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The microwave beeps and Woohyun rushes over to it. There is a bowl of (now melted) butter inside which he carefully extracts, making sure not to spill any on his sweater. He’s very happy with his sweater; it’s gaudy and amazing and perfect for baking holiday cookies.
“Are the sweaters really necessary?”
Woohyun rolls his eyes. “Holiday spirit, Gyu! Do you not feel it?”
“All I feel is itchy,” Sunggyu, replies, scowling. “This is such cheap material. Anyways, even if I were the kind of person who wears pom-poms and sparkles, this abomination would still never make it into my wardrobe.” He raises his arms as if to prove his point, and the sweater jingles a little with the movement.
Woohyun ignores him and pours the butter into the mixing bowl on the counter. “Could you pass me an egg?”
Sunggyu grumbles but complies, grabbing an egg from the carton in the fridge. Woohyun cracks it and adds it to the bowl as well before reaching for the whisk to stir. After last year’s disastrous cookie-baking ordeal, Woohyun has been deemed the only one allowed to do any of the actual baking while Sunggyu is responsible for only the simplest of tasks, such as fetching ingredients. Even asking him to get an egg was risky; what if he had dropped it?
“Okay, now we need the peppermint bits and chocolate chips.”
Another consequence of last year’s disaster had been a change in recipes. Sure, they could have made another attempt at the classic holiday cookie, but their friends had pleaded with them to try something simpler, and neither of them are very skilled at frosting. Thus they’ve settled on peppermint brownie cookies for which they can use brownie mix instead of struggling to mix flour and brown sugar and whatever other ingredients they got all over the kitchen last year.
Sunggyu drops the bags on the counter next to him, already open. Well, at least he’s being helpful, even if he won’t stop complaining about the sweaters—something else new that they, or rather Woohyun, decided to try this year.
Woohyun stirs in the last two ingredients, whisking until he’s satisfied with the distribution. “How does it look?”
Sunggyu pads up the counter to peer over his shoulder. “Looks good. Smells really good.”
Satisfied with that answer, Woohyun bends down to look for cookie sheets in the lower cabinets. Their cabinets aren’t very organized, so it takes a while for him to actually find a couple. When he stands up to put them on the counter, Sunggyu is looking at him.
“Enjoying the view?”
Sunggyu blushes. “Shut up,” he says, turning away and opening up some random cabinets. “What else do we need?”
As fun as it is to tease him, Woohyun lets it go; the cookies await. “Parchment paper.”
Sunggyu hands him the roll. As Woohyun goes to work lining the sheets, he can still hear Sunggyu puttering around the kitchen, but he stops whatever he’s doing when Woohyun’s finished.
“Alright! Now we just need to put the cookies on the sheets,” Woohyun says, turning on the sink to wash his hands. He had considered using the ice cream scoop instead, but the cookies would probably end up being bigger than his face, and there’s also less clean up involved without it. He turns off the sink and starts scooping.
He’d anticipated needing a third sheet, but it turns out that the dough just barely fills the two sheets he had put out. “Huh.”
“What?”
“I thought the recipe was supposed to make more cookies than this.”
“Weird.”
Woohyun shrugs it off and loads the cookie sheets into the oven; now all that’s left to do is wait. It should only take ten minutes.
Four minutes in, however, Sunggyu begins to lose patience. “That smells so good,” he says, “Are they ready?”
“No, we’ve still got—” Woohyun checks the timer, “Five minutes and fifty-two seconds.”
Sunggyu groans, but says no more for the moment. Another few minutes pass, and he bends down to inspect the oven, his sweater jingling slightly as he does so. “You sure they’re not ready yet?”
“Sunggyu.”
“Woohyun.”
They have a stare-off for all of half a minute before Sunggyu grows bored of that too, returning his attention to the oven. Nothing has changed since the last time he looked, so with a resigned sigh he stands back up and promptly starts pacing around the kitchen.
Except their kitchen is very small and there’s really not enough room for pacing, so it’s more of Sunggyu walking in place looking grumpy while Woohyun leans against the counter and tries to avoid getting his feet stepped on. The last few minutes pass, and the buzzer goes off.
“Finally,” Sunggyu says, backing up to let Woohyun open the oven. He removes the cookie sheets and places them on top of the stove before closing the oven and turning it off. Sunggyu’s quick to peer over his shoulder again. “So, can we eat them now?”
“No, we have to let them cool for another five minutes, and then you can eat one because we’re supposed to bring them to Sungyeol’s party later tonight—”
Sunggyu cuts him off with a groan and moves away to start pacing again.
“If you’re that bored you can start cleaning the mixing bowl,” Woohyun suggests innocently. All he gets is a glare, but Sunggyu does stop pacing to stand by the sink. He holds a hand out. Woohyun passes him the bowl and grins. “Thanks! I’m gonna go to the bathroom, be right back.” As he leaves the kitchen, he hears Sunggyu grumbling something along the lines of “You didn’t need to announce it,” but he chooses to ignore the comment.
When he returns from the bathroom, he claps his freshly washed hands together and says, “Okay! They should be cool by now.”
“So we can put them in the container now?”
Well, that wasn’t quite the response he expected. Woohyun cocks his head. “Yeah, but don’t you want to eat one first?”
“Nah, I’m good,” Sunggyu replies, which is kind of weird.
With a shrug, Woohyun approaches the counter to start shoveling the warm cookies into a tupperware container. They smell delicious, and Woohyun internally pats himself on the back for his self-control; that he’d been able to stave off the desire to eat anything during this whole baking process is rather impressive.
“Hey, Woohyun.”
“Hm?” He turns away from the cookies to face Sunggyu, who leans in to give him a quick peck. When he leans back, there’s a weird anticipatory glint in Sunggyu’s eyes. “What was that for?”
Sunggyu lets out a sigh and rolls his eyes. “You’re kind of oblivious sometimes, you know that?”
“Huh?”
Instead of answering, Sunggyu shakes his head and laughs. "Eat your cookie, Woohyun."
Ignoring whatever it is Sunggyu’s on about, Woohyun obliges and plucks a warm cookie off of the somewhat smaller-than-expected pile.
It tastes good, warm and gooey but pleasantly minty and refreshing at the same time. Overall, an immense improvement over last year.
After a few more thoughtful chews, Woohyun realizes that the taste is familiar.
“Kim Sunggyu, how many of these did you eat?”