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“Mydei!” Phainon yells, knocking on the door of his best-friend-turned-lover's home. He couldn’t have gotten the time wrong, could he?
On the day of Mnestia’s Day of Romance, Mydei had confessed.
On the roof of their favourite meeting-building, given a spiky heart-shaped box tied in a neat golden ribbon, Phainon had received a confession from the person he had least expected it from.
He had accepted eagerly, sweeping Mydei off of his feet and kissing him so hard that passersby whistled at them from down the street. Only once a Garmentmaker stepped in had they finally parted, and Phainon had finally paid attention to the box he was given.
Opening the box, he saw not the usual store-bought chocolates, but caught the scent of buttercream and sugar cookies, spotting an array of heart-shaped iced cookies sitting in the box with various chimera drawings on them. They were adorable, evidently made with love, but Mydei had all but shoved one into his mouth after Phainon was refusing to eat them, declaring it ‘a pseudo-murder!’.
Mydei sighed, then shouted at him. ‘Tomorrow, idiot Deliverer! I’ll teach you how to make cookies!’ And Phainon was so overjoyed that he could’ve died right there, crunching on pure bliss in cookie form while his new boyfriend declared a date.
So here he is, at the peak time of Action Hour, dressed in the most casual clothes he could find. Purple shorts and a yellow shirt.
“Mydei?” He tries again, knocking harder and more incessantly. Harder, harder, harder—
SHPLT!
Phainon blinks, a gap where the wood would have been below his fist.
A golden eye comes through it, darkened in anger.
“HKS!” Mydei shouts from behind the cracked door. “Just come inside, the door was unlocked anyway!”
Gleefully, Phainon opens the door and strolls in.
“What’s up, Mydeimos!” He greets, looking around. “Nice place you got here. Very neat!” The audacious white-haired man plops himself on the sofa like he belongs there, crossing one leg over the other and batting his big blue eyes and long white eyelashes like he’s never done a single thing wrong in his life. Lives.
“Get in the kitchen,” Mydei demands, angry from his inaction rather than his antics. He wouldn’t have fallen in love with such an irritating HKS if Mydei truly held a problem with Phainon’s tendency to be an ass.
Phainon rolls his eyes and stands up, groaning and stretching as if he were a hundred years old and hasn’t moved from his rocking chair since he was eighty. To help him along with that, Mydei slaps him on the back, right in his tenth thoracic vertebra. The hard bone of the spine may bruise Mydei’s hand, but it bruises Phainon’s ego more as he straightens like a startled chimera, running to the kitchen.
“I’m going to teach you how to make simple,” Emphasis on simple, “Sugar cookies.” Mydei glares, “Don’t you dare fuck up. I am a man who owns two ovens and am not afraid to use them, so I will be cooking alongside you.”
Phainon swallows and laughs nervously, holding his hands up as if begging for mercy. “Haha, yep!” He nods, “No funny business!”
Mydei’s oddly long marble countertop is split into two with a black line of easily-erasable whiteboard marker that Phainon isn’t completely sure comes out of marble easily, two sets of identical ingredients neatly lined up at the edges. To Phainon, standing behind the kitchen counter, his set of ingredients is at the top edge. To Mydei, also standing behind the kitchen counter but to Phainon’s left, the ingredients are also at the top edge. They’re matching, Phainon thinks with not a little bit of giddiness rising in his heart, butterflies in his stomach going on overdrive as it settles in that he has a boyfriend!! And they’re baking together for their first date!!!!
Mydei carefully assesses everything, nodding in approval. Phainon has no clue what he sees in this orderly mess.
A precisely measured four cups of all-purpose flour sits on the table, or 480g. That rests on the absolute leftmost side. On its left (Phainon’s right) ¾ teaspoons of salt rest in a tiny glass bowl that could only be used for specific small amounts of baking things and commercial creation. To the salt’s left once again, the same ¾ teaspoons of a white substance sits in another glass bowl, this time baking powder. And next to that, not in a literal cup but rather sitting on the smallest, most inconvenient plate Phainon has ever seen, rests a cup of softened, unsalted butter. 227 whole grams of softened, unsalted butter. Then in a normal-sized small bowl to the butter’s left, two large eggs. And lastly, in another of those small glass bowls, 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract.
“Are you ready?” Mydei asks.
“Yes!” Phainon says.
Mydei sighs, not trusting Phainon at all. “Just copy exactly what I do, okay?”
“Okay!” Phainon says.
Mydei furrows his brows, staring at Phainon up and down suspiciously.
“Okay? Mydei asks again.
“Sure!” Phainon says.
