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The breakfast place is almost packed when they arrive, and Asher gives Grant an “I told you so” look that Grant defuses with a smile and a touch to his arm.
Asher isn’t all that mad anyway. Even a crowd such as this has a certain charm to it when he’s with Grant, as soppy and ridiculous as that sounds. And it’s been a while since he’s been out for breakfast. It had been more difficult than he thought it should be to conceal the surge of happiness he’d felt at Grant’s suggestion that they eat out instead of cooking. Grant’s smile and kiss on his cheek had told him he’d seen right through him, though.
“Most important meal of the day,” he’d said, his eyes twinkling, and Asher really couldn’t argue with that.
They eventually get a table outside, in a nice sunny spot out on the terrasse. Goldwalk Channel is below them, sparkling in the morning sunlight like a jeweled tapestry. The rumble of the ambling crowd is more distant from here. It almost feels like being up in Highrise, but with the wind in your face and the sun in your hair. It’s nice. As he sits and pulls his chair in, Asher is glad that he’s feeling good today. He would have hated to be stuck in a dark cloud even more on a lovely day like this.
“Mr. Administrator,” the waitress says politely as she places a menu first in front of Grant, then in front of Asher.
“Please,” Grant says graciously. “Today, I’m only one customer out of many.”
The waitress smiles shyly as she fills their water glasses and takes their coffee orders, then leaves to give them space to peruse the menu. Looking after her, Asher knows she’s half-charmed already. The same thing did happen to him, after all.
Grant follows his gaze then looks sheepish. As well he should. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine.” Asher smirks as he unfolds his menu. “Can’t help your celebrity status.”
Grant ducks his head into his water. “You’re more celebrity material than I am. Editor of a major publication--”
“Porfa. I’m a gossip rag author compared to you.”
Grant sets down his water and reaches for Asher’s hand. Asher folds his fingers naturally against Grant’s before he remembers they’re in public, and more importantly that he himself isn’t usually this demonstrative when in view of, well, anyone. Grant seems to remember this too and starts to pull away, but Asher catches his fingertips to keep him there, and Grant smiles. He lifts Asher’s hand to his lips and places a lingering kiss on his knuckles.
“Sorry,” he murmurs, just above the din of the terrasse.
“It’s fine,” Asher says again. He gently strokes Grant’s lower lip with one finger. “Pretty much the whole city must know about us by now.”
“Why, did you publish it?”
Asher snorts and Grant laughs silently, his forehead lowering onto the back of Asher’s hand. The waitress chooses that moment to return with their coffee, and flushes visibly when she sees them with their hands intertwined.
“Thank you, dear,” Grant tells her, his thumb stroking over the back of Asher’s hand.
Asher’s smile, as he watches her leave again, may be just slightly smug, if Grant’s sly look is anything to go by. For a moment, Asher thinks he may try to push their luck a little further, but Grant just puts Asher’s hand back on the table, places his reading glasses on his nose, and picks up his menu in a serious attempt to choose an order. Asher dumps cream and sugar in his coffee and does the same.
The sounds and scents of the city mingle with the more private atmosphere of the terrasse. Asher finds it very tolerable, even when he has to scoot his chair a bit to the side to allow passage to someone from the next table (“‘Scuse me, mister”). Something in the man’s frame and gait looks awfully familiar, but then the waitress re-enters to take their orders, and he loses the man from sight.
It’s no matter. Even he can’t work on an empty stomach and with this lingering feeling of pleasant exhaustion. When he shifts in his seat to rearrange the various tabletop implements to his liking, he can feel the slight pull in his muscles, the just-noticeable ache in the joints of his hips. And when he closes his eyes briefly to enjoy the warmth of the sun coming down on their heads, he remembers the softness of Grant’s duvet, the firmness of the bed beneath him, the slight dip where Grant’s knees press down the mattress on each side of his hips. Good feelings. Asher smiles, privately, into his coffee. Grant is doodling on his napkin, angular mazes and swirls and flowers and what looks suspiciously like Asher’s name. The side of Grant’s shoe just brushes Asher’s calf under the table.
Good feelings. Asher feels warm and content, maybe even happy. He doesn't even remember the last time he's been this happy. He says so, and Grant considers him over the rim of his coffee cup, his glasses sliding down his nose.
"That's...good," he says slowly, "though I do wish you felt this happy more often. For your sake."
Asher reaches across the table to gently push Grant's glasses back up the bridge of his nose. "So do I. But I'm willing to take what I can get, when I can get it."
"Fair enough."
The tender look Grant gives him through his spectacles makes Asher want to lean over and kiss him, but he'd feel too self-conscious doing that here, so he settles for tucking a stray wisp of Grant's silver hair behind his ear and sits back in his chair to further enjoy the comfortable bustle of the terrasse. Grant polishes off his coffee, then tastes Asher's. No matter how many times he does, he always makes the same "much too sweet" face at Asher's cream-and-sugar concoction.
"Not everyone can stomach it black as night," Asher points out.
Grant takes another tentative sip. He lives in hope, or perhaps a kind of stubborn optimism. "Royce can."
"Royce is an outlier."
"Don't let him hear you say that, it'll go to his head."
