Secret Recipe
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: Two figures meet in the middle to answer a great debate: What exactly is the secret to the other's recipe? Sookie, Luke, and warm fuzzies set in no particular season.

GG GG GG

They skulked by moonlight and streetlight, down alleys and across empty lawns.

They hurried from shadow to shadow, muttering to themselves under their breaths.

They met at the gazebo, unexpectedly, when Luke careened around it from one side and Sookie from the other, and they thumped physically against one another.

Sookie gave a small yip of surprise, quickly stifled by a hand over her mouth. Luke grunted, and steadied her, before losing his own balance and hitting the gazebo stairs on his butt. A flash of cloth revealed each carrying something that did not belong to that person.

As one, the two exclaimed, "Hey, you broke into my kitchen!"

After a red-faced pause, each them said, in the same breath, "Don't tell anyone!"

Another thoughtful moment was followed by a rather abashed, "Look, I didn't…"

Finally, both spat out, "That's your big secret?"

To which Sookie amended, "You cheater," sotto voce.

Luke Danes scratched at the back of his neck. "Ah. Yeah. Um. Look, can I have that back?"

"No deal," snarled Sookie, clutching the box to her chest. "Not till I see you have my stuff!"

Luke slowly reached inside his flannel to pull a narrow bottle out of his waistband.

Sookie couldn't help it. She giggled, "Gee, and I thought you were happy to see me."

"Ah geez," groaned Luke, and continued to hold out the bottle. "The box, or your bottle gets it."

"Okay, okay, gee, calm down," huffed the chef at the Dragonfly Inn. "Here. You cheater."

Luke accepted the large box, covered in masking tape to hide certain identifying brand name and images. Sookie snatched the bottle from his hand, uncorked it, sniffed, and gave a sigh of relief.

Luke moved over. Sookie accepted the silent invitation and sat down on the step.

"So, uh, Lorelai doesn't need to know about this, right?" asked Luke anxiously.

"Nope," agreed Sookie fervently. "Not a word. I know nothing."

After a comfortable, if awkward few minutes watching Kirk run screaming down the street in the throes of a night terror, Luke grumbled, "Your magic special glaze is Two-Buck Chuck with Mrs. Butterworth?"

The redhead flared crimson, shaking a finger. "Don't you start. The ethanol content is a good complementary component to the…"

"High fructose corn syrup?"

Fuming, Sookie wielded a nonexistent knife at him. "Hey, there's more than that to it!"

"Yeah, I took a whiff. What is that, a shot of liquid hickory smoke flavoring?"

"You have a good nose," admired Sookie, before retreating into the offensive. "And you, Mr. Magic Perfect Burger and Wonderful Meat Loaf? Hmm?" She shook the box in his hand. "Texturized vegetable protein? Hidden in a Jiffy corn muffin mix?"

"Uh," said Luke uneasily, shifting away from her by a few precious millimeters. "Uh, well, y'know, it's, uh… Well, it's not… Ah geez." His hand started to toy with his ball cap.

"Ah-ha!" caroled Sookie, pointing a finger, a la the judges at the Salem Witch Trials. "Confess! I knew there was something else in there!"

Cringing, Luke admitted, "Well, yeah, corn muffin mix."

Sookie's jaw dropped. "Wait. You put corn muffin mix with texturized vegetable protein into your hamburger?"

Luke opened his mouth to deny, and sagged. "Yeah. Look, I gotta get fiber into these nutjobs somehow, and nobody can tell the difference, and… Wait, you use cheap wine and commercial maple-flavored corn syrup for your famous glaze!"

"Well, you add non-meat to meat!"

"It stretches the meat supply," muttered Luke, "and, uh, y'know, keeps the meat loaf and hamburgers from falling apart."

"You glue them together with…" Sookie sputtered hopelessly. "Glue-y stuff!"

Flushed even by starlight, Luke snarled, "At least my secret ingredient isn't going to give anyone liver failure or diabetes!"

A steaming of angry breaths filled the night in Stars Hollow, punctuated by Sookie's low-voiced litany of herbs she used in her now less-secret glaze, and nobody died of flavor, whereas constipation was a serious inconvenience.

After a time, the two regarded one another with something like respectful contempt.

"Never happened?" bargained Luke.

"Never happened," said Sookie, shaking his outstretched hand.

The two had walked perhaps four paces in their respective directions when Luke and Sookie stopped short, turned, and asked as one, "How did you get in?"

A mere heartbeat sufficed.

Both sighed, "Lorelai," and then with a furtive nod, departed into the night, their secret recipes safe and sound.

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Mrs. Butterworth: Cheap pancake syrup with very little actual *maple* syrup in it. (It's officially maple-flavored sugar syrup.)
Jiffy: A boxed-mix baking brand best known for its biscuits and cornbread
TVP: Texturized Vegetable Protein. Weird kernels of stuff that are non-animal protein, and not really food IMHO, but are often heavily flavored by chemicals to mimic meat. How that's a "health" food is explicable only to my husband. I just eat the darn veggies.
Two-Buck Chuck: A real name of a real wine, believe it or not.
Liquid hickory smoke flavoring: A real thing. You smoke hickory wood (green) and it is mixed with steam that is then cooled into a liquid. A cheat in many US barbecue type sauces.