Chapter Text
Ryker has to squint as they filter out of the church doors. In the hour or so since they sat down in the pews for Sunday Mass, the sun has emerged fully from behind the clouds sprawling across the horizon, and its rays spear straight into their eyes. Immediately they are enveloped in its heat.
They glance longingly back to the shade of the church. It’d be a far more pleasant environment to wait in - cool, dry air; sunlight glowing through stained glass windows, rendering the pews below a jewel-cast spectacle; Bibles to flick through instead of idling out here with their hands in their pockets. But they don’t want Leon to feel ambushed the second he steps out of the sacristy. They can linger outside with the rest of the congregation, trying to look like they aren’t eavesdropping on the hum of conversation around them.
They’re interrupted from listening to an especially dry line of discussion - somebody’s poor son wore a T-shirt to last week’s service, God help him - by an older lady shuffling up to them. “Hi, Marguerite,” they greet her, with a small, bashful wave. “Good Mass, right?”
They can’t remember the last time they attended a Mass without seeing Marguerite’s white bun peeking out over the top of the pews. She was one of the first people to welcome them into the community when they washed up in Cadère-Rosse as a teenager, marching them around the village by the arm to introduce them to everybody she knew. She has also recently gotten it in her head that they’re the perfect match for her grand-nephew, Father Sanseverino’s blonde maniac of a son, who at the ripe age of twenty-five is sorely in need of a spouse. They hope her Rotary Club friends are nearby to steal her away before she starts on that particular topic.
“It was lovely,” she says emphatically. “I used to come for morning Mass every day before work, you know. What a way to start the day… I’ve been retired for a long time now, of course, but a nice Sunday service still gets my head on straight. Your father— oh, what a fantastic speaker…”
Ryker inhales sharply. Something twists deep in their belly, hot pressure groping and squeezing at their insides, then curls up inside them like a satisfied cat. They hope it doesn’t manifest on their face. “A-ah,” they force out, eyes averted, torn between wringing their hands and beaming, “I think you’ve got a little confused. Leon’s, ha, not my dad, actually.”
Sometimes they think it would be easier not to correct people. Indulge in the mistake. Underneath the embarrassment and the oh God what would Leon think is a deep, purring contentment to be recognised as his child. They’d excuse themself as being too polite to speak up if Leon wouldn’t see right through it.
Marguerite goes still for a moment and blinks, wrinkled mouth slack. Before something rushes back to her and— “Oh!” she exclaims. “Oh, dearie me, I’m sorry. Things are all muddled in my head these days. Of course you aren’t the Father’s son.”
Stiffly, they chuckle alongside her. “It’s okay! That’s, u-um, that’s not the first time somebody’s made that mistake. It happens more than you’d think.”
It’s not untrue. A few months back there was the new parishioner, a man from Marseille with a startlingly large moustache, who had clapped them on the shoulder and asked if they’d follow the call of God like their papa. Years before - just after they’d started considering being baptised themself, to Leon’s delight (maybe because of Leon’s delight) - they’d tagged along as a witness to a baptism at a local nursing home. The woman was charmed by what she thought was a father-child duo working together under the same church roof. ‘Like the old days,’ she’d mused, smiling faintly to herself. Leon watched them squirm in their too-hot too-tight clothes and said nothing.
Dotting the span of time between those two incidents were dozens of minor ones. Newcomers who were flustered to realise their assumed blood relation didn’t exist; church regulars who would pinch their cheek and remark that they could pass for Father Tremblay’s daughter.
At first they took it for a racial assumption. Though Leon has never been forthcoming about his background - for all Ryker knows, he and Bishop Tremblay sprung forth as middle-aged men from the Garden of Eden - anybody could look between him and Ryker and guess they share an ethnicity. They have Leon's dark hair, his tan, his thick, curved eyebrows. Their sideburns flick upwards the same way; their nose follows the same strong silhouette. Of course people assumed. That wouldn't have surprised them. ‘Bizarrely diverse for rural Provence’ still makes Cadère-Rosse mostly white, with all that entails.
Then they’d joked about their experiences to Accardi, hoping for some kind of solidarity— and had received only a strange look.
So it kept on happening. Then kept on happening. And kept on happening, to nobody except them and Leon - until Ryker found themself before a mirror trying to fit their lips into his shape so somebody might tell them that they smile like their father, too.
It was stupid. Leon wouldn’t outright scorn them if he found out, but— Ryker, he’d tell them, that concerned little expression crooking across his face, don’t you know that God sculpted you perfectly? You smile in exactly the way that makes you most beautiful, even though looking beautiful while not looking like him seems oxymoronic. He likes their smile anyway. Once he told them himself: squeezed their hand as they came down from the afterglow of their laughter, called them a sweet little kid, politely ignored the way they broke out sweating. To try to change it after that, even to mould themself in his image… Wouldn’t it be a kind of sacrilege?
Ryker blinks. They realise Marguerite is staring at them expectantly. It’s too easy to get lost in thought about Leon when every winding mental path seems to lead right to him.
“Sorry!” they rush out. “I zoned out for a second… Did you say something?”
“No, no, it’s alright, young lady. You didn’t miss anything interesting. I was just talking about this dreadful heat. And with the humidity—! I think it’ll storm later, you know…”
They perk up. “Oh, really? Do you think so? Let’s hope!”
