Jul. 30th, 2008 09:29 pm
The Lost and Found - Part 2
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lovely_ambitionTITLE: The Lost and Found - Part 2
Pairing: Implications of Ambrose/OFC.
Rating: PG.
Disclaimer: These characters are not the property of me.
Summary: When they put Ambrose's brain back in, he wasn't supposed to keep glitching and certainly not for days at a time. It's been three-plus days and Ambrose has strange coordinates on his hand.
Notes: Dedicated to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lionille and koslorollo, who showed me that OC's can be wonderful when they're serving Our Fair Heroes' plot.
It seemed that Harry and Sue bred routine and ritual in their house and Ambrose quickly fell into their tutelage to learn the ins and outs. He still didn’t know why he was there, but he knew that breakfast was served at eight and then house chores were done followed by study and training after lunch (the training was not optional, despite the fact that Harry was in his early seventies and Sue was pushing the seven-zero figure). Dinner was served punctually at seven and reading and conversation was had until bed.
Days of that had been calming, but weeks had lulled Ambrose into a sense of security.
Not only that, but the regular meals that were being pushed into him had actually allowed him to gain back all the weight he had lost after the surgery and then some, but training kept it so that he wouldn’t grow too much of a belly. Not only that, but Ambrose had grown used to the company that was kept. Occasionally, former-Resistance workers would pass through for meals and more often than not, Sue’s bespoken-of nieces and nephews dropped by for dinner.
“You’re taking Mara out to dinner next week,” Sue said while they folded clothes in one of the spare rooms. Mara was one of the nieces with curly golden hair, who constantly wore a golden heart pendant against her tanned skin. She was willowy and beautiful and Ambrose had found himself occasionally staring at her and trying to place where he knew her from.
Sue had taken that as reason to set them up.
“Am I?”
“She says you should dress fancy, you’re going to the little restaurant on the hill near here, in Amberlea.”
“Ah.” Ambrose really didn’t know what else he was supposed to say to that and one of the things he’d learned was that he was not to disobey what Sue wanted because she would then smother you to death with good intentions, trying to fix it. It was best to go along with whatever she wanted, let it run its course, and then move on.
She placed the brunt of the folded laundry in his arms, wiping her hands on her trousers as she nodded to the linen closet they belonged to. “Just in there,” she instructed, tucking away a wisp of hair, and at the sound of the front door bell being rung, she caught Ambrose’s eye. “Get that, will you? I’m going to help Harry with the garden out back.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” he said politely, closing the door lightly before hurrying to the door.
Whoever was there kept ringing and ringing the bell impatiently and Ambrose had a curse or three ready for whoever it was (he would put platinums on it being the little children from down the road who seemed to enjoy this little game of ring-and-run far too much).
“Coming!” he assured, “coming, coming, coming…” And as he drew the door open, he plastered on his best grin. “How can I help…you…Cain?” Ambrose asked, shock overtaking him as he gaped at the man in the doorway.
“Ambrose,” Cain said, sounding just as shocked. “What are you doing here?”
“What am…what am I doing here? Thank the gods you’re here, I thought no one would ever get my letters!” he said, letting out a laugh of relief and nearly pouncing on Cain to hug him tightly. “I’ve been out here for weeks and no one’s written anything back! How did you find me? Did you track the letters?”
“I didn’t come here for you, Ambrose,” Cain said slowly, his words filled with confusion as he eased back from the hug to study him curiously. “Why are you here?” he asked, again.
Before Ambrose could answer, or demand to know why it mattered so much, there was the sound of an elated shriek and a deep laugh behind him.
“Wyatt!”
“There he is.”
Ambrose waffled as Harry and Sue went rushing past him. In an instant flat, Sue wrapped her arms snugly around Cain while Harry patted him on the back and Ambrose had to remind himself that it was only natural that they would know him. He had been in the Resistance, after all, and Harry and Sue’s outpost was one of the more visited ones along the path. Except that most of the scouts and soldiers that passed didn’t get Sue kissing them on their cheek or Harry ruffling their hair.
“Uh…”
Cain glanced up from all the attention he was receiving and brushed himself off, nodding curtly to Ambrose. “Like I was saying,” he continued. “I didn’t come here for you, Ambrose. I came to visit my parents.”
“And me!”
“And Ella,” he corrected himself, earning a smack on the shoulder from the spirited young woman in question. Cain just laughed deeply and tugged her into a hug before they set off in the midst of a conversation about what Jeb was doing and Cain inquiring as to her studies.
