𝓌𝑒 𝒻𝑒𝓁𝓁 𝒾𝓃 𝓁𝑜𝓋𝑒 𝒾𝓃 𝑜𝒸𝓉𝑜𝒷𝑒𝓇 ; 𝓈𝒶𝓅𝓃𝑜𝒷𝓁𝒶𝒹𝑒

[vi.] ;; 𝒿𝓊𝓃𝑒

june first is dave's twenty-second birthday.

he wakes up too early in the morning for it to be enjoyable, a headache pounding at the inner walls of his skull, but gets up nevertheless, making a beeline for his hibiscus flowers. purple and white blend together prettily, and he takes his time watering them, making sure they're not on the cusp of wilting before he turns his attention to his other plants, stepping onto their balcony in the back to water the alliums and roses and the hyacinths, the bush lillies and the begonias are looking rather refreshed and his bromeliads and poinsettias are flourishing.

as he comes back in, he takes a glance at the clock and sighs – it's only four am. he isn't surprised, he's been waking up at or around four am for the past week now. he figures he could make food, he doesn't want to ubereats at this time in the morning, and they probably don't deliver this early anyways. he steps into the kitchen, checks the cabinets for cereal (if it all goes bad, he wants to have something he could eat), then grabs some sugar, cornstarch, and food colouring, manoeuvres over to the fridge to grab the eggs, settles everything piled in his arms onto the table.

to be honest, cloud bread has always been something he's wanted to make. what better time to make some than at four am, on your birthday, whilst your roommate is sleeping in the room just down the hall?

he starts with separating the egg whites from the yolks into a bowl, grabs his whisk and whips them until they're frothy and pale-looking, then grabs the bag of sugar and accidentally pours more than what the recipe called for, – he winces, but he doesn't think it'll hurt the bread (hopefully) – stirring gently until the whites foam up. once it starts looking how it's supposed to, he picks up the cornstarch, adds it into the mixture; he checks the recipe to see what else he's supposed to do, adds in the blue food colouring and continues to whip the whites (blues?, dave thinks with a small chuckle) until it holds a peak – to test, he tilts his bowl, and the dough (can you even call it dough?) slides just a bit, so he continues to whip until it doesn't.

he grabs his spatula – the website says to use rubber but he only has a wooden one – and scoops out the dough, rolling it into a decent-sized ball onto the parchment paper on his baking sheet, forms another one, sets aside the dough and slides the sheet into the pre-heated oven, closing it with a resounding sigh.

it'll take about thirty minutes for it to fully be done. as the bread is baking, dave sits down at the kitchen table, grabs his phone from his pocket and scrolls through twitter. nothing really interesting has happened – dave isn't one for the youtube drama like a lot of other people, but he does find some of the stuff that happens mildly intriguing – and although he isn't surprised that some people are tweeting (every youtuber has a shit sleep schedule, and timezones are a thing), none of their tweets catch his eyes.

he switches over to youtube, scrolling through his subscriptions feed to try and find something to watch. he's unashamed to admit most of the stuff is minecraft; there's a few cooking videos lingering around, flower care, horror shorts, – dave's always been a big fan of alter and crypt tv, the short films they make are fucking astounding – and other stuff he can't be bothered to watch. still, he isn't really in the mood to watch anything, so he instead switches to spotify, lowers the volume, and puts on his stream music playlist. he really should rebrand it, he listens to it off-stream all the time, but he just doesn't feel like it.

katyusha by szymon starts playing softly from his phone's speakers and he smiles, letting his eyes slip closed as he rocks back and forth to the rhythm of the song, leaning against the counter. something about the song makes him feel relaxed, but he definitely doesn't mind it. his playlist is on shuffle, so once katyusha finishes playing, the familiar beat of sunflower surprises him.