Archive of Our Own

Now that they were out of it, neither Fluixon or Saparata spoke much about that summer, that hazy period of time where they fought about everything. It was the summer that Sidefall came to live with them, and it had been a hot, brutalizing summer, in which everything went wrong at once. The icebox in the freezer had broken and churned out cube after cube, spilling over, the garden was overgrown, the tomatoes grew out of control and piled up on their countertop and Flux didn’t know why Saps had planted them in the first place when neither of them liked tomatoes. The squirrels ate through the rest of the other crops, so every morning Saparata would come back inside with a mutter and a sigh, rinsing his hands of hot wet mulch in the sink, with nothing to show for it. 

During the first weekend that Sidefall was there, Saparata had the bright idea to take him to the nursery. Sidefall was the sort of teenager who was steadfastly unimpressed by everything his uncle and his uncle’s partner had to show him. He was always on his phone and no matter how much Saps tried, he could never quite get Sidefall to open up, not in those first two weeks. They wandered the wasp-ridden halls of the nursery, poking through the aisles of marigolds and daisies, and came home with empty hands. 

“I’m really beginning to regret saying yes,” Saps muttered one night, fresh out of the shower. His hair was still damp, and he had a towel wrapped around his waist. On any other evening, Flux might have been captivated by the sight — this was, after all, the sight he’d first fallen in love with, back in college when the two of them shared a dormitory. 

But Flux was irritable that night. Summer grant applications piled up. His reviewer’s report on his latest article had returned to him last week; revisions seemed an unbearable ordeal. Tersely, he said, “It was a favor to Ender.” 

“So what, Ender just gets to — not be a parent for a summer? He gets to go — what’s he doing again? Some wellness retreat or something?”

“He asked for help getting back on his feet and I said yes.” 

“Yeah, well, Sidefall’s his kid, not ours.”

“I know that,” Flux said. “Obviously I know that. We can’t have kids, Saps. Science hasn’t figured that one out yet.” 

“We could always adopt like Ender did. Just in case you forgot.” 

Flux let out a slow, controlled breath. “We’re only holding onto him for a little bit while Ender figures things out on his end. That was the deal. Sidefall goes back when school starts up again. It’s just two months.” 

Saps stared at him, then seemingly gave up on whatever argument they could have had. He was annoyed too, Flux knew, because Saps was in between jobs at the moment and he was the sort of person who needed to be busy all the time to feel comfortable. He was constantly searching for things to do. The other day, Flux had found him on a ladder cleaning out the gutters. Before then, he was rearranging the cabinets in the garage, one painstaking item at a time. Now he was obsessed with the garden, a period of intense work he went through each summer. Flux hated getting his hands dirty while Saps loved it. 

Sometimes, when times were better, Flux would sit on the lawn chair in the backyard and watch Saps work while pretending to read a book of his own. It was a selfish pleasure of his to watch his lover in his white shirt, sweating underneath the hot sun, dirt streaked all over his arms. Flux had never felt more in love than in those moments, paralyzed by the sheer desire he felt for the man who had transformed his life. And he was haunted by the strength of his own love, how it seemed a bodily thing, a pink blush that felt so unlike him. 

You’re staring, Saps would always call, a cheeky grin on, as though he was aware of just how attractive Flux found him.

And Flux would pretend to avert his eyes. This was their little game: Saps teased and Flux resisted. Saps read his mind while Flux played at being unreadable. Once, it had brought Flux a lot of comfort. 

As much as he complained, Flux loved their little home: the tiny cottage an hour away from the nearest big city, far enough to barely count as suburban. He’d been uncertain about buying it, but Saps had convinced him. Saps had a way of convincing him into nearly everything, which made Flux feel insane sometimes — furious at himself for giving in, furious at Saps for knowing he would give in and pretending otherwise. But they’d bought the house and moved out of their tiny apartment and set about making a strange little life together. It had been four years of living there when Sidefall came there for the summer and occupied their one guest room. 

The house was bigger than their last apartment, but it was still small, and Sidefall took up an abominable amount of space. He’d brought a PS5 and an XBox and a Nintendo Switch and a stack of board games, and he’d brought two monitors and a PC and a folding table to serve as his desk. 

“You owe me one,” Flux muttered to Ender, watching his partner help his nephew move into his beautiful, once-organized home. 

Ender winced. “I know.” 

“Is this the start of some sort of midlife crisis? You decide that you actually don’t want a kid now that he’s a teenager and an asshole?”

“First off, fuck you,” Ender said. There was a bite to his voice that suggested Flux had, perhaps, stepped over a line. “What’s my other option? Having him live with Dad?”

Flux and Ender’s parents hadn’t mellowed out with middle age; if anything, they’d become worse. Flux had survived one too many summers as a depressed teenager, trapped inside their family home. At the very least, Flux could acknowledge that having Sidefall live with his divorced grandparents for the summer was a fate worse than death. 

He and Ender fell silent. Saps was being kind, carrying all of Sidefall’s things inside. He was trying to joke with him, Flux knew. He’d spent a while volunteering at a summer camp for middle schoolers while Flux was busy with his PhD, and the kids always loved Saps. But after more than a decade together, Flux could tell when Saps’ smile was strained. Sidefall was going to be a nuisance. 

“I really just,” Ender’s voice went quiet. “I don’t know what to do right now.” 

He and Ender had never been close as children. There were twelve years of distance between them, and by the time Fluixon had grown old enough to want a relationship with his older brother, Ender had moved out and had wanted nothing to do with his gangly, awkward, teenaged younger brother. So their relationship had existed in short flickers and bursts: groupchats with Cynikka that fizzled out, phone calls once a year, holiday cards, strained Thanksgiving dinners at their family home. 

