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The buzzing sound of the door opening breaks Kim’s staring contest with the grocery bag sitting on his counter. He shakes off his thoughts and, quickly getting up, walks out to the hall.
“P’Kim! Hi,” Chay smiles brilliantly and rambles on without letting Kim interrupt. “Sorry! Hia insisted he be the one to drop me off, and his and P’Kinn’s meeting ran late. Am I late?”
Kim doesn't get a chance to reply before Chay, without waiting for an answer, grabs his phone out of his back pocket and checks the time. “Just a minute! We said 4pm, it's just after 4 now. Hia needs to pay more attention to speed limits…” Chay trails off, finally looking up at Kim.
His eyes break Kim out of his stupor, and Kim realises he’s just been standing there and staring like an idiot.
“Uh, hi,” he says, very eloquently.
Chay chuckles and the endeared look on his face catches Kim off guard.
“Hi,” he says again.
Ducking his head to hide the smile he can feel appearing on his face, Kim reassures Chay. “We have nowhere to be. I thought we could just stay in today?”
“Sure!” Chay bends down to line up his shoes with the wall, and Kim tries his hardest to ignore the little voice in his head pointing out that Chay knows him well enough to know that Kim likes things in their places, without Kim having ever told him. “Did you have anything specific in mind? There’s a new TV show coming out that looks promising, if not.” Chay straightens back up.
Any other day, Kim would be ecstatic to do whatever Chay wanted to do, but today he has something else in mind, so he starts leading Chay towards the kitchen instead of the living room.
“I thought that maybe we could bake something together today..?” Kim means for it to come out as a statement, but it sounds more like a question even to his own ears.
He carefully watches as Chay freezes for a second, before curiously tilting his head.
“Bake?” he asks, as if to make sure he heard Kim correctly. Kim doesn't blame him. He's not quite sure he's suggesting it either.
“Yeah,” he nods, offering Chay a smile. “I thought we could make cookies.”
Chay bites his lip and looks at Kim uncertainly. “Cookies! Yeah, uh–” Chay looks around the kitchen, his eyes catching on the grocery bag. “P’Kim, do you know how to bake?”
Kim really wants to feel insulted, but Chay does have a point.
“I’ve never tried it,” he says honestly. “But I found a recipe, and I figured that you know how to cook. It can't be that much harder, right? I thought we could try.”
“Baking is very different from cooking…” Chay trails off. “And last time you set off the fire alarm while making instant ramen.”
“Hey!” Kim protests. “I now know not to leave an empty pan on the stove while it's on.”
Chay snorts, and looks at Kim dubiously.
Kim can feel his face dropping, and tries to reel in the disappointment sneaking its way into his chest. Clearly, he doesn't do it fast enough, because Chay rushes forward, takes his hand and drags him closer to the counter and the grocery bag on it.
“We can definitely try!” he drops Kim’s hand and starts rummaging through the groceries Kim painstakingly picked out just before Chay came over.
He spent 3 hours in the grocery store, trying to figure out which brand of flour is the best, and which kind is the most suitable for cookies. And who knew there were that many different types of milk, butter and eggs? And the sugar! Kim never wants to have to figure out the difference between refined, unrefined, raw and organic brown sugar ever again.
“Did you get everything we need?” Chay looks up from the grocery bag.
Kim nods and offers Chay the piece of paper lying on the kitchen island. “I wrote down the recipe.”
Chay gives Kim a funny look. “You could have just pulled it up on your phone.” He teasingly adds, “That way we’d definitely know that you didn't make any mistakes.”
“I triple checked!” Kim protests.
Chay seems like he's about to laugh, but whatever he sees on Kim’s face when he looks up from the recipe stops him. Instead, a warm smile and a light blush spread across his face. Kim should find it disconcerting that he seems to be projecting his emotions for the world to see and Chay can read him like a book, but instead a warm feeling washes over him, and the corners of his lips twitch.
“Okay,” Chay’s eyes sparkle under the kitchen lights as he stares at Kim for a little longer, before looking down to the recipe again. “Do you have measuring cups?”
***
“You're sure you set the timer?” Chay asks again, looking at Kim through his eyelashes.
“12 minutes,” Kim confirms.
His eyes catch on the leftover smear of flour on Chay’s cheek. After the “flour disaster”, as Chay had called it, they cleaned up as much as they could without taking a shower, but Chay clearly had missed a spot. Kim leans in a little and rubs his thumb over it. Chay stares at him, frozen like a deer in headlights, barely breathing.
“You had a little–” Kim moves away. “Some flour, here.” He gestures to Chay’s cheek.
“Thank you,” Chay’s voice is slightly higher than normal, and it makes Kim feel better about the way his heart races in his chest.
Kim looks away, before he does anything stupid, and reaches for the remote on the coffee table. “What show did you say you want to see again?”
“Oh!” Chay sounds a little out of breath. “It's a new one P’Khun recommended. It's on YouTube. He said we should like it, and his past recommendations were good.”
