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“Where the fuck is my cream of tartar?”
Armitage Hux ducks his head down over his mug of morning tea, careful to keep out of eyesight as Ben Solo tramps his way through the test kitchen. It’s only eight fifteen in the morning, and most of the staff are just starting to dribble through the door, but apparently early morning is the most optimal time for His Royal Highness to whip up some example meringues for this afternoon’s video shoot. Hux knows where the cream of tartar is; he tends to know where most things are in the kitchen because he, unlike some of his colleagues, doesn’t come to work every day with his head stuffed up his ass, but apparently this is too much to ask for from Ben Solo, who decides to pick this very moment to lurk behind Hux’s breakfast spot and just stare.
Hux takes a small sip of tea and waits a few uncomfortable seconds. “May I help you?”
“Did you take the cream of tartar?” It comes out as a breathy, hysterical pant that’s just on the edge of a whine, a sharp contrast to Solo’s hulking, 6 foot 2 frame. “I need it for my meringues.”
“I did not take the cream of tartar,” Hux says evenly. “Have you considered substituting with lemon juice?”
Another whine, this one wordless and pained. “My recipe calls for cream of tartar.”
“But lemon juice will perform the same function.”
“I haven’t accounted for the extra liquid.”
“Then add a teaspoon of dried egg white.”
“Because that’s accessible for the home cook.” Solo lets out a bark of laughter. “That’ll track well. ‘Okay everyone, today we’re going to make meringues, so first grab your can of meringue powder and add some water. Okay, done.’”
“At least that sort of recipe won’t take you four days to complete.” Hux takes another sip of tea, fully aware that he’s treading in dangerous water.
“I–” There’s an angry huff and then Solo stalks away, fists clenched, and Hux laughs quietly to himself.
Things have changed in the test kitchen over the past year. When Hux started, the job was what it said on the package: creating and testing recipes for Good Appetite magazine. No muss, no fuss, and definitely no 8 AM call times for ridiculously themed YouTube videos that were guaranteed to go viral. It all changed when Rey Johnson, Good Appetite’s resident expert on survivalist cuisine, uploaded a quick ‘25 Instant Noodle Hacks’ video which included, among other things, dandelion greens foraged from the park, pork belly marinated in ketchup, and a two minute montage of her nearly catching her hair on fire multiple times. It amassed five million views in the first week, and it changed the lives of the test kitchen staff forever.
Particularly affected was one Ben Solo, whose background appearances in Rey’s video made him a minor internet celebrity overnight. He’s easy to spot, black hair flecked with two strips of grey at the temples, hunched and frowning at Rey’s attempts at ‘food’ while she chats animatedly in the foreground. It’s a classic combo; his serious, overly frustrated yet secretly soft approach to cooking contrasts brilliantly with Rey’s off the wall, no recipe, fly by the seat of her pants style, and their audience eats it up, no pun intended.
Hux has a show too. Not content to leave any potential cash cow unmilked, the highers-up mandated that every test kitchen staff member needed a ‘thing’, so now once a week Hux has to get in front of the camera and try to recreate a famous dish that’s given to him while he’s in a blindfold. Admittedly it’s quite fun, though he’s not a fan of the messiness required to dissect a meal using one’s fingers. Everyone has a show now; they even drag the Test Kitchen Manager Maz out of her hidey hole to make something on camera every so often.
Even with all of the content, no one can touch Rey and Ben’s level of popularity. Rey’s survivalist schtick and elevated dorm room hot plate cuisine contrasts beautifully with Ben’s shows, where he’s either explaining baking terms to laymen or recreating famous desserts and snack food with the finesse of an Escoffier trained pastry chef. Their personalities follow suit, with each of them popping into each other’s videos enough that there’s a massive online community that’s hell bent on proving that they’re secretly a couple.
Hux snorts at the thought. Like either of them could tolerate the other for more than a nine-to-five workday.
Speak of the devil.
Rey bursts through the test kitchen door, hair askew and sweat dripping off of her forehead. “Sorry I’m late!” she gasps.
Like magic, Solo appears behind her, glowering at her ratty backpack and dirt streaked face. He frowns. “You smell.”
“–delicious? I smell delicious?” She spins on the spot. “Thanks Ben! Someone at my building threw out a bottle of Calgon marshmallow body spray that was over half full, can you believe it?”
