Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Okay, what the hell is this?”

Goro’s scrutinizing gaze drops to the sickeningly colourful floral print bowls stacked in front of him. He blatantly ignores the ingredients, and zeroes in on the most hideous looking thing there, which happens to be—

“A bowl.” Akira deadpans with a repressed smile, “Or, you could say, several bowls.”

The response earns Akira a light smack on the side of his left shoulder. He feigns pain with a pathetic whine, rubbing his arm as if he’d never taken a beating at the hands of a powerful shadow in his life. Whatever intelligible response Goro had is exchanged for a deep sigh, resting his hands on his hips as he surveils the area; it’s a decently-sized kitchen studio, something he’d see on a late afternoon cooking show when Akira wasn’t home – not that there’d be a problem if he was home, but some part of Goro’s ego bruises when he recalls all his failed attempts at cooking, especially when his fiancé was near flawless at it. Although, he was a little loath to admit that last part.

Akira recovers quickly, starting to arrange the kitchen utensils and ingredients on his side of the countertop, “Anyways, you agreed to this, didn’t you?” He glances sideways at him, the beginnings of a smirk playing on his lips, “Another duel – a bake-off challenge?”

“Yeah, well… I didn’t know what to expect when you brought me in here blindfolded but I thought our agreement meant, I don’t know— us at home, in our own kitchen, not renting out a whole…” Goro frowns and vaguely gestures to the rest of the studio, “Whatever this is.”

“A studio?”

“A studio.”

Akira stops and shifts closer to Goro, leaning into his space just enough to see him squirm a little, “Well, I thought you would appreciate the extra flair. Unless…”

He knows this tone. He knows he’s trying to bait him, and yet, he’s left no choice but to bite.

“Unless what?”

His voice drops a little lower as he leans in even further, a fully realized smirk plastered on his face, “Unless this is your way of saying you want to back out of the challenge?”

Goro grabs his chin between his thumb and his forefinger, glaring daggers into gunmetal eyes. It takes a moment or two before the frown slips with a huff, surrendering to his fiancé as he moves his hand up to cup his cheek for barely a second before letting it drop to his side. A bright and self-satisfied smile paints Akira’s expression, to which he only rolls his eyes and mutters a quiet, “Oh, shut up.”

It’s after that and a grin that Goro tries very hard to wipe off his face, that the two of them lapse into a comfortable silence as they work to arrange their materials. Akira was much less methodical in his approach, opting to organize in a way that could basically be summarized as ‘winging it’, while Goro methodically sorted bowls by size, dry ingredients to wet ingredients, and anything else related to decorations pushed to the corner of the countertop. All the while, his heart doesn’t stop pounding against his ribcage – whether it’s from the anxiety of what’s to come from his lack of experience or the thrill of a competition, he can’t quite tell.

His hands feel clammy and even a little cold as he adjusts the oven to preheat it. Akira is going at a similar pace, although he’s a step ahead of him, rolling up his sleeves to his elbows and exposing his forearms as he washes his hands thoroughly. Akira glances to the side and sends him a wink when he catches Goro staring, to which he only rolls his eyes, biting down the words ‘show off’ when he realizes that there’s no one to show off to but him. Somehow, that’s enough to make him fluster even more.

Goro quickly catches up, both of them tied as they combine their first ingredients together in their own studio-supplied stand mixers, Akira starting with a yolk mixture while Goro starts with a ludicrous amount of butter and sugar. They weren’t following the same process, given that their cakes were different recipes altogether, but they were at least fundamentally pretty similar.

Or so Goro thought – he’d baked once or twice in the past with Akira, so it wasn’t like he was heading into this completely blind, but jumping straight into making a mockup cake for their wedding definitely made him feel a little like he’d just been suddenly dropped inside of a pressure cooker. At the very least, the way Akira looked like he was in his element made him prickle with jealousy.

And so, he’d relied on the two things that had gotten him through most of his life to get him through yet another ordeal: thorough research and late-night practice.

While Goro wasn’t anything close to being decent in the kitchen, the one thing that set cooking and baking apart was the fact that cooking felt like it was more of a freeform art, while baking was formulaic – it demanded precision, the closest that one could get to perfection. For all his flaws and ego, that was a front that Goro refused to back down on.

Goro’s nudged out of his trance by Akira’s right elbow at his rib, although he doesn’t even recall when the other had gotten into his space. Akira’s grinning at him, hovering a dark and blurry square of something by his mouth in an attempt to prod it open. He furrowed his eyebrows and leaned away from whatever was violating his personal space, trying to get a better look.

“Open up, it’s just dark chocolate.” Akira says with a teasing lilt, waving it around as if it would make it any more enticing, “It won’t hurt you.”

“Why the offer?” Goro narrows his eyes suspiciously, watching his partner’s playful grin melt away into a proper smile.

