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Adam had never really been one for cooking. Most of the time, in what could now be considered his previous life, he didn’t have a lot of time to eat, let alone prepare something. He’d get into a meeting, plot a course of action for a mission, act as a consultant for yet another, lead his own, rinse and repeat. Perhaps he’d even be able to grab a bite in between all his moving if he was stationed on a GF ship with a decently placed cafeteria.
It wasn’t an uncommon occurrence. And he has lived most of his life in the military: he’s been cared for, at least in the sense of eating. Missions where he’d had to come up with an emergency cooking schedule and a cooking duty for people he had under him had always been uncommon. And in that case, he had a person he could point at that he knew would not disappoint. That being Anthony.
The one time he tried he remembers burning whatever he was trying to make. He was thinking about too many things all at once. Samus had glared at him with venom in her eyes. Then she’d muttered something about it being awful, and Adam had never tried to cook in her presence ever again.
He even faintly recalls another time. After a long day, he was finishing up with paperwork and strategies that would save the most men, looking forward to retiring for the night.
“You’re an idiot.” Samus had told him, looking up at him from where her at the time petite stature allowed her. She would be getting taller, he could already tell, and she had in the little time they’d spent together, but for now he could still look down at her in the literal sense.
Instead of writing her up for insubordination, as he should have done, he crossed his arms and leaned on the side of the door to his office. Only partially because he was feeling rather tired.
“And what makes you say that?” He asked with one raised eyebrow, not at all intimidated.
“You forgot to eat again.” She huffed out. Then she left, leaving behind a (admittedly now cold) plate she must have salvaged, or stolen, from the mess hall when others weren’t looking. And she’d held onto it just to give it to him.
“Thank you, Lady.” He’d murmured, even if she might not have heard him. He finally decided that work would still be there for him in the morning. He had that meager dinner and actually turned in for the night.
So now, looking at her, exhausted after her latest mission, finally talking a breather in her suit, and hearing her stomach growling out of nowhere, in the relative quiet of the ship, he feels a bit bad for not having a body to prepare her a meal with.
Not that his knowledge would allow him to cook her anything. As already established, he’s by far the least qualified for it.
Samus huffs. She’s sitting slack on the pilot seat, but now that the worse is gone, and ZDR is nothing more than a red nebula on the horizon among the stars, she looks truly, bone-deep tired. In a way he’s never really had the possibility of seeing. She looks ready to simply fall asleep right then and there.
“Samus?” He gently calls, just to make sure she isn’t slumbering already. Samus moves, lazily turning her helmet in his direction. He doesn’t have control over many of the ship’s functions, he can’t take off or land for example, but there are a few practical things he can do to make her life a bit easier. “May I suggest a hot shower?”
She ponders on it, her finger gently tapping her side. “I’m tired.”
God, even her voice sounds drained.
“Acknowledged. However, a warm shower would let you get out of your suit, and would have a calming effect on your nerves.”
She looks at him through her visor. Most likely squinting her eyes at him. He can’t make out much else.
“Fine.” She murmurs.
He immediately diverts power from some part of the engines to the boiler. It hums, and by the time Samus’s up and her Power Suit deactivated she has all the boiling hot water she might need.
He leaves her to her privacy, beyond doors that his mechanical eye cannot reach.
Which takes one thing off of his list. She would have to rest, and she can get to her own bed just fine. But she also needs nourishment. He’s quite divided. Can he really not do anything else…?
He moves his mechanical eye, turning from the main deck view to the cargo hold. Stacks of crates that were shaken and tumbled down during their last mad ascent towards safety welcome him. He won’t tell Samus about the mess in here just yet. Besides, nothing seems to be leaking or badly damaged, they will hold the few hours Samus needs to sleep this all off.
What interests him the most is… ah, there, sprawled on the floor.
One packet of astronaut food. Emergency rations, as it’s common to call them. Easy to prepare with water, and fast to eat in case of an emergency. Quick and light to transport, compact and warm where the surrounding space is insurmountably vast and cold.
There’s one mechanical arm in the cargo hold. Used to rearrange things around, and to get heavy cargo into the hold without the pilot needing to raise a finger, even if he’s never seen it in action: Samus is more than capable to transport anything her ship can bear by herself.
Adam has to move a few things to start the mechanical arm, but he finally manages to move it just as Samus starts using the hot water reserves. He queues more into the boiler, immediately, just in case she wants to have a longer shower to wash any soreness away, and sets back to work.
Moving the arm proves trickier than expected. It’s divided in three main sections, one being the arm itself, then a sort of rotating wrist and yet another part then attached to an enormous claw. It’s hell to calculate the exact inputs needed to get the very tiny packet off the floor, but he manages it. In the end. Followed by quite a lot of curses because the thing refuses to cooperate.
He’s reminded of rigged crane games he’d only ever heard be talked about. This sounds exactly as stressful.
He doesn’t need to read the instructions on the packet, he has memories of consuming plenty of these. He’ll have to rehydrate it. Which means trying to work with the claw again to get hot water – luckily there’s a tap connected to that same boiler that he can use in the cargo hold. He can’t take as much as he likes, because he notices that it’s almost completely gone.
Samus is burning through the reserves faster than they can be replenished. So in some time, five minutes he estimates, her hot shower will have to come to a stop.
He can’t get a plate with a crane thought for heavy lifting, and it can’t even get to the main deck where he might be able to find a plate, so he has to get creative and use whatever he finds in his immediate vicinity instead. What is supposed to be an aluminum container used for storing food once it’s cooked (and in fact, it looks immaculate as if brand new) will act as his dish.
He nudges the aluminum container to the faucet and uses a remote command to open it. Some of the water sloshes out, but it’s a minimal loss. Then he puts the crane right above the container and unceremoniously drops the ration inside it, causing a wave of hot steam to rise from it.
