Who: TJ Jung & Carlos Tan Where: Suite 5N When: Part One: unspecified date a few years ago. Part Two: Friday, July 24, early evening. What: Snickerdoodles x2 Warnings: N/A
“I’ve never made snickerdoodles before,” TJ announced as he pulled out items from a grocery bag, “but I looked it up and it doesn’t look too hard, so I think we can do it. Plus, there’s you. Maybe they’ll even be the best snickerdoodles ever! Anyway I brought some cream of tartar and cinnamon, like you asked. I hope I didn’t forget anything,” he said like it was a joke, and laughed under his breath.
Looking over at Carlos, he asked, “So, what’s the first step?”
“Umm,” replied the other boy, as he squinted at the oven dial. “Mixing! Wet and dry. Here,” he slid over half of a piece of paper, torn and curled on the edges, with a list of ingredients and directions. “My mom found out and insisted on writing her own recipe down. Hope you can read her handwriting… it took me half my life to figure out. Wanna do the dry stuff?” Hopping across the kitchen, he picked up the butter on his way to the microwave.
“Also… I’m not that good… don’t get your hopes up. There are tons of better bakers than me here. Probably most of them, actually.” But Carlos grinned at him anyway, excited for the process more than the result.
So was TJ. Well, no. He was pretty pumped to eat some freshly baked cookies later. Before that could happen though they had to bake them first, and he peered over at the scrap of paper. "Nah, it's not as bad as mine. I can read this. Hand me the measurement cups when you're done with them?" he requested, and took out a large bowl to dump the dry ingredients in.
While he waited, TJ turned to watch Carlos and asked, "So how's training going? Learn anything cool lately?" Despite being younger, Carlos began the program before TJ did and was further along, so he was hoping for some insight that wouldn't disappoint. "I'm still doing a lot of power honing, but they're showing me muay thai right now. It's preeetty sick."
“That is sick!” Carlos’d perked up instantly at the mention of the program -- as if he wasn’t already perky enough -- and looked up. The measurement cups, little bits of sugar still at the bottom, were tossed over to TJ’s side of the kitchen, and Carlos picked up a rag to wipe his fingers as he leaned against the counter. The microwave beeped but he didn’t notice, looking over at his friend expectantly. “They have us doing exercises where we figure out how to deal with different kinds of baddies on the spot, sometimes alone and sometimes as a group… I come home, like, exhausted mentally as well as physically. It’s fun, but -- come on! Show me your moves!”
TJ laughed and shook his head. “No way, man. Not while we’re getting our bake on. If we duke it out in here things are going to break--probably including one of our noses--and then Ji is going to come in and throw a fit.” He could see it now: hands thrown up, rolled eyes, and a loud sigh. The image had him laughing again, and TJ bit his lip so he could stifle it long enough to crack the eggs into the bowl. The only response he got to the rejection was an “aw, fine,” exaggerated sigh belied by a smile.
“It sure sounds like a ton of fun,” TJ echoed, tossing the egg shells into the trash can. “They’re preparing you to go out into the field! Can you imagine when you finally graduate? I already can’t wait and I just started. Umm, you preheated the oven, right?”
“Yep,” Carlos confirmed, and peered into TJ’s bowl, his own at the ready. “Here, add this in when you’re done? Or I can do it, either way...”
He took a moment to stretch, pulling his arms tight behind his back while TJ added the vanilla extract. “Yeah… I’m a little bit nervous, you know? Not because of like, the danger. Though that’s, I mean, not exciting either, I guess. But working with people in training is different, like I know all these people, I grew up with half of them, but on a real team… they’ll all be older, and experienced, and stuff. What if I don’t do good enough?”
TJ shrugged, reached for a wooden spoon, and began stirring the ingredients together so they’d transform into a malleable dough. “You probably won’t.” The declaration came with a teasing snicker, causing his shoulders to bounce again, more slight this time.
