By: glasseslouis on ao3
Word count: 2,668
Summary: the high school AU nobody asked for in which dan is a secret admirer and baking genius, and phil is oblivious in more ways than one.
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Phil Lester felt his stomach turn as he turned the corner and approached room 211-B. A burnt smell was escaping from the room, and Phil stared at the door handle, knowing that it would engulf him as soon as he opened the door. He also knew, almost quite certainly actually, that he would be contributing to the smell in roughly twenty minutes.
Phil had been a straight-A student his entire life, but stick him in front of a sewing machine or standing mixer and you've got a recipe for disaster – no pun intended. He'd somehow missed an arts credit along the way in his high school career, so in a last-ditch effort to get it taken care of in time, he took the only class available.
Home economics.
He just wasn't cut out for a subject as hands-on as home ec. He was much better with English and writing, and he was decent at math. The only other thing he screwed up at as much as home ec was chemistry, which made sense if you thought about it. They both involved breakable objects and potentially dangerous mixtures, things Phil didn't exactly gel with.
There was one good thing about the class, though.
Phil had a secret admirer.
At least once a week, he'd walk into class and there'd be something sitting on his desk. Sometimes, it was a blueberry muffin, or a heart-shaped cookie, or a baking related pun handwritten on a scrap of graph paper. Phil hadn't the slightest idea who it could be – he never had time to investigate in class, since he was always trying to make sure he didn't sew his fingers together or burn the classroom down. He had a feeling that whoever it was, though, was the best cook in the whole class. Phil tried everything that they made for him, and it was always delicious.
That almost made going to home ec worth it.
Phil squared his shoulders and pulled the door open. He slid into his seat just as the late bell rang and found a folded up piece of paper in front of him. Phil opened it while Mrs. Bell took attendance.
Roses are red,
Violets are blue.
I heard you like Muse,
I do too.
It was no Robert Frost or William Blake, but Phil still felt his ears go pink at the tiny, smudged writing. He whipped his head around, looking for anyone who might be interested in the note, but everyone either looked bored, hungry, or both.
Phil folded the note up and stuck it in his pocket for safe-keeping. He tried his hardest to listen to Mrs. Bell as she explained what they were making. Chocolate soufflés. Apparently, they were difficult if you didn't follow directions. Phil tried to stifle a groan – as if the class wasn't hard enough already, he was now expected to be the next MasterChef.
He ended up doodling in his notebook while Mrs. Bell explained the same safety measures that she'd explained since the beginning – Phil was sure he'd muck at least one up no matter what – and found himself drawing roses in red ink and violets in blue. His mind wandered back to his secret admirer. He hoped they were nice. It would really suck to have a secret admirer that turned out to be a jerk, wouldn't it? He lifted his head and caught the eye of the girl next to him. Heather, he thought her name was? She smiled and broke eye contact, turning back to her notebook. Phil wondered if the blush on her cheeks was makeup or if he'd made her do that. Was she the secret admirer?
He snapped out of his daydream and-slash-or investigation when he heard chairs scrape against the tile floor as everyone stood up. Instruction was over; it was time to bake.
Phil shuffled over to his regular workstation and opened his mouth to talk to PJ, his cooking partner, when Mrs. Bell laid a hand on his shoulder.
"Phil," she said kindly. Mrs. Bell was a sweet woman, with a round face and soft, greying hair and glasses that were always sliding down her nose. Phil felt guilty for how often he stressed her out by setting mini kitchen fires and jamming sewing machines and over-filling the washers. "A few students dropped the course, so we've had to shuffle some partners around. I'd like for you to work with Dan, over at station five." Phil looked down the row of kitchen stations to see a pale-faced boy staring back at him. The boy looked frozen. Phil glanced back to see PJ being lead over to a different station as well; he was being paired with Louise, the bubbly blonde who starred in all of the spring musicals and happily chatted with anyone.
Phil took his time collecting his notebook and pencil from his old station – Dan didn't look too excited to see him, and Phil was going to make his life hard enough once the cooking started, so he was sort of dreading what was about to come. Mrs. Bell seemed to have caught onto his deliberate procrastination, because she came back over. "Oh, you'll love Dan," she said, ushering him over to the new station. "He's the best baker in the class, always in here during his study period, making the room smell good with his cooking."
