Work Text:
CONNECTION : Ke-Nek-Shan
A relationship in which a person, thing, or idea is linked or associated with something else.
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As it turns out, an oven CAN burn you.
To most, this is already common knowledge, something you learn as a child from either experience or being warned of the troubles. You retain that knowledge, maybe neatly labeled in a category in the corner of your brain as “common sense.” Why? Just staying in the summer temperature for a bit too long can give you a sunburn, imagine the pain when you stick your hand on a heated oven for longer than a few seconds. It doesn’t end well.
To Firey, this is not common knowledge, and while he is ordinarily a dimwitted and impulsive person, this time, the blame is not entirely his fault. He’s a fire object, and therefore, that means he is naturally resistant to high temperatures. Can you imagine how inconvenient it’d be if his hands were damaged by limb melting weather like everybody else? It’d be like if a bubble didn’t pop, or if a teardrop didn’t like absorbing the tears of others. It’d just be plain wrong, and only serve to be an inconvenience to everyone.
Firey prided himself on his warm personality and fiery passion, never able to resist trying to make others happy or getting too hot headed in an argument. His stubbornness shaped his legacy, and no matter how many times this trait seems to drag him into trouble, he never gives up on what he believes is right, and this is what earned him the crowned achievement of being the winner of “Battle for Dream Island.” Just kidding, that’s not why he won, he only won because the viewers thought he was cool looking, but the point is that being a source of warmth is an important thing to Firey, who cared intensely about his reputation. By all known logic, it made no sense that he wouldn’t be able to touch an oven.
Which is why he had loudly bragged about that assumption to Gelatin.
“Man, I feel bad for the rest of you guys sometimes, none of you can handle the heat like I do! Sure, some of the metal objects are able to swim in lava like I can, but it’s not the same. They, like, get tinted with red afterwards or something, like it’s hurting their body.”
“Mhm,” Gelatin hummed halfheartedly.
The jello WAS paying attention to the conversation, don’t get it wrong. He occasionally ignores all of his friends’ words of advice, but right now, he’s listening to the flame. It’s just that.. they’re both at HIS house, he’s starting to get tired because it’s nighttime, and Firey is bragging about his immunity to heat while Gelatin is.. boiling pasta on top of the oven. (Sure, he CAN cook steak, but that doesn’t mean he wants to.) Normally, he saw no harm in trying to refute or defend Firey’s arguments, but right now? Gelatin was not interested in ending up boiled in a pot of pasta. The thought crawled unpleasantly around in his mind, and he harnessed it as a reason to not properly respond to Firey.
However, Firey was quick to observe this behavior. “Hey, you doing ok?”
“What?” Gelatin blinked, then remembered the conversation. “Oh, yeah, I’m fine. I just don’t think that’s a very special immunity.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m immune to poison, do you know how much cooler that is than not getting a sunburn?”
“Well, literally, it WOULD be a cooler temperature..”
“That’s not the point! What I’m trying to say is that it’s.. nothing important?”
Wrong wording, Gelatin! Firey glared at the other from where he was in the kitchen, his pride wounded. They had never really disagreed before, always finding a solution to their very minor quarrels, so Firey doesn’t know how to respond to this compared to the sharp retorts of Coiny. Doubt has never mixed well with claims of superiority! Firey knows that if they were combined in chemistry, the set would blow up and leave scorching burn marks on top of the table. So why is Gelatin trying to mix those two like a greedy alchemist?! It’s so frustrating!
Gritting his teeth, Firey stomps over to the oven. “Oh yeah?! You see this? How you have to wear oven mitts to avoid getting injured? Watch this!”
The pot of pasta is still boiling, beginning to bubble on the surface. The fire, knowing that he would die if he actually touched the water, only stuck his right arm in, spinning it around a few times. Firey showed no reaction to the heat, which caused him to smirk at the jello defiantly.
“You should probably stop that, you’re gonna burn yourself,” Gelatin teased, still keeping his composure.
This angered Firey even more, and in response, he turned up the temperature to the highest degree. The slightly bubbling water was now an explosion of liquid, beginning to spill out of the pot. Gelatin frantically reached to turn the oven off, but it was too late. A bit of the water splashed Firey. Not enough to kill him, but it did hurt. It also didn’t help that the water finally seeped into his arm, causing it to feel weak and tingly. The anger had completely left him, making Firey feel dazed. Gelatin finally turned the knob to turn off the oven, then pulled Firey’s hand out of the pasta.
Gelatin pointed a finger at Firey. “Are you crazy?! You could’ve gotten hurt- You DID get hurt!”
