Chapter Text
There’s a specific kind of tired that hits you somewhere between your third alarm and actually getting out of bed. Not sleepy-tired. Like, soul-tired. The kind where your brain is technically on but your body is filing a formal complaint.
That was Wemmbu at 7 AM on a Tuesday.
His eyes cracked open to the ceiling of his apartment, the pale morning light creeping through the gap in his curtains like it had no business being there. He stared at it for a solid thirty seconds, unmoving, doing absolutely nothing, which was honestly a luxury he’d gotten way too used to since college. Except now he had an actual job, so the ceiling could wait.
He hauled himself upright and immediately caught his reflection in the mirror across the room — and yeah, okay. The hair was doing something. His long purple hair, which usually sat in this effortlessly cool kind of way when he actually took care of it, was currently going in no fewer than four different directions. There was a chunk pressed flat against the left side of his face, two pieces sticking straight up near the crown like little antennae, and the rest just sort of… doing whatever it wanted. He tilted his head at his reflection. His reflection tilted back, looking equally unbothered and equally chaotic.
“Respectable,” he muttered to himself, and got up.
His morning routine was simple, not because he was a simple person, but because he’d perfected the art of doing the minimum while looking like he’d done considerably more. He shuffled to the bathroom, washed his face, spent a good few minutes actually working through his hair with his fingers and a wide-tooth comb until the purple strands fell the way they were supposed to — long, a little wavy, resting just past his shoulders. He didn’t bother fully styling it. He never really did. It always looked decent enough on its own once it wasn’t trying to imitate a bird’s nest.
He threw on his work clothes — dark trousers, a clean button-up with the sleeves he’d inevitably roll to the elbow the second he sat down, and a jacket he’d probably hang on his chair within the first ten minutes of being at his desk. He grabbed his bag, slung it over one shoulder, locked his apartment door, and headed down to the parking lot.
His motorcycle was waiting for him right where he’d left it, and honestly, it never got old looking at it.
It was a blacked-out cruiser — deep, glossy black with this subtle purple sheen that only showed up when the light hit it at the right angle, like the color was hiding underneath the surface waiting to be noticed. The chrome accents ran along the exhaust and the handlebars, catching the morning sun in thin, sharp flashes. The seat was low and wide, dark leather, worn in just enough to be comfortable without looking beat up. He’d had it since second year of college and it was genuinely the best financial decision he’d ever made, and he’d made some pretty questionable ones, so that was saying something.
He swung his leg over, settled in, pulled on his helmet, and kicked it to life. The engine rumbled low and steady beneath him, and just like every single morning, something in his chest loosened a little. He pulled out of the lot and onto the road, the city still blinking awake around him.
The coffee shop was about halfway between his apartment and the office, wedged between a dry cleaner and a bookstore that never seemed to have any customers but somehow never closed. It had a green awning, a hand-painted sign in the window, and smelled, from about fifteen feet away, like roasted coffee and something warm and baked. Wemmbu pulled into the small lot beside it, killed the engine, and pulled off his helmet.
He could already see Wifies through the window.
He was behind the counter, brown hair a little tousled, writing something on the small chalkboard menu they updated every few days — probably a new seasonal drink he was way more excited about than anyone else would be. Wifies was sharp like that. He noticed everything, remembered everything, and could hold an actual conversation about seventeen different things at once without losing the thread of any of them. He and Wemmbu had been friends since the tail end of college, and he was one of those people who just made things feel a little more organized by proximity. Smart in that quiet, consistent way — not showy about it, just reliably, annoyingly right about most things.
The bell above the door chimed when Wemmbu pushed it open.
“There he is.” Wifies didn’t even look up from the chalkboard. “You look tired.”
“Good morning to you too,” Wemmbu shot back, sliding onto one of the stools at the counter. “I look fine, thank you.”
“You look like your hair just survived something.” He set down the chalk and finally turned around, already smiling in that way that said I see through you completely and I find it entertaining. “The usual?”
“Please.”
He started on it without another word — iced coffee, a specific ratio of espresso to milk that he’d figured out for Wemmbu weeks ago and never had to ask about again. Wemmbu dropped his bag off the stool beside him and rolled his neck, working out some of the morning stiffness.
From somewhere near the back of the shop, Lomedy emerged from behind the espresso machine carrying two drinks that definitely weren’t for anyone who’d ordered them yet. He set one down in front of a regular at the far end of the counter, then wandered over and just… sat down. Not behind the counter. On a stool on the customer side, right next to Wemmbu, like he’d decided the shift could handle itself for a few minutes.
“You’re a worker,” Wemmbu pointed out.
