All He Wanted Was Dinner...

[x-polarisstar.livejournal.com]

Scene: The Kitchen, late afternoon
Players: Lorna and Manuel
Summary: Lorna is about to make dinner when Manuel comes looking for food. She decides to make good on her threat to make him learn to feed himself.



These days the kitchen was the closest Lorna came to a place of absolute freedom. A place where she had control over every aspect and where no one challenged her abilities. She occasionally worried that the lack of challenge was making her sloppy but since Chef Marcel wasn’t anywhere this side of the Mississippi, she couldn’t summon too much dread for his opinion of her flautas.

She was sitting on the center island, not cooking for once. Instead, she was busily making out a menu for the week. Behind her, the ingredients for today’s dinner were already laid out and ready just in case someone showed up to help. Hope, for Lorna, always sprang eternal. However, being equally practical, she figured she’d get started in another half an hour or so.

Manuel had absolutely less than zero intention of ever trying to help out in the kitchen. However, his stomach had let him know that, in no uncertain terms, if Food was not procured Soon that there would be Trouble. So here he is, in the kitchen, trying to see if he can get something to eat. Unfortunately for him, he senses Lorna long before he actually sees her.

~Shit.~ he thinks to himself.

Lorna looked up at Manuel walked in--she’d position herself facing the doorway for a reason after all--and suppressed a grin. Even if he knew that she was feeling triumphantly smug, that was hardly a good reason to flaunt it. “Hi. Come for your first lesson?” she chirped, recapping her pen with a flourish.

Manuel looks irritated. "No." he says in heavily accented English before heading right for the Holy of Holies - the fridge.

Lorna hopped off the counter and circled round to the assembly side of the counter. “There isn’t anything in there that’s ready to eat,” she said conversationally in lightly accented Mexican Spanish. She’d pulled out her AP Spanish texts a few days before after arguing with him over the journals. It wasn’t exactly like riding a bike but she thought she could manage.

Manuel, if it is even possible, looks even _more_ disgusted. "I will find something." he says, slowly, in English. He opens the fridge, and begins to root around the various shelves. ~Crap.~ he says in Castilian, forgetting himself. There truly wasn't anything that he could just throw together. Even a salad would require preparation.

Such a snob she thought, amused. “Told you.” She reverted to English, having made her point. “Of course, this,” she indicated her prepared ingredients, “could be turned into food in about twenty minutes and cooks always get to eat first. Beggars however have to wait.” She folded her arms and let him figure it out.

Manuel motions to the telephone. "And the delivery guy is always there for you." he snarks. "And doesn't dare give you any backtalk."

“And he’ll take a minimum of 40 minutes to get here. 20 minutes longer and you have to tip him.” Lorna smirked at him.

Manuel shrugged. "I fail to see the problem." He does find a long-lost bottle of water, probably Alison's, on the counter which he opens and begins to drink.

“Okay then, the phone numbers are in that drawer there. Phone is over there. Enjoy your lukewarm takeout.” Lorna reached behind her and clicked on the stove underneath a large pot. She heated some olive oil then lightly flattened some garlic and tossed it in. The smell filled the kitchen quickly.

Manuel's stomach rumbled audibly. The smells were delicious, but his will was strong - for the moment. He finished the bottle of water, and flung the empty into the trash - the non-recycling trash can. "Why are you doing this?" he blurts out suddenly. "Is this some sort of amusement for you?"

“Actually, yes.” Lorna glanced at him over her shoulder then rolled her eyes. “I like cooking.” She walked over and picked up his empty water bottle and moved it to the recycling bin. “I get that a lot of people don’t. I’m okay with that. I’m even okay with cooking for the half the house’s population who doesn’t like to cook. But I don’t think it’s asking all that much that you should be able to fix yourself a simple meal.”

Manuel grimaces at this, because he can see the dusky rose of her amusement wafting from her in waves. "No." he grits his teeth and bites out. "If you will not permit me to eat, then I shall have to be content with scraps." And with that, he takes a few steps until he is right next to the food-disposal trash can. "I hope that you derive a great deal of pleasure from this."

Lorna’s amusement vanished and a sharp gesture kept the metal lid of the trash can quite firmly closed. “Don’t be melodramatic, Manuel. I can only attempt to wrangle you into one impossible task a day so I don’t have the energy to convince you to be in the drama club too. I didn’t say I wouldn’t feed you. Just that I think you shouldn’t have to rely on me to do it.” She turned back to preparing dinner, part of her attention still focused on holding the trash can closed.

Manuel looks at the trash can like it has personally betrayed him. "Very well." he says, backing off from the trash can. "I'll just have to inform Dr McCoy that you kept someone who was literally starving to death a few months ago from eating. That should be _well_ received, I think."

