Romance short. A shy man falls for a regular at his bakery.
4k, rated M, M/M. Just a sweet one between a baker and a… businessman. Adapted from a TweetFic.
Martin’s been a bit in love with the man since he’s laid eyes on him.
He’s always had a habit of falling of people just from the sight of them, of being entranced and hypnotized by the way they walk or stand, the way they look in motion, the way their voices stand.
He’s aware of the smallest details about people sometimes, and they make his heart flutter or his breath catch in his throat — the way some people put out one finger when they hold a cup, not sticking it out all the way but just not letting it touch the surface; the way some people sweep through their hair with one hand and toss their head slightly after they’re done, making the locks bounce; the way some people shimmy once they’ve pulled on their coat, making sure it sits right on their shoulders.
This man does all three.
He’s a businessman, Martin thinks, probably a lawyer or an accountant or just works in an office — he wears a suit every day, and Martin doesn’t know much about suits, but he knows that this man’s suit fits him very well, is tight to his thighs and his generous arse, seems perfectly moulded to his broad shoulders with a little dip where it comes in to hug his waist.
His coats are always nice, too, always flowing as he moves, always in complementary colours to match his tie or his socks. He’s well-dressed, very well-dressed — maybe he works in fashion, or with fashionable people.
He’s almost always on the phone when he comes into the bakery, always asking distractedly for the same thing — a pain au chocolat and a regular café au lait to go — and after a while, Martin just makes sure it’s ready for 7:45 because he comes in at 7:50 almost on the dot every weekday, so he just hands it over as the businessman taps his card.
It means he doesn’t stay for longer, continuing to talk briskly on the phone while shooting Martin and the other employees and other customers apologetic smiles with his shiny white teeth and slight overbite, because he no longer has to wait, but he smiles so much wider because he doesn’t have to, often gives Martin a little wave as he goes.
Martin’s ill for a week in November, gets absolutely bodied by some horrible stomach bug, and he doesn’t think about the businessman, or work — he doesn’t think about anything except how he wishes they did cooling toilet seats so that when you’re feverish you can rest your forehead on it in between bouts of vomiting.
He’s tender when he goes back on the Monday, not used to the early morning start after a few days of being destroyed and then barely being able to sleep once his schedule’s thrown off.
At 7:47, the businessman comes in, beams, and hangs up his phone with little more than a, “I’ll call you right back!” and it makes Martin’s heart flutter in his chest even before he says, “I’m so pleased to see you — no one else gets it quite right.”
“Café au lait isn’t that hard to fuck up,” Martin says, stumbling before the words come out. He can’t believe he’s said it, somehow, feels a kind of excruciating self-consciousness bubble between his ribcage and his skin, because he’s pretty sure he shouldn’t say fuck to customers. “I’m sure there’s nothing wrong with your orders.”
“Well, no,” demurs the businessman, sliding his phone into his pocket and watching as Martin makes his coffee. “But I don’t like looking at your coworkers quite as much as I do you.”
Martin’s cheeks burn, as if he’s making his blood hot as well as the businessman’s milk for his coffee.
“Are you feeling better?” he asks. “Tara said you were ill — I hope you’ve not returned too soon. You work so hard: you should look after yourself.”
Martin laughs softly as he hands over the businessman’s order. He can barely think, he’s so flustered and embarrassed, and the businessman looks suddenly embarrassed too as he turns away, pulling his phone back out of his pocket.
Martin stares after him desperately wishing he had something funny or interesting or just nice to say to him, but his tongue feels frozen in his mouth, and it just won’t happen.
For a few weeks, they go back to the usual routine — the businessman is on his phone all the time, Martin always has his order ready as he comes in. He smiles more, though, when he comes in. Makes small talk while juggling the phone conversation.
It must be important, Martin thinks, because he’s almost always listening intently, and he seems to be the one making a lot of decisions on the call — it’s always the morning meeting, maybe, because he seems to say “Yes, send — ” or “No, that won’t work, that’ll conflict with the Thursday meet,” or “We won’t have the resources until August.”
