by Beth Bolden
Landon shuts the door behind them and tries to dredge up something he can say to comfort Quentin. To apologize, for letting Kimber win the second sabotage, when she couldn’t have handled it herself, for not cooking better today, even though all the judges said that the dishes’ disparities only came in their level of complexity.
“Landon,” Quentin says softly. The kind, sweet edge to his tone isn’t deserved, Landon knows that. He knows Quentin is almost certainly secretly angry that they lost. That he must blame him. Them. Anyone. Landon should have made sure this didn’t happen.
He still can’t turn around and face him.
“Landon,” Quentin repeats again, and he’s a touch firmer this time. “It’s really okay. I have the bakery. You have your album. We’re going to be fine.”
Landon finally turns. “I hate losing,” he says and his voice is trembling. He hates how much this reminds him of Steve and the aftermath of his second album. That stinging regret of failure.
Quentin enfolds him into his embrace almost instantly. “I know, I know,” he murmurs against the cotton of Landon’s shirt, his breath warming the skin beneath as they hold each other. “But we didn’t really lose.”
Landon, who is halfway to tears, pulls back abruptly at this statement. “We lost,” he grinds out. “I was there, we most definitely lost.”
“No, we didn’t,” Quentin corrects again, softly but surely. Like he knows something that Landon doesn’t.
“I found you,” Quentin says and holds his hand up to stop Landon from speaking. “I know, it’s horribly sappy, but I don’t feel like I lost today.”
This is a whole different take on the situation. When Landon came in third on The Voice, he definitely lost. But he also won, because the winner’s contract was total shit. Third place got him only a marginally less shitty contract, but even the tiny difference was worth celebrating.
Today? Today he has a lot more to celebrate. A partner and a life and a future. None of which would have been possible if he hadn’t gotten his head out of his own ass and made peace with the fiendish appliance otherwise known as the oven.
“No,” Landon says, a smile dawning across his face, “we didn’t lose.”
“I thought this would be easier,” Landon says as they lean up against their faux-kitchen counter and wait while the camera crew adjusts for what feels like their fiftieth shot of the day.
Landon refuses to check which take it actually is. Quen has no such compunction and glances over at the clapboard. “It’s only been six takes, Landon,” he says, still easy-going even though it’s a thousand degrees in this hellhole masquerading as their house.
Landon would never keep their house at ninety fucking billion degrees.
“Also,” Quentin continues, “you’re the one with all the television experience. I thought you knew what this would be like.”
“Reality TV,” Landon hisses at Quentin. “I’ve never filmed a cooking show before. And don’t say Kitchen Wars was a cooking show. We both know it wasn’t. Not like this.”
When Ian approached them with a proposal for filming a cute fifteen-minute cooking show for Five Points, a sports and pop culture blog looking to diversify more into the latter spectrum, Landon had laughed. “They really don’t want me to teach people how to cook,” Landon claimed, while Quentin had lovingly rolled his eyes at Landon’s dramatics. “Quen, now, he’s a genius and could teach a rock.”
“They want both of you,” Ian had insisted. “They’re considering calling it Dream Team.”
“Well, that’s a ridiculous title,” Landon scoffed. “It’s perfect.”
Landon knew he’d been seduced by the adorable title, the prospect of more, cute on-air bantering with Quentin, and also the surprisingly good compensation package Five Points had put together.
During all of that, he’d never once considered what filming a strictly cooking show might be like.
What it’s like is the most boring twelve hours of Landon’s life. The only saving grace is that Quentin is here with him, and he’s been entertaining himself by balancing a dozen pieces of fruit around Quentin’s cute little top knot. The “bun” is just about as silly as Dream Team’s name, which means that Landon loves it.
“I’m gonna call you Carmen from now on,” Landon proclaims, as he gets a particularly large bunch of grapes to drape artistically down the side of Quen’s head. Unsurprisingly, the person who makes a face isn’t Quentin, but the director, who, after an entire day of wrangling a bored Landon, has completely run out of patience.