Ambrose, for lack of a better term, had been left back in the dust, gaping over this new development as he tried to settle all the pieces into place. It explained many things, like why he had a trinket of Cain’s (probably to show his parents for safe passage) and why he knew the address and had it written on his hand. Of course, he still didn’t know the why of why he was there, but it’d come eventually.
For the moment, he was preoccupied with the fact that his gaze was swiveling back and forth between Sue and Harry. “He’s your son. Wyatt Cain is your son?” Ambrose asked, disbelief writ all over his face.
“Is that bad?” Sue asked, still smiling away.
“You…I…” Ambrose blinked and a headache was coming on strong at all the information that was coming too quickly and without abandon. “I’m Glitch! He said he wrote about me all the time to a couple out here in the Spires.”
“Why do you think we’ve been taking such good care of you?” Harry asked, shaking his head. “I’m going back to work. Send Wyatt along when he’s through with Ella’s lessons.”
“You got it, sweetheart,” Sue promised, kissing him on the cheek as he went. “Ambrose, come on with me, before you pass out in shock.”
He went along because he had the feeling if he didn’t, there would be a righteous smacking from Sue and after the morning he was having, he didn’t want to add that to the grand list of things he had experienced. Just because he was going along didn’t mean he was willing to do it quietly, though.
“Your son is Cain,” Ambrose said again, as if saying it enough times aloud would somehow make the thoughts settle.
“For forty-five annuals, yes,” agreed Sue. “Any other obvious statements you feel compelled to make?” She had a hint of a smirk on her lips and Ambrose felt as if he wanted to wring out his hair and figure out what had brought him here in the first place and why he hadn’t bothered to tell anyone where he was going. “Don’t you fret about this. We’ll sort it at dinner tonight. Wyatt’s staying for two weeks seeing as he’s still trying to figure out what to do with his life.”
“And you thought you could help?” Ambrose remarked with a rueful smile. It seemed the thing for parents to do.
“Actually, he did.” Sue gestured with her head. “Now come on. The grapes need picking if we’re going to produce wine this season and I’ve the feeling you’ve got excellent stamping toes on you.”
*
He was still stamping grapes when Cain found him. Well, ‘stamping grapes’ was a generous term for it. What he was actually doing was panting as he leaned over the wooden edge of the vat, sweat dripping into the juice. It was going to be a salty batch this annual, at the rate he was going.
“So I didn’t tell you or anyone that I was coming here?” Ambrose asked as he tried to catch his breath. Sue had been right about one thing. Right before she’d left him to it, she’d made a wry comment about how good it could be to just get all your anger and irritation out when it came to stomping the grapes and Ambrose had been pouring all his available energy into that. “Not even DG, not Raw? Why would I do that? Why would you let me?!”
It wasn’t a secret that he’d been having the ‘episodes’ of blacking out and had been under close surveillance for a great deal of time. He couldn’t imagine that anyone would just let him wander away without a fuss. Unless he snuck out…? No, but then people would have been searching. At least, he hoped they would be.
“You said you needed to do this one thing,” Cain said evenly, resting his palms high up on the barrier between him and Ambrose and let the barrel pull at his muscles. Ambrose leaned down and over Cain and from the angle he was at, could barely see anything past his hat. “You never really clarified what that ‘one thing’ was, but you made a big deal about you being left out. We tried to stop you. I’m pretty sure DG tried to put a protective spell around your room, but you got out. And we knew you’d taken care of yourself with only half a brain…”
“So you gave me the benefit of the doubt,” Ambrose realized with a sigh. “I guess that was what I wanted. But Cain, I had your parents’ address on me. Literally on me. And I think I stole the horse you carved for Jeb?” he added, voice slightly anxious and was well-deserved seeing as Cain tipped his head up to level Ambrose with a heavy glare. “Sorry?”
“I thought I’d lost that,” he muttered. “Are you done up there?”
“No, I was about to take out my frustrations against the Longcoats and Zero?” He paused where he was and suddenly a brilliant, genius smile took over and he extended both hands to Cain. “Wanna help?”
Ambrose’s smile turned just a smidgen more mischievous as Cain reached out both hands and clasped tight onto Ambrose’s wrists, letting him haul the other man up into the grapes with him, even cushioning him when he stumbled and he wrapped one arm around Cain’s waist to make sure he didn’t do something stupid like give himself a concussion on the sides.
