Chapter Text
Leo is sick for a couple more days, which unfortunately meant for Vegetta that he was unable to do some baking and continue selling them.
And he would’ve called Roier to have him take care of Leo so that he could bake for a while, and unleash his creativity- totally not because Foolish’s bakery was right opposite from their kitchen window.
However, Roier had instead started teasing him about Foolish, and so Vegetta just ended the call without waiting for his answer.
Speaking of the good looking baker, he had actually come over a few other times to see Leo, once with some homemade soup, which he had to practically force feed Leo the soup, but he did not have the heart to tell the excited man the next day about what had actually happened.
Instead, he flashed Foolish a bright smile and told him that Leo had enjoyed it a lot, and despite the lying, his heart still stuttered for a second as he watched as Foolish’s eyes practically lit up, and smiles so wide that his eyes almost disappeared behind his grin.
It vaguely reminds him of an excitable puppy, who is just eager to please and receive praise. And Vegetta can almost imagine Foolish’s imaginary tail wagging as he tells him how much Leo enjoyed his food.
And to his amusement, Foolish had come over with pastries sometimes, which included some cookies and his brownies which were still ‘in the works’, despite being one of the tastiest brownies Vegetta has ever had.
It’s during one of these ‘meetings’ that Vegetta learns that Foolish had moved here alone, with one of his friends ‘Bad’ which, and Vegetta has no idea why Foolish and his friends have such funny names, delivers him produce every week. Hearing the passion that the younger man standing in front of him had for baking made him all the more invested in his life story.
And it’s also when he realises that Foolish is so easily distracted, almost like a puppy who can in one moment go from going on a walk to chasing different small animals, in the way that he had jumped from topic to topic, going from new baking recipes to him and Leo reading her Lobo Nocturno comics out loud to him.
Every single one of his stories were also accompanied by facial expressions and funny voices that Vegetta couldn’t help but laugh at times, which seemed to fuel Foolish even more as he further exaggerated the voices to make them more high-pitched, which Vegetta was sure that it was an attempt to send him into a heart attack by just laughing.
And every time there would be a time where Foolish had to leave, and tells him that he can ‘call on him anytime’ which seemed bizarre to Vegetta since he didn’t even have Foolish’s number- not that he wanted it, of course.
It's during one of Foolish’s weekly calls with Bad that it hits him.
The usual agenda for the call is how much produce does Bad have to send to Foolish and when they are both free to schedule the meet up. And it was during this particular call that Bad confronts him.
“So Foolish, why do you need me to deliver you so many strawberries? It's almost twice as much as before! Is there a certain someone you're trying to-” Foolish can almost visualise his sly smile over the phone, and he feels his face warm up at the implication, and lets out a noise of protest.
“Don't say it like that Bad, what the seal-'' Of course he isn't trying to woo anyone! And especially not the handsome baker with an adorable child that Bad is trying to imply. He's currently pacing around his kitchen, a frilly apron still tied around his waist and holding a piping bag filled with mascarpone cream.
He was initially making Vegetta a tiramisu dessert, despite having never attempted it before. Its mostly because of the fact that he had spent their last interaction ranting about new desserts that he was going to try, when Vegetta suddenly grasp his hands with Foolish’s and him having a weird fluttery feeling in his gut, kind of like the ones he would get whenever he had to present in class, but instead of making him want to puke, this one made him want to take Vegetta’s hands in his and start bouncing around his kitchen.
“-Foolish?”
Foolish blinks as he is jolted from his thoughts, right the call with Bad. “Huh? I’m here.” he rushes out with a feeble attempt at convincing Bad that he wasn't just imagining prancing around his kitchen with his supposed ‘certain someone’.
“Oh you’re hopeless already.” Bad snorts. And Foolish immediately starts protesting, “What no why would you say that?”
“You don’t need to try and hide it, you know, you literally try new desserts every time you go over and they ‘just so happened’ to be one of Vegetta’s favourite pastries.” Foolish can practically hear the smirk that Bad is sporting without a doubt.
But now that Bad mentioned it, he did try his best to make Vegetta’s favourite snacks every time he went over in an attempt to cheer him up for the past couple of days, especially since he seemed upset that Leo had caught a stomach bug just as she was about to recover from her food poisoning.
