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“I do believe you’re supposed to break the pasta up first before you put it in—otherwise, how will it ever fit in the pot?”
“Take it back, right now .”
Heathcliff is fucking sweating. Goddamn, how hard is it to follow a simple recipe? There were two of them in the room frantically running amok, reading this damn cookbook back and forth and upside down, checking everything once, twice, and thrice to make sure that everything was running smoothly; surely, statistically, something about this should have been going well, but in practice, it turns out that two stupid heads are, in fact, not better than one. It just becomes stupid squared.
Anyways, he knows that apparently you are definitely not supposed to break the pasta ( it’s like, the number one sin of cooking or whatever. they were probably consequently breaking sins two, three, and whatever came afterward, but at least they could do with keeping one of them intact ), but Hong Lu’s words were certainly clicking with him in some way. How else were they supposed to get the noodles to fit in the pot? What else were they supposed to do?
“Hmph, none of this would be even happening in the first place if we had just made our own noodles; then the size and everything would be to our liking, and we wouldn’t have to worry about what fits and what doesn’t,” Hong Lu sighs, leaning against the counter, his apron splattered with sauce as if he had just left a delicious war zone.
“Piss off, you prat. Make pasta? With what? Our bloody hands?” Heathcliff groans, getting exasperated, but it’s not like he wasn’t already at his wit's end to begin with, so it’s more like a drop in the ocean of horrible embarrassing rage he’s feeling. It’s not like this was his first time cooking or anything, he used to make instant ramen all the time when he was living by himself. They were adults. They should be able to handle this. What idiots can’t boil pasta? ( these ones, apparently. )
Hong Lu pouts, huffing displeasedly and looking away while crossing his arms. “My family’s home chef has a really great pasta machine.”
“We have neither a home chef nor a pasta machine.”
“…well, we should!”
Heathcliff has no clue why they were put in charge of dinner that night ( when the sinners set up that chore wheel, they probably should have taken their names off of the activities that simply wouldn’t get done or would be completely ruined by the end of the night had they actually worked on it. the whole bus was still facing the consequences of Faust trying to clean up the place by scrubbing it down with bleach ), but they can’t exactly back out now that they’re this deep in it, can they? They said they were gonna cook, so they’re gonna do it. No takesies-backsies.
“All we got in this god-forsaken kitchen is an oven and an air fryer,” he growls, slamming the door of the broken microwave shut. Not like he could damage it any worse than it already was—the bloody thing was practically falling off of its hinges.
“Mm, perhaps we could simply air fry the pasta, then? I think the container is big enough to fit the noodles without having to break them…” Hong Lu muses, and Heathcliff grabs his hand to stop him from sitting on the counter because, like, they still had to work on that thing before they could even think about resting. Hong Lu squeezes his hand for a moment before smiling again. “I mean, they’re pretty much the same thing aren’t they?”
“…what? A pasta machine and an air fryer? What the hell are you smoking?” Heathcliff asks, incredulously, unceremoniously dropping the other man’s hand to cross his arms.
“Well, for both of them, you put in one non-edible food, and then after a while, a new, completely edible food comes out!”
“…I don’t think you’re supposed to eat the pasta fresh out of the pasta maker, mate.”
“Oh, really? Hmm, but it’s worked out for me so far~” Hong Lu responds, a dopey smile plastered all over his face, and Heathcliff thinks he’s finally figured out what’s wrong with this guy. The salmonella must have somehow reached his brain.
“You…!—agh, never mind,” Heathcliff grumbles, scratching the back of his neck and turning back to the bowl in front of him. He’s been trying to mix this sauce together for the past half an hour, but nothing seems to be going right. I mean, all you have to do is mix flour, cheese, and cream, and then heat it up a little, right? But this…this bowl looks all clumpy and weird and honestly, he fucking loves food, but he’s still afraid to taste-test this one. He doesn’t think it’s supposed to be bubbling this much either; this isn’t a goddamn chemistry class. Instead, Heathcliff lifts up the bowl with the tips of his fingers ( eugh, he doesn’t even want this thing anywhere near him. he definitely messed up somewhere, but where? ) and shows it to Hong Lu, grimacing. “…you wanna have a bite?” he says, although he thinks he already knows the answer.
Hong Lu only smiles dreamily back at him, fluttering his eyelashes gently. “No, thank you. It looks disgusting~” he chirps in response.
Heathcliff sighs, walking over to a nearby trash can and scraping the contents of the bowl out into it. “Even you think so, huh?” he grumbles, deciding to just toss the entire bowl away. They could always get a new one, and he didn’t think there was any saving it at this point. “Haah, we should have just bought some pasta sauce when we were out shopping. I mean, we got the noodles just fine.”
“Ehh, but you were the one who was so insistent on making the sauce himself~”
“Bugger off.”
Hong Lu hums a bit, before breaking the pasta strands in half and tossing them into the pot of boiling water. So much for trying to do at least one thing right, but at this point, they might as well just be trying to get something that was sort of edible on everyone else’s plate. And hey, if they fuck it up badly enough, maybe everyone will agree to take their names off of the dinner-making part of the chore wheel. “What are we making, anyways?” Hong Lu chimes in, and Heathcliff wants to strangle him a little bit, but he holds himself back because he doesn’t want to be the only one left who has to take the blame for doing all this.
“Uhh,” he starts, flipping through the pages of the book to find the place that they had started out with ( they took a lot of breaks throughout the process to see if they could find an easier recipe. however, given how far they had gotten, no matter how badly they were doing, this always proved to be a futile effort if only due to the fact that they didn’t want to start over at this point ). “Spaghetti carbonara.”
