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Louis paused the YouTube video with his elbow, fingers too covered in sticky frosting to risk touching his laptop with his hands. When he’d promised his niece a Barbie princess cake, he thought it looked pretty easy, especially considering the cakes would come from a box mix that he’d successfully made the year before. Obviously the decorating would be the challenging bit, but he’d underestimated just how challenging it could be.
That was how he’d ended up in the spot he was currently in, with frosting dyed four different shades of pink smeared not only on the cake, but on his shirt, hands, and the kitchen counter. Surveying the mess he’d made, he realized the frosting was in the Barbie’s hair as well, the electric pink a stark contrast to her blonde hair. With the cake a crumb-covered disaster, he was sure he’d have to start from scratch, though he really didn’t want to.
Still, nothing was worse than the thought of seeing Molly’s disappointment if she didn’t get her special cake tomorrow, so Louis figured there wasn’t much he could do but try again. He was in the midst of washing his hands when he heard a knock at the door followed immediately by Liam calling hello to him.
“In the kitchen,” he yelled, squirting more soap into his hands to try to combat the slick fattiness of the frosting. Liam’s hiss upon surveying the scene told Louis that it really was as bad as he’d thought it was. “I know,” he said, voice a little sharper than necessary. Most of his family teased him about being a disaster in the kitchen, so he might’ve been a bit sensitive about it.
“Ooh, what’s happened here?” Liam swiped at a bit of frosting on the counter, bringing it up to his nose for a sniff.
“Molly’s cake. Or my cake fail, I guess you could say.” Louis dried his hands on his jeans, turning back to look at Liam properly and facing his mess anew. “At least it’s for tomorrow and not later today.” He gathered his little bowls of frosting and set them in the sink, then picked up the Barbie to wash the frosting from her hair. “I did expect it to be easier though.”
“Oh, it’s supposed to be the sort of thing where the doll’s in the middle and the cake is her dress? That sort of cake is so cute!”
Louis turned around to flick soapy water at Liam before turning back to his cleaning, cackling when Liam let out an affronted huff. “Well I’ve mucked this one up beyond repair, I’m afraid, so there’s not going to be anything cute about it unless I get a visit from the cake fairy or something like that.”
“That’s not a bad idea, actually.” Liam hopped up on the cleanest part of the counter, idly watching Louis do dishes. “I mean I’ve got his number after all.”
“What are you on about?”
“The Cake Fairy!”
Louis turned off the water to cross his arms over his chest and fix Liam with a confused stare, brow furrowed and a sarcastic comment at the ready just in case whatever Liam was talking about was something completely fantastical, as it often was. Liam just rolled his eyes and continued with his usual little grin.
“I forget his name, but I’m sure it’s on the card. He helped me when I tried making that map of the continent out of cupcakes, remember? He comes around and fixes cake fails.”
Now that Liam said it, Louis vaguely remembered the story from a few months before. Liam had told them about it when he brought the remains of France and Germany to the pub after using the cupcake map as part of the school’s Geography Bee. Apparently he’d found a man on the internet who came at the last minute and turned his messy, uneven batch of cupcakes into a recognizable map of continental Europe.
“His name rhymed with fairy, didn’t it? Barry, Gary, Harry--”
“That’s it! Harry! Thought it was funny because he had long hair, too.” Liam laughed to himself as he pulled his wallet from his back pocket, thumbing through it to pull out a business card that he handed over to Louis.
“The Cake Fairy: There’s No Fail I Won’t Fix!” Louis read aloud from the card. There was a phone number and email address, and though it was last minute he figured it couldn’t hurt to try reaching out. “Mind if I try calling him?”
“Go ahead, I’ll order us some real food while you do that.”
Louis dialed the number, picking up the doll that was meant to be the cake’s centerpiece and blotting her hair dry with a kitchen towel and using his shoulder to balance his phone in the process. “You’re quite sad, aren’t you? I hope Molly doesn’t mind a spot of pink in your hair.”
“Hello?”
“Oh! Hello?” Louis set the doll down, hoping the man on the other end hadn’t heard his one way conversation with a Barbie. “I’m trying to reach the cake fairy?”
“You’ve got me! What kind of fail needs a little magic today?”
Chuckling softly, Louis eyed his messy cake before telling Harry about his failure as well as a bit about the event it was for, hopeful that he could get the help he needed. Harry asked him to send a picture of the cake, and Louis snapped it with his phone, sending it over followed by a ☹.
“You said the party is tomorrow afternoon, right? I think we can fix your fail within a couple of hours, so I’ll be over mid-morning if that works for you.”
“It does, yeah.” Louis took in his messy kitchen again. “What should I have ready when you arrive?” Harry explained that Louis should wrap the cake and refrigerate it overnight, promising to bring everything else they’d need to make it look perfect in time for Molly’s party. By the time Louis ended the phone call, he was far less stressed than he’d been initially.
“Oh Louis, just one more thing before I go-- I thought you should know I haven’t got any spots of pink in my hair at the moment, so you won’t need to worry about that.” Louis could hear the teasing in Harry’s voice, and in spite of not yet meeting him it confirmed Louis’ suspicion from their brief conversation that they’d get on well with one another.
“Ahh, I was hoping you’d missed my little chat with Barbie. She’s adopted a bit of an edgy aesthetic and I’m worried it just won’t work for a five year old.”
“Oh, you’d be surprised. The five year old set is very advanced now. They can act eleven half the time, if you believe it.”
“That’s fair! Molly’s a youthful five, though. Or, well, a youthful four for at least another couple of hours.” Harry laughed at that, and Louis caught a glance of himself smiling like a fool at the sound when he saw his reflection in the window glass. Outside, the sky was darkening, and he realized abruptly that they’d been on the phone for much longer than the ten minutes he’d expected, though he hadn’t minded it one bit.
