A/N: This is another one-shot from my 'Daddies' series, featuring Kurt and Sebastian (well, mostly Kurt) making cupcakes last minute for a bake sale at their son's school. This one is inspired by personal events, and mentions one of my fave San Diego bakeries. Warning for mention of sex and foul language, and the mention of anxiety issues in a child. Originally, Thomas was going to make an appearance, but it's past his bed time ;) AU, FutureFic, humor
"Are you sure there wasn't any other time in the last two weeks that you could have told me Thomas would need 120 cupcakes by tomorrow morning?" Kurt asks in a mock cheerful voice while angrily whisking away at his signature cherry red velvet cupcake batter and glaring murderously at his husband.
"Probably," Sebastian answers with a shrug and an infuriating sense of calm. He meets Kurt's glare and has the balls to look unrepentant. "Sorry, babe. I just forgot."
It was on one of the mornings when Sebastian takes Thomas to school that Thomas's teacher, Mrs. Henderson, had told Sebastian about the school's annual Penny Bake Sale. She had even given him a bright orange flyer. He only half-listened at the time when she explained about Kaplan School's ingenious plan to nail parent's twice for donations during the course of one fundraiser. Parents pay the school money which is put into their student's "accounts" so that they can buy treats at the bake sale. On the day of, the kids come to school with a pocketful of pennies and use those to make their purchases. Kids are allowed to buy until their account runs dry. Along with being a fundraiser, it's also supposed to be a lesson in math and budgeting for the kids. Sebastian smirked while he listened. This school seemed to have a way to suck the fun out of everything. That's probably why Kurt loves it so frickin' much.
Once he heard the words 'bake sale', Sebastian pledged 120 cupcakes, which thrilled Mrs. Henderson to no end because Kurt's cupcakes are legendary. But Sebastian was worried about Thomas in all of this. His son isn't all that good at math and the concept of budgeting is foreign to him, no matter how hard Kurt tries to help the boy manage his allowance. When Thomas doesn't have a firm grasp of a concept, he stresses out really easily and that usually results in a level 18 meltdown. Sebastian doesn't want to be a helicopter parent. He doesn't want to have to attend the bake sale and hover over him, telling him what he can buy and what he can't, so to circumvent the problem Sebastian wrote a check for $30 to put into Thomas's account.
If Thomas spends $30 on treats that cost a penny, someone had fucking better find a way to stop him, tantrum or no.
Sebastian had left the school, prepared to call Kurt and let him know about the cupcakes he would have to bake, but as luck would have it, Kurt sent him a particularly filthy text along with an explicit picture, and all thoughts of bake sales and cupcakes flew straight out of his head.
Later on that same day, Sebastian used the bright orange bake sale flyer in a pinch to clean up after Hepburn, Thomas's pet labradoodle and service animal, during one of their impromptu after school trips to the park. Sebastian wasn't worried. He was sure he would remember the information and relay it to his husband.
Apparently, he was mistaken.
Which is why Kurt has been in the kitchen for the past two hours at nearly eleven o'clock at night, whisking away, with a small army of cupcakes already baked and sitting in tiny, multi-colored foil cups on the kitchen island.
"You know, considering the fact that Thomas's class is filled with kids who are all on special diets and have bizarre food allergies, it seems that we should be exempt from this insanity," Sebastian comments, doing his best to show solidarity for his poor, overworked husband while all the while eying the cupcakes in front of him, making moves to confiscate one of the cupcakes in the red foil cups closest to him.
"First of all, this is a fundraiser for the school," Kurt explains with a thick helping of condescension, "and as Thomas attends Kaplan School, that means we participate, and second of all, that is why Mrs. Henderson took the liberty of giving me a thorough and organized list of everyone's various food needs."
Sebastian looks over the tops of the cupcakes to a color-coded list stuck in the pages of Kurt's recipe book on the counter. Sebastian's eyes went wide.
"Which means what?" he asks.
Kurt huffs, blowing out a breath through his lips that lifts his bangs off his forehead. He stops whisking.