One day, he comes in without his phone, and Martin manages to blurt out, voice abortive and stammered, “No… calls? Today?”
“There are always calls,” says the other man regretfully, running his hand through his hair, with a self-deprecating half-laugh. “I fell in a stream yesterday. My phone’s scuppered.”
“A stream?” Martin repeats as he rings up his order.
“I live next to a farm,” says the businessman. “Their cat was stuck in a tree — she’s this ginger thing and she’s always getting stuck in stuff, was running about with a cereal box around her neck the other day. I was trying to climb the branch to help her out — she used me as a jumping-off point, literally leapt into my lap and then hopped down the rest of the way. Knocked me off balance in the process and… Splash.”
Martin stares at him as he taps his card. “Was the cat alright?” he manages to ask.
“For now,” says the businessman. “I’ve yet to exact my revenge.”
Martin’s laugh comes out soft.
“At least someone can take pleasure in my misery.”
“Oh, no, no, not pleasure. I’m just… I’m glad you’re okay.”
“Kind of you to think of me,” says the businessman. “Too bad about my phone, though — I’m going to get a new one as soon as the shop opens in town.”
“Maybe it’s a sign,” says Martin.
The businessman looks at him in such sudden fascination that Martin has to repress the desire to recoil. “A sign of what?”
“Well,” Martin mumbles. “Nothing. Sorry.”
“Oh, but I’m curious,” says the businessman. Martin wonders if he went to a posh school — he’d said “scuppered”, but his accent is a funny meld between Yorkshire and further down south, Oxford, maybe. “You can’t tease me with fortune telling and then hide it away.”
“You told me to rest, before,” says Martin, almost to the floor. “Maybe you work too much.”
“God knows that’s true.”
“Maybe you’re on the phone a bit too much,” Martin says.
The businessman stares at him, his lips parted, a stunned expression on his face, and Martin realises that he’s maybe not been nearly playful enough, that he’s basically admonishing a fucking customer for living their life and it’s none of his business and —
“I think you’re right,” says the businessman, dropping a fiver in the tip jar. With that said, he takes his coffee, and goes.
Martin exhales as the door clicks shut, and he reaches up to touch the side of his sweaty, too-hot cheek.
* * *
Perhaps one morning out of five, going forward, the businessman comes in with his phone in his pocket. It vibrates regularly, but he doesn’t pick it out until he’s outside again — he chats, instead.
He chats with Martin, talks about the weather, or asks questions about what pastries they sell and why they sell those and which ones sell most (the milk chocolate cookies) and if Martin bakes (when Arwen and Tara are sick or on holiday, he takes some of the baking shifts) and if he likes the work (he does, but he hates the four AM start) and if he likes it more than working the till (no, and not just because the hours are later).
He chats with the other bakers, asks Arwen or Tara about their cats when they come in from the back, and how their daughter is doing once he finds out they’ve got one — he chats with other customers, too, sometimes, especially on the days where there’s more of a queue, but even if there isn’t, he lingers, compliments people’s clothes or what they’re ordering, coos over people’s babies.
One day, the postman comes in and he compliments her carabiner, and she says, “You’re pretty butch yourself,” with a wink and he laughs and his cheeks darken and he looks abashed in a way that makes Martin feel light as a feather.
He chats about all sort of things — he’s very good at chatting. Martin is normally good at small talk himself, just not with him. He stammers when the businessman says the weather’s been getting wet; he forgets every album he’s ever listened to when asked; he says he’s allergic to pollen.
This latter wouldn’t be so bad, just that it came up in a chat about hay-fever. When the businessman had looked at him he’d been so overcome with the heat of his attention that he’d listed his other allergies — peanuts and penicillin — and those of his family for good measure.
One morning, he sees the open paper left on the counter, and asks, “Reading horoscopes or taking your pick from the call boys?”
Martin’s cheeks burn so much he could use them to warm one of the proving drawers.
“I’m a Virgo,” says the businessman helpfully.
“It says, um… A romantic encounter will end in complete calamity.”
“Oh dear,” says the businessman. “Not a good day to invite you out for dinner and a movie, then?”
