#espressecream

Clotted Cream looked at him over his shoulder, his eyes widened and brow furrowed with a vague sense of worry. His oft-present smile--charming, confident and guarded--was gone now, replaced with a fretfulness that extended outward, in the way that he began to pace about the kitchen to get himself a glass of wine. His hands shook just a little as he poured it, though he tried to keep it steady. Espresso guessed that he was stressed--a glance at the calendar was all the reminder he needed that his schedule was swamped with appointments and deadlines.

"Clotted Cream, I'm not going to divorce you over bad bread."

The Consul lifted his head at that, staring at Espresso for a few long moments before gesturing about vaguely. "I didn't say anything."

"Sit with me," Espresso suggested, reaching a foot out to nudge one of the chairs at the table out. "Tell me about your day."

He did. For the next hour and a half, Clotted Cream and Espresso talked, first about work and then about other matters. Clotted had a short day, but a hard one--it was always a difficult day where private discussions with the Elders were involved. He was more than happy to leave the office early and offload his work, relieved that overstaffing was a current issue. Espresso thought bitterly of Elder Custard, Clotted Cream's miserable excuse for a father, and felt disgust coil in his stomach.

From there, it shifted to lighter things. Clotted Cream saw a little dog on his route home and has been thinking about it ever since. "No," Espresso said, firmly, "we aren't getting a dog." Clotted Cream nodded and agreed, explaining that he knew they were both too busy to take care of one. But it was a nice thought.

An hour and a half later, the timer went off, interrupting Espresso's explanation of why cat claws can sheathe and dog claws couldn't. Clotted Cream and Espresso both rose to their feet and advanced towards the oven, Espresso grabbing the oven mitts on the way. He opened the oven while his husband reached over him to turn the timer off.

He blinked down at the bread.

"...Oh."

Clotted Cream looked over his shoulder, frowning down at the bread, as well. Espresso's cheeks felt warm at the fact that he knew this, a traitorous butterfly flitting in his stomach enough to make him shiver. "Yeah," Clotted Cream agreed, his voice bleak and vague. "It looks like a ghost."

Nonetheless, Espresso took the loaf pan out, setting it on the stove top and closing it carefully. Clotted Cream took a stick of butter out of the fridge and began smearing it over the steaming top, but Espresso doubted that it'd do much. Curiously, he took a knife and tapped at its surface once Clotted Cream was done with that.

"...It feels crisp," he noted. "Let's see how it cuts."

And cut, he did--though he gave up on the bread knife quickly and reached for a steak knife instead. Surely the crust wasn't meant to be as tough as it was--it was so strange and peculiar, how it looked undercooked but felt like it was burnt! Even with a steak knife, the cutting wasn't easy--the crust on the bottom was insistent about staying attached, stubborn and clingy. When he finally took a piece and set it on a plate, the inside of the bread was thick and cakey.

One slice for each of them, slathered in bread. It smelt like bread, and it tasted like bread, but it tasted so thick and moist that it ended up making Espresso wonder if the dough was undercooked. Clotted Cream grimaced as he chewed, his refined palette finding it difficult to digest in comparison to Espresso's more tolerant stomach.

"...It's edible," Clotted Cream commented. "I think."

"Let's retrace our steps," Espresso suggested, setting his bread on the plate and bracing himself against the counter. "The dough didn't necessarily double in size when we were letting it raise in the pre-heated oven both times. What could be the reason for that? Did you activate the yeast?"

Clotted Cream blinked, double-taking at Espresso. "...Activate the yeast?"

"The little packet," Espresso explained. "That's the yeast. According to the instructions on the back of the packet, you activate it by letting it sit in hot water for a few minutes."

"...There were instructions on the back of it?" Clotted Cream cleared his throat, turning his head away, face turning warm and pink with embarrassment. "Well--I don't know about any instructions on the packet! I was just following what the cookbook said."

...So he didn't activate the yeast.

Espresso expected himself to be irritated at the blatant lack of regard, but amusement and warmth tickled him instead. Clotted Cream wasn't a cook--it seemed that every time he tried to cook in his own house, something horrible went terribly wrong. He remembered the rank stench of burnt cake around when they first started dating, the first instance where Clotted Cream's professional demeanor started to crack on the edges. "I wanted to impress you," he'd said miserably, "but I just ended up making a fool of myself..."

Espresso found out quickly that Clotted Cream's tendency to not do what commoner cookies tended to do was less for lack of interest and more for lack of knowing how to proceed with it in the first place. What was the point of trying to do something if you were just going to make a fool of yourself? Better to stick to what you already know and preserve your image.

"Hey," Espresso urged, his voice soft as he reached to rest a hand on Clotted Cream's shoulder. "Think of it like this. At least you didn't start a fire in the oven. Progress."

Clotted Cream blinked, looking at Espresso and meeting his gaze for a moment. His shoulders eased, relaxing, a tentative smile easing on his face and reaching his leafy green eyes. "At least it's edible," he suggested, emboldening himself to take another bite.

"It is," Espresso agreed. "But it's no dinner."

"Let's order something, then," Clotted Cream suggested immediately. "Maybe watch something on the television together."

For once.