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“Are you sure you’ve made meringue before?” Lup is looking over Lucretia’s shoulder as they each beat their own bowl of egg whites, sugar and cream of tartar in the kitchen aboard the Starblaster. Lup’s is beginning to peak beautifully as she slows her pace, while Lucretia is just about managing to keep the still lumpy, inconsistently-textured stuff in the bowl. She stops in her tracks and eyes both mixtures.
“Well, I uh- said I knew how to make it… it’s just…”
Lup’s face breaks into a wide, knowing smile, and she rolls her eyes. “You cannot be serious.”
Lucretia only looks at her bowl, then back at her, and smiles sheepishly back, her cheeks a slight, dark red.
“Okay, well, before you kill that poor thing, let me—” Lup giggles and shakes her head, setting her own bowl down on the kitchen counter. She then stands behind Lucretia and wraps her arms around her. “May I?” She asks, and waits for her to nod her head before taking her hands in her own.
Lup’s grip is firm but gentle. She holds Lucretia close and lets her hands relax underneath hers as she grabs the bowl and whisk. Her hands are warm and slightly rough to the touch.
“You’ll overmix it. Let it sit for a bit and then…” There is a moment of silence between the two, of stillness. Lucretia hopes Lup did not notice her breath catch when she embraced her, has not noticed her racing heartbeat with her back flush to her chest. She lets herself just be in this moment, in Lup’s arms, trying not to think about the fact that she’s made a bit of a fool of herself; a bit of up-close-and-personal tutelage isn’t so bad, after all, is it?
They start to stir the mix again, and it is completely different to the way Lucretia has been doing it. It is like Lup’s lithe elven hands were made for this as she turns her wrist and shifts her fingers with such precision that, in no time, all the lumps are gone and the now smooth egg and sugar paste starts to give more and more as it is filled with air. Lucretia can feel every movement in her own hands, feel Lup’s steady breath, enveloping them in an aura of concentration and security that almost feels like being surrounded by magic.
When the mixture starts to rise, Lup’s hands tighten over Lucretia’s. It’s almost like she feels her pulse quicken as well—she is sure to be imagining things in the heat of the moment, she assures herself—Lucretia can’t help but let out an excited yelp.
“Oh! look at that! You fixed it!”
“We fixed it, Creesh! Hell yeah!” Lup’s left hand lets go of the whisk and she embraces Lucretia fully. It is quick and it is tight, and she feels it pull on something warm deep within her chest.
Lup lets her go, and the slight void left behind by her arms is quickly replaced by her beaming smile as she takes the bowl from Lucretia’s hands. “Hey, hey, hey-check it out!” She holds out a bowl in each hand toward her and asks “Favorite color, go.”
“Uh, well… as colors go…”
Lup’s smile seems to be capable of widening ad infinitum, and the bigger, the brighter she smiles, the more that warm spot in Lucretia’s chest grows. “Don’t overthink it! Just say a color you like!”
Lucretia laughs a little and struggles to form the words.
“Alright, alright! uh… purple!” she stops to think for a moment. “Like how we’d get sunsets sometimes, and they’d reflect off each other, and it was a wonderful gradient of every shade of purple you’d ever seen.”
They both stop for a beat. They do not stop smiling, but their expressions are of nostalgia. Sad smiles, smiles remembering times gone and places lost, but never forgotten.
“You’re right. We did get beautiful sunsets back home.”
And there has been no lack of pretty sunsets since, either. Every new plane comes with a new sky, new days and nights and in-betweens to preserve. Every single color is worth the effort.
“So what’s your favorite color?” Lucretia inquires, nudging at the bowls in Lup’s hands. She looks like she just snapped out of a daze and the weight of her full attention immediately falls back on Lucretia. Lup’s eyes being so blatantly on her makes her skin tingle.
“Well, now it feels silly to say.”
“Promise I won’t judge,” Lucretia teases.
“Uh-huh, right. Ready?” Lup holds out the bowls and straightens her stance; looking back at the bowls. She glances briefly up at Lucretia once more and then taps the bowls together while a single-word spell passes her lips.
In the blink of an eye, as soon as the bowls touch, the mixture in each one becomes a distinct, pastel color.
One a light purple, the other a faint red.
“It’s predictable, but hey. At least you can’t say I’m not consistent.”
