Work Text:
“Triple P; would you like to hear about our new Monday night special?”
Mista’s brain went on autopilot as he began explaining the promotion to the customer. He might have been on the clock, but his mind was miles away from cooking pizza and making deliveries. According to him, the real special was the fact that Giorno always stopped by the restaurant after he was done with classes on Monday nights. Just the thought of getting to see his boyfriend in the near future made him want to sigh.
Which he did once he’d taken the customer’s order and hung up the phone.
However, the sound of a stern voice behind him immediately snapped him out of his lovesick stupor.
“Mista.”
He flinched and turned around just in time to see his boss approaching. “I wasn’t making a personal call!”
Bruno raised an eyebrow. “That’s not…” He paused to shake his head. “I just wanted to let you know that I’m leaving a little early tonight.”
Strange. Bruno never left early.
“You feeling ok?”
“Yes, I’m fine. I just have some important business to attend to.” Bruno crossed his arms as he explained, “I’ve already called Fugo and asked him to come in and cover for me. He’s been shadowing me and learning how to do more managerial tasks. Mondays are typically slow; I trust him to be able to close tonight.”
Mista shrugged. “I mean, that’s cool with me.”
“But since Fugo is still learning, I didn’t want to leave the two of you completely alone. So I called in someone else just to be safe.”
The kitchen door suddenly swung open to reveal the brightly smiling face of none other than Narancia. “Yo, bossman!”
Mista had to suck in his bottom lip to keep from grinning. Not only would Giorno be stopping by tonight, but now he and Narancia were going to get to work together with Fugo in charge? Work tonight had seriously taken a turn for the awesome.
At least, things would be awesome as long as no one else clocked in. A three-man team was great, and a five-man team was fine, but the number between those two…
“Where d’ya want me?”
Bruno gestured with his head toward the very door Narancia had just walked through. “You mind the register while Mista gets this order ready. Fugo should be here by the time it’s done, so he can take over on register while you make the delivery.”
Mista and Narancia traded smirks, and Bruno was quick to add, “Don’t make things harder on Fugo than they need to be tonight.”
“What’re you saying?” Mista asked innocently.
His eyes narrowed. “Let me rephrase. I don’t want to hear about you two intentionally riling him up. Are we clear?”
“We’re always nice to him!” Narancia insisted. “We’re like, his best friends.”
Mista looped his arm around Narancia’s shoulders and gave his boss a reassuring grin. “We’ve got everything under control. It’s a Monday night! You said it yourself, it’s never that busy on Monday nights.”
Bruno didn’t look convinced, but he didn’t seem to have anything else to say on the matter. “If you need me, I’m just a phone call away.” He turned and started toward the back door but stopped long enough to give his employees one last stern look. “Oh, and Mista?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t make personal calls with the restaurant phone unless it’s an emergency.”
“Narancia, what are you doing?”
Mista snickered under his breath at the clueless look Narancia gave Fugo. “Making a pizza.”
Bruno had definitely been right to pick Fugo to start learning some management skills. With his smarts and keen eye, Fugo had slipped right into leadership mode as soon as he’d arrived at Triple P for the night.
But, man, was it hard to take a close friend seriously in the workplace.
Fugo’s eye twitched. “I can see that. Why exactly are you putting peanut butter on it?”
“Because it’s gonna be a peanut butter and chocolate dessert pizza. Duh.”
“We don’t serve peanut butter and chocolate dessert pizza.”
“It’s an experiment! It’s gonna taste good, trust me.”
Fugo grabbed Narancia by the ear and yanked him away from the counter as Narancia let out a howl of distress. “Now isn’t the time to fuck around! If Bruno wanted us to experiment, he’d have told us to experiment!”
“Ow ow ow! Fuck you! Like there’s anything else I could be doing!”
As if on cue, the kitchen phone started to ring.
Mista took a step toward it to answer the call, but then he heard the restaurant’s front door opening. That had to be the person he was waiting for. “I’ll get the dining room!”
“Mista, you-!”
The kitchen door swung closed behind him before he had a chance to hear what kind of creative insult Fugo had for him tonight. Either one of them could answer the phone just as easily as he could, and he wasn’t about to miss watching his man walk through the front door.
Except, the man standing by the front door definitely wasn’t Giorno. Not unless Giorno had magically grown nearly a foot taller, gained some massive muscles, and dyed his hair black.