He wrinkles his nose. “Did they throw it on you? No wait– you didn’t.”
“Uh huh!”
“Rey.” He’s whining again, only this time there’s a hint of a smile creeping at the corners of his cheeks. “Rey, that’s disgusting.”
“It’s free!” She walks over to a workstation and drops her backpack onto the counter. A lip balm, charge cord, and three pairs of disposable chopsticks fall out of a half zipped pocket. “Oh shit–”
The lip balm rolls onto the floor and makes a break for freedom, only to be stopped by Solo’s shoe. He bends his hulking frame over, retrieving it, then gingerly places it next to her other treasures. “Please don’t tell me that you pulled this out of the garbage as well?”
“That’s disgusting,” she parrots. “No, I bought it at the dollar store, duh.”
“Is it expired?”
She shrugs. “Lip balm doesn’t go bad, Ben. Everyone knows that.”
Hux watches the scene bemused, especially since Solo hasn’t yet accosted Rey about the missing cream of tartar. His amusement is amplified by the fact that Hux saw Rey use the cream of tartar to clean rust off of her canning rings yesterday afternoon while Solo was in a meeting, and he’s fairly certain the remaining powder is currently in a jar located right in front of Solo’s left shin, far too low for him to notice.
Raising his nearly empty mug to his lips, Hux drains the remainder of his morning tea and gazes out the window. Let Solo fume. It’s his damn fault for being so distractible.
Hux took all the fucking spoons again.
Poe bites his lip to curb his frustration, then flashes a devastating smile at the camera. “Normally I wouldn’t do this but...this is what happens when my co-workers hoard all of the teaspoons.”
He quickly dips the tip of his pinky into the bowl of mayo, cheese, and spices, then pops it into his mouth for a taste. “Hmmm. If I was making this for myself I would probably add an additional half teaspoon of guajillo, but because I’m making this for the staff I’ll have some mercy on them.” He grins again. “Now that this is ready, let’s head over to the grill.”
“Allright, CUT!”
His shoulders sag. As the camera crew rearranges themselves, he scans the kitchen, looking for that ginger fuck who probably has his pockets stuffed full of spoons. Hux is nowhere to be found; the only usual suspect currently in the kitchen is Rey, who is busy at her station and currently seems to be mashing a ziplock bag full of oranges with her shoe?
“Hey Rey!”
She looks up, sneaker held aloft mid-swing. “Yeah?”
“What are you–?”
“Poe, we’re ready for you at the grill.”
A bundle of corn is shoved into his arms by Kay, the director for this shoot, and he groans. “You guys didn’t even shuck it?”
She gives him a blank look. “We figured you would do it on camera.”
“At the grill?”
“It doesn’t have to be pretty.” She grabs a compact of powder from her pocket, and gives him a quick dab on his forehead. “You’re shiny.”
“I’m in front of a grill.”
“No excuses.”
“No excuses? It’s like two hundred fucking degrees over here!”
She quirks an eyebrow. “Are you about done?”
“Fine.” He runs his finger against an ear of corn, already searching for a good seam to pull. “And I guess it’ll look cooler with the husks hanging off of it.”
Tilting her head, she gives him a sardonic smile. “That’s the spirit. Now ready? Action.”
Someone drops the clapper and Poe snaps into camera mode. “So traditionally elotes would be made on a charcoal grill, but since we’re forty stories up an airtight building, we’ll have to make do with the gas grills here in the test kitchen. But first, I need to shuck this corn.”
In the back of his mind, he’s very aware of the rhythmic bang banging of Rey and her sneaker, but he’s fairly sure they’ll be able to edit that out in post-production. At least that’s what the crew usually claims. Either way, it’s not his problem.
Easing the husks off of the kernels, he tugs them back until they’re uniformly pointing away from the ear but still attached. “These also double as a handle.”
Once he husks all of the ears, he lines them up on the grill and starts poking at them with his heavy duty metal tongs. This is his favourite part of the shoot, where he gets to bullshit with the crew and tell some family story, or show off his impressive collection of food related knock knock jokes. He’s halfway through a particularly good corn themed one when a dramatic gasp from across the kitchen grabs the camera crew’s attention.
“Rey, what on Earth are you doing?”
BANG! BANG! “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m squishing oranges.”
