Doubled Edge 4a/10

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Doubled Edge by Katt Solano
Disclaimers & further hoopla in part 0
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Hilo, Hawaii...

The doorbell rang just as Alex was taking the lasagne out of the oven.

"I'll get it!" hollered John. Footsteps with the volume of thunderclaps told
his step-mom that he was already halfway to the door. "Hi, I'm John."

Tyce accepted the offered hand, shaking it with just enough gravity to
please the younger male. "Tyce Beauregard. Nice place you have here. Do you
have your own beach?"

"Yeah. I surf there every day.

"Yeah? I've meant to give surfing a try but I've never had the time."

Aghast at that pronouncement, John went off into a lengthy discourse in
favour of the ancient Hawaiian sport. Connor met with them at the threshold
to the dining room.

"I'm glad you could come on such short notice," said the Highlander.

"Hey, it's not like you had to twist my arm or anything." Tyce clapped his
hands together as he inhaled the rich smells that wafted out of the kitchen.
"Between moving in and classes, all I had to look forward to tonight was
microwave-made macaroni and cheese and bad beer."

"Heh, heh. Ever had to resort to ketchup soup?" When Tyce looked both
mystified and revolted, Connor explained. "Heat tomato ketchup with water.
Flavour with salt swiped from the nearest fast food joint. Enjoy. That's my
most enduring memory of college."

"Dang," John exclaimed with wide-eyed exaggeration, "You must have a great
memory!" Laughing, he escaped to the kitchen, ducking Connor's half-hearted
smack on the head.

Tyce did his best to smother his chuckles. "He reminds me of my brother,
Lach."

"Older or younger brother?" Connor asked as he led his guest to the dining
room.

"Younger by three years," replied Tyce. Seeing Alex enter with the plates
and eating utensils, he darted to her side. "Lemme get that for you."

"Thanks," said Alex just as John jogged around to get behind her, calling,
"I know, I know; I was suppose to get that."

Connor didn't look a bit perturbed at the loose manners. "We're not too big
about ceremony around here."

"Hey, no problem," said Tyce, holding up his hands which were full of forks
and knives, "I'm used to it."

Alex, re-entering with John and the salad, said "Good. Otherwise, Hawaii
would've been a shock to your system. My mom's side of the family was very
'proper' New England society." She turned her nose up and pursed her lips in
demonstration. "My aunt had dinner at our place once and we failed to
differentiate the salad forks from the entrée forks. Drove her nuts!"

"My mom taught us how to eat with our hands," said Tyce.

John came joined them, breadbasket in hand, in time to hear Tyce's statement
"There's a proper way?"

"Oh, yeah, there's a whole technique to it." He gave the noodles a quick
frown. "I can't see it working for lasagne though. Works best with rice."

"Next time," Connor told John, already guessing his son's request, "I slaved
to make dinner."

"So, Tyce," Alex said as they slathered the hot, crusty dinner rolls with
butter, "How long have you been in the Big Island?"

"A couple of weeks," replied Tyce around a half-chewed bite, "Moved in from
Washington State. Got sick of the rain."

"Are you here for school or work?"

"Or surfing?" John put it.

Tyce chuckled again. Alex liked this the sound of it, it seemed to come
easily to the young man's lips. "All of the above. I was majoring in biology
in U-Dub and got into marine biology and..." He shrugged. "As much as I love
orcas and seals, I wanted to see a different ecosystem. And I really did
want to learn how to surf," he added for John's benefit.

Reaching to take the salad bowl from John's outstretched hands, Alex
continued her interrogation. "And how do you like it so far?"

"What's not to like?" Tyce gestured to the food in front of him. "Friendly
people, sun, fun, hang-loose attitude-- just the place my sister, Rae, would
hate."

John chewed on the dressing-slathered baby greens. "How many brothers and
sisters do you have?"

"One each: I'm the middle kid, Rae's three years older and Lach's three
years younger. Oh, hey, thanks," he said as he took the salad bowl and
forked a generous pile on his plate.

"Lach; that's an interesting name. For that matter, so is Tyce." Alex pushed
her carrot curls to the side; she couldn't stand the stuff in a salad. "Is
it short for something?"

"Nope." Tyce munched happily on his own food. "My parents both had extremely
long names so they decided they wouldn't inflict the same torture on their
kids. Hence: Rae, Tyce, and Lach."

"Lives near the water," quoted Connor.

Tyce wagged his fork in the older man's direction. "Exactly."

John and Alex, both lost conversation-wise, raised their brows at Connor.
After only five years, the boy was already taking to some of his wife's
habits, Connor reflected with soft delight. "Lach," he said, "means 'lives
near the water' in Middle English."

"What do Rae and Tyce mean?" John wanted to know.

