Incubus Dreams - Laurell K. Hamilton [92]
He handed me my baby penguin mug with coffee nearly to the brim, just the color I liked it, pale brown. By the color alone, I knew it would be perfect. “Drink,” he said, “you’ll feel better once you’ve had some coffee.”
“I feel fine,” I said, but I sipped the coffee. Perfect.
He’d also already plugged in the coffeemaker. I was right about the French press not making enough coffee at a time to satisfy this many people. Hell, it barely made enough for my early morning needs. “We’ve got enough for one more cup, who wants it? There’ll be more in a few minutes.” He smiled at the room in general, getting more of the blue and green mugs out of the cabinet.
“He acts like it’s his kitchen,” Richard said.
“He cooks in it more than I do,” I said.
Richard made a visible effort not to shake his head, though he wanted to. “No, I mean . . . Jason is Jean-Claude’s pomme de sang, but he doesn’t move around the Circus of the Damned like he owns it. Nathaniel acts like this is his home.”
Nathaniel had his back to the room, but he was close enough to me that I felt his sudden stillness, as he poured coffee and tried to pretend he couldn’t hear.
“It is his home,” I said.
I was standing close enough to him to hear the slight sigh of his breath, as if he’d held it waiting to hear what I’d say. He was careful not to look at me, but he was smiling as he puttered with the coffee.
“Jason lives with Jean-Claude, but he isn’t . . .” Richard seemed at a loss for words.
Lillian helped him out. “Jean-Claude wouldn’t have minded me remarking how cute Jason was, you minded when I said something about Nathaniel. If they’re both pomme de sangs, then I think Richard and I are both confused about how we’re supposed to act around them. Not boyfriend, not lover, it can get a little confusing.”
Nathaniel was very carefully not looking at me, or anyone, but especailly not me. I don’t know how I knew that he wasn’t just busy getting real cream out of the fridge to pour into an honest-to-God cream pitcher. The little pitcher was blue, and the sugar bowl was green, so the mugs matched everything. I knew his favorite color was purple, and had asked him why blue and green, and not purple? His reply was that blue was my favorite color, and green was Micah’s favorite color. The answer seemed to make sense to him. It didn’t really make sense to me, but I was beginning to learn that things didn’t have to make sense to me if it made the people around me happy, and the new dishes seemed to make Nathaniel very happy.
He set the creamer and pitcher on a little tray, along with little tongs for the sugar cubes. Why sugar cubes? Because Nathaniel seemed to get a kick out of asking how many lumps people wanted. He was like a kid playing house. No, that wasn’t fair. He was like a new bride that had never had a house, or a kitchen of her own, and was really enjoying the hostess stuff. But it was like he didn’t know what real people did in a house, so he was taking it from movies, books, or magazines. I mean nobody serves cream and sugar anymore on a little tray with little tongs, right?
Nathaniel was wearing one of his favorite pairs of blue jeans, so faded that they were turning white in places. They fit his lower body like they were painted on, and it was a nice paint job. His shoulders had broadened since he moved in with me. He was filling out, developing the body he’d have for the rest of his life, if he took care of it. A “late bloomer,” my grandmother would have called him. He’d looked younger than he was for years, a delicate body to match the eyes and hair. It had made him popular with a certain kind of clientele that his old Nimir-Raj had pimped him out to. Muscles moved in his arms, shoulders, and back, as he set the tray on the table and began to pass out mugs of coffee. I watched him asking, “How many lumps?