"Dakos" - A Short Snippet (Patreon)

Based on the commission, "Davy x nb!MC. MC makes Davy some dinner (aka, domestic bliss)."

Your parents never cooked for you. 

Ever since you can remember, you've always had a chef at home, preparing your meals. Immaculate meals: perfectly nutritious, splendidly plated. Even now, when you go back for the holidays, you're greeted by that perfect omelet in the mornings - silky smooth, garnished with chives, on china so polished it reflects back the kitchen lights, blinding. 

Of course, after you left for college, things changed. You didn't have a personal chef, obviously. And, you learned just how messy cooking could be. 

Late night cup noodles. Burnt quesadillas. Cakes baked in microwaves - innovations out of desperation and drunken enlightenment. Eating with paper plates and plastic utensils, using paper towels as napkins, cross-legged on the floor. You loved it, the sloppiness. The haphazardness that would make your mother grimace - that slightest downturn in her mouth, disapproval in one miniature gesture. 

You remember how nervous Aaron was, cooking for you the first time. The apology, the "you're probably used to better." Mismatched forks and knives, chipped plates. A kitchen so small it could hardly fit the two of you, oil splatters on his shirt, a band-aid wrapped around his thumb. 

You pressed him against the counter, kissed him hard. 

I love it, you murmured. 

And, it was the truth. 

Aaron's gone now. A relationship you willfully imploded. Your therapist had much to say about it, and you turn it in your head sometimes, too - examine the ending, how terrible it was, what you did. The feeling of being trapped closing in on you...and the feeling of freedom when the two of you opened your letters, and he saw what you'd done. 

You like to think you've grown a bit since then. 

"You're doing that thing," MC says, and you blink, shift everything back into focus. 

"Sorry." You smile. "Just in my head."

MC squeezes your hand, and you squeeze back.

Tonight's meal: dakos. You take a bite, and you're struck again with that feeling - the feeling that always happens.

An immense gratefulness that sits in your chest, heavy and painful.

"Thank you," you say, swallowing around the lump in your throat. 

MC inclines their head. "Of course."