Cooking is my passion. Work aside, I adore it. Making good food, feeding people, seeing the smiles on their faces, cleaning their empty plates… It just floods my brain with dopamine.

Don’t get me wrong, I love making music, too. Where cooking gives me structure, I let music be my time to unwind and just do something for myself.

Between the two I like to think I have a pretty healthy grasp on my work/life balance.

Sylus, on the other hand, likes cooking, but it’s not the same for him. I think he just likes sharing in something with me more than anything else. He’s a good cook, without a doubt, but it doesn’t call to him. It doesn’t feed his soul like it does mine.

Never you worry, Sylus is well fed regardless.

He had a similar relationship with music as I do, but he’s more than once expressed a desire to have something to do with his hands. He used to dabble in lasers cutting, but life pulled that away from him. So there’s a hole left there that cooking doesn’t quite fill.

In another life, as he used to say, he was a Sci fi writer. He has yet to let me see any of his work and I stopped pestering him when I realized how sore of a spot it really was. He had dreams of publishing. Of being one of those homegrown success stories rising from the ashes of a miserable life. Instead live made him a dead eldritch god and writing had to take a step back.

He seems a bit hollow when asked what his interests are. It’s the same response every time: Protecting the people he loves. It’s not a very good answer either because that’s more of a role than an interest. Still, that’s all he says he cares about.

Meanwhile he loves working on cars and identifying flowers yet none of these things register as interests to him. Why? Because they’re impractical. He can’t actually repair a car so much as tinker around under the hood and what good is identifying flowers?

I know how useful those skills could be, but he doesn’t see it.

Though thick, I know his hands to be incredibly dexterous. As a whole he’s deceptively agile. I know how well he can navigate tight spaces despite his size. So I knew he could handle the task I’d picked out for him

I handed him a box wrapped in brown paper. He glanced between me and the object, cocking a brow.

“What’s the occasion?”

“Well, maybe I’ve made a bit of an assumption, but we’re off for a few days and I thought you might like a little hands on project. Just for fun.”

He furrowed his brows as he opened the package. I’m not sure what was going on in his head as he processed what he was looking at. Once he held the unwrapped box in his hands he just stared at it.

“Struck out, huh?” I chuckled.

I think he was reading the box even though it was largely I another language. I forget sometimes that he’s an omniglot.

He read the sides and checked the back which was blank, before holding it in his hands again, studying it.

He cleared his throat. “How did you know?” He choked out.

“Know? Know what?”

“Did Aria tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

He looked over the box again. “You just found this and somehow thought I’d like it?” I was trying desperately to get a hold of his tone.

I shrugged. “You like scifi. You like machines. You like making things with your hands. It was an educated guess at best.”

He stared at the box again.

“Plus it’s got a lot of that retro clear plastic stuff and I know how much you love dated things. Bonus, it’s got a lot of purple.”

“I’ve always wanted a kit of my own.” He was almost in tears. “I love it.” He sobbed as he threw his arms around me.