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Jeff was a heavy sleeper. So heavy, in fact, that even after the fire alarm had gone off he remained spread out across his mattress, clothes piled on top of him like a bear in hibernation. It wasn’t until he smelled smoke that his brain finally hit the panic button, and Jeff shot out of bed, feet quickly moving into a fighting stance and his knife in his hand. After realizing no one was standing in front of him with a lighter, and double checking that his body was not in fact, burning, Jeff’s panic turned to agitation. He shifted the knife in his hand, throwing open the door and making his way downstairs. The smoke wasn’t too bad, but it still seared his eyes and nostrils, his brain still violently hitting the panic button, telling Jeff to run.
Fire fire fire FIRE, his brain screamed. Go go go it hurts not again. Jeff told his brain to shut up, pushing open the door to the kitchen. Another plume of smoke poured out, but Jeff couldn’t see the familiar red and oranges of a flame.
“What the hell happened here?” He said to himself. Almost immediately Jeff heard the sound of a pan dropping over the sound of the fire alarm, still blaring.
“Jeff?” Said a nasally voice. There was some coughing before LJ appeared in the doorway, coughing slightly and waving a towel, trying to get rid of the smoke. The clown’s face brightened upon seeing Jeff.
“Jeffy!” He said over the alarm, leaning against the doorframe. “Did I wake you?”
The question was so stupid Jeff wasn’t sure how to respond, instead grabbing one of Jack’s too-long arms and pulling him out of the kitchen, and out the front door to the mansion.
Once they got far enough from the sound of the alarms, Jeff turned on LJ.
“What the hell were you doing, dumbass? Trying to set the whole house on fucking fire?!” He yelled, throwing his arms out. Jack gave a goofy (and infuriating) smile, raising his arms in surrender.
“Oh, please, Jeff. I put the fire out almost immediately. The fire alarm was the real problem here. Ever considered turning it off when you cook?”
Jeff rubbed his temples, taking a few deep breaths. He knew the clown was trying to get on his nerves purposefully, but god, it was so hard trying to not get mad.
“Where the hell is everyone?” He asked instead, ignoring Jack’s question. Jack straightened, listing off on his fingers as he spoke.
“Well, Eyeless went out hunting last night, he’ll be back in maybe four to five hours to sleep, Toby was sent on a mission to Wyoming three days ago, he’s gone another week or so. Everyone else was sent on some mission or another. Everyone except us, anyway,” Jack finished, rolling his eyes. “ I was bored as hell, so I tried to cook something. I think it went well, to be honest~” He leaned forward, getting in Jeff’s face, as if waiting for Jeff’s reaction. Jeff glared at him before pointing to the mansion.
“Turn the alarm off. Now.” He ordered, his voice rough with held back rage. Jack seemed mildly disappointed with Jeff’s response, but listened anyway, strolling into the house with his hands in his pockets. After about a minute the sound stopped, and Jeff let out a sigh of relief. The noise had been really getting on his nerves.
He came back into the house, smoke still lingering in the air. Jeff’s nose wrinkled, and he opened a few windows. Jack clapped his hands together. “Finally! That mess is over,” he exclaimed. Jeff nodded in agreement, his adrenaline wearing off. He headed back upstairs. Jack saw him leaving.
"Oh, you're going back to bed?" He asked hesitantly, looking a bit disappointed.
Jeff didn't stop. "Yep," He said bluntly. Jack nodded quickly, speaking loudly for Jeff to hear. "Good! It'll be like I have the whole house to myself. No one around to stop me from doing whatever I want!"
Jeff grunted in response.
Jack continued, moving his clawed hands around as he talked. "Baking is quite the hassle, but I'm not the sort to give up anytime soon!" He lifted his pointer finger as he made his speech, glancing up at Jeff to see if he was paying attention. He added on, “Time for round two, I suppose.”
Jeff finally paused, turning to stare questioningly at Jack. “Round...two?” He said slowly, his voice low. A sly smile slipped back onto Jack’s face, and he shrugged nonchalantly. “Second time's the charm, right?” Jeff shook his head, coming back down the stairs.
