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Jon knocked on the door and waited. On the other side, he could hear footsteps, then fumbling and cursing, before the door opened. Arthur’s hair was well-combed, and all the buttons on his shirt were done up, but he’d missed a few places while shaving, and his left hand was clenched in a fist at his side. Jon stifled a sigh.
“Arthur. John.”
“Hello.” Their voices overlapped, both sounding sullen. “Please come in,” Arthur continued, stepping out of the way, and Jon took a moment to give thanks that at least John was willing to help them walk properly. He came in and closed the door behind himself.
The kitchen was an absolute mess. A bag of flour was tipped over on the counter, there was a baking sheet on the floor, and it looked as though a cow had had an accident in front of the refrigerator. Jon sighed. “I, um. Well I take it there’s a problem.”
“He called me a parasite!” John growled.
“He won’t stop putting things out of my reach!” Arthur hissed.
“Because you won’t follow directions!”
“It’s cooking, it’s not an exact science!”
“Do you want to give us salmonella poisoning, Arthur?”
“It’s fine, John!”
“Enough!” Jon massaged the bridge of his nose. “I don’t suppose it occurred to either of you to…” stop arguing for one moment? “…give up and have something delivered? Or head out to Tesco?”
“It’s the principle of the thing!” Arthur insisted, John grumping simultaneously, “It’s not like I can go on my own.”
This was going to be a very long afternoon. “Right,” Jon said firmly. “Why don’t we start with cleaning up the spilled…everything. Can you both work together long enough for that?”
“Fine,” John huffed. Arthur nodded grimly.
“Good. Thank you.” Jon headed for the kitchen and got a towel. Luckily, wiping things up didn’t take too much coordination, and John gave Arthur directions, albeit still perfunctorily.
By the time they were done, Arthur and John seemed a bit less fraught. Which was to say, they weren’t getting along, but they seemed less inclined to outright murder. Jon considered giving himself a virtual pat on the back for de-escalating it, then decided that might be tempting fate.
“Right.” Jon folded the towel, looked around, and nodded. “So. Tesco?”
“No!”
“Absolutely not!”
Well, it had been worth a shot. Jon sighed. “Where’s the recipe?”
“Here.” John found a few sheets of paper and Arthur held them out. They were dusted with flour, wet, and also…
“This is in…are these US measurements? Wasn’t there anything in metric?”
“In what?” Arthur (or maybe John?) stared blankly at him.
“Oh, for…Right. We’re starting by finding an actual recipe. Where’s your computer?”
Half an hour later, when he’d found a recipe they could all agree on, then printed it out — normally a waste of paper, but with the state of the kitchen earlier, probably a good idea — they started again. Jon handed Arthur the recipe and got out of the way, ready to step in if needed.
“Heat the oven to 190. That’s a lot less.”
“Are you sure that’s what it says? It doesn’t sound very hot.”
“That’s what it says, Arthur! I can read.”
“It’s Celsius!” Jon broke in. “It’s fine, it’s a different scale.”
They turned to him with a baffled scowl, and Jon raised his hands in defense. “Your other recipe used Fahrenheit. The oven is marked in Celsius. If you use 350, you’ll scorch them. The oven probably doesn’t even go that high.”
“You don’t just go around again and add?” John asked.
“Er…no. I…it let you do that without removing the knob?”
Both of Arthur’s shoulders shrugged. Wonderful. At least they agreed on something.
“Get out the baking sheet. To your right. Your other right. Lower down…there. Now beat the butter and sugar until they’re creamy. Isn’t butter already creamy?”
“That just means we won’t have to beat it for long,” Arthur said. “How much of each?”
Jon started to speak, debated it, then reluctantly asked, “Do you have an electric mixer?”
“A what?”
“Something to mix it faster. Did the kitchen come with one?” Jon was already getting up to look for one.
“That’s ridiculous!” Arthur protested. “There’s modern conveniences, then there’s modern laziness. I can mix just fine.”
Jon sat back down and waited.
Five minutes later, Arthur held out the bowl again and Jon checked it. Again. “Not yet. You want it to be fluffy.”
“But it’s butter!”
Jon shrugged. “It’ll get there eventually.”
“Give me that,” John growled, grabbing the whisk. He started in vigorously, and Arthur barely had a chance to grab hold of the bowl. “This isn’t that hard.”
“Of course not,” Arthur shot back, “I did the hard part.”
John scoffed. Jon facepalmed.
