Sorry for the delay! Life's been pretty wild!
twistedpremise wanted to see Beast Boy teach Raven to cook after Cyborg failed. Here it is!
Cooking: Raven learned the darkest magical spells in the world, but she can't make tacos.
She had spent hours upon hours in the garage with Cyborg and she was good at it! She could take an engine apart and put it back together without glancing at a manual. She knew how to change a car's oil – hell, she knew how to fix a car's suspension. She could hear the car make a squeak and know exactly which part needed oil. She could learn. She could learn from Cyborg. She could even learn complex things from Cyborg.
Somehow, she could not make something as simple as tacos.
She stood over a pot of meat which, at least this time, wasn't burnt. This was her first try, and the other pots were varying colors of black and had set off the smoke detector for fifteen minutes after each attempt. Cyborg had thrown it away from her, patting her back and urging her to try again. It was getting better, she supposed, as she appeared to have cooked the beef the right amount of time, but the meat was bland, and almost bitter. She must have used the wrong spices, or at least the wrong amount. And no there was no meat left.
"It's alright, Rae. We'll get pizza," he said kindly, dumping the pot. "You're getting better. We'll make a chef out of you yet."
"I don't think taste is my best sense," she muttered, drumming her fingers on the table. "I just don't understand what I'm supposed to add to make it taste right."
"We can always get a box mix. How about that, Rae? I'll get one of those bags of taco seasoning."
She scowled. "I'll probably just burn it, then."
"Don't be so hard on yourself."
Beast Boy groaned, tossing his controller down. The all too familiar sound of a man getting shot by an obscene amount of automatic firearms rang through the room not a moment later. "Dude, how can she not? All you've been doing is making her fail over and over, and making her touch raw meat."
"Raven likes meat, green bean."
He rolled his eyes. "Yeah, well, she's still failed a bunch, dude."
"And that's my fault?" Cyborg snapped.
"Uh, duh!" He snorted. "Why are you starting her with hard stuff? You don't start someone with Dark Souls. You start them off with, like, Kirby. Or Pokemon. Maybe, like, Mario Kart on ea-"
Cyborg snapped his fingers. "Man, focus. Raven. Cooking."
"I would appreciate it if you stopped talking about me as if I wasn't here," she said flatly.
"Right, right," Beast Boy got up and stretched, striding up to the counter. "So, like, with games-"
"Are you takin' over, B?" Cyborg asked. 'Cuz I'm not watching you taint Raven's hands with tofu."
"Yeah, I'm taking over," he said, opening the fridge. He called over his shoulder as Cyborg left the room. "And I'm not making tofu, dude! I eat other stuff."
"Could've fooled me," she said dryly.
Beast Boy laid two round, ripe tomatoes on the cutting board, next to a small, sharp knife. "Go ahead and chop those up, Rae."
She eyed him. "Why?"
"You're cooking. And it's going to be delicious." He beamed. "So, take the knife and slice up the tomatoes, however thick you like them. Just cut it."
She picked up the knife, awkwardly bringing it close to the tomato, her fingers splayed across the fruit. "What if I don't like whatever we're making?"
"Oh, crap, no." He leapt forward and grabbed her hand. "Not like that. Oh my god. Raven, this is not how you cut things, you're going to chop your finger off."
He took his hand and carefully guided hers. He shifted her grip on the knife to be more relaxed, easy, and curled her fingers so the tips were safely bent away and her muscled touched the broad, smooth side of the blade, holding it steady. "There," he said with a grin. "Now you won't bleed to death."
"This feels weird."
"So does doing push-ups in the right position. It's the same thing. Trust me, Rae, keep this up for a while and you won't be able to do it any other way."
She grunted in response and set to work cutting the tomatoes, letting Beast Boy correct her finger position whenever her hands fell out of place. Her slices were uneven, and she had put the knife through at an angle, leaving some slices thick at the top and thin at the bottom. She glared at them.
"I messed up."
"Did you?" He grabbed a slice and popped it in his mouth. "Nope, tastes fine. You haven't messed up."
She shook her head. "No, I-"
He set mozzarella down in front of her, a thick, wet log of cheese. "Slice this too, as thick or thin as you want it."
"What are we making?"
"Food." He pointed at the mozzarella, walking to the cabinet to pull out a plate. "Slice it, Raven. Keep your fingers in."
She frowned, but listened, following the same procedure she had with the tomatoes and getting similar results. When she had looked up, she saw that Beast Boy had set up the counter with salt, pepper and two long battles with spouts at the top. He grinned at her some more and nudged the plate closer to her.
"Alright. Put the tomatoes and cheese here."
"But what-"
"Trust Professor Beast Boy," he said. Raven's lips twitched at the thought of "Professor Beast Boy". He continued, "Put them on the plate. All of them. However neatly or orderly as you want."
She frowned, doing as he said. She created neat rows of tomato and mozzarella. "There's a lot of "you want" in there. Isn't there some kind of recipe to follow?"
"Baking is math. Cooking is art. You make it the way it tastes good to you." He lifted the lid off the bowl of salt. "Alright, now, over the bowl to practice it first. Pinch the salt between your fingers, then sprinkle it back in."
"Why?"
"Because I want to make sure you can sprinkle."
She rolled her eyes and showed him that, while she wasn't going to sprinkle a masterpiece, she could most certainly evenly distribute salt across an area. He gestured to the plate and she sprinkled salt over her clumsily sliced items. He indicated the pepper mill and she ground pepper over the plate until he told her to stop. Next was one of the bottles. He smiled as she grabbed it.
"Olive oil. God's gift to man."
"I believe the olive tree was from Athena," she said with a snarl trying not to laugh when his brow wrinkled up in thought. "What do I do with this? Put it in a pan?"
"Over the plate, Rae." He grabbed her wrist as she went to pour, tilting the bottle gently so the oil trickled out slow. "There you go, Rae, nice and easy."
"Shouldn't I heat up the pan?"
"That's level two," he said calmly. He gave her the next bottle. "This is aged, balsamic vinegar – not the stuff they put on the table, but nice stuff. It's sweet. Pour it just like the oil. Really gently, really slow."
"What about there, where there's a pool of oil?" she said, pointing at a spot of oil that was far bigger than the others.
"You're fine. Just pour the vinegar."
She did. It was awkward and halting, but she slowly circled around the plate, leaving perfect sized lines and too small puddles and too large pools and she frowned at her sloppy, messy looking plate.
"Now what?"
"You enjoy what you made." He handed her a fork and knife. "This a caprese salad, though I don't have basil so we're short on greens, but no big! It tastes great without it."
She glared. "This isn't cooking. It's just some tomatoes and cheese."
He laughed. "Taste it. If you don't think that's a million times better than plain tomatoes and cheese I'll find something else for you to make."
Raven rolled her eyes, but obligingly cut a piece of her salad and popped it in her mouth, chewing slowly. She felt her face go red and admitted, "This is really good."
He took a bite himself and smiled. "Way to go, Raven, you have cooked some delicious food."