They don’t know how to live without looking over their shoulders. They go to sleep at night staring up at the stars, and hoping they will come back tomorrow.
(Or: The first year in Paradise is bad for some and worse for others.)
it’s fourteen years after the sun flares destroyed the earth, and wckd has no choice but to deploy the back-up plan no one dared to think truly possible: recolonization. enter the gladers, a group of teens raised to become the superscientists the world so desperately needs. but when their mission to the so-called paradise of an exoplanet quite quickly turns sideways, they are forced to scrap a plan ten years in the making and just wing what is perhaps the most important expedition in human history.
if they fail, there will be no longer be such thing as human history.
flour, fruit, and the subtle waft of musky pheromones
thominho | 5.2k | fluff
minho hates lemon squares, but he wouldn’t say he’s averse to the people (one certain person) that enjoy them. especially when those people (that one certain person) are very attractive.
or, ‘i need someone to work the front of the bakery and i guess you’re alright even if you insist on trying (and failing) to bake and are kind of strange but really endearing for some reason and i definitely have firm moral rules about dating my own employees but shit i think i might really like you’ au
(ao3)
When Minho said he was desperate, Thomas was not what he had had in mind.
Sure, the guy was nice enough. A bit clueless, but he meant well. Loyal? Consistent? Easy-going? Thomas was all of those things. Hell, he was even nice to look at.
But god, he could not bake to save his life .
It wasn’t as if Minho hadn’t given him a chance, because holy shit, he had. He’d given him many chances. In fact, Thomas was once chance away from either bankrupting or setting fire to the entire bakery. And seeing as the bakery was Minho’s entire life put into one 1900 square foot space, neither of those things were an option.
It started with the lemon squares.
Minho didn’t even like lemons, or lemon flavoured things, but Newt insisted that they make them, or else the masses would revolt against their disgrace of a bakery. ‘ Pretty Baked’? Newt had asked, laughing. More like ‘Pretty Broke’. We need those lemon squares, Min.
Whatever, right? It wasn’t that big of a deal. Minho wasn’t the one eating them, it was his customers. The more customers, the better.
Cue the arrival of the infamous Thomas. He didn’t have a last name that Minho or Newt knew of, nor did he need one. He was just Thomas. Or, as all the employees of Pretty Baked had come to know him, Lemon Square Guy.
One Tuesday morning like any other, the weekly visit from Lemon Square Guy was due any minute. Minho was just putting the last of the freshly baked squares into a box when Brenda called to Minho from the front counter.
“Lemon Square Guy’s here!”
Minho couldn’t stop himself from rolling his eyes, but smiled anyway at the dumb nickname for the guy. “Coming up!” he called out to Brenda, tying the box shut with a bow. Giving it a quick once over (perfect, as always). Minho set it on the counter behind the cash, eyes meeting the sight of Thomas standing there with a dopey grin.
“The master chef himself!” Thomas nearly yelled, a massive smile overtaking his face as he pointed to Minho in the most animated of gestures. Minho smiled politely. How could this kid be so damn chipper at 8:00 am? How did he eat so many lemon squares every week? How was he still in such good shape? Minho had so many questions, and none of the answers were to be found in their weekly 40 second exchanges.
What a weirdo. A cute weirdo, but still a weirdo.
It was three days later that Minho received The Worst News Ever. Okay, maybe that was an exaggeration, but it was still some pretty shitty news. After being offered some prestigious scholarship bullshit somewhere across the country, Brenda was leaving. Which meant Minho had an empty spot to fill. One pretty little sign in the window later, he was ready to welcome a new addition to the team.
He just didn’t know it would be so hard.
Apparently, there was nobody interested in working at a cute as fuck bakery in a great location. Nobody, it seemed, but one young man.
Minho had almost rolled his eyes when the application was dropped on the counter the following Tuesday morning. It had only been four days - there would be other applicants, right? Lemon Square Guy would not be there to obnoxiously laugh-yell at them six days a week, right? There would be more people interested, for sure.
At least, that’s what Minho kept telling himself.
