#it's hot that they're so competent at handling live tv

[challenge-ant]

BGT 01/06/2022

[ohmytheon]

ship of your choice. chopped au. they're in the dessert round, and one of them will be chopped. (alternatively any of the other rounds if it's an ot3/4 haha)

(CHOPPED AU. JAYSON. I DON’T EVEN. oh man… this is serious. I actually died while writing this and then came back to life to post this ridiculousness. You can tell that I have a lot of feelings about Chopped.)

“I was an orphan,” Cassian tells the camera in the tone of a person who no longer seems to understand the severity of what he’s saying. “I lived in an orphanage. I raised myself, got a job in a restaurant when I was thirteen, put myself through school. I mean, it wasn’t legal, but it got my foot in the door. If I can handle all of that, I can win the desert round.”

*

Back in the Chopped kitchen, Cassian looked completely at ease standing at his table in front of his closed basket of mystery ingredients. The competition so far had been fierce and he’d had both ups and downs, much to his irritation, but this was what he was made for. He’d been in the restaurant business for years. It might not have been what he’d originally thought he would do, but after growing up in the service industry, it was all he knew.

If he couldn’t win a damn cooking competition on TV, then did he even have any business calling himself a chef?

Glancing to his left, he sized up the last of his competitors. Jyn Erso was not technically what one would call a chef. While neither one of them had gone to culinary school, she hadn’t even worked in a restaurant of years. Instead, she’d been operating out of a food truck, roaming around the country, known for rarely sticking to one city for long. Somehow, she’d managed to gain a cult following this way.

While he toiled away in a hot as hell kitchen for fourteen hours a day, sweating and bleeding for his job, she would park her truck near a beach or outside of a nightclub and have at it. When she’d walked into the room, his first instinct had been to roll his eyes, but he didn’t unlike Chef Krennic who had found out the hard way that Jyn did not play even remotely nice. He knew better than to underestimate her. After all, her late father was Michellen three star chef. She might have ignored the call to cooking until later on in her life, but she was absolutely brutal in the kitchen, especially one as competitive on Chopped.

It almost made Cassian smile just thinking about the way she’d forced Krennic to come up with a completely different strategy last minute for a mystery ingredient on the appetizer round by not giving him a chance to use the one fryer.

As if sensing him looking at her, Jyn turned her face towards him and grinned faintly. It was small, but cutting, as sharp as any chef’s knife.

*

“Cassian Andor,” Jyn drawls melodramatically, leaning back in her seat as the camera trains on her face. She shakes her head. “James Beard award nominee this year, Southwest’s top new chef winner? No, I’m not afraid of him. The man was voted to be in People magazine’s sexiest people alive. I’m not about to lose to a pretty boy.” She pauses, a little frown on her face. “Okay, he is talented – and he’s okay-looking, I guess. But I’m not going to let that distract me!”

*

Jyn’s smile stayed razor sharp as she nodded her head towards him. “Best of luck, chef. I hope you don’t want to use the ice cream machine.”

“I wouldn’t dream of doing something so typical,” Cassian responded coolly. 

It actually made her laugh. To the side, she heard one of the judges, probably that Conant bastard, snicker and whisper, “Are they flirting?” and ignored them. Maybe she should try to flirt with him. It could possibly distract him. But she could barely get a read on him despite going through two rounds of cooking hell with him at her side. She wasn’t so certain that he had a passion other than food. Besides, if she was going to beat him, it would be at his own game.

No doubt he was already planning something magical and connected to his roots. He’d been spectacular with his seasoning and flavors in the first two rounds, blowing everyone out of the water. It had been frustrating. She was able to get the perfect cook on some absurd meat and then there was his burst of flavor, like he was Guy Fieri taking them to Flavortown or some bullshit.

When it was time to open their mystery baskets, both Jyn and Cassian focused ahead of them, blocking each other out, and looked inside. Naturally, it was a total shit show of ingredients. Whoever came up with them deserved to be shot. While she grumbled under her breath with each addition, Cassian was silent as ever, like it didn’t bother him one bit that their desert basket included raspberries, stale oreos, pumpkin pie, and jalapeno cheddar bratwurst. What the fuck was she supposed to do with that combination?

God, was she really considering making a raspberry sorbet? She had been joking about using that stupid ice cream machine.

*

Cassian takes a deep breath and sighs into the camera. “Honestly, I don’t care about the bratwurst, but I freaking hate pumpkin pie. What kind of consistency is that stuff? It’s like gloop. And the spices are somehow both overpowering and bland.”

*

While Jyn was wearing the same aggravated look she gave every mystery basket – despite pulling out something stunning-looking in the end – Cassian kept his hands folded behind his back and looked upfront calmly. As long as he remained cool and detached, he’d be able to keep his head in the game. He was silently grateful that there had been no chocolate in any basket. He wasn’t about to make a freaking mole with Aaron Sanchez as one of the judges, especially since he’d grown up on the stuff and it was something sacred, although he knew that it was almost expected of him.

“You have thirty minutes on the clock!”

Just before the clock started, Cassian connected eyes with Jyn again. She rolled her eyes, not at him though, and for a brief second, he felt an odd camaraderie were her and smiled. Strange because she was absolutely nothing like him and they had two very distinct styles and were competing against one another. And yet, in a way, it was kind of nice to not be in this alone.

Because desert was hell and no one wanted to bake a cake in thirty minutes with only themselves as company.

*

“Oh, piss on it, he’s handsome,” Jyn groans, burying her face so that she can hide it from the camera, “and I’m going to make a bloody sorbet.”