Work Text:
There are a very long list of things that Gregor dislikes in this world. Most of them are incredibly serious, and some not at all. One of his least favorite things in the world, however, is when people offer to help him cook. And, unfortunately, at this moment, it’s relevant.
As he’s just starting, another Sinner is hovering nearby, peeking from behind a wall. “Greg~ can I help?” Rodya asks, fluttering her eyelashes at him in a way that’s going to work if she does it enough. They both know this, but it’s a worthy fight regardless.
He gives her a flat look. “No. Get out.”
“Boo~” She says, and instead takes a seat nearby. Gregor sighs, resigned. “What’re you making?”
“Food, hence why I’m in the kitchen.”
“You know what I mean, baby.” She crosses her legs, one over the other, watching him through narrowed eyes. Her lips are curled up at the edges, amused. For one thing, Gregor doesn’t like being watched. For another, he hates when people linger around and backseat cook. Still, it’s not likely she’ll go away just because he asks, so he may as well resign himself to his fate.
“You’re gonna hang around, so you’ll find out eventually.” He grunts, pulling the apron over his head. It catches on his ponytail, and he frees it with his right hand. Rodya hums across from him and motions him over. He complies, and when he approaches, she deftly ties the strings of his apron into a bow, tied in the front. “...thanks.” He says, a little reluctantly. It would’ve been fine to tie it in the back, wouldn’t it?
As if reading his mind, she chuckles with her mouth behind her hand, Gregor seeing only a flash of her scarlet lipstick, “It’s cuter that way. It suits you.”
He turns away. “Yeah yeah, whatever you say.” He disagrees, and hates when she says shit like that. But again, there wasn’t much he could do about it, so he may as well just resign himself to his fate… again.
This next part he doesn’t need help with, washing his hand and not-quite-hand thoroughly with soap. Once he’s done, he wraps a plastic tarp around his right arm and secures it with a rubber band. Rodya gives a thoughtful, questioning hum. “Sanitary reasons. Most people don’t feel like eatin’ when this cooked it,” he gestures with his not-quite arm. “Better safe than hearing them complain.”
“Hong Lu’s the only one who really complains.” Rodya offers, and Gregor shrugs.
“Eh, it’s fine. Doesn’t make a huge difference, and makes cleanup faster anyways.” He’d already washed everything going into the stew earlier, now it was just a matter of chopping them. He starts with the potatoes, placing them down and slicing them vertically, and then into cubes. He keeps the skin on; he’d scrubbed it, and it had more nutrients than without the skin. After that, the carrots, the garlic, and then the onions, although he crinkles up his nose and ducks his face back a bit, willing himself not to sniffle.
“Aw~ did something make you sad?”
“Shut it,” he replies, and ignores her. With all of the produce cut, he slices open the plastic packaging of chicken thighs and unceremoniously drops it into a heated pan. There’s a bit of oil sizzling in there already, and he leans to the side to avoid the splash. He sprinkles a decent amount of salt and a generous amount of pepper over the chicken thighs, alongside shaking a few dashes of garlic powder in the pan. As it starts to cook, he starts to heat up a large pot, dropping some butter in there. Once it’s melted, he drops in an equal amount of flour.
It just needs a bit of browning, not much. There didn’t need to be that rich of a flavor, nor did it require particular depth. As he waits for it to brown, stirring a few times, he quickly switches gears and flips the chicken over, salting, peppering, and sprinkling some garlic powder on the other side. And then he continues with watching the roux, and he can feel eyes on him, so he turns, looking at Rodya from the corner of his eye.
“What?”
“Nothing, I was just thinking you’re a good cook~” She replies, voice sing-song-y. “And you switch between this and that well, given your arm.” She gestures, and Gregor feels something inside of him twitch unpleasantly. He supposes it’s better she’s straightforward about it, rather than dancing around it like some of the other Sinners or their Manager does. But it was strange, foreign: not unwelcome, though, he’s willing to admit.
“Thanks. Had enough practice to get decent at it.” And it’s true, he had. He wasn’t always deft with his left hand, he just needed to be down the line. Gregor had been able to at least passably use it before he found himself needing to, but that didn’t make adapting to the emotional aspect of it all that easier. When he first tried cooking again, it was a disaster. He had no idea how to hold anything, how much weight to press down his not-quite arm on whatever he was trying to cut, and cutting out the muscle memory of trying to catch things with his formerly dominant arm had been a messy nightmare. Never accidentally drop a peach and try to catch it unless you want its innards to coat your damn kitchen.
“Must’ve been hard,” Rodya says, sympathetically. Gregor doesn’t know how to reply to that so he doesn’t; sympathy feels too much like pity and pity feels too much like judgment, scorn, disgust.
There’s that horrid buzzing inside of his brain again, like cicadas in the summer. The vibrations come from underneath his skin like something was buried underneath trying to burst out. He takes a breath. Gregor knows he needs to calm down, to level his breathing, to stop thinking about sympathy, pity, disgust, scorn, vermin, vermin, vermin. His hand shakes, and he tightens his grip on the whisk he’s using to stir the roux. It’s dark enough now, so with a pair of tongs, he fishes out the onions from the pile of produce and drops them in alongside half of the remaining garlic.
