by Rhys Ford
“Yeah, I get you.” Sionn tangled his fingers into Damien’s hair, pulling his head back with a tug. Capturing Damien’s mouth in a fierce kiss, Sionn drank from his lover’s lips until he left Damien breathless. “I love you, D. I love the quiet you that nobody knows. And I love this fierce, argumentative warrior who will stand in front of a rushing horde to protect his broken brother. But most of all, I love the man who shares my bed and my heart and sometimes even lets me eat my own bacon. So, just so we’re clear, I will always be in your life, just like you’ll always be in my soul.”
Fried Rice and Wisdom
“SO YOU just stand here. And wait?” Miki resisted the urge to poke at the rice in the skillet. “How do you know when it’s done?”
“Ye’ve worked in Chinese restaurants, son. Didn’t ye pay attention when they were making fried rice?” Donal worked his knife through a slice of carrot, turning it into slivers.
“Dad, the only view I got from the kitchen was from the sink and the table they put in the back where you sat and made wonton.” Miki gestured at the pan with his wooden spatula. “This shit is actually cooking. Do you honestly think they would let me near anybody’s food? I like burnt grilled cheese sandwiches.”
“Honestly, who doesn’t?” Donal tsked at him, gesturing with the knife for Miki to step away from the stove. “Leave off of that and come help me. Do me a favor and chop up that chicken and all of the leftover bacon. About the size of a dime for the chicken and a little bit smaller than that for the bacon.”
It was one of the things he loved about Donal—one of the many things. His adopted father knew Miki needed reference points, especially when faced with things he’d never done before. As stupid as it sounded, the kitchen was a waystation of sorts for him, and to enter it with the intention of creating an actual meal was as scary as the thirty-foot-drop ride they’d gone on in Japan.
“If I cut my fingers off, you’re going to have to explain to the band why I can’t play guitar anymore,” Miki warned, picking up the knife. “And maybe to Edie too. And the record label guys.”
“Well, don’t ye be cutting your fingers, because while I could take them on, I’m more afraid of what my bride would do to me,” Donal replied, chuckling. There was a warmth to his laugh, a gravitas mingling humor with comfort. Miki liked that Kane laughed as his father did, a low roll of thunder spiced with a bit of joy and sometimes teasing.
The teasing was the hardest thing to get used to.
Damien seemed to get the knack of it, but for all of his years on the road with the Sinners boys, Miki never quite got the hang of poking fun at others and himself. It felt mean, even though other people seem to enjoy it, and there’d been a few times when Miki sat in the middle of the Morgans’ living room and the mood shifted around him, going back to normal when Donal cleared his throat and everyone found something else to do.
Donal’s teasing was out in the open and never meant to make Miki feel small. Maybe that’s what he really didn’t like about being poked at. There’d been too many years where he’d been shoved into a tiny space and told to be invisible, or worse, told he didn’t matter at all.
“Does it have to be, like, squares? Or does it matter?” Miki poked at a piece of chicken, wondering if he should take the skin off as well. “And do I just cut it up? Like, do you want the skin?”
“Yer making it too hard on yourself there, son.” Donal leaned over to take a peek at the rice. “Skin on or off is fine. However you want to make it.”
“I just don’t want it to be wrong.” Miki scowled at the mound of cooked chicken in front of him. “Food’s a big thing. They’re always giving me shit about how I eat. I just don’t want to fuck this up.”
“That’s not going to happen. That’s the best part about fried rice,” Donal remarked, cracking an egg into a glass bowl. “It doesn’t have to be perfect, because it’s made out of everything ye have the refrigerator. It’s kind of like an omelet.”
“Yeah, I don’t know how to make those either.” He shook his head. “Kane makes them sometimes. Like, he takes a couple of eggs and pulls crap out of the fridge; then all of a sudden we’ve got this five-course meal with hot biscuits and these perfect half-moon egg things on everybody’s plates.”
