tp5 log: cooking
Dec. 14th, 2005 04:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shattermeltSo much for sorting things out. Ibu Shinji had been staying at his house for one day, eight hours and thirty minutes or so, and Kippei was more confused now than he'd been when he started. He'd gotten up early and quickly and made breakfast of sorts before Shinji was awake the first day, and that had worked out pretty well, except it did strange things to his heart to see Shinji come walking out in his clothes, sleepy and hair all mussed and Kippei had wanted badly to kiss him, and there was no way that was going to work out well.
So he'd maybe been a little more short and untalkative than usual as they both ate and left to get their respective work done, and it had only been when he came home later and Shinji was there and he realized that he'd spent the entire day looking forward to seeing him there, like he belonged, like they were actually a couple or something and he had someone to come home to, that he really started to feel stressed. Freaked out, Shinji would have said undoubtedly, but soldiers did not freak out, or so Kippei told himself sternly--but he couldn't deny that he was stressed.
What do you want? he asked himself, several times during the night and day that followed, and he'd had to admit that the problem was not that he didn't know what he wanted. It shocked the hell out of him, but he definitely knew what it was. The problem was that he couldn't have it, no matter what, and that was the end of it right there. Or it should be, but Shinji was still here and Kippei could feel it chipping away at his control, his carefully set outlook and guidelines splintering and whether he wanted to admit it or not, it was playing hell on his nerves. Damn, damn, damn. He did not have enough swear words to express the fucked up reality of this situation.
Shinji sat on the couch, tense as all hell and wondering where the hell Ina had ended up because he could sure as hell do with a massage right now. It wasn't just work, though the twelve hour shifts were killing him. It was bloody Tachibana Kippei. Incredibly sexy, downright weird and unfathomable Tachibana Kippei. The guy would be like a rock and getting anything out of him was damn near fucking impossible and then, randomly, as if the sun had come out he would say something nice, or smile, or reach out and touch and Shinji cursed himself for waiting, as if on the edge of a cliff, just waiting to be pushed off, but waiting for those touches. Those words, those rare brilliant smiles. He was a doomed man, completely at the mercy of the damned Ambassador. He was almost positive there wasn't anything he wouldn't do for the man.
Maybe that was how he got to be where he was; he just invited people to stay with them, or made them do so, and then proceeded to confuse the hell out of them for as long as possible until they cracked and gave in to worshipping the ground he walked on. Sighing, Shinji put down the magazine he wasn't reading and made his way to the kitchenette, finding Tachibana-san and sitting on a stool, just watching him. He liked watching Tachibana, when he was at home supposedly relaxed.
"Can I help?" With whatever he was doing.
Kippei looked up from where he was attempting to cook something slightly more complex than just taking something out of a box and heating it up, and it wasn't working very well. Frankly, he sucked at cooking. His sister had vowed to change this once, but... it wasn't like she'd ever had the chance. He covered his wince with a frown and shrugged at Shinji.
"If you want to. Can you cook?" He pushed the book he was using across the table so Shinji could see what he was doing, or trying to do, and went back to his finely chopped vegetables. Why the fuck didn't they sell them finely chopped already? And he was absolutely not thinking about how it was rather embarrassing for Shinji to come out and offer to help with something that Kippei obviously didn't do that often, and he just hoped to god that Shinji didn't ask any awkward questions, like why he was doing it in the first place. Kippei wasn't at all sure he knew the answer to that, but he was fairly certain he wouldn't like it if he did.
Cook? Shinji stared at the book and then back at Kippei. The closest he had ever come to cooking was a microwave with a frozen lunch. Still, it couldnt be that hard right? Except that Tachibana was obviously having trouble with it. Curious, Shinji read through the recipe and wondered why the hell Tachibana was cooking anyway when you could get just about everything frozen and just zap it. Still it was nice, watching him in the kitchen, cooking, or attempting to.
"Um...I can't cook," Shinji mumbled, a little embarrassed to admit to something he couldn't do. Sure, he could fix any cooking device known to be made, in a pinch. That didn't mean he could actually use them.
Kippei shrugged, and went back to work. Finely chopped vegetables, check, and what came next? He retrieved the book and frowned at it, trailing down the list of instructions with his finger until he found his place.
"Just sit there and look pretty then," he told Shinji absently, because it wasn't like this could be any harder if Shinji was sitting there watching him do it. More embarrassing, yeah, but not really harder. He carefully stirred the prescribed amounts of various things together, and hoped there weren't any lumps. He wasn't sure what to do if there were lumps, but he was pretty sure they were bad.
