Location: Mount Justice
Date: Sep 29th
Time: 04:28
Wally West had a horrible day, physically and emotionally. Emmy advanced her cooking training with Megan, so the duo made a huge spread that included one dish requested by everyone. They had gotten back from a long mission late last evening, and Wally hadn't been able to wait until the team finished showering off the nasty sewer sludge to start eating. The whole team, plus Sage and Hunter, had walked in on him finishing the last of the nine dishes.
Emmy threw a glass of water at him. Megan cried. Conner glared and put an arm around Megan. Artemis flipped him off. Robin muttered, "Not asterous, Wally." Kaldur lowly chastised his behavior. Sage stomped her foot, and even Hunter sent him a look of disappointment with more gravitas than a six-year-old should be able to muster.
Wally felt terrible about ruining his team's night, but he had to prioritize his health over their feelings. Uncle Barry had an elevated metabolism, but he was on the other side of puberty. He told Wally that once he got out of the teens, his super metabolism would stabilize and not have so many tumultuous ups and downs. Unfortunately, Wally was still a few months away from 16, so he had years left of shifting from hungry teen to ravenous animal without warning. He couldn't control it. He didn't want to eat other people's food, the lantern and Martian had worked really hard to make the weird dishes everyone requested, but the hunger hurt. Sometimes he could go hours without even a snack, and sometimes it felt like he was about to digest himself to death five minutes after finishing a meal.
They had gone on a mission to New York. The Brain and Mallah confessed that they set up their animal controlling devices in the underground sewer system and set them to start at 8:55pm last night, so the team had spent hours destroying all the machines. The mission was time sensitive and heavy on underground navigation, so Wally had done most of the leg work. After six hours of almost nonstop running, his stomach was screaming in agony. He hadn't even realized the extent of the food he was eating until his blood glucose returned to an acceptable level, his blurry mind cleared, and he was able to comprehend his team glaring at him.
"Kid Pig ruins things again," Artemis snapped.
Emmy turned to the rest of the team. "Who here not named Wally would like a pizza party?"
The rest of the team agreed, and Wally had gone to wallow on the beach at his team's lack of understanding. His parents told him to stay at the mountain instead of wasting time traveling home on a school night, so had just gone to bed early in a sour mood. But now it was 4:30AM, and his traitorous stomach was demanding to be fed again. That was why Wally was brooding in the dark kitchen trudging his way through 8 sleeves of saltines.
He heard foots coming down the hallway and prepared for the worst when he realized it was Emerald. She walked in, flicked a small light on, and jumped into a fighting stance when she saw a guy sitting at the table.
"Wow," Wally was grumpy and sarcastic. "Jump much, Green Goblin?"
Emmy relaxed her stance and glared at the boy in a Flash t-shirt and blue basketball shorts. "Well, if it isn't the fifth deadly sin."
Wally scowled and bit into another tasteless cracker. "Ha ha, I'm a glutton. I get it. So clever."
Emmy furrowed her eyebrows when she noticed the lack of his typical fire. He usually didn't seem hurt by any of her comments, just offended or eager to fight back. His sullen anger now seemed to be hiding pain. He glared at the crackers he was eating even as he clung to them like a lifeline. She thought back to his innumerable mentions of having a "fast metabolism". The way his stomach could be heard grumbling during missions. The fact that he had food compartments built into his uniform. Emerald's mouth made a small "oh" shape and the sound came out without her permission.
"What?" Wally snapped irritably.
"You can't control it." Her voice was quiet, but her firm gaze let him know it was a statement and not a question.
His shoulder slumped. "Nope." He chomped on his 53rd cracker. "Usually it's not that bad, but since I'm a teenager Uncle Barry says that my crazy hormones and growth spurts mean that my metabolism goes through cycles without any warning. Most of the time I'm fine, but sometimes I have days like this where no matter how much I eat I can feel my body tearing away at my stomach lining, my muscles, my fat, my bones when none of those can cut it, and it fucking sucks. I didn't want to ruin the team dinner! But I also didn't want my body to keep devouring itself. Once the muscle is gone it takes weeks to eat enough to get it back." The redhead was glowering at the next cracker sleeve, and he ripped it open. "The only good side is that this type of hunger usually goes away after a day or two, so I should be back to normal in a few hours."
Emmy's eyes softened with sympathy. She knew what it was like to be hungry. How your stomach would growl and roar before your body finally gave up hope that food was coming and stopped sending ghrelin hormones. How the hunger stopped and was replaced with an empty gnawing. How the gnawing pain became a dull ache as fog enveloped your brain and your body ripped itself apart to survive. There had been days and weeks at a time, when her father had gone back to his "real family" and her mother had been too high to remember she had kids, where Emmy had to steal and lie just to get food for the Easts.