“Twenty minutes.” She pointed at the chicken she was searing. “Forty minutes.” She waved her hand toward the phone. “People don’t starve in under an hour. However, if you want to help then I can cut that time in half. I’m not the one being unreasonable here.”

Manuel quirks an eyebrow. "But you are." he says, holding his hand up to his neck as if to check his pulse. "I have no intention of relying on you to feed me. But you will not permit me to feed myself. So what am I to do?"

“That is trash. This is food. I’m not certain how a bright boy like you is unable to tell the difference but here in this house, we don’t eat trash. Well, except for the occasional corndog but that’s Jubilee’s deal.” She wielded her knife with a little more force than was necessary to chop the carrots. She was really trying not to let him irritate her but it wasn’t easy. “Since you don’t want to wait for what I’m making, I suggest you open the refrigerator, get out a head of lettuce, a tomato, a cucumber and some cheese, chop it up, mix it together and put some dressing on it.”

"Since the cook won't when asked without demanding gratitude, and she can't be sacked, I suppose we'll just have to make do." he sighs. He then open back up the refrigerator and begins to shift things from one side of the fridge to the other - since he doesn't know what he's looking for. "What does a head of lettuce look like?" he asks innocently.

“Now here’s another misconception we need to clear up.” She walked up behind him and pointed over his shoulder at the lettuce, then at the other items she’d told him to get just for good measure. “I’m not ‘the cook’. I am a junior staff who happens to enjoy cooking and whose mother forced her through seven years of gourmet training.”

Manuel shrugs. "I don't care what you think you are. You're the cook. You said it yourself - you cook meals for those unable or unwilling to cook their own." He gathers the items that Lorna pointed out and dumped them unceremoniously onto the counter-top.

“Because I like to. Not because it’s my job.” She handed him a knife. “There is a distinction.”

Manuel ignores that as irrelevant. "Irrelevant." he says, gazing at the items on the countertop, as if annoyed that they have not spontaneously assembled themselves into an edible form. He accepts the knife from Lorna, but holds it loosely in his hand, sharp-side up.

“I don’t think so. You see, if I were the cook, I would have fed you by now. But since I’m just someone who likes to cook, I don’t have to give food to anyone I have decided is insufferable.” She reached out and turned the knife blade down. At this rate, she was going to be well done with her planned meal before Manuel’s salad was even begun.

"You're not a very good cook." he comments idly, still looking at the food items on the countertop. "And you will, if I want you to."

Lorna nearly laughed at his first claim but found her amusement drained by his second. She hadn't been afraid of him before. She thought perhaps she could understand why others were. "It's probably a bad idea to manipulate the emotions of a woman with a large knife and the ability to warp metal," she replied neutrally. She turned her back on him deliberately and started to work on the pilaf she was planning for a side dish.

Manuel shrugs. "It beats being hungry." he says idly.

“It must be a strange place in your head. What’s it like to completely lack moral fiber?”

Manuel looks confused. "I'm sorry?" he asks, his accent thickening. "Did you just threaten to crack my skull open?"

"Not hardly. That would get brains in the food and that's unsanitary." Lorna checked on the chicken then on Manuel's progress with the salad. She was definitely going to be finished first.

Manuel does a quick empathic scan, to check for any nefarious designs upon his person. "You are very strange. First you threaten my life, then you say that you are not. It is very confusing."

She was irritated but the only nefarious designs she had on him had to do with forcing him to prepare food. “I said it must be strange to be in your head. To...ah, think like you do.”

"What's wrong with the way I think?" he asks curiously. "Seems perfectly normal to me." He glances over at the salad-components, and puts the knife in his hand down on the countertop - since he has no idea what to do with it.

“You were supposed to be cutting the tomato,” she said, without looking back. It appeared to be a neat display of optocraniodorsal talent but she was merely tracking the magnetic field around the knife. “It rather lacks in moral fibre,” she continued, backtracking to his question about how he thought.

"Moral ... fibre?" he says, still confused. "In what way?" And he looks at the tomato, and then the knife, and then at Lorna like she's from Mars.

“It’s better to manipulate someone into doing what you want than to bend your pride and learn to support yourself? Dodgy ethics.” Setting her various dishes to simmer or set, she leaned to the right and tugged a cutting board out of a nearby cabinet and set that in front of Manuel as well. Then she picked up the knife and held it out to Manuel again.

Manuel looks at the cutting board with bafflement. "What's that?" he asks, taking up the knife like a weapon, not like a cooking implement.

“Cutting board, so you won’t damage the counter or the knife. Also more sanitary.” She adjusted his grip on the knife again then, holding the tomato in place with her free hand, guided his hand to slice the fruit in half.

