New Fic: Umami
Title: Umami
Author: joe_pike_junior, AKA Armchair Elvis.
Pairing: House/Wilson friendship, Wilson/Cuddy, Wilson/Amber, Wilson/wives.
Warnings: Spoilers for Season Four and Five finales, and a few swear words.
Summary: Wilson always found time to cook.
Disclaimer: House belongs to Fox. No infringement intended.
Notes: Thanks and thanks again to nightdog_barks for the beta, and for suggesting blintzes. Umami definition from the OED. 2,432 words.
Umami: a category of taste in food, corresponding to the flavour of glutamates... a fifth basic taste, in addition to sweet, sour, salt and bitter.
Wilson loved sweet things.
Sweet coffee, loaded with sugar and hazelnut syrup and whipped cream. Crème caramel. He learned to cook standing on a chair in his mother’s kitchen, carefully stirring fudge and cutting out cookies. He and his brothers would wait until his mother turned to stuff balls of raw dough into their mouths, giggling with their hands over their full mouths.
In med school he cooked simple food out of necessity - there wasn’t much time to cook and even less money for expensive ingredients. He slow-cooked casseroles in the crockpot his mother gave him, bought a good copper-bottomed pan to simmer pasta sauces. In the middle of books and lectures and phone calls from a brother who suddenly wasn’t there, he gained an admiration for sweet basil and the warm scent of garlic. He liked studying in the kitchen, spreading his books out on the table while something bubbled on the stove, filling the air with a warm steamy smell.
After he married, there were sunny Sunday mornings in bed. Later he’d get up and read notes while he reduced an orange sauce. Then he'd take out his thick cast-iron pan and make blintzes. He liked the plain, pancake smell of the crepes, because they reminded him of warm winter mornings at home, the smell of hot butter.
Later he’d sit with his wife on their ratty student couch, each cradling identical bowls of soft crepe and rich cream-cheese filling. Light orange-scented steam threaded around their faces.
Wilson's wife didn't cook much. She didn’t enjoy it like he did, and she was too busy working. Wilson was better at cooking -- better at being a doctor, too -- than he was at being married.
After they filed for divorce, Wilson’s wife got most of the furniture, the car. He took the saucepans.
…
Wilson loved comfort food, too.
He was trying to find the vegetable peeler. He raked through the utensil drawer looking for one, but none of the five or so that should be floating around were in there, not even the ridiculously expensive deluxe Swiss monstrosity he'd bought on impulse at the kitchen store a few weeks ago.
Wilson got sick of trying to find the goddamn peeler and took a paring knife out of the knife block. There were a bunch of large, waxy Sabago potatoes on the benchtop, and he took to peeling them savagely, staring down at his hands, the last conversation he’d had with Stacy running through his head on a permanent loop. Was there anything different he could have said? Was there anything different he or Stacy or House could have done? Not now, when everything was turned upside down and inside out.
Just like how driving while angry was a bad idea, operating a kitchen knife with a temper was dangerous, too. Wilson sank the paring knife into the end of his right thumb and flinched, throwing the stupid fucking potato into the sink where it belonged. Fucking Stacy. Fucking House. Fucking Victorinox paring knife.
“Shit,” Wilson said, and stared at the thin line of blood blooming on his thumb. It was stinging, but it wasn’t so bad. He was running it under the tap and getting ready to fumble a band-aid on it when Bonnie came to the door of the kitchen. She was wearing sweats. She was on a trendy food kick, Asian laksa and macrobiotic brown rice salad, things like that.
“James,” she said. “What are you doing?” She wiped at her sweaty brow with the neck of her t-shirt and went to the refrigerator for a bottle of water.
“What does it look like?” Wilson said, gesturing at the pound of lamb thawing on the benchtop and the potatoes on the chopping board. “I’m making a shepherd’s pie.”
Bonnie put her hands on her hips. She looked tired. Wilson didn’t come home until late last night. He felt more tired, more spread thin. Bonnie's self-righteousness didn’t take up much energy, but tending to your best friend did.
