A/N: Another silly request, but this time about Andy's birthday and kids.
In the whole wide world of things that April definitely doesn't like to do, the one that she never thought she'd actually do a spin on was baking. It wasn't, like, a constant thing. She simply didn't have time to be doing it, plus it would be all sorts of sweets and insane cookies that Andy would devise up (though, honestly his cinnamon and brown sugar molasses cookies were great) but it was, weirdly enough, fun. The part that was fun, actually, was doing it with her kids.
Baking years ago for a bunch of college kids was mostly just to apologize to Crazy Craig, and now it was like she had something to bond over with Jack. Robbie didn't like it so much, though she liked squirting the icing on the cake or cupcakes they might make. The rest of the kids had zero interest in cooking of any kind, but Jack seemed to be into it and the things she had to share with him over the years dwindled. Andy had football with him, and his siblings were around him often when he wasn't out of the house, so April settled on baking.
"How old is dad?" Jack asks, looking at the flat top of the round, chocolate cake ready for the icing.
"Fifty-five," April answers without thinking about it, tossing the batter dish in the sink for when she actually cares about washing it.
"Whoa," he mutters.
"What?"
"Dad's, like, really old," he says dumbly. April just shakes her head and chuckles.
"Yeah, me too," she scoffs.
"Not as old as dad," he says, again obviously, but she smiles and kisses the back of his head. "When does he get home?"
"He's just visiting your Uncle Ben while he's in town," she sneers. Then, in unison, April and her son say, "Dork."
With a shared smirk at the little joke, April goes to gather everyone for the decoration. By the time they come back, Jack's finished his touch of exquisite icing-calligraphy with a huge Happy Birthday Dad! and Robbie adds a little action figure she has of a man in a karate gi - a relic of a toy that April found and painted up to look like Johnny Karate years ago that Robbie took an extreme liking to - along with Sam's intricate, finger-drawn design of their large family in the icing above the lettering. The twins take advantage of April leaving the room for a moment and, when she comes back, finds four hand prints around the edge of the cake, spiking the icing up and making the whole thing look just bizarre.
And, really, it's gorgeous in all of its grotesque randomness from the toy to the messed up icing, to the now misshapen lettering, and the candles yet to be added would just make it more of a mess. She wants to laugh and shake her head, and be grossed out, and it could never be more perfect.
"What about yours, ma?" Jack asks.
"Yeah, you need to decorate it too!" Lucy pipes up.
"Decorate!" Victoria repeats after her, lifting her hands up in fists as if in victory.
"Yeah, like put skulls or a vampire on it!" Robbie offers, as if April needs ideas. Still, she considers all of them. The idea that pops into her head immediately is great.
By the time Andy gets home, the cake is waiting on the kitchen table and all of the kids bombard him with hugs the moment he's in their line of sight. Or, really, after he shouts for all of them. April greets him with a brief kiss and a question about how lame Ben is doing, and Andy answers that he's just as lame as usual but he wished him happy birthday so that was cool, too. That easily led into the kitchen where she presented him with the mess in front of him.
Instead of on a single dish, April separated each portion of the cake out into seven separate pieces on seven different plates, with Andy's much, much larger than the rest. Stools and chairs were brought up around the little island, and they all sat down at their plates.
"What's this?" Andy asks, confused.
"Your birthday cake, babe," April says, pointing at everyone's piece.
"Um, that's more than one cake," he says confidently. Jack muffles a chuckle.
"No, dad. It's your cake and all our stuff we did to it," Robbie clarifies for him, pointing at the toy on top of hers. The twins' pieces are little chunks of their hand prints.
"Oh my God, babe. Did you make this?" Andy asks, walking over to her and leaning down for a deeper kiss that mortifies everyone else in the room. "You are so, so awesome."
"The kids gave me an awesome idea too," she shrugs. April takes her glasses off and sets them next to her plate, and then ties her hair up behind her. "C'mon eat your cake with us. Robbie take your glasses off, you too Andy."
When he sits down, all the kids present their little variations of decoration. Andy thinks they're all as awesome as the others and says as much. He probably has a favorite, but he doesn't say as much. Instead he just calls it all awesome, his family awesome, and that his kids are so amazing he just might cry. He quickly quiets down with the prospect of cake in front of him, but is confused by one thing.
"Um, where are all the forks and stuff?" Andy asks, scouting around the table for his silverware.
"You said you always wanted to have a cake and just shove your face in it," April says, taking a deep breath and looking at all of their cakes. Robbie takes her toy off of the icing, setting it on the table, and Sam looks wistfully at the art she drew and then seems to change her mind about something, quickly shifting to a little smile. "So, yeah."
"Wow, really? You always said the kids weren't s'posed to-"
"It's fun," April interrupts. "Right?"
"It's gonna be awesome!" Robbie says, and Jack nods with her.
"Happy Birthday daddy!" Victoria tells him, and Andy takes that as his signal.
"Shove your face in the stupid cake already," April smirks and watches his face burn with delight as he does exactly that.
When his face plants with a soft thump in the cake, he giggles and comes back up with chocolate smeared all over his face. The twins follow suit, and then the rest of the kids do it as well . They sink their faces in the cake and come up with laughter, taking chunks off of each other's faces along with Andy, who wipes at their faces to taste the cake and groans appreciatively.
"Babe, you haven't done it yet!" Andy complains.
"Yeah, ma! You gotta do it too," the kids say to her, expectant.
So she does, and when she comes up, April can barely see anything other than chocolate cake. It's ridiculous and she can barely smell anything else, but everyone is laughing, and shouting, and giddy, and Andy takes the cake from by her cheeks and puts the bits in his mouth with a grin. Part of April wishes she saved a piece of the cake for another, late-night recreation of this little face-planting. Then again, the next half hour or so is spent taking the bits of crusted cake from each other and eating it, Sam sitting next to April and mostly sharing with her, and the other kids each having their little cake fights that ends up with brown cake flung halfway across the room and dirtying up the floor and counters.
Icing smears all over the walls and floor, and, really, the immense messiness of it all makes Andy smile so damn much that April knows this was exactly the right spin to put on the cake. He smiles, and his face says as much. Leaning down again, he kisses past the chocolate, or through it and with it she isn't sure, and they smile against each other as the kids make yet another sound of disgust.