There had been one time where she passed out on the side of the street from exhaustion and woke up to a homeless man roughly gripping her neck. If she hadn't seen the glass bottle next to her and knocked him out with it, she might have died that day. Emmy sighed. She started eating well once she faked her family's death and ran to Bludhaven. The fights brought in decent money, and Emmy and her siblings had gained weight quickly and started growing taller. Even today, five years after her last time being hungry to the point of terror, Emmy still feared it. She had hard-won fat on her body now. She wasn't just skin and bones anymore. She was toned and healthy, and she knew that she and her siblings would never be starving like that again. But that did nothing to stop the periodic nightmares of bare cupboards, empty fridges, and increasingly visible ribs. She couldn't imagine how it would feel to know that at any moment you could face that kind of hunger, unable to do anything other than wait for it to stop.
She took a sip of her water and walked in front of Wally. He looked up at her tiredly, like he was expecting a fight.
"Going to throw that on me again?" His snapped hollowly.
"What do you want me to make?" She asked.
Wally frowned. "What?"
"What food do you want, Kid Famished? You know, what are you craving?" She quirked an eyebrow. "Those crackers don't look particularly appetizing, and this offer won't last forever."
His mind whirled sluggishly, but he found himself blurting out his favorite breakfast, "Cinnamon rolls with cheesy eggs and bacon."
Emmy finished her water and nodded, "Cinnamon rolls are my favorite."
"Mine too," Wally added still surprised by her offer.
Emmy started gathering ingredients.
"I'm going to prep the rolls first since they cook the longest. I'll do the eggs and bacon while they're resting." She glanced at Wally over her shoulder. "Will you be okay until then?"
"Uh, yeah," he put a few more crackers into his mouth. "I have 273 more bland bites to get through first."
Emmy was already mixing the dry ingredients. She smiled a little to herself, "When Sage was 6, she went through a phase where she would only eat saltines with butter on them."
"That's actually a good idea," Wally slowly moved to stand up and winced.
His teammate noticed the languid movements and agonized face. She threw a stick of butter on the table and slid a knife next to him after she turned on the oven.
"Don't overdo it, Kid Falter," Emmy lightly pushed him back into his chair.
Wally watched Emmy move about the kitchen with a mild interest. He had only seen her cook with Megan. She was always instructing and stopping to explain things. On her own, she flowed through the kitchen with a confident grace. He cocked his head to the side; it was reminiscent of the way she moved when hitting the punching bag. They were silent for 76 crackers.
Emmy put a towel over the cinnamon rolls. They could go in the oven once she finished the other food items.
"You want them scrambled?" Emmy asked as she opened the fridge.
"Please," Wally nodded.
Emmy bit her thumb for a second as she looked at the egg cartons, "How many eggs will you eat?"
Wally chuckled weakly, "As many as you cook."
She nodded and grabbed three of the cartons. She put two large pans on the stovetop and popped the bacon into the oven since there wasn't room on the stove. The eggs were in the pan quickly, the cheese waiting on the counter.
Wally was running out of crackers, "Were your parents big chefs?"
Emmy paused with her spatula for a second. "Not really. My father was gone for work most of the time, and my mother only liked things she didn't make herself. I snagged a cookbook from the school library when I was Hunter's age. My affinity for cooking grew from there."
Her cooking started as a necessity more than a passion, but he didn't need to know that.
Wally nodded, "My mom likes to cook. My dad likes to bake. I can do a little of both, but I'm not an expert or anything. They always say that all you knead in the kitchen is love."
Emmy didn't react so he explained, "Knead as in kneading the dough. They like food puns."
Emmy deadpanned, "That pun was very cheesy, but I'm sure they think it's grate."
Wally's lip twitched upward, and he finished the last of his crackers, "You're bacon my heart with your horrible attitude, Emmy."
"I warned you not to steal my kitchen supplies," Emmy tossed the cheese on the first giant batch of eggs, "but I guess that was a whisk you were willing to take."
"You can always whip me as a punishment, but I might get too frothy," Wally offered.
"Yeah, I can tell that your brain is low on glucose," Emmy smirked and set the tower of eggs in front of him before moving to the oven. "That one was a reach at best."
Wally dug into the eggs. They were fluffy, cheesy, peppery, and garlicy. He would have to pay attention to how Emmy made them when he could focus better, "Excuse you, suffering teammate over here. I was always cruelly awoken by my stomach."
Emmy rolled her eyes, a piece of crispy bacon hanging from her mouth as she used the spatula to put the rest on a second plate on the table, "You weren't the only one 'cruelly awoken', Lace."