“Yeah,” Lomedy agreed, entirely unbothered, his light brown hair slightly disheveled in that casual way that somehow looked intentional. He rested his chin in one hand and blinked at Wemmbu with the energy of someone who was present but reserving the right to not fully be. “What’s up.”
“Work,” Wemmbu said. “Which is a thing you’re also doing right now. Allegedly.”
Lomedy glanced toward the counter, where everything was running fine without him, then looked back. “It’s going good.”
Wifies slid the iced coffee across the counter, already giving Lomedy a look — the kind that wasn’t quite disapproval but was definitely a note. Lomedy saw it and made no moves to stand up.
“So,” Wifies turned back to Wemmbu, leaning on the counter with his elbows, head tilted slightly. “How’s the job actually going? Like, for real. You’ve been there what, a week and a half now?”
“Almost two weeks.” Wemmbu took a sip of his coffee. Perfect, as always. “It’s honestly not bad. Minute runs things really well — like, you can tell he’s thought it through. Everything’s organized. Egg showed me the whole schedule breakdown on day one and it actually made sense, which I wasn’t expecting.”
“Egg seems chill,” Wifies offered.
“He is. He’s super chill. Kind of helplessly chill sometimes, like you’ll ask him something and he’ll think about it for a little too long and then say something that’s technically correct but also sort of useless.” Wemmbu paused. “In a good way, though. He’s growing on me.”
Lomedy, still very much sitting there, nodded thoughtfully like he was a full participant in this conversation. “That’s a good work environment descriptor. ‘Growing on me.’”
“Thank you, Lomedy.”
“You’re welcome.”
Wifies shook his head faintly, but he was smiling. “And Minute? You said he’s your friend but like — is it weird working for someone you know?”
Wemmbu considered that for a second. “Not really. He’s kind of the same at work as he is normally, just more focused, I guess. He’s got this thing where he can be really calming about everything. Like nothing ever seems like a crisis to him even when it kind of is. It makes you want to not panic, you know?”
“That’s good leadership,” Wifies said, nodding approvingly, like he’d mentally filed it under something he already knew to be true.
“It is.” Wemmbu took another long sip. “Today’s apparently a bigger deal than usual though. We’ve got people coming in. Investors or something. Minute was kind of serious about it this morning in that quiet way he gets.”
Wifies raised his eyebrows. “Big meeting energy?”
“Big meeting energy.”
Lomedy had gotten up at some point in the last thirty seconds — Wemmbu hadn’t even noticed — and was now back behind the counter doing actual work, seamlessly, like he’d never left. Wifies caught Wemmbu noticing and shrugged in a this is just how it is sort of way.
Wemmbu finished his coffee, left the cup on the counter, slung his bag back on, and pushed up from the stool. “Alright. I should head in before Minute decides I’ve abandoned him.”
“Good luck with the big investors,” Wifies called after him, already back to wiping down the counter.
“Yeah yeah.” He pushed the door open, the little bell chiming again, and stepped back out into the morning.
The office wasn’t huge, but it didn’t need to be. Minute had built the company with the kind of intentionality that made every square foot of it feel earned. Clean lines, good lighting, no unnecessary clutter. The kind of workspace that made you feel like the work you were doing actually mattered, which, Wemmbu was slowly realizing, was a specific and difficult feeling to manufacture.
He got to his desk at 8:17, hung his jacket on the back of his chair, and rolled his sleeves up to his elbows within the first four minutes exactly as predicted.
Egg was already there, sitting across from him at the adjacent desk, white hair flopping gently forward as he leaned over something on his screen. He looked up when Wemmbu sat down and gave him a small wave.
“Morning,” Egg offered.
“Morning.” Wemmbu dropped into his chair and pulled up his computer. “You already eat?”
“Yeah, I had something.” A beat. “I think.”
Wemmbu looked at him.
Egg thought about it. “…I had half a granola bar.”
“That’s not eating, bro.”
“It’s partially eating.”
Before Wemmbu could follow up on that, Minute appeared — not dramatically, because Minute never did anything dramatically, he just sort of arrived places and things became more organized in his presence. He was carrying a small stack of folders, dark hair neat as always, expression calm but with this particular kind of focus behind his eyes that Wemmbu had started to recognize as the signal for okay, today’s real.
“Morning,” Minute said, setting a folder on Wemmbu’s desk with a clean tap. “You two good?”
“I’m good,” Wemmbu confirmed. “Egg had half a granola bar.”
“That’s fine,” Egg said.
