Master Chef Misaki

"Usagi-san, just so you know, there's someone coming over today."

"I thought I made it clear that I don't want your 'little friends' in our house."

"Baka Usagi, he's not a 'little friend,' he's a student!"

"Student? And what precisely do you have to teach, waitlist freshman?"

"Agh, I thought I told you stop it with the waitlist!"

Usami Akihiko didn't reply to his young lover's complaint but merely stood, arms crossed, with a slightly dangerous look in his narrowed eyes.

"I answered an ad for cooking lessons. Even you say I'm a good cook!" Misaki retorted, brandishing a ladle at the man he refused to call his lover.

"That's true…well, I have work to do, so I'll just be in my room. Let me know if there are any problems," Usagi-san said.

"Ah, he's just a kid, he won't be able to do anything, and besides IT'S NOT ALWAYS ABOUT THAT!"

"You're wrong about that," Usagi-san said as he slipped into his room and shut the door.

The doorbell rang, and Misaki buzzed the visitor in. He opened the door to a boy a little shorter than himself with brown hair and a somber face. "Hi, I'm Takahaski Misaki. Welcome."

The boy entered and introduced himself as Takatsuki Shinobu.

"So you advertised for cooking lessons. Maybe you can tell me what you had in mind."

"Uh…well," the boy began to blush, and Misaki began to think this was going to be a drag if the kid couldn't even say what he wanted. "I want to learn to cook better dinners for my boyfriend."

Now it was Misaki's turn to blush. Could he never get away from this crazy homosexual world he'd somehow stumbled into?

"Heh heh heh, well is that so? Well, I cook dinner every night, for, um, for a certain hard-to-please landlord, that's right, he's my landlord! So I should be able to teach you something." Shinobu only stared at his new teacher.

The boys returned to the apartment laden with shopping bags.

"Um, go ahead and put the bok choi on the counter there, and put the rest in the fridge, Shinobu-kun," Misaki said cheerfully. He was beginning to get into this new role. "Misaki-sensei, huh!" he thought gleefully. "Bow down to my great knowledge!"

To Shinobu, he said, "Get that cutting board down, wash the bok choi in the sink there, then trim and chop it into two-inch pieces."

"Trim it?"

"Yeah, cut the stems off so you don't end up serving the tough parts to your, um, your guests." Shinobu stared at him again.

"My boyfriend."

"Yeah, right, whatever."

Misaki made tea and watched over Shinobu while he awkwardly washed, trimmed and chopped the leafy vegetable.

"Looks good. Now get down that colander and peel and rinse the shrimp. Okay, I'll show you how," he said, giving Shinobu a disgusted look when the younger boy shot him a fearful glance. Here. You just pull the shell off like this—slide your thumb under here .That's off, now. Now you go here, and you pull this vein out. Because you don't want to feed shrimp poop to your—"

"Boyfriend."

"Yeah, whatever!" Misaki tossed the shrimp in the colander. "Now you do it."

Shinobu faced the task of peeling shrimp with a courage and fortitude that Misaki had to admire. More than once, he'd been tempted to make Usagi-san peel the shrimp and only had restrained himself because he'd known how badly that could have gone—couch, Usagi-san's hot tongue, shrimp everywhere….

"All done!"

"Good, then rinse them off. I'm going to start a skillet heating with some oil in it, and you chop that onion and garlic there. We'll toss the onions in, then the bok choi, and then the shrimp for just a few minutes. Then some soy sauce and cornstarch, and we'll have a delicious shrimp stir-fry!" Misaki rubbed his hands together and gave a mad-cheflike grin. The water ran in the sink, and he put the skillet on with the oil in it.

"Okay! Onions!" Onions flew into the pan and sizzled. "Okay, hold the handle here, and take this chopstick and stir the onions so they don't burn." Misaki took the garlic, which Shinobu had placed in a small bowl and dumped it in. "You put the garlic in after the onion, because it's smaller and cooks faster. Shake it. Yeah, like that."

He handed the bowl of bok choi to Shinobu. "Put it in!" he commanded, in his master chef voice. "THAT'S RIGHT!" he said to encourage his protégé. "Keep stirring," he added, in a calmer tone.

He went to the sink and got the colander full of shrimp. "Now put these in too. " Shinobu dumped the shrimp into the pan. "Uh huh, that's gooooood," he oozed. Shinobu ignored him and stirred the shrimp. "Oh! Looks like we need some liquid here!" He ran and got the bottle of soy sauce out of the refrigerator and shook some into the pan. "Yeah! That's better!" He got out the box of cornstarch and mixed two teaspoons with water in the bowl that had held the garlic. "Notice how I'm doing this very slowly. If I do it too fast, it might be a problem."

He heard the door at the other side of the living room open, and the form of Usagi-san burst out. "That's enough!" growled the older man.

"HUH?" Misaki lifted his head.

"Looks like it's done!" said Shinobu at the same time.

Usagi rushed over and looked like he was going to grab Shinobu, but in the moments it took him to cross the living room the kitchen, he was able to see that both boys were fully dressed, down to the aprons, and the smell of shrimp stir-fry confirmed that he had been hearing a cooking lesson and not a scene of passion.

"You're just in time!" Misaki grinned at him. "Shinobu—can I introduce you to my—"

"Boyfriend," Shinobu said, smiling up at Usagi.