The speedster raced through the food instead of replying. Emmy smirked at him a little. He was beginning to have a hint of his normal, perky, annoying self again. She popped the cinnamon rolls in the oven and did the other half of the eggs.
"'Cruelly awoken', hmm?" Wally grinned around two pieces of bacon and wiggled his eyebrows. "Any interesting dreams?"
Emmy sighed. He had made a reference to dreams at least once a day since their India mission. She thought about pointing out how unwise it was to antagonize the person making your food but decided to do something odd and tell the truth instead.
"Actually, yes," she sent a dirty smirk at the boy, "Lisa Bonnet and Jason Momoa asked me to be their third, and we had a life-changing, orgasmic time on a nude beach. I've never been so devastated to wake up in my entire life."
Wally choked on his eggs. "That explains why you woke up so thirsty."
Emmy let out a sharp bark of laughter which made the speedster smile proudly.
"No kidding," the lantern's grin was dopey, "I want the two of them to beat me with sledgehammers."
"You are so weird," Wally chuckled.
"Right," Emmy drew out sarcastically, "because you're the only teenager in the whole world without a dream threesome."
"I never said that," he smirked and stacked three pieces of bacon on top of each other to eat once. "I just want them to do normal things to me and not abuse my bones."
"Well surely there's one bone you'd like them to abuse," Emmy scraped the eggs in the pan.
"How have you not scarred Sage and Hunter irreparably with your gutter mind yet?"
"I have this thing called self-control. You might have read about it or heard someone mention it in passing before?"
Wally scoffed, "Hey, I am a total bastion of self-control."
Emmy sent him a look as she placed the extra eggs on the table. "Sure, sure. Who's your dream three-way, Bastion?"
Wally got his own dopey grin, "Megan Fox and Rihanna."
"Mm," Emmy nodded appreciatively, "that's a good one."
The cinnamon roll timer dinged, and Emmy joined the speedster at the table. They debated the hottest celebrities, traded more kitchen puns, and complained about their latest English essay assignment. By the time Wally moved to his twelfth cinnamon roll, his stomach had stopped twisting in pain, and he felt himself shift to normal again. He sighed with relief and glanced at his sustenance savior. Emmy had stayed up with him chatting and cooking for over two hours now. Her hair was in a messy bun that fell a little too far to the left and she was in a long green Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle t-shirt that went to her mid-thigh. She looked serene and relaxed, like that sliver of time in the park before he made the mistake of mentioning Basketball Boy. A question had been bouncing around his head since she first offered to cook, and he finally worked up the courage to ask it.
"Why?"
Emmy knew what he meant, but she wasn't quite sure how to answer. He had looked pitiful and afraid and it made her think of all the times she saw that look on Sage's starving face. They had also promised to work on being friendly, and helping him seemed like the right thing to do for a teammate and quasi-friend. She took a thoughtful bite of her cinnamon roll.
"Being hungry like that," Emmy's eyes glazed over in dull remembrance. "It's scary."
Wally wanted to ask more, but he didn't.
Emmy switched back to her usual quips. "Besides, we can always make more food, but it seems like a total pain to make a chemistry lab in a garage and blow it up in the middle of a lightning storm just to get another speedster."
Wally smirked at her and let her switch the mood of the conversation. "You got that right. I'm one of a kind."
"Understatement of the century," Emmy grinned at him. "By the way, sorry I threw water on you. At the time it seemed like a nicer option than yelling."
Wally snorted, "It was refreshing actually. You of all people should know how hot I always am."
Emmy kicked his shin lightly and ate her third piece of bacon while Wally tore through the other 15 cinnamon rolls. It was fascinating to watch him. He was like a one-person eating contest.
Location: Mount Justice
Date: Sep 29th
Time: 07:48
The rest of the team groggily stumbled into the kitchen. The smell of peanut butter pancakes and the last of the eggs had woken them up and dragged them to the kitchen.
"Guess who made an apology breakfast?" Emmy nudged Wally with her hip. "Don't worry. I supervised, so it's actually edible."
"Excuse you, I know what I'm doing when it comes to pancakes," Wally grinned sarcastically, "Emmy kept trying to throw laxatives in and poison you all."
He coughed slightly, rubbed the back of his neck, and apologized for eating their food.
"It's cool, man," Rob assured him before piling six pancakes on his plate. "We should have known that you were having a bad metabolism day."
The rest of the team and the two youngest Easts echoed the sentiment as they dug into their before-school feast.
-Gotta love the filler chapters. Thanks to gm3161 and KirikaAndo for reviewing! I like hearing what you guys think.
Until next time,
ThaDarkAbyss
