Chapter Nineteen
“So it’s come to my attention over the last couple of weeks that Kai is a huge fan of chocolate,” Wyatt explained as he started adding ingredients to his bowl. “And this week I’m gonna make him something my mom was famous for back home: red velvet cheesecake brownies.”
At the other end of the bench, Kai let a soft, needy sound escape him. Wyatt grinned, glad he’d picked something that Kai would enjoy.
“I’ve actually never had a red velvet cake,” Kai said, dicing an onion with such precision that Wyatt wondered, not for the first time, how the hell he managed not to cut his fingers off doing it.
“Oh, honey.” Wyatt grinned. “I’m about to rock your entire world.”
The fact that they were screwing now didn’t seem like a good reason to stop playing up their relationship on camera. If anything, it made it more comfortable to do. Which, honestly, was a surprise.
Wyatt had been wrong about fucking his co-worker being a bad idea. It was a great idea. This way, he got laid regularly, he was more natural with Kai, and he knew how to get a genuine reaction out of him.
They were going to have the best ratings on the entire channel.
“I actually didn’t even know it was chocolate,” Kai responded, a faint blush peeking through the makeup caked on his cheeks.
“Oh man, it’s this amazing buttery, complex chocolate with enough vanilla to really bring out all the flavors, and then the cheesecake swirl cuts the richness and… you will eat the whole tray of these. They’ll have to drag you out of here to get you away from them, trust me.”
“I’m already sold,” Kai said. “So if you’re making things for me now, does that mean I can make requests?”
Wyatt chuckled. “Depends on what you’ve got in mind.”
“Well, you could start with a glass of wine and a neck massage,” Kai said, smirking.
Someone in the audience wolf-whistled, which Wyatt figured was about the response Kai was looking for.
“In your dreams,” Wyatt responded, but was already planning on remembering that for later. Kai was pretty good at asking for what he wanted, but he had a bad habit of making it sound like a joke, sometimes.
Wyatt was getting used to that now, so he could tell when Kai was serious about something. And who wouldn’t be serious about wanting a glass of wine and a neck massage?
Besides, Wyatt was hoping that their budding routine of going home together after the show was going to continue today, and he wanted it to continue next week, too, and well into the future if he had his way.
He liked Kai. He wanted the opportunity to get to know him better.
He also, if he was being honest, wanted the opportunity to have sex with him more often. Which was fine. It was obviously an important part of a relationship for both of them, and it was incredible. Wyatt drifted back to it all the time while Kai wasn’t around.
It was too weird to call what they were doing dating, but Wyatt was hoping that once this show was over, they could maybe start doing that. He would have liked to date Kai.
He would have liked to wake up next to Kai, and he planned on doing his best to make that happen tomorrow morning.
“Oh, you have no idea,” Kai said, smirking.
Wyatt cleared his throat. They still had a show to get through, so he couldn’t let himself drift off into fantasy land just yet.
“Anyway,” he said, “this recipe actually uses Dutch-processed cocoa, which is my mom’s big secret. Sorry, mom,” he added, smiling wryly. “But I don’t think she’ll mind.”
“You wanna explain to the folks at home what that means?” Kai asked.
Wyatt got the impression he was asking because he didn’t know, which was… weirdly endearing. He’d gotten used to the idea that Kai knew everything, that his knowledge of food surpassed Wyatt’s by miles and miles and Wyatt was always struggling to keep up.
It was nice to have the opportunity to tell him something new, for once.
“This is a little bit more science-y than I usually like to be,” Wyatt began. “But Dutch-processed cocoa has a higher pH than regular cocoa, which makes it less acidic, so it’s kind of… mellower. Creamier. You can taste more of the chocolate flavor, I think. I guess we’ll leave that one up to Kai, he’s the one with the good taste buds.”
“So how soon are these gonna be ready?” Kai asked, not even bothering to hide how excited he sounded.
Wyatt liked that he could make food Kai enjoyed. Cooking for people was his favorite way of showing affection.
