A/N: UWU back to plot. But also single scene because I did much much research on olive oils. Something interesting I found out too is that the best quality olive oil is so amazingly delicate that it's really drinkable, even. So very interesting. 

Also, because I no longer limit myself to the idea of 'update MUST hit 3.5k words or no update', I do realize that I have a much easier time keeping up with weekly stuff and also feeling a lot more relaxed when I write. 

I don't know for sure if it shows in my writing but I have been rather chill and enjoying it lately. I can only hope you do too.

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[Leroy]

"You will first taste different types of olive oil. In teams. After gathering the olives, there will be a taste test. The team that identifies the most types correctly will receive high-grade ingredients for the main challenge—that's the basic info. The judges will tell you the full details. We're starting in two. Places."

Random teams, I caught on, watching the assistant radio someone on her walkie before she left us to stand in a pre-arranged line for entering the set. I was number six on the call sheet. Assuming the judges had their numbers too, he'd be three.

Bored, I scrolled through an older version of the script that was on my phone, searching for some sort of miracle segment that had both our numbers written at the top of the call sheet. Exclusively us.

There weren't any. Guess I just have to make it happen, somehow.

A minute later, they had us walking on set for a first take, on top of a hill that overlooked olive trees and you could see part of the docks we'd passed. There was a table in the middle of the terrace we were out on and it had a couple of shot glasses—labelled—spread out on top of it, in front of something that was covered by a red piece of cloth. He and the other judges stood behind the table, eyes on the bunch of us arriving on set to start the day.

Shooting the first take had me noticing his vest. He didn't have that on this morning; knitted, beige, v-neck, paired with a white dress shirt that... was missing its top-most button. Not gonna lie, that took me a while to recover from. The only reason I did was because the rest of the judges, too, were wearing something different from the shoot back at the villa this morning.

I put two and two together and figured the people in Wardrobe needed them looking different to mark the start of a new episode or something. Still, they got him to wear a dress shirt without a top button.

So that circled around in my head for a bit until they called for a second take but this time with Chicken. They had no idea where to put him in the shot, so I suggested telling him to sit by the table the judges were standing at.

"Ay I love dogs," Pao reached out to rub my boy's back but missed him narrowly 'cuz he decided to walk all the way over to the other side and sit by the snowy surprise. "But I guess your dog doesn't love me. He seems to like Banilla a lot."

I would've left my boy to make his own decisions after telling him to stay but I wasn't sure if Leo's owner was okay with that, so I waited till he turned my way to ask. By that I sort of mean searching his eyes for a wave check; he turned and I knew he wasn't all for it, but only because he had someone extra in his arms. So he did bring his little one along.

"Take two, ready?"

He snapped out of it the moment they called for places and looked away, down at my boy who was really just staring up at him and waiting for a pat. The next thing I knew—out of urgency or just some kind of resolution—he set a sleeping Leo down on Chicken's back, gently, before giving him a respectful pat between the ears.

I gave my boy the eye so that he'd stay stock still but there was no telling if he understood what I was trying to tell him. It was a miracle that we ran the next take in less than a minute and moved on smoothly. I had conflicted feelings about my dog being a natural in front of the camera but at least he was somewhat getting along with Leo. A sleeping one.

"Chefs," Pao started out. "Welcome to Portofino. It is illegal to come here without trying the Ligurian pesto, did you know that?"

Streisand laughed. He did too. "You put it that way, but I can't disagree. I mean, this is Genoa— right where pesto alla genovese originated from. And as chefs, we all know the most important ingredient in a good pesto recipe."

Pao was right on cue, removing the red cloth and unveiling whatever they had underneath it. A bottle of olive oil.

Reactions followed. Most of 'em were exaggerated and borderline cheesy. Andre's included. It's a pity stuff like that don't get cut out and are instead given more screen time. All that over a bottle of olive oil?

Half the labelled shot glasses filled with a decent bit of liquid, I recognized. Siegfried had me differentiating the eight grades of olive oil according to culinary standards back when I was homeschooled. Not gonna lie, that was the easy part. The colors were a giveaway. And even then, the ones that looked the same smelled and tasted entirely different. Nailing the spelling was where I tripped up most of the time.

The rest of the collection though, included oils made from olives across the world. Turkish. Tunisian. Ligurian. Stuff I knew little to nothing about.

"Two teams: red and blue. By the end of today's masterclass, led personally by the owners and experts of the olive farm, each team must be able to identify, correctly, all thirteen samples. Or at least, more than the opposing team."

Realistically speaking, I was half asleep from the stale challenge. It didn't sound very interesting, with so many of us in a team and five times the brain power to make out something we're given the opportunity to taste and learn about. Not until him of course.

