Chapter 22 Happy Ever After
Happy ever after.
“It’s a lot of work, looking after our humans. They’re so fragile and, to be honest, imbeciles sometimes. But they’re so adorable, aren’t they? With them, humanity persists beautifully, don’t you think?”
Two years later.
PERRI
I sigh. “I promise, you really don’t want to do this.”
“Shut up!” says the young man holding the gun. He’s sweating profusely and a sneer reveals his yellowing teeth.
We were working on Gandalf’s broken-down hovercar, the late afternoon sun beating down on our shoulders, when a group of five survivors appeared from the shade of a nearby butte. We’re somewhere between Arizona and Utah, deep in Navajo territory.
While the man holds us at gunpoint, his four friends are ransacking Gandalf’s hovercar, taking everything of value and throwing the rest on the red dirt.
Gandalf sighs. “Let them, Perri. Come have a drink with me.” He’s sitting under the shade of his tarp, pouring cold brew in three glasses with ice cubes from his fridge, now emptied by our captors.
Vex sits on a stool on his right, her pale face the only visible part of her artificial body.
She loves to wrap herself up in scarves and colorful fabric, like a princess of a desert tribe in a fantasy story.
I doubt the man holding us at gunpoint even realized she isn’t human.
He and his friends are too busy getting excited about their luck.
Well, I wouldn’t call that luck. Not when Stellan and Alastair could be back at any moment.
I sit by Vex’s side. She accepts the glass of cold brew Gandalf is offering her. She likes to pretend to drink, and we let her. To us, she’s more human than the dirty motherfuckers ransacking the hovercar as we speak.
She wrinkles her nose. “How inconsiderate,” she says, watching them.
I snort. Vex always kept her dainty personality, no matter how much of the world after the Rise she experienced. She’s a delight.
Our captors tried to steal the hovercar, at first, until they realized it wouldn’t move.
Gandalf called us five days ago, asking for help when his ride broke down.
That’s how we ended up here, trying to repair it.
The local Navajo tribe couldn’t help him; his hovercar is a tricky amalgam of advanced technology.
It required my skills combined with Griffin and Beet’s knowledge, connected through Vex’s transmitter, to understand the problem.
And even then, we were still missing a few parts.
Thankfully, Jude and Oliver owed us a favor and they agreed to travel from Gears and Giggles to a rendez-vous point with Stellan and Alastair and give them the parts.
They have been gone for a few hours now.
Over a year ago, Stellan wouldn’t have let me out of his sight in the middle of the wastelands like this.
But Alastair is teaching him how to relax and allow me space to walk on my own two feet.
Well, that and having Vex at my side helps.
We’ve also updated her programming, and now she’s giving me therapy sessions to work through my childhood trauma.
“How is it?” Gandalf asks after I take my first sip of cold brew.
The old man must be a few centuries old now, by my guess. His sunburnt face is a map of wrinkles and his white beard is longer than ever.
“Pretty good, actually.” Right as I say this, I notice a cloud of red dust on the horizon. “Oh, it looks like the cavalry’s coming.”
Our captors seem to notice it, too, and they get agitated. They evidently only have one gun.
“Who’s that?” the man holding us at gunpoint asks.
I grin around the rim of my mug. “My husbands.”
He frowns at me for a moment, confused. “Huh?”
The King’s monster truck gets more defined on the horizon as they race towards us. Finally realizing the danger they’re in, the survivors swarm us to try and take us hostage.
But Vex is quicker. She stands up swiftly and puts herself in front of us. The man holding the gun shoots her, but the bullet ricochets off her reinforced armor before going straight through his friend’s leg, who falls on the ground screaming.
Chaos ensues, and Vex fights off two men while I throw my glass of cold brew at a third man’s face. I’m never happier that I changed her programming to free her from the three laws of robotics than when she kicks some asses to save us.
Our four captors try to retreat behind the hovercar, abandoning their wounded friend, but it’s too late, Stellan and Alastair are already pulling up in a cloud of red dust. Before anyone can say ‘oh shit’, they’re both jumping out of the truck, fury incarnate.
The survivors empty their only gun on Alastair, who takes it all in stride, the bullets barely slowing him down.
He kills the first man he reaches with his bare hands.
Stellan is right behind him, shotgun firing.
In less than a minute, they have efficiently gotten rid of the threat.
