Original: "Breakfast for Two" Slash
Summary: “Unacceptable!” Harvey roars, smacking a hand on the table in outrage. “This is skullduggery, plain and simple!”
Gerald hums back calmly, and flips the omelets.
~
"Unacceptable!” Harvey roars, smacking a hand on the table in outrage. “This is skullduggery, plain and simple!”
“Do you see this?” he continues to rant, waving the newspaper like a banner at Gerald from his seat at the little dining table.
Gerald hums back calmly, and flips the omelets. They sizzle angrily as they hit the hot cast-iron pan. Combined with the whine of the toaster and the gurgling glug of the coffee pot, it’s like an entire breakfast chorus attempting to hum along.
“Here - listen to this,” continues Harvey, determined to share the catalyst for his outburst. Sharing is, after all, caring.
“Ivan Scorav, 23,” Harvey reads aloud, “Impressed crowds and judges alike as he dived from the 10m platform.”
The paper protests loudly as it’s wadded up and tossed aside.
“Dived. Dived! In the newspaper! What do they teach kids these days!? He dove from the platform! Just like Sherlock Holmes never sneaked into an abandoned warehouse, he snuck. She lent them money, he bent to pick it up, the toast is burnt-”
“No it’s not,” Gerald protests, sliding the onion and mushroom studded egg omelets out of the pan and onto two plates, right next to the (lightly browned) toast. “Besides, you like burnt toast. And I’m pretty sure that ‘sneaked’ was in use long before ‘snuck’.”
“Well, it sounds stupid,” Harvey insists, but his attention is obviously shifting from verb endings to the kitchen. “Gerald, that smells delicious,”
“Anything with mushrooms and onions smells delicious,” Gerald points out blandly, but anyone with eyes can see the compliment has made him happy. The plates are delivered, a grapefruit cut in two, coffee poured, and soon they’re sitting down for breakfast at their table for two. Gerald rescues the scorned newspaper from the floor, tucking the editorials next to his plate, while Harvey scoops sugar onto his grapefruit.
“If you really want to get worked up, go champion the cause for there, their and they’re,” Gerald proposes, buttering his toast. “None of the young people these days seem to be able to get it right.”
“I could evangelize on how the phrase “a lot” is not one word,” muses Harvey. “And the differences of to, too and two.”
“I love you,” says Gerald.
“Happy anniversary,” replies Harvey.
And when the grapefruit is gone, they hold hands across the table, Gerald with his left, and ambidextrous Harvey with his right. Later, they’ll get up to do the dishes, exchanging coffee-flavored kisses and arguing about what to purchase from the corner store, but for now Gerald is content to sit at the table in the sunshine with the man he loves.
They’ve shared fifteen years of breakfasts as husbands, and a handful before that as boyfriends. Rainclouds, lost keys, pancakes, burnt granola... their history together has a little of everything.
So many mornings, and this one perhaps his favorite yet.
Gerald hums back calmly, and flips the omelets.
~
"Unacceptable!” Harvey roars, smacking a hand on the table in outrage. “This is skullduggery, plain and simple!”
“Do you see this?” he continues to rant, waving the newspaper like a banner at Gerald from his seat at the little dining table.
Gerald hums back calmly, and flips the omelets. They sizzle angrily as they hit the hot cast-iron pan. Combined with the whine of the toaster and the gurgling glug of the coffee pot, it’s like an entire breakfast chorus attempting to hum along.
“Here - listen to this,” continues Harvey, determined to share the catalyst for his outburst. Sharing is, after all, caring.
“Ivan Scorav, 23,” Harvey reads aloud, “Impressed crowds and judges alike as he dived from the 10m platform.”
The paper protests loudly as it’s wadded up and tossed aside.
“Dived. Dived! In the newspaper! What do they teach kids these days!? He dove from the platform! Just like Sherlock Holmes never sneaked into an abandoned warehouse, he snuck. She lent them money, he bent to pick it up, the toast is burnt-”
“No it’s not,” Gerald protests, sliding the onion and mushroom studded egg omelets out of the pan and onto two plates, right next to the (lightly browned) toast. “Besides, you like burnt toast. And I’m pretty sure that ‘sneaked’ was in use long before ‘snuck’.”
“Well, it sounds stupid,” Harvey insists, but his attention is obviously shifting from verb endings to the kitchen. “Gerald, that smells delicious,”
“Anything with mushrooms and onions smells delicious,” Gerald points out blandly, but anyone with eyes can see the compliment has made him happy. The plates are delivered, a grapefruit cut in two, coffee poured, and soon they’re sitting down for breakfast at their table for two. Gerald rescues the scorned newspaper from the floor, tucking the editorials next to his plate, while Harvey scoops sugar onto his grapefruit.
“If you really want to get worked up, go champion the cause for there, their and they’re,” Gerald proposes, buttering his toast. “None of the young people these days seem to be able to get it right.”
“I could evangelize on how the phrase “a lot” is not one word,” muses Harvey. “And the differences of to, too and two.”
“I love you,” says Gerald.
“Happy anniversary,” replies Harvey.
And when the grapefruit is gone, they hold hands across the table, Gerald with his left, and ambidextrous Harvey with his right. Later, they’ll get up to do the dishes, exchanging coffee-flavored kisses and arguing about what to purchase from the corner store, but for now Gerald is content to sit at the table in the sunshine with the man he loves.
They’ve shared fifteen years of breakfasts as husbands, and a handful before that as boyfriends. Rainclouds, lost keys, pancakes, burnt granola... their history together has a little of everything.
So many mornings, and this one perhaps his favorite yet.