Man of Light
pt. 12
The morning's light had sent its squared-off beams several feet across the living room floor in the Lightman household when his cell phone began to ring.
Lightman lifted his chin and looked aside at the device, trying to read the display from halfway across the kitchen. No joy. And he wasn't about to leave the stove to answer it. He had it down to a science, after all. Second on the list after reading faces- his perfectly timed chocolate chip pancakes. Emily's favorite. Emily's- Emily's.
Emily was still asleep. Why was he making chocolate chip pancakes, over and above the fried eggs, english muffins and curled slices of sizzling hot bacon? No idea. He chalked it up to a long night and poured another pancake.
He barely recognized his intern when he got out of the shower and slid down the corridor in a pair of Cal's slippers and a robe he seemed to nearly disappear into. Curly hair heavy with water hung in longer ringlets than was its custom when dry. He'd shaved in the shower and at least a couple of years had come off with the rough stubble. Flush with the warm shower, he was rosy-cheeked and sleepy-eyed as he came into the kitchen.
"Chocolate chips?" Not exactly incredulous, but getting there.
"Em's favorite."
Eli looked behind him, back toward Emily's room. "She's asleep," he pointed out.
"They're for you."
It might have been his imagination, but as Eli's eyes scanned the ingredients on the countertop one more time, it seemed to Lightman that he might just have been checking to make sure there wasn't any arsenic among the bottles of vanilla extract and lime juice.
Seeing none, "Thanks," he answered, somewhat tentatively, and settled up onto a stool on the other side of the kitchen island. "Is your arm-?" he introduced the question, though finished it up with just a nod at the offended limb.
"It's fine, yeah, thanks. You know your way around a bandage," Lightman pointed out, flipping a pancake while giving the younger man a nod of tacit approval in regards to the way his fingers were precariously poised over a piece of bacon. Eli swiped the breakfast meat and crunched down on it.
"Guess so. Sorry about, uh- all of that," he told Lightman, mouth full, though he lifted his other hand to hold it a few inches in front of his mouth in an effort not to spit on anything.
"Nothing I don't guess I didn't deserve," Cal replied with a surprising dose of candor, one large enough to distract Eli from the I'm Hungry noises his stomach was sending his brain.
"Oh?" is all he said, unsure of how exactly to take that.
Cal slid another pancake onto the pile, turned off the stovetop and turned around with the plate of chocolate chip pancakes, sliding them onto the island.
"And more," he went on, by way of affirmation. "I know it's nothing that a batch of chocolate chip pancakes can fix, Loker. But. You should know that you've got a place here, as long as you need it, ey?"
Huddled inside the robe, Eli looked into Lightman's eyes, seeming to take stock of his boss' intentions, a gaze as incisive as it was peaceful.
A silence hung between them, an uncertainty as to this strange new pact into which they were entering, one moment, two, before Eli's fingers inched forward across the island, stealing a chocolate chip pancake and folding it in two to eat.
"Okay."