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frogs_of_warSomeone set a vase of flowers in the kiosk with “BOK BROKE” written on it, but in such a way (between the handwriting and the expensive card it was written on, I read it as Brooke, so I left it alone. Hours later I asked someone about it and she looked and read the word correctly and we spent several seconds trying to find the break (a tiny chip out of a bottom corner).
I feel kind of silly misreading it, but not too bad. I’m sure I would have figured it out in a second if it had read “BROKEN.” Broke doesn’t even work. What’s wrong with the vase? It’s broke? No. It’s broken.
Title: Stronger than you think you are
Series: A Balance of Harmonies (Three)
Status: Chapter eighty-seven of lots
Genre: m/m romance, drama, city life, businessmen
Rating: R
Content: A statement, trying, memory, James, introduction, artists, working, questions, answers, food, dessert, a story, patience and impatience
Length: about 3,000 words
Summary: Peregrine takes Brandon to dinner.
Note: Brandon grew somehow between these last few chapters and the others he was in. I’ll have to go back and make him taller… at some point.
Master list
Peregrine knocked on Andre’s open door. “I’m taking Brandon.”
Andre frowned. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“If you think I should bring another adult, Kit volunteered to come with us. I’m not going to put myself or the shelter in a position to be sued. Or are you worried that he’ll convince me that living with two men who couldn’t wait until his eighteenth birthday is a good thing.”
Andre sighed. “I thought I understood you, but now…”
“No one can understand me. I’m a puzzling anomaly. The harder you try to understand me the more enigmatic I get.” Peregrine shrugged. “My family just expects me to be weird. When I told my mother about my second boyfriend she was actually relieved. I was still the same child she never understood.”
“You told her?”
“I did. I’ve never been closeted in my life, I don’t see why I should start now. I’ll bring the report on my conversation with Brandon by tomorrow afternoon, if that’s all right. I promised him I’d talk to you before you talked to him.”
Andre pressed his lips together and sighed. “I can do that. I just can’t see any good in those men.”
Peregrine would try, for Brandon’s sake.
He waved bye and hurried out to where Kit was getting in his car. “The noodle place on eleventh in an hour.”
Kit nodded. “The one by the bookstore. I’m going to pick up Brody and meet you there.”
Peregrine nodded. Brandon was waiting at the bike rack. “I thought you and me were going to talk.”
“We are, man to man, but for legal reasons Kit and his husband are going to sit at a table nearby.”
Brandon frowned. “You didn’t need another adult when you went places with JJ and Hunter.”
“There were two of them and I always stayed in public places. Tonight I’m going to show you my studio. Or not if you don’t want Kit and Brody along.”
“Your studio? Where you paint?”
Peregrine nodded and picked up his bike.
Brandon managed to look up through his dark bangs despite being taller than Peregrine. “You can ride it.”
“No. I can walk. And you can tell me about your men. Julian and Grant?”
Brandon opened his eyes wide. “How did you know?”
“I remembered, kid. You are important to me.”
Brandon smiled. It wasn’t very big, but with as rare as his smiles were, it was precious. As they walked the blocks, Brandon told how he’d been moving between relatives’ houses, then friends of relatives, then friends of theirs. No one wanted him. But then as he was spotting the signs that he’d outlived his welcome yet again and a handsome guy not much older than Brandon came by the house where he was staying. Julian lived a few houses down and he was seeking one more egg to finish a batch of cookies he’d started. He’d had two, but dropped one and he was in a hurry to get them finished before his roommate came home. He was so friendly that Brandon had followed him home.
Brandon was only in the little house for a few minutes when he realized, from the photos everywhere, that roommate was just another word for lover, but also that Julian’s invitation to make cookies, extended to the spare room that Julian was no longer sleeping in. Grant came home while Brandon was in the bathroom. And when Brandon came out, the men had a plate of warm cookies and a glass of cold milk waiting for him. He was so overwhelmed that he’d cried.
Grant wrapped his arms around Brandon and Julian had made faces and told jokes until Brandon got himself under control. They liked him, they said, even when he cried and they had known the tears weren’t from unhappiness. That was the first place Brandon could remember feeling loved. And that was before he found out Julian had eleven perfectly fine eggs in the fridge.
