Work Text:
“Maya!” She short black haired woman looked up towards the door of her bakery as she sipped the last of her morning coffee. Harper, her employee and best friend, was motioning for her to hurry from the slightly ajar front door. She’d opened that morning, and Maya was thankful for the day to sleep in. It was two days after Christmas and she was still exhausted from all the festivities. “Hurry,” The long blonde haired woman hissed, waving her hand faster, a frantic look on her face.
Maya picked up her pace at that. She ran the rest of her way towards the bakery (only a few feet). Harper stepped out of the way as Maya entered the relatively large building. When she got inside her worry vanished; everything looked normal. She turned to Harper, her eyebrows raised, and asked, “So…what’s the problem?”
“In the back.” The blonde led her to the very back of the bakery, past the kitchen to the freezer. When she opened the door Maya’s stomach dropped, her eyes almost bulged out of her head. From floor to ceiling there was nothing but fruitcakes. Getting fruitcakes a few days after Christmas was nothing new; Maya happily accepted unopened ones from the people who didn’t want them. She deconstructed them, made them into something appetizing to sell for New Year’s. Each year she got around a hundred. But this…this was overhaul.
“How…how many are in here?” She asked slowly, turning to her friend.
Harper continued to look at the cakes, completely disheveled. “Three hundred.” Maya’s jaw nearly dropped to the floor.
“Three hundred?” She repeated in disbelief. Harper nodded. Maya looked back to the cakes, rubbed her temples. “Okay…well, New Year’s is in a few days; we’ll be able to recreate these in that amount of time.”
“No doubt.” Harper agreed confidently. Maya exited the kitchen, leaving Harper to finish up some pastries for the display case in the front of the store. When she got to the front she saw two women waiting behind the counter for her, expectant smiles on their faces.
Maya grabbed her apron, tied her hair back, and approached the register with a welcoming grin. “Hello, what can I do for you today?” She asked cheerily.
“I’m Anya,” The tall, slim Asian woman introduced, then she grabbed the dark haired woman’s hand next to her and smiled broadly, “And this is my fiancé Echo.”
Maya clasped her hands in front of her, grinned, “Aw, congratulations.” She replied sincerely.
Echo patted Anya’s hand, looked at her lovingly, said, “We would like you to make our wedding cake.”
“Absolutely, no problem.” Maya said quickly with a nod. She grabbed a pad of paper and a pen to write down their information.
“With the fruitcakes you got in, if that’s okay?” Anya asked with raised eyebrows and a hopeful face.
Maya looked up from the paper. “You want a fruitcake wedding cake?”
Both of the women nodded. “We always love the way you reinvent them and we’d love for you to do that with our cake.” Echo urged.
Maya thought about the excess about in the freezer. Using some of them to make a wedding cake would make things a lot easier. “Sure, I can do that. When’s the wedding?”
“Tomorrow.” Anya answered.
“Morning.” Echo added.
Maya froze for a second, wondered how the hell she was supposed to pull that off, but wrote down the details anyway. “How many tiers do you want?”
“Ten.” They both said together.
She could have sobbed, really. “What time in the morning?”
“Eight.” Anya said, excitement in her voice.
“Okay…” Maya nodded slowly, finished scribbling down their information.
“Will you be able to do it?” Echo questioned. Maya looked up at them; they looked worried, like she might say no, and she might would have if Echo didn’t continue, “We know it’s short notice but with the marriage equality bill that just passed we didn’t want to wait anymore.”
The dark haired woman’s heart melted at that. She could understand it completely. “No, yeah, I totally get it. I can absolutely do it.” She said surely. The relief that washed over their faces could have lit up a room.
“Oh, that’s great!” Anya exclaimed, then she reached into her bag, pulled out a card, and handed it to Maya. “Here’s the address. Thank you so much.” The couple turned to leave, hand in hand, completely submersed in each other.
She watched them go admirably, called out as they exited the bakery, “It’s my pleasure.” A few more people came in after them, regulars, who said their good mornings, ordered their usual, and left within minutes. The bakery was silent, Harper making minimal noise as she decorated some display cakes in the back. That’s when Maya had time to really think about what she’d just gotten herself into. A ten tiered wedding cake to be delivered tomorrow at eight in the morning. She could do that, right? She’d done stuff with a short deadline before, but never anything like that.
People in the city called her the Confectionery Queen because of the things she could do with sweets, because of the pressure she could work under and gets things completed in short amounts of time, and while she took pride in that, she didn’t know if she could do this. There was just her and Harper in the bakery, after all, and they were usually extremely busy most days, especially during the lunch rush, so how was she supposed to get that all done in time? Besides staying up all night…
“…Maya,” She hadn’t noticed Harper leaning over her shoulder, hadn’t even heard her walk into the front of the store. The younger woman was reading her chicken scratch notes for the couple’s cake, her eyes wide.
Maya nodded solemnly. “I know.”
“How…?” She trailed off.
