Homelands Pt. 03 Ch. 07

"How'd that happen anyway?" Todd asked, jerking his thumb at Brie's retreating form.

I shrugged.

"Well. I guess you always were the first to get Dom's hand-me-downs."

I slapped his arm. "Jackass."

He laughed. "I'm gonna smoke a quick cig. Step outside with me?"

"Sure," I said.

Out on the front porch, Todd offered me a smoke as well.

I declined. We could smoke and drink and eat as much as we liked, and we'd never have to worry about our health. One of the many gifts of having the blood of angels and demons, or whatever the sunlit and moonlit folk were, running through our veins. But it just wasn't a habit I'd ever picked up, hanging out with nerds and pretending to be an academic. Smoking was, after all, one of the many issues on which academics and military guys tended to have slightly different views. And, for better or for worse, leaving the mortal world behind didn't always mean leaving mortal ways of thinking behind.

"Thought maybe you'd loosened up a little. That Brianna had helped get that stick out your ass," he said. Then, with a shrug, he added, "Suit yourself."

"Guess she's doing a bad job of being a bad influence," I said.

"Not entirely, from what Mom said." He whipped out his lighter and put a bright cherry on the end of the cigarette. "By the way. Holy shit, man. She was fucking pissed at you. Or maybe still is. I don't know. If I were you, I'd go see her after this."

"Yeah," I said. "You're right."

He clapped me on the back. "Now, me? I'm not mad. You hear the way my wife shrieked when she saw our kids? Like she was having an orgasm? I felt something then. Not sure how to describe it, really. Like a river that had run dry started flowing again. Or whatever. I don't know. But something inside Holly came back to life. Something that had gone cold."

"Her Libido," I said.

"Yeah, that," he said.

"How do you still not know these things?" I asked.

"I don't know, man. I haven't studied this shit, like some fucking nerds among us. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is, things have been bad between us. Now, I'm pretty sure they won't be. So as far as I'm concerned, it's all good. Can't say the same for Mom, but you can at least be sure that you won't get anything but gratitude from me or Holly."

"The thing is, I don't really deserve that," I said. Then I told him what Lord Furcas had said. "Granted, another week there would have been the better part of a year here. So it's not like the trip was for nothing. But I didn't exactly pull them out of a fire."

"Whatever," Todd said. "You didn't know that. Neither did we. And to be perfectly fucking honest, I'm not sure I could have made it through a year or even a few weeks with things being the way they'd gotten between me and Holly. So you get my gratitude whether you want it or not. Deal with it."

I laughed awkwardly. "Okay then."

"For what it's worth, I think Mom's more upset that you told her she was being a bitch to Brianna than anything. She wanted me to think she was worried about my kids, upset that you didn't seem to think anything could or should be done for them, but I'm not stupid."

"So says you."

"Ha freaking ha."

"And, I never said Mom was being a bitch. I just-"

Todd waved away the rest of my comment. "Whatever. Argue about with her. I don't give a fuck one way or the other. Just trying to give you some advice, so maybe you can keep her from running your balls through the meat grinder."

"Thanks." I drew a deep breath. "Why is it that I feel like I'm the little brother?"

"Pfffft. Cuz you are."

"Yeah, yeah, I get it, you've got a huge dick," I said. "And mine's tiny, right?"

"No, I'm not talking about that," he said. "I mean, yeah, of course, yours is pathetic, and mine's a work of art. We all know that."

I laughed. Same old Todd.

"But the point is, I'm really not the younger brother. I was born after you, sure, but I've lived longer. Holly and I spent twenty years in the mortal world, during which time you spent two years in the Homelands. That makes me older, unless they've changed the rules on math since I last checked."

"Fair enough," I said.

The argument was sound. But it still seemed odd to think of him as older.

"Anyway, enough about who's mad at you, who's not, and all that shit," Todd said. Then he took a long drag on his cigarette. The red tip seared, turning orange then yellow. "Let me ask you something. Should I be okay with not one but two of my children being married to these damn blue-skinned freaks?"

"They're not freaks," I said.

"Well, obviously I was speaking loosely," he said. "I mean, your kids are good-looking enough, and they certainly didn't get that from you."

I rolled my eyes.

