A/N: Another fic meant to be multi-chaptered. It has a pretty interesting plot, which I've forgotten most of. It also centers around cookie pizza. A friend got me addicted. Be thankful I didn't write a fic about sushi. Anyway, the usual warnings. If this is just a oneshot, all you need to worry about is Kurogane's bad attitude. If it isn't, there will be some BL and het pairings. Lotsa angst either way. Remember: if you like it, then nag me. I'll forget otherwise. Busy life. You know the drill.
Cookie Pizza
Chapter One: Nothing But Weirdos
Kurogane considered the introduction of cookie pizza to the Palazzo de la Pizza menu the worst move possible. Equitable with Napoleon moving in on Russia, in fact. Or the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor. The advent of chewing gum.
As if his job of serving fat people their daily dose of heart attack wasn't already hellish enough, cookie pizza attracted nothing but weirdos. Giggly girls that jiggled every time they moved and always wasted more than half their food. People on dates. Screaming brats that Kurogane wanted to fold into the oven. More people on dates. And fat people beyond what one would even call obesity; fat people that were probably beginning to attract their own solar systems. And they all wanted cookie pizza—what was worse, they all agreed that the cookie pizza was the best thing they ever shoved in their ugly mugs and kept coming back. Kurogane was convinced this had to be solely to annoy him. There was no way anything that sounded as morally unsound as COOKIE pizza could taste good. He, of course, refused to try it. He knew how much sugar went into that evil thing. Sweet stuff was gross.
It was only a matter of time until he started telling customers that the pizza had been a temporary item (which it was supposed to be) and removed from the menu just to get them to leave him alone. And equally inevitable was Princess Tomoyo finding out about it and kicking Kurogane over to phone duty so he could be bored and think about what he had done (i.e., costing Tomoyo money). Kurogane had been glaring at the phone for so long that he didn't think he could move his face, was about to go and unplug the arcade so that one little kid dying over and over in Pacman and screaming for quarters would shut the hell up, and honestly didn't expect the phone to ring.
Palazzo de la Pizza wasn't exactly a big joint. They couldn't afford the commercials necessary to get it across to people that they didn't need to come to the restaurant and annoy Kurogane; there was a perfectly good delivery system ready and waiting to take fresh, hot heart attacks to the loyal customer. There were a couple of people who actually paid attention enough to call, but for the most part, anyone who used the phone was just that particularly obnoxious brand of customer that considered all pizza places delivery joints and demanded accommodation in a way that usually made Kurogane get put on phone duty for even longer. He also always had to do the delivery jobs, after all, because he was the one with the delivery vehicle.
Kurogane was contemplating this vehicle when the phone did actually ring, which was part of why he never heard it (although that Goddamn kid wasn't helping). That… beautiful vehicle was the reason he'd taken the job, after all. He'd been going to the bike shop every day since he was six to learn and help out the majority of the people he associated with in nonviolent ways, and lately he'd had his eye on a truly beautiful motorcycle. He'd helped build it, helped customize it until it was truly a work of art, polished every exposed piece of metal until it gleamed, and it was safe to say that the motorcycle was his one true love. Unfortunately, his loving attention had also attracted the eye of someone with the cash available to actually buy it, and Kurogane had been desperate enough to go to Palazzo de la Pizza and its psychotic manager and plead for her to spot the rest of the money for him to buy the motorcycle—in exchange for his soul.
By 'soul' Kurogane was referring to his employment in the pizza place and organization of a delivery service on the back of his motorcycle, which had been smothered in Palazzo logos and paraphernalia. He didn't care. Underneath it was still a gorgeous, fully customized machine. He called it Ginryu.
He was lost in fantasies of his latest plans for the engine when the phone rang, and thus, was entirely lost to the world until someone tapped him on the shoulder. He was fairly sure that kid was about to hit him up for quarters and turned around with the full intention of making the brat cry, only to find a very different brat bugging him. Syaoran Li was Princess Tomoyo's alleged nephew, but Kurogane suspected that his parents had sold Syaoran to Tomoyo to work off some manner of debt because there was no way that the kid was old enough to work first of all, and second of all, he never seemed to leave. Plus Kurogane didn't entirely believe that the brat was really related to Tomoyo. Syaoran was normal—Tomoyo was definitely not.
