Work Text:
The fried rice sizzles as Barnaby cooks it; steam floats through the air, making the room noticeably opaque. Staring into the wok now, he feels some relief- he had had a rough start with the dish, but the further along he comes with it, the nicer it looks. From the other room, he can hear Kotetsu let out a small groan in impatience.
“Why can’t I come and see what you’re making,” he yells out. “It smells good. Plus, I thought I’d get to see you a bit coming over, but you’ve just been hidden across that wall.” “It’s a surprise,” Barnaby calls out. “I’m almost done anyway. Be a bit more patient and I’ll be joining you soon.”
“You ask too much of me,” Kotetsu shouts back, letting out an overdramatic huff.
Barnaby smirks to himself at the sound. It doesn’t take much longer for him to finish it up, carefully splitting the meal onto two separate plates. He crosses the threshold onto the other side of his apartment, and looks through it- they lock onto Kotetsu, sitting on the opposite end of the room. He’s sat on the floor leaned against the windows, staring out absent-mindedly at the ground below.
“I’ve finished making lunch,” Barnaby says as he joins Kotetsu by the window. He lifts the plates up slightly, in a shy, presentatory manner. Kotetsu's eyes light up as he sees what the food is.
“I thought it was fried rice! I could recognize its smell even from here,” Kotetsu says as he takes his plate. He looks eagerly at it before he begins.
“I’m still getting the hang of making it, so tell me what you think,” Barnaby replies. He sits across from Kotetsu, leaning casually against the window as he settles down. “But since it’s the anniversary of your top surgery, I thought this would be a fitting dish to celebrate with.”
Kotetsu manages to scarf down two forkfuls of the dish before Barnaby finishes his sentence, looking up from the plate as he does.
“It’s tasty,” he says through a mouthful of food, “Thank you.”
The two sit in silence for a bit as they eat. Light streams through the windows as Barnaby glances over at Kotetsu- the sunbeams caught in his eyes make them look like polished geodes. The warmth he always finds in them is only intensified by the brightness. Eating a bit of the food himself, he feels slightly surprised at its quality. He’d been practicing making the dish for some time now, but had still felt unsure over how good he was at cooking it. After a few bits, his eyes wander back towards Kotetsu. His face is scrunched in the way of whenever he’s thinking particularly hard- his eyebrows stitched together, chin jut out a bit to the side, nose rumpled up, the occasional bite at his lip. He at one point accidentally stabs his thigh with his fork when he misses his plate.
“Thinking about something?”
“Just reflecting, I guess,” Kotetsu replies. “It’s a bit bizarre to me to think back before I had top surgery- how long ago it was, and how much it changed things. It was quite, if I do say so myself-” a wicked grin stretches across his face as he pauses momentarily- “a weight off my chest.”
Kotetsu lets out a howl of laughter at his own joke, choking slightly on a bit of fried rice still in his mouth- all Barnaby can manage in return is to groan out of mild disgust at how bad the pun is.
“Your humor is going to be the death of me one of these days,” Barnaby sighs. “I’m sure that that joke took a good year off my life.”
“Pah, please! You would be lost without my wit.”
Both of them giggle softly as they settle back against the window. A few moments of silence pass before Kotetsu speaks again.
“I remember whenever I found out what the date would be. Somehow, knowing when it was going to come made waiting even worse. It was something that I had been wanting for so long, and after fighting for even the chance to get it, there was just that final wait.” He sets his emptied plate down besides him as he says this last part. Laughing a little, Kotetsu continues, “I remember the night before I struggled to go to sleep. I ended up staring at the clock most of the night. I almost felt as giddy as when Kaede was born.”
“What was it like when the surgery was actually done?”
“It wasn’t what I expected.” Kotetsu scratches his beard slightly as he searches for the right words. “I’d seen so many videos of people crying when they first saw their chest. For me, I ended up passing out when they took off my surgical binder for the first time. There was a lot of swelling, and I wasn’t sure what my chest would really look like fully healed. The change was jarring, and things felt different for a bit- I questioned if this was going to help my dysphoria as much as I thought it would.
“But it did, so much. It wildly improved my life. That moment of seeing my chest for the first time didn’t capture that feeling of amazement I had seen from others, but it had genuinely pushed things into a better direction for me. As time went on, the more comfortable I felt, and the happier I got. It was more like growing into a great feeling of joy instead of feeling it in the moment. My scars have healed pretty well, though you can still see them pretty easily.”
“Does it bother you that they’re still visible?”
Kotetsu shakes his head at this. “Quite the opposite. I feel pride when I see them- they remind me of how far I’ve come, and how hard I had to fight to get surgery. They’re markers to show how much I’ve grown into myself. That, and they make me look cooler.”
At this, Barnaby laughs a little.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean that to be rude,” Barnaby says quickly, “It’s just that “it makes me look cool” is a very fitting reason for you.”
“And I mean it too,” Kotetsu huffs, a fake haughty tone oozing from his voice. “But look- I am quite happy with them.”
He fumbles slightly with the first button of his shirt, but easily enough unbuttons the whole thing. The edges of his scars poke past the unbuttoned clothing, but as Kotetsu moves the shirt aside, they come clearly into view- under his chest are two distinct, pink scars. Internally, Barnaby agrees that they do actually look cool.
“I remember when I was recovering, I was so frustrated with how long I had to rest,” Kotetsu says, chuckling a little as he does. “I wanted to get back into the hero work pretty much immediately, but I was under strict doctors orders. It was so confidence-boosting when I reentered under my new hero title, and how accepting everyone was. It’s funny looking back on it all now, how this wasn’t always how things were. I’m glad I’ve been able to get so far into my transition as I have. Top surgery was life-altering in so many ways; there were the big changes I expected, but there were so many small, day-to-day things that changed too.”
“I’m happy for you,” Barnaby says earnestly. “Being able to grow into yourself is an amazing thing.”
“Indeed,” Kotetsu says, leaning back against the window.
Barnaby stands, taking Kotetsu’s plate along with his own. He stoops down, pulling Kotetsu’s head close to kiss his forehead. When he moves away, Kotetsu gives a soft smile, the corner of his eyes crinkling. As he goes to clean the dishes, Barnaby thinks over what next to do for the day.