Archive of Our Own

“Come on,” Stelle whined as she tried to use a jar to keep the phone up, “you know how much I suck at baking! And Firefly returns in a few hours!”

On the other end of the phone, Herta rolled her eyes, “Yes, but Ruan Mei can't just bake you something at the moment.” She sighed, as one of their cats entered the camera, “I am sorry, but you caught us in a bad moment. You could have asked a few days ago, Ruan Mei had some free time then!”

“But it wouldn't have been the saame! I wanted her to get back home and smell the freshly baked cake as I pop from my hiding spot telling her ‘Happy Birthday!’. The plan was great…”

“You could have… used one of the many perfumes Kakavasha has? Surely he has one that smells like baked stuff. Or even Ratio, he should have some scented candles as well just for-”

“But it's not the same!” Stelle whined about it even more. “And also, I didn't want Ruan Mei to fully make the cake, just to help me. In person…”

“I still don't get why you want to specifically bake a cake. You could have bought one, as well. Freshly made cake, would still smell, would still be delicious…”

“But where's the effort of making something for my partner from scratch! That adds to the value of the surprise.” Stelle crossed her arms and nodded.

“The effort of…” Herta sighed, “then why not bake one together?”

“Bake one together? Herta, do you hear yourself? Who bakes their own cake for their birthday?!” Stelle rolled her eyes, “I want her to be spoiled at home, not make her work on things while she's home on her birthday! You know, have her relax and such…”

“Aeons, I wish you’d put that much thought into your lesson plans.”

Ruan Mei popped into the camera, holding a different cat, giggling, “I might be able to still guide you? I can see what you're doing through this video call. Might not be able to catch the details, but it wouldn't be a problem.”

“That should work, right?” Herta asked Stelle, as the cat tried to catch a few strands of her hair. A hint of annoyance was starting to surface.

“I do have the ingredients after all…” Stelle placed a hand under her chin, closing her eyes, “but are you sure it's easy enough?”

“Hey, Ruan Mei managed to teach some kids how to cook. You're not that far off.” Herta snickered before mumbling a swear as the cat decided her hair was a new toy.

The other woman giggled, hiding her mouth behind her hand. “It shouldn't be that difficult. After all, it's all just precise measurements.”

Stelle looked away. Her scale was anything but precise. Surely she could eyeball some measurements, right?

“Yeah, ok, what do I need to start with?”

“Preparing your main ingredients would be the first place. You don't want to start measuring mid-baking and have your dough suffer because of it.” Ruan Mei replied, smiling warmly. “Well, first, we’re looking at sugar.”

Stelle opened the cupboard, seeing two bags of sugar. One was the brown one, the one she’d put a lot into her coffee specifically, while the other one was the regular one, unopened. “White or brown?” She shouted from the cupboard.

“White.” Ruan Mei replied, before whispering something to Herta. Stelle caught the other woman rolling her eyes and sighing, as she picked the orange rascal sitting in Ruan Mei’s arms.

“How much?” Stelle asked, bringing the 1 kilo bag back to the counter.

“One cup of sugar.” It seemed the rascal was back to annoying Ruan Mei, which got a cute laugh out of her. 

One… cup? Oh those aren't shit that she can eyeball! 500 grams? Sure, just take half of a kilo bag! Even less? Just round it up to the closest nice number…

A cup?! What sort of cup was she even talking about?! Stelle wanted to complain, because she had no idea what exactly a cup meant! Like using one of their actual cups to measure? Sure she had some nice ones laying around, maybe those would be helpful. She grabbed her cup with the Raccoon Baseballer and poured sugar ‘till it got filled up. She still had no idea just how much sugar that was but, hopefully enough? 

She glanced at the woman, just to see her too occupied with the cat to even notice the blasphemy Stelle had just done. She poured the sugar in a nice bowl, just to hide her crime. There was no need for the baking expert to see all of her mistakes, right? It wasn't like baking was rocket science, she could probably freestyle the cake. Maybe it required the same precise measurements as rocket science did but… it should be fine, over all!

“I apologize, Troublemaker wanted some of my attention.”

“Is Herta fine with all the cats, at the moment?” Stelle tilted her head. “Also that name does fit the little guy.”

“She should be. Sadly some got into the patch of mud that resulted from the recent storm, so they require a bath. But she should have them, after all, I showed her how exactly to bathe them.” Ruan Mei clasped her hands, smiling. “Right, now that you have the sugar, you should consider grabbing the flour. One and a half cups of all-purpose flour.”