Dan must have overheard, because his ears turned bright red at Mrs. Bell's praise. Phil placed his notebook down and smiled. "It's probably a good thing," he nodded. "I burn everything I touch, even if the stove isn't on yet. Er- I'm Phil. Nice to meet you."
"M-me too," Dan said quickly, glancing up for a moment. "I'm rubbish at this stuff. And, um, I'm Dan."
"But Bell just said you were best in the class? And that you come in on your study period?" Phil's eyebrows knit together.
"Oh- well. I guess I am. Not that I'm the best, but that I'm in here on my study periods. You, uh, know what they say. Practice makes perfect."
Phil gave Dan a suspicious look, and Dan's pale cheeks bloomed a splotchy red. "I- I mean, Bell gives me extra credit for coming in on my off period. To make up for how bad I do in class."
"No way," Phil said, his eyes widening. "She never offered that to me! She must like you better. Maybe she's partial to boys with dimples or something." He felt pleased with himself when Dan grinned wide, showing off said dimples; Dan was cute.
"So, uh, should we get to this soufflé?" Dan seemed to just now remember where he was after a moment. "Not that I'm, y'know, looking forward to it or anything."
"Yeah, let's do it." They both leaned in to look at the recipe they were meant to be following, and Phil felt his stomach flip over when their sides brushed. He suddenly felt immensely disappointed when he realized Dan wasn't his secret admirer. If Dan were so rubbish at baking, he'd never be the one to make him all of those things.
"'Preheat the oven to 190 degrees,'" Dan read from the sheet, eyes flicking up to Phil to see if he'd done it. Phil leaned over their stove and peered at the dials.
"I hate these bloody gas marks," he said, eyes narrowing at his options. "No one uses gas stoves anymore. Which one is 190 degrees?"
Phil looked over at Dan, who appeared to be hesitating. "I... don't know," Dan finally said. "Um, I think it's six?" His voice had gone very high pitched, and the splotchy red blush was back on his cheeks.
"Six it is," Phil said, cranking the dial. The old oven creaked in protest. "What's next?"
"'Butter the soufflé dish and sprinkle with sugar, knocking out the excess,'" Dan recited, reaching for one of the sticks of butter in front of them. "Do you want to get the sugar?"
Phil nodded and crouched to rifle through the little cabinet adjacent to the stove where a bag of sugar was sat on the middle shelf. He was too busy trying to slide it out from between the flour and the brown sugar to notice Dan reaching over and turning the oven down a few marks. "I've got it!" He called, standing back up and unrolling the top. He slid up next to Dan and began to gently shake the sugar over the ramekin. All was going well until Phil jostled his elbow a little too excitedly and half the sugar came rushing out of the bag, forming a little hill in the ramekin and dusting all over the counter and the floor.
"Oh no-" Phil said, glancing down. Dan's shoes were covered in sugar, and Dan's mouth was hanging open slightly. "I'm sorry, I told you I was rubbish at this. This is supposed to be the easy part, isn't it?"
"It's, uh, it's okay!" Dan said quickly, shifting on the spot and crunching the sugar underneath his shoes. "Why don't you get the bain-marie going? I'll clean this up."
Phil stared at Dan blankly. What was a bain-marie? Dan must have seen the confusion on his face; he flushed immediately. "I, uh? The boiling water with the glass bowl on top? That thing? At least, I think that's what it is."
"Oh," Phil said, hesitating for a moment before crouching to get a pot and a bowl. How did Dan know that? He turned his back to fill the pot with water at the sink, completely missing Dan frantically scooping out the extra cup of sugar that Phil had dumped into the ramekin.
Phil broke up their baking chocolate and dropped it in the glass bowl, poking at the chocolate with a wooden spoon while the water simmered. Dan stood next to him, measuring out vanilla and sugar while Phil watched. He noticed Dan's thin wrists were stacked high with festival bracelets.
"You went to Reading Festival?" Phil said, twisting his neck to read the bracelets better. "I was there too!"
"Really?" Dan's head snapped up so fast Phil was surprised his neck didn't break. Phil nodded, a grin spreading on his face.
"Muse was incredible-" they said in unison, and Phil's eyes widened. "You like Muse?" Dan nodded and beamed. Phil felt his stomach flip, like it had in the beginning of class. "Wh-what other stuff do you like?" Dan said, interrupting Phil's train of thought.
