Moonhaven

Chapter 20: Chocolate, Chocolate, Chocolate

It was nearly midnight when Grayson finally got home. As soon as he stepped inside, he noticed a note taped to the staircase handle, from Alex. After reading it, he strolled into the kitchen and opened the microwave, where a ceramic plate occupied with rice and beans, a small swirl of spaghetti with two meatballs perched on top, and a leafy side of salad, settled in the warmth of the enclosed machine. As he dug into the hefty meal, he read over Alex's note again before pulling out his cell phone to make a call.

Morning arrived with clouded over skies and faint streaks of sunlight making through every now and then.

Lev awoke to a slumbering Alex cuddling up to him with his head nuzzling his shoulder and his arm draped over his abdomen. Lev looked around the bed for his phone, finding it entangled in the ends of the blue comforter, just above where Alex's feet rested underneath it.

7:15, the time read on his phone screen.

It was then that he noticed, in the numb brightness of the bedroom, that the light had been turned off. He was sure it had still been on when he and Alex had dozed off last night chatting about action movies they had watched in the past. The door was also fully closed, even though he clearly remembered that it'd been left ajar yesterday too. He wondered for a second if Alex had woken up during the night and did all that himself, but he and Alex had still been laying shoulder-to-shoulder until they had fallen asleep, so he likely would have felt it if Alex had gotten up from bed.

'Could it have been...?" Lev thought for an unbelievable second, then internally scolded himself for even considering that aliens were involved.

Since Alex was still asleep, he decided to use the opportunity to prepare breakfast. He slipped out of the bed and Alex's grasp, he had begun to notice how much of a heavier sleeper the Prior boy was, then softly trekked out of the room and closed the door before heading downstairs.

Arriving in the kitchen, Lev recalled seeing several boxes of pancake mix in one of the cupboards, and instantly he knew what to make. He also discovered several pint-sized bags of chocolate chips loitering behind the boxes; a lightbulb flickered on in his head. Alex always seemed to be eating for two, so Lev was going to make sure to prepare double the batch. A yawn escaped him; his body yearned for coffee. He remembered again that the Prior's had a coffee machine on the opposite counter. He looked all over the kitchen then, for coffee mix, but instead he found a tall container of hot chocolate mix.

He shrugged, going over to fill the coffee pot with water and some cocoa mix. Thirty minutes later, the pancakes were stacked on two wide dishes, and the cocoa was steaming ready, so all Lev needed to do was set the rest of the table. He froze while setting up one last place setting when he heard someone stomping down the stairs, and suddenly remembered that Alex's father lived in the house too.

"Mmm...what's smells so good?" Grayson murmured to himself as he wandered into the kitchen. "Lex? Oh, it's you, Lev. Boy, am I gonna get heck if I ever get your names mixed up. Did you do all this?" He marveled at the pancake stacks and arranged settings populating the table. "You didn't have to make breakfast."

"Oh, uh, yeah..." Lev quickly grabbed a third plate to set down from the cabinet. "It's no trouble, really." He rushed to get a bottle of maple syrup from the refrigerator as Grayson took a seat.

"And they're chocolate chip too!" Grayson said as he caught a whiff. Not even a second went by as manned his fork, lodging it into the stack and securing two flapjacks that he carried over to his plate. His eyes lit up and his nostrils flared as he saw Lev fetching the pot of hot cocoa. "Hot chocolate too! You must have read one of our minds. Amazing. Alex hadn't told me you could cook. Did you also cook up that banquet last night?"