“Aren’t you a cutiepie?” Bone-dry pruney fingers pinch their cheek; Ryker laughs, swatting her off, and she tuts at them. “Let’s hope indeed. It'd be a break from this terrible heat, at least…” She shakes her head and grumbles something to herself. “Well. I ought to leave you to your thoughts and get home before it starts to rain, eh? Take the washing down. Cast my storm-summoning spells for you, the usual. You enjoy yourself now.”
“Oh— bye then! Have a nice day!”
They wave again as she totters off, somewhat bemused. That’s Marguerite for you. There’s no point in asking her to stay if she’s decided she’s gone. They didn’t even get an opportunity to ask her about this week’s hiking escapades, their post-service staple. Oh well; it’s not as if they won’t have an opportunity for a longer talk with her, whenever they rock up to church next.
In the end, they get little time alone with their thoughts at all. Marguerite has barely ambled away into the small crowd when another voice calls out:
“Good morning, Ryker!”
They turn around towards the church, grin already breaking out across their face like the sun cresting over the horizon— and there’s Leon, hand raised in greeting, smiling warmly back at them. He always looks like he’s tumbled out of bed after pulling off his vestments. His tousled hair spills down his shoulders; strands of his fringe poke into his long dark eyelashes. When they embrace him, breathing deep into his neck and feeling their shoulders droop, they find that myrrh incense has melted into the comforting backdrop of his soap-clean-linen scent, deep and fresh and heady.
“Hi,” they say into his shoulder. His arms tighten around their waist before they begin to slip away. Still close enough to see the gold fronds of his irises, they briefly consider brushing his hair out of his eyes themself. They can’t pretend it would be entirely for his benefit; not when it would let them stand here in his arms for a moment longer.
But Marguerite’s slip-up burns in the forefront of their mind. They draw back.
“Mass wasn’t too traumatising for you, right?” they tease, before they do something stupid instead, like reach for his hand or say that lady thought you were my dad, isn’t that funny? How does that make you feel? Leon grimaces.
“Oh, Ryker, I hope Francis recovers enough to give Sunday services again soon. Attendance is far lower when I give weekday Masses. I didn’t realise how much pressure the filled pews would be…!”
“It can’t be that bad,” they say. After all he’s done for them, it feels funny for Ryker to be the one giving reassurance. “I thought you did great. Even if you were nervous.”
“Of course you thought so,” he says fondly. “It was easier with you sitting in the front row, anyway. I could pretend as if you were the only one in the audience.”
Their face heats. They’re never quite sure how to take it when he says things like that. It’s easiest to roll their eyes at him, smiling. “Old sap,” they call him. He tuts. They’d make a joke about the old ‘pretend the audience is naked’ platitude, if they were in any way mentally prepared to think about Leon picturing them in the nude.
“Yes, yes,” he says. “Come. Walk with me, won’t you?”
Leon offers them an elbow. They step into his space to loop their arm through his, sliding their bodies together, and begin to meander slowly down the church path. There’s a respectable distance between them still; nobody would bat an eye at it. Still, they’re close enough now that they can pick up on a hint of the incense smoke clinging to his hair again. Though it’s clearly been a while since he’s shaved - he’s developing a charming scruff of a beard - his hair must have been more recently washed. It has a beautiful sheen to it, gleaming blue in the sunlight.
“It feels like such a long time since we’ve seen each other!” he comments, poking them gently in the side with his elbow. They look at him incredulously.
“Leon,” they say, “I was here Monday.”
“Time starts to pass strangely when you’re my age,” he says, as if he’s a wizened old thing with a brain decaying from the strain of a century’s operation, and not their parents’ age. “It might as well have been a month for me. They work you too hard down at that garage. I miss seeing your little face in the pews during my weekday services, you know.”
Little face. They blush. Sometimes they wonder if he has any sense of age at all. He’s never known them as a young child, never even seen the grainy photos of baby Ryker left behind in their family home - yet he seems to still half-think of them as one. It gives too much fuel to their fantasies.
“Aw, Leon, I miss going too. But now I’m working more hours, maybe we’ll be able to afford that holi— retreat together. If you’d still be up for something like that.”
His eyes crinkle. He draws their arms tighter until their shoulders bump together and their hips brush with each step. “Of course I would, Ryker,” he says, and they swear they can feel his breath ghosting over their neck. “That sounds marvellous.”
With the peaceful lapse in conversation, they have some time to draw their eyes over their surroundings. The yellowing grass hill they’re wandering down lacks any morning dew-pearls. The cicadas are yet to start up their cacophony, and the air is stagnant, already swollen with wet heat. Those clouds on the horizon really do look quite grey. Maybe it’ll storm after all. A delicious thrill shoots up them.
A fork in the path. The sandstone homes of Cadère-Rosse cluster ahead - but when they step down the left path-prong towards them, Leon tugs softly on their arm. They blink up at him, head tilted to the side.
“Wait just a moment there, kid,” he says. Untethering the two of them, he tucks his hair behind his ears; his gaze flickers back and forth between them and his shirt-sleeves he’s cuffing as he starts to speak. “I thought it would be nice to make the most of the free time we have together. I have the makings of a salad and crêpes in my pantry - would you like to come back to the chapel house and have breakfast with me?”
Ryker stares at him. They didn’t even realise the chapel house was an option for something so casual. They can count the number of times they've stepped foot in it on their fingers— only when invited to dinner by Leon or the Bishop, only because they'd be too ashamed to show their face at church if they turned down such a kind offer from one of their ministers. Entering such an intimate holy space, where Leon eats and sleeps and prays... There’s a reason they almost always spend time with him outdoors or in their own cramped flat. They’re not his wife, nor his legal child. What right do they have to be there?
