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3. Get Sugar

"Do you know what Rick is? Rick's a little bitch."

Saturday morning, around seven o'clock and Maisie was about to strangle Charity's boyfriend who she swore she would dump. But she hadn't. And that was becoming a problem.

"Charity," Maisie said as she leaned her body over the counter in the bakery because her own legs were about to give out from tiredness. "You've already told me Rick's a bitch. Many, many times over the phone last night. Remember? It's the reason why I'm about to fall asleep."

"I mean the bastard cheats on me and when I give him a second chance he goes and forgets our one year anniversary. I might as well dump him!"

"There's a good idea," Maisie gasped before rolling her eyes. "Just let him go Char. The guys a dick. He cheated on you. With his math tutor."

"Thanks for bringing up the dark memories, Maisie," Charity grumbled and slumped down in a seat.

Maisie groaned and put her head through her apron before tying it around her waist. She threw an apron at Charity and it hit her face.

"I need your help," Maisie said. "We need to teach the new guys."

"Oh, you mean the 'good for nothing murderous hooligans' as Tony so kindly put it," Charity said.

Maisie nodded. "I also might have made a bet with one of them."

Charity raised an eyebrow. "You made a bet with a murderous hooligan? Do you want to die?"

"One of them said that baking was a girl's thing. It pissed me off. You know how exhausting this job is. So I said that if he isn't sweating and dying by the end of the shift then he can go elsewhere for community service. They can clean toilets at the rec. centre."

"So what you're saying is that we have to make sure this guy eats his own words. And that by the end of the day I'll be surrounded by four sweating men?" Charity grinned and Maisie sighed.

"Yes, you horny virgin," she said. "You'll be surrounded by perspiring men."

"Damn, why didn't you do something like this earlier?" Charity asked.

Maisie smirked to herself. "Well don't get too happy about it. Wait until you meet them before you start with praises."

"Why, what's wrong with them?"

Maisie shrugged lightly. "They're...different."

Charity frowned. "The hell do you mean-?"

Maisie's friend was immediately cut off by the doors to the bakery slamming open and a body tumbling inside. A mass of arms and legs stumbled to a stop in front of the two girls and grinned.

"Guten Morgen!"

Charity blinked at Andrew who stood on one knee with his arms spread wide. His fingers started to move into a 'jazz hands' and Maisie groaned and hit her head against the cupboard beside her. She wanted to fall into a hole.

Andrew stumbled off his knee and fell to the ground when Keith came up behind him and kicked him with his booted foot. Keith sent a sickly sweet smile to Maisie who glared back. "Maisie," he greeted her.

"Keith," she said and then finally rolled her eyes and walked over to Andrew to help him up. The supposedly German man gripped onto her arm and got uncomfortably close.

"Why thank you, amore mio," he breathed.

Maisie patted the back of his hand. "Wrong language, sweetie."

Keith slapped the back of Andrew's head and turned his narrowed eyes down on Maisie. "So are we doing this or what? You made us come at seven in the fucking morning."

"And I've been here since six," Maisie grumbled. "I'm sure waking up early for once must have put a real strain on you. Did you watch the sun come up for the first time?"

"Oh, fuck you," Keith sighed and sat down at one of the tables.

"Aw, don't be such a little hündin, Keithy," Andrew laughed. Keith stood up and Andrew scrambled back. "On the other hand, that's totally fine. Be as much of a hündin as you want. No problem. I'll be over here."

Andrew backed away and Maisie walked to stand between him and the sulking giant sat at the tiny bakery tables. "Where are the others?"

Keith shrugged. "Me and the German ran ahead."

"The German and I," Charity piped up from beside Maisie.

Keith set his deathly glare up at the direction of the voice until he realized it wasn't Maisie's and frowned, catching the eyes of a girl he hadn't seen before. He raised an eyebrow as his eyes looked her over in the most obvious and non-discreet way humanly possible.

"Who's she?" Keith asked Maisie but his eyes never left Charity.

