Work Text:
Red had meant to finish one tray and go to bed. That had been the plan when she tied her hair up, shoved half the kitchen aside, and told herself the assignment only required something edible and presentable, not two separate cooling racks and flour somehow on the counter, sleeve, and floor. When midnight edged past the kitchen clock, there were two batches cooling under the warm light above the stove: one she actually intended to carry into class the next morning, neat enough for a grade, and another pushed farther back where nobody else in the house had any business touching it, darker at the edges and made with ingredients that belonged to Wonderland more than anywhere near Auradon Prep.
The second batch had only happened because she was already baking and because once she started measuring things she kept thinking one more tray was easier than cleaning up. It felt harmless then, standing there with a spatula in hand, sliding one tray into a box while the other sat uncovered because she still had not decided if she wanted ribbon or just a lid.
Pink arrived too early the next morning, already dressed, already carrying her own box balanced carefully against her hip, talking before she was fully through the doorway. Red was still half turned toward a drawer looking for parchment she had no reason to need anymore when Pink reached the counter, bright and helpful in the way that usually meant things moved faster than Red wanted them to.
“I brought mine too—oh, this one’s ready?” she asked, and before Red looked up, the nearest closed box was already in Pink’s hands. Red answered something distracted, one word, maybe yeah, because she had finally found the ribbon she thought she wanted and was trying to decide if it made the whole thing look ridiculous. Pink thanked her like she had done something useful, adjusted both boxes against her arms, and disappeared back out before Red had even tied the knot around anything.
It took almost three full minutes before Red looked at the counter again and saw the wrong tray still sitting there, plain lid crooked over the ordinary batch she had actually meant to bring. She stared at it without moving, ribbon still looped between both hands, then set it down slowly and lifted the lid like somehow the contents would have changed if she checked twice.
They had not.
The plain batch sat there untouched, exactly where it should not have been, and for a second she only looked toward the doorway Pink had already gone through, measuring how far ahead she was, whether it was worth running after her before first bell, whether Pink had even opened the box yet. By the time she reached the front hall, there was nobody there, just morning air through the half-open door and the ugly certainty that Pink had already left.
Outside the auditorium before assembly, nobody looked remotely concerned because nobody had any reason to be. Pink had the box open on the bench between them like she had done everyone a favor, explaining—very proudly—that Red had finished hers early and there were enough for everyone before they had to go in. Luis took the first one before she finished speaking, because Luis took food the way weather happened, easy and automatic, already halfway through chewing before Chloe leaned in to look. Chloe picked one up next, studying it for half a second the way she studied most things Red baked, then took a bite and frowned lightly, not because she disliked it but because she was trying to place something.
“There’s cardamom,” she said through the second bite, more to herself than anyone else, and Pink immediately nodded as though she had contributed to that somehow.
Max had taken one without looking at it at all, eyes fixed somewhere beyond them toward the auditorium doors, while Hazel only accepted hers after Chloe broke another piece and held it toward her without thinking, Hazel taking it because refusing would have required more attention than either of them had for the gesture.
The warning bell rolled across the courtyard, and Luis reached back into the box for another before Pink snapped the lid closed with a laugh and told him to save at least some for class. Nobody argued much as they moved inside, filing into the auditorium with the rest of the school while voices folded into that low morning noise assemblies always had—rows filling, shoes against polished floor, somebody near the back still talking too loudly until a teacher glanced over. Chloe slid into her seat and, for the first time that morning, did not immediately straighten the hem of her jacket or smooth the crease in her skirt. Instead she sat with one hand still loosely curled near her lap, eyes on the stage without really settling there, and after a moment leaned slightly toward Hazel as the lights dipped lower.
“I want cheese,” she whispered, as though the thought had been thought of already halfway formed and simply needed saying before it disappeared.
Hazel turned her head, looked at Chloe for a second longer than usual, then down at her own fingers resting against her knee like they had become unfamiliar in the same breath the assembly began.