“Dunno, you just seemed really tense. I know it’s a competition, but it’s no fun if we’re both not enjoying ourselves.” He shrugs nonchalantly, none the wiser to the warmth buzzing under Goro’s skin, “I just thought it might make you feel better. Maybe it’ll even act as a good luck charm.”

And that does it.

Goro swoops forward and snatches the piece of chocolate between his teeth, a rejuvenated flare in his eyes as he faces the counter, a scoff escaping him mid-chew, “As if I’d need your good luck.”

“Better live up to your words then, detective.”

Akira smirks and flourishes his spatula with a confident spin, not unlike Joker wielding his dagger in the Metaverse.

Except… it wasn’t a dagger. It was a spatula, one covered in wet eggy batter that now painted the wall in streaks behind him in a moment of sheer stupidity that Goro wishes he caught on camera.

“…Oops.”

An ugly laugh rips out of him at the pathetic look on Akira’s face as he stares at the wall behind them. Affection and challenge working hand in hand to stoke the fire within him, as they both swing right back into baking, working in tandem as a perfect team just as much as they were dueling against each other. It was perfect, however flawed they may be.

Goro wasn’t afraid to admit his feelings about himself or Akira, for better or for worse – the silver ring on his finger was proof of that. It was nothing short of liberating after a lifetime of pressing down on old bruises and refusing to let wounds scab.

Truthfully, the first time Goro Akechi had ever cried in front of a person that wasn’t his mother, was when Akira welcomed him back into his life; first with a punch across his jaw, followed by an ice pack pressed against his cheek and a cup of coffee set before him, his usual order memorized and suited perfectly to his tastes.

The second time was when Akira told him that he loved him in the quiet hours that followed, bleeding way past midnight and whispered through torn down walls.

Despite that, he didn’t cry at the proposal. Sure, he got a little misty-eyed, but his emotions were more or less swept away in the flair of it all; Akira knew him well enough to know that he wouldn’t settle for anything less than perfect. As if Akira himself would settle for anything less than perfect.

So, when Akira approached him with the challenge, with the prospect of them not only getting to decide the wedding cake for themselves while also getting the chance to hold a little contest, who was he to refuse his lifelong rival?

Rest assured, he could always count on Akira to meet and exceed his expectations.

Goro shakes his head, refocusing.

Given that his own ingredients focus more on the frosting and decorations, it’s fair game to assume that the ingredients Akira has laid out will help in focusing on a complex taste; at least, judging from how they ranged from an espresso mixture, coffee beans, vanilla beans, and for some reason olive oil.

The fact of the matter is that he knows Akira; he knows he’s a natural in the kitchen, and like with most things, he’s bound to have tricks up his sleeve to get the upper hand in their little competition. Maybe that’s why they were made to be rivals – after all, Goro himself was no stranger to using tricks and dirty tactics.

Still, for the sake of playing fair and sparing their cake judge, he’d decided against intentionally sabotaging his partner’s cake – although he won’t deny that he had considered it for a good, long while. If he’s judging Akira’s strengths correctly, compensating for taste with flashiness and grandeur seemed to be the logical route to take if he wanted to win against him.

From the corner of his eye, he catches Akira pulling out a sheet tray, whipping out a roll of parchment paper and effortlessly gliding a pair of scissors through it. Goro curses under his breath, nearly thrashing his batter with every ounce of frustration he can muster to speed up the whisking process, because god , the lumps are still there. It’s not a race or anything, but the smug look on Akira’s face from pulling ahead is doing unimaginable damage to his ego.

It takes a solid ten minutes to get all the lumps out and fumble over his own cake pans, but Akira’s already slipped his pan into the oven and started on the frosting. He skillfully scrapes the vanilla beans with the back of a knife, dropping the seeds and the pod into the mixture of coffee beans and milk he’d set on the stove, stirring mildly until the fragrance wraps around them both.

The little song he hums to fill in the space between them is inoffensive at best – despite his pleasant voice – and headache-inducing at worst. It’s all Goro can handle before the stick of butter greasing his parchment paper makes an ugly tear, and irritation catches up to him with a pointed snap.

“How the hell are you already so far ahead?”

Akira looks up from the stove with an easy smile, his glasses fogged from the rising vapour. He shuffles back to the countertop, doing something with the gelatin in his bowl, “I’m actually not really that far ahead compared to you. I’m still working on the first type of frosting— or, well, pastry filling.”

He has to stop himself from dropping his stupid cake tray at Akira’s words. Goro sputters inelegantly as the heat from the oven blasts his face, “Your first type?!”  

The other man only shrugs, and it’s in that moment that Goro hopes his face melts off from the heat.

Before he can slip in another remark, Akira’s humming picks up again, although the tune changes to a familiar one – a gentle song they’d heard as teenagers, sweeping through the atmosphere over mellow sweet soft drinks and low lights that did nothing to quell the surge of longing he’d stubbornly denied himself back then.

