“Er, I just…I mean, it’s not for you, necessarily. I thought maybe Dee would want it.”
Chancey looked from his garishly dressed ex-wife up at his fiancé and let the smile ease across his face. Damn thoughtful, was Seamus Williams. He grabbed Seamus into a long, luxurious kiss, and then pulled him down on the bed.
A Moment with Patrick and Aidan
Patrick lit the cinnamon and apple candles at either end of the mantelpiece and stepped back, his eyes losing focus to the gentle flicker of the stereo flames, small at first, and becoming mightier the longer they burned. Behind him, the door opened and closed, lifting the spiced scent into the room. A moment later, Aidan rested his chin on Patrick’s shoulder, circling his waist.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“I made us some of that Irish coffee. Or I tried to, but the cream didn’t want to stay on the top.”
Patrick covered Aidan’s hands with his own and inhaled deeply. The air was as intoxicating as his husband. “How much whiskey did you put in the glasses, my love?”
“An inch, maybe?”
“Goodness me. We’ll be rotten drunk by the time everyone else gets back.”
“Yeah. It’s a little too much, huh?”
“Maybe a little, aye. But never mind. I’m sure they’ll taste amazin’.”
Aidan kissed his cheek. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For being you.”
Patrick glanced over his shoulder. “For being me?”
“Yeah. You know what I mean.”
Patrick laughed and turned around, wrapping his arms around Aidan. He moved closer, their lips almost touching already, but no kiss yet. “I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about, Aidan Degas-Williams. I’m afraid you’ll have to elaborate.”
Aidan leaned forward, and Patrick leaned back. Aidan laughed. “Aw, Paddy, come on.”
“No explanation? No kisses.”
“But—”
“But nothin’.” Patrick squeezed Aidan gently. “Go on, just humour me. I like hearing it.”
Aidan sighed in exasperation, but it was entirely faked. “All right. You always find the good in everything—” Aidan tilted his head at the two glasses of cream-beige gloop “—even my dreadful attempt at making Irish coffee. You are the kindest…most generous…happiest…” Aidan frowned and tipped his mouth to the side as if deep in thought.
“Handsome?” Patrick suggested.
“Oh, yeah. Very handsome.”
“I think I might like you.”
“That’s good. You married me.”
“Aye, I did that.”
Aidan leaned in again, and this time Patrick stayed where he was, returning the kiss, slowly, gently, filling it with all the things he was feeling. They’d shared two Christmases, and they’d been wonderful, perfect, but this? Being with his brother, and Chancey, and Dee, and the rest of them—it was like the family Christmases he’d lived for when he was young. After their parents died, both Patrick and Seamus tried to keep the traditions going, but they’d never quite got it right, until this Christmas.
When the kiss came to an end, Patrick picked up the two glasses of Irish coffee. Placing one in Aidan’s hand, he put the other to Aidan’s lips.
“Oh, this could get messy,” Aidan said and quickly slurped at the liquid as Patrick tipped the glass. The tiniest dribble of cream escaped, but Aidan caught it with the tip of his tongue. “Mmm. That tastes pretty good.” He lifted the other glass to Patrick’s mouth, and tipped. Patrick took some of the coffee and groaned in pleasure.
“Gimme more.”
Aidan’s grin was wicked as he tipped the glass until it was almost horizontal and Patrick got more than a mouthful of cream. He tried to swallow it down but ended up spluttering and laughing with cream cascading down his chin. Without missing a beat, Aidan moved in and licked from the tip of Patrick’s chin up to his lips.
“Have I told you lately how much I love you, Aidan?”
“Yeah, but you can tell me again.”
“I love you, Aidan. Thank you.”
“For being me?”
“For being my everything.”
Part II:
Tom
&
Michael
Chapter One:
Cereal Thief!
“If you’d only let me explain,” Michael McFerran begged. “I didn’t mean to, Dee, it was an accident, I swear!”
