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dragonmuse · 1 year

Note

There may not be drastic changes from their Mainverse-selves, but I have been interested in reading more of/from Bottle of Red, Bottle of White, so if inspiration strikes, maybe a piece on Frenchie & John in Bottle of Red, Bottle of White? The original piece mentioned Frenchie made "pastries light as air," & only referred to John as Frenchie's friend. Do they still have a similar meeting? Similar crossing with Pete? Buttons isn't mentioned at all, if I recall correctly. How might they know him?

(Have a bulleted list, anon!)

-Miss Griggs had never been in charge of detention before. Frenchie didn’t know her well, hadn’t taken a class with her before, but he’d always admired her dozens of skinny braids that swept nearly to her waist and changed color every few months in a bright, seasonal way.

“What are you in for?” She asked, amused apparently.

“Taking too long in the bathroom. Mr. F said I was being ‘idle’.”

“I see,” a momentary anger sparked over her face then was smothered away. “Well. I hate this room and since it’s just the two of us, you’re going to come help me setup for class.”

She taught home ec and they were in a baking unit. Frenchie helped her dole out the dry ingredients into tupperware for each table. While they worked, she asked him a lot of questions about home and school. He talked, always happy for a ready ear. At the end they made cookies which he brought home and his father ate half of, forgetting to scold him for detention entirely.

-Frenchie got detention a few more times that year. If it fell out on Miss Griggs’ days then that was just lucky. The next year he got to take Home Ec himself and he found sewing came to him quickly and while he could cook just fine, it was baking where his heart was.

-”You know there are schools just for baking,” Miss Griggs told him as he rounded into his senior year.

“My dad wants me to go to college.”

“Do you want to go?”

-Frenchie went home and had a very long talk with his father. It was hard and both of them were wrung out as Frenchie filled out the application that would whisk him away to the city. For nine months, he barely slept, learning everything he could possibly absorb as fast as they would throw it at him. He had never been a dedicated student before, outside of music classes.

He learned to make everything, but it was pastry that had his heart. It was finicky and demanding, requiring time, patience and attention. They were not things that Frenchie thought he had in abundance before, but he managed them.

-Of course everyone needed downtime and Frenchie’s nimble fingers remembered Miss Griggs other lessons too. So one unexpectedly quiet weekend, he picked through google and found a shop not far from the school. The weather was good, cool and crisp.

The shop wasn’t very big, just a decal of a spool on the front door to catch attention. When Frenchie went in, he was greeted by the dense smell of wool and a pleasant edge of dust. The shelves were all weighted down with fabrice, notions, needles, thread, and even pillowy containers of yarn.

Behind the counter was a massive mountain of a human in a bright yellow t-shirt with an old-fashioned sewing machine it that read ‘Sewing Mends the Soul’ in curly script. He was knitting with very tiny needles, made all the smaller by his hands. The hair on his head was shaved on either side, all the better to show off a constellation of stars tattooed on one side of his forehead.

“Hi,” the mountain shifted on his stool, aiming a bright smile in Frenchie’s direction. “Can I help you with a project today?”

“Could you?” Frenchie stepped in, let the door close with a jangle of bells behind him. “I’m kind of a novice, only made a few things before, but I need something to do with my hands.”

“Sure. What’s your crafting poison?”

“I hand sew. I mean I can use a machine, but I don’t have one right now,” he took another step forward, bringing him to the counter itself. It wasn’t a very big store.

“If you’d prefer a machine, we’ve got a little workshop space in the back that’s available for rent.” The mountain’s name tag said ‘John’.

“I don’t mind doing it by hand. I don’t have time for anything really big anyway.”

“So what’d you want to make?”

“I...don’t know?” He admitted. “I just want to keep my hands busy.”

“Coin purses are a good place to go. Learn how to put in zippers if you don’t know already and you don’t need much fabric for ‘em,” John turned around, rifled through a drawer, knitting dropping to the counter. He pulled out a thin envelope. “Pattern, needles, zipper and all is in there. You just tell me what fabric you like from the back wall and I’ll even cut it for you.”

“That sounds perfect,” Frenchie took the kit from him looking it over. “You’ve made one?”

“Made about a hundred,” John grinned. “I like to keep my hands busy too and we sell them at street fairs sometimes.”

“Oh wow, okay, so you’re the man to talk to.”

“Can be. About some things.”