Brandon slept in the spare room and played housewife by day. Julian could bake cookies and cake and pie, but not dinner foods. Grant was good with breakfast foods like omelets and pancakes, so that’s what they eaten before Brandon rescued them with pastas and roasts and side dishes and breads. He found that he loved to cook as much as he loved to have a place of his own.
“I can see why you fell for them.” Peregrine opened a door into the building that led to the parking lot his building shared. He needed to put his bike away. “They seem like nice men.”
“They are.” Brandon’s eyes got a dreamy. He did truly love them. Only, did they love him?
People joined them on the elevator. Peregrine got off on the second underground floor and walked across the parking lot. Sound echoed strangely in the cavernous space, which Peregrine didn’t feel was a good environment for sharing important things, so he brought up the topic of what Kit was teaching. Brandon preferred subjects where he could express himself like poetry and art. Peregrine was impressed. He was no good with words himself.
He parked his bike and then they took the elevator back to ground level. He motioned Brandon to slow down when he saw a lady with a moppy dog, whose hair was tied up in a pink ribbon to keep it out of its eyes. “James? Is that James?”
The lady smiled. “Yes. This is James and you are?”
So she was Janine Hart the Homeowners’ Association secretary.
Peregrine got down on his knees and petted the dog. “Peregrine Jones. Kurt said that you might be interested in a painting of James K. Hart.”
Janine looked down at her dog, who was getting attention from not only Peregrine, but Brandon too, which was why Peregrine had got on the floor in the first place. The more she saw people love her dog, the more open she might be to a painting. She smiled sadly. “I’m not sure.”
Peregrine stood up. “Come by sometime and I’ll show you some of my commissions.”
Brandon stood up slowly. “Ma’am, you have a very sweet dog.”
Janine smiled again. “I think so too.”
“And this is Brandon, my young prodigy. He has yet to make a name from himself, but someday people will be naming dogs after him.”
Janine laughed and took her leave. Peregrine opened the door to the street. “She named her dog after painters and musicians and poets.”
“Artists then.”
“That’s true. Joyce Amadeus Monet van Eyck Schubert Kafka Hughes Alighieri Rossetti Tchaikovsky or some such. While I’m painting her, I’ll asked if she means the painting Rossetti or the poet.”
They sorted out painters and writers and musicians as they crossed the street. Brandon knew all the names but Hughes and Alighieri and he did recognize Dante Alighieri’s more common name. They talked about painters and Brandon’s favorites like Leyendecker and Mucha. Peregrine put a hand on Brandon’s back as he opened the restaurant door. “You know you can learn to paint like them.”
Brandon shook his head.
“You can. Not from me, but others know most of their techniques. Some things died with Leyendecker, he was a genius who didn’t share his secrets, but if you aren’t painting to eat, you can experiment. I’m sure you could do it.” Peregrine waved at Kit and Brody who were ordering at the counter. “Do you know what you want?”
Brandon crossed his arms. “Why should I make art if I have people to support me?”
“We’ll ask.” He stopped Kit and Brody on their way to the tables. “Let’s all sit together at first.”
Brandon looked down. “Why?”
“Because you asked.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Order first. Then we’ll talk.”
Peregrine ordered a lot to encourage Brandon to do the same. A boy needed food to grow. Once they ordered, Peregrine led Brandon to Kit’s table. “Brandon has a question: why work if you don’t have to? I can’t think of anyone better to explain it.”
Kit grinned. “Or anyone else available.”
“That too.” Peregrine sat down.
Brandon flopped into a chair on Peregrine’s far side. “Why can’t you just tell me?”
“Because I would paint if it made me nothing. If I had no paints, I would use mud and sticks. If my art sent me to jail, I would paint on the wall, in my own blood if I had to. Asking why I paint is like asking why I breath.”
“I don’t think he’s joking,” said Kit.
“I don’t think so either,” said Brandon.
Peregrine wasn’t.
“Well I work so Kit can do the job he loves. I like what I do, but not the way he loves what he does. We’ve known this since college when we got together. But I just can’t imagine not working. It would be like giving up an arm. I wouldn’t say my job was my life, but if I fell into some money, I would still work even I could afford to go on lavish vacations a few times a year. Kit?”
