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feverinfeveroutfic · 30 days

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The Confectioner’s Tale | Chapter 2

as sweet as blood and chocolate 🩸

(speaking of, new chapter of that coming)

There was a rumor spread about me some time ago. I had no idea as to when it had manifested or when it came into fruition, but somehow I had gotten word that the kids down the street were saying that I made cupcakes out of human flesh and blood. At first, my colleagues and I had laughed it off, and I believed it to be because we served cupcakes at Halloween with a cherry red glaze over the top so as to resemble to blood: we also had cakes with decorations in the shape of human fingers and eyeballs. I figured that it was simply Halloween fun from the neighborhood children: I was a kid in northern Nevada, and Halloween was a huge deal in Carson City, and so, I knew it all too well.

Then the health department showed up.

The memory of being questioned by the health inspector and having my pantry looked at down to every last molecule of flour and sugar had been etched in my memory from thence forth. I was still wary of keeping red food coloring in the pantry near the decoration tools because I knew that it could be mistaken as blood.

I had considered myself as a kitchen witch of sorts, what with my long dark bushy hair down to my waist and my brown eyes in contrast with my pale olive-toned skin. I had been to Cyprus and Israel, the latter of which a few times to say in the least. I was all too familiar with Canada and Britain. I was an artist on top of being elbow-deep in pastry and bread doughs.

But I knew in my heart of hearts that one of these days, I was going to have to find my out of Los Angeles and mosey on up to Reno again.

What you see as somewhat above you, you watch with eyes that burn like cigarettes no matter what the context.

I had the bricks of cream cheese out on the counter next to me and the mixer, as well as the sour cream, half a stick of butter, six eggs, and the jar of vanilla extract. I had already crafted out the graham cracker crust and had put it in the fridge for chilling for about twenty minutes.

Chill for twenty, bake for twenty-five, as my boss had advised me on the first time around.

I couldn’t stop thinking about those two boys as I began work on that lush New York cheesecake: it was going to take longer than the Bailey’s cake given it had to sit in the fridge and chill for a whole day once I had finished it, which meant Alex wasn’t going to get his slice until the morning hours at the very least. I hoped that he would understand, and I hoped that he would still be there come the morning as well.

Boiling water in the roasting pan where the springform pan would be set within, and I hoped that the cake would set.

I had only made all of three New York style cheesecakes before then, the first of which was at home, and thus, I was a bit nervous to start with.

In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I found rather interesting that I had gotten a Jewish boy as well as another guy from New York, and there I was crafting out a state dessert complete with a small grouping of fresh raspberries on top.

Once time was up, I opened the oven door and checked on the cake, nestled inside of the shiny springform pan and the steaming water bath.

An ever so slight wobble in the middle was all I needed.

My heart skipped a beat when I knew it was just right, and I took the smooth pale yellow disk right out of the heat with my red silicone oven mitts. I perched the cake on the wire rack next to me for a moment; I then took off the springform, albeit with some care so as to make sure the cake was fully set in place. The latch clicked off and the filling stayed put as it should. I let out a low whistle and tucked it into the top shelf of the pale purple refrigerator, and then I got right to work on that Bailey’s cake for Pete.

There sat a brand new rich black bottle of the liqueur in the back of the pantry, and as I took it out of hiding, I had a flashback to when Ben was in the picture.

They were never that much of heavy drug users, but they did enjoy some drinks and some recklessness every now and again. But Ben had the most nefarious of habits with his smoking. He made it look so cool and yet so repulsive at that same time as he leaned against the brick wall with a cigarette rested on his bow-shaped lips and his long shaggy, bushy hair dangled down over his face. I had only known him via writing and what I had seen from afar, but the thought of the smoke caressing and cutting into his skin, a subtle poison sharper than any knife, only made me nauseous. I may have had my inkling for him, but I had my doubts about kissing him should the opportunity ever make its way to my mind

Maybe it was just my own naïveté in thinking that I could fix him. I often fantasized about getting together with him and we could find a way to get away from those damned things. To clear away the smoke so he could smile and breathe without choking on his own oxygen.

