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Yaku rolled his head around the axis of his spine as he made his way down the long hallway of his apartment complex to his front door with one hand on the handle of his suitcase and the other on the base of his neck massaging the tight knots that had accumulated over the long hours of his flight. The idea of returning back to Tokyo — back to his home — was always something he looked forward to during the competitive season, but the near ten hour flight from Moscow to Tokyo always left a sour taste in his mouth. He wasn’t one to sleep on long haul flights — it just didn’t feel right — and the hours at length he had to sit idle in his seat only served to compound discomfort to his already present exhaustion.
He looked down at his watch: it was currently just past noon. He turned around the corner, the window at the end of the hallway letting the light of the afternoon sun spill in and bathe the corridor in a warm glow.
Perhaps he would give Kuroo and you a ring after settling down. It had been quite some time since he had last met up with the two of you, and while he would never admit it out loud for fear of the teasing that would ensue, he had missed the company of two of his best friends sorely.
“Huh?”
His sight shuffled down to the slit of his front door with a frown, having noticed the light spilling out from inside. Had Kuroo stopped by and forgotten to turn the lights off before leaving?
He pressed on the silver button atop the door handle, and punched in his passcode onto the screen when the numbers lit up. He heard a soft whirr from the electronic lock as the deadbolt retracted, and he then sank his weight onto the handle with his elbow to open the front door.
As he stepped foot into the atrium with his suitcase rolling next to him, a whiff of something nostalgic caught his attention. It smelled like remnants of his childhood, reminding him of the sweet and buttery moments he had shared with his mother in the kitchen back when he was young.
It smelled like… Cookies?
Oh no, Yaku innerly groaned, kicking his dress shoes off and bending down to arrange them onto the shoe rack by the door. Two pairs of sneakers tucked on the top corner caught his attention, confirming his suspicions as he let out yet another sigh.
It’s them.
He padded quietly to the closet in the front hallway, wincing at the slight creak of the folding door when he opened it, and tucked his suitcase inside before making his way over to the living room with a shake of his head. He took a deep breath, holding in his inhale before slowly releasing his exhale, to mentally prepare himself for the shenanigans that Kuroo and you must have gotten up to in his house.
You had been sitting at the dinner table with your back to the door, your elbows planted onto the surface of the wood as you looked over the counter to watch a tall man on the other side shuffle about in the open kitchen. Your ears picked up on the sound of his footsteps, and you turned around to lean your elbow on the back of the chair as you shot him a friendly wave.
“Yakkun! Welcome home,” you greeted with a wide beam. Kuroo looked up from the kitchen counter with a nod and a sly smirk, but the childish grin that grew on his lips soon after failed to escape the blond’s notice.
“What are you two doing?” he asked with an eyebrow raised. He frowned as he approached the kitchen, noting the mess of white powder on the ground with a click of his tongue. “And why are you making a mess in my house?”
Kuroo looked up briefly as he dumped the tower of dirty dishes in his arms into the sink. “Conducting an experiment, obviously,” he said matter-of-factly.
“In my house?”
“Yeah,” Kuroo shrugged, patting a white handprint off the thigh of his black jeans. “Obviously,” he added on after a second, shooting his high school friend a thumbs up.
“This white powder…” Yaku trailed off, pushing Kuroo aside by the chest as he walked into the kitchen. He swiped a finger across the surface of his black marble counter and frowned at the substance on his hand. “Do I even want to know what this is?”
“Either flour, baking powder, or sodium bicarbonate,” you listed off from the other side of the room. “Don’t worry, nothing illegal,” you added on for extra reassurance, your fingers drumming along the tabletop.
“Sodium bicarbo-what?”
“I believe you non-science people call it baking soda,” Kuroo chimed in, leaning back to look over at you as he poured a cup of water for himself from the side.
Yaku groaned under his breath, running a hand across his hair to loosen up the neatly waxed strands. He walked over to you as he took his jacket off, and draped it over the chair adjacent to you before sitting down with his hands thrown up into the air in defeat as he settled into his spot.
“Can either one of you please tell me why you’re always hanging around in my house and using my kitchen? I gave you the code to the door thinking you’d pop by to help me water the plants or something, not use my oven.”
Kuroo stroked at his chin inquisitively as he tried to formulate a believable excuse for his friend. Should he convince him that his oven at home had broken down? Or maybe that Yaku’s oven was superior to his? Regardless, he couldn’t just say it outright; no, it was much too embarrassing to admit something so cheesy out loud, and he knew the libero would never let him hear the end of it if he did. Yaku raised an eyebrow at his friend as he leaned against his chair, folding his arms and resting them against the table as he awaited for an answer to be delivered.
“It’s cause Tetsu missed you,” you divulged with a sly grin, noting the wide-eyed look Kuroo had shot in your direction nearly immediately after the words left your lips. “You know, he’s been refreshing the flight arrivals all day just to be able to be the first to welcome you back in person.”
“I did no such thing,” Kuroo spluttered out, nearly choking on his sip of water. Yaku turned around in his chair to look over into the kitchen with the edges of his lips raising up into a grin as he stifled a chuckle.
