Work Text:
It's perfectly centered.
Jo has made sure of it a thousand times in the span of the fifteen minutes since he's arrived, sat down on the chair, and placed the borrowed plate on the middle of the table. He has his trusted handkerchief too, tucked idly inside the pocket of his white pants, he's brought it out multiple times to scrub around the circumference of the dessert plate, to make sure it's clean and presentable.
Cuisine chefs and their tendency to point out imperfections, Jo wants to guarantee that he doesn't leave anything for his group mate to latch onto and hyper-analyze. First impressions also matter. That's why he arrived twenty minutes early, deliberately chose the table with the best lighting—right next to the floor-to-ceiling window—and snatched one of his successful soufflés from the kitchen before anyone could question him about it.
However, his group mate is ten minutes late, which means Jo has been sitting down in that corner table for approximately thirty minutes, checked and rechecked the position of the plate at least a hundred thousand times, and have started to wonder if he should have brought a second soufflé, just in case this one decided to deflate out of spite.
His finger curls over his knee as he internally fights the idea of reaching out to grab the small folded handkerchief on top of the table to clean the plate once again. He thinks it's overkill at this point and that's coming from someone who makes at least three backup soufflés every time the opportunity calls for it. Just in case. Everything's just in case when it comes to his own decision making.
Just when he's about to dig into the pocket of his pants to double text—his last message left unanswered, a two-worded sentence announcing his arrival at the meetup point—and ask, the sound of the chair in front of him shatters his train of thoughts.
"—sorry, sorry, I know I'm late."
Jo smells him before his eyes take him in: garlic, oil, charcoal, something else Jo can't recognize. His chef jacket is rolled up to his sleeves, where Jo can see tattoos littering his forearms, some better than others. The white of his top stained with something dark near the hem, oil, most probably, or a failed gravy.
Involuntarily, Jo straightens up, hand slipping out of the pocket of his pants empty-handed. His group mate sits down in front of him, running his hand through his flat hair—one that Jo thinks has been kept hidden under his hat for far too long and lets out a breath that sounds like he's been holding it since morning.
"I got held back in the kitchen," he offers an explanation although Jo doesn't necessarily need one, he knows how hectic it can get sometimes.
"'s fine," Jo answers, too could to sound genuine, before adding, "I understand."
"You've been here a while?"
"Not too long," he chooses to lie, doesn't know why it feels like the right thing to do in this circumstance, "nothing to worry about."
"That's good."
Jo doesn't know what he was expecting from his partner when he read his name on the email blast a couple of days ago but the man sitting in front of him isn't it—and yet, somehow, it is.
Up close, he notices the finer details he wasn't able to catch during his sudden arrival: the messily folded up sleeves, the fine nicks along his knuckles, the faint sheen of heat clinging to his skin like he's still standing in front of a burner instead of sitting down at a corner table in a heavily air-conditioned room. Most cuisine students are like him, in a way, used to being in motion, living in spaces that never truly settle.
He finally looks up after a while, sweeping imaginary crumbs off the table with his hands, then introduces himself. "I'm Yuma, by the way."
Jo already knew that, they'd introduced themselves in an email where Jo asked for his phone number and suggested the time and place to meet. But he thinks his partner just wanted to make sure that he wasn't some stranger who'd intrude on a lonesome lunch patron like that.
"Jo," he says, simple, to the point, "I'm… uh, from pastries."
Yuma smiles at that. "I know."
He's not used to holding conversations, let alone knowing what to say to someone that he's just met. From the brief interaction he's had with Yuma, it seems like he's not much of a talker, either, so this whole thing could very well end in a dumpster fire and Jo must brace for impact. The impact: a big fat 'F' written on his report card for the month, the cause? A lack of communication, a trait that he thinks someone who's heading into his line of work should already master at this point.
"So," Yuma senses the awkwardness in the air, he must've, and goes straight to business, "so, one big Christmas dinner, huh?"
"That's what the email said," Jo replies.
"I know, I was just… trying to gauge your reaction."
It's hardly small talk, Jo doesn't even think cuisine chefs like Yuma has it in them to know how to do small talks when time's so important and essential to them. He's probably counting down the milliseconds in his head, Jo infers that if he doesn't start opening his mouth and say something important, Yuma's probably going to stand up and leave, do something more important than this.
Though Jo doubts anything's more important than a cooking assignment worth half of this particular module's grade. But he's in cuisine, so he thinks he probably has fifteen other fires to put out—literal ones too, maybe—before his next class on braising begins.
Jo clears his throat and fiddles with the edge of the worn-out leather-covered notebook in the pocket of his pants. "Well, uhm, I think it's manageable," he starts, which feels like the safest word to choose when talking about a group project with someone whose work ethic he hasn't been able to figure out yet, "I think Christmas dinners already have an order and I mean… it's Christmas, I think everybody's too festive to care."
Yuma shifts in his seat, chair creaking under his weight. He places both of his forearms on the table, Jo tries not to stare at the tattoos on his skin but is able to make out some of the obscure drawings: pans, a sprig of something leafy—rosemary, perhaps—an uneven line, a few Roman numerals scattered around like last minute additions during a session. They don't have the same art style and aren't cohesive with one another in any way—like everything's added based on a narrative that Yuma himself doesn't even know he's writing.
"People care," Yuma tells him, kindly, in a tone that Jo doesn't hear in a hot kitchen often, "they just pretend they don't."
Jo blinks. "About Christmas food?"
"About Christmas," Yuma replies, "food's just where it all leaks out."
