Work Text:
Rody wishes he had normal dreams.
Normal dreams; the type where you go to school naked and wake up in a cold sweat, whipping your head around madly for any scarlet lockers surrounding you. Not visions of yourself bounded to an ivory plate, served in a banquet as the star of the show to a bunch of hungry onlookers. His nights are shrouded in starvation and stress; being the only, severely underpaid, waiter at one of the most esteemed resteraunts in the area, hanging his apron up everyday to an empty fridge and a cracked television. A catalogue outdated by a month because he simply couldn't afford to buy the latest one on his pathetic paycheck he received from the restaurant-he-couldn't-pronounce and newspapers nicked from bins, clippings of missing cases to make himself feel better.
Rody doesn't have to starve - but he prefers to. Starving is better than slaughtered rodents in strawberry sauce, loveless lasagnas and soulless spring rolls. There's no love in Vincent's cooking - it feels empty, hollow. The flavour is there, but the soul, the heart isn't, he tells Vincent, who scoffs at him, rolling his eyes as he twiddled a pen between his fingers. "A useless critique in the culinary world," Vince sneers, his mother's heavy French accent an echo on his own. He doesn't look at Rody; too occupied scribbling the ever loving hell out of a restaurant review snarking the waiter. "There is no such thing as love in cooking; you cannot taste love, your vocabulary is simply stunted, Rody," he addressed Rody directly, enunciating a french R as he dumped the newspaper in the bin. "Like your palette."
"Now are you going to eat or not?" Vince raised an eyebrow at him, gesturing to the dish in front of him that Rody was clearly trying to avoid eating. "It's another dead plate - god knows i wouldn't cook for you," Vince says harshly, shoving a silver spoon his way.
A bouillabaisse, Vince had told him, a warm french seafood stew, marinated prawns, thinly sliced lemons and chunks of meat that Rody thought must've been crab, lobster or some other type of shellfish Rody could barely pronounce stewing in a thin, rich broth that glistened under the gleam of Vince's expensive german oil lamp. Vince looked at him expectantly, waiting for him to dig in. Beads of sweat pooled on Rody's forehead.
"Whoo-we!" Rody said embarrassingly, standing up abruptly. "Looks like my break is over! I must be getting back, I am the only waiter after all, speaking of which, what's with that-" Vince looked at him unimpressed, before interrupting him.
"Sit down, Rody." Rody plopped down into the rough cut wooden chair. "We closed thirty minutes ago, you know that." Rody looked down at the bouillabaisse. "...Forget it. I won't make you eat anything you don't want to. I don't care anyway, I just thought you wouldn't want to starve," Vince said in a sniffy voice that indicated that he very much did care. Rody looked at the bouillabaisse one more time, noticing the slices of lemons, their sour juice dissipating into the savory broth. Lemons.
That was Vince's favourite food, wasn't it?
Rody picked up the spoon, scooping up some crab-lobster-shellfish-meat-cube, some lemon guts, and a small piece of prawn. And he ate.
The sour of lemon collided with the umami of the broth like a hurricane of flavour; though what should have been a bitter symphony was battled by Vince's culinary genius cultivating to produce brown sugared prawns. Sweet, succulent prawns coagulated with piquant broth to create pure heaven on Rody's tongue. But what he really couldn't figure out was the meat. What he thought was a seafood cut had presented itself as a pork-like texture; though not as fatty. It seemed much leaner, much rougher than pork, but it didn't have the stark, scaley texture of shellfish. He chewed apprehensively, before swallowing and taking another bite of one of the cubes as Vince watched him with bated breath. He munched on it more enthusiastically, now the broth's flavour had seeped into the meat as he let out an appreciative moan of delight.
Days of starvation does something to a guy.
He had never tasted anything like this in Vince's hollow, corporate cooking. But this...
"This is love." Rody spoke through a mouthful of meat-cube, pointing down at the bouillabaisse. "This tastes like love."
Vincent smiled at him; not a cruel smirk or an effortless grimace. Flattery illuminated his cheeks, his eyes creasing happily as he grinned at Rody. "I thought it would."