strangetrip | [EP] A Bored Smartass

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[EP] A Bored Smartass - OTA

Alec was bored and so he decided to test the waters with the various creepy Inn workers. He started by walking up to the man at the desk. He plopped the towels down on the counter. Some were ripped, others had blood on them. "This is really unacceptable. How's a guy supposed to enjoy his time here at the Madonna Inn when these towels are dirty and destroyed? I thought this was a fine establishment, but I guess I was mistaken." The man behind the counter apologized, though there didn't seem to be any actual regret in his voice.

"Take this down. I want blue towels. They should smell like Lavender. And folded like various animals on my bed." There was a nod from the man, but how much would actually be followed through it would be hard to tell. Alec ended their interaction by tossing one of the towel's on the man's head.

His next destination was the kitchen. The chef was there preparing something chicken, as always. Alec stood next to the oven, watching. When the chef turned to get an ingredient, Alec flung a few shrimp into the dish. He watched with vague amusement as the chef came back, discovered the shrimp, and threw out the contents of the dish before starting over again. Alec repeated this a few times, the last two times being blatant about it and not getting much of a response from the chef at all.

Hours later Alec ran into the housekeeper. He spent a good hour walking behind her littering with small pieces of paper. Each time she'd stop and pick up or vacuum the mess. At one point he walked up looking earnest. "Oh here, let me help you." He grabbed the vacuum cleaner and 'accidentally' emptied its contents on the ground. The woman didn't even blink, but started to sweep the mess up.

After a while, Alec got bored of even this and ended up flopping down onto one of the couches in the lounge and exhaled.

(ooc: Feel free to find him at any point in his journey)

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He glanced over at the cute girl and smiled to her even if she wasn't really looking at him and focused on whatever she was stirring. "I'm not entirely convinced I am wasting anything. I mean, have you seen a garbage dump around here? It's not like there's a truck that's picking everything up so where does it go?" Alec lifted a hand and waved it, palm open, in front of the chef a few times without a reaction. "But if you have to know, I'm testing out some theories."

If he didn't think he was wasting food – regardless of what happened to everything that got thrown out, magic or whatever, the food wasn't able to be eaten – Emma didn't even know how to finish the thought. Probably he'd never worried about where food was coming from.

Maybe a different perspective. "You do know somebody is waiting to eat whatever it is he's trying to cook, right? Are you going to explain to them why your theories are more important than their hunger? He's just trying to do his job." Focusing on her roux made it easier not to be self-conscious about calling the guy out on being rude, but it was getting to the delicate point now, and she couldn't really afford to get distracted right now, but she'd started this, she wasn't quite ready to give it up.

That actually made Alec paused. His eyes glanced at the door, then to the chef, then back to Emma. "I thought he just sort of... made food all the time for whoever might need it." It came out sounding super lame which was usually a good indicator he was telling the truth.

She turned, boggling at the man and his assumption, still stirring, but not as carefully. Did he really...? Although it wasn't a completely ridiculous assumption, and the staff were strange enough. "Sometimes we make things that can be heated up as needed. I do that a lot, actually. But usually, if he's cooking, it's because someone ordered food."

It was then the nutty aromas coming from the roux she'd been stirring developed an acrid, and obviously burnt note. Emma sighed. "Wonderful. That's an hour wasted. And more food." Just flour and clarified butter, as far as ingredients went, but it added to the pattern, didn't it? She grabbed a towel to use as a pot holder while she scraped out the blackened mess.

Alec looked a littler surprised and definitely a little defensive. He pointed at the pot. "Whatever happened is totally not my fault." A pause. "...What happened?"

"No, it's not your fault... exactly. I know better than to take my eyes off roux for even a second when it's so close to the right shade." She wiped the pot clean and went to the fridge for more clarified butter.

"If you want to do something useful you can help me catch up, and I'll explain. Maybe you can tell me what exactly it was you wanted to learn by tormenting the poor chef too. Can you talk and use a knife at the same time?"

"I can do a lot of things while using a knife." Which was probably one of the truest things he's ever said while at the inn. Despite himself, he went for a knife as a silent show he'd help her. "What's roux anyways?"

She hadn't known whether he would help or not, but when he went for the knife, she had her answer. While grabbing the butter, she added a couple of bell peppers and celery. "Onions are in the dry pantry," she said, pointing with an elbow since her hands were full. "We'll need probably three.

"Roux is flour cooking in fat, in this case butter. Most of the mother sauces start with a roux, and I can't make gumbo without it."

"Gumbo." He made his way toward where she indicated. "Sounds like a name of a guy who should be in jail."

He opened the door to the pantry. There were white and red onions. Alec stood there trying to decide which ones to get. He eeny-meeny-miny-moed and picked up three red onions and headed back towards her.

"Oh, sorry," Emma said when she saw him come out of the pantry with red onions. "I should have specified. Yellow or white onions are best for this. Gumbo's a kind of stew. I think the name comes from an African name for okra, maybe?" It had been a long time since she'd first helped Sister Thérèse make gumbo, and heard her stories about it and what made it special.

"Most of my food comes from boxes and take out counters"He left and returned with the right onions. He started to chop one up, starting in the middle of the onion.

"First –" she started, but not before he began to chop one of the onions. Right. Baby steps and specific instructions. You'd think she'd be better at this, from when Pyro had helped in the kitchen. "Wash your hands. Then," she took one of the onions and another knife, cut off stem and root ends and sliced from one to the other just enough to remove the outer skin. That should be enough for him to treat the others the same way. "There's a way to dice onions, but as long as you get pieces about this size," she held her fingers apart to show how big, "for the onions, peppers, and celery, they should all cook at about the same rate." Continuing her example setting, she de-stemmed one of the peppers and removed the seeds and membrane.

