torchwoodteaboy | [RL WITH SULU][backdated to the 10th]

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[RL WITH SULU][backdated to the 10th]

Ianto stood in his kitchen, in front of a grocery bag on his table. A grocery bag full of food that he had bought in preparation for making it with Sulu. For Sulu. ...what the hell had he been thinking, he wondered, as he stared at the bag in front of him before starting to pull the different ingredients out. He had absolutely no idea how to cook. He could call his sister and ask her about it, but. That would mean he'd have to call his sister and ask her about it, and although he'd come out to her a while ago, he still wasn't quite ready to talk to her about either Sulu or Jack.

He'd looked up a recipe, and really, how hard could it be?, he thought to himself, as he refrigerated the ingredients that needed to stay cold. They just had to follow the recipe, and everything should turn out fine, right? He certainly hoped so. He'd like to not make a fool of himself in front of the other man if he could help it. Sure, Sulu wouldn't mind, he figured, but. It'd be nice to get this right at least, he thought, as he went to get out the right sized pot from the back of his cabinet where it'd been sitting for probably the majority of the time he'd owned it.

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"What if everything feels right?" Sulu sighed, moving the now-filled cups over to the side of the oven. "That seems like the kind of logic a kid uses when deciding what kind of toppings he wants on his pizza." He grinned, "You know, 'Man, potato chip and chocolate pizza sounds awesome right now,' that sort of thing."

Not that Sulu had ever considered that in the slightest. Really. (It had been a disaster.) "How long do we have now, anyway?"

Ianto gave Sulu a look that obviously said he knew the other man must have been speaking from personal experience. "Well. 'Potato chip and chocolate pizza' isn't something you'd attempt to make twice, now is it? I'd say that any amount of either thing would turn out pretty bad no matter what. So I suspect that it's a little different than that."

He turns to look at the clock. "We're supposed to let it 'simmer' for five minutes, then add in the rest of it, whisk so that it heats through and serve it. As for the pasta," he said, checking the timer. "We've still got a few minutes on that too." So far so good. Maybe this cooking thing wasn't so bad after all?

"What I should've done was use shaved chocolate, but all I had were candybars," Sulu admitted casually, like it was completely normal for a kid to try out horrible pizza concoctions.

When Ianto gave him the times for their various stages, Sulu couldn't help but grin. They had a few minutes overall, right? That was plenty of time for him to reach out and grab Ianto's hand, pulling him over to where he was leaning against the counter. "You know, I have no clue what simmering even means," he said, his hand moving to Ianto's waist once he'd effectively pinned himself between the other and the counter top.

"Remind me never to agree if you ever offer to make me a pizza," Ianto said, shooting the other man yet another look.

Ianto wasn't sure where Sulu was going with the grabbing his hand and pulling him, but he went willingly because...well, why not? He trusted Sulu. And the other man didn't disappoint, pulling him closer to himself and then putting his hands on Ianto's waist to hold him there. Ianto smirked down at Sulu slightly, leaning into Sulu and trapping him there completely. "I'm assuming that it's got something to do with heat..." he said, softly. "You know. What with it being a cooking word and all," he teased.

"You have no idea what it means either, do you?" Sulu prodded with a half-grin, raising an eyebrow as his fingers stroked the parts of Ianto's waist that were within their reach, leaning up to kiss the corner of Ianto's mouth. "Let's hope you got it right, in that case, because otherwise things might get burned. Or not heat up enough."

Ianto shook his head slightly, with a soft chuckle. "Not a clue," he said, affirming Sulu's guess that he really didn't know what he was doing. He pressed closer to the other man, leaning in to plant a slow, passionate kiss on his lips, simply because he could, also because...well. It was hot, having him pressed up against the counter as he was. Ianto wasn't too British to be able to understand that. He pulled away after a moment, though, pressing his forehead against the other man's and smiling slightly as he said. "You're being awfully distracting from the cooking, you know..."

