"Jun, get the blindfold. Then tie me up again."
Plenty of their conversations involved those words, or some variation. But this time, Hayama Akira had said them without warning or context — so when he noted Jun's ensuing yelp, he supposed the yelp made some sense.
The order had probably surprised her. It could be read as inappropriate. But Akira hadn't thought Jun the type to immediately jump to such context.
They weren't doing S&M. And as far as Jun ought to have been concerned, Akira didn't know what sexual acts were. So the thought of him having meant something dirty rather than what he'd really meant shouldn't have made Jun blush this way. They didn't have a relationship where they could even joke about topics like that… and they were supposed to be focusing, now.
"H-H-Hayama-kun," Jun said, "W-w-w-w-without context, you randomly make me think you want—! This sort of shock isn't good for my heart!"
Akira sighed. He stood up from the sofa where he'd been musing. "The context should be obvious, even if we weren't already in a discussion. I want to do a spice smelling test again. I want you to cover my eyes, so I can't see the plates, and then bring spices out to test."
"R-right." She twiddled her fingers, not making any eye contact. Her eyeglasses glinted at him.
"And by the way," Akira asked. "Isn't it a little odd, that your mind could think even for an instant that I was asking you to do something like that with me?"
His wry question caused the scurry he'd expected. Jun scuttled a few steps away from him, already heading for the back room. "Of course I didn't mean you would be interested in it with me! I just wondered if a student your age was letting himself get distracted, in general, thinking about topics—"
"Just stop." Akira closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose, tensing.
He wondered why Jun couldn't wipe off her blush. Was S&M where her brain really went — and so easily — when they weren't talking, working directly together? Would she always think inappropriate things, if Akira caught her off guard?
Maybe he should speak out of context to Shiomi Jun more frequently.
Akira felt his own face turning red — and as soon as he thought it, he cut himself short. He didn't intend to start thinking like that.
He knew his place, and what their status quo was.
"Another spice smelling test, though?" Jun asked him. "Right now? It's getting late, Hayama-kun."
"Just do it," Akira said. His tone took on a superior edge. He raked a hand back through his hair — he'd taken out his ponytail — and watched the short woman hop-skip.
"Oh, fine! I guess you wouldn't be satisfied for long, even after your recent win. Give me one second in the other room; I'll pick out the very hardest combinations, and, and and—" She bounded away, looking as usual like a small grade-school kid.
When she was gone, Akira sighed again. He couldn't focus well in her presence — and it was not because his mind wandered at random to naughty things teenagers often thought of. He snorted. Lately, Akira got too distracted contemplating their entire relationship.
It was getting bad, the way they two had been slightly awkward recently. Ever since he'd hugged Jun after winning the Autumn Elections... Well, it had only been two days since then. But since then, Akira still hadn't gotten over the reality that he'd lost his cool and shown affection for her in front of the entire school.
Students already thought things about the relationship they had. What right had Akira had, to give them more fodder for their rumors? And Jun's surprised, adorable reaction didn't help the image much.
It certainly didn't help the stirring that wouldn't stop now in Akira's chest.
From his pocket, he took a cinnamon stick and lifted it to his nose. The smell was comforting at once... but his thoughts kept moving in the back of his head.
He liked Jun. Of course he liked her. Who else on earth would have been worthy of him? And Akira hoped desperately to be the sort of person who was worthy of her. But it wasn't the kind of sexual attraction most people assumed it was. At least, it wasn't rampant lust.
Akira's feelings for Jun were somehow both more pure and more complex than that.
"Hayama-kun," Jun called, high-pitched. "I can't find the napkins we were using as blindfold material. Where—?"
"In the drawer to the left of the sage plants," he said. "But take one out from in the back. The ones in front might still smell like the laundry detergent," he said.
He could hear Jun muttering, as she rummaged through the drawer. "Mm hmm, and that might interfere with your sense of smell, but then again, wouldn't the napkins from the back also do so, and smell worse, because they smell like the back of the drawer and the wood...?"
Akira wanted to laugh. Instead, he smelled his cinnamon, as the grin in him died before reaching his lips.
He wished he could control himself. Or sort out his emotions. He wished he wasn't distracted by affection, or attracted to Jun enough to think dirty thoughts even in jest when she brought hints of them wafting between them. Akira thought their current relationship should be above anything base and common like straightforward lust on his part.
If he could simply love Jun like he always had — in that fierce, special, but harmless way — if he could simply keep things as pure as the smell of the spices they grew... then he wouldn't have to worry he'd lose her.
So why was it so complicated lately?
"You aren't peeking, are you?" Jun asked.
She had left the door cracked open. He heard her move again around the room. At once, Akira took more cinnamon from his pocket and used it to occupy his nose. "I'm trying not to smell anything you're doing," he said. Akira didn't need to cheat with his eyes, when without even trying he could accidentally cheat with his nose.
"Good, good, good. Ah, you've improved so much thanks to the Elections, I guess I'll have to try even harder to challenge you right now." A mortar and pestle clanked, as Jun moved it somewhere and then put it down.
Akira shut his eyes and used the time he had to muse further. He needed to stop considering Jun in any adult sense, he decided. That was why things were getting so complex. Akira was almost an adult now himself, yes... but he knew that Jun didn't see him that way. And he'd never really seen her that way, either. She always acted like a kid. Akira was the one in charge, between the two of them – in every way but on legal paper.
Or so he always told himself.