BANG! “Should I even ask for a clarification about why you’re choosing to do this with a shoe and not something more sanitary, like a rolling pin or a meat tenderizer?”
“Ben.” BANG! “What’s with you and criticizing my hygiene today? I’ll have you know that I showered only a day ago.”
“I didn’t need to know that, but thanks anyways. Also, what are you planning on doing with these? Did you really mean to keep the skins on?”
BANG! “Oh gosh no, Ben, I must have made a terrible mistake.” BANG! “Of course I meant to leave the skins on. I’m making pruno.”
“CUT!”
Kay groans from behind the camera. “Guys, please don’t discuss future projects while we’re rolling. This is going to be going out a month before the pruno episode, at least.”
“No.”
Ben stalks over the crew, brows drawn and expression dark. Practically snarling, he points an accusing finger at Rey and spits, “There is no way you are allowing her to create motherfucking pruno in the test kitchen. This is a professional environment, we are educated chefs, and this magazine has a reputation to uphold. Making prison wine is not what Good Appetite is about.”
Kay shrugs. “It’s what the viewers requested, and she agreed to it.”
He whirls around to face Rey, who stands her ground and gives her bag of unpeeled oranges another wack for emphasis. “It’ll be fun.”
“Fun?”
Then Ben’s face does something weird, something that makes Poe’s stomach twist the same way it does when he watches YouTube videos of colourblind kids wearing those magic glasses for the first time. He looks...pained, but also equal parts vulnerable, pathetic, and strangely brokenhearted. It’s an expression that contrasts so jarringly with his bulky, linebacker with a spatula persona that Poe almost recoils.
Wait...what?
“Let’s take fifteen for a bio break,” Kay instructs her crew.
“Wait!” He gestures his tongs at the grill. “What about my corn?”
“We’ll pick up at assembly. I think we’ve got enough of you standing around grilling.”
“But my joke…” His voice trails off as the production team grabs their water bottles and snacks and congregates on the sidelines. Grumbling, he finishes his corn and kills the gas, hoping the residual heat will keep the ears warm enough that his cheese mixture will at least melt a bit.
Speaking of cheese, he scans his remaining ingredients, and notices that he’s forgotten to reserve some cotija for the outside of the corn. He groans, running his hand through his gloriously sweaty curls, then heads over to the walk-in. At least the cold will be a reprieve from the virtual sauna in front of the grill.
He’s about to open the door when he notices voices coming from inside, just barely discernible over the rumble of the cooling systems.
“You can’t do it, Rey. It’s too much. Too over the top.”
“You can’t tell me what to do. Kay thinks it a great idea, and I ran it by Leia.”
“Do you think she has any fucking idea what pruno is? She probably thinks it’s some sort of plum based cocktail.” There’s silence, followed by a heavy sigh. “I just...I don’t want you to get sick.”
“I’m not going to get sick. You know me, I have an iron stomach.”
“But you could get botulism–”
“Ben, no one’s gotten botulism in years, come on!”
More silence. Then more silence, then–
“I need to get back to my fruit bag.”
“Why? You worried it’s going to go bad? Ow!”
A soft giggle.
“Did you just pinch me?”
“You deserved it.”
There’s a rustle, then suddenly Ben’s face pops out of the door of the walk-in, and he’s...smiling?
Whatever it is, it’s quickly wiped from his face when he notices Poe loitering in front of him. “I–” Poe coughs to clear his throat. “I came for my cheese.”
Ben grunts and steps aside to let him through. Rey looks up at him as he enters, schooling her features into a neutral smile. “Hey.”
“Hey.” Poe gestures to the door with his thumb. “What’s up with the big guy?”
“Oh!” She laughs, and is that a touch of nervousness? “You know Ben. He’s concerned about his professional reputation, about being associated with a hack job that makes prison wine for views on YouTube.”
“Right.” He locates his small tub of cheese, and gives her a nod.
She nods back. “What’s that?”
“Oh. It’s cotija.”
“For elotes?” Her face lights up. “Oh my God, I love elotes, even though Ben says mayo on corn is sacrilegious.”
Poe doesn’t know why Ben’s opinion on any traditional food is relevant, but from the look on her face, he’s not sure it’s the right opportunity to make that point.
