Chapter Text
Bitty vignettes
Episode 1:
Bitty looked around the tent at his fellow contestants, all of them a least a couple of years older than him.
That shouldn’t matter, though. Not to Bitty, who’d been baking since before he could properly talk. Really, he knew his way around a kitchen — and a KitchenAid stand mixer — better than just about anyone.
But so did these people, if they were chosen to participate in the bake-off. Bitty hadn’t even planned to apply until he got that text from Johnson, saying that the show was suddenly short a baker, and the spot was his if he could prove his baking chops to the judges.
Sure, it was a big commitment, especially with the taping falling right at the end of the spring semester of his junior year, but it didn’t conflict with hockey season, and just appearing on the show — let alone winning — would probably help him land a job after graduation.
As long as he didn’t make a fool of himself the first weekend.
Bitty looked at his bench, already stocked with the ingredients for his tiramisu Swiss roll.
“I can do this,” he told himself. “It doesn’t matter that I’m the last one they picked. I am an award-winning baker. I deserve to be here.”
He looked up and saw one of the cameramen staring at him, and not, he thought, in a good way. The guy — Bitty thought he was called Jack — must have heard his little pep talk.
Bitty wouldn’t have minded just staring at Jack for a while, or he wouldn’t have if Jack stopped glaring at him. Jack was tall and built and had the most amazing eyes. Which still looked like they were judging him.
Speaking of judges … Oh, lordy, Alice Atley and Rob Hall were in the tent. Alice was just as put-together and businesslike as he expected from watching her, and Rob was a little more casual, maybe friendlier, but just as focused on quality when it came to baked goods.
Why couldn’t they start with pie? Then Bitty wouldn’t have to worry about making it long enough to impress the judges with his real signature dish.
Then he was off, making the Swiss roll, which didn’t get the best comments but was far from the worst. Lunch was with Christopher Chow, who was just about the sweetest-tempered person Bitty had ever met; Caitlin Farmer, who seemed to be hitting all the right notes for the judges; and Will Poindexter, a laconic redhead from Maine who was looking forward to breads.
No matter what, Bitty thought, he would leave this experience with new baking techniques and skills, and probably at least a few new friends. Who could argue with that?
Atley’s cherry cake in the technical turned out to be simple enough to make, but with enough tricky bits to help the judges make sense of which bakers were most qualified.
“I think I’m middle of the pack, which, given who I’m up against, is really very good, especially since cakes aren’t really my specialty,” Bitty said in the post-challenge interview with Jack. “I’m just hoping to stick around as long as I can, I guess, and maybe learn some things.”
Jack didn’t give him any kind of feedback — not a nod or even a grunt — just turned the camera off and walked away.
Well. One more day in the tent at least, and probably more. Bitty better brush up on what he was doing tomorrow. Then he had exams to study for.
Sunday was much warmer, and Bitty was feeling like a genius for choosing not to work with chocolate today.
He hoped his mini lemon drizzle cakes made the judges think bright, spring-like thoughts. At least the recipe was simple enough, very similar to cakes he had made in the past.
When he noticed Jack pointing his camera at him stirring the curd, he started narrating, just like he would have on his vlog. Jack stayed longer on him than he did on most of the bakers, not leaving until Bitty came to a natural pause.
This time, Jack gave him a nod before moving on.
At the end of the day, Caitlin Farmer was named star baker, to no one’s surprise. But Bitty boarded the bus back to Samwell feeling more confident than he was when he arrived.
His lemon cakes had gone over well, he thought, and he didn’t think he’d be among the first to leave the tent. Unfortunately, he was nowhere near as confident about the statistics exam he had in the morning.
Episode 2
Bitty arrived for the second weekend determined to make a good impression. His biscotti recipe was pretty good, he thought, and the apricots might even make it stand out.
Tomorrow’s showstopper would be the maple shortbread hockey sticks in the gingerbread zamboni. The hockey sticks he could make in his sleep — he’d made them by the hundreds for parties at the Haus — which meant he had plenty of time to make the Zamboni look good.
He wished he’d been able to find out whether Hall or Atreus liked hockey; for all of his research (yes, he was pretty sure he’d read everything posted online and on every social media platform about the bake off, reputable source or not) he hadn’t seen a word about it. It should be fine as long as neither of them hated hockey. Oh, God, what if they hated hockey?
