4. Kato #2
Cas hesitates before padding across the worn tile and handing me the tin.
He pulls the sweater down his thighs as he sits and that’s real cute too.
I’ve got the most insane urge to kneel and get between them.
I have to tear myself away, but I let my fingertips brush along his shoulder before I do, and even that much is enough to make my chest tight and my heart bump.
Fuck, being near him makes me actually crazy.
And my wolf is so very, very interested. He’s a dark, rumbling hulk, and in my mind’s eye I can see him—ears pricked, eyes fixated, tongue lolling out the side of his mouth.
“Where’s Nate?” I ask. “Thought he was sticking around today?”
“A couple of alphas came earlier and told him he was needed at work. He didn’t want to leave me alone, but”—Cas shrugs his small shoulders—“it seemed like they didn’t give him much of an option. He told me you’d be back soon.”
“They love messing him around like that.”
“You sure you don’t need any help?” Cas offers as I force myself to look away, struggling a little with the tap.
Nate’s shut the thing off tighter than he clamps down his emotions, so it takes me a few seconds to get the water running.
“I know Americans aren’t well-versed in this sort of thing,” Cas adds, tone light.
Oh, he’s teasing me. “Sure,” I say. “You just heat up some water in the microwave, right?”
A look of abject horror contorts his features. “No. God, no. Don’t you dare.”
“Don’t worry, I’m not. Nate already yelled at me about that.” I indicate the kettle. “See? I’m using the thingy.”
He’s bemused and wary both, and he still seems like he wants to get up and take over.
But of course I’ve got this all under control.
I give him a reassuring smile before I open the tin and oh fuck—it’s all leaves and sticks and shit.
I forgot about that. Desperately I try to remember how Nathan makes it.
Surely I don’t just dump it in the mug like this, right?
I glance up. Cas is watching me, elbows on the table and chin propped in sleeve-covered hands. I think he might be smirking a little, actually, and fighting it, lips twisting to the side—and did I mention how good he smells? How badly I want to climb over the island and put my mouth on his?
“Okay?” Cas asks.
The kettle clicks off. “I’m so okay,” I say, grabbing a handful of the shit out of the tin and dumping it into the mug. “This is going to be the best tea you’ve ever had. You’ll wonder why you ever doubted me.”
No, I’m not going to look at his face after that maneuver, and I definitely didn’t hear him snort in what might’ve been derisive laughter.
I pour the hot water over the leaves and they float, sort of listlessly, to the top.
The back of the tin says to steep for three to four minutes, so I set my phone timer to 3:30. It’s fine! Everything’s fine.
“So I was thinking,” I say, casually, as I not-so-surreptitiously gather both a strainer and a second mug, “after this, I’d show you around the village. If you’re up for it, I mean.”
“Oh?” His dark, dark eyes—sable is really the only way to describe them with any accuracy—are fixated on the steeping tea.
“What do you think? Get some fresh air, meet some nice people, see some sheep and ponies.”
He lights up like a Christmas tree and it’s adorable, the way he comes to life all at once, maybe for the first time since I’ve known him. It changes his demeanor completely, bringing an attractive pink flush to his pale face. “Ponies?”
“Guess you wouldn’t have seen them, huh? You were sorta passed out on the way in.” I give him a smile. “Yeah, the pack raises horses. The flashy ones with the furry feet—”
“Cobs,” he interrupts. “I know. I…” He seems like he wants to say more before he trails off abruptly, looking down and rubbing his wrist. “Um, I’d like that. I like horses.”
“You’ll just have to put on some pants.”
He raises his face again, brows knit in confusion. “I…have.” He draws the sweatshirt up, and up, and up, and I think I’m about to get another whole eyeful of him. Lo and behold, he’s wearing the tiniest pair of track shorts known to man; I don’t even know where he found those.
My mouth tastes like paper suddenly, but I’m saved from saying or doing anything stupid by my phone going off.
With little discretion (and with great mess) I pour the debris-ridden concoction into the other mug, managing to catch most of it in the strainer.
At Cas’s direction I add just a splash of milk.
It’s a dubious, murky brown liquid that I deliver to him. “Um,” I say. “Enjoy.”
He gives me another smile, offers a tiny “Cheers,” before he takes a sip.
And the moment he does he goes rigid, a misty expression swamping his face, and I know I fucking messed up.
