Chapter 26 #3
Sidney is in the bathroom. The door is open, he's started leaving it open, a small change that Erath noticed and didn't comment on, because it means Sidney no longer feels the need to seal himself in, and the steam is drifting into the hallway in slow, curling wisps.
Erath can see him through the doorway, submerged to his chin, his blond hair wet and slicked back from his face, his eyes closed.
He looks peaceful. Not performing peace, not arranging his features into something that resembles calm, actually peaceful, in the unguarded way that only happens when Sidney forgets to hold himself together.
Erath leans against the doorframe.
Sidney's eyes open. He finds Erath without turning his head, he's been doing that lately, sensing his presence before he sees him, the conduit bond making him aware of Erath's proximity in a way that bypasses sight and sound.
"She asleep?" Sidney asks.
"Out cold. Mid-sentence."
"Classic Penny." A pause. The water shifts as Sidney adjusts. "What was tonight's story?"
"The fish found a roommate."
Sidney's mouth curves. "The starfish?"
"She's pink. Not orange. I was corrected."
"You always are." Sidney watches him for a moment. The steam moves between them and the bathroom light is warm and the water is still and Sidney looks at Erath from the bathtub with an expression that is quiet and full and unhurried.
"She asked me if I'm going to marry you," Erath says.
He says it before he can decide not to. It comes out directly, without preamble, because he has been holding it for less than an hour and it's too warm to contain. He says it and watches Sidney's face and waits.
Sidney doesn't react the way Erath expects.
He doesn't stiffen, doesn't deflect, doesn't reach for a joke.
His expression shifts, a flicker of surprise, then something softer, then something that Erath has seen only in glimpses and half-moments and never at full strength. Tenderness, unguarded and unashamed.
"What did you tell her?" Sidney asks.
"Nothing. She told me you make good pancakes and then asked for a story."
Sidney huffs a breath that's almost a laugh. "Sound reasoning."
"Airtight."
The bathroom is quiet. The steam moves.
"I don't need a ring," Sidney says. His voice is low, careful, the voice he uses when he's saying something that matters and doesn't want to get it wrong. "I don't need any of that. I just need this."
Erath looks at him. This man in his bathtub, in his house, in his life, who walked into the underworld and stayed, who makes pancakes and plays cards and gives bubble baths and reads stories and fights for a little girl who isn't his and loves a man who doesn't know what he did to deserve it.
"You have this," Erath says.
Sidney holds his gaze. The water is still. The steam curls between them and dissolves.
"Then that's enough," Sidney says. "That's more than enough."
Erath nods. The word enough sits in the air between them, and for once it doesn't mean settling or making do or accepting less than. It means full. It means complete. It means he has been empty for a very long time and Sidney filled every part of him and he doesn't need anything else.
"Come to bed when you're done," Erath says.
"Give me five minutes."
Erath pushes off the doorframe. He walks down the hallway and checks Penny's door, still ajar, nightlight still glowing, and goes into the bedroom. He sits on the edge of the bed and waits.
Five minutes later, Sidney appears in the doorway in sweatpants and a t-shirt, toweling off his hair.
He tosses the towel toward the chair in the corner, misses, doesn't bother to pick it up, and crosses to the bed and crawls in beside Erath and pulls the covers up and fits himself against Erath's side.
Erath's arm goes around him. Sidney's head goes to his chest. Their breathing aligns, Sidney's slowing, Erath's deepening, and the dark of the underworld hums around them, steady and constant and unchanged.
"Erath?" Sidney says, after a while. His voice is drowsy, fading, the words coming from the edge of sleep.
"Yes."
"I love you."
The words land in the dark between them. They land softly, not thrown, not forced, not dragged out under duress. They land and they stay and they are, simply, true.
Erath's arm tightens around him. His hand spreads across Sidney's back, wide and warm, and he presses his mouth to the top of Sidney's head and holds it there.
Sidney's fingers curl into his shirt. His breathing deepens.
He's almost asleep, or already there, balanced on the edge, letting the words exist in the air without taking them back, without qualifying them, without bracing for impact.
"I love you," Erath says, into his hair, into the dark, into the space between the living and the dead where they have built something that belongs to neither world and both. "I have loved you since before I knew what to call it."
Sidney's hand tightens in his shirt. A small movement. The last conscious act before sleep claims him.
Erath holds him. The underworld hums. Penny sleeps down the hall with her bear in her arms and a pink starfish in her dreams.
And the dark, for once, feels like exactly where they're supposed to be.