[Fanfic, 100% OJ] Chef

Genre: Slice of Life

Length: 2,301 words

B/D: I've been away for a little bit, but wanted to make at least one Sugihime post in recent memory. They don't get as much spotlight as Sora and her crew, and I always want to go back and give them some attention but never find time.

Hime was not a remarkable cook – at least, not in the traditional or positive senses. It was a level of accomplishment that she shared with Sora, although for entirely different reasons.

Sora’s great sin in the kitchen was a lack of imagination. She would set out her ingredients, weigh them down to the last gram, open the cookbook, and slavishly follow the instructions until the food was done. If the recipe didn’t tell her to season things, they didn’t get seasoned. If the author assumed there would be a side dish to accompany the meal, it didn’t get made. Sora cooked one thing at one time, exactly how it said in the book, and that was that. That was how she liked it. There was something very comforting about having a set of detailed instructions to follow, and nobody could take that from her.

Hime, on the other hand, would actually adjust her recipes for taste and flavour. Unlike Sora – who, with the application of practice, only got better at following the recipe – Hime actually got better at making food. It would have elevated her to a new plateau of cooking distinction, if Suguri had not foolishly equipped her with a spice rack.

Hime loved her spice rack. It was her mentor, her muse, her oracle. She could tell how the day was going to turn out by how the spices looked in the morning, although the food itself was another matter. With almost every meal she made, she would take anywhere from one to six jars of spices, throw in a random amount of each at random times in the cooking process, and observe the results with the careful neutrality of a scientist. With enough repeated observations, she would eventually be able to draw a conclusion about what each individual spice did, other than ruin the food when combined with random amounts of other spices. It would take a long time, but that was fine. She had a long time to do it.

In another household, Hime’s constant experimentation would have ensured she was relieved of cooking duties in short order. But Suguri had to wrestle for days with even basic recipes, and Sora had grown up with tasteless military ration bars, so any cooked meal was an upgrade. It made every day into a little adventure of its own, and substantiated Sora’s belief that Nath – who possessed more or less a normal, human palate – was a gourmet without equal.

Still, there was a limit to how haphazard Hime could be in the kitchen, and Suguri believed they had gone past it.

“Hime,” she asked, gently, “is something on your mind?”

“Oh, you could tell? You do know me so well, Suguri.”

Suguri looked down at her bacon and eggs, and said nothing, which was the objectively correct thing to say. They had sprinkles on them. Not sprinkles of sage or parsley, which would have been par for the course, but the colourful sugary kind that usually went on ice cream, and of which they had many, many jars. She wasn’t sure ‘crunchy and sweet’ was the correct flavour profile for a fried egg, but that was the one that hers was going to have, and she would eat it anyway because she loved Hime and was the perfect lab rat for her cooking experiments. But she wanted to know why.

“I was in the middle of making breakfast and I just found my mind wandering, you know?” Hime continued, reaching for a salt shaker that might, on further inspection, have contained sugar.

“On which topic?”

“Oh, you know. All sorts of.. ineffable things.” She waved her hand airily. “The beauty of the natural world, the feeling of being in a loving home, human ingenuity. Things like that. Humans really can make the most amazing things, can’t they?”

Suguri raised an eyebrow. Hime’s fondness for humans was news to her; if she had asked Hime to rate the human race on a scale of one to ten, she would have given them a seven at best. They were charming creatures, of course, but Hime generally complained that they weren’t all that entertaining, that they bred too much, and that they were just a little too susceptible to horrific spaceship accidents. Horrific spaceship accidents were a part of Hime’s life that she never spoke too much about, but Suguri had surmised she had seen at least a few; over ten thousand years, the chances of not having an accident or two was within kissing distance of zero, and all spaceship accidents were horrific by default.

“For example,” she said, “did you know that they can deep-fry ice cream now? Isn’t that amazing? Sham told me she’d eaten some at a fair once, and I’ve been thinking about it all week. It has to be witchcraft of some kind. It must be.”

Deep fried ice cream didn’t seem very ineffable, at least to Suguri. It seemed like more of a party trick, a novelty food you ate once and then very wisely did not subject your body to a second time. It seemed like it would do funny things to your organs, and she was quite fond of her organs. Quite fond of Hime’s organs too, if it came to that. But she was also quite fond of Hime’s eyelashes, which were fluttering in such a way as to suggest a hint was very graciously being bestowed upon her, and it would be a mark of great wisdom to seize it. Think of the brownie points you’ll get, Hime’s eyelashes said. Think of the opportunity to go out for breakfast instead of eating an egg with sprinkles on it. It’ll be a date and an adventure all rolled into one.

They were, on reflection, very persuasive eyelashes.

“Well…” Suguri trailed off, her gaze shifting to the window. She could see Sora’s duck coop standing proudly in the back garden, half-painted in a traditional barnyard red. As of late Sora had taken to sleeping there, because the ducks tried to follow her out when she went to wish them goodnight. She was very serious about wishing her ducks goodnight. They couldn’t sleep without it, she said, despite all evidence to the contrary. “Well.”

“Well, what?”

“Well… we’d better get our coats.”

To see Hime smile like she did then was not, particularly, a rare thing. But it was just as beautiful every time it happened.

The search for deep fried ice cream took longer than expected, but eventually led them to a tavern with a roaring fire. It was a little odd for the fire to be roaring in spring, but it was a blustery day, and if either Suguri or Hime had been beholden to the usual laws of aerodynamics they would no doubt have been blown off course.

As soon as they sat down (on real, genuine chairs, not the motley collection of furniture that passed for sitting apparatus at home), Hime immediately seized the children’s menu and began to paw through it with relish. One of her favourite Earth customs – besides filling the internet with cat videos, and naked apron – was their odd habit of putting cartoon cowboys on children’s menus. If pressed, she’d have guessed that cowboy menus outnumbered their non-cowboy counterparts by four to one, and she can’t help but wonder why. Maybe the murky world of professional catering was being manipulated by a shadowy council of retired ranch hands – a cowboy cabal, if you would.