“That’s a perfectly fine thing to be,” Lucretia reassures her, taking the purple bowl from her hands.
“I know what I like.” She must be imagining things again, because there is no way Lup is looking at her in any specific or odd way while saying that, and definitely no chance she looks her up and down afterward.
“That must be nice. You should tell me your secret sometime.” Lucretia rushes to grab the dry ingredient bowls they set aside earlier and tries to hide her face, more likely than not burning once again with a dark red blush she cannot afford around her coworker.
Though at this point, what does that even mean anymore? It has been at least ten years since everything started, who knows what lies ahead? what will they be to each other in another ten, or twenty, or fifty years? how long will this go on?
They continue to bake—the cookies are the hard part, really, so after a considerably stressful thirty minutes of piping cookies onto baking sheets and Lup supervising every step very closely to make sure they even tap the trays on the counter correctly, putting them in the oven and preparing the frosting is a breeze. Lup does most of the mixing while Lucretia adds the ingredients, but Lucretia insists on stirring in the liqueur flavoring and the salt.
“How hard can it be to mess up a pinch?” She asks, unscrewing the top of the shaker.
“You’d be surprised,” answers Lup, raising her eyebrows and puckering her mouth like she has tasted a particularly messed up pinch of salt (at no point does Lucretia’s sight linger on her lips, and she absolutely does not fixate on the way the corners curve up. She categorically does not think about kissing that spot).
Lup seems to have everything about the process down to a science, because as soon as the frosting is done, the timer she set when they put the cookies in the oven goes off.
“Now, we watch and wait.”
The few minutes they spend standing in front of the oven, waiting for the cookies to be done, are as ensorcelling as watching a weaver carefully work together threads on their loom.
Lup explains everything about how the cookies bake and why they have to be very careful about the temperature and the timing. She talks about ingredient cooking times and chemical composition, she points out the right distance the trays need to be from the bottom of the oven and each other. When she cracks open the oven door she explains airflow and thermodynamics and how it all adds up to the cookies having a crunchy shell and a chewy inside and gods, Lucretia just wishes she could be writing this all down in her best hand. Lup’s focus is razor sharp, and it is almost as if she can sense the moment the cookies are ready.
“Is that some sort of magic you’re using to be able to tell? Like a measure density spell or something?” She asks, because when the trays of cookies come out of the oven they are perfectly cooked—not a raw spot, not a smidge of burnt or darkened crust. Only smooth, bright pastel purple and red crusts.
Lup clutches her own chest at this, but smiles wide and chuckles and replies in a mockingly dramatic tone “Who do you take me for, some sort of half-witted magician chef?”
She approaches the trays, laid out on the counter to cool, and points at the edges of each cookie, going all around before moving to the next as she speaks.
“The trick is on the edges. After a while you learn to spot the exact moment they’re done. It’s hard to fully describe… something in the color. And the way you can kind of see how dry they are, you know? There’s a point.”
When Lup looks back up at her, there is something in her eyes for a moment; something sparkling and wide and excited and full of love. And Lucretia could almost melt right then and there, if she didn’t notice by the shift in her expression to a cocky grin that she has been staring. She does her best to look at the cookies, to see what Lup has been talking about. All she can see is how some of them—mostly the ones she piped on the sheet—are slightly weird shapes, rose in odd ways or did not end up perfectly round.
“Those are some really interesting macarons, huh?” Lup teases, holding out the bowl of white frosting. “Good looking ones, too. Especially those funky shaped dudes.”
She must know. She must have noticed, and now…
Well.
And now… what? What does that mean?
What does it mean for the mission? For the crew?
…For them?
“I rather like the rounder ones, actually.” Lucretia takes the bowl from Lup’s hand. When she does, their fingers brush against each another for the slightest moment—and it is like an electric shock goes through her entire body, paralyzing her.
“Well, as I said.” Lup pulls back her hand. Lucretia could have sworn her cheeks did not have quite this much color a minute ago; but then again, it could just be the oven making the kitchen hotter. She wants to convince herself that that is the reason for her own cheeks feeling just short of bursting into flames.
“Besides, technically they’re not macarons yet,” Lucretia adds, motioning toward the trays with the bowl of frosting.
