Page 6 of Sugared

Ean smiled up at his savior. He would try anything, do anything for Leland, and he would be happy to do it. Even if Leland tried to make sure he paid for everything with his body, Ean wouldn’t mind at all. Maybe it would just be for one night and everything would turn to shit again in the morning, but if one night was all they had, he intended to enjoy every second of it.

THREE

Ean looked so much betterafter a shower and a change of clothes. The transformation was so marked that Leland could hardly take his eyes off him as he went to work setting up the kitchen’s center island with all the ingredients that his class would use for the afternoon lesson. Ean was eager to help, though clearly anxious about something. He kept checking in with Leland every few seconds to make certain he was putting things where they needed to go.

“Everything in the kitchen is labeled,” Leland called to him as he brought the bin of mackerels the class would be learning to fillet out of the fridge. “We’re going to need fillet knives and non-porous cutting boards.”

Ean nodded silently, then headed over to the shelf filled with plastic bins against the far wall.

Something warm and exciting pulsed through Leland as he set up for the class. He couldn’t take his eyes off the young man who had all but fallen into his lap. Ean had changed a lot since the last time he’d seen him years ago. He wasn’t a kid anymore, that much was certain, even if he radiated vulnerability. He was small and skinny, but his physique had filled out and his facial features had matured.

Leland almost laughed aloud at a sudden memory of an afternoon playing video games with Ean about five years ago. He’d arrived at the Jones’ expecting Davie to be there, but something had come up and Davie wasn’t home. Mrs. Jones had insisted he would be back soon and that Leland should wait for him. Ean had shyly volunteered to play whatever racing game he was into at the time with him, and the rest was history.

If he was honest with himself, Leland had been attracted to Ean. He hadn’t said or done anything about it back then because Ean had been about fifteen. Way too young for him to even think of making a move. He’d kept the idea of waiting until both of them were a little older then checking back to see if Ean might want to go out sometime, but when he had come out to Davie a couple years later, that had been the end of that friendship.

Leland drew in a breath as he put two and two together while still watching Ean puzzling over the bins of cutlery. Davie had turned out to be a homophobe. Ean said his parents had kicked him out for being gay. Of course Davie hadn’t helped him.

The burst of protective anger that accompanied that thought coincided with the realization that Ean had been standing there, staring at the shelves too long.

“Do you need help?” he asked. The question felt far more important than asking about knives.

“Um, I….” Ean turned to him with a look of distress.

Heart pounding with protectiveness, Leland left the fish and strode across the room to the shelves.

“There they are,” he said, grabbing the bin of fillet knives. “Right in front of your nose.”

Ean turned bright pink. “Oh, sorry.”

“Nah, no worries,” Leland said, handing him the bin with a smile. “You’ve had a rough time of it. You’re probably just tired.”

“Yeah,” Ean said, lowering his head to look at the box of knives. “I’m tired.”

Something about the answer didn’t sit quite right with Leland, but there wasn’t time to question it. Students started to arrive for the class a few minutes later, and once the class got started, he was up to his ears in fish scales as he walked the class through filleting.

“Point the head of your fish toward your weaker hand,” he said from the main workspace at the front of the room while the seven students that made up the class, and Ean, circled around. “You’re going to cut vertically just behind the pectoral fin with the knife angled slightly toward the head. Keep going until you feel the backbone. Then you’ll remove the first fillet by turning the knife and sliding it gently back toward the tailfin. Work along the backbone and hold the head of the fish for stability.”

It was always interesting to see how people reacted to filleting something with an eyeball or two looking right back at you. A couple of the students winced and one made a queasy noise as Leland completed the demonstration.

Ean, on the other hand, watched the whole procedure with rapt attention. His eyes practically shone with excitement and understanding as Leland demonstrated each of the steps. When Leland finished and sent everyone to their workstations to give it a try themselves, Ean jumped to it like he was racing for the controller of a game he knew he was going to win.

It was more than just eagerness, though. Leland dutifully traveled between everyone’s workstations, watching what they were doing and giving pointers, but he kept one eye on Ean the whole time. With complete focus and a deft hand, Ean took up his knife, and with careful concentration, he filleted the mackerel with perfect precision on his first attempt.

Not everyone came anywhere close to accomplishing that.

“I’ve made a right mess of this,” Betty, one of the elderly ladies taking the class sighed, throwing up her hands. “It might be alright in a stew.”

“It’s so much harder than it looks,” Betty’s husband Arthur agreed.

“This young man has done it perfectly,” Betty said with a smile, nodding at Ean.

Ean glanced up from his work. He immediately sought out Leland, then smiled once their eyes met.

It was like Cupid’s arrow hitting Leland right in the heart. Happy Ean was the polar opposite of the distressed young man with a bum lottery ticket that he’d stumbled across in the off-license that afternoon.

“Ean, have you done this before?” Leland asked, walking over to Ean’s station. Ostensibly, he was there as a teacher taking a look at his student’s work, but really, something irresistible drew Leland to him.

Ean shook his head once Leland was standing across the counter from him. “This is my first try.”

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