Work Text:
“12 inch Spicy Surprise. No cheese. No tomato. No jalapeño. Hold the chilli flakes. Extra sausage. No sausage. Toasted extra on one side. Stuffed crust in alternate slices. Cut into sevenths. Delivered while warm, not hot. Seriously, this guy again?”
Keigo nearly breaks his fucking ankle lunging across the register to snatch the receipt from Yamagata.
“I got it,” Keigo says. His fingers are greasy; he leaves little smudges on the cheap paper, smearing his slick desperation all over Touya’s weekly order. “Hey, why don’t you take your break? Don’t worry about it.”
“Really?” Yamagata, freshly eighteen and not paid enough for this shit, doesn’t really look like he wants to put up a fight. Keigo isn’t sure Yamagata likes him, but they’re usually paired together on the night shifts so they share the regular kind of mutual respect between any sad-sack pizza place employee slogging their way past three in the morning.
Sure, Keigo toppled from being No. 2 Wing Hero Hawks on his way here, and Yamagata just needs some savings for when he goes to university, but everyone in the gutter sees the same stars, or whatever, and Keigo isn’t Hawks.
He’s just Keigo.
Yamagata shrugs. He doesn’t argue, just slings his jacket off the hook by the backroom and slips outside for a smoke. Keigo keeps trying to give him stern talks on the effect of smoking on his baby lungs, but Yamagata always just stares at him blankly because he’s seen the paparazzi photos of Hawks chain-smoking on rooftops.
But Keigo isn’t Hawks, and smoking is bad, and Touya’s order is waiting to be fulfilled.
He gets to work.
🍕
The first time Touya ordered from PIZZA GOOD PLEASE, Keigo didn’t realise it was him.
The order itself was mundane. Four medium pizzas, in various flavour combinations. One without cheese. The email contained no identifying features, an anodyne [email protected] that bemused Keigo to no end. The address was on the outskirts of the city, an apartment veering into suburbia.
So Keigo prepped the pizzas with the focus and drive that he used to dedicate to saving the world, and hopped on his second-hand moped to make the midnight drive.
Keigo didn’t think much of it. He drove with the wind whipping at his cheeks, trying to stop his eyes drifting shut. He skidded to a stop outside a dime-a-dozen apartment block and buzzed into the intercom. He trudged up the stairwell and pasted on his brightest smile as he knocked on door 301.
Todoroki Natsuo answered the door, and Keigo’s smile slid right off his face.
Natsuo didn’t look pleased to see him either.
“What the hell?” Natsuo said.
“Your PIZZA GOOD PLEASE delivery,” Keigo choked out, holding the boxes up between them like a shield. He peeked over the top of them, at Natsuo’s gobsmacked expression. “That’ll be ¥6500.”
“Hawks—”
“Keigo.”
“You’re—”
“¥6500 please, sir, thank you, any day now, your pizzas are getting cold—”
“Hawks?”
Todoroki Fuyumi joined the fray, staring at Keigo from the doorway, and Keigo realised he was in trouble.
“Oi! What’s the hold up?” another voice shouted from deeper inside the apartment, and Keigo didn’t even know it yet but his heart squeezed inside of him at the cadence of a voice that he could never quite forget.
“Is that him?” Keigo blurted. He stood on his tiptoes in an attempt to peer over Natsuo’s shoulders, but Natsuo inherited all of his father’s bulk. Keigo felt manic, wrong-footed, displaced. “Is that Touya? Can I see him? I’ll be quick. That’ll be ¥6500, by the way. Did I say that? How is he? Does he ever talk about me? Did you—”
Natsuo snatched the pizza boxes from Keigo’s limp hands, and Fuyumi pressed a wad of bills into Keigo’s freshly empty palms with a wan smile.
As the two of them retreated into the apartment, preparing to slam the door in Keigo’s face, Keigo’s wild eyes drifted between the gaps in their bodies and met Touya’s.
🍕
TO: [email protected]
FROM: [email protected]
SENT: THU 16 AUG 04:23
SUBJECT: this is keigo from the pizza place
touya is this u it’s keigo i made an email so we could talk and now we match haha i bet u ordered the pizza without cheese ok pls reply im not that mad anymore about the wings or the war or anything thx
🍕
TO: [email protected]
FROM: [email protected]
SENT: FRI 17 AUG 02:07
SUBJECT: this is keigo did u get my email
touya pls reply i wld like to talk to u and i can make you another pizza if u want we have lots of toppings and i’ll give u friends and family discount even tho ur not really either of those things i promise im only a little bitter about the wings i only cry sometimes haha
🍕
TO: [email protected]
FROM: [email protected]
SENT: SAT 18 AUG 04:22
SUBJECT: touya???????
if this is natsuo or fuyumi or shouto pls can u pass my message to touya and if this is touya pls can u stop being a dick i promise i wont hit u with my katanas even tho the thought of u keeps me up at night and sometimes im very tempted but i’ll leave them at home and we can talk or maybe kiss wait it’s sending wait why is it s
🍕
TO: [email protected]
FROM: [email protected]
SENT: SUN 19 AUG 03:10
SUBJECT: u know where to find me if u want to talk
:(
🍕
After the war, Keigo decided to stay in Musutafu because Fukuoka didn’t feel welcome to him anymore. He bought a shoebox apartment with his HPSC payout. He found a job down the street at PIZZA GOOD PLEASE, because he didn’t trust himself alone with his thoughts, and the manager didn’t give a shit who he was before Keigo’s world fell apart.
