Fishy Riot, page 12
The look Sietta gave him was dark, incredulous, and yet somehow still amused. Taylor wasn’t sure if Sietta hadn’t expected Taylor to be quite that blunt, or if he was peeved someone was dissing his studies, but whatever the reason, Taylor found he liked the look anyway. Sietta was taking things so easily, it was good to know the guy could get angry. That there were things he cared about.
“I work hard,” Sietta managed to ground out, holding up his hands and wriggling his long, slender fingers. “For hours, every day.”
“You were allowed to do that?” Taylor had pictured him chained up in the wine cellar all day, every day, brought out for the occasional public appearance as required.
“Ah… I was, perhaps a little literally, chained to the piano.”
“How can you be a little literally chained to anything? What does that even mean?” Taylor’s anger was ignited. He wanted Johnathan Salisbury’s face in front of him, so he could shove his fist into the man’s flesh, repeatedly.
“You’re very attractive when you’re angry,” Sietta observed.
Taylor snorted, the anger fading as quickly as it came. “A little literally?”
“Mmm,” Sietta mused. “Well, figuratively, then, but I felt chained to it.”
“So they didn’t install a chain on a piano?”
“Well it would be sacrilege, you know. I think Mozart’s father might have invented it first though anyway, and you know my dad’s not really one to copy.” How Sietta could sit there and laugh about it was beyond Taylor. He gripped the wheel tightly and silently fumed.
“You don’t fume silently, you know?”
Taylor glared at him, but Sietta was grinning from ear to ear, and it was stunning.
“You fume. You know, like heavy breathing and nostrils flaring, and it’s like you can almost hear your muscles creaking….” Sietta demonstrated, and it looked so ridiculous that the fury fled Taylor, just like that, leaving him feeling drained and amused and a thousand other things he couldn’t be bothered thinking about.
“You look like a gorilla with rabies.” Taylor scowled.
“Seen a lot of those, have you? I guess you look in the mirror a lot….”
“No need, I just look at Clay.” He liked how easily Sietta laughed, how relaxed he was with him, as if they were old friends. He wondered if it was simply the way Sietta was, or if it was unique to him. He was selfish enough to wish for the latter, but also curious because Sietta hadn’t exactly had a lot of company since he was a teenager. Where did his sense of humour come from, if it wasn’t simply something innate in him?
It wasn’t far to the nearest shopping centre with a Kmart, and he pulled into a park close to the store, rummaged in his gym bag on the back seat, and found his sunglasses and a cap, holding them out to Sietta, who didn’t question him at all, just obediently put them on his head.
Sietta still needed a moment before he was willing to get out of the car, so Taylor waited patiently until he was ready.
The store was relatively empty, and Sietta wasn’t a fussy shopper, apparently. He walked to the men’s section, grabbed two pairs of cheap jeans, a black T-shirt and a white T-shirt, two pairs of underwear, and a belt, and shoved them in a basket. Taylor frowned down at the meagre pile, but he knew better than to argue. He watched a five-dollar pair of black canvas shoes go in, and sighed, but Sietta was still grinning so whatever. A cheap black cap joined the pile, and a cheap pair of thick black-rimmed sunglasses. A pair of boxers, and then some socks. A single dark hoodie.
“That is the saddest wardrobe I have ever seen.” Taylor snatched up the basket and rummaged through it as if the contents might change.
“I don’t need anything else,” Sietta sounded a little confused.
“Except maybe a sense of style,” Taylor muttered. Sietta’s eyes widened, and he stared down into the basket alongside Taylor, as if searching for what was so wrong. It was his complete lack of ability to care about his clothes that sealed the deal for Taylor. He stroked a hand down one of the locks of hair that had escaped his hat on Sietta’s head, tugged gently, and then led the way back to the register.
The whole lot cost less than a hundred dollars, and they packed it themselves at the self-serve checkout, in a brown paper bag. Sietta clung to it like a lifeline, and Taylor made sure he said nothing, leading them back out to the car and sighing a little in relief. Apparently middle-aged mothers frantically doing the groceries had far more important things to do than recognise and harass a recovered kidnap victim.