“Race you to see who can put more together?” Lup’s voice is playful, delighted, mischievous, and just a little… something that seems to be holding her back. Something that glints in her eyes and makes it look like holding eye contact with Lucretia is some kind of thrilling game to her.
“Sure,” Lucretia engages in the game, and saying she does not like it would be lying. She can almost feel the sparks fly between their gazes. She sets the bowl down; “but no magic.”
Lup narrows her eyes playfully at her and smirks as she offers her a tablespoon. “Bold of you to assume. Ready?”
They each grab a plate to pile their assembled macarons and ready their respective spoons over the bowl. Lup looks at Lucretia expectantly.
"Go!"
They start laughing almost immediately when they play-fight for a spoonful of frosting or as their fingers brush together trying to take the same cookie. It's electric and exciting and intoxicating. Trying to make them look good is half the fun, but Lucretia cannot compete with Lup’s steady, practiced movements; she makes putting in the exact right amount of frosting to get a perfect, evenly-distributed cookie sandwich look easy. She barely needs to smooth it over before picking up another one, and another, and her hands move in a hypnotizing way, like a repeating pattern, and her face of pure concentration—it should be considered cheating just looking like that. Lucretia can hardly look away.
By the time they are done with the macarons, Lucretia finds she was able to put together an astounding ten, while Lup took care of the rest in the same time.
“Well, you’ll get the hang of it, I’m sure”, her ears are angled down slightly, but her face is lit up in unmistakable pride. She reaches out for one of the purple macarons in Lucretia’s plate. “Shall we taste-test?”
Lucretia grabs a red one from Lup’s pile and holds it up. They tap them on each other as if toasting and laugh together—Lucretia cannot tear her gaze off Lup’s wide, bright eyes—before taking a bite.
“Hot diggity shit,” Lup starts, staring at the macaron in her hand and immediately going for a second bite, “that is a baller cookie.”
They really are, thinks Lucretia—at least the ones Lup put together. They don’t just have rich, vibrant colors, but the filling is silky smooth, and the cookies give easily under their teeth with a soft crunching sound. The flavor is more robust than Lucretia had expected, maybe from the added vanilla, but the floral tanginess of elderflower is just the right amount of delicate and sweet to make her taste buds almost swell in delight.
“Woah.” is all she can bring herself to say out loud before closing her eyes and digging back in, making an effort to not down the whole thing in one bite in order to really savor it. A fuzzy, magical warmth blooms within her and settles around her like the feeling of sunlight on her skin.
When Lucretia has finished savoring her last bite and opens her eyes, she is confronted with Lup staring at her with an indescribable expression: only calling it curious or fond or proud or nervous would be a disservice to the… completeness of it. The vulnerability. The absolute certainty with which it sits on Lup’s face. It makes Lucretia shrivel up inside while her heart grows about five sizes at the same time.
Her face feels like it is attempting to burn itself clean off her head. One corner of Lup’s lips quirks up.
“That good, right?” She teases, putting the last morsel of her own macaron in her mouth and smiling at the taste. Lucretia smiles back, still full of that bright, tingling warmth.
“No kidding, that is a baller cookie,” she concurs.
“I almost don’t wanna share with the others,” says Lup, “but I guess we can’t really eat forty macarons all by ourselves, huh?”.
“I wouldn’t mind trying. They’re that good.”
“I can see that,” Lup laughs, “hold on, let me…” She trails off as she raises one hand to Lucretia’s cheek, and Lucretia is convinced she feels her heart stop. A second later she appears to still be alive, though, and she can hear the blood being pumped through her ears. Lup briefly dabs the very edge of her mouth with one finger and pulls it back smeared with a bit of red buttercream.
“There,” she states, as if she hasn’t just killed Lucretia and brought her back to life within a moment. “Not gonna lie, I’m flattered!” There it is again. That teasing tone. “I didn’t know you could be a messy eater, Creesh.”
Without hesitation, not even bothering to break eye contact, Lup licks her finger clean.
That may just be the thing that tips Lucretia over completely.
“You have something on your mouth too,” she spits out, all other thoughts pushed out of her head. “Let me get that for you.”
Before Lup (or even herself, for that matter) can process what is happening, Lucretia closes the distance between them, grabs her face with both hands, and plants a kiss right on the edge of her lips.
