Chapter 43 MISSION COMPLETE #2
I always knew this man would be the end of me, but I didn’t expect the cause to be his sex drive.
Not that I was actually complaining. It…
it had been… incredible, to put it mildly.
So long as Malwin wasn’t over. One never knew when he would stumble into the room and sneak into our bed.
We more often than not woke up to him between us, hogging the pillows, which I also wouldn’t want to change.
And I think it was safe to say, after the many nights I woke to the greatest loves of my life cuddling in my arms, that Ethin didn’t want it to change either.
“Are you feeling okay, Daddy? Your face is all red,” Malwin asked, having returned. He sat at the kitchen counter, his legs swinging off the chair. Pieces of his artwork hung on the fridge beside the shopping list, a calendar covered in events, and pictures of all of us.
“Yeah.” I coughed and returned to making lunch. “I’m fine, bud. How many lettuce wraps do you want?”
“Four.”
“Four?!”
“I’m growing.”
Humming, I pretended to pout. “I don’t want you to grow.”
“But I need to get taller!”
“I don’t think so.”
“I do!” Malwin dragged out the O and called for Ethin to back him up.
Ethin dropped into the chair next to him, changed and cleaned.
He had always been tall and lean, the kind of figure that made heads turn and eyes linger.
Mine certainly did when I first saw him; and all the days after.
Sometimes I felt like a pervert for staring at his ass every time he left the room and struggling not to stare when his shirt rode up to reveal the dark hair beneath his navel leading to the part of his anatomy that I thought about way too frequently.
“I didn’t eat much as a kid and still got tall as fu,” Ethin bit his lip at the glare I shot him. “Tall. I’m tall.”
“I want to be taller than you,” said Malwin.
“In your dreams, squirt.”
“Way taller, like feet taller, giant tall!”
“Have you seen your parents?”
I felt Ethin’s mocking gaze on my back. Meat and vegetables sizzled in the skillet that had felt so foreign in my hands until recently.
We ate ration packs, slop the droids threw in a microwave, full of all the nutrition we technically needed but with none of the taste or texture.
Cooking had taken getting used to. Being in a kitchen with dishes and food and spice racks was intense, but became more normal every day.
“Your dad isn’t that much taller than your mom, which means you will probably be around the same height,” Ethin declared.
“No way; they just didn’t eat enough vegetables.”
Ethin laughed, and I sighed as this argument continued until well after lunch.
In the end, it ceased with my suggestion of a movie day.
Ethin and I had the day off. Malwin wanted to watch some horror movies after catching Ethin watching one the other day.
That got them off the topic of height, and we found ourselves curled up on the couch with the blinds closed and the holo screen on.
Sir Scribbles sat on Malwin’s lap. That was his boy, and I half expected the cat would gnaw someone’s hand off if they so much as looked at him funny.
Lady Mildred preferred Ethin, deciding that he could hold her throughout the movie even if it made his arm go numb.
He wouldn’t move her either because it was “against cat law.”
At five, Dinah came in. Knocking lasted about a week. She came and went as she pleased, as we did to her place right down the street. Malwin really could be wherever he wanted, but we scheduled ourselves to work on opposite days, so there was always someone around.
“Mommy, we’re watching scary movies,” Malwin declared.
“Without me?” Dinah kicked off her shoes and shuffled into the living room.
A living room that had been plain for months because Ethin and I couldn’t believe we’d be here for long.
Then we got another chair and pictures and the cats and their toys.
The house filled with pieces of us, making a home neither of us had until now.
Sometimes I caught Ethin standing simply observing the space like he expected everything to disappear.
When I held him, he looked at me the same way, like he did in the caves, terrified and unsure.
So I would kiss him, his muscles eased, and I held him for as long as he needed to remember we were alright.
“We can watch another before you go,” Ethin offered. “Unless you have plans.”
“I figured we’d grab dinner, but if Malwin isn’t hungry yet,” she gave him a questioning look.
“I’m good. We had veggie and beef wraps for lunch. Me and Ethin picked them from the garden!” Malwin exclaimed.
“You did?” Dinah sat in the plush beanbag chair Malwin sometimes napped on with the cats. “Put something good on, Roys, actually scary.”
“Super scary!”
“Super scary it is.” I searched through the movies and picked what Dinah and Malwin agreed on.
Malwin got more comfortable in my lap, and Ethin leaned against my side.
