Chapter Text
It was a nuisance, really. Dashed inconvenient if he was perfectly honest. It’s why Aziraphale preferred to go out to restaurants rather than to cook at home. It wasn’t that he wasn’t any good at cooking, on the contrary, he had carefully studied various great chefs around the world over the millennia and held a treasure trove of recipes, all neatly filed away in his meticulous head, but…
All was fine provided he stayed relaxed and enjoyed himself while preparing a delectable meal, but he’d tried once actually learning in a kitchen alongside a volatile French chef (are there any other kind? The world of haute cuisine is pretty cut throat). He found he didn’t have the disposition for a busy working kitchen, not at all.
Tempers flared, people shouted, barged, and wouldn’t hesitate to flick the point of a knife in your direction if you stepped out of line and into their work area. Aziraphale didn’t have the nerves to put up with such a high pressure atmosphere, even if it was only in order to learn how to create the most sublime dishes that he could try to surprise Crowley with later.
The demon, like his serpent aspect, rarely ate, perhaps once a month, and the angel suspected he mostly only did so to keep him company, to make him feel better, or so he wouldn’t feel guilty having a dessert at a restaurant alone. It was less sinful to have a pudding if someone else was as well. He knew fine well that the demon’s lust wasn’t fired by the eating of food, like his own, but by the observation of someone else, well, a certain someone else, ok, Aziraphale, consuming it.
Nonetheless, he wanted to learn, so he persevered for a time, until it was clear that it was no longer a good idea.
The point at which he found that out was whilst working as a junior commis-chef in training under aforementioned volatile French Chef in Paris, sometime around the mid 1800s. It was the Chef de partie barging past him for the umpteenth time that evening that did it. Mid way through dicing some carrots, the wickedly sharp blade in the angel’s hand burst into celestial fire as his anger overflowed.
Aziraphale dropped it, startled, and had the presence of mind to flick it across into the sink quenching the fire hopefully before anyone noticed. Not that random gouts of flame were a rarity in a busy kitchen as dishes were flambéed and spitting fat caught alight here and there. He quickly and carefully retrieved the extinguished knife from the soapy water – you soon learn never to leave sharps in the sink lest the groping fingers that reached in there next were your own. Rule 1.
He stood at his work station, uncertain what to do. He had to take a breather but there was no chance of that, they were on a deadline. A faint tinge of just-past-caramelised onions caught his consciousness and he almost swore, having nearly forgotten the pan on the hob next to him, he reached for it just as the bastard Michel the chef de partie barged past him again – he was clearly doing it on purpose. As he did the entire PAN in Aziraphale’s hand lit up with celestial fire. Not the contents, the handle and all. Oh heavens above.
He quit that afternoon.
But even when at home he found out, if he became stressed, if something wasn’t going quite right, like when he dropped an entire bag of rice on the floor, grains skittering everywhere across the floorboards, and the fork in his hand burst into flame in exasperation.
Or when writing a particularly vitriolic letter giving some fairly stern words to another book dealer who had gazumped him in a most underhanded fashion on a series of rare tomes that he’d already agreed a deal on with the seller, when his fountain pen caught alight, flaring the paper into ash under it. It was probably for the best, it wasn’t very angelic behaviour to send such a letter anyway, he reconsidered and with a sigh, decided to forgive the terrible human.