There were nineteen years in between them. Jun had rescued him as a seven-year-old child. Despite that even then, Akira had thought Jun younger than him, and despite that Akira had matured faster than anyone else his age, thanks to his rough background, and despite that now he'd grown enough to carry Jun around like a sack of millet when she fell asleep... Well. There were so many years between their ages that sometimes Akira winced. Life was cruel, because it was easy to forget the gap, unless he was doing the math — but the math was there. And it was a big difference. Jun acted younger than him, and looked younger... but she wasn't. Akira wasn't always sure, therefore, how much control he truly had.
He knew Jun didn't see him like her own child, despite having purchased a stack of child-rearing how-to books when he'd joined the Hayama family — and for that, Akira thanked all gods. He wouldn't have been able to keep his heart whole, if she'd ever acted like a mother to him. But if Akira had to guess, he'd guess Jun saw him like a young kid brother. Or a nephew, something like that.
And sometimes that felt equally as bad.
But Akira knew he could never change the dynamic he and Jun shared. It wasn't his place to press if Jun didn't see Akira as a man. And beyond that, their age gap…. Even if Jun could acknowledge his feelings, certain actions weren't legal for Akira yet — alcohol, cigarettes... relationships with people older than him. Akira hated that laws went by age instead of by maturity level. But he wouldn't ever do things the law made illegal for him.
He wouldn't. It stung, but he knew that. Akira did not want to make trouble for Jun. No matter what his body wanted, or his heart, whatever it told him when Jun came near him, he cared about her as a whole — and the relationship they already had — far more than he cared about bringing up his attraction… or wrecking everything by making a move.
If he never had Jun in the sense he wanted — if he never even told her that he adored her — it would be all right, Akira told himself. He loved Jun enough to deal with it. And besides. Akira had the option to wait. He only had to be patient. If he waited until he was old enough, it might feel like waiting for a wine to age, so that it could be mulled with spices and taste extra glorious.
"All right!" Jun fumbled in the other room. "I have the spices ready. I'm coming with the blindfold first... and the other big piece of fabric for your hands."
Akira kept the cinnamon against his nose until she'd come out and shut the door behind her. Obediently, he went to sit in the spare chair that they kept for this testing reason. He tossed his bangs out of his face so she could tie the blindfold on.
Jun stood behind him, like she always did. The only time she'd stood in front of him to tie the blindfold on, she'd blushed. It was things like that, Akira reflected, that made his situation with her so much harder than he wished it was.
She didn't tie the blindfold tight. Akira could smell the soap she'd used to scrub her hands of spice... so he wouldn't be able to smell the spices that way, either, before she brought them out. When she was finished, Akira extended his hands behind the chair as well, between the rungs.
Jun started tying his wrists. "C-come to think of it, Hayama-kun," she said, "Why do we always tie up your hands, too? It's not like you're going to reach for the spices on the plate to feel them. You're way too disciplined. You know it's about testing your nose."
"It is. But the extra sensory deprivation of my sense of touch as well as my sight helps sharpen my sense of smell," Akira said. "It also challenges me not to engage in the usual physical habits I engage in when I'm thinking and trying to decipher a scent — like playing with the hems of my clothes, to concentrate."
Jun just laughed. "I didn't realize you did that. You think of everything, don't you?" She finished tying and stepped away from him. "Okay, as soon as you think you can tell—"
"Flat leaf parsley," Akira said. "In the top right corner of the plate closest."
Jun made an astonished sound. Akira could hear her back up, as if she thought her presence interfered with his smelling.
It did.
But Akira sighed and kept on going. "I'll go vertically down the plate closest to me, from right to left," he said. "Cardamom pods. And right below them, ground cardamom, just to see if I could smell any difference."
"Apparently you can," Jun said to him. She sounded a little awed.
"Next is what smells a bit like nutmeg, but what I believe is technically mace."
"That's correct. Hooray! Go on."
Akira did. "Turmeric, fresh thyme picked an hour ago, oregano from Italy's southeast coast." He named a few more, finishing off the plate. "And the plate in the back is a curry powder mix you made yourself. It has more ginger than usual, I would say by almost a gram, but otherwise contains in order of largest amount to smallest amount coriander, fenugreek, turmeric, cumin, black pepper, pulverized bay leaves, celery seed, nutmeg—" Akira frowned, concentrating hard. "—cloves, onion powder from the cheap grocery store simply to try to confuse me — my god, Jun, you've ruined it for a test? — and some red pepper. That's all."
Jun sighed, and then laughed awkwardly. "Well, there's no fooling you today, either, I guess." Akira heard her move back in. "This... this is yet another reminder that I had always better be careful to smell nice around you, I suppose."
Akira told her, "You always smell nice." Then he realized these were exactly the sorts of things he should take care never to be caught saying — otherwise he might cause awkward moments. He shouldn't even think them.
Jun groaned. "Oh nooo, you can smell me?! What... what do I— Do I want to know? What do I smell like? Is it bad? Should I go home? Should I lock myself in here with my spices and never go outside and plague other people ever again?"
Akira rolled his eyes behind his blindfold. Then, carefully, he swallowed... and decided he could put her terror to rest.
"You don't smell like anything that merits such a reaction. You washed your hands before you came in, but you've opened the new soap in the bathroom — the kind that isn't scented but that still smells like its different sodium ingredients and acids. You took your clothes out of the dryer this morning, but this time you didn't use dryer sheets; your clothes smell like only your laundry detergent this time, which I wouldn't call bad. You probably ran out of dryer sheets and forgot to get more…. You haven't washed your hair today, but you must have done it yesterday morning and left it damp in a ponytail; I can still sense traces of shampoo. You're perspiring slightly... but the deodorant you reapplied within the last six hours is working fine. Its smell is a lot more strong than any trace of a body odor."
