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Jack's started up baking.
It's the normal fare: cookies at first (chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, and peanut butter), then muffins (blueberry, banana nut, and apple cinnamon), then cakes, varying in tiers, flavors and frosting.
“Why are you doing this gay shit?” Brock said, holding up a muffin tin and turning it around in his hands, inspecting top and bottom.
“Think we should trade places?” Jack replied, pulling open the oven to check on a fresh batch of cookies. Brock nearly threw the tin at him, only stopping himself when he realized the dangers of a hot oven. A “fuck you” had sufficed just fine.
“Seriously, why?” Brock asked again, setting the tin down on the counter.
“Why not?” Jack shrugged and moved over to where he'd set a bowl of fresh batter. “S'fun. Wanna lick the spoon?”
“Fuck no,” Brock spat. He turned on his heel and stomped off to the farthest room from the kitchen.
He spends the next while vehemently not thinking about eating the batter right out of the bowl. Who would even do that, anyway? It's got like, raw eggs and he doesn't want fucking salmonella. It doesn't matter that it's chocolate, and sweet, and it'd probably feel good to have a stomach full of sugar, and –
No.
*
Next week, there's a devil's food cake in the fridge. There's a piece cut out, a respectable size, and there's a ton left. It's a big cake. Too big for two people. Brock definitely isn't going to eat any, so it's too big for one person, so what the fuck, Jack?
“Fuck this,” Brock mumbles, slamming the fridge door closed hard enough for the magnets to rattle. One falls off, so Brock leans down to pick it up and when he stands to stick it back to the surface of the fridge door, he pauses. Brock stares at the white surface of the fridge door, long enough for his vision to lose focus. He goes through the mental catalog of all the food in the fridge and when he envisions the cake, in his mind's eye it's big enough to take up half the shelf space. He thinks about the swirls in the chocolate frosting, the moistness of the cake, the way that it's already been cut and eaten so it's okay, it's okay because Jack ate it too and he made it, made it for both of them, so it's okay, just for a bit, or he can think about how much he ate and then maybe –
Brock opens the fridge. His palms are sweating, his stomach is churning but in a way that feels like he's hungry, he's probably hungry, his knees are shaking but it's just because he needs to eat. It's good to eat. People like when you eat their food. It's okay.
Brock takes the cake out of the fridge. It feels like it weighs ten pounds in his hands. He sets it on the kitchen table and stares at it. And stares.
He slowly touches the tip of one finger into the frosting. It's a minuscule amount, barely enough to taste it. He raises his finger to his lips and licks the frosting off. It's sweet, as sweet as he expected, and the unmistakable flavor of chocolate, and –
Brock picks up the cake and throws it into the trash.
*
“Why is this in the garbage?” Jack asks, when he finally notices.
Brock doesn't answer. He's been sitting at the kitchen table staring at the garbage can. He doesn't think he can take his eyes off it. He thinks he can see frosting on the edge of the garbage can but it might just be his imagination.
“Hello?” Jack says, waving his hand in front of Brock's eyes. Brock nearly jumps in his seat, and the adrenaline plus irritation leads him to smack Jack's hand out of his face. Jack doesn't recoil, just looks Brock in the eye and slowly lowers his hand to his side. He keeps his gaze locked on Brock's, green eyes seeming to see through Brock down to his bone marrow.
“Fuck off,” Brock says, getting up to leave the room.
Jack steps in front of him, faster than Brock can process.
“Why is it in the garbage?” he says, voice low and steady compared to Brock's. “I put a lot of work into that. I put work into a lot of things around here.”
“You put eggs and sugar and flour in a fucking bowl and stirred,” Brock snarls. “Big fucking goddamn deal.”
“What the fuck is your problem now?” Jack asks, glaring. “You won't anythin' I make. Always with the healthy bullshit. Gotta keep your girlish figure, princess?”
Brock's mind blanks, searing white. He can't think of anything to say to that, considering how close it is to the fucking truth.
“It – tastes like shit!” Brock yells, and pushes past Jack with all his strength. Jack lets him go.
*
The next morning, Brock's sitting at the kitchen table, this time not staring at the garbage can. The trash has been taken out, there's nothing in there, so it's fine.
