Work Text:
“What is this?”
He's unloading all the groceries onto her counter while she examines the ingredients.
She's wearing pink shorts, with stripes up the sides, and he's already distracted beyond belief. The old sweatshirt she's wearing almost swallows her up. It must be her dad's. And all her hair is piled up on her head tied with a scrunchie. He still hasn't told her he kept one.
Maybe today will finally be the day?
“You're killing me, smalls,” he says to her, as she starts to dig into the bag to look at the rest of the ingredients.
“I'm living my own s'mores scene right now,” she tells him with a grin. “Sandlot kid?”
“Was that really optional?” he asks her.
“There's definitely a broth involved.”
“You're so impatient,” he tells her, tipping his chin at her, moving the bag behind him on the counter. She's been at it all week trying to guess what he's making. She presses her lips together, locking eyes with him, searching his.
“It's definitely a broth,” she says with a half-smile, trying to get him to cough it up. “You're here way too early, and there's protein with bones in that bag.”
“You'll find out, in about eight hours,” he answers, cocky. “Show me around your kitchen, though.”
“Come on, you know how I keep things,” she teases, starting to open and shut cabinets so he can see where everything is. She's not wearing shoes, either. He didn't notice when he brought the bags in.
“Should I take my shoes off?” he asks now.
“No, unless you just want to be a filthy American,” she says with a grin, as he rolls his eyes and walks past her to the front door again to slip out of his sneakers and socks. When he comes back, she's in the bag again, unloading things and examining them.
“Pasta. Raviolo. Lemon and ricotta.”
“Get out of here,” he says to her, bumping her with his hip before he dives into a cabinet to bring out a large pot.
“Oh. This wine looks nice. I'll put it in the fridge,” she says, going to chill it. “It's really from Sicily?”
“Yeah, turns out I have a connect,” he says, starting to unwrap the butcher paper and place the chicken and beef inside the pot before he fills it with water at the sink.
“Is that just your way of saying your mom?”
“No. Unc, actually,” he goes on, setting the pot on the stove. “He gave it to me. I think he's trying to date my mom.”
He turns to look at her when she doesn't answer, but her mouth is open and she finally remembers to shut the fridge door. “That actually makes so much sense.” He follows her with his eyes as she circles him to come back around to him on the other side. “Yes,” she answers at his disbelieving look. “I wish my dad would date.”
“What's your dad like?” he asks, after a few beats, getting out a knife and rough chopping some mirepoix on the countertop. “I mean, what does he like?”
“Warm. Funny. Competent. Wait. Scratch that. Maybe a little better than him, is what he’d say anyway,” she tells him with a sweet smile.
“So...perfect,” he says with a nod.
“That's sort of how we remember her,” she tells him with a sigh, her eyebrows drawing together. “Never saw them fight, you know?”
“No, I don't,” he answers with a puff of laughter. She sucks her teeth at him, and then gets in his way again to gather the vegetables out from under him and put them in the pot.
“Here I thought I was cooking for you,” he mentions softly. Not that he's complaining about her being here in the kitchen with him. It just feels nice.
It feels nice to cook just for her.
“It's always nice to have an extra pair of hands,” she tells him. “Especially if they know what you're making them.” She wiggles her eyebrows at him, making him laugh. “You started the water cold.”
“It requires more patience this way.”
She makes a scoffing noise at that as he adds the aromatics.“Must need a lot of skimming.”
“About eight hours. Mostly at first, though.”
“It's been awhile since someone made something for me that took all day.”
That hits him, how unfair that is. It's why he thought of this. Because he thought of her. That first time she made those cola ribs. How he remembers them straining the stock for the risotto. After she tells him this, she goes back into her front room and sits at the table. He can still see her from his vantage point as she starts working on her laptop.
“What kind of music do you like?” she calls back to him.
“Whatever,” he answers, shaking his head at her. Because, he doesn't really know. He doesn't know what music should sound like when it's just him and her.
“What about WDCB? I feel like no one does that anymore. Does that make me old?” He shakes his head and hears some easy jazz start to play off her computer speakers. “My parents used to. Listen to this station, I mean.”
It's the most she's ever talked about her family to him. Before he gets too ahead of himself, he checks down in the pot and sees bubbles starting to form. Maybe this is more of a test of his patience than hers? He pulls himself together and skims the top off the liquid with the wide wooden spoon he found.
When he glances back up, just like that, she's in the kitchen with him again. “Come on,” she asks, watching him do another skim, she sways in, enough that he almost feels her against his side. “Just tell me what it-”
He gives in. “It's a-”
“Brodo,” she finishes for him, grinning mischievously, his face turned towards hers now, and he swears that they've worked this close in the kitchen before, but it's never felt like this.
“You looked it up,” he whispers, licking across his lips. He looks down at her mouth. “That's cheating.”
“I cheated,” she admits, her smile softening. “What are you gonna do about it?” she teases.
He leans in, close enough so she can't mistake it, but he doesn't go further. Far enough that her breath catches and she stops. Time stops. Then she releases it, warm across his mouth, her face tilting like she's hovering, too, just...waiting.
The spoon clatters to the counter, as he closes the space between them, kissing her, pulling her in close to him with his hands around her waist.
He knows just how she fits against him. He's held her like this before, and ever since that day in the front of the house, he hasn't stopped thinking about it. Her fingers in the hair at the back of his neck and he hesitated then. He just didn't want to ruin one more moment for her. And he kept wondering after, if only.
But she's kissing him back now and it's everything he's ever wanted in a kiss. He opens his eyes and his heart and his head are all filled with this feeling. He might say wholeness, or peace. But he gives it the only real name it's ever had for him.
Sydney.
Sydney, who's glowing, radiating her warmth through her body to his own. It feels golden, just like the golden- “Oh, shit, the brodo.”
“Oh no, my brodo!” she exclaims.
He reaches for the spoon and then for her, pulling her in close as he steadies his hand and carefully skims the top of the liquid. “I have to do this for, like, twenty minutes,” he tells her, giggling a little at the conundrum he's put himself in now. “But don't go anywhere!”
“I'm not,” she says, laughing. Her fingertips are on his chin, turning his face back to hers so she can kiss him feather light, as he leans in for seconds. “I'm not going anywhere.”