Chapter Text
Everything is a washed blue-grey when Kojiro wakes--the sheets, the wintry light outside. The way he feels, because the bed is cold, because his first soft instinct is to reach out for a darling that is not there.
He sighs, and that is washed-out too, and tired. He remembers, he coaxed Kaoru to come to bed last night, and was met with only an insistence on just a minute, dear.
It was never just a minute--Kojiro can’t remember Kaoru coming back to him at all. Can’t remember his warmth, the way he clings.
Some nights, he is just like this. Anxiety curls in him, tangling in his ribs, and restlessness gnaws. On good nights, they work this out by making love, by clutching at each other ‘til there’s only satisfaction left. On nights in between, Kojiro finds his husband dozing on the couch, under the kotatsu.
He’s got an inkling, though, when he gets up and tugs on a shirt, that Kaoru didn’t get off so easy. He thinks of the way Kaoru was tense, was terse at dinner, and--on his worst nights, he just abides the whole way through.
And that’s how Kojiro finds him, pale and drawn, all limp and tense at once. He curls around his laptop, neck a wicked cramping bend.
“Hey,” he murmurs, nearly too soft to be heard. “Hey, baby, you alright?”
Kaoru doesn’t look up, but his keystrokes taper off into a trickle of little mechanical sounds. “Damn,” he says, after a moment. His voice is thin. “It’s five already?”
Kojiro purses his lips, wracked with concern. He tries to sound upbeat anyway, to make everything alright. “Yep,” he says, “that’s just the way time works, I don’t make the rules.”
Time, he knows, is something Kaoru hates. There is never enough of it--as efficient, as effective as he is, there is a finesse to his work; something that can’t be rushed. And still, still there is so much to be done--even when he ought to, Kaoru cannot seem to stop.
He groans, a half-hearted thing, and rubs his hazy eyes. “I am no nearer to updating Carla,” he sighs, “than I was when you went to bed. I think it was about two in the morning I discovered a massive error in the code, deleted an enormous bit of it, and I have been rewriting ever since.”
Kojiro pads to his husband’s side, sits down on the floor. Wraps one warm arm around Kaoru’s slender shoulders, rubs his back. Just to put some warmth in him, and he says “hey,” says “what did I tell you about bread?”
Kaoru turns, then, a little victory no matter how peeved he looks. No matter how tired--the skin beneath his eyes is positively grey, and Kojiro holds back the urge to kiss it.
“You love your inspirational fucking anecdotes,” says Kaoru, with a gentle acidity, “more than you love me.”
He can never control his mouth when he’s this tired. Kojiro adores it, thinks of Kaoru at seventeen.
“Probably not,” he says, smiling soft, “but I want you to say it anyway.”
Kaoru scoffs at him, and rolls his eyes behind smeared glasses, and does it anyway.
“Every loaf of bread you make,” he recites, “enhances the yeast biome in your kitchen when you leave it out to rise.” A sigh, replete with false resentment. “Thus, even if your bread doesn’t come out, the next loaf will be better.”
A smile from Kojiro, a kiss to the crown of Kaoru’s head. “Yep. So even if you scrap something, that’s still progress.” He can’t keep from sounding a little smug when he says it, if only because he’s pleased to have taught it to Kaoru so well.
“Alright, alright.” Kaoru huffs, lists back into Kojiro’s solid body. “I suppose I did get a couple of things done.” His tone is grudging, but he is giving ground. Kojiro is proud--he kisses him again, all over his head and cramped-up shoulders.
He loves him, this persnickety husband of his. Says so, too, when his lips come to rest at the shell of Kaoru’s ear.
“Now,” he murmurs, “I don’t want to hear any arguing--I’m making your breakfast and putting you to bed. It’s your day off, sweetheart, I want you to make the most of it.”
Kaoru turns, mouth open as if he wants to say that if he were to make the most of it he’d have Carla updated by now, and perhaps the bathroom cleaned. Kojiro heads him off, though, still softly smiling.
“I’m gonna make you omurice,” he says, and Kaoru must know that there is nothing he can say to divert him from that goal.
