by Rhys Ford
“The LA County Fair.” Kane acknowledged a biker’s thumbs-up with a small wave. “They like your car.”
“Fuck the car.” His lanky musician sat up, shoulders braced against the door, his knee angled up on the seat. “You’re taking me how many hundreds of miles to go to a state fair?”
“Ever been to one?” He thought about it, thinking back on what he’d heard about Miki’s experiences on the road and all of the things Damie dragged him to so Miki could have a bit more of normal in his life. “You guys didn’t play them, did you? I mean, I know some bands do that.”
“Not really been, been.” Miki shrugged, rubbing at one of the scars visible through a tear in his black jeans directly over his knee. “Stuff like that costs money. We did roadie stuff for a couple of guys before. Don’t remember much, but there was a lot of noise and it smelled like pigs. I think we were in Minnesota. Or maybe Idaho. It was a last-minute thing we pulled in between gigs we’d set up. Damie was in charge. I just went where he took us and helped out. Got paid, got some food, and then we were back pounding the road with a set of new tires and burping hot dogs.”
“We went to that carnival, remember?” Kane shot him a quick grin. “The Ferris wheel? I won you a stuffed chicken.”
“That Dude tore apart almost as soon as we got home.”
“Ma fixed it right up. Okay, so it’s FrankenChicken now, but still, I won it,” he said with a grimace. “It wasn’t exactly pretty even before the mutt got it.”
“Looks cool now,” Miki conceded. “I like she used the rainbow fur she had to patch in the missing spots. I like him better now. Who doesn’t want a rainbow-black patchy chicken with a leather eyepatch and only one leg? Win me another one of those and I’ll marry you.”
“Yeah, you already married me,” Kane reminded him with a sharp laugh.
“I did. So you better get to making good with the second FrankenChicken,” Miki warned, settling back against the seat to stare out at the ocean. “Or I’m going to call in the rest of the dowry, and where the hell are you going to find fifteen Nubian goats and a pygmy alpaca?”
“OH LOOK, a cow,” Miki said, eyeing the mahogany-and-white beast lipping pieces of feed from Kane’s outstretched hand. “And what’s next to it? Shit! Another cow! Just like the last five cows. Betcha there’s going to be a… cow in the next stall too.”
“You, Mick my love, have no sense of wonder and awe.” Kane scratched a spot near the cow’s ear. It rumbled a low note, closing its eyes. “This is a great cow. Firm. Smells earthy. Pleasant. All in all, a great cow. Says here her name is Daisy.”
“Huh.” He quirked his lips. “Kane, that’s an unprocessed hamburger. Might look cute, but I bet you it could fuck you up if it wanted to.”
“Come on. Look at her.” The love fest continued; Kane bent over slightly to administer a scratching to the bovine’s other ear. “She’s adorable.”
“I’m adorable. That’s dinner. I’ve got to keep hard lines on that.” He glanced about the long stretch of the hall, taking in the people and animals around them. “Don’t fall in love with your food. Don’t name it. Don’t pet it. I know me. I like bacon and ribs too much for this. I start putting a face on my food and that’s it, no more carne asada fries for me. I guess if they were like ice cream cows, that would be okay. And it’s not like I don’t know cows are hamburger. Shit. This is a weird headspace I’m going into. I fall in love with cows and all of that goes up in smoke. And I love carne asada.”
Kane looked up from his cow scratching. “Really? You’d give up carne asada? Beef chow fun dry style?”
“Okay, maybe not.” Shrugging, Miki contemplated his hungers. “Yeah, probably not. I mean, they’re cute as hell, but they’re cows, dude. What’s next? Chickens?”
“I was thinking alpaca.” Kane straightened up carefully, angling his shoulders to avoid smacking a young teenaged girl in the head when he let go of the cow’s ear and stepped back from the temporary fencing put up to separate the animals from the crowd. “And then, I’m thinking I’ve got to be feeding you, because that stomach of yours must be eating your spine by now.”
“Shit, long past that.” Miki snorted, shoving his hands into his jeans’ pockets. “They don’t eat alpacas, right?”
“I’m sure some do,” Kane replied, a smirk on his lips. “But probably these are for yarn.”
