Empurpled
There was a hiss, and a sour, squelching explosion. Blake jerked up, hissing in pain, and stared over towards the stove. And stared some more.
"Avon," he said faintly, trying to make sense of his sluggish thoughts. "Avon, you're purple."
"Thank you for that observation, Fearless Leader." Avon's voice was just as sour and nearly as squelching as he tried to wipe purple-brown smears of something that would have been dinner from his face, hair, clothes... just about everywhere. "I trust you're satisfied this time."
It was always amazing the venom that could be poured into that voice, but then Blake was used to it. Still groggy from the fall - and the painkiller his overtly uncaring and antagonistically overprotective companion had forced on him - he looked around at the deserted shelter: last century by the looks of the ornate, almost fussy brasswork and heavy furniture. And the old-fashioned appliances that Avon was not about to admit he couldn't operate...
Until dinner exploded on him.
"I only trust," Avon went on acidly, throwing aside the ostentatious and rather useless knife he'd found in a cupboard, and tried to cut the alien fruit with, "that you were correct about that... thing being non-poisonous."
"I was going to eat it as well..." Blake couldn't stop staring. The normally immaculate (if somewhat outré) clothes looked like they'd been boiled in a mulberry vat, the smooth dark hair was a tangled, wiry mess of drying strands of sticky plum-coloured paste, and as for his face... There was a shimmering droplet of the purple stuff on his nose, another sliding down his lower lip, and streaks across his cheek and chin.
In spite of his grogginess - and sense of self-preservation - Blake had to fight the laughter building up in his throat. "What happened?"
One frigid, furious glare was all the answer he got to that.
"N-no, seriously Avon, they're not poisonous. Puce-puffs are - native to Alpha Incognita, I heard once, but they're just about everywhere humans settled, but consider a... Gamma food. My cousins on Exbar weren't so fussy... they taught me about them." Damn, that blob on Avon's nose was going to slide...
"Did they also tell you they explode when heated?" Blake could almost imagine the particles of amethyst-tinged ice in Avon's voice.
"Uhh... I forget. What did you do?"
The other man glared at him for a minute - then sighed, swiped a hand across his face and looked around for the bucket of less-than-clean water he'd stoically (but not silently) drawn.
Blake couldn't resist. "Lick it off, Avon," he said shakily.
The glare flashed to a flamethrower blaze. "What?"
"Don't waste food while we're stranded." He met the scorching look, trying - though not too hard - to mimic Vila's innocent look when the thief was in deep stegowarg shit. "Don't tell me - you're embarrassed."
"I would make you prepare the next one." Avon threw him a sneering look, and the drying smears on his hand a calculating one.
"It tastes good, you know," Blake went on in a failing voice.
"Define good."
"You know you're allergic to choklit substitutes? Well, puce-puff is thought to be very like -"
In spite of himself, Avon licked his lips - and froze, an expression of purest bliss on his face.
Blake said nothing, lying back and watching as his reserved, detached and oh-so-proper crewmate unabashedly wiped another streak of puce-puff from his face and yes, licked his fingers. With any luck, Avon would be willing (actually, looking by his face as he headed back to the table for the scraps still on the metal plate, avid) to pick a few more of the plants, with rather less complaining this time.
Especially as the minor side-effects Blake hadn't seen fit to mention kicked in. He and Vila both agreed that Avon was really quite a mellow, nicer-than-normal-tempered drunk, and until rescue came, he felt that a mellow, nicer-than-normal-tempered Avon would be easier to deal with...
But maybe - even in his still slightly groggy state - he'd better do the cutting. Avon never was any use, even when stone-cold sober, with serrated knives...
- the end -