The food experiments

II

Otacon had decided to steal one of Snake's thickest coats and continue his practical experimentation outdoors, away from the house. Snake was out - he went to the village to buy more food for his dogs, as they were already running low. Otacon nervously invaded his bedroom and forced himself not to pay attention to anything that wasn't the closet, from which he picked a coat that seemed warm enough. He ran outside the room as quickly as he could, went to the bathroom and checked his prize.
He put it on and looked at himself in the mirror. Even though they were roughly the same height, it looked oversized on his skinny body. He sighed.

He turned around to continue with today's mission and realized some of the dogs had seen him do all that. He had been caught... It wouldn't have worried him if it had been some other dog, but Snake's huskies seemed to be just as smart as him. They would tell him about it, someway, somehow, and he would understand it all.

—Okay... —he whispered—. You guys come with me outside. If my recipes work out - or at least they don't end up burnt, I'll give it to you guys. Deal? I'll have to taste it first though, I need to know if I'm improving.

The three dogs waved their tails and barked in acceptance. They followed him outdoors and played around with each other while Otacon set his portable kitchen up.
Hal followed one of the recipes he had previously memorized and made sure not to be dramatically exact about the quantities, as his latest research via YouTube videos proved recepies weren't, in fact, always exactly the same. He thought maybe the issue was being too boringly precise.

The dogs were getting bored and started running in circles around him, whining. Hal gave them a treat to shut them up, as he was having a hard time focusing with the noise. He wondered how Snake dealt with that...
After a bit of imprecise measurements and some heat time, his experiments of the day were done. And they hadn't burned. They looked kinda decent, actually. He felt proud of himself, but still felt worried about the flavour. He took a small piece of each to taste and realized they weren't disgusting. He definetly needed to improve, but not feeling like puking was a pretty good result. It didn't take long for the huskies to confirm those things he made were, in fact, edible; thus, they belonged to them. They barked at him and he divided all the food into equal pieces for each one of them.

—Hey...! Watch out for my fingers! I still need them!

Otacon made sure they didn't chew any part of his hand and checked his watch. He knew it would take some time for David to come back, as he gave him a long list of things he "needed". The list, of course, had been previously meditated to make sure he'd be out for hours. He purposely gave him wrong directions and incoherent petitions.
After a few seconds thinking about this personal victory of his, he picked everything up and went back to the house accompanied by the three huskies. He took the coat off, checked it as to make sure nothing had accidentally spilled —he didn't want to leave any traces— and, given the circumstance he didn't find anything out of place, he followed the same procedure as before to put it back inside David's closet.

______

Snake came back home pretty tired, both mentally and physically - he ended up walking through the whole village and almost had to go further away because nobody seemed to really understand what the list was asking of them. He had made his best and even then, some items were an entire gamble. He couldn't imagine what Hal needed a flamingo sculpture for. And why specifically green? They were supposed to be pink as far as he knew.
All of the huskies showed up in front of him as he crossed through the front door. He petted them all, one by one, only if they behaved as he had taught them —because Otacon was still unused to the rules he had set for them, Snake had to remind the dogs he wouldn't accept their behavior that easily—. Although he wasn't very expressive, his pets knew he was incredibly happy to be home and wished nothing but to let himself fall on the couch. And he did exactly that. The youngest dogs had the privilege to jump over and ask him for more pets, which they promptly received.