JL Fic: Boiling Bones
***
Boiling Bones
a Justice League story
by Merlin Missy
Copyright 2005
G
***
Summary: Every family has rituals.
Disclaimer: DC/Warner Bros. own the characters. I'm
just taking them out for a spin.
For the "John Stewart's backstory" challenge. Thanks
go out to XFfan_2000 for the beta; Tylure, for the
technical assist; Tamnonlinear, for putting the idea
(and the title) in my head in the first place; and my
sweetie, for following my directions to the letter.
***
The warm smells of roasting turkey and gravy hit him as
he opened the front door, and John's mouth watered just
a little. He shooed Rex inside, then helped him shrug
out of his jacket and boots. He heard plates and
silverware clatter onto the table.
"It's almost ready," Shayera called from their rarely-
used dining room. "Go wash. I'm sure you're both
filthy."
John shrugged and looked down at Rex, who looked up and
grinned, a few dead leaves sticking in his short dark
hair. Rex was still learning how to catch, and the
football had landed in the piled leaves more than once.
And since half the fun of piled leaves was jumping in
them .... "C'mon, kiddo."
A few minutes later, hands and faces freshly scrubbed,
the pair entered the dining room to the sight of a
small, golden-brown turkey on a platter, surrounded by
all the usual fixings: mashed potatoes in a dish, a
small tureen of gravy, stuffing, corn, rolls, and a
still-wiggling cylindrical mass of cranberry sauce.
Shayera looked pleased with herself, but tired.
Rex climbed into his own chair, eyes wide at the
spread. "Wow, Mom!"
John slid up to her, kissed her on the cheek. "This
looks fantastic."
She shrugged. "I followed the directions on the boxes
just like you said." John kept his wince entirely
internal; real mashed potatoes were always better than
boxed, but she had insisted on preparing everything
today. He suspected much of the reason was hormonal
but didn't dare say so. "The turkey was a lot easier
than I thought it would be," she continued, gathering
plates to spoon out the potatoes.
"You followed my note, right?" he asked, picking up the
carving tools. He'd left the turkey marinating for a
day in a nice garlic brine and he had written down
quick instructions for her before he'd taken Rex out
earlier in the day.
She nodded. "To the letter." He caught Rex's
reassured expression, and rather hoped she hadn't
noticed. There were a lot of reasons why John did the
bulk of the cooking in the family.
Something had been tickling at the back of his mind for
a while, and only as he went to carve did it finally
click. "Dear, the turkey's upside-down."
"The legs are on the bottom."
"Yes. But the wings are supposed to be facing up. So
the breast is up when it cooks."
"You didn't say anything about that in your note." He
knew that tone. That was a tone that would end with
her retrieving her mace from the hall closet and
tenderizing his skull.
"It's fine," he said. "Just something to remember for
next time." He made the first slice in the turkey,
near the spine rather than the breast in consideration
of its unusual arrangement. Something else occurred to
him. "What did you do with the giblets?"
"Giblets?" she asked, dishing some stuffing onto Rex's
plate.
"Giblets, heart, liver. They were stuffed inside the
turkey. You took them out when ... "
"That wasn't in the note, either."
John stared at the bird for a long moment. "Oh."
***
After dinner, John cleared the table and removed the
leftovers back to the kitchen. As he'd expected, it
looked as though she'd detonated a small bomb in this
rare domestic endeavor, but at second glance, it wasn't
so bad; the crumbs and splatters would clean easily
with a little elbow grease. The potatoes, stuffing and
corn went into plastic containers, the rolls into a
bread bag, the gravy into a jar. This left a few bites
of cranberry sauce, which he ate, and a lot of turkey
on the bone. Also an unexpectedly cooked turkey neck,
gizzard and so on.
It still amused him that Shayera ate chicken and
turkey, but she'd pointed out that he ate beef and pork
without consideration of his fellow mammals, so he
supposed she had a point. At least most of their meals
were what he'd consider "normal" in that he could
identify the components and they were as a rule cooked.
"Rex, can you come in here and help me?"
"Okay, Dad!" came the responding shout. A few moments
later, his son walked into the kitchen.
"You sure you don't want me in there?" Shayera called
from the living room.
"We'll be fine," John said. She needed to stay off her
feet more, he thought privately. After all the trouble
she'd had carrying Rex, John really would prefer she
take it easy this time around.
"Get me the big pot, please." Rex scrambled over to
the cabinet with the large pots and pans, and brought
out the pot they used to make spaghetti. "Thanks."
John filled it most of the way with water, then set it
on the back burner to warm.