Quentin, obviously a saint in a former life, just grins.
“Landon,” the director snaps. “Let’s focus. We just need one more shot of you and Quentin taking the casserole out of the oven.”
“You mean the casserole someone else cooked?” Landon asks archly. Maybe he didn’t start the day trying to be difficult, but he’s run out of patience himself. He never expected that compared to Kitchen Wars, this show would feel like only smoke and mirrors. They barely chop anything. They don’t prepare anything themselves. They barely cook. They play act with food that other people prepared. Landon doesn’t even have to taste this casserole to know that even though it’s an exact replica of Quentin’s, it won’t taste right because Quentin didn’t make it.
In the last year, Landon has become a food snob—as in he doesn’t like to eat anyone’s cooking except for Quentin’s.
“Landon, let’s just get it over with.” It’s the most straightforward Quentin has been all day, and Landon’s been making a concentrated effort over the last year to listen more when he gets that edge to his voice. Trusts, like he implicitly trusts Quentin, that he wouldn’t use it if he didn’t need to.
“Okay, let’s go.”
Quentin pulls the grapes down just in time, and they start the take.
“Quen, I’m starving, is it done yet?” Landon barely refrains from rolling his eyes at this horrible canned dialogue that doesn’t sound like anything he’d say. He’d wanted to ad lib all his lines, but then he’d gone off in so many different directions, many of them too explicit for the channel, that they’d written him an actual script.
Landon rolling his eyes ruined the last three takes of this scene, but this time he makes it through. A few months ago when Landon had suggested to Ian he should start shopping him for the requisite power musician-actor crossover, Ian had flatly refused, claiming the only person Landon was good at being was Landon.
Like everything else, Ian isn’t wrong about Landon’s acting abilities either.
“It’s finally done,” Quentin says, actually making the line sound authentic. If he wasn’t completely committed to his bakery, maybe he could make a go of the acting thing. Of course, it’s a great distraction that his job is to pull out the barely warmed, pre-prepared casserole out of the cold oven. Landon’s only task is to react.
“Looks delicious!” Landon exclaims, which is only half a lie.
“You want to make sure it’s a really nice golden brown. Don’t undercook it,” Quentin counsels seriously, as Landon jostles him, trying to slip a fork in to grab a quick bite. Quentin gives him a quick elbow jab, and they jostle back and forth, before Quentin deigns to feed Landon a forkful.
It’s one of the few scripted moments that actually feels authentic.
“For this recipe, and others, make sure you check out Five Points’ website,” Landon says through a big bite of cold casserole. Luckily for him, the casserole isn’t just out of the oven and he didn’t just fry his tongue.
It’s finally, blissfully, over, at least for two weeks, when their busy schedules have jived enough to be able to get together for another full day of filming. Landon is not looking forward to it.
When they return to their green room, Landon is so tired he doesn’t even try to seduce Quentin.
“I can’t believe we have to come back and do this again,” Quentin says, and that’s the most brutal thing he’s said all day. Maybe in his entire life. Landon smiles. Quentin fi
nally getting fed up is enough to boost his own mood.
“They need to find a better person to write the scripts,” Landon says. He doesn’t even bother to argue they don’t need scripts. He lost that fight during the screen test when he accidentally brought up blowjobs three separate times.
“You sound like a caricature of Landon,” Quentin agrees, eyes drooping as he lies back on the couch. “Like a weirdly peppy cheerleader.”
“Also less cooking and more dressing you up as Carmen Miranda,” Landon adds, though the chances of them being allowed to do that are slim to none.
There’s a knock on the door, and Landon groans loudly. He isn’t in the mood to meet and greet Duncan Snyder, the CEO of Five Points, who was apparently going to stop by after filming finished for the day.
Quentin shoots Landon a dark look and struggles to his feet. Yeah, whoever’s at the door probably heard that. Landon doesn’t feel the tiniest bit guilty.
