Evenfall (89 page)

At first he thought he would need to light the things on top of the contraption, but the more he read the directions, the more he thought maybe the beef was supposed to be encased in heat rather than just heated on the bottom. Besides that, there was only one dial that had numbers in the hundreds, such as was required with the 'Preheat to 300° F' and when Boyd turned the dial, it was the part that looked like a box behind glass that seemed to turn on and not the spiral black things on top.

Although he had used the oven/stove in his house before in order to heat tea, he'd never paid much heed to terminology or even how to properly use any of it. The only reason he'd even known to heat tea on there was because he'd vaguely remembered his mother doing the same when he was little. It didn't take long after his father's death for his mother to basically abandon him to the house, so Boyd had to learn how to do things. Lou, who'd always had a maid to do that sort of thing, didn't know how to operate any kitchen machinery either. So, the first time Boyd had felt adventurous enough to heat water somewhere other than the microwave, he'd gone vaguely by memories of his mother's actions. As a result, he'd often burned the water, steeped the tea too long, and in general made a mess of things. When he'd told Sin in his apartment that he was not good in the kitchen, he hadn't been joking. He really had very little clue how to work anything. And, being the sort of person who was used to knowing exactly what was happening and when, it was a little frustrating.

Standing back and staring blankly at the glass, he realized he had no idea what it meant to preheat. Obviously he heated it prior to something, but to what? Placing the food inside presumably. But if that was the case, how in the world did he know when it reached the appropriate temperature? Was it important that it was exactly on that degree? If he left it heating long enough, would it heat over 300° or did it have some sort of failsafe that cut off the heat producing agent at the correct time to keep it only at that temperature? Frowning distractedly to himself, Boyd washed his hands and flipped through all the cookbooks he could find. Unfortunately, most of them were simple collections of recipes and didn't tell him anything useful at all regarding the oven/stove equipment. A few of them were also bilingual, in a language he couldn't read.

After awhile of trying to decide what to do, Boyd settled on just preparing the food the way it said and assuming that if he left it for half an hour it would be warm enough. Turning back to the recipe for 'easy' chile con carne, he got rather frustrated when he realized it didn't tell him what the hell he was supposed to put the beef in. Would it
kill
these people to put better directions in these things? Recipes were totally unlike mission parameters. If this were a mission, he would know exactly what he was supposed to be doing, where, when, what time frame he had, even the location to the exact longitude and latitude.

Instead, the sadistic writers delighted in such vague phrases as 'add beef and brown well on all sides' and 'remove all but one teaspoon of fat.' What the hell was that? First of all, browning well on all sides didn't tell him how long that took. Did he just stare into the glass until he saw it was brown? How did he know? He assumed he would have to turn it around or something and that the point of browning would occur on the edge against the metal, but if it was surrounded in heat, did it actually brown on all sides at once? And then the teaspoon comment. What did he do, remove everything into a bowl and then stick one teaspoon of fat back in? How did he remove fat anyway? What did it even look like? And what was a teaspoon? Just a normal spoon?

But what he was perhaps most indignant about was the phrase, 'Heat oil in an ovenproof Dutch Oven over medium high heat.' An ovenproof Dutch Oven? How could it be ovenproof if it
was
an oven? That was like saying he was a foolproof fool, or a nonhuman human. And 'medium high heat' seemed to imply the other dial which he knew turned on the spirals, but he had just thought he'd realized that an oven was the glass box and the stove was the top, but then hadn't he also heard 'stovetop oven' so did that mean that the stove was on top of the oven and that not all ovens had stoves? God. What was with these kitchen contraptions? They were so contradictory and fuck that stupid Dutch Oven, Boyd would just put the oil in a pot. Which, by the way, it would have been nice of them to tell him what exactly he was doing with this oil other than heating on medium high.