“Yarn I can handle.” He nudged his husband with his shoulder, barely budging Kane’s greater weight. “Let’s go and get our alpaca on, and then yeah, best feed me before I start chewing on you.”
“And how is that a problem for me?” Kane muttered into Miki’s ear right before he walked away.
“Dick. Now I’m going to be thinking about that all day,” he whispered at Kane’s back, but quickly fell into a walk to match Kane’s leisurely stride.
The fair was… odd. Not in a funhouse mirror slasher flick horror kind of way, which is what Miki always thought of when he even remotely had the idea of a fair cross his mind. No, the gathering of odd groups of people around even odder bits of things no one could actually buy was a bit bizarre. It was like he’d stumbled into a farmers’ market museum of sorts, where people oohed and awwed over enormous cabbage heads and long-lashed cows but nobody walked away with the fifteen-pound avocado thinking they’d gotten a good price on what was going to be a massive guacamole bowl.
Kane’s fingers brushed the back of Miki’s hand while they walked toward the end of the long building. The casual touch still startled him, tingling his skin with the awareness of the man he’d fallen for. Every time they made contact, Miki fought the urge to look around, to challenge anyone’s glare in case someone had a problem with them. He hated that response, resented he couldn’t simply accept Kane’s fingers on his wrist or hand or even his shoulder without wondering if it would bring trouble to their feet.
“What are you muttering about, Mick?” Kane stopped in front of a pen of fluffy white sheep with quixotic black faces, their luminous eyes soft but sharp, probably on the lookout for purloined handfuls of popcorn and chips despite a sign warning people not to feed the livestock. “And those were dairy cows back there, in case you were wondering. No one’s going to do anything to them other than maybe churn out a bit of butter or chocolate ice cream. Don’t tell me you’ve got something against sheep now too.”
“Sheep are cute. These are great,” he said slowly, looking over the puffy, lumpy animals dashing about the pen. “They don’t look real. I mean, Dude’s got a toy that looks like one of these things.”
“Oh, they’re real.” Kane slid a massive arm around Miki’s shoulders, pulling him in closer. “Cute as hell, but they smell like….”
“Ass end of a rotten hot dog,” Miki finished, enduring the sloppy wet kiss on his temple with a grimace. “K, people are going to—”
“Think I punched above my weight class,” he said, keeping Miki against him for a long moment before letting him go. “Come on. I promised you alpaca. They’re down at the end.”
“I’m not the one who stopped for the sheep,” Miki reminded him, falling into step once again. “Remember Dude and the sheep shit he found when we took that road trip up north? Nightmares about that, K. Nightmares.”
The ring on his finger was a strange weight he’d not gotten used to yet. Even after months of wearing the simple gold band, Miki found himself seeking out its edge with his thumb, running his nail over its ridge and twisting it around. They’d debated wearing them, finally deciding something simple would be good and easy enough to take off if Miki couldn’t play with it on. So far he hadn’t had any issues, other than feeling naked when removing it. Kane caught Miki asking Dude if he felt as uncomfortable as shit when Miki took the dog’s collar off for his bath, and they’d ended up in a tangle of a fight after Kane coldly asked if the ring on Miki’s finger made him feel like he was owned in any way.
They made up when Kane finally got it into his thick fucking skull that Miki was thinking it felt like he was carry
ing a piece of his home around on him and wondered if Dude felt abandoned when his collar came off.
The make-up sex had been as challenging and hot as their fight, and the apologies Kane murmured later were soft and sweet, stroking at Miki’s ruffled feathers until Dude jumped onto the bed and they discovered the mutt hadn’t gotten his bath and their bed now smelled like diseased fish guts and regurgitated Brussels sprouts.
Everyone got a bath after that, including the sheets, and Miki dug out a bit of Kane’s insecurities about being afraid Miki would feel trapped as they stood under the hot water and Miki’s hands were soapy from scrubbing Kane’s back.
That had been a while back, and still the ring felt new, and despite Miki’s fears he’d lose it, it seemed to stay on quite happily, even as Miki worried at it.