And Ender, calling him out of the blue, to say I’ve been evicted, and I need your help. 

“You’ll make it work.” The steadiness of Flux’s own voice surprised him. “He can stay with us for the summer.” 

That summer of arguments: hot, humid, shot-through with storms that shook the entire universe, wet bloated panels of rain that slammed against the skylights. The power went out on Sidefall’s first weekend, so Saps cooked dinner with the gas stove by candlelight. Sidefall didn’t want to join them, even though Saps tried to convince him otherwise, and finally allowed him to eat dinner on his own in his room. 

The first whole week, Sidefall was sullen. He spent most of his days calling his friends, locked in Discord voice calls for up to ten hours. He emerged from his room to root through the cabinets for snacks, and he didn’t join them for dinner. Saps and Flux ate at the round table in quiet, comfortable silence. They chatted about nothing in particular — conversations had a way of turning endless with them. They were watching the new season of Severance. Saps had a lot of opinions about office dramas and loved complaining at every moment. Flux listened to him peacefully and tried not to think about his nephew, tucked away in their spare guest room. Every so often, Flux could hear him shout something in glee as he presumably won whatever match he was playing. 

“Maybe it’s just teenage angst,” Saps said one morning, as they were slow to wake, not wanting to let go of these precious morning hours in which there was nothing in the world but each other. “You’d know all about that.”

Flux was frustrated; he hadn’t slept enough. He’d had one of his dreams again, the ones in which he awoke from the delusion that his dissertation had gotten rejected and he was back at Berkeley, trapped inside endless stairwell within the clock tower, searching for his committee members who seemed to laugh and taunt him from around invisible corners. He didn’t laugh at Saps’ joke. 

“Okay, you’re in a bad mood,” Saps sighed. “You’re not laughing at my jokes. You’re not even smiling. What is it?” 

“It’s nothing. I’m just tired.”

“Maybe if you didn’t stay up until three in the morning —”

“Saps, seriously, quit it.” 

“I just wish you’d come to bed with me. That’s it. Just one night a week.” 

“I don’t stay up that late.” 

Saps shot him a look that clearly read you’re a liar. Flux didn’t deign to respond. He liked these hours of solitude, which sometimes felt like the only true time that belonged to him, and he was remiss to give them up. 

Sidefall was a strange intrusion into the house in this way. His presence was like a mirror, shining back all the things that Flux disliked about his own life at the moment. Sidefall spent half his time on his computer and the other half on his phone. He didn’t want to join them for dinner. He kept taking Saps’ bicycle out to visit his friends, and kept coming back late at night long after Saps had gone to sleep. Flux would irritably wait up for him, wishing that he had some way to track Sidefall’s comings and goings. He wondered how Ender dealt with this. Was Flux this bad as a teenager? He was certain that he wasn’t nearly this awful. 

Flux tried to get closer to him. He really tried. He felt bad that he’s never been close with Ender when they were younger, and he felt some sort of obligation to prove to Sidefall that adults could have healthy, happy relationships — that what happened to Elanuelo and Crow didn’t happen to everyone. Sidefall seemed depressed, always sulking around. He resisted sharing anything about his life. It took Flux a whole week to get the name Ymi from him, one of Sidefall’s friends, who worked at the coffee shop down the street. That was where Sidefall spent most of his days, a detail that Saps and Flux worked out of him at lunch. 

“You could apply for a job there,” Saps suggested. 

Sidefall’s face scrunched up. “Nope.” 

“It would get you out of the house,” Flux said. He was cottoning onto Saps’ plan. “Plus, you would get a lot of money.”

“You guys aren’t my parents,” Sidefall said fiercely, “So stop acting like them.” 

Flux and Saps exchanged glances. Flux had never felt more like an adult in that moment than when he said, “Well, you’re living under our roof.” Then he winced as he said it; his voice, in that terse severe mood, came out sounding exactly like Crow’s. 

Saps sighed. “Ignore Flux, he’s just being prickly.” 

“I am —”

“I would love to ignore Uncle Flux,” Sidefall said. “That’s amazing news for me. I will proceed to do that effective immediately.”

“Oh, come on,” Flux muttered. 

“Did someone say something?” Sidefall wondered. “Was that the wind?”

Saps evidently felt guilty for turning Flux into the scapegoat. “Alright, don’t actually ignore him. Listen, I’m not like — I’m not gonna force you to do something, I think that’s kind of Ender’s job, or — your dad’s job, I guess. But you probably should apply for a job or something. Think about all the money you could make. It would look really good on your college apps, right?” 

“To be totally honest,” Sidefall said, “I really don’t care that much about college.”

Flux frowned. “Why not?” 

“Because school fucking sucks?” Sidefall said. He appeared bemused; he had forgotten about ignoring Flux. “Because I think applications are a waste of time?” 

“What are you going to do with yourself if you don’t go to college?” Flux countered.

“I dunno. I could do trade school or something.” He brightened slightly. “There’s a whole bunch of people who like, make a living on Twitch — you know, the livestreaming platform. People make a fuck ton of money from streaming on Twitch or making YouTube videos or something like that. I’m pretty funny. I think I could make a killing.”

Flux resisted the urge to point out that what he saw on those platforms was the one percent — the one percent of the one percent, those who had gotten lucky and then gotten even luckier. Millions of dollars didn’t come to everyone who thought they could entertain an audience. 

“You know Flux has done admissions stuff before,” Saps said. “He could probably read over all your Common App essays if you wanted —”

“Yeah, no,” Sidefall said. 