Suguri didn’t know anything about cowboy cabals, which probably indicated that they didn’t exist. Cowboys weren’t known for their stealth, because they were obligated to wear spurs on their shoes that gave them away. They were also usually in the company of horses and/or cows, which, as stealth-equipped animals went, probably weren’t in the top ten. The idea that a group of cowboys, with the ensuing group of animals, could maintain enough sneakiness to create a monopoly on children’s menu branding seemed preposterous.

Mostly she was occupied with picking something to eat, preferably from the adult menu. Everything came with a side of something, which she hated. She just wanted to order a thing and then get the thing, rather than the thing and then three more things she didn’t really want. She wondered if she could get away with just ordering the deep-fried ice cream and skipping the rest of the meal; Hime would probably permit it in the short term, but it would make it less of a date. She was also a little hungry, having abandoned her besprinkled egg to the gods of the kitchen before they left. If she was lucky, Sora would wander in and eat it out of sheer curiosity before they got back.

“What are you going to have?” she asked.

Hime peeked at her over the menu and fluttered her eyelashes, a skill she had put many hours of practice into. She was a master of menu-peeking, brushing her foot against her partner’s ankles under the table, and other miscellaneous romantic talents. “Well, I was thinking we could have something to share.”

Suguri blinked. In her heart – in the heart of every human, enhanced or otherwise – was encoded a genetic cultural memory of two animated dogs enjoying a plate of spaghetti in a back alley. This wasn’t a back alley, and mostly she opposed eating in back alleys for hygiene reasons, and also the tavern did not serve spaghetti. But it did serve ice cream sundaes, the kind in the tall glasses that were secretly designed to feed a family of four. They could eat one between them. All they had to do was ask for two spoons. But was she brave enough, or crazy enough, to have a whole meal made of nothing but ice cream? How far would she go to win Hime’s affections?

“Oh, don’t be silly,” Hime replied when she brought it up. “I appreciate the thought, but you haven’t had any breakfast. If all you eat for the day is ice cream, you’ll hurt your stomach. Just get something you like and I’ll pick at it.”

“You’re sure?”

“Oh, absolutely. It’ll help me keep my weight down. Sham has told me quite emphatically that food taken from somebody else’s plate has no calories whatsoever, and she’s as good an authority as any.”

This was almost certainly a joke, but Suguri frowned anyway. Hime didn’t need to worry about her weight. She had put on a pound of two, but nobody with Hime’s love of ice cream could stay the same weight forever. And besides, if Hime gained weight, it meant there was objectively more Hime in the world. That could never be an entirely negative thing, although it would make the world marginally more dangerous.

“Still, I am curious,” Hime continued. “If we order a hamburger or a t-bone steak, do you think they’ll send a cowboy to deliver it?”

Suguri frowned more deeply. Hime’s insistence on cowboys in the kitchen was starting to worry her. She had previously made clumsy attempts at providing breakfast in bed, and those attempts would only become clumsier if Hime forced her to wear a cowboy hat and silver spurs while she was cooking.

In the end, dinner was not served by a cowboy. Suguri chose the very simplest thing on the menu, and Hime ate two thirds of it, presumably enjoying her calorie free lifestyle. There were no spaghetti-related kissing mishaps, although Suguri would not personally had said no to them if they’d been in a less public arena. She was still discovering her personal tolerance for displays of affection, public or otherwise; apart from her need for a hug in the morning to get her motor started, she wasn’t a clingy kind of romantic.

Then, the moment of truth arrived. The waiter approached, the question of dessert already forming on his lips. Suguri looked at her partner over the table, and motioned with her eyes: You can do the honours.

“Why, yes, we’d love a dessert,” Hime purred. “Can I get… oh, I don’t know. One of those big sundaes, please, to share.”

Suguri didn’t gasp, but she definitely thought about gasping. Certainly, she found her mouth very slightly open in confusion. Hime had a look of silky satisfaction on her face, as if she had masterfully executed a beautiful prank.

“Well,” she said a little primly, “I did think it was quite a romantic idea, especially since I know you sometimes struggle with that kind of thing… You really do try your best to make our dates as lovely as possible, and I’m very lucky to have a partner who takes the effort to do that.”

“But… the ice–”

“And besides, it means I have a reason to drag you out for another date later. Just because I’m not eating the deep-fried ice cream this visit, it doesn’t mean I’ll give up.”

Suguri closed her mouth, swallowed, and found she was smiling. Maybe even blushing. She fixed her gaze somewhere in the rafters, which were old and carved from pleasing rugged boughs of wood. “…I don’t…think we need an excuse to go on dates.”

Hime’s smile was brilliant. “Well said! But it’s never bad to have one. Otherwise, we might get caught ducksitting for Sora.”

In due time, the sundae was delivered, with a pair of long-handled spoons to enjoy it with. Gleefully, Hime scooped up the first spoonful of cream and held it out towards Suguri.

As she begrudingly opened her mouth, Suguri thought that maybe it was a good thing she couldn’t talk at that particular moment in time. The things going through her head were painfully, painfully corny – but nonetheless true.

A sweet treat was fine once in a while. But having a sweetheart was better still.

A/N: It's been a bit rough lately, so I gave this one a quick ending so I could at least post something and not get hung up on it. The coda to this story: Suguri and Hime return home after their date to find that Sora, Sham and Nath are having a council on the origins of the sprinkled egg. Sora is wondering whether chickens that lay rainbow eggs exist; Nath is adamant that they don't; Sham doesn't think they do, but wishes they would.