"What?" Kurogane growled, and not ungraciously, considering the amount of loathing he felt for the universe in general—Ginryu excluded—right now.
"Someone was calling," Syaoran informed him urgently, nodding towards the now silent phone. Both men took a moment to stare at it in bemusement before Kurogane looked back towards Syaoran with a characteristic grimace.
"Well, they aren't anymore. I care because…?"
Syaoran looked momentarily uncomfortable before he feigned great interest at the table to Kurogane's left, and leaned forward enough to mutter, just audible between them, "Lord Tomoyo is coming."
Oh.
Tomoyo Daidouji was not lord of anything except her own twisted fantasy life. The minute Kurogane was hired she insisted that he, like all the other employees, refer to her only as Lord Tomoyo. Kurogane had started calling her Princess Tomoyo out of spite, but that was just dubbed 'cute' and she left him alone about it. Kurogane had no idea why and didn't want to know. It had just taken one person asking him if they were going steady to snap and punch his lights out—ew, gross, NO. Princess Tomoyo, who he assumed felt similarly, had scolded Kurogane when she heard of this, before drawing the unfortunate employee into her lair, from which he was never heard from again.
See? Definitely not normal!
That didn't mean she wasn't scary as hell, so Kurogane nodded his thanks to Syaoran and practically leapt at the phone when it rang again. "Palazzo de la Pizza delivery service fresh pizza at all hours how may I help you?" He rattled off, taking a moment to glower at the child in the arcade until it dashed back to its parents. No one started talking about pizza toppings, so he added a little guiltily, "I think I missed your first call." He took a deep breath, which helped and added the dread word, "…Sorry."
"It's alright," a voice on the other end said, and Kurogane froze, muscles tensed up for a fight or flight response. No, he was probably wrong. Maybe this guy had been dusting or had gotten a cold. No reason to think—ah! A sniffle! Cold! It was most certainly a cold! "OK," the unknown and diseased caller said softly, breathlessly. "I'd like an, um…" When his voice cracked Kurogane recoiled from the phone to stare at it in abject horror before he caught Princess Tomoyo's gaze from across the room and she smiled at him. He pressed the phone back to his ear, feeling ill. "…C-cookie pizza. OK? I'd like to… to tr…" And then all semblance of professional boundaries were lost because the person on the phone dissolved into loud, gut-wrenching tears that not even Kurogane could pretend to ignore.
And Princess Tomoyo was still smiling at him like she knew exactly what was going on and this was his punishment. Maybe it was. Maybe she'd made this guy cry. She made Kurogane want to cry and he hadn't cried since he was—oh never mind.
The person on the other end of the line was still sobbing pitifully, like a kicked puppy, and although Kurogane absolutely didn't approve, he couldn't help but feel some sympathy too, buried somewhere below an ocean of discomfort and awkward embarrassment. By some one-in-a-million chance, this was the feeling that seized control of his mouth and made him, instead of hanging up, Princess Tomoyo be damned, say, "Uh, there, there."
The guy just seemed to cry harder, sobbing uncontrollably into the mouthpiece until Kurogane's shoulders were around his ears and he was trying to rub a migraine away with one hand and a phone. "I'm s-so s…So…rry," the caller whimpered, fumbling with something on the other end. "I… My… my order w-was…"
"It's fine!" Kurogane snapped, unable to deal with this for a second longer. He stood abruptly, nearly ripping the phone out of the wall and doubled back, cursing. "I got it, alright? Cookie fucking pizza! Get your money ready, I'll be there right away!" And then he dropped the phone back into its cradle like it was some kind of venomous insect, storming behind the counter to make a freaking cookie pizza for some crying guy who thought that calling a pizza place while he was having an emotional breakdown was a good idea.
Cookie pizza attracted all the weirdos in the entire state! How many people went crying to a pizza delivery service when they were feeling down! This was service industry harassment!
