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For once, Vash was having a wonderful day.
Piled high on the plate in front of him, a stack of donuts glistened enticingly. Fresh, soft, still warm from the fryer; the glaze cracked beautifully in his fingers when he lifted one from the plate. Their heavenly sweetness drifted past his nose in an oily cloud, and as soon as he sank his teeth into the one he held, the dough melted on his tongue. Perfect.
But as good as it smelled, it didn't taste like anything.
Disappointment alone jolted him awake. Above him, the sun-streaked ceiling with its rickety fan and familiar water spots; at his elbow, peeling wallpaper; around him, sheets, tangled and sweaty. He'd laid down for a nap after an early morning - and what a luxury that was! A nap, and in his own room at that - and, judging by the angle of the light, slept longer than he'd intended.
So the donuts, beautiful as they'd been, had been a dream. But he hadn't dreamed the scent of sugar.
He'd misinterpreted it, though. The scent wreathing his head as he disentangled himself from his sheets and rolled out of bed wasn't fried dough, fatty and sweet - someone was baking. And since he shared this tiny apartment with only one person, that someone had to be…
"Kni?"
Kni glanced back over his shoulder from where he stood, hunched over to peer into the stove with his hands braced on his knees. Sweat shone above his dark brows; even with the window open, the kitchen was stuffy with the heat of the oven. He’d rolled his sleeves up to his elbows. "Vash. Finally awake?"
"Yeah..." Vash scrubbed sleep from his eyes with a knuckle and shoved his shirttails back into his loose jeans. He probably made for a sight, rumpled and sticky with sleep, but he tried to blink it back and straighten up. "You're baking?"
No answer. He supposed he didn't need one, what with the dirty bowls in the sink and the counters wiped suspiciously clean; and Kni pale and serious before the oven window was a clue, too, his brow furrowing as he turned back to his vigil without a word. Raking his dark tousle of hair back off his forehead, Vash joined his brother at the stove and leaned down to peer over his shoulder. The bulb in their oven hadn’t worked since they moved in - Vash hadn’t wanted to pester the super about something so small - but he could just make out two round tins through the smudgy window.
Squinting blearily in at them, Vash asked, "Whatcha making?"
"A cake."
"Huh..." Odd whim, but he couldn't complain if Kni was going to take the initiative. Come to think of it - Kni rocked easily with the elbow Vash jabbed into his side. "Did you go shopping?"
The look Kni shot him could have withered apples on the stem. "No, obviously I waltzed up to the local plant facility and asked the guards very nicely if I could speak with our sisters. Yes, Vash, I went shopping." He fixed his eyes on the cake tins again. “We were out of sugar.”
"You went shopping! All by yourself! Kni!" He tried to throw his arms around Kni's shoulder, but his brother slapped his hands away, his scowl carved deep. "You paid, right? Nobody died?"
"Vash," Kni hissed, hand raised to push him off, "Go away."
Fair enough, he figured. He slipped out of the kitchen to shave and make his bed. Kni wasn't particularly interesting to watch, anyway, sat before the stove as he was with his elbows balanced on his knees and his chin in the hammock of his entwined fingers, and the heat in the kitchen was oppressive. Even with the breeze from the window, sweat stained the collar of Kni’s shirt.
“Your icing’s gonna melt,” Vash observed on one pass-through, arms full of fresh sheets from the clothesline out their window.
“It's in the cooler. Go away.”
“What flavor is it?” He asked on another, broom in hand. Kni had pulled the cakes out of the oven, and he was watching them cool on the counter now, his chin propped in one hand. With the other, he fanned the tins with a folded sheet of paper.
He simply said, “Vanilla.”
“The icing?” Vash poked his head into the icebox on his way to putting the broom back in its corner, but the bowl was covered - no way to sneak a quick taste.
“Buttercream. Seemed easiest.”
“Why’d you want to make a cake anyway?”
Kni shot him a look, brows oddly tilted, and Vash ducked out before his brother could find another sharp word for him.
The suns were well into their long slide down their arch when Vash finally broke. By his standards, he'd been patient, damnit, and Knives was bogarting their tiny kitchen. He couldn't so much as make a sandwich without elbowing him.
“C'mon, Kni, I'm hungry,” he whined, dangling into the room from the archway by his fingertips.
Kni sighed and dropped the spatula back into the bowl. On the counter before him sat the cake: Squat, subtly lopsided, icing shining as the heat began to work its slow magic in separating the fat. It was a work of art, as far as Vash was concerned.
“Fine. Come here.” Wiping icing from his fingers - Vash mourned the waste - his brother reached into the paper bag beside him and produced two candles. “Make yourself useful and get out the plates, will you?”
He was happy to. It was something to do with his hands, something to hide his confusion as Kni stabbed the candles into the cake and lit them. The whiff of sulfur overtook the sugar for only a brief moment.
Plates in hand, Vash couldn’t help but ask, “What are we celebrating?” - and there was that look again, the accusatorily quizzical tilt of Kni's dark brows as he turned back from the drawer where they kept a handful of mundane knives with a long blade shining in his hand. Vash placed the plates in front of him and said, “Don’t look at me like that! It's a normal question. Not like you're big on baking. Or sweets. Or, y'know, eating.”
Kni set the knife down and braced his palms on the counter. The candles flickered fitfully. It never failed to take Vash back, how bright his brother's eyes were - even now, shadowed with mortal exhaustion, they gleamed in that candlelight. “Do you really not know what day it is?”
“It's… Sunday?”
“Vash.”
“Sunday the 21st? Kni, c'mon. Give me a hint.”
“What month is it?”
