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Quinn yawns and shuts the oven door with her foot, the pan of French toast inside to keep warm. She’s been up for at least twenty-two hours – she lost track somewhere around dawn, when she stopped being civil and started just screwing with the dragon – but she promised Prue a birthday breakfast and no amount of sleep deprivation could possibly prevent her from keeping her promise. Besides, breakfast is a thing she’s made half-asleep before.
She takes the bacon out of the fridge without even looking; she knows exactly where everything is in the fridge – the entire kitchen, really – because she’s the only one who cooks. Prue can manage assembly, but actual creation was determined off-limits the day Quinn came home just in time to watch Prue do battle with a fire extinguisher against an empty burner. Best for everyone. While she’s washing her hands, she encourages the low flame under the empty pan to grow to medium. She cracks her neck and stands in the corner, willing the pan to heat up faster, which it doesn’t; she can’t control the heat, only the flame. It’s wishful thinking.
She hears movement from the back of the apartment; Prue must be starting to wake up. She places her palm in the center of the pan and quickly removes her hand, shaking it out. The bacon sizzles when it hits the hot metal. She turns away from the stove and starts to clean up. If she doesn’t, Prue will make a fuss about how she’s supposed to do the dishes because Quinn cooks and but we agreed, Quinn, not taking into consideration that it’s her birthday or the unwritten universal rule that birthdays are also exempt-from-chores days. She lifts her arm to brush a lock of red hair out of her face and realizes that she should probably shower. She still smells like dragon: kind of sweaty, very reptilian, slightly burnt.
The pipes creak, indicating that Prue’s about to start the daily fight with the pipes and hot water supply, and Quinn realizes that she’s not going to have time to shower before breakfast. She’ll put on some deodorant and spritz on something from one of the bottles Biggie keeps giving her for Christmas and hope that Prue will be too distracted by food and presents and the dragon situation to notice.
Quinn settles the last dish in the drying rack and briefly considers eggs. She decides against: they’re only two people, Prue’s not really a big egg fan anyway, and she only wanted to make eggs to keep herself awake while the bacon cooks. She settles her iPod into a set of portable speakers and turns on a playlist with a suitable collection of bagpipes and starts to bob her head in time with the drums.
She’s dancing around the kitchen in full goofball mode, pretending to sing Gaelic into the tongs, when Prue walks in. “Hi!” She’s had two cups of the coffee that finally brewed. “Happy birthday!” She turns down the volume on the speakers at the same time as she lowers the flame under the bacon. She hugs her roommate, careful not to squeeze too hard.
Prue smiles and returns the hug. “Thank you.”
Quinn motions for Prue to sit down at the table and transfers the bacon to a paper towel-covered plate to drain. She pours hot water into a mug for Prue’s tea, refills her own mug of coffee, and brings both to the table where two glasses of orange juice are already sitting at opposite ends. Her present for Prue, purchased months ago while on a trip to Druzhba to help with a rogue firebird, is next to Prue’s plate, wrapped with last week’s Sunday comics because they’re completely out of non-holiday wrapping paper. They’ll go over to the Sanctuary later tonight for dinner, celebrating the birthday of everyone who was born in November, and she has a goofy gift to give to Prue then in front of everyone, but this is the actual present. Quinn thinks that somewhere in today’s schedule she needs to find time for a nap.
“How’re you feeling?” Quinn asks, taking the French toast out of the oven. Prue’s still recovering from an episode earlier in the week, her body trying to attack itself again. It wasn’t bad enough to take her to the Sanctuary this time, but Quinn had been worried for a few days.
“Better,” Prue says, and she sounds it. She swallows a handful of vitamins with a big gulp of orange juice. Her eyes light up when Quinn brings over the plates of French toast and bacon. “This looks wonderful.”
Quinn holds up a finger and dashes back into the kitchen. She comes back with a sieve, a small container of powdered sugar, and a bottle of maple syrup; she sets the syrup down and gently dusts the powdered sugar over the French toast. “Breakfast is served,” she says with a grin, wiping excess sugar off her fingers onto her pants.
“Did I hear something about a dragon last night?” Prue serves herself three slices of bacon and two slices of French toast to start with.
“Yeah,” Quinn rolls her eyes and puts food onto her own plate. She waits for Prue to start before she digs in, though she can feel her stomach about to growl audibly. “It got out again and decided to climb City Hall.” Once Prue takes a bite, she digs in before her stomach can join the conversation. “Everyone else kept getting burned and Helen didn’t think that Henry in wolf form fighting a dragon on top of City Hall was something she could contain from the press that well. So she called me.” She has her own set of burns, but she heals from burns faster than others, and it was worth it to see the confused look on the dragon’s face when it tried to breathe a huge, engulfing flame in her direction and it turned into a mild burp.
Prue tries to imagine what kind of story Helen could possibly spin to explain a giant wolf trying to take down a dragon and comes up empty. “Speaking of,” she says, knowing that Quinn will follow her thought process, “we have to move out of this apartment.”
Quinn nods in agreement. Their old building is still under quarantine until they can be sure that the glowing multipedes were completely exterminated. This is a temporary gig and they’ve both had it with the pipes and the cracked ceiling and the ability to hear the neighbors yelling at each other day and night, though they are starting to pick up on some of the more colorful bits of Polish. “Will thinks they’ll be sure in a week or so. Henry’s working on something,” she gestures aimlessly through the air with her empty fork, “that will do some fancy scan on the building.”
“Excellent.” Prue’s trying very hard to be patient and eat breakfast before she opens her present, but she loves presents and can’t wait any longer. She carefully wipes her hands, making sure they aren’t sticky with syrup, and sets her plate aside. She’ll finish later. She looks across the table at Quinn, who looks at her with an expression of well, get on with it already, and grins widely. She tears into the paper.
“Oh,” she says, lifting the blanket from the box, “it’s beautiful.” The fabric is thick and warm against her fingers, without being bulky. The deep colors in the pattern seem to shift in the light as she changes the angle. “Thank you,” she says, smiling widely. She gets cold easily, even in their real apartment where the heating works spectacularly well, and no amount of sweaters and socks and hats can beat curling up in a blanket.
That smile, more than anything else, tells Quinn that Prue really is feeling better. “You’re welcome. Happy birthday.”
The smile widens. “Please tell me someone took pictures of you being sassy to a dragon.”