She did draw the line at Keigo bringing his katanas to work, but Keigo supposes he can’t win ‘em all.
Touya didn’t reply to Keigo’s emails, but a week after the initial order, he ordered another pizza. This one to another address, a disused warehouse by the docks, and when Keigo delivered the box with a speed that he hadn’t exhibited since he fell from grace, he found a wad of money and a note that read stop emailing me.
So Keigo stopped emailing Touya, and Touya kept ordering pizza, and thus began the story of Keigo’s weirdest summer to date.
🍕
“12 inch customised pizza. No tomato. No cheese. No pepperoni. No onion. No olive. No mushroom. No sausage. No peppers. No bacon. No pineapple. Left beef. What the fuck is left beef?”
🍕
“12 inch Saucy Sunrise. Extra tomato sauce. Extra white sauce. Extra soy sauce. No cheese. Keigo-san, please help instead of laughing.”
🍕
“12 inch Hawai’i Adventure. Extra pineapple. All your pineapple. No ham. No cheese. Serve soggy. Send your ugliest delivery driver LOL. I’m going on my break. All yours, Keigo-san.”
🍕
“6 pack chicken wings. Ah, there’s a note with the order. ‘These are for you. To replace the old ones, or whatever.’ Keigo-san, what does that mean? Keigo-san, are you crying?”
🍕
Every time Touya orders from PIZZA GOOD PLEASE, he sends his abomination to a different address. Usually somewhere inconvenient, usually somewhere sketchy, and always somewhere where he isn’t.
Keigo should stop getting his hopes up, because every time he shows up with a disgusting pizza that he made with love and Touya isn’t there, his heart crushes a little bit, but he can’t help it.
Touya’s still ordering. Like clockwork, Touya makes Keigo’s life hell on Thursday nights, when Keigo has nothing better to do but think about the two of them while he assembles pizzas and takes the bins out and nicks cigarettes off Yamagata.
It reminds Keigo of his early days as a spy, trying to clamber into Dabi’s good books. Inconvenient meetings and late-night anxieties and Dabi in the dark like a nightmare and a dream.
But this is Touya, and it’s just pizza, and Touya always leaves more money than he needs to.
Keigo wonders how Touya does it. Whether he stops by an hour before and scatters before Keigo even receives his order. Whether Touya perches in the shadows and watches Keigo run around after him in his stupid PIZZA GOOD PLEASE uniform.
It’s not like Keigo has the tools anymore to know if Touya is breathing down his neck.
Instead, he commits himself to the signs: the money, the notes, the lingering smell of char.
Keigo commits to it like religion.
🍕
“12 inch Fishy Dream. Extra tuna. Extra bonito flakes. Extra anchovies. Extra anchovies. Extra anchovies. Extra anchovies. Extra anchovies. Extra ancho—”
Keigo whisks the receipt from Yamagata’s despondent hands.
“Seems fishy, eh?” Keigo says. Yamagata doesn’t laugh. “Take your break.”
Yamagata doesn’t need telling twice. He heads out the back while Keigo carefully assembles a pizza that makes him gag, the stink of fish clogging his sinuses. Keigo blinks past the tears anyway, arranging anchovies in artful swirls, and by the time the pizza is cooking, he’s lost all sense of smell and his nose has stopped stinging.
Keigo hops on his moped with the pizza cradled in the back like a baby, and zooms to yet another nondescript warehouse.
He’s fairly certain that he’s been to this one before. Not on his pizza-delivery sagas, but in a time before the war, him and Dabi and the lack of light, and an almost-kiss in the dark.
There were a lot of almost-kisses in the dark. There were a lot in the light as well, now that Keigo comes to think about it. Hawks and Dabi and their magnetism. Keigo wants it back, perhaps with a couple of caveats. It’s the only thing he enjoys thinking about, the lack of romance between them but no lack of wanting.
Keigo dismounts from his moped and circles round the back, whistling tunelessly to himself as he hunts for the money Touya’s left.
“That fuckin’ stinks.”
Keigo drops the pizza box on the floor.
“You asshole,” Keigo says, voice cracking.
Touya melts out of the shadows. Keigo drinks him in like an elixir.
