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Right as Rantaro steps out of his room, he is intercepted by Mukuro.
“Hey, you’re awake,” she grins, which isn’t uncommon for Mukuro when she’s with Rantaro, but still looks like an alien expression on her face. “That’s good, I was just coming to get you.”
“Good morning,” Rantaro smiles back at her, holding out a hand. She grabs it and pulls him into a one-armed hug, pounding him on the back. “What’s up?”
“What, my best friend gets back from traveling for several weeks and I can’t come say hi?” Mukuro rolls her grey eyes, pulling out of the hug. “Anyway, you should come make a cake with me.”
Rantaro, while he isn’t opposed, or even wary, really, still raises his eyebrows. “So early on a Sunday?” He asks. “What for?”
“I wanna make something for my boyfriend, but I can’t bake, and you can, so the obvious solution is that I take advantage of your weird older-brother baking skills and force you to help me. We can make something for your boyfriend, too.” Rantaro considers what she’s saying. He supposes he’d like to bake something for Shuichi. And he hasn’t spent very much time with Mukuro as of late. (Traveling will do that to a person.) So he nods, smiling.
“Sure, alright,” he agrees. “What’s Makoto’s favourite kind of cake?”
Mukuro sighs. “He likes chocolate.”
“Haha, you’re dating a normie.”
“I know…” she shakes her head and gestures for Rantaro to go with her. “I requested that Kirumi clear out of the kitchen so we could do this. She was pretty nice about it. A bit too nice.” Mukuro looks off to the side as Rantaro falls into step on her right. “She put out a bunch of ingredients for it.”
“Are we using cake mix? Or making it from scratch?” Rantaro can use either, but it really just comes down to which one Mukuro is wanting to do.
“From scratch.” Mukuro responds lightly, turning into the main building. They pass by Gonta and Tsumugi in the hall; Tsumugi smiles and waves and Gonta greets them as politely as he always does. Rantaro follows suit because Gonta’s manners are always contagious, but Mukuro just gives a curt nod in their direction. Something that is also pretty normal for her. A soldier through and through, Mukuro is.
They arrive at the dining hall and Mukuro grabs the door, holding it open for Rantaro, who thanks her as he ducks under. He’s glad for th chance to spend some time with Mukuro. He and Shuichi just got back from Spain and it was a good trip (aside from the obvious lack of results as far as finding Tsubaki is concerned) but he’s pretty tired nonetheless. Teaching Mukuro how to bake a cake sounds like a pretty relaxing use of his time.
When the two of them get into the kitchen, Rantaro sees that Kirumi really did lay everything out for them. Beyond eggs and flour and baking soda (all the necessities for making a cake from scratch, essentially) there are also bags of chocolate chips and cocoa powder and bottles of vanilla extract- a lot of ingredients Rantaro likes to have but doesn’t always use. There’s even stuff there to make gourmet frosting, as well as coffee, which he likes to use whenever he makes chocolate stuff because the acidity makes the chocolate more rich.
“Kirumi doesn’t clown.” Rantaro comments lightly.
“Yeah. Prime wife material.” Mukuro sighs. “If I wasn’t dating Makoto…”
“I didn’t realise my best friend was a thot.” Rantaro snorts, walking over to the sink and turning on the tap to wash his hands. As he soaps up, Mukuro chuckles, stepping up next to him and washing her hands in the next sink over.
“Not everyone is demisexual, ‘Taro.” She reminds, turning off the sink and drying her hands. Rantaro grins at her, doing the same, but the comment about being demisexual makes him pause. He knows a bit of what demisexual means, of course, but as far as in application to himself, he’s never considered it before. As for what he’s felt in the past, he’s always just used gay, but…
He takes his thoughts off the subject when Mukuro moves over to the ingredients to follow her. “You should separate the dry and wet ingredients, he tells her, and he nods. “I’ll do the wet if you want to start measuring out the dry. Do you know how much to do?”
Mukuro hums. “I have a general idea. I might rather do it with you, though, so I don’t make any huge mistakes. It would suck if I forgot baking soda, or something.” Rantaro chuckles and nods, putting a bowl in front of him and pulling over a carton of eggs. He takes one out and cracks it against the edge of the bowl. “How much experiences do you have baking?” Mukuro asks, watching him carefully. He taps the egg carton with a finger as though to tell her to crack some herself before he responds.
“I’m a better cook, but I can bake.” He answers slowly, then adds, “I used to do it all the time with my younger sisters. MIna was really in to baking.” Mukuro knows enough about his sisters to know who Mina is. One of his three biological sisters. She got lost in San Francisco.
“I can’t imagine Junko liking that kind of stuff.” Mukuro shakes her head. “She says baking is boring.”