Kit shrugged. “I teach because that’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.” He smiled. “Well I guess when I was very little I said I wanted to be a mommy, but that didn’t last long. A teacher is like a mother, but social acceptable for a man to be.”
Kit put his hand on Brody’s. “We are thinking of becoming parents, but I can’t really see either of us staying home fulltime to care for an infant, even for just a couple of months. One thing I really love about this job at the shelter is that it is year round, but that also means that one or both of us will have to cut our hours to be there for the baby that relies on us. I’m not sure how well an infant would go over if I brought him to work with me.”
A waiter came up with Brody’s and Kit’s plates. Peregrine excused himself and Brandon to another table. He looked over his young friend. “Did that help?”
Brandon looked at his hands. “I touched a dog. I should wash up.”
“Go. I’ll do the same when you get back.”
Brandon arrived just before the food. Peregrine waited to be served before he washed his hands. When he came back Brandon had arranged his plates neatly and his napkin was on his lap. He looked up through his bangs. “I waited for you.”
That was a lot to ask of any teenager. Peregrine sat down and picked up his napkin rolled around his silverware. “Dig in.”
Brandon showed off better manners than could normally be expected in a homeless youth, or even one with a family that sat around the table for dinner. Peregrine nodded. “Where did you learn your table manners?”
Brandon sipped his water of water. “With Julian and Grant. Julian likes everything to be just so and Grant always puts a napkin on his lap even when we are eating a midnight snack in front of the TV. I just wanted to be like them.”
Peregrine cocked his head. “And do you think it made you look older?”
Brandon laughed. “I’m kind of tall and when I lived with them I was… more filled out. I look younger now.”
He looked his age now, but Peregrine remembered how everyone had expected Kurt to be older due to his size. “Did you tell them your age?”
Brandon shook his head. Peregrine let him eat and then got up to get dessert. Brandon was right. He had lost weight at the shelter. Kids at a good weight to start with shouldn’t lose any. Peregrine sat his choices in front of Brandon. “Any preference?”
Brandon looked over the hand-span sized cookies and the giant rice crispy treat, but didn’t reach for any of them. Peregrine peeled back the wrapping of the giant sugar cookie. “We can split them all in half.”
Brandon grinned and picked up the chocolate chip cookie. He took a bite. “Not as good as Julian’s.”
But he took another bite.
Peregrine broke off a bit of his half of the sugar cookie. “How old do they think you were?”
Brandon sighed. “Won’t you leave it alone?”
“Sorry, but if you want me on your side, you have to talk to me. They sound like good guys. How did you ended up at the shelter?”
He wanted to ask when and how Brandon had ended up in their bed, but if he knew unequivocally that Grant and Julian had sex with Brandon, he’d have to tell the police. As he’d listened to Bandon talk about them, he’d become less and less sure the men deserved that.
Brandon sighed. “My grandfather who did not give a… care about me. At all. I couldn’t live with him because I used to whimper in my sleep and that disturbed him or something. So anyway, he didn’t care about me one drop and never contacted me: no Christmas present, no birthday cards, no ‘hello, you still alive?’s until I moved in with people who would never get tired of me, who loved me, who came in and rubbed my hair and whispered sweet nothings when I had nightmares. Then and only then did he decide that he deserved some say in my life.”
Brandon shredded his napkin. “He insisted I go home with him. Grant and Julian said just to go. I would always have a home with them, no matter what. My grandfather was worse than I remembered. When I made dinner, he complained that I used his food up and when I cleaned, he complained that I moved his things, and even though he falls sleep with the TV so loud I could hear it though the walls, he complained that I whimpered in my sleep. I have nightmares. That’s understandable after what I’ve been through.”
Peregrine nodded in agreement. He wasn’t sure what Brandon had lived through, but no one had nightmares because they wanted to.
“So I ran away. I’d never done it before, so I wasn’t very good at it. If I was the type that could sleep outside, I would have been on the streets years ago.”
The poor, poor boy.
