Title: Chef Heero's Selection #8: Food Taster Extraordinaire.
Author: Keiran
Pairing: mentioned 1x2x1
Rating: PG.
Warning: mentions shounen-ai
Word Count: 627
Thank you Deb for betaing! glomps Deb
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Wufei was sitting at home, minding his own business. He'd had a decent lunch; he was well-rested; it was Saturday; he wouldn't see Yuy and his cooking for at least a day more - what was there not to love? The man sighed contentedly, stretching as far as the couch would allow.
With a leisurely smile he reached to the coffee table, picking up a pair of reading glasses and a book. The glasses went up on his nose, the book was carefully opened and set on his lap, allowing the man to reach out once more, for a cookie and a sip of tea. He felt a bit guilty as he munched his way through the treat: a minute ago he was happy that wouldn't have to see Yuy until Monday, yet now he was blissfully indulging in one of the cookies he'd snatched from the man.
Then again, Wufei mused, it was sufficient payment for being stuffed with fresh spinach leaves the other day. Apparently Duo expressed his astonishment over the lack of spinach in his diet, so Yuy naturally set off to correct his mistake. After all, research had shown that even though someone had indeed made a mistake with a comma a long time ago and henceforth the amount of iron in the cursed greenery had supposedly been as high as vegetably possible, it was still nutritionally valuable.(1)
But Yuy, apart from being anal retentive when it came to food, was also and aesthete. No surprise there, considering whom he was involved with, Wufei reflected. Duo was indeed eye-candy. It was a bit dangerous though, when Heero's tendencies leaked into his culinary interests. Who hadn't heard the story of Yuy staying up all night to decorate a cake, only to wake Duo up in the wee hours of the morning, when it refused to meet aesthetic standards.
The point was, Yuy distrusted weird-looking food and a handful of weeds thrown into a pot and cooked until they resembled seaweed, definitely fell into that category. And that was largely it: anything Yuy distrusted, would need to be checked thrice. Wufei would have found it hilarious, had in fact, when he watched Trowa being presented with a plateful of greenish goo, smelling of garlic. The hilarity died down to amusement though, when the next day Quatre went through the same treatment.
When he was forcibly fed the spinach leaves on the third day, the amusement had already been history. Usually only one of them suffered, while Duo (and the rest, once Duo was full) reaped the benefits. Heero never tried it, (he did eat it afterwards though), and would not let himself be convinced that Duo didn't need a personal food-taster. Nothing Heero cooked could be potentially dangerous, not after the fuss he kicked up when looking for healthy and fresh items. He had, eventually, seen sense, or lack thereof, of checking for taste - Duo told him, rather forcibly too, that since he'd spent most of his childhood eating from the trash cans, his taste-buds, while still sensitive, had learned to filter the impressions going to his brain. 'Good' turned to 'yummy', 'yummy' became 'absolutely delightful' while 'disgusting' translated to 'apparently necessary'.
Taking all into consideration, Wufei was peeved when the phone rang, announcing that on the other side of the line there was an emergency. Grumbling, he threw on his jacket, grabbed his keys and marched out of the door. "'Food Taster Extraordinaire, Chang Wufei' my business card should read," the black-haired man said to himself. "At least this saves me the trouble of cooking tonight, since Yuy is toast if he doesn't feed me well for my trouble," he said resolutely, setting off on the short trip to his friend's apartment.
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(1)I read something like that a long time ago in 'Focus' magazine: while studying spinach, someone accidentally put a comma in the wrong place (namely one to the left) and so the amount of iron in the green leaves was multiplied tenfold! Therefore many kids in the world had to suffer eating the green goo, hearing it's good for their health... I personally like spinach, but didn't as a kid. So can sympathize.