Where IVIaedhros operates on deadlines and is confused in spite of everything.
And Stark tries his hand at cooking...
Unohana awoke feeling relaxed enough not to care about the time, and did not rush to open her eyes, though the warmth of the sunlight which bathed her pillow clearly showed that it was approaching midday. She lingered between sleep and true awakening for a few more minutes, enjoying the smell of the garden, which drifted in through the half open window – a rhythmic sound, one she could not quite place made her frown, though her eyes were still closed.
It was dry, precise, not overly loud and though the woman wished it away, it continued to linger just on the edges of her consciousness.
She opened her eyes, and listened intently.
As if pointedly evading her, the sound stopped for a few seconds, then picked up once more, with a different rhythm, precisely when she'd closed her eyes again. Intrigued, she lifted herself to her elbow, and focused, trying to pin-point the source.
'Well, I'll be!' she exclaimed, once she had identified the kitchen as the source of the sound – she hopped out of bed, taking the sheets with her, without caring that she'd pulled the pillows to the floor as well. Barefoot, and with her hair unbraided, she crossed the living room and peered into the small kitchen, eyes wide in disbelief. Of all of the many things she had seen in her long life, she thought, this had to take the lot.
A small bowl, filled to the rim with neatly cubed tomatoes stood proudly on the edge of the kitchen table, next to four eggs, a piece of crushed soft cheese and a pile of thinly sliced green and yellow peppers. The fire burned merrily in the stove, heating a small piece of butter.
There is a Vasto Lorde in the kitchen, she thought. And, would you believe it, he is chopping onions.
'What are you doing?' she asked, feeling that she was on the very edge of a mad fit of laughter.
'Erm,' Stark said, looking over his shoulder, and frowning lightly at the amount of surprise her voice had carried. 'Cooking. And, wishing good morning to you, half nude lady.' He grinned.
'Good morning to you too, fully dressed gentleman,' she snickered, shaking her head at the image, and biting her lower lip to prevent herself from laughing out loud.
'I was hungry,' he innocently shrugged, in the way of an explanation – and indeed, she conceded to herself, it was the best explanation of them all; Unohana leaned against the doorframe, still pointedly staring at the chopping board, until the man chuckled in his turn, admitting to the strangeness of the situation. 'No onion for you?' he asked, with a wide grin, and she bent over laughing, almost dropping the sheets which covered her, and immediately forgetting that under any other circumstance, at any other time, the last thing she would have associated a hungry Hollow with might have been onion.
'You are awful,' Unohana managed, between chuckles.
'And you are quite naked,' the man seriously returned, arching an eyebrow. He watched her laughing, allowing himself a grin of his own, and, when she finally straightened and their eyes met, she could tell that he'd been looking at the sheets but only thinking of what they covered. 'That is a dangerous state, Madame.'
Unohana blushed, and composed herself, gathering as stern an appearance as standing barefoot and wrapped in linen sheets possibly allowed.
The kitchen knife hesitantly shifted in his hand, and, for a moment, he looked as if he could not decide between putting it down and embracing her, or continuing his task – she enjoyed the sensation, so, forgetting to be stern, she allowed the corner of her lips to curl mischievously upwards. Stark put the knife down, by the side of the chopping board, and turned towards her fully.
Unohana did not withdraw, so after one further second of hesitation, the man left the side of the table, to lean one arm on the doorsill, over her head, and place his other hand on her waist; she took in the light that was dancing in his eyes, before she surrendered to the warmth of the kiss. When their lips parted, she looked up, and softly caressed his cheek, grinning inwardly as Stark's fingers sought a way towards her skin through the unwillingly intricate layering of the sheets.
The woman allowed him to think he'd caught her for another second, then laughed and darted away, just as his hand had finally found her hip.
'Your butter is burning,' she said, slipping under his arm and running towards the bedroom at lighting fast speed.
'Treachery!' he exclaimed, on her trail – Unohana simply hid her chuckles behind the Shoji panel. She thought she'd heard him laugh too.
