Azkadellia's Okay! Part 8: Judgment Questioned; Test Given.
Scarily enough, this is only one of the fic posts I'll be doing today. Apparently I multi-task?
Banner by magicscalpel~!
AUTHORS: andrealyn and luchia13
TITLE: Azkadellia's Okay! (With Ambrose and the Cains' help), Part 8: Judgment Questioned; Test Given.
RATING: PG-13.
PAIRING: Ambrose/Cain (or Cain/Ambrose, whatever), VERY FUTURE Az/OC, Jeb/OC/OC
DESCRIPTION: When the Witch picks another target, everything changes. Including switching out the Roboparents for Ambrose and the only Tin Man who knows what's going on (and his kid).
This Part: Cain goes back, Ambrose starts a war, Azkadellia is nobody's mother, and Jeb does not, in fact, know Q.
Part 1: Things Explode; Iceland Blamed.
Part 2: Pink House Purchased; Introductions Ensue.
Part 3: Fight In Classroom; Landslide Victory.
Part 4: Cain Doesn't Move; Children Scream.
Part 5: Countries Massacred; Restaurant Warned.
Part 6: Dog In Prison; Keys Lost.
Part 7: Woman Hurt; Ship Sinks.
Azkadellia's Okay!
(With Ambrose and the Cains' help)
Part 8: Judgment Questioned; Test Given.
several months before
He'd come home punctually from his day out with Miss Miller, still dressed in his finest (which for Cain translated into a fine-fitting pair of black slacks, a silk button-down and a jacket). He'd left at nine in the morning and it was five o'clock as he sauntered into the kitchen and ruffled Jeb's hair, kissing Azkadellia on the cheek while he started opening the fridge and digging out food to cook.
He saw Ambrose too, but mostly ignored him and started to whistle as he made his way around the kitchen to prepare dinner for the lot of them, so invigorated and happy as he seemed.
"Jeb, Az, finish your homework and after dinner, we can even get ice cream, okay?" he promised with an easy grin on his face, turning to chop some vegetables up and to start the stovetop and cook some pasta.
Ambrose was immediately suspicious. Ice cream? Grinning? Whistling? Not to mention he was cooking pasta. Sure, it was easy to make and everything, but he just kept staring at Cain, wondering what had happened to make him so...so happy. It was genuinely disturbing, so he set down the book he'd been reading and leaned against the counter, watching him as the kids went off to get their homework done.
"What happened?" Ambrose found himself asking. He'd meant to ask 'What happened to you' but he hesitated in the middle, remembering it probably wasn't his business, but...still. This was not regular Cain behavior.
Cain looked to his side and gave Ambrose the tightly-controlled grin he had, the one where he wanted to smile a lot wider, but he knew would look a little out of place (not to mention rude). So he just went about salting the water and easing the pasta in, leaning back to look through the door and see just how out of earshot Jeb and Azkadellia were.
"We had a good time," he said, shifting past Ambrose to get out the strainer and a bowl for the vegetables. "Coffee, lunch, movie. Then we went dancing for a while and I let her step on my feet," he said with a broad grin, yanking Ambrose's hand without warning and spinning him out of the way as Cain switched places to wash vegetables under the water at the sink. "Why? Did I miss something around here?"
Ambrose actually found himself nearly taking the hand back out of habit, just about ready to dance the creepy, happy version of Cain around the kitchen. He hadn't even known Cain could dance. Almost said 'I wouldn't step on your feet' too, but instead he watched the chopping. Watched Cain. "You had a good time," he found himself repeating blandly. Finally, Ambrose just shook his head. "Only thing you missed was Scrabble and Azkadellia's continuing attempts at getting me to let her in the lab. Normal day in the house."
"Who won?" he asked, of the Scrabble. "Or rather, who'd you let win?"
"Jeb actually won fair and square," Ambrose said, a small smile coming onto his lips, and shook his head. "He managed to put down quizzers, and there were all types of absurd bonus points and...well. Basically he destroyed us with one word."
If it was possible, the smile on Cain's face got even broader and he didn't take his eyes off Ambrose for a long moment while he basked in the knowledge that a Cain had beat him. "That's my boy," Cain praised proudly. "Definitely have to give him a pat on the back for that, later," he said, mostly to remind himself. "Anyway. Is it illegal for me to have a good time now?" he asked, popping a green pepper past his lips and chewing it idly as he watched Ambrose. Good conversation came of making sure both parties knew they were having a dialogue and not just nattering at a wall.
He rolled his eyes. "Yes, you're allowed to have fun, but this is..." Ambrose paused, trying to think of the most polite way to say what was on his mind. "This seems more like you had a very good time."
"I did have a very good time. Miss Miller's sweet. She reminds me of some women I used to know," he said calmly.
Ambrose barely restrained himself from repeating Cain's words again. He also nearly had to take a deep breath and force himself to just stop feeling so...so whatever he felt like. "I almost feel like I need to defend your honor or something," he said aloud, frowning. Finally he looked at Cain. "She might be sweet but she still bought you, you know."
Cain rolled his eyes at that, turning back to the cooking and dousing a pan with oil (if it had four steps or less, he could do it; any more than that and he was lost in the Cooking Sea). "You don't have to take it so literally. Besides, we'd gone out before she 'bought me'," he pointed out, words a bit sharper now. "And I can defend my own honor, thanks."
He blinked. "Oh. Right." Ambrose's hand went into his hair as he leaned fully against the counter, watching Cain cook. "I just don't really like the difference between a date and 'Buy A Day With Wyatt Cain' is all." He said it in a good impression of an airy, distant voice. "You could have been bought by some criminal with a grudge." He paused, giving Cain a look that wasn't very pleased or happy. "Or the police. Maybe I should have bought you for the faculty, made you grade multiple choice tests all day for the department."
With the pasta boiling and the vegetables ready to fry up quickly, Cain leaned back against the counter and relaxed, letting his shoulders ease from the tension they carried. Cain just endured whatever Ambrose saw fit to push at him because dinner was about done and he had it plated in as simple a way as he could. But really, he was still in a good mood and THAT might have been the strangest thing at all. He just grinned at Ambrose while he set out cutlery.
"Whatever you say, Ambrose," he agreed in a laissez-faire tone. He set aside a separate plate for himself. "Jeb, Az, dinner," he called out to the other room. “Since we'll go for ice cream later on, I have to eat out in the house."
"But Mr. Cain!"
"Dad!"
"I have work," Cain admitted. “Seeing as I spent the whole day doing things that were decidedly not work. Here. Ambrose will eat with you, though and in a couple hours, I'll drive us down for sundaes, okay?" There was quiet grumbling, but he was able to get his things (and snatch a beer from the fridge) and head out the back door to his small house. And he did so without letting Ambrose get the last word.
Ambrose was stuck just staring at the door, mouth gaping at the fact he'd practically been dismissed. Three fourths of him wanted to follow the man out and shout until he couldn't speak, but that other fourth was the loyalty part, so he found himself simply shaking his head and sitting down with the kids for dinner.
The food was good, they talked about their day, Azkadellia and Jeb started taunting each other and Ambrose had to threaten to deflate Cain's tires so they couldn't go get ice cream to make them stop. And, of course, Azkadellia took the opportunity to bring up the lab. Again. But this time, apparently she had Jeb to back her up.
"No, I'm not letting either of you in the lab," he said, sick and tired of this argument. "You don't get to go in because there's extremely dangerous stuff inside of it. When I think you're mature enough, I'll show you what's down there. Neither of you are at that point. Can you pass the pasta?"
And dinner went on, finally leaving Ambrose with dirty dishes, two extremely giddy children (it didn't matter that Azkadellia was already getting into high school, she was still a kid), and a very strong urge to strangle Cain.
Ambrose took it out on the dishes. They received quite possibly the most vicious scrubbing known to mankind.
Cain came back to return his plates, finding Ambrose at the sink looking to murder the serving bowls and he set his plates down on the counter loud enough to make a sound. "You coming with us?" he asked curiously. "Or should I bring you back your favorite?"
Ambrose wanted to break Cain's plates, but he liked the pattern so he just stuck it under the faucet, passing yet another bowl to Cain. "I'll stay here, work a little bit," Ambrose said as civilly as he could, and cleared his throat to get rid of at least some of the venom. "I'm still fixing things from whatever shut down the power."
Cain eased in to help with the dishes, taking a cloth in one hand to dry the wet ones, standing nearly hip-to-hip with Ambrose. "You know, Nina. Miss Miller. She pointed something out to me today about widowers. She sees a couple of 'em, working with as many parents as she does."
He paused at the widowers thing. "Does she." Sure, it was a prompt for him to keep talking, but Ambrose managed to say more in his quiet, dark tone than he'd like to admit. Miss Miller this, Miss Miller that, he wanted to punch Cain and pin him to the refrigerator door and to tell him to just stop. But instead he just kept on scrubbing. "What'd she say?"
Cain nodded at Ambrose's question and kept drying where he could, getting every little stray droplet off. "She said," he started quietly, so the kids wouldn't overhear (especially Jeb), "that they spend too much time living in the shadow of a person who would've wanted them, the widower or widow, to go on and live. Because Adora loves me doesn't mean I have to die along with her. Apparently, that's a common mistake."
He was staring out the window closest to the sink as he spoke, watching the sun in the sky and digging out his keys, clearing his throat.
Ambrose let out a light sigh, looking at Cain. "Doesn't mean you should go plowing into things head-on, either," he said, just as quiet. "When I thought Az was dead, I..." Ambrose laughed lightly. "Well. I was stupid. I didn't lose her, though. So just..." He sighed. "Just make decisions you think they'd be proud of, or at least okay with. I still haven't told Azkadellia what I tried to do, and I don't ever want her to-" He stopped, realizing he'd just been ready to admit all his sins from that horrible period of mourning.
Cain stared critically at Ambrose at that admission and he spoke up quietly with an, "Ambrose..." but he knew nothing was going to come out of that, so he quieted himself. "I'll uh, we should get going. We'll just get the ice cream and come back. What do you want?"
Ambrose blushed, grabbing the dishes and putting them away. "Chocolate with chocolate sprinkles and just lots and lots of chocolate. Azkadellia knows what I like." He smiled slightly over his shoulder. "But it can be summed up in 'lots of chocolate' if she gets too precise."
"Chocolate it is," he agreed, hesitating in the doorway and smiling to himself still as he watched Ambrose. That hadn't been all he and Miss Miller had talked about and it had helped him in a general way.
By the time he piled Azkadellia and Jeb in the car and got them to the local ice cream parlor, the sun had nearly dipped in the sky. When they got back, Jeb had ice cream all over his chin and Azkadellia was savoring her choice of frozen yogurt with a lot more dignity while Cain juggled the double-triple-chocolate-brownie-heart-attack for Ambrose with a plain vanilla cup, topped with an orange sorbet. He sent Jeb up to the bathroom to clean up and Azkadellia wandered off on her own, saying something about Toto.
