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Bettel has been permanently banned from kitchen duty (forever, Magni would say, eyeing him every time he catches him taking a step through the kitchen doorway) but that doesn’t stop him from wandering in.
He gets his cravings like everyone else does, and it’s unfair to ban him from a cheeky little kitchen run (and man, he’s got to stop hanging out with Axel so much, the Northern Elysium is spreading to him now, he already gets teased enough by the guy, fucking christ), especially when he needs some bread in his system to survive the night.
And believe him when he says Guild TEMPUS has a shit-load of bread to spare.
He picks out something reasonably less stale than the others, hoping that someone will take stock of this bread soon and throw out the nasty ones (it’s supposedly Shinri’s job but that man has been on expeditions day-and-night and Bettel honestly doesn’t know how the rest of them even live without him).
Then, just in case his choice of bread betrays him, he picks out two more rolls and gathers them in his arms.
There’s a Magmite in the bread bin that he shuts the lid on – if that little guy was on an errand for Magni, then good fucking luck. Magni can get his own bread.
As he’s trying not to let his boots clop too hard on the kitchen floor (because it’s almost midnight and if he wakes anyone up, they are coming for him, and he does not want to fake his death in the kitchen because the floor is disgusting here and Vesper’s out with a cold so he can’t get him to help him stage a murder and Vesper is the only one that would do it without accidentally killing him on purpose), he suddenly realizes he’s not alone.
Hakka’s sharp eyes catch him from across the counter.
“Whatever you’ve got, I hope it’s not going in the microwave. It’d be pretty sad if you were banned from that, too.”
“I can’t fuck up microwave snacks,” Bettel huffs.
He’d usually prickle harder at the accusation but it’s late and he’s tired and he has to get up early tomorrow because he’s booked in with Flayon for something he doesn’t remember. Flayon will tell him in the morning if neither of them sleep in. Shinri will tell him in the morning if they do sleep in.
“But don’t worry,” the reassurance is less for Hakka, and more for himself. “It’s just bread.”
“Mm, bread, nice, nice,” Hakka nods, seeming satisfied with the answer, lips curling into a smile. His ponytail bounces with the movement, a graceful ebb and flow that Bettel The Fumbling Fool Jester can only hope to achieve one day. “Can I have some?”
“Yeah, sure. Hang on,” Bettel inches closer, nose wrinkling at the sudden smell that wafts into the air. It’s chemical and unappetizing, and surely Hakka isn’t drinking that icky purple stuff and oh, that’s not a straw (curse his bad eyesight), that’s a tiny little paintbrush, so he’s just gotta ask, “Are you painting your nails?”
Hakka blinks, nail brush suspended in the air. His free hand does a dance on the kitchen counter. “Well, yeah. Did you think these nails were natural?”
“I thought they were–” It sounds stupid now that he thinks about it, but Bettel’s never been good at keeping his words out of his mouth. It’s not every day he meets people with long, sharp purple nails that might just have some resemblance to, well, “–claws.”
There’s a beat as Hakka processes the words, and then he laughs. “Really? What kind of creature do you think I am?”
“I mean,” Bettel starts his sentence with no idea how to end it. “Bird.”
Hakka laughs again, with a shrug that tells him he’s not entirely wrong, and a messy, dripping purple hand waving him over to sit at the stool beside him.
“You’re getting nail polish everywhere.” Bettel says, taking a mouthful of his roll. “I don’t want to sit there.”
“You don’t know how to wipe your ass? Just sit down.” Hakka chortles, pulling his hand back to the counter.
Bettel thinks he’s being funny but he (primly and reasonably) doesn’t want to get anything purple and sticky on his shorts (it’s happened before, no thanks to Magni fucking Dezmond and his fucking Magmites), so he takes the seat on the other side of his guildmate.
“I’ve never seen you paint your nails before.” He mutters conversationally and because he doesn’t want to suffer the silence of just staring at Hakka, like he’s some kind of spectacle to behold while eating bread. “I didn’t want to assume they were fake.”
“They’re not fake, either.” Hakka swipes the brush along his pinky nail, checking it for coverage. All Bettel can see is that it’s long and sharp and shiny. “They’re my actual nails, they’re just purple.”
“They’re pretty long.”
“I take care of them.” He finishes the nail coat and blows gently on his nails, and Bettel feels awkward, as if he’s interrupted something possibly intimate and possibly very personal. Hakka must sense his unease, because he shoots him a raised eyebrow. “Weren’t you gonna give me some bread?”
“Can you, uh, eat?” Bettel asks, mid-chew, gesturing to the counter. “Your hands are busy.”
“Throw it to me like I’m a seagull. Come on.” He makes a smacking noise with his lips. “You can do it. It’s easy, Bettsy, throw it to me.”
That pulls a snort out of Bettel, but he pinches the smallest corner off his roll and tosses it into Hakka’s open mouth.
Or, at least, he tries to. It hits the exorcist in the nose and falls with a remarkable precision straight into his nail polish bottle.
“Sick rebound,” Hakka says, sounding genuinely impressed.
“Haha. Yeah, I meant to do that.” Bettel lies.
They both look at it and then look back at each other.
Unable to resist cracking a lopsided smile, Bettel asks, “Is it weird that this isn’t the first time I’ve tried to feed you like you’re a bird in the park?”
