I was going to leave the house within a few days after the birth, but now that the house has burned down, I guess I’ll stay until her husband gets in and I know she’s got somewhere safe to live.
Mila can go to her husband’s home. Freya and her husband have access to military housing. They’re both going to be fine. They don’t really need the old house, practically speaking anyway.
Our father built the house when he married my mother. Both of them are gone now. The house was the last remnant of our family. I can’t believe it, too, is gone.
“My wife! My son!” A booming male voice interjects loudly into our conversation as Freya’s husband gets half of his opening statement wrong.
Ragnar is a musclebound idiot who loves my sister more than anything in the universe. He comes bounding in wearing his shiny blue spacefaring uniform. His beard has been trimmed close to his chin to allow him to wear a space helmet if he needs to.
He engulfs Freya in a hug, and she smiles brightly and thoroughly for the first time since, well, everything happened.
Mila starts to fuss with the baby while Ragnar puts his forehead against Freya’s, and murmurs soft romantic things to her that would make me gag if I had to keep hearing them, so I slip out of the room and leave them to their love fest.
I go back out into the hall and sit on the plastic chair, and wait for Ragnar to stop acting like he’s useful.
Someone clears their throat a few feet away from me. I look up vaguely, faintly acknowledge the guy, and zone out again, staring at the wall across from me and trying to work out what I feel. It’s such a strange day. We have lost a lot, but the fact that Freya and the baby are alive makes it joyous. I am happy and I am sad. I am home, and I am homeless. Where will we go tonight? Mila’s house, probably. Her husband has an apartment that overlooks the river. It will be crowded with all of us, but a roof is a roof.
“Muffy?”
I come back to reality with the realization that Thor is next to me, and he still thinks my name is Muffy. That last fact makes me smile in spite of everything.
He holds out a beverage to me.
“What is it?”
“Hot chocolate,” he says. “You seemed like a milk drinker to me.”
That’s what we in the business call an insult, but I’ll take it, and the hot chocolate. I didn’t think about how hungry I was, or how thirsty. Both problems are very temporarily assuaged by the beverage.
“Why are you still here?”
“I’m an emergency responder,” he says. “You’re an emergency.”
I should throw the rest of the drink at him, but I don’t.
“Aren’t there other fires to put out?”
He leans in, his voice lowering. “Just the one between your legs, naughty girl.”
Fuck me. It’s such a cheesy line, but he’s right. My pussy pulses at his lewd comment, and I know I’m not going to be able to escape the arousal he’s stoking in me. My body and mind have been through a lot, and I want release.
He puts his hand on my thigh, a little too high. His little finger brushes briefly against my crotch and I feel a tingle of excitement racing through me. He wants to fuck me. I’m considering letting him.
It would be fucked up to get laid on the same day my sister gives birth after our house burns down, but fucked up and me often live on the same street. Hard to be the family embarrassment and black sheep without making dubious choices.
“I thought you weren’t going to push things that shouldn’t be pushed or indulged or whatever.”
“I wasn’t going to,” he says. “I actually came to apologize for doing what I did.”
“And then you immediately decided to… touch me?”
“You’re very touchable,” he says.
I try not to be too pleased by that statement, and I fail.
“We shouldn’t do anything,” he says. “You’ve suffered a trauma today, and I have no right to be here with you now. But when I feel a draw to someone, as strongly as I feel to you, it is hard to ignore.”
“Oh, you get drawn to a lot of women, then?”