She sighed as more people came in, grabbed the paper and headed towards the back. “I’ll start making the cake, you run the front.”
“Okay.”
Two hours later, at eleven o’clock, Harper burst through the door to the kitchen, a desperate expression on her face. “I’m sorry, but the lunch rush is here and I can’t do this myself.” Maya wanted to be aggravated, but she couldn’t bring herself to. She knew how overwhelmingly busy they got during the lunch rush—it was enough to even make her anxious. She got up from the long prep table, wiped the flour from her face and hands, then followed Harper back out to where all the ruckus was.
The rush lasted till one, which was longer than usual, but Maya couldn’t complain; the more money they brought in the better off the store was. Once things had died down she left Harper and went back to working on the impossible wedding cake. So far she’d gotten the first two tiers done and they were cooling in the freezer. Now she was working on tearing apart more fruitcakes and adding them to her cake batter. The first four tiers would be a simple vanilla cake, then she would make two carrot, then repeat until she had ten tiers. She hadn’t gotten to figuring out the icing yet; one step at a time.
She worked all through the day, creating sugar flowers for the cake, going back and forth from making more cake batter and trying to sketch a design. She knew she wanted the flowers, white roses, and she knew she wanted to do a black and white scheme. They weren’t specific on the decoration, which gave her free range, she just didn’t know what else to do. Harper gave her input here and there as she passed back and forth through the store, but other than that Maya was stumped, staring at a mostly vacant piece of paper.
All ten tiers were cooked and cooled, but without a decoration idea she couldn’t do a damn thing except dirty ice it (put a thin layer of white butter cream over the cake to seal in the crumbs so that when she iced it thickly pieces of the cake wouldn’t get all over the place) and keep it in the freezer until she was ready. Usually she wouldn’t be so stumped—she was a fucking artist, it shouldn’t be this hard. But it was. At least, today it was for some reason. She was happy they got no more special orders that day; she didn’t know if her unimaginative mind could take it.
It was nine when the bakery closed, and the only thing she had done was a dirty iced cake and around one hundred sugar flowers. She and Harper cleaned the place up, except for Maya’s little work station, and then they sat around the large decoration table, eating leftovers from the day and thinking in silence.
Maya’s phone went off for the third time in twenty minutes. She didn’t have to look at it to know who it was: Octavia, her girlfriend. She smiled at her message, felt her heart flutter a little.
From O: Missed u 2day. When r u coming home?? :*
Even after seven years Octavia still made her feel like they were in their first month of dating. The sparks never really went away. Maya was told that was a rarity. She believed it, too.
To O: Missed u 2. Not soon; cake it taking all night apparently.
From O: Awwww. Ok. Need help???
Maya grinned.
To O: No it’s ok. U had a long day. Go to bed. <3
Octavia was a pediatrician. She co-owned her own practice with their friends Clarke and Raven. They were always extremely busy the days after Christmas, and she knew Octavia would be way too tired to come and help. She appreciated the sentiment, loved her for being so selfless and helpful, but she deserved to rest.
“Alright,” Maya sighed, pushing her phone into her back pocket. Harper looked up from her own phone, texting her girlfriend Monroe no doubt. The blonde yawed long and deep as she put her own phone away and gave the pale woman her undivided attention. Maya was silent, waiting for Harper to say something.
“What?” Harper asked, raising a lazy eyebrow.
“Don’t you have any ideas?” Maya asked, trying hard to conceal her agitation. It wasn’t Harper, it really, truly wasn’t; it was that she was exhausted and frustrated with the wedding cake.
“I thought you did.” Harper groaned.
Maya ran her hands through her hair, pulled at it a little. “It’s never going to get done at this rate.” She whined.
“Why not just cover the whole thing in flowers?” Harper suggested.
Maya shook her head. “We did a cake like that last week; I don’t want it to look the same.” They were both silent after that, lost deep in thought of what they should do.
Ten o’clock rolled around and they still had nothing. Both women were still seated at the long table, their heads resting in their hands. Harper had dozed off to sleep and Maya wasn’t far behind when there came a loud knock at the back door entrance. They both jumped awake, their hearts thudding rapidly in their chests, their breaths coming out in little huffs from the freight. The knocking came again and they looked at each other, more than a little terrified of who it could be.
“Maya, it’s me!” A muffled female voice came from the other side. Relief flooded through the dark haired woman in realizing that it was Octavia.
“It’s fucking freezing out here, let us in.” That was Raven.
Harper and Maya shared the same confused expression as Harper got up and opened the door for them. Not only did Octavia and Raven walk into the room, but so did Clarke, Monroe, Lexa, and Bellamy. Now Maya was extremely confused.
“What are you all doing here?” She asked, giving Octavia a side hug as the long haired brunette came up to her and wrapped both of her arms around her girlfriend’s waist.
“Octavia told us that you and Harper were staying late to finish a wedding cake.” Raven informed, huddling up beside Bellamy to get warm due to standing outside in freezing temperatures for a bit.