“I-It’s fine, don’t worry about me,” Firey said as he attempted to flash a smirk. However, he felt pins and needles (Not literally, that would be weird!) on his arm, and Firey’s expression dropped as he held his limb with his other arm.
“Oh, ok,” Gelatin shrugged, turning away to stir the pasta so it wouldn’t stick to the pot.
“WHAT?! Where’s the part where you go ‘Oh Firey! My dear friend, I cannot bear to see you in pain! What can I do?!’ I’m a damsel in distress!”
“I was just waiting for you to admit that you were hurt,” Gelatin replied.
“N-Nevermind, I retract my previous statement! See, I even used a smart word and everything to prove my point!”
“Who’d you learn that from? Leafy?”
“Nah, it was actually Lollipop. She was arguing with Purple Face about something and the word was thrown around a few times.”
“That makes sense.” Gelatin stopped stirring and glanced back at Firey, “You’re still shaking a bit from the water, y’know.”
“Am not! You’re just saying that to drag me to your level.”
“My level..?”
“Your.. uhm.. low heat resistance level! You should feel ashamed of yourself!”
“Firey-“
“I know what you did! You sabotaged the oven to injure me ON PURPOSE!”
“..Firey-“
“In fact, this was all a trap, wasn’t it?! Inviting me over to eat dinner with you, setting the heat at juuust a low enough temperature to taunt me, then you started boiling the water, and-“
“FIREY!”
The flame sheepishly grinned at Gelatin and asked: “Yeah?”
A loud sigh could be heard from Gelatin, “Just let me see your arm. There’s never really been any research on whether or not a fire object’s limbs can handle water, right?”
“My arm works perfectly fine!”
“Oh yeah? YOU were supposed to cut up the vegetables for the salad, why don’t you go do that!?” Gelatin gestured towards the kitchen table, where a cutting board and a knife lay next to some packaged vegetables.
“Maybe I will!” Firey childishly shouted as he took a few steps over to the table.
The fire reached for the knife with his wobbling hand, carefully wrapping his fingers around the handle. Gelatin looked on with an amused look, grabbing two bowls and setting them down next to the pasta. Firey was clearly struggling, barely managing to lift it a few inches off the ground, but when he grabbed the cutting board with his left arm to slide it closer to the knife, his other hand gave out, dropping the blade. He let go of the cutting board and angrily punched the table, earning a laugh from Gelatin.
“You could’ve accidentally cut yourself!” Gelatin said through his laughter.
Firey grabbed the knife with his left arm, “Wanna bet?! Since you hate me so much, maybe I should just STAB MYSELF instead!”
Before Gelatin could react, Firey plunged the knife into himself with the sharpest of jabs!.. Only for him to feel absolutely no pain, as it had gone right through his flame. The imagery was uncanny, but now he wasn’t able to get his point across. He let out another noise of complaint and dropped the knife back onto the cutting board.
“Yeah, because me showing concern is a sign I hate you,” Gelatin rolled his eyes as he placed two spoons on top of the bowls, then he left the stove behind and got closer to Firey, “Let me see your arm.”
“Fine! Have fun breaking every bone in my arm!”
“We don’t have bones,” Gelatin replied as he held up Firey’s right arm close to his face.
If Firey had a heart inside of him, it’d be pounding at a million beats per minute. An overwhelming emotion swallowed him as Gelatin shifted his hand around Firey’s arm, and he wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing. The smallest of sweat drops started to drip down his face, stinging him as they hit his flame, but Gelatin didn’t seem to notice, lowering the other’s arm.
“You’ll live, unfortunately,” Gelatin stated as a joke, “But that arm is useless until it fully dries.”
“So, I can just get a towel and dry it off, right?”
“Yeah, but you’re already wasting my time, so I guess I’LL go get the towel.”
Firey began to sputter furiously at Gelatin, but it was too late. The jello had left the kitchen and headed over to the bathroom. Normally, Firey wouldn’t mind being alone. He has no fear of that whatsoever. (You can be left alone and still be liked, but if someone hates you, they might never leave you alone, destroying every single part of you bit by bit until you’re left with nothing but your flaws. That’s what he’s scared of.) Strangely, however, he felt a pang of disappointment echo inside of him. Unsure of how to cope with it, he tried to brainstorm an epic comeback while Gelatin was gone.
Footsteps, look who’s back. “Here it is,” Gelatin said while holding up a small black towel with white stripes.
“Really? That’s kind of a tame towel design,” Firey said as he tried to take it from the other.
