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It was still a thing of wonder and joy to wake up to sunrise stretching languidly across Gorjo City, to the gentle sea wind in the chiming glass floats dancing rainbows around him, to windows open to the sounds of waves, of early risers greeting each other and vendors setting up their stalls and carts in Zaviya Square.
To the scents and sounds of home.
To soft breathing beside him.
Cliopher could feel the dream slipping, the world around him asserting itself, and breathed deeply as he stretched, smiling as he opened his eyes to the glass floats swaying gently above him.
He found himself bereft of a blanket - a cool, airy one more for comfort than warmth, these warm spring nights - and was not surprised to turn his head and find Fitzroy comfortably wrapped up in it, his own blanket rumpled by his feet, kicked aside at some point during the night. He was curled up on his side, facing Cliopher, his breath whistling in a soft snore, one hand outstretched toward Cliopher, and if Cliopher took a moment to just look at him, still and calm in a way that wasn’t serene but peaceful, it was alright; he could.
"Blanket thief," he accused him under his breath. "Typical outlaw behavior."
Fitzroy mumbled something and curled up more comfortably in the warm spot Cliopher had left when he sat up. Accepting this as an admission of guilt, Cliopher decided to withdraw to consider his judgment on the matter and snuck out of the room, shrugging into one of the silk robes Fitzroy had insisted were absolute necessities on his way down the stairs.
The scent of coffee and something sweet baking greeted him as he approached the kitchen, and he peered in curiously but cautiously (because last time it had been Rhodin working on a secret cake recipe to surprise Sardeet, and innovative cake recipes were not one of Rhodin's many talents; explosive cake recipes, on the other hand…). Their kitchen was full of flour, clatter, enticing scents and outraged muttering, all centered around one of his favorite cousins.
"Enya!" he said, pleased but baffled, still halfway asleep.
"Kip!" Enya brightened up as she saw him, and he was promptly enfolded into a floury hug. "Morning! There's coffee, here –"
Cliopher looked down at his robe, now covered in flour and a blot of chocolate, in despair, but then dismissed it with a shrug. If Fitzroy was going to stare at it accusingly, he should have picked more sensible materials. He accepted the coffee pitcher and went to pour a cup for himself, blinking blearily at the chaos in the room. The oven was on, there was a batch of pineapple upside-down cakes cooling on the counter, a tray of little cakes in paper cups on another counter, and Enya was furiously mixing what appeared to be chocolate frosting in a bowl. He remembered, once again, that his younger cousin had always expressed her feelings in cooking and baking; this time, everything seemed to be sweet, but her mood seemed nothing of the sort.
“Is… everything alright?” he ventured, sipping his coffee cautiously. It was still a delight, that good coffee was available whenever he wished.
“Yes! Perfectly!” Enya frowned at the frosting, then turned to glare at him. “No! Kip, how could you! Galen brought me some pastries last night when I was closing up the restaurant – you know how it is, doing inventory, and I may have been up a bit too late, so he brought me something new to cheer me up – and he bought them from the woman who lives next door from here, and I don’t think I slept a wink, they were glorious and I’ve been up all night thinking about them, and I can’t believe you were hiding her from me!”
She had advanced on Cliopher with each word, still mixing the topping in the bowl, and certainly looking like she had been up all night. Just when Cliopher thought he might have to back out of the kitchen and all the way back up to the solarium, she turned on her heels and flounced back to the counter.
"This woman, Kip! Her pastries! Have you tried them? Have you seen this woman – of course you have, you own the house next door, don't you, it's someone you know, only you, Kip – her pastries! And have you tried the macarons?"
Cliopher grounded himself by wrapping his hands more securely around his coffee mug. It was much too early to find an Enya-shaped whirlwind in his kitchen, baking up a storm. "Sardeet's macarons? Yes, they're amazing."
Enya made a sound and flailed, waving both spoon and bowl around in a wordless effort to express her outrage at this bit of news. A particularly robust wave of her arm sent a glob of chocolatey frosting flying at Fitzroy, who had just entered the kitchen and just barely managed to duck in time, mid-yawn and golden eyes going from bleary to wide in an instant.
"Sardeet Avramapul! Of course she is Sardeet Avramapul! Really, Kip, could you be more ridiculous! You move Sardeet Avramapul of the Red Company into your guest room and don't breathe a word to anyone – of course you do, just as you casually refer to your good friends Auri and El, and have a literal blob of sunlight in your living-room –”
“Coffee, Fitzroy?” Cliopher murmured over his cousin’s tirade.
