Work Text:
Nearly two months after Lemony Snicket successfully reunited Beatrice with her family, an intervening time he spent acting as Sunny’s sous chef, Sunny decided it was Snicket’s turn to cook.
“Snicket, you’re head chef tomorrow. What are we making?”
Snicket’s eyes went wide. Sunny had thought they would, thought he would know that it meant a great deal for her to let someone else take charge in her kitchen.
“I think I would like to roast a chicken,” Snicket replied after a long moment of careful internal deliberation. Sunny nodded, although she was a bit apprehensive; roasting a chicken was an easy thing to do poorly and she did not want to serve her family dry or rubbery chicken even if––especially if––she had not caused the mess herself. She relaxed when Snicket said they ought to go to the market now so he could salt the chicken the night before it would be cooked. He knew what he was doing. Sunny, rationally, already knew this––she would not have allowed him to take charge otherwise––but it was a comforting thing to have confirmed.
Sunny watched as Snicket shuffled through the contents of the pantry, making notes on a clean page of his commonplace book to track the ingredients he would need to purchase. His tendency to write in shorthand that she couldn’t read bothered her. When Sunny had asked, Klaus had said it wasn’t real shorthand so she couldn’t learn it on her own. She would have to ask Snicket about it, but she didn’t want to let on that it bothered her. She was sure he knew.
She asked Violet, who was studying a sheaf of blue prints with her hair tied up, to borrow the car. Even though she was absorbed in her upcoming invention, Violet deliberately handed the keys directly to Snicket. He smiled when he noticed Sunny’s frown.
“It’s only appropriate for twelve year olds to drive during a serious emergency where no adults are present. That is not the case in this instance,” he said in his low, dry voice. It made Sunny smile. Snicket didn’t say anything when she sat in the front seat so she could scan through the radio channels, hunting for cooking shows, even though Violet and Klaus always said she was still to small for it to be safe.
The Baudelaire’s lived quite a distance from the nearest town––a long drive in the ancient, rattly vehicle that was, at this point, more odds and ends Violet had pieced together than conventional automobile. Sunny and Snicket passed the time in easy silence, focused on the radio as a woman explained the secret to making light and fluffy gnocchi. Sunny made notes in the back of Snicket’s commonplace book. She hadn’t quite asked permission, but she had held her pen over the paper pointedly and waited for Snicket to nod in assent before she started to write. Snicket pulled up in front of the market and let the car idle until the program was finished. He glanced over Sunny’s notes as they walked inside.
“No potatoes?” Sunny asked as Snicket picked out brussel sprouts.
“I intended to make egg noodles,” he replied. It was not a question but there was a hesitancy to his voice, like he wanted her approval.
“Egg noodles are better than potatoes, also more work but I have nothing more pressing to do tomorrow,” she smiled, showing all her teeth. They were not the same teeth as she had when Snicket had written about her and her siblings, but they were still sharper and pointier than average.
Snicket didn’t quite smile but he looked pleased. They quickly gathered the rest of the ingredients on Snicket’s list, until it came time to select the chicken and they walked across the street to the butcher. Sunny stood back and watched as Snicket rattled of an exacting list of preferences for his chicken to the butcher. Sunny wondered if it had taken practice for Snicket to pitch his voice in the exact right way for it to seem low and quiet but still be clearly audible even in a noisy butcher shop or if it came naturally to him. The evidence pointed towards the former—he had grown louder, more dramatic and less carefully restrained, the longer he spent in the Baudelaire’s home. He was not, Sunny thought, as naturally repressed as he pretended to be.
Chicken procured, they made their way back to the Baudelaire residence. Sunny wandered towards her favorite chair in the library, page carefully torn from the back of Snicket’s commonplace book, leaving him to season the chicken and put away the rest of the groceries. She wanted to compare the technique against some of her favorite recipes and formulate a plan to creatively reheat and present last night’s leftovers for this evening’s dinner. She would help Snicket tomorrow.
