Forever Promised (29 page)

Shane
:
Favorite Dish

S
HANE
and Kimmy had lived through some lonely-assed holidays.

When they were children, more often than not, their parents had been traveling, and they’d been at home with the help. The “help” had been competent but not warm, and as such, they both remembered gourmet turkey, five-star dressing, and stifling evenings of reading in the same room together, until Kimmy got old enough to sneak out and go clubbing.

Even after Shane met Mikhail and become part of The Pulpit family, his luck with holidays hadn’t been great. Their first Thanksgiving, Mikhail spent the night with his mother and her church, because she was dying, and Shane had been devoted to courting him slowly. That Christmas, Mikhail and Ylena had been on a cruise, because it was Mikhail’s last promise to his mother, and Shane had been recovering from a knife wound, because that’s what he’d done as a policeman. He’d gotten hurt a lot.

The next year, they’d started Promise House, and Shane (and Kimmy and Mikhail) had resolved for all of that to change.

Their first Thanksgiving, Shane and Mickey busted their asses to make sure the kids all got the full meal treatment from top to bottom, and Kimmy stayed with them to eat it. Shane and Mickey planned to eat at The Pulpit, and that had turned out to be frightening because the night before Thanksgiving was the moment Deacon’s heart took to just give out. Shane had been the one to sit down and talk Deacon into admitting that maybe, just maybe, there was a problem, and that once Benny arrived, Deacon could possibly let the family handle things. Getting inside people’s heads to find out what they did—that had turned out to be Shane’s best thing, which pretty much made up for the fact it made him just a little bit weirder than the average bear. (He’d liked that turn of phrase, but Mickey hadn’t—Shane had reluctantly put it away, along with any ideas of waxing his chest, because Mickey didn’t like that either.)

That Christmas Collin was recovering from the flu, and Jeff was trying very hard not to let all of that dying and living scare the holy Jebus out of him (as Jeff would say), and that was a tough time too.

But the Thanksgivings
after
that—well, Shane, Mickey, Kimmy, and Lucas had pretty much put together a game plan to make the holidays not suck for a bunch of kids who knew
exactly
how shitty Thanksgiving and Christmas could be.

One of the first things they did was ask the kids what side dish they wanted to help cook for Thanksgiving dinner.

It had been Mikhail’s idea, sort of. Shane had asked him before their wedding if he ever missed his mother’s Russian cooking. It had been the third or fourth time he’d asked—Shane was still trying valiantly to cook in those days—and Mikhail had wrinkled his pert little nose.

“Borscht? Are you high? I think you must be high. How about
you
overcook cabbage and stuff it with ground-up pigs’ feet, and then tell me if that sounds like a good idea to
you
!”

“That’s not the recipe for borscht.” Shane knew—he’d looked it up.

Mikhail grunted. “Well, it should be. No. I told you. American food. In fact….” Mikhail’s face softened with memory here, and Shane was enthralled. “My best holiday meal was probably meatloaf. We had just moved from Brighton Beach to California, and
Mutti
wanted to celebrate the American Thanksgiving. We didn’t know about turkey and pilgrims and pumpkin pie so much—and I… I remember I really wanted red meat. It seemed to be everywhere. So
Mutti
asked a friend from church and made us meatloaf for Thanksgiving.” Mikhail’s smile was… small, on his pointed face, and nostalgic, and Shane was sharply reminded of Ylena Bayul, who had been compassionate and dry and who had desperately loved her son. “It was a very good recipe,” he said after a moment. “There was soup and bread crumbs and ketchup. I should like to have it again sometime.”

So Shane tried to make it for him, just a side dish of it, for Thanksgiving. The recipe turned out too dry, of course, because Shane couldn’t cook boiled water, but Mikhail ate it with that same small nostalgic smile, and some of the kids had asked for some, because
they
remembered a time when meatloaf had made
them
happy.

The next Thanksgiving, the week leading up to it, Shane had asked every kid at Promise House what his or her favorite holiday dish was. And then he and Kimmy and the other two counselors spent the rest of the week mining that one good memory—a good food during a holiday—to remind the kids life wasn’t all that bad, and that holidays were worth celebrating.

