Adventures in Cooking

[Ares]

*Beeeeeeep*

Jack snapped his head up from the school newspaper at the sound. Oven #3 of the cooking lab had just been kind of enough to let him know it was heated and ready to go. Jack flipped the paper over so as to hold his spot, rose from the table and strode the short distance across the room to where the oven waited.

"Where are you...where are you..?" Jack mumbled to himself as he looked through the spices at his disposal.

"Ah. Perfect." He said as he his rested on the cayenne pepper.

Jack flicked open one half of the lid, revealing the grated side. He looked down at the tray in front of him. Scattered upon the tray, dusted with Jack's own created spice, was a good number of chicken wings. Slowly and steadily Jack dusted the wings with the cayenne pepper. It was always added last.

This was the benefit of having a free period before lunch. It allowed Jack to work on his cooking. It was his main passion outside football, and having the entire cooking lab to himself was relaxing in a way. It allowed him to focus on improving old recipes, and perfect new recipes.

Once he was done with the cayenne, he re-capped the small shaker and placed the spice back on the shelf. He quickly slipped on an oven-mitt and placed the tray in the oven.

After setting the timer to 35 minutes, Jack reached into his pocket for his iPod. He hit play and turned up the volume.

The opening riff to "Don't Hold Back" by The Sleeping, gunned itself into Jack's ears as he began stage one of the cleanup. He grabbed the spice mixing bowls and made his way to the nearby sink.  It took a decent amount of elbow grease, but once the bowls were thouroughly cleaned, Jack gave them a squirt of a bleach and water mix to help sterilize everything from the contact with raw chicken.

His iPod switched tracks to a blistering number from one of his favourite bands, Four Year Strong, as Jack gathered the utensils and gave them the same treatment as the bowls. This was followed by a sterilization of the counter-tops he had worked on.  After washing his hands for what had to be the 12th time since he'd entered the lab, Jack checked the timer.

23 Minutes.

He checked his phone to verify the time, then sat back down to continue reading the paper. As he sat there, music blasting in his ears, prom theme debate dominating his view, Jack noticed the all too familiar smell of the chicken wings baking begin to fill the room.

This was why he loved having a spare before lunch.

[BROseidon†]

(Matt Vartoogian from League of Lunchtime)

Matt decided that he would spend his free period and lunch in the cooking lab today. Perhaps it was the previous mishap with Rebecca and Logan, or maybe it was just a desire not to interact with people and be able to watch some League streams in peace. Then it hit him.

Damn, that smells good.

As Matt entered the room, a distinct scent of chicken and spices grew stronger. Matt saw Jack Johnson sitting there listening to his iPod, waiting for his wings to cook.

Damn I should cook more.

Back before Matt had decided to go pro, he cooked a fair bit. Nowadays he didn't cook as much, spending almost all of his free time practicing instead. He would, from time to time, take a step back, think about how one-dimensional his life had become, and decide to cook something. One instance of cooking would add enough variety to Matt's life for him to be able to focus on gaming for a few weeks, before he would have to take another few hours on an afternoon to cook again.

Jack was a nice kid. A little brash, sure, but he never really seemed to actually cause any trouble or harm. He wasn't exactly a friend, but he was someone that Matt had no issues with. As such, Matt was fine spending his period hanging out with the guy, especially if he could get some free food out of it.

"Yo, mind if I join ya?"

[Solitair†]

Initially, Ilya had simply wanted to find a new place for him to eat lunch. He almost never wanted to eat it in the cafeteria unless he could find all of his friends from wrestling at one table. But today was not one of those days, so he found himself leaving for one of his usual spots outside.

Had he not smelled the scent of chicken wafting down the halls, he would have eaten under a tree as he normally did. But his curiosity got the better of him, and he followed someone he felt as if he barely knew into a room he'd visited only once before.

Inside, Jack Johnson of the football team was cooking up what Ilya presumed was going to be his lunch. He knew that Jack played the guitar in a much different style than the popular musician who shared his name, and that Jack did well in his history classes. Most importantly, Jack was rather hard to get along with. It took a few conversations for Ilya to actually connect with him on some level, though that might have been his fault. He'd heard rumors to the effect that he was creepy and robotic sometimes, a crude exaggeration of how he actually acted.

Regardless, seeing Jack start cooking reminded Ilya how long it had been since he gave cooking a try. The last time he made his own meals, they hadn't turned out that bad. Certainly better than anything he could obtain at a drive-thru. But then it had slipped his mind and he completely forgot to do it again until now.

He kept his eyes on the cooking chicken, taking out his own BLT from a bag to eat as he did so. When he heard the other guy in the room ask Jack something, he simply commented, "If I can hear the music coming from Jack's headphones, I doubt he can hear you." He didn't turn to look at Matt, just watching the chicken sizzle in the pan.

[Ares]

You ever get that strange feeling you're no longer alone a room?

