Chapter 4: Ryan—Cooking With Kerosene and C-4

AT LEAST Ryan’s dad liked the omelet. And Walter and Yvonne were both happy with the spiced oatmeal—Yvonne waxed rhapsodic about the charming presentation of the different spices on the lazy-Susan until Walter cut her off with a snort.

“Vonnie, I don’t know why you’re so excited about it. It’s not like you ever cook!” He looked at Ryan, inviting him to share the joke. “Her idea of cooking is putting pizza bites on a pan and not burning them. It’s why we had to hire a housekeeper.”

Ryan’s father spoke up from a mouthful of bacon-chive omelet. “I thought you hired a cook and a housekeeper because she was putting in fifty hours at the office and you could afford one. If she’s going to spend any time with the kids, expecting a clean house and food on top of that—it’s insane!”

Walter rolled his eyes. “I don’t know what she does with the kids exactly. It’s like they spend all their time in the car!”

Yvonne grimaced. “Soccer season. W.G. started this year. It’s like four different teams, six days a week. Geeyawd! Talk about insane!”

Gordon looked at Walter with jovial curiosity. “Why aren’t you in on any of that action, Walter?”

Walter blinked, and Ryan grinned, going in for the kill. “Yeah, Walter. My dad used to coach our soccer games. It was great!”

“But I’ve got—I mean, work…,” Walter sputtered, looking truly uncomfortable, and Gordon continued, completely oblivious to having just shattered Walter’s smug little bubble.

“So did I. God, it was just nuts. You remember that, Tay?”

Gordon smiled at Ryan’s mother, and her own expression grew soft. “Oh yes, I remember. You’d coach on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and then I’d take Yvonne to dance on Mondays and Wednesdays. There was piano and competitions—hectic and completely exhausting. I don’t know if we could have done it if we hadn’t both pitched in. And you were wonderful with the team.”

Gordon smiled reminiscently. “Best fun ever. Kids are awesome, you know?”

Walter looked like he was going to swallow his tongue, and his flushed complexion could be seen in the thinning spots on the top of his head. Ryan knew because he had to stand up and start clearing the table for this part. He also wanted to mask the sort of a hidden pain, one that only Scott was starting to suspect. Scotty promised him fervently that someday, someday, they would have a taste of that madness, and Ryan—who knew that Scott rarely made promises and so took them seriously—was content to wait for the right time. He certainly wasn’t going to make a big deal about it right now.

“Not to hear Yvonne talk about it,” Walter mumbled, and Ryan finally turned to him in exasperation.

“Well, maybe her break from the kids could be your break from your golf game, okay, Walter?”

“Ryan!” Taylor admonished, and Ryan took a deep breath.

“You know,” he said with a forced smile, “Scotty cooked the first half, and I cooked the second half and cleared the table. I think someone else here is good for the dishes.”

His father, God love him, stood up and said, “That’s my cue!”

And Ryan took his opportunity to escape upstairs and get dressed to go out and play.

THE AIR was like a slap in the face, and he didn’t have to look at the thermometer on the side of the garage to see that the temperature was in the low twenties. His gloves were fleece-lined leather—because that’s the sort of thing Scott would get him because he thought that’s what lawyers should wear—and he’d made sure to put long-johns on under his jeans because he hated being cold.

But he’d hated being in that kitchen even more.

He found Scotty and the kids in the back, making twin forts—one for the girls and one for the boys—and getting ready to launch a snowball offensive of the first order.

“Wheee!” Ella-Jaye called when she saw Ryan stomping out. “You’re here, Uncle Ryan! You can play on the girls’ side now!”

“No he can’t!” Tommy said logically, looking up from where he was tamping snow down into a three-foot wall with his heavily mittened hand. “Daddy says that Uncle Scotty is the wife. Wouldn’t that mean he’s on the girls’ side?”

There was no rancor in the words. In fact, there was nothing but the guileless expectation that his father would know what he was talking about because he was a grown-up—but that didn’t mean Ryan’s eyes didn’t get so wide they dried out in the frigid air before he could even blink.

Scotty met Ryan’s eyes with a wicked glint in his own and a shocked hand clapped over his mouth.

“Ohmygod! Tommy!” He seemed to be as much at a loss as Ryan was.

Tommy looked up. “What? Dad told my mom that Ryan would be the husband and Scotty would be the wife. Is that bad? And then something about baseball, but I asked you if were a pitcher or a catcher, Uncle Scott, and you said you’d never played, so he must have got that wrong. Is Dad wrong about the wife thing too?”

“Yes,” Ryan answered, because Scott looked like he was going to just drop into the snow, fetal with laughter, at any time. “Yes, Tommy, your father is wrong. Wh…. If Scotty and I are ever married, we will both be the husband.”

Tommy looked up, mildly surprised by that, and then shrugged and went back to helping his brother scoop snow out from behind the snow fort, the better to build his arsenal of snowballs, and to condense the snow for them so it would smack instead of pffft. “Okay then, well, if that’s true, who is going to be on the girls’ side in the snowball fight?”