Asher snatches his coffee back and nurses it possessively, and Grant laughs at his expression. The side of his shoe glides up Asher's calf, and Asher has to take a big gulp of coffee to conceal the shiver that runs up his spine. Grant smirks knowingly, and Asher gives him a mock glower that he tempers by lacing the fingers of his non-coffee cup hand with Grant's.
Their food arrives at long last, warm and steamy and delicious. They thank the waitress and dig into freshly cooked waffles and toast and sausages and eggs, and into piles of cool sliced fruit coupled with English cream. As he tucks into the first of his long-coveted waffles, Asher considers the last time he had tried to replicate such a spread at home. It had been rather good, though he had burnt the waffle, but overall it had been far too much trouble for one person's breakfast.
That had been before Grant, though. If he were to try cooking that whole thing again, he would probably do it on a morning where Grant is hovering expectantly by the coffee machine, or bothering him at the stove by wrapping his arms around his waist and pressing distracting kisses to his shoulder while Asher tries valiantly to not to break their omelets apart.
The longer he thinks about it, the nicer it sounds. Asher files that plan away for next time and finishes his sweetened coffee with satisfaction.
They talk about this and that as they eat. Grant reprimands him jokingly when he tries to bring up something work-related ("It's the weekend, Asher, honestly") so they begin to make plans for the next public holiday instead. Asher had been thinking of staying in with his cat and the half a dozen novels he has yet to catch up on, but Grant won't hear of it.
"Not that I have anything against a quiet three-day weekend," he says while spearing a strawberry slice with his fork, "but wouldn't you like to go somewhere? Even a little?"
Asher waits until the waitress has finished refilling his coffee cup before answering. "You mean like a day trip?"
"Just so!" Only Grant can use an expression like "just so" in casual conversation and still make it sound genuine. "If I could take you out for only one day then I would consider the weekend a success."
"You could just take the chance to sleep in."
"Nonsense. I haven't slept in in thirty years."
Asher has yet to disprove that, considering he always finds Grant awake and ready to go even when he sleeps over at his place. He stirs cream and sugar into his fresh coffee until it goes the perfect shade of light brown. "I'll see how I feel around then."
"Excellent." Grant winks at him. "I promise I'll make it worth your while."
"You always do," Asher says before he can stop himself. His voice gets a little lower as he says it, suggestively low, quite without his leave. It's probably the most he's managed to flirt in public. It isn't much by most people's standards, but by his--
He hides his blush in his coffee while Grant steals his bowl of leftover English cream. They speak of nothing of real import for a while, though Grant does try to sneak his shoe up Asher's leg again, and this time Asher has the presence of mind to give him a little kick under the table to make him behave. Grant gives him a "you wound me, sir" look that does nothing to diminish the mischievous sparkle in his eyes.
Comfortably full and still thirsting for one more coffee, they sit and enjoy the terrasse for a bit longer. The crowd is thinning as the late morning wears on, but Asher still has to push his chair aside again as the same gentleman from before stands to leave his table with a "sorry, need the little boy's room".
"As do I," Grant declares, throwing his cloth napkin down with all the relish of a well-fed man. "Excuse me for a moment, cariño."
"Of course."
Grant stands and heads off, whistling an old tune as he goes. There are two things in life that make him as happy as this: a job well done, and a good date. Asher has told him off for being the hopeless old romantic that he is, but privately, he has to admit it makes him happy too, to be spending his scarce and valuable free time with someone in this way.
He's basking in that thought and mixing his third sugared milk coffee when there's a snicker to his left. There's a woman at the next table -- the companion of the familiar man who keeps standing to use the washroom -- with a colourful scarf over her head and a pair of oversized sunglasses over her eyes. She could be any of the thousands of Cloudbank socialites who regularly frequent this restaurant, and normally Asher wouldn't give her a second glance, but there's something familiar about the tilt of her nose and the pitch of her laugh. That's when he notices the particular shade of red hair falling artfully over her forehead, and he knows: "Red."
The woman looks up from her phone, which she had been tapping on one-handed, her lips pursing. "You can recognize me?"
"It's my job to recognize people, Red."
Red swipes the sunglasses from her face and tosses them on the table. "Damn reporters!" Then she turns back to her phone and types some more, two-handed this time. She means business.
"You said I looked perfect," she mutters as she types, then drops the phone on the table next to her glasses.
As Grant had pointed out earlier, it is the weekend, but Asher's reporter instincts never did learn to take a day off. "If it's a sweetheart you're talking to, then they would probably say that any time."
Red, to her credit, doesn't rise to the bait. Instead, she says with affected sweetness, "Speaking from experience, Mr. Kendrell?"
"I am." He sips his coffee as he relishes Red's momentarily stunned expression. "What? Is that so surprising?"
"It's surprising that you'd admit it," Red concedes. "For someone whose job it is to dig up dirt on other people, you don't reveal much about yourself."
Asher frowns at Red's crude understanding of his profession. "Should I? I'm no celebrity. No one is interested in the sordid details of my life."
"So there is something sordid about your life, then?"
"You have no idea." And she never would.