His family doesn't celebrate Christmas the way the Westerners do in movies, they're not religious nor are they big in traditions that don't stem from the country so he wouldn't know. But it looks like Yuma's had his fair share of celebrating it or at least, understanding what people do during the holiday.
Jo nods, agreeing. "Then… nothing too experimental?"
"Yeah, stick with tradition, I think it'll be fine." Yuma's grown restless, if bouncing his leg underneath the table is any indication of it. "I assume you'll work your magic when it comes to the dessert?"
Before Yuma asked the question, Jo wasn't fully paying attention, instead already thinking about ideas on what kind of desserts people love to eat during Christmas and whether something like a lemon meringue is too on the nose and too bright for a season that puts a lot of emphasis on warmth and spice. He snaps back into the conversation a beat too late and Yuma's already looking like he's looking forward to move to the next topic.
"Yeah, I, uh, sorry, of course," he stammers, making a complete fool of himself in front of this guy already, "dessert on me."
Yuma smiles again and Jo tries to send him one back but he's about half-sure that he looks more like an awkward grimace than anything that resembles confidence. Still, thankfully, Yuma doesn't seem to mind—it even looks like his smile has gotten wider at the sight.
"Great, then I think—"
Before Yuma could finish his sentence, his phone buzzes. He grabs it from his pocket, doesn't bother to read the Caller ID nor think about if it's an important enough call to take, and picks up in—what Jo assumes is—the second ring. His eyebrows furrow together involuntarily as he listens to whatever the person calling him has to say and he only responds with a simple 'okay' before ending it and shoving his phone back in his pocket.
Jo doesn't know what Yuma looks like when he's trying to look apologetic, this is their first meeting after all, but he imagines it looks like the Yuma who's currently staring at him right now. Bottom lip tucked under the upper row of his teeth, eyebrows raised like he's trying to make Jo ask the question so he doesn't need to say it out loud himself.
And because he's kind and understanding, he puts Yuma out of his misery when he asks, "Something came up?"
"Yeah, this friend of mine, he's… he's really stupid and I think he needs my help."
"Yeah, it's okay, I understand."
Yuma huffs out a breath that sounds like he's been holding in forever. "Thanks," he says, "really didn't mean to cut this short."
"No worries." Jo says, because, really, there's nothing to worry about when the deadline's still over a month away and the only thing they have to brainstorm together is if Jo's choice of dessert will match Yuma's starter and main. "We can talk later."
"Yeah, yeah, definitely." Yuma pushes his chair back, legs scraping softly against the floor before he stands and fiddles absentmindedly with the hem of his chef's jacket again. "Really nice to meet you, Jo, uh, just text me when you want to meet next and I'll be there."
"Okay, I'll do that."
"See you."
Like how he came in approximately eight minutes ago, Yuma exits just as fast. His sneakers squeaking against the freshly-mopped floors, dark tuft of hair gone behind the door before Jo's gaze could even follow him out of the room. The soufflé sits, still, in the middle of the table perfectly. Untouched, not acknowledged, lonesome.
Maybe he shouldn't have even brought it in the first place.
-
Turns out, other than having a seemingly recurring problem with tardiness—gossip from the cuisine department thanks to Harua—Yuma also has a problem with being a bad texter.
Jo learns about this fact over the course of five days.
Day one: after just finishing up his night class of Perfecting Icing 101—that's not really what the course is called—he was hit with a burst of inspiration, wrote down a concise description of a dessert that he thought could be good for an assignment and sent the idea over to Yuma, just in case he had some time to brainstorm about what dish he could make to compliment Jo's idea. Hey, tell me if you think this is any good.
When he got back into his apartment and still received no reply, he took a long, hot, shower, checked his phone one more time before he went to sleep, turned on do not disturb mode, then set it face down so he wouldn't look too desperate.
No reply.
Day two: he was by the vending machine, trying to buy a fresh cup of coffee that tasted like shit but would wake him up for the rest of the day, when he opened his phone and asked Yuma if he had free time on the weekend to discuss about their project once more. By the end of the day and after 3 hours worth of class about how to bake the perfect pie crust and still, with no reply, he'd given up and gone to sleep again.
Day three: Jo woke up to the sound of his alarm and the familiar disappointment of an empty notification bar. He stared at the ceiling of his room for a good few minutes, mentally cataloguing all the possible reasons as to why his group mate had decided to ghost him—his phone fell into a hot pot of gravy, he lost it in the subway, chopped it up in a blender while he was making purée—before he swung his legs off the mattress and got out of bed.
By noon, he was elbow-deep in laminated dough, counting folds underneath his breath. Butter was leaking where it shouldn't. His phone buzzed once in his pocket and he jumped up so high his classmate beside him though he'd sliced one of his fingers in half with a cookie cutter. After washing his hands and taking a short break to check, he was disappointed to find out it was just one of his friends arguing about ovens and cleanliness in the group chat.
He didn't check his phone for the rest of the day.
Day four: Harua met him outside of the cold kitchen area and asked if he was still being ghosted by Yuma—a small fact that he'd let slip the day before when they were having dinner together and also, he didn't use the term 'ghosted'.
"I didn't say he was ghosting me." Jo wiped his clean, wet hands on his apron as he made his way to the locker room, told him, in a tone that he thought could sound neutral enough for Harua so he wouldn't sniff anything odd from him—like the growing restlessness and anxiety over the possibility that this project might not turn out the way he thought it would.
"Eh, don't overthink it. He does that sometimes, but he always pulls through."
"Okay," he said because that's probably the only thing Harua would take.
