Lemongrass
Watchmen → Domestic!Comedian, Ozy.
Summary: Eddie gets nostalgic.
Crossposted at daikontime, my fanstuffs LJ.
A/N: My first Watchmen fic! *scared* Dipping my toe into the Ozy/Comedian ship.
From the Watchmen kinkmeme prompt: The Comedian never struck me as the kind of guy who liked to cook, but in the movie, he seemed to have a schmancy kitchen and some heavy duty cutlery. Which made me wonder... Does he cook dishes he remembers from places he's been? Does he cook for someone else? Or does someone cook for him? Can we have some domestic!Comedian?
Eddie has never been much of a sentimental person, which is why his sudden and desperate craving for pho catches him off-guard.
To his knowledge he's really only ever been good at searing fresh meat by way of flamethrower, but ever since Little Hanoi closed down for renovations in August, Eddie has been craving beef noodle soup like it was nobody's business and he sure as hell wasn't going to Chinatown to try and follow the elusive scent of lemongrass and basil amidst all the soy marinade and MSG.
There was reason he got this place fully furnished, with its fancy granite kitchen countertops and state of the art stove and stainless steel sink and seven-setting refrigerator. And there's definitely no reason for him not to send Victor, who is on government payroll for a reason and paid to do Eddie's shit for him, out to the nearest Asian market and pick up the special ingredients he'll need to start the beef stock—the cinnamon, lemongrass, basil, ginger, limes, cilantro, and rice noodles. Eddie heads down to the butcher's to get the beef himself—he knows meat well enough—decides to go with four pounds of lean cut top round. Four pounds of beef is probably excessive for a dish that only uses meat as a garnish, but really, since when has he ever done anything half-assed?
Victor comes back that morning and doesn't look fazed at all to see Eddie hovering over a wooden cutting board and slicing the beef into thin strips with incongruous finesse. He places the groceries down on the counter, briefly inquires if he can be of any further assistance, and when Eddie doesn't dignify his request with more than a grunt, leaves without further ado.
Two pounds of the meat stay in the butcher paper and get tossed in the freezer, for future insurance against beef cravings, and he chops one pound roughly—just for the stock, after all—and then sets to work on the other chunks. There's something reluctantly therapeutic about interaction with raw meat in this way—delicate and precise—and Eddie's fingers are all tight tension around the curve of dead muscle as his other hand slices paper-thin pieces, edge of the carbon steel knife going smoothly through the flesh in a way that military-issue weaponry doesn't—and there's no bone to choke the metal-through-red movement.
Memories of Vietnam irresistibly tangle with the cooking process, and Eddie smiles, maybe too widely, when he turns the stove on, smell of lighter fluid subtle and tangy in the air, suddenly, before it's whiffed out by flames, the way that blood and skin boil the same way that water does, how ox blood smells the same and the whole kitchen is filled with the smell of it, mostly on his hands.
But he's not one to wax lyrical while moping over a kitchen stove, and Eddie moves to the groceries, and breathes in deeply—fresh, green-yellow scents of lemongrass and basil, onion and ginger assaulting his nostrils and fading the edge of his smile to something less severe. He catches himself but lets him ride with the sentiment, as rare as it is, washing the basil leaves under running water and stripping the leaves from their stems and only barely managing to restrain himself from humming thanh niên hành khúc under his breath.
There's still a few hours before the beef stock will be ready, and so Eddie turns on the television and watches a few commercials before rifling through the magazines stacked on his coffee table. A few outdated copies of Hustler and foreign policy rags that he's supposed to be keeping up with but he's only interested in what the Harvard establishment has to say when he needs material for a new punchline. He turns the heat on medium-low, shrugging on a jacket as he heads outside to the corner newsstand to pick up the latest copy of The Economist. A hobo wrinkles a heavily freckled face as he walks by and Eddie chuckles at the irony—the other man may like year-old shit and piss, but Eddie himself reeks of Communism and red sympathies.
He flips idly through the magazine when he gets back, occasionally getting up to skim the residue off the top of the broth, and decides that the Yale establishment is probably more full of shit the Harvard one is, chucking The Economist in the direction of his still-rambling television set before picking up last month's copy of Hustler, thumbing through it with keen disinterest and conditioned arousal. He ignores his half-hard state as he turns off the television and heads back into the kitchen, and adds the lemongrass, basil, onion, ginger and cinnamon to the broth, letting it simmer for half an hour before shaking in the salt and pepper.
The noodles are the last to be prepared, a simple matter of bringing water to boil and breaking up the vermicelli so the pieces won't be too long. By now the kitchen is drowning in the smell of 1975 and Eddie entertains the thought of the HUAC barging in and throwing accusations at him with plenty of evidence to spare, and wonders if the ghost of McCarthy will haunt him tonight. But sir, he'd probably say in his dreams, man cannot subsist on hamburgers alone.
The noodles get drained shortly afterwards, and Eddie turns on the television again, simultaneously pleased and annoyed when Veidt's latest commercial comes on. This time he really does hum under his breath—not the Vietnamese national anthem, although the thought has occurred to him many times tonight. His voice replaces the television's, deep and rumbling over the tinny sound of Cole's, all analog and tube-fed, and all of this—the red-orange glow of the setting sun, the music, the rich, layered smells wafting through his whole apartment—
He's got his hand on the phone before he knows it, receiver held up to his ear and fingers poised over the buttons, muscle-memory ready and willing and the number for Veidt Industries' executive office just a few touches away. After all, Eddie's been down to Karnak—he's has seen the fruits Adrian keeps around the place.
"Sorry I'm late," Adrian is standing outside the apartment, pressed within an inch of perfection and hair looking perfectly coiffed, everything as usual. Eddie, by contrast, has answered the door in his robe and slippers, having just gotten out of the shower, and his hair is still a little bit wet. None of this fazes either of them, of course. "It's been a hectic day at headquarters. New line of lunchboxes just launched and they found lead in forty percent of the shipment. But," Adrian shrugs, shoulders moving fluidly underneath the angular cut of lilac silk, "those are the risks you take when you outsource to China."
The blond man hands him a bottle of something and Eddie looks at the label—a 1975 Merlot, a reserve wine from one of Veidt's Napa estates. "The plum and berry tones will put up nicely with the pho," Adrian comments. "But we can always save it for later. If I recall correctly, you were always more of a lager sort of person."
"Then you've never seen me at a government function," Eddie says easily. "Flexibility pays when you have to hang around suits all the time. For instance, Nixon only drinks dry martinis. Some call it personal preference; I like to think of it as James Bond hero-worship."
The other man cracks a smile under the smooth veneer, but then his look fades to something more intent. "Honestly, Eddie—" Adrian words, usually so smooth and measured, trip over themselves a little. "I was surprised to hear from you at all."
His tone is sharp, but not unkind.
Eddie steps out of the doorway to let Adrian inside. "It was only a matter of time, I suppose."
end