The Google Doc was called SUNDAY (DO NOT OPEN AT WORK) and it had four tabs.
Tab one was limits. Nico had written most of it, eight months ago, at the kitchen table of Grant’s half of a German Village double, while Grant sat across from him eating cold sesame noodles out of the carton and reading over his shoulder.
“You spelled ‘humiliation’ with two L’s,” Grant had said.
“It’s a limit, not a spelling bee.”
“It’s a hard limit and you spelled it with two L’s. If I’m going to not do something to you, I want to know what it is.”
Tab two was Things Nico Wants, which was longer than tab one and got longer every month. Tab three was aftercare, which said water, the gray blanket, do not let me doomscroll, a Graeter’s run if it was a big one and nothing else. Tab four had been created by Grant in March. It was called SCOPE OF WORK and it looked exactly like the service tickets he filled out eleven times a day as an HVAC tech for a company in Grove City. Customer. Address. Description of Issue. Corrective Action. Technician Signature.
That tab had changed Nico’s life.
The words, anyway. The words and the carbonless pad.
Nico was twenty-four and a line cook at a brunch place on Third Street where he made roughly four hundred eggs every Saturday and Sunday. He was small and quick and pretty in a way the kitchen had decided to be normal about. The pink bandana was his, the chipped black nail polish was his, and so was the way he said “yes, chef” that made the new dishwasher blush. Sundays he was off at 2:00 now, since the schedule change.
Grant was thirty-three. Broad in the chest and a little soft in the middle and gray coming in at the temples, which he pretended not to notice and Nico noticed constantly. He owned four pairs of the same Dickies work pants. He got up at 5:40 every weekday and was wearing the company polo by 6:15. He had never, in eight months, raised his voice at Nico, and he had never once missed a count.
The thing about Grant, the thing nobody at Nico’s job would have guessed from the Ford Ranger and the work boots and the way he said “you bet” to waitresses, was that he was the most careful man Nico had ever met. He did everything to code. He measured twice. He wrote it down.
So when Nico wanted to be graded, Grant built a form.
Sunday at 3:40 Nico was home, showered, standing barefoot at the stove in Grant’s kitchen in nothing but a pair of pink cotton briefs and the white apron he’d stolen from work, making breakfast for dinner the way he’d make it for a ticket.
Coffee in the Chemex. Soft scramble with chives and crème fraîche. Sourdough toast.
He burned the toast on purpose.
It was a small thing. He left it in the broiler for forty extra seconds while he stood there and counted and let the edges go black. A line cook knows exactly how long it takes to ruin bread. He plated it anyway. He set the plate on the counter in front of Grant with the scorched side up and the eggs perfect and folded his hands behind his back and waited.
Grant was sitting at the breakfast bar in his work pants and a gray t-shirt. He looked at the toast. He looked at Nico.
He did not laugh, though Nico could see how badly he wanted to.
“Huh,” said Grant.
He picked up the fork. He ate a bite of the eggs. Chewed. He took his time about it. Nico’s pulse was going so hard he could feel it in his throat.
“Eggs are good,” Grant said.
“Thank you.”
“Coffee’s good.”
“Thank you.”
Grant reached down to the stool next to him, where his work bag was, and took out a service pad.
It was a real one. Yellow and white carbonless triplicate, the company logo in the corner, MERCER written in Sharpie on the cardboard backing. He clicked a pen. He started filling it out, in his square blocky contractor handwriting, and he said it out loud as he went, like he was talking to a homeowner.
“Customer. Nico Albescu. Address, here. Description of issue.” He looked at the plate. “Toast.”
Nico bit the inside of his cheek.
“Coffee, pass. Eggs, pass. Toast—” He tapped the pen once against the counter. “Fail. Burnt. Deliberate.”
“It wasn’t—”
Grant just looked at him.
“It was deliberate,” Nico said.
“Yeah.” Grant wrote it down. DELIBERATE. “Corrective action required.”
He tore off the white copy and slid it across the counter. Nico picked it up with fingers that weren’t completely steady.
CORRECTIVE ACTION: 20. HAND, THEN SPOON. COUNT OUT LOUD.
At the bottom, in the Technician Signature line: G. Mercer. Under that, in the smaller box labeled Customer Acknowledgment, a blank line.
Grant held out the pen.
This was the thing. This was the whole thing. Nico could have said anything in the next five seconds. He could have laughed and said “not tonight,” and Grant would have eaten the toast anyway, burnt side and all, and they’d have watched Great British Bake Off and gone to bed. That had happened twice. Nothing broke either time.
Nico took the pen and signed it. His hand shook in the N.
Grant stood up.
And the jokes were over.
“Apron off.”
Nico untied it. Folded it, because he couldn’t help it, and set it on the counter.
“Briefs.”
He pushed them down and stepped out of them. Stood there naked on the kitchen tile with the stove light on, his cock already half hard and flushing, which was embarrassing, which Grant saw and didn’t comment on. He didn’t have to. He just looked.
Grant pulled one of the bar stools out into the middle of the kitchen floor, where the anti-fatigue mat was. The one Nico had bought, the same kind they had on the line at work, because Grant’s kitchen floor was tile over concrete and Nico’s knees had opinions. He sat down on it with his feet planted wide.
