Work Text:
Finch opened the door to his and Albert's apartment slowly and quietly. Albert had texted him a little camera emoji to let Finch know he was filming, and, while Finch wouldn't interrupt him as long as he was sufficiently quiet, he had startled Albert on more than one occasion by coming into the apartment too fast. The layout of their apartment meant that the front door opened right into the large room that included both their living room and their kitchen, putting it in perfect view of Albert for most of the time he was filming.
Or in this case, giving Finch the perfect view of Albert sitting on the counter and scrolling through his phone next to a camera that was most definitely pointed towards the door. "Al?" he asked, a little unsure, taking in the mess Albert had apparently left the kitchen in as he set down his keys and his work bag. "Why does it look like a tornado went through the kitchen?"
Albert looked up from his phone, grinning. "Finch!" He set his phone down and jumped down from the counter, crossing the living room over to Finch. "Hi, I need you to be in my video, please?" He kissed Finch on the cheek and gave him his best puppy dog eyes.
Finch laughed and let Albert drag him into the kitchen, to the other side of the island counter and Albert's normal filming set up. Albert pulled Finch in front of the camera where they adjusted themselves in the viewfinder until the frame looked about the same as it usually did when Finch joined Albert for his videos. There were various bowls and pans scattered around the countertops and the kitchen smelled vaguely like Asian food. "Don't tell me there's this many bowls and no edible food."
"Shut up, asshole," Albert answered, even as he still grinned up at Finch. "It's in the microwave staying warm because someone was late."
Finch couldn't help but to lean down and kiss his boyfriend. "It's real rude of you to be late to your own video, Al, not sure how you managed it."
Al rolled his eyes but turned toward the camera and and put his hand on Finch's chest. "So now that my Bert is here, we can finish this video."
"Hi! I have no idea why I'm here," Finch told the camera.
"If you don't know, this is my boyfriend, Finch. I call him my Bert because someone made a Albert and Ernie joke once but he's the one who wears vertically striped sweaters." It was more introduction than Finch usually got on Al's channel but he nodded through it and rolled his eyes at Albert's joke. "Okay, you're just tasting what I made so guess what it is.
Finch hummed as he glanced around the kitchen. Despite the open cabinets and otherwise tornado-like mess, Albert had left no actual ingredients or packaging out which meant that Finch had no good clues. "Italian?" he asked, mostly to mess with Albert. Albert's Italian videos almost always came with Race attached.
Albert tapped the back of his head lightly but didn't actually look annoyed. "Try again."
"Well, something with a lot of soy sauce. Ooh! Did you finally try that egg roll recipe lola sent you?"
"I told you, that's for your birthday. Guess again."
Finch closed his eyes and hummed, a little extra dramatic for the camera and for Al. It really was mostly soy sauce he was smelling but it smelled more like take out than anything else. He turned to Albert and grinned, trying to convey that he was joking. "Did you order take out to prank me for a video?"
Albert rolled his eyes. "No but you're close. I did make Chinese takeout." Albert went to the microwave and pulled out several white takeout containers.
"Did you buy takeout containers for this video?"
"Amazon Prime, baby." Albert set the containers down in front of them and then pulled a wax bag with some spring rolls from the microwave as well. "There's cashew chicken and beef and broccoli," he explained, handing Finch a set of chopsticks. "And some rice, of course."
"Awww, like our first date." Finch grinned at his boyfriend and took the carton of cashew chicken he was offered. He turned back to the camera as Albert opened more cartons, wiggling his eyebrows playfully.
"Wasn't our first date," Albert said.
"Guys," Finch said to the camera, "Chinese food was absolutely our first date and Albert has been wrong about it for the entire seven years of our relationship. He invited me to get Chinese food and go to a movie and he meant to ask as a date but he chickened out. So he wanted it to be a date and I thought it was a date but he still insists it wasn't. It was though."
"Because I didn't ask. And you didn't ask either. It wasn't a date."
Finch rolled his eyes dramatically for the camera's sake and then took a bite of the cashew chicken. "Oh shit- this can't be legal."