Shinji gaped a little. On the one hand, Tachibana Kippei had just said he was pretty. On the other, he had used it to insult him. Glaring at Tachibana's back, Shinji grabbed the book angrily and looked at it again, looking at what Tachibana was doing and trying to see where he was up to. Looking at what was still left on the table, Shinji poked at the pieces of meat and shrugged. That couldn't be too hard. He wandered around the bench and turned on the stove and hunted down a pan. There was oil on the bench so he sprinkled some in the pan and waited for it to heat, then went to toss in the meat, but hesitated, reading the book again. What the hell did that mean?
"Do I have to cut it up or what?"
Kippei blinked, watching him move around the kitchen like he owned it and okay, that was so not helping his emotional equilibrium at all. What would it be like, to share living space and have someone here all the time, someone who was meant to be there and share and do things randomly whenever they felt like it?
The mental effort it took to ignore this idea made him a bit slow in responding, but he finally came over to look at the book, leaning over Shinji's shoulder to read the page. Not that close, really. Perfectly normal and it shouldn't feel hard to breathe. He eyed the page in concentration.
"Hmm... I don't think so?" he said doubtfully. "It doesn't say to... it says to brown it, I think you just put it in and like... turn it over several times." So he didn't know what the hell he was talking about. Shinji didn't either, apparently, but damn if he was going to be the first to admit it.
A low chuckle spilled out of Shinji, because this was sort of fun, pretending they had any idea what they were doing, and having Tachibana that close felt damn good. Sure, it was a 'safe distance' but Shinji couldn't help leaning back into it a little as he dropped the fillets in the frying pan and then stepped back, wide eyed and shaking his hand as hot oil spat over it. He realised belatedly he had stepped back into Tachibana-san and promptly stepped to the side, ducking behind his hair and cursing himself. It had been comfortable and fun and he'd gone and ruined it because Tachibana would be uptight and in a foul mood the rest of the night.
"Sorry," he mumbled, grabbing the spatula and attacking the stupid meat.
Kippei didn't answer him, falling silent and biting savagely at the inside of his lip. God this was just never going to work. The longer Shinji was here the harder it became to remember how strange this was, how very bad of an idea, and yet the more it unsettled him because it was so very different, and he really didn't know how to respond to it, except to remember that he shouldn't need to because it fucking shouldn't be happening, dammit! Things like wanting to touch, to catch and steady him when Shinji stepped back, wanting to push his hair back and see him and put comforting arms around him and not incidentally kiss the hell out of him.
The 'what' of what he wanted bothered him a great deal less than the why. Because there wasn't a why, there wasn't a reason, it didn't make sense to him at all. He'd never met anyone he couldn't ignore, couldn't put out of his mind at will, anyone that made him feel like softening and letting go and coming closer was something he would give anything to be able to do. But he couldn't. Even if he could, he didn't know how. And he'd never hurt that much before, except once.
Obviously he was certifiably insane for looking for more of it, for not kicking Shinji out with the rest of the refugees in the garden, because no matter what he said there was no reason why he couldn't. He just... didn't want to. Even if he was pretty damn sure that he really, really couldn't stand another day of this.
Tachibana Kippei was definately the most confusing person he had ever met. Shinji stared at him from behind the veil of his hair and wondered what the hell was going through his head when he paused like that and scowled as if berating himself. Shinji was pretty damned sure he was damning himself for inviting Shinji to stay at all, but really it was his fault since he had threatened to drag Shinji here kicking and screaming if he had to. But Shinji was surprised how much he liked it. It wasn't home and regardless of how comfortable it was he was still sleeping on a couch and not in a bed, but he was extremely aware it was a thousand times better than the people he worked with were getting, and it had the added bonus of being able to watch the Ambassador.
"What are you meant to do with the vegetables?"
"Just...mix them up with this other stuff and the meat and..." Something like that. Really, how was he supposed to remember anything about cooking when he was trying not to feel and trying not to care and mostly getting angry at himself for failing. And then there was the vague suspicion he couldn't get rid of that Shinji actually really wanted him to, that Shinji wanted him and Kippei just really did not need to know for sure one way or the other about that. Because it didn't matter and if Shinji did then Kippei didn't want to know because he would feel even worse about the whole damn situation.
Even though deep down where he was absolutely not even coming close to admitting it, he already knew.