“No, no goddammit, you just set the house on fire, and you’re telling me ‘second time’s the charm’? No, fuck that, clown,” He declared.
Jack hunched slightly bringing his face closer to Jeffs. “Well, you can’t blame me for it. I don’t know how to cook!”
“It’s not that fucking hard, you’re just a dumbass that can’t read a recipe,” Jeff argued back, stepping closer to Jack, trying to look intimidating despite his short stature.
“What, so you can?” Jack asked in mock awe.
“Yeah, of course I fucking can, cause I’m not an idiot.”
“Just because I'm terrible at cooking won't stop me from doing it,” Jack stated knowingly.
“I know it won't, that’s why it’s so stupid,” Jeff explained, teeth clenched.
“So therefore you should teach me, considering we both know I’m not going to stop, and you don’t want me to set off the fire alarm again.” Jack finished smugly. Jeff opened his mouth to argue. No, because you’re a dumbass, and that’s a dumbass idea for idiots, he thought. But then he realized Jack had effectively backed him into a corner.
“You...idiot,” Jeff said, his voice trailing off into a whisper. He wanted so badly to wipe that stupid smug grin off of Jack’s face. Instead he glared at Jack in defeat. “Fine. What the hell were you cooking anyway?”
Jack’s smile was so big it gave the impression that his face was ripped into two.
“Red Velvet cake,” He responded, his voice low with anticipation and excitement.
He dragged Jeff into the kitchen, which was almost completely smoke-free now, and Jeff saw exactly what Jack had been doing in there.
Pans and bowls were everywhere, filling the sink and the neighboring counters. A burnt, bubbling cake sat in a pan on the stove. Flour and sugar coated the island countertop, and there were at least 2 eggs that had broken on the floor, and even more eggshells hidden among the rest of the mess like an Easter surprise gone terribly awry. The only thought going through Jeff’s head was, “This is what Gordon Ramsay's nightmares are like.”
“Ohhhh Kay…” Jeff started, looking around at the mess. “We need to clean up this shit first. You do the island counters, I’ll start on the dishes,” He rolled up his sleeves, biting back a sigh. He really wished he had gotten a few more hours of sleep. He moved as many pots as he could out of one of the sinks, then washed them one by one. He put the newly cleaned ones on the counter, which Jack then dried and put away in their rightful spot. It was a good system, and they worked in mostly silence, except for Jack’s humming and Jeff’s occasional complaining.
“How many attempts did you make?” Jeff eventually asked, throwing out the burnt cake. Jack put a glass bowl away, smiling. “Ah, quite a few, I suppose. But that was the only one good enough to put in the oven.”
Jeff stared down at the blackened piece of bread. That was considered a good attempt? He sighed, and tried to think of the last time he had tried baking. It probably hadn’t been since he was a kid, when he and Liu helped their mother make something. Hopefully he could remember his mother’s tips, as well as whatever he knew from watching reruns of Kitchen Nightmares, to bake a cake.
“Ok, where’s the recipe?” Jeff asked. Jack cocked his head. “Recipe?” he asked blankly. Jeff stared at him.
“Did you...not have...a recipe?” He asked the clown slowly. Jack’s smile was wide, but he took a nervous step backwards. “I was going off of memory, really,” Jack said. “But if you really prefer to do things by the book…” Jack pulled from his sleeve a cookbook. It looked old, the edges were frayed and torn, the pages yellowed. He put it on the counter and flipped it open, going through until he suddenly stopped, pointing at it. Jeff squinted at the page. All the recipes were written by hand, in loopy cursive.
“This your handwriting?” Jeff asked. Jack laughed. “Oh, no, my hand is much worse. I stole this sometime in 1935, I believe.”
Jeff shook his head. “I can barely read past the title. You’ll have to tell me the directions. Start with ingredients.”
Jack cleared his throat. “ One cup beet puree-”
“What the shit is that?” Jeff asked.