To make matters worse, the stupid pizza just didn't want to cooperate. The dough wouldn't stretch and then the chocolate spilled everywhere before Kurogane realized that although he, like all of the Palazzo de la Pizza employees had been trained to make every item on their menu, he'd never made a cookie pizza before. Shortly thereafter he remembered that he'd forgotten to get the guy's address. He also saw Princess Tomoyo stalking forward, probably to deliver some calming epithet about when and where it was appropriate to scream 'fucking' in a public area. Kurogane delegated the pizza making over to the current employee on pizza duty—Souma today—and made Syaoran call the guy back for his address because he wasn't going to do it for all the money in the world. Kurogane stormed out to his motorcycle, shaking chocolate off his hand and stringing together all of the curse words he knew. Seeing Ginryu would calm him down, plus he knew that Princess Tomoyo had some weird honor code about setting foot outside of the Palazzo de la Pizza before closing time.
Predictably, Ginryu had the desired tranquilizing effect, and when Syaoran brought the pizza out ten minutes later with the address and the slightly worried expression he got whenever Princess Tomoyo was approaching, Kurogane had started her up and was calmly waiting. They strapped the pizza into a specially modified 'pizza harness' in the back and Syaoran offered a long and complex string of directions that basically amounted to 'those apartments behind the home of the antichrist', which translated into 'those apartments behind the Pizza Hut'. Kurogane set out with one thing and one thing only in mind: to get this over with as quickly as possible.
And to never do phone duty again, but considering how unreasonable both he and Princess Tomoyo were, that probably wasn't going to happen.
The apartment number was four and Kurogane found it rather easily. It was an unimpressive place that seemed to have been painted white once upon a time before neglect and dust faded it to gray. All the grass around it was dead and there was a bowl of catfood on that pseudo-porch used to pretend the building had some class. The stairs creaked, and managed to sound like they too were crying. Crying. Yeah, Kurogane wasn't a big fan of tears. He figured he'd rather have his fingernails pulled out than watch someone bawling their eyes out. He couldn't even watch the stuff on TV, where he knew it was entirely fake.
Kurogane rang a very grating doorbell, and gulped, begging whatever God took interest that the man wouldn't be crying anymore, because Kurogane hated, even more than cookie pizza, crying people.
The door swung open and Kurogane immediately thrust out the pizza box like it might shield him from the horrible force of people with tears in their eyes. When no one took it he peered around the cardboard to see nothing but pitch black in the apartment beyond the door, like some sort of yawning abyss into hell. He stared forward with grotesque fascination, wondering if it was an apartment that tricked people into coming so it could eat them, before fuzzy gray shadows moved within and he saw the distinct shape of something human approaching and leafing through its wallet. Kurogane stared with wary suspicion until the person had moved close enough to the door for him to ascertain that this man was not, in fact, crying.
Thank you, God!
It was, however, Kurogane noted upon further inspection, just the sort of person you expected to burst into tears at any point in time. Or, you know, crumble into dust. It was more than looking tired or thin or whatever; this guy seemed to have been drained of all energy, all color, all life. It was hard to tell in the shadows that the fading day cast, but the guy was as pale as a ghost. His hair was as white and lifeless as an old man's, he was dressed in what appeared to be a large gray curtain, and his eyes were sunken, dull, and bloodshot. Kurogane found himself somewhat amazed that this guy had found the strength to cry or… or stand, or breathe.
Kurogane stared at this man for quite a while longer than social constraints generally allowed, and the man just stood there, clutching his wallet and looking lost. Finally Kurogane figured he needed some sort of prompt to take the pizza and let Kurogane get back to work, so he asked gruffly, "You the guy that called?"
"Oh," said the man, seeming to wake up a little bit, voice just as breathless and hoarse as it had been over the phone. "Yeah. You're the one who answered…"
Suddenly, looking at this pathetic excuse for a human being, Kurogane felt inexplicably guilty. "Sorry," he said again, barely choking on the word at all. "Not so good at…" Talking? Comforting? Answering the phone? "…People."