“You’ve never even needed to use a towel, so stop complaining- And good luck properly drying off with only one arm!” Gelatin hissed as he took the towel back from Firey.
The jello snatched Firey’s arm again and wrapped the towel around the other’s arm. Firey tapped his foot in an act of impatience as Gelatin started drying his arm off, but secretly, he kind of liked it. Gelatin could be just as outspoken and energetic as him, but sometimes, he’d act more serious, usually to get a point across. Firey had always found it.. kind of cute, really..
Wait, FUCK!
“Your face is warm.. are you sick or something?” Gelatin asked, tone laced with concern.
“My face is ALWAYS warm,” Firey pointed out as he tried covering his face with his free arm.
“No, I mean, like.. warmer than usual. There’s even this blue tint under your eyes.”
Oh no, was he blushing?! Firey immediately felt regret pulse through him, ashamed of himself for being flustered around one of his closest friends. This kind of thing violates a “bro code,” y’know? Once he regained feeling in his right arm, he frantically tried to pull it away from Gelatin’s unintentionally tight grip.
“Haha, o-ok, you can let go now!” Firey stuttered as he attempted to flee.
“I was about to, but now that you’re begging, I kind of don’t want to. Is getting your arm held some kind of scandalous activity or something?”
“WHAT?! NO! I-It’s just weird, a-and wrong for a guy to hold another guy’s a-arm for longer than a few se-seconds, and-“
Gelatin pulled away the towel from Firey’s arm, hanging up the damp cloth over a nearby chair. However, instead of letting the other’s limb go, he brought his hand closer to Firey’s instead. Previously, he had been holding him around the wrist area, but now their fingers were intertwined and holding each other.
“Y-You can’t be serious right now..!” Firey gritted, looking at Gelatin with distress in his eyes.
“Maybe I am. Your face just got warmer after I did that, so maybe that fever of yours has something to do with me..”
Firey couldn’t tell if Gelatin was messing with him or if he genuinely believed that Firey was actually sick, so he said “Maybe you’re giving me germs by holding my arm!”
“Ah, then I guess I’d be sick as well, right? Yet I don’t think I show any signs of it.”
“It’s possible to carry a disease while showing no symptoms,” Firey responded as he started twisting his hand around.
Gelatin held Firey’s hand tighter, “That’s true, but.. I don’t think you’re sick, after all. Wouldn’t a fire be able to burn most of the germs he gets in contact with?”
“T-That’s..!”
Before Firey could finish his sentence, Gelatin started rubbing circles in Firey’s palm with his thumb. He was giving the most evil smirk ever, what a bitch!.. But Gelatin was going to keep teasing him if he didn’t positively respond, right? Firey glared at the other and pulled Gelatin closer, their faces only a few inches away from each other. He curled his fingers around the other’s hand and breathed as quietly as possible, scanning Gelatin’s expression. The other’s face was quickly growing red, not expecting this.
“Maybe you’re the sick one, after all,” Firey smirked, having regained his confidence.
“Maybe. You-“ Gelatin slightly tip toed to meet Firey’s gaze perfectly, being a bit shorter, after all, “You’re c-cute when you care, Firey.”
He pressed himself as close as possible to Firey, intensely kissing the other, but only for a second or two. Don’t want to get burned, after all! Satisfied, he stepped a few inches back, and tried to pull his hand away from Firey. This time, however, it was the flame who gripped the other’s palm.
Gelatin blinked. “Not so weird and wrong now, isn’t it?”
“S-Shut up, it was nice, ok?”
The jello laughed, and continued holding hands with Firey. It WAS nice, just.. being in the company of someone else and having fun. The infectious joy spread to the flame, who also started laughing, and soon, the giggling was louder than any other sound in the house, replacing the awkwardness of the minutes before.
They say that when something hurts, it usually means it’ll turn out good in the end, like sour snacks or an injury causing you to earn sympathy. This is quite a dangerous phrase to follow, but here, it’s correct to a degree. Firey would gladly dump more water on himself if it meant that he could relive this moment.
When the laughter finally died down, a loud knocking sound could be heard. Both of them turned their gazes towards the front door, which was located in a hallway right next to the kitchen. It shook a few times, and eventually, a voice piped up.
“Hey, Gelatin, can you open the door? You invited me to the dinner, it’s not nice to be rude to a guest.” That’s Leafy.
Firey glared at Gelatin, not because he hated Leafy or anything, but because the moment was, in his eyes, ruined.
“Haha, oops..”