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The dorm’s small kitchen was in a state of complete and utter disaster when Yuuji poked his head in.
“Out! Out!” Nobara scolded. Beside her, Maki had a hand on her hip, rubbing her temple with the other. Nobara brandished a dripping whisk like a weapon. “This is a big enough mess already without someone else adding to the chaos.”
“There’s a lot of swearing going on in here, are you sure I can’t do something to help?” Yuuji said. The walls were smeared with streaks of chocolate brown, sugary pink, and bright, candy red. Eggshells littered the counters. A recipe book was torn in half and left in the trashcan nearby.
Maki groaned. “Unless you know how to make chocolate, I don’t think there’s anything you can do. Come on, Nobara, just toss that. One of these batches has to turn out.”
Yuuji perked up. He let himself in, sidestepping the fat drops of chocolate still dripping from the whisk. “Well, I’ve never made chocolate, exactly, but I did help my gramps cook sometimes.”
“Not allowed,” Nobara said. “This is prep for Valentine’s Day. I’m not letting the chocolates win, not this year!”
Maki sighed. She was already starting to sweep the mess into a bin, chasing the rest of it with a towel to clean and sanitize. “This is why I just buy them every year. Less hassle, and it’s not honmei-choco anyway.”
“I just want to get it right at least once. Is that so much to ask for?” Nobara grumbled finally. She lowered the whisk and started to scoop some lumpy sludge into the trash. She glowered at Yuuji. “And no, I’m not trying to ask anyone out, so don’t get any ideas. You’re getting the same chocolate as Fushiguro and Sensei and everyone else.”
“Oh, I don’t like chocolate that much,” Yuuji said, beaming. “Are you sure you don’t want any help? I really don’t mind!”
Maki and Nobara exchanged a look. “Well… he is a decent cook...” Maki said, looking doubtful.
Yuuji beamed, reaching for an apron on a nearby hook. “How hard can it be?” he said, looking around the messy kitchen. “I’m sure we can figure this out.” A few minutes on Google turned up a straightforward recipe for chocolate truffles, and he felt reasonably certain that, between the three of them, they could absolutely pull it off.
He grabbed the one off the blocks of solid chocolate the girls had been hacking away at. It looked like it had been smashed with a hammer at least once to break off enough chocolate for the first few failed batches.
“I can take care of that,” Nobara said, grabbing it and a nearby meat tenderizer. From the chocolate already smeared over the side, it looked like this was not the mallet’s first time being used today.
Yuuji stepped back as she crushed the chocolate hard enough to send shards scattering across the counters. He winced when a hard wack sent a chunk whizzing past his head.
Between the three of them, they measured out chocolate and simmered the cream, then mixed it all together as the recipe instructed. Within just a few minutes, the mixture was a smooth, creamy texture. Yuuji grinned.
That hadn’t been so bad at all. “Ok, it says we have to let it chill for a couple hours before we can roll them into balls. So we can maybe make some other kinds, too?”
“Definitely. That was too easy,” Nobara said. “We need something more challenging than truffles.”
Maki stifled a laugh. “An extra set of hands does help, though. Should we try again with the chocolates we were trying to make earlier?
Nobara brandished a set of chocolate-smeared silicone molds with a dark grin. “Now you’ll see true suffering,” she said, reaching for the block of chocolate again. With massive sweeps of the meat tenderizer, she began to break it into pieces. “It’s so frustrating! We just can’t figure out why it keeps going wrong.”
Yuuji watched as they emptied out the saucepan and set it back on the heat, adding shattered cubes of chocolate to the pan. It melted readily enough. Maki stirred it quickly the entire time. “See, at least one time, it scorched on the bottom,” she said with a wry grin. “So we won’t do that again.”
“It keeps getting all weird and lumpy when we pour it into the molds,” Nobara said. She finished cleaning out the broken pieces of seized up chocolate from the last failure and gave the molds a quick rinse. Yuuji watched, not seeing a problem until the chocolate hit the mold. Immediately, most of the chocolate took on a weird, dull, lumpy texture. Nobara miming hurling the tray at the wall.
Suddenly, it clicked. “Wait, I think you need to dry off the molds before you pour the chocolate in. The chocolate uhh… gets all weird when it touches water.” He didn’t know how to describe it. He pointed out the ones that hadn’t had water in them, which had retained their shine.
