Jake shrugged. “I’m only doing a bit of web design. Cass could do it if he could be arsed . . . sorry, I mean if he had the time.”
Rich rolled his eyes. “You don’t have to be diplomatic, Jake, about any of it. I don’t get to see my little brother as much as I’d like, but I know him, and I know when he’s happy. Cass too. No one around here is ever going to argue with that.”
It was close to lunchtime when Jake realised Cass had never come back to the living room. He put off going to find him for a while, waiting for Tom to do it, but when Tom remained caught up with his siblings, Jake slipped away.
He found Cass in the kitchen, wrestling with an enormous joint of gammon.
“Thought this was your day off?”
Cass grunted and lifted the ham out of its saucepan with two carving forks. “Trust me, you’ll be glad I took over the cooking when you taste Lily’s trifle. She’s got a heart of gold, but she’s a lousy cook.”
Jake ventured closer. Tom’s parents had a big, country-style kitchen, with an AGA stove and an island in the middle. Jake settled on one of the stools. “Do you cook every year?”
“Yep. Learned my lesson the first time, then Rich offered to pay me to take over. I’ve never taken him up on the cash, but somehow, I still end up doing it.”
By Cass’s faint grin, Jake knew he didn’t mind. “What are you making? Can I help? Unless you want to be by yourself.”
It crossed Jake’s mind too late that perhaps it suited Cass to be all alone in the kitchen, away from the merriment of Tom’s loud, affectionate family. He could tell Cass loved them, and it was obvious they loved him, but as ever with Cass, Jake knew he was missing something.
“Nah, you’re all right,” Cass said. “I’ve got to scrape the rind off this. Want to make the glaze for me?”
“Erm, okay.” Jake slid off his stool. “How do I do that?”
“Mix together all that crap on the board. There’s a bowl by the sink.”
All that crap turned out to be treacle, mustard, and smoked paprika. Jake stirred it up in the bowl, took it back to Cass, and watched, fascinated, as he scored a diamond pattern in the flesh of the gammon and studded it with cloves. “That looks like the ones in Morrisons.”
Cass elbowed him, hard. “Bloody Morrisons? Are you taking the piss? This ain’t no battery-farmed swine, you know. This is good stuff.”
“Not going to lecture me on commercial farming again, are you?”
Cass rolled his eyes. “Not if you behave, and I only lectured you because you asked.”
He had a point, on both counts. Tom had shown Jake how restaurants were branded and marketed to the outside world, but Cass . . . man, Cass had taken him back to the start and taught him where the food had come from in the first place, from the Kentish wild mushrooms and herbs, to the organic eggs from their neighbour in Berkhamsted. Cass had taught him a lot, in more ways than one.
“Something on your mind, mate?”
Jake blinked. Cass was staring at him, holding out his hand for the bowl of glaze. “Not really.”
“Not really? Sounds like a little of something, then. Wanna share?”
“Like we did last night?”
It was Cass’s turn to blink, though Jake was just as surprised. He’d had their alcohol-fuelled threesome on his mind since he’d awoken that morning, but had figured he’d find a better way to bring it up.
Cass fiddled with a pan on the hob. “Regrets?”
“What? No! I mean, no, fuck it. I mean no. It was great; I meant you.”
Cass’s lips twitched, like he was fighting a smile, but his gaze remained shrewd. “Me? In what way?”
Jake reclaimed his stool. “Have you ever watched Tom with another bloke before?”
“You want to talk about that here?”
Jake shrugged. He didn’t want to talk about it at all, but he needed to, damn it.
Cass sighed. “I wish you wouldn’t worry about shit like that. I wouldn’t let it happen if I had a problem with it. I liked it, more than liked it.”
“Did you feel left out?”
“No.”
But did you want to fuck me too?
Jake didn’t have the balls to ask it out loud, because he wasn’t sure what answer he wanted to hear. He was coming to terms with his attraction to Cass, helped by the memory of their sizzling-if-drunken encounter, but did Cass feel the same?
Jake had no idea.
“And in answer to your other question, I’ve watched Tom with other blokes before, but never all the way. Just kissing and stuff. When we’ve had three-ways in the past, it’s always been him watching me. He likes watching me top.”