But when Quentin opens the door, Duncan Snyder isn’t standing there. Instead, it’s a young-ish-looking man, really tall and slender, with a buzzcut and a pair of startling green eyes.
Landon might be otherworldly happy with Quentin, but he can’t help but give the man a second glance. He’s in love, not dead.
It’s been a hellish, exhausting day, but curiosity propels Landon off the couch to catch what the man is saying to Quentin.
“. . . a fan,” Landon catches. “Had a chance to see you on set today, and thought I’d stop by and say hi.”
“Hi, I’m Landon,” he says, grabbing the door out of Quen’s hand. “Wanna come in?”
“Jordan Christensen,” the man says as he nods and walks in, Landon closing the door behind him. For a split second, Landon can’t place the name, even though it sounds very familiar, and then it hits him all at once. This is why Quentin’s been so weirdly quiet since he opened the door. This is Reed’s . . . well, Landon heard they broke up. So this is Reed Ryan’s ex-boyfriend.
Logically he knows he and Quentin aren’t responsible for their breakup. Maybe even if Reed had won Kitchen Wars, it still would have ended. But even a vague possibility they’re responsible for what happened is enough to make Landon tense as hell.
“I have to tell you how sorry we are,” is of course what Quentin says when he decides to open his mouth.
Jordan chuckles, and if Landon wasn’t listening for it, he might have missed the tiny edge of bitterness. “You really don’t have to apologize.” He shrugs. “Reed knew it was an outside chance that he’d win. But I’m not here to talk about Kitchen Wars, I’m here to talk about your new show.”
Landon makes a face.
“Yeah,” Jordan says, lips quirking up in a quick smile, “I caught some of the filming today. Why did you let someone script you?”
“We . . . well, I, am incredibly easy to distract,” Landon admits. “I was rambling all over the place. They said the show would need to be twice as long if I didn’t stay focused.”
“I mean, you can tell me to go to hell,” Jordan says, “but I watched Kitchen Wars. I know why they wanted to make Dream Team, and it’s not because you can stay focused or because you can credibly cook something in fifteen minutes. They wanted you because you’re great together.”
“And we’re losing all that,” Quentin observes morosely. Landon wants to hug him. He sounds exactly how Landon feels. This Dream Team thing was supposed to be a lot different.
“You’ve lost it completely,” Jordan states. “But I think you could get it back, if you could find someone to script you who got your dynamic.”
“Who could do that?” Landon asks, refraining from the over-dramatic addition that nobody gets them as well as they do, and he and Quen are definitely not going to write their own scripts. They’re busy enough, thank you very much.
“Me.” Jordan sounds deadly serious.
“You?” Landon squawks. “But why?”
Jordan has really nice eyes; such a deep, rich green, and Landon is almost certain he recognizes that deep sadness buried in them because he’s felt it too. It makes him want to both apologize and to help, but Landon isn’t dumb enough to think either of those things might make a difference to Jordan.
Jordan hesitates. “Because I work here now and I think I’d do a good job—at least a better job than what you have now—writing you some lines.”
“They’re not going to want to reshoot,” Quentin warns.
“Leave that to me,” Jordan says. “I know some people. I’ll talk to them, let them review the footage. They’re not going to waste your chemistry together, and right now, that’s what they’re doing.”
Landon looks over at Quen. They’ve developed an unspoken language over the last six months. Sometimes Landon even knows what Quen is thinking from the way he breathes on the phone when Landon’s away, promoting his new album. He knows that Quen wants to reshoot, and that’s because Quentin is a perfectionist who won’t let anything less than flawless ever cross his bakery counters. Not only would Quentin not want to see his brand diminished, no doubt he’s worried over what a Dream Team failure might do to the future success of the bakery.
“We’re on board,” Landon speaks up for both of them. “Anything you need, you got it.”
They discuss details for a few more minutes, and then Jordan leaves, claiming he has some arms to twist.
“So I guess he left the NFL,” Landon says as he pulls on a jacket. “And now he wants to be a writer.”