“Breakfast? At your place?” they finally come out with.
Leon ruffles their short fluffy mop. They don’t bat him away like they’d usually do. “Ry-ker,” he says, name drawn out affectionately, “don’t be so nervous. You are always perfectly welcome in our chapel house. You wouldn't be bothering anybody; you know we all live on separate floors. Besides—” He waggles his eyebrows, and they can’t help but giggle— “None of the other clergy are at home, hm? Francis is away for his treatment; Father Sanseverino is visiting family in Italy. We’d be completely alone.”
“I…” They fidget with their hands. “If you’re really sure it's okay…?”
“Absolutely. If you’re interested in breakfast, that is. You might be busy preparing for the working week.”
They shake their head. A small, nervous smile; they slip their arm back around Leon’s. “Lead the way,” they say, and trot after him like a lamb down the path towards the chapel house.
***
It’s a small battle to get the front door open. Leon despairs under his breath as he heaves at the doorknob - ‘oh, for goodness’s sake— I swear I’ve dealt with the rust a thousand times already’ - until, with a terrible groan, the door shrieks open. Ryker just barely hops out of the way before it slams into them.
“It’s quite the ordeal, isn’t it?” says Leon apologetically. “Sometimes the hinges jam themselves shut. If you’ll follow me…”
They step out into a hallway, lit only by the sunlight streaming in through a few small windows, and pad up two flights of stairs. “Be careful where you step,” Leon says over his shoulder, like he does every time they come up here. “The steps get narrow towards the centre. Before I became ordained, from time to time I’d visit Francie on the second floor while, ah, more than a little tipsy - I was always tripping and slipping up these…”
Ryker mm-hms, not willing to open their mouth and embarrass themself with their breathlessness. Leon, for all the flack he gives himself about his weight and his lovely ageing body, hasn’t even broken a sweat. By the time they’ve reached the third floor, they have half a mind to bend over with their hands on their knees and pant.
Leon’s flat door, a cheery sky-blue painted all up with florals - “Father Sanseverino’s son painted it for me. Isn’t he talented?” he tells them, patting the door like you would a beloved old dog, while Ryker tries not to screw their face up instinctively at the mention of him - opens with significantly less protest. In the cramped yellow-lit vestibule, they follow his lead and slip off their shoes. Their trainers are so dwarfed next to his boots that they look pleasingly like the shoes of a child. The room is heavy with the smell of old leather.
Amongst the various jackets hung up along the walls is his old brown long-coat. If Leon wasn’t here, they’d be pretty tempted to stride up to it and embrace it like a teddy bear. Silly, to be attached to a coat, but they’ve huddled under it as a blanket or mooched it off Leon on cold walks home or felt its age-fuzzy twill grain against their cheek more times than they can count. The worst part of summer is that he stops wearing it.
They wonder idly if it’s still stained with the tears they’d shedded into his chest when they met, empty-pocketed and desperate for sanctuary. Ideally not. They would’ve hoped Leon had washed it since then.
“Welcome!” he says, slapping his hands against thighs which wobble under the impact. “Sorry it’s not the most spacious in here - we’ll be in close quarters, but that’s not so bad, hm?” He smiles mysteriously at them. Tips of their ears red and nodding dumbly, they try to smile back. This vestibule really is tiny. It’s difficult to look him in the eyes like this. “Come on. I’ll take you to the kitchen.”
Leon pushes aside his coats like a jungle explorer pushing through thick vines to open the door. He leads them through a small living room, not much more than an armchair draped neatly with a quilt - they’ve seen Bishop Francis sewing before; the stitches connecting each fabric square seem suitably precise for him - and a coaster stained with faint brown rings atop a table. The walls are crammed with so many bookshelves that they couldn’t begin to guess what colour the paint is beneath. Scattered amongst the predictable theological and fiction titles (they look fondly at the mix of poetry, sci-fi and historical fantasy) are more eccentric choices— thick tomes boasting the secrets of herbal medicine, of surgery. They part their lips to ask a question and find Leon has already vanished into the next room. Ryker stumbles after him.
They breeze through a modest dining room and emerge with him into his kitchen. “Et voilà!” Leon spreads his arms out with a flourish.
Cinnamony air-freshener covers the scent of yesterday’s dinner. A warm, muted light filters into the room through blinds half-closed in defence against the heat. Its glow casts a golden shine across the countertops, gleaming off the fridge, the polished sink, the handles of his overhead cabinets. Nothing grandiose - and they’ll be bumping into each other a lot if Ryker gets involved in cooking breakfast. But the floor is free from dirt or crumbs and the surfaces are dustless. That’s a lot more than they can say for their own flat.
“You have a lovely place,” they say. "It's always so nice in here." He smiles like he doesn’t quite believe them, brushing his hair behind his shoulders.
“That’s sweet of you. It’s, ah, not much, but I try my best to keep it tidy. But look at me, being a terrible host. Sit down, sit down - you can bring in a chair from the dining room - can I get you a coffee?”
They’re just barely hanging on in here, alone with Leon in the heart of his home. The last thing they need is caffeine to make their jitters spiral out of the realm of their control. “I’m alright, thank you. Um - how about I, uh, wash the vegetables? For the salad?”
“Ry-ker, you really don’t need to,” he insists. “I didn’t invite you over to put you to work.”