I had my fantasies, about talking to him face to face, about going on a date with him.

They were fantasies until I acted upon them.

I returned to reality as I made the chocolate ganache for the Bailey’s cake.

Unsweetened chocolate with heavy cream and a tablespoon of that smooth liqueur over a bain-marie.

I wondered what those boys were doing across the street as I glimpsed over at the time on the two tiers in the oven. Only five doors separated them, and I knew that the smell of the Bailey’s cake would attract attention amongst themselves once the time came for me. Five doors and five minutes.

I let the ganache set for a second on the stove so it would stay warm for the time being, and I began the buttercream frosting. Oh, what a glorious bitch that was buttercream frosting.

I switched on the mixer to low speed and took another glimpse up to the shelf with the boxes of cake decorations. A part of me wanted to whip out the fake blood again, just to see how they would react across the street. I may have been a baker, but I was a baker who gave a blessing to the kitchens I worked in.

I had my witchcraft, and they both had the shadows on their eyes and the hair as black as night. A rumor or not, it made sense in the strangest way as the cream manifested itself right before my eyes. I switched off the mixer, and within seconds, the timer went off. I put the mitts back on and took the cake pans out of the oven: the rich dark chocolate batter had risen toward the edges of the fine silver pans in a slight dome shape, and I knew they were done with a mere pat of my fingertip.

I let them cool for a few minutes before I took each of them out of the pans and spread the ganache over the bottom tier. It seemed a bit of a rush as the tiers had to cool all the way, but I figured that it was cool enough in that kitchen that they would temper down enough to work with. Or perhaps not as they steamed once released from the pans.

All the while, I flashed a glimpse over at the refrigerator door, and I thought about that cheesecake. It had to chill before I could do anything to it, and so far, it had only been about an hour.

I was going to have to spill to Alex once I walked on out of there with the Bailey’s cake for Pete.

I cleaned up the kitchen a bit so as to let the tiers cool some more, and I once again had another flashback to Ben. When the rumor that we were using human flesh and blood in our baked goods, and I was supposedly the one responsible for it, I thought about Ben talking about being a twenty-year-old kid and living on Bainbridge Island, far removed from the rest of the world. Chris had said the last thing any kid would ever want to do was knock on Ben’s door for any reason whatsoever, not even if his house was on fire, because Ben would greet them with a double-barrel twelve-gage. I always wondered how much truth there was to that, and if any kid had ever gone to the hospital with a slug of lead embedded in the back of their head.

I was in love with a potential murderer as far as I knew, and I shuddered at the thought.

As I wiped down the counter over the display case with a cloth, I looked on at myself in the reflection of the shiny silvery metal. As silver as the tiny plume in Alex’s hair.

Oh, flesh and blood. The thing that bounded us and the thing that could have done us in more so than the nickname of the “tombstone mile”.

A shadow emerged from behind the glass front door, and I took a glimpse up for a look outside there. A tall, burly man with long wavy hair the color of the Bailey’s cake, smooth skin kissed by the sun, and long lanky arms strode across the street; when he extended his hand out to the door handle, I caught a glimpse of the silver cross on his middle finger.

“Hey!” he greeted me once he stepped inside; he took off his mirrored sunglasses and showed me brilliant blue eyes in sharp contrast of his dark skin.

“Hey!” I returned the favor, albeit with a bit of reluctance as he was just a stranger to me.

“I’m with Alex, who came in here earlier,” he told me as the door closed behind him. He lightly smelled of cologne, beer, and incense, and it helped that he donned a turquoise bracelet on his left wrist. “I’m Chuck.”

“Chuck! I’m Hannah. What can I do for you?”

“I just came to see how you’re doing,” he replied. “He told me about you and the cheesecake you’re making just for him.”