The first few minutes of the assembly passed under the kind of ordinary school quiet that never really became silence, only rows of students pretending they were listening while the microphone on stage clicked once, then settled under Uma’s voice carrying across the auditorium. Chloe should have been sitting straight by then. Usually she would have been—hands folded, attention forward, already tracking which announcements mattered and which ones did not—but instead she stayed angled slightly toward Hazel, gaze drifting somewhere between the stage lights and the edge of the curtain as though the whole room had softened around the edges. The thought about cheese clearly had not left her because after another minute she leaned again, lower this time, voice barely there.
“The kitchen near the west hall sometimes has those little wrapped ones,” she murmured, like continuing a conversation Hazel had already agreed to have, then smiled to herself when Hazel still hadn’t answered.
Hazel had not answered because she was staring at her own hands with increasing distrust. Both palms were open against her skirt now, fingers flexing once, then again, slow and careful, as if she expected them to respond differently the second time. When she finally leaned close enough that her shoulder brushed Chloe’s, her voice came quieter than the room around them. “I can’t feel my hands,” she whispered, eyes still fixed downward. “Do you see my hands? Are they still there? Charming, look.”
Chloe looked immediately, but not quickly. Her attention dropped with full seriousness, eyes moving from Hazel’s wrists to her fingers, staying there long enough that Hazel’s shoulders tightened before Chloe reached over and took both hands gently into her own. She turned one palm upward, studying it with a concentration she usually saved for sword grips or difficult notes, then gave a soft little breath like she had confirmed something important. “I see them,” she said, lacing their fingers together without hurry. “And they’re so pretty.”
Hazel made a startled little noise at that, not quite a laugh, not quite disbelief, but she did not pull away. Her hands stayed there, folded into Chloe’s while the assembly continued overhead, announcements about club deadlines and sports schedules dissolving into background noise neither of them followed anymore.
Two seats over, Luis had opened another snack without bothering to hide it. The bag crackled loudly enough that Pink glanced over, then back to the stage like she had forgotten whether she was meant to react. Luis leaned across slightly, chips already halfway gone, and hissed through a mouthful, “Shhh,” toward Chloe and Hazel with full sincerity, then crunched so loudly the word lost all authority. Before either of them could answer, he turned toward Max and started speaking again, still chewing. “Do assemblies always take longer when you’re hungry, or is it just because this one started after cookies?”
Max did not answer. He had not moved since sitting down except to blink slower than usual, his entire focus fixed on the microphone cord curling near the edge of the stage like it had become the only thing in the room worth understanding. Luis kept talking anyway, one hand deep in the snack bag, because Max’s silence had never stopped him before.
Pink had gone oddly small in her seat without seeming to notice she was doing it. She sat lower and lower as Uma kept speaking, collar lifted near her mouth, shoulders folding in while a quiet laugh kept escaping every few seconds for reasons she probably could not have explained. It was not loud enough to interrupt anything, just visible enough that Red, three rows over, finally looked away from the stage long enough to notice the box tucked beside Pink’s foot.
The sight of it hit before the thought finished forming. Same box. Same lid. Same ribbon she had not tied because she had never finished tying it. Red stared, then looked from the box to Pink, from Pink to Chloe still holding Hazel’s hands, to Luis eating in an auditorium like school rules had stopped existing, to Max staring at nothing human, and finally back to the stage where Uma had just paused mid-sentence because somebody near the front row had laughed when nobody had said anything funny.
Red was already moving before she fully brought herself to. She slipped out of her row, crossed the aisle, leaned up near the stage steps and said something low enough that Uma had to tilt her head to hear it. Uma’s expression changed almost immediately—not alarmed, exactly, but sharpened in that quick way that meant she understood enough to stop speaking and redirect the room.
The microphone clicked once when she lifted it again.
“Alright,” Uma said, voice flat enough that the room quieted on instinct. “Who here ate cookies this morning from an unlabeled box?”
For one second nobody moved.
Then Chloe raised her hand immediately, still half holding Hazel’s fingers, smiling like she had just remembered she had indeed done that.
Hazel lifted hers slower, only after Chloe’s arm went up, eyes still not fully leaving her own lap.
Luis raised one hand with the other still in the snack bag.
Pink shot both hands into the air, then immediately giggled and pulled her collar up over half her face like visibility had become unbearable.
Max raised his hand last without once looking away from the stage light.
