Work Text:
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love is all you knead
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Itadori Yuuji is not a stress baker.
“Are these brownies?” Gojo-sensei says, snooping under the tablecloth Itadori had hastily thrown over his latest batch of shame. He’s wearing sweatpants, a Hello Kitty blindfold, and no shirt.
“No,” Itadori says, grabbing the still-cooling tray out from under Gojo-sensei’s hands. Then he drops it, because the still-cooling part basically translates to still-hot.
Gojo-sensei watches as the cake sheet of brownie breaks into pieces and is contaminated by the floor. Then he starts messing around with the kitchen cupboards.
“Cookies!” he says with apparent glee. Itadori lunges forward to slam the door shut, but it’s too late, and Gojo-sensei has a mouth full of forbidden chocolate before he can do anything about it.
Gojo-sensei is not allowed in the kitchen. That was one of the first things that Fushiguro had impressed upon a still-very-confused Itadori, whose new goal in life was now apparently to die. Gojo-sensei could not cook. Gojo-sensei could not cook very spectacularly.
“If you see him near the kitchen,” Fushiguro says, with a grimness Itadori thought better reserved for special-grade cursed objects, “Come and get me.”
It’s been ten minutes since Gojo-sensei had moseyed his way in, and Itadori has yet to get Fushiguro.
Gojo-sensei is taking blatant advantage of Itadori’s moment of weakness. The cookies are gone within the span of a minute. He goes over to the fridge and pokes his nose inside to stare at the rows of pudding.
“Itadori,” Gojo-sensei says, pulling out a pudding cup and grabbing a spoon. “Are you okay?”
Itadori stares at him.
“Now, I’m sure you feel a little uncomfortable talking about personal things with me,” Gojo-sensei continues. He takes a bite of pudding, makes a face, and then takes another bite. Itadori doesn’t know what to do with that. “I am, after all, your beloved teacher, and it’s only natural –”
“I have a crush on Fushiguro,” Itadori says, and then tries to drown himself in cake batter.
“Do you,” Gojo-sensei says. He’s finished the pudding cup, and has gone onto picking pieces of brownie off the ground and staring intently at the differently-sized pieces.
“What should I do about it?” Itadori says. He’s desperate. He’s desperate, he’s been up since 2AM and he’s running out of eggs. There are only so many things he can bake over the course of a morning, and he’s apparently reaching his limit. Also, the freezer is full, and he doesn’t know how he’s going to hide the pavlova from Nobara tomorrow. Maybe it’s a good thing Gojo-sensei apparently likes to gorge himself on sweets.
Gojo-sensei looks far too delighted about this turn of events for Itadori’s liking. He points his spoon at Itadori’s chest and says, “I knew it! Masamichi owes me 50000 yen!”
“What?” Itadori screeches, reaching forward to hit Gojo-sensei. Gojo-sensei just bounces back – almost absently, too lost in his apparent glee to notice Itadori’s newfound rage.
“I told him, I told him, but would he listen to me? He was like, Megumi is too repressed to be a normal teenager for once, Gojo-sama, and, Yuuji is too smart to have a crush on that dour-faced –”
“Hey!” Itadori says, face beet red. He’s given up on killing Gojo-sensei and is now back to attacking the cake mix. He’s already broken three bowls. He hopes he doesn’t break this one. They don’t have any more. “Fushiguro isn’t –!”
“Yes, yes, you have an insane crush on my emo student,” Gojo-sensei says with a dismissive wave of his hand. “You’re slightly biased. I’ve raised that brat.”
“Don’t call him a brat,” Itadori says, but sulkily. He gives his cake batter another violent stir.
Gojo-sensei reaches over to pat Itadori’s sticky hair. Then he pulls back with a slight grimace, wiping his now batter-covered fingers on the back of Itadori’s shirt. Itadori is too tired and stressed to protest.
“I’m so glad you’ve come to me about this,” Gojo-sensei says grandly. It would be more impressive if he wasn’t still trying to use Itadori as a tablecloth. “I am known far and wide as a great lover of romance –”
Itadori has so many regrets. There’s desperation, and then there’s stupidity. He apparently falls into the latter category.
“Let this teacher teach you a thing about love,” Gojo-sensei says. He unceremoniously takes Itadori’s bowl of batter away from him and shoves him into a seat next to the kitchen table.
“I don’t think –” Itadori starts to say, when Gojo-sensei starts shovelling the uncooked batter into his mouth like soup, but Gojo-sensei doesn’t stop talking.
“The first thing you need to know about my cute Megumi is that he’s very shy, but he likes grand gestures.”