The sunken gray eyes blinked at him, and then the ghost made a face almost—almost—like a smile. It stepped aside to give Kurogane a better view of the pitch black house. "Please, come in."
Kurogane's mouth opened at once to say that no he couldn't; he was on the job, he couldn't leave Ginryu on the street, he was too old to think that going into strangers' houses was a good idea, and then he wondered where exactly that guilt had gotten too and—oh look! There it was.
Kurogane shifted uncomfortably, sighed, and then stepped inside, still holding the pizza box like a complete idiot. He nearly punched the guy when he felt too very cold hands take his arm and start pulling him through the darkness. The fact that he was holding the pizza box helped, as did the fact that if he killed the person leading him, he might never find his way out again. He somehow managed not to crash into any walls or trip over any of the miscellaneous items on the floor. Some of them felt suspiciously soft. He wondered if this was anything like Princess Tomoyo's office; strewn with the bodies of her unsuspecting victims.
He was suddenly far less agreeable to being inside this house and was about to do something stupid and thus far unknown before the hands abruptly released him and in mere moments, there was light.
The first thing he noticed was that there weren't any corpses lying around, just clothes and fast food containers and the like.
The second thing he noticed was that this place was a dump.
And then he realized that the light wasn't coming from a lamp or an overhead light like a normal light would, but from a candle held in his pale host's hand.
This was beginning to get creepy.
"No electricity," the man explained, which made Kurogane feel better, but not by much. He remembered the pizza box and shoved it at the man.
"Great," Kurogane said in monotone. "Here."
The man stepped around the pizza box, which proved he knew it was there, but otherwise gave no sign of being aware of its existence. He moved towards a dump-like area that involved more metallic objects than the one Kurogane was standing in—Kurogane supposed he was probably standing in some kind of sitting room and the other room was maybe a kitchenette—and began to inspect things within. "I wanted to apologize," the ghost muttered. "For all of…" His voice trembled and Kurogane got the urge to run. He held it back, just barely. "…That. I've got… tea… somewhere…"
"It's fine," Kurogane declared, and shook the pizza box again. Why, why did cookie pizza attract these people? It just wasn't right! Like Kurogane was actually going to put anything that he gave him into his mouth! "Here. Take it."
"I'll make tea," the man said obliviously, and Kurogane ground his teeth.
"I don't want any tea!" He shouted, stomping over to press the box directly into the guy's hands. "Here! TAKE the box!" The guy pulled back, murmuring something Kurogane didn't care about, but Kurogane was determined that he take the box so Kurogane could leave. He followed the ghost, trying to imbed it in his palms, if necessary. Between the two of them something was bound to go wrong, and fate did not disappoint. The pizza box tumbled out of their hands and into a tower of cooking implements that came crashing down as one spectacular domino effect avalanche, skittering all over the floor around the pale guy, somehow not knocking him over (a real accomplishment as he looked like a good gust of wind would knock him over) and ultimately, creating a mess to end all messes. Kurogane stared at it, impressed and revolted at once, and the pale man did likewise before he just folded in on himself, hands covering his face, and gasped into them, "shit!"
And he was unmistakably crying again.
Kurogane closed his eyes for a moment, counting to ten to keep himself from shouting, running, or trying to commit ritual suicide, and when he opened his eyes again the man was crouched in the mess and reaching with the shakiest hands Kurogane had ever seen, bar none, for one of the largest knives he'd ever seen. Second largest, actually. He remembered the first quite well.
"Don't touch that!" He growled, and stormed over to yank the man up by the wrist (he really did weigh nothing), sending waves of the mess clattering this way and that, and shoved him out of the kitchen area. "Get out," he said unnecessarily, glaring for extra emphasis. "I'll clean it up."
The man who had been only a few moments ago trying to force feed Kurogane tea of unknown origins now looked aghast at the thought of a stranger cleaning up the mess said stranger had just made. It made his eyes look huge, sparkling in the candlelight until Kurogane had to look away, sick with the reminder that there was someone crying in front of him. "N-no, I can't let you—" He protested, voice hitching, and Kurogane, in the height of maturity, threw a spoon at him.
