Work Text:
Ulquiorra Cifer wasn’t sure what he’d gotten himself into.
In fact, he wasn’t even entirely sure how he’d ended up attached to this bubbly woman who was currently introducing him to a bustling household of delinquents, nerds, and sporty lesbians as her ‘boyfriend.’
Ulquiorra didn’t really do relationships.
Except, apparently, somehow, he was in one. With Inoue Orihime.
And possibly her entire gaggle of friends.
Orihime held his hand tightly and all but dragged Ulquiorra into the kitchen. She deposited him on a stool in front of one of those island things with the pans hanging overhead that he’d previously only ever saw in Yammy’s manga stash. Ulquiorra could not get over how huge the kitchen was in this house, and how shiny and new. Someone in the house--and he suspected it to be Orihime, since many of them looked to have been picked up at thrift sales and lovingly repaired and polished--had bought every single kitchen gadget known to humankind. There were things lined up along the granite-topped counter that he couldn’t even begin to identify, including the contraption that Orihime was picking up now and putting on the island in front of him.
“I had to import this,” she told him, even though he hadn’t asked. “It’s an Italian pasta maker. But, I read an article that convinced me that it’s going to make Dumpling Day a breeze.”
This was something else Ulquiorra didn’t entirely understand: Why was today “Dumpling Day” and why was his presence considered “mission critical”?
“What is a dumpling?” he asked.
Having forgotten that half of Orihime’s roommates had joined them in the kitchen, Ulquiorra was surprised when people laughed and a nerdy boy in a button-down shirt, adjusted his glasses to sneer, “Where did you dig this one up, Orihime? Has he been living under a rock?”
Close enough, Ulquiorra thought to himself ruefully. As often as Aizen had ever let any of them out of the ‘Hollow World,’ he might as well be a foreigner.
Orihime looked pained on Ulquiorra’s behalf. “Be nice, Ishida! Ulqui was… I mean, he grew up very… sheltered.”
The orange-haired delinquent with a fruit for a name--… mango, was it?--gave the bespectacled nerd, Ishida, a smack on the arm. “Oi, Uryuu. You know this guy’s situation. It was all over the news. Do you read newspapers or only sewing magazines?” At Ishida’s blank look, he prompted, “He’s like Grimmjow, only… less growly and more broken.” That last comment earned a sharp glance from Orihime, so Mango-boy quickly added, “I mean… Quiet.”
Ishida peered at Ulquiorra like he was a specimen under a microscope. “Oh, he’s one of Aizen’s experi--”
The second smack from Mango-boy was harder. “Shut. Up. Uryuu..”
“Bright Buddha, you morons, stop talking about him like he’s not sitting right here!” It was the sporty lesbian, Tatsuki. For some reason, her name had stuck in Ulquiorra’s head during the flurry of introductions. Maybe it was the pointed way in which she’d sized him up and explicitly told him that she was the second strongest person in Japan, a Judo master, and she would kill him with her bare hands if he harmed a single hair on Orihime’s head. Tatsuki and Orihime had been friends since high school, and Tatsuki remained fiercely protective of her now that they were all graduated.
Even though, in Ulquiorra’s mind, Orihime was never the one who needed protection. She might not be physically strong, but she was the most emotionally resilient person he’d ever met. In that regard, she was his savior.
Quite literally.
“Yes, I don’t understand why you’re all talking around it,” Ulquiorra said, his downcast gaze finding his reflection in the fancy pasta machine that Orihime had set out in front of him. The scars on his face were visible for all to see. Besides, at Orihime’s advice, he’d stopped trying to hide them, but, instead, had accentuated them with eyeliner. “Aizen Sousuke and his cohorts had ten of us kidnapped and locked away.. I was so brainwashed I called him Aizen-sama and nearly dug my own eyes out of their sockets to please him..” He let out a breath. Looking up at Orihime, he added, “I’d have died serving him, but Orihime stumbled across us and started talking to me through the window. Then… a bunch of stuff happened and Grimmjow made his escape and eventually we were all freed. But, that’s literally old news. I’d much rather find out what is a dumpling.”
Something in what he’d said made everyone let out a collective breath.
“Right!” Orihime smiled brightly around her deep blush and the tears forming in the corners of her eyes, “Dumpling Day is underway!”
#
Ulquiorra was handed an apron and told he would help with the dough and the noodle press.