“Please,” his fanoa agreed fervently, retrieved a cup and sipped on the coffee Cliopher poured for him with obvious joy. “I do love that whenever your friends and relatives decide to visit us early in the morning, they at least have the decency to make excellent coffee. What have you done to your robe?”
Cliopher gestured at his cousin. “Nothing! She happened to it.”
“Ah.”
“... And bring the Last Emperor over for dinner without a word of warning, and then pack up said Emperor and plant him here because you think he'd be happier here –"
"I am," Fitzroy supplied, now eyeing the blob of frosting decorating the wall where his head had been a moment before. "Poets and renegades thrive in the sun, and emperors are somehow not even allowed windows."
This distracted Enya, who was now pouring the topping into a sort of funnel to squeeze it into a piping tube. She made a distressed sound and scraped the topping out of the bowl faster. "Really? That sounds – oh, not great at all, no wonder Kip wanted to relocate you both here…" She pushed the now empty bowl into Fitzroy’s hands and turned back to Cliopher, "But honestly, Kip, you can't bring a culinary mastermind to my city and not inform me, I can't believe you would do that to me –"
Cliopher traded nonplussed glances with Fitzroy, who was cradling the bowl uncertainly. "I'm not… sure what you mean, are you worried that she will set up a competing business? Or mad that I didn't immediately forward her to you for a job interview?"
"Both! Neither!" Enya groaned as she started decorating the pastries before her with graceful swirls of frosting. "I don't know, I just came here to panic-bake and yell at you!"
"I can see that," Cliopher murmured, peering into the oven; there seemed to be two different kinds of cookies on their way to join the cupcakes currently being decorated, as well as the batch of pineapple upside-down cakes already sitting enticingly on the counter.
Enya was now starting to sprinkle colorful sweets on top of the frosting, looking sullen and mutinous, so Cliopher assured her that they would introduce her to Sardeet at the earliest opportunity and that Sardeet was likely to love Enya and her restaurant to bits. Soon, however, he was distracted by Fitzroy, who was still staring quizzically at the bowl Enya had given her, before making as if to go to the sink to wash it. He looked decidedly mystified but a little pleased at having been relegated to washing up duty.
"And Galen's going to love her too, I know it - no, what are you doing, don't you want it?" Enya flapped her hands at Fitzroy, alarmed and affronted.
Fitzroy looked up, bewildered. "The bowl?"
"No, the frosting! You said something sad, although I don’t remember what it was now, something about windows, so I gave you the bowl! There’s still a bit of frosting in it."
She stared at him; Fitzroy stared back. Both whirled to look at Cliopher imploringly.
Coffee kicked in, finally, and something clicked into place in his brain with an almost audible snap. “Ah,” he said, struggling to contain the conflicting emotions of fuzzy warmth and sorrow his realization had invited. “Fitzroy, when we were young, whoever was baking something sweet used to let the children lick the spoon or eat the remains of frosting or cookie dough from the bowl. Because there were always more of us than there were opportunities for this, the honor was usually given to someone who had done particularly well at something, or someone who was feeling sad and needed to be cheered up.” Fitzroy blinked; Cliopher turned to Enya and continued, softly, “Enya, I don’t think anything of the sort ever happened in Fitzroy’s childhood.”
Enya gasped, her eyes filling with tears; in contrast, Fitzroy’s eyes lit up like the sun breaking through the clouds, and he plopped down on a chair to scoop up the remaining bits of frosting, humming happily as much at the taste as - Cliopher thought - at the fact that Enya had wanted to cheer him up.
“Really? Never?” Enya was clutching at the countertop, evidently still reeling from the revelation that not every child had aunts and uncles and older siblings handing them spoons and whisks to lick clean.
Cliopher shrugged, almost apologetic, but couldn't tear his eyes away from the blissful expression on his fanoa's face.
"Oh," his cousin said, her voice choked up. "That means - that must mean you've also never baked with anyone? But - but," she trailed off, evidently upset. "But cooking and baking together was such an important part of my childhood." She sounded utterly crestfallen to find out that this was not the case for everyone.
"I can cook," Fitzroy offered, looking a little embarrassed. He set the bowl in the sink, now scraped completely clean of frosting. "Passably at least, if not anything I would want to show to you. Or at least I could until…" He glanced at Cliopher and clearly decided to not give Enya any more reason to feel shocked – that she knew, in theory, that he had spent decades as emperor barred from any manual work as well as most of his favorite foods did not necessarily translate into her fully realizing it.
