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When Adora made a pie for the first time, she had to kneel on a chair to reach the counter. Razz fixed the crust when it rolled out uneven, wrinkled hands surprisingly strong. Aromas laced through the bakery, fruit and spices and butter, thick enough to taste.
"Ach, dearie," Razz said, turning back to the worktable and gesturing at the pie in front of Adora. "The oven won't wait for that one all day."
"It's almost done." Adora shaped another leaf the way Razz showed her, pinching and stretching the cool dough with her fingers. "It just needs a couple more."
Razz layered fruit in another shell while Adora made sure her leaves were tucked into the lattice, and moved one, and adjusted another. It didn't look as good as the pie Razz made earlier, the one that sat cooling on the rack. Razz had rows of them in the display case, peaches and berries and rhubarb peeking through crust, and Adora's looked like she made it out of play-dough.
When Razz eventually took the pie from her, Adora fought down the urge to reach after it. It came out of the oven gold, blueberry filling shiny through the gaps, leaves brown like the ones falling off the trees. Adora and Catra competed to see who could crunch the most, when they walked to the bus in the morning, and Adora was pretty sure that Catra cheated.
"It's lovely, dearie," Razz said. "Your friend will love it."
Adora blinked at her. "What?"
"Your friend." Razz smoothed another strip of crust over glossy strawberries. "Did you already forget? You chose blueberries because she likes them."
It was one of the only fruits Adora'd ever seen Catra eat. She was pretty sure she hadn't told Razz that.
"Catra's not my friend," Adora said. "Mom says I should play with better influences."
Razz raised an eyebrow. "Do you?"
Adora shook her head, quiet, cheeks warm. "Is that okay?"
"You're a smart girl," Razz said, dusting off her hands. "Stop waiting for someone to tell you what the right thing to do is."
The next day, Adora offered some pie to Catra at lunchtime, pretending she'd brought too much. "Can't eat flour," Catra said, poking her fork into the gray mass that she brought from home every day. She sniffed and grimaced. "Or cinnamon. Makes me sick."
"Oh." The blueberries had less color than they'd had yesterday. "So you've never had pie before?"
"I don't like sweet stuff." Catra stirred the sludge in her plastic tub, nose wrinkling worse. "Sugar and candy and whatever - it just tastes like nothing. It'd be a waste. It's a-" she cleared her throat. "A hybrid thing. Well, my kind." Her spoon clacked loud. "Anyway, what did you put for number four? I swear that asshole never taught us that one."
Adora pulled the container back. The pie didn't taste like anything to Adora either.
"Thanks," Adora says through her dust mask a decade later, between swipes of paper towel.
Catra brushes something off the fur on her shoulder. "You're lucky I have nothing better to do. But if I get one of those TV cancers, I'm blaming you."
Razz's bakery is thick with dust, wiping away in layers from the counters and sweeping up in clouds from the floor. In her will, Razz hadn't mentioned how long it had been closed. The real estate agency Adora spoke to said it would sell well once it was clean, though.
Under the dirt, scraps of paper litter the bakery with Razz's scrawl. "What's that one?" Catra asks over Adora's shoulder.
Adora shrugs. "It was Razz. It could be in Krytian for all I know."
Catra gestures for the paper, turning it in the light and squinting. "A focaccia," she says, "and two hummingbirds." When Adora stares, Catra says, "It's a kind of cake."
Adora blinks. "How do you know that?"
Catra shrugs. "Do you remember the Silvestris' place?" She doesn't wait for Adora to answer. "I hung out there after school for a while, junior year."
Adora vaguely recalls a bakery almost as small as Razz's. She'd never been inside. "Why?"
Catra drops the paper towel in the bag they've designated for garbage and grabs another. "Only place in the neighborhood with," she gestures at her ears, "hybrids. My kind, anyway."
Adora doesn't remember ever seeing a hybrid like Catra before. She'd never thought about it. Catra being a hybrid had just been part of what made Catra who she was: sharp eyes, sharp wit, sharper claws.
"Anyway. They closed. Think it's a juice place or some shit now." Catra changes paper towels again and nods her head at a jar half-filled with sand. "That's the starter. For the bread. It really lasts when it's dried, I bet it still works - people sell it online, you should see what you can get."
Adora doesn't know what a starter is. She doesn't know the recipe for pie crust, but she knows how the dough feels under her fingers. And she hears something in Catra's voice - bright, excited. Adora hasn't heard that in years.
"Hey," Adora says. "Do you know how to make that stuff? The fuck-atch-"
"Focacchia," Catra says, eyes crinkling. "And - yeah. No one needs a wayward teen causing trouble, they put me to work."
"Did you like it?"
Catra looks back at the countertop, though Adora's stopped cleaning. "I guess." What Adora can see of her cheeks darkens. "Yes. It was fun to - I don't know. Make something that's better than what you started with, that people like. There's an art to it." Catra's fingers curl on the counter. "There's a universe where I would have kept doing that. Like, for a living."
"That's cool," Adora says, and means it. "You never told me."
"Yeah, well. It was never going to happen." Catra glances at Adora before rolling her eyes. "No one wants a baker that can't taste sugar. The Silvestris had to open their own place for a reason, and look how that went." She picks up a jar full of brown. "Whatever. Forget it. Was Razz allergic to labels?"
Adora braces her hip against the counter, and takes a deep breath before she says, "Do you want to open this place?"
Catra turns to face her, pulling her dust mask down. "Are you stupid? I said they closed. They were only open, like, two years. For an accounting student, you're pretty mad at math."
