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Felix raised his hand to knock on the door. Three quick raps. And then he waited, but not for long. The door opened and a skeptical looking Minho stood on the other side.
"Why are you knocking?" Minho asked.
"Oh," Felix grimaced, an apology already forming in his mind. "Is Jisung asleep?"
Minho scoffed and ushered Felix into the house. "Of course he's sleeping, but you know a couple of knocks wouldn't wake him up."
Felix toed his shoes off at the entryway and Minho kicked some nondescript gray slippers in front of him. Felix slipped his feet inside, toes curling into the simple comfort.
"You know you don't have to knock."
A small laugh. "It's polite, hyung. I have manners."
Rolling his eyes, Minho began walking to the kitchen. "You are a shameless slut on your best days. Don't preach to me about manners."
Felix slapped Minho on the shoulder before quickly dodging out of the way of whatever retaliation Minho might try to inflict on him. Giggling, he shuffled his way into the kitchen.
He stopped to take in the kitchen's state. Clean, if not a little cluttered. As if either Jisung or Minho, most likely the former, were in a perpetual state of doing something but forgot halfway through and went to something else.
"Why are you pouting?"
Felix hadn't even noticed he had been. "You started without me."
"Were you going to watch the pot boil?" Minho tsked. "Plus, we're proactive in this kitchen. We multitask. We don't trust Lee Yongbok to light the burner."
If the two of them weren't in the kitchen where sharp objects and fire resided, Felix might try hitting Minho again. "Shut up! I'm capable of turning on a stove."
Minho snickered. "And that time you nearly burnt our place down…that was just a coincidence."
"First of all, it was Seungmin's fault."
"And yet it was you I found in the kitchen."
Felix gathered his hair and aggressively wrapped it into a hair tie. Minho had once nagged at him about loose hair in the kitchen, and he wanted to get ahead of the lecture. "I turned on the burner and Seungmin laid a towel down. I'm sorry I scooped it up before it could burn the apartment down."
Minho just stared at him.
"I'm telling the truth." He definitely did not emphasize the last word with a stomp of his foot.
A few slow blinks were Minho's only response.
"Ugh, whatever. How about we focus on today's meal? Which you've already started."
"Here," Minho opened the fridge and began pulling out vegetables. "Start washing these."
Felix eyed him, and Minho poked a cucumber into his cheek.
"Don't look at me like that. The vegetables have to be washed. I'm not giving you a kiddie job."
"Right."
Minho reached out to tweak Felix's nipple. Felix yelped and rubbed at the sore spot.
"If you do well with the washing, I'll even let you use the knife when you're done."
"Promise?"
"Promise. Now get to work."
Felix gave scrubbing the vegetables his full attention. He took it so seriously he only made one crude hand motion when he washed the cucumbers. Though, really, Minho probably would have enjoyed a few more, but Felix had a point to prove.
While Felix washed, Minho moved effortlessly around the kitchen, gathering spices and utensils. He tidied a section of the counter so they would have a workspace.
"Bring everything over here," Minho said.
Gathering all the vegetables up, he moved to where Minho was and carefully released all of it onto the clean counter space.
"I'm going to get started on the meat. I'll leave you to dice all of this up."
He turned to open a drawer and pulled out a knife, then crouched to open a cabinet so he could drag out a large cutting board. He pushed the food out of the way and laid the cutting board down beside it.
Minho held out the knife to Felix and waited until Felix wrapped a hand around the handle. Minho pressed a finger knife to the blade to guide it to point downward. He nodded at Felix and then turned to start the next part of dinner.
Felix sighed and turned to the pile of vegetables in front of him. A cucumber, a couple of carrots, a few tomatoes, an onion—which he knew was going to be a bitch—he didn't know where to start.
Finally he decided he'd start with the tomatoes, messy but probably the easiest thing to cut through.
He grabbed a tomato and put it in the center of the cutting board. He wrapped his right hand around the handle of the knife and used his left to stabilize the tomato. Felix looked for the bump where the tomato had once been attached to the vine and then cut through the center of it—mostly the center. He was sure the tomatoes didn't have to be exactly the same size.
"What are you doing?"
Felix glanced up, balking at Minho's horrified face.
"Uh, slicing a tomato?"
Minho's eyebrows raised. "That's what you would call that?"
"What am I doing wrong?"