“It’s August. And you’re not from Wales or England or wherever shepherd’s pie is from.”
Wilson put the water on the stove to boil. While he waited he put water on the stove to boil, then chopped the potatoes into small pieces with a kitchen knife. Even with the throbbing thumb, he worked quickly and easily. He didn’t look at Bonnie, and she didn’t say anything. She sipped from the bottle of water. When he’d placed the potatoes in the water and put a little bit of sea salt in, Wilson turned around to look at her.
“Stacy left House.”
“So you’re making her a shepherd’s pie.” The words were almost scoffing, and that was annoying, but Bonnie’s face was soft.
“Him,” Wilson said, "I'm making it for House," and then he turned to the meat. When it was defrosted, he’d chop it finely and make an onion gravy, beef stock and flour. He’d add the lamb to that, with Worcestershire sauce and pepper. The meat would be tender, and the gravy would be thick.
“Oh, honey,” Bonnie said behind him. She softly kissed him on the back of the neck and left the kitchen. Her lips were cold. Wilson gave it another couple of months before she would start begrudging his visits to House, asking questions she already knew the answer to. House wasn’t going to get better for a long time, and Wilson was going to keep going over there.
He was going to keep cooking food and washing House’s clothes and sitting in front of House’s television. Maybe House was taking advantage of him, and maybe Wilson let him because he was guilty. Maybe Wilson spent more time at House’s now because he knew his marriage to Bonnie wasn’t going anywhere but downhill, anyway.
Wilson would make the pie, and brown it in the oven until the mashed potato was golden on top. Then he’d cover the Pyrex oven dish in aluminium foil and take the pie to House’s place. They’d eat it on his couch, probably, House slouched there in front of the television in sweatpants. The tastes wouldn’t be delicate, the rich gravy and the thick cheesy layer of mashed potato, but the pie would be hearty, and that was what Wilson wanted.
House probably wouldn’t eat much, but Wilson would eat two servings, because he was tired all the time now. He seemed to always have a hunger he couldn’t necessarily sate with protein and carbohydrate and iron. It was as if House’s lack of appetite, the result of a sudden lack of aerobic exercise and pain meds, had been transferred to Wilson.
Wilson watched the potatoes roil, then took out a flat pan and poured olive oil into it to heat while he chopped an onion. He fried the onion and breathed the sharp, oily smell of it.
There would be plenty of leftovers, enough for House to nuke for a couple of days. Shepherd’s pie made great leftovers.
Wilson breathed deep and turned to the lamb. He hoped it would be enough.
…
Wilson loved expensive food. It wasn’t the expense, so much. It was the knowledge that he was eating something decadent, something made with care, something delicate and unusual.
He liked eating out in expensive restaurants, and on a doctor’s salary (even with three alimony cheques going out every month) he could afford to. He read the reviews in the foodie section of the newspaper and he knew which chef was good at duck confit and which made a better sage crème brulee. He knew which restaurant was better to take a date to, and which restaurant was just expensive enough to impress a research donor or a headhunted doctor.
House, of course, found all this ridiculous. He sipped espresso and ate chocolate cake while Wilson sampled gourmet desserts. He liked good food, but only if Wilson was paying for it.
Cuddy was a much better person to take to a restaurant.
Wilson had the warm beef salad, and Cuddy had the spicy pumpkin soup. They talked nervously about work. For the main course Cuddy ordered chicken while Wilson had the pumpkin and truffle risotto. It had a strong, earthy flavour. He held out a mouthful on his fork for Cuddy to try.
She closed her eyes as if she wanted to focus completely on the flavour, and then she opened them again and said “I really don’t get what it is about truffles.”
Wilson tried her chicken. It was flavoured with lemon, with rocket on the side.
“I don’t get what’s so great about rocket,” he said, and they laughed.
Wilson couldn’t help but think, for a moment, of House and his mocking contempt for Wilson’s stuffed pepper recipe. For all his scoffing, House had polished off two portions. Wilson liked that feeling, when an experiment paid off, when a new recipe was appreciated.