He tries anyway, tells him that the rice cooker takes too damn long, that he’ll be late for work, and Kojiro runs with it, goes through all the theatrics. There is no way to convince Kaoru if he doesn’t, after all, and he may as well indulge him a little snippiness if it’s going to get him fed and resting in the end. Yes, the rice cooker takes half an hour. Yes I’ll be late for work, but the restaurant’s just downstairs. Yes, I’ve trained the crew well enough to get on fine without me for a while.
And Kaoru must be exhausted, just enervated, because he acquiesces. “If you must,” he says to him, flat-voiced. Still, he is leaning into Kojiro’s body, still he is resting his head back against that shoulder. Still, he looks pleased, that he can finally allow himself to be cared for.
Kojiro smiles, and kisses his temple, and switches on the morning news. Kaoru despises early newscasts, hates the false affected cheer, but he tolerates this station, and it will keep him from working any longer.
He makes for the kitchen, sets up the rice cooker. It’s easy, even this bleary. He could do it blind, with his hands behind his back.
And they wait. Together, with Kaoru’s head in Kojiro’s lap, those broad hands stroking at his hair. Periodically, Kaoru will say something cutting about some news anchor’s tie, or the way they smile, or how he hates their little jokes, and Kojiro will laugh.
Kaoru is nearly asleep, cheek pressed against soft sturdy thigh, when the rice cooker goes. When Kojiro has to lay him out on the couch, draw a thick throw over top of him. Has to go and do the hands-on part, and it aches to even be on the other side of their living room.
But it’s alright, because he’s cooking. Cooking for Kaoru, and what could ever be wrong about that? He sings, over the commercials, a syrupy love ballad. Laughs to himself, because it is in his wobbly Italian, because Kaoru would roll his eyes and snipe if he knew what mush the lyrics were.
He will roll his eyes, will snipe at the smiley face Kojiro draws over the omelet with ketchup. He always insists, it makes his love pinch his nose and sigh with all of his precious exhaustion.
“Really?” Kaoru says, as if this is the first time his breakfast has ever been happy to see him. Kojiro laughs, settles at his side. Watches him eat, the way his dignity barely hides that he is ravenous.
Kisses the ketchup from the corner of his mouth, when he is done. Hoists him up into his arms, lets Kaoru curl against his chest. Bears him softly, safely back to bed, and slips his glasses off with all the gentleness in him.
“You get some rest,” he whispers, lips grazing the cool skin of Kaoru’s forehead. He grumbles a little, clearly peeved that he can’t keep working himself bone-tired, but Kojiro only shushes him, only kisses him again. “You get some rest, and I’ll be back soon.”
By the time he has changed into his chef’s whites, by the time he leaves the room, he thinks his darling Kaoru is asleep.
He leaves most of the restaurant work to his sous chef, an ebullient woman with arguably more talent than himself. Kojiro trusts her, trusts the whole crew. He told Kaoru as much, and he wasn’t lying. Sia la Luce is safe with them, once the brunch hours are over, and he takes his leave upstairs.
Kaoru is still sleeping when he gets back to their room--his mouth slack, his silky hair spread out against the pillow. Kojiro can’t help but watch him a moment. It’s not a new sight by any means, but it is never less beautiful--the sight of his cagey darling so unguarded.
He fumbles the buttons on his chef’s whites, for the way he watches. And then--like a soap bubble--it’s gone. Kaoru stirs, and stretches underneath the sheets, and reaches limp-armed for the clock.
“Fuck,” he grouses, “‘Jiro, what time is--what are you doing back here? Y’re supposed to be at work.”
Kojiro only smiles, working himself out of his pants and underthings. “I’m taking the rest of the day off,” he says, in the yes-chef voice he might use on his crew. “I’m having a family emergency--” he does so love to be able to say family--”and my husband needs taking care of. So, I’m here, and there’s no use in you complaining.”
“Oh,” rasps Kaoru, “you bastard, you foolish extravagant bastard.” His tone fluctuates like an old scale, not quite on balance between love and irritation. There is something like a smile on his lips, and all Kojiro wants is to kiss it away.
