Hot Pursuit, CH10 (Patreon)

I am an idiot.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The peanut gallery can shut up now.
But how didn’t I see it? It isn’t that Tristan is addicted to pemmican, it’s that he hasn’t been keeping up with the energy intake he got from it.
I scan through the listing, find one that works in the next city, confirm nothing’s going to get in the way, and silence Emil’s phone, which he’s using as navigation while driving, before sending the instruction.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see him glance over his shoulder, but I don’t react. Tristan’s on the couch, table low, and he’s cleaning a rifle, so Emil’s completely out of his line of sight, but I’m not.

Yes, I’m serious, I text. We need to do something about your dad, and unless you have a better idea, it’s got to be this.
I don’t, but he’s not going to be happy.
I’ll take the fallout, not you.
You are so looking forward to that, aren’t you?

I don’t reply. That’s basically confirming he’s on board with it. Thing is, I don’t want there to be a fallout, no matter how fun that might be. I want Tristan to see reason, for once.
Well, nothing to do but hope and place my order.
* * * * *
“You two take care of the groceries,” I instruct as I head for the door.
I picked this house because it’s been on the market for a month and there hasn’t been a showing in a week. I might have also made sure the listing was mis-tagged within the realestate network to ensure we wouldn’t be disturbed. It’s also angles oddly in that the front door doesn’t directly look out onto the road, so no one is able to see that I’m unlocking the keycase using my phone instead of tapping in the correct combination. Then I unlock the door and motion my husband and son in.
“I’ll be back in ten,” Emil says, heading for the car. “I’ll text you so you can open the garage.” He’s off to return the car and get his bike back.
“Our son is turning out to be quite adept at picking cars no one will notice missing,” I say as I go through the groceries.
Tristan’s reply is a grunt.
That’s the best I’ve been able to get out of him.
He doesn’t like this idea. As far as he’s concerned, we need to keep driving until we get to Spokane and his locker there. Of course, as much as he refuses to admit it, with the way his control’s slipping, I don’t know that we’re going to make it unless we address the problem.
And that’s what this afternoon is about.
“You sit down and take it easy. I’ll have everything ready by dinnertime.”
* * * * *
Emil helps once his bike is in the garage. Considering that for him, cooking means throwing something in the microwave, he’s a decent assistant. And it’s fun cooking with him. And Tristan doesn’t grumble from the living room, where he’s clearing his gun, again, anytime he gets close to the coffee machine, so I get guild free coffee, as it should be.
Dinner is simple, heavy on animal protein, fat, and vegetables.
Oh, you scoff at including fats? You never looked into what goes into pemmican, have you? That’s stuff is nearly as much that as it is the powdered meat. Since I’m going with fresh meat, It’s about a third of it. It’s going to be part of the sauce, as well as what the steaks baste in. And with that will be greens and other colors in the salad. And the dressing will be made by me, using the ingredients left over from the cooking.
Come on, he basically inhales pemmican. He’s not going to turn his nose up at meat dripping as part of his salad.
Oh, and I make a lot of it. All of it. Enough, I can probably feed the whole neighborhood, well, so long as most of them are still at work.
I’m lucky the dining table’s something that can sit eight, because there are a lot of plates of food on it.
“Diner time!” I call and Emil, who’s standing next to me, glares, acting like I deafened him. “I hope you’re hungry!”
Emil’s already seated by the time Tristan stands, but at least he isn’t going for the food yet. I might not be as strict as Grams when it comes to eating etiquette, but his dad is who is going to start this.
Of course, he doesn’t comment on the wonderful food or the smells. Those aren’t things he notices. But I’d have hoped for the quantities to get a reaction. I sit as he does, and as soon as he forks a piece of steak on his plate, Emil piles it on his, along with salad, and he drenches it in the sauce.
I’m confident that I could put an entire carcass before him, and he’d eat it all, bones included. Don’t ask me with he puts it all.
In contrast to him, or even me, Tristan’s portion qualifies as dainty, at best.
“Really? That’s all you’re taking?” oh, shut up. If you’ve paid attention, you’ll have seen he doesn’t currently do extra serving. Unless I do something about it, what’s on his plate it all he’s going to eat.
