Episode 134: Mis-Matchy (Greg)

He lay on the bed, wrapped from neck down in aluminum foil. It wasn’t very comfortable. Actually it was pokey-weird and there was one place on his back where it had torn and bent into him at an angle. Itchy.

She’d said she was putting her kids to bed and to please wait, and he’d gotten bored, and one thought had led to another. He wasn’t ready to think about that dragon and what it meant, or those kids in the other room and what they would mean to him if the dragon thing was real.

He wanted three things tonight: Sex, distraction in the form of conversation and/or sleep, and to figure out what the hell all of this meant.

He was just Greg, a few days ago. He had a messed up life, but he knew what it was, where he came from, where he was going.

Sort of.

Now he was Mr. Not-so-temporary-after-all and he was living in the wrong – right? – universe and even though he’d never even noticed another girl besides Molly he was inextricably attached to this complete stranger, who was also a queen, who had a million kids, who had his son…

And that damned dragon could mind its own damn business. Showing up months ahead of time. Smug prick of a dragon.

He lay there, wondering why the hell his dragon hadn’t bothered to rescue him from the attack the other day, and watched the stars twinkle in Aadya’s domed ceiling. It was probably the most magical room he’d ever been in, and this was the first time he noticed how unique it was.

Aadya had that effect on him.

She came out from the nursery now, moving the door slowly so it wouldn’t make any sounds, and closed it with the quietest of clicks.

She took him in – the outfit, the casual pose on the bed – and smiled. “What am I supposed to do with you?” she teased. He could hear the laughter wanting to bubble up. Too bad he was constricted by aluminum or he would have tickled her to get the laughter out.

“Unwrap certain parts of me very carefully?” he suggested.

That earned a laugh. She undid the ties to her dress and let it fall to the floor, revealing what he’d suspected all day, that she wasn’t wearing anything but that dress.

No drinking allowed, combined with the suspicion that Aadya was barely dressed…it had been a long afternoon.

She ran her fingertips over the aluminum with light taps, like raindrops falling against it, exploring. “How was your day?” she asked him.

Unbelievable. If he was in a bad comedy, he would have pinched himself a few dozen times to check that he wasn’t dreaming.

“Good,” he said, instead. It didn’t seem smart, talking about how other her world felt to him, when he wanted her forever. Delineating differences was like relationship suicide. “I met a lot of people,” he went on. “There are plenty of teenaged girls and boys with Drey-variant names.” It was a shock to him, until he thought about how many people in his world ended up named after martyrs. He guessed it wasn’t that big a deal, except that in this case he knew the people who knew the martyr.

“How was your day?” he asked her. Drey had come up a number of times during the day, she’d had to work with Mr. Divorce all day long…she must be emotionally drained.

Plus the damn dragon.

“It was okay,” Aadya said. “Meldrick wanted to talk a few minutes ago. But, otherwise, perfect.” She moved so that she straddled him – he checked to make sure the foil wasn’t scratching against her inner thighs – and kissed him. She slid her hand between layers of foil and skimmed his chest with her hands.

“What did he want?” Greg grumbled.

He and Mister Divorce were not destined to be best friends, at least not any time soon, he thought.

She kissed him more, and the foil above his pelvis tore as his body responded to her.

She glanced down at it, a little cat-smile forming on her lips, and teased, “You should have given yourself more room.” She did something with air – hot and cold – that sent an unexpected shiver of longing down him. “He,” she said, tearing at the aluminum as she spoke, “wanted to talk about things that may not arouse you.”

Queen things. Permanent things.

She shredded the aluminum that wrapped each of his legs, and fully freed him from the costume. Her lips met the skin of his inner thigh and he moaned.

To hell with temporary.

“How long do dragons live?” he asked her.

“I don’t know,” she said, with a shrug. Too casual. She hadn’t shrugged since he met her. This mattered. He fought the grin that threatened to take over his face. Deadpan mattered, too. “A long time,” she said. “Why?”

She took him into her mouth. He would have thought it was a ruse, meant to deter him from the line of dragon questions, except they were headed towards sex anyway. So it wasn’t a ruse, it was a convenient ruse.

He joined in. He used the air magic she’d given him to spin her so that he could reach her body easily. “I’m learning my way around,” he teased.

She hummed against him. “Yeah, you are,” she agreed.

He wanted this. She wanted this. They both needed it.

They needed to talk, too. Serious things about temporary and dragons and waiting-for and none of it mattered.

He spun her again with air magic, a reminder of the flight this morning, and she lowered herself onto him.

Jesus fucking Christ on a pogo stick.

