Chapter Text
Kili wiped the sweat from his brow as he walked out of the studio, kicking the door shut behind him. He didn’t hear the distinct sound of it slamming closed, though. Instead, he heard a loud knock and a grunt of pain. He spun around on the balls of his feet, horrified.
“Oh hell. Sorry man, didn’t see you behind me!”
The door had hit Kili’s on-screen rival, Chef Fili. He was the Iron chef that Kili had accidentally chosen to compete against on the show of the same name. He had absolutely no intention of picking the gorgeous blond chef, but right when Kili was asked who he wanted, Fili had walked into the room.
“Chef Fili!” Kili had gasped his name, awestruck by the man’s beauty and presence.
“Chef Fili it is!” The producer repeated, scribbling things down in the contract.
“What?! No that’s– hnnnng, fuck.”
“Are you okay?” Kili asked Fili, who was holding his nose in pain.
“Yeah, I’ll be fine… lucky my nose is so big or else I’d be getting a full face of bruises. Definitely makes for a great door stop,” he joked. Kili laughed with him weakly.
“Glad you don’t hate me for it…”
“For this? It was an accident! Hey, though. Good job today, kid. It’s really stressful in there but you did great.” Fili smiled and patted Kili on the shoulder.
“Thanks!” Kili grinned.
“Don’t relax yet. Today was just practice. The real deal will be much, much worse.”
Kili sighed loudly, but nodded. “Yeah… But don’t think just ‘cause I’m what they call a ‘rookie’ means I’ll be losing. Get ready to have your ass handed to you in two days, blondie!” He shouted, poking Fili in the chest.
Fili snorted, but smiled. “Get out of here, kid. Make sure to get your rest, you’ll need it!”
Kili stuck out his tongue after the blond, but turned and walked down the street into the night. Unfortunately for Kili, he did not have his own personalized parking space in the Iron Chef parking lot. Therefor he had quite the trek ahead of him to reach his old beaten up jalopy.
Not ten minutes into his walk, he heard shouting and a scuffle. Kili perked up when he heard a distressed woman plead to be let go.
Don’t be a vigilante, Kili, that’s stupid! They said, don’t be stupid and wear your dumb outfit underneath all your clothes! They pleaded. Yeah well he sure showed them, over and over again! As a civilian, Kili was expert amateur chef Kili. But unbeknownst to everyone, Kili was… Komrade Kielbasa! Vigilante extraordinaire!
Kili ripped off his shirt and threw it away from him, revealing the top half of his super suit. It was a dark teal nylon muscle shirt with a bright gold K sewn sloppily onto the chest.
“Y’all better get your asses ready, for I am he who brings the justice.” Kili said aloud to no one, clenching his fist in the air.
He did a quick stretch for his legs, then sprinted towards the woman’s distressed cries. He reached an alleyway– typical, and lept into a power stance. He held up his hands towards the attackers.
“Halt, heathens!” He boomed.
Much to his surprise, they did. A myriad of emotions ran through the muggers as they stared at Kili. All of them landed on the same thing it always did: greatly amused.
“What the hell are you!” One shouted.
“Get out of here, pleb!” Another scoffed.
“This is your final warning! Let that woman go!” Kili shouted back at them.
Almost predictably, none of the three men listened. They went right back to harassing the drunk woman. Kili stomped towards them, hands on his hips.
“Don’t make me open a can of whoop– yip!” Kili was grabbed and thrown against a brick wall, a knife was quickly pressed to his throat.
“Mind your own business, you little shit!” The halitosis-ridden man hissed into Kili’s ear. The distressed drunken woman let out a battle cry and kneed her captor in the groin. As he fell over onto the ground she fled.
Not much else was said or done to Kili, for right at that moment there was aswish and a tink! Right next to his ear, causing his heart rate to shoot through the roof. He side-eyed the subtly swaying knife that was embedded into the brick wall next to his jugular.
“Let him go.” A deep voice rang out. When none of the brutes made a move, another knife whizzed through the air and embedded itself into the brick wall, this time having to go through Kili’s captor’s hand to get there.
He howled out in pain and ripped it out, stumbling away to nurse the appendage. He and his cronies fled the way of their first victim. Kili slid down onto the ground and took a moment to catch his breath. He looked towards the entrance of the alleyway in hopes of seeing his savior. No such luck, the man was gone. But the knives were still there.
Kili reached over to the bloody one laying on the ground and picked it up. It was a professional chef’s knife, brand name.
It was Saturday, two days later, the day of the competition. It was the real deal. Kili was bent over one of his work stations, frantically grating a truffle over his custard and bacon coated pork and goat loin, dyed black by squid’s ink. Behind him his sous chef made small cinnamon banana Irish oatmeal balls, drizzled with a grass puree.
Across the room was Fili, who was also adding the finishing touches to his main dish. Several drops of virgin tears (part of the secret ingredient; blood, sweat, and tears) were mixed into the handmade shrimp sriracha sauce colored red by frog’s blood, along with a handful of cat hair for added protein.
It had so far been a trying day for both teams. Poor Kili had issues with opening a can of tomatoes. The can opener jammed (not even his own tears of anguish and overexertion lubricated it), so he ended up hacking it open with a meat cleaver. As he went to place the can out of the way, it slipped from his fingers and plopped right into his trash. There was a surplus of tears that day.
Fili on the other hand had major issues with his crabs. They had such claw strength that they would widen them enough to snap the thick rubber bands keeping them clamped shut. For six long minutes, rubber projectiles shot throughout the studio, smacking anyone who was foolish enough to get in their way.
