Jily Oneshots (pt2)

spice and honey

by clarewithnoi on archiveofourown.org

glossary:
"commis" means "junior chef"
"chef de cuisine" means "head chef"
"sous chef" means "deputy chef"
"chef de partie" means "station chef"

8:28am

“He’s just insufferable,” is the first thing out of Petunia’s mouth when Lily steps carefully into her car at half-past eight in the morning. It’s followed by a series of confluent grumbles and moans and complaints, some brimming with various Oxfordian synonyms to insufferable, some simple swears and ill-wishes, all along a classically high-toned stream of consciousness.

“Good morning to you, too, Petunia,” Lily mutters as she shuts the door.

“I mean honestly—he’s just awful!”

Petunia does not deign to clarify the he in question, but, really, there’s no need for this clarification. Lily knows at once that she’s talking about James Potter—the head chef and owner of Chez Maraudeur in south London.

It is, to be quite frank, the simplest deduction of all time.

Any conversations with Petunia for the past two days have been rent into two very specific categories: first, how impressive it is that she was chosen by Great British Foods—her dutiful employer, about whom she usually whinges, but that’s neither here nor there—to profile such a radically popular young chef, and shortly to follow, how insupportably immature the subject of said profile has proven himself to be. Ever since the interviews started (“Recorded interviews!” Petunia would screech. “He’s acting like an insolent child on camera! For ITV!”) three days ago, Lily’s been the unfortunate recipient of no fewer than fifteen phone calls at all hours of the night that consist purely of her sister’s hissing complaints.

“Maybe today will be better,” Lily says, a blatant and hopeless attempt at placation.

Petunia snorts. It’s something she’d never dare do with anyone but Lily, whom she deems beneath the social threshold for such breaches of etiquette. Much like a telemarketer or a taxi driver. “I highly doubt it. The man—and I use the term lightly—has been positively unendurable since I’ve arrived.”

I wonder what might have happened to establish such hostility, Lily thinks wryly. Maybe he didn’t bow low enough when you walked in the door.

A few minutes pass in terse silence. Outside the car, the landscape of London flashes by, flickers of old marble and brick and, for a while, corporate-tinted glass. Lily envisions herself getting out at a stoplight and running into any particular building, grounding herself in the presence of other people and their regular workdays, their abilities to chitchat back and forth comfortably, without fear of being shut out or talked over.

“This city is too crowded. Even in the morning it’s like a damned circus.” Petunia grouses with a sharp push of breath. She hits the break a little too hard; a warning for the driver behind her, creeping too close.

“I think it’s nice,” Lily murmurs. “It’s lively.”

Petunia accelerates but says nothing, as though she hadn’t spoken at all.

The reason she’s accompanying her sister on this particular day’s escapade is that Petunia’s assistant, a small, browbeaten man by the name of Murdoch, has mysteriously come into a severe case of pox (which kind he did not specify) and will be thus unable to continue his essential task of holding her various papers and files while she asks questions. The magazine refuses to provide her with a replacement—probably due to the fact that Murdoch is the fifth in a series of short-term assistants all suspiciously driven away from the position—and therefore, twenty-seven-year-old Lily was enlisted to take a day off work and provide free labor for the cause.