“Thank you,” Sietta said softly from the passenger seat, and Taylor managed a wry smile because they both knew there was no point to thanking him.
Despite the austere nature of the clothing, Taylor had to admit that when Sietta emerged from the bathroom an hour later, freshly showered and laundered, he looked good. The jeans were loose in all the right ways, hanging low on his hips, and the shirt wasn’t tight but fit snugly, moving with his lithe form as he sat down beside Taylor on the couch and waved a hand at the television.
“Reckon we can watch a movie? I haven’t seen anything in… well….” He was laughing, but it had that hint of brittle to it, and Taylor didn’t bother answering with words, reaching out to ruffle Sietta’s hair. Then he got up to boot up the computer attached to the television.
“Preference of genre?”
“Not a thriller,” Sietta grumbled. Taylor looked at the ceiling and quietly asked for a little help. But he found a simple comedy from a few years ago and got it playing, moving back to the couch, but sitting closer to Sietta, wrapping an arm around his shoulders, and hauling him over with him as he lay down and settled in to watch.
It was like holding a wooden plank at first, but gradually Sietta relaxed, and eventually Taylor was treated to the gentle vibrations of Sietta’s laughter against his chest. He liked that Sietta smelt like him: his shampoo, his deodorant, his home. He liked the way Sietta’s hair tangled between them, tickling his neck and shoulder where Sietta rested his head. He liked how warm Sietta was, and the weight of him. He liked a lot of things, apparently.
He fell asleep. When he woke, it was not Sietta’s eyes staring at him, nor Sietta’s face. Little flecks of brown, completely out of place in the eyes of any Jameson, which told him exactly who it was. Not that he needed that to tell him, when there was that much fruit on the kid’s breath.
“Emma… back off.”
“Give her a break, ever since she heard Uncle Tay was let out of the hospital, she’s wanted to come and make sure your face was okay.” Brayden’s voice came from somewhere near the kitchen.
“My face is fine, Em,” Taylor grumbled in response, reaching down to haul her into his lap as he sat up and searched the living room. He spotted Brayden by the couch, handing Sietta a steaming mug of what smelled like ginger tea.
“You let him in?”
Sietta froze, eyes flicking from one brother to the other before settling on Taylor. “Was I not supposed to?”
Taylor shook his head, and Brayden laughed, going to collapse on the other couch, looking tired, as usual. “Don’t mind Taylor, he prefers to avoid family as much as possible.”
“But…. Clay lives here,” Sietta pointed out, less confusion in his voice and more amusement as he sipped his tea.
“Uncle Clay and Uncle Tay are the same soul split in two bodies,” Emma settled in Taylor’s lap like a small princess. Somewhat literally, as she was dressed as Elsa, her favourite Disney princess, along with the rest of the world under six.
“I don’t think that’s quite right,” Brayden told his daughter, but she scrunched up her nose at him.
“Nanna said it!” As if that would magically make it saner.
“See, not right, then,” Taylor agreed with Brayden.
“Well, she was right about your face!” Emma reached up to poke the dark purple bruises on the side of his head, making him hiss and bat her hands away. “Why did Uncle Clay let the thing hurt your face?”
“What’s your preoccupation with my face?”
“Jay says if you pull a funny face and the wind changes, it’ll stay that way. What if now your face stays this way? Then everyone will know Uncle Clay is the nice one just by looking at you, and no one will ever talk to you again.”
There was one of those strange silent moments before the shock wore off and they were all laughing with Emma shaking her head at Taylor and continuing to try to poke his bruises, before he grabbed her hands and folded them in her lap for her.
“My face is going to be fine, they’re just bruises and bruises fade. You know that. Remember when you hit your knee last month? And now it’s all gone, right?”
“Yeah, but… I’m a nice person.”
They were probably never going to stop laughing at him, and Taylor really couldn’t blame them. From the mouths of babes and all that.
“I’ll still be Taylor’s friend,” Sietta said from across the room, and Emma seemed to notice him for the first time. Her eyes went wide and she leaned closer, as if trying to get a better look at him. Sizing him up for her next victim, perhaps.
“Is he paying you?”