"So, yeah, I'm not worried about having grandkids that look like smurfs. What I want to know is if the resident expert thinks that these moonlit folk can be trusted."

"I'm not an expert. And they're not all the same, man. Come on, now."

Suddenly I had flashbacks to conversations we'd had about politics back in the mortal world. Remembered the way Todd would judge people by the color of their skin or their nationality or their religion. We weren't talking about Islam and terrorism or race and unemployment or anything like that at the moment, but some things never changed.

"I can't tell you if you can trust Troy and Rose to be good to Mel and Sean. What I can tell you is that the more I think about it, the more I think things could have worked between me and Lily if I'd handled them better. So if Rose is like her older sister, then Sean could definitely have done a whole lot worse. But is she like her sister? Damned if I know. I haven't really got any more information than you do at this point."

Which was mostly true. I knew some things about Lord Furcas, though, and what little I did know about Rose didn't make me think particularly highly of her. That said, I wasn't confident enough in my assessment to risk prejudicing my brother against someone his son seemed to really care about. Todd was far too reluctant to change his opinions about people.

"Bullshit. I know you hate generalizations so much that you're not even comfortable saying that tall people and short people tend to differ from one another in terms of height. I get it. But you were married to their sister, and you've met their father, and you've seen their court. How can you say you've got no more information than me?"

I laughed. "I'm not that bad."

"You sure about that?" he interrupted.

"Anyway. For what it's worth, their father is a monster, and their court ain't pretty. So, yeah, there's cause for concern. But Lily was nothing like her father."

"Correct me if I'm wrong," Todd said, "but Lily ran away from home, right?"

Was exiled, in fact, but near enough. I saw where he was going. "True. But Rose and Troy only just came of age. Lily was a bit older than them when she left."

Todd shrugged. "I guess we'll just have to convince Mel and Sean that they need to stay a little while then. See if I can't get a read on them myself."

Couldn't argue with that.

"On a different note," my brother said, "you need to go see Nat soon too. She's dying to forgive you, but too stubborn to do so until you give her reason to."

I jerked my head back a bit. "She is?"

"Don't be so dense," he replied. "She's always wanted the two of you to be closer. I can't say it bothered me that you never picked up on that, because I kinda like being her favorite brother, but, yeah. So. Swallow your fucking pride, tell her you realize that you've done a lot of shit you shouldn't have done, but you've learned your lesson now, and you're a changed man, and all that good stuff. Like I said, she already wants to forgive you, so it won't be that hard to convince her to do so."

"I'll keep that in mind," I said.

"Good," he said. Then he took the last drag of his cigarette and flicked the butt away. It evaporated into smoke in midair. "Shall we?" he said, gesturing towards the door.

I nodded and we went back inside the house.

We found everyone sitting at the dining room table. Bowls of chips and salsa had been laid out, and Holly informed us that a tray of lasagna would be coming out of the oven in a little while. Todd took a seat next to Mel and I sat down beside Rose.

The girl looked a lot more like Lily than I'd realized at first. She was a few inches shorter and lacked Lily's curves. In fact, she was much too thin for my tastes. But she had the same heart-shaped face, thin nose, and prominent cheekbones. Her hair was closer to violet, and where Lily's eyes had been purple, Rose's were blood-red. That latter point was somewhere between intoxicating and unsettling. But, besides the difference in hair and eye color, she looked the way Lily would have had Lily been more athletic.

Images flashed through my head. Some were memories of Lily that I'd like to forget, and others were ones I savored, but none were welcome at that particular moment.

"You really should have seen it, Dad," Sean, who sat on the other side of Rose, said to Todd. "The way these two fought," he said gesturing towards me and Brianna, "was just so freaking cool. She was tossing fireballs left and right, and Uncle Frank was some kind of man-wolf hybrid death-beast thing. Seriously awesome."

"Let's not get carried away, dear," Rose said. "They got lucky. Besides, it was two against one. I bet neither one could have taken him alone."

Her tone was polite enough, and she wasn't wrong on either point. We had been lucky, and it didn't seem likely that either one of us could have faced him alone. But I still found myself grinding my teeth together.

Lily had been plain-spoken to the point of being blunt too. Yet, with her, I'd found it endearing. Perhaps I needed to give Rose more benefit of the doubt though.

