ahn!!

𑣲 : BLUEBERRY CHEESECAKE and an americano || Love and Deepspace

𑣲 : MOCHA CAKE and an espresso || Genshin Impact

𑣲 : DOUBLE DUTCH and black tea || Off Campus

𑣲 : RED VELVET and vanilla latte || Minors do not Interact. NSFW.

𑣲 : PINK CHAMPAGNE and hibiscus tea || Haikyuu

𑣲 : UBE COCONUT and matcha latte || Jujutsu no Kaisen

𑣲 : LEMON VANILLA and earl gray || DC Comics, HTTYD

NOTICE FROM HIRAYA CAKES AND COFFEE:

"Critical path," you had repeated.

"It means if those things don't happen on time, the whole meal collapses." He had said it very seriously, the way someone might describe a structural load-bearing wall.

That had been yesterday. Today — Thanksgiving morning, soon after most have left on their own adventures — Tucker was standing in the middle of the kitchen with his hands on top of his head, staring at the oven like it had said something to him personally.

"Hey." You came up beside him with two mugs of coffee, offering him one. "Talk to me."

"Garrett and Hannah are going to Phil's," he said.

"I know."

"And Dean is going to New York."

"I know that too."

"With Bella." He said the name with an expression you couldn't quite read. Not betrayed, exactly. More like — startled. The way someone looks when the weather app is wrong. "I made enough food for the whole house."

"Which is still going to be incredible," you said, "and Logan and Jules will be here, and I'm here, and whoever else shows up—"

"That's the thing." He finally turned to look at you. His eyes were doing the thing — that wide, slightly overwhelmed thing that he tried to cover with forward motion and color-coded spreadsheets. "What if more people show up? I've already adjusted for five, but if it's more than eight I need to restructure the—"

"Tucker."

"—the entire side dish situation because the casserole dish only fits—"

"Tucker."

He stopped.

You held out the mug. He took it. You watched him take a breath that started in his shoulders and ended somewhere around his feet.

"The food is going to be amazing," you said. "It always is. Your mom taught you, remember?" She did. And he had called and texted repeatedly the past week. You knew, because you were there every single time.

Something in his face shifted at that — softened, the way it always did when you mentioned her. He looked back at the oven.

"She does a wet brine," he said, quieter now. "Forty-eight hours. I started it Tuesday."

"I know. I remember. You were very intense about the brine."

"I wasn't intense—"

"You used the word integrity about a salt solution."

He opened his mouth. Closed it. The corner of his lip curved up, just slightly, grudging and genuine. "It does have integrity."

"It has so much integrity." You squeezed his arm. "Now. Tell me what needs doing and I'll help."

For a while, it worked.

You had a system. Tucker moved through the kitchen like he'd been built for it — which, in a sense, he had — narrating as he went, occasionally consulting the spreadsheet, occasionally consulting you when the spreadsheet didn't cover something. You stayed one step behind him, pulling things from the fridge when he called for them, stirring things when his hands were full, asking questions that kept him from disappearing too far into his own head.

It was good. He was finding his rhythm. You could see it happen the way you always could, this particular unwinding in his shoulders, his voice dropping back to its normal register instead of the slightly-too-fast one he used when he was worried.

And then Logan arrived, got sent the to-do list, and stared. “This is like, three pages.”

"It's not," Tucker said immediately.

"It is."

"It's just — longer than usual —"

"Tucker, buddy—"

"Can you check on the rolls?"

Logan, to his credit, checked on the rolls.

You caught Tucker's eye across the kitchen and had to turn away quickly so he wouldn't see you laughing.

It was the cranberry sauce that got you.

Tucker was outside — Logan had talked him into going to look at the deep fryer setup, two boys and a machine that was going to either produce a perfect turkey or a small catastrophe — and you were inside, perfectly capable of handling the cranberry sauce, which you had made before, which was simple.

The can of chicken broth was on the counter. You didn't need the broth, as it turned out — wrong recipe step, you'd gotten ahead of yourself — but when you went to move it aside, your grip shifted, and the pull-tab caught you across the pad of your index finger on the way down.

Sharp. Clean. The kind of cut that takes a beat to decide what it's doing.

You don't make a sound, instead staring at the cut, before quietly,  "Okay," you murmured quietly. You grabbed the nearest clean cloth and pressed down hard, the way you were supposed to, perfectly sensible, nothing dramatic about this at all.

You were still standing there when the back door opened and Tucker came back in, mid-sentence to Logan about oil temperature, and stopped.

"What happened?"

"Nothing," you said, in the voice that everyone uses when something has definitely happened.

His eyes went to your hand. To the cloth. To the way you were holding it.

"Hey — hey, what—" He was across the kitchen in three steps, and then his hands were around your wrist, careful and immediate, tilting it toward the light. "Let me see."

"Tucker, it's just a little—"

"Let me see."

You let him see.

The color left his face in a specific way, the kind that started at the mouth and worked outward. He was quiet for a moment that felt longer than it was.

"We're going to the hospital," he said.

"We're not going to the hospital, it just needs a bandage—"

"It needs more than a bandage."

"Cuts bleed a lot, that's just—"

"That's deep." His voice was steady, which was somehow worse than if he'd been visibly panicking. Tucker panicking out loud you could talk down. Tucker going quiet and focused was a different thing entirely. "Logan, can you grab my keys? They're on the hook by the—"

"I'm not going to the hospital over a can," you protested.

