Chapter Text
I can hear Pop swearing in the kitchen as I make my way down the stairs. I turn into the room to see him throwing a piece of paper, there’s packaging all over the floor.
“Oh.” I walk into the room, realising what happened. “Our new dishwasher arrived, huh?”
“Yeah,” Pop says, heaving an annoyed sigh. “And the stupid instructions are in German. How the hell am I supposed to hook it up?”
I hesitate. “They’re in German?”
He fixes me with an annoyed stare. “What did I just say?”
“I mean, I can probably help with that,” I tell him, tentatively.
“You ain’t reading German, Cooper,” Pop scoffs.
“No,” I agree readily, rocking back awkwardly onto my heels. “But Kris is German, it’s his first language. So, he could probably...” I trail off. We don’t speak about Kris.
Pop sighs deeply, looking at the mess of packaging around him as if in deep contemplation. Finally, he looks up, semi-irritated already. “Well I ain’t waiting here all day, you best go call your boy.”
I try to mask my shock at Pop openly calling Kris my boy, and pull my phone out. I lay the instructions out, and send the photos to Kris. It doesn’t take long before my phone is ringing.
“Why are you sending me instructions for a dishwasher?” Kris asks immediately when I answer.
I laugh a little. “We got a new one, and all the instructions are in German. We can’t read it.”
“Oh,” Kris drags out in understanding. “I see. Well, it’s pretty easy to use, I think. You just—“
I hesitate. “Hang on, I’m gonna put you on speaker.”
“Okay.” Kris’ voice is tinny from the speaker of my shitty phone. He murmurs in German, going so quickly that I can barely hear where one word ends and the next begins. “Okay, cool,” he says, “So you just need to press the red and blue buttons at the same time to turn it on.”
“Wait, which buttons?” I ask, staring at the instructions.
“These ones,” Pop says quietly, pointing to the diagram. “But I don’t know how to plug it in.”
Kris pauses when he hears Pop’s voice, then very tentatively suggests, “It’s hard to explain, but I could show you?”
I watch the contemplation flit over Pop’s face. He‘s still not comfortable with me and Kris, I know that much for sure, but I also know that there’s no way he’s hand washing his dishes for the foreseeable future.
I wait for him to give his reluctant nod, and then with a kind of terrified thrill, I tell Kris the words I didn’t think I would ever be able to.
“Come over.”
I’m bouncing on my heels with barely contained energy when Kris knocks on the door. I tear it open so fast that I can hear the hinges protest, and he reels back a little.
“Hi,” I say breathlessly.
His hair is a mess of curls, falling across his forehead, and he looks soft in his worn crewneck.
“Hi,” he says back, hesitating a moment. He isn’t sure whether or not he can kiss me, and his hands flutter uselessly by his side for a moment.
I take the hesitation out of it, pulling him forward by the collar of his jumper, and into a warm kiss. He slides his hands up my sides out of instinct more than anything else, and when we break apart he looks equal parts dazed and terrified.
I huff out a small laugh, taking his hand. “Pop is in the kitchen.”
He doesn’t move, at first, and it occurs to me that he’s never actually been here. He tears his eyes away from the wall, and I flush, horrified, as I realise he’s staring at a baby photo of me.
“Okay,” I say, a little more insistently now. “Let’s go.”
He relinquishes to the tug at his hand, following me into the kitchen with wandering eyes.
I drop Kris’s hand as soon as we open the door to the kitchen, and I spot Pop. Then I immediately feel guilty, torn between not wanting Kris to feel uncomfortable, and not wanting to make the situation even more uncomfortable for him.
It doesn’t seem to matter though, because Pop drops his eyes after giving Kris a quick once over.
Kris steps hesitantly into the room, ducking under the doorframe. He’s so tall, he dwarfs even Pop, who clears his throat before taking a step back so he can make eye contact.
“Kris,” he says, gruffly, sticking out his hand to shake.
Kris takes it without pause. “Nice to see you again, sir,” he says.
