Aside from his jog and then his breakfast of a granola bar, Trevor spent the first half of the next day sequestered in his room, fulfilling commissions, forwarding emails to his father without comment, and updating his website to try to get more work. He consulted several forums in his search for platforms to help with organizing a story like what he wanted to do.
He left his phone in the kitchen and skipped lunch.
He stopped only to rest his wrists and to go to the backyard with Ellie to watch her growl at squirrels along the fence.
His plan was to get right back to work, but his grandma looked up from her laptop as he came in and asked if he planned on eating today.
Trevor couldn’t decide if she knew that he wouldn’t respond to being told to eat, or if she was genuinely asking so she could plan dinner. She was probably still intent on teaching him to cook.
He adjusted his route to head into the kitchen to grab some of the snacks he’d foolishly purchased the day before, then stopped at the sight of the bakery box on the kitchen table.
“G.G. came by,” his grandmother revealed, coming up behind Trevor while he was still staring at the box. Since the staring would give him away, Trevor finally moved and approached the table. “He brought a gift. I told him that the desk was more than enough,” Trevor didn’t flinch but his grandma paused all the same, “but pastries are a nice gesture, don’t you think?”
G.G. had wanted to make something himself. Or said he had. Even if his family was right and G.G. was a terrible baker, Trevor would have tasted whatever he made and then come up with a kind lie.
Trevor didn’t think G.G. would be terrible, though. Maybe not the best in the world, but not terrible. G.G. was particular and exacting, if his renovation and decorating choices were to be trusted. He probably approached baking the same way. Which meant, if anything, he tried to get everything as perfect as possible and would think a tiny smudge in the frosting meant a whole cake was ruined.
Trevor wondered if people had responded to that by agreeing with G.G. instead of reassuring him, and how long it had taken G.G. to realize that it was better for him to not offer things—and then still do it because he wanted to so much. He wanted to be appreciated, if not loved.
“He didn’t have to do this,” Trevor agreed after a noticeable silence, and cleared his throat. “He could’ve waited for his hand to heal and made something. But maybe he wanted any obligations over with.”
“He said he thought they might go well with tea,” Trevor’s grandmother informed him. “And I said, ‘Tea?’ and he said, ‘Yes,’ and then looked worried and asked me if you drink green tea or iced tea and not what he was thinking. Which was apparently a formal tea. Do you think he imagines all gay men drink high tea?”
Trevor turned away from the bakery box to give his grandma an incredulous stare.
“No, I do not think he thinks that,” he finally told her.
“It did seem ridiculous.” She continued to frown. “And not the sort of thing I expect a sensible person like G.G. to think. Though I don’t know him that well, it’s true. I just couldn’t imagine why he’d ask that.”
Trevor rubbed his eyes, then sighed. “I offered him tea.”
“From a can?” His grandma murdered him with a single question.
“Well, he didn’t know that,” Trevor explained with a hint of irritation, “and I was going to give him something else anyway.”
She scrunched up her nose thoughtfully. “Is this why you bought that fancy beer?”
The remark was nothing at all like his mom wondering why Trevor had kept getting Shelter and Bronson from the last video rental place in town when he’d been thirteen, but something in his grandma’s expression did make Trevor want to hunch his shoulders and mumble before fleeing the scene.
He didn’t. “Please do not ask me why I asked a fully grown American man and former licensed contractor to tea. Or why I then thought he’d prefer some pricey IPA that I heard a friend who is into beer mention once. I’ve spent two years in the house, and he’s like twelve years older than me, and I lost my mind for a second.”
“Did you ask G.G. on a date?” his grandma demanded in a scandalized whisper. “Is G.G. gay?” Only to then scowl mightily before she got an answer. “What about Sky?”
Trevor met her scowl as squarely as he could. “Sky and I aren’t together. You know that.”
“Yes, you say that. But you two….” She stopped there, studying him for another moment before backing off, a little. “I like Sky.”
“I like him too.” Trevor wasn’t going to lie about it but he also wasn’t going to fidget or apologize. “But he’s not in this state and he’s not coming back. That’s what’s best for him.”
Trevor’s siblings would have made some commiserating comments about Trevor moving on and finding someone else, or possibly advised him to try with Sky again.
His grandma, thankfully, lived with Trevor and assessed his mood well enough to decide not to say any of that.
“G.G.?” she pressed after a moment of chewing on the matter.
“Don’t tell Nancy or anyone,” Trevor warned her. “I don’t know if G.G. wants the world to know.”
Nancy was hardly the world, but he didn’t want G.G. uncomfortable.
His grandma considered that, looking like she had several more questions to ask. She didn’t ask them. Instead, she said, “There’s more than twelve years between you. At least thirteen, maybe more.”
As if Trevor didn’t already feel young and stupid about it.
