The Cult of Good Use
by Siarade
All characters herein belong to Marvel, and are used without permission but for entertainment purposes only.
After all of the great feedback I got on my first story, I got very inspired to keep writing. Thank you everyone, for all of your great support -- especially Alicia, Duey, BJ, Pebbs and Redhawk. In fact, it all made me feel so gooey on the inside that I had to write a story about goo. ;)
And you know, I have no idea where this title came from.
"Little late for baking, isn't it?"
That was unmistakably Nate's voice, despite his accent coming out stronger and sounding about two tones lower than usual, plus a bit gravelly. He'd been asleep, which was good -- but he'd been woken up by something, which wasn't so good.
"Summers, one thing you obviously haven't learned yet is that it is _never_ too late to bake cookies."
"Chocolate chip, right?" She kept her back to him as he moved into the kitchen, leaning his hips on a counter behind her and crossing one ankle over the other.
"Always."
His snort came out more as a sigh and he tiredly rubbed his face with his hand. "Okay, Dom, I can understand cookies, but it's three a.m., and I know there are those packaged kind in the cupboard somewhere. Do you really feel it necessary to bake?"
Whipping around and holding her spoon in a fighting pose, she glared at him with a mixture of disdain and derision. "Listen, future-boy, chocolate chip cookies fall under the category of _craving_, and I happen to respect my cravings far too much to ever feed them with store bought, half-stale out-of-a-bag Chips-A-Hoy rejects simply on the premise that it's more convenient to do so. Got it?" Spinning back around, she put her spoon back to good use.
"Well, that's telling me," he muttered, sounding a little disgruntled. Irritation stamped her forehead, and she considered telling him to take a hike, that if he wasn't in the mood to put up with her humor then he could go be broody somewhere else -- she had better things to do. But the link was bubbling darkly behind her ears, and she took into account his unaccountable presence, so instead she continued to dole out her cookie dough in silence.
He had that exhausted, post-adrenaline glaze in his eyes, she'd noted, and he stood with that same kind of posture he had whenever they'd come too close to losing in battle. And the fact that he'd come down here probably meant something -- she wasn't quite sure what, except that whatever nightmare he'd had was probably a repeater, and he probably was mucking through a miserable bout of not-quite-wanting-to- be-alone yet.
"Have you ever had freshly baked chocolate chip cookies, Nate?"
"Probably," he mumbled distantly.
Her eyebrows hit her hairline as she looked at him over her shoulder. "No, obviously you haven't. All right, buddy, you're gonna get the only lesson you'll ever need in cookies."
She pivoted away from the stove to face him, holding the barely depleted bowl of cookie dough in one hand and the cookie sheet in the other. He mindlessly took the bowl and made room for her at the counter, dutifully accepting the fresh spoon she shoved at him.
Her tone was all authority. "Never, ever eat a chocolate chip cookie that hasn't been made in the last hour. If it's cold, it's worthless. If it's fresh, however, it doesn't matter if it's square or amoeba-shaped -- it's good. And when I say fresh, I mean the chocolate has to still be at least slightly gooey. Otherwise, it's a pale shadow of what it should be and you're just setting yourself up for disappointment. Got it?"
"Got it." A half-grin wobbled on his mouth before he could hide it.
"Now help me finish this."
They went to work, digging out lumps of congealed mix of mostly flour, sugar and chocolate then smearing them carefully on the cookie sheet, portioning them out in a careless array of sizes and shapes.
"I think Jean made me cookies once."
"I can see her doing that," Dom replied -- and she could. Jean could be Betty-fricking-Crocker sometimes.
"Yeah. When I first came back here, after...she made cookies. Not for me, probably, just made ‘em, and let me have some."
"Were they good?"
He glanced at her and cocked his mouth."They were warm, if that counts."
Dom nodded in sharp approval. "Damn straight."
"I doubt Maddie ever did, though."
"No," she snorted, "I can't quite see that."
"Well, maybe if they were laced with arsenic and fed to Scott. Then it might have happened." He smiled all the way up into his eyes for a second, and she chuckled.
The bowl was half-empty by the time they spoke again, and Domino had put one sheet into the oven already. "You ever thought about having kids, Dom?"
Her skeleton tried to jump free of her skin, and it seemed ready to break loose any moment before she could come up with a normal response.
"Do I look maternal?"
Expecting an off-hand remark to her off-hand remark, Dom frowned at being under his sudden scrutiny. He had turned to face her, his head tipped slightly and his eyes intense as they sought...something. This was very abruptly a conversation she didn't want to have.
"You look strong. Mothers, or the good ones, anyway, always have to be strong."
She had her caustic reply all ready, when he said, "Aliya was strong."
Well, that was a kick in the stomach, and her dry retort fluttered away.
"I'm sure she had to be, considering."
"Yeah." He still held the spoon, but he wasn't doing anything with it. She, on the other hand, couldn't stop herself from spreading the dough, like her hands were a factory keeping her from dealing with Nate directly.
Guilt leapt over her like someone had tossed a net, and she forced herself to put down the spoon. Quid pro quo, right? "I don't know what I could offer a kid, I guess. I mean, what kind of life do I have to give? Forever in day care because Mommy's off at her day-and-night entirely illegal mercenary job on the other side of the world? It wouldn't be fair."
