A/N: Penultimate chapter! If all goes well the final chapter should be up Christmas Eve. Also, due to time constraints, I've crammed RoseMary and Karezi into one chapter, so if you were expecting more with them my apologies.
"Terezi, there is no way in hell this is a good idea."
"What's that, Karkat? I don't think I can hear you over the sound of my inner baking genius being unleashed." Terezi thrust a heavy tome, titled Cooking for All your Christmas Needs, into Karkat's arms. "Which cabinet is there sugar in? Never mind, I can smell it."
"Since when were you a baking genius?" Karkat shifted the book and flipped through it in search of the Batterwitch logo. They wouldn't have one of those books in the bubble, though. Would they? "You're blind."
"And yet I was able to figure out before you that that book isn't Batterwitch. Elementary, my dear moirail." Terezi grabbed a chunk of pages and flipped them forward. "Look in the index. Is there gingerbread?"
"I was in the index, miss elementary, that's where the logo usually goes." Karkat flipped the pages back testily. "Yeah, there's about fifty kinds of gingerspiceloaf or what-the-hell-ever you just said, including…" He did a double take. "A house. Made of gingerbread."
"Let me see that!" Terezi made a grab for the book, but Karkat scrambled backwards and onto a chair and held it above his head. "No! You'll get it all slimy and disgusting!"
"Fine! Find the least bizarre recipe for human gingerbread you can and tell me what it needs."
"Okay. I can do that." Karkat plopped down on the chair and balanced the book on his knees. Papers rustled as Terezi waited impatiently.
"Kay so start with one cup – ew, a whole cup – of molasses…"
She found the molasses, flinching as the sharp smell hit her nose, and measured out a cupful.
The bout of bickering they had started this baking endeavor out with didn't fool Terezi in the slightest. Her moirail was cantankerous for the effect of it, not because he meant what he said. You had to learn to look past the loudness when dealing with Karkat, try not to let his natural irritability get in the way of the underlying message in his actions. And today, that message was that he was willing to spend time with Terezi while everyone else frolicked outside in the snow. Terezi supposed she was touched, somewhere deep down in a part of her she usually ignored, because ordinarily Karkat would be the first one out and not look back.
For some incomprehensible reason. Why anyone would want to spend hours on end surrounded by freezing wet white was beyond Terezi. And she'd tried it, too, which she reminded Karkat of forcefully whenever he tried to convince her outside with him. Three hours, Karkat, three whole hours of my life that I'll never get back! Standing knee-deep in white crap I can't move good in! Do you have any idea how hard it is to do anything when everything from you to the horizon looks exactly the same, no, you do not, Karkat Vantas!
She usually won. (How much of a win, though. There weren't a lot of things to do in an empty complex besides sitting by yourself and feeling lonely.)
What he was doing was sweet. His own way of showing his moirail that he loved her, and that he could tell she loved him too. She could hear clinks and sense Karkat moving around her, setting out ingredients in a nice neat line on the counter. And if she wasn't mistaken – she ran a hand over the line, just to be sure – he had put them in the order they'd need to be added to the recipe. Forget sweet, this was verging on adorable.
But who said adorable couldn't be boring at the same time? And Terezi was bored. And slightly confused about the whole concept of baking. Which she wouldn't ever admit directly, of course, that was ridiculous. Legislacerators didn't do that sort of thing.
"Who even needs this much molasses? Have you tasted it, Karkat? It tastes like what our lusii used to bring in for 12th Perigee's." She dumped the rest of the molasses back in the bottle, probably missing and dripping all over the counter, and reached for the sugar.
Karkat's hand was there to stop her. "What are you doing?! Whoever wrote that recipe knew their way around an oven well enough to get a book published, and definitely knew more than a girl who's never tried to cook in her life and also can't see because she refuses to take off a blindfold!"
"Yeah, but they didn't have the idea of adding chocolate chips to it, did they? And it's not like chocolate chips can go wrong in anything."
Karkat paused. "You have a point," he conceded, and darted off to the fridge. "I think there's whipped cream, too. That makes everything better no matter the recipe."