“Well now, that’s just him showing off, then.” A few more eggs joined the first one in the bowl; then Donal added a dollop of water from a nearby cup. “Hand me that fork there, will ye? It’s time to add the eggs.”
“Shit, I’m not done chopping up the meat.” After handing Donal a fork, Miki began to diligently separate the chicken from the bones.
“Take yer time. See? The eggs just go on top of the cooking rice, and then let that sit for a while.” Donal made sure Miki’s attention was on the pan as he poured the beaten eggs slowly around the skillet. “Just finish up what ye’ve got and we’ll toss it in after the vegetables. Then we’ll broil the short ribs. Those will go fast, and the rice will keep in the oven under the warmer.”
He finished the chicken and then the bacon, tossing them all into a bowl before handing it over to Donal. There was a space on the counter he’d been told he could sit on, a controversial decision protested by the Morgan siblings, since they hadn’t been allowed to do so growing up. Being overruled first by Donal and then Brigid, there was a tiny storm of grumbles, but Miki was assured the rest of the family would simply have to adjust.
Although he did notice Ryan had been promptly told to get off the counter when she’d tried to sit up there.
Miki nearly breathed a sigh of relief when Donal turned the rice over with the spatula. He watched attentively when Donal showed him the crackle, then leaned back on his hands. “Can I ask you something?”
“Ye can ask me anything. Ye know that, Mick.” Donal continued to work the pan, then tapped the spatula against its edge. “What’s on your mind?”
“Did you know what kind of person you wanted Kane to be with?” He shifted on the counter, careful not to bang his heels against the kitchen cabinet. “I mean, I hear people talk about what they want for their kids sometimes. And it’s kind of weird, because they’ve got these huge ideas about what this kid is going to be when it grows up and sometimes even the type of person they want it to be with. Did you and Brigid ever do that? Like, try to plan out their lives?”
“Truth be told, I think every parent does that.” Donal turned the fire down with a flick of the knob, then leaned against the counter, crossing his arms over his burly chest. “Funny thing about raising kids is that a parent shouldn’t go into it thinking they can mold or make what they want out of this person. Not to say that we didn’t make our mistakes. For the longest time, I’d wanted Connor to be a lawyer, but that wasn’t in the cards.”
Miki snorted. “I can’t imagine Connor being a lawyer. Maybe Kiki. Or even Kane.”
“Well, I had it all planned out. I knew what schools I wanted him to attend and figured one of us was going to have to learn how to play golf so we could teach him, when Brigid’s da told me something while we were getting pissed over a new bottle of whiskey he’d brought in.” Donal grinned. “And ye’ve been around me long enough to know pissed means drunk, right?”
“I think I know how to say drunken hangover in about fifteen dialects and twelve languages.” Miki made a face. “It’s right up there with ‘where’s the bathroom’ and ‘no, I don’t have any money’ and ‘I am not looking for a hooker.’”
“Very good life skills, that,” Donal agreed. “So we were passing a fine Sunday afternoon when he looked at me and said, ‘Ye’re a fool if ye think ye’re going to have a say about what the boy will be. Here ye are laying down a path for him to walk on when what ye should be thinking about… what ye need to be doing… is to be concerned about what kind of man he’ll become. Raise the man, Donal,’ he scolded me. ‘If ye raise the man right, the path he chooses will be the one he’s meant to follow.’
“Since they stuck with me even after I sobered up, I figured those words were a trut
h I couldn’t deny.” The vegetables joined the rice, but Donal held off mixing them in. “I never wanted any of my children to pick up the gun and the badge. For me it was a way to help people find justice, for me to help people who may be needing a voice but couldn’t speak up. I never imagined any of them would wear my uniform. And any plans that I might’ve had for them were set aside, because their passion for justice is even stronger than mine.
“Now to get to yer question about did I ever imagine the person I saw Kane with? The answer to that is no, because I know love hits without warning or reason.” Donal’s smile grew wistful, and he laid a warm hand on Miki’s thigh. “I never imagined I would fall in love with Brigid Finnegan, but when I finally saw she’d made a place for herself in my heart, I knew I couldn’t ever love anyone else. It was that way with ye and Kane. I knew the moment I heard him speak about ye that he’d lost himself in loving ye.”
