Episode 14: Spence (Acheron)

He almost ran into Spence, who was just coming out of their bedroom. He hadn’t shaved yet today so he had this layer of stubble that made Ach lick his lips.

Spence was home, which meant his final exams were done and he’d graduated.

“Ach!” he said. He pulled him into a hug and pressed him against the wall, kissing.

He kissed back. It had only been a few days, the rational part of his mind knew that, but a few days without Spence was like an eternity…and he was going to make scorch marks on the wall if he wasn’t careful.

“I’m gross,” he apologized after a few forevers that weren’t long enough. “I need to shower.”

He looked at Spence’s clothes, but since the scrog guts had dried while Ach was mucking in the barn they hadn’t stained Spence’s shirt.

“It has to wait,” Spence insisted.  He urged Ach toward the apartment door with a firm hand on the small of his back, guiding. “I need you to meet two people.” He kissed Ach again and ran his hand all the way down his back. His skin tasted like chlorine.

“I love you,” Spence told him.

Ach glanced back toward his bedroom door, just a few feet away. “I’m meeting people gross?” he complained.

Spence rained water on him, drying it as it hit the floor. It rinsed his clothes out a little, but it did nothing to remove the acids and emulsifiers that decorated his clothes. It didn’t even really get rid of the coating of barn – hay dust and odor – that had dried on top of it.

“Better?” Spence asked in a tight voice.

Something weird was going on.

Ach wished he knew what it was. It must be about the two people. They must matter. Maybe it was people from Spence’s new campaign thing, but Ach didn’t want to meet them covered in scrog.

If they mattered, then… “Soap,” Ach insisted. “Just five minutes, please?” he turned back toward their bedroom.

Spence tugged his hand. “If you waste even five minutes, you may regret it. I want to adopt two kids.”

Two kids. Spence had a dragon. It took Ach a minute to connect the dots. Spence didn’t want to adopt two kids, he wanted to adopt two kids with Ach. Together. Not with Talise, but kids that were just theirs. The surface of Ach’s skin buzzed with fire. He pivoted and continued down the hall with Spence.

“I thought you were graduating today?” he asked.

He didn’t think adopting kids was part of that, but maybe Sylem was weird. There was no maybe about it, Sylem was definitely weird. He just didn’t know it was that weird.

“I did,” Spence said. He sounded giddy when he added, “The announcement went well. But the thing I did this morning… there was a complication.

“These two kids,” Spence explained while they went down a staircase. Spence skipped steps, hopping down a few at a time and then waiting for Ach to catch up to him. “Became orphans this morning. They look like they might be family. I want them to be family.”

There were a ton of ways someone could look like they might be family: Pale skin but with fire magic, twins, just some kind of resemblance. Ach liked the idea of kids that looked like Spence. That would be the best.

“Twins?” he guessed.

“Yeah. Orris is a boy with your skin and curly brown hair and Olida is his sister. She has straighter hair but the same skin. She’s unconscious for now.”

No wonder Spence wanted to adopt her. He was a naturally protective person. What Ach didn’t understand was how Spence even knew about her.

“What happened?” he asked.

Spence stopped with his hand rested on the lever-style handle to Zero’s office door. “She was burned and left for dead; they somehow notified a bunch of people we had Orris before his mom melted herself.”

Ach had a revelation: This must be how most people felt when they talked to him. Spence had somehow managed to make everything sound chaotic and complicated without giving Ach any real idea what was going on. Ach wondered if verbal density was contagious.

“If you don’t want this,” Spence said in an intense voice, “tell me the minute you know.” He swung open the door as Ach promised himself that, no matter what, he would want this because it mattered to Spence.

Then he saw the little girl. She lay on Zero’s examining table with her hair fanned out around her. It was matted and tangled like it hadn’t been brushed in a long time. Her skin was charred, some spots bloody, but Ach could see that it was healing.

Faster than it should, even with Zero’s magic. She really was family.

He felt something forming, like the bond. Almost as strong, but natural rather than magic. He reached across the examining table and brushed her hair out of her face.

Spence was right; this girl was theirs. He could feel it.

He felt Zero’s eyes on him and turned to look at Spence’s dad. His boyfriend’s dad, who was from a realm that hated gays.

He blushed. “Hi,” he said.

Zero stood about a million feet taller than Ach, and was as masculine as Ach was feminine. Maybe more.

“Happy birthday, Acheron,” he said. “And congratulations.”