"Wh-wh-aaaat?!"
He didn't say the rest of what he could tell. Your mouth is hanging open now, because I can smell the breath mints you've probably been munching like candy. You've just started your period... When you do, your body always has a slightly different smell to it. But you're not wearing a pad this time. When you do, I can smell the blood, so you must have a tampon in. They weren't details he cared about, or even wanted to be able to discern as easily as he could. They were just the facts of Akira's life — the things he could tell because he had such a powerful nose.
Like some kind of a price that he paid for living. Or so he had always believed.
Jun still believed differently. "Well. I guess it could be worse."
Akira felt fingers work at his wrist bonds. His ties started coming off.
Jun was probably as crimson as chili powder. Or maybe like good paprika. She stammered for a long time, and then managed to talk some more. "So personal! Ahhh, Hayama-kun—"
Akira couldn't help but frown, as something occurred to him that would explain her reaction. "Don't tell me you've never realized that I can smell you always, like spices?"
"I-I realized!" Jun choked out. "And I've always tried to be careful because of it! B-but I guess you've never brought up anything except cooking smells and spices, s-so I never talked about it either. I was maybe trying to pretend your talent wasn't there, when it came to people, and other things..."
Akira knew what she meant.
He never crinkled his nose in public, if they passed a storefront or a person who exuded a pungent reek. He never commented on the smell of the grass or the trees, or talked about how he could tell when rain would come — long before weather forecasters mentioned it. Akira never mentioned that he could pick out a smoker from meters away, tell roughly how old the upholstery and finish on furniture was, or estimate the year a book had been published by breathing in the scent of the glue used to secure its pages at the spine. He didn't talk about how he could smell the confidence of people like Yukihira in the essence of their sweat and breath whenever Akira had a cooking face-off. Some information was simply extraneous and, if he spoke it aloud, annoying to regular folk.
In addition, if Akira focused too hard, his talent simply became overwhelming. So instead he tried to banish it elsewhere.
And thanks to Jun, now he carried cinnamon.
"I won't bring it up again," Akira said. "It's just that you asked me, this time." He realized that Jun wasn't moving to keep on untying him.
Akira took a deep breath and breathed in the two plates of spices again. The scents erased the memories of the vile and wretched fumes he'd been surrounded with when he was younger, living on the streets where reek had been ripe. He could still recall the rot of foods that he'd been forced to eat in alleyways... even though his stomach had heaved at the smell, and he almost always choked from how hard he was crying, doing it. He recalled the reek of offal in the streets, of piss and disease, and the animal sweat, all amplified around him because of the power of his uncommon, god-like nose.
He really was too powerful. For his own sake, he'd learn to suppress his talent, unless his nose was necessary while he cooked.
"You don't have to make a big deal out of the fact that I can smell you, Jun. I don't."
Akira had never told Jun how close he had once been to going insane. The market with the spices that smelled good had been his only solace as a child, but Akira's rope had been frayed. He hadn't been sure, as that seven-year-old, how much longer his sanity would last. And then...
Then Jun had rescued him, given him this life, and dropped him directly into the world of the spices that had helped to preserve his sanity. Now spice scent and flavor was everywhere, and she'd given him cinnamon... and Akira was better every day at blocking out the array of other smells that came at him from every angle.
He wouldn't go crazy now, as long as he could put his nose to work on what cared about.
"Untie me, Jun."
Jun jumped. "A-ahh, heeeeyy! How many times do I have to tell you? Call me Shiomi—"
"It's late to say that. About eight years too late, now."
Then Akira cut himself off with a sound, and Jun jumped again, hearing it. But she'd… she'd come to untie Akira from the front — and that put her so close that he could smell the warm skin of her neck, because she was so short that she came right up to the level of—
"Are you all right?" Jun asked him. Her voice shot into its highest register, and she stopped untying him.
Akira gritted his teeth and breathed quietly through his mouth. "Yes. Untie me." What was this? He could normally ignore her scent. Hadn't he just told her he didn't make a big deal of it? Was it because they'd just been addressing it, that perhaps it was still on his mind, and so when she had come near, Akira couldn't help but...?
He twitched.
"I am untying you," Jun said. "I'm hurrying." She sounded suddenly nervous. Her fingers fumbled at the back of his head.
When he was free, she moved away from him. She headed again for the door into the back room... but not before Akira noticed her cheeks had turned pink with her second blush that evening.
Akira stood up, trying to brush aside the potency of Jun's scent in his mind. He said, "I'm going to keep working tonight." Maybe their work would clear his head.
Jun whined at him, holding one napkin in each hand, "But it's so late! So late, I said!"
"Nobody said you had to stay up with me."
"Is it what Chef Dojima said to you? Aaaaahh, he's so stiff sometimes! To give you such a stern warning right after your victory like that!" As Jun muttered something else, biting at the napkins she held in her fit of frustration, Akira decided to tune her out. He leaned a hip on the back of the couch and put a hand up to his head.
He needed to study harder. And yes, Chef Dojima was exactly why he needed to — or at least one of the reasons. After Akira had hugged Jun, Dojima had come up and told Akira essentially that his talent was so great... it might backfire on him.
Akira could not let his guard down now. Just because he'd won, it didn't mean he could rest. He needed to gain even more control over his powers of fragrance... or he would fail. Or stagnate. Either of those would be bad for a chef.
Either of those would separate him from life spent here with Jun. If Akira wanted to live up to his name, and change the world of cooking using the power of fragrance, for Jun's sake...
