Work Text:
Baking Fun
Gary was bored — a feeling he was never happy to experience. He sighed and took a sip of his coffee, starting to wish that he had gone along with Ash for his morning training session. But he had chosen to stay for a reason. They had only just moved into their house a week earlier and exhaustion had made itself known, so Gary had opted to sleep in and spend some time unpacking the rest of his books and odd and ends in the spare room-slash-office.
Now, however, he didn't feel like it. The books wouldn't go anywhere and leaving them in the boxes another day wouldn't hurt anyone. Today he just felt like being lazy — who knew moving could be so tiring? He had expected it to be easy, especially considering the fact that neither of them had a lot of possessions. Books, trophies, and gear aside, most of their belongings fit in a few large boxes and moving those in hadn't taken long at all. Far more time consuming had been cleaning the house from top to bottom, shopping for furniture, putting it all together, and bickering over where to put the newly assembled furniture — fortunately, all with help from Delia. Except for the bickering — she had let them settle that on their own. He couldn’t blame her.
Gary felt he had earned a lazy day, but that did nothing to soothe the boredom he felt. There was always something to do at his grandfather's house between the pokemon, the professor’s study full of books, and the piano downstairs. There were plenty of books here, albeit in boxes, and he had his keyboard, but all of that felt like it took too much mental energy today and Gary had already slept in as late as his body would allow so a nap was out of the question too.
"Pika, pipichu?"
Gary hadn't been the only one who felt like taking a lazy day today. He smiled at his boyfriend's pokemon and scratched him behind the ears in the one spot that always made him melt.
"We gotta find something to do other than unpacking, buddy," he told the electric mouse as he took another sip of coffee
Pikachu cocked an ear curiously and Gary smiled again. The little guy was far too cute. Gary scratched his ear again before heaving a sigh and resting his chin in his hand. He needed to figure out something for food soon but that was another thing he didn't entirely feel like doing.
"Pika!"
Gary watched as Pikachu suddenly bounded across the kitchen counter and picked up a notebook with the Kanto starters on the cover. It was from Delia: a book of their favorite recipes of hers, all hand-written and handed over with boxes of kitchen supplies.
He wasn’t overly fond of cooking. He could do it just fine, so long as it was simple, but that didn’t mean Gary enjoyed it. Ash was a better cook than he was and Delia had spent more time teaching him than she had with Gary.
Still… He had been craving chocolate ever since setting up the bookshelves in the spare room two days earlier, and Gary knew that Delia’s chocolate chip cookies recipe was in that notebook.
The kitchen was fully stocked, so why not try it? It couldn't be all that hard, right? Ash did it all the time and Delia always made it look so easy.
Gary took a determined breath and took the notebook from Pikachu, flipping through until he found was he was looking for.
…
… … …
…
An hour later found Gary glaring at a pan of burnt, misshapen cookies as though they had personally offended him. Which they had. The kitchen was a mess because of the damn things and he couldn't even eat them! What a waste of chocolate chips.
Too stubborn to be deterred and too annoyed to try another attempt at cookies, he flipped through the pages in search of a different chocolate treat. He found what he was looking for after a large assortment of Delia’s best cookie recipes: her brownie recipe. Hopefully they had all the ingredients because the disappointment over the chocolate chip cookies was only making him want chocolate even more.
Before he could check, however, Arcanine let out a loud bark from the living room. He scampered down the hall to the door, whining excitedly. Gary heaved a sigh of relief and took a long sip from his coffee. There was only one person Arcanine greeted that exuberantly.
Sure enough, the front door opened, followed by Delia’s cheerful voice. “Hello you big silly!” she greeted the fire dog. “Where's your trainer at, handsome boy?”
“In the kitchen,” Gary called, trying not to sound too dejected. He’d screwed up cookies and made a mess, and now Delia was here to see it. Oh well. At least it wasn’t Ash.
Her footsteps echoed down the hallway, followed closely by Arcanine’s, before pausing.
“Well, this looks like fun!” she chirped from the doorway, smiling broadly despite the mess.
“Not the word I would use, but okay,” Gary sighed. “Whatever you say, Mom.”
“Oh, don't sound so down! What are you making?”
“The cookies didn't go so well, so I was gonna try brownies instead.”
Delia positively beamed at the sight of her recipe book open on the counter, despite the generous dusting of flour it had received. “That sounds wonderful! I'll help you, sweetheart.”
“You don't have to,” Gary replied automatically though he desperately hoped she would ignore him saying that.
Fortunately, she laughed. “Nonsense! What could be better than teaching you how to bake?”
“A lot of things, probably.”
“Oh, hush! Let's get you your chocolate fix before you get any more grumpy.”
“I'm not grumpy," he defended dejectedly. "I just don't think I'm cut out to be in the kitchen.”
