Shot in Love and Crime (DNF)

Chapter 55: Birthday preparation

Karl POV.

I glanced over all of the options in the glass cabinet, marvelling at each of the different cake designs while my hand was wrapped around Sapnap’s wrist, having dragged him along with me to buy a cake for the brunette. We were at a flash bakery near the better half of town, and I admired everything that was there.

Hundreds of photos, displays, and sketches of cakes drew away my attention from the job that I had been sent here to do. But I couldn’t help it, everything looked so delicious; A strawberry unicorn cake for someone's birthday, a multi-tiered vanilla sponge cake for a wedding, several cakes that looked so realistic that you couldn’t tell whether they were actually cakes or not.

“Karl,” Sapnap hummed quietly, brushing his thumb over the back of my hand. I glanced over at him to see what he wanted. His eyes were glancing down the list of things that we needed to get for George’s party.  “Dream wants us to get all of these things organised before tonight, but you need to hurry up and choose what cake we are going to get for George.”

“Well…” my gaze drifted over all of the things I could request. There was a list of all the different flavours, all of the different icing flavours and colours, toppings, and cake toppers with birthday messages or wedding statues. There was so much to choose from.

“What flavour of cake does George like?” I asked, glancing over to the ravenette since he knew him better. “Is it racist for me to think he’d like Victoria sponge cake because he’s British?”
“I’m not sure,” Sapnap responded. “But I do remember he often got chocolate cake. He also liked ice cream cake but we didn’t really have it for his birthday since it was almost Winter.”

I took note of what he had said with a nod. My eyes glanced over all of the different things in the display before a woman approached us on the other side of the counter. “Are you two needing any help?” She asked in a sweet tone, resting her arms against the display case.

“Yes please,” my boyfriend smiled. “We are wanting to get a cake for our friend's birthday, we just can’t decide what he would like.”
“Well I can make some recommendations if you need.” She smiled kindly. “I have a list of some of our most popular.”

“That would be great, thank you.” The ravenette smiled at her as she grabbed a folder from behind the counter. It was labelled in small writing ‘birthday cakes’, and she pulled a couple of images out, laying them for both of us to look at.
“These are some of our most popular designs.” She explained.

There were cakes of different colours and flavours, with each picture having small instructions in the margin about what type of sprinkles are needed and what-not. “Do you think he would be interested in any of these?” She asked, her finger boredly tracing over the details of a chocolate castle cake.

I tried to figure out what George would want to eat, but since Dream was planning on surprising him with the cake we couldn’t ask him what type of cake he would want since it would ruin the surprise. That meant that the only information we had was from Sapnap’s outdated high school friendship.

“Let’s just go with something that has a lot of options.” I finally decided. “Could we get a multi-tiered cake with several different flavours? That way he’ll have to like at least one of them, right?” I glanced over at Sapnap for reassurance it was a smart idea, he gave a nod of agreement.

“Sure,” she smiled, pulling out a notepad, and I swear that I noticed her grumbling 'rich people's under her breath. “What would you like for it?” she motioned over to the list of flavours that we had been looking at earlier.
“Strawberry, chocolate, vanilla, buttermilk, sponge, and red velvet,” Sapnap listed before glancing over at me. “That way everyone will have something they like.”

The woman nodded as she took note. “And what icing would you like?” She continued. We went into a huge talk with her, explaining the things that we knew George liked. She listed down that his favourite colour was blue, and then took our suggestions for some good toppings including whipped cream, chocolate shavings, and sprinkles.

Overall I was looking forward to it as I handed her the card that Dream had given me to pay for it. We gave a downpayment and then when we came to pick it up we got the rest. We decided we’d pick it up on the morning of the first of November, since it was George’s birthday.

She gave a bright and happy ‘have a nice day’ when we left, after having given her a one hundred dollar tip out of Dream’s money (under Sapnap’s suggestion). The two of us chuckled softly to each other as we stepped out into the cold early evening, a crisp breeze rushing past us on the quiet street, playing with our hair and our clothes

“What’s next on the list?” I asked quietly, pressing my face into the shoulder of my boyfriend to protect him from the cold.
He had a pen, crossing out the ‘order cake’ instruction, then he looked down at the next thing on the list. “It says balloons. Seems simple enough.”

I smiled at him as he said that, the two of us still holding hands as we headed off in the direction of a store that I knew did a lot of party supplies. That meant that while we were looking for balloons we could get a bunch of other things that were on the list Dream had given us, such as a ‘happy birthday’ banner and candles.

Both of us had been joking about how much money he was allowing us to spend on the brunette. When it was the birthday of anyone in the mafia, the most he’d do was buy you a small cake of any flavour with a singular candle, and then a voucher for a meal at some flash restaurant, and that was only after spending years working for him.

The two of us kept giggling to each other about the situation as we walked all the way to the party store, with the two of us talking about the ways we could mess with Dream while we were getting what we needed. Maybe getting a banner that says ‘I love you George’ at the party supplies store.

We agreed it would be a great prank, however we also knew Dream would kill us if that did happen, and neither of us were ready for death yet. As much fun as it would be to prank the blond, we decided it could wait.
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1158 words