But first he had to get through the biscotti.
Once he had the loaves in his oven, he tried catching Jack’s attention. It couldn’t hurt to commiserate over the heat in the tent, right? And maybe then Jack would stop glaring at him.
But Jack literally turned his back when Bitty smiled. Well then.
Bitty turned to Chowder.
“I don’t even like biscotti,” Bittle said. “Too hard. And I had to make about two hundred of them this week just to make sure I could do it right. Good thing my team’s not fussy. They’ll eat anything.”
“They’re all right,” Chowder said. “I guess. What kind of a team are you on?”
“Hockey,” Bittle said.
It turned out Chowder was a huge fan of his hometown San Jose Sharks, and he and Bitty chatted through the rest of the challenge.
He was most concerned about the technical. They could make almost anything small and call it a biscuit, and Bitty had no idea what they would ask for.
Neither judges advising patience nor Holster’s announcement that they would be making something called ‘arlettes’ helped, but once Bitty got a look at the recipe, and the slab of butter on his bench, he nearly swooned in relief.
“This is puff pastry,” he said to himself. “This I can do.”
He felt his face heat when he noticed Jack’s camera on him. Just what he needed, letting Jack see he’d been doubting himself.
Even knowing what to do, Bitty found the pastry to be a challenge with the heat in the tent. He had to chill his dough briefly after every turn rather than every other turn as he would have done at home.
Other bakers started following his example, he noticed. Especially Chowder, who didn’t seem to have much experience with pastry at all.
The only weird thing was how much Jack was looking at him. Every time he looked up, if Jack wasn’t busy recording another baker, he was looking at Bitty like he was some kind of … something that Jack couldn’t figure out.
Bitty made sure the other bakers could see what he was doing; he couldn’t expect everybody to have his experience with pastry, after all, and if they were following his example, it should still be to his advantage. If the recipe called for a skill he had performed a hundred times, he should do it better than someone just trying it out.
He was pleased, but not really surprised, to get top marks in the technical.
The showstopper went according to plan the next day, but it wasn’t enough to win him star baker. That was okay, Bitty thought, especially since Will had created his own device to make a round shortbread box. There was no way Bitty could do anything like that. He thought he was probably middle of the pack, which was safe enough. For now at least.
He had just expressed that sentiment to Jack, or to Jack’s camera, when Shitty appeared at his side.
“Did you know Jack here played hockey, too?” Shitty asked.
“Did you?” Bitty said. Maye this coud break the ice (no pun intended) between them.
Jack nodded.
“I’ll have to make sure you get some of my cookies,” Bitty said.
“That’s not necessary,” Jack rebuffed.
Maybe not.
“Okay, then,” Bitty said.
Seriously, what crawled into his (admittedly marvellous) ass and died?
Episode 3
Bread week. Truth be told, Bitty had been kind of dreading this. He knew when he agreed to come on the show that bread was likely to come up early in the season, and here it was, just after cake and biscuits.
But bread wasn’t something he made very often. There just wasn’t time for something that had to be left to rise for long periods.
He had practiced his pane bianco several times, to the great pleasure of his Haus-mates, and he was fairly certain that while it wouldn’t win the day, it also wouldn’t get him dismissed from the tent.
He tried to ignore Jack (why did he have to be so attractive anyway?), instead watching his fellow bakers. Will was clearly a breadmaker, and Cait had probably made more than a few kinds of bread before. Chowder was so enthusiastic that it was hard to tell how much actual experience he had. Another baker, Derek, didn’t seem as good on technical skills, but he came up with inspired flavor combinations. He could be a dark horse.
If Will didn’t kill him first.
The signature ended up much the way Bitty expected, with positive but not superlative notes for him.
Bitty amused himself by watching Chowder try to flirt with Cait. He really wasn’ very smooth, but Cait seemed to enjoy it anyway. It was nice, really, when nice people liked each other.
Then it was time for the technical: four perfect baguettes. Bitty kind of knew what a baguette should look like and taste like, but he’d never made one. And he knew exactly what the judges were doing here. There would be no kiding behind decorations or stylistic choices; they would either have good baguettes or they wouldn’t.