"I'm-"

"Off limits, criminal!" Maisie snapped, cutting off Charity.

Keith's face scrunched up in something akin to disgust. "God, you sound just like Small. He really is your dad."

"Stepdad," Maisie ground out.

"How come you got the same last name then?" he asked.

Maisie shrugged. "My mom wanted the Small name to live on so she persuaded every man she ever married to take her name instead of her take theirs."

"Your mom managed to get more than one guy to agree to change his last name to Small?" Keith asked and Maisie nodded. "Holy crap I've got to meet this woman."

Maisie sighed and looked up at the analog clock high up on the wall. It was already coming up to twenty past seven. She narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest. "How fast did you run? They're taking ages."

Keith lifted one shoulder up in a shrug and continuously kept glancing at Charity which made Maisie look between them with suspicion. Meanwhile, Andrew was walking behind the counter and currently had a cupcake halfway down his throat.

A policeman walked past the display window and opened up the doors to the bakery making the stupid jingle go off. The first thing everyone in the room looked at was his mouth - or rather just above it. A thick, curvy moustache sat along the top of his lip and Maisie shivered as she always did when she saw him.

"Hi Ben," she took a step forward. "Did Tony send you?"

Ben was out of breath. There was sweat everywhere and the uniform shirt was damp under his armpits. Everyone in the room winced when he stretched his arm over his head, revealing the sweaty area.

"Yeah," Ben huffed out. "I was supposed to walk the guys in but half of 'em ran off..."

"Well here's the half that ran off," Maisie pointed to Keith and Andrew who was on his second cupcake.

"No, no, the other two ran off," Ben said. "These guys were just faster than me. There was this really loud boy and a blonde kid that screamed about curing the world of poverty before running off."

Maisie sighed while Keith snickered.

"That's Nick and Logan," Keith said. "They do that kind of crap."

Ben frowned and started to fan his face as some form of natural air conditioning. As he began to sweat onto the floor of Maisie's bakery, the door opened up again and the damn jingle went off again. Nick and Logan walked in before stopping when they caught sight of Ben.

"Hey!" Nick grinned and patted Logan's chest with the back of his hand. "It's moustache man!"

Ben scowled and Maisie grabbed an apron and threw it at Logan before pushing one into Nick's chest. "You're late," she said.

"Fashionably," Nick smirked.

"What the fuck is this?" Logan said as he unravelled the bright pink apron that was probably at least a size too small for him. "Once size fits all my ass."

"That is your sacred apron that you will protect with your lives or you owe me twenty dollars to replace it," Maisie said.

"It's pink," Nick said as Keith and Andrew were given one.

"Good to know you're not colourblind," Maisie commented.

"Not to be mean or anything Small Jr. but...I'm not going to wear a pink fucking apron."

"But it matches your eyes," Maisie smiled and Nick gave her a flat look.

"I'm not wearing it," Keith said and stood up again from his chair.

Maisie shrugged. "Then I guess you're not a real man."

Keith raised an eyebrow and took a step towards Maisie. "The hell you talking about?"

"I mean a real man wouldn't care what colour a little apron was. He would be man enough to pull off pink. He wouldn't care. Unless I misjudged you."

Keith frowned and sneered at Maisie before aggressively putting the apron on like a petulant child. When he had it on, Maisie had to fight with every muscle in her body to not burst out laughing. There he was, self-proclaimed macho man with his big, bad tattoos out for the public to see and a bright pink apron sitting along the top. The frilly bits along the outside just brought it all together.

"Oh my god you look fucking ridiculous!"

Luckily she would always have Nick to voice the opinion she wouldn't speak out loud. Keith turned his glare to Nick but the latter didn't seem at all phased by it. Maisie didn't know how he did it, Keith's evil eye terrified her right down to the core. Nick threw his head back and laughed continuously until he was hunched over and clutching his stomach.

That was when Maisie noticed that Andrew was on his fourth cupcake.

"Andrew!" she gasped. "What are you doing?"

"Eating," he said as if she was stupid.