That was food for thought.
“Do you like it? Topping, I mean, because I know Tom doesn’t bottom. Is that why you see other people?” Jake had asked Tom the same question once, but he figured he’d get a less polite response from Cass; the kind of response that couldn’t be misinterpreted.
He wasn’t disappointed.
“No,” Cass said. “We fuck other people because it suits us to do it, but if you’re freaking out about that, you should know neither of us has looked at another bloke since you came along. You’ve put a spell on Tom, and I’m not far behind.”
Yep. That was Cass, all right, and his words did strange things to Jake. He’d closed his mind to the possibility of Tom hooking up with other men, couldn’t see where he’d find the time, but knowing Cass hadn’t either gave Jake pause. Until he’d felt Cass’s lips on his in the club the night before, he hadn’t known he cared.
Cass nudged him. “Don’t do your nut, but I reckon you’re everything me and Tom didn’t know we were looking for.”
Jake absorbed the compliment as Cass stepped away from him. The thought of Tom and Cass calling time on their open relationship, closing it down for him . . . around him, like a warm, safe fortress, made him feel a little light-headed. In a good way. Perhaps. Maybe. “If it was just you and me in bed, what would you do?”
“You mean, top or bottom?” Cass drained a pan of cauliflower, dumped it in a dish, and poured another pan of cheese sauce over it. “I’d do whatever you were comfortable with, but if you’re asking what I’d want to do, then I guess I’d want to top you. Get a piece of the look you put on Tom’s face last night. Pass me those bread crumbs, would you?”
Jake passed the bread crumbs. He absently watched Cass finish off the dish of cauliflower cheese, while he struggled to articulate his answer. “What about after, though. I mean, after the first time . . .”
Cass caught on without missing a beat. “Mate, I’d bottom for you in a heartbeat, if that’s what you’re asking, and no, before you ask, Tom wouldn’t mind. He’d love it. He’s totally in love with you. You know that, right?”
Jake ticked. A bowl of cherry tomatoes skidded across the counter, but he caught the bowl before it crashed to the floor. The tomatoes weren’t so lucky. He got up to retrieve them. “Tom’s not in love with me.”
He kept his back to Cass, but he saw his knowing smirk all the same, even though it was gone by the time he made it back to the counter.
“Suit yourself,” Cass said. “I reckon that photo frame you gave him will be filled with your smiley mug soon enough.”
Jake covered his snort of laughter with a cough. Giving Tom and Cass their presents had turned out to be a lot of fun, though he wasn’t keen on seeing his own face slapped in the picture frame.
Cass mistook his unintelligible answer for sulking and sighed. “Look, I know this is complicated, Jake, but it’s here to stay, for as long as you want it, especially if you want to fuck me. Just not on these counters, yeah? Bloody granite is freezing on my arse.”
The dirty joke eased some of the tension the subject had brought with it. There was a noise from the hallway, and Jake figured it was time to kill their X-rated conversation. He thought of the new hard drive burning a hole in his back pocket. “Tom’s folks are really nice.”
Cass turned away to open the
oven. “Yeah, they’re good people, and they’re experts at ignoring things they don’t know how to deal with. Comes in handy when you don’t fit what they had in mind for their son.”
“What do you mean?”
Cass came back to the counter, his gaze on the ham. “I spent some time inside before I met Tom. I know they know, but they’ve never mentioned it.”
“Inside? Like, prison?”
“A young offenders institution, actually, but I suppose it’s the same thing. I did a year in Feltham when I was seventeen.”
Jake had heard of the notorious prison in West London. He’d watched a documentary once that named it the most dangerous jail in Britain. “What did you go down for?”
“Nicking cars, mostly. Selling a bit of weed. Nothing I’m particularly proud of.” Cass stuck a pastry brush in the glaze Jake had made and started painting the ham with it.
“What was it like?”
“Prison? Boring, most of the time, and fucking terrifying when it wasn’t. Did its job, though. It took me a while to get my head straight after, but I got there in the end. I might not have bothered if I hadn’t known what it was like.”
