A/N: I in no way claim to own Tales of Symphonia, it's characters or its world. Temporarily borrowed to get back into the swing of writing :)

Bet you thought I'd died, huh? Back with a one-shot, inspired by one of my housemates who has the same problem as Sheena does ;) Enjoy!

Personal Taste

She didn't like pineapple.

It wasn't a trait that Zelos had consciously picked up on. He should know, after all, since he'd purposely committed to memory the exact inky-purple shade of her hair; could pin-point precisely the zone on her forehead that would bunch up increasingly with her ire; knew specifically how she took her coffee (black with one and a-teensy-bit sugars).

If he thought about it hard enough, he supposed the first acknowledgement of the quirk occurred in the dingy, dusty realms of the Temple of Earth. When the feisty gnome blocking their path had demanded "something spicy", all eyes had turned to the resident spice-user (and occasional abuser...).

"Sheena, d'you want to whip up a curry?" asked Lloyd cheerfully. His faux-casual question was met with a roll of the eyes and an expectant sigh.

"Sure," she breezed, already setting down her pack and digging through it to find the necessary Red Satay. "He asked for 'spicy', not 'poor attempt at spicy' which is what you would have served up," Sheena added, her grin a streak of white lightning in the gloom.

"Hey! Just because I have a sensitive tongue..." Lloyd muttered dejectedly.

The group settled down, falling into the easy banter and conversation which they had begun to perfect in the last few months. Zelos took the opportunity to sharpen his sword while listening to Raine quiz the gnome about the deeper areas of the Temple. Subconsciously, he also kept half an eye on the fluid rhythm of Sheena's cooking. Her hands flew over the ingredients, slicing them as easily as she would shuffle her cards.

It wasn't long before she was finished, adding the final spices with a flourish-accompanied "Voilà!" Zelos, as the closest to her, took charge of handing out the bowls of steaming, aromatic rice and curry as she dished them up.

"This looks even more delicious than you, my fragrant flower," he purred, dodging her ladle attack easily as he accepted his own bowl.

"Shut up before I stick you in the pot," she muttered. Zelos liked to think there was a playful spark to her eye, but that could well have been nothing more than a spitting ember in the fire. As he tucked into his meal, he watched in growing bemusement as she dished up a large bowl of her curry, and then proceeded to carefully extract the pieces of pineapple from her bowl with her spoon, before dropping them back into the simmering cook-pot.

About to open his mouth to enquire as to the unusually picky behaviour, Zelos was cut off by Regal's smooth baritone. "Sheena, you really must share with me your recipe for curry. No matter how hard I try, I can never quite achieve the same tangy flavour."

Before she could reply, a loud, echoing crunch reverberated around the cavern, and all heads swivelled to see the tiny gnome brushing pottery flakes from his tunic. "Did he just...?" Colette trailed off, her doll-eyes wide with surprise.

Lloyd's expression held an obvious element of awe. "Woah, he ate the whole bowl!"

It was only after the gnome had wandered off in bland disappointment that Sheena realised she was yet to answer Regal's enquiry. "It's actually a surprise ingredient," she said. "It adds an amazing depth of flavour and really brings out the sourness of the curry. Just add pineapple!" She finished with a smile, which quickly slid from her face in favour of a scowl when she met Zelos' raised eyebrows across the fire. "What?"

"But you just..." At her abrasive stare, he quickly dropped his inquiry. "Never mind. So along with spices, what else do you keep in your rack?" The mingled sound of laughter, a slap and a yelp of pain echoed far into the deep recesses of the cave.

It wasn't until many months later, in the shadows of Latheon Gorge, that Zelos recalled his passing curiousity.

As the spidery fingertips of moonlight crept through the veil of dense fruit trees, Zelos struggled to keep his wary eyes alert. The shadows danced and merged, fading in and out of starlight with each faint rustle of a breeze. His eyes ached from the constant adrenaline stream in his blood that had plagued him the last two days that they had spent in the maze of rock.

