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It was too early for the bakery to be smelling like peppermint sweets and cinnamon. Halloween hadn't even come and Louis had been washing the smell of Christmas off of himself for weeks now. Although the air outside was brisk and nipping at any exposed skin, the inside of the bakery was warm and comforting, with cream colored footstools and end tables cluttered with mugs and books.
Louis was scuttling about the shop, collecting dirty dishes for Zayn to wash and tidying up as he went. He was bloody exhausted; nearly dead on his feet. He told everyone who asked that he felt a bit ill, but honestly Louis had just stayed up too late binge watching Criminal Minds. Prentiss had just come back from being not-dead, and if Louis cried a bit then that was between him and his cat, Charlie.
It was nearing six o’clock, which was when he usually cleaned up and said goodbye to Jane; Jane was the baker, owner, and founder of Boulangerie Bakery, who had given Louis his job about a year ago (Of course youre hired, darling, but if I catch you sneaking biscuits I’ll give you washing duty for a week). After about a week of training in the kitchen, Jane had realized that Louis was much better suited for the counter, where he could charm customers into buying a bit more than they initially expected to.
“Jane! Darling, I'm off !” Louis called out as he headed to the back, removing his red apron and trying to shake the sugar powder off his jeans. Jane, being nearly 63, was a bit hard of hearing, lovely as she was. He hung his work clothes up on the hook underneath the little chalkboard schedule they had for employees. Louis worked weeknights and saturday afternoons, which paid just enough for food and his tiny flat while he was in uni.
“Alright dear, get home safely!” She grinned at him, “Don't stay up too late! You don’t want your grades to start slipping.” Her hands were weathered and wrinkled, working some dough to prepare for tomorrow’s bread.
“M’ only having trouble in maths,” Louis replied indignantly. Short as he was, he still had to bend over a bit to give her a hug goodbye. His flat was a ten minute walk from the tiny shop, and although it didn’t usually give him any trouble, the bitter cold was making Louis shy away from the trek home. Louis was looking forward to getting home and making a nice bowl of ramen for himself; chicken flavored being the only respectable choice. It was warm and noodle-y and required only the tiniest bit of cooking skills, which he usurped by using the microwave instead of his stove. Louis was a bit notorious for his horrid cooking ability; there was a reason that Jane gave him a kitchen ban within his first week of training.
Stepping outside in only his hoodie was a bit like stepping into a walk in freezer, except with wind chill. Rubbing his bare hands together, Louis cursed the fact that he forgot his gloves. Again. He fished his headphones out of his pocket, trying to get his already numb fingers to work enough to unravel the tangled wires. The Killers might be the only thing to get him home, honestly.
“What in the bloody -” His fingers uselessly tapped at his phone, too cold for the touchscreen to register. Groaning, Louis shoved his phone back in his pocket, muttering about technology and October weather.
As he trudged down the little cramped sidewalk, now music-less and much more miserable, Louis remembered his disaster of a cooking attempt the other day. In his defense, he thought chicken was supposed to be easy to cook, and its not really his fault that he has a sensitive smoke alarm. Or a super hot oven. It’s up for debate really, but neither of those things are his fault. Obviously. Anyways, Louis had been cooking along (actually he was recreating the Risky Business Dance Scene with Charlie, but semantics) when the smoke alarm went off. Which, you know, would have been fine, except he lived in a flat. Which was connected to a bunch of other flats. Basically, Louis caused his entire building to nearly evacuate at 3 in the morning because he burned his dinner.
Although, Louis mused, turning the corner onto his street, it did give him a chance to meet some new people. Even if they were shouting and grumpy. His attempt at creating a get together on the rooftop had been a bit of a failure when only John from Floor B had shown up. John always smelled a bit like sour milk and whiskey anyways. Best to steer clear of that sort.
***
“Many people make the mistake of assuming that since orchids are native to tropical rainforests, they must be watered several times a week. Unfortunately, watering this frequently will kill the roots of any orchid in short order.”
Harry furrowed his brow, worriedly glancing at his wilting plant. He hadn't been watering her too much, only on Saturdays, yet Eleanor was still looking a bit droopy. She had taken ages to find this time of year, but her pretty blue petals made his otherwise monochromatic decorating scheme a bit more lively. Everything in Harry’s flat was bright, clean, white and crisp. It was his first flat, and it was his favorite.