It was just a matter, then, of finding Ambrose. "Ambrose?" he called out, closing the front door behind him carefully. "I think my hand's twitching from sugar just from the proximity of your dessert," he called out in warning.
There was a very loud thumping noise that probably echoed through the entire house, followed by the lab's door swinging open, Ambrose peeking out around him before closing it behind him. He grinned as he caught sight of the horrifically chocolately chocolate ice cream, and walked over so eagerly that he ended up practically gliding, old habits snapping in. You don't run, you move gracefully and quickly. Ambrose was really starting to hate all that training.
"If your hand's twitching it's not sugar, it's the caffeine in chocolate. Works pretty well for migraines, actually." That didn't keep Ambrose from practically jumping around as much as the kids had been at the sight of it.
Cain just grinned at the sight and gave Ambrose a curious look, setting his own down. "Is that so?" he asked, good and calm, picking up the spoon and poking around layers of chocolate. "Well, maybe I ought to just trade you. Vanilla and orange. Chocolate." He gave a 'huh' like he really had to think it over and he took a large step back to eat a lazy spoon's worth of Ambrose's ice cream, licking it good and slow.
Ambrose swallowed, trying to ignore the tongue. Trying, and failing. "But you...you were just complaining about it," he said, and shook himself out of the tunnel vision focusing entirely on Cain's mouth and yanked the chocolate towards him, like it was a wall between them, and immediately scooped some into his mouth. He sighed happily at the flavor, smiling a bit stupidly as he swallowed. "It's always so good," he practically purred, and went for another scoop, glancing up at Cain with a frown as he put the spoon into his mouth and swallowed again. "My chocolate. You get your...vanilla-orange thing."
Cain picked it up without much of an argument, studying it by tipping it up to the light and looking it up and down. But really, he was watching Ambrose and wasn't even trying to hide it. From his tongue to his lips to the tone of his voice and gods, but it'd been so long and that night in the truck wouldn't leave Cain alone. "You could always come by my house and tell me why chocolate's so much better," he gave the offer lightly, arching one brow.
Azkadellia was outside and Jeb was upstairs and no one would overhear Cain's offer, as it was.
Ambrose nearly choked on the chocolate at that, leaving him a coughing, staring mess for a while as he wondered if he'd honestly heard that right. But he kept on coughing and had to set the chocolate down, finally managing to breathe, although it was more like panting.
"You...you just couldn't wait until the spoon was out of my mouth at least?" Ambrose said lightly, trying not to panic because he really, really wanted to say yes but most of him thought that really, there was something incredibly stupid about saying yes, so he just stood and got his breath back together and thought.
Cain was calm as a pond on a clear day while he watched Ambrose react, smiling broadly, hanging up the keys on the rack where they went as he nodded towards the door, implying with absolutely no words that the conversation they had in the small house would be a lot better than this one. "Finish up the ice cream," Cain said, recalling that at the last minute (his own cupped in his palm and giving him chills). "I'll be there if you decide to come over."
"You sure you want it finished?" Ambrose asked idly without even really thinking about it, taking another spoonful and raising an eyebrow at Cain. He swallowed, and took another spoonful, fairly certain his mind was already made up but genuinely confused at what he should be thinking this was. Or could be. Or...whatever. Sometimes all the thinking he did was overrated.
"Well," Cain said evenly, as if he wasn't twitching as it was and it had nothing to do with caffeine, "I'd rather you make good on that promise you made me in the truck the other night, but you're gonna need all the energy you can get, sweetheart," he added, a little lascivious. "So you'd best finish that and come join me."
Smug and content with his rejoinder, Cain tipped his hat to Ambrose and walked (almost sauntered) out back and he unlocked the door and kept it slightly open behind him as he started clearing things off the desk and the bed and the floor. Just in case.
Ambrose frowned, eating his ice cream and trying to think about what kind of promise he made in the truck. And why he'd been in it at night, or the other night, or what Cain was even talking about-
The chocolate ice cream clattered to the floor, and Ambrose smacked a hand over his mouth as he put the pieces together. Cain had driven him home when he was drunk. That probably meant he'd been absolutely smashed and been talking absolute nonsense that was entirely true.
The hand was over his mouth to cover all the profanity he was hissing out and didn't want the kids to hear. Even if they were both practically guaranteed to be in their rooms the rest of the night, shouting curses at the top of his lungs might have been bad.
His hands were shaking when he cleaned up the ice cream, and they were clenched in fists when he walked into the little pink house, slamming the door behind him. "What the hell did I say when I was drunk?"
Cain looked up at Ambrose and furrowed his brow, wandering ever-closer as he made sure the door was locked (if they were needed, Toto could alert them loudly) enough. "You don't..." remember. Cain was a proponent for honesty, no matter how bad it was, so he nodded the once and leveled Ambrose with a serious look. "I drove you home. You were babbling on about stealing the Queen's underwear and how you were an advisor when you were too young and things about the truck's roof and when I kissed you, you kissed back," he admitted simply. "So I dragged you into the truck and I got you off."
It almost sounded very clinical, the factual way he was saying it all. Cain brushed his palms over his shirt to ignore the fact that they were sweaty, the only sign of his discomfort.
"And you said one day you were planning on fucking me good and hard into a mattress," he added, sounding ever-so-casual like they were just discussing what was for lunch the next day. "Well, that and a lot about how we should have had sex, but I put you to bed and turned everything off in the lab, like you asked." By that point in his speech, Cain had perched himself atop his desk, just watching Ambrose for the reaction.
It took a moment for Ambrose to process all of that, during which he was mostly staring at Cain and blinking. Finally, he walked over, and ended up snickering. "I can't believe I told you about the underwear," he said, and then grabbed a handful of Cain's shirt to yank him into a hard, fierce kiss. He pulled back, and smirked, giving him an innocent look that was very, very dirty. "Oh my. Looks like there's a mattress over there. Whatever shall I do."
"Better make good on your promise," Cain mumbled in reply, looking all parts relieved and like a heavy burden had been lifted off his chest. He had gone from 'not allowed' to 'not allowed to hesitate anymore' and he gave as good as he got when it came to that fierce kiss, nearly smashing his lips back against Ambrose's and tugging on his lower lip with his teeth before wrapping an arm around his neck and yanking him closer yet to kiss him deeply, his other arm wrapping around Ambrose's waist as he dragged them both in the direction of the thoroughly-clean bed.
--
Jeb was sitting at the kitchen table plugging away at his homework just as diligently as ever when Ambrose slid inside the room, watching him for a moment. Jeb looked up and smiled at him quietly, and Ambrose smiled back a bit thinly. When Ambrose didn’t say anything for a long while, Jeb turned from his homework, frowning at the dark-haired professor.
“What’s going on?” Jeb asked quietly, his pencil hitting the table with a light click. It was later than Jeb was normally awake, considering he’d had an away basketball game that afternoon and had to catch up on what he’d missed for it, and Ambrose interrupting homework for something other than advice was a rare thing indeed. In fact, seeing Ambrose quiet and somber was even rarer. The only time that really ever happened was on the day the Cains had come to realize was DG’s birthday, and since that was in November and it was January, that wasn’t the problem. Jeb stood up. “Ambrose?”
Ambrose hesitated for a moment. “Are you almost done with your homework?” Ambrose knew he was doing nothing but stalling, hoping to give Jeb just that extra bit of time to be nothing but a second-grader, just a kid. But he’d tried it with Azkadellia, and he had a feeling it’d work out just about the same.
“It’s nothing I can’t finish before school in the morning,” Jeb said, frowning at Ambrose, who simply nodded. “What’s going on?” He’d already asked the question, but the man was acting so out of the ordinary that Jeb honestly couldn’t think of any other question.
Ambrose gave Jeb a small smile. “Follow me,” he said simply, and Jeb did as he was told, following Ambrose all the way to the door that led downstairs, leaving the blond-haired boy blinking as Ambrose unlocked it and waited for Jeb to walk down.
Nobody got to go into the Lab. His father had a spare key for emergencies, but that and Ambrose’s key were the only ones Jeb could think of that let someone inside of the basement of their house. At his hesitation, Ambrose motioned with his arm. “I have to lock it behind us, and I’d still like you to get to bed at a decent hour you know.”
Jeb smiled, considering that Ambrose sounded much more like himself, and nodded, walking through the door and down the sturdy stairs, slowing a bit when he got a good look at the contents of the room, hearing the click of the lock behind them. There were three tables with one rolling swivel office chair, two huge bulletin boards with schematics on them, and a mass of metal…stuff against the wall, another room locked off to the side.
“You really are a mad scientist, aren’t you?” Jeb asked, frowning as he moved forward and looked at one of the sketches on the first of the three tables.
“I’m not mad,” Ambrose protested, already moving past Jeb and towards the second door. The thing looked almost like one of the vault doors in all those bank robbery movies. “Well, usually at least. In that insane ‘it’s alive’ kind of way I’m never mad, but…well.” He laughed lightly, starting on the combination, turning the thing over and over, making a nine-number combination. “You’ve heard how frustrated I can get with your father.”
With a smooth whirr, the door popped open just a bit. Ambrose paused again, and took a deep breath, hand on the handle that would open the massive slab of metal. He looked straight at Jeb. “Jeb Cain, you are aware that Azkadellia is princess and heir to the throne of the O.Z. and must be protected as best we can manage, yes?”
His spine straightened immediately. “Yes, sir.”
“And you are willing to help in the protection of the Princess?” Ambrose asked.
Jeb nodded. “I’d do anything-”
“Don’t say that, Jeb,” Ambrose stated, face going pale. “Don’t ever say you’d do anything. I could tell you to shoot yourself in the head and you’d have to do it.” Jeb paled, but Ambrose plowed along. “Never, ever, ever say you’ll do anything for a cause unless you really would be willing to put a bullet in your brain for it, and I’m not going to even let you try and make that choice for yourself right now. All I want to know is if I can trust you to stand for her.”
“She’s practically my big sister,” Jeb said, completely serious. “I’ll protect her with everything I’ve got.”
Ambrose smiled at that. It was a sad smile, but still a smile. “You’re about to have a lot more to protect her with then, Jeb,” he said, and swung the door open, walking into the darkness, Jeb on his heels. “Don’t close the door behind you.” He didn’t, and honestly hadn’t had any intention of doing so. With a door that big, he didn’t want to know what could happen if it managed to jam and trap them inside of here.
“Jeb, I haven’t talked to Cain about this, and that was for a very, very good reason,” Ambrose said, and flicked on a lightswitch. Something whirred, and two lights buzzed, flickering on. “I’d like to introduce you to quite possibly some of the most sophisticated and dangerous equipment on the Otherside that isn’t related to nuclear explosives.”
