[LOG] Zaizen and Marui

[mmmarui]

Who: Zaizen and Marui
When: October 4th
Where: Marui's room
What: Zaizen checks up on Marui’s tongue piercing and makes him food



Some time had passed since he'd pierced Marui's tongue, so Zaizen figured it was about time to go see if Marui was ready for a shorter barbell or something.

He knocked on Marui's door, yawning a bit. It had been a long day. "Hey Bunta-san, you home?"

Even after Marui had realized it was the new medication sapping his desire to do things, it was still hard for Marui to work against it. He'd convinced himself to get a few things done earlier, and now he was spending the rest of his night lazing about watching movies. Pausing the movie when he heard the knock, he told the door to open but didn't get up from his bean bag chair on the floor. "What's up?"

Zaizen came on in with a shrug, holding the little baggie with the fresh barbell for Marui to see. "Time to see if the swelling has gone down enough for the shorter barbell. Then I figured we could eat dinner together or something."

See what a good friend he was being? He wasn't always mean to you, Marui.

"It isn't going to hurt, is it?" Marui eyed the barbell warily from his spot on the ground. He had no intention of getting up, Zaizen would have to come down here to check on him.

Zaizen seemed to catch on to that, and moved to crouch by Marui. "It might, it might not. Depends on how the healing is going. I'm good at this though, so if it does hurt it won't hurt for long."

No point in lying to the man.

Sigh. Well, it wasn’t like Marui could avoid it, it had to be done. “Fine. But if it hurts so much I can’t eat after, I’m gonna be pissed.” Because in the end, of course it came down to food. “So you want me to just stick out my tongue, or?”

"It won’t hurt enough to keep you from eating. I'll even cook for you once we're done." Zaizen offered, feeling a bit bad for Marui. His meds were putting him through some shit, right? Maybe he deserved some compassion. "And yeah, stick it out so I can check the swelling."

Some of it was meds shit, but a lot of it was just regular Marui-shit. “I didn’t know you could cook.” That was all Marui said for now, sticking out his tongue for Zaizen to see. He’d been diligent in cleaning his piercings, even when he didn’t want to do anything else.

"I mean, I'm not at your level, but I used to help out by cooking sometimes back home. So I'm not hopeless like Kenya-san is." Zaizen poked and prodded gently, testing how swollen things were before getting the fresh barbell ready.

It only took a few deft movements for him to carefully remove the longer barbell and replace it with the new one.

"You're healing up really well. Good job taking care of it. A lot of people don't and... well, it's not pretty."

Marui whined for the sake of whining when the bar was switched, but it didn’t actually hurt. Immediately he ran the new bar against the roof of his mouth, testing it out. Interesting. Even through the soreness, Marui could tell he was going to have a lot of fun with this when it was healed.

“It’s almost like I’m smart enough not to get an infection in my most important body part.” Marui stood up from his chair, stretching his arms wide. “Alright, let’s go. Let’s see what not-hopeless tastes like.” He had to admit, he was curious to see just what Zaizen could pull off.

Zaizen actually gave Marui an amused smile as he got up off the floor. "You do seem pretty attached to your tongue. You use it for a whole lot of things."

He headed for the door so that they could head for the kitchen. "You okay with omurice for dinner?"

Marui nodded. “Yeah, it’ll be soft enough. I figure the less I tempt fate the quicker this’ll heal.” The world of not-soft food was too wide and tempting for Marui to hold back if he didn’t set himself a clear boundary. “I’m attached to all of my body parts for the record, just in case you were going to go black market space-surgeon on me. You’ve gotta have a favourite part too, right? Everyone does. And don’t say your dick.”

Zaizen looked thoughtful, thinking of his favorite body part. "Probably my ears. Can't make music if you can't hear. Well, not easily at least."

He walked through the halls to the kitchen, relieved to find it unoccupied. Probably because it was getting late.

“Hah, called it. You’re pretty predictable, you know that?” Marui grinned, walking into the kitchen like he owned the place and jumping up to sit on one of the counters. He pulled a keycard on a lanyard out of his pocket, and tossed it over to Zaizen. “That’s for the big fridge. Anything with my name on it in there is free game, and I haven’t been using my allotment of eggs lately so go ham on those if you want.”

Zaizen nodded and put some rice on to cook before selecting a few vegetables to start dicing as tiny as possible, used to the difficulty of getting kids to eat anything that might be considered healthy.

Partway through he seemed to remember that Marui was not a kid. "Oh, yeah, you probably wouldn’t be offended to find a piece of vegetable in your fried rice. I'm used to cooking for my nibblings."

“Do what you gotta do.” Marui had been watching Zaizen as he worked, judging his skill with a knife. “I don’t know what a nibbling is, but I guess they don’t like vegetables, huh?” Judging by the way Zaizen was absolutely murdering the ones in front of him.

"It's a gender neutral term for nieces and nephews. So yeah, they're kids. And kids don't like vegetables much." So he'd gotten pretty good at hiding the veggies so they'd just eat the damn food he was nice enough to make them.

