Chapter Text
Dysgeusia, also known as parageusia, is a distortion of the sense of taste.
Milluki was someone who could spend hours at a time staring at a screen without ever looking away. Because of that, he didn’t realise that he’d finished his current snack until he reached down for more and came up empty. Without missing a beat, he leaned over to his top drawer and pulled out the first thing he touched. Still staring straight ahead, he ripped open the packaging and took a bite. It was good, but as with most things, the taste was off. That wasn’t enough to totally suck the joy out of it, but it still caused a twinge of annoyance that he couldn’t enjoy his food the way he used to.
He’d done a fair bit of research trying to find out the cause of his taste issues; it wasn’t something that would concern his parents, so he didn’t bother broaching it with the family doctors. The highest on his list of potential culprits was lead poisoning or nerve damage. Nerve damage would be a little hard to prove —he had any number of malfunctioning nerves at this point— but lead poisoning matched the timeline pretty well.
As with any number of other toxic substances, he’d ingested increasing amounts of lead for years, but it was only when the dose had significantly increased that his sense of taste had started to concurrently decrease. The increase had also come with a sudden onset of splitting headaches (another symptom of lead poisoning), and a newfound irritability (although whether that was actually down to the poison, hormones, or just his natural disposition was up for debate). Regardless of the cause, it was a pain in the ass.
The one thing that had stayed fairly consistent had been the taste of salt. Salt still tasted like salt, and thank fuck for that. He was a man of many passions, but the energy to pursue them was contingent on his ability to consume copious amount of salty snacks. Even when he’d been too sick or injured to attend meals (or he was just avoiding going to them), he’d always been able to scarf down snacks from the comfort of his bedroom.
His constant snacking had started at a young age; he wasn’t particularly introspective about it, but if he were, he might have put it down to an anxiety-induced habit. ‘Comfort eating’ felt like an undersell for the degree of stress his younger self had been put through, but his compulsive need to keep eating, even when most of the foods he used to enjoy no longer tasted right, pointed to the need being habitual, rather than stemming from actual hunger.
Plus, he had fond memories associated with snacking; when he was little, and it was just him and Illumi, his older brother would often give him small treats after training. Even after he became one of many siblings, and he was shunted more and more into the background, Illumi would still sometimes bring him snacks back when he’d been away from home for a while.
Not to mention, no matter how scathing the initial commentary around his weight-gain had been, it had drastically decreased his parents’ interest in training him. If anything, it had only aided his cause when he argued that his skills could be better utilised elsewhere. Rather than risking his life and working himself to death, he could sit comfortably in his room, working on his computer units, while watching anime on one of his extra monitors. Win win.
He’d already finished his snack when he heard a knock coming from the door behind him. Few people in his family were actually polite enough to knock, and even fewer were polite enough to actually wait for a response. Being that Kalluto was away, and he was the only one in the latter category, Milluki didn’t bother to answer the knocking. Instead, he just spun his chair around as Illumi strolled in.
“Oh hey, Illu-nii. Back already?”
Illumi hummed in agreement. Casually walking into the room as if he’d been invited, he lightly tossed a new bag of snacks in Milluki’s direction. He caught it with practised ease.
Without hesitation, he gave in to his urge to tear open the bag and shove a handful of the contents into his mouth. Swallowing, he looked up at Illumi, “want one?”
“No thank you,” he said absentmindedly, responding so quickly that there was no way he’d really considered it. Milluki frowned slightly as he turned back to his console. He never actually thought Illumi would say yes, but still. Years of offering and being told no wouldn’t stop him from trying. If nothing else, it showed his appreciation for the small gift, and for Illumi venturing out into the big wide world so that he didn’t have to.
He was keenly aware that his ability to never leave the estate or do any of the actual ‘hands on’ work was in no small part enabled by Illumi’s apparent inability to stop working. Not that refusing work was ever an option per se, but his diligence still made up for when he and his siblings picked up none of the work themselves. Killua and Kalluto leaving, in particular, had had a drastic impact on the family’s available resources.
For a time, he even thought he might actually be forced to go out and take some jobs himself. Luckily, it seemed his ‘physical condition’ made him an afterthought; no-one ever gave him any serious consideration when it came to manual labour, and that was the way he liked it.
Still, he liked to think he was doing his bit, and lightening the load for the members of the family that actually did contribute to the family business. He’d seen how his intel had streamlined their jobs— cutting out additional risks and the busywork of finding targets. He may not be eager to get out in the field, but he still wanted to be part of it. To make everyone’s lives easier. He didn’t want to feel like he was part of the reason that his older brother routinely skipped out on meals and sometimes suddenly slumped in the corner of a room in a dead sleep.
No, unlike Killua, he had no interest in abandoning his family in pursuit of some childish adventure. He was perfectly capable of looking after his own interests while also being a team player.
Still, working taste buds would be nice.