"You're going because you're hurt." He had found the first aid kit from under the sink without looking — knew exactly where it was, of course he did — and was pressing a clean gauze pad into place with both thumbs, gentle and unhesitating. "Hold that. Firm pressure. Don't let go."

"Tucker—"

"I know you're fine," he said, and his eyes met yours over your hand, and his voice was very even in a way that meant he was holding something down. "I know. I just — I need you to let me take you, okay? I need—" He exhaled. "Please."

You looked at him. The please had done it. Tucker did not say please like he was asking permission. He said it like something honest.

"Okay," you said.

"Okay." He let out a breath. Then he looked back at Logan. "The turkey—"

"I got it," Logan said, from where he'd appeared in the doorway, watching the whole thing with an expression that was mostly neutral but had something warmer around the edges. "Go."

The urgent care waiting room had one of those cardboard turkeys on a stick taped to the check-in window, the kind that looked like it had been made by a bored front desk employee sometime around Halloween and never taken down. The fluorescent lights gave everything a vaguely greenish quality. There was a man across the room who had apparently hurt himself carving and was being very stoic about it.

Tucker had not sat down. He was standing at the window that looked out onto the parking lot, hands in his hoodie pocket, weight on one foot and then the other.

You watched him from the chair.

"Tucker."

He turned.

"Sit down."

He sat. Immediately. Like he'd just been waiting to be told what to do with himself.

For a moment neither of you said anything. The fluorescent lights hummed.

"I ruined it," you said. Quietly.

He looked at you.

"The whole thing. You've been planning it for weeks and you were just starting to feel good about it and then I—" You looked down at your bandaged hand. "With the cranberry sauce."

"You didn't ruin anything."

"Tucker."

"You didn't." His voice was certain in the way that meant he'd already thought it through and arrived somewhere. "You know what's happening right now? Logan is watching the turkey. Jules is probably already there by now, and she's going to bring Jules energy into that kitchen which is either going to be very helpful or a complete disaster, but either way—" His mouth curved. "It's something. And when we get back—"

"If we get back before everyone leaves—"

"When we get back," he said, firmly, "there will still be food, and people, and it's going to be fine." He reached over and tucked a strand of hair back from your face with one careful hand. "I am not worried about the dinner."

"You were extremely worried about the dinner this morning."

"I was worried about the dinner. Now I'm worried about you. Different thing." He said it plainly, the way he said most things — no performance in it, just the fact of it, sitting there in the open. "That's how it works."

You looked at him for a moment. The waiting room smelled like antiseptic and a little like someone's leftover lunch, and the cardboard turkey was slightly crooked on the window, and Tucker was looking at you with that expression he got sometimes — the one that was warm all the way through, no gaps in it.

"You're kind of a lot," you said.

"Yeah," he agreed, without any apology in it.

"In a good way."

"I figured." But the tips of his ears went a little pink, the way they did when he was pleased and trying not to show it. He settled back in the chair and after a moment his knee drifted over until it was against yours. Warm. Solid. Just — there.

You came back to a kitchen that smelled like smoke and cornbread and something that might have been, at some point, a turkey.

Logan was holding a piece of charred bird with an oven mitt. Jules was laughing so hard she had to hold onto the counter. There were three more people in the living room who you did not recognize but who had apparently brought a sweet potato pie and been warmly absorbed into the evening.

Tucker stood in the kitchen doorway and took it all in.

His to-do list was open on multiple phones on the counter. Most items were all crossed off— but the turkey was, genuinely, unrecoverable.

"I forgot to pat it dry," he said, mostly to himself. He told Logan to cook it, saying that it was fine through text… and only now it dawned on him that he had forgotten a crucial step.

"Buddy," Logan said. "It's fine."

"The whole dinner—"

"We've got seven side dishes and someone's aunt's pie." Jules raised an eyebrow. "We're eating."

Tucker looked around the kitchen. At the chaos, at the people, at the pie that had appeared from somewhere, at you leaning in the doorway with your bandaged hand and your coat still on.

Something in his face went very quiet. Not the worried kind of quiet. The other kind.

"Okay," he said.

And then — because he was Tucker, because he was this — he rolled up his sleeves, said someone get the cornbread out of the oven, and got to work.

Later, when the food was on the table and Logan was doing something inadvisable with a hockey stick and a piece of burnt turkey and Jules was on the phone with their mom, voice a little rough but steady, Tucker found you in the corner of the kitchen where you'd retreated to stay out of the way, hand still bandaged (apparently you cut nerves. Yes it was that deep. Yes, Tucker worried even more).

He handed you a plate.

"Happy Thanksgiving," he said.

You looked down at the food — the beautiful, careful, slightly chaotic food that he had spent two weeks planning and one very weird afternoon salvaging — and then back up at him.

"Happy Thanksgiving, Tucker."

He smiled. The real one. The one that took over his whole face and made him look exactly like what he was: someone who just wanted everyone at the table fed and warm and together. Then he kissed your forehead, a gesture that made you grin, tilting your head to kiss his cheek.

Outside, Logan yelled something about the turkey. Jules yelled back. Someone new knocked on the door.

Tucker went to answer it.