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A sweet, spicy, and warm aroma wafted through the apartment, coaxing you away from the article plastered on your computer screen. It was an unmistakable scent — Zayne was baking again. Your stomach rumbled in response to the call of the delicious scent. Your eyes lingered on line after line of text as you tried to wrangle yourself back into focus, your feet already swinging away from the desk towards his bedroom’s doorframe. It had become your bedroom too, over the last few days.
It was meant to be a single movie night at his apartment to commemorate the holidays and the first evening you’d been able to spend together in weeks. You’d been missing him terribly, and you didn’t need to guess whether he’d felt the same — he’d paused the movie mere minutes after the title screen, and you’d made up for the lost time by getting lost in each other, moments of bliss punctuated by heated kisses full of longing and fervor as snow piled softly outside. And you’d stayed the next morning, and the next, until the days blurred into one, like an unending dream.
You knew that this blissful time would come to an end, of course, as all things did, when the haze of the holiday season would inevitably dissipate and you’d be thrown back into your usual routine. That arduous routine that would find you facing wanderers and him performing tedious surgeries, away from each other. But for the moment, you’d let yourself grow comfortable in the constancy of his presence, let yourself grow accustomed to the somewhat cold and austere decor of these halls that betrayed none of the warmth they made you feel.
You’d injected some of that warmth in yourself, in the form of bright, neatly weaved garlands of LED lights you’d hung up on any wall that could accommodate them, and pillowy soft fake snow you’d set underneath the tiny — and also fake — tree you’d been surprised to find Zayne had already put up near the decorative fireplace. You’d lightly goaded him on his unexpected display of a festive spirit as you laid out the cotton candy-like snow, an observation he’d dodged by rebutting that he could have made more believable fake snow using his Evol. You’d quipped that actually decorating was half the fun. And besides, you enjoyed leaving small marks of yourself in his apartment in the form of decorations and trinkets. He didn’t seem to mind, as you’d always find them exactly where you left them, even months later. Small, yet indelible.
Another whiff of the enticing aroma, full of cinnamon and spice and vanilla, pulled you from soft reminiscence, and you were decidedly drawn away from your computer. Your slippers softly tapped beneath your feet as you sauntered down the stairs and slid into the kitchen, where the oven’s warmth emanated from. As you’d expected, you found Zayne pulling a tray of golden brown cookies from the oven. He was dressed in a dark grey wool sweater, one of the many you’d gifted him, and his sharp features basked in the soft glow of the warm overhead lights. A small smile adorned his lips as he beheld his cookies, and he looked gentler than a soft winter’s breeze. You stood in the doorframe for a moment, savoring the picture in front of you, before another rumble of your stomach urged you to savor some of the tasty treats now laid out on a cooling rack on the counter. The sound drew Zayne’s attention to you, and he let out a soft chuckle.
“Hungry, are we?” he said as he discarded his oven mitts.
“How could I not be?” you replied. “This entire place smells like a bakery.”
You stepped past Zayne as casually as you could, your hand softly grazing his back as you closed the distance between you and the object of your stomach’s desires. You stole a glance at him as you approached the rack; he was tidying mixing bowls and measuring cups from the countertop, and so you figured this was your opportunity to strike.
“Wait,” came his voice, soft yet firm. “They’re hot. Let them cool.”
“You don’t even know what I’m doing. I’m just looking at them!” you protested.
You heard Zayne hum over the slight clatter of metal bowls. “I know what you’re doing. You’re going to try and eat them when my back is turned, then you’re going to burn your tongue.”
Guilty . That had been your exact plan, tongue burning and all. It was a price you were always ready to pay when it came to freshly baked goods, and Zayne unfortunately knew you well enough to stop you in your tracks.
“I’m just admiring the artistry, honest,” you lied, a playful smile coloring your words.
“Is that so?” Zayne moved closer to you, towards the sink, dishes in tow. “And what grade does my artistry earn me this time?”
For the first time, you actually stopped to look at the cookies. You’d noticed their... peculiar shape earlier, but you’d been too enamored with their enticing smell to really pay attention to anything else. Now, you could see that each cookie was meticulously hand-crafted into some sort of animal, with chocolate chunk dotted eyes, a globular head, rounded ears (or extremely curly hair?), and a questionable large appendage at their side. They were all almost carbon copies of each other, and you admired how he’d managed to make them so faithful to each other. Other than that, you had no idea what to make of the bizarre yet endearing cookies.