“Wouldn’t you want your kid to have somebody less fucked-up?” Miki bit at his lower lip, looking away. He was poking at a brittle shell of insecurity he’d been avoiding for months, but the doubts about him fitting into Kane’s life and the family always resurfaced. “I mean, I’m not—”
“Yer exactly who he needed to fall in love with, Mick,” Donal said, cupping the back of Miki’s head until their foreheads touched. “Ye challenge him. Ye challenge his world and make him think. Ye tell him no when the world bows to his pushiness and force him to rethink the way he approaches people. If there is one great disservice I’ve given my children, it’s that they sometimes believe they are always right.”
“Yeah, I don’t know where they got that from.” Miki coughed, “Brigid.”
“I’m not going to say that ye’re wrong, but I had a hand in it.” He laughed, kissing Miki on the temple before letting him go. “Ye make Kane stretch outside of himself. With ye he learns to compromise, because while he is an irresistible force, ye are an immovable object at times, and this makes him stop and change course. So while I have made him the best man that I could raise, ye are making him a better man, because ye love him but won’t take any of his shit. So that, Mick, is why I could never imagine anyone but ye by Kane’s side, and it was one of the happiest days in our lives when he brought ye home, so I knew right then and there, ye’d be a son of our hearts and a blessing on this family.”
Strawberries in the Office
“DR. MORGAN, can you get into why the introduction of foreign dyes and fabrics was important to England’s industrial growth?”
Quinn turned, hearing the groans from the other students in his class. Only three weeks into the twice-weekly sessions and he’d already discovered Sarah Yarbo was as curious as she was awkward. Younger than the others by at least two years, he felt a bit of empathy toward her struggling to keep up socially, even as he understood why the others were frustrated by her questions. It was supposed to be an easy history class, something to be taken to fulfill a requirement or use as a stepping stone to get to a higher level. Sarah wanted more, and there was nothing Quinn wanted more for her than to let her explore the past and guide her through the interesting things she would find.
It was hard being an adult. Hard not diving at the White Rabbit carrying green dyes and watered silks. His brain twitched, longing to go down roads he’d gone down before to share the marvels and oddness of things he’d stumbled across. He could spend hours on the poisons people used in their everyday life simply to make their eyes whiter or bring a bloom to their cheeks, even drifting over to the devious ways people murdered their family or business partners using what were, back then, everyday products. Mysteries stretched out around them, and it would only take a single tug on a thread to unravel them so they could be held up to the light and examined.
Sadly, the other eighty-five students sitting around her weren’t so keen on the journey, and they simply didn’t have the time for side quests.
“You know, that’s a lot to talk about.” He picked through his words carefully, not wanting to turn her curiosity away but instead, put it on hold. “And hell, you could go so many ways with that, because it isn’t just economic but also social influence. Or even the development of different patterns and fabrics which then became iconic British standards but had their roots in imports. Kind of like chicken tikka masala. Which is Indian in influence but a lot of people say was invented in Scotland. It’s an interesting rabbit hole to fall into. Digging stuff out, I mean.
“How about if you send me an email about what you’d like to learn about and I can steer you towards sources. I’ve got a series of videos I follow where a woman in Wales is reconstructing Victorian and Edwardian dresses based off of fashion plates printed during those times.” Sarah perked up, her eyes bright behind the glasses she constantly shoved up the bridge of her nose. Quinn pointed to the whiteboard where he left his contact information scribbled in the top right corner. “There’s some books you’d like too. And a couple of virtual exhibits you can walk through about fabrics and industrial inventions. I’ll put that together for you, so email me, and we’ll go back to the migration of ethnic foods through Great Britain and how they influenced other cuisines.”
