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apparitionism · 1 year

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Confection 3

Bering and Wells! Rival chefs! Competition! Past entanglement of some sort! That’s basically what’s going on here, as imperfectly begun in part 1 and part 2. I have to warn you that in this next part, Helena makes an enormously cheeseball move, for which I apologize, but everything in this story is pretty cheeseball (except maybe the actual cooking); some Helenas are less smooth than others. Some other Mykas might (would) laugh in her face and say “are you kidding me with this,” but this Myka is not one of those. Sometimes a given Myka is just too smitten—and at the same time too psyched out by power dynamics—to do any of what she really should.

Confection 3

“For the first round,” Steve says, “the judges would like to taste your takes on two iconic Christmas side dishes: cranberry sauce and candied yams. But—and no one will be surprised to hear this—the former should be made without cranberries, and the latter without yams. You’ll have ninety minutes for this round... and your time starts now.”

****

Claudia sharpened her eyes when Chefs Wells and Bering—Or should that be Chefs Bering and Wells, she wondered—were on set together for the first time. She was hoping for nature-documentary levels of savage, “Chefs in the Wild,” featuring Predator-Wells and Prey-Bering, with growling and yowling and maybe even some trap-setting and -springing.

Disappointingly, all Claudia could tell at first was they were very obviously not looking at each other, both paying very intent attention to the production personnel explaining marks, angles, retakes. Chef Wells knew it all, of course, so her attention had to have been for show. She was the type, Claudia figured, who never bothered watching airplane safety videos. Whereas Chef Bering obviously always watched the safety videos and located the nearest exit, even if it was behind her... so her attention was harder to read.

Not impossible, though: every now and then she’d waver, blinking and lowering her eyes, and Claudia would have bet money that was cover for a glance at Chef Wells, because when Chef Bering would raise her face again, she’d be a slightly brighter shade of pink.

Claudia was beginning to suspect that “hate each other” was going to be more difficult to sell than she’d thought... at least in one direction. But that was the story. And maybe, if she tried, she could make it more true...

****

You can be professional, Myka had reminded herself on the sidewalk in front of the studio. No: you will be professional.

About everything.

She hadn’t told Pete who her competition was going to be, even when he’d observed, “You’re freaky-nervous about tomorrow. What gives?”

Instead of just saying “Helena Wells”—fearing the embarrassment—she’d babbled about the stakes being high: the restaurant, her parents. Needing to win. Needing to prove.

“I never shoulda made you think about the restaurant thing,” he said with a wince. “Just go and cook like you do. If the money happens, it happens. And if not, we’ll be fine. As for the parents... I really never shoulda made you think about that. Just cook like you do. Seriously, no pressure.”

As always, his sweetness was... sweet. But she had been sure, down to her very bones, that pressure was all there was.

And she was right.

First and worst—or best?—was the pressure in her chest as she stood in the presence of Helena for the first time in over a year. Next—also a war between worst and best—was the pressure of Helena’s hand in and against hers, a warm clasp to acknowledge their re-meeting, a professional greeting, away from which they both turned (Myka trying to hide her fluster, Helena probably feeling nothing but “oh yes I suppose I did know her”) to make the acquaintance of the other contestants.

Once they were on set, Myka had found it a bit easier to control that chest-pressure, for she had instruction to focus on.

But then she’d made the absentminded mistake of glancing at the decor around her: Christmas. She’d known that was the theme of their episode, the point of all their cooking, but she hadn’t realized how extremely Christmas the set itself would be. Wreaths and poinsettias, jingle bells and pine garlands, holly and snowflakes and shiny stars.

And mistletoe.

Was Helena taking it in too? And if she was, did Myka’s presence prompt her to remember? Myka tried, briefly, to find Helena’s eyes but then thought better of it.

Dangerous.

****

The annual Apples Christmas party was Quite A Gala Affair, Myka had heard, and her experience of it did not disappoint. Caturanga, despite not having a Christian bone in his body, adored Christmas. “On what basis could one possibly reject a rationale for such celebration?” he demanded of any employee who questioned him as he sailed through the closed-for-the-occasion restaurant. “Religious differences? Absurd!”

Party lights twinkled everywhere, their pops of bright not fully illuminating the expansive space, smoothing the edges from its everyday functionality, rendering it a mystery. Caterers plied the Apples staff with food they could simply enjoy. Caterers: not Myka, not Helena, but vested and tied all the same. It spoke to Myka of statuses and how they changed... she had a vision of herself offering a tray to Helena... and then the reverse. Let me serve you.

Myka had one drink, then a second. A cocktail invented for this party: an Apple Old-Fashioned, with not only an apple garnish but apple bitters as well.

