Sugar, Spice and Not so Nice (Open)

[Jacelynn Heron]

Why she was in Home-ec, she didn't really know. It was her last year at Hammel and she was all for trying new things. She wanted to have fun and meet other people and learn some fancy new skill. Maybe her new skill would help her with her pranking. The very idea was what made Jacelynn sign up for the class. New people, new targets, new ideas. She just couldn't help but pity the poor home-ec teacher. Not just because of the pranks, but because Jacelynn couldn't cook to save her life.

A typical male would be exasperated by that fact, simply because women were supposedly the only gender that were allowed in the kitchen. Jacelynn wished she'd had a dime for every time she heard 'Go get in the kitchen and make me a sammich' woman' on some lame sit-com. If she was going to be the one who cooked for her husband...it was looking like take-out every night. That's one way for her to get fat and never be able to wear her adorable outfits. That made her shudder.

It wasn't her fault that she'd never cooked a day in her life. Her mother always shooed her away from the kitchen when she was younger. It was a dangerous place filled with knives and fire. As if going to school with a bunch of pyros and spike-skinned metas was any better. Then again, her mother didn't really know about that, what with her mother being a non-meta and all. Jacelynn knew that if Alana ever found out how dangerous Hammel could be...well, that would be a disaster. She wasn't too keen on the idea of her mother trying to fight the school. Luckily, in the past seven years, Lana still didn't know.

Long story short, Aleks and cooking didn't mesh well. She didn't even know how to boil water. She knew simple measurements, but she didn't know most of the spices in her mother's cabinet. She needed a tutor, but she didn't know anyone who was good at cooking. Eddie for sure wasn't, well except for the occasional pot brownies, but that didn't count. She needed someone who knew what they were doing and someone that had the patience to teach her. But who? And if that person would help her...would they be able to handle a few adolescent pranks in the process?

[Isaac Tilford]

Isaac liked to cook and sew because he rejected stereotypical gender roles in favor of things he genuinely enjoyed. Or, alternatively, he just liked girly things. He preferred the first interpretation though, and so when the time came to fill in the hole in his schedule his last semester at Hammel, it had been a natural choice to take Home Ec. again for some easy credits. Ms. Reynolds let him do whatever he wanted for sewing projects, and it had been pretty easy so far, so long as she let him do projects on his own.

When he was working with other students, not so much.

There weren't enough ranges in the cooking portion of the room for him to work alone, however, so he'd been assigned a partner for that. At least Jacelynn was a senior too, and he didn't think she had too much invested in the class. They could get along just fine if she just let him do what he wanted. "I'm thinking we should do the rice pilaf recipe. It looks easy enough and I bet it's better than whatever they're serving at the cafeteria later."

Isaac started getting the pans they would need out of the cabinets, then looked over at his partner again. "Unless you really want to do something else? You can pick something else if there's something you like better."

[Jacelynn Heron]

Jacelynn hadn't realized that she was paired with a good cook. In fact, she'd assumed that only people who had nothing better to do with their time took home ec. That, or the girls in training of becoming the next Desperate Housewives. Aleks definitely did not fit into the housewife thing, she was just the one who had nothing better to do. But this guy, the dude with the curly locks beside her, Isaac something or other, he actually knew what he was talking about! A guy!

Not that Aleks was into stereotypes, but it was rare that guys took home ec or actually liked to cook for that matter. And yet, here he was, asking her if she wanted to make some funky thing called rice pile of...or was it pee laugh. Pilaf. Honestly who knew how to pronounce that word?! Apparently people who can cook.

Not Jacelynn.

"What's rice pee-laugh? Or however you say it." She asked with a raised eyebrow. Seriously, she probably looked like a toddler doing that. Really, Aleks didn't care what the guy made as long as it got her a good grade without doing much besides pulling cruel pranks on people, she was happy with it.

She shrugged, "Honestly, make whatever you want. I don't care, as long as it tastes good and if you can explain to me what it is so that if Mr. Master Chef dude asks me what I did, I can actually tell him and not sound too stupid."

[Isaac Tilford]

"Rice pilaf. It's just a rice recipe. It's got spices and some vegetables. My mom makes it with almonds. If you do it right, it's really good, and if you do it wrong...well, it isn't bad." Was it really such a weird thing to say? He thought the word over in his mind a few times, but it still didn't seem strange to him.

And was it really so strange that he liked Home Ec? So Isaac knew what he was doing in the kitchen, and he definitely knew what he was doing behind the sewing machine. His partner had probably seen the projects he'd made for the sewing portion of the class already. He figured she wouldn't mind having a partner who could manage his shit; and he really had hoped she'd take it more seriously than this.

"I'm not going to make it all myself though. I'll walk you through it. Won't be too hard." He put a pot on the stove and slid a measuring cup towards Aleks, since she was closer to the sink. "Measure out three and a half cups of water. We need to boil the rice before we can do anything else. I'll get the other stuff ready. But we're doing this together."