He resisted the apron until Orihime explained that it would keep the white flour from ruining his ‘emo-goth’ look. “Plus,” she said, demonstrating with a giggle, “It gives you a place to wipe your hands!”
Besides, everyone was wearing one, even the red-haired, tattooed bruiser who’d come down from ‘upstairs’ to help chop the cabbage with a wicked sharp, custom-engraved Aritsugu knife he’d apparently named, because he kept muttering, “Look, Zabimaru! Dinner!”
He and Mango-boy, who also had a fancy carbon steel kitchen knife, were having some kind of competition over who could shred the vegetables into the thinnest slices. No offense to the bruiser, but Mango-boy was a natural, because he was clearly winning--even though he’d only just borrowed the special knife from some other ‘upstairs’ person named Rukia, and had apparently never gone to the fancy culinary school that the bruiser had.
There was a lot of good-natured competition going on. Everyone traded easy banter. The glasses wearing nerd, Ishida, was expounding on some traditional dipping sauce recipe that was passed down from his grandfather that only he knew. It was the pride of his family, apparently.
People kept coming through, exclaiming, “Oh, it’s Dumpling Day!” and joining in.
The kitchen was a cacophony of voices and activity.
It would have been far too much for Ulquiorra, except for Orihime. She stayed by his side and patiently explained the process. They boiled water in a pot and then added it, some salt--Orihime was vague about the amount, said something like ‘enough’--and rice flour into a big mixer.
Ulquiorra was fascinated to watch the mixer’s dough hook doing its work. What started out looking like sludge quickly became an elastic ball, almost as if by magic.
Orihime watched the mixer with the same rapt expression.
Someone, Ulquiorra thought it was Tatsuki’s maybe-girlfriend, Chizuru, winked at them and said, “Two peas in a pod!”
When Ulquiorra looked to Orihime for explanation, she was blushing again, but explained, “She thinks we’re a lot alike.”
That could hardly be less true, Ulquiorra thought to himself. Orihime was so cheerful and energetic, she was the definition of ‘bubbly.’ Everyone told him he radiated gloom and despair. He was about to say something to that effect, when Orihime’s hand closed over his, where it rested on the counter.
The smile she gave him was very soft and private. “I love how everything is new to you. I’m so excited to show you what a dumpling is.”
Then, the emotions seemed to be too much for her and she quickly let go of his hand and ran off to ‘prep’ the noodle maker. He was told to remove the dough and let it rest under a towel.
He blinked in confusion at the mixer, but he was determined to do as he was asked. It took a few moments to figure out how to release the lock on the beater section so that it could be lifted up, but once he did that he was left with the bowl. He tried just upending the thing, but the dough resolutely stuck to the bottom. He was still shaking it, when Ishida clucked at him and told him to “just use your hands to dig it out!”
Luckily, he’d washed them along with everyone else at the start of this thing, but, grasping the mound of dough with both hands, Ulquiorra was unprepared for… how wonderful the dough felt to touch. It was so springy and stretchy and warm that it almost demanded that he play with it.
“Jeez, dude, don’t molest it! We gotta eat that,” the redhead teased with a leering smile that threatened to undo Ulquiorra’s composure.
Mango-boy threw a carrot at the red-head, “Oi, Renji. Xn--ay on the Okes-jay. Ulqui is one of Aizen’s.”
Having taken the carrot right in the nose, Renji rubbed the smile off his face. Sincerely, he said, “Oh, hey, sorry, man. I didn’t know.”
“It’s fine,” Ulquiorra said, despite the fact that nothing seemed fine all of a sudden. He held the dough in his hands, but he was suddenly frozen in place, even though all he wanted to do was run and hide somewhere. Maybe the bathroom? “I have to go--where is the toilet?”
Orihime was right there, coaxing the dough from his hands. “It’s down the hall. Let’s put this under plastic wrap and let it rest, then I’ll show you. It’s easy to get lost in this house.”
The putting away of the dough happened somewhere outside of Ulquiorra, but he came back to himself when he concentrated on figuring out just how many rooms there were in this palatial estate Orihime called home. “How big is this place?” Before he could filter himself, out came: “How can you afford it?”
“Oh, the rent is cheap with all of us, plus Rukia finagled us a deep discount. She and her ultra-rich brother live upstairs with a bunch of other… shut-ins? I can’t exactly call Byakuya a NEET, because he’s got all the income, though.. I do think it’s a stipend? He doesn’t work. None of the upstairs people interact with the Land of the Living much at all, honestly.”
