[fic][Check, Please!] Cornucopia
Jun. 6th, 2020 07:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sakon76Because I am apparently hard-wired to speculative fiction, even in a fandom that just plain isn't SF/F... Rated R for one sex scene.
Cornucopia
by K. Stonham
first released 6th June 2020
There was a kitchen.
It was the very first thing that Eric noticed about the Haus. It drew him, calling, singing in his blood even as Shitty's voice faded from his ears.
It was dilapidated. It was disgusting.
It was unclaimed.
Solo cups and kegs, a cupboard of Sriracha, dirty dishes mounded high....
And in the back of a cupboard, moths fluttering out of a mostly-empty bag of flour that had been there who only knew how long.
A couple apples (Red Delicious, ugh) on the counter.
A small tub of I Can't Believe It's Not A Trampoline in the fridge, scraped almost empty.
It was not a lot, but he'd worked with worse.
And if Eric wanted this kitchen, he'd have to work with this.
He wanted the kitchen.
There was salt but no sugar. He forced what he needed from the apples, making them better. Not even the memory of cinnamon in this room... he pulled it from deep inside himself. The oven didn't like him waking it up, making it heat. Tough. And there was nothing even like mixing bowls or a proper rolling pin. He made do.
By the time the tour group wandered back downstairs, Eric had made his mark on the kitchen. It was grudgingly, nominally, his domain, as shown by the steaming pie in his hands. Not his best work; he'd had to will too much of it into being, including the pie dish, some oven mitts, and an apron.
"Wow," said Shitty, "we've only been here five minutes."
Eric went pale. Caught up in the moment, in trying to carve out his own space for the first time, he'd forgotten--
"Holy hell," Holster said, having grabbed a fork and dived right in without even waiting for the pie to cool. "Shit, and I thought that pecan pie from the other night was good!"
Between the four residents of the Haus (Jack apparently lived there too, but wasn't home just then?) and the four other incoming freshman, Eric's pie was nothing more than a memory in less time than it had taken him to make it.
(No slices. Felonious eating. Why was he on the hockey team again?)
"Fuck me sideways, Bitty. If you can cook like that, you can cook here anytime!" Shitty declared.
"A-fuckin'-men!" Ransom agreed, as did the other two residents. And just like that, the kitchen was Eric's.
He felt it glow and pulse around him, his new little temple, even as he stammered thanks.
He was very old. Or, at least, he thought he was very old. It was hard to remember; so much of what he had been was gone. He knew he'd been somebody, something, long before he'd been Eric Bittle. But by the time he'd become Eric Bittle, he'd been barely more than a tattered scrap of a thing, forgotten and unbelieved in in this new land where his followers had once upon a time brought him in their hearts.
Gone, gone, gone, all of them. And he'd grown weaker and thinner, less and less and less until he was faded, almost gone....
It was a prayer that saved him.
Not his own, but the prayer of a blonde woman standing in her kitchen, crying as she rolled out dough. She scrubbed her tears away before they could fall on her crust, and kept working it thinner and thinner with her well-seasoned pin. "Please, God," she whispered as she worked, her forearms strong and her motions accomplished, easy despite her turmoil. "I just want one baby. One child. That's all I'm askin'. Please, Lord, just let me and Rick have this one thing...."
In another era, another place, she might have been one of his priestesses.
As it was, the God to whom she prayed was not listening, so the faded god slipped in through her open window, a mote of dust, and into her offer.
Nine months later, infertile Suzanne Bittle's prayers were answered, as her tears fell unimpeded onto the downy hair of her healthy newborn son. She smiled, and as she nuzzled his head, she could almost swear she caught a whiff of baking bread.
He grew up small, and different, and all too aware that he was out of sync with the boys around him. Sometimes he felt that he almost understood why, when he was trying something that was yet again just out of his reach. A skating move that he couldn't accomplish yet, or a recipe that left him all thumbs, when he knew he should have been able to do it easily.
It wasn't until he was alone, locked into a dark space for nearly three days, that he understood. The cold and dark and the silence drove him inward, further and further after his voice and his tears gave out, throat raw and aching with thirst, the wetness he couldn't hold in any longer long since evaporated. He shivered, he shook, he went wild with dreams and memory.
He didn't even notice when the janitor found him Monday morning.
Days later, Eric woke up in the hospital, head full of fuzz, mouth full of cotton, his mother dozing in a chair by his bedside.
Looking at her, he knew for the first time exactly who and what he was.
Things got easier after that. They moved to Madison, nearer Moomaw, and Eric's hands no longer fumbled recipes. He couldn't figure skate any longer, but he found a hockey team just to keep up the pleasure of the ice.
Suzanne Bittle was good in the kitchen, and her sister-in-law and mother-in-law were too, but mostly it was an activity saved for the women of the family.
And Eric, who quickly began to outshine them all.
"Boy's a natural," Moomaw said once he began taking home blue ribbons from the fair. "Gets it from both sides," she said, smiling at Suzanne.
Eric, working on a loaf of beer bread for Coach's sandwiches, smiled and said nothing.
He'd never had a kitchen that was just his, at least not since he'd been Eric Bittle. Once upon a time... well, that had been a long time ago. But Suzanne and Judy's and Moomaw's kitchens had all been their own, not his.
This... the Haus kitchen was going to be his temple, if Eric had to clean every roach-attracting scrap of grime out of its cupboards himself. And he did.
He worked as hard on that kitchen as he did on hockey. Homework came in... well, mostly a distant third. He needed the kitchen to live. He needed the hockey to have access to the kitchen. Schoolwork, he listened to the lectures on repeat and slept on top of the books, hoping it would all soak in through osmosis.
And for a long time, that was all he needed. Surviving by filling the kitchen with followers (...however tenuous) and filling their starving jock bellies with his bounty.
Eric didn't want to know what would happen if he couldn't cook. He suspected that he would simply finish fading away, and someone would find his cooling body in his dorm room one morning. And while he might have been old, he wasn't tired of living yet. There were so many things he wanted to make...!
Then along came Jack.
Staring at Jack in his kitchen, Eric realized what a huge mistake he'd made.
Inviting Jack to cook in his kitchen.
Teaching him.
Anointing him with flour.
Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck....
He made a hasty excuse, he didn't even know what, and ran to his room, where he buried his face in his hands, a white-cold knot of haunted misery taking residence behind his sternum.
I want him.
