A/N: Hehe, did everyone enjoy the previous chapter? This one's not the longest chapter but I hope you will enjoy it too ;v; Next week will be full of le juicy plot but this one was necessary for set-up ;-;
On a happier note:
As promised! Those of you who follow me on Instagram would have seen the process and hard work already but other little Beans here on Wattpad who happen to be interested in seeing more of the physical copy (how it looks like on the inside, the outside) are free to head over to watch the videos too!! ;v;
I'll be at hisangelchip
The official release date isn't confirmed yet but will be over the next week or so. Other details like how/where the books will be available can be found on Instagram too ^^
At the end of the chapter is a small little thing you can participate in to win a physical copy for free ;v; I will ship it to you at 0 cost, wherever you are. Details at the end of the chapter!
Otherwise, enjoy.
_______________________
[Leroy]
Engine twelve was on our way back to base after a minor MVA, stopping by a bakery for some goods when he texted me first. I'd felt my phone buzz in my pocket and part of me had, on instinct, assumed it was Annie sharing her late-night adventures with Rexi again, when I reached for my phone. To be wrong was weird; it made the start of my day ten times better. I didn't think he'd have the time to mess with his phone during work hours.
"Sir, you're smiling at your phone."
I looked up from the three-second video of Chicken balancing a blueberry on his snout to see Probie returning to the engine with three sourdough loaves and two baguettes. Jung strapped in up front in the passenger's seat before Zales radio-ed for base, adding an extra zing over comms.
"Oo, did someone just receive a couple of nudes?" "Probie, grab his phone." "Sir, it's password protected." "Must be filled with nudes then. At least now we know the reason behind Cox's great mood." "Yeah man, what the heck the fire last night sucked several years of my life into the void." "Cox is the one homeless for two weeks, Zales. Not you." "Ha, so that explains the car he arrived in this morning, the ten-out-of-ten mood, and his amazing complexion." "Does this mean we're getting bagels for tea, sir?" "No..." "Aw man Chief would've loved the bagels." "Shut up Jaeger. You finished three in a go the other time."
The idea was wine. One sip and I was hooked, no questions; plus, he did mention something about working remotely till three in the afternoon, so. I sent him a casual request for nudes. Just to sit back and admire his reaction. And then, for the next two minutes, watched the status below his name switch from online to offline to typing and then back to offline five times in a row, unable to hide the amusement on my lips. Somewhere over the radio, they started asking Probie to pull out his phone for evidence.
I was too distracted to care.
___________________
Can you send nudes?
Please
Are you Googling
The definition of nudes
Leroy Jeremy Cox
This is a warning from the authorities never to engage in such audacious requests for criminal activity and to please for the sake of everyone's sanity, exercise some restraint. It is ten in the morning and the day has just barely started. I do not wish to spend the rest of it on life support. In addition, should you ever decide to bring up requests of similar nature in the near future, I shall personally ensure the equivalent number of years be added to your sentence.
Good day.
Also, you wasted two minutes of my time on Google. I suggest you take responsibility.
OK
I'll send nudes
ALKSDJALFJKH
That is not a solution!
;)
How was the meeting
Ah
Speaking of which
_________________
I could feel the amusement on my lips disappearing in the next couple of texts, turning into something bitter on the tongue at the mention of his name. Recognizing Chicken over low-quality laptop video cam footage isn't exactly what I was expecting but he surprised me even further by remembering that dress shirt he got me a couple of years back for formal occasions. The fact that he'd practically cornered Vanilla into either lying or admitting something private in front of an audience didn't sit well with me either but. Wasn't gonna involve myself in his shit again unless he crossed the line.
Texting back a word of warning and a quick heads up on the kind of fuckery Siegfried was capable of, I made a mental note to ask around about his recent activity in the culinary world. Mostly ex-kitchen crew from when I used to do the mise at his restaurant. Entertainment and entertaining were the fuel to his fire and sad to say, I'd felt the brunt of this explosive obsession.
Stuff like that should stay away from quiet snow.
"Cox, could you help me out on that report when we get back?" "Adding it to your tab." "What's it now?" "Seven." "What the fuck it was five last week." "Reports are double." "Yeah 'cuz you hate words." He flipped me off and I did the same, unbuckling my seat belt as Zales pulled into the engine bay.
A third of us joined in on standard drills while the rest headed in to the commons for lunch prep. I was on my way to the administrative office where the computers were when my phone buzzed. And buzzed again.
A call.