Ryan grinned wickedly. “I am—all the better to beat you and your Uncle Scotty, okay?”

Scott laughed and bent down and scooped up W.G., who flailed his stubby arms and legs and squealed deliriously. “You can’t beat me! I’m using a human shield!”

Ryan lofted a couple of really soft handfuls of snow at the little boy, who squealed some more and wiggled until Scott was forced to drop him into a snow drift. The boy scrambled out of the drift to gather back with his brother and hurl snowballs at Scott. Suddenly, it didn’t matter if there was a boys’ side or a girls’ side. Scotty and Ryan were in between the forts and were therefore the targets, and after a few moments of “Ouch! Geez, Tommy not in the—whoooot! Ella! That went right down my shirt!” and “Get ’em, Ry! You can throw harder than that! I know he’s little, but he’s fierce,” the two men were hunkered in the center of the trench, back to back, throwing snowballs at the little hellions as fast as they could.

The fight ended when they ran out of snowballs and W.G. started to whimper with the cold. Ryan figured they’d earned themselves a snack and maybe worn Blitzkrieg out enough for her to sack out in front of the fireplace for a few hours. He picked up Ella-Jaye, who had taken off her mittens sometime in the fight and was now crying from the cold, and Scott picked up W.G., and together they tromped back around the house and through the door in the garage. Ryan and Scott had the kids form an assembly line where Ryan would take boots and Scotty would take jackets before the child went into the mudroom and started to remove wet outer garments and hang them up on the drying rack by the washer and dryer.

They folded an old towel up for Blitzkrieg, and she was content to spend her time panting and warming up in the corner while the snow melted off her coat. The kids would take turns, when they weren’t being undressed and sent upstairs to go change, wiping her down and making sure she was warm. She was. Even though the room was slightly cooler than the house, it was still much warmer than the garage or outside, and by the time the mudroom was clear of little kids in their underwear, she was fast asleep. Ryan and Scotty were left pulling off their own clothes, still laughing from the frantic activity.

“Oh lordy!” Scotty was shucking off his vest and his sweater, leaving on the long-sleeved shirt underneath. “I haven’t had that much fun in ages!”

“Really? It’s not a club with strippers, you know.” Ryan pulled his own sweater over his head so he could shake off the snow. His shirt rode up, and his exposed skin puckered in the chilled air when suddenly two ice cubes snuck up under his shirt and clamped themselves under his arms. The scream he let out was two octaves higher than his speaking voice and shriller than a middle school student dancing away from a spider, and Scotty kept his damned freezing hands up in Ryan’s underarms, wiggling his fingers as he giggled.

“Have I ever taken you to a strip club?” he demanded, trying to be stern, but his usual wicked grin had cranked the naughty up a good notch or two, and he moved his body up to catch Ryan’s as Ryan doubled over with helpless laughter.

“No! No no no no no no no… oh God! Scotty! No! You’ve never! Oh geez! Scott—eeeeeeeeee!”

Scott kept tickling him until his knees went out from under him, and suddenly Scott was holding him, and Ryan’s chest was mashed up against Scotty’s, and he could hardly catch his breath with how wonderful it felt to be this close, this intimate, with this man, his mate, the love of his goddamned life.

He looked into Scotty’s eyes and giggled, and Scott’s own grin grew unusually serious. “God, Ry,” he said softly, “I really love you, you know?”

For a moment, there was a burning weight on Ryan’s chest involving the brightly wrapped box that he hadn’t yet put under the tree and a present that they couldn’t really afford on top of the house but that Ryan had wanted desperately to give. He opened his mouth to say “I love you,” back, and the thousand other things as well, but he hesitated just that fraction of a moment too long, and Scotty claimed him instead.

Scott’s mouth was hot, blindingly hot, and after the bitter cold of outside that had seeped into Ryan’s hands and feet, he just wanted to fall into that warmth and feed on it. He opened to his lover, and Scott moaned in the back of his throat, and Ryan felt himself shoved up against the washer as Scott bore down on him with uncharacteristic aggression.

Ryan always loved it when Scotty tried to top.

He moaned and opened his mouth wider and bunched Scott’s shirt in his hand so he could palm the soft skin of Scotty’s back. Scott was wearing snow pants, and Ryan slid his hand down under the waist band and grabbed himself a hot, tight little handful of Scotty’s well-worked ass.

Scott seemed go limp, because that’s what Scott did—he went paradoxically limp and tense, like a feral cat, and Ryan loved petting his baby. He gave a little hop until he was sitting on the washing machine, wrapping his legs around Scotty while he kneaded Scott’s bottom with enough force to make Scott groan and hump his groin hard against Ryan’s.

They very well might have gotten off like that—Ryan was blind to everything but Scott’s taste and the feel of his hands and the rising, delirious pressure in his cock and his balls as Scott ground up against him—but there was a sudden chill of air.

“You guys coming in for lun—” Walter began, but he got one look at them and groaned. “Oh God, no homo necking, you two. That’s just so gross!”