The conversation wandered to mutual friends (mostly House and other people at the hospital), but still stayed annoyingly neutral. Cuddy was pleasant, sure, and appreciative of the food, but Wilson knew something was up. He was on uneven footing, in a sort of wasteland between their life as colleagues and their life as friends. There were no landmarks here.
They ordered coffee, but no dessert. Wilson spooned sugar into his short black and stirred it. Cuddy sipped at hers.
“So,” Wilson said. “Are you sure there’s nothing you want to tell me?” There were almond biscotti with the coffee, and Wilson dipped one in.
“James,” Cuddy said, and leaned forward slightly. Wilson watched her hand move toward his just a fraction, but then she leaned back and glanced toward her handbag, as if in her mind she was already walking out the door and back to her work. As if she'd made a decision in that instant. “Nothing. Never mind. Dinner was very nice.”
"It's always very nice here," Wilson said.
They talked of the Oncology budget, but with his belly full and his cheeks flushed Wilson felt too sleepy and content to talk of business.
Wilson paid. He walked Cuddy out, and she gave him a quick, nervous smile as she got into her car and drove away. It would have been easy to kiss her, as easy as it was to have her try the risotto, but Wilson knew that wasn’t what she came for. He had known that as soon as she drew her hand back and quickly sipped at her coffee.
Some hungers were easier to satisfy than others.
As he drove home he could taste the coffee in his mouth, the taste sharp and full but not unpleasant at all.
…
Wilson loved cooking for people. When he moved into Amber’s apartment, he found a large but mostly unused kitchen. The appliance she used the most often was the microwave. "I don't have time to cook," she said. Wilson always found time to cook.
He spent a lot of time cooking roast lamb and chicken, the kitchen full of the winter smells of sage and rosemary and nutmeg. He tried his hand at proper slow-cooked butter chicken and he made his own pesto, a sprig of fresh basil bright green and fragrant in his hands. He liked the way his kitchen smelled (the kitchen was his from the day he moved in), the way it was warm and inviting in a way it hadn’t been for a long time.
One weekend he experimented with dolmades, and he liked the way Amber smiled, her mock applause. After they’d eaten she said “You should taste my grandmother’s baklava,” running her hand up his belly and shucking his McGill sweatshirt.
Wilson never got around to tasting the baklava. He remembered it, though, whenever he saw thin pastry dripping with honey in a deli or a supermarket.
…
Wilson called House at Mayfield. He could hear strange noises in the background, something like the flat echo of a hospital ward, but not.
“I know you’re gonna say I’ve had this coming to me for years,” House said, “but the food really sucks.”
Wilson was taken aback - of all the things he’d expected House to say, of all the subjects he’d expected him to start off with, that wasn’t one of them.
“Really,” Wilson heard himself say, “What’s it like?” It was hard to believe he was discussing the food quality at a mental institution with House, but there he was, sitting at the phone in his office.
“I don’t know,” House said. “It just sucks.”
“Okay,” Wilson said. “But your diet consists of chips, Pop tarts, peanut butter sandwiches and hamburgers, so I don’t know how you’d be able to tell the difference, anyway.”
There was silence at the other end of the line. No talk of therapists, or patient privileges, or anything like that. After four days, should Wilson expect more change? Probably not. He remembered the stricken look on House’s face as he came into his office, and for a moment he imagined Amber standing beside House, listening to the phone, too. Could House see Amber, really? Was he seeing her now?
“-And it was kind of spicy.” House was talking.
“What?” Wilson looked down at the clean wooden surface of his desk. It felt like he should have more work to do, but all his appointments were over and all his charting was done. Funny, how work disappeared when you really wanted to do it.
“That peanut chicken sauce you used to make? With the peanut butter and the lime juice and the spices? That was nice.”
“Gado gado,” Wilson said remotely, thinking of a crowded Asian vegetable shop, verdant Chinese cabbage and crisp bean sprouts.
“Yeah,” House said. “I’d like some of that.”
He fell silent again, and Wilson waited to see if he was going to say anything more. While he waited, he opened his datebook to look for the slip of paper with Mayfield’s visiting hours on it.
