MorMor Fic: New Flavour (when you notice the stripes)
This is my entry in the Mortastic Fic Exchange, written for theendtoday. It was a bit of a challenge writing this, as it was my first forray into Sherlock AU:s, but I hope it's not too far off from what you wanted. My apologies if it is.
Title: New Flavour (when you notice the stripes)
Author: keeloca
Words: 2 855
Prompt: Jim is the head chef at one of the finest restaurants in London, and Sebastian comes in with the intention of proposing marriage to his girlfriend of a couple years. They meet when Jim abandons ship in the middle of dinner service for a smoking break, and Sebastian sneaks out the back after the girl intentionally splashes a glass of wine on his face
Warnings: Language, hints of misogyny, hints of racism.
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They say that when change – the big, irrevocable kind that rearranges everything you know and leave you feeling as if you’ve been grabbed by a sodding tidal wave and left stranded in a foreign country – comes, you won’t know it at first.
Well, they say a whole lot of stupid as fuck bullshit, so it’s no surprise they got this wrong too. I was fully prepared for my life changing that chilly October evening; hell, I had planned for it.Of course, things didn’t go exactly as planned, but yeah. That’s life for you.
Eight years I spent in the south, moving from one base to another, one operation to another, and it wasn’t so bad. Bit of a thrill, you know, adrenaline highs and the knowledge that you were one mean bastard, seeing and doing things the people back in good old England hardly dare think of. I was good with a rifle, too; better than I have ever been with words and science and what-not (though I’m not nearly as simple-minded as some assume when they see me; apparently you can’t have both brains and brawns, and there’s no denying my brawn).
But it gets old, the rebellion act. There comes a time when you realize that by living your life in opposition to something you’ll always make that something the focus of your existence. And truth be told, I just wouldn’t allow them – him – that sort of satisfaction. Besides, life in the army gets old too, particularly if you don’t buy into the fire-forged friends, brothers in arms sort of bullshit. My family in general and my father in particular might be idiots, but so are most guys (yeah, yeah, yeah, and girls, whatever) in uniform. Can’t stand morons thinking we have some kind of special bond, either because we share genes or because we’ve spent three hours hiding under half-rotten corpses together.
So I quit. Got my honourable discharge and returned to the mother country. These days I run a small private surveillance and security firm, and while it is very far from what my family would have chosen for me at least I’m the boss and owner, and that apparently counts for something with them. As for me, all I care about is that I get to choose what jobs to accept and what people to hire. (It’s not uncommon for old army pals to drop in, thinking I’ll take them on for old time’s sake, and I always tell them to fuck off. As I said, I can’t stand morons thinking we have a bond, or that they’re owed something.) Can’t say the family and I have reconnected on any deep, emotional level, but I do visit for Christmas lunch. I may not be the lost sheep found or the prodigal son returned but close enough.
Jeanette was the daughter of one of my father’s old acquaintances, and while I was initially inclined to hold that against her she won me over by not being a complete idiot. Actually, she was quite bright, but bright isn’t really considered a particularly desirable trait in a woman in the circles she usually moves in, and she had learned to hide it pretty well. To be honest I, too, was more interested in her frankly impressive sexual know-how – I do love a woman who’s no shy about taking her pleasure – than her intellectual prowess. Anyway, we had a bit of fun, and continued to have a bit of fun until it was more or less a regular, monogamous thing with lazy afternoons in front of the telly and half her wardrobe kept at my place. We could have gone on like that I suppose, but well…
Okay. I know. I was settling. It seemed like a good idea at the time (though obviously not to her; I told you she was bright).
So there we was, October 9:th 2012, our two year anniversary and me with my mind made up to make an honest woman out of her. I’d paid a small fortune for the ring, knowing she wouldn’t put up with anything less, and booked tables at Nema four months in advance, knowing she’d been dying to try their supposedly ‘breathtakingly and almost terrifyingly innovative combination of flavours’ ever since the restaurant opened a year ago. I picked her up right on time, I had made sure there was champagne waiting for us at the table when we arrived, and I delivered a suitably emotional proposal once the main course had been cleared away. I was doing things right, and it never occurred to me that she would say no. (In hindsight that might have been one of the reasons why she did; apparently I never knew her quite as well as I thought.)