At least it missed.
"I'm cleaning it!" He shouted in a tone that allowed for no arguments. "It's a mess in the living room too! Go clean up in there if you want something to do!" The pale man stared back at him dumbly, tears sliding down his cheeks until Kurogane rounded on him with a roar of "GO!" and he picked himself up and stumbled into the living room, presumably to tidy up. Kurogane meanwhile stomped around in the kitchen, shoving pots and pans into one pile and eating utensils into another. There was also plenty of disposable crap, but the trashcan was full and overflowing, so Kurogane made a pile for the trash too and figured that if his bizarre, cookie pizza-eating customer didn't like it, he could damn well do it himself (never mind that Kurogane wouldn't let him). Knives got a separate pile as well, and Kurogane felt like putting a sign over it that said 'do not touch until mentally stable' to inform the pale guy that he was never to touch the knives again for as long as he lived, but he didn't know where to find anything like that and settled for finishing his task by scrubbing his hands off in the sink and walking back into the living room with the pizza box in hand to find the guy sitting quietly on the sofa. The room didn't seem any cleaner than before, but who was Kurogane to judge the paying customer? No one, that's who. Princess Tomoyo had made that very clear. With the actual largest knife that Kurogane had ever seen.
"Now," Kurogane said firmly, stopping in front of the pale guy. The guy didn't look up, which was fine with Kurogane, who was feeling more than a little annoyed after having to clean up a kitchen which had probably been developing rare plagues in its morass that Kurogane just caught because he had to be a nice guy and general idiot. "You are going to take your frickin' pizza." The guy didn't move. Kurogane's temper rose. "Take it!"
He took the pizza.
Feeling a little more calm, Kurogane crossed his now unburdened arms. "Then you're going to pay for the pizza." That got him a nod. The pale guy didn't seem to have his wallet anymore. No matter; he'd find it even if Kurogane had to beat it out of him. "Then you're going to take me back to the front door and never call again. OK?"
In the tiniest, most pitiful voice Kurogane had ever heard in his life; "…OK…"
He glared at the tiny, still figure on the sofa, watching its shoulders tremble and the guilt was back full force, forcing him to sink onto the filthy floor, his own face in his hands, groaning, "Please stop crying!"
"I can't," the pale guy wailed, hiding his head behind the pizza box. "I'm sorry b-but I… can't! I'm so… so… sorry!"
"Well," Kurogane said helplessly, looking around the room for any sort of inspiration at all. Fat lot of good that did. This room made him want to cry a little bit too. The sounds coming out of the person on the sofa weren't helping. It was like getting punched in the gut and not being able to do anything about it—and there was nothing Kurogane hated more than this. He stared at the floor just so he didn't have to look at the person in front of him, and finally asked, thoroughly defeated, "What? Your girlfriend leave you or something?" When the man didn't answer he looked up and found him shaking his head, wet cheeks catching the light. Kurogane gritted his teeth, stomach starting to churn. "Then—you got sacked." Not a bad guess, considering the looks of this place, but the man shook his head again. Frustrated, Kurogane's hands made fists. "What happened? Take the wrong pills? Someone step on your foot? D'your cat die?" At this the man broke into a paroxysm of sobs so loud that Kurogane was sure he'd gotten it right and rolled his eyes. A cat. A telephonic breakdown to random pizza guys—over a cat. Seriously. Professional help—and not just the cleaning service—had just become necessary.
"No," the man sobbed into the air between them, and Kurogane's internal rant over the human race's stupidity took pause. "My brother." The pause lengthened into disbelieving silence. "My twin b-brother, my—" As Kurogane stared up, horrified for once not by the crying but by the reason for it, the pale man blubbered, "—He's dead…!"
And Kurogane was officially lost at sea.
He was an only child…
…He'd never lost a family member he actually cared about…
…And still had no idea how to deal with someone who was crying.