The thought of Jack set his heart hammering in his chest. He'd been falling in love for a while now, he realized. His feelings had been growing quiet and unseen, until Jack had stepped into his domain with the intent to learn.
Even so, the fact remained that Jack was not Eric's, didn't even know what he was, much less understand it, and was straight. Eric might be able to teach him to make a pie, but Jack belonged to the ice; he would never leave his heart in the kitchen. He would never, ever be able to fulfill the rites and rituals, would never be an acolyte, no matter what Eric felt about him.
It had been too long since he'd had worshippers like he truly, actually needed; having someone fulfill even a hint of that role made sudden miserable desire hit Eric like a sledgehammer....
Regardless, he couldn't have Jack.
It took almost everything he had to let Jack go, at the graduation ceremony. He couldn't have Jack, he knew he couldn't have Jack, so he'd just have to live with it. Maybe next year he'd start teaching the Frogs to cook, to fill some of that giant aching void in his chest....
Then came the kiss that changed everything.
Bitty's face the first time he saw Jack's kitchen was glorious. He stood there, turning in a slow circle, eyes wide, mouth slightly ajar, like he couldn't believe it. And Jack was suddenly really glad that, even if he hadn't realized why at the time, he'd followed his gut instinct to go with the condo that had a really nice kitchen.
"Should I let you have a moment?" he teased. Bitty just stared at him, seemingly unable to give an answer. Jack swooped in for a quick kiss. "I'm going to put your bags in the bedroom, okay?"
By the time he got back, Bitty was at work. An open bag of flour was at his elbow as he rolled out pie crust.
Jack stopped.
He didn't have flour. He didn't have a rolling pin. He didn't have a pie dish like the one Bitty was draping the crust over. He'd planned for them to go shopping together and outfit his kitchen with everything Bitty wanted....
He didn't have any of these things.
As he watched, Bitty picked a single apple out of the fruit bowl on the counter and swiped a knife through it. Chunks, far more than one apple's worth, overflowed his hands, tumbling into the pie. A pass of his hand sprinkled sugar and cinnamon, sweet and spicy, over the filling. He wove an invisible lattice into existence, almost faster than Jack could see. He turned and put the pie into the oven. Jack could feel its heat even though there hadn't even been time for it to come to temperature.
Bitty shut the oven door, turned, and saw Jack watching. His pupils were blown wide. "You got this kitchen for me," he said, sounding almost on the edge of unbelieving, on the edge of tears.
"Yes," Jack said, not knowing what to think.
Bitty closed the distance between them, reached up, kissed Jack most thoroughly. "Thank you," he whispered against Jack's mouth, like Jack had given him something far bigger than a room.
Jack's hands, drawn like magnets, found their way to Bitty's ass. He picked up the smaller man, carried him back until he was sitting on the counter. He wasn't sure what was going on, but... "Do you want to christen it?"
Bitty's eyes were right before his, wide and dark and starless. "Oh, I think we can do better than that, Jack Zimmermann," he breathed. "How about we sanctify it?"
His words sent a golden frisson down Jack's spine. "God, yes," he said, fingers fumbling at Bitty's fly, and sank down to his knees.
They'd done this before, hushed and quiet in the Georgia night of Bitty's childhood bedroom. Somehow, this was different. It was different than it ever had been. The taste of Bitty was so much better, so much more. The sounds of his gasps and hitched breaths. The way his fingers curled into Jack's hair like a benediction as Jack swallowed him all the way down to the root. The way his voice broke as he said "Oh, sweetpea--" and came and came and came. His come flowed thick and creamy over Jack's tongue, unlike anything he'd ever tasted before, and he drank down every drop.
Jack stood, following the tug in his hair, wanting, hoping he'd done good enough.
Bitty was golden as he kissed Jack, tugging at his shirt, his trousers, until Jack stepped out of them and was naked in the kitchen he'd bought for Bitty. Strong hands pulled Jack closer, guiding him to the bowl of olive oil that hadn't been there before, as Bitty's clothes joined his on the floor.
"Fuck me," Bitty told him, laying back across the counter, better than any pinup. Jack couldn't have not obeyed.
He'd never used it before, but the golden oil was as slippery as any lube as he touched fingers to Bitty's hole, worked his way in, kissing every inch of Bitty that he could, until the smaller man was hard and gasping again. Slicking himself, slicking Bitty, Jack sank in.
He'd forgotten what worship felt like. Sex before with Jack had been good, the kisses even were fantastic, but for the first time in his mortal life, Eric experienced what it could really be like for him.
Every touch burned pure. Every gasp of his name from Jack's lips resounded through him. Sweat pattered clean on Eric's skin like a blessing.
He could live like this forever.
"Come for me, sweetheart," he whispered, running his hands down straining arms. "Jack."
Jack stiffened with a cry, and Eric could feel his own release jolt through him too, nearly as good as the first one, but all that was distant beside the glorious light that suffused him. Power, energy like he'd nearly forgotten, filled him, and it was so good, so good.
He heard himself whispering that. So good.
His heart beat in time with Jack's as their bodies lay pressed together. The granite countertop was cool beneath him, Jack hot above, his lover's head on Eric's shoulder as he drew in deep gasps of breath.
"Oh, sweetheart, what you give me," he murmured, feeling every part of himself alive, from the tips of his hair all the way down to his toes as he combed fingers through Jack's hair. "I'm going to take such good care of you."
He felt Jack hesitate, then he pushed back up onto his marvelous forearms, this wonderful tall dark-haired heart-of-gold boy of Eric's. "Bitty..." he said, and Eric could feel all the questions he wanted to ask even though their bodies were still connected.
"Shh," he said, pressing a finger to Jack's lips. "Shower first. Talk after." Jack's eyes were troubled, but he nodded and pulled out. His semen didn't leak out and drip down; Eric refused to give up even a bit of this offering.
But first, the pie was ready. Eric pulled it out of the oven bare-handed, in a flagrant show of power he never would've been able to afford before. He set it down on a trivet that didn't exist an instant ago. "That should be ready for us to eat by the time we're out of the shower."
Jack took his hands, examined them each for burns. The poor thing clearly didn't know what to think.
But Eric was serious about the shower, and led him there, because if the kitchen was like this, what must the condo's water pressure be like?
He kept his word, though, and explained it to Jack the best he could over apple pie. Sliced and on a plate, because Jack was never a heathen like the rest of the Haus boys. Jack, Jewish and agnostic both, took it the best he could. "So," he said slowly, fork scraping against his plate, "I'm a worshipper?" His eyes were downcast and his tone dull. It took Eric a moment to parse what Jack meant.
