I do not own Hawaii Five-0 or any characters. No copyright infringement intended.

Notes: Yes, as you probably know by now, the cake is real. Check it out on Pinterest if you haven't look already - the avatar to this story is that cake!

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Birthday Wishes - chapter two

"Did you click through to the actual page?" The young girl asked after Steve literally shoved his cell phone under her nose. He'd called the Pinterest page up with the laundry list of ingredients below the cake's perfect image.

"What click through? What actual page?" Steve asked, his confusion growing in leaps and bounds as he blankly stared at the girl's smiling face. She was much too happy for his current mood. "This is the page and the ingredients are listed right here. It says right here - under the picture - that I need 'one chocolate ganache'. I just want to buy it and I'm kind of in a hurry."

"No, no … you don't buy it. You have to make it," she smiled even more. Thrilled it seemed - as proven by the happy light in her eyes - for being able to offer even more help. Completely unaware that her customer's ire was increasing.

"If you click on the picture of the cake in Pinterest, you'll go to the actual recipe page where all the instructions are."

"All?" Steve whispered, his eyes growing large in disbelief.

"Here, I'll show you." With that breezy comment, his phone was confiscated from his hand with ease. "Here ... look ... you'll see right there that you can't actually buy ready-made chocolate ganache. You'll have to make it from scratch."

"Crap," Steve breathed out as he began to feel the nasty fingers of defeat teasing his brain as he watched the girl quickly poke through his phone to the page in question. "There's more?" Then it was she who was brandishing the device back under his very nose. Sure enough, a rather lengthy section of his coveted cake recipe explained - in remarkable detail - exactly how to make chocolate ganache.

"Crap. There is more," he said, stunned as he slowly began to scroll through the actual step-by-step instructions. "I can't do this. This is crazy."

"Sure you can! It's not that hard," she gushed, trying to soothe his growing unease with a patient smile. "Based on the cake recipe, you don't even have too much baking to do. It's all about assembling your ingredients and getting the right things mixed together at the right time."

She grinned at him to bolster his confidence. "It's a great cake! If you take your time and just read through the whole thing first before you begin, it'll be a snap and well worth it! Your girlfriend will love it!"

"Girlfriend!?" Steve barked without thinking, his eyes widening more when he realized what his slip of the tongue sounded like as her own eyes grew in kind.

"Sorry," she cringed, wincing at her apparent mistake. "Not ... girlfriend?"

"No. Just ...gimme that! " Steve coughed and stammered, his hands flying through the air as he grabbed his phone out of her fingers only to slam it in his pocket. His face was red by the time he poked her in the shoulder to get her moving down the aisle. "Just ... just ... show me what I need."

Completely unconvinced of the intelligence of his plan by the time he'd scrolled down the entire page of baking instructions, Steve could only obediently follow the clerk around the store as she pushed a few additional items into his basket. After he paid for his newest purchases, he mumbled something just under his breath to her parting words of 'good luck'.

Something which wasn't entirely meant for mixed company.

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"Sure … it's easy … piece of cake." Hours later, night had fallen and he was refusing to admit defeat. His fingers were beyond a reasonable level of stickiness, he'd used virtually every utensil in his possession and his patience had been shredded to a fine edge. Tired and cranky, he'd even missed his own dinner and in his frustration, had resorted to cursing the young store clerk profusely while mimicking her to his heart's content in the privacy of his own home.

"Bull crap … easy my ass … make it from scratch she says … it'll be such a snap!"

"Damn microwave," he growled, punching buttons after reading the manual which he'd dug up from some junk drawer he'd discovered in the bowels of his very kitchen. "Girlfriend. Seriously?"

The first batch of white chocolate chips had become a charred, odorous clump. The plastic wrap he'd diligently placed tightly over the glass bowl, had also melted into said clump of white ick to create a toxic, plastic-like stew. His second attempt had only been better in that he'd used a paper towel instead of plastic wrap because it hadn't smelled quite as badly. However, he'd once again achieved burned chocolate chips morphed into an unusable whitish lump of clay decorated with damp bits of paper. His kitchen garbage pail was a mix of refuse from boxes, eggshells, plastic wrap and ruined mounds of grainy bits of ugly sugar.

"Half power," Steve muttered to himself as he thumbed through the microwave oven's old and dis-used instruction manual. He glowered angrily at the instructions which told him how to dial-down the power on his obviously very strong microwave.

"Half … okay …. baby steps. Half power … half the time … slow baby steps."

He might have ruined a number of things by that point, but Steve also had his successes. The brownie cake layers were perfectly baked and already well-cooled off to the side. It was the conquering of the chocolate which had his house almost reeking of burnt odors weirdly mixed with an honest-to-goodness sweetness. He bent down now, nose glued to the small window of the microwave oven as the turntable slowly spun with what might amount to his very last available bits of white chocolate.

"Please don't burn. Please don't burn," he chanted with a finger just poised over the stop button. Just in case.

Steve was close to having used up the bag of white chips and he couldn't afford to ruin this batch. He couldn't even bear the thought of going out – again – for more ingredients. Besides, this late at night, he'd be lucky if he found a store even open for business.

Any store.

"Oh ... good ... that works." He heaved in a huge sigh of relief as the bits slowly and oh so carefully melted down to just the right consistency. Steve dared to smile as the timer binged and he took out a perfectly melted, soupy white pool of heaven.

"Thank you," he grinned in relief. But then his smile faltered and he gasped in shock, his eyes widening in disbelief for what he'd done.

White pool?

"No! No, no, no!" Steve's hands shook as he flew back to the iPad to double-check the recipe. It couldn't be true ... there was no way that he'd made such a huge mistake.

"Crap," he cursed because it just wouldn't be fair. His eyes flew down the recipe, sentence by sentence. Line by line. Ingredient by ingredient and ... then stopped, his finger hovering as he rapidly read and reread through the part in question.

"Oh come on! Crap!" He shouted loudly at himself for his error because he'd just perfectly melted down ... the wrong flavor of chocolate chips.

~ to be continued ~