"I'll make you a pot of strong coffee," Jun said. She was already moving to the other room. "And I'll put lots of cardamom in it, because the new kind we have is so amazingly fragrant. Then I can have some, and I'll stay up with you—"
"If you make the coffee the way I like it, then you might have a heart attack. You're too small, Jun."
"Hmmph. You're right, aren't you. You like it so dark! That much caffeine would be bad for my heart. Then... then I'll just sit up with you and read my new book about spice growing in Indonesia!" She skipped from the room, intent on it.
"Turn the lights off," Akira said, because he knew she'd pass the switch. He concentrated better sometimes in the dim or the dark. It helped him muse.
"Then turn the salt lamps on, the salt lamps," Jun told him, doing as Akira said.
Akira turned on the lamps one by one, until the whole room lit with a pinkish-orange, sunset glow.
Then he set to work. He hardly noticed when the coffee brewer put off a delicious scent, but he smelled cardamom when Jun placed a cup down right beside him. When Akira took it, their hands brushed.
Jun squeaked and retreated to the couch.
Hours later, after Akira was done, he was not surprised to see her curled there on her side, asleep. He folded his arms and walked to look down on her there. He sighed. "Jun..."
For the first time, Akira didn't pick her up and carry her back to her room at Tosuki where she usually slept. She was tiny, and there was still space on the couch.
Akira crawled carefully down beside her, between her body and the back of the couch. He curled a protective arm over her waist and went to sleep.
Before he opened his eyes, Akira could smell cold coffee. He'd left his second mug of it on the counter where he had been working last night. But for some reason, the other scents that normally woke him — sunlight warming the world outside, the air in the room when it was a little staler from not moving all night — didn't register in his brain.
Instead, he smelled the scent of Jun. It was amplified — and not because he'd put himself last night down on the couch next to her; this wasn't proximity alone. Jun's scent was amplified because now it was morning, and she had been steeping in her essence all night.
Her clothes were soaked in it. Sweet, enticing. And she was warm. Pliant with the rest she'd taken.
She was stirring now, too, just like he had.
Akira opened his eyes, but he had the sense not to move before he assessed his situation. Jun's pink hair scrunchie was a centimeter from his nose, and looking at it made him cross eyed. He blinked. The scrunchie had fallen loose in her hair; a few escaped strands drifted over his arm. Jun, it seemed, had ended up using Akira's arm for a pillow.
His other arm still draped over her side. But now he clutched her close enough to him that they were like two spoons, her back pressed flat against his chest. Would she be able to feel his heart beat?
No, no — that was not what he should be thinking.
At least their legs weren't tangled together. The decency of the situation might be salvaged yet.
Was Akira an idiot? How could he have let this happen?
No, again. He ought to be honest with himself. He'd done this on purpose, with a motive, or at least made the deliberate and conscious decision to sleep in this way, regardless of any other motive. He'd collapsed right here, last night, as if he had a right to. And he hadn't thought about the repercussions of it come morning.
What if Yukihira barged in with Tadokoro, or something? And was what he had done called 'taking advantage?'
"Mmm..." Jun rubbed her eyes, while Akira lied there, frozen. Her motion knocked the arm Akira had still wrapped around her waist. It seemed to jolt her more awake. "What's...?"
Her motion just stirred up more of her scent. It almost drove Akira mad. He told himself to a get a grip.
"H-H-H-Hayama-kun?! Wh-when did, when d-did you...?" Jun had finally noticed him.
Akira slid his hand away from her waist at once, and raised it up into the air, like he made a sign of surrender.
Then he thought better of it and settled the hand on her hip. Akira held her lower half in place, as carefully as he could manage. He cleared his throat to cast away the husky edge to his voice. "Don't wriggle too much," he said.
There was a pause quiet enough that they could hear the birds outside. A pause long enough for Jun to realize where her bottom was positioned... and that if she jerked backward at all, she might very likely press against—
Jun leapt off the couch immediately, scrunching her entire body up. "Are you serious, Hayama-kun?!" She screamed a manic little shriek. "Why do teenaged boys have to be so awkward about morning wood!"
Akira felt himself turn pale. Was that how bad she thought this was?
And then he knew Jun's eyes were filling with tears. He could already smell their salt.
"Aah, I was never prepared for this when I agreed to let us share this space together, even during the nights we overworked! Ha-ya-ma-kuuuun, h-how could you—?!"
Akira sat up at once. "You've got it wrong. It's not like that." He wasn't hard down there. Not... not yet. It was why he hadn't wanted her to move backward, to grind even a little against him. Because if she did, he might get hard. But—
"Then what do you think you're doing, sleeping where we can touch like that? What else is anyone going to think! Not that I'm accusing you of liking me that way. H-how could you? But still, Hayama-kun, what it looks like!"
Her yelling started to grate on him. Akira felt himself contracting a headache. He rubbed his face with his hands and told himself that he couldn't yell at her.
She still hadn't turned around. She was patting her hair frantically, finally realizing it must look like a mess.
Akira put one hand into his own ruffled pale hair. "I don't have an excuse," he said. Then his own words surprised him.
He could have made up any lie. He could have said he wanted to keep her warm, but there were no blankets, so he'd used his own body heat. He could have turned her naughty thoughts around on her, and said he'd never once thought about contact with her in that sense. But now he was sounding apologetic... and thus admitting he realized what kind of vibe their contact gave.
What would Jun think, hearing him address something in terms of sexual context? They'd never talked about this topic before.
They didn't even joke about it.
Akira had never dared. The last thing he wanted to do was sour their relationship with it. "Turn around," he told her, irritated, "before you go thinking the situation is something it's not, why don't you?"