It was the right choice, for Enya looked relieved, if still a bit upset - desperately trying to not let her pity show, Cliopher realized, so she wouldn't hurt Fitzroy's feelings. "Well, that's good, at least! But no baking…" She considered him for a moment and then, clearly coming to a decision, brightened up and squared her shoulders. "Right. We shall fix that, of course. I can't have my cousin walking around with a fanoa who has never baked a thing in his life. What if word got around?" She looked mortified. "What if Sardeet Avramapul heard?"
"I think she might already be aware," Fitzroy said, almost gently.
Cliopher watched his cousin slump in defeat and realization. "Right, of course. Fitzroy Angursell, also of the Red Company. Just the smallest chance that you've already met her." She laughed and smacked her own forehead, leaving a floury handprint there. "Oh, that's great, Enya. Anyway, our entire business is built on the fact that we were raised in a family where cooking and baking together was important; we’ll just have to teach you, as well."
They both looked at Cliopher, Fitzroy looking charmingly baffled and gleeful at once, and Enya looking very stern, as though daring him to contradict her.
"I didn't know you cooked and baked, Kip. You must, having grown up in such an environment," Fitzroy said innocently, as though not fully aware that Cliopher had yet to use anything besides the kettle and the tap in their new kitchen.
"I, er." Cliopher quailed under Enya's frown. "I participated? But mostly I copied out recipes that were getting too faded or stained, and wrote them down as people invented them. There's probably an entire notebook full of ones you invented when you were thirteen, in fact."
Enya’s eyes brightened. “Now there’s an idea! Think you could find it, Kip? Here, put these in the pantry to cool.” She handed the pineapple upside-down cakes to Fitzroy, who looked intrigued and did as he was bid. "A menu inspired by my childhood recipes would work wonderfully, I think. The cookies need to come out next, Fitzroy – no, not with your bare hands, use these! Honestly, Kip! How do you call yourself a Mdang and let your fanoa walk around always one step from being a burn victim!”
Fitzroy – who had held them safe from the very heart-fire of the world while forging an island from it with just his magic – examined the oven mitts she had handed to him and grinned at Cliopher with such glimmering mirth that he could barely respond. "He's generally acknowledged to be a fire mage of some relevance and skill, Enya, you may have heard about the literal island he raised for us? Also, what are you doing?"
“Teaching him, obviously!”
“Don’t you have an actual restaurant to run?”
Enya paused reluctantly in the midst of instructing Fitzroy on the order of taking the baking trays out of the oven. “Well. Yes.” She looked at Fitzroy regretfully. “I suppose I’ll have to teach you later. Tomorrow morning?”
“If there’s coffee,” Fitzroy agreed easily, and if Cliopher took the opportunity to admire him standing there in their kitchen, hair still in a sleep-wild halo around his head, still barefoot and in his silk robe, a baking tray full of steaming chocolate chip cookies in his mittened hands, well, he was allowed to.
Enya was still talking as she washed her hands, cleared away her baking implements, and walked to the door. “And you’ll promise to introduce me to Sardeet Avramapul?” she checked again just as she was leaving.
“Yes. Although to be clear, what do you want, so we can tell her what to expect?”
“I don’t even know,” Enya sighed. “To hire her! For her to hire me! For her to set up a business next to my restaurant and for us to be locked in an eternal combat of competition and friendly rivalry!” She paused, blinking. “Is this how you felt when you wouldn’t shut up first about Fitzroy Angursell and then about how you were going to be the Elonoa’a to the Last Emperor’s Aurelius Magnus, Kip?”
Cliopher thought he was quite valiant in ignoring Fitzroy’s sniggering. “Well, I certainly never imagined us becoming business rivals,” he deflected.
“You would love that, though,” she pointed out, kissed them both on the cheek, and was gone, already greeting someone she knew as she jogged away.
Cliopher and Fitzroy looked at each other, at the baking tray still in Fiztroy’s hands, at the various other cookies and pastries Enya had left behind, and back at each other.
“My business would be much more popular,” Fitzroy informed him as he set the tray on the counter decisively. “I’m charming.”
“Yes,” Cliopher acknowledged. “But mine would thrive and eventually buy out yours, because you’d spend all your time charming customers instead of handling your finances.”
“We could just, you know. Skip the rivalry.” Fitzroy smiled and waved his oven mitt-covered hands at him. “Go right to the part where you run both our finances and I keep on being charming.”
“We do work together very well.”
“We do.”
And if Cliopher spent a moment simply grinning stupidly at his fanoa, glitteringly happy and almost giddy with it, it was alright, too, because Fitzroy was grinning right back at him.
Then, looking back at the cookies Fitzroy had set on the counter, “I suppose we’ll have to set breakfast outdoors to try to lure everyone in the neighborhood to help us eat all this.”