"No!" he said, putting his own plate aside on the coffee table. "What's between you and me has nothing to do with that." He leaned forward, cupped his hand on Jack's jaw. "It doesn't work that way, sweetheart. Just because someone worships, doesn't mean they get access to..." he gestured at his own body, "take liberties. That's just for you. Because I...." The words died in his throat, because he'd honestly never expected this, a conflict between what he was and who he loved to arise in this fashion. "It ain't like that," he repeated, his accent thickening for a moment as it tended to do when he got distressed.
"Hey." Jack was touching him, mirroring his touch. A thumb stroked across his jaw. "I trust you. But, I mean, there must have been others..."
"Hundreds of years ago, in another land," and damnit, Eric was crying now for all the parts of himself that he'd lost. "I can't even remember 'em, they're too far gone and I lost too much along the way. Just... I know they were there, once upon a time."
"Well, you've got me now," Jack said, his own plate making its way to the table. He leaned back into the wide, plush sofa, pulling Eric down on top of him.
"Mmm," Eric agreed. "But... I was thinking of teaching the Frogs to cook, if you don't mind? I mean, acolytes aren't the same as a worshipper, but heavens know those boys need to learn to cook for themselves before they go out into the big wide world. And it'd be nice, teaching in my temple again...."
"Temple. Heh." Jack kissed his forehead. "Go for it, Bits. I'd tell you to teach Ransom and Holster, too, but...."
"But yeah," Eric agreed. "They're probably beyond hope, except for filling them up. And Lardo's got her own patron."
Jack's eyes widened. "Seriously?"
Eric shook his head. "Nah. I don't think so, anyway. But... she's not one of mine. Love her dearly, and she's surely competent, but the kitchen's never going to be her lodestone."
"Hmm." Jack relaxed further back into the sofa, and Eric could feel him starting to drift off, lulled into a nap by the three S's: sex, shower, and snack.
"Jack," he whispered, one more important thing to tell him before Jack fell asleep.
"Hmm?"
"You're probably not going to remember this all the time, what I am," Eric said, remembering what he once knew about being embodied. That most people didn't, or couldn't, see divinities. Something about the human condition made it impossible for them to confront the other things among them all the time.
"'Sokay," Jack said, eyes closed. They fluttered open briefly, that beautiful ice blue, then closed again. "Remind me if you need me to. You're my Bits...." And with that he was asleep.
Eric smiled and brushed a kiss to Jack's cheek. "That I am, sweetpea," he whispered, and got up, to go make use of the shrine Jack had given him.
Eric was right: Jack didn't remember, when he woke up. But Eric had used Jack's naptime to make bread, and peanut butter, and some blackberry jam for Jack's sandwiches, as well as a shopping list both for the kitchen and the refrigerator. Jack really did not know how to properly outfit a kitchen, and Eric didn't want to use up too much of his new power making food out of nothing, no matter how flush with it he felt. Because even with this shrine, and Jack's devotions... they were going to be forty minutes apart, both of them working on different things, for rather a long time.
Fuck, he wanted to get Jack back into the worshipper zone so bad. But it had never been a good idea to submerge a person into religious zeal too deeply, or too often. Sometimes they didn't come out of it quite the same. Sometimes they never came out again at all. And he wanted to keep Jack for a long, long time.
For forever, if only that was possible.
But each bite Eric made for him, for this first worshipper, for his love, was filled with whispered magics. Health. Stability. Clear-sightedness. And because Jack had bought this shrine for him, filled it with the things Eric requested, he found that even while in Samwell, he could feel it when Jack was in the kitchen. The post-its added to his fridge only intensified the clarity of the connection.
He realized somewhat later that he should add a shield from injuries to the magic in his food. Unlucky pluot jam...!
Still, even with both a temple and a shrine, junior year was harder than freshman or sophomore. His reserves ebbed faster, and he couldn't help but feel ashamed. He had the vague notion that being torn between two places had never been so hard in the past, but... as he'd told Jack, that had been a long time ago, in another land. And Eric was different, lesser, now.
Even with Dex being a willing acolyte in the mysteries of the kitchen, and Chowder, dear sweet soul that he was, trying but never quite feeling the making in his soul, Eric was stretched so thin that he ended up dropping a pie on the floor.
Him.
Letting what he did, what he was, slip through his fingers like that.
Torn up and ashamed, he retreated to his room, trying not to cry, and called the one person who loved him best.
Waking up with him the next morning helped. He could see that Jack almost remembered. "I dreamed that you were golden," Jack murmured, fingers brushing reverently along Eric's cheek.
"With you, I'm always golden," Eric said, and leaned in to kiss him.
It wasn't the rushing torrent of that first worshipful connection, more like a drifting mist easing the edges of everything, but the devotions were enough for Eric to slake his thirst, to soothe where the hurt and ache were worst. "I love you," he breathed into a kiss.
It wasn't cheating, exactly, Eric reasoned, to fill the food he fed to his team, and sometimes the Falconers, with his power. He didn't put winning into it, after all. Just health (which food was for, anyway!) and protection from injury.
If he'd put winning into it, he thought grumpily, Samwell would have made it farther in the playoffs. But no... he had to have ethics. Whatever. He meditated quite a bit on this quandary while making jam, and decided he didn't want to be the kind of person he wouldn't like. So no winning magic, now or in the future.
Looking up, he saw that the jars of jam covered the counters and were stacked on the floor.
Fuck.
He couldn't really remember, but he wished he could. Sometimes more than others. Like now. If only Eric remembered how he used to be, he might know some way to help Jack feel better. To take away the pressure of messed-up brain chemicals making him tremble in the grasp of his anxiety.
But all he could do was rely on his mortal part, and hold onto his love tight. Food wouldn't fix this, plenty wouldn't fix this. There was no magic for feeling better, only what love he could give Jack.
It was enough. It had to be enough.
And when the fit had passed, he led Jack into the kitchen, hoping that its warmth and magic would help heal the aftermath of a good man shaking apart in Eric's arms.