The moment drew out, slightly awkward, and Ambrose stared up at Cain as he felt his throat begin to dry and questions crumbled there. “Did you and DG and Raw want to come after me?” he asked curiously.
“I was coming here to ask my parents what I ought to do about my life,” Cain admitted. “We just figured you’d find your way home at some point.”
“I had no idea your parents were still alive.”
“It never came up in our conversations,” Cain said, releasing himself slowly from Ambrose as he pried off boots and socks – already heavily stained in grapes, but Cain didn’t seem to mind. “You and I were always bickering about therapy or what my career ought to be or just talking and we never talked about our families.”
“We should have,” Ambrose said, as if suddenly determined. “Cain, we should have.”
“So, thinking of Zero, you said?”
“His face, his coat or his…wait. If Sue and Harry are your parents, then Mara is your cousin!” Ambrose announced, the epiphany hitting him like a particularly strong bolt of lightning. He gaped at Cain and nearly needed to steady himself before he went face-first into a vat of particularly noxious grapes.
Cain glanced up from picking skins from off his toes, throwing his hat down over the side to join his boots. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “Did you want to see the family tree?”
“No, I just…” Ambrose blinked, trying to accustom himself to seeing Harry, Sue, and the rest in this new light. He had been enjoying Cain hospitality the whole of the time he’d been under the roof (the one he had no intention of leaving just yet and he had a feeling if he did try and go, Sue and Ella might just bind him down with chains). “Huh. That’s going to be a weird date.”
Something he said was funny because Cain had bowed his head down low and had started to laugh, garnering a sulking reaction from Ambrose.
“What!”
“Just…you and Mara,” Cain said, glancing up and though he was smiling, there was something else lurking deep in his eyes that wasn’t as pleased as the rest of him seemingly was. “I hope you don’t mind if I lurk at a table nearby and observe the carnage.”
“Wyatt,” Ambrose scolded sharply.
“Or not,” Cain teasingly replied. “Just be sure your wallet’s full because by the end of the night, it won’t be. Mara’s always liked the finest of things. She’s driven off two boyfriends and a girlfriend because her tastes ran the gamut of too much.” At Ambrose’s look of somewhat horror, Cain leaned over and clasped a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry. She’s a real fun woman to be around. You two will have a great time, I bet anything.”
The shock and horror were still combining to produce something of a bemusing sight on Ambrose’s face and Cain clapped him once more on the shoulder and gave a patient smile.
“You’re not very encouraging,” Ambrose muttered.
“No, I think bitter cynicism was how someone once put it,” Cain agreed and groaned as he lifted himself from the grapes and started to clean his feet off in a waiting tub of water. “Come on, my father’ll get those fermenting and you have to help with dinner, I hear.”
“Everything runs smoothly in the Cain household,” Ambrose agreed sarcastically, yanking on Cain’s arm to help him out of the tub of grapes. “And everything works, especially the guests.”
“Annuals of learning that laziness begets death,” Cain’s reply was dark and hinted at what Ambrose already knew – people lost too much in the war and they had lost it through the mistakes they had been too slow to prevent. “Go on. I owe my mother a long talk about where my life is going.”
Ambrose dawdled, walking backwards towards the house as he raised an expectant brow. “And?”
“I didn’t exactly map it out before I came,” was Cain’s frustrated sigh of an answer. “Go inside. If my father asks where my life is headed, tell him North.”
Ambrose waved before turning around and contemplating Cain’s predicament as he went inside. He had refused quite audibly to become a Tin Man again and had made a show of turning down every job offer that came his way, from personal protection, to Central Security Systems, to construction, to lecturer, even. Ambrose imagined if his own parents were alive, that kind of behaviour was bound to earn him a ‘what are you doing with your life, boy?’ speech.
“Got the grapes?” Harry boomed out when Ambrose opened the creaky screen door, wielding a bucket’s worth of them. Leaning out from the kitchen, Harry caught sight and boasted a maniacal and manly grin. “Good. Come on, let’s get those buddies fermenting before you and I glaze the roast.”
Ambrose followed along in the wake that was Harry Cain, having the feeling that many a stronger man had fallen powerless to that same pull of charisma and grit.
And he’d once wondered where Cain got it from.