“He is a writer,” Quentin corrects. “And I feel responsible for that. I don’t think I should, but I do.”
Landon shoots his boyfriend a sympathetic smile. Normally he might insist Quentin is too nice, but he’s too tired and Quentin’s right. “I do too.”
“Makes me wish I’d gotten to know Reed a little better.”
“All I remember about Reed is muscles, those serious eyes, and how well he made those foil pans when I sabotaged him,” Landon says.
“I think that was his partner, but yeah, me too. He kept to himself a lot,” Quentin says, jamming his hands in his pockets as they walk out towards the parking garage where his car is parked.
“It’s still really nice of Jordan to offer to help. I wonder who he knows.” Landon’s curiosity is insatiable at the best of times. Right now, his interest is undeniably piqued, but he and Quen know almost nobody at Five Points yet.
It's another very early morning when Quentin lets them into the back door of the bakery. Landon hates the early mornings, will probably never stop hating them, but is slowly becoming resigned to them because often it's the only time he can get a moment alone with his boyfriend.
The downside of being both the cutest couple on the planet, and also individually brilliant, is that Landon longs for the days when their Kitchen Wars schedule felt hectic. They live in the same house now, which Quentin had to move them into while Landon was doing the publicity tour for his very successful album, but quiet evenings cuddling on the couch are hard to come by. Quentin is still needed at the bakery every day—wouldn't have it any other way, in fact—and gets up painfully early the six days a week they're open. Landon is in demand everywhere and finds himself even turning down appearances occasionally because sometimes the thought of dragging himself on another plane for another week away from Quentin is cringeworthy.
Landon both loves and hates these early morning trips with Quentin to the bakery. He loves Quentin and loves watching him be his most amazing self. He does not love getting out of his warm, cozy bed with the man he would just about kill to have morning sex with.
"Coffee," Landon slurs, propping himself up against one of the big stainless steel counters where Quentin and his small staff create the pastries and goodies for which they're quickly becoming renowned.
"Already heating the machine up," Quentin echoes from the other side of the cavernous kitchen. After almost a year together, he knows Landon isn’t really coherent until his second cup of strong coffee.
Landon boosts himself up on th
e counter, ignoring his boyfriend’s half-hearted glare. He still likes being taller, and Quentin still loves to lecture him about breaking the rules. Landon hopes nothing will ever change.
Except maybe the being so busy they can barely breathe thing.
“I talked to Ian yesterday,” Landon tells Quen when he brings him a steaming cup of cappuccino, dark espresso swirled with lighter foam, lightly sweetened, just the way Landon likes it.
“You talk to Ian every day,” Quentin says absently as he heads over to the walk-in cooler, and begins loading a beat-up hotel pan with pounds and pounds of butter.
“Not about getting out of a contract,” Landon retorts.
Quentin glances up in surprise. Landon makes a face. “Here’s the thing,” he says. “Between this crazy schedule you have at the bakery, and my own crazy schedule touring the world, we barely have time together. But we said we’d do Dream Team anyway, because it sounded awesome.”
“Except it wasn’t awesome.” Quentin finishes Landon’s sentence before he can. Landon loves it when he does that. It’s a visceral reminder that from the first moment they met, they’ve always been on the same wavelength. Even when Landon is being an asshole.
“It wasn’t awesome,” Landon agrees.
“I like Nick. I like Five Points. I still like the promotional package they were talking about. Lots of bakery tie-in promo.”
Landon knows Quentin still worries about the bakery making it. Margins are so slim. He likes buying the highest quality ingredients and charging just as much as he has to for his products. He’s only taking a small salary, a minuscule amount compared to the time and energy he puts in. Landon, on the other hand, has never been more comfortable financially. He’s got lots of money in the bank, and Ian is making rumbling noises about hiring some fancy financial planner. But Quentin wants to pull his own weight between them, and though it’s never come up, Landon knows he refuses to ever depend on Landon’s money.