Lucretia realizes she can count the amount of times she has seen Lup genuinely shocked on one hand. Including now.
This snaps her back to reality, like a bucket of cold water has been dumped over her head. She lets go of Lup’s face like one would a hot iron and steps back as far as she can—which isn’t much before she bumps her hip on the kitchen counter.
“Shit. Shit. Shit. I’m so sorry, Lup, I- I don’t know why I did that, I’m so sorry. Fuck, I’m sorry—”
Lup, for some incomprehensible reason, gives her a wide, gentle smile. She steps closer to Lucretia and carefully sets both hands on her elbows. This sends a warm shiver down her spine, which in turn makes her the most mortified she has ever been in her life. Lup then tentatively raises one hand to cup over Lucretia’s cheek. She is helpless to avoid relaxing into her touch.
Lup’s eyebrows raise. Lucretia can read nothing in her expression but unbearable, inescapable love.
“Don’t overthink it.”
Then she leans in and kisses her back.
It feels like tasting the macaron for the first time all over again. Warm and soft and sweet. Lup’s lips, too, give with ease between hers, and in an instant her arms are around Lucretia’s waist, pulling her in even closer.
Lucretia melts in Lup’s arms. Her entire body relaxes, like unwinding by the hearth at the end of a long day.
When they pull away, Lup is still gently holding her face with one hand and looking at her like. Well. Like that. It could be Lucretia’s life’s work to find a word that can describe that look. Then, she chuckles quietly and shakes her head.
“You’re still doing it.”
“Only a little bit,” Lucretia laughs, too. Her head has not been this empty of words since before she learned to speak.
“Are you good?” Lup asks and brushes a single curl out of Lucretia’s face.
Is she good? Can she possibly be alright after what just happened? She doesn't know. She doesn't know because her swollen heart and her lips and her cheek under Lup's skin scream yes, while a knot grows at the pit of her stomach trying to pull her back down to reality. But she cannot bring herself to pay attention to it. Not when she feels this warm and held.
“I'm… I don't know. I think so.” She is smiling without willing herself to. She has to trust that.
Lup's brows knit together, and another wave of warmth washes over Lucretia. She feels herself blush.
“Okay, well… good thing we may have all the time in the world to figure that out, yeah? No rush.”
Lucretia’s heart skips a beat. We, Lup said. All the time in the world…
“Yes. No rush.” She gently lets her hands slide from Lup’s cheeks and onto her shoulders, still unable to look away from those bright, indescribable eyes. “We can… take things as they come.” As daunting as that is.
“We can keep talking about it as long as we need, to make a good map before rushing ahead.” Lup gently runs her thumb against Lucretia’s cheek.
“I’d like that,” she says.
Lup is beaming and glowing and radiating warmth and safety and something strong and steady and explosive. She removes one hand from Lucretia’s waist to take her hand in hers and bring it up to her lips. Lup kisses the back of Lucretia’s hand gently, but with absolute resolve.
“Me too.”
If Lucretia looks at that smile for another second, she might not ever be able to think about anything else. She averts her eyes, cheeks burning, and spots the cooling macarons on the countertop.
“Hey, should we… get everyone? Have a little snack break all together?” Lucretia tests, even though she still thinks “we” is an overstatement of her own involvement.
Lup straightens up and lightly squeezes Lucretia’s hand.
“Oh, yeah!” She turns briskly to the cookies, and with a snap of her fingers wills them on a serving platter. “I’ll go call ‘em. Get some napkins from the cupboard?”
“Sure thing.”
“Thanks, babe—” Lup stumbles over the words and hesitates for a second, but then shakes her head with determination. “Back in a sec.”
She exits the kitchen with long, smooth strides and Lucretia stands there for a long moment before snapping herself out of it and reaching for the cupboard. From the deck of the ship, she hears Lup’s booming voice:
“EVERYONE COME LOOK WHAT LUCY AND I MADE!”
We, again and again and again “we”. Lucretia can't help her heart for soaring.
“AND THAT MEANS EVERYONE, TAAKO! IF YOUR ASS IS NOT IN HERE WITHIN THIRTY SECONDS I WILL MAKE SURE YOU ONLY EAT GOGURT FOR THE REST OF THE YEAR.”
Lucretia laughs. They really do have all the time in the world.
She can work with that.