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“When I agreed to serve you, this is NOT what I had in mind,” Lucifer grumbled. “And get that away from me this instant. I am your servant , NOT your dress-up doll.”
Smiling from ear-to-ear and poignantly ignoring everything he'd just said, Diavolo slung the frilly white apron over Lucifer's neck, then nudged his arms out of the way so he could tie it in the back.
Despite his resignations, Lucifer rolled his eyes and just… let it happen.
“…I hate you so much right now.”
“Don't be such a sour puss. This is going to be so much fun!”
“No it isn't.”
“You look great!”
“I look stupid. And so do you.”
Diavolo hadn't just bought them both aprons.
He'd bought them a matching set.
“Look at us!” he beamed. “What a great team! There's no way we can mess this up!”
“There is if we have no idea what we're doing,” Lucifer muttered.
“Ahaha! But that's why you’re here! I don't know the first thing about baking, but you know everything about everything,” Diavolo laughed. “You're the most talented demon in my kingdom! A bit of flour and sugar are no match for the mighty Lucifer!”
Lucifer frowned uncomfortably at the misguided praise. He had, in fact, tried his hand at baking, exactly one time.
The fact that nobody knew it was a pretty good indication of how well it had gone.
Just remembering the ungodly flavor he'd somehow invented from scratch made him want to throw up in his mouth.
“Come on,” Diavolo smiled, practically bouncing with excitement. “We only have a few hours until Barbatos gets back, and I want these to be ready and waiting for him. He works so hard, and I want him to know how much I appreciate it - he'll be so surprised!”
“I work hard,” Lucifer muttered under his breath, as Diavolo grabbed his arm and led him into the palace’s massive kitchen. “Nobody ever makes me cookies.”
“Careful there,” Diavolo grinned, “you're starting to sound like Levi.”
Lucifer choked on a lungful of perfectly good air, and immediately reined in his whining. “Don't ever say that again. Now let's get this over with. What are you hoping to make, exactly?”
“Cookies!”
Lucifer dropped his head into his hands to massage his aching temples. “Care to be more specific?”
“We're going to make him a batch of those delectable hellfire cigar cookies. He makes them for me all the time, so I'm sure all the ingredients are already here. Plus, I already found the recipe!”
“Spectacular,” Lucifer dead-panned. “Let's get together everything we need, then. Read me the list.”
Diavolo slipped on his glasses and held the sheet at arm’s length. “Ok, let's see… ‘A simple yet elegant dessert, this recipe harkens back to’… no, I don't think that’s what we need… ‘festive decorations, perfect for holiday accents or’… hmm, ok, let's keep looking here…”
Lucifer shut his eyes and concentrated. Maybe if he just focused really, really hard, he could will himself into having a heart attack.
“Aha! Here it is! So we need… flour, something called cornstarch, salt, butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla, chocolate and hellfire truffle dust. Those all sound easy enough! Get out some bowls while I hunt these down.”
“Ugh. Yes, Lord Diavolo. Whatever you wish, Lord Diavolo. I am, unfortunately, yours to command, Lord Diavolo.” He'd only opened one cupboard, however, before Diavolo started talking to himself.
“..oat flour… cake flour… whole wheat flour… hmmm… do I just pick any one? Well… we’re not making whole wheat, or cake, so those probably aren't-"
“Which one's in the biggest bag?” Lucifer asked, already exasperated before they'd even begun, as he went about setting out every bowl and utensil that looked even remotely useful. “The biggest bag implies the most-used variety, and I'd imagine that if the recipe doesn't specify, it assumes a standard.”
“Ohoho! You're a genius!”
“That's why I’m here, apparently,” Lucifer muttered.
“This one here is twice as big as the rest. Let's see… “All-Purpose Flour,” he read aloud. “Well, how do you like that!” he laughed. “It's right there in the name!”
Lucifer rolled his eyes, and briefly considered bashing his own head in with a rolling pin.
Diavolo dropped the fifty-pound bag right in the middle of the table, and a white mushroom cloud exploded out the top.
Lucifer, now wearing most of it, just glared.
“…Whoops. Well… at least you're wearing an apron!”
“Don't remind me,” Lucifer grumbled. “Just keep going. Next?”
“Next was… ok, let me see… ‘A simple yet elegant'-"
“Just give me the damn list,” Lucifer snapped. He snatched it out of Diavolo's hands before the prince could protest, brushed the flour off, and scanned the ingredient list. “I'll find the rest,” he stated, since he didn't have all damn day to watch Diavolo try to figure out what the hell cornstarch was.
“But what should I-"
“We need eggs. Two eggs. Find two eggs,” instructed Lucifer, since that seemed like the most fool-proof item on the list. “They're probably in the fridge.”
“I'm on it!”
Lucifer tracked down everything else, arranged them, in listed order, on the table, then looked up… and frowned.
Diavolo was staring into the fridge. He looked confused.
“Now what's the problem? If we don’t have any eggs, I'm going back to bed.”
“No, no, there's lots of eggs… I'm just not certain which two we should use.”
“JUST. PICK. TWO,” Lucifer seethed between his teeth. “Any two. If they're white and even remotely egg-shaped, they'll be…”
Beaming proudly, Diavolo set two eggs the size of basketballs beside the bag of flour.
