Chapter Text
At precisely 3:15 PM, Suzaku was outside the faculty lounge, an exciting, forbidden area of the school he'd never stepped foot in before. It was huge—easily thirty tables, three plush chairs at each. He couldn't help but feel pleased, as though he'd unlocked access to another level of Britannian society. The whole place gave off the same refreshing feeling as a new car. Princess Euphemia had been thrilled to hear about his extracurricular activities and had gladly given him the day off, making him promise to tell her all about his culinary adventure when he returned to duty.
Beside him, Lelouch was evidently not feeling quite as refreshed, counting the number of chairs with an increasingly-grim look on his face. Despite Suzaku's constant admonishments, he had yet to take responsibility for his impolite words to Ms. Volpe (who was, the nurse assured him, perfectly fine). He'd spent the past three hours looking increasingly harassed, attempting to wheedle his way out of the extra credit assignment and insisting that he was only going through with it because, in his words, Suzaku was too much of an ignoramus to quit.
One of the errant caterers gave them a rundown over the phone, profusely apologizing for the last-minute nature of it all: their boss had gone into labor unexpectedly, and her sous-chef was her husband, and the guy they usually called in as a replacement was the father of the child, so really everyone was tied up at the moment. Lelouch stared at the phone as she explained the situation, appalled. Suzaku wished the mother a safe delivery and healthy child.
The menu for the evening: one vegetable soup (borscht), two choices of seafood (trout and salmon), one pork dish (pork chops with potatoes). The meat and fish had already been pre-proportioned and cleaned, packed in little vacuum-sealed plastic envelopes and refrigerated by the tardy caterers. Spices, root vegetables, and broth were likewise in plentiful supply, all organized neatly in the faculty lounge's spotless kitchen. Suzaku was instantly calmed by the sight. There was even a big television screen just above the central island that showed the recipes, and they didn't look too hard!
Lelouch was less enthused, flipping through the recipes on the screen. "I'd assumed this was going to be buffet-style. Why are there two seafood dishes? And is the soup meant to be the vegetarian option? It has chicken broth in it." Suzaku was about to ask if chicken broth contained chicken when a look of horror crossed Lelouch's face. "Suzaku," he said, suddenly deathly serious. "Did Ms. Volpe tell you how many people are attending the party?"
"Uh, yeah. I think she said there were," he put on his gloves and apron, "like seventy or eighty? Not too many."
Tense-jawed and seemingly resigned to his impending demise, Lelouch tied his own apron. "Right. Well, let's see if we can pull off a miracle here. We need to stay focused and orderly. Panic will only embolden our enemies."
"We have enemies?"
The self-appointed kitchen commander was not listening, and instead chose to flip through each recipe once more, noting the required ingredients and their present locations in the kitchen. Pans: on the stove. Pots: filled with water. Oven: turned on and set at 350 Fahrenheit. Utensils and tools: retrieved and neatly organized by size on the central island. Suzaku stood by silently, not daring to interrupt, instinctively adopting a proper posture, arms straight by his side. His eyes went to the clock. 3:39 PM.
"Here's the situation," Lelouch was explaining, retrieving the measuring cups. "According to the caterer, this is not a formal dinner. Schmoozing was the word used. Guests will arrive whenever they want, between four and eight. We don't even know when Reuben himself will show up, if he shows up. We are responsible for serving each person as quickly as possible upon their arrival." He gestured to the screen. "Assuming this functions as advertised, guests will select their choice of entrée and it will be displayed here. Appetizers, drinks, and amuse bouches will be served in the lounge itself by the underpaid foreign staff."
Suzaku was about to object to that last part—had he asked the staff if they were underpaid? Maybe they were happy with their salaries!—but then Lelouch handed him a spatula, placing it in his hand as though it was a precious weapon. "You, Suzaku," he said, "you must be my blade." They looked down at the utensil in unison. Lelouch coughed. "My spatula, rather. I mean to say—when I can't flip the meat, you must flip it for me. When I can't open the bottle of oil, you must open it for me."
Hand on your chest, two solid pats. Their childhood signal for I understand. "Let's do it."
Lelouch felt a surge of affection for his oldest friend, finally by his side, working together towards a common goal. The way it always should have been. Together, there was nothing they couldn't do.
There was one crucial piece of information that Lelouch had left out of his impeccable plan: Suzaku was a complete idiot.
