Title: Mise en place
Characters/Pairings: Yamamoto/Gokudera
Summary: In which Gokudera receives a lesson in sushi-making.
Notes: Cotton-candy fluff with a needle in. General audiences. For khrfest, prompt: Gokudera/Yamamoto – sushi, "Now, roll it firmly, just so." Was supposed to have been UST but the muses had other ideas. 1024 words.
Mise en place
Hayato was learning to make sushi, mostly due to a bet he'd made (and lost) after drinking two beers too many, and partially because Takeshi had looked at him, eyes big and round as a puppy's, and said, "Won't it be fun?"
Hayato wasn't so sure about that, but he'd given his word and couldn't go back on it, not with Takeshi giving him that look, anyway. That was how he found himself first washing rice under Takeshi's strict supervision, and then cooking it and seasoning it after with a solution of vinegar and sugar and salt. "No, seriously," he said, wrinkling his nose as he mixed the rice, "how is this supposed to taste good? Who came up with this?"
Takeshi shrugged. "I don't know," he said. "It just does." He was barely bothering to watch the knife he was wielding against a whole pile of vegetables, deadly efficient and really kind of freaking Hayato out by how casual he was about it, even though he was turning out perfectly-cut strips and hadn't managed to slice a finger off yet. "Just trust me."
That was just as irritating as it ever was when Takeshi said it, but he was, technically, the one who knew what he was doing in the kitchen, so Hayato sighed and kept stirring.
Then there had been the matter of toasting the seaweed. "Why?" Hayato asked. "I've had sushi." Usually under duress, and usually because of Takeshi. Funny how that worked. "It just gets all chewy anyway."
"This is just how you do it," Takeshi said, firmly, handling the sheets of nori deftly over the gas flame. Hayato couldn't actually see the difference in the toasted and untoasted sheets, but it seemed to please Takeshi, so whatever.
And then Takeshi had fussed with getting everything set out just so, neat bowls of sesame seeds and raw fish and vegetables that had been cut into matchstick strips, before he'd finally pronounced them ready to begin making the sushi. Hayato noted, though privately, that it had only taken an hour or so of prep work to get them this far. Sometimes he really did wonder about Takeshi's sanity.
Takeshi showed him how to line up the nori on the little bamboo mats, and then spread a layer of rice over it with his fingers. "The hell," Hayato muttered, fighting with the rice, which had gone all sticky and seemed rather more inclined to stick to him than the nori. It sure as hell wasn't spreading as easily as Takeshi's was.
"It takes a little practice," Takeshi told him, totally cheerful and totally unhelpful.
Hayato just grunted with him, and finally got something like a layer of rice attached to the nori and (mostly) not him. "Now what?"
"Choose your fillings." Takeshi was already reaching for the fish and laying it out in a neat row that glowed a rosy pink against the white of the rice.
Hayato ignored the fish--fish was supposed to be cooked till edible, no matter what Takeshi said to the contrary--and eyed the vegetables. Cucumber, he decided, that was nice and safe, and scooped up a handful to lay over the rice.
"Now roll it firmly, just so," Takeshi said, and showed him, rolling the mat up and using it to guide the seaweed and rice and fish over. Somehow he managed to roll up the mat at the same time, counterclockwise to the clockwise movement of the sushi. Every movement was deft and smooth, and the result was a compact, tidy cylinder.
"Um," Hayato said, and eyed his own mat doubtfully, wondering whether that maneuver was actually something he could duplicate, or whether a person had to be a baseball savant to do it properly. Takeshi was watching him, though, so he reached for the mat and gave it his best shot.
Takeshi had managed to make it look really simple, and it definitely wasn't. Hayato fought with the mat and the nori and the rice, and lost about half his cucumber in the process, as he tried to roll the whole thing up without rolling the mat into it too. The end result was... untidy, to say the least, somewhat lopsided and not very like Takeshi's roll at all. As Hayato glared at it, Takeshi smiled and said, without any apparent irony whatsoever, "Not too bad for your first roll." He handed Hayato another piece of nori. "Now do another one. The second one's easier."
Because if Takeshi had any kind of one true core philosophy, it was that practice always made perfect. Hayato sighed and accepted the nori, and dropped it on his mat. "Why can't I just let you make dinner?" he complained.
"Because it's more fun to make it together," Takeshi told him, hands moving quickly now that he'd already demonstrated the technique for Hayato. He spread the rice against the nori, and sprinkled it with sesame seeds. "...I used to help Tousan make dinner," he added, after a moment, and the smile he aimed at the tuna was softer than any piece of fish really deserved, no matter how much it'd cost at the market. But hey, it was Takeshi talking about his dad, which happened so rarely that Hayato could count the times Takeshi had up on his fingers and still have a few left over, so he wasn't going to say anything about it. "I always liked that."
Really, what could a guy say to something like that? Not a lot, the way Hayato figured it, and spread the rice against his nori. "So what goes with cucumber?"
Takeshi hummed, thoughtful. "Try the shrimp," he suggested. He had cooked those, and the little pink curls of the shrimp were hanging out in some kind of creamy sauce now. Hayato figured that would be safe enough, and reached for the bowl of them.
He didn't say anything at all when Takeshi's shoulder bumped against his and then stayed there, even when it made rolling up the second roll a little more difficult than it probably should have been.
Besides, Takeshi was right. It did get easier, with practice.
end
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