Work Text:
There is a whiteboard at the hotel gourmet. It is an absolutely super special secret scoreboard that belongs to one of the restaurant’s many sauciers and shall not be shown to head chef Komatsu under pain of a vicious beating from Sous-chef Mitsuba and a watery, disappointed look from Komatsu-sama himself (which would probably be the worse punishment).
The whiteboard is hidden in the depths of the Hotel’s pantry, behind a shelf that holds all of the most boring ingredients, like rice and plain onions and russet potatoes. Komatsu-sama could still probably make something fantastic out of just things on that shelf, but they have all decided that it is the least likely place for him to look. Only the most junior chefs go back there to fetch things, and they all know about the board anyway, because nearly all of them have their names on it, along with a number.
That’s because this a betting board. Nearly all of the hotel gourmet is in on it, from the Sous-Chefs to the Dishwashers, offering up prizes ranging from 10,000¥ sums to prized secret recipes. That’s not what would make Komatsu-sama so disappointed, though. No, what would make Komatsu upset was that the board was betting on who, of all of his friends and acquaintances, would end up banging their little head chef first.
It started not long after Komatsu had begun to go off on expeditions with Toriko-san, though it was, of course much smaller then, and not on exactly the same subject. It started with a bet on when Komatsu was going to open his eyes, see that he had a super-hot bishoukuya practically gagging for it, and take advantage of the situation, as any regular person would do. They knew he was at least somewhat attracted to boys from some embarrassingly shared high school stories, and that one time Komatsu got wasted while perfecting the restaurant’s cherry rum cake, so they figured it was only a matter of time before some hot loving happened, probably in the middle of some jungle or wherever.
But no. As far as the staff of the Hotel gourmet could tell, it had never happened. Komatsu was not the sort of person to hide something like that either. And very soon all of the dates for prospective banging would have passed, which made them scrap the board and almost forget about it.
Almost.
But then Komatsu began to bring other famous people into the restaurant. Famous and attractive. And all of them, the staff hypothesized, had a big, gigantic, flaming crush on their head chef.
First was the second of the heavenly kings, Coco, who Komatsu invited personally. When he and Toriko came to visit they managed to go through the Hotel Gourmet’s menu four times and still have room for dessert, a towering blue raspberry cake with devil’s fruit icing and sweet bamboo cane filling. Afterwards, Komatsu-sama had gone out to greet his guests and only minutes later the maître d’ came in nearly yelling about how Komatsu had asked if they enjoyed the meal and then kissed.
Coco-san.
Right on the cheek.
And then also hugged him for a good 30 seconds or so.
The waitress accompanying him says that she nearly fainted from the cuteness.
That day the board is brought out of storage and split into two categories. The betting begins anew.
Sunny is put on the board when he comes swaggering into the restaurant, dressed in finer clothes than even their establishment requires and asks to see Komatsu. The head chef leaves Mitsuba-san in charge of the kitchen for a few minutes and rushes out to the third (third!) heavenly king he has befriended and, later, word reaches back to the kitchen of how Komatsu had ran up to the elegant man and enthusiastically hugged him. They also noted that Sunny-san fully embraced said hug even though Komatsu was hot and sweaty and covered in smears of food and sauce from the kitchen. Sunny goes up on the board that night with two 1000¥ bids.
The fourth heavenly king isn’t next, although the staff of the hotel gourmet would not be at all surprised if Komatsu somehow broke that human natural disaster out of jail just to add him to the growing list of admirers.
No, next comes the Century Soup. The three sous chefs, Mitsuba, Sakura, and Kyoko all have their work cut out for them, because Komatsu is gone for far longer than he usually is, and although the restaurant can keep itself together without their head chef, everybody knows that they would suffer if he was ever truly gone. Kyoko-san, who is the youngest of the sous chefs and the only one to rise up through the ranks of the Hotel Gourmet while it was under Komatsu’s supervision, can sometimes be seen clutching a necklace representing the patron saint of gourmet hunters and adventurers, praying for their leader to return.
And he does return, with a fire in his eyes, a will in his heart and a small pink penguin toddling around behind him. He spends nearly the whole of the next month isolated in one of the side kitchens, only stopping to sleep and sometimes eat, if one of the busboys bring him something from the kitchen. It is nearly like he is absent once again, even though he is never more than ten feet away each dinner service. The board lays untouched and unremembered until the Century Soup is finished.
