—Hot Steel—

CH.2 Part 1

༺♛༻Callum༺♛༻

═══════════════════════════════════════

THREE DAYS EARLIER

My forehead is leaking sweat so fast it feels like my skull's springing leaks.

My eyes sting, vision blurs like someone smeared grease across glass, but I can't blink. 

If I do, I'll lose the rhythm.

Fifteen seconds.

Just fifteen before the scallops turn from perfection to rubber, before the butter in the pan goes from nut-brown to acrid smoke.

My chest tightens, like someone’s cinching a belt around my ribs, pulling harder with every second. My heartbeat is too loud, too heavy, pounding against bone.

"Corner!" A body flashes past, carrying a pan so hot the air itself hisses. I duck, almost lose my balance, and then  another barrage.

"Where's the sauce for the côte de veau?!" Head chef's voice slices across the line, sharper than a boning knife.

I'm plating. 

Focus, Callum. Focus! 

But my mouth can't keep up with my hands.

"Thirty seconds before Bran finishes the-"

"Did I ask you to speak?"

The words don’t rise. They land. Heavy and precise.

"You see? This is why I never wanted you on my line. Tu es incompétent." He shouts at me like a lunatic.

Silence folds over the kitchen. Pans hiss and no one looks at me, but they all listen.

He steps closer.

"Absolute waste of space. Rubbish stays rubbish. You understand?"

"Yes..." I say, barely. Sweat slips into my split lip. Salt and copper.

"‘Yes,’ what?"

My jaw tightens. "Yes, Chef."

"Look at me when you say it."

I do. And that’s worse. I hope he doesn't see the murderous fire in my eyes.

"Say it properly."

My fingers tremble around the spoon. I smooth the sauce like it matters. Like I matter.

"Rubbish stays rubbish, Chef."

"And what are you?"

We’re all skint, overworked bastards chained to this line, breathing in his steam and ego. We all get it and we all take it. Just not at the same time.

Someone keeps chopping. Someone keeps stirring. Because we all know how this works. It doesn’t stop until his ego swells full enough to brush the ceiling, until he’s wrung every last ounce of shame from someone and can season his sauce with it.

"...Rubbish, Chef."

He nods once, satisfied.

"Good. At least you can follow instructions."

The words settle in my gut like swallowed shrapnel, but the service must carry on.

That's me. 

Callum. 

I dragged myself out of Gora Park by the skin of my nails, only to get hauled back down in a fancy uniform and still be called rubbish. Sweat-stained whites instead of torn hoodies, a name embroidered over my chest like that somehow makes me new or worth something. Doesn't matter. Dirt is dirt, no matter how you plate it.

I need to be here, no matter what.

"Chicken shits, the lot of you! More truffle oil. Where's the truffle oil?"

Truffle oil. Always fucking truffle oil. The miracle cologne for mediocre food.

"Wait, scratch it! Rosemary. Garlic. Actually-"

FUCK! 

The scream stays in my skull, caged, but it rattles hard. If indecision was a terminal disease, this bastard would be patient zero. Meanwhile my scallops - my perfect, nut-brown, delicate scallops - are seconds from flatlining.

To my left, the lad manning sauces trembles so hard the pan rattles.

"Here." I whisper, hand shooting out before my brain catches up. I steady his wrist, guide the spoon. "Not like that. Circle. Even. Keep breathing, Jesus Christ, you're not defusing a bomb." I let out a soft chuckle.

His eyes flick to mine, wide and desperate, then back to the sauce. For a moment, his hand steadies.

His lips tremble like he's about to beg for mercy.

"Thank you, Callum..."

That tone, thin, frayed, clinging to hope, cuts deep. I know it too well. I've lived in that register since the first time I wrapped my hand around a knife. The kitchen doesn't just chew you up; it swallows you whole, bones and marrow, gristle and pride, like some ravenous beast that never tires of the taste.

I grew up in Gora Park, where failure wasn't some distant threat, it was the baseline; the default setting you had to overwrite every single day just to breathe. I know what it feels like to be stepped on, kicked down, scraped off the pavement like gum. That taste never leaves your mouth.

Ever.

And yet, here I am in my one year deep in this palace of posh sadists. Le Palais des Bêtises. Translation: 'The Palace of Nonsense'. At least that's what I called it inside my head. My so-called dream restaurant. Except tell me this: when did dreams start tasting like hot oil lodged in your throat? When did ambition start feeling like drowning with your eyes open?

Yes, I fought for my place for years to become sous chef. But cooking here isn't food. It's theatre. Props disguised as plates, dressed in edible gold dust, arranged for the camera lens, hollow as glass baubles. Pretty enough for social media, tasteless enough to sell.