Not in all measures, of course. Suzaku had mechanical knowledge, martial arts knowledge, some emotional intelligence when it did not pertain to the blatantly obvious feelings of his best friend. But—
"Lelouch?"
"Yes?"
"I think I mixed up teaspoons and tablespoons again."
Lelouch cursed Britannia, its empire, and its dreadful system of measurements which had spread across the globe like a virus, infecting conquered territories with teaspoons and pints. He silently vowed to destroy the Empire for the sake of his friend's future culinary projects.
As the self-appointed head chef and thus the individual responsible for all dishes leaving the kitchen, Lelouch had taken charge of the prep work, instructing Suzaku to prepare a large vat of borscht for the first guests. He supposed ten servings would be enough for the first half-hour. Suzaku had done an admirable job peeling and chopping the vegetables, showing off his fine motor skills. The addition of liquid ingredients was proving to be… less successful at this point in time. But they could turn this around. 3:53 PM. The beets, onions, and celery were already done. The potatoes and carrots would take ten minutes once they'd sorted out the liquid situation, and then they needed a mere five minutes for completion after that, according to the recipe. Guests would likely entertain themselves with appetizers and champagne for at least a few minutes. As long as they got the broth going before the clock struck four, they could get it out the door in a reasonable amount of time.
…though that relied on the assumption that, once the soup was finished and ready to be plated, Suzaku would not bump into the pot and send it flying halfway across the room due to his herculean strength.
Another tactical miscalculation.
The first guests did not desire soup, much to the relief of both mentally ill teenagers in the kitchen. Trout was the first order of the day, a blessedly simple dish that required little more than baking the fish and seasoning it with a few herbs. Pork chops followed; Suzaku handled the mashing of the potatoes while Lelouch tended to the meat. By the time five dishes had been handed over to the foreign waitstaff—making an hourly wage that corresponded roughly to one-thirtieth of Suzaku's, Lelouch informed him—they had a moment to take a breath, convince themselves that all would be well, and return to the borscht.
It was at this crucial moment, when a path to victory was in sight, that a new nemesis appeared.
Arthur, Suzaku's confusingly-named female cat, had somehow tracked them down and slinked into the kitchen when the waitress last opened the door. This was a disaster on multiple grounds. A mangy animal in the kitchen was a health code violation of the most severe kind. The cat would attempt to eat the fish, if not all of the contents of the kitchen. Finally, and most disastrously, Suzaku refused to kick the creature out and Lelouch could not bring himself to do it for him.
"She just missed me," Suzaku said while cradling the thing, her claws stuck in his apron. A tender look was on his face. "The vet says she has separation anxiety because she spent so long as a stray. I'll keep an eye on her, promise. She can leave once she seems better."
There was no arguing with him when it came to the damn cat. Or… well, Lelouch could argue with him, point out that it was against the rules and try to convince him to get rid of it, but he wouldn't. That would deprive his sous-chef of one of his rare sources of joy, and that was regrettably unallowable. Lelouch reminded himself that acknowledgement of one's shortcomings was a crucial aspect of leadership and continued his task of frying potatoes.
The door opened again, a waitress coming to retrieve the miraculous first completed bowl of borscht. She looked at Suzaku, Arthur cradled in his apron like a baby kangaroo.
"Here's the borscht for table 16!", Lelouch said, positioning himself directly in front of her so as to maintain eye contact. "And you don't see any cats in this kitchen." He coughed. "Right?"
"Right," the woman said, tonelessly. She took the soup and left.
What a good sport, thought Suzaku.
Fourteen dishes into their continued nightmare, it became evident that all would not be well.
Suzaku had ruined an entire batch of mashed potatoes, meant to be paired with the pork chops, by overmixing them. That was Lelouch's appraisal of the situation, at least; he'd witnessed Suzaku turning the potatoes into a gum-like texture, rendering them unsalvageable. Lelouch volunteered to mix them himself from now on, insisting that Suzaku was not at fault for his absurd hand strength. The frustration brought a tear to Suzaku's eye, which he blinked away as quickly as possible. This was meant to be difficult. It was atonement for missing so many classes.
Head Chef Lelouch was not doing much better, for equal and opposite reasons; he had vastly underestimated the combined weight of the ingredients that he was carrying to his station, which at approximately ten pounds was far too heavy for his noodle-like limbs to hold. He tumbled to the ground, the bottle of sunflower oil breaking in the process, covering his apron and soaking into his pants. Valiantly he attempted to recover his dignity, but a man's dignity could only be recovered so much when he was oiled up.
