Work Text:
The bright studio lights stung Bitty’s eyes, but he powered through, keeping a picture-perfect smile on his face. It wasn’t the first time he had sat through a talk show interview, and given how successful his most recent cookbook was— and the fact that he had already started pulling together ideas for a third one— it certainly wouldn’t be the last time.
“So Eric,” the hostess began, leaning her chin in her hand, “Obviously the internet loves seeing the truly fantastic creations you post on your Instagram, and given that your birthday is in just a couple days, can we expect to see something exciting up there soon? After all, it has been quite a while since you posted an elaborate cake.” A small huff of a laugh escaped Bitty. He had been waiting for this question since filming had started, and here it finally was.
“Oh no,” he said with a flippant shake of his hand, “I spend every other day of the year baking, my birthday is the one day I promise myself a day off. I leave that in the hands of my husband, Jack.” The hostess raised a curious eyebrow; this was clearly not the answer she had been expecting.
“Your husband? The sports star? Are you sure that’s the best idea?”
Eric laughed, “I know that athletes aren’t necessarily what people think of when they picture a baker, but not only is Jack pretty dang handy in the kitchen in general, he loves baking with me, has the entire time we’ve been together. After all those years baking as a team, I can promise you he’s picked up a trick or two.”
“Well, I’m sure I’m not alone when I say I can’t wait to see what he manages to whip up!”
_/_/_/
This was an unmitigated disaster.
Jack made a conscious effort to regulate his breathing has he looked around the mayhem he normally called a kitchen. There was flour everywhere, mysterious liquids dripping off counters, and a thin curl of black smoke came out of the oven. And in the middle of it, completely unconcerned by the wreckage around her, sat the orchestrator of this chaos. One Lisette Bittle-Zimmermann, who at the tender age of three years old had just enough self-awareness to recognize the kind of mayhem she had the ability to create but not enough to care about the consequences. In other words, if someone were trying to very meticulously bake something truly spectacular for the person they love most in the world, allowing a small child who lives by a policy of pandemonium as a general rule to be involved in the process at all was, in hindsight, a Very Bad Idea.
In truth, for most of the process, Lissy had been an angel. She had spent a large portion of her life thus far in kitchens with baking going on. The hum of the oven was her lullaby, the sight of a stand mixer at work was her mobile. However, the parent who normally did the baking was obviously Bitty. And for Bitty, baking was so old hat, so second nature to him he barely needed to think while doing it. And because of that, he had plenty of brain power to spare to keep an eye on a baby-now-toddler. Jack, while he was probably a better baker than the average citizen, was nowhere near Bitty’s level in pure baking instinct, and that combined with his own perfectionist nature meant that when he baked, he had a tendency to focus on that and nothing else no matter how hard he tried. And when you have your young daughter in the kitchen with you, allowing your attention to deviate for even a moment is a recipe for disaster.
Jack had been so proud of himself. He had the first round of cake pans in the oven, and the next round were poured and waiting on the counter for their turn. He was just getting ready to start on the buttercream. This year he planned to outshine all his past baking endeavors, and so far, he was on track to do just that. Lisette sat on a pile of blankets in the corner, contentedly playing with monsieur lapin, blissfully unaware of her surroundings, or so Jack thought. That was, he supposed, his first mistake, making that assumption. Because as he turned away from her to begin measuring the sugar, the calm of the kitchen was disturbed by a series of crashes and a layer of white began to settle over him. Jack took a deep breath as he turned around, bracing himself for what he would see. Years of anxiety making him imagine the worst possible outcomes for any given situation combined with a rather eventful and well-traveled life thus far gave Jack a pretty vivid imagination and scene he found when he turned around certainly seemed like something only someone with as wild an imagination as him would be able to come up with.
On the floor sat Lisette with an overturned cake pan, happily licking cake batter of her fingers. Also on the floor, clearly knocked over in her attempt to get at the cake batter was a mostly full (well, formerly mostly full) bag of flour. The contents of which now dusted the entire kitchen. But before Jack could truly react, the cake timer went off. He promptly ignored it— there were more pressing things that required his attention, such as his daughter eating cake batter off of the floor. Jack snatched the overturned pan off of the floor and threw it into the sink, grabbing paper towels to try to clean up as much of the batter as quickly as possible. Lisette sat there happily, completely ignorant of the mayhem she had caused. The batter proved trickier to clean up than Jack had counted on and as he threw away the last of the paper towels the unfortunately familiar smell of burning began to waft through the kitchen. Jack looked around the kitchen and spotted that curl of smoke, but before he could move to take the ruins of his cake out of the oven, he heard the sound of the front door opening.
“Lord Jack, what an interview. I know I say this every time, but I swear every interviewer must have the same script. I feel like I answer the exact same questions every dang time— Jack?” Bitty froze as he entered the kitchen and took in the sight before him. In all honestly, it was a pretty amusing one. There stood his husband, his entire back covered in a white dusting, his hands full of paper towels covered in a dark substance, poised over the trash can. His daughter was just as covered in white as Jack though happier about it than her father, gleefully sucking on her fingers. That and the rest of the mess of the kitchen combined with the interview he had just come from was enough to tip Bitty over into hysterical laughter.
“Good Lord Jack, what on earth happened?” He finally managed to get out after almost an entire minute of laughing.
“Uhhh….” Before Jack could actually say something, Bitty was doubled over, laughing once again. It took Bitty a few minutes to calm down, but by the end of it Jack was chuckling along with him.
“Well,” Bitty said, wiping away a tear, “I’m guessing this was supposed to be my birthday cake?”
“Yeah.” Jack looked away for a second, an embarrassed flush creeping up his face, “Things were going really well until this one got bored.” He replied, punctuating his statement by swooping down and picking up Lissy, who only giggled in response. Bitty nodded once, hands on his hips as he gave the kitchen an assessing glance.
“Well then, let’s get this place— and the two of you— cleaned up and then we can try this whole birthday cake thing again.
“No Bits, I got—” Jack began to protest before Bitty cut him off.
“Shh, nonsense. Listen to me Jack, I know I like to say that my birthday is the one day of the year I let myself take a break from baking, but you know just as well as I do that there is practically nothing that makes me happier than baking with my family. Plus, baking with this little one around,” he punctuated the statement with a boop to his daughter’s nose, “is not a one-person job, and you clearly need all the help you can get.”
“Well, if you insist…” Jack said as a smile crept along his lips and he readjusted Lisette on his hip. He felt a familiar warmth fill him. Even after eight years together, that something as simple as baking with Bitty could make him feel so loved and so safe was something he wouldn’t trade anything in the world for.
“Now you go get Lissy and yourself cleaned up and I’ll take care of the kitchen, and then we can get to work on a new cake. I can’t wait to hear what you had planned.” Bitty said as he swatted Jack with a towel, directing him out of the kitchen. Jack barked out a laugh as he escaped the range of the towel. Maybe this day wasn’t as much of a disaster as he originally thought.