"I'm not sure that 'cool' was quite what we were going for anyway," I said.

"Speak for yourself," Brianna said.

A few of us snickered at that. Including Rose.

"I'm gonna have to try the fireball thing out next time we spar," Sean said his wife.

"What's that?" Holly asked.

Todd didn't say anything, but I saw the muscles in his jaw tighten.

"Rose is teaching me how to fight," Sean said, in a tone of voice that would have been appropriate for announcing that she was teaching him to paint. "She says that even though I'm foreign, I might be able to join the Brotherhood, if I get good enough."

Mel had started to shake her head at him, then covered her face with her hands.

"And what exactly is the Brotherhood?" Holly asked.

It finally dawned on Sean that his parents might not share his excitement. He looked confused by the revelation though. "They're like special forces for the Shadowed Glade of the Moon. Mostly they go on raids in the Eternal Garden of the Sun to rescue hostages and stuff. Though sometimes they have missions in the lesser courts."

"It's a position of great honor," Rose explained.

"Todd, honey, would you explain to your son-" Holly began.

"Don't you think you should wait until you've been there a while longer before making a decision like that?" Todd asked Sean.

"It's not like I've signed up," he said. "Just something to aspire to. For now, we're just training. There's no harm in that. It's fun."

"A lot of fun," Rose said in a voice that, for just a moment, made me forget her utter lack of curves and wonder what it would be like to see those red eyes staring up at me while I fucked the hell out of her.

I must not have been alone in noticing that. Everyone went quiet. Then Todd cleared his throat, turned his daughter, and asked, "And what have you been doing with your time?"

Mel shrugged. "Reading, mostly." She patted her husband's leg gently. "I don't get out much. But that's okay. I'm learning a lot."

"Every time my father sees her, he asks her why she isn't pregnant yet," Troy said, blushing. "I've tried telling him that we've decided to wait, and that neither of us wants to rush into that, but he doesn't really listen. To anyone. Ever. About anything."

"So what you're saying is that he's every bit as charming once you get to know him as he seems to be at first," Brianna said.

Another round of chuckles and snickers.

But not from Rose.

By the time we finished dinner, I found myself wondering why Troy hadn't run away from home, whereas it was clear that Rose was madly in love with their father. And though it didn't seem fair to think of it this way, I thought to myself that it was good that it was Mel who'd married the nice one. Not that Mel couldn't handle herself, or that Sean in any way deserved worse. But it still seemed fitting.

I also couldn't deny that Sean seemed happy with Rose. I found it harder and harder to convince myself that I wasn't giving her a fair chance, and I wasn't crazy about who she wanted Sean to become, but I had to admit that they were a good fit for one another.

Holly and Todd seemed to share my assessment. No one said as much, but there were lots of subtle cues that both my brother and his wife were already prepared to accept Troy, but had their doubts about Rose. Yet I also thought they too had noticed that Sean and Rose seemed to be really into each other.

Brianna didn't seem to be paying much attention to the unspoken vetting that was taking place. She kept tossing out one-liners but had little else to say otherwise.

It took a while for me to realize that this wasn't Brianna enjoying herself, it was Brianna busting out her defense mechanisms.

I pulled her aside after dinner, while Holly and her kids did the dishes.

"I'm sorry if I embarrassed you earlier," I said.

"What? Oh, when we first got here? Forget about it."

The tone in her voice told me I was being silly for even bringing it up.

But her eyes told me that she wanted to apologize for embarrassing me with the way she'd reacted when I'd tried to pay her a compliment.

I ran my hands through her hair, wondering how to get her to talk about what was really bothering her. Or if I even should. "So what do you think of Rose?"

She shrugged. "You mean besides the fact that she thinks I'm an ugly pink cunt? I suppose, setting that aside, I'd have to say...she seems like a real fucking bitch."

And then it clicked. How could I have not seen it earlier?

"I'm not crazy about her either," I began.

"And boy does it show," Brianna snapped.

I sighed. "If it was Josh that had married her, I'd say something."

"Oh, I get it. Because she married someone less important to you, that means she can treat me however she wants and you won't do anything about it?"

My hand left her hair. "That's not what I was saying."

Brianna crossed her arms under her breasts. "Sounded like it."