Red closed her eyes for half a second because somehow seeing all five at once made it worse than imagining it had.
Nobody in the auditorium moved at first because half the room still thought Uma was joking. Then she looked directly at the five raised hands, then at Red beside the stage, and whatever had almost passed for patience disappeared cleanly from her face.
“You five. Up.”
Chairs shifted in uneven little bursts as rows opened for them. Chloe stood first, though not with her usual neat efficiency; she had to glance down like she had briefly forgotten how the seat folded back. Hazel followed slower, fingers slipping from Chloe’s only because they had to, her eyes dropping once more to her own hands before she stepped into the aisle. Luis took the snack bag with him, apparently seeing no reason not to, while Pink came up laughing softly into her collar until Uma looked at her once and she lowered it, only to lift it again halfway to the aisle. Max stood because everyone else did, but his attention stayed fixed somewhere near the stage curtains even as he moved.
The walk out felt longer than it should have, mostly because none of them matched pace. Chloe stopped once to glance toward a side hallway where the auditorium doors opened, eyes narrowing like she had remembered something important there, and Hazel nearly walked into her before Red reached back and pushed lightly at Chloe’s shoulder to keep her moving. Luis was still chewing. Pink whispered something to herself and smiled at it. Max only looked down when the polished floor changed to hallway tile.
Uma did not stop until she had them in an empty classroom off the west hall, one usually used for club overflow and storage when nothing else was happening. She opened the door, waited until all six bodies were inside, then turned with both hands folded.
“Here’s what’s happening,” she said, looking first at Red, then at the others. “Those cookies were not regular cookies.”
Chloe had made it halfway to a desk by then, fingers trailing over the edge like she had forgotten why desks existed. “There was cardamom,” she said helpfully.
“Yes,” Uma said, “and other things.”
Pink blinked at that, still smiling faintly. “Other things like cinnamon?”
“No,” Red muttered before Uma could answer, already knowing that letting Pink keep guessing would somehow make this worse.
Uma kept going anyway. “Wonderland ingredients. Strong ones. Enough that nobody leaves this room until it wears off, nobody wanders, nobody touches anything they shouldn’t, and nobody thinks this is funny.”
That last part should have sounded harder than it did, but Chloe had already looked toward the small interior window in the classroom door like she was checking whether the kitchen hallway could be seen from there. Luis leaned one hip against a desk and reached into the now nearly empty snack bag again. Pink nodded solemnly for almost a full second before her expression slipped back into visible amusement. Hazel sat on the floor instead of taking a chair, folding down beside the nearest desk like standing had become too much effort, while Max crouched near the wall and pressed two fingers lightly against the baseboard as if testing whether it was real.
“What do you mean strong?” Hazel asked, though she still sounded more distracted than alarmed.
Uma gave her a look that suggested she had no intention of softening language for anyone. “I mean you’re high.”
Pink made a startled little sound that turned immediately into laughter she tried to bury in her sleeve. Luis looked at the empty snack bag as if reconsidering the last ten minutes. Chloe only stared for a second, then asked, very plainly, “Is there cheese nearby?”
Red shut her eyes.
Uma inhaled once through her nose, then looked at Red like this entire problem had been handed back with paperwork attached. “I need five minutes. Stay here. Keep them here.”
The door closed behind her before Red could argue.
For exactly one second, the room held.
Red looked around at all of them, straightened a little, and tried to pull authority together before it vanished.
“Alright… how hard can this be? Just—as long as everyone stays put— Drop that, Hatter!”
Because Max had already peeled something tiny off the wall and was examining it with total concentration. He looked up only enough to blink at her, then slowly lowered whatever it was. Red crossed once, took it from his hand, turned back—and saw Pink halfway under the nearest table.
“Oh no you don’t, Pink—leave that alone. Get up, this is not a game. I am not playing a game with you, Pink.”
Pink only laughed harder and moved to the other side of the table, ducking each time Red reached across. Red shifted left; Pink shifted right, still crouched low enough that her head kept disappearing under the tabletop.
While chasing Pink, Red reached once—
Pink ducked—
and Pink whispered, bright with triumph, “You almost got me.”
