Chapter Text
“Where are my nuts?” Davey yelled, standing on a chair. Every shred of the dignity he had once prided himself upon had disappeared.
Jack laughed. “I’ve got the filberts. Don’t worry,” he replied, handing Davey a large bag of hazelnuts.
Five weeks earlier, Davey had been walking across campus to his bio lab when he spotted Jack deep in conversation with Kath ahead of him. Quietly power walking towards them, he had managed to overhear Jack saying that he taught cooking classes on campus to help pay for his tuition.
Precisely four days and seventeen hours before that, Katherine had persuaded, or forced, him to watch the original Grinch. Why she cared so deeply about it, he’d never understand. But one part had stuck out to him, as a dumbass with few critical thinking skills.
“The Grinch got a wonderful, awful idea.”
Four days and seventeen hours later, he sympathized with that line. And in that moment, his wonderful, awful idea nearly rivaled stealing a Christian holiday from a non-human village.
He was going to take Jack’s cooking class.
After his lab, he texted Kath for the details of Jack’s cooking class.
Plums and Roses: why do you need to know?
YesIAmDaveyJacobs: just curious.
Plums and Roses: i can hear the gears in your head turning. what’s the dumb plan this time?
Plums and Roses: god it’s been thirty seconds if it involves arson i’m out
YesIAmDaveyJacobs: well. if using a stove is considered arson, then yes. it involves arson.
Plums and Roses: using a stove for w h a t
Plums and Roses: David Middle Name Jacobs you are not thinking what i think you’re thinking.
YesIAmDaveyJacobs: what? it’s just a cooking class.
Plums and Roses: dave. you’ve been cooking since before you could walk. do you seriously not recognize how bad of an idea this is?
YesIAmDaveyJacobs: there’s no harm in brushing up on my basics.
YesIAmDaveyJacobs: please, kath?
Plums and Roses: fine. but i am not involved in this plan in any way, shape, or form, got it?
Plums and Roses: the beineke building. room 503, 5 pm every monday night.
Plums and Roses: if anyone asks, you heard this from specs.
YesIAmDaveyJacobs: yes ma’am.
The next Monday, Davey set out for the Beineke building.
As per usual, he worried the entire way. What if someone had mentioned the fact that he could cook to Jack? What if there wasn’t enough space in the class? What if he overplayed being bad at cooking and Jack decided he was pathetic? What if there was someone who was better at being charmingly incompetent? What if he was just being an idiot and needed to go home and watch Scandal reruns until he pulled his shit together and actually studied?
Then he walked in, and Jack turned around.
“Dave!” Jack grinned, and the corners of his eyes crinkled, and yeah, David Jacobs was a certifiable genius. “It’s so good to see you! Ready to smash?”
Davey blushed. Maybe he wasn’t in the right place after all. “Uh—”
“Some potatoes! We’re starting off with chopped chicken piccata and mashed potatoes,” Jack finished.
“Oh. Uh. Yea-yes! I love mashed potatoes!” Davey enthusiastically responded. Maybe a little too enthusiastically? Well, he couldn’t take it back now.
Jack raised one eyebrow. “Cool, okay. Grab an apron and wash your hands, I guess.”
Davey dutifully marched over to the apron rack, picking out a blue one with ducks on it. After washing his hands and finding the paper towel dispenser empty, he walked back over, wiping his hands on his apron as he went.
Jack laughed. Davey wanted to hear that sound for the rest of his godforsaken life. “Go to a cooking station. You can’t cook on thin air! The potatoes would all end up on the floor!”
Davey smiled, hoping it didn’t come out as a grimace. “The more you know,” he managed, and fled to the safest station he could find—not right next to the stoves, not right next to the guy sneezing, not right next to Jack. Davey may have been desperate, but he didn’t have a death wish.
“Alright, everybody! Now that we’re pretty much ready to go, I’d like to introduce myself. I’m Jack, I’m a third year here, and I, remarkably enough, like to cook. Why don’t we all go around and introduce ourselves, now that I think about it. It’ll be easier for me to help you that way,” Jack said, pointing at a tiny, nervous girl in the front row. “You first.”
“Uh—hi, I’m Smalls,” she began. “I’m a first year, I hate dorm food, and my suitemates are shit cooks so I decided to come here.”
