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“Yujo?”
Haurchefant looked in the room, still in pristine condition and practically untouched despite the lalafellin woman sat on the bed. She stared down at her gloved hands, blonde hair falling over her eyes, unresponsive.
“I kicked Tataru out of the kitchen.” He tried. That got her attention. Her head snapped up, blue eyes wide in mild panic.
“Why’d ye do that?!” She asked, incredulous. “Ye know Tataru’s the only thing keepin’ that place runnin’ proper-”
“I wanted to make cookies! For Valentione’s. I know many of the knights here would appreciate some.” He interrupted, rubbing the back of his neck. “Only, I’m not very good at it, and I was hoping you might be able to assist me, lest I make a fool of myself...” Please take the bait...
Yujo sighed.
Minutes later, they stood in the kitchen. All the other cafeteria staff had been sent to rest for the day, after a stern warning from Tataru to make sure everything is put back in its correct place, or HEAVENS help me. The room was silent, lanterns set to burn for a few hours at least. The staff clearly didn’t trust their Commander in the kitchen – a recipe had been pinned to the small cork board behind the baking station, colourful metal pins tacked around it in the shape of arrows pointing inward, and the ingredients had been left out for them with no room for misinterpretation. Yujo eyed them with no small amount of skepticism, looking between the elezen and the large bag of flour he was attempting to wrestle with. He was clearly losing the fight, already making a mess of himself, white powder dusting all down the front of his shirt and rolled-up sleeves, small patches even in his hair.
He fumbled, metal cup still full in his hand, half trying to hold up the falling bag, half trying to make sure the cup didn’t fall from his grasp. Yujo let out an exasperated sigh, shaking her head.
“’ere, let me.” With a swift movement, she kicked the small wooden stool into place and reached up, taking the flour bag from his hands and steadying it with seemingly practiced ease. “If ye don’t stop now, ye’ll have a kitchen full of flour and no cookies, not tae mention yer cook’ll be pissed at ye.”
He dumped the last cup of flour into the large bowl, and she set about measuring the rest of the dry ingredients. She confidently measured what she presumed was sugar into the flour-covered cup, completely missing the large bold letters spelling SALT on the side of the wooden container, and dodging Haurchefant’s butter-covered hands reaching over her for the eggs. It should have been a simple task - crack, separate, discard the shell - but somehow, impossibly, he managed to miss the bowl entirely.
There was a wet splat.
Both of them froze. The yolk lay in a sad, sticky puddle on the counter, the shell rolling to a stop beside it and the whites dripping down the side of the counter and spattering onto the floor. Yujo slowly turned her head, giving him the flattest look she could muster. Haurchefant, ever the picture of innocence, cleared his throat and straightened his shoulders.
“Well. That was an unfortunate miscalculation.”
“…Aye. And the fact that ye still have the other egg in yer hand?”
“I shall be more careful, I swear it upon Halone’s spear.”
He cracked it with one hand - an unnecessary flourish, two heavy taps against the edge of the metal bowl, nearly toppling it over in the process - and this time, the yolk did land in the bowl. However, so did bits of shell, speckling the mixture and sinking to the bottom of the egg white.
Yujo pinched the bridge of her nose.
“Move.”
“I can fix it-”
“I said move.”
He relented, stepping aside with a dramatic sigh as she fished the wayward fragments out of the batter with the end of the used butter knife, muttering to herself about ’elezens with more confidence than sense’.
Once the egg crisis had been handled, they moved on to mixing the dough. Haurchefant insisted on taking charge of this part - perhaps as redemption for the previous culinary disasters - but as soon as he began stirring, it was clear things would not improve. The spoon stuck fast in the thick mixture, and he yanked at it like a sword caught in a tree trunk.
Inevitably, with one final, overly forceful tug, the spoon came loose. So did a great glob of dough. It flung through the air in slow, damning motion before splattering onto Yujo’s shoulder.
Haurchefant immediately dropped the spoon back into the bowl, hands raised in surrender.