He nodded to concede the point, and turned back to the cookie dough. Domino followed suit. "You'd still be a good mother, though."
"You know that for a fact?" She countered coolly.
"I just mean that -- well, look how good you are with the kids." She snorted and muttered something about "den mother," but he ignored it. "I'm not saying it'd be easy, but, I just wondered if it was even something you wanted."
"You're just a fountain of curiosity, aren't you?" Pure accusation dripped down her voice.
"Dom," he softened his tone, to prove he wasn't being nosy just for the sake of nosiness.
"Hell, Nate, what the hell would I do with a kid? I could what -- make it cookies? I've got about as much maternal instinct as Bishop. In fact, the only thing I could do that he couldn't is breast feed. So there, I have thought about it. I'm not the mommy-type. I'd probably drop it, or something."
A short snort was his first reply, but he seemed to gather himself up for more. "You could just think of it as a gun. You don't drop your guns, do you?"
"No, but then, I think I might get hauled in by social services if I try to use my infant as a weapon. I mean, look what happened when Maddie did."
His face closed up, which punched through her anger like a bulldozer. "Damn, Nate," she whispered, "that was out of bounds. Sorry."
Shrugging, he waved his spoon. "I probably deserved it. For being pushy."
"Yeah, well, sometimes you can't help yourself." She met his eyes with a tiny smile.
"I think you'd be a good mother, Dom. Really." All the honesty he had was in those eyes, and in some quiet, hidden part of her heart, she was warmed by it.
They were quiet a while.
"Nothing changes the facts, though. The kind of life we -- I live, it just isn't fair to put a kid through that.
"You don't know that we -- you'll be doing this forever, though."
"Not forever...but probably long enough that I'll be past the prime child-bearing age for it. And I refuse to be one of those sixty year-old grandmas who tricks all the infertility specialists just so she can play the woman's version of mid-life crisis."
He chuckled. "Well, you're the kind of person who's liable to get pregnant pretty easy."
She turned on him, cookie spoon raised like a weapon. "Now what the hell does that mean, Summers? You calling me easy?"
"No!" He retreated, arms up. "Although, that did come out bad, didn't it."
"You're damn right it did, buddy. Tell me why I shouldn't smash your nose in." Somehow, he couldn't quite tell if she was kidding or not.
"All I meant is that you look like a very fertile woman....flonq. That didn't come out any better."
In one quick splatter, his face was covered in the sticky, cream-colored dough, and a chocolate chip clung perilously to his earlobe.
Death glared in his eyes. "You are so in for it, lady."
She actually shrieked, which she was sure she had never done in her life, as he grabbed a fistful of dough and smashed it into her hair, grinding it down for good measure. Cookie dough flew throughout the kitchen, and before they knew it they were both covered.
"Die, Dayspring!" She roared, hurling two handfuls of the stuff at him. Both hit their mark, one on his stomach and the other dead-square on his forehead.
"Where's your luck now?!" He retaliated with a booming voice, and she sputtered as dough flew up her nose.
"By the Goddess, what is going on here?!" Ororo, horrified and wearing a pale pink robe, stood in the doorway of the kitchen and managed to look as if she were witnessing a holocaust. A dollop dropped from Nathan's nose.
Domino wiped her nose. "The cookies attacked. We were forced to defend ourselves."
Ororo stood disbelieving, noting the dough on the refrigerator, splattered on a the sink handle, blotting the overhead light. She turned her eyes to Nate, full of fire, brimstone and accusation. "I demand an explanation."
He squirmed, for just a second. "Well, see, we were baking cookies, when the dough just leapt up, cried, ‘freeEEEEEddoooomm!' and flew at us with the might of a thousand armies..."
Hissing with exasperation, Ororo glowered mightily. "You will clean this up, of course?"
"Of course."
Shooting them both killing glances, Ororo whipped around and stormed out of the room. But Nate and Dom no dissolved into giggles long before she was out of earshot, and there was a rumbling of thunder outside. This, however, simply made them laugh outright.
"You know," Domino said finally, grinning as she wiped his cheek with her finger. "I don't think I _should_ be a mother. Sometimes I'm way too much of a kid."
Nate grinned back, returning the favor as he swept a chocolate chip from her chin, which he then popped into his mouth. "I can see that. But you'd have to admit, if the kid did stuff like this..." he glanced about the kitchen, so completely covered in cookie dough that there was no way they'd be out of her before sunrise, "it'd be fun."
"Yeah," she agreed, and the smile left her face suddenly, replaced by a serious look. "And you know --"
The timer buzzed, silencing her.
"What?"
She shook her head and let the smile slip back into place. "Nothing. C'mon, I'm hungry."
As she moved to the oven, Nathan's own smile fell a bit. So different from his dream, Tyler's face swam into his vision, and Aliya's, and all the old familiar hurt associated with them paused for a minute as he remembered the three of them together -- young, laughing, happy in the moment with each other.
"Nate?" Dom held the tray out to him. "Wanna give me a hand, here?"
There was a question in her eyes that reached deeper than cookies, and he met it with as much honesty as he could, smiling a smile that somehow shook off the past. "Yeah."