"I'm—I'm a sandwich."
Hunk puts his hands on Keith's shoulders, or tries. It's hard through the layers of painted foam and velour. The costume is a little stained, a little sun bleached, and smells vaguely of every person who's ever been forced to go through the same trial Keith is now facing.
"Don't say that man. You're more than that."
Keith tries to give him his best deadpan stare, raising his arms to the side to say, I am. I am a sandwich. I'm literally a sandwich.
But Hunk shakes his head. "No. It's what's in here that counts." He presses the palm of his hand to Keith's chest—to the middle of the sesame bun painted foam covering his chest.
"Tomato?" Keith asks. "Cheese?"
"I mean ideally, some lettuce and meat, but— No. No, what? Your heart. He's not going to judge you for being a part-time sandwich—"
Keith raises an eyebrow.
"—ok, well, if he does, that's on him," Hunk concedes. There are fundamental truths in the universe like gravity and time and the fact that men who wear Armani don't look at—let alone date—sandwich boys. No matter what else Keith is, he works part-time dressed in a sandwich costume, foisting unwanted flyers on unsuspecting passersby.
There's no coming back from that.
Keith remembers the morning it started, because it was beautiful.
It was spring, and the weather was nice—one of those post-storm sunrises with puddles still glittering on the sidewalk, buds starting to open on the ornamental cherries someone thought would look good lining the streets. He took the job because he wasn't doing anything else from nine to twelve and the gig was near his regular work. Why not make some extra money?
It was Keith's third day. The man walked by at 9:10am, coffee in hand, wearing a suit Keith later identifies as Canali after several embarrassing evenings spent poring over men's clothing magazines in his boxers and t-shirt, trying to convince himself it was a natural amount of curiosity and not anything deeper.
He walks by with the grace and presence of someone who knows their own body and worth, and then when he's within a few feet, he glances at Keith and smiles . And not the awkward don't-look-directly-at-the-sandwich-boy look Keith is getting used to. It's warm—a little amused, but like Keith is in on the joke, and bam. He doesn't know it for a week, but that's the moment Keith's life ends.
The man is beautiful, and that might be excusable if he wasn't also the kindest man alive.
Two weeks in, Keith sees him stop to help a woman who dropped a stack of papers. It takes minutes, and Keith spends every moment of it watching the man bend and grab papers—and he's not the only one. Keith shoots a glare at the papers' owner. She could at least help instead of ogling him. Keith would, but the sandwich isn't made for flexibility and if he breaks it he buys it. When the stack is collected, the man brushes the dirt off the papers on his own pants and hands them to the woman with a little bow and an apology, as if he had a thing to do with it.
That's the start. It turns out to be a theme.
Three days later a man runs into him with a coffee. "Oh," Suit man laughs, "I needed to get it dry-cleaned anyway." He waves a hand and right there—right there on the sidewalk—unbuttons the suit jacket, pulls it off, and flips it over one shoulder to carry like he's on the runway.
A week after that he rescues a child's toy from the street. He puts out a hand to stop traffic first, and Keith is seconds from leaping in there to grab him, sandwich be damned, but the cars part for him like the sea parting for a patron god.
No one honks.
He gives a homeless man his coffee unprompted, and what looks like a twenty, with a quiet apology he doesn't carry more cash. He stops to pet dogs and smile at strangers and once, once he stops right next to Keith to watch the sky.
"Nice day," the man says.
For a second Keith thinks he's talking to someone else, but they're in the post-morning rush lull and the sidewalk is quiet.
"Yeah," Keith says, trying to inject some joy in it rather than the near-fatal shock that's coursing through his veins. At least he's not blushing—but only because he's too scared. The bloodless terror that he'll mess up wars with the instinctive need to go as red as the tomato he can see at the corner of his eye, and Keith hopes it cancels out to an almost-normal skin color.
You're a sandwich, his logic brain reminds him delicately.
"Yeah," the man agrees, nodding. "It is nice."
He turns to Keith, smiling a little too brightly. There's some color in his cheeks—it's a cool morning—and Keith had been distantly hoping the man would be ugly up close. He's not. The scar across his face, the white in his hair—it's all perfection.
Later Keith will recognize that as the moment his situation slipped from mildly embarrassing to life-ruining.
The man holds out his hand. "I'm Shiro," he offers and smiles.
Keith makes himself take his hand, basic muscle memory taking over where the rest of his brain has seized up in complete panic mode, and god, he's warm even through the fingerless gloves. "Keith," he manages, and then to his everlasting regret, his muscle memory chooses that moment to fail him.