I hope he does.
Day five: the reply came when he was least expecting it, mid-whip, cream splattering all over his sleeve.
Sorry!! Kitchen was a disaster. Just saw your text, nice suggestion, I'll see what I can do! I'm free tomorrow after 7, if that works?
Jo—with cream all over his hands—had his thumb hovering over the keyboard on the screen, relief flooding him so fast it made him dizzy. Then, without thinking too much and without even checking his schedule (though he rarely has anything after 7 PM), he typed back before he could overthink it.
Tomo ow sou ds goo . (Whip cream covered up half of the remaining text.)
Twenty seconds later: another reply, wholly out of character if Jo still chose to believe Harua's stories.
Great!! See you tomorrow. I'll meet you at the pastry kitchen.
Jo wondered, for a brief second, if replying to his text would make him look desperate but he didn't understand why that would matter. So, he sent another text, just in case.
See you! Thanks.
No reply after.
-
From a very young age, Jo had always known that he wanted to work in the kitchen. He'd seen his mom been the happiest with her sleeves rolled up, hair pulled into a tight ponytail, hunched over a simmering pot of soup as she stirred it gently with her trusted wooden spoon. His first introduction with cooking had been when he was ten, tasked to skin edamames one by one at the kitchen table because his mom needed an extra set of careful hands. He remembers how it had frustrated him, the way the skin clung stubbornly, the way his fingers were stained green after; but there's a satisfaction that washed over him when he saw the smile on his mother's face after he'd filled up the large bowl with green soybeans.
That's what cooking's always like for him—the light at the end of a tunnel, a rainbow after a heavy rain, the satisfaction that seeps into his bloodstream, and the involuntary sagging of the shoulders after a long day of baking pies and perfecting whip cream consistencies and whatnots.
Jo's in the middle of wiping down the metal counter in front of him down when the kitchen doors open. He doesn't even have to look up to know who it is, no one in his class smells like smoke and pepper unless they've accidentally burned their quiche.
"Hey." Yuma greets him as he approaches Jo's station.
He looks up from the already-clean metal counter that he's been wiping continuously for the past three minutes. Yuma still looks the same as he did when he met him six days ago in the restaurant. Same damp dark hair, same lopsided smile, same tattoos running up his arms and disappearing underneath the folded sleeves of his chef's jacket. When their eyes meet, Yuma raises his arm to make Jo look at the paper bag dangling from his fingers.
"Have you had dinner?" He asks.
Jo's stomach growl, not loud enough that it can embarrass him in front of Yuma, but loud enough that it serves as a reminder from his body telling him that he has not, in fact, had dinner. "No," he says.
"Good, then we can talk while eating." Yuma makes his way around the counter, grabs a stool by Jo's side, and sets the bag down on the counter before he climbs up the chair to sit. When Jo doesn't say anything back—and is honestly looking like he's in a catatonic state of shock—Yuma clears his throat and nudges the paper bag closer, like how Jo would nudge an empty plastic container towards the stray cat that lives in the garbage room of his apartment building.
"I brought enough for two, don't worry," he adds, "also, I cooked it so please keep your comments to yourself."
"Do I look like someone who would comment on somebody else's cooking?"
Yuma opens the paper bag and reaches into it, revealing two wooden bento boxes as he slides them out onto the counter carefully. They're still warm enough that Jo can see the faint curl of steam escaping from the seams and with it, the unmistakable scent of soy, sugar, ginger.
"No, actually, not really." Yuma cracks open the lid and Jo gets to finally see what he's prepared for him: gleaming, braised chicken nestled beside a mound of rice, the grains glossy and tight, sautéed vegetables neatly arranged in another small box. Everything looks like they are where they're supposed to be. The intention was most definitely there when Yuma put all the dishes together for it.
Looking at the bento in front of him, Jo feels bad for the lack of preparation on his side. There's no perfectly-risen soufflé this time, or even a leftover cookie dough from this afternoon. All he has in his backpack is a semi-expired—he says semi because it expires tomorrow—stale convenience store brownie and, at most, two working pens. Which are obviously not delicious nor edible.
"Thanks." Jo says to him before grabbing the chopsticks that Yuma's offering, finger slightly brushing against Yuma's. He feels the difference in texture immediately, warm skin, faintly rough at the pads, hands that are used to gripping hot pans without thinking too much of it. He pulls his hand back a little too fast, hoping Yuma doesn't notice the blood rushing to his cheeks or the way his pulse quickens underneath the touch. "I feel bad, I didn't prepare anything for you today."
Yuma opens the lid of his bento and chuckles. "Don't worry about it, I completely ignored your soufflé the last time."
"So you saw it."
"I did, sorry I didn't say anything about it, I assumed you were just showing off."
"Do I also look like someone who would show off their soufflé to strangers?"
Yuma turns his head sideways at the question, staring right at Jo's face, as if trying to study him and see whatever's written in the margins of his face or if he can just tell what sort of person Jo is just by looking. It's not an invasive thing, especially when it's his face someone's looking at and not his failed tiramisu, but it makes Jo painfully aware of himself. Of the way he's still clutching the wooden chopsticks too tightly, of the way his shoulders have crept up towards his ears.
"No," Yuma says, finally, putting Jo out of his misery, "but you do look like someone who would panic about it collapsing."
"Yeah, of course, they're notoriously the hardest dessert to get right."
