Handholds Before Breakfast

At the corner market, Marlon had organized Ravi’s breakfast list by aisle before they reached the produce section. He matched Kendrick’s pace without comment, steering them around a crowd near the dairy case with easy efficiency.

At checkout, Marlon added a narrow white roll from the pharmacy shelf.

Kendrick picked it up. “Rigid strapping tape.”

“Inch and a half wide. Cloth-backed. Nonstretch.” Marlon’s mouth curved. “You said the athletic tape at the gym curls beneath your brace and makes you swear at innocent furniture.”

“I said that once.”

“You said it memorably.”

That was not a normal thing to remember. Kendrick put the tape back in the basket anyway.

At Hearthline, Marlon set the roll beside Kendrick’s water bottle. “I brought it. You decide whether you want it.”

“You did not need to buy this.”

“I wanted to.” He lifted both hands. “No expectations, Professor.”

Kendrick used the tape before their easy slab circuit. Marlon never treated his knee like a fragile object—or, worse, an inconvenience. He simply adjusted the route plan, offered clear options, and celebrated when Kendrick made a careful turn on a high foothold.

“See?” Marlon said as Kendrick landed. “Your body has excellent legal counsel.”

“That is almost charming.”

“Almost is my best work.”

Afterward, they carried loose quickdraws into the equipment room. Kendrick bent to set a bin on the lower shelf, then straightened into Marlon at close range. Marlon held a carabiner against his chest, very still.

His attention dipped to Kendrick’s mouth, then returned to his face.

“Professor?”

“Yes?”

“Do you want me to step back?”

The question landed harder than it should have. Kendrick’s thoughts scattered with humiliating speed. “No. I mean—you are fine.”

Marlon’s expression softened. “Okay. I don’t need an answer faster than you have one.”

Then he moved into the hallway, leaving Kendrick room to breathe—and, somehow, wanting less of it.

Ravi stamped their card when they emerged. “Three down,” he said. “Try not to make the equipment room blush.”

“It is a storage closet,” Kendrick said.

“Sure it is.”

Their fourth Saturday began with Ravi losing a volunteer spreadsheet to what he called “administrative anarchy.” Kendrick opened it during prep and found duplicate names, broken formulas, and one poor man assigned to both the dish station and the skillet.

“This is a public hazard,” Kendrick said.

Marlon leaned over his shoulder. “You find spreadsheet repair attractive, don’t you?”

“I find functionality attractive.”

“Professor,” Marlon said, “that is the hottest thing anyone has ever said near a pivot table.”

Twenty minutes later, the schedule worked. Ravi stared at the cleaned columns as though Kendrick had negotiated peace between rival nations.

“You are a menace,” Ravi told him.

“A useful menace,” Marlon corrected, openly pleased.

At the stove, Kendrick noticed flour on Marlon’s cheek. “May I?”

Marlon’s entire face brightened. “Please.”

Kendrick wiped it away with the side of his index finger. Marlon stayed where he was, watching him with an attention that made the skillet suddenly difficult to remember.

“Still okay?” Marlon asked.

“I am removing flour.”

“I had noticed.”

He did not move closer. After a moment, he turned back to the eggs, granting Kendrick the same gracious exit he always did.

Later, while Marlon carried plates toward the serving counter, Ravi cornered Kendrick beside the industrial sink.

“You understand Marlon has been courting you for weeks, right?”

Kendrick laughed. “Courting?”

“Yes. By strategic carbohydrates, medical supplies, and aggressive remembering.”

“He is kind to everyone.”

“Does he buy everyone specialty knee tape? Build them custom climbing circuits? Listen to municipal-transit litigation as if it is prestige television?”

Kendrick set down the dish towel. “Those things could be friendly.”

Ravi gave him a long look. “And I could be a decorative fern.”

On the train home, Kendrick read Marlon’s text three times.

Home safe, Professor? Ice your knee if it complains.

He spent the entire ride wondering whether Ravi could possibly be right.

Fortsetzung folgt.

Kendrick canceled their fifth Saturday at six fourteen on Friday evening, while three transit divisions argued through a service emergency in the glass conference room above his office. A cracked rail joint had shut down part of the elevated line; by dawn, there would be reporters, angry aldermen, and an emergency hearing over the agency’s contingency plan.

He wrote Marlon’s message twice before sending the shorter version.

Work emergency. I’m sorry. I can’t make Hearthline tomorrow.

Marlon answered in less than a minute.