In the end, it was good that Boyd started his attempt to cook quite early. It took him hours to get everything prepared and even then he had to throw some pieces of food out as he accidentally did something wrong that ruined it. He went through several cycles of being indignant enough that he almost left the apartment to find a library to look for a book that would explain something properly instead of this vague inside-terminology about Dutch Ovens and bringing to a fucking simmer. What constituted a simmer, how did he know how to bring it to one, why would he want something simmering anyway?

Over time, in frustration, Boyd had started moving things around that didn't need to be touched. When he didn't know what something was, he looked all around the kitchen for something to tell him, maybe user manuals because honestly, why wouldn't they have one somewhere? But there wasn't a manual for the oven or the stove and all he succeeded in doing was accidentally knocking over a bag of flour and getting it all over his shirt and face. He washed his hands and got it off his face mostly, but his hair was sprinkled with bits of white and it kept getting into his eyes when he tried to finish what he was doing. Although he cleaned the flour from the floor there were still some clouds that were kicked up when he walked around and Boyd gave up trying to keep the situation under control.

The beef already looked brown to him so he had a hard time figuring out what shade of brown they meant when they said that, and the glass in the box was not the most conducive way to check. The oil also popped all over and he was irritated that he didn't have a long sleeved shirt on when one bit fell on his arm and burned. Even after he washed it off the skin puffed up a bit and he glared at it sullenly, as if to silently say that was the physical manifestation of why cooking sucked. Sin had damn well better appreciate what Boyd was trying to do because if he didn't, they would just have to find places to eat out, which would unnecessarily deplete their account too quickly. Boyd was not cut out for being a housewife, or a slave, or anything they had joked about. He could infiltrate a rebel base and take out the leader no problem, but give him a slab of beef and point him to the kitchen and he had no idea what the hell he was doing. He was only doing this because for some God-forsaken reason he'd been motivated into trying to do something different and he knew neither of them had been eating particularly healthily since neither of them ever made anything. They'd been eating the food that could be eaten raw or with minimal preparation and somewhere along the line Boyd thought it may just be a nice gesture in general to try to make food for them both in time for Sin to get off work. A thought that, especially when the flour exploded around his face, had been becoming less motivating by the minute.

Even so, some of his indignation faded over time and he started to get into trying to work with his hands, creating something from separate ingredients. He was curious to see if it would actually work out, and if not, he knew he was stubborn enough that he would try several other recipes until he found something he could perfect. He could not let a simple kitchen beat him; that would just be embarrassing. By the time he heard the door open behind him, the beef looked like it was probably on the way to finish simmering or baking or whatever the hell it was doing and he had the plates ready with the tortilla circles. Shaking his head to get his hair out of his eyes, he kept his messy hands carefully away from his shirt and turned to look at the door with a slightly expectant expression.

When Sin walked in he didn't look at Boyd at first and the expression on his face could easily have been described as pensively disgruntled. The corners of his mouth were slightly turned down and his eyebrows were drawn together as he shoved the door closed behind him. However, as soon as he looked up at the spectacle of Boyd standing in the kitchen covered in flour and sauce, his mouth curled up into a helpless smile and a startled laugh escaped him. He seemed surprised by the sound and blinked a couple times but he didn't seem capable of stopping it.

Boyd stared; he had never heard Sin laugh before and he was mesmerized by it. The moment he realized it was because of him, he smiled self-consciously and tilted his head down, watching Sin through red hair that did not quite cover his expression.

"What?" he asked, his smile stretching to a grin at how amused Sin was. "I don't look that ridiculous, do I?"

Sin locked the door, not taking his eyes off Boyd or bothering to hide the large grin that spread across his face. He dropped his keys on the small coffee table, another one of Boyd's surprise additions to the apartment that had been accompanied by a secondhand loveseat, and walked over to the island, leaning on the countertop with his elbows.

"Ridiculous wasn't the word that came to mind," Sin drawled, seeming to be in a much better mood than he'd been in a few moments ago.

