Chapter Text
A cooking date, simple yet efficient at bringing two people closer together; you’ll both gain confidence in the kitchen and get to impress each other with your newfound culinary skills, as the first article, that popped up when Shoto looked up ideas for dates, stated.
Obviously, he wasn’t unwilling to invest time in looking for date ideas, but the others on the different sites he found, were way too noticeably date ideas.
And subtleness is the key in his special type of crush; the one he developed on his fellow co-worker who, at first glance, is an absolutely horrible match for him in the first place.
What kind of demon slayer is trying to get a demon to notice him (and make him fuck him into the mattress) anyway? Shoto is, in case that wasn’t clear yet.
But it’s not like anything in their case is normal anyway, it’s not like he could just slay his co-worker and – weirdly enough – friend (which is frustrating enough as it is).
What had started as casual collabs during streaming, since they have a similar friend group, turned into multiple duo collabs.
And now, at least if everything goes to plan, an in-person collab that’ll include them cooking in his kitchen.
Before he asks him, he makes sure to go through the recipe himself though, just to make sure he can actually impress him with his culinary skills (that he’ll play off as natural talent of course).
Despite the fact that he doesn’t know for sure if Vox will even agree to this, seeing as they only had a few streams together, he’s already excited as if he did agree already.
And so he makes the planned recipe – dumplings – by himself and even gifts his neighbors a few in order to hear their opinion.
Just to be safe, since he’s pretty sure that an objective opinion is better than his own by itself.
And when the elder couple approve of them with four thumbs up, he is sure that Vox can only fall in love with his newly acquired cooking skills (which is limited to dumplings only).
His plan – simple yet effective – is to cook together, with one person having a blindfold over their eyes and the other instructing them before switching, and increasing the level of trust between them.
That much is only the official plan though – the part that he won’t tell Vox, is the fact that he’ll make sure to excel at everything and impress him with all his might, which will inevitably cause Vox to fall for him.
Basically foolproof.
Now the only puzzle piece to his master plan is the part where Vox agrees to collab with him in the first place.
SHOTO: Hey, I just had a good idea for a collab :D
He almost planted his face on his desk for the stupid emoji at the end. So much for being natural and relaxed.
VOXAKUMA: Let’s hear it, shall we?
SHOTO: It would be in-person, we’d cook but one person is blind-folded and the other guides them and then we switch!
VOXAKUMA: Sounds fun, do you have a certain date in mind? My earliest would be Thursday two weeks from now.
SHOTO: I didn’t, but Thursday in two weeks works for me as well!
He just ignores the fact that he gave in on that date so easily, but he didn’t want to risk pushing it off even more since he is dying to finally go through with it.
VOXAKUMA: Great, I’ll reserve it for you then, where do you want to film?
SHOTO: We could film at my place, since you need a bit longer travel-wise, you could stay over for longer than just one day
VOXAKUMA: That’ll be fine for me, promise not to kill me in my sleep though?
SHOTO: You can lock the door if you’re scared <3
VOXAKUMA: Brat, we’ll see if your mouth is that wide open once you’ll have to say that stuff to my face.
Shoto is pretty confident that his mouth will always be very much wide open for Vox, not that he’d ever admit to that though, there would need to be a lot of convincing to get him to admit his honest feelings to that demon.
Which is why his plan includes making Vox fall for him to make him confess his feelings, leaving Shoto standing as the victor in the end (not only in seducing but also not being seduced first).
The fact that he did fall for Vox first won’t matter then because he won’t have to tell him.
Foolproof.
And so Shoto has to twiddle his thumbs for two weeks and wait, impatiently, as the time passes slower than usual, as if torturing him.
During that time, he and Vox discuss further details, for example what exactly they will cook (Shoto said he’d let a wheel of chance decide, but in reality, spun it until dumplings was the result) and how they’ll film it.
Since they have two channels, they decided to just do the cooking collab on Shoto’s channel and do another one with a different recipe the next day for Vox’s (because Shoto is positive that he can make Vox confess in one day, he even let the wheel of chance decide for real on self-made sushi).
In the end, instead of staying two days and one night, they ended up agreeing on three days and two nights, so that Vox can take a break after filming.
While they don’t have the biggest distance between each other, Shoto is definitely quite thankful that he isn’t the one who has to take the trip over to the demon’s house.
Probably also because he doesn’t quite think it’d be the best idea for him to be in a demon’s house in the first place, he assumes that said person had the same thought in mind.
And he even makes the effort to go and put all of his usual slayer tools away into boxes under his bed in order to make it more comfortable for Vox; while Shoto doubts that he’d seriously feel threatened by himself and let alone his weapons, he still wants to make an effort.
It’s all part of the plan to make that demon fall for him after all.