“And I don’t want you to do everything by yourself! I-I don’t mind washing some vegetables…”
His eyebrows are tilting upwards. He looks like an anxious old dog, about to start scratching and whimpering outside his owner’s door. Ryker is just about to retract their offer for his sake - yes, they’re perfectly happy to sit around drinking coffee like a good guest while he cooks for them, thank you so much, Leon - when he clucks his tongue and shakes his head. “You’re too sweet, helping out an old man like me. Here. I’ll fetch them for you.”
They stand around trying not to twiddle their thumbs as Leon potters over to the fridge. The vegetables he hands them - a cucumber, a carrot, two tomatoes - are fat, and a welcome chill to their skin; Ryker’s hands dip under their weight before they adjust their grip. They roll the tomatoes in their palm and watch them gleam. They’re a vibrant red, tight-skinned and firm. If they pressed down their thumbs on one even slightly, it would squirt all over them, leaving their hands dripping with its seeds.
“These are beautiful,” they say. The words come in an almost reverently hushed tone. It would be more appropriate if they were down on their knees, Mary gazing down at them from her sumptuously-rendered glass window— though the jewel-rich colours are the same…
They feel immediately silly. This is something that, for good reason, would get them ridiculed by people their own age. But Leon only hums, running an appreciative eye over the vegetables. “Aren’t they?” he says. They’re grateful not to detect even a trace of mockery. “They’re all in-season. They should be ripe.”
Ripe seems an understatement. Ryker is surprised the tomatoes haven’t split down the middle already, parting themselves to expose their wet insides.
They slip a hand-towel off its rail below the sink, fold it neatly, and rest it by the basin; a little cushion to cradle their vegetables once they’re washed. For now they settle the crops beside it and reach across to twist the tap handle. Underneath the pouring faucet they bring the carrot first. The water, not yet left unsatisfyingly tepid by an afternoon languishing beneath the sun, is so cold that it makes their fingers stiffen. They run their balled hand up and down the carrot’s length to brush away the outermost dust, then get to work scraping away the bits of dirt wedged into its wrinkles. It’s a quick job— no need to overwork it and bruise its sensitive skin— before they place it on the towel and pick up the cucumber.
Emboldened by Leon’s prior interest, they continue: “The produce at Super-U looks much sadder than this. Did you get these from the farmer’s market?”
“I did.” When he looks at them over his shoulder, brows raised, there’s something new in his crinkling eyes— something appraising. A near-imperceptible tug at the corners of his lips before he asks: “Do you have an interest in agriculture? I have some books I could lend you, if that’s the case.”
That, for some reason, makes heat rise to their cheeks. They feel their shoulders start to draw in just slightly towards their ears. “Really? Oh, uh, thank you. I’d appreciate that a lot.”
Where this embarrassment comes from is beyond them. Leon is a priest and a hunter and apparently some kind of aspiring herbalist, whose eclectic literary collection they’ve seen for themself. Even if he had the inclination for it, he’d be in no position to judge them for this vaguely niche interest, one which they know isn’t even that odd at all. But reading’s definitely a respectable hobby, right? It must be for Leon to have so many books. Before their senses catch up to their mouth, they add: “I— I like to read.”
Leon has the grace not to laugh at them. “I know,” he says. “It’s no inconvenience. I'll show you the books after lunch.” And - because he’s good, because he’s always been so kind to them - he keeps going before the silence can really settle in like dust. “I’ve always admired your reading habit, Ryker. I hope you know that. Few kids read casually anymore, and it makes me proud to see somebody your age finding so much pleasure in literature.”
Ryker stills. Water drips down the cucumber in their palm and soaks into their sleeve. With the tap's flow no longer broken up by their shifting hands, its jet hits the sink uninterrupted, and the drumming of water against metal intensifies.
It wouldn’t be a hugely meaningful compliment in isolation. But— proud. Proud of them. They bask in the newfound glow inside their chest. Maybe the setting heightens everything— maybe it’s the privilege of getting to share this experience with him; he’s unmarried, so this must be an intimacy he’s shared with few— or maybe they're just sappy, but they have the sudden urge to cross the three short strides it would take to hug him.
“Thanks,” they tell him instead. They bite down a childishly wide smile as they stare down at the cucumber in their hand, thumbing at its vein-like ridges. “That's— you're sweet.”
It’s an incomplete sentence without ‘dad’ attached. They tack on the only addendum they can: “I think you’re cool too, Leon. For an old man and all.”
“Oh, shush, you,” he says warmly, and they blow out a laugh through their nose.
They lapse out of conversation again— but their anxious compulsion to fill the quiet doesn't arise. Leon taps the egg against the countertop edge. Its shell cracks into two. They catch a glimpse of a rich golden yolk nestled inside its white as it slips into the jug, followed by milk and a heaping of flour. His whisk begins to clink against the jug’s glass sides. Through the cracked-open window filters a hint of birdsong, and the slightest morning chill; Ryker’s whole body slackens when they exhale.
This cucumber is more than clean now. They settle it down next to the carrot on its towel, and exchange it for the tomatoes. These really are beautiful crops: two plump, heavy jewels, of such a vibrant colour that they can almost taste them bursting sweet across their tongue. The summers around here produce few watery tomatoes. Everything and everybody - except Leon, who has long since kicked off his tradition of fretting over sunburn - ripens under the Provençal sun.
There’s a good chance they’ve cycled by the fields all these vegetables grew in and witnessed their flourishing first-hand. Cadère-Rosse has never been big enough to support a proper supermarché; they have to make shopping trips into the closest town each week to fill their shelves. It’s deep enough into summer now that they’re on the verge of dreading these outings. They always dismount their bike panting and sticky, flecks of handlebar rubber clinging to their palms.