Maybe it was worth a shot.
Author: joe_pike_junior, AKA Armchair Elvis.
Pairing: House/Wilson friendship, Wilson/Cuddy, Wilson/Amber, Wilson/wives.
Warnings: Spoilers for Season Four and Five finales, and a few swear words.
Summary: Wilson always found time to cook.
Disclaimer: House belongs to Fox. No infringement intended.
Notes: Thanks and thanks again to nightdog_barks for the beta, and for suggesting blintzes. Umami definition from the OED. 2,432 words.
Umami: a category of taste in food, corresponding to the flavour of glutamates... a fifth basic taste, in addition to sweet, sour, salt and bitter.
Wilson loved sweet things.
Sweet coffee, loaded with sugar and hazelnut syrup and whipped cream. Crème caramel. He learned to cook standing on a chair in his mother’s kitchen, carefully stirring fudge and cutting out cookies. He and his brothers would wait until his mother turned to stuff balls of raw dough into their mouths, giggling with their hands over their full mouths.
In med school he cooked simple food out of necessity - there wasn’t much time to cook and even less money for expensive ingredients. He slow-cooked casseroles in the crockpot his mother gave him, bought a good copper-bottomed pan to simmer pasta sauces. In the middle of books and lectures and phone calls from a brother who suddenly wasn’t there, he gained an admiration for sweet basil and the warm scent of garlic. He liked studying in the kitchen, spreading his books out on the table while something bubbled on the stove, filling the air with a warm steamy smell.
After he married, there were sunny Sunday mornings in bed. Later he’d get up and read notes while he reduced an orange sauce. Then he'd take out his thick cast-iron pan and make blintzes. He liked the plain, pancake smell of the crepes, because they reminded him of warm winter mornings at home, the smell of hot butter.
Later he’d sit with his wife on their ratty student couch, each cradling identical bowls of soft crepe and rich cream-cheese filling. Light orange-scented steam threaded around their faces.
Wilson's wife didn't cook much. She didn’t enjoy it like he did, and she was too busy working. Wilson was better at cooking -- better at being a doctor, too -- than he was at being married.
After they filed for divorce, Wilson’s wife got most of the furniture, the car. He took the saucepans.
…
Wilson loved comfort food, too.
He was trying to find the vegetable peeler. He raked through the utensil drawer looking for one, but none of the five or so that should be floating around were in there, not even the ridiculously expensive deluxe Swiss monstrosity he'd bought on impulse at the kitchen store a few weeks ago.
Wilson got sick of trying to find the goddamn peeler and took a paring knife out of the knife block. There were a bunch of large, waxy Sabago potatoes on the benchtop, and he took to peeling them savagely, staring down at his hands, the last conversation he’d had with Stacy running through his head on a permanent loop. Was there anything different he could have said? Was there anything different he or Stacy or House could have done? Not now, when everything was turned upside down and inside out.
Just like how driving while angry was a bad idea, operating a kitchen knife with a temper was dangerous, too. Wilson sank the paring knife into the end of his right thumb and flinched, throwing the stupid fucking potato into the sink where it belonged. Fucking Stacy. Fucking House. Fucking Victorinox paring knife.
“Shit,” Wilson said, and stared at the thin line of blood blooming on his thumb. It was stinging, but it wasn’t so bad. He was running it under the tap and getting ready to fumble a band-aid on it when Bonnie came to the door of the kitchen. She was wearing sweats. She was on a trendy food kick, Asian laksa and macrobiotic brown rice salad, things like that.
“James,” she said. “What are you doing?” She wiped at her sweaty brow with the neck of her t-shirt and went to the refrigerator for a bottle of water.
“What does it look like?” Wilson said, gesturing at the pound of lamb thawing on the benchtop and the potatoes on the chopping board. “I’m making a shepherd’s pie.”
Bonnie put her hands on her hips. She looked tired. Wilson didn’t come home until late last night. He felt more tired, more spread thin. Bonnie's self-righteousness didn’t take up much energy, but tending to your best friend did.
“It’s August. And you’re not from Wales or England or wherever shepherd’s pie is from.”