“Aw!” I brought a hand to my chest at that, and I could feel my heart skipping a few beats. This was a first for me, especially after everything that Ben and I had gone through before. I could feel my face growing warm as a result of that.

“And let me guess, you want a slice yourself,” I quipped, to which he shrugged.

“Maybe. I guess I could also check out what else you got given this is a bakery and a rather infamous one at that, as well.”

“The cake has to cool for eight hours,” I told him, “and we’re not that infamous, either.” I flashed him a wink, and he returned the favor with a sly grin. His luminous eyes swept down to my chest and the pendant around my neck for a moment. He squinted at it, and then, like the sun outside of there, his face lit up.

“Oh, that says ‘Soundgarden’! Love those cats.”

“Favorite band in the whole world,” I said with one hand on my hip as if to indicate my pride. “I wrote a string of letters to their bass player Ben.”

“Oh, that’s so cool! Anything come of that?”

And I sighed through my nose. He raised his eyebrows at that.

“Really?”

“Yeah, I used to like him,” I confessed with a shrug. “I never did get even so much as a ‘boo’ out of him.”

Chuck leaned over the top of the display case and folded his arms over the edge.

“You deserve better,” he assured me in a low voice. “You deserve so much better than to be left in the dark like that.”

I showed him a smile.

“Thank you, that’s really sweet of you,” I said.

“I mean it, though!” Chuck insisted. “You deserve to feel something in the midst of everything.” He ran his fingers through his dark waves, to which he craned his neck for a look into the kitchen behind me.

“By the way, what else is baking in here? It smells wonderful.”

“A chocolate cake laced with powdered espresso and Bailey’s,” I replied. “A favorite at St. Paddy’s Day and a special one for a guy who came in before Alex.”

Chuck paused for a second.

“Was it a tall guy? Taller than me? Long jet-black hair and big bright green eyes? Looks like he could either drain you of your blood or kill a man with his bare hands?”

“Yes, actually,” I stammered.

“He and his band are staying right next door to us,” he replied. “We’re on separate tours, but we’re in the same hotel.”

“Oh, my god, really?”

“Yeah! Small world, right?”

“As small as the petits-fours we’ll be making coming up here soon enough,” I quipped. Chuck took a glimpse down to the case before him right then: the glass always got too warm if someone leaned up against it like that, but he seemed to be double-taking on something under the glass.

“What’s this right here?” he asked me with a gesture to the box on the shelf right before me.

“Malassadas,” I replied. “They’re basically Portuguese donuts, covered in cinnamon and sugar. Pretty big over in Hawai’i as well as the Azores, and also me as I’m Portuguese.”

“I’m Mexican and Native American,” he added. “We’re curators of the damned.”

“And I’ll be damned, too,” I cracked, which in turn brought a big chuckle out of him.

“I’ll take one of those, and how long do you think that Bailey’s cake is going to be?”

“I took the tiers out of the oven about ten minutes ago and they have to cook before I could frost and assemble them,” I explained. “So, about… twenty minutes or so.” I paused. “Why?”

“Let me walk you over there once it’s done,” he suggested. “You know. Woman walking across the street in L.A. with a chocolate cake in her arms.”

I squinted my eyes at that. This totally was nothing like Ben, or like Soundgarden for that matter.

“Let me get that malassada for you,” I said to him in a low voice.

#fanfic #fanfiction #testament #testament fanfic #testament band #chuck billy #oc tag #chapter 2 #type o negative #soundgarden #ben shepherd #peter steele #also on ao3 #writing #text #the confectioner’s tale fanfic #the confectioner’s tale

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feverinfeveroutfic · 1 month

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The Confectioner’s Tale

a/n: no idea if this will remain a one shot or if i’ll expand it further. the fanfic community just doesn’t like me no matter what i do and i don’t think any of them realize how isolating this is, either.