Jeb blinked. He was looking at one wall of things that looked like completely ordinary, boring objects, another wall that was a cot, a toilet, and five shelves of canned goods, and another wall that was very, very obviously nothing but very dangerous…things, most of them looking like bombs.
“…whoa,” Jeb said, eyes wide, staring at the third wall and taking a step towards it, only for Ambrose to put a hand on his shoulder and twist him around to face all the normal-looking stuff. Jeb frowned.
“I said not related to nuclear explosives,” Ambrose said blandly, walking over and pulling a belt off the shelf, looking at it with a bemused smile. “Maybe in another four or five years you’ll get to learn about that wall, but for now, don’t touch anything over there.”
Jeb’s jaw dropped. “You mean-”
“This is a bomb,” Ambrose interrupted, holding up the belt. “And best of all, it’s a bomb you can both use as an adhesive explosive or throw like a grenade, and walk around wearing with nobody knowing a single thing about the fact you could blow up a small house with it.” He pointed to the strap. “Adhesive explosive.” He pointed to two small buttons on the top and bottom of the buckle. “This is what makes it…well, sticky, instead of malleable like a belt. It doesn’t have to be sticky to make it explode, but that’s the adhesive explosive part - stick it to what you want to blow up, and run. It takes about forty seconds for the fuse to ignite and blow, and you trigger that like this.” He pulled the two pieces of the buckle around and pressed them to the metal base. “You do this very, very firmly because I don’t want you exploding accidentally.”
“But-” Jeb began, backing up at the realization the belt could explode and kill them.
Ambrose grinned, and tapped the two pieces to the metal base, flicking them back to the normal belt position. “And now the fuse is off, and it’s nothing but a fancy strip of plastic that holds your pants up and can blow things up if you feel like something is a serious threat.”
Jeb gaped, realizing that if the belt could do that, the rest of the normal-looking things had to be just as dangerous.
Ambrose grinned, handing the belt over. “The CIA would kill for this stuff.”
“It’s like you’re Q,” Jeb blurted, noticing the array of watches and shoes and even a soccer ball. A soccer ball that could probably…shoot out explosive electrified spikes or something.
Ambrose frowned. “…Q like on Star Trek?”
“No, no, like James Bond’s Q!” Jeb’s eyes grew wide. “I’m James Bond!”
“Whoa, whoa, hold on there now,” Ambrose said hastily. “No trick car, no…secret agent stuff, no James Bond or espionage or anything. This is all just to make sure Azkadellia stays safe, and you stay safe too. Some day, things are going to get bad, very, very bad, and we have to be prepared. You are not James Bond, Jeb.”
Jeb nodded, but still couldn’t help but grin. He was getting 007 gadgets. “Okay, what’s next?”
“Bedtime,” Ambrose said very, very seriously, already gently pulling Jeb out of the vault, who was frowning, belt still clasped carefully in his hands. “We’ll get you some practice with less belt-looking belts I have when it’s not a school night and your father won’t catch us sneaking out.” He closed the vault door firmly, spinning the dial as the lock let out a hiss, and then a thunk-noise. “This never happened, and I just bought you a belt, okay?”
“Okay,” Jeb nodded, smiling up at Ambrose.
“And if you end up in a fight, the things you get from me are your last line of defense, and I’d honestly prefer you ran,” Ambrose went on, moving up the stairs and opening the door to the rest of the house, where Ambrose wasn’t making explosive belts and bombs and things that could destroy half of Baker and wasn’t…Q-ish. Jeb frowned, though, when Ambrose didn’t leave the basement with him. The man smiled, shifting a bit. “…I still have some things to do.”
“Alright,” Jeb nodded, smiling, and went back to his homework. He finished it up and set it aside so it was ready for school in the morning, and finally went up to bed, still holding the belt.
He couldn’t help himself when he was brushing his teeth though. He grinned at the mirror, pulling the belt on.
“Cain. Jeb Cain.”
--
Cain had been waiting for Azkadellia to return from school and he hadn’t moved from his position at the kitchen table. He had been at the high school for a regular check-up under the guise of the town’s safety program when he’d overheard Azkadellia holding ‘counsel’ with her little group and the topic of him and Ambrose had come up.
Words like ‘screw-partners’ and ‘fuckbuddies’ kept getting lobbed around, but there was one pointed thing to notice and that had been the general air of discomfort the schoolchildren had possessed while talking about the subject. Their voices were tense and they seemed like they were going along with it for Azkadellia’s sake.
Cain had been sure that it was only for Azkadellia that they even bothered to entertain the subject when The Event came to pass.
“That’s so disgusting,” one of the boys had muttered. Cain was around the corner, barely able to overheard, but they all seemed to enunciate and talk loudly - probably in some misguided gambit to get Azkadellia’s attention. “I mean, they’re two guys. That’s just not right.”
It wasn’t that Cain hadn’t expected that at all, but what he didn’t expect was what came next.
After a very long and chilly silence, it was Azkadellia who spoke up and each word was crystal clear. “Edward, you’re not welcome here anymore. Please go find somewhere else to eat your lunch.” Then there was the scrape-and-shuffle of a chair and then the sounds of whispers descended upon the lunchroom as a whole. “If you want to say things like that, you can leave us.”
Not a single other chair moved, indicating that Azkadellia’s word was the law and to disobey it was to face social exile.
Cain still wasn’t pleased with any of it and that was why he sat at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee - slightly spiked - waiting for Azkadellia to return so they could sit down and have a good long chat about the topics she brought to discussion at school, in such a public place, where so many people could overhear, where so many people could disapprove and want to do something about it. He sat there waiting for two hours, in the meantime Jeb came in and rambled on about the new projects and he briefly saw Ambrose, but it took two full hours for Azkadellia to wander in the door.
“Princess,” he greeted evenly, while she was saying hello to Toto. “Sit down. You and I need to have a talk about some things.”
It was a very foreboding way to start a conversation and Azkadellia had the slightest look of trepidation upon her face as she sat in a chair opposite Cain. “Is Ambrose okay? Jeb?”
“They’re both just fine,” Cain said patiently. “Though, they might not be if you keep up that talking of yours.”
It was straight to the point and direct and possibly a little blunt, but Cain felt it was what he needed to give her. This wasn’t a joking matter and the sooner Azkadellia understood how serious matters were, the sooner they could end this conversation with her learning her lesson.
“Pardon me?”
“Princess, this ain’t the O.Z.,” Cain warned, voice low. “They don’t have the same sort of social values or attitudes that we have back there and we are trying to lay low. You going around your school and telling all the connected kids about what me and Ambrose are doing is dangerous for us, do you get it?”
Azkadellia had a shell-shocked look on her face and her coloring turned pale as Cain spoke. She was growing up quickly and her features had an elegance to them now and they all knit together to look dashed and angry at once.
“Are you implying I would ever hurt us?” she demanded.
“Not intentionally, Princess,” Cain said, stressing her title as he was going overboard with being polite for the sake of being polite. “But in this climate, someone doesn’t like what we’re doing and people get hurt. Ambrose gets hurt and that’s about the last thing I want.”
“Hurt?” Azkadellia echoed in disbelief. “I cannot believe this. Hurt! Hurt? Mr. Cain, did you even give one moment’s thought to how very hurt he’s going to be when you two fall apart because you’re no longer physically attracted to each other, but your duty binds the both of you to me for annuals to come?” she demanded. “When this ends! What then? How hurt will he be?”
“At least he’ll still be alive,” Cain growled at her, not budging from his seat. “As for that, it’s a bridge we’ll cross when we get to it.”
“So you admit it’s a finite thing,” Azkadellia spoke, staring at him. Cain stared right back and neither of them dared to blink.
“I never said that, you’re twisting my words,” Cain countered in a tone that was dangerously patient. “I just mean that we shouldn’t jump to the conclusion when we’re barely at the introduction. The point of this is you can’t talk to your friends about this. And that’s an order.”
“You aren’t my father,” Azkadellia nearly hissed at him. “He’s in the O.Z. and if he were here, maybe he would be understanding.”
“Maybe. Or maybe he’d let you get away with whatever you wanted and then let chaos happen upon his family. I’m not losing any of you,” Cain snapped. “And that means you shut your mouth when it comes to your friends and this subject.”
“Why! It’s bound to end anyway!”
“I never said that, Azkadellia Brown!”
“That’s not my name.”
“It is, here.”
She looked half-near-tears as she spoke with him and Cain’s jaw was so tight that it looked bound to snap any second now. She stood up swiftly, her dress floating around her and she stared right at Cain with an icy look to rival his.
“Fine,” she snapped. “I don’t care. I never cared about you anyway. You can go back to the O.Z. for all I care when your mutual arrangement with Ambrose, your little fucking…”
“Azkadellia, don’t use that word.”
“…system is over,” she accused, -- speaking right over him -- her lower lip shaking lightly with the anger of her words. “I don’t care about you at all. And you obviously don’t care about me. So just go away. Leave us alone. Leave all of us alone and we’ll be happier.”
“Your highness, it is our duty to watch over and protect you while you live here, or anywhere else,” Ambrose finally said from his station on the stairs, making Azkadellia spin in surprise. He’d been staying out of the way and just listening, letting Cain take the fight and the beating, and almost felt sick over it. “I don’t care if you hate him or love him, I don’t care if there’s any other sort of emotional attachments or fears you may have about him, he was sent here by your mother and that means he stays.”
Ambrose got a watery glare. “Ambrose, you-”
“I’m not your father, I’m not trying to be your father, but remember you’re not anyone’s mother here either,” Ambrose bit out. “If you were thinking this sort of stuff before, you should have said so. And he’s completely right about damn near everything!” Swearing was rare for Ambrose, and practically nonexistent when any of the kids were around. He was even glaring at her. “I’d tell you to go to your room if I knew that wouldn’t just give you more emotional ammunition, and don’t you dare try to take any of this back. You’re going to go into the dining room, and you’re going to do your homework, and you are going to listen to Cain, whether you like our little ‘fucking system’ or not.”
Azkadellia just watched him, defiant and proud. “I may not get my title outside those doors, but I’m the Princess of the O.Z. in this house,” she said coolly, immediately going for the loyalty in Ambrose.
“You’re completely right, your highness,” Ambrose said quietly. “And this is the first time I’ve ever been ashamed of you.”
Azkadellia stood there glaring at Ambrose for a very long time before she gave a huff and left the room, skirts trailing her in a flurry of activity and Cain barely sat there for a moment longer before he shoved the chair back - so hard that it toppled to the ground - and he stormed out to the small Pink House, leaving Ambrose in the wake of the argument.