"It's good?"
"Yeah, Ern, it's the best cashew chicken I've had since we moved to the city. You have beef and broccoli?"
After Finch had tried the beef and broccoli and the spring rolls- and gone back to the cashew chicken because it was his favorite- Albert turned away from the camera and pulled a tray from the oven. "I made one more thing actually. You can't have Chinese without fortune cookies."
Finch tried not to laugh when Albert set down the tray in front of him, he really did, but it was hard to resist. There was indeed a tray full of fortune cookies but maybe three of them were actually the right shape.
"Go ahead," Albert said. "Laugh. I know they're terrible."
"No, they look great!" Finch assured him. "They look perfectly baked. They're just misshapen."
"Here, you have the good one. They may be the wrong shape but they do have fortunes." Albert handed him just about the only cookie that actually looked like a fortune cookie. "These were way too hard."
Finch took the cookie and snapped it in half. "You didn't learn anything from that episode of the Bake Off- Oh." The little paper in the cookie read Will you marry me? in Albert's neatest handwriting. When Finch turned to Al, he wasn't standing next to him but kneeling on the floor, a ring box open in his hand. "Oh my god."
Albert grinned at him, suddenly a little shy and a little teary. "I had a whole thing I was gonna say but I just forgot all of it. The important part is that I love you and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. And I know we'll do that anyway but it'd be cool if the government knew too. Will you marry me?"
They'd talked about marriage- they'd been together for seven years, of course they'd talked about it- but Finch hadn't thought it'd come so soon or that Al would be the one to get down on one knee and be so emotional about it.
"Yes, of course, Al. I could spend a million lifetimes with you and still be ready for a million more." Finch pulled Albert up from his knee and kissed him. When he pulled back he couldn't help but grin, leaning his forehead against Albert's. "We're getting married."
"You might have to put on the ring first."
Finch laughed and so did Albert. Finch offered his hand and Albert slid on the ring, a darker metal with a streak of gold. It was exactly what Finch had talked to Race and JoJo about wanting- something simple but unique and bright to remind him of Albert. "We're getting married," he repeated and kissed Albert again.
"Heck yeah, we are."
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Making Chinese Takeout to Propose to my Boyfriend
October 25, 2019
Albert DaSilva
6.62M Subscribers
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October 18, 8:12am
The video opens on Albert, with bedhead and bleary eyes, looking very much like he just woke up. "Hey, guys, welcome to today's video. It's gonna be a vlog one more than anything else. I'm proposing to Finch today, which I'm really excited and nervous about obviously." Al yawned and then looked back to the camera. "Sorry, Finch just left for work and I made him think I was sleeping in but I have a grocery delivery scheduled for half an hour from now and a lot of work to do so I'm going to get in the shower and shave. So yeah. Wish me luck today."
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10:04am
Albert slides into the frame, set up like his normal frame for his cooking videos. "Alright," he says, leaning forward on his elbows. "We back. So the plan is basically I'm going to get Finch on camera like he's doing a normal taste test for a video and then I'm going to propose. So I'm making Chinese take out and fortune cookies but I also wanted to do something special for after. You guys know I don't have the patience or the understanding of measuring ingredients to bake but I can work with chocolate so I'm gonna cover some strawberries in chocolate and do some other chocolates and caramels and stuff and I have like champagne and whatever Race said to get so that's the plan. Ooh and I have to charge all the camera batteries. I normally do a two, maybe three, camera set up for my cooking videos but I think I'm gonna use all five of our cameras tonight, so I have to make sure all the batteries are charged. So I'm gonna go do that and then probably time lapse my chocolate making except for the million times I'm going to burn myself with caramel. Okay. Bye."
The frame is empty for a second as Albert walks off but he's back only a few seconds later in time lapse. It only lasts a minute or so before he starts working on caramel and burns himself when the time lapse is interrupted by Albert swearing in real time. It happens four more times during the time lapse before the video changes abruptly to trays of decorated strawberries and other chocolate candies. "These are pretty messy," says Albert. "Finch would have done a way better job but they're done and they'll be good with champagne so they're going in the fridge."
