He expected Lance to laugh, or to be annoyed, but realizes his mistake at once. Maybe his brothers roll their eyes or raise their hackles when he pries, but if Lance has a temper, Robbie has never seen it. This seems to be as true in the man as it was in the boy. Lance’s cheeks flush, but he looks quietly troubled instead of defensive, spinning his cup in a slow circle that makes its contents rise up toward the lip like a small, dark whirlpool and causes the faint steam to curl.

“I do like fancy things,” he admits at last, his voice hesitant. He shoots a look up at Robbie. Lance’s eyes are wide and soft beneath his eyelashes—showing that emotional fearlessness that Robbie remembers, which always touched him. Lance was mistreated throughout his entire childhood, and yet was so eager to go around handing his heart to people. It always made Robbie crazy with the urge to protect him, all too aware of how easily someone could take advantage.

He feels that protective urge now, too. It doesn’t matter that Lance is grown up and presumably better-equipped to protect himself than when he was only a slip of a thing, running the trails with Danny. And now, there’s another element to the old feeling that’s making Robbie’s pulse speed up. It’s the idea of Lance easing his long limbs into fancy clothes, the brush of fine fabric against his fair skin, perfumed by expensive cologne—

The toast pops up, yanking Robbie out of his brief visit to unreality. The bread is supposedly whole wheat, but from what Robbie can tell, all that means is that the thin slices are an unappealing shade of light brown instead of white. Robbie wordlessly puts the toasted slices on a plate and slathers them with butter. Then, he reaches into the cabinet where the little-used spices and seasonings are gathering dust. He isn’t sure he’ll have what he needs, but whistles softly in triumph when he finds cinnamon, the seal still on the bottle. Most of the miniature spice rack is in the same dusty condition. It was Megan’s house-warming gift to Johnny when the loft got to the point that it was habitable and he relocated from the house.

“What are you…?” Lance starts to ask.

“I don’t have any of that cereal you used to eat by the box that was all dye and sugar,” Robbie says, flashing him a grin, “but I have something that might be even better.” Robbie fishes two paper sugar packets from a drawer that also contains a handful of ketchup and mustard packets, four sets of plastic silverware, and three fortune cookies. Robbie tears open the sugars, pours them carefully out on a saucer, and then adds a dash of cinnamon and stirs. Lance has gone quiet. Robbie’s hands are starting to tremble again when the mixture is ready to be spooned up and sprinkled carefully over each piece of buttered toast.

He slides the plate toward Lance before looking up. As he meets Lance’s eye, Robbie realizes he’s adopted Lance’s ridiculous and inadvisable behavior—that he’s opened his chest and exposed his heart in this small gesture, this callback to the past; if Lance doesn’t remember, it will hurt.