Jun did what he said at once. When she dared to glance in his lap, turning more crimson than Akira thought possible, with tears collecting in the corners of her brown, doe eyes — Akira couldn't look at her.
She really was too cute like that.
"O-Oh my god. You're not... you're not— THEN WHY DO YOU SCARE ME LIKE THAT?!"
Akira winced at her volume, and she gave in to crying more. His hand stayed buried in his hair.
They hadn't seen each other fresh from bed in years — not since Akira had grown past the age of ten. And when he lowered his eyes further, unable to speak now for embarrassment, he realized that the collar of his shirt — that he had long ago unbuttoned — was crooked, and baring more of his collarbone than it normally did.
This looked bad no matter what had actually happened. Akira shut his eyes and tried to breathe in.
"Go take a shower, Jun," he said. If he took command here, he could manage this. The sooner she rinsed off that scent of hers, the sooner Akira could clear his head. And—
"Don't you tell me what to do! Akira-kun, you need to apologize for this!"
Akira started and looked up. That was the second time lately she'd slipped and addressed him by his first name. The first had been after he'd hugged her when he was announced Election winner.
"I'm sorry," he said instantly. "I shouldn't have made this look like what it's not. I didn't intend to suggest anything of that nature by sleeping next to you." His hand dropped from his hair as he recited the words he knew he ought to say. He got to his feet incrementally.
As he stood, it made Jun fall back. She clutched her hands to her body, seeming to stare at his chest and his waist. But... she always did that when she didn't want to crane her neck to look up at him from her short height, didn't she? But now her eyes were scanning his body, almost like—
Akira expected a bad scolding. He intended to let her go to town, too, for as long as she wished to yell at him. Akira scolded her all the time — so every now and then, it was only fair to let the woman get some of her own scolding in. And by now, he knew he deserved it.
But what Jun said surprised him.
She'd stopped crying. She looked aside. Then she pulled the scrunchie out of her hair so her long locks fell to her shoulders, and she muttered through pouting lips. "It wouldn't be a problem, I suppose, for us to sleep together innocently like we sometimes used to, if you weren't... i-if you weren't..." Akira blinked at her. "S-so tall now!" Then Jun turned very red.
Akira blinked at her again. "My height?" He felt suddenly irked again. Couldn't this woman ever make real sense?
"Y-you're— tall!" Jun's arms flailed next. "And your muscles are well-defined! Augh, y-you've grown up, Hayama-kun, and now that makes things difficult! Oh, what the heck am I saying..."
Jun covered her face with her hands and took a half a step away. Akira dropped both his arms from his face — where he'd rubbed it again — to his sides, at a loss for how to reply. Was she saying she acknowledged the ways his body had changed? That meant she was looking at him as if he—
"T-take this neutrally, all right? I might be a person who has helped look after you since you were a child, but that doesn't mean you should put your guard down, Hayama-kun! A-anyone could— including me—"
"It's all right, Jun. No one saw us." Akira realized what her problem must be. It was the same thing he worried himself already, all the time. "I made the mistake," he said. "And I realize what would have happened if anyone walked in on this. I'm aware of what it looks like and why something like that is bad."
Jun talked on, as if she hadn't heard him, raking at the skin of her face with her fingertips like pulling her cheeks down would help her to speak. "I'm still a woman, you know! I'm not immune to things, even if—" She pointed to Akira's crotch, citing the reaction that was implied, but hadn't actually happened. "—even if you're immune to them! Do you understand what I'm saying? It's unfair to catch me off guard behind me when I'm asleep! Wh-what if I was dreaming about a sexy Mediterranean spice god or something, and then I woke up, and you, er—"
She had lost him with her train of thought. She babbled something else about dreams making people wake, turned on. Akira's lips fell open, then closed again, as she went on, describing what bodies did sometimes thanks to stimuli when they couldn't help themselves.
Her level of directness staggered him. She blamed teenaged boys for morning wood, but what she was referring to now in her case was almost exactly the same. Wasn't it?
Akira wet his lips to speak, because certainly he could handle this subject more smoothly than Jun could. He had taken sex ed, and at least he did not blush in the ways she did. But he could find no words just now. He didn't think he'd ever been in such an awkward situation.
"I never thought I'd have to have these kinds of conversations with you!" Jun finished.
Then Jun covered her face with her hands and ran from the room, howling.
Akira felt his own hands twitch, almost itching to do the same; he thought maybe the cold of his fingers would cool his face. Instead, he squinted shut his eyes and tried to assess the point they had come to.
He'd been given no indication that Jun thought anything sexual toward him personally. But she had made it very clear that she found his body worth... worth some worry, apparently, because of its decent design — or at the least, she felt Akira might be capable of affecting her, if she woke up halfway seduced already, from some kind of... spicy god dream?
Akira groaned quietly. Every time he believed Jun could not get any more wired or strange...
All this time, Akira had thought Jun incapable of assessing his looks objectively. He had assumed that to someone like her, he would always be the young nephew or sibling, not appropriate for evaluation as even a casual mate. So he'd touched her, and carried her around, and hugged her and now slept cuddled next to her, believing it was without repercussion — never mind that now he started to suspect he was a jerk for doing it. It was taking advantage, Akira thought, because even if he never told her he liked her… he did. He treasured those touches… which made it sort of like stealing from her.
Akira rubbed his eyes. He felt confused. And slimy, and annoyed at the world.
What had now been disturbed, he realized, were the careful lines they'd had.
The lines drawn in between them both. The lines meant to keep them both safe — from what others at Totsuki thought about them... and now from what they thought about each other. The status quo was in danger, and Akira had never predicted this.