Fortunately, Bitty had enough experience with simple yeast breads to know how to start. He was just starting to slide his loaves into the oven to bake when he caught sight of Will adding a pan of water to the bottom of the oven.
Bitty thought about it and vaguely remembered an old Julia Child episode where she’d sprayed the loaves with water before baking, but there was no spray bottle in the equipment allotted for the technical bake. Maybe Will’s method would work the same way? He hurriedly filled a pan from the tal and added it to the oven.
He looked up to see Jack staring at him once again, but this time it was a death glare. What had he done now?
His baguettes ended up third, which was great, really, especially when Atley said the top three were all very good. Hardly any different from second.
“I guess I’ve been doing okay,” Bittle told Jack’s camera. “But I think I can do better.”
As he turned his camera off, Jack said, “I saw what you did.”
Huh?
“Saw what?”
“With the water,” Jack said. “You only did it because Will did.”
“Okay,” Bitty said. “What if I did? Part of the competition is learning from each other. And I had to take the shot that he was right.”
“It was a lucky shot,” Jack said.
Right. Of course it was. But it worked. Fuck.
Bitty didn’t know why Jack didn’t like him (because he was from the South? because he was kinda obviously gay? because he’d almost had a crush on Jack and Jack could see inside his empty head and knew that?), but the idea of spending five hours sculpting a cornucopia and its contents out of bread dough under his watchful glare tomorrow seemed just too much. Bitty wished he could find a rink, put his earbuds in and just skate and not think for a while.
The next morning, Jack wasn’t in his usual spot. He’d moved closer to the front, and Johnson was in his usual place.
Johnson was fine, really. Bitty had never known him well — he didn’t think anyone had — but he had a knack for turning up just when he was needed.
Bitty was able to forget he was there during the hours of kneading and proving and molding and baking and assembling.
When he did sneak a peak at Jack, he looked as grumpy as ever, this time seemingly annoyed at the way Derek and Will seemed to grate on each other. Maybe it wasn’t just Bitty?
Whatever. By the end of the day, he was exhausted and he couldn’t wait to go back to Samwell.
Episode 4
Bitty was looking forward to a relatively Jack-free weekend. Or maybe it was a weekend where he could look at Jack, but Jack would be so busy with his own section of the tent that e couldn’t focus on Bitty.
Bitty would be busy too, of course, but it was tart week, and Bitty planned to take full advantage. His apple-lavender tarte Tatin had just the right hint of lavender cutting the sweetness of the carmelized apples. His showstopper was a masterpiece — or would be, if it came together right. Which would be so much easier without Jack breathing down his neck.
Only when he got to the tent, he found that his bench had moved into the middle section. Smack dab next where Jack was holding his camera.
Bitty looked away, noting Ollie next to him and Wicks behind him, then carefully keeping his gaze straight ahead, on Ransom and Holster preparing to announce the challenge.
Once they began, Bitty noticed Jack training his lens on him, but Jack didn’t ask him any questions before moving on. Then Rob Hall came and questioned his decision to use lavender, and Bitty might have second-guessed himself if it wasn’t already too late to do anything about it.
He felt vindicated at the end, when Alice Atley said it added the perfect note of sophistication. There was no chance to gloat, though, especially since Shitty steered him away from Jack for the post-challenge interview. Had Shitty and the production staff picked up on the friction between him and Jack? Dang.
The technical, of course, could have been almost anything. But the treacle tart recipe Rob Hall assigned was first cousin to the chess pie Bitty had been making since he was a kid, and, wonder of wonders, it called for a lattice. For the first time in the competition, Bitty was almost relaxed.
Ransom spent some time with Bitty during the bake, giving him a chance to explain how he felt like he knew just what to do.
When he began weaving the lattice, he cast a glance over his shoulder at Jack, then angled his body so as not to block the view of the other bakers. Some of them had clearly never given a thought to how to weave pie dough, and they weren’t going to overtake Bitty on this challenge just by watching him, but maybe they wouldn’t feel so overwhelmed either.
