Work Text:
It was a day like any other day. Daichi left his desk at 12:15 and got in the elevator to visit the deli in the ground floor of his office building like he had done every work day since he’d first started working there over five years ago. The same time, the same wave to his manager, the same button of the elevator. Empty, happily, save for a pizza delivery person, but it was a quick ride to his destination, so it didn’t really matter. Everything was as it should be.
Except that this time, the elevator didn’t do the same thing it always did. Sure, it started that way, moving smoothly up to find the floor the pizza was meant for, but then something changed. A branch of fate split and the motor jerked to a halt and the elevator shuddered and shivered and stopped.
Daichi didn’t say anything at first. This was something he’d never predicted, something he never could have prepared for. He pressed his button again, as if it would help, and then once again, more insistently, as if maybe, even though it hadn’t helped the first time, he might have done it wrong and now it definitely had to work.
It did not work.
And then Daichi started to get nervous.
“Stupid- it’s not working- I have things to do-!”
The pizza deliverer laughed and adjusted his hat, as if this was a completely normal occurrence for him and not the complete breakdown of the routine pattern that had ruled his life for years.
“Does this happen often?”
Daichi couldn’t help but eye him and his stupid delicious smelling pizza aggressively.
“No, never. This has never happened before.”
“Well, there’s always a first time for everything!” The delivery guy laughed for a second time, and now that Daichi could hear it better, he was struck by the musicality of it. Soft and sweet, like bells, lighting up his face with the joy of the unexpected. The warm feeling in his chest was a brief but welcome relief from his anxiety.
“Uh. Um. Right.”
He shook himself from distraction and jabbed the help button, but nothing happened. He tried the firefighter’s button next, and that was just as useless as the first one. His anxiety welled up again and he jabbed the button repeatedly, hissing under his breath for it to work, dammit, work, he had places to be and things to do, and this wasn’t where he was meant to be-
“Don’t you have a cellphone?”
“No service,” Daichi spat. “Elevator blocks it.” He jammed the red button again. He tried to pound on the door, even, hoping, praying that someone would be paying attention and they weren’t stuck on one of the floors that was currently getting remodeled.
“Oh, well that’s unfortunate! Looks like we’ll be trapped for a while!”
Daichi couldn’t help the tiny whimper of horror that escaped from his throat. He tried to cover it with a cough, a straightening of his necktie, but the damage had already been done. The beautiful pizza guy’s expression had changed from mild indifference to gentle concern, the soft look of pity in his eyes in no way helping the growing panic in Daichi’s gut.
“Hey, you’re not claustrophobic, are you?”
Daichi avoided eye contact and pounded on the elevator walls again.
“So what if I am?”
“So this is a pretty unfortunate situation if you are.”
Daichi stopped pounding and took a deep breath, counting backwards from ten like he had to do on night when the train was full.
“You don’t think...we’ll be here that long, do you?” He risked a glance at the pizza guy, who grinned as if they weren’t currently occupying one of Daichi’s nightmares.
“No, no, of course not! These never last long, especially in a building as big as this!” He rested his pizza bag on the floor and clapped a hand on Daichi’s shoulder. “It’s probably just a short power outage and you’ll be back on the job before anyone knows what happened.”
“A power outage?” The bile rose in Daichi’s throat and he fought to keep it down. No way he was puking in front of a guy who could still look attractive in a polo shirt and baseball cap. “Can’t those last for days?? I can’t be stuck here for days! My lunch break is only forty-five minutes long!”
“Relax! Relax, no one’s going to let us stay stuck here for days!” He squeezed Daichi’s arms to reassure him. And then squeezed again for good measure. “Maybe we should just try and think of a distraction?”
“What...kind of a distraction?” Those hands on his muscles were already helping. He thanked every deity he could think of that he’d kept up with his gym routine even after they’d hiked their prices.
“Like twenty questions! We can start with names.” He took a step back, then stuck out his hand and grinned winningly. “I’m Sugawara Koushi, but you can call me Suga!”
“Suga?” Daichi could almost see stars. “I’m… I’m Sawamura Daichi.” He shook Suga’s hand and marveled at the warmth he found there. Probably just from the pizza. “What kind of questions?”
Suga sat cross-legged on the ground, like a small child, and Daichi mimicked him, not remembering to worry about what might be on the floor of the elevator getting on his suit. It was a little easier to breathe at a lower altitude.
“Well, like...hmmm...” Suga rubbed his chin as he thought, and whether he was being silly or he actually thought that way, it made something flutter in Daichi’s chest that wasn’t related to his panic. “What about, what do you do here?”
Easy question. He could do this. He did it every day. He barely had to think. Ha! Come up with a more difficult question, Suga!
“Telecommunications support services.”
“Oh my god, that might be the most boring thing I’ve ever heard.”
“You deliver pizza!” Daichi didn’t know why he felt defensive about this. How many times had he complained about his boring job to his friends? But something about this felt different.
“Delivering pizza can be exciting! You don’t know how many weird calls I’ve been on. I have so many stories-”
“So do I!”
Suga blinked, and Daichi thanked the universe for whatever had given him such long eyelashes. Get it together, Sawamura!
“You do?”
“Well...” Daichi tugged at his collar. “Not really, no.”
Suga laughed again and it was almost worth the embarrassment.
“Maybe we should play truth or dare instead,” he suggested, wiping a tear away and chasing away remnant giggles. Anything you want, Daichi wanted to say.
“Sure,” he went with instead. “You go first.”
“Okay, truth or dare?”
How much daring could they do in an elevator with no cell service? Daichi rolled it over in his head, hoping for a safe way to answer.
“Truth.”