He should have resisted his urges last night. He was fine with simply being near Jun, doing all their work together, and loving her in ways that didn't involve anything physical.
Wasn't he?
He ought to be. Akira still wanted to be. He didn't want to feel sleazy, as if he wasn't satisfied with how much of Jun belonged to him already — and vice versa. There wasn't anything he should find lacking in a love so straightforward and pure. As well, if he really loved Jun, he wouldn't need to think about anything sexual.
At least that was what he had always believed. Or tried to convince himself he believed.
Akira looked out the window. He should take his cinnamon sticks and go sit on the grass outside. Clear his head. Try to think more. Try not to think about Jun's flush and her tears.
If things were changing between them, if they were able to start evaluating each other in even the slightest sexual way...
Akira sighed, whispering to himself, "Jun... this is going to be complicated."
His mind felt blissfully blank. A pot of homemade stock bubbled on the stove, and Akira stared at it, thinking nothing. All the scents tickled his nose, but he didn't register them. He waited on the stock to be ready, that was all. The bouquet of spices he had tied and submerged in the stock — in their wrap of delicate mesh — bobbed.
Akira stared some more. Staring.
The door burst open, and he jumped. When he turned, he struggled to shake off his mind's haze.
He heard the sound of a crinkling plastic bag, and then saw who had come in, holding it. Red hair and a squinty grin.
"'Sup!"
"Yukihira." Akira stared. "What—"
"Ah, sorry, sorry — I see you're working." Yukihira picked his way to the couch, around the mess of materials on the floor Jun had left there last night that Akira still hadn't managed to pick up. He sat down. "I couldn't help myself, though. I bought a cool thing this morning and wanted your opinion on it. Make a second, when you can?"
Akira opened his mouth to reply, as he put down the ladle he'd held in his hand. But just then, the door to the back room opened, and Jun poked out her head. "A customer?!"
Yukihira winced and raised his hand. "Nope, sorry. 'S just me again."
"Oh, Yukihira-kun!" Jun beamed. Then she glanced once at Akira.
Akira rolled his eyes and shrugged, as if to say it didn't matter one way or another, at least to him, whether Yukihira bothered them that afternoon.
In fact, Akira was a little grateful not to be left alone with Jun. After their awkward face-off that morning, after waking up together sprawled on the couch... Well, the two of them had been civil to each other, but it had become clear they both felt strange about what had occurred. Neither of them knew how to move beyond it. Yukihira was almost a blessed distraction.
"You're here to consult with Hayama-kun again?" Jun asked, grinning as if nothing was wrong.
"Yeah. Sorry to bother you. I just stopped by on another whim, but it's one of those things I can't really let go... until I get the opinion of the person who beat me. Again." Yukihira plastered on another of his practically shit-eating grins... but Akira could sense the frustration seated behind Yukihira's facade.
He turned down the heat on his stock, clapped his hands off on his apron, and directed his next sentence at the woman peeking from the door.
"Go back to your work, Jun," Akira said. "I won't let him disturb you. Whatever he wants to know, I'm sure my expertise will clear it up in a few minutes anyway."
Jun laughed nervously, bowed, and ducked back into her room, closing the door with a click.
Yukihira scratched at his head and uttered, "I really want to kick your ass, know that?"
Akira smirked and folded his arms over his chest. Even if Yukihira didn't end up in here for long, this confrontation would probably do wonders to cheer him... and remind him he should be focusing on food.
All he'd seen was Jun's head through the door, and his pulse was up and his emotions fluttered in too much confusion again.
Akira took a deep breath... while Yukihira dug through the plastic bag he'd brought. "You were in the frozen aisle of the grocery store right before you came here."
"That's just like you," Yukihira said. "You can probably smell the stale, cold air that clung to my clothing." His hand closed on a box. He drew it out.
"And I can tell that you guzzled a coffee. Did you even sleep last night?" Akira finally sat down on the couch opposite of the one Yukihira had plunked on. He kept his arms folded. He looked at the clock.
It was too late in the afternoon to drink coffee and hope it would help with daytime awareness, but too early for coffee sucked down to help a person keep awake all night. If Yukihira was running on coffee randomly, around the clock, however... maybe that would explain his drinking choices.
Yukihira paused to blow a breath out on his palm. Then he sniffed it. "Oh, right. Yeah. I have coffee breath. Sorry — I can't seem to stop drinking it. Too many ideas in my head, and I need to be up for all of them."
Akira crossed one leg over the other and nodded at the box Yukihira held. "What is that?"
"It's popsicles. The ice cream kind, coated in crumbly stuff. The ones they try to tell you are strawberry shortcake flavored? And sometimes the pink coloring turns your mouth pink." Yukihira opened the box.
The popsicles were individually wrapped. Yukihira unwrapped one.
Akira found it difficult to concentrate. He could hear Jun moving around in the back room. What was she doing in there this afternoon? She hadn't even told him yet. Suppose she couldn't manage it well without Akira's help? Not that he would dare to ask her if she needed him yet, now.
That was why he had started making stock — to give himself an excuse not to fill his senses up with her again. Too early for that. Too early. Akira still needed to think. Recover.
He glared at Yukihira. "Why would you bring something so disgusting in here to show me?"
"Huh?" Yukihira just blinked. "They're really not that bad," he said. "Or at least, not the idea of them."
"A coated popsicle," Akira exclaimed in monotone. He watched Yukihira bite the top off the one he held... and then wince at the cold.
Yukihira grinned again, and then leaned forward in his seat. Akira watched a strand of hair fall into his eyes, and almost make him look… adorable. Akira thought it and scowled.