He’s different, but he’s the same. His hair is shorn, sticking up in white tufts from his scalp. His skin is puckered, almost full scar. Despite it all, he looks healthier. Touya meets Keigo’s eyes.
Keigo would know those eyes. Keigo would know the wrinkle between those eyebrows.
“My pizza,” Touya says, without dismay, dry as anything. “You dropped it.”
“Touya.”
Touya’s eyes flash. Keigo’s desperate to have a conversation, any conversation, to see if the water’s rushed beneath the bridge, but Touya’s eyes warn against it. Later, they promise.
“Can I have my pizza?”
“You’re actually going to eat it?” Keigo says, aghast. He scrambles for the box. A pile of gooey anchovies wink sadly at him from the floor.
Keigo hands over the box. Touya carefully takes it, positioning his hands as far from Keigo’s as humanly possible.
Keigo watches as Touya opens the box and the fishy smell hits him all over again. Touya openly gags, holding the box at arm’s distance as he regards the pizza.
“You always hated fish,” Keigo says, far too wistful for the situation at hand.
“Still do.”
“You have to eat it.”
“This’ll be what finishes me off.”
“You survived a war,” Keigo says. His voice is shaking. He doesn’t really know why. “You’ll survive anchovies. Please. I made it for you. I made all of them for you.”
Touya meets Keigo’s eyes again. He reaches into the box and extracts a slice. He offers the box to Keigo and, mostly against his own will, Keigo extracts another slice.
His carefully arranged anchovies splatter onto the concrete. Keigo looks at the slice, slick with fish oil, and sighs.
The things he’ll do to get this boy back.
“Cheers,” Keigo says, and tears into his slice.
The pizza, somehow, tastes worse than it smells. The grease floods Keigo’s mouth, and the taste of fish is so strong that it verges on rotten. Keigo attempts one chew, heaves, and spits his bite out on the floor.
Touya’s faring no better. His slice barely looks nibbled on, but he’s bent double, retching, when Keigo emerges from the haze of fish, eyes watering, and looks over.
“Touya,” Keigo rasps.
“I hate this stupid pizza,” Touya says.
“Touya,” Keigo insists, verging on desperate.
“Fuck this,” Touya mutters. The slice falls to the concrete with a stomach-turning squelch.
Touya crosses the distance between them in determined, clumsy strides. Keigo doesn’t have time to be afraid; he only has time to stare at Touya, wide-eyed, and take him in when Touya’s hands grasp the side of his face.
“Should we talk about this?” Keigo mumbles through the pressure on his cheeks, Touya’s hands heavy on his scars. They don’t hurt, but it feels like they could, if Touya looks at him wrong.
“Probably,” Touya says, so Keigo fists his hands in the collar of Touya’s faded hoodie and leans in to kiss him.
Touya tastes like fish. He really tastes like fish. Keigo tries so hard to ignore it, to focus on the feeling of Touya beneath him, but Touya’s mouth parts and Keigo has to pull away.
Through a grimace he attempts to disguise as a smile, Keigo says, “So are you—”
Touya doubles over and throws up.
“It wasn’t that bad, was it?” Keigo tries, the joke plummeting to the concrete like the contents of Touya’s stomach. The smell is killing him, and Keigo tries to subtly cover his nose with the back of his hand; by the glare out of the corner of Touya’s eye, it’s nothing but overt.
“Fuck,” Touya says, hands on his knees, still bent double. He coughs wetly. The pizza box did not survive the expulsion. “Birdie—”
“Keigo.”
“Keigo,” Touya says, the word all strange in his mouth.
“Touya,” Keigo says, equally as strange.
Touya looks up at him solemnly. Keigo’s trapped in the blue, in the memory of eyes that haven’t changed even while the rest of Touya has.
“I’m never eating a fucking pizza again.”
So this is it? Touya dug his own grave, and now Keigo has to go back to minimum wage hell without Thursday nights to look forward to, carefully concocting the worst meals known to man for a sliver of a chance with the person he aches for the most, and—
“I’ll email you,” Touya says. He mutters, under his breath, “Stupid.”
“Alright,” Keigo says. He takes a tentative step back towards his moped. “I should go back to work.”
Touya waves him off. “Leave. I’ll just die here.”
“Third time lucky,” Keigo says, and Touya’s returning glare is still sour but maybe also soft.
“Go.”
“I’ll go.”
“I’ll email you.”
“Email me.”
Keigo doesn’t overstay his welcome. He skips off to his moped with vomit splattered on the tips of his shoes, giddy like a high schooler. The wind whips his face as he drives back to work, Touya’s promise ringing in his head. His heart like a bird in his chest, fluttering.
As Keigo heads back into the store, already checking his phone for an email from Touya, buffeted by the smell of grease and tomato and cheese, he thinks, for the first time since the war, that maybe this is what it feels to be human again.