Hanna face lit up when I agreed to help him bake cupcakes. Neither of us has ever baked cupcakes, and I'm not sure his oven is safe to use. But after I came back to his flat after my night stroll I found him in the kitchen with all the ingredients laid out in front of him, what seemed like a decent recipe and a few cupcake pans and molds he said to have 'borrowed' from Conrad. Trying wouldn't have hurt anyone (hopefully). Besides, I wasn't so good as refusing him something, especially when he pleaded (which I think he took advantage of in certain occasions. Not that I complained).

The recipe didn't seem too hard, I read it out loud as Hanna weighted and put everything in order. "We have to preheat the oven before doing anything else"

Hanna shot a worried expression towards the old rusty thing and I joined him. We pressed a few buttons and turned some knobs until it seemingly came back to life after a few tries. The light was broken and the whole oven buzzed impossibly loud. But at least it looked like it had started heating itself (for now).

Hanna was literally beaming at our little accomplishment. It was rather… heartwarming to see him so happy for a bit, after some tough cases it was nice to see him at ease. It was like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders, just the night before I had seen him slump on his mattress and curl up without even changing his clothes and now he was giggling about cupcakes. I didn't like seeing him like that, it just wasn't Hanna.

I rolled my sleeves up and started combining butter and sugar in the mixing bowl and started beating them. I turned around just in time to see Hanna squash an egg right on the side of a another bowl. "Oh….whoops, my hand slipped eheh" He wasn't exactly the most delicate person ever, in spite of his frail appearance (never judge a book by its cover, right?)

He tried again to crack the eggs open shaky hands and a furrowed brow and let out a little victory scream after he succeeded and grinned at me "I'm a master chef! Aren't I Hibiki?"

"Of course Hanna." I could only shake my head and smile back at him as he poured the eggs one at a time in my bowl as I kept mixing and adding some vanilla. "Could you start mixing the dry ingredients?"

"Sure man!" He start dutifully mixing salt, baking powder and flower inevitable got everywhere after Hanna sneezed right on the opened flour bag. "Crap I'm sor- Hahahahah! Oh my god Renshu you have flour everywhere!"

I ran a hand through my hair only to find flour. How did it even get that high? I looked down at him, he had gotten the worse of it. There wasn't an inch of his face or head that wasn't covered in flour. Since the floor and counter where already messy I just bent down and blew it all away from his face, he patted my shirt a few times as I ran a hand through his hair (I really tried hard not to linger too long. I loved that mess of curls, but this wasn't really the moment to stop and appreciate it.). He got on his tip toes and kissed my chin, I couldn't resist and bent down to give a slight peck at his lips (Which he answered to with a squeak and giggle). They tasted strange. Probably the flour, I wasn't really good at telling flavors apart. The perks of being (un)dead I guess.

We put together the two bowls and started adding some orange juice and zest while whipping everything (Hanna had insisted in making all the cupcake orange). We went to check the oven, it had miraculously kept working the whole time and had reached a reasonable temperature. Hanna took a few spoons from out of a drawer and we started pouring all of the mix in the molds.

Now came the hard part, not burning everything. Which we did. In our defense it was hard to check the baking process with only the light from Hanna's phone. Luckily we had enough mix to make more cupcakes after the first batch inevitably burned. And managed to check with toothpicks in time if they were cooked or not. The second one was definitely better, and Hanna gave me the thumbs up after trying a cupcake.

While we left them to cool off we worked on the icing. This time we this mess up as much. We spilled a bit of orange juice but it was quickly wiped off (we didn't really need another ant invasion) and had to add an additional tablespoon when the frosting came out too thick.

"Shirong can you pass me the piping bag?" I dig between the discarded utensils and found the bag in question, which looked rather new and devoid of dust or holes.

"Another thing 'borrowed' from Conrad?" Hanna puffed his cheeks and started stuffing the frosting into the bag

"Hey! It's not like he needs them anymore! Who cares if I keep them a bit longer than intended?" Well he did have a point, kind of.

I helped him close the back of the piping bag and he turned around and stuck out his tongue at me while trying to put the icing on one of the burnt cupcakes to test out his work. "And it's actually gift from Toni you distrustful excuse of a partner! Now gimme a hand."

"You know Hanna." I scooped up some of the icing left in the bowl with my index finger and booped Hanna's nose with it soliciting a surprised yelp from him. "Orange looks very good on you."

"But never as much as it looks on YOU!" I may have deserved a tiny bit Hanna squeezing part of the icing right in my face. But that didn't stop me from lifting him under my arm and squashing the only frosted cupcake in his face. He protested and rubbed more of that sticky mess in my face.

Our little battle was interrupted when I slipped on a bit of the frosting we 'accidentally' threw on the ground and almost dropped Hanna. I set him down as he regained his breath. He had been howling with laughter the whole time and now his cheeks and nose were tinted a light shade of red. I felt a knot in my stomach and decided in that exact moment I wouldn't have allowed anything to hurt him anymore as best as I could. It was a weak promise but the best I could do for him. He deserved to always have a smile plastered on his face.

He calmed down a bit and we finished frosting the cupcakes (with way less cream that we intended too, but accident happens). They looked and smelled nice, and tasted pretty ok too according to Hanna.

"So, now what you want to do with them, they're sure a lot." There was enough to feed a family of five. And the only one with a working digestive system here was Hanna.

"Giving it away to our friends no? I'm sure they'll love them!" We packaged them as best as we could and got a change of clothes. We had sticky frosting and flour everywhere.

We grabbed the packages (I didn't know what smelled more of orange, vanilla and butter in that moment, us or the cupcakes) and set out on the street.