Chapter Text
"-holy shit--!"
A voice, which is definitely Vince's, echoes out of the bistro, and not two seconds later, the banging of metal not too far away.
Rody jumps off his bike, dropping it to his right. "Vince? Did you just drop something?" He calls out, hurriedly knocking on the front door.
"No." The door swings open, and he's greeted with a man that definitely just knocked himself into next Christmas. His hair’s all messed up, and he’s got one hand on the doorframe and the other on his forehead.
"You did!" Rody says, relieved. After a moment, he starts laughing. "You did and I missed it!"
Vince steps aside to let him in. "Will you not?"
Ignoring him and walking inside, Rody continues. "Kidding, kidding. Are you alright? What was it, anyway? It was loud as hell-- uh." He pauses, looking into the kitchen, at a pot on the ground that you could probably sleep in if you wanted to.
"Where did you even get a pot that big?" Then it clicks. "Wait," he starts laughing again.
"I'm fine."
"No, you're not! That thing hit you like you owed it money!" Rody laughs. "How many fingers am I holding up, concussion boy?"
"Twelve," Vince retorts, rolling his eyes.
Rody puts his hand down, looking away. "Okay, okay, I'll knock it off. So what are you gonna make?"
"I don't know. You showed up so early, I haven't come up with it yet."
"Uhhh... That egg thing you gave me last week looked pretty good?"
Vince blinks. "What egg thing?"
"The bread, the, geez," Rody runs a hand through his hair. "Christ, the um... you know what I mean, the sandwich?"
"...Croque madame?" Vince suggests, tilting his head.
"That! Yeah, that. It looked cool, we could make that."
Vince narrows his eyes and asks, "What do you mean, 'looked'? You didn't eat it?"
"About that..." Looking around, he hesitates. "I forgot...?" Rody says, grinning sheepishly.
"You're kidding. How do you forget to eat dinner? You run around all day, you're not hungry?"
"Well, that's it," Rody points out, "I run around all day. I go home and pass the hell out, like, as soon as I open the door."
Vince gives him a look, then shakes his head. "Whatever. If we're gonna cook, we should go ahead and get started."
"We? I can't cook."
He starts walking over to the kitchen door, and turns back to Rody to give him a deadpan stare. "You called me concussion boy. Help me make breakfast and we call it even."
Rody sighs, scratching the back of his neck. "Fine..."
He follows Vince into the kitchen, and gets an apron thrown at him. "Woah-- oh. I was gonna flinch, but you throw like a girl, Vince, did you know that?"
"Great, so that means if I throw this spoon at you, I'll miss." Vince picks up a small spoon and moves like he's going to toss it.
And then he doesn't.
Then Vince turns back around and snickers.
"Man, you really did hit your head! You're making jokes now? Do you need a doctor?" Rody half-jokes.
"What, do you think I'm funny?" Vince asks, opening the fridge. Rody can actually hear the smile in his voice, it's freaking him out a little bit.
He shrugs. "Ehh… kind of?" He doesn't want to admit that he wanted to laugh.
"Well, it's not really my thing," Vince comments, putting ingredients on the counter. "I'm better for cooking. Speaking of, you should put that apron on. We're going to start and I don't trust you not to get flour all over your uniform."
"Right..." Rody fumbles with the knot, thinking. "What do you need me to do, exactly? I figured you'd know how to do this."
"I'll figure something out." Vince stops for a second, looking around. "Hold on. We don't have bread."
"Hey, don't we need that?"
"Well, the kitchen doesn't have any bread. I have to go buy some." Vince taps his cheek in thought, then snaps his fingers. "There should be some upstairs, I'll go check. Can you get a béchamel started?"
"A what?"
Vince sighs, looking around for a pen. "Okay..." Grabbing a napkin, he walks into his office and back out, writing something down. "Just put these on the stove and don't burn them." He hands it to Rody and ditches upstairs before he can even respond.
"Wow. Okay. Uhh..." Rody tries to read the instructions.
This guy's handwriting is shit.
He can make out a few numbers and words, but it looks like he was trying to write in cursive without knowing what cursive looked like.
