Garlic Breath

Sweet Kiss

Takumi wishes that he could say he saw their relationship coming. That theirs was a given thing, just waiting to happen. A build up of events that he could pinpoint, all leading to that moment in the kitchen when Souma asks to kiss him for the first time, as if to solidify a something 'undefined' hanging between them.

But no.

Souma's feelings for him come from out of nowhere. That is the problem.

The night is as dead as a mouse, and in a kitchen so quiet one could hear a pin drop, Takumi's voice seems so loud that he doesn't want to talk anymore. But talking is all he can do. Talking fills the strange atmosphere in the air that he can't place.

Because Souma isn't.

He's just sitting there, hands warming against a bowl of garlic chicken soup, mind on another planet. This is how he's been all night; randomly snapping out of it to ask something basic—how do you remove the taste of garlic is the latest dumb question—before hibernating into this weird, thoughtful version that stares at his soup like he's trying to unlock the secret to it.

Takumi stops talking just so he can take another sip from his own bowl. Nope, just as lacking as the last bowl. If not, this seventh batch is even more so.

This is the issue on the table, the reason Takumi's been summoned this sombre Saturday evening. They've been here all night, recreating and experimenting with a garlic chicken soup recipe. Whoever had given it to Souma knew their way around the recipe, but clearly the intricacies of its execution didn't translate from paper. It doesn't help either that gradually Souma's been losing his focus with each bowl made. That itself is a little annoying, but also a bit dangerous.

Taste-testing twenty dishes in a night requires a tight adherence to procedure—cook, taste, cook, taste—with a few small-minute breaks in between, so this sitting around and thinking is already starting to get on Takumi's nerves. At only their seventh batch, he can't lose all of Souma's focus now.

He glances at his watch. It is only 11pm, their dawn has just risen. But if they want to get some sleep, especially with another one of Souma's big days tomorrow, then they need to get a move on.

"So, I'm moving this to the diner pile," he says, hoping for a reaction. "It's definitely not restaurant material."

The jab goes unretaliated. If he heard it, Souma doesn't react.

"Hey." He lifts his spoon and jabs Souma's cheek, leaving little moon crescents of soup on it. "Ask me another stupid question."

Souma's face finally lifts up, gold blinking at him. He wipes at his cheek with the palm of his hand. "What's up?"

"I was going to ask you the same question."

"Hmm?"

"You are being weird."

"How so?"

Takumi rolls his eyes. "You haven't said anything for the past thirty minutes."

"Oh." Souma shrugs. "I'm just thinking."

"Thinking about what?"

Souma cups his bowl. "What else? The soup."

"Bullshit." Souma pinches his brows, but Takumi's not having it. "If it was about the soup, then you would be fixing it. But we are just sitting here."

"I'm going through my options."

"And clearly none of them are going to work out. Otherwise just pick one, and do it." Takumi raises his hands. "Or, quit."

Souma lifts an eyebrow. "You want me to give up."

"There's a difference between giving up and knowing when you've had enough," Takumi says. He gestures at the growing pile of bowls in the sink. "I'm not saying you have to stop. It's up to you if you want to do another batch. It's also up to you if you want to experiment on another soup, instead. All I'm saying is you won't get anything done by just sitting around, doing nothing. So either we try this again, or cut our losses and do something else."