Rose hums as she rinses her hands under the warm water, scrubbing garlic skin and flakes of ginger from her fingers with the little red ladybug shaped brush she keeps next to the sink. Still humming, she wrings her hands to get rid of excess water, then reaches for the fluffy kitchen towel on the counter.
It doesn’t budge. She tugs it again, with a bit more force, and it still doesn’t move.
Now in hindsight, she would fully admit that yanking on an object that’s previously resisted being moved is probably not the best decision? Especially when she’s in the corner of the kitchen that hosts most of Rey’s more unsavory kitchen creations (but it’s next to the handwashing sink, so sue her!). But hindsight unfortunately doesn’t change the fact that when Rose gives the towel one last, mighty pull, it finally dislodges whatever is wrapped within it and sends it flying across the kitchen and onto the floor, where whatever the fuck it is proceeds to explode like a miniature atomic bomb, baptizing everything in a six foot radius with radioactive orange goo and emitting an odour that can only be described as ripe.
She takes in a deep breath and instantly regrets it. “Oh boy.”
Looking up, she spots Solo across the otherwise deserted kitchen. He’s frozen in place as well, knife hovering mid-chop over a slab of dark chocolate. “What. Did. You. Do?” he hisses.
His voice seeps into her bones, despite her stubborn insistence that, no, just because he’s twice her size with a bull’s temper doesn’t mean she’s scared of him, thanks for asking. “I– I needed a towel,” she stammers.
Gently, he places his knife on the chopping board and wipes his hands on his apron. “And you needed that towel specifically? The one that’s been incubating Rey’s pruno for the past week?”
“Is that what that is?” Rose gasps. Yes, that would explain the smell, as well as the stringy citrus innards currently sprayed all over the floor.
“Yeah. She was planning on opening it tomorrow for a shoot.”
“Oh fuck.”
“Yeah.” Solo raises an eyebrow. “Good luck with that.”
Then he walks across the room and, very pointedly, reaches over her head to retrieve a bag of something from the wall of freezers behind her. He doesn’t make eye contact, walking straight back to his station after preheating one of the ovens on the way.
Rey is...very Rey about the whole situation. She stutters and stammers after Rose’s apology, an extra bright smile pasted on her face the entire time, and even helps Rose clean up the mess.
“I should have labeled it,” Rey insists for the two thousandth time. “Really, I label everything else. It totally just looked like a towel, honestly I’m surprised it took so long for someone to try and grab it.”
Her hands are moving so fast, scrubbing a damp rag over the workstation, that Rose almost misses how much they’re shaking.
The video team is prepping the Lunar New Year series for the YouTube channel, and Rose has been tasked with preparing authentic Bún Bò Huê. It’s a daunting dish to prepare, made more so by the rich stocks and painfully authentic cubes of boiled pork blood that she has to create in front of a full camera crew. She and Jessica Pava have set up a little ‘Asian Station’ at the back of the test kitchen, and the workspace is practically heaving with all of the garlic, ginger, green onions, and various bottles of sauces they have crowded on top.
Admittedly, it’s pretty overwhelming, even without the added layer of residual pruno odour from earlier this morning. Luckily Jessica is willing to go first, proofing the yeast for her bao dough while Rose tries to calm herself down in the corner.
“Why don’t you go upstairs for a bit?” Jess suggests during a quick lighting break. “I’ll be all afternoon at least, so you can work on your notes and maybe answer some emails to pass the time?”
“If by ‘answer emails’ you mean hyperventilating in a paper bag, then yeah, sure, I’ll go do that.”
Rose trudges up to her cubicle. It’s stupid; she’s done videos before, and they’ve all been fine and well recieved, but there’s something about taking a family recipe and spreading it out there that makes her feel extra vulnerable.
She should call Paige. Her sister is always good for a pep talk, and her job as a mechanic gives her pretty flexible hours. Once she gets to her desk, Rose pulls her phone out of her pocket and is about to hit speed dial when she smells it:
Fresh cookies.
Not just any fresh cookies. No, these cookies smell butterier than normal cookies, richer and more complex, with just the right amount of toasty brown edges and melted chocolate.
She knows these cookies because the entire test kitchen spent almost two weeks eating the byproducts of every ‘failed’ batch during the recipe development phase. As far as failures go, they were delicious, but compared to the final product they were absolute garbage.