Red lifts her hands and sticks out her thumbs and index fingers to form a rectangular frame, and places Asher right at the center of it. "Mr. Kendrell, my readers are dying to know: what is the current state of your relationship with that dreamy Administrator?"
"I am not answering that."
"But think of your fans! And the Administrator's."
"What fans? I don't--"
"Hmm, I suppose you're right. Bragging about getting into Mr. Admin's, er, good graces is sure to set off the hounds."
Asher has enough street smarts to know when he's being taunted, but: reporter's instinct. "What do you mean?"
Red tilts her head to peer at him innocently around the camera frame of her hands. "Well, word on the street is both you and the good Administrator have quite a few admirers in the wings. Some of them may even be the jealous sort. Especially in his case. Old flames, jilted lovers. You know how it is."
The way she's going on, Red could probably be writing a column of her own. Asher knows better than to listen to her, but his mind remains stuck on old flames. He knows Grant's had plenty of those, of course. It's no secret. Grant has even spoken to him about some of them. It's not like Asher minds. That was then.
Still, he'd be lying to himself if he said it didn't make him a little insecure, sometimes. Not Grant's attitude, but his history. He has no illusions: he knows he probably isn't the most attractive, or the most educated, or the most interesting, or the most adventurous of all of Grant's lovers. But he's here, now. He does the best he can by him, and it's enough. It's more than enough.
Following that train of thought, he gives Red his most thunderous glare over the rim of his coffee cup, but she only smirks.
"Nice try," Asher tells her.
"Wasn't it, though?" Red answers, pleased. "I'm a devil in disguise."
"Well, if that's your disguise--" Asher gestures to her sunglasses with his cup. "--I'd say it's plain as day."
Red's eyes narrow, though the smile says on. "You're a mean one, Mr. Grinch."
"Who's mean?" Grant cuts in jovially. He'd returned while Asher and Red had been busy staring each other down.
"Your boyfriend," Red says petulantly. While the title is a fitting one, Asher still wishes it hadn't come from Red.
"Him? But he's sweet." Grant leans over Asher to place a kiss on his hair, and Asher struggles to not smile too widely. "Once you get to know him."
Red picks up her phone and thumbs through her messages. "I've been trying."
"You make a poor interviewer," Asher says.
"But an awesome friend," Red shoots back. "Try me out sometime, instead of trying to dissect me like every other reporter in this city does."
Asher has nothing to say to that, so he just turns away and downs the last of his coffee. "Ready to go?" he says to Grant.
Grant squeezes his shoulder affectionately. "After you, Mr. Kendrell. Goodbye, Red."
Red wiggles the tips of her fingers at them, her eyes still on her phone. She's done with him, for now. Asher doesn't know if he's relieved or disappointed.
They leave. Asher catches a glimpse of Red's companion making his way back through the tables, his bulky, muscular frame just wide enough to cause him trouble in the narrow spaces. Too late, he realizes: "That's him."
"Who, cariño?"
Asher looks up at Grant, wide-eyed, then turns to look back at the dining room, but they're already out of sight of the terrasse. "Him! The man Red has been seeing! I've been trying to get information on him for weeks. It has to be him!"
"Ah. So it is. I had a lovely chat with him in the washroom, as it were."
"You what."
"Whoa, now." Grant puts his hands up placatingly. "If you want to see him that badly, why not go back?"
It's so tempting an idea that he can feel the physical pull of it in his gut, but before he can take a step, something stops him. He thinks about Red, sitting in a crowded restaurant terrasse with her mysterious beau, her hair and eyes covered to avoid recognition. He thinks about her disdain of reporters, her snide dismissal of his questions. Try me out sometime, instead of trying to dissect me.
"No," Asher says slowly.
Grant hums. "No?"
"No. It's all right. Let them...have their privacy."
"Are you sure? It may cost you the story."
Asher turns away and heads for the door before he can change his mind. "I'll get the story eventually. But not today. It's the weekend, after all."
"You are sweet," Grant says delightedly. It'd be embarrassing if it were anyone but Grant saying so.
They emerge into brilliant early afternoon sunshine, expertly calculated to cast the maximum amount of rays with the minimum danger of heat stroke. Asher catches Grant's hand on the way out and slips their fingers together. Usually, Grant is the one to initiate this kind of contact, but Asher's in the mood. Grant's palm is dry and warm and fits perfectly against his.
Grant looks up at the skyline, then down at the canals. There's love for the city in every glance, and when he looks at Asher, there's love there too. "It's a beautiful day. Fancy a walk?"
Asher smiles gently in response. They skirt around the corner of the restaurant to reach the main thoroughfare, and as they pass below the terrasse, a woman's voice is heard up above: "Babe, did you hear? Asher Kendrell is sleeping with that old Administrator! Isn't it scandalous!"
All at once, Asher loses his temper. "He's my boyfriend!" he yells, to the aborted clinking noises of momentarily forgotten breakfasts, and to a peal of raucous laughter from the infuriating Red.
"You heard it here first, folks!" she enthuses from on top.
A dozen reputation-ruining schemes run through Asher's head, but Grant is already pulling him away, the grip of his hand firm with affection and his laughter ringing down the street.
exit()