Sulu leaned into the kiss, letting Ianto have control while still pressing his fingers against Ianto, dragging his hand to the small of his back and resisting the urge to pull him flush against him. He didn't want to be too distracting - the last thing they needed was a fire. Or burnt cream and butter. With half a sigh as Ianto pulled back, he couldn't help but grin lazily. "We have time to be a little distracted. Unless there's something else you'd rather be doing."

Ianto laughed, shaking his head. "Mmm, let's see. If given a choice between this or standing there and watching a pot do absolutely nothing for a few minutes..." He pressed forward again to press his lips against Sulu's, not so much kissing him as just being really really close when he spoke again. "I'm not sure that there's any questioning the matter really... I think we both know what I'd rather be doing..." he teased.

"I have a guess," Sulu replied, his voice low as he spoke against Ianto's lips. "A watched pot doesn't do anything, anyway," he added, poorly reciting part of an old wives tale before kissing Ianto once again, running a hand through his hair. As invested as he was in the idea of a homecooked meal, Sulu would never pass up the opportunity to spend more intimate moments with Ianto.

Ianto chuckled into the kiss at Sulu's misquote, but he wasn't going to speak up and try and correct him. There were better things to be doing with their time right at that moment. Ianto stepped a little closer to the other man, not exactly standing flush with him but definitely pressed rather intimately against him as he kissed him back.

He was expecting to be interrupted by some timer or another but it still came as a bit of a surprise when it sounded off. With a groan, he pulled back out of the kiss enough so that he could speak up. "Pasta's done," he said. "Means the sauce's only got about thirty seconds left as well..." He supposed...that he should do something about that. Leaning in for one final brief kiss, he pulled back and went back to the stove, turning the burner off and indicating the pot of pasta. "Care to do the honors, then?" he asked, with a smile, meaning to drain the pasta. "Unless you'd rather add the cheese and garlic and do the whisking..."

Sulu looked briefly thoughtful at his two options. "You did pretty much everything so far, I think, so if you want, I can do the cheese and garlic. No idea how to whisk anything, though." After all, Ianto had pretty much set everything up, aside from Sulu putting in the pasta and measuring out some cheese. He figured that it was the least he could do to give Ianto a break. Worst that would happen, he figured, would be that the cheese would be... lumpy, he supposed.

"Really, though, it's more if you want to risk me doing something wrong or not," he added, fully prepared to take on the very strenuous task of draining the pasta if Ianto asked him to.

"I think the question is more whether you're up to the challenge of it," Ianto countered, with a grin. "Because really, we're both in equally over our heads as far as this whole cooking thing is concerned." Alright, not true. Ianto probably knew how to cook a little more than Sulu. He was trying to be a little more sophisticated than a can of soup on the stove or a box of pasta and a sauce out of a jar for this, though. Which, in hindsight, would have been a lot easier and a guaranteed success, but. He'd wanted to at least give it a go.

He reached forward, taking the pasta off the stove, and moved over to the sink, going to drain it. "I think you can handle it," he said, with a mischievous smile. "Just put in the cheese and however much garlic it says, stir it with a fork, and call it done. Not too hard, yeah?"

"Not too hard at all," Sulu agreed, though he wasn't really sure how much garlic he was supposed to put in. It said a clove, and that would've been fine, but all Ianto had was a jar of pre-minced garlic and, unfortunately, Sulu really wasn't sure how to estimate out a clove when it was already finely chopped. (And, to be honest, he'd only ever used garlic for tea - and that one time to get out of a date in the eighth grade.)

He knew it wasn't more than a few teaspoons, so he went ahead and put in three. They weren't even heaping, so he knew if he'd over shot it, it was just by a little. The cheese was the easiest - but the problem remained that, as he stirred, the cheese wasn't exactly... well, melting. "How do you turn up the heat? I'm not sure this is going to get done before the next ice age." He paused, then grinned, "Don't tell anyone I mentioned that."