"Would you like a flyer...?"
Hunk knows about Shiro because Hunk works at Kolivan's along with Keith, and he's the only one there doesn't think his part-time gig as a sandwich isn't the funniest thing to ever happen to the garage. Antok snaps a picture of Keith on his first day and prints it out to hang on the fridge in the lounge. Look, it's my wallpaper , he tells Keith later, showing him his lock screen. (As far as Keith knows, he hasn't changed it.)
Kolivan is kinder about it. He pulls Keith aside to ask if he needs more hours, but Keith doesn't know how to tell him that he's only doing it for his daily thirty-second fix of Suit Man.
Shiro. His name is Shiro.
Hunk is the only one Keith trusts with that. Hunk is understanding.
"I mean, you could see him in other ways. You could… not wear the sandwich and still be out there. It's a public sidewalk," he says from under the car they're working on, a month in. "How did you get his name again?"
Keith wipes his forehead, trying to physically wipe the memory out of his failure out of his mind. "He wanted a flyer."
"He told you his name because he wanted flyer?" Hunk rolls out from under the car to give Keith a dubious look.
There's no answer the rest of the garage won't mock, and Keith doesn't miss the way they've all gone quiet. He's not giving them more ammo.
Hunk glances around, realizing. His voice drops. "Look… What do you have to lose?"
Keith can't explain that he's fine with the current situation. He wants to watch this man walk by in the morning, to know there's one perfect person out there in the world, and that he deigns to let Keith look upon his majesty. Since their introduction, Shiro's added a little wave to his morning smile. Sometimes he says Keith's name, softly.
Have a good day, Keith. Nice weather, Keith. Don't work too hard, Keith.
It can't get better, and it can't get worse.
It gets worse.
The job was only supposed to go for two weeks, a month tops, but when the shop offers to keep him on through summer, Keith can't think of a compelling reason to say no. None more compelling than Shiro's smile. The downside is that it gets hot. The ornamental cherries aren't so nice in summer; there's a halo of smashed fruit cooked onto the sidewalk around each one. Keith gets used to avoiding stepping on them and ignoring the faint, omnipresent smell. It's thankless work, but he's good at compartmentalizing and he has high motivations.
And then, on an unassuming Tuesday in mid-June, Shiro walks by—and he's not alone.
The woman with him is the second most beautiful person Keith has ever seen. Her blonde hair is almost platinum white, half done up in braids, half stretching down her back in waves. The two of them together are lethal, illegal—traffic is visibly slowing to watch them go by and Keith can't even pretend not to stare.
Past the shock rolling through him, past the crushing disappointment, it makes sense. Of course, Shiro would have someone, and—well. Keith is a sandwich.
As they walk by, Shiro does his usual wave and smile. The woman glances at Keith and does a quick double-take, eyes skating up and down Keith's body—and then they're past him and off down the street.
Keith sees her lean in, put a delicate hand on Shiro's shoulder, whispering something in his ear that has Shiro going tense, and then they're obscured by the crowd, and Keith's life is over.
For the next ten minutes he stands there, frozen, the scene replaying in his mind. A girlfriend. Shiro has a girlfriend. He's an idiot.
Keith begs off work early and heads to the shop to take out his anguish on an engine. The rest of the garage seems to get the vibe that he doesn't want to be talked to when he asks for the worst job in the shop and Kolivan points him in the direction of an engine that he shudders and says was "smoking" when they brought it in and lets Keith loose.
The job takes all day, and most of the night, until it's well past close and Hunk is the only one left there—mostly out of sympathy, Keith thinks. "Do you want to talk about it?" he asks in the quiet of the shop.
Keith doesn't insult him by pretending they don't both know what this is about. "No."
Hunk lets it lie, but a half-hour later he comes back from the kitchen with a beer and wet towel and Keith owes him something for that.
"He has a girlfriend." There's no question who he means. The sound Hunk makes is the same one Keith's heart made when he saw the woman on Shiro's arm. Heart, Keith thinks to himself. Don't be dramatic. "They—they weren't kissing. But she was beautiful."
Hunk glances at him and gives him a quick once-over with a little, "Hmm." Keith knows how he looks after a day in the shop: boilersuit half-unbuttoned and tied around his waist, hair back, tank top and skin smeared with engine grease. It's not better than the sandwich by much. Hunk makes the same sound again, more considering.
"I'm going to quit tomorrow," Keith tells him. It's time. He'll get over it, and it may be his worst crush, but it's not his first.