“Over.”
Nico went over his lap. Belly across those thick Dickies-clad thighs, hands flat on the mat, toes just touching the floor on the other side. His cock pressed against the outside of Grant’s thigh. The rough fabric. He could feel the heat of Grant’s leg through it.
Grant put one broad hand flat on the small of his back. Pressed. Nico’s whole body settled under it like something had been switched off.
The other hand rested on his ass. Just rested. Warm and heavy. Rubbed slow circles.
“Color,” Grant said.
“Green.”
“Count.”
The first one wasn’t hard. None of the first ones were ever hard. That was the point, that was Grant, a man who warmed up the heat exchanger before he fired the burner. It was a flat cupped slap to the fleshiest part of his right cheek, sound louder than sting.
“One.”
The next one on the left. “Two.”
He worked up slowly. Right, left, right, the undercurve, never above the line where Nico’s ass met his lower back, never near his spine. Every few swats Grant’s hand came back and rubbed, spreading the heat, and then left again. By ten, Nico’s skin was hot all over, tight and prickling, a deep throb spreading out from the center of each cheek, and his cock was fully hard against Grant’s leg and leaking a wet spot into the fabric.
“Ten,” Nico said, and his voice broke on it.
Grant’s hand stopped. Came to rest on the hot skin. Nico heard him breathe.
“Look at that,” Grant said, so low it was almost to himself. “Pink as your bandana.”
Nico whimpered.
Grant reached over to the counter. When his hand came back, it held Nico’s wooden spoon.
Not a kitchen spoon. Nico’s spoon. Maple, flat-backed, a gift from his first chef when he’d left for Columbus, and he’d used it for four years of risotto. It had been in the Google Doc, tab two, since June: the spoon. I know. I KNOW.
Grant laid it flat against his ass. Cool wood on hot skin. Nico’s whole body jerked.
“Eleven,” Grant said. “You’re counting.”
The spoon was different. Hand was a thud; the spoon was a sting, sharp and bright and focused, a hot line that bloomed out slower than a slap. Nico yelped on eleven and got the number out anyway.
“Eleven.”
Twelve. Thirteen. He was breathing hard. His eyes were stinging. Fourteen landed on the undercurve and he felt it in his teeth. He was pushing back into it now, lifting his hips for each one, and he hated how obvious that was and didn’t stop.
“Fifteen.”
“Good,” said Grant. “Good boy. You’re doing so good.”
Nico sobbed once, which was pure want.
Sixteen.
Seventeen came in high. It wasn’t much. An inch, maybe. Nico had shifted his hips at the wrong second, chasing it, and the edge of the spoon cracked across the top of his ass where the bone was close, right on the tail of his spine. The pain wasn’t a sting. It was a white jolt straight up his back and into his skull.
“Red,” Nico said.
Grant’s hand was off him before the word was finished.
The spoon clattered on the counter. The kitchen went silent. Nico could hear the fridge compressor. He could hear the neighbor’s TV through the shared wall, a football game, somebody cheering. He could hear his own breathing, ragged and fast.
Grant didn’t touch him. Nico felt him sit perfectly still. Then, very quietly: “Where.”
“Tailbone,” Nico said. “You—I moved. It’s not—it’s okay, it just hit bone.”
“Can you move your legs?”
Nico wiggled his toes against the tile. “Yeah. It’s fine. It’s a bruise, it’s not—”
“Okay.” Grant’s voice was flat and calm and completely without play. He laid his palm very gently a few inches below where the spoon had landed, on the hot part, the part that was supposed to be hot. Not on the bone. “That’s on me. I’m gonna keep it lower. You want to stop?”
Nico lay there across Grant’s lap and breathed. The sharp white pain was fading back into a dull ache. Underneath it, the rest of him was still burning, hot and swollen and throbbing and good. His cock hadn’t softened at all, which told him everything.
He turned his head so Grant could see his face.
“Green,” he said. “Please. Green. Three more, you owe me three more.”
Grant looked at him for a long moment, checking. Then he nodded once.
He picked up the spoon again. He rubbed it gently, flat, over the undercurve. Low. Where he’d been every time until seventeen.
“Eighteen,” he said. “Your count.”
It landed right where it was supposed to. Perfect. Hot. Nico cried out, and it wasn’t the same sound as before at all.
“Eighteen.”
Nineteen. He was shaking.
Twenty, and Grant put his whole arm into it, and Nico came up off his lap with a shout and dropped back down and said “twenty” into the mat and started to cry for real. It was good crying, the kind that comes out of the body when something has been held too tight too long and finally opens.
The spoon went back on the counter. Grant’s hands were on him. Rubbing the heat, soothing, both palms spread over his hot ass. Nico felt the burn of it all the way to his thighs.
“Done,” Grant said. “All done. Corrective action complete.”
“Grant.”
“Yeah, sweetheart.”
“I need you to fuck me,” Nico said into the rubber mat. “I need it right now. Please.”
Grant stood Nico up and turned him around and bent him over the counter, right next to the plate of burnt toast.
