Title: Food of the Gods
Pairing: Spitfire
Words: 2,131 [Edited and revised as of July 2, 2012]
Summary: When Wally thinks cooking dinner for the first time is a good idea, Artemis disagrees. Strongly. / In which omelettes are bashed as well as silly classmates named Carol.
Disclaimer: No, but god, I wish I did.
Prompt: In the Iron Man 2 movie, Pepperoni had an interaction that went kind of like this: "What is that?" / "This … is your dinner." / "Did you just make that?" / "Where do you think I've been for the past three hours?" I love Pepperoni and Iron Man and this part was too cute that I fashioned a Spitfire version. Enjoy!
Food of the Gods
"Fuck!" Wally jumped back from the stove for the third time in the last minute. He glared accusingly at the frying pan's angry and sizzling contents. Wally reached into the pan, prodded at the food cautiously with his turner and flinched when the oil continued to pop dangerously close to his wrist.
He heard a soft padding behind him and snuck a glance to the entrance of the kitchen. Nelson sat on the kitchen's tiles about a foot away from Wally, his tongue dangling from his open mouth, panting loudly. He wore a ridiculous grin on his face and Wally couldn't help but think that Nelson was enjoying the show.
"What?" he asked. "You try cooking with oil. See who's laughing then." He didn't think it were possible but Wally swore that Nelson's grin grew a little wider.
Wally turned away from the damn dog and tried taming the wild beast that would eventually have to be Artemis's supper this Friday. He had wanted to make her an omelette for dinner, mixed with tomatoes, onions and since he was feeling a bit daring for his first cooked meal ever, he even wanted to throw in a bit of beef, too. Simple, really, but his plan had experienced its first speed bump when he had realised that he didn't even know how to keep the tomatoes in place as he cut them.
Wally admitted it only a few months after he'd started dating Artemis that he had no idea how to cook. As in, really, really cook. He could make easy things like sandwiches, salads and packaged-sauce pastas because, really now, the steps it took to make such foods were kind of mindless and didn't really require much thought.
Actual cooking was a different story. He never really had to learn how to. Wally was used to his mother making meal upon blessed meal during Christmas, Thanksgiving, birthday and everyday dinners all year round. She would, without fail, provide heaps of different dishes for every single important holiday or event in the Wests' calendar; stews, mashed potatoes, the occasional turkey, soups, homemade pastas, fancy salads, and the desserts, oh, god, the desserts. Time and time again, Wally and his father would spend a good hour every month trying to convince Mary that part-time jobs at the post office and as a sub at Central City Elementary School would add up to nothing if she started her own bakery. Because, by God, that woman's parfaits, eclairs, cakes, pastries, and muffins were beyond delicious and if you were lucky enough to try one of her cinnamon rolls, you could just kiss your future goodbye because your life would essentially be complete.
Wally West never exaggerated when it came to food. Wally West never joked when it came to food. So when Wally West insisted that his mother made the absolute best food in the world, he was not kidding.
Of course, his mom's food was one of the biggest impediments that hindered Wally's decision to move in with Artemis (along with other equally important factors, like being apart from his actual mother, of course) after discovering their acceptance to Stanford. In the long run, Artemis had triumphed over his mother's glorious food and it was actually a pretty win-win situation. Wally and Artemis would visit their families as often as possible and every weekend if Batman didn't require them to check into the Cave for a mission. His mother would get to see her favourite – and only, as Wally constantly reminded her – son and he would bathe in the sublime products of her culinary skills. And he was met with a bonus – Artemis wasn't that bad of a cook herself.
True, she leaned more towards Asian cuisine (it was her heritage) and constantly experimented, laying out exotic and tremendously colourful dishes for dinner, but everything she made always tasted delightful and even if it didn't have Mary's professional touch of magic, Artemis's cooking always tasted like home. And for Wally, that was probably the best taste of all.
He, on the other hand, had never learned to cook and now, it was biting him in the ass. This was the first night in the six months that he'd lived with Artemis that she hadn't started up dinner at precisely six o'clock and Wally had immediately assumed that something was wrong. A broken picture frame, some few loud and rough words, and a couple of bruises to Wally's shoulder later, he discovered that one of her classmates had failed to meet one of their more vital group deadlines for her Journalism class and she was the only one who could come up with a solution for the crisis.
And now here he was three hours later. Stuck next to a spitting, laughing stove and inwardly berating himself for never bothering to learn how to cook.
Wally removed the steel turner from the contents of the pan and held it in front of him. He stared at the "food" for a good thirty seconds before deciding that it would have to do and turning off the stove. Fishing out their best China, Wally resolved to make the food, if not tasteful, then at least visually pleasant.
Five minutes later, Wally stepped into the living room with the covered dinner and a glass of iced Cola and walked to where Artemis sat on the couch. Her cellphone was held between her ear and her left shoulder and her hands fumbled amongst the flurry of notes and fact sheets scattered around her. Her eyes flashed in anger suddenly and she grabbed the phone, switching it to her right ear.
"Oh, for the love of – Carol, if you can't contact Steve, then do it yourself! You were accepted to Stanford fucking University, a summary is not too much to ask for!" Artemis promptly hung up and tossed her phone onto the coffee table carelessly and threw her head back onto the back of the couch, smothering her face with her hands to muffle her shriek.
"Woah, babe, a little harsh there," Wally spoke up. She didn't even bother answering, simply sending him a very rude, but somehow appropriate hand gesture from her position on the couch. He chuckled and plopped down next to her, clearing away a space on the coffee table for her dinner. Artemis sighed and removed her hands from her face.
