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‘Okay, let’s see. You have your water – filled to the brim, might I add, your pot might overflow a little. You have your ground coffee – bit too much here as well, you might wanna put a little less next time. And now we just press… this button and… Hm. Oh, I see what the problem is,’ Alex grins, picking up the cord and dangling it a little in front of Henry’s eyes. ‘This needs to go in the outlet, sweetheart, otherwise it won’t start.’
Henry’s eyes instantly widen and his cheeks turn a delightful shade of red. It quickly spreads downwards, to his neck, making Alex inadvertently wonder how far down it goes because he’s a little pervert and his mind should find permanent residence in a gutter somewhere.
He clears his throat, then gingerly plucks the cord from Alex’s hand and pretty much shoves it in the outlet, as if both of them had personally offended him. The machine immediately comes to life and starts whirring, without either of them needing to press the button once more.
‘Magic!’ Alex exclaims, shit-eating grin never leaving his face.
Henry just rolls his eyes and crosses his arms. His cheeks are still ruddy and they bring out his striking blue eyes even more. Alex’s mind helpfully supplies potential causes for heated skin and none of them involve kitchen appliances. Or clothes.
‘Since when do you even have a coffee machine?’ he asks as he jumps onto one of the barstools, right arm resting on the island and head resting in the palm of his right hand.
‘Since this morning.’
‘But you don’t drink coffee?’
It sounds like a question but it’s definitely a statement. He knows Henry prefers tea. Earl Grey with a dash of milk and, unlike his entire family tree, a spoonful of honey instead of the standard sugar.
He wisely ignores the fact that he now has a wide selection of Earl Grey tea and two different types of honey in his own kitchen. One of these days he'll definitely get to use them.
‘I don’t, but Pez does.’
The regular pang of jealousy occurs, although he very well knows there never was and never will be anything between Henry and Pez. It’s more to do with how at ease Henry feels around Pez and how fondly he talks about him and how he apparently bought a fucking coffee machine for his equally British best friend who loves tea just as much as Henry does.
‘Since when?’
‘I don’t know, Alex,’ Henry sighs as he leans against the counter, both hands shoved in the pockets of his obscene grey sweatpants that Alex absolutely did not notice the exact moment Henry opened the front door. ‘I stopped trying to keep up with Pez’s attempts to upgrade himself, as he so eloquently puts it, sometime between the first and second year of uni.’
Nothing to add here. Alex smiles and hopes it comes across as genuine.
‘Fair enough,’ he says and hops down from the barstool.
‘You’re leaving?’ Henry asks before he even manages to take a step, sounding inexplicably… dejected?
‘Well, yeah. The coffee machine works now, mission accomplished.’
‘Oh.’
Oh?
‘And anyway, isn’t Pez coming over?’
‘No? Why would he?’
Alex frowns. It feels like he should be able to put two and two together but somehow, he keeps ending up with a decimal number.
‘I wanted to test the machine.’
‘Ah, okay. Well, it’s working,’ he chuckles and it sounds horribly off.
‘But what if the coffee is rubbish?’
Alex frowns again. Fitness for his face muscles hadn’t been on the bingo card for today.
‘Why would it be?’
‘I don’t know, Alex, I don’t drink coffee. But you do.’
‘I– Yeah. I do.’
‘So… will you stay for a cup of coffee? Please? I have cinnamon,’ he adds softly.
So Alex stays.
___
‘Alejandro, you’re a fucking idiot!’
‘What the fuck, Nora?!’
‘You honestly believe he didn’t think to check whether the stupid thing was plugged?’
‘Uhm, yeah?’
‘Lord, give me strength.’
‘Look, he bought a coffee machine ‘cause his best friend Pez started drinking coffee and he couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t working, so he asked me to have a look and it just so happened that he’d forgotten to plug it in.’
Said out loud, it sounds stupid as hell. The “dog ate my homework” kind of explanation.
‘Right. And then he asked you to stay for coffee.’
‘To test it.’
‘Mhm. And he also just happened to offer you some cinnamon. Because, you know, all people add cinnamon to their coffee.’
‘He just knows how I like my coffee.’
‘Yeah, I wonder why.’
‘Hey, I know how he likes his tea.’
‘Yeah, ‘cause you have a crush on him the size of the moon.’
Alex shrugs before he remembers this is a phone conversation and Nora can’t see him try – and fail – to seem completely unfazed.
‘Alex, come on, use that big head of yours to connect the dots because I refuse to do it for you.’
‘Zero ideas what you’re talking about.’
Nora honest-to-god growls and hangs up without so much as a “fuck you”.
‘Rude,’ Alex grumbles and throws the phone on the coffee table.
He hates it when she does this. Feed him the smallest crumbs to lead him to her epiphanies, as if using full sentences like a normal human being is an attack on her very principles. Connect the dots... What fucking dots? They know each other’s go-to order, big deal. Not like it’s hard to remember such details when you care about someone.
He freezes. Blinks once, twice, then hurriedly gets up from the couch and heads for the front door. In a split second he’s outside Henry’s, knocking with a little too much force for it to be considered non-urgent.
‘Alex?’
‘Be honest, you knew it wasn’t plugged, didn’t you?’
There’s that lovely shade of red once more, this time accompanied by a bashful smile.
‘Yes.’