milliways_bar | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

Delectable scents of apple butter and nutmeg and chocolate waft out from the kitchen today, where Autor is hard at work. He has donned an apron and is crooning along with--of all people--Frank Sinatra.

Covered bowls litter the countertops and the fridge, but only for a moment; the industrious boy codes them all into his sylladex to preserve their contents. Having chopped and sautéed and boiled all day, the boy pulls more bowls out to prepare dough.

He's busy, but might be willing to take a break.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Hannibal wanders in through the back door, having one more escaped the infirmary via the back route into the garden.

"Interesting taste in music," he says.

Autor looks up from stirring the apple butter. He cuts his singing off immediately. "Oh, now," he says, shaking his head. "I am supposed to be avoiding you."

"Oh?" Hannibal says. "Who said so?"

"I did," Autor says, heading to the sink to start in on the sizable pile of dishes trapping him here. Once these are done, I can leave him behind, but I'll have to come back to make croissants. Hmm.

"I said that if I were smart, I'd still avoid you," he says, turning on the sink. "You're not at your best, so maybe that's why you can't remember."

"I remember well," Hannibal says. "But that is the sort of theoretical thing you sometimes say."

"Well, I didn't seek you out," he retorts, "and once I wash these dishes I'm free to flee again, which I will. I'll just have to put up with you until then."

"I'll make tea, then," Hannibal says. "Would you like some as well?"

Autor adds soap to the water, finding the man behind him impossible to ignore. "No, thank you," he says. "I'm not sick, so there's no reason for me to accept tea from you. But feel free to make some for yourself."

Hannibal fills water into a kettle, and puts the kettle on the hub.

"What are you baking?" he asks.

"Something constructive," Autor says, immersing the first dish in the water and scrubbing it jerkily, annoyed. He sighs. He may as well tell him. "Croissants, if you must know."

"I doubt you could do destructive baking," Hannibal says, smirking as he measures tea into a warmed tea-pot.

"What, and use gunpowder instead of yeast?" Autor says, furrowing his brow. He sets the first dish aside and scrubs the next. "No, I'm focusing on constructive things to keep me from being tempted to do dangerous ones."

"Like what?" Hannibal asks. "Having conversations with me?"

He takes a deep breath while waiting for the water to boil.

"You do make some inventive croissant fillings," he says. "One could call that constructive. I'd love to try the Brie and onions one."

Pause.

"You do realise that Brie cheese is named for a region in France, and that's the province where Jean Valjean is originally from?"

"Yes, exactly. Now you're getting it," Autor says, flicking his fingers to shed them of water. He washes and dries his hands, and crosses to the oven to stir the apple butter, and take it off the heat.

"Perhaps you'll win the die roll for it on Friday," Autor says. "But knowing all of them takes half the fun out of it--they're supposed to be random."

He'll be making three of each filling anyway, something he doesn't intend to inform Dr. Lecter. "Where he's from doesn't matter as much as what he does with his life."

Edited 2014-09-17 00:13 (UTC)

"What is on Friday?" Hannibal asks.

Edited 2014-09-17 00:50 (UTC)

"A Happy Hour," Autor says, and selects a glass bowl to pour the apple butter into. "I'm not making these croissants just for myself. They'll be distributed at random to bar patrons."

"It will be amusing to see their faces when they happen to eat one of the less orthodox ones," Hannibal says. "I should have thought of something like that when people were still willing to eat my food."

"I'm thinking of reserving the buttered asparagus for myself," Autor confesses. "I don't know that many people will like it as much as I do."

He seals the bowl with a lid, and codes it into his bulging food bag in sylladex with a whispered, "Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day, or gluttoning on all, or all away.*"

"Does it hurt, that people no longer eat your food, Dr. Lecter?" the boy asks genuinely, taking the apple butter pot to the sink.

*Shakespeare, Sonnet 75

"Cooking isn't quite as enjoyable if there is nobody to appreciate the result, beside me," Hannibal says, "even when the ingredients are perfectly orthodox. I never used truly unorthodox ingredients here. Nothing stranger than Lunar blue steak."

"Ah, so you have met Mia," Autor says, and bristles a bit. He's not sure where he's going with that, so he submerges the warm apple butter pot in the warmer water and soap, not bothering to mask his displeasure.

"You can't very well see what happens anymore if no one will try it, can you?" Autor says, shaking his head. "Even with orthodox ingredients."

"Some people still will," Hannibal says. "Either out of ignorance, or out of curiosity, or because they are sensible and know I'm not going to harm the food."

Pause.

"Or my chances of using this refuge."

"Rae has always said that the first bite is the best for people watching," Autor says, feeling a bit guilty for bringing her up in the conversation. Still, she was the one to teach him.

He turns away from Dr. Lecter, bent over the sink and scrubbing the pot. "I know that you won't," he says, "but I still don't plan on trying anything you make anytime soon."

Hannibal leans back against a kitchen cabinet, one hand on his drip stand.

"Simply to deny me the pleasure," he says. "Which I can well understand."

"Can you?" Autor says, adjusting his glasses. He shrugs. "Yes, well, I am petty like that. How long will you have your"--and here he waves a soapy hand at the drip stand--"accompaniment?"

"That is for Guppy Sandhu to decide," Hannibal says. "I'm in no hurry and would rather err on the side of caution, personally."