Quentin & Alex, Sunday afternoon

[xp-erverse.livejournal.com]

Alex bakes a cake for a baked Quentin.


Alex was quite amused as he made his way into the kitchen (with a shirt on), though he did his best not to show it. He wasn't quite sure what was going on with Quentin and didn't want to seem insensitive, after all. "Alright man?" He asked as he made his way to the pantry to scope out what he had for supplies.

The kitchen was empty except for one lone occupant, sitting at the center island with his head in his hands, surrounded by bags of flour, sugar, cocoa powder, and one egg that sat perilously close to the edge. Quentin looked up when he heard his coworker's voice and his expression brightened for a moment before returning to its previous state of distress. "I have fifty bucks in my pocket . . ."

Alex nearly laughed as he walked out of the pantry with a few more supplies and carefully moved the egg to a safer place. "Keep your money, Quentin. I don't actually want you to pay me to bake shirtless. What flavor are you thinking?" He eyed the cocoa powder, raising an eyebrow. "Chocolate?"

"So you'll do it for free? Um." Quentin glanced around the room, as if under the pressure to respond with a correct answer that he could only determine based on clues in the kitchen. "I dunno. I just need, like, a cake, you know? Like, a cake."

"I'll bake you a cake for free, yeah." Alex smirked a bit, collecting his supplies and pulling them to one side of the counter so he could start getting to work. "A cake, then. I can do that." He had baked enough munchies for high people to know that the actual flavor didn't matter much as long as it tasted good. So he settled for chocolate and got to work, going to find a bowl. "You get caught up in that telepath thing earlier?" He'd seen the post on the journals and could only assume it was linked to Quentin's sudden desire to be so high he couldn't remember the name for a kitchen.

"We all did. Except for Chuckles, who was serendipitously away for the weekend." Quentin snorted. "How lucky for him. It was fucked up, though. Like living in My Little Pony with psychotic little squirrels. Fucking bushy-tailed rat vermin."

Alex turned on the oven real quick and went back to the counter, dumping his ingredients into a bowl and whisking them all together. "My Little Squirrel, then?" He couldn't help but ask.

"Squirrels, songbirds, a fucking unicorn that actually went up directly to Emma Frost, which between you and me either means that Frost is a liar or it was just a horse with a horn taped onto its head to save her face. If you know what I mean," Quentin added conspiratorily. "I couldn't stop smiling. It was literal hell."

"Sounds like you were stuck in a children's movie." Alex finished mixing the wet ingredients and grabbed another bowl for the dry ingredients, mixing them together before dumping them in the first bowl. "That is hell."

Quentin watched Alex's hands closely as he picked up ingredients, poured them together, stirred, and then added more. Even though even now he knew he wouldn't remember much detail later, the view was nice for now. "I seriously think there's something wrong with, uh, oh fuck what's her name . . . Mila? Mona? Meggan! With Meggan. Like, whose brain does that? She might be autistic."

"I'm sure she's not." Alex went to a cabinet to grab a baking pan and greased it quickly, pouring the batter in. He eyed the bowl for a minute before holding it out to Quentin. "Wanna lick? Might hold you over until this is done."

"You don't know how long I've waited for you to ask me that. Oh, you mean the spatula. I guess." Quentin ran his tongue up the utensil, snatching up every drop of batter. He took another scoop from the bowl but stopped midlick, eyeing Alex. "How come you're doing this?"

Alex rolled his eyes but chuckled all the same as he popped the cake in the oven and set a timer on his phone. "Because it sounded like you had a rough night and nobody should be as high as you are and without munchies."

"I'm high because it makes it hard to teep," Quentin explained even though Alex hadn't asked. "I'ma just keep smoking so stuff like this stops fucking happening to me. I'm really fucking over it, you know. I didn't fucking sign up for this."

That was possibly the most sincere thing Alex had ever heard Quentin Quire say. For a moment he was actually really unsure how to respond it. He sat down on the other side of the island, resting his elbows on the counter. "Not judging, you know," he said after a minute. "It's bullshit. Not gonna pretend I know what it's like, this telepathy thing is on another level. But the whole deal seems like absolute bull."

"This was especially bullshit because even Frost and Hot Doctor Jean were stuck. If they hadn't been there, if they'd also taken a vacation like Chuckles, we'd probably all be dead now."

That definitely brought Alex up short. Anything he could have said would have been condescending crap, and that was the last thing anyone needed right then. "Fuck," he said finally, quietly. "Fuck telepathy."

"Fucking tell me about it. You know, sometimes I don't even know if Gabriel or anyone . . ." Quentin realized he was saying too much to someone he really only knew in a professional capacity, and shut himself up. "Never mind. It's stupid. Telepathy's stupid. It's all stupid. How do you make frosting for the cake?"

Alex was tempted to push it, but he knew there was no point. Quentin wasn't going to give up whatever was going on his mind. And Alex blissfully was not a telepath. "It's easy." He pushed himself away from the counter, going to get what he needed. "Wanna learn?" The words were teasing. He knew even if Quentin were interested - in some alternate universe - he was too high to retain any of it.

"Lemme just eat your sweet sweet cream, Summers."