...Ok, it may be his first, also, but he'll get over that, too.
"Maybe I'll stop by and grab lunch for everyone. See you off."
This is Hunk, trying to cheer him up. "I've got discount coupons," Keith tells him, and tries to make it humorous more than defeated.
True to his word, Hunk is there, and he comes armed with a pep talk Keith wants no part of.
"I'm a sandwich," Keith repeats, trying to explain why this isn't going to work. The statement gets him a couple stares, but he's used to it.
"No. You're dressed as a sandwich." Hunk removes his hand from Keith's chest and changes tactics. "I don't know if you realize this, but you've talked about him a lot."
Keith rolls his eyes.
"A lot. Like, a lot . You've talked about him so much. You've talked about him for months." Hunk shakes his head, eyes boring a hole into the middle distance, hands on his head. "Just so much. You've talked about him so m —"
"I get it." Keith's blushing, part embarrassment, part heat. It's already warm out and they're predicting it to be a record day. He already handed in his resignation—or, mentioned it in passing at the sandwich shop as he walked out, which is really all they needed. He'll be out before it hits the hundreds and then he can move on with his life and forget he ever spent two months cosplaying lunch food so he could lay eyes upon the most beautiful man alive.
Hunk takes a deep breath. "Ok. Look. I didn't want to do this, but—the guys told me to tell you that you can't come back until you talk to this guy."
Keith rolls his eyes. "Oh, come—"
"No. No , Keith. Tell him." Hunk punctuates it with a glare. He starts walking, backward, maintaining eye-contact with Keith. "Tell him," he repeats, and again: "You better tell him." He's almost to the street. "Keith, tell him. "
Keith doesn't flip him off, but only because it'll reflect badly on the sandwich shop if someone sees.
Tell him. If that's what they want, fine. It'll go exactly how he thinks it will, and he'll be right, and that's it. He settles in to wait it out.
But Shiro doesn't show up at the usual time.
By ten, it's too hot for comfort. By eleven, Keith has sweated through his shirt and is starting to regret not quitting outright. A few people walking by give him concerned looks, but the part of him that's mourning his lost crush and dignity doesn't mind the suffering. Of course, it would be the hottest day of the season. Of course, Shiro has a girlfriend. Of course, he's dressed as a sandwich, standing on a street corner. A sweaty sandwich. That's all he is.
Shiro shows up exactly ten minutes before noon.
Keith knows because there's a clock in the window of the clothing shop across the street and he's whiling away the last few minutes watching time tick down, not sure if he's disappointed or relieved that this is the first day he's missed Shiro. It makes a cosmic sort of sense. He's almost convinced himself of that by the time Shiro appears.
"You're still here."
His voice is wondrous.
He's hard to see in the sun—but everything is hard to see. Peripheral vision isn't stellar in a sandwich outfit in best conditions, but his hair and sweat keep obscuring his eyes. He's a mess. Of course, Shiro would see him, on today of all days.
And Keith realizes, he has no idea how to respond. "Yeah?"
Shiro steps closer, eyes wide. "The shop told me you'd quit. It's so hot, i didn't think you'd be out here, so I went here..." He trails off. It's more than Keith's ever heard him speak at once, and Shiro must realize it too, because he looks a bit chagrined.
Keith shrugs; the sandwich tilts a little with the motion and not much else. "It's not that hot."
It is. It's sweltering. Keith feels—not great. At all.
"It is. It's a hundred and three. Keith, what you doing out here?"
Tell him , Hunk says in his mind. A kind of delirious courage wells up in him. Shiro is the most beautiful man alive, and Keith isn't too proud to admit it. No one would be ashamed to say so—but most people don't dress up as a sandwich to pine their love away, either.
"I quit," Keith tells him, and winces. Shiro already knows that. "I have to tell you something." Keith scuffs his boot on the sidewalk, staring down at the sesame bun covering his legs. "But you have a girlfriend, and I'm a sandwich, and—"
"I don't have a girlfriend." Shiro takes another step toward him, eyes riveted to Keith's face in what's either concern or wonder. "And you're not a sandwich. You're a mechanic at Kolivan's, right?"
Keith nods, not able to connect the dots, feeling a blush rise in his cheeks.
Shiro smiles at him, eyes bright. "I knew it. I used to take my car there."
There's no Earthly reason why Shiro would remember him from there, but it's something. Shiro doesn't have a girlfriend, and he walked here to see Keith, and he knows Keith isn't a full-time sandwich. It's worth a shot.