Ambrose scoffed to think that some people were far, far too easy to explain once you had seen their parents and what they could do with squished, thick, blue-juice grapes.
tbc
Pairing: Implications of Ambrose/OFC.
Rating: PG.
Disclaimer: These characters are not the property of me.
Summary: When they put Ambrose's brain back in, he wasn't supposed to keep glitching and certainly not for days at a time. It's been three-plus days and Ambrose has strange coordinates on his hand.
Notes: Dedicated to
lionille and koslorollo, who showed me that OC's can be wonderful when they're serving Our Fair Heroes' plot.It seemed that Harry and Sue bred routine and ritual in their house and Ambrose quickly fell into their tutelage to learn the ins and outs. He still didn’t know why he was there, but he knew that breakfast was served at eight and then house chores were done followed by study and training after lunch (the training was not optional, despite the fact that Harry was in his early seventies and Sue was pushing the seven-zero figure). Dinner was served punctually at seven and reading and conversation was had until bed.
Days of that had been calming, but weeks had lulled Ambrose into a sense of security.
Not only that, but the regular meals that were being pushed into him had actually allowed him to gain back all the weight he had lost after the surgery and then some, but training kept it so that he wouldn’t grow too much of a belly. Not only that, but Ambrose had grown used to the company that was kept. Occasionally, former-Resistance workers would pass through for meals and more often than not, Sue’s bespoken-of nieces and nephews dropped by for dinner.
“You’re taking Mara out to dinner next week,” Sue said while they folded clothes in one of the spare rooms. Mara was one of the nieces with curly golden hair, who constantly wore a golden heart pendant against her tanned skin. She was willowy and beautiful and Ambrose had found himself occasionally staring at her and trying to place where he knew her from.
Sue had taken that as reason to set them up.
“Am I?”
“She says you should dress fancy, you’re going to the little restaurant on the hill near here, in Amberlea.”
“Ah.” Ambrose really didn’t know what else he was supposed to say to that and one of the things he’d learned was that he was not to disobey what Sue wanted because she would then smother you to death with good intentions, trying to fix it. It was best to go along with whatever she wanted, let it run its course, and then move on.
She placed the brunt of the folded laundry in his arms, wiping her hands on her trousers as she nodded to the linen closet they belonged to. “Just in there,” she instructed, tucking away a wisp of hair, and at the sound of the front door bell being rung, she caught Ambrose’s eye. “Get that, will you? I’m going to help Harry with the garden out back.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” he said politely, closing the door lightly before hurrying to the door.
Whoever was there kept ringing and ringing the bell impatiently and Ambrose had a curse or three ready for whoever it was (he would put platinums on it being the little children from down the road who seemed to enjoy this little game of ring-and-run far too much).
“Coming!” he assured, “coming, coming, coming…” And as he drew the door open, he plastered on his best grin. “How can I help…you…Cain?” Ambrose asked, shock overtaking him as he gaped at the man in the doorway.
“Ambrose,” Cain said, sounding just as shocked. “What are you doing here?”
“What am…what am I doing here? Thank the gods you’re here, I thought no one would ever get my letters!” he said, letting out a laugh of relief and nearly pouncing on Cain to hug him tightly. “I’ve been out here for weeks and no one’s written anything back! How did you find me? Did you track the letters?”
“I didn’t come here for you, Ambrose,” Cain said slowly, his words filled with confusion as he eased back from the hug to study him curiously. “Why are you here?” he asked, again.
Before Ambrose could answer, or demand to know why it mattered so much, there was the sound of an elated shriek and a deep laugh behind him.
“Wyatt!”
“There he is.”
Ambrose waffled as Harry and Sue went rushing past him. In an instant flat, Sue wrapped her arms snugly around Cain while Harry patted him on the back and Ambrose had to remind himself that it was only natural that they would know him. He had been in the Resistance, after all, and Harry and Sue’s outpost was one of the more visited ones along the path. Except that most of the scouts and soldiers that passed didn’t get Sue kissing them on their cheek or Harry ruffling their hair.
“Uh…”
Cain glanced up from all the attention he was receiving and brushed himself off, nodding curtly to Ambrose. “Like I was saying,” he continued. “I didn’t come here for you, Ambrose. I came to visit my parents.”
“And me!”
“And Ella,” he corrected himself, earning a smack on the shoulder from the spirited young woman in question. Cain just laughed deeply and tugged her into a hug before they set off in the midst of a conversation about what Jeb was doing and Cain inquiring as to her studies.