He digs into the rice and puts it in his mouth, savoring the warmth that spreads almost immediately, grounding him where nerves seem to fail. And because he's impatient—and if Yuma's plain white rice is this good, he can't imagine what his other dishes must taste like—he grabs a piece of teriyaki chicken and puts that into his mouth as well. As expected, a mind-blowing burst of flavors follow. He has to stop himself from making a noise, schooling his expression into something completely neutral.
His partner's staring at him, of course he is because cooks tend to be narcissistic in that way, and says. "Okay, is it that bad?"
"You know it's not."
"Of course, I just wanted to make sure." Yuma smirks before feeding himself too.
Everyone's hard on themselves in culinary school. Everyone has a stick up their ass, everyone isn't good enough, everyone will be jobless and scraping the bottom of a dumpster to get by—that's the kind of mindset that's been instilled in everybody's mind when they start this whole journey. You can't be good, you have to be perfect. Your hardest critic will be yourself. So, even though Jo thinks the meal is perfectly cooked and the chicken is tender enough that he doesn't have to try too hard or that the green beans are seasoned the way he'd season it himself, Yuma still has that look in his face when he's chewing, like he's trying to know what he missed this time.
Jo watches him when he eats, trying so hard to be discreet but probably failing miserably in the process. He gets like this too when the chefs tell him to taste his own pastries, listing down all the imperfections and saving them for the next time he bakes it again—less sugar, more citrus, need to whisk more.
But he also knows that encouragement helps, occasionally. "It's really good," he comments, the boldest statement he's made since Yuma stepped foot in this kitchen, "you're talented."
Yuma scoffs. "You sound like my mom."
There's that, a small thread and common ground he could potentially exploit to make the air feel less awkward or the silences shorter. "She taught you how to cook?"
"Not really, she'd cook and I'd watch," Yuma replies, voice softening at the sudden change of topic, moms are always a soft spot, Jo thinks, "then she signed me up for like a gazillion cooking classes and she hates that I became a better cook than her."
Jo laughs, remembering how his mom would tell him that he's so good at baking birthday cakes now she doesn't have to spend a couple thousand yens on birthday cakes anymore, she can just call him up and make him decorate it for her. He's always happy to do it, of course, but he does sometimes miss the sweetness of store-bought funfetti birthday cakes.
"Do you cook with her, still?"
Yuma shakes his head. "Nah, she'd make me cook all the time whenever I'm home."
"Do you miss it?"
Because I do, Jo wants to say but doesn't know if it's the right thing to confess to a project partner he's just met twice in his life. He misses the simplicity in early morning breakfast preparations and cooking dinner for the family whenever they came down to visit. Hunching over the counter, peeling onions and chopping them up, wiping the tears off his face with his elbow. The softness of his mom's hands cupping his cheeks by the end of the night as she chanted a thousand thanks and I love you my Jojo.
The silence stretches for a while and Yuma chews the words around in his mouth, mixing it with his cooking, tries to stomach it before he answers, "Yeah, most days I do, on hard days, especially."
Jo relates to that. Long nights spent in the kitchen scrutinizing his own works and jotting down ideas as to where he might've gone wrong. Sometimes he wished that his mom would just magically appear beside him, soft hands on tense shoulders, whispering the answers right into his ears. What a distant dream—what a stupid wish.
"I think," Jo starts, then stops, adjusts the way he's sitting, "it's different when it's not for school, you know? When the biggest critic is your mom, I mean, you're not trying to prove anything."
"You have something to prove, Asakura?"
The question catches him off guard, he opens his mouth and closes it again, buying time by shoving rice into his mouth yet again. "I think—we both have something to prove, right? That's why we're here."
Yuma shrugs. "Honestly? I just want to cook."
"Really?"
"Why?" He asks, quirking one of his eyebrows up.
Jo's not the kind of person who assumes another person's drive or ambitions, he's not the kind of person who assumes at all. But Yuma looks like he can take it. Harua's in cuisine and he's said some borderline questionable stuff to Jo in the past before. Cuisine guys could take it. He thinks, he hopes. And it's not like it's a bad assumption at all.
He cocks his head sideways, tries so hard to ignore the way he's always trying to look away whenever Yuma's looking at him with those intense eyes or the way his pulse rabbits whenever he notices the tattoos on his arms again. "I mean, you just look… ambitious."
Yuma lets out a small laugh at that. "Ambitious," he repeats, tasting the word on his tongue, wondering whether he likes it or not. He nudges a piece of chicken around, eyes focusing on it instead of looking at Jo. "I think I'm just stubborn, to be honest."
"Is there a difference?" Jo asks.
There's an old and worn out notebook, a melting fudge brownie, and two dried up pens in his bag. And speaking about things that are abandoned, he thinks about their project and how they should've started talking about it 10 minutes ago but now they're here talking about cooking and stubbornness and ambitions. He wonders, briefly, if he should get them back on track.
But Yuma turns his head and looks at him and the lights above makes his eyes look a little less intense than usual and all of the thoughts about getting them back to the most important topic leaves. Most words, actually, leave in an instant, his mind empty, void of thoughts. If he's better at picking up signs from his body, then he might've actually registered it for what it is.
Sadly, he's not.
"I think…?" It sounds more like a question and Jo chooses to ignore it, like he's ignoring how his breaths are coming out shallow, how he has to remind himself to breathe with his nose instead of his mouth. "I just don't know where I'm headed so ambitious is kinda wrong."
"I hope you know where our project's headed." Jo thinks it's a way for him to remind himself why they're here and also a way to anchor himself onto something real and safe.
Yuma smiles and Jo does the same, of course he does. "I read your dessert idea, kind of complex but I think it might work."