“They’ve had years to get awesome though, and you’re only starting. Besides, you’re still doing something. Better yet, you’re doing good, you know, doing something good,” he pointed out, turning to direct his smile at Carlos. “You’ll get to doing good enough later, but I get what you mean. It’s kind of scary. I mean, what if I don’t even make it that far and fail? That would suck.” Despite the topic his words were kept light. After all, the worry was usually forgotten as soon as it surfaced.
He had better things to worry about, like rolling this dough into balls. “Got the cinnamon and sugar ready to roll these bad boys in?”
The change of topic seemed to startle Carlos, literally into motion, so focused was he on TJ’s words. TJ was only a few years older than him, but sometimes it seemed to the younger boy that those three years had granted him a world of maturity and knowledge that he himself hadn’t found yet. “Oh -- wow -- nope, let me just…” And then he was in motion again, consumed by both thoughts and task for the minute that it took to complete it.
“Thanks,” he finally said, once he slid over the mixture, and had an oiled cookie tray ready. “And you’re definitely not going to fail. Come on, you’re learning kickass martial arts already, they’re not going to want to lose you.” Carlos nudged him affably with a shoulder, as he reached out for some of the dough.
TJ nudged back with an elbow. "Yeah," he agreed, chuckling when his first ball rolled into a mass of lumps. Time for a redo. "I'll memorize so much that they won't be able to let me go."
“I’ve never made snickerdoodles before.” TJ sat up, an incredible feat considering he was sitting in an extremely comfortable beanbag chair, and crossed his legs so he could lean his elbows against them. After some browsing on his phone, he looked over at Carlos. “Should I run to the Commissary and get anything? Do you have…” He squinted at his phone. “Uh, cream of tartar?”
“Well-- huh.”
Carlos’ struggle over whether or not he ought to point out that they had, in fact, done this before -- a struggle he repeated with himself every time this sort of thing came up -- was interrupted by the question. “Uhh, maybe, actually.” He stood up from the beanbag next to TJ -- that is, a Carlos stood up to go to the kitchen and check, and a Carlos remained behind in the chair next to his friend. From Carlos’ room they could hear him rummage around, before he said, “Actually, we do… but it’s kind of old. Like, years old. I don’t know if that goes bad, but… we can get started with the other stuff and I can run down and get some.”
Carlos-in-the-chair stood up this time, while Carlos-of-the-kitchen put his shoes on to run down to the commissary. The former offered a hand to help TJ up, smiling.
"I don't even know what that stuff is," TJ said, chuckling, and took the hand to heft himself up. "Thanks, bro. For going to the Commissary to save me the trip too, though I would've gladly risked the food poisoning." He lightly elbowed Carlos as they walked to the kitchen, where he stepped away from his friend and went straight to the cupboard holding the different pots and pans they would probably need.
Pulling out a large bowl, he looked over his shoulder to ask, "So, what's the first step?"
“Mixing,” Carlos replied immediately, “Wet and dry.” Déjà vu hit him hard, but it was easier to handle when you knew why it was happening, and he shook it off easily enough. Flitting around the kitchen, he pulled out their ingredients and put them together on the counter. “I have the recipe memorized by now… the hardest thing is going to be making sure Ji Won and Kyle don’t come back early and devour them all.”
That had happened before. Not that Carlos really minded, but it was easy to make fun of it and TJ laughed anyway. “You want to get egg all over yourself, or flour?”
“I’ll take the eggs, but if I get salmonella then you have to promise that you’ll carry me to the hospital,” TJ replied and grabbed the egg carton from the fridge, waiting for Carlos to measure the dry ingredients into the bowl before he cracked the eggs in. Next went the vanilla extract. Taking the wooden spoon Carlos handed him, TJ held the bowl against his side and began stirring.
“So,” he started. The word was left hanging in the air. On another day he probably would’ve asked how the operative life was treating him, but that was before Paul’s death. Now he asked, “How are things?”