Ach wondered if he gelled his hair that way on purpose or if he had the kind of hair that just looked good no matter what. Ach had the kind of hair that stood straight up. Uncle Meldrick had it too, but Uncle Meldrick looked like an adult and Ach looked like a little girl who forgot her headband.

“Congratulations for what?” he asked.

Zero glanced at Spence and then looked back at Ach. “For the successful scrog encounter. Nell was looking forward to it.”

“I knew he did it on purpose,” Ach complained. He felt a little warm inside though too. Getting eaten was something his dad would have done. It was a connection, a link. Significant.

Just like this girl was. He looked at her, nervous.

“What happened to her?” he asked. “Is she going to be okay?”

Zero put his hand on Ach’s shoulder. Something about it made Ach feel like he mattered to Zero, more than he had before. Like Zero was comfortable with him.

“She’s going to be fine,” Zero promised. “She has severe burns but she’s healing very quickly.”

Spence opened the door that led into his family’s in-palace apartment. Ach looked one last time at the little girl, her fragile features. He couldn’t imagine the kind of person that would do something like this to someone so breakable.

“Let us know if she starts to wake up?” Spence requested. He grabbed Ach’s hand and pulled him toward the apartment.

Zero looked had returned to his bedside chair and picked up his book of number puzzles. He looked up from it, pencil in hand, and promised, “I will.”

Spence tugged Ach into his family’s living room and then stopped and closed the office door behind him. Ach squeezed his hand. “Yes,” he said.

There was nothing like that feeling that the girl was meant for them. Ach refused to ignore something that strong.

Especially now, with the enormous smile that crept across Spence’s face. “Don’t you want to meet Orris first?”

Ach bumped against him, casual. “If I don’t like him, we can just adopt her,” he joked.

Spence’s chest puffed out for a second, like he almost laughed, and then it relaxed as he knelt down by the little boy. “Hey, Orris. This is Ach. My boyfriend.”

“Hi,” the boy said. “Are you going to help me paint the floor?”

“No,” Ach said. “I’ll help you paint on paper though.”

The boy shrugged. He had brown hair a few inches long that fell in little crescents along his hairline, and pale skin, and eyes the same brown as dark chocolate.

So, he didn’t look much like Spence.

He looked like himself.

Orris. Ach mouthed the name, letting it imprint in his mind.

His son, Orris. Hello, this is my son Orris.

Orris looked at Spence. “When is it time for me to go home?” he asked.

“We were thinking you might want to live with us,” Spence told him. He picked up one of the carved wooden horses the boy played with – things that had been Bentley’s once but now belonged to any family that wanted them – and continued, “Instead of going back to where you used to live.”

The boy scrunched his face in thought.

Ach tried to think of how this was going to work, whether their kids would sleep in the middle part of the apartment like the kids Spence shared with Talise, or whether they would add bedrooms to his and Spence’s apartment.

“Me and Olida?” the boy asked.

Spence danced the wooden horse across Orris’ shoulders. “Yup. Both of you, both of us. Do you want to see the new room or wait for your sister to wake up?”

“Now!” he said. He jumped from the floor to standing. “Because I want the best corner!”

Before Spence could lead them out of the apartment, his mom came over. “Busy morning?” she asked.

Ach opened his mouth to tell her all about church and getting eaten and flying all over the Lower Dell for no reason, but Spence squeezed Ach’s hand and said, “Busy day. Do you have any anti-soup?”

She smiled.

Ach liked her smile. She had big lips and a face that made him think she was just really calm and content and like she could be trusted to not have emotional meltdowns.

“Antisoup?” she asked Spence, one eyebrow raised.

“Food for good days?” Spence asked. “Or do you have to starve when you’re happy around here?”

Spence’s mom made the best soup in the world for anyone having a bad day. Before Ach had figured out that girls were just like that, he used to think Talise faked being moody just to get more soup.

Indigo patted Spence’s back. “Starvation is the only option.” She leaned in and gave Spence a hug. “Why don’t you bring the kids by for dinner and we can get to know them a little?”

“Tomorrow?” Spence asked. “We have the barbecue tonight. You’re forbidden from getting to know them at that.”

Indigo laughed. “Of course. Tomorrow, then. See? You don’t need soup at all.”

“Ach likes lunch, you know,” Spence teased her.