Harry’s internet search, informative as it was, was stressing him out a bit more than he would have liked to admit. While he loved owning plants and loved how they looked, keeping them from dying was a bit harder than it seemed. His fish, Sushi, on the other hand, was a bit easier to maintain (Harry named him ironically, alright ? Its funny). Cooking always took his mind off of things; it let him focus on one thing for a little while, instead of the looming death of his expensive and sedentary flatmates.
Decided, Harry whipped on his apron (it said “Sweet!” over a little pink cupcake. It was beautiful), Harry started pulling ingredients out of the cabinets. He made the best peanut butter cookies, and they took no time at all to prepare. While Harry was preheating the oven, he stuck his favorite album on the vinyl player he had bought the other day. It had taken ages to find, but it made Dark Side of the Moon sound about a hundred times better. Bopping his head along, Harry began to make the flat smell positively lovely; peanut-buttery cookie smell filling up the whole kitchen. Humming along, he then heard the customary racket that accompanied his neighbor's arrival home. Harry grimaced, preparing himself for the daily ritual.
His next door neighbor seemed to have a particular fondness for pop music. While Harry can agree that it is a perfectly sound and valid genre of music, it grates against his ears like nothing else, and the paper thin walls do absolutely nothing to mask the opening chords of Katy Perry’s new single. Whoever lives next door also apparently has an imaginary friend named Charlie, considering its always a one sided conversation, and they are seemingly determined to set off the bloody fire alarm at the single most inconvenient time for Harry. Last time it happened, Harry had been in the shower. Before that, it was when the premiere of Breaking Bad was 3 minutes away from starting. It was honestly ridiculous.
Harry, hearing the timer beep, took his cookies out of the oven. They were soft and warm and smelled really very nice, and they didn’t set off a single smoke alarm.
***
Louis was having a bit of an issue.
See, he was sick of sucking at cooking. He was great at football, his singing was alright, and he made friends pretty easily, but he literally burned his instant oatmeal this morning. He was tired of this weird knowledge gap that he seemed to have, and decided to fix it immediately. And he would do it with the help of Katy Perry and her best album, because God knows he needed to feel like a firework right now.
Cake was easy to make, right? He pulled out his phone, searching easy cake recipes. Bit of a no brainer, really, but Louis really didn't feel like setting fire to his kitchen. Decided on a chocolate cake, he pulled out the ingredients. It needed something called baking powder, but Louis figured baking soda was an alright substitute, since they looked and sounded pretty much the same. He also needed flour, which was- yep, on the top shelf. Louis didn’t even remember buying flour, much less using it. He stretched on his tippy toes, fingers scrabbling at the edge of the shelf, before he huffed to himself and stood on a chair.
“Shut up,” Louis said to Charlie, who was currently laying in a pile of flour on the counter and paying no mind to Louis and his biological shortcomings.
Turning back to the cake mix, Louis tried to crack eggs into the bowl. Apparently, eggs are a lot harder to break cleanly than Gordon Ramsay made it look. Eggshells are edible right? Or at the very least they won't kill you. Louis blamed the fact that his eyelids felt a bit like lead; Netflix was the real problem here.
By the end of it, Louis was completely covered in flour and cocoa powder and he had a bowl of what looked like mud. Nice tasting mud, actually. Jamie Oliver once said that you had to cook the mud for, like, 40 minutes in a preheated oven; since Louis had no idea how to preheat an oven, he just stuck the cake batter in at 350 degrees without preamble. The great thing about cake, Louis thought to himself, is that it cooks just long enough to watch an episode of Criminal Minds. Still filthy from head to toe, Louis flopped down on the sofa with his laptop, and promptly fell asleep.
***
When Louis woke up with drool dried on his cheek and his face creased from the edge of his Macbook, it was to the sound of the damn fire alarm and the smell of burning cake. Which smelled a lot worse than normal cake, and apparently made for some incredibly dense smoke. Louis lept off of the couch, frantically trying to get to the kitchen without tripping over anything, namely Charlie.
He skidded into the kitchen, hoping to see just the usual charred mess in the stove, but instead was greeted with hot flames licking at the inside of oven. Louis, still half asleep, had no idea what to do; while all of his previous cooking endeavors had maybe smoked up the kitchen, this was the first time there was actual fire.
Louis, in short, panicked.
