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It had been a long time since Jack had last stayed at Mark's house. Both men had been busy with conventions and YouTube as always, and even when Jack made it to LA the last time, he had stayed with other friends. Mark had barely seen him at all. So when Mark heard Jack would be coming over again, he offered Jack his spare room for the week he would be in LA. Jack happily accepted. That was several weeks ago. Now Jack was here, in Mark's home. The only problem was Jack couldn't sleep. Since it was currently three AM, and he didn't want to wake his sleeping host, Jack was trying to figure out something he could do that would help him get to sleep, or at least be helpful to Mark when he got up in the morning. Jack had already been on Twitter and Tumblr for hours, answering comments and reposting fan art until he couldn't focus any more. He needed to rest his eyes from the tiny phone screen and do something else for a little while.
After thinking about it, Jack decided he would bake Mark a thank you treat. He walked into the kitchen as quietly as he could and began looking around, finding the things he would need. Should he make a cake? No, he would need to use a mixer for the frosting at least unless he wanted to use pre-made frosting. Jack made a face at the very idea. He never cared for that type of frosting much, finding it too greasy. Besides, a cake would take all night. Cupcakes would be faster, but he would need to find cupcake liners and he still had the problem of frosting them. So they were out too. Finally Jack decided to make a batch of cookies. He knew a good recipe and cookies would be fast. Jack grabbed a large mixing bowl, a wooden spoon, two cookie sheets, and the measuring cups and spoons. Then he looked around the kitchen until he found the flour, sugar, brown sugar, vanilla, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and oatmeal. He reached in the fridge and got out the eggs and butter. He found the oil. Then he started mixing the batter. There was only one flaw in Jack's plan. Mark's measuring cups and spoons were all non-metric and Jack's recipe in his head was all metric. He tried to do the mental conversions, but somewhere along the way, something went seriously wrong. Before he knew it, Jack was not only covered in flour, but the dough was somehow just wrong. It tasted fine, as Jack knew from sampling it, but the dough was too hard and dry. Jack wanted to cry. Instead he tried scooping out little balls of dough onto the cookie sheet just to see if they would bake into proper cookies. They came out of the bowl as chunks, instead of balls.
Jack had preheated the oven a little while ago, so it was ready when he finished the tray of cookie chunks. He shoved it in, trying to stay quiet, and set a timer for seven minutes. Then he smacked his forehead. He had forgotten the chocolate chips! Jack walked over to the counter where the bag of chocolate lay, forgotten until now. He opened them up and decided maybe if he melted them and dipped the bottoms of the finished cookies it wouldn't be so bad. He could drizzle some chocolate on top too. He got out another bowl and dumped the chocolate in, melting it carefully in the microwave, making sure it didn't burn. The chocolate finished just in time for the first batch of cookies to come out of the oven. By some miracle they looked gorgeous. Jack grinned and moved them off the tray onto a cooling rack. Then he put the next batch of cookies in the oven and stirred the chocolate. It was just cool enough to work with now. He worked quickly, dipping the bottoms of each cookie and letting them drip for just a few seconds before putting them back on the cooling rack. He had to stop once the chocolate started to harden, but thirty seconds in the microwave soon had it back to temperature.
Jack finished all the cookies and wiped his head. The kitchen was getting hot. As soon as all the cookies came out of the oven, Jack turned it off. He dipped the last of the cookies and set them out to cool. He had a little bit of chocolate left, but not enough, so he rounded up some ingredients to make a chocolate drizzle for his cookies. Cocoa, milk, sugar, and a little bit of butter mostly. He mixed them with the melted chocolate, not noticing the cocoa he now had all over his shirt and somehow in his hair. He began drizzling the glaze over the cookies, making random patterns and designs until all the cookies were coated. He grinned. Perfect. He started putting things away and cleaning up the kitchen. He had just finished everything but the bowl with the leftover glaze when he finally felt tired. Jack decided he could sit down and rest for a minute before he cleaned up the bowl and himself. He sat down and put his head in his hands, his green hair sticking out at crazy angles. He reached one hand down and scooped out a fingers worth of chocolate glaze. He tasted it, closing his eyes and enjoying the flavor. He never meant to fall asleep...
When Mark woke up in the morning he headed out to the kitchen to get some breakfast and was dumbfounded. What had happened?
Jack was sound asleep, his head in a bowl of what looked like chocolate sauce, cocoa, sugar, and flour all over him and two giant streaks of chocolate across his forehead. Mark saw the cookies and grinned. He grabbed his phone and took a picture, posting it on Twitter with the hashtag #SomeoneMadeAMessAndItWasn'tMe. Then he took a picture of the cookies and tweeted it, hashtagging it #sweetgesture. He started laughing when he saw the original post comments. Jack was going to have a lot of fan explaining to do very soon. Marks laugh woke Jack up with a start. He sat up and blinked, the bowl still on his head. Mark laughed harder. Jack looked so confused, but it was adorable. Mark reached over and grabbed the bowl, lifting off of Jack's head. Sticky, sweet chocolate dripped down onto Jack's face as it left. His hair was thickly coated.
Jack had managed to become chocolate covered.