"That means that this batch of 60 cupcakes are regular red velvet cupcakes for the normal kids..." He says the word normal with a ridiculous amount of emphasis, and somehow manages to do the equivalent of air quotes with his expressive eyebrows. "The ones in the blue foil cups are gluten-free. The ones in the red foil cups are sugar-free…"
"Ewww…" Sebastian comments, looking back with disgust at the red foil cupcake he was preparing to snag moments before.
"The ones in the green foil cups are peanut-oil free, and the ones in the gold foil cups have no potassium."
Sebastian sits back and furrows his brow.
"Why the fuck…"
"I don't know!" Kurt laments in frustration, going back to his whisking. "Steven's mother says he can't eat potassium. I don't particularly care why, but there has to be at least ten cupcakes for each frickin' kid ergo a batch of super-dense potassium-free cupcakes! God save the Queen!"
Sebastian wants to laugh. He wants to laugh at his adorably overwrought husband pouring out his tenth batch of cupcakes. He wants to laugh at the flour dusted over Kurt's designer pajamas. He wants to laugh at the way Kurt mutters curses at Sebastian underneath his breath, and at the blissful domesticity of watching his husband in the kitchen.
But Sebastian spies a spattering of red velvet batter at the hollow of Kurt's neck, and all of his attention focuses on that…and his need to lick it off.
Sebastian stands from his stool over by the fleet of cupcakes to sneak up on Kurt who is focused on his cupcake pan, but stops when he notices Kurt's entire body go rigid. Sebastian figures it's because Kurt senses Sebastian walking towards him, and he's not in the mood to be touched, but he sees Kurt's blue eyes stare down at the counter, or is it his hands, and then up at the cupcakes with panic on his face. He stands up straight, raising his hands and grabbing at his hair in clumps.
"OhmyGod!" Kurt exclaims. "OhmyGodOhmyGodOhmyGod!"
"Kurt?"
Sebastian immediately races over to his husband, overwhelmed with concern at the look on Kurt's face, which has gone pale in less than a second.
"My ring…" Kurt mumbles, his eyes searching the tops of the cupcakes as if they might hold the answer.
"What?" Sebastian asks with confusion, following Kurt's gaze to the cupcakes sitting quietly lined up in their neat, perfect rows.
"My ring!" Kurt repeats, pulling his left hand out of his hair and showing it to Sebastian. "My wedding ring! It's gone! It must have slipped off while I was baking and now…"
He doesn't finish his sentence. He can't. It's lodged in his throat at the thought of exactly where his ring has ended up…and what they would need to do to find it.
"Oh God," Sebastian mutters, but even as Kurt trembles with frustration and anger beside him, he has to clamp his teeth over his tongue to keep from laughing.
This is definitely not the time.
"It's okay," Sebastian says, running his hands down Kurt's arms, stealing a last, longing glance at that spot of batter on Kurt's neck that is simply begging him to run his tongue over it. "We'll cut the cupcakes open carefully, this way we can glue them back together…"
Kurt turns on Sebastian with an eyebrow raised and a grimace on his face.
"Glue?" Kurt asks.
"You know, with frosting or something…"
Sebastian thought it was a reasonable compromise, but his suggestion seems to frustrate Kurt more. Kurt sighs, the kind of full body sigh that deflates a defeated human body like a balloon. He turns his head to look at the oven clock and groans.
"It's fucking midnight," Kurt says. "I'm sixty cupcakes behind, and I can't even see straight anymore. Everything just looks red." He reaches out a hand and turns off the oven. "I'm going to bed."
Kurt pulls away from Sebastian's hands on his arms and heads for the door.
"But…but what about your ring…and the cupcakes?"
Kurt puts a hand to his head and squeezes his bleary eyes shut.
"You got us into this mess," Kurt mumbles. "You can get us out."
Sebastian looks down at the mass of cupcakes - one of which has essentially swallowed his husband's ring - then over to the cookbook with the recipe for Kurt's masterpiece cupcakes that only he can seem to get perfect, and finally to that color-coded list.
"But…but…wait a minute," Sebastian says, chasing after Kurt and blocking his way, "I really wanted to get with you tonight…" Sebastian is pleading, his voice low, his lips closing in on that prized spot of batter. "I've been thinking about you all day."
