The air in the single-wide trailer was thick with the scent of burnt wheat and regret. Chris wiped a forearm across his brow, leaving a faint smudge of grease next to the tattoo, and glared at the blackened squares smoking in the cast-iron skillet. Behind him, on the chrome-edged kitchen table, the disassembled pieces of his silver pistol gleamed under the fluorescent light like the carapace of some meticulous insect. Eagly, perched on the back of the worn plaid sofa, let out a soft, questioning chirrup.
“It’s supposed to look like that, buddy,” Chris muttered to the eagle, though the explanation was intended for the other presence in the room. “It’s called… caramelization. A fancy cooking thing.”
He risked a glance over his shoulder. You were curled in the corner of the sofa, knees drawn up, a book resting in your lap. But you weren’t reading. You were watching him, a smile playing at the corner of your mouth that he felt more than saw, a tiny seismic shift in the atmosphere of the room. The late afternoon sun, heavy and gold as honey, slanted through the window and caught the dust motes dancing around your head like a benediction. It illuminated the title of his current mixtape, Sensual and Slow Jams for Maximum Libertinage, which was doing a poor job of living up to its name from the tinny speakers of his boombox.
This was it. Domesticity. He was fumbling at it like a man trying to assemble a complicated piece of IKEA furniture without the instructions, all too aware that he was probably forcing the wrong piece into the wrong slot, stripping the screws. He’d vowed, after the whole Butterfly mess, to be better. A better friend. A better son to a dead, shitty father. A better man. For you. And being a better man, he’d decided, involved grilled cheese sandwiches that weren’t incinerated and not cleaning his guns where the food was prepared. He was failing on both counts.
He used the tip of the knife to pry one of the carbonized blocks from the pan, flipping it with a grimace. It landed with a solid thunk. “See? Perfectly… structural.” He gestured with the knife. “Gotta have a good foundation. You build a sandwich like you build a peacekeeping strategy. From the ground up.”
You unfolded yourself from the couch, the soft whisper of your sweatpants against the fabric a sound he’d come to catalogue among his favorites. You padded barefoot across the linoleum, the cool, practiced pads of a medic assessing a battlefield. You stopped beside him, your shoulder just brushing his bicep. A jolt, simple and pure, went through him at the contact. You leaned over the pan, your hair brushing his cheek, and took a deliberate, deep sniff of the acrid smoke. Then you looked up at him, your eyes—the color of good whiskey held up to the light—crinkling at the edges. The verdict was in the single, graceful arch of your eyebrow.
He deflated, the performative bravado leaking out of him like air from a punctured tire. “Okay, fine. It’s a little… tactical. A little over-charred for your civilian palate.” He dropped the knife into the sink with a clatter. “I just wanted it to be… you know. Nice. A normal thing. People do normal things. They make sandwiches that aren’t weapons-grade.”
Your hand came up, not to his face, but to his arm. Your fingers traced the line of the dove perched on the Peacemaker helmet inked into his skin, a touch so light it felt like a memory. Your gaze was steady, seeing past the burnt offering, past the guns on the table, past the loud and clumsy armor of him. You saw the boy who’d never had anyone make him a grilled cheese, the man who was trying, so desperately, to build a quiet altar in a world that only knew how to scream.
He covered your hand with his own, his calluses rough against your knuckles. “We could just order pizza,” he said, his voice dropping, the showmanship gone, leaving something quieter, more raw in its place. “Get the kind with the extra cheese and those little pepperoni cups that fill with grease. A real gastro-intestinal peacekeeping mission.”