Chapter Text
It had been the buzz around HQ all morning.
Finders passed whispers to scientists and nurses, who paused in their tasks to glance at the clock. Murmurs snaked through all the facilities, falling through the barely parted lips of conspirators and the desperate. Rumors of the sightings of scientists not seen for weeks emerging from the mountains of work in the science departments only added fuel to the kindling fire.
Competition, everyone seemed to be thinking as they eyed anyone shuffling towards the hall to the cafeteria. Anyone with the misfortune of needing to take that passage could feel the weight of those stares on their back, but would also be treated to a remarkable smell: hot and a little smothering, sweet and rich and somehow airy underneath the thickness. Even if the news hadn’t reached them, they would know what had everyone on the edge of their seats all day:
Jeryy was baking today.
To be more specific, Jeryy had been experimenting lately. Something like a little influence or advice from Komui had encouraged the Order’s best chef to stray from their formidable mental library of culinary experience and to instead test some things of their own. They hadn’t stopped making meals to order, nor had they enlisted any particular help from anyone else in the kitchen. All the same, word was starting to go around that, perhaps the Order had never been meant to study Innocence and theologic-scientific theories as much as it had been meant to house the birth of a culinary era for the modern age.
These rumors did not impress Reever Wenhamm of the science department, who it was said continued to bar Chief Officer Lee into his office until his work was completed for the day.
It seemed random exactly when Jeryy would choose to dole out their creations onto the waiting plates and trays of hungry soldiers in the holy war, but every time, without fail, they’d brought something forward to satisfy every craving and titillate every palate. Some of these had been sworn life-changers, though not everyone always got the chance to try. Supplies in the building were limited until restocking days, and they could only make the same dish so many times. Desserts were a bit easier to handle and distribute, and they were almost unfailingly popular with most everyone in the Order. They tended to come out in batches or perfectly equal slices, which would be claimed quickly (one to a person only) and then gone for long stretches in between.
Today, though, there was a second strange rumor floating around: Jeryy had been upset early in the morning about the disappearance of one of his cakes. They hadn’t abandoned the kitchen over this, but for an entrepreneurial few, there could be great rewards for the capture of the thief.
While this rumor was making the rounds alongside the first, back in the Order kitchens and from behind the counter, one pair of two different hands were reaching up from underneath the counter for the last slice left behind Jeryy’s back. The finder at the front of the line on the other side of the counter looked on wistfully as the fingertips of the hands caught on the rim of the plate and pulled it away from him towards the far side of the ledge, but he recognized those hands and sleeves and hid a faint smile behind the bandages across his face.
The plate hung over the edge a second, and then tipped over the edge with one more tug. Though he strained his ears, the finder could hear no crash or any noise except for what could have been some very faint shuffling with muffled laughter that faded to the right, blending with the hiss and rattles of boilers and pots.
When Jeryy turned around, the finder looked up at the towering chef to see their expression upon noticing the missing plate. But when he looked at their hands, he realized Jeryy had been needlessly beating a bowl of oil for the past 60 seconds, and seemed to be smiling just as faintly as he was.
They shared a brief knowing look, or as knowing as the finder felt it was on the other side of Jeryy’s inscrutable glasses. The finder finally gave his eyes a roll and left the line to sit crosslegged on a bench nearby to wait for the next batch as the line behind him fell apart with disappointed mutterings.
Jeryy waved a hand at them all. “Ten more minutes from the oven, and this batch will have whipped cream! Can’t the big kids wait ten minutes, hmm?”
Just outside the kitchen doors, two young Exorcists were sitting on their heels and shaking with quiet laughter, the slice of cake held above the ground with one hand from each on either side of the plate.
“I can’t believe we did this,” laughed Lenalee, a knuckle to her lips as she tried to stifle her giggles. “We almost dropped it right then and there. Shouldn’t we have just waited on the line like everyone else?”
The redheaded Exorcist next to her grinned cheekily and threw his free arm out in an exaggerated gesture of surprise.
“Wait! On that line? Are you serious?” He wagged a finger at her, shaking his head. “I’ve seen and read all about human conflict and strife, and that line was absolutely something that’ll make it into the Bookman records tonight,” he teased. “The internal conflict that threatened to sunder the Black Order from within: all over a cake!”
“Would that mean that we’ve just infiltrated the enemy’s headquarters?” Lenalee asked with a wobbly poker face. Lavi looked into her eyes, seeing the telltale tilt up at the corners and her slightly pursed lips as she struggled to keep her voice steady. His face splitting grin somehow grew wider yet.
“It would mean,” he said dramatically, lifting the plate with reverence above their heads as he spoke, “that we have recovered a fragment of the enemy’s most important resource, and that it’s your duty as an Exorcist to assist in the study of this resource.”
They both looked at the thick slice of chocolate cake between them, and both immediately perceived the issue presently at hand. The atmosphere deflated a bit.
“We forgot forks, Lavi.”
“Then we’ll eat with our hands.” Lenalee had already reached out and taken a corner of the narrow end of the slice into her hand. She smiled sweetly at him as she waited for him to take a piece of it himself, but laughed when it crumbled in between his fingertips. She popped her piece into her mouth with some relish and closed her eyes happily, “mmm”-ing softly.
Lavi was still smushing the crumbs together into a stickier glob as she took the plate gently out of his hands. He finally managed to mush it all up into a little cakey ball that he rolled into his mouth off his lower lip and gave it a thoughtful chew.
“I’ve been hearing the rumors.” His voice started low and urgent. “‘So decadent, Central should send an inspector to interrogate this sinful, soulful cake’ and ‘death by chocolate’ being some of the better ones. This cake, this cake belongs in the annals of history, Lenalee. I didn’t even taste the upper crust yet!”
“That would have been my fault.” Lenalee raised her hand a bit, admitting to her guilt. But Lavi shook his head “no” vehemently.
“No, you see, it was fully in your right. Now that you’ve analyzed this cake-resource, we understand already what the most important parts to use are, and the schism here has let you claim the upper crust for yourself. But what we need to do, then, is to raid the source. We need more cake!”
“A mission!” Lenalee now raised a fist in the air. “We need cake!”
“We need cake! We need cake!” The two began to chant softly, and Lavi beat his fist rhythmically on an imaginary table. They rose to their feet together, shaking off the pins and needles from kneeling for so long. “We need cake! We need cake!” The two were now dancing on the spot, chanting and marching up and down the narrow stone hallway they had been hiding in. Heads began to poke around the corner from the main passage that this usually led to as the teenagers raised their voices and waved vehemently. “Hey! We need cake! We need cake!”
The distant figures waved back after a few seconds’ pause, and Lavi leapt up with his arms in the air when—
A heavy thud echoed in the small space. The two of them looked down slowly. The dull grinding of the plate rolling away was muffled only partly by the smear of cake along its edge.
A piteous splatter on the ground with one sad little raised knob of cake looked up at them as the plate fell over and clattered noisily to a halt, face down on the ground with a trail of soft cake behind it like a gruesome murder scene. The distant heads had already disappeared from around the corner.
By the time Jeryy poked their head out the back door to the kitchens to see what the noise had been, the Exorcists were already gone. The only traces left of the two of them were the plate placed right-side up on the step beneath the door and a very large stain that smelled strongly of chocolate and sugar.
Distant shouts echoed faintly in the hallway, forgotten and left behind by the ones who uttered them. A blur of green light and orange hair blew by the mouth of the hall, and Jeryy pulled back into the kitchen with another small smile on their lips as a gaggle of harried scientists chased down a distant whirlwind of laughter and light.