Jack hit the pause button on his iPod and turn to see the two guys standing there, one of which seemed fascinated by the chicken, the other seemed to be expecting a response from Jack. If he wanted a response to an unheard statement, then dammit, he was getting a response.

"Gentlemen," Jack began putting on an exuberant voice, "I'm glad you could make it. Today you are both in for a special treat. You two are going to be my guinea pigs for this new recipe."

Jack began gesturing in a very game show host-like fashion as he made his way over to the oven.

"Gentlemen...this chicken is life changing."

Jack squatted next to the oven and looked in at the food.

"I have spent years perfecting this recipe, knowing that one day, you Matthew, and you Ilya, would walk into this very room, at the moment, looking at me we a mixture of hunger, confusion, bemusement, and possibly slight arousal. In the end though, your hunger is most important to me. Boys, in approximately 10 minutes, you will be satisfied in ways that chicken has never satisfied you before. If you would kindly take your seats, we will patiently wait for this clock to hit 0, and when it does, mark my words, you will be satisfied, and your hunger will be defeated!"

Jack ended his impassioned speech with a gesture, quite similar to Tebow-ing. Oh, who was he kidding? Jack Johnson was Tebow-ing for his chicken.

After holding the pose for a few seconds, he rose and faced the boys.

"Nah, but seriously, it's going to be good, so grab a plate, and we shall wait it out together."

[BROseidon†]

It seemed like Jack hadn't heard his question. Whatever, I'll just go ask him ag-

"If I can hear the music coming from Jack's headphones, I doubt he can hear you."

Ilya Volkov had managed to make his way into the room as well. Whether he was there before Matt had arrived or had followed right after, Matt wasn't sure. Nevertheless, Ilya did have a point. Matt could also hear the music coming out of Jack's headphones, so there was no way in hell that he was going to hear anything.

"Fair point, Ilya."

Matt didn't really mind Ilya as company either. The two had never interacted all that much, but all of their previous interactions had been pleasant enough. As much as Ilya appeared a bit cold, he was actually a pretty nice guy to Matt and his friends.

Since Jack couldn't hear him, the only option Matt had to get his attention was to go tap him on the shoulder. However, as he was about to do that, Jack took his headphones off and noticed the other two boys in the room.

And then Jack suddenly went on one strange passionate rant about how amazing his chicken would be, ending it with that pose... Tebowing, was it? Matt watched and listened the entire time a little baffled. He was used to people who had strange senses of humor or were just bad at interpersonal interactions; gamers weren't exactly known for their social prowess. Nevertheless, this was amongst the strangest displays that Matt had ever seen.

Then Jack gave a more normal invitation for him and Ilya to stay for lunch. Matt had been planning on eating a Power Bar for lunch anyways, so this would also give him a real meal.

"Sure, I'll stay. The chicken smells pretty fucking good." Matt walked over to the cabinet to grab himself a plate. Since spending ten minutes in awkward silence with two other people would have been really awkward, Matt decided that he should start the conversation.

"So, you guys have any interesting plans for prom?" Even though Matt wasn't going to go to prom, at least this was something of a common ground between all of them.

[Solitair†]

Ilya looked up from the chicken when he saw Jack turn to him and Max. When Jack started his speech, Ilya just looked at him. Once in a while he blinked. Jack couldn't have known that the two of them would eavesdrop on his cooking, nor that it would... arouse them? Good food was good food, but not an aphrodisiac. His confusion was sealed by the pose Jack struck, and it wasn't until Jack said "seriously" that the possibility that he was making a joke occurred to Ilya.

"Heh," he said, laughing once in an awkward way. "I already have my own lunch, Jack, but I guess I could sample your cooking, too. I didn't know you worked so hard at it." Nevertheless, he took the first bite out of his BLT and reached inside his backpack for the book he was halfway through reading. It had a yellow cover with the blurred image of a man up front, so out of focus that no feature beyond perhaps skin color was identifiable. The only clear part of the image was the pair of wings behind him, wings that looked like cursive writing, specifically the looping, lower-case L's. Above the image was typed The Life of Insects in crisp capital letters. His eyes scanned the pages and his mouth occasionally twitched in the slightest imitation of a smile as a result of the text.

There wasn't much point in talking with the other two. It would be disrespectful to the book. But then, looking at a book was disrespectful to his acquaintances, so Ilya repositioned his bookmark after only a page and looked back at Max. "Funny you should ask," he replied. "I wasn't actually planning on attending prom, but then Penny Huang asked me. So I suppose I'm going. I'll have to rent a tuxedo, right? How much do those typically cost to rent?"

[Solitair†]

Ilya forgot what happened the rest of that lunch period, but he figured it must not have been that important anyway.

((Ilya Volkov continued elsewhere))

[BROseidon†]

The rest of lunch went by with pleasant conversation and delicious chicken. Tasty, tasty chicken.

((Matt Vartoogian continued in V = - ∫ E · dl))