One week later with two days to go until Brenda’s departure for who the fuck knew where, Minho was starting to get desperate. He’d gone over it all in his head a thousand times. Sure, he realistically could get by without another person up at the front - it’d be hard, but he could manage. But the thing was that he could get by, yes, but without anyone but Brenda. She’d been with him and Pretty Baked since the very start, and no one else could run the front of the shop like she did. Newt’s patience only reached a certain extent before crumbling into nothing, and Alby had no patience at all. Frypan couldn’t leave the kitchen, and Zart was, well - he was Zart. Brenda was their star - she was good with the customers, and she actually knew them. Bothered to learn their names, their orders. It created a unique kind of atmosphere in the store, one that kept people coming back each week.
If Minho was being honest, the whole place would be that much closer to falling apart without Brenda - not like he’d ever tell her that, though.
So, yeah - desperate was the word Minho would use to describe his situation at that point in time. And, as fate would have it, it was this desperation that led Minho to making the decision that would turn out to simultaneously be the best and worst of his life.
Leaning against his kitchen counter, Minho groaned and picked up the phone.
The next morning, Minho was lifting the first tray of cookies of the day out of the oven when Newt announced his arrival.
“Hey, Min,” he said, throwing his jacket onto the counter with little regard.
Minho rolled his eyes, setting the tray down with one mitted hand and using the other to grab the jacket, throwing it in behind him, toward Newt. “No outdoor jackets in the kitchen, asshole.”
“Yeah, whatever,” Newt said, reaching for a monogrammed apron and tying the strings around his waist. “Y’know your lemon square guy is just standing outside, right?”
Minho’s nose wrinkled in confusion. He looked at Newt.
“See for yourself,” he said.
Minho huffed out an annoyed sigh as he slowly tilted his head, ignoring Newt’s giggle-sneers. Minho shifted once again so he could peer out the front window of the shop unseen and lo and behold, the infamous Lemon Square Guy - Thomas - was there. Standing. Just like Newt had said - except he wasn’t just standing; he was kind of bouncing a bit too, up and down on his heels as he talked. To himself, presumably, because Minho couldn’t see anyone else on the sidewalk, nor would expect to see anyone else before 8:00 am on a Wednesday.
Minho groaned, shutting the oven door with a thunk . “What is he doing ?” he asked, knowing no answer could make the kid seem normal.
Newt laughed. “Dunno, but I do know that he’s pretty bloody strange,” he said, rummaging through the fridge. He stopped and turned to face Minho. “Sure you want him out front with the customers?”
“I don’t know if I even want him as a customer. But we don’t have much choice, Newt, Bren’s leaving tomorrow .”
Newt shrugged, turning back to the open fridge. Cold air was starting to leak out, reaching Minho’s fingertips. He rolled his eyes again at the sight outside the shop. There was still fifteen minutes until the bakery even opened, and Thomas was standing out there talking to himself. Poor kid. Probably shitting himself. Minho let out another exasperated sigh and peeled himself off the counter, trudging through the kitchen and toward the front of the shop. Newt snorted as they made eye contact, Minho grabbing Thomas’s application off the counter.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, right?
Minho unlocked the front door, sticking his head out and calling Thomas’s name. The boy turned immediately, eyes wider than a drooling kid’s at the cupcake display. Minho could have sworn he heard a muttered oh, God, from Thomas before he walked over (trying way too hard to be casual - and failing, miserably), wiping his hands on the side of his jeans.
Minho resisted the urge to roll his eyes and instead donned a grin that he hoped could be described as amicable as he held the door for Thomas.
“No harm in starting early.” Minho mumbled, following Thomas into the store. “You can sit.” he said, feeling awkward as he gestured to one of the tables. Thomas sat down almost immediately, looking up at a still-standing Minho with almost puppy-like eyes. Minho would almost find it endearing if it wasn’t so, well, weird. As Minho sat down, shuffled his papers, and cleared his throat, he predicted that he truly had no idea what he was getting himself into.