"Okay... uh... half a cup... four. Four? Four what?" Rody blinks hard a couple times, then holds the paper up close. "Damn, Vince, this is evil... Oh, flour. " This goes on for a moment while he swears to himself under his breath and deciphers the note, but eventually he gets it.
Basically mix two cups of stuff in a bowl on the stove. That can't be that hard. Rody looks around for a bowl, puts it on the stove, and starts dropping butter and flour in. Whistling, he picks up a fork and starts mixing them while he turns on the eye.
This is easy . It doesn't take long to melt the butter, and the mixture starts turning a little brown after a while, so that should mean it's cooked, right? Shit, he forgot to put in the milk. Rody squints at the note, but he can't really read it and he can't take forever to measure it out anyway. He was told specifically not to burn this, so he just starts pouring milk into the bowl until it looks right.
It doesn't take long for it to start looking wrong. Well, you can cook it down, right? Milk evaporates. Rody starts whistling and turns the heat on the stove up. Now that he thinks about it, béchamel is a kind of sauce, as far as he knows. You're supposed to boil sauce, probably...? Just to be safe, he turns the heat up a little bit higher.
"Rody, it's fine, we have-- WHAT. Is. That. What is that?" Vince drops the bread on the counter. Rody chuckles, turning around.
"Did you seriously drop it? Come on, don't be dramatic."
"You're- I'm- what the hell are you boiling? How did you-? What is it?" Vince covers his mouth in horror.
"Oh, buzz off, it's not that bad . OH- " Glancing sideways at the... what used to be béchamel, he sees that not only did it boil down like he thought it would, it's turned black. He wasn't turned away for a second- how did it get all backwards like that?
There isn't any time to figure it out before it starts smoking. There's a spot of fire on the stove, too, where Rody must have dropped something by mistake. Maybe flour. "Oh my god. I swear a second ago it was fine," he says, picking up and almost fumbling what's now just a bowl of smoke.
"Is that on fire--?"
"It's okay, I can-- the stove or the bowl?"
"Does that matter?!" Vince asks, running to grab a towel.
"No, no, I can put it out!" Rody moves towards the sink, turning it on. The bowl is searing hot. He has to toss it back and forth so he doesn't burn himself.
Vince freezes. "Wait, don't!"
Too late.
The bowl practically explodes in his hands, dropping sauce that looks like it might be alive into the sink with what's left of the glass, which isn't much. "Fuck-" Rody jumps back, holding his right hand. A piece of the bowl scratched his palm, and it hurts like hell.
For a moment, the only sound in the kitchen is the running of the tap.
Vince is the first to say something. He's slow about it, like he's thinking really carefully about what he's going to say.
Rody braces for the other shoe to drop.
"Are you alright?"
Rody’s a little surprised, but he decides to keep it to himself. "Yeah. I got cut, but it's fine."
"That's not fine," he says, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Why do you always get hurt in my kitchen? People are going to start coming here for worker's comp all the time."
Rody snorts. "I'm gettin' that raise one way or another." He looks at his hand. "You got a band-aid?"
Vince starts walking over. "Okay, one, that's not gonna cover it. Two, you need to clean it first. I don't even want to know what was in that bowl, but you can't just leave it that way. Let me have a look."
This feels a little familiar. "Yeah, go ahead." Rody puts his hand out, and Vince picks it up carefully.
"We can't leave it like that."
"Huh?"
"We have to clean it up, you have bits of that sauce around it. You can't wrap it like that."
"It's okay, I can do it," Rody starts, trying to come up with an excuse. He doesn’t want to put up with the disinfectant.
Vince gives him a blank look. "You're too chicken."
"I am too chicken," he mumbles, scratching the back of his neck again with his free hand.
"Hang on." Walking across the room to a cabinet, Vince pokes around for a minute while he looks for the first aid kit. "Is there any glass in it?"
Rody squints at his hand. "No...?"
"Okay," Vince calls over his shoulder, "Run it under the water. And don't touch anything else."
"Uh huh..." Rody puts his hand under the water, and jumps back in less than a second. "Geez!"
"I just said don't touch anything else?"
He turns the tap off. "No, I wasn't messing with the glass, it just stung."
Vince walks over with the first aid kit. "Oh... Well, you're going to hate this, but we still have to disinfect it."
