Crochet Hook

A hotel tea room, the sounds of conversation and clinking porcelain muted by thick tablecloths and stands of roses, both cut ones in vases and living ones trained up trellises. Slightly outside of the fashionable centres of the city—not quite the level of luxury he’s been used to—but Pete said his grandmother would complain, if they took her somewhere too showy. And, well. It’s not that Korn has said anything, but Vegas is constantly aware of the extra level of scrutiny on him now, and that includes his spending. It’s just as well not to be too extravagant, for the time being.

Pete also said that she’d be too embarrassed to host them at her own home, which is—cute. He knows that his grandmother’s address is on file at the main family’s office; must know, too, that Vegas has had it since that time they stayed at the safe house together. So long as he’s aware that Vegas could walk up and knock on her door whenever he cared to, Vegas will let him keep up this pretense of separation.

The main family’s mansion was out of the question, of course. So here they are.

They got here early, but it feels like they’ve only just sat down when the waitress ushers a tiny old lady around to their table. She looks unremarkable: iron-grey hair pulled away from her face, a flowered blouse, dark blue trousers.

He stands to greet her with a wai and a, “Sawasdee khrap,” Pete beside him like an echo. For the first time in years, the worry crosses Vegas’s mind that his gun in its holster is showing through the drape of his suit. He forces himself not to check; that would be absurd.

“Sawasdee kha,” she returns, eyes sparkling like any grandmother meeting her grandson’s good friend, and it’s as she lowers her gaze to return his wai that he sees her snap into focus—sees her wide mouth, suddenly, as Pete’s, wrinkles around it in the shape his face takes on when he smiles.

Her cheeks are sunken, not full like his, and her eyes aren’t quite the same. The next time she looks at him, though, after he’s pulled out a chair for her and made sure she’s settled in it, after Pete’s formally introduced them to each other, Vegas thinks he sees something of the same hidden steel in them.

They order tea and cakes, little bite-size things that will come topped with whipped cream and artfully scattered pistachio crumbs. Before any of it arrives, Pete’s grandmother pulls her big handbag up onto her lap to rummage through it.

“Pete told me it was your birthday.”

He tenses, but all that emerges from the bag is a small parcel, hand-wrapped in bright yellow paper. Something soft that gives in his grip, as he accepts it, but springs back. “Thank you, Grandmother. You didn’t have to.”

“Oh, but I wanted to,” she says. “How old are you, now? Twenty-three, twenty-four?”

“Twenty-four.” He’s grateful, now, that this first meeting is taking place today. Had Pete planned it this way, knowing how much of the conversation could be given over to routine questions and answers, things that barely require thought to answer?

Have you made merits yet? Yes, they were at the temple shortly after dawn this morning, his motorcycle cutting through the early traffic like a shark through schools of fish. No, he hadn’t set free any birds or turtles. They’d just given donations to the monks and listened to a sermon.

(What he doesn’t say: the symbolism of releasing animals would have felt off, this year of all years. Instead, after the sermon, he drove Pete through backstreets and alleys until he was certain no tail could have followed them. Then he shoved him against the wall and tore open his shirt to bite a livid purple bruise next to his collarbone, just underneath the chain he’d given him that Pete wears every single day.)

Are you going to have a party with your friends, or go out on the town to celebrate? This is already his birthday celebration! Vegas raises his teacup. He glances at Pete, and gets back a small, warm smile, not the bright broad one he hides behind. There’ll be a special dinner tonight with his family, of course. They don’t usually do a lot for birthdays—other holidays are more important, you know? (A flat-out lie. The party for Kinn’s thirtieth birthday had cost enough to feed a rural village from then until his thirty-first. The fact that it was tied in to promotions for two of the main family’s businesses didn’t make it less extravagant.) Vegas doesn’t go out too much these days—he has to set a good example for his brother.

A younger brother? Just one, or do you have sisters too? Getting the topic of conversation onto Macau was a master stroke. There’s plenty to say about his little brother, even if Vegas sticks to describing the life he’s tried to secure for him, rather than the future their father had in mind. (Who knows what will become of him, now that both Macau and Vegas are under Korn’s ‘protection’?) Vegas tells Pete’s grandmother about shopping trips and teaching Macau to ride a motorcycle, about English tutors and when to apply to universities abroad.

Pete leans further back in his chair as Vegas talks, contributing less and less to the conversation, and he feels a flare of anger—Pete knows Macau, he spent every day with him while Vegas was in his coma, they even seem to get along. Why is Vegas being left to entertain his grandmother alone, when Pete could easily throw in an anecdote or two?

When he shoots him a glare, Pete doesn’t even acknowledge it. He simply pushes the last bite of his matcha-green cake into his mouth, pantomiming for his grandmother how delicious it is.

Fine. Pete wasn’t brought up the way Macau is being brought up, and maybe he doesn’t want to make his grandmother feel awkward about it, but that’s a scruple he can have on his own time. It’s not like Vegas got the chance to be a spoiled teenager either.

He changes the subject with a sharp, deliberate smile. “Did Pete tell you all about his holiday a few months ago?”