“Gotcha. I didn’t have that problem with my brothers, they liked everything I made them.” Mostly because most of what he made them was bread and cookies and pastries. Marui shrugged. “Bribing them works good too, but I guess it’s not your problem anymore, huh? One of the upsides to being way out here.”

"Yeah. Yuzuna will be like eight when I get to go home, so unless Akira decided to reproduce again hopefully my days of trying to coerce toddlers to eat damn vegetables are a thing of the past." Zaizen finished chopping up his veggies and set them aside so that he could start on the omelette batter, clearly practiced at this. Omurice was Yuzuna's favorite after all.

“My brothers are just about old enough to start doing that too…” Marui looked horrified by the realization. Horrified enough to dictate a message into his comm for later. “Note to self, tell siblings not to have babies yet.” Hopefully it wasn’t too late. “Amazon delivers condoms, right? I wonder if there’s a way to send out comms early, I can’t wait a whole month for this…”

Zaizen looked massively amused at Marui's utter horror at the thought of his siblings reproducing. He took his micro veggies and the now cooked rice and set about frying said rice. "Will they even listen to you though? I told my brother to stop at one, and he has three now."

Which was too many, honestly.

“They’re teenagers, they have to.” Marui was adding to his note manually now, making a list of all the things he needed to order. “Ugh, I hate being out here. This would be way easier if I could just call them up and talk to them normally. Space sucks.”

"Yeah, it does." Zaizen agreed, seasoning the fried rice, tasting it, and adding a little more seasoning before plating the rice, making the nicest little mounds of rice he could manage. They weren't perfect, but they were pretty good. "It would have been nice if we were at least a little closer to a space station or something."

He started cooking the omelet part of the omurice.

“I don’t know how I’m gonna last five years. I tried pretending like I was on a reality show last night, but without people giving me dumb obstacle course challenges I couldn’t get in the right headspace.” Marui slid off the counter to nibble on the rice Zaizen had finished. “Not bad.”

Zaizen rolled his eyes and let Marui steal nibbles, since apparently he was sooooo hungry he just couldn't wait. Instead he focused on finishing up the omelette blankets to lay over each pile of rice. There, almost done.

"Any requests?" Zaizen asked Marui as he grabbed a bottle of ketchup to put the finishing touches on dinner.

“Write the most complicated kanji you know.” Marui just wanted to see what Zaizen came up with.

Zaizen rolled his eyes, but set about carefully writing 'soy sauce' across the omelette for Marui, before just putting a swirl of ketchup on his own food.

He then took the plates and carried them to the table. "There we go. Eat up."

Marui hadn’t expected Zaizen to play along, and was pleased when he did. “Yay, thank you~” Without another word Marui dug in, and his reaction was a good one. “Not bad. You used some white pepper, right? Nice touch.”

"Hana-san... my sister in law taught me this way." Zaizen confessed, not about to pretend he was secretly some culinary genius or something. That was Marui's job. He was just a guy who knew how to follow a recipe. "She taught me most of what I can cook, honestly. Always told me I needed to be able to care for myself when I grew up."

She hadn't been wrong. Not knowing how to cook would be kind of, well... he couldn’t depend on Kenya to cook for him. Might as well do it himself.

Marui nodded. It made sense. “You sure she didn’t just teach you so she had someone to cook breakfast for her kids? She’s right though. You should see what some people our age eat, it’s a mess. I saw a guy in here a few days ago eating unseasoned chicken breast.”

"Oh, that's definitely the main reason she taught me to cook. Hana-san is a smart woman." Zaizen took small bites of his own dinner, not really one to gorge himself. "And I wish I was surprised, but a lot of guys never bother learning to cook. Kenya-san's a terrible cook, for example. He gave me food poisoning once back in school with a homemade bento box."

Marui laughed, Kenya sucking at cooking fit perfectly with Marui’s mental image of him. “Sounds like he was trying to flirt with you. Did it have food-animals and all that cutesy stuff? Did he watch you eat it?” Marui wanted to picture the scene in his head as accurately as possible.

Zaizen blinked, just now really registering that yeah, that had probably been Kenya trying to flirt. "It had attempted food animals. It wasn't very cute though..." Zaizen shrugged. "...he made us matching bentos that day."

“Matching bentos, huh?” Marui said nothing more than that, just giving Zaizen a smug grin and letting it all sink in. He thought he’d lucked out with the food, but this was even better. They were so oblivious it was painful. (For them. For Marui it was hilarious.)

Zaizen looked horrified as he realized the implications of things, his ears heating up to a bright red. "Well, I feel like an idiot now... all it got Kenya was a trip to the school infirmary with me."

Maybe he'd make Kenya a bento to make up for it.

“I knew Kenya could be oblivious, but I think you might actually be worse than he is.” And Zaizen of all people should understand how serious that was. Marui was enjoying getting to tease Zaizen, and Zaizen blushing was a nice bonus. “Thanks for the heads up not to let Ken-chan cook for me. I get the feeling he was too busy with other stuff to get the chance to work on that.

