“I don’t blame her. You don’t get to decide what makes you happy and what doesn’t, and I would never have asked her to give up the chance to be happy…”
They go quiet after that. It’s starting to get cold in the bakery, the smell of the fires outside seeping in, inviting, suggesting warm living-rooms and heavy blankets.
“You’re too good, too kind,” Oliver says with a smile.
Adrian chuckles. “My brothers say that too. I don’t really think you can, though. Be too kind.” He smiles at Oliver, blond hair falling over his eyes as he turns. Oliver can’t help smiling back; has to stop himself from curling Adrian’s hair behind his ear.
***
It’s a Saturday afternoon, and the kids are playing cards together at the kitchen table, Sam yelling unhappily every time Junia and Jamie team up against him and giggle conspiratorially.
“Behave,” says Adrian, but when he turns around the giggling starts again.
There’s a knock on the door, and Sam, tired of his brother and sister, hops off his chair and opens the door before Adrian can reach it, then he grabs the hem of Adrian’s shirt.
“Hello,” he says, shyly, and Oliver smiles kindly at him.
“Hi.” Sam hides his face against Adrian’s shirt.
“Hey,”says Adrian. “Come on in.”
“Actually…” Oliver says, pausing for a moment before continuing. “I wanted to know if you could come over to my house. I need help with something.”
“Sure, let me just call Steven to keep an eye on the kids.”
“Oh, no, they can come too. Actually, it would be better if they came too,” Oliver says quickly. “Children have no brain-to-mouth filter. I kind of need that.”
***
Oliver’s kitchen is bigger than the one in Adrian’s house; he’s got both an island near the kitchen and a big table, and both are filled with pastries that remind Adrian of his mother’s kitchen.
The children are completely quiet. They all look up at Adrian, their eyes big and expectant.
“I don’t have a lot of experience with German pastries,” explains Oliver. “I don’t know if these taste like they should. I need your input.”
Sam sways from one foot to the other. “Does ‘input’ mean we can eat them?” he asks timidly.
“Well, yes.”
Sam walks to him and hugs him.
***
It’s nice, Adrian thinks, watching Oliver with Sam on his lap, explaining him how to bake this and that. Sam looks at him with his big blue eyes shining, chewing on a cookie. Junia and Jamie seem to be having the time of their lives too, having an intense conversation about which pastry, in general, is the best pastry ever. When Sam decides he can’t eat anymore, he curls up against Oliver, which is basically a miracle since Sam has something of an issue just talking to people outside his family, let alone be friendly with them.
It is nice. How sweet Oliver’s eyes are when he looks at Sam, how he speaks with Junia and Jamie, like they’re grown ups, like there’s no reason whatsoever for him to simplify anything, to treat them like they don’t understand.
“What do you think?” asks Oliver, looking up at Adrian, who’s barely touched anything, and finds himself wondering exactly why.
“They’re good,” he says and blushes a little. “Very good,” he adds, feeling like he’s only making things worse.
But Oliver smiles at him, gratefully, and Adrian’s stomach twitches a little, finally making him realize what’s going on: he’s had butterflies in his stomach since Sam opened the door.
***
Oliver’s heart starts pounding every time Adrian is around, which is new. And he actually wants to have him around, which is also new. It’s a weird feeling, much like the one he had during the first few nights in his new house: he feels light, like for once his skin fits him just right.
Making things; stirring and mixing and flattening with a rolling pin and cutting and baking and decorating, everything becomes incredibly more fun, incredibly more important, when he’s doing it for Adrian, or for the kids.
Because he likes them too, the kids, Sam especially. He’s shy and sweet and curious. Junia and Jamie are a bit more diffident, but still good kids. Junia is bossy and protective, Jamie calm and thoughtful, but all of them have the same sort of kindness Adrian has, the same tendency to overlook flaws and exalt merits. Oliver likes kids; they’re not as emotionally exhausting as adults, they ask questions, they don’t try to push their answers down your throat.