The last Thanksgiving had been the best ever. Shane and Mikhail had regretfully passed on the gathering at The Pulpit (Lucas and Kimmy had gone instead), but the kids had been
so
grateful, because each of them hadn’t just contributed a
dish
,
each kid had contributed a
memory.

This year they were doing the same thing, but the results weren’t quite so spectacular—at least not with Melissa Coats, they weren’t.

“I don’t give a shit,” she snapped when Shane asked her what side dish she’d like to have at her meal.

“Really?” Shane liked food—a little too much, but all that good running with Deacon was starting to pay off, and you could hardly tell at all.

“Yeah, really. It’s food. Someone cooks it. You eat it. Meal over.”

“So no one ever tried to make the holidays special for you?”

Missy scowled. Since her father’s funeral—which she had refused to attend, even if it would have given her a day off of chores, which she loathed—her attitude had gotten more sour but less violent. It was, Mikhail said in distaste, like she’d turned into a simmering cauldron of bile. You never knew when she would bubble up and get you, but she wasn’t likely to set the house on fire.

“Yeah, I guess,” she grudged. “Not lately, but….” She gnawed on her lower lip. “You know, Crick made us dinner once. It must have been right before he got kicked out. He… well, it was one of those boneless turkey breasts, but he cooked it, and baked potatoes, and… and he made that green bean stuff with the soup. I think Deacon helped him.” She frowned, but in memory and not in bitchiness. “Yeah. He must have, because there was stuffing, and Crick didn’t know how to make stuffing. But… but that was real good. Bob was out drinking, and Melanie told us we could have a sit-down if we wanted, so Benny and Crystal and me, we made place mats with office paper and crayons and… I remember that. They let me cut out leaves and color them orange. It was… it was nice. It was holidays like the kids talked about at school.”

Shane’s heart caught. For a moment, right
this
moment, Missy’s face relaxed, and she looked a little like Benny and a little like Crick, and a little like someone Shane could care about out of kindness and not just duty.

“The green bean casserole stuff was my favorite,” she said after a moment of consideration. “Bob came home and finished off the stuffing and threw it all back up, but the casserole… I ate that the next morning for breakfast.” And then she looked up at Shane. “Could we….” She shook her head. “I’m sorry. That’s stupid—”

“No. No. We could have some made. Just like you remember it.”

For a moment the girl’s narrow, pinched face was wide open and vulnerable, and then it closed down as she remembered the whole world could go fuck itself. “Yeah, well, if you don’t have anything better to do, feel free.”

Shane sighed as she shoved away from the kitchen table and stalked out to her room, but he was actually a little pleased. It was a sign. It was a start. It had taken nearly three months, but finally,
finally
, they had proof of intelligent life inside.

That done, he went and found Sweetie.

He’d saved Sweetie for last, actually, not because he was afraid of problems but because, well, he’d had a feeling Mikhail would want to do it. When he’d brought it up the night before, lying in bed and talking randomly like they did sometimes, Mikhail had given a trademark sniff.

“Why should I want to involve myself in your holiday plans? I shall be there to eat the food, is that not enough?”

Shane had hmmed and hugged Mikhail just a little bit tighter. He had not grown, or even gained an ounce, in the past four years. His stomach was still tight and wiry, and his entire little body still vibrated with the things he didn’t say. “You really like her, don’t you, Mickey?”

“Getting attached is not a good idea,” he said. The words were practical, but Shane heard the underlying hurt.

“You really made a difference to Kimmy, you know that, right?”

Shane could also hear Mikhail’s hard swallow, even in the dark. “She will still not talk to Benny, and I cannot fix it.”

“That’s not ours to fix. That’s Kimmy’s. She will or she won’t—but you were there when she needed you.”

Mikhail didn’t pretend to Shane—at least not for long. Not anymore. He turned in Shane’s arms, dislodging the furry brown Jensen Ackles, who still regarded Mikhail as his favorite human. Mikhail’s breath was warm against Shane’s neck, and Shane dropped a kiss on that wildly curly hair out of need. God, Mikhail in his arms? Even if all they were doing was this—talking about their day—it was as good now as it had been that first night. Better, even, because Shane had no doubts now that Mikhail was there to stay.

“You say that because you love me,” Mikhail sighed. “That is very kind of you, but it does not fix what’s broken.”

