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Hifumi sneezes for the fifth time this morning, his body falling back into his bed with the force. He’d felt slightly off the night before, but didn’t expect whatever this sickness is to worsen so quickly. His muscles ache, and he can’t bring himself to sit up from his current position, arms splayed out over the mattress as he stares through watery eyes at the ceiling.
That is, until Doppo walks in with breakfast.
“I’m glad it’s Saturday so I can be here to help look after you,” he says quietly, setting the tray over Hifumi’s legs. “Well… as much as I can. You’re always going out of your way to look after me, so I want to do the same. I don’t know how good I’ll be, though.”
“You know it’s not a problem, looking after you,” Hifumi replies through blocked sinuses, coughing suddenly in response to his body getting angry at him for talking. “It’s my favourite thing.”
If he didn’t feel like death, he’d spend more time reveling in how Doppo’s face turns red as he listens. Alas, even winking feels like too much effort, which is so not like him.
“E-Even so,” Doppo stumbles, helping Hifumi sit up straighter so he can eat breakfast. It’s just a simple slice of toast and some juice, but it’s perfect. He’s not sure his lack of appetite could handle much anyway. “Don’t worry about doing too much today, just stay in bed a-and call for me if you need anything.”
“Doppo!” Hifumi groans loudly, an attempt at a shout. Ever the petulant one. “I need you.”
“And as always, you’re even whinier when you’re sick,” Doppo rolls his eyes, but he leans down and kisses Hifumi’s forehead anyway. “That’s all you’re getting, if I get sick too my boss will drive here himself just to tell me I’m fired, and maybe set fire to this apartment to further prove the point.”
Hifumi pouts around a mouthful of toast, but doesn’t protest. Doppo disappears out of the room and comes back with a thermometer and some cold and flu medicine, waiting for Hifumi to finish eating. He sits on the end of the bed and watches, eyes gentle as he takes in Hifumi’s disheveled form.
“I’m probably at my ugliest like this,” Hifumi whines.
“Yeah, probably.”
“Doppo!”
“Hey, you said it first,” Doppo half-shrugs, popping the flu tablets out of their plastic packaging and handing them to Hifumi as the latter lifts up his glass of juice.
Hifumi’s expression sours as he looks down at the two pills resting in his palm. Ever since he was a kid, he’s always hated tablets. He’s always feared they’ll get lodged somewhere in his throat, or to a much less threatening extent, that the taste they leave in his mouth will never go away and that’s how everything will taste for the rest of his life.
His mother always used to cut them in half for him if she could, but unfortunately, the ones Doppo just handed to him can’t be split.
“Come on, you big baby,” Doppo pushes impatiently, in the middle of tucking the thermometer under Hifumi’s arm. “They’re too small to block your throat like you think they’re going to.”
Hifumi gives him his best pout, but Doppo’s expression doesn’t waver, so with an overly dramatic, heaving sigh, he fills his mouth with juice and awkwardly pops the first tablet in as well, shoulders tense and eyes squeezed shut as he counts down to when he feels comfortable enough to swallow. With another mouthful of juice, they’re both gone.
“See? That wasn’t so bad.”
“I want a kiss as a reward for my bravery.”
Doppo huffs slightly but indulges once more, another quick peck to Hifumi’s forehead that isn’t nearly enough, but he knows that’s as much as he’s going to get. “That’s the last one for the day,” Doppo says, leveling Hifumi with a look as soon as he starts to protest. The thermometer beeps and Doppo’s forehead creases in concern as he stares at the screen.
“Don’t worry about house duties or anything today,” Hifumi urges, suddenly semi-serious. “I can just clean when I feel better, you shouldn’t have to spend the day trying to both look after me and pick up the slack.”
“It’ll be fine,” Doppo replies airily, looking away from Hifumi’s narrowed, doubtful gaze. The fidgeting of his hands is probably giving him away. “Really, I can handle a bit of housework and a meal or two.”
“Well, if you’re going to try and cook, the fridge is basically empty, so you’re gonna have to go shopping,” Hifumi yawns around the end of his sentence, painfully aware that the Evil Capsules of Discomfort that Doppo gave him have drowsy side effects. Not that he minds too much - a nap where his blocked nose doesn’t wake him up repeatedly sounds amazing. “Do you know what brands to get?”