Minute glanced at Egg with the faint, patient amusement of someone who had long accepted Egg for exactly what he was. “We’ve got the meeting at three,” he said, getting right into it. “I need all the investment documents sorted and tabbed before lunch, because I want time to go through them once before they get here. No loose ends. These are people who notice loose ends.”
Wemmbu opened the folder. Dense — proposals, projections, company overviews, formatted neatly but a lot of it. He flipped through the first few pages, getting the shape of it in his head.
“Who are we looking at?” he asked, not looking up.
Minute leaned against the desk and ticked them off. “First one is Theo. He runs a mid-sized tech development firm — sharp guy, kind of a lot, but good. He’s worth taking seriously.” A slight pause. “He also takes himself seriously, which can go either way, but he’s professional.”
Wemmbu nodded, still scanning.
“Second is Mane. Real estate and entertainment ventures — the man’s got money in a lot of places at once. He’s…” Minute chose his word carefully. “Confident.”
Egg, from across the desk, made a small sound that wasn’t quite a word.
“And,” Minute continued, “Mane mentioned he wanted to bring his younger brother along. Something about wanting him to see how this kind of meeting works, maybe get him interested in the investment side too.” He glanced at Wemmbu. “So there’ll be a third. Don’t know much about him.”
Wemmbu shrugged, turning a page. “Fine by me.”
“Good.” Minute pushed off the desk. “Documents by noon.”
“Yes sir,” Wemmbu said. Not sarcastically. Mostly.
Minute walked back toward his office, and Wemmbu settled in. The morning unwound the way mornings at work do — gradually, then all at once. He and Egg sorted through the documents between them, Egg occasionally reading something aloud to double-check a number while Wemmbu tabbed and cross-referenced. Easy work once you got into the rhythm of it, methodical. Wemmbu didn’t mind that kind of thing. He could put his brain on a certain frequency and just go.
By 11:40 the documents were stacked, tabbed, and sitting in a neat pile on the corner of his desk. He leaned back and stretched until something in his back popped satisfyingly.
“Nice,” Egg observed.
“Thanks. I needed that.”
They broke for lunch — Egg actually ate a full sandwich this time, which Wemmbu silently took as a personal win — and came back to a building that felt, somehow, a little more charged than it had that morning. Minute had straightened the meeting room. The lobby lights were on at full brightness. Small things, but things.
At five minutes to three, Wemmbu was back at his desk skimming through a secondary set of notes when he heard the cars first.
He didn’t mean to look up. He just did.
Through the large front-facing windows, black sport cars were pulling into the lot — two of them, sleek and low to the ground, the kind of cars that don’t announce themselves because they don’t need to. Behind them, a third, slightly different in make but no less intentional. Doors opened. People stepped out.
Theo came in first, and Wemmbu’s first impression was: okay, yeah, that guy knows what he looks like. Tall — properly tall — with posture that wasn’t practiced, it was just there, like standing straight was his default setting. Fitted charcoal suit doing everything right, not flashy but precise. His yellowish hair was styled cleanly back, just a little textured, the kind that looked like two seconds of effort had produced something that would take most people half an hour. Sharp jaw, neutral but open expression, and when he stepped through the door and his eyes found Wemmbu at the desk, he gave this small, genuine nod. Like — hey, I see you, we’re going to be professional about this.
Wemmbu liked him immediately, in the way you like someone who doesn’t make things weird.
Behind Theo, Mane walked in like he owned the place — not the office specifically, just the general concept of places. Broad-shouldered, well-built, filling out his suit jacket in a way that made it clear he worked at it. His dreads were thick and yellow-orange, not tied back, just present the way everything about him was present, bouncing slightly with each step. Wide, easy grin already on his face as he looked around, like he’d already decided this was going to go exactly how he wanted and the grin was just him being polite enough to share that with you in advance. Handsome in that annoying way where you can see it clearly but kind of don’t want to because it feels like giving him something.
Minute stepped forward to meet them, hand extended, calm and warm as always.
Wemmbu stood up, smoothed his shirt out of muscle memory, and walked over. He shook Theo’s hand — firm, brief, easy — and Theo gave him that same straightforward nod up close. “Good to meet you,” Theo said, and he meant it. Some people say that and it’s filler. Theo said it like a statement of fact.
Mane’s handshake was the grip of a man who was always just slightly testing something. He held eye contact a beat longer than necessary, the grin staying wide and comfortable. “Nice setup you’ve got,” he said, glancing around. “Cozy.”
“It works,” Wemmbu said, pleasantly, and did not take the bait, because there was bait there, he could absolutely feel the bait.
Minute steered everyone toward the meeting room. The room filled up. The meeting started.
