warnings for: violence (ear, arm), emeto additional tags: food, this is really gross, word count: 924 (aka got out of hand length)
The lighting was harsh and artificial, and it almost reminded Sangaku of someplace unpleasant, except for three things. First, the electric current was slow. Sangaku could tell because their eyes were sensitive enough to pick up on the flicker rate of the lights, barely perceiving a pulse from overhead. Second, there were huge, round flies; not a lot of them, but enough, that one or two was always in Sangaku’s line of vision. In direct sunlight and up close, maybe they could have marveled at a subtle sheen on the fly’s shell, but they were indoors at night and so the bugs were nothing more than fat dots, buzzing in loops around people’s heads, resting briefly on the grubby display case. Sangaku watched the person across from them swat one away from his head. The third thing was that no hospital had ever had the night breeze sweeping in and mixing the smells of traffic exhaust, sweaty bodies, and cheap pizza into a humid soup, barely mitigated by a rickety circle fan.
“Teshima-san. Why did you bring me here.”
“Hm? Oh.” Junta had been preoccupied tugging at the silver stud at his earlobe. It itched and hurt a little when he wiggled it. Junta chalked this up to the ear piercing being a recent acquisition. If he had left it in and waited another few weeks, he would have noticed that it never seemed to heal properly, and that most other people’s ear piercings did not itch and swell and turn red and ooze pus when they were touched. But Junta would never learn that he was actually allergic to the metal in his ear, because later that night, as they tussled in the alley between the pizza shop and the tattoo place next door, Manami would rip the stud out with their teeth and it would get lost in the garbage that by necessity coated all city gutters.
“I felt like pizza, I guess. I have a friend who likes pizza.”
“So why aren’t they here instead.”
“Well they had somewhere else to be, of course,” he responded almost petulantly, and Sangaku dropped it at that. It didn’t matter anyway. The reasons stopped mattering any time Teshima called them out.
He gets up from the table to pick up their slices: plain cheese for Sangaku and mushroom for himself. Sangaku’s face was turned away from the counter, but they could see Teshima’s back in the blackened mirror that made up one entire wall of the store.
Sangaku probably shouldn’t be eating pizza, they think, picking at the rubbery yellow ropes of cheese. None of this belonged in their body. The tomato sauce seemed undercooked and rancid oil dripped off the pizza to soak the paper plate. But Sangaku stopped caring about stuff like that a while ago, because what difference did it make if they were adding garbage to something that was garbage to begin with?
The decision to ingest it comes back to haunt them a couple hours later, along with the rest of the contents of their stomach (brunch was takeout from a comparably low-end store). This is after the usual offhand taunting results in the routine lunge across the table. Teshima comes at them with a flimsy plastic knife this time, almost laughable in how useless it is until the serrations catch the skin on their forearm and rip Sangaku a shallow new scratch, five inches long. Next follows the traditional expulsion from whatever eatery had the misfortune of hosting them on a given night.
Junta muses as the burly cashier tosses him into the street that he’s probably run out of restaurants to downgrade to. With each – definitely not a date – outing, he’s dragged Manami out to a less and less classy establishment, but this was probably rock bottom; you couldn’t really compete with the glamour of dollar-slice pizza served from a hole in the wall. Junta learns the second time he invites Manami back that they weren’t blacklisted from the place because it was hardly the first attempted stabbing that particular joint had seen. Junta makes sure the third time they go back that it’s far from the last attempted stabbing they see. But that first time is the only – outing – where he’s ill-prepared enough to be using a plastic knife.
The knife snaps easily at some point during their scuffle, which continues into the back alley. It’s honestly more dangerous after shattering on the brick into a single sharp plastic spike. Junta digs it into the flesh near Manami’s hip, and it sinks in a satisfying half-inch before falling out and joining the pointed detritus that littered the alley. They stand panting for a few moments, Manami with their bleeding hip, Teshima with his bleeding ear.
Sangaku doubles over.
“Come on now, don’t tell me you’re done already?”
Sangaku covers their mouth with their hand and leans against the dirty bricks.
“Hey… come on”
Junta grabs Manami by the collar on their shitty pajama t-shirt and hoists them up so the two of them can see black eye to black eye, taking care to scrape their back along the rough wall of the building.
“What’s the matter? Look alive, Manami,” he says to their ear, and the end of the sentence hangs implicit in the air between them, look alive so I can punch you again.
Teshima lets go when Sangaku upends onto the front of his shirt a mixture of spicy beef, lemonade, hydrochloric acid, and the liquefied remains of one slice of dollar cheese pizza.