"What's that for?"
"I'll show you in a few minutes. First, we have to get
the meat off this bird."
***
Gran's fingers tremble as she pulls strips of meat from
the chicken bones. Johnny is quiet beside her, pulling
little bits off the ribs with his own nimble fingers,
but for all his diligence, Gran still manages to clean
her bones more thoroughly. She pops each bone, big and
little, into the simmering pot.
Johnny won't tell anyone else, but this is his favorite
part of dinner. Gran's cooking is the best, whether
she's roasting a chicken or broiling pork chops, but
after the dishes are cleared and it's time to debone
the leftovers? That's even better than eating the
food, sometimes. The chicken gets parceled out: a dish
for good sandwich chicken, and a dish for good
casserole chicken, and a hot pot for the skin and bones
and finely-diced cooked giblets.
The kitchen is the warmest room of Gran and Grandad's
house, and when Johnny rushes in after being outside
all day, his glasses steam up and the whole place is
covered in a glowing fog. Add a pot of boiling bones
and it's like a wizard's nook, like they're casting
spells. They're pulling out of dead bones the makings
of the best soups he's ever tasted. It's like magic.
Johnny's bright enough not to talk about magic, not
under Grandad's roof. He's learned that sort of thing
gets a boy sent to bed with a sore bottom, ear pressed
against the wall to hear Grandad storm at Uncle James
about "showing the boy those trashy funnybooks again."
It's taken some time for Johnny to get used to the
rules here. Mama never complains about what her son
reads as long as he's reading, but Mama's in the
hospital again getting radiation. While Johnny doesn't
know it yet, she's not going to leave the hospital this
time. He's going to live with his grandparents until
the spring of his senior year when they pass within a
month of each other, and then the recruiter who comes
to his highschool will tell him there's another way to
pay for college if he's strong enough to take it.
Innocent of all these thing for now, Johnny keeps his
thoughts quiet, and only makes up the words to the
secret magic soup spells when he's alone in his head.
The pot is simmering as Grandad comes into the kitchen
to get himself some coffee. "I don't know why you
insist on showing him this stuff."
"I don't insist," says Gran, fetching him some cream.
"John's in here because he wants to learn to cook.
Isn't that right, John?" Johnny nods. Gran pets his
hair and gives him a smile.
Grandad shakes his head. "A man doesn't need to learn
to cook, Johnny. A man just needs to marry a girl who
can cook." Grandad gives Gran a squeeze and a kiss to
the cheek before he shuffles out of the kitchen with
his coffee.
Gran waits until he's out of earshot before she says,
"John, a man who knows how to cook can marry any girl
he pleases."
"Yes, Gran," he says, sticking out his tongue a little.
His grandma is great and his mama's wonderful, but most
girls are, well, girls. Getting married is the
farthest things from his mind right now. Instead, he
tiptoes to the stove and peeks over the rim of the soup
pot. Gran always does her big pot cooking on the back
burners because when she was a girl, her best friend's
little sister got scalded to death by a pot of water
left unattended. The kitchen gives and it takes away,
Gran says when Grandad can't hear her.
It's giving now, as Gran pulls two pieces of fudge from
the tin and hands one to Johnny. He understands this
is a rare treat, one they're not sharing with Grandad,
and that makes it another secret to mark and keep.
When they finish their fudge, Gran declares the soup
stock is ready. Steam fills the kitchen as she
carefully strains the stock into her second pot. Then
they go through the bones and the rest in the strainer,
pulling off the last tiny bites of meat to pop into the
stock. Everything is hot hot hot to touch, but Johnny
wouldn't have this any other way. The second pot is
already boiling again as they put in the final bits of
chicken; Gran will let it boil down another few minutes
while she adds salt and pepper and tarragon and sage.
The stock is a lovely brown and smells like Heaven.
No, not Heaven. Home.
***
The scent filled the kitchen as John threw in the last
of the seasonings. He'd watched his grandmother make
the stock countless times, but no matter how many times
he'd altered his recipe, it was never exactly the same
as hers. But it was his own, he supposed, and when Rex
eventually did his own cooking, that would be a little
different too, and so the recipe wouldn't go on so much
as evolve.
"What's funny?" Rex asked, his chin resting on his
hands.
"Nothing. I was just remembering something my grandma
said."
"About what?"
"About why I'm going to show you how to cook."
"So Mom doesn't accidentally poison me when you're
offworld."
John chuckled. "You know better than to say that where
she can hear, right?"
Rex grinned, as John rummaged around in the
refrigerator for the tin of fudge he'd made last week.
