365 Days of Starshipping (Part 2)

Holiday Cookies

12/7/19

"Well, look who finally came out of hiding," Judai teased, smiling as Yusei entered the kitchen where he was currently in the middle of baking a variety of things - some regular sugar cookies were requested by none other than Yusei himself (even if he didn't explicitly say that he wanted them, but it was painfully obvious to Judai that he did), and he had some breads in the process of finishing up in the oven.

"More like there's not much else for me to study, so I had to," Yusei sighed lightly, returning the smile and moving over to watch him put cookie dough on the tray in front of him, "I just wish finals didn't have such an odd schedule..."

"Yeah, it kinda sucks that you have to go over the course of the week," Judai agreed, pausing and putting down the bowl of cookie dough he was pulling from before leaning on Yusei in a mock-hug, not wanting to put his doughy hands on him and get him dirty, "And for what, two extra hours tacked on to every class?"

"That's correct. And it's spread out over the week too, so I'll still be gone all day, even if I'm only really going to one or two classes every time," Yusei added, having none of the same problems he was having with wrapping his arms around him and leaning down to give him a quick kiss on the cheek, "Enough about that, though... I think if I focus anymore on class for now I'm just going to stress myself out."

"Definitely don't want that to happen," Judai murmured, smile growing a little softer as he looked up at him before turning back to what he'd been doing, "Want to help me out here? I've got another tray ready to go, it just needs the dough to be put on it."

"I'd be happy to," Yusei replied, going over to the sink to wash his hands without Judai having to say a word about it, which Judai was quite happy about. Yusei did his best to help out when he could, and Judai appreciated the effort, but drilling into him that he needed to wash his hands first was harder to do than he thought it'd be - he had a feeling that it was because Yusei was so used to wearing gloves all the time that he wasn't used to not having them on, along with all the other things he had to do that came with it.

He wasn't saying that he was unclean or unsanitary at all, but basically? Yusei just hadn't worked with food enough to drill the rule of having clean hands into his brain. He was fine when it came to other topics where one had to wash their hands, but cooking just... took a lot of extra time, for whatever reason, since it just never seemed to click in his brain. Either way though, Judai seemed to have finally succeeded in his mission to do so, and he silently cheered to himself about the accomplishment.

"You remember how to do it from last time?" Judai asked, remembering that he'd helped him out a little when he'd been making the Halloween-decorated cookies - he hadn't really been planning on icing the current ones, but remembering their little decoration contest they'd had made him want to do it again but for Christmas stuff instead. He was pretty sure he had all the food dye he needed (though he swore he remembered thinking last time that he was starting to run low on a certain color), and making icing just took a lot of powdered sugar and a few other things, which he had an abundance of...

"It was red," Haou decided to helpfully supply, which caused him to perk up at both the reminder and the fact that Haou had helped.

Oh! That's right, it was red! Judai realized, internally sending feelings of gratefulness through the connection. Now that he remembered, it was red he was 'missing', in that he had one little dropper bottle left of it - of course, that would make a ton of red or pink or whatever combination color icing he needed, but it was always good to keep his stock up.

"I remember. I just roll it into a ball, right? Twelve on a sheet," Yusei replied, pulling out some dough after rolling up his sleeves (which Judai did not stare at in appreciation as he did so, of course, he would never) and doing exactly as he'd said. He held it up for him to look at once he was finished, and Judai smiled and nodded in approval at the ball, which was a little on the small side but otherwise perfect.

When it finally came time to decorate, Judai quickly whipped up a couple different colors of icing before grinning at Yusei in challenge, who seemed to have realized what was happening the second he'd started adding color to the icing and was totally down for another icing competition.

Needless to say, they tied again and ultimately, their stomachs won when they couldn't stand not eating some of the sugar cookies they'd decorated... though Judai was just glad Yusei was able to relax before his exams started the next day, and that was the real win of the night to him.