The power in the PBJs and pies held and held and held, until it just wasn't enough. Eric near bit through his lip when Tater's injury was replayed and replayed and replayed on the Jumbotron. Why hadn't it worked? Had someone broken through his magic, was challenging Eric through his devoted follower? He couldn't tell, didn't know any longer how he might tell. He held his hands over Tater's knee when the injured Falconer came to stay with him and Jack, tried to sense any malign force at work, couldn't. He channeled his baking even more than ever into health and healing, guilty that he hadn't been able to protect his own.
"Even the beloved of the gods aren't guaranteed perfect protection," Jack whispered into Eric's hair late that night, spooned behind him as he was curled up in knotted misery at having failed one of his devoted.
Eric turned with a whimpered cry, letting Jack wrap arms around him, falling into the care and embrace of someone who understood, even if only hazily, and only until morning.
Senior year seemed almost to blur by in a rush of baking, hockey, Jack, and studying. The Haus was still Eric's temple, but he wondered how long it would stay so, once he'd graduated. Dex would surely keep cooking in it, and Chowder would help, but despite Eric's best efforts, none of the Tadpoles had been drawn to be followers, and neither were any of the Waffles.
The baking ban hurt. But he had enough energy stored up from Jack's regular low-key infusions to suffer through it and try to concentrate.
The boys really thought they were helping. Eric concentrated on that. Bless their hearts.
But despite the low-grade headache all the time from being banned from his own temple, he managed to push through and they got to the Championships. And he wasn't playing his best, weakened by the best of intentions, insulted by petty bullies, slammed into the boards in blatant targeted checks that the refs weren't calling--
Eric began to grow mad.
This was his game. And this wasn't just about him. It was about everyone like him. It was winning for his boys, and for everyone who was different, who was scared of what they were, who just plain didn't fit--
He needed power to make this fair. And the only way to get power was to sacrifice.
Odin bleeding on a tree for nine days, losing an eye. Jesus on the cross, losing everything. Poseidon, eaten by his own father.
Eric let himself grow angry. And he gave the Fates leave to take what they wanted.
He could feel the ringing shock of divine blood, however watered down, echoing through the arena. No more turning a blind eye to dirty hits. No more slurs where there should be clean play.
No more holding back for any of Samwell, when the small god among them had finally loosed his righteous anger.
The medics had mostly staunched the bleeding by the time Jack and Eric's parents were able to get to him.
No one ever found his tooth.
The Fates had taken it, sacrifice for power.
For the first time, Eric felt like enough all by himself. He didn't need worship from Jack (though it was darn nice, he did have to say). And the thought of losing the Haus kitchen didn't fill him with dread the way it once might have, because he knew that he would find a new one wherever he went. Not that the Fates had whispered that to him, per se, but he knew it in his bones.
He poked at his slightly sore mouth the morning after the replacement surgery. "The god with the fake tooth," he muttered to himself. It was definitely not as catchy as Odin One-Eye, but he'd still take it, both for the clean play win he'd bought his boys, and the blow he'd helped deliver to homophobia.
And... if he didn't need Jack to sustain himself, then Eric was free to just love him, pure and simple.
And he did.
Though when Kent Parson showed up at a kegster, again, Eric thought he might need to have a word with Ransom about just who he was inviting to parties at a school that he didn't even attend anymore.
Still, Eric invited Parse in. Southern hospitality, and all that. And Parson had been important to Jack once, still was in some ways, so he wanted to see what else he had to say. There had to be more to the man than what he'd said at that Epikegster. Jack surely wouldn't have loved him, if there wasn't something more.
And Eric had to admit, Parse's reaction to his cooking was gratifying. It really wasn't his best work; he literally did make it appear out of nowhere while the table was getting low and he was distracted, teaming up with Tango at beer pong. But Parse hadn't eaten Eric's food before, wasn't accustomed to the touch of divinity that was in everything he made.
Though, really? Kent Parson should know better than to try to lie to a god in their own temple. Did he really think, sitting in Eric's kitchen, that Eric wouldn't hear his bullshit and call him on it?
Never mess with a god on their own ground.
He made Kent deal with his own lies, and sent him back off to his team with pie, hoping that it would maybe help the Aces play slightly less bullshit hockey. (Though Eric admitted that Scraps, at least, seemed nice enough.)
And then Jack proposed.
He knew right now, Eric could see it in his eyes. He knew that Eric wasn't fully human, was something else, and he'd slept on it, thought about it, and still wanted him to be Eric's and Eric to be his in every way that could possibly, comprehensibly matter.
Jack was willing to give up humanity for an uncertain forever, to be with Eric.
That was really quite a lot more than Eric was ever expecting, even from his first and best and most loved worshipper, so he thought he was to be excused in taking refuge in a few seconds of darkness.
When he said yes, then realized their friends were watching, with sticks and skates and pucks at the ready... well, he was sure he could be forgiven the little shimmer of power that shifted his own skates to hockey blades. Like with almost everything, no one else noticed. And playing hockey in figure skates was doable, but with his own disciples, Eric would really rather not. He'd rather be like them.
It ended and began like this: he married Jack, body and soul. And Jack never again forgot what Eric was.
(Though, the worship was intense, y'all. Eric loved his hockey player.)
And beloved of a god, one who, however small, was now fully in control of his own power, Jack never suffered a career-ending injury the way so many hockey players did. He ended his career on his own terms, when he was ready. Jack was legend.
Eric's mortal fame grew with each vlog post, each cookbook, each cooking show appearance. Every kitchen touched by him became, in a way, a small shrine.
They had a family, both their blood relatives, and the close friends and disciples they made through their college years and professional lives. And, eventually, there were children of their own.
They grew old together, and happy, and, in the fullness of time, slipped away into the mortal night.
"What happens now?" the minor god of hockey asks the minor god of cooking and plenty.
His husband smiles and slips his hand into Jack's. "Now, sweetpea," Eric says, "now I get to show you my world."
Author's Note: Edited by San-chan, my Wonderful Husband, and most especially N-chan! This work got written in one day, which is a feat I haven't been able to accomplish in years! It clearly wanted to be written. This story was inspired by Bitty's physically impossible five-minute pie in Year One, even his mother being amazed at how fast he piped cookies in Christmas in Madison, and Neil Gaiman's novel American Gods. I hope y'all enjoyed it.
Cornucopia
by K. Stonham
first released 6th June 2020
There was a kitchen.
It was the very first thing that Eric noticed about the Haus. It drew him, calling, singing in his blood even as Shitty's voice faded from his ears.
It was dilapidated. It was disgusting.
It was unclaimed.
