Roys
Thesunshiningdirectlyinto my eyes woke me.
“Sir Scribbles, please close the curtains.”
Bargaining with the cats led nowhere. Sir Scribbles did what Sir Scribbles wanted. We were in his territory, after all. The ball of black fur sat on his window perch, having brushed the curtains aside to get to the morning sun. By this point, Ethin should be cursing the daylight hours, but my hand spread across the cool empty mattress. The clock read 1105. I slept in.
And Malwin was awake, laughing in the backyard.
I rolled out of bed, wondering why my knees had to make those cracking noises at thirty-one years old. Not that long ago, Ethin had a hysterical fit when I pulled my back mid-thrust and spent the next hour trying not to humiliate me further. He wouldn’t be laughing when he hit thirty.
Sir Scribbles glared when I stood by him to look outside.
Alliance territory had taken time to adjust to. They were almost too good to be true. There weren’t towers stacked atop one another, each threatening to crush the person below them. Smog didn’t fill the streets or poison our lungs. Water ran clean through our faucets, and thedesperate weren’t stashed into the lowest rings, starved and coerced into the worst aspects of society.
Kayleigh Layne and her mother, the ambassador, kept their words. We were placed on one of the Alliance planets and given a two-story family home. We worked four days a week—Ethin running a speeder protecting cargo between planets and me as a trainer for their military, which was far better than the Intergalactic Militia in every sense of the word.
Maddy stayed on a survey team, wanting to continue her education and career, although the Laynes assured us they monitored her. She was welcome anytime and visited regularly between her college courses and work. She and Ethin would stay up for hours drinking and chatting about all the years they missed. From time to time, the air got cold between them when the past became too much, but they moved through it, and I couldn’t be happier for them. Ethin didn’t deserve to carry that guilt forever. He deserved to be happy.
I wanted to make him happy for the rest of our lives.
Arana, Iylene, and Lilea lived in nearby towns. We had weekly dinners, one scheduled for tomorrow, where we laughed over a hot meal about how bland our lives had become. And we wouldn’t change that for anything. Ryker returned to his parents, and Zavir took a chance on returning to his home planet. They sent messages from time to time, mostly jokes from Ryker and vids of Zavir’s adventures with his family.
We had exceedingly ordinary lives where we worked and picked Malwin up from school and met Dinah for family breakfasts, lunches, or dinners. They gave her managerial work at the local shopping center, which she adored, kept her busy, but with the three of us, it was easy to partake in the many activities Malwinwas in.
We signed him up for art courses, and he recently took up the piano. He would have a recital next month, which still made my heart burst with so much warmth I thought I would cry. A sky hung overhead, blue as could be, and some days I asked myself if it was real, or all a figment of my imagination because how could we be here?
In our yard large enough for the swing set we built and the garden, Malwin knelt in the dirt, assisting Ethin in the upkeep of that garden where they planted vegetables. Real ones, not the ration packs that said “vegetables” and tasted like slop. These were tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, broccoli, and a stray fluffy tail belonging to Lady Mildred.
Sir Scribbles’ sister pranced out of the patch with a cucumber in her mouth. For reasons we could not fathom, she enjoyed gnawing on them, and Ethin allowed her one from time to time. Apparently, this was not one of those times because he made the fatal mistake of reaching for her treasure. Hissing, Lady Mildred swatted at him.
“You already gnawed on one, you little shit.” Ethin sucked on his thumb that her claw must have caught, then cast his attention to Malwin. “Don’t tell your dad I said shit.”
Giggling, Malwin put a hand over his mouth to signal his silence. I pretended not to have observed it all because Malwin had yet to pick up Ethin’s potty mouth. Malwin probably got as much amusement out of Ethin’s momentary panic as the rest of us.
Leaning against the window, I took a moment longer to watch them while brushing my fingers over the scars along my arms. They were dark and unavoidable reminders of all I had done, and what I sometimes craved.
Ten months and counting.
I pressed hard against the rough skin, reminding myself of all the ways I fucked up when I had synthetics coursing through my veins.How I hurt Ethin, of all people, that look of disappointment when he returned home to find me curled up on the bathroom floor after snagging whatever I could around the house. It wasn’t moira, but I needed something, anything. He didn’t say anything, just cleaned up, got me into bed, and reminded me Malwin would be there soon, so I had to get my shit together.
I did, or rather, I was trying and it was working better than ever because we weren’t around all that shit. We weren’t around the military, the stress, none of it. We were good. We were happy. Malwin had both his parents around. Now, he even had Ethin, who, day by day, became a parent too. We were all nervous at the start, unsure about what transpired, all the changes. For over a month, Malwin wouldn’t even talk to Ethin. But over this year, so much had changed for the better, and I couldn’t—I wouldn’t mess this up.
I had to keep trying, reminding myself that no synthetic could live up to looking out this window and seeing them down there smiling and laughing. This was more than I ever thought I could have.
After washing up and tugging on the armbands, I went downstairs to have my nostrils assaulted. Ethin’s cooking skills were imaginary, though he always tried and failed fantastically. Based on the wrappers on the counter, he and Malwin snacked rather than eat whatever peculiar concoction had been shoved into the waste. In short, I took to preparing an early lunch containing proper nutrition.
Those two would be made of pure sugar if not for me.
I chuckled when the backdoor slid open and Malwin’s voice rang out, “Daddy, you’re up! Wait, wait, wait, use these!”
He appeared, wide-eyed, with a missing front tooth that we feared he had swallowed mid-dinner until Ethin spotted the tooth on the floor. Malwin pushed a basket of fresh vegetables onto the counter and pickedout which belonged to whom. Ethin liked peppers, so he got most of those. I preferred tomatoes, so those were mine, and Malwin liked broccoli, so those were his.
“All excellent decisions,” I said, chopping them up for some beef wraps. I leaned over to kiss his head. “Go wash up. You’re filthy.”
“That’s not my fault.” Malwin shot Ethin a teasing look, who finally rounded the corner in his dirty jeans and t-shirt, which didn’t distract from his looks. In fact, I rather liked it when he returned from the garden, cheeks flushed from the summer sun and sweat sticking his black hair to his tempting neck.
I wanted to kiss him, to bite his neck, hold him close, feel him all around me as we lost ourselves in each other.