Ianto rolled his eyes fondly at the other man, but decided not to take the piss in that moment. Well. Not too much. "It's the dial in the front," he said, nodding to it. "Low is low, and High is high, and well... I don't need to explain the tallies in between the two do I?"

He shook his head, smirking to himself and turning back to the sink to drain the pasta. When that was done, he made sure that he put it back in the pot, taking a strand of it to test. Well, it wasn't hard as a rock nor was it falling apart, so. He supposed at least the pasta part of the equation was a success. "How's the sauce coming along?" he asked, genuinely curious as he watched the other man stirring it. It certainly...well. It smelled like garlic, but there was garlic in the recipe after all, so he supposed that that was to be expected, right?

Sulu rolled his eyes briefly at Ianto's tone, reaching out to adjust the heat according to... well, no real standard. He just turned it up almost as high as it would go. "Sorry, I come from a time when dials usually mean you shouldn't touch them," he laughed - it wasn't really true, but he couldn't remember any time he'd twisted a knob that hadn't ended up with him screwing something up. Oh well.

"I guess it's pretty well good," he added after a few minutes, once Ianto came to check on it. He'd realized almost immediately after he'd started smelling garlic almost as much as cheese and cream that it probably was going to be a little overly garlicky, but he was hoping that he really hadn't overdone it. That wouldn't be the best mark in his botanist book, if he couldn't even measure garlic out right. "I dunno, it doesn't look lumpy any more, so I guess that means it's done. Right?"

Ianto moved to stand over the pot, looking down at it. It seemed to look alright, but what did he know about these things when it came down to it? "I think so, yeah. Here," he said, reaching forward and turning off the burner. "All that's left to do is pour it over the pasta and serve..." Which needed plates and utensils.

"Alright," he said. "If you can do that, I'll... I'll get the table ready. You've already stated before your opinions on the idea of me asking you to clean anything," he said, with a wry quirk of a smile. He was going to try his best to pretend that he wasn't really apprehensive of the food, but. Neither of them were cooks, and Ianto certainly didn't have a good track record with anything in the kitchen save for the coffee machine, so. Just because he was pretending he wasn't didn't actually mean that. Stepping back, he went to clear the table and get it set nonetheless. Who knows, maybe he could be proven wrong...

Moving to where Ianto had set the pasta, he brought it back to the counter by the stove and went about dealing with the sauce. Honestly, he wasn't really nervous - it smelled a little more like garlic than it should, but nothing looked particularly wrong or undercooked, so that pretty much meant it had to be at least decent.

"I guess I could let you have a freebie once in a while," he said as he worked, "With cleaning and dishes and all that. But that's mostly because we did equal parts cooking here, so nobody here is really supposed to clean." He held up a finger as he set the saucepan aside, "Just the once, though." Not like Ianto couldn't get him to do pretty much anything, if he just asked.

"Mmm, just the once, I see..." He noted that the way Sulu said it made it sound like there would be more nights in the future where they made dinner and ate it together and were pretty mundane in just enjoying each other's company, and really. Ianto like the sound of it. Even if it was mundane. The fact that he could enjoy things that bored him simply because the other man was around and keeping him company during them did wonders for his mood, especially in that moment.

He flushed, slightly, clearing his head of such thoughts and stepping up to the pot with the plates, serving himself what he considered to be a fair portion before looking to Sulu. "D'you want to serve yourself, or shall I do the honors?" he asked. He'd be lying if he said he weren't a bit apprehensive about this whole alfredo thing though. It smelled...really garlic. And he wasn't sure that the sauce should be as thick as it was. It seemed to be solidifying rather quickly.

Sulu was equally as apprehensive, but he hid it well - he could handle pretty much any amount of garlic, really, even if it would make kissing Ianto later a pain (unless he ate just as much, of course), and the sauce... didn't seem to have enough cream or whatever made it less like a block of cheese than it was originally, but it couldn't be that bad.

