by Tia Fielding
“Yeah, I did once I cooked.”
“Okay, well, I’ll eat and then go shower.” And then the conversation.
“Okay. I’ll be here somewhere.” Kaos’s smile was small and tight and didn’t reach his eyes.
Padraig nodded and fixed himself a plate. Kaos was a great cook, at least compared to Padraig himself. With a husband like Marcus, who had been good enough with cooking not to just follow simple recipes, but to come up with his own sometimes… yeah, Padraig hadn’t needed to know more. And now there was Kaos, who seemed to enjoy cooking and making meal plans, and already Padraig was eating better, and healthier, than he had in the last few years.
After eating, he showered unhurriedly, trying to buy time. He feared the conversation, both because he didn’t want to discover that he’d already fucked up somehow, and because he wasn’t sure what he’d hear. The thought of someone being unkind to Kaos seemed like such a wrongness.
There was a certain delicate quality in Kaos that had never attracted Padraig before. Sure, he was a bit of a protector—Marcus had always teased him about that—but for the first time, it was actually something that drew him in. With Marcus, it had been his strength and wit and the way he was brave even after….
Padraig turned off the shower and absently rubbed the scar on his thigh.
“Padraig? Do you want tea?”
He cleared his throat. “Yeah, thanks. I’ll be right downstairs!”
He got dressed in the most comfortable clothes he could find just to make himself feel as good as possible physically. Then he steeled himself. “Come on, Padraig. You’re forty-fucking-seven years old. You can do this,” he murmured under his breath, then went to face The Talk.
HE FOUND Kaos in the living room with a pot of tea and mugs on a tray on the coffee table.
“I hope this is okay? It’s decaf, lavender and lemon. My grandma swore by it in the evenings.” Kaos glanced at him timidly, and Padraig sat down on the couch.
“Why don’t you pour for us?” He smiled, hoping to radiate calm or some shit like that.
Kaos poured some in each mug and gave Padraig one. “Grandma didn’t believe in tea cups. She said they were fancy.” He smiled slightly at the memory, it seemed. “I think she wanted one of those fancy sets, but we could never afford one.”
The tea was fragrant and just the right temperature, so Padraig took a sip and hummed in surprise. “This is really good.”
“Mm-hmm, told you so.”
“So, I’ve been meaning to ask, why Kaos?” Padraig chose to ignore the way Kaos tensed at the first part of his sentence.
To his surprise Kaos blushed lightly and looked at his mug. “It’s really stupid.”
“I’d still like to hear, if it’s something you don’t mind telling.”
Kaos seemed to think about it for a moment, and then he spoke a little absently, as if he was deep in his memories right then. “I was about twelve when I discovered graffiti. I’d always drawn, and Grandma encouraged me to, but graffiti changed a lot. When I got really into it, I needed a tag—you know, like a signature. So one night I was in the bathtub, thinking about it, and I guess, like so many times before, I looked at Grandma’s shower curtain. It had all these words on it, like ‘relax’ and ‘bathe’ and whatnot. But then one of the words was ‘soak.’ The thing was see-through, so on my side, from inside the tub, it read ‘kaos,’ right?” He glanced at Padraig, who nodded, fascinated by the story. “And it was close to ‘chaos,’ obviously, so I thought it was a cool spelling, but since we only had the one bathroom in the house, I had to ask grandma to buy a new shower curtain in case one of my friends came over and made the connection.”
Padraig surprised himself by laughing out loud. “That’s a great story. It’s a good tag too. Very… cool.” He grinned at Kaos, who snorted.
“Yeah, I guess. But it stuck. It’s at least cooler than Jeremiah.”
“Maybe I need a tag too. Padraig doesn’t exactly give me street cred.”
Kaos looked surprised that he knew the term, then threw his head back and laughed. The sound was beautiful, but more than that, the relaxed way Kaos held himself made something in Padraig reach for him.
“Don’t worry. Doc is cool enough, I think.” Kaos smiled, then got more serious again, maybe because of whatever he saw on Padraig’s face before he could hide his emotions. “So….”