He couldn’t do temporary. Not when he had her now, here, like this, both open and coy, starving for him in the same way that he starved for her.

No, he wasn’t temporary. Even if Mister Waiting-for came back, he’d fight for Aadya. He wanted her, all of her, not just these stolen times until someone else came to take her back.

Once he’d made the decision, it was easy to immerse himself in her, worship her, let her consume all of him.

There was nowhere for them to go but forward, together.

Right after he caught his breath.

She fell onto the mattress, sweating and panting beside him.

He looked at her, taking in all of her warmth and beauty, her golden ember skin and stunning eyes.

“I’ve wasted my entire assets on this one outfit,” he teased her, “and it’s already ruined.”

He looked towards the foot of her enormous bed, where the aluminum lay in shreds. He’d need to move it before any kids crawled into bed in the morning and scratched themselves on one of the sharp edges.

Aadya laughed again and skimmed her hand down his chest. “Did you really like the festival?”

“I loved it,” he told her. “Everything.” In some ways it was too much to be believed. In some ways, he thought maybe Lewis Carroll hadn’t done any drugs after all when he wrote Through the Looking Glass, he’d just come here.

Greg would have to keep an eye out for suspicious talking cats, to be wary of.

He shifted onto his side so that he could see her. “The busy-ness, culture, the lights, the feeling of belonging. You guys put on a good show.” Even Mister Divorce, he decided to be grudgingly honest.

She kissed his jaw and down his neck. Her lips still sizzled. “I’m glad,” she murmured.

“Did you enjoy it?” She’d seemed to, but it was also her job to seem to. He wanted to know how much was show, exhausting and draining her resources, and how much was genuine and maybe even invigorating.

“Yes,” she said. She reached her hands over her head and arched her back in a long stretch, content. “I love the festivals. The reminder that we’re still doing something right.”

There. They were good for her. Mostly. She was tired, but these festivals clearly gave her something she needed.

He nudged her onto her side and decided to give her a thorough massage while they talked. Relaxed meant open, and they’d had some important stuff come up in the last twelve hours.

“They like you,” he said. He left it a generic they. She didn’t need to know how much he’d messed with some of them, and she’d probably guessed to an extent anyway. “Some of them are very protective of you.”

And some – most – possibly all? – of them wanted to know when the hell the wedding was.

It was Greg’s favorite question, besides the classic, “So you have a dragon, huh?”

His loaner dragon.

He grinned down at her where she lay face-down on the bed, her head turned sideways on the pillow, oblivious to his amusement.

“Are they?” she asked. “Many knew me during one or more of my…lives.”

He kneaded a knot in her upper back with his knuckles.

  She’d alluded to a memory problem enough times that he had to ask, “How many did you have?”

“I don’t remember,” she said into her pillow.

He tried to figure out whether she was hiding from the answer, or if her muffled voice was just a coincidence. Either way…He knew what it was to be lost.

He strung a trellis of kisses down her back. “I had three,” he told her, “but I can remember them all.”

He knew it wasn’t the same, but he had to connect with her on this, and in some ways it was a nearly identical situation.

She turned and looked up at him, surprise and curiosity mingled on her face. “What were they?”

“When I was young,” he explained, “I trusted my home country. My parents were immigrants, and I thought, somehow as a teenager, that my life would have been better back in Poland.” He’d been recruited. The word spy had never been used. Neither had informant. It was sharing, helping, looking into, always with the promise that he could move to Poland when he was finished.

He’d been naive. He’d almost cost his parents everything they’d built in the US.

“Then I trusted the US,” he went on, flatly. It had cost him much more than trusting Poland ever had.

The first, promised child. That was the deal. It destroyed him and did worse things to Molly. But they were resilient, they’d pushed through.

When Oscar disappeared, they’d debated countless miserable hours over whether it was coincidence or the government.

And then James had vanished, leaving nothing more than a note, and they’d known.

Someday, Greg would have to find a way to share this with Aadya. His mistakes, the losses Molly and his kids had suffered…

“Eventually,” he finished, “I learned to trust only my own instincts. Three lives, to me. Three different versions of myself.”

He waited to see how she would respond to that – pity? Resolve?

Nope.

She did what he’d done, and kept pressing forward about her problem. She agreed about the similarity, then, and they didn’t need to talk about it because it was miserable enough already.

“I’m the crown heir of another kingdom,” she confessed. “My home. But I don’t remember it at all. I can’t avoid it forever, but I’ve been lost.”

How the hell did she get roped into ruling the wrong kingdom? “How do you find your way back?” he asked. “Are they enemies or allies?” Maybe she’d run because they were terrible or something. It was possible.

