Chapter Text
The first time it happened, Himchan simply scoffed.
Silly things happened all the time in life, after all. Like that one time he caught Jongup and Junhong dipping pickles in Nesquik, somehow sober and well aware of their choices. Or that one time Yongguk attempted to make beer-batter fish, but mistook Himchan’s jar of icing sugar as the jar of flour. So, in the big picture, the things he sees as a chef at Domino’s shouldn’t be too weird. He has only fainted once so far, when someone actually replaced the pizza sauce with Alfredo pasta sauce on their custom order.
But things are getting out of hand.
“Himchan!” Daehyun yells, not realizing Himchan was standing next to him. “You’ve got an order from Heavy Ranch!”
“I know,” Himchan shudders, making Daehyun jump out of skin due to their apparent close proximity. “I saw it. Kill me now.”
“Oh, come on!” Daehyun laughs, giving Himchan a much-not-appreciated slap on the back, like a true brother. “It’s not the weirdest thing we’ve gotten.”
Affectionately, Himchan grabs Daehyun’s arm and twists it behind his back, smirking when he cries uncle. “This is the eighth week in a row, you little shit. I’m getting annoyed!”
Eight weeks.
Ever since university students began their break, someone had begun ordering a specific pizza—nothing too odd, but enough to make Himchan’s face scrunch in disgust. After all, to put anything other than pizza sauce as, well, pizza sauce, is a disgrace to humankind.
“Heavy ranch sauce, extra cheese, green peppers, black olives, green olives…” Himchan grumbles, getting everything together with a few pinches of reluctance sprinkled over. “…Hey, Daehyun?”
Suddenly, Daehyun seemingly teleports to Himchan’s side, chin on his shoulder. “What’s up?”
“Can you get Eunae to make this delivery?” Himchan says, scrunching his nose as he works the ranch sauce—an abomination—onto the dough. “Tell her to get the person’s name, and any social media, if possible.”
“You know,” Daehyun sighs, shaking his head. “I can literally just tell you who ordered it, considering it was an online order.”
“That’s very true, however,” Himchan pops his lips, smiling, “I’ve been watching a lot of rom-coms lately.”
“Hold on-!” Daehyun exclaims, waving his hands dramatically in faux-confusion. “You mean to tell me that you want to date this customer you loathe? You don’t even know if they’re attractive! Or what gender they are! Or if they’ll even be attracted to you!”
“Perks of swinging both ways, Daehyun.” Himchan winks. “And you’ll be living eternally in your unrequited love, without ever experiencing the delightful feeling of a woman’s-”
“-expression when she holds her newborn child!” Daehyun cuts, looking horrified, spitting his words out quickly while making a beeline for the exit. “Eunae~!”
Daehyun has a point, though.
There’s no telling what this customer might look like, how they act, or what they do with their life in their spare time.
Life for Himchan, though, is a drawl. Attending college later in his twenties does him no favors and only serves to make him regret the lost years of his life spent on his back, refusing to sit up. He’s lucky to even blend in with the early-twenties crowd that his friend circle mostly consists of.
If he’s going to blend in with them and regain his lost years, he ought to have the same amount of fun. That fun may as well consist of rose-tinted lenses and a what-if every now and then, taking the chance to find puppy love through chance encounters written in fate’s script.
It feels good to feel young.
Yoo Youngjae.
His hair is blaring tangerine, something like a bad bleaching of dark hair repurposed into something beautiful. The chub of his face doesn’t take from his jawline, nor from the mischievous glint in his eyes—one of which has a squint to it—that screams ‘brat’. The captions on his Instagram are some of the most teeth-gritting words Himchan has ever read, and they make him want to pull someone’s hair.
Thank God for Eunae being a charming-enough delivery girl to get this guy’s Instragram.
Yoo Youngjae is extremely cute, and the pictures of him at Toronto Pride—sticking out his tongue with a pink-purple-blue flag in his hands, hair spiked and blonde—make Himchan’s heart pitter-patter a bit faster.
“That was back in 2012,” Daehyun remarks, pointing at the date. For a moment, Himchan’s terrified the plain white heart is going to turn red. “I checked his tagged photos, too. I don’t think he’s gone to a pride event in the last four years. It’s unlikely that he’s the in-your-face kind of gay. I mean, he doesn't have that god awful hair anymore, either.”
“That’s a good thing,” Himchan nods, discreetly shifting his phone away from Daehyun’s clumsy fingers. “He’s twenty-two—hold on let me scroll up to find his birthday picture-”
“Wait, wait, wait—stop!” Daehyun yells frantically, stealing the phone.