Wilson put the water on the stove to boil. While he waited he put water on the stove to boil, then chopped the potatoes into small pieces with a kitchen knife. Even with the throbbing thumb, he worked quickly and easily. He didn’t look at Bonnie, and she didn’t say anything. She sipped from the bottle of water. When he’d placed the potatoes in the water and put a little bit of sea salt in, Wilson turned around to look at her.
“Stacy left House.”
“So you’re making her a shepherd’s pie.” The words were almost scoffing, and that was annoying, but Bonnie’s face was soft.
“Him,” Wilson said, "I'm making it for House," and then he turned to the meat. When it was defrosted, he’d chop it finely and make an onion gravy, beef stock and flour. He’d add the lamb to that, with Worcestershire sauce and pepper. The meat would be tender, and the gravy would be thick.
“Oh, honey,” Bonnie said behind him. She softly kissed him on the back of the neck and left the kitchen. Her lips were cold. Wilson gave it another couple of months before she would start begrudging his visits to House, asking questions she already knew the answer to. House wasn’t going to get better for a long time, and Wilson was going to keep going over there.
He was going to keep cooking food and washing House’s clothes and sitting in front of House’s television. Maybe House was taking advantage of him, and maybe Wilson let him because he was guilty. Maybe Wilson spent more time at House’s now because he knew his marriage to Bonnie wasn’t going anywhere but downhill, anyway.
Wilson would make the pie, and brown it in the oven until the mashed potato was golden on top. Then he’d cover the Pyrex oven dish in aluminium foil and take the pie to House’s place. They’d eat it on his couch, probably, House slouched there in front of the television in sweatpants. The tastes wouldn’t be delicate, the rich gravy and the thick cheesy layer of mashed potato, but the pie would be hearty, and that was what Wilson wanted.
House probably wouldn’t eat much, but Wilson would eat two servings, because he was tired all the time now. He seemed to always have a hunger he couldn’t necessarily sate with protein and carbohydrate and iron. It was as if House’s lack of appetite, the result of a sudden lack of aerobic exercise and pain meds, had been transferred to Wilson.
Wilson watched the potatoes roil, then took out a flat pan and poured olive oil into it to heat while he chopped an onion. He fried the onion and breathed the sharp, oily smell of it.
There would be plenty of leftovers, enough for House to nuke for a couple of days. Shepherd’s pie made great leftovers.
Wilson breathed deep and turned to the lamb. He hoped it would be enough.
…
Wilson loved expensive food. It wasn’t the expense, so much. It was the knowledge that he was eating something decadent, something made with care, something delicate and unusual.
He liked eating out in expensive restaurants, and on a doctor’s salary (even with three alimony cheques going out every month) he could afford to. He read the reviews in the foodie section of the newspaper and he knew which chef was good at duck confit and which made a better sage crème brulee. He knew which restaurant was better to take a date to, and which restaurant was just expensive enough to impress a research donor or a headhunted doctor.
House, of course, found all this ridiculous. He sipped espresso and ate chocolate cake while Wilson sampled gourmet desserts. He liked good food, but only if Wilson was paying for it.
Cuddy was a much better person to take to a restaurant.
Wilson had the warm beef salad, and Cuddy had the spicy pumpkin soup. They talked nervously about work. For the main course Cuddy ordered chicken while Wilson had the pumpkin and truffle risotto. It had a strong, earthy flavour. He held out a mouthful on his fork for Cuddy to try.
She closed her eyes as if she wanted to focus completely on the flavour, and then she opened them again and said “I really don’t get what it is about truffles.”
Wilson tried her chicken. It was flavoured with lemon, with rocket on the side.
“I don’t get what’s so great about rocket,” he said, and they laughed.
Wilson couldn’t help but think, for a moment, of House and his mocking contempt for Wilson’s stuffed pepper recipe. For all his scoffing, House had polished off two portions. Wilson liked that feeling, when an experiment paid off, when a new recipe was appreciated.