--
After the fight with Azkadellia, Cain had found himself pacing the little pink house for hours on end, searching for a way to get his irritation and anger out. He’d double-bolted the doors so that not even Jeb or Ambrose could get in, not while he was in one of these moods. Ambrose had his lab and Cain had his locks and that would do for the moment. He kicked a chair, knocked over a stack of papers, and then he realized that being angry wasn’t going to solve anything.
On top of the stack of papers that now littered the floor, something caught Cain’s eye.
It was the letter that Annie had sent home with him, implying that they really ought to send someone to the weapons-safety conference in Denver so that they could update protocol. It had been a light suggestion, but she’d had a look in her eye that said Cain wasn’t going to have a choice in anything but who went.
It didn’t take him long to locate the telephone and dial the station, cradling the phone between his ear and shoulder and pacing with the phone in his hands.
All the while, his brain kept circulating around the argument with Azkadellia and all the things she’d said, wondering if they were true. After annuals, did Azkadellia still not care for him the slightest bit? Was he nothing more than a lawn ornament there to stand in the way of any stray bullets that were directed towards her? And why was she lashing out so badly?
Maybe she preferred Jane to Cain and wanted Ambrose to be somewhat normal.
Either way, it was still bugging him, all the while he sat there with the ringing looping over and over. “Baker Sheriff’s Station,” Annie said pleasantly when she finally picked up the phone.
“Annie, it’s me,” Cain said, surprising even himself with how absolutely patient he sounded, even though he wanted to completely shoot things in half. “Listen, you still think we should send someone to the convention in Denver?” He was staring at the pamphlet and the details in his hand, which included the hotel and the agenda - which totaled to four days in the city, which meant for five with travel to get there and back. Five whole days out of Kansas sounded like a long time for such a small department, but it was slow lately anyway, since the Smith situation.
“Yeah, I definitely think so,” Annie agreed, sounding half-optimistic and half-stern. “Who do you think? Smoky? Lambton? What about your new recruits?”
There were three new kids. A redhead kid from upstate who went by the name of Pip, but who was actually Philippa came through a training program and every day tried to take Cain out for a lunch jog - and she succeeded, half the time. The second was a smart kid who sometimes reminded him of Ambrose and was a local graduate in the criminology program. He had thick glasses and dark lanky hair and people just called him Greg. The last was one of Annie’s choices and happened to be an attractive young man who was a little dim, but had a good heart. That was Lochlann. “He’s Irish,” Annie had said after the interview with a shrug and the hint of a sigh. Thing was, he was actually decent at his job, so Cain couldn’t begrudge Annie for being a little taken.
“Actually, Annie,” Cain said, staring at the schedule of lectures and seminars. “I think I’m gonna go. We’ll put Smoky in charge in name, but you’ll have the reins while I’m gone.”
There was a long silence on the line.
“What?” Cain asked.
“Sheriff, are things okay? You haven’t taken a day off work in the whole time I’ve known you, other than…well, you know. You’ve never wanted to go on any conferences. Why now?”
“A man’s got to start sometime,” he said flatly. “I’ll leave in the morning and drive.”
There was a hesitant ‘okay’ on the other end of the line before Annie gave him verbal directions to the convention center, instructions about what he was meant to do and she promised she’d phone in his name so that there would be a reservation at a hotel waiting for him, not to mention an actual place amongst all the seminars.
He thanked her quietly before setting to packing his things up and writing a quick note. Cain wasn’t a very loquacious man when it came to most things and that translated to the page as well, so when he sat down to write his excuse, all he came up with was:
Work calls. Be in Denver for five days. Back later. -Cain
He left at dawn and put the note on the kitchen table for all of them to read. For five minutes, he contemplated adding something, some personal comment to any of them, but instead of apologizing to Azkadellia or telling Ambrose it’d all be alright, all he wrote was a quick PS to Jeb: “Don’t do anything your mother wouldn’t approve of.”
And then he was off for five long days away from his family for the first time in his life.
--
The students had been muttering between themselves, seated in their chairs, for nearly five minutes. There was no Professor Brown smiling at them in front of three chalkboards, no substitute, no Professor Walker giving his excuses for running late or a sign that said class was cancelled - not that his class had ever been cancelled in his three years of lecture at Baker University. In fact, the man was practically infamous for his punctuality.
When he finally did show up, half the class was already realizing that maybe it would have been better if the man had stayed absent. His hair looked like it hadn’t been brushed in a week, and while he was wearing the same sort of pants, he was wearing a t-shirt under one of his white fitted shirts, a tie slung loosely around its collar. The way he slammed his briefcase down didn’t help anything either, considering he let it fall in the middle of the floor while holding what looked like tests under his arm. There was only one test in his class, and that was after the intensive pre-Actual Learning section. They’d taken that already, so nobody had a clue what was going on.
The tests fell to the floor too, and the final, most concerning thing he had under his arm, was pulled out. All three chalkboards were lined up, and magnets were pulled out as he stuck a massive map in front of them, one full of absolute nonsense and very clear lines around sections of it that had the names of their countries written on them.
“If you don’t have one of those scantron things, you’ve got five minutes to go get one,” Ambrose shouted out, and most of the class went scurrying off after conferring with others in their group, who immediately headed for the chalkboards. They were stopped as soon as they got out of their desks by a glare. “Did I say you could look at this yet?”
“No, sir,” one of them said shakily, and sat back down, hard.
It occurred to the class that Professor Brown was now some sort of demon from hell, and they wondered when the swap had happened.
Ambrose, on the other hand, was pacing and already regretting letting the kids go off to get those scantron things. He wanted to punch something, he wanted to teach these kids something, he wanted to keep everyone safe, and he couldn’t do any of it. So he stood in front of them, and as soon as the five minute mark hit with most of the class inside, he locked every single door that led inside, grabbing the tests and letting them flop down on the first desk he saw, the student in it squeaking a bit. “Pass them out.”
The tests were on every color of paper he could find, which had included about fourteen shades of yellow that were all named different things but were just yellow in the end. A hand went into his hair as he ran through the statistics. His class was a big one, so he’d made twenty variations of the test. There was no way anyone would be able to cheat, he’d made sure of that. “The colors of the paper mean absolutely nothing, the only thing that you have to do is write down the word at the bottom of the last page next to your name.”
Words ranged from ‘dog’ to ‘Byzantine’.
“You have half the class period to complete it, I’m starting to time it as soon as I stop talking, and really you should all be able to do this test with no problems unless you spent most of the semester asleep,” he said, shouting at the end. “No other sort of work in my class! No reading the college newspaper in class! No handjobs while I’m in class, and yes, I know who you are! Have I made myself clear?”
His answer was a resounding, terrified “Yes, sir.”
“You’re being timed now, good luck,” Ambrose snapped, and sat on the floor, right next to his briefcase, trying not to glare at everyone. Really, the test was pretty easy, considering it was almost a dumbed-down version of their official ‘final’ but with questions about their country’s formation and what not to do while forming a system of government. Still, the entire class looked frantic as they filled in bubble after bubble. There was some pounding on the doors, but Ambrose ignored it. He’d set rules, and they’d failed to meet them. They could pound all they wanted, he wasn’t letting them in.
With a click, he opened up his briefcase that still, even after all this time, had a slight dent in it, and started shuffling through papers, grabbing a bag of dice he’d stolen from some of the games back at the house. Each paper had the name of one of their countries, and he kept rolling on them, then scribbling things down. Roll, scribble, put the paper to his right. Roll, scribble, put the paper to his right. When he finished, the class’ time was finished too.
“Pencils up and all that, pass to your left, those to your left will then pass it down, and whoever’s unfortunate enough to be sitting in the lower-left seat puts them on that table over there,” Ambrose said, and gestured over to the place where he normally smiled and set his briefcase before class began. “But, as a reward, they get to know what the hell’s going on with the map and these things.” He waved the papers around, slamming the tattered briefcase shut, and pulled some more magnets out, sticking the appropriate paper in the appropriate country.
Ambrose turned back around with a slightly dead look on his face. “Congratulations, you’re all at war with each other.”
The classroom exploded with shouts and disbelief, and were immediately silenced by the glare he sent back. “Thanks to these dice I used, you have a military strength. Six is highest, one is lowest. You’ll have until the end of class to make treaties and alliances, and you’d better have someone recording those word for word, because you’ll need it.” He stood up in the complete silence of the room, grabbing the papers and scantrons. “I’m leaving. There’s the standard office hours, but if you can’t tell, I’m not in the best of moods right now. Tests will be graded as soon as I figure out how to use the machine.”
When the professor walked out the door, it almost hurt to hear his class burst into action, practically rioting as they ran towards the front to grab their country’s new military information, but he let the door swing shut anyway, hearing it click behind him.
There were five of them in the hallway. Three boys, two girls, all looking at him with hurt, betrayed eyes, their swiftly purchased scantrons held limply in their hands. For a long while he just stood there, feeling the itch of the t-shirt’s fabric, the wrongness of nothing on his shoulders. He let them stare. Ambrose wanted to stare at himself, too.
It was one of the boys that finally spoke. “Professor, are you okay?”
“No,” Ambrose said simply. “The door’s unlocked now.” That got all but the kid in front of him inside, but this guy…he seemed like he’d be sticking around for a while, just to get some answers out of Ambrose.
“Do you want to talk to someone about it?”
Ambrose let out an exasperated sigh and had to turn his head, because the kid looked like he was actually serious. “There’s nothing to talk about anymore, alright?”
“They die, or leave you?” the kid asked, and Ambrose’s head snapped back with wide eyes. “I’m Peter, by the way. If you feel that miserable about it, you need to take your mind off it with something.”
Ambrose stared at him. “…are you hitting on me?”
Peter laughed at that. Peter laughed very, very hard, and then reached into a pocket, giving Ambrose a bright red flyer advertising a frat party, events both before and after it, but the party very much emphasized, along with the wet t-shirt contest.
“I think I would have preferred being hit on by a twenty-year-old,” Ambrose muttered, and handed the paper back. “I have kids to look after.” He nodded in the direction of the class. “Go prepare for war. Be someone’s general.”
“There’s a pledge meet-and-greet, if you look at the very top in the fine print,” Peter said, grinning. “No offense, sir, but I saw you the night you were drunk at the campus bar. I wouldn’t want you drunk anywhere but your house. Too much information gets out of that mouth of yours, seriously.” Ambrose blushed a bit at that. “No, don’t worry about it. I’m a total lightweight, and you were drinking like you owned the place. Anyone that hammered would be talking out of their…um. Anyway. The frat’s been wondering if you’d be willing to sponsor or mentor some of us since your first year here.” The flyer was back in his hand. “Think about it, alright?”
To his horror, Ambrose actually found himself thinking about it. It was disturbing enough that he pocketed the flyer, pointed at the door, and said, “Go to class.”
Peter grinned, apparently thinking he’d already caught Ambrose Brown for his fraternity, but Ambrose Brown walked right past him before Peter even moved for the door, walking home in utter silence after throwing every single test into a dumpster.
tbc
Banner by magicscalpel~!