"I'll take care of it," he said, taking his own plate and dishing up a decent heap of slowly-looking-worse alfredo. He gave Ianto a look. "Well?" he asked, nodding to the table before moving towards it, "You ready to taste... whatever this has turned into?"

Ianto followed after him, sitting down at the table and poking dubiously at the food with his fork. "I'm as ready as I'll ever be," he said. Maybe they should have tried something easier. Hell, maybe they should have just ordered in. It wasn't really very romantic, and yet...well. Failing to cook something together wasn't all that romantic either.

Twirling some on his fork, Ianto gave it one last glance. "Here goes," he said, and leaned forward, taking a bite of it. The texture wasn't right, but that wasn't really the problem. The problem really was the fact that there seemed to be a disproportionate amount of garlic to the sauce, and that the cheese and the garlic had sort of combined to make a paste that was...well. It wasn't godawful, but. It definitely wasn't good. Well. Shit.

Sulu slid into the seat nearest Ianto's, giving the food a slightly wary glance before going ahead and shoveling some into his mouth. Not the best way to approach a strange looking dish, but he was a don't-look-just-jump kind of guy.

Which he immediately regretted, because the sauce was a little too garlicky, and it sort of felt like chewing rubber. He did, however, manage to swallow it down. "...Alright, maybe we should've just used canned sauce," he admitted lamely.

Ianto managed to chew and swallow the bite he'd taken, but at the thought of trying to eat more and hoping that he'd just get used to it, that it'd be salvageable... He groaned, putting down his fork before starting to laugh. "God, well. I guess we're lucky we didn't burn the house down in trying, but maybe it's better that we never try again. There's sauce in cans for a reason, and there's much better things that we could be eating than this." He poked the food around on his plate for a few moments.

"We gave it our best, but. I think I'll just phone in Jubilee's." He pushed the plate away, before moving to stand. "How'd you rather a pizza?" he asked, with a bashful smile, because yes, he had just pretty spectacularly failed at cooking there.

Sulu scratched the back of his head before leaning back in his chair, rolling his eyes upward. "I think we're probably way better off with a pizza." Grinning, he pushed his chair back and stood, grabbing his plate and then Ianto's before moving over to the sink. "I honestly think we'd be better off with pretty much anything. Thankfully we didn't try for anything harder than pasta." He couldn't imagine how bad it might've been if they'd tried to make something involving meat.

"But," he said, leaving the dishes in the sink for the timebeing and grinning over at Ianto, "Can we go for something with pepperoni, or... Anything meaty? And no garlic."

Ianto smiled, shaking his head at the dishes in the sink. "Well. I did choose pasta because it was at least hard to set it on fire. That's a milestone that I hope I never have to check off of the list of stupid cooking mistakes I make, burning down the house in the process. Here," he said, standing and going to get his phone out of his jacket. "Pepperoni you said... Well. Maybe not a meat feast like sometimes, but pepperoni bacon sounds pretty good about right now. Pepperoni really anything without garlic or extra cheese, honestly. I'll just phone it in," he said, pulling out the phone and hitting the speed dial for Jubilee's. From the way he talked to the man on the other end of the line, obviously ordering pizza both from the Hub and his apartment were not new things.

"Sounds good," Sulu replied, considering the plates for a moment before deciding to just leave them there - he wasn't sure if Ianto's sink could handle having fistfuls of congealing cheese and pasta being shoved down its disposal, and he didn't want to break it and cause more problems. It was, after all, sort of his fault why there was so much garlic and the cheese hadn't really melted right.

He smiled as Ianto placed the order, leaning against the counter and crossing his arms comfortably over his chest. When the other hung up, he raised an eyebrow. "Should I be jealous of the pizza place?" he asked, amused. "You order out from them a lot, I take it."

[RL WITH SULU][backdated to the 10th]

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