And talk they did. Frenchie didn’t know that he cared so much about fabric. With Miss Griggs, it had been what was available, but given options he discovered opinions. John had them too, advising him away from things with too much stretch or that might pill. They poured over bits and bobs and it wasn’t until John had to leave him for a bit to help with another customer that Frenchie realized he’d been there for nearly an hour.

“You didn’t have to spend so much time with me,” he said when John returned. “Feel bad hogging you.”

“Nah,” John reached up and pulled down a satin the color of fresh leaves, “I love this stuff. And you’ve got a good eye. It’s fun.”

-Frenchie went back to his dorm with his relatively small purchase and worked away at it. Three days later he went back, pleased to find John behind the counter again so he could whip it out and show him.

“Wow!” John grinned. “Thanks, sometimes I get people all setup and never see them again. I worry they got frustrated or something.”

“Your instructions were great,” Frenchie grinned right back. “But I kept thinking of that velvet.”

“Ah,” John nodded sagely. “Well. Let’s get you setup with another zipper too.”

-Frenchie kept going back. Coin purses became appliques on pillows, became his first ever garment, a shirt that came out a little lopsided. He learned John’s schedule and despite not minding the shop manager (owner?), he timed his visits for when John would be there.

“It’s kind of lonely here,” Frenchie told him confessionally. He had his elbows on the counter, watching John nimbly rip out uneven seam Frenchie had made and gotten hopelessly knotted up trying to fix. “I’m not used to cities, I think.”

“Haven’t been here long myself.”

“Really? But you seem...huh. I guess I wouldn’t know, I only ever see you here.”

“Could change that,” John said very casually though there was a dash of pink on his cheeks. “If you want. I know you’re busy and all, but I was going to go to this craft fair this Sunday, just to poke around. Could meet up.”

“Yeah?” Frenchie beamed at him. “I’d love that.”

He’d worry about the rest of it later. For now, having plans with someone that wasn’t permanently flour-marked and making high-pitch anxiety noises while chain smoking, sounded good. Frenchie’s roommate was interesting at best.

-They met up at the fair. It was easy to find John, who towered over everyone else. He dressed much the same out of work as he did in though in deference to the chill, he had added a black and pink flannel. They walked through the stalls, Frenchie chatting away at a million miles a minutes and while John took it slower, he was clearly listening and finding it all very amusing.

-One food truck was selling stuffed meatballs which they had to stop walking to eat.

“Oh wow, these are great,” Frenchie said around a mouthful. “Seasoning is all off though.”

“How so?” John regarded his own half-eaten container. “They taste fine to me.”

“Fine is fine, but I could make ‘em awesome. I made this meat pie last week...mm. Would blow your socks off.”

“Yeah?” John smiled. “Prove it.”

-Which was how they wound up in the grocery store, John insisting on paying since he’d issued the challenge. They wound up back at John’s apartment, a two-bedroom three-story walk up.

“Pain in the ass, but the place was nicer than anything else is our price range,” John explained.

“We?”

“Me and my roommate, Pete. He’s working tonight, so you won’t see him, but he’s a decent guy. We’ve been friends for a couple of years, met at an old job. He’s got a boyfriend named Lucius. He’s around about half the time. Funny guy.”

“What about you?”

“Not funny,” John considered. “Not really my thing.”

“No I mean...you know. Someone special?”

“Oh,” John fished his keys out of his pocket, eyes averted. “No. Don’t really date.”

So it wasn’t a date. Which was good. Frenchie wasn’t looking for a heartbreak. Really.

“Yeah, me either. My only lover is butter.”

John laughed, tension bleeding away a little. Frenchie made meatballs in John’s small kitchen and on a whim while they cook, threw together a bread dough.

“It’ll need to prove,” he explained. “But then you can bake it.”

“You’re assuming a lot about me and this kitchen,” John watched him. “Why do you have to bang on it so much?”

“Builds up the gluten strands. That’s what gives you all the air pockets and stuff that makes bread...bread.”

“Huh,” John watched him work, provided utensils as needed, and an everflowing conversation.

In fact they talked for so long over dinner that Frenchie was still there to begin a second prove. Then they watched a movie, mostly talking over that. By then, he might as well put in the oven.

-It was nearly midnight when Frenchie slathered butter over brioche and handed a still warm slice to John.

“This is...it’s beautiful,” John told him.

“Thanks,” Frenchie beamed.

