Chapter Text
u/ina4ever: What’s your favorite thing to cook?
“If I’m doing a proper meal, a roast chicken. A little salt and pepper, some butter under the skin, bang a lemon in there if you have one, maybe some thyme, and you get this lovely smell while it’s cooking.
“If not, flapjacks. They’re basically oats with golden syrup that come out all squidgy in the middle and crisp at the edges. When I’ve had a really crap day, I’ll make a pan of them and eat them in front of the TV.”
u/caitykat4893: When are you going to get a new cat?
“When I stop tearing up every time I look at photos of kittens.”
u/passit420: Have you ever done drugs?
“I might have, on my own time. I’m definitely not going to do them in my videos, though.”
u/throwaway00690069: What’s your boyfriend’s name?
“What makes you assume I’d have a boyfriend?”
u/Finn12345: Where do you get your earrings? They’re all so fun!
“These little paring knives? My friend makes them. He’s super talented. I’ll put a link to his shop so you can check it out.”
u/sohlastan1990: When are you going to do a cookbook?
“When someone offers me a book deal! I have a few ideas, so if anyone in the publishing world is watching, please get in touch.”
u/spoon_me_kylo: I’m a big fan of yours and I also love Cravings with Kylo. Would you ever make a video with him?
“I don’t think I’ve seen any of his videos. But I’ve met and cooked with a lot of other YouTubers in real life, and it’s been really rewarding. And I’ve been looking for a fun way to celebrate getting to half a million subscribers.
“So, maybe! Anyway, thanks for all your questions, and if you enjoyed this, please come check out my channel.”
*
Her phone lit up the instant she shut the camera off.
Finn: ty for answering my question
Rey: finn12345? REALLY?
could you be more obvious
Finn: don’t worry about it
christmas is coming and i need the promo
check your email
i can’t believe you haven’t seen any kylo videos
Rey: i’m kind of busy
Finn: i sent links to the best ones
you’ll love them
Rey: sure i will
Finn: for a youtube star
you’re extremely offline
The thing about working together was that you never knew what the other creator was going to be like—if they’d say something weird to you over email, unconcerned about corporate IT reading over their shoulder like they would be at a regular office, or if they’d later post videos that revealed them as flat-Earthers.
Frankly, sometimes even the videos with millions of views weren’t that interesting. Yes, Rey definitely wanted to cook with the high school chemistry teacher who made a steak dinner in her lab using the heat from reactions she stirred up; no, she was not interested in the man who was “hacking” sous-vide by steaming everything in plastic bags on his dishwasher’s pots-and-pans cycle, turning it all tepid and floppy. But if Kylo’s videos had Finn’s endorsement, she’d give them a shot.
She sat down with the microwaved remains of a brined turkey breast she’d been developing for a holiday video, now on its fourth test batch and somehow still too salty, her laptop, and Finn’s email, and clicked the first link.
It opened on a shot of the finished dish, plated and set on a tablecloth, with a simple voiceover backed by soft music.
“So. Tonight I’m making ratatouille. It’s going to be a challenge, but when it’s made right, it’s worth the time.”
Good sound. Tightly edited script. And a basic but effective setup: just a single camera mounted at eye level above his hands, pointed at a countertop with a cutting board and ingredients laid out. It was intimate, even though he didn’t show his face. Like being in his head—she assumed it was a he, based on the bass timbre of his voice vibrating through her tinny laptop speakers—as he cooked.
She clicked through the other links from Finn with interest: a mix of weekend projects, like making your own sausage and ramen and three-tiered birthday cake, and late-night eats, like nachos and a cheeseburger he fried while drinking a beer.
The setup was always the same—voice, hands, cutting board—and the comments were the usual mix of sincere, if grating, questions and unnecessary feedback, though Kylo didn’t get as much criticism as she did. (Possibly because the resonant voice and the size of his hands and the height of the camera made him seem like a big guy, whereas she was definitely A Woman On The Internet and therefore fair game.)
What can I swap for the ground pork in the sausage? I don’t eat meat.
Hubby doesn’t like green peppers. What other colors of peppers are good?
I made the cheeseburger and added extra cheese. Way too much cheese.
Then there were—not the weirdos, but, say, the thirsty. The silly walking right up to the edge of creepy.
I’d let him grind me into a patty with his grade-A beef.
Just put that plastic-looking cheese over my mouth and smother me good.
Can we talk about the size of Kylo’s hand compared to the beer can? I bet I’ve worked at places with walk-ins smaller than him. A MAN.
She rewound to the part of the video where he shuffled onions around the pan with one hand while lifting the can for a sip with the other. It did look pretty big. Then she rewound all the way to the beginning, dumped her now-rubbery leftovers in the compost, and cooked a cheeseburger along with the video, letting the grease drip down her chin as she ate.