Ambrose, for lack of a better term, had been left back in the dust, gaping over this new development as he tried to settle all the pieces into place. It explained many things, like why he had a trinket of Cain’s (probably to show his parents for safe passage) and why he knew the address and had it written on his hand. Of course, he still didn’t know the why of why he was there, but it’d come eventually.
For the moment, he was preoccupied with the fact that his gaze was swiveling back and forth between Sue and Harry. “He’s your son. Wyatt Cain is your son?” Ambrose asked, disbelief writ all over his face.
“Is that bad?” Sue asked, still smiling away.
“You…I…” Ambrose blinked and a headache was coming on strong at all the information that was coming too quickly and without abandon. “I’m Glitch! He said he wrote about me all the time to a couple out here in the Spires.”
“Why do you think we’ve been taking such good care of you?” Harry asked, shaking his head. “I’m going back to work. Send Wyatt along when he’s through with Ella’s lessons.”
“You got it, sweetheart,” Sue promised, kissing him on the cheek as he went. “Ambrose, come on with me, before you pass out in shock.”
He went along because he had the feeling if he didn’t, there would be a righteous smacking from Sue and after the morning he was having, he didn’t want to add that to the grand list of things he had experienced. Just because he was going along didn’t mean he was willing to do it quietly, though.
“Your son is Cain,” Ambrose said again, as if saying it enough times aloud would somehow make the thoughts settle.
“For forty-five annuals, yes,” agreed Sue. “Any other obvious statements you feel compelled to make?” She had a hint of a smirk on her lips and Ambrose felt as if he wanted to wring out his hair and figure out what had brought him here in the first place and why he hadn’t bothered to tell anyone where he was going. “Don’t you fret about this. We’ll sort it at dinner tonight. Wyatt’s staying for two weeks seeing as he’s still trying to figure out what to do with his life.”
“And you thought you could help?” Ambrose remarked with a rueful smile. It seemed the thing for parents to do.
“Actually, he did.” Sue gestured with her head. “Now come on. The grapes need picking if we’re going to produce wine this season and I’ve the feeling you’ve got excellent stamping toes on you.”
*
He was still stamping grapes when Cain found him. Well, ‘stamping grapes’ was a generous term for it. What he was actually doing was panting as he leaned over the wooden edge of the vat, sweat dripping into the juice. It was going to be a salty batch this annual, at the rate he was going.
“So I didn’t tell you or anyone that I was coming here?” Ambrose asked as he tried to catch his breath. Sue had been right about one thing. Right before she’d left him to it, she’d made a wry comment about how good it could be to just get all your anger and irritation out when it came to stomping the grapes and Ambrose had been pouring all his available energy into that. “Not even DG, not Raw? Why would I do that? Why would you let me?!”
It wasn’t a secret that he’d been having the ‘episodes’ of blacking out and had been under close surveillance for a great deal of time. He couldn’t imagine that anyone would just let him wander away without a fuss. Unless he snuck out…? No, but then people would have been searching. At least, he hoped they would be.
“You said you needed to do this one thing,” Cain said evenly, resting his palms high up on the barrier between him and Ambrose and let the barrel pull at his muscles. Ambrose leaned down and over Cain and from the angle he was at, could barely see anything past his hat. “You never really clarified what that ‘one thing’ was, but you made a big deal about you being left out. We tried to stop you. I’m pretty sure DG tried to put a protective spell around your room, but you got out. And we knew you’d taken care of yourself with only half a brain…”
“So you gave me the benefit of the doubt,” Ambrose realized with a sigh. “I guess that was what I wanted. But Cain, I had your parents’ address on me. Literally on me. And I think I stole the horse you carved for Jeb?” he added, voice slightly anxious and was well-deserved seeing as Cain tipped his head up to level Ambrose with a heavy glare. “Sorry?”
“I thought I’d lost that,” he muttered. “Are you done up there?”
“No, I was about to take out my frustrations against the Longcoats and Zero?” He paused where he was and suddenly a brilliant, genius smile took over and he extended both hands to Cain. “Wanna help?”
Ambrose’s smile turned just a smidgen more mischievous as Cain reached out both hands and clasped tight onto Ambrose’s wrists, letting him haul the other man up into the grapes with him, even cushioning him when he stumbled and he wrapped one arm around Cain’s waist to make sure he didn’t do something stupid like give himself a concussion on the sides.
