Chapter 6 Frosting Friction
Frosting Friction
Cetus
The chocolate cake sits cooling on the counter, filling the residential pod with rich Earth-sweet scent. Tavia’s scraping the last bits of batter from the bowl with single-minded focus, her yellow markings pulsing contentedly.
The cake should have my attention. Or the atmospheric readings that need monitoring. Anything except the woman three meters away, reorganizing my kitchen with the kind of easy competence that makes heat spread across my shoulders.
Seventy-three thousand credits.
Predatory lending.
Collectors with advanced shielding arriving in three to four days.
She told me everything an hour ago—trusted me with the truth that’s been eating at her since she arrived.
Now she’s trying to pretend everything’s fine, humming quietly while she washes mixing bowls, but I can see the tension in her shoulders.
The way her hands pause fractionally before each movement, like she’s bracing for impact.
My marking patterns shift before I can control them—protective colors I haven’t displayed since Seraphina was sick. Since I last had someone I needed to shield from the universe’s cruelty.
Wait.
When did I start thinking of Dove as someone I need to protect?
“Papa!” Tavia’s voice cuts through my spiraling thoughts. “The bowl’s clean now. Can we make frosting while the cake cools?”
“The cake requires adequate cooling time before frosting application—”
“Which is why we should make the frosting now!” She’s already pulling ingredients from storage with the determined efficiency of a trained negotiator. “Dove can teach us! She said Earth frosting is different from nutritional coating.”
“Everything is different from your nutritional coating, small person,” Pickles observes through the kitchen speakers. “The Captain’s baking skills represent a significant improvement over the Terraforming Specialist’s previous culinary methodologies.”
“I prepare nutritionally complete meals.”
“You prepare edible sustenance,” Dove corrects, but she’s smiling. “There’s a difference between fuel and food.”
“The distinction seems arbitrary.”
“The distinction,” Tavia announces with the authority of an eight-year-old who’s discovered chocolate, “is that one makes you happy and one keeps you alive.”
Dove’s laugh is warm and genuine, and heat blooms across my chest in response—automatic, undeniable, beyond my control.
“Your small person is wise beyond her years,” Dove says.
“She’s been spending too much time with Pickles.”
“I neither confirm nor deny providing philosophical guidance to the small person,” Pickles responds. “However, I note that buttercream frosting preparation would benefit from close instructional proximity. I have prepared—”
“Do NOT say you’ve prepared slides,” Dove interrupts.
“I was going to say I have prepared the kitchen workspace for optimal teaching conditions.”
Tavia’s already arranging herself at the table with her datapad, far enough away to observe but clearly positioning herself as supervisor rather than participant. Her markings do that rapid pulse pattern that means she’s plotting something.
“Papa needs to learn too,” she announces. “He should stand close so he can see exactly what Dove’s doing.”
I open my mouth to point out that I have excellent distance vision, but Dove’s already pulling butter from cold storage, her expression amused.
“Does everything in this family involve elaborate setup for ‘learning experiences’?” she asks.
“The small person demonstrates exceptional tactical planning for her developmental stage,” Pickles says. “I find it admirable.”
“You’re all conspiring.”
“Affirmative,” Pickles agrees cheerfully.
Dove sets the butter on the counter, then looks at me with those dark eyes that seem to see straight through my carefully maintained control. “Well? Are you going to learn how to make proper frosting, or are you going to keep pretending you’re not interested?”
I cross to the counter, hyperaware of how the space suddenly feels smaller. “I’m interested in comprehensive culinary education.”
“Sure you are.” Her smile is knowing.
The butter is soft enough to work with, and she demonstrates the proper whisking technique with the kind of fluid confidence that speaks to years of practice. I watch her hands—smaller than mine, human-soft, moving with precise economy.
“The key is creaming the butter first,” she explains, angling the bowl so I can see. “You have to feel the resistance change as it softens and incorporates air. Here—”
She steps back slightly, making space. “Your turn.”
I take the whisk, focus on the task. The butter yields under the pressure, transforming texture.
“Good,” she says. “But you’re too tense. Here—”
Her hands cover mine on the whisk, and every coherent thought evaporates.
She’s tucked between my arms now, her back a hand’s width from my chest—close enough to feel her warmth radiating through the space between us, not close enough to close the gap.
Her hands guide mine through the whisking motion, and I can smell her.
Not just the vanilla and cherricus fruit scent that’s been driving me slowly insane, but something underneath that’s uniquely her. Warm. Human. Intoxicating.
