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Midwinter is nigh. Darkness blankets the kingdom of Corona, but the princess doesn’t sleep.
No, Cass thinks tiredly, because that would be too good to be true.
She hasn’t spent many midwinters in Corona since Rapunzel’s return, but they tend to be… busy. Along with getting dragged into the festive cheer, Rapunzel always seems determined to cram as many winter activities into her days as she can; decorating the castle with holly wreaths and sprigs of mistletoe, humming festive tunes as she skips through the corridors, and when it snows, taking the time to build snowmen and go sledding with the townspeople.
Another factor of the midwinter festivities includes the traditions of the royal family, something that regretfully neither of them can quite get away from. Speeches, lantern-lightings, ribbon-cuttings, the works, without even encompassing the private Midwinter Dinner that the Der Sonne family host each year for their nearest and dearest. Cassandra spends the weeks leading up to it shitting bricks over all the many ways she could accidentally piss off some ancient relative. Meanwhile, Rapunzel simply loses herself in her own creative outlets until she’s physically pulled away by the dress-fitter. Maybe it’s a strange method to cope with the madness of the season, but if it calms her, Cassandra generally leaves her to it, no longer under any obligation to pull her away from this kind of thing.
This is where Cassandra finds her tonight, instead of sleeping in her bed like a normal human being.
The castle is dark. Most of the staff have retreated to their sleeping quarters for the night, leaving only the guards on the night shift to silently patrol the corridors. Yet, the palace kitchens are aglow with lantern light.
See, this year Rapunzel has wholeheartedly thrown herself into festive cuisine.
She’s already attempted a poorly made eggnog, which Cass had dared Eugene to down in one and had promptly spent the next day or so nursing him back to health from a brush with food poisoning. After that, slightly put off from attempting more homebrewed drinks, Rapunzel had focused solely on the baking side of things, and soon after came a whole array of fruitcakes and panettones and stollens and shortbreads. Just yesterday, she tried making baklava for the first time.
Finally, given the warm aroma filling the surrounding corridors, Cass guesses that Rapunzel has moved onto gingerbread. And oh, it does smell divine.
Cassandra has spent the day with her father, as one should do whenever midwinter rolls around, being a holiday typically shared with family and all, but it means she’s somehow managed to spend the whole day without Rapunzel. And now, she’s suffering a bad case of Wife Withdrawal. If she wasn’t, there’s no way she would be wandering the castle so late at night, following the scent of warm ginger with the fervour of a bloodhound.
As she enters the kitchen, quiet enough as to not disturb Rapunzel right away, she observes the scene before her. Rapunzel’s hair, having grown out a little in the last year, is tied back in a stubby ponytail to keep it from trailing in her handiwork, but there are plenty of telltale splotches of flour along her brow and dusting her hair that show moments of forgetfulness, of running her hands back against her hair like she always does when she’s trying to work out what her next move will be. It’s endearing, somehow seeing the physical imprint of that, and Cass smiles wryly at the sight. She’s surrounded by half a dozen mixing bowls, some with remnants of batter in, some completely licked clean. Flour dusts the surfaces, and Cass can’t help but wonder how distraught the morning kitchen crew will be when they arrive to begin breakfast preparations, only to find their work station in such a state of disarray.
I’ll definitely have to remind Rapunzel to tidy up once this baking frenzy is out of her system, Cass thinks to herself.
The mess doesn’t end there - Rapunzel’s forearms are caked with flour, almost reaching up to her elbows. She’s foregone her usual royal gowns in favour of the more practical clothing she has a tendency to wear when she’s out on the road. Atop a pink shirt with rolled sleeves sits an apron that Cass has never seen before. Tailored especially for her, or maybe she’s made it herself? If it were in line with what the kingdom’s kitchen staff wear, it would simply have the Corona sun emblem on, but this appears to be adorned with flowers, birds, and a rather cartoonish rendition of Pascal. Definitely customised by her, then, at the very least.
It’s cute. Rapunzel is cute. Cass would really love to just hug her from behind right now and melt away.
“You should really be sleeping,” she says instead, leaning against the doorway in an attempt to appear nonchalant, and definitely not in need of Rapunzel’s company. Rapunzel startles a little, turning to her with wide eyes and a hand to her chest. But that initial shock melts into warmth at the sight of a familiar, much-appreciated face.
