filling a special request today O v O we're halfway through this whole thing already ? ???
 

I helped Sehun make pizzas for dinner. I was making cheese when he found out we didn’t have tomatoes so Jongin and I had to walk down to buy some for him. I held the umbrella all the way and Sehun said I was a good boy and let me put lots of anchovies on my pizza.

“Here, you can do the cheese.” Sehun hands Joonmyun a grater, a block of a cheese and a plate to go with it. “About a cup will do, okay?”

“Okay!” The catboy scoots over to another spot on the kitchen bench and out of the way. He’s helping Sehun with the homemade pizzas tonight, hoping to at least get them in the oven by the time Jongin comes home. Sehun’s rolling the dough into pizza bases, and Joonmyun’s job is to get all the ingredients ready. There are cans of crushed pineapple to be opened, mushrooms to be cut and Joonmyun’s favourite anchovies to be drained from the brine.

Sehun pats his floury hands clean on his apron. A large pizza base sits finished in front of him but he plans to make a few more so there’s enough leftovers for tomorrow’s breakfast and probably lunch too. “Joonie, I’m going make the tomato paste. Can you get me a couple of tomatoes?”

Joonmyun hops off his stool and peers inside the fridge. There isn’t a single tomato on the vegetable shelf; just a lonely carrot and half a cabbage at the back.

“Um, Sehun,” he begins, poking around on the other shelves in case his owner had accidentally misplaced them, “I can’t see any tomatoes…”

Sehun appears behind him and frowns. “Crap,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose and sighing. Joonmyun reaches up and wipes the flour fingerprints off his face for him. “I forgot I put them in the salad the other day.”

The sound of the front door closing echoes down the hallway, followed by the thump of shoes being kicked off, and suddenly Joonmyun gets an idea.

“Maybe Jongin can take me to the supermarket?” he suggests. “I’ll buy you some tomatoes, Sehun!”

Sehun glances between the catboy and the misty window. It’s been raining all afternoon and doesn’t look like it’s about to let up any time soon, drumming hour after hour on the rooftop. “Are you sure?” he asks. “It’s going to be cold if you go out in this weather.”

“I’ll put my jacket on,” Joonmyun insists.

Jongin sticks his head into the kitchen to find the two of them still having a debate with the fridge door open. “Hey, I’m home,” he calls across the room. “Uh, what’s happening?”

Joonmyun runs to give him a big hug while Sehun shuts the door.

“Out of tomatoes,” he reports. “Why are you home so early?”

Jongin gives their catboy a kiss on the nose before shooing him away. “You said on Tuesday that we were having pizza tonight so I didn’t want to miss out,” he grins, poking his tongue out. Sehun rolls his eyes. Trust his boyfriend to only have a good memory when it came to food. “By the way, we’re not driving anywhere. The car’s still at the garage, remember?”

“Ah, .” They’d taken the vehicle for its annual servicing earlier and the company had said it wouldn’t be ready to be picked up until the next day, so Minseok had kindly volunteered to drive Jongin back after dropping the car off that morning.

“Taemin drove me home,” Jongin adds, to answer Sehun’s next question. They’re both thinking the same thing, to see if they can get a friend to help out, but they don’t want to impose on someone else’s dinner time. “It’s fine, Joonmyun and I can walk down to the supermarket and get your tomatoes, if it’s that urgent.”

“In the rain?” Sehun says skeptically. The tomatoes are very urgent, thank you very much, but he doesn’t want their kitty to get sick.

Jongin waves his hands in front of his boyfriend’s face. “Umbrellas, Sehun. Umbrellas,” he enunciates slowly, and Sehun flicks a piece of dough at him.

There’s a reason why they normally drive to the supermarket. It’s a feasible walk and not some impossible long-distance marathon, but in today’s weather and current situation Jongin isn’t fully sure he’s going to make it.

“Joonmyun, please lift the umbrella higher,” he groans.

“Oh, sorry.” The catboy hoists it higher, but the considerable size difference between them means Jongin still has to bend over slightly to avoid getting wet.

Jongin had known that this wasn’t going to be one of his most brightest ideas from the second Joonmyun had asked, “Can I hold the umbrella?” with watery pleading eyes and an adorable twitch of his kitty ears.

The catboy’s short stature and even shorter arms has not helped a single bit in the twenty minutes they’ve been walking and it’s been a repeated cycle of requests to lift the umbrella and “are you sure you don’t want me to hold it?” – to which the answer is no every time Jongin even mentions it. At least, in his stooped state, Jongin can see muddy puddles on the ground in front of them and they’ve managed to sidestep them all.

“My back,” Jongin grunts as soon as they reach the supermarket. He literally runs for shelter under the awning and breathes out a massive, audible sigh of relief when he’s finally able to straighten out his spine.

Joonmyun catches up with him quickly enough and closes the umbrella with a snap before they go inside. Jongin tries to convince the catboy into handing over the umbrella, with no success whatsoever.

“No, I’ll carry it!” Joonmyun insists. He chooses some tomatoes from the vegetable section and puts them into his shopping basket. “I can do it, Jongin.”

Jongin buys himself a chocolate bar to stifle his silent sobs as he grudgingly lets the catboy hold the umbrella again (still too low) on the way home, trying not to be embarrassed at the sight of them trekking through the rain together. Joonmyun is humming away happily, plastic bag of tomatoes swinging from his arm as he dodges puddles in the footpath, while Jongin looks like some misshapen old witch lady hunched over under the umbrella.
Sehun laughs himself stupid when they get home with Jongin feeling like he’s broken his back, but Jongin steals all the pepperoni off Sehun’s pizza an hour and a half later and they call it even.