The conversation wandered to mutual friends (mostly House and other people at the hospital), but still stayed annoyingly neutral. Cuddy was pleasant, sure, and appreciative of the food, but Wilson knew something was up. He was on uneven footing, in a sort of wasteland between their life as colleagues and their life as friends. There were no landmarks here.
They ordered coffee, but no dessert. Wilson spooned sugar into his short black and stirred it. Cuddy sipped at hers.
“So,” Wilson said. “Are you sure there’s nothing you want to tell me?” There were almond biscotti with the coffee, and Wilson dipped one in.
“James,” Cuddy said, and leaned forward slightly. Wilson watched her hand move toward his just a fraction, but then she leaned back and glanced toward her handbag, as if in her mind she was already walking out the door and back to her work. As if she'd made a decision in that instant. “Nothing. Never mind. Dinner was very nice.”
"It's always very nice here," Wilson said.
They talked of the Oncology budget, but with his belly full and his cheeks flushed Wilson felt too sleepy and content to talk of business.
Wilson paid. He walked Cuddy out, and she gave him a quick, nervous smile as she got into her car and drove away. It would have been easy to kiss her, as easy as it was to have her try the risotto, but Wilson knew that wasn’t what she came for. He had known that as soon as she drew her hand back and quickly sipped at her coffee.
Some hungers were easier to satisfy than others.
As he drove home he could taste the coffee in his mouth, the taste sharp and full but not unpleasant at all.
…
Wilson loved cooking for people. When he moved into Amber’s apartment, he found a large but mostly unused kitchen. The appliance she used the most often was the microwave. "I don't have time to cook," she said. Wilson always found time to cook.
He spent a lot of time cooking roast lamb and chicken, the kitchen full of the winter smells of sage and rosemary and nutmeg. He tried his hand at proper slow-cooked butter chicken and he made his own pesto, a sprig of fresh basil bright green and fragrant in his hands. He liked the way his kitchen smelled (the kitchen was his from the day he moved in), the way it was warm and inviting in a way it hadn’t been for a long time.
One weekend he experimented with dolmades, and he liked the way Amber smiled, her mock applause. After they’d eaten she said “You should taste my grandmother’s baklava,” running her hand up his belly and shucking his McGill sweatshirt.
Wilson never got around to tasting the baklava. He remembered it, though, whenever he saw thin pastry dripping with honey in a deli or a supermarket.
…
Wilson called House at Mayfield. He could hear strange noises in the background, something like the flat echo of a hospital ward, but not.
“I know you’re gonna say I’ve had this coming to me for years,” House said, “but the food really sucks.”
Wilson was taken aback - of all the things he’d expected House to say, of all the subjects he’d expected him to start off with, that wasn’t one of them.
“Really,” Wilson heard himself say, “What’s it like?” It was hard to believe he was discussing the food quality at a mental institution with House, but there he was, sitting at the phone in his office.
“I don’t know,” House said. “It just sucks.”
“Okay,” Wilson said. “But your diet consists of chips, Pop tarts, peanut butter sandwiches and hamburgers, so I don’t know how you’d be able to tell the difference, anyway.”
There was silence at the other end of the line. No talk of therapists, or patient privileges, or anything like that. After four days, should Wilson expect more change? Probably not. He remembered the stricken look on House’s face as he came into his office, and for a moment he imagined Amber standing beside House, listening to the phone, too. Could House see Amber, really? Was he seeing her now?
“-And it was kind of spicy.” House was talking.
“What?” Wilson looked down at the clean wooden surface of his desk. It felt like he should have more work to do, but all his appointments were over and all his charting was done. Funny, how work disappeared when you really wanted to do it.
“That peanut chicken sauce you used to make? With the peanut butter and the lime juice and the spices? That was nice.”
“Gado gado,” Wilson said remotely, thinking of a crowded Asian vegetable shop, verdant Chinese cabbage and crisp bean sprouts.
“Yeah,” House said. “I’d like some of that.”
He fell silent again, and Wilson waited to see if he was going to say anything more. While he waited, he opened his datebook to look for the slip of paper with Mayfield’s visiting hours on it.
Maybe it was worth a shot.