“First, please, you don’t have to tell me anything you don’t feel comfortable with. I don’t….” Padraig shifted his weight carefully and took a sip of his tea, using the time to choose his words carefully. “I can’t say I’m not attracted to you, because I am. And it’s freaking me out, because… you’re the first feminine person who has made me feel anything like that ever before. That’s on me, though. It’s my job to deal with it. I won’t take it out on you. Just… I might stare a little…?” The last bit came out as a question almost, and he startled when Kaos’s slender hand came into his view and touched his knee.
“Hey, Padraig, that’s… that’s great. It’s already more than my ex ever did. I mean, I don’t mean we’re going to—” Kaos stopped abruptly, pulled his hand away, and gulped down some of his tea. “Look, you know I was in prison with Makai, right?”
“Uh, yes, I know.” Now Padraig had no idea where this was going.
“So when I went in, I’d just turned nineteen. I’d been apprenticing tattooing for a year, but I knew Trev before that from the neighborhood. He was a few years older, a tattoo artist, and I think I first met him at sixteen or something, because his sister, LaKeisha, was in my high school. Anyway, we got together, Trev and I, and at first it was great. He even helped where he could with the bills and all. He hated that I was dealing, you know, because it was dangerous.”
Padraig wondered how far his perfectly normal middle-class life was from Kaos’s experiences. In some ways they were similar, being LGBTQ, but in others….
“So anyway, then I went to jail for four years, right? And before that I hadn’t really told Trev I didn’t feel like a guy all the time. He didn’t like the feminine gay guys we knew, because of this internalized black-guy homophobia. You got to be tough and masculine if you’re gonna be gay. That sort of shit.” Kaos was on a roll now, gesturing in rapid short jabs with his free hand, while holding his mug with the other.
“Oh, I know all about that. Well, not the black part. Replace that with Irish Catholic.”
Kaos grinned at him briefly, then continued. “Then in prison I met Makai, and for the last two years, we were cellmates. I talked to him more about shit than I’d ever talked to anyone before. Together we sort of figured ourselves out. I got out with the unconditional love and acceptance from Makai making me think that Trev would feel like that too. He’d missed me, right? He said he wanted to continue where we’d left off.”
“Did he date while you were in prison?” Padraig leaned back and drank more tea, engrossed in the story for the time being.
“He says no. He had sex with people, probably women too from what I can gather, just to you know, not be too gay and all. Lake, that’s LaKeisha, said she thinks he had more like a couple of fuckbuddies or even dated someone at one point.” Kaos shrugged. It didn’t seem to bother him anymore. “We got back together, and I started to gradually integrate the new me into my old life. Nail polish and eyeliner were sort of okay. Then—and remember I was still trying to figure out ways to be me back in my regular life—he started to make snide comments about… well, anything he saw as ‘girly,’ really.”
This was so not going into a comfortable direction, and part of Padraig knew what he would hear next, as soon as Kaos put his mug down and wrapped his arms around himself for comfort.
“The hitting… it started with a slap, pushing me into a wall, apologizing the next morning, promising never to do it again. Then punches, tripping me, slamming my head against the tiles in the bathroom once….” Kaos shivered suddenly, and Padraig, moving carefully so not to startle him, put away his own mug and took
the dark gray fleece blanket off the end of the couch and wrapped it around Kaos’s shoulders before retreating to his end.
“Thanks,” Kaos said weakly. “I ended up in the ER with a broken wrist after last New Year’s. Tragically that was the last step for me. He’d threatened to break my fingers so I couldn’t draw if I didn’t stop being such a fucking faggot, and that was it. I could lose anything else, but not my art.”
Padraig felt physically sick. To hear about the abuse was one thing, but to hear those words, so familiar from his past experiences, having been aimed at Kaos…. It broke something in his heart, and he reached a hand toward Kaos without meaning to.
Kaos reached back, and they squeezed each other’s fingers in silence for a moment.
