bigapplesauce | My muffin top is all that / whole grain, low fat [closed]

Current Music: April 25th, 2013, very early (backdated)

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My muffin top is all that / whole grain, low fat [closed]

It's o'dark thirty, and Sunshine is in the base's cafeteria, making muffins like it's her job, because it used to be. Her hair is in a messy bun and her face is streaked with flour, but she's in… well, it's probably the best mood she's been in since she got here.

It's been a week since she arrived, but her internal clock is still set to coffeehouse hours. She woke up a little before four, stared at her ceiling in disgust for a few minutes, and then rolled out of bed and came to the one place she knows that has a decently-equipped kitchen. She is going to make some goddamn muffins, and that's that.

This is the first time she's used the place, and it's deserted… so whether it turns out to actually be all that decent remains to be seen. There's no one to introduce her to the ovens and their various quirks, and she's had to track down the equipment and ingredients she needs via intuition and guesswork. She sort of prefers it this way, though. She's used to being queen of her domain, not having some other baker breathing down her neck while she works. (Okay, so this isn't her domain - but as long as no one else is here, she doesn't feel so much like a trespasser.)

Speaking of, she figures she might have an hour before the quote-unquote real cooks arrive to make the real breakfast. But that's enough time for her to turn out a few trays of excellent muffins, so how upset could they really be if they find her here? She's basically just making their jobs easier, right?

Never mind that she's also that desperate for a little bit of her old routine. Well, if she wants to land another gig in an above-ground bakery, she's going to need a resume, which will mean borrowing these facilities, anyway. She's just being… proactive. And they're pretty well-stocked, so it's not like she's using up the last of their anything.

Yes. This is totally fine.

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It's as much his internal clock as it is the nightmares that wakes Peeta in the early hours of the morning.

Even after a year away from the bakery following the first Games, his body still tended to drag him into consciousness well before the rest of the world. With the added turmoil of troubling dreams and horrifying nightmares, his sleep habits changed little. If anything, he stayed up later, slept less, and woke earlier.

Now, in the unfamiliar confines of his room in the base, with the fresh memories of the Games he was recently plucked from filling his mind, sleep is hard to come by. So when he startles awake from restless slumber, he doesn't both to seek sleep again. Instead, he hauls himself from bed, pulls on clothes that are still stiff with newness, and heads for the cafeteria.

Baking has always calmed him, the routine giving him comfort and a sense of control even when everything else seems to be in chaos. He isn't sure whether it's okay for him to use the cafeteria kitchen without asking first, but he doubts the cooks will mind waking up to fresh bread. With a slight grin, he thinks that he can use this as an opportunity to display his skills and prove himself worthy of their employment.

He's surprised to hear noise coming from the kitchens when he gets close. For a moment he wonders if he's too late, and preparations for breakfast have already started, but remembering the early hour, he approaches the kitchen doorway with curiosity.

Sunshine's spooning batter into some muffin cups when she realizes she has a visitor. She pauses mid-action and stares at the guy - the kid? - batter slowly dripping off the spoon as she endeavors not to look like a deer caught in headlights. Damn, is he one of the quote-unquote real cooks? He looks kind of young for the job, but she was just out of high school when she started working full-time at the coffeehouse.

"… Hey," she offers.

From the girl's reaction, Peeta gleans that she isn't a kitchen worker, either. He gives her a smile.

"Hi," he returns. "I was going to borrow the kitchen, but I see you beat me to it."

Oh, good. She hasn't been rumbled. Officially. Yet.

Sunshine gives the kid an assessing look. Not many teenagers would think to sneak into a kitchen in the wee hours, so she's inclined towards approval. Granted, she doesn't know what he was going to borrow the kitchen for - maybe he was just going to microwave some pizza rolls - but it's not like there isn't room for the both of them. "There's plenty to borrow," she says, slapping the remaining batter in the cup and gesturing around with her spoon. Hey, maybe if they both bustle around like they own the place, no one else will think to question them.

It's true. Peeta can see from the shelves of tools, bowls, and ingredients that there's more than enough kitchen to go around. He was expecting to do his baking in solitude, but the idea of company pleases him, so without further hesitation, he begins collecting supplies.

A quick survey of the pantry area alleviates his first concern. Whatever differences there might be between this place and Panem, it looks like bread remains the same. He pulls the familiar ingredients from their shelves and grabs a large bowl his way back to one of the kitchen islands.

Though he watches the girl from the corner of his eye at first, Peeta's quickly lost in a combination of memories and focus, and forgets about her almost completely.

Well, look at that. He's into baking. Sunshine finds herself smiling faintly as she works. It's almost like having Paulie back - though at least what's-his-face doesn't hum.

She slides the first muffin pan into the oven, not bothering to set a timer; her nose will let her know when they're done. So, there's the cranberry oatmeal on its way to done. She surveys the other ingredients she pulled before and decides it's time for banana nut.

