Candy Hearts, Vol. 2

Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

Ean looked so much better after 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.”

Leland checked the mackerel, but sure enough, it was beautifully filleted. “You’re sure?” he asked, teasing a little.

Ean took him seriously and looked nervous. “I’m sure. I’m not lying, I promise.”

Leland’s heart melted for the young man. “I believe you,” he said softly. He reached out and rested his hand on the back of Ean’s for a moment.

Both of them breathed in slightly, like the touch was electric. Their eyes met, and Leland had to pull away before he did something silly. Flirting shouldn’t happen over fish scales.

“Great,” he said, turning to the room at large. “Once you’ve filleted your fish, grab a pan and take it to the stove and we’ll sear it.”

The class shuffled along, following instructions well, but Ean raced to take his fish to the hob like cooking was a treat and not a chore.

Leland talked his class through pan-searing the fish, then set everyone up with the ingredients and recipe for pesto that they would use as a sauce for the meal. His focus wasn’t completely on the lesson anymore, though.

The more he watched Ean, the more things didn’t add up in his head. Ean had confessed to sleeping rough and staying with friends, but he hadn’t said anything about getting a place of his own. He hadn’t mentioned a single thing about a job. Surely, at his age, he had to have some sort of employment. Barring that, he must have been eligible for a public assistance program. Young, bright men from good families didn’t just end up homeless for no reason…did they?

Leland made a mental note to sit Ean down after class and talk about it. Every fiber of his being wanted to help the young man. Every fiber of his being also rebelled at the idea of sending Ean on his way again. He wanted to keep Ean right where he was, safe in his sight, instead of patting him on the head and sending him on his way.

Another piece of the puzzle started to fall into place as the majority of the class moved on to whisking up their pesto while Ean just stood at his workstation, staring at the recipe.

“Is something wrong?” Leland asked, his need to help Ean pulling at him. “Are my instructions not clear?”

Ean glanced mournfully up at him. His eyes were glassy and red-rimmed again, which was like a punch in the gut for Leland.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Leland asked quietly, leaning toward Ean and using his body to shield him from the prying eyes of the rest of the class.

Ean swallowed, darted a shamefaced glance around, then lowered his head. “I can’t read,” he whispered.

More pieces fell into place.

“I mean, I can read,” Ean immediately corrected himself, looking up at Leland again. “A little. Sometimes.”

“Are you dyslexic?” Leland ventured a guess.

Ean nodded and lowered his head again. “Badly,” he whispered.

Yep, things were definitely making sense. Stress made things like dyslexia worse. Ean had been under more stress than Leland could even imagine for months now. Chances were he’d had trouble finding or keeping a job and definitely with filling out forms if stress was robbing him of his ability to read. And without family to help, it would have made things even harder.

Leland bristled with frustration. A lot of people had let Ean down in a lot of ways, but he definitely wasn’t going to be one of them.

“It’s okay,” he said, touching Ean’s hand again in reassurance, even though it nudged things toward a place they shouldn’t be going in a kitchen classroom. “I’ll read the recipe out to you and you just follow what I say.”

Things went well from there. Ean truly was a natural in the kitchen. Leland’s mind immediately filled with ideas for ways to help him get a job in a kitchen somewhere and to help him take the first steps to landing on his feet. He would deal with his distaste at the idea of sending the man out alone in the world, specifically away from him, later.

The class didn’t seem to mind that he gave more of his attention to Ean than to them. In fact, several of the others helped Ean wherever they could as well. More than a few of them grinned away at the two of them as they interacted, as if they were reading more into things than was there.

Then again, would Leland really mind if something was there between him and Ean?

“You did great today,” he told Ean after the class ended and it was just the two of them cleaning up. “You’re an amazing cook.”

The class had all eaten their lesson for supper around the table at the end of the room. Leland had had a taste of Ean’s dish and had been impressed that it tasted as good as it looked.

“I like food,” Ean said, blushing sweetly as he washed dishes in the big sink. “I’ve sort of been obsessed with food lately, since I haven’t had much to?—”

He stopped himself from finishing that sad statement, but it still broke Leland’s heart.

“It’s alright,” Leland said, bringing some of the pans from the hob to soak in the sink.

He started out maintaining a professional distance from Ean, but once he was standing by the man’s side, he couldn’t stop himself from drawing Ean into his arms.

Ean made a small noise of surprise and held his arms at odd angles, since his hands were wet and soapy. He was stiff for a moment, but then he relaxed into Leland’s chest with a sigh.

“Thank you,” he said quietly. “I don’t know what I’m going to do, but you make it better.”

It was the simplest and sweetest statement Leland had ever heard, and it made him hug Ean tighter.