Anything was possible, he’d figured out over the last 24 hours.

“I mean I know where it is,” she said. “I’ve been there. But not how to handle it. They tend enemies at the moment, because my supposed dad is mad at me.”

“What for?”

This was the good stuff.

Dragons, Temporary and Waiting-for and Divorce, those were all more surface topics. This was Aadya, delving into her past. With him.

He felt a little honored at her openness, hopeful about what that silver dragon meant.

She pressed her shoulders against his hands where they massaged her muscles, like a cat enjoying a back rub. “This kingdom held me prisoner. I’m an undine – a water fairy. He thinks I belong there. And, in some ways, it’s true.”

So she’d been a prisoner, and maybe somehow talked Mister Waiting-for into rebelling, and he’d died in the war. Rightful queen, wrong kingdom.

She didn’t seem to mind. After he’d watched her all day, he was sure of one thing: She was good at her job because she loved her job.

“You don’t want to go back,” he surmised.

“No, I don’t,” she sighed. “But I know I need to handle it. The process to ascend is complicated and difficult if you’re the rightful heir. Anyone else…it’s nearly impossible to pass.”

“Did you?” he asked. That would be a good bartering tool, if she could prove that she was ready to rule when her dad welcomed her back.

“No,” she said, with a laugh. “Yes I passed.” Like it was obvious.

He wondered what he was missing. Getting elected in Canada wasn’t the same as getting elected in the US. Queen of this Dells place didn’t mean queen of everywhere, or how would people know which kingdom they had the right to rule?

It felt logical to him, that they were separate thrones, separate processes, but apparently not.

“And technically I’m a rightful queen to that kingdom,” she explained, “in addition to these two.”

Did that mean she could just go over to the other kingdom and start ruling? Or was that why her dad treated this kingdom as an enemy, because she was a threat to his power?

“What,” he asked, trying to sort through this mess, “besides your dad, makes you not want it?”

“It isn’t home anymore,” she said. A shudder rippled through her. “And it’s dark.” She laughed, too high-voiced. “That’s probably not a reason.”

End of the massage.

He turned her, so that she faced him. “What is it?” he asked.

She scrunched her face up, in a comical impression of a pissed off toddler. Then, in a comical impression of the complicated creature that she was, she said in a placid voice, “I have minor fears of certain things. Is all.”

He kissed the tip of her nose. “Me too.”

“In this life,” she began, “when I was young, I was a priestess. I was told Maelchor had sent me to the deserts with the gift of water. I was told I was there to save them. So, when I was young, before my magic was much more than an unintentional reflex, I was forced to use it by being sent down wells. To get out, I had to fill the well. For hours. Days.”

Christ.

The things people did to kids.

He aligned their bodies so that his hug could completely encompass her. She snuggled, nestling into every curve of his body, until they touched as much as they could.

“And yours?” she queried. “You don’t have to tell me.”

He ran a hand through her hair. He loved the scent that drifted from her head as he ran his fingers through, something floral and earthen.

“In my middle life, when I was young, I believed children were safe. The way you are here…letting them be anywhere, comfortable having them around strangers…” He shook his head. He couldn’t believe it, and he didn’t know how to tell her how impossible it seemed to him.

“Each has a guard,” she explained, comforted. “A team of guards, really. And tracking spells.”

“But there are still two people missing,” he pointed out.

“Yes,” she said. “And I’ve lost three children. That I know of.” Her voice hinted at something heavy that made him put his arm around her without even thinking about it.

“Lost?” he asked.

“One in birth, two earlier in the pregnancy.” She turned and settled her eyes on him, deep and blue and plagued with something he knew they would have to talk about. Maybe talk about a lot, to help her address it, heal. “I’ve never asked Meldrick about the first six hundred years I was with him. All of our children are under one hundred. Under fifty.”

He thought about his four boys, the three and the secret, and the grief and regret and obsession he lugged around with him while he pretended to be normal.

It was nothing, against hers.

“All accounted for?” he asked, about the ones under fifty.

“All but one. We have two of his children,” she said, and then in a darker tone, “He’s been bred too…”

Bred.

For the first time, he wondered what he’d gotten himself into here. That Ionia woman Spence warned him about, the breeding, the recent war…

He kissed her cheek, while he decided he was going to learn a lot more tomorrow. “Maybe that’s why we connected right away.” Both of them had lost children. It was a terrible place to be.

“It might be,” she said. She kissed him, but it devolved into a yawn and he laughed against her mouth.

“Sleep?” he suggested.

She snuggled against him again and murmured, “Greg?”

“Hmm?” he hummed against her neck.

