by Beth Bolden
“Because I love you,” Landon continues in a jumble as Quentin just stands there, a bit shocked. A good kind of shocked Landon interprets, and fervently hopes that he’s not wrong.
And suddenly, Quentin’s confusion smooths into the brightest smile, his eyes gleaming like jewels in the dimly lit kitchen. It feels appropriate, Landon decides a bit hysterically, that this is coming to a head in a kitchen.
“Of course I love you,” Quentin finally says. “I love you so much. I thought that . . . I thought that was obvious? That I’m absolutely crazy about you? We’re practically living together. I don’t even like being in a different room from you. All of my pastries are suddenly inspired by you. I’m completely crazy about you.”
It hits Landon like a wave, and he’s drowning in love for a moment, but when he reaches the surface and can breathe again, it’s the best gulp of air he’s ever had. “Ditto,” he giggles, hooking his legs behind Quentin’s back and tugging him close until he can lean down and kiss him.
The kiss only stays sweet and soft for a moment, but Landon’s heels dig hard into Quentin’s back, pulling him impossibly closer. It gets deep and dirty, tongues sliding together wetly and Landon is gasping into Quentin’s mouth as his hands creep up Landon’s thighs, thumbs digging into his muscles.
“Love you,” Landon whispers against Quentin’s lips, “love you.”
Quentin murmurs it back, not just twice, but a litany against Landon’s skin, over and over. Until he feels branded with it and he’s never been happier in his entire life.
“Let’s go home,” Landon suggests with a dirty eyebrow waggle that only a man in love might appreciate.
“This is going to change everything,” Landon admits in the cab as they head back to Quentin’s place.
“Or nothing,” Quentin corrects softly. “I feel like I’ve loved you for so long, I’m not sure of any other way to be. Like, I knew so much about you from The Voice and when you walked in that day and couldn’t even cut a carrot properly, that was all it took.”
The cab stops in front of Quentin’s apartment building and they lug the bags up the stairs. Landon has never seen Quentin treat kitchen equipment or groceries roughly once so it comes as quite a surprise when he drops the bags he’s carrying right in the tiny entryway and crowds Landon up against the door.
“You were so beautiful and cute and clueless,” Quentin repeats and he’s smiling so brightly that Landon can’t look away.
“Clueless, huh?” Landon can’t help a smirk.
Quentin just giggles though.
“I . . . I loved you the moment you joked about getting the mixer attachment in the hole,” Landon confesses. It’s so outside of his realm of experience to have someone who actually wants to talk about these things, who revels in the joy of falling fast and hard. With Quentin, there’s no shame, no hiding his feelings so he doesn’t feel stupid and cliché. There’s only love, holding them together in this perfect bubble.
“You finally going to let me listen to your music now?” Quentin asks.
This is the moment Landon should say yes. His whole body is thrilling with the love Quentin feels for him. The right thing to do would be to pull out the thumb drive he has with the latest version of the album on it, but he doesn’t, and he can’t help but think of the marketing meeting he had today. “Yeah, but later,” Landon says, reaching to kiss him again. He won’t let himself think that he’s distracting Quentin, but he definitely knows he’s distracting Quentin.
It feels like a complete no-brainer to kiss again. A lot. Against the door. Until Landon’s knees feel just about ready to give up the ghost and melt into jelly. It’s the way Quentin kisses, probably—like Landon is the only person he wants to kiss, ever. Landon doesn’t know how he wasn’t more certain before this that Quentin loves him. It’s in every angle that Quentin bends himself to, so he can surround Landon completely. It’s in every delicate lick of his tongue against Landon’s. It’s the way his thumbs caress his cheekbones and then drift to his collarbones.
It’s also in the way that the moment Landon feels like he’s gonna just slide to the floor, Quentin scoops him up and carries him to their bed.
“Our bed,” Landon says dazedly, realizing for the first time that whatever bed they’re in, Quentin’s or Landon’s, it’s still always going to be theirs. That’s a heady realization that sends the rest of his blood straight to his already hardening cock.
