As Sören washed his hands, he took some deep breaths and forced his magpie-like ADD mind to slow down and get in "the zone", preparing for today's assignment on Let Them Eat Cake.
Sören was relieved he'd survived the first elimination round, of course the Elmo and gingerbread man cakes had been such an epic disaster that the bar for survival was very low. Nonetheless, Sören was fiercely determined to make it to the end - failure was not an option. He knew of course he had to be realistic and have a Plan B, but for the last several years his life seemed to be a series of Plan B options and at thirty-six going on thirty-seven, he was getting fairly tired of that. Especially now with the pandemic, which had widened the gap of economic inequality and worsened the standard of living for so many, himself included.
In an ideal world Sören would be painting full-time, but he had learned early on that art didn't really pay the bills. So he'd taken up cooking, which itself was an art form when done well, and left him with enough free time to paint; when he served in the kitchen of the cruise ship he got to travel around the world and that was a particularly good source of inspiration for his paintings.
If Sören made it all the way through and was employed in one of Anthony's restaurants - and at this point, Sören wasn't picky about where, even if that meant relocating to the trash fire that was the United States; the UK wasn't that much better, these days - he planned on living frugally and in about ten to fifteen years he would be set for life and could retire somewhat early and spend the sunset of his life fully devoted to his art.
It was amazing that he was even thinking that far ahead; more than once, he'd come close to taking his own life.
Today they would be catering for a "masked masquerade" party, with a theme of "Earth, Wind and Fire". To ensure that there was equal representation of the elements - that there wasn't something like twelve Earth cakes and six Wind cakes - Anthony put elements into a hat and each contestant was blindfolded when they picked from the hat. Sören's heart beat a little faster when it was his turn, he felt like he was re-enacting the Sorting Hat scene from Harry Potter, but instead of strongly not wanting one or two elements, his mind chanted Fire, Fire as he reached into the hat. When Anthony lifted up Sören's blindfold and Sören looked down at the ticket printed with a flame in his hand, his other fist clenched and drew down as he let out a hissed, "Yes." Then his face burned hot as a flame as his eyes met Anthony's and he saw Anthony's mildly amused smirk. Sören backed away quickly, heart hammering in his ears.
Truth be told, Sören wasn't just trying to win this season of Let Them Eat Cake for a shot at working in one of Anthony's restaurants and securing his future. Anthony Hewlett-Johnson had been his celebrity crush for years, and the not-infrequent star of Sören's masturbation fantasies once he got his libido back after his husband's death. Sören knew that nothing could come of this and everything was strictly business, but nonetheless he had applied to compete the same way that someone with a crush on a rock star might try to buy front-row tickets for a concert. Just to be in the same room, breathing the same air as Anthony Fucking Hewlett-Johnson was thrilling to Sören. It was giddy and he felt flustered.
It wasn't the first time he'd met a crush in person. The previous time had been his late husband, Eiliv Erlend Heyerdahl, the openly gay guitarist for Blod Ulv, a Viking metal band from Norway that Sören had gotten into as a teenager and had won backstage passes for a concert in Reykjavik for his nineteenth birthday in 2003, and Eiliv had given him birthday spankings then fucked the daylights out of him; they had been together since then, till the day Eiliv died, just shy of eight years. Sören thought of Eiliv now, who he missed every day - the ten-year anniversary of Eiliv's death had just passed in July - and he could almost hear Eiliv's gruff voice now. Look at you, little crow. You're on TV.
This was not that, this had to be professional, but Sören remembered the rush of meeting Eiliv when he was nineteen... and this was almost worse. Anthony was much hotter in-person than he was on the screen - and he was gorgeous on-screen. If Sören was casting a James Bond movie, he'd pick Anthony.
Of course, Anthony was a different kind of lethal. His weapon was his wit.
Everyone was going all out today with aspirations of making elegant, beautiful cakes for the ball. This wouldn't be the last time they'd have to bring all their design skills to the table, but Sören was surprised such a big challenge was happening this soon. On the other hand, after the embarrassing train wreck of the two cakefails in the season opener, Sören supposed it made a certain amount of sense to take a "sink or swim" approach this round and cull others who didn't have what it takes.
Sören hoped with all his heart that he did.
There wasn't just pressure to make the cakes look pretty, they had to taste good. Sören racked his brain for ideas - he had an affinity for fire, but he was so nervous, looking across the room at the gorgeous Anthony, that his mind drew a blank. Then the obvious hit him - the full-sleeve tattoos he had, flames on one arm, ocean waves on the other, led out to two phoenixes on his back, a firebird and a waterbird. He would make a phoenix cake. Since he imagined he wouldn't be the only person on Team Fire with that idea, he decided he'd do it with a twist - a crow as a phoenix, sort of in honor of his late husband's pet name for him, due to Sören's tendency to wear all black.
He could go the safe and easy route with chocolate, dark like a crow - it was hard to fuck up chocolate - but he got the feeling the masquerade ball was going to see an overabundance of chocolate cakes for that reason. He needed to do something different.
