[One for all] I Can't Believe a Year Went By So Fast

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Nikola is bored, a fact he finds patently unfair as it's his birthday, and for once he's not holed up in an abandoned manor somewhere with no one but unintelligent, undead minions for company.

He thinks there should be cake, at the very least, so he's wandered down to the kitchen in an attempt to either scrounge some up or make one himself.

Probably someone should intervene before the Big Guy finds him snooping around the kitchen.

Comments

[w-zimmerman.livejournal.com]

Will looks up as a vampire stomps into the kitchen. "Oh, hey, Nikola. Caramel corn? It's fresh," he says, offering the bowl. "Just made it a few hours ago."

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Nikola wrinkles his nose. "No, thanks. Never been fond of anything that sticks in my teeth." He gives Will a predatory grin.

[w-zimmerman.livejournal.com]

Will smiles back, putting down the bowl and climbing to his feet. "This is apparently my day for showing off my culinary side. Do you want cake or a special meal?"

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Nikola arches an eyebrow. "Feeling guilty still?"

[w-zimmerman.livejournal.com]

Will shrugs. "I was a jerk. Besides, it's the 10th and I couldn't begin to think what to get the vampire who can invent anything..."

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Nikola pulls up a stool and manages to sprawl over it. "Schwartzwälderkirschtorte, then," he says mildly. "If you're so intent to cook your way back into my good graces."

[w-zimmerman.livejournal.com]

Will refrains from making comments about the way to a man's heart and pulls out his internet phone to look up the recipe. "Uh, could you spell that?"

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Nikola rolls his eyes. "Black Forest cherry cake," he translates. "More or less. You know, you're not building any confidence in your culinary skills with that."

[w-zimmerman.livejournal.com]

"If you'd said it in English, I would have known what you were talking about," Will answered, putting away his phone and opening cabinets and the fridge.

Dutch cocoa, check. Fresh cherries, check. Whipped cream... going to have to make his own.

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If Will had tried to use pre-made whipped cream, Nikola might have thrown a fit.

"The Black Forest," he points out, "is in Germany. Hence Schwartzwälderkirschtorte, which is what it's properly called."

[w-zimmerman.livejournal.com]

"Ah," Will answers, putting a metal mixing bowl into the freezer, then sitting down to pit the cherries. "Sorry. I took Latin and Spanish, not German."

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"Clearly," Nikola mutters.

"That's a terrible shame, you know. German is such an efficient language. Where else could you put four concepts together to make one word?"

[w-zimmerman.livejournal.com]

"True," Will agrees, wondering if there's a gram scale in the kitchen or if he's going to need to run down to the lab. "Maybe I'll give the folks at Rosetta Stone a call if I get some time between treating patients, recruiting new talent, and letting Ashley beat the crap out of me. Couldn't hurt to learn."

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"Certainly more pleasant than letting Ashely beat the crap out of you."

[w-zimmerman.livejournal.com]

"Kind of a toss-up, actually. I mean, yeah, pain, but also gorgeous woman in spandex who moves like a panther on the prowl. Nice offset. German's expressive and everything, but you've also got that third gender to contend with..."

Will finishes the cherries and starts searching cabinets for a scale.

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"Mmm...true," Nikola murmurs, clearly having thought of this before.

"Spanish doesn't have a third gender?"

[w-zimmerman.livejournal.com]

"Not the way I remember it. Granted, that was North American Spanish, which I'm given to understand is a different animal for European Spanish." He gives a little cry of triumph as he finds a gram scale tucked away with other cooking supplies. "Found in better kitchens and meth labs everywhere..."

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Nikola shrugs. "I'm not sure either way. Latin has a third gender, though. And more declensions than German."

[w-zimmerman.livejournal.com]

"True but, at the risk of sounding like a cretin, I pretty much took Latin for the vocab rather than the syntax. I audited the course instead of enrolling so I wouldn't have to mess around with declining anything or figuring out how word-order changed meaning," Will admits, hanging his head. "I know; I give a bad name to geeks everywhere..."

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"Word-order doesn't change the meaning in Latin," Nikola says. "That's rather the point of declension."

[w-zimmerman.livejournal.com]

"Really?" Will shrugs. "In case it hasn't become obvious yet, language is not my strong-suit. This is much more my sphere," he admits, gesturing around the kitchen. "Do you like your cake chocolaty, or really chocolaty?"

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"It's a German chocolate cake," Nikola says. "It should be chocolatey, but not overly so, and not rich."

[w-zimmerman.livejournal.com]

"You've got it," Will answers, saluting. "When I'm left to my own devices, I modify German chocolate in all kinds of ungodly ways involving baker's chocolate and spices. I won't even freak out your inner purist by getting into that. It's your birthday cake and, if you want traditional, you get traditional."

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"Somethings cannot be improved upon," Nikola says.

[w-zimmerman.livejournal.com]

"Traditions become traditional for a reason," Will agrees, sifting together the dry ingredients. He eyes the stand mixer for a moment, then shakes his head and decides that if he's going to do it, he might as well do it right.