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Log Title: Cookie Dough
Log Setting: Walker's Apartment, downstairs
Log Cast:
Trace
Jean-Batiste
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"Can I look yet?" comes Batiste fond, amused voice from the kitchen. He's been puttering around in there all day, making 'summer food' as he called it - food that you can eat that doesn't require heating the house up with the oven or stove. Working for Marco those couple days made him enough money to splurge on a bill of groceries again. A huge batch of macaroni salad has been prepared, split into two bowls - one has chunks of ham in it, the other has chunks of chicken. He's working on something else currently, something that requires a large mixing bowl and struggling with a wooden spoon to stir the stiff mixture. He leans his hip into the doorway of the kitchen, looking at you from a distance as he stirs the mystery contents of the white plastic bowl. His expression is thoughtful, just a touch too pensive to be called truly -content-. It doesn't stop his face from warming up whenever he watches you working at your creation, though.
"Just... just hang on a few more seconds!" Trace promises, glancing back to the kitchen, pleased and growing more flattered and eager to show it off each time you peek in to ask if it's done yet. He actually *does* feel good about the work of art, and as a constant, Trace doesn't show confidence in scarcely anything. "I... I think I'll give this one to Ayita," he announces, turning back to it and busying himself with the glue and shredded remains of Jordan's pretty shirt once more. "I like how.. how the light comes down on his face here, even though his smile's all lit up by itself, and.. And, um, nevermind, I don't wanna give it away. Just a few more, hold on!" The last few shimmery strips are applied, and then it's done. There's a glob of purple paint on the cardboard that has dried around the edges, but the center is still slick and wet, so Trace now reaches for a paint brush and loads the end with it. Then he leans forward a little bit more to write in the left-hand corner above the picture in a slow, careful hand the following little, slash-stylized letters: "Holly in Spotlight"
Trace calls happily, clasping his glue-sticky, paint-stained hands together eagerly, "Okay, come see!"
Jean-Batiste laughs softly, eyes brightening at the happy sound of your voice and the eager clapping of your hands. For a few seconds, he doesn't move at all, just watching you and your new artwork as if taking a picture of it and filing it away into some mental scrapbook. Finally he remembers to turn and pushes the bowl onto the counter, then heads for the living room, his hands held behind his back. "Okay, on my way. I want to see this..." He hurries his steps a bit, moving around to crouch beside you to see the picture from the same angle as you. Before he gives it more than a cursory glance, though, he says to you, "Close your eyes and open your mouth, I've got a surprise for you." He figures you'll do this without much complaint - after all, you -did- put cream cheese on a sundae.
Trace is indeed trusting when it comes to Batiste Cuisine, and all too eager for surprises. He unsticks his hands and lets his eyes fall closed -- without even trying to peek back at what you hold first -- and opens his mouth, tongue poking out. "Ahhh...!"
After a few seconds, something cool and vaguely lumpy is carefully set onto your tongue. It tastes sweet already. As you draw it back and taste it, you discover yourself to be eating a lump of chocolate chip cookie dough. "I made up a huge batch, so we can keep it in the fridge and bake up fresh cookies whenever we want," he explains with a grin as you sample it. Sure, it'd spoil if it was left in there for a month, or something - but how likely is it that cookie dough will last a month around the three of you?
"Umm-mm!" Trace approves heartily around the cookie-dough lump, eyes blinking open and beaming back at you -- closed mouth beaming, but all lit up in the eyes and cheeks. Once he's got the mouthful swallowed, he asks hopefully, "But we can sometimes just eat it raw, right? Sometimes cookie dough just tastes better to you cold and unbaked. It's true." He looks down at the white bowl, and then up at you hopefully. Seems like this is one of those times when the dough is better, because he's giving you a definite, unspoken, soulful-eyed 'More..?'
Jean-Batiste is suddenly happy. Absurdly happy, the sort of happiness that hits you like a tidal wave and just leaves you staggering. He crouches there, watching you, just grinning like a fool. "We can eat it all raw if we want," he promises you. "Mix it into ice cream, even. There's eggs in it, though, so..." Not that he's -ever- been sick eating cookie dough, despite his grandmother's protests. He suddenly hugs you, planting a grinning kiss to the crown of your head, then is up and darting into the kitchen to grab the bowl and bring it back to you. A veritable feast of cookie dough is there, full of milk chocolate morsels. He sneaks a small mouthful himself, and chews on it as he looks down at the picture, lowering to a kneel to better examine it.
Trace is about to dig a hand into the cookie dough and pull out a more than generous handful, but at the last moment he remembers his filthy hands. Wouldn't do to taint the whole bowl of it! He takes a moment to scrub his hands hard against his dirty, too-baggy jeans. Then, when he can't get them any more clean that way, he starts to rub the glue off his fingertips in careful little gray rolls, and pick his nails at specks of purple, black, and peach paint. He works at that awhile, all the time his eyes paying more attention to you, your expression, and occasionally flickering his gaze back to the picture. "Do you think... do you think Ayita'd like it for the gallery..?" he wonders with a shy smile.
