Chapter 5
Levi
“Ohhh…what I get?” Chipmunk didn’t seem to have any personal space boundaries when he was little because he climbed all over me as I picked up a bag from the porch. “Nuggets?”
That was a ridiculous question but I answered it anyway.
“Yes, nuggets and tater tots and stuff.” Free delivery was important, so I’d made sure to add enough to the cart to qualify. “I got stuff for breakfast too.”
He really didn’t seem to have much beyond soup and some weird bean salad thing that couldn’t have been edible given the questionable color and possible fuzz. He’d said he only got it yesterday but had no idea when it’d actually been made.
So out with the weird crap and in with reasonable groceries that wouldn’t kill him.
“Oh, pancakes?” He followed me into the kitchen and released me long enough to set the bag down on the table, but he glued himself to me again as I went to get the next bag. “Eggs. Like eggs.”
He seemed to like anything he didn’t have to cook.
“Yes, I can make either of those.” I wasn’t sure how the running joke of college guys not being able to cook got started but we all liked eating too much not to have figured at least some of it out.
I wasn’t at Gary’s level, but I could keep Chipmunk fed.
“We could also do a breakfast pizza or something else fun.”
Between the random stuff in his pantry and what I’d picked up, we had a variety of meals that I could make.
“Yes.” Nodding excitedly, Chipmunk tried looking in the bag as I shut the door and he nearly took us both down. “More.”
I wasn’t sure what more meant, so a distraction seemed to be in order. “Do you want to help make dinner or are you going to finish your picture?”
And he was off.
Since he ran into the living room, I took that to mean he was going to color. “Walk, please.”
Because he only paid attention to where he was going when he was making us walk in circles around the house. Otherwise, Chipmunk barreled through it at full speed, crashing into everything.
Yep.
“Oops.”
I wasn’t sure what he’d run into that time, but by the time I got to the living room, he was standing in the middle of the space and crayons were everywhere.
What had he hit?
The air?
“Help, Daddy.” He was frowning at the chaos, but hadn’t made any attempt to fix the situation. “Everywhere.”
“Oh yeah.” Hoping the groceries wouldn’t thaw too much more, I knelt down and patted the floor. “Help me, please.”
He couldn’t do it for himself, but he was a master at helping me with anything and everything. He also had opinions on everything, and he usually had me fighting to keep a straight face. “Yes. Helper.”
My method was to pick them up randomly, working my way across the mess, but Chipmunk groaned. “No, Daddy. Red. Blue. Green.”
Good fucking grief.
There were five different colors of red.
“Show me, Chipmunk.” I was not going to guess the best way to pick up fucking crayons. I would however pretend to be interested and not curse.
I was a good Daddy no matter what he liked to say when he was fucking with me to get his way.
“Red. Red. Red.” His words and actions didn’t match in the slightest but did show me that I was supposed to start with the lightest shade and move to the deeper ones. “Good boy, Daddy.”
Brat.
The way his eyes sparkled said he knew it too.
“Good Daddy, Chipmunk.” Repeating myself got a giggle from him and distracted him enough that I managed to pick up the greens in a completely random order.
As soon as his laughter stopped, though, he looked down at the floor and frowned. “Gone? Red. Blue. Green.”
I played dumb and cocked my head as I ignored the blues and reached for the yellow. “Yes, well, they’re not gone, we’re putting them away in your box.”
The decorative box looked like something he found at one of those big craft stores and held what seemed to be a thousand crayons. “Once we get these picked up, I’ll start making dinner.”
He wanted to let me distract him with dinner, that was clear as he sighed, but he winced as my random crayon sorting drove him too crazy to ignore. “Nuggets…Daddy…colors…”
Chipmunk wasn’t an especially chatty little in his deepest headspace and had mostly descended into looking cute and giving me short responses to questions or just random chatter as we’d colored and watched TV, but he was incredibly easy to read because his face showed everything he was thinking.
And at the moment he was thinking about how to fix my chaos.
I was curious to see what he’d do, but I should’ve known to expect the unexpected when it came to my soup bandit.