"Yeah?" Jo asks, anticipating a little push back when he sent it, knowing that someone like Yuma's opinionated and probably has a stronger vision than he lets on. "I was worried it might be too much."
"Culinary school is actually about being too much." Yuma quips and Jo laughs at that, the easy kind, because he doesn't understand why falling into the rhythm of a conversation with Yuma seems so easy. "And I've been thinking about home a lot and I guess that's what Christmas is, right? The regrets, the expectations, the awkward silences, I think food just might be able to fill them, you know?"
Jo nods. Remembers the times that his family visited and had tasted his food for the first time, even made a perfect crust for a pie. It filled the silence, even when conversation stalled halfway through a sentence, even when no one quite knew what to say next. Food, for better or worse, gave people something to hold onto. A reason to stay seated. A reason not to leave just yet.
"It fills the gaps," Jo says quietly.
Yuma crunches down on his green beans and smiles. "It does."
-
Pastry is, for lack of a better word, very technical. Jo doesn't get the side eye he receives from friends and relatives whenever he tells them that he's focusing on pastries instead of cuisine. Like working in a kitchen that's relatively less chaotic than a hot kitchen is somehow not real work. Like the crust of a pies don't burn. Like butter doesn't split. Like soufflés rise all the time irregardless of oven temperature and time.
People assume pastries are gentle and forgiving—the easy way in a culinary track.
Jo learned early on that they aren't; Yuma learns it on a random Wednesday evening when he asked if Jo's free and would like to discuss and calibrate their ideas together.
Yuma had commented how whenever he stepped foot into the pastry kitchen, it'd smell so different from the hot kitchen where he's used to. It's less gnarly and chaotic but he also acknowledged that it's important to have everything where they should be, as intended. There was a leftover layer cake by the counter and Jo just wanted to bring it back home so he could practice but since Yuma's intruded on his night, he thought he might as well put him through it.
"I've never made you cook me something," Yuma comments when his buttercream drops off the spatula for the third time that night, joining the rest of its family inside the cold metallic bowl. The cake is still on its stand, undecorated, bland, looking like couch stuffing and from Jo's personal experience, couch stuffing doesn't look nor taste nice.
Jo moves closer to Yuma and inspects the cream, right away he can already see what's wrong with it. "I mean, you could make me," he says, "also, cream's too soft, you should've let it chill longer."
"I thought this was fine."
"Hm, yeah, buttercream lies to you all the time." Jo swaps Yuma's bowl of unready cream with his own version, the one he keeps stocked up in the fridge in case he messes up in class and needs a replacement, stat. "Here, try this one."
In a cold kitchen, Yuma looks almost out of place. Unkept hair, messy rolled-up sleeves, tattoos that don't look at all cohesive or neat. His hands—roughed up, coarse, huge—would look better holding a Butcher's knife rather than a pink, plastic spatula. But he doesn't look like he completely hates it either.
Jo has never tried being in a hot kitchen—aside from the very few classes he took last semester where he had to learn the basics of it for the organizational hierarchy more than anything—but he can imagine it easily. Yuma in his element: flames blazing from the burner, the chaotic nature of a flambé, listening to the chef's orders, staying in his station until his fingers feel like they're no longer his anymore. Sweat on his forehead, on his upper lip, the look of concentration that he's doing right now but probably multiplied tenfold.
He probably loves it, the noise and the hectic nature of the hot kitchen, he looks like he thrives in it. Here, he's out of his element. Here, he's open and vulnerable and above all, less stubborn. What it takes to thrive in a place like this is different than what it takes to thrive in a place like his.
"You don't move, you move the cake stand," Jo instructs when he sees Yuma struggling with making sure the cream is even all around. Then, he takes a bold move, a step forward. Line cooks have their own stations, they hate it when somebody intrudes. It's like a cat who knows the familiar dent on the sofa is theirs, nobody else's. Jo's challenging Yuma's space—he'd like to think in a professional way but he thinks it might be more than that at this point.
Yuma doesn't move away, doesn't flinch at all. Instead, he shifts his weight so there's room. An acknowledgment.
Jo notices the subtlety in Yuma's movement but doesn't point it out. He settles just behind Yuma's shoulder, close enough that it's not just the smoke and the garlic that he smells off him, but the scent of something else entirely. His body wash, his shampoo, his cologne that he probably douses himself with every morning just to try to mask the other smell. He tries to move away but it's redundant because in all honesty, he doesn't want to.
"Like this." He reaches over and lets his left hand hovers above Yuma's, who's trying to figure out the physics of the rotating cake stand. There's warmth emanating off his skin, one that Jo wants to press his cold hand on just to warm himself up a little, but he ultimately decides against. Yuma's a fast learner because soon, the cake rotates, and the cream evens out along the side of the cake just fine.
Not perfect, far from it really and warrants an extra 50-minute of cupcake icing practice after class from the chef if she ever sees one of her students do this, but just enough. Clearly, Yuma's already satisfied with it because from the angle that Jo's looking down on him on, he can see the small smile creeping up the side of his face.
He should pull his hand away from the cake or at least take a step back so he doesn't have the privilege to be able to guess the notes in Yuma's perfume—sandalwood or vanilla or musk or all of the above—and to let him do his thing. But his heart hasn't beaten this loud in a long while and hardly anything ever makes him feel so happy to be stuck in the kitchen after hours like this again.
So, he brushes the back of Yuma's left hand with his for a bit, as an assurance to make him keep going. Yuma looks over his shoulder, smile wide as ever, and Jo's heart does the thing it does whenever he sees his batter rising in the oven.