Theo was exactly as advertised — thorough, precise, the kind of person who asks good questions and actually listens to the answers. He’d gone through the proposal documents with real attention beforehand and it showed. Wemmbu found himself genuinely engaged, which was a pleasant surprise.
Mane was… fine. He knew his stuff, that was real, he hadn’t walked in unprepared, but there was this persistent layer of I know I know my stuff sitting over everything he said that made it land differently. He’d make a smart point and then hold the pause after it for just a half-second too long, like he was waiting to see if everyone had properly appreciated it. When Minute explained something, Mane would nod slowly, like he’d already arrived at that conclusion on his own a while back and was graciously allowing Minute to confirm it for the room.
Under the table, Wemmbu pressed his shoe into the floor and breathed.
Calm. You are calm. He’s a client. Clients get the calm.
About forty-five minutes in, Minute paused to pull something up on his laptop, giving everyone a natural break. Wemmbu pushed back from the table slightly.
“I’ll grab water and glasses,” he said to nobody specific, the kind of thing that doesn’t require a response.
He slipped out into the small kitchen area adjacent to the main floor. Quieter out here — just the hum of the fridge and the distant city through a cracked window. He pulled out a tray, started setting up glasses, grabbed the water pitcher.
And then he turned around and nearly walked directly into someone.
He caught himself — barely — the tray tilting before he grabbed it back level, glasses clinking but not falling. His heart did that thing where it spikes and then immediately tries to pretend it didn’t.
The person he’d almost walked into had stepped back, but not much.
He was slightly shorter than Mane but built with the same easy, grounded energy, like he was comfortable taking up space without needing to announce it. His hair was in short dreads, brown with warm golden-yellow running through them, pushed back and slightly disheveled in a way that felt less like an accident and more like a deliberate choice. Dark green shirt, well-fitted, no jacket. His eyes were sharp — not hostile exactly, but not welcoming either. He looked at Wemmbu the way you look at something that appeared without warning and that you haven’t yet decided how to categorize.
On the lanyard clipped to his pocket, a small tag: Flame.
So. Flamefrags.
There was a beat where neither of them said anything. Wemmbu opened his mouth — he was going to apologize, which was the perfectly reasonable and mature thing to do when you nearly collide with someone in a narrow space.
Flamefrags got there first.
“Watch where you’re going.” Even, not dramatic, which somehow made it sharper. His eyes dropped to his shirt — dark fabric, no damage, but he was checking — and when they came back up there was this flat, unimpressed look on his face, the kind that said I have decided to be annoyed and you cannot stop me. “You almost ruined my shirt.”
“I —” Wemmbu stopped. Restarted. “I was going to apologize.”
“Right.” Flamefrags adjusted the lanyard, gave the shirt one more look just to really drive it home, then looked back at Wemmbu with an expression that communicated approximately nothing useful. And then he just — walked past. Not shoving, not making a scene. Just removing himself from the situation entirely, footsteps unhurried, hands relaxed, as if the conversation had concluded to his personal satisfaction and Wemmbu could do with that whatever he wanted.
Wemmbu stood there holding the water tray.
Completely still. Four seconds.
Then he set the tray down on the counter very carefully. Picked it back up. Took a slow breath in through his nose and let it out through his mouth. There was a vein doing something alarming behind his left eye, which was fine. He was fine. He was a professional adult in a well-lit office and he was not going to let some guy with good hair and a completely unnecessary attitude ruin his Tuesday.
His shirt. Wemmbu hadn’t even fully made contact. The shirt was perfectly, entirely, demonstrably intact.
He picked up the tray. Walked back into the meeting room. Set the glasses down quietly. Sat back in his chair.
Across the table, Mane glanced up and flashed that wide grin. “There he is. We were wondering where the drinks went.”
“Sorry for the wait,” Wemmbu said, pleasantly, and poured the water.
The meeting ran longer than anyone expected because Minute, once he got going on something he believed in, was thorough in a way that was deeply good for business and slightly painful for everyone’s sitting endurance. He covered everything — numbers, projections, three-year outlook, risk margins, what the partnership would look like phase by phase. By the end even Mane’s posture had shifted slightly, less theatrical confidence, more actual interest. Real win.
Theo was leaning forward, hands folded, taking actual notes on a small notepad he’d produced from his jacket. Wemmbu appreciated that more than he had words for.
Flamefrags had come back in at some point during the back half — seated toward the end of the table, slightly apart from his brother, one arm resting on the surface. Quiet, mostly. Watching. He had a different energy from Mane; where Mane expanded into every room, Flamefrags seemed to be conserving something. Weighing things. Taking it all in without giving much back. Wemmbu caught himself glancing in that direction twice and found something very interesting in the documents in front of him both times.
