Blackbird Knitting in a Bunny's Lair (14 page)

Jeremy caught his breath and stared at Aiden with outraged eyes. “That baby’s not gonna want me to hold it!” he exclaimed.

Three months earlier, Aiden would have smacked him upside the head again and stalked out.

Aiden had gained years of wisdom since then.

He bent his knees and put his face very, very close to Jeremy’s. “You
will
hold this baby, and you
will
care for this baby, just like the rest of his gay fucking uncles, do you hear me? Now you take that brace, and the doctor’s directions, and the next time you want to hang shit from the ceilings, you call Rich in to do it for you. I understand shamrocks are big in March, and April does bunny eggs. We’ve got him until August. Humiliate him all you fuckin’ want—but do
not
fuck up your scrawny-assed beaten little body any goddamned more, are we clear?”

Jeremy squinted at him, the lines at the corners of his fine brown eyes no less beguiling than they had been in October, when Aiden decided his heart had ached with wanting for quite long enough.

“You’re not the boss of me,” he had the audacity to say.

Aiden growled. Like an animal.

Jeremy’s mouth worked like he was coming up with something
really
crushing, and the doctor cleared his throat.

“Jeremy, I’m your doctor, and I say he
is
the boss of you. Now tell him what he wants to hear so I can fit on your brace, all right?” The doctor wasn’t exactly coming between them, but Aiden took a step back anyway.

Jeremy shook his head. “Ain’t right,” he muttered. “I’m just trying not to be useless.”

“You want to not be useless?” Aiden snapped. “You keep knitting. Craw just texted me—you raised fifteen dollars in raffle money already, and the day ain’t even over. You man the store, you do the books, and you keep knitting for Ari. And please, for the love of God, stop thinking you don’t matter.”

That was the thing that pissed him off the most.

Jeremy looked away, lower lip trembling, and Aiden thought,
Oh hell. We cannot have this same argument in this place with people watching.
He let out a reluctant breath and leaned down and touched his forehead to Jeremy’s.

“I’m going to go say hi to Ariadne. After you come and join us, I’m going to talk to your doctor alone, when I can’t get mad at you, okay?”

“I don’t want you mad at me,” Jeremy said with such naked truth in his voice that Aiden brought his hand up to touch his cheek.

“Then please take care of yourself.”

Aiden turned and nodded at the doctor, who nodded back gratefully. God, Aiden didn’t know what it was like to be a doctor and have patients ignore your advice, but being a boyfriend and having Jeremy blow him off just tweaked his nose to no end.

All things considered, he was not in a very chipper mood when he stalked into Ariadne’s room.

And then Ariadne looked at him with big dark circles under her eyes, and he practically howled.

“When was the last time you ate?” he demanded, and she looked up from her knitting and rolled her eyes.

“Oh, God,” she muttered. “Of course. I just kept feeling like shit and feeling like shit and I was waiting for you guys and figured I’d—”

Aiden shook his head. “I’m gonna go get pudding from the nurse’s station. You stay right the hell there.”

They knew him by now. For Jeremy’s first few days in the hospital, his life had been a game of piss-off-the-nurse-and-I-don’t-give-a-fuck. After the first month, he and the nurses had both given ground. The nurses understood that Aiden’s
only job
there was to make sure Jeremy and Ariadne were comfortable, and Aiden conceded that there might be other people in the hospital. Keeping this in mind, he used his Sunday-school manners to ask if he could have some pudding, and if he could have someone come down to Ariadne’s room to check her blood sugar and maybe bring her some lunch. When he got back to Ariadne’s room, three little pudding cups and matching spoons in his hand, he set the chocolate one down in front of her and peeled back the top.

She devoured it, took a deep breath, and wiped out the second one. A nurse arrived with some protein and a blood-sugar test, and about ten minutes later, Ariadne was relaxed, pinker, and, dammitall, trying not to cede to the instant fatigue brought on by a blood-sugar crash.

“Well,” he said when she was settled, “you and Jeremy are going to be a pair. By the time he gets here, it’s going to be his naptime too.”

Ariadne swallowed her last mouthful of pudding before replying. “How’s he doing? He settling in all right?”

Aiden eyed her distrustfully. “He texts you—what’s he say?”

She thought about it. “Well, he says that Craw was allergic to the Valentine’s Day decorations, the regulars keep asking for me because he doesn’t remember what their favorite stuff is yet, and the WITSEC guy who’s working in the ranch keeps pissing you off. Why? What’s he doing? Jeremy, I mean.”

