Pushing Daisies ficlet: a perfect pie
a perfect pie [Pushing Daisies, Ned/Chuck, G, 877 words, fluff, vague spoilers for 2x02. For fox1013, prompt: baking. Huge thanks to slodwick for the quickie beta, and for providing the writing soundtrack.]
a perfect pie
At this very moment in the town of Coeur d'Coeurs, Charlotte Charles, otherwise known as Chuck, was - if one included the time she was dead - twenty-eight years, twenty-eight weeks, two days, seven hours and eighteen minutes old. And Chuck was, unbeknownst to her, about to learn something very important.
It all came about due to an idea she had for a little thank you to the pie maker. Not, of course, that she felt anything was a good enough thank you for bringing her back to life, but still, she felt she ought to make the gesture. It was simply the way she'd been brought up. After every birthday young Chuck had always sat down at her desk and solemnly written out thank you cards, making sure that every single person was thanked appropriately, and the habit was thoroughly ingrained. As Hallmark, or, for that matter, any other known card maker, didn't stock a suitable range of cards for this particular thank you message, she looked around for some other way to say thank you.
In short, she decided to bake Ned a pie. Aunt Vivian always said she was the best cook in the family, but she still wanted to make sure it was the finest possible pie.
So she watched Ned. At a careful distance, naturally, otherwise he had a tendency to get nervous, and when he got nervous he got tense, and when he got tense he made bad pastry. Or so he said - it might just have been an excuse to get her to stand further away - Chuck found it hard to tell with Ned sometimes.
Anyway, she watched him, and as she had always been extraordinarily observant she noticed all the little details, all the things someone else might have dismissed as unimportant. She noticed, for example, the way he washed his hands in ice cold water just before he handled the pastry, and the way he used exactly one half stick of butter and just a fraction less shortening though the recipe called for half and half. He handled the pastry as little possible and when he did touch it, Chuck noticed that it seemed a very gentle touch - not hesitant because Chuck was quite certain he could make pastry while blindfolded - but gentle, as though the pastry were something altogether precious.
Chuck made an excuse to leave once she had watched him bake sixteen different pies. She went home and proceeded to check all his cupboards for the necessary ingredients. She even remembered to look for butter in what you or I would call a refrigerator but Chuck called the Cheese Box, even though it still seemed incredibly odd to her to keep anything besides cheese in it.
Chuck discovered that she had everything she needed apart from fruit, but as it was a Saturday and the Coeur d'Coeurs market was open, that was not a problem. She put on a headscarf and dark glasses and wandered happily around the market searching for the ideal fruit. She picked up purple plums and ripe peaches, smelled apples and pears, and tasted every type of berry she'd ever heard of and some she hadn't. She hovered for some time over a punnet of golden yellow gooseberries - she thought they were the sweetest gooseberries she'd ever eaten - but the plump sunset-pink peaches won out in the end.
She set out all the ingredients on the kitchen table and ran through a mental checklist of all the things she'd learned from watching Ned that morning. She held her hands under the cold tap until her skin looked faintly blue, and she used exactly the proportion of butter and shortening that she'd observed the pie maker using. She made a lattice top for the pie to show off the carefully arranged peach slices, and forty-five minutes later she pulled a golden pie out of the oven. She set it to cool on a rack and then shook a trace of sugar over it.
It looked perfect, by far the best pie she had ever made.
When Ned got home that evening she waited for him in the kitchen doorway. He stood patiently as ever, waiting for her to move to one side before he entered the kitchen, but as soon as he was in the room and saw the pie he began to smile.
"Is that for me?" he asked, and Chuck nodded and handed him a fork.
After he had eaten his first mouthful his smile grew - Chuck thought it looked like the sun coming out from behind the clouds and turning a dull day into summer, or something equally poetic.
"That's good pastry," he said, and fed Chuck a forkful.
It was every bit as good as it looked, but it wasn't the success of her cooking that was Chuck's important discovery that day. You see, Chuck had always believed that she would find happiness somewhere further afield. Tahiti, for example, or some other exotic location far far away from the little town of Coeur d'Coeurs. But, in that moment, she learned that she had found all the happiness she could ever desire.
She learned that nothing could possibly make her happier than putting a smile like that on the pie maker's face.
//
ETA: ana_grrl wrote me SG-1, Cameron & Daniel role-playing in a sexual harassment seminar! Eeeeee! Just perfect.