The next morning, Bitty was wishing he didn’t feel overwhelmed. The pile of ingredients on his bench towered over the other bakers’ ingredients, and Bitty knew printed-out recipe had pages and pages of instruction.
His planned bake — a rose and lychee and raspberry tart, featuring rose mascarpone creme, macaroons and carmelized almonds — definitely met the assignment of a large tart that would star in a bakery shop window, but it had so many components he’d only managed to bake it all the way through once.
“Looks like you’ve got quite the job ahead of you,” Jack said, nodding at Bitty’s bench. “Sure you haven’t bitten off more than you can chew?”
What was that supposed to mean? Bitty stiffened and said, ““This is the showstopper. It wouldn’t do to go for something easy.”
Then he turned back to his pages of notes.
As soon as the bake started, Bitty dove in, whirling from one task to the next, in a carefully choreographed sequence that got interrupted as soon as Alice Atley stopped with Tater in tow as he coated his almonds in caramel and explained his plan.
“Where do the almonds come in?” Alice asked.
“Some of them will be pushed into the crust — it’s a sweet rosewater crust — and under the lychee creme pat,” Bitty said. “On top of that will be raspberries glazed with jam, garnished with raspberry and rose mascarpone creme and macaroons, with the carmelized almonds on top.”
“So you’re making a crust, creme patissiere and creme mascarpone, jam, macaroons and caramelized almonds, all as components?” Alice asked doubtfully.
“Yes, ma’am,” Bitty said, hoping he sounded confident.
“Are you sure you’re going to finish?”
“I’m sure gonna try, ma’am,” Bitty said.
“Then I’ll leave you to it,” she said.
Bitty honestly didn’t have the time to pay attention to what the other bakers were doing. He even lost track of Jack as he hurried through his dozens of steps. He was so focused it even seemed like the tent was quieter than usual as he painted each raspberry with jam and sprinkled the crushed caramelized almonds over the top.
He was rewarded with what might have been the most positive comments of the season, with Rob Hall saying it was what a showstopper should look like.
Being named star baker — well, it was a dream come true, but after today, he thought he deserved it.
Bitty was just getting ready to board the shuttle back to the hotel when Jack stopped him.
“Good job today,” Jack said. “You worked hard.”
No. Really?
“Thanks?” Bitty said. “I didn’t think you were supposed to be judging me.”
Episode 5
Self-saucing puddings? As far as Bitty was concerned, he was making individual chocolate upside-down cakes with peanut butter. Most of the other bakers looked like they were doing similar techniques, although their flavors varied.
At least Jack was nowhere close. Neither was Johnson, who seemed to have disappeared. Now Bitty was in front, nearest Marty, who gave off a calm, fatherly sort of vibe.
Bitty could live with that.
The self-saucing puddings — or chocolate-peanut butter fondants, as Bitty called them for the show — went well enough, Bitty supposed. It seemed like most of the bakers were just trying to get through the day. Tomorrow’s baked Alaska — on a day forecast to hit 85 degrees — was definitely going to be the focus of the weekend.
The technical turned out to be Rob Hall’s recipe for tiramisu cake. Bitty thought his was good, but not great. But really, he thought, several bakers did well enough in terms of creating a recognizable tiramisu cake. It was the kind of challenge where it was hard to excel; the cake could be good enough, or a disaster.
Bitty’s was good enough.
After a full day in the tent, Bitty was looking forward to the evening. He’d called around and found a local ice rink where could skate in the evening. He thought time on the ice would do more for his focus than obsessing over whether his ice cream would freeze the next day.
He was surprised to find himself alone on the ice. The manager said no one usually showed up on Saturdays in the summer, except maybe one other guy who didn’t come until later.
“Feel free,” the guy said. “I’m gonna grab some dinner. I’ll be back later to lock up.”
Even better. Bitty put his earbuds in, laced up his figure skates, and started to warm up. After nearly an hour, he was warm and loose and honestly kind of enjoying the misty effect from the ice in the summer humidity.
He knew better than to jump when he was alone, but a toe loop couldn’t hurt. He’d been doing toe loops since he was ten. He could definitely do a double at least.
Until he couldn’t. He knew he didn’t have his landing foot in position, but it was still a shock to come down on the rough surface on his knee, then his hip. Crap.