“You don’t know what a beet is?” Jack asked, amused. “Jeffery, I’m ashamed. I thought you were better than this, first you tell me you can’t read, and now-”
“I know what a beet is, dumbass!” Jeff yelled back. “AND I can read,” He added on. Jack snorted in response, before flipping to another recipe.
“If you insist, Jeffery. Beet puree,” He began. “First, wash and prep the beets.” Jeff opened his mouth to say something, like where the fuck are beets in this kitchen, do you know the type of people that live here, but before he could say anything of the sort, Jack pulled from nowhere a bunch of beets. He handed them off to Jeff with his eyebrows raised, as if he knew what Jeff was thinking. Jeff snatched it from Jack, and began prepping them, washing, peeling, and dicing about 3 of the beets into small pieces. He followed Jack’s instructions, boiling them in a saucepan, and then blending them. When it was done, he checked the clock.
“Jeezus fucking christ, Jack, how long is this gonna take?” Twenty minutes on just the first step seemed a bit much. Jack flipped back to the cake recipe.
“An hour and twenty minutes in prep time- and no, the beets don’t count,” He explained with a smile. Jeff glared at him, running his fingers through his own hair and sighing for the hundredth time that day.
“Fine. Let’s get this over with.”
Jack seemed happy with the killer's determination. The rest of the ingredients didn’t take long to acquire, thankfully, and soon Jack was reading out the instructions as he helped Jeff prepare.
Jack sifted flour, cocoa powder, and baking powder in a bowl while Jeff blended the beet puree, buttermilk, vinegar, vanilla extract, and lemon juice together. They put the mixtures together, trying to be careful with it, put it into two pans, and then popped it in the oven for 25 minutes. Jeff sat back in a chair. “Was that really so damn hard?” He asked Jack. Jack shrugged. “Well, I was going off the book. Besides, we aren’t done yet. Have you forgotten the frosting?” He teased.
“Fuck the frosting!” Jeff said, causing Jack to chuckle.
“Aw, it can’t be too hard, we just need…” He looked at the recipe. “Say, do we have any crème fraîche on hand?”
“Ohmygod.” Jeff said, putting his head in his hands. Jack let out another laugh, patting Jeff on the shoulder sympathetically.
"Oh come on now, Jeffery, you're doing so well! You really are quite good at this whole baking nonsense," he admitted reluctantly.
Jeff scoffed, looking up at the clown. "I told you, it's just reading a recipe. If you had that book out from the beginning you would have been done by now."
"Yeah, but then you wouldn't have had the chance to hang out with me," Jack replied, winking at Jeff jokingly. Jeff shoved him, laughing.
"You prick. If it weren't for you I'd still be in bed. What's the news on that frosting? What did we need again? Crème fraîche?"
Jack nodded and turned back to the recipe book. He clucked his tongue, muttering to himself. “No, we can’t so easily make this, can we? No, no, not at all. I’ll be back in a jiffy,” Jack said, and before Jeff could say anything, he was gone in a puff of black smoke.
“Damn clown,” Jeff muttered to himself, pulling the recipe book closer to himself, and tried to decipher the words written on the yellowed pages.
"Can't read, my ass," he muttered to himself. Jeff started to gather the rest of the ingredients, and had just grabbed the mixer when Jack came back. He handed the container to Jeff dramatically, and Jeff grabbed it without looking at him.
“I guess you aren’t as prepared as I thought,” Jeff said to him. Jack seemed offended by that statement, and stood up, his feathers looking quite ruffled. Jeff smiled, feeling slightly accomplished in his endeavors to annoy Jack.
Jeff shoved the mixer into Jack’s hands. “Here, plug this in,” He ordered, and grabbed the butter and cream cheese. He grabbed his knife and ripped open a bag of confectioners sugar, causing a cloud of sugar powder to come up and hit him in the face. Jeff turned his head to the side and burst into a coughing fit as Jack watched with amusement, taking the bag from Jeff’s hands and slowly mixing it into the bowl.
“Are you ok?” He said in a sarcastic, saccharine tone.
