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“Anything else,” he breathed. When Krishna’s grip tightened, his arms jerked involuntarily. Hugo took a breath, held it until his chest burned, and released it. He did it over and over, until his muscles melted against the Kirin’s hold. The frantic light in Hugo’s eyes remained, but he shoved it back behind a flat plane. Love, in every form and manifestation, was stupid. It didn’t belong here. It could not take up residence in this Light’s mind.

“It's a passing fad,” he said, vicious not in his tone, but his explanation. “I'm going to want it and want it until I get it, and then I'm going to take it, use it, and break it.” He wrenched out of Krishna’s hold and turned towards the sink again, attempting nonchalance.

“That's not love. That's greed.“ He knew very well the type of person he was, so why, this time, did he feel so disgusted by himself?

The silence, punctuated only by running water and Krishna’s mild movements at his back, clawed itself across Hugo’s overworked psyche. Steam billowed up from the steel basin, burned away crusts, made his hands pink with its sting; he found comfort in it. And yet it was no comparison for this curse Krishna spoke of. Stupid, curses were meant for old houses and talking skulls and people who used arcane magicks-- Hugo’s sudden laugh sounded a lot like a dry sob.

Krishna’s voice made him jump, and the scratch of his iron pad against a difficult pan ceased. It slipped into the gathering water with a ‘plop’, and instead of reaching for it, he grabbed the edges of the counter, steadying himself to listen.

Is that was love was? Right up his alley, ha ha ha, but he had never called it love. He’d also never been so frustrated before, or wanted it so fervently; he hid it well. Wasn’t love supposed to be normal? Like picket fences were normal, like grassy knolls were normal - not wanting to grab someone’s face and kiss them until you bruised their lips because youjustwantedtoleaveamark-- not normal.

And that’s what he was afraid of. That all-consuming feeling. He’d never felt this needy before. And the warmth he felt at times, as opposed to the obsession, was even worse. The impulse to see this person, to please them. It was all so saccharine and so unlike him.

“That's not enough for me, though, Krishna,” he said. He sounded tired, didn’t want to deal with this topic anymore. He just wanted to make cookies. “I can't stop at just being around them. That's not enough for me. It's never been enough for me. It won't be. What am I supposed to do?” If I can’t have what I want?

Krishna’s tone captured Hugo’s attention more than his words, though he hung off of them all the same. He turned and looked at the Kirin, watched him work at the dough and move to set the cookies into the oven. He seemed to study Krishna without really looking at him, his eyes half mast, mind preoccupied. The water hissed across piles of silverware and plates.

That’s why he didn’t want to open himself up to the feeling. Scrapes hurt, this he knew, but to willingly open oneself up and bleed and bleed and bleed without the guarantee that you’ll be stitched… Hugo did not like pain. He had always been the one with the metaphorical needle in his hand. Acknowledging this little bit to Krishna was like stretching the wound, something he was half unaware of even having. Was it supposed to be sudden like this?

He lifted his eyes when the oven was shut, stared at Krishna openly, words working within his mouth to escape. How could his friend read him so, be so versed?

“How do you know?” he asked, hand on the faucet’s lever. “How do you know there's something after denial?”

It was like having all of the pieces of a puzzle set out before you, all of them already sorted in the broken image you’re trying to fix, you just had to fit them together to make sense of it all. That’s what Krishna was, a scattered picture that he half understood, but felt too cautious to begin because there were just so many pieces.

“Yes,” he said gently, moving the first piece into place. For once he didn’t pick at the wound, though he couldn’t deny that he desperately wanted to. It may have been what he wanted, but it wasn’t what Krishna needed. Cabinets open and shut, drawers clattered open with his hands' unrest. He found a roll of trash bags and tore one free, snapped it open, and moved to the island.

“We're quite the pair,” he said, trying his hand at amusement as he picked charred pieces of cookie and sorted through what could be tossed and what could be salvaged. He held up a brick of burnt cookie and shut one eye as he peered at it, “Aren't we?”

Here they were, discussing the complications of this stupid thing Krishna claimed was love, but Hugo was too adamant to name it that, both picking at scabs like they were comparing them and just bleeding into one anothers' wounds. The dappled Light giggled, pressing the back of his hand to his brow.

“So, suppose you can cook feeling into food,” he prompted, clearly backtracking as he picked up what looked like charcoal. “Suspend your disbelief for a few minutes. What feeling do you think this represents? My guess is frustration. Maybe anxiety. You?”

He smiled softly at Krishna, patiently waiting for his friend‘s response to his invitation back to normalcy.

Hugo made a face at the word desire, like a child would at the mentioning of marriage, or, well, love. Tension flickered in and out of his body, a waning feeling as though he still expected a blow, like he was becoming accustomed to this trust thing. He held out the bag to Krishna so he could deposit his collection of smoldering pastries.

“This one,” he said, reaching across the counter. “Is longing.” He chucked it into the bag, picked up another, decidedly more misshapen cookie, “And this one is neediness” - a pause in his systematic naming of his own emotions, a wrinkled nose - “...or Quasimodo.”

Hefting the bag by its neck, Hugo dropped it onto the counter and disappeared behind the island for a moment, only to come back up with a handful of charred pieces. He pushed his hair from his face with laughter in his grin.

“And this one is pent-up, sexual frustration.”

“Until I'm blue in the face,” he confirmed with a nod, grabbing nondescript black hunks and dropping them into the bag. He couldn’t even tell if he was kidding or not. Hugo knew he would never be the one to crack and admit it, he still wanted to find some other excuse instead of the answer that was looking straight into his face.

He was selfish. He knew it, Krishna knew it.

Sterling most definitely knew it.

It was supposed to be like a real cookie, warm and gooey and every other ridiculous synonym for sentimentality you could think of. Hugo would cling to this ideology until he became one with it.

“You. You won't tell?” Okay, maybe later.

“Oh, that's inconvenient,” he said as flippantly as possible, trying his damnedest to salvage his dignity. Feelings were easier to deal with when they were his and only his. Hugo found that as soon as you involved someone else and started caring about what they could possibly think of you, like a friend, like… like whatever Sterling was to him (which, he told himself, wasn’t love, ha ha ha!), you started puzzling over the possibilities of how they would react and no matter how many times you played it out in your head, you just knew it wouldn’t be the way life played out.

But, picking at the counter with a nail, he told himself that it wasn’t love and was content. At least, he told himself that, too.

“Well, I'm good at keeping secrets too,” he declared. And he was, for the most part, simply because he usually forgot them after a while. He honestly hoped this was forgotten as well.

“When will the cookies be ready?”