Play!

LXII

Cole had thrown one glance at Eddy’s message and had let out a laugh, asking Brett, “You still think it’s impossible?” before he’d ditched the smaller with a pat on his back in order to join the others in a nearby restaurant, and mostly, to leave Brett to look for Eddy. 

   “Hey Brett 😊! No worries and take your time! Gonna go get something for the both of us. Wanna come see me in my dorm when you’re done? You won’t regret it 😉”

Texting something so sweet after Brett had left Eddy hanging so he could face the epiphany of his life with Cole? Yeah, Brett wasn’t so sure anymore if it really was that impossible…

   “Done and omw!”

There! Brett didn’t dare to send more than two words and an abbreviation in fear of exposing his stupid, dangerous feelings. He shook his head wildly, pocketed his phone and quickly strode to the closest bubble tea place. 

In front of Eddy’s building, nervously pacing around before announcing his presence was on again, just like when he had to enter a practice room for his masterclass or before every audition ever.
“Alright, Brett! You got this!”, he whispered to himself, earning a sus side-eye from a student leaving the dorm. But did he really? Bummer there was no mirror around so he could at least throw a look at his pitiful self after all the crying in the park. He was still wearing the same clothes as yesterday and kind of wanted to change, but then he’d be epically late and their dinner would have to be cut short so they could make it to evening’s rehearsal in time.
So, this just had to do it and he was pretty sure Eddy didn’t care anyways.

“Nothing’s changed. Everything’s exactly like before”, Brett continued his whisper-pep-talk despite the statement being so far away from the truth it could basically be on the other side of the universe. He slapped his cheeks harshly several times, scrunched his eyes shut and suppressed a cry of despair before he pulled out his phone and sent a quick “downstairs.”, not trusting his voice to work well enough for a phone call without raising suspicions. 

Eddy arrived at the front door sooner than Brett liked (what had he expected? Eddy’s room wasn’t exactly far away), hair slightly disheveled, his face beaming and thus looking absolutely adorable. 

Damn him!

“Hey!”, he greeted as soon as he’d pushed the door open. 
Brett’s heart shot through the roof. “He- hey!”
“Cool you could make it!”
“Yeah, well, I do need to eat dinner, so…”
Eddy laughed. Brett’s stupid heart decided to skip a beat. 
“Taking advantage of a bro, I see.”
A bro… probably the most unromantic term Eddy could have used. Brett found his mood plummeting a bit, which was dumb because hadn’t they called each other bro several times like normal bros did?
“Poor, scholarshipless student, you know”, he quipped as they walked to the elevator.
“What you got there?”, Eddy asked and pointed at the plastic bag Brett was carrying.
Brett grinned mysteriously. “You’ll see.”
“Uhh… I think I have a suspicion.”
“And you’re probably right”, Brett sighed. 

To Brett’s surprise, Eddy didn’t bring Brett to his room. 
“Where are we going?”, Brett furrowed his brows when the lift took them to the second instead of the third floor.
“You said you need food, right?”, Eddy winked. They turned around the corner and then reached a small, sparse, typical student dorm kitchen. 

“Oh…”
“You mentioned you wanted to cook together yesterday.”
Yesterday? It felt like ages ago with everything that had been going on.
“So I bought some stuff we can make fried rice with. Figured that might be something we won’t mess up beyond recognition. And certainly goes well with whatever you brought”, he waggled his eyebrows towards Brett’s bag.
“Eddy, that’s so…”
Eddy stood there, hands on his hips and looking like a very proud ten year old who’d just helped his mum buy groceries. “Yeah?”
“That’s so cool”, Brett croaked, unsuccessful in using more elaborate words to describe the joy he felt deep inside him. 
“I knew you’d be on board!”, Eddy beamed and walked over to the counter, starting to unpack different ingredients. “So, you have any experience in doing this?”

Brett had none, so they had to first google what to do. They weren’t even sure if the rice had to be cooked first or not and since, yes, this was the case, preparing this dish took way more time than they’d anticipated.

“Damn! Good luck with cooking rice without a rice cooker”, Eddy shook his head with a sigh while washing the rice before setting it on the stove to simmer.
“Right? I don’t know how non-Asians do it without messing up. You never cook rice here?"
“Only the congee you got. Let’s see if we fuck up less.”
“Seriously doubt that”, Brett remarked and started to peel the carrots. Eddy gave him a small slap on the back, making Brett yelp. 
“Have a bit more faith in us, will ya!”
Brett sniggered nervously, trying hard not to blush.

Cutting the vegetables side by side, crushing garlic and adding it to the oil to sear had such a domestic, homey vibe to it. The tasks were so mundane, much less exciting than dancing in a club, one would think. Nonetheless, it almost made Brett tear up over how magical it felt. Like this was the place to be, in this simple kitchen, the chrome steel surface partly reflecting the silhouettes of two boys preparing their dinner together, wielding knives that hadn’t been sharpened forever. The small, content smile Eddy carried didn’t escape Brett and soon enough, he was humming Mahler five’s epic second movement, turning and tossing the veggies and sausage in the cheap Ikea wok. 
“You’re quite good at this”, Brett stated.
“Don’t wanna mess up in front of you, you know?” Another toss and high up did the peas and bits of egg fly, some of it landing on the stove and burning to black crisps immediately. 
“Fuck!”, Eddy cursed, holding up the wok while Brett held his belly, laughing till tears spilled and thus receiving several punts for his impudence. 
Funnily enough, those kicks helped Brett relax a bit. Despite the earth he was standing on turning backwards currently, he could still act silly and mostly be himself around Eddy, weird palpitations, spontaneous break outs in sweat and sudden urges to wail aside and he was eternally grateful for that. Cooking with Eddy and messing up half of it was exactly what he needed. 

“Mmh! This is actually quite good!”, Brett exclaimed when they tasted their work, stuffing his second spoon into his mouth without having quite swallowed the first. 
“Why do you sound so surprised?”, Eddy asked, carrying an outraged expression which Brett couldn’t take seriously with all the rice all over Eddy’s face.
“Because you burnt half of it and I had to scratch out the rice from the bottom of the pot because I forgot to turn off the stove?”
“Pretty proud that it turned out this nice for our first time.” 
Some grain of rice got stuck in Brett’s throat after hearing the last three words of Eddy’s sentence, throwing him into a coughing fit and prompting Eddy to quickly pop a straw through Brett’s boba so he could wash it down. 

The empty plates were further proof of their successful cookery together and after dinner, Brett even managed to force Eddy to take a selfie with him. Their first one. There, in the student dorm’s kitchen with dirty dishes and an imploded work surface serving as background, smiling like loons and toasting half empty cups of bubble tea to each other to celebrate their experiment. 

And Brett reckoned there was not one picture in his album on which his big grin was more genuine than on this one.

A/N: Hi guys! Sorry again for the late upload time! Have once again been in the mountains skying with thousands of people 🙈! Hope this chapter makes up for the wait a bit!