That’s the look of someone who’s either just been told their dad got hit by a bus, or just drank the worst thing in the world, prepared by the biggest moron in a fifty-mile radius.
“Oh no,” I say. “It’s shit, isn’t it?” He doesn’t answer. “It’s okay. You can just say so. I actually have no idea how to make tea that doesn’t come in a little bag. I’m sorry.”
He clutches the mug to his chest like a lifeline. The steam coils up and around his softly flushed face. “No,” he whispers in a threadbare voice. “It’s actually really nice.”
I can smell his fragility, almost. It’s salt in chilled air; it’s skin that hasn’t seen the outside for days.
Like a tear trembling on the edge of a lash, threatening to spill down a cheek.
Like someone just this side of breaking.
I want to wrap him up in my arms. I want to protect him from… I don’t know what. Something. Anything.
My hand reaches out almost mindlessly and once again I touch Cas’s shoulder, gently, and when he leans into the touch I slide one arm around him, and then the other. His head tips into my chest, and I lower my face into his hair and breathe him in, just for a moment. He smells like Nate’s shampoo.
I realize this is the first time since Everett died that I’ve felt anything for any omega at all.
And all too soon, it passes. The moment, that is.
Cas finishes his tea and tugs against my arms, and it is with the utmost reluctance that I let him go.
There’s still the powerful urge to keep him close, to bury my face in his neck—maybe my teeth—to somehow get under his skin, but he’s not mine. Not yet, anyway.
“I’m fine,” he says, answering the unspoken question. “I’m just… I…”
I rescue him from the explanation I sense he doesn’t want to give. “Don’t worry about it.” I take his mug from his hands and deposit it in the sink. “So, do you want to go for that walk?”
It turns out that he does, a beatific smile suffusing his delicate features, and is it possible to fall in love with someone just from the way they look at you?
How they smell? The way they feel in your proximity, buzzing like something magnetic.
Just pulling and pulling. I’ve never experienced anything like it, and I wonder if this is what they meant by finding your fated mate.
It was never anything like this with Everett.
And any sense of sadness I might feel about him—beyond a pang—is totally overridden.
By Cas. Watching him as he goes to tug on a pair of rain boots by the door (sorry, wellies) that are several sizes too large because they belong to Nate, and he looks utterly adorable standing there in my too-big sweater, his long, slender legs on display.
“I’m ready,” he announces. “As ready as I’ll get, anyway.”
We depart into the misty late-morning sunshine.
I can hear the heels of his boots slapping against the bottoms of his feet with every step, but he doesn’t complain.
He’s taking everything in with a wary curiosity, his big eyes luminous as he sticks close to me.
Absently he catches the hem of my shirt in one hand as we walk, and of course I don’t brush him off.
I almost offer him my hand instead—want to, but maybe that’s too much, too soon. I should let him come to me.
There is some part of me that is so very, terribly afraid of leaving my dirty fingerprints on him.
The village isn’t very big. It’s got just the one road winding through it without so much as a stoplight, since traffic here is practically nonexistent.
By that same measure there’s not all that much to point out to Cas, so we get through it quickly—the handful of shops, largely beta-run: a grocer, a butcher, a general store, and a post office.
Cas gravitates toward the paddocks the moment he lays eyes on the grazing horses, letting go of me to take hold of the slatted fence instead. His lips part; he says “oh” under his breath. “They’re beautiful.”
Which they are. Not that I know much about horses, if anything.
Stout, splashy things with manes and tails out of a shampoo commercial, coming in all sorts of colors.
The foals are perfectly adorable miniatures of their mothers, only a few months old and still reluctant to stray too far from their sides.
One marbled black-and-white baby eyes us from afar, taking a few cautious steps towards us with pricked, fuzzy ears.
I rest my forearms against the top of the fence. “They are pretty cute,” I say.
His dark-eyed gaze does not stray from the curious foal, and now its mom has taken notice of us too.
With equal curiosity she studies us, then makes a beeline for us, her fluffy feet flaring with each step.
Cas is holding his breath, I think, when she stops just outside touching distance, her pink nostrils flaring.
“I wish I had a treat to give her,” he says, almost wistfully.
I turn and look around. Nearby, two betas in dirty coveralls and muck boots are lazing beneath the shade of the barn, both smoking. For all my flaws I would never—even I know smoking near a barn is fucking dangerous. I whistle at them. “Hey,” I say. “Either of you have any carrots or anything?”