“We decided to come and help.” Monroe added, standing beside Harper, giving her a little peck on the cheek.
Maya felt her cheeks heat up slightly by their kind gesture. “Aw, you guys didn’t have to do that.”
Clarke waved her hand through the air. “Just tell us what to do and we’ll do it.”
“We still don’t have a design for the cake.” Maya sighed, embarrassed.
“Okay, well, you and I will work on that while they handle making the icing and putting it on the cake.” Clarke declared, grabbing a pen from her bag and sitting down at the table. Maya sat down beside her while the others got to work on the icing.
“And the fondant.” Maya reminded them.
“Got it.” Lexa said as she and Bellamy went to the freezer and started pulling out the tiers of the cake.
She smiled to herself as she and Clarke poured ideas onto paper. She was lucky; truly, to have such amazing people in her life that would just come and help her like they did. After their days at work they were still willing to stay up all night and make a damn wedding cake with her. She didn’t think life got much better than that.
It was six-thirty a.m. when they finally finished the cake. All exhausted and covered in icing, but triumphant as they stood in front of their work and marveled at it; each tier was a pattern of black and white, alternating colors with each tier, starting from white and ending with black. The flowers cascaded down the cake in a spiral, starting from the top in a little bouquet and wrapping around it all the way to the bottom. Maya and Clarke added small intricate details with white and black icing to the cake, little designs that meant nothing but made the cake look elegant.
“Cake Boss ain’t got nothin on you.” Raven said, bumping Maya’s hip with her own. She grinned, taking pride in their work.
“I couldn’t have done it without you guys.” She admitted proudly.
“Hey, what time did you have to be there?” Bellamy asked, looking at his phone.
“Eight, why?”
“It’s almost seven.” He showed her the time and all the tiredness drained out of her.
“Shit!” She exclaimed. “Okay, you guys load the cake up into the delivery van.” She pointed at Bellamy, Lexa, and Raven. Then turned to Harper but before she could say anything the blonde beat her to it.
“I’ll stay here and man the store.”
“Are you sure?” Maya felt bad for making Harper work after just staying up all night.
Harper nodded. “If we close for one day think of all the potential business we could lose.”
She had a point. “Okay, then I’ll take the cake. Bellamy, Raven, and Lexa have to ride in the back of the van to make sure it doesn’t fall over.”
“I’ll stay and help man the store.” Monroe offered.
“So will I.” Clarke chimed in.
“And I’ll go with you to make sure you don’t fall asleep driving.” Octavia stated.
Maya could have cried, really. Having all over her friend’s band together like this meant the world to her. She didn’t know how she was going to repay them.
She nodded, rubbing all the sleep from her eyes. “Okay, let’s go.”
She tried to drive as carefully as she could, but there were a lot of potholes in the city, and traffic was horrible in the morning, so she was swerving all over the place. But they got to the venue with five minutes to spare. Her friends unloaded the cake as she greeted the two brides.
“Oh, Maya, it looks gorgeous.” Anya praised, kissing her on both cheeks. Echo did the same, nodded in agreement. “You’ll stay for the ceremony and have a piece, right?”
She looked to her friends, who all nodded eagerly. She turned back to Anya and Echo and nodded with a smile. “Sure, yeah, that sounds great.”
The ceremony was beautiful, obviously. It even made Bellamy and Lexa tear up a little. After the vows were said, Maya and Octavia were sitting at a small table in the back, gorging on their third pieces of cake. It was flawless, if Maya could say so herself. But of course she was biased.
“You know, I think…” Octavia trailed off, a hint of uncertainty in her tone.
Maya stopped eating her cake and looked up at her girlfriend, her vision a little blurry from lack of sleep. “Hmm?” She mumbled with a mouth full of food.
She hesitated for a moment, then spoke, “We should get married.” Octavia stated bluntly, looking up at her girlfriend and half smiling.
Maya’s mouth dropped a little, her palms broke out in a cold sweat. She bit her lip, tucked a piece of hair behind her ears. “Is-is this you talking or the exhaustion?”
Octavia got up from her seat, walked over to Maya, took both of her girlfriend’s hands in her own, stared into her eyes, her face serious now. “Me. This is one hundred percent me talking. I love you, Maya, and I want to be with you for the rest of my life, I know that for sure.”
A grin broke out across the shorter girls face, as well as a blush. “Octavia Blake, are you asking me to marry you at someone else’s wedding?”
Octavia got down on one knee, kept her hands in Maya’s, and in a sincere yet nervous voice asked, “Maya Vie, you are a beautiful, drive, passionate woman, and I love you more than anything in this world. Will you marry me?”
Maya nodded over and over again, squealed loudly. “Yes, yes, of course, a million times yes.” Octavia stood up, pulled Maya to her feet, wrapped her arms around her waist and kissed her on the mouth as she lifted her off her feet and spun her around.
It was cliché but Maya wouldn’t have it any other way.