“So my grandfather caught me as I was getting off at the stop by Grant and Julian’s. He said that if I went back to them, he would turn them into the cops and they would spend years in jail and then have to register as sex offenders. Their lives would be over. I couldn’t do that to them. So I tried to live with my grandfather, really I did, but that didn’t work. A month into it, he told me to pack my bag and he took me down to the shelter and told Andre to keep me safe as if Julian and Grant were evil men. They aren’t. They come just from states where the age of consent is seventeen. I looked it up.”
Just like they could have looked up to find out Oregon’s.
“They were so good to me and protective and stuff. They wanted to teach me to drive, so they took me to the DMV to get my learner’s permit, then they made me show my ID before I… joined them.” He smiled a far way smile and then frowned and leaned forward. “It’s my fault I didn’t tell them at in Oregon I wouldn’t be legal until I was eighteen. Grant finished his post graduate work and we discussed where Julian would go for his and he could have gone to a university near where Grant’s mother lives, but then Grant was offered a job here, and Julian was accepted down in Corvallis, and I voted to stay because I’m not keen on moving to the desert, but I should have told them because if we’d moved, my grandfather would have nothing to threaten them with and I wouldn’t be stuck here right now.”
Peregrine held up his hand. “You are only stuck here for a few more months. Use your circumstances to live, learn, grow.”
“But I just want to be there, with them.”
Peregrine patted Brandon’s hand. “I understand.”
“Do you?”
“I’m not myself without Kurt and Emil.”
“Then you know I need Julian and Grant.”
Peregrine nodded. “I see, but the law has tied my hands. I can’t encourage, I can’t even allow you to go live with them until your birthday.”
“Why?”
“I’m protecting them because you are protecting them. I waited a dozen years for my first love to return. You don’t even have to wait a dozen weeks.”
“A dozen days is too long.”
“You are stronger than you think you are.”
“But I don’t want to be.”
“I know. I know.” The poor kid. But as much as he felt for him, Peregrine could only do so much. “Can I meet them?”
“You want to?”
“Yes.”
Brandon cocked his head. “You aren’t just trying to find something bad about them.”
Peregrine could do that without meeting them. They slept with a kid. A kid as tall as an adult, sure, and a kid who wouldn’t have been a minor in many other states, both of which were in their favor, but still a kid.
“I want to see them how you see them.” Peregrine needed a pen and paper so he could show Brandon how he saw him. Then he would understand.
I feel kind of silly misreading it, but not too bad. I’m sure I would have figured it out in a second if it had read “BROKEN.” Broke doesn’t even work. What’s wrong with the vase? It’s broke? No. It’s broken.
Title: Stronger than you think you are
Series: A Balance of Harmonies (Three)
Status: Chapter eighty-seven of lots
Genre: m/m romance, drama, city life, businessmen
Rating: R
Content: A statement, trying, memory, James, introduction, artists, working, questions, answers, food, dessert, a story, patience and impatience
Length: about 3,000 words
Summary: Peregrine takes Brandon to dinner.
Note: Brandon grew somehow between these last few chapters and the others he was in. I’ll have to go back and make him taller… at some point.
Master list
Peregrine knocked on Andre’s open door. “I’m taking Brandon.”
Andre frowned. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“If you think I should bring another adult, Kit volunteered to come with us. I’m not going to put myself or the shelter in a position to be sued. Or are you worried that he’ll convince me that living with two men who couldn’t wait until his eighteenth birthday is a good thing.”
Andre sighed. “I thought I understood you, but now…”
“No one can understand me. I’m a puzzling anomaly. The harder you try to understand me the more enigmatic I get.” Peregrine shrugged. “My family just expects me to be weird. When I told my mother about my second boyfriend she was actually relieved. I was still the same child she never understood.”
“You told her?”
“I did. I’ve never been closeted in my life, I don’t see why I should start now. I’ll bring the report on my conversation with Brandon by tomorrow afternoon, if that’s all right. I promised him I’d talk to you before you talked to him.”
Andre pressed his lips together and sighed. “I can do that. I just can’t see any good in those men.”
Peregrine would try, for Brandon’s sake.
He waved bye and hurried out to where Kit was getting in his car. “The noodle place on eleventh in an hour.”
Kit nodded. “The one by the bookstore. I’m going to pick up Brody and meet you there.”