Martin feels his jaw drop, and can’t remember how to pick it back up.
After a moment, the businessman looks over the counter and delicately picks up his coffee — café au lait, as usual — and his pastry — still pain au chocolat on Fridays, but now croissant with ham and cheese Tuesdays and Wednesdays, puff pastry jam tart Mondays and Thursdays.
“What star sign are you?” he asks. He’s picking coins out of his wallet and counting them out exactly instead of tapping his card today, giving Martin more time to answer.
“Cancer,” he whispers.
“All work and no play does you no favours,” he reads upside down with a flick down of his dark eyes. He’s got very thin eyelashes, but they’re long, and seem to have a lot of movement in them. “Take a break.”
“That’s not for Cancer,” says Martin. “That’s Sagittarius.”
“Cancer says something about a skin condition,” says the businessman. “It’s not very helpful to my argument.”
“What if I have a skin condition? You don’t want to date me with that.”
“I’ve got Sudacrem. I’ll cope.”
Martin feels so hot under his shirt and apron he could melt. The businessman’s warm gaze isn’t helping matters, and Martin reaches up to adjust his collar.
“Perhaps you don’t like movies,” says the businessman, moving with a sort of graceful deliberation that makes the baker hot all over, but particularly concentrates the heat in the areas of his body mercifully hidden by the counter between them. “Perhaps… bowling? Dancing?”
He’s studying Martin’s face. His eyes are a sort of flinted brown, like wet sandstone. “Mmm…” he hums. The baker stares at the handsome press of his curved lips under his moustache. “Aha!” he suddenly says. A finger rises, points. “You’re tired of baking for me. You want me to cook for you.”
Martin gulps then sputters, and the businessman spreads his hands, his coffee in one hand and his cash in the other, as though he’s the one caught out. “Where shall the car pick you up from?”
“I… here?”
“Seven?”
“Yes.”
“Lucky seven.”
He leaves his coins in a stack on the counter.
After he leaves, Martin gets Tara to take over the till for his break, and he sits in the walk-in for ten minutes to cool down.
* * *
After work, Martin showers and gets changed. He finishes at three, but in the intervening hours he thinks he’ll go mad with waiting — the businessman always comes in so early in the morning, so he’d had all the hours in his shift to think about it, to anticipate it. The day had gone by with all the speed of dripping treacle.
He paces his flat, then realises he’s working himself up so much he’s liable to sweat even more, and he forces himself to sit down. His roommates are both at a music festival for the weekend — he had been planning to do a jigsaw on the kitchen table while it was free.
Not that he can’t when they’re home, just that he likes being able to come in and out and pick at it, and they always ask him about it or try to help sometimes, and it’s not unpleasant — it’s nice that they want to do something with him — he’s just fastidious. He likes to do them alone, uninterrupted, but it’s too cramped on his bedroom desk.
When he walks back to the bakery, the car pulls up. It’s a good deal sleeker than he expected, a beautiful steel grey, a vintage car with chrome pieces polished to a dazzling shine.
The businessman isn’t the one driving it.
“Martin Whistler?” asks the driver.
It’s not a taxi. It’s far too nice inside and out to be a taxi, with a tan leather interior, and the driver wears a neatly pressed dark blue suit. Martin realises he doesn’t even know the businessman’s name — he’s ever given his, and they don’t wear name tags at the bakery.
He stares, blank with incomprehension and a sudden, overwhelming uncertainty, at the driver. He’s bald and clean-cut, and he has kind eyes. His tone is apologetic as he says, “He’s sorry to send me alone. He’s just finishing up a meeting.”
“Yes,” says Martin.
He gets in the car, and the driver seems surprised that he gets into the front instead of the panic — he panics, his hand hovering over the door handle, but the driver says, “No, no, it’s fine, it’s okay. Don’t worry about it — no stress. You’re meant to relax tonight, right?”
“I’ve never been good at relaxing,” admits Martin in a voice that strangles in his throat. He feels too big and too clumsy to be in a sleek car like this one, his knees too close to the dashboard, and he’s too shy to fiddle with the levers and shit to slide the seat back.