As she starts peeling the bananas, she glances over at the other guy to see how his project is coming along. It looks like he's going for some kind of bread. This place is going to smell pretty amazing by the time people start shuffling in for breakfast. "I'm Sunshine," she says belatedly.

Peeta's sniffing various herbs and spices, trying to decide on a combination he likes - he recognizes many of them, but not all, and opted to choose by smell - when Sunshine's voice pulls him from his thoughts. Blinking in bemusement, he glances around with a frown before focusing on her face. Right, he isn't alone in the kitchen.

"I'm Peeta," he returns, waggling the bottle in one hand in lieu of a wave.

Now that he's consciously aware of his surroundings once more, he registers the warm, sweet smell of the muffins Sunshine is baking. He gestures toward the ovens with the bottle.

"Those smell great."

Hey, she's not one to fault people for getting too absorbed in their work, especially when that work is baking. Muffins are pretty easy for her to churn out because the batter is child's play, but dough can be a bit fussy.

"Thanks," she says with a little one-shouldered shrug. "My real specialty is cinnamon rolls, but the dough has to rise overnight." And it's pretty obvious that neither of them planned this little kitchen takeover in advance.

She nods at his bread-in-progress. "Are you a baker back home, too?" He seems to know what he's doing, and she has a hard time believing that a mere hobbyist would feel compelled to sneak into someone else's kitchen in the wee hours to do some covert bread-making.

"I -" Peeta pauses midway to saying was. He wasn't really anything after the Games. A Victor was just a Victor. He supposes if he has ever been anything, it's a baker. "Yeah, I am."

"How long have you been a baker?"

She could've said 'was,' herself, but a week isn't long enough for her to start abandoning the present tense when she talks about the universe she came from. It's not that she's the sort of person who never resigns herself to fate, because there have been a few occasions when she was pretty carthaginian certain that she was going to die, and she sort of made peace with it. But she wasn't given the luxury of anticipating her universal displacement, so she's not any closer to accepting it than she was on day one.

"Since I graduated high school." She'd been at Charlie's for a few years before that, but she'd worked her way up to the bakery. "That's when I started working full time at my stepdad's coffeehouse." She smushes her muffin batter around with a spoon, trying to break up the bananas without overdoing it and ending up with soup. "So… seven years?" Yeesh. It doesn't feel like it's been that long.

Peeta nods as he dumps the dough onto the counter top and starts kneading. "Did you always want to be a baker?"

"I have the Feed People gene," she acknowledges. "So does my mom - and Charlie. I think you need it if you're going to survive in the restaurant business."

"My parents are bakers. I've been working in our shop since I was old enough to walk. Thankfully, I enjoy it."

Kneading done, he begins forming the bread into buns. The flavors he put in the dough remind him of the bread from District 4, even if the color doesn't, so he copies that shape.

"How long have you been here?" he asks Sunshine. "Is your world very different?" He gets the impression it isn't too different, but he knows from experience that even the smallest changes can have a big impact.

Sunshine smiles faintly as she spoons the batter into the second muffin pan. One of her earliest memories is standing in the kitchen and crying because her mom was making something and she really wanted to hold the spoon and help out. Yeah, she can relate.

"A whole week," she deadpans, nose briefly wrinkling in displeasure. "And it's… yeah." Gods and angels, where to begin? She doesn't exactly want to go too in-depth, here. "We have vampires and Weres and magic-handling." And wards. She might miss those the most (after the obvious choices like friends and family and her entire carthaginian life); part of the reason she didn't just stay home this morning is because living in an unwarded apartment is like trying to live with a persistent draft. Anything could get in. The base might not be warded, either, but at least there's a guard at the door.

"Ah." Peeta blinks at her, not all that surprised anymore to hear unfamiliar and strange words pour out of people's mouths when asked about their worlds. It seems he is in the minority coming from a world where there is nothing supernatural.

As he arranges his freshly formed loaves on a baking sheet, he throws her a wry smile. "It's my third day."

She's going to go ahead and infer that Peeta's universe is a bit less Other-filled. The only consolation she has for her lack of wards is that they aren't so necessary, here, but she can only follow that train of thought so far before it hits You Live In A Building Full Of Rifties Station. Yeah, the overwhelming majority of the people on this island are entirely free of magic or Other-related abnormalities, but her apartment is surrounded by the minority of those who aren't.

Plus, while many wards are designed to keep out specifically supernatural threats, there are plenty that are there to stop regular joes from picking your lock or wedging open your window. A properly warded house - or apartment - is going to keep out anyone you don't go out of your way to invite in. A few extra deadbolts are pretty goddamn paltry by comparison.

"Only three days?" she asks, opening the oven door and sliding in the second muffin pan. Poor kid. Granted, they're both in the same boat, here, but it's got to be a bit harder on a teenager than it is on her. She gives the first muffin pan an assessing once-over and concludes that they still have a little ways to go before closing the oven and turning to Peeta. "I'd offer you sage advice, but…" she doesn't have any.

