“Don’t look!” he said and smacked his hand over the picture.
“Close it for now.”
He pouted but listened. There was an outraged gasp as he looked at his pizza that had me chuckling.
“What now, bud?”
I got another pouty squint in my direction. “There’s a pepper!” He pointed at one of the two slices on his plate. “Are you serious about all this gross green stuff?”
His outrage was so real I had no idea if he was playing or not, or if he really did hate veggies and he was just allowing himself to go to town with it. I firmed up my resolve. “Where?”
“Right. There.” He pointed at the tip of one of his slices, where it might have been joined to one of my pieces that had peppers and sausage, along with the traditional pepperoni I’d gotten on his half. “I see you want me to eat a salad.” He shook his head slowly. “You can’t go ruining good pizza with salad parts, too.”
I showed him my plate of pizza. He made a face, so of course I couldn’t let that go as his Big Brother. I picked a piece up and took a huge bite. The flavors were great and the peppers weren’t even bitter like they could be sometimes. “Come on. Man up.”
“Nice try,” he grumbled, “but they’re poison.”
“They won’t kill you.”
He flopped back on the beanbag chair, and I dropped my slice to my plate, concerned, but then he stuck his tongue out of his mouth. He lifted his head. “It already did.” And then he went back to his death.
He was so committed I couldn’t help but chuckle. I tapped his nose, and he swatted at my hand. “What if I go look for another poison-free piece?”
“Would you do that for me?”
“Anything for you, bud.” This was so easy and more fun than I’d thought it would be. We could tease each other. I wasn’t sure why I’d even worried about not being Daddy in the first place. I scooped up his plate and went on a mission to go out and investigate all the slices to make sure there was no ‘poison’ on them.
“Thank you, Casey bear,” he yelled. I’d never heard his voice that loud.
My heart soared and I turned on my heel.
He sat up and I hated the way he shrank in on himself. “Is that okay? You’re just… kind of growly.”
I went back over to him and dropped to a knee, so I could plant a kiss on his forehead. The warmth of his skin had me wanting his lips. “That’s perfect.”
His breath caught and he rubbed his feet against the floor. There was wood in his pants—a nice thick bulge I wanted to play with. What had caused it? Tame didn’t begin to cover his playtime. I wanted to take him upstairs and fuck him right now. There was no way it was anywhere near bedtime for a lot of reasons, the least being that we still hadn’t managed to eat.
“Do you have a problem, baby brother?”
“M’not a baby,” he whispered, but he ducked his head.
I forced myself to my feet before I could do something he might not want yet. When I came back from the kitchen, he scoured his pizza slice for anything even remotely close to healthy, and when he was satisfied he dragged the remote over and started the movie again. He let out a happy whoop when I produced a can of Pepsi for him from my pocket and popped the tab. I set the can in the center of the table because I didn’t want him to knock it off the edge, and he gave me a look like maybe he knew what I was thinking was too parental and disapproved.
“Yes! I was low-key worried you didn’t like sugar.”
“Salad,” I reminded him blandly. He ignored me and ate his pizza and guzzled down the can of Pepsi. I finally took his plate and the empty pop can and replaced it with a glass of water and the salad. He pouted his way through the vegetables, and I thought about making an issue of his bad attitude, but I didn’t want to do that on our first night.
Hopefully we would have plenty of other nights for me to correct him… and see where that led.
When I was done eating and had settled back against the couch, I couldn’t help but notice he was hunched over his paper again.
“What are you drawing?”
“Nothing.”
“Psst.”
He glanced back, and I lightly poked him in the side. He giggled and the sound was like music. He flashed the paper at me, and I was astounded. He had a definite theme, that was for sure. Comics. The character he had drawn was inside a square like he was in a graphic novel, adorable, but clearly a hero of some sort. It was a man with huge blue eyes in a bear costume with a cape, wielding a computer mouse like a weapon. Those eyebrows were vaguely familiar, along with his angular jawline, and I would have maybe been irritated, but the drawing was too professional.
