The food experiments

XIV

The cigarettes were done.
Well, not exactly the cigarettes... The candles with such a shape were done.
Otacon had developed an overwhelming amount of energy after being brave enough —finally!— to deal with Snake's misunderstanding. He had caused it himself, yeah, but he also fixed it by himself. He had kissed his neck after gluing his body to David's, the same way a limpet would to a rock. Man, if that hadn't felt good...

Miku moved her eyebrows at times hearing her best friend giggle, seeing him walk around the bedroom in such a naively childish way. It looked to him she was judging him, but she was only trying to understand his actions. Either way, he was happy enough to not mind her stares. He had prepared more than a hundred candles, which weren't scaled to an actual cigarette but rather the average length of a regular candle. He did, however, make a different batch with such a size - he even thought of stealing one of his boxes and put them inside before leaving it back, see what happens...

His partner in crime —Miku, that is— hadn't had the need to wake him up, that's how hyped he had felt. He put his work inside an empty, small cardboard box, which he hid under his books of Chinese proverbs.

—Do you think this is good enough? —he asked, slightly doubtful.

Miku barked and wagged her tail. She thought it was.

—Okay —he nodded, relieved—. I'll leave them there. Now I gotta think of the menu... Maybe some decorations... But what kind of decor would he like...?

Miku barked, stood up, ran in circles on the bed and laid down again. She stared at him, ran to get her chewed toy, and went back to her place. She barked again.
He thought for a few seconds, trying to decipher what she tried to say.

—I could do doggies... Paper cut doggies. Yes? —she barked again—. They'll be a bit ugly, though...

Hal picked up his scissors, a few colored pencils, a stack of old papersheets he never used —he tried one once and despised its really low quality—, and looked for some reference on his computer.
Miku heard a noise from behind the door and went to open it, carefully. Snake was opening a bag of treats to train some of the youngest huskies and she didn't want to miss any of that. David saw her leave the room and he went inside.

—What are you up to? —he asked, trying to peek his screen—. Can't sleep?

—Snake! —he turned around in a jump—. Where are your manners? What about knocking?

—What are you talking about? The dog opened it.

—Yeah, sure!

—Are you serious?

—How's she gonna do that, Snake? Think I am a fool?

Snake raised his eyebrows, somewhat confused. He moved his right hand in different ways, without saying a single word, and Miku did several tricks, one after the other. Each cue was more difficult than the previous one, but she nailed them all and finished by closing the door in question. He then gave her enough treats to compensate for her obedience and opened it back again.
Otacon was visibly speechless.

—I... I thought she was nothing but a creature of destruction...

—You don't believe me when I tell you they play with you, or what?

—They do, indeed, Snake... I am a complete and utter fool...

Snake sighed, his eyes closed. He put his hair back before throwing a few more treats to his dogs.

—So? What are you awake for?

—I, um. I have a very important daily quest on this virtual game... I'm supposed to protect my sheeps from hunting wolfs. If I don't log in, I might wake up to have no sheeps at all.

—Uh-. Okay.

—What are you awake for?

—Can't sleep. Do you really do that every night? It's pretty common for me to stay up at these hours. I hear you typing sometimes. But it's not that often at all.

—You hear me typing???

—Yeah. I know you're watching some sad show before going to bed because you're always sobbing and complaining about the characters.

—I-...

—Anyway, go back to your little farm.

—Right!

Snake closed the door. Otacon tried to hold his cold sweat. He felt embarrassed, as it was becoming an habit, but he became worried he had heard about his secret plan at some point. If he could hear the keyboard, he most definitely could've heard him talking to Miku... Or maybe the keys were just a bit too noisy? He was more than used to the sound, so he wouldn't know. He didn't take the last part into consideration because he always used headphones and wasn't really aware of how loud he actually was, but it definitely wasn't comparably quiet to his whispers to the dog.
He tried to stop spiraling about it. It didn't matter that much - even if David had heard him, he'd act like he hadn't. He'd never know. He'd never know. So why worry?...

He turned his head around, pretended nothing had disturbed him and continued to look through drawings of dogs until he found some he liked. He tried to trace them as well as he could, but they turned out to differ quite a lot from the originals. He sometimes didn't feel like some of them looked "dog" enough, but kept them anyway. Art wasn't his thing...