"Exactly," Yukihira said. "A dessert dunked in something to make it extra luxurious, by giving it more flavor layers and texture for a more complex mouth feel. A popsicle like this, or an apple coated in caramel and candy... You know what it is, Hayama. Gourmet." Yukihira's gold eyes glinted.
"You're thinking of gourmet desserts?" That didn't seem up Yukihira's alley. Come to think of it, had Akira ever really seen Yukihira make a dessert?
He wondered vaguely if Yukihira had a woman he wanted to please. Maybe someone in Polar Star had a sweet tooth.
It was a bad route to start thinking along. Women, and pleasing them with sweets...
Now Jun was humming in the other room. Akira shut his eyes and tried to breathe.
"Frozen treats are what I wondered if I could improve this time," Yukihira replied.
Akira asked, "Still trying to come up with a specialty? Don't tell me you think you'll make it a dessert?" What was Yukihira going to do, when he so often relied on ingredients like eggs and rice? Akira supposed there was mochi, and plenty of baked options that used eggs, but...
Yukihira tossed him a popsicle. "I'm trying not to think too hard about the specialty right now. I just want to learn everything I can, and break out of my box a bit. I want to see what comes to me. And this morning, what occurred to me—" Yukihira took another bite out of his own popsicle, swallowed, and pointed the bitten ice cream at Akira for emphasis. "—is that once things are frozen, their fragrance drops dramatically."
Akira had caught the popsicle Yukihira tossed him. He didn't open it. He put it down.
He uncrossed his legs and leaned forward also, gazing at the box atop the plastic grocery bag on the coffee table. "Odor molecules move more slowly once the air temperature drops..."
Yukihira wasn't wrong. In terms of frozen or chilled desserts, especially ones designed to be gourmet, there was a lot a chef could do to impress — with visuals, flavors, and textures... but fragrance would always fall short.
"I want a good way," Yukihira said, "to make even a frozen popsicle overwhelm people with scent."
The solution was obvious. Akira frowned. "You would need to add heat to it." Without heat, frigid odor molecules wouldn't stir enough to reach people's noses.
Heat. Was that why Jun always smelled so incredibly tempting? She heated up when she drank alcohol, for one thing. And around Akira, she often seemed to have a higher body temperature in general.
Akira wondered if she had been designed specifically to drive him crazy. Maybe now that he had learned to manage his smelling talent, and the torture of acknowledging every reek was no longer his price to pay for living, dealing with the temptation of Jun was his price to pay instead.
The price for his rescue from the slums, for being taken from rags to riches and titled The Spice Prince by so many.
Yukihira flopped backward on the couch, seemingly unaware that he'd lost Akira to inner thoughts. "Yeah, and obviously I've already considered a lot of typical heating methods. Like torching the outer layer, or using alcohol somewhere, so I could light it on fire..."
Akira nodded, trying to focus again. Yukihira was talking of flambé. "That would be the route to go."
"I can't, though," Yukihira said. It was decisive.
Akira snorted.
Yukihira twirled his popsicle in his left hand. "I was thinking about something on the level of maybe an ice cream truck. So I just can't."
Akira groaned, but somehow refrained from putting his face in his hands. "A truck isn't gourmet, Yukihira. Your diner mentality is showing again."
At one point, of course, Akira had possessed less than a diner mentality himself. He'd scrounged around in garbage bins, and thought old moldy crusts 'gourmet.' But now that he'd been lifted out of the hellhole of the slums, he couldn't stand it when people glorified anything less than the best they had access to. If people in this country were so blessed to live this well, at Totsuki Academy that provided them so many opportunities and advantages... wasn't their job to use the best ingredients and skill sets possible, to bring the riches they themselves enjoyed to people?
The point was to gift good taste to others. Yukihira was wasting time and being lazy, relying on an idea that was common... and so outside Totsuki's capabilities.
Then Akira almost started. No. Gifting good taste to people was precisely what Yukihira was trying to do – and to people who couldn't usually access it. Yukihira was trying to bring gourmet to the masses, to give them a taste of a world they couldn't reach, but that they still deserved.
Yukihira had the privilege granted by Totsuki... but he wasn't just going to master what the school offered, cook related dishes, and then perpetuate privilege by impressing eaters only of the same level. Yukihira always thought beyond school, beyond the Elite Ten, beyond the Totsuki alumni and famous judges. Yukihira wanted to reach and impress even the people who couldn't typically afford to experience the sensual world of gourmet food that the Totsuki crowd was used to and was driving them to compete in.
How had Yukihira been able to think outside the box like this, again and again? Was it because Yukihira, unlike Akira, did not feel like he had to focus on this school and his studies so he could prove himself to guardians?
Yukihira was like Jun, Akira realized, stiffening. Yukihira did for people what Jun had done for Akira, when she'd rescued him and gifted him his spice world. Her act had done more for Akira's happiness in the end than if she had given him money to buy food in the slums. Without her unconventional solution, Akira would never have made it this far by himself. How could he, if he hadn't ever even realized what he was missing?
He changed his tune. "All right," he said, aware that Yukihira was musing to himself again, rather than taking Akira's previous skepticism as insult. Akira suspected Yukihira almost never got insulted; he was so… mellow always, it seemed. "If you want to bring gourmet to a food truck..."
Yukihira snapped his fingers and grinned. "But trucks like ice cream trucks, and small places made for common people to get a dessert refreshment at... even vending machines... those places don't come furnished with the equipment you'd need to employ heat, like from a torch, right? Not to mention, a lot of the customers would be children. Open flames around them wouldn't be a very good idea."
