What We Left Unsaid

“What are you doing?”

He watched as she sent him a sideways glance that somehow, even without showing him more than a fraction of her face and eyes, completely conveyed her disapproval of his question. “Exactly what it looks like I’m doing, Fuck Face,” came the ever-so-polite answer.

That didn’t help him to understand. “But why?”

“I don’t fucking know, Johnny! Because I want to?”

“I’ve just... never seen you cook before. I didn’t know Rinaldis cooked.” And it was true; never in his entire life had he seen a single Rinaldi doing anything but having others cook for them. But then again, he had never actually been in the Rinaldi mansion, so he really had no way to know what happened on a day-to-day basis for most meals. Somehow he was still sure they had others cook for them.

“They don’t,” she told him after a moment of staring down at the pan before her, even though nothing was actually on it yet. He wondered if she was aware she shouldn’t be letting it sit on a working burner without anything on it. He didn’t dare ask. “But Haners do.” She laughed at the look of confusion he sent her, before quickly elaborating, “Most purebloods are of the opinion that females should be perfectly able to take care of their mate’s every whim, and that includes knowing how to prepare meals. My family was the exception, at least in modern times, because my mother didn’t believe in doing work when you could hire someone to do it for you. So Brian’s mother decided to take it upon herself to teach me culinary skills; if I was going to mate with her son, after all, I was damn well going to know how to cook for him.”

“I can’t imagine your mother approved of that.”

“What she didn’t know I wish would have killed her,” she answered wistfully, making him laugh lightly in response. Of course she would have an answer like that.

“So,” he started after another moment of observing the woman before him only staring at the ingredients she had spread across the counter, “if Mrs. Haner taught you how to cook, why do you look so lost?”

Though she gave him a bitter look at his chosen description of her, she huffed out a sigh and turned to look at him. “I was fourteen when Brian was disowned from his family for leaving with you guys. His mother no longer gave a damn if I knew how to cook or not. Up until then, she’d only taught me how to help out, and then how to make a few very select dishes. I knew how to chop up tomatoes, shuck corn, and blend ingredients together. I didn’t know how to sauté or whatever the fuck else there is.”

The bassist made a noise of understanding, and then took a moment to look back over all of the ingredients that were spread over the counter. He glanced back at the pan with a frown on his lips. “And just what are you trying to sauté right now?”

“I’m just trying to make pancakes, alright?”

Both of his eyebrows arched up. “With potatoes?”

She sent him a dark glower in response, before huffing irritably and slapping both of her hands down on her hips. “Maybe I was going to make latkes. You don’t know what I’m thinking!”

With a cheeky grin, Johnny begged to differ. “Right now it’s ‘why the hell isn’t there a cookbook in this kitchen?’ isn’t it?” When his comment only earned him a low growl and a loud slap to the arm, he laughed loudly. “You don’t have to make them from scratch, Ava. On the top shelf in the pantry, on the far right, there’s a container full of pancake batter. Grab it -- oh! and the chocolate chips! -- and mix in some eggs and milk. I actually think the container itself has a post-it note telling you what ratio to use.”

She didn’t thank him for the suggestion, but he hadn’t expected her to. And, as she sent him a fierce glare before going and doing exactly as he suggested, he could do nothing more than laugh and lean back against the counter. And reach over and turn the burner off before she seriously screwed up that pan -- he did that the second she was turned away from him.

“So, how’d the dinner last night go?” He asked curiously, having been banished with the others to the opposite end of the house the night before. Apparently Matt hadn’t even wanted them to be able to eavesdrop... the secretive bastard.

“Slowly,” she answered in a tone that was all too sweet to have been completely sincere. He knew better than to call her out on it, though.

“What did you guys talk about?”

Her head appeared out from behind the pantry door with an arched eyebrow and a bemused expression. “Super secret alpha and beta stuff.”

He groaned. “Come on, Ava! Don’t make me beg!”

She laughed, making her way over to him with batter container and chocolate chips in hand. “Seriously? It wasn’t anything interesting. We drew out the official territory with a sharpie on a road map, talked about boring things like official regulations and your little rogue problem, answered questions about my family, discussed current events, and I’m pretty sure Matt gave an autograph for the councilman’s daughter-in-law.”

He wanted to comment on all of those things, but knew he’d really only have one follow-up question before she’d cut him off and start to get irritated. “Answered questions about your family?” he chose, figuring all of the others could be explained just as easily by the alpha.

She didn’t appear impressed with his choice. “I’m a Rinaldi, Johnny. There’s always questions to answer about my family. This time, most of them were about the ‘rents, and... Axel. It was kind of weird, actually. Drake wasn’t mentioned once. I mean, Toni wasn’t either, but he never is, so that’s not a surprise. I haven’t been questioned about my parents in a while, though. It was... weird.” She seemed to consider it for another moment, biting her lip and staring down at the batter, before she shook her head and gave her shoulder a shrug. “Ah, well. I consider it a win because it pissed Zacky off.”

He snorted. “Doesn’t everything?”

A wicked smile answered him. “And that, my short friend, is why I wake up in the morning.”

He wanted to laugh -- oh, he did! -- but he forced his expression to drop into a deep frown instead. “And here I was, thinking you woke up every morning just to see my smiling face.”

