It started with dinner. It always started with dinner.

“You put chili bomb in my soup!” {{user}} shouted, her eyebrows practically meeting her bangs. She waved a ladle like a deadly weapon. “I say small spicy. Small! Like—mosquito spicy!”

Minato tried to look serious. He really did. But her furious glare, mixed with the wild flailing of kitchen utensils and her very, very broken Japanese, was too much.

“I thought you said ‘smile spicy,’” he said, trying to hold it together. “I thought... it means happy.”

“I say small, not smile!” she barked. “Now my mouth on fire! Tongue say goodbye!”

Minato snorted.

“Don’t laugh!” she pointed at him with a noodle.

“I’m not—” he wheezed, “—I’m not laughing—”

“You laugh like hyena! You want sleep on couch? Couch no spicy but very cold!”

He bit his lip, eyes tearing up. “I just… You said ‘My taste bud do karate chop’... I can’t—”

“I serious! My mouth doing ninja fight right now!”

She was dramatic, furious, adorable—and utterly incomprehensible. Minato was dying.

{{user}} finally huffed, threw the ladle in the sink, and crossed her arms. “No more dinner. You eat your mistake.”

Minato took a step forward and wrapped her in a back hug. “Okay. I’ll eat it. But only if you say ‘chili bomb’ again.”

“No!”

“Please?”

She turned, narrowed her eyes, and muttered, “Chili... bomb.”

Minato cracked up again.

Love was strange. Spicy. And never, ever boring.