***
Boiling Bones
a Justice League story
by Merlin Missy
Copyright 2005
G
***
Summary: Every family has rituals.
Disclaimer: DC/Warner Bros. own the characters. I'm
just taking them out for a spin.
For the "John Stewart's backstory" challenge. Thanks
go out to XFfan_2000 for the beta; Tylure, for the
technical assist; Tamnonlinear, for putting the idea
(and the title) in my head in the first place; and my
sweetie, for following my directions to the letter.
***
The warm smells of roasting turkey and gravy hit him as
he opened the front door, and John's mouth watered just
a little. He shooed Rex inside, then helped him shrug
out of his jacket and boots. He heard plates and
silverware clatter onto the table.
"It's almost ready," Shayera called from their rarely-
used dining room. "Go wash. I'm sure you're both
filthy."
John shrugged and looked down at Rex, who looked up and
grinned, a few dead leaves sticking in his short dark
hair. Rex was still learning how to catch, and the
football had landed in the piled leaves more than once.
And since half the fun of piled leaves was jumping in
them .... "C'mon, kiddo."
A few minutes later, hands and faces freshly scrubbed,
the pair entered the dining room to the sight of a
small, golden-brown turkey on a platter, surrounded by
all the usual fixings: mashed potatoes in a dish, a
small tureen of gravy, stuffing, corn, rolls, and a
still-wiggling cylindrical mass of cranberry sauce.
Shayera looked pleased with herself, but tired.
Rex climbed into his own chair, eyes wide at the
spread. "Wow, Mom!"
John slid up to her, kissed her on the cheek. "This
looks fantastic."
She shrugged. "I followed the directions on the boxes
just like you said." John kept his wince entirely
internal; real mashed potatoes were always better than
boxed, but she had insisted on preparing everything
today. He suspected much of the reason was hormonal
but didn't dare say so. "The turkey was a lot easier
than I thought it would be," she continued, gathering
plates to spoon out the potatoes.
"You followed my note, right?" he asked, picking up the
carving tools. He'd left the turkey marinating for a
day in a nice garlic brine and he had written down
quick instructions for her before he'd taken Rex out
earlier in the day.
She nodded. "To the letter." He caught Rex's
reassured expression, and rather hoped she hadn't
noticed. There were a lot of reasons why John did the
bulk of the cooking in the family.
Something had been tickling at the back of his mind for
a while, and only as he went to carve did it finally
click. "Dear, the turkey's upside-down."
"The legs are on the bottom."
"Yes. But the wings are supposed to be facing up. So
the breast is up when it cooks."
"You didn't say anything about that in your note." He
knew that tone. That was a tone that would end with
her retrieving her mace from the hall closet and
tenderizing his skull.
"It's fine," he said. "Just something to remember for
next time." He made the first slice in the turkey,
near the spine rather than the breast in consideration
of its unusual arrangement. Something else occurred to
him. "What did you do with the giblets?"
"Giblets?" she asked, dishing some stuffing onto Rex's
plate.
"Giblets, heart, liver. They were stuffed inside the
turkey. You took them out when ... "
"That wasn't in the note, either."
John stared at the bird for a long moment. "Oh."
***
After dinner, John cleared the table and removed the
leftovers back to the kitchen. As he'd expected, it
looked as though she'd detonated a small bomb in this
rare domestic endeavor, but at second glance, it wasn't
so bad; the crumbs and splatters would clean easily
with a little elbow grease. The potatoes, stuffing and
corn went into plastic containers, the rolls into a
bread bag, the gravy into a jar. This left a few bites
of cranberry sauce, which he ate, and a lot of turkey
on the bone. Also an unexpectedly cooked turkey neck,
gizzard and so on.
It still amused him that Shayera ate chicken and
turkey, but she'd pointed out that he ate beef and pork
without consideration of his fellow mammals, so he
supposed she had a point. At least most of their meals
were what he'd consider "normal" in that he could
identify the components and they were as a rule cooked.
"Rex, can you come in here and help me?"
"Okay, Dad!" came the responding shout. A few moments
later, his son walked into the kitchen.
"You sure you don't want me in there?" Shayera called
from the living room.
"We'll be fine," John said. She needed to stay off her
feet more, he thought privately. After all the trouble
she'd had carrying Rex, John really would prefer she
take it easy this time around.
"Get me the big pot, please." Rex scrambled over to
the cabinet with the large pots and pans, and brought
out the pot they used to make spaghetti. "Thanks."
John filled it most of the way with water, then set it
on the back burner to warm.