Like he's doing something right.
-
Feelings are complicated stuff and one that Jo has never had to figure out during his life. Not because he doesn't care about them—baking is all about ensuring that the end product evokes the feeling he wants it to evoke—but because it's never mattered enough for him to actually talk and learn about. It's always been background noise for him, nothing to address, nothing to lose sleep over.
He understands baking; understands structure and ratios and cause and effect. If you overwhip cream, it splits. If you put chocolate in a hot pan and not in a bowl above warm water, it'll probably burn. There's comfort, also frustration, in knowing that there's nothing that can't be fixed unless you really want to fix it. In baking, everything's perfectly clear: mess up, know what made you mess up, fix it, start over if you want to.
People, on the other hand, Jo understands, do not do that.
Yuma, especially, does not do that.
He texts every few days whenever the kitchen doesn't make him want to throw scalding hot water all over the chef's face—violent, his words, not Jo's—and he asks if Jo wants to come to the café by the school to have some of their croissants and judge the taste. He talks about his mom with a sort of disconnect that a son who has left home for a long time talks about their mom, through half-remembered memories and run-on sentences that don't make sense. There's no cook book or BuzzFeed article about how to ensure he simmers just enough for Jo to understand him.
Jo, of course, answers the texts anyway, even if he doesn't understand if he's warmed the oven just enough for the batter.
Most of the time it's about the project, throwing ideas at each other and sending exclamation marks when they find one that sticks, recipe articles, tips and tricks from a grandma with a YouTube channel clearly ran by their grandchild. Sometimes it's just a photo of something that Yuma burned with the caption don't say anything. Sometimes, it's a voice note sent far too late at night, Yuma sounding tired and loose in a way he never does during the day. It'd be about a sauce that refused to emulsify, the lack of juice in a turkey that's been seasoned to perfection, or a chef who'd snapped at him for being a second too slow.
Jo listens to those over and over again because that's the only time he gets to listen to the cadence in Yuma's voice when it's unguarded and raw. Like he's still a kid whining about the way his mom cooks his eggs.
They meet up more often after and Yuma becomes a better texter with time. Still mostly talking about the project and taste testing the whole course menu together, still pretending that this is the only reason they're orbiting around each other so closely. Yuma calls it an actual friendship. Jo doesn't dare correct him.
There are arguments too, of course. Yuma's still the hot-headed cuisine cook who thinks he knows better than everybody else and Jo's the one who nitpicks and circles back to the details that most people have forgotten about. Yuma talks in big gestures and loud voices and words that sound harsh but shouldn't; Jo speaks in margins and footnotes and whatever he scribbled down on his notebook when he's taking a shower and inspiration slips through the seams.
It's almost always balanced out in the end. Like they figure out how to meet each other halfway.
Jo convinces himself that the only reason why his heart beats out of his chest whenever he stares at Yuma cut through one of his pastries and put it in his mouth is because the vulnerability that he has to present himself with when he's making someone else taste test his food. Not at all because he needs Yuma to like it. Not at all because he wants Yuma to taste the unspoken words on his tongue. Not at all because whenever Yuma licks the edge of his lips to wipe the remnants of the dessert off his face, Jo fantasizes about placing his tongue there.
Only when he's wide awake at 2 AM, crouched in front of his oven, phone opened on the camera app as he snaps a picture of the rising cupcakes bathed in orange light that he realizes he's probably accidentally tethered himself to this too far.
He tells himself it’s fine.
That everyone in culinary school ends up this way at some point, sleep deprived, overly attached to their work, reading too much into nothing. That standing alone in an empty kitchen at 2 AM, watching batter swell and breathe under oven heat, makes anyone sentimental. The oven ticks softly, Jo crouches there with his phone in his hands, framing the cupcakes just right, waiting until the domes round perfectly before snapping the picture.
He sends it to Yuma without thinking. Look. They didn’t sink this time.
The reply doesn’t come right away. Still, when the notification finally lights up the dark kitchen, Jo exhales and lets the muscles in his shoulders relax.
They look insane, Yuma texts back. You did that thing again.
What thing?
The thing where it looks effortless even though I know you were probably panicking the whole time.
Jo lets out a quiet laugh, resting his forehead briefly against the cool oven door. He doesn’t deny it. There’s no point. Yuma sees him more clearly than he’d like.
He notices more things about him too: the way Yuma hums under his breath when he's focused, the way his thumb brushes over the rosemary tattoo whenever he's nervous that his sauce won't emulsify in time, the way his laugh blares in the air like an air horn and turns softer whenever he notices Jo watching. And Jo realizes, slowly and painfully, that he's memorizing him. Writing him down in his head like a recipe that he'll have to pass down to his grandchildren one day: what he likes, what heat he thrives under, how many pinches of salt he needs before he bursts at the seams, when he needs someone to step in and steady his hands.
Dangerous territory, he thinks as Yuma makes a home out of Jo's small kitchen, arms raised as he tries to find the oregano in the spice rack. Very dangerous territory, he repeats in his head as if it'd make a difference.
Yuma turns back once he finds it, huge smile on his face.
Jo presses his hand against his knuckles, grounding himself in the dull ache there. He watches Yuma does the mundane task of sprinkling the oregano and feels something warm and unwelcome bloom in his chest. Affection, maybe. Want, definitely. He knows, with the kind of certainty that usually only comes with ratios and his mom's recipes, that he’s already crossed a line he doesn’t know how to uncross and the most terrifying part of all is that, standing here in the quiet of his kitchen, he doesn’t actually want to.