He thought of the orange flames on his back... the ginger hair and beard and chest hair of his late husband. A ginger cake.
Sören was so completely absorbed in the task of mixing his cake batter that he only noticed Anthony making rounds when Anthony was two tables away - and he had a box of plastic spoons and was pulling out a fresh one to dip into the bowl of batter and taste-test the raw cake batter, offering critique.
Oh shit. Sören was NOT expecting that, and he went into panic mode as Anthony approached his table, getting a new spoon ready, the camera following.
Sören's face burned again, and for a moment he and Anthony just stared at each other, then Anthony dipped his spoon in the bowl and Sören felt so self-conscious and awkward that before Anthony could taste it, Sören heard himself blurt out, "You know, you're not supposed to eat raw cake batter." As if that was going to stop Anthony, who had already been eating from other bowls.
Anthony's response to that was to laugh, showing his straight white teeth, and then he said, "My kitchen, my rules," just before he put the spoonful of ginger cake batter in his mouth. Wrapping his lips around it and sucking on it in a way that made Sören's mind go right in the gutter, picturing Anthony with a cock in his mouth. Anthony pulled the almost-clean spoon out and took a long, slow lick at the spoon that made Sören's cock start to stiffen.
Then Anthony stroked his chin for a moment, considering, and he shook his head. "You put so much ginger in this it's going to call you Jon Snow and tell you that you know nothing," Anthony said, shaking the spoon at him before he tossed it onto Sören's table and walked off.
Sören's fists clenched. Anthony's snark had been funny when it was directed at other people; it stung when it was directed at him. Slowly, Anthony Hewlett-Johnson was starting to fall from the pedestal Sören had him on.
"Hoppaðu upp í rassgatið á þér," Sören muttered under his breath, and got back to work.
Sören liked heat in his food, and Eiliv had been especially fond of his ginger cookies. But Sören reminded himself that not everyone appreciated the same intensity of spice, and he didn't want to get eliminated when Anthony tasted the finished product.
Still seething with resentment over the snarky criticism - and annoyed with himself for getting angry, because he'd watched Anthony do this on camera for years and he should have realized it was inevitable that he would be judged like this, they all were - Sören went over to the supply station to see what he could use to tone down the heat. He gathered an orange and molasses, and set out to add freshly squeezed orange juice and molasses to the batter.
The snark at the taste-testing of the unfinished batter had rattled Sören enough that after the cake was shaped and baked and it was time to decorate, his hands shook and he had to focus especially hard to not make his design a gloppy disaster like the cakes of the first episode. The key was to try to make the flames look realistic and not cheesy or tacky, which was easier said than done... and in the heat of his anger and determination to prove himself to that snarky bastard, he went slowly, carefully brought his inner vision to life of a crow-as-firebird, standing atop a cake that looked like a bonfire.
At the ball, Sören's cake was well-received, getting many compliments on taste and appearance from the attendants - Sören was so nervous he barely noticed the costumes or anything else going on - but it was up to Anthony, who sampled a small piece of each contestant's cake. "Better," was all he told Sören, and it aggravated Sören that he only had one word to spare when he'd worked so hard, and Anthony wasn't going to get into a critique of the nuances of orange-ginger flavor... but it was still better than nothing. Sören didn't win this round - that went to a young, pretty Chinese-American woman named Vivian, with a long black braid and wire-rimmed spectacles, from Team Earth, who made an exquisitely beautiful cake of snowy peaks of a mountain range rising above an evergreen forest and a lake. While Sören was proud of his cake and how hard he worked on it, he had to concede his competitor's cake deserved the gold star this round.
Which made him even more determined to win. He hoped Vivian had a bright career ahead of her, she was damned good, that cake was art, but he wanted this job, dammit.
As much as Sören wanted to spend the next decade or so cooking in one of Anthony's restaurants, he didn't love it so much that he went about the task of cooking dinner ungrudgingly - Justin was late. Again.
Which meant dinner was cold when Justin got in, and Sören was tired of hearing Justin grumble about having to heat it up. Not a single compliment, not even a thank you, no offers to help with cleanup, so Sören had to do dishes all by himself.
To make matters worse, Justin had obviously been out drinking - he stank of beer so strongly it made Sören feel queasy even when Justin was in a different room.
Sören was tired - he had long COVID and the hours he'd spent on his feet took more out of him than it used to - and he felt himself starting to drift off and then Justin wanted to talk about his day, now that he'd had yet another beer and his feet up. Sören wanted to be left alone for awhile and get some peace and quiet, but he wasn't about to ask Justin for it, he'd learned not to do that.
After Eiliv's death in 2011, Sören had left Norway and returned to Iceland to live in Reykjavik for a few years, then his sister - a trans woman - was murdered, and Sören was very sure their alcoholic uncle Einar, who'd raised them, had done it, but he had no proof. For fear of his own safety - and not wanting to murder Einar himself and end up in prison - he signed on to work a cruise ship to support himself, getting as far away as he could while still being on the same planet, and when that no longer became feasible once the pandemic started, Sören decided to stay on in England, where the ship had docked, rather than trying to go back to Iceland. He needed a place to live, though, and he'd answered an ad from a guy who needed a roommate on short notice, where paying one half the rent was affordable.