“Daddy.” He gave me a big, clearly forced smile and leaned over to kiss my cheek. “Good helper.”
Well, that was one way to get what he wanted.
“Thank you.” Brat. “I think that’s cheating, though.”
He managed not to laugh out loud, but his whole body jerked as he attempted to give me wide eyes and look innocent. “Good boy.”
Chipmunk’s shrug wasn’t believable either and became even less so when he reached for my hand and slowly moved it to a blue crayon. “Thank you, Daddy. Good Daddy.”
And I got another peck.
“Fine.” I wouldn’t be lectured but I’d let him bribe me. “Blue.”
His ridiculously dramatic sigh of relief had me trying not to laugh, but I decided not to fuck with him about the crayons when he started picking them up too.
The overly organized cleanup added time but made him happy, so we eventually got through it and made it to the table with his loot. “There we go.”
“Thank you.” Doing a little wiggle, he sat up straighter and started setting out his toys. “Nugget time.”
“That’s right.” The groceries had to be put away first, but I got the oven preheating as I figured out where everything was and got it organized. “Nuggets and tater tots and…hmm…green beans or cucumbers?”
Thankfully, he had other things he liked to eat that weren’t soup and had been very willing to tell me all the best vegetables to go with chicken nuggets.
“Green.” The way he held up a matching crayon didn’t answer my question, but he didn’t let that stop him from changing the subject. “Dessert?”
Playing dumb, I frowned and started putting away the first bag. “Dessert? I don’t think you have anything.”
Pretending to go over and look in the freezer to search for dessert, I ignored the bags on the table and shrugged. “I don’t see anything.”
He tried to groan and sound like a frustrated old man, but his giggles kept sneaking out. “Brownies, Daddy. Brownies.”
Since he thought I was a few crayons short of a box, he held up the brown one. “Like brown. Brownies.”
“I’m not eating crayons, Chipmunk.” My dry response and eye roll had the giggles escaping. “That’s yucky.”
Collapsing into the table, he laughed like I was hilarious and didn’t stop until I pulled out the box of brownie mix I’d added to the cart…clearly not as secretly as I’d thought. “How did you know I bought dessert?”
Nearly climbing on the table to see the box, his grin was ear to ear. “Sneaky.”
“Yeah, you’re sneaky.” I should’ve taken my phone with me when I’d gone to piss earlier. “I’m going to have to watch you closer.”
Nodding, he didn’t seem to find that threatening. “Closer. Closer. Closer.”
We needed to work on his self-preservation instincts.
“Brownies. Brownies. Brownies.” My ridiculous response got a snicker from him and he nodded excitedly. “Alright, dinner and dessert.”
It was slightly early for dinner, but I wasn’t sure when he’d eaten more than the soup in the fridge.
His lack of real food was weird, though, because I knew he had the money to eat because he had enough to fuck with me, and his parents were beyond generous.
He’d also gone over the menus for every takeout place in town so that wasn’t a problem either.
But from what I could tell, it was a severe lack of interest in actually cooking food and definitely wanting a Daddy to take care of him.
“Movie?” Doing a full-body wiggle that reminded me of a pup, he gave me his I’m going to manipulate you smile. “Toys?”
I wasn’t sure if that meant more coloring or not, but I shrugged. “If you want to.”
I didn’t have anywhere else to be…and he was funny in a bratty way.
“But eventually you’re going to get bored of me and send me home.
” For some reason he found that to be so funny he landed back on the table as I took the last of the food out of the bag.
Thankfully, I caught the crayons before the box went flying but I really wasn’t sure why that was hilarious.
“You’re so silly, you need food or a nap. ”
He kept snickering but his head popped up and grinned again as I went back to putting away the groceries. “Brownies.”
He was ridiculous.
“Which part is best, the corner or the middles?” His answer would help me decide which pan to use, because surprisingly enough, they had a ridiculous amount of cookware no one seemed to use.
Or at least Teddy hadn’t known who any of it belonged to…and most had so much dust on it we were going to have to scrub it before we used it.