Peregrine nodded. Brandon was waiting at the bike rack. “I thought you and me were going to talk.”
“We are, man to man, but for legal reasons Kit and his husband are going to sit at a table nearby.”
Brandon frowned. “You didn’t need another adult when you went places with JJ and Hunter.”
“There were two of them and I always stayed in public places. Tonight I’m going to show you my studio. Or not if you don’t want Kit and Brody along.”
“Your studio? Where you paint?”
Peregrine nodded and picked up his bike.
Brandon managed to look up through his dark bangs despite being taller than Peregrine. “You can ride it.”
“No. I can walk. And you can tell me about your men. Julian and Grant?”
Brandon opened his eyes wide. “How did you know?”
“I remembered, kid. You are important to me.”
Brandon smiled. It wasn’t very big, but with as rare as his smiles were, it was precious. As they walked the blocks, Brandon told how he’d been moving between relatives’ houses, then friends of relatives, then friends of theirs. No one wanted him. But then as he was spotting the signs that he’d outlived his welcome yet again and a handsome guy not much older than Brandon came by the house where he was staying. Julian lived a few houses down and he was seeking one more egg to finish a batch of cookies he’d started. He’d had two, but dropped one and he was in a hurry to get them finished before his roommate came home. He was so friendly that Brandon had followed him home.
Brandon was only in the little house for a few minutes when he realized, from the photos everywhere, that roommate was just another word for lover, but also that Julian’s invitation to make cookies, extended to the spare room that Julian was no longer sleeping in. Grant came home while Brandon was in the bathroom. And when Brandon came out, the men had a plate of warm cookies and a glass of cold milk waiting for him. He was so overwhelmed that he’d cried.
Grant wrapped his arms around Brandon and Julian had made faces and told jokes until Brandon got himself under control. They liked him, they said, even when he cried and they had known the tears weren’t from unhappiness. That was the first place Brandon could remember feeling loved. And that was before he found out Julian had eleven perfectly fine eggs in the fridge.
Brandon slept in the spare room and played housewife by day. Julian could bake cookies and cake and pie, but not dinner foods. Grant was good with breakfast foods like omelets and pancakes, so that’s what they eaten before Brandon rescued them with pastas and roasts and side dishes and breads. He found that he loved to cook as much as he loved to have a place of his own.
“I can see why you fell for them.” Peregrine opened a door into the building that led to the parking lot his building shared. He needed to put his bike away. “They seem like nice men.”
“They are.” Brandon’s eyes got a dreamy. He did truly love them. Only, did they love him?
People joined them on the elevator. Peregrine got off on the second underground floor and walked across the parking lot. Sound echoed strangely in the cavernous space, which Peregrine didn’t feel was a good environment for sharing important things, so he brought up the topic of what Kit was teaching. Brandon preferred subjects where he could express himself like poetry and art. Peregrine was impressed. He was no good with words himself.
He parked his bike and then they took the elevator back to ground level. He motioned Brandon to slow down when he saw a lady with a moppy dog, whose hair was tied up in a pink ribbon to keep it out of its eyes. “James? Is that James?”
The lady smiled. “Yes. This is James and you are?”
So she was Janine Hart the Homeowners’ Association secretary.
Peregrine got down on his knees and petted the dog. “Peregrine Jones. Kurt said that you might be interested in a painting of James K. Hart.”
Janine looked down at her dog, who was getting attention from not only Peregrine, but Brandon too, which was why Peregrine had got on the floor in the first place. The more she saw people love her dog, the more open she might be to a painting. She smiled sadly. “I’m not sure.”
Peregrine stood up. “Come by sometime and I’ll show you some of my commissions.”
Brandon stood up slowly. “Ma’am, you have a very sweet dog.”
Janine smiled again. “I think so too.”
“And this is Brandon, my young prodigy. He has yet to make a name from himself, but someday people will be naming dogs after him.”
Janine laughed and took her leave. Peregrine opened the door to the street. “She named her dog after painters and musicians and poets.”
“Artists then.”
“That’s true. Joyce Amadeus Monet van Eyck Schubert Kafka Hughes Alighieri Rossetti Tchaikovsky or some such. While I’m painting her, I’ll asked if she means the painting Rossetti or the poet.”