The revelation should’ve shocked Jake, but it didn’t. He’d known from the moment he’d seen Cass’s brooding eyes that he’d lived a darker life than Tom. A life Jake could only imagine. “What about your parents?”
“My what?”
Cass turned away, but even without seeing his face, Jake knew he’d made a terrible mistake.
“Um, your parents. You’ve never mentioned them.”
“Don’t have any,” Cass said. “Never knew my dad and my ma’s been gone a long time.”
“Gone?”
“Yeah. Gone.”
Cass turned back, his expression benign, but the chill in the air remained until a ripple of tics buzzed through Jake and left him half-convinced he’d imagined it.
Jake eyed the family photographs scattered around the kitchen. “Tom’s the youngest, isn’t he?”
“Hmm? Oh yeah. By five years. Think he was an accident, but he’s definitely Lily’s favourite. She’s so proud of him. Arsehole can do no wrong in her eyes. Good job he’s the nicest guy in the world.”
Jake already knew Tom was the nicest guy in the world, and his gut told him Cass fitted that title too. He studied Cass, tried to picture him a decade younger, caged in the dark, creepy cells he’d seen on TV. “Will you tell me about it?”
“Tell you about what?”
“Prison.”
Cass thought on it a moment, then shrugged. “One day.”
A few weeks after a strangely muted New Year, Tom arrived home from the city with a boot full of sweet treats and cakes. Jake met him at the door and relieved him of some of his load. “You brought home twenty different puddings?”
“Yep.” Tom traipsed through the house with Jake in his wake and spread the cartons and boxes out on the kitchen counter. “And there’s more. I’ve got some of Cass’s ice creams in the freezer. Hope you’re hungry, because we’re having a sugar fest for dinner.”
“Um, okay.” Jake hopped up on the kitchen counter, unable to hide his grin. After a crazy December, Tom had forced him to take some downtime. He’d spent his first day off alone kicking around the house by himself, completing some of the unfinished DIY, but as the day had drawn to a close, he’d begun to feel lonely, too used to spending most of his days with Tom, or at the very least, engrossed in something that involved him. “Any occasion? Or are you trying to tell me you’re pregnant?”
“Very funny. If anyone’s pregnant, it’s you.”
Jake let him have that one. Since Christmas they’d fucked a lot, sometimes with Cass present, sometimes without. Truth be told, Jake preferred it when Cass was there, kissing him and whispering dirty things in his ear, and he’d have liked it even more if Cass joined in. Not that he was going to complain about Tom fucking him every night, Cass watching or not. Hell no. Though he did wonder when Tom and Cass found the time to love on each other, because if they were doing it, they weren’t doing it in front of him. “So what is all this? Ooh, are they doughnuts?”
Tom pushed a box Jake’s way. “Churros. Mexican doughnuts with cinnamon chocolate sauce. We’re looking at dessert options for the Camden project. The menus need finalising, the basic blueprints, at least. Cass has done the development research, so it’s down to us to pick something and roll with it.”
Jake stuffed a tiny spicy doughnut in his mouth and frowned. “These are minging. I’d be right pissed off if I ate one of them after my badass burger.”
“Badass? Have you been watching Sky Atlantic all day?”
“Maybe.” Jake pushed the doughnuts aside and stuck his middle finger up. “But those are still disgusting.”
“Okay, no churros.” Tom dumped the box in the bin under the sink. “What about brownies, or here . . . try these waffles.”
“Waffles? Aren’t they like chips?”
Tom rolled his eyes. “Not those kind of waffles. Belgian waffles, with ice cream and chocolate sauce. Whipped cream and strawberries. Bananas and syrup. Sound good?”
Like Jake could argue with that. He sampled the waffles, all of them. “I like them.”
“Yeah?” Tom wiped Jake’s mouth with the pad of his thumb. “Okay, now close your eyes and imagine you just ate your badass burger and downed some bubbly. Would you want a plate of waffles next?”
Jake thought on it. “I could eat them, but I’d probably puke after.”
Tom pushed the waffles aside, and so it went on. Brownies, cookies, and pies, washed down with some wine from the cellar. Jake was half-pissed and fit to burst by the time Cass drifted through the front door an hour later.