This prediction, as fate would so lovingly have it, turned out to be the grossest and most extravagant understatement of Minho’s entire life. Exactly one month and three days had passed since Brenda’s departure and Thomas’s arrival as an official employee of Pretty Baked, and Minho had just about had it with Thomas. He had actually turned out to be great at the counter with the customers - sociable, easy-going, even funny. The customers seemed to love the new addition, and business was really picking up.
But God, Thomas in the kitchen was an entirely different story.
If Minho had to hear the words ‘destined for more’ and ‘born to bake’ a single, solitary time more, he might have to stick his head inside the oven. Thomas was convinced - convinced - that there was some part of himself deep inside that was meant to bake, meaning that the start and end of every shift was spent begging Minho to let him bake, to teach him, take him under his wing and allow him to become the baking champ he knew he was always destined to be.
Please. The day that Thomas became a baker was the day that Minho forgot how to make cookies. For God’s sake, the kid didn’t know the difference between baking powder and baking soda, let alone how to operate an industrial mixer. But that didn’t mean that Minho didn’t try.
Oh, he tried. Thomas had tried too, he really had. Minho could tell that there was effort there. Perhaps an absurd amount of effort, just not enough to compensate for the lack of skill.
Cookies were their first challenge. Minho hadn’t thought it would be a difficult task, but obviously he was very wrong. Thomas’s dough forms lacked consistency, baked unevenly, and tasted like shit. Minho wasn’t even sure that was possible, seeing as how they had used his own recipe and his own ingredients - all top quality, of course.
Next they tried brownies, because hey, you just had to throw it all in one pan and make sure it doesn’t burn.
(It burned.)
After butchering the most basic of the basic, Minho decided that maybe it was the oven that was throwing Thomas off. So they tried one of Pretty Baked ’s classics, no bake cheesecake bites. Much to Minho’s (and Thomas’s, the poor kid) dismay, the bars didn’t even set.
After three failed recipes in three weeks, Minho didn’t know what to do. Thomas was a lost cause, and not just in the actual act of baking itself. He easily messed up simple measurement tasks, like adding a tablespoon of vanilla instead of a teaspoon or boiling the butter when it was just supposed to be softened.
There was nothing Minho could do to help Thomas, but he still felt this strange obligation to do something. He’d actually grown to quite like Thomas over the past three weeks, as ridiculous as it would sound to the Minho of just three weeks and one day earlier. Actually, everyone had really grown to like Thomas. Sure, he was kind of weird and kind of annoying, but in the same way that a really loud puppy was annoying.
But there was one thing.
This really, really annoying thing.
As much as the whole team had grown to like Thomas, Minho had grown to like him just a bit more. In a way that Minho should really not be liking his employees.
Somewhere, between the smoking ovens and the customer compliments on the ‘cute new cashier guy’, Minho had caught a particularly terrible case of Feelings. This was, for Minho, something that could be classified as ‘utterly terrible and extremely unbearable’. And as much as he wished he could ignore it, Minho knew this was something he would eventually have to confront.
Eventually.
“I mean, he can’t even bake, which should be a huge turn off, cause God, he’s awful, but somehow I don’t even care.” Minho crossed his arms, scowling as he inspected the ovens, double checking that the switches were turned to ‘off’. “And he still eats a fucking box of lemon squares every week. That shouldn’t be cute, that should be seriously concerning.”
“But it’s cute?” Newt asked, voice almost as low as his tolerance level for Minho’s crush bullshit.
Minho half-groaned, half-sighed, flicking the kitchen lights off and pulling on his coat. “Yeah,” he muttered, a hint of contempt in his voice. Clearly, feelings were not Minho’s thing.
Newt stepped out of the kitchen, Minho following close behind. “I don’t blame you, Min, those hands sure are something. Couldn’t knead a pie crust for absolute shit, but I bet he could knead-”
“Yeah, yeah. Not gonna happen,” Minho said, coughing. A low blush was already creeping up his cheeks. Fuck Newt for making him think of Thomas’s hands.
Newt hummed. “Yeah, that might be weird. Pretty sure he still thinks you’re a God or something, like some lemon square king.”