She only laughed in response, winking at him as she set to work stirring the pancake mixture, her expression dropping into one of complete seriousness very quickly. Johnny wondered if she realized it looked more like she was taking a calculus test than mixing pancake batter. He wondered why she was even trying to make pancakes in the first place.

“Is everything okay, Ava?” he found himself asking once she had finished with the mixing and had approved of the little taste test she had done. As he leaned up against the counter, his brows furrowed and concern obvious in his expression, he gave the woman before him a once-over. Something was off, but he just couldn’t put a finger on how he knew it, and he sure as hell couldn’t put a finger on why it was off.

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“I...” He didn’t even know how to answer that question. Sighing, he lifted a hand to rub over the back of his neck.

“Johnny, I’m making pancakes, not staring out a window listening to only sad songs. Is that not normal enough for you?”

He rolled a shoulder. “You’re not a normal person.”

She barked out a loud laugh, grinning at him despite the seriousness on his expression. ”Johnny,” she stressed, “everything is fine. I’m just trying to do something nice for everyone, okay? Do you harass Kat like this every time she sets foot in the kitchen?”

When she switched the burner back on and went to lift up the bowl, mixing spoon poised and ready to scoop out batter, he jumped forward, temporarily forgetting his train of thought. Using his hip to bump her over to the side -- and luckily not causing a mess in the process -- he snatched up the can of non-stick spray and gave the pan a nice, generous coating of it. Only when he was sure that absolutely every spot was covered did he step away again and allow her to resume her actions. He ignored the look on her face at his interruption, and tried to recall where they were in the conversation. “It’d be strange if Kat wasn’t in the kitchen, though. She likes to cook and do the whole house-wife thing. You’re not... domestic, Ava.”

There was a loud clash as the woman threw her mixing spoon harshly into the sink, spinning around and looking at him with irritation plain on her face. “Jesus, Johnny!” she snapped. “What do I need to do to convince you everything’s fucking peachy? Get drunk and streak through town with you again? Throw Baker out of a window? What?”

It was then that he finally realized exactly how stupid his line of questioning was. He was antagonizing his friend for making pancakes, for crying out loud. He still completely knew that something was definitely off because she was making them, and because she had snapped so suddenly and defensively, but he should have known better than to try and use that as evidence against her. And he should have known better than to walk into a trap like that, where he had literally no answer for her.

“Try it and I’ll fucking kill you, Rinaldi.”

Johnny’s gaze broke away from the floor that he had become interested in when she had snapped at him, quickly shifting toward the doorway where his good friend and rhythm guitarist stood. It took him a moment to snap out of his thoughts and realize what exactly his friend had been commenting on.

“Sounds like fun, Baker,” Ava responded with a smirk on her lips, though she was quick to turn back to the pan, pick up a spatula, and otherwise ignore the newcomer.

Johnny sent the man a nod of greeting, getting a quick one in response before those sharp green eyes of the guitarist were rather intensely scanning the room for something. He must not have found it, for only a moment later, he was glaring at the back of the blonde’s head. “Rinaldi.”

“Baker,” she mocked, using the exact same warning tone as the man, before rolling her eyes and turning to finally look at the man. “It’s right there on the table; talk about not seeing what’s right in front of your face! Also, I’d recommend actually sitting down this time; I won’t catch you if you fall again.”

Having literally no idea what was going on, Johnny only watched as the other man picked up the mug that had been resting on the tabletop and grimaced down at it. “Somehow, that’s actually more comforting to me.”

The response earned the black-haired man a loud growl from the woman, who then stifled it and pointedly turned back to the stove, reaching for the spatula and somewhat surprisingly flipping the pancake without making a huge mess. (And the thing wasn’t even that burnt!) But, of course, the other man in the room wasn’t about to let her drop the conversation that easily. Johnny watched with narrowed eyes as his friend put the mug back down and approached the two of them, glancing briefly over the woman’s shoulder down at the slightly burnt pancakes and snorting. Johnny was quick to give his head a warning shake, mentally pleading for his friend to just leave it, but that wasn’t really Zacky’s style.

“And you even fuck up pancakes. Thank God Kat doesn’t let you cook with her!”

Johnny had slapped a hand over his face the second those words had left his friend’s mouth, but even without being able to see what was going on, he knew from the sounds and curses that Ava had whipped around and used something other than her hand to smack the guitarist with, and the guitarist had undoubtedly retaliated. When he finally dragged his palm down his face and opened his eyes, the sight of pancake batter all over the two of them and the raised spatula that the man was now holding told him everything.

“Damn it!” he muttered under his breath when he took notice of the overturned and rather empty looking mixing bowl the blonde was using as a shield as the black-haired man brought the spatula harshly down toward her. Quickly deciding against interjecting himself, the shorter man simply reached for another spatula from the utensil holder and then scooped the two only-slightly-overcooked pancakes onto a waiting plate. With a quick flick of his hand to turn the burner back off and a last glance over his shoulder at the still-fighting betas, he took his leave, breakfast in hand.

He’d figure out what was going on with Ava later, because he was not going to be in the room when Matt discovered how much of a mess his kitchen was.