Zayne must have noticed your silence, as he swiftly shut off the sink and turned to face you and the countertop that housed his creation. You realized you were squinting at the display and immediately straightened. “Uh, it’s a high score. The highest!”
Zayne narrowed his eyes as he moved towards you after drying his hands on a towel. His arm settled comfortably around your waist as he stared at his cookies from behind you, gaze seemingly second-guessing. Oh, you were laying it on far too thick.
“They’re cute. They’re, uh…”
You trailed off, hoping he would finish your sentence and enlighten you on exactly what you were looking at.
Zayne’s sharp gaze turned back to you. “Yes, what are they?”
Good lord, you had no idea. ‘Alien’ was frankly your first guess, but you refrained from verbalizing it.
“Animals…” you chanced.
“Yes.”
“B-bears?”
Zayne let out a dramatic sigh, and pinched his temples with his free hand. “No.”
It was all you could do not to let out an exasperated sigh of your own. The not-bears stared at you, chocolate eyes silently chastising you.
“Look at the tails,” said Zayne.
Baffled and wondering where you were meant to be seeing said tails, you failed to suppress a giggle. And at that, Zayne’s lips pursed into a small pout. “You have no idea what they are, do you?”
The genuine incredulity in his voice combined with the army of identical yet nondescript blobby cookie-creatures staring at you turned suppressed giggles into a fit of laughter. You tried to stop yourself from laughing, but the floodgates were already open. It wasn’t long before you felt Zayne’s own rumbling laughter at your back, and the sound warmed you more than the sweltering heat of the oven ever could. You laughed together for a while, fits occasionally quieting down until you dared to look at the cookies again and they’d start back up.
After a while, the spell finally broke, and you sighed contentedly in between small chuckles. Zayne’s hand traced light circles into the soft fabric of your hoodie as you leaned into the warmth of his body. It had been so easy to fall into this blissful domesticity, so natural, so comfortable, that you wondered how you’d ever let it go.
“They are cute. I never lied about that,” you said gently, voice barely above a whisper. Then, suddenly reminded of your original mission, you quickly swiped one of the cookies and bit at the appendage. It almost melted in your mouth, a delicious swirl of cinnamon, chocolate, and perfectly crisped brown sugar lighting up your taste buds. “Mm, and they’re delicious! That’s all that matters, Zayne.”
You raised the cookie to his mouth and he bit into what was meant to be its head. An approving hum left his lips as he savored his creation. You almost inhaled the rest of the cookie, and as you reached for another one, Zayne broke the comfortable silence with a single word. “Clopidogrel.”
The gears in your head ground to life, your eyes widening with recognition.
“Squirrels!” you exclaimed far too late.
It all made sense now: the appendage was meant to be a large tail, and the little niblets of dough at the cookies’ heads were small ears. Granted, the shapes and proportions were all wrong, a detail you attributed to dough expanding when baking, or perhaps Zayne’s memory of the actual anatomy of a squirrel being less than reliable. Regardless, you knew for sure you never could have guessed that the cookies were meant to represent your mutual, nut-loving, questionably named friend from Akso Hospital.
“Next time, I’ll just make them into circles.”
“Mm. No, I think you just need more experimentation,” you mumbled between mouthfuls of cookie. “The shape language could use some work, you know.”
“You just want me to make more cookies,” Zayne frowned in mock annoyance.
“Is that really so bad? You get to eat them too, you know,” you smiled, reaching for your third, or fourth, or perhaps sixth cookie. You’d lost count.
“Then next time, you get to make them with me,” he mumbled warmly into your ear. “Maybe they’ll turn out better with your expert artistry .”
“Deal,” you replied, turning your head to face him. You couldn’t help but bring your hand up to trace the contour of his jaw, suddenly enamored with this moment, this warmth that you weren’t willing to let go of. He leaned down and planted an unhurried kiss on your lips, and it tasted of cinnamon and chocolate and perfectly crisped brown sugar.
Yes, perhaps all things did eventually have to end. This dreamlike holiday season certainly would. But for now, you could allow yourself to savor each moment, one cookie at a time.