Dee, huffed and threw herself down on the couch across from her father, Chancey. Michael tried not to look at the older man. It had only been six months since Chancey and Dee Clearwater had moved into the farmhouse, and even though technically Michael had been there first, he felt like the outsider. After all, Chancey was Seamus’s fiancé, and Seamus Williams owned both the house and the farm. Michael was just a tenant, and a poor excuse for a tenant at that—or, at least, where the actual paying of rent came into it.
Since the day Chancey and Dee moved in, Michael had been uncertain about the ‘Texan’. Well, not actually a Texan—from Kansas, but that was harder to remember. Was it Kansasan? Or Kansan? Whatever, Michael was dead sure Chancey didn’t like him much.
Dee puffed out her pink cheeks and crossed her arms over her chest. The way she was throwing a wobbler, it was easy to forget she was already fourteen.
Against his better judgement, Michael glanced over at Chancey, who looked none too impressed. Until they’d come into the living room—Dee stomping, Michael running after her—Chancey looked like he’d been enjoying a moment’s peace in the chair near the fireplace, Tess the border collie lying across his lap. She lifted her black and white head, cocking it slightly. Michael eyed the dog cautiously, getting ready to give chase and soothe her if she did a runner. The dog had been a right madwoman when Seamus had brought her home. She wasn’t so flighty now, but a stormy teenager stomping through the living room was enough to set her on edge.
“All right there, darlin’?” Chancey asked Dee, though his eyes were on the dog. He ran his fingers down Tess’s back and she began to relax. When he reached the spot at the base of her tail, she tilted her head back and kicked her hind leg. Calm again, the lovely girl flopped over like a fainting goat.
“So, other than scaring the dog, what’s going on here, kids?”
Kids? Maybe that was one of the reasons Michael couldn’t get on a firm footing with Chancey. He was always calling him ‘kid’, lumping his twenty years in with Dee’s fourteen. If anything, she was like an annoying little sister, or not so annoying, actually. She was loud and fun, but she didn’t seem to like him very much, as the way she was glaring at him right now made clear. He gave her a quick smile. She slow-blinked once and cut her eyes over at her father.
“He ate all my Christmas Crunch.”
“Who?” Chancey asked.
Michael blushed and fidgeted. It was true, technically. He had poured the cereal into the mixing bowl, and he had doused it in milk, and he had then eaten every bite. And he’d really enjoyed it, too. But…well, it had been an accident…of sorts.
“Mi-chael.” His name became two angry syllables in Dee’s mouth. “Michael ate my blueberry candy canes, he ate my summer sausage and my teriyaki-flavoured beef jerky, and now he’s eaten! My! Cap’n! Christmas! Crunch!”
Chancey turned his cool gaze on him. Michael gulped and involuntarily stepped back.
“It wasn’t like that, I promise. Well, what I mean is, um, yeah I ate it, but—”
“You tripped and fell and your mouth landed on all the food in my care package?!” Dee snapped.
“Wanna watch your volume, darlin’? Seamus is asleep.”
Dee glowered.
“Don’t give me that look. You’re the one who got him in this situation in the first place, lil’ girl. Least you can do is let the man sleep.”
The last time the four of them were over at Marie’s pub, Dee had accidentally broken a bottle of really expensive whiskey called ‘Coleraine 34’, or something, from
Marie’s personal collection. She claimed it was bottled in 1959. Michael didn’t know exactly how much it was worth, but he thought it was well over £2,000, and Marie had shouted until she’d turned blue in the face! Since then, Dee had been working in the back of the pub after school, washing dishes. The only time she was allowed off was when she had her rodeo club; otherwise she was a slave to Marie’s dusty corners and dirty dishes.
Around the middle of November, Seamus had taken pity on her and said at the rate Dee was going, she’d be retired before she paid what she owed on the bottle. Seamus and Chancey got in a big row about it. Seamus was trying to help, but Chancey said Dee should do it all herself. Michael hadn’t meant to eavesdrop, truly—but sometimes Seamus and Chancey forgot he was around, and he’d end up privy to their chatter, bickering, and more than once…their love-making.