"I like you," Keith hears himself blurt out. The second it's out his mouth, a weight lifts from his shoulders. For months it's been weighing on him; it almost feels like his body is physically rising. He lays that truth on the ground between them and then raises his hands to the side. I'm just a sandwich, standing in front of a man.
"But… you never talk to me. You—you gave me a flyer when I introduced myself." Shiro has started to color around his ears from the heat "I was going to ask you out, if you want to sometime."
The blush on Keith's face is already permanent. It's never going away. Keith's life is falling apart around him. It's not just his face—his whole body feels hot. He opens his mouth to say something, explain his own stupidity, but words won't come out.
"Keith—" Shiro's voice comes to him down a tunnel, and his hearing blinks out for a moment. "Keith? Can I get you some water?" Shiro glances around, like maybe there will be a child on the corner selling lemonade or some magical water fountain—
Keith is—Keith is not good, he realizes distantly. Shiro steps closer, until he's only a foot away and Keith feels Shiro's leg brush the outer edge of the lettuce on his thigh as he lays a hand against Keith's forehead.
Shiro's eyes are big and kind and Keith wants to touch his eyebrows.
"You—what? Keith? "
That's the last thing he sees: the man's perfect eyebrows, rising in shock, and nothing.
"I've got him. Here—"
Keith feels something cool nudge his lips, and then realizes it's cool water and comes alive. "Slow," the voice chides gently, and the hand he didn't realize was buried in his hair tugs him back. "Just take it easy."
Shiro, he realizes when he blinks the sweat and fatigue out of his eyes. The man looks like an angel, limned in sunlight, dark eyes full of concern and—and Keith is lying on the sidewalk. Beyond Shiro there's a crowd gathered, faces pressing in. At least one person has their phone out, though Keith can't imagine why.
"Should we call an ambulance?" someone asks.
Ambulance.
"What the fuck," Keith says, trying to raise his arms. His shirt is gone, and more pressingly, so is the sandwich. No, not gone—it's in shreds of lettuce and tomato colored foam, he realizes, glancing around him.
Shiro strokes the back of his neck, calming. "Sorry, sorry—I couldn't find the zipper." There's an extra step there between not finding the zipper and cutting the thing apart, but after living in it for a few months, Keith can't really mourn its loss.
"My shirt?" Keith mumbles. He can only process one piece of this at a time and Shiro's hands on his naked skin are at least ten of them.
The guilty look on Shiro's face says it went the same way as the sandwich. Instead of answering, Shiro presses the bottle back to his lips and tilts it again. Keith drinks obediently, trying to clear his mind enough to remember how he ended up there.
When it's empty, Shiro sets the bottle aside and runs his fingers over Keith's face. They're cool by comparison, gentle but firm. "Can you stand? I want to get you out of the sun."
Keith nods, tries, and regrets it when he goes pitching forward, but Shiro steadies him. "What happened?" Keith asks.
"You asked me out and fainted," Shiro tells him, walking Keith to the nearest patch of what passes for shade at midday.
"I asked you out?" That doesn't sound like something Keith could manage to do in a sandwich costume, but his memory is still fuzzy.
"Close enough." Shiro says, kneeling in front of him, brushing the hair back from his forehead.
He lost his suit jacket at some point, and his tie. It shouldn't be possible that he looks more beautiful, but he does.
"Did you say yes?" Keith asks.
Shiro ducks his head, and when he looks up again he's grinning. "Of course I did."
Keith stares at him, trying to make the words click together in his mind. It's like a double positive or something, and Keith suddenly isn't sure that they don't work the same way a double negative does. "Why?"
"Because I like you." Before Keith can argue, Shiro leans forward and brushes a kiss to the corner of his mouth. Keith is totally unprepared for it and wants to object on principle because he looks disgusting and smells disgusting and he's half naked sitting under a cherry tree on the stinking sidewalk, but then Shiro pulls back and he looks exactly how Keith feels: a little scared, but like he wants to pull Keith to the nearest quiet, private place and repeat the move when he has time to follow it through.
That only leaves one question. "But why?"
Shiro hunches over, shoulders shaking a little. "Keith. Keith, you have to know."
He's laughing and it figures that he'd have a bad sense of humor. One flaw Keith can overlook. Keith's head is starting clear up, his memory is starting to come back, and the sound of Shiro's quiet little guffaws is the sweetest thing he's heard in weeks or months—maybe years.
"Keith. You look like a snack."