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Kunigami has only known Chigiri for a week or two, but he swears to hell and back that he is going to be the death of him.
"For the last time," he hisses as he stumbles after Chigiri, who has an arm wrapped tightly around his wrist, dragging him along, "I think we should just leave it alone!"
"Shut up, Kunigami," Chigiri replies with a sing-song voice. His eyes are trained ahead as he walks, stubbornly on this one-way tunnel of his that Kunigami can't seem to talk him out of no matter how hard he tries. "This place is so, like, high-tech. It wouldn't be there if they didn't want us to find it."
"Just because it's there, doesn't mean we should snoop!"
"Don't be boring. What's the worst that could happen?"
Sincerely, Kunigami is going to die. "We could get kicked out of Blue Lock. We could accidentally burn this place down. We could—"
"Or we could bake the most delicious fucking cookies ever and everyone will be jealous," Chigiri says, coming to a stop. Kunigami sighs.
The place they just entered was discovered completely by accident by the two of them. Kunigami was walking through the cafeteria, searching for a place to return his tray, when he came across an inconspicuous button on the wall at the very corner of the room. Chigiri was tagging along with him, and because he apparently has no self-control when it comes to buttons, he pressed it.
It revealed a sliding door that led to a small kitchen. It looks exactly like the rest of Blue Lock—stainless steel everywhere, a grey and blue colour scheme, and so robotic that it kind of makes Kunigami uncomfortable. It's like those kitchens he sees when bingeing shitty cooking shows to entertain himself.
Anyway, they had to rush off for training after that, so they didn't get to explore. But Chigiri was hellbent on coming back despite Kunigami's insistence that they should just leave it be, so now they're here at almost half past nine at night, sneaking in.
"How the hell do you close this door?" Chigiri mutters, feeling the walls. When he can't figure it out, he shoots his hand out to the wall on the exterior side, slamming his palm into the button before withdrawing his hand, just in time to avoid getting squished. Kunigami winces.
"Great. Now it's like we're really doing something wrong," he grumbles. "How are we going to get out?"
Chigiri pauses. He definitely did not think about that, then. "...We can figure it out after."
"Dude."
Chigiri sends him a glare that holds no heat. "Okay, loosen up, Hero. I can't believe they had a whole kitchen just hidden here. I wonder if there are chefs?"
"There has to be. I assume that's where we get our food."
"To be honest, if you told me that our food just spawns out of thin air here, I would believe you."
Kunigami hums, looking around. There's a fridge almost as tall as him a few feet away. He walks over, opening it, and is taken aback by the sheer variety of ingredients inside.
Vegetables, eggs, frozen meat—everything he thinks of, it's there. He recognises them as some of the dishes they get for their meals. From behind him, he can hear Chigiri tugging open the cupboards, making offhanded comments about the spices or other ingredients that they have stored.
"Aha!" Chigiri cries out. Kunigami turns around just in time to watch him pull out a comically large bag of flour and dump it on the table in the centre. It wobbles under the weight and he mutters a curse, bending down to lock the wheels in place.
"Okay!" Chigiri says as he pops back up, flipping his hair back. "We can definitely bake cookies here. I see bowls and stuff over there."
"Nothing I say is going to talk you out of this?"
"You know it!" He grins, and despite the situation, Kunigami finds himself smiling back.
Even though there's a part of him that's still hesitant, he supposes he can go along with Chigiri's whims right now. He knows that Chigiri is serious about Blue Lock and that he wouldn't risk his position here for no reason, so he decides to trust his confidence that they won't be pummelled into the last century for baking innocently.
Then comes the next problem.
"Do you even know how to bake?" he asks, walking over to Chigiri.
Chigiri blinks up at him, pressing his lips together. "...Kind of? I've watched my sister do it."
"You have to know that watching and actually doing something are two completely different things. You play football."
"You're so judgy, Kunigami!" Chigiri laughs, shoving at his arm. He grunts, not expecting the sheer force. "Fine, do you know how to bake?"
"No," he huffs.
"Then there's a first time for everything. It can't be that hard."