She wanders over to inspect his handiwork, then nods curiously. "I've never seen that shape before."

"It's common in one part of my country," he explains. "I don't know all the herbs and spices they have here, so I just picked out a few I thought would go well together. They reminded me of this bread, so I thought I'd shape it the same, too."

Peeta sighs a little. The bread looks mostly the same. It's the wrong color, and the taste won't be exactly right, but the shape is identical. It's a metaphor for everything here. Most of the people he has met look normal enough - they look like they could have come from anywhere in Panem - but then they talk about worlds with magic and vampires and gods.

Everything is almost but not quite and somehow that makes it all worse.

"Huh." There's something that hadn't occurred to her: that this universe might have more ingredients. The natural world hasn't struck her as all that different - even the almost-tame animals in the park remind her of the desperately friendly creatures that frequent Old Town. The only real difference there is circumstantial: the animals in Old Town moved into the city because the wild got too dicey during the Wars, whereas these animals don't have a conveniently located 'wild' to go back to. The Park is the closest thing the island has to wilderness.

So yeah, the natural world seems to match up. It's the Others that are mostly absent except for the rift.

She catches his little sigh, and comes to a decision. Maybe it's because he reminds her of Paulie, or maybe it's because cheering him up will give her something to focus on besides her own anxiety. "Okay. If you teach me how to make stuff from your universe, I'll teach you how to make the stuff I normally serve at the coffeehouse: Cinnamon Rolls as Big as Your Head and so on." She raises her eyebrows, hoping to convey that this is an offer she doesn't make for just anyone. Even Paulie had to work for it before she let him in on the secret of Bitter Chocolate Death. "Toxic sugar concoctions are my specialty."

Peeta catches the uniqueness of the offer and appreciates it, baker to baker and riftie to riftie. He eyes Sunshine as he walks a full tray over to one of the other ovens, wondering about her. He slides the tray in, sets the timer, and turns back to her.

He smiles. "Deal." As he starts to gather up his equipment to be cleaned, a thought occurs to him. "My baking is pretty good, but my decorating is really good," he says, a grin spreading across his face. "You teach me how to make your specialties, I'll throw in my decorating secrets, too?"

She raises her eyebrows, intrigued. Under normal circumstances, she wouldn't be interested: life is too short for her to spend three hours piping frosting onto one cake. But her calendar is currently wide open thanks to her lack of a job, and if Peeta has some tricks that aren't too time consuming, it can't hurt to learn. "Sure," she agrees, returning the smile as she piles her used utensils into a bowl. "I don't normally go in for decorating, so I'm a blank slate."

Peeta's pleased that he'll get to teach on top of learning new recipes. Though he enjoys teaching, he rarely gets the opportunity to do so. And between working with Sunshine and offering his knowledge to the base's kitchen staff, he should be able to kill a lot of time.

He mostly ignores the practical voice in the back of his head assuring him that learning new skills - and getting to practice his own in this new environment - will be beneficial when he needs to look for a job. Thinking in the long term isn't something he wants to do. At all.

At the sink, Peeta surveys their combined bowls and utensils. He meets Sunshine's eyes. "I wash, you dry?" he offers.

"Deal," she echoes, nodding. She'll have to check her muffins in a minute, but there's a drying rack, so it shouldn't matter if she has to step away for the few seconds it'll take to get the first pan out of the oven and onto the stove to cool.

They work in companionable silence for a few minutes before she ventures, "So, no magic where you're from, I take it." She gets that the only reason this universe has that stuff is because the rift keeps spitting it out, but it's still weird to think of coming from a world with nothing Other-related.

"None," Peeta confirms. "From what I've heard so far, it seems like I'm in the minority there. Does everyone have magic where you're from?" he asks, thinking of Daine and her world.

"There aren't that many magic-handlers," she says, "and even fewer good ones. But most towns will have a decent wardskeeper or two, and you can get charms anywhere." They might not be great charms, and they might not last very long before they start to go a bit mental, but they're not hard to find.

Her nose informs her that the first pan of muffins is done, so she throws her dishtowel over her shoulder, grabs a potholder from beside the oven, and fishes them out. She gives the muffins a critical look - they're not dead ringers for what she'd have made back home (in part because the rebels don't take flour quality as seriously as she does), but they'll probably taste fine to less discerning people than her. She sets the pan on the stovetop to cool, then returns to the sink.

"Some partbloods have a little magic, too - or what looks like magic, anyway. Peris, especially."

Peeta watches Sunshine remove the muffins and makes a mental note to check his bread soon. Back home, he wouldn't need to - he knows his ovens so well, and he doesn't have a reason to burn bread anymore - but since he's never used this particular oven, it's better to play it safe.

He frowns at her explanation of the magic in her world. "Partbloods? Peris?" he asks in confusion.

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