But the routes they cycle down are beautiful this time of year. The country paths are bracketed on either side by fields in full bloom, verdant with their dew-speckled harvests; if they come early enough for the irrigation sprinklers, a breeze will blow the mist their way, and they can bask in the temporary blissful cool.
Sometimes the sun catches suspended mist at just the right angle and a rainbow glimmers before their eyes. They only ever hang in the air for a matter of seconds before they dissipate, a prismatic glimpse of an angel. Then it’s just Ryker and God and sunlight spilling across the open morning sky and mist beading in their hair, surrounded for miles by fields filled with vegetables so ripe they’re about to snap off the stem under their own weight, and their chest is helplessly light, and they wish more than anything that Leon was here to share this with them.
But he’s here with them now, isn’t he? And they’re finally done washing these vegetables.
“Alright.” They present their vegetable towel before him, a loyal altar-server presenting their priest with his chalice. “Where do you keep your chopping boards?”
“Ah, Ryker, there’s no need to prepare the salad yourself if you’d rather sit down,” he says, worrying at the hem of his sleeve with a thumb. “You’re my esteemed guest, after all.”
Guest. They pull a face. “I wanna help! Think of me as like—” Your kid perches on the tip of their tongue. His only child, nestled snugly since birth in the warm beating core of his heart, at home preparing breakfast like they always do with their papa; they’d never let Dad labour all by himself. But it’s unwieldy and rough against their taste buds, scraping against their throat the whole way when they swallow it down. He wouldn’t take well to it. The only thing that comes close to that level of domesticity is: “—your wife, you know?” Leon’s lips part into an O. Maybe a bit too strong of an opener. Would ‘girlfriend’ have been more appropriate…? “As in, we’re making breakfast together, and there’s a newspaper open on the table, and you’re complaining about your bad back—”
A pensive touch to the base of his spine. It’s a relief to see him playing along. “It has been giving me trouble recently,” he muses, and Ryker grins.
“What, you want me to kiss it better?”
They are not entirely sure what compelled them to say this. They’re equally murky on whether it’s this statement, or the thought that comes after it— a feverish sensation, a flash of lips on hot skin, of thick dark body hair— which unsettles their stomach. They’re lucky when he only chuckles.
“Go ahead if you’d like,” he says, thoroughly unhelpfully. “If anybody could inspire a belief in faith healing, I’m sure it would be you.”
Lips on skin. Body hair. It takes a long, dazed moment of standing around before Ryker recalls what they were even asking in the first place. They rub the back of their neck. “Where… are the chopping boards, though?”
“Oh! Just over there, behind the bread pile.” He gestures with the spatula to the counter across from them; they can garner a peek of wood from behind the copious amount of bread leaning against the wall, stout loaves and baguettes wrapped in brown paper. It’s a somewhat eccentric arrangement. They’re surprised they didn't notice it as soon as they walked in. “And the knives are in the block.”
“Sale at the boulangerie today?” they ask as they walk over to retrieve the board, earning them a sheepish, close-lipped curve of his lips.
“Ah— well, ownership was passed to a new baker recently, and you know how I get over these things. I’d like to make myself a nice light soup tonight, to enjoy the loaves properly…”
Another bullet point on their mental list: next birthday, they’ll make sure to cycle out somewhere far afield to pick him up some nice bread from a bakery he’s never been to. The idea has come a long while in advance. Still, it’s never too early to start gathering ideas for small things that’ll make him smile— especially with his tendency to mope and sigh and succumb to melodramatics each time he gains another year.
They slide a knife out from its block with a shing. “The tomatoes and cucumber should be diced finely enough to eat with a spoon,” Leon adds, and they nod.
No longer tethered to the sink, Ryker sidles up next to him; the chopping board makes a loud wooden clunk when they set it against the countertop by the hob. Each vegetable is arranged in a neat row before them, red-orange-green. Leon’s eyes crinkle up into half-crescents. He busies himself with measuring out butter into a little bowl then pottering over to the microwave; its mechanical droning fills the kitchen.
“Alright,” they murmur to themself. They’d be lying if they said they felt within their depth. Preparing vegetables is generally a ‘butcher them up with a knife they never officially learnt to use and chuck them in a bowl or pan’ affair, and with Leon in the corner of their vision, they’d like to pull off something slightly more respectable.
Before they even ask where to find the grater, Leon eases a drawer beneath him open - its slide mechanism, in dire need of some kind of lubricant, trundles and grinds the whole way - and fishes it out for them. For a brief moment as the grater is exchanged between them, their fingers brush together over the handle. Entirely mundane. They remind themself that he probably shares this touch with his altar servers every Sunday each time he’s presented with incense and thuribles. Smoke curling sensually through the half-dark, hands sliding over each other, minute thank-you smiles and eyes twinkling beneath his liturgical façade…
It’s a souring thought. They set the grater down atop the chopping board, fist the carrot, and begin shredding it in short, sharp jerks. Damp orange flecks spray over their hands. At least, it occurs to them, he doesn’t invite his altar boys into his home and let them call themselves his wife. That’d be weird. It’s gotta be just you, right? Their grip around the carrot softens.
A pile of shredded carrot begins to accumulate inside the grater. Ryker grates it down until their fingertips graze over metal teeth with each jerk of their hand. The leftover base is discarded. They push the grater and its contents to the side of the board, leaving only an orange-tinted wet spot behind, and roll the two tomatoes towards them.