Lucifer stared at them, unblinking, for almost a minute, until his brain stopped seizing long enough for him to form a coherent sentence. “Diavolo,” he sighed, “is this a human world recipe?”
“Yup!”
“And do they have rocs in the human world?”
“Nope.”
“Then why would… you know what? Nevermind. We'll just use one instead of two.” He planted a single finger against one of the eggs and slowly, determinedly, rolled it off the table. The giant egg splattered all over the floor. The simple act of breaking something was instantly cathartic. “There. Problem solved.”
“...That landed on my feet,” Diavolo frowned.
“Did it?” Lucifer said, with the faintest hint of a wry smile. “Whoops. Well, we have everything we… actually, we don't. Do you happen to know where Barbatos keeps his wine?”
“Of course! Red, or white?”
“Red. Something expensive, preferably.”
Diavolo dug around inside a massive glass case next to the fridge, and pulled out a dusty, barely legible bottle. “1247,” he read, as he handed over the priceless bottle. “Is that old enough? Hopefully we don't need too much, this particular vintage is quite…
Lucifer tore out the cork with his teeth, put the bottle to his lips and chugged back half of it without breathing once.
…expensive.”
“It will serve its purpose,” Lucifer smirked, as he double-checked the recipe and set the oven to start pre-heating to 350 degrees. “Are you ready to get your hands dirty, then? Because I have no intention of touching any batter, myself. You work. I'll supervise,” he finished, as he downed another healthy swallow. “If you're about to set the kitchen on fire, I'll step in.”
“That sounds like a fine plan! What's the first step, oh glorious supervisor?”
“Two cups of flour, a pinch of salt, and two teaspoons of cornstarch - that's this stuff here,” he pointed. “Into this bowl.” He pointed again. “And mix them together.”
Overjoyed at the prospect of finally learning a domestic chore, Diavolo hunted up a little spoon (it looked like the spoons Barbatos always served with tea, so must be a ‘teaspoon’), then threw open a cupboard to find a cup.
There were juice glasses and water glasses and wine glasses and coffee mugs and…
“…they're all different sizes,” he frowned. “Does it say which sort of cup we need?”
Lucifer studied the instructions, then frowned, then (with the booze slowly kicking in), shrugged. “No. It must not matter. Pick whichever cup you use the most. Do you have any,” he hiccupped, and it tasted like thousand-year-old wine, “flour cups?”
“I have a flower vase,” Diavolo offered. “That's sort of like a cup.”
“That must be it,” Lucifer confirmed, as his foggy brain forgot what a homonym was. “Use that. Two of them.”
They worked together for an hour and a half. Diavolo did all the mixing; Lucifer downed three bottles of the demon prince's most priceless wines.
In that hour and a half, the Dynamic Duo solved all manner of baking riddles:
Any sugar can be powdered sugar if you blow in it hard enough.
The easiest way to soften butter is by squeezing it until it runs between your fingers.
Batter filled with eggshells gets less crunchy the longer you knead it.
Beating something until its ‘light and fluffy’ is harder than it sounds, and flies in the face of every sadistic precedent.
And, most importantly:
350 degrees Fahrenheit is NOT the same thing as 350 degrees Celsius.
With black smoke billowing out of the kitchen, the fire alarm finally went off. All over the castle, terrified Little D's scattered for the exits, certain that the Celestial Realm had finally sent its army of angels to wipe the Devildom from existence.
Barbatos frowned as he made his way through the castle. All the servants were screaming.
Or sobbing.
Or gagging on suffocating black smoke that smelled a little like vanilla and a lot like toxic charcoal.
Barbatos had served the royal family for three generations, now. He'd seen everything.
Except this.
His kitchen was destroyed. There wasn't one square inch of surface area, including the walls and, here or there, the ceiling, that wasn't covered in flour. The floor was flooded with water and oil and eggs, and the wine cooler had been thoroughly ransacked.
Diavolo and Lucifer, in matching, filthy white aprons with frills all down the sides, had pulled barstools up to the island in the middle of ground zero. They had a pan of smoking, blackened… somethings between them, and were happily snapping off corners and crunching away while they chatted.
Diavolo was laughing.
Even Lucifer was smiling.
They finally looked like friends.
Even knowing full well who would have to clean everything up, Baratos smiled too. “Good evening, Young Master. I see you've been… um… baking?”
“If you use the term loosely enough, yes,” Lucifer chuckled.
“Barbatos! You're back early!” Diavolo looked briefly delighted… then, after a self-conscious look around the room, ashamed. “We meant to have this cleaned up before you got back.”
“It is no trouble at all,” Barbatos smiled. “You two enjoy yourselves. I'll get to cleaning right away.”
“Absolutely not! Come, sit!” He patted the empty barstool beside him. “Lucifer already volunteered to clean everything up later.”
Lucifer choked on his “pastry". A cloud of black dust puffed out of his mouth.
“Here,” Diavolo continued, still beaming proudly from ear to ear. “We made these for you, Barbatos. To say thank you. For everything.”
“You did this all… for me? I… I don't know what to say. Thank you, my Lord. And you, Lucifer.” He took his seat between them, and accepted their gift with awe in his heart. “This is the most wonderful thing…
*crunch crunch SNAP crunch*
…anyone has ever done for me.”
Lucifer frowned at the shameful abominations. “Even though they're awful?”
Barbatos smiled, and helped himself to another. “Especially because they're awful.”