AUTHORS: andrealyn and luchia13
TITLE: Azkadellia's Okay! (With Ambrose and the Cains' help), Part 8: Judgment Questioned; Test Given.
RATING: PG-13.
PAIRING: Ambrose/Cain (or Cain/Ambrose, whatever), VERY FUTURE Az/OC, Jeb/OC/OC
DESCRIPTION: When the Witch picks another target, everything changes. Including switching out the Roboparents for Ambrose and the only Tin Man who knows what's going on (and his kid).
This Part: Cain goes back, Ambrose starts a war, Azkadellia is nobody's mother, and Jeb does not, in fact, know Q.
Part 1: Things Explode; Iceland Blamed.
Part 2: Pink House Purchased; Introductions Ensue.
Part 3: Fight In Classroom; Landslide Victory.
Part 4: Cain Doesn't Move; Children Scream.
Part 5: Countries Massacred; Restaurant Warned.
Part 6: Dog In Prison; Keys Lost.
Part 7: Woman Hurt; Ship Sinks.
Azkadellia's Okay!
(With Ambrose and the Cains' help)
Part 8: Judgment Questioned; Test Given.
several months before
He'd come home punctually from his day out with Miss Miller, still dressed in his finest (which for Cain translated into a fine-fitting pair of black slacks, a silk button-down and a jacket). He'd left at nine in the morning and it was five o'clock as he sauntered into the kitchen and ruffled Jeb's hair, kissing Azkadellia on the cheek while he started opening the fridge and digging out food to cook.
He saw Ambrose too, but mostly ignored him and started to whistle as he made his way around the kitchen to prepare dinner for the lot of them, so invigorated and happy as he seemed.
"Jeb, Az, finish your homework and after dinner, we can even get ice cream, okay?" he promised with an easy grin on his face, turning to chop some vegetables up and to start the stovetop and cook some pasta.
Ambrose was immediately suspicious. Ice cream? Grinning? Whistling? Not to mention he was cooking pasta. Sure, it was easy to make and everything, but he just kept staring at Cain, wondering what had happened to make him so...so happy. It was genuinely disturbing, so he set down the book he'd been reading and leaned against the counter, watching him as the kids went off to get their homework done.
"What happened?" Ambrose found himself asking. He'd meant to ask 'What happened to you' but he hesitated in the middle, remembering it probably wasn't his business, but...still. This was not regular Cain behavior.
Cain looked to his side and gave Ambrose the tightly-controlled grin he had, the one where he wanted to smile a lot wider, but he knew would look a little out of place (not to mention rude). So he just went about salting the water and easing the pasta in, leaning back to look through the door and see just how out of earshot Jeb and Azkadellia were.
"We had a good time," he said, shifting past Ambrose to get out the strainer and a bowl for the vegetables. "Coffee, lunch, movie. Then we went dancing for a while and I let her step on my feet," he said with a broad grin, yanking Ambrose's hand without warning and spinning him out of the way as Cain switched places to wash vegetables under the water at the sink. "Why? Did I miss something around here?"
Ambrose actually found himself nearly taking the hand back out of habit, just about ready to dance the creepy, happy version of Cain around the kitchen. He hadn't even known Cain could dance. Almost said 'I wouldn't step on your feet' too, but instead he watched the chopping. Watched Cain. "You had a good time," he found himself repeating blandly. Finally, Ambrose just shook his head. "Only thing you missed was Scrabble and Azkadellia's continuing attempts at getting me to let her in the lab. Normal day in the house."
"Who won?" he asked, of the Scrabble. "Or rather, who'd you let win?"
"Jeb actually won fair and square," Ambrose said, a small smile coming onto his lips, and shook his head. "He managed to put down quizzers, and there were all types of absurd bonus points and...well. Basically he destroyed us with one word."
If it was possible, the smile on Cain's face got even broader and he didn't take his eyes off Ambrose for a long moment while he basked in the knowledge that a Cain had beat him. "That's my boy," Cain praised proudly. "Definitely have to give him a pat on the back for that, later," he said, mostly to remind himself. "Anyway. Is it illegal for me to have a good time now?" he asked, popping a green pepper past his lips and chewing it idly as he watched Ambrose. Good conversation came of making sure both parties knew they were having a dialogue and not just nattering at a wall.
He rolled his eyes. "Yes, you're allowed to have fun, but this is..." Ambrose paused, trying to think of the most polite way to say what was on his mind. "This seems more like you had a very good time."
"I did have a very good time. Miss Miller's sweet. She reminds me of some women I used to know," he said calmly.
Ambrose barely restrained himself from repeating Cain's words again. He also nearly had to take a deep breath and force himself to just stop feeling so...so whatever he felt like. "I almost feel like I need to defend your honor or something," he said aloud, frowning. Finally he looked at Cain. "She might be sweet but she still bought you, you know."
Cain rolled his eyes at that, turning back to the cooking and dousing a pan with oil (if it had four steps or less, he could do it; any more than that and he was lost in the Cooking Sea). "You don't have to take it so literally. Besides, we'd gone out before she 'bought me'," he pointed out, words a bit sharper now. "And I can defend my own honor, thanks."
He blinked. "Oh. Right." Ambrose's hand went into his hair as he leaned fully against the counter, watching Cain cook. "I just don't really like the difference between a date and 'Buy A Day With Wyatt Cain' is all." He said it in a good impression of an airy, distant voice. "You could have been bought by some criminal with a grudge." He paused, giving Cain a look that wasn't very pleased or happy. "Or the police. Maybe I should have bought you for the faculty, made you grade multiple choice tests all day for the department."
With the pasta boiling and the vegetables ready to fry up quickly, Cain leaned back against the counter and relaxed, letting his shoulders ease from the tension they carried. Cain just endured whatever Ambrose saw fit to push at him because dinner was about done and he had it plated in as simple a way as he could. But really, he was still in a good mood and THAT might have been the strangest thing at all. He just grinned at Ambrose while he set out cutlery.
"Whatever you say, Ambrose," he agreed in a laissez-faire tone. He set aside a separate plate for himself. "Jeb, Az, dinner," he called out to the other room. “Since we'll go for ice cream later on, I have to eat out in the house."
"But Mr. Cain!"
"Dad!"
"I have work," Cain admitted. “Seeing as I spent the whole day doing things that were decidedly not work. Here. Ambrose will eat with you, though and in a couple hours, I'll drive us down for sundaes, okay?" There was quiet grumbling, but he was able to get his things (and snatch a beer from the fridge) and head out the back door to his small house. And he did so without letting Ambrose get the last word.
Ambrose was stuck just staring at the door, mouth gaping at the fact he'd practically been dismissed. Three fourths of him wanted to follow the man out and shout until he couldn't speak, but that other fourth was the loyalty part, so he found himself simply shaking his head and sitting down with the kids for dinner.
The food was good, they talked about their day, Azkadellia and Jeb started taunting each other and Ambrose had to threaten to deflate Cain's tires so they couldn't go get ice cream to make them stop. And, of course, Azkadellia took the opportunity to bring up the lab. Again. But this time, apparently she had Jeb to back her up.
"No, I'm not letting either of you in the lab," he said, sick and tired of this argument. "You don't get to go in because there's extremely dangerous stuff inside of it. When I think you're mature enough, I'll show you what's down there. Neither of you are at that point. Can you pass the pasta?"
And dinner went on, finally leaving Ambrose with dirty dishes, two extremely giddy children (it didn't matter that Azkadellia was already getting into high school, she was still a kid), and a very strong urge to strangle Cain.
Ambrose took it out on the dishes. They received quite possibly the most vicious scrubbing known to mankind.
Cain came back to return his plates, finding Ambrose at the sink looking to murder the serving bowls and he set his plates down on the counter loud enough to make a sound. "You coming with us?" he asked curiously. "Or should I bring you back your favorite?"
Ambrose wanted to break Cain's plates, but he liked the pattern so he just stuck it under the faucet, passing yet another bowl to Cain. "I'll stay here, work a little bit," Ambrose said as civilly as he could, and cleared his throat to get rid of at least some of the venom. "I'm still fixing things from whatever shut down the power."
Cain eased in to help with the dishes, taking a cloth in one hand to dry the wet ones, standing nearly hip-to-hip with Ambrose. "You know, Nina. Miss Miller. She pointed something out to me today about widowers. She sees a couple of 'em, working with as many parents as she does."
He paused at the widowers thing. "Does she." Sure, it was a prompt for him to keep talking, but Ambrose managed to say more in his quiet, dark tone than he'd like to admit. Miss Miller this, Miss Miller that, he wanted to punch Cain and pin him to the refrigerator door and to tell him to just stop. But instead he just kept on scrubbing. "What'd she say?"
Cain nodded at Ambrose's question and kept drying where he could, getting every little stray droplet off. "She said," he started quietly, so the kids wouldn't overhear (especially Jeb), "that they spend too much time living in the shadow of a person who would've wanted them, the widower or widow, to go on and live. Because Adora loves me doesn't mean I have to die along with her. Apparently, that's a common mistake."
He was staring out the window closest to the sink as he spoke, watching the sun in the sky and digging out his keys, clearing his throat.
Ambrose let out a light sigh, looking at Cain. "Doesn't mean you should go plowing into things head-on, either," he said, just as quiet. "When I thought Az was dead, I..." Ambrose laughed lightly. "Well. I was stupid. I didn't lose her, though. So just..." He sighed. "Just make decisions you think they'd be proud of, or at least okay with. I still haven't told Azkadellia what I tried to do, and I don't ever want her to-" He stopped, realizing he'd just been ready to admit all his sins from that horrible period of mourning.
Cain stared critically at Ambrose at that admission and he spoke up quietly with an, "Ambrose..." but he knew nothing was going to come out of that, so he quieted himself. "I'll uh, we should get going. We'll just get the ice cream and come back. What do you want?"
Ambrose blushed, grabbing the dishes and putting them away. "Chocolate with chocolate sprinkles and just lots and lots of chocolate. Azkadellia knows what I like." He smiled slightly over his shoulder. "But it can be summed up in 'lots of chocolate' if she gets too precise."
"Chocolate it is," he agreed, hesitating in the doorway and smiling to himself still as he watched Ambrose. That hadn't been all he and Miss Miller had talked about and it had helped him in a general way.
By the time he piled Azkadellia and Jeb in the car and got them to the local ice cream parlor, the sun had nearly dipped in the sky. When they got back, Jeb had ice cream all over his chin and Azkadellia was savoring her choice of frozen yogurt with a lot more dignity while Cain juggled the double-triple-chocolate-brownie-heart-attack for Ambrose with a plain vanilla cup, topped with an orange sorbet. He sent Jeb up to the bathroom to clean up and Azkadellia wandered off on her own, saying something about Toto.
