Cooking
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Author's note: Shoutout to Reader42Long for reviewing!
So, this is both very inspired and dedicated to Erestor, a writer on this site who is sadly not active anymore. I saw this one fic of hers where two characters were given the task to cook, but failed, badly, and instead served salad to everyone. The salad had poison ivy in it.
I looked for something like this on the PJO site, but could not, so I decided to write it. Enjoy!
"This is all your fault," Annabeth said lowly, and dangerously as she hoisted a tub of tomatoes to the table.
"How is this all my fault!" exclaimed Percy, throwing his hands out. The dark haired demigod was covered in flour, and it made it seem like he had just walked through a snowstorm even if it was in the middle of May.
"Well," Annabeth said, glaring hard at her boyfriend as she picked up a knife and a chopping board, "if you hadn't decided that it would be a good idea to show off to Jason, and in result flooded the Big House, maybe Mr. D wouldn't have deemed it okay to tell, no order, us to cook a special lunch. Not for the campers, though that would have been better in some cases, but for the Olympians themselves!"
After the Giant War, the gods had finally listened to sense and started interacting more with the camp. In some cases, it had been an improvement, and in others (like this) it was a very, very bad thing.
"Jason started it!" Percy protested, kneeling down on the floor and trying to figure how to turn on the stove. He got back up, and twisted the knob, jumping back when hot, blue flames started burning on the circle thing. "I thought fire was red."
"I don't care who started it," Annabeth said, still grumpy as she dragged out a sack of potatoes from the storage room. "What matters now is that we are two individuals who don't know how to cook and that we're locked in and have no way of getting out."
"We have the window," Percy pointed, trying to be helpful.
"I don't know about you, but I'm not jumping from a two-storey building," Annabeth said, rolling up her sleeves. "At least, not until you spontaneously become a son of Zeus. Pass me the spoon, and I'll mash the potatoes."
"Don't we have to wash them and boil them first?" asked Percy, dubiously as he turned out drawers looking for a suitable spoon. "And have you decided what we're making for them?" he asked, as he found it.
"Well... no," Annabeth admitted. "I'm following the 'do-it-as-it-comes' rule. I'm going to roll with it."
"But we can't do that!" Percy retracted his hand, placing the spoon out of reach of Annabeth. "I don't know about you, but I don't want to be smited for feeding the King of the Gods mashed potatoes and corn."
"Oh," Annabeth came to a realization. "He will smite us, won't he?"
"Glad you see my point," Percy remarked dryly. "Tell you what, let's make some soup and some cake. With some nectar and ambrosia. We'll be done then."
"That's an excellent idea, genius," said Annabeth, and the son of Poseidon preened. "Do you know how to make soup? I don't know, but we can't exactly go to the supermarket."
"The window-," Percy tried to suggest again, but Annabeth glared at him, her eyes like steel arrows.
"Okay, I get it," he deflated, as the blonde daughter of Athena nodded smugly. "And to answer your question, no, I do not."
Annabeth slumped over the table, her hair falling over her face like a blanket of sorrow. "Great," she sighed.
Percy came over to her. "Hey," he tried to comfort her. "There's no harm in trying, right?"
Annabeth raised her head. Her face was shining with determination. "You're right, Seaweed Brain," she exclaimed. In her eyes was a feverish light. Jumping up, she grabbed a knife and a chopping board. "Where are the tomatoes, again?"
An hour or so later...
The walls of the kitchen, which were usually blue, were now a reddish-violet. Tomato innards were everywhere, as a slab of butter lay melting on the floor next to a cup ton of salt and an entire container's worth of pepper. The room was swelteringly hot as Percy scrubbed a humungous pot charred with use. Near him on a stool, stood Annabeth, stirring a huge pot of soup. Her hair was pushed away from her forehead by a piece of cloth. Their faces were equally red and dripping with sweat.
After a short while, Percy somehow managed to wrestle with the pot and put it near the table in the middle of the room. He dragged a stool and stood near to Annabeth, peering over her shoulder to look at the giant cauldron of soup.