"What's that for?"
"I'll show you in a few minutes. First, we have to get
the meat off this bird."
***
Gran's fingers tremble as she pulls strips of meat from
the chicken bones. Johnny is quiet beside her, pulling
little bits off the ribs with his own nimble fingers,
but for all his diligence, Gran still manages to clean
her bones more thoroughly. She pops each bone, big and
little, into the simmering pot.
Johnny won't tell anyone else, but this is his favorite
part of dinner. Gran's cooking is the best, whether
she's roasting a chicken or broiling pork chops, but
after the dishes are cleared and it's time to debone
the leftovers? That's even better than eating the
food, sometimes. The chicken gets parceled out: a dish
for good sandwich chicken, and a dish for good
casserole chicken, and a hot pot for the skin and bones
and finely-diced cooked giblets.
The kitchen is the warmest room of Gran and Grandad's
house, and when Johnny rushes in after being outside
all day, his glasses steam up and the whole place is
covered in a glowing fog. Add a pot of boiling bones
and it's like a wizard's nook, like they're casting
spells. They're pulling out of dead bones the makings
of the best soups he's ever tasted. It's like magic.
Johnny's bright enough not to talk about magic, not
under Grandad's roof. He's learned that sort of thing
gets a boy sent to bed with a sore bottom, ear pressed
against the wall to hear Grandad storm at Uncle James
about "showing the boy those trashy funnybooks again."
It's taken some time for Johnny to get used to the
rules here. Mama never complains about what her son
reads as long as he's reading, but Mama's in the
hospital again getting radiation. While Johnny doesn't
know it yet, she's not going to leave the hospital this
time. He's going to live with his grandparents until
the spring of his senior year when they pass within a
month of each other, and then the recruiter who comes
to his highschool will tell him there's another way to
pay for college if he's strong enough to take it.
Innocent of all these thing for now, Johnny keeps his
thoughts quiet, and only makes up the words to the
secret magic soup spells when he's alone in his head.
The pot is simmering as Grandad comes into the kitchen
to get himself some coffee. "I don't know why you
insist on showing him this stuff."
"I don't insist," says Gran, fetching him some cream.
"John's in here because he wants to learn to cook.
Isn't that right, John?" Johnny nods. Gran pets his
hair and gives him a smile.
Grandad shakes his head. "A man doesn't need to learn
to cook, Johnny. A man just needs to marry a girl who
can cook." Grandad gives Gran a squeeze and a kiss to
the cheek before he shuffles out of the kitchen with
his coffee.
Gran waits until he's out of earshot before she says,
"John, a man who knows how to cook can marry any girl
he pleases."
"Yes, Gran," he says, sticking out his tongue a little.
His grandma is great and his mama's wonderful, but most
girls are, well, girls. Getting married is the
farthest things from his mind right now. Instead, he
tiptoes to the stove and peeks over the rim of the soup
pot. Gran always does her big pot cooking on the back
burners because when she was a girl, her best friend's
little sister got scalded to death by a pot of water
left unattended. The kitchen gives and it takes away,
Gran says when Grandad can't hear her.
It's giving now, as Gran pulls two pieces of fudge from
the tin and hands one to Johnny. He understands this
is a rare treat, one they're not sharing with Grandad,
and that makes it another secret to mark and keep.
When they finish their fudge, Gran declares the soup
stock is ready. Steam fills the kitchen as she
carefully strains the stock into her second pot. Then
they go through the bones and the rest in the strainer,
pulling off the last tiny bites of meat to pop into the
stock. Everything is hot hot hot to touch, but Johnny
wouldn't have this any other way. The second pot is
already boiling again as they put in the final bits of
chicken; Gran will let it boil down another few minutes
while she adds salt and pepper and tarragon and sage.
The stock is a lovely brown and smells like Heaven.
No, not Heaven. Home.
***
The scent filled the kitchen as John threw in the last
of the seasonings. He'd watched his grandmother make
the stock countless times, but no matter how many times
he'd altered his recipe, it was never exactly the same
as hers. But it was his own, he supposed, and when Rex
eventually did his own cooking, that would be a little
different too, and so the recipe wouldn't go on so much
as evolve.
"What's funny?" Rex asked, his chin resting on his
hands.
"Nothing. I was just remembering something my grandma
said."
"About what?"
"About why I'm going to show you how to cook."
"So Mom doesn't accidentally poison me when you're
offworld."
John chuckled. "You know better than to say that where
she can hear, right?"
Rex grinned, as John rummaged around in the
refrigerator for the tin of fudge he'd made last week.
***