It was just a matter, then, of finding Ambrose. "Ambrose?" he called out, closing the front door behind him carefully. "I think my hand's twitching from sugar just from the proximity of your dessert," he called out in warning.
There was a very loud thumping noise that probably echoed through the entire house, followed by the lab's door swinging open, Ambrose peeking out around him before closing it behind him. He grinned as he caught sight of the horrifically chocolately chocolate ice cream, and walked over so eagerly that he ended up practically gliding, old habits snapping in. You don't run, you move gracefully and quickly. Ambrose was really starting to hate all that training.
"If your hand's twitching it's not sugar, it's the caffeine in chocolate. Works pretty well for migraines, actually." That didn't keep Ambrose from practically jumping around as much as the kids had been at the sight of it.
Cain just grinned at the sight and gave Ambrose a curious look, setting his own down. "Is that so?" he asked, good and calm, picking up the spoon and poking around layers of chocolate. "Well, maybe I ought to just trade you. Vanilla and orange. Chocolate." He gave a 'huh' like he really had to think it over and he took a large step back to eat a lazy spoon's worth of Ambrose's ice cream, licking it good and slow.
Ambrose swallowed, trying to ignore the tongue. Trying, and failing. "But you...you were just complaining about it," he said, and shook himself out of the tunnel vision focusing entirely on Cain's mouth and yanked the chocolate towards him, like it was a wall between them, and immediately scooped some into his mouth. He sighed happily at the flavor, smiling a bit stupidly as he swallowed. "It's always so good," he practically purred, and went for another scoop, glancing up at Cain with a frown as he put the spoon into his mouth and swallowed again. "My chocolate. You get your...vanilla-orange thing."
Cain picked it up without much of an argument, studying it by tipping it up to the light and looking it up and down. But really, he was watching Ambrose and wasn't even trying to hide it. From his tongue to his lips to the tone of his voice and gods, but it'd been so long and that night in the truck wouldn't leave Cain alone. "You could always come by my house and tell me why chocolate's so much better," he gave the offer lightly, arching one brow.
Azkadellia was outside and Jeb was upstairs and no one would overhear Cain's offer, as it was.
Ambrose nearly choked on the chocolate at that, leaving him a coughing, staring mess for a while as he wondered if he'd honestly heard that right. But he kept on coughing and had to set the chocolate down, finally managing to breathe, although it was more like panting.
"You...you just couldn't wait until the spoon was out of my mouth at least?" Ambrose said lightly, trying not to panic because he really, really wanted to say yes but most of him thought that really, there was something incredibly stupid about saying yes, so he just stood and got his breath back together and thought.
Cain was calm as a pond on a clear day while he watched Ambrose react, smiling broadly, hanging up the keys on the rack where they went as he nodded towards the door, implying with absolutely no words that the conversation they had in the small house would be a lot better than this one. "Finish up the ice cream," Cain said, recalling that at the last minute (his own cupped in his palm and giving him chills). "I'll be there if you decide to come over."
"You sure you want it finished?" Ambrose asked idly without even really thinking about it, taking another spoonful and raising an eyebrow at Cain. He swallowed, and took another spoonful, fairly certain his mind was already made up but genuinely confused at what he should be thinking this was. Or could be. Or...whatever. Sometimes all the thinking he did was overrated.
"Well," Cain said evenly, as if he wasn't twitching as it was and it had nothing to do with caffeine, "I'd rather you make good on that promise you made me in the truck the other night, but you're gonna need all the energy you can get, sweetheart," he added, a little lascivious. "So you'd best finish that and come join me."
Smug and content with his rejoinder, Cain tipped his hat to Ambrose and walked (almost sauntered) out back and he unlocked the door and kept it slightly open behind him as he started clearing things off the desk and the bed and the floor. Just in case.
Ambrose frowned, eating his ice cream and trying to think about what kind of promise he made in the truck. And why he'd been in it at night, or the other night, or what Cain was even talking about-
The chocolate ice cream clattered to the floor, and Ambrose smacked a hand over his mouth as he put the pieces together. Cain had driven him home when he was drunk. That probably meant he'd been absolutely smashed and been talking absolute nonsense that was entirely true.
The hand was over his mouth to cover all the profanity he was hissing out and didn't want the kids to hear. Even if they were both practically guaranteed to be in their rooms the rest of the night, shouting curses at the top of his lungs might have been bad.
His hands were shaking when he cleaned up the ice cream, and they were clenched in fists when he walked into the little pink house, slamming the door behind him. "What the hell did I say when I was drunk?"
Cain looked up at Ambrose and furrowed his brow, wandering ever-closer as he made sure the door was locked (if they were needed, Toto could alert them loudly) enough. "You don't..." remember. Cain was a proponent for honesty, no matter how bad it was, so he nodded the once and leveled Ambrose with a serious look. "I drove you home. You were babbling on about stealing the Queen's underwear and how you were an advisor when you were too young and things about the truck's roof and when I kissed you, you kissed back," he admitted simply. "So I dragged you into the truck and I got you off."
It almost sounded very clinical, the factual way he was saying it all. Cain brushed his palms over his shirt to ignore the fact that they were sweaty, the only sign of his discomfort.
"And you said one day you were planning on fucking me good and hard into a mattress," he added, sounding ever-so-casual like they were just discussing what was for lunch the next day. "Well, that and a lot about how we should have had sex, but I put you to bed and turned everything off in the lab, like you asked." By that point in his speech, Cain had perched himself atop his desk, just watching Ambrose for the reaction.
It took a moment for Ambrose to process all of that, during which he was mostly staring at Cain and blinking. Finally, he walked over, and ended up snickering. "I can't believe I told you about the underwear," he said, and then grabbed a handful of Cain's shirt to yank him into a hard, fierce kiss. He pulled back, and smirked, giving him an innocent look that was very, very dirty. "Oh my. Looks like there's a mattress over there. Whatever shall I do."
"Better make good on your promise," Cain mumbled in reply, looking all parts relieved and like a heavy burden had been lifted off his chest. He had gone from 'not allowed' to 'not allowed to hesitate anymore' and he gave as good as he got when it came to that fierce kiss, nearly smashing his lips back against Ambrose's and tugging on his lower lip with his teeth before wrapping an arm around his neck and yanking him closer yet to kiss him deeply, his other arm wrapping around Ambrose's waist as he dragged them both in the direction of the thoroughly-clean bed.
--
Jeb was sitting at the kitchen table plugging away at his homework just as diligently as ever when Ambrose slid inside the room, watching him for a moment. Jeb looked up and smiled at him quietly, and Ambrose smiled back a bit thinly. When Ambrose didn’t say anything for a long while, Jeb turned from his homework, frowning at the dark-haired professor.
“What’s going on?” Jeb asked quietly, his pencil hitting the table with a light click. It was later than Jeb was normally awake, considering he’d had an away basketball game that afternoon and had to catch up on what he’d missed for it, and Ambrose interrupting homework for something other than advice was a rare thing indeed. In fact, seeing Ambrose quiet and somber was even rarer. The only time that really ever happened was on the day the Cains had come to realize was DG’s birthday, and since that was in November and it was January, that wasn’t the problem. Jeb stood up. “Ambrose?”
Ambrose hesitated for a moment. “Are you almost done with your homework?” Ambrose knew he was doing nothing but stalling, hoping to give Jeb just that extra bit of time to be nothing but a second-grader, just a kid. But he’d tried it with Azkadellia, and he had a feeling it’d work out just about the same.
“It’s nothing I can’t finish before school in the morning,” Jeb said, frowning at Ambrose, who simply nodded. “What’s going on?” He’d already asked the question, but the man was acting so out of the ordinary that Jeb honestly couldn’t think of any other question.
Ambrose gave Jeb a small smile. “Follow me,” he said simply, and Jeb did as he was told, following Ambrose all the way to the door that led downstairs, leaving the blond-haired boy blinking as Ambrose unlocked it and waited for Jeb to walk down.
Nobody got to go into the Lab. His father had a spare key for emergencies, but that and Ambrose’s key were the only ones Jeb could think of that let someone inside of the basement of their house. At his hesitation, Ambrose motioned with his arm. “I have to lock it behind us, and I’d still like you to get to bed at a decent hour you know.”
Jeb smiled, considering that Ambrose sounded much more like himself, and nodded, walking through the door and down the sturdy stairs, slowing a bit when he got a good look at the contents of the room, hearing the click of the lock behind them. There were three tables with one rolling swivel office chair, two huge bulletin boards with schematics on them, and a mass of metal…stuff against the wall, another room locked off to the side.
“You really are a mad scientist, aren’t you?” Jeb asked, frowning as he moved forward and looked at one of the sketches on the first of the three tables.
“I’m not mad,” Ambrose protested, already moving past Jeb and towards the second door. The thing looked almost like one of the vault doors in all those bank robbery movies. “Well, usually at least. In that insane ‘it’s alive’ kind of way I’m never mad, but…well.” He laughed lightly, starting on the combination, turning the thing over and over, making a nine-number combination. “You’ve heard how frustrated I can get with your father.”
With a smooth whirr, the door popped open just a bit. Ambrose paused again, and took a deep breath, hand on the handle that would open the massive slab of metal. He looked straight at Jeb. “Jeb Cain, you are aware that Azkadellia is princess and heir to the throne of the O.Z. and must be protected as best we can manage, yes?”
His spine straightened immediately. “Yes, sir.”
“And you are willing to help in the protection of the Princess?” Ambrose asked.
Jeb nodded. “I’d do anything-”
“Don’t say that, Jeb,” Ambrose stated, face going pale. “Don’t ever say you’d do anything. I could tell you to shoot yourself in the head and you’d have to do it.” Jeb paled, but Ambrose plowed along. “Never, ever, ever say you’ll do anything for a cause unless you really would be willing to put a bullet in your brain for it, and I’m not going to even let you try and make that choice for yourself right now. All I want to know is if I can trust you to stand for her.”
“She’s practically my big sister,” Jeb said, completely serious. “I’ll protect her with everything I’ve got.”
Ambrose smiled at that. It was a sad smile, but still a smile. “You’re about to have a lot more to protect her with then, Jeb,” he said, and swung the door open, walking into the darkness, Jeb on his heels. “Don’t close the door behind you.” He didn’t, and honestly hadn’t had any intention of doing so. With a door that big, he didn’t want to know what could happen if it managed to jam and trap them inside of here.
“Jeb, I haven’t talked to Cain about this, and that was for a very, very good reason,” Ambrose said, and flicked on a lightswitch. Something whirred, and two lights buzzed, flickering on. “I’d like to introduce you to quite possibly some of the most sophisticated and dangerous equipment on the Otherside that isn’t related to nuclear explosives.”
