#HC: hi- / Me: I shall project onto you so damn hard

[hualianff]

(Chef HC AU)

Auditory Hallucination — Funguypiano

After failing to earn money while working at a well-known charity fundraiser, HC was kicked from the orphanage, on the streets at thirteen years old. He was taken in by an older restaurant owner who gave him a place to stay, work, and taught him how to cook.

HC worked his way up the ranks of the restaurant industry, cooking and cleaning in various kitchens. There would be days when HC felt like he was the walking dead. His feet would have blisters, his hands would have rough calluses and burn marks; his heart felt like it was beating on its last whim.

Years later, HC was accepted into his top choice culinary school at the young age of twenty-four, The restaurant owner who took him in had passed away two months into his study, and since then, HC has been alone.

He had no one to come home to, no one to share his successes and concerns with, no one to look forward to seeing every day.

It’s no secret how vigorous and challenging culinary school is. In addition to weathering the grueling working conditions, hours, and level of difficulty, HC continued to cope with the scars leftover from his abusive parents, exploitative environment in the orphanage, and other chefs he was forced to work with.

After surviving culinary school, HC’s life turned very formulaic, waking up at the crack of dawn, working for sixteen hour shifts, and going to bed late at night—only to repeat the process again.

There were days when HC didn’t want to get out of bed. Days when he didn’t want to open his eyes and look at himself in the mirror as he brushed his teeth, getting ready for another day where he worked his ass off to achieve his future goal of being a successful chef with his own business.

Though he met several dependable colleagues along the way, HC clawed his way up to the top of the mountain, bare-handed with a tired soul.

Life was better when the restaurant he opened finally gained traction and popularity in the big city. Another half decade whizzed past and then HC had Michelin stars under his belt and numerous locations in different cities.

But it wouldn’t be until he managed to cross paths with XL again—the person who had shown HC kindness and mercy for a crucial mistake—that HC’s spirit would begin to lift and shed its weariness.

There are still days where a long day at work will have HC recalling his junior chef days, or even his time at the orphanage. HC’s face of steel remains intact as he interacts with his employees, clients, and customers, but whenever he finds time to himself—in the bathroom or in the car—HC feels like his head will explode, clutching his head in agony.

Only one year after getting to know XL and having the honor of dating him, they have moved into HC’s bigger apartment, where there is plenty of room for XL’s things, and of course, XL himself.

Now, HC has someone to come home to.

When HC turns the key to his apartment, pushing the door open with a deep sigh, the clanging of dishwater greets him. It’s a sound he’s heard nearly everyday for years, a sound he’s very much used to.

After he slips his shoes and coat off, HC walks into his kitchen to see XL laboring away at the stove, wearing his ferret-patterned apron, hair pulled back into a long braid.

“San Lang, you’re home!?” XL yelps as he catches sight of his boyfriend out of the corner of his eye. HC barely has time to nod before XL comes bounding over, glomping onto the taller man, kissing his cheek.

“Hi, Gege,” HC says quietly, automatically wrapping his arms around XL’s waist. “I missed you.”

“I missed San Lang too. I always do,” XL says with a light laugh.

When he goes to pull away, XL realizes HC’s grip doesn’t loosen. XL then notices the sudden dampness on his shoulder where HC’s face is buried into the fabric.

“San Lang!? Are you okay?” XL exclaims, worried. HC’s slightly trembling form answers his question.

XL gasps, wasting no time to pull HC over to the couch, sitting them down side-by-side. He physically extracts his boyfriend from his shoulder, hands coming up to cup HC’s cheeks.

Tears well up one reddened and puffy eye, accompanied by a wobbly lip.

“San Lang...”

A hitched sob.

“I’m- I’m s-sorry, G-Gege,” HC hiccups, curling in on himself. “I d-don’t know why I’m like this right now.”

“No no no, there’s nothing wrong with crying,” XL whispers softly, thumbs wiping away the stray tears. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

HC shakes his head out of habit. He grasps onto XL’s hands that cup his cheeks, nuzzling into the gentle touch. HC squeezes his eye shut, then reluctantly opens it to meet XL’s sweet eyes.

“I’m just so t-tired,” HC mutters hoarsely, voice cracking at the end. XL nods in understanding, lips parted and eyes misty.

Tired meaning exhausted.

Tired meaning sad.

Tired meaning helpless.

During the very rare instances that HC cries in front of XL, XL can’t help but cry himself in response to seeing HC’s tears. One, because it doesn’t happen often, and the fact that HC sheds tears means he’s barely holding on. Two, because seeing his boyfriend in any sort of pain or anguish affects XL just as much.

HC’s pain is XL’s pain.

HC purses his lips. Tears continue to steam down his face when he blinks rapidly several times.