Solo cups and kegs, a cupboard of Sriracha, dirty dishes mounded high....
And in the back of a cupboard, moths fluttering out of a mostly-empty bag of flour that had been there who only knew how long.
A couple apples (Red Delicious, ugh) on the counter.
A small tub of I Can't Believe It's Not A Trampoline in the fridge, scraped almost empty.
It was not a lot, but he'd worked with worse.
And if Eric wanted this kitchen, he'd have to work with this.
He wanted the kitchen.
There was salt but no sugar. He forced what he needed from the apples, making them better. Not even the memory of cinnamon in this room... he pulled it from deep inside himself. The oven didn't like him waking it up, making it heat. Tough. And there was nothing even like mixing bowls or a proper rolling pin. He made do.
By the time the tour group wandered back downstairs, Eric had made his mark on the kitchen. It was grudgingly, nominally, his domain, as shown by the steaming pie in his hands. Not his best work; he'd had to will too much of it into being, including the pie dish, some oven mitts, and an apron.
"Wow," said Shitty, "we've only been here five minutes."
Eric went pale. Caught up in the moment, in trying to carve out his own space for the first time, he'd forgotten--
"Holy hell," Holster said, having grabbed a fork and dived right in without even waiting for the pie to cool. "Shit, and I thought that pecan pie from the other night was good!"
Between the four residents of the Haus (Jack apparently lived there too, but wasn't home just then?) and the four other incoming freshman, Eric's pie was nothing more than a memory in less time than it had taken him to make it.
(No slices. Felonious eating. Why was he on the hockey team again?)
"Fuck me sideways, Bitty. If you can cook like that, you can cook here anytime!" Shitty declared.
"A-fuckin'-men!" Ransom agreed, as did the other two residents. And just like that, the kitchen was Eric's.
He felt it glow and pulse around him, his new little temple, even as he stammered thanks.
He was very old. Or, at least, he thought he was very old. It was hard to remember; so much of what he had been was gone. He knew he'd been somebody, something, long before he'd been Eric Bittle. But by the time he'd become Eric Bittle, he'd been barely more than a tattered scrap of a thing, forgotten and unbelieved in in this new land where his followers had once upon a time brought him in their hearts.
Gone, gone, gone, all of them. And he'd grown weaker and thinner, less and less and less until he was faded, almost gone....
It was a prayer that saved him.
Not his own, but the prayer of a blonde woman standing in her kitchen, crying as she rolled out dough. She scrubbed her tears away before they could fall on her crust, and kept working it thinner and thinner with her well-seasoned pin. "Please, God," she whispered as she worked, her forearms strong and her motions accomplished, easy despite her turmoil. "I just want one baby. One child. That's all I'm askin'. Please, Lord, just let me and Rick have this one thing...."
In another era, another place, she might have been one of his priestesses.
As it was, the God to whom she prayed was not listening, so the faded god slipped in through her open window, a mote of dust, and into her offer.
Nine months later, infertile Suzanne Bittle's prayers were answered, as her tears fell unimpeded onto the downy hair of her healthy newborn son. She smiled, and as she nuzzled his head, she could almost swear she caught a whiff of baking bread.
He grew up small, and different, and all too aware that he was out of sync with the boys around him. Sometimes he felt that he almost understood why, when he was trying something that was yet again just out of his reach. A skating move that he couldn't accomplish yet, or a recipe that left him all thumbs, when he knew he should have been able to do it easily.
It wasn't until he was alone, locked into a dark space for nearly three days, that he understood. The cold and dark and the silence drove him inward, further and further after his voice and his tears gave out, throat raw and aching with thirst, the wetness he couldn't hold in any longer long since evaporated. He shivered, he shook, he went wild with dreams and memory.
He didn't even notice when the janitor found him Monday morning.
Days later, Eric woke up in the hospital, head full of fuzz, mouth full of cotton, his mother dozing in a chair by his bedside.
Looking at her, he knew for the first time exactly who and what he was.
Things got easier after that. They moved to Madison, nearer Moomaw, and Eric's hands no longer fumbled recipes. He couldn't figure skate any longer, but he found a hockey team just to keep up the pleasure of the ice.
Suzanne Bittle was good in the kitchen, and her sister-in-law and mother-in-law were too, but mostly it was an activity saved for the women of the family.
And Eric, who quickly began to outshine them all.
"Boy's a natural," Moomaw said once he began taking home blue ribbons from the fair. "Gets it from both sides," she said, smiling at Suzanne.
Eric, working on a loaf of beer bread for Coach's sandwiches, smiled and said nothing.
He'd never had a kitchen that was just his, at least not since he'd been Eric Bittle. Once upon a time... well, that had been a long time ago. But Suzanne and Judy's and Moomaw's kitchens had all been their own, not his.
This... the Haus kitchen was going to be his temple, if Eric had to clean every roach-attracting scrap of grime out of its cupboards himself. And he did.
He worked as hard on that kitchen as he did on hockey. Homework came in... well, mostly a distant third. He needed the kitchen to live. He needed the hockey to have access to the kitchen. Schoolwork, he listened to the lectures on repeat and slept on top of the books, hoping it would all soak in through osmosis.
And for a long time, that was all he needed. Surviving by filling the kitchen with followers (...however tenuous) and filling their starving jock bellies with his bounty.
Eric didn't want to know what would happen if he couldn't cook. He suspected that he would simply finish fading away, and someone would find his cooling body in his dorm room one morning. And while he might have been old, he wasn't tired of living yet. There were so many things he wanted to make...!
Then along came Jack.
Staring at Jack in his kitchen, Eric realized what a huge mistake he'd made.
Inviting Jack to cook in his kitchen.
Teaching him.
Anointing him with flour.
Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck....
He made a hasty excuse, he didn't even know what, and ran to his room, where he buried his face in his hands, a white-cold knot of haunted misery taking residence behind his sternum.
I want him.
The thought of Jack set his heart hammering in his chest. He'd been falling in love for a while now, he realized. His feelings had been growing quiet and unseen, until Jack had stepped into his domain with the intent to learn.
Even so, the fact remained that Jack was not Eric's, didn't even know what he was, much less understand it, and was straight. Eric might be able to teach him to make a pie, but Jack belonged to the ice; he would never leave his heart in the kitchen. He would never, ever be able to fulfill the rites and rituals, would never be an acolyte, no matter what Eric felt about him.
