AN: Been feeling sick lately, and I also attempted to bake some cookies myself. May's experience with baking cookies in the story is based off mine. :P I've never been a good baker/cook xD So a random Christmas Hoennshipping story came out of it. And there's still...like eight months until Christmas? Whatever.
The egg's shell exploded in her hands, splattering yolk and the egg white all over her face and the kitchen. May groaned loudly, and set the remains of the egg shell on the counter.
"This was a terrible idea," she muttered to herself, walking over to the sink. She washed her face quickly, and decided to mop up the mess she'd made. But she quickly changed her mind - she'd probably make more messes after cleaning up, and there was no point. So she settled on continuing her baking.
It was Christmas Day, and May's parents were out in Lilycove, spending their lunch together. ("Finally he takes me somewhere other than his gym!" her mother had commented, referring to Norman's dedication to his job. It was quite true, though). Her best friend, Brendan, was...somewhere. So she had decided to make some Christmas cookies for them, as a nice surprise. Now, May was pretty sure the only surprise her parents would get was an extremely dirty kitchen.
Not exactly a nice surprise, in her opinion.
There was flour everywhere on the counters (not to mention on the floor as well), remains of egg shells lying around, a pile of sugar near the sink where she'd accidentally spilled it, and now, splatters of egg yolk and white decorating the wall. Her cookies weren't looking too well, either.
With a sigh, May returned to her bowl where she was mixing her dough. She cracked another egg successfully, and began kneading the dough. What she was dreading most, though, was the frosting she was planning to put on her cookies. She had never been a good artist, and had very bad control over delicate things like that. Frosting cookies sounded like it required patience to do it successfully, to make sure it looked nice.
She was a very impatient person.
The dough looked more or less decent, so May rolled it out on a chopping board, and dug around in the drawers for a cookie cutter. She found a few of snowmen and Christmas trees, which were satisfying enough. After cutting out her cookies, she laid them out on a pan, put them in the oven, and went to get the frosting.
Just as the cookies had finished baking, and as May went to get them, the door swung upon to reveal Brendan standing in the doorway. He was wearing a red coat and his usual black pants (didn't he ever get cold in the winter?), as well as his trademark white hat (she still couldn't persuade him to stop wearing it. He'd always looked better without it).
"What happened in here?" were his first words.
May bent down, taking out the pan of her cookies. Well, they certainly didn't look the best. She straightened up, and said, "I'm making cookies."
"Oh," said Brendan, unzipping his coat. "Can I come in?"
At least he'd bothered to ask. "If you really have to."
"Gee, I can tell you really miss my presence," the boy said, but he smiled. He stepped inside, shut the door behind him, and took off his coat. "So how's the baking going?"
"Great," May muttered, setting the cookies on the kitchen counter. "If you think this looks great."
She was annoyed at herself for just trying to bake. Funny enough, it was Brendan who was great at baking, not her. She'd never bothered to learn how to bake. Being a pokemon trainer had always seemed much more interesting, and so much more useful than it.
"Not bad," Brendan said, coming up to her. "Looks like you over baked them a bit, though."
"Not bad," she repeated, raising an eyebrow. "Well, Chef Birch, care to help me and frost them, so they don't go from 'not bad' to 'terrible'?"
May grabbed several tubes of frosting from the fridge and held them out to him. Brendan took them, smiling amusedly. But he didn't say anything.
She watched him as he frosted the cookies, and couldn't help but feel admiration. His brow was furrowed as he slowly squeezed frosting onto a snowman cookie. White for its body, black for its mouth and eyes, orange for a carrot nose, and red for a scarf.
"Can I try?" May ventured. It didn't look that hard. She could probably do it.
Brendan grunted in response, and passed her a tube of green frosting. For the Christmas tree cookies, probably. She tried to copy his delicate manner of frosting, trying to make it look neat, but several times she accidentally squirted out too much frosting, causing random lumps of frosting on her cookies. She tried to brush them off, but only succeeded in smudging the frosting messily on the sides of her cookie. Frustrated, May used her finger to frost the rest of the cookie before grabbing a tube of blue frosting.
She wanted to make her cookies look just as fancy as the ones Brendan were frosting. So she grabbed several more tubes of colourful frosting, and squirted little blobs of frosting on, to resemble Christmas tree ornaments. Satisfied with her work, she set the cookie on a plate and decided to frost the next one.
"That looks pretty good," said Brendan, surprising her. "The ornaments are a nice touch. Maybe you could add a star on the top, too? You know...since most Christmas trees have a star ornament on the top."
May stuck out her tongue at him, but she knew he was trying to be nice. So she did as he said, and frosted a tiny little star on her cookie. It did look better.
"Thanks," she mumbled, beginning to frost her next cookie. "It does look better."
"I told you," said Brendan, smirking. "Leave it to the pro to give you the best advice."
She laughed, and they worked in silence for a while. Eventually Brendan finished frosting his cookies, and offered to take over for her. She was glad - her hand had started cramping from gripping the tubes so aggressively. He finished the rest, and together they stood back and admired the cookies.
"They look pretty good," May said, breaking the silence.
"Yeah," said Brendan simply.
"The only thing is, we gotta clean up the kitchen," she added, looking around. Yikes. This would take a while. "No matter how good the cookies may be, I don't think my parents would like coming home to this mess."
"No problem," said Brendan, starting to grin. "Leave it to the pro."
May felt relieved, but then decided she wouldn't have to rely on him any more. It was time she showed him she could do things by herself. With a devilish grin on her face, she stood on her tippy-toes and kissed him on the cheek. He immediately turned red and froze on the spot, and May took advantage of his hesitation to sashay towards the sink, still grinning.
"Actually, I don't you're in a state to clean anything. Let me show you how it's done for once."