"Depends who you ask." Tyce looked up to the left, searching his memory.
"Um... I think Rae means 'deer' or 'gracefulness' or 'graceful deer'...
something like that. Mine means 'fiery.' Got a bit of flak for it in school,
specially Lach, but I figured, between Tyce and Tyr, I think I got the
better deal."

Alex swallowed her bit of lasagne. "'Tyr' was one of the options?"

"Yeah. I think it was a Norse God of tight britches or something." Tyce
rolled his eyes heavenward. "Anyway, we were living in the UK at the time,
and my dad convinced Mom that the spelling would scar me for life.
Y'know--'tyre' and 'tyr'-- and I'd grow up thinking I was somehow connected
to Goodyear or Michelin." He rolled his eyes again, prompting his hosts to
laugh softly with him. "I've got weird parents."

"I hear ya," John said with whole-hearted agreement.

"When you were in the womb, did your parents consult an Osage shaman, a
faith-healing nun, a Buddhist priest or all of the above before even going
to a good old-fashioned doctor?"

"Really?" Alex thought it was both fascinating and flaky that anyone would
go through all the trouble. "You don't find those in every street corner.
Did you travel a lot?"

Tyce nodded. "Mom's an artist; she has an excuse for being strange. But my
dad was in the army. Maybe boot camp loosened something upstairs... I
dunno." He shrugged philosophically, taking in a monster bite of lasagne.

"They sound very interesting."

Tyce guffawed then, nearly spilling the wine that he held in his hand. "Oh,
yeah. 'Interesting' is the story of my life. I'm the weirdo of the family;
I'm getting a generic degree."

"Marine biology is hardly generic," protested Alex.

"It is when your older sister takes up acupuncture and thousand-and-one ways
to torture people and your younger brother's into 'testing security
systems.'"

"Breaking and entering," Connor translated.

"It's totally legitimate," Tyce clarified for the benefit of John whose jaw
had become unhinged and was currently swimming in tomato sauce. "Several
security companies hire him to try and break into places they've wired. When
he does, they go back and fix the bugs."

"_When_ he breaks in?" Alex repeated with an amused grin.

Tyce looked embarrassed that he was proud. "Far as I know, there's not one
place yet that he can't break into. He's diversifying into computer hacking
nowadays though."

"Got to stay with the times," Connor agreed in deadpan.

"His thoughts exactly." Tyce speared a stray noodle, naked for some unknown
reason of any sauce, and proceeded to herd it into a pile with its brethren.
"My sister, in case you were too embarrassed to ask," --this he threw
towards Alex, who blushed lightly in acknowledgement-- "is getting a second
degree in historical torture methods. She's working her way from the
Americas to New Zealand; last I heard, she was still in fifteenth century
Egypt."

John looked ready to secede from his own family and beg Tyce to adopt him.
Alex was doing a credible job of choking down her food. Connor just smiled
blandly.

"I actually get all the usual college-related nags," Tyce continued with a
worn-out sigh, "What'll you do with that degree? How do you expect to get a
job? By the time she was your age, your sister already fill-in-the-blank.
It's a nice dash of normalcy."

Looking up from his third serving, John asked, "What _will_ you do after
school?"

"Not sure," replied Tyce, "Likely teach high school or community college. If
I'm really, really good and share all my toys, they'll let me keep studying
marine life until I die. Heck--" he threw his hands up-- "I might work in a
dojo. D'you need any more instructors?" he asked Connor, half-jokingly.

"I'll get back to you on that," Connor answered, surprised that he was only
half-joking as well.

"Hey, cool." Just then, Tyce's shirt started to chirrup. He took out the
cel-phone, excusing himself, and retreated to the living room to take the
call.

"I like him," Alex said, "So he's had a kooky childhood... He didn't make
the hairs on my neck creep like you did."

But Connor was shaking his head. "I can't get rid of this feeling... like I
should stay as far away from him as possible."

"That's going to be hard considering he exercises in your dojo. You just
invited him for dinner, for Pete's sake!"

"Just... trust me on this one, Alex." Connor's blue eyes became hard as
gems. "He's not what he seems. He's lying about everything."

"Maybe he's just running away," John suggested, unwilling to let go of a
possible friendship with the fascinating young man. "It's not just Immortals
that do it, y'know...I mean...." His eyes drifted to his plate where he was
stabbing at the last noodle with his dinner knife. "There's this guy in
school that everyone thinks is a weirdo; he lies all the time, outrageous
stuff sometimes but some kinda believable. And y'know Jason and them, they
pick on him a lot and... well... just maybe he--" he jerked his chin towards
the living room "-- is kinda like that."

The lines on Connors face softened momentarily as he studied his son.
"Maybe," he allowed for John's sake. But in his heart of hearts, he was
already evolving a plan to figure out all of Tyce Beauregard's secrets.


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