Red should have appreciated the effort, But the groan Red made came from somewhere low and tired before the chase resumed. She finally caught Pink by the sleeve when Pink misjudged the table leg, straightened with one hand still holding fabric, took one breath— then noticed Chloe gone.
And from floor level Luis casually said, still eating crumbs from the bottom of the bag, “She left.”
Pink looked up at Red’s arm still around her sleeve, reached with one finger, poked her side lightly like tagging , and mumbled, delighted, “Can’t catch me,” before slipping free again. Red made another noise—half disbelief, half regret—and lunged after her.
That was when Chloe appeared briefly in the doorway again, checking first that Red was facing the wrong direction. Hazel was still seated near Max, one hand open against the floorboards while Max had lowered himself almost flat, staring at the line where wall met tile.
“Come with me,” Chloe said, as if returning for something she had forgotten. Then, after half a beat because the reason clearly mattered, “I need help in the kitchen.”
Hazel looked up slowly, glanced once toward Red circling the table after Pink, once toward Max still unmoving, then pushed herself upright without another question.
Luis watched them leave and did not bother warning anyone.
Chloe did not move down the hallway like someone sneaking out of a room she had been told to stay in. She moved like the hallway itself had become part of a plan only she fully understood, one hand lifted once toward Hazel in a sharp little stop before they reached the corner, as if there might be guards where there were only bulletin boards and a half-open classroom door. Hazel nearly walked into her shoulder before Chloe lowered herself suddenly, pressing one palm to the floor and looking ahead with complete seriousness.
“Wait.”
Hazel stared down at her. “For what.”
Chloe did not answer immediately because she had already committed to dropping lower, rolling one shoulder so she could slide herself the rest of the way along the wall like she had decided upright movement no longer qualified as stealth. Her blazer dragged against the tile, skirt bunching awkwardly, and she still looked entirely convinced this was necessary.
“We have to be quiet.”
“This is ridiculous,” Hazel muttered, but she lowered too, slower and less dramatic, crouching first before easing herself down enough that she could move beside Chloe in a way that at least resembled sneaking instead of surrendering to gravity. “Nobody’s looking.”
Chloe glanced back at her, insulted by the implication. “That’s because we’re doing it right.” The kitchen door at the end of the west hall was barely shut, not locked, not guarded, just resting against the frame after breakfast prep had ended hours ago, but Chloe still reached it like she expected resistance. She touched the handle once, then drew her hand back and looked at Hazel with sudden urgency.
“You open it.”
Hazel blinked. “It’s a handle, Charming.”
“I know,” Chloe whispered, like Hazel was missing the larger importance of the moment. “Still.”
Hazel pushed it down. The door opened immediately.For one brief second Chloe looked genuinely pleased with her, like a difficult problem had been solved exactly the way she hoped. Then she slipped inside, moving straighter now that they had crossed whatever line in her head had made crawling necessary.
The kitchen lights were only half on, enough brightness from the prep area and high windows to leave long pale strips across the floor. Chloe stood still for a second, eyes moving shelf to shelf like she had arrived in a cathedral built specifically for her.
“There,” she said, spotting the upper cabinet almost immediately.
Hazel followed her line of sight. “That’s very high.”
“You’re taller.”
That was apparently the full argument. Chloe dragged a chair only halfway before deciding it made too much noise, then abandoned it and looked up expectantly until Hazel stepped forward, reached overhead, and pulled open the cabinet. Wrapped packets shifted forward, plastic catching the light.
Chloe made a small gasp so sincere Hazel nearly laughed.
Hazel handed down the first thing her fingers found, then another when Chloe kept both hands out like she was receiving treasure. By the time the cabinet shut again, Chloe had cheese tucked against her palm and two more packets balanced in her lap because she had already lowered herself to the floor near the prep counter without thinking.
Hazel took the chair after all, but only long enough to reach the shelf beside it where a half-open box of salty crackers sat behind stacked napkins. She took that too, then slid down beside Chloe with the box in her lap, shoulder against cabinet wood.
For a minute neither of them spoke much. Chloe opened one packet carefully, like the unwrapping deserved attention, then took a bite with visible relief that made everything she had done to get there look entirely justified.