“Let me-“ a watery sniffle. “-let me turn off the stove. I can put dinner in the fridge for later,” XL shakily says, rubbing small circles into HC’s temple. “You can wait for me in bed. When I finish putting everything away, I’ll c-come in to hold you, okay?”

XL touches their foreheads together, tears glistening in his eyes. HC hates that he’s made XL upset with his own grief, knows it is unfair to burden him like this.

HC has been a burden his whole life.

“Okay,” HC whispers, praying that this horrible, tired feeling would subside soon, if just to let himself breathe easier.

Now that XL is by his side, HC is sure it will.

(XL)

[kazushuu]

🍍🍊🥝 for both of those sweet boys

o lord this ended up long. read more time!

🍍  :    how comfortable is my muse in their body? how do they feel about their height,  weight,  strength,  and body type?  how important is being attractive to them?

    “ …occupying myself with such things is nothing but baggage. ”

    he says, but it’s only half true. appearances (and identity itself) is completely neutral for him. not uncomfortable, but not really confident and proud either. however if he had to pick, he is often bothered with things below his neck more.

   he’s not bothered about his height, necessarily. but his strength is a bothersome thing. chemistry equipment like machinery is usually heavy, and so carrying those things around is a hassle. he sorta expressed his desire to be stronger in a usual creepy manner when talking about mantis shrimp.he is almost always cold and rigid because he’s underweight, and paired with medication, he’s generally a very dizzy.

   …he fully knows that he’s responsible for his own health, but completely reinventing his lifestyle– even though he’d definitely be even more productive and beneficial if he were healthy– is just an… impossible task, that he can’t tackle right away.

   but on another hand, even if he doesn’t voice it, he is very touched and impacted about compliments (usually just acknowledgements) about his voice, and hair, and eyes, and believe it or not, hands, so he’s subtly proud of them. he takes better care of his hair than anything else about his anatomy. and the pretty bow that he always has in his hair is very much a conscious decision.

   kazuaki picked up on this fact and compliments shuu on his butt and thighs in hopes that he’ll enhance them too but to no avail, shuu always hides them under discreet coats. damn u shuu

   he isn’t really self conscious about his scarring. he is worried that kazuaki will be too disgusted to handle it, but soon enough they’re gonna talk about it and their worries will be gone.

   summed up, he’s distressed about how vulnerable he unfortunately is, but doesn’t really care about beauty.

   “ …………………..n-no, not comfortable. i hate everything, everything about myself! i truly mean it!! i don’t like my height, i don’t like my weight, i don’t like my strength, i don’t like my body type, i don’t like my hair, i don’t like my face, i don’t like my voice, i don’t like my teeth, i don’t like my hands, i don’t like my knees, i don’t like how my hips look, i don’t like how my stomach rolls when i sit down, i don’t like my nose, i don’t like anything, and if if they were visible, i’d hate my organs too.

   everything feels wrong… i’m too tall, i don’t want to bring attention to myself, i want to disappear, i’m too fat- but i don’t even really dislike it alone, it’s just a constant reminder of how shitty and sloppy i am with what i put in myself…

   i don’t like the lines on my wrists because they are a constant reminder… of hitori.

   i like things that are cute and pretty, and i’m neither… even though shuu compliments me, i don’t know how to stop hating myself.

   f-freckles! i also have those, i-… i don’t know, they make me look childish, maybe?

   …why am i looking for reasons to hate myself??!! why can’t i stop??!!

   …i feel like if i met someone nice and kind and friendly, someone whom i’d like, who had the same physical traits as me, i wouldn’t find them ugly, s-so why? ”

   yeah. but as he said, he simply feels like a nuisance and clutter of space, because he thinks he has too many flaws without any good things to make up for them. shuu isn’t super vocal, but he actually finds kazuaki’s appearance very endearing. if not too much sometimes. cause you know. kawa-word.

   as teeth-gritting as it is, he’s happy to know that shuu is pleased with his appearance, and equally as pleased with the idea to experiment and bruise him, so oddly enough, that’s a small boost to his cripplingly low confidence.

🍊  :    does my muse desire romance?  is it something they would actively seek out,  or prefer to happen more  ‘  naturally?  ’  what is their love life like?  do they have any exes or past flings,  or crushes?