“What?” That tea almost went everywhere. Sietta was clearly struggling to swallow the hot brew and not spray it.
“Emma… no, Taylor is not paying Sietta to be his friend.” Brayden struggled to explain, clearly wanting nothing more than to laugh hysterically. “Sietta was hurt, and I helped him at the hospital, and then Uncle Taylor agreed to let Sietta stay here while his brother is staying with Uncle Clay and Uncle Joel.”
“Oh.” Yeah, oh.
Sietta was still struggling with his tea.
“How come I don’t get to stay with Uncle Joel?”
“Because you live with me. You know, your father,” Brayden pointed out. It was like he had these conversations every day. They didn’t seem to faze him at all.
“Oh. That makes sense.”
He was a doctor. Of course it made sense. But Taylor wasn’t stupid enough to tell her that.
“Is Uncle Tay’s head really going to be okay? I don’t want him to have no friends.”
“Yes, Emma, Uncle Tay’s head is like a rock, remember? So his head’s fine, and his face will get better. It’s just God’s way of telling him he’s horrible and needs to be nicer to people. His face will go back to normal when he’s learned his lesson.”
“Bray, what the….” Taylor gaped at Brayden, but he was sitting there looking smug and sickeningly in control of the situation, and Taylor let him have the win. It wasn’t like he really cared, anyway, Brayden hated that Taylor was Emma’s favourite. Supposedly because Taylor needed whatever friends he could get, but Taylor suspected it had more to do with the secret stash of lollies he gave her under the table at Saturday lunches.
“You should learn faster, it’s pretty ugly,” Emma told him resolutely, and Sietta was laughing again. At least something good was coming from his pint-sized emasculation.
“I’ll try,” Taylor looked at Brayden. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to check on my patients. Mostly because Mum wouldn’t stop harping on about you dying of brain damage or something. But also because I have duty of care and Emma wanted to see you.”
“There are these things called telephones,” Taylor reminded snidely, letting Emma play with his hair, happy he kept no glitter in his apartment. They’d all learnt that lesson pretty quick.
“You don’t answer yours when you don’t want to.” Brayden shrugged.
“Or I’m busy? Or at work? What if I’m on a raid and my phone starts ringing and I’ve got to answer it because my mum’s calling?”
“Why would you take your phone on a raid?” Brayden scoffed, and Taylor scowled at him because he was deliberately missing the point. Not that Taylor actually cared.
“Were you on a raid with Uncle Tay?”
All sets of eyes returned to Emma. Taylor wondered if it wasn’t her superpower; coming up with the most awkward thing to say in any given situation to ensure all attention was purely on her.
“Oddly enough, I was.” Sietta was snickering. He seriously had issues. Serious issues. Seriously serious issues. If Taylor hadn’t known it already, the look on Brayden’s face would have told him, clearly and succinctly. And yet he didn’t care about that either. He cared that Sietta was laughing, not in the slightly manic way he had been, but openly and naturally. Genuine.
“He was in the wine cellar,” Taylor told her in a soft, serious tone he knew she would listen to, and her eyes went wide in fascination while Brayden groaned.
“Were you drinking?” So serious.
“Well, not when Taylor found me, no, but sure, I would drink down there. I mean… it’s hard to survive if you don’t drink something.” She was nodding along to everything Sietta said, as if it made perfect sense to her. It didn’t, but it was cute that she tried.
“Uncle Clay takes his clothes off when he’s drunk.”
Dead. Silence. Brayden sank into the couch as if he thought it could eat him. Sietta sat gaping at her. Taylor looked at the ceiling and prayed for a reprieve from his whole family, Clay included.
“He… what?” Sietta was still struggling. It was cute as hell, and something Sietta would have to get used to if he intended to continue to hang around Jamesons. Which, considering Micah was fostered at Joel’s, he was going to have to.
“It’s a Clay thing. One too many and whoosh, off go his pants and he runs around naked until he passes out or I arrest him, which I try not to do because then he thinks we’re playing cops and robbers, and he tries to steal my stuff.” Taylor shifted Emma off his lap to snuggle in against his side.