The thing is, Oliver might like them a lot, might like Adrian a lot, but it doesn’t matter in the least, because from the way Adrian talked about his wife, he’s still not over her. And even if he were over her, it still wouldn’t mean Adrian could want him. He’s married and with children, what chance does Oliver have
And he knows it, Oliver, he knows it almost painfully, and still he takes every chance he possibly can to see him, and talk to him, and spend time with him; and when he goes to bed at night he closes his eyes and thinks how nice it would be, snuggling up against Adrian, having him hold him as he falls asleep.
***
“They’re at a friend’s house,” says Adrian, handing Oliver a steaming cup of coffee. Sam is kneeling on his chair, intently drawing with a bunch of crayons, tongue between his teeth in concentration.
“Birthday?”asks Oliver, warming up his hands around the cup. Adrian nods.
“The first kid of Junia’s class to turn ten. I feel so old.”
“Done!” announces Sam from across the table.
“Can I see?” asks Adrian, and Sam nods and hands him the drawing.
“Miss Aimee told me to draw my family,” he explains.
Adrian looks at Oliver from behind the drawing, and his blue eyes are smiling. He turns the notebook around. There’s Adrian, with big blond hair and eyes of a blue too pale, three small, equally blond, equally blue-eyed, children; and then a dark haired, green-eyed man with a chef hat on his head. “Looks like we adopted you,” says Adrian, softly.
“Did we adopt him?” he asks, looking at Sam, who nods, then seems to be thinking about it.
“Can we?” the boy asks, hopefully, and Adrian laughs. Oliver reaches out and ruffles Sam’s hair, Sam grinning happily at him.
***
Junia’s sitting on Adrian’s shoulders, hanging a branch of mistletoe on the doorway to the garage.
“Done?” asks Adrian.
“Yeah,” answers Junia. Adrian has just let Junia hop off of him when Oliver walks around the corner. Adrian waves at him, suddenly feeling peculiarly happier.
“Hey,” Oliver says, smiling.“What’s up?”
“I went down to the post office to send a couple of Christmas cards…”
Adrian is suddenly aware of an insistent giggling beside them. He turns and looks at his children; all three of them in a row, excitedly looking at them.
“What?” asks Adrian, and they all point above their heads. Adrian and Oliver both look up, staring for a moment at the freshly hung branch of mistletoe.
“You have to kiss,” says Junia.
“It’s the law,” adds Sam.
“Tradition, not law,” Jamie corrects him.
Adrian looks at Oliver, then looks back up. He makes to take a step back, because he doesn’t want to make Oliver uncomfortable, but Oliver reaches out for him, grabbing his sleeve, and Adrian freezes.
Oliver looks at him, nervously, walks a little closer, a hand moving to the back of Adrian’s head, tilting his head before pressing his lips to Adrian’s.
It’s a brief kiss, innocent, just their lips brushing together for what’s probably a handful of seconds, but feels like a very long time. Adrian instinctively grabs Oliver’s waist, delicately, shivers running down his spine with every almost imperceptible movement.
Then Oliver steps back, and Adrian feels suddenly cold and exposed, wants to hug Oliver so tight, and push his face against his neck, and just stay like that for a minute or a hundre
d.
Oliver then turns around and crosses the street in a hurry.
Adrian raises a hand to his lips, watching him go. He’s a bit shell-shocked, for a moment, then feels like laughing. He feels like laughing till his jaw hurts and his eyes water.
***
It’s snowing hard when Oliver wakes up, feeling dejected as he hasn’t felt in a very long time. He drags himself to the bathroom, takes a quick, hot shower, all the while repeating himself just how much of an idiot he is. He shouldn’t have done it. He should never have kissed Adrian.
There’s only two possible outcomes to what he’s done; either Adrian will go on being friendly with him but slowly drift away; or he’ll be outright hostile.
There’s a third chance, Oliver allows himself to think, as he waits for his tea to cool down a little; Adrian could choose to ignore everything, and nothing will change. It’s not inconceivable. Adrian is a good person. Maybe everything will stay the same.
***
So he does what he always does when he has absolutely nothing to do: he bakes.
He prepares some choux pastry, mechanically, his head somewhere else, stuffs it in a pastry bag and squeezes a dozen of hot-dog-shaped stripes of dough on two baking trays.