Minho snorted. “Yeah, and you’re the princess.”
Newt shoved him lightly. “Shut up. Ask him out or something gay like that.”
“Wow, you’re such a romantic, Newt. Maybe it’s your hands I should be lusting over.” By this point the two were outside, the bakery safely locked up behind them.
“I’m serious, you should ask him out. Tell him you like his hands.”
Minho nodded his head in agreement. “Good idea, Newt,” he said before turning to walk home. “Good idea.”
Fast forward exactly one week and three days, and Minho had found himself in a very petrifying situation. As a result of Newt’s meddling (oh, how that boy could meddle) and one very enthused lemon-lover, Minho was standing in the kitchen of his apartment with a batch of lemon square crust in the oven and a ticking time bomb on his wrist. His watch read that there were precisely six minutes and fourteen seconds until 6:00 pm, the set time for Minho and Thomas’s ‘date’. More accurately, it was an impromptu ‘baking extra help session’ set up by Newt as a thinly veiled attempt at something resembling a date between Minho and Thomas.
As much as Minho despised Newt at that very moment, he would take what he could get.
Thomas arrived three minutes later, balled up apron in hand. It was streaked with stains of varying colours. He smiled at Minho, pausing for just a second too long before stuttering out, “Th-this is the one I use at home.”
Minho nodded without a word, silently cursing the mixture of feelings that stirred up inside of him as he let Thomas inside, shutting the door behind him.
“I already started the crust, thought it’d be easier if we focused on one part of the recipe.” Minho said dumbly, trailing off at the end.
“Okay,” Thomas said, fingers working at untying a knot in the strings of his apron.
“Uhm,” Minho mumbled, trying very hard not to focus on what Thomas’ hands were doing, “so we’re gonna do the lemon part.” He closed his eyes. Sounding like a complete dumbass already, great.
“Uh, yeah,” Thomas said, a flash of confusion in his eyes as if to say, “yeah, duh” .
Minho wanted to die. He cleared his throat. “Yeah, it really isn’t that hard,” he said, turning toward the counter to grab a chunk of lemon. “maybe you’ll actually get this one,” he finished, squeezing the last dregs of juice from the fruit into a bowl. He smirked at the tiny exhale of a gasp that came from Thomas, quickly covered up by a cough.
His decision to wear short sleeves had paid off, apparently. Trying not to smirk even more at the very apparent blush flooding Thomas’ cheeks, Minho dropped the lemon on the counter. “Ready?”
In the next half hour, Minho’s anxiety surrounding his ‘date’ with Thomas had all but faded. Tried-and-true, baking had eased his nerves and he was back to his regular, confident self. Sure, he still had to bite back a grin each time Thomas’ eyebrows furrowed up in concentration, but that didn’t make Minho any less of a badass. It wasn’t his fault that Thomas somehow managed to be extremely cute even when meticulously measuring out flour.
And, to further the fortune of the night, they were nearly done the recipe and Thomas hadn’t fucked up that catastrophically even once. There was a close call with the cracking of one of the eggs, but Minho had caught it at the last second - and the relieved smile he won in return was totally worth hitting his shoulder on the cabinet.
By the time the crust was ready to be taken out of the oven, Thomas was just stirring the last of the sugar into the bowl of filling. Minho looked on with silent approval. He felt like a champion; he’d actually found something the boy could bake without fear of burning the place down. And Minho himself had managed to calm the fuck down a bit with his alleged feelings toward Thomas - he hadn’t even stared at his lips once in that entire night.
For more than twelve seconds.
Truth be told, Minho was lying to himself. Teetering on the edge of insanity, even, vehemently denying his feelings to his own self. And he knew that, a little bit, but he was denying that too. Also making an appearance on the list of things he was denying included: how much he was into Thomas’ hands (fuck Newt for that one, really), the annoying little flutter in his chest that happened whenever Thomas made some dumb comment, and how increasingly fucked he was with each passing minute.
“So, what next?” Thomas’ voice broke Minho out of his trance, inciting another round of butterflies.
