#no it dosen't typically use chicken broth but there's no reason why it can't

[thebluestbluewords]

I'm Not Scared of What You're Gonna Tell Me

(~2k, Jaylos, TW for food issues/isle related food restriction. Seriously. This one is a little heavier than I usually write for tumblr.)

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“When did you last eat?” 

Carlos pulls himself out of the schematic he’d been mentally working on. It’s easier to focus on certain things (like the problem of where to put the extra wire in the blender he’s trying to reconstruct) when he’s got something to do with his hands, and even easier still to get absorbed in the mental work when he’s got someone there to watch his back. “What?” 

Jay makes a soft noise. He’s perching on the windowsill again, but at least he’s on the outside this time. It’s not that anyone in Hell Hall is going to come into the kitchen, but it’s safer to have an easy escape route. The last time he came inside they had to jam him into the kitchen closet when Jasper unexpectedly poked his head into the kitchen, and while the closet is great for storing things like the occasional rusty canned goods and unrotten potatoes they get sent over from the mainland, it’s not a great place for a human person to hide in, and the amount of dirt they had to try and clean up wasn’t worth the small increase in comfort that Jay gets from sitting inside the window rather than on the sill outside. “You’re always in here,” he says casually. “but I don’t think I’ve ever seen you eat anything you make. When did you last eat?” 

There’s a pile of walnuts sitting on the countertop, next to the cutting board. Carlos reaches over with his left hand and picks up a single broken nut. He pops it in his mouth. It’s small enough that it won’t be missed from the sauce. “Right now.”  

“Doesn’t count. C’mon.” 

Carlos gestures down at the fully loaded cutting board he’s still working with. At the bubbling pot he’s got sitting on the stove. At the unmentioned presence of his mother in the next room, drinking herself to death and waiting for her nonexistent servants to bring out dinner to her and the guests, who also don’t exist and probably wouldn’t want to stay for dinner regardless. The Isle is a bit lacking in ingredients, and tomato-walnut soup isn’t exactly the level of fine dining that Cruella’s high-society patrons would have been used to had they ever existed, much less now, when they definitely don’t and likely won’t ever exist again. 

Still. Even without servants, without ingredients, and without a hope of ever getting off the Isle of the Lost again, dinner must be served.  “I can’t leave,” Carlos explains patiently. “I have to be here until dinner’s done.” 

Jay rolls his eyes, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “C’mon outside for one minute. She won’t notice, I promise.” 

She will. She has before, even just for a moment, even when it’s just a second of fresh air because the smoke inside the house is making his lungs close up again. “She will.” 

Jay shifts again, restlessly. His is a body meant to be in motion. He’s not built for sitting still and watching like this, but he keeps coming by to do it despite the fact that he’s definitely got more interesting things to do with his night. It’s weirdly sweet of him to keep coming by just to sit on the windowsill and keep Carlos company while he attempts to scrape something together to feed his mother and her minions, but it’s also wholly unnecessary, and they both know it. “What if you just hop out here for a sec? No door opening and closing means no problem with the noise, right?” Jay offers, hopefully. 

“She’ll notice if the noise in here stops. I can’t leave until this is done–” Carlos gestures with his chin towards the pot bubbling on the stove, not stopping the smooth chopping motion he’s been practicing since he was probably too young to hold a knife. Red juice drips down the sides of his hands, coating them in the sticky mess that he’s going to have to wash off the cutting board and the entire counter later. Jay would probably lick it off, if Carlos would let him. “And she’s eaten and left me the dishes to clean. I can maybe steal a few minutes while I’m supposed to be washing up, but nothing before that.” 

Jay whistles through his teeth, the sound low and impressed. Or maybe not. Villains are villains no matter where they are, and just because Cruella has a house to maintain doesn’t actually make her worse than any of the other adults on the isle. “Damn. Tight leash much?” 

“You know it. So, you gonna stick around for…” Carlos hesitates. At least another forty minutes for the soup to be done, and then twenty minutes of coaxing his mother to put down her drink and actually eat, and then dinner and cleanup after that. “At least an hour and a half until I’m done?” 

Jay nods. “So long as you promise me you’ll eat something after that.” 

It’s one of the easiest promises that Carlos has ever made. “Sure thing. I’ll meet you in the treehouse once I’m done here.  I’ve got food in there that my mom doesn’t even know about, and it’s not even moldy this time.” 

“Sure,” Jay echoes back. There’s a weird furrow between his eyes that’s not usually there. “You have food up there?” 

“Yeah, I just said that.” Carlos says, letting a hint of the irritation he’s feeling bleed into his voice. He’s tired, and hungry, and the smell of the tomato soup is making his stomach ache. “What else do I need to repeat? Hour and a half, treehouse, we’ll both be there. You can hang out down here until then, but I can’t give you anything from the kitchen tonight, I’m sorry. There’s barely enough for my mom and her henchmen as it is, and if we take anything she’s going to notice and have my hide for it.” 

“I didn’t ask for anything,” Jay says, sounding irritated as well, even though he wasn’t just a moment ago. “I get it. You can’t share tonight.” 

It feels like they’re talking at odds with each other, which isn’t how talking with Jay usually feels, and it’s making Carlos more pissed off than he has any right to be. “I didn’t say that,” he snaps. “I said I can’t give you anything from the kitchen. You can have whatever you want from my stash, you know that. It’s all up where it usually is. If you’re just here to take my food you can go up and eat already, you don’t have to wait for me to do it.” 