“Hmph,” remarks the driver, pulling out to join traffic again. “Between you and the boss, that makes two of you.”
The driver’s watch looks very expensive. Martin is out of his depth.
The businessman, he’d said to Martin, lives next to a farm, amidst green fields and forestry on the horizon. The house the driver pulls up at is a leek and modern design, all grey stone and glass expanse: when the driver pulls up, another man opens the door.
He’s wearing a suit too, neatly tailored — a normal suit like the driver wears, not like a butler or something, but like… Well, what would he know? For all Martin’s aware, butlers do wear normal suits these days.
“Thanks, Joe,” says the man who might be a butler.
“See you tomorrow, Sav,” replies Joe.
Sav gives Martin a smile, but he doesn’t say a word as he brings him inside, up a sleek spiral staircase, through modern, minimalist halls, into a wide room which is all glass on one side.
He’s barely seen the businessman without his coat on in winter, let alone without his blazer.
He wears a tightly fitted grey waistcoat, his sleeves rolled up to the elbows and a leather strap over one arm, the sort of thing he’s seen some people wear to support an old injury.
The room smells wonderful, music playing quietly from the radio as things sizzle on the job.
He’s holding a half-full glass of wine in one hand and in the other a spatula as he moves around his sleek, beautifully appointed kitchen and grumbles at an equally sleek, beautifully appointed laptop, “I’m off for tonight, I told you. Get Smith’s new boyfriend on it — what’s he called, Heathcliff?”
“Heathcock, but I didn’t know he was dating anyone on staff. Which Smith?”
“Vi — Shit, he’s here. Goodbye!” He pulls out one of his wireless earphones and smiles at Martin, gesturing to the dining table. “Please, Martin, sit. Thanks for coming — I’m sorry, I meant to be in the car to greet you, but something came up. Joe’s friendly, though. Did you chat much?”
He and Joe had sat in relative silence the whole time as Martin had tried not to think about the fact that his knees were uncomfortably compacted. Two or three times Joe had tried to break the quiet, and Martin had been so out of his element he’d just responded in monosyllables until Joe had given up.
He nods dumbly even though it’s not exactly true. The kitchen is even more expensive-looking than the car had been, and he’s scared to sit down.
“Thanks, Sav,” says the businessman. “You can leave us.”
“Usual patrol at eight, or shall I push it back?”
“Push it back to after dark. Nine-thirty?”
“You’re officially not on-call?” asks Sav.
“Yes,” says the businessman with a tone of impatience.
“I’ll redirect all business calls, then.” Sav says it very pointedly, not looking at Martin, and the businessman wavers helplessly like he’s been caught off guard, but Sav just smiles, nods to him and Martin both, and takes his leave.
The businessman presses his lips together then looks back to Martin. The smile rises warm to his lips again.
“You don’t want to sit?”
Martin is afraid of somehow getting the white leather dining chairs dirty somehow — each of them look more expensive than any piece of furniture he’s ever owned.
“No,” says the businessman softly. “Just hang your jacket up and come here.”
It’s easy to obey: it’s not easy to relax when the businessman puts one hand on his hip and slides his body behind Martin’s, looking over his shoulder to stir the red wine sauce on the hob, reaching around him. He has to stand on his tiptoes to do it — he’s taller than Martin, but not by much. The meat in the stew smells incredible, but so does the businessman: his cologne is subtle but has a cardamom spice to it that makes Martin salivate.
He has corded scars around his wrists.
“Thanks for coming,” he murmurs in Martin’s ear, his breath hot on Martin’s skin. His knees feel weak, and he’s almost trembling. “I promise to make it worth your while.”
He brings the spatula up to his mouth, frames Martin’s body with his arms.
Martin moans at the taste.
“Yes,” says the businessman. His body is surprisingly warm and solid against Martin’s back. Martin is aware of his crotch against martin’s arse, almost hopes he’ll grind forward with his hips, but he doesn’t. “I’m good at cooking. I’m good at lots of things, as it happens.”