Itadori squints at Gojo-sensei, whose mouth is now covered in cake batter.
“That sounds like a lie,” he says, slowly.
Gojo-sensei gives him a look of profound offence. “Who do you think knows Megumi better, hmm? You, who have known him a total of three months, or me. Who helped to raise the brat.”
“….you,” Itadori says, unwillingly.
Gojo-sensei’s smile is fixed back into place within the second.
“Excellent! Now – you should be taking notes.”
Itadori looks around at the kitchen. It hadn’t been in too bad a shape before Gojo-sensei had come inside, but the man seemed to just generate mess by existing. Random cupboards have just been flung open, the cutlery drawer is a disaster that is spilling over onto the counter, and three empty cups of pudding have mysteriously made their way to the floor.
“I don’t have a pen,” he says.
Gojo-sensei very generously gives him a few minutes to look for one.
When Itadori has gotten back into his chair and Gojo-sensei has stopped shovelling cake batter into his mouth, he hops lightly up onto the counter and begins to narrate as though to a large audience.
“Megumi,” he says, posing. “Dreams of being a damsel in distress – he wants someone who will sweep him off his feet and spoil him rotten!”
Itadori mentally shrugs and writes that down. Gojo-sensei looks pleased.
“When you ask him out –”
“Wait,” Itadori says. “Wait, why am I going to ask him out?”
“Because I have ten thousand yen on it,” Gojo-sensei says impatiently. “Anyway –”
The fridge starts beeping. Itadori gets up to close it properly.
“I’m not going to ask him out,” Itadori says, shoulders hunched over the fridge door. “He hates me.”
“No,” Gojo-sensei says, like he’s talking to a particularly slow rock. “He really doesn’t.”
“He won’t look at me!” Itadori says, spinning to glare at him. “After what I – after what happened, how Sukuna just – just. It doesn’t. Sukuna almost killed him. I almost killed him.”
Gojo-sensei waves his hand dismissively through the air. “That kid has been through more near-death experiences than a plague doctor. He’ll get over it.”
“No,” Itadori says. His voice is steadily rising higher and higher. “No, that’s not – you’re not getting it! He won’t look at me! I invite him to study sessions or to train and he just – he freaks out. I don’t know what to do. I can’t ask him out if he’s scared of me. What if he says no? What if he says yes because he’s too frightened to say no? What if –”
“Yuuji,” Gojo-sensei says, hopping down from the counter and reaching over to squish Itadori’s cheeks together. Itadori stops talking. “I’ve seen Megumi drop-kick you into the ground after you insulted his stance. I very much doubt that he’s scared of you.”
“Why not?” Itadori says. His face is still being squished, so it comes out a little awkward, but he needs to talk about this or he’s going to go crazy. “You’re scared of me.”
Gojo-sensei laughs at him for that, releasing Itadori’s now-sore cheeks and taking a step back. He opens the fridge and pulls out some strawberry parfait. He looks it over with interest, and then starts to destroy it with a spoon. Itadori only internally cries a little at that. He had hoped to give it to Fushiguro tomorrow at dinner.
“Oh, Yuuji,” he says. “Sukuna isn’t as frightening as you seem to think he is.”
“Oi,” Sukuna says. Itadori slaps his hand over his cheek. The privacy had been nice while it lasted.
“Good morning,” Gojo-sensei says pleasantly.
“Give me a muffin, Yuuji,” Sukuna says. Itadori weighs the pros and cons in his head, and then reaches over to the muffins cooling on the nearby rack and shoves it whole into his cheek. Sukuna makes a brief, beautiful choking sound, and then he’s biting down on Itadori’s knuckles. Itadori pulls back with a hiss, frowning as blood wells up around his fingers.
“Back to the note-taking,” Gojo-sensei says. He points his parfait-covered spoon at Itadori with enough force that something spatters into Itadori’s eye. “Megumi usually has horrible taste in men, but I’m willing to look past that in light of my bet.”
Itadori tries not to perk up, he really does. “Fushiguro likes guys?”
“Literally no one in this school is heterosexual, Yuuji, keep up,” Gojo-sensei says impatiently.
“What an idiot,” Sukuna agrees, like the world’s most annoying mosquito. Itadori wipes his bloody hands on his already ruined shirt and writes down, I need a better teacher.
“I saw that,” Gojo-sensei says.
“I know,” Itadori says. Sukuna’s mouth appears on the inside of his palm and bites at the pen savagely. Itadori watches as ink splatters across the ruined kitchen countertop and plastic shards rain down onto the ground.
“You’re cleaning that up,” Gojo-sensei tells him.