“Seriously!” Saps persisted. 

“Oh my god, I just want to do my own thing!” Sidefall complained. “It’s summer, I shouldn’t have to fucking — think about college or all these boring tests or work a stupid job, okay? Why can’t I ever have something for myself! I don’t even want to be living here in the first fucking place!” 

His outburst surprised all three of them. They sat in stunned, strangled silence, and Flux thought bitterly that it wasn’t like he wanted to take care of his teenage nephew either, a sentiment which he could never, never voice aloud. 

Sidefall’s chest heaved. In a move that reminded Flux remarkably of himself, he shoved himself back from the table and stormed to his room. The door slammed shut so hard that the whole world rattled.

The outburst had clearly hurt Saps. Flux could tell that he was turning the argument over in his head like a worry stone, trying to figure out where he’d gone wrong. Flux wasn’t hurt as much as he was annoyed. He was even annoyed enough to tell Saps curtly, “I don’t like it when you volunteer me for things. Don’t sign me up for something like that.” 

Saps balked. “I just thought —”

“I know what you thought. But I can volunteer myself and I can make my own decisions. And I really don’t need you taking up more of my time.” 

Flux had been prickly and sharp and strong-willed as a teenager. He had a habit of irritating Cynikka; he’d once dyed his hair purple in the bathroom and stained every single towel in the cabinet as a result. He had been a nuisance in every way possible. He’d been the sort of teenager who shouted back at his parents. More than once, Flux had entertained the delusion of running away. He’d climb out of his window at night and stand there, looking out on the suburban streets, their vast obscene emptiness, and considered what it would be like to pick a direction and start walking. Where would it take him? The world seemed so pitch-dark in those moments. All the illumination went from him. Then, inevitably, he would turn and walk inside. He had just enough bravery to shout at Crow whenever Crow tried to coerce him into doing something, and just enough cowardice to keep himself there in that household. 

In some ways, college was a blessing — he had plenty of everything and plenty of time. Freshman year felt like the first open door in his life. Four years was an impermeable, insurmountable amount of time. He’d never worried about the future then.

“Do you think he means it?” Flux asked Saps several days later, at night. He was worrying at his nails. Saps reached over, put a hand on top of his without looking over, a gentle reminder to stop hurting himself. “About college? Or not wanting to do anything?”

“I mean,” Saps considered what he was going to say. “Not everyone has to go to college.”

“Obviously. I know that.” 

“It probably feels worse coming from you.” 

Flux frowned. 

“I mean — you and Ender look so much alike.” Did they? Flux had never considered that. Saps continued, “And I don’t know, it fucking sucks to be seventeen. Everyone knows how much it sucks to be seventeen. Not to mention that he’s been forced out of his home and has to live with us, you know? I think he’s allowed a summer where he doesn’t have to do anything serious and he can just hang out and do whatever.” 

Money was tight that summer. Flux was paid only for the nine months of the academic year; summers were a blurry haze of grant applications and research proposals and fighting to make ends meet. He was only an assistant professor then — it would take him six more years to go up for review, after which he would get tenure, after which he would begin to relax, slightly, and see the world as more than a series of closed and locked doors. But that summer, especially with Saparata searching for a new job, money was a constant fight. Bickering about all these little things: the number of days they got takeout, whether to cancel their HBO subscription, to switch cell service providers, the broken refrigerator and whether they should replace it, the ants crawling in through the back screens, the endless fight against them. Flux was beginning to hate the ants more than he hated anything in the world. He hated that Saps didn’t seem to care about the ants at all; or if he did, he didn’t show it. The lack of care about something that deeply bothered Flux seemed like a disrespect. It grated on him, the absence of Saps’ care. 

The three of them went out to see a movie on Wednesday evening. It was Saparata’s idea: family bonding, he’d said, after yet another silent dinner between the three of them. It was a worthy expense, in his eyes. They went out to Olive Garden beforehand, and Sidefall said, “Dad and I used to go to Olive Garden all the time.”

That surprised Flux. For some reason, he’d always thought of Ender as slightly too pretentious to ever go to an Olive Garden, or some poor chain restaurant like this. He’d always been more like Elanuelo than Crow — always more concerned with how he moved about the world. “Did he really?”

“Yeah. It was like, our big routine when I was in middle school. He helped me with my algebra homework.”

“Oh god, I’m terrible at algebra,” said Saps. He was trying to sympathize in his own clumsy, heartfelt way. “I failed my seventh grade math class.”

That startled Flux. “Did you really?”

“Did I never tell you? It was so awful. I had to repeat a year of math.” 

It occurred to Flux that he knew so little about Saps’ own childhood. They’d talked about their respective childhoods, of course, but there was only so much that could be said aloud. There was so much he might not ever know. 

“Well, I didn’t have to do that,” Sidefall said. “I killed it in algebra. I got a C, which is technically a passing grade! So I got to move onto geometry, which was just way better. Triangles are way easier than fucking matrices or whatever they’re called.” 

“Math is not my strong suit,” Saps agreed.

“You literally work in finance,” Flux muttered.

“It’s not your strong suit either,” Saps pointed out. “Remember that one stats class?”

Flux’s nose wrinkled. “We don’t have to talk about this now.”

But Sidefall was interested, seemingly intrigued for the first time the whole summer. “Wait, did you also fail a math class?”

“I didn’t fail,” Flux said. “I got an A-.” 

Conspiratorially, Saps stage-whispered, “Your uncle thinks that anything below an A+ is considered a failing grade.”

Sidefall winced. “I would hate to be in your class.”