Late in the afternoon the next day, Sunny sat at the kitchen table alternating between leafing through a cookbook and watching Snicket who was wearing the reading glasses he only wore when he needed to read particularly small print, shuffling through a pile of newspaper clippings, and making notes in his commonplace book. The chicken was nestled in its cast iron skillet (which was a new trick Sunny had not seen before) in the piping hot oven, the brussel sprouts were halved and sitting in a large bowl with olive oil, salt, and finely chopped garlic waiting to be poured out on a cookie sheet and baked, and the noodle dough rested on the counter covered in its plastic wrap (Sunny had helped Snicket knead the dough when they started their cooking project almost an hour ago).
She looked up from the cookbook to consult the schedule Snicket had drawn up; it wasn’t encoded. He was taking this very seriously, calculating to serve dinner on time. He had flipped the chicken over so the skin would crisp on both sides ten minutes ago, so it was time to put the brussel sprouts in the oven and then roll out the noodles.
Snicket took off his glasses, clearly of a similar mind. “Sunny, would you mind putting the brussel sprouts in the oven? They can go on the bottom rack under the chicken.”
“I wouldn’t mind. I would mind so little that I’ll do it right now,” Sunny replied. Snicket seemed to appreciate when she indulged in being a little bit obnoxious and precocious. The better she got to know him, the more she suspected this was because being obnoxious and precocious was something he liked to indulge in as well, on occasion. As old as he was, and as dead as his siblings were, he was still a youngest sibling like herself. Snicket smiled, gathering the detritus of his research into a neat pile and then wiping down the water spotted woodblock table with a damp, clean rag.
Sunny slid the brussel sprouts into the oven and went to retrieve the two rolling pins from their place near the largely unused food processor as Snicket carried the bag of flour and large blob of noodle dough to the table. Snicket divided the dough into six pieces and the pair began to roll it out in silence. It wasn’t terribly difficult as the dough was the proper soft and springy texture but it took a great deal of focus, as people who did not regularly make noodles by hand, to keep the pieces even and rectangular.
They were ready to cut the rolled out dough into noodle sized pieces when Sunny said, “I know what’s in the sugar bowl.”
“I knew I picked the right Baudelaire sibling as my favorite,” Snicket said sardonically. “Do you feel any better for knowing?”
“I feel better for having figured it out.”
“How do you know you’re right?”
“It’s obvious, isn’t it? Most people just don’t want it to be true.” Snicket smiled a sad smile, so Sunny bared her teeth at him until his smile met his eyes—that was why Sunny was his favorite, not because she was too clever for her own good.
Snicket frowned slightly. “You remind me of myself at your age.”
“Is that a complement, an insult, or a warning?” Sunny asked with feigned nonchalance, as she returned to slicing the noodle dough horizontally and then vertically to produce small rectangles.
Snicket twisted the noodles and pile them on a lightly floured tea towel. “I couldn’t say. I suppose that depends on how you hope the rest of your life will go.”
“I suppose I’m too young to know that.”
“You’re smarter than I was. There’s hope for you yet.” Snicket smiled in a quiet way that was more in the eyes than the slight quirk of his mouth and crouched down to peer through the glass pane of the oven door. He nodded, mostly to himself, and prepared the water for the noodles with a liberal amount of salt. Sunny moved easily around Snicket, tidying up the ingredients and tools they had finished using.
“People sometimes ask me why I love to cook. What do you say when people ask you that?”
Snicket frowned slightly. “I say that it is both creative and relaxing, and cooking produces food, so it is a valuable skill to cultivate.”
“That’s not why though, is it?”
“No, I would bet that you know why, that it is the same for you as it is for me,” he said without looking at Sunny.
“Some things are worth saying out loud,” Sunny replied, feeling uncertain for the first time in her dealings with Snicket.
He stood, put on a pair of oven mitts, carefully removed the skillet containing the chicken from the oven, and placed it to rest on the stove top. They both gazed at it; it looked marvelously crispy. “I love to cook because when words are not enough, serving a home cooked meal is the best way I know of that one can show how much one cares for another person.”
Sunny felt a lump grow in her throat, so she reached out and squeezed his hand and he looked down and gave her a wobbly smile.
“I’m glad that you’re here,” she said.
“I am as well.”