FILL: TEAM Aoyagi Hajime/Izumida Touichirou, T
additional tags: food, this is really gross,
word count: 924 (aka got out of hand length)
The lighting was harsh and artificial, and it almost reminded Sangaku of someplace unpleasant, except for three things. First, the electric current was slow. Sangaku could tell because their eyes were sensitive enough to pick up on the flicker rate of the lights, barely perceiving a pulse from overhead. Second, there were huge, round flies; not a lot of them, but enough, that one or two was always in Sangaku’s line of vision. In direct sunlight and up close, maybe they could have marveled at a subtle sheen on the fly’s shell, but they were indoors at night and so the bugs were nothing more than fat dots, buzzing in loops around people’s heads, resting briefly on the grubby display case. Sangaku watched the person across from them swat one away from his head. The third thing was that no hospital had ever had the night breeze sweeping in and mixing the smells of traffic exhaust, sweaty bodies, and cheap pizza into a humid soup, barely mitigated by a rickety circle fan.
“Teshima-san. Why did you bring me here.”
“Hm? Oh.” Junta had been preoccupied tugging at the silver stud at his earlobe. It itched and hurt a little when he wiggled it. Junta chalked this up to the ear piercing being a recent acquisition. If he had left it in and waited another few weeks, he would have noticed that it never seemed to heal properly, and that most other people’s ear piercings did not itch and swell and turn red and ooze pus when they were touched. But Junta would never learn that he was actually allergic to the metal in his ear, because later that night, as they tussled in the alley between the pizza shop and the tattoo place next door, Manami would rip the stud out with their teeth and it would get lost in the garbage that by necessity coated all city gutters.
“I felt like pizza, I guess. I have a friend who likes pizza.”
“So why aren’t they here instead.”
“Well they had somewhere else to be, of course,” he responded almost petulantly, and Sangaku dropped it at that. It didn’t matter anyway. The reasons stopped mattering any time Teshima called them out.
He gets up from the table to pick up their slices: plain cheese for Sangaku and mushroom for himself. Sangaku’s face was turned away from the counter, but they could see Teshima’s back in the blackened mirror that made up one entire wall of the store.
Sangaku probably shouldn’t be eating pizza, they think, picking at the rubbery yellow ropes of cheese. None of this belonged in their body. The tomato sauce seemed undercooked and rancid oil dripped off the pizza to soak the paper plate. But Sangaku stopped caring about stuff like that a while ago, because what difference did it make if they were adding garbage to something that was garbage to begin with?
The decision to ingest it comes back to haunt them a couple hours later, along with the rest of the contents of their stomach (brunch was takeout from a comparably low-end store). This is after the usual offhand taunting results in the routine lunge across the table. Teshima comes at them with a flimsy plastic knife this time, almost laughable in how useless it is until the serrations catch the skin on their forearm and rip Sangaku a shallow new scratch, five inches long. Next follows the traditional expulsion from whatever eatery had the misfortune of hosting them on a given night.
Junta muses as the burly cashier tosses him into the street that he’s probably run out of restaurants to downgrade to. With each – definitely not a date – outing, he’s dragged Manami out to a less and less classy establishment, but this was probably rock bottom; you couldn’t really compete with the glamour of dollar-slice pizza served from a hole in the wall. Junta learns the second time he invites Manami back that they weren’t blacklisted from the place because it was hardly the first attempted stabbing that particular joint had seen. Junta makes sure the third time they go back that it’s far from the last attempted stabbing they see. But that first time is the only – outing – where he’s ill-prepared enough to be using a plastic knife.
The knife snaps easily at some point during their scuffle, which continues into the back alley. It’s honestly more dangerous after shattering on the brick into a single sharp plastic spike. Junta digs it into the flesh near Manami’s hip, and it sinks in a satisfying half-inch before falling out and joining the pointed detritus that littered the alley. They stand panting for a few moments, Manami with their bleeding hip, Teshima with his bleeding ear.
Sangaku doubles over.
“Come on now, don’t tell me you’re done already?”
Sangaku covers their mouth with their hand and leans against the dirty bricks.
“Hey… come on”
Junta grabs Manami by the collar on their shitty pajama t-shirt and hoists them up so the two of them can see black eye to black eye, taking care to scrape their back along the rough wall of the building.
“What’s the matter? Look alive, Manami,” he says to their ear, and the end of the sentence hangs implicit in the air between them, look alive so I can punch you again.
Teshima lets go when Sangaku upends onto the front of his shirt a mixture of spicy beef, lemonade, hydrochloric acid, and the liquefied remains of one slice of dollar cheese pizza.