In the end, Seamus won out, and he’d started doing work for Marie, too. Repairs on her pub, repairs on her house, even repairs on her car, which he said was a heap of junk and probably hadn’t run since the nineties. That, plus the work he put in on his farm, meant Seamus came home worn out. Michael would have volunteered to help, but…he had his own troubles to deal with, and it was safer to not venture too far from home. Even walking Tess outside of the farm’s boundaries had become impossible.
Dee had the good sense to look reticent at being reminded of her crimes against the Coleraine.
“I’m sorry,” Michael said. “I thought the package was…well…from me mum.”
“Why would your ‘mum’ send you Cap’n Christmas Crunch? You don’t even have Cap’n Christmas Crunch in Ireland! That’s why my mom sent it to me.”
He couldn’t say what had made him think his mother had sent the brown-paper-wrapped package. If he’d been thinking at all, he might have noticed Dee’s name, or the American stamps. But his head was full of…well…it was enough to say his mind wasn’t on addresses or American postage.
“So what are you going to do to make it better?” Dee wanted to know. She was still ‘spitting sass’ at him—as he’d heard Chancey call it once—but she had, at least, listened to her father and dropped her volume.
When Seamus came home earlier that evening, Chancey had gone to take care of him, to see him to bed. Michael tried not to blush at the way they were with each other. It wasn’t that they might be intimate with each other in a carnal sense—it was that they were intimate with each other the way his mum and dad had been, before Dad passed away. It made Michael foolishly hopeful for himself one day.
“Well, I dunno,” he finally said. “Er, I could clean your room?”
“I don’t want you in my room. You might eat more of my things.”
She had more things to eat? Jesus, Michael man, keep your mind off your stomach! That’s what got you into this mess in the first place.
“Well, I could replace it for you. The cereal.” Dee looked slightly disbelieving, so Michael said, “Right now.” And he hurried to his room to see what he could find online. Surely someone had to sell her cereal.
Amazon.co.uk only half let him down. There was Cap’n Crunch, but when he added ‘Christmas’ to his search, he only found a book about American cereals. Which…actually looked quite good. Maybe he should read that? No, focus. £10.15 for two boxes? Maybe they could be her Christmas present. But he owed her, so that wouldn’t work… Maybe the first box could be a make-up box, righting his crimes against her, and the second box could be her Christmas present?
An alert in another tab sounded, and Michael’s attention was drawn away from the Cap’n Crunch issue. Facebook. And a private message. He bit the inside of his cheek, only realising because he’d bitten pretty hard and it hurt. On the one hand, it could be one of the lads from his last job, giving him more shit. Their messages were coming less frequently now, but that didn’t mean they’d stopped. Especially the ones from Connor.
But on the other hand, it could be from his friend Harrison. After Michael had gone over to America with Seamus for his brother’s wedding, Michael and Harrison had been talking online a lot—not about anything serious. Just chatting, and Michael posted jokes and funny pictures on Harrison’s profile. But it was such a long time since Harrison had been online now. At first his absence had Michael worried, but then he’d mostly forgotten about it. Tonight, with falling out with Dee and stressing over what Connor might have written, Harrison was on his mind again.
With a brave click on his Facebook tab, Michael cringed. Not Harrison. Connor. And he’d copied everyone in on it so they could all have a laugh at Michael’s expense.
Sucking much cock these day, Mike?
Even as he fought it, Michael’s eyes welled with tears. The lads had been his friends once. Well, as much of friends as Michael ever made. He’d had a couple of good mates at school, but he’d always been a bit shy, a bit awkward.
Fair dos, Connor?
Connor and a few of the others came back with a string of slurs that sliced into Michael like blades. He should block them. He knew he should. But what good would it do? He’d see all of them around town anyway, and they would make those gestures at him, or call him names, or Christ knew what else. One time, he’d taken Seamus’s truck to get supplies for the farm. He’d passed a group of them exiting the supermarket; when his own shopping was done, he’d found all four tyres flat.