In fact she didn’t say no as such, but the glass of 150 quid a bottle Shiraz she threw in my face spoke of a rather firm refusal. We were both quite drunk by then. Not entirely sure how we managed not to get thrown out or how I refrained from punching her in the guts (no, I don’t beat on women, but I don’t really believe in cutting people slack just because they have a pussy rather than a cock, and had she been a man she would have been meat), but the last I saw of her that night was her calling for a refill while I stalked into the men’s room to try and get cleaned up. I was only marginally successful, and since I didn’t fancy parading my ruined shirt and trousers – all too obvious signs of my humiliation – in front of the full restaurant I turned left rather than right when I emerged from the loo, heading for the back door.
Cue the tidal wave. Come to sweep me off my feet.
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“No. No, no, no, no.” Jim’s eyes always seemed to darken when he was in a mood, and he could tell from the petrified look on the other man’s face that they must be close to black right now. “I’ve told you repeatedly how to make it, so how come you keep getting it wrong?”
The man whimpered. He honest to God whimpered, and Jim opened his mouth to tell him not to be so fucking wet, not to be such a fucking idiot, not to –
“Take it easy, chef,” a placating, infuriatingly calm, voice interrupted. “I’m sure it’s not that bad.” Sous chef Nina Blake, come to the distraught demi cook’s rescue, dipped a spoon into the offending soup and brought it to her lips to taste while Jim turned his dark, disapproving gaze upon her. As always, she seemed completely oblivious to the furious scowl that sent everyone else in the kitchen running, and she even smiled as she put the spoon down. “It’s delicious, Robin,” she offered gently to the younger of the two men before adding to Jim: “I doubt anyone would be able to tell whether you or Robin cooked it,” she said firmly. “I certainly can’t, and there have been no complaints all evening.”
“That’s because people are stupid,” Jim snarled. Everyone raved on about Jim’s genius, how he could combine the most unexpected of flavours to create something entirely new and enchanting, but what did that mean when their palettes were as sensitive as a plank of wood? Even Nina, by all accounts an accomplished cook, couldn’t detect the subtle nuances that made Robin’s sad attempt at a basil and licorice crème mignon a completely different soup from Jim’s carefully perfected concoction. It was ridiculous. It was maddening. Why should he waste his time on this when people just plain didn’t get it?
“Fine,” he said curtly. “Keep serving that shit then. In fact, serve whatever you like. Serve a pile of actual shit, tell them it’s my secret recipe. Obviously no one will be able to difference.” He spun around on his heel and stormed out of the kitchen (not completely unmindful of the dramatic quality of his exit). He heard Nina call after him, but he ignored her and she didn’t try to follow. She knew better after over six months as his second in command. In the first five months after the launch, Jim had worked his way through no less than four sous chefs, the last of the lasting no more than two weeks before leaving the restaurant in tears. But Nina was made of sterner stuff, and when he was in a good mood Jim might even go so far as to admit that she was not completely useless. Good for keeping the staff calm, if nothing else. Though why grown men and women would need anyone to hold their hand and tell them that everything would be all right was beyond Jim’s ken…
He stopped by his office to pick up a pack of cigarettes, then slipped out into the alley behind the restaurant where the large bins were kept. The brisk day had turned into a chilly night, but Jim was not bothered by the cold. He was, however, a bit surprised and rather displeased with not finding the alley deserted. A tall man in his thirties was leaning against the brick wall with his face turned to the sky, as if gazing at the stars made faint by London’s light. Too well-dressed to be a common thug lying in wait for some hapless victim to mug or rape, though when the man straightened and turned to face Jim the chef saw that the expensive suit had been ruined by wine stains.
“I take it she wasn’t keen on marrying you, then,” Jim said, lightening a fag.
The man didn’t start, but he became still in a way that suggested that he was, in fact, startled. “Don’t think I know you,” he said coldly, and wasn’t that an interesting voice, full of strange contradictions, both public school and street gang, crisp pronunciation mangled by casual words.
“I don’t think you do,” Jim agreed lightly after a long, deliberate drag, watching the smoke rise and then fade rather than looking directly at the man. “But it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that your girlfriend – tall, blonde and quite the animal in bed I see - just responded to your proposal by throwing a glass of the 2005 McLaren Vale Shiraz at you.” He smiled. “Or maybe it does take a genius. Either way, I’m sure it’s all very traumatic – and it’s certainly a criminal waste of good wine – but why don’t you take your broken heart off of my backyard and go find yourself some cheap scotch to drown your sorrows in, hm? There’s a good boy.”