He waits for the packet itself to dissolve in the hot water and free the food inside. No part of the emergency ration can go to waste, after all. It’s all edible.
Just in that moment he realizes a quite idiotic fallacy. He doesn’t even know what he’s preparing, and now he has no label to read.
He sighs to himself. He’s been so focused on getting that single packet off the floor that he didn’t even consider checking what he’s plucked from Samus’ reserves. They all even cook the same, so there was no need. He’ll just have to wait and see.
He puts the arm back into the nook he’s taken it from, always with mental commands but at the very least there’s a function he can call to simply put it back into place this time, and ends up having to wait from his skewed point to view to see what will come out of it.
Samus chooses that exact moment to exit her personal quarters and he takes control of the camera on the main deck once more. Her hair’s down, for once, looking more like burnt ash than the stark and perfect blond he’s come to associate her with. It’s still slightly wet, then.
But she’s also wearing a comfortable outfit, blue shorts he maybe saw her in once already, when they were around a coffee shop one day, and an orange oversized shirt draping lazily over her shoulders. A pair of tall boots, because the floor is never warm on a spaceship and any extra insulation is welcome, but at the very least it seems that the shower has taken a layer of exhaustion off her shoulders. She seems considerably more comfortable.
“You were right, Adam. That shower worked wonders.” She combs her hair with a hand, in no particular rush. The AI is ready to remark on it, but the sound of many, many things falling in the cargo bay interrupt him before he can even begin.
Perhaps he wasn’t as careful as he should have been with that giant mechanical arm.
“Adam.” Samus says, immediately more tense, squinting suspiciously up at him, at his lenses suspended in front of the pilot seat. “What happened?”
“I… attempted to cook.” He admits, beat.
Samus stills. “What?” Her voice still sounds so tired. “You don’t… you don’t have any arms. How does that even work? And besides, I’ve seen you try, you can’t cook!” She’s getting ahead of herself, her thoughts tumbling out of her mouth without her really thinking about it.
“I know.” He says, once more. “Honestly, I do not even know what I prepared. I got emergency rations and put them in water.”
Samus rolls her eyes, her exhaustion still creeping on her. The magic of her hot shower has all but disappeared. Then her frown turns more suspicious, as she carefully looks up in his direction.
Adam doesn’t want to waste any more of her time. He just opens the door to the cargo bay and her head whips towards it.
Under the faucet is the container he prepared, still steaming. His position does not allow him to see what it actually is.
“Oh. You really did.” She says, almost in awe. He doesn’t quite know how to take it, but she moves on quiet steps to the hatch. She touches it, feeling the heat through her fingers. It’s hot, so she has to use some other piece of cloth to get it up and bring it in front of the pilot seat.
But Adam has to focus on her face for a moment. He can’t quite understand it but… she’s definitely smiling. It’s always something soft, Samus has never been one to have smiles ranging from one ear to the other. But it just makes even the slightest twitch of her lip a treasure to behold.
Though it’s definitely short lived.
What is in her hands is steaming hot soup. It looks light, a warm color that mingles with the steely hue of the metal. There’s tiny pieces of very short pasta around, and some vegetables… it doesn’t look like a full meal. Could it be Adam picked the only ration that was not supposed to be eaten on its own…?
If he still had a face, he would have frowned.
“That… doesn’t look very nutritious.” He states after a moment. He can’t quite help the sorrow slipping into his machine tone.
“No, it doesn’t…” She agrees.
It definitely isn’t enough, not after the rapid escapade, not after the Xs infected the planet, not after all of her endeavors. He can only imagine what else happened to Samus when they lost contact.
Samus moves away to get a spoon. She kicks the pilot seat closer to the console and settles herself in it, stirring her meager soup. Then she takes some of it. Even he, through the blurred lenses, can see the clear metallic color of the spoon through the broth, occasionally interrupted by some pasta, but with how short it is it might as well be rice.
Samus takes a cautious sip. Something tells Adam it’s not because of the warmth. There’s something else bothering her. But maybe, it should be brought up once she’s rested.
Samus blinks into nothingness for a moment, feeling the food inside her mouth. Then she frowns even harder.
Is it something wrong with the soup? Adam tries to retrace his steps. Ah, of course. He didn’t measure the water, so now the sorry concoction is uncomfortably thin. That’s definitely on him.
Slowly, tentatively, Samus’s lips twitch up. Her abdomen rapidly shrinks and expands with a barely contained chuckle.
“Lady? What is it?” Adam can’t help but ask now.
Samus stirs her stupid soup, her other hand flies to her mouth, making a more valiant effort at stopping her laugh. Adam doesn’t interrupt further. For whatever reason, it’s nice to hear that sound every once in a while. It’s rare enough as it is.
“It’s… I…” She fondly shakes her head, taking another sip, much calmer this time. “I’ll tell you all the details tomorrow. For now… know that Ashkar Behek was impersonating you. He fooled me for some time, even if the signs were evident.”
Oh. This puts things in a rather different perspective. From how she pronounced it, Adam believes this… ‘Raven Beak’, his translation software supplies, is not someone Samus thinks of fondly. Rather, someone who’s most likely dead now.
“I see.” He simply says.
“I thought maybe he was still haunting me, you know? Perhaps he had made his way onto the ship somehow. I expected the worse. But, well… tasting this, I’m sure it’s the real you I’m talking to.” She replies, offering no further explanation.
“I’m aware that I put in too much water.” He apologizes.
She waves her hand in front of herself in dismissal, mouth full of soup until she swallows. “Oh, it’s not that.”
Adam takes a look at her oddly glad look. At the soup still in her hands. At the strange shape of the pasta. Then it clicks.
“It’s overcooked, isn’t it.”
Samus finally lets herself laugh out loud.