To my anon and guest reviewers who have been asking – yes, I am absolutely continuing Phosphorus/In Whom We Trust/Dragon Reborn etc!
Brief callback to Nile's chapter here.
Benkei
"I smell good things," was the very first thing that Kyouya said when Benkei opened the door of his house. "Hey, Benkei."
"Hi, Kyouya-buddy! Come in, I've just finished making everyone's Christmas presents so everything's a bit of a mess."
"You make everyone's presents?" Kyouya asked, stepping past Benkei into the house. Benkei gave him a quizzical look.
"Kyouya, you've had presents from me for years. I always make cake."
"Even though Madoka does the same thing?"
Benkei grinned. "She's way better at making sponge cakes and chocolate cakes, but fruit cake is my speciality."
Kyouya halted in the doorway to the kitchen and stared. "You weren't kidding," he said. "How much cake have you made?"
Benkei shrugged as he took in the scene of chaos that he hadn't really even tried to clear up. "Enough for everyone."
"And by everyone you mean..."
"Nile, you, Demure, Kenta, Gingka, Madoka, Tsubasa, Yuu, Masamune, Yuki… Hikaru… oh, and Tithi, he's staying with Yuu this year so he'll be around."
Kyouya's eyes went very wide. "That's… Benkei, that's a dozen people. You've made twelve fruit cakes?"
Benkei shook his head. "No, only for the people who like fruit cake. Some people are getting sweets or candies."
"Which one am I getting?"
If he hadn't been Kyouya, Benkei would have scowled at him. "Do you like fruit cake?"
Kyouya laughed. "Okay, I deserved that. But wait, you're making sweets too?"
"Only a few. Yuki's getting Turkish Delight. And Nile doesn't like sweet things but he loves mint so he's getting dark chocolate mint truffles."
Kyouya stared. "You know how to make those?"
Benkei gave him a flat look. "Who did all the cooking for Team Wild Fang whilst we were travelling?"
"I take your point, but… there's a difference between cooking and hand-making Turkish Delight."
Benkei didn't have an answer to that. Instead, he cleared a space at the table and indicated to Kyouya to sit down. "I've just got to finish up the salted caramels for Yuu, I won't be long."
"Salted ca- you know what, I'm just going to assume you can make everything in the known universe apart from sponge cake." Kyouya shook his head. "That's incredible."
"All I'm doing is following the recipe," Benkei mumbled, shocked by the sudden compliment. It was so rare for Kyouya to do that he didn't really know how to react.
Kyouya didn't reply. Instead, he turned his attention almost deliberately away from Benkei, and looked around the room at the various cakes scattered across every surface.
"That's not yours," Benkei said as he sprinkled salt on the top of the setting caramels, seeing Kyouya sneak a hand towards the cake cooling on the draining board out of the corner of his eye. "That's Demure's, he doesn't like dried peel so that one doesn't have any in it."
Kyouya looked surprised. "How do you know that?"
"He said it once when we were in India, when we had that curry with all the dried fruit in. He'll eat it if he has to, but he'd rather not. And that's not yours either," Benkei continued as Kyouya's attention turned to the second cake on top of the microwave. "That's Tsubasa's, it's got extra nutmeg in, that's his favourite."
Kyouya looked around. "Are all of these cakes customised?"
"Of course. There's no fun in giving everyone the same present. Gingka's has almonds in it, Tsubasa's has extra nutmeg and apricots, and Hikaru's is made with dark brown sugar instead of demarara."
"You remember everyone's preferences in that amount of detail? Not just whether they like cake or not, but what they like in it?"
"You're my friends," Benkei said simply. "Food makes people happy. I like making people happy, and I like making food. And everyone is different, so when they talk about their favourite things I try to remember it so I can make the things that would make them happiest. Imagine if I gave you something that had cherries in it." Kyouya pulled a face. He hated cherries. "Exactly. Which is why yours doesn't have any cherries in it, but Kenta's does because he loves them." Benkei smiled. "Yours has got crystallized ginger in it instead."
Kyouya was silent for a long time, apparently lost in thought. With the caramels cooling, Benkei decided to start tidying up a little bit, only to find his friend joining him with a tea towel. Together they cleaned and cleared up until the kitchen was in a slightly more presentable state. Finally, just as Benkei was rooting around in the bottom cupboards for some boxes to put the cooled cakes into, Kyouya said, "You're not really giving people fruit cake or candy at Christmas, are you? You're giving them acknowledgement that you see them all as individuals with their own tastes, but it just happens to come in cake form. And you're not making one thing that everyone will eat, you're making something perfect for each person individually."
"That's what presents usually are," Benkei reminded him. "That's what they're meant to be, anyway. I've just used the same base for everyone and adapted it."
Kyouya was quiet again for a moment. Then he said "Could you show me how to make truffles?"
"You don't like chocolate, though," Benkei pointed out.
"No," Kyouya said, and his smile was sudden, like the sun through the clouds. "But you do."