Then Yukihira jumped, glancing at his popsicle. It was beginning to melt; the ice cream threatened to drip down his hand.
As Yukihira licked it desperately, Akira finally caught on. He opened his own popsicle and gazed at it critically. Then he put it down again without bothering to taste it. "Then the only thing you'd have left to rely on would be the outdoor temperature, when the popsicle was served. Ideally in summer, when it's the hottest."
"Thass righ," Yukihiria said, his tongue out against his own popsicle. Akira blinked rapidly, watching Yukihira's tongue dart out twice more. "So I need to find ingredients that respond best to outdoor heat and sun, and take advantage of those instead of any equipment — so I can make a fragrance that will explode."
Akira was about to agree, and tell Yukihira it was a tall order. But just then, Yukihira was looking at him, with that light in his eyes that announced he felt completely determined… and Akira noticed a drip of ice cream melting unnoticed at the corner of Yukihira's mouth.
Without warning, Akira leaned over the coffee table and wiped his thumb against it.
Then he froze — with them still connected by touch. What in the hell was he doing?
Yukihira stared at him. "Say..."
Akira raised his eyes to Yukihira's, his brain still a little cloudy. Yukihira had looked... attractive to him, somehow, with that enthusiasm and unruffled attitude of his.
"You're not bisexual, are you?"
The question pierced only a part of Akira's distracted mind. He didn't move, but he answered, hardly moving his lips when he replied, "I... I never thought about it."
The only person he'd ever had eyes for had always been Jun.
Yukihira's eyes flashed in amusement. He didn't order Akira to move. "Got it." With his popsicle-free hand, Yukihira took hold of Akira's wrist.
He removed Akira's touch from his face... and then he licked Akira's ice cream covered thumb.
A zing of dizzy pleasure wound from where Yukihira's mouth touched, all the way down toward Akira's toes. Part of him wondered why he didn't jerk his hand away.
Sweet dessert, his mind whispered. Food play. Pleasure.
Sexual frustration.
Yukihira murmured against his thumb, and the firmness of his lips coaxed out another brief jolt of feeling. Akira let slip a breath.
"You've been a little off lately," Yukihira said, watching him.
His touch... it was like a kiss. At the least, something equally intimate. But Akira didn't quite want it from him.
Did he? No. This was just Akira's body, acting out from being under stress. Acting out because he'd doubled his restraint after this morning. Akira felt repressed.
And this was how it manifested?
"So I wondered," Yukihira said. "But maybe you're just frustrated?"
The nail had been hit on the head, Akira realized, too shocked to move. Yukihira saw right through him. And Yukihira shrugged, sucking the rest of the mess off Akira's thumb calmly.
Akira's body felt hard with tension.
A bang from the back room made both of them jump. Jun called Akira's name, seemingly in a fit of hysterics.
Yukihira dropped Akira's hand. Akira flushed, until he became certain he understood the situation happening inside him perfectly.
He'd just decided to take his sexual frustration out on Yukihira. Casually. By making an intimate gesture that could be read as sexual. Touching the side of Yukihira's mouth. At times, such a move might appear motherly, but Akira knew he hadn't meant it like that.
And then... then Yukihira had responded, and made it doubly sexual.
Akira felt himself color. What the... hell...?
Yukihira seemed to remain cool. "Hey," Yukihira said quietly. "I'm messing with you a little bit, but at the same time, I'm not."
Annoyed, Akira wanted to ask what mentality, exactly, reigned over at Polar Star such that Yukihira wouldn't be punching Akira in the face about now.
Or why he would be poking fun at Akira instead of responding more.
But Yukihira murmured on. "If you need to talk about whatever you're going through, or counteract it somehow, I won't say a word. But I'll be here... because I think now I get you. You don't have a good outlet for dealing with what you're feeling about— well, about a certain someone. Right?"
Akira's flush fled him. Yukihira knew?
"To tell the truth, I'm kind of worried it will affect your cooking." Yukihira paused, then pointed to the stock pot that had been simmering. "For example," he uttered, "for how long has that pot been on?"
Akira stood up, his heart pounding, when he heard Jun call him another time. "If you don't stop making assumptions," he said, "I have a mind to challenge you to a Shokugeki."
Yukihira laughed loudly. "All right, all right, I get it." Akira allowed Yukihira to stand up, then walk to turn the burner off. As Yukihira turned it off, he lowered his face to smell the pot. "Although if you do want to challenge me... I would take the rematch, any time." He scratched the back of his head and smiled at what he smelled in the pot. "So delicious! But back to the topic at hand... You should do something about her, you know? So the tension doesn't go on? I'm sure it's not easy for either of you."
While Akira moved for the door into the back room where Jun called, Yukihira gestured to the ice cream box.
"You two can keep those," Yukihira added. "I'll come back to talk about temperature and gourmet ice cream another time."
Akira didn't reply. His mind was now in too much of a whirl. As if his feelings for Jun weren't enough... now somehow he'd gone and involved Yukihira? Was he that typical and horny of a stupid teenager, after all? After thinking himself able to control his urges, all this time? He was supposed to be mature.
He put his hand on the back room doorknob.
"Hayama," Yukihira called.
His voice had dropped. Akira looked over, feigning calm.
Yukihira's carefree attitude was gone. "Don't get expelled, whatever might happen. Be really careful what you do."
Akira didn't smile. "No one at Totsuki ever intends to get themselves expelled."
But he was scared.
Author Note: I do not apologize for the unconventional and awkward places this fanfic seems to be going. I'm going to have fun with it. Stay tuned for another chapter.