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Xylo didn’t think it was possible to mess up stew.
But here he was, in the kitchen, fanning away smoke with a deep sigh, watching as Patausche scrambles to get a grip on the pot.
“I thought you knew how to cook,” Xylo says sarcastically, staring blankly at the mess along the countertop and then peering into the burnt pot.
The carrots and potatoes look like mush and the broth looks like slop. At least she hadn’t added the meat yet. Their meat rations were significantly less than everything else and harder to acquire.
“I—” Patausche frowns. “I thought I had a handle on it.”
She looks down at the pot, sullen. Defeated. “Perhaps something is wrong with the stove.”
Xylo stifles back a laugh. Of course her pride wouldn’t allow her to admit she was just not a good cook. And that’s okay, she’s skilled at so many other things it wouldn’t really have mattered if she was or not. Xylo wishes she would have said something so she didn’t have to end up almost burning down the tiny kitchen.
“Nope. Nothing’s wrong with it. I cooked here last night,” he steps in front of her and takes the pot from her hands, dumping out its contents and leaving it to cool in the sink.
Patausche watches him helplessly. He leans back on the counter and crosses his arms, meeting her gaze. They stare at each other for a second, Xylo in total amusement as he watches Patausche turn beet red in embarrassment.
It’s this moment that Tsav barges in.
“Hey, sis, is the stew ready?”
“Uh—” she stutters, looking about ready to simmer into the floor.
“Go away, you don’t rush the chef,” Xylo shakes his head and waves him off.
“Bro, it’s been like over an hour-”
“And I said go away. It’ll be ready when it’s ready.”
Patausche looks grateful, and manages to shoot him a tiny, sheepish smile that he rarely ever gets from her. He pushes Tsav out of the kitchen and yells at him to tell the rest to give them another hour, the food will be ready then.
“Are you ready?” Xylo says, taking another few potatoes and carrots and spreading them across the cutting board, pointing to the pot in the sink, “Wash that for me, will you?”
Patausche is still staring at him.
“What do you think you’re doing? I’m the one on cooking duty.”
“Helping you. You look like you need it,” Xylo raises a brow. “Unless you don’t want my help. I can leave.”
She genuinely looks like she’s considering her options, face obviously battling with the fact that she needs his help and hates the fact that she does. Xylo waits for her to own up to it. They can have the stew ready in an hour. It’s up to her, though, he can wait however long she needs.
“Okay,” Patausche sighs, defeated. “Tell me what to do.”
♱
This is how they end up hip to hip, with Xylo teaching her how to properly cut onions. He gives her a brief tutorial, and watches the furrow of her brow concentrate as she tries to mimic his movements.
It’s strange, seeing this side of her. He would say she’s the most competent person he knows, and yet she can’t dice an onion for shit. Xylo’s watched her cut down demons and assassins without so much as breaking a sweat, but of course, an onion seems to be her toughest battle to date. Her concentration face is desperate, confused, and a pretty shade of pink all at once.
How ridiculous, he thinks a little too fondly, as he comes up behind her and puts a steady palm over her knived one. He can feel how she freezes up, body tensing at his proximity as her as her knuckles tighten over the knife.
“You’re going to slice a finger off like that,” Xylo says, ignoring the way her body heat feels against his chest, something left unexplored, blooming. “Here—”
And honestly, he’s a little surprised that he lets her, surprised she doesn’t have the knife to his neck already. It’d be so easy to slice his jugular right now, and he knows that she knows this.
So Xylo moves her hand in the correct motion, and pats it after, briefly sweeping a thumb across her knuckles before letting go, simply because he can and she’s letting him. (Xylo, however, misses the sped up rise and fall of her chest and the way her breath hitches at the gesture, because he is, in the end, dense as a ton of bricks).
Once everything is chopped and ready to go, they work on the broth, settling into an easy rhythm where he explains the steps and has her do most of it, occasionally stepping in to give instructions.
He expects her to be more petulant about this, but he finds that she’s eager to learn and open to feedback. Or maybe the hunger has finally settled in, because at some point, both their stomachs start growling at the fragrant smell of the beef simmering alongside the spices and vegetables.
“Thanks,” Patausche mutters, begrudgingly, when the stew is finally finished.
They both have their own spoons and dip into the pot to test out the flavor. He holds back a smile watching her face go from serious to pleased at the taste.