“This is a perfectly acceptable portion size,” he replies.
“For some old man,” I say. “Even Emil’s eating more than that.”
“Emil is his own man. He can decide what is appropriate for him.”
Emil is ignoring us for his food. He isn’t ‘I don’t want to be here’ by any means. But he knows this is going to take something drastic. Something I’m going to take the fallout for, not him.
“And you can’t?” I ask innocently, taking a bit of the melt in your mouth meat drenched in the spicy sauce I made.
“Of course I can.”
I eye the steak, the drizzle of sauce, the small pile of salad next to that, and slowly raise my eyebrow as high as it will go. Turn this into animation, and it’d keep going up until it touched the ceiling.
“This is a normal portion,” Tristan says.
“For whom?” Emil says, then gets over his surprise and goes back to eating.
“For normal people,” Tristan replies.
I nearly choke on the meat I’m swallowing (come on, really? Your mind’s down there already?) trying not to laugh. “Who at this table is normal?” I finally manage.
“We are,” Tristan says. “We are a normal family, in a normal house, enjoying a normal diner.”
“There’s no one here you need to put an act on for.”
“This is a normal house,” he says, and I can see the effort needed to keep his tone steady. “So we are going to be a normal family.”
At least this is heading in the right direction.
“You’re deluded if you think that sitting here, at this table, makes us normal. You weren’t this anal when we were in my house.”
“You’re house had nothing normal about it,” he replies, the tension leaving.
Oh no, you don’t. “You’re starving yourself.” If being indirect isn’t working, I’m going to tackle this head on.
He rolls his eyes. “This is plenty.”
“Are you doing this on purpose, or are you actually this ignorant?” I ask, and the glare I get makes me smile. Come on, get there, prove my point. “You haven’t had any pemmican for what, two weeks now, three?”
“I am not addicted,” he replies through clenched teeth, “you’re the addict.”
“Not saying you are, and this is about you, not me, not that I am. You’ve been living on one, if not two, of those bars a meal for years, and since running out, that’s the most food I’ve seen you put on your plate, and usually it’s not even close to being as energy dense as this. You need to eat more.”
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not. You’re a monster who pushes his body beyond anything that should be possible. It needs the energy your pemmican provides.”
“Which I’m going to get once we reach my locker.”
“We aren’t going to reach it.”
He grips the side of the table and narrows his eyes. “Are you threatening me?” his knuckles turn pale.
I smile. I can see the storm in his eyes. The building explosion, the fear behind that. And you need to remember one thing. I suck at seeing those things. So how far gone is my man that I can easily see them?
“I’m warning you. I’m trying to keep you from suffering from a system failure because you are so fucking set in your ways you can’t workout what you have to do even knowing what the problem is. You said it. You are hungry. You think this paltry portion is going to do anything to deal with that? You nearly killed me a few hours ago, Tristan. And as much as I look forward to that day, it isn’t what you wanted to do, because to want it, you have to be in control, and you weren’t. You’re barely now.”
“I’m fi—”
“Stop lying to yourself!”
Of course, he doesn’t recoil. The one time I saw him recoil, he was going through withdrawal from a drug that should have killed him. Has killed every soldier to have taken it, base on the military reports I read.
What he does, is growl. His control slipping away from him a bit more.
I am quite literally risking my life with this. And yes, I’m sure you are less than impressed with that, since dying at his hand is what I’m in this for, among other things. But the deal is that he will kill me. One day, he will have enough of me, and I will die.
It’s not him before me, right now. My man doesn’t do out of control.
“If I thought it would work, I’d wrestle you to the ground, hogtie you and force feed you until you ate the caloric and protein intake equivalent of two of your precious pemmican, but I’m pretty sure that you’d bite off my fingers instead and I need those to type.”
“Alex.”
I can barely make out my name through the growling.
“I’m going to make you a deal. You attack me, you beat the crap out of me and on top of fucking my ass until I beg you to stop. I will never, ever, bring up your pemmican intake, or how you eat when you’re out of it.” Emil dump more food on his plate and steps away from the table. “I take you down, and you will let me feed you until I decide you’ve had your fill.” I grin. “Do we have a deal?”
