Character A is a stress baker and character B has a sweet tooth. They live next door to one another. It works out well. Bonus points if character A doesn’t even like sweets.
When Aishwarya moved into her dinky, fifth-floor apartment with the cramped bathroom and the leaky roof, she’d hardly expected to wind up living next to a someone. A set-butterflies-off-in-my-stomach someone. A my-toes-curl-when-I-see-you someone. A you-make-me-feel-drunk-all-the-time someone. Because coincidences like this never happened in the movies. When Aishwarya dragged her bruised heart up five flights of stairs to look at the place, there had been a sweet grandma next door. But when she returned with her six pieces of luggage and furniture that her friends had donated out of pity, she found a someone living there.
And that was before she found out about the baking. Because once she found out that he liked to bake, well, hot damn. Her poor fantasies were never the same. Coming home every other night to white chocolate chip and macadamia nut cookies, and lemon cheesecake bars, and profiteroles, tended to do that to a girl. He had her so wound up with his gooey caramel bars and ginger banana muffins that she couldn’t walk by a bakery without feeling hot and bothered.
“Before you-” she said, biting into a cooling salted caramel fudgy brownie, “-I’ve never met anyone who could say no to salted caramel brownies. Especially the person who made them.”
He looked up from washing the dishes and smiled. “Yet, here I am. A person who doesn’t like desserts. Making them.”
“Explain this to me, again. Why stress bake when you don’t eat them? Why don’t you stress cook?”
"You ask me this every single time. I told you-”
“-there’s something deeply comforting about measuring out the ingredients and whisking them into perfection. Yeah, I know. But I just. Don’t. Get. It. Is it because you dated a baker and she broke your heart so now you bake every time you think of her to avoid the urge to go stand outside her window and throw rocks at it?”
“No. It’s so I can get annoying girls to sit around my flat and speculate about my love life. Now, shoo. I have a project to finish and I won’t be able to do it if you sit around, complaining that the only thing that can make these things better is We Bare Bears.”
“But it’s true! We Bare Bears makes everything better and stop shooing me out like I’m a goat chomping on your lilies. I know you’re just trying to change the subject so I’ll talk about how Ice Bear is my soul mate and not about your homewrecking girlfriend who only ate tiramisu after sex.”
“Sure thing, missie. I’ll tell you about my ex-girlfriend when you’re ready to talk about that stain on the couch cushion.”
“Which one?”
“...which one?! There’s more than one??”
He quickly stepped to the couch and began flipping the cushions. “Geez, Louise. Relax, I’m kidding. There’s only the stain and I had nothing to do with it.”
When he glanced at her suspiciously before dropping the cushion he held in his hand, Aishwarya breathed a sigh of relief that he hadn’t flipped the last one. Man, his couch did not appreciate the ice cream she’d tried to feed it.
“But speaking of your couch....”
“No.”
“Can I just lay down for a teensy weensy bit? I’m so tired, my shift was forever and my heels are killing me and your couch is so comfortable and I wouldn’t want to hurt its feelings by walking past it without lying down for just a little while...”
He sighed and threw his hands up in the air, flicking little soap bubbles onto his hair. It made him look so adorable that her heart almost flipped out of her chest and onto the floor to pathetically sign, I flipping love you.
“Do whatever. You always do, anyway.”
The response troubled her but not so much that it stopped her from flopping onto the couch and moaning out loud. He didn’t say anything.
“I wouldn’t spend so much time on your couch if you didn’t feed me like this. One almost wonders if you’re fattening me up for a particular reason...are you secretly a cannibal but you’ve been starving forever because your last girlfriend refused to eat your desserts and hence she wasn’t an adequate meal?”
He didn’t say anything but just turned off the water.
She turned onto her side in a couple of minutes and groaned quietly. He stacked the last dish, wiped his hands and went to a closet near the front door to pull out a blanket. He tucked the blanket around her and said, “Not a word.”
“I promise.” She pouted. “You’re the best.”
She watched through half-shut eyes as he settled into the chair next to the couch with his laptop. He rumpled his hair, took a deep breath and began to type. She wanted to stay awake and watch him work - the way he bit his lip when he was deep in thought was the sexiest thing she’d ever seen after watching him mop up a spill - but she really had had a long day on her feet and he’d filled her up with his lasagna and salted caramel fudgy brownie and there were....
When she opened her eyes next, she realized it was dark and she was being carried.
“Waddjadoing-”
“Carrying you to my bed.”
“Mmmk.”
When he set her down on his bed, she flopped back onto his pillow and watched him tuck her into his sheets.
“Why do you stress bake?”
He didn’t answer until he finished adjusting the pillow and stepped back.
“Would it be really crazy if I said it was because you love sweets and I...like you and want you to be happy, even on the really bad days when you’re too tired to cook or even cry?”
How did he...He blinked. She blinked.
“My ex-girlfriend rarely ate desserts. My mom on the other hand...”
Her voice was stuck in her throat.
“Get some sleep. Stop working yourself like this. Good night.”
And then before she could say anything, he was out of the door, leaving her to her thoughts.