“Okay. Why did you lie to me about your job being exciting?” Suga’s eyes glittered mischievously, and Daichi felt heat rise to his cheeks. Maybe he should just- “Remember, you have to tell the real, actual truth!”
Daichi gulped. What was this, a sleepover?
“I, uh...” He could hardly look him in the eye, but it was difficult to pull his gaze away. “I wanted to impress you?”
There was that musical laugh again. Maybe it was compensation for the worst possible thing that could happened to him happening to him.
“Why do you want to impress me?”
“No way!” Daichi countered. “It’s my turn.”
“Fine, fine,” Suga grinned. “Dare.”
“I dare you to give me a slice of that pizza.”
“I can’t! I’d get fired!” The surprise on his face was gorgeous, his round eyes getting rounder and color gracing his angelic cheeks.
“It’s truth or dare!” It was Daichi’s turn to grin.
“I can give you some parmesan packets, but that’s my final offer.” Suga folded his arms. Daichi just laughed. Suddenly spending hours with him in this metal death trap didn’t seem so bad.
“Alright. Okay. Truth, then.”
“Why do you want to impress me?” Suga leaned forward, giving him his utmost attention. Daichi felt his stomach drop through the floor. This was no good. No good. Maybe they ought to play a different game. Tic tac toe? He liked tic tac toe. They could use marinara sauce and paint the walls-
“Daaaaichi~.”
“I-”
“It has to be the truth,” Suga warned, that dangerous glint returning to his eyes.
“I want to impress everybody.” Daichi looked away. It was a weak excuse and both of them knew it, but Suga shrugged and let it go.
“I guess I’ll have to give you that one since I didn’t do your dare.”
Thank jesus.
“Truth.”
Shit.
Daichi didn’t even let himself think, his mouth moving for him before he could stop himself from blurting it out.
“Do you have a girlfriend?”
Suga looked at him, squinted slightly, as if he’d come to a decision, and shook his head.
“Nope.”
“You’re not in any kind of relationship?” The hope fought shame in his chest for what reaction to show on his face.
“Dai~chi, that’s two questions!” God, he wanted to hear him say his name so many more times…
“You take two in a row next.”
Suga made a little pouty face that ran so hot through Daichi’s blood that he had to loosen his tie again.
“No, I am not in any kind of relationship.”
Yes!! He fought to keep his excitement from showing, coughing and mumbling his next ‘truth’ without looking directly at Suga. It felt so warm in the elevator, but was that panic or flustered romantic excitement or real temperature?
“Are you in a relationship?” Suga grinned at him. “And why are you interested?”
Daichi coughed and wished he could sink through the bottom of the elevator and find a quick death in the shaft below.
“I’m, uh. Not. In any kind of relationship.”
“Aaaaand?” Suga practically sang it, the glee in his eyes showing that he knew full well why Daichi had asked him.
“M-maybe-” He coughed again and struggled to avoid looking at him with the lack of any other focal points in the elevator. “Maybe...I...hypothetically...was interested...in pursuing-”
Suga giggled.
“Never thought I’d get flirted with by a businessman on this trip. Told you delivering pizza was interesting.”
Interesting. Like weird, curious, strange kind of interesting. Daichi’s heart sank even lower in the writhing pit of snakes that his chest had become.
“I’m sorry- I didn’t- you don’t have to-”
“Relax, relax!” Suga giggled again, his smile blinding like some kind of angel. Daichi hoped he was the movies kind of angel and not the burning-wheel-covered-in-eyes kind of angel because he was already dying enough on the inside, thank you very much.
“I think you’re pretty cute, too.”
“W-what?”
He leaned closer and grinned.
“I think it’s your turn.”
“Wait, what??” Daichi couldn’t control his pulse. One way or another, he was going to have a heart attack in this elevator.
“You know, truth or dare?” The innocence in his smile had been completely burned away.
“...Truth?”
“Have you ever been kissed by a man, Daichi?” He put a hand on Daichi’s thigh and Daichi gulped harder than he thought he ever had, including a certain high school disaster he’d almost allowed himself to forget. He took a deep breath.
“Yes,” he whispered.
Suga leaned even closer, enough to spark Daichi’s imagination into wondering what those soft eyelashes would feel like on his cheek.
“Dare.”
It was all or nothing.
“Kiss me,” he breathed.
And Suga did.
Time stood still for what felt like an eternity. When he’d asked the question, he’d had a million things on his mind: was his breath fresh enough? would Suga refuse him? would Hell open and swallow him up for doing this kind of thing at work, no less? But when Suga’s soft lips met his, the buzzing in his head stopped almost completely. He forgot to think, forgot to breathe, forgot to control where his hands went and what to do with them. This was the most exciting thing he’d done all week, or all year, even, and more exciting than that was the way Suga responded to him.
There was no way this was his first kiss either.
Suga pulled back to let him breathe, and Daichi opened his mouth to say something--anything!-- but before he could, the elevator jerked back to life and sluggishly continued its ascent.
Both pairs of eyes went wide. Suga stared at Daichi and Daichi stared at Suga, and they just barely managed to scrambled off of the floor and each other before the elevator came to a halt and the doors dinged open. Suga picked up his pizza bag and they traded another glance, one of hundreds of things left unsaid, before he scribbled a note on a napkin and jammed it into Daichi’s loosely clenched hand.
“Guess I’m not going to get much of a tip!” He laughed and hurried off to complete his delivery.
Daichi took a deep breath and decided to take the stairs.
He almost forgot the napkin until he was back at his normal desk with his normal sandwich and his normal paperwork, when he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the only reminder of the unusual thing that had happened to him in a very long time.
In rapidly scrawled blue pen, it read
SUGAWARA KOUSHI
THANKS FOR THE DISTRACTION!
CALL ME~! XOXO
and below the message were the unmistakeable digits of a phone number.