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"Oh God, this is so gross." Jack complained while elbow-deep in a bowl of peanut butter and powdered sugar.
"Suck it up, princess. My mom and I used to make these every year and we are not breaking tradition because you don't want to get your hands dirty."
Jack lifted his bare hands out of the mixture to show Mark his peanut butter coated hands, "Look at me, Mark. Look at what I've become."
Mark rolled his eyes and continued to stir the chocolate, ignoring Jack’s plea.
Jack waved his hands at Mark before plunging them back inside the bowl. "How many of these do we have to make, anyway?"
"Enough for the party."
"And how many is that?"
Mark took the chocolate off of the stove and made his way over to the counter where there were already shapes of pumpkins, witch hats, and bats formed out of the moldable peanut butter.
As he began to dip the shapes into the chocolate and let the excess drip off - just how his mother had taught him to - he answered Jack, "I have no idea. Whatever they don't eat there, we can give people to take home."
"Or I can just eat them."
"You will literally die if you eat this many."
"Nah, I can handle it!" Jack had finally finished forming the peanut butter and pushed the bowl aside to toss the dough-like mass onto the wax paper, smoothing it out and beginning to use the cookie cutters to cut out the shapes.
Mark couldn't help but stop everything he was doing to stare at Jack.
Jack was helping him make sweets that Mark's mother had taught him to make when he was a kid and he had never been so beautiful as he was in that moment.
There was powdered sugar all over him, even on his face, there was butter somehow on his eyebrow and chocolate on his neck. He took Mark's breath away and he wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of his life with the ethereal creature before him.
He put everything down and wiped his hands on a nearby paper towel, pulling a tiny box out of his pocket, he rounded the counter and made his way to where Jack was happily making little bats out of the mixture.
"Jack, baby."
Jack, looking up from his work, asked Mark, "Why aren't you at your station?"
"Well," Mark was shaking and his breath was shallow and he couldn't even process thought at the moment, but he slipped down to the floor on one knee in spite of his trembling. "Jack, I need you. I need you to be here for the rest of my life. I want to try every recipe with you. I want to see you eighty years old still cooking with me and still covered in sugar and chocolate. I want you to share everything with me. Sean McLoughlin," Mark pulled the box out and opened it, revealing the ring inside, "Will you marry me?"
Jack didn't respond for a while and Mark began to tremble harder. Was he going to say no? Was he going to be mad? Was he going to hit Mark with the rolling pin?
"You are proposing to me? Right now? When I look like this?"
Mark shifted a bit, "Yes."
All at once, Jack’s face scrunched up and he sniffed, tears began to roll down his cheeks and he covered his mouth with his right hand to hold out his left, choking out a yes as he did.
Mark's smile lit up their corner of the world and he slipped the ring onto Jack's finger, smearing a pit of chocolate on the precious band. He was about to rise to his feet to wrap his love in his arms, but Jack sunk to his knees with Mark instead.
He cupped Mark's face in his hands, smearing ingredients everywhere, and pulled him into a tearful, loving kiss.