He doesn’t just clean up that either, he makes sure to clean up the entire apartment the day before his guest arrives, cleaning in places he hadn’t cleaned ever since moving into the place.
Shoto seriously doubts that he has ever felt this nervous about a collab before, and it’s not the first time he’s having an in-person collab either, when Mysta came over, he hadn’t felt anywhere close to this nerve-wrecked.
Though, obviously, this time is very different, since he never felt anything close to this for Mysta (he doesn’t deem himself to be someone who develops a crush quickly after all).
He pushes it on his deteriorating nerves, that get worse by the hours that haven’t passed yet, that still separate him from finally putting his plan into a reality.
After thinking it over again and again, he’s quite confident that he can get Vox to fall for him in less than 24 hours and confess his love, and while his plan, seducing him with cooking skills, might seem weak to some, through countless voice calls, hours of texting and so on and so forth, he is quite positive that he has Vox on his hook already.
Shoto is a stubborn slayer after all, he won’t let that demon escape so quickly, even if his goal isn’t to slay him for once.
He’d love to do even more preparations to get his nerves to calm down, but since he purchased the groceries already and went through everything at least four times already to check if everything is in place, he would feel quite obsessive if that number would increase to five.
And so he resolves to sitting on the couch, feet anxiously wiggling around as he watches a series, he usually enjoys a lot more, when he isn’t dying of impatience at least.
The stream is supposed to start in about three hours, since Vox wasn’t sure how traffic would be and Shoto wants to give him the opportunity to relax a little from the long drive and show him around the apartment quickly.
He is lucky to have an extra room in which guests can sleep but, in a way, he is also a bit unlucky, since they won’t get to have the corny ‘who sleeps on the couch and who in the bed or maybe we will just share the bed’ fight where the protagonists end up cuddling in the bed anyway. He can be a sucker for romance clichés.
The awaited demon ends up texting him that he’ll be an hour late due to the horrible traffic, Shoto makes sure to scold him for texting while driving and Vox ensures that he isn’t moving anywhere because of the current circumstances.
So they text for a while, until the traffic jam is resolved and Vox announces that he’ll be there in only thirty more minutes.
Thirty minutes pass painfully slow but the point is that they pass and when the doorbell rings, Shoto jumps from the couch in lightspeed and opens the door for him, having to wait until the demon makes it up to his level with the elevator.
The wait feels just as long as the past two weeks, but Shoto busies himself with bouncing from one foot to the other while eyeing the elevator with narrowed eyes, trying to determine when exactly it’ll open.
And when it does, revealing the tall, dark-haired male with a small bag in tow, Shoto has to suppress a happy squeak and instead waves towards him with the big smile he can’t quite hide.
“Vox!”, he grins and the demon copies the gesture, walking towards him.
The closer he gets, the more obvious it becomes just how many inches he has on Shoto, despite Shoto not being short but rather average for a guy, but somehow, he isn’t feeling too dejected about that little detail.
Who even cares about height?
“My boy”, the demon replies with a toothy grin, opening his arms for a hug.
Ah yes, the greeting.
A thing that Shoto has been trying to figure out how to approach correctly.
It’s their first-time meeting in real life, he wasn’t sure if a hand shake or a hug was appropriate (he preferred a hug obviously, but making Vox uncomfortable was the last thing he wanted to do).
So he was even more thankful to realize that the older man has taken this burden off of his shoulders.
Instead of further hesitating, Shoto quickly steps forward and into the hug, sneaking his arms around Vox’s neck since the demon already preoccupied the place on his torso, making it hard for Shoto to do the same; forcing him to lightly increase his height by stepping on his tippy-toes.
“Vox”, he breathes out, feeling a lot more relaxed now that he is here and he doesn’t have to obsess over the tiniest details anymore.
The repetition of his name makes the demon chuckle understandably, hands just slightly increasing the pressure on the small of Shoto’s back.
“Shoto”, he calls out the others name as well, as if to teasingly mock the younger slayer, who immediately sends him a glare.
“It hasn’t been ten seconds, don’t ruin this or I will make you sleep on the floor”, he curses quickly, only making the other laugh at his soft threat.
“For sure you will”, he nods sarcastically and pulls Shoto closer for a mere few seconds, before completely releasing the hug.
“How about you show the floor I’ll be sleeping on tonight then?”, he suggests, making Shoto narrow his eyes at him, before he turns around to enter the apartment.
____________________________________
The purple-haired boy opens the last door in his apartment that he hasn’t revealed yet.
“And this is my own room, I even hid all of my weapons so you don’t get scared”, he shows with a proud hand gesture.
The past ten minutes he’s been showing the demon around, showing off his spotless apartment and explaining little things like what towel he can use if he wants to shower and not to wake Shoto up before 11AM unless something is burning or he’ll seriously kill him.