"Sauce," he said finally, finding the book and forcing himself to focus on some activity that actually had a point. "We're making sauce, for spaghetti, so the vegetables get stirred into tomato sauce and then... stir it into the meat you're browning, I think." It wasn't sauce with meatballs, because Kippei definitely knew that was out of his league, but it was ground beef or ground something and it was supposed to get stirred into the sauce, or maybe the other way around--Kippei wasn't very clear on that.
Blinking, Shinji looked from the different contents over to the book again and slipped past Tachibana to get a better look at the page, reading it thoroughly then shrugging. Tachibana's version sounded better. He grabbed the jar of tomato sauce and poured it over the...ground beef? What the hell was ground beef and where the hell had Tachibana got it? Really was a weird guy, but he was cooking, or attempting to, for some reason Shinji could not fathom and it was damn cute, so whatever. He snatched the vegetables and threw them in as well with a grin. This was kind of fun. Stirring, he glanced over Tachibana's shoulder and frowned.
"Um...is there meant to be pasta? Like...noodles? Or something? I mean if this is sauce it goes on something right? We're not just eating sauce?" Because even for Tachibana that would be weird.
Kippei gave him a faintly insulted look. "I didn't get to that part yet," he answered stiffly, which was kind of true--actually, he'd been concentrating on the hard part, which was the sauce, and kind of forgotten about it. And since the sauce was pretty much done now--it just had to be stirred occasionally and simmered for a bit--it was a perfect time to make the pasta. He wished he could say he planned it that way, but maybe Shinji would think he did.
He pulled the spaghetti noodles out of the cabinet, rummaged until he found yet another pan--how the fuck did cooking one meal manage to use up so many dishes anyway?--and filled it with hot water, setting it to boil and hoping it didn't take too long. He was getting hungry, and the sauce smelled good.
So he'd maybe been a little more short and untalkative than usual as they both ate and left to get their respective work done, and it had only been when he came home later and Shinji was there and he realized that he'd spent the entire day looking forward to seeing him there, like he belonged, like they were actually a couple or something and he had someone to come home to, that he really started to feel stressed. Freaked out, Shinji would have said undoubtedly, but soldiers did not freak out, or so Kippei told himself sternly--but he couldn't deny that he was stressed.
What do you want? he asked himself, several times during the night and day that followed, and he'd had to admit that the problem was not that he didn't know what he wanted. It shocked the hell out of him, but he definitely knew what it was. The problem was that he couldn't have it, no matter what, and that was the end of it right there. Or it should be, but Shinji was still here and Kippei could feel it chipping away at his control, his carefully set outlook and guidelines splintering and whether he wanted to admit it or not, it was playing hell on his nerves. Damn, damn, damn. He did not have enough swear words to express the fucked up reality of this situation.
Shinji sat on the couch, tense as all hell and wondering where the hell Ina had ended up because he could sure as hell do with a massage right now. It wasn't just work, though the twelve hour shifts were killing him. It was bloody Tachibana Kippei. Incredibly sexy, downright weird and unfathomable Tachibana Kippei. The guy would be like a rock and getting anything out of him was damn near fucking impossible and then, randomly, as if the sun had come out he would say something nice, or smile, or reach out and touch and Shinji cursed himself for waiting, as if on the edge of a cliff, just waiting to be pushed off, but waiting for those touches. Those words, those rare brilliant smiles. He was a doomed man, completely at the mercy of the damned Ambassador. He was almost positive there wasn't anything he wouldn't do for the man.
Maybe that was how he got to be where he was; he just invited people to stay with them, or made them do so, and then proceeded to confuse the hell out of them for as long as possible until they cracked and gave in to worshipping the ground he walked on. Sighing, Shinji put down the magazine he wasn't reading and made his way to the kitchenette, finding Tachibana-san and sitting on a stool, just watching him. He liked watching Tachibana, when he was at home supposedly relaxed.
"Can I help?" With whatever he was doing.
Kippei looked up from where he was attempting to cook something slightly more complex than just taking something out of a box and heating it up, and it wasn't working very well. Frankly, he sucked at cooking. His sister had vowed to change this once, but... it wasn't like she'd ever had the chance. He covered his wince with a frown and shrugged at Shinji.
"If you want to. Can you cook?" He pushed the book he was using across the table so Shinji could see what he was doing, or trying to do, and went back to his finely chopped vegetables. Why the fuck didn't they sell them finely chopped already? And he was absolutely not thinking about how it was rather embarrassing for Shinji to come out and offer to help with something that Kippei obviously didn't do that often, and he just hoped to god that Shinji didn't ask any awkward questions, like why he was doing it in the first place. Kippei wasn't at all sure he knew the answer to that, but he was fairly certain he wouldn't like it if he did.