Jeff continued wheezing into his arm, giving Jack the middle finger. “Fuck...you...clown,” He said in between bouts of coughing. Jack let out a giggle, turning the mixer off to scrape the ingredients back to the bottom of the bowl. When Jeff finished coughing, Jack offered him the spatula, which had some frosting on it.
“Care to try?” Jack asked. Jeff didn’t reply, taking the spatula and the bowl, mixing the frosting around, catching the sugar that had stuck to the sides and mixing it back in with the rest of the ingredients. Jack waited a few moments, watching him, until he finally said, “I meant for you to taste the frosting, but that’s fine too.”
Jeff paused, the corner of his eye twitching slightly. “Fucker,” he muttered under his breath, before responding. “It probably tastes fine, besides, knowing you, you put something in it. Why don’t you try, huh?” He shoved the bowl towards Jack, who smiled at him lazily, taking the spatula and looking at it.
“Always so paranoid, aren’t you, Jeffy?” Jack muttered to Jeff as he tasted the frosting. Jeff huffed in response, looking away.
“Don’t call me that,” He said, crossing his arms. Jack mirrored Jeff’s movement, leaning his head sideways to look at the killer. Jeff noticed him staring.
“What?” He asked, bristling.
Laughing Jack shook his head, laughing quietly. Jeff’s shoulders bunched, his anger rising. “What?” He asked again, sharply. Was he laughing at him?
“When was the last time you relaxed and enjoyed yourself, Jeff?” Jack questioned. His eyes were still light, amused maybe, but his tone took on a more serious note. “We’ve spent well over an hour baking a cake and you’re still standing as if I’m about to claw through your intestinal tract at any moment.” Jeff stiffened, becoming aware of the way his feet were moved into a fighting position, and of his crossed arms. He uncrossed them, forcing his hands back down to his sides in an attempt to appear relaxed.
“I didn’t realize baking a cake excused us from being murderers,” Jeff said in a low voice.
Jack chuckled. “It doesn’t. But we both know the mansion is a safe-zone. So why can’t two murderers bake a cake together?”
“I think we just did.” Jeff said bluntly. He didn’t understand what Jack was talking about. Not that he usually could understand the clown’s rambling, but something about the way Jack stared at Jeff irked him. Like he knew something Jeff didn’t.
Jack smiled, shaking his head again. “I guess it’s understandable. You’ve spent a lot of time- longer than most- running from danger, trying to survive. It’s commendable, managing to live as long as you have in a world full of monsters. But now you’re safe, no longer running, and it’s like you haven’t realized it yet.” Jack rambled, almost to himself, in a quiet voice.
Jeff glared at him. “Realized what?” He snapped. “Do you have a screw loose or is there a point in anything you’re saying right now?”
Jack looked over to him, surprised. Then he sighed, and he looked tired. “Jeff, when was the last time you enjoyed yourself?” He asked again. “You clearly like to bake. Don’t you have any hobbies besides killing?”
Jeff was completely taken aback. “I- what?” He asked, not knowing what to say.
“You can’t just spend your entire life killing and running, y’know.”
Jeff laughed, actually laughed, at that. “You do realize who that’s coming from, right?” He said, in between laughter. “You’ve spent 200 years murdering actual children. Are you getting bored of it finally? Is that why you’re telling me all this?”
Jack frowned, his eyebrows creasing together in annoyance. “Don’t act like you’re any better, Jeffery. I’m telling you this because all you do is sleep for 18 hours and then go off and kill people. It’s barely living, it’s surviving.”
“Why the fuck do you care?” Jeff shot back, crossing his arms again. “It’s not your problem what I do with my time.”
Jack opened his mouth to reply, but nothing came out. The timer on the oven went off. Jeff put on some oven mitts, pulling out the cake and dropping the pan onto the stovetop unceremoniously. He turned off the timer and the stove, the noise and heat reminding him of Jack’s earlier attempt to bake a cake.
“How is it?” Jack asked, referring to the cake. Jeff glanced at it.
“It’s burnt.”
“Badly?”