Ach saw Indigo smile again, affection for Spence obvious in the way she regarded him. He wondered what it was like for Spence, living in the same house as his parents. All the royal kids got bedrooms in the main halls once they turned five, and kind of got lost in the tide of activity at the palace. For Spence, his family ate dinners at home most of the time.

He was excited. Two days, and he and Spence and their kids could have dinners at home. Just the four of them. Moved in together, with kids, in their own apartment.

Two more days. Birthday dinner and then a dinner with Spence’s parents, and then they’d be free.

Still holding Ach’s hand, Spence grabbed Orris’ hand too. “First step, we have to take you somewhere to pick out a new blanket.”

“Can I pick my corner first?”

“Sure,” Spence said. They all waved goodbye to Indigo and left the apartment through the main door into the palace.

Spence’s family’s apartment was on the second floor near the end of one of the wings. Now he led Ach and Orris through the center of the palace and up to the sixth floor, where their apartment they shared with Talise was located.

They all went inside, and Spence attempted a tour but Orris jumped up and down on the couch three times and then fell into a purposeful sitting position. “This is my corner!”

“Hold on, Orris,” Spence said. “That’s for everyone. This way is your corner.” He led Orris deeper into the apartment, in the shared section.

Spence opened an empty bedroom. “All yours unless you want Olida to stay with you. We can paint it and get you a bed and pictures for the walls if you want. Bookshelves, a desk…whatever you want.”

“Can I have one of those puffy soft things?” Orris asked.

Ach missed Spence’s response because a funny idea had occurred to him. It was impulsive, which Ach wasn’t, but it was exactly the kind of surprise he could never in a million years pull off. Spence would see it coming unless he was impulsive about it.

“Spence…” he started.

“Yeah? Do we have birthday things you want to do?”

“I didn’t expect…” Ach began. He blushed and sparks lit his fingertips. “If you’re doing all this career stuff…the army with Konrad and running for governor in Sylem…would you ever want to elixir?” He blushed even more. He should kneel. But he didn’t have a ring. But people were supposed to kneel for proposals.

He didn’t kneel. “Get married?” he finished.

Spence’s face went kind of vague, and Ach felt his skin go cold.

It hadn’t occurred to him that Spence would say no. It should have, because Spence’s family was from Sylem and they probably needed more time to get used to the idea. Not some dumb impulsive idea of Ach’s, on a whim.

“Eventually?” Spence asked.

It wasn’t no. It wasn’t yes either, but he’d take it. Eventually meant Ach hadn’t just ruined everything by even asking.

He blushed again and felt a pressure of tears pushing on the ducts in his eyes. He didn’t want to cry in front of Spence. He could find an excuse to get out of here, calm his body down, then come back and be okay.

“Yeah,” he said. “Okay, eventually.” He glanced at Orris before looking at Spence again. “If we’re going shopping, can I shower first?”

“Try this hall’s shower out?” Spence suggested. “Make sure it works before we move kids in here.”

Ach just needed five minutes. Just five, to sort through his disappointment. “Well I don’t have any stuff here,” he argued.

“Do you really want to walk back to our room? You could shower here while I get you clothes.”

“Okay, thanks,” Ach said, because he couldn’t think of any arguments and he didn’t want Spence to see the hurt, even though Spence probably already saw it. He couldn’t stand the idea of hurting Spence back by being hurt, when it was Ach’s fault for doing something so impulsive.

He stood in the shower and scrubbed his body and let the water rinse the tears from his face. It took three rounds of soap before his skin stopped feeling slimy from scrog guts, and a fourth before he felt refreshed and clean.

When he got out, waiting for him in the bathroom was a new outfit – a grey sweater with matching strands of vertical argyle beads, a maroon oxford shirt, and black slacks with gray and maroon argyle socks. Ach laughed and hugged the clothes. Spence knew him so well.

He emerged from the bathroom ready to be normal and okay again, like nothing had happened at all. He stopped in the doorway to the new living room and watched Spence and Orris play some kind of game with the wooden horses. Spence kept making Orris giggle. Ach liked what a relaxed and homey sound that was.

He observed for a while before he stepped into the room and said, “Okay. Shopping?”

“What do you think about that?” Spence asked Orris. “We can get lunch.”

“Okay, yeah. When will Olida wake up?”

Orris left all the wooden horses in a mass on the floor, ready to be stepped on and broken. Ach walked over and picked them up. Next time, he’d make Orris do it so he learned, but today he was new.