“Cass! You scared me!” Her scolding holds nothing close to anger, and her giddiness is infectious. “I thought you’d be in bed by now.”
“I was planning on it, but there’s nobody for me to spoon,” Cass points out, moving closer. “On nights as cold as these, I can’t sleep alone, can I?”
“There’s Eugene,” Rapunzel says with a note of humour to her voice, despite already knowing how Cass will answer.
“First of all, he’s all freakishly smooth legs and sharp elbows, not fun to spoon at all. Second, I’m not about to hug anybody around the middle if they’re still suffering the aftershocks of a bad eggnog, it’s just common sense.” She sees a flash of guilt on Rapunzel’s face at the mention of making Eugene sick, and quickly backtracks. “Besides that, you know, your side of the bed was empty so I decided to track you down before it was worth raising the alarm. Just doing my civic duty, you know.”
“Well, there’s no need to worry,” Rapunzel declares, gesturing around her. “I’m safe, I’m alive, and I’m making gingerbread.”
“I gathered.” Stepping out of the shadows and into the warmth of the lantern light, Cass finally notices the trays upon trays of gingerbread. There’s more than just vaguely humanoid figures, too. She’s made trees, stars, and what appear to be parts to assemble a basic gingerbread house. “You’ve sure put yourself to work.”
“I found I couldn’t stop,” Rapunzel says, almost breathlessly, grinning from ear to ear. “I was thinking I’d make a house to start small, and once I get the hang of it, I’ll start assembling pieces to build a small model of the castle!”
“That’s… a little ambitious,” Cass ventures doubtfully, “but if you think you can pull it off, I won’t stand in your way.”
“Trust me, I’ll have it down. I could use it as a centerpiece for the dinner party, and wouldn’t that be special?”
“Let’s just get the basics down first, all right?” Cass moves to stand beside her, examining the pieces. “It’s good that they didn’t crack, and you stuck to a simple design, but do you have enough icing to cement the walls together?”
“Uhh…” Rapunzel glances over at the nearby counter, which Cass mentally dubs as the Icing Station, having half a dozen small mixing bowls scattered on it. “Maybe? I mixed up a bunch of different colours, but not really in enough quantities to use as a binding tool… I already mixed food dyes into them too.”
Cass nods. “Okay, all right. Come on, let's make up some more.”
Rapunzel sets to work right away, mixing up some plain icing in a larger pan, and watches in amazement as Cass lathers the corners of each wall with ease and sets a bowl down on the inside of the walls to support the structure as it dries. From there, while waiting for the icing to set, she moves onto some basic decoration.
“You’re so good at this!” Rapunzel marvels, as Cass begins to pipe several small blobs of icing onto the roof pieces, sticking down flat almonds in their place to represent the ceramic tiles of a roof. “I never would have guessed.”
“Well, I’m a renaissance woman. Got hidden talents just pouring out of my ears,” Cass rebukes, tongue peeping out slightly in concentration as she works. “Besides, I used to do this all the time when I was a kid.”
“Oh?” Rapunzel watches her, doesn’t say anything immediately, and Cass is sure she can work out how the gears are turning in her brain. How far back? Would it be bad to talk about it? What if it digs up some unpleasant memory that sends her wife reeling?
“It was after I was adopted,” Cass says, a little more gently, so Rapunzel doesn’t have to broach the question. “Midwinter was always busy for my dad, being the captain of the guard, and with the search efforts to find you still going strong. I’d spend a lot of time at Uncle Monty’s.”
“Monty,” Rapunzel grumbles, expression darkening at the mention of her nemesis. Even as their relationship has somewhat mellowed over the years, there’s still that disdain ever present, that has Cassandra chuckling.
“Yes, Monty. He was a good man, you know, watching me for hours at a time while my father attended to his guard duties.” She exhales softly, recalling those hours spent staring at frost-covered window panes in between cleaning out piping bags. “He taught me a lot about how to decorate gingerbread so I could help him out at the store. I think he thought giving me some big important task would keep me out of trouble, ha. Besides, kids always make the weirdest shit. Sometimes stuff I made that looked particularly awful would be wildly popular, for that very reason.”