Foolish winced, remembering how he would brush it off whenever Leo ate a big spoonful of raw cookie dough, but under Vegetta’s persistence he had stopped trying to apologise for it.
But he swears that the baked goods were only to cheer him up, and since they were friends! Well he thinks they are friends, especially with how close he is with Leo, surely they are at least acquaintances, and with their little chats whenever he visited them he was sure that they were friends.
And he certainly wouldn’t mind if they were slightly more than friends, although that thought has been nestled deep inside his brain, never to be opened.
As he walks past the window, he suddenly spots Vegetta walking towards him, and in a panic, quickly stumbles out a “Gotta go Bad” before rushing to the door and wrenching it open to reveal Vegetta, with Leo in his arms tucked into his neck.
He jostles her for a moment, in an attempt to wake her up. And when Leo starts looking around groggily, she suddenly squirms to be let down as she spots Foolish, and leaps into his arms once she’s on the ground.
Foolish bursts into giggles as he catches her, twirling her around once and hoisting her onto his hips.
“Hey! You're all healed up now and stuff!” He grins and turns to Vegetta, who funnily enough, almost has a bashful smile as he chuckles at Leo’s energetic tendencies.
“Yes, and now that she’s not sick, this little one has been itching to go out,” He says, while ruffling her hair, and laughing when she starts swatting his hand away. Suddenly, Vegetta almost looks like he’s turning slightly red, “and I was hoping that you could take care of her for today? I need to complete some orders at my bakery, and as much as I love Leo, she is going to distract me”
Foolish nods without hesitation and starts to jump around in small hops, with Leo still in his arms, accompanied by his silly voice, and starts chanting “Foolich y Leo”. It doesn’t take long for Leo to start copying him as Vegetta watches from beside them, chuckling at times, watching Foolish bounce around with his precious girl.
Vegetta leaves a little after that, with a kiss pressed on Leo’s cheek and a wave to Foolish. The moment he leaves, Foolish claps his hands together, “What do you think we should do today Leo?”
Leo ponders for a second before clapping her hands together, to mimic Foolish, “Bake!” and Foolish responds with a swift “Yes chef!” and wills his face to be serious for a second as he nods in agreement.
In the week that Leo had been sick, Foolish was actually able to find a stool that allowed Leo to see over the table as she stood on it, and so out with the unstable cardboard.
They quickly decide to make a little cake and decorate the top of the cake by piping Lobo Nocturno on it, especially with a limited edition of the comic coming out soon. As they start making the batter of the cake, Leo somehow ends up sitting on the table, with her legs swinging back and forth as she excitedly fills him in on the events of the latest issue of the comic.
“And, he swings down from the building with his grappling hook and lands-” just then, their doorbell rings as Leo is explaining, and she huffs in annoyance, and Foolish laughs and tells her to wait a second, and heads to the door. He doesn’t think that he has missed out any orders, he even double checked and triple checked before he and Leo started the cake baking.
When he opens the door, he is suddenly bombarded with a man, slightly younger than himself, with spiky brown hair.
“Hey man, are you uh, Mr Foolish?”
Foolish stares at him for a quick moment and gives him the tiniest of nods. Just then, he hears a shriek behind him, “Roier!” and he feels a force colliding into his legs as he tries his best not to fall. When he looks down, he spots Leo leaping into this man’s arms.
“Leo! You’ve recovered!” Leo nods vigorously and tries her best to pull the guy into Foolish’s bakery.
“Roier this is my new best friend Foolich, and Foolich this is uncle Roier!” Leo beams up at both of them, while Roier tries to hold back a snicker at Leo’s pronunciation of Foolish’s name.
Well I'm here to see Leo, but I see she's busy...” Roier trails off, and Leo immediately cries out, pulling on the pant leg of both Foolish and Roier.
“Can’t we all just bake? Please?” Leo turns to Foolish with what is most alike to puppy dog eyes, and without thinking, Foolish agrees. Anything to make Leo happy, he thinks.