I had to stare at the ID for three whole seconds before slowly sliding my thumb across the screen to answer it. One good thing about the habit I never really kicked was the short time frame that came in handy for the person on the other end to make their intentions clear. I never speak first when it comes to picking up a phone call. Usually, all it really took to figure things out was a word from the caller and their tone of voice but the last time I'd seen 'Andre's' on the screen of my phone was way too many years ago, back when I was one of his kitchen boys.
Three seconds was me running through my head for reasons and piecing things together. Nothing really stood out except the red flags of him having seen me with my personal snowstorm and his recent involvement in the entertainment industry. If this was Andre giving me some kind of a heads up to a fight he was going to pick with Vanilla, I'd take that information.
"Good afternoon, Leroy."
Aand I got played. So be it. Fuck. "You're using the phone at Andre's because...?"
I heard him laugh like this was a nice little tea party with fairies and shit. Though I doubt a man like him would spend precious time with his son at a tea party when they could be in the kitchen chopping up chickens and ducks. "It doesn't take a genius to know what sort of calls you'd bother picking up. And I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little disappointed that you never answer your phone when I call."
I said nothing. This wasn't some everyday occurrence. Siegfried wasn't the kind of person to be reaching out to others unless he needed them for a specific purpose; and because I wasn't the god-like, invincible culinary prodigy he'd made me out to be, I'd served no purpose to him in the last couple of years. Unsurprisingly.
"So?" You could hear the smile in his voice. "Are you going to hang up?"
"Just... spit it out."
"Is this you trying to be a civil-minded person? Or do you actually know what I'm about to say. Oh wait, hold on. Let me guess. He told you about the shirt?"
"Who's he?"
"You know, for someone who lies a lot you're not really that good at it, Leroy."
I was sitting at Jaeger's desk, in front of his PC that was booting up. "You're doing it again, making things up in your head. I don't know what you're talking about and no one's getting involved in your shit."
"You need me to lay it out for you, son? Why you'd pick up a call from Andre's restaurant even though you never liked him but have somehow recently developed an emotional investment in his affairs? About a little critic in glasses, wearing a shirt that doesn't belong to him and looking after said owner's dog?" He snorted. "Come on."
"He's nothing. He's not what you think..." I stopped, knowing I'd probably end up eating my own words down the line. "You don't need to know all this. You don't even care. Just say what you want."
"I'm sure you don't mean that, Leroy. Now that someone's back in your life again, the old you—" "There's no old me. You're making things up in your head." "Cooking can become your passion again. And you know what, I wasn't expecting your standards to remain the way they were but that chicken soup you made, I mean. You didn't think I wouldn't recognize—" "Just. Leave Vanilla out of this. He's not like you. He doesn't like the attention." "Oh no I'd never hurt the critic, Leroy. He's amazing. He's the only living person in this world who can motivate you to return. Why would I do anything to him?" "No. No, this is you trying to—fuck, don't you see? You're using him."
The next instinct was to run. It was to put everything down and away, put out the fire and the flames and return to nothing. Just as I was in those few years of empty vacuum, hiding in the station and pass my days fighting fires, putting them out. Stay far, far away from everything else just in case there was ever a spark that would burst into flames.
"Of course not, Leroy. Why would I? I like Vanilla. His palate is unmatched and he's got this arsenal of culinary knowledge—I mean, in so many ways, he's just like you. This... this affinity he has with the industry. He was born for this."
"That's his choice," I said carefully. "You stay out of it."
He sighed on the other end and it sounded like smoke rising into the air. I glanced at the time, praying to the fire and EMS gods above for something. Anything. "I need you to do something for me on your next day off, Leroy."
*
It wasn't really about accepting his request or giving it a couple days' worth of consideration but really just taking it in and knowing that he'd come with the intention of pulling something out of me like he always did in the past and now that I'd stepped back into the culinary world by accident, these were his rules I had to be playing by.
Over the forty-eight-hour shift, I wasn't even thinking about Siegfried. Wasn't even close to feeling mad or frustrated or motherfucking pissed by his whole damn existence because those were all a waste of energy, time and space in my mind that could have, instead, been thinking about snow.
"Please tell me you weren't speeding home just to watch me fry an egg," was what he went with at the front door of his apartment, letting me in and closing it behind. Chicken was right beside him, waiting for head pats. I gave him a good fill. "I can handle that perfectly fine by my own."