He makes the custard and the chocolate glaze sitting down on the island with his feet on a chair, the smell of éclairs spreading in the house as they bake, the snow still falling and falling, a weird sense of expectation coiling unpleasantly in his guts.
Once the éclairs are filled with custard and glazed with chocolate, tiny little stars of sugar sprinkled on top of them just because; Oliver sets them neatly in a platter, carefully, covers it up, and grabs his coat.
His heart is beating furiously in his throat as he walks up the steps of Adrian’s house, feeling more and more like walking away with every step. He’s not going to, though. He’s always running away. He ran away from his name, ran away from his family, from the place he was born and raised, from the people he grew up with; he’s not going to run away now.
Oliver knocks at Adrian’s door, tries to calm down as he waits. When Adrian opens the door Oliver feels his courage drain away, but he bites his lips and forces himself to speak.
“I’m sorry,” he says, handing Adrian the plate. “For what happened yesterday.”
Adrian takes a peek under the handkerchief, then puts the éclairs on the little table next to the door, curiously eying Adrian. “I shouldn’t have done it, it was not…”
The rest of the sentence is muffled, a tiny little surprised moan, as Adrian leans forward, arms wrapping around Oliver’s waist, and kisses him. It’s a sweet kiss, slow and gentle, but definitely not as innocent as the first one. His tongue presses against Oliver’s, rolling delicately, Adrian’s humming vibrating pleasantly against his lips.
Oliver tenses up at first, then melts against Adrian, fingers clutching at Adrian’s sweater, eyes falling closed. Adrian feels so solid and warm, and Oliver doesn’t move for a moment after Adrian breaks the kiss; he presses his forehead to Adrian’s, their noses brushing together.
They don’t move, at first, they just stand there, Adrian pressing Oliver close, Oliver’s hand rising to Adrian’s jaw, then Oliver opens his eyes and looks at Adrian, and Adrian’s eyes are pale and happy in the cold morning light, and Oliver can’t help smiling brightly.
***
The kids are out with Jake and Steven, says Adrian, they’re on a secret mission to buy Adrian a Christmas present; so Adrian tugs Oliver inside, guides him to the couch, still kissing him, still touching, his beard scratching Oliver’s face, his hands open wide against Oliver’s back.
Adrian is so busy kissing Oliver he misjudges the distance of the couch and ends up falling on it, dragging Oliver down with him. He laughs and scrambles up, pulling Oliver’s coat off and letting it fall on the floor, wrapping him up in his arms again, pressing a little kiss against Oliver’s chin, waiting for Oliver to kiss him instead. And Oliver does, tracing Adrian’s lips with his tongue, sighing deeply against his mouth, rocking gently against him.
By the time Oliver kisses Adrian one last time and curls up against him, the fire is reduced to a bunch of shimmering embers, the walls painted red and orange. He can feel Adrian’s heart beating, a calm, peaceful rhythm that lulls Oliver to sleep. He closes his eyes, feels like purring as Adrian runs a hand through Oliver’s short hair, his fingertips tracing little circles on the nape of his neck.
***
“Are you sure you don’t want to come?” asks Adrian, checking Jamie’s little bag to make sure he’s packed everything.
Oliver smiles apologetically. “I’m sorry.”
Adrian shakes his head. “As long as you’re all right,” he says, zipping up Jamie’s bag, moving to rest a hand on the back of Oliver’s neck, squeezing gently.
“I am.”
Sam finishes his breakfast and shows Oliver his empty plate, looking proud.
Oliver smiles.
***
Junia and Jamie run around the garden screeching as Steven runs after them; Adrian’s parents’ dog yapping happily and trying to reach them by hopping from place to place in the tall, untouched snow.
Adrian looks at them from the couch under the window; Sam squeezed beside him, asleep.
“Relax,” says Jake.“They’re not going anywhere.”
Adrian smiles at him.
“Force of habit.”
Jake nods. “Do you remember how old we were when we started jumping over the fence to explore the woods? The only rule was coming home before sunset.”
