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It's sunset when Hakkai emerges from the house, cutting through the growing quiet of the early summer evening with the gentle swing open of the front door. Normally Gojyo would've been inside with him, idling around uselessly while Hakkai worked whatever magic he put into his cooking, but their A/C had broken the previous night.
Only one of them is enough of a freak to withstand being indoors without the cold air, and it definitely isn't Gojyo; for the past hour and a half, he's been posted up outside with a beer and a pack of cigs, listening to the occasional muffled sounds of Hakkai cooking through the thin walls.
It's been, Gojyo realizes, a pretty lonely hour and a half.
It's hard to think about the fact that, in less than a year, Hakkai has become such a fixed presence in his life that Gojyo actually finds himself getting a little bored and lonely in such a short amount of time. He might actually, in some stupid way, get pretty close to missing Hakkai in these pretty rare moments. It feels pathetic to admit to even in the privacy of his own head, but it's what's happening.
Gojyo snuffs his cigarette out on the house's outer wall as the door shuts behind Hakkai. He keeps it in his fingers for a few seconds, uselessly, before letting it drop to the ground beside him.
Hakkai, when Gojyo looks up at him, is carrying a couple plates of food. He's as impossibly poised as ever, especially compared to the hunched-over crouch Gojyo has found himself in, and the orange light filling the sky does him a lot of favors—though he's a handsome guy at the worst of times, it makes him look almost intense and otherworldly, and Gojyo's uncharacteristic silence reflects that.
Then he bends down to sit next to Gojyo, and the illusion fades; he can see the sweat that's accrued on Hakkai's face from cooking inside their oven of a house glistening in the light, can hear the exertion of heavy breathing. If anything, it makes whatever strange feeling he's drawing out of Gojyo seem way more intense.
Hakkai places one of the dishes in front of Gojyo before crossing his legs and leaning back against the wall, head tilted upwards as he takes a moment to feel the nonexistent breeze, or something—Hakkai gets weird during the summer, Gojyo's noticed. But it's not like he's normal the rest of the time, anyway, so he's just mentally filed that away in the same place he puts all of Hakkai's oddities.
"The sweet potatoes turned out well, I think," Hakkai says, not moving to start eating. Gojyo suddenly remembers to look down at his plate, and, yeah—those sure are the sweet potatoes he'd gotten at the market for a ridiculously steep discount.
He gets along a little too well, Gojyo thinks, with all the vendors selling the freshest produce.
"Yeah," Gojyo says, a little dumbly. "I've never had 'em before. Guess it's your fault if I don't like 'em."
He laughs, then picks up the plate from the ground, inspecting its contents. Aside from the potatoes—which have to be a completely different food than regular potatoes, there's no way these are the same thing—there's rice, and some pork that Hakkai had also gotten for a ridiculously low price because he'd shared a few recipes with the butcher.
"I can only work so many miracles when it comes to taste," Hakkai shoots back, sounding mildly affronted, though Gojyo's pretty sure he's joking. "Don't go blaming your bad taste on me if you don't like them."
Gojyo huffs, and as if to prove a point, takes a quick and not-at-all hesitant bite.
Hakkai must see the way his face screws up at the taste, because he chuckles. It's a sound Gojyo sort of hates hearing, because Hakkai almost always laughs at his expense; it's only bearable because he's never gotten the sense that Hakkai is actually making fun of him.
"I didn't really think you'd enjoy them," he admits, himself having just swallowed a bite with no visible reaction. Hakkai's like that about food—he never likes to tell Gojyo what he prefers, but Gojyo doesn't really needle him about it. "In an ideal world, I'd have gotten yams, but I've heard they don't cultivate well here."
"Hell's a yam?" Gojyo asks, pivoting smoothly to eat the pork on his plate instead of the sweet potatoes. Hakkai reaches over and deftly steals a few slices of the too-sweet vegetable from him, piling his own plate up further.
Gojyo lets it happen.
"A tuber," Hakkai explains. "I had one at university. I'd heard sweet potatoes were similar—in reality, yams aren't nearly as sweet. I thought you might like them."
"Did'ja think these weren't gonna be sweet? It's in the name," Gojyo points out. "It's fine. I'm still gonna eat some. If you even leave any for me."