Ulquiorra smiled softly at the obvious capital letters in ‘Land of the Living.’ She had a way of making everything into a fantastical story.
She leaned into Ulquiorra as they turned down yet-another-corridor, and said, “Ichigo and I sometimes call them the ‘Sole Society’ because they’re all loners, but all together! Get it?”
She laughed at her own joke, so he joined her.
“You don’t really get it, do you?” she asked, but there was no judgment or malice.
“I don’t get a lot of jokes, honestly.” Plus, he was still trying to work out how the upstairs and downstairs worked. “The redhead doesn’t seem like a loner.”
“Renji?” She shook her head in emphatic agreement. At some point, she’d curled herself around his arm, as she continued to lead him deeper into this maze of a house. “He’s Byakuya’s CPA… basically? They all have one, even though some of the Sole Society folks are really young. But, Renji cleans the place and makes sure Byakuya remembers to eat, washes his clothes, takes a shower, and stuff like that. In exchange, he has a room up there.” She finally stopped in front of a door. “Ta-dah! The bathroom!”
Ulquiorra had forgotten that he’d said he’d needed to use it. He stared at the door helplessly. Should he pretend to go in? Did he still need to hide out for a while?
Orihime seemed to understand that it had all been a ruse to escape the chaos of the kitchen for a while. “Do you want to just go to the courtyard and sit? We don’t need to be back to roll out the dough for a good thirty minutes.”
“That would be lovely.”
#
They sat in the interior courtyard garden for a long time, saying nothing, just holding hands. Just… breathing.
Ulquiorra watched the birds flitting between the branches of the maple tree and continued to marvel at the space of this place.
It was almost as big as Aizen’s…
He pulled himself back from that thought with a grunt. No, no, there was sun here. He could feel it on his face. The rooms were cozy and comforting, not vast and empty and hollow. Even so, he was feeling the need to move again, so he announced, “We should go back to the others. I want to know what the dumpling is.”
#
The dough had rested long enough, so they started the process of assembling the gyoza.
The kitchen took on a festive air. Beer or barley water, as people wanted, was passed around. People took up their positions, like they were going into battle. Ulquiorra and Orihime were in charge of rolling out the dough. Rukia, another tiny, fierce woman, who’d come down from upstairs at some point, was organizing people with pastry cutters to cut out the circles. Renji and his team were filling. Then it was on to Ishida’s group to do the careful folding. Tatsuki and the rest would do the frying.
Once Ulquiorra got the hang of the noodle maker, he really enjoyed rolling out the thin sheet of dough. He had to run the sheets through a few times to make them flat enough, but he enjoyed the challenge and the precision required.
As they worked, people tackled his question.
“What is the dumpling?” Ishida said, as though beginning a soliloquy in a play. “Surely, it is more than the sum of its parts…”
“It’s dim sum!” Renji interjected.
After the laughter died down, Ishida adjusted his glasses, cleared his throat and continued, “Filling and wrapper, yes, but it’s deliciousness comes from the addition of--”
“Friendship,” Ichigo said. “Family.”
“Seriously, though, I think it’s the sauce,” Ishida argued, “The pride of the--”
“It’s love!” Orihime shouted, but then turned bright red and covered her mouth in embarrassment.
Everyone was looking at Ulquiorra then, so he said, “Yes, but I still don’t know what it tastes like.”
They all laughed again.
#
When the first of the gyoza came out of the hot oil, Orihime presented one on a paper towel to Ulquiorra. Though his hands were crusted in flour, he reverently took it. He’d been smelling all the scents in the kitchen as they worked, the salted cabbage, mirin, soy, and chopped garlic chives. Even so, he was not prepared for the combination, particularly with how crispy the wrapping had become in the oil.
It was astounding.
He’d never tasted anything like it before in his life.
When he licked the last bit of the oil from his fingers and looked around for another one, Ulquiorra realized that Orihime’s entire household was staring at him. The nerd adjusted his glasses and grunted, but everyone else burst into applause.
He had no idea what he’d done.
Then, Orihime smiled at him through tears welling in her eyes. “Oh my god, Ulquiorra. You SMILED.”
He had? If so, he was going to be doing a lot more of that today.
Ichigo nodded. “The dumpling is all that and more, my friend. It’s joy and family… and love.”
Ulquiorra was beginning to understand.
Also, he needed another one. Right now.