"If you have questions, ask. I won't have to watch so carefully for the first half hour or so," and it shouldn't take him that long to chop the trinity, "but I have to stir constantly, so I won't be able to demonstrate."

Alec watched, putting everything to memory which was easy when yours was eiditic. When she mentioned there was a way to dice, he held out the knife. "Can you show me the way to dice. Just once. I'll figure it out from there." If he was going to do this, he was going to do it right. Max had said once that a guy who could cook was hot and it seemed to be true with Logan who was very good at cooking so it didn't hurt to try and learn. He could go home and impress everyone, assuming they didn't die right away with all those guns pointed at them.

Dicing peppers and celery were much more straightforward, and if he could handle a knife, he should be able to handle that without any trouble. She cut the onion in half and laid one half cut side down. Checking that he was watching, she made several cuts parallel to the cutting board not quite all the way through. "The onion layers do part of the work. Cutting it along all three axes keeps things more stable while you work and lets you control the size of the pieces." Then perpendicular, and finally perpendicular at right angles to the previous cuts. Then she repeated the cuts along the root end she'd been holding to keep it stable. In the end, she had a pile of onion bits all cut to approximately the same size.

Alec watched with an expression that might have come off as a little disinterested, but it was from years of learning to observe while not being obvious about it. "Where'd you learn to cook? School?"

Once she was done showing him, he started on the vegetables. It took him only a few cuts before he was dicing the peppers. By the time he got to the celery he was dicing as quickly as a seasoned chef. When he finished the onions, everything was unison and he had made good time, too. Except his eyes seemed to be a little itchy, though he couldn't quite pinpoint why, and he rubbed his eye with his hand and some of the residual onion bombarded his eye. "Ah. Ow, ow ow." He blinked, shut his eye tight, blinked again and went in to rub his eye again as they stung and started to water.

"Don't rub your eyes." Emma hadn't thought to warn him about onions. "First, wash your hands again. Then you can either flush your eyes with cool water, or use a cool compress for a few seconds. Or you can let tears do what they're supposed to do and rinse the irritant out."

A lot of the science Emma had been most interested in had started from cooking. "There's something in onions that reacts with air, forms um... sulfon- sulfenic...some kind of sulfur-based acid. Makes your eyes tear up. It doesn't last long usually. Unless you go and rub your eyes when there's traces of onion on your hands.

"My grandmother taught me to cook, and how to cry less when chopping onions. But Sister Thérèse taught me to make gumbo. She was one of my teachers, and use to let me hang out," hide out, "in the kitchens when she was cooking."

He moved to the sink, eyes squinty and looking a little ridiculous as he washed his hands and then proceeded to stick his face in the flowing water. After a few moments the stinging subsided and Alec straightened, blinking before he pulled up his t-shirt, revealing briefly an abdomen of a man who was quite fit, to wipe his eyes with the bottom edge of the fabric. He let out a sigh. "Wow. Who knew food could sting like that." If he was ever in a fight with someone in a kitchen, he was going straight for the onions.

"Your sister was your teacher?" Yep, he asked that.

Sabine had taught her a lot of things, and was a close as a sister, but –

It took longer than maybe it should have for Emma to realize what he meant. "No. No no. I went to convent school. Sister Thérèse was a nun." Technically there was a difference, but for someone who had to ask, and a lot of people who didn't, it was easier just to lump sisters and nuns together. "All the teachers were. I dropped out, ran away when I was thirteen, though. Except for Sister Thérèse, I hated it there."

"Nuns, huh?" He had a passing knowledge of nuns. It may or may not be mostly from porn but that would be Sketchy's fault, really.

"I'd have left too." He nodded. "Organized religion is freaky."

"It's not all bad. I like the ritual of it." She always had. "But I'm a really bad Catholic, and after my grandmother died, I had no reason to stay." Not to mention, there'd been no school to have school in for a while, after Katrina.

"So I ran away and joined a carnival. Found my home with the outcasts and the freaks."

"Freaks and outcasts, huh?" He looked her over for a second. "Not really seeing either of those, unless you mean in the bed." He smirked, then winked to say he wasn't exactly being serious.

With her attention on the pan she was stirring, Emma missed the wink, but even if she'd seen it, her reaction would have been the same. Her eyes widened then lowered, focusing very intently on her roux, as her skin ignited blushing so hard.

She couldn't do anything about that reaction, but when she'd had a few seconds, she took a deep breath, held it, then exhaled slowly. Turning off the heat, she moved the pan to a cold burner, still stirring. "Stir this for me?" she asked, keeping her gaze on the roux. "You need to keep all of it from sitting too long, even the edges.

Then more quietly, "I meant because I'm a mutant."

Edited 2018-02-21 20:35 (UTC)

He always liked it when he could make a girl blush and he grinned. When she asked for his help, he moved over and obliged. Alec stirred, trying to make sure he wasn't missing the edges. Somehow he was worried he was going to stir it wrong, out of all the things he had done so far.

Alec looked up and over to her, though he kept stirring. "You're a mutant?" More interest than surprise. "Like, you have special abilities and stuff?"

"Precog with psionic projections," from where she'd gone to get some things from the fridge. Gumbo obviously wasn't going to happen. Not if she couldn't get a decent dark roux, and she didn't trust she'd be able to do that now. A good Creole-style étouffée was a better choice.

When she came back, she looked at the color of the roux, put a hand above it to feel the temperature. "That's probably okay now," she told him, reaching for a bowl to transfer the hot paste to so it wouldn't continue to cook.

Alec was pretty proud he hadn't fucked up the roux, but he was still focused on her explanation. "Psionic projections?" He thought. "Can you make people see things?"

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