Four

by Tia Fielding

  He drove down the long driveway and only realized his hands were shaking when he went to turn off the car. As soon as he’d managed that, his door was wrenched open and Makai was pulling him out and hugging him close.

  “For fuck’s sake, Kaos,” he grunted into Kaos’s hair. “We love you unconditionally. You need to understand that. It was just a mishap—we all know that.” He was being squeezed into Makai’s muscular frame, which dwarfed his own, and if it had been someone else, he would’ve been in a state of panic. It was Makai, though, and Kaos felt completely and utterly safe and went limp in his arms.

  “Yeah…,” he finally murmured, trying his best to make himself believe what Makai was saying.

  The cottage door opened and Emil stepped out. He looked at Kaos hesitantly, and Kaos extracted himself from Makai to go to him.

  “I’m sorry,” they both said at the same time.

  “Wait, what?” Kaos blinked at Emil. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “If you’d known pizza is a trigger of mine—”

  “No. Absolutely not. This wasn’t anyone’s fault, really, even if it feels like it was.” Kaos had to make it clear, even though he might not believe it himself right then. Besides, he was pretty sure Emil didn’t either. That wasn’t how PTSD worked, not for anyone.

  Hesitantly, Emil reached out a hand and took Kaos’s. It was the first time Emil had touched him on purpose. Emil looked at him seriously, then smiled in a quiet way. “Okay.” Something about his expression made Kaos realize that maybe Emil was further along with this believing thing than him.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way,” Kaos started, and waited for Makai to come over and wrap an arm around Emil’s waist before continuing. “I’m moving out tonight.”

  While both Emil and Makai looked surprised, they also looked a little bit hurt but hid it quickly.

  Emil had let go of his hand but now took it again. “You don’t have to leave because of this.”

  “I know. It’s not for that. I promise.”

  A curious little meow made them all realize they were still standing in front of the open door. “Let’s go inside. You can tell us more, okay?” Makai looked at Kaos, and Kaos could tell Makai was doing his best to understand.

  “Yeah.”

  Kaos sat in the armchair, leaving the couch for Makai and Emil. The cats followed them, and to Kaos’s surprise, Mouse jumped on his lap instead of going to her daddies.

  “So, basically I ran to the only place I felt comfortable going—the clinic. And then Padraig took me to his house for lunch and to calm down,” Kaos said, fiddling with Mouse’s ears and basically using her as a stress-relief toy of sorts, which he assumed was exactly her goal anyway.

  “Okay… it’s so weird to hear you call him by his first name,” Makai said slowly, but he was smiling when Kaos glanced at him.

  “Yeah, he’s always been Doc Donovan for me.” Emil grinned. “Go on.” He gestured while dodging Spike, who was trying to brush cheeks with him.

  “We got to talking, really. It’s… I mean, he’s a nice guy. Lives in this big-ass house by himself. Somehow he ended up asking if I wanted to rent one of his extra rooms.” Kaos shrugged. “I mean, I also got the job, pending getting my license, so I was going to move out soon anyway.”

  “Wait, you got the job too?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We need to celebrate!” Emil’s enthusiasm poured right over, and Kaos smiled.

  “If you want to, but I don’t really feel like doing anything special. It’s just a job.”

  “And a place to live, Kaos. It’s not a small deal,” Makai said gently.

  “I know…. Celebrate your victories and all that,” Kaos murmured. It was one of the things he needed to try to remember better. “I just want you guys to know that if this house was any bigger, I’d love to stay. I love it here. I’ll miss the cats too. It’s just… three grown humans and two cats in such a small space. You two don’t have any privacy and….” He sighed and pointedly ignored how Emil blushed at his mention of privacy.

  “We get it.” Makai lifted Spike onto his own lap so the cat would stop trying to tickle Emil’s face with his whiskers, and smiled slightly. “Besides, it won’t hurt having a hot and single housemate.”

  Emil giggled, and Kaos groaned. He wanted to hide his face in Mouse’s fur but didn’t think she would appreciate being manhandled.