Who was I kidding? I was going to have to scrub it.
When he didn’t answer right away, I turned back to him rubbing his tummy. “All the brownies.”
Clearly that hadn’t been a smart question.
“Then you can have the middle ones and I’ll get the edges.” I grabbed a pan at random since it didn’t seem to matter to him and found a cookie sheet to put the nuggets and potatoes on. “You have to share or I’ll pitch a fit. I can be very dramatic.”
That wasn’t nearly as funny as he thought it was, but between his giggles and snorts he dug into his crayons again and I got to actually start getting dinner ready.
As I moved around the kitchen, part of me had a what the fuck moment but a bigger part of me just didn’t care how weird it was.
I was self-aware enough to know that having someone else to take care of had always been good for me, but I was also a big enough dick not to want to think about any of it.
So I didn’t.
I turned off my brain and just operated on Daddy autopilot, checking on Chipmunk and tinkering in the kitchen once the food was in the oven. “Why do you have a pasta maker?”
He had the strangest things in his kitchen.
Teddy looked confused, head cocked to the side as he went still. “Noodles?”
Dragging out the ridiculously heavy machine from underneath the counter, I showed it to him. “This is a pasta maker, Chipmunk.”
“Oh.” He shrugged, more interested in his coloring book and the smells coming from the kitchen. “Big.”
So it’d been heavy and clunky and they’d just left it alone?
Had he and his roommates actually bought anything in that kitchen?
That question gave me a few others.
“Where are your sippy cups and fun plates?” Nothing in the cabinets said little and Teddy was a little who was too comfortable in his own skin to not have at least a few fun plates and a sippy cup somewhere.
He pointed to the ceiling.
Ah.
Was that private?
He’d brought his coloring stuff down from upstairs, so his roommates being gone might’ve made him more open?
“Once you finish my picture, we’ll go upstairs and get anything we need for dinner.” He couldn’t eat on the weird mismatched plates that were all chipped.
Had his mother seen the condition he was living in?
Teddy’s nod said he was on the same page, but whatever he was going to say was cut off as someone started knocking on his back door.
For fuck’s sake.
Thankfully it was in his laundry room, so the angry-looking girl couldn’t see him or the crayons but she could see me.
“Teddy? Did you steal soup guy?”
I couldn’t help snorting.
“I’m asshole guy, not soup guy.”
That got giggles from him but he wasn’t moving to go answer the door.
So it was a Daddy issue?
Fuck it all.
“Wait right there while I chase off the crazy chick.” I hadn’t dated that many women, but I knew crazy when I saw it.
I’d learned from the best, so I kept a straight face as I went to the back door and I was glad I’d locked it earlier. “He’s busy. We’re hanging out. You can come back later.”
I thought it was obvious and that she might assume it was a date of some sort, but she frowned and didn’t seem to be in any mood to walk away. “Did he kidnap you somehow? Did you kidnap him? It was just soup, dude.”
God.
“No.” The questions just kept getting more and more ridiculous, so I thought that would cover all of them. “Call him later tonight or tomorrow.”
She was a special brand of stubborn and just raised her voice. “Somehow they both met up at the bakery and now they’re going on a date without me. Teddy? They were angry.”
I could guarantee they had a right to be angry but that didn’t slow her down.
“They’re going to that stupid movie I wanted to see and that vegan restaurant over by Walmart for dinner.
I’m never going to be able to show my face there again.
” That seemed to piss her off more than whatever happened to begin with.
“They’re both huge gossips. Everyone is going to know and this is going to make dating even harder. ”
Chipmunk’s snort said he wasn’t worried. “Oops.”
Whatever the screamer had done was clearly her fault, so I shook my head. “He’s busy. Try apologizing to them and don’t do it again.”
Whatever it was.
Hell, whatever she’d done seemed worse than my behavior or Teddy would’ve been more sympathetic.
“I don’t know how it happened.”
Her being ridiculous seemed like a good place to start.
“Call him tomorrow and see if he’s free.”
Because currently he was busy coloring my dinosaur picture and I wasn’t willing to share.