“Were you lonely?” Rapunzel asks softly, reaching over to squeeze her shoulder, and Cass stops piping and sets down the bag, tilting her head to look at her.
“Maybe sometimes. But they’re happy memories too, you know? Imagine being a child, loose in a sweet shop, with free rein over how to decorate all of the stock. I could make a gingerbread me. I could make a gingerbread version of my dad, or Monty, or any of the guards. I could…” She cuts herself off, cursing inwardly, because of course now she’s started that thought Rapunzel will urge her to finish it. And there she is, wide-eyed and curious. So Cass concedes, choosing to focus back on the task at hand to curb her embarrassment. “...I could even make the lost princess, if I wanted to. Which I did, sometimes.”
Arms wrap around her immediately, and she can feel Rapunzel's face pressing into her shoulder.
“I love you,” she murmurs. For a moment, Cass feels like she’s melting.
“I love you too.”
“When you finally met me, were you disappointed?” Rapunzel wonders. “You probably had this whole image of me. Totally different to who I am now, right?”
Cass shakes her head, keeping her eyes trained on her handiwork. “First of all, I was not disappointed by you. I was surprised, sure. I didn't expect the lost princess to be painting flowers and birds all over castle property, or desperately wanting to be my friend no matter how cold I was. You were… a lot, but it's not a bad thing.”
“I was surprised too,” Rapunzel murmurs, almost too softly to hear. “You were different to anyone I really knew. Everyone treated me so delicately after what happened, but then there you were. Prickly as brambles, and refusing to take any nonsense from me.” She sighs, rests her head fully against Cass’s shoulder. “My missing piece.”
Cassandra’s heart seizes for a moment - words she’s never heard together, until made in Rapunzel’s mouth; sweet and intense and sudden, like ginger itself. Me too, she wishes to say. You were a piece I never knew I needed.
“Roof tiles are done,” she says instead, in a strangled sort of voice. Rapunzel exhales and lets go, straightening up and peering over her shoulder.
“They look good!”
Now that the roof pieces have been decorated, she takes to grabbing at the smaller bowls of coloured icing and begins filling up piping bags she's uncovered from the pastry chef's supply cupboard. More mess to clean up after the fact, Cass thinks dryly, but in the holiday spirit, graciously doesn't dampen Rapunzel's mood by saying so.
So instead they dutifully set to work, piping over the leftover pieces of gingerbread. Cassandra handles the more basic, straightforward pieces, like piping little snowflakes or stars, while Rapunzel decides to make delightfully sweet renditions of herself and her spouses.
"Wow. You actually didn't fuck up Eugene's nose," Cass marvels, and Rapunzel swats at her playfully.
“He could use a win,” she retorts, thinking of the sorry state he's been in after downing her failed eggnog earlier in the week.
Gingerbread-Cassandra looks decidedly less sulky than Cass figures holds true to life, and Gingerbread-Rapunzel looks as sunny as ever, with her choppy hair and smiling face. The three of them are put to rest beside the gingerbread walls, still drying, and Rapunzel gleefully explains her plans to prop them up outside the gingerbread house as though it is their own.
It's an interesting fantasy, Cass muses. A cottage isn't in the same realm as the kingdom Rapunzel will one day inherit, and by extension of their marriage, Cassandra and Eugene too. Strange times, indeed.
As Rapunzel busies herself in decorating one last little ginger cookie, Cass glances down at herself with some shock as she notices the clear dusty imprints of Rapunzel's flour-covered arms across her torso, almost as though she's still being hugged by a ghost.
“You got flour all over me,” she remarks, though with a tone light enough that Rapunzel can tell she's not mad.
“Sorry, sorry,” she chirps. “But how could I not hug you, after that story?”
“With great ease,” Cass says dryly. “Trust me, if you'd seen those little gingerbread princesses, you wouldn't be so quick to hug. Depending on my mood and ability to mix food dyes, I think I made you look closer to a mountain troll a few times.”
“Oh, I still would have loved them,” Rapunzel scoffs, shaking her head fondly. “Just by virtue of being made by those hands of yours.”