They call the neighborhood “the tombstone mile”, mainly because every other establishment had fallen on hard times in recent months, and we were the only place that had our heads above water. The pink lettering stared out to the busy street of Los Angeles, and I had a way of honoring the whole shebang from my beginnings as a standard pastry chef fresh out of the Central Valley and back to the place where it all began for me there, in the southland.

As far as I knew, the higher-ups of Smell the Magic had enough money to open up a couple of new venues out here on the western wing of the country, one back in my real home of Reno and one out in Hawai’i.

And as far as I knew, because the shop here in L.A. was the only one running at its best and ran on my elbow grease as I carried it upon my shoulders, I could qualify for a transfer to one of those spots. And if I went back home or out to the ocean, I knew that I would be turning over a new leaf, after I had turned over a new leaf already.

You wouldn’t think of a girl who had lost over seventy pounds to be working in a funky little bakery, but here we are: I tightened up the belt at the small of my back, and I let the blood red apron fit my body like a glove. I had the net over my hair and my Soundgarden pendant close to my chest: I never went to the bakery without my pendant, just so long as I kept it at a certain length on my chest.

I had done something so stupid ten years before. I was your given obsessed fangirl who had the bad idea of writing a letter to Ben Shepherd. I had a crush on him, there was no way around it. The reason why I say it was a dumb idea was because the letter coincided with a time in my life I would choose to forget if presented with the choice. I had made peace with my demons a long time ago, but he loomed over me like a dark specter, especially when I thought about that time of my life.

It felt as though I could never find the right words upon writing, even with the shards of sanity I had left within me. I wrote the damned thing in pen, too, so I had hope that he found me sincere. I had filled out three pages of paper, front and back.

I had no idea about his relationship status, especially as I had never seen him with a wedding ring on his finger or heard any mention of a girlfriend other than a failed relationship prior to my writing.

You know. Typical “scoop this dude up from the muck before someone else does” type of shit that I soon realized was a bad idea. Never mind the fact that this was a major long shot, writing a letter from the forefront of a broken mind and a fragile heart to a guy whom I had never met let alone the bassist of my favorite band Soundgarden, but I was going in deep here.

He had gotten it. As far as I knew, he read it. I wound up writing him four more times as a result: my fifth letter to him was on his birthday and no one had seen him for months prior to then, either, so it was like coaxing out a venomous snake out of hiding so I could try and capture it.

We were hundreds of miles apart but I could feel him, though, and I knew that he could feel me as well…

Sometimes, whenever I thought about him, I had the strangest, most inexplicable sense of nostalgia overcome me. He just got up and left, it felt like, and I hadn’t seen him since then, I hadn’t talked to him since then, and to make matters worse, I had seen a photo of him back around Christmas and time had not been all that kind to him: an otherwise young man with a head of scraggly rich dark hair grayed out to cigarette smoke, smooth skin now with the texture of leather, crooked teeth now browned and made to look like those from a corpse, and a slender beautiful body now incredibly heavy and massive, and to the point where I could feel the heart disease coming on just with a mere look at him. I choked up at the sight of him, as I knew that I had something to do with his transformation into the portrait tucked away in the attic.

A part of me wanted to write to him again, but I had long lost his address, and thus, I had no other means of contacting him. I still yearned the idea of writing him another letter.

But at the same time, I also had no desire to pick at that old wound.

Ben had hurt me and went on with his life with someone else, and last I heard, they had had a couple of kids together, which in turn left me in the weeds.

But I never had the chance to leave him behind, however, even as I myself started over again in a new place and with a brand-new look to me. His ghost still haunted me.

I never got closure.

Sometimes I held my Soundgarden pendant and wondered as to what could have been with him, had we not drifted apart and gone our separate ways. I needed an answer, whenever I thought about it long and hard enough. His parents and entire family had lived up there since like World War Two, so I knew that should push come to shove, I would have to dig around for him. Ask people where the big tall dead man walking resided on Bainbridge Island because I needed an answer.