As much as Rantaro isn’t really surprised to hear that, he raises his eyebrows anyway. “I would have thought doing something with such a high chance of burning down the building would make her happy.” Mukuro snorts, cracking an egg one-handed (impressive) and nodding her head.
“It’s always hard to tell with her,” she remarks, and Rantaro takes the brewed coffee that Kirumi left and a measuring cup to start putting it in. Mukuro drums her fingers on the counter before grabbing a bottle of olive oil and unscrewing the top. “Sometimes it seems like she’s… ugh, nevermind. This is supposed to be fun, not…” she shakes her head.
“Mm.” Rantaro dumps in the coffee and then grabs the vegetable oil, tapping the line on the measuring cup that it should be filled to and hands them both to Mukuro to tell her nonverbally how much to put in. “Did something happen with her recently.”
“Nothing.” Mukuro dismisses, pouring in the oil. “Just… recently, she’s been acting… different? Like. Better. I don’t know how to put it. More like a normal person. And it’s weird. Like she wants something. But she knows I’ll do pretty much anything she wants me to already, so I don’t see why…”
As she talks, Rantaro adds in the vanilla extract and a cup of water before picking up the bowl and the whisk to start mixing. Mukuro watches, falling silent, and eventually he passes over the bowl for her to finish and speaks. “Most of what Junko does is pretty strategic, from what you’ve told me.” She hums, nodding. “So I can see why that would put you on edge.”
“It’s not bad.” Mukuro says evenly. “It’s nice to be able to talk to her sans all the, like, degradation. It’s just… it’s uncomfortable. Unsettling. Is it bad that I distrust her this much?”
“It’s bad that she gave you reason to.” Rantaro replies. “That’s fine, by the way,” he adds in regards to the wet ingredients, and Mukuro nods, putting down the bowl. “But there’s no reason for you to feel guilty about it. She hasn’t exactly been the perfect example of a trustworthy, dependable sister in the past.”
The soldier sighs, but eventually nods, and Rantaro reaches for the dry ingredients. He measures out the baking soda and baking powder and guides Mukuro through the sugar before she speaks again. “I dunno, I just- is it weird that I feel bad about it?”
“About what? Being suspicious of her motivations?” Rantaro asks, opening the flour and pouring in a cup. He passes the bag and the measuring cup over to Mukuro as she contemplates a response. Her hands measure out the flour expertly. She has very still hands. It’s likely something that makes her as good of a soldier as she is. With her good memory and quick thinking skills, she’d probably be pretty talented as a cook if it’s something she’s really interested in.
“I guess? I also feel like- it’s my fault she’s the way she is in the first place? Like, my leaving her to join Fenrir a few years ago made me the one to blame for her behaviour?” She passes the flour to Rantaro, rolls a couple grains between her fingers. “Is that… weird?”
“Not weird. Not right either, though.” Rantaro hums. “She’s the one who chooses to act like that. And she was like that before, right?” Mukuro shrugs. She’s looking down at her hands, gaze distant, and Rantaro decides to change his strategy. He nudges the wet ingredients so they’re out of his direct reach and pours out another cup of flour. Instead of dumping it into the bowl, though, he grabs a spoon and gets a spoonful of flour, humming under his breath as he turns it in his hands. He pulls back the spoon, like it’s a catapult, and aims it at Mukuro. At that point, it’s just a matter of releasing with his right hand. So he does.
His aim is pretty excellent, if he does say so himself. The spoonful of flour lands right in the middle of her face.
Mukuro sputters. “What the f--”
“Oops.” Rantaro smirks. “My hand slipped.”
“You…” Mukuro blinks at him, a few bits of flour slipping onto her shirt. A lousy day to be wearing blue. “You really… you really wanna fuck with me, Rantaro?”
“I’m not afraid of you.” Rantaro laughs, even though it’s a bold-faced lie. “You cried for Remus Lupin for a week after finishing The Deathly Hallows.”
“It was sad, he and Tonks just had a baby-”
“A week, Muku.”
“I’ll kill you.”
“Do it, you won’t.”
“I will.”
“No balls.”
“Rantaro-”
“No balls.”
With that, Mukuro grabs a handful of flour straight from the bag and darts over to Rantaro. He starts to move away, laughing, but he is nothing compared to the Ultimate Soldier. She shoves the flour right into his face. Rantaro stumbles, grabbing wildly for more flour to retaliate, but she’s a step ahead of him, grabbing the whole bag and turning it over on his head. (Rest in peace; he took a shower this morning.) At that point, he has a pretty formidable mouthful of flour but in lieu of spitting it out on her, he grabs a handful from his hair and rubs it in hers. Mukuro shrieks and tackles him to the floor (perhaps on instinct) to rub more flour in his face.