She was quiet, for long enough that he thought she must have fallen asleep, but then she said, “We can sleep,” and she squirmed her body against him until she found a comfortable position.

He watched her silhouette in the moonlight from her domed ceiling. Her breathing didn’t even out like it would have if she’d fallen asleep, but he guessed she had at least as much on her mind as he did.

He watched her belly, where two little people practiced their movements and built tiny little muscles so that they would be ready for life. For breathing, for finding, for jumping in their sleep, for kicking their little feet.

He missed Molly. It hit him like a wave, all those memories of watching their sons grow inside her. Especially Pip, because Pip’s pregnancy had been so alarming and memorable.

She was gone. Just…gone. Maybe it hit him now because he was finally sober. Maybe it hit him now because he was in bed with another woman, when he’d promised himself he never would. Because being here didn’t even feel wrong to him.

And her gone was different. She wasn’t like Aadya’s magical Drey, able to come back somehow. She had been forcibly removed from space and time, all of her memories and idiosyncrasies lost to before. Greg was trapped in after.

He’d done a bad job honoring that memory. Drinking wasn’t the way to remember her, it was the way to obliterate her from the mind and heart that knew her best.

Aadya had given him thousands of years, to live and remember her. He wouldn’t let Molly go. He’d hold onto those memories for dear life, make sure she wasn’t forgotten.

Her touch, her smell, her mind, her humor…

She was so jarringly different from Aadya. Aadya was this strange person, who could go from being a steel door – and you wondered what was hidden and protected behind that door – to being a copper birdbath in the sun, warm and inviting.

So far, Greg had mostly seen the bird bath. He’d caught glimpses of the steel door and guessed at the rest, but he suspected she was capable of intense fierceness. Things that would make the skill sets of the average superhero in a movie, look laughable.

Molly wasn’t any of those things. She didn’t like to be on display. She was the stake in the ground holding the bird bath up. She was the latch mechanism inside the door, keeping it closed. Everyone’s best supporter, no one’s burden. Easily forgotten by the world, but not by Greg.

And not by the damned government.

God, they’d fought so hard to keep Pip safe. To keep him theirs, and he was just gone. Just like Molly, his inquisitive mind and deep questions whisked away to someplace where they could be manipulated and used as a weapon.

He knew he had two sons still missing, but Oscar…he’d been gone most of his childhood. Greg knew he was a little scared of what he’d become. Jay was grown already, adult, with experiences Greg couldn’t even dream of. He’d made it clear he didn’t need Greg, or really even seem to like him.

It stung. Greg would try to help him, would try to be the person Molly would’ve been, but he was also afraid that Oscar wouldn’t like him either.

He just wanted his family whole. To have what they should have had. Four sons, including the secret one. Christmas and New Years and school problems and girl problems and whatever else came up.

Forging ahead alone, building something new…it was scary. Not what Greg had bargained for when he’d left home.

But he watched those babies move, Aadya’s palm across part of her belly, and he felt at home. He could see their future, thousands of nights like this, children who would be safe with them, memories they hadn’t made yet.

In a way, letting her in, meant letting Molly go. Admitting Molly was gone.

His vision blurred, just as Aadya twisted her face towards him. “Are you okay?”

How could someone become so much to him, in almost no time at all? He ran his index finger down her cheek. “Yeah,” he managed.

He knew he wasn’t, but it wasn’t really a lie because she knew he wasn’t too.

She rolled onto her other side and faced him, arm on his shoulder. Her hand was so warm. “What is it?” she asked, in that cat’s-tongue voice he’d first noticed.

“I was just thinking,” he said. He put his hand on her belly until he’d found a place where he could feel one of the babies kicking. “About the last baby I watched grow.”

“You never said how old he was when…a year ago,” she prodded.

He swallowed again, so he could talk. “Four.”

One of the babies kicked, hard.

“The first year itself wasn’t the hardest for me,” Aadya murmured. She danced fire against his skin, pensive. “It was the first pregnancy after, life moving forward. What was the worst for you, so far?”

The worst…

Wondering how many pieces a bombed body ended up in.

The month that he’d wanted to kill himself, except he couldn’t even drag his ass out of bed to follow through on it.

Pip’s face, everywhere in his mind.

Molly’s, nowhere in his mind, like he couldn’t ever get her right. Something was always off.

The worst…

He knew what was worst.

“Knowing I’ve wasted a year. That’s a year someone else has had them, while I was drunk.”

“Drunk is understandable,” Aadya defended.

It wasn’t to Greg, or to Mister Butterfly, but he was relieved that Aadya got it, that she understood.