“Hey, you’re early.” Tom ditched his notebook and embraced Cass like he hadn’t seen him for weeks. “Everything okay?”
Cass let Tom sweep him off his feet a moment, before he smirked and fought back, ducking Tom’s shrewd stare. “Quiet night. I cleaned the canopies and caught an early train home, seeing as some fucker stole my car.”
Tom’s grin was infectious. Jake took his turn greeting Cass and wrapped his legs around his waist, hooking him close and holding him there. Cass felt chilled from the outside world, and Jake wanted to warm him up. Wanted to welcome him home. Recently, he’d found himself dreaming of Cass, and then jumping awake, convinced he was alone, and back in his crappy flat. Then he’d roll over and find Cass already reaching out for him in his sleep, like he sensed Jake needed him.
Jake loved him for that.
Cass kissed Jake’s cheek. “Pleased to see me?”
“Always.”
Tom watched the exchange with a soft smile, then he poured Cass a glass of wine and passed him a box of cheesecake. “What do you think of this? Any good?”
Cass swiped a finger through the box, then stuck it in his mouth. “I know it’s good. I made the bloody thing.”
“Ha-ha.” Tom poked Cass, hard. “Just answer the question, will you? If I eat any more sugar my teeth are going to fall out.”
“Okay, okay . . .” Cass sampled a few more boxes and considered the rest, all the while remaining in Jake’s grip, but he didn’t seem to have an answer more definite than what Tom and Jake had come up with. “We need something fun and cheap, but not crap. Something that proves the rest of it isn’t a gimmick.”
Tom nodded. “It’s got to fit, and feel right. There’s no point setting the tone, only to mess it up at the last hurdle.”
Cass looked thoughtful. “Did you say something about giving away jelly beans on the bill trays?”
“That was Jake’s idea,” Tom said.
“And I was joking,” he protested. “You were banging on about ice buckets and all that posh stuff I’ve never heard of. Figured I’d bring the conversation back to my level.”
“Don’t put yourself down. You sound like Cass.”
Jake eyed Tom as Cass tensed in his arms. Tom smiled, but it seemed off.
“I like the
idea of jelly beans, gourmet ones,” Cass said at last. “We’ve just got to find the right platform to get us there from burgers and fizz.”
He absently traced a pattern on Jake’s jean-clad thigh, his sharp gaze clouded and miles away. Jake waited for Tom to comfort Cass, to put his arms around him and soothe away whatever had troubled him so suddenly, but it never happened and though the tension in Cass remained, the moment passed.
They talked in circles for next few hours. Jake mostly let Tom and Cass get on with it. Tom knew what sold, and Cass knew what the kitchen could realistically produce, and on what scale. For a while, Jake thought they were arguing, until he caught the gleam in Tom’s eyes, and the smirk playing on Cass’s lips. Then he realised the tension he’d seen earlier had dissipated and the banter was a weird take on flirting, that this was the part of opening the restaurants they got to do together.
It was nice to see and it distracted him, a little, from the sensation of having his legs wrapped around Cass, having his hands on his thighs, and the warmth of their hips pressed together.
At least until he’d downed his third glass of Tom’s posh wine, then he could think of nothing else, and he no longer gave a shit what sweet treats the funky population of Camden Town wanted with their burgers.
He slid off the kitchen counter right into Cass’s arms, and made a clumsy grab for Tom. “Ice cream. Two flavours from a choice of six. A tray of three toppings from a choice of twelve. Five quid all in. Done. Can we go to bed now?”
Jake: You left early. Something big happening 2day?
Cass: Nah. Just couldn’t sleep.
Jake: Why not?
Cass: Dunno
Jake: Liar
Cass: Am I?
Jake: Dunno
Cass: Don’t forget to eat lunch
Jake: I want to punch you
Cass: Do it. I like that shit
It was February when Jake took a trip to Camden Library to finalise the handover of the old fire station artefacts. As it turned out, the library had been pleased to see the back of them in return for a hefty donation, and Jake had the perfect place for the vintage fire engine in the entrance of the new restaurant. He tracked down the woman in charge of the exchange and waited in her office, trying not to call her anything rude, while she pulled the paperwork together.
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