   “ …i don’t seek anything, no. i have always been married to my work, but, well, it seems that i became sentimental about this… particular quail. i don’t know how it came to this, ” yes he does, all too well, “ but alongside my main husband, kazuaki is very dear to me… and i shall not comment on the last question. ”

   obviously shuu needs a lot of time, and some amount of pressure, to awaken some empathy and feelings in him. and when he likes someone, he will develop an entire lobe in his brain dedicated to them. although it has only happened… twice in his life.

   his love life is kazuaki, and nothing else.

   his feelings towards ryuuji, although on a similar frequency, are much different than kazuaki’s. believe it or not, shuu has a romantic crush on kazuaki, and had one for a long while before they became a couple, but his feelings towards ryuuji are actually platonic. at least, that’s the state that they ended on. if… time went on, they would’ve developed into romanticism as well.

   ryuuji can’t really be called a crush, as much as that souma projected his entire being onto him, his present, his future, his little embryo hopes and dreams… he called him his boss, because that’s what he was, but really, souma saw ryuuji as a father figure.

   after being robbed of his childhood, ryuuji showed him a glimpse of innocent fun, but was also a role-model in his achievements.

   it was unrequited love in a way, but souma didn’t realize the depth of his feelings until much later.

   as he said, he saw ryuuji as someone to be admired from below, but kazuaki is someone he can sympathize with, and clings to the fact that they’re in love with all his might.

       -sniff-

   “ …hitori…hitori is an ex. i don’t know if i love or hate him anymore.

   b-but um, um, otherwise… i haven’t really met all that many people in my life, so i don’t know… i always fantasized and dreamed about true love and all that stuff you see in cartoons.

   i didn’t really chase after shuu because i wanted him to be my boyfriend, at first. at first, i came to him because i had no one else. not a single person in real life left. shuu was my only acquaintance, and was the only person who didn’t immediately slither away when i tried to be friendly, so i fixated on him with all my might…

   …to be my friend. i wanted to be his friend.

   a-and i guess at some point, we did, but we never even really acknowledged it, because we only realized it when we decided to take the next step already! so that’s wild! it happened naturally, i guess. um, more naturally than with hitori. and i mean that as, maybe because we didn’t know we were friends, i didn’t latch onto him as obviously as to hitori, when we were 18… we were mostly at a certain distance.

   so, i guess, i’ve always been a slow burn, “natural” type, ahah… mnm, when i think about it really hard, maybe i had some aesthetic-based highschool crushes. there was a guy, and a girl, or… there might’ve been two girls, but we never even talked, so… ”

🥝  :    does my muse have any  ‘  unusual  ’  habits, interests,  and  /  or talents?  do they hide it,  or are they proud of it?

   “ I don’t know much about what is considered ‘unusual’ or not. but from reactions and experience, i guess everything about me is called unusual, creepy, suspicious, untrustworthy…mean…disgusting...

   but if we put what most birds know on a surface level about me, i guess there are some hidden traits too…

   …my interest in marine biology seems to be one. i love it equally as much as i love pathology and research, but i don’t have a reason (or way) to show it as a nurse in a highschool.

   …i like cooking? it’s a bit of a shame. i never saw a reason to put effort into it, if it was just gonna be me eating it in the end, but kazuaki seems to like my dinner making skills, so i’ve been doing that more often.

   …there…there probably is more, but i can’t remember anything… m-my mind is full of crabs and seafood now, hm. ”

   the list of shuu’s habits is endless and the list is always expanding! i have a list of HCs on it in a twitter thread here!

   but let’s see, the quirkiest of habits, that are a bit of a secret…

   shuu looks really cute when you catch him eating. he is quiet and polite of course but he tends to stuff his cheeks and then just slowly chew looking like a hamster.

   shuu stims. he’s never really mobile and never gets hyperactive so those stims are subtle.he fidgets with his (reminiscent) necktie, or any other fabric in hand.he chuckles (and makes.. bird noises) pretty much unawarely and impulsively. those count as stims too.

   “ u-uhuu... i dunno... i’ve always been the introverted outcast and no one is interested in me, so that can either mean that i’m painfully average or really weird without meaning to...

   ...i-i’ve been told that because i work at this prestigious academy, that must mean that my skill...”talent”...for classic and contemporary literature is unusual and exceptional...so i guess that’s unique?

   and...um... ” now that he thought about the topic harder, a piling mountain of perverted thoughts came to his mind, “ Y-YEAH THAT’S IT!! THERE IS...NOTHING ELSE! ”

   but that’s not true. kazuaki has plenty of hidden traits. one of his interests, although not so secret on this blog, is his love for hatocatch pretty coore, and generally, he loves most childish and energetic anime and games... and interests.

   aside from writing, he also really likes drawing, but isn’t very good at it, which prompts him to hate the end results.

   he loves astrology, and had a phase where he obsessed over it while studying both art and science related to it... you can probably guess that shuu loves this intellectual side of him.

   as for talents, or, uh, lack of thereof, kazuaki can’t whistle, and can’t wink. (shuu can whistle, but he can’t wink either).

   and as for a habit and skill, in bird form, kazuaki gets frightened so easily and so frequently, that his quail instinct is desensitized to it and actually doesn’t jump and ram his head into the ceiling when startled, and instead his instinct is to hide below. of course, he’d still jump if something were really (really) sudden. but he’s more likely to hug someone than flee.. upwards.

   also, he’s actually really talented at rhythm games... and i won’t tell what else he’s really good at with his fingers.