Aiden looked over at the door and was relieved when nobody was heading their way. “When the house is quiet, he startles,” he said softly, remembering that sudden terror-by-proxy of Jeremy’s now-thin body just shooting out in a maze of starfish limbs when the house creaked. “And he keeps pushing himself too hard in the store. And….” Aiden hesitated, not wanting to talk about Jeremy’s plan, but not for the reasons Jeremy didn’t. He settled on: “And he’s worried about you, and about the baby. And I think….” Oh, how to put this into words? “I think he’s afraid of… of contaminating the baby in some way. Like he’s not good enough to be there for it.”

Ariadne’s mouth twisted. “Oh hon. He’s got a lot of… I mean, you can’t just beat the baggage out of someone. In this case, it only got harder to carry.” She looked a little pinker but she still looked ghastly.

“No,” Aiden said thoughtfully. “It’s more like now that he knows he can carry that baggage, he wants to carry the full load from our lives too.” Aiden shrugged. “He’s going to have to put something down.”

He heard footsteps and turned to see Jeremy walk in, accompanied by the doc. Aiden got up and gave Jeremy his chair and a kiss on the temple, and then followed the doctor out to the corridor.

“How bad’s his shoulder?” Aiden asked.

The doctor shrugged. “He needs to rest it. But other than that, he seems to be doing okay. He needs to eat a little more, but he says you keep trying to feed him and he’s just not hungry. I get that. He’s used to hard work, and he’s suddenly not working that hard anymore—”

Aiden shook his head, thinking about how Jeremy had Aiden stop and get peanut butter twice in the past two weeks, and they’d only had PB&J once. “It’s not that,” he muttered. “He’s not feeling secure. He… he saves a little from every meal when he’s not feeling like he’s going to stay.”

The doctor raised his eyebrows. “I beg your pardon?”

Aiden shrugged. “Left over from his con-man days, what can I say? I don’t think he’s planning to run, but… well….” Well, they’d pulled the home right out from under him, twice, and he was still getting his feet. “It’s going to take some time,” he said, and the words felt like sharpened gravel rolling up his windpipe.

The doctor pursed his lips. “So, uhm, con man?”

Aiden glared at him. “He is completely honest now. Was there anything else?”

The man took a step back. He was sort of an ordinary-looking man—close-cropped gray-blond hair, fortyish. But his eyes were suddenly bigger than his face.

“Uhm, please don’t take this the wrong way. But your boyfriend there has been through a hell of an ordeal and you seem, uhm, never mind. You wouldn’t be thinking about therapy, would you?”

Now
Aiden
was the one with the big eyes. “You
have
met us, haven’t you?”

The man held his hands up. “So sorry. My bad. Continue to be violent and repressed. It’s good to know that’s still in vogue.”

Aiden was about to glare at him, and then it hit him: the man was telling the God’s honest truth. “Why, thank you, sir, we will,” he said with a grin.

The doctor smiled wearily back. “Yeah, well, it ever gets too tough for you all in the wilds of Granby—”

“We’d still rather die,” Aiden said dryly.

The doctor conceded with a little bow, and Aiden felt slightly less homicidal when he walked through the door to Ariadne’s room.

She was lying on her side, and Jeremy was leaning his chin on his arms so they could talk softly. No interruptions, no social behavior—just the two of them.

“So the paper hearts,” Ariadne said, and for a moment Aiden expected her to finish the sentence.

“Craw hated ’em.”

“He would.”

“Aiden liked ’em.”

“Humoring you?”

“Naw, he’s got sentiment.”

Ariadne made a little sound, just a little puff of breath.

“Swear,” Jeremy answered.

“I’ll believe you.”

“The baby okay?”

“Fine, but the lip.” She rubbed her fingers over her own sharply defined lip.

“Still, yeah. Gonna need surgery.”

“I know. Doc’s been scaring us.”

“Not scaring. Just, you know.”

“Preparing us.”

“Right. It’s okay. Craw’ll help.”

“Don’t see how!”

“’Cause he loves you,” Jeremy said with such incredible assurance that Aiden, who knew how deep a hole Craw was digging himself out of, almost believed in him.

“Bet he’s happy to have you back,” she murmured, switching subjects without a single step to the side.

“I think so. Ben says so.”

“Believe them.”