"I like a lot of stuff," Phil said, poking at the melting chocolate. Was Dan flirting with him? "I like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and anime, and dog Facebook groups."
"I meant music," Dan said, dimples sinking into his cheeks when he smiled again. "But I like anime too."
From there, they launched into a discussion about their favorite shows and characters, and Phil found himself forgetting about the soufflé and wondering why he'd never managed to befriend Dan in the past. They had matching haircuts, for crying out loud, not to mention their identical tastes in entertainment. It wasn't until Dan handed him the electric mixer and told him to beat egg whites until peaks form that he remembered he was in class and not on a wildly successful first date.
He wasn't exactly sure what "stiff peaks" looked like, so he just set the mixer to high and let it go while he and Dan argued over which Sonic game was the best. All was going well until he peeked in the bowl and wrinkled his nose at what he saw. Instead of stiff peaks, the bowl just contained a watery mess of grainy ex-egg whites.
"I think you overdid it," Dan said, appearing next to Phil to scrape the bowl into the trash. "Try adding sugar and letting it go for less time."
"How do you know all this stuff?" Phil said curiously. "Are you a secret cooking channel chef or something?"
"Uh-" Dan's cheeks flared up again. "My mum makes her own butter. You have to whip egg whites to make it. That's the only reason I know it." He cracked more eggs to busy himself, handing over the bowl of fresh whites.
"Oh," Phil said, starting up the mixer again. "You've got a legacy to live up to, then. So we'd better get this right."
"Right," Dan said, turning away to hide his blushing face while he mixed the egg yolks in with the chocolate. It didn't work; Phil still saw. He didn't comment though, because he was sure he was blushing just as much.
He managed to get the egg whites right this time, and Dan folded them into the chocolate mixture without issue. The batter was then transported into the ramekin, and Phil slipped on the oven mitts to slide the soufflé into the oven. The bell had already rung, and most of the class was already cleaning up and filing out; Dan and Phil had fallen behind during all their conversation.
Phil opened the oven, but when he picked up the ramekin, his grip on it went funny, and the dish went flying out of his hands and onto the tile floor of the home ec room. The soufflé mixture went everywhere when the ramekin cracked in half, and Phil's mouth dropped open. His eyes went to Dan, who looked somewhere between horrified and livid.
"Phil!" He cried, dropping to his knees and picking up the ramekin pieces. "Are you serious?!"
"Dan- I'm so sorry," Phil said, shutting the oven and dropping paper towels over the soufflé batter to try and soak it up. "I told you I always muck this stuff up. I- I'm sorry?"
"I'd hope you should be!" Dan said, shaking his head. "All this time, I thought I had saved it! You put too much sugar in it, I saved it. You had the oven too hot, I saved it. We even fixed the bleeding egg whites before they went in, but now?!" He grabbed their dish towel and wiped his hands, slumping a little. "I was gonna put a picture of it on my food Instagram."
"Wait- you have a food Instagram?" Phil said, raising his eyebrows. "For what?"
"Phil-!" Dan borderline-whined, frustrated. "Don't tell me you actually believed me. All I do is bake, during my free period, in this class, after school. I have a perfect grade in this class, and I've been the one leaving you stuff on your desk, because I have a huge crush on you. I've had a huge crush on you, ever since we took English together last year. I just- I wanted to sound cool, because this was the first time we ever got to talk, and I didn't want you to think I was annoying for knowing how to do everything. I pretended to know nothing so you'd like me. And now I've just mucked it all up and yelled at you over a soufflé." It was like everything Dan said hit him at once, and immediately he dropped his head and began to scrub at the chocolate stained floor.
"You have a crush on me?" Phil repeated dumbly, forgetting the paper towels in his hand to fish the note from earlier out of his pocket. "Wait- you like Muse! It is you!" He held the note out. "You wrote this."
"Obviously," Dan mumbled to the floor. Phil could see that the tips of his ears were red. "Wait..." he looked up. "You're not mad?"
"Dan," Phil said, keenly aware of the fact that they were one of the only pairs left in the room. "Why would I be mad that a cute boy with awesome baking skills and good taste in music and anime has a crush on me?"
Dan's mouth gaped, and Phil smiled.
"D'you think, maybe, after we get this cleaned up and explain to Bell that I'm a hazard to this learning environment, that you'd want to go get coffee with me?"