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“I'm sorry... this belongs in the trash, doesn't it...” Fujisaki stood looking paralyzed in front of the stove, weighing the pan in his small hands and staring listlessly at its contents. The burnt food had an offensive odor which was quickly filling up their small apartment. For Mondo, there was barely time to blink before Ishimaru leapt into action.
“Nonsense, Fujisaki-kun!” He'd already wrested the pan away and was preparing three bowls. “The gift of a home-cooked meal is one of life's greatest treasures!” Three plops, full of finality, as the food was distributed among them.
Mondo's first instinct of agreeing with Fujisaki, of letting him dump the pan and start over (because for the love of god what even was that?), was quickly pushed back. Kyoudai was right, wasn't he? He usually was. “Uh... yeah!” He quickly chimed in. “Looks great!” It didn't.
Ishimaru took the lead, and they all sat down at the small table which they shared. Again, Ishimaru was the first one to start eating. Perhaps with more vigor than they were used to, even.
Well, no use putting it off. Mondo followed his example, lifting the bowl up to his lips and shoveling the first bite down. He'd had worse. Just not for a while.
Fujisaki watched them for a moment, his face downcast, his eyes nervously trailing their overeager movements before he finally started at his own food. He took a couple of cautious bites, chewing slowly, turning the bad taste over in his mouth, while the furious scraping sounds of wood against ceramic filled every corner of the underwhelming kitchen.
“Um... It's not a race, is it?” he ventured.
A loud slam as Ishimaru's bowl connected back to the table. Not even a speck of food remained. “When it comes to getting one's proper nutrients, there is no such thing as too much enthusiasm,” he said after a pause, in what seemed, somehow, like a carefully loud voice.
Oowada's bowl followed a moment later. “You oughta cook for us more often!”
“Excellent idea, kyoudai! That is, unless Fujisaki-kun would prefer us to all take turns! Which I think is also a perfectly viable idea! But, if he should prefer to cook-!”
“Please stop." Fujisaki surprised himself with the volume of his voice, though it still quivered a bit at the end. Both their eyes were on him now, wide and intense, and he reflexively stared back down at his own bowl in response. The burned remains of the chicken seemed glaringly, offensively obvious. “I can handle being told it's bad...! I know it is!”
Tears were welling involuntarily in his eyes. It was the first time in recent memory he'd had the impulse to cry. He'd thought he'd finally driven it off for good.
“H-hey... it's not that!”
“P-please purge any such thought from your mind, Fujisaki-kun!”
“Ah, shit, don't cry-”
For some reason, seeing the two of them overflowing like this only made it worse. There was no disguising it now. Fujisaki excused himself, with one last apology, hearing his own words echoing in his ears as he retreated to his room. It was so easy to fall back on routine like that; on the crutch of apologies and tears and downcast eyes.
He didn't have to wait one minute for the knock on the door. It was Ishimaru, crossing the room with a determined stance and seating himself on the chair adjacent to the bed. He stared resolutely at the wall as he immediately began speaking.
“Fujisaki-kun, I wish to humbly apologize for my actions at dinner! Words cannot express the depth of the regret which I feel knowing how my actions have affected you!” A stranger could have picked him out as an aspiring politician right away. Fujisaki knew, though, that it was just his way. His stiffness wasn't from lack of sincerity; if anything, it was the opposite. He acted as though he couldn't even bear to look him in the eye.
“You didn't do anything, Ishimaru-kun.” The few tears that had fallen were now dry, the rest just prickles towards the back of his skull. “I'm sorry I ruined dinner. I stayed up all night working on this bit of code, and I didn't even realize- and we'd bought all that chicken, too-”
The unspoken words were there: chicken, a rare commodity for someone on their budget. Money down the drain, all because he was a little spacey. Supposedly, they were adults now- someone like him should've been able to handle the simple matter of making dinner.
“Nonsense!” Ishimaru barked in response, perhaps unintentionally. “It was still quite edible! Please do not hold yourself at fault!” Fujisaki had sat up in bed, and slowly shifted his knees over the edge, so they were brushing against Ishimaru's, who continued rattling off. “I do believe just last week, kyoudai dropped quite a large sum of perfectly good noodles!!”
“Noodles are cheap, Ishimaru,” Fujisaki reminded him, but there was a distinct teasing quality back in his voice. Ishimaru immediately seemed to sense it.
“Money is insignificant,” he replied, in what Fujisaki knew, for him, was a subdued voice. “As long as a life like this is possible.” One hand, with only a flicker of hesitation, reached out to trace the shape of Fujisaki's knee.
A long shadow appeared in the doorway as Oowada hesitated outside the room. Finally he made out the two shapes in the dark and approached them in one stride. Seconds later, they were together in a tangle on Fujisaki's bed, Mondo's arms strewn about the both of them. Breathless laughter echoed to the other rooms.
For a while, no one said anything, and Fujisaki let himself relax, enjoying the warmth of all of their bodies blending together. They didn't often relax like this, the three of them. He pulled so many late nights in front of the computer that he insisted on having his own place to sleep, so he wouldn't disturb Ishimaru's impeccable schedule. Oowada would sometimes doze off on the couch, but more often than not Fujisaki found him curled around the honors student, the two of them crowding up the futon in the bedroom.
“Still don't know how ya sleep with s'many lights blinkin' at ya from every corner of this place,” Oowada muttered, and Fujisaki laughed quietly, as Ishimaru pulled back a section of his (still girlishly long) hair and rested his chin against his forehead.
“Maybe you're right. Maybe it's time for a change.”
He didn't even rethink this decision when Ishimaru loudly proclaimed that someone had unleashed a rude bodily odor and then demanded to know the perpetrator. Nor when Mondo elbowed him in the ribs for ruining the moment, or even when the both of them erupted in apologies, after they'd unthinkingly pinned Fujisaki down into the mattress trying to get a leg up on each other. Maybe they weren't quite adults yet after all. Maybe they never really would be.