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Something was burning.
James frowned at the smooth mahogany door, wrinkling his nose at the putrid smell. What the hell was Thomas doing?
Thomas Jefferson was James’ neighbour, a businessman with sharp fashion sense and a fascinating fear of rats. James had barely spoken to him and their interactions used to be limited to polite nods of acknowledgement. But all it had taken was one interaction for James to get to know the man past the cool façade.
And now he stood in front of his door, clutching a movie that Thomas had briefly mentioned. If you asked him if the movie was just an excuse to talk to Thomas again, James would deny it, but that didn't make it any less true.
He knocked on the door. It was chilly and James wasn't dressed for cold weather, with his t-shirt and loose sweatpants. The wind was bitingly cold against his bare arms, making goosebumps erupt across his dark skin. He raised his hand to knock again but the door swung open before he could.
“I need your help,” Thomas said breathlessly before James could say anything.
James gaped, and for good reason. Thomas was wearing nothing but dark boxers, unfairly tight. His skin shone beautifully, his arms rippling with muscles and his lean, sculpted torso made James swallow heavily. The man was built like a Greek god, it was so unfair. His legs were long, never-ending, and could James be blamed for staring, when they were so smooth and shapely?
James could see the outline of his dick. Shit.
He clutched the movie casing tighter in his hand, gaze dropping guiltily. “Um,” he began weakly. “Could you, uh, put some clothes on first?”
Thomas glanced down at his outfit - or lack thereof - and gave him an apologetic look. “Sorry, I didn't realise…”
“It's fine,” James said quickly, glancing away. When he looked back, Thomas' cheeks were suspiciously dark. Good. At least wasn't the only person who was embarrassed by the situation.
Thomas invited James in before disappearing to another room. James didn't stare at his ass as he walked away. He didn't, but if he did, nobody needed to know.
He settled on the couch, sighing deeply. Was this what he had signed up for when he had first investigated the scream? Was this going to be a regular occurrence? If so, James wanted nothing to do with Thomas; he had little interest of his cause of death being sexual frustration. And yet he knew, despite the small voice in the back of his head telling him to get the fuck away from Thomas before he got too attached, that he wasn't strong enough to resist Thomas. Thomas was the sun and James was Mercury. He never had a chance against the gravitational pull.
When Thomas reappeared, he was wearing sweatpants, a hoodie and a frown.
“How much do you know about cakes?” Thomas said before James could say anything. The darker man blinked, somewhat taken back.
“Quite a bit,” James said slowly. “Is… Is that what's burning?”
Thomas bit his lip guiltily with a hesitant glance into the kitchen. “Possibly? Anyway, I need your help.”
It was, James mused, rather pretentious of Thomas to assume that James had nothing better to do, and to not even phrase a proper question in order for James to have an opportunity to refuse and give an excuse. Not that he would refuse. But still.
“Sure,” James found himself saying, wondering how much he was going to regret this decision. Not a lot, if Thomas continued to smile like that.
He was led into the kitchen, where wisps of smoke decorated the air and the pungent smell increased tenfold. James wrinkled his nose subconsciously as he stepped closer towards the large tray that had been placed on the counter.
“Is that… What is that?”
“A cake,” Thomas insisted, sounding more than slightly offended before letting out a miserable sigh. “At least, an attempt at one.”
James gaped. The monstrosity that was presented before him looked nothing like a cake and it was an insult to all bakery to even call it so. Not only was it lumpy and disfigured, it was charred black and smelt more like the deepest pits of hell than any bakery product James had ever seen..
“If I smack a ton of whipped cream on top, I don't think anyone will be able to tell the difference?” Thomas said weakly.
James gave him a horrified look until Thomas looked sufficiently chastised.
“Okay,” James said weakly, taking a deep, shuddering breath. “Okay. We can fix this.”
“We can?” Thomas said sceptically. His Southern accent, James noted distantly, was significantly stronger when he was sceptical.
