awesome_binomial_theorems | [OOM] Oswin, Moriarty and Hangovers.

[OOM] Oswin, Moriarty and Hangovers.

Alcohol is a fiend. A tempting, beguiling fiend.

Moriarty blinks awake at roughly dawn with an impressive headache, a dry mouth and an ache in his side. The latter he was expecting - he'll deny it until the end of time (which, in the bar, gives him considerable flexibility on the duration of his denial), but sleeping on a tough leather sofa is not the best idea when you're injured.

Rubbing his forehead, he shrugs on a dressing gown without bothering to do it up and stumbles into the kitchen to pour himself some water.

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"It may have been whiskey."

He doesn't sound sure.

"Ugh." She's adding a new line of code to the command structure: Bottles of whiskey = bad, to hopefully keep this from happening again. "Though," The speculative tone of her voice probably doesn't mean good things for that recently written rule holding for very long. "It definitely wasn't a bad night."

Just a moderately horrid morning.

"The night was fine," Moriarty says, with a slightly shy, very goofy grin in Oswin's direction. "It's the ensuing day that needs to go die a most painful demise."

"It is certainly going to have to work hard for redemption." She agrees, before tipping back the rest of her water. That grin... damn. It has very hard not to just sit there and plot ways to get that grin to appear again.
"Right, so. I'm thinking coffee. Coffee as black as space and hot as a fusion reaction. Possibly multiple cups."

Moriarty throws a sloppy salute which is more like smacking himself in the forehead than anything (maybe he wishes to beat the hangover out?). "Aye-aye, ma'am."

With a wordless 'why-won't-this-headache-go-away' grumble, he heads back into the kitchen. It isn't long before the sounds of a kettle boiling start drifting through the door.

She levers herself upright in stages, but it's the promise of coffee that keeps her from surrendering and hiding under the blankets again. She used to watch mad Daleks slam themselves into walls, over and over, for days on end - somehow a few of them have migrated into her skull and are repeating their act with great vigor.

Oswin sighs at the state of her rumpled clothing, decides to re-label it as bedhead-chic, and slowly chases after Moriarty and his promise of coffee. That whistling kettle sounds promising.

When Oswin gets into the kitchen, Moriarty's just pouring the coffee. It's not good coffee necessarily: It's early twenty-first century instant, courtesy of his room's seemingly constantly stocked cupboards.

(It took him off guard, at first, the futuristic kitchen with its buttons and lights and myriad jars of tiny coloured granules, but there's little point being a genius if you can't figure out how to make instant coffee.)

He offers her a smile. "Hello. Here." A mug of coffee is slid down the worktop towards her.

She grins back, wrapping her hands around the warm mug.

"Thanks very much." She dips in what might approximate a quick curtsy (sans voluminous skirts and thus looking a lot silly. Then, armed with caffeine and a whole load of curiosity, she noses about the kitchen.

"Could make a whole load of souffles in here."

"I don't have any fish oil in the cupboards, to my knowledge," Moriarty says, leaning against the worktop and gulping down a good third of his mug's contents. "So they'd be lacking that special something."

Oswin shoots him an arch look over her coffee mug, sipping her drink (but only because it truly is hot, and she doesn't want to add burnt tongue to today's complaints).
"Truly tragic. One wonders how you ever manage." The size of the pantry is greeted with a surprised whistle. "I might have to ask the Bar to set me up with one of these, you could feed an army out of here."

"I think it may be meant as a subtle hint that I'm not eating enough," Moriarty says. After a short pause: "Which is nonsense, I eat plenty."

"Well then." She sets her coffee mug down on the nearest counter and cracks her knuckles. "I propose to settle the debate - cook something from things in here, and you eat them, and you'll both win."
Head-bashing Dalek invaders or not, Oswin is ruthless as a provisions finder. It helps that the bar seems to have stocked everything fairly logically, making flour, sugar, buttermilk powder, pecans, salt, and cinnamon all very easy to find.

"By all means," Moriarty says, with some amusement. "But I'm a terrible cook, so don't use me for anything more delicate than stirring."

"Excuses, excuses." She tsks, dumping her load of goods onto the worktop. The refrigerator yields more goodies - butter and cream, a jar of maple syrup, eggs.

(Eggs)

She impatiently ignores the stray thought, already knowing where that rabbit hole leads and not today, thank you.
"You may sit there then, sir, and attempt to not appear too smug." She's barely looking at her measurements, she's made pancakes too many times before to really need to be careful.

Another check of the refrigerator brings a crow of triumph and a box of blueberries. Now, to find a griddle...

Moriarty laughs, patting her on the shoulder. "I'm going to get dressed."

He wanders out into the main room and, when he returns ten minutes or so later, the dressing gown has been replaced with - some incongruously not Victorian clothing in the form of a loose pair of grey sweatpants and a neon green t-shirt.

(It matches his eyes, at least?)

He's tugging at the hem of his t-shirt, looking mildly ill-at-ease. He's Victorian, after all, he's used to far more layers than this. But on the other hand, the entire British Army is doing a parade in his skull, and he would rather not compound that with heavy, stiff Victorian gentleman's garb.

"How goes the baking? Need anything stirred? I can also do kneading and whisking, if I must."

She turns, knife in hand (pecans need chopping, much chopping) and her eyes widen in surprise at his outfit.

...

Huh.

"Careful, dear. You'll put an eye out with that shirt." Oswin returns to her chopping while the oil on the griddle she's found slowly warms to cooking temperature.

"You seem surprised," Moriarty says.

(He can understand why, but still, it's worth sort-of-asking.)

Pause. Then: "The clothes of the future are much - lighter than I'm used to. And there's less of them."

Oswin smiles, one of her quick, uncontrolled smiles that seem to get away from her on occasion (and she'll deny the blush that she forces down soon after until the day she dies, truly she will).
"You're wandering further and further away from tweed - your fellow professors would be shocked." She retorts instead, scooping the chopped nuts back into their bowl and grabbing batter (smelling of buttermilk and cinnamon) and spoon instead. The batter sizzles on the griddle, and she pours six perfect disks before marring their starkness with a sprinkling of nuts and berries for each.

"And appalled, I've no doubt," Moriarty replies cheerfully. "Maybe I should teach a lecture in this garb, just to see what they say. What do you think?"

He's peering at the griddle, because those pancakes do smell pretty delicious.

"Lucky students." She mutters, and smacks at him with her spatula when he gets too close to the griddle.
"Go and be useful, we're going to need plates." The sizzling rises in pitch when she flips the pancakes over, one after the other.

Moriarty's expression is that of a wounded puppy highly aware of the injustice of the world, but he plucks out two plates on a cupboard and - maturely resisting the urge to balance them on his head - places them on the worktop near the griddle.

He is swiftly rewarded for his maturity with the arrival of four golden brown pancakes, dropped in neat precision across his plate.

The other two she claims, while waving at the spare butter and maple syrup with her free hand.
"Breakfast is served. I have plenty more batter... if you want more later, that is."

"Thank you," Moriarty says dutifully. The pancakes are duly drizzled with maple syrup before he grabs a fork and takes his plate through to the main room.

It does not take him long at all to start digging in with remarkably little grace or delicacy.

After dressing her pancakes, she follows, clutching her mug of coffee. Her own assault on the pancakes is much more reserved - they're not bad, if she does say so herself, but she doesn't want to tempt fate or her hangover with too many of them.

The coffee, however, is clutched like a lifeline.

Cheerfully: "We should have hangovers more often if I get breakfast out of it."

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