“Uh,” Minho stuttered, blinking up at Thomas. His face was flushed slightly, that same dopey smile he’d known since the bakery opened wide on his face. His hands were on his hips, floured smeared over the black cotton of his shirt. He waited expectantly. “We have to put the filling in the crust,” Minho said matter-of-factly, “then bake it for another twenty minutes. Think you can handle that?” A wink squeaked it’s way out of one eye, much against Minho’s will. He had to contain the annoyed groan bubbling up inside of him.
Thomas seemed to take it in stride, just nodding as he - was he biting his lip? Minho wanted to throw up, closing his eyes and sighing silently as soon as Thomas turned around to take the crust from the oven.
“Alright, now you just pour it in.”
“Like this?” Thomas asked the question with a laugh in his voice, and Minho looks up to see him holding the pan with the crust over the bowl of lemon filling, as if he was about to pour it in.
Minho just stared.
“Holy shit, I’m kidding,” Thomas said after a beat, setting the pan down on top of the stove. “I may be bad at baking, but I’m not that bad,” he said, grabbing the filling.
“I really wasn’t sure for a second there.”
Thomas scoffed, pouring the filling over the crust - surprisingly even, Minho noted. “You have no faith in me!”
Minho just rolled his eyes. Thomas really couldn’t take offense to that . He’d absolutely butchered every single recipe they’d tried before the lemon squares, he had no right to faith nor hope from Minho when it came to baking. However, Minho was quite enjoying the sight of Thomas bent over as he inspected the level of the filling.
Realizing he was staring, Minho coughed and spoke up. “Now we have to bake it for another twenty minutes,” he said, wondering what the fuck he and Thomas were supposed to do for twenty minutes without a predetermined task. Or, what the fuck they could do. Hey, there was a couch right like two metres away.
“Okay,” Thomas said then, rather gingerly, as he closed the oven door. He seemed to be thinking the same thing as Minho. Okay, maybe not the exact same thing, probably, but he was at least in the same awkward what-do-we-do-know phase of thinking.
Minho pulled out his phone, setting a timer for twenty minutes. “So I guess-”
“What made you want to open a bakery?” Thomas asked suddenly. His eyes looked dark from where Minho sat, and his face somehow softer than before.
So, it was going to be that kind of twenty minutes. Minho took a deep breath. “Well,” he started, leaning back in his chair. “I always loved baking, but I never thought I would actually do it as anything other than a hobby. But after high school, I still didn’t really know what I wanted to do, so I just did a business degree because I wasn’t really good at anything else and I thought it would be easy.”
Thomas nodded along thoughtfully, waiting for Minho to go on.
“By the end of it I started really thinking about starting my own business. I told my parents that I was thinking of opening a bakery, and they laughed in my face.”
Thomas’ lips fell open slightly, dropping into a frown. Then Minho smiled.
“So I did it anyway just to spite them. I’d say it’s worked out pretty nicely.”
“Wow,” Thomas said, laughing. “That’s actually incredible.” He pulled himself up to sit on the counter, this amazed look on his face that made Minho feel like he was going to die. Instead, he shrugged.
“No, really, it is. Pretty Baked opened what, a year ago? Year and a half? Look how well you’re already doing,” Thomas continued, eyes burning into Minho as he spoke.
“I guess,” Minho said quietly, looking down. “Now what about you? What’s with you and lemon squares?”
Thomas grinned sheepishly, fiddling with his hands. “I just really like lemon squares.”
“Bullshit. No one likes lemon squares that much.”
Thomas gripped the edge of the counter, leaning forward. “Minho, have you ever had one of your lemon squares?”
Minho smiled. “Nope,” he said proudly, enjoying the flabbergasted look taking over Thomas’ face. “Can’t stand citrus. Got Newt to do all the tasting - hell, he’s the only reason we even sell them.”
“You’re insane.”
“ You’re insane!” Minho exclaimed, leaning his elbows on the counter. “You go through one box of that shit every week!” he finished, gesturing to the oven.