They eye the fruits warily. At least the carrot was solid and easy to handle, as the cucumber will be; despite their lacking culinary experience, they could only mess it up so badly. But these are softer. More delicate. In the back of their mind niggles the thought that they might end up squashing the whole fruit into a wet mess of seeds and flushed skin.
Blade in one hand, first tomato cupped in the other, they position the tip of the knife at its core and slowly push in. No juice squirting in their eyes yet. The tomato offers enough resistance to hold its shape, but their blade still glides through it as they ease it open. It slides apart into two halves, slick flesh glimmering under the sunlight.
It’s just like an onion, right? They lay one half on its belly and slice it in careful strokes— up and down and side-to-side, splitting it open into a lattice. Each diced piece is bitsy enough to scoop up with a teaspoon. Experienced now with how much pressure they can apply before the fruit starts to break into mush, the second half comes out cleaner, and the next tomato even more so.
Maybe they won’t embarrass themself too badly here after all. (At least in regard to their chopping skills.) They might even pull off a salad that’ll make Leon proud of them again.
As if Leon can sense his presence in their thoughts, he decants the last of the melted butter into the batter-jug then turns towards them. “Say, Ryker,” he comes out with, as Ryker is nudging their mound of diced tomato away from the centre of the chopping board, and they look up at him. “What do you usually have for your breakfast?”
There’s a myriad of possible answers here. Energy drinks in wincingly artificial flavours, which are definitely going to corrode away their taste buds someday; Super-U-brand cereals crunchy with their sugar coatings; fruit and pain-au-chocolats. Yet not a single response they could give him without provoking a distraught look and a reproof on their health. Instead, they shrug. “You know, this and that. This is a nice change of pace for me.” Before he can prod deeper: “How come?”
“Aren’t I supposed to think of you as my wife?” To their credit, their ensuing giggle sounds only a little hysterical. Leon’s brows crook. “Then it seems like the sort of thing I should know about you,” he continues. “What if I want to make you breakfast in bed, hm?”
A small, skittish little creature flutters inside their chest, wings brushing against their ribs. Wife. Maybe going with ‘kid’ wouldn’t have been so bad after all.
“Oh, you know, I…” Get it together, Dublin. Energy drinks. Cereal. And— “I like pastries? Sweet stuff. I used to eat loads of these flatbread things, with hot honey and butter— mssemen, I think it was called; my pronunciation’s not great— but I haven’t had it since I left home. My parents never taught me the recipe.”
They sense an opportunity here, in bringing up Algerian food. There’s a corner of their heart that has always regarded Leon's background with a curious kind of yearning. But any questions about his parents are met with a mirror; he smiles, gives a non-answer, and deflects, leaving no room for further pursuit. Eventually they learnt to give up asking.
They’re pretty sure he's Arab too, but it's a difficult topic to broach without embarrassing themself. Especially when they've known him for so long now. How do you walk up to your friend of several years (not to mention your priest) and ask ‘so, Leon, you're not white, right?’ When they were younger, eager for something to bond over with their mentor in this strange new place, they'd entertained the idea of simply starting a conversation with him in Arabic. But it fell apart as soon as they remembered that, A) they would have to revert right back to French immediately after stumbling their way through their rote-memorised ‘weather’s nice today, right?’, and B) if he turned out not to be Arab, they might genuinely have sunk into the floor and died.
But this— this is a golden chance to put the topic on the table. Hesitantly, nearly tripping over the first syllable, they say: “Since my, um, grandparents were from Algeria, me ‘n my family used to have a lot of sweets for breakfast. Like these little shortbread biscuits, and brioche with orange zest, or chocolate chips, and French stuff too—” It occurs to them that they sound like a six year-old happily rambling about their favourite foods. Oh, they’re such a child; they couldn’t make their age gap any more apparent if they tried. Quick! Pivot! Something more adult! “—because of, you know…” Ryker clears their throat. “Colonialism…”
They trail off. Their eyes are fixed firmly on a spot on the floor, hands knitted tight together, lips pursed to prevent even more nonsense from spewing out. Right now, they think. Right now would be a great time to make good on that ‘sinking into the floor and dying’ thing.
But when they risk a glance up at Leon, he’s only looking at them. His position has stayed relaxed; one arm braces his torso where he leans against the countertop, and his hips jut out to the side. Those thick, sturdy legs slant diagonal. “Go on,” he encourages.
They cock their head. “About colonialism?”
That garners a twinkle-eyed smile, which they appreciate, even if they’re not sure what they did to deserve one. “Sweetheart,” he says, with a father’s fond cadence. Ryker has the sudden urge to check - and perhaps adjust - the crotch of their shorts. “I’m well-acquainted. I meant about your grandparents. Were you close?”
“No, they died when I was super young. I never had a chance to know them.”
It’s something they can say casually; a cut that never really opened in the first place, leaving behind the faintest white impression on their skin. Their grandparents exist only to them through the pictures their parents displayed on their mantle. One in particular sticks out in their memory— a shot of their grandmother dripping with bridal gold, caught midway through a radiant laugh as she presses a pastry into her husband’s mouth. Her eyes are fawnish. His hold nothing but tenderness. They wish they’d thought to tuck the photo in their bag before they left home, as a tethering point.
Leon clucks his tongue. “Ah, I remember now you've mentioned that before, haven't you? What a shame.”