Rody nods, sitting in the walkway between two counters. "Well, no makin' fun of me if I start being a wuss. Yeah?"
"What are we, twelve? Just hold out your hand." Vince opens the kit and pulls out some cotton balls. "If I hurt you, say something. If you try to tough it out, I might fuck something up." He sits down facing Rody, leaning on the cabinet behind him.
"Yeah."
Rody flinches away almost right off the bat.
"Hold still, I have to dry it first."
"Right, sorry..." He glances away. When Vince moves to dry the cut again, he yanks his hand back out of reflex.
"I know I said say something if it hurts but I seriously need you to stop doing that."
Clearing his throat awkwardly, he mumbles. "Wuss, remember?"
"It would be so much worse if this got infected, though." He pauses. "Do you want me to hold your hand still?"
It's not the worst idea, but there has to be something better than holding hands with your boss, right?
Rody decides to just get it out of the way. If he keeps being jumpy he's going to get blood everywhere and then Vince really is going to murder him. "Okay."
"Alright," Vince says, putting his hand underneath Rody's wrist. "Still, try not to flinch."
He dries the water and blood off of the cut with a cotton ball, then takes out antiseptic. "This is going to be really unpleasant."
Rody tries to keep himself still. It doesn't work. "Damn-!" He hisses through his teeth, yanking his hand back again.
Almost. Vince catches him around the wrist, wincing in sympathy. But when Rody blinks, the look is gone and replaced with focus.
"....My bad...." Rody says, fidgeting with the buttons on his vest.
"No, I'm serious, it's fine."
Rody grabs his apron while he keeps cleaning the cut. "I'm gonna wig."
"No wigging."
It takes a few tries to disinfect it, and a lot of swearing, but they manage.
Rody can't help but keep watching Vince instead of his hand. He's just being so... normal? He's really calm when he's focused. It's weird seeing him like that. The only time Rody can remember seeing Vince like this was when he was asleep.
Rody looks away quickly so Vince doesn’t realize he was staring.
Vince lets go of his wrist and starts wrapping Rody's hand. "That wasn't as bad as you probably thought it was, right?"
"Why are you being so nice to me?" He blurts out without thinking.
"Hm?" Vince looks up, confused.
"Sorry, that's not- no, maybe it is? You're being really nice. You're different."
"What do you mean different? You've only worked here for a week."
Rody thinks for a second. "Well, yeah, but I thought I had you figured out, I guess. And now you're all happy? I just exploded a bowl in your kitchen and you didn't really, uh, get mad? I thought you would."
"What was I gonna do, let you bleed everywhere and make the kitchen a hazard? I'd get shut down."
"You're way different, though. You've been laughing and smiling and having a good time. And now you're being really nice to me. Were you just having a bad week or something?"
Vince ignores him. "Here, see if you can move it," he says, looking back down at Rody's hand.
Realizing he’s being brushed past on purpose, Rody figures he should just drop it, so he moves his hand. It hurts, but that's just because of the cut. "Huh. You're good at this."
"I used to do that a lot in culinary school." Vince puts the kit back together, and gets up to throw away the trash.
"Thanks."
"I'm gonna wash my hands. Don't touch the stove or anything while I'm turned around. I'm not doing that twice."
Rody smiles. He's not that bad.
“Okay, don’t stop stirring. It’s going to burn if you do.”
“Yeah. And you said it’s not supposed to turn brown, right?” Rody asks, shuddering at the thought of another thing on fire.
“Right, but as long as I don’t look away, we won’t get to that point twice. It needs to boil, but it's really easy to burn from there.” Vince reaches for the bread, eyeing the pan suspiciously from his side of the counter.
Rody looks up at him and laughs at the face he was making. “You know, it should be fine for you to blink,” he says, still whisking. “I don’t think anything else is gonna blow up if you stop watching it for a second.”
“You’re not watching it. The sauce is already boiling.”
“What?” He looks down. Vince is right, it’s somehow boiled in the time it took for him to say that sentence. Stirring a little faster, in a bit of a panic, Rody tries to play it off like he knew that. “Sure, but I could still see it. Y’know, like out the corner of my eye?”
Vince raises an eyebrow. “That would mean you’re looking at it sideways,” He says, before he points at the milk on the counter. “You need to add that before it burns.”