“Table for four, please,” the gigantic man said. At first, Mista wondered why this guy needed a table for more than one person, but then he noticed a little girl with hair pulled into twin buns holding onto his trousers. Then the man stepped to the side, and Mista saw that he’d been eclipsing another man who was holding a toddler, one who was busy tugging at the long red hair of the man carrying him.
Then Mista finally registered exactly what the buff guy had said.
“T-Table for… four. Got it.” He shakily grabbed four menus from the stack beside the register and scurried over to an open table.
As he placed the menus at each seat, he overheard the red-headed man murmur, “Jotaro, would you take your son for a moment?”
“He’s your son, too.”
“Yes, but he’s your son when he’s being difficult.”
Mista gave them a wary smile as they passed the toddler between the two of them. “I’ll give you guys a minute to look at the menu.” He turned on his heel to head back to the kitchen for a moment, trying his best to shake off the foreboding feeling sending chills down his spine. It wouldn’t have been such a big deal if he’d let Fugo or Narancia seat that family. Four was bad luck, but it was especially unlucky when he had to deal with it directly. He really hoped this wasn’t a sign of misfortune yet to come…
He heard the front door open again, and his heart fluttered. Surely this time it was Giorno!
But then he turned around and saw three even larger men than the one who’d just come in with his family. Except these guys were all wearing muscle shirts and jogging shorts to show off their bronzed godlike figures.
“Welcome to Triple P,” Mista said, forcing himself to smile. “H-How many?”
“Three,” one wearing a nose ring replied.
Mista fought the urge to audibly sigh with relief until he heard the sound of someone clearing their throat. A fourth absolutely ripped man shouldered his way to the front of the group and frowned directly at the one who’d just spoken.
“Oh, right.” The man looked back at Mista. “Make that four.” As Mista picked up four more menus he heard the man add, “Lighten up, Santana, you never hang out with us.”
“You invited me.”
“It doesn’t matter who invited who,” a man with a lip ring noted. “We should take advantage of our time together to prepare for the night ahead.”
“Wammu is right,” the tallest in the bunch said as he pulled his long wavy magenta hair into a ponytail. “If we’re to be successful in achieving total dominance, then we needn’t argue amongst ourselves.”
The man who spoke first chuckled. “Leave it to you to make marathon training sound like a villainous scheme.”
Once Mista had those menus spread on the table, he quickly said, “Gimme just a sec and I’ll be back to get your drink orders.” With that, he nearly ran back to the kitchen. The door had just barely closed behind him when he practically hissed, “We just had two parties of four come in at the same time.”
Fugo’s eyes widened in shock. “What!?”
About that time, Narancia hung the phone back on the wall. “They want two of those new Monday night specials.”
Mista could feel his palms becoming clammy. “Th-That means…”
“The Monday night special is buy one medium two-topping pizza, get one free,” Fugo mumbled to himself. “That’s four pizzas for one order.”
Mista yanked his beanie off of his head and raked his fingers through his hair. Four. So many instances of four tonight. What had he done to piss the universe off!? This couldn’t all just be some horrible coincidence, could it? Something devastating was about to happen to him, he just knew it!
“Bruno came up with that special to try to entice more business on Monday nights,” Fugo continued. “I didn’t think we’d see such an uptick so quickly…” By then, he was pacing, clearly going into panic mode as well. And, honestly, Mista couldn’t blame him. Mondays were usually painfully slow, but, tetraphobia aside, this was shaping up to be a hell of a night for Fugo to dip his toes into the pool of management. “Th-This is… This is like how Saturday night rushes start. But on Saturdays, we have at least six people working. How are the three of us supposed to handle so many orders, especially if even more start coming in? I-”
Narancia marched over and grabbed Fugo by the shoulders, stopping him in his tracks. “Listen. You’re like, the smartest guy I know. Just tell us what to do, and we’ll do it! We’ve got this!”
Fugo nodded as he looked into Narancia’s eyes. “Yeah. Yeah, ok. We can do this. You start working on the delivery order.” He turned his head toward Mista. “You get out there and mind the dining room.”
“Parties of four, Fugo!”
“I don’t care!” Fugo shouted back. “Someone has to wait tables. Narancia’s a delivery boy. Do the fucking math.”
All three of them froze at the sound of the front door opening yet again.