Spence, in the other room, told Orris, “I hope she wakes up as soon as we’re back. But my dad is a great doctor and he will make sure she is healthy. Do you think you know her well enough to surprise her with a decorated room?”

Orris scrunched his face up again. Ach found a small plastic bin with a lid. He made sure Orris saw him putting the wooden horses in it, and made sure Orris saw where he put it, on the low set of shelves near the door.

“Olida likes turquoise,” Orris decided. He touched the box of horses on their way out of the apartment, marking their location.

Ach suspected, based on that touch, that he and Orris were going to turn out to have a lot of personality traits in common once they got through the initial awkwardness of getting used to each other.

They transported to a popular department store that sold bedding and clothes and toys and furniture, and made their way around. Orris picked out a butterfly comforter set for Olida, with a lavender and turquoise and white color theme, so they got her a white bedroom set and added some purple and turquoise accents.

For himself, Orris picked out flame bedding, so Spence suggested an all-black furniture set.

Orris got himself to dinosaurs, toy cars, and a toy set of building bricks that interlocked for stability. It looked like some kind of spaceship set, with curved pieces and astronauts and tons of little tiny things to leave out and lose.

Ach would have to teach him to put everything away, so that none of it got vacuumed up.

For Olida, Orris picked out a similar set of building bricks, with princesses and a horse-drawn carriage, dolls and a doll house, and a build-your-own robot set.

They transported home and set the rooms up – Olida’s first, which Orris happily helped with, and then moved on to Orris’ own bedroom.

While they were in there, Orris looked up at both of them, shy.

“Am I allowed to do my magic trick?” he asked, eyes on his feet.

Spence made eye contact with Ach over the top of Orris’ head. “What’s your magic trick?” he asked.

“I can turn into something else and make my body glow.”

Salamander. Orris was a salamander, which meant he was definitely family. Spence, as usual, had been right.

“Oh, yeah,” Spence promised him. “At home, you can do that any time you want.”

“Really?” Orris asked, like he couldn’t believe it.

Ach looked at him and worried where he had come from, what sort of danger he might be in. They needed to talk to Konrad, Meldrick, his mom…

“Yeah,” Ach said. “I can do that trick too. Can Olida?”

Orris shook his head, solemn. “She’s not allowed.”

“She is from now on,” Spence insisted. Together, he and Ach lifted the bedspread over the bed and surveyed the now-complete bedroom. “Will you help her get comfortable being herself around us?” Spence asked Orris.

“Yeah. She’ll be okay, she’s nicer than me.”

Ach didn’t think that was possible.

They walked back downstairs to Zero’s office together, swinging Orris between them while he made happy whooping sounds.

When they reached the office, Zero still sat with his book of number puzzles and a pencil. He had another puzzle tucked behind his left ear.

“How is she?” Ach asked. He looked over at Olida, whose body looked a lot healthier than it had three hours ago. Now she could just be sleeping, not injured.

“Good,” Zero said. “She’s just starting to wake up, but she doesn’t seem to want to.”

Orris pushed away from Ach and Spence and reached for the girl’s hand. “Oli?” he asked.

Her eyes popped open. “Orris? You’re okay?”

Ach felt a twisting in his gut. Wherever they had come from was so bad that the girl assumed he was dead.

Orris hugged Olida, and Ach saw tears running down his cheeks. “Yeah. I’m sorry.”

Ach reached for Orris’ back and moved his hand in soothing circles while Orris sobbed. “It’s not your fault,” he told him. He looked at Olida. “Hi, I’m…”

He didn’t actually know how to introduce himself. Especially not in front of Zero. He blushed instead of finishing the sentence.

Spence stepped closer. “We’re adopting both of you. We found out that you were in trouble and we want you to be safe.”

Olida’s eyes studied Spence’s face for a minute, then moved on to Ach’s before she said, “Do you like them as new parents?” She sighed, thoughtful. “New again.”

“Again?” Spence asked the pair of them.

Orris was all words and excitement. “They got you people toys that have a baby even, and a bedroom that’s just yours instead of a corner and they have a television.”

Olida grinned. When she looked at Spence, she seemed more open than she had a minute ago, but her arms were still folded across her chest.

“Yeah, we have new parents every year almost. Because he has brown hair.”

“Hey!” Orris complained. “You have brown hair too. Oh, and you can change into a lizard here and it won’t get you in trouble.”

Olida’s eyes widened. She looked at Ach and Spence again. “So we don’t have a mom anymore?”