“Of course, I couldn’t let you burn all of our rations, anyway,” Xylo jokes.
He finally lets himself laugh as he dodges the spoon that comes flying to his face.
“Yo, sis, did you really make this? It’s fire,” Tsav gulps down his bowl, and goes for seconds. Patausche slaps his hand away from the pot.
“Of course I made it! How dare you suggest otherwise! Why? Did you think I’d be incapable of cooking a simple stew?” She shouts, “And Teoritta gets her second bowl first if she wishes, you already know that!”
Teoritta giggles and reaches for her second helping, turning to Xylo. “My knight, this tastes like the stew you made last week, did you have a role in this?”
Xylo looks over at Patausche, who is now pouting.
“Nope,” he says, leaning back in his chair. “I only gave some advice.”
Patausche’s eyes widen, and she nods, sternly.
“It’s exactly as Xylo said. “He simply consulted on my stew.”
“Right, of course,” Teoritta looks between them, knowingly, and smiles.
♱
It begins an odd sort of ritual of them cooking together. The next time Xylo is on cooking duty, Patausche joins him, saying it’s because she doesn’t want to owe him anything for helping her the last time. And when Patausche is next, he sides next to her and claims someone has to work on her cooking skills with her, and since Jayce won’t (correction: he was never even asked because Xylo already knows what his answer would be), Xylo will.
But after that, they join each other so often that they become almost like an inseparable cooking duo. You can’t have one without the other, or at least somewhere nearby.
This is not to say that Patausche always necessarily helps him.
Sometimes she stands back and watches.
(“I’m taking note of proper technique. The emergency book doesn’t have a section on how to actually prepare meals.”
“I’m not a professional,” Xylo responds.
“You’re about as much professional as Penal Unit 9004 is going to get.”)
He admits she has gotten exponentially better at planning and prepping her meals. She still oversalts everything and her porridge could use some work, but improvement is improvement. Patausche no longer needs any assistance on the chopping block, and only occasionally asks him directly for his opinion when she’s unsure about flavors working well with one another.
(She calls him over one evening, shoves a spoon harshly in his face. If he hadn’t opened his mouth fast enough, it might’ve crushed his bottom lip. At least, the taste was decent.)
So it becomes a thing. Whenever they get their rations or their hands on any sort of meat that isn’t processed, they consult each other on what recipes to use and how to best split it up. They speak about it with the same cadence as discussing battle strategy.
Xylo peers over at Patausche’s messy handwritten list of recipes and points out adjustments and alternatives with the supplies they have, and it becomes the norm. While the unit is usually surviving off scraps, the times they do get a proper meal in, they eat good.
And when they aren’t fighting for the lives of everyone else around them, sometimes, they squeeze in market runs using their limited funds to buy a special ingredient or two. Of course, this is always disguised as Teoritta wanting to go outside and explore. Really though, Xylo has grown to look forward to these brief moments, despite what he says.
One evening, he catches a glimpse of Patausche excited over a stall specializing in citrus fruits. He watches as she puffs up her chest and requests that the man at the stall give her a sample before she makes a decision to invest.
Unable to deny her commanding voice, the man cuts up a fruit for her to try. She ends up buying three oranges, peeling Teoritta’s for her and hand feeding her slices, and Xylo isn’t sure why it gets to him. Not in a negative way, but in a way that he doesn’t know how to process. He just feels. My knight, you must try this delicious fruit at once, Teoritta says, pointing to Patausche. She peels him an orange and tosses him the fruit. It’s bittersweet.
♱
“My uncle always cooked for me,” Patausche says one night, when they both end up outside, watching the dull flame of the fire.
The night air is cold and the fire is too low to do anything about it, so they end up sitting close together, under the guise of huddling for warmth. Xylo doesn’t mind it, finds it oddly comforting, even, to have her near. They’re on some mission that Venetim had shipped them out to on a short moment's notice, a defense one where they have to be ready to act as decoys. Another shit show. Since there is no kitchen out in the frontlines, so they make use of their rations and store the leftovers for moments like these.
He splits the jerky between the both of them, and hands her the larger piece, letting her words hang, not quite sure how to respond. So he keeps quiet, gives her some time to think about what she wants to tell him. He’d never pressure her to say anything, knowing she wouldn’t do that to him either. It’s an understanding between the both of them; that they’d both be there for each other when the other was ready.
