@sidepartskinnyjeans brought in a dealer's choice by suggesting this post as the prompt! Thank you @muffinshark for the beautiful piece and inspiring this little drabble! It's a fantastic post and I'm excited to make something from it 😆 I hope you all enjoy! 🥰
Date 16 of 28: Cooking Date
| - 15 - | - Prompt - | - 17 - |
"That can't be right," said Bucky, looking down at the scrawled chicken scratch of Titi's recipe, "No. I refuse. That's so much."
"It's not that much," said Sam, dumping the half-cup of molasses along with the one and a half cups of rootbeer already in the pot, turning the stove on to high heat, waiting for the mixture to boil, "You're just saying that because you only got like a handful of potatoes to eat during the depression."
"Look, molasses was big back in the day, it was popular," said Bucky, "You covet that brown gold."
Sam cackled.
"James, molasses was popular up until the 1880s," said Sam, trying to keep an eye on the boiling liquid and not on the ridiculous apron filled with Steve faces, "I know you went to school riding dinosaurs, but you were, like, the Cretaceous period, not the Triassic."
Sam and Bucky had been helping Sarah organize her kitchen when they had noticed a scrap of paper that had fallen behind the refrigerator. Curious, Bucky pulled it out only for Sam to realize that it was Titi's old rootbeer cake recipe, thought to be lost to time.
Well.
It was probably a recipe she wrote down from somewhere, but Sam still thought of it as Titi's.
And despite Sarah telling them that no one wanted to eat a rootbeer cake, they were making one. Because Sam remembered making this cake with Titi on several occasions and he... he just wanted that one more time.
That feeling of being close.
"You're just showing off," said Bucky, Sam seeing the rootbeer-molasses mixture get to a boil, taking the mixture off the heat as Bucky measured out the baking soda, dropping it into the pot as Sam whisked the mixture, "Knowing when dinosaurs existed. Being smart."
"I'm showing off? You're the one who tried to crack that egg with one hand. I see you haven't cleaned that up yet," said Sam, smirking glancing at the egg still very much on the counter.
"So I can't look into your gorgeous Bella Notte coral bells eyes and think 'Man, I just want to impress the pants off of the love of my life'?" asked Bucky, voice thick with charm.
"You know what would impress me?" asked Sam, trying to hide a smile, the mixture he was whisking frothing, "If you clean it up."
"I was getting to it," said Bucky, kissing Sam on the cheek as he grabbed the pot from Sam to place it in the fridge to cool, then getting to actually cleaning up his mess, "Oh, that reminds me. Jurassic Park. On the list of things I'm supposed to watch at some point."
"Date night: Jurassic Park. I'm down to clown," said Sam, pouring gratulated sugar, brown sugar, and vegetable oil into a mixing bowl, about to pour in the vanilla extract when Bucky stopped him, "What?"
"I read about this online. You can replace vanilla with alcohol sometimes," said Bucky, grabbing the cheaper bourbon bottle from the alcohol cabinet and pouring probably too much of it into the mix, "Let's see if that's true."
Sam snorted, mixing the ingredients, the combined mess a little chunky, but he remembered how his titi used to say that was what was supposed to happen.
"Hey. We need the egg that you actually cracked into that bowl now. You know, the one you cracked before you read the instructions," said Sam, snickering as he watched Bucky walk over to the fridge, pulling out the second-try egg that he did manage to crack with one hand and unceremoniously dumping it into the mixing bowl.
"Voila," said Bucky, Sam trying not to laugh at the deadpan as he whisked, everything becoming a smooth, thick paste as Bucky pulled out another mixing bowl, pouring in the cardamom, baking powder, star anise, and flour into the bowl and combining them, "A lot of steps to a rootbeer cake."
"What? Did you think this was going to be easy?" asked Sam, grating in lemon zest and nutmeg, adding salt and pepper to the dry ingredients bowl, "This was a whole thing. My parents would dramatically grumble about what the mess would be as Titi brought me, Sarah, and Gideon into the kitchen to make it with her. She needed... three helpers, you see, and..."
Sam... didn't talk about Gideon much.
Gideon fell off the face of the earth for them. Sam didn't even know what happened. There had been a fight between Gideon and Sarah when Sam was on the run with Steve. When Sam came back from the Blip, Gideon never reached out. Sam and Sarah didn't know if Gideon was even alive.
Sam wished he knew.
But he was very sure that the fight was about him. He couldn't be sure, because Sarah always shut down whenever Sam brought it up, but... Sam was pretty sure.
Bucky wrapped an arm around Sam's waist, the light pressure of their sides touching comforting. Sam leaned his head on Bucky's shoulder.
"I think we're supposed to do one of the more complicated steps now," whispered Bucky.
Sam laughed, wiping away a few tears.
"You're just saying that because you're bad at spatial intelligence," said Sam.
"I'm not bad at spatial intelligence, I hate trying to figure out what a third of a mixture is," said Bucky, but Sam dismissed that grumble, pulling out the cooled rootbeer mixture from the fridge.
"I can eye it," said Sam, feeling like Titi as he poured what he assumed was a third of each of the mixtures, mixing, adding another third, mixing again, another third, mixing, combining it into an almost liquid mix, "Titi always used to eye it."
"Your titi sounds like a great woman," said Bucky as Sam handed the mix to Bucky, who poured it into an already prepared cake pan.
"She was," said Sam, putting the cake pan on a cookie sheet before sliding it onto the middle rack in the preheated oven, "A scientist. Artist. She studied the birds off the Louisiana coast - drew sketches of them, took notes on their behavior. She was the smartest woman I knew. Wildly creative. Used to make up a new game for us to play every weekend, even when we were all teens. I wish you could have met her. I don't know if she would have loved you. I don't - she was religious, so I don't know how she would have reacted..."
Sam pointed between him and Bucky.
"To this," said Sam, "But I know you would have loved her."
Bucky's eyes softened.
"I'm sure I would have," said Bucky, putting in forty-five minutes on the oven timer, the two of them walking to the breakfast table to sit and wait, "Could you tell me a few stories about her?"
Sam smiled, grabbing Bucky's hand and squeezing it.
"I'd love to," said Sam, overflowing with warm memories about his titi.
❤️ ❤️ ❤️
Want to choose a date for Sam and Bucky to go on during this special February Daily SamBucky Fluff Diary event? Check out the prompts here and send me an ask! I’ll write you a drabble as one of my Daily SamBucky Fluff Diaries!