“Soon enough,” he promised. “These are actually pretty quick and easy, and they’re a huge hit at Christmas. And the Fourth of July. And every single birthday party and potluck.” Wyatt smiled again, remembering his mom making a batch of these at least once a week when he’d been a kid.
It had been her way of sharing out her love with everyone. Family, friends, and neighbors. He’d grown up knowing that baking was caring, that it was something that had to be done with love.
He wanted Kai to feel like he cared about him. There was something so… needy, and fragile about the guy, under all his knowledge and competence and sarcasm. Wyatt had been allowed to see it a few times, and he wanted to work his way past Kai’s outer armor and snuggle up next to him. The real him, the one underneath that not a lot of people got to see.
It always felt like an honor when Kai let his guard down, and Wyatt wanted him to be comfortable doing that more often.
“How much food dye are you putting in those?” Kai asked as Wyatt got to that part, looking over at him warily.
Wyatt looked at what he had left and the color of his batter, and considered.
“Probably not the whole bottle,” he said. “Like half, maybe.”
Kai stared at him. “I’m going to die,” he said.
“You’ll be fine. Cochineal is an all-natural food dye,” Wyatt said.
Kai raised a disbelieving eyebrow, which meant Wyatt got to teach him two things today.
“It’s made of ground up beetles,” he said, grinning.
Kai wrinkled his nose, which was unreasonably adorable. “I don’t know if I believe you.”
Wyatt shrugged. “You can look it up later. But I promise you, it’s true.”
“And you want me to eat these brownies?” Kai asked.
“Hey, if you don’t eat them, I will.” Wyatt shrugged. “For the record, you can also use regular red food dye for this. I’m just following my mom’s recipe in case she watches this and then calls me to tell me I did it wrong.”
Kai chuckled at that. “Your mom would have gotten along with my grandma,” he said, and Wyatt didn’t miss the note of sadness in his voice. He’d remember to ask about her later, see if Kai wanted to talk about it.
They exchanged a few more good-natured barbs as Wyatt poured both of his batters into the tray and got his brownies into the oven, beautifully swirled, and Kai took the time to explain what he was doing.
Wyatt always had trouble making comments when Kai was explaining his stuff, because he was just so damned competent that all Wyatt could do was stare and wish he’d had the benefit of the formal education Kai obviously did.
It wasn’t jealousy, exactly, just a general feeling that he would have liked to know what Kai knew. Even if he had managed to know two things Kai didn’t today.
Maybe if they spent enough time together, Kai could teach him a few things. Wyatt liked the idea of that.
The sound Kai made when he tried the brownies was incredible, and Wyatt’s heart soared to hear it. This was the purest expression of affection he could think of, and Kai was responding well to it.
He had no intention of explaining what this meant to him just yet, because Kai still struck him as skittish, but maybe with a little more gentle coaxing…
Well, Wyatt wasn’t exactly sure what he wanted from Kai, but he definitely wanted him to be comfortable. Wyatt wanted to be someone Kai felt he could drop his guard around.
If he could accomplish that with a few tailor-made treats and by playing to Kai’s tastes, that was good. It was really the only way he knew to move a relationship from casual sex to anything else.
And the one thing he was sure of was that he didn’t want to lose Kai once the show was over. He didn’t want this to be nothing more than convenience and mutual lust.
Which was scary, because Wyatt hadn’t felt like that in a long time. But on the other hand, it made excitement well up in his gut every time he thought about it. He was ready to have someone to share his life with, and he thought maybe Kai was, too.
They could have been that for each other. Wyatt knew that, already, though he wasn’t about to risk saying it and scaring Kai off. Not yet. They had plenty of time. There was no reason this had to end when the show did.
Hell, with these ratings, they were probably going to end up doing another show together anyway.
“These are incredible,” Kai said as he started in on a second one. “I’m gonna eat the whole tray.”
Wyatt chuckled, remembering that he’d predicted Kai was going to do exactly that. “I’ll take that as a compliment,” he said, and then launched into his end-of-episode spiel, glowing with pride that Kai was enjoying one of his family recipes.
He was maybe getting in a little too deep here, but he was having fun along the way.