After putting the strawberries and chocolate in the fridge, Al turned back to the camera. "So I'm going to eat lunch because I forget to do that sometimes and Finch just texted me to remind me. I think I'm going to have to start cooking and, unfortunately baking, around 4 so that everything is ready just a little bit before Finch gets home, so I'm gonna clean up the kitchen and get the cameras set up and everything and I'll probably see you guys again when I start that."
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3:37pm
Albert's face appears close up to the camera. "So I got a little carried away. I'm feeling pretty nervous so I got everything set up super early and then cleaned the entire apartment. So I cleaned everything." The video swings around to show the kitchen and the living room, looking spotless before moving back to Albert's face. "I mean the kitchen's going to be a mess again because I'm a tornado but I couldn't stop myself. I also got the bedroom set up, which I'm not going to show you, ya nasties, but things at work have been kind of stressful for Finch lately so I have some stuff for like a really relaxing night tonight, like massage oils and bath bombs and shit that I set up. Ooh and I'll show you my camera set up."
The camera turns around to focus on the kitchen. One side is open to the living room with the other three walls covered in cabinets, with the oven and stove top on the back wall, the fridge on the right, and the sink on the left. There's a large island in the center of the kitchen. "So these two are what I normally use for filming while cooking," Albert says from behind the camera. He points to the larger of the two tripod setups. "This is just my normally stationary camera and this," he points to the smaller camera, "is what I use for close ups of cooking and the final dishes. So I'll use that normally while cooking but I'm going to point it towards the door when Finch comes home. And then these two," he points to the cameras on the counters on either side of kitchen, both propped up on small tripods, "are actually Finch's cameras for his photography so let's hope he doesn't notice I'm using them and get suspicious. And then I don't know what I'm going to do with the vlog camera yet because I'm using it right now but I'll figure something out."
The video turns around to Albert's face again. "So yeah. I'm nervous but almost ready. It's a little too early to start cooking so I think I'm going to write some fortunes and pre-measure the ingredients for the fortune cookies so maybe I won't mess up the baking as much with my tornado. Next time you see me will be cooking time so let's hope I don't puke in the next half hour."
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4:15pm
Albert is standing behind the kitchen island wearing his chef coat with various materials spread out in front of him. "Alright, guys, if you're here for the cooking and not for the whole proposal thing, this part of the video is for you. On Finch and I's first date, we got Chinese takeout before a movie so I'm trying to recreate that here. Also, don't tell Finch I said that because I like to deny that it was our first date and it annoys him. This is essentially still our takeout order so I'm going to do cashew chicken for him, beef and broccoli for me, and then some spring rolls and fortune cookies. So it's cooking time which unfortunately means baking time."
The video cuts to a side shot of Albert whipping his head around to face it. "As always, you can find all of the recipes and quantities on my blog. Links are in the description."
A shot of Albert whipping his head forward. "Alright, let's do this. Just so you know this is probably going to be a pretty quiet video because I'm getting really nervous. So, yeah. Let's bake, which is a thing I'm terrible at. Great."
Albert goes through the process of making fortune cookies, being uncharacteristically meticulous about following the instructions and measurements. His instructions, as usual, are basic and concise with plenty of jokes thrown in. He stops right before he puts the cookie tray in the oven.
"So I'm doing these 4 at a time because they bake quick and need to be folded pretty quickly. Finch and I were watching Bake Off the other day, which is what inspired me proposing this way, and I know this step has to be done really quickly so I have my fortunes written out and my glass and cupcake pan ready for shaping so let's do this. These are going to go in for five minutes so I'll see you then."
The video cuts to a close up of the cookie sheet going into the oven and then to it coming out, with the edges of the cookies a nice golden brown. The video then cuts back to the normal frame, with Albert looking into the camera disappointed, with 15 or so broken or misshapen cookies in front of him. "So. This has not gone well so far. I've done 4 batches and still haven't gotten one that's the right shape but I am getting closer." He holds up the best looking of the cookies, still not quite a fortune cookie shape. "I've got to move on soon though because I don't want to be cooking when Finch gets home. So I'm gonna put in one more batch of just two and hope those turn out well. All the fortunes say 'Will you marry me?' so it doesn't really matter which one Finch opens."