“Good thing you don’t plan on going to college,” Flux said, with a pleasant tone that bordered on mocking. 

Sidefall pinked and stared back down at his plate of pasta. Saps glared at Flux for a moment, then said, “So — what movie do you guys want to see tonight? The new A24 film is out, but that — er — might be pretty adult.”

“Dad lets me watch R-rated movies all the time,” said Sidefall. 

“Okay, I’m beginning to believe that you’re a liar,” Saps said, and Sidefall grinned. “You can’t just pull that card on us all the time. Dad lets me do all this, Dad lets me do that. You’re just trying to get away with things.”

“Is it working?” said Sidefall. 

Saparata looked at Flux, who pressed his lips together and tried to tell him, this is your problem to solve.

“Alright,” Saps sighed. “You can pick the movie if you want.” 

Sidefall selected a recent action flick — something with spies and cars set in London. Flux wasn’t one for movies. Most of them, in his opinion, were mass-produced and poorly-edited, hours and hours of painless entertainment that ultimately served no purpose. He couldn’t stop himself from critiquing them afterwards, walking out of the theater and prepared to hotly debate all the ways in which it could be made better. This one was no different. Some of the pacing had been abysmal. The dialogue even more so.

“I really liked it,” Saps said. “I thought it was a great watch.”

“It was apolitical,” Flux muttered. 

“Not every movie has to like, take a huge political stance on the world,” Sidefall said. “Can’t it just be a fun, stupid move about sports cars and racing?”

“But that is political,” Flux said shortly. He had this argument with undergraduates all the time who hadn’t yet figured out the way the world worked. “A movie is itself political. The setting is political, the displays of wealth are political, the very notion of competition —”

“Baby, you’re lecturing again,” Saps said. “You don’t always need to lecture.” 

“I’m not lecturing, I’m only —”

“You’re definitely lecturing,” said Sidefall. “Oh my god, I’m never going to college. Imagine having Professor Flux as your teacher. I’d actually, literally kill myself.” 

He flounced onward to the car. A hot pearl of frustration condensed in Flux’s chest, and he set off after his nephew. Saps caught his arm and said, “What’s up with you?” 

“I’m perfectly fine,” Flux said shortly, “I’d rather not have this discussion with you right now —”

“Oh my god, Flux, I really don’t want to do this whole song and dance where you pretend like nothing’s wrong when something clearly is. Just tell me what it is. Can’t we ever actually communicate like grown adults?” 

It boiled up out of Flux’s mouth: “And what’s up with you? You’re not supposed to throw me under the bus.” 

“I — what? About picking the movie?”

“Yes,” Flux snapped. “And the lecturing comment you made.” 

“You were lecturing.” 

“I want you to defend me,” Flux hissed. “What good is a relationship if you’re not going to defend me?” 

Saps’ face twisted into a short frown. “That’s not what — hang on, what the hell are you talking about?” 

“If you’re just going to let him drive us apart —”

“What? We’re not — being driven apart. That’s a ridiculous thing to say. That’s actually stupid.”

“And now you’re calling me stupid.”

“And now you’re deliberately misinterpreting me!” Saps threw his hands into the air. “Oh my god, whatever. Let’s just get home.” 

In the car ride back, Sidefall sat in the back seat. He was quiet. His eyes moved between Flux’s and Saps’ shoulders and he opened his mouth as if to say something, before deciding the better of it. 

On the weekends, Saparata went out with his friends from his last workplace, before he’d been laid off — Schpood and Spyder and Cass and the like. When he’d started working at the firm, several years ago, he’d been relieved to know that there was another queer couple in the office. Saps had rambled to Flux about the first work party, in which he’d discovered this fact, and had promptly begun talking about Flux the whole night. He’d come home slightly wine-drunk, in a way that was both endearing and embarrassing, and spilled the whole story. 

While Saps was out, and while Sidefall was busy playing whatever video game he was preoccupied with, Flux visited Thomas. Thomas was an old college friend of his, and by some stroke of luck, they’d wound up at the same university. Thomas was adjuncting at the moment, vying for an assistant professorship in the political science department. He and Flux could pass hours and hours of time mutually complaining about the hatred of their own jobs. It was probably irresponsible of him to leave Sidefall at home, but Flux had been left alone as early as fourteen, and seventeen felt like the age at which you could be trusted to spend several hours alone. 

He and Thomas got dinner at the wine bar thirty minutes away. It was a pleasant evening; Thomas was teaching an online asynchronous summer course and was full of complaints about it. Flux had to remind himself to only drink one glass of wine at risk of becoming unable to drive back home. 

“And how’s Sidefall?” Thomas said at last, when the night had worked its way into darkness. 

Flux winced. “He’s reminding me of why I don’t want to have kids.”

“That bad, huh?”

“It’s all just — teenage melancholy and pettiness.” Flux stared dismally into the dregs of his wine. “Saps is great with him, but he’s Saps. He’s how he always is.”

“Unsurprising,” Thomas said. “And how are you and Saps doing? Any updates?” 

Thomas was prodding for news on the marriage front — which Flux had only talked about once, several months ago, when he’d gotten much too drunk at a departmental party and had ended up spilling his guts to Thomas outside, by the back wall of the political science building, a rare cigarette between his fingers. It was the sort of pleasure he rarely allowed himself: smoking and complaining about his life. How Saps had brought up marriage, and Flux hadn’t wanted it; how at once it felt as though a deadline had been put on their relationship; how life abruptly became measured in meaningless milestones like engagement and wedding and house and kids, and how Flux really wanted nothing to do with any of it, nothing at all, why couldn’t they just be happy with what they had? Was it possible for anyone to be happy with just what they had? 