And me? I'm fire by nature. I burn for flavour, for the crackle of garlic hitting oil, for the snap of salt against heat. But lately, my fire is guttering low, smoke curling, choking itself out. Every night I chase the art of it; sweating until dawn, wrists blistered, eyes raw, but the more I look around, the more I see colleagues who stopped chasing years ago.

Dead-eyed.

Moving because the orders keep coming. Not living, just surviving in whites. And I know, deep down, I'm not far behind them.

"Never mind. Truffle oil again! On order seventeen, hurry-hurry, dickheads!" 

Head chef's bark ricochets off steel and tile, stabbing through the noise. His gaze snaps to me, eyes hungry for a scapegoat.

"Callum! Tar-head! That pan should’ve been on two minutes ago!"

"That fucking little-" An elbow nudges my ribs before I can finish my sentence.

Bran, the saucier, gives me the sort of wide, pleading look usually reserved for dogs about to watch you step into traffic. A silent don’t. Because if my temper flares before the burner does, the head chef won’t just shout. He’ll punish everyone for my fire.

"Orders nineteen and twenty-one! Vegetables now, Callum!"

My shirt’s plastered to me, skin slick and shining under the kitchen lights, steam curling around my shoulders as if I’m the thing on the boil. Every muscle in my back pulled clean and deliberate beneath damp cotton.

"Veg shouldn't be fired yet-"

"Did I ask?! I know the timings." Chef spit. 

"Do it, or you're back on dishes till your skin peels off! And Christ, wipe your face, you're glossier than the pork terrine!"

I duck into the storage to grab more veg and steal sixty seconds of air.

From the dining room, laughter floats in. Light. Polished. The kind that clinks like crystal. Champagne-bubble laughter.

It drifts down the corridor, thin and brittle, all sharp edges and curated delight, slicing straight through the sweat, grease and heat.

"Atmosphère, darling. The food is...como se chiama..." A fake Italian drawl, heavy-handed.

"Très délicieuse..." Now fake French, syrupy and smug. Is the fucker mixing languages? Very fancy, I roll my eyes.

My hand tightens on the ladle until my knuckles bloom white. Three accents swanning about in that dining room like a badly dubbed opera: North London, faux-Italian, wounded French  and one twat trying to swallow the lot. Lovely.

They wouldn’t know hollandaise from custard if you shoved it in their faces, but they’ll snap photos, post it online, call it a moment. Call it art. Call it whatever keeps the likes coming.

"Callum!"

Head chef's voice snaps again, a whip that makes everyone flinch.

"The vegetables!"

"Oui, chef. Sauce au vin, tout de suite!" It slips out before I can stop it. Habit. Muscle memory. The only scraps of French I can throw from my old job.

"What was that?" His eyes snap to me, sharp as a whisk. Two words right, and suddenly it’s sacrilege. My mouth tastes metallic with absurdity.

If there's a god, let me tumble into the oven and roast slowly. Anything but this stare, the one that trims me down to an unpaid bill.

 I'm the clown with the black hair, sweating through a painted smile, the joke everyone keeps retelling until they forget the punchline was ever mine.

Then the kitchen roars back to life, because kitchens don't hold grudges - they just feed panic. 

I jerk back into the line, eyes on the work, the juniors needing direction like small boats in a storm. I don't have time to rot in existential dread.

Fuck this.

"Here."

I slide in next to a trembling kid at the pass and take the spoon from his numb fingers.

"Not like that. Smooth, clockwise. Taste it. Balance the acid; don’t drown it in vinegar like you’re baptizing a salad."

My voice is flat, clinical. Bad, because we never got proper training. Still, the juniors nod, a silent kitchen truce: we’re all drowning, might as well drown together. Tristan, the American intern, looks the most broken; weeks under the head chef’s crosshairs have him moving like he’s waiting for the axe.

I plate like a man staving off a cliff.

Oysters - cold, perfect - glisten in their shells, a silver architecture of brine and pearled flesh. I carefully spoon a lattice of mignonette over each, letting it thread across the curve like liquid lace. With tweezers, I place a single micro-herb atop the edge, then finish with a paper-thin lemon twist, torched lightly for aroma, an edge of brightness to cut through the fat.

I've been told I'm shit my whole life, with the rare pat on the back from a chef who noticed I had some potential. What still throws me is why I'm the one trusted with plating instead of the head chef.

Not that I'm complaining.

I live for it.

Art on a plate; sharp, fleeting, edible. One of the only reasons I bother dragging myself out of bed each morning.

Still, somewhere between the heat and the shouting I find the one quiet, filthy joy left to me: the plate. When I lean over it, everything else narrows. Only colour, texture, the way a smear of sauce catches the light. It's the one thing I can control in a room that thinks control equals command.

But it doesn't matter.

At the end of the day, I don't belong here.

I never did.

༺♛༻