Jeb blinked. He was looking at one wall of things that looked like completely ordinary, boring objects, another wall that was a cot, a toilet, and five shelves of canned goods, and another wall that was very, very obviously nothing but very dangerous…things, most of them looking like bombs.
“…whoa,” Jeb said, eyes wide, staring at the third wall and taking a step towards it, only for Ambrose to put a hand on his shoulder and twist him around to face all the normal-looking stuff. Jeb frowned.
“I said not related to nuclear explosives,” Ambrose said blandly, walking over and pulling a belt off the shelf, looking at it with a bemused smile. “Maybe in another four or five years you’ll get to learn about that wall, but for now, don’t touch anything over there.”
Jeb’s jaw dropped. “You mean-”
“This is a bomb,” Ambrose interrupted, holding up the belt. “And best of all, it’s a bomb you can both use as an adhesive explosive or throw like a grenade, and walk around wearing with nobody knowing a single thing about the fact you could blow up a small house with it.” He pointed to the strap. “Adhesive explosive.” He pointed to two small buttons on the top and bottom of the buckle. “This is what makes it…well, sticky, instead of malleable like a belt. It doesn’t have to be sticky to make it explode, but that’s the adhesive explosive part - stick it to what you want to blow up, and run. It takes about forty seconds for the fuse to ignite and blow, and you trigger that like this.” He pulled the two pieces of the buckle around and pressed them to the metal base. “You do this very, very firmly because I don’t want you exploding accidentally.”
“But-” Jeb began, backing up at the realization the belt could explode and kill them.
Ambrose grinned, and tapped the two pieces to the metal base, flicking them back to the normal belt position. “And now the fuse is off, and it’s nothing but a fancy strip of plastic that holds your pants up and can blow things up if you feel like something is a serious threat.”
Jeb gaped, realizing that if the belt could do that, the rest of the normal-looking things had to be just as dangerous.
Ambrose grinned, handing the belt over. “The CIA would kill for this stuff.”
“It’s like you’re Q,” Jeb blurted, noticing the array of watches and shoes and even a soccer ball. A soccer ball that could probably…shoot out explosive electrified spikes or something.
Ambrose frowned. “…Q like on Star Trek?”
“No, no, like James Bond’s Q!” Jeb’s eyes grew wide. “I’m James Bond!”
“Whoa, whoa, hold on there now,” Ambrose said hastily. “No trick car, no…secret agent stuff, no James Bond or espionage or anything. This is all just to make sure Azkadellia stays safe, and you stay safe too. Some day, things are going to get bad, very, very bad, and we have to be prepared. You are not James Bond, Jeb.”
Jeb nodded, but still couldn’t help but grin. He was getting 007 gadgets. “Okay, what’s next?”
“Bedtime,” Ambrose said very, very seriously, already gently pulling Jeb out of the vault, who was frowning, belt still clasped carefully in his hands. “We’ll get you some practice with less belt-looking belts I have when it’s not a school night and your father won’t catch us sneaking out.” He closed the vault door firmly, spinning the dial as the lock let out a hiss, and then a thunk-noise. “This never happened, and I just bought you a belt, okay?”
“Okay,” Jeb nodded, smiling up at Ambrose.
“And if you end up in a fight, the things you get from me are your last line of defense, and I’d honestly prefer you ran,” Ambrose went on, moving up the stairs and opening the door to the rest of the house, where Ambrose wasn’t making explosive belts and bombs and things that could destroy half of Baker and wasn’t…Q-ish. Jeb frowned, though, when Ambrose didn’t leave the basement with him. The man smiled, shifting a bit. “…I still have some things to do.”
“Alright,” Jeb nodded, smiling, and went back to his homework. He finished it up and set it aside so it was ready for school in the morning, and finally went up to bed, still holding the belt.
He couldn’t help himself when he was brushing his teeth though. He grinned at the mirror, pulling the belt on.
“Cain. Jeb Cain.”
--
Cain had been waiting for Azkadellia to return from school and he hadn’t moved from his position at the kitchen table. He had been at the high school for a regular check-up under the guise of the town’s safety program when he’d overheard Azkadellia holding ‘counsel’ with her little group and the topic of him and Ambrose had come up.
Words like ‘screw-partners’ and ‘fuckbuddies’ kept getting lobbed around, but there was one pointed thing to notice and that had been the general air of discomfort the schoolchildren had possessed while talking about the subject. Their voices were tense and they seemed like they were going along with it for Azkadellia’s sake.
Cain had been sure that it was only for Azkadellia that they even bothered to entertain the subject when The Event came to pass.
“That’s so disgusting,” one of the boys had muttered. Cain was around the corner, barely able to overheard, but they all seemed to enunciate and talk loudly - probably in some misguided gambit to get Azkadellia’s attention. “I mean, they’re two guys. That’s just not right.”
It wasn’t that Cain hadn’t expected that at all, but what he didn’t expect was what came next.
After a very long and chilly silence, it was Azkadellia who spoke up and each word was crystal clear. “Edward, you’re not welcome here anymore. Please go find somewhere else to eat your lunch.” Then there was the scrape-and-shuffle of a chair and then the sounds of whispers descended upon the lunchroom as a whole. “If you want to say things like that, you can leave us.”
Not a single other chair moved, indicating that Azkadellia’s word was the law and to disobey it was to face social exile.
Cain still wasn’t pleased with any of it and that was why he sat at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee - slightly spiked - waiting for Azkadellia to return so they could sit down and have a good long chat about the topics she brought to discussion at school, in such a public place, where so many people could overhear, where so many people could disapprove and want to do something about it. He sat there waiting for two hours, in the meantime Jeb came in and rambled on about the new projects and he briefly saw Ambrose, but it took two full hours for Azkadellia to wander in the door.
“Princess,” he greeted evenly, while she was saying hello to Toto. “Sit down. You and I need to have a talk about some things.”
It was a very foreboding way to start a conversation and Azkadellia had the slightest look of trepidation upon her face as she sat in a chair opposite Cain. “Is Ambrose okay? Jeb?”
“They’re both just fine,” Cain said patiently. “Though, they might not be if you keep up that talking of yours.”
It was straight to the point and direct and possibly a little blunt, but Cain felt it was what he needed to give her. This wasn’t a joking matter and the sooner Azkadellia understood how serious matters were, the sooner they could end this conversation with her learning her lesson.
“Pardon me?”
“Princess, this ain’t the O.Z.,” Cain warned, voice low. “They don’t have the same sort of social values or attitudes that we have back there and we are trying to lay low. You going around your school and telling all the connected kids about what me and Ambrose are doing is dangerous for us, do you get it?”
Azkadellia had a shell-shocked look on her face and her coloring turned pale as Cain spoke. She was growing up quickly and her features had an elegance to them now and they all knit together to look dashed and angry at once.
“Are you implying I would ever hurt us?” she demanded.
“Not intentionally, Princess,” Cain said, stressing her title as he was going overboard with being polite for the sake of being polite. “But in this climate, someone doesn’t like what we’re doing and people get hurt. Ambrose gets hurt and that’s about the last thing I want.”
“Hurt?” Azkadellia echoed in disbelief. “I cannot believe this. Hurt! Hurt? Mr. Cain, did you even give one moment’s thought to how very hurt he’s going to be when you two fall apart because you’re no longer physically attracted to each other, but your duty binds the both of you to me for annuals to come?” she demanded. “When this ends! What then? How hurt will he be?”
“At least he’ll still be alive,” Cain growled at her, not budging from his seat. “As for that, it’s a bridge we’ll cross when we get to it.”
“So you admit it’s a finite thing,” Azkadellia spoke, staring at him. Cain stared right back and neither of them dared to blink.
“I never said that, you’re twisting my words,” Cain countered in a tone that was dangerously patient. “I just mean that we shouldn’t jump to the conclusion when we’re barely at the introduction. The point of this is you can’t talk to your friends about this. And that’s an order.”
“You aren’t my father,” Azkadellia nearly hissed at him. “He’s in the O.Z. and if he were here, maybe he would be understanding.”
“Maybe. Or maybe he’d let you get away with whatever you wanted and then let chaos happen upon his family. I’m not losing any of you,” Cain snapped. “And that means you shut your mouth when it comes to your friends and this subject.”
“Why! It’s bound to end anyway!”
“I never said that, Azkadellia Brown!”
“That’s not my name.”
“It is, here.”
She looked half-near-tears as she spoke with him and Cain’s jaw was so tight that it looked bound to snap any second now. She stood up swiftly, her dress floating around her and she stared right at Cain with an icy look to rival his.
“Fine,” she snapped. “I don’t care. I never cared about you anyway. You can go back to the O.Z. for all I care when your mutual arrangement with Ambrose, your little fucking…”
“Azkadellia, don’t use that word.”
“…system is over,” she accused, -- speaking right over him -- her lower lip shaking lightly with the anger of her words. “I don’t care about you at all. And you obviously don’t care about me. So just go away. Leave us alone. Leave all of us alone and we’ll be happier.”
“Your highness, it is our duty to watch over and protect you while you live here, or anywhere else,” Ambrose finally said from his station on the stairs, making Azkadellia spin in surprise. He’d been staying out of the way and just listening, letting Cain take the fight and the beating, and almost felt sick over it. “I don’t care if you hate him or love him, I don’t care if there’s any other sort of emotional attachments or fears you may have about him, he was sent here by your mother and that means he stays.”
Ambrose got a watery glare. “Ambrose, you-”
“I’m not your father, I’m not trying to be your father, but remember you’re not anyone’s mother here either,” Ambrose bit out. “If you were thinking this sort of stuff before, you should have said so. And he’s completely right about damn near everything!” Swearing was rare for Ambrose, and practically nonexistent when any of the kids were around. He was even glaring at her. “I’d tell you to go to your room if I knew that wouldn’t just give you more emotional ammunition, and don’t you dare try to take any of this back. You’re going to go into the dining room, and you’re going to do your homework, and you are going to listen to Cain, whether you like our little ‘fucking system’ or not.”
Azkadellia just watched him, defiant and proud. “I may not get my title outside those doors, but I’m the Princess of the O.Z. in this house,” she said coolly, immediately going for the loyalty in Ambrose.
“You’re completely right, your highness,” Ambrose said quietly. “And this is the first time I’ve ever been ashamed of you.”
Azkadellia stood there glaring at Ambrose for a very long time before she gave a huff and left the room, skirts trailing her in a flurry of activity and Cain barely sat there for a moment longer before he shoved the chair back - so hard that it toppled to the ground - and he stormed out to the small Pink House, leaving Ambrose in the wake of the argument.
--
After the fight with Azkadellia, Cain had found himself pacing the little pink house for hours on end, searching for a way to get his irritation and anger out. He’d double-bolted the doors so that not even Jeb or Ambrose could get in, not while he was in one of these moods. Ambrose had his lab and Cain had his locks and that would do for the moment. He kicked a chair, knocked over a stack of papers, and then he realized that being angry wasn’t going to solve anything.