Kunigami wants to argue some more, but Chigiri's eyes are shining with excitement. Or, maybe it's mischief, because if it's one thing he's unexpectedly learned about him, it's that Chigiri loves messing around.
Still, he can't find it in himself to diminish that light. Chigiri is one of his closest, if not the closest friend, that Kunigami has here. Watching him go from the moody and uncaring player to this explosive bout of energy was an awe-inspiring experience too, and it makes Kunigami even more unwilling to destroy that development.
Besides, Chigiri is probably right. It's just cookies. Perhaps it'll come to them as naturally as football does.
"Okay," he relents, rolling up the sleeves of his jumper and heading to the sink. "Let's bake cookies."
"Hell yeah!" Chigiri laughs, pumping a fist in the air.
It starts off relatively simple enough. They mostly eyeball things as they go, adding whatever they need to get the right consistency. Sugar and baking soda and such are all a guess too, but Chigiri has a bit of knowledge on that matter, so it’s fine. The batter is beginning to form, not as hard as cookie dough is, but hard enough for them to mould.
Despite Chigiri's disagreement that it wouldn't work, Kunigami plucks out a bit of batter to taste test. It's just a bit too sweet for his personal liking, but it definitely tastes like cookies, so he decides that they're going in the right direction.
“I wonder if they have any fillings,” Kunigami says aloud, letting Chigiri take over the mixing as he wanders through the cabinets. He thinks he saw hazelnuts somewhere, or even raisins—
“They have chocolate chips in the fridge!” Chigiri pipes up.
“…That’s so unhealthy.”
“It’s cookies. What kind of heathen eats plain cookies?”
“I wasn’t thinking of leaving it plain, I was thinking of using a healthier option like nuts.”
“I have a nut allergy.”
Chigiri says it so fast and so naturally that Kunigami is inclined to not question it. That is, until he recalls a vague conversation where Chigiri mentioned loving his mother’s walnut banana bread, and only then does he catch the bold-faced lie.
“No, you don’t!”
“Yes, I do. Only certain nuts, though.”
Kunigami frowns. He supposes that sounds plausible. Allergies are weird like that. “Oh. Like, hazelnuts?”
Chigiri looks up, his grin turning into something sharp. “Like deez nuts— ”
He doesn’t get to finish his sentence, for Kunigami feels a blinding rush of impulsivity run through him at being fooled with a joke only a thirteen-year-old would find funny, that he reaches into the open packet of flour by his side, grabs a handful, and tosses it straight at Chigiri’s face.
Chigiri coughs in surprise, jaw dropping open. They stare at each other for a few seconds, unblinking and unmoving, until Chigiri’s finger twitches.
Unfortunately for Kunigami, his reflexes will never be faster than Chigiri’s speed. Chigiri dashes around him, swiping the bag of flour away and backing off, holding it out threateningly. He digs his hand inside, grabbing a large amount of flour, and throws it.
Most of the flour does not actually end up on Kunigami and instead drops to the floor. “Dude! How the hell are we gonna clean that?!”
“You started it!” Chigiri cries, doing it again.
Kunigami’s attempts to shield himself from flour only go so far. He yells, an arm covering his face as dusts of white surround him, until his clothes are all cloudy and he can barely even see and Chigiri is laughing—
Chigiri is laughing, his head thrown back, specks of flour on his cheeks and fingers because he wasn’t very careful either, and he looks shockingly beautiful.
It’s not a new thought. Everyone and their mother knows that Chigiri is beautiful. With silky hair, long eyelashes framing doe eyes, and sweet pink lips, Chigiri is widely known as the pretty one, but this.
This Chigiri’s eyes are shut tightly, his cheeks red and plump, his mouth wide open as his unbridled joy rings through the air, throes of delight within his peels of laughter. At this moment, Chigiri isn’t just pretty—he’s real, and he’s radiant.
Kunigami feels like he’s being blinded and drawn in at the same time. Something unfamiliar tugs at his heart strings.
Chigiri’s happiness is contagious, too, as Kunigami’s lips twitch up into a smile he can’t contain. They probably look ridiculous, two boys covered head-to-toe in flour, but Kunigami feels like he hasn’t had this much fun since entering Blue Lock. He feels free.
