Quote:
While out and about, you manage to obtain a cute cooking pot designed to look like a witch's cauldron. It's a little eccentric but wanting to get in the spirit of things, you or a loved one obtain it and food is prepared in it, be it for a personal or social gathering.
Only... anything made in this pot tastes startling of candy corn. Regardless of whether you finish your homemade treat, you find that no matter what you eat or drink, everything for the next twenty-four hours tastes exactly like candy corn. The strange thing is, this only seems to happen once. After you've given it a good scrub, it doesn't seem to have the same effect ever again.
He had wanted, not for the first time, to cook something for Michael.
Caspian's cooking skills were not exactly terrible; he'd lived with Cassie on their own for years, after all, and he knew how to take care of himself enough to get by. But Michael was by far the better cook, and in spite of Caspian's attempts at also pulling his weight in the kitchen, often he was relegated to dish duty instead, which he took (mostly) in stride.
At the same time, he did not want Michael to think he was just leaving him to do all the work. Relationships - and especially marriages - were a two way street. Caspian's adoration of his husband was surpassed only by his unfailing determination to do anything and everything to make sure that it continued working out, and that it continued being something wonderful and something loving and precious for the two of them. No marriage was perfect, and Caspian had not ever expected it to be, but he was not going to let anything happen to them while he was still around.
Well. As much as he could with Caspian being a senshi and Michael being knight, but still. He did not want to have any regrets, especially because he didn't believe in them. Michael had done so much for him and had sacrificed a great deal; he had bent over backwards to make Caspian happy and Caspian was not about to let that go unnoticed or unappreciated because there was no one else in the world that Caspian cared for and loved more than Michael Gallo.
He had gone out earlier in the day to find supplies for cooking a delicious home cooked meal while Michael had been in class, and had returned home with grocery bags and what Caspian deemed a cute addition to their household - namely a pot for cooking that was in the shape of a cauldron. It probably hadn't been necessary, strictly speaking, but it added to the holiday spirit and the festivities, and Caspian felt this was also important for mood reasons.
He was not the most adept or the most creative of cooks, but the recipe for cheeseburger soup had seemed simple and tasty enough that even Caspian could make it work. He set the pot on the stove and set the water to boil while he readied the rest of the ingredients: hamburger, cooked in a frying pan on medium heat; onions, cheese, salt, pepper, and a few other things that he carefully arranged in a semi-circle around him so that he could portion everything out correctly. And for the first little while, he thought he'd done pretty damn good. He was careful; he measured everything out exactly, all ingredients, to make sure it was as it should be. He kept everything meticulously organized, which for Caspian was a major feat, because he tended to be someone who kicked off his shoes at the front door and who dropped his jeans beside the bed, rather than put them away.
And it smelled good. It looked good. It looked like it had worked.
At least until Caspian tasted it.
He wasn't sure when Michael would be home, but it was nearing five when Caspian finally pulled the lid off of the pot and gave it an experimental stir. It looked exactly like the picture he'd found online did, which was a relief, because Caspian was still learning. He gave it another stir, swirling the soup around, then added some more cheese, just for the hell of it, because who didn't like cheese? After that, a little more salt, a little more pepper, and he was pretty sure it was done. All he needed was to try it.
Which he did. And nearly spat it back out again, because it did not taste like cheeseburger soup.
It tasted like candy corn.
For someone who liked sweets as much as he did, candy corn was not on the list of Caspian's favorite things. He tolerated it, mostly because it was in the spirit of things, but otherwise, he disliked it because it was just one of those things that was popular for no reason other than it was popular, and on top of that, it tasted disgusting on a multitude of levels.
Caspian stared down in dismay at the soup with a mounting feeling of confusion. It seemed impossible that even after all of his hard work - all of the careful and meticulous planning that he had done to make this the perfect dinner for Michael - something somewhere had gone wrong. But he could not figure out, for the life of him, what exactly that was, because not one of the ingredients currently laid out on the counter even remotely resembled candy corn, taste, appearance, or smell otherwise.
So what the hell was the problem?
It took him a good thirty minutes to clean everything up. Caspian put all of the soup in a tupperware container in the fridge and made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches instead, but even as he took a bite of it, he could still taste the lingering taste of that ******** candy corn. He stared at the sandwich, feeling both frustrated and more than a little annoyed, though the annoyance was overlaid by his sheer aggravation that he had tried to do something nice for Michael - had tried to give them a romantic and pleasant evening together at home, and yet the stupid soup and the stupid candy corn had ruined this, even if Michael was good natured about it all and Cassie laughed at him later on, when she got home.
It did not make sense. The candy corn taste was still in Caspian's mouth the next day as he guzzled water during volleyball practice, and still in his mouth as he stuffed his face with pizza at their team party, and then again as he stuck a piece of gum between his teeth to get the frustrating, enraging taste of that horrible candy from his tongue. And even that didn't work.
He vented his feelings by angrily scrubbing all of the dishes that evening after dinner, including the cauldron pot that he'd filled with water and set to soak all night in an effort to clean whatever lingering taste of candy corn was left in it out. Caspian dried all of the dishes a little more violently than was strictly necessary, much to Cassie's amusement, but it at least helped to alleviate some of his outstanding irritation with the whole situation.
He put away all the pots and pans, wiped down the counters, scrubbed at the table, and then reset the place settings, so that each one had a placemat and a plate atop it, silverware set out neatly, more of a display than anything else, because they'd already eaten dinner. Caspian was in the process of putting the water jug back into the refrigerator when he saw the container of soup sitting there nonchalantly, as though it hadn't just gave him the most annoying cooking experience of his life.
He pulled it out and gave it an experimental sniff. It smelled like cheeseburger soup, which was a bonus, but that didn't mean he trusted it. Caspian rummaged in a drawer to grab a spoon and then dipped it into the cold soup, giving it a suspicious look before he finally put it in his mouth and swallowed.
It tasted like cheeseburger soup - albeit cold and slightly congealed cheeseburger soup, which was a little gross, but Caspian could have cried with relief. He gave a huge sigh, then put the container back into the fridge and shut the door, rearranging some of the magnets on the front of it without conscious thought before padding out of the kitchen and shutting off the lights.
Maybe he was hallucinating. That had to be it.
Or maybe he was just overthinking. Caspian climbed back into bed, nestled down next to Michael, and closed his eyes.
He was never going to eat candy corn ever again.