He went over to the table to pick at a corner of the box. The box was white, with thin lines of lavender across the top, and writing in clear black script that read Bakery Rosemont. Simple sophistication, but not too classy for someone buying muffins for a family breakfast. A good design, Trevor thought absently, as he always did. Lincoln had likely paid a good sum for it, even though everyone in town still called his business the Rosemont Bakery.
“It wasn’t a date,” Trevor informed his grandmother without looking at her. Which was true. It hadn’t been a date. “G.G. reads everything but fantasy, I think. He has a real job and owns a home. Obviously, it wasn’t—wouldn’t have been. Rosemont is a smallish town. Smaller now. That’s what it feels like. And I need friends.”
G.G. was probably friends with Lincoln Lee, the bakery owner. They were close in age and Lincoln flew those little Pride flags in his bakery to attract all the queers in the area, Trevor was pretty sure. It was why Trevor had gone there in the first place, a quick visit before everything, when he’d been on his way to a family gathering at his grandma’s house.
He didn’t think his grandmother believed him, but Trevor did need more friends, friends outside of the gaming group for one, since, if G.G. was right, those were probably already lost to Trevor. And he would have been friends with G.G., and whatever else G.G. would have allowed.
“I know things are different for you boys,” his grandma began hesitantly, and despite his mood, Trevor nearly turned around to drop a kiss on the top of her head for the phrase ‘you boys.’ “But a box of pastries is not how I would say no to a date.”
“But he didn’t….” Trevor ended his argument before it could really begin. “He already said no,” he corrected himself.
Which would make this an apology gift. Which was so unnecessary, Trevor didn’t even know how to express it.
He flipped the lid to open the box and then stared at pastries that were not the muffins and croissants he’d been expecting. “These are some of Lincoln’s fancier creations,” he remarked, stunned. “I think you have to special order these. They’re rarely in the display case.” Hadn’t been even before the pandemic that had made every business cut back. “Unless Lincoln made them for some other reason. Maybe a canceled event or something.”
The box contained eleven pastries, with one missing from the dozen that his grandmother must have already sampled. Originally, it must have been four each of lavender-lemon bars, small cakes that smelled of oranges and rosemary and something boozy, and honey-apple tartlets.
The honey made Trevor think that those had to be G.G.’s favorites of Lincoln’s rarer treats. They’d cost a pretty penny; for something like that, Lincoln would use finer ingredients. But G.G. had money and apparently no one but a cat to spend it on. He didn’t even indulge himself much. His books were mostly paperback, not hardback.
Trevor’s grandmother was talking. Trevor turned to her and tried to catch up with what he’d missed.
“I showed him one of your cans of tea,” she said. “He seemed taken aback. I see why, now.”
Trevor closed the box and shook his head before walking out of the room.
“Trevor?” his grandma called after him.
Trevor stopped but didn’t turn around. “I’m trying to take myself more seriously. I’m trying to be the sort of person to appreciate lavender-lemon and rosemary-whatever. But I’m a cheap can of tea sort of guy.”
“Oh, Trevor,” she answered. She was audibly upset by Trevor’s pity party, so he turned to smile at her.
“I’ll eat some later. I’ve got work to do. Thank G.G. for me if he comes by again.”
With G.G.’s tastes on his mind, Trevor did a loose doodle of an orc up to its elbows in pastry dough, then put it in a tiny, frilly apron that contrasted beautifully with its muscles, thick belly, and furred chest. He also, because he could, did the same orc bent over a table laden with bags of flour, distracting himself with orc hole like an immature artist with nothing better to do. He did not draw the orc getting fucked. The orc could fucking beg for it until he cried, but he didn’t deserve the cock he wanted.
Even a monster should know how to R.S.V.P. no.
Trevor added some shading to indicate red marks across the orc’s ass and back from the punishment it had more than earned, then blew out a breath and shoved the sketchbook aside.
He watched a video class on storytelling, forcing himself to pay attention, and then thought, Fuck it, and went to the kitchen for a can of tea because he liked them.
The bakery box was still on the table.
Trevor cracked open a can and considered the elegance of that box and the pastries within it.
G.G. had thought that suited Trevor. Though he’d also imagined Trevor with a pot of tea.
Trevor, when not drinking it from cans, did make tea. Usually herbal teas without caffeine that came in sweeter, fruity flavors. But he made them for Sky. Sky only sipped them, but sometimes liked to have something warm to hold post-scene.
G.G. had thought these treats might please Trevor. No can of sweetened tea or three-dollar box of teabags would do these pastries justice. They would be best with real coffee or tea, strong and bitter—except for possibly a dollop of honey.
Or a bite of one of those tartlets.
Trevor almost reached for one, but took a small cake instead.
It was delicious, not overly sweet, but warming. He finished it, had some water, and then gave in and took one of the apple tartlets.
He had to lick honey off his fingers when he was done, which was in seconds, because it had been amazing.
