Communication
by Saro
Heero and I made pasta, salad and garlic cheese bread for dinner when Relena brought Mr. Wonderful over to meet us. Picking up a cheesecake for desert guaranteed at least one dish would be edible. Neither of us is what you’d call domestic.
I was trying for the salad, chopping lettuce and spinach, dicing tomatoes, cutting green onions. Cooking might not be my forte, but the knives are sharp. Heero did his best with the pasta and the bread, stirring the sauce while he was trying to make garlic butter and grate cheese. He stole some of the tomatoes and olives I had set aside for garnish, but then I swiped the grater from him for the carrots. I suppose that leaves us about even. The salt was in the cabinet above my head; I ducked when I saw him reaching for it. Later, I needed to dodge around him to get to the fridge for the dressing. Shaking the bottle, I returned to the spot I’d staked out by the sink.
After finishing the salad, I started setting the table and straightening up. Heero gave me the wine as I carried the silverware, and I left it to breathe. The wine, not the silverware. I brought out the plates on the next trip, managing not to clip my boyfriend’s ear as I got them out of the cupboard. When I came back for the glasses, they were waiting for me on the edge of the counter.
The professional in me wouldn’t let the knives sit out dirty while we ate dinner, so I cleaned them real quick before Relena showed up. It doesn’t matter what they’re for; you don’t leave knives dirty longer than you have to. I was just rinsing off the cutting board when Heero guided me back from the sink to strain the pasta, one hand resting on my hip.
The cheese bread was ready to come out of the oven when the happy couple arrived. I let Heero get it, and went to answer to door. He caught up in time for introductions, shaking hands and smiling that small, deep smile.
I can speak seven languages well--Standard, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, German and Russian. My French, Cantonese and Korean all suck, but with a little patience and a lot of hand gestures, I can generally get my point across. G put me through two and a half years of speech therapy to make perfectly sure my L2 gutter accent didn’t interfere. I know three kinds of sign, both branches of Sweeper pidgin, and can navigate at least a dozen different colonial creoles. I can read lips and crack military codes. The same goes for Heero. He actually speaks more languages fluently than me.
Despite all of that, somehow we still manage to communicate.
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