Butter for Pancakes
"I hate you." Duo mumbled as he rubbed the heel of his palm against the bridge of his nose as he stumbled out of his dark room into the dim hallway. His feet still felt heavy from lack of sleep so it really should have come as no surprise to him when he tripped over the furry black ball of inconsiderate fluff that had insisted he wake from a dead sleep to feed it. With a loud curse he flailed forward and caught himself on the hallway wall. He shuffled his feet back under himself and wove his way down the hall toward the kitchen of his apartment. With fingers that knew what to do solely on reflex he flipped the light switch and cringed against the sudden bombardment on his sensitive eyes.
While squinting through one eye that was cracked just enough to be able to see the shapes of the cabinets through his dark eyelashes he felt his way to the air-tight container containing the hard crunch kibbles for which he'd been so rudely awakened by his cat. His one squinted eye began to adjust to the light of the kitchen while he scooped the food of his psychotic pet into its food bowl. Black Cat or BC for short jumped up onto the counter. His meow was tinted with the conceited belief that all was right with the world when his human slave woke to tend to his every whim. He began to crunch contently on his early breakfast.
"I hate you." Duo repeated as he slumped his way back to his bedroom and threw himself into his pillows with a sigh.
An hour later he glared at the bright red numbers that stood out against the dark background of his bedside table. Unable to fall asleep, or fall back to sleep in this case, he rolled out of his bed once again and dragged himself to the kitchen once more. BC was no longer there, the ungrateful beast had vanished into the four-am gloom. He dropped into one of five chairs that surrounded a circular table in the small dining area of the apartment. He sat staring across the room at the stainless steel refrigerator for what felt like another hour before he commented out loud to no one in particular...
"I want pancakes..."
He dug the flour out from behind a stack of instant noodle packages, was amazed to find baking powder in the drawer where he threw all of the spices he normally used on said noodles, and then scrounged an egg and a cup of milk out of fridge. He tossed some salt in with the flour and a pinch of sugar and was just about to pour in the milk and crack the egg when he realized he was missing the most important ingredient. He blamed the fact that his mind was most likely still muddled from lack of much wanted sleep. He returned to the fridge and discovered, with a stomach dropping sense of horror, that he did not have what he needed.
Pancakes were not pancakes without butter! Without the sweet, artery clogging, flavor adding, milk derivative he could not cook his cakes. Now one might argue that you could just use vegetable oil or olive oil but a true fan of the fluffy breakfast cakes of early morning doom would never disgrace his table with pancakes fried in veggie oil. What kind of American would he be without the buttery goodness of... butter!
He whimpered and sagged on the door of his refrigerator. It was then that he was struck with the most brilliant idea he would ever be able to think of in a pancake-less induced stooper. He pulled a hoodie on over his t-shirt and black pajama pants. Making sure that door was closed firmly behind him he padded, barefoot, down the concrete steps and across the damp grass and sidewalks of the apartment complex in the pre-dawn quiet. He arrived at the door of another apartment that he had never been inside of and instead of tapping on the door he tapped on the glass of the window that looked into the bedroom of the apartment. After his initial rapping elicited no response he tapped again on the window.
The blinds of the window bent with the weight of a finger for a fraction for a second and then returned to normal but he did not miss the movement. A few moments later the door to the apartment swung open with a pop and it was evident that the opener was quite irritated. None of the lights of the apartment were on so only the struggling light of the streetlamp seeping through the leaves of one of the complexes trees illuminated the eyes of the figure who leaned on the frame of the open door.
"What?" Heero said shortly
The shorter Asiatic man with oddly dark blue eyes glared at the American from under dark brows drawn in what might have been a glare capable of freezing the heart of a lesser man dead in his chest. Duo however was required to be immune to such effects of utter terror. He'd been a terrorist for years! What would it say about his mental stability if Heero could stop his heart from beating just by glaring at him? This, of course, did not mean that he was capable of halting the involuntary shiver that ran down his spine.
"I need butter."
"It's four-thirty in the morning, what do you need butter for." It was a statement because Heero didn't really care what the American needed butter for.
"I'm making pancakes."
Heero mumbled something unintelligible and retreated into the darkness. There was a quick flash of light and a soft popping then he was back in the doorway holding a small glass container. A butter dish, Duo registered quickly, complete with matching lid.
"Do you want some?" Duo asked just for the sake of it as he took the butter dish from the dark young man. He did not expect an affirmative answer but when he didn't get a gruff scoff he looked closer at his old acquaintance and found him peering out with an eyebrow lifted in query.
"Pancakes. Do you want some?" Duo clarified, wondering briefly if the stoic man even knew what pancakes were.
Heero sighed and close his door with a roll of his eyes. Duo just grinned at the door before turning and trotting back to his own apartment with butter in hand. The sky was beginning to lighten in the pre-dawn and his stomach grumbled. He shoulder his way into his apartment and headed for the kitchen. BC had worked his magic again, scattering the back of flower that had been left open on the counter top all over the floor. It looked like someone had blown up a fire extinguisher in his kitchen. Thankfully his ingredients were still intact in their individual measuring cups.
He added his own barefooted prints to the collection of tiny cat prints that riddled the otherwise perfect white blanket on his kitchen floor. Placing the fancy glass butter dish on the counter next to the stove top with one hand he extracted a skillet from the cabinets with the other. Mess be damned he wanted his pancakes!
After six plats of butter and several flips of a spatula he had a heavy duty Dixie plate laden with thick fluffy pancakes. The varied in size from one inch in diameter to seven and he stacked them in a pyramid like fashion so that when he set the plate on the dining table they were in the perfect position to pour syrup on. He left flour prints on the carpet leading from the kitchen to the table and sat down with a plop, fork in one hand and maple syrup in the other. He entertained the idea of getting back up for a tall glass of milk before digging in but let it fall to the wayside as he watched the amber colored gloop cascade down his pancake pyramid and pool on the plate around the pancake that formed the base.
After the first stab, after the first bite, he moaned in ecstasy through a mouthful of pancakes, smothered in butter and drenched is syrup. When the sun finally peered over the horizon and shot warm rays of light through the blinds of his apartment windows they found him sitting in his chair at the table starring off into nothing while caressing a cooling cup of coffee. BC sat opposite him on the table top licking the now empty Dixie plate clean of the sweet leftover syrup.
Pancakes are delicious but they are absolute bliss only when smothered in butter. The world is only in the right sorts when there is butter for the pancakes.