As soon as Lorna's skin touches his own, his empathic power locks in onto her with a vengeance. But the bond is two-way, and while Manuel gets Lorna's love of cooking, impatience, exasperation and fear of Manuel, Lorna gets his total bafflement, his disdain for the culinary arts, and the feeling of total ignorance, with the fear and anger that usually accompanies ignorance. She also gets to feel his discomfort at the gnawing pit of hunger in his belly, and the pleasure of the smells of the food.

The knife in their linked hands crumpled to a cold lump of scrap metal and she jerked away, her heart racing. Her own stomach was complaining bitterly, having been reminded that it was quite some time since the yogurt she’d had the night before. Her hands shook and from all around the kitchen came the jittering clank as every piece of loose metal trembled in sympathy. She continued to back away from him until she ran into the counter. She wrapped her arms around herself like it was all that was keeping her together and stared in wild-eyed shock at him. Taking a long shuddering breath, she managed to summon a shaky sort of control, silencing the ringing metals. “Well...okay then. We won’t do that again.”

Manuel, for his part, also looks like chiselled spam. Taking a deep breath, he took a step back away from the green-haired cook. "NEVER do that again!" he almost screamed.

Lorna was pulling herself together, or rather supressing her reaction, far more quickly and lifted her head in agreement. "Who would want to?" she responded sharply, still pressed back against the counter.

Manuel, feeling cruel, decided to demonstrate exactly _why_ people came back to him time and time again. To counteract all of the nasty, he decides to project a little happiness. No, strike that. A LOT of happiness. The kind of happiness that doesn't come naturally. The kind that comes from a needle, or from a line of powder on a mirror, or from a really good binge.

The shuddering fear, the hunger, the weariness and the always present heartache were swept away under a rush of warmth and pleasure. Lorna giggled in a euphoric daze and reached out to poke the shimmering lines of color and movement that were radiating off every object in her view. Amazed by how they bent to her prodding she pushed more which was when she noticed that her own hand was pulsing with the same waves of movement. She looked at Manuel, overjoyed by this discovery and was even more delighted to realize he too had the waves. Experimentally, she pushed at the waves around him wondering what they were.
Not happy ones, that's for darned sure. Manuel rocks backwards, staggered a step or two by the magnetic shove. "No rough stuff, or the happy goes away!" he barks.

Suitably warned but undisturbed by the berating, Lorna went back to poking the other waves around her. There was a ringing in her ears that she knew meant something but nothing in her associated it with worry. Without caution or understanding, she sent the heated grilled over the flames on the stove spinning into the air, flipping the pan that had been resting on it over in the process.

Manuel stood back up, walking over to where Lorna sat playing with the E-M spectrum. "Now Lorna, I'm going to need to ask you to do something for you. You will do something for me, won't you?" And with his words, his eyes once again flash red as he adds more happy on top of his previous happy.

Lorna nodded eagerly. Of course, she would. The world was a beautiful place and people should be happy happy happy happy happy. Manuel didn't look nearly happy enough. "Yes?"

"I am hungry. Fix me something to eat. If you do it quickly, and I like the food, then maybe there will be a special reward for you." he says patronizingly.

Food! Food was...here her thoughts stuttered, as long held patterns of thought rebelled against the word "good". Undaunted, she found her way around it. Feeding people made them happy. Lorna pushed against the floor and propelled herself to the refrigerator. She took out a large steak and a large bowl of pasta salad that had been well-hidden. Turning on the broiler as she went passed, she moved back to the counter-top and began to season the meat. Off to her right, a knife worked independently to chop the items that Manuel had taken out for his salad. To her left, another knife made quick work of a clove of garlic and some onions. She began to hum as she worked, well-pleased with herself and the world.

Manuel surfed the happy-vibe that he had created in her, monitoring it to make sure that he could undo what he had done if he needed to. At the same time, voyeuristically, he empathically watched what her brain dreamed up that fit the feeling of "happy". It was hard to see, precisely, because of how much the feeling he had created overlaid her own natural emotions, but he had nothing but time to puzzle it all out.

Lorna's mind was having a hard time with "happy" because the emotions continued to summoned memories that swiftly became negative. California summers led to the mob scene in front of her house. Her parents led to her father's accusing revelation she was adopted. Cooking led to eating. Alex...Alex meant fire. Again and again, the manufactured pleasure was forced to start over. Lorna's hands were none too steady as she prepped the steak for a quick broiling. Unable to hold even usual caution in her head, she reached out to the oven tray and grabbed it in her hand. She jerked back from the pain then promptly forgot about it. She put the steak in and nudged the oven closed again. She did nothing about the rising blisters on her hand.

Manuel tsked. "Mustn't hurt your beautiful flesh." he scolded. "Take care of that, now." To reinforce it, he added a little bit of "OBEY" to the "HAPPY" that he's been sending. As the bad emotional memories come up to Lorna's mind, Manuel examines them as best he can, noting them for further reference.