When things wrapped up, handshakes went around. Theo shook Wemmbu’s hand and said “good meeting” with the same matter-of-fact sincerity he brought to everything. Mane clapped him on the shoulder — not hard, but not soft either — and said something about following up soon, grin fully operational.
Flamefrags walked past.
Didn’t say anything. Didn’t look at Wemmbu, at least not in any way Wemmbu caught. Just moved, relaxed, hands easy at his sides, following his brother out through the lobby and through the front doors like the last two hours had been a perfectly ordinary afternoon, and the kitchen thing had already evaporated from his memory entirely.
Meanwhile Wemmbu was standing there with a very specific feeling in his chest that he was choosing not to examine too closely.
He turned around. Went back to his desk.
The rest of the day was paperwork and wrap-up, the kind of tasks you do on autopilot while your brain idles just below the surface. He filed things. Cross-checked numbers. Replied to two emails that had been sitting since morning. The office quieted. The light shifted from sharp afternoon to warm amber gold.
He started packing up around 5:30. Laptop into bag, notebooks stacked, jacket off the chair. His hair had loosened up over the day and he pushed a strand off his face, which helped approximately nothing.
Egg appeared at the edge of his desk, doing that thing where he was just… there. White hair flopping forward, expression open, not asking anything yet. Just present. Observing. Very Egg.
“You good?” he finally said.
Wemmbu looked at him. Considered several things he could say.
“Yeah,” he said, and zipped his bag. Then, because Egg was still just standing there, he added, “Stellar day actually. Really. One for the books.”
Egg tilted his head.
“I’m fine, bro.” Wemmbu threw on his bag. “I’m being dramatic. It was a normal day and I’m tired and I want to go home.” He pointed at him. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Okay,” Egg said, easily, no pushback whatsoever. “You did good with the documents.”
“Thanks. You helped.”
“I helped a normal amount.”
Wemmbu snorted — a real one. “See you tomorrow.”
“Yeah.” Small wave, white hair still flopping. “Sleep.”
“That’s the plan.”
He stopped by Minute’s office on the way out, knocked on the open door frame. Minute looked up, the calm sitting on him the way it always did.
“Meeting went well,” Wemmbu offered.
A small, genuine nod. “It did. Theo’s solid. We’ll hear from his team by end of week.” A pause. “Mane’s… an experience.”
Wemmbu let out a breath that was dangerously close to a laugh. “Yeah.”
“Go home,” Minute said, not unkindly.
“Already leaving.” He tapped the door frame once and turned.
The night air hit him when he stepped outside — cooler now, the city settling into its after-work rhythm. He found his motorcycle, swung his leg over, and sat there for a second before starting it.
His hair was doing its own thing again. He could feel it. The morning’s effort had long since unraveled — loose, a little wavy, one piece falling forward near his face that he’d been pushing back every thirty minutes all afternoon. He didn’t bother fixing it. No one was watching.
He pulled on his helmet, started the engine, let the rumble move through him for a moment, then pulled out of the lot.
The ride home was the best part of the day. It always kind of was. The city at this hour was different — less aggressive, roads opening up into something more manageable. He took the longer route, past the river, where the lights reflected off the water in long broken ribbons of orange and gold. He didn’t think about the meeting. Didn’t think about documents or Theo’s neat notes or Mane’s persistent grin.
He definitely didn’t think about some guy in a dark green shirt who couldn’t fathom that near-collisions in tiny kitchen spaces are typically nobody’s fault and that the shirt — again — was completely, entirely, demonstrably fine.
He just drove.
By the time he got back and killed the engine, he had exactly enough energy left for: getting inside, dropping his bag by the door, toeing off his shoes, and making a very executive decision to handle literally everything else tomorrow. His hair was a full disaster again from the helmet — he could see it in the dark hallway window, all loosened waves and flyaways, stray purple strands going every which way across his face.
He looked, he decided, like someone who had survived something.
He shuffled to his room, sat on the edge of his bed, stared at the wall for a few seconds. The day arranged itself in his head without his permission — Wifies and his chalk and his quiet knowing smile, Lomedy sitting on the wrong side of the counter like it was completely normal, Egg and his half a granola bar, Minute’s steady focus, Theo’s genuine handshake, Mane’s grin that never fully turned off.
Wemmbu fell back onto his bed, stared at the ceiling, and exhaled very slowly through his nose.
“Cool,” he said, to absolutely no one. “Great. Good day.”
He closed his eyes.
Within about four minutes, the day was gone.