And so on.

Aiden just stood there, leaning against the hallway wall, and listened, wondering when they’d learned to talk like that.

A hulking shadow moved quietly to his side. “Since you first had to leave them,” Rory answered him without waiting for the question. “They just talk like that, like they’re finishing each other’s sentences.”

“It’s sort of cool,” Aiden admitted in wonder. “I mean, it’s like they know—”

“Sh,” Rory warned, and they both quieted down to hear the rest of the hushed conversation.

“You look tired.” This from Ari, and Aiden wanted to laugh, because she looked exhausted.

“Backatcha. Sleep?”

“Don’t want to miss your visit.”

“Sleep. Pretend we’re here. We’ll be back in a week.”

“God, I miss the damned ranch.”

“And your damned husband.”

“How’s things with Aiden?”

“He’s trying to forgive me.”

“He’ll do it.”

“I don’t know if I’m worth it.”

Ariadne propped her head up on her fist. “Jeremy, you so are worth it. Please. Hang in there. Aiden will get over it. You’re so worth it.”

“He is,” Aiden said, striding in like he’d only heard that last part. He just couldn’t bear to have Jeremy deny it, that was all. “Very worth it.” He put his hand under Jeremy’s arm and helped him up. “Ariadne, I hate to drag him away—”

“But your plane leaves in an hour,” she said, smiling with bright, watery eyes. “It’s okay. Rory’s staying tonight, and Stanley’s by most days.”

“Gia—Johnny back?” Aiden asked, thinking Jeremy would know this already.

Ariadne shook her head. “No. He tries to mask it, but I think the wait’s pretty hard on Stanley. He’s lonely.”

Jeremy let out a soft grunt. “Well, you keep him company. Craw said Aiden and I will be running deliveries as soon as the road’s passable.”

Ariadne smiled. “He’ll be really happy to hear that.”

They said their good-byes then, and Rory walked into the room. Aiden was amused to see that Rory took up Jeremy’s exact position against the bed. Maybe it was just Ariadne who invited that almost subvocal murmuring.

But as Aiden and Jeremy walked away, he turned to watch Rory brushing her hair back from her face and kissing her knuckles with as much tenderness as one man could give. Aiden thought maybe there was a difference depending on who she talked to.

“What?” Jeremy asked, seeing him turn around and look behind him again.

“Just, you and Ari got really tight,” Aiden said, trying not to sound like a peevish, jealous bastard.

“Well,” Jeremy reasoned, “we both missed the hell out of home.”

Aiden took his hand and laced their fingers tightly. “Good,” he said gruffly. “No running away for Jeremy.”

Jeremy grunted, and Aiden thought hard to try to make that more affirmative.

“The house’ll feel like home soon,” he reassured.

This time Jeremy’s grunt was self-deprecating. “The bed is feeling mighty damned familiar.”

Aiden stopped in the hospital corridor and pushed Jeremy into the little alcove of a lab room that had been closed for the afternoon. “We haven’t christened it as much as we should,” he said seriously.

Jeremy looked away. “My stomach—”

“Kissing, Jeremy. We need to kiss in that bed some more, okay?”

Jeremy met his eyes and smiled faintly. “Are you still afraid I’ll run?” he asked, surprising Aiden some.

“Have you thought about it?” Aiden said, jealousy suddenly naked like an exposed bone.

“No,” Jeremy said, like the sound of the words surprised even him.

Aiden closed his eyes, and some of that anger, that need to control
his people
and make them do
his things
, shivered down his spine, snow thawing into spring. “No?” he asked hopefully.

“That conversation I had with Ariadne? I can only have that about one place. There’s only one group of people who’ll know that language.” Jeremy smiled shyly at him. “Only one boy who’ll care if he understands me.” He shrugged. “Only one place where the critters think I’m fit to care for them. Don’t worry, boy. We got worries, yeah. But that’s not one of ’em. I….” And now he shuddered, and Aiden rubbed his arms, trying to take any fear.

“You what?” he asked softly.

Jeremy gazed at him fiercely, and Aiden felt the sudden kinship of wild things. “I let that man beat me, and I wasn’t thinking about running. Running would have hurt you, boy. I promised. I won’t ever gut you like a sheep. I mean it.”

Aiden smiled and bent down to kiss a temple. “You mean it. No running. I’ll hold you to it.”

“Teach me to spin?”

“Who gave you that idea?”