The fact that Andi had to ask made George wish he could wrap his partner in pure warmth and protect him from the outside world forever. “Yes. That’s love, dear. A form of it. And I’m eternally grateful that you seem to be unimpressed by its uglier side.”
“You mean the side that tries to evict me from your life.”
“Yeah. That.” George started stroking Andi’s head, gently massaging the scalp, eliciting a happy groan.
“It doesn’t really bother me. I know what a difficult topic mothers can be. To me, my true mother was Gran. She loved me unconditionally. Accepted my otherness without batting an eye and offered me a safe haven when all the other adults in my life only had expectations or contempt to offer.” Andi paused. “I’m not saying my mother doesn’t love me. It’s just that her love is inseparably intertwined with the expectations she failed to meet first when she was born without the geschenk and then when she failed to stay in Bavaria with me. Her relationship to my oma was a volatile mix of hurt feelings, thirst for vengeance, pettiness, and a desperate need to validate herself in the eyes of somebody who saw people as?—”
“Things?” George suggested when Andi didn’t seem to be inclined to keep on talking. His lover shook his head.
“Things can still have value. I don’t think there’s a word for how my oma viewed people. For her, they were what a field of grass is to a bee or a room without anything in it is to a fly. Something of no value. Only to put value to it, you’d have to think or hope it could become something more if you went to the trouble of investing in it. To a bee, a field of grass is—at best—something to be ignored when there’s other food sources around. For a child wanting to be a flower—to stay in the metaphor—it’s a devastating experience to be nothing.”
“You were the flower. In the eyes of your oma.”
“I was, and I’d have preferred to be grass. But I wasn’t, just like my mother wasn’t a flower. We both yearned to be different, to be what the other was, completely out of reach and bound to make us unhappy, while at the same time it was the only strong connection we had to each other.”
“Which is why you have so little contact.”
“Mostly.” Andi shrugged, the movement a gentle scrape on George’s chest. “I think my mother regrets a lot of things regarding me. When we talk, she tries to decide whether she should make an attempt to change the past, which is impossible, and her bad conscience as well as her underlying anger about it make our interactions awkward and exhausting.”
“Are you mad at her?”
Again, Andi shrugged, a little more pronounced this time. “Sometimes? Yes. Most of the time. I see and understand what she went through and what little choices she had. I mean, I’ve met my oma. Considering what my mother had to endure growing up, it’s a wonder she’s as stable as she is. Returning back to the States with me was her one act of rebellion against my oma, and she could only go through with it because my gran offered her a home and love and because my oma was already declining in health at the time. If she’d still been in her prime, I’d now be a citizen of Bavaria.”
George hugged Andi closer. Just thinking of never meeting him made his stomach turn.
“I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad your mother found the courage to defy your oma at least once.”
“Me too.”
CHAPTER 10
PRAISE TO THE QUEENS OF DEATH AND TECHNOLOGY
Andi woke up to an empty bed. Two days after their return from Spartanburg, they still hadn’t heard back from either Evangeline or Shireen. While not unexpected, the waiting still grated on Andi’s nerves. On George’s nerves as well, if the long runs he was doing in the mornings were any indication. His man loved his early morning sport, but for the last two days he’d been out a lot longer than usual. It could also be his impending birthday and the visit from his family, but Andi was fairly sure most of the stress the arthropods in the house were telegraphing to him stemmed from this strange non-case they were currently dealing with.
Andi still wasn’t sure what to make of the images he’d gotten from the black widow and the hornets. Meditating and even carefully dipping into the mind of the wild honeybee hive in one corner of his garden in the hopes of getting an idea what it could be hadn’t helped either, just given him a mild headache and the urge to pollinate some flowers. He hadn’t dared to venture too deeply into the hive’s collective memories because the ease with which he had slipped under had frightened him. Ever since he’d saved Tyler by using the bees to kill the serial killer who had kidnapped him, his mind seemed to just be waiting to dive in, and the walls he built around it to protect the blob that was Andi Hayes were getting thinner and harder to maintain, even with George’s help. It was so alluring, giving up his own sense of self, becoming one with something greater, with a clear purpose, where there was one goal and one goal only: survival. No complicated social constructs, no careful maneuvering through relationships and connections—everything was simple, hierarchical, easy to understand and follow. Individuality was overrated anyway.
