[Part 02] Let's Get Cooking

Cheese Melt was so excited he just couldn’t contain himself. He was pacing the dining room, going from the window, to the table, around it, looking at all the reusable bags filled to the brim with artisan cheeses, breads, deli meat, vegetables and sauce ingredients. 

Wrench, who was doing his level best not to be irritated at this flurry of activity from his husband, simply finished up washing his hands and leaned on the kitchen island, waiting for Cheese Melt to flutter over to him, rocking from side to side with excitement. 

For this, he’d asked his husband to be in humanoid form, as he didn’t want any fur in the food. Normally quite well-dressed, Cheese Melt decided to dress comfortably, preferring a large t-shirt which obscured the shorts he wore with it. The way the clothes engulfed him, he looked rather twiggy, not that Wrench minded. 

And what was “this”? Well, it was their date night. Wrench wasn’t much of a romantic, but Cheese Melt was so earnest and sweet that he felt, every once in a while, he could do his best by Melt to really give him a nice experience. 

Although, this dinner date was a compromise. Wrench didn’t like being in restaurants. There were too many people, too much noise and he hated waiting for the food to come out, especially when he was hungry. 

They’d gone to their local market to purchase a few things, although Wrench knew what he was making, he kept Cheese Melt in the dark. He was quite the intelligent Crook, an academic of the highest standing, but he still didn’t know much about food. After all, Cheese Melt could eat just about anything, though he was developing a more refined palette. Wrench blamed his uppity professor friends for that. Used to be Wrench could make Cheese Melt a grilled cheese and he’d eat it with gusto. Now, well, he had opinions on what he wanted to eat. 

But that wasn’t terrible in its own right. Wrench did like to challenge himself to make better and better food, showing his husband that he absolutely could cater to his “refined” palate. A very big part of Wrench liked providing and taking care of his husband. 

“Are you going to tell me what you’re making?” Cheese Melt asked, trying his best not to wheedle. He even gave Wrench his best liquidy puppy-eyes. 

Not that it did any good. Wrench simply shooed him away and began collecting the bags, separating out the ingredients on the kitchen island. 

“Go find a bottle of wine, red, and two glasses. We’ll drink as I cook,” Wrench said. Better to give Cheese Melt something to do, or his curious nature would get the better of him and he’d pester Wrench until he blew. 

Disappointed at not being told, but excited at having a task, and an enjoyable one, Cheese Melt skipped off to rifle through their wine rack. He’d bought one a year after becoming a professor. The amount of gifted wine they owned had been collecting in an unused corner of their home, and Cheese Melt just couldn’t let that be. Even Wrench had admitted, once he’d built the rack and Cheese Melt stocked it, that it was a nice addition to the home. 

As Cheese Melt hemmed and hawed over the wines, trying to find one that would pair well with the amount of cheese he’d spied in the bags, Wrench began to prepare the ingredients and his cooking surface. 

First he turned on the stove, letting it preheat to the desired temperature, then he set a cast iron pan on the stove, turning the burner on to a medium heat. 

He had to cook the meat first, and carefully separated out slices of prosciutto, before daubing a generous amount of butter into the cast iron pan. He waited for it to fully melt before he laid out the thinly cut slices. Those would cook fast, but thankfully Wrench was very quick about dicing the tomatoes they’d purchased. For now, he set them aside in a bowl, just in time to receive a glass of wine offered triumphantly by his excited husband. 

“Let me know what you think,” Cheese Melt chirped. 

Wrench brought the glass to his lips and took a generous sip, his brows lifting at the taste. As if to check they were drinking red wine, he pulled the glass away from his mouth to stare at it. 

“This is good, it tastes like… berries?” he said, and set the glass side to flip the slices of prosciutto. 

Cheese Melt, his dreads tied back per Wrench’s instruction, leaned over the island to look at what was being cooked in the pan. He thought he remembered the name of that meat… it started with a p… pro-something. 

“Mhm, it was gifted to me by Lana,” he said. That was one of his co-workers that he got along with, a gravent, and another member of his friend group that his husband absolutely did trust. 

Wrench reached up and nudged Cheese Melt’s head back. “You’ll get a grease burn like that, come over on this side if you want to be nosy,” he said. 

Taking Wrench’s direction, Cheese Melt circled the island and looked over Wrench’s shoulder (he wasn’t very tall and it was easy to loom at a distance). He watched as Wrench removed some leaves from a stem, and chopped them finely, dumping them into the bowl with the tomatoes. 

Before removing the prosciutto from the pan, Wrench took another sip of the frankly fantastic tasting wine– he’d have to thank Lana personally. 

The cooked slices went onto a plate with a slice of bread on it to soak up the grease, and more uncooked slices went in the pan. 

While they cooked, Wrench peeled, sliced and chopped some fresh garlic, dumping that into a smaller bowl and set aside to be cooked in the pan once the prosciutto was done. 

Cheese Melt watched Wrench remove and replace the slices of meat at least three more times before he added some olive oil to the pan and the garlic he’d just chopped up. While that cooked, he watched Wrench grab a strainer and set it over the sink, dumping the tomato and basil mixture into it to toss with salt. 