And boy, was this guy crying. He looked like he was going to shake himself apart if he cried any harder and just flutter to the floor as little strips of gray paper. He looked like he was dying. Kurogane wondered, throat dry, if maybe he was.
"There was an accident," the man ground out, painstakingly, around his tears. "I… I don't even know—" He broke off again, doubling over, pizza box discarded somewhere on the sofa. "How… or, or why…" Kurogane, who currently felt sick not only to his stomach, but to the bottoms of his toes, covered his eyes so he didn't have to see the way it looked, but the voice was more than enough, and he still wanted to curl up and die himself. "He h-had a daughter. She's… she's all alone now!" Kurogane's eyes snapped back open at that and he looked up to the pale man looking back at him, eyes wide as if all the crying was scaring him too. "…So am I…"
For a moment Kurogane didn't trust himself to speak and after that moment was past he still didn't really trust himself, but he spoke anyway. "How did you find out?"
The man shrugged, somehow smiling as he sobbed his eyes out, and Kurogane didn't think he wanted to know why. "Just… a neighbor. She called." He looked away now, smile vanishing. "I hung up."
Kurogane's eyes narrowed further. "Where's the kid?" He demanded, and the man shrugged, too wrapped up in his own self-pity to realize that Kurogane was about to punch him into the next world. Kurogane would have done it too, but the man was coming out of it now, looking dazed.
"She…" He said, and now looked worried, and Kurogane wanted to punch him even more for that, because he was willing to bet that this selfish guy hadn't even thought about the kid until now. He looked over at Kurogane, not really seeing the black look he was getting. "I don't know… Must be—" And then he seemed to forget again, because he was crying once more, rocking in the sofa. "Why did th-this happen…?"
"Hey!" Kurogane snapped, on his feet now, and the man's eyes followed the movement. "Is she with relatives? On the street? What?" The man didn't answer, just wept and shook his head, and Kurogane shouted, probably loud enough to be heard in space, "ANSWER ME!"
"I can't," the man pleaded, and Kurogane knew that look really well; he was pleading for this to be a dream and for him to wake up soon and not have to grow up and deal with this. Kurogane hated that look, and he stepped forward, shoving the pale man back against the sofa, hard, until he felt the upholstery start to tip against his weight. The man just let it happen, shuddering uncontrollably and whispering. "I just c-can't… I don't know what to do…" He stared into Kurogane's eyes when he said that; "I don't know what to do." His eyes seemed to get caught there and Kurogane held them, ignoring the tears.
"I don't know what I should do," the man repeated, and his hands rose, gripping Kurogane tightly, willing to hold onto anything when the world was coming down around him.
"The hell you don't!" Kurogane snapped between them. "You know exactly what to do." When the man started to shake his head no, Kurogane shook him back, tipping the sofa even further, until he stopped, staring into Kurogane's face in despair. "Then I'll tell you what you're going to do," Kurogane growled, fingers digging into this man's bony shoulders. "You're going to shut the fuck up and stop crying. You're going to get cleaned up, get in your car or rent one or BIKE THERE, but you're going to get to where that kid is because she needs someone, and you're going to have to do!"
"I can't," protested the man, unheeding to the fact that Kurogane was about to claw his arms off. "Can't help her. Can't help anyone—I can't even order a pizza without Yuui!" He was shaking his head again, ignoring Kurogane's deepening glare. "I can't do anything without him. Can't. Won't. Just—" The man tried to lower his head down so that he wasn't looking at Kurogane and Kurogane jerked it back up, only to find the eyes avoiding his. And then the man said something that truly, truly made Kurogane see red. "I just want to be with Yuui."
And then he was still again, except for the tears still coursing down his cheeks. The muscles in his shoulders unwound, his head fell back against the cushion, and his hands slipped off of Kurogane's forearms, hitting the sofa in silence. He went slack like that was it, like he could just die at will because his life was hard, and leave an innocent kid to fend for herself while he rotted in this goddamn place and didn't even pay for the fucking pizza. This kind of crap happened every single day all over the world, and Kurogane never had to be a part of it, but this guy had started crying at him, had invited him into his home—Kurogane wasn't sure if he was madder at the person who was letting all of this happen or at himself for getting involved. But this guy was NOT allowed to cop out like this. Not when he'd dragged Kurogane into the proceedings.