“You helped me bake enough times when you were little for me to know that's not the case, Gary," Delia replied firmly. "You've just never had to do it on your own. Now, come on, let's get these dishes cleaned so we can try again, hmm?”
Gary didn't entirely believe her but he forced a smile nonetheless and joined her at the kitchen sink. A few minutes later the dishes were clean and dried and Gary was ready to start over.
"Alright, we'll start with the dry ingredients," Delia declared. She passed Gary a measuring cup and pointed to the open recipe book. "You get the flour and sugar, I'll get the others."
Taking a deep breath, Gary took the measuring cup and set about measuring out the sugar first. It took three tries to get it right but he breathed a sigh of relief when the the top of the sugar perfectly lined up with the line on the cup. He dumped it in the mixing bowl and turned his attention to the flour. He scooped up an amount from the large container of flour only to find it wasn’t quite enough.
No matter. He tried again but this time ended up with far more than he meant to scoop up.
Measuring was a pain in the ass, Gary determined as he sighed and dumped some of the flour back into the container. Now it was too little. Again. He poured a tiny bit back into the measuring cup and checked the line. It was over again.
He sighed and Pikachu patted his head from his perch on his shoulder.
Delia peered at the measuring cup and nodded approvingly. “That's fine," she said, resting a soothing hand on Gary's shoulder. "It's just a smidgen over, dear, it'll balance out.”
“A smidgen's okay?” What even was a smidgen?
“Yes, you can always add a touch more water if you need to.”
Gary still wasn't quite sure how much a smidgen was, much less how to tell if more water was necessary. “How do I know if I need more water?”
“I'll tell you when we get to that step.”
He hoped so. Following the recipe was proving hard enough, he didn’t know how he would manage steps that weren’t part of the recipe.
How did Ash make this look so easy? Probably by only cooking with Delia’s supervision, he realized. He had only seen his boyfriend cook with his mother in the room and, now that Gary thought about it, this sort of thing was probably the exact reason why.
Delia passed him a whisk — finally something he couldn’t screw up. Gary took it and carefully mixed the dry ingredients, making sure not to get flour all over the counter.
"Good job, sweetheart," Delia chirped a moment later, bringing a touch of pink to Gary’s cheeks. "Time for the wet ingredients. I'll get the eggs, you get the water."
Water would be easier to measure, Gary was sure. He had measured plenty of liquids in the lab, so it couldn't be difficult, right?
He rinsed the flour remnants out of the measuring cup and set about filling it with the correct amount of water. His theory was proved wrong almost immediately. Once again: too much, then too little, then too much. It was close every time but the recipe called for a specific amount and he was determined to get that specific amount correct.
“Piiii-ka, pipichu,” Pikachu sighed dramatically from Gary’s shoulder after a moment of measuring over and over again.
“Now, now, Pikachu,” Delia soothed, patting his head with an amused smile, “Gary can't help that he's a scientist at heart. It doesn’t have to be exact, dear… Actually a splash over is perfect.”
“How much is a splash?”
“Just a tiny bit.”
“A tiny bit like a milliliter? Or a fracti– Oh, shi—” He cut off abruptly as he stopped pouring with a frown. She had distracted him enough to not stop quite in time and he had poured a little too much into the measuring cup and the bottom of the meniscus was definitely above one-hundred-twenty milliliters.
“That would be a splash, dear.”
Gary eyed the line in the cup. “Is a splash always five milliliters?”
“Not always,” she replied breezily. “What's next, dear?”
Her nonchalance was baffling and somewhat irritating. How was he supposed to know all these little secrets? What balanced what out, what ingredients could be more or less than the recipe called for and by how much? All he had wanted was a chocolate fix but this was getting dangerously close to migraine-inducing.
Gary sighed and consulted the recipe on the counter. “Six tablespoons of butter.” At least he'd had the foresight to put the stick on the counter to soften.
“Just put the whole stick in.”
Gary eyed the stick warily, noting the markings on the wrapper. “But that's more than—”
“Trust me on this one, dear," Delia replied with a wink.
He sighed again and removed the wrapper, dropping the entire stick of butter into the mixing bowl.“Okay, I trust you. I just don't understand this whole imprecise thing with recipes.”
“Cooking can be a little more art than science," Delia replied, seeming oblivious to his building frustration. "There are a lot of different ways to achieve the same thing.”
“Yeah, but then there are times that you get the science part slightly wrong and then the whole thing's screwed up.” He nodded towards the pan of botched cookies from earlier.
“Brownies are harder to mess up than cookies.”
“Are they?" Gary asked doubtfully. "Or are you just trying to make me feel better?”
Delia smiled. “Perhaps a bit of both.”
"Thanks, Mom."
"That's what I'm here for, dear," she said, that smile only becoming more fond.