“I just love cheese…” she said after swallowing, already halfway into the thought before Hazel looked over. “There’s so many… gouda—”
Hazel shrugged, a cracker between her fingers. “Who wouldn’t… well, maybe lactose intolerant people.”
The laugh burst out of Chloe before she could stop it, sudden and bright enough that she had to cover part of it with the back of her hand, though that only made the next one worse. She leaned sideways against the cabinet for balance, shoulders shaking once while Hazel watched her with that half-baffled look she got when she said something dry and somebody actually found it funnier than intended.
Still smiling, Chloe lifted another piece of cheese. “Brie was obvious. Mozzy too. Colby-Jaq took longer because he kept escaping and I thought his name should fit the kind of mouse who bites ribbon.”
Hazel opened another sleeve of crackers. “You really named four animals after dairy.”
“And Sage Derby.”
“And The reptile.”
“He still matters.”
Outside in the hallway, footsteps passed too quickly to belong to anyone calm. Somewhere farther down, Red’s voice rose, then cut off, followed by Pink laughing hard enough that even through the kitchen door it still sounded like movement.
Luis reached the vending machine before he fully noticed he had left the classroom. He only knew the snack bag in his hand was empty and the machine in front of him offered choices. He stood there pressing buttons slower than usual, forehead nearly touching the glass while deciding between chips and whatever sat twisted behind the lower spiral.
A few feet behind him, Max had made it halfway down the hall without ever standing properly again. He slid more than walked, shoulder brushing lockers once before he lowered himself back to the floor entirely, following the reflected strip of light from a high window until it bent across the tile near the machine.
Luis looked down only when the machine dropped something with a hard clack.
“You came too.”
Max did not answer. He had stretched one hand into the light and was watching his fingers divide it.
Red found the vending machine before she found the kitchen, mostly because Luis had no instinct at all for disappearing when food was involved and because every machine in Auradon seemed determined to announce itself when it released something. He was standing too close to the glass, one hand already reaching down into the tray before the packet had fully settled, shoulders loose in that infuriating way that suggested none of this had registered as urgent to him even once. Red barely had the breath left to sharpen her voice properly by then, so the warning came out tired before it came out angry.
“Don’t,” she said, though he had already done it, and Luis only looked over with the kind of calm that made the answer worse, bag half open before she even reached him, explaining with complete sincerity that the first snack had ended as if that made the second one inevitable.
A few feet away, Max had drifted almost entirely to floor level again, one shoulder near the lockers, palm pressed into the strip of light crossing the tile like he had followed it there on purpose and could not imagine a reason to leave it. When Red asked why he was on the floor, he only blinked at the light instead of her, murmuring something about movement that took her a second to realize meant not the floor at all but the reflection crossing it, and by then Chloe’s laugh had reached the hallway faintly enough through a closed door that Red stopped listening before he finished.
The kitchen door gave everything away before she touched it—light under the frame, voices lowered enough to sound settled rather than hurried—and the second she pushed it open the whole thing became so specifically absurd that her first reaction arrived before thought did. Chloe was on the floor like she belonged there, knees bent loosely, cheese in her lap, one cabinet still hanging half open above her as if the room had simply accepted she had moved in. Hazel sat beside her with salty crackers balanced in one hand, shoulder near enough to Chloe’s that it looked less like hiding and more like they had relocated their afternoon entirely, both of them calm in a way nothing else in the school had been for the last twenty minutes. Red stopped in the doorway and just looked, the words leaving her almost flat from disbelief.
“Are you kidding me?” came first, because there was nowhere else to start, and then once she saw the crooked chair, the wrappers, the shelf left open, it sharpened enough to become, “I leave you alone for two minutes— two minutes, Chloe—” only for Chloe to lift the cheese in one hand like she was presenting the obvious answer before Red even finished.
“There was cheese.”
The way she said it left no room for apology, no awareness that the sentence explained nothing outside her own mind, and Red might have kept pushing if Hazel had not looked up just then, still quieter than usual, still softened in a way that felt wrong the second Red noticed how close she was sitting. That closeness registered before Hazel’s answer did, before the small shrug, before the simple
“She asked,” delivered as if that settled everything too.