“That was—”
Yujo’s entire expression flattened. Then, deliberately, she dipped her fingers into the as-of-yet unmixed dough and flicked a generous portion onto his cheek.
A beat of silence. Then his lips curled into something far too delighted.
“Oh, you wish for war?”
“War’s already been declared. Mate.”
The flour bag was still open. That was his first mistake. In one smooth motion, Yujo grabbed a handful and clapped it against the front of his already covered shirt. A dust cloud puffed up between them, and she grinned at his indignant spluttering.
Haurchefant recovered quickly. Too quickly.
He reached for the butter.
“Don’t.”
“I must.”
“Don’t ye—”
The butter squelched as it smeared onto her nose. Yujo stared at him, aghast. It was silent for a moment, her mouth open in shock.
“Ye absolute gobshite.”
And that was it. The kitchen descended into chaos.
Flour rained down like snowfall, smears of dough and butter found their way onto cheeks and sleeves, and laughter rang through the once-pristine kitchen as they ducked beneath counters and took tactical cover behind appliances. Ingredients coated the walls and floor, even spattering onto the ceiling in some areas. Yujo, being smaller, hid in the smaller nooks of the room, squirming through gaps and forcing the taller elezen to have to run around tables, and straight into an ambush. Haurchefant dodged an expertly-aimed handful of ‘sugar’, only to trip on the unmoved stool and knock the jug of milk over in the process, going down onto the floor like a sack of popotoes with a hard yelp of slightly pained laughter. Yujo, in turn, nearly slipped on the spill, catching herself on the counter at the last second, hand gripping one of the metal handles of the lower cupboards like her dignity depended on it.
“Oh, now look what ye’ve done!” she scolded between breathless laughter.
“What I’ve done? You were the one who threw sugar as though it were a spear!”
Yujo only snorted and grabbed a towel, wiping at the worst of the spill. Haurchefant, similarly dishevelled, straightened and clapped a flour-covered hand on her shoulder.
“Well fought, my friend,” he said solemnly, as though they had just finished a grand battle. “Shall we call it a truce?”
Yujo considered. Then, with a sharp jab of her fingers, she flicked the last bit of butter at his nose.
“Now we can.”
Still grinning, they finally turned back to the mixing bowl, surveying the damage. The dough - what little remained in the bowl after the fight - was now somehow mixed in the chaos, but still sticky, far too soft, and had not been given a moment to rest. But at this point, neither of them cared.
“What now?” Haurchefant asked.
Yujo wiped her hands off on her blue and powder-white shirt.
“We bake.”
“Like this?” He gestured at the unchilled, uneven mass.
“Like this,” she confirmed. “Ain’t got the patience for chillin’ it proper, and I don’t trust ye to nae eat half the dough if we leave it sittin’.”
How Haurchefant managed to look both deeply offended and mischievous at the same time she’d never know.
“I would never."
She raised a single, sceptical brow.
“…Fine,” he admitted, already eyeing the dough with barely-restrained longing. “To the oven, then.”
Perhaps, in hindsight, they should have double-checked which oven they used. In their defence, the kitchen had several. The mistake was an easy one to make, given that they were covered in enough flour to resemble ghosts, the room’s lanterns had begun to dim, and they were still recovering from their impromptu battlefield. Nevertheless, they shoved the tray into the nearest oven, set the temperature very incorrectly, and shut the door with a triumphant smack.
The fact that the dough immediately began melting into a soupy mess did not bode well, but neither of them noticed. Instead, they turned back to the mixing bowl. The remnants of their efforts clung to the sides, sticky and unbaked, but now that the main event was in the oven, there was only one logical course of action left.
Haurchefant grabbed the wooden spoon. Yujo picked up the bowl. They eyed each other, then the batter, then each other again.
“…Reckon the batter’s edible as is?” Yujo mused.
The answer, of course, was no. But that didn’t stop them from eating it anyway. They could clean up later.