Was the cocktail truly delicious, or was it merely delicious to drink while gazing upon Helena Wells? She and Caturanga were the party’s stars, of course, but while Caturanga was clearly also its jolly host, Helena was its Sphinx-like queen. Staff seemed to be waiting in an unspoken ambit of station and status to receive a word with, or even a nod from, her opaque majesty...

Myka was accepting a third glass from a vest-and-tie-wearer when Abigail Chow—a fellow line cook whose knife work Myka envied enormously—raised her own apparently several-in glass to Myka and said, “These are okay, but last year it was an apple Negroni, Calvados instead of Campari. A real heavy hitter, but it went down so easy... everybody was tipsy. Hookups galore that night. Tons of awkward fallout.” She drained the glass and said, “Not this year, I guess. Sad.”

Myka didn’t dare say what she was thinking: that she was suddenly sad too, because a tipsy Helena Wells might have been everything she wanted and then some. Hookups galore? She was staring without cease—which she had to stop; Abigail or someone else, someones else, would surely notice—and she knew she would have been content, if not happy, to accept the awkward fallout if she could have that hookup, because who knew anything about aftermaths anyway? Maybe the fallout would have been... happiness?

Don’t be ridiculous, she told herself. Out loud, in her head, because she needed to remember it.

Still: alcohol was flowing free, if not hitting heavy, and Myka had noticed the decorations comprised fake mistletoe, among other clichés. Possibilities abounded.

Myka waited and watched Queen Wells, waiting for her turn, watching for her opening, and at last she’d sidled her way into the correctly collapsible orbit to achieve an audience.

“Are you enjoying yourself?” asked the chef—but Helena tonight, surely tonight Helena, for she asked it low, as if over Myka’s shoulder, but her now to her face, so near her face.

Third drink in hand, Myka was, if not tipsy, certainly emboldened. “Now,” she said.

“I’m delighted to hear that,” was the response, in a voice that, in Myka’s estimation, tilted toward “Helena” rather than “Chef Wells.” Her raise of her glass to Myka’s weighted the scale even further in that “Helena” direction, as did her next words: “And the décor pleases you?”

Was that a generic question? Or was it meant to be personal? Wary, Myka offered an anodyne “It’s beautiful.” But neutral had been the wrong choice; Helena gave her nothing in return. All right. Trying for more “Myka” in her own voice rather than “employee,” she said, with a slight lean in, “The lighting. The... mood.”

Helena said, as if simply musing, “Caturanga always insists that we import the mistletoe from Tenbury Wells.”

“I...” Myka stopped. Regrouped. “Why?”

“Authenticity. The town’s apple orchards are particularly attractive to mistletoe, that parasitic plant; the place styles itself the mistletoe capital of the UK.”

“I didn’t know there was such a thing as authentic mistletoe,” Myka said.

“Shall I show you?”

Could Myka have said anything but yes? In response to which, Helena (tonight clearly and obviously Helena) took her hand—a simple directional gesture to observers, perhaps, but to Myka ignition—and led her to stand beneath a garland in the surprisingly uninhabited lobby. She pointed up at the clump of green, which Myka did now register as real, not plastic.

“The berries determine the attractiveness of the plant. Its appeal. As I understand it, this year they’re... spectacular,” Helena said, and then she paused. As if it were now her turn to wait and watch.

“Are they.” Myka thought on awkward fallout.

But she knew that she and Helena been building to... something. Something. That quiet morning. Breath on Myka’s neck. Greetings delivered with what seemed to be secret smiles. Swift, warm answers, rather than brusque brushoffs, when Myka would express curiosity about recipes, platings, choices.

And yet even as she felt her body give in, leaning close and closer, her mind raced again to fallout, afters, nexts, consequences.

Prompted by panic, she blurted, “I’m supposed to go to another party.” She was. Secret Service, where Pete worked, was having its own holiday party—late, after close—and Pete had “invited” her by saying, “You’ll like this better than snooty Apples. We’ll just hang out and have fun.”

When in return Helena offered, “Are you,” Myka wanted to respond “But I would never” or, crazier, “Would you come with me”—but she couldn’t. Well. Shouldn’t.

Then Helena asked, “With?”

That changed the game. It might have been a casual inquiry. But as Helena had said it, she’d moved back, only an inch if that, but Myka saw it. Saw it and read it as jealousy, or possessiveness, or at least a hint of something like one of those, something like everything Myka would have wished—had been wishing—Helena would feel. And that her body might express it so legibly? A dream, in some sense, come true...

Myka opened her mouth to hurry out “no one, no one,” with the idea that such an assurance would bring Helena back, back that one inch and maybe more. But before she could speak, a striking woman emerged from the dim light and grabbed Helena’s arm.