Fugo sighed. “I’ll help you both. Just get your asses in gear.”
If Giorno wasn’t surprised enough by how full the parking lot was for a Monday night, he was even more shocked to see just how crowded the dining room was as he walked through the front door. Things were never this busy when he stopped by to visit his man.
He held his backpack straps tighter as he looked around at everyone enjoying their meals. Although he didn’t mind crowds too terribly, he knew that most people weren’t overly fond of…
“Giorno!”
He glanced up and saw Mista pouring water into a customer’s glass. Once the cup was filled, Mista hurriedly put the pitcher aside, made a beeline for the door, and wrapped Giorno in a hug.
Mista lowered his head onto Giorno’s shoulder and murmured, “Thank God you’re here.”
“Of course I’m here,” he said, lightly patting his back. “I apologize for being a little later than usual. My class went long.” He thought that that would be when Mista pulled back and gave him a kiss on the cheek or something, but instead, his grip tightened, and Giorno could feel him trembling. “Is something wrong?”
“Gio…” he whispered. “There’ve been so many fours tonight. So many. I was starting to worry that all of that bad luck had transferred to you and that something had happened.”
A little smile tugged at Giorno’s lips. On the one hand, he felt a little bad that he’d made Mista worry. At the same time, he couldn’t help but think about how lucky he was to have someone like him. Neither of his dads were completely sold on Guido Mista just yet, but Giorno knew how much Mista loved him. And he loved him, too. Giorno loved Mista in a way that he never thought he was capable of loving someone else—quirks and all.
Even the bizarre tetraphobia.
“I’m fine, Guido,” he quietly assured him. “And as much I love being held by you, I have to ask you to loosen up.”
That finally got Mista to let go. “Did I hurt you?”
“No, but I don’t want you to accidentally crush my backpack.” Mista cocked his head curiously, and Giorno added, “I’ll show you when we sit.”
Realizing that he needed to do his job, Mista turned and gestured toward a two-person table in the back of the dining room near the bathrooms. On any other Monday night, Giorno could sit anywhere he wanted, but tonight’s crowd would rival the pre-dinner rush on a Saturday. He was lucky to have a seat anywhere.
As he pulled out the chair, Mista asked, “You want anything special tonight?”
“No, the usual is fine. Fruit-”
“Fruit punch, an order of cheese bread, and a chocolate chip pizza.” Mista chuckled and shook his head. “I’ll be right back.”
A minute later, Mista returned with Giorno’s drink. “Ok, I’m not officially on break yet, but I wanna know what’s up with your backpack.”
Giorno already had the bag sitting in his lap, but he still beckoned Mista closer with a finger. Once Mista was standing right by his side, he carefully loosened the drawstring and pulled the top open. There at the very bottom of his backpack, the most adorable reptile in town greeted them both with the flick of his forked tongue.
“Gold Experience?” Mista turned his attention to his boyfriend. “Look, I know he’s your pet, but you don’t have to take a boa for walks.”
“Ball python,” Giorno corrected him. “And I didn’t bring him out just for fun.” With a warm smile, he reached into his bag and stroked the snake’s head. “The power is out at my house. As you know, reptiles are cold-blooded. He needs a heat source.”
“So you’ve been carrying him around with you all day?”
Giorno nodded. “The people from the electric company were supposed to come out to restore the power today, but I didn’t want to risk him getting sick in the meantime.”
His heart fluttered as he felt Mista wrap his arm around his shoulder and lean down closer to his backpack. “Hey, Goldie!” he whispered. “It’s your stepdad. ‘Member me?” Mista pressed a quick kiss to Giorno’s temple before standing back upright. “I’ll take my break when your cheese bread comes out. Just… don’t take him out in here. Not everyone is cool with snakes.”
As Mista headed back toward the kitchen, Giorno couldn’t help but sigh. “Stepdad, huh?” He looked back down into his bag with a smirk. “I suppose that’s his way of saying that he sees this relationship working out.”
“You should’ve seen it! It was crazy earlier!”
By the time Giorno’s cheese bread came out of the oven, the dining room crowd had dramatically thinned out, making it the perfect time for Mista to take his break.
“Even more than when I got here?” Giorno asked.
Mista nodded as he took another bite of bread. “That was when things finally started slowing down.” He looked up and flashed his boyfriend a sly grin. “Not that I’d expect anything less from my good luck charm.”