“No updates,” Flux said. “We’re doing just fine.” 

He bid goodbye to Thomas and started the long dark drive home. The freeway was vast and limitless. For a moment he had the unknowable impulse to level the pedal with the floor, a teenage ache to drive as fast as he possibly could. 

But Flux wasn’t seventeen anymore. He was hardly a child. He was long past the age to give into such ridiculous impulses. 

Saparata was already home. He and Sidefall were sitting at the round table, cards splayed in front of them, and Saps was in the middle of explaining the rules of some game — aces are the lowest, not the highest, so this doesn’t count as a set — before pausing when he saw Flux. 

“You’re home,” he said. 

“Hi,” Sidefall waved. “Uncle Saps is teaching me how to play gin rummy.” 

“Ah.” Flux hooked his coat by the door and looked down; they were in the middle of a game. “Who’s winning?”

“Sidefall,” Saps said, at the same time that Sidefall said, “Saps.” 

Saps had that crooked grin on his face. “He’s still learning, I’m going easy on him. Where’d you end up?” 

“Thomas and I got dinner at Elevage.” 

Saps set his cards down on the table. “How’s Thomas?”

“He’s fine.” Flux became aware it was extraordinarily late — much later than he had wanted to return. “I think summer teaching is wearing on him.”

“Yeah, I remember you both complaining lots about that.” Then Saps looked at the time too and said, “It’s way too late for you to be up, Sidefall, I think we can just call the game here.” 

In the bedroom, Saps shut the door behind him. Flux went to the ensuite and washed his face, stared at his reflection. Saps peeled off his clothes and came to brush his teeth. He said, “Did you really leave Sidefall by himself?”

“He’s seventeen,” Flux said. “He’s basically an adult.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t even tell me. I wouldn’t have seen Schpood tonight if I knew —”

“It’s not that big of a deal,” Flux said shortly. “You don’t need to babysit him. He’s not one of your middle schoolers.” 

“And you’re going out and spending money,” Saps said pointedly. 

Flux felt himself tighten. “So are you. Don’t turn this on me.” 

“We agreed —”

“And both of us broke that, so what does it even matter?” Flux snapped.

Saps’ jaw worked. He swished mouthwash, spat it into the sink, and turned towards the bedroom. Then he said, “You didn’t tell me you were seeing Thomas either.” 

“Are you seriously still jealous?” When Saps didn’t respond, turning over to flick off the light, Flux pressed, “Are you ever going to let go of that? You know Thomas and I are just friends.”

“I know you’re just friends. I know that. It doesn’t change how I feel.” 

“This jealousy isn’t a good look on you.”

“You always do this,” Saps muttered, “You push, and you push, and you push, and you don’t tell me where you’re going, and you go out without saying things —”

“Excuse me?”

“— and obviously I know whatever you and Thomas had is long gone, but I’m sorry, I’m just human. I’m still going to be jealous over it. God forbid a guy has feelings over seeing his husband get drunk with his ex.” 

“I didn’t —” Flux had to remind himself not to shout. “I had a single glass of wine. One single glass of wine.” 

Saps turned the light off, rolled to the other side of the bed, and said, “I love you. Goodnight.” 

The first three-odd years of living together had been delightful. They had been so new with each other, and everything felt as though it was the first time anyone in the world had done it. No one had ever loved each other like this; the depth of Flux’s own passion felt incomprehensible even to his own mind. Was it possible for two people to live like this — moving around the kitchen in their identical dance, intimately aware of where the other person was without needing to look? 

But the years of love had dulled the excitement. Pattern became habit, and habit became invisible after a while. What had begun as frighteningly new and tender had settled into complacence. Flux tried not to take each I love you, I love you too for granted, but it came from his mouth so easily that he sometimes didn’t realize the strength of the words he was saying. 

He had once agonized so much over when to first say I love you to Saps. The agony had choked him up for a year’s length of time. He missed that raw anxiety sometimes. The enthusiasm of young love. They were still young, but they were getting much older now. 

They would need to talk about the arguments at some point. It was bad enough that Sidefall had heard their whispered argument. It was even worse that the frustration lasted long after that night, stretching into the whole next week. 

Saps was the one to corner him, when Sidefall and Ymi were out at the coffee shop. He stood behind Flux’s desk and said, “We need to talk.” 

“I don’t want to have a serious conversation right now,” Flux said. He was busy working on his syllabus for the next semester; he’d been assigned to teach two more sections of Introduction to Philosophy, a class which all the other members of his department hated, which Flux had been assigned by virtue of being the newest hire. He knew this was academia’s hazing ritual, he knew it was a necessary torture, and he still despised it — the dirty work of dealing with undergraduates that none of the other professors wanted to do. “I’m not in the mood to sit down and talk with you."

“But this matters to me,” Saps said, and he said it with such a tone of voice that Flux was forced to pause and listen to him. 

He turned around. Saps pinched his eyes shut and said tersely, “I just — I don’t like it when you think that I’m deliberately not taking your side. I don’t like it, Flux. I really don’t. I don’t like it when you fight with me, or when I fight with you, or when it’s like — like you can’t even see the next five years with me.”

Flux’s breath felt like liquid. “Is this — what is this?”

“We’ve bought a house together,” Saps said quietly. “We have a house, Flux, we have all this — we have all this space, and I don’t want to say that it matters to me, if we’re married or not, but it does, and you know it too.” 

Flux faltered back. Saps so rarely spoke to him like this. 

Saparata stared at him for a second, then pinched his eyes shut. His next words came out tight and strained. “It matters, Flux, if you want to get married or not.”

