing partner who I was there with, Drew - he had a crush on this girl who had a big fishing family. One day he comes home and tells me we're going fishing, so we ended up going like 3 times. I was so bad at it but it was actually a lot of fun."
"No shit..."
"Yeah! My only complaint is that the locals did not want to teach me how to gut or clean the fish. Like they were adamantly against it. I really wanted to, though."
George nodded. "They definitely wouldn't be into teaching an American girl that."
"Yeah I figured, so I didn't insist on it too much."
He smiled, sitting down in the chair next to hers and leaning towards her. "I'm from Osaka, actually. I know that district well."
Y/n looks shocked and excited. "Oh no way..."
"Yeah I fucking love fishing. I could teach you the rest, it's really just about the right knife."
"Sir, I just met you but I would absolutely let you take me out on the water with a variety of knives, that is so cool."
Her tone is light but he can tell she's so serious.
Something about the way she called him "sir" and the light in her eyes makes his stomach do flips that it hasn't done since high school. He doesn't know what to say next, but it doesn't matter anyway.
The moment is over just as quickly as it started, because Rich Brian is wrestling with the door and cursing George out for not looking at his phone.
chapter 2 here