Before Giorno had a chance to say anything in response, Fugo arrived at their table and started refilling Giorno’s cup. “Ten minutes,” he said flatly.
Mista groaned. “It’s a fifteen-minute break! I don’t need you reminding me how much time I have left!”
“Guido was just telling me how busy it’s been,” Giorno said. “I’m sure Bruno would be proud of how you’ve handled everything.”
Fugo put a hand on his hip as he glared at Mista. “See? It isn’t that difficult to respect your coworkers.” He turned his attention back to Giorno and nodded politely. “Thank you.”
“Whatever,” Mista grumbled.
“Honestly, I’m surprised he didn’t run you off,” Fugo said to Giorno. “After all, counting you, there are four Passione Pizza Parlor employees here tonight.”
Mista’s eyes widened in realization. “Y-Yeah, but… But Giorno isn’t on the clock! It doesn’t count.”
With a shrug, Fugo started back toward the kitchen.
Mista rested his elbows on the table and put his head in his hands. Four. Even his beloved Giorno had brought another four into his night. He’d thought that his run of bad luck was over, but now the cursed number had reared its ugly head once again.
“Guido.”
Mista warily looked up at his boyfriend.
“If you’d like for me to go home, I can.”
“No!” He hastily reached out and grabbed Giorno’s hands. “No. Please. Don’t leave me.”
“You sure? I promise it won’t hurt my feelings. I might not understand, but I know it’s something that causes you a lot of stress.”
“Positive. Gio, you’re my good luck charm. With you here, nothing bad can happen to me.”
Giorno gave him a reassuring smile. “And I have my good luck charm with me as well.” He glanced down at the floor where he’d placed his backpack by his chair. As easy as it would have been for Mista to feel jealous of a snake, it was cute seeing how much Giorno loved Gold Experience. And besides, he knew that Giorno loved him, too.
But then Giorno’s smile faded.
“Babe?”
Giorno immediately yanked his hands away and reached down to pick up his bag.
“Something wrong?”
“My bag tipped over…” Giorno whispered. He then held the backpack open so Mista could see inside.
Empty. Gold Experience was nowhere to be seen.
Mista sprang to his feet and frantically started scanning the area. “He couldn’t have gotten that far, right? I mean, how fast is he?”
“Pretty fast when he wants to be.” Giorno slid out of his chair and began looking beneath the table.
“I’m gonna be in so much trouble if someone sees him…”
“You?” Giorno peered over the top of the table at his boyfriend with a raised eyebrow. “I’m the one who brought him here. He’s my pet.”
“Yeah, but I knew about it! I’m an accessory!”
“As long as we find him first, we won’t have to worry about that.”
However, the scream that came from within the nearby bathroom told them that that was just wishful thinking.
“Snake!” A tall, muscular man with carefully styled white hair came running out of the bathroom. “There’s a snake!”
As the man went barreling by, Giorno and Mista traded glances. Without wasting another moment, they both rushed into the bathroom.
“We have approximately thirty seconds before Fugo gets here,” Mista said. “We’ve gotta find him now.”
Luckily, that proved to be a simple task. Within moments of looking around, Giorno spotted Gold Experience slithering around beneath the sinks. “There he is.”
He squatted down and started to reach for the little snake, but another set of voices could be heard quickly approaching.
“Sir, calm down. We’ve never had a snake in our restaurant before.”
“I swear to God, there’s one in there! I was washing my hands, and it slithered right across the end of my boot!”
Giorno gave his pet a scolding look, which was met with an innocent tongue flick.
“Hurry up!” Mista hissed.
“I’m trying,” Giorno insisted. “He’s just out of reach…”
“Jean, last time this happened, the ‘alien’ you said you saw in the mirror ended up being just an odd reflection.”
“I know what I saw! There’s a yellow snake in that bathroom!”
“Sir, please, you don’t need to shout.”
“Giorno, hurry!”
Giorno stretched just a bit more, wrapping his hand around Gold Experience before he scrambled back to his feet. “Forgive me.” He then snatched Mista’s beanie off of his head, stuffed Gold Experience inside, and slammed it back on top of his boyfriend.
Just then, they were joined by three others: Fugo, the white-haired man, and another tall, muscular man sporting Bantu knots. All five of them exchanged confused looks, Mista fighting the urge to shudder from the cold squirmy thing in his hair.