"You can't eat those!"

"Sure I can," Andrew said and brought the second half of the cupcake up to his mouth, "you just open your mouth like this, take a huge bite and hmm."

Andrew devoured the rest of the baked good and Maisie turned away, deciding that trying to talk to the alleged German man would only make her more frustrated with all of them.

"Okay everyone just put on a damn apron," Maisie said and walked over to Charity. "We've got a long day ahead of us."

***

And a long day they had.

Logan decided that he didn't want to do anything - that his mind needed to be open and away from too much working so that he could think up innovative and new ideas to make the world a better place. Maisie told him to shut the fuck up and start kneading the dough.

Charity was terrified. She hadn't met the boys before and was expecting a group of sulking men who didn't talk much and kept to themselves. Instead she found herself caught in the crossfire of Nick's overly sarcastic and loud comments, the subject of Andrew's German seduction, under the evil eye of Keith and listening to Logan rant about how society was killing everyone.

Maisie had the boys do simple tasks when she realized that they weren't very good with timing. The first batch of bread came out burnt. Keith was commenting continuously about how he wasn't sweating yet and Maisie smirked, walking over to him.

"Okay," she said, "at this time I have to do a large batch of bread and cakes to a big delivery that comes every week. I usually do it alone. If you can do half of it without sweating or complaining then you win."

Keith grinned cockily. "You're on."

Everyone else moved down to the further end of the kitchen and gave Maisie and Keith a large amount of work space. They stood opposite each other over the table.

"Four loaves of soda bread, two chocolate cakes and a set of six blueberry muffins," Maisie said. "That's half my usual."

"Easy," Keith said.

Maisie grinned. "Ready..."

"Set..."

"Go!"

The two of them worked vigorously. But for Maisie, this was child's play. She created the dough for the soda bread in minutes while Keith was still trying to find the ingredients. When her bread was proofing, she began the cakes while Keith was slamming his fist down into the bread dough continuously.

He kept glancing up at Maisie to see what she was doing and the second his breath began to go a bit quicker, she grinned. Maisie poured her cake batter into two separate tins and looked up to see Keith with his muscled arm wrapped around a plastic bowl as he messily mixed together eggs and butter. He placed the bowl down and looked around his work surface. He frowned and lifted things up, looking through the cupboards around him.

"Where the fuck is...?" Keith mumbled to himself until he saw what he was after. A big bag of flour was sat far away beside Nick who had stolen it from him moments before. "Nick, pass the flour."

Nick looked up slowly then down at the flour before looking back up. He place a hand on top of the bag and inched it towards his body. "I'm using it."

"Nick just pass it, I need it," Keith said, a little frantic.

"Wait your turn Keith! I'm making muffins!"

"I'm making cakes!" Keith exclaimed. "This is more important."

"Why is everything you do important? My muffins are just as important as your cakes!"

"Nick, pass the flour!" Keith yelled and lunged along the table.

"No!" Nick tried to yank the flour away but Keith gripped the side of it. They tugged at both sides of the bag. "It's mine!"

"Just pass it!"

"No!"

"Pass the fucking flour!" Keith screamed, breaking into a sweat and yanked the flour out of Nick's hands.

Which subsequently made it go everywhere. On Keith's face, up Nick's nose, in Charity's hair and in Andrew's eye. It hit Logan's clothes that poked through the apron and made the man look up and glare.

"This was my favourite thrifted shirt!" he yelled.

Nick and Keith just looked at each other, covered in flour from head to toe.

Maisie came round the corner with the tins of cake batter, Charity holding the proofed bread dough behind her, opening the oven. They stopped and stared at the scene in front of them before bursting into laughter. Everyone in the room looked at the two girls flatly and Maisie nearly dropped the cakes as she laughed.

When she calmed down a little, she wiped at her eyes and smirked at Keith. "I saw you sweat earlier. Looks like you didn't win. I guess baking isn't as pathetic as you thought."

Keith blew some flour off his nose and sent her a look from the pits of hell.

- Tahlie x