The camera cuts to a close up of Albert's hands folding a cookie the proper way and then to the regular frame with him explaining the process as he does it. He places the cookie in a muffin tin and turns back to the camera. "Now that we're done with that tragedy, let's move onto the cooking that I will actually enjoy."
"So, we're going to do our beef and broccoli and cashew chicken first but I'm going to prep all the veggies for both before we do anything." Albert lists the ingredients in voice over as the video shows closeups of him preparing each ingredient. He goes through cooking the two dishes, with his instructions interrupted by close ups of the cooking food. He goes through preparing and frying the spring rolls in the same manner- a little quieter than normal but still with a bit of joking and his signature chaotic energy.
After several minutes of the condensed cooking process, the video cuts to Albert with the food laid out in front of him. "Now that this is all done, we have the most important part here on this channel-" He holds up a stack of takeout containers and a package of wax bags. "Presentation! I decided to go extra this time and I ordered these from Amazon, so I'll link them below. Let's hope Finch has been on Prime in the past two days. Oh, and I forgot to tell, I also made some rice in the rice cooker to go along with this."
The video cuts to close up shots of the finished food in the take out containers, including the handful of fortune cookies that sort of look like they're supposed to, before it cuts back to Albert. "Alright, so that's all the filming I'm gonna do before Finch gets back and we do the damn thing. All the food is in the warmer and I'm just gonna wait for him to get home. I texted him to say I was filming but he's kind of running late so we'll see when he gets home. I'm sorry this isn’t a great cooking video. Sue me, I’m nervous. Wish me luck!"
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5:53pm
The video cuts to Finch opening the door. “Al?” He loosens his tie and sets down his bag as he takes off his shoes. He looks incredibly confused. “Why does it look like a tornado went through the kitchen?
The video cuts again to Albert’s normal frame, this time with Finch on the right of the frame. A grinning Albert puts his hand on Finch’s chest. “So now that my Bert is here, we can finish this video.”
Finch still looks very confused but he’s also smiling. "Hi! I have no idea why I'm here.”
"If you don't know, this is my boyfriend, Finch. I call him my Bert because someone made a Albert and Ernie joke once but he's the one who wears vertically striped sweaters.” Finch rolls his eyes. Albert is practically bouncing as he turns to Finch. "Okay, you're just tasting what I made so guess what it is.
The video cuts to a side view with Albert flashing a thumbs up to one of the side cameras behind Finch’s back before the video cuts back to Finch, closing his eyes and humming like he’s taking in his surroundings before making his guess. He grins as he turns to Albert. "Did you order take out to prank me for a video?"
"No but you're close. I did make Chinese takeout." The video cuts to Albert setting the containers down in front of them and handing Finch a set of chopsticks. "There's cashew chicken and beef and broccoli and some rice, of course.”
“Awww, like our first date,” Finch says as he picks up the cashew chicken. He wiggles his eyebrows at the camera.
"Wasn't our first date.” Albert winks at the camera, which Finch seems not to notice.
"Chinese food was absolutely our first date and Albert has been wrong about it for the entire seven years of our relationship. He invited me to get Chinese food and go to a movie and he meant to ask as a date but he chickened out. So he wanted it to be a date and I thought it was a date but he still insists it wasn't. It was though."
"Because I didn't ask. And you didn't ask either. It wasn't a date."
Finch rolls his eyes dramatically and he and Albert both take a bite of their respective food. "Oh shit- this can't be legal."
"It's good?"
Finch turns to Albert, genuinely excited. Albert hasn’t stopped grinning since being in the frame with Frinch. "Yeah, Ern, it's the best cashew chicken I've had since we moved to the city. You have beef and broccoli?"