The other man crossed his arms and glared at the white-haired guy. “Well, where is the snake, Jean?”
“It was here!” he practically shrieked in response. “It was right there!”
Fugo, in an effort to be a good manager, walked over to the sink and gave it a thorough examination. “I don’t see anything.”
“Jean.”
“I swear!” The white-haired man, Jean, grabbed the other by the shoulders. “Why would I lie about this, Mo? Tell me!”
The man, Mo, sighed. “I apologize,” he said to Fugo as he got back to his feet. “My husband has a history of ‘seeing things’ in bathrooms.”
The two customers took their leave, but Fugo gave his friends a suspicious look. Mista put on his best inconspicuous smile, which earned him a little frown. “I don’t want to know why the two of you were in here by yourselves. Five more minutes,” Fugo said before he walked out of the bathroom as well.
As soon as they were alone, Mista pulled his hat back off, and Giorno was quick to take Gold Experience back into his hold. “Sorry about that,” Giorno mumbled. “Could you go grab my backpack? I’ll make sure he’s out of sight before coming back out.”
Mista grinned at the sight before him. Yeah, it might have been a tough night on the job, but he didn’t feel unlucky anymore. How could he when he had someone as smart, handsome, and loving as Giorno for a boyfriend?
He leaned in and pressed his lips to Giorno’s, eliciting a surprised little noise from him. But before Mista could pull away, Giorno rested his free hand on Mista’s cheek and tilted his head ever so slightly so that Mista could get closer.
A few minutes later, the two of them reemerged, Gold Experience safely tucked away once again, only to find someone unexpected sitting at Giorno’s table. “Yo, Giorno!”
“Narancia, get out of my seat,” Mista groused.
“Um, newsflash, your break is over. Mine has just begun. This is my seat now!”
“Why would you spend your break with Giorno!?”
“He’s my friend, too!” Narancia looked at Giorno with a pleading face. “Giorno? We’re cool, right?”
Giorno smiled as he sat at the table. “Of course. I’d enjoy your company, Narancia.”
“Yes!” He gestured to the large chocolate chip pizza on the table. “Your dessert was ready, so I brought it out.”
“I see that. And… what is this?” Giorno pointed at the other chocolate-covered pizza there.
“Oh that? It’s chocolate and peanut butter. I invented it!”
Mista started to walk away as he heard Giorno ask, “May I?”
“Absolutely!”
After a brief pause, Giorno said, “Oh, this is good…”
“You bet it’s good!” Narancia laughed. “You gotta tell Fugo you liked it before you leave. He was all on my case-”
Mista tuned Narancia out after that. Instead, he grinned to himself. They were all pretty lucky to have Giorno around.
“Enjoy your meals.”
Despite how hungry he was, Abbacchio didn’t make any moves for the appetizing sushi on the platter in front of him. Instead, he kept his eyes trained on the man seated across the table. Namely on the small frown on his face…
“Bruno,” he said gently. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
Abbacchio challenged that with a raised eyebrow.
Bruno softly sighed. “I just feel a little guilty.”
“For what? Eating?”
“I told them I had ‘important business’ to attend to tonight.”
Bruno picked up his chopsticks and pulled them apart, and Abbacchio followed suit. “You deserve a night off every now and then. You work all the damn time.”
“I shouldn’t have lied, though.” He paused, but then he smirked. “Look at that.” He pointed at a spot on the sushi platter with the end of his chopsticks.
Abbacchio glanced at the sushi in question, but when he said nothing, Bruno explained, “There are four pieces of sashimi for me to choose from. If Mista were here, he’d be demanding that the waitress take it all back.”
“Well, it’s a good thing he’s not here, isn’t it?”
Bruno reached out and picked one of the pieces up. “I hope nothing bad happens now that I’ve chosen from four.” Seemingly unremorsefully, he popped the sashimi into his mouth.
“Something tells me that we have nothing to fear,” Abbacchio sarcastically grumbled.
He scooped up a piece of sushi for himself, and he was in the middle of chewing when Bruno spoke again. “I suppose this is technically important business.”
“Oh yeah?” Abbacchio asked around his sushi.
“I’d say that our first date would be pretty important.”
Shocked, Abbacchio swallowed his food before he was finished chewing, causing him to cough.
Date?