Spence laughed. “Ach is better than having a mom.”

Despite the blush that flooded his cheeks, which was mostly because Zero was listening to this whole conversation, Ach pushed forward with a perfect joke. “So you can call him mom and me dad.”

Zero and Spence shared some kind of look, which made Ach blush even more, this time from confusion. He could never figure out how supportive Zero was and how much he was judgemental. Maybe the welcoming tone was a public face or something and Zero really didn’t like Spence being gay at all.

It would explain why Spence had said “Eventually” to the marriage idea.

Zero got up from his seat. “Why don’t the two of you watch a movie in the apartment while Olida finishes healing?”

Ach wasn’t sure if Zero was talking to him and Spence, or to the two kids, but luckily Spence seemed to get it. He carried Olida to the couch – Orris sat beside her with an emphatic bounce.

“We’ll be back,” he told Zero, and he led Ach out of the apartment. “So you really are okay with them?” he asked Ach as they walked up a flight of stairs.

“Yes! Very.” He smiled, playful with Spence like he didn’t know how to be with anyone else except Talise. “My kids will be older than Talise’s. And they’re nice. And it’s not like we can have our own. Adopting twins is good because they’ll fit in.”

Spence laughed and pulled Ach into a hug in their apartment, running his hands down Ach’s arm as he looked at him.

“Are you going to tell someone about the salamander thing?” Ach asked him.

“Yeah, I sent Konrad a dragon message. Hopefully he understood it.”

He opened their bedroom door.

The room was lit only by candles, the shades drawn. Hundreds of red candles lined every surface.

“What’s this?” Ach asked.

He turned to look at Spence, but Spence was gone. No, he wasn’t gone, he was lower. On the floor, on one knee, looking up at Ach.

Ach’s stomach fluttered.

“Ach, will you marry me?” Spence asked.

Ach grinned and bit his lip.

He tried to stay calm and focused. He wanted to remember this moment forever, not be so buzzy that he couldn’t remember anything.

He bit his lip again.

“Eventually,” he teased.

Spence stood and led Ach into the room. “I wrote you a book,” he said. He picked up off the bed a book, published and bound and illustrated like a children’s book.

As Ach leafed through the pages, which formed a story about their adventures together every summer since they were little, Ach realized Spence had to have planned this ages ago. The amount of effort that had gone into the book…and on the last page, a drawing of Spence kneeling in front of Ach, proposing.

Tears stung Ach’s eyes.

Poor Spence.

He knew right away what had happened. Spence had planned this and set it up. He’d even asked Uncle Nell to keep Ach busy all morning while Spence graduated. And then the kid thing had come up and Spence had wanted to sort that out first, and Ach had gone and proposed.

It must have been torture for Spence, saying eventually when he had this waiting.

All that effort to keep Ach out of the room until now.

Ach could barely breathe. He refocused by taking a pen off his bedside table and opening the book.

On every single page, so that he’d never forget, Ach wrote words like, “Eventually,” “maybe,” “could be,” “even odds,” “it’s possible,” and several others, until he reached the proposal page. There, he drew a text bubble above the book-Acheron’s head and wrote, “Yes!”

He passed the book to Spence.

Spence looked through it in silence, his body language all closed off like he was in a meeting and not in the middle of getting engaged. He slid the book into the bedside table drawer and looked at Ach.

Ach looked back at him, as hunger charged the air between them.

Spence stepped forward and kissed Ach, pushing him back onto the bed. “You defiled a book,” he said, shock evident in his tone.

Ach grinned between kisses. “Do I get this every time I write in a book?” He lifted Spence’s shirt over his head.

Spence pinned Ach’s hands above him on the bed, kissing him and holding him down with his body. “It may escalate,” he warned, teasy.

Ach let the sensations consume him.

There was nothing in the world, ever, that could rival what he had with Spence.

“Happy birthday,” Spence said, with another kiss.

Acheron smiled up at him, too happy to contain. He felt more tears rise to the surface of his eyes and spill onto his cheeks and the bridge of his nose. He kissed Spence. “Happy engagement day,” he said. He kissed Spence again. “Happy adoption day. Happy graduation day. Happy moving-in-together day.” He kissed him yet again, tasting the soft yielding side Spence only shared with him.

Spence kissed him back, arm around him, bodies and minds and hearts pressed together.

“Happy forever day.”

<- Episode 13 | Episode 15 ->