"I don't know. You're going from hard-boiled to sunny-side up. That's a leap of faith," I teased, pulling him in for a kiss. He was getting better at it. Not that he wasn't already cute but.
"Well, I suppose you'll be the judge of that. I'll serve up a good one. Just you wait," he hummed, making his way past the kitchen counter for the freezer. "Two eggs? And some bacon?"
It was half-past-six in the morning, which was not a time you'd find most of the human race up and about; not even him. And here he was, making special arrangements in his schedule to accommodate mine, allowing for the smallest overlap in our routines and a brief, but long-awaited moment of interaction.
"I usually get something in before I leave the station, so."
"No bacon then?"
"Just the eggs. I'm not paid for overtime," I teased and he rolled his eyes, smiling still. Heading down the hallway into the master, I changed out of my station shirt into a... nothing, and swapped the cargos for the lounge pants from last night before rejoining him in the kitchen. Watching.
"So um, are you... this is going to sound a little strange, but I was invited to dine at Andre's tonight for a dinner event. And I was wondering," he said while trying to transfer my sunny-side up onto a plate. "If you'd... like to join me. As my companion. My plus-one."
My mind slowed to a stop.
"Andre?" Coincidences happen. But it's important to differentiate between pure fortune and things that were planned. Otherwise, going with the flow was playing into the hands of those tugging at the strings. "That loser who nearly punched you in the face?"
"Not... wrong, but," he cleared his throat. "He's not the one doing the cooking. Remember the last time I told you about this... unnamed chef who went up against Andre with an eight-course menu of his?"
I nodded, digging into the eggs and trying to look at indifferent as I could.
"Well um. I had quite the experience with the food and... I thought it was... impressive." I raised a brow, slightly green about him using that word for someone else. Although technically that someone was me but still. Not exactly me. "It's part of this media campaign for some production company's new cooking program. A competition. They haven't announced it just yet but they were intending to once interest in Andre's piques and... the rest of it sounds perfectly boring. I just thought it could be something like a date. Without me burning down the kitchen, of course," he added with a smile that felt like snow. Soft.
"I can't say no to a date but..." I set my plate aside. Not again. "Tonight I'm heading out for a drink with some of the crew."
He held his smile. "Ah. That can't be helped. I'm glad you and your crew members spend time together even outside the fire house. So um. I assume you'll be resting in bed till then?"
I snaked a hand around his waist. "You joining me?"
"Unfortunately, I have some proposals to read and reviews to edit," he sipped at his cup of tea. "What time will you be back?"
"Before ten. You?"
"As soon as dinner's over, I suppose. No reason to linger without company," he leaned against my shoulder in a daze and the proximity made the moment more ambiguous than it would have been. Especially after last night.
I glanced down. He had his eyes closed, shoulders relaxed and the cup of tea lowered to his chest, steam rising into the air like a dream. There was a winter chill at his lips that felt as though this was him freezing the world to a stop and the last thing I had been doing was looking at him with his eyes closed, and then, awakened at the coming of spring.
"Did something happen today?" He said without opening his eyes. Another kind of smile on his lips.
"Siegfried called."
"I suppose he asked about me?" He looked up then, from my shoulder. Frozen lakes. "I mean I'd prefer if he asked about you and, well, Annie and life in general but factoring in this morning and the timing of his call, I wouldn't be surprised if he expressed some form of curiosity about us."
I slipped the cup of tea out of his hands before closing the distance, taking him into my arms. As close as I could.
"He'd use you. Use you against me, if he knew about us. About how much you matter."
"Oh how terrifying. I am absolutely, positively frightened. Shall we call the police?" He said into my shoulder, voice muffled with a smile.
I flicked his forehead. "I'm serious, Vanilla." Kissed it after.
"Well I'm as serious as you are, Mr. Cox," he raised his gaze with a wry smile on his lips. "Your father does not faze me. You should've seen me constantly putting him in his place! At his restaurant, over at my office, this morning over the call—I am the avalanche, Leroy. He should fear me," said the snowflake with a triumphant fold of his arms and a look in his eyes I could not resist.
"An avalanche, huh." I leaned in, trapping him against the kitchen counter with hands on both sides. "I like that."
"All jokes aside, I don't wish for you to be spending your time and energy brooding over lesser beings attempting to get between us. U-unless you, um. Happen to be okay with that, then."
"Mm, true." I ran my fingers through his hair. He smelled like tea. With milk. "What can these motherfuckers do."