ETA2: I have riches! vinylroad has written me a gorgeous Supernatural, Dean/OFC story, and it just fills me with joy: While the Night is Still Ahead.
a perfect pie
At this very moment in the town of Coeur d'Coeurs, Charlotte Charles, otherwise known as Chuck, was - if one included the time she was dead - twenty-eight years, twenty-eight weeks, two days, seven hours and eighteen minutes old. And Chuck was, unbeknownst to her, about to learn something very important.
It all came about due to an idea she had for a little thank you to the pie maker. Not, of course, that she felt anything was a good enough thank you for bringing her back to life, but still, she felt she ought to make the gesture. It was simply the way she'd been brought up. After every birthday young Chuck had always sat down at her desk and solemnly written out thank you cards, making sure that every single person was thanked appropriately, and the habit was thoroughly ingrained. As Hallmark, or, for that matter, any other known card maker, didn't stock a suitable range of cards for this particular thank you message, she looked around for some other way to say thank you.
In short, she decided to bake Ned a pie. Aunt Vivian always said she was the best cook in the family, but she still wanted to make sure it was the finest possible pie.
So she watched Ned. At a careful distance, naturally, otherwise he had a tendency to get nervous, and when he got nervous he got tense, and when he got tense he made bad pastry. Or so he said - it might just have been an excuse to get her to stand further away - Chuck found it hard to tell with Ned sometimes.
Anyway, she watched him, and as she had always been extraordinarily observant she noticed all the little details, all the things someone else might have dismissed as unimportant. She noticed, for example, the way he washed his hands in ice cold water just before he handled the pastry, and the way he used exactly one half stick of butter and just a fraction less shortening though the recipe called for half and half. He handled the pastry as little possible and when he did touch it, Chuck noticed that it seemed a very gentle touch - not hesitant because Chuck was quite certain he could make pastry while blindfolded - but gentle, as though the pastry were something altogether precious.
Chuck made an excuse to leave once she had watched him bake sixteen different pies. She went home and proceeded to check all his cupboards for the necessary ingredients. She even remembered to look for butter in what you or I would call a refrigerator but Chuck called the Cheese Box, even though it still seemed incredibly odd to her to keep anything besides cheese in it.
Chuck discovered that she had everything she needed apart from fruit, but as it was a Saturday and the Coeur d'Coeurs market was open, that was not a problem. She put on a headscarf and dark glasses and wandered happily around the market searching for the ideal fruit. She picked up purple plums and ripe peaches, smelled apples and pears, and tasted every type of berry she'd ever heard of and some she hadn't. She hovered for some time over a punnet of golden yellow gooseberries - she thought they were the sweetest gooseberries she'd ever eaten - but the plump sunset-pink peaches won out in the end.
She set out all the ingredients on the kitchen table and ran through a mental checklist of all the things she'd learned from watching Ned that morning. She held her hands under the cold tap until her skin looked faintly blue, and she used exactly the proportion of butter and shortening that she'd observed the pie maker using. She made a lattice top for the pie to show off the carefully arranged peach slices, and forty-five minutes later she pulled a golden pie out of the oven. She set it to cool on a rack and then shook a trace of sugar over it.
It looked perfect, by far the best pie she had ever made.
When Ned got home that evening she waited for him in the kitchen doorway. He stood patiently as ever, waiting for her to move to one side before he entered the kitchen, but as soon as he was in the room and saw the pie he began to smile.
"Is that for me?" he asked, and Chuck nodded and handed him a fork.
After he had eaten his first mouthful his smile grew - Chuck thought it looked like the sun coming out from behind the clouds and turning a dull day into summer, or something equally poetic.
"That's good pastry," he said, and fed Chuck a forkful.
It was every bit as good as it looked, but it wasn't the success of her cooking that was Chuck's important discovery that day. You see, Chuck had always believed that she would find happiness somewhere further afield. Tahiti, for example, or some other exotic location far far away from the little town of Coeur d'Coeurs. But, in that moment, she learned that she had found all the happiness she could ever desire.
She learned that nothing could possibly make her happier than putting a smile like that on the pie maker's face.
//
ETA: ana_grrl wrote me SG-1, Cameron & Daniel role-playing in a sexual harassment seminar! Eeeeee! Just perfect.
ETA2: I have riches! vinylroad has written me a gorgeous Supernatural, Dean/OFC story, and it just fills me with joy: While the Night is Still Ahead.