“Ah,” Helena said, a startle. But she didn’t pull away from the grab; instead, she allowed herself to be pulled away, unresisting, leaving Myka stranded, in no orbit at all. A lost satellite.

Stunned, bereft, she looked up at the mistletoe. Parasitic plant, Helena had called it. More like useless plant, Myka thought, and sent that thought, limply, in its direction.

Abigail, Greek chorus personified, appeared again, supplying, “Awkward fallout: pretty sure that’s some.”

Myka didn’t ask, but her heart (it knew; it knew) began to thump triple-time as Abigail went on, “That’s Giselle. She’s an investor in this little restaurant concern. Everybody thinks she and the chef hooked up last year, so now the chef’s on the hook, if you know what I mean.”

“I guess I do.” The distance, suddenly such distance between her and Helena. No: between her and Chef Wells. Last year, she hadn’t been here. But Chef Wells had.

“Or maybe not,” Abigail said, quickly, and had Myka revealed more than she meant to? If she had, maybe Abigail would do her a drunk favor and not remember. “Whatever happened,” Abigail went on, “Giselle’s got money, and she definitely knows how to pull a string.” She looked around. “The caterers don’t come out here, do they? I need another drink.” And she left.

But Myka waited, there under the mistletoe. She waited, with nothing to watch but the useless—if imported—plant above her solitary head.

She lingered until “waiting” had turned into nothing but “standing.” Then she left and went to Pete’s party. She figured that at least there she wouldn’t do anything reminiscent of her teenage self—such as foolishly thinking she could translate signs into wants; she might as well have been writing in her diary, “Helena leaned toward me but does that mean what I hope it means?”—but in fact she did: she complained to Pete about Giselle’s removal of Helena from their... interaction.

She didn’t mention the involvement of mistletoe.

“That happens at parties,” Pete said. “Right? You’re talking to somebody, then you’re not.”

“I didn’t want it to happen,” Myka said, stuck and stubborn in her hurt.

Pete gave her his Sherlock-Holmes face. “My brilliant detective skills say that means something’s going on with you and the chef.” Myka held her breath; once again, she’d said too much. He gave a little “mmhmm” and followed that up with “You wanted more face time with the famous lady. Hero-worship, right?”

She was able to frown truthfully at that, correcting, “Admiration, not worship.”

“Hero-admiration?”

That sounded even more wrong. “I don’t think I have a hero. Or need one.”

He laughed. “Except me, right? Grease fire.” In culinary school, his quick move with a frying pan had saved, if not Myka’s life, at the very least her eyebrows, and he liked to remind her of it.

“Bánh mi,” she said back—laughing back—because, also in culinary school, her quick proffer of a mayonnaise jar had saved him from, if not flunking out, at the very least embarrassment at having left out an ingredient. One reminder deserved another.

“And that’s why we’re partners. Saving each other. From whatever, right?”

From whatever. He’d done it again, for she’d needed reminding: of what was real and what wasn’t. Of what she could rely on and what she couldn’t.

In her head, she rewatched Helena letting herself be pulled, without even a glance back at Myka. “Giselle’s got money,” she reheard Abigail say. And: “She definitely knows how to pull a string.”

Myka had no money. And she had no idea how to pull a string.

“Is your boss still interviewing?” she’d asked Pete then, and with a yelp, he’d thrown his arms around her.

He’d been nagging her for weeks to try for Secret Service’s soon-to-be-vacant sous-chef position; she’d intended, until tonight, to keep putting him off, saying that at Apples she had so much more to learn (meaning: about Helena). So much more to experience (meaning: with Helena).

But that wasn’t real. The learning and the experience were, but the Helena part wasn’t. Pete, her partner, was.

****

As the first round of competition began—or “began,” for the chefs stood idle as several crew members took their time ensuring that various setups were doing what they were intended to—Myka tried to convince herself that her feelings about the collapsed possibilities of the past didn’t matter in the slightest: she had to figure out how to make cranberry sauce without cranberries and candied yams without yams, and she had to do it fast.

Even under non-filmed circumstances, those cooking demands would have been difficult. But constantly seeing Helena Wells at the edge of her vision—constantly feeling the presence of Helena Wells, barely an arm’s length away—constantly having to navigate around Helena Wells when moving from her station to anywhere else in the kitchen—well.

All of that was certainly going to make things easier.

TBC

#bering and wells #Warehouse 13 #fanfic #Confection #part 3 #AU week #holiday (but not yet Gift Exchange)#ah... Christmas #and the parties thereoccasioned #it's a Christmas doubledown #the question here is #what is the mistake in this case?#has it been averted or committed?#I find that a pertinent question for many versions of B&W #and the turning points they face

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