Andi shook his head. He knew this was a dangerous path to tread, even if it was only in thought. Individuality was one of the core elements of being human. By giving it up, he would lose everything that made him human. Concentrating on his bond to George helped. The man was his anchor in every sense of the word. He was also coming back this very moment, his progress through the neighborhood documented by the ants and beetles and butterflies and all the other creepy crawlers dwelling in the gardens of their neighbors. George still maintained his brisk tempo, no doubt dripping with sweat, his exhaustion a deeper note among the familiar potpourri that made up his individual scent signature. Andi allowed himself to follow his partner’s path?—
The blob was enticing, healthy, the sweat calling to the mosquitoes, luring them in, though the prey was too fast, gone before they could land, his footsteps too heavy on the ground, the ants in the nest next to the sidewalk were not happy, some of their tunnels had caved when the blob’s feet had hit the ground at a particular spot, the butterfly on the roses in Mr. and Mrs. Kettemer’s garden saw him as a huge shadow moving past, no predator, though, the pheromones gave it away, faster, faster, George was coming closer, Andi could feel it, home, he was coming home, to the nest, to safety, where he belonged, next to Andi, so they could tend to the nest, take nourishment, burrow deep and never come back up, shut the world out, at least those parts that could hurt them, everything hurt, always, the constant battering against his mind, the nest was safe, mostly, George was coming, closer, closer, Andi could now taste him with the antlers of the moths hiding on the bark of the trees, could sense him through the hundreds of legs of spiders and ants and other earth dwelling creatures, the rhythm so familiar, it was like a lullaby, soothing, reassuring, he could see him through the compound eyes of the flies and butterflies and dragonflies, all looking at him, because Andi wanted to know, and it was so easy, following George like that, borrowing eyes and legs and antlers and antennae and?—
Andi took a deep breath. He was doing it again. Slipping into them, using them without even realizing it, no longer just a spectator, no longer simply a guest. No, he was something else now, and he didn’t like it, didn’t understand it, and until George entered the house, he would admit to himself, at least, that he was frightened. He couldn’t remember his oma ever talking about using the arthropods like that. Borrowing from them, sure, utilizing the geschenk in any way he saw fit, of course, it was his Geburtsrecht, ja? But taking over, actively taking control, she’d never mentioned it, and he was sure she would have, if only to gloat and show him how weak he still was. Du muast di zsammreißen, Bua. You have to get your act together, boy. Only it had never been enough, had it? Not for her.
The door lock sounded, followed by George’s footsteps. Andi shook his head as if the unbidden thoughts of his oma could be divested off that easily, ha, and got up. He had just finished taking off his pajama pants when George entered the bedroom, wet from sweat, his skin glistening, his eyes lively. As exhausted as he might be from his training, it had done wonders for his inner equilibrium. He smiled at Andi.
“You’re up.”
“I’m up.” Andi turned toward the bathroom. “Do you want to shower together?”
“Give me a sec.” George was already pulling off his T-shirt. Next came his running shorts, underwear, and socks. His shoes were downstairs on the shoe rack next to the door. George was a stickler for rules and outside shoes had no place beyond the entrance hall.
They stepped into the shower stall together, George manipulating the faucet until the water had the temperature Andi liked—scalding hot. George preferred it to be colder and turned the heat down as soon as it was his turn to step under the spray. But first, Andi let the warm water loosen his muscles. Behind him, George found the lavender soap they both liked and started foaming it. This was a familiar ritual by now. Showering together, soaping each other up, feeling their bodies, the skin texture, learning the dips and curves and angles, the healthy muscles George had, and the protruding bones Andi had to offer.
It wasn’t perfunctory. It wasn’t sexual either, not yet, but they were definitely heading in that direction. It was, in a way, a mating dance—an attempt to acquaint themselves with each other, a natural progression from what they did when they meditated together and talked about everything and anything. They discussed all the little things a human was made of, just like Andi saw his fellow human beings in multi-layers: pheromones, vibrations, echoes, and—always last—the shape they took for his own senses.
As intimately as Andi knew others, he had never imagined there could be so much more to a human. Now, with George, it was one epiphany after another, his partner and lover surprising him regularly with facets neither his tiny informants nor his own senses and talent for deduction could reveal.
It also made him pity mundane humans who could never see others the way he saw George, and at the same time, he was jealous because they could never see as clearly as he did. It was a strange dichotomy. One he would ponder another time or perhaps never because thinking about it forced him to face facts he’d rather forget.
