An effort was made nonetheless

Why on earth did he decide it was a good idea to invite the man over to make him dinner? He didn’t know how to cook! Well, actually that was not entirely true, what he did not know how to do was cook something that was edible – or even something that was not worthy of being labeled a biological hazard – but that did not mean that he did not know how to stir things. He would like to think he was capable of that at least, but frankly Charlie doubted there were very many recipes that were made entirely by the act of stirring things over the stove.

But he really, really wanted William to like him, so of course he made the foolish decision.

So there he was, sleeves rolled to his elbows, the old cookbook his mother had given him years ago that had remained unopened due to the fact that it frightened him finally laying open on the countertop, a carrot in one hand and a bundle of beans in the other. He was sure that the carrot would so something if he did… something to it, but unfortunately it seemed as if the thing to do some of had escaped him. The glossary in the back of the book did little to help, and thrice cleaning his boxy glasses did very little to uncover anything in the way of an answer, and so it was made very apparent that this one and only option was to make things up as he went and just hope for the best.

But really, how hard could it be? All he needed to do was chop up some vegetables into shapes that made them smaller. That would be so easy that he was sure he would be able to laugh at his own trepidation once everything went swimmingly and he was able to boast of his absolute success.

An absolute success that he had yet to achieve, however, as he needed to pause the act of both slicing and dicing when one of the aforementioned dicing slices decided it was very appropriate to acquaint itself with his finger instead of the carrot it was supposed to be severing.

Okay, that was just one little setback. Barely anything, really. With the addition of a plaster upon his finger and a determination to ignore that it was throbbing uncomfortably, and a carrot that was thoroughly washed – he wanted to woo the man, he did not want to somehow accidentally invoke some sort of long forgotten blood magic he didn’t know about by mistake – he carried on. He was determined to not let his mood dip just because he made one silly little slip up. There was always going to be something that goes wrong, that is just the inevitable outcome of literally any situation ever, so he would like to think this was just getting it out of the way early.

Was it a little foolishly optimistic? Maybe, but one could fault Charlie for wanting to be optimistic. He wanted things to go well, so it was only fair that he was going to be looking out for any little sign that he could convince himself was a sign of good luck regardless of whether there was any real truth to the matter.

The rest of the ordeal, however, seemed very much prepared to do any and everything in its capacity to test the bounds of this optimism, however.

Admittedly, it was not too much of a surprise to think that the act of chopping vegetables was actually one of the easiest parts of the cooking process. This included the act of flicking through the cookbook to try and find something to make that didn’t make him feel dizzy from the act of merely imagining making something. It seemed much of the process in the book did not align well with his own. The book specified precision and exact while he had very much just accepted that he was running off of hoping for the best and the reassurance that came when things he did didn’t immediately ruin the overall scent of the things he tossed a little haphazardly into the pan.

Slices of meat definitely did end up with both herbs and spices on it, and he thought that counted as an absolute win. He just had to hope that they were actually the correct herbs and spices, or at the very least the things he substituted – who can afford saffron nowadays? – would actually work as suitable substitutions for the things he did not have. Additionally, there were definitely vegetables doing things that they would not have been doing had he not started to, well, do things to them so he assumed this would have to be the correct thing for them to be doing. Even if it was beginning to smell a little like there was enough garlic to deter even the most curious vampire, he could at least claim he was cooking something that was good for the blood, as if that was something that people normally claim when cooking for people.

Despite everything, Charlie was sure that he had managed to make something that was at least mostly decent and more than a little edible. Really, he was quite proud of himself for the effort he went to in his cooking, and he secretly – the worst kept secret in the world – hoped that William would be suitably impressed by his effort and so would declare his undying love to him there and then. Even if it meant he might need to learn to cook, he would find that tolerable if it meant his attempted courtship was complete and total success.

He had just set the meal to simmer over the heat, keeping it warm and all that, when there was a knock on the door. With a flurry of excitedly nervous and nervously excited butterflies in his stomach and swirling his lungs, he paused only briefly to straighten his appearance in the mirror as he passed before granting his partner entrance.

So caught up as he was in greeting William, who he had no qualms about informing looked perfectly charming in his greatcoat, and the typical sharing of pleasantries that he had rather forgotten he had left the meal on the stove. In fact, he would most likely have entirely missed it if the world itself decided this was the perfect time to go and end, as he was far too smitten to notice all that much of anything.

Unfortunately.

Devastatingly, these good and wholesome vibes lasted for as long as it took William, glancing towards the kitchen, to ask the perfectly reasonable question of,

“Is that smoke?”