And almost immediately, Foolish nearly regrets his decision, as his kitchen becomes ten times more chaotic, now with Roier and Leo fighting every few minutes, and thankfully the cake is already in the oven, as they’re just grabbing flour off of the table and flinging at each other.
While the cake is baking, Foolish is trying to come to a conclusion whether Roier is actually Leo’s uncle, especially with how they fight- almost like pseudo siblings. That is until one of them accidentally flings some flour at him, and thankfully he was wearing an apron, if not he would’ve been distraught.
He looks up to see Leo’s hand frozen in a throwing position, and Roier having his hands up in a ‘’surrender’ position and mumbling out a “It was Leo!”.
So Foolish puts on his silliest voice and cries out “I’m coming to get you!” before chasing Leo around the table before he manages to grab her and lifts her up effortlessly onto his shoulder as she shrieks with joy to be let down.
From the corner of his eye, Foolish is able to see Roier standing in the same spot, with a fond look in his eyes, and despite not knowing much about him, he can appreciate how much he seems to care for his family.
And almost like time resumed, Foolish is thrown back into trying to balance Leo on his shoulders as she bundles up a chunk of his hair in each hand and steers him around the room.
Afterwards, they spend the rest of their afternoon lying on his couch, as Leo excitedly narrates out each of the Lobo Nocturno movies that Vegetta had brought her to see, with Foolish and Roier chiming in with “wow!”s whenever Leo dives into the couch.
When the cake comes out of the oven, it becomes apparent that Foolish is the only one who is capable of holding the piping bag upright. The too small hands of Leo kept causing the bag to flop, which then she decided to poke at Roier, making his piping lines come out wobbly. But if anyone asks Foolish, he would tell them with cheeks red from laughing, that it was a group effort.
“Thank you! Come again soon!” Vegetta exclaims as the customer leaves his bakery. He for one is relieved that the work day is over, despite him spending the last week by Leo’s side, he already misses her despite it only being a few hours.
Roier did pop in earlier, asking where Leo was, and upon Vegetta’s answer that she was with Foolish, Roier snickered and then was chased out of Vegetta’s bakery with a rolling pin threatening to hit him.
After thinking for awhile, he decides to make some cookies, especially with how Foolish was bringing over pastries non-stop, surely in an attempt to intimidate Vegetta, so now he will show Foolish that he was good at baking cookies, to further scare him.
Vegetta has a tendency to get lost in his thoughts whenever he bakes alone, kind of like reflecting on his thoughts lately. And for whatever reason, the silly baker seems to be said thoughts recently.
He quickly snaps himself out of it, instead opting to put on some music to fill the silence as he worked on the cookies.
Once the cookies have finished baking, he’s left with a little space on the cookie to pipe a little smiley face that ends up a bit more happy and cute than menacing and triumphant- which was supposed to symbolise Vegetta winning this ‘bake off’ thing they are doing.
But he thinks that Foolish will probably understand what the smiles are supposed to mean, he thinks as he puts the cookies aside to find a box.
He then rushes to Foolish’s bakery once he realises how late it is, with the sky already starting to turn dark. When he knocks on the door, Foolish is the one who opens it, with a messy hair-do that looks like a bedhead. When he peers into the bakery, he sees Leo sprawled on a couch, which he supposes makes his bed head guess quite accurate.
The thought of cuddling on the couch with Leo and Foolish suddenly pops into his mind, and he can’t help but latch onto it, the domesticity of the scene in his mind makes him feel warm, and safe. He shakes himself out of it and quickly passes the cookie box to Foolish.
“I think they just knocked out while we were watching some cartoons, we were kind of running around and stuff so” Foolish sheepishly says as he leads Vegetta to the couch.
Vegetta then carefully picks up Leo, and manoeuvres her around to take the cake box that Foolish hands him.
“It’s the cake me and Leo worked on.” Vegetta nods in understanding and quietly makes his way out, but not before placing a kiss on Foolish’s cheek.
He rushes back home, and when he was tucking in Leo, he assures himself that he isn’t in love with Foolish, it was a gesture of gratitude, since he was so willing to spend time with Leo. Of course he isn’t in love with him, you know, since they’re rivals.