“It’s okay,” Kojiro says, coming to sit at the end of the bed. Stretching out the small of his back, which tenses when he works all morning on his feet. “If the prime minister or Godzilla shows up they can call me; I’m just upstairs.”
“And what’s the point of life, anyway?” He turns to Kaoru, quirks a thick brow. “If we’re not living deliciously?”
Kaoru’s eyes narrow, but there is not heat in it. “The fuck does that even mean,” he sighs, “you big oaf. If you’re going to waste your time, you may as well come keep me warm.”
And Kojiro does, is so pleased to--to slip naked between the warm covers, draw his delicate darling against his scarred chest. To tangle their legs, and feel against his knee the soft press of Kaoru’s thighs.
To hear the little sounds he makes, appeased, like he’s receiving his due, and he is. Kojiro will always give him this, whenever he needs. Whenever he wants, whenever it is even the slightest of his whims.
Kaoru scoffs, slightly, in the warm space between his breath and Kojiro’s breast. “You smell like kitchen,” he says, and Kojiro’s laughter is rumbling and warm.
This is not an objection. This is--this is simply what he is, the way he smells when Kaoru comes to him for comfort. When he allows himself, grudgingly or not, to be gentled. It is the smell of the home they’ve made together.
So Kojiro doesn’t protest, doesn’t bicker. Just nuzzles into the soft crown of Kaoru’s head, hums Carla’s tender lullaby.
“No,” mumbles Kaoru, “good heavens no, Kojiro, it’s nearly ten, I can’t go back to sleep.”
Kojiro only smiles into the part of Kaoru’s hair. “Yes you can. You’ve been burning the candle at both ends, baby, for weeks, and that’s just not how candles work.”
“You need rest,” he entreats him, “and I’ll make it worth your while.”
Kaoru doesn’t say anything--just listens, and Kojiro cannot see his eyes but he knows the glimmer in them, the expectation. Like he knows he’s worthy of all tribute, and is only waiting to be told what it is.
“Well,” Kojiro says, “when you wake up I’ll make you lunch. Carbonara, maybe? And I won’t even make you do the dishes, even though I’m a chef and all I do is dishes.”
“And I’ll run you a nice hot bath, with one of those sakura bath bombs you like so much, and I’ll bring you a little glass of wine--white,” he adds, “because I know you love red but it gives you headaches. You’ll like it, I’ve got some nice enough stuff downstairs.”
Kaoru hums, a little, and it fills Kojiro like pulling back a curtain fills a room with sun, all warm and lazy and bright.
“And I’ll rub your shoulders, baby, and your wrists, because before we do any of that--if you’re okay with it, I want to put you under.”
“I want to take care of you, Kaoru,” and his voice barely holds for the weight of this desire, “will you let me?”
Kaoru, he can tell, is smiling. Kojiro can’t see his face, tucked up as it is against his breast, but--it is the way he breathes, it is the movement in his cheek. He pictures it, languid and feline and pleased, and it makes him thrill a little bit.
Makes him go on--”I’ll lay you out all comfy on this bed, and I’ll get out that pretty red rope you like so much,” he says, and Kaoru is so rapt that he does not even make his usual protest, does not say you uncultured ass, it’s burgundy. “And I’ll tie your wrists up and cover your eyes, sweetheart, so you don’t have to worry about anything at all.”
So all you have to do is be here, Kojiro thinks. So that the way you lean on me is all there is.
He imagines Kaoru’s lips pursing, in the silence. “And?”
And Kojiro laughs, soft against that silky hair. “And anything, Kaoru, baby I’ll give you anything you want. Anything at all, just say the word--if,” and his smile widens, because there is an if, “you take a little rest with me, first.”
“Hmph.” Kaoru’s primness belies the way he nestles up against his husband, gentle. Clinging, the way he’ll never admit to.
“I suppose,” he says, so lightly, “I suppose that if you really insist, I might be able to...” but there is sleep in his voice, and he does not finish. Only nuzzles closer, nosing at Kojiro’s breast, only lets himself be held.
Kojiro hums that old familiar lullaby to him, and rocks him soft and slow, and they’re alright, alright.