Lorna stated at her hand for a second then moved to the sink and stuck her hand under the cold water. Some part of her mind recited the steps she needed to take for a burn like this. Ice, salve, bandage, report. She followed them to the letter, giggling at the tediousness. When her hand was swathed with bandages and some burn cream from the first aid kit she kept in the kitchen for her cooking classes, she looked to Manuel for further instructions. She wasn't sure who to report this to as Chef Marcel was nowhere nearby and she couldn't report to herself.

"That's much better." he says, taking the role that she expects of him. "Don't forget, you've got a meal going. Wouldn't want to ruin it through carelessness, now, would we? The warm boy with the soft hands would really be upset with you if you did that." he says, needlessly twisting the knife just a little.

She smiled brilliantly at him and sailed back to finish up the salad she'd begun. Adding croutons, some shelled pistachios and a sliced avocado that she'd originally intended for Alison's guacamole, she tossed the whole thing with a creamy caesar dressing and offered it to Manuel as a salad course.

Manuel looked at the salad, then leaned over to smell it. "Smells delicious. Thank you, Lorna." he says, giving her a spike of pleasure with his words. "Is there anything else?" He then starts to eat the salad hungrily.

She drifted toward the oven then stopped, recalling that the steak wasn't done yet. "Soon?" she asked, hoping he would be happy with that answer.

"Soon will be fine. Perfection takes time." he agrees between bites of salad. Mentally, he revised his opinion of her cooking skills northwards. This truly was an excellent salad. "Is there anything you'd like for yourself?" he asks, curious as to what she'd come up with in her current state.

For herself? What else did she need? She was warm and floating on air. How could she need anything when the world sparkled like it did? It was like Alex described catching the perfect wave... Alex. "Alex." she murmured and didn't understand the strange emotion that pierced her enshrouding joy.

Ah. A name to go with the feeling. "Alex. Tell me about him." he says, still working on the last little bits of salad.

She floated a little upwards and spun a pirouette buoyed by both Manuel's manufactured happiness and the real love that was summoned with thoughts of Alex. "He's wonderful. He's smart, sweet, sensitive." Pleased with her alliteration, she laughed richly.

Manuel coughed. "Food." he reminds her. "You miss this Alex, and you feel like you're in love with him."

Lorna zipped over to the oven to check on the steak and smiled in satisfaction when the knife revealed a perfectly rare steak. "I am in love with him," she corrected happily then turned to look at him, "Rare okay?"

"A little underdone for my tastes. I prefer a medium-rare." he says, looking over at the steak. "Of course you are." he says as he puts his empty salad bowl and cutlery back onto the table. "I'll bet he can't make you feel like this all the time."

Lorna closed the oven door again and with a sweep of her hand, sent Manuel's dishes to the sink. She sank lower as she pondered his statement. "He hurt me," she said after a moment.

Manny nods his head in total sympathy. "I know. I can feel it." And he can - feel the emotional heartbreak, the pain of love spurned, the ache of longing...

"He went away." Lorna shoved away the sudden feeling of fire and fear, grasping at the euphoria that had been supporting her. She spun back to the oven and took out the now medium rare steak. "Done!"

Manuel's mouth salivates as the smell of the steak hits him. "Smells delicious. Do you want some?" he asks courteously.

Lorna started to nod then recoiled as the familiar yearning/disgust of feeling for food hit her. She retreated in confusion and instead offered him the pasta salad she'd taken out of the fridge.

Manuel grinned. Now _that_ was an interesting reaction indeed. "No? Well, OK, more for me then." He then takes a few bites of the steak, then bothers to look up at the proffered pasta salad. "No thank you. This should be fine. You should eat some instead."

600 calories... Lorna shook her head, alarmed. "I'm not hungry."

Manuel smirks. "Don't lie to me, Lorna. You are." And then his eyes flash red. "EAT." he says.

Lorna settled reluctantly on the chair opposite him and used a summoned fork to stab at the pasta salad. So strong was her aversion to eating that she was fighting the complusion. She raised the fork to her mouth then stopped with a whimper.

Manuel's eyes flashed red again as he smirked. "EAT." he commanded again, adding OBEY to the HAPPY warring against the disgust and revulsion in Lorna's head.

She complied helplessly for several minutes until she'd emptied the bowl. As the command to eat faded, she stared into the bowl with a rising sense of nausea. Fat contents and calorie counts swirled through her head and she stood abruptly. She stared at Manuel for a second then ran. She reached the bathroom on the ground floor and proceeded to throw up what she'd just forced down. She continued dry heaving, her stomach rejecting even the illusion of food. When she was utterly spent, she laid her head down on the cold tile floor and giggled helplessly to herself, still futilely delighted with the world.