He had to think about it, embarrassingly enough. But with Kni…
It hadn’t mattered anymore, that was all. A calendar hung on the kitchen wall, gift from the local grocery store, but neither of them had kept up with flipping the pages. One month, three months, a year. The suns rose and set. Children grew into weedy preteens. Kni’s hair grew out; he cut it short again. Their faces stayed unlined, unchanging, handsome and subtly inhuman.
But he wasn’t so far out of time that he couldn’t haul himself back in and ask himself: What date had been on the newspaper he’d handed to their downstairs neighbor this morning?
Sunday, the 21st of July.
“Oh,” he said, softly.
“Happy birthday, Vash,” Kni said.
If he hadn't known him so well, Vash could have mistaken the softness in Kni’s tone for something like bashfulness, like his brother knew how inadequate a gesture this was towards redemption. What did Millions Knives care for apologies, even now that he'd dropped that moniker and taken up the mantle of brotherhood again? What was a cake in the face of everything Kni had done?
The tender little flames shimmered in his vision. Kni was pushing the platter towards him; he stopped halfway, his fingers lingering on the plate.
“Stop crying, you fool. Blow out the candles,” Kni said.
He couldn’t do both. So he picked the easier one - leaning in, same as Kni, their combined puffing snuffed the candles with a wisp of smoke.
“Make a wish,” Kni said. He picked up the knife.
“Supposed to do that before you blow the candles out,” Vash muttered, half to himself. The tears wouldn't stop; he wiped them away, but more dripped down his cheeks to replace them in a steady stream, fat droplets plipping off his chin to wet his shirt.
When was the last time he'd celebrated his birthday? Had he ever, since Rem was the one cutting their cake? Long before July, he'd let the day fall to dust in his memory, because his birthday was Kni's, and their existence was a travesty, a horror - a mistake to be undone.
Then, after July… What had there been to commemorate?
“I haven't celebrated our birthday since we were on the ship,” Kni said, meticulously nonchalant, letting the words touch his lips the same way he measured the knife against the cake. Light pressure; careful placement. Two neat, clean halves. Icing clung to the blade when he drew it free and measured again.
Vash sniffled. His nose wanted very badly to run, but at least his tears were slowing to a trickle. “We didn't get it then, huh?”
Hard to believe it, but there was a smile on Kni's lips. A tiny one - a bare, rueful twitch of the corners, gone as quickly as it came - but a smile, a softening of his brow. “Does any child? Here.”
The slice Kni handed him was perfect. Perfectly cut, perfectly portioned, the layers roughly equal, even if his work on the icing left something to be desired. His brother doled out a slice for himself and fetched them forks.
“Happy birthday, Kni,” Vash managed. His brother hummed in acknowledgement and took his first bite.
He chewed thoughtfully; and then suddenly he went pale, his lips thinning out. Vash, with his fork halfway to his mouth, stopped and stared as Kni spit his mouthful of cake back out onto his plate in an inelegant, drooling heap of mashed crumbs.
“Kni - ?” Vash started. He felt his lips wobbling against a grin.
“Give me your plate,” Kni said. Hurriedly, he dropped his own plate on the counter to snatch at Vash’s. “Vash - give me the cake back. Vash!”
Delight welled in his chest. Vash dodged away, scrambling off his stool with his plate held out at the end of one arm to avoid Kni's grasping hands, and darted around the island. “No! I want to try it!”
“Vash!”
It wasn’t easy, balancing a mouthful of cake on a fork while scrambling cartoonishly around the kitchen to evade his brother, but he’d dealt with far worse. A few close calls later, Vash managed to cram a bite in. The fork clinked against his teeth. Sweetness burst across his tongue in a vibrant explosion of fat and sugar -
And then bitterness rose behind it, so thick it made him choke.
“Oh fuck,” he gagged. The shock of it dragged him to a halt, and Kni finally caught him, yanking the plate out of his hands with a ragged groan. “Kni - ugh! Gross! What’d you do?”
Kni’s face was flushed down past his collar; his ears were radiantly pink. “Stop it - ”
“That’s the worst cake I’ve ever tasted,” he laughed. Sneaking an arm across Kni’s, he swiped a chunk off the slice and crammed it in his mouth before his brother could snatch it back, and stood there with his arm linked through Kni’s, holding him hostage as he chewed consideringly. The second time around, he managed to swallow it down. “Not the worst thing I’ve ever eaten, though,” he said, to Kni’s irritated hiss.
“I don’t understand - I followed the directions,” Kni said, setting the plate on the counter and pushing it out of Vash’s reach.
“Lemme see.”
The recipe had been clipped out of a newspaper - the crisp paper was fragile in his fingers. Not that he claimed to be an expert baker, but at a glance, everything seemed about right.
"Two and a half cups of flour? Bit of salt?" Besides him, Kni nodded. "Two teaspoons baking powder?"
"...Teaspoon?"
Vash looked up at him - he'd gone pale again, his eyes wide. As Kni lifted the paper from his fingers, he asked, "What'd you do?"
Kni scanned the recipe and then sagged, bracing his elbow on the counter and dropping his head into his hand. "Tablespoon."
Laughter bubbled up out of him. Sneaking the paper back out of Kni's unresisting hand, he nudged him in the ribs. "Did you get enough to make a second cake?" Kni nodded, and Vash patted his back consolingly, hard enough to jar Kni's elbow loose. "Let's make it together. Okay?"
Kni's ears were pink again, but whatever complaints were running through his head, he didn't voice them. "Give me the bowls," he said instead, holding his hand out.
"Before that," Vash said, though he placed the first bowl in Kni's outstretched palm, "Kni..." When Kni turned to look at him, Vash cupped the next bowl to his chest and batted his lashes sweetly. "Make me a sandwich? No - hey! Kniiii, please! I'm so hungry! Kni!"
He’d had worse birthdays.