Page 19 of From the Noblest Motives
What Damien knew about the actual backroom workings of political machines wouldn't have filled a spoon. If thoughts could fill spoons.Free Shudder. At least that was a sentiment he understood completely. Shudder's arrest. Vanishing kids. The hologram of his mother, which might have been message or threat.Shudder. Vanishing. Message. Threat. His brain kept jerking from one topic to another, and his bones began to itch.
Something… he needed something to do before he got any worse.Spoons. Yes.
The silverware drawer was the same one it had always been, and the spoons…good. He knew them, familiar in his hands as he removed both piles of spoons from their places in the caddy. The ones with the acanthus leaves first. Those were the biggest. One… two… three… Damien placed each back in the spoon slot individually, careful to line them up exactly with the ones underneath. Four… five…
A thread of anxiousness speared through him. There should have been six. Why weren't there…Ah.There. In the sink.
He washed the errant acanthus spoon, dried it, and placed it with its design brethren. Bamboo design next. These he laid out to count before placing them atop the acanthus spoons. Also five. A lead blanket draped across his chest, each breath more labored than the last. Fine tremors disturbed his coordination as he took each pile of silverware from its slot, giving each group a discrete piece of real estate on the counter. Forks. Butter knives. Sharper knives. Serving sp—
There it is. Damien struck out as if the larger spoons might bite him and retrieved the bamboo design teaspoon from the incorrect pile.Wrong, wrong, so much is wrong. The spoons clattered as his shaking hands reunited the spoon with its brethren. He had to straighten the stack. That helped. The pain around his heart receded a notch. A corner of his brain registered someone else in the room, but those footsteps, that breathing, the sudden wall of comfort and safety behind him—Blaze.
Damien flattened both palms on the counter, breathing carefully through his nose, and Blaze didn't say a word, just went about his morning getting coffee from the carafe and a muffin from the fridge. Because it was Blaze, Damien managed a steadier breath again. Not something he wanted to look at too closely. Instead, he finished the teaspoon sorting—the rose pattern, four of them, as there should be, and the scroll pattern, eight, also as there should be. The serving spoons all had different patterns, so those he sorted by size, largest to smallest. The forks were a single pattern and only needed to be straight when he returned them to their slot. The butter knives—stacked in two columns, one for the scroll pattern, and one for the bamboo. The miscellaneous sharp knives he sorted as best he could by size.
With the fog clearing from his brain, he finally looked up to find Blaze studiously not watching him, picking apart his muffin as he ate.
"Morning. Sleep well?"
Damien nodded, grateful that they weren't going to talk about his episode, then realized, again, that Blaze wasn't looking at him. "Y—yes. Not... terribly." Politeness worked as a reliable fallback, so he added, "And you?"
"Bed was too short," Blaze grumbled into his coffee. "House is quiet, though." He finally looked up at Damien and raised an eyebrow. "You'll feel better if you eat, Twitch."
When Damien stared at him, trying to recall whether he had eaten, Blaze sighed and shoved back from the counter, retrieved a second muffin, and set it on a plate in front of Damien.
"It's a cherry one. There's walnut ones too, if cherry's no good."
"That's…" Damien swallowed against the sudden lump in his throat. "Thank you."
Tears stung the backs of his eyes because it was Blaze, and things felt somehow better because it was Blaze, and this was exactly why he'd tried so hard to stay away. From Blaze. Whose presence tempted him to think he could have more, have what others did, have something normal.
Which I'll never be, and things would eventually break. Or one of us would.
"Doc already head to work?"
Damien nodded and swallowed a mouthful of muffin before he trusted himself to answer with actual words. "She goes early. She always has."
"Good for her. I hear old people don't need much sleep." Blaze stretched and scratched the exposed strip of belly when his T-shirt rode up. "Guess we'll see what she digs up for us today. I still want to—"
The door chime startled Damien into dropping his muffin.Do I answer it? Do I want to?Even though Dr. Parma asserted that this was his house, too, answering the door in any house made his heart race. "House? Can you ID the person at the door?"
With an affirmative beep, the house system brought up the front-door camera, which showed a familiar figure, his bright-red hair a sharp contrast to his black-and-gold Guild uniform. House agreed with Damien's identification, displayingFox Hendersonunderneath.
Blaze huffed out a breath. "I say we pretend no one's here."
"He can't have missed our scent. And the truck's right out front." Damien patted Blaze's arm on his way to the front door, using the brief contact to steady himself.If only one could bottle a sense of security, I could take Blaze everywhere.
The uninvited thought made him stumble. As if he had any business wanting Blaze with him everywhere. And yet… he couldn't help longing for it, the feeling of safety, of calm that he had with Blaze, and, yes, doubled when Shudder was there, too. Safety, ease, calm,want…
Stop. Stop now.You can't have these things. Not with anyone.
He glanced back to be sure Blaze had stayed in the kitchen and opened the door. Damien wasn't trying to be secretive, but it was best to keep them separated. They reacted to even the mention of each other's names with irritation.
Damien felt vindicated when he opened the door and Fox didn't look at all surprised. He knew exactly who was inside.
"Hazelwood. Hello." True to his name, Fox's smile was vulpine—calculating, handsome, and maybe a little dangerous. "Didn't realize you'd come home."
"Yes."
"Well." The single-word answer made him hesitate but only for a moment. "Look, Doc left early yesterday, and I've been worried, since I know she was upset. It was a tough day. So I brought her some of the chocolate mint cookies she likes." He held the box up in both hands like an offering. "Is she still home?"