Annabeth raised the spoon to reveal black soup with the consistency of expired shaving cream.
"I don't think tomato soup is supposed to be black," Percy mused. He picked up a spoon and dipped it into the liquid, tasting it, promptly before making a face. "What did you add in this?"
"Tomatoes, salt, pepper, sugar, butter, cream, and this black substance that I found in one of the cupboards," Annabeth absent-mindedly listed.
"That!" horrified Percy exclaimed. "That's tar!"
"What!" The soup jerked dangerously, a little amount falling over the brim. Percy jerked.
"Did you not read the label?"
Annabeth blushed. "Dyslexia," she murmured.
Percy hummed with understanding, though with concern he looked at the rapidly shaking bowl, before deeming that it could wait.
"What do we do now?"
"I don't know," Percy shrugged. "Can gods get diseases?"
"Of course not!"
The cauldron was now releasing steam, as it jerked even more, splattering black goo on the already tomatoed walls and the pepper-butter-salt-tomato floor.
Percy eyes opened wide, as his warning came just a second late. "Look out!" he cried, pushing Annabeth under a table; and the cauldron exploded, and now it looked like someone had liquidised ash.
"Oh Gods!" moaned Annabeth, peeking her head out. "This will be torture to clean up."
"As if it wasn't already," Percy snarked.
"Percy!"
"All right, all right, sorry," the dark haired demigod raised his hands in surrender. "What do you say we do?"
"Cook something else, that's for sure," he muttered under his breath, smiling embarassedly at a pointed glance from Annabeth.
"We-e-e-ll, I suppose we return to the original plan- mashed potatoes and corn?"
Annabeth had moved towards the gigantic cauldron, peeking in. "There's a little left..."
"What!" Percy moved quickly, looking over her shoulder. "Oh great!"
There was a sound of a horn in the distance.
Two panicked pairs of eyes met each other, and they rushed.
The Olympian gods were fidgety. The food was late- the horn had blown minutes ago, and the nymphs and dryads hadn't appeared it. Zeus was contemplating smiting somebody, Poseidon was doodling sea waves on a piece of paper, Demeter was ranting about grain and corn to her daughter, Miranda, who looked vaguely uncomfortable. Hera was looking regal, glaring at the Zeus cabin, glaring at the campers- the, as she phrased it, 'breakers of marriage'; Apollo was muttering something to himself; Artemis was carving an arrow; and Hermes was attending to 'a hundred or more so messages'. Athena was solving complex mathematical problems on a napkin, Hephaestus was taking apart a pen due to boredom, Ares was surveying everything with an angry calmness over the top of his red sunglasses, Aphrodite was looking at everyone as if she was thinking of how best to give them a makeover. Which, knowing her, she was.
And most of all, Dionysus was smirking. That was always a bad sign, Chiron noted, stamping his hooves restlessly.
Then suddenly, two demigods appeared, holding up a big, blackened pot between themselves. One of them had blonde hair, and startingly grey eyes, her hair tied up and pushed back from her forehead. The other had dark hair sticking to his scalp and eyes like the sea. Both of them were covered in tomato and ash and some strange black, gooey liquid.
"Annabeth!" exclaimed Athena, as Poseidon called his son's name in alarm too. What in Hades were they doing?
Chiron watched in dumb confusion as the two logged the pot around, pouring some amount of the gooey liquid into the plates of the Gods. Ares poked it with a spoon.
Apollo looked at it skeptically, and remarked, "I don't think that's even edible."
The cauldron was empty now, kind of. The two demigods stood still, and bowed. "Lords and Ladies, please accept our apologies," Annabeth started.
"We have no experience in cooking," Percy added.
"Wait a minute," Poseidon butted in. "Who told you to cook?"
"Mr. D," Percy shrugged. Eleven great glares were directed at the young god, and he blanched.
Hermes looked over the top of his I-Phone, shrugged, and went back to writing an email.
I really hoped you liked that. Coming up next...more mortal AUs. I have a strange fixation with them nowadays. On writing them, that is.