On top of the stack of papers that now littered the floor, something caught Cain’s eye.
It was the letter that Annie had sent home with him, implying that they really ought to send someone to the weapons-safety conference in Denver so that they could update protocol. It had been a light suggestion, but she’d had a look in her eye that said Cain wasn’t going to have a choice in anything but who went.
It didn’t take him long to locate the telephone and dial the station, cradling the phone between his ear and shoulder and pacing with the phone in his hands.
All the while, his brain kept circulating around the argument with Azkadellia and all the things she’d said, wondering if they were true. After annuals, did Azkadellia still not care for him the slightest bit? Was he nothing more than a lawn ornament there to stand in the way of any stray bullets that were directed towards her? And why was she lashing out so badly?
Maybe she preferred Jane to Cain and wanted Ambrose to be somewhat normal.
Either way, it was still bugging him, all the while he sat there with the ringing looping over and over. “Baker Sheriff’s Station,” Annie said pleasantly when she finally picked up the phone.
“Annie, it’s me,” Cain said, surprising even himself with how absolutely patient he sounded, even though he wanted to completely shoot things in half. “Listen, you still think we should send someone to the convention in Denver?” He was staring at the pamphlet and the details in his hand, which included the hotel and the agenda - which totaled to four days in the city, which meant for five with travel to get there and back. Five whole days out of Kansas sounded like a long time for such a small department, but it was slow lately anyway, since the Smith situation.
“Yeah, I definitely think so,” Annie agreed, sounding half-optimistic and half-stern. “Who do you think? Smoky? Lambton? What about your new recruits?”
There were three new kids. A redhead kid from upstate who went by the name of Pip, but who was actually Philippa came through a training program and every day tried to take Cain out for a lunch jog - and she succeeded, half the time. The second was a smart kid who sometimes reminded him of Ambrose and was a local graduate in the criminology program. He had thick glasses and dark lanky hair and people just called him Greg. The last was one of Annie’s choices and happened to be an attractive young man who was a little dim, but had a good heart. That was Lochlann. “He’s Irish,” Annie had said after the interview with a shrug and the hint of a sigh. Thing was, he was actually decent at his job, so Cain couldn’t begrudge Annie for being a little taken.
“Actually, Annie,” Cain said, staring at the schedule of lectures and seminars. “I think I’m gonna go. We’ll put Smoky in charge in name, but you’ll have the reins while I’m gone.”
There was a long silence on the line.
“What?” Cain asked.
“Sheriff, are things okay? You haven’t taken a day off work in the whole time I’ve known you, other than…well, you know. You’ve never wanted to go on any conferences. Why now?”
“A man’s got to start sometime,” he said flatly. “I’ll leave in the morning and drive.”
There was a hesitant ‘okay’ on the other end of the line before Annie gave him verbal directions to the convention center, instructions about what he was meant to do and she promised she’d phone in his name so that there would be a reservation at a hotel waiting for him, not to mention an actual place amongst all the seminars.
He thanked her quietly before setting to packing his things up and writing a quick note. Cain wasn’t a very loquacious man when it came to most things and that translated to the page as well, so when he sat down to write his excuse, all he came up with was:
Work calls. Be in Denver for five days. Back later. -Cain
He left at dawn and put the note on the kitchen table for all of them to read. For five minutes, he contemplated adding something, some personal comment to any of them, but instead of apologizing to Azkadellia or telling Ambrose it’d all be alright, all he wrote was a quick PS to Jeb: “Don’t do anything your mother wouldn’t approve of.”
And then he was off for five long days away from his family for the first time in his life.
--
The students had been muttering between themselves, seated in their chairs, for nearly five minutes. There was no Professor Brown smiling at them in front of three chalkboards, no substitute, no Professor Walker giving his excuses for running late or a sign that said class was cancelled - not that his class had ever been cancelled in his three years of lecture at Baker University. In fact, the man was practically infamous for his punctuality.
When he finally did show up, half the class was already realizing that maybe it would have been better if the man had stayed absent. His hair looked like it hadn’t been brushed in a week, and while he was wearing the same sort of pants, he was wearing a t-shirt under one of his white fitted shirts, a tie slung loosely around its collar. The way he slammed his briefcase down didn’t help anything either, considering he let it fall in the middle of the floor while holding what looked like tests under his arm. There was only one test in his class, and that was after the intensive pre-Actual Learning section. They’d taken that already, so nobody had a clue what was going on.
The tests fell to the floor too, and the final, most concerning thing he had under his arm, was pulled out. All three chalkboards were lined up, and magnets were pulled out as he stuck a massive map in front of them, one full of absolute nonsense and very clear lines around sections of it that had the names of their countries written on them.
“If you don’t have one of those scantron things, you’ve got five minutes to go get one,” Ambrose shouted out, and most of the class went scurrying off after conferring with others in their group, who immediately headed for the chalkboards. They were stopped as soon as they got out of their desks by a glare. “Did I say you could look at this yet?”
“No, sir,” one of them said shakily, and sat back down, hard.
It occurred to the class that Professor Brown was now some sort of demon from hell, and they wondered when the swap had happened.
Ambrose, on the other hand, was pacing and already regretting letting the kids go off to get those scantron things. He wanted to punch something, he wanted to teach these kids something, he wanted to keep everyone safe, and he couldn’t do any of it. So he stood in front of them, and as soon as the five minute mark hit with most of the class inside, he locked every single door that led inside, grabbing the tests and letting them flop down on the first desk he saw, the student in it squeaking a bit. “Pass them out.”
The tests were on every color of paper he could find, which had included about fourteen shades of yellow that were all named different things but were just yellow in the end. A hand went into his hair as he ran through the statistics. His class was a big one, so he’d made twenty variations of the test. There was no way anyone would be able to cheat, he’d made sure of that. “The colors of the paper mean absolutely nothing, the only thing that you have to do is write down the word at the bottom of the last page next to your name.”
Words ranged from ‘dog’ to ‘Byzantine’.
“You have half the class period to complete it, I’m starting to time it as soon as I stop talking, and really you should all be able to do this test with no problems unless you spent most of the semester asleep,” he said, shouting at the end. “No other sort of work in my class! No reading the college newspaper in class! No handjobs while I’m in class, and yes, I know who you are! Have I made myself clear?”
His answer was a resounding, terrified “Yes, sir.”
“You’re being timed now, good luck,” Ambrose snapped, and sat on the floor, right next to his briefcase, trying not to glare at everyone. Really, the test was pretty easy, considering it was almost a dumbed-down version of their official ‘final’ but with questions about their country’s formation and what not to do while forming a system of government. Still, the entire class looked frantic as they filled in bubble after bubble. There was some pounding on the doors, but Ambrose ignored it. He’d set rules, and they’d failed to meet them. They could pound all they wanted, he wasn’t letting them in.
With a click, he opened up his briefcase that still, even after all this time, had a slight dent in it, and started shuffling through papers, grabbing a bag of dice he’d stolen from some of the games back at the house. Each paper had the name of one of their countries, and he kept rolling on them, then scribbling things down. Roll, scribble, put the paper to his right. Roll, scribble, put the paper to his right. When he finished, the class’ time was finished too.
“Pencils up and all that, pass to your left, those to your left will then pass it down, and whoever’s unfortunate enough to be sitting in the lower-left seat puts them on that table over there,” Ambrose said, and gestured over to the place where he normally smiled and set his briefcase before class began. “But, as a reward, they get to know what the hell’s going on with the map and these things.” He waved the papers around, slamming the tattered briefcase shut, and pulled some more magnets out, sticking the appropriate paper in the appropriate country.
Ambrose turned back around with a slightly dead look on his face. “Congratulations, you’re all at war with each other.”
The classroom exploded with shouts and disbelief, and were immediately silenced by the glare he sent back. “Thanks to these dice I used, you have a military strength. Six is highest, one is lowest. You’ll have until the end of class to make treaties and alliances, and you’d better have someone recording those word for word, because you’ll need it.” He stood up in the complete silence of the room, grabbing the papers and scantrons. “I’m leaving. There’s the standard office hours, but if you can’t tell, I’m not in the best of moods right now. Tests will be graded as soon as I figure out how to use the machine.”
When the professor walked out the door, it almost hurt to hear his class burst into action, practically rioting as they ran towards the front to grab their country’s new military information, but he let the door swing shut anyway, hearing it click behind him.
There were five of them in the hallway. Three boys, two girls, all looking at him with hurt, betrayed eyes, their swiftly purchased scantrons held limply in their hands. For a long while he just stood there, feeling the itch of the t-shirt’s fabric, the wrongness of nothing on his shoulders. He let them stare. Ambrose wanted to stare at himself, too.
It was one of the boys that finally spoke. “Professor, are you okay?”
“No,” Ambrose said simply. “The door’s unlocked now.” That got all but the kid in front of him inside, but this guy…he seemed like he’d be sticking around for a while, just to get some answers out of Ambrose.
“Do you want to talk to someone about it?”
Ambrose let out an exasperated sigh and had to turn his head, because the kid looked like he was actually serious. “There’s nothing to talk about anymore, alright?”
“They die, or leave you?” the kid asked, and Ambrose’s head snapped back with wide eyes. “I’m Peter, by the way. If you feel that miserable about it, you need to take your mind off it with something.”
Ambrose stared at him. “…are you hitting on me?”
Peter laughed at that. Peter laughed very, very hard, and then reached into a pocket, giving Ambrose a bright red flyer advertising a frat party, events both before and after it, but the party very much emphasized, along with the wet t-shirt contest.
“I think I would have preferred being hit on by a twenty-year-old,” Ambrose muttered, and handed the paper back. “I have kids to look after.” He nodded in the direction of the class. “Go prepare for war. Be someone’s general.”
“There’s a pledge meet-and-greet, if you look at the very top in the fine print,” Peter said, grinning. “No offense, sir, but I saw you the night you were drunk at the campus bar. I wouldn’t want you drunk anywhere but your house. Too much information gets out of that mouth of yours, seriously.” Ambrose blushed a bit at that. “No, don’t worry about it. I’m a total lightweight, and you were drinking like you owned the place. Anyone that hammered would be talking out of their…um. Anyway. The frat’s been wondering if you’d be willing to sponsor or mentor some of us since your first year here.” The flyer was back in his hand. “Think about it, alright?”
To his horror, Ambrose actually found himself thinking about it. It was disturbing enough that he pocketed the flyer, pointed at the door, and said, “Go to class.”
Peter grinned, apparently thinking he’d already caught Ambrose Brown for his fraternity, but Ambrose Brown walked right past him before Peter even moved for the door, walking home in utter silence after throwing every single test into a dumpster.
tbc