"Ay but how can we give you such a difficult challenge without first proving that we can do it?" Pao laughed and my eyes went to him. He seemed to have seen it coming. Of course, they'd have this scripted, somehow. "We are not bullies. Mm, maybe sometimes, but not always. But we are not hypo...crits, right, Banilla?"

He smiled. One of his practiced ones. "Yes. It would be silly, expecting all of you to have the ability to execute something even the judges find impossible. Therefore, I shall first demonstrate."

This stirred some excitement. His name had its place in the culinary world prior to the whole shitstorm with Andre, but there weren't many who were familiar with his genius. Back in school, sure. A honed, sensitive palate, backed by the kind of knowledge no library could ever hold a candle to—people knew him. Feared, sometimes, even.

Most of the chefs present were a generation above, and would've either had their doubts about those who came after or naturally known less about them. This was his moment.

He picked up the left-most shot glass that contained a little more than a teaspoon of light-yellow, slightly opaque liquid but Pao stopped him.

"Banilla, you cannot be serious. We all know that's too easy for you," he said with a funny raise of his brows and right on cue, an assistant came into the shot with a blindfold in her hands. "Normal people can tell the difference according to color. That's the easiest way of separating the many grades and types of olive oil, you agree?"

Streisand received the blindfold and held it out to him. Waiting with a smile.

The look in his eyes, I could read. He hadn't seen this coming; either this wasn't part of the script or the production team had somehow kept this from him for an authentic reaction but whatever it was they'd intended to capture didn't show on his face. No shock, no reluctance or hesitation. Only genuine amusement.

"I shall humor you, Chef Pao," he said, putting on the blindfold. "For all you know, I could have very well memorized the labels. In order."

"All thirteen of them?" Pao teased but he seemed to doubt his own words. Wasn't sure if it was all part of the script. "Unless you have a photographic memory... but even then, I wouldn't be surprised."

Streisand handed him the first glass and he raised it to his lips. It had to be the smell. Either that, or the texture but either way, he'd already seen the color of the liquid. Not in a million years he'd get this wrong.

"Refined olive oil. The flavor is... acceptable. Not incredibly acidic but distinctive," he put the glass away and Streisand handed him a bottle of mineral water. "Your average grocery store product off the shelf."

"Too easy." Du Bellay and I had our heads turned to Andre, who'd probably meant to say this a little louder just in case the sound guys were listening in and needed some theatre.

There wasn't a need to respond to a kid mumbling on under his breath or defend a genius because already, I could foresee Andre having to swallow his words in a couple of minutes. He was that bad at picking a fight.

The second glass was a kind of Turkish naturally-pressed oil—top quality stuff, and the third was the lowest of all, olive pomace oil that was really only used for frying. That one made him flinch.

The next four, five samples, he breezed through. By this point, needless to say, the judges, farm owners, chefs beside me and even the camera crew were impressed by his palate. By that I mean they had hands over their mouths and gasped every now and then. Layla was standing at the end of the row with her arms folded and a proud look on her face.

He was good. Very good.

There was really no other way to describe it. Also, I had limited vocabulary but guess who's been helping out with that?

"Probably memorized that shit," was all Andre could come up with in the end and I snorted out loud, genuinely entertained by all that salt in his head. In a way, having Du Bellay between us made things a lot less firey between the sad chef and myself. She looked far too neutral to give a shit about the drama.

"Andr—" She moved abruptly all of a sudden, like she was grabbing onto something which turned out to be Andre's sleeve 'cuz the next thing I knew, he was standing right in front of the table, switching the last couple of glasses.

I had to close my eyes and try to look like I wasn't about to laugh and die from the second-hand embarrassment on his behalf. Really though. Andre was about to get his ass handed to him on a plate and I didn't have to lift a finger.

No one stopped him. And I could tell from the look of genuine surprise on Pao's face that he was a tad too stunned to actually do anything other than look at the director for a signal. None was given. Streisand hadn't exactly noticed what was going on but she caught Andre just as he was returning to his place at the front of the row and exchanged a look with Pao.

Everyone else stared in Andre's direction and looked between him and the bunch of producers at the other end of the terrace. Still, nothing.

"Chef Streisand? The next glass please." He held the bottle of mineral water with two hands, waiting expectantly for the next sample in the middle of an awkward pause. No one was speaking.

"Yes, uh, of course," Streisand was forced to proceed, turning away from the producers and relieving him of the mineral water but then pausing as her hand hovered over the next sample. She must have noticed it looked different. "Give me a second."

"No matter."

They would've had to cut the past two-three minutes out if faces were stiff and things weren't going as smoothly as before. Otherwise, it would have called for some heavy editing.

