Title: Meet Me In St. Louis, Louis
Summary: Installment 4 of the Mistletoe Chronicles. Tom Chandler sets out to impress Sasha Cooper. Post-season 4, canon-ish.
x
"Would you like a glass of wine?" Tom asked as he began slicing up tomatoes for the salad.
"That sounds amazing. If you tell me where the wine opener is, I can pour." Sasha smiled at Tom from her seat at the far end of the island that took up half of the mammoth kitchen, a space clearly designed for a dozen servants. A far cry from Sasha's efficiency kitchen, which was really just part of the living room of her very practical one-bedroom apartment located less than five minutes from the Presidential Mansion.
Sasha had instantly fallen in love with Tom's French Colonial in one of the oldest areas in St. Louis. The two-level wrap-around porch alone was enough to have her swooning but, even better than the original exterior was the fact that the interior of the house had been completely updated within the last twenty years to include all the modern conveniences. It was only after letting Sasha gush over the architecture for fifteen minutes that Tom admitted he had picked the house due to the three-acre lot and pre-existing security system, and actually found the house to be too big.
"Wine is in the fridge and the opener is in the third drawer to the left." Tom threw the tomatoes into the salad and checked the oven.
Sasha retrieved both the bottle, a chardonnay, and the opener and expertly popped the cork. Tom might not be a romantic, but he did have a good memory for details. Sasha couldn't recall the last time she had a nice chilled glass of chardonnay.
"I didn't know that you could cook," she said, enjoying a sip of the smooth liquid as it splashed against the back of her throat. Between the Red Flu and then the Red Rust, good wine was hard to come by, and she wondered where Tom came up with this bottle.
"You don't like charcoaled hamburgers?" Tom replied with a chuckle. Referencing a date-gone-wrong from many years before. One that ended on a much better note than it began, with ice cream and a scorching kiss on the beach.
Tom pulled what appeared to be chicken breasts out of the oven. Again Sasha was impressed. Although the food shortages were never as bad in the United States as elsewhere in the world, wine, lettuce, tomatoes, and chicken were certainly no longer everyday fare. Sasha glanced around the kitchen wondering what he might have come up with for dessert, her mouth already watering at the thought of cake or cookies or chocolate.
Sasha was brought back to the present by Tom's voice as he explained. "Darien had a lot of complications when she was pregnant with Sam. She was on bedrest for almost four months, and then Sam came six weeks early. I probably would have lived on fast food but the Doctor said it was important for Darien and the baby to have a variety of healthy options, especially proteins. So I had to learn to cook."
"And Tom Chandler always succeeds at a mission," Sasha added, her tone light despite immediately recognizing how hard that time must have been for him. Darien flat on her back, Tom able to do nothing to help his wife and unborn son except reinvent himself as a chef. Strange to realize that, as much history as Sasha had with Tom, there were huge swathes of his life that she knew very little about. "Sam seems very healthy now."
"He is." A note of pride colored Tom's voice as gathered the chicken and salad, walking down the hall towards the formal dining room, which stood at the front of the house overlooking the gardens. Grabbing the wine and both glasses, Sasha followed. The table was set for two, complete with candles and a tasteful flower arrangement, and a cozy fire was burning in the corner. Sasha allowed Tom to seat her before he returned to the kitchen for something. She smelled something familiar, the scent pricking at her memory, but Sasha couldn't identify it. Perhaps it was something from the gardens. Sasha knew little to nothing about foliage, especially the foliage in St. Louis, a city she had actually never been to before the pandemic.
"Sorry, no butter," Tom apologized as he returned, setting a small bowl with bread and oil on the table before taking his own seat.
Sasha waved off apology with a teasing smile. Milk had been prioritized for those under ten, making dairy products even more scarce than vegetables. "Apparently there are some rules that even Thomas Chandler must follow."
Glancing at the food before them, Tom laughed. "I did have to do a bit of bartering with Mike and Russ to come up with chicken and wine. And I traded Kara some chicken for the tomatoes. Apparently Debbie turned their garage into a nursery but so far the only thing she's managed to grow is tomatoes and...
"Danny hates them," Sasha finished for him. Danny's hatred of tomatoes was well known on the Nathan James, although he loved ketchup, an inconsistency that Sasha found puzzling. Was there really a difference between spaghetti sauce and ketchup?
"Apparently Frankie is the same." Tom shrugged. "Genetics are funny."
"Their loss is our gain," Sasha replied, rubbing at an itch on her nose. She helped herself to one of the chicken breasts and half the salad. There was no way she was going to waste this feast. "This looks delicious. Besides, it's always good to brush up on your negotiating skills."
"You did make me wait three months before agreeing to this date. I wanted to do something memorable in the hope that you might want to repeat it," Tom explained. And while his voice was light, there was also a note of uncertainty. Something that Sasha was unused to seeing in Tom.
Sasha finished chewing a piece of the chicken which, she noted, was perfectly cooked. She wondered what other skills that Tom might have picked up over the past fifteen years. "I needed some time to think, Tom. About Fletcher. About what happened... achoo." Mortified, Sasha grabbed her napkin. Cloth, she noticed, high-end. Probably came with the house. "Sorry about that."
"So long as you aren't allergic to me," Tom replied, the joke immediately falling flat when Sasha sneezed again.
"I don't...achoo...know what...achoo," Sasha stopped trying to talk, her eyes darting around the room looking for the cause of the... Her gaze fell on the gorgeous flower arrangement that she had, until this moment, assumed was fake. "Is that mistle-achoo-toe?"
"Yes. The florist recommended adding a few real plants to the fake ones and there aren't that many options these days. Something about the scent tricking our minds into thinking that the flowers are real even though they aren't..." Tom stopped abruptly. "Please don't tell me that you're allergic to mistletoe."
"I am." Now Sasha was laughing and sneezing as Tom jumped up, propping the French doors open to air out the room. "Bath-achoo-room?" she managed to choke out.
"Down the hall on the left, just before the kitchen," Tom replied, grabbed the sneeze-inducing bouquet from the table.
Five minutes later, no longer sneezing and having pressed a wet washcloth against her eyes and nose long enough that they were only mildly red, Sasha returned to the dining room. Stepping inside, the first thing she noticed was the smell of melting plastic. She glanced towards the fireplace, where Tom stood next to the smoking remains of what appeared to have formerly been a flower arrangement. A pity, really, the combination of roses and pinecones were lovely.
"Pretty sure that you aren't supposed to burn plastic," she observed.
Tom blushed. He actually blushed. "So much for a romantic evening where I would sweep you off your feet and convince you to give me another chance."
Laughing, Sasha moved towards him, setting a hand on his chest. "I don't know about that. Dinner, wine, even a fire. Seems to me that you checked most of the boxes."
"Only most of the boxes?" Tom asked, eyebrow lifting as he slid an arm around Sasha's waist.
"Mmmmm..." she smiled up at him. "Well, there is the matter of dessert..."
Leaning down, Tom pressed his lips against hers. Softly, gently. Coaxing rather than demanding a response. Sasha rose on her toes, wrapping her arms around Tom's neck as she deliberately deepened the kiss. Letting him know, without words, that she had already made her decision about that second date, as well as a third and fourth and fifth. A moment later they parted, both smiling, and Sasha raised a hand to touch his cheek.
"You never answered my question," she murmured. When Tom raised an eyebrow, she elaborated. "About dessert."
Tom chuckled, leaning down to steal another kiss. "I guess that you will just have to wait to find out."