“So, missed me, huh?” Yaku teased with a smug grin as the black haired man slipped on a pair of oven mitts and pulled open the oven door.
Kuroo spun back around with a cookie sheet in his hands to shoot another dirty look at you before scowling at his high school friend. He slid his hands out of the oven mitts and returned them back into the drawer before walking over to the sink to wash his hands under the faucet.
“No, you know she’s spouting nothing but lies,” he dismissed, eyeing the diagram mapping out the location of each test group on the cookie sheet as he dried his hands on the kitchen towel. He reached over back to the pan and sorted the cookies onto their designated plates before heading back over to where you and Yaku sat waiting.
“Awww,” Yaku cooed in a honeyed tone, watching as Kuroo placed the plates of cookies onto the dinner table and plopped down in the seat next to you, his arm wrapping around the back of your chair to rest on your shoulder. “You definitely missed me,” Yaku ribbed on.
“He definitely did.”
“I absolutely did not,” he asserted, pushing the edge of the dish over to his friend. “Now make yourself useful and help me test out which leavening agent works best for this recipe.”
With a shrug, Yaku reached for a cookie and handed it to you before getting one for himself. “I still don’t get why you had to do your ‘experiment’,” he waved his cookie in the air to act as air quotes, “in my house still.”
“Temperature 25ºC, pressure 1 atmosphere. Yakkun, your house is literally the very definition of standard state. It’s perfect for running experiments,” you pointed out through a mouthful of cookie. “Oh, this one’s good. I’d rate it an eight on that ten point scale you drew up earlier,” you told Kuroo, who nodded and scribbled your words into his notebook.
Yaku chuckled at the sight before him as he raised his own cookie up to his mouth. The two of you were like two peas in a pod — no matter how often you were at odds about which branch of science was superior, when it really came down to it, the love you shared for the field as a whole and for each other was unparalleled to all. He froze mid-bite as his eyes found their way onto the written script on the side of the dish.
His dish. The one that he bought.
The one that now had “2 tsp baking powder” scribbled messily on the side.
“Why are the both of you always scribbling on my stuff in Sharpie?” Yaku loudly complained as he twirled the plate of cookies around to point at the hastily scribbled handwriting on the edge. “Do you know how hard it is to get Sharpie off of ceramic?” he loudly grumbled as he rubbed at the ink with his thumb.
You took a look and shrugged, an expression of indifference crossing your features as you sipped calmly on your tea. “Have you tried acetone? That usually does the trick.”
“Methanol works pretty well also. Too well, almost. Any time you work with methanol, all your labels are sure to disappear,” Kuroo added as he reached for another plate to try another cookie. He gave an approving nod as he pulled the plate closer to him to get a clearer view of the label scribbled on. “Oh, this one’s got baking soda in place of baking powder. Less cakey.”
“Why would I have methanol at home...” Yaku groaned into his hand, clearly distressed by the nonchalant attitude from the duo in front of him.
“Hmm, good point, ” you mumbled as you racked your head in thought. “Oh, ethanol works too. You know the whole idea behind like dissolves like? How non-polar dissolves in non-polar?” You paused as you watched Yaku’s face contort into a frown. “Sharpies are on the non-polar side, which is why water, being polar, doesn’t really work to get rid of them. If you use a solvent that’s sufficiently non-polar, like an alcohol for example, it should do the trick,” you explained with a happy smile.
“First of all, thank you for the refresher,” Yaku sarcastically said with a roll of his eyes as he leaned back in his chair. You shot him a thumbs up as you grabbed another cookie from the dish and snapped it in half, brushing the crumbs to the side. “But more importantly, I am not cracking open my alcohol cabinet to remove a Sharpie scribble from you pain-in-the-ass Kuroos.”
You frowned, shaking your head in dismay. “It’s (l/n) still, Yakkun.”
“And the Sharpie’s still on my plates, (f/n).”
You stared back at him with an eyebrow quirked up for a second before leaning back and folding your hands in front of you. “Touché.”
“And shouldn’t you be scared of Sharpie poisoning? You’re pregnant, you know,” Yaku continued on, pointing the uneaten cookie in his hand in your direction.
You simply shrugged and took a bite out of your own treat. “It’s the fumes that pose a toxicity risk mostly. It’s not like I’m licking them or anything. I know the LD50, and the writing on the plate is not enough to do anything probably. I stand a good chance.”
“Kuroo, please do something about your wife. These are your kids we’re talking about,” Yaku moaned in exasperation, looking to his friend for help.
Kuroo gave a tight lipped smile as he raised up his right shoulder in a one-sided shrug. “She’s the doctor, she calls the shots.”
“You’re a doctor too, you ass!”
“Eh, that’s on paper only,” he managed through a mouthful of cookie. He frowned, taking the bite out of his mouth with his tongue stuck out in disapproval. “This one’s gross.”
“Oh, this one was the one where you doubled the amount of baking powder,” you remarked, pointing at the label on the edge of the plate.
Yaku rested his still untouched cookie onto the tissue laid out in front of him and buried his face into his palms.
Dealing with one Kuroo was hard enough, and dealing with two was even worse.
But with two more coming soon?
Someone please save him.