The fair was something new, a different slice of a world he’d never known. Sure, he knew about cows and chickens existing, but spending any time up close to any of them never held any interest. The people around him, however, were another story. There were threads of stress woven through the crowd, small tidbits of tired and grumpy children missing their naps and possibly food, but for the most part everyone seemed to be happy to stand in the middle of straw bits and melting ice cubes from dropped drinks simply to look at bovines.
Something ached in his chest, a hard kernel of spirit bone lodged somewhere in his soul Miki couldn’t shake loose, and standing in the middle of the stretched-out building, he couldn’t figure out why the minute constant throb was suddenly an aching pang. Or at least he was clueless until he took another good look around and realized he was standing in the middle of families with slightly sunburnt faces tipped with freckles and plump cheeks as sugary wholesome as the adorable sheep a few stalls back.
It wasn’t a perfect picture. Not by any means. But he’d been around the Morgans long enough to know that even the tightest of families bickered and argued. It was the sickly happy ones that gave him the shivers, their fondant smiles and chipper voices more than likely hiding knives and pain beneath the surface. He’d learned that lesson at a very early age. Window dressing perfection was put up to keep secrets from prying eyes and inquisitive noses. No, he liked hearing a family push and pull on each other, but in the soft, gentle tones of long-held inside jokes and, more importantly, affection ripe with love.
“Hey, babe,” Kane ventured, tugging at Miki’s shirt. “You coming along, or do you just want to go straight to get some food? You look a bit off your feet, there.”
“Just thinking about stuff,” he explained, letting his hand get caught up in Kane’s. The warmth of his husband’s fingers on his felt nice, and the rough calluses on Kane’s palm from his woodworking rubbed like velvet on Miki’s smoother skin. “Food would be good, but it can wait.”
The alpaca were a surprise. A pleasant one. Soft and good-natured, they ambled up to Miki when he leaned on the paddock railing, his hand filled with a few sweet grass cubes their owner gave him. One nipped at his fingers, looking for more to eat, and Miki laughed.
“Dude, careful. You bite off one of those and my guitar days are over,” he warned, letting the beast nuzzle his open palm. “Damie would kill you.”
“Pretty sure Damie would have to get in line,” Kane teased. “And I love you, but I’m not going to reach down into that thing’s mouth to get your finger so they can sew it back on.”
“Yeah, that’s what I need,” Miki playfully groused. “A zombie finger.”
“That’s Pete. He gets a bit grumpy if he’s hungry, but he loves a good neck scratch.” The owner was a large beefy woman with an easy gap-toothed smile and a long blond braid one of the goats in the pen kept trying to snag when she leaned forward. “Go on and give him a deep scritch and he’ll be your best friend for life. Just brushed them out a bit to get rid of any leaves caught in their fur, but Pete’s always up for some love.”
“Who isn’t?” Kane replied with a wide grin.
Miki dug his hands into the animal’s fur, rubbing his fingernails against the tender skin buried beneath its undercoat. The silky-smooth texture beneath the upper coat was a bit of a surprise, a pleasant burr against the nip he’d gotten from Pete’s odd teeth. A discordant hum kicked up from the animal, quickly rolling into a squawking kazoo sound, and Pete stretched his head out, tilting it slightly to encourage Miki’s hands to move around.
He could have stayed there forever, coaxing wookie kazoo noises out of the speckled beast he’d lured in with grass cubes and string-roughened fingertips, but Miki’s stomach had other ideas. Rumbling loudly over Pete’s crooning, the growling noise startled the baby goat dancing about next to the alpaca’s legs, sending it careening into the cluster of placid pack animals Pete’d broken off from.
“Okay, say goodbye to your new best friend, babe.” Kane jerked his head toward the open end of the paddock building. “You need feeding yourself.”
“What I need to do is wash my hands,” Miki muttered. “Pete’s nice and all, but the dude kind of smells like Rafe after he’s eaten four bean-and-cheese burritos with green sauce.”
“God, I am so sorry to say that I know what that smells like.”
“Yeah, but have you been stuck with him in a van for three hundred miles after he’s done it?” Miki cocked his head, amused at Kane’s disgusted grimace. “The rock star shit isn’t for the weak, dude. I had to get some Vicks rub when we stopped at the Love’s so I could CSI my nose up until we got to the hotel. Thought Damie was going to duct tape the asshole to the roof because he wouldn’t stop laughing and farting.”