Nobara’s eyes widened. “Really? Ugh, chocolate is so stupidly difficult. Hold on, let me try,” she said, drying off the other mold thoroughly before Maki began to pour more into each of the heart shaped depressions. It flowed, smooth and silky as a gleaming river, filling each mold without seizing or dulling.
Nobara tapped the tray with the tenderizing mallet just enough to make bubbles rise to the surface as the chocolate settled. “It worked!” she said. “We got it!”
“We got it!” Maki cheered. The girls beamed at Yuuji. “You know, I didn’t expect you to actually be able to help us.”
“I didn’t do that much,” Yuuji said, laughing gently. He helped them stack up the molds in the fridge. They let the candies chill for a while, cleaning up the kitchen in the meanwhile.
When the chocolates had set enough, they made as much of a mess as before trying to decorate. It led to chocolate on every surface and all over their faces and hands. By the end of it, all three of them were laughing so hard they couldn’t breathe.
At last, the day was done. The boxes and bags were filled one by one, making a mountain of perfect truffles and a pile of drizzled, topped, and decorated chocolates. They cleaned up the mess, and finally they could enjoy their spoils. “Here, take your share,” Nobara said. “Thanks for helping us figure that out.”
Yuuji beamed. “Glad I could help. Wow, there’s so much here!”
Maki shrugged. “You can give it out, if you don’t want to eat it. I doubt anyone will say anything about you sharing chocolate on Valentine’s Day if it means free sweets. Unless it’s Gojo-sensei, he’ll probably tease you. And eat all your chocolate when you’re not looking.”
Yuuji considered it, and he smiled. “Great idea. I’m going to go find Fushiguro!” The girls waved goodbye as he gathered up his designated bags of chocolate and headed to Megumi’s room.
He rapped on the door. “Fushiguro! Oi, open up, I’ve got something for you!”
The door opened. Megumi looked like he’d been working out not long ago, a towel around his neck and sweat still dewed up on his temples. “What do you need?”
“We were making chocolate and had some extra, so I wanted to share with you!” Yuuji offered one of the bags of truffles and decorated chocolates.
Megumi looked at it, first confused, then startled, then back to confused, this time with a fierce streak of red coloring his cheeks. “Valentine’s Day isn’t until tomorrow, right? And uh… isn’t it usually girls giving chocolate?”
Yuuji rubbed the back of his head, feeling a bit sheepish. “Yeah, I know it’s a little weird, but I figured you wouldn’t mind. Unless you want me to offload them on Inumaki and Panda-”
“No- I mean, it’s fine. I’ll take them!” Megumi said quickly. “Uh, it’s just, I kind of stink right now. I’ll go take a shower and after that we could… maybe watch a movie and eat some of these?”
Yuuji grinned. “Yeah, that would be awesome! I’ll go raid the movie stash.” Megumi smiled for a moment, before he suddenly excused himself. Yuuji jogged off with a wave. Megumi headed for the showers with a pep in his step Yuuji hadn’t ever seen before.
A quiet part of him was suddenly extremely glad to have stumbled into the kitchen this morning. The day would have been good enough, simply to have spent it cooking with Nobara and Maki. More than that, though, seeing a rare, genuine Megumi smile was the kind of gift that was worth a thousand chocolates.
Yuuji left a pair of bags on the table, writing a note saying they were for Gojo-sensei and Nanamin, then hurried back to the dorms with a pair of movies in hand. He knocked on the door again. Megumi was already dressed in comfortable pajamas, his hair wet and flat to his skull. He let Yuuji in while he toweled off his head.
“You can make yourself comfortable, if you want,” Megumi said. He wasn’t looking directly at Yuuji, especially not as Yuuji left the remaining chocolate in a pile on the table.
“I grabbed a few I thought you might like!” Yuuji said, showing off the films. Megumi fumbled through turning them on, and they settled in together to watch.
The movie was great, just as good as Yuuji remembered the first time he saw it. But beside him on the bed, as they huddled in front of Megumi’s laptop, he could help but notice Megumi couldn’t stop fidgeting. “Something wrong?”
“Nothing, don’t worry about it,” Megumi said quickly. “It’s nothing.” He reached for a piece of chocolate quickly, stuffing it in his mouth. Megumi looked pleasantly surprised shocked as he bit into the truffle. “This is actually really good!”
“Thanks! I’m really glad they turned out well. Take as many as you want,” Yuuji said, handing him more. It made him happy to see Megumi eating them, leaving a warmth in his chest he couldn’t quite describe.