Finch and Albert both try the rest of the food, with Finch telling Albert it’s all delicious and Albert being hard on his own cooking, not an unfamiliar phenomenon in his cooking videos. It goes on until the video cuts to Albert setting the tray of fortune cookies in front of Finch, who tries not to laugh as he looks them over. “Go ahead, laugh. I know they’re terrible.”
"No, they look great! They look perfectly baked. They're just misshapen,” Finch says as he looks over the cookies, picking one up.
Albert hands him the best one "Here, you have the good one. They may be the wrong shape but they do have fortunes. These were way too hard."
The video cuts to the side as Finch talks, showing Albert pulling a ring box from behind a cup of utensils and getting down on one knee, before cutting back to Finch. "You didn't learn anything from that episode of the Bake Off- Oh." Finch reads the fortune. He turns to Albert and the video cuts to the side, showing a surprised Finch with Albert kneeling in front of him. “Oh my god.”
"I had a whole thing I was gonna say but I just forgot all of it. The important part is that I love you and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. And I know we'll do that anyway but it'd be cool if the government knew too. Will you marry me?"
"Yes, of course, Al. I could spend a million lifetimes with you and still be ready for a million more." Finch pulls Albert up and kisses him. “We’re getting married.”
Finch pulled Albert up from his knee and kissed him. When he pulled back he couldn't help but grin, leaning his forehead against Albert's. "We're getting married.”
The video cuts away from Finch and Albert in the kitchen to an old video of the two of them in front of the camera on a couch. They look younger and Finch is wearing an NYU sweatshirt that looks brand new.
“Hi, guys! Welcome to today’s video. It’s not a cooking video but you’ve been asking for me to do the boyfriend tag with my boyfriend so here we are.” Albert puts his hand on Finch’s chest. “This is my boyfriend. His name is Finch.”
Finch smiles and waves at the camera. “Hi.”
The video continues, a chronological montage of clips of the two of them from Albert’s previous videos. There’s clips from vlogs and tags and challenges but mostly a lot of them laughing and goofing off during taste tests at the end of Albert’s cooking videos. There’s a clip of them dancing wildly after beating Race and Elmer in a round of the newlywed game, a clip of Albert smearing frosting across Finch’s cheek, a clip of them celebrating Finch’s graduation and then Albert’s 1 million subscriber play button. There’s clips of Finch playing guitar and serenading Albert, Albert surprising Finch with breakfast in bed, Finch on his camera while they explore the city. There’s a whole series of clips pulled from the vlog of their 5th anniversary trip to Ireland. There’s taste tests and parties with their friends and lazy days at home, all leading up to the start of the taste test from Albert’s last video, when Finch had snuck up on him and hugged him from behind, resulting in a lot of laughter and Albert leaning back to kiss Finch on the cheek.
The video cuts back to Albert and Finch in the kitchen, standing with Finch’s hand on Albert’s chest so that he’s showing off his ring. “Alright, everyone, thanks for joining me on this very long and stressful day but you know I had to do it to ’em.” Albert puts his hands together and crosses his fingers. Finch rolls his eyes and slaps at his hands. “Finch and I are getting married, which I’m pretty psyched about.”
“Same,” Finch says, leaning over to kiss Albert’s cheek.
Albert grins at the camera, a little lopsided and blinding. “You all know the deal. Recipes are in the description, like, subscribe, find me on the socials, tag me if you make these recipes yourself. This is definitely the sappiest video on my channel but I don’t even care. We’re going to clean up a little and then celebrate. I’ll see you guys next time.”
“Bye!” they say together and the video cuts to an end card, displaying Albert’s first rendition of the boyfriend tag and his latest video, along with all his social media handles.
After the end card, the video blinks back to the kitchen, where Albert and Finch are cleaning up food to be stored in the fridge. “Sniper bet me I couldn’t. Of course I did box jumps during lunch.”
“Did you know I can box jump onto this counter?”
Finch stops cleaning. “Why do you know that?”
“I did it in my last video.”
“Albert, tell me you’re lying.”
“No, watch.”
“Do not-”
The video ends immediately after Albert box jumps onto the island counter.