If I’d needed it, the roar would have been the only warning. But like our son, I’m out of my seat before Tristan lunges for me. The act shoves the table aside and half my hard work lands on the floor to the sound of breaking plates.
That’s fine, I’m sure we can get an extension to the five second rule for this.
I bat his hand aside as I move out of his way, and he crashes against the counter. He turns and leaps at me again. My fists hurts, when it impacts his jaw, then he crashes into the table and there goes the rest of my cooking.
He reaches for me and I redirect him into the fridge. The dent his head leaves in it is impressive. I’m not worried about him getting a concussion. I doubt going head first into a concrete wall would give him one. All I’m going for is knocking him for a loop. It’s not like I can outlast him.
As I said before, he can push his body beyond what is humanly possible.
No, I’m not scared. I’m never scared of my man. Turned on, all the time, well, except now. Nothing hot about him frothing at the mouth, or not being able to anticipate me stepping out of his way and causing him to slam into a cabinet.
I’m winning this. All I have to do is cause him to rush head first into furniture until he can’t stand anymore. The only real question is if there’s enough house for me to make that happen.
* * * * *
Somewhere in the middle of the ‘fight’, and yes, the quotes are there on purpose. You’ve watched us fight, this ain’t it. This is barely me leading a bull around like a toreador.
But yes, somewhere in the middle of this, Emil retreated to the garage with a yelled, “Stay out!”
Tristan’s eyes are unfocused as he stands before me. We’re in the living room…what’s left of it. There’s little left of the kitchen or dining room either. Just one dining chair, really. I made sure one survived. I need him sitting on something when I feed him.
“Come on,” I urge him on. “I’m still standing.”
Oh, I am not unharmed. He might not be the killing machine he usually is, but even a wild slap hurts when it connects. My man is strong.
He takes a step forward, then another. At this point, I’m pretty sure it’s pure determination or his body on automatic. He hasn’t made a sound in the last five minutes, and he definitely hasn’t been all there for the last one. The lumbering steps are a problem. I need him to impact things with enough strength to drop him.
If I can’t get him to build up that momentum, I’m going to have to build it on the item that’s going to impact him. I grab the half of the long coffee table top that’s at my feet. It’s heavier than it looks, possibly maple, which is what I need, and I swing it at him. He doesn’t even try to get out of the way. It explodes from the impact and he hits the wall, then bounces and falls on his side.
I take the time to catch my breath.
Fuck, he’s hardheaded. In both senses of the word.
I can’t wait until I’ve fully caught my breath. I need him in the chair before he can fight be again.
He’s also heavy.
“Come on, I won fair and square.”
Emil takes his other side. “I figured the lack of breaking sounds meant it was over.” He helps me sit him and I fill plastic containers with food, putting that on the counter before sitting on his lap.
“And that’s my cue to not be in this room,” Emil says.
“You heading out?” I ask.
“Yes. Sorry, pa, but I know what this is going to turn into. I don’t want to be within hearing range. Text me tomorrow and I’ll come pick you up.”
“Don’t get into trouble, you hear me?”
“Like I’m the one with that habit.”
He’s in the garage and I wait until he rides away.
I tap, then slap Tristan’s cheek until he regains consciousness. His eyes are still unfocused. I smile at him, reaching for the closest container. “I won, so open up.” I present a slice of meat to his lips, which become thin, as he presses them together.
“Please? For me? I want my monster back, Tristan. You know, the one in complete control of himself. The one I have no chance of ever winning a fight against?” 
There’s confusion in his eyes.
It’s not fair. I know it, and I don’t care. It’s his own fault for letting himself lose control like that.
I smile at him tenderly as I rub the meat against his lips. In his current state, he might give in just from the smell.
It’s tentative. Then they part and I put the meat on his tongue. There’s resignation as he chews and I take a longer piece, holding it between my lips. Once he’s done, I lean in for a kiss and he parts his lips again; he chews as we kiss and I smile.
Looks like I found a way to make him enjoy this after all.