The moment drew out, slightly awkward, and Ambrose stared up at Cain as he felt his throat begin to dry and questions crumbled there. “Did you and DG and Raw want to come after me?” he asked curiously.
“I was coming here to ask my parents what I ought to do about my life,” Cain admitted. “We just figured you’d find your way home at some point.”
“I had no idea your parents were still alive.”
“It never came up in our conversations,” Cain said, releasing himself slowly from Ambrose as he pried off boots and socks – already heavily stained in grapes, but Cain didn’t seem to mind. “You and I were always bickering about therapy or what my career ought to be or just talking and we never talked about our families.”
“We should have,” Ambrose said, as if suddenly determined. “Cain, we should have.”
“So, thinking of Zero, you said?”
“His face, his coat or his…wait. If Sue and Harry are your parents, then Mara is your cousin!” Ambrose announced, the epiphany hitting him like a particularly strong bolt of lightning. He gaped at Cain and nearly needed to steady himself before he went face-first into a vat of particularly noxious grapes.
Cain glanced up from picking skins from off his toes, throwing his hat down over the side to join his boots. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “Did you want to see the family tree?”
“No, I just…” Ambrose blinked, trying to accustom himself to seeing Harry, Sue, and the rest in this new light. He had been enjoying Cain hospitality the whole of the time he’d been under the roof (the one he had no intention of leaving just yet and he had a feeling if he did try and go, Sue and Ella might just bind him down with chains). “Huh. That’s going to be a weird date.”
Something he said was funny because Cain had bowed his head down low and had started to laugh, garnering a sulking reaction from Ambrose.
“What!”
“Just…you and Mara,” Cain said, glancing up and though he was smiling, there was something else lurking deep in his eyes that wasn’t as pleased as the rest of him seemingly was. “I hope you don’t mind if I lurk at a table nearby and observe the carnage.”
“Wyatt,” Ambrose scolded sharply.
“Or not,” Cain teasingly replied. “Just be sure your wallet’s full because by the end of the night, it won’t be. Mara’s always liked the finest of things. She’s driven off two boyfriends and a girlfriend because her tastes ran the gamut of too much.” At Ambrose’s look of somewhat horror, Cain leaned over and clasped a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry. She’s a real fun woman to be around. You two will have a great time, I bet anything.”
The shock and horror were still combining to produce something of a bemusing sight on Ambrose’s face and Cain clapped him once more on the shoulder and gave a patient smile.
“You’re not very encouraging,” Ambrose muttered.
“No, I think bitter cynicism was how someone once put it,” Cain agreed and groaned as he lifted himself from the grapes and started to clean his feet off in a waiting tub of water. “Come on, my father’ll get those fermenting and you have to help with dinner, I hear.”
“Everything runs smoothly in the Cain household,” Ambrose agreed sarcastically, yanking on Cain’s arm to help him out of the tub of grapes. “And everything works, especially the guests.”
“Annuals of learning that laziness begets death,” Cain’s reply was dark and hinted at what Ambrose already knew – people lost too much in the war and they had lost it through the mistakes they had been too slow to prevent. “Go on. I owe my mother a long talk about where my life is going.”
Ambrose dawdled, walking backwards towards the house as he raised an expectant brow. “And?”
“I didn’t exactly map it out before I came,” was Cain’s frustrated sigh of an answer. “Go inside. If my father asks where my life is headed, tell him North.”
Ambrose waved before turning around and contemplating Cain’s predicament as he went inside. He had refused quite audibly to become a Tin Man again and had made a show of turning down every job offer that came his way, from personal protection, to Central Security Systems, to construction, to lecturer, even. Ambrose imagined if his own parents were alive, that kind of behaviour was bound to earn him a ‘what are you doing with your life, boy?’ speech.
“Got the grapes?” Harry boomed out when Ambrose opened the creaky screen door, wielding a bucket’s worth of them. Leaning out from the kitchen, Harry caught sight and boasted a maniacal and manly grin. “Good. Come on, let’s get those buddies fermenting before you and I glaze the roast.”
Ambrose followed along in the wake that was Harry Cain, having the feeling that many a stronger man had fallen powerless to that same pull of charisma and grit.
And he’d once wondered where Cain got it from.
Ambrose scoffed to think that some people were far, far too easy to explain once you had seen their parents and what they could do with squished, thick, blue-juice grapes.
tbc
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