"What is that?" she asked roughly.
"This…" Wally removed the cap covering their finest white china, "…is your dinner." He revealed the orange-yellow omelette with bits of oversized tomatoes and onions sticking out here and there and an unhealthily coloured sauce drizzled on the edges. If the colours weren't so nauseating and the sizes of the vegetable not so overly large, Artemis would've said that he'd presented the dish quite well. Unfortunately for Wally, the omelette looked disgusting, and that was Artemis being nice.
"…Did you just make this?" Artemis couldn't help but ask.
"Where do you think I've been for the past three hours?" Wally retorted jokingly. They both new the limits of his culinary skills. Artemis had to crack a smile. She sighed and picked up the fork Wally had laid beside the plate. Tentatively, though she tried to make it look as smooth as possible, she cut off a hefty piece so as to satisfy her boyfriend and without a second thought, placed the contents in her mouth.
Jesus Christ.
Maybe she should have found a way to hide all of her spices, sauces, salts, cooking utensils, cook books, pans, spoons, forks — everything. Everything. She should have and would immediately hide everything related to cooking as soon as she finished dealing with … this. What the hell was this? It looked kind of like an omelette when it first got here but it tasted like – well, bitter chalk with a dash of sourness was the best way to describe Wally's omelette.
Artemis felt bad about thinking such a thing and reeled it back immediately, trying to put a smile on her face. She tried, she really did. But Wally was always annoyingly skilled at picking out her thoughts and emotions with one quick glance at her eyes. His face fell and he looked so crestfallen that Artemis swallowed the omelette in shame. Almost instantly, she broke out into light coughs as she was suddenly overwhelmed by an unnecessarily high level of spiciness. Wally handed her her glass of Cola and she downed half of it in seconds.
Wally sat quietly and waited until she was ready to voice her opinion, at the same time, irked with her reaction to his omelette. On the other hand, in the back of his mind, he slapped himself for even bothering to make her dinner. Jesus, he was so embarrassed.
Artemis's coughing died down and she took Wally's hands in hers. Mostly against his will, he looked at her.
"Wally, this is shit." Wally blinked. Talk about "brutally honest." When he didn't say anything, Artemis repeated herself slowly, almost placatingly, "This is shit, Wally." Then she laughed out loud gently and pulled him down for a quick kiss that tasted nothing like bitter and sour chalk and only a little bit like Coca Cola.
"What – " Wally started but Artemis shook her head and continued laughing.
"It's the thought that counts, you monster. Your cooking is terrible but you are the sweetest boyfriend for even trying." She brushed a stray bang back and tucked it behind her ear. Wally's eyes lit up as he realised that she was in her Walls Down mode. When she allowed herself to be unguarded in times like this, he saw parts of her that reminded him of a little girl or a teenager that never really got to experience her first love or first kiss or first anything. This Artemis was shyer and way more innocent than his typical spitfire but he'd decided a long time ago on a bioship above a rainforest that he liked this Artemis; the one with the pink blush and the hooded eyes that seemed hesitant but willing to accept his comfort and take his advice.
"Thank you," she whispered, and pressed a kiss to his cheek. Despite his obvious failure in the kitchen, Wally grinned and felt like he could run the diameter of the Earth faster than even the Flash.
"Should I try something else?" he asked eagerly, wanting to keep Artemis in this mood. If he was lucky, they'd be able to get to bed early tonight and she always let him get top when she was like this.
His hopes shattered when Artemis flinched and quickly re-covered the plate, all the while helping herself to some more Cola. She smirked.
"I think you should stay away from the kitchen until I have time to give you a few lessons, Kid Spatula," Artemis teased him, getting up and heading back to the kitchen, most likely to toss the contents of her "dinner" into the garbage bin mercilessly.
"Hey, it can't have been that bad! At least give it to Nelson so we don't waste it – Arty, I worked hard on that!" he scrambled after her, fruitlessly trying to keep his omelette alive.
"Babe, I don't think the dog would appreciate any of this and I don't want to take him to the vet anytime soon," she smirked but grinned fully when she saw his affronted expression.
"That is cruel, Artemis, and you know it," Wally said accusingly, crossing his arms. Artemis laughed and dumped the omelette in the trash bin, much to the speedster's dismay.
"And I'm still hungry," Wally whined. She turned around, stepped up to him and hooked her hands around the redhead's neck.
"How about we order some pizza and afterwards, I'll help you satisfy a different kind of hunger," she purred, burying her nose in the crook of his neck, sprinkling feather-light kisses there. Wally stiffened and wrapped his arms around her in response, forcing himself to relax.
"I think I like that plan," he whispered into her ear, but was suddenly met with cold air when Artemis pulled away from him faster than should be humanly possible. At least for her.
"Good, 'cause, babe, I am starving." With her academic crisis seemingly forgotten, or at least averted for the time being, her boyfriend suffering from unintentional and unpredicted sexual frustration, and that monstrosity of an omelette safely disposed of in the rubbish bin, Artemis triumphantly dashed off to call for pizza. She heard Wally speed next to her not a moment sooner as she ordered heaps of pizza, both of their stomaches growling in anticipation. Artemis smirked. They'd both be satisfied tonight, and in more ways than one. She'd make sure of it.
So, I fixed it, I think, and if you spot any more mistakes, please do not hesitate to message me or say so in a review! …This is not a ploy to get more reviews but… just bear with me.
This was actually supposed to be a drabble of less than 800 words but I was able to fit in a little bit more in there. Camping kind of threw me off and I was totally rushing to just GET THIS IN. Hope you guys enjoyed and a review would be totally crash!