Chapter 19 #2
“Enjoy the kale, Team Jacob,” Oscar said, his laugh rifling through the mic and into Lucas’s lavish living room.
“Fuck off, Team Edward,” Lucas replied, narrowing his eyes. Oscar wasn’t really team any of them, but Lucas had once let slip his teenage obsession with vampires and Oscar had taken the opportunity to tease him about it for the rest of his life.
“I think you’re both fools,” Aaron said, leaning back into the bench and calling Luigi over again. “You’re all sleeping on the real national treasure.”
“Please say Charlie!” Philip shouted from somewhere else in the room.
“Indeed!” Aaron replied. “Or, maybe, how about the vampire Lestat?”
“Oscar!” Philip yelled. “You’ve got yourself a keeper!”
“Yeah,” Oscar replied, eyes darting to Aaron’s face.
Team Edward, Team Jacob, Team Lestat de Lioncourt. Team Aaron, he thought. Team Aaron and his freckles I want to trace.
“I quite agree,” he said instead.
The conversation lasted another two hours.
Philip narrated multiple anecdotes from the marathons they’d run over the years, funny moments and beautiful, heartwarming recollections.
Lucas told them about Philip’s proposal, a story Oscar knew but Aaron didn’t, and then they told them about their travel plans and what it was supposed to be like while they waited to bring their daughter home. They were going to call her Madeleine.
As the call beeped to an end, Oscar closed his laptop and turned to look at Aaron, leaning in to kiss him on the cheek.
“Want to waste some time on the couch?” he asked.
“Always,” Aaron replied.
Ten minutes later, they were wrapped in the corner, Oscar pressed into the cushions, Aaron pressed into Oscar, each of them sipping a fresh hot chocolate with little marshmallows on top. Luigi was running from one end of the living room to the other, which meant he’d head to the litter box soon.
“Would you ever want that?” Oscar asked, brushing Aaron’s hair with his fingers.
It had grown a little longer on top, soft and fluffy and straight, but he’d had Joe shave his back and sides, and Oscar loved the feeling of bristly hair.
He remembered having it before, remembered obsessively rubbing and scratching it when he’d gone back to school after Papa had died, the way everyone had stared at him with his girl name and boy hair, everything so firmly binary in a world that didn’t understand him or anybody like him.
There hadn’t been a Tobe at Oscar’s school.
“Want what?” Aaron asked, shifting a little to kiss him on the jaw. “A rich-ass house with a couch I would definitely not drink green juice on?” His lips curved against Oscar’s face.
“No, smart ass. I would never get a couch like that. Nor would I drink anything green.” Oscar made a face, mock gagging.
He closed his eyes and listened to the spinning record of Aaron’s laugh. Oscar was glad he was the needle that came down on the grooves, that he was the cause. He wished it would skip forever, that he could be trapped in its sound.
“Kids?” Aaron asked then.
Oscar nodded against his head. Maybe it was too much to ask so soon.
Maybe it would spook Aaron. But he hadn’t bristled in his arms. His fingers still reached for the longer strands of Oscar’s hair.
He’d trimmed it just the previous week, a long overdue task, but he’d left it long enough for Aaron to play with.
Because it turned out he liked it a little long, and Aaron did too, and Oscar could scream his name from the rooftops now, and he could do it shaking his long, thick hair.
He could see it bobbing around his neck in the mirror and not be afraid.
Oscar could even smile at his own reflection.
“Do you want that?” Aaron asked.
“I’ve never actually thought about it before,” Oscar admitted. “I’m a little afraid of babies.”
“I don’t ever want to get pregnant,” Aaron said. “It’s…it would ruin me.”
“No, me neither. I couldn’t. I admire the men who do it, but I don’t want that.” Oscar leaned in, pressed his lips to the top of Aaron’s head. “I meant adopt, like Philip and Lucas.”
“Maybe.” Aaron leaned back, looking at him for the first time. “Whatever we decide is fine. I’ll be fine if we never have kids, too.”
Something skittered to life in Oscar’s chest, something about the way Aaron had said never that implied the existence of forever. Not just the existence, but the inevitability, as though Aaron had risen to the sky and painted their story in the stars, turning their future into fact.
Oscar wanted to travel three thousand years ahead to read their history.
But first he wanted to live it.
“I wish I had a home to take you to for Christmas,” Aaron said.
The wistfulness in his eyes made Oscar understand why writers made the curtains blue.
He wished he’d gone into engineering instead, that he could fuse copper; he wished he was a thundercloud, electric, so he could flick the light on behind Aaron’s eyes again.
You can, Oscar thought. You have. He rested a hand on Aaron’s cheek, leaning in to kiss him on the lips, a soft delicate thing he would chase until the very end of his life.
“You do have a home to celebrate Christmas in,” Oscar said. His lips curved, nose brushing against Aaron’s as the brainwaves began to roar inside his skull, whirring to life an idea he’d fully composed by the end of the minute. “I hope you like mashed potatoes, Aaron.”
“I do, but I prefer them roasted,” Aaron murmured.
“Hmm,” Oscar replied, kissing the space between his eyebrows. “Then we’ll have both.”