Slowly, slowly, she stands, peeking her head over her half cubicle wall, zeroing in on the source of that delicious odour, and sure enough, just two cubes away, she spots a heaping platter of fresh cookies right next to Rey’s laptop, with a half eaten one dangling from her fingers. Before Rose can sit back down, Rey spots her.
“Oh, hey Rose.” She nudges the plate with her elbow. “Would you like a cookie?”
“No, that’s fine, I couldn’t–”
“No, go ahead, I swear.” She smiles, shyly. “There’s loads.”
“Well, if you’re going to strongarm me like that…” Rose replaces her phone in her pocket and walks over to Rey’s desk. The smell is almost orgasmic this close to the cookies, and it’s so potent that they must still be warm from the oven. She grabs one and takes a bite and, oh–
“These are Ben’s, right?” she mumbles through a mouthful of half chewed cookie.
Rey looks away for a second, her cheeks flushing pink. “I, uh, sorry, I can’t understand what you’re–”
Rose swallows, a bit too soon, and her throat burns. “These cookies. This is Ben’s recipe, right? I can tell from the nutmeg and the extra richness…from the almond extract?”
“I don’t– I’m not sure. I haven’t seen the recipe in ages, I mean–”
“You didn’t make these?” Rose pops the rest of the cookie in her mouth and groans. “God, they’re so good, especially fresh.”
“No, I, uh, no I didn’t.”
“Oh.”
Rey busies herself with scribbling in her notepad as Rose grabs a tissue to wipe her fingers. “Thanks,” Rey says, in a voice barely louder than a whisper. “For helping me clean up earlier.”
“You’re thanking me? I was the one who destroyed your project!”
“But I should have labelled it better, like I’m surprised it went this long without–”
“Rey.” Rose resists the urge to rest her hands on her hips, lecture-style. “It’s not your fault. Please, please accept my apology. I know you’ve been working super hard on your videos and it must suck to be set back an entire week because I messed it up for you.”
Rey takes in a deep breath, then huffs it out through her nose. “Okay. I-I accept your apology.” She tugs her sheet of doodles out of her notebook and nervously toys with the edge of the paper. “B-my friend keeps telling me that I need to let go of things, that I can be a bit of a control freak, and I guess taking all the blame for stuff that goes wrong is kind of part of that.”
“I get that,” Rose admits. “I really do.”
Work is tough, especially lately. With so many videos on top of their regular recipe development duties, the kitchen staff have been feeling the squeeze, especially with the oncoming holiday season. She doesn’t blame Rey for being flustered and control seeking, and in the same way she needs to stop blaming herself for feeling nervous.
“I’m going to be boiling pig blood tomorrow,” she blurts out. “For my video. And I’m kind of nervous about what the response is going to be.”
Like magic, Rey’s face lights up. “Can I watch?”
“Of course!”
She stills calls Paige for morale support, because every call to her sister is edifying and makes her feel whole and valid again. Paige is incensed that anyone would be offended by her preparing blood for soup when Rey had an entire series on how to butcher roadkill (“it’s racism, em gái, plain and simple racism!”), and insisted that she would fight any negative commentator with her bare hands.
Rose grins when she hangs up the phone. She heads back up to the kitchen with an extra spring in her step, fully reinvigorated after her pep talk with her own personal cheerleader. Sometimes she feels guilty about having so much support when she knows her other colleagues, specifically Rey, don’t have family to call on bad days.
But then she enters the kitchen and spots Ben Solo hovering in the back, around Rey’s various fermentation experiments. He’s scribbling something on a piece of paper, the scent of Sharpie thick in the air, then he steps back and exposes a new dishcloth wrapped juice baby, Pruno 2.0, wearing a large sign written in big block letters:
REY’S PRUNO
DO NOT TOUCH ON PAIN OF DEATH
“TICO!” he bellows across the room. “I’m watching you.”
Rose hides her smile in her palm and nods curtly in return.
“Where are you off to next week?”
Finn looks up from his desk over at Maz, who is passing out sample slices of what appears to be an herbed flatbread. “Uh, some Southern place called Bawse Nass down on 72nd and 5th.”
“Southern? Oooo.” She winces. “Pack your Pepto, dearie.”
“Should be fine. The menu isn’t too extensive.”