--
Harry arrived around ten-- just when Louis was expecting him to --with a load of supplies that Louis assumed could somehow turn his sad lump of a cake into a Princess shaped confection. What he hadn’t expected was that Harry would be exactly his type, just a shade taller, with dark hair and a lovely smile. He liked to joke, too, and from the moment they started to work on the cake together Louis knew he was a goner.
“You said you made the icing yourself, right?” Harry turned the plate that the cake was set on this way and that, inspecting Louis’ messy work.
“Yeah, never done that before, but I followed the recipe.”
“It’s--” Harry scrunched his brow, taking another good look at the frosting. “What’d you use to mix it?”
“One of those, uh,” Louis mimed the action he’d used to mix the frosting, the name of the kitchen tool escaping him. He was grateful when Harry’s eyes lit up with recognition.
“A whisk? You whisked the icing together?”
“That’s it, yeah.” Louis reached around Harry, pulling the tool from the drying rack. “This one.”
“Alright, well-- that’s where you’ve gone wrong. We’ll use an electric mixer to get the right consistency, and I’ve brought along another layer of cake to give us a bit more height if it looks as though we need it.” Though Louis offered to help, Harry shooed him away, telling him to sit instead. “You’re paying me for this, after all. Might as well let me do the boring bits.”
Louis couldn’t argue with that. As he watched Harry work, he asked about how he’d come to do this sort of thing. He couldn’t imagine it was the kind of career people expected to go into.
“I went to pastry school, actually,” Harry said as he dropped soft blobs of butter into a mixing bowl. “I ended up getting hired as a private chef for a pretty well known musician, and she paid me shockingly well. She moved back home almost a couple years ago and I decided to try giving something new a go since I wanted to stay here. Had to cut back on a lot of expenses, but it’s been amazing. I have a lot of fun doing things like this.”
Powdered sugar fell like snow into the bowl of butter as Harry tapped gently on the side of the fancy sifter he’d brought with him. Louis watched, mesmerized by the care Harry took in such a simple action. He could taste the sugar in the air, and he wondered how sweet Harry’s skin might be after a day of mixing frosting and baking. He didn’t realize how deeply he’d been lost in the thought until he heard Harry clear his throat.
“Alright, Lou?”
From most people, Louis would cringe at that nickname, but it sounded nice coming from Harry. “Yeah, just uh-- thinking about how nice it is that you get to do something you love.”
“What about you? What do you do?”
“I’m over at the LGBTQ youth center, mostly coordinating events and planning programming. It’s a lot of work, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
“Oh! I used to go there when I was younger and just coming out, back before I moved away for school.” Harry paused, electric mixer in his hand and a fond, faraway expression on his face. “Met my first significant other there, actually.”
It turned out they’d just barely missed one another in their time at the center as youths; Louis was older than Harry by a couple years, and had moved away at eighteen before returning a few years later to be closer to his family. Meanwhile Harry had gone to the center for the first time at sixteen, staying active there for three years before he headed to pastry school. If they overlapped at all, it had only been for a month or two.
Harry beat the frosting, the loud whirring of the mixer offering Louis a moment to consider his next move. He didn’t necessarily have a reason to think that Harry might want to go out with him, but he couldn’t help imagining how disappointed he’d be if he never actually took the chance to find out. By the time Harry was dividing the frosting into five separate bowls, Louis knew what he had to do. It was just a matter of timing.
He couldn’t say anything while they were stacking the cakes, carefully adding Louis’ layers on top of the one Harry had brought along and securing the whole thing with dowels. There was the time that Harry spent spreading what he called a “crumb coating” of icing over the whole cake, but Louis thought that must take concentration, and then they moved right on to decorating, where Harry expected Louis to be a full participant.
Together, they covered the cake in multiple shades of pink frosting. Harry did the parts that required more finesse, though he did teach Louis how to use one of the special tips to pipe details along the skirt in a warm, orangey pink, and when he made the softer pink mini roses that ringed the bottom he went extra slow so that Louis could see how it was done. After the skirt was fully frosted and decorated and the Barbie was set into her spot in the center of the cake, her fondant bodice sparkling with edible glitter, Louis leaned back to admire their handiwork.
“Molly’s not going to believe her eyes. This is better than I could’ve imagined when I looked at the mess I’d made last night.” When Louis turned to look at Harry, he found Harry’s soft gaze on him instead of the cake he’d just saved. Harry looked away quickly, a blush rising to his cheeks, and Louis knew the moment was right.
“This might be weird, so please don’t feel obligated to say yes, but-- would you like to come to my niece’s birthday party with me?”
Harry lit up at that, a smile stretching across his face as he nodded his head. “Yes, that sounds amazing. The one downside of this sort of job is that I rarely get to see how the cakes are received once they make it to their final destination. I’d love getting to see your niece’s face when she sees the beautiful princess you’ve made her.”
Louis couldn’t help feeling a bit crestfallen at that, though he did his best to hide it. He’d hoped to lead with the party and then offer dinner afterward as more of a proper date, but he didn’t want to push Harry into anything he might not want.
“And maybe afterward we can grab something other than cake together? If you’d like?”
Looking up, Louis caught the hope in Harry’s expression and smiled back, nodding, his confidence returning. “I was hoping we could, yeah.”
--
As they left the party together later that night, Louis found himself feeling as if the whole night must’ve been a dream. Molly had loved her cake of course, and Harry had fit in with Louis’ family and friends as if he’d been there all along, laughing and joking with everyone. They walked around talking with one another for quite a while that night, only stopping when they were too tired to continue. The kiss they shared at Louis’ doorstep was as sweet as he hoped it might be, and he felt certain that whatever happened, the future that lay ahead of them was going to be as far from a fail as possible.