I’m good. You want some company?
David
You don’t have to
Farzan
I want to
David was tempted to say no. To tell Farzan he’d be fine. That he didn’t feel like having any company. That he just wanted to sleep.
But no. He wanted to see Farzan.
David
Okay
thirty-three
Farzan
For whatever reason, Farzan had gotten sick a lot as a child. All through elementary and middle school, it seemed like he’d gotten an ear infection once a month, on top of the usual other complaints: several bouts with strep throat, one particularly nasty stomach flu in third grade, and plenty of colds.
And every time he got sick, his mom would stay home and take care of him, making one of the few dishes she was actually good at, ash-e reshteh, a thick, herby soup with thin noodles. Even now, as an adult, whenever he felt sick, he’d make it for himself.
He had no idea if David would like it—he and David hadn’t actually talked too much about food preferences—but still, he’d swung by the Persian grocery store on the way to David’s house.
David was quick to answer the doorbell, dressed in the softest-looking pink hoodie Farzan had ever seen, and another pair of those damned sweatpants. Farzan did his best to ignore the swish, swish, swish of David’s dick in them as he stepped back and Farzan kicked off his shoes.
“What’s all this?”
“I was going to make you soup.” He held up his bags.
“You don’t have to do that,” David said, giving a loud sniff. His voice was hoarse, and he had white Kleenex dust powdering the edges of his chapped nostrils and caught in his stubble, but he seemed in good spirits. “I have a frozen pizza we can eat.”
“I want to,” Farzan said. He hated the thought of David wolfing down pizza when he was sick. “Unless you don’t like soup? Or beans? Or herbs?”
“If you’re cooking, I know I’ll like it,” David said, and he looked so sincere and miserable and cute in his pink hoodie, Farzan wanted to just cuddle up with him.
But soup came first.
“You go relax. Let me take care of it.”
Instead of going to the couch, though, David followed Farzan into the kitchen.
“I got it,” Farzan insisted. “You can rest.”
“I’m tired of resting,” David said with a shrug. “Besides, I’d like to watch you cook.”
Farzan wasn’t sure why that sent tingles dancing across his skin. David had seen every inch of him at this point. But watching him cook? That felt… weirdly intimate.
David gave Farzan directions around the kitchen—pointing out pots and pans and cutting boards and colanders—as he got to work. He set a pot of water on the stove to boil. He rinsed and drained the chickpeas, red pearl beans, and lentils; while they cooked, he chopped an onion and got it caramelizing in one of David’s smaller sauté pans.
“What’s that?”
“What’s what?” Farzan pulled the leaves off a stalk of parsley and added them to the colander.
“You’re humming.”