"Yep," agreed Terezi, and added double the amount of cinnamon and nutmeg, because it tasted good in pumpkin pie. And ginger, because it was gingerbread after all, and vanilla, because it smelled like everything dreams were made of. While she was at it, why not add almond extract and all the things that smelled good that she was never supposed to use large quantities of?
Her assistant had arrived with an assortment of delicious-smelling things to add. She addressed him without turning around. "I read that eggs are poison, so we can leave those out and not flirt with death more than we have to. You know humans use those like every recipe?"
"What? Really? Wow. I've been thinking they were weenies the whole game. Perspective, I guess."
"Yeah. Hardcore."
The whole bag of chocolate chips went in the mix, as well as the marshmallows and peanut butter. It was getting too chunky to stir properly, but it was nothing a little milk couldn't fix.
"Aw, we're out of flour," said Karkat, disappointed. "I think that's important, like it makes the dough stick together or whatever."
"There's some in the cabinet above me. I can smell it. Probably you can't reach without a stool." Terezi smirked at Karkat's wordless splutters of rage. The cabinet in question was less than a foot above the counter. (He was short, though.)
The cupboard hinges squeaked as Karkat stretched to reach the flour on the second shelf. There was some scuffling, and then an expletive followed by a small, hopeless "oops."
"What's oops?" Terezi demanded.
At that point, the sack of flour that Karkat had been trying to scoot to the edge of the shelf so he could reach it finally unbalanced completely and tipped forward out of the cabinet. Terezi couldn't have known to get out of the way before a heavy bag of densely packed, fluffy powder impaled on one of her horns and split.
Terezi sighed internally, mouth screwed shut against the onslaught of flour cascading over her face and hair. And it had been going so well.
"Kanaya – " Rose blinked and frowned down at the design her matesprit had handed her. "I really don't see how you expect me to do a double-layer sweater and make both layers visible at the same time."
The troll shrugged despondently. "I know, Rose, I figured it wouldn't be possible. Only, I have really no idea what would suit her body type, and it is very frustrating! She's not like any model I've worked with, she's not a human or a troll, I don't know how to know what would look good on her! I am beginning to clutch at sticks here."
"Grasp at straws. We could always ask Jade what she thinks would be cute, I guess…?"
"She would be more of a hindrance than a help, I'm afraid. Have you seen her handmade dresses? The girl has no sense for fashion, and I fear she'll rub it off on Callie if we let her."
Rose hummed noncommittally. "Well, maybe we can work on something else for a while and come back to this. We decided on making Aradia and Feferi sweater dresses, right?"
Kanaya nodded, reaching for one of the papers scattered at random around Rose's room and picking it up. It was a sketch of a troll body with curling horns and the label "Aradia" in red at the top. She scooted closer to Rose on the bed where they both sat, surrounded in a nest of drawings and fabric and yarn, and retrieved a pencil from behind her ear. Rose leaned over her shoulder, nodding as she gestured at the sketch with one hand. "Now, Aradia's body type is pear while Feferi's is closer to hourglass, so we'll have to make it longer than a typical sweater dress to accommodate for both of their hip widths. However, with Aradia, you won't have to worry about adding as much room around the top – what if we put some sort of design in the center? Something to symbolize the rugged outdoors she so loves to explore, perhaps?"
"And what about lining the helm with a plant motif?" added Rose. "Callie will probably let us use her plant scrapbook for reference and not ask too many questions – should I go get it?"
"Oh yes please!" Kanaya grinned. Rose grinned back at her and hopped off the bed. She closed the door of the bedroom door behind her – the Sweater Project was Top Secret Information, and they couldn't have anyone finding out about it before Christmas Day. With Kanaya's fashion expertise and her knitting skills, they would make sure that everyone was both warm and stylish for however long they stayed here. (And it meant avoiding the line of everyone else trying to sneakily alchemize their gifts without anyone seeing.)
Rose got halfway to Jade and Calliope's room before realizing how unusually empty it was. She felt a small, annoyed sinking in the pit of her stomach. Had everyone gone outside? Again?