Stelle blinked. Since when did flour have multiple jobs that they had to make one that's all-purpose? She looked into the cupboard, spotting the opened bag she used a few days ago for pancakes. This should maybe serve the purpose of making a cake…

“Mei, can you hold Lucky Snack for a second?” Herta was heard shouting from a distance.

“Alright, give me a second!” She shouted back before looking back at the camera. “Right, before I return, you also require whole milk and unsalted butter. Half a cup each. Oh and also eggs, two of them. I'll return as fast as possible.” 

She got up, Troublemaker taking the camera spotlight, lounging on the table the phone was placed on. It started snoring, happily. Stelle could only see its fur, raising and falling down in the rhythm of its breathing.

She sighed, pouring some flour in the cup she had, reusing the one for the sugar. They're gonna mix anyways and they're both dust, shouldn't be that big of a deal. She poured one cup, she moved that into a bigger bowl and eyeballed half a cup as well. Got everything nice and clean into the bowl and went to the fridge.

‘Whole’ milk, huh? She grabbed the bottle she had there, half full. Maybe the bottle was not whole but the milk seems fairly ok? Didn't seem like the milk broke down through a weird chemical reaction or anything like that. Should be ‘whole’ enough for the cake.

She stared at the butter. What did Ruan Mei mean by ‘unsalted’? It just said butter on it. There was no mention of how much salt it had! Or, anything… also how was she supposed to measure the butter in cups? Maybe with the other things she could just pour them in a cup, but butter? She could fit the whole stick in the cup! Hah… ‘whole’ butter.

What else did she need, eggs? At least those were relatively easy to measure. Then again, did their size matter? While she's an avid believer that size didn't matter over all, especially boobs size, maybe for the eggs it was another story. It didn't help that they got some dinosaur-looking eggs from one of the teachers who had a farm. Fuck it, couldn't go wrong with two giant eggs!

She grabbed the three ingredients and went back to the counter. For the milk, she applied the same measuring technique as with the flour and sugar. With the butter… she was still staring at it. She picked a knife and used the little ‘here’s 50g’ mark to cut around 70 grams, in hopes that was more than enough. If not, well. Fuck her life.

Ruan Mei returned back to the call, with her hair a bit messy and some small scratches on her face. “Shit, you good?” Stelle asked, worried.

“The cats don't like having a bath. But it is the price they have to pay if they want to play in the dirt…” she sighed, moving her hand through her hair to fix it a bit. “The scratches are superficial, at least.”

“That's good to hear. What else do we need?”

“Vanilla extract, salt and baking powder. You’d want to measure them with a teaspoon.”

Thankfully Firefly was drinking tea so they had something like that laying around. Or well, it was a small spoon she was using to mix the tea. Sounds ‘teaspoon’-y enough for Stelle. She brought the stuff at the counter and grabbed a big bowl as well for the mixing.

“Soo what now?”

“Do you have a mixer?” Ruan Mei asked, trying to look around Stelle’s kitchen through the phone camera. 

“... No? What do you mean I need hardware for this?” 

“Hmm.” Ruan Mei placed a hand under her chin. “That might be a problem. How strong are your arms?”

“Strong enough to lift up any woman I encounter!” Stelle flexed her arm, grinning brightly. 

“Then grab a whisk, you’re doing this manually.” 

With the tool in hand, Stelle listened to Ruan Mei’s instructions and poured the sugar and butter into a bowl. Seeing how much the quantity of ingredients varied, she threw in a few more pieces of butter, doubling the amount of it in the bowl. She pushed, putting as much strength as she could in the hand movement, seeing how things started to mix slowly.

She continued this for almost ten minutes, when Ruan Mei asked her to show her the contents of the bowl. With a small nod, she issued the next order. Stelle cracked an egg, threw its contents into the bowl and continued mixing. Once that got nicely in the dough, she threw the other one, mixing it as well.

The next step was the vanilla extract. She picked up the teaspoon and placed it over the bowl. She poured the vanilla extract on it, of course some overflowing over the mixture.

“How many teaspoons?” She asked, looking at Ruan Mei.

“T- Gateau! Get out of there!” She immediately got interrupted by one of the cats deciding to bestow chaos upon their household. She got up to grab the cat.

T… could be two, could be three, could be ten! Maybe three. Three and a half? Everyone loved vanilla flavour, surely you couldn't have too much of the extract in a cake… she poured the teaspoons, probably reaching around 4 or 5 with all the overflowing getting into the bowl too. She started mixing everything. Ruan Mei returned, white cat in arms.

“I am sorry, but Gateau Gamer did not want to cooperate.” She said, sighing. “Herta is not having a better time bathing the others.”

Sometimes Stelle wondered where did Ruan Mei come up with all the cat names. Some… if not all of them were very unique. Also somehow tied to baking, which felt rather characteristic from her.