It had been too long since he'd had worshippers like he truly, actually needed; having someone fulfill even a hint of that role made sudden miserable desire hit Eric like a sledgehammer....
Regardless, he couldn't have Jack.
It took almost everything he had to let Jack go, at the graduation ceremony. He couldn't have Jack, he knew he couldn't have Jack, so he'd just have to live with it. Maybe next year he'd start teaching the Frogs to cook, to fill some of that giant aching void in his chest....
Then came the kiss that changed everything.
Bitty's face the first time he saw Jack's kitchen was glorious. He stood there, turning in a slow circle, eyes wide, mouth slightly ajar, like he couldn't believe it. And Jack was suddenly really glad that, even if he hadn't realized why at the time, he'd followed his gut instinct to go with the condo that had a really nice kitchen.
"Should I let you have a moment?" he teased. Bitty just stared at him, seemingly unable to give an answer. Jack swooped in for a quick kiss. "I'm going to put your bags in the bedroom, okay?"
By the time he got back, Bitty was at work. An open bag of flour was at his elbow as he rolled out pie crust.
Jack stopped.
He didn't have flour. He didn't have a rolling pin. He didn't have a pie dish like the one Bitty was draping the crust over. He'd planned for them to go shopping together and outfit his kitchen with everything Bitty wanted....
He didn't have any of these things.
As he watched, Bitty picked a single apple out of the fruit bowl on the counter and swiped a knife through it. Chunks, far more than one apple's worth, overflowed his hands, tumbling into the pie. A pass of his hand sprinkled sugar and cinnamon, sweet and spicy, over the filling. He wove an invisible lattice into existence, almost faster than Jack could see. He turned and put the pie into the oven. Jack could feel its heat even though there hadn't even been time for it to come to temperature.
Bitty shut the oven door, turned, and saw Jack watching. His pupils were blown wide. "You got this kitchen for me," he said, sounding almost on the edge of unbelieving, on the edge of tears.
"Yes," Jack said, not knowing what to think.
Bitty closed the distance between them, reached up, kissed Jack most thoroughly. "Thank you," he whispered against Jack's mouth, like Jack had given him something far bigger than a room.
Jack's hands, drawn like magnets, found their way to Bitty's ass. He picked up the smaller man, carried him back until he was sitting on the counter. He wasn't sure what was going on, but... "Do you want to christen it?"
Bitty's eyes were right before his, wide and dark and starless. "Oh, I think we can do better than that, Jack Zimmermann," he breathed. "How about we sanctify it?"
His words sent a golden frisson down Jack's spine. "God, yes," he said, fingers fumbling at Bitty's fly, and sank down to his knees.
They'd done this before, hushed and quiet in the Georgia night of Bitty's childhood bedroom. Somehow, this was different. It was different than it ever had been. The taste of Bitty was so much better, so much more. The sounds of his gasps and hitched breaths. The way his fingers curled into Jack's hair like a benediction as Jack swallowed him all the way down to the root. The way his voice broke as he said "Oh, sweetpea--" and came and came and came. His come flowed thick and creamy over Jack's tongue, unlike anything he'd ever tasted before, and he drank down every drop.
Jack stood, following the tug in his hair, wanting, hoping he'd done good enough.
Bitty was golden as he kissed Jack, tugging at his shirt, his trousers, until Jack stepped out of them and was naked in the kitchen he'd bought for Bitty. Strong hands pulled Jack closer, guiding him to the bowl of olive oil that hadn't been there before, as Bitty's clothes joined his on the floor.
"Fuck me," Bitty told him, laying back across the counter, better than any pinup. Jack couldn't have not obeyed.
He'd never used it before, but the golden oil was as slippery as any lube as he touched fingers to Bitty's hole, worked his way in, kissing every inch of Bitty that he could, until the smaller man was hard and gasping again. Slicking himself, slicking Bitty, Jack sank in.
He'd forgotten what worship felt like. Sex before with Jack had been good, the kisses even were fantastic, but for the first time in his mortal life, Eric experienced what it could really be like for him.
Every touch burned pure. Every gasp of his name from Jack's lips resounded through him. Sweat pattered clean on Eric's skin like a blessing.
He could live like this forever.
"Come for me, sweetheart," he whispered, running his hands down straining arms. "Jack."
Jack stiffened with a cry, and Eric could feel his own release jolt through him too, nearly as good as the first one, but all that was distant beside the glorious light that suffused him. Power, energy like he'd nearly forgotten, filled him, and it was so good, so good.
He heard himself whispering that. So good.
His heart beat in time with Jack's as their bodies lay pressed together. The granite countertop was cool beneath him, Jack hot above, his lover's head on Eric's shoulder as he drew in deep gasps of breath.
"Oh, sweetheart, what you give me," he murmured, feeling every part of himself alive, from the tips of his hair all the way down to his toes as he combed fingers through Jack's hair. "I'm going to take such good care of you."
He felt Jack hesitate, then he pushed back up onto his marvelous forearms, this wonderful tall dark-haired heart-of-gold boy of Eric's. "Bitty..." he said, and Eric could feel all the questions he wanted to ask even though their bodies were still connected.
"Shh," he said, pressing a finger to Jack's lips. "Shower first. Talk after." Jack's eyes were troubled, but he nodded and pulled out. His semen didn't leak out and drip down; Eric refused to give up even a bit of this offering.
But first, the pie was ready. Eric pulled it out of the oven bare-handed, in a flagrant show of power he never would've been able to afford before. He set it down on a trivet that didn't exist an instant ago. "That should be ready for us to eat by the time we're out of the shower."
Jack took his hands, examined them each for burns. The poor thing clearly didn't know what to think.
But Eric was serious about the shower, and led him there, because if the kitchen was like this, what must the condo's water pressure be like?
He kept his word, though, and explained it to Jack the best he could over apple pie. Sliced and on a plate, because Jack was never a heathen like the rest of the Haus boys. Jack, Jewish and agnostic both, took it the best he could. "So," he said slowly, fork scraping against his plate, "I'm a worshipper?" His eyes were downcast and his tone dull. It took Eric a moment to parse what Jack meant.
"No!" he said, putting his own plate aside on the coffee table. "What's between you and me has nothing to do with that." He leaned forward, cupped his hand on Jack's jaw. "It doesn't work that way, sweetheart. Just because someone worships, doesn't mean they get access to..." he gestured at his own body, "take liberties. That's just for you. Because I...." The words died in his throat, because he'd honestly never expected this, a conflict between what he was and who he loved to arise in this fashion. "It ain't like that," he repeated, his accent thickening for a moment as it tended to do when he got distressed.