“I have no idea how our parents did that. I couldn’t possibly stand not being able to at least hear what the kids are up to.” Jake looks at him, unreadable; and Adrian is tempted to ask him what he’s thinking about, but thinks better of it.
“Junia tells me you kissed the baker.”
Adrian blushes harder than it seems appropriate. “Well, he actually kissed me. Under the mistletoe.”
Jake hums a little.
“And… then I kissed him some more… but the kids weren’t around, so they don’t know that.”
Jake chuckles. “It’s not a bad thing, you know.”
Adrian bites his lips. “I really like him,” he says. “And the kids like him too. Sam likes him a lot, actually. I’ve never seen him being so comfortable around anybody after…” He stops, looks at Sam as he sleeps peacefully.
Jake frowns at him. “After what?”
Adrian wets his lips.“Two years ago Jamie found the letter,” he says with a sigh. “It was when he’d just started reading, remember? He had to read everything out loud to understand it. And he did, he read the letter, and Junia and Sam listened.”
“Fuck.”
“There were a lot of questions, afterward. I tried to make them understand…”
Jake snorts. “I’m pretty sure they understood all right.”
“Some people aren’t made to be parents.”
“That’s not an excuse,” snaps Jake.
“I remember what she wrote, you know. ‘I can’t feel anything at all for any of them’.”
“She was sick,” insists Adrian. “It’s not her fault.”
“It doesn’t matter, because children don’t understand how fucked up people can be, but they do understand what rejection feels like,” says Jake, and Adrian looks away, instinctively holding Sam a little bit tighter. He knows Jake doesn’t mean it, that he’s just mad Adrian got hurt; that’s what his role has always been, just like Junia’s, watching over his brothers.
“Anyway,” Jake continues, his voice calmer, but still a bit cold. “It’s good that you like this guy. And it’s good that the children like him, too. They always know better, the kids.”
“Yes,” Adrian agrees. Sam stirs a little, he stretches and turns.
***
Oliver stays in bed on Christmas morning; he puts a record on, picks up a book, and reads.
Everything is quiet around him, the streets empty, the
chimneys smoking. Oliver can feel the needle scratch against the record when the music gets particularly fragile, the swishing of the pages as he turns them, the delicate crackling of the fire in the fireplace.
After lunch he puts his coat on, wraps a scarf around his neck, wears a warm hat, and goes out. He walks along the empty, slippery sidewalks. The sky is clear and bright, the sun shines, and Oliver walks slowly, taking everything in now that there’s no people around.
The park next to Jamie and Junia’s school is almost empty, the pond frozen over, crows hopping around excitedly, rolling around in the snow and cawing at each other. The air is so cold it hurts Oliver’s nose when he breathes, but the silence and stillness in the park are so profound, the wind making the naked branches of the trees sway, the few birds that haven’t left chirping as they hop from one branch to the other.
He wanders without knowing where he wants to go, letting his feet bring him wherever they please; he stops whenever he wants, pauses on the wooden bridge, looking down at the thin stripe of flowing water between the frozen edges of the creek, observing the fallen leaves being dragged away by the current.
As Oliver walks inside a tunnel formed by low evergreens, he wonders what Adrian would think if he saw him walking around like this. What would he do if Oliver asked him to come with? Would he talk? Would Oliver’s silence make him uncomfortable? Or would he understand? Is he like most people Oliver knows, or can he tell the subtle differences in silences? Can he recognize a good, light, comfortable silence?
If he has to be honest with himself, he misses him. This would be so much better with Adrian beside him, holding his hand, and the kids walking in front of them laughing and bickering with each other.
He wonders what they’re up to, hopes they’re having fun. Hopes they’re warm and happy, hopes they feel as complete being all together as he does right now, walking out of the shadowy path and into the shining cold light of the day.
***
Oliver is waiting for them when they come back home, sitting on the stairs to Adrian’s house. He stands up when Adrian parks the car, smiles at him and waves. Sam is the first one out of the car, he runs to Oliver, who picks him up and squeezes him tight, Sam clinging to him like a little monkey.
Something Greater Than Yourself: An Omega Mpreg Romance Page 13