“Ahh, no stop, you’re doing it wrong.”

“No, I’m not. Just hold still-”

“There! Right there, baby, just squeeze a little harder and-”

“WHAT THE ARE YOU TWO DOING IN MY KITCHEN?”

Luhan and Kai freeze at the sound of Tao’s voice from the doorway, the cake in front of them still only half-decorated despite the hour they’ve spent working on it. “Icing the cake? I was trying to show Jongin how to squeeze the bottle so it came out right for the lettering.”

Tao flushes hard enough for both of them to see it before muttering something about ‘Sehun is turning me into a damn ert, I swear’ and walking back out into the café.

It takes twenty more minutes of Luhan working with his arms wrapped around Kai’s waist before they get the cake done and then ten minutes of laughing before they can put the cover on the dish and take it out to the main room.

“Took you guys long enough,” Tao says as they set the cake down on the counter.

“Relax,” Luhan replies with an exaggerated eye-roll. “Chanyeol won’t be in for at least a hal-”

The door chime has Luhan shutting up as Sehun rushes in. “They’re coming! I just saw Kris’s car pull up across the street.”

“Well, ,” Luhan finishes lamely, a small pout on his lips that has Kai giggling behind him.

The next time the door chimes, Kris is walking in with that aura that pretty much screams “Bow down to me peasants” that has Kai and Sehun, both of which have only ever seen him in passing or pictures, staring in awe. Kris stops just inside to the hold the door open for Chanyeol, who is no where near as awe worthy because of the confused scowl on his face and the slight limp to his gait.

“Hey, Tao?” Chanyeol grits, thoroughly unamused by the fact that, with the exception of one man, all of his most mischievous friends are standing around the counter of Panda&Deer with eating grins on their faces.

“Yes, Channie?” Tao replies, clearly stifling giggles.

“You texted me - before noon, on a Saturday, my day off - saying ‘Urgent, we need your help at the café. Come if convenient.’ Oh and then followed that up with a text five minutes later saying ‘If not convenient, come anyway.’ and I come here to find that THERE AREN’T EVEN ANY CUSTOMERS! WHAT THE , TAO?” Chanyeol glares at the Chinese man, about thirty seconds away from storming across the room and throttling him for interrupting his extremely late breakfast.

Tao just rolls his eyes, though, completely unfazed by Chanyeol’s obvious anger. “Of course there aren’t any customers. We can’t throw a surprise celebration party if the place is full of strangers.”

Chanyeol’s reply dies on his tongue and all he can do is stare at Tao in confusion. “What?”

“Get over here and cut your cake already!” Luhan yells from behind the counter, Kai’s arms wrapped around his waist and face buried in the elder’s back so Chanyeol and Kris can’t see him shaking with laughter.

Chanyeol and Kris make their way over to the counter, Kris’s eyes narrowing when he catches sight of Sehun sitting back by the cash register and holding Tao’s hand. Not one to be shown up, Kris throws his arm around Chanyeol’s shoulders as they reach the counter and Luhan pulls the cover off of the only ‘confection’ Kris has ever actually seen in Panda&Deer Confectionary.

Kris’s arm falls back to his side when Chanyeol groans and throws himself onto the counter, head hitting with a solid thud before he’s yelling unintelligibly.

Kai finally loses it, leaning back against the wall as he and Luhan gasp for air between guffaws. Tao’s biting his lip, forehead resting against the register as he tries desperately not to laugh. It only takes thirty seconds for Sehun to read the pretty cursive covering the top layer of the cake and fall to the floor, choking out between laughs, “Oh my god it rhymes!”

Kris his head to the side and gigglesnorts (....um, that’s a manly gigglesnort. Yeah, manly, testosterone, grrrr.) as he finally gets a chance to read the cake.

“It does kind of rhyme actually,” he says, prompting another yell from Chanyeol that has Kris laughing more than the cake.

Kris runs his finger over the top of the cake, smearing the icing so the words “Congrats on your hot piece of Chinese ” are no longer legible.

“Hey, Chanyeol,” he says on a whim, struggling to keep his simple smile from turning into a grin as Chanyeol sits up and get a strip of icing from one cheek to the other, right across the tip of his nose.

Chanyeol screams again, but this time it’s a battle cry as his fingers drag through the icing and he lunges forward to smear it in Kris’s hair.

Kris tries to dodge, instead tripping over his own feet and ending up on the floor with Chanyeol straddling his legs and struggling to get his wrist free from Kris’s grasp so he can run icing covered fingers through the elder’s hair. Kris smirks in victory, certain of his superior strength...at least, it was victory.

Kris shrieks when he feels Taos’ hands combing through his hair and dirtying it with the white and red icing that decorates Chanyeol’s nose and cheeks.

“ YOU, HUANG ZITAO. YOU ARE DEAD.”

---

After almost twenty minutes of Chanyeol, Tao, and Kris going at each other with the cake while Kai, Sehun, and Luhan try not to legitimately die laughing, they’ve all pulled chairs up to the counter and are eating what’s left of the cake that Luhan and Kai made. Luhan and Kai are practically sitting on each other’s laps, feeding most of the conversation asking how classes have been going for everyone.

“I’m actually thinking of enrolling for a few classes next semester. I’ve got some money saved up, why not use it?” Tao says with a shrug before opening opening his mouth to allow Sehun’s fork into his mouth.

Kris can’t help the eyebrow twitch that comes from watching Sehun feed his boyfriend Tao. It isn’t that he’s still got feelings for Tao, because he really, honestly doesn’t, it just hurts his pride to see Taohun being cute when they’ve literally been together two and a half months and Taoris has barely been broken up for three.

Kris throws his arm around Chanyeol’s shoulders once more, prompting an eyebrow raise from the younger and nothing more as he continues to eat his cake.

“I managed to bring all but one of my grades up from last term,” Sehun says proudly.

Another eyebrow twitch and Kris has to literally bite his tongue to keep from- “What class are you having trouble with? Geometry? Algebra one?” -whoops, tongue slipped.

Sehun pouts and Tao glares before Sehun answers. “AP Calculus actually.”

Tao smiles proudly at Sehun’s correction, feeling the need to further stomp Kris’s pride into the ground by adding on, “He’s only making a B as his lowest grade, too. My baby’s smart.”

“Baby is right,” Kris mutters around a bite of cake, thinking that Tao won’t be able to hear him.

But of course he does and a few seconds later Sehun’s beanie is crashing into Kris’s head with more force than he ever thought a small piece of cloth could hold.

“ you, Kris.”

“What?” Kris says defensively, tossing the beanie back at his ex-boyfriend. “He’s the maknae! Baby of the group and all.”

Tao rolls his eyes, opening his mouth to reply only to be cut of by Chanyeol’s fork clattering to the floor followed by a string of painful sounding coughs that have Kris patting his back and pulling the hair out of his eyes before he can even realize what he’s doing.

“What happened to your hair?!” Chanyeol screeches once he’s avoided choking to death on his cake.

“Huh?” Sehun mutters dumbly before remembering just what Chanyeol was talking about. “Oh, this? Social experiment. I wanted to see how people would react.”

“Social experiment? YOUR HAIR IS RAINBOW COLORED! YOU COULD BE IN A SKITTLES COMMERCIAL!”

“That’s not a bad idea actually,” Sehun mutters thoughtfully. “It could show me shaking out my hair and people gawking or something and then the slogan comes on like: Dye the rainbow, taste the rainbow.”

“I like it,” Kai says, reaching over Luhan to bump his fist against Sehun’s.