“Feel that?” she asks, and I have to force myself to focus on the butter instead of the way her body fits in this space like she belongs here. “The texture’s changing. It should be light and fluffy, not dense.”
Heat floods across my shoulders—visible, I’m sure, in the brightening patterns. I can see them reflected in the metal bowl, pulsing with my heartbeat, broadcasting exactly how affected I am by her proximity.
She notices. Of course she notices.
Her breath catches slightly, but she doesn’t pull away. If anything, she leans back fractionally, her warmth seeping through my clothes.
“Cetus,” she says quietly. “You’re not even watching what I’m doing.”
“I’m paying attention.” My voice drops into harmonic registers I can’t control.
“To the frosting?”
Long pause. I should lie. Should maintain professional distance.
“No.”
Her hands still over mine. The kitchen is very quiet except for Tavia’s stylus scratching against her datapad and the soft hum of environmental systems.
“We should add the sugar,” Dove says finally, but she doesn’t move.
Neither do I.
I’m running hot enough that she has to feel it, but instead of pulling away, she makes a soft sound—not quite a sigh—that does illegal things to my already compromised control.
“Dove—”
The kitchen timer shrieks.
We break apart like we’ve touched a live current. Dove’s cheeks are flushed, her breathing slightly uneven. My markings blaze bright enough to light the workspace.
“The cake!” Tavia announces, far too cheerfully. “Papa, you should check if it’s done!”
I move to the oven with careful precision, grateful for a task that doesn’t involve standing dangerously close to Dove while fighting every instinct that’s screaming at me to pull her closer.
The cake is perfect. Of course it is. Because the universe has a twisted sense of humor.
“It needs to cool completely,” I say, setting it on the designated cooling rack. “We should—”
A massive yawn from Tavia cuts me off. She stretches dramatically, her markings dimming to sleepy patterns. “I’m so tired. Storm pressure always makes me sleepy.”
“You were energetic five minutes ago,” Dove observes, clearly suspicious.
“Very sudden fatigue,” Tavia says solemnly. “Very scientific. Papa, can you help me with my sleep routine?”
She’s absolutely giving us alone time. It’s as subtle as a meteor impact.
“It’s early for sleep cycle—”
“I’m eight and three-quarters and I know when I need rest,” Tavia announces with wounded dignity. “Unless Papa doesn’t want to do bedtime routine?”
I recognize manipulation when I see it. I also recognize that arguing with my daughter when she’s in tactical mode is an exercise in futility.
“Fine. Bedtime routine.”
Tavia bounces up, already moving toward her quarters, then pauses. “Dove, you’ll still be here when I wake up, right?”
Something flickers across Dove’s face—too quick to interpret fully, but it looks like longing mixed with fear.
“I’ll be here,” she says softly.
Tavia’s smile could power the station’s reactors. “Good. Because we still need to frost the cake tomorrow, and Papa needs more teaching.”
“I’m certain he does,” Dove agrees, and I refuse to look at her because my markings will absolutely betray the direction of my thoughts.
Tavia’s sleep routine is normally efficient—wash, teeth, pajamas, bed. Tonight she’s drawn it out with questions about tomorrow’s activities, observations about the storm patterns, and increasingly transparent commentary about how nice it is to have Dove here.
“Do you like her, Papa?” she asks when I’m tucking her in.
“This is not an appropriate conversation—”
“Your marks are really bright.” She pokes my forearm where the marking patterns pulse. “They get bright when you’re happy. You’ve been bright a lot since Dove arrived.”
“Bioluminescent response patterns are complex and don’t always correlate to—”
“You like her,” Tavia says with complete certainty. “And she likes you too. I can tell.”
“Sleep. Now.”
“She makes you smile. Real smiles, not work smiles.” Her yellow eyes are far too knowing. “Mama would like her.”
The observation hits harder than expected. Would Seraphina like Dove? The question feels disloyal and necessary in equal measure.
“Mama would want you to be happy,” Tavia continues quietly. “She told me that. Before. That she wanted us to be happy.”
My throat tightens. “I know, small one.”
“So it’s okay if you like Dove. It’s okay if you want her to stay.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Why not?”
Because she’s leaving. Because I have no right to ask her to stay. Because three years of careful control is disintegrating in the space of days and I don’t know how to stop it.
“Sleep,” I say instead. “We’ll discuss this when you’re not deploying tactical exhaustion.”
Her giggle is unrepentant. “I love you, Papa.”