“...We can’t,” James sighed. “I can make a new one, if you want?”
“You would?”
Actually, James wanted nothing more than to curl up in a blanket and forget about the abomination of a ‘cake’ that Thomas had produced. But Thomas looked so hopeful, his eyes lighting up in a way that made him look younger, more boyish, almost innocent. How was James supposed to refuse him when Thomas was looking at him like he had just saved his only child from burning?
“Sure,” James found himself saying, cursing Thomas’ charm internally. “How many eggs have you got?”
An hour later of patronisingly slow explanations and several tests to James’ patience, they were pulling a cake out of the oven. Well, James was. Turned out that one of the reasons for the original ‘cake’s failure was because Thomas had been terrified of burning himself whilst taking the cake out of the oven and had proceeded to watch the cake burn and had been too panicked to do anything about it. The man really needed to get his shit together.
“Hey, it looks edible, “ Thomas said, sounding unreasonably surprised as he watched James carefully place the cake onto the counter. “Huh.”
“I'm a little offended that you sound so surprised,” James said, amused. He glanced at Thomas, who shrugged his shoulders.
“You added lemon skin,” Thomas pointed out, crossing his arms. “That sounds like a recipe for disaster. Literally.”
James barked an indignant laugh. “First of all, lemon zest is an amazing addition to almost any bakery confection. And secondly, like you can talk about disaster recipes!”
Thomas grinned sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck and the movement made the muscles in his arms began more pronounced. His biceps strained again the hem of his short sleeves and James’ mind flashed back to earlier, when Thomas had stood in front of him wearing nothing but boxer. God, his body was glorious. James realised suddenly that he had been staring at Thomas’ arms for a beat too long before glancing away, cheeks burning.
“So now we just need to decorate it!” James said brightly, too brightly, overcompensating for the awkward moments second ago and dammit, now Thomas was watching him weirdly. “Have you got any icing or…?”
“I have icing powder, chocolate icing, cream cheese icing, vanilla icing and strawberry icing,” Thomas recited smugly, looking far too proud of himself for someone had burned a simple sponge cake earlier. James raised an eyebrow.
“You bake often?”
“No,” Thomas admitted as he opened a cupboard and pulled out several tubs of icing. “I just like having food in my kitchen. I barely use any of the stuff in there.”
James snorted. “What do you live off?”
“Kraft mac and cheese?” Thomas offered with a sheepish grin that meant he was completely aware of how stupid he looked in this situation. “I go to fancy French restaurants a lot too though.”
“So your meals are always either five dollars or five hundred dollars?”
“Well, five hundred is a little extensive,” Thomas mumbled under his breath but James noted that he didn’t look majorly put off at the price. Wow. How rich was this asshole?
James picked the cream cheese, cracking open the tub and scooping up a generous amount with a spoon. The cake wasn’t massive, serving around twelve people. It looked good, so far; a perfect circular shape and the outside was crisp and golden. James was pretty proud of himself.
“So we just slap some cream cheese on and a bit of whipped cream?” Thomas said conversationally, taking advantage of the height difference to lean on James’ shoulder. James resisted the urge to shoot him a glare, more because of the comment than the action - he was enjoying being close to Thomas way too much.
"No, you can’t put whipped cream on cream cheese, it ruins it,” James said slowly, as though talking to a child. Thomas’ brow furrowed like he couldn’t comprehend the concept of whipped cream being a disadvantage in any baking expedition. Of course Thomas was the type to add whipped cream to everything. Blasphemous.
James began to spread the cream cheese icing onto the surface of the cake carefully with a spatula, keeping it as even as possible. The task itself was simple enough, but anything, including breathing, was difficult when there was one Thomas Jefferson watching him with such focused intensity. James tried to ignore his burning gaze as he began to spread the quickly solidifying icing.
“That looks great,” Thomas murmured. James jumped, startled by the unexpected proximity from which the voice came. When had Thomas moved to stand so close to him? James willed his cheeks to stop heating up but at least his skin was too dark for any visible blush; thank the lord for small mercies.