“So — so what?” Flux found his voice. “So all of this has been about getting married?” 

“It’s just — it’s just been on my mind. With Sidefall, and Ender, and — and looking for a new job, and the…” 

He trailed off. Flux looked at him for a hard long moment. 

The evenness of his own voice surprised him. “Is this a dealbreaker?” 

“I’m not saying it’s a dealbreaker.”

“But you are.” 

“It was hard enough when I had to explain you at work,” Saps muttered, “At least Schpood and Spyder have put a ring on it, and it’s hard being the only one of the team not married —” 

“Oh, so this is about work?” 

“When is it not about work!” 

“You want to get married to impress all the stokebrokers who work in finance? That’s it?”

“That’s not what I’m saying. I’m trying to say —” 

“I really, really don’t want to have this conversation right now,” Flux said tightly. 

“— it’s not about impressing people, it’s about — about fitting in —” 

“Newsflash, Saps, you won’t ever fit in with them! You know that as well as I do.”

“I know that!” 

“And what?” Flux knew he was being unfair, but he couldn’t stop himself. “You want me to be — be one of the wives? One of the housewives, just for you? We can go on vacation to the Hamptons. When you find a new job, I can just quit mine and take care of the house. You’d make enough money for the both of us anyway.” 

“That’s not what I’m — god, Flux, you’re being unfair.” 

“It’s true.” 

“But it’s not what I’m trying to say!”

They stared at each other for a moment. Saps’ face twisted in anger, and he left the room. Flux sat in tense silence for a moment, trying to wrangle his rabid anger, which seemed at times a live thing, slippery and wet. He never knew what to do with himself when this anger burst forth from him. Sometimes, it felt as though he became an entirely different person: terse and curt, snippy, upset. The same way Crow had been for so much of his youth, to the point where Flux felt as though half his childhood was spent walking on eggshells. 

“Come on,” Flux said later that week, at the door to the guest room. He tossed the car keys to Sidefall. “I’m going to take you driving.” 

Sidefall acquiesced immediately. They ended up in the church parking lot. It was spacious and open on a Wednesday morning. One lone car littered the back corner. Sidefall sat in the driver’s seat and squinted at the console. He readjusted the seat, as if to make a point about his height. Flux fought the urge to grimace. 

“Are you and Saps like, breaking up,” Sidefall said. 

“Put your hands on the wheel,” Flux said. “Ten and two.”

“That’s not an answer.” 

“The car will move if you let it. You don’t have to press the gas at all.”

Sidefall pressed the gas immediately. The car shot forward, and he yelped. In the panic, his foot hit the gas again while searching for the brake, and the car lurched forward. An ugly screech of metal against concrete came. 

“Oh, Jesus fucking Christ,” Sidefall gasped. 

Flux took a deep, steadying breath. “So that’s called hitting the curb.”

“I can fucking see that!” 

“It’s fine. You’re fine. Just put the car in reverse and back up.” 

Much paler, Sidefall put the car in reverse. He peered over his shoulder to see where the car was going. “Are you and Saps actually breaking up? You have to tell me. I’m your nephew, so you can totally trust me if that’s true. I won’t tell anyone.” 

“We aren’t breaking up,” Flux said tightly. “We have ideological differences. That’s normal for couples.” 

Sidefall looked at him dubiously.

“Keep your eyes on the road,” Flux instructed.

“What road? We’re in a parking lot.”

“Well, keep your eyes on the parking lot,” Flux muttered. “I’m giving you a big privilege by letting you drive. Ender would kill me for this.”

Sidefall’s face scrunched up. “God, it’s so weird when you call Dad by his name. He calls you Uncle Flux, by the way. Uncle Flux and Uncle Saps.” 

Flux’s face scrunched up too. The concept of being someone’s uncle was still baffling to him. It was odder still that he and Sidefall were barely twenty years apart. He’d been seventeen when Sidefall was born and he’d looked at all the photos Ender sent him and Cynikka: Sidefall’s tiny, scrunched up, tomato-red face, wailing and screaming up at the multicolored mobile on the crib. He’d been treated to a million more photos for the following months. It was more than he and Ender had spoken in years, but now Flux was privy to every aspect of his tiny nephew learning to crawl, grasp, babble whitely at colorful squares, thinking about how baffling it was that his older brother was now a father, that he himself was an uncle. 

who do you think ender’s more like as a dad, Cynikka had texted him privately. elan or crow? 

idk thats a weird question 

im just wondering! 

weird baby
why does he look like that

thats ur nephew flux thats what a normal human baby looks like 

u are definitely more like elan btw 

wtf????
fine. ur more like crow 

They knew how to irritate each other. Cynikka knew all the ways to get underneath his skin. Flux hoped he wasn’t like Crow. The idea of growing up simply to become his father was one of the most haunting things he had considered in a while. In hindsight, though, this was the same fear that every seventeen year old had. He was just like everyone else. 

“Do I just… keep going,” Sidefall said. His hands were still on the wheel. He was looking uncertain, compulsively reaching up to adjust the rearview mirror. 

“You just keep going,” Flux said. “Very slowly, though. Don’t hit the gas like that again.”

The car shuddered forward, stopped in jerky, fitful motions. Sidefall took a slow, slow turn around the parking lot. Flux made him go back and do it again. He tried to park, which resulted in the sedan lodged diagonally between two white lines.

“I’m so fucking shit at this,” Sidefall said. 

Flux sighed. “That’s what driving for the first time always feels like.”

“When did you learn how to drive?”

“Er — I was fourteen.”

“What?” 

“Your dad taught me, actually.”