Warmth flooded through Boyd at Sin's expression and all the annoyances he went through to make dinner suddenly seemed worth it. He would have preferred it if Sin weren't wearing the brown contacts; he would have loved to see that spark in his natural pale green eyes. They had been closer since the night they'd fallen asleep together, but it was mostly shown in the way Sin was a little more likely to smile around Boyd, or how comfortable they were around each other. Even though this was the first time Boyd cooked, even though they were on better terms, this reaction was far better than he had expected.

"Oh really?" Boyd asked with a wide, amused grin. He walked over to the island and leaned his hip against the other side, his hands still held carefully away from everything they could get dirty. He had yet to get the leftover cascabel sauce off them but with Sin there smiling at him it seemed less important to do so immediately. "What was the word?"

Sin leaned forward a bit and raised an eyebrow at Boyd, reaching out and running a finger along his forehead, managing to collect a large amount of flour. "I'm afraid I can't share that information with you. It's confidential. But it wasn't bad."

Boyd was mildly distracted by Sin touching him and leaned into it a little, but when he saw the white covering Sin's finger he couldn't help an amused, self-deprecating smile. "It was probably 'messy,'" he said, bemused. "Look at my hands! They're so covered in cascabel sauce I haven't even been able to keep my hair from my face." He held his hands out to Sin to show him.

Sin's gaze dropped to Boyd's hands and he arched an eyebrow. "Cascabel? What's in it?" Without waiting for an answer, he leaned forward and enveloped one of Boyd's sauce covered fingers with his mouth, absently closing his eyes as he did so.

Boyd's eyes widened and he was so surprised that he didn't even think to hide his reaction. Dropping his other hand to the counter and leaning all his weight on it was mainly what kept him steady with his knees getting a little shaky. His mouth fell partially open and with a darkened, half-lidded stare he could not seem to look away from his finger disappearing into Sin's mouth. It was warm and wet and with Sin sucking the sauce off so thoroughly, every other thought in Boyd's mind disappeared. He didn't even realize that he exhaled with a hint of voice making it into his breath, or that he had not answered Sin's question. All he could feel was Sin's tongue against his skin, the heat of his mouth, even the slight press of the lip ring against his finger. Heat pooled in his belly as he felt himself begin to harden.

Although he'd done it with the sole intention of tasting the sauce, Sin didn't seem in any hurry to release Boyd's finger.

 
Sin licked his lips absently and gripped the counter. "Tastes good."

"Ahh," Boyd said, a helpless half-breath of a sound. He held himself up by a slightly weak hand on the counter, his gaze completely caught by Sin's lips even though his finger was free and hovering in front of him rather stupidly.

Boyd felt flushed, completely arrested by an overload of sensations and reactions he was not expecting from his partner. Sin's saliva cooled on his finger in a manner that took entirely too much of his attention, making it difficult for him to think past anything his body was telling him. The entire situation left him off-balance and uncertain though it wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Dropping his gaze and free hand to the island, he tried to steady his breath, the rapid beat of his heart, and his thoughts.

Sin didn't speak for a long moment, opting instead to stare at his partner with slightly parted lips and narrowed eyes. He licked his mouth again and finally dragged his eyes away, raking a hand through his unruly black and white spikes.

"So, what are you making?"

"What..?" Boyd asked in a slightly dazed voice, not looking up though his eyebrows furrowed down. "I don't... kn..." He stared at the counter and shook his head to clear it. "Oh. Ah." Blinking, he finally glanced up at Sin then turned his attention to the oven. "Chile con carne?"

"Ah." Sin walked around the island, trying to ignore the thoughts swirling in his head, and instead began poking at the ingredients and peering into the oven. "Is it almost done?"

"I don't... know..." Boyd stared after Sin, highly distracted by the way his tank top showed off his arms and clung to him as he moved, and especially the shape of his ass when he bent over to peer into the oven. "I think... it said another twenty minutes."