He cooks them until the onions are semi-translucent, and then uncaps and starts to pour in the chicken broth—two cartons of chicken broth, two cartons of chicken bone broth. He stabs a hole diagonal from the opening; doing so stops that irritating staccato glug glug of the liquid inside and enables smoother pouring. It was a handy trick he’d learned in his many years of cooking. Gregor stirs it until the roux’s fully dissolved.
He flicks the burner for the chicken off, and pulls them out of the pan and places them on a prepared cutting board. Thankfully, they had more than one, so he could leave the vegetables to the side and have a separate cutting board for the chicken to eliminate the chances of cross-contamination. Pressing the tip of his plastic covered not-quite arm against the chicken, he slowly starts to carve it into bite sized pieces. He does this for all of the chicken until it’s all shredded, and he keeps it to the side.
Now that the liquid in the pot was starting to bubble, he takes the cutting board with the produce on it and slowly slides it all in, carefully so he doesn’t spill any of it on the ground or the stove. He stirs it carefully, and lets go of the wooden spoon he’d switched to using to start seasoning. Some more salt, black pepper, white pepper, an understandably generous amount of thyme, onion powder, garlic powder, and then just a dash of paprika and cayenne. Some of the other Sinners couldn’t stand spice, and if they wanted it, they could just add hot sauce to their own portions.
“What about the chicken?” Rodya asks, who’s been watching surprisingly quietly this whole time.
“Gonna add it near the end,” Gregor replies, pulling the rubber band off of his not-quite arm, and throwing away the plastic. He starts clean up, stopping to stir the bubbling stew every now and then. Once he’s finished, he shuts off the faucet with a sigh, shaking the water off and drying the rest with a towel. “Right. Now we just gotta wait a while.”
She seems to have been waiting for this, what with the way her right foot starts tapping against the ground with excitement, her eyes sparkling like the coins she was so fond of. She uncrosses her legs and pats her lap. Gregor stares her down, unamused. “C’mon!” She says, voice pleading. She furrows her eyebrows and pouts at him, willing crocodile tears.
“That’s not gonna work.” He sighs. They both know that’s a lie, so Gregor sighs again and stares up at the ceiling, and reluctantly climbs into her lap, Rodya immediately resting her chin in the crook of his shoulder and nuzzling him. “Geez. Clingy.”
“Do you hate it?” She asks, momentarily pausing her copious nuzzling to press crimson kisses on his cheek. He wants to wipe it away, feeling his face heat up, and turns his face away so she can’t see his expression. “Gregor~?”
“...never said I hated it.” He replies, sounding reluctant. “Do as you’d like. ‘Cept, stop leaving those damn marks on me.”
Rodya laughs, loud and boisterous. Like she doesn’t have a care in the world. “You don’t need to be so shy about it, you know? That color looks nice on you.” And then, in a way that feels almost smug, she kisses the back of his neck, and he flinches, instinctively covering his temples with his hands. “Oh, they popped out.”
“Fuck off!” He starts to try and scramble out of her lap, feeling embarrassment and shame color his cheeks the same shade on the nape of his neck, now, but Rodya simply tightens her grip on him, giggling like a schoolgirl all the while. Once he stops struggling, she covers both of his hands with her own, holding them in hers. She traces comforting circles into the back of his palm, and the back of his not-hand. She doesn’t… ever seem to mind it, but she doesn’t shy away from it, either.
“It smells good,” she hums, returning to rest her head on his shoulder. He leans his head on hers, closing his eyes. “What is it?”
“I already said you’ll find out,” he replies, slowly relaxing. The soup just needs to cook for a while, and it really doesn’t need to be stirred until when he checks the doneness of the potatoes and drops the chicken in. There’s a comfortable silence between them for a while, until Gregor breaks it, speaking softly, “...hope you like it, though.”
Rodya laughs, and presses another kiss to his cheek. He doesn’t complain this time. “I’m sure I will, baby. Thank you. You’ve done such a good job cooking~”
“Hm,” he grunts, and accepts the compliment without complaint and keeps his protests inside. When enough time has passed, he gets up from her lap even though she complains and dumps the shredded chicken in. It doesn’t take long after that for the soup to be done, and Gregor dips a wide spoon in and blows on the steam until it’s cooled down enough. It’s the perfect bite, with just enough of the thick broth, a bit of vegetables, some potato and some chicken. He offers it to Rodya, who happily takes it, having him feed her. “...well?”
Her eyes are sparkling, and she all but leaps on him, lifting him up and nearly crushing him in her affectionate grip. She cups his face in his hands and kisses him on the lips. “I want to eat this forever~!”
Gregor wriggles in her grip. “You’d get tired of the same shit forever. Put me down.” She complies, setting him down with a wide smile. “Ugh, well… glad y’like it, Rodya.”
She swipes the spoon from him and dips it in the soup, ignoring Gregor’s protests about using the same spoon twice. Blowing the steam away, she offers a spoonful to him just as he did her. He stares at her, blinking, before sighing, resigning himself to his fate of being fed like this for however long he made meals for her and the rest of the Sinners.
“...it’s not bad.” Gregor admits, and can’t help a soft laugh, accompanied by a barely-there smile.