No.
Kurogane shoved with all of his might, and the resulting crash shook the floor two apartments over. The contents—previous contents—of the sofa, including the unfortunate pizza box, scattered into the air. This time Kurogane ignored the mess, clambering on top of the upended sofa and on top of the man it had taken with it, whose eyes had widened to impossibility, it seemed, and was completely startled out of his tears. By some miracle the candle hadn't gone out, so Kurogane could see this. Kurogane ignored it, seizing the pale man by the collar of his—oh, it was a bathrobe—and dragging him forward to look at him in the eyes even if he was strewn over the floor with a one hundred and fifty-pound man all but sitting on him. The guy looked truly scared.
Good.
"Listen up, you bastard," Kurogane said in a tone that menacing didn't begin to cover. He figured the closest example of how his voice sounded was probably how Princess Tomoyo's soul actually looked, and didn't care what sort of parallels that drew. For all intents and purposes, and for the words he intended to use, this was his voice. "While someone in this world still needs you, you are not allowed to run away like this. You aren't free to do whatever you want because that kid—your brother left her to you. If he died, he died knowing that his brother would be there for her, and if you love him so much, you won't let him down like this." To encompass 'this', Kurogane just waved a disdainful hand around the room before winding it up in the man's robe again. "I don't know how you're going to do it and I don't care, but you're going to go see that kid and you're going to take care of her because she's family and she's not all alone in this world. Because she has you…" The man's eyes overflowed with tears again, but they stayed focused somehow, and locked unwaveringly on Kurogane's. "…No matter how pathetic that is in the end."
With that final blow Kurogane released him and climbed off, stepping apart from the overturned sofa and its unseated occupant. He went to the candle, staring into it pensively, walling himself in as tightly as he could without touching anything. He couldn't believe all the stuff he'd just said. Princess Tomoyo would kill him if she knew. Everyone else he knew would probably just stare and then write it off as an alien possession because there was no way Kurogane was emotionally invested enough in anything but Ginryu to chew out a stranger during a pizza delivery without killing anything. Hell, there was no way Kurogane was emotionally invested enough in anything to even be ten feet near crying. And the worst part was that even now that he'd gotten a hold of himself and was no longer flying off the handle and ranting about everything from cookie pizza to wire hangers, he was still deeply, deeply pissed off.
Which explained why, when he felt the pale man touch his shoulder, perhaps to apologize, or perhaps to order him out, he spun around and clocked the guy in the face.
Oh, when this got reported, he was so very much a dead man.
And all his friends and family too.
And Ginryu—no, he'd make sure Ginryu was well-hidden.
The guy was staring at him, having fallen to the floor out of shock or something more likely to get Kurogane imprisoned on assault charges, and Kurogane figured there had to be some sort of explanation now, however much he felt like getting punched in the face ought to communicate. He crouched down in front of the guy, and tapped a finger hard against the already swelling cheek, feeling the pale guy wince away from it with an expression that seemed to ask why had he been sent what was probably the only abusive pizza delivery guy on the planet. "Hurts, right?" Kurogane asked without sympathy, withdrawing his hand. "That means you're alive. He's dead…" Another flinch, this time having nothing to do with his cheek. Kurogane's sympathy for that had long since faded, though. "And you're still alive. You can mourn somebody and live at the same time. And you can… Well."
He sighed, standing up again and pulling the pale, shell-shocked man to his feet. It took a few moments for him to get the hang of standing, but ultimately he seemed to remember how to do it, so Kurogane figured that the damage couldn't be too bad. "…You can mourn with somebody else, too." Kurogane finished awkwardly, and then all but dove for the candle. He wanted to be out of here so very much. He was fully willing to spend the next ten minutes invading this guy's privacy in search of a door, but instead the guy plucked the candle out of his grasp and made an ambiguous gesture that could be taken to mean either 'follow me' or 'fuck you' and which Kurogane chose to take as the one more advantageous for him. That fortuitous assumption was proven correct. The pale man opened the door for him too, and Kurogane stepped out, grateful to be out of the grimy house and away from its weeping, whining inhabitant, and not even thinking about pizza in any way, shape, or form until the pale man spoke up again, voice cutting through the night in an oddly sharp tone.