Angrily, Himchan rips it out of his hands. Before he can yell, though, the image Daehyun clicked on catches his eye. “Oh, you have got to be kidding me!” he groans, throwing his head back.
There’s nothing overly impressive about his hands themselves, though the video Daehyun caught shows them in clear definition.
What’s impressive is how he uses them.
Himchan thinks he might fall in love with the way Youngjae’s fingers move over his bass, fluid and instinctive, moving in a complicated mess and wait, that’s a song that he’s memorized, somehow. The sheer talent poured into a minute-long video with a caption calling it sloppy is enough to make Himchan think of other ways those beautiful fingers could be put to use.
“I don’t mean to be rude, but if you’re going to get a hard-on, I’d rather you get it in the bedroom,” Daehyun remarks, and Himchan exhales in frustration through his nose. “You know, where I can comfortably help you out.”
“Not into otters anymore, sorry,” Himchan mutters, shutting his phone off and running a hand through his hair.
“Don’t tell me my fuck-buddy is leaving me for some guy that orders ranch-sauce pizza,” Daehyun pouts, joking but there’s a slight tinge of disappointment in his voice.
Himchan shrugs, looking up at his friend’s wide eyes. “If it means you’ll finally let me introduce you to Yongguk so you can get over Jongup, definitely.”
“Fuck, fine,” Daehyun whines, ruffling his own hair. “I’m here if you need me, though.” He win exaggeratedly, hopping off the kitchen counter and leaving to go god-knows-where.
Huffing, Himchan turns his phone back on and continues to scroll, getting lost in videos of bass riffs from bands he doesn’t know and horrible selfies accompanied by model-like candid photos. It’s a bit funny, how this guy can’t seem to take a selfie to save his life but any other photo of him looks like an editorial.
There’s some photos of him and what seems to be his garage band, including a boy that he recognizes as one of Yongguk’s producer friends. He digs in his head to find his voice, remembering it to be full of snarls and growls. So Youngjae’s in a bit of a rock band, it seems.
That’s hot.
He looks exceptionally good in loose band tees and black skinny jeans. Leather jackets, surely fake, give the slightest edge to him that steals breath. There’s recent pictures of him mildly drunk at an outdoor party, rocking tacky leopard print like it’s fashion-forward. There’s pictures of him with his band, playing in someone’s garage, with a caption gushing about how fun it is to just let loose, even if no one’s listening to them.
That’s cute.
Back at the top of the screen, his most recent picture seems to be in his own living room, with a half empty bottle of whiskey and his bare feet up on the coffee table.
Youngjae looks impossibly attractive, as seems to be the case in every previous photo. His purple bass seems to fit perfectly against his body. Grey, though a bland color for a shirt, looks like silver on his skin, even with the shoulders cut and ripped off the sleeves.
The caption is what steals Himchan’s attention, in the end. At the bottom, it says the post was made only an hour ago, about when Himchan and Daehyun’s shifts had ended.
anyone else got that 1 person who always makes ur pizza when u order dominos online? lmao @ himchan idk who u r but ilysm i hope u have a good night bby <3
“Daehyun, get your ass back in here!” Himchan practically screams, holding his phone against his chest. “He acknowledged my existence!”
Seconds later, Daehyun walks back in the apartment kitchen, sighing with his hands inside his pockets. “Himchan there’s no way he could-” he starts, but is cut off by Himchan’s phone screen in his face. “Oh my God, wait, what?!”
“I feel special,” Himchan grins. “Like, shit, yeah this guy has terrible taste in pizza but now I’m realizing that he’s liking what I’m making. I’m giving this guy some true happiness in the form of some damn good pizza. At least, it’s good to him. This little bit of his happiness is thanks to me? I'm proud of myself.”
“Would it be weird to just show up at his door?” Daehyun quirks an eyebrow curiously. “Because you should totally do that. We have his address in our records.”
Himchan stares at Daehyun, unimpressed. “I totally should not do that.”
“Honestly, I think he’d be charmed,” Daehyun shrugs, holding his arms out. “Just sayin’.”
“Just let me deliver the pizza myself next week,” Himchan suggests. Daehyun purses his lips, and nods, acknowledging the obvious. “So I can meet him properly under, you know, normal circumstances.”
“Good idea, yeah,” Daehyun admits. “You’ll do that then. Not my fault if you get in trouble with Geunsoo for technically leaving your shift, though.”
Himchan realizes, he wouldn't even care.