Their shoulders brushed, and Megumi’s breath spiked. He exhaled slowly, almost a little shaky. “Itadori?” Megumi said. He hesitated. “Do you- never mind.”
Yuuji cocked his head. “What’s wrong?” He saw Megumi’s hand curl into a fist, uncurl, and then curl tight again, little involuntarily twitches. He smoothed his hand over it, and Megumi jerked. “Hey, it’s okay, you can tell me.”
Megumi sighed. “I’m being an idiot right now. Forget it.”
“Is it about the chocolate?” Yuuji asked. He sat up. “Am I making things too weird? I know it’s usually girls giving out chocolate, but I figured you wouldn’t mind-”
Megumi huffed. “It’s not that! I don’t care about- well, if you’re a girl or not. You’re not the one making it weird.” He scrubbed his face with his hands. “I am.”
“I don’t think you are,” Yuuji said. “I’m just worried about you. I wasn’t trying to make this a stressful thing for you, and you look really tense right now. I just wanted to do something fun. If you’d rather spar or something-”
Megumi had a wild look in his eyes for a split second, and then he grumbled. He didn’t sound angry, just desperate as he said, “That would not be helpful right now. Fine... I’ll just come right out with it, then. I know you made chocolate today with Kugisaki and Zenin, and then you came here, and the first thing you do is ask to share it with me, and I just…”
He paused, and Yuuji waited, watching carefully. It was as though Megumi was searching for the right words.
“This is going to sound ridiculous. Ugh, there’s no other way to say this, I think. When you taught me how to make those meatballs a while back, I couldn’t help but think about how you put so much of yourself into everything. Fighting, cooking, everything. And then you show up, with chocolate in hand, and you’re smiling at me, and I just…”
Megumi looked like all the energy had been sucked out of him as he lowered his head, hiding a grimace.
“I really admire you. More than I think I can ever really express. But there are times when I think ‘admire’ isn’t really a strong enough word for the way I feel. There’s this feeling where my chest feels tight when I look at you, and the way you smile at me, it makes me feel like… I don’t know. Like I suddenly can’t breathe. But I know it’s not fair to you, and I don’t want to make things weirder than they already are for us, and you’re into people like Jennifer Lawrence anyway. We have to deal with so much all the time, and we can’t afford to be distracted by things like this.” Megumi groaned. “Just forget I said anything.”
Yuuji blinked. “I didn’t realize…” Yuuji blushed bright red. “Wait. Do you… have a crush on me?” he realized, slowly dawning on him. He could see the streak of red on Megumi’s cheeks, the way Megumi refused to look him in the eye.
“I said forget-”
“I don’t mind,” Yuuji said. Megumi broke off, looking confused. “I mean, yeah, I like girls like Jennifer Lawrence. She’s super hot. But you know, you are, too, Fushiguro,” Yuuji confessed. He couldn’t help but laugh. “I guess I never really thought about it, but when you say it like that…”
“Itadori, you don’t have to do this,” Megumi said, burying his face in his hands. He looked like he wanted to drown himself in the puddle of his bedsheets. “Really.”
“Do what?” Yuuji said.
“Act like you’re interested. Or that you’re not… annoyed or disgusted with me for pushing this on you. You don’t have to pretend for my sake.”
Yuuji frowned. He butted his shoulder up against Megumi, pouting. “Oi, I’m not pretending. I’m being serious. I like you, too, dummy. My first thought after making chocolate was, ‘I definitely want to share them with Fushiguro’. Thinking a celebrity is hot and liking your friend are… well, really different,” Yuuji said, looking away. His face was burning a bit. “You’re also one of the few people who still treat me like ‘Yuuji’, even though I’ve got Sukuna inside me. That means something to me.”
“You’re not Sukuna,” Megumi scoffed. He hesitated, and then he dropped some of the tension from his shoulders. With a slow, almost nervous motion, as though trying not to spook away some animal in the forest, he leaned his shoulder against Yuuji’s. Yuuji let him.
Warmth suffused his chest as Megumi sighed, putting just a little more weight there.
“You’re sure you don’t mind?” Megumi said. Yuuji leaned his head against Megumi’s. His heart fluttered in his chest as he relaxed into this new position, so much more comfortable than the one from before. He couldn’t help but smile when he heard Megumi sigh happily.
“I promise,” Yuuji murmured. He reached for Megumi’s hand, and he held it tight.