Disclaimer: I don't own Trials of Apollo.
Day 9: Feast For the Gods
Jerry's mum was a baker. He'd grown up on all sorts of cakes and pastry-related treats, although his own attempts at recreating her masterpieces had always fallen short. He had fond memories of sitting in the kitchen, sometimes on a stool and sometimes on the counter, kicking his feet excitedly as he licked fingers and spoons clean, and sometimes an entire bowl if he got to it before his mum did.
The cakes he'd 'helped' to bake, as a kid, definitely weren't as good to eat as the ones his mum had baked without his interference, but it had been fun.
Jerry was very much not a baker. Maybe it was dyslexia making the numbers and measurements seem like a foreign language, maybe it was the ADHD making him too jittery, more interested in eating the batter out of the bowl than waiting for it to finish, but his attempts always came out a little wonky, over-baked or under-baked and half the time chewy when they weren't supposed to be.
Part of him didn't want to be good at baking, anyway. That was his mum's thing and the idea of being able to do cakes as well as her just felt wrong.
None of that meant that Jerry wasn't decent in the kitchen the rest of the time, though. Pancakes might be a risk, coming out too thick and rubbery or too thin and seared to taste of anything except burnt, but somehow the batter for toad in the hole was easy.
He had the chipolatas sizzling away in the oven already, dumped in a splash of oil and decorated with crisp rosemary he could smell even through the closed door. It was almost distracting, because it smelt good, but Jerry reminded himself that it wasn't cooked yet, and food poisoning sucked, and that was good enough to keep his hands away from the oven gloves and instead busy whisking together the concoction of flour, eggs, and a slow trickle of milk as the uncooked batter began to form.
Cooking was fun to do, when he had the time for it. Adult life wasn't the kindest at giving time for proper cooking, not when he had practice and training and coaching and then more practice again, interspersed with matches and travelling for matches – and if Jerry had his way, made it to his dream – he'd have even less time.
At the moment, he only played for local leagues, travelling up and down England but not leaving it. If (when, he knew he was being scouted) he made the national team, he'd be spending weeks at a time in other countries. The odd trip back to the States, perhaps. Near-constant journeys out to Australia, the West Indies, and Pakistan.
It would be amazing, but cooking would become a rarer and rarer pastime, which was a little bit of a shame. There was something satisfying about eating something he'd made from scratch himself.
There was something even more satisfying about sharing that food with other people, other loved ones, and that was one of the reasons he was mixing milk into a flour-and-egg mix while skinny sausages started to brown in his oven right then, even though he'd had a long day of training and was pretty tired.
He had a visitor, and no amount of tired muscles and inclinations to shove something in the microwave for two minutes and call it a meal was going to stop him from giving them proper, home-made food.
Apollo was hovering in the doorway, watching. He'd offered to help, offered to do it for him, but Jerry had shot all of those suggestions down. He wasn't a young kid reliant on adults, or immortals, for survival anymore. He was an adult, and if he wanted to pay his dad back for his help over the years by cooking him a meal, then that was what he was going to do. Besides, his mum would have his head if she heard whispers of him letting a guest help with the cooking. Even if said guest was his father.
Browned sausages left the oven, fat sizzling in the heat, and Jerry carefully – because hot oil and fat hurt if it got on skin – poured in the batter mix over the top, listening to the hissing and spitting as cool liquid met scorching.
Then the whole thing went back in the oven, and he tugged off the oven gloves, tossing them carelessly on the side where they could stay until it was time to take the finished food out again, before turning to face his dad.
"Are you sure there's nothing I can do to help?" Apollo pushed. Jerry reached out for the tomato-shaped timer that lived on top of the fridge and twisted it until it was set for half an hour. Roughly. That was one of the joys of cooking, rather than baking; things didn't have to be exact. As long as it was cooked enough to not be raw and threatening food poisoning, and not so long it became a lump of charcoal, it was pretty forgiving.
Much more Jerry's speed.
"Nope," he said sunnily. "It's all under control." To his credit, if Apollo didn't believe him, there wasn't a single sign of it on his face. Then again, Apollo made a point of listening to his kids, so Jerry was confident that Apollo did, in fact, believe him.
He pulled a stool out from the counter that doubled as his dining table, because tiny studio flats in the middle of London didn't have space for actual dining rooms, and gestured towards it before dragging out the second stool and sitting on it himself. Apollo wasn't slow to accept the invitation.
Jerry had had a few dreams recently, ones he wanted to run past his dad to check he was aware of them, or at least to get his opinion on what they might be, and the conversation ran long and deep. He was rudely interrupted from discussing the possible significances of croaking crows over a graveyard filled with living people – that dream had been particularly disturbing, and Jerry was mostly desensitised towards death-based imagery thanks to his brother-in-law which just made it worse when it still creeped him out – by the hoarse and throaty trill of the tomato as its timer ran down to zero.
That thing was easily loud enough to wake the dead, that was for sure. Jerry grabbed it with the same extreme prejudice he always did – even though it was his favourite timer for that exact reason; there was no missing it and accidentally leaving food to burn in the oven when it trilled like that – and yanked it all the way to its stop, silencing it, before tugging on oven gloves and pulling out the casserole dish.
The toad in the hole looked perfect, which was a relief as much as Jerry had already known it would come out just fine, and not even because Apollo wouldn't let it go wrong if he had any say in the matter.
Two slightly chipped plates were fished out from the cupboard above the sink and promptly found themselves laden with half the food apiece. Ten seconds of rummaging around the cutlery drawer had knives and forks located and placed on the plates, too, before they landed on the counter-come-dining-table.
"Dinner time," he said, a little unnecessarily given Apollo was right there and it was only the two of them. His dad smiled at him.
"It looks delicious," he said, and he was right because it did, Jerry was pleased with how it had turned out. "Thank you."
Thanks for reading!
Tsari