“That the last thought you want to have in your head before we scrounge up some food?” Kane’s hand sought his again, fingers tangling into Miki’s despite the warnings about Pete’s rank odor. “How about we talk about something other than Rafe’s… gaseous contributions to road trips and sleepovers, because I’ve shared a tent with that asshole. I know exactly what he’s like. And take the scowl off your face. No one’s going to give us shit about holding hands.”
“Sure. ’Cause you’re the size of one of those cows back there.” He slowed their walk a little, feeling a pinch in his knee starting up. Surgery on it did wonders, but there was only so much healing it could do, and after the long ride down, Miki was beginning to anticipate every sharp twinge wrapping around the joint. “It’s hard, you know? I mean, life keeps seesawing back and forth. We’re good. We’re not good. People are okay with us. Some assholes work hard to be even bigger assholes because they think no one’s going to tell them to fuck off. Guess I always just want to go straight to fuck off instead of waiting.”
“Work on that, will you?” His husband snorted when Miki shot him a hard look. “What’s it going to be, Mick? Hamburgers? Deep fried Oreos? Deep fried butter? Or just the standard big corn dog and elote?”
“Dude, if they have elote, you’re getting lucky later,” Miki growled.
Kane’s eyebrow arched. “And if they don’t?”
“You’ll probably get lucky anyway,” he said with a shrug. “Because anytime you get lucky, I get lucky. But if I fall asleep in the middle of it, wake me up. It’s not like a movie. I want to see the ending.”
IT WAS the oddest collection of food, even for a county fair. Still, Kane didn’t blink an eye as he placed the order, used to Miki’s crazy eating habits. The counter person stood frozen in place for a brief moment, then repeated everything back, emphasizing each item slowly and carefully. The well-done fries were normal enough, but deep frying a handful of kimchee to toss on top of them with a healthy dollop of green onions, hot sauce, and mayo probably threw her for a bit of a loop. But it was when Kane asked for a squeeze of lime on Miki’s burger that she finally give him a skeptical glare.
“Really?” The girl must have been at the most, sixteen, but she had the jaded look of a career waitress stuck in an old diner sitting a swirl of dust by busy railroad tracks. “You want me to have them put lime on the burger? So it’s pepper jack, tomatoes, lime juice with salt and pepper o
n a medium rare double burger but not bun.”
“Yeah,” Kane replied with a nod. “No lettuce, no bun. Mayo’s fine, but no mustard or ketchup. And definitely no pickle. It can be on the side but not on top. I’ll also take an order of those spicy pickled Brussels sprouts and a side of ranch for the fries without the kimchee on them.”
“You want those fries burnt until they’re screaming for Satan too?” She curled her lip up, as sour and hot as the pickled Brussels sprouts Miki loved. “Or is crispy good enough for you?”
“If you want to drop them into the fryer all together, that’s great. Less work for the back.” He caught her snort, then added, “Oh, and toss in one of those rice-battered corn dogs too.”
“That’s got mustard on the inside. They’re premade. No one’s going to peel that shit apart to take that out.” She caught herself, attempting to soften her words with a canine-bristling smile. “Just so you know, because if you don’t like mustard—”
“Mustard’s fine on the dog but not the patty,” Kane explained. “Thanks.”
A cardboard drink carrier with handles and a couple of plastic bags later, Kane worked his way through the crowd, careful not to jostle anyone as he made his way back to the tree-shaded table he’d left Miki to guard. He wasn’t surprised to find Miki sitting on top of the table, especially since his husband seemed to have an aversion to chairs and benches at times, but it was startling to find him surrounded by a small group of people, his arms around a pair of teens beaming with braced-teeth smiles and laughing at something Miki said. An older woman bearing a sharp resemblance to the blonder boy standing by Miki stood in front of them, her phone held up to take a picture while she gave them directions on how to stand. A few feet away, an older man in a polo shirt and cargo shorts watched with a look of tolerant amusement. He nodded absently as Kane approached, frowning slightly when he spotted their food.
Clearing his throat, the man spoke up over the chattering teens. “Jessica, the man’s got lunch. We should be leaving him alone so he and his bodyguard—”