Cooking

The afternoon sun was starting to be annoying already and that was the thing which made Stan finally open his eyes and lazily sit up on the bed he had been napping on for quite a while now. The black haired young man looked outside the huge window just in front of the bed which showed a spectacular view of the terraced hills filled with housing buildings that sat against the bay of the city. The apartment in which he was now was part of one of those buildings, all forty four of them made with the same shape but different colors, which made the bay hills to appear as a work of art under the heavy summer sun.

With a deep yawn, Stan got up from the bed and walked slowly towards the kitchen where faint sizzling sounds could be heard. He didn't bother with putting any clothes on, it had been quite a while since he had moved from the initial embarrassment of walking around naked in his boyfriend's place. 'His boyfriend' those words made him smile, or more like the affirmation that he was in a stable, wonderful and hopefully non ending relationship with the most amazing man he had ever met.

Just outside the kitchen's door, Stan could hear a soft humming and some murmured words that accompanied the cooking sounds. He recognized his boyfriend's singing voice although he was doing it really low, probably to not wake Stan up. The raven haired man crept across the kitchen and hugged his boyfriend from behind "What are you preparing?" Stan felt a soft purring coming from the huge man he was hugging and pressed his head against the other man's back.

"Just a little something I learned a while ago. I think you'll like it" Eric replied with a smile of his own as he cut some bacon and then put it on the big pot where some onions and minced meat were already being fried in a generous base of oil.

Stan peeked to the table where Eric was now cutting some thick sausages he had never seen before "It sure looks like something quite complicated. Are you planning on putting all of that to it?" Beside the cutting board were a lot of different vegetables already peeled and waiting to be cut.

Eric finished cutting the sausages in thick slices and started to do the same with an orange sweet potato "It's not complicated, you just gotta put all the ingredients in the pot and let them to be cooked. It is kind of an art though, to know when to put each ingredient and thus their cooking time so nothing ends up overcooked or raw" The fat brunet added some potatoes cut in cubes and continued with some carrots "There are numerous ways to prepare this of course, but I wanted to make it supercharged so you can taste it's full glory" Eric cut some yellow sweet potato now and then looked at the big pumpkin that sat at the table with a thoughtful look "Mmmm no… That would be overkill" He decided to put just what he had already cut in the pot and immediately added a lot of water and started with the condiments.

Stan had been amazed with Eric's kitchen the first time he saw it. It wasn't that big, Eric's apartment wasn't big at all for such a big man, or at least it wasn't big in comparison with what Stan was used to but Eric's kitchen was filled to the brim with various high quality kitchenware and the biggest collection of spices and condiments Stan had seen. It could surely put a specialist store to shame and Stan always loved to listen to Eric telling him stories about the rarest spices and how he had gotten them or the places where they came from.

Eric turned around now and surrounded Stan with his burly arms while he placed a kiss at the top of his head. To say that Eric was huge could be an understatement, he was a good foot taller than Stan, which was incredible already since Stan was taller than the average man and Eric was also quite fat but solid, like a round wrecking ball and Stan felt small in his arms but incredibly comfortable and safe "I thought you were going to sleep a bit more"

"The sun was bugging me" Stan replied resting his head on Eric's chest "And besides if I sleep too much during the day I won't be able to sleep at night"

"As if I was going to let you sleep tonight…" Eric said with a husky and mischievous tone.

Stan blushed at the implication but chuckled while looking up "We gotta be up early tomorrow or we'll lose the ferry like the last time"

"I know" Eric rolled his eyes and planted another kiss on Stan's head "But you won't deny us some fun tonight just because of that right?"

"Why do you think I wanted to take a nap?" Stan replied giving his boyfriend a devilish smile "I want to at least have a good round with you tonight before we go to sleep"

Eric chuckled and patted Stan's ass "I'll try to make it two rounds since we haven't done it in a while…"

"You read my mind" Stan said lowering his hand and pinching Eric's ass "Don't you have to be taking care of the cooking though?"

The burly man swatted Stan's hand and turned around "Since my petulant boyfriend seems to be more interested in dinner than in me then I may as well get back to the cooking" Eric said with a faked offended tone "And maybe he should go and help making the bags for tomorrow"

"Don't be an ass Eric, you know you're my favorite dinner" Stan replied while tightening his hold on Eric before separating from him "But I like to watch you cooking, and this looks interesting"

"That's what I like to hear" Eric nodded and shot a smirk looking back at Stan above his shoulder "Well, it's good that you get interested in cooking actually. I can't be the only cook in this relationship after all"

"Exactly" Stan agreed and leaned on the side of his boyfriend to watch him "So… Now what do we do?"

"We are going to wait a bit more and then I'll put the final ingredient, or more like the body of the meal and then we should go and prepare our bags"

"Your bag you mean" Stan remarked scoffing "I have mine already done. No need to change anything of what I used on the trip to Milan"

"Yeah smartass, my bags" Eric nudged the smaller man with his hip, making Stan lose his balance and almost fall to the ground.