“Thanks,” James said, cursing himself when he heard his voice crack.
The icing was even now, a pure blanket of white coating the surface of the dark cake. James frowned at it, trying to think of what to decorate the icing with, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to think when he could feel Thomas’ radiating body heat. James could have sworn he felt electricity crackle where their shoulders barely brushed.
James cleared his throat, praying to the heavens that his voice didn’t come out too high when he spoke. It didn't, but it certainly wasn't at its usual pitch. “Have you got almonds or other nuts?”
Thomas frowned thoughtfully, his brow furrowing and his lips turned downwards. Everything the man did was unnecessarily dramatic; he couldn't even think without expressing the action through every inch of his body.
“I think they might be all out. But I have cashews?” Thomas offered. “I have a lot of cashews.”
James shook his head. Cashews were too thick, they'd steal the attention from the actual cake. “Something flatter.”
Thomas shrugged, a casual move that ended up enviously graceful. James didn't stare at the sharp line of his broad shoulders. He didn't.
“I can check if I have any almonds? I might have stashed them in the corner somewhere.”
James nodded distractedly, gaze too focused on the movement of Thomas’ lips to completely focus on what the man was actually saying. And it wasn't wholly unreasonable. Thomas had nice lips. But being distracted meant that, when Thomas placed two warm hands on his hips, he startled so bad that he knocked a spatula off the kitchen counter.
“Wha-”
“You're standing in front of the cupboard,” Thomas explained apologetically. James looked down and, sure enough, there was a cupboard door under the kitchen counter he had been working on. Thomas’ hand moved up to rest on his shoulder as he peered into James’ eyes with slight concern. “Sorry. Didn't mean to startle you.”
“It's fine,” James dismissed, embarrassed at being caught out. He moved away from the cupboard, allowing Thomas to drop to his knees and begin to rifle through its contents. After several moments of rustling, he emerged with mussed hair, a packet of almonds and a bright grin.
“Last packet!” he crowed, looking so delighted that James couldn't help but laugh. One section of his hair had gone flat, probably hitting the top of the cupboard. The excited smile that stretched his lips was so lovely that, for a moment, James indulged and allowed himself to imagine a domestic life with the other man, seeing that smile every morning.
What happened to not getting emotionally attached? James pushed the thoughts away firmly. There was no use falling in love with such an untouchable creature.
“James?”
James snapped back to reality to see Thomas watching him worriedly.
“Sorry,” James forced out with an awkward laugh. “Spaced out.”
But Thomas was still frowning at him with such an intensity that James felt the urge to look away. It was like looking into the sun: dangerous but irresistible.
“You seem out of it today,” Thomas said and James resisted the urge to remind him that this was only the second time the two of them had actually spoken. Instead, his lungs decided to choose that moment to protest and a wheezing cough forced its way out of James’ throat.
“Are you ill?” Thomas said, horrified. “My god, why didn't you tell me earlier? I can't believe I forced you into labour when you're this ill!”
James attempted to argue with the frankly ridiculous statements Thomas had just made but attempting to talk only made him cough harder, until he had to hold the counter for balance. His body shook with the strength of his hacking and he could feel tears coming to the corner of his eyes.
“Are you dying?” Thomas said, looking panicked as he began to thump James’ back with more force than was strictly necessary. “Go home , man, get a blanket or two, Jesus -”
“I’m fine,” James wheezed finally. Thomas continued to administer slaps to his back until James weakly batted his hands away.
“Go home,” Thomas insisted, grabbing James’ arm and dragging him out of the house. He even went as far to stand on his porch and watch James enter his own house, apparently making sure that he didn’t ‘faint on your way over, goddamn James, you’re basically on the brink of death!'
It wasn’t until James was curled up in his own bed that he realised that he hadn’t even told Thomas about the movie he had brought for him.