"Language," he warned, resting his arms on my shoulders, around my neck. "But yes. Civilly put, it would take much more than a little discomfort to faze us, the way we are now. I hope."
I wanted to agree. In fact I did, out loud, but inside I wasn't so sure about the kind of threat that Siegfried was, being the person that he'd always been, the husband he never was, the father he thought he'd been. This was it. Just the calm before the storm.
And yet, gazing down into frozen lakes was more than enough to answer the questions I had had swimming in my mind since that call. Or maybe even weeks ago, when I first smelled the smoke and saw the flame and let it take over in the heat of the kitchen. Do I regret my return? Stepping back into the kitchen, standing over the flame, looking into the oven; would I have done it again, knowing the consequences and what was to happen thereafter?
Without a doubt.
"Just let me impress you."
I lowered my head to take in more of his scent and caught him rolling his eyes. "Is this you being upset over the fact that I found someone else's cooking impressive? I've said this years ago and I'll say it again: I've had my fair share of pleasant culinary experiences and you are merely one of them."
"Okay, what about just pleasant experiences?" I teased.
He cleared his throat. "Yes, you are a pleasant experience. I mean, you are pleasurable. Pleasing. I meant pleasant."
"Last night?" I laughed beside his ear and watched it darken.
"Last night w-was... not unpleasant. Of course. I mean to say I wouldn't mind for it to happen again, is what I'm trying to say. In the near future. Although not too soon, I suppose. After you, um. Clarified the um. The size of the... s-so I'm assuming I'd have to opt for the ones that are bigger?" He finished in a whisper and I was trying so hard to contain my amusement.
"Where'd you put the rest of the set?"
"Oh. Oh they're in the drawer by my closet. Would you...?" He looked down at his fingers. "Like to take a look at them?"
I nodded, laughing and running a finger along the edge of his ear that darkened further even as he left the kitchen in a hurry, resembling an anxious deer forced to reveal his secret stash of herbs.
My eyes never left his back down the hallway and remained on the door to his bedroom even after he'd disappeared behind it. A part of me knew, full well, that somewhere inside the empty fires and cold candles, I'd left the part of me that had wanted, above all, to be his chef. It comes out, sometimes. It came out then, two weeks ago.
Just; there seemed to me no will or way to channel this love, this overly specific form of cooking for him that I'd always found myself so drawn towards, into Siegfried's version of passion for food and all things edible.
I mean, I did try.
For some time, I even managed to convince myself that being in the kitchen and in his kitchen were two separate things but those years? Those were the hardest. Those were years I didn't even want to remember.
====================
[Vanilla]
The decision to bring Annie along as my companion was one I made on a stroke of inspiration. Needless to say, I hadn't been expecting to be turned down but there was nothing wrong with Leroy spending some well-deserved time with his second family and as such, I saw no issue with extending the invitation to mine as well.
I'd picked Annie up at her place after work and she had been nothing short of ecstatic about our evening together. I'd left Leroy a text earlier in the afternoon about taking his mother out but he hadn't quite returned it; or read it at all, for the matter. I therefore deduced that he was, unfortunately, still sound asleep.
"This is so exciting. I'm in love with your outfit, by the way," said Annie in the car, as Jason turned a bend and neared the restaurant. "I've heard about this Andre person. I think he's dumb. But the mystery chef you're talking about sounds like something up my alley and I'm so glad you invited me to join you."
I'd thanked her then for accepting my invitation and being the most delightful companion I could ever wish for (more so than Leroy) and she had laughed. It was after being dropped off across the road and ensuring that Annie was seated comfortably in her wheelchair that we made our way over to the front house of the restaurant.
Tonight's dinner event was strictly invitation-only, and the absence of a line before the host's podium proved a point. It was, however, to the disappointment and horror of us both that a familiar face stood in the place of the restaurant's hostess, and it was no one other than the celebrity chef himself. Siegfried Cox.
________________________
A/N: Ah the next chapter will be super exciting. So many things converging hehe I'm pumped to write the next one.
So as promised, if you'd like to try your luck at winning a physical copy of Vanilla, here are the instructions!
All you have to do is highlight this sentence and, in the form of a comment: Name or describe your favorite scene in Vanilla or Wax. And why.
One lucky winner will receive a copy of Vanilla Part 1 delivered to their doorstep! ^0^/ Oh, and you must be comfortable with telling me your address (privately, of course) and what not. You may also request a signed copy and/or a handwritten note hehe.
UWU EGGCITEMENT
-Cuppie