“I’ll be fine,” Doppo promises, resting a hand on Hifumi’s, before he stands and lifts the tray up with him. “Enjoy your nap, don’t stress about the housework.”
Hifumi just hums in response, already burying his face in the pillows. With one hand balancing the tray, Doppo uses the other one to lift the covers higher and push a few stray locks of Hifumi’s hair away from his face. He shouldn’t be allowed to be this cute when he’s sick.
With uncertain determination, he closes Hifumi’s bedroom door behind him and looks around at their near spotless apartment (not spotless enough, by his partner’s standards).
He can do this.
--
He most certainly cannot do this.
Why are there so many brands for potatoes?
And why are the tiny packs of strawberries 897 yen?!
The trip to the supermarket had seemed deceptively simple, but now he’s not even sure what to choose, or if Hifumi ever even had a shopping budget for this sort of thing. Should he spend that much on what are probably mediocre strawberries?
His plan for dinner is simple: curry and rice. Hifumi had mentioned before that he got his recipe from Ichiro a while ago, and so Doppo had panic-texted their Ikebukuro acquaintance on his way to the supermarket for any advice.
“It’s like, the world’s easiest dinner, bro,” Ichiro had replied almost instantaneously, always so casual. “Even if you overcook it, it still slaps.”
Doppo didn’t really have the headspace to contemplate the language of young people, or what any of it means, and so he just assumed one thing: curry and rice was immensely easy to not screw up.
And so, after a debilitating ten minutes spent standing in the potato section of the fresh produce, most of which consists of googling what the difference between all these names and similar shapes is, Doppo has everything he needs.
Thank God for curry cubes so he doesn’t have to make the broth himself.
Also, these strawberries better taste like heaven.
--
When Doppo returns home, he lightly pushes Hifumi’s door open a crack on the way in and heaves a sigh of relief when he sees Hifumi is still deep in slumber.
Good, now might be the time to vacuum.
But first, maybe he should wipe down the kitchen? In case any crumbs fall to the ground to be vacuumed up.
Seriously, what is the best order to do all of this in?
He decides on wiping the kitchen down first, which thankfully, is a job Doppo can do. Hifumi had cleaned up after dinner the night before, so the kitchen doesn’t really need much attention, which makes things even easier for when Doppo has to cook later.
It’s the vacuum that gives him the most trouble.
How many times is this thing going to grab their fluffy lounge room carpet and refuse to let go?
The noise is also making him panic, although he always sleeps through it whenever it’s Hifumi vacuuming because of how exhausted he is all the time. That’s without drowsy flu medicine too, so it should be fine.
By the time he makes his way to his room, he and the vacuum have a mutual understanding. It stops getting caught on doorway corners, and Doppo stops steering it into carpets and other fabrics it chokes on. All in all, vacuuming is a success.
Until it’s time to pack it away, which always looked deceptively easy whenever he’d seen Hifumi do it.
Doppo lightly rests one foot over the cord retracting button, hands resting on his hips as he surveys the fruits of his efforts - not that the floor looks much different from before he vacuumed. All of a sudden, there’s a sharp pain in his ankle and he crouches down, teeth clenched in an effort to mute himself as he glares at the cord in betrayal.
He untangles the cord from where it had wrapped around his ankle during the attack, carefully pressing the button again to send the rest of it back into its metaphorical cage. Traitor, I thought we were friends, he thinks miserably.
With the vacuum packed away, it’s time to start dinner.
Which means it’s time to work with knives.
Which means Doppo needs to not have another betrayal.
Luckily, even though it probably takes longer than it should, preparation for dinner comes and goes without hiccup. He probably spends far too long staring at the rice cooker in worry as there’s no indication it’s doing anything except for the two dash lines that appeared on the screen after he hit the start button (the internet tells him that means it’s working), but really, it’s all working out.
Ichiro had sent him a basic rundown of instructions on the curry, and Doppo’s pretty sure he’s doing everything right, so when it comes time to let the curry simmer for a while, he allows himself a seat at the kitchen counter, sighing peacefully.
For a day filled with firsts, less went wrong than he thought.
