This is for my friend Yoru_no_Angel, who I can thank for the fact that I ever wrote Harvest Moon fic in the first place. I highly recommend you all read her Chase/Hikari story "Bittersweet"! But anyway, her birthday's in a few days. So, this one's for you, M. :D Sorry I couldn't do a Calvin fic, but hopefully you'll like this just as much. :3
In Chase's opinion, "Happy Birthday" was such a stupid phrase.
Woo-hoo, one year closer to death! Let's celebrate that!
His birthday meant very little to him; it wasn't as if he thought it gave him privilege to take the day off from work, or that he should be treated in any special way because of it. If the other townspeople really wanted to give him a "Happy Birthday!" they'd leave him alone and not constantly tear his attention from his cooking with their useless birthday wishes.
He figured that if maybe he was as reckless as Luke, and taunted death on a daily basis, then being excited over surviving another year would be warranted. For Chase, the most dangerous aspect of his life was Maya's cooking. And though he harbored an underlying fear that one day Maya would take the term "bleached flour" literally and accidentally kill the entire staff of the Ocarina Inn with a batch of cookies, it was mostly just stomach-churning stenches and billows of smoke that he had to do battle with.
But every now and then, she would actually complete a recipe and present it to him in all its inedible, hideous glory and expect him to be proud of her. Which he never was, of course. Just irritated that she was wasting his time.
So it made perfectly ironic sense that today, his twenty-second birthday, was one of those now-and-thens that she'd managed to do just that.
Maya's disgusting lump of an orange cake sat before him with an equally disgusting yellow-orange icing blob scrawl of "Happy Birthday, Chase!"
At least he thought it was an orange cake. It was orange in color but that didn't mean anything.
He blinked at the "cake", then up at her, then back at the cake with a smirk fighting at his lips. "What a lovely centerpiece, Maya."
"It's your birthday gift, you goofball!"
Ever since the calendar had flipped to Spring 1, the moment he stepped foot into the Ocarina Inn, Maya would skip up to him and inform him how many days remained until his birthday, and say "Betcha can't guess what I'm going to give you!"
She expected him to actually guess each time, but he would reply "You're right, I can't guess," and she would stomp away in frustration. (Though one day he was feeling particularly clever and answered "E. Coli?" and she just crossed her arms and told him quite sharply, "No, I don't know how to make that!")
Chase sighed and rested his chin in his palm, rolling his eyes. Supposedly actions spoke louder than words, but Maya had never interpreted either very clearly. "What is it?"
"Orange upside-down cake!" she exclaimed with delight, and ripped open a pack of tiny wax candles.
"Orange upside-down..." his voice tapered off and his eyes widened, with the sudden awareness that Maya was planning on lighting those candles. "There's no such thing as that! And give me those!" He snatched at the box of candles but it was too late; Maya had already dumped out a handful of them and was poking them into the cake. Chase was slightly impressed that the cake was soft enough that she could do so.
"Welllllll, the cake kinda sorta got stuck in the pan, and then I kinda sorta couldn't get it out, so..."- she made wild motions with her free hand- "I turned the pan upside-down and gave it a few good shakes and...Voila! Orange upside-down cake!"
The ways in which Maya's mind worked were harder to digest than that macaroni-and-ketchup disaster that she force-fed to him a couple years ago. Chase repeated, slowly, mechanically, her previously stated actions to himself, trying to make sense of it all. Meanwhile, Maya rummaged around in the pocket of her apron, and in a few moments' time produced another small box; this one containing matches.
Chase didn't even give her the opportunity to take one out, attempt to strike it. He'd been there at the Summer barbeque when her effort to help Jake and Yolanda light the grill had gone awry and left her with blackened pigtail tips.
She made a high-pitched, helpless squeal as he lit the match himself, and repeated it even louder when he moved his hand to the first candle.
"Oh, fine. You can help me light it."
"YAY!~"
Maya's delicate hand clamped over the base of Chase's, and soon all twenty-two candles were burning bright. She eagerly blew the match flame out after the final candle, and plopped down in the chair next to Chase.
"Make a wish, now!"
Chase did not make birthday wishes, or wishes in general, but that instant, a certain one did come to mind.
He pinched his eyes shut, puffed his cheeks out and purposely blew out just barely hard enough to make the candles flutter, but with nowhere near enough force to outen them.
"You're a horrible candle-blower-outter, Chase! This is how you really do it!" Maya took in an enormous breath and... "SPBBBBBBBBBBBBBH!"
Extingushed. And covered with spittle. As if he couldn't be even more nauseated by the cake, now it was contaminated with Maya saliva.
Maya picked up the pie server that was beside the cake, and pared off a sizable slice (Chase noticed that it had both the exclamation points that had been in the "Happy Birthday Chase!", somehow incredibly fitting for Maya), setting it on a sandwich plate between the two of them.
"Sooooooo~, what was your wish?" She asked as she stabbed of a hunk of the cake and popped it into her mouth, swallowing it after two chews.
"It doesn't matter, I didn't blow 'em out anyway." Chase just continued to fuss around with his napkin, smoothing and re-smoothing it in his lap, anything to avoid trying the Orange Mess of Upside-Down Doom.
"But I wanna know, silly!" Maya swung her hand errantly to smack Chase playfully on the arm, and in the process, whacked the slice of orange cake between them off its plate, and off the table entirely. It landed on the floor with a muted splorp!
"Oh no! Chase, I'm so sorry!" Maya's voice cracked with impending sobs, and Chase hastily unfolded his napkin and crouched down to wipe out the smears of icing and pile of crumbs that was at Maya's feet.
He chuckled, an entertained spark in his eyes. "Don't be." He crumpled up the napkin between his hands. "My shift starts in a few minutes. I really oughta get washed up and head back there."
"But Chase, your cake!"
"Bye, Maya." He laughed again, and waved lazily at her, turning before she could say anything else, before she could ask him again about his wish.
He probably wouldn't have given her the truth anyway: that his birthday be like any other day. And indeed, with Maya, it had been.