*
When she watched the videos over dinner, she thought about how smooth the edits were, how instructive his tips, how he’d adjusted the lighting from one video to the next. How it could be fun to cook something together, and how she might even learn a few things on the production side.
When she closed her eyes in bed that night, she thought about him.
About his fingers curling under when he sliced tomatoes, keeping the tips safe. About the way you could just see his forearm tighten when he whisked an egg wash. About his palms flattening against his garlic press, pushing the handles together as easily as if he were squeezing toothpaste. About the flush of orange around his fingernails from the paprika-based rub he pressed into a rack of ribs. About the care he took soaping his thumbs after rolling meatballs.
It wasn’t really the size of his hands—although the way the soft sides of the beer can flexed in his grip was certainly interesting. It was what they were capable of.
The one she kept going back to was the veal piccata video, when he put on gloves to mix a marinade. Her mind circled around the way the latex snapped against the bone at his wrist, the way he flexed his fingers to stretch the material before plunging them into the bowl, the way he deftly massaged the mixture into the meat, working it gently but thoroughly.
And then there was his voice. Of course there was something inherently sensual about cooking. You had to put your body into it, and it was meant for your body to enjoy. When the recipe turned out, it satisfied every sense. When it didn’t, there was still the pleasure of nourishing yourself.
The way he spoke, though, hinted at another level of satisfaction. He must have known how it sounded when he said things like What a beautiful strawberry. Look at you and your perfect shade of red or I prefer this mallet because it really tenderizes the meat.
Or maybe not; after nearly 200 videos, Rey still hated listening to her own voice. Watching herself on camera was fine, but she’d rather scrub the vent fan housing above her stove than hear herself (and had, in fact, done so to procrastinate).
Every time she drifted off, she heard another suggestion.
I like to hold the thyme gently with one hand and strip the leaves with the thumb and first finger of my other hand.
That wasn’t quite true. Every time she drifted off, she thought of something else she’d heard.
Once I slide the onions into the pan, I’ll let them really sizzle. Be patient or you won’t get any nice caramelization.
There was nothing overtly sexual about it. Well, except for You have to pound the meat good and hard so the marinade will really penetrate it, if your mind was in the gutter.
But no reason that her heart should have beaten faster or that she was suddenly too hot beneath her duvet.
No reason for her to feel something coil in her belly when she thought of him saying I have a paper cut on my finger, so I’m wearing gloves. Otherwise the lemon juice in the marinade will sting. But you don’t have to. Unless you want to. No reason for her to feel a pulse at her clit remembering the snap of the gloves as he tugged them on.
No reason at all.
*
“Out of stock,” Ben said as he crouched and scooted into the passenger seat, answering Mitaka’s anxious glance. “Anything online?”
Mitaka grimaced. “We can have it shipped from North Carolina, but it’ll take five days.”
“Shit. Okay.” Ben tapped at his phone, ignoring the barrage of email notifications to check his notes. “That’s every store on my list.”
“Back home? I’m double-parked here.”
“Fine.” Ben ran a hand over his face, more irritated with himself than his assistant. If he’d just finished his research and tested the recipe earlier, he wouldn’t be scrambling for purple sweet potato vinegar—the key ingredient in the French-Japanese-inspired potato salad he’d envisioned—the day he was supposed to film himself cooking with it.
He knew this. He just couldn’t bring himself to care. Somewhere between rolling out hundreds of wrappers for his soup-dumpling video and dutifully rapping the baking sheet only to have all his macarons collapse, he’d lost the energy to cook.
Every idea in his notebook was weeks old, and when he looked over past scribbles—cotton candy with flavors of caramelized pork, new kind of cinnamon rolls, stuffed-crust pretzels w/mustard filling?—it only filled him with the urge to make another batch of neon-orange mac and cheese. In the microwave.
Mitaka dropped him off, leaving Ben alone in the kitchen with his lights and his camera and his cutting board. He took some potatoes out, scrubbed them, thought about peeling them, then looked at Twitter instead. Another food magazine was laying off staff. Probably just a matter of time before his own column got cut, and then he’d either have to hustle for another one or start taking video sponsors.
His inbox delivered more bad news: one request to turn some edits around by the next day, and another to send his spring recipe ideas (which at this point were nothing but “mac and cheese, but add frozen peas”) by the following week.
There was one intriguing email from the inquiries section of his website, asking cheerily if he’d be interested in making a video with someone called Rey who had a channel called Reycipes. This person had used as many exclamation points in a single message as Ben had used in his entire life.
He glanced at the tubers and the time, telling himself guiltily that maybe the potato salad would be one of his midnight cooking videos, and clicked the link to their channel.