Seamus had asked him why he was so late making it back, but Michael didn’t want to worry him. He’d already long overstayed his welcome in the Williams house, though Seamus was too good to ever tell him so. There was no need to bring his personal problems into it as well.
Besides, it was more of the same—his stepdad’s doing, most likely.
Michael’s mum had separated from Peter about a month ago. It wasn’t a day later that everyone at church knew Michael was gay. One time, someone stole his Bible, the one his grandma had given him when he was christened. The next Sunday, it was waiting for him in his pew with every passage concerning man lying with man highlighted. What could he do? He couldn’t burn the book. It was both holy and sentimental. But it no longer brought him much comfort.
He was just waiting for Father O’Neill to pull him aside and tell him he wasn’t welcome at Mass anymore. Until then, he’d keep going—even if the other parishioners gave him a wide berth. At least he could sit next to Mum during the services again, though he still hadn’t moved back home.
“Please will ye?” she begged. “Your room’s just as you left it, Mikey.”
Michael blushed at the nickname she hadn’t used since he was a kid. “Mum, I can’t. If you and Peter ever reconcile—”
“I won’t reconcile with the stubborn eejit until he comes to appreciate you as you are.”
“Well, he won’t appreciate me at all if I move back home. I’ll just stay with Seamus.”
His mother had become awkward then, fidgeted a little, and asked, “Is it weird?”
“Is what weird?”
“Livin’ with Seamus and that American fella?”
“Chancey?”
Just about everyone in Omagh knew about Seamus Williams and his engagement to ‘that American fella’. There was even the suggestion that moving to America had ‘turned’ Seamus gay, and that’s why he’d come back with Mr. Chancey Bo Clearwater on his arm.
“I just…what’s it like?”
When Michael realised his mother was asking what it was like living with a loving gay couple, he blushed. His mum was amazing, he realised. It wasn’t that she’d been raised in an open household—but she was learning her own way, challenging her own set of beliefs.
“It’s nice,” Michael said. He didn’t tell her that sometimes he felt like he was in the way, even though the house had enough rooms for them all and a few more besides. She might use it to persuade him to go home. “It’s nice to be around people like…”
“Like you?” she asked quietly.
He nodded. “Seamus is really good to me, Mum.”
“Always was a good lad… I still don
’t understand the little girl, though,” she said, more to herself than to Michael, and he had to work quickly to stifle his chuckle. Those in his conservative community who had tried to understand Seamus and Chancey were often baffled by Dee.
“Chancey was married before,” he told her for the hundredth time. “I guess Chancey likes men and women.”
“But you don’t?”
“Only men.” Or boys, really. Men sounded old—even Tom, who was twenty-four, wasn’t a ‘man’. There again, he wasn’t a ‘boy’ either. Whatever, it didn’t matter. He was one of Connor’s mates. Way to kill a crush.
“You sure you won’t come home?” she asked again.
“Not until you and Peter work things out.”
He knew for a fact his mother had heard the whispers around church about him, rumours of all the wild things Michael got up to, which he might have found funny if he wasn’t so hurt. What she didn’t know—at least Michael didn’t think she knew—was that it was Peter, angry his wife had chosen her son over him, who was saying all those things.
Peter Brannigan had been an all right stepdad. He took care of them after Dad died, making sure Michael always had opportunities to participate in sports and other things. He wasn’t abusive, though he could yell up a storm when he got hammered—and he did like a drink. But he wasn’t a drunk. In fact, his constant sniping at Michael to ‘man up’ had been the only sore point between them. If Michael wanted to take art lessons instead of playing football, Peter would tell him to stop acting like a poof, and ‘man up’. So he played a lot of football, and never learned to paint like he wanted.
It must have been the ultimate shocker for Peter when Mum told him Michael was gay.
Christ save them, the argument that had followed.
Michael blinked. How long had he zoned out, thinking about things that didn’t matter right now? It was enough time for the lads to have written him a page more of hateful messages. Including pictures.
Seeds of Tyrone Box Set Page 60