  “How about we ask Nora to bake us a cake for another day? Maybe a housewarming gift of sorts, and deliver it to Doc Donovan’s place whenever she’s had time to bake it? Call that the celebration?” Makai suggested. Kaos was about to protest, but Emil looked so happy at the prospect, he said nothing instead.

  “Mom will love that idea! She uses any excuse she can find to bake something. You just let me know what flavors you might like, and she’ll work her magic for sure!”

  “Blueberry and chocolate are my weaknesses. I don’t like caramel-type stuff.”

  “Excellent, I’ll go call her right now!” Emil bounced off the couch and into the bedroom.

  “He’s very into that idea, isn’t he?” Kaos said dryly.

  “Oh, see, Nora has gotten into baking even more. She likes to experiment with recipes, and I think she’s considering some sort of business even. We’re her guinea pigs.” Makai looked happy in a way Kaos had never seen him when talking about his own mother.

  “I’m glad you’ve found a family here, Makai.”

  “I’m pretty happy with everyone, especially now that you’re here too.” Makai’s smile was beautiful and genuine, and it made Kaos’s heart clench a bit.

  “I’m so fucking happy for you,” he choked out and got up to plant himself and Mouse next to Makai on the couch. He burrowed into Makai’s side like he had during many long, sleepless nights in their cell, and just breathed.

  Makai seemed to realize he needed the closeness and safety, so he stayed quiet for the time being. Emil’s excited babble sounded from the bedroom, and eventually he came back. Emil looked at them with clear aww in his expression, but instead of commenting, he went and sat on Makai’s other side.

  THERE WASN’T much to pack, so instead Kaos did all his laundry and hung out with the guys while waiting for the dryer to do its job. Emil and Makai were watching some comedy show or another, and Kaos sat in the armchair with a sketchpad on his lap. He drew a quick sketch of the two of them looking so happy and carefree, then added the cats when they appeared and curled up next to their daddies too.

  When his phone buzzed with an incoming message, he dug it out from between his thigh and the chair’s arm, then smiled widely at the silly selfie Lake had sent him.

  “Who’s that?” Makai asked, grinning at Kaos’s expression, it seemed.

  “It’s my friend LaKeisha, or Lake, as she prefers to be called.” Kaos turned the phone so that the guys could see the photo.

  They both laughed, and Emil ended up giggling so hard that he had to hide his face in Makai’s shoulder.

  “She’s a goofball. I think with me here, she’s able to not be so stressed out. It wasn’t easy for her when I took out the restraining order on her brother,” Kaos mused as he sent her a photo of the cats he’d taken earlier. He hadn’t really paid attention to what he was saying, but the sudden silence from the couch made him look up. “What?”

  “You have a restraining order for someone?” Emil asked quietly, his hand finding Makai’s where he’d gone deadly still.

  Shit. Kaos hadn’t thought about talking about this quite yet, but it seemed like he had to now. “Uh… I was in a relationship with her brother, Trev, who was also one of my bosses at the tattoo studio. He was….” Kaos looked away and licked his lips in a nervous gesture. He could say the words. Admitting it was the first step, right? “He was abusive.”

  Suddenly there was a soft thump, and a dark gray figure crossed the carpet and jumped up to his lap. He was pretty sure Mouse could read minds. Gratefully, he held her close, and she let him squish her against him
like it was no big deal.

  “How long?” Emil seemed to be the one doing the talking, and Kaos understood why. When he glanced at Makai, he was so damn tense still, as if holding himself back. It made Kaos nervous on some basic level, his lizard brain saying there was danger, even though there wasn’t, never from Makai. Logically he understood that Makai was mad at Trev, instantly on protector mode.

  “Makai, can you….” Again, Kaos concentrated on Mouse, let the smooth-as-silk texture of her fur calm him down a little. “Maybe relax? I know you’re safe, but….”

  Emil grabbed hold of Makai’s whole arm and hugged it to his chest, then pulled at it, making Makai literally shake out of it. “That’s better,” Emil said calmly, but turned to look at Kaos expectantly.

  “On and off for years. Even before jail, I mean. It… it was never bad then. But when I came back, it gradually… changed. The first year was pretty good, but then I started to behave more like… well, me.”

  “What do you mean?” Makai asked in his soft, low voice.