He was still on the ice, taking inventory and making sure everything still worked, when he realized he wasn’t alone after all.
There was someone rushing toward him. Bitty pulled his earbuds out to hear a familiar voice.
“Seriously, are you okay? Do you need help?”
“Jack? What are you doing here?”“I came to skate,” Jack said. “Clear my head, cool off. Can you stand up?”
Bitty focused on the way his hips and knees and ankles felt. He’d be bruised in more than his ego, no doubt, but all the joints still seemed to be working.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Bitty said, pushing up to his feet and looking down at himself. “Ripped my pants.”
“Not just your pants,” Jack said. “I have a first aid kit in my car.”
No, just no, Bitty thought. First he had to fall in front of the hot guy who already didn’t like him, and now the guy was offering to take care of him like he was a little boy crying over a scraped knee.
“Don’t worry about it,” Bitty said. “ I can make it back to the hotel. Let me get my skates off and I’ll be out of your way.”
Jack didn’t look convinced.
“You’re not in my way,” Jack said.
Right.
“You said you came to clear your head,” Bitty said. “Pretty sure you wanted to be alone.”
Jack shrugged.
“I usually am here. At least let me give you a Band-Aid.”
Standing here wasn’t doing either of them — or Bitty’s knee or bruised hip — any good.
“Fine,” Bitty said with a sigh, and lowered himself to the bench to take off his skates and put on slides.
“I didn’t know you figure skated,” Jack said as Bitty led the way outside.
“You said you played hockey.”
“I figure skated first,” Bitty said. “Not sure I can say I do anymore, after that.”
“Come on, you were good,” Jack said. “Until you fell.”
Yeah, that part. As if Bitty needed to be reminded. But Jack said he was good before … How long had he been watching?
“You must have fallen a lot before,” Jack said reasonably. “When you were learning. Just because you fell doesn’t mean you can’t do it.”
Jack stopped next do a dark grey SUV and unlocked the door with a keyfob. He gestured to Bitty to sit on the seat while he rummaged in the glovebox for the first aid kit.
He held out a Band-Aid. “Here.”
At least he wasn’t trying to put it on for Bitty, with a kiss to make it better. “Thanks,” Bitty said. “For the Band-Aid.”
Jack threw his skates in the back seat.
“Get in the car,” he said. “I’ll take you back to your hotel. Shitty and Lardo would kill me if I let anything happen to you.”
Bitty wanted to tell him, no, he’d order a rideshare, but he knew it wouldn’t work and he didn’t want to have to give in again.
“Well, if you insist,” he finally said.
The next morning, Bitty ached all over, like he’d played a really physical hockey game the night before. Jack was right; he had fallen plenty of times when he was learning. But he never felt like this the next morning when he was ten years old. And he had a long, hot day ahead.
Shitty had turned up at his door twenty minutes after Jack dropped him off last night too make sure he was well enough to continue (like a little fall would stop him) and Ms. Duan had checked in with him as soon as he arrived at the farm. He supposed they wanted to make sure he would look all right on television.
Jack approached him as soon as he entered the tent.
“You okay?” Jack asked.
“I have to make a baked Alaska in a tent on an 85-degree day,” Bitty said. “But other than that, I’m fine. Embarrassed. But thanks, if I didn’t say it last night.”
“You did say it,” Jack said. “But you’re welcome.”
Then they were off, making ice cream and meringue and trying not to present a gloppy mess.
Bitty had to concentrate on not limping as he moved between his bench and the freezer, but nobody seemed to pay much attention to him. The early drama was the revelation that one of the freezers wasn’t working. Then, after Derek’s ice cream didn’t freeze — which wasn’t helped by Wicks forgetting to put it back in the freezer — everyone was focused on that.
Bitty felt terrible for Derek, but also for Wicks, because he was pretty sure the short time Derek’s ice cream spent outside the freezer wasn’t enough to make the difference between liquid and solid.
Bitty just thanked his lucky stars that his pistachio ice cream stayed frozen, although he supposed it wouldn’t have mattered. With Derek binning his ice cream, no one else was leaving the tent, even though Wicks probably would have taken his place if he could.
“I’m just glad today is over,” he told Marty’s camera.