Masterpiece
((From the bowels of the sick and twisted mind of Black Kat comes an all-new yaoi from One Piece. However, I don't own One Piece, Oda-sama does and he'd be very angry if I took credit for his wonderful anime that 4Kids ROYALLY SCREWED! I digress. Here it is.))
One could not possibly call Carne a coward. He'd fought off hundreds of rouge pirates without a second thought. He'd even helped the Straw Hat boy fight off Don Krieg. However, he couldn't deny that this was the single most frightening thing he'd ever gone up against in his entire life. Tomorrow was Patty's birthday and he was trying to bake a cake.
Of course the two bickered and fought to no end, but the truth was that Carne had always felt a strange affection to the older man. Patty was strong and vicious. Although Carne was not what one might call a weak individual, he took comfort in knowing that Patty would always be at his side. Now, however, he wasn't sure what to make of his feelings.
The batter in front of him mocked his every attempt to stir it. The spoon had long ago gotten quite stuck in the thick goop. Even though he was a chef, Carne's specialties were meat dishes, so he'd hardly ever touched desserts; that was Patty's job. Obviously he couldn't ask for help from the other man without blowing his cover and the other chefs could care less about his endeavors. Now, it was just him and the task at hand.
After a few moments, the spoon was liberated from its sticky prison and the batter was almost distributed evenly into the pans. Carefully setting them into the oven, Carne sighed in relief that the first third of his ordeal was complete. Leaning back onto the island, he removed his hat and wiped the sweat from his brow. It was times like these that made him thankful that the Baratie was his home. No other restaurant he knew of had a kitchen as elaborate and functional as this.
"Three hundred jobs I lost with that fool. It was all his fault too," he breathed quietly.
It was true that he and Patty had a long history of lost jobs due in part to their fights. The day they had met, both were applying for a job at a small-town restaurant on the Isle of Kiishin. Neither of them had a Berri to their names, but their cooking expertise was unmatched. The owner was impressed and hired them both, but that soon caused trouble.
Carne, as was mentioned earlier, had a great skill with meat dishes that far surpassed Patty. Since the dishes he created were quite enough to fill a full-grown man to compacity, there was little need for a man that specialized in desserts. Because of this, Carne was given a large raise, and this did not please Patty.
Their fight had started predominately in the kitchen, but soon reached the dining area when Patty threw his adversary through the doors and into a table occupied by the mayor and his wife. Carne had landed sprawled in the lady's lap, scaring her to no end. It was after their employer threw them out that they decided to travel together; or rather, that Carne began to follow Patty.
Carne had been around twenty-five and Patty around thirty at the time. The latter was obviously more skilled in combat than the younger man, and Carne knew that Patty would be an important ally if trouble were to occur. Patty had at first rejected the idea, pushing him off the dock as they boarded a merchant boat. Later, however, he eventually came to grasp that no matter how far he travelled, the other would persue him with vigor.
Coming out of his flashback, Carne looked down at the stove and carefully took the pans out. The lumpy mixture had turned a sickly golden-orange color. He noted that the picture in the recipe book showed a dark brown chocolate cake; nothing like his disaster. Shrugging it off, he decided to continue.
Icing the cake was messier, but a bit easier for him to handle. Although the cake broke apart several times, he concealed the cracks as well as he could. Now came the hard part; the message.
Carne was not a coordinated individual. His handwriting was, to put it mildly, atrocious. That, topped with his inadequacy with a frosting gun, made his work very tedious. He would never admit it, but he was ever-so-slightly unfamiliar with correct grammar and spelling. This, however, he would simply work around. After the careful scrawling was complete, he stood back, admiring his work.
An hour or so later, the dishes had been washed and the garbage disposed of. Everything had been put into its proper place and the cake had been set on a small silver platter. Knocking on the door to their bunk, he waited for a response.
"Whadda ya want?" came the familiar gruffness.
Stepping into the ill-lit room, Carne placed the platter on the table between their bunks, eyes peering hungrily behind his dark spectacles at the receptor of his gift.
"I've just completed my new masterpiece. I thought you'd like to try it."
"Shit, Carne! It's almost midnight and you wanna give me a steak! Whatever. May as well give it a shot."
Swinging his legs over the side of his bed, he removed the cover on the platter. What met his gaze nearly stopped his heart in his chest.
Staring back at him was a terribly lop-sided chocolate cake, large chunks gathered together and oozing down the sides where the frosting had lost hold. In vanilla icing, scribbled on the top, was what appeared to be, "Hapy 40 Birhday Patty."
His confused gaze broke away from the heart-warming atrocity and to Carne's ever-reddening face. Trying to be gracious, Patty took the offered fork and dug it into the cake, taking a bite of the half-baked glob into his mouth. The taste was enough to cause him to gag and immediately wish to vomit, but Carne's words rang in his ears.
After forcing himself to swallow it, Patty looked back up at the nervous young man.
"W...what do you think?" Carne stammered.
Before the instinct to completely curse the foul pastry and beat the hell out of Carne for wasting ingredients took over, Patty stopped himself. How could he tell his sole friend and comrade, one that he'd had a sneaking suspicion about for years, that his masterpiece wasn't worth feeding to the sharks?
"You don't like it, do you?" Carne whispered.
Turning back in rejection, he was just about to walk out when his shoulder was caught in a firm grip. Turning around, his fearful gaze rose to meet that of the man he'd lusted after for ten years.
"No...no! I like it. It's just..missin' somethin'."
"What's that, then?"
"Dis..."
With that, Patty pulled the smaller man forward, lips pressing tightly together. For a moment, Carne fought back before allowing Patty's tongue to find its way into his mouth. The two stayed there for a moment before finally breaking off to breathe.
"There. Dat tastes much better now."
"Happy birthday, Patty."
"Thanks. Tell anyone I'm dat old and I'll break your jaw," he murmured, smirk crossing his face.
His only answer was a slow nod before they both retired for the night. The light of the full moon streamed in from a port hole, illuminating the icon of their friendship and love; a true masterpiece.
FIN
((Freaky, isn't it? I'm sorry, but I think Patty and Carne make the cutest couple when they're both docile. I only speculated their ages because of an upcoming fic I'm doing in which a young woman falls for Carne. Since she's about twenty-seven, I figured he'd be best at thirty-five. He sorta does look like he's in his mid-thirties anyway...at least to me he does. Forgive my terrible spelling, but I did this in the wee hours of the morning. Thanks for reading it!))