"I gave you more pork and rice to compensate," he replies, head tilting towards Gojyo's plate. Gojyo glances between their two portions, and—yeah, he does have a bit more of everything else. "It's good you're pushing yourself, though. I know you're not especially fond of sweet things."
He's not. Hakkai saying it like that, though, suddenly makes Gojyo realize how closely he must have been paying attention to notice such a little thing. Gojyo's never once complained about the things Hakkai's made, even when they're things he doesn't like, and he can't help but wonder just how long Hakkai had noticed that pattern.
In fact, he's not really sure anyone's ever bothered to notice those sorts of things about him. There's the bar and all its regulars who remember the drinks he likes, but that's not really comparable, because Gojyo's a paying customer there. Hakkai just knows this stuff because—
—Well, because he's been around Gojyo for long enough to know it.
Gojyo swallows even though he hadn't taken a bite of anything, and turns his eyes back down towards his plate. "Yeah, well. Cheap food is cheap food. You're not gonna hear complaints from me when we got a deal on 'em."
Hakkai hums his acknowledgement and possibly approval. Gojyo looks up at him from his plate again, and he's in the middle of a bite, contentedly eating the food he'd worked so hard to make. It's a little nagging thought he can't avoid, a truth he hadn't voiced, that the price of the food isn't the only factor in his choice to eat it.
It's also that it's hard not to eat something Hakkai's gone and made. Maybe it's because he clearly cares so much about it—he's set up a budget for groceries and everything, making sure never to make the same thing twice in a week. He somehow spends less money on better meals than Gojyo had spent on the bottom-of-the-barrel stuff he'd kept in his fridge before, and even today with the A/C out he's spent a ton of time just preparing things for Gojyo to eat, while Gojyo does nothing but sit and watch.
It's usually the best food he'd ever had. The couple times he hasn't liked it aren't enough for him to feel like not eating it wouldn't be somehow disrespectful to the effort Hakkai is going through, even if it's for his own sake rather than Gojyo's.
Conversation lapses for a short while; Hakkai carries on eating, and Gojyo manages the rest of his sweet potatoes in between heavy and plenty mouthfuls of pork and rice. The sun sets around them, orange fading into purple into dark blue, and it's still too damn hot to want to go back inside. When he's finished, Gojyo puts his plate down haphazardly in almost the same spot he'd dropped his cigarette earlier, and he reaches into his pocket to light up again.
"Rest of it was good," he says, as second nature brings a cigarette between his fingers. He puts the pack back, then fishes around for his lighter. His fancy new secondhand lighter that Hakkai had gotten for him, a few weeks after Banri had gone for good. "You're good at pork."
"I happen to like pork," Hakkai says.
Before Gojyo can light his cigarette, Hakkai moves, reaching bodily over him to retrieve his discarded plate. Gojyo freezes in place, eyes stuck on Hakkai's arm as it reaches further for his burnt-out cig, then grabs his plate almost as an afterthought. As Gojyo watches him retreat, Hakkai offers a close-lipped smile in his direction.
What was that? Gojyo wants to ask. He spends a few more seconds staring instead, as Hakkai stacks their dishes on top of eachother, utensils and cigarette placed on top of both.
It's not even close to the first time Hakkai has done something that's made Gojyo stop in his tracks like that. He's never acknowledged it. Neither of them have, and Gojyo wonders if they ever will. Maybe, he thinks, it's habit left-over from whatever Hakkai used to do for dinner with his sister. That's the most reasonable explanation, at least.
Gojyo flicks his lighter on when he wriggles free of that train of thought, lighting his fourth cig since Hakkai started cooking and second that Hakkai's been around to actually see what he's been doing with the finished ones.
"We'll do jiaozi tomorrow with the leftover pork," Hakkai says. It's not a suggestion.
Gojyo thinks any girl in the world would be lucky to have Hakkai, with his good looks and the magic he works on food. He feels a little lucky himself about the way Hakkai's shoved himself into his life and started deciding all sorts of things, like what food they're going to eat and when. He's a little bit of a freak for it, because no-one else would ever be so obliging about someone like Gojyo, whose participation in cooking and cleaning begins and ends with whatever Hakkai tells him to do.
It wouldn't be so bad, if it were like that. But Hakkai's got issues, and Gojyo's got issues, and that's never going to stop being the case, so he exhales a cloud of smoke and says, "Sounds good to me."