"Well," Kurt says, pulling back right before Sebastian's lips can touch Kurt's skin, leaving Sebastian to whimper in its wake, "if you can think of a way to find my ring and replace 120 cupcakes in the next 20 minutes, then I promise to ride you into the fucking mattress. But after I've taken a nice, hot shower, I intend to be in bed and asleep, so if you wake me up, I'm going to start removing body parts…" Kurt leans in to his husband's ear, "and I promise they will be parts that you will miss."
Kurt backs away, spinning on one heel and blowing out the door.
Sebastian swallows hard.
He turns back to the sea of cupcakes, all of them mocking him now.
He gets an idea. He picks up a fork and starts stabbing at some of the cupcakes, trying to see if the tines make contact with something hard and titanium, but after twenty cupcakes he finds nothing. To top it off, the once pert pastries start to sink in on themselves from all the holes, rendering them completely unusable. Kurt would never stoop to selling flat cupcakes, even to children.
Sebastian looks at the time on the clock and grumbles.
Five minutes wasted, and still no closer to a ring or cupcakes.
How the fuck did Kurt expect him to fix this?
It reminds him of the birthday party they went to for Wes's daughter, Emily. She has some strange gluten/sugar issue, too, and they had to order her cake from some specialty bakery downtown. Wes showed up twenty minutes late, but he had forgotten to pick it up on the way to the venue like he promised.
Luckily, they delivered.
Sebastian jerks upright, struck by the bolt of an amazing idea. He yanks out his iPhone and pulled up a browser window.
"Please have a website, please have a website, please have a website…" he mutters, searching the Web for a listing for Gloria's Bakery. "Bingo!"
And there it was. Salvation. Kurt said that Sebastian needed to find a way to replace 120 cupcakes. He never said Sebastian had to make them himself. He clicks on the hyperlink for place an order. He looks down the options for cupcakes and finds a section for special orders and express delivery.
Cupcakes ordered before 3 a.m. can be ready for same day delivery during normal bakery hours with a surcharge of $35 per dozen.
$350 in delivery costs on a $147 order of cupcakes?
Sebastian pictures Kurt for a second, gloriously naked, his pale skin glowing and marked with red cupcake batter waiting for Sebastian to lick it off.
Sebastian chuckles.
"Totally worth it," he says, selecting the cupcakes, entering his credit card number, and placing his order. "Okay," he recounts out loud to himself, "sixty regular red velvet cupcakes, twenty gluten-free, ten peanut-oil free, twenty sugar-free, and ten potassium-free for freak show Steven - why, we don't know."
He looks at the cupcakes on the counter and smiles.
This next part is going to be fun, but first he has to set the mood.
He scrolls through the music selections on his phone and selects Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain.
Never let it be said that Sebastian Smythe ever did anything in halves.
With the orchestral score rising and falling behind him, he tears through the cupcakes with his hands, pulling them apart in search of his husband's ring. The carnage of the cakes is brushed to the floor as cupcake after cupcake is decimated, and still no ring.
Wouldn't it be hilariously ironic, Sebastian thinks, if the ring didn't fall into the cupcake batter at all? What if Kurt left it by the sink in the bathroom, or his bedside table…
Sebastian smiles as he ruins the next cupcake in his hands. He knows Kurt didn't take it off. Kurt always said that the only way someone would get that ring off his hand would be to cut off his finger.
It's in the body of that last, traitorous, red foiled cupcake that Sebastian finds Kurt's ring, winking up at him. Sebastian wipes the ring off as best he can with a dish towel and kisses it. Sebastian has never been much of a jewelry man, but this one ring means the world to him. Sebastian looks at the clock. Three minutes left. He's cutting it down to the wire, but he'll just make it.
Sebastian rounds the corner, slipping on the remnants of destroyed cupcake littered all over the linoleum floor. He takes a look down and catches a glimpse at his clothes, also covered in cake, and strips them off, tossing them aside and racing to his room in nothing but his deep red briefs with the ring clutched in his hands.
He doesn't know what Kurt was complaining about. Bake sales are no big thing.