Then Padraig broke it, surprising himself. “I met Marcus at college. First semester. Never looked back. We knew we were it for each other. But we almost died a year later. Gay bashing. It… we grew up with gay men dying of AIDS left and right. That was still the general atmosphere around what my mother called ‘the gays’ when we were in college. Someone found out about us, no matter how careful we had been, and….” Kaos squeezed his hand tighter, and Padraig made himself continue. “I have a scar here”—he pointed at the outside of his left thigh—“where they broke my femur. Marcus lost a kidney and almost one of his testicles. We both had broken ribs—I just had one miss my lung—I had some long-term memory issues, and Marcus had bad migraines for years…. It was….”
“Horrible. It was a travesty, Padraig,” Kaos said with sudden feeling.
“Yes, and so was what happened to you.” When Kaos was obviously going to try to diminish his trauma, Padraig shook his head firmly. “No, Kaos. Look at me. I know what hatred does. We were victims of hatred. It doesn’t matter that it was domestic violence for you. It was still a horrible thing and, in some ways, even worse because you were supposed to trust him, love him.”
Kaos sighed, then smiled sadly, letting Padraig’s hand go finally. “I tried my best to be me, and to be what he wanted. But the more I became me, the more he hated it.”
“I would never, ever raise my hand at you. I know I can’t promise that in a way you’d believe, but I… I hope you try to trust me on that,” Padraig said with all the sincerity he could muster.
“I’ll try my best, okay? And you can stare—I don’t mind when it comes from you.” Kaos blushed again, and this time the weird feeling in the pit of Padraig’s stomach was definitely those damned butterflies again.
“So, wanna have a baby with me?” he deadpanned, and the expression on Kaos’s face made him laugh out loud.
Kaos sputtered out a “What?”
“A dog baby. A client offered me a puppy today. I told her I needed to consult my housemate first.”
“What kind are they?” Kaos asked, his eyes alight with interest as he turned to sit sideways.
“They’re… what’s it called? Pitskies? Pit bull–husky mixes. Really gorgeous puppies, accidental as they were. The parents are great dogs, and the pups will be too.”
“You like the idea of adopting one of them, I can tell,” Kaos said, sounding oddly fond.
“I haven’t gotten a dog before because I didn’t want to leave one alone, and I can’t take one with me if I’m stuck at the clinic all day, no matter how well trained they are. It’s just not safe. Now, on farm runs and stuff, they could stay in the car. But….” Padraig shrugged and frowned. He still wasn’t sure if it was a good idea, but something about having even more life in the house seemed like a good idea.
“And your sudden calls at any time would mess up a puppy or a dog that otherwise needs security,” Kaos mused, nodding slowly. “Well, I think I could talk Christa into letting me take a dog with me to the studio if we can teach it to behave, and if her kids are at home, then we’d have a built-in sitter at my job?”
Padraig felt his chest constrict a little at the thought of Kaos making plans with him. These were long-term plans, after all, not just something fleeting. He cleared his throat. “So you’re planning on staying in Acker for a while?”
Something sad passed over Kaos’s expression then, and he gave Padraig a little smile. “I’m not going anywhere anytime soon. I promise, as much as anyone can.”
That alone made Padraig feel wobbly on the inside. For someone to understand him like that…. He nodded quickly. “Yeah, okay. Then maybe I should text Mia to ask when we can go choose a pup?”
“Yeah, maybe you should. We both have tomorrow off, right? Barring emergencies, of course.”
“Yes, I was thinking about driving to Woodruff for groceries. Getting some other stuff too. The drive’s about an hour or so.”
“I could come with? There must be an art store there, right?” Kaos looked perky at the thought of art supplies.
“I’m sure you can google where.”
“Awesome, I’ll do that right now.” Kaos took his cell phone off the coffee table and began to figure things out.
Fifteen minutes later, they had an afternoon date with Mia’s puppies, and everything was set.
Chapter Nine
THE PUPPIES were adorable balls of energy. Kaos was sprawled in the dogs’ room in Mia’s house, and all six were crawling on top of him, licking him wherever they could find bare skin. Kaos laughed out loud as he tried to hide his face with his hands, and one of them dove right to his ear. He squealed and giggled like a little kid, making Mia and Padraig laugh at him instead of the puppies.