“Wanna make love to you,” Quentin says, and Landon can only nod helplessly. He really wants that too. He’s so turned on his blood seems to boil with it.
The first slide of skin on skin feels like a revelation, a ghost even of when they did this the first time, when Quentin went out of his way to make it romantic and sweet. It feels so much more now, so much bigger, that Landon nearly cries when Quentin slides the first finger inside him. But it’s Quentin who moans brokenly.
Landon thinks he’s been in love before, but it’s never felt like this with another man before. Every movement, every touch, every frisson of pleasure is more somehow, and being in love hasn’t changed anything; it still feels like more. As Quentin slides inside of him, he knows he wants him this close for the rest of his god damn life. He’s never letting this man go.
“Perfect,” Quentin groans into Landon’s neck, his teeth catching on the tendon, roughing him up the tiniest bit as his strokes are so long and slow and even that they’re driving Landon out of his fucking mind. Quentin knows how to make it hot and good, but that isn’t even why Landon loves him.
But it certainly doesn’t hurt.
“Quen,” Landon gasps out as Quentin refuses to speed up, despite Landon’s intense efforts to persuade him that leave him panting in more ways than one, “please.”
“Need a hand, baby?” Quentin asks with a smirk, and then, in such an infuriatingly Quentin way, suddenly starts fucking him into the mattress. It turns out that Landon doesn’t need a hand; he just needs Quentin to stop teasing.
“That was good,” Landon says later, when they’re clean and dry, tucked back into the cocoon of Quentin’s bed. “But it really wasn’t all that much different. I thought it might be, but no.”
Quentin laughs softly into Landon’s shoulder. “We’ve loved each other for a while. Besides, while being slightly more attuned to each other’s desires, and maybe a trifle more selfless, how is having sex while we’re in love any different really than having sex if we merely like each other?”
Landon is perplexed for a moment. He’s never thought about this before. “I mean, it wasn’t all that different. It felt like more of the same, like better more, sure, but still just more.”
“I’m still going to want to ride you, I’m still going to want to fuck you into the mattress. I’m still gonna want to bend you over Rory’s desk and eat you out until you cry and beg for it. That’s part of loving you too.”
“Even if I wanted it rough?” Landon asks, because he’s beginning to discover that he does. And so does Quentin. They’re a good, if rather incendiary, combo.
“Especially if you wanted it rough. Or I wanted it rough, actually,” Quentin laughs with a bit of a self-deprecating edge. “It’s all about trust, baby.”
Landon thought he might, faced with Reed and Diego, think of them slightly differently now that he knows why Reed is doing this show in the first place. That Reed wanting to be closer to his boyfriend might somehow trump Landon’s insatiable desire to win. After all, Quentin’s going to get his bakery now regardless. He’s signed the papers. The building is his. They don’t need to win.
But Landon wants to win anyway. He’s just not that good of a person.
“You better be ready to lose,” Rory calls out as they assemble in the kitchens for filming. “I brought my A game today.” Next to him, Kimber blushes, and Landon debates whether his whole matchmaking idea was smart. Rory looks ready to take on the world today.
Landon glances over at Quentin. They sure should be too, after exchanging exceedingly sappy
I love yous upstairs in the green room before coming downstairs to compete in this semi-final round. He raises his chin a bit. He’ll take Rory’s just-been-fucked glow and raise it one my-boyfriend-told-me-he-loves-me, thank you very much. He would be completely, one hundred percent transcendently happy if he could just forget that he keeps putting off Quentin’s polite, never invasive questions about the album.
Landon doesn’t think Quen will run when he hears how serious Landon is about him. That’s a given at this point in their relationship. The problem is when Quentin falls asleep next to him, Landon stays up and thinks too much. Thinks about how Quentin doesn’t really enjoy the spotlight, not like Landon does. That when this album comes out, a few months after Kitchen Wars ends, everyone who listens to it will know exactly who it’s about, and Landon, who went into this very much feet first, brain scattered and no thought whatsoever, realizes that might not be something Quentin wants. The marketing department at Epic is already pushing for Quentin to participate in the release.