Reluctantly, Streisand handed him the next sample and he followed suit by doing the same thing from before—smelling it first and then, briefly touching the surface of the liquid with his lips, licking them after.

"Ah. The Ligurian. Extra virgin. Delicate—almost fruity, too. Perfect, really... did this come straight out of the mill this morning?"

Even the farm owners were stunned for a second. One of them recovered first. "Y-yes. Sì! This morning..."

"Excellent flavor."

"Thank you signore."

His compliments had the farm owners alit, beaming from ear to ear and even more so when he'd so confidently, assuredly differentiated their olive oil from the rest; making a point about the quality of their produce. Half the room remained in disbelief. The other half looked relieved but partly in awe at how smoothly this had gone despite Andre's childish behavior.

In fact, I made sure to take in the look on his sad, salty face just so that I could remember the details and recount it whenever that was required. Might bring a smile to a certain someone's face.

"Should we move on?" Said someone directed at Streisand and she'd laughed, partly amazed and no longer unsure or afraid of the circumstance. Thinking hard, Andre could've been right; the production team might have written the sequence of the oils in the script. Knowing him though, he wouldn't have bothered storing that useless extra info in his head since he already had everything he needed to identify them tucked somewhere up there.

"Of course, Mr. White. You are very good at this, aren't you?"

"Oh no. Just your average critic, really."

He proceeded to nail the rest of the samples. All of 'em, Andre had scrambled up randomly in a matter of messy seconds. Poor guy. He should've known; stuff like that wouldn't faze a true expert.

It was after he'd identified the last glass of olive oil that Streisand helped remove his blindfold and everyone clapped; you could tell he was embarrassed by that, actually. Him being him, so much attention simply by doing what he was used to wasn't exactly within his expectations. He'd never been the kind of person to prioritize recognition or acknowledgement since all that had, already, come from within.

Vanilla was stable, pretty much. Couldn't say the same for me; at least right now, for sure. He knew I was in the middle of sorting it out and until then, well. He said he'd wait.

"Let's take ten all," I heard the director say after calling cut. "Check your shots, 'aight?"

I hadn't so much as moved when I noticed Pao heading over as soon as the cameras stopped rolling, eyes fixed on Andre and not exactly in the friendliest, normal-Pao way. "Chef Andre. How are you today? You seem restless. Active."

Dude shrugged. "Pao. I'm good. Maybe a little eager."

"Yes," Pao sighed. "I see, I see. I appreciate your entertainment. But may I politely ask... I would not like to see a repeat of what you did just now, is what I'm saying. I hope you understand."

Andre went stiff for a sec. Du Bellay wanted nothing to do with him and had politely excused herself when Pao came over to talk. I hung back for a bit, watching Chicken from afar thinking about the many treats I was gonna reward him with for watching over Leo while the latter slept.

"It was for the effect, Pao," Andre laughed, as though this was all humor. "You get what I mean because you've been in this for a long time, right? Turned out great."

Pao did not laugh. "Ay. A long time but I've never met someone like you. Yes, that thing went smooth but only because Banilla doesn't need..." He sighed. "Okay, never mind. I do not want to leave a bitter taste between you and me, Chef Andre. I believe in you. But even in the industry, we try to follow the script, no? That cause less trouble for everyone. For directors. Editors. For you, and for me." He finished with a smile and I think that was enough to convince Andre for a bit.

I left without hearing his response.

Over at the other end of the terrace, Streisand was talking to Leo's owner—who had him in his arms and was stroking his back, nodding as she spoke. She looked serious. No smiles. Arms folded.

"Hey buddy." I came up to my boy and rubbed the top of his head, then under his chin. He looked off into the distance instead of me. I followed his gaze. Leo. "What, miss him already?" He continued to stare.

"Hi! Uh," someone stopped by with a phone held up, pointed at us. "Can I get a picture of you with your dog?"

I paused. She was dressed like the rest of the assistants. "What for?"

"Oh, uh, I'm an intern." She tried to explain, turning the screen of her phone my way and scrolling through the stuff she had in the album. "They said I should be getting behind-the-scenes material for daily updates on social media. Just for the hype, you know. And exclusive stuff for some magazines we'd signed on. I've been going around with my phone for pics and some videos."

While scrolling through, I caught a shot of my boy and his new friend on his back, fast asleep. "... can you send me that?"

"Oh, this?" She gave it a glance and nodded right away. "Sure, sure. I have a few more. And a video, too..." The intern swiped across the screen to show all that content on her phone and fuck, they were cute. My dog was getting more action in an hour than I was for the past couple of weeks.

"Send me those and you can have your picture." "Okay, deal."