“You’re insane,” Kunigami sighs, and even his voice is thrumming with fondness, like every part of his body adores the sight in front of him. “Completely, utterly, batshit insane.”
“Don’t bring out the big words, now,” Chigiri teases, wiping a lone tear away from the corner of his eye.
Kunigami bites back another smile. He glances at the bowl of batter, which has remained surprisingly unaffected during their entire fight—if you can even consider it one; Chigiri was relentless and he barely fought back. Chigiri sets the bag of flour down with a pointed look at him before heading to the fridge, pulling out said packet of chocolate chips.
He goes up to the bowl, ripping open the packet of chips and dumping it all in. Kunigami rolls his eyes, but he lets him do that and mixes it lazily.
"There's more chocolate chips than cookie batter in that," he says.
Chigiri nods. "The best kind. Can you get a tray?"
Kunigami mumbles an affirmative, ruffling around the cabinets. He successfully finds a metal tray as well as a roll of baking sheets. Once he sets that up, Chigiri shifts the bowl to the centre and they begin rolling up balls of dough together.
"We might have made too much," Kunigami says when the tray is halfway filled and the bowl does not look any less empty than it began with.
"Maybe," Chigiri agrees. "Get another tray."
He does. And then he gets another because even two trays aren't enough for the amount of batter they made.
They end up with three full trays. After Kunigami slides them into the oven, Chigiri rattles off a series of numbers for the temperature and timing to set it to, which he memorised from his sister. They forgot to preheat the oven, but they agree that it probably doesn't matter, and just leave it be.
"Now's the fun part," Kunigami says a bit sarcastically once the oven is running. He gestures around. "Clean up."
Chigiri's lips twist into a pout. "I don't want to. I'm tired."
Kunigami sighs, reaching out and dusting a bit of flour off of Chigiri's shoulders. "You were the one who got flour everywhere, and we cannot just leave behind the evidence. It's even in your hair—"
They both freeze. Kunigami immediately regrets the words that just came out of his mouth.
"I-I mean, it's not that bad. It's only at the ends, not near your roots at all—" he begins, but Chigiri is rushing over to the fridge, squinting at himself through the reflection. He squats, tilting his head back and forth to assess the 'damage'.
“Fucking hell,” Chigiri mutters, “I look like an idiot.”
Kunigami glances down at himself, covered in way more flour than Chigiri is, and distantly thinks to himself, if you look like an idiot, what do I look like?
“You don’t,” he assures anyway, because it’s true. “You could wear a trash bag and still look better than all of us, I think.”
He realises how odd that compliment is only after he says it out loud. Chigiri doesn’t seem to mind, though, looking up with a surprised laugh. “Wow. That’s the kindest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“Wh— I’ve always been kind to you!”
“Eh… you called me a lazy princess yesterday. Don’t know how I feel about that.”
“You left, and I cannot emphasise enough, an entire ball of hair in the shower drain last night!”
“Just use a different cubicle!”
“That’s not the point and you know it!”
Chigiri manages to keep up a glare for a good, solid five seconds before he bursts out laughing again. His shoulders shake as he straightens up, flicking his hair back and sending yet another puff of flour to the ground.
Kunigami’s stomach twists with something new and unfamiliar.
He thinks, then, that this feeling has always been building up, coiling tighter and tighter until it threatens to snap. It’s just something he’s been ignoring from the moment it started—thinking back, it was probably when he first laid his eyes on Chigiri and quietly mused to himself about how pretty he was. Is.
A quiet, sickening dread fills his head. Something akin to fear sinks into his bones and he feels nauseous when he realises this one thing: He wants Chigiri. He wants him ardently.
Chigiri is like a fairytale with his magnetic, blazing personality, one you only unlock if you're lucky enough like Kunigami is. And, like all fairytales are, Chigiri is an unreachable star. An unrealistic goal, for a textbook happy ending isn't something to be replicated in real life.
A hero is meant to be brave. Kunigami is never afraid to reach out.
But this time, shackles wrap around his beating heart and lock it there, chaining his feelings up forever. It threatens to squeeze it dry if he dares think about verbalising his feelings to Chigiri, to chase after this hopeless wish.