Handle it, Professor. Do you need food, tea, or somebody to curse at the printer?

Kendrick looked at the screen far longer than the joke required, then typed, No. Thank you.

At nine on Saturday morning—after one hour of sleep and enough institutional coffee to qualify as a workplace grievance—his intercom buzzed.

“It’s me,” Marlon said. “I’m downstairs with breakfast. You can tell me no. I’ll leave it with the doorman, or take it home. No guilt either way.”

Kendrick leaned against the kitchen cabinet. “You came here?”

“Yes. But I’m not inviting myself up.”

The restraint in that landed somewhere tender.

“Come up,” Kendrick said.

Marlon arrived carrying a thermal bag and a paper sack, rain freckling the shoulders of his jacket. He took one look at the legal filings covering Kendrick’s tiny dining table and did not comment on the disaster zone.

“I brought soft eggs, potatoes with onions, and Earl Grey,” he said. “Everything is separate because soggy eggs are a civil-rights violation.”

Kendrick gave a tired laugh. “That is not how civil rights work.”

“You’re the attorney.”

“I am.”

Marlon unpacked containers with tidy care, setting a mug beside the kettle as if he had done it a hundred times. “How bad?”

“Bad. Temporary. There are other lawyers on it.”

“Good.” Marlon looked toward him. “Eat. Then I can wash these containers and leave.”

“Don’t leave yet.”

Marlon went still—not trapped, not demanding. Just attentive.

They ate at the counter, knees almost touching beneath it. Kendrick had spent months pretending that this was ordinary: the tea, the tape, the custom routes, the messages asking whether he had gotten home safely. Ordinary kindness from an extraordinary man. Nothing to examine too closely.

“I keep treating every good thing you do as though it’s just your job,” Kendrick said.

Marlon set down his fork. “Some of it is my job.”

“Not this.”

“No.” His mouth curved, smaller than usual. “Not this.”

Kendrick looked at his plate. “I have spent months looking forward to your attention. I told myself it meant I was lonely. Or bored. Or perhaps deranged.”

“Professor.” Marlon’s fondness hit him with almost physical force. “You are not deranged.”

“You’ve been trying to tell me?”

“I fell first,” Marlon said. “Embarrassingly early. You annotated a route card, and I thought, there is the man I will spend six Saturdays trying not to scare.”

Kendrick laughed once. “That was your plan?”

“My plan was to be clear without crowding you.” Marlon’s hands rested flat on the counter. “I didn’t want every nice thing I did to become pressure. I wanted you to have room.”

“You’re not pressure.”

“That matters,” Marlon said. “I needed it to be true, not polite.”

Kendrick met his eyes. “It’s true.”

Marlon stood, then stopped on the other side of the counter. “Can I kiss you?”

The question steadied everything—made it possible to answer without hiding behind wit.

“Yes,” Kendrick said. “I want you to kiss me.”

Marlon’s palm settled along Kendrick’s jaw. “Because you want this? Not because your week was awful?”

“Because I want you. Now.”

Marlon came around the counter.

His mouth met Kendrick’s once, gentle only for the first second. Then Kendrick caught the front of Marlon’s shirt and pulled him closer, and Marlon kissed him again with a hunger that made Kendrick’s lungs forget their assignment. His back found the counter. Marlon’s hands held his waist, firm and careful; Kendrick opened for him, chasing every deeper kiss until the kitchen, the filings, the whole ruined workweek vanished behind the simple fact of Marlon being here.

“Still good?” Marlon asked against his mouth.

“Yes.” Kendrick kissed him before Marlon could retreat. “Very good.”

They stopped only when Kendrick’s knee bumped a cabinet and reality returned with insulting efficiency. Marlon stayed close, his hands still at Kendrick’s sides.

“I need a real date first,” Kendrick said.

Marlon’s eyes brightened. “A real date.”

“Dinner. Somewhere you aren’t coaching and I’m not fielding catastrophe calls.” Kendrick let himself smile. “I want to do this properly before I lose every sensible thought in my kitchen.”

“I can do proper,” Marlon said. “I can also be catastrophically patient.”

“Friday?”

“Friday.”

Kendrick kissed him once more, then made himself step back.

Continua...

Friday’s dinner had lasted past ten—good food, better conversation, and Marlon in a dark green button-down that had made Kendrick forget two separate points about a transit-funding case. By the time they reached Kendrick’s apartment door, he had decided pretending otherwise was beneath him.

“Come upstairs,” Kendrick said.