But Quen might not want to read tabloid articles about his private life when he’s standing in line at the grocery store. He will definitely not want to get papped with Landon—that much Landon already knows. Quentin won’t want to be asked questions about his relationship in interviews, when he wants to talk about his bakery and his creations instead.
The conclusion Landon always comes to, in the grey of the morning, is that there’s no conclusion at all. He doesn’t know how to fix things that aren’t changeable. He can’t make Quentin like the spotlight more. He can’t make himself like it less. He can’t write a different album. This is the album.
Landon knows he’s only postponing an inevitable conversation he doesn’t want to have, so he puts it off, and every time, Quentin gets that confused little wrinkle between his brows. It hurts each time, but it doesn’t hurt enough to make Landon risk the peaceful happiness they’ve found together.
“Welcome to our semi-final round,” Alexis says as filming starts. Landon tries to shake off his melancholy and look involved. Alive. “Where things start getting . . . good.” She cackles for a moment. “Or progressively more evil,” she continues, “depending on how you think of it. Let’s get started, shall we?”
“As our dear judge Zach’s restaurants are most famous for their Italian roots, I thought it would be appropriate if we celebrate the art of pasta today,” Alexis concludes. Landon nods. Pasta. Okay, he loves pasta. He also really loves it when Quentin cooks him pasta.
The sixty second shopping time comes and goes, and Quentin comes back with a satisfyingly full basket of ingredients. Landon thinks he spies tomatoes and cheese and of course, the ingredients to make fresh pasta.
“Now for the first auction item,” Alexis says with an extra dramatic flourish. “This is an oldie but a goodie, I think. A real classic.”
Someone wheels out a kitchen that looks like the one Landon’s younger sisters played with a few years ago. When they were toddlers.
Everything is tiny, including the stove and the oven, which is so small that it can’t actually be a functioning piece of equipment. He looks over at Quentin, and sees his eyes grow wide.
They’d already discussed potentially bidding for and buying one of the sabotages today. Landon knows there are two, so it’s a risk to bid for the first one, but he can’t possibly imagine anything worse than this. He doesn’t know how you’d actually cook anything on that stove and since cooking is a required element, this is going to have to go to Rory or Reed.
“Let’s open the bidding at five hundred dollars,” Alexis says.
“One thousand dollars,” Landon shoots right back.
“Fifteen hundred dollars,” Rory chimes in. Landon is sweating a little; the one person he didn’t really want to bid against was Rory. Rory’s proven to be both relentless and completely unconcerned about the amount of cash he has available to him. Not a great combination.
“Three thousand dollars,” Landon responds, hoping to scare him away with how high the number is already. He does seem to have scared off Diego and Reed, if they were ever even considering bidding in the first place.
“Four,” Rory yells happily.
He and Quentin have never spent this much on an auction item before, but then again, they’ve won two weeks in a row now. They’ve got the extra funds. He might as well use them.
“Five,” he calls back again. Alexis’ eyebrows shoot up and Landon stares her down, trying to pretend he isn’t flushed and flustered. He doesn’t like the auctions, but he has to do something. He can’t ask Quentin to do ninety percent of the cooking and bid as well.
“Fifty-four hundred dollars,” is what almost instantly comes from Rory. Landon gnashes his teeth in frustration. Why won’t he just stop bidding?
“Fifty-five hundred dollars,” Landon grits out and Rory finally throws up his hands in mock surrender, grinning the entire damn time. Which immediately makes Landon think all he was doing was driving up the price.
Landon is not amused, even after he gives the tiny kitchen to Reed and Diego, who have the nerve to not even look slightly panicked. He can only hope this isn’t a repeat of the foil pan and utensils sabotage which didn’t phase them at all.
Landon continues to be not amused as the next auction item is revealed. It’s a spoon. They all stare at it, mystified. Landon wonders if they’re going to use it to scrape out each other’s eyeballs, a little bit at a time.
“I know you’re wondering, what could this possibly mean?” Alexis asks. She’s got an absolutely conniving expression on her face and Landon knows that means nothing good is about to happen. Nothing.
“We’re going to auction off . . . the ability to taste your own food.”
