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The first thing Sorey noticed when he returned home was that the apartment smelled like freshly baking chocolate cake.
In any other home, this might have been an innocuous event to come home to. Not so much for him. He could count on one hand the number of times that he and Mikleo, whether together or on their own, had attempted to use their kitchen to bake since they moved in three years ago. After the third attempt, which ended in copious amounts of smoke and the ruin of one out of the two small cupcake pans they owned, Sorey had been banned from baking. Mikleo had valiantly given another two tries, only to burn the fourth attempt and both over and underbake the fifth.
Understandably, they had stopped baking after that. Yet now, a year later, someone was actually using their kitchen to bake again.
Instinctively, he looked down at the entryway to check for an additional pair of shoes or some other indication that someone had come to visit while he was in classes all morning and been overcome with the sudden unfightable urge to bake something right then and there. Which sounded ridiculous, but Lailah had been known to go a bit overboard when in the middle of brainstorming and testing new recipes for her cafe.
… Huh. Thinking of Lailah and her baking frenzies, he did vaguely recall overhearing a conversation months ago of Lailah offering to give Mikleo some baking lessons while they and the rest of their friends were dragged into taste-testing some of her new recipes. But after not hearing any follow up on it (and Lailah being weirdly evasive at any mention of baking for weeks after that), Sorey had assumed that either Mikleo had declined or it had gone so horribly that they were keeping it secret to avoid Mikleo being relentlessly teased over his continued failures.
However, the lack of any shoes or bags but his and Mikleo’s own ruled out the possibility of it being someone else. After slipping out of his shoes and setting his backpack aside, Sorey made his way to the kitchen to investigate. Sure enough, there was no Lailah or any other guest—only Mikleo, pulling their one surviving cupcake pan out of the oven.
Sorey leaned against the doorway, watching as Mikleo shut the oven and moved to set the pan on the counter. He waited until Mikleo had set the pan on the counter before saying, “Sure smells good.”
Mikleo turned around, eyes widened and just a tinge frantic as if caught completely off guard. He quickly schooled his expression back to calm, huffing in light (mostly-fake) irritation at the surprise. With regained composure, he gestured at a plate situated further down on the counter that held six more cupcakes. “Hopefully they taste good, too. Those should be cool enough to try, if you don’t mind playing guinea pig.”
Sorey laughed. “Guess I’ll take one for the team, then.”
He shuffled over to the counter and picked up a cupcake. It didn’t look or smell burned, at the very least—that was promising. Instead of biting into it, he grabbed a knife from the silverware drawer and cut it in half. One glance at the inside proved it wasn’t still raw in the middle, either. Feeling reassured that he wasn’t about to be poisoned, he lifted one half and took a bite.
His eyes brightened. “Oh, wow. That’s actually pretty good!”
Mikleo rolled his eyes at the slightly backhanded compliment, but one hand raised to hide his lips, now lifted in a pleased smile. As a peace offering, Sorey picked up the cupcake liner holding the uneaten half and held it out to him.
Mikleo reached out to accept. His brow furrowed a bit after biting into the cupcake, the way it often did when he thought he had solved a problem only to just miss the mark. “Well, they’re not bad. But they’re still way denser than they’re supposed to be.”
Sorey shrugged. He didn’t know what the right denseness was even supposed to be, let alone how to tell that the half cupcake he had just eaten was too dense. All that mattered, in his book, was that he enjoyed eating it. But that was probably why Mikleo was in charge of making desserts and Sorey wasn’t. He stepped closer to Mikleo and shot him a teasing grin, saying, “If you say so. But, hey, if these aren’t up to your standards, I’d be glad to eat more so you don’t have to.”
Sorey half expected Mikleo to joke back, maybe roll his eyes again. Instead, Mikleo smiled—a soft, fond smile that made Sorey acutely aware of his heart as it started doing funny things in his chest—while one hand came up to brush a crumb from the corner of Sorey’s mouth. “That’s good. They are for you, after all.”
It took a second for Sorey’s brain to process that sentence, too focused on the lingering warmth from Mikleo’s fingers. “For me?”
Mikleo nodded, clearly holding back a laugh at Sorey’s response. “Yup. Happy Valentine’s Day.”
… Oh. That had not at all been what he expected, but now everything made sense. It wasn’t that Sorey had forgotten about Valentine’s Day. He had already gotten his boyfriend a gift and everything, hidden in the second drawer of the desk in Sorey’s room, which admittedly acted as more of a study room-slash-closet instead of a proper bedroom these days. He’d just been caught a little off guard by the whole baking thing, was all.
Not to mention…
“Isn’t Valentine’s Day tomorrow?” Sorey asked.
“It is. But somebody”—Mikleo playfully elbowed him for emphasis—“came home early, so I didn’t have time to hide them for tomorrow.”
With a sheepish grin, Sorey responded, “My last class was cancelled. Sorry for ruining the surprise, I guess.”
“It’s fine.” Mikleo smiled reassuringly. “As long as you like them.”
“I definitely do.” Sorey took a step closer to his boyfriend, placing a hand on the other’s waist to pull him closer. As Mikleo reached out to put a hand on Sorey’s shoulder to steady himself at the unexpected gesture, Sorey leaned down to press a quick kiss to Mikleo’s lips. “Thanks for the surprise.”
Mikleo rolled his eyes as Sorey pulled back slightly, but the smile tugging at the corners of his lips and the light kiss he gave in response betrayed his true mood. “I’d say anytime, but I think I’ll take a break from baking for the foreseeable future. You don’t even wanna know how many batches I burnt while I was learning from Lailah.”
Actually, he did kind of want to know. But that conversation, Sorey thought to himself as he leaned in for another kiss (or two or five), could wait for much, much later.