“I’m not the-”
“And you don’t even gain weight, which is fucking impossible because the crust is basically pure brown sugar, and-”
“Minho!” Thomas yelled, laughing. The kitchen fell silent. “Do you get this worked up about all your customers?”
It was a joke, obviously, but Minho felt a blush burning in his cheeks. Of course he didn’t. He bothered to learn the regulars’ names, but beyond that Minho had never been so invested in a customer - former customer, now. “It’s just weird,” he finally decided on.
“They’re not just for me, y’know,” Thomas said.
Minho looked up at Thomas. He couldn’t tell if he was kidding or not. Minho quirked an eyebrow. “No?”
“No,” Thomas repeated, sounding almost offended. He swung his legs, launching himself from where he was seated on the counter. He pulled his phone out of his pocket - Minho immediately noticed how Thomas’ hands seemed to dwarf it, even though the phone was a fucking android - and stepped toward the island, resting his elbows directly across from Minho.
Thomas tapped on the screen for a few seconds before putting the phone down and sliding it across the counter toward Minho. Minho caught it, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. The fact that Thomas would trust him to not let it hit the ground - without a case - explained a lot about Thomas as a person.
“That’s Chuck,” Thomas said, nodding toward the screen. Minho looked down at the phone in his hands and picture of kid with chubby cheeks, curly hair, and the same dumb grin he had grown accustomed to seeing every day.
“Little brother?”
“Yep,” Thomas said, nodding. “even crazier about the lemon squares than I am.”
Minho gave a smile, passing the phone back to Thomas. He returned it to his pocket but made no move to return himself back to his previous spot across the kitchen. His face couldn’t have been more than a foot from Minho’s, the hem of his shirt hanging loosely, just barely grazing the edge of the counter.
“He’s a little shit,” Thomas continued, snapping Minho out of his thoughts of leaning over countertops and hipbones cutting into granite. “but you gotta love him.”
“Must run in the family,” Minho muttered, not realizing he was talking out loud.
“Hey!” Thomas clutched at his chest, feigning heartbreak. “I am not a little shit.”
Minho rolled his eyes, silently thanking the gods that Thomas hadn’t chosen to focus on the second part of his own statement. “You kinda are, dude.”
It was Thomas’ turn to roll his eyes. “But you gotta love me, right?”
Shit. Minho put on his best I totally don’t have a big gay crush on you look and sighed, deeply exasperated. “Sure, Thomas.”
There was a satisfied smirk on Thomas’ face, but Minho could tell by his eyes that that wasn’t the answer he was expecting. The distance between them suddenly seemed much, much smaller. Thomas’ eyes flickered down to Minho’s lips, and Minho heard his own breath hitch slightly.
“Yeah, well-” Thomas started halfheartedly, trailing off. Minho allowed himself that split second to look at Thomas’ mouth, lips impossibly pink and right there. “Uhm,” Thomas mumbled quietly, breath mingling with Minho’s own. It smelled like the lemons and for once Minho didn’t mind the tartness of it. Thomas’ eyes were blinking fast - fluttering, almost - on Minho’s lips, unmoving now. Had he moved closer? Minho was about to throw up, all over Thomas’ gross dirty apron.
Then, just as Minho had resigned himself to emptying the contents of his stomach, a shrill ringing started blaring from Minho’s phone. Thomas shot straight up, as if the counter was lava. Minho jolted back in his chair, nearly sending it toppling backwards.
“The lemon squares,” he announced, fumbling to shut off his phone.
“Hmm.”
“Wanna take them-”
“Yeah.”
Minho couldn’t believe twenty minutes had already passed. He kept his gaze strictly to the screen of his phone as Thomas bent down to retrieve the pan from the rack inside the oven. What the fuck just happened? Was Minho actually high off baking fumes or was Thomas about to kiss him?
“Okay, they’re out,” Thomas said rather awkwardly, resting his oven-mitted hands on his hips.
Minho shook his head, telling himself to snap out of it. Nobody just goes and tries to kiss their boss . “Okay. Last thing to do is the icing sugar.”
“Right.”