"Hey." Jack was touching him, mirroring his touch. A thumb stroked across his jaw. "I trust you. But, I mean, there must have been others..."
"Hundreds of years ago, in another land," and damnit, Eric was crying now for all the parts of himself that he'd lost. "I can't even remember 'em, they're too far gone and I lost too much along the way. Just... I know they were there, once upon a time."
"Well, you've got me now," Jack said, his own plate making its way to the table. He leaned back into the wide, plush sofa, pulling Eric down on top of him.
"Mmm," Eric agreed. "But... I was thinking of teaching the Frogs to cook, if you don't mind? I mean, acolytes aren't the same as a worshipper, but heavens know those boys need to learn to cook for themselves before they go out into the big wide world. And it'd be nice, teaching in my temple again...."
"Temple. Heh." Jack kissed his forehead. "Go for it, Bits. I'd tell you to teach Ransom and Holster, too, but...."
"But yeah," Eric agreed. "They're probably beyond hope, except for filling them up. And Lardo's got her own patron."
Jack's eyes widened. "Seriously?"
Eric shook his head. "Nah. I don't think so, anyway. But... she's not one of mine. Love her dearly, and she's surely competent, but the kitchen's never going to be her lodestone."
"Hmm." Jack relaxed further back into the sofa, and Eric could feel him starting to drift off, lulled into a nap by the three S's: sex, shower, and snack.
"Jack," he whispered, one more important thing to tell him before Jack fell asleep.
"Hmm?"
"You're probably not going to remember this all the time, what I am," Eric said, remembering what he once knew about being embodied. That most people didn't, or couldn't, see divinities. Something about the human condition made it impossible for them to confront the other things among them all the time.
"'Sokay," Jack said, eyes closed. They fluttered open briefly, that beautiful ice blue, then closed again. "Remind me if you need me to. You're my Bits...." And with that he was asleep.
Eric smiled and brushed a kiss to Jack's cheek. "That I am, sweetpea," he whispered, and got up, to go make use of the shrine Jack had given him.
Eric was right: Jack didn't remember, when he woke up. But Eric had used Jack's naptime to make bread, and peanut butter, and some blackberry jam for Jack's sandwiches, as well as a shopping list both for the kitchen and the refrigerator. Jack really did not know how to properly outfit a kitchen, and Eric didn't want to use up too much of his new power making food out of nothing, no matter how flush with it he felt. Because even with this shrine, and Jack's devotions... they were going to be forty minutes apart, both of them working on different things, for rather a long time.
Fuck, he wanted to get Jack back into the worshipper zone so bad. But it had never been a good idea to submerge a person into religious zeal too deeply, or too often. Sometimes they didn't come out of it quite the same. Sometimes they never came out again at all. And he wanted to keep Jack for a long, long time.
For forever, if only that was possible.
But each bite Eric made for him, for this first worshipper, for his love, was filled with whispered magics. Health. Stability. Clear-sightedness. And because Jack had bought this shrine for him, filled it with the things Eric requested, he found that even while in Samwell, he could feel it when Jack was in the kitchen. The post-its added to his fridge only intensified the clarity of the connection.
He realized somewhat later that he should add a shield from injuries to the magic in his food. Unlucky pluot jam...!
Still, even with both a temple and a shrine, junior year was harder than freshman or sophomore. His reserves ebbed faster, and he couldn't help but feel ashamed. He had the vague notion that being torn between two places had never been so hard in the past, but... as he'd told Jack, that had been a long time ago, in another land. And Eric was different, lesser, now.
Even with Dex being a willing acolyte in the mysteries of the kitchen, and Chowder, dear sweet soul that he was, trying but never quite feeling the making in his soul, Eric was stretched so thin that he ended up dropping a pie on the floor.
Him.
Letting what he did, what he was, slip through his fingers like that.
Torn up and ashamed, he retreated to his room, trying not to cry, and called the one person who loved him best.
Waking up with him the next morning helped. He could see that Jack almost remembered. "I dreamed that you were golden," Jack murmured, fingers brushing reverently along Eric's cheek.
"With you, I'm always golden," Eric said, and leaned in to kiss him.
It wasn't the rushing torrent of that first worshipful connection, more like a drifting mist easing the edges of everything, but the devotions were enough for Eric to slake his thirst, to soothe where the hurt and ache were worst. "I love you," he breathed into a kiss.
It wasn't cheating, exactly, Eric reasoned, to fill the food he fed to his team, and sometimes the Falconers, with his power. He didn't put winning into it, after all. Just health (which food was for, anyway!) and protection from injury.
If he'd put winning into it, he thought grumpily, Samwell would have made it farther in the playoffs. But no... he had to have ethics. Whatever. He meditated quite a bit on this quandary while making jam, and decided he didn't want to be the kind of person he wouldn't like. So no winning magic, now or in the future.
Looking up, he saw that the jars of jam covered the counters and were stacked on the floor.
Fuck.
He couldn't really remember, but he wished he could. Sometimes more than others. Like now. If only Eric remembered how he used to be, he might know some way to help Jack feel better. To take away the pressure of messed-up brain chemicals making him tremble in the grasp of his anxiety.
But all he could do was rely on his mortal part, and hold onto his love tight. Food wouldn't fix this, plenty wouldn't fix this. There was no magic for feeling better, only what love he could give Jack.
It was enough. It had to be enough.
And when the fit had passed, he led Jack into the kitchen, hoping that its warmth and magic would help heal the aftermath of a good man shaking apart in Eric's arms.
The power in the PBJs and pies held and held and held, until it just wasn't enough. Eric near bit through his lip when Tater's injury was replayed and replayed and replayed on the Jumbotron. Why hadn't it worked? Had someone broken through his magic, was challenging Eric through his devoted follower? He couldn't tell, didn't know any longer how he might tell. He held his hands over Tater's knee when the injured Falconer came to stay with him and Jack, tried to sense any malign force at work, couldn't. He channeled his baking even more than ever into health and healing, guilty that he hadn't been able to protect his own.
"Even the beloved of the gods aren't guaranteed perfect protection," Jack whispered into Eric's hair late that night, spooned behind him as he was curled up in knotted misery at having failed one of his devoted.