"How much do I owe you?"
The way he said it made Kurogane figure that he'd made the guy mad at him and turn around to give him a good opportunity to whack him one—it was only fair, and besides, after he did everything Kurogane had done would all be self-defense—but the man standing in the shadows of his home (from what Kurogane could see, anyway—what was this guy, a vampire?) didn't look angry. He'd somehow gotten his wallet again and he was leaning in the doorjamb with an arm wrapped around his waist, looking more like a mafia hit man than the crybaby Kurogane had just been dealing with. He also didn't start any fistfights with Kurogane, which was a shame, but at least he'd reminded him of the only thing that would keep Princess Tomoyo off his back; cash.
"Eleven twenty," Kurogane responded automatically, and didn't add, 'plus the past'—watch check—'twenty minutes of my life', because he wasn't petty. The pale man looked pretty incredulous already, and Kurogane shrugged, and threw company policy out the window to continue being brutally honest. "We scalp. Consistently. Don't ever eat with us again." The pale man shook his head—to which statement Kurogane didn't know—and rummaged around in his wallet. After about fifty seconds of watching the man scrape around in his wallet, Kurogane figured he probably couldn't afford it. The apartment was a wreck already (he briefly considered ordering the pale man to get a better job and rent a new place in preparation for the kid, but decided against it, having filled his quota of 'being a bossy asshole' for the day) and that wallet certainly didn't look packed. Kurogane would have probably spotted the money to Princess Tomoyo himself, to avoid certain death, but the man stepped out onto the porch, with the money miraculously in hand.
It was late enough that the streetlights had been switched on, and under a real light source, the pale man was probably the most beautiful person Kurogane had ever seen. Stringy hair turned silky, sunken eyes became huge and angelic, ashen skin turned porcelain. To top it all off he was platinum blonde, blue-eyed, slender beneath the bathrobe, stood tall and proud—the whole shebang. He didn't look like he'd stepped out of a magazine. He looked like he was what every magazine wanted but couldn't have because that sort of thing didn't really exist. It was all sort of stunning and it made Kurogane glare even harder before he averted his eyes to something less mind-boggling, which happened to be the guy's wallet.
"Thanks," the man said in his newly piercing tone of voice, a vast improvement on his old one. He was apparently completely ignoring the accepted rules of customer-employee relations, in which the employee said thank you, not the customer. Oh well. It wasn't like those hadn't been well and truly fucked up already. Kurogane screwed them up further by pretending he hadn't heard a word that the blonde guy had spoken, hopping on the Eighth Wonder of the World that was Ginryu and driving away without a backward glance. Or nearly. He had to go back for the money he'd left in the guy's hand. The guy was gone, but he'd left the money on the porch. Kurogane thought this was the best possible situation, and headed back to the Palazzo.
He was surprised at how normal life was when he got back. He'd expected people to leap out at him and mock him for any number of things that had just transpired, or for his heart to finally give out from shock, or for random blonde guys to come leaping out of the dark to murder him or return his punch. None of that happened. Ginryu was still the love of his life. Work was still filled with squalling children and whiny adults and boring phone duty. At least Syaoran was cleaning up, so Kurogane had someone to talk to.
"Did you get lost?" Syaoran asked, plainly thinking that bad directions were the reason for Kurogane's absence.
How the kid had missed that level of psycho over the phone was beyond Kurogane.
Ah, normalcy, Kurogane thought, sitting down glumly by the phone to wait for the next batch of fun times to start. He heard himself say, without really having any part in the lie's conception, "Traffic was a bitch."
He'd seen that guy's driver's license, he thought distantly, before subsiding into dreams of Ginryu's engine. His name had been Fai.