Mydei throws his hands up and gives up.
“Get your medium bowl,” Mydei sighs, pulling his own medium bowl closer to him. See, he had also prepared utensils and equipment. “You see that sifter right there? The thing with the mesh?” Mydei has to physically point to the object for Phainon to pick it up, but patience is a virtue. “Sift the flour, salt, and baking powder into it.”
Phainon nods, picking up the sifter and beginning to put the dry ingredients through. “Say, Mydeimos.” Mydei groans, preparing himself for the first question of the day. “Why do these powdery things need to be sifted?”
“It’s smoother,” Mydei simplifies. There’s probably a longer explanation, but that’s the one he’s believed over the years, and that’s what he’s going to tell his Phainon.
Once Phainon has finished sifting about ten minutes after Mydei finishes, Mydei brings out two stand mixers.
“Woah,” Phainon gasps, “What are those?”
“It’s a stand mixer,” Mydei deadpans. “I’ll help you get the paddle attachments on, just plug these two in and turn the power on for me.”
Phainon’s ahoge bounces when he nods eagerly, twin clicks indicating that the machines have power linked.
“I don’t recommend you switch attachments with power on for safety reasons,” Mydei explains, “But I’m experienced, so I can do it.” He switches out the normal attachment for the paddle attachments on both. “Put the butter and sugar in there, then turn it on on medium,” he calls, starting the same process with his own things. “About two minutes should be enough.”
Phainon stands and stares as the paddles start moving, mixing the butter and sugar evenly. True to Mydei’s word, the creation becomes light and fluffy, and ready for the next step.
“Add the eggs,” Mydei says. Upon seeing Phainon pick up both eggs, ready to crush them in his hands, he blanches. “One at a time!” He scolds. “And scrape down the sides while you’re at it. Once you’re done with that, add the vanilla.”
An increasing pile of empty bowls and such fill the sink behind them, residue of individual ingredients lingering in just the right ratios that the mysterious pipe creatures could make a singular miniature cookie. The pile goes ignored, just as everything is until it suddenly becomes relevant again.
“Gradually add the flour mix in,” Mydei tells Phainon, bumping the back of his flour-mixture while holding it steady. “And keep mixing until everything is well in.”
After a while, it becomes proper dough.
“Proud of yourself?” Mydei asks, cocking a hip and resting his hand on it. Phainon is practically glowing with pride, looking at his dough that isn’t too different from Mydei’s own.
He nods and his metaphorical ears flop wildly.
Mydei smirks, “Great.” Knowing that Phainon’s heart will be broken, he still tells him the next step. “Now, you have to split the dough in half, wrap it in plastic wrap, and put it in the fridge for two hours or up for two days.”
Immediately, Phainon looks torn. Just like his dough.
“I– I can’t do that!” Phainon mumbles, shoulders slumping and turning into a big soggy puppy left out in the rain too long.
“Oh, you big baby.” Mydei steps forwards to kiss Phainon, letting him devour his mouth while Mydei splits and wraps the dough for him. “Just let me get these into the fridge, and we can pass the two hours a better way.”
Let’s just say, more than two hours pass, and they’re required to let the dough sit at room temperature for a few minutes to slightly soften, as well as washing their hands and bodies to clean off the filth.
Mydei preheats both ovens to 375F, or approximately 190.5C. The countertop is floured lightly and the doughs are rolled out to a ¼-inch thickness, where at that point Mydei takes out his array of cookie cutters.
Phainon chooses the smaller heart-shaped one and the sword-shaped one, because he’s unoriginal and predictable. He cuts cookies out from his uneven dough with pride, re-rolling the cookie dough as much as he can to get the most cookie yield from it.
Mydei uses the larger heart-shaped one and the gauntlet-shaped one, because he never claimed to be less predictable. He lays out his cookies on parchment-lined baking sheets with one inch between every cookie, quietly observing Phainon to make sure he doesn’t accidentally make a cookie sheet after baking.
“Good,” Mydei praises. Phainon starts glowing. “Now, we bake one sheet of cookies at a time in each of our ovens, around 10-12 minutes each or until the bottom edges start turning brown. Okay?”
“Okay!” Phainon says, nodding enthusiastically.
Once the cookies come out, they trade, and even though they used the same recipe, Phainon feels that Mydei’s taste much better than his. Mydei reassured him that both were made with love and that Phainon’s love for Mydei was tainting his cookie-eating experience, and Phainon had shrugged and declared that he liked the cookies anyways. Somehow, though, Phainon’s cookies were gone first. Seems that Mydei really enjoys the ‘love’ Phainon feeds him…!?