-One hang out led to another after that. Frenchie didn’t actually have a lot of free time, but John’s life seemed mostly working at the shop, hanging out with his roommate and very occasionally going to drag bars. Within a month, Frenchie was regularly going with him to that too.

-Which was probably why when the phone call came and Frenchie was still sobbing, it was John’s number he hit.

“I’m so sorry,” he said as soon as John picked up.

“What’s wrong?” John demanded.

“My Dad...he just...he just...they said it was his heart, but he was fine when I went home last time. I just talked to him last night...and I don’t know. I have to go and...I don’t know what to do.”

“You at your dorm room?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

And he was. John arrived, taking up most of the small room. He asked no questions, just wrapped Frenchie up in an consuming hug and Frenchie clung to him like a rock in a storm. He got to go on clinging too.

“I know how to plan a funeral without much money,” John told him solemnly and he started making up a list. “How far away is home?”

“It was just an apartment. We only lived there a few years,” Frenchie was still tucked in close to John’s side. “About an hour away.”

“We can leave in the morning.”

They did. John drove him up to the town that Frenchie had never thawed in. They do all the mundane and horrible things you had to do when someone died. But John had a list and whenever he showed up, the things he said should happen generally did even though he was soft-spoken and kind as anything. It only a few days, there was a funeral. It was well-attended. His father had always been good at leaving an impression on people. Frenchie let people shake his hand and tell him they were sorry. He accepted bits of food and floral cards.

Then they went back to the apartment and sorted through his father’s life. It felt wrong to go into his bedroom, to touch all his intimate things.

“When my mother died, I didn’t cry until this part,” John told him, eyes misty all over again recounting it. “Sat down in her closet and bawled like a baby into one of her dresses.”

“What did you do with all of it?”

“Donated most of it. She had good things that someone else could wear. She’d want that. Kept a few for myself just to have,” John dabbed at his eyes, then gently took a suit jacket off a hanger and tucked it into one of the liquor boxes they’d scrounged up. “I keep saying I’ll make something with them someday, but really I just like having them in my closet. Like the good kind of ghost.”

“I like that.” Frenchie decided. He took his father’s favorite hat, one of his work shirts and still crisply ironed pair of slacks. The cologne too, cheap, but beloved. His father hadn’t owned any jewelry, not even a watch.

There was the guitar though. Frenchie took it with care, set it in it’s case.

“You know how to play it?” John asked as they loaded it into the car.

“Yeah, he taught me how. I love it, but there wasn’t room at the dorm. Probably still isn’t.”

“Store it at ours then. I’ve got some space.”

“Really?”

“You’re over pretty regularly anyway. It’ll be safe there.”

-Regularly became an understatement. Under the cloud of mourning, Frenchie rarely left. He liked Pete, who was brassy and loud, but also intensely kind. When he got wind of what happened, he’d actually been miffed that John hadn’t told him about the funeral and went out of his way to make sure Frenchie had his preferred coffee blend at the apartment for the mornings after he fell asleep on the couch. Lucius was abrasive and mean, hilarious and also secretly softer than John and Pete combined. He sat up with Frenchie on a night he couldn’t sleep and told him increasingly unlikely, but funny stories about drunk rich people shenanigans.

-In that haze, Frenchie completed his program and then he was also homeless.

“You’ll stay with us,” John told him as his last week at the dorm drew closer. “You can have the couch.”

“I don’t have a job yet.”

“It’s a couch. Who pays rent on a couch?”

-Frenchie got a job within a week at a bougie bakery. He got up when Lucius was walking in a lot of the time, out of everyone’s way long before they woke up. With great care, he baked his grief into croissants and scones. The head baker wasn’t very good and the recipes were too sweet, but Frenchie appreciated the mechanicalness of it all just then.

-One late sweet night at the end of summer, John rubbed Frenchie’s hands between his own, working out a cramp that had snuck up on him while he put pleats into his first pair of sewn pants.

“Feels good,” Frenchie whispered, the words caught between them.

“You need to loosen up or you’ll give yourself carpel tunnel,” John chided, taking each finger carefully in turn.

“I don’t date because I’m asexual,” Frenchie said, the words which has been waiting on the tip of his tongue finally tumbled free. “I want to. I just know most people want sex and then it’s a whole thing.”

“What’s asexual?” John paused, hands frozen around Frenchie’s like a horrible parody of a proposal.