By the time hour to cook was up and they had reached the stage for judgement, Kili was clinging to his final strands of consciousness. Fili looked as if he had just stepped out of a spa– one of those sketchy ‘full service’ spas, though, because his hair was quite disheveled. Kili remembers nothing that the judges said to him. He just nodded and thanked them and stumbled away to collapse into a chair behind the scenes.
Thirty minutes later, the contestants were summoned back on stage for the announcement.
“Today… our winner is… CHEF KILI!!!”
There was confetti, and music, and a deafening amount of cheering. Kili hit the ground, unconscious.
Four months later
Kili’s eyes shone with joy and anticipation as he watched the waiter arrive with his table’s food. As the plates were placed down in front of them, the chef in him couldn’t help but scan his dish for any flaw, large or small. There were none that he could immediately see, and Kili was impressed. The first bite of his lobster thermidor had him moaning lasciviously, it was too good for words. Kili had been starving and awaiting this meal all day– all year, he had made these reservations for him and his friends many months ago. It was well worth the wait.
“Ohhh man… so good.” He sighed. Next to him his best friend Tauriel made a similar noise.
“This is unbelievable… I can’t believe you got us into the most popular restaurant in the country. Oh man Kili we all really owe you for this one!”
Kili assured her that they didn’t owe him anything and insisted they enjoy themselves to the fullest. The night continued on with more pleasant banter between the group. Eventually, the waiter returned with the check and a handmade fortune cookie for each of them. Kili ripped his open and tossed his fortune away– but he caught the glimpse of one word that stuck out oddly to him and made his heart jump, ‘danger’.
He quickly reached out and grabbed it before it could disappear onto the floor.
“You are in danger. Say nothing and leave immediately. I will find you and explain everything.”
Kili looked up sharply at his friends, checking to see if they got any weird messages also. They were sharing their fortunes with each other, giggling and making up exaggerated scenarios that might fit them.
Kili jumped to his feet and grabbed the bill, mumbling something about going to pay it. He hurried to the front and did just that before quickly slipping out the front entrance and disappearing into the shadows. The fortune was vague and didn’t give him any clue as to where to go… but he was drawn to the back of the restaurant, so he headed there.
Almost immediately he was hugging himself, trying to warm himself up. He had forgotten his coat inside, like an idiot, and the temperature outside had already dropped drastically since the sun had gone down, and standing in the shadows only made it worse. He waited for fifteen long minutes before something happened: the back door to the kitchen opened, and out stepped the head chef.
It was Fili! Kili would recognize that stern all-business air anywhere. Kili took a step forward to call out but stopped himself. He and Fili were rivals almost too recently on Iron Chef. Kili thought they had gotten along well enough… but Kili had beaten him on national TV, so maybe he was upset and wanted revenge. Fili stuck a well-earned cigarette into his mouth and went to light it. Kili watched him try and fail six times before he stepped in.
“Need a light?”
Fili startled. “Kili! What are you doing back here?” He asked, letting Kili light his smoke.
“Someone sent me a threatening fortune cookie…” Kili explained.
“What? I–” Fili scoffed and rolled his eyes, flicked the butt of his cigarette and brought it back up to take another drag. “It must’ve been my sous chef. I told him to find a way to get you alone so I can talk to you. What an idiot.” He sighed.
“Oh,” Kili smiled. “Yeah that was bit of an odd way to do it. What do you want to talk about? Why? How did you even know I was in tonight?” He asked.
“Someone made a smartass comment about you showing up tonight. Something about rubbing your win in my face. And I saw you, too, for just a second… with your friends and girlfriend?”
“Nah, she’s just been my best friend for as long as I can remember. We’ve always stood by one another.” Kili shook his head.
“Ah yeah, I remember seeing her in the crowd when we were competing. It’s nice you have someone there for you like that,” Fili smiled. Kili nodded and matched his smile.
“Sorry, what did you want to see me about? I sort of ditched my mates inside and I sh–”
Fili hooked his finger beneath Kili’s chin and brought him in for a kiss. He pulled away and cleared his throat awkwardly, taking a step back and a drag of his cigarette.
“Oh.” Kili stood limp, feeling numb. A stupid grin slid onto his face. “You taste like cigarettes and lobster. You made my dish?”
Fili blushed. “It was a special dish, I didn’t want anything going wrong. How was it?”
Kili laughed loudly. “You know damn well it was… phenomenal. There was just one thing missing.”
“What are you talking about?” Fili looked taken aback and quickly leaped into agitation.
“Your dick. Is there any time later tonight I could get a taste of that?” Kili smirked. Fili choked on a breath of smoke and dropped his cigarette.
“Uh… yeah, I think that’s something I could make room for in my schedule.”
A shrill scream sliced through the air. Both chefs stilled for just a nanosecond before their hands launched to their shirts. Kili’s was halfway across the parking lot immediately and the buttons on Fili’s chefs jacket were launched in every direction as he ripped it off. Kili did a double take at the olive nylon shirt Fili wore with the white F emblem.
“You–!” He shouted. “You’re a vigilante of justice too?! I had suspected that night from the Master Chef knives, but… which, by the way, I have a question about that. You left those knives at the scene of the crime. You just abandoned them there! Those are expensive!”
“Oh! Well, they were kind of old, and they were the first ones I grabbed since out of all of them they’re easiest to get to…”
“‘Out of all of them? What do you mean–” Kili watched as Fili patted himself down and pulled out three… no, seven… no, fifteen different knives from hidden spots all over his body, and explained that they were all older knives anyway so it wasn’t really that big of a deal to abandon them.
Fili nodded at Kili when he finished. “I am. El Feroz Buñuelo, at your service.” He began the long, tedious task of replacing all his knives.
“Komrade Kielbasa, at yours and your family’s.” Kili responded, unable to break his gaze away from the pile of knives on the ground. “Care to join me in saving the night, partner?”
“Absolutely.”