“It’s not a big deal,” they say, shrugging. “I know it's selfish, but mostly I’m sad I never got to learn Arabic from them. My cousins are… I want to say around ten years older than me ‘n my sister? So my grandparents were around to teach them when they were little.” They fiddle with their shirt sleeves, voice dropping as they add: “I guess Ma and Dad didn’t feel like it.”
A hum reverberates through his chest; his eyes float to the side, a slight furrow to his brow. Ryker pushes down the itch to rush the conversation as far as possible away from this vulnerable admission. They clamp their lips shut as he mulls his words over, and assume a stilted facsimile of his lean against the countertop. Maybe they should relent to his fussing to eat more. Where his fat cushions him, the counter’s hard angles dig into Ryker’s side.
But— slowly, slowly, like sinking into a goose-down pillow, they relax into it, luxuriating in the low golden sizzle as Leon slides a half-ladleful of batter around his pan until it spreads into a thin sheet. Their shoulders begin to drop down from their hunch. They’d barely noticed the tension creeping up on them.
The pan clanks down against the hob. Leon turns to them, steepling his broad fingers above his sternum, breasts swelling over his forearms. “I could teach you,” he suggests.
Ryker’s breath catches in their chest. “Y-You would?”
They’ve never been able to seriously entertain the idea of speaking Arabic. Their monolingualism is an old, swollen gash in their belly, never bandaged and liable to tear open. An expectation fallen short of. A connection lost. Though they’d tried to stitch it up themself, stumbling through the beginner’s sections of various textbooks and language apps - the basics that they should’ve known by age three - was more akin to jamming their fingers into the wound to see how much it would still bleed.
Giving up was less painful.
But with Leon to hold their hand through it— with Leon smoothing them over with his herbal pastes and plasters, cooing ‘open wide’ to place an antibiotic on their tongue, patting their head when they swallow for him— it could be different.
“Of course I would, Ryker,” he says earnestly, taking their hands in his. His hands are firm and broad and stable. If sweat is clammying their palms, he’s courteous enough not to point it out. “It’s a parent’s duty. If yours neglected to fulfil that role, it’s the least I can do.”
A “Leon” tumbles from them, as if punched from their chest. Their ribs seem torn between constricting until their lungs pop and floating away entirely. “I’d like that. A lot,” they admit, woefully inadequate as it is. It’s a marvel they have the breath to manage it. “That’s really kind of you.”
Leon’s smile is intimate, disarming, like warm golden phantom-hands pulling a blanket around their shoulders. They have to resist the compulsion to whip around towards the door just to make sure nobody has caught them. As if they’re a kid again, swigging booze behind their parents’ backs. Leon gets to their head worse than any drink.
“It’s no more than you deserve,” he says. And Ryker makes a pathetic little noise in the back of their throat, and surges forward to kiss him on the cheek.
It’s chaste. An outsider might mistake them for a child on their tippy-toes greeting their dad. Leon is still, willfully dormant as they lean into him, though he could so easily grip their slender bird-wrists and force them away. The scruff of his beard rasps against their lips. His body is steady and soft at each point where they’re pressed together into one flesh, his chest, his belly heavy against them, and if they just took him by the hair to bare his neck, they’re sure he’d let them lave at his hot pulse.
It’s only a moment that they linger there, letting the warmth of his skin bloom into theirs. Ryker pulls back. For a fleeting second their lips brush against the corner of his mouth. Then they’re only standing there— his breasts brushing against Ryker’s chest with every inhale, fingers so intertwined it’s difficult to discern where Leon ends and Ryker begins. There’s nothing now to shield them from the mounting pressure of Leon’s gaze. They feel like a bug frying under a magnifying glass.
“You’re a good—” They swallow. “A good friend,” is their lame finish. “I appreciate everything you do for me, a-and I love you a lot, and…”
Leon squeezes their hands with a breathy half-laugh. “I love you too, Ryker,” he tells them, words fanning softly over their face; immeasurably tender, even if he’s only humouring them. They melt a little further into his chest. What a cosmic error for those to be rare words worthy of cherishing from him. They should have heard it every night growing up, as he drew their duvet snugly beneath their chin. “Maybe a little too much.”
They blink several times in rapid succession. “Huh? What?”
Leon smiles down at them, as graciously opaque as ever. He lets loose their hands. In his absence they slump down to Ryker’s sides, cold again. “Let’s get back to cooking now, hm?”
“…o-okay,” they say, feeling somewhat like they’re trying to keep track of the fastest tennis match in the world, head whipping back and forth after the ball until they’re dizzy.
Leon steps away to retrieve his spatula. (They almost stumble forward right back into him again, barely cognisant of how much they were leaning into him— it's a shame their instincts caught them before Leon could.) They take a moment to watch him slide the first crêpe off the pan and onto the cooling rack before they return to the chopping board. It’s beautifully browned, patterned with rings and spots like the surface of the moon.
They pick up the cucumber and turn it in their hands to get a feel for its weight. Its skin has absorbed traces of sun-warmth in its time out the fridge. How strange to hold a vegetable that feels half-alive. It seems a shame to butcher it up, or to have plucked it from its vine in the first place— I’ll make a nice job of cutting it to do well by it, they think, then blush and shake their head at the absurdity.
The tips of the cucumber are sliced off. They almost wince. This procedure broadly resembles the vegetables they cut before; their blade, so much sharper than the cheap kitchen knives Ryker usually works with, sails down the cucumber, and it’s split into two half-moon lengths which they then slice horizontally into thirds. Its exposed flesh glistens. They rotate the chopping board so the cucumbers lie perpendicular to them, and begin to dice in close, delicate cuts.