The breaking point came when Arthur jumped gracelessly out of Suzaku's apron, causing him to try and grab her, resulting in the soup bowls resting upon the central island shattering as they fell to the floor. This marked the third occasion on which Suzaku had sent a serving of precious borscht to its untimely demise, and he felt like crying. Correction: he was in fact crying. The salt from his tears would be good for the salmon.
"I've got it all figured out," Lelouch assured him while covered in sunflower oil, a deranged look in his eyes. "We have a system now. Look—" at this he produced a piece of paper, slightly crumpled and dusted in an unidentifiable spice. The kitchen was laid out in architectural detail, down to the dimensions of each appliance. Is this what Lelouch was doing while Suzaku had been crying over the mashed potatoes? "This corner over here," he said, jabbing the bottom right, "will be the Designated Soup Region. We will not walk over there unless it is for the express purpose of retrieving or pouring soup. I've cordoned it off with the empty salt containers. At all times, there must be at least five borschts, properly proportioned, ready to go. Borscht can be served at any temperature, so all we'll need to do is garnish it. If there are five and you remove one, you must pour another bowl from the central soup pot immediately."
"It's on the floor," Suzaku observed.
"The fridge is full. And I've got it cordoned off," Lelouch repeated. "It'll be fine. We just don't have enough counter space for all of these dishes. It's a small kitchen. That's why you keep ruini—accidentally knocking things around. It's not your fault."
Nodding mutely, Suzaku gently nudged Arthur out of the room, her distress long since lessened. He went to the Designated Soup Region and, kneeling, completed his duty.
5:01 PM. Twenty-eight dishes served. Current level of stress: numbed to the world and its contradictions.
Both chefs were preparing potatoes: Suzaku was slicing and boiling for the mashed side dish, Lelouch was seasoning and pan-frying for the accompaniment to the salmon. The removal of Arthur and introduction of the Designated Soup Region had significantly decreased but not eliminated the rate at which disasters occured. The pre-prepared borscht idea, a product of Lelouch's genius, had at least solved the soup meltdown situation. The trout dish was unproblematic. They thus focused their attention on the salmon and the pork, plus the potatoes.
"You know, Suzaku, I like mashed potatoes well enough," Lelouch began, a combination of exhaustion and insanity causing his brain to conjure up strange metaphors. "See, the potato works with cream. But it works even better with oil. Mashed potatoes—they're fine. Pedestrian. But fried potatoes? Is there anything better?"
"I like French fries."
"Exactly. You like French fries. So why aren't you making them?" French fries were not on the day's menu, by the grace of God. Suzaku shot Lelouch a confused look, then returned to monitoring his pot of water. Lelouch, recognizing his rhetorical error, attempted to right the ship. "I mean—! I mean, if you had to choose, which one would you make?"
"Depends on what I feel like that day, I guess?" He shrugged. "Both taste good."
"But which is better?"
"Maybe I'd just eat both."
Lelouch slapped himself in the face, drawing his hand downwards and bringing a frown with it. "This potato here," he said, holding up a large russet, "can only be paired with cream or oil. Once you choose one, you can't choose the other." Suzaku opened his mouth and was certainly going to say something infuriating like why not just use two potatoes?, missing Lelouch's artful metaphor entirely. He never was very good with this sort of thing. If Suzaku could understand the superiority of fried potatoes, he wouldn't be in the Britannian army in the first place, let alone serving as Euphemia's knight. But if Lelouch could make him understand why the unassuming mashed potato was a misleading siren, then… "This specific potato," Lelouch emphasized. "What should we do with it?"
Squinting at the root vegetable, Suzaku frowned as he quickly plucked it from Lelouch's hand. "It's all mushy." He tossed it into the trash bin from ten feet away. Lelouch's hand, still in a potato-shaped grip, began to shake in incoherent rage.
The guest of honor arrived at 6:32 PM, judging by the drunken cheers emanating from the faculty lounge. If Suzaku's seventy-to-eighty estimate was correct, and there was no guarantee of this, then they had served over half of their total expected dishes.
It seemed that the vast majority of the remaining orders were coming in now, with Reuben's arrival. They'd gotten nine orders in the span of as many minutes. Lelouch had reasoned that the guests' evident drunkenness meant that they would care less about the quality of the food, and so this was the time to cut corners. Suzaku wanted to object on moral grounds, but his constitution was weakening, his moral code decaying as it was confronted by the harsh reality of kitchen life. And so when Lelouch suggested cooking a batch of ten trout and microwaving them as needed, he did not disagree.