Next was Romeo, a second year wanting to impress his latest fling, then Finch, a panicked fourth year who needed to learn to cook before his mom’s next visit.
Next thing Davey knew, everyone was looking expectantly at him, and he cleared his throat. “Hi, I’m David. Davey. I’m a third year, and I…” He faded off when he realized that he had precisely one reason for being there, and it wasn’t to learn how to cook. “I want to get to know someone better. And this, uh.” He paused. “They like cooking, so I thought…”
“Aw, you want to cook for your crush! How sweet!” Jack interrupted, noticing that Davey was at the end of his rope. Davey blushed bright red.
“Well, uh, yeah…” Davey froze.
“Why don’t we go to the next person. You!” Jack quickly redirected, pointing at the tall, lanky redhead at the station next to Davey’s.
“I’m Buttons, I’m a second year on exchange here, and I wanted to learn how Americans cook,” she said with a thick Scottish accent.
Once Jack figured out what Buttons had said, the twins at the last two stations piped up. “I’m Mike, I’m a second year, I want to be better than Ike.”
“I’m Ike, second, and superior in every form.”
Mike turned towards him. “Dude, shut the fuck up.”
Jack cut Ike off from retorting. “Allllllrighty then. So. Today, as I think I might’ve mentioned before, we’re making chopped chicken piccata with mashed potatoes. I know it sounds like a lot, but it’s a lot easier than it looks.” Gesturing toward the oversized picnic baskets placed on each station, he continued. “Everyone, please open up your baskets. You’ll find your ingredients inside—take them all out and put them on the counter, then put the basket away.”
Davey scrambled for a napkin to shove in his mouth and hide his laughter.
(He couldn’t help but laugh, though. Having lived through Jack’s Chopped binge, he knew exactly what was going on.)
Jack clearly noticed and frowned at Davey, wrinkling his nose. Davey protested through the napkin. “At least my hands aren’t contaminated.”
Jack scrunched his nose up. “You’re a fuckin’ punk, you know that?”
Someone made a little worried noise, and Jack suddenly looked alarmed. “I’ve known him for two centuries, I can say that.”
The class broke out in giggles, and Jack smiled before he looked back down to his own basket. “Let’s get started!” he exclaimed, opening its flaps. “First, you’re going to want to grab your chicken breasts. They’re in a sealed container for a reason: don’t open it yet. Does anyone here know why I did this?”
Davey paused. He knew the answer, having handled raw chicken frequently in his own cooking adventures, but his cover would be blown if Jack learned of his experience in the kitchen.
No one had raised their hand while Davey deliberated, so Jack continued on. “Raw chicken could potentially carry some pretty nasty bacteria like salmonella, so you need to handle it properly. Don’t touch your face, and make sure to wash everything that’s touched chicken once you’re done handling it—including your hands! Otherwise you might get food poisoning and that would really fuckin’ suck.”
“Understatement of the year,” Smalls mumbled audibly, making the class break out in laughter once more.
“Alright!” Jack shouted, regaining control of the class. “Are we clear? I can’t really afford to have anyone getting food poisoning on my watch.”
“Yes, Teacher Jack,” Romeo answered, grinning broadly.
“Fuck off, Romeo,” Jack quipped, causing another fit of giggles. “Okay. So you’re going to open up your chicken container and put the two breasts on the cutting board.”
Mike and Ike doubled over in laughter.
Jack rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, breasts, haha, we’ve all got them. Continuing on. Take that big knife—yes, Smalls, that knife—and cut each chicken breast into four strips.” Jack stepped away from his station to survey his students’ work. “Nice job, Buttons!”
Buttons made some sort of positive reply that Jack couldn’t quite understand. He gave her a thumbs up and returned to his station.
“Alright! Now that your chicken is sliced, you’re going to grab those little baggies of salt and pepper. Sprinkle some of each over each of your slices evenly —Ike, do you want to have one peppery slice? I didn’t think so—and set them back on the cutting board. This is called seasoning,” Jack instructed.
Davey wanted to roll his eyes. Of course he knew what seasoning was. What kind of cook would he be if he didn’t? Not only that, he’d be a disgrace to his family if he didn’t. He restrained himself from making the comment that, as a black Jew, he knew his fucking way around a spice rack.