"Fuck! Watch it dude!" Stan protested and moved away from Eric to prevent his mountain of a boyfriend to do that again.

Eric was laughing hard now, his round cheeks becoming noticeably red under the well-trimmed but still copious beard "You should get back to training Stan, you don't want to be a wimp like your Jew friend right?"

"Kyle is not a wimp, he's athletic" Stan rolled his eyes. He knew that Eric didn't mean to really insult his best friend but the bigger man liked to banter with the red head when they did something together. It was like a mutual agreement of theirs to rip on each other but deep down Stan knew they respected each other a lot. Maybe if he hadn't met Eric before, the brunet and his friend could've been together, probably they would make a good couple. Stan dreaded to think of that but he was sure that neither of them would do anything to hurt him and Eric proved each day how much he loved Stan so it wasn't something that worried him too much.

"He's a twig with a mop of red yarn on the top" Eric chuckled but then smiled warmly at Stan "Don't worry, I'd like you even if you were a wimp"

Stan rolled his eyes but smiled back at Eric. They spent ten more minutes talking until Eric deemed right to put a generous amount of white rice on the boiling water to cook with the other ingredients and then patted Stan's back "Now we let this to consume the water and in a while dinner will be ready"

"I'll help you with your bag then" Stan grabbed Eric's hand and they walked out of the kitchen and to the closet to prepare anything that Eric would need for their vacations.

About twenty minutes later Eric put down the fire on the stove and let the food to cool down a bit so they could eat. The bags were ready now so the two men sat on the bed to watch a short episode of their current favorite series until it was time for dinner.

Like always, Stan prepared the table and Eric served the steamy food for them both and watched at Stan, eager to see his reaction to the meal. The black haired man tasted it carefully since it was still pretty hot and then smiled amazed at his boyfriend "This is so good! I honestly thought that it was going to be like a crude mix of things since you put a lot of stuff in this but I can taste it as a whole and at the same time the individual ingredients and it all just works so good…"

Stan didn't hesitated to continue eating while and Eric smiled, pleased that his boyfriend enjoyed his cooking so much "Well, I guess someone could fuck up a meal like this one but in general is something pretty easy to do"

"What is it called anyways?" Stan asked "Where did you learned to do it?"

"It's called 'Guiso' in the place where I first tasted it although some other places have some variations of it and of course the name may vary as well" Eric replied starting to eat too "I learned about it when I was doing a joint operation with the SAS in a pretty small South American country, not the jungle type but one to the south, it acts like a bottleneck to maritime commerce in the region, specifically controlling what enters to way bigger countries like Brazil and Argentina"

"Huh… I probably have never heard of it…" Stan admitted a bit embarrassed about that fact. Geography wasn't his forte and in general, the north and south hemispheres worked kinda like separate entities nowadays so many people like him grew up not knowing much of each other.

"Yeah, I don't think so either… It became famous at some point when oil was found near its shore. In fact, that's why I went there at all" Eric commented while taking a sip of the orange juice he had prepared earlier. Stan was intrigued about why a person like Eric was so adamant on preparing natural juices to have at his home all the time.

"Wait, if oil was important this must have been a while ago right?" Stan asked furrowing his brow.

"I was your age when I went there so…" Eric nodded continuing to eat his dinner.

"You were doing joint missions with special forces when you were twenty?" The younger man was quite astounded by that.

"I was that good" Eric replied smugly "Actually, it took me a while to get there but since I blackmailed my way to join the army at seventeen I had a year of advantage over the other guys in my unit"

"You did what?!" Stan looked at his boyfriend with his eyes wide as plates now.

"I needed to get honest money to help at home and I was sick of the farm so I enlisted when I had the chance" Eric shrugged nonchalantly "And this was at the time when you had to earn your stripes with hard work, discipline and guts. The army now is just a place for bored rich kids to spend their lives playing simulations and flaunting their fake stars when they hardly know what they used to mean"

Stan looked at his plate for a moment at Eric's bitter words. Talking about his time in the army always made the older man do that at some point and he always felt a bit guilty about that.

Sensing Stan's discomfort Eric gently caressed his boyfriend's hand and when he raised his eyes, Stan found the brunet smiling at him "Sorry about that"

Stan shook his head and smiled too "Don't be. I kind of understand you. A lot of things were harder for everyone back in those days and now it must look like people my age get everything so easily"

"I mean, it's exactly like that" Eric nodded "But on the other hand it's great that things changed so much. People don't have to die fighting for some idiot's whims like in the wars of my time, medicine and food industries are making everyone's lives way better and people like you can be free to pursue what they really desire"

"You mean rich, spoiled kids like me?" Stan raised an eyebrow.