She dressed, without hurry, and the dulled sound of chopping resumed. With almost unconscious gestures, she picked up the pillows from the floor and straightened the sheets over the bed, then, not caring for undoing her own good work, she sat on the edge of the mattress, looking out the window, and feeling, she thought, without anger, or shame or doubt, happy.
'What are you making?' she questioned, from the bedroom.
'A sort of an omlette,' Stark answered from the kitchen. 'Bit more of an eierspeise than an omlette, actually…'
The sound of the sizzling onion drowned out his voice, and Unohana pondered the names of both dishes for a moment, recognizing neither but not wishing to give him the satisfaction of asking. She shrugged to herself, then, after a final glance out the window, stood and slowly walked to the kitchen, embracing him from behind.
'And what goes into it?' she asked, bending to the side to look at the small pot in open curiosity. The smell was pleasant, but thoroughly unfamiliar, and the soft cheese had melted with the butter, bubbling merrily around the translucent onion.
'Egg, onion, cheese, smoked ham, tomato, half of Isane, your lieutenant,' Stark seriously enumerated. 'Ow!' he complained, arching to the side when she powerfully pinched his arm. '…and garlic,' he completed, giving her an innocently injured glance.
'Awful,' Unohana muttered, resting her cheek on the back of his shoulders.
'I know,' Stark shrugged. 'No fresh herbs. Let me get the ham,' he smiled – the woman reluctantly let go of him, but stayed close to the small stove.
'Where did you get all of these things?' she wondered, when he returned to her side with a cut of pork meat that she had never seen before.
'My new lieutenant really needs to be kept busy,' Stark answered, with a wink. He dropped the thinly cut strips of meat into the pan, and gave the whole a gentle stir. 'I've told him to get me some things, and then instructed Szayel Aporro to stock them here,' he added, carelessly gesturing towards the door of the adjoining pantry. Driven by curiosity, Unohana drifted away from his side, and carefully, as if she had expected some monster to leap at her from behind the pantry door, pulled the panel aside. 'I think even Szayel Aporro agrees that protein is an essential component of all of my good work here…'
'Holy…' the woman breathed in, making him chuckle.
The pantry, which had previously stored some rolls of seaweed and a few bags of rice, was now full to the brim with things that she did not even recognize as food – well, she thought, feeling slightly ashamed, she did recognize some of the vegetables, and could tell that the thing that was hanging from the ceiling was smoked meat, but the neat rows of jars which lined the walls, and the strange stacks of herbs which were stuffed in between them completely evaded her.
'Am I that bad of a cook?' she asked, looking over her shoulder, and voicing the first thing that came to her mind. 'You must have seriously suffered last we were together, if you took such precautions, and made such preparation…'
'No, of course not,' Stark replied, breaking the first of the eggs over the side of the pan. 'You can tell a bad cook by the consistency of their vegetables – if the vegetables are turned to mush, then the person should truly consider hiring help. You're not a bad cook at all,' he repeated, looking over his shoulder, to assure she had not taken offence. 'You do all those neat rice wraps, and everything was incredibly detailed and well presented. I…just really don't like your food,' the Primera shrugged. 'It is not in how you make it, simply…'
He sighed deeply.
'Somehow,' he said, 'I imagined that all food in heaven would be French.'
The woman giggled at the irony, and gave him an apologetic smile.
'Sorry,' she said. 'Sushi makes you live longer, apparently.'
Stark rolled his eyes.
'It is not that you live longer – it just feels longer,' he muttered, and tossed the eggshells over his shoulder, finding the rubbish bin with remarkable aim, but still making her cringe at the small amount of liquid that had dripped on the floor, before the shells had disappeared into the bin.
'Can I help with anything?' Unohana asked, coming to his side.
'Yes, get the half of Isane…'
He did not have time to finish the phrase; Unohana ran her fingers up and down his ribcage, on both sides, making him jolt to the side as if he had been burned and bend over with uncontrolled laughter.