“Oh… my… God…” Sietta’s eyes couldn’t get any bigger. Emma was shaking her head, clearly recalling their last Christmas party, where Clay had overindulged. Taylor had convinced Clay to lie on the lilo in the pool, he’d passed out and gotten so sunburned he’d had to go to hospital, where Brayden had made him stay overnight. Emma had been kind enough to go read Uncle Clay a bedtime story or fifteen while he was stuck in hospital.
“He only tries to steal Taylor’s stuff, though,” Brayden thought to add. “The rest of us apparently aren’t in the game. Or we just plain don’t exist if Clay’s drunk. It’s like Tay’s his whole world.”
Taylor went to stick his finger up before he remembered Emma was in his lap and covered it by shoving his fingers into his hair instead, glaring at his brother.
“Taylor drunk is just funny,” Brayden offered, and the light of curiosity lit that quickly in Sietta’s eyes as he turned to listen. Brayden smirked knowingly, and Taylor groaned and wondered if there was any way to claim brain damage and scare them all out of his house. Unlikely; it would be more likely to land him back in hospital under Brayden’s care, and he did not want to be there. “He sings. So badly. It’s amazing.” Those eyes were like saucers.
“When you say badly….”
“I mean dogs howl loudly in an effort to drown him out and run away to hide and whimper when they fail.”
Well, at least Sietta was getting a laugh out of it.
“Why do you sing, then?” Sietta asked a little breathlessly. Taylor could think of ten things right off the top of his head that would have made him equally breathless and been far more fun than Brayden telling stories. Oh well.
“Apparently drunk me thinks he’s a superstar,” Taylor muttered.
“Oh, no… drunk Taylor is awesome.” Brayden got up and went to the kitchen, taking a bag of frozen vegetables out. He shoved them against the bruising on Taylor’s face, amused when Emma took over holding them in place so he could return to his couch.
“He’s nice!” Emma piped in, and Taylor gave up, because if it wasn’t going to be Brayden and his pint-sized niece, everyone else in the family would ensure all his secrets were revealed and he remained single for life.
“Drunk Taylor is nice?” Sietta looked around the room for clarification.
“Will agree to do pretty much anything,” Brayden acknowledged, and even he seemed surprised by this.
“Just about?” Sietta was looking at Taylor now, smirking.
“Well, there was this one time when a girl tried to get him to go home with her….”
He could jump off the balcony…. Right? Run down the street…. The train station wasn’t that far away, and he was sure he had a few coins in his pocket. He could get to Joel’s and beg asylum?
7: Lemonade Barbeque
THE DOOR clicked shut, and Taylor fell back against it, closing his eyes briefly and counting to ten to make sure they were really gone. He locked it for good measure before he dared to push away, looking up and meeting Sietta’s incredulous look where he still sat on the edge of the couch, as if he might fall off if anyone told him one more ridiculous thing.
“Your whole family is like that,” he noted a little breathlessly. “I mean… even the small ones!”
Taylor went to sit beside him on the couch, noticing Sietta didn’t flinch or pull away in the slightest, that he visibly relaxed instead and leaned back into the curve of Taylor’s body, making it that much easier for Taylor to settle a heavy arm around his shoulders and pull him even closer. Everything about Sietta felt easy and comfortable.
“Even the small ones,” Taylor agreed.
“I need to go to Saturday Barbeque” was the last thing Taylor had expected to come out of Sietta’s mouth, which had to be obvious when all he could do was gape at him.
“Oh, come on, how bad could it be? Your dad invited me, said Leila has invited Micah, and that Joel was going, so I could meet him and everything.”
“I don’t think you understand….” How could he? He had brunches, not barbeques, and for those, he’d likely still been chained to the chair, so no one had expected him to do anything. Brunch was a whole different beast to barbeque. Brunch was avocado toast and coffee at a café where everyone had to be on their best behaviour. Barbeque was sausage sandwiches and beer and your family getting all up in your business and telling embarrassing stories. These two things were not the same!
“Have you already forgotten that I was rescued by Vikings extras, handed off to your seriously loony sister, who delivered me to the medical devil himself, who let me go home with the Vikings?”