“Nothing a bunch of frosting can’t fix,” Jeff replied, pulling off the mitts and throwing them onto the counter. There was a strange tension in the room, Jeff’s unanswered question hanging in the air like a broken pinata at a birthday party. Neither person wanted to address it, and the resulting awkwardness was difficult to sift through.
“Do you want to frost it or should I?” Jack asked, picking up the bowl of frosting.
“You have to wait for it to cool off, dumbass. 20 minutes at least,” Jeff felt a small bit of comfort in insulting Laughing Jack.
“20 minutes?” Jack exclaimed, “Why the hell do we have to wait that long?”
“Cause otherwise the frosting will fucking melt!” Jeff said back at him in disbelief. “Haven’t you ever watched a baking show?”
Jack shrugged. “Maybe? I dunno. Never seemed interesting.” He frowned at Jeff's reaction. “What?”
“Not interesting?” Jeff said indignantly. “I can’t believe you would say something like that, directly to my face. I’m gonna fucking kill you.”
Jack snorted. “Good luck trying, shortass. Wait- what are you doing-” Jack stepped back as Jeff strode forward, grabbing his hand and pulling him out of the kitchen. Jeff took him to the living room, grabbing the remote and turning the TV on, talking.
“I asked Tim to record episodes of Cutthroat Kitchen and Hell’s Kitchen-”
“Do they all have the word ‘kitchen’ in them? Is it mandatory or what?”
“-Shut the fuck up clown, Hoodie also likes to watch the Great British Bakeoff so we can watch one of those if you’re interested.”
Jack waved his hands, trying to grasp the situation, “Wait, wait, hold on. What are we doing? Watching TV? What about the fucking cake?” He pointed his thumb back to the kitchen for emphasis.
“Well we got 20 minutes to kill, don’t we?” Jeff said. “So I'm using that time to culture you. And also to catch up on these shows. I, uh, haven’t actually watched TV in a while,” he added on, trying not to call attention to the fact that it was because he’d been sleeping for 18 hours lately.
Jack flumped down on the couch, sighing. “Yeah alright. Which show do you think I’d like?” He asked.
Jeff frowned, rocking on his heels as he thought. Laughing Jack would probably enjoy all of them. After a moment of indecision, he put on Cutthroat Kitchen. Jack did in fact, enjoy it.
When the episode was over, the two returned to the kitchen, flipping the cake out of the pan and onto a large plate. They frosted the cake together, armed with spatulas and arguing.
“You’re frosting it the wrong way,” Jeff insisted for the second time. Laughing Jack leaned back from the cake, angry.
“There isn’t a wrong way to frost a fucking cake!” He shouted.
“Yes there fucking is bitch!” Jeff shouted back. “It’s gonna look all fucking wonky if we’re both frosting it two different ways!”
“Then frost it the way I’m doing it!”
“No!”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because it’s wrong!”
Jack let out a string of curses that would make a sailor blush, dropping his spatula onto the counter. Jeff stubbornly continued to frost the cake, moving his spatula to Jack’s part and fixing the frosting. Jack watched him, and held back the urge to thwack Jeff across the head. After a few minutes of silence, Jack said, “I did a pretty good job though, huh? Managing to bake a cake.”
Jeff glared at him, “I helped.”
Jack waved him away. “Whatever, all you did was read a recipe,” he replied, but there was amusement in his tone. Then he looked at the cake and frowned. Jeff noticed.
“What?” he asked.
Jack tilted his head, “How are we gonna stop the others from eating it?”
Jeff slathered on some more frosting, trying to cover up the burnt edges. “We don’t even know if it’ll taste any good.”
“Like I fucking care. We made this cake, we’re gonna fucking eat it. I’ll cut off their hands if they so much as goddamn look at this thing.” Jack said, motioning towards the cake.
Jeff nodded in agreement, smiling. “Too bad you didn’t actually poison it. Easier to figure out who the traitorous bastards in the house are that way.”
Jack laughed at that, shrugging. “Maybe next time,” he said.
“Next time,” Jeff said, “ask me to help you before you set the house on fire.”
Jack winked back. “Sure thing, Jeffy.”