Minho pushed the container of sugar forward. “I don’t have a sifter here, so you can just sprinkle it with a spoon.” Thomas’ face had contorted into a picture of fear and confusion. Minho closed his eyes and made the motion of using a sifter. “Squeezy sugar sprinkler thing.”
“Gotcha!” Thomas said, opening the drawer and grabbing a spoon. “I knew that,” he added, quieter. Minho rolled his eyes.
Within a minute, Thomas had successfully covered the pan in an acceptable amount of icing sugar. Minho had to admit, Thomas had actually done a really good job. Given that he’d done the crust, but the filling was even and smooth and the sugar was not in form of a mountain. Coupled with the fact that not a single fire alarm had gone off, Minho would call the night a success.
But of course, there was still the whole issue of the gymnastics that was taking place inside his stomach. The image of Thomas’ parted lips and half lidded eyes still flashed in Minho’s mind, spiking his heart rate each time. Thomas, though, had seemed to recover from the moment with no problem.
“These smell so good ,” he said, giving each word its own emphasis as he shoved his face right down into the pan. “I want my remains to be encased in a batch of lemon squares, okay?” Thomas turned back to face Minho as he made his request, and Minho burst into laughter.
“Hey, it’s a valid request!” Thomas defended, crossing his arms.
Minho waved him off, clutching his stomach. “No, no, it’s not - oh my god, Thomas.”
“What?”
“You’ve got-” Minho started but cut himself off, falling again into another fit of laughter. Thomas had somehow managed to get icing sugar all over his nose, leaving it completely white. He looked ridiculous.
“What, Minho?” Thomas was desperate now.
“God, here,” Minho said, getting up and walking over to Thomas before he even knew what he was doing. “You look like a crack addict,” he mumbled under his breath, standing directly in front of Thomas. He reached up and brought his thumb to the tip of Thomas’ nose, swiping off the white powder in one movement. “There,” he said quietly.
“Thanks,” Thomas replied, voice low. His eyes locked with Minho’s, dark and wide and waiting.
One second later, Minho’s fingers are looped in the straps of Thomas’ apron, pulling him in closer until their lips were pressed together. Thomas froze for only a fraction of a second before his hands found their way to Minho’s hips, thumbs digging into the soft skin just above the bone. He tasted like lemon - the brief question of whether it was leftover from his weekly box or if Thomas had snuck some filling when Minho hadn’t been looking floated into his mind, but he had other things to worry about at that exact moment. Like Thomas’ tongue down his throat.
Minho deepened the kiss, barely able to hold back a satisfied smirk at the soft groan-sigh hybrid coming from Thomas’ mouth. Thomas let one hand drift up Minho’s back, the other reaching back to the counter, fumbling slightly, until -
There was a moist-sounding squelch , and Minho only had a moment to be disgusted by it before the crash of the pan smashing to pieces on the floor.
Minho and Thomas recoiled from each other in an instant, Minho leaping back from the shards of glass and Thomas jumping entirely onto the counter. Everything laid silent and unmoving except for the small cloud of powdery sugar hanging in the air. Minho took a second, letting himself process what had just happened, eyes glued to the fucking lemon square massacre covering his kitchen floor.
Then, the sound of Thomas licking his fingers.
“It’s a shame, we actually did a really good job on this batch,” he said, voice strange as if he’d had to work the words around a laugh. Minho looked up at him, speechless. This guy said the strangest fucking things. When their eyes locked, a tiny smile - no, a grin - bubbled up on Thomas’ lips. He sucked on his index finger once more, swallowing thickly.
Long ago, too long, a century possibly, when Wednesdays couldn’t potentially kill you and no one Dreamt, one quiet summer evening; Newt’s face glowing blue and pink and green under his porch lights, smiling, laughing carefree, eyes bright and filled with mirth, and Thomas remembers feeling so in love he thought he might die from it. Combust into nothing but particles; stardust, and float away. Dizzy, a little drunk on nothing but air and the look of Newt’s face as he leant in over the small coffee table, and a kiss, no longer than a second and no more than a brush of lips.
“No.” Thomas says, staring at the ground. “No, I guess not.”