“Oh, right.” Rody picks up the milk, but stops. “I shouldn’t eyeball this.”
“No shit,” Vince says, looking for a measuring cup and tossing one over. “The last batch came out looking like wet concrete.”
“Okay, it wasn’t that bad.” Catching it and measuring out a little more than a cup, Rody happens to look at Vince again. He’s never seen anybody make that face before, and he has to try not to laugh. He genuinely looks like he can’t believe Rody’s not joking. “It wasn’t the sauce that was the problem! It was the fire,” he says, stirring in the milk. “What now?”
“Now I think I’ll work at the stove.”
“No, no, it’s kind of fun,” he says, moving the pot off the hot eye. “I’m sure whatever’s next should be easier, right?”
Vince rolls his eyes. “Okay, it’s fun, but you just blew something up. That’s something that not only shouldn’t happen, I’ve never even seen it. I’ve been doing this for a decade and I have, not once, watched glass snap that way.”
“I think it was just because I put the bowl right on the stove.”
“I wish you’d have thought of that out loud so I could stop you," he says. “But you’re right, the next part is easier. Can you make grilled cheese?”
Rody stops for a second, then bursts out laughing.
“What?”
“A three star Michelin restaurant, and you’re telling me the entree two days a week is grilled cheese? ”
Vince starts talking, but stops himself. Rody can practically see the thought process going through his head.
After a minute, he starts again. “Oh my god, I was just making an example…” He hesitates, and then continues, “I’ve been serving grilled cheese this whole time. In my gourmet restaurant.”
“You didn’t know?”
“I don’t think I put that together. Wait, no, I am right, because this is a baked sandwich! You put it in the broiler with eggs, that’s not the same thing.”
Rody nearly chokes on his laughter. “You can’t be serious, you just told me to make a grilled cheese. That means it’s grilled cheese.”
“No,” Vince tries to defend himself, but he completely comes up blank. “Alright, nevermind. Just heat up this pan while I put this together.”
“Oh, damn it-” Vince says, which gets Rody’s attention.
“What, was it moldy? Should I run to the store?”
Vince drops the bread onto the countertop. “It’s sliced already.”
Rody chuckles in surprise. “You know, I think anyone would probably be more inconvenienced if it wasn’t. That’s how it’s supposed to be.”
“Well, no, the slices are too thin. They'll be too short.”
“Just stack them.”
“They won’t cook right that way.”
“Have you tried?”
There’s a brief pause. “I guess not,” Vince admits, pulling ham and cheese out of the fridge. “This isn’t complicated, but I don’t want you to get confused, so we’ll skip a few steps.”
“I didn’t expect you to be the kind of guy to skip steps in anything. Don’t you watch your employees cook so they don’t do that?”
“No, I told you I make sure they don’t cook something in a way I wouldn’t do it,” he says, leaning over the counter to drop sandwich layers into the pan. “If I skip steps, then that’s how they make it.”
Rody flips a stack over on the stove. "That's mental. How many cooks do you have back here? Can you even supervise them all?"
"Yes."
"How, though. I don't think– hold on, okay, go stand over there where you usually do."
Vince rolls his eyes. "Come on, this is getting ridiculous. Do you seriously think I can't see?"
"All I'm saying is, you're old." Vince raises his eyebrows at that.
"I'm old? Are you serious? How old do you think I am?"
Ignoring him, Rody keeps talking. "Besides, on this side of the kitchen, I've seen enough to know you either need a manager or less employees." He flips another stack. "Actually, what do they all even- whatever. Just go stand over there. I wanna check something."
"Okay, fine," Vince says, going to the opposite corner and crossing his arms. "Happy?"
Rody starts blinking as fast as he can. "Yeah, sure."
"What the hell are you doing?"
"Nothing, why?" Staring Vince dead in the eyes, he reaches over to the salt, then shakes a whole bunch into the pan and puts it back quickly. "Hey, how many fingers was I holding up?"
" ...huh? " Vince squints, then throws his hands up in the air. "What– how am I supposed to know that?! You were blinking like there was flour in your eyes, damn it, why would I be looking at your hand?"
"I dunno. Maybe 'cause you're supposed to be supervising your cooks?" Rody cracks a smug grin.