Zaizen actually pouted and looked properly mollified by the apparently quite accurate critique of his observational skills. "I just didn't think he was interested in me, so it all just seemed like friend stuff."

All of it. The bento, the weird attempt at asking for a date, the matching shirts and wallets, the flowers on his birthday... it had all seemed perfectly innocent at the time.

"God, I feel dumb." Zaizen complained.

Marui had to laugh, but at least gave Zaizen a good pat on the back to make up for it. “Hey, it all worked out though, right? If you’d dated in school you probably would have broken up and that would be that, you’re way better off with an adult relationship. Plus, how lucky can you get? Five years guaranteed of nothing getting in the way. It’s the perfect chance to make it work.”

Zaizen huffed but nodded his head. "Yeah, you're right. We'd have had to break up when Kenya left Mars to go to college anyway. Things do work out better now."

Like hell was he going to let Kenya slip away now.

“You should come visit me on Mars when we get out. There’s actually stuff to do there, none of this new-colony bullshit.” Marui was long since done his omelet, and went to dump his dish in the sink for the cleaning bots. “I don’t know about you, but even if they get this place fixed up in the next five years, the lack of internet is a deal breaker for me.”

Zaizen nodded his head in agreement. He was definitely fleeing this place and never looking back in five years. "Sure, I'll drop by and visit you when we get out. Kenya and I are probably going to move back somewhere on Mars when we get out of this place anyway... so I can be close to my family."

“Aww, you’re a big sap,” Marui cooed fondly. “A big, tsuntsun sap. I’m gonna tell everyone on the internet that you love your family.”

Zaizen glared half-heartedly at Marui, crossing his arms. "It's not like it's a secret. I talk about them a lot on my blog, and Takeru and Momoka have both sung for me before."

“Then there’s no problem.” Marui took out his comm as he spoke, snapping a few pictures of Zaizen, and then apparently starting to record. “I’ll tag you when I finish my Zenzai-P is tsundere compilation.”

Zaizen bristled at that, holding his hand out in an attempt to block the camera. "I make you dinner and this is how you repay me!? What the hell!?"

Marui cackled, continuing to film for a few more moments before knocking it off. “Fans love this stuff, what’s the problem? Thanks for the omurice by the way, really hit the spot. You should make one for Ken-chan, he’s gotta be really busy with everything going down in medbay right now.”

Zaizen nodded his head, looking at his mostly untouched meal. He wasn't particularly hungry, maybe he should just save the rest for Kenya? There was a lot left. "Yeah, Kenya-san has to be stressed out. I think I'll save the rest for him."

He got up and started packing away the food for his boyfriend. "Thanks for eating with me by the way. I don't like eating alone."

Oh, that was interesting. For once, Marui decided not to tease Zaizen about it. “No worries. I don’t really have a schedule because of my job, so call me if you ever need company for dinner. I’m usually free.” He watched as Zaizen packed up the rest of the food. “Make sure you write his name on it. Unlabelled stuff disappears.” And frankly, sometimes the labeled stuff did too, but Marui had mostly got around that by leaving a few extra servings marked ‘free’ in the fridge after he cooked.

Zaizen nodded his head, carefully writing Kenya's name on the packed up food and including a heart just because Kenya would absolutely appreciate it. "Yeah, I noticed stuff disappearing. Some jerk ate my zenzai the other day. If I find them I'll kill them."

“It’s survival of the fittest around here, or something like that. Not having access to good food makes people a little crazy, so I can’t blame them.” Marui shrugged. He’d intentionally over estimated what he’d need for his videos, so he had plenty of supplies that the UEA shipped him, on top of the stuff he’d ordered for himself. As long as there was enough for himself, he didn’t really care who was eating the extra. “I’d offer to let you use my mini fridge for your stuff, but Akaya’s as bad at reading as the people in here are. There’s always the locked fridges, I guess? Only a few people have access to those, they’re pretty safe.”

Zaizen shrugged. He had several cans of shelf stable zenzai in his room at least. "I'll be okay. I just know not to try to keep leftovers for later."

He'd eat all his sweets immediately. Then nobody could steal them.

And then he’d have none for later. So short sighted, Zaizen. “Suit yourself,” Marui replied with a shrug. “Stuff tastes better the first time anyway.” Between his own appetite and Akaya’s, leftovers were a rarity around Marui.

Zaizen would suit himself! He was a grown man, capable of making good dietary choices. "Okay... I'm gonna head off and see if it looks like Kenya-san is off yet. You go rinse your mouth out since you ate and I'll come hang out with you again later."

“Okaaaay.” Oh boy, rinsing his mouth. Marui’s favourite part of piercing care. “Bring Ken-chan if he’s off. I think Akaya’s off early today, we can play a few rounds of something.” He gave Zaizen a lazy wave and headed off. Time to go practice good oral hygiene.