First line provided by akisawana on tumblr: "Tucker wished, suddenly and desperately, for his father."
See, the thing about Wash was that the guy would probably live out the rest of his days eating nothing but military-issue ration bars. Given the chance, he'd stoically chew his way to the eventual heat-death of the universe. And Caboose might have a sweet tooth big enough to bore down to the center of the planet, but put him anywhere near an oven and just, you know. Fire. Death. Explosions. Screaming. All that good stuff.
So basically what this all boiled down to was that Tucker was currently the only person in Blue Base who, as the son of a moderately famous pastry chef, had the first idea how to bake a cake.
"Listen up, fuckers," he said. Caboose blinked at him. The rest of the room echoed emptily "Fucker," he amended. "I'm sick of what passes for food around here, so I am gonna bake a cake, I am gonna do it once, it is gonna be fucking incredible, and we are never gonna speak of it again."
Caboose's voice rose to a deafening stage-whisper. "Is it Agent Wash's birthday?"
"Sure," Tucker said. "That works. Fuck it. Happy birthday, Agent Asshole. And what I need from you, Caboose, is—"
"To be as far away from the kitchen as humanly possible," Caboose intoned.
"Farther," said Tucker, checking one of the base's cupboards for something he could use as a substitute for eggs. "Why are all the cupboards full of beef jerky?"
He glanced up. The kitchen counter was, impossibly, on a whole lot of fire. "Tucker did it," Caboose said.
Tucker sighed and rested his forehead against the cheap plastic of the wall, trying to drag back childhood memories of a warm kitchen and raised, laughing voices. The smell of fresh dough. The smell of burning sugar. He wondered, vaguely, whether the Sangheili had pasty chefs.
Then he sighed and reached out for the extinguisher, which was, of course, already on fire.