That guy was one Justin Roberts, a former rising star of FC Arsenal; sports had been suspended during the pandemic and Justin was experiencing enough wear and tear to his body that it would have been his last season anyway. A couple of months into living together Sören and Justin hooked up, sexually frustrated and stir-crazy.
Now that his football career was over and there weren't many job opportunities under lockdown, Justin worked as a delivery driver and he was resentful of it, and he was increasingly hostile to Sören, taking the unfairness of the world out on him. He was also starting to get mean and nasty in general. Sören had once thought he was kind of hot, with his blond fauxhawk and athletic build, but more and more Sören was starting to find him hideous and Sören wished they had never gone there. His first order of business was going to be to save enough money from his stint on the show to put down a deposit on a new flat and move the fuck out, as soon as he could.
So, as Sören reclined on the couch with his eyes closed, hoping Justin would get the message and just watch TV and let him rest, of course it was time for another one of Justin's work stories. "Today I had a delivery that was just Pepsi, right, six packs of it. The customer's delivery instructions said they're disabled, and to put it close to the door." Justin snorted. "So I put it off the porch, on the sidewalk. While I break my back and my knees bringing people groceries, they're living on the dole, buying Pepsi to make themselves fatter and even more mobility impaired, they can fucking exercise for it."
Sören sat up and facepalmed so hard it hurt his face, not able to believe what he was hearing. Every time Sören thought Justin couldn't be more of an asshole... "You do realize that they could have been in an accident or born with a disability? And that it doesn't matter what they have, and fat people are human beings, and people deserve common decency, the world is unkind enough, you're just being an arsehole?" One of Sören's only friends back in Iceland, Olof, was a heavyset man who gave great hugs, and was obsessed with the song "Jaja Ding Dong", cheering Sören up with it when he needed a laugh. More than one person who'd ridiculed and bullied Olof for his weight had met Sören's Doc Martens.
Justin cackled, shrugged, and took a swig of his beer. "You realize some people need people like me to be arseholes? The world is this way because people are too soft. They need to toughen up. I could have gotten a better job than this if people weren't so afraid of a little flu that everything's shut down -"
"OK. Stop." Sören put his hands up, beyond exasperated. He knew arguing with Justin was like talking to the wall but he couldn't help it, Justin was wrong. "You saw how I had walking fucking pneumonia earlier this year when I got COVID before the vaccines came out, and I'm still having problems months later, so please don't tell me it's 'a little flu'. And the reason why there's still restrictions is because of people like you who won't mask up or get the jab. You mock people for being afraid of 'a little flu', you're afraid of a little needle."
"Those vaccines aren't safe -"
"How many beers have you had today? You came home reeking of it. You're killing your liver with alcohol and you want to tell me the vaccines aren't safe? Do you not hear yourself?"
"And soft idiots like you are why the world is such a mess." Justin shook his finger. Then he chuckled. "At least you've got a soft arse. How about you let me give you a little 'jab', huh? That might make us both feel better." Justin winked.
"No," Sören said, and walked off to the spare bedroom, where he'd been sleeping most of the time the last few months.
He closed the door behind him and began to change into his pajamas. He'd hoped to destress a bit by sketching or painting on his Wacom tablet, or maybe reading a book, or watching silly videos on YouTube, but now he just wanted to go to bed even though it was only ten PM. As Sören pulled up his pajama pants, he suddenly heard the sound of pots and pans clattering, glass breaking, thuds like furniture was being overturned. Sören thought about calling the police but he knew that could possibly end badly for him as well, so instead he locked the bedroom door. He quickly checked the bedside table to make sure he still had the key - he did - and then he remembered he'd left his Wacom tablet and laptop in the living room. There were more crashes and bangs coming from the living room.
Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit. Sören felt sick to his stomach. He needed a computer to have access to important e-mails for show contestants, and replacing the laptop - which he was sure he would have to do - would eat most of this week's salary, even if he got a cheaper one, and that would set him back for his plans to move out. He had a hard time using the Internet on mobile; there were places with free computer access but most of them had closed down during lockdown and were slower to open, and Sören was wary of putting in anything requiring passwords on a public computer anyway.
He felt trapped, and helpless, like he was back in Iceland again living under Katrin and Einar's roof, dealing with their tantrums. Eiliv had his work cut out for him with helping Sören heal and feel safe - he was a gentle giant of a man, so good to him - and now it was like all the progress of those years was gone, Sören freezing, barely breathing. He hit the light, tunneled under covers, and hoped if he pretended to be sleeping - played dead - maybe he could escape Justin's notice and the rage storm would calm down before Justin went looking for him. Just like he'd done as a child, with Einar.
More than ever, he needed to win this show. It was his ticket out of hell.
go to Chapter 3 | go to story index | go to O-fic index | go to home page