“He would always cook in large amounts. He liked to feed people, especially any visitors,” Patausche continues, staring hollowly at the piece of dried deer in her hand. “I think a part of him just always wanted to be praised for it.”
Xylo bites into his piece, listens. Patausche looks like she wants to say more, but can’t bring herself to. Her eyes glisten as she watches the fire.
“He had some good recipes,” She continues, voice cracking slightly before she coughs and steadies herself. “We could attempt them one day.”
She sounds faraway despite how close they are. Xylo moves his hand to pat her shoulder, lets it rest there for a second, rubbing soothing circles without thinking. It’s almost instinct, how he goes to touch her, comfort her.
The touch makes her snap out of whatever fog she was in and snap away. “Only if you want to, of course,” she says, quickly, “I can make them myself, obviously. I just think it’d be nice to split the work.”
“We can make them together,” he says, shrugging. “I mean, we have all the time in the world.”
He finds that the thought isn’t a horrible one.
“We’ll just have to beg for a little more vacation time.”
She nods. They eat their snack in comfortable silence and watch as the last of the fire flickers out.
♱
Xylo also finds that he likes making sure she’s eaten.
Unbeknownst to the rest of the unit, he’ll slide her extra portions of ready-to-eat meals whenever he can. They’re technically meant to prepare them each for themselves, but Xylo finds that batching them is easier. And he likes knowing she has enough for when they’re split up.
They’re both the same in that neither of them is willing to admit when they are at their limit. It’s self-deprecation from both ends, but it’s nice to know that there is another person out there that struggles to take care of themselves when the main focus is trying to take care of others.
(They had an argument about it once. Well, a lot of times in various fonts.
“How can you take care of everybody when you barely take care of yourself?”
“I can say the same for you, Patausche.”
“I’m not the one who looks like utter shit right now, though.”
She’s right, of course, he’s overexerted himself past the brink of sanity too many times to count, it’s just that no one had cared this much before. It was usually the other way around—him worrying about everyone else and trying not to outwardly show it.
“If not for anyone else, do it for Teoritta.”
She grabs him by the collar and shoves him to get her point across.
He lets her because he probably deserves it, then watches numbly as she reaches into her pocket and pulls out wrapped pieces of the fruit mixture he had taught her to make some time ago, the ones held together by honey. There were dried apricots, apples, and figs stuck together, even sprinkled in some brown sugar and coated in some sort of homemade syrupy peanut sauce.
Here, take this and get at least a thirty minute nap in. Or I will kill you. The choice is yours.)
He likes knowing she’s well-rested, too, can tell when she’s not when the hollows under her usually bright eyes are duller. It’s good, he thinks, that they can both count on the other to check up on each other.
Because, really, he has no one else but her. And it’s complicated staying alive.
“Xylo,” Patausche starts. She’s popping handfuls of homemade trail mix into her mouth. “I have a question.”
“What is it?”
“I’ve noticed that you include extra portions for me in the meals you make.”
“That’s not a question, Patausche,” He grabs the bag of mix from between them and scoops a handful for himself.
“I was wondering why you do that, I mean statistically speaking, based on your height,” she continues, matter-of-fact, “you need more nutrients than I do, and you always give yourself the same amount as everyone else.”
“Yeah,” he says. He hadn’t really considered the logistics behind it, but she was right. Still, he didn’t really care. “But I like knowing you have enough to eat. You’re my right hand.”
“That's—I mean—” Patausche flushes, frowns.
“Plus I’ve told you,” he continues. “I’d die without you.”
Like, it’s clear as day. A fact. Because, it is. Xylo doesn’t know what he’d do without her, and isn't sure how he’d operated for so long before her. In this world, they are sentenced to live forever as expendable weapons, and for once, he feels that he wants to live in it.
Patausche looks stunned, mouth opened in an o, and there are crumbs lining the edges of her mouth. Xylo feels a tug in his gut. He wants to reach over and brush them off her.
“Big bro! Sis! We’ve got a big problem!” Tsav shrieks, breaking the spell. “Fire in the kitchen, I repeat, fire in the kitchen!”
They stand up at the same time, still staring at each other.
“You’ll elaborate what you mean by that statement later,” Patausche springs into action and runs forward.
How am I supposed to explain that? Xylo thinks, cursing, and running after her.