“It seems they like you,” Mia said, smiling at him when he finally sat up from his puppy pile.
“Yeah, that’s a fair assessment, I think,” Kaos replied, grabbing a particularly rambunctious puppy when it tried to climb to his shoulder. “Come on now, buddy, let’s not do that.” He held on to the puppy until it calmed a bit, then scratched it behind the ears. “That’s better.”
“So, which ones did you say we could choose from?” Padraig came closer and knelt down next to Kaos.
“The one behind Kaos with one blue eye, the gray girl, and the reddish one with the blue eyes next to you.” She pointed out the dogs, and Kaos paid attention. He had a favorite. The last one she’d named, a female with red-and-white coat and a shrewd expression because of the blue eyes, somehow called to him the most.
“I think she’s the calmest, but also seems just bossy and curious enough,” Padraig said, picking up Kaos’s favorite.
As if she knew this was a momentous occasion, the puppy looked at Padraig seriously, then wagged her long tail rapidly and licked his chin a few times.
Kaos grinned. “Well, that’s a match if I ever saw one.” When Padraig looked at him with worry in his gaze, he added quickly, “No, she’s my favorite too. I just didn’t want to sway you with my opinion first.”
“That’s set, then. Little Red will move to Doc’s,” Mia said, just as the door opened and a tall man walked in.
“Hey, I came over as soon as I could,” the man said, giving Mia an indulgent smile. “Hi, Doc.”
“Hey, Jai. How’s Teddy?” Doc asked, and based on their conversation in the car on the way back from the shopping earlier, Kaos realized this guy was the neighbor whose male dog was the dad of the puppies.
“He’s okay. Would’ve wanted to come by, but I didn’t want the chaos since I saw your car in the driveway.”
“Speaking of chaos,” Mia said, grinning at Kaos before gesturing between him and Jai. “This is Kaos, Doc’s housemate.”
“Nice to meet you.” Jai smiled at him in what seemed like a genuine way, and Kaos replied similarly. “Did you pick Little Red?”
“Yeah, it’s unanimous. Even the puppy seems to approve.” Kaos pointed to where the puppy now snoozed on Padraig’s lap.
“Aww, so cute,” Mia cooed. “Okay, I have a puppy pack for her here. I’ll get it for you….” She wandered into the other room before coming back with an actual backpack with a cartoon dog face on the flap.
“There’s some of the food they’ve been eating, a new
collar we didn’t have time to put on her yet, and a couple of toys in there,” Jai explained.
Kaos got up and held his hand to Padraig, who had sat down and seemed to be stuck under the puppies now.
“Thanks,” Padraig murmured as he let Kaos pull him to his feet while holding on to Little Red with the other hand.
“No problem.” Kaos turned and took the pack from Mia. “This is great. We got some stuff from Woodruff, but someone filled me in about the food being changed gradually and so on….” He grinned teasingly, and Mia giggled.
“At least you have someone to explain stuff to you. We were stupid enough not to keep an eye on the dogs while we were grilling in my backyard, and ta-dah!” Jai gestured dramatically at the puppies.
“Well, you know now and can tell anyone you know who hasn’t spayed or neutered their dogs,” Padraig said evenly, looking ever so attractive with the puppy in his arms and his expression all kind and soft.
“That’s true.” Mia reached to pet the puppy, and Kaos saw her lip wobble a bit.
“She won’t be far,” he said quietly, and Mia glanced at him, looking ashamed. “Hey, none of that. You’ve had them since birth. They’re essentially your grandkids.”
Jai pulled her to his side, and by the look of them, Kaos was pretty sure they would become one household sooner rather than later. In a way, the puppies must’ve brought them closer together.
“All right, I guess it’s time for us to go,” Padraig said then, and Kaos shouldered the backpack.
“I’ll get into the car first and you can hand her over, unless you want me to drive?”
“I’ll drive. You two can watch the scenery.”
They said bye and were soon on the way home. Maybe it was the puppy, but for the first time, Kaos thought of Padraig’s house as a home, and it felt… good. Not awkward at all. He felt like he belonged there now, especially after the talk they’d had.