'Nother Sip of Gin - Rhys Ford Page 0,12
take care of my human. And keep death as far away from him as possible.
Five
“DO YOU know what you need?” Brigid tilted her head, studying Miki as he nibbled on the mountain of food she’d put on a plate and plopped into his lap.
The woman purred. Literally purred. As Irish as any pint of Guinness he’d downed in Dublin while on tour, Kane’s mother spoke with a lilting purr meant to comfort and soothe.
But it scared the fuck out of him.
Crawling scary fucks even.
He knew why. Explaining it wouldn’t help. He’d met women like Brigid before. Well, not exactly like Brigid, since she seemed to be the type of person someone would name an unsinkable ship after.
No, Miki frowned, they’d name the iceberg after her. Any poor ship minding its own business in the middle of the ocean was fucked if it ran across her.
And if anything made him feel smaller than a dinghy on a collision course with doom, it was apparently a sweet-faced Irish mother bent on stuffing him like a turkey waiting for Judgment Day. That and she was staring.
It was damned hard to eat when someone was staring at him. Hell, even the dog didn’t do it. But then, Dude’d abandoned him what seemed like hours ago, settling in to gnaw on yet another bone he’d dragged over to a corner of the living room. Staring—like she wanted something.
He held out a grilled Brussels sprouts, putting up a wall of green between them.
Apparently that wasn’t it, because her eyebrows gathered up together like a coiled spring waiting to snap back and bite him.
“Um, no?” It took him a bit to realize she was still waiting for him to answer her question. Odd since she’d not paused for more than a second as she chirruped and sang her way through the living room and across the couch where he’d shoved himself to hide from her assault.
First thing he was going to do was get very thick doors for the room he’d plopped his bed in. Really thick doors. That locked. Maybe even bolted from the inside with a heavy wooden bar like he was expecting an orc raid or perhaps Smaug. Eyeing her frightful mop of red curls as it bobbed and wove about her heart-shaped face, Miki wasn’t so sure even those types of doors would hold her back.
“You need to come home with us,” Brigid declared, pronouncing a death sentence on him in her cheery Lucky-Charms accent. “Quinn can come get us. I’ll go pack up some of your clothes—”
“Shit, no!” Miki was up off the couch before he realized he still had a plate of food in his lap. The cabbage thing he’d been picking at hit the carpet by Dude’s nose. Gleefully, the terrier snapped it up in a single gulp, quickly rising up to hoover his way through the remains of Miki’s dinner.
No carried absolutely no weight. Hell, even the dog didn’t look up from his food slurping when Miki shouted. Although, he frowned down at the terrier, the grilled sprouts were probably going to revisit them all later. Miki was still reeling from the gaseous cloud of death the dog emitted after he’d gotten a mouthful of kimchee.
“Shit, kimchee’s cabbage. Everything on that damned plate’s cabbage. Is she trying to make sure I fart off the bed? Kane’s going to love—shit, where did she go?” Miki looked around, shocked to find himself alone in the living room with what was obviously going to be a furry ticking time bomb of mustard gas in a few hours. A fluff of red hair near his unmade bed stuttered his heart to a dead stop, and Miki knew he’d die of cardiac arrest long before the dog’s sulfurous ass got him.
Especially when Brigid held up the half-empty bottle of lube he’d hastily shoved under his pillow and asked, “Should I pack only this one? Or do you think you boys are going to need more?”
Five and a Half
THERE IS someone new in the house.
I, as the Dude, am responsible for checking out the intrusion. The duties of the name Dude are loosely defined. Unlike my other names—like the most recently obtained Cat Squat Sand Scrounger—Dude is not so much a description of my status among the others in the global Pack but rather my Miki-given status as I share his life and den.
Dude—such a short noise—but it comes with tremendous responsibilities.
I take these responsibilities very seriously. My first and foremost responsibility is to Miki,