Eddie’s doing some dumb trick with a couple of wooden spoons, clever hands making them move through the air in improbable ways, and Steve’s about to bite his whisk in half.
He’d thought for sure that Eddie would be going home the first week; Edward Munson, 29, bartender/musician from Brighton with mismatched tattoos and wild hair, seemed like exactly the kind of pretentious asshole who would flame out early with some ill-advised hipster experimentation. If Steve (28, social worker from Indiana, USA) had been a complete asshole, he’d have said that Eddie didn’t have the fundamentals. That he was all sizzle, no steak.
It’s a good thing Steve’s not a complete asshole, because Eddie’s been blowing the technicals out of the water so consistently it’s actually pretty fucking embarrassing. His signatures and showstoppers are making a very respectable showing too, except for the time he tried to incorporate some fresh pandan extract and fucked up the liquid ratio, leaving him with a dripping mess that Mary’d declined to even try.
Afterwards, Steve had seen him leaning against a tree and struggling to light a cigarette. Steve went over for no particular reason, flicking on his lighter and holding it out like a peace offering. Eddie looked at him warily, but bent over the offered flame.
“Can’t believe I made it through this one,” Eddie said after a moment, white smoke curling out of his mouth.
“Yeah, I feel like that every week.” Steve leaned against the tree next to Eddie. It was a big tree, the kind that’s probably been growing in this field since before England was even England.
“Nah, but—c’mon, you know what I mean.”
“You had some bad luck with your showstopper. Happens to the best of us, man. Your signature hand pies looked sick as hell.” Steve’s own hand pies had turned out pretty well, so he was feeling generous. It had only been the third week; plenty of time for Steve to snag Star Baker, though even by that point, Steve had been getting the creeping feeling that he was being a little too American about the whole thing. Everyone else seemed to think competitiveness was some kind of deadly sin. It was—actually kind of nice, to get the same kind of nerves he’d always gotten before high school basketball games, but know that he wasn’t really fighting against anyone except himself in the tent.
Anyway, the very next week, Eddie had done some kind of kickass gothic castle with a shiny chocolate dragon and gotten Star Baker for the second time. Steve had clapped him on the back, appropriately manly. Eddie had pulled Steve into a real hug, arms tight around Steve’s shoulders and his whole lean body pressed up close and warm. It had only lasted a moment, and then Eddie had bounded over to Mel and Sue, both of whom he’s been thoroughly charming since the get-go.
Steve thinks that when this season—or, uh, series—airs, no matter where Eddie places, the entire country is going to be just as charmed. Eddie’s going to get whatever kind of cookbook deal or streaming show he wants. Sponsors will take one look at that handsome face and charismatic grin, and a whole world of possibilities is going to open up for Eddie.
Steve’s not in it for any of that, of course. He’s here kind of by accident, because Robin pushed him to apply, and it’s a goddamn miracle he’s been holding his own. Hell, it’s a miracle he’s in this country at all. When Robin had started looking at the Cambridge MPhil program in linguistics, she’d said wouldn’t it be great if and he’d snorted, yeah right, like I could ever get whatever job I’d need to move to another freaking country, but then—well. Things had happened the way they’d happened, and now Robin’s almost finished with her degree and Steve is taking time off from the London charity he works at in order to be on Bake Off.
He’s told all this to the cameras, plus the stuff about how baking started as a way for him to connect with the kids he used to babysit in Indiana, blah blah blah. He thinks it’s probably too boring for them to air, but he gets that they have to try to get a story anyway.
Eddie Munson, on the other hand, is probably going to be featured in all the series promos. Steve is rabidly curious about what Eddie’s story is, but he hasn’t worked up the nerve to just ask. It should be the easiest thing in the world. They’ve got kind of a camaraderie going, the two of them; a bit of a bromance, as Mel’s put it more than once.
It’s true they get along pretty well, and the cameras have been picking up on it: on the way Eddie’ll wander over to Steve’s bench like a stray cat whenever they get some downtime, how they wind up horsing around sometimes, working off leftover adrenaline from the frantic rush of caramelization or whatever. There’s the time Eddie had hopped up on a stool to deliver some kind of speech from Macbeth, of all things, and overbalanced right onto Steve, who had barely managed to keep them both from careening into a stand mixer. Sue had patted Eddie on the shoulder and said, “Well, boys, that’ll be going in the episode for sure.”
They both get along with the other contestants just fine, of course, but they’re two guys of about the same age with no wife and kids waiting at home. It’s only natural that they’re gravitating together, becoming something like friends, Steve figures. It’s pretty great that he’s getting at least one real friend out of this whole thing.
It would be even greater if Steve could stop thinking about Eddie’s hands in decidedly non-friendly ways. With all the paperwork he’s signed, he can’t even complain to Robin about how Eddie looks with his sleeves pushed up to show off the tattoos on his forearms, kneading dough and grunting a little under his breath with effort. Steve had almost forgotten to pre-heat his oven that day.
Two benches away, Eddie fumbles the spoons he’s been juggling with a clatter, and he bursts out laughing, glancing over at Steve like Steve’s in on the joke. Steve grins back, heart twanging painfully in his chest, and thinks: well, fuck. Guess this is happening.
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realising how much of my expansion beyond rock and metal into a wide range of genres is because:
Slipknot crossed over with the edgy/gothier end of 2000s hiphop
Disturbed are just like. The BIGGEST nerds for 80s British pop (they're not alone in that, it's a whole numetal Thing, but I think like a solid 10% of the 80s pop I listen to I first heard as a Disturbed cover)
Lady Gaga was the top 40 artist it was Okay For Edgy Alternative Teens To Like In 2007
Being an Alternative 2000s Teen was in many ways very musically stifling cause it was incumbent upon me to perform disdain for anything deemed too Pop.
I was somewhat rescued by my own gayness (when me and my gay goblin friends discovered CAMP!!!! and got semi-ironically big into Katy Perry and Rihanna and of course Gaga) but mostly I was so aggressively self-policing my music tastes and deciding what to listen to based more on my assessment of where it fitted socially than on whether I like. Liked it.
Catch 13 year old me studiously typing "punk" and "metal" into Limewire and listening to whatever came up. Catch 15 year old me assessing whether the fact that Rihanna is making music videos about murder in black lipstick means it's ok to like top 40 pop. Complicated by the fact that honestly half the biggest Alternative Teen bait acts of the 2000s were pop as hell, and that as above, numetal acts were nerdy musicians with a broad range of tastes outside metal, and it was very complicated for me. It probably took me until I was like 20 to really start to get a handle on what I personally liked musically, rather than what fit my persona (vividly remember being in a goth club when I was like 18 where they closed out the night with Leonard Cohen's Closing Time every time, and thinking like oh man am I allowed to like Leonard Cohen then? having been listening to Leonard Cohen since I was a literal infant.)
Once I let go of the sense of having to like the Right Music, I very rapidly developed very eclectic tastes and music became a really big part of my life. although my friend did recently still describe my music taste as "two genres - heavy and gay" so that 2000s alt teen is still in there big time.
I think it's a normal thing about being a kid. You're developing music taste basically from scratch and there's a world of music out there so it helps to start out with a narrow focus and build a solid few acts, albums or genres you really like and work out from there. But I do regret how much good music I missed out on first time around because even though I liked it I wrote it off for being rap or being too pop or too upbeat. But the good thing about music is that it doesn't go away! I'm still discovering a lot of music that I heard 50000 times when it was on the radio but never really listened to at the time. It's fun!
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