“Yeah, it’s a little weird.” Hakka states matter-of-factly, but the cheer and mirth in his voice tells Bettel he’s not trying to insult him. “Anyway, you missed. Try again.”
“You’re just using me now.” Bettel stuffs more of his roll into his own cheeks, puffing up as he pretends to sulk. “I’m not your bread dispenser.”
“You haven’t even given me a single piece. You said you’d share.”
He heaves a great, dramatic sigh. “Fine. Open your fucking mouth.”
Hakka does, with an ease that’s almost endearing – and he gets it, he gets why people bully Hakka because he’ll fall for just about anything – and because Bettel is also the kind of person who can’t resist the urge to make this moment much less endearing, he throws the entire roll at his head.
“Hey!” Hakka squawks as it smacks him in the face. “What did I do to you!?”
Bettel opens his mouth to retort but Hakka is faster, shoving him off his chair. Tragically, he stumbles, and wonders if he can yell loud enough to convincingly frame Hakka for his murder.
It’s a short-lived thought though, as Hakka yelps, leaping back to catch his nail polish bottle before it hits the floor.
They both exhale in relief.
That’s a mess nobody wants to explain to Shinri, when Altare inevitably makes him clean the kitchen after Magni inevitably shirks cleaning duties again.
“You ever wonder where the bread came from?”
“The oven?” Bettel asks. He begrudgingly crawls back onto the stool. He’s tired but he doesn’t feel sleepy, but boy, oh boy, is he going to feel the consequences of his actions in the morning.
Hakka snickers, his shoulders shaking with quiet laughter. “And what comes before the oven?”
“Um,” Bettel searches his brain for an answer that won’t come. “Flour.”
“Dough, yes, and lots of flour,” Hakka’s beaming now, and Bettel can see his feet kicking from under the table. “I baked the bread, idiot.”
“Oh, you did?”
“Uh huh. We have so much because Leader forgot to tell me to stop. Shinri was watching but he passed out on the couch and I just kept baking bread all night, I didn’t even stop to pee or anything. I just kept baking bread. I was in the zone, man.”
Bettel just stares at him in disbelief.
“You’re the reason why we have so much bread.”
It’s not a question. The pieces fall together far too easily – Bettel remembers Altare shouting something about bread production, he remembers the way the guild hall smelled like a fresh bakery for a week, he remembers walking in on Hakka and Shinri coated head to toe in flour and smartly asking if they had rolled in another kind of white powder. Shinri had chased him with a broom for that.
Hakka’s eyes smile, and he grins in that brash, unhesitant way he always does. “You like it?”
“It’s crusty.” Bettel says cleverly.
“Good.” Hakka replies. “Now, feed me again. Properly.”
“Just wait for your nails to dry. Does it take that long?”
Something unreadable flits across Hakka’s face, but when Bettel blinks, it’s gone.
“Nah, but I’m trying to make both sides match and it’s hard.” He wiggles the fingers of his right hand.
“Because one of your hands is different?”
It might be insensitive, Bettel realizes much later, to point out that one of Hakka’s hands is damaged, but Hakka doesn’t seem to mind. At the same point much later, Hakka would tell him that it’s better that he was blunt and didn’t try and talk his way around it. He didn’t need anyone’s pity, much less the pity of a fool.
Hakka smiles. “Don’t you know asymmetry is in fashion these days? Look at your hair, pretty boy.”
Bettel preens but tries to play it off. He can’t act like he actually wants to be complimented; that would mean no end to his torment (and anything that gets into Hakka’s loud mouth will surely spread around the guild and then everyone will know that he actually likes being complimented and the horrors would be inescapable).
He runs a gloved hand through his hair. “Oh, no, this was a mistake.”
“A happy accident!” Hakka corrects.
Amused, Bettel rolls his eyes. “You’re starting to sound like Flayon.”
“Yeah, I love Flayon.”
“I know you do.”
“You’re supposed to tell me Flayon loves me too.”
Bettel snorts. “No way. I hear enough of that from him already.”
“I don’t. Tell him he needs to tell me he loves me next time you see him.”
“I won’t do that.”
“Fine then.”
In playful retaliation, Hakka leans over and takes a huge bite out of the roll in his hand.
“Here, if you want it so bad.” Bettel shoves the rest of it into his guildmate’s mouth like he’s feeding a carrot to a horse. Except he’s never done that before so he’s not even sure that makes sense. Whatever. The bread is in his mouth and the chirpy exorcist has finally shut up enough for him to take his next move.
It’s been on his mind, this thought that nagged at his stupid little brain, telling him there’s a reason why Hakka was painting his nails alone in the middle of the night in a communal room (in a guild where nobody has a sensible sleep schedule and anyone could have walked in, and if he wanted the privacy, he might as well have done this all in his own room so why here, why this, and why had he looked so happy to see him) – the thought that maybe, just maybe, he had wanted to be found.
(And if he had wanted to be found, then why?)
He plucks the nail polish bottle from Hakka’s hands, and resigns himself to endless teasing when the other inevitably swallows or chokes on the bread, whichever comes first. Hakka’s voice is too muffled for him to make out what he’s saying.
Then he steels himself, ironically, by swirling the brush in the bottle and picking out the piece of bread that fell in earlier. He doesn’t look at Hakka's face, but he can tell the exorcist catches on the moment he stops struggling and lets Bettel take his unpainted hand.
Bettel pretends not to notice the way those eyes bore into him.
“Now stop dying and let me help.”