She kept explaining her opinion: “It’s not wasted time, if you needed it. You’re far enough from the losses to see things in a new way, but the time was spent surviving. You’re more equipped now.”

Surviving, yes. Learning how to be whole again.

“It’s…” he didn’t want to offend her, but the worry had built inside him all day, “really hard for me to trust that your people will find him.”

“Then don’t,” she said.

What?

Maybe, while he’d been growing closer, she’d been trying to think of a way to get rid of him. Maybe he’d misread everything.

He could go. Keep finding Pip and Oscar. It was what he’d set out to do anyway.

“I shouldn’t,” he agreed, testing to see if that was what she wanted.

He wasn’t actually sure he could go. Physically, yes, but emotionally she’d become such a part of him.

“Shouldn’t go, or shouldn’t wait?” she asked.

He didn’t know how to answer that, because he didn’t know if they were talking in code about him leaving or if they were talking on the surface about his kids.

“What if the time is never right for someone to get them?” he asked her.

“What if we put a time parameter on it?” she suggested. “And if the timing hasn’t been right by a certain day, I send a mission regardless.”

That could risk other lives, maybe her kingdom even going to war. He couldn’t do that to her, over two people. This was his job. “Or I go alone, regardless,” he countered.

“If you’d like,” she agreed.

He thought about his promise to her, to be there for her babies. He didn’t want to leave her, he just wanted to find his sons. It pissed him off that he couldn’t get them and be with Aadya at the same time. It pissed him off that he was even looking for them. He should have raised them.

But then Molly would be here, and not Aadya.

No, she wouldn’t, she’d be at home with him, and Aadya would be alone.

That was what this was about. He was mad because what he wanted was his old life back, and to somehow still have Aadya.

He swallowed and snipped at the edges of his attachment to should have been and let it go. He focused on what was at hand. “After they’re born,” he suggested. He massaged a baby’s footprint on her belly, with his fingertips, and it moved away.

He and Aadya might even be married by then. It wouldn’t be him leaving, it would be an excursion.

She smiled. “I think they’ll be here before then. The timing works.”

Before then? But that was only weeks away. Weeks, and he’d have his sons back.

She smiled at him, warm and hopeful in the moonlight.

“You and Molly are so different,” he marveled.

“What was she like?”

That was fair. He’d actually gotten to meet Mister Divorce and try to puzzle out what parts of Aadya had mattered to him most. Aadya deserved to know what he could tell her about Molly.

But… “First, I want to talk about something. I was thinking, how can the same man feel so much connection to two different women? I’ve concluded that it’s because I’ve changed. Losing her made me into someone else.”

“See?” she teased, but he knew she was serious under her tone. “Not wasted time; you were rebuilding.”

“My point is, if she could come back like you think-”

He stopped talking. Her eyes had widened, like she’d just thought of something.

“What?” he asked her.

“She will be? Back.” She relaxed her body more against his.

Back. His Molly, back. Alive. Their sons coming home. They could be a family.

He tried to picture that, and drew a blank. Whenever he imagined himself, in his mind’s eye it was Aadya by his side. Every damned time.

“You were saying,” Aadya nudged, “if she comes back…”

“I don’t think it would be the same,” he decided. “I’ve changed, she probably has, in a year.” Now, for the point he’d been trying to make: “What do you think sixteen years has done with you and Mister Waiting-for.”

Her hand stilled on his skin.

“I’m not waiting for him,” she stated.

He laughed, from relief and from how she’d pushed to put up a barrier to his affection.

“I’m just waiting for you,” she added. “Timing. To know you better. In the sea kingdom, the bonds would mean we were already married. Alum – the dragon – is yours. It’s just you.”

He just had one more thing to sort out then: How long she’d known.

“Who decided he was mine?” he asked.

“He did.” She made a little arc of fire a few inches long that danced between their bodies. It was intensely flirtatious as it moved between them, writhing and sensual. “I suppose you can argue with him,” she teased.

He kissed her shoulder. “I’m not here because of some dragon,” he promised her.

Had she known? Did she sleep with him because he had a dragon waiting for him, or because she wanted to?

He waited, breath held.

“I don’t want you because of some dragon,” she assured him. Honest, he could feel it.

So she’d just found out. And she hadn’t had any time to warn anyone what her plan was. He grinned at her. “Next time you want to keep something big from me, you might want to let Mister Divorce in on it.”

She laughed, and the arc between them jumped a little. He spun it back into place.

“He knows, then,” she realized.

“Nope,” Greg joked. He could hear her sense of loss and conviction, mingled in her voice, and he reached out with his mind, to face his own:

“Molly, to answer your question…”

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