Red had not even thought about whether she was more annoyed that Chloe had gone or that she had apparently recruited help when Hazel shifted without thinking and moved nearer still, fingers catching lightly in Chloe’s sleeve the moment Red stepped further inside. It was such a small gesture it should have passed unnoticed, except Hazel did not seem aware she had done it at all, and Chloe did not react the way she normally would either—no startled glance, no awareness of being observed, only a quick turn of her head before she passed Hazel another wrapped piece of cheese as naturally as if the movement had already been expected.
“Don’t let her take it,” Hazel said, low enough that Red knew she meant the cheese and not anything larger, though the seriousness in it still made Chloe laugh, soft at first, then brighter when Hazel stayed entirely earnest beside her.
Luis reached the doorway while that laugh was still there, carrying another vending machine bag and looking into the room with no urgency beyond curiosity, which gave Red exactly enough fresh irritation to point at him without fully turning.
“No. Stay there. Do not come in here.” He obeyed only in the narrowest possible sense, stopping where he was while opening the bag anyway, and Max arrived lower than him, sliding into the edge of the doorway until one hand rested flat on the threshold, gaze fixed not on any of them but on the cut of kitchen light across the hall floor. Pink appeared next, half hidden around Red’s elbow, face bright with the kind of pride that suggested she had not spent the last several minutes being chased so much as winning something invisible.
“She almost lost me,” she whispered into the room like a report from somewhere important, and Chloe laughed again because of course she did, because by then nearly everything seemed to catch her at exactly the wrong angle.
The room might have held there—crowded, ridiculous, somehow briefly still—if Hazel had not heard Red’s name again when Pink asked what they were eating and Red answered too sharply. Something in Hazel changed so quietly Red only noticed because the fingers in Chloe’s sleeve tightened first.
“You like Red better than me.”
The sentence came without warning and with enough hurt in it that Luis stopped chewing mid-bite. Hazel had turned fully toward Chloe now, eyes already bright in that helpless way thoughts got when they arrived too large to manage, and Chloe stared for exactly one beat before the laugh escaped her again, startled this time, immediate enough that she had to catch it with the back of her hand and failed.
“Hazel—what?”
“You laughed at her text,” Hazel said, as though she had been collecting proof for some time now and only just found the courage to present it, which only made Chloe laugh harder because the accusation sat so far outside anything she had expected that even trying to answer took effort. The tears came before Hazel looked embarrassed enough to stop them, first one sharp breath, then another, then actual crying that she clearly had not intended in front of anybody. Luis made the mistake of laughing too, quieter but visible enough that Red’s glance cut him off immediately, while Pink leaned in with genuine concern and somehow managed to make it worse by offering that Chloe smiled at library notices too, which helped no one.
By then Chloe had stopped trying not to laugh and started trying to fix it, one hand finally closing around Hazel’s wrist properly, thumb moving once over the back of her hand while the words came softer than anything she had said since the assembly began. Red stayed where she was and watched the whole thing shift under that tone—Hazel crying harder when Chloe first denied it, then slowing when Chloe explained that Red had been in her life a long time and that none of that touched what Hazel was to her now. The words landed because Hazel did not argue immediately after them, only sat there breathing unevenly, eyes still wet, fingers no longer twisting Chloe’s sleeve quite so hard.
Luis resumed chewing first. Pink folded herself lower near the cabinet and she opted for the floor. Max, who had never fully looked away from the doorway light, finally spoke into the quiet that followed, voice flat and untethered from everything else in the room.
“That machine is crooked.”
Nobody answered him. Even Red no longer had enough left to try.
Once Principal Uma returned, the energy had dropped enough that no one even considered scattering again. Chloe still had cheese in her lap, Hazel beside her with red eyes and crackers, Luis finishing whatever remained in his bag, Pink curled against the lower cabinet, Max low by the threshold like standing had become optional for the day. Uma looked once at Red, and Red only leaned against the frame and answered before she had to ask.
“Next time I bake something, nobody touches anything unless I hand it to you myself.”
No one argued, not even Pink, and the quiet that followed lasted just long enough for Chloe to tilt slightly toward Hazel again, voice lowered like the day had taught her almost nothing.
“I still need the rest of that cheese.”