The night that Komatsu officially presents the century soup, at what is essentially a large dinner party for a select few, the board comes back with a vengeance. The kitchen staff interrogate waiters as they return to the kitchen, asking about each member of the party and why they are there. It is only when they realize that yes, there is Living Gourmet National Treasure Setsuno out there that they buckle down to cook and agree to debate Komatsu’s new potential boy toys only after dinner is finished.
After most of the guests have retreated to their hotel rooms for the night, they practically push him out of the kitchen, insisting that, yes they can do the washing up fine, they can handle prepping for tomorrow, go home, please. As soon as he’s out the door, the betting starts, all of the waiters giving their account of just who was there and how much in love they were with the head chef. Because it is apparently impossible for someone to be around Komatsu for long periods of time and not fall in love with him.
Takemaru, Match and Teppei all carve out their own little corners for the board, some with more money placed under them than others. Some of the sneakier wait staff, who listened carefully to the group’s conversation, make a little category labeled Starjyunn. One person even places a tiny bet for Setsuno, and when the rest of the restaurant looks at him oddly he defends himself by saying that Setsuno would probably ask Komatsu-sama to be her platonic cooking soulmate before any of the other idiots made a move.
After that night the board never really gets forgotten.
Some additions to the board are made purely through Komatsu’s stories, like Melk II, who apparently made the Komatsu’s beautiful new knife, an object of lust for many of them. Some are added when someone shows up at the hotel gourmet asking after their head chef and discretely checking him out when he emerges for them.
Nearly a quarter of the chefs and half of the waitstaff have a panic attack when the fourth heavenly king shows up. Sakura-sempai ends up breathing into a paper bag even as she sautés vegetables for garnish. But then Xiang, one of the new hires, comes in, breathlessly talking about how Zebra is a total tsundere towards Komatsu-sama, and almost nobody is surprised at this point. They keep tabs on the relationship throughout the meal, and once the monster of a man is gone, he not only gets put up on the board, but has the fastest growing section by far, getting almost as many bets under his name in one night as Sunny has gotten in the last four months.
Some bets are obviously made in jest- most highly doubt that Komatsu is going to partner up with the head of the IGO, or date Toriko’s pet, Terry, or end up in a threesome with both Acacia and Frohze. But most of them are deadly serious. Some of the chefs have at least two months worth of pay up on the board, and considering their positions as professional chefs in a six star restaurant during the gourmet age, that’s nothing to sneeze at.
When the staff goes out drinking, (and Komatsu almost never comes, notorious lightweight he is,) they have long, serious, debates, about which person would be the best for Komatsu, both career wise and personally; About which would treat their chef right, about which would probably give the best sex, About who would create the best dates or gift Komatsu the best ingredients. People steadfastly defend their pairings, drunk off their ass, but still perfectly logical, at least to the other drunks.
Two of the line cooks, for example, often get into loud, terrible, arguments over whether Komatsu would end up with Sunny or Zebra. At this point Mitsuba would come in, ranting about Toriko, usually followed by at least one Coco supporter. The pastry chefs always play the devil’s advocate, as they had mutually pitched in on a bet that Komatsu would end up with all of the heavenly kings at once, in some sort of weird polyamorous relationship where they all loved their head chef and fought contstantly with the others.
Meanwhile, in the corner, there would be much softer discussion of Melk-sama and other chefs. The more circumspect people would state the obvious connections between their head chef and his actual combo partner Toriko, while the more adventurous, riskier types spoke about the dangerous rarities of people like Match and Livebearer. The hotel staff must have speculated about the sex lives and romantic habits of nearly half the gourmet world by now.
They all have their favorites, and their hated pairings. Some believed that Komatsu will never date, while some believe that he has been in a relationship nearly this whole time and is just being an unintentional troll. Nobody talks about how they all have their own carefully nurtured crushes on their head chef.
Because that’s the thing, isn’t it? Komatsu loves the whole world and the whole world love him back, and even his co-workers aren’t resistant to his charms. They all know that no matter who Komatsu ends up with, they won’t be good enough for him, because nobody is. So they like to speculate and imagine and contemplate about things that probably won’t become reality.
It is only when they come in on a lazy Sunday morning to find that the four kings have apparently been there and have written huge bets under their own names that they realize that they are not the only ones.