Our hands caught between us, fingers intertwined, because some days, when we were like this, Ethin needed something to hold on to.
His eyes glazed over, lost to a time and place that couldn’t be forgotten.
The Colony cut a hole in his heart, rotten to the core, and though we filled the surrounding spaces, nothing could remove that core.
We understood that, and like me, he just had to try.
Try to think of the good and all we had.
After the movie ended, we went outside with them. Malwin adjusted his shoes, which he always tied himself and reminded anyone who tried to help. He hugged me. “Bye Daddy! I love you.”
“I love you too.” I squeezed him tight even though I could go down to see him whenever I wanted.
Malwin went to Ethin. “Bye Ethin! I sometimes love you.”
Ethin knelt to flick his nose. “I love you every other day.”
Laughing, he threw his arms around Ethin’s neck, where he whispered he actually loved Malwin every day. Malwin said it back, and Ethin always got this look like he couldn’t believe it. His arms tensed, and he buried his face in Malwin’s shoulder for a second longer before letting go.
Malwin took Dinah’s hand, waving as they walked out the door. “See you later! Don’t eat all my broccoli.”
“It’ll be gone before morning,” Ethin teased.
Malwin blew a raspberry, then he and Dinah moved further down the street.
A safe street lit by lamplight through the row of homes, each different from the one before.
The architects built in whatever way they wanted, creating a variety of homes that somehow fit the owner’s personalities.
Unlike Earth, where the homes were iron boxes stacked side to side, one on top of the other, rusting and leaking who knew what.
Sometimes I could still smell it when I woke in the middle of the night and thought I was back in an unknown room with a stranger and synthetics in my veins. Then I’d drift into a world of laughter and light, none of it real, all of it a fantasy that would come crashing down in the worst ways.
In those waking hours, I’d forget to breathe until Ethin woke and his voice murmured sweet nothings against my ear.
He would hold me, and I’d squeeze, and he promised I was safe, I was clean, and if Malwin was home, I had to get up to see him.
Seeing him sleeping peacefully put me at ease, then I climbed back into Ethin’s arms that fought the nightmares whenever they dared to return. And I did the same for him.
We weren’t perfect. Time didn’t heal all wounds.
A year certainly wasn’t enough to heal ours.
If anything, they got worse for a time, because neither of us believed in our comfort.
Ethin was tense, as he had been when we first met.
That fuse, burning bright, caught fire to everything.
He bickered and fought and believed every noise was someone out to get us, that we weren’t safe and this was all a ploy.
I couldn’t fault him because I had my suspicions too.
But we got therapists. We talked. We went through our days hand in hand. Maddy visited, and that settled him a great deal. Things settled and life was nice, so the nightmares weren’t always there, but when they slipped through, we had each other.
Ethin and I stayed on the porch until Dinah and Malwin reached her place. We didn’t need to. We knew it was safe. Nothing happened around here except the time our neighbor’s dog got out and trudged through our garden. But that was another piece of the past that we hadn’t quite rid ourselves of yet.
I looked back. Ethin stood in the doorway where his shirt had risen enough to reveal the bottom of the harsh pink scar along his abdomen.
He didn’t feel me reach out. He was completely numb there, a reminder of how we almost lost him.
Most nights, I found myself kissing that spot over and over.
If Ethin minded, he didn’t say. He just curled his hand in my hair and let me take a deep breath of him.
“It’s sweet that you already have your hands all over me, but I would prefer if they traveled lower.”
I shut my eyes and laughed. “Can you let me have a sweet moment or two without ruining it?”
“I did. I let you sweetly feel me up for at least twenty seconds.” His thumb rubbed against the back of my hand. “Come along, Captain. I have a great deal of desires that need to be met. You’re in for a long night.”
“I’m counting on it.” I stepped up to him, where he draped an arm around my shoulders and kissed me. I rubbed his abdomen, brushing my thumb higher until I knew he felt the touch when it coaxed a shiver. We stumbled back into the house, my arms around him.
“I love you,” I said, pressing my palm hard over his racing heart.
“I love you too,” he whispered, still blushing like he wasn’t used to saying it. Admittedly, he didn’t say it often, but that made me cherish the moments when he let me in even more. Especially because he, as always, couldn’t let a sweet moment last. “Stop being mushy and fuck me already.”
“Ethin.”
“Roys.” He kissed me again, slow and sweet, then dragged me into our house, our home to last forever.