Chapter Text
'No matter how sad someone is,' John remembers his mother explaining to him, floury to the elbows and shooting him a sideways smile as she kneaded, 'having someone take the time to make something for them will take them out of the grief for a moment. And if you're sad, making someone smile is sometimes the best way to get happy,' she paused then, leaning into the dough for a moment before slinging her arm around John's neck. 'And we all gotta eat, kiddo.'
It's his overwhelming memory of her: making people happy with a bundt cake or a casserole. Right up until the end, his mother was a fixture in the kitchen with a quiet smile and a generous heart.
So when he's sitting in the recruiter's office, his entire life packed into a duffle by his feet and his head still ringing from the gentle exhortations of the priest not to despair but to rejoice that his mother's pain is over; when he's asked what career path he's interested in, John blinks twice and says 'Cooking.'
****
There's Basic first, of course, and that's enough of a distraction that John slides past the worst of his grief mostly-intact. He's too busy with PT and inspections and keeping his head down to break down, and by the time he's marching out he's come to grips with his loss without quite noticing.
His mother wanted to make the world a happier place by filling bellies; John's determined to continue her legacy.
He's done well enough that the conversation with the colonel about perhaps pursuing combat training isn't in any way surprising, but he's determined. Mom would be proud of him for helping, but he can't even bring himself to picture the look on her face if he went into killing.
No; you can't change the world, but you can change one person's day.
John's going to feed people who need it, not eliminate people who may or may not deserve it.
****
It was a great idea, but combat doesn't ask whether you're front-line or support staff.
They're killing time, horsing around in the Kuwaiti sun, watching black smoke spiral up in the distance and making jokes about the smell . MPs and techs and all the myriad non-combat parts keeping the ”real” soldiers going laughing and decompressing with a little b-ball. Command have said the Iraqis are pulling back so quick they're leaving their pants behind, so there's time to have a little fun before Stormin' Norman flattens the pedal to the floor and hoons over the border to finish this mess off.
They're never quite off-duty, though, and when the kid with the gun interrupts John's pick-up game, he reacts like the grunt they ground him into and tackles the threat away from his comrades. John's hands close around wrists that feel like wire-wrapped twigs.
The kid looks about twelve, except for his eyes. When they struggle for the gun, it's almost no contest given the difference in their sizes and the however-many dollars the US government spent turning John into a soldier. When he forces the gun down and towards the kid's jaw, the kid snarls up at John before tightening his own finger on the trigger.
He's told he saved his friends. He's told it was the right thing to do. He's slapped on the back and handed the candy from four different guys' MREs, but John knows from the second the kid's finger shifted that he made the wrong choice. The army does good, but he needs out.
The next three years both drag and fly by. He learns how to brawl from bored Marines and drunken rednecks. Swaps recipes with a corporal named Valentino; learns his nonna's secret lasagne in trade for John's mother's baked custard. Spends every off-duty moment scouring recipe books and trying not to think. Stateside postings might just be the worst part of the job; close enough to normal to smell it, but stifled by regs.
John loses the little baby fat he'd retained and gains the final four inches in height. He earns two black marks and a total of eighteen stitches for intervening in fights. He learns how to laugh at death and ignore emotions beyond humour and aggression.
He finds himself with an undesirable reputation and a stomach full of regrets, so when the opportunity finally comes, John grabs the discharge with both hands, jumps on the first bus out of town, staring out the window at nothing and sending ironic thanks to the army for inuring him to stench every time the toilet door swings open.
Four days later, John finds himself standing at the edge of a manicured lawn staring at red brick and white columns, brow furrowed and hands clenched.
He lost his way for a bit, but dammit, his mother will be proud of him.
****
Of course, cooking school is in a lot of ways tougher than the army. Drill Sergents never expected him to be able to differentiate between ten wines by smell or twenty cuts of meat by texture.
John loses a dozen sauces to over-saltiness, trained by the preferences of grunts into over-seasoning. He butchers his first butchery class (though after a studious night sharpening his knives, he does get the highest grade in the class on his retest). He discovers an unguessed affinity for desserts, and actually makes one instructor cry in his second year with a lavender and honey pannacotta.
It's completely by accident that Jake Fioretti and his production team find John. He's in one of the kitchens, practising gueridon tricks while his souffle rises, juggling knives and twirling in place when a brash voice startles him into dropping a $100 santoku onto a stainless steel bench, ruining the edge.
'You ever worked on TV, boy?' the brash voice shouts, and John's suddenly crowded against a stove by a guy eight inches shorter and twenty pounds heavier than him. 'I'm gonna make you a star!'
John blinks at him, looks up at the... entorage?... crowded in the doorway, and offers a bemused smile. 'Are you looking for someone?'
Jake Fioretti grins, ten thousand dollars' worth of dentistry on dazzling display. 'Kid, I just found him.'
****
John's a bit bemused at the speed with which Fioretti gets things set up. The studio lights are painfully bright and punishingly hot, and for some reason smirking girls with aprons on keep smearing orange powder all over his face.
He has to tell the blinking red lights on the cameras not to try tossing blades around at home about ten times an episode, usually while flipping a butcher's knife around his fingers.
Endorsements flood in, and John has to gets to tour all the daytime shows to talk about flair and presentation in cooking. He turns down fifteen book deals and uncounted requests for interviews.
Oprah calls him the “bright new face of cooking”.
He never wanted this.
****
Fame is everything John feared it would be, and he loathes every minute under the hotlamps, grinning inanely for the seventieth take of how to dice a fucking potato.
The world has gone crazy around him; there are personal assistants, and producers, and paparazzi, and image consultants, and all John ever wanted to do was to make people smile when they had no other reason.
It's absurdly complicated to extricate himself, but John perseveres. Goes so far as to change his name by deed poll to buy a little time. “John” is harmless enough, so he keeps that (and the ever-fainter echo of his mother's voice saying “Johnny” whenever anyone calls him), and the last ad he saw was for Reese's Pieces, so that's what John puts on the form.
'That'll be $65,' the clerk says, and John hands over four twenties.
He buys a bottle of Suntory whiskey on his way home and toasts his own failure.