So when he tries to take a step forward, his feet remain rooted to the ground. When his lips part, no words leave his throat.
His heart hammers against his chest, begging to be set free. Why can't he?
"—oi, Kunigami. Are you dreaming about the cookies?"
Kunigami is snapped out of his thoughts when Chigiri waves a hand in front of his face, a small frown playing at his lips. When he deems Kunigami alive, he pulls back with an eye roll. "I never know what's going on in that rock head of yours. Come on. I'm gonna get a mop."
"E-eh?"
Chigiri walks off before Kunigami can say anything else. He heads to the corner of the kitchen, where a small station has been set up for cleaning materials, and grabs the mop and bucket. Before he goes to fill it up with water, he gathers his hair up, procuring a hair tie out of nowhere and putting his hair up into a high ponytail.
Kunigami's gaze drags over the expanse of his now-exposed neck for a full five seconds before he forces those thoughts out of his head, his cheeks burning pink.
Together, they clean up the mess they've made. At least they're both marginally better at cleaning things than baking things. By the time they're done, Kunigami still feels sticky and dirty, but a sense of satisfaction overtakes that. Chigiri flops to the floor, drawing his knees up to his chest and looking through the oven for the cookies.
"...Kunigami," he says, his tone a lot softer than before. Kunigami feels his heart stop in his chest.
"Yes?"
"Thanks for always hanging out with me. Blue Lock gets kinda, I don't know, suffocating, sometimes. But you feel like a breath of fresh air."
Chigiri buries his face in his knees, a stray strand of hair falling over his eyes, hiding his expression completely, but Kunigami has already seen it—the subtle flush on his cheeks and the tips of his ears turning red.
He swallows roughly, joining Chigiri on the floor and knocking their shoulders together. Clearing his throat and hoping he doesn't sound like a loser, he replies, "Of course. I like spending time with you, too. Even if it's reckless."
Chigiri chuckles, shoving at him lightly. "It's not reckless. I'll show you reckless when we're on the field again tomorrow."
"Please don't. Wait, what?"
"Nothing~"
"Chigiri, you can't just say that! What does that mean? Chigiri!"
His laughter echoes throughout the kitchen, and Kunigami thinks that there is truly no other place he'd rather be.
When Chigiri and Kunigami return to the rest of the team, it's about fifteen minutes before lights out. Isagi looks up from where he's watching Bachira and Gagamaru play imaginary tic-tac-toe (don’t ask), raising an eyebrow at how Kunigami is towelling his hair dry and Chigiri seems to be hiding something behind his back.
"Where the hell were you two?" Raichi asks.
Kunigami groans. Chigiri kicks his shin before revealing what he's holding—a comically large jar of chocolate chip cookies. "We made these!"
Isagi blinks a few times, trying to figure out the logistics behind that before Bachira tumbles past him, racing for the jar. That sets the rest of the team off, all of them hurrying to get a nighttime snack.
Isagi doesn't bother moving, able to see that there are plenty of cookies to go around. Sure enough, once the crowd clears, Chigiri comes over, sitting down and offering the jar to Isagi with a small, proud smile.
"Thanks," he says, taking one and popping it into his mouth. It's still warm. "Wow, this is nice!"
"You're welcome." Chigiri smiles as Kunigami comes up to sit beside him, stealing another cookie from the jar. At that, Chigiri gives him a teasing look, to which he grunts and mumbles for him to shut up. "We did our best. I told you the chocolate chips were gonna be a hit."
"They're awesome!" Bachira agrees, bouncing up to them. He stops behind Chigiri and Kunigami, waving one cookie around. "Tastes like chocolate goodness and a special secret ingredient!"
Isagi tilts his head in confusion. "What's that?"
Bachira grins, holding the cookie between his teeth. He kneels down between the other two, careful to avoid their gazes before forming a heart with his hands, and Isagi picks up on the understated message—the secret ingredient is LOVE.
He turns his focus to Chigiri and Kunigami, who are looking at each other with something soft and fresh in their eyes, as if they both hung the stars in each other’s universe, and grins back.