  “He wasn’t that okay with being gay. Never was, really. It was the whole black-guy thing, I guess—Lake explained it to me at one point. But he was coming to grips with it, knew it was just a part of him, like the art was, you know.” Kaos shrugged, still petting Mouse, who was now purring like small engine. “But then I figured I was not quite… a guy. That some days I liked to dress differently or wear makeup. I should’ve known the first time he told me off for wearing nail polish. I’d lined my eyes occasionally, and that was fine, but….”

  “The more feminine you got, the less he liked it?” Emil hazarded a guess, and Kaos nodded in response.

  “I don’t want to talk about it, if that’s okay,” Kaos said as a sudden image of his favorite ruffled shirt being torn apart by the large hands of an irate man flashed through his mind.

  “Of course. You don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to. We promise,” Emil said firmly.

  Makai cleared his throat. “Yeah, I’m sorry if I got… intense. I don’t like anyone hurting people, and if it’s someone I love, I….” He swallowed with an audible click, and Emil hugged Makai for comfort. Whose comfort, Kaos wasn’t sure. Probably both of them.

  “So I might not freak out for pizza, but fabric tearing or glass breaking is bad for me.” Kaos attempted levity and failed miserably. “We all have our triggers, right? It’s… it’s not easy, but it’s better now, with him all the way back home and me here.” Not that he’d truly felt at home in Missouri after he got out of jail. With no family left, he’d just floated, then latched on to Trev and Lake and the studio family.

  Makai held a hand out. Kaos got up with Mouse still cradled in one arm and went to sit with them. He wasn’t sure when the last time he’d gotten hugged so much was, if he didn’t count Lake’s hugs, but he wasn’t complaining. Not when they came from people who weren’t scary at all.

  AN HOUR later, Kaos parked the Toyota next to Padraig’s Land Rover and took a deep breath. I can do this.

  “I can do this,” he repeated out loud, then got out of the car and grabbed his bags to carry them in first. The boxes could wait.

  He didn’t even get to the door before it was wrenched open and Padraig stepped out.

  “Hi, welcome. Do you have anything I can help carry in?” he asked, smiling at Kaos in an endearingly nervous way.

  “Sure. Let me drop these inside, and we can go get the boxes.”

  Padraig stepped aside, and Kaos brushed past him to drop the bags at the bottom of the stairs. Then he went back out, and they walked down to the Toyota. He had to fiddle with the lock—the mechanism was a bit messed up—but once he got it to pop open, he caught a glimpse of Padraig’s expression.

  “Hey, I know it’s not much, but it’s all I have,” Kaos said, aiming at playfully scolding.

  Padraig ducked his head and flushed pink, his gray stubble doing very little to hide the blushing. “Sorry, I’m—”

  “It’s fine. I’m teasing you.” They each took two boxes, and Kaos slammed the hatch closed with a well-aimed yet awkward elbow. “Honestly, this is all that’s left that I wanted to take with me when I left Missouri. After my grandma died, the landlord sold everything my friends or the neighbor couldn’t save. There was nobody who could do a thing.”

  “That’s horrible,” Padraig said with obvious feeling. “Did you guys have a lot of stuff?”

  “I lived there all my life. She and Grandpa moved there when my mom was ten, I think. So yeah, lots of memories and history.” Kaos shrugged. It was a big deal, of course. Lake had once said it was as if his home had burned down in a house fire. Maybe that was true, but he still had pictures and scrapbooks of his art that his grandma had kept, and a few pieces of her jewelry that the neighbor had saved for him because she’d known where Grandma had hidden them while Lake and the others hadn’t.

  Padraig was obviously still thinking about it all as they walked inside and up the stairs to Kaos’s new room. Kaos realized he didn’t have linens or anything, which was a bit of a problem.

  “Anything you don’t have but is in the house, you can use,” Padraig said, as if reading his thoughts. “There’s a separate cupboard for the spare towels and all that. Let me show you.”

  Kaos followed him into the hall and down into the nifty little utility room under the stairs. The appliances there weren’t old, and someone had had an impeccable organizing system, which Kaos immediately liked a lot.