“What?” Now Sidefall was truly intrigued, looking more excited than Flux had seen him all summer. “Hang on, you’re saying my dad broke the law? Are you serious?”

Grimly, Flux said, “Your father has broken the law more than you would like to know.” He surveyed the car again and sighed. “Let’s get back home.” 

Flux had shown all of Sidefall’s baby photos to Saps as they lay curled up together in their dormitory twin beds. At that point, Sidefall was four years old and was starting to learn, in the way most four-year-olds did, what being an annoying nuisance could do for him. Flux was slotted between Saps’ legs; Saps had his arms around his chest, holding him, so that their breathing felt like the breaths of one combined being rather than two separate people. They were roughly ten months into dating, then, junior year on the verge of wrapping up. Saps had asked Flux about his childhood, and Flux had diverted the conversation. 

“It would be crazy if we had kids,” Saps said. He was always saying things like that. He loved talking about the future, whereas Flux felt like the future was enormous and unfathomable, a nauseating open blackness. “We’d be amazing parents.”

“Ha,” Flux said. “You wish.” 

“No, think about it. We’d totally raise them right. No social media until they’re eighteen.”

“That’s just asking for trouble. Our kid would figure out a way to get social media anyway.”

“No, we’d do, like, a screen-free childhood. He’d only ever watch Bluey or National Geographic. He wouldn’t even know that social media existed.” 

“You’re so stupid. That’s not how the world works.” A beat. “Also, why do you think we’d have a boy? We could have a girl.” 

Saps laughed. “Okay, okay, we could have a girl. Sorry for assuming.” 

“I don’t want a girl.”

“That’s so sexist, dude. You can’t say that.”

“Don’t call me dude,” said Flux, annoyed. “I just don’t want kids. That’s what I meant to say.” 

He scrolled to the next photo. Sidefall was on Ender’s shoulders. His mouth was open in childhood delight, reaching up to the top shelf at the grocery store, one hand fisted in Ender’s hair. He was reaching for bottles of mayonnaise. Two bottles were already splattered open on the floor around Ender’s feet. 

“Why not?” Saps said. 

“I just don’t want them,” said Flux. He turned to the next photo. 

“But why not?”

“Do I have to have a reason?”

Saps’ voice came out tight. “Kind of, yeah?”  

“I just think I’d really fuck it up.” Flux thought for a single moment of Crow. “I don’t think I could do it. I think any kid we have would end up like me.”

“Okay, but I like you,” Saps said. “That’s not a bad thing.” 

“It is to me.” 

“Ugh,” Saps complained, “Let’s just forget about it. We don’t have to have this conversation now.” 

In the first week of July the air conditioning unit broke and the house filled with the sweet, sick heat of summer. The overhead fans couldn’t spread enough air to cool anyone down. Flux stared pitifully at his computer screen, at the readings he meant to review — Sartre, Husserl, Heidegger — and found himself longing for a reprieve. A break. Time, more time, anything to ease the crash of the future into the present. He hadn’t stopped thinking about his conversation with Saps, the veiled threat of it. Was that how easily it would be for things to end? One decision, one stubborn decision, born out of spite, out of fear? 

Again and again his thoughts drifted to his own parents — the excruciating divorce, the resulting split. Their family had divided along party lines. It had been easy at thirteen to look at his parents and see his own life reflected in their eyes. You couldn’t fix this, his own existence seemed to say. And Fluixon had been the last child, the last attempt at making a marriage work. One thirteen-year-long experiment that was always destined to end in failure. 

Saps came in from the backyard. He was sweating, streaked with dirt, armfuls of tomatoes in his hands. On any other day Flux would have shamelessly watched him, the sweat-slick muscles in his arms, the way his white hair plastered itself to the nape of his neck. 

“That is an insane amount of tomatoes,” Sidefall said. 

“Tell me about it,” Saps sighed. “They just keep growing. I don’t know how to stop them. I wish the squirrels would eat them.” 

“I think you have to get rid of them,” Flux said over his shoulder. He was only half-paying attention. 

“I like the garden,” Saps said. “I don’t care if it gives us a million tomatoes, I’m not just going to destroy the whole thing.” 

Sidefall glanced between the two of them. “I don’t think he meant like, actually destroy the whole garden.”

For a moment, Saps’ veneer cracked. He appeared hotly frustrated, staring down at the piles of tomatoes, their sweet, sun-warmed flesh, the cracking splits like scars along the skin. “I know that. Obviously I know that. Let’s just get rid of some of them, then. There’s no way we can eat them all.” 

At night, Saps came out of the shower. He smelled fresh, citrusy. He’d used Flux’s shampoo, and it made a tight knot ache inside Flux’s chest, the warmth of his water-warmed skin, the summer-lit freckles dotting his back. He pretended to be asleep, and Saps moved quietly around the room. The drawer opened, closed. Saps crawled into bed, and yellow light doused the world. 

He kissed Flux’s head and the nape of his neck. “I love you,” he said, with such certainty. 

Flux closed his eyes and did not respond. 

Saps put an arm around him for a moment. His chest pressed to Flux’s back, and for a moment their breathing synchronized; Flux could feel his heartbeat, that slow steady pulse. He imagined for a moment that they would fall asleep like that, with Saps holding him. Then Saps yawned, squeezed him tighter, and released his hold. He rolled to the other side of the bed. 