That’s the only explanation for why he turned on his heel, grabbed Charlie, and ducked into the outer hallway. He then made the incredibly rash decision to knock on the only other door on his floor, hoping that it contained a proper adult who would know what to do when you have a small fire contained in your oven.
The first thing he saw when the door opened was rumpled, curly hair and a whole lot of plants. Which - alright, Louis had seen weirder. “Hello?” The mans voice was raspy with sleep, and he talked with pretty seashell lips.
“Hi!” Louis squeaked at an embarrassingly high register. Now that he was here, he didn't quite know how to explain why he was standing in front of a stranger's door, holding Charlie and covered in flour. Especially a pretty stranger, with eyes like leaves and bodily proportions of a giraffe. Louis decided to just be blunt about it. “I may have set fire to my kitchen and I’m not quite sure how to put it out?” He winced, desperately hoping that no one thought he was a bloody arsonist. The man simply blinked.
“Are you the bloke who keeps setting off the damned smoke alarms?” The man’s eyebrows pulled together in a groggy frown.
Louis embarrassingly bit his lip, trying not to look directly into his neighbour's eyes for fear of making the situation worse. "I might be, yeah." There was a painfully long pause where Louis stared at the man’s ankles, shifting on his feet and trying to keep Charlie from jumping out of his arms. He heard a long sigh that was bordering on annoyed, and when Louis looked up the lanky neighbour was disappearing back into his flat. “Wait- my flat?” Louis teetered on the doorstep, wondering on whether it would have been smarter to just call 999 in the first place, when the guy came back with a fire extinguisher.
“Why the hell did you bring your cat outside?” The guy questioned, looking at Louis with a bit of intrigued confusion as they crossed the hall towards Louis’ flat. When they got to the disaster of a kitchen Louis hugged Charlie a bit closer, glaring at the giraffe-mans back.
“I dont even know your name and you're already insulting Charlie, what a great start,” Louis thought he was being quite slick, if he was honest. Completely subtle.
“I’m Harry,” he said shortly. “Stand back a bit, don’t wanna inhale this.” That was all the warning Harry gave before opening the oven door and filling it with pressurized water and carbon dioxide (Louis paid attention to that bit of fire safety, at least). When the fire was easily put out, Harry looked at him with a bit of an incredulous expression. “Wait, your cat’s name is Charlie?
Offended on Charlies behalf, Louis puffed his chest out a bit. “What else was I going to name him? Mittens? Oreo?” Honestly, Louis thought Charlie was a great name for a cat. It had character.
“No- fuck-i just- I thought you were insane?” Harry twitched, talking with his hands and looking a bit embarrassed. “Like, you talked to yourself all the time and I thought you had an imaginary friend or summat.”
Louis pouted a bit, “Well that’s a bit rude. Why are you listening to me talk to my cat anyways? Got a cup on the wall?” Louis was a bit flustered, considering all the things he whined about to Charlie.
“I wasn’t! Not intentionally, anyways.” Harry’s face looked like it would be hot to the touch, it was so red, and before Louis could retort he quickly added “What’s your name, anyways?”
“Louis,” Louis stuck his hand out, all proper, “I am not insane, I’m horrendous at cooking, and I have a cat named Charlie.” He grinned, and Harry seemed to catch on a bit.
“M’ name is Harry, I make really good cookies, I have a fish named Sushi, and I promise I'm not an eavesdropper,” His smile was wide, dimples carving into his cheeks like semi-colons. They were much too cute, much much too cute. Louis found himself staring at them for way longer than was socially polite, and it was Harrys hands waving in front of his face that caught his attention. Louis felt his face flush from his neck to his hairline, and he quickly buried his face into Charlies fur.
Louis let out a muffled whine when he remembered that he was quite literally covered in flour. "I'm a mess."
Harry laughed, and it was honestly more of a cackle, "So is your kitchen, babe." Louis lifted his head and pouted at the pretty boy who seemed to enjoy taking the mick out of Louis, who had just gone through a very traumatic experience. He could have died. He said as much to Harry.
“How about I make you cookies considering you nearly burned down your flat tonight?” Harry responded, and you could hear the teasing lilt in his voice. “You won’t be allowed to help; don’t need my kitchen ruined too.”
“Rude,” Louis muttered, but he smiled. If the boys cookies were as lovely as he was, Louis didn’t think he’d mind being taken care of.