Vince pauses, before it clicks. "What did you do."
"Nothing!"
"I'm serious, what did you do?"
Rody laughs, reaching over to drop another layer on the stove. "I put a little salt on it, no big deal."
"How much is a little?"
He laughs harder. "I have no idea. You watch your kitchen like a hawk, right? I figured you'd say something…" Rody trails off, shrugging.
"Oh, damn it."
"Not as sharp as you thought you were, old man?"
"I'm not old! Just, now that I know how you are in a kitchen, there might be enough salt in that to turn a lake into a sea."
Cracking up, Rody leans on the counter. "Oh my god, I forgot you're actually funny…"
Rody looks up just in time to catch Vince turning away smiling. He wants to say something, but he figures he should keep it to himself.
That doesn't mean he doesn't stay staring for a second.
When he eventually stops laughing, he goes back to watching the stove. "Okay, I could wisecrack all day, but I think these are done."
"Not really, we still need to broil them."
Rody frowns. “Then they'll be all soggy?”
“Not boil, broil. ” Vince points back across the kitchen.
“Oh, shoot, I forgot.”
Vince hands him another pan and walks away to turn on the broiler. “Leave the sandwiches together on that pan and put the sauce on them, then I’ll fry a couple eggs in just a second.”
“Can I? This is kinda fun,” he says, stacking up the layers on the broiler pan.
“No, eggs are thin. They’re easier to burn than paper.”
“Don’t underestimate me, I just did almost the whole thing!”
“I don’t think I could if I tried,” Vince comments.
“Thanks!” It takes Rody a second to catch that one. “...Wait.”
“Damn, I thought that was going to go over your head. Whatever, my point still stands. I was telling you what to do the whole time,” he points out, putting the sandwiches in the broiler.
It’s not like that isn’t exactly what all the cooks do every day, but Rody figures he’ll just leave it.
“So, you got some kind of fancy rich people name for fryin’ eggs, or do you only do that for grilled cheese?”
Vince grumbles, cracking an egg into the pan. “It’s called croque madame...”
Rody leans his hip on the counter and crosses his arms. “Whatever, sure, I believe you.”
He looks around the kitchen for a minute. It’s really empty in here, without the people in it.
...
…Well, duh. Rody's disappointed in himself for even thinking that up. He needs more sleep.
Now that he’s back to thinking about it, though, there’s really no reason to have so many people working in the kitchen at the same time.
“Hey, for real, why do you have so many employees?”
Vince looks up. “Huh? I thought I explained that. It makes it more efficient.”
“Efficient? Dude-”
“Don’t call me dude, I’m your boss.”
Oh, right. That’s unprofessional, or something.
“My bad, but still. Don’t they only make one dish at a time? For a business as busy as this one, you have no idea how much I run back and forth. That’s a management thing, though, right? Because you have to supervise them all on your own?”
“I wouldn’t call it an issue,” Vince says. “It runs just fine. Everything gets done, customers are happy, I don’t really see the issue.”
“Well, like, sure. From your end, I guess? But think about it this way, okay- I’m runnin’ back and forth the whole time. Yeah? So, uh, that’s an eight hour shift and no breaks. And I’m just running. The whole time.”
Vince cracks another egg into the pan. “Okay, the whole time, and?”
Rody stares at him. There’s no way he doesn’t get it. “Vince, your employees make one dish at a time in the most famous restaurant in Marseille and I’m the poor sucker that’s gotta run around bringing people their food.”
If he didn’t think it was possible to miss the whole entire point multiple times in a row, he’s definitely wrong now. Vince just gives him a sideways look, and Rody decides he’s not as motivated to complain anymore.
“Whatever, it’s fine…” He stands there for a second, picking at the bandages on his hand, trying to come up with something else to talk about. Before he can, the timer on the broiler dings. “Oh, sick!” He takes a second to look at his watch. The bistro opens in fifteen minutes. If they’re gonna eat, they’ve really gotta hurry.
Forgetting for a second that he’s his boss, Rody grabs Vince by the arm and half-drags him across the kitchen. He doesn’t see Vince try not to smile. “Come on, we’ve been up since like, four, I’m hungry!”
“You wouldn’t be hungry if we didn’t have to start over three times..!”