The Pizza Man Cometh
---------------------------------------------------------------
Summary: He was a man who needed a woman. She was a woman who needed a man. Together, they found each other. And a pizza. Drake x Wendy silly!fluff, somewhat AU, set slightly post-OAV.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Disclaimer: I don't own them. And boy, are they glad.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Wendy stared, awestruck, at the sight before her. Surely, this was the most sublimely beautiful sight that anyone had ever seen, and the blessing of being in its presence would follow her all of her days.
Or at least, until tomorrow.
Yes, the tiny digital clock in the bottom right-hand corner of her computer screen finally informed her that it was time to depart from the workplace and resume her life outside of work, and very little, mostly involving massive lottery winnings and barns full of fuzzy wild kittens, could have made her happier.
It was not that Wendy disliked her job; quite the contrary. Most of the time, she was so very fond of her job that her friends and family were beginning to worry, and rumours were beginning to circulate as to why she was so fond of her job.
When the first of these had come back to her, she had assumed an expression something like a very small and helpless bunny facing down a nuclear bomb, saucer-eyes darting around to make sure that a certain someone wasn't close enough to hear these utterings and judge them to be true and her to be too silly to be worth his bother.
It had been quite a relief to find out that the rumours were along the lines of her fancying Joker. What a ridiculous idea! She hadn't thought about him that way in at least five months! Honestly, if people wanted to gossip, the least they could do was try to keep up.
No, it was not Wendy's deep and abiding hatred for her work as Mr. Joker's personal assistant that led to her gazing with rapt, shining eyes at the clock reading six in the evening, but rather, her deep and abiding hatred for waiting when she was looking particularly forward to something.
For the first time in ages, she was actually going to have real, live company! Company that would be happy drinking beer, eliminating the necessity of acquiring and choking down a bottle of wine rather than feel crude and unfeminine all alone!
Company with a lovely growly-sounding laugh, that looked really, really good in a tight tee-shirt.
With one more loving look at the clock, Wendy flipped off her computer, donned her coat, and retrieved her purse.
"Ack!" she noted curiously when, upon straightening up, she found a boss in her work station where there had previously been no one. "Oh! Mr. Joker!"
Responding in kind to her warm smile, he produced, from seemingly out of nowhere, a reasonably massive file folder containing a hodge-podge of scribbled notes.
"Wendy, do you think you could take care of a little something for me before you leave tonight?"
A little something. The last little something he'd thrown at her in the last moments of the workday had involved two hours of digging through ten years of medical files, and another hour of assembling them into some sort of useful order.
Suppressing a whimper, and trying to plaster on a smile that didn't look as though she was currently giving birth to a flaming thistle patch, she nodded.
"Of course, Sir."
--------------------------------------------------------------
Within a small, shabbily furnished hotel room, a cell phone beeped frantically on the dresser. Seconds later, a series of curses issued forth from the bathroom, in time with a billowing cloud of steam. Still damp and wrapped in a towel, Drake lunged for the offending noisy object.
"Drake Anderson," he announced grumpily to this mysterious intruder upon his shower time.
"Drake, we're going to have to change our plans a bit for tonight."
His first thought, vaguely amused, was that he was starting to rub off on his new pal, if she'd reached the point of doing away with all pleasantries in favour of leaping right into the conversation. His second thought, vaguely annoyed, was that she had a hell of a nerve, assuming that she was the only young woman that he received social phone calls from while in the city. Finally, his third thought, mournfully resigned, was that she was entirely right in this assumption.
Not that he particularly wanted more big-eyed little blonde scraps following him around and talking his ear off about anything and everything. One was exhausting enough. He was pretty sure that a guy wasn't supposed to leave two weeks of hospital time feeling more drained than he had come in. Once she'd seen for herself that he was all right, bursting into the room with wide, frightened eyes and unaccustomed pallor, she'd cheerfully announced it her sworn duty to keep him cheered up until he'd recovered.
Fair enough. He was in dire need of a little cheering by that point – with a medical bill that had eaten up at least half of the paycheck he hadn't even seen yet, and the babysitting agency fees laying claim to another third – and she had a sixth sense for picking out good magazines. Must have been a side effect of working in a library. But the talking. Dear God, the talking. Half the time, he'd just filtered it out, letting her cheerful bursts of chatter provide some nice background noise while he flipped through his magazines.