Gosh, he was just so talented, the way he could just turn away from one task to see to another, and everything seemed to be working for him as if he had an internal tempo. 

Wrench, knowing Cheese Melt would want to help, opened up a container of ricotta cheese, portioned out a fourth cup of olive oil, a pinch of salt, and gestured to the food processor. “Melt, dear, blend these things for me until it's nice and fluffy,” he said. 

Cheese Melt perked up from where he was leaning and hurried to do as he was bidden, happy that he could help, and very interested in how this cheese would taste once all whipped up. 

They both flinched at the initial noise of the food processor, but were able to ignore the noise as Cheese Melt waited for the cheese to become fluffy, as Wrench indicated it would. 

With Cheese Melt distracted, Wrench took a bigger swig from his wineglass and finished preparing the tomato portion of the bruschetta, taking the garlic off the fire, and dumping it, oil and all into the bowl with the tossed tomato basil mixture. All finished with that, now he had to brush the ciabatta bread on both sides with the olive oil and set it to toast on a baking sheet in the oven for a few minutes. 

In that time, he sliced up the myriad cheeses and meats they’d bought, arranging them on a lovely wooden serving board. 

It almost became deafeningly quiet when the processor stopped running. Dutifully, Cheese Melt came over with the contents, showing Wrench. “Looks good, could you spoon that into that small bowl there, no not that one, yes that one,” he directed. 

When Cheese Melt was finished, he rinsed out the processor and put it away, and began to clean up the empty bags, husks of garlic, pieces of tomato core, and bread wrappers. Wrench was an amazing cook, but he cooked messy, and Cheese Melt, well… he liked things being neat. He blamed it on Wrench being a mechanic and used to the mess of a job. 

Once he was finished cleaning up behind Wrench, he zoned in on the charcuterie board. There were cheeses and meats, olives, grapes, berries, dried apricots, pistachios, sesame seed crackers and oh was that honey comb? 

He looked over at Wrench, who had gone over to the stove to take the bread out, and snatched a grape, popping it into his mouth just as Wrench turned around, toasted bread in hand. He squinted his eyes at Cheese Melt, who smiled, his mouth closed around the grape. 

“Get outta here you thief,” Wrench barked, a grin on his face as Cheese Melt skipped out of the kitchen giggling and chewing. 

He set the bread down on the unused half of the stovetop, letting it cool before attempting to assemble the bruschetta. 

Their fancy dinner almost put together, Wrench rested against the countertop, sipping the wine Cheese Melt had poured for him. 

Cheese Melt, who couldn’t stay gone for long, came back with the bottle, and dutifully refilled Wrench’s glass along with his own. 

“Are you going to tell me what you’ve made besides the charcuterie board?” he asked, even sweeter in tone than last time. 

Wrench grinned around the lip of his wine glass. “It’s called bruschetta,” he said, relenting to Cheese Melt’s eagerness. 

“Oh? Is that the tomatoes and cheese?” Cheese Melt asked. 

“No not necessarily, it’s the tomato mixture on the bread, the cheese is there to keep it from sliding off, and because we both like cheese quite a bit,” he explained. 

“Then what about this uh.. pro… pros…” Cheese Melt said, struggling with the name for the cooked slices of prosciutto. 

“Prosciutto,” Wrench provided.
“Yes that, prosciutto, what about it?” he asked.
“Oh that? Well I’m going to toast up some of this lovely ciabatta bread with oodles of butter, and then I’m going to melt some of this mozzarella on top of it, and when it’s nice and gooey, I’m going to stick this prosciutto on top, put another toasted slice of bread and squish it down, just the way you like–” Wrench explained, his tone like that of a story teller getting to the good part. 

“Oh my god, my favorite, a cheese melt… with prosciutto!” Cheese Melt cried. 

Wrench, unable to keep it in, laughed at his husband. Oh he was just the cutest sometimes. His energy was difficult to match, so Wrench didn’t try, but he sure did enjoy how easily Cheese Melt could show his excitement and joy. Wrench himself was more reserved, a product of his upbringing, perhaps. Rarely did he ever get excited, and never as excited as Cheese Melt. 

Perhaps it was having to fight to survive, traveling from place to place and not knowing the kind of stability and peace one could get from settling down in one spot. He wouldn’t even have stopped traveling were it not for his injury, and yet here he was with a successful business, a happy marriage and a warm, loving home, with an equally as warm, loving husband. 

Taking a sip of his wine, he let his husband embrace him from behind, setting his chin on his shoulder to watch him make the cheese melts of which he was so fond. 

He set his glass down, waddled over to the stove and began preparation of the third part of their meal. Every so often, he’d reach up and feed Cheese Melt a scrap of mozzarella, smiling to himself at the hums of delight that tickled his ear. 

“Okay Melt, just about done, why don’t you set the table?” he asked, putting the last cheese melt on the serving plate. 

“You can count on me,” Cheese Melt said, and grabbed up two plates, two forks, the wine bottle and the two glasses, somehow all at once, heading for the table to set it up just like Wrench asked. 

Oh, this dinner was just going to be so good!