Unbirthday present for coffee-flavored-fate!
coffee-flavored-fate:
Um…the first time Romano cooked a dessert especially for America, maybe? As a surprise, or just unexpected on America's part. Human/nations/any gender/universe acceptable, your choice. No pressure though!
I went for genderbent!Romerica in a human AU! I hope you like it. It got a bit longer than I intended. (And I'll explain the dessert choice and everything if you like.)
Lovina bit her lip, sniffing the hot air coming out of the oven. It was, admittedly, a delicious smell, if a little unusual. She could've made something she'd made a hundred times—something she could make in her sleep—but Feliciano had said that Ludwig had said that Julchen had said that Matthew had said that this was Amelia's favorite dessert.
An uncomfortably long telephone line. Any one of the links could have gotten it wrong, so she'd called Matthew herself, and he'd confirmed it. Pecan pie with caramel ice cream. Well, the ice cream had been easy enough to make; Amelia had an unopened machine for making it. It was chilling while the pie baked.
Nervousness pricked Lovina. She'd been going out with Amelia for a couple of months, but she'd steadfastly refused to cook for her. Amelia hadn't pushed her, despite her endless appetite. Cooking for someone meant something. Knowing what their tastes were, or hoping you knew them—knowing their allergies, too. Spending hours making the perfect pie crust and the perfect filling and hand-making ice cream took time, darn it. Time she'd spent thinking about whether Amelia would like it.
Lovina checked the pie, and the toothpick came away clean and perfect. It had to cool, though; Matthew had told her that it wasn't served hot. She set it out to cool and checked the ice cream—the consistency looked perfect. A taste test assured her that she hadn't mixed the sugar and salt up, at least.
She tried to tell herself that they could just go out for gelato at their usual place if Amelia didn't like it. Why had she made dessert without making dinner to go with it? Lovina pressed her forehead against the freezer door, about to mentally berate herself for not thinking things through when she heard a key turning in the front door—Lovina had given her a duplicate key just that morning, with instructions to drop by after work.
"Oh my God," Amelia groaned, kicking off her shoes. "It smells like Heaven in here. Like, even more than it usually does." She padded toward the kitchen, entering nose first with a ridiculous grin on her face. Lovina pulled her head away from the freezer and Amelia reached over, rubbing the tip of Lovina's nose. "Flour," Amelia explained absently, stepping forward to press her forehead against Lovina's. "Did you have a good day, love?"
Lovina blushed. Ever since she'd admitted that she kind of liked Amelia's pet names, Amelia had made a point of using dozens of different ones: love, sweetie, dearest, darling, gorgeous, and beautiful—but also goose, silly, wiggler, and even biscuit. Love was okay, at least.
"Yeah," Lovina said, glancing at the pie out of the corner of her eye. The clock claimed it'd be cool in another five minutes or so, but Amelia wouldn't want to wait. "I got a lot of sculpting done."
"Oh, I want to see!" Amelia beamed. "You still need to teach me how to throw stuff on the wheel!"
"Nuh uh," Lovina said, shaking her head. "No way." Amelia was too rough with the clay; her finger had split the still-spinning pot and splattered them with the resulting globs so many times. "I'll show you the slab roller sometime," Lovina amended, unable to handle Amelia's puppy eyes. "Or maybe the extruder."
But Amelia's eyes had fixed on the pie, and Lovina's suggestions fell on deaf ears.
"Pecan pie?" Amelia gasped, staring at it. Lovina thought her expression would better fit someone crawling through the desert when they first spotted water; the absolute want in Amelia's expression was something she hadn't quite prepared for. "But—but how did—when did—it's not my birthday or—you made me pecan pie?"
Lovina swallowed hard and nodded. Amelia's grin flooded her entire face—her entire body.
"You made me pecan pie!" Amelia repeated. She spun in place, arms up towards the sky in celebration. "It's my favorite dessert in the entire world—how did you know? Oh, man, I'll need to go pick up some ice cream—"
"I made ice cream!" Lovina said, pulling back and crossing her arms. Amelia whirled around to look at her, and Lovina said. "Caramel ice cream, and if you don't like it, we can go to—"
"You—" Amelia pressed the back of one hand to her forehead, clutching the other over her chest as she swooned back against the fridge. "You made ice cream?"
"Well, yes, but I've never made it before, so it might—"
"Be the most amazing, incredible, fantastic thing in the entire world?" Amelia interrupted. "Is it ready yet? I'll die if it's not ready yet."
"Calm down!" Lovina snapped. "Go set the table while I cut it."
Amelia nodded and ran off to set the table. Lovina steeled herself, wishing she could've taste-tested the pie before serving it, but cut it and carried both it and the ice cream out to the table.
"Dessert before dinner!" Amelia sang. "This is the best day of my entire life."
"It's just pie," Lovina said, not quite laughing at Amelia's exuberance. But Amelia leveled a very serious look at her, touching Lovina's hand.
"It's so much more than pie," Amelia said. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me until you've tasted it," Lovina said, serving Amelia a small slice with a scoop of the ice cream. Amelia waited impatiently while Lovina served herself, then readied her fork, looking to Lovina for confirmation. As soon as Lovina nodded, she dug in. The sound she made as she took her first bite made Lovina go red to the tips of her ears.
"Oh, Lord," Amelia moaned. "I have never in my entire life eaten anything this delicious." She took another bite. "And the ice cream and the filling and it's not too sweet but God." The next bite made her eyes flutter. "You are the most incredible girlfriend to ever exist in any universe ever." She devoured the pie; Lovina just sat, staring, her own pie untouched as her ice cream slowly melted around it.
When Amelia finished, she sagged against the table, trying to scrape the remaining bits into something large enough to scoop up and eat. Her eyes settled on Lovina's plate as she did so.
"You gonna finish that?" she asked, hope making her eyes do that thing that made Lovina's stomach knot up. Startling even herself, Lovina burst into laughter. There'd been nothing to worry about after all—with Amelia, there never really was.