Until a plate with a piece of cake is dropped unceremoniously in front of him. Brock's eyes widen and then narrow, and of course it's Jack in front of him, twirling a fork in hand with dextrous fingers.
“What the fuck is this,” Brock says, and when he takes a closer look at it – “Did you take this out of the fucking garbage? Are you fucking serious, Rollins?”
Jack shrugs and stops twirling the fork, planting it into the center of the mangled piece of cake.
“Eat up,” Jack says, pushing the plate closer to Brock.
“I'm not fucking eating this,” Brock retorts. “It was in the garbage, for fuck's sake. Make ano – go fuck yourself.”
Brock makes to get up but before he can, there's chocolate and frosting and sugar and sweetness in his mouth. He chokes, grabbing Jack's wrist to get the fork out of his mouth, but it's too late. He's salivating, and the taste hit his tongue, and his eyes are watering but it's just because of how deep the fork is in his mouth. He tries to pull his mouth off the fork but Jack's a step ahead of him and grabs him by the hair and keeps his head still. Brock makes a muffled, unintelligible attempt at telling Jack to let him go.
“Eat,” Jack says, voice and face expressionless.
Brock slams his fist on the table and points at the garbage can.
“It's still perfectly fine. You put it in the garbage, you get to enjoy the consequences.” Jack shoves the fork in hard enough to make Brock gag. “Chew and swallow.”
Brock does. He does his best not to taste anything but it's hard. His saliva's started to break down the cake and his entire mouth tastes like chocolate. When Jack's seen that he's swallowed, he takes the fork out of Brock's mouth and puts it back into the cake.
“Why the fuck did you do that?! Why did you do that, why?!” Brock shouts as he loses himself and starts scraping at his tongue with his fingers.
Jack doesn't answer, just watches the spectacle before him.
“I'm going to get f-fuh-f-fuck, fuck you! Fuck you, why did you fucking do that to me, I don't want to be fucking fat, I don't wanna be!” Brock shouts, and nearly sends the plate crashing to the floor before Jack grabs his arm.
“Want to eat more?”
“Sh-sh-sh-shut up!”
“Okay,” Jack says, and lets go of Brock's wrist. Brock doesn't try to smash the plate again. Instead, he runs away from the kitchen altogether, not staying to hear what Jack has to say next. He sprints into the bathroom and barely makes it to the toilet before he throws up everything he's eaten in the past twenty four hours. The sour bile mixing with the sugary sweetness of the cake is disgusting, excruciating, and Brock hates throwing up but he never has to make himself do it, the sheer stress of eating anything from before is enough.
He retches, crying hard enough to make himself retch harder. Jack comes up behind him, rubs his back and smooths his hair down. Jack waits until Brock's done throwing up, elbows on the closed toilet lid with his head in his hands, to ask.
“Why'd you have to make that one happen?”
“I don't want to be fat,” Brock says, voice rough from the force of his retching.
“Okay,” Jack says. “That doesn't give you the right to throw out what I make. If you don't want to eat it, don't eat it.”
“It's hard,” Brock whines, hating that he's so fucking whiny. “You kept – you didn't help me.”
“I did,” Jack says, and sighs when Brock lets his arms collapse and buries his face in them against the porcelain. “What I did was teaching you not to waste food.”
Brock's shoulders begin to shake.
“There's kids starvin' in Africa and shit, Brock,” Jack says calmly. “Food's important. For a lot of reasons.”
Brock can't seem to get enough air.
“Look, you wanna lose weight?”
Brock's breath halts completely.
“Cake has a lot of calories, that's it, right? You made a mistake. It was just one piece, though. You can burn it off. No problem, huh? I'll help you.”
Brock raises his head slowly, blinking at Jack through tears, wiping his nose on the back of his wrist.
“You'll help me?”
“'Course. Fix your diet and all that. It's easy. You don't need to have a fit. How many times I tell you that, huh?”
Brock blinks, staring at Jack for a few seconds before launching himself into Jack's arms and burying his face in Jack's chest.
Jack holds Brock close, wrapping an arm around him to rest one hand lightly on Brock's flat, toned stomach and kisses Brock's temple.
“You'll look real good, baby.”