They sorted out painters and writers and musicians as they crossed the street. Brandon knew all the names but Hughes and Alighieri and he did recognize Dante Alighieri’s more common name. They talked about painters and Brandon’s favorites like Leyendecker and Mucha. Peregrine put a hand on Brandon’s back as he opened the restaurant door. “You know you can learn to paint like them.”
Brandon shook his head.
“You can. Not from me, but others know most of their techniques. Some things died with Leyendecker, he was a genius who didn’t share his secrets, but if you aren’t painting to eat, you can experiment. I’m sure you could do it.” Peregrine waved at Kit and Brody who were ordering at the counter. “Do you know what you want?”
Brandon crossed his arms. “Why should I make art if I have people to support me?”
“We’ll ask.” He stopped Kit and Brody on their way to the tables. “Let’s all sit together at first.”
Brandon looked down. “Why?”
“Because you asked.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Order first. Then we’ll talk.”
Peregrine ordered a lot to encourage Brandon to do the same. A boy needed food to grow. Once they ordered, Peregrine led Brandon to Kit’s table. “Brandon has a question: why work if you don’t have to? I can’t think of anyone better to explain it.”
Kit grinned. “Or anyone else available.”
“That too.” Peregrine sat down.
Brandon flopped into a chair on Peregrine’s far side. “Why can’t you just tell me?”
“Because I would paint if it made me nothing. If I had no paints, I would use mud and sticks. If my art sent me to jail, I would paint on the wall, in my own blood if I had to. Asking why I paint is like asking why I breath.”
“I don’t think he’s joking,” said Kit.
“I don’t think so either,” said Brandon.
Peregrine wasn’t.
“Well I work so Kit can do the job he loves. I like what I do, but not the way he loves what he does. We’ve known this since college when we got together. But I just can’t imagine not working. It would be like giving up an arm. I wouldn’t say my job was my life, but if I fell into some money, I would still work even I could afford to go on lavish vacations a few times a year. Kit?”
Kit shrugged. “I teach because that’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.” He smiled. “Well I guess when I was very little I said I wanted to be a mommy, but that didn’t last long. A teacher is like a mother, but social acceptable for a man to be.”
Kit put his hand on Brody’s. “We are thinking of becoming parents, but I can’t really see either of us staying home fulltime to care for an infant, even for just a couple of months. One thing I really love about this job at the shelter is that it is year round, but that also means that one or both of us will have to cut our hours to be there for the baby that relies on us. I’m not sure how well an infant would go over if I brought him to work with me.”
A waiter came up with Brody’s and Kit’s plates. Peregrine excused himself and Brandon to another table. He looked over his young friend. “Did that help?”
Brandon looked at his hands. “I touched a dog. I should wash up.”
“Go. I’ll do the same when you get back.”
Brandon arrived just before the food. Peregrine waited to be served before he washed his hands. When he came back Brandon had arranged his plates neatly and his napkin was on his lap. He looked up through his bangs. “I waited for you.”
That was a lot to ask of any teenager. Peregrine sat down and picked up his napkin rolled around his silverware. “Dig in.”
Brandon showed off better manners than could normally be expected in a homeless youth, or even one with a family that sat around the table for dinner. Peregrine nodded. “Where did you learn your table manners?”
Brandon sipped his water of water. “With Julian and Grant. Julian likes everything to be just so and Grant always puts a napkin on his lap even when we are eating a midnight snack in front of the TV. I just wanted to be like them.”
Peregrine cocked his head. “And do you think it made you look older?”
Brandon laughed. “I’m kind of tall and when I lived with them I was… more filled out. I look younger now.”
He looked his age now, but Peregrine remembered how everyone had expected Kurt to be older due to his size. “Did you tell them your age?”
Brandon shook his head. Peregrine let him eat and then got up to get dessert. Brandon was right. He had lost weight at the shelter. Kids at a good weight to start with shouldn’t lose any. Peregrine sat his choices in front of Brandon. “Any preference?”
Brandon looked over the hand-span sized cookies and the giant rice crispy treat, but didn’t reach for any of them. Peregrine peeled back the wrapping of the giant sugar cookie. “We can split them all in half.”