“I’m not going to leave you to starve down here while I go through your stash,” Jay insists, gesturing short and sharp and irritated. “Dude. I’m not that much of a dick. You deserve it more than me.”

Carlos doesn’t deserve anything, not until the food is done and his mom and her henchmen have had their fill. He cooks and cleans and survives on the scraps they don’t want, and that’s how it’s always been, and he’s fine. He’s got his treehouse and his machines, and the barrier that keeps him from dying outright from the hunger. He’s not like Jay, who steals all his meals himself and doesn’t get pushed around at school and isn’t afraid to tell people no when he doesn’t want to do something. 

“I–” Carlos huffs out a sharp breath, annoyed at the way things are going. “Whatever, man. Just do whatever you want.” 

A dark, sulky look passes over Jay’s face, and then he relaxes into his usual carefree expression. “Fine,” he says, letting whatever irritation he’s been carrying fade away into nothing. “I will.” 

Carlos breathes out a sigh of relief, and turns back to his pot, where the broth he’d made ages ago, back when he’d had a string of good luck with his machines and sold one of them for enough money to buy a whole chicken from the market, is bubbling away. They’d had a freezer up until about a day ago, when the stupidly old-fashioned thing broke down again in the first heat wave of the year, so now he’s using up the few things he’d had squirrelled away in there before they go bad. Or, worse. Not much makes it over to the isle before it goes bad, and the original broth had been made with some pretty questionable root vegetables, in addition to the chicken carcass that he’d saved after picking it clean. 

Jay clatters his way inside the window, and Carlos turns back to him, irritation faded but not forgotten. “What’re you doing.” he asks, and it’s not a question. “You can’t be inside when my mother comes in, remember?” 

“I know, chill the fuck out.” Jay says, leaning down to tuck his head through the open window. “I’m just helping you out for a sec.” 

There are only so many things that Carlos can worry about at once, and the whims of another teenage boy aren’t one of them. “Thanks.” 

“No problem,” Jay says, grinning, and presses their lips together. 

Carlos opens his mouth into the kiss on pure instinct. Sweetness blooms across his tongue, bitter and rich and complex all at once. Jay slips his tongue deeper, and the flavor spreads, somehow even sweeter than before as it melts and spreads deeper. It’s like nothing that Carlos has ever tasted before, and he’s kissed Jay a lot of times, in a lot of situations. It therefore stands to reason that this isn’t some new and previously unknown kissing ability that Jay’s developed, and is instead some rare treat that he’s chosen to share. Through kissing. 

Well then. 

Carlos tips his head back, going pliant and soft under the attention. The flavor is somehow hot, sweetness combining with the bitter bite of it and spreading to make his mouth feel warm and tacky with whatever the treat is. Jay nibbles at his lip, and Carlos obediently opens his mouth wider, so that Jay can slip more of his tongue inside, and– 

Oh. Deposit a soft chunk of something inside his mouth, something that tastes amazing and even more delicious when it’s not diluted by two people’s worth of spit and slick kissing messiness. 

Jay pulls back, one hand guiding Carlos’s chin up so that he closes his mouth properly around the treat, the other planted firmly on his hip, holding him upright. Gods, but it’s nice to have somebody around who knows exactly the ways that Carlos likes to be kissed, and also understands that the wobbly thing that always happens with his knees afterwards is fine and normal and just means he needs a second more support before being let go again. 

Gods. Carlos is a man (teenager. whatever.) of science, but a treat this good deserves the invocation of some sort of higher power, because there is no way that Jay got something this good on the isle without divine intervention. It’s soft and sweet while not being overpowering the way the usual boiled sweets they sometimes get over are, and the background flavor is somehow bitter like coffee without being like coffee, and it’s so good that Carlos doesn’t want to swallow the last little sliver of it and have it be gone forever. 

He does, because keeping a mouthful of sweet spit in his mouth forever would actually be disgusting, and opens his eyes to find Jay grinning at him. 

“It’s good, right?” 

Carlos nods. “It’s so good. How did–what is it?” 

Jay laughs. “It’s called dark chocolate. My dad got a case from one of the goblins, and he’s been trying to sell it without letting anyone know he has it. I got curious, and–” he gestures between them. “You’re the best cook I know, so I figured if anyone deserves to try it with me, it’s gotta be you.”

Carlos shouldn’t be greedy. He’s a– He’s a villain. He’s allowed a brief indulgence of greed. “Do you have more?” 

Jay pulls a paper-wrapped package out of his hip pocket. “Not much. I was gonna wait until later, but…” 

Carlos is still so hungry that the smell of cooking chicken broth and tomatoes is making him faintly nauseous, and the soup will have to be tended to soon, and his mother is still in the room just across the hall, and could come in at any moment, but. “I will literally suck your dick right here in this kitchen if you let me have more.” 

Jay laughs. “Dude. No dick sucking necessary. I brought it over here for you.” 

Carlos breathes in slowly, pulling the air in through his mouth. The flavor of the chocolate is still lingering on the back of his tongue, and he wants.  

“Give me an hour,” Carlos says slowly, letting the words drag over his tongue as he says them, imagining that they’re as sweet and delicious as the chocolate that Jay has waiting in the paper wrapper for them. “One hour. To finish this. And then I’ll meet you in the treehouse, and you can have whatever you want.” 

“Deal,” Jay whispers against his lips. “Don’t be late.”