“I’d imagine.” Stelle replied, mixing the dough. “Why did you guys go for those names?”

“You mean stuff like Gateau Gamer? I found them cute.”

They were nonsensical at best. But, Stelle didn't feel like talking about cat names when hers was called Garbarra. Found in trash, so she was considered garbage. Thus, Barbarra but with trash! Tarbarra could have also worked as a name.

“Is the mixture done?” Ruan Mei brought her back to reality.

“Uhh, think so?” She showed the bowl on the camera.

“Looks good overall. Now grab another bowl for the flour mixture.”

“What do you mean flour mixture?”

“Mix flour, salt and baking powder, that's all.” Ruan Mei continued petting the white cat.

She threw some salt in the flour, not really measuring it and then eyeballed some baking powder as well. More would make the cake more fluffy, right? She mixed them a bit - not like she could tell the difference between flour and the baking powder - and prepared herself to throw everything into the butter mix.

“Wait! You need to do it slowly… and also add the milk in it!” Ruan Mei said, actually catching Stelle’s mistake in time.

She rolled her eyes, sighing. “Alright, how do I do that?” 

“You pour a bit of flour, mix, add the milk, mix, add the flour. Three batches of each.” 

She threw in a batch of flour and started mixing. Once it seemed that the powder was nicely incorporated in the dough, she threw in the liquid as well. She continued mixing, feeling her arms starting to hurt. Good workout, at least. 

It took her a good chunk of minutes to get all the ingredients in, but the dough actually looked like dough! She placed it in the pan to then get that into the oven.

“So what's the temperature combo?” She asked Ruan Mei, clearing her sweat off her forehead. She had to clean afterwards…

“What… wait, have I not given you that already?” 

“Why would you, I was gonna take a while until the cake was ready to be cooked anyways.”

“Stelle please tell me you actually preheated the oven…” she spotted Herta appearing in the background with more scratches on her face than what Ruan Mei had.

“... Was I supposed to?”

She could see Ruan Mei’s eyebrow twitch. She was doing her best to hold a nice warm smile, but anyone could tell she had the same expression as Stelle’s teachers whenever she said something stupid.

“Oh come on, Stelle! Even I know that I should preheat the oven. And you know how great my baking attempts went…” Herta replied, looking smug. “Don't you make frozen pizzas anyways? You mentioned it while talking with the other teachers.”

“Yeah I make them in the air fryer.” 

Ruan Mei looked even more angry.

“... I think I know why Firefly is doing the cooking…” Herta replied, picking up the white cat that her partner was holding. “Gonna take Gateau Gamer back to the others if you don't mind-”

“Stelle.” Ruan Mei’s voice was colder than winter, “I’m freeing up a week in my schedule to teach you how to cook.” 

“But it's fine?”

“No. You cannot refuse this.” Stelle felt a shiver run down her spine.

“Y-yes m’am!”

“Now back to the cake. You just have to preheat the oven to 175°C and then put the cake in for around 30 minutes.”

Ruan Mei looked over the camera, a bit of worry being registered. “If you excuse me, it seems the cats are more rowdy than usual. You think you're fine with the cake?”

“Shouldn't be that complicated anymore, aye. Thank you!”

“Next Monday. At 9 am. At my place. You got it?” She frowned before waving at the camera, smiling. 

Stelle nodded and waved, as she closed the video call. She checked the time and saw that Firefly should arrive in around 15 minutes… which would ruin the surprise of taking the cake out right as she arrived!

Stelle looked around the kitchen, seeing all the dirty bowls used and all the ingredients that spilled on the ground as well. She covered her face with her hands, screamed and then slapped her cheeks.

She put the oven to a higher temperature. If 175 was needed for 30 minutes… surely having it on 220 would make things faster! Fuck the preheating, the air fryer pizza never really needed that. It sounded like a fancy thing oven users were always telling others about. “Look at me, I had preheated my oven for my pasta dish!” She rolled her eyes imagining a man with a monocle and moustache saying that.

She picked the pan and placed it into the oven. She turned on the timer for 10 minutes. If things looked bad, she might be able to still fix it. Next, she threw the bowls into the dishwasher, starting it for a quick wash.

Picking up the broom, she gathered all the flour that ended up on the ground. A part of her was wondering if she even put enough of it. But, well, it wasn't like she could grab the cake and mix in even more. 

It should at least end up sweet, right? She followed Ruan Mei’s instructions! Well, almost all of them… well, at least the cake had more than enough sugar to still have the taste profile of a cake! She wasn't sure how the texture would be… Nope, no more worries Stelle.