“Uh, it means I don’t have sex? It’s a whole spectrum, but I’m firmly in the ‘no, thanks’ part of it,” Frenchie felt his heart sink into his stomach. “It’s not a big-”

“I didn’t know there was a word for it,” John practically whispered. “I thought it was...just me.”

“No, oh my God, no,” Frenchie turned his hand, clasping at John’s. “Not even a little. There’s me, obviously. But there’s so many of us. Is that why you don’t date?”

“It’s miserable,” John nodded, clinging to the tether of Frenchie’s hand. “I want...I want things.”

“Yeah,” Frenchie found a smile, maybe the first smile he’d really managed in months. “Me too.”

Their eyes caught and held, very tentatively, John asked, “Me?”

“Yeah, you,” Frenchie brought their joined hands to his lips, brushed a kiss over one of John’s knuckles. “I like kissing sometimes. Not too much. I like hugging a lot. Cuddling is good. You?”

“I like hugging you a lot. Let’s find out about the kissing.”

-The kissing was good. The kissing, actually, was fucking great. They did that a lot and eventually, they experimented with a night’s sleep which was comfortable as anything. The couch was abandoned and after a little arguing, Frenchie started paying rent.

“So you two are...” Pete looked between them over the first joint rent payment.

“Happy,” Frenchie supplied while John blushed.

“Got it,” Pete took the check. “Good for you then.”

-By winter, Frenchie was over the bakery. He wanted something more challenging and maybe a little creative. He applied all over the map, but when he walked into Freedom, he had a good feeling right off the bat. The place smelled amazing, looked both homey and threatening at the same time.

“This is the place,” ‘Call me Eddy’ told him. “I’m the co-owner, but I do the front of house stuff. You’ll interview with Izzy.”

“That’s Chef Hands?” he recalled from the advertisement.

“Sure, we can call him that,” Eddy snorted. “IZZY! YOU’RE GUY IS HERE!”

“SEND HIM THROUGH!” A voice penetrated out of the kitchen.

“Uh, okay, any tips?” Frenchie glanced at Eddy.

“Be good at cooking,” Eddy said with a twitch of a smile.

“....thanks.”

The kitchen was immaculate as Frenchie went through the doors. A man in a black chef’s coat, black jeans, black boots, and his arms crossed over his chest greeted him as he came through.

“You’re resume only says Frenchie.”

“Yes, chef,” Frenchie drew himself up. “It’s my name.”

“Pretentious,” Chef Hands judged, but in a toneless way like it hardly mattered to him. “You’ve read about what we do?”

“I did.”

“Can you make pastry worth a damn without eggs?”

“Yes, chef,” Frenchie lifted his chin, answering the challenge with a challenge. “Try me.”

“Most of it needs overnight, right?”

“I can do something right now if you need me too.”

“Let’s say I do. Savory, not sweet.”

“Yes, chef.”

It took longer in an unfamiliar kitchen and there were the eyes of the chef on him the whole time. But Frenchie thought about John kissing his forehead before he left that morning.

They’d just be lucky to have you if they’re smart enough to take you.

He cooked and he baked. In the end, he presented the chef with five puff pastry packets, embracing a damn good chicken pot pie mixture. The chef didn’t say a word, the same blank face as many of Frenchie’s professors. He picked one up, bit into it. Then took another bite and another.

“EDDY!” he shouted and there was a rattle, a bang, then doors swinging open.

“What?” Eddy crowded in around the chef. Without ceremony, the chef shoved the last remaining bite into Eddy’s mouth.

“Yes?” The chef asked.

“Holy shit, yes,” Eddy said, pastry flaking out of her mouth. “Why are you even asking me?”

“Because you didn’t eat lunch,” Izzy shoved a full pastry at her on a napkin.

“Can I have two?”

“Leave one for Roach,” he allowed.

“Do I have a job?” Frenchie asked, glancing between them.

“You’ve got a job.”

“Thank you, Chef-”

“Izzy,” came the harsh correction. “You can call me chef during dinner service, rest of the time just use my damn name. This isn’t the fucking miliatry or something.”

“Ok,” Frenchie nodded. “I can work with that.”

-If he had any worries about working with Izzy, who continued to have the personality of steel wool, then they were erased when he met Jim and Roach. Jim wielded a knife during prep with such speed it took Frenchie’s breath away. They were also silent until they shot of a wry observation that made Frenchie cackle.