Itadori knows. He goes to get the broom out from the cupboard, groaning when he sees the time stamped bright and red on the fridge’s electric clock. He has barely fifteen minutes before Fushiguro’s internal clock starts ringing Itadori’s funeral dirge. He very much doubts that Gojo-sensei is going to help him out of this mess – in fact, Itadori is quite sure that if he even bothers to ask, Gojo-sensei is going to make the situation so much worse.
Over the years, Itadori has gotten used to cleaning up after his definitely-not-stress-fuelled baking escapades so as to leave no trace. His grandfather would always give him these looks after waking up after a long night’s rest to find cake batter on the ceiling, or half-melted butter coating the kitchen counter. Itadori still doesn’t know if it was because of the mess, or because of the wild-eyed sleeplessness that had haunted them both in the weeks before his grandfather had been put into care.
Don’t end up like me, his grandfather said.
A good death. That’s all Itadori wants.
His fingers itch for the flour.
“Are you going to make pancakes?” Nobara says, leaning over his shoulder to stare at the sponge in his hand with apparent fascination.
Itadori doesn’t scream. Absolutely not. Stop laughing, Gojo-sensei.
“No,” he says. He needs to get this cleaned up before anyone else wakes up.
Nobara points at Gojo-sensei. “You’re not allowed in here.”
Gojo-sensei pokes out his tongue at her. It’s very mature.
“I want pancakes,” Nobara says. “With maple syrup.”
“We don’t have maple syrup,” Itadori says.
“I want strawberry jam then,” Nobara says.
“I’m not making you pancakes.”
Nobara points her finger in his face. Sukuna tries to bite it. “This is why you’ll never get a boyfriend,” she says, when her appendage is safely out of biting range.
“Because I won’t make you pancakes?” Itadori asks, slightly bewildered. “Or because of the evil psychopath in my body?”
“The first one,” Nobara says. “I’m pretty sure the second part of that turns Fushiguro on.”
Itadori stares at her.
A chill seems to emanate from the kitchen door as it is very slowly, very carefully opened. Fushiguro looks well-rested (as well rested as his naturally-occurring dark eyebags and resting bitch-face will let him look, at least), uniform on, hair askew. Even Nobara is dressed casually this early in the morning, but not Fushiguro. Who looks. Well.
“Good morning,” Itadori yelps. Like a dog. Sukuna is laughing at him.
Fushiguro stares at him, and then at Nobara (who at least has the presence of mind to keep her amused look to herself), and then – the most damning evidence of all – to Gojo-sensei. Gojo-sensei, who is sitting on a bar stool cool as you please, digging into one of Itadori’s numerous pastries with apparent gusto. Itadori really wants to punch him.
“And what,” Fushiguro says, very calmly. So calmly. Just. The calmest thing Itadori has ever seen. “Am I turned on by?”
Itadori kind of wants to die. Is this a good death? It doesn’t really matter – at this point, he’ll take it.
Sukuna has no such objections. He laughs, too loud, and leers at Fushiguro from Itadori’s cheek. As much as a disembodied mouth can leer, anyway. Itadori is getting second-hand embarrassment just thinking about it.
“By me,” Sukuna says, tongue dragging across his lips suggestively.
Fushiguro has a suspiciously blank look on his face. He walks forward, and Itadori instinctively cowers a little. Sukuna is still laughing, the bastard.
Fushiguro doesn’t stop at Itadori, though. He completely bypasses him. And Nobara, who is starting to look slightly alarmed at how well Fushiguro is behaving.
He gets to Gojo-sensei.
“Good morning, my cute little apprentice,” Gojo-sensei says, popping one of the last of the sheet brownies into his mouth.
Fushiguro takes Gojo-sensei’s hand in his own, staring up into Gojo-sensei’s Hello Kitty blindfold like it’s the void itself.
“If you ever,” he says. “Come into this kitchen again, I will make it my personal mission to make sure every meal you eat will be too salty.”
Gojo-sensei recoils a little.
But Fushiguro isn’t done. No, Fushiguro looks like he’s just getting started.
“And then,” he says. He’s smiling, faintly. Sukuna stops laughing. “I will replace all the coffee in this hellhole with decaf. And maybe you can handle that. You can roll with a lot of punches. But do you really want to deal with all the students in this school on caffeine withdrawal?”
Then he goes in for the killing blow. He lowers his voice low, and soft, and threatening.
“Maki can have up to seven cups of coffee a day.”
Itadori has never seen Gojo-sensei move so fast in his life.
“Well, then,” Fushiguro says brightly. Itadori and Nobara inch backwards. “Let’s go over the ground rules again for kitchen use.”
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