The rush hour was not treating Lelouch's mental state any better. When the kitchen timer began malfunctioning, its incessant ringing stopped only by Suzaku stomping on it with his full body weight, his mind broke altogether.
Suzaku whistled as he observed the broken machinery of the sad timer. "Well, that's gonna—"
"The Empire is intrinsically corrupt! As a concept!" Lelouch hollered while gesturing dramatically with the soup ladle, sending drops of precious borscht flying around the room. "Convincing people that they should abandon their dreams of independence for the sake of freedom in slavery, it's pathetic, Suzaku! The mentality of a dog! Jesus Christ himself could be the Emperor and the Japanese would still be justified in rebelling against him because they don't want to live under Britannia!"
"Jesus wasn't Britannian," Suzaku pointed out, retrieving the trout from the microwave.
"He would be, since the Holy Land was conquered six decades ago. Brutally conquered. Like Japan."
"Hmm," was Suzaku's only response.
Wild-eyed and dangerously silent, Lelouch returned to his pre-prepared soup.
"It's not that I don't like cream," Lelouch reconsidered at 7:12 PM. Beetroot had joined the sunflower oil on his apron, dyeing it a pleasant pink. Unidentified herbs decorated his hair. "I just think it—it's in too much stuff, you know?"
Suzaku was comparatively neater, with only cat hair and the results of his earlier mashed potato massacre staining his appearance. "Like… ice cream?"
"Exactly. Ice cream. Whipped cream. Eggs. Pasta. It's in everything. And the worst part is that cream is fattening, just like oil. But if you show people oil and cream side-by-side and ask which one they want, they'll choose cream. Because it's sweeter. Well, the world needs more than just sweetness."
The current order count stood at 85, meaning there were either more guests than anticipated or some individuals had unlawfully ordered seconds. Lelouch vowed to hunt them down and ensure that they faced justice for their crimes. Suzaku had listened with disinterest, staring at the salmon steak he had inadvertently sent flying to the ceiling when he attempted to dislodge it from an under-oiled pan. It remained there, glued to the tiles by its glaze. His sins always looked down on him from above, like judgemental angels.
"I think you should stop being Zero," Suzaku said to the ceiling.
Lelouch spun around in the background, nearly ruining a bowl of soup. "Pardon?"
"I think," Suzaku repeated, "Zero. Is what I should earn for this extra credit assignment. I've ruined everything." He trembled. "All I ever do is ruin everything."
That was an unfair assessment, as Lelouch had also ruined at least half of everything. But it was not all bad. The two boys had developed a comfortable teamwork after enduring four hours of hell, learning to rely on one another. Suzaku handled the pots of borscht and the carrying of floor-borscht to the waitstaff, compensating for Lelouch's inability to handle anything weighing more than three ounces. Lelouch took care of garnishing after a diner had the absolute gall to send a waiter into the kitchen with a complaint about Suzaku's herbal handiwork. They took turns with the meat and fish, hoping to spread out the risk of total mental collapse; ideally, they would both only half-collapse.
Half-collapse they did, as indicated by Suzaku leaving their only remaining spatula in the oven with the trout, an error discovered only when the room began to fill with an unpleasant chemical odor.
They completed the rest of the dishes with two forks, a ladle, their gloved hands, and spite.
Ms. Volpe entered the kitchen at 8:21, rosy-cheeked from the champagne and the pleasure of good company. She was greeted by Suzaku repeatedly wiping an already-clean section of the island, staring into the distance. Lelouch was in the Designated Soup Region, huddled in the fetal position.
"Gentlemen! What a fantastic job you did this evening," she beamed. "You got many compliments from the guests. The soup, especially—one of our Russian teachers described it as wonderfully innovative. And the trout! Such a silky-smooth texture!"
Suzaku continued wiping the island, gradually wearing down through the countertop material. Lelouch did not move.
"I do believe," she continued, oblivious in her intoxication, "you've earned yourself an extra fifteen points apiece added to your final grade. That should be more than enough to ensure you both pass!"
Then there was silence, and her expression flattened. "Of course, you will pass in any case, as you will receive passing grades regardless of the work you do or do not complete."
Lelouch twitched on the floor, defeated.