It’s all for Finn’s YouTube series, where he goes to various restaurants and tries everything on the menu. As far as shows go, it’s a pretty good racket, aside from the obvious health setbacks when he goes to a place that serves food that’s rich or greasy. It’s not like he’s having to butcher squirrels on camera, or boil pig’s blood like his colleagues.
Speaking of which. “Hey Poe!” he calls across the office.
Poe’s curly head pops up from a cubicle. “Yeah man?”
“Is Rey cracking open her pruno today?”
The other man wrinkles his nose with disgust. “I dunno. We’ll probably be able to smell it from here.”
“I kind of want to try it,” Finn admits. “Is that weird?”
Poe opens his mouth, frowns, then closes it. “Eh,” he groans. “Actually yeah. Yeah, it’s weird.”
Maybe it’s the yearning to live dangerously. Maybe it’s solidarity, or maybe it’s the fact that it’s 1:45 on a Friday afternoon and he’s sick of answering emails and pretending to video prep. He wants to live on the edge, try something new, like Anthony Bourdain eating cheese that’s full of maggots. Sure, there’s a botulism risk (is there?), but isn’t everything in life worth doing worth the risk? He’s not sure that’s an actual saying, but it still runs through his head as he locks his computer and heads down to the test kitchen.
Rey usually eats her lunch either at an empty workstation, or perched on a stool in the back set. She’s not in the kitchen, so he heads to the back and cracks open the door.
“Hey, is Rey in he–”
His words die in his throat when he sees her. Them. Her. Rey, on her usual stool, only Ben Solo is hunched over her, one of his giant hands snug in the curve of her waist while the other is laced in her hair, and his mouth is...is…
Finn’s brain short circuits. He’s barely able to blurt out a “Whoops, wrong room!” before slamming the door behind him and marching across the test kitchen like his pants are on fire. He hears the door swing behind him and a gasped, “Finn, wait!” but he can’t turn around yet, not while the image of Rey with Solo’s tongue down her throat is still seared on his eyeballs. Unfortunately, the door to the hall swings open right as he’s about to leave, causing him to stumble back a few steps to let Kay and the rest of the video crew in, which gives Rey enough time to grab his shoulder and pull him into the pan storage room.
“Hey, leggo!” he grumbles, half heartedly batting at her hand.
“No! Not until I can explain what’s going on.”
“Fine then!” Steadying himself against a wooden shelf full of Bundt and springform pans, he turns to face her. “So explain.”
“I–”
The closet goes dark, like an eclipse passing over the sun, and Finn feels the tell tale prickling on the back of his neck as the hairs stand on end. Solo.
He peeks over his shoulder and stares right at the other man’s grimace. “What?”
Solo ignores him, choosing to lift an eyebrow in response. Looking past Finn, his voice goes soft as he asks, “Hey. You okay?”
Finn looks back at Rey, who gives Solo a small, shy smile in return. “Yeah, thanks.”
“Okay.”
He’s gone before Finn can get in a cheeky comment. “I’m fine too, thanks for asking,” he mumbles.
Rey pokes him in the ribs. “Don’t be a smartass. You know he’s shy around people.”
“No, I don’t. Apparently, there’s a lot of things I don’t know about him, including his favourite flavour...You.”
“Fuck off,” she hisses. “And don’t tell anyone.”
He tilts his head to the side and taps his chin with mock contemplation. “Hm? Don’t tell anyone what?”
“What you saw. Don’t act stupid.”
“But what was it that I saw, Rey?”
He leans against the shelving and crosses his arms. To be perfectly honest, he loves watching her squirm, even though the circumstances that have led them to this situation will most likely result in nightmares about Solo’s tongue for the next week.
“I don’t know what you saw.” Her eyes flick up to his face, then focus on the stack of loaf pans next to her arm. She runs a finger over their metal rims, one after the other. “Just that you saw something that may have been private for a reason? The reason being...some people may find it upsetting?”
Oh. Now he feels like a jackass. “What matters is that you’re happy,” he admits. “Does he make you happy?”
“Of course! He makes me feel so happy.”
“Then fuck everyone else.”
“But Finn,” she groans. “He’s insulted you and your cooking more times than I can remember.”
He holds up his hands defensively. “Hey. I’m not the one screwing him.”
“Finn!”