Which was wonderful, except that was how Robbie Hawthorne and his boyfriend, Toby Tillman, who also worked as the Hawthorne Community Arts Center’s business manager, found them.

“Hey, Leland, we have a few questions about the Valentine’s Day supper,” Robbie asked as they entered the kitchen.

Both men stopped when they saw Leland and Ean in their embrace. Leland let Ean go, but that felt wrong. Being caught hugging someone who Robbie and Toby probably thought was a student must have looked even more wrong, though.

“Hi, guys,” Leland greeted them, trying to remain outwardly calm while scrambling to make things right. “This is a friend of mine, Ean Jones. If it’s alright with you, he’ll be staying with me for a while.” He paused slightly as Robbie and Toby exchanged a look, then told Ean, “This is Robbie Hawthorne and Toby Tillman.”

“Oh. Hi,” Ean said, lowering his head. Leland wasn’t hugging him anymore, so he hugged himself as if he were trying to hide.

Leland would have to deal with that in a minute. “I’ve got answers to whatever questions you might have about Valentine’s Day,” he said.

Toby nodded, then said, “The budget seems a little…large.”

“I told him that we can’t skimp on something like this, but you know how efficiency experts are,” Robbie added, grinning sideways at his beau.

“Hawthorne House has only just started operating at a teeny, tiny, minuscule profit,” Toby argued back. “If you want to keep things in the black, you can’t go on spending like an artist.”

“It’s absolutely worth it,” Robbie told him, his smile broadening. “Mostly it’s worth it to get a reaction out of you.”

“This is how you choose to get a reaction out of me?” Toby fired back, desire in his eyes as he squared off with Robbie. “By breaking Hawthorne House’s budget?”

Leland cleared his throat. The conversation in front of him was definitely about to head someplace he didn’t really want to witness. As soon as Robbie and Toby turned to him, he said, “I can work on the budget for the event. I was going to get the teen pastry class to help with desserts for the supper, but I’m not sure they’re really up to it.”

“I could help,” Ean offered. He had so much hope in his eyes, but that immediately dampened when Robbie and Toby looked at him. “I mean, if you want me to. I don’t know how to make desserts, but I’m sure if you tell me I could figure it out.”

“I’d be happy to have your help,” Leland said, resting a hand on Ean’s shoulder.

“Can we afford to hire someone else?” Toby asked Robbie. He lowered his voice and muttered, “I’m still on the fence about whether we can afford to hire a cooking teacher.”

Prickles broke out down Leland’s back. He was almost certain Toby had only said that to tease Robbie. The Hawthorne family had been more than happy to hire him and to expand the arts center’s offerings for cooking classes. But a frustrating niggle of the idea that Toby was serious and that he had to prove himself and his worth poked at Leland.

“Don’t worry,” he said, trying to sound as confident as possible. “I’ll make certain the Valentine’s Day supper is a smash hit, and I’ll bring it in under budget as I do.”

“I’m sure you’ll do a fantastic job,” Robbie said. He turned to Toby and repeated, “I’m sure he’ll do a fantastic job. Now stop harassing our staff and find something more productive to do with your time.”

“Is that a threat or a challenge?” Toby asked as the two of them headed out of the room.

Robbie just laughed.

As soon as they were gone, Leland breathed a sigh of relief. He didn’t really need to worry about his place at Hawthorne House, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t highly motivated to make the Valentine’s Day supper an event to remember.

“Are you sure I should be here?” Ean asked, turning back to the sink to finish with the dishes. “They seemed kind of…uptight.”

“That’s just how Toby is,” Leland said, turning around to help him. “You’re fine. I’ll make sure of it.”

Ean smiled at him, but he was still anxious. It made sense, really. After everything Ean had been through recently, he was bound to be on edge and insecure about housing as well as food. Leland promised himself he would do whatever needed to be done to put him at ease.

They finished cleaning the kitchen and putting it to bed for the night, then headed back upstairs to Leland’s flat. Since they’d already had dinner, they didn’t have to worry about that once they settled in for the night. Ean followed Leland into his kitchen while he made tea, and once they both had a cup, they relocated to the main room and sat on the couch.

“So we should probably discuss sleeping arrangements,” Leland said, reaching for the remote to turn the telly on with his free hand.

“You can fuck me if you’d like,” Ean answered quickly and breathlessly. “Or I could give you a blow job. It’s the least I could do after all the kindness you’ve shown me. I’ll do it right now if you want me to.”

He set his mug of tea aside and scooted closer to Leland, reaching for the fly of his jeans.

Leland was so shocked he nearly spilled his tea.