-
Things don't explode in a kitchen—unless you haven't properly connected your gas tank. Everything that depicts a disastrous situation of a kitchen in movies are usually exaggerated too much. Yes, chocolates burn and sugar hardens and you have to use oven mitts if you're not used to the heat of the tray yet. Milk boils over and the burner catches the liquid. Croissants don't rise and you have to start over. It's normal, everyday stuff, nothing out of the ordinary.
Jo's in the cafeteria grabbing lunch when Harua slams his tray down onto the table and slides onto the bench in front of him. Uninvited, because that's how he is with Jo most of the time and how he'll always be with him. There's a juice box and lasagna on his tray, unconventional choice for someone who claims to have a refined palate, but Jo doesn't think too much about it.
"Did you hear?" Harua opens up the conversation.
See, Jo does have big ears and he takes pride in that but he's not much of a listener nor a gossiper. He looks up from his bowl of overcooked—why can't culinary school have a decent kitchen?—rice and shrugs. He doesn't even understand why Harua had to ask if he's heard anything. It very clearly looks like he hasn't. The only person—aside from Yuma—that he talks to regularly is Harua and they haven't talked to each other for a while.
"Fuma, yes, him, the one who graduated like… a hundred years ago—"
"Three," Jo corrects, though uninterested, he needs the facts to be right.
"Okay, three years ago, he was here for like a demo cooking or whatever right and—" Jo's completely tuning out whatever words are coming out of Harua's mouth right now because he's famished and the rice, honestly, tastes less than ideal and he needs to mentally perfect the torte he's planning to close the Christmas dinner project with.
"—and apparently," Harua keeps going, undeterred, voice pitched just loud enough for it to feel invasive, "he's been crushing on Yuma ever since they met, like, at a cooking class a year ago or something and—"
Jo freezes at the mention of Yuma's name. All of a sudden, the gossip feels too close, too personal. Too invasive. This is something that he doesn't want to know through juicy gossip he hears from his friend.
"What'd Yuma say?"
Subtle, Jo, he warns himself. Harua obviously doesn't look too deep into it, he just shrugs, "I don't know, you know how Yuma is, he'd rather close himself in a kitchen and cook than talk about feelings in the open like that. Fuma couldn't get a date, that's for sure."
If Fuma, someone who's from cuisine and probably has more in common with Yuma than Jo does with him, can't even land a date with Yuma, Jo doesn't think he even has the slightest chance then. It's over. He thinks.
Here's the thing with pastries: you do tend to make mistakes that prevents the batter from rising, which is a rookie mistake, but a mistake that everybody makes. But also, you can tend to make rise too much, overproof it, let it believe that there's nothing left to do but expand, until it collapses under its own promise.
"Did he not say anything to you?"
The question lands heavier than he should. He thinks about whether or not it's just him that's felt it all this time they've spent days and nights together, blurred like a haze.
"Why should he?" Jo asks back because yes, why should he? There's no obligation from Yuma's side to tell him about guys that have asked him out or if their friendship's the kind that stews over the burner for an unpredictable—yet prolonged—amount of time and waiting for someone to name it first.
Harua blinks at him, clearly deciding whether he should push. "I don't know," he says, voice lighter than usual, "just thought you two were close."
"We're partners in a project."
His friend takes it as a cue to drop the topic and move on, choosing to talk about beans and custards. Harua goes back to his food after he's exhausted his quota of facts for the day. Jo's appetite never comes back.
When he's back in his apartment, pouring a packet of pre-made onion soup into a pot and sees his phone light up with a familiar name, he locks the screen and turns his phone face down onto the counter. He puts the stove on high and moves to the living room to grab a mug but gets distracted by news about the coldest winter they're going to experience in 50 years.
He comes back to the kitchen with a goo instead of soup inside of his pan because of course, of fucking course: things don't explode in the kitchen, they burn.
Quietly, slowly, creeping up on you like a feeling that's begging to be called by its name. Until all that's left is the smell of something ruined and the knowledge that you should've taken it off the heat sooner.
-
Of course, as much as Jo is hurt—although he knows he shouldn't be, they're just friends—by the situation, he knows he can't keep running from Yuma forever. Especially not when the due date's in four days and they have yet to finalize which main they're going to pick out of a selection of mains that Jo thinks are all good fit for the theme as well as his lineup of desserts. So, naturally, they meet again. This time in Yuma's turf instead of Jo's and this time, with an obvious tension in the air that Yuma's still trying to figure out its cause.
Jo is still giving pointers, still writing down important things in his notebook in case they need to go through their discussion again at a later time. The kitchen—Yuma's studio kitchen—is messy and they've tried all possible combination of starter, main, and dessert but none of it feels right. None of it feels as right as it felt when they met for the second time to talk about cooking. The heart-to-heart.
Yuma notices because of course he does. He notices when he underseasons his meat, he most definitely will notice when his project partner—who has been warm and welcoming so far—is retreating into a shell and disappearing completely, unreadable, totally guarded.
When Jo grabs a spoon to taste one of the cooled down sauces in the pot, Yuma, finally, tries to cut through the tension with a butter knife. "Are you okay?"
"Why shouldn't I be?" Jo knows he sounds overly defensive, and even a little mean, but he can't help to be when he's trying so hard to put out a fire that he's created in this metaphorical kitchen in his mind. It's boiling now, whatever liquid's in the pot, and he's trying so hard to find a lid, or even turn the stove off altogether but it's impossible because whenever he looks at Yuma too long he remembers the bento and how it's the most intimate things anyone's done to him in his 21 years of life.