Cook? Shinji stared at the book and then back at Kippei. The closest he had ever come to cooking was a microwave with a frozen lunch. Still, it couldnt be that hard right? Except that Tachibana was obviously having trouble with it. Curious, Shinji read through the recipe and wondered why the hell Tachibana was cooking anyway when you could get just about everything frozen and just zap it. Still it was nice, watching him in the kitchen, cooking, or attempting to.
"Um...I can't cook," Shinji mumbled, a little embarrassed to admit to something he couldn't do. Sure, he could fix any cooking device known to be made, in a pinch. That didn't mean he could actually use them.
Kippei shrugged, and went back to work. Finely chopped vegetables, check, and what came next? He retrieved the book and frowned at it, trailing down the list of instructions with his finger until he found his place.
"Just sit there and look pretty then," he told Shinji absently, because it wasn't like this could be any harder if Shinji was sitting there watching him do it. More embarrassing, yeah, but not really harder. He carefully stirred the prescribed amounts of various things together, and hoped there weren't any lumps. He wasn't sure what to do if there were lumps, but he was pretty sure they were bad.
Shinji gaped a little. On the one hand, Tachibana Kippei had just said he was pretty. On the other, he had used it to insult him. Glaring at Tachibana's back, Shinji grabbed the book angrily and looked at it again, looking at what Tachibana was doing and trying to see where he was up to. Looking at what was still left on the table, Shinji poked at the pieces of meat and shrugged. That couldn't be too hard. He wandered around the bench and turned on the stove and hunted down a pan. There was oil on the bench so he sprinkled some in the pan and waited for it to heat, then went to toss in the meat, but hesitated, reading the book again. What the hell did that mean?
"Do I have to cut it up or what?"
Kippei blinked, watching him move around the kitchen like he owned it and okay, that was so not helping his emotional equilibrium at all. What would it be like, to share living space and have someone here all the time, someone who was meant to be there and share and do things randomly whenever they felt like it?
The mental effort it took to ignore this idea made him a bit slow in responding, but he finally came over to look at the book, leaning over Shinji's shoulder to read the page. Not that close, really. Perfectly normal and it shouldn't feel hard to breathe. He eyed the page in concentration.
"Hmm... I don't think so?" he said doubtfully. "It doesn't say to... it says to brown it, I think you just put it in and like... turn it over several times." So he didn't know what the hell he was talking about. Shinji didn't either, apparently, but damn if he was going to be the first to admit it.
A low chuckle spilled out of Shinji, because this was sort of fun, pretending they had any idea what they were doing, and having Tachibana that close felt damn good. Sure, it was a 'safe distance' but Shinji couldn't help leaning back into it a little as he dropped the fillets in the frying pan and then stepped back, wide eyed and shaking his hand as hot oil spat over it. He realised belatedly he had stepped back into Tachibana-san and promptly stepped to the side, ducking behind his hair and cursing himself. It had been comfortable and fun and he'd gone and ruined it because Tachibana would be uptight and in a foul mood the rest of the night.
"Sorry," he mumbled, grabbing the spatula and attacking the stupid meat.
Kippei didn't answer him, falling silent and biting savagely at the inside of his lip. God this was just never going to work. The longer Shinji was here the harder it became to remember how strange this was, how very bad of an idea, and yet the more it unsettled him because it was so very different, and he really didn't know how to respond to it, except to remember that he shouldn't need to because it fucking shouldn't be happening, dammit! Things like wanting to touch, to catch and steady him when Shinji stepped back, wanting to push his hair back and see him and put comforting arms around him and not incidentally kiss the hell out of him.
The 'what' of what he wanted bothered him a great deal less than the why. Because there wasn't a why, there wasn't a reason, it didn't make sense to him at all. He'd never met anyone he couldn't ignore, couldn't put out of his mind at will, anyone that made him feel like softening and letting go and coming closer was something he would give anything to be able to do. But he couldn't. Even if he could, he didn't know how. And he'd never hurt that much before, except once.
Obviously he was certifiably insane for looking for more of it, for not kicking Shinji out with the rest of the refugees in the garden, because no matter what he said there was no reason why he couldn't. He just... didn't want to. Even if he was pretty damn sure that he really, really couldn't stand another day of this.