The granite was cold against Nico’s stomach and chest and it made him gasp. His ass was so hot by comparison he could feel every beat of his heart in it. He put his hands flat on the counter and pushed his hips back and heard Grant’s belt buckle.
He looked over his shoulder. He wanted to see.
Grant shoved his work pants and his boxers down to mid-thigh and his cock sprang up. It was thick and blunt and uncut, a heavy dark red head half-hidden in foreskin that slid back as Grant stroked himself once, twice, root to tip, and a slick drop welled out of the slit and ran down the underside. His balls hung full and tight underneath. He was hard like he’d been hard for a while. The whole count, probably.
“You’re staring,” Grant said.
“You’re hard as a fucking rock.”
“I’ve been hard since you signed.”
The lube lived in the drawer next to the stove, between the matches and the meat thermometer, because they’d done this before. Grant squirted it into his palm and slicked himself, and then two fingers pressed against Nico’s hole and slid in without a pause, because Nico was relaxed, because Nico was so far gone he felt like warm water.
“Oh,” Nico said. “Oh, fuck, yes.”
Grant opened him up. Two fingers, then three, deep and slow. Every time his hand pushed forward his wrist brushed the burning skin of Nico’s ass and made Nico jolt and clench around his fingers.
“You feel that,” Grant said.
“Yes.”
“Tell me.”
“It’s hot. My whole ass is hot. Every time you move I feel it. I can feel where you hit me.”
Grant pulled his fingers out. Lined up. The head of his cock pressed against Nico’s hole, fat and slick, and then Grant’s hips pushed forward and the head popped through and Nico’s mouth fell open with no sound coming out.
The stretch was a lot. Grant was thick and the first push always burned, stinging and sharp and full, and it lit up every nerve in the skin around it that the spoon had already woken up. Grant held there with just the head in and his big hand spread on Nico’s lower back, not pressing, just steadying.
Nico pushed back. Took another inch himself. Said “yes, go, go,” and Grant went.
He slid in all the way in one long slow push, until his hips were flush against Nico’s ass. The rough fabric of his half-down work pants dragged against the welts, and Nico sobbed and came up on his toes.
“Hurts?” Grant said.
“Yes,” Nico said. “Don’t you dare stop.”
Grant didn’t stop.
He fucked Nico over the counter with long heavy strokes, pulling almost all the way out and driving back in. Every time his hips smacked into Nico’s hot, bruised ass it was like the spoon again, a slap of heat that went straight to Nico’s cock. Nico’s hands slid on the granite. The plate rattled. A piece of burnt toast fell off and landed on the floor. Neither of them looked at it.
“Whose ass is that,” Grant said.
“Yours.”
“Who marked it?”
“You did.”
“Say it.”
“You marked me, you fucking—you marked my ass, Grant, it’s yours, it’s red because of you—”
Grant groaned. His hand came around Nico’s hip and wrapped around his cock, which was so hard and slick with precum that Grant’s fist slid right over it. He started jerking Nico in time with his thrusts.
“Good boy,” Grant said. “Good boy. Took all twenty. Took my cock. Look at you.”
Nico couldn’t look at anything. His eyes were squeezed shut and his cheek was pressed to the granite and he was coming. He came into Grant’s fist with a strangled noise, hot pulses spilling over Grant’s knuckles and dripping onto the kitchen floor. His hole clenched around Grant’s cock over and over, and Grant said “fuck, Nico, fuck” and lost his rhythm.
He grabbed Nico’s hips in both hands. Drove in hard. Once. Twice. Held.
Nico felt him come. Felt that thick cock swell and kick deep inside him, felt the hot flood of it. Grant’s whole body pressed down on his back, his breath harsh against Nico’s shoulder blade. Another pulse. Another, slower, as Grant’s fingers dug bruises into the tops of Nico’s thighs that would match the ones on his ass. A long, low, shaking breath.
Then stillness. The fridge compressor. The game next door. Somebody had scored.
Water. The gray blanket. Grant on the couch with Nico lying face-down across his lap, a bag of frozen peas from the freezer wrapped in a dish towel resting on the high spot above his tailbone, and Grant’s hand drawing slow circles on the back of Nico’s neck.
“I’m sorry about seventeen,” Grant said.
“You stopped in like a quarter of a second.”
“Yeah.” Grant’s thumb pressed the knot at the base of Nico’s skull. “That’s the job.”
Monday at 7:52 a.m., Nico put on his chef coat in the brunch place’s locker room and found the yellow carbonless copy folded into quarters in the breast pocket.
The same ticket. The same DELIBERATE. The same CORRECTIVE ACTION: 20. Under it, in the Notes section Grant never used for anything:
CUSTOMER RESPONDED WELL TO SERVICE. FOLLOW-UP SCHEDULED SUNDAY. NEXT TIME BURN THE BACON.
He texted a photo of it to the night shift chat before his first ticket.
Theo: Oh he’s GOOD good
Pip: what does corrective action mean. what does 20 mean. nico. NICO
Rafi: He wrote you a work order. That’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever seen a man in Dickies do.
Nico tucked the ticket back into the pocket of his chef coat, over his heart, and made four hundred eggs, standing up.