Leon slaps his thighs. They startle. “Ah, I almost forgot!” he exclaims. “I’d like to add some mint and parsley to the salad. You’ve done more than enough, champ, I won’t ask you to chop the herbs too - is there room on that board to share?”
They ignore the queasy thrill that ‘champ’ sends through them and give him a thumbs up. “Sure, I’ll shuffle over. I’m almost done with this anyway.”
He breezes around his kitchen, plucking herb sprigs that bow under the weight of their abundant leaves from pots on the windowsill, rinsing them under the tap. The brush of his thumbs over their leaves is a borderline caress. They’d trust him more than anybody to handle the delicate herbs without tearing them.
The slap and sizzle-hiss of another crêpe flipped. Focusing pointedly on the task before them, they can sense more than see Leon come up beside them, a dense, hot presence to their left. If they dared to look up at him now, what would they see? Are his eyes fixed on them as much as their thoughts are on him? Is he haloed in the morning light, filtering through the edges of his hair like candlelight through gauze?
They fumble the knife. It narrowly misses slicing through the very tips of their fingers, and clatters to the board.
“Ah-ah, be careful,” Leon chides. “Silly thing. Do you need a plaster?”
“I-I’m fine!” they stammer, face tingling with an unpleasant heat. “I didn’t even touch myself— my fingers, I mean. My hand just slipped.”
“I can finish cutting it for you, if you’d like.”
They stick out their tongue at him. “I’m not a little kid! I can handle it.”
If they were, they’re sure he’d barely let them do this. He’d probably guide their wrist up and down the grater himself to ensure they were nice and careful, taking their hand in his after they inevitably scraped themself anyway, bringing the stinging cut to his lips. The idea is so vivid in their mind it could be taken for a childhood memory. They wonder what his kind mouth would look like, rouged with their blood.
“Are you sure?” he continues, surfacing them from the buoyant, simmering waters of their reverie. “I’d prefer you to leave with all your limbs intact.” They nudge his side with their elbow and grin, somewhat shaky.
“Focus on your own problems, old man. Can you hold a knife properly? Don’t you have arthritis by now?”
“You used to respect me more than this,” Leon says despairingly, and they laugh.
***
After all their work to prepare the ingredients, it takes mere moments to combine them into a dish. It’s a satisfying climax nonetheless. Leon catches their eye and winks affectionately as he pushes the pile of vegetables and herbs into a china bowl; he dresses it with olive oil, a sprinkle of salt and sumac, and an enthusiastic squeeze of lemon. Pleasantly soupy with its own juices, it makes soft wet noises while he stirs it together. Ryker’s mouth waters.
“Voilà!” Leon exclaims. He steps back, broadening their view.
It's been a long while since they've had a salad that looks anything like this. Dainty and fresh, glistening brightly, it's a far cry from the bowls of eggs and olives and broad lettuce leaves that Accardi tells them off for cutting with a knife and fork; yet with more form than the hmiss they can barely recall the taste of.
“It looks great,” they say. A speck of praise, but Leon gives them a small pleased smile regardless. They sometimes wonder why he's never had children of his own. Today has only solidified the query in the front of their mind. Wouldn't he suit it? He seems to get a lot out of cooking, and caretaking, and spending time with young people (at least one of them), scraping by only on the little reward they can provide him with their gratitude.
“You did an excellent job.” Maybe he’s not the only one. Barely skimming their toes across the surface of an ocean of praise, and they’re engulfed in warmth as if they’re bathing in it. “Help me fetch the china, won't you?”
They heave over an old wooden stool for him. Though Ryker isn’t sure they could put any weight on it without anticipating a swift reunion with the ground, Leon steps easily atop it to reach into his highest cabinet. Porcelain clanks together as he stretches his arm right to the back. They’re left eye-level with his lower torso. His trousers are loose, they notice; bunching up with excess material like they were purchased with another person’s body in mind. The fabric is drawn tight only around the swell of his— they avert their eyes.
Maybe it’s for the best he doesn’t have kids, they think, self-soothing after the sudden spike in their heart rate. You wouldn’t want anybody else to divide his attention.
Leon pulls out two large plates; he blows on them, and the sunlight illuminates a spectacular plume of dust fluttering through the air from his lips. They’re passed down to Ryker. Glossy-smooth beneath their hands, the gleaming porcelain bases are swallowed up with blue paint-strokes, fussy renderings of roses and leaves… It’d be too easy for them to slip from their damp palms and crack open across the floor. Their grip tightens instinctively.
“I thought I might pair some leftover marinated artichoke with a nice cheese, for the crêpes,” Leon says as he steps down from the stool. “Would you enjoy that too? You can have anything you like.”
They rub the back of their neck. When they’re feeling adventurous enough to cook anything more elaborate than a sandwich at home - an achievement by itself, given their tendency to eat a bag of nectarines over the sink as a meal - the fillings aren’t fancy. Cheese and tomato, cheese and ham. Whatever they can scrounge from the fridge. When’s the last time they even had an artichoke…?
“Oh, um, yeah, I’d love that, if you don’t mind. Really pulling out all the stops here, haha…”
Passing by them to the stovetop, he pats their shoulder, a moment of contact before his hand slips away. His fingertips brush over the junction of their neck; only a thin layer of fabric separates his skin from theirs. A fizzling tingle up their nape. They shiver. He gives them a knowing, amused look.
“I wanted to do something special for you,” he says. From his mouth, it sounds like the most natural thing in the world.
Ryker flushes hot. They are in for a long breakfast.