Kim doesn’t try to hide the smile appearing on his face at how easily the “ we” seems to slip out of Chay’s mouth. He nods silently and pulls up YouTube on the TV, before passing Chay the remote so he can find the show he wants.
Chay is quick, and in under a minute, the first part of episode one is playing. Kim holds his breath from his spot on the couch as Chay puts down the remote and resettles himself in his seat. When Chay ends up closer to Kim than he originally was, it’s like something that had been squeezing Kim’s heart loosens, and he relaxes a little.
Kim is so focused on all the points of physical contact between him and Chay that he completely misses the first couple of minutes of the episode.
He’s only brought out of his thoughts when Chay suddenly jumps up from the couch.
“P’Kim, do you smell that?”
Kim unconsciously follows Chay’s move, and scrunches up his nose, finally focusing on the smell all around them, and…
“It smells like burning?”
Whatever Chay says next gets lost under the shrill sound of the fire alarm.
“Fuck!” Kim swears and runs to the kitchen, Chay following.
He gets a chair to turn off the fire alarm, while Chay runs to the oven. After last time, Kim already knows how to turn it off, and blissful silence returns after a couple of seconds.
Chay has already taken the blackened lumps that were meant to be cookies out of the oven, and is opening the window. Kim rushes to do the same in the living room.
When he's back, Chay is poking dejectedly at the slightly smoking remains of cookie dough on the tray. Hearing Kim approaching, he turns to him.
“P’Kim, what temperature did you set the oven to?”
Kim stops and glances uncertainly at the oven, feeling like he's being asked a trick question.
“The recipe said 350 degrees, but this oven doesn't go that high up, so I just put it on maximum,” he answers honestly.
Chay stares at Kim silently for a second, and then his lips twitch and suddenly he's doubling over laughing. Kim freezes and feels his eyes widening. Chay rights himself after a couple of moments, but one more glance at Kim and he falls back into his laughing fit.
“What did I do?”
“P’Kim,” Chay wipes the tears from his eyes. “The degrees were in Fahrenheit.”
Kim opens his mouth to reply, but what comes out instead is a snort. The situation isn't even funny, and it shouldn't be, but the next thing he knows, he's laughing harder than he can ever remember having laughed before.
He catches a glimpse of wonder on Chay’s face, but doesn't have the time to consider it before Chay joins him.
He's not sure how, but they end up sitting on the floor leaning against the kitchen cupboards, trying to stop giggling and wiping the tears leaking from their eyes.
Kim turns to Chay to find him already watching him.
“I don't think you're allowed to cook anything anymore.”
“I agree,” Kim snorts again. “Unless you're supervising my every step.”
“Exactly,” Chay laughs, closes his eyes, and rests his head against the cabinets. “Why cookies anyway?”
Kim mimics Chay’s movement, but keeps his eyes open, and thinks about how to word it. Chay waits.
“I– I lost your trust. When I lied to you, and when I left you, and let you think that I don't love you.” He feels Chay straighten up next to him, and when he turns his head, their eyes meet. He opens his mouth to say something, but Kim shakes his head slightly and continues. “No, wait. I know you said you forgive me. It's not an apology. I just– you also said you can't trust me again yet. And– and I want you to trust me again. So I looked up advice, how to get people to trust you again and–”
“P’Kim–”
But Kim doesn't stop, afraid that if he stops talking now, he'll never say it. “And everywhere said that I need to show you, and the best way to do that is to spend quality time together. And some suggestions were cooking? But you’ve cooked for us various times, so I figured baking would be the next best thing…” Kim finally breathes in. He thinks that aside from his apology to Chay, this is possibly the most he's ever said in one go, and Chay is once again on the receiving end of it.
He looks up from where his eyes had fallen to study the floorboards, and his heart squeezes painfully in his chest when he sees the expression on Chay’s face. Chay looks like someone opened his heart up and cut into it. Kim doesn't get a warning before Chay launches himself at him. Kim’s arms wrap around Chay on instinct.
“You're an idiot, P’Kim,” Chay’s voice sounds wet.
“Yeah,” Kim agrees and Chay chuckles. The sound reverberates through Kim’s entire body.
“I trust you.” Kim can feel Chay’s lips moving against his neck when he speaks. “I didn't, for a while. But after we talked, and agreed to try being friends so I can get to know the real Kim, you’ve never been dishonest with me, and at some point I started trusting you again.”
Kim looks up at the ceiling and fights the need to blink, begging the wetness in his eyes to stay there.
“Okay,” he whispers. “So no more cookies?”
Chay laughs against him. “Yes more cookies. But I'm measuring the flour next time. And setting the temperature.”
“Okay.” Kim laughs too, and feels a tear slip down his cheek.
He lowers his head and lays his cheek on Chay’s shoulder.
“You know, we should be boyfriends too.”
Kim chokes.