That is, until minutes later when he checks the rice cooker.
Digging the scoop into the rice, Doppo’s heart sinks as he realises he’s basically charred the grains sitting in the bottom of the bowl. Okay, maybe he mismeasured the amount of water. He’s just about to drop down and curl up into a ball when--
“Doppo?”
Feeling as if he’s been caught in a crime scene with the murder weapon in hand (well, he is still holding the scoop) Doppo turns slowly to see Hifumi staring at him quizzically, and he’d laugh at how messy Hifumi’s hair is if not for how stupid he feels.
“You look stressed, what happened?” Hifumi sounds less sick than he did this morning, which is a good thing, but Doppo can’t bring himself to verbalise his stupidity and only ducks his head as he sinks down to the floor with his back against the cabinet.
Hifumi meanders into the kitchen and side-steps his partner to get a better look at the rice, and he smiles sympathetically. “Hey, it’s fine, Doppochin! I used to do this all the time too if I was distracted when cooking, so don’t worry about it! The curry smells great, you know.”
“I added chocolate,” Doppo whimpers from the floor, voice muffled against his knees. Hifumi sits down beside him.
“Thank you for helping with everything today,” he says earnestly, and Doppo isn’t sure what to think - he’s not normally used to Hifumi giving praise so seriously. “I’ll take care of the rice and maybe we can pack the curry away for tomorrow? I’m kind of feeling greasy takeout food right now.”
“Yeah…” Doppo resigns. “So am I.”
“Well, how about you handle ordering the food while I take care of all of this, and then we can camp out on the couch and watch something silly?”
Doppo smiles at that, lightly bumping against Hifumi. He scooches down a little so he can lean his head down on Hifumi’s shoulder. “You’re much better at taking care of me than I am of you.”
“That’s not true, you did a wonderful job today! Look how pretty our apartment is today.”
“It was pretty before because you cleaned it.”
“Look how much prettier our apartment is today!”
Doppo sighs, hand finding Hifumi’s and intertwining their fingers. “I’m not going to win this, am I?”
“Nope!” Hifumi chirps, kissing the side of Doppo’s head. “I see you bought strawberries, too. If they’re still as expensive as they were yesterday, they better taste like heaven. Actually… combining them with the spare bottle of champagne work gave me should help.”
“Should you really be drinking when you’re sick?” Doppo’s pretty sure if he suggested alcohol to Hifumi this morning, his host partner would have only turned green. How things change after a day-long nap.
“I can’t think of a better remedy than enjoying drinks and greasy food with you.”
Doppo rolls his eyes, standing and helping Hifumi up with him. “I’ll go order the food then.”
“Great! Leave the rest to me,” Hifumi winks, ushering Doppo out of the kitchen.
“I usually do,” the brunette mumbles, still displeased with himself.
“Yeah, and I love you for it,” Hifumi replies without missing a beat, already grabbing containers out for the curry. Doppo looks back at him with a smile that he doesn’t see, but he hopes Hifumi senses it anyway.
“I love you too.”
Forty-five minutes later, the curry is cooling in containers on the counter, the crime scene that was burnt rice has been scrubbed clean, and Doppo and Hifumi are bundled up in blankets together on the couch, sipping on expensive champagne in contrast with their cheap takeout dinner.
“Moment of truth!” Hifumi says excitedly as he wrestles with the strawberry container, having finished his dinner. Doppo watches in silent amusement. “These better be enlightenment-inducing, like, I better get the same result I’d get from committing to a life of being a monk.”
“Hifumi, I’m pretty sure they’re not going to be that good, you can’t get mad if they’re not,” Doppo reasons, even though he’s thinking the exact same thing.
Hifumi makes for the kitchen to cut the strawberries, returning in record time. He pops one into his mouth with a smile. Doppo looks over at him, waiting for the review.
“Well,” the host starts, “They’re probably not worth the 987 yen price tag, but I suppose eating expensive strawberries and drinking expensive champagne with my favourite person is basically reaching enlightenment anyway.”
Doppo blushes profusely. “Sh-shut up,” he stammers. Hifumi cackles happily and kisses him before he can repeat himself.
Okay, maybe the expensive strawberries were a good call.