They hadn’t always fought like this. No, so often their fights had been worse. When they’d done long distance in the years between college and moving in together — that thin, awful trembling period of time, when Flux was finishing his PhD in philosophy and Saparata was doing business school, then fighting to find a stable job afterward, all his hours long and lengthy while Flux burned himself alive on his thesis — they’d fought all the time. To such an extent that Flux sometimes wondered how the two of them had made it work. So many nights he’d hung up the phone feeling shivery and raw, cursing Saps, but mostly cursing himself for falling in love with someone who he used to be able to touch and kiss at any moment of the day. Things had been so much easier in college. 

Flux missed it sometimes. That was a lie — he didn’t miss college at all, was often grateful he’d graduated when he did. But he missed how silly everything seemed in hindsight. Like the argument they’d had over the end of college, when Flux had gotten into a handful of PhD programs and was debating where to spend the next seven years. Saps wanted him to attend a program closer to him, which was anywhere on the East Coast, but Saps wouldn’t admit this out loud. So he kept saying things like imagine if we both lived on the East Coast, which Flux knew was Saps’ way of saying this is where I want you to be. 

It irritated him, how Saps tried to shape his life path. They’d shouted at each other once, stumbling home from the bar, angry at each other for failing trivia and at Saps for being so confident in his wrong answers and at Flux for being too controlling while still getting trivia wrong and at the bar for serving him the wrong drink and at the stupid sophomores who had tried to take over their table and at the prospect of the next seven years of my life might change everything and I am going to lose everything I’ve ever loved if I don’t cut it from myself first and Flux had said, “I can’t do long distance. I just can’t.”

“What?” Saps said. “What the fuck? What are you talking about?”

The too-sweet, grenadine-heavy drink curdled inside his gut. Flux was suddenly wordless. He had the awful feeling that if he spoke any further, he was going to irreparably break something between him and Saps. And what would Flux do with himself then? They’d been together for nearly two years at that point and Flux was only twenty-two, so two years felt like a lifetime. This relationship felt like the only real thing he could hold onto, but staring down the hot light at the tunnel of graduation, even his love for Saps felt slippery and distant. 

“If we — if we —” Saps was drunk. He couldn’t speak right. “What do you mean, you can’t do long distance? We don’t really have a choice, I’m not — I can’t — I have a fucking job, Flux, I can’t — and you have the stupid grad school thing —” 

“I know,” Flux said. He was very tired. “I know, Saps.” 

 They walked forward on the lightless road back to the apartment. It was quiet and still. They fell asleep in the same bed and didn’t speak about the conversation in the morning. What could they have said? 

“A couple of my friends are doing a thing,” Sidefall said at dinner, in the second week of July. The air conditioning had still not been fixed; turning the oven on to roast vegetables had been a mistake. Saps knew it, because he’d scowled down at the stovetop, furious at himself, and he’d snapped at Flux when Flux said why would you turn the oven on? Sidefall continued, picking at his plate, “There’s this, uh, well, it’s not like a party, it’s just a little get-together.”

Saps gave Flux a very knowing look. It’s definitely a party. You have to handle this one. 

Flux glared at him. How he hated being an adult. He tried to imagine what Ender would say in this circumstance and ended up with, “Does Ender let you drink?” 

“Ender lets me do whatever I want to do,” Sidefall said. 

“That just can’t be true. I don’t believe that for a second.”

“Well, it is true. So.” 

“You’re seventeen,” Flux said irritably. “You can’t just go to a house party and get drunk.”

“You went to house parties and got drunk when you were seventeen,” Saps said. 

Flux resisted the urge to kick him under the table. “That’s different.” 

But Sidefall wasn’t about to let something like that go. “How is that different?” 

“It just is,” said Flux sharply. “You can’t go. That’s it. Final.” 

“You’re so unfair. And hypocritical!”

“That’s why I’m the adult and not you.”

“Saps,” Sidefall pleaded, “Help me out.” 

Flux stared hotly at the plate. This is what having a child would be like: constantly trying to find the holes in their relationship. Poking them apart. Working a wedge into the united front and turning them against each other. Flux had done it with Crow; Ender and Cynikka had done it with Elanuelo. That was the way childhood worked. It was a series of searching for ways to win in a world where you had never once felt victorious. 

“I don’t know,” Saps said at last, “I feel like — I dunno, as long as you drink responsibly —”

“Saps,” Flux hissed. 

“What? I drank when I was a kid, you did too, it’s not like he’s going to die —”

“Please don’t speak about me in the third person, I’m literally right here,” Sidefall said. “I’m super good at drinking responsibly. I have never once drank un-responsibly.”

“Irresponsibly,” Flux said. 

“Irresponsibly,” Sidefall said easily. “I’d have like, a single beer. Maybe two. But definitely not more with that. And I’m being open and honest with you, which should be a huge point in my favor. Imagine if I was the kind of person to sneak out and get wasted without telling you. That would be way worse.” 

Flux pinched his brow. “You’d make a great lawyer, Sidefall.” 

“Flux,” Saps muttered in quiet admonishment. Then: “You can go. But you have a curfew. You have to be back before midnight.”

“Oh, come on — two?”

“Twelve thirty.”

“One forty five.”

“One,” Saps said with finality, “And I’m serious, I don’t care if I’m not your dad, I’m going to ground you for the next ten years of your life if you’re not back by one AM.” 

The text from Sidefall came at two in the morning. 

helllo
thsi is really rmbarrslng
i need a ride
pelase
please

He had texted Saps and not Flux. Saps stirred from sleep at the phone buzzing. He squinted at the screen and turned it over to Flux, who was still awake with a novel tucked in his lap. 

“Oh my god,” Flux muttered. “Of course.”

“I’ll get him,” Saps mumbled. He braced himself, then rose from bed. He pulled on sweatpants and a hoodie, which made him seem so much younger. He fished for the