Most likely, even Pete’s grandmother can tell how ill-at-ease he becomes when Vegas waxes lyrical about the jungle and the lake around the safehouse, the sightseeing that can—he presumes—be done from its remote location, the well-equipped kitchen that Pete never saw. Pete is, in fact, so uncomfortable he starts to giggle. The sound grates on Vegas like a rotary sander against the soft skin of a man’s belly: sure, he enjoys having that effect on Pete, but today? Right now? He’s been trying to be good.

Fortunately, Vegas’s mention of the safehouse kitchen gets them talking about cooking, a relatively easy subject. Pete’s grandmother, of course, is a fantastic cook: those are Pete’s words, but she doesn’t dispute them. Pete can’t cook at all, though he can certainly eat. Vegas? Vegas is learning. Maybe sometime Pete will bring him around to try his grandmother’s food. Yes, he’d love that.

Then it’s four o’clock, and Pete’s grandmother has to leave to get to the next station in her geriatric social life. Or maybe to take a nap. Vegas wouldn’t blame her—that’s what he’s going to do, as soon as he gets back to the main family’s house. Pete hugs her, and Vegas wais, and then she’s leaving, head high despite her bent shoulders, having refused the offer of a hired car.

Vegas smiles while he pays the bill, and the moment the waitress turns away, he feels it fall off his face.

“Come,” he snaps at Pete, and walks out without checking if he follows.

He only feels worse by the time they get back to the main family’s house, to the suite he’s been sharing with Pete since getting out of the hospital. It’s within the section of floors reserved for the family’s personal use, but considerably below Kinn’s penthouse suite, lower even than Tankhun’s rooms. There’s still a handful of boxes stacked up next to his desk: things brought over from the minor family’s house that have nowhere to go in this cream and beige, hotel-generic space.

Naturally, all of Pete’s possessions fit into the allotted storage. He probably didn’t even have to pack—just came up here in the elevator, his suit jackets slung over one shoulder, his weights set in the other hand.

Vegas strips his leather jacket off like it’s personally offended him and tosses it towards the dresser. His chest aches, and he needs to sleep before dinner tonight. He wasn’t wholly putting on a squeaky-clean act when he told Pete’s grandmother he didn’t like to go out much: after so long on painkillers that meant he couldn’t drink, he’s started to feel nauseous at the sight of the whisky tumblers Korn, Kinn and now Porsche all like to nurse.

With his face pressed into the pillow, he hears Pete trail into the room, pause for a moment, and then walk on, to the side of the bed. He picks up Vegas’s jacket to hang it up.

Something drops to the carpet, landing with a soft pat.

He swings himself upright fast enough to see Pete’s flinch, and the way he whips his hand back from the little yellow packet.

“Oh, right,” Vegas sneers. “I nearly forgot. Let’s see what Grandmother gave me for my birthday.”

Pete doesn’t reply. He kneeled down to pick up the gift, and he stays in that position, eyes fixed on Vegas’s face.

The paper is neatly folded, held together by the smallest strips of tape possible. There’s no label. He shreds it, not even trying to unpeel it at the seams, and when he’s done, he just stares for a moment. He can’t quite work out what he’s looking at.

“Vegas.”

It’s brown, and soft. Something knitted? Handmade?

“I didn’t tell her, Vegas.” There’s alarm in Pete’s voice, a warning not to do something stupid.

Not a scarf or a pair of socks. He flips it over. Lighter brown wool, four pink bits that stick out.

“Vegas, I swear I didn’t tell her anything.”

He looks up from the present, into Pete’s face, where his eyes are deep and black and almost scared.

“She likes to crochet. She makes crochet gifts for everyone. She asked me if there’s an animal you like, and I didn’t even think, I didn’t know what else I should say, I just…”

He turns it back over again, in his lap, and now he can see it properly, the same way her face only looked real to him once he saw the echoes of Pete in its features. Rows of rounded spikes, a pointed black nose, a fawn-coloured belly and four pink feet. A hedgehog.

It even has a tail. Most people don’t know that hedgehogs have tails.

“Vegas?”

There are tears standing in his eyes, and the pressure of some emotion he doesn’t want to deal with in his throat and chest. With an effort, he wrestles it into a bark of laughter.

“Fuck,” he says, covering his eyes with one arm. He even manages to stop laughing before he loses control and it turns hysterical. “It’s perfect. I love it. I’ll send her a thank-you card.”

Pete frowns. Vegas throws the crocheted hedgehog onto the bedside table and grabs at his shoulder, trying to pull him onto the bed. Obediently, Pete climbs up to where Vegas is too weak, too clumsy right now to manouevre him.

“Turn the light out,” he orders. Then he wraps himself around Pete’s body, burying his face between his shoulderblades until he can pretend to be no one and nothing at all.

Later—after they’ve slept, when they’re absolutely running late for Vegas’s birthday dinner and need to get showered and dressed immediately—Vegas watches Pete reach up and turn the hedgehog around, so it’s looking away from them, at the wall. He doesn’t say a word, just waits for Pete’s arm to come back so he can pin it to the bed with his full body weight and bite at Pete’s grinning mouth.