And Roach. Roach was magic.

“I’m going to make a jambalaya and people like to dip shit in that,” Roach told him. “So give me some options.”

“What’s the spice profile like?”

“Say ah.”

And an amazing flavor explosion just happened in Frenchie’s mouth.

“Holy shit, yeah I can work with that.”

They bounce off each other easily, the menu evolving so fast that Eddy just took to handwriting it until it coalesced for the season. To Frenchie’s surprise, Izzy had little to say about their improvisations, except to curtail them when the menu got longer than a page.

“People get stupid when they’re too many decisions,” he announced. “Just save it for winter.”

-John came to eat with Pete the very first night Frenchie was in the kitchen.

“It was amazing,” John told him when Frenchie climbed wearily into bed.

“I don’t think it was yet,” Frenchie tucked his head into the crook of John’s arm. “But I think it will be.”

-In summer, Izzy took Frenchie and Roach with him to the local farm where they got their produce. A wild looking man named Buttons with a pigeon on his shoulder walked them through greenhouse after greenhouse.

"You can make good things from good soil," Buttons intoned.

"What kind of good things do you grow here?" Roach asked specutiavely looking at the one greenhouse the door hadn't opened too.

"You want to cook with that shit, you find a different place," Izzy cut off whatever Buttons was going to say. He was rows away, giving accessing looks to a thyme plant.

"How's he even hear that?" Roach groused.

"What kind of basil do you have?" Frenchie asked.

"Every kind," Buttons gave him the same kind of look Izzy was giving the thyme. "But you'll be wanting the onions first."

-They were really great onions. And basil. And everything. Frenchie spent all afternoon asking Buttons questions and at the end of it, Izzy said in his decisive way,

"You're doing this from here on out. Once a season, come out, see what looks good. Buttons invoices us."

"Me? But I'm not-"

"Are you a chef or not?" Izzy demanded.

"...I am," he realized.

"Good. Order the fucking produce from the madman then."

Frenchie did. He liked Buttons, even if he did smell like mulch.

-The closure scared Frenchie a little even though he understood the vision. It made him realize how quickly the kitchen had become the bulk of his life.

"You love it." John shrugged when he brought it up.

"Yeah, but I-" Frenchie started, caught himself, then couldn't figure how why he'd bothered. Surely John knew by now. "I love you too. More than that."

"No competition," John pinked up. "I love you a lot. But that's not my whole life. Shouldn't be yours either."

-It was, in some ways, an embarrassment of riches. To have John with their room and their place enmeshed with Pete and Lucius as well as the kitchen with Roach and Jim. Increasingly there was Eddy too, who liked to come back to the kitchen when Frenchie was prepping and ask him idle questions about what he was doing and steal bits of dough.

Maybe there was even Izzy, who barked and ordered, but also made staff dinner almost every night, rotating through everyone's favorites. On Frenchie's birthday, he made beef wellington with a sniff,

"Like pastry is fucking hard?" Then very quietly admitted that he'd had to start over after he'd fucked up measurements. No one else heard it, but Frenchie did and that was all that mattered.

-So when Lucius got the job then came home a few days later with a groaning, "Does the man not understand that I'm hitting on him so hard I might knock through drywall?"

Frenchie offered, "Yeah, no he doesn't get it, guaranteed. Gotta be clear."

That took ages to pay off, but once it did, the kitchen was even nicer to work in. Not that Izzy got nicer, but he was easier to tease and less likely to strike back. Jim took the most ruthless advantage and their verbal sparring made Frenchie spill more than one container on the floor with laughter.

-And if sometimes on a late night, when John was sleeping, Frenchie took his father's hat down off the shelf and just held it in his hands, wasn't that okay?

"It's going good," he told the hat. "You'd be proud, I think. No...I know. You would. It's a good life, Dad. Wish you could've seen."

When he crawled into bed, John pulled him in close.

"Maybe he does see," John mumbled. "You deserve a guardian angel or two."

"Got one already," he slotted his fingers over the stars on John's temple. "Best one going too."

"Want to stay in tomorrow?" John suggested. "Watch movies and make things?"

"More than anything," Frenchie slung his leg over one of John's. "Chocolate chip cookies, maybe. And we can work on that quilt."

And that's exactly what they did.

#leda house and the kraken verse #ficlet #bottle of red bottle of white #frenchie #john feeney #songs for lovers

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