Carlos pressed his lips together as he thought, absently shaking the little bowl he was holding with sugar and cinnamon. Far from small talk, it was a serious question, and he gave his response the thought it deserved. Down in the commissary, he was at the cashier, thankful that he remembered to grab his card on his way out; if his brow furrowed in thought the lady working behind the counter wouldn’t know why.
“You know, things are okay,” he said, “Umm, I think, I think things will be even better after the investigation is over and done with. ‘Cause, yeah. But, you know. What about your things?”
“They’re…” he trailed off, setting the bowl aside. The worry lines that Carlos kept smoothing out of his expression today reminded him of the look Dani had given him when they met at the cafe. Normally TJ would keep it to himself, but it was hard trying to relive these memories on his own, and he only made it through a few text conversations before he turned off his phone and rolled over on his bed.
That feeling, weight and emptiness at once, had yet to fade. “My things are okay. Um, you know Dani, right?”
His training might’ve given him some reaction control -- he needed to be able to not flinch too badly when a copy was hurt, after all -- but nothing could’ve stopped Carlos in that moment from pausing and looking at TJ with wide eyes. “Uh? Yeah, you … uh … don’t?”
Stupid. Carlos could’ve slapped himself, and he entertained the thought briefly as, in another body, he was taking off his shoes and coming over with the cream of tartar, and could’ve legitimately brought a hand across his own face. Although sometimes he didn’t feel like he needed to bring up TJ’s memory loss, this wasn’t something to gloss over.
“I mean -- never mind that. Yeah, I do. Why?”
"I just met her last week. For the second time? I guess, I don't know," he murmured, rambling more to himself than anything while he faced forward. "I didn't know I could forget entire relationships and the people along with them. I mean, it's happened before with people I've met once or twice, but we had been dating for over a year, or at least I think we were, and." His lips pressed into a line, and when his jaw slackened he only had a sigh to release.
"I don't know where I was going with that," TJ said quietly, looking down at the ball of dough in his hands. It was smooth and round, so he rolled it in the cinnamon and sugar and set it on the prepared tray. "Sorry." He shot a smile at Carlos. "I wasn't trying to blame you, but I'm sorry for bringing all this up."
A small pause, and then, "Did I forget this too?"
“Um,” said Carlos, quite eloquently. “Ummmm.”
Then he shook himself out of it, almost literally with a little shake of the head, and returned TJ’s smile. “Yeah, but that’s not a big deal. I don’t even remember all the details of when we did this first myself, except that the cookies were awesome. Dani, though…”
He rolled a piece of dough into a ball between his palms, and tried to imagine. Tried to picture a year of his relationship with Daiana, gone from his memory -- the inside jokes, the nonsensical secrets, the times stolen away all included.
“You dated her for a year and a half,” he said. “We used to go on double dates! It was fun, too bad we can’t recreate those for you, since, you know, none of us are… but maybe we could go except it could be you-and-me and Dani-and-Daiana… bad idea? Bad idea. Anyway…”
Carlos’ hand hovered with the ball of dough above the sugar and cinnamon, and then he seemed to change his mind, raising it to his lips and biting a chunk out of it instead. “Can’t make cookies without sneaking some cookie dough! What I meant is, I’m not the best storyteller, but if you have any questions… I’ll do my best to fill you in.”
"It's cool," TJ replied, shaking his head to spare his friend that burden. "I'm not even sure what I wanted to hear. You know, about this. Not from you. What you said helped. Thanks, bud." And he smiled--a notch lower than his standard grin--and glanced at Carlos chewing on the cookie dough. "Is it good? I hope they are. We've got to make this count, since I can remember it this time." His words had an undercurrent of a laugh to them that carried through as he finished the last of the dough, straightening out some of the cookies until they were all in neat lines.
After sticking the tray into the oven, TJ stretched his arms over his head and swept his gaze over the mess until his eyes landed on Carlos. He grinned. "Want to play some Smash again until they're done? I'll even put a handicap on myself and stick to using Kirby."
Carlos laughed. “You’re on,” he said, and nudged him with a shoulder before he went to go set up the game.