Tachibana Kippei was definately the most confusing person he had ever met. Shinji stared at him from behind the veil of his hair and wondered what the hell was going through his head when he paused like that and scowled as if berating himself. Shinji was pretty damned sure he was damning himself for inviting Shinji to stay at all, but really it was his fault since he had threatened to drag Shinji here kicking and screaming if he had to. But Shinji was surprised how much he liked it. It wasn't home and regardless of how comfortable it was he was still sleeping on a couch and not in a bed, but he was extremely aware it was a thousand times better than the people he worked with were getting, and it had the added bonus of being able to watch the Ambassador.
"What are you meant to do with the vegetables?"
"Just...mix them up with this other stuff and the meat and..." Something like that. Really, how was he supposed to remember anything about cooking when he was trying not to feel and trying not to care and mostly getting angry at himself for failing. And then there was the vague suspicion he couldn't get rid of that Shinji actually really wanted him to, that Shinji wanted him and Kippei just really did not need to know for sure one way or the other about that. Because it didn't matter and if Shinji did then Kippei didn't want to know because he would feel even worse about the whole damn situation.
Even though deep down where he was absolutely not even coming close to admitting it, he already knew.
"Sauce," he said finally, finding the book and forcing himself to focus on some activity that actually had a point. "We're making sauce, for spaghetti, so the vegetables get stirred into tomato sauce and then... stir it into the meat you're browning, I think." It wasn't sauce with meatballs, because Kippei definitely knew that was out of his league, but it was ground beef or ground something and it was supposed to get stirred into the sauce, or maybe the other way around--Kippei wasn't very clear on that.
Blinking, Shinji looked from the different contents over to the book again and slipped past Tachibana to get a better look at the page, reading it thoroughly then shrugging. Tachibana's version sounded better. He grabbed the jar of tomato sauce and poured it over the...ground beef? What the hell was ground beef and where the hell had Tachibana got it? Really was a weird guy, but he was cooking, or attempting to, for some reason Shinji could not fathom and it was damn cute, so whatever. He snatched the vegetables and threw them in as well with a grin. This was kind of fun. Stirring, he glanced over Tachibana's shoulder and frowned.
"Um...is there meant to be pasta? Like...noodles? Or something? I mean if this is sauce it goes on something right? We're not just eating sauce?" Because even for Tachibana that would be weird.
Kippei gave him a faintly insulted look. "I didn't get to that part yet," he answered stiffly, which was kind of true--actually, he'd been concentrating on the hard part, which was the sauce, and kind of forgotten about it. And since the sauce was pretty much done now--it just had to be stirred occasionally and simmered for a bit--it was a perfect time to make the pasta. He wished he could say he planned it that way, but maybe Shinji would think he did.
He pulled the spaghetti noodles out of the cabinet, rummaged until he found yet another pan--how the fuck did cooking one meal manage to use up so many dishes anyway?--and filled it with hot water, setting it to boil and hoping it didn't take too long. He was getting hungry, and the sauce smelled good.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-12-15 07:16 pm (UTC)"You'll fall asleep doing that, which is fine. You can fall asleep wherever you want, but the bed's probably more comfortable...definately is if its anything like the couch, so...bed? Or a shower? Or something?" What the hell was he doing mothering Tachibana Kippei? The guy was going to deck him!
no subject
Date: 2005-12-15 08:10 pm (UTC)That was a sterling example of intelligent thought to be sure, but Shinji was close and his eyes were big and soft with concern and holy fuck, Kippei was going to kiss him in another second and he was sure Shinji could tell. He closed his eyes and turned his head and took a deep breath, and then the words sank in. Sleep. Not bloodly likely, although he was tired as hell. Shinji had just invited him to come to bed--or even worse, a shower! and Kippei knew that wasn't what he had meant at all, but the way it had sounded just about killed any chance he had of rational thought at the moment.
He rolled over, away from Shinji, and pushed himself up, forcing himself to get up and move away even though his entire body and half of his mind, too, were screaming at him that wherever the hell he went he better drag Shinji with him.
"Right," was all he said out loud. He scrubbed his face with his hands and tried not to pull his hair (or remember how Shinji's fingers had felt stroking through it) and set his jaw with iron determination. Going into the bedroom, by himself, and at least pretending to sleep, dammit. "Goodnight," he said quietly, and got out of Shinji's way before he did something insanely stupid like tackling him there and kissing everywhere he could reach and tearing clothes off until he could get to more of him. All of him. Fuck.
He closed the door behind him very, very carefully, and pretended he was in control of himself for about five seconds before he groaned and shuddered and leaned against the wall, tore open the button on his pants and started jerking himself off, quick and hard and oh god, Shinji's name on his lips when he came. It was the most stupid thing he'd ever done, he was sure, and it also felt better than anything, ever.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-15 08:17 pm (UTC)