They’ve only met once, when Kris and I had to give our statements to the police. Pop came to get me, claiming my car was too recognisable, as if people didn’t already have our address. He parked around the side to avoid the army of journalists, and Kris helped me push through the fray to get there. There was an awkward moment of all three of us standing on the curb until Pop all but shoved me into his car without saying so much as a word,
I glance between them now, tensing in preparation for the outburst, for Pop to suddenly decide that a dishwasher isn’t worth it, and start ripping into him. But it doesn’t come.
Pop drops his hand and picks up the instructions. “Sorry to make ya drive all the way down here,” he says, curtly.
Kris shakes his head. “It’s really no problem.” He takes the instructions from Pop’s hand. “It’s nice to have to flex my German, I might lose it otherwise.”
He’s joking—he still thinks, dreams and speaks in German, especially to his parents—but it seems to put Pop at ease a little.
I brush up behind Kris, putting my hand on his back as he looks through the instructions. Pop’s eyes follow the movement, and I tense, but he says nothing.
“It’s easy,” Kris declares, looking up. “I can hook it up, we just have to move it closer.”
It’s fairly heavy-looking, but between Kris and I, it shouldn’t be much of a hassle.
“Okay,” I say. “Just tell me where to put it.”
We count, then lift it up together, stepping it in closer to the gap where it is meant to rest. Kris crouches down on the floor, inspecting the back. Pop points out the water line, and electrical plug points to him, and they look together, dark hair and blonde side by side.
It’s bizarre, to say the least.
Kris has gone into full worker mode, as he does, instructing me to go this way and that as he methodically works out which lines go where. My face heats as I watch the little furrow in his eyebrow deepen, consulting the instructions.
I cannot believe that I want to rip his clothes off with my own father in the room, but, hey, who could blame me?
It takes a good half an hour, handing Kris the various parts we couldn’t figure out where to put, before he finally stands.
“Okay,” he says, eyes darting between me and Pop like he isn’t sure what here he should be looking. “That should work.”
“Let’s give it a try,” Pop says. “How do I do that?”
Kris guides his hands to the right way to turn it on. “This means program,” he explains, running a hand over the button. “If you give me a second, I should be able to—“ he pauses, pressing the button various times until the display screen finally comes up in English. “Ah, there we go. It should be easy from there.”
Pop lets the dishwasher run a small course, and we all stand, waiting for some kind of leak, or for it to break, but nothing happens.
“Huh,” Pop says, once the cycle has ended. “You did it.”
Kris shrugs, uncomfortable with the attention. “It wasn’t hard.”
There’s an awkward silence, and I open my mouth to break it, but Kris gets there first.
He turns to me. “Where’s the bathroom?”
“Uh,” I point down the hall. “Down the hall to the left.”
“Thanks,” he says, and I lean up and kiss him out of instinct more than anything.
His eyes are a little wide when I pull away, and dart quickly to Pop, but he says nothing. He squeezes me on the arm, and then makes his way past and out the door.
Pop looks after him, waiting for Kris to be out of sight. I drop my hands to fiddle together, anxious for his response.
He just sighs, a slow and deep sort of breath, before turning to me. “You’re a good team, you and him.” He pats the top of the dishwasher, avoiding eye contact. “Work well together. It’s—it’s nice to see you happy, Cooperstown.”
I blink. He hasn’t called me that name in a really long time. “Thanks Pop,” I say, quietly.
“Yeah, well,” he dismisses. “I better go pick up Lucas. You, uh,” he hesitates, and I raise an eyebrow. “You let me know if Kris wants to stay for dinner, yeah? I’ll get some extra meat on the way home.”
I have to bite back my incredulous ‘ Really?’ and instead nod, sharply. “Yeah, um, can do. Thanks,” I add, as almost an afterthought.
Kris stoops back into the room, and Pop claps a hand on his shoulder. He’s a good four inches shorter, and it almost makes me laugh. “Thanks for your help.”
“Not a problem,” Kris says sincerely.
Pop heads out the door, and Kris turns to me with his eyebrows raised.
“What was that?”
I shrug, entwining our fingers together. “Just Pop being weird. Hey,” I turn to him, grinning. “What are you doing for dinner?”
I watch the realisation dawn on his face, and his smile, before he pulls me in tight to kiss me slow and deep, is blinding.