Eventually, after they had switched off twice more, Jon declared the batter good enough. It was close enough to work, and he was getting tired of the bickering. Maybe they should move on to a different source of bickering.
“Two tisps of vanilla extract and one large egg,” John read. “What’s a tisp?”
“Teaspoon,” Jon and Arthur informed him. “Right,” Arthur continued. “That’s…this drawer?”
“Yes,” John confirmed. “There’s one on the left. Yes, that one.” Arthur pulled out a spoon.
“Wait, no.” Jon stopped them. “Get a measuring spoon.”
“It says teaspoon, this is a teaspoon,” Arthur reasoned.
“No, it’s…it’s not literal,” Jon protested. “It’s a measurement called…look, where are your baking things?”
“John?” Arthur asked.
“What kind of baking things?”
Jon gestured helplessly. “We’re looking for…it usually looks like a series of different-sized round spoons all hooked together at one end. Either metal, or plastic…” He trailed off hopefully.
“I don’t remember seeing anything like that. Would it be in a drawer, or…?”
“Yes, probably.” Jon opened the nearest drawer to him and was rewarded with paper clips, a torch, and a ball of rubber bands. He heard John start to do the same on the other end of the kitchen.
“These?” he asked after the third drawer.
Jon turned around. “Yes! Now one of them will say ‘1 teaspoon’ on it. Or maybe just ‘1 tsp’.” Which he was absolutely spelling out and not pronouncing like “tisp”.
“Got it.”
“Okay, so two of those?” Arthur asked.
Jon nodded. “Yes.” He eyed them. “You might want to pour it over a glass or something instead of right into the bowl.”
That accomplished, they went for the egg. There were four left in the carton. “Are these large?” John asked.
“I don’t know.” Arthur frowned, picking up each in turn. “They all feel roughly the same size.”
“Just pick whichever is biggest,” John suggested. “Second from the left?”
Arthur picked that one up, turned it over, and agreed. “Seems large to me.”
Jon bit his tongue.
“Okay, so we just put it in?”
“Well, no, you break it first, John.” Arthur felt for the rim of the bowl. “Right. Here we go.” His first tap wasn’t enough to break the shell. The second barely cracked it. He grumbled, and the third try sent egg and shell everywhere.
“Jesus Christ, Arthur! It’s dripping down the bowl!” John’s hand reached out to try to scoop more of it in, managing to get enough of the egg in that it would probably work. If be somewhat crunchy.
“Well excuse me if I can’t see what I’m doing!” Arthur scowled. “You think you can do better?”
“I could hardly do much worse.”
“Fine.” Arthur crossed his arm over his chest. “You do it, then.”
“Okay, I will!” John picked up the whisk again and started trying to beat the batter, as the bowl jumped across the counter with every stroke. “Fucking hell, could you at least brace the bowl, Arthur?”
"I thought you could do this on your own,” Arthur snarked.
“There’s always Tesco,” Jon muttered.
“No!” came in stereo.
Jon sighed.
“Sift in flour. How do you sift flour?” John asked.
“I’m not entirely sure. Jon?”
“Check for a sifter,” Jon suggested. “It’s…never mind, they’re too hard to describe. I’ll look.” They got on with the other dry ingredients and finding a wooden spoon (“no, your other right…”) as he searched. “I don’t see one, but there’s a sieve; you can use that.” He handed it to them.
John took it. “We put the flour in this?”
“Yes, just put it over the bowl and put the flour in, then shake it.”
“Okay,” Arthur said. “Do you…maybe you should hold it and I should dump the flour?”
“Okay. We’ve got this. No, wait! Further forward. Further. There.”
Jon breathed a sigh of relief for the rest of it. The worst that could happen was biscuits a little too big or too small, right?
“No! Arthur, stop that!”
Or not.
“Don’t you hit me with that spoon, John!”
“Don’t eat the batter! The Google says raw eggs are bad!”
“I always used to eat it as a child.”
“That explains a lot.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re not supposed to eat it,” Jon said, rubbing his head. “But a lot of people do.” Even he wasn’t sure who he was agreeing with anymore. It did seem to mollify them both a bit, though, which he was choosing to count as a definite win.
Eventually, chocolate chip cookies in the oven and timer set, they settled in to clean things up.
“Can I go now?” Jon asked. Everything seemed to be under control.
“Don’t you want cookies?”
“You were instrumental in getting them made.”
Jon sighed. “I’ll come back tomorrow.”