Chapter Text
Alban was just some guy.
Not that it was terrible to be just some guy: to most people he was unassuming, non-threatening and generally just another wallflower in some main character’s story—it meant he could live his life as a cat cafe barista peacefully with only the most common grievances coming his way. Oh, the milk prices are a dollar extra this month? The economy! Mr. Snuggles the third has escaped out of the enclosure? Time to run! Little things, ordinary. The most mundane of mundane. This went on for…well, forever, he supposed. If he has the time to write up his life story into a movie plot, surely the audience would give a review of ‘Well, it’s not spectacular but its so entirely unoffensive that nothing exciting happened’ and that would be that.
This was until he realized he has a stalker.
Oh, but of course, just for the universe to fuck with him a little more than usual, he has a nice stalker.
Nice. Nice! How could a stalker be nice!
In his coffee-filled head, he imagined stalkers to be quietly violent; prowling the streets; to have a knife tucked away in the pockets of a French trench coat that was absurdly out of place in the summer weather and of course, the classic face mask. Because, of course, no one wanted to be known as a stalker. Much less a nice one.
It all started when one day as he was returning home from his afternoon shift to find that his laundry had been taken out of the dryer. And that his breakfast dishes had been cleaned. And that his plants had been watered. Listen, maybe it was crazy of him to try to gaslight himself that all of this had been done before he left and that somehow, in some bizarre mental breakdown he had during his 15-minute break, he’d just somehow forgotten all of these things but. But!
There was (hopefully) more belief in himself that he just had a friendly burglar than he suddenly being crazy. That’s something you’d surely notice right? One day you’re serving coffee to a guest, the next day you’re suddenly checking yourself into a mental asylum, talking to the rainbow-coloured walls and becoming best buds with your cellmate even though everyone including the state-mandated psychologist insists that you bunk alone but you swear Steve is alive, has three kids named Jim, Jam and Jones and eats lactose-free cheese slices only on Thursday afternoons. Like, hah! Surely that was too specific to be a simple figment of his imagination!
…
Yeah. No, let’s go with the friendly stalker hypothesis and the possible solution of just inhaling fewer coffee fumes.
So perhaps his laundry had been folded into wonderful little piles (with…less underwear than he swore went in? God dammit, they really took his favourite pair?), his dishes cleaned (he really hoped with water and not saliva or anything) and his fake, plastic plants watered, he was looking at a possibly perverted, stupid, househusband/wife stalker.
Wow. That. That was just so fucking wonderful. What a joy!
His profile of his stalker further is complicated by the addition of flowers on his table the next morning, right next to a still steaming negi omelet and a cup of coffee, the latter of course somehow made exactly how he liked every morning. As he stands still in the doorway of the kitchen, he wonders for a moment if his stalker is still in his home. Just. You know. Waiting for him. Perhaps they are even just behind the pantry door, clad in his worn apron he’d gotten from the dollar store a few years back.
He shouldn’t eat anything he hasn’t cooked. He really, really shouldn’t. But damn if those eggs don’t look good. With presumably fresh negi too! So what does he do? Of course, he eats those damn eggs and reads the note underneath once he finishes, stands up and moves to put his things away.
‘Oni-chan will take care of you. Don’t call the police.’
So his stalker was:
- Male
- Older than him
- A Japanese fucking weeaboo.
…
Agh.
Well. It wasn’t that bad. Considering his househusband stalker was a great cook, it wasn’t the worst thing in the world, right? Right! He loved gas-lighting himself!
Alban was just a regular guy.
And he supposed now, he had a regular stalker.