I would be a dirty liar if I said they weren’t so freaking hot when angry. I would be all over them right now if Gandalf and Vex weren’t here.
Stellan rushes to me. “Are you okay?” He grabs my face with both hands after swinging the shotgun over his shoulder.
I nod and kiss him. “All good. We were just having a drink.” I mourn the the glass I just threw at the man’s face. The ice cubes are already melting in the dirt. But then I notice Vex’s full glass on the camping table in front of Gandalf, and I reach for it with a smile. “May I?” I ask her.
She nods. “Of course.”
“Lucky! It survived the fight.”
Stellan glares at me as I offer him a sip, but his face relaxes when he tastes the cold brew.
Alastair walks to us to give me a kiss, then he accepts Stellan’s help grudgingly to extract the bullets from his chest with the tip of a knife. They’ll come out, eventually, but it can sometimes take hours if they’re stuck in bones or organs. He’d bleed all over the truck.
“Thank you, Sunshine,” Alastair says, looking down fondly at Stellan.
“You could have avoided getting shot, dumbass,” Stellan grumbles.
“I love you, too.”
Stellan chuckles and says to me, “Distract him for me?”
“Sure.” I grin and grab Alastair by the crotch. I can feel his tentacles move under my hand.
His eyes widen and he licks his lips. “Hey, now you little—” Then he winces when Stellan stabs him particularly deep to extract a bullet.
Stellan pulls away. “All done.”
I kiss the corner of Alastair’s mouth. “Distraction successful.”
He shakes his head, white locs cascading over his broad shoulders, and smiles fondly.
Behind us, Gandalf is already putting all of his wares back into the hovercar with Vex’s help.
“Did you get the parts?” I ask.
Stellan nods. “Let’s get to work.”
It takes us three hours to finish the repairs on the hovercar. When at last, it turns on with a satisfying purr, Gandalf does a little jig, all bony elbows and legs.
The Traveling Market is a few hours away, and we agree to drive with him and make sure he gets back safely. We’ll do a full checkup of the hovercar in the upcoming days, before the old man can escape into the wilds again. Gandalf can never stay put for long.
We finally reach the Market a few hours after dark. The lookouts see us and the door to the hangar near the bottom of one of the RWE Baggers is already open, with the ramp down. We park the truck inside, followed by the hovercar, and we bid Gandalf goodnight before going home.
Home is the place where the three of us live together.
After our adventure north, Alastair started sleeping with us often, until we could no longer deny the truth: he was ours and we were his.
We stopped pretending and we found room for his belongings.
We built an extension—it’s funny how easy it is to claim more space when the King is your lover—and he gave up his royal lodgings to expand the hydroponic gardens at the top of the RWE Bagger.
Alastair was the one to bring up the question of marriage last month. I’ve never seen Stellan so dumbstruck. But when he finally recovered from his shock, we had the wildest sex, and his answer was pretty obvious. I was so happy I felt like my heart would stop.
When we came back from our rescue mission two years ago, wrapped around each other, some residents and merchants of the Market gave us the stink eye.
Others whispered behind our backs that we were perverts, or that this thing we had going on wouldn’t last long.
They called us a dangerous distraction. As if Alastair was a feature of the Market and not a person.
Alastair broke a few jaws. People who had nothing good to say learned to keep their mouths shut. Our king isn’t to be trifled with. Once, he even threw a man who had insulted me over one of the rope bridges. He called it the Stellan special. The man survived, but barely.
Now that we put a ring on it, most residents have gotten used to it.
Our happiness only grew over time, and two years later, I feel like I’m bursting at the seams.
We did a simple ceremony at Gears and Giggles, surrounded by only family and a few friends. Helios teared up, and Jude gave him so much shit for it. Griffin and Oliver stood at opposite ends of the camp, but at least they didn’t try to kill each other, and we counted that as a win.
Vex made us tungsten rings. It’s apparently the strongest metal on earth, and we joked that it was needed considering how often Alastair gets shot, stabbed, or blown up.
He’s still the Traveling Market’s first line of defense.
Thankfully, we make a point of taking him away from the Market more often.
He deserves some time off from his responsibilities.
Anyone disagreeing usually find themselves at the receiving end of Stellan’s wrath.
Stellan pulls me out of my musing with a hand on my lower back. I was playing with the silver ring on my finger. “Shower and bed?” he asks. We’re standing in our dimly-lit living room.
I nod.