"You feel it too, don't you?"

Zelos felt his tense shoulders relax slightly as his gaze swung to his fellow night watch. Sheena was scanning the impenetrable dark of the cliff's edge, her posture a giveaway of the tension that visibly thrummed through her as well.

"It's a pretty damn awful place, that's for sure," he muttered. "I don't care how pretty it is, this stupid gorge gives me the creeps."

"I can't believe how many monsters are festering here. Does that guard actually do anything?" Sheena glanced towards Zelos before rubbing her eyes relentlessly, until bright spots danced beneath her lids. "I'm so tired of being on edge all the time. It's just so exhausting!"

He grunted in agreement, his jealous blue eyes running over his sleeping companions. "Tell me about it." Settling on the pack at Lloyds's feet, Zelos rubbed his hands together. "We should eat. That would wake us up a bit."

She hummed her approval and sat up straighter as he began to rummage through the pack. "What's on the menu?"

His hands emerged clutching two reddish-orange fruits, a frown marring his pristine, porcelain features. "Kirima, kirima, and yet more kirima. Plus the end of our last loaf. Lloyd seems to think that the bottomless pit that is his stomach might be filled if he eats the majority of our supplies with all his snacking." He tossed her one of the fruits with a wry grin. "Little does he know, he could swallow Derris-Kharlan and still ask for seconds." The summoner let out a quiet snort of laughter as she turned the fruit in her hands. The small smile tugging at her full lips soon fell as she gingerly picked at the short green stem that protruded from the top. Zelos watched her reticent figure with a raised eyebrow. "Y'know, it's safe to eat. My whorish tendencies haven't spread to inanimate objects. Yet." Her droll glance had his full grin flashing pearly bright in the gloom. "Seriously, what's up hunny bunch?" he asked. He took a big bite of the soft kirima in his hands, relishing in the sharp, tangy-sweetness of the flesh.

"I'm just not the biggest kirima fan," Sheena muttered, glancing longingly at the half-empty ingredients pack. "But I can't really justify snagging the last of the bread just for a late-night snack." With a weary sigh, she lifted the kirima to her lips and took a shallow bite, wincing ever so slightly as she chewed.

"Jeez, it's not poison babe." Zelos was unexpectedly amused by her frosty reaction to the fruit, and watched her contemplatively as he devoured his own. "What's not to like?"

She twisted her mouth in thought, holding the round, mutilated fruit up for inspection. "Well, for starters, its appearance is deceptive. It looks hard. Like an apple! But then..." She took another delicate bite, and he struggled to hide his amusement as her face became increasingly scrunched up with every second that she chewed. "And then there's the texture," she eventually announced decisively.

The swordsman quirked an eyebrow at the remains of his own fruit. "...Tastes like fruit to me."

Sheena sighed in exasperation and glanced at her kirima loathingly, before turning in her seat and throwing it over the cliff edge. It was quickly swallowed by the greedy darkness as she got to her feet to brush past his lounging figure to grab a canteen of water from one of the packs. "It just... looks like it's going to be all hard, and then you bite into it and it's so soft and juicy that it throws you off guard." She paused to drink and settle down beside her curious companion. Glancing up, she was surprised by the intensity and attention that radiated from his pale face. She found herself fighting a blush at his stare, and stumbled along in her explanation to escape. "And it's kinda sweet but also tart and tender and strange and... almost too much. Yeah, it's just too much," she repeated, firmer, sucking in a deep breath that was masked by the faint crashing of the nearby waterfalls.

Zelos nodded once, slowly, his eyes still fixed on her face. "So between the appearance and what it's like inside... it's just too much all at once for you?" he summarised quietly, distracted by the way the faint moonlight was making her skin glow as if from the inside. Soulful luminescence.

