Page 39 of Seal the Deal
“I think you’re a pain in my ass,” Andrew grumbles, marching towards the kitchen.
“Speaking of ass?—”
“No.” Andrew’s expression stops anything else Nicholas means to say. “I’m going to get the ice cream. Do you have any dietary needs or sensory preferences?”
“Uh, no.”
“Good then just…get on the couch and sit there. And behave.”
Nicholas obeys, glad when Andrew turns away from him so he can grab a couch cushion to disguise his reaction to being bossed around. Nicholas has always hated being told what to do, but apparently he doesn’t mind so much when it comes from Andrew.
“You better not be snooping,” Andrew yells.
“I’m not, but thank you for the idea.”
Andrew curses under his breath followed by the sound of jangling cutlery. When he returns, it is with two pints of ice cream, each wrapped in a dish cloth. He passes one to Nicholas before settling himself into the opposite corner of the couch, his legs tucked underneath him as he rests the ice cream on his knee. Very carefully, he peels off the lid, depositing it upside down on the coffee table before he digs a spoon into his pint and lifts it to his mouth.
Unsurprisingly, Andrew seems to be eating vanilla ice cream, as white as his sweatsuit. White like the couch. White like the carpet. So much fucking white.
“Do you hate color or something?” Nicholas asks, opening his own ice cream. It’s something brown with copious swirls of fudge and chunks. Far different than Andrew’s and likely not kept in the freezer for him. Does he keep this in his freezer for dates? Or his brothers? Somehow the first thought makes him irrationally jealous. He doesn’t like the idea of anyone else seeing Andrew fresh out of the shower with his socked feet shoved into the couch cushions and his slightly damp hair curling up at his neck.
Andrew looks so much younger like this, stripped down. Nicholas is reminded of being a child and taken out shopping by the nanny. If he saw something he wanted, he got it, but the piles of toys in his play room never filled the loneliness in his heart.
Looking at Andrew, he has the same irrational urge to keep him all to himself.
Nicholas is terrible at sharing. Maybe it’s because he was an only child, maybe it’s because he was a spoiled rich kid, or maybe it’s because he’s a possessive asshole. Whatever the reason, he doesn’t want anyone else eating stupid fucking ice cream with Andrew on the couch.
“Not exactly,” Andrew says a minute later, taking so long to answer Nicholas has to pause to recall what he asked in thefirst place. “My mind is…loud. Having everything the same—it’s quieter. You look surprised.”
“Well, yeah,” Nicholas admits. “You’re just, you know?—”
“You can say it,” Andrew urges, popping a spoonful of vanilla ice cream into his mouth. He licks the spoon, his pink tongue swirling around the metal.
“You’re really fucking calm and collected. Unless you’re breaking shit at a rage room.”
“That won’t happen again.”
“It should and it will,” Nicholas objects, determined to make sure Andrew lets it out. He’ll never forget the first time he went to one, the first time he finally had a safe private place to let out the kind of feelings he could usually only get out in the middle of a fist fight on the ice. Andrew deserves that.
“My parents worked a lot,” Andrew unexpectedly offers. “They’re both amazing, but they were gone a lot when I was a kid. People needed them, you know? Myabuelahad her hands full helping watch us when they were gone, which was most of the time. I had a lot of sleeping issues as a kid and Charlie is, well—Charlie. Our younger brother Jason was a pretty good kid, but he was a rambunctious and emotional kid, and he all but adopted his best friend Theo when they were seven, so he was always at our house, too. Then when I was eleven, my mom got pregnant with Alec by accident, and Alec was…a handful. As a baby, he never stopped crying, and then once he learned to walk, he never stopped moving. By the time Alec was a toddler, me and Charlie were teenagers, and Charlie had a lot of big feelings during puberty. A lot. It was just easier when I needed less.”
“Easier on who?” Nicholas challenges.
“Everyone else.”
“Fuck that.” Nicholas takes a bite of ice cream, savoring the salty sweet mix of chocolate and salted caramel. He lets it melt in his mouth before he adds, “I don’t like your fucking family.”
“They’re great,” Andrew protests.
Nicholas scoffs, unsure how anyone great could make Andrew feel so shitty. “If you say so.”
“I do say so,” Andrew frowns. “I like being there when my family needs me.”
“What about when you need them?”
“I don’t,” Andrew answers, quick enough to know it’s not the first time he’s thought of it. “I love them though. That’s all that matters.”
“Family is fucking stupid,” Nicholas grumbles, slumping into the sofa and taking a massive bite of his ice cream. “Speaking of you being ace.”