“Ehh, then what are you doing making sauce for, anyway? It’s just eggs and oil, isn’t it?”
“What? Really?” Heathcliff murmurs, checking the page again to see that it does not, in fact, ask for him to make a cream sauce of any kind. What the hell has he been doing for the past half an hour? He’s about to rip this damn book apart.
Hong Lu giggles a little bit, stirring the pot. “Ah, then, can you beat some eggs? We’ll need them for the actual dish.”
As much as Heathcliff wants to scream and crush the entire carton in his hands, he relents. “Yeah, I’m good at beating things,” he says, cracking four eggs into a bowl and whisking them up ( there’s a little bit of shell, but he’s sure it’s fine. who doesn’t like a little crunch? no one will even notice among all the other shit that they have to put in this thing ) until they’ve been thoroughly mixed, and then adds some of the cheese that he didn’t end up shredding into that horrible awful sauce from earlier. “Well. It’s not as chunky as the last one, so that’s gotta be a good sign, right?”
“Mmhm, probably…” Hong Lu says, reaching over and stirring the broken noodles every once in a while. “Ah, I should probably sautee all the other stuff while I’m at it…” he muses, throwing the chopped-up pancetta ( heh, if there’s one thing the two of them could do right, it would be cutting things up nice and fine ) and garlic into a pan, drizzling it with a bit of olive oil. Then, he turns back to the pot of boiling noodles, which is beginning to get dangerously close to bubbling over. “When am I supposed to take these out?”
“Uhh, when they’re ‘al dente’, whatever that means…”
“Um…” Hong Lu says, taking out a few of the noodles and watching them fall apart, just from being picked up with the tongs. “Ah…that’s probably cooked through enough…” he says, doing his best to move the…noodles…from the pot to a bunch of bowls they had set up previously. “Okay, I think you’re supposed to pour in the eggs while it’s still hot…”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m workin’ on it,” Heathcliff sighs, bringing his bowl over and combining the contents with all the other ones. “We probably should have done this in one big bowl before separating them.”
“Oh, but that would take so long, and I don’t exactly want to be in here any longer than I have to.”
“Well, you said it, not me,” he grumbles, beginning to stir each bowl, in turn, to ensure that everyone got their fair share ( and also to make sure that no one would be chowing down on some raw egg. but, with the way they did things, he didn’t have any way to really make sure of that, so he guessed that he would just avoid the bowls he stirred last when he was serving ). “Huh. Doesn’t look…too rank…” he mumbles, staring down at the various concoctions that could barely be called food lying out in front of them. Holy shit, they really did suck at this. I mean, he even tried his best and everything—he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t a little disappointed. But he doesn’t have time to dwell on that, because he smells something burning, and turns over to the stovetop. “Uh, Hong Lu, aren’t you supposed to be, y’know, stirring those?” he says, gesturing towards the pan of meat and garlic that were certainly becoming much more charred than they ought to be.
“Oh! Waah!?” Hong Lu exclaims as he dashes over to turn off the stove, noticing the smoke rising from the pan. “Ah—hmm…” he says, furrowing his eyebrows while staring across the burnt mess of pancetta and garlic. “We don’t have any more of these…do we?” he says, looking back at the floury, egg-shelly mess that lays across the kitchen countertop.
“Hmm…” Heathcliff grumbles in response, holding up the empty bag that once housed all of the pancetta. “Nope, I think you used all of it…”
“Ah, what a predicament…” Hong Lu groans, picking up the pan. “Well, I guess this will have to do then…” he mumbles, disappointedly sprinkling the contents evenly across the bowls of pasta. “Um, we can just say that they were extraordinarily well done…” he says, smiling a little bit and trying to lighten the mood. Heathcliff is mostly just glad because now, if anyone complains about eggshells in their food, he can just say it was a piece of burnt garlic or something.
“Well,” Heathcliff starts, stretching out backward and patting down the more horribly ruined parts of his apron. “Looks like we’re done then,” he finishes, staring at the mess they made of the kitchen. “Well, good thing we’re not on cleaning duty, I guess,” he says, nudging the other man a little, who just chuckles in response.
“Yes—quite the good thing. Though, I do feel a bit bad for whoever has to clean up after us, what with the horrible food poisoning we’re about to give them and all,” He hums, before smiling again. “Although, not bad enough to take care of it myself~”
Heathcliff laughs a little bit, about to run his hands through his hair before physically stopping himself because those things were just covered in flour and cream, and he’d rather not muck himself up any more than he already had. Instead, he wipes them down as best as he can and then looks out at the glorious meal they have finished preparing. “I don’t know about you, mate, but I’m sure as hell not eating any of that.”
“Are you kidding? Golly, I wouldn’t even feed it to my dog~”
“Maybe we should run away while we still can.”
“Oh, I can make them look a little more presentable to buy us some time—just have to move all of the little burnt pieces and eggshells to the bottom, and they won’t even notice until it’s too late; we’ll be long gone by then.”
“Hah, yeah…” he says, trailing off a bit before throwing off his apron. “Let’s set everything up, and then go out and get something to eat.”
“HamHamPangPang?” Hong Lu gasps a little as he gingerly places the bowls across the table in a way that sort of makes them look appetizing. Almost.
“HamHamPangPang,” Heathcliff says, sneaking out the back with Hong Lu following suit. They’d deal with all that later, no matter how many angry (or, maybe dead, because if any cooking could kill, it would be theirs) the rest of the sinners would get. Maybe they’d leave them behind, or interrupt their dinner date just to smash their heads in. Either way, they were the ones who were going to be eating good food, if just for a little bit, so who’s the real winner here?
Definitely the guys who were getting out of cooking duty for the rest of their lives.