365 Days of Starshipping (Part 2)

Favorite Foods

7/20/19

Yusei was interrupted during his work by a certain cat sitting on his mouse hand, letting out a low meow and staring at him.

"Hello," Yusei greeted, raising an eyebrow at the cat with an amused quirk of the lips as he took his hand back and pet him on the head, "And what do you want?"

Pharaoh meowed at him again, nudging his hand with his nose and turning his head towards the kitchen before meowing even more.

Was he hungry? What time was it even...?

With a blink Yusei checked the clock after adjusting his glasses - seven o'clock at night, which also happened to be an hour past Pharaoh's usual dinner time. If no one had fed him yet, then it made sense for him to be complaining to someone.

Usually that person was Judai though, which prompted him to look over and see what he was up to. He wasn't expecting to find him hunched over a notebook, which looked relatively new, biting his thumb with a concentrated frown and twirling his pencil in his other hand. Generally, Judai didn't get that deep into whatever he worked on unless it was important to him, so Yusei could see why Pharaoh had bothered him instead of Judai.

"Alright, let's get you some food then," Yusei murmured, quietly getting up and going to the kitchen so as to not accidentally disturb the other's concentration. He'd have to ask him about what he was working on later, but for now he didn't want to disrupt his thought process - he knew very well just how important it was to have time to think things through and just... work, with no outside distractions.

With that thought, he decided that he'd make dinner for both him and Judai tonight, not just Pharaoh's, because he hadn't done it by himself in a while and he figured it'd be nice for Judai. He might as well call it a night for working too, since he was already starting to feel a little tired now that he'd been dragged away from his laptop and energy readers by Pharaoh and he knew that in an hour or two he'd really start to feel it set in.

"Here you go," Yusei smiled, putting Pharaoh's food bowl on the floor and taking a moment to watch the fluff ball happily eat before getting to work on his own meal. He wasn't entirely sure what to make at first, so he settled on filling the rice cooker while he thought about it.

Maybe... no, not feeling it right now, he thought to himself. Judai spoiling him with high-quality foods had led to him developing an actual taste for food, and he'd started to get used to the feeling of not wanting certain ones at certain times, unlike before where even a hint of such a feeling was usually shoved aside in favor of getting some form of sustenance in his stomach.

When he'd noticed and mentioned it to Judai, the other had made a surprised look before a very prideful, self-satisfied grin formed on his face, which Yusei was just going to assume was a good sign.

The sight of the cabinet holding all the more unique cooking utensils gave him his answer though, and a quick check of the fridge confirmed that he did indeed have all the stuff needed for for what he had in mind, so he got to work preparing it.

About thirty minutes later, the smell must've finally wafted out of the kitchen (or he'd been too loud, which was very much a possibility considering what he was making) because Judai wandered in with a pleasantly surprised look on his face.

"Are you making dinner?" he asked, blinking at him and the basket in front of him, "Wait... what are you making? That's the compact fryer."

Yusei couldn't help the slight smirk his grin turned into when he replied, "I've been practicing making fried shrimp whenever you left to go work at whatever thing Phoenix scheduled for you that day."

"Wait, really?!" Judai exclaimed, eyes practically sparkling as he ran over with a silly grin, "Oh my gods, it is ebi fry! How did you know?! You wouldn't have practiced if you didn't know it was my favorite!"

"Remember when you could talk to Pharaoh thanks to the potion? You mentioned it then," Yusei replied, satisfaction filling his chest at the way Judai gaped at him in return before hugging him.

"That was one time, and you remembered it?" Judai wondered, pulling him down for a moment for a kiss before letting him go back to watching the food, "What did I do to deserve you?"

"That's what I should be asking," Yusei mused, determining that it was almost done and turning to Judai with a smile, "Can you get a plate please? I made just enough for both of us, so we can just put it on one and split it."

Judai's happy aura as he stuffed his face and praised his cooking made all the pain of going through how to learn the fryer worth it. Yusei was never going to tell him about how he'd accidentally given himself a small burn thanks to the oil the very first time he tried to use it, or how he'd burned the first two batches he ever made somehow. The stupid fryer just hadn't wanted to work with him, but he'd figured it out eventually at least.

The things he went through to surprise his boyfriend... he wouldn't have it any other way.