I ran my fingers down the edge of the pendant, which had been crafted in the shape of a guitar pick. It ran through my mind, the tombstone of my love for him. I had the stone but no way to place it six feet under.

But I vowed to remain as soft as water no matter what, though. He was slowly digging his own grave and I had no way of saving him.

I turned my attention to the counter behind me to prepare for the day’s work, and no sooner had I done so when the tallest man I had ever seen in my life strode into the bakery. Ben looked at well over six feet in height but he must have easily been more than that. He towered high over me with his long beautiful smooth black hair and stern facial expression: his green eyes penetrated through me as if they emanated from the shadows. He was long and lanky but strong and sinewy, as if he worked out on a regular basis.

“Hi,” I could hardly muster the word out of me. He stooped down and folded his arms over the edge of the display case so we were face to face with each other. He showed me a quaint smile, to which the corners of his eyes crinkled up.

“Hi.” His voice was smooth and low, with the biggest timbre I ever heard in my life. He made me think of a vampire.

“What can I do for you on this fine morning?” My heart pounded in my chest at the sight of him: I had no idea if it came from his towering, almost overwhelming height or from those deep, penetrating eyes that seemed to be gazing into my soul.

“I’m looking for a green cake… with Bailey’s or some kind of liqueur mixed in,” he stated to me.

“We have our Bailey’s chocolate cake and cupcakes for St. Patrick’s Day,” I replied.

“Only for St. Paddy’s Day, though?” he reiterated with a furrowing of his eyebrows.

“Pretty much. We do have a green cake in the works, though. It’s pistachio and chocolate, and we’re experimenting with green tea in some cupcakes as well. But I’ll tell you this.” I gestured for him to come in closer to me; when he did, I caught a whiff of a smoky cologne on the side of his neck. “I could put an order in and we could whip one up for you if you’d like.”

“Please do,” he said in a soft tone of voice. An absolute gentle giant, nothing like Ben. I reached to my left for the pen and the notepad to take it down.

“A green cake with Bailey’s incorporated?” I asked him.

“You know it, doll.” I picked up on a slight New Yorker accent: not the most exotic accent I had heard there in the bakery, but not the most common one, however. “Bailey’s, pistachio, and a chocolate layer on top.”

“Like a ganache?”

“Yeah, that! Something nice and nutty and chocolate with a bit of decadence drizzled within.”

I scrawled it all down in one fell swoop, and I could feel him looking at the pendant around my neck.

“And, may I have a name?” I asked him.

“Pete.”

“The dynamic Pete,” I repeated. “And an address?”

“I’m staying at the hotel across the street for the next week,” he replied. “Room 513.”

“Room 513, got it.”

“And I can pay then?”

“You absolutely can,” I assured him as I clicked the pen and tucked it back into the front pocket of my apron: I never intended it to do so, but he looked down the collar of my shirt when I put the pen back.

“You know, you are really beautiful,” he remarked to me with a slight twinkle to his eyes.

“You’re just saying that because you took a peek down my shirt,” I teased him.

“Not necessarily,” he assured me with a slightly smug look on his face. “I really do mean that, my dear.”

A warmth washed over me, and I bowed my head at that. I was glad that I had been growing out my bangs at that point because I would have wanted them to sweep over my face for that glamour magazine look for him anyway.

“Maybe when I have it delivered, I can have a note included that reads ‘from the gorgeous baker’,” I joked, but he looked on at me with a thoughtful look on his face.

I only joked around, but I would think about that look all day long.

There was another guy who came in later that day. He was tall as well, but he only leaned against the edge of the display case with only one elbow. He had the cutest bulbous nose and the smoothest lips, like little Rainier cherries, and the longest blackest curls I had ever seen in my life: at the crown of his head was a tiny plume of silver about the size of a thumb of ginger.

His electric blue eyes locked onto me as if he was watching me from the nearest lighthouse overlooking the ocean.

“Hi,” he greeted me; his voice made me think of molasses given it was rich and full and yet very soft. He showed me a sweet little grin which hung off to the side a bit.