One thing that he had paid very close attention to, however, was when, nearing the end of his hospital visit, she'd cheerfully informed him that they would be having one of their traditional Pizza-and-Beer Nights on his last night in the city.
Pizza and beer were nothing to scoff at under any circumstances, but especially when the realization hit him that he was starting to miss her incessant rambling when it wasn't there.
However, it seemed that something of a crimp had been thrown into the plan.
"Why, what's up?" he asked.
She made a nervous little noise.
"Well, Mr. Joker needs me to finish up a few things, so I won't be home until a little later, and I'm passing right by the liquor store on the way, so I can get the beer, but if we phone in the order ahead of time, could you bring over the pizza?"
He caught his own horrified eye in the dresser mirror.
"What? Why do I have to do it?"
Floored by this unexpectedly rude response, Wendy floundered briefly for a reply.
"I just thought it might save a little time. There aren't any pizza places on my way home, and you said there was one right by your hotel."
"Yeah, there is, but--"
"If we wait to order the pizza until I get home and call you, we'll either have to go out again or wait for another hour to have it delivered!"
"Yeah, I guess, but--"
"Bloody hell, Drake, I'm hungry!" she wailed.
Wincing, he moved the phone quickly away from his ear.
"Look, Wendy, I know it's been a long day, but I can't show up at your apartment with a pizza!"
A long, bewildered pause, during which he could nearly hear her confused expression.
"Em...why not?" she finally asked.
He made a noise of disbelief.
"Why—are you serious?! Come on, Wendy, haven't you ever seen a porno?"
Another long, even more bewildered pause.
"Did—did you just ask me if I've ever watched porn?"
"Right, okay, dumb question," he conceded, dropping to the bed and giving up on the idea of finishing his shower in peace, since women couldn't be trusted to know simple things like this. "It's a classic set-up. The pizza guy shows up with the pizza, some woman answers the door in a sexy nightgown, and...you know."
"Not really," she admitted apologetically.
"He...y'know, whips it out."
"Em...he whipswhat out?"
"His...uh, sausage."
"Oh." A brief pause. "Oh."
"Yeah," he agreed emphatically.
She made an impatient noise.
"Drake, you're being silly. Just because some movie was fixated on sausages—"
"I'm not being silly!" he insisted. "Messing with a classic like that? Who knows what might happen?"
"I know what might happen," she replied pettishly. "We might actually get to have dinner before ten tonight. Listen, if you're really that worried, we can have something else instead of pizza. Has anyone ever made an adult film about a fellow bringing over falafels?"
"Ha-ha, smartass," he grumbled. Then, reulctantly, "Okay, Wendy, if you really want to risk it, I'll bring over the pizza."
"Thank-you," she said with a painstaking dignity that made him grin. "I'll phone you when I'm on my way home, then?"
"Yeah, sure. Talk to you later."
And with that, he hung up and, with a quick prayer of thanksgiving that the hotel managers were taking care of the water bill instead of him, ducked into the bathroom to turn off the shower.
Meanwhile, in a cubicle halfway across town, a little blonde made a mental note to hunt up that gift from Mum last Christmas.
--------------------------------------------------
And so it was that Drake Anderson arrived at the apartment of one Miss Wendy Earhart, bearing a large, steaming pepperoni pizza.
And thus did it follow that the aforementioned meal of junk food slipped, utterly unheeded, from his grip when a strange, enticing apparition, resembling his hostess wrapped in a few strategically placed shreds of lace, answered the door. Her sheepish, hopeful little grin was entirely out of keeping with her fashion choice, but had little negative effect on the dazed impromptu pizza guy's assessment of the situation, serving, if anything, to nudge his evaluation in the other direction.
Particularly when she asked, blushing furiously and attempting in vain to sound sultry rather than embarrassed and giggly, if she could have a taste of his sausage.
In one movement, two figures disappeared hastily into the apartment, leaving behind them an upended pizza box.
----------------------------------------------------------
End Notes: Nope, there's really nothing to say this time. Except, aren't you glad it didn't turn graphic? XD