He thinks Yuma's just overly friendly—maybe he offers bento boxes to his friends too. But does he send them pictures of burnt lamb shanks to tell them it reminds him of them too? Or if that's something that Yuma does to him only?
Jo swallows and stirs the sauce again, although it doesn't need to, the spoon scraping softly against the pot. He tells himself he's overthinking things. He always does. "I'm just tired, okay?"
"Bullshit," Yuma calls him out on his lie and well, Jo thinks he deserves that, "what's up with you?"
"It's just, uh, nothing, Yuma," Jo clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth and scratches the back of his neck, "nothing, I'm fine."
"You've been avoiding me."
"I've been busy."
"Busy avoiding me." Yuma corrects him, there's confidence in his voice, like he's so sure that whatever is bothering Jo right now has something to do with him.
He puts the spoon back into the pot and wipes his clean hands on the kitchen towel before saying, "I think the sauce tastes good but I don't know which dessert I can clean the palate with after—"
"Jo, please cut the crap right now, can you please tell me what's going on with you?"
"Yuma, the presentation is in four days and it's going to—"
"End in a disaster if you aren't being honest with me," Yuma finishes, cutting through Jo's deflection almost flawlessly.
Jo can do one of two things: a) he can lie again and sweep whatever he's feeling or whatever he thinks is festering between them under the rug, put it over to the back burner, place a wet cloth over it and pretend the inside isn't burning or b) he can tell him the truth, risk the project, and the friendship at the same time, if he can even still call it one.
He chooses the one that makes the least sense.
"It's because of Fuma."
Yuma shifts on his feet, crosses his arms over his chest. "Fuma?"
Jo nods, fingers curling into the towel, twisting it. "I heard… something. About him asking you out and, uh, yeah."
"Oh," Yuma says, like he doesn't know what else to say to that. He's filling in the blanks in his head, trying to figure out why Fuma confessing to him would matter in the grand scheme of things. Then, it clicks eventually, of course it does. Jo's dismissiveness in the past few days, the unspoken tension in the air, why it feels like Jo's walking on egg shells around him. "That."
"Yeah." Jo wants to laugh, this feels absurd, it is absurd. They text each other like a couple of giggling teenagers and already Jo feels like confessing to Yuma about this is a good idea. "That."
"Why does that—"
This time, Jo's the one who cuts him off in the middle of his sentence because hearing the end of that question makes it all feel more real. "I figured, if… someone like him, someone in cuisine, alumni, knows your world, couldn't even land a date with you, then whatever is happening between us was just… me misreading things." He finally looks up and there's an expression on Yuma's face he's never seen before. "So I backed off before I could ruin the project and embarrass myself."
Yuma doesn't say anything after, lets the words fester in between them. After some time, and after Jo has made up fifteen ways in which he could technically wriggle himself out of this awkward mess of a situation, Yuma finally speaks up.
"I'm not… good at this," he starts and it sounds rougher than he probably intended it to be, but Jo waits, "at… well, whatever this is I guess."
Then at that, Jo's shoulders tense instinctively, like he's bracing himself for impact. "In a kitchen it's like… so easy because you get to have the instructions but even with that, you still fuck it up sometimes and I don't know, this, uh, this didn't come with an instruction." Yuma looks at him then, really looks at him, and the openness in his expression almost hurts to witness. "When Fuma talked to me, it didn't feel like anything. It just… wasn't right. And I didn't really question it until now."
Jo's heart starts doing that reckless thing it does again, beating like it's forgotten every rule it's ever learned.
"I'm not used to someone paying attention to me the way you do. Or relating to me on this level when it comes to cooking and why I do it," Yuma confesses, voice low and serious, the way it does when he's giving Jo one of his meals and making him taste it, "and honestly, I don't know what I'm doing but I think—I like you, Jo."
The words hang there, fragile and unadorned, served on a plain plate, laid bare on a stainless steel counter. Order's up: one plate of half-choked out confession garnished with fear and hope in equal measure.
Jo exhales, a sound he didn't realize he'd been holding in for minutes, or days, or even weeks. "I'm not… good at it, either, but—I think we'll figure it out, right?"
His mind wanders to his worn notebook, filled almost to the brim with the pointers that he'd scribbled down during their meetings, recipes that never came to be, half-known facts about creams and batter and meringues. There's a fixed science to this: cooking, baking, making sure whoever's stuffing their face with your food is satisfied enough to the point that they'll keep coming back. But there's an uncertainty to it too, that's why experiments and taste tests are important. That's why you crouch in front of your oven to see if your cake's rising or not even though you've followed the recipe to a T.
He realizes there's a science to this too, whatever this is between him and Yuma. But everything else is figuring it out along the way. Cataloguing each other's dos and don'ts, understanding where the line is, crossing it over and over again but apologizing if they overstep it.
Yuma nods at that. "We will."
It's enough for now, it should be, they still have a final project they should finish and a sauce that hasn't found a home within their planned courses. But there's a distance to close, so Jo takes the bold step; and a confession to taste on the other's tongue, so he leans down and places his hand on the back of Yuma's neck and presses his lips against his.
He doesn't taste the way he smells. Like smoke and oil and burnt onions.
He tastes like something entirely new. And right.
-
Final Dinner Course
by ASAKURA JO & NAKAKITA YUMA
Starter – Ginger Chicken Consommé
Main – Teriyaki Chicken with Winter Vegetables
Pre-Dessert – Citrus Sorbet
Dessert – Warm Vanilla Soufflé