Martin can’t breathe and he feels like his face must be bright red and steaming. He turns in the businessman’s arms, kisses his mouth so that the other man sighs in pleasured surprise, and then says too loudly into his face, “I don’t know your name!”
The other man laughs, one hand on Martin’s shoulder, the other coming up to cover his mouth.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” he says once he’s done laughing, putting both hands on Martin’s shoulders, rubbing them back and forth and making him shiver. “I haven’t, have I? My name is Raj, Raj Usmani. I work in communications.”
When he leans back, Martin sees that the strap over Raj’s shoulder isn’t what he’d thought it was — there’s a holster nestled under his armpit. The pistol gleams in the light, its metal parts as polished as all the chrome surfaces he’s seen today.
Martin stares at it.
“Sorry,” says Raj, unbuckling the harness. “Like I said, I was kept at work longer than I intended — I meant to change my clothes, too.”
“What sort of communications need a gun?”
“Not the sort you ever need to be involved with.”
“You’re police?”
“I told you — I work in communications.”
“For who?”
Raj laughs, setting the holster aside, looks over his shoulder and back at Martin. “Is it too cliché if I tell you that’s classified?”
Martin’s burning hot, and he wonders if he’s bonkers for being turned on.
Probably.
“Oh,” says Martin. “So… So this whole time, you’ve been…?”
“Mmm hmm,” says Raj. His eyes are sparkling.
“But isn’t it — Isn’t it bad for… for someone like you to have a regular routine? You come into the bakery at the same time every day. On the dot.”
“Not at all,” says Raj. “How could enemy operatives find me without one?”
“You want enemy operatives to find you?”
“If I have a regular routine, that’s their in for a tail. If they set a tail, that’s our in to tail them back.”
Martin opens his mouth, closes it. It’s not as if he wants to argue, but it seems wrong as much as it seems right.
“Weren’t you lecturing me, telling me I work too much?” asks Raj, sidling closer and putting his hands on Martin’s hips. “Telling me to relax? Telling me I should take time off work to seduce handsome bakers?”
“I think you might have made a lot of that up.”
“Really? I’m sure I heard you say it. I’m sure I heard you say, you know, Raj, I don’t think you’ve been sucking enough cock lately. I think you should fit more of that into your schedule.”
Martin is blushing so hard he’s probably glowing. “You sure you didn’t dream that?”
“Maybe I did,” says Raj musingly. “Do you think I dreamed it before or after dinner?”
“After, I think,” says Martin. The absurdity of everything is somehow letting him talk through his agonising flusterment. “Otherwise we might never eat.”
“Oh, I’ll eat” says Raj.
Martin breathlessly laughs as one hand squeezes his arse, and cups Raj’s face to kiss him again.
They break apart to plate up and eat.
Martin is gratified to see the slight darkening in Raj’s own cheeks and a sheen on his skin.
* * *
“Raj,” Martin manages to mumble into his mouth two hours later. Raj’s waistcoat and his shirt are both open, showing a chest marked with a handful of scars; Martin’s still in his t-shirt and boxers, but his trousers are on the floor.
“Mmm?”
“The… patrol?”
“Mm, just of the grounds,” says Raj, kissing the side of Martin’s neck and making him shudder. “Make sure there’s no one creeping in.”
“Is that a concern?”
“Not for you,” says Raj. He sucks a bruise into the side of Martin’s neck that makes his brain go blank.
* * *
The next morning, he rolls over in bed and sees Raj still naked, sitting cross-legged on the beautiful weave rug on the bedroom floor, cleaning his gun.
“Want me to show you now?” he asks when he sees Martin watching.
Martin, distantly enamoured, slowly crawls onto the floor to sit across from him, and listens intently as Raj talks, guiding him through it. His hands are beautiful as they work, and warm where they brush Martin’s.
The gun in comparison is very cold, and very heavy between their hands.
“I could teach you to shoot,” says Raj.
Martin thinks of Raj behind him at the stove, Raj’s strong body, his strong arms framing Martin in.
“Yeah,” says Martin. “We can go while the bread I’m teaching you is proving.”
Raj grins, and draws him into another kiss.
FIN.
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