—Hot Steel—

CH.2 Part 1

༺♛༻Callum༺♛༻

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

THREE DAYS EARLIER

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

My eyes sting. Vision blurs like someone dragged grease across glass. I don’t blink.

If I do, I 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.

The heat in the kitchen shifts again. Not from the burners. From me. From somewhere under my skin that never quite stays quiet for long.

My chest tightens like a belt being pulled one notch too far. Then another. My heartbeat is too loud, too heavy, knocking against bone like it’s trying to get out.

“Corner!”

A body flashes past with a pan so hot the air around it hisses. I step back too late, shoulder clipping metal. The kitchen doesn’t care.

“Where’s the sauce for the côte de veau?!”

The head chef’s voice cuts through the line, sharper than anything in here should be allowed to be.

I’m plating.

Focus, Callum. Focus.

My hands move faster than my thoughts.

But the heat won’t sit still.

My skin is starting to burn again. Worse than before.

“Thirty seconds before Bran finishes the-”

“Did I ask you to speak?”

The words don’t rise. They drop. Heavy. Exact. Final.

Silence folds over the kitchen. Even the pans feel quieter.

He steps closer.

“Absolute waste of space. Rubbish stays rubbish. You understand?”

“Yes…” I manage. Sweat slips into my split lip. Salt and copper.

“‘Yes,’ what?”

My jaw tightens. I force my hands steady over the plate like it matters more than anything else in this room.

“Yes, Chef.”

“Look at me when you say it.”

I do.

The heat under my skin spikes, sharp and sudden, like something responding.

“Say it properly.”

My fingers tremble around the spoon. I smooth the sauce anyway.

“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. And tuck those fucking horns away Callum, don’t you try intimidate me with those."

The words settle in my gut like swallowed shrapnel, but the service must carry on. My horns are not for show. They come when I focus too hard. When the heat in my body starts to climb and there’s nowhere for it to go except outward. My fucking head. 

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. 

It 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 is trembling so hard the pan rattles. It doesn’t help that he’s part gargoyle. When he’s anxious, he stiffens. Which is always in this damned place.

"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.”

His grip finally steadies.

The pressure in my skull eases, just a fraction. The horns recede.

His eyes flick to mine, wide and desperate, then back to the sauce. His lips tremble like he's about to beg for something.

"Thank you, Callum..."

That tone right there, thin, frayed, clinging to hope, cuts deep. I know it too well.

I’ve lived in it since the first time I wrapped my hand around a knife.

The kitchen doesn’t just chew you up. It swallows you whole, bone and marrow, pride and everything soft in between, like it was always hungry and never learned how to stop.

I grew up in Gora Park, where failure wasn’t a distant threat, it was the baseline. The default you had to overwrite just to get through a day.

I know what it feels like to be stepped on, kicked down, scraped off the pavement like gum.

That taste never leaves you.

And yet, here I am, a year deep in this palace of posh sadists. Le Palais des Bêtises.’The Palace of Nonsense’ or at least that’s what I named it in 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 turn into the feeling of 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. The restaurant was built in one, after all.

Plates as props, dusted in edible gold, arranged for a camera lens. Pretty enough for social media, hollow enough to sell.

And me? I’m fire by nature. I burn for flavour, for garlic hitting oil, for salt snapping against heat.

But lately, that fire has been guttering low, smoke curling back in on itself.

Every night I chase the work anyway. Sweat through service until dawn, wrists blistered, eyes raw. And still, the more I look around the kitchen, the more I see people who stopped chasing anything a long time ago.

Dead-eyed. Moving because the orders keep coming. Not living, just surviving in whites.

And I can feel it, creeping in at the edges. I’m not as far from them as I like to think.

“Never mind. Truffle oil again. On order seventeen. Hurry dickheads!”

The head chef’s bark ricochets off steel and tile, cutting straight through the noise. His gaze snaps to me, already hunting for something to blame.

“Callum. Tar-head! That pan should’ve been on two minutes ago.”

“That fucking little-”

An elbow catches my ribs before I can finish.

Bran, the saucier, gives me that wide, pleading look he always wears when things are about to go wrong in ways that involve me.

“Don’t.”

Because if my temper flares before the burner does, it won’t just be me that pays for it. The whole line will.

"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 with champagne-bubble laughter.

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

“Atmosphère, darling. The food is…como se chiama…”

A fake Italian started.

“Très délicieuse…”

Now French. Syrupy. Smug.

I swear they’re assembling a language like it’s a tasting menu.

My hand tightens on the ladle until my knuckles go white. Three accents swanning about out there like a badly dubbed opera: North London trying its best, faux-Italian, wounded French, and one man attempting to swallow all of it at once. Lovely.

They wouldn’t know hollandaise from custard if you weaponised it, but they’ll call it a moment. Call it art. Call it whatever keeps the photos and likes rolling in.

"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. A few right words 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. At least that would be honest work.

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

The kitchen roars back to life. It always does. Kitchens don’t hold grudges. They just escalate panic.

I jerk back into the line, eyes on the work, the juniors drifting around like confused small boats in a storm. I don’t have time to rot in existential dread. Unfortunately, the dread does not care.

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, yeah? Balance the acid, don’t drown it in vinegar like you’re baptising a salad. Ok, good. Just like that.”

My voice comes out flat. Clinical. It always does when things are going wrong.

The juniors nod. A silent kitchen truce: we’re all drowning, so we might as well do it properly.

Tristan, the American intern, looks the most broken. Weeks under the head chef’s crosshairs have him moving like he’s always waiting for an execution.

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 but make it make sense.

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.

༺♛༻