“Just make enough for everyone! Jesus!” Dex complained loudly enough for Ros to hear through the wall.
The room felt cold but while it snowed outside and the wind whistled at the crack in the window, the hoodie Shane offered Ros to sleep in had kept him cozy under the comforter all night long. It had lulled him to sleep with Shane’s pleasant, earthy scent.
The room was narrow, with barely any space left to walk along the side of the bed, but Ros hadn’t yet spotted a single cockroach, and the bedding smelled of copious amounts of fabric softener.
For the first time since leaving the frat house, he’d slept soundly, without the fear of being attacked or robbed. And while he was groggy after being jerked awake, he barely even remembered falling asleep last night.
“I’m not cooking for your ass! When have you done something for me, huh?” Shane roared.
“I help you! I give you advice!” Jag roared, and Ros had to snicker to himself, because he had no idea what kind of advice someone like Jag could have offered.
He put on a pair of sweatpants and walked out, feeling like one of those wrinkly dogs with too much skin on them. But the outfit was cozy at least.
The first thing he saw in the open-plan kitchen with mismatched cupboards was Jag sitting on the floor between Frank’s legs while the older man tidied his hair with a wooden comb. The towel wrapped around Jag’s hips didn’t hide much, so Ros looked up, dragging his gaze up the unexpectedly wiry body that he’d so far only seen wrapped in loose-fitting clothes.
The interior smelled of coffee and pancakes, one of which was already half-eaten in Jag’s hand. Dex, who drank from a mug in just a pair of white, loose-fitting boxer shorts, saw Ros first and winked at him while Shane groaned, moving the pan over the stove.
“You took the best one, Jag. What the fuck’s wrong with you…”
In comparison to Rosen’s chilly room, this space was boiling with heat generated by both the stove and the fireplace in the corner, which explained why even Frank had chosen to wear a thin tank top that revealed his firm, dusky arms.
Jag shrugged before tearing off a chunk of the pancake as if he were a child playing the role of a caveman. “You can wrestle me for it. We’ll see who wins.”
Dex rolled his eyes. “Nobody’s fighting you over food you’ve already licked.”
Ros’s face was already flushing from the unexpected heat, so he took off Shane’s hoodie, uncovering his own T-shirt. “Good morning. Is it always so busy here?”
Frank smiled at him, looking up from Jag’s head, where he was creating a parting in the thick locks. “We don’t often have breakfast together, but for some reason Shane’s decided to grace us with pancakes, so no one wanted to miss that.”
Dex smirked at Ros, leaning against the counter in a pose clearly meant as seductive. “Wonder why.”
Shane spun around, his eyes wide as if he’d been caught with a nasty porn mag. He held a spatula and wore a plain black T-shirt that he’d tucked into his pants at the front and left loose in the back.
“Morning. It was my turn to prepare breakfast,” he stated and left the pan to pull out one of the chairs by the table, which had already been set with mismatched crockery.
Ros couldn’t have felt more welcome.
While he’d spent most of his life in more favorable conditions, in a house with more space and better insulation, there was comfort to being around so many gay men—not in a club setting, not trying to date or hook up—just hanging out, chatting with people he didn’t need to hide parts of himself from. For once, he didn’t feel like the odd one out, even if he was an outsider in Frank’s household.
“Oh! My favorite juice.” Ros smiled at Shane and poured himself some of the orange-lemon nectar standing in the middle of the table alongside a jug of water. He’d mentioned it to Shane many times, and while he couldn’t be certain whether he was the reason for its presence at breakfast, he still smiled at him when he put the glass to his lips.
Shane’s mouth twitched, as if he’d lost the plot, but Frank was there to speak for him. “He drove out early to buy it for you.”
Dex put his chin in his hands and sighed, watching Shane with a smirk. “Isn’t he just dreamy? I heard he saves kittens on his days off.” The mockery couldn’t have been clearer, and Ros had to bite his lip not to laugh when Shane hit the back of Dex’s head with the spatula.
“Don’t listen to them. They just want to embarrass me,” he grumbled, returning to the stove to add the final pancakes to the massive portion already stacked on a plate with a deer pattern around the edge.