"I just feel like I've ruined the lives of enough people in my family. If Sean and his parents are going to fight about his wife the whole time he's here, I at least don't want it to be because of me. They can figure out on their own how to feel about her."

"So what you're really saying is I have to watch you be polite to that bitch because you want to have a clean conscience. That's just great, Frank."

I sighed. "Fine. You're right. I'll go talk to Todd."

She grabbed my wrist. "No, don't do that."

I raised an eyebrow at her. Then I let out a nervous laugh. "So you're not mad because I'm trying to pretend I haven't made up my mind about her. You're mad that it's not a whole lot harder for me to fake it."

"Maybe," she said, staring at her feet.

You could be forgiven for thinking Brianna didn't know the meaning of the word innocent, but damned if she couldn't fake it.

I wrapped my hands around her hips, pulled her against me, and kissed the top of her head. "But it isn't easy for me, baby. Troy seems okay, but I don't care for Rose at all."

"Really?"

"And I don't even care that you're trying pretty hard to convince Todd that things aren't all that serious between you and me."

Brianna dropped the cute and innocent look, reminding me that no one could do devilish the way she could either. "Noticed that, did ya?"

I gave her ass a playful smack. "What do you say we head out? Maybe conjure up a place to live and have ourselves a little house-warming party?"

"Why, Frank, are you asking me to move in with you?"

"Certainly sounds like it," I said.

Suddenly, I found my heart racing, even though I had no reason to doubt her answer.

My cousin went up on her tiptoes and plant a soft, fleeting kiss on my lips. Light though it was, it made my knees tremble. "We can't leave just yet."

"No?"

"I still haven't gotten good and fucked by Todd," she explained.

I gave her ass another smack.

She giggled. "Besides, I'm not crazy about sharing, and if you touch Rose, you can forget about sharing a bed with me tonight, but Holly and Mel are both dying to jump your bones. You should have heard them while we were making dinner."

"Now you're just fucking with me," I said.

"I wish," she said. "Don't let this go to your head or anything, but yeah. Holly asked me what it's like to get to sleep with you every day, and I almost felt bad telling her the truth. She also told me not to say anything, but the best sex she ever had was with you. She's totally in love with Todd, mind. Not like she has actual romantic feelings for you. But if you don't fuck her brains out before we leave, she'll be mighty disappointed."

"I suppose we can do something about that," I said.

My cousin studied my face. Or perhaps my Libido. But eventually she decided that I was not unduly excited about the prospect. "You have my permission to take good care of her. I guess the same goes for Mel, but if you decide not to bring your A game with her, I certainly won't complain. But, like I said, you better not touch Rose."

"Not a big fan of Mel either?" I asked.

Brianna shrugged. "She's fine. Under different circumstances, I think I could actually see myself really getting along with her. But I don't like the way she talks about you. Holly wants to get off, and knows you know how to make that happen. But Mel? I think she's borderline obsessed with you."

"What?"

"Oh, of course she doesn't show it when you're around. But you're like some kind of role model to her, I think. Especially now that she's married to Lily's brother. That really seems to mean a lot to her." Brianna shrugged. "Which is fine. Weird, but sweet." Her voice came down in pitch just a bit as she continued. "What's more troubling is that I'm not sure there's much she wouldn't do to impress you. And I don't think she's going to be content with getting a little bit of attention during a group session. She's going to be looking for some alone time before they head back to the Shadowed Glade, you can be sure. Someone needs to tell her that you've already got yourself a beautiful redhead as the captain of your fan club. You don't need another." Then, almost as an afterthought, she added, "And someone also needs to tell her that those boobs look ridiculous on that body. She's way too lean and muscular to have a rack like that. It's absurd."

I laughed.

"Don't laugh," she said. "I know you love big tits, but even you have to admit-"

I held up my hands in protest. "I'm not arguing. It's just funny."

She sighed. "Anyway, she probably has some actual, legitimate questions to ask. So if she wants to meet up with you at some point, that's fine. But it better not be just for sex."

"Are we telling each other who we can sleep with now?"

"No. I fully expect you to fuck her tonight. And if she wants to come over our place for a threesome sometime, I can get behind that. I wouldn't mind getting a little rough with her. I just mean that if she's going to expect to get you all to herself, it better be because she needs to ask you for advice about how to deal with her father-in-law or something."