It dissolves into wrestling not long after that. Partly because there’s only so much flour they can reuse on each other, but also because the flour was never the main point in this fight. Mukuro eventually gets Rantaro in a chokehold, which- well, there are more flatting positions, but as she startings noogying him (thanks) the door to the kitchen swings open.
“...ah.” Shuichi stops in the doorway, raising his eyebrows. “Am I… interrupting something?”
“Shuichi!” Rantaro breaks free from Mukuro’s grip (probably because she lets him) and stumbles over in front of his boyfriend, catching his breath. “Help me, this crazy woman is trying to kill me-”
“You threw flour in my face,” Mukuro points out. “I think it was warranted.”
“Murder? Murder was warranted?” Rantaro isn’t really upset, of course, but he mocks incredulity nonetheless.
“Flour! In my face!”
“Mukuro, look at my hair-”
“Pfft.” Shuichi laughs slightly, shaking his head. He steps forward and puts a hand on top of Rantaro’s head, brushing bits of flour of from his hair. “You made a pretty big mess in here.” His grey eyes are dancing with laughter. Rantaro leans into his touch, admiring how pretty Shuichi looks when he’s amused. “What exactly were you trying to do?”
“I wanted to make Makoto a cake.” Mukuro sighs, slumping down against the counter, and Rantaro offers her a crooked grin. “So I invited your dumbass boyfriend to do the same thing for you, but then he thought it was a good idea to launch flour in my face…”
“In my defense, it was really funny.” Rantaro admits, and Shuichi laughs again, combing his fingers through the adventurer’s hair.
“She could break you in half, you know that, right?” Shuichi grins at the indignant expression that crosses over Rantaro’s face.
“Hey, I’m strong!” He protests, and the detective shrugs.
“You’re not weak, but Mukuro is way stronger.” He offers a playful smirk. “You’re too pretty to hold your own against her.”
Rantaro sputters (a low blow, that was, adding a compliment in there too) and Mukuro barks out a far too self-satisfied laugh. Shuichi is mean, Rantaro thinks, but it’s hard to really be upset when he smiles like that.
“Do you want help making the cake?” Shuichi asks. “I know a thing or two about baking-”
“Nooo,” Rantaro gets to his feet, admittedly with some effort, because his muscles are still a little tired from wrestling with Mukuro. “I wanted to make some for you too, you can’t help!”
“...well, if I know about it already…” Shuichi pauses, giving Rantaro a look. “You’re covered in flour, don’t make that face. I can barely even kiss you to make you shut up.”
“Wow, that’s why you kiss me?” Rantaro manages an offended expression despite his laughter, and Shuichi snorts, cupping the side of his face and tugging him down into a kiss. “Y’know, I have no qualms about getting you covered in flour,” the adventurer points out against Shuichi’s lips, and the detective huffs, moving away, only for Rantaro to pull him in closer for another kiss.
“Jerk,” Shuichi murmurs, then kisses back, which takes all the merit from what he said.
“You guys are gross.” Mukuro groans. “Makoto only kisses me in private.”
“You wish Makoto would make out with you in front of your disgusted best friend.” Rantaro retorts.
“No, no, I don’t, it’s sweet that he waits until we’re alone, I’d rather-”
“You’re lying to yourself, Muku,”
“What, do you want to watch us make out?”
“Ew, no, why would I want to watch straight people kiss?”
“I can’t believe my best friend is a voyeur-”
“No!”
“Okay.” Shuichi laughs, brushing flour off of the front of his shirt. “You should work on that cake.”
“I hope there’s more flour.” Rantaro frowns, running a hand through his hair. A cloud of flour comes away with the action. “Mukuro poured almost all of it on my head.”
“You shit.” Mukuro frowns at him. “You deserved it.”
“That’s fair, but even so-”
“There’s more flour.” Shuichi sighs. “Look in the cupboard, there’s plenty.”
“Maybe we need Shuichi here to help.” Mukuro points out, and the detective shrugs, chuckling as he heads over to the cupboard to get more flour. Rantaro moves over to drape his arms over the soldier’s shoulders; she laces their fingers together as she speaks. “We’re a bit of a mess.”
“We are,” Rantaro agrees. “But the best kind of mess.” He squeezes her hand, and she squeezes back.
“Yeah.”
(Makoto ends up really enjoying the cake, but he also laughs at Rantaro and Mukuro when he sees that they’re covered in flour, and he and Shuichi spend a couple minutes comparing examples of how their significant others are disasters, which, alright, they’re both just extremely rude.)