  “Whatever we run out of, the one who uses the last will replace, if that’s okay?” Padraig asked, gesturing to a cupboard with cleaning products inside.

  “Yeah, sounds fair.”

  “Okay, so here’s the closet where the extras are. Feel free to use whatever, but you can of course get your own stuff too.”

  It was more like a small walk-in closet, if Kaos was completely honest. There was empty space there, but a lot of the shelves were filled with folded towels, linens, blankets, pillows, and even comforters on one shelf in the back.

  “Wow… this is….”

  “A bit extreme, yes. Marcus liked to be prepared, and we used to entertain during the holidays.”

  When Kaos looked at Padraig, he was smiling wistfully at a pile of blankets just inside the closet. It was obvious how much he’d loved his husband, and something about that made Kaos feel rotten, because he was so fucking jealous of that. Not of Padraig, but of the fact that he’d had that kind of love where he missed the other person even after they’d been gone for four years. Kaos didn’t want to say anything insensitive, so he just nodded.

  “I’ll leave you to unpack. There’s some chicken tikka masala in the slow cooker for dinner. It’ll be ready in two hours, but it’ll just be better if we let it cook longer, so no rush.” Padraig stepped away from the closet, and it hit Kaos that he hadn’t felt any anxiety being effectively trapped in the small space.

  “Sounds great, thanks!” he called after Padraig who was retreating now. It might’ve been Kaos’s imagination, but was his posture a bit tense? Had talking about Marcus been bad for him?

  Sighing, Kaos grabbed a set of linens and towels, and decided to come back to raid the closet once he had everything else ready. He wondered if he should take a comforter just to be sure, because the nights were already pretty damn cold, but he’d figure that out later too.

  THE ROOM itself was a gem. Large, with a lot of light, and the attached bathroom with the tub was to die for. Kaos just needed to put his personal touches into the room, and he’d feel right at home here.

  Padraig had turned the thermostat up for him, so when Kaos changed into some sweats and a T-shirt, he still felt warm enough. Maybe he wouldn’t need the comforter after all.

  He put his clothes into the dresser and placed the picture frames he had in one of the boxes on top. He was smiling at the photo of him and his grandma at the park when Padraig knocked on the half-open door.

  “Come on in.”

  “Hey, I got a call and have to go t
o work for a while,” Padraig said, then noticed the pictures and gestured. “Can I look?”

  “Yeah, sure, if you’re not busy?”

  “Oh no, it’s gonna take the owner a while to get to the clinic. Dog might have a broken leg,” Padraig explained, stopping next to Kaos and peering at the photos.

  Kaos pointed at the one he’d been looking at. “That’s me when I was about… five, I guess. With my grandma.” The familiar confusion in Padraig’s features told Kaos exactly what he was thinking, and it made him laugh. “Yes, it’s really my grandma. I know I look white.”

  “No, it’s not—”

  “Save it. I know your mind went there for a moment. She’s black, and Grandpa was Korean. My mom looked mixed.” Kaos pointed at a photo of his mom when she’d been fifteen, just a couple of years before he’d been born. She looked so young and pretty in it. “My dad, I assume he was white, you know?” He gestured at himself. Somehow all the different genes had mixed into a blond with slightly tanned-looking skin and hazel eyes. If you squinted, there might’ve been some of his grandpa in him, but mostly he just looked like a paler version of his mom.

  “You look a lot like her,” Padraig mused out loud.

  “I think so too. That’s not how I remember her, though. She wasn’t a good mom—that’s why Grandma raised me. I always saw her when she came back to try to get cash from Grandma, and she didn’t look anything like that.”

  “That’s… sad.”

  “Yeah, it is what it is, and here I am. It’s not a big deal anymore. I don’t even miss her.”

  Padraig nodded slowly, then tore his gaze off the pictures. “Okay, I’ll be back when I can. If you get hungry, do eat. Just make enough rice for me too.”

  “Sure. Hope the pup is fine!”

  “Thanks.” Padraig smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling in a now-familiar way, and left.

  Kaos couldn’t help but smile stupidly after him, like a schoolkid with a crush. Damn the man for being sort of ruggedly handsome, with those steel gray eyes and the stubble and the… everything.