“Just saying. If he treats you nice, then don’t worry about it. You deserve to have someone at your back...even if that someone is Solo.”
“Gee, thanks.” She smiles, nudging his foot against hers. “Tell me if he’s mean to you though? So I can beat him up for you.”
“Oh God, Rey.” Finn sticks out his tongue. “Save it for the bedroom, please!”
Her punch against his arm lacks any true malice, but it’s enough to send him into the shelf of muffin tins, knocking them to the floor with a mighty clang.
If you were to tell Rey a year ago that she would one day become an online celebrity, she would have laughed in your face. That sort of stuff is for drama queens, make up channels, and clean cut, Aryan couples that play increasingly cruel pranks on each other, not a street rat turned line cook turned recipe tester like her. But now, with one person brushing powder on her face and another adjusting her hair, Rey can admit that sometimes amazing things happen to normal people. Sometimes, a passion can become a job, and a job can become a gateway to new opportunities.
Most of the staff are gathered behind the camera crew, leaning up against the back counter and squatting on stools. There’s not a ton of space, but enough that everyone can pack in to watch her unleash Pruno 2.0 and taste the results.
Kay nods and then someone, probably Poe, drops the clapper to start the shoot.
“Hey everyone,” Rey says, smiling. “So it’s a week later, and finally time to strain, bottle, and drink our pruno. For maximum authenticity, I’ve gathered together some supplies that would be available at the average prison commissary, some tube socks, pantyhose, you know, clothing stuff mostly. Should get the majority of the chunks out, and then we can give it a drink! And, uh, hopefully not die.”
She spots Ben hovering around the back of the group. Her stomach flips; what if the pruno is bad? What if she barfs on camera while he’s watching? Admittedly, he’s seen her in some pretty uncompromising positions already, lots of ugly crying, a bout of cheap sushi induced food poisoning, the first time they tried a–
She shakes her head and gives the camera a toothy grin. “Let’s get to straining!”
The moment she cracks the freezer bag open, the entire crew recoils, some holding their noses while others wince. “It, uh, smells interesting?” She wracks her brain for descriptors; this is an educational program after all. “It’s got a very strong odour of...cleaner? Kitchen cleaner, and like Tang, but kind of in a bad way. Also kind of...vomit-y?”
Hux rolls his eyes and breathes, “Jesus Christ.”
“But that doesn’t necessarily mean it's toxic. Nowadays, we’re so scared of home fermentation, with all of its strange smells and bubbles, that we don’t try new things. I don’t know about you, but I’m very excited to try this.”
Gingerly, she hefts the bag up over her makeshift straining contraption, consisting of a section of pantyhose stretched over a bowl, covered with a sock that’s been cut open. The entire thing is fastened with binder clips, then reinforced with a single, straining rubber band. She holds her breath, then lets the bag’s contents slosh onto the filter. It...works, inasmuch as dollar store pantyhose can be expected to work, catching all of the orange guts, bread chunks, and strings of unmixed ketchup while letting a steady stream of opaque orange liquid drain into the bowl below.
“Alright, cut!”
Kay’s crew clears away the packages of tube socks and jar of oranges they’re using as props. One of them places a box on the table, filled with what appears to be antique coupe glasses, secured in bubble wrap, while another carefully transfers the pruno from it’s bowl into a nice cut glass pitcher.
“We thought the juxtaposition would be funny,” Kay explains, grabbing a glass from the box and unwrapping it. The antique crystal glints under the camera lights.
“They’re beautiful.” Rey takes another from the box, marvelling at its weight. “A whole box is a bit overkill though, don’t you think?”
Kay gives her a wry smile. “Welllll, since you asked...we were kind of hoping the entire team would try a sip with you. Especially since they’re all conveniently gathered here.”
Rey has never seen a group of people disperse so suddenly. Hux mumbles something about having to pick up some new variety of quinoa, Rose pulls out her phone and calls her sister, and Finn chokes out a “hell no” before ducking out for a bathroom break.
“Oh come on!” Kay moans, throwing her hands in the air. “Take one for the team!”
“I’ve done a lot of things for this team,” Poe says. “But I am not getting botulism.”
“No one’s gotten botulism in years,” Rey yells after him, but he’s already grabbed Maz and Snap and pulled them into the walk in, leaving Ben alone behind the camera crew.
Ben.