She peers over at Cass, a lopsided smile on her face as she watches her wife stand there with a rigid uncertainty at the praise.
“Hey, come here.”
Cassandra steps a little closer, curiosity peaked, when suddenly a cookie is thrust into her face, with such speed that she stumbles back.
“Geez, Rapunzel, don't do that so fast!” Cass scolds, but stops when she lays eyes on what exactly Rapunzel almost clobbered her with.
A cookie, iced ever so intricately, with the unmistakable pattern of mistletoe.
Cass can't stifle her groan, even if she tries. “Really, Raps?”
Eyebrows raised, she plucks the cookie from Rapunzel’s fingers and takes a bite from the corner. The flavour is explosive, hot, sweet. After chewing and swallowing, she fixes her with a look.
“As smooth as that gesture was, mistletoe doesn’t work like this. You don’t give it to-”
“Ah-ah-ah,” Rapunzel interrupts, with a wicked grin, holding up a hand to stop Cass in her tracks. “Hold that thought.”
Cassandra, confused, cocks an eyebrow, before following Rapunzel’s hand as she gestures upwards. Tilting her head back, she spies some real mistletoe dangling. Upon closer inspection, she sees it isn’t in fact tied to any beams, but being held up by Pascal, who is doing his best to camouflage himself.
“I see you, Pascal,” she says dryly, and he returns to his original hue almost immediately, with a cheerful squeak that shows little remorse for his part in this. Cass folds her arms and eyes Rapunzel, who is positively vibrating with how perfectly her little plan has worked out. “All right, you got me. You know you don’t need to trap me under some mistletoe just to kiss you, being that we’re married. All you had to do was ask.”
“Well, where is the fun in simply asking?” Rapunzel retorts. “This is getting Rapunzel’d, festive edition.”
“This sure is more than just a standard Rapunzeling,” Cass agrees, taking a step closer. “This is Rapunzeling with a side of being Pascal’d. And all for a silly little kiss.”
Rapunzel steps forward to close the gap, eyes gleaming.
“No such thing as a silly little kiss from you.”
She stands on her tiptoes to bridge the gap, and Cassandra’s eyes flutter shut as their lips meet. Rapunzel tastes of her own creations, of ginger spice and saccharine icing, and after all these years, Cass swears it’s through kissing her wife that she’s developed such a sweet tooth. Rapunzel reaches up, tangling her fingers in Cassandra’s hair, seemingly forgetting that she was just messing around with flour and icing sugar and all other manner of sweet things that make even the most careful of hands sticky to the touch. No doubt Cass will be rinsing sugar crystals out of her hair for days to come, but right now, she’ll let it slide.
Pulling back to catch her breath, Rapunzel’s eyes cross slightly as she stares up at Cass, before declaring, “You have flour on your nose.”
“That makes two of us,” Cass retorts, reaching to the counters and coating her fingers in residual flour, which she then smears across Rapunzel’s nose and cheeks. She squeals and shakes her head, sending flour scattering everywhere. It dusts their hair, their faces, their clothes and all of the surrounding area.
“Well, now I feel extra bad for the kitchen staff,” Cass remarks, glancing around at the carnage. “Figure we should start cleaning up?”
Rapunzel tugs at her, pulling her back into more kisses. In between each kiss, Cass utters, “Also, you know, Fitzherbert will be wondering why we’re all covered in flour tomorrow.”
“Well, all will be forgiven when he sees all the gingerbread we made,” Rapunzel says cheerfully, resting her brow against Cassandra's lips giddily.
After dutifully planting a kiss to her wife's forehead, Cass continues, “I don’t know, Raps. Waking up to flour in the bedsheets? He’ll flip out, for sure.”
“So we’ll take a bath before bed,” Rapunzel says nonchalantly.
Colour rushes to Cassandra’s face.
“We?”
“Is that a problem?” Rapunzel asks, voice achingly sweet.
“N-No,” Cass chokes out. “No problem at all.”
With an incentive like that, it’s amazing how soon they wipe down the kitchen from head to toe. The gingerbread house sits unfinished, surrounded by its cookie inhabitants, as Cass tugs Rapunzel out of the kitchen and towards their sleeping chambers, laughing all the while.