Work Text:
You feel awful. Better than last night, but still- awful.
You’re laid out on the pristine white sectional in the living room, legs draped over Suguru’s lap and the comforting warmth of your heating pad pressed to your stomach. His eyes are closed as he leans back against the cushions, dark hair framing his drawn and pale face. Both of you still dressed in mismatched loungewear despite the fact it’s almost noon.
He had returned early yesterday evening after a days long assignment to deal with a vengeful cursed spirit relatively unscathed but grimacing and restless. Alternating between pacing the length of the apartment and bracing himself against the side of the bathroom sink with his head bowed, breathing deeply.
Over the years he’s become more discerning with the curses he ingests and his tolerance has built, but the higher their grade and the uglier their origin the harder they are on his system.
Back in your days as students he tried to hide it. But once he started being sent on more and more missions, his drop in weight and the burst capillaries around the delicate skin of his eyes were impossible to ignore. You started a routine of bringing steaming bowls of rice porridge and cups of gingery broth and apple slices with their peels carefully shaped like rabbit ears to his dorm room in the mornings afterwards. Totally uncaring of how pushy you were being in the single-minded way you’ve always tried to take care of people around you.
“You’re worse than my grandmother, I swear,” he’d huff.
It turned out to be for the best.
There were a lot of things that were eating away at Suguru. A lot of things he needed to talk to someone about besides how sick he kept getting. But when he had described the horrible feeling of swallowing down curses and their putrid taste to you, the way it made his skin crawl and his gut roil- well, it was almost enough to turn your stomach too.
Your own issues are less predictable but stress seems to play the biggest role. The twinges start in the afternoon high in your abdomen and turn into sharp stabbing by the time night falls. Your belly transformed into half hornets’ nest, half foundry with a constant white hot pain that burns straight through to your back.
It leaves you unable to do much more except lay on your heating pad. Face down and face up and face down again, re-clicking the buttons so it won’t shut itself off. Even the relief of sleep is impossible at the height of it and both Gojo and Suguru have stayed up with you through it on many nights. Taking turns rubbing their big hands in slow, gentle circles where it hurts the most while the other dozes off by the flickering light of the television.
It’s rare for your troubles to align, but when they do, Gojo does his best to tend to you both. And last night he flit dutifully between you in the living room and Suguru on the bathroom floor for a few hours, sports drinks and antacid tablets in hand.
Needless to say, neither of you were up for consuming anything else.
(Gojo took the opportunity to indulge in a bowl of ice cream for dinner. How his own stomach never aches, you aren’t sure.)
Once Suguru was showered he found his way to you too, groaning as he flopped down on the wide cushions. His still damp hair soothing and cool where it pressed against your cheek and soaked through your shirt while Gojo settled on the protruding L piece of the sectional to keep an eye on you through the night.
But now, many hours later what the two of you need is to get some food into you. You’re just too tired and weak to make it yourselves.
“Satoru,” you call out weakly. “We need to eat something.”
He appears after a moment, fanning the takeout menus from their drawer in the kitchen open in front of you with all the flair of a stage magician.
“Anything you want- all on me, of course!”
The colorful pictures of rich, glistening meat and various other offerings printed on them does nothing to further stir your fragile appetite and Suguru grimaces as he curls over your legs, elbows on his knees. He looks like he might be sick again.
“Well, I could try to make something,” Gojo offers, tapping his chin with the menus. “Okayu- that’s what you guys always eat when you’re sick.”
“You know there’s a reason you aren’t the cook in this house,” Suguru chuckles, despite the miserable look on his face.
“Sheesh, have a little faith in me!” You see his eyes roll over the frame of his glasses. “It’s just rice and a lot of water! How hard can it be?”
Well, he’s not wrong. Rice is the one thing he can reliably make, even if he does complain that the top of the line rice cooker Suguru bought you has too many settings. And you know he’s seen you make okayu for Suguru and yourself before.
“Here-” You hold up your phone, open to a blog with a blurb extolling the benefits of consuming the simple porridge in all states of ill health. “It is easy. Just make it in the donabe on the stove, not in the cooker- it makes it taste better but you’ll have to pay attention to it.”
“Which one’s the donabe again~?”