And just like that, Goro’s heart settles and his edges soften, no longer resembling the serrated knife resting at the corner of his workspace.

The rest of their time is significantly more enjoyable without the haze of frustration clouding his mind. For one, the actual challenge kicks in once they’re down to their last steps of decoration prep; Akira finishing up his first coffee flavoured filling before moving onto his second mascarpone-based frosting for the outer layer, while Goro quickly caught up with his buttercream frosting and fondant layer.

He’d never been too shabby with his handiwork, admittedly. In fact, he takes pride in the control he has, which was probably why sculpting fondant roses felt more therapeutic than anything else he’d done this evening. Between the delicate twists and folds of the petals, he watches Akira whip together the last of the ingredients with practiced ease.

Akira is incredibly graceful in his motions, something that colours Goro’s heart with both pride and a slight tinge of jealousy. Whether it’s in real life or the Metaverse, once he slips into his element, he’s Joker in stride – confidence and playfulness going hand in hand, regardless of if he was cutting down shadows or giving his best shot at a pour-over. It’s a far cry from the boy that always kept his head ducked down when he wasn’t donning a white mask, and he’s grateful for that.

It's almost midnight when they wrap things up for the day, both of their assembled cakes needing enough time to set before they frost them. Goro’s grateful for the break, the exhaustion seeping bone deep to the point where he clings to Akira as he calls for a cab, both of them too tired to even check for running trains.

The next day doesn’t fare much better, because Goro feels like he’s slept for a total of thirty minutes when he’s almost positive he got at least seven hours. It doesn’t escape Akira’s studying gaze as he dissects his fiancé, looking at him with concern like he was a dog that got his annual shots instead of a man that stood around baking for several hours straight. Again.

“Ann and the others will be here soon, by the way. You should maybe try easing up a little,” Akira points out with a chuckle, leaning into Goro’s space like an overly affectionate cat, “Unless… you’re just worried that you’re gonna lose?”

Goro snipes him down with a glare, but looking at the grin plastered on his face, it’s wasted on a brainless guy like him. Still, he can’t deny that the fatigue is catching up to him, weighing him down with sore arms and a headache. And so, he relents with a sigh, “No, it’s just that… while I suppose I did have fun, I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t tired. It’s annoying actually – I thought I’d have more stamina than this from cycling at least.”

“Hm… well, baking and cooking might be therapeutic and all, but it does take a lot out of you if you’re not that used to it.” Akira drapes himself over Goro’s shoulders, playing the well-loved role of his human weighted blanket, “But we’ll keep at it, don’t worry.”

“…We?” Goro twists his head to the side, only to be met with Akira’s warm lips pressed against the crown of his head.

“You heard me.”

Before he can question any further, the cavalry arrives, and Goro feels his exhaustion creep right back into his temples.

Ann bursts through the entrance, throwing open the double doors with ease as the rest of their friend group trickles in, “Morning! Are we ready for cake testing?!”

“Bet you’re more excited than everyone in this room combined.” Ryuji sneers as they approach the counter, but it goes ignored as Ann’s focus is narrowed in on Goro’s cake as she nearly runs across the studio to swipe a taste.

Shiho is immediately there by her side, slapping her hand away from it with an overly bright smile that could rival the Detective Prince. He has to bite back a laugh at the familiar pout and look of betrayal on Ann’s face as she rubs at the back of her hand.

As expected of Ann’s smarter half, Shiho picks up the slack and hands out plates, equally dividing both Akira’s and Goro’s cake until there’s less than half left.

Up close, Akira’s cake looks and smells delightful – moist, delicate, and aromatic, and he has no doubt the taste will live up to his expectations. On the other hand, he can’t say that he did a shabby job with his cake either; after all, he’d poured in a lot of time into crafting each flower and styling it with red and gold accents. He cuts into his own cake, stopping only when Ann pipes up again.

“This is… hard.” Ann hums with her mouth full, “Not sure how to say this without you two getting mad, but… I think we might have a tie on our hands?”

Goro frowns.

“Hear me out, just— look, it’s complicated; both of your cakes taste and look amazing, but when it comes down to it, Goro’s looks better and Akira’s tastes better. So, um… what do we do now?”

Akira’s the first to swoop in, stealing Goro’s cake off of his affronted fiancé’s fork.

“Call it a tie and combine our ideas?”

He flashes a smile at him, bold and hopeful, blissfully unaware that Goro could never refuse him in the first place.

But Goro is nothing if not dramatic, so it’s with a heavy sigh that he sticks his fork into Akira’s plate and steals a bite of Akira’s cake, settling with an acquiescence and maybe a playful smile, giving into the mellow sweetness and rich taste of coffee.

“Fine, Kurusu. We have a deal.”