A/N: This is my first Dark Angel fic and my first time using the site, so I hope it all checks out. DA does not belong to me. This takes place right after "Prodigy."
-2019-
"The hardest ingredient to find isn't the spices," Logan said. He dumped the chopped onions off the cutting board into the melted butter with the flat of his knife and paused expectantly.
Max leaned against the low counter and recrossed her legs. "Well, what?" she asked. She was playing along, which Logan appreciated. He was trying for their usual tone, but he could tell he was a little off the mark tonight. He couldn't seem to get the roof of the Steinlitz Hotel out of his head, where it loomed a lot higher than five stories. Given her part in the hostage situation, Logan would have thought that Max might be on the same page, but supersoldier stoic that she was, she wasn't showing it. She seemed more hungry than anything else.
Well, she had said that she looked out for her meal ticket, Logan remembered. He added the puréed tart apple, chili peppers and garlic to the onions in the big dutch oven on the range and gave the mixture a quick stir. "Spices have been a luxury item since trading began," he said, measuring out three careful tablespoons of yellow curry powder. "Could you pass me the flour? Biggest canister."
"Sure thing." Max handed it to him without their fingers touching. Not that they would have anyway, if he wasn't thinking so damn hard about it.
He reached down to rummage in the cabinet for the next ingredient. "This, however," he said, placing the can by the stove with a flourish, "you used to be able to buy for ninety-nine cents."
The writing on the label was in Thai. Max raised an eyebrow. "Coconut milk?"
"I've been saving it for over a year, if you can believe it." He sighed. "A decade ago, you could pick this stuff up in any Asian grocery. Now it's worth its weight in gold. Coconuts aren't exactly local."
"And yet your supply hasn't dried up." Max smiled sideways at him. "Lucky me."
Logan shrugged dismissively. "Eating well these days is more about being a good scavenger than about being a good cook."
"If that was true," said Max, "I would have just eaten with Kendra and saved myself a bike ride in the rain. Way I see it, eating well is and has always been about having good taste."
"Well, thanks." He let himself glide backward from the stove. "You know, I really I wish I could cook you a meal, just once, with access to all the right ingredients."
Max leaned back comfortably. "Real smooth, Romeo. I'll bet you did some pretty solid trade with the shorties, back in the day."
Logan hated the fact that she seemed to be so sure that he was flirting with her, even though that was, in fact, what he was doing. If she could see through the quid pro quo to what he felt for her, he wished she would at least have the decency not to tease him about it. Then again, it was hard to blame her for being flip. Maybe she saw it as a way to let him down in a way that was less painful than a straight rejection. Her extraordinary beauty was seldom off Logan's mind for long, but he tended to forget that it meant she dealt with infatuated assholes all the time, asking her out when she asked for a signature, staring at her breasts, making stupid romantic pronouncements in the street, probably. She was used to jokers like him.
The only thing to do was to tease right back at her, and that was what he was having trouble with, today. "Exactly how old do you think I am, anyway? What do you mean, 'back in the day?'" He'd been going for comically affronted, but he could hear that he sounded testy instead.
"You know," Max said, "back when you had everything you needed to woo a woman," and he felt it like a punch in the gut. "Ingredients, I mean," she added quickly. "Did you use to cook for females before the Pulse killed Seattle's gourmet experience?"
He was being sensitive. He tried to think seriously about her question. "Sometimes," he said. He'd been into cooking as a hobby since his early adolescence, but he couldn't remember doing it on a regular basis for the lovers or friends he'd had in the past. Cooking was personal for him. Pre-Pulse - and even post-Pulse, but pre-wheelchair - eating out had always been social. "Not as much, I guess," he admitted. "I used to take women to restaurants, when there were more to choose from. Ordering well from a menu is a skill. Picking the right wine, the right appetizer ... it's a matter of taste, too."
"Original Cindy always says that you a balla."
Logan snorted. "A what?"
"You know. Balla, shot-calla. A high roller. A playa-playa. " Max smirked at his reaction. "Well, come on. You're sitting here telling me about your old dates."
"Because you were prying," he said sharply. He shrugged, looking over at the curry on the stove. "Anyway, sometimes, food is just business."
TBC
