Door No. Two
Dinner for Two
Violet & Augustus
There is something unexpectedly shared between Violet and Augustus, as she learns in the middle of November. The campus is abuzz with talk about Thanksgiving break. Though it isn't long, people are evidently going home and enjoying the break.
But Violet doesn't have anywhere to go. Well, she does. But she doesn't want to go home. What's the point of flying all the way to Georgia to sit with people from the real estate firm for a dinner that isn't homemade but catered? Thanksgiving dinner was more about presentation than anything with her mother, so why go home?
And Gus, if not in the same boat, is floating near by. What's the point of flying over nine hours to the middle of the Alps for a holiday that's nowhere near long enough to enjoy? Besides, he has to save money for next month when Christmas is actually worth it.
So. They both didn't have anywhere to go this Thanksgiving and they're the only two people who don't have plans. Mike is flying to Denver (for some reason, even though it's farther away than Georgia?) and Charlie is taking the train home and Veruca is going to some resort or something to go skiing for her family. Yeah.
So that means they have to stick around campus for the week and wait til their friends come back.
Violet was honestly planning to just do whatever while they were gone. Catch up on her reading. Go to the gym longer. Maybe sleep in? Maybe?
She broached Gus with what his plans are for the week while they're at Starbucks, working on making flash cards for Violet's Introduction to Marketing class. He finished his sip of venti hot chocolate before he answered her.
"I was going to ask you that as well. Do you have anything planned for Thanksgiving Day?"
"Like, as, in dinner?"
"Dinner, yes."
"Um . . ." Violet sipped her cappuccino. "Probably take out of some kind, to be honest. Probably Chinese."
"Do you want to have dinner with me?"
She snorted and looked at him quizzically. "Like, as in a date?"
"No! Nothing like that!" Gus was defense and it was kind of hilarious to watch him retract to the thought he was attracted to Violet. Like this was third grade and not college. "I just wanted to make Thanksgiving dinner for myself this year. I've never had a true Thanksgiving dinner before."
She looked at him, with that same quizzically, almost pitying look, and agreed.
You can't be an asshole to someone you share a boat with.
On Thanksgiving day, she woke up at nine o'clock and it felt so. Fricking. Good. Her roommates were all away so she had the common area all to herself. She went to grab some coffee from the Starbucks (which she could not believe was still open if it was so empty today) and then she went to the gym ( and nobody was there either.)
Gus told her that around two was a good time to head to his apartment on campus. He told her to bring a dessert as well, and maybe a side dish if that was alright by her? So Violet picked up a loaf of Italian bread and pumpkin pie at the grocery store the night before and she carried them with her through the (mildly snowy) landscape of campus to the apartment building at the end of the long line of lecture halls.
Gus lived on the second floor in a studio and Violet could smell onions and braising meat and something chocolaty? from the stairs. She went to the door 5b and knocked.
Sure enough, Augustus opened the door, flour and egg on his ruddy cheeks, an apron with a dark outline of a pig and the words Gloop Metzgerei on the front but was also stained with blood. (It was dried blood, but blood none the less.) But the smell washed over her and god, it smelled like real, actual Thanksgiving other than some college-kids thrown together event for two.
"Dinner's almost ready," he assured her when he took the pie and bread from her hands. "Do you mind setting the table?"
The table in question was a small card table that has a desk chair and a borrowed fold out chair from the school and a cheap, plastic tablecloth. But there was real eating ware. It was all plastic and mismatched. But it was real. She looks around the small kitchenette Gus has filled with boiling pots and pans and crockpots.
"I don't want to purchase anything that would be unnecessary to go home to Germany with," he explained as he puts something into a Tupperware bowl from the frying pan as Violet sets two glasses opposite each other.
She said that that's practical and she realizes, after forgetting, that Gus isn't here forever and she's not here forever. Gus is here only for a term, to study abroad, to finish his degree, then go home.
"I don't get a chance to cook as much as I want to," he confessed, setting the Tupperware onto the table. It was sweet potatoes. "I just do not have time and it is much easier to earth cafeteria food. If I cooked everyday it would be worth it - to have real plates rather than ones I bought at a thrift store. I borrowed a lot of this cooking stuff from other people who cook more than I get to."
Violet - for god knows what demon possessed her hand - took a lump of sweet potatoes off the top and puts it to her lips.
Jesus Christ it's good.
"Is this the first time you've made sweet potatoes?" She asked, wanting to take more. "I didn't think it was a staple of Bavaria."
He laughed. "They are not. I watch the Food Network a lot and that is where I learned. I tried to do everything like on the show, but I made turkey breasts instead of a whole bird. I would be eating turkey forever and I am not a huge fan of poultry."
"That's okay," she takes another bowl he filled (this time with mash potatoes) and set it down on the table. Not like she likes turkey very much either.
Soon dinner was set and done and Violet looked over the impressive spread. It was a real Thanksgiving dinner - turkey, stuffing, sweet and mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce. Only not nearly as big. Just enough for two.
And it was incredible. All of it. Holy mother of god, it was so good. It took her back to a time that didn't even exist for her. A time, a home, filled with warmth and richness and not artificiality. Just genuine goodness.
And the whole thing is just surprisingly perfect? Sure, they're in a crappy student apartment and the plates don't match and they are both technically stranded but this is real.
And when Violet falls asleep on Gus's futon as they watch Christmas movies on his tiny TV, lulled by that rumored turkey induced haze, her stomach full, she, for the longest time during the holidays, has a real smile.
AN: Oh look, another Thanksgiving fic. Haha. I really just wanted to write some Violet and Augustus because they're such an interesting dynamic.
