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It was a Friday evening and Andy had tried and failed to follow a simple recipe for a lasagna. Andy wasn’t a cook; he had never really had to make his own food before, choosing to subsist on takeout and junk food and friends’ leftovers. But two weeks prior, Sam had said that Andy was a ‘disaster’ in the kitchen. And sure, maybe he had left a mess in her kitchen more than a handful of times while living with her, and yes, he had once ruined a cup of instant ramen so badly it made him sick (don’t ask), but that didn’t mean he was some sort of moron. Sam had wounded his pride and so he had become determined to prove all his naysayers wrong.
Turns out she was right. Where it all went wrong, Andy had no clue but the lasagna had burned into an inedible brick. It was honestly kind of impressive but he wasn’t in the mood to appreciate it. The only relief for him was that he wasn’t really that hungry, having been satiated by some free pizza he had been offered after a meeting.
So he abandoned his attempt at a lasagna in the kitchen and went to the couch for some much needed relaxation. Hendrix watched him from his spot on the floor with silent judgment, but Andy chose to ignore that. What did a dog know about cooking anyway? Hendrix was afraid of his own reflection; he wasn’t some intellectual superior. It wasn’t that he was embarrassed or anything.
But the second he flopped down, someone started knocking on his door rapidly. The sudden noise made him jump out of his skin but he forced himself to get the door. He hoped it wasn’t Sam; he’d rather eat the charred hunk of pasta then admit to her how badly he had managed to fuck it up.
Swinging the door open, he was prepared to dismiss whoever was there and get back to his moping, expecting it to be one of his older neighbors who complained about every little thing that went on in the building. But it wasn’t. Outside his flat was Val.
And he seemed pissed.
Andy took a step back and held out his arm to invite Val in, who readily entered, fuming. It had been a few months since they went on that first date, which Andy had silently and excitedly taken to calling it. They had met up a few times for things like coffee and had met up more than a few times for sex, but that had always been at Val’s place. He didn’t mind having to go over rather than the other way around; Val had a nice place that was neat and smelled nice and didn’t have the world’s nosiest dog in it.
“Uh… did you want… a drink? I’ve got orange juice,” Andy said to fill the space. It was a flat out lie anyway: Andy didn’t have orange juice. If Val actually wanted orange juice he would be screwed.
“I want the fucking world to stop falling apart for one fucking second!”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Val closed his eyes tight and rubbed his temple with his fingers, exhaling. He was dressed in a more subdued look, with minimal makeup and no wig. He wore a turtleneck with dark leggings and impossibly high heels.
“Nothing has gone right for me today. A pipe fucking burst at COX.”
“Ooo,” Andy winced. “How bad is it?”
“Well half of the place is fucking flooded and its going to take weeks for them to repair all the damages. There’s insurance and my savings, but that’s still a huge loss.”
“That’s… bad.”
“Not to mention Patrick keeps calling me wanting to talk.”
“I take it you don’t want to talk to him then?”
“We have nothing left to talk about.”
Andy didn’t know all that had gone down in Val’s previous relationship but he knew that there were still some hurt feelings from it on both sides. He had never asked about it beyond a few surface level questions and had figured based on Val’s short responses that it wasn’t something he wanted to elaborate on. Despite Andy often being regarded as an insensitive woodlouse, he didn’t try to upset people, least of all Val.
“Have you asked him to leave you alone?”
Val let out a dry humorless laugh. “Of course I have but he thinks another one of his fucking apologies is going to fix everything. We’re incompatible but only one of us has figured that out.”
“I’m sorry Val.”
“Not your fault that he turned out to be a complete twat,” he said, the anger gone, leaving behind a sad resignation. He looked tired more than anything else.
“Still, you deserve better.” Andy sat down on the couch with Val slumping down on the other end of it.
“My head is throbbing. Sorry to have interrupted your night with my problems.”
“Believe me, you interrupted nothing. I tried to cook but that’s the last time I make that mistake.”
“Didn’t go well, I take it?”
“No! Oh my God,” Andy said, rushing to grab the hard brick of pasta and presenting it to Val like it was a newborn.
It only took one look at the pitiful attempt of a meal for Val to burst into laughter. Real laughter, not like the cynical kind before. Andy had thought that showing someone his failure would make him feel like shit but for some reason it didn’t. Instead it filled his whole body with some sort of emotion.
“What- What was it supposed to be,” he choked out in between laughs.
“A lasagna.”
“God,” he muttered, wiping the tears away from his eyes. “Fuck you, I was trying to be pissed off.
“Usually I have the opposite effect on people. I worked so hard on the stupid fucking lasagna and it came out like that. I don’t even know what happened!”
“Did you follow a recipe?”
“Yeah! I mean, mostly. I skimmed it.”
Val’s stare was scathing in its judgment and yes, it probably would have helped to read the recipe more than once. But in Andy’s defense he hadn’t realized how hard it would actually be. He flopped back down on the couch.
“You never learned how to cook?”
“Nope. Never needed to.”
“That’s… I don’t even know what to say.”
“Is it really that big of a deal?”
“It’s a valuable life skill, Andy.”
“My parents weren’t really the cooking types. I don’t even know where Sam learned how to do it,” Andy explained. He never learned to cook but he did learn the art of ordering delivery.
“I’m going to teach you,” Val said in his stoic, serious voice. That voice did things to Andy.
Val leaned over on the couch, resting one hand on the cushion and the other on Andy’s thigh, pressing down hard. He kissed him slowly and deeply, taking the air out of Andy’s lungs and devouring him.
“Your first lesson,” he said in between kisses, “is to do what the recipe says.”
And then he pulled back.
“I don’t have the energy to fuck tonight.” Ah.
“We don’t need to fuck. We can just, you know, hang out. I was going to watch a movie if you wanted to stick around.”
“Mmm. What movie?”
“I was thinking Jurassic Park. I was in the mood to see some dinosaurs.”
“That works for me.”
While Andy set up the movie, Val rubbed Hendrix. The dog had lost all interest in the visitor about as soon as he had arrived and instead flopped down onto his side, but had perked up at the attention. His tail thumped happily against the floor as he was called a good boy but dropped like a sack of rocks the second he wasn’t the center of attention.
“If you wanted,” Andy started, silently praying to any god that would listen that what he said wouldn’t come across as weird, “I could rub your feet?”
Val looked away and bit back a smile. “That sounds nice. I’d like that.”
They watched the movie as Andy rubbed Val’s feet in his lap.
“It would be so cool to meet a real dinosaur,” Andy said, absentmindedly.
“What are you talking about? You want to get torn to pieces by a prehistoric animal?”
He rolled his eyes. “Well obviously it would suck if you died, but if you survived? You’d have the coolest story to tell!”
“Is that what you’ve gotten from this? God I hope they don’t bring back dinosaurs. You’ll either die or become completely unbearable.”
“I’ll bring them back myself if I have to. And then I’m gonna dedicate the album I write about my experiences to you.”
“You’re already insufferable,” Val said, fondly.