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"What now?" says Takane, and she looks exhausted- hair all messed up, scraped back into a single, scraggly ponytail to keep it out of the food. Her face is shining with sweat, but there’s a glint of pride in her eyes all the same.
"We wait, I guess," says Momo, and her voice is soft and sing-song, words followed by a little twirl of her apron. She bought it herself, a few years back, but it was her brother who’d picked it out of the closet in the downstairs hallway, thrown it into her bedroom while she was half-asleep. Right now, she’s grateful for it. Patched in blue and brown, with a knock-off version of a popular cartoon character stitched into a fake pocket over her chest- it matches the brown splodges of melted chocolate perfectly, and even looks, in her opinion, cuter for the wear it’s sustained over the past hour. She’s reluctant to take it off, and perches on the arm of the sofa without changing.
"…Shouldn’t we wash up?" Takane’s looking at her apron with all-too-obvious wariness on her face. The sofa cover iswhite, and this isn’t technically their sofa, or even their room. Neither of them are very good at facing Kido when she’s angry. Momo sticks out her tongue with an apologetic grin.
"W-well, we can always do it after… it’s just chocolate, right? It’ll wash out!"
"That’s not the right kind of attitude…!"
Momo almost flinches- but Takane is smiling, ever-so-slightly, and she relaxes. Takane seems to notice too, because she quickly raises a hand to her mouth to cough. They trail off into a peaceful, but somewhat heavy silence.
"…Well," says Takane eventually, "it’s not like it was good chocolate, anyway."
"What? I thought it was delicious!"
"You think everything’s delicious! I saw you drinking that lime juice yesterday, like some old hippie-"
Momo’s never been great at listening to people rant. Not her brother, not her parents, and certainly never her teachers. She tries with Takane, she really does- but she’s come to realise, gradually, that caring for someone doesn’t necessarily mean you have to listen to them talk about shooting games for two hours straight. So she does the first think she can think of to make the stream of speech stop.
She kisses her.
Predictably, Takane stops talking immediately, her entire face flushing bright, bright pink. It’s cute, Momo thinks, how there’s a tiny spark of disbelief in her eyes every time they do this, but it makes her sad, too. She’s promised herself secretly that she’ll kiss Takane as many times as it takes for that spark to go out.
Also predictably, Takane starts rambling against her mouth.
"I-I’m surprised you don’t taste weird, considering all the stuff you… mm… I mean, if we made a menu out of your appetite, it’d attract the strangest people… m-maybe even demons! Bad food demons!"
That makes Momo laugh, and she pulls back, just enough to giggle into Takane’s chest. Out of habit, she hides her face in her girlfriend’s sweater (because they don’t like it,on TV, not her real laugh, not her true happiness), and Takane sighs deeply, mumbling something about ‘idiots playing dirty tricks’.
(It’s not a trick, though. It doesn’t matter what face she’s allowed to show on stage, or what the people in the crowd would think about her apron, because she knows Takane likes the taste of cheap chocolate only off of Momo’s lips, and because, in the space between the cake going into the oven and the others coming home to eat it, is the warmth of someone she thinks she’s coming to love.
Forget interviewers, and screw TV crews. Her true happiness is right here.)