Sheena shrugged and looped some of her inky dark hair behind her ear. "Kinda. I'm the same with pineapple. They're just... odd fruits, y'know? Although..." She laughed softly as she turned back to face him. "It's ironic that I hate the fruits so much and can't eat them... but I kinda love the flavour."

"What?" Zelos snapped out of his daze with the sudden burst of confusion. "But you just said that you hate them!"

She shrugged lightly, embarrassed. "Well I hate the texture and actually having to deal with eating the fruits. But the flavour and juice of pineapple or kirima, fresh and tangy..." She licked her lips at the thought, catching a drop of kirima juice from the corner of her mouth, making her smile. "I love it. I just wish I could get over the fruit themselves."

"Is that why you add pineapple to curry but then won't eat the pieces?"

Sheena was shocked into silence. "H-How did you –?"

He waved his hand dismissively. "It's been months babe. You pick up on people's quirks. I bet if you thought really hard you could pick out one of mine that you've noticed." He smirked at her sceptically raised brow. "Alright, maybe something you've picked up subconsciously?"

A short silence fell between the two, until it was broken by her soft murmur. "You always have to eat your vegetables with something." Sheena looked at him curiously, surprised at herself for having noticed something so trivial, even if it had been subconsciously. "With meat, or potato, or sauce. But always... with something."

She was side-swept by the dazzling brilliance of his genuine smile – the one she didn't get to see all that often. "It was the only way Sebastian could get me to eat anything green," he recalled, chuckling quietly at the memory. "The habit stuck. I was a fickle and demanding child, as hard as that is to believe."

"I would never have guessed," she replied dryly, but he delighted in her tiny grin.

A comfortable silence settled between the two, with Sheena stirring the faint embers in the campfire and Zelos polishing off his kirima. "Personal taste's a funny thing," he mumbled contemplatively. Sheena raised an eyebrow, both at his words and at the trickle of juice inching its way down his chin from his full mouth.

"I suppose so."

"I mean, it's not just for food. It's how we see people. It's what clothes or music or style we like..." He finished the fruit and neatly wiped at the juice trail.

"Are you going somewhere with this?" she asked, starting to get annoyed at his random musings.

Zelos flung the fruit core over the cliff edge after Sheena's, before crossing over to where she was sat and hunching down in front of her. The look of intensity on his face made her intended words lodge in her throat, in a way that made her inexplicably nervous. "My point is, before this happy camper got his wagon hitched to this... mess ," he murmured, waving a hand behind him at their sleeping companions, but keeping his eyes fixed on the deep brown of her own eyes, "I wouldn't have touched any of them. I'd have stepped right over them in the street and gone chasing after another skirt. You were just the smart-arse tomboy I've known half my life." He interrupted her indignant protest by skimming his pale fingers across her cheek, brushing the same strand of dark violet hair behind her ear again as it fell forward. "But tastes can change." Sheena felt her breaths grow shallower; her eyes darted between his intense crystalline eyes and his thin pink lips, which appeared to be inching closer. Yet she couldn't bring herself to pull away, trapped in this intricate, sensual web the swordsman had woven around her.

"My tastes have changed," she heard faintly, felt his words against her lips on his hot breath, until there was no space between them. Soft – softer than she'd anticipated – his lips lingered, gentle yet with no mistake of their intent, coaxing a tentative response from her shock. Sheena began to kiss him back, feeling her breath catch in her throat as tingles followed his fingers, skating across her cheek until they tangled in her hair as the kiss deepened. His scent, woody and fresh and familiar, clashed with the burst of sweetness and tang of the kirima on his lips and tongue. She couldn't help but crave more of it, sliding her own hand up until it gripped his arm, anchoring him close.

But Zelos chose to sever their connection then by withdrawing, feeling her soft pants fan across his lips. Her eyes opened with effort, sluggishly drawing her from the cocoon of warmth she'd been wrapped in; trapped in the effects of his kiss.

"My tastes have changed," he repeated in a soft whisper, commanding her gaze. "The question is... have yours?"