Jean-Batiste glances away from the picture for a second as he sees you rubbing your hands together, then breaks out the wooden spoon and carves out a palm-sized chunk, leaving it in the bowl but detached for easy grabbing. There. Now you can contaminate only your own chunk o' dough, see? He leans over the picture a bit, head tilted, examining the sheen of the cloth strips against the painted lines. A soft smile starts to grow across his face. "Trace, this is great," he says. "It'll be fantastic, I'm no good at multimedia stuff like this, but this is just...wow." He sits back, and looks to you, though his eyes keep straying to the canvas. "I think what I like the best, is that now the shirt's worth something, you know? It's art, now. It's not just some shirt that got worn once and left in a closet. You transformed it."
"Even so, it'd be cool if Jordan somehow wound up at the gallery and got to see his 'transformed' shirt, y'know?" Trace giggles merrily at the thought. "Wonder if he'd flip. Selfish little prick." He snatches up his palmful of cookie dough and gnaws on it, turning his eyes back to the picture. "M'glah ya like'ih," he admits around the mouthful, still carrying a trace of the flattered permagrin around on his expression. A big swallow. "This stuff is really good, Batiste." He holds up a little chunk for you -- forgetting his cookie dough is tainted, obviously, as he brings it up close to your lips in offering.
It's only tainted by Trace-cooties, as Batiste sees it, and those are -way- down on the list as far as Cooties To Avoid go. And so he leans forward, and neatly bites off a piece of the offered cookie dough, grinning at you as he leans back and chews contentedly on the sweet dough and hard little bits of chocolate. "Yeah, cookies are great. I'm glad you like it." He drapes an arm around your shoulders, hugging you comfortably to him. He looks down at the picture again, murmuring, "It's beautiful, Trace. You're so talented. You're going to be famous someday."
"On'y if ya famous wif me," Trace murmurs, talking with his mouth full again as he leans into you contentedly. He closes his eyes, enjoying both the hug and the sweet dough melting velvet-soft all over the inside of his mouth. When just a little lump remains, his tongue turns archaeoligist, worrying away the remaining sweet dough to reveal just a fused cluster of softening chocolate lumps. He keeps that on his tongue and wonders softly, "You got anything ya thinkin' of giving to Ayita yet?" He figures that, unlike the sketchbook, he's allowed to ask outright about this since after he sees it, it will be immediately hung up for the rest of the world to see -- well, maybe not the whole world, but the New Orleans gallery hopping crowd anyway.
"Sure you want me riding along on your coat-tails?" Batiste teases affectionately, words a bit muffled around his own mouthful of cookie dough. He finally swallows down the last of it, licking the sweetness off the corners of his mouth. "I've got...yeah, a couple of things. Couple of ideas..." A mild frown tugs at his brows. "Thought about doing my part of the mural...the part on my wall, I mean...as a picture for the showing." He says it quietly, then shrugs a bit, as if he'd decided against it already. "Don't think I will, though. But..." Okay, so maybe he -hasn't- decided.
Trace nods faintly, peeking up at you as best he can without moving too far away from the lean-hug. "Well... It's a real amazing picture. If ya can do it again, that'd be great, I bet. It'd sell so fast... I couldn't do nuthin' like that though, I think. I can't barely ever draw the same thing twice like that." He finishes off the last of his palmful of cookie dough, grinding up the chocolate chips in his jaws.
"D'you really think so?" Batiste suddenly turns this intense look on you. Scrutinous. "I..." He licks his bottom lip, cleaning a trace of chocolate off, then continues. "I wasn't sure if I should paint it, or not. It was...in my head, I mean, I could just -see- it, but...I thought maybe it'd be too much. And...well, it's kind of twisted, and all. I didn't want to freak anyone out." Softer, he admits, "I wasn't sure what you'd think of it." He leans his head against the top of yours, looking down thoughtfully at the picture again.
"Well..." Trace considers, and then peeks up to point out, "Think 'bout the town yer in! People jest seem t'eat up everythin' freakish here, they can't git enough! Sure, won't mean to them what it means t'you, or..." Softer, "Or t'me. Coz, I mean, I really know you, and my heart hurts t'look at that poor tortured Batdemon and, and know y'mean that t'be you..." He sighs. "I dunno. I dunno anymore if ya should give it up fer the gallery. Much's people'd like it, it just, it pisses me off people'd look at it an' think 'Oh, look, that picture's so dark.. darlin', wouldn't it go nice with that bone sculpture ya picked up, 'n match yer grey carpet so swell?" He makes a face and shakes his head. "That'd be terrible. They wouldn't... deserve it, they wouldn't understand..."
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