A glance out a nearby window confirmed it. Evidently she and Kanaya had been too caught up in their holiday knitting to hear everyone leaving. She'd have to wait until Callie came back in to borrow the scrapbook. Of course there was nothing stopping her from taking it out of the girls' room right now, but Callie really dislike other people touching her things. Especially books, after she had lost a whole tome of slaved-over art and writing to her destructive brother.
So Rose would wait. That was okay. She turned around to report back to Kanaya with the news when she heard a noise coming from – yes, that was the kitchen, and yes, that was Karkat. It sounded like he was arguing with someone less loud than him. Something about flour and idiots and gingerbread.
To her horror, Rose felt a growing sense of…responsibility. To help take care of whatever situation had made Karkat shouty this time. Ugh. Kan was really rubbing off on her.
Rose sighed and trotted back the way she had come.
The polite "Please Knock First" note in Kanaya's neat handwriting went unheeded and Rose poked her head inside without fanfare. The only reason the note was there was for the Sweater Project, so it really didn't matter. Other players, being teenagers, would think "shenanigans" and avoid the room. That worked out well for the continued secrecy of the project.
"Karkat's shouting about something in the kitchen, and everyone else is outside. Shall we go see what the fuss is about?"
Kanaya glanced up from her sketchpad, looking resigned. "Is he? We had better."
"I had very definite plans for making some kind of Christmas confection," she admitted forlornly as they walked in step toward the source of the yelling. "I do hope he hasn't messed that up in any way."
The yelling faded away gradually, and was replaced with a very faint, sibilant hiss. "But would you have found time for it, with all of the…project?" asked Rose.
"You…have a point." Kanaya smiled shyly. "I do have a tendency to put more things on my plate than I can handle."
The hissing had grown more distinct and now resembled a low shoooooooooshhhhhhh. Good. Rose was relieved, if still a little nervous, as they neared the kitchen. At least Karkat wouldn't be on full shout mode anymore.
Yes, that was definite shooshing Rose could hear from the other side of the door, and now she could also make out a rasping undercurrent of grumbles along with it. Terezi was surprisingly good at this.
Kanaya took a deep breath and swung open the door.
After a solid minute of silent staring at Terezi, whose arms were linked protectively around a freshly papped Karkat, at the sheer mess – how on earth did you even get batter up there, and why was there a whole bag's worth of flour on the floor and in Terezi's hair – and at Kanaya, both trying very hard not to grin, Rose broke the silence. "And I thought it was bad when my mother tried to cook."
From where his head was tucked into the crook of Terezi's neck, Karkat unleashed a string of swearwords. Terezi ran a hand through his hair and murmured shooshes in his ear.
"Well, don't blame me that they made the recipe boring," she said. It took Rose a while to figure out that she was talking to them.
Rose skirted the various baking ingredients scattered all over the floor and picked up the cookbook. It had either fallen or been dropped off the table and landed spine-up in a way that made her internally cringe. That wasn't how you treated books, under any circumstances. She held it gingerly and flipped to the page it had fallen open on, now marked with a page-long crease. "Gingerbread?"
"Thought it would be traditional," Terezi shrugged. "It's a traditional human Christmas…whatever it is, right?"
"Yeah, but it's rather gross, if you ask me. Too much molasses. Let's start with something simpler." With the wording of that last sentence, Rose realized that she wouldn't be going back to working on sweaters anytime soon. Oh well. Kan had really rubbed off on her.
"Sugar cookies!" Kanaya exclaimed happily. "Oh – er – " She blushed and cleared her throat, embarrassed at her outburst. "I mean – sugar cookies. I've always wanted to try them."
It's gonna be a long day, Rose thought. A long day spent mostly in this kitchen. Surrounded by her friends, and matesprit, and baking smells, and sweet things, and arguments. And of course all of that would just be compounded when everyone else came in from the snow and instinctively sought warmth and food.
"Rose –" called Kanaya, from the table where she was hunched over the recipe book with Terezi and Karkat. "Rose, have you made these before? It says to separate the eggs. I was not aware that eggs could undergo mitosis."
Vague memories of googling "how to separate an egg" at age eight for her mother's surprise birthday cake floated into Rose's mind. She smiled. "Coming!"