Landon fully expects Quentin to groan out loud next to him. He’s always telling him, over and over again, how important tasting the food at every stage of cooking is. But when Landon looks over, he’s perfectly calm and relaxed. Serene.
It’s not like Landon could have bid for this sabotage even if he’d wanted to, though, so he gets to sit back and watch Rory and Diego fight for it, all while knowing that it is almost certainly going to be given to him and Quentin.
The spoon is, for the affordable price of $3,800, delivered to their station by a very smug Rory Dargan.
Landon regrets ever wanting to help him win Kimber.
“Oh”—Alexis smirks—“and your challenge this week.” She whips her arm around and she’s holding a rope. “You’ll be tied together for the entirety of the thirty-minute time period.”
There is a large chorus of groans. Everyone except him and Quentin that is. Landon just smirks at Quentin, who smirks back. He wonders if Alexis’s been listening in on some of their conversations. They’ve been discussing introducing some light bondage into the bedroom, and Landon thinks this is a great start.
They get tied up, and Landon rolls his eyes when the knot is tied purposefully loose, with all kinds of give, and it’s only one hand. This is a joke. Alexis could have made this so much harder. Sure, he and Quentin will have to work together on any task that requires more than one hand, but they’re so in-sync anyway, Landon doesn’t see that being an issue.
“Aren’t you worried about not being able to taste anything?” Landon asks Quentin as they unload their ingredients from the basket. There are tomatoes and a big hard brick of cheese. Landon sniffs at it and is surprised at how pleasantly nutty it smells. There’s herbs and sausage too.
“Nah,” Quentin whispers conspiratorially, “I can make Bolognese in my sleep. The ingredients are so standard, it shouldn’t be too much of an issue. Besides, I think we’re going to be a lot better off than those two.” He nudges Landon’s hip in the direction of Diego and Reed in the tiny kitchen. He can already hear frustration in their voices as they try to navigate the minuscule space, all while tied together.
“What’s Bolognese?” Landon asks.
Quentin rolls his eyes but still looks endeared. “Basically, tomato sauce with meat.�
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“Oh, that pasta,” Landon exclaims. “That’s delicious. Of course it’s delicious when you make it for dinner, but my favorite is probably when it’s late at night and I’m hungry from, you know, and I sneak back into the kitchen and eat it out of the Tupperware cold.”
“Is it sneaking if I know you’re doing it?” Quentin asks fondly.
“Yes,” Landon insists, ignoring the way his stomach twists painfully. If Quentin knows he’s not falling asleep after sex, why hasn’t he asked him what’s wrong? Landon doesn’t know if he could be honest about his feelings, but maybe it’s worse that Quen doesn’t seem concerned.
Together, they start a big sauté pan with the sausage and onion and garlic. Landon has to hold the onion while Quentin chops. It takes them a bit longer and some trust, but they get it done. Quentin eschews chopping the garlic, decided to use the knife to smash it to a paste instead. The smells from what they’re already cooking are delicious. Landon feels rather unbearably smug, as he glances over to where Rory and Kimber are clearly bickering, and then to where Diego and Reed are struggling with an oven that seems to be heated with a lightbulb.
“Stop gloating and come help me get the pasta machine,” Quentin laughs.
They cart the machine over to their station and Quentin mixes together the pasta dough with his one hand. “Are we being too ambitious?” he wonders quietly as they begin to feed the dough through the machine.
“It’s the semi-final. I don’t think there’s such a thing as too ambitious,” Landon pronounces.
“Besides,” he adds with a tiny brush of his lips to Quentin’s cheek, “your fresh pasta is delicious.”
Quentin blushes. “Maybe it’s even worth the annoyance of chopping the herbs with one hand.”
The pasta dough takes forever to get rolled thin enough and then they have to carefully feed it through the cutter that divides it into long, wide strips. They take breaks periodically to check the sauce, to add tomatoes, to add spices and herbs, to add salt and pepper with a look of intense concentration on Quentin’s face. Landon gets it. If he can’t taste it before he presents it to the judges, Quentin has to be deliberate about everything he adds to the sauce.