The door snapped shut, and Scott and Ryan were stuck clenching their butt cheeks together to try to get over the terrible squirming sensation caused by a hard-on that was all dressed up with nowhere to go. Ryan rested his forehead against Scotty’s collarbone and struggled with a combination of panting and laughter that threatened to take over.

“Yeah,” Scott panted. “Like he would know about gross. Doesn’t know the difference between a husband and a wife, the stupid asshole.”

Ryan looked up at him and nodded, remembering how tired Yvonne looked and how clueless Walter had been. “Like being his wife is so much fun!” he snorted, and then pounded his forehead against Scott’s shoulder. “Forget I said that. Will. Not. Drag. Scotty. Into. Bad. Family. Drama.” Scott laughed and Ryan looked up at him hopefully. “Sorry about that.”

Scott shook his head. “Ryan… man, drag me into anything you want. Drag me outside again naked, drag me to Alaska and make me work on a fishing boat—hell, drag me to Six Flags with those kids. I’ll go. I’ll go, and I’ll love it, because it’s with you.” Scott’s mouth thinned then, and Ryan reached up to cup his cheek because he wanted that happy, glowy, I-was-making-out-with-Ryan look back on his face.

“Hey,” Ryan murmured, “who else would I drag with me, right?”

Scott shook his head. “It’s not that. It’s just… you don’t have to throw yourself on the mom grenade for me, okay?”

Ryan sighed and hopped off the dryer, and then pulled his overshirt over his head, leaving his T-shirt on. His long-sleeved overshirt was wet too, mostly because Tommy had been lobbing his shots and a few of them had slid between his fleece-lined flannel coat and his shirt.

“She’s a good mom,” he murmured, knowing it was true. “She loves us a lot.”

“Just not me,” Scott said dryly, and Ryan grimaced.

“She’ll love you,” Ryan told him, hoping. “She’s just… demanding, you know? No one’s good enough for her kids.” He rolled his eyes. “Well, in Yvonne’s case, she might be right, but not with you. Not even a little bit with you, okay?”

Scott laughed a little. “Maybe you’re just biased.” He was going to walk away, and Ryan put a heavy hand on his shoulder and yanked him back.

“Damned straight I am! Look, Scott. I didn’t drag you up here just to torture you, okay? I mean, it sucks—I get it. You woke up, took care of the kids, fixed everybody breakfast, and your reward—well, besides my complete adulation, mind you—is shit. Walter’s a douche, my mom’s being the ice queen, and you had to spend your entire morning out in Ice Planet Zero, trying to get away from it all.”

“I enjoyed myself!” Scott protested, and Ryan reached out and pulled Scott closer until they were touching below the waist, even if they had to lean back to look in each other’s eyes.

“And that’s one of the many reasons I love you. Look, Scotty. Yvonne and I used to get up in the morning here, and we’d turn on the Christmas lights and pour ourselves cereal and then wait for Mom and Dad to wake up so we could sit and play Yahtzee. It was fun—and we loved it—but it wasn’t omelet bars and that amazing hot-chocolate thing and oatmeal with happy faces on it. It wasn’t snowball fights and a big dog that wakes me up on Saturdays by licking my toes.” He’d started shivering, and he pulled closer to Scott and burrowed, and Scotty, whose outer shirt was still on—and still dry—wrapped his arms around Ryan’s shoulders because that’s what they did. They partnered, and Scott was good at it, even though he’d always claimed to be way too narcissistic to be a good partner. “It’s not you, Scott. You don’t know it, but just dragging your gay ass into this place made it better. And even if you just made it better for me, that would be all I needed. But you make it better for everybody, and even if no one else sees that, I do, and it matters.”

Scott shook his head, his carefully dyed hair falling in a mess around his face and his eyes darting around the little white mudroom like fish. “You’re so going to make me queen up, you dick. Now let’s go change and wipe the floor with Walter in Scrabble or something, you think?”

Ryan grinned at him with a little bit of shared malice. “How about Trivial Pursuit. Teams.”

Scott nodded. “Oooohhh, yeah. Babe. We can so make him eat snow.”

Scott’s eyes were steady now, and his pointed chin with the little divot in it wasn’t quivering, and neither was his full, mobile mouth. Scotty was good to go, and Ryan would let him—after one last kiss.

This one was sweet and tender, and Ryan gave as much comfort as he could, and Scott smiled gamely and stroked Ryan’s cheekbone with his thumb when it was over.

“No mercy,” he said soberly, and Ryan nodded.

“Let’s go kick some weenie ass.”

It was pure optimism on their part—but that’s how they’d gotten through the first hour of their relationship, and then the first week, and then the first three years. Pure optimism that as long as they were side by side, they really could kick the world’s weenie ass. Hell, wiping the floor with Walter at Trivial Pursuit was not even a problem.

But that didn’t mean that Ryan wasn’t counting the hours until he could give Scotty the little gift he was about to put under the tree that might make a whole lot of this headache go the fuck away.