“It was either that or kiss you.” He gave Miki a cocky smile. “It was safer for my dick’s sanity not to kiss you.”
“Never ever fucking do that to someone who’s lived around roaches,” the singer grumbled, taking a final swipe at his nose. “I have nightmares about those bastards climbing into places I can’t get them out.”
Kane winced. He’d stupidly complained about the Irishwoman who, at that very moment, was clanging around Miki’s kitchen because she missed him, and Miki’s first thought at being tickled was roaches. He leaned in and kissed the corner of Miki’s frown, murmuring, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
Miki snorted and shrugged it off, rolling his shoulders. The crack of his spine was loud enough to make Kane wince, and the popping from his neck almost echoed in the cavernous room. Stretching his arms up over his head, Miki shifted his legs out and sniffed. “You ordered dinner?”
“Worse, dinner came to us.” Kane grimaced playfully. “My mother’s here. She brought food. Smells like roast beast a la Morgan and cabbage rolls.”
Miki raised his eyebrows. Then his eyes widened, his pupils nearly pinpricks amid the green and gold. “What the fuck? Your mom? How the… oh fucking hell… fuck me.”
“Yeah,” Kane agreed. “I’ll do that later. Hopefully, I can wait until your knee’s better, but I’m not promising anything.”
“Dude, I don’t do parents,” Miki mumbled in a panic. “Fuck, they hate my guts. You’ve got to get rid of her. Why the hell did she come here?”
“You’re cute when you’re nervous.” He laughed and slid off the bed. “Go pull your pants all the way up and go wash up a bit. You’ll be fine. She’s nice. It’s me she’s pissed off at. You, she’ll love. Just be yourself.”
“Are you fucking kidding me? You’ve met me!” he grumbled and searched for his shirt, finding it balled up under the sheets. “God, this is the worst fucking idea.”
“I’ve had worse,” Kane promised. “Remind me to tell you about my baby brother Ian’s adventures of seeing what his dick would fit into when he was sixteen. Having my mother here will seem like a walk in the park.”
“Who the hell walks in the park?” Miki sighed and flung himself back on the bed. Kane nudged him with a poke in the ribs, and he yelped, rubbing at the ticklish spot. “Fine, go keep her company so I can sneak into the bathroom, but I swear to God, if she hates me, it’s all your fault.”
KANE’S mother loved Miki.
She’d been thrown by the Spartan warehouse and the seemingly overwhelming supply of packaged ramen in the pantry, but when the gun-shy, wide-eyed, disheveled Miki emerged from the bathroom, Brigid fell in love.
Kane almost bit through his upper lip to stop from laughing when Brigid clasped Miki’s fine-boned cheeks. His deep hazel eyes flew open in surprise, and he stumbled back, caught short by his injured knee. He was nothing like her own sons, with his haunted, startling eyes and pretty face, but that didn’t stop Brigid from clasping him to her not inconsiderable bosom and tsking over his lean body.
“Mom, leave him be.” Kane pulled a shell-shocked Miki out his mother’s grasp. “Mick, grab the plates. We’ll go set up in the living room.”
Miki snatched the plates, forks, and napkins from the counter and limped out faster than Kane thought humanly possible. Dude glanced up at Brigid once, obviously contemplating his options. It was decidedly easy once Brigid began trimming the fat off the roast beef she’d set into the oven to warm and slid the finely slivered trim into Dude’s dish.
The lack of dining room table perplexed Brigid for a moment, but she rallied admirably, ordering Kane to set the pseudo-coffee table once it was cleared of game controllers and a stack of notebooks with worn edges. Miki grabbed them before Kane could get ahold of them, and stashed them in a milk crate set on its side by the couch. A swipe of a damp sponge took off most of the dust, and Kane grinned when Miki hurriedly shoved a couple of DVDs under the couch before Brigid could see them.
Kane left Miki to figure out how he was going to set up the coffee table and ambled back into the kitchen to see if his mother needed help.
“He doesn’t eat healthy,” Brigid said accusingly when Kane joined her. “You call yourself a boyfriend? Look at what he has in his fridge!”
“Mom, he’s not….” Kane stopped himself. “I know what he’s got in the fridge. I put some of it there. I’m not going to tell Miki what to do. He’s a grown man.”
“Where’s his mother? Doesn’t she care about him?” Kane shook his head at her warningly, and she sniffed haughtily, a strong condemnation against Miki’s absent parents. “It looks like I sent a five-year-old to the store. I worry about him.”