Brandon grinned and picked up the chocolate chip cookie. He took a bite. “Not as good as Julian’s.”
But he took another bite.
Peregrine broke off a bit of his half of the sugar cookie. “How old do they think you were?”
Brandon sighed. “Won’t you leave it alone?”
“Sorry, but if you want me on your side, you have to talk to me. They sound like good guys. How did you ended up at the shelter?”
He wanted to ask when and how Brandon had ended up in their bed, but if he knew unequivocally that Grant and Julian had sex with Brandon, he’d have to tell the police. As he’d listened to Bandon talk about them, he’d become less and less sure the men deserved that.
Brandon sighed. “My grandfather who did not give a… care about me. At all. I couldn’t live with him because I used to whimper in my sleep and that disturbed him or something. So anyway, he didn’t care about me one drop and never contacted me: no Christmas present, no birthday cards, no ‘hello, you still alive?’s until I moved in with people who would never get tired of me, who loved me, who came in and rubbed my hair and whispered sweet nothings when I had nightmares. Then and only then did he decide that he deserved some say in my life.”
Brandon shredded his napkin. “He insisted I go home with him. Grant and Julian said just to go. I would always have a home with them, no matter what. My grandfather was worse than I remembered. When I made dinner, he complained that I used his food up and when I cleaned, he complained that I moved his things, and even though he falls sleep with the TV so loud I could hear it though the walls, he complained that I whimpered in my sleep. I have nightmares. That’s understandable after what I’ve been through.”
Peregrine nodded in agreement. He wasn’t sure what Brandon had lived through, but no one had nightmares because they wanted to.
“So I ran away. I’d never done it before, so I wasn’t very good at it. If I was the type that could sleep outside, I would have been on the streets years ago.”
The poor, poor boy.
“So my grandfather caught me as I was getting off at the stop by Grant and Julian’s. He said that if I went back to them, he would turn them into the cops and they would spend years in jail and then have to register as sex offenders. Their lives would be over. I couldn’t do that to them. So I tried to live with my grandfather, really I did, but that didn’t work. A month into it, he told me to pack my bag and he took me down to the shelter and told Andre to keep me safe as if Julian and Grant were evil men. They aren’t. They come just from states where the age of consent is seventeen. I looked it up.”
Just like they could have looked up to find out Oregon’s.
“They were so good to me and protective and stuff. They wanted to teach me to drive, so they took me to the DMV to get my learner’s permit, then they made me show my ID before I… joined them.” He smiled a far way smile and then frowned and leaned forward. “It’s my fault I didn’t tell them at in Oregon I wouldn’t be legal until I was eighteen. Grant finished his post graduate work and we discussed where Julian would go for his and he could have gone to a university near where Grant’s mother lives, but then Grant was offered a job here, and Julian was accepted down in Corvallis, and I voted to stay because I’m not keen on moving to the desert, but I should have told them because if we’d moved, my grandfather would have nothing to threaten them with and I wouldn’t be stuck here right now.”
Peregrine held up his hand. “You are only stuck here for a few more months. Use your circumstances to live, learn, grow.”
“But I just want to be there, with them.”
Peregrine patted Brandon’s hand. “I understand.”
“Do you?”
“I’m not myself without Kurt and Emil.”
“Then you know I need Julian and Grant.”
Peregrine nodded. “I see, but the law has tied my hands. I can’t encourage, I can’t even allow you to go live with them until your birthday.”
“Why?”
“I’m protecting them because you are protecting them. I waited a dozen years for my first love to return. You don’t even have to wait a dozen weeks.”
“A dozen days is too long.”
“You are stronger than you think you are.”
“But I don’t want to be.”
“I know. I know.” The poor kid. But as much as he felt for him, Peregrine could only do so much. “Can I meet them?”
“You want to?”
“Yes.”
Brandon cocked his head. “You aren’t just trying to find something bad about them.”
Peregrine could do that without meeting them. They slept with a kid. A kid as tall as an adult, sure, and a kid who wouldn’t have been a minor in many other states, both of which were in their favor, but still a kid.
“I want to see them how you see them.” Peregrine needed a pen and paper so he could show Brandon how he saw him. Then he would understand.
