Work Text:
“What are you doing in my kitchen this time?” Foreman confronted Taub.
Taub, in sweats, a ragged t-shirt and a flour-covered apron, turned to Forman “Su casa e me casa, you say, right?”
“Listen, I may have said that I am chill with things after you poisoned me—“
“Us” interrupted Taub. “You may remember that I was just as miserable?”
“last week,” Foreman continued. “But that pretty much went with something of an agreement that you understand no repeat performances of that. So, what are you doing in my kitchen this time?”
“Making hamentaschen. I make them for Rachel every year. It’s something that my mom and I always did, and that I kept on doing. Rachel was never much of a cook. Great with a take-out menu, even better with reservation systems, never seen a maitre d' she couldn’t sweet-talk, but not so much with the actual cooking.”
“I believe that this is what our mothers referred to as ‘baking,’” clarified Foreman. And you are covering the entire kitchen with what, exactly?” His eyes again went over his beautiful granite countertops oozing with various colors of jam and smears of what looked like sugar cookies.
“Hamentaschen. Cookies. Purim. Jewish holiday thing.”
“And your plan is to bring these to her?”
“Yes. I always have. It’s something we do.”
“You do realize that you’ve been beyond ‘we’ for a while now. You know she’s moved on. You can’t expect these things to stay the same.”
“That is exactly what tradition is,” expounded Taub. “I don’t hold by many traditions, but this is one.”
“Suit yourself, but as a friend, Chris, I’m telling you: you have to move on. And you’ve got to stop messing around in this kitchen. Don’t forget to clean up!”
With that, Foreman finished fixing his tie, ducked through the mess to grab his coffee and headed to the front door. Something didn’t quite feel right under his feet. After scraping the dough off his foot onto the matt, he yelled back at Taub. “Taub. You are also buying me a new matt!”
Foreman tried to put Taub’s culinary misadventures and romantic woes out of his mind as he headed to Princeton-Planesboro. With the continuing saga of House and Cuddy, focusing on the cases was even harder that usual these days. There was also a limit of what he could do for his friend.
Taub showed up later than usual that day. He slid his chair in under the table and, with an air of resignation, pulled out a large container wrapped in colored plastic wrap.
“Are those Hamentschen for me?” exclaimed House.
"Peter Jacobson at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival." David Shankbone, via Wikimedia Commons http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Peter_Jacobson_at_the_2009_Tribeca_Film_Festival.jpg 22April2009