Eric turned with a whimpered cry, letting Jack wrap arms around him, falling into the care and embrace of someone who understood, even if only hazily, and only until morning.
Senior year seemed almost to blur by in a rush of baking, hockey, Jack, and studying. The Haus was still Eric's temple, but he wondered how long it would stay so, once he'd graduated. Dex would surely keep cooking in it, and Chowder would help, but despite Eric's best efforts, none of the Tadpoles had been drawn to be followers, and neither were any of the Waffles.
The baking ban hurt. But he had enough energy stored up from Jack's regular low-key infusions to suffer through it and try to concentrate.
The boys really thought they were helping. Eric concentrated on that. Bless their hearts.
But despite the low-grade headache all the time from being banned from his own temple, he managed to push through and they got to the Championships. And he wasn't playing his best, weakened by the best of intentions, insulted by petty bullies, slammed into the boards in blatant targeted checks that the refs weren't calling--
Eric began to grow mad.
This was his game. And this wasn't just about him. It was about everyone like him. It was winning for his boys, and for everyone who was different, who was scared of what they were, who just plain didn't fit--
He needed power to make this fair. And the only way to get power was to sacrifice.
Odin bleeding on a tree for nine days, losing an eye. Jesus on the cross, losing everything. Poseidon, eaten by his own father.
Eric let himself grow angry. And he gave the Fates leave to take what they wanted.
He could feel the ringing shock of divine blood, however watered down, echoing through the arena. No more turning a blind eye to dirty hits. No more slurs where there should be clean play.
No more holding back for any of Samwell, when the small god among them had finally loosed his righteous anger.
The medics had mostly staunched the bleeding by the time Jack and Eric's parents were able to get to him.
No one ever found his tooth.
The Fates had taken it, sacrifice for power.
For the first time, Eric felt like enough all by himself. He didn't need worship from Jack (though it was darn nice, he did have to say). And the thought of losing the Haus kitchen didn't fill him with dread the way it once might have, because he knew that he would find a new one wherever he went. Not that the Fates had whispered that to him, per se, but he knew it in his bones.
He poked at his slightly sore mouth the morning after the replacement surgery. "The god with the fake tooth," he muttered to himself. It was definitely not as catchy as Odin One-Eye, but he'd still take it, both for the clean play win he'd bought his boys, and the blow he'd helped deliver to homophobia.
And... if he didn't need Jack to sustain himself, then Eric was free to just love him, pure and simple.
And he did.
Though when Kent Parson showed up at a kegster, again, Eric thought he might need to have a word with Ransom about just who he was inviting to parties at a school that he didn't even attend anymore.
Still, Eric invited Parse in. Southern hospitality, and all that. And Parson had been important to Jack once, still was in some ways, so he wanted to see what else he had to say. There had to be more to the man than what he'd said at that Epikegster. Jack surely wouldn't have loved him, if there wasn't something more.
And Eric had to admit, Parse's reaction to his cooking was gratifying. It really wasn't his best work; he literally did make it appear out of nowhere while the table was getting low and he was distracted, teaming up with Tango at beer pong. But Parse hadn't eaten Eric's food before, wasn't accustomed to the touch of divinity that was in everything he made.
Though, really? Kent Parson should know better than to try to lie to a god in their own temple. Did he really think, sitting in Eric's kitchen, that Eric wouldn't hear his bullshit and call him on it?
Never mess with a god on their own ground.
He made Kent deal with his own lies, and sent him back off to his team with pie, hoping that it would maybe help the Aces play slightly less bullshit hockey. (Though Eric admitted that Scraps, at least, seemed nice enough.)
And then Jack proposed.
He knew right now, Eric could see it in his eyes. He knew that Eric wasn't fully human, was something else, and he'd slept on it, thought about it, and still wanted him to be Eric's and Eric to be his in every way that could possibly, comprehensibly matter.
Jack was willing to give up humanity for an uncertain forever, to be with Eric.
That was really quite a lot more than Eric was ever expecting, even from his first and best and most loved worshipper, so he thought he was to be excused in taking refuge in a few seconds of darkness.
When he said yes, then realized their friends were watching, with sticks and skates and pucks at the ready... well, he was sure he could be forgiven the little shimmer of power that shifted his own skates to hockey blades. Like with almost everything, no one else noticed. And playing hockey in figure skates was doable, but with his own disciples, Eric would really rather not. He'd rather be like them.
It ended and began like this: he married Jack, body and soul. And Jack never again forgot what Eric was.
(Though, the worship was intense, y'all. Eric loved his hockey player.)
And beloved of a god, one who, however small, was now fully in control of his own power, Jack never suffered a career-ending injury the way so many hockey players did. He ended his career on his own terms, when he was ready. Jack was legend.
Eric's mortal fame grew with each vlog post, each cookbook, each cooking show appearance. Every kitchen touched by him became, in a way, a small shrine.
They had a family, both their blood relatives, and the close friends and disciples they made through their college years and professional lives. And, eventually, there were children of their own.
They grew old together, and happy, and, in the fullness of time, slipped away into the mortal night.
"What happens now?" the minor god of hockey asks the minor god of cooking and plenty.
His husband smiles and slips his hand into Jack's. "Now, sweetpea," Eric says, "now I get to show you my world."
Author's Note: Edited by San-chan, my Wonderful Husband, and most especially N-chan! This work got written in one day, which is a feat I haven't been able to accomplish in years! It clearly wanted to be written. This story was inspired by Bitty's physically impossible five-minute pie in Year One, even his mother being amazed at how fast he piped cookies in Christmas in Madison, and Neil Gaiman's novel American Gods. I hope y'all enjoyed it.
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Date: 2020-06-07 06:02 am (UTC)--Tainry
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Date: 2020-06-07 04:07 pm (UTC)It's based on a webcomic called Check, Please! (https://www.checkpleasecomic.com/), which just recently finished. I both adore it and highly recommend it!
Unlike this story, Check, Please! is totally not fantasy (which I've realized makes it an outlier in my fandoms), but is about Bitty's college experiences as a closeted Southern gay man, learning to accept himself and find his place in the world. (As well as finding love!) There is one chapter of the comic (Year 4, Chapter 19) which isn't on the website, is only available in the print books, which is referenced in this story, but it's not truly necessary to complete the larger arc of the comic.
I think you would like the series, if/when you're inclined to seek out new amusement. (Coronavirus and the racial issues going on right now have left a lot of people with no headspace for new things, I know. I hope you're doing well?)