“Don’t suppose you’ll volunteer to try it,” she mutters bitterly.
He steps forward and reaches out his hand for a glass. “I’m still here, aren’t I?”
She gapes at him, open mouthed like a dead fish. Kay grabs a compact to powder his forehead and nose, another crewperson adjusts the boom and lights to accommodate his height, someone else grabs him a mic pack. Kay’s PA grabs a comb and lightly brushes the hair at his temples, accentuating the grey spots there that the audience apparently loves. The rest of Rey’s traitorous team is lingering in the corners of the test kitchen, too nervous to come out, but far too curious to remain fully hidden.
And Rey just stares. She stares until she hears the smack of the clapper, which shocks her to attention. “Alright, so we’re here with my colleague Ben Solo, and together we’re going to give this a taste. Ben, are you ready?”
The corner of his mouth twitches. “Sure. I suppose.”
The pruno is suspiciously viscous as she pours it into the coupe glasses. It’s the colour of a can of Fanta, and just as opaque. “Just a taste,” she explains for the camera. “Wouldn’t want to get you drunk during working hours.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” he deadpans.
She fights back an unflattering giggle snort. “Ah right. I forgot about the great sourdough incident of 2019.”
“Sourdough slash beer making incident.” He’s actually smiling now, a real smile that shows off his full lips and crooked teeth. “And if I’m not mistaken, you were the one who insisted that Guiness would make a great starter.”
“It makes a great leavener. Starter is different.”
“Well, you didn’t say that.”
“I shouldn’t have to say that to a gourmet pastry chef, should I?”
Kay groans. “Guys. The pruno?”
“Oh, right.” Rey looks down at her glass, her cheek suddenly warm. “Uh, it’s orange?”
Ben lifts the glass to his nose, sniffs it, then makes an admirable effort to suppress his urge to recoil. “It smells...like how you said it smells. Vomit-esque.”
“Yeah, well washed rind cheese smells and tastes like foot fungus, but people keep eating it.”
There’s white flecks on the top of the pruno that look like bubbles, but may actually be mould. Rey looks over at Ben. If he’s noticed the maybe-mould, he’s being very polite in choosing not to mention it. Oh God, what if he actually drinks this? What if he drinks it and it makes him sick and he never wants to talk to her again? What if...what if he gets botulism and dies?
Then she feels something warm brush up against her free hand, behind the workstation. She glances down and watches as Ben twines her fingers in his, then squeezes them. “Together?” he asks, his voice a soft rumble.
She nods. “Together.”
She sputters the moment the demon liquor touches her lips. It burns, not like cognac or a nice bourbon, but like she’s doused her lips in nail polish remover and set them on fire. The taste is incidental; she can barely absorb it in her rush to set down the crystal glass that probably costs more than her life. Choking back a cough, she looks over at Ben.
He drinks the entire thing, without flinching. “Its....” He pauses, thoughtful. “Not as bad as I expected.”
“What?” Rey feels like she’s going to explode with nerves.
“Yeah, it’s...not terrible? Not what I would consider drinkable, but it’s not the worst thing I’ve had in my mouth.”
“I–” She remembers the camera, and schools her shocked expression into a smile. “Well folks, there you have it. Pruno aka prison wine. It’s cheap, alcoholic, and not the worst thing that’s been in Ben Solo’s mouth. I would say go out and try it but, uh, I feel like that would open us up to some funky lawsuits, so be safe, and maybe go grab some real wine from the store if you’re legal. Thanks for watching and Good Appetite.”
She hears Kay cut, but her attention is already swiveled to Ben. “I can’t believe you drank it all,” she mumbles, her fingers still intertwined with his.
“I wanted to be supportive.” He shrugs. “And really, it wasn’t too bad, I–”
Maybe it’s the pruno. Maybe it’s the way he’s smiling at her, like he’s proud of the glorious demon liquid she’s created. Maybe it’s because he’s holding her hand and they’re surrounded by their colleagues and for once it doesn’t feel weird, it feels right and good.
Whatever it is, it makes her put down her glass, tug him forward, and rise up on her tiptoes to press her lips against his–
Then promptly pull away and gag, as Ben lets out a fully belly laugh.
“Oh, fuck no,” she groans, grappling for water. “God, what was I– fuck.”
He tastes like pruno.