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Caught on Camera

Photograph: Gift

"Ooh, I remember that one, it was really good. Make me another one Shin-chan~?"…

. . . . . . . . .

Kaito's birthday was just around the corner, literally, and Shinichi still had no idea what he was supposed to get the magician. Neither of them really had anything they needed that they didn't already have. Their families were both well off and their parents fairly willing to let them buy whatever they wanted since they knew neither boy would abuse the privilege.

He had asked his mom for advice first, which he sorely regretted. He still couldn't stop blushing every time the conversation surfaced in his mind (What kind of mother gave advice like that to her teenage son who'd barely just started dating?). He was currently in the process of scrubbing it from his memory. He was never going to ask her for her advice about this kind of thing again.

He would have asked his dad next if the man hadn't been sitting in the room during his first attempt to solicit aid. As far as he knew the man was still lying paralyzed with silent laughter on the living room couch. Traitor.

So he had wound up here, wandering along the streets of the shopping district and browsing through the shops. Of course, since he had no idea what he was looking for or even where to begin, what he was really doing was wandering aimlessly past various brightly lit display windows. It wasn't, he reflected, that there wasn't plenty of stuff available. It was just that a gift was supposed to mean something. It shouldn't be something you grabbed just because you could.

Coming to a stop in front of a bakery, he gazed at the many cakes on display. There were fruit cakes and cream pies and, for whatever reason, an ice cream sundae on display. Each piece was a carefully crafted piece of artwork. For as far back as he could remember both his and Kaito's birthday cakes had been made by Chikage-san. The cakes were generally small, just enough for each of the eight of them to have a slice, because Chikage had learned a long time ago that giving her husband and her son a lot of sugar just before bedtime was not a good idea. Kaito sometimes complained about the fact that he didn't get seconds even when it was his cake (so sometimes Shinichi gave him his slice since he didn't much like sweets himself).

His thoughts came to a stop and circled around that recollection. Then he spun quickly on his heels and set off towards the train station.

One train ride and a short run later he was in front of the Kuroba house. He had called ahead to check who was home and been told that Toichi and Kaito had left for some kind of magicians get-together. With that important fact established, he shared his idea with Chikage-san who laughed.

"Of course I'll help!"

She opened the door before he could ring the doorbell and invited him inside. He left his shoes by the door and followed her into the kitchen where he saw that she had already laid out an assortment of materials.

"So what kind of cake were you thinking about?" she inquired as she pulled several large bowls out of the cupboards and set them on what space remained on the counters.

"Chocolate," Shinichi replied without having to think.

Kaito had decided to throw a party that year, mostly because he liked to throw parties. They were great places for him to ply his arts on a captive audience (not that his audience ever complained). But, like they did every year, the Kurobas and Kudos had their own private celebration afterward over a sumptuous dinner. It was once the last dish had been cleared and before they were to move to the living room to look at gifts that Chikage cleared her throat and pulled a large, covered tray out of the fridge. Winking at Shinichi, she carried it to the table.

"Shinichi made the cake this year," she announced as she lifted the cover off the plate and set it in the middle of the table.

Kaito had inherited his father's sweet tooth and both Kurobas were eyeing the newly revealed treat with great interest. It was a large, chocolate cake twice the size of most normal cakes shaped like a magician's top hat with a white chocolate band serving as the ribbon. Perched to one side of it on the hat's brim was a dove-shaped cake painted in white icing.

"Your mom made the dove," Shinichi added a bit self-consciously. "And she helped a lot with the rest of it."

The delighted grin on Kaito's face made all the trouble of trying and failing to get the thing to both look right and taste good worth it.

"Let's take a picture before we cut it!"

"You have to light the candles first," Yukiko reminded him, producing a pack of candles with a smile. "I found these really pretty candles the other day just for the occasion!"

"Who cares about candles?" the magician retorted, bouncing in his seat, but Yukiko was already sticking them into the cake in a neatly spaced ring around the top of the hat. Once she was done, Toichi snapped his fingers and all eighteen candles burst into life simultaneously.

The song was sung and Kaito paused for a moment before blowing out the candles—or trying to blow them out, as the case may be. Everyone had just started the traditional clapping after the candle flames died when they suddenly leapt back into life. Puzzled, Kaito blew them out again, only to have them roar once more into vibrant, dancing existence like they were taunting him.

He glared. "Why you little—"

"Let me see those." Yuusaku snatched the candle pack and flipped it over, reading the back as Kaito made another failed attempt to extinguish the candles. "Yukiko, these are emergency candles. They're designed to be long lasting."

Hurriedly, they all set about carefully removing the candles before they could damage the cake. Toichi produced a stone bowl out of somewhere and the candles were placed, still burning, inside.

Kaito observed the lot of sticks with a bemused expression. "Didn't I say we should skip the candles?"

. . . . . . . . .

…Kaito still hadn't been allowed to have seconds that night, but he'd gotten all the seconds he'd wanted the day after that (though Chikage suspected he'd helped himself to more a bit earlier than that since she would swear the cake was smaller the following morning than it had been when she'd put it away after the celebration).

TBC

A.N: Just a little something since I'll be gone next week. ^_^