“Satoru…“ you warn, you know he’s not that helpless.
"Okay, okay.”
Gojo stares at the screen, his dark glasses sliding down the bridge of his nose. Crystalline blue eyes bright and determined as he scans the instructions for proper liquid to rice ratios. But he still takes your phone with him as he strolls off to the kitchen.
Suguru gives you an amused little smile, eyebrows raised as he leans back against the cushions again and you hope you have not made a mistake.
He hadn’t been wrong either. There’s a reason that you are the one who prepares meals for the three of you besides the fact that you love to do it- Gojo is an absolute, undeniable menace in the kitchen.
While Suguru makes an excellent sous-chef when called upon, Gojo behaves more like a hungry dog. Sniffing the air and perpetually underfoot. Sneaking bites when your back is turned and sticking his fingers in everything ‘just to taste’ until Suguru attempts a smack to his hand with a wooden spoon.
“Do we need to put the television on to keep you entertained, Sattchan~?”
“What! It’s not my fault everything smells so good! I’m the luckiest guy in the world, you know, getting to eat your food~ How can you expect me to wait?”
"Just sit at the counter. And ask Suguru if you want something.”
You can never fully resist his compliments about your cooking and Gojo takes full advantage. He’ll just end up sitting on the counter. Far too close to the stove. Inevitably working with Suguru to fluster you so much with their antics that sometimes you have to shoo them both away.
But you don’t exactly blame Gojo for his lack of contribution. He was raised in an environment where his involvement from the meals prepared for him was quite far removed. He doesn’t have childhood memories of helping his parents cook like you do. Of learning how to properly dice vegetables or add the secret little dashes of this and that to make flavors sing.
To this day you’re still a bit surprised how underdeveloped his palate is despite coming from such a wealthy family and you don’t think he fully understands how cooking even works. The necessary layering, the differences in techniques. Especially not the importance of timing- he pretty much burns everything when he tries.
Just rice and a lot of water, you tell yourself as Suguru gently massages your calves and you listen to Gojo puttering around. And you allow yourself to close your eyes for just a little bit longer.
.
“Alright, my sleeping beauties~” Gojo is gently nudging Suguru’s shoulder as your eyes flutter back open. “Lunch is ready!”
You and Suguru shuffle behind him, stretching your stiff limbs and rubbing your eyes as you sit at the kitchen counter for Gojo to present you with your still steaming bowls of okayu.
They’re a bit messy and the portions are uneven but you know he got it right. The porridge is thick and shiny and fragrant with an umeboshi nestled into the center of each one. You realize he’s even wearing your favorite cross-back apron and you can’t help but find it hopelessly endearing.
“I could feed it to you, if you want,” Gojo smiles teasingly, pulling back Suguru’s spoon as he reaches for it.
“If we let you do that we’ll be here all day,” he smirks, resting his face in his hand. “Just one bite.”
Your chest floods with warmth while you watch Gojo blow on a spoonful, his hand cupped carefully beneath it as he leans forward and guides it to Suguru’s lips. It’s almost unbearable to you, how sweet it is. Maybe even worth being up half the night with your own stomach trying to gnaw a hole through itself to see, you think.
Suguru blinks.
“It’s good,” he sighs, looking content and a little relieved as he takes the spoon away from Gojo and goes for a second bite.
Gojo crosses to the other side of the counter, long fingers trailing along it as he goes, to hover over you as you taste it for yourself. Waiting for your reaction.
“I put love in every bite,” he tells you as he rests his chin on your head and loops his arms around you.
“I know, I can taste it,” you smile, leaning into him. And you mean it. You really do. “You did a good job, Satoru- I feel better already.”
Gojo beams at the praise, giving you a tight squeeze as you break a piece of your umeboshi away from the pit with the edge of your spoon. You know that coming from you, it probably means a lot.
“So I’m allowed to help in the kitchen now, right~?”
You hum thoughtfully around the porridge in your mouth. Okayu is easy to make- just rice and a lot of water, after all. But it’s much more than that. It’s time, patience, attention- not to mention the right amount of love put into it.
“Well, if you are you’ll still have to work your way up from dish washer first,” Suguru says, his tone fondly reminiscent. “Just like I did.”