The morning of Dec 14th:

He wakes up with the sun on any given day, but today anticipation has him awake earlier than that. Today is a very special day, one of few anniversaries he keeps in mind but won't mark on the calendar. It's early yet, so he'll take his time about drawing himself from the warmth of the covers, careful to leave his housemates to their slumber as he does. Wouldn't do to have them up early themselves to spoil their surprise, though it's just as special a day for them, too. It's more likely that they'll wake soon, and yet he intends to try.

With one step, he finds himself in the kitchen, the distance and closed doors nothing to him with his abilities. He leaves the room in darkness and moves around it quietly, gathering things he knows he'll need. His eyes haven't seen clearly in years, but he knows his own home well enough by now to know precisely where everything is, and even in socks, he can hear his own feet padding about the kitchen floor.

Once he has everything settled, he starts the oven and puts on his apron and a kettle to heat tea. It's going to be a long morning and a longer day, and... he thinks he'll start it with a cake.


The night of Dec 14th:

It's well past the boys' bedtime after such an exciting and unhappy day all around. The kitchen is still a mess, in part, and he'll work on the details later. In fact, that's his excuse, should anyone find him awake at this hour, as to why he is awake. But it's his tradition to remember.

It has been five years to him since his world had been shattered, hidden behind a quiet smile that even now sometimes is hard to maintain. Perhaps it could have been easier had Vincent not been returned to him, taken away, returned as a boy, then taken away again so very recently. But old wounds had been reopened, and he needed this time to himself. He needed to cry it out over a nice, hot cup of tea now or risk bottling it up and watching it explode on him and serve collateral damage on others at some unknown time later.

As happy a day as it should have been and was, he needs to mourn. The Grim Reaper academy had tried its best to take all emotion out of the job, but in the end, they all had once been human.