"I meant kind hearted dreamers like you" Eric replied rolling his eyes "Even people who aren't born rich have the opportunity to follow their dreams now, like actually do it, not like when I was young when that phrase was just that, a phrase to keep the masses quiet and compliant"

Stan nodded too and squeezed his boyfriend's hand before getting back to his dinner. He had been born soon after the great technological revolution that changed the world like nothing else had done in the past few centuries and he had grown up amidst the fortune that a new and almost miraculous mineral that had propelled that revolution had brought his to family, with his father as the center of the discovery. So Stan couldn't really grasp how things had been twenty years back when Eric was his age and things looked pretty bleak for mankind and the whole planet "Do you miss the army? The old days?" Stan finally asked.

Eric chewed in silence for a moment and then shook his head "Kinda… I miss the guys in my unit, like Kenny and Craig and even crybaby Clyde… They were the best friends a man like me could have" His words were thick with nostalgia and some tinge of sadness, aside from Clyde and Eric, the rest of his unit had died and since then Eric hadn't made new friends, real ones at least "The old days as you put it… Well, no. I may have my pride in the things I earned but I'm not stupid. The old world was dying and if it weren't for your dad we would've drowned in chaos and war a long time ago. Besides, even if the Mithris made a lot of jobs obsolete it also opened a lot of new opportunities for anyone willing to take them. Look at us" Now he smiled again at Stan "Without me becoming a military relic I wouldn't have founded my company and we wouldn't have met…"

Stan smiled too and nodded "If it hadn't been for my parents becoming rich I wouldn't have even born. Or so Shelly always likes to tell everyone…"

"Dreadful thought" Eric shook his head.

Stan chuckled and then looked at his almost empty plate "Tell me more about this food. I mean, about the country where it's from and the mission and all that"

"For a pacifist as big as yourself you surely love to hear about my army days" Eric laughed. Stan shrugged and Eric continued "Well, like I said, this little country was pretty famous at the time for its oil reserves but even if most people didn't know about it, it was also famous to international security agencies because a branch of a huge drug cartel had moved to the area from the north and used the oil rigs to smuggle drugs into the region and also to take out the laundered money. So my unit was sent along with a British SAS one to investigate and end with whatever we encountered at the site"

"And did you found anything?" Stan asked finishing his meal and now paying all of his attention to his boyfriend.

"Well, we were kinda right about the laundering" Eric nodded "But it was going the other way around, they used private banks in the region to store the laundered money and it turns out that what they were smuggling out weren't drugs but people" Stan frowned shocked "Yeah, exactly that" Eric said acknowledging his boyfriend's expression "We were shocked too since it was rare for something like that to happen in that place. Long story short we thwarted their operation and rescued a lot of people from something pretty horrible. After that we still had to supervise the extraction of the money so we were stationed at the capital of this country and I got to meet a lot of the locals who introduced me to some pretty great things, especially their cuisine"

"Wow, that sounds like a lot to take in" Stan said while Eric finished his food "But at least good things came out of all that right?"

Eric nodded satisfied with his dinner and reclining a bit on his chair "Yeah. A lot of people were spared from something awful and I got to experience some great days there. And I got to delight my beautiful boyfriend with an international plate today"

Stan blushed a bit at the compliment "You always cook great things from all around the world…"

"Just the ones I like, or that I know that you might like" Eric replied grabbing Stan's hand and tracing circles with his thumb over the palm.

"This one must be like a specialty there right?" The raven haired man asked.

"Actually is kind of a poor people food" Eric chuckled a bit "I mean, maybe not the charged one I made today but take away the meat and some condiments and it's a pretty basic plate there"

"Really?" Stan asked surprised "But you put tons of vegetables and stuff on it"

"Produce is really cheap down there" Eric shrugged "Farms are not far from the center of the capital and pretty much the rest of the country is, well, country. Most of their meat they export but the veggies are mostly for the inside market"

"Sounds like a great place. So much nature is rare to see in these parts" Stan smiled.

"At least it was like that twenty years ago" Eric sighed "It may be really different now. But you would've loved it back in the day. Animals everywhere, miles and miles of green pastures and low hills. And the beaches…" Eric smiled again with yearning in his eyes "I hope it still retains some of its beauty"

"We should go there someday" Stan got up from the table and leaned down to kiss his boyfriend "I want you to show me all those beautiful places you've been before" Then he moved away and walked to the bed, sitting on it and looking at Eric through half lidded eyes "But now it's time for you to uphold the promise you did earlier"

Eric got up and walked to the bed, shaking his slippers off and letting the robe he was wearing fall to the floor "I'll uphold much more than that" He smirked and joined the younger man in the bed.

***Disclaimer: I don't own the South Park characters or any of the brand names mentioned in this story. I don't own any of the songs mentioned on the story or used as chapter titles.