Jack didn’t look up from the slices he was transferring. “Dave, you put your napkin in your mouth again and I’ll kill you.”
“I—how the fuck could you tell?”
“Dude. I can smell the smoke over here. Chill. Besides, you’d contaminate your napkin with all the chicken on your hands,” Jack replied. “Aaaand that brings me to my next point: I need you guys to go wash the chicken off your hands. We need to start boiling the potatoes if we want to have any hope of being able to mash them later.” Like a mother duck, Jack led his students towards the sink in the back, demonstrating proper handwashing technique. Davey couldn’t contain his goofy grin at how adorable Jack was.
He almost reached for his phone before he felt what he could only describe as the non-corporeal essence of Esther Jacobs slap the back of his hand.
Right. He wasn’t exempt from handwashing. Meekly, Davey stepped up to the sink and washed his hands for the required 20 seconds, humming “Happy Birthday” to himself to keep time.
Upon returning to his station, Davey dutifully pulled out a second cutting board (“So you don’t cross-contaminate your potatoes, Ike,” Jack had reprimanded) and began cubing his Yukon Golds. Dumping his (rather excessive) pile of potato pieces into his pot of boiling water, Davey followed Jack’s instructions through dredging and sautéing the chicken and making the sauce carefully. Not too carefully, though, so he wouldn’t get caught. He flew under the radar pretty easily once Jack got distracted when Mike’s potatoes started vanishing rapidly. Ike, suspiciously enough, was sporting more potatoes than hair.
“Okay, class!” Jack shouted once Ike’s head had been mostly returned to its previous potato-free state. “We’ve only got a few minutes left, so let’s plate our chicken piccata and mashed potatoes by packing it up to take home because we only have this room for a few more minutes and I can’t afford to rent it for any longer!” He pointed at the stack of mini-takeout boxes on the table near him. “We don’t have the big ones, so, uh. Bear with me, it’s gonna be a tight fit.”
Smalls raised her hand. “Mr. uh, Mr. Kelly. Could I, uh, politely ask how the fuck you expect us to fit this dish we just cooked into those boxes?”
Jack sighed. “Just do your best. These looked bigger in the photos on Amazon and they were pretty cheap, so I figured they’d be a good deal. And, I mean, they were, they just weren’t what I was…. Expecting.”
Romeo coughed out a laugh. “Have you never gotten takeout Chinese?”
Jack wrinkled his nose at him. “I’m not sad, like you. Package your food.”
Davey was the first to walk up to the teetering tower of boxes. Plucking three off the top of the stack, he turned and strutted back to his station, unaware that the tower was toppling behind him. The class broke out in guffaws. Davey assumed it was due to his confident posture until Buttons pointed behind him, doubled over in laughter. Profusely apologizing, Davey raced back to the pile of boxes and tried to help restack them. Jack batted away his hands, insisting that Davey “leave a job like this to the professional.”
Romeo patted Davey on the back as he walked back to his table, eventually just tilting his dishes to let the food slide directly into his containers, about half of it missing and landing on the counters. Davey opted for a more methodical approach, which meant he was still boxing up his food once everyone else had left for the night.
“How much longer are you gonna be here?” Jack inquired, startling Davey. “I can’t really afford to stay here much longer.”
“Oh! I—uh. Ha. Not too much longer,” Davey smoothly answered.
Jack stepped behind Davey’s station. “Let me help you,” he said, scooping mashed potatoes out of Davey’s pot and into the boxes. “Fuck! This is not a teachable moment! Here, you hold the spoon. I’ll guide you so you can do this on your own next time.”
Davey nearly melted into the floor when Jack held his hand on the spoon and the next empty box. Too soon, all of his takeout boxes were filled with chicken and potatoes and it was time to return to his cursed usual position of not having his hand held. Jack gave Davey a final smile and wave as he shut the door behind them. At least he could complain to Crutchie about how he would never end up with Jack over some damn good chicken piccata and mashed potatoes. (Damn good, but not Esther Jacobs standard. He could never tell her.)
After a long, chilly walk across campus back to his apartment, Davey slammed open the front door, ready to whine.
He dropped his takeout boxes in shock. There was Crutchie, alright. And that was Finch, freshly kissed, underneath him.