It was hard to read a room sometimes, especially if he let himself fall into the expounding on why something happened, thinking other people would find a subject interesting. It was the hardest thing about trying to stay human sometimes. His nature was to dig, more badger than magpie, he often believed, thinking of his family’s nickname for him, but in a lot of ways, they were right. Anything sparkly caught his attention, and the world held so many sparkly things, including British dye techniques and French fashions. Sarah would chase that wisp of an idea until something else caught her eye, but Quinn found the past fascinating, often more intriguing than anything else. The past held patterns, echoes of ripples one could only clearly see by stepping back into the present and staring at the whole picture. Sometimes the smallest of stones tossed into a vast sea created the greatest impact, but at the time, no one knew what hit them.
Much like Rafe Andrade did to Quinn’s life… and exactly like he was doing right now as he slipped into the room and took a seat by one of the doors.
Of course the students noticed Rafe. It was impossible to ignore him, and even if not everyone knew who he was, he drew eyes to him. There was more than a bit of pirate to his look, a dash of rogue made all the more distracting when he ran his fingers through his disheveled blond hair and gave Quinn a slow, wicked smile. He’d probably grabbed whatever was handy to put on, because Quinn was pretty sure Rafe was wearing the ramen shop T-shirt Quinn wore to the Morgan family dinner the night before, and the pair of beat-up jeans barely hugging Rafe’s hips were paint-splattered in places, celery green dots exactly the shade of the walls in Con’s study. Throwing out old clothes wasn’t something either one of them did on a regular basis, but the jeans were kissing the line of indecent, especially after Rafe caught a sharp corner and ripped a small divot beneath his left asscheek.
What Quinn really didn’t need was the good peek of the boxer briefs Rafe wore beneath his jeans, the red cotton framed by the faded denim and clearly visible when Rafe rested his foot on the table’s edge, bending his knee while sprawling across the chair’s wide back. The top level of the risers was nearly empty, and Rafe’s presence filled that corner of the room, pushing much of Quinn’s train of thought right out of his brain. After shooting a fierce scowl at Rafe, he turned back to the whiteboard, hoping his notes would lead him back to where he’d been in his lecture.
“So tikka masala isn’t really Indian food?” One of the lantern-jawed boys who usually squirmed through the class pushed himself to the edge of his seat, glancing over his shoulder at Rafe before drifting his attention back to Quinn. “Or is it one of those influenced things?”
“That is a hotly debated topic, and according to one side of the argument, it was created by a British Pakistani chef in Glasgow, while others maintain that its origins are in India. But that’s another rabbit hole, beca
use we’re talking about something that earned a niche in the lexicon of British foods sometime in the 1960s or ’70s. It all depends on who’s telling the tale,” Quinn replied, his mind careening back to where he’d gotten derailed. “Now, that’s not to say India didn’t have its hand in influencing British cuisine during Queen Victoria’s reign, because here’s when things get really interesting….”
He got through the rest of the class with a determined focus. Rafe’s presence… throbbed in the corner of Quinn’s awareness, pulling him back to the sun-kissed bassist time and time again until Quinn was nearly ready to kick Rafe out just so he could finish his lecture in peace. Rafe said nothing, did nothing, but every shift of his shoulders or the minute squeak of a Converse moving against the table’s edge yanked Quinn right back to the top level of the classroom’s seating. Hidden partially by silken gray shadows, Rafe merely sat and watched Quinn, making eye contact every time Quinn glanced his way and infuriatingly smiling once in a while, with enough of a heated promise in his grin to make Quinn stutter and trip over his words.
It was like being back in high school and watching his brothers and their friends hunker down over lunch, usually leaving the end of the bench open for Quinn… where inevitably, Rafe joined them five minutes into the period, shoving Quinn farther in with a nudge. He’d spent more than a few lunch hours wishing he was anywhere but plastered to Rafe Andrade’s side, while also hoping the meal would go on forever.
Except right now, he would cheerfully kill Rafe, because he had a class to get through, and the asshole knew exactly how Quinn felt about those damned jeans and the challenge of a red triangle flashing at him like he was a bull Rafe was baiting to fight.