As she finished cleaning, the timer started ringing. She checked the cake and it seemed reasonably fine? Maybe a few more minutes for it to be done. She cranked the temperature a bit higher and sat down on the chair, waiting for Firefly to show up.

She closed her eyes, waiting for the smell of freshly baked cake to fill up the room. What she didn't expect, however, was the smell of freshly burnt cake to make its way there. She immediately got up and took the cake out of the oven.

Its surface? Looked fine! Maybe a tiny bit crispy. She cut a slice, just to see the horror: its underside was completely burnt, while its insides were barely cooked. She sighed, looking at the disaster. If she was worried about not getting the ingredients right, she never thought that the actual baking part would be what kills the cake.

The door opened, Firefly’s happy voice ringing through the building. “I have return- huh, what's the smell?”

Stelle looked at the door and then at the cake. She could throw it, pretend it never existed. Sure the surprise won't be there anymore but taking Firefly to a nice dinner sounded like a good backup. She picked up the plate.

Firefly hugged her from behind, “what do you have there?” 

Stelle almost dropped the food. “Ohh, uh. Happy Birthday?” She turned around with the pan in her hands. “I uh. Tried.”

Tried was a big word for the cake. 

“Oh, is that a cake?” Firefly asked, tilting her head. She sniffed the air a bit, “you know, under the smell of burnt you can pick up some hints of vanilla.”

“Yeah! I’ve put some extract in it. Think the recipe mentioned… 5 of them?”

Firefly blinked and then patted her girlfriend’s head, “That's so sweet of you!” She smiled, “how about we give it a try?”

“But it's going to taste bad…” Stelle replied, her shoulders dropping.

“And? It's still your first cake!” Firefly picked up the pan from her hands, “there's only room for improvement.”

“Alright, alright…” Stelle joined her in the kitchen and used the knife to cut two slices. She placed them on separate plates and handed Firefly a fork.

“Happy Birthday, bug.” Stelle smiled at her lover.

“Hehe, thank you!” She grabbed a bite from the cake. She immediately started coughing. She did her best to swallow the bit. 

“How bad is it?” Stelle asked before taking a bite herself.

“It's… unique.” Firefly mumbled as she managed to get the block of cake to go down her throat. She immediately grabbed some soda and downed it.

Stelle’s tastebuds were never so assaulted as they were now. Where she would have expected a sweet taste accompanied with a fluffy, maybe even flaky texture… she got hit with the bitterness of too much vanilla extract, the plain taste of flour which wasn't mixed properly… she crunched on something which might have been the sugar that didn't mix too.

It was a disaster, inside and outside. Firefly somehow took another bite. Stelle grabbed her hand, “it's fine, you don't have to force yourself!”

“But it's a cake made by you! How can I not enjoy it?” Firefly asked, smiling. “It's not that bad…”

“After you get past the taste of raw materials? And the taste of burnt dough?”

“Yeah! You can feel uh. The sugar. Makes it nice and sweet.”

“I don't think you're supposed to feel the sugar…” Stelle looked away. “Sorry, you wanna go out and eat instead?”

Firefly tilted her head, “how about we cook something together instead? And then have a lazy evening on the couch.”

“That… I can't just let you cook on your birthday!”

“I don't mind it?” Firefly leaned her hand into her open hand, “I suppose you can be the cook and I will be the assistant instead. You think you can follow some instructions?” 

“I always follow your instructions in bed.” Stelle winked at Firefly, who rolled her eyes and laughed.

“Alright.” She got herself up, picking up the plate of cake, “Maybe for your birthday I’ll get you a mixer. That would improve the cake overall.”

“You think so?” Stelle picked up the pan and threw its contents into the trash. 

“The base of the cake was there. Just badly mixed and… I’m not sure if the quantities were also right?’

“Ruan Mei kept telling me about cups! I don't know what cup she's talking about!” Stelle sighed, waving her hands around, “it can be any of ours!”

Firefly bursted out laughing. “Measuring cup. You used a few!”

“... Oh that makes much more sense. Still, actual quantities would make more sense!” She crossed her arms, frowning. “But I do accept your feedback.”

“I need to come up with a good surprise for your birthday too…” Firefly mumbled to herself.

“I’d love to have a cake made by you!”

“Hey, just because I can cook decently, doesn't mean I know how to bake. That is an entirely different beast to tackle.” Firefly laughed, elbowing Stelle. “Also sounds better to leave it to you. I cover the cooking, you cover the baking.”

“But I also cover the alcohol mixing…”

“Then I’ll find another thing to cover as well.” Firefly winked. “Alright then, what should we cook?”