Gary found himself returning it despite himself. She just had that affect on him, always managing to put him at ease, even when he felt like an idiot and a failure in the kitchen.
“Alright, time to mix everything all together…" Delia trailed off, peering around the kitchen. "Do you boys not have a mixer?”
“We only moved in a week ago, Mom.”
“Well, I'm buying you boys a mixer," she declared. "We'll just have to do this the old-fashioned way until then." She passed him the whisk from earlier and Gary immediately set about mixing the dry and the wet ingredients together.
It was more time consuming than Gary remembered it being as a child, but eventually it was mixed to the right consistency. Delia fetched a pan from one of the cabinets, a glass one that she must have given them because he hadn't even known they'd had a glass pan, let alone in that cabinet. He supposed that was what happened when you left the kitchen to your boyfriend and future mother-in-law in favor of putting together bookshelves in the furthest corner of the house.
"Where'd that come from?" he blurted, earning a laugh from Delia.
"You would know if you had helped set up the kitchen," she returned, her smile turning sly.
"I needed to put the bookshelves together!"
"You say that, but have you actually filled those shelves yet?"
Damn, she knew him well. "Not yet," Gary admitted.
"Ah, so you didn't need to build them then, did you?" she teased, her fond smile never fading as she took a stick of butter from the fridge and rubbed the end of it along the inside of the pan.
Sometimes it amazed Gary just how alike she and Ash truly were. Quick with a tease, always keeping him on his toes by managing to keep up with him. It was one of the things he loved most about them. He could only laugh and shake his head.
"You got me there."
Delia giggled as she carefully poured the brownie batter into the pan and set the bowl in the sink.
With the pan in the oven and the timer set — and Delia to watch over everything — Gary breathed a sigh of relief. Pikachu patted his shoulder with a tiny paw and Gary gave him a grateful smile and another one of his favorite scritches behind the ear.
“I think we've each earned a glass of wine," Delia said after a moment of relaxed quiet passed between them.
Gary agreed wholeheartedly, despite the fact that it was barely lunch time. Fortunately he knew that within the boxes of kitchen odd and ends that Delia had brought over, there was a set of wine glasses and a corkscrew, along with a pikachu-shaped wine bottle holder. Even better, he actually knew where those were. He fetched the glasses from from the cupboard near the coffee pot and retrieved the corkscrew from the drawer.
It only took a moment to open the bottle and pour the two glasses. They each took their glass, gently touching it to the other's in a quiet toast.
It was a wine Gary hadn't tried before, but was apparently made near Cerulean and had an ornate gyarados on the label. He took a larger first sip than he normally would and was pleasantly surprised by how smooth the dark, bitter liquid was, despite its dryness. Delia had found another new favorite for him, apparently. Somehow she always knew with him.
Delia took a sip of her own and nodded approvingly. "Misty said this was one of her sisters' favorite wineries. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but it's rather nice."
Gary nodded his agreement and took another, smaller sip of his wine. A few moments passed in a comfortable quiet before…
"Thanks for helping me," he said quietly, eyes on the glass in his hand.
“Any time, dear. Although, perhaps next time we should start with the wine," Delia said with a mischievous smile and a glimmer in her eye.
“Next time?” Gary asked.
“Oh, of course. I'll need to teach you how to use your mixer, won't I?”
Gary paused with his glass halfway to his lips. “You were serious about getting us a mixer?” She had already done so much for them with helping them clean and paint and set up furniture and every little thing under the sun...
“You need to get your chocolate fix somehow, don't you?”
Gary supposed he couldn’t argue that. If Delia was serious about stocking their kitchen and teaching him how to cook, and if each lesson was going to end with a glass of wine, then maybe he could manage to dislike cooking a little less. Reason said that he would improve with Delia's help and she was good company…
Besides, she may as well have been his own mother. What was wrong with spending some time with the woman who had always encouraged him, helped him when he was down, fed and looked after him for much of his life?
That…
Well, that sounded like exactly what he had realized he had been aching for all along while he had been soul-searching in Calusa.
"Sounds good to me," he agreed, taking a sip of his wine. It was about more than just learning how to attend to his own junk food cravings and figuring out how to be an adult in the kitchen, and he was certain she knew that.
It was probably exactly why she had suggested it in the first place.
Delia beamed, absolutely radiating excitement at the agreement. "Excellent! We'll have so much fun!" she exclaimed.
Gary shook his head with a small laugh. "I think we have different definitions of fun but… It'll be nice."
The smile that followed told him that she understood exactly what he meant.
"This winery has a bottle with a lapras on the label, perhaps we can try that one next. I'll pick out a few recipes that should pair well and we'll make an afternoon of it one day when Ash is out training. How's that sound?"
"I'd like that."
He honestly couldn't wait.