Shane reached under the covers for Mikhail’s hand and brought it, flat-palmed, to his stomach. Scar tissue from being shot, from being stabbed—Mickey would know the placement of every scar. Sometimes, when Shane was falling asleep after making love, he had to still Mikhail’s restless fingers, because too often Mickey liked to dwell on what he almost lost instead of on the man he held in his arms every night.

“Sometimes it takes a while to get fixed,” Shane said, his voice weighted with the dark, and Mikhail’s hand balled into a fist.

“It is not comforting that you are wise when….” Again, that audible gulp. Shane could even finish his sentence. Mikhail was hurt and helpless because one of the few people he allowed himself to love was miserable.

Shane slanted his mouth over Mikhail’s full and vulnerable one, and that sigh, that giving up of all his defenses, was something Shane treasured every time he heard it. Mikhail answered him, mouth open, legs spreading. He rolled to his back and shimmied out of his underwear, and Shane rolled on top of him, careful because he was really very much larger than Mikhail.

But sometimes Mikhail liked to be covered by Shane’s body, sheltered by his shoulders, and kept warm in the dark. It was never said between them, but Shane knew, could read the ease of his body, the way he became supple and needy.

Another thing about Mikhail: sometimes, especially as they grew older, penetration was not his goal.

Sometimes it was enough that their bodies, naked and vulnerable, rubbed up together. Shane would kiss his stomach, his ribs, his chest, his neck, and then grasp their cocks together and simply thrust, and Mikhail would melt, fall apart, and come in a roll and shiver. Those were the times he needed Shane more than he needed the sex, and took the sex because he didn’t know how to fill the need any other way.

He made sexy noises, uninhibited, when Shane kissed his collarbone and his neck, and the spurt of his come scalded Shane’s hand, drove him up, pitched him higher. With a sudden impish lunge, Mickey arched his back and pulled one of Shane’s nipples into his mouth. Shane groaned and Mikhail nipped, and that was it, he was spilling between them. Mikhail kept making those sexy groans in his ear as they frotted desperately for that one… last… spasm….

“Auuuughhh….” Shane’s own voice echoed back to him from the hollow of Mikhail’s neck, and he released their cocks and rolled to the side, wiping his hand on the towel they’d learned to stash under the pillows. He used the same towel on his Mikhail’s stomach and then his own, and Mickey grabbed a wet wipe from the end table and finished the job.

“So’d that work?” he panted, and Mikhail let out a sweaty laugh from his shoulder.

“Did your magic cock take away all my worries?” he asked acidly, and Shane grinned.

“Why yes, yes I
do
have a magic cock, why do you ask?”

Mikhail thumped him fondly on the bicep. “Exasperating man! You know what I was saying—”

“Yes,” Shane rumbled, tucking him more securely on his shoulder, right where all that curly blond hair and attitude belonged. “You were saying that us getting it on cannot possibly help Kimmy, but that’s where you’re wrong.”

“You know how I love it when you tell me I’m wrong.”

Shane grabbed at his groin again. “Why? Is it giving you wood? We could do something with that!”

“Hey!” Mikhail smacked at his hand, and Shane rolled backward, laughing. Mikhail sat up and smacked him on the top of the head, and Robert Downey Jr., the cat who slept on the foot of the bed, finally had enough, so he hissed and bailed off the bed in frustration. “You are either being deliberately dense—”

“Or….”

Mikhail grunted and settled down again. “Get over here. Your life is not in danger and I need a pillow.”

“Yes, sir, I live to do your bidding.”

“Stop it.”

“Of course.”

Mikhail settled in, cuddling like a supple, sinewy cat. “You are insufferable, you know that?”

“I know I love you, and for fifteen—”

“Five—”

“Ten minutes, you weren’t thinking about Kimmy or any of the kids at Promise House—”

“As if I would!”

“And for ten—”

“Eight—”

“Nine minutes, you knew one thing, and one thing only.”

“That your cock is so big you could have posed nude and lived off the proceeds for the rest of your life?”

Shane snorted. “As. If. No, you knew that I love you.”

Mikhail took a deep breath. “I would say that you are very wise, but I have said it too much. Your head will get big, and you will not be able to fit through the door, and our grand love affair will be over.”