Adora's had a plan for years. Graduate high school, graduate college, pass the CPA exam. It's safety, and Adora gets there with a neat list of assignments and color-coded sticky notes in her textbooks. This is what Adora's wanted since she was old enough to want anything.
You're a smart girl. Stop waiting for someone to tell you what the right thing to do is.
"I hate math," Adora says. Even with all the dust, the truth feels like fresh air. "I don't want to spend the rest of my life doing math. I want to do this."
Catra's eyes are wide, but her tail starts to swish. "You're crazy."
"Yeah," Adora says. "I guess so."
"You're going to specialize in charcoal."
"Not if you help me." Adora sticks out her hand, smudged with flour and dirt. "Do you have something better to do?"
Catra pretends to think about it, but her face gives her away. Her hand is warm, and Adora has to make herself let go. "I'll stop you from burning the place down." Catra's voice is fond. "But only because I want to hear you try to say focaccia again."
"Bake me some and you're on," Adora says.
Catra laughs, scattering dust into the sunbeam, and Adora wishes she was crazier.
Catra's fur lies a certain way when she's focused - flat, glossy, beautiful. Not that Adora notices. She's paying attention while Catra measures ingredients into the bowl. Catra uses a scale. Adora had assumed that she'd do less math here than in accounting.
"Razz didn't have recipes," Adora grumbles.
"Razz had them in her head." Catra gestures at Adora's tray of melted, bubbled cookies. "You must have put at least double the right amount of butter and sugar in those."
"You can't even taste them."
"I have eyes."
"Well," Adora says, crumbling more worthless cookie between her fingers, "this is why I'm going to run the front."
"Not yet," Catra says, sliding the bowl toward her. "I'm counting on those dumb muscles to do all the mixing."
All through the rest of their prep, Adora keeps stealing glances to the other end of the table, where Catra measures and shapes and glazes. Her face is quiet, hands moving with confidence, and it's so hard to look away.
Catra thuds a different dough down on the table. "You used to make pie with Razz here, right?"
Adora nods. "She did most of the work."
"Yeah, dummy, I assumed that when I didn't see any signs for hazardous waste." Catra's smile is fond, and Adora looks away from it so she can keep pitting cherries. "I haven't made it before, but we can try."
If Adora bites the inside of her lip, she smiles a normal amount. "Yeah," she says. "That sounds like a lot of fun."
Later, Catra makes a face at the monstrosity that's cooling on the rack.
"Raw and burned at the same time," Catra says. "We're wizards."
"It smells like Razz's, though." Adora pokes at where the filling bubbled up and over the lattice. "Mostly."
Catra hands Adora a fork. "I need a taster," she says.
Adora lets the smile tug at the corner of her mouth. "Don't you have eyes?"
"You're tasting for poison, stupid."
Adora takes a bite, and - it's raw, and burnt, but the filling is rich and luscious and syruped. She puts down the fork. "It's full of poison."
Catra rolls her eyes and nudges the tin towards her. The pastries cool on their racks, streaming with steam. Catra has some of the extra blueberries, and slides Adora a spoon for the liquid that pools in the middle of the pie tin, and none of the warmth in Adora's chest comes from an oven.
Adora measures, next time. She even gets the scale. She squints through the oven door as the pie cooks, waiting for something to catch fire. But it browns just like the ones in the pastry cabinet, ragged crust and all.
When Catra gets in, she tilts her head at the cooling rack. The look on her face is worth the early alarm and cold floor this morning. "That one's not right."
It's hard to pretend to be paying attention to the scone dough Adora's supposed to be mixing. "The lattice didn't work out."
"No, it's-" Catra leans closer to the pie, nostrils flaring. "Almonds." Her eyebrows furrow. "Is this what happens when you bake unsupervised?"
"Tell me if it's good," Adora says.
"I mean, it's food-shaped, so that's progress." Catra leans against the countertop next to Adora and holds out a fork. "Is it poisoned or not?"
Adora slides over the paper where she'd copied out the recipe. "I said, you tell me."
In Adora's peripheral vision, Catra studies the paper. Her arm sags onto the table. "What the fuck is this?"
"I found it on the internet," Adora says. It took a while to find something she thought would work, but she's seen Catra salt her eggs and sneak almonds that were meant for the croissants. "Thought it looked good."
Catra waves her hand. "Okay, but - it's missing, like, everything people buy desserts for. We can't sell this."
Adora puts her bowl to the side and turns to look at her. She taps Catra's right hand, the one still holding a fork. "I wasn't planning to." When Catra doesn't move, Adora slides the pie tin over. "It's safe, so tell me how bad I ruined it."
Catra takes a bite, eyes still tight. There's a smear of purple juice on the side of her mouth when it twists.
"You didn't ruin it," Catra says, quiet.
Adora lets out the breath she hadn't meant to hold. "I have a good teacher."
Catra puts down the fork, standing straighter. "I wasn't that late today. How many hours ago did you get here?"
Adora's face warms. "A couple."
"Why?" There's something off in Catra's voice.
"Because-" Because Catra deserved at least that much. Because it isn't fair that Catra is surrounded by food she can't eat. Because Adora's wanted to do this for years.
"Because that's what Razz made for people she cared about. It's what she'd have wanted."
Catra's eyes scan her face. "Razz never met me."
"No, but-
Stop waiting for someone to tell you what the right thing to do is.
"I care about you. A lot." Adora swallows, but her mouth is still dry. When Catra doesn't say anything, Adora's nervous laugh scrapes in her throat. "Sorry if that's - forget it. I won't, um, make it weird or anything, but-"
Adora stops talking when Catra's hands land on her shoulders. Catra's lips taste like the filling Adora tested as dawn broke this morning, much more tart than sweet. Adora thinks she likes it better that way.