“Hi,” I returned the favor to him.

“Word on the street is that you make a mean cheesecake here,” he told me.

“And you’d be right, too,” I assured him. “Classic New York, plus Basque and Japanese. And we also have a raspberry cheesecake, and a cinnamon apple one.”

“Cinnamon apple, really?” He raised his eyebrows and his entire face lit up

“We make it for the Jewish New Year and the first day of fall,” I explained. “There’s this one Jewish family who comes in the day before Rosh Hashanah and they always ask me for it.”

“Oh, man, that sounds amazing,” he decreed with a hand pressed to his chest. “I’m Jewish so I’ll have to remember that.” He waggled his eyebrows at me a bit, to which I smiled at him.

“What exactly makes it Japanese cheesecake, too?” he asked me.

“It’s really emphatic on the ‘cheese’ part,” I replied, “and to the point it’s quite pillowy and soft. The crust is thin and almost nonexistent. It’s so… delicate.” I raised my eyebrows and flicked the tip of my tongue to him.

“I really like the way you just said that,” he admitted to me.

“What, ‘delicate?’”

“Yeah. Like you were trying to entice me or something.”

“Because it is enticing,” I assured him with a little gyration of my head. “We’ve been thinking of incorporating a vein of matcha into that one, too. Make it a little more authentically Japanese.”

“I’m such a sucker for authenticity,” he confessed with a sly smirk and a shake of his head. “Those perfectly imperfect human breaths of fresh air in an otherwise phony world that’s becoming more and more fake as time goes on.”

“We try our best,” I assured him. “And I do, too.”

“It’s so brave,” he said, and he showed me the tip of his tongue as well as the hooding to his eyes. Even with a display case between us, I could feel something else in there. The whirring rush of a waterfall in a sunrise in a dance of fire and water. Where Pete gave me a dose of heat, this boy here sent a chill up my spine and a feeling that I had found an oasis in an otherwise scorched, parched desert. A great number of souls came through the front door day by day, but none of them had as much of a hold on me as these two guys.

“Sign me up for a New York one,” he suggested, and he flexed his long thin fingers before me. A fair number of thoughts went through my mind at the sight of those fingers.

“A whole one or a slice?” I offered him.

“I’ll just take a slice for the time being,” he quipped. “You can take it over to the hotel across the street to Room 518.”

“Room 518, really?”

“Yeah.” He paused. “Something significant about the hotel across the way?”

I shook my head. “No, not really.”

“You wouldn’t react like that if you didn’t have a significance to it,” he pointed out to me. I locked onto his blue eyes again. He dug out the truth from me just like how standing on the edge of the ocean washed away the sands of time and beheld the truth.

“There was a guy who came in here earlier who’s staying over there,” I told him. “Like… a few doors down from you.”

I couldn’t lie to him. I had stretched the truth with Ben in my letters to him, but I could never do that with him. And I had a feeling that I could never do it with Pete, either.

“Wow.” He raised his eyebrows. “It’s gonna be busy over there, if you catch my drift.” He chuckled, a full hearty chuckle that sounded as though it came from deep within him. I couldn’t help but chuckle as well.

“What’s your name?” I asked him as I held the tip of the pen to the notepad.

“Alex,” he replied.

“Jew boy Alex,” I reiterated. “I’ll make sure there’s a nice, fat slice of rich, decadent New York cheesecake waiting for you and your tummy.”

He flashed me a wink, and a shiver ran up my spine. I watched him go out to the street with those long black curls drifted back from his head in thick waves.

I may have lost Ben but I had been sent two more angels in his wake. But then there was the rumor that had been started against me in particular by the kids down the street.

#the confectioner’s tale #the confectioner’s tale fanfic #fanfic #fanfiction #one shot #testament #testament fanfic #testament band #type o negative #alex skolnick #peter steele #oc tag #also on ao3 #writing #text #bakery au #april fool's day

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