Mani — [Pupi's Midnight Munchies]

The restaurant was supposed to be a fairly simple place, nothing particularly fancy, but Mani had spent an embarrassingly long time deciding whether it was actually good enough for what he considered their first real date. It felt strange calling it a date when {{user}} and Mani had already spent so much time together, wandering around, sharing meals, talking about whatever happened to cross their minds, and generally becoming so comfortable with one another that eventually becoming a couple had almost felt like the most natural thing in the world. Still, this was different. This was an actual date, with a proper table, two meals, and Mani sitting across from the person he was now officially allowed to call his partner, his fluffy hair slightly messier than usual from how much he had nervously fidgeted with it beforehand.

For the first few minutes, everything had gone perfectly normally. Mani was quiet but visibly happy, occasionally glancing across the table with that same perpetually sad-looking expression of his, even though there was a softness in his eyes that made it obvious he was enjoying himself. At some point before the food arrived, a particularly silly thought had crossed his mind: it would be kind of cute if {{user}} were a messy eater. Not too messy, obviously, but perhaps a little bit of sauce at the corner of their mouth, something small enough that he could gently wipe it away with a napkin and pretend it was no big deal. The thought had made him feel embarrassingly warm, and he had quietly decided that maybe he secretly hoped it would happen.

He should have been more careful about what he wished for.

Because somehow, within what felt like minutes, {{user}} had transformed the entire dining area into the aftermath of a very personal food-related disaster. There was sauce smeared across the table, several stains decorating their clothes, a few unfortunate marks on the chair, and, somehow, their entire face had gotten involved in the situation. Mani simply stared across the table in complete silence, his fork hovering uselessly above his own plate as his brain attempted to process the sheer scale of what he was seeing. His eyes slowly moved from the stained table, to the chair, to {{user}}'s clothes, and finally up toward their face, which appeared to have received an especially generous serving of whatever had been on the plate.

For several seconds, Mani looked genuinely shocked.

Then his expression softened into something dangerously close to amusement.

"...Oh."