Normally, Jim kept his observations to himself, because apparently it made people uneasy to have a complete stranger tell them things they must already know, or at least ought to know. In Jim’s opinion they might want to try not to be so very obvious about everything, but he supposed one had to make allowances when one lived in a world occupied with blind, deaf and seemingly brain-dead fools. Except he was bloody well tired of fools, and couldn’t care less if the stranger got upset, interesting voice or not.
“I know at least seven different ways of killing you in less than a minute using nothing but what I can find in this alley,” the man replied conversationally. He didn’t appear uneasy, or unsettled, just exceedingly fed up.
Jim could relate to that.
“Apart from strangling most of them will be pretty messy,” he noted. “But I suppose you don’t need to worry about that. Those stains will never come out anyway.”
The man laughed. It was as surprised sort of half-snort, offered as if in spite of himself. “Guess there is nothing to stop me then.”
“I guess there isn’t.”
---
Yeah, I know. He was a bit of git right from the start. An enormous, huge fucking git, really, a bloody pain in the arse. Still is. But I’ve never met anyone, before or since, who reacted with such complete lack of concern when faced with an, albeit implied, death threat. I’m a big man and don’t bother to hide the fact that I’m a dangerous one as well; people usually take me seriously (even my damned father does, no matter how hard he tries to hide it behind his usual look of righteous disapproval).
But not Jim. Some months later he told me that there had been a moment when he was actually unable to predict whether I would proceed to demonstrate the truthfulness of my claim or not. Most people would have found that a terrifying experience; to Jim it was a thrill. He’s used to being able to read anyone, as easy as you read a book, and most of the time he knows what I’m thinking before I do, but… there are moments, like back in that alley, where I’m able to surprise him. Pretty huge part of why we’re still together, I guess.
“Why even ask her to marry you?” he demanded. By then we were sitting next to each other on the ground, backs to the wall, passing a fag back and forth.
I merely shrugged, but he didn’t need me to answer the question; as so often, he did it himself. “All the best cowboys have daddy issues,” he decided with a small nod.
“My father’s got nothing to do with it,” I told him firmly, not particularly liking where he was taking this. “All he ever wanted was for me to get a good, proper, pointless ‘job’ and settle down with a good, proper, pointless girl. Have a lot of Moran babies to carry the family name on. Me marrying Jeanette would have played right into his hands.” She might have been too bright and too wild to be proper or good (or pointless, I would have argued just an hour earlier) but she came from the right sort of background. Had the right sort of connections and breeding.
Jim gave me a look, the kind he often gets; the ‘who the fuck are you trying to fool, Moran?’ look that never fails annoy me.
“It would have defied the expectations you’ve spent years making him have of you,” he said, somewhat condescendingly. “You’re a thug, a common soldier and a security guard – that’s what he thinks – ,” he impatiently injected off my raised eyebrow, “and you’re not fit to carry the Moran name. And then you go and marry this nice girl, this proper girl, and every child you have by her, every little boy or girl you give the name Moran, will be a mockery of your father and his line.”
Do you know, he was right? The weird little bugger was right, even though I had not realized it myself until he spelled it out for me. He does that a lot, and it’s really fucking infuriating.
“Why the hell are you a cook?” I asked (and I refuse to admit I sounded petulant, no matter what he says). “You should be a psychiatrist or a professor or a sodding detective.”
It was his turn to shrug. “I see patterns where others don’t. See how it all works together, this influencing that, that affecting this. People and events or textures and flavours… it doesn’t matter, I see it all. I guess I could have ended up doing anything that allowed me to utilize it, but my mum taught me to cook when I was a kid, and… “ He shrugged again. “At least this way I’m creating something rather than just taking things apart to peer at the pieces.”
“Not sure that’s such a great thing,” I said wryly. “The pea soup I had was bloody disgusting.”
The look he gave me then was one of sheer delight, his smile triumphant. “I know it was!”
---
He has made me that pea soup – yeah, I know what it’s called, but I’ve got a reputation to uphold, all right? – several times after that, and I still don’t like it. Basil and licorice don’t go with champagne and green peas, and that is that. But apparently an ex-sniper with daddy issues goes surprisingly well with a moody, brilliant head chef, so I guess I can live with the occasional bowl of crappy soup.