“Good?” his grandmother asked from the couch as Trevor walked in to see her. “But they feel almost like wedding food. Not for every day, I mean.”
Wedding food. Meant to impress. Maybe the kind of thing G.G. would have made himself if he could have right now, or wanted to make but decided not to because he didn’t think it would be good enough. So instead, he went to an expert professional like Lincoln Lee and spent way too much after already offering to make Trevor a desk.
He had also almost definitely special ordered them, quite possibly the moment he’d found Trevor’s invitation.
And Trevor had thought Sky had problems communicating.
He must have sighed or something, because his grandmother decided to press him again. “He got those for you. He didn’t ask if I liked tea,” she added pointedly. “A sweet gesture all the same. Are pastries to soften a rejection a gay tradition?”
“Grandma.” Trevor narrowed his eyes at her, an empty threat. “And no, it isn’t.”
She pulled her glasses up to the top of her head but didn’t close her laptop. “You know,” she began, tentative now, “an age difference like that wouldn’t have mattered much only a few decades ago. A respectable man, established, would of course only finally have time for… I was going to say a wife, but you know what I mean. He’d only start getting serious as he got older. Forty is nothing, really, by the way things work now. And you’re hardly a child.”
“Thank you for that.” It could have been sarcastic but Trevor was sincere.
His grandma smiled, then seemed to flounder on what to say next. “I’ve never made pastries like that, so I can’t teach you those.”
“That’s okay,” Trevor assured her quickly. “I think G.G. knows how to bake things like this.” If not as well as a professional, then probably still pretty damn good. Trevor was willing to bet money he did not have on it. “I was thinking…. Mom wants me to go over there for dinner soon. I should bring a dessert and freak her out by telling her I made it.”
His grandma’s grin was wicked. “I’ll come up with something good and we’ll practice.” She went serious a moment later. “What about G.G.?”
“I’ll think about it.” Trevor was very aware of the honey still on his fingertips. “I’ll have to thank him for the box anyway.”
He didn’t draw anything, sparing his hands while he daydreamed.
He left the orc for a future project and replaced him with his sad, lonely warrior. The warrior would have cooling racks of delicious, if slightly imperfect, treats to one side of him in a gorgeously fantasy-looking kitchen built exactly to his specifications. In the background would be bushels of ripe apples, pots of slowly dripping honey, and multiple ovens with wavy lines to show the heat that had the warrior barely dressed.
His face and chest would be red from the heat and the implied attention of his audience, and he should pause in his work to run his fingers over the fine chains wound around his neck, and maybe to give a careful glance toward the one watching him. He should also stop when directed to, and step to the side to push a piece of pastry into the mouth of the tightly bound and gagged wizard glaring furiously up from where he’d been forced to his knees by the chain linked from the floor to the leather collar at his neck.
A closeup of the wizard’s mouth as he took in both thick fingertips and a soft, doughy pastry was required. And the fierce look on his face shifting to greedy hunger before he could deny it.
Then his gag should be replaced and the warrior could continue in his work, pleasing himself, and displaying himself, and waiting.
Like the straining, momentarily silenced wizard on the floor.
No.
Trevor stopped the whole thing.
He shouldn’t be thinking about Sky or situations to add to Sky’s notebook.
Sky was smart. Sky had listened to Trevor whine about his life and about G.G., and dropped his genius Sky breadcrumbs telling Trevor to try with G.G. and that was very likely why he was being quiet now. He was encouraging Trevor to move on and probably didn’t want Trevor to think about this anymore. Or Trevor had gone too far the other night and it amounted to the same thing; Sky wanted Trevor to direct his energies elsewhere.
So, the warrior could be restrained on his knees on the floor, keeping his head down until instructed to raise it, because unlike the wizard, he enjoyed the attention and would be eager to get more of it. Someone ought to stand next to his kneeling figure and tangle their fingers in his hair, then bring his head up to ask why he felt he deserved this.
The imperfections in the pastries, smudged frosting or a slightly burned edge, those were nothing. But the warrior wanted to give the one watching him the best of himself. As if his best wasn’t his obedience, and grace, and beauty, and how he wanted to offer the treats in the first place.
He’d have to be protected from himself, allowed to suffer but to not truly injure himself. Then fed his own desserts in between kisses and told how good he was. Spoiled rotten with everything he wanted.
Trevor stopped his daydream again.
He should thank G.G. for the pastries. No, he should make it clear to G.G. that his only mistake was not being clear and then thank him for the pastries.
Trevor did not have permission to make anything clear to G.G. how he might want to. But G.G. had special ordered a dozen treats for him and was probably waiting, like a fantasy warrior, and the longer he waited, the more he might worry that he’d made too big of a mistake.
Silly poodle, Trevor thought with sudden fondness, someone should spank some sense into him.