Minho took a deep breath and left his own station. He stopped at the sink to scrub his hands and wipe them off on a kitchen towel.
"It's not your fault," Minho said. "I should've given better directions."
Minho placed his hands next to Felix's on the handle of the knife before gently taking it away from him. "When you hold a knife, you place your thumb on the base of the blade just above the handle, then place your index finger on the other side so you're pinching it. The rest of your hand wraps around the handle and that's how you create a sturdy grip. Here," Minho held the knife back out to Felix. "Try it again."
Felix placed his thumb and index finger where Minho had directed. It was a little weird having something so sharp pinched between his fingers, but it definitely felt more secure.
Felix turned and pulled the tomato back in front of him. He began slicing again, feeling a little more confident in his abilities until he turned to see Minho obviously biting his tongue.
"What?"
"You're holding the knife really well now, but you need to work on…everything else."
"Seriously, hyung."
"Okay, sorry, sorry. Pop your elbow out so your wrist is forced to stay turned and then curl the fingers of your left hand in. Place the blade against the knuckle of your middle finger so you know you won't chop it off. Now your knife is going to stay in one place and you're going to move the food towards it."
Felix popped his elbow out and curled his fingers in, the pulpy flesh of the tomato giving way beneath his hand. He softened his pressure, sighed, and then began chopping again.
"Perfect, Yongbok, perfect."
"You're so professional," Felix snorted.
"When you leave here with all ten of your fingers, make sure you send me a thank you gift."
"A basket of flavored lube and an economy sized box of condoms."
"You think Jisung and I still use condoms?"
Felix's hand stuttered.
"Yah! If you can't talk and cut then just focus on the cutting."
"You can't just slip that you and Jisung are hitting it raw into conversation while I have something sharp in my hand."
Minho shrugged. "You asked."
"I didn't."
They were interrupted by a sleep rumpled Jisung shuffling into the kitchen. His hair was sticking up in three different directions, and he was still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. It looked as if he could collapse again right there on the cold tile of the kitchen floor.
Halfway through a yawn, Jisung asked, "What are you making?"
"Food," Minho answered.
Jisung groaned and moved to drape himself across Minho's back.
"No cuddling in the kitchen." Minho grumbled but made no move to get Jisung off of him.
Jisung ignored him and nuzzled deeper into the space between Minho's shoulder blades, like he was trying to bury himself in the other man.
Felix watched them. "Hyung is a little crazy about his kitchen, huh? He almost bit my head off about my knife skills."
"Lack thereof."
His eyes were going to be sore with the amount of times he rolled his eyes at Minho. "Jisung, you want to step in here?" Felix held out the knife handle-forward to Jisung.
Minho quickly extricated himself from Jisung's tentacle-like grip and took the knife from Felix. "Absolutely not. Jisung isn't good with knives."
Felix watched Minho place the knife back on the cutting board before looking at Jisung who just shrugged and leaned back against the counter.
"You didn't teach him?"
With the knife safely out of sight, Minho moved back to stand in front of Jisung, his eyes soft when he said: "he had no interest in learning."
"Why learn when hyung is here to do all the chopping?"
Jisung puckered his lips for a kiss, which Minho returned with stiff, overly pursed lips. Jisung giggled and Minho pressed a softer kiss to his neck. Jisung jumped away, ticklish, and Minho used the opportunity to smack Jisung on the ass and direct him out of the kitchen.
"You really haven't taught him?"
The question shook Minho out of his Jisung induced trance and he turned back to Felix. "I tried, but he is too easily distracted. It's safer for everyone if he never tries again."
Felix chewed the bottom of his lip. "But I'm not? Easily distracted, I mean."
"No, Felix," Minho smiled at him, just a hint of upturned lips. "You're the perfect student."
Felix blushed. "Really?"
"Of course. Look how well you're doing." He nodded toward Felix's partially sliced, quite mushy tomato.
"Thank you Minho-hyung." He picked up the knife again, eager to finish chopping the vegetables and get dinner on the table for the three of them.
"Just need to chop a little faster or we'll be eating next week."
Felix pinched the blade between his thumb and index finger again and shook his head. "Just couldn't let the moment sit for too long, huh?"
Minho giggled softly and patted Felix on the shoulders. "Finish that up. I've got more for you to do."
"Right."
Felix rolled his shoulders, stretched his neck, and turned his focus back to his task. One tomato half-way down, a whole vegetable medley to go.