'Unfair,' he gasped. 'My very confessions are being used against me…'
'Yes, well, if you are being awful, then I have a right to be awful as well,' she shrugged, picking up the wooden spoon and gently stirring the contents of the pot.
The egg was beginning to gain consistency, and the only two ingredients left out were the pepper and the tomatoes; she cranked her nose, considering the options, then gathered the peppers and added them to the pot.
'You could peel one clove of garlic for me,' he said, straightening and expectantly stretching his fingers out – in the open demand that the wooden spoon, and the mastery of the dish was returned to him. 'Unskilled labour, as it were,' he shrugged – Unohana laughed, and ceremoniously handed over the spoon, then headed into the pantry and found the garlic.
'Just one clove?' she asked, reaching into the satchel.
'Yes,' Stark answered, sounding absorbed in his work.
Unohana blindly crushed one of the garlic heads between her fingers, and separated one clove, rubbing it free of all leaves before extracting it from the satchel, then returned to the kitchen. She gave Stark a passing glance before she took a dull knife from the drawer and peeled the clove. The Primera seemed absorbed with his creation, and was carefully making sure that the egg did not catch on the sides of the pot – once she had passed the garlic to him, he diced it with remarkable speed and dexterity, then added it to the tomato bowl.
'You can only do this at the end,' he smugly explained, holding the tomatoes over the pot as if expecting the precisely correct moment to add them to the mix. 'If you do it too early, the garlic burns and turns bitter, and the tomato gets…erm, mushy,' he concluded, shrugging in apology for the fact that he could not find a better word.
She chuckled, and, guessing that the food would be ready soon, went about setting the table and warming water for tea, still observing him through the corner of her eyes.
The last of the four eggs went in immediately after the tomatoes; Stark carefully shook the pot twice, without stirring, then pulled it to a side of the stove, away from the hot flame and on moderate heat.
'Are you hoping this will hold together?' Unohana asked, sitting down, and guessing what he intended to do. Still, she thought, the ensemble looked too disorderly and was simply too much for a single egg to hold it.
She closed her eyes, breathing in the pleasant, unknown smell, almost missing the fact that Stark had questioningly glanced at the pot, then looked at her with a rebellious frown.
'It will hold,' he said, with supreme confidence.
'M-hmm,' Unohana nodded, demonstrating nothing but doubt.
'Less questions, more salad,' the Primera demanded. 'Unskilled labour is needed once more – would you mind fetching a lettuce? In the pantry, on the right, there should be…'
Shadow stepping had many benefits, she thought, holding the lettuce up to his face before he'd even finished the words. He blinked twice.
'Washed lettuce,' Stark said, not granting her the victory.
He overturned the pot onto a plate, and gave her a triumphant smile when the contents came out as a single, perfectly rounded piece. She did not mind. She washed the lettuce, ripped out the roots, then considered for a moment before tearing it to strips in her hands rather than cutting it.
'You are beautiful,' Stark off-handedly said, as she was reaching for a wooden bowl.
Suddenly, Unohana felt as if she truly was.
The perfect, rounded creation of the Primera fell apart as soon as he cut into it; Unohana laughed, and stood away from the table to fetch a spatula, while the man contemplated his failure in defeated silence. She ruffled his hair before she sat back down and served them both – despite its presentation, the crossing of the omlette with eierspeise tasted good; the salty cheese and the smoky flavor of the ham melded together well with the sweetness of the onion and the freshness of the barely warm tomato.
'This is actually excellent,' Unohana said; Stark sighed, looking at the loose pieces of egg on his plate with such deep sorrow that she had to laugh. 'Look – you simply need a bit of common sense,' the woman giggled. 'It was clear that one single egg would not be sufficient to hold this through; you would have needed one more, and you should have beaten them together, to make sure that the yolk seeps through the entire thing.'
'Oh well,' the man sighed, sounding unconvinced – she simply leaned over and kissed him on the lips.
Everyone enjoy? I hope so, because next time the angst returns, though at least with some explosions.