“Tally-ho and spit spot and welcome to Cooking Challenge from the Comments number forty-five, which is to make a full roast beef dinner,” the host said in a voice somewhere between Mary Poppins and Julia Child, playing around. She laughed and continued at a lower pitch and fewer decibels, “I’m really excited about this one, because the sauce only calls for half a bottle of wine. I’m going to pour myself a glass while I tie up the beef and get it in the oven. Let’s have some fun!”
He fast-forwarded to the halfway point, which found her plucking leaves off thyme sprigs while chatting to the camera. Suddenly a timer went off and she almost spit out her mouthful of wine.
“Oh, fu—okay, that’ll be the fat heated up for my Yorkshire puddings, but I’ve completely forgotten to mix up the batter. So I’m just going to put a cut here—and now I’m back, this is seriously just flour, eggs, and milk I’ve whisked together, and I’m going to ladle it into the muffin tin with the beef drippings and put it back in the oven.”
Timing and technique were clearly not her strongest points. She’d nearly burned the puddings and neglected to show the viewer how to actually make the batter. But the video was still half an hour long because she was pulling the thyme off one tiny leaf at a time.
The comments were meaner and, astoundingly, even creepier than the ones on his videos. He thanked Past Ben yet again for using his old AIM screen name instead of his real name for his channel.
THIS IS THE DUMBEST F*CKING THING I’VE EVER SEEN. Why wouldn’t you use cheesecloth to strain the gravy?
Ben rolled his eyes at that one. She’d explained in the video that she found it easier to use a metal strainer, which he’d thought was a good compromise. Did people even watch before typing?
My cooking challenge from the comments is, make me a sandwich!
That roast is COMPLETELY overdone. Why have a cooking channel when you don’t know anything about food? What a WASTE.
Get me a red jacket and a funny hat cause I’d totally eat her beef.
I bet her ass tastes like Yorkshire pudding.
Ben thought very briefly of how it had looked when she bent over to take the roast out of the oven. He chalked it up to the power of suggestion, nothing more, and watched a few more of her most popular uploads.
They were charming, like you were sitting in a friend’s kitchen and listening to them gossip as they banged pots and pans. But it would be a nightmare to shoot with her, waiting while she chopped and trying to keep her from burning herself. He couldn’t imagine smiling through an hour of her chatter. He’d never smiled for more than 30 seconds at a time. Maximum.
The single video he’d made showing his own face had been dragged immediately to the trash can. Misery didn’t rule every moment of his existence, so why did the nerd onscreen look so grumpy the entire time? Plus, if he showed his face, there was no point in using a pseudonym anymore.
He typed a Thanks, but no thanks response, but didn’t send it right away. Better to film first, then read it over and make sure it was at least a polite rejection.
*
At two a.m., potato salad finally assembled and in the fridge, Ben pulled off his clothes and fell into bed. Then he remembered he hadn’t sent that email. Another thing slipping through the cracks. He’d do it in the morning.
It made him think of her, though, as he fell asleep. She was a bit sloppy, in a way that he’d never allow himself to be on camera, but she still had a gleam in her eye when she seasoned the roast, patting the meat as she turned it to make sure it was evenly covered.
She wasn’t living on food that came in seasoning packets. She still took pleasure in her cooking. He could tell when she took a little sniff of the lime before juicing it in her chips and salsa video, eyes briefly closing; when she firmly grasped a carrot and grinned to herself when she peeled it from end to end in one go. When she tasted the broth for her weeknight stewed chickpeas and poked her tongue out to chase the drop that landed on her chin.
What was troubling was when he kept thinking of her tongue when he woke up. There was nothing special about it. A shiny, pink, ordinary tongue. He stuck his own out to meet his toothbrush and looked at it in the bathroom mirror. It was basically the same.
There was nothing salacious about her tasting the broth. It wasn’t as if she rolled her tongue along her lip or ran it along her teeth, although now he was imagining her mouth doing both. There wasn’t even anything particularly appealing about the stewed chickpeas, which were far down the hearty end of the casserole-to-oysters spectrum of food sexiness.
It was that she tried to lick it instead of just wiping her chin. Like she was hungry.
He took the potato salad out of the fridge along with the cream for his coffee and dumped it in the trash, disgusted with himself. Instead of opening the video files when he sat down at his computer, he opened the email and rewrote.
Hi, Rey,
I’m Ben, the cook behind Cravings with Kylo. Nice to hear from you. It would be great to make a video together. Please email me with some suggested times and we can set up a call to discuss.
Also, I can’t stop thinking about the shot of your tongue in the stewed chickpeas video, which is weird because I know you didn’t mean it to be sexy, but I hope I’ll get to see it in person when we shoot and possibly even feel it caressing my skin.
Now it was out and written down, and he could stop thinking about it. He deleted the last sentence, triple-checked that he’d excised the creepiness, and sent the message.