“Oh how generous of you”, the man snorts at that explanation but enters the room nevertheless, looking around interested.
Shoto’s own bedroom has a big bed despite him barely needing half of it in theory, he just likes the thought of having a gigantic bed and being able to roll around in it if he wants to.
“Shut up or I’ll use the back-up key for your room to come and kill you tonight”, he threatens immediately, his defense-mechanism kicking in without him having to think about it.
“You have a back-up key for the guest room?”, he tils his head interested and Shoto nods, proudly.
“Yeah, you shouldn’t be worried about that though unless you want to do something inappropriate”, he shrugs.
“Maybe I will, but you wouldn’t need a key unless you wanted to watch me do inappropriate things, right?”
“I’m going to murder you Vox”, he scowls.
“You’ve threatened me so many times, but you wouldn’t be able to do it because you like collaborating with me too much, right?”, he questions with a grin, leaving Shoto with a soft red tinge on his cheeks and nose.
“No, I can’t do it because you’re my co-worker”, he shakes his head with the usual excuse he brings up whenever Vox teases him about the fact that he, as a demon slayer, hasn’t killed Vox yet.
“Oh, just your co-worker? I’m wounded you know?”, he fakes a pout, before breaking back into a knowing smirk.
“Really? It’s working then.”
“Are you a sadist babe?”
“What? No! But you might be!”
“I might be, honestly, I probably am. I’m a demon after all, I’ve got a reputation to keep up. But I think you’d be a better judge of that honestly, wanna try-“
“No!”, he squeals and shakes his head.
“I-I’m going to set up for the stream I think, you can just uh- relax until we have to start”, he quickly leaves his own bedroom, leaving Vox in there by himself.
Even though it’s probably a bit early to start with the set-up of the camera and stuff like that, he needs something to do, before his plan does a 180 on him and Vox ends up seducing him instead of the other way around.
He can still feel his cheeks burning and he’s confident that a thermometer would signal for fever if he were to try right now. Stupid demon.
____________________________________
Shoto is able to contain his feelings into a box and bottle it up, throwing it into a dark, dark room in the deep depths of his mind until it’s time for them to come out, later, way later.
Instead he busies himself with being fully concentrated on finishing the set up and looking through the ingredients to make sure that they have everything they need once again.
He takes his time, wanting to stay busy because he doesn’t know what else to do.
He hears Vox going into the guest room soon after he starts his work in the kitchen and the door closes, the lock doesn’t click though and so he assumes that the inappropriate things that Vox meant won’t be happening anytime soon.
Whether that’s good or bad news for him is to be decided in the future though.
While he had expected to immediately spend some time with the older demon, he can understand that he is tired and needs a break from the trip to Shoto’s apartment, so he doesn’t mind preparing on his own, as it gives him an occupation at the very least.
He’s happy when he ends up finished eventually, prepared to start the stream at any time now.
At least on the technical side of things, he still needs to get ready himself and thus decides to tell Vox that they have about an hour left until stream start, just mentioning it through the solid wood of the door that separates them.
He gets a short hum back from the demon and then quickly slides into his own room in order to change into more appropriate clothing.
As in clothing that flatters him – specifically his ass – is allowed to get dirty from the cooking and doesn’t look too try-hard either.
It’s tough trying to seduce a demon without said demon noticing that you are trying to seduce him because you don’t want him to know that you fell for him. Shoto has a difficult life after all.
However the time seems to fly as he decides on an outfit and quickly makes sure to prepare the rest of his appearance, which includes a soft, light make-up to accentuate his best features and hide the few marks on his face he doesn’t like as much.
After that he puts an appropriate hairstyle on his head, combing and styling away until he is satisfied, before he leaves his room and goes back into the kitchen.
There he finds Vox, standing tall and proud as he inspects the ingredients interested, the blindfold sitting ready and happy on the kitchen counter as well.
Since it’s Shoto’s stream today, they had decided only to blindfold him today and blindfold Vox tomorrow during his stream, leaving Shoto to fully showcase his newly acquired kitchen skills (which he hopes to still be top notch).
“You need to cut quite a bit, so I’ll jump in if you get too close to chopping your fingers off”, Vox muses and Shoto just nods with a smile.
“Alright, but I’m usually quite good with knifes and swords, if you get what I mean”, he grins before he starts operating on his devices in order to get the stream going.
Vox looks as good as ever too, just as good as he usually looks on a screen, he looks in real life too.
Shoto can only hope that he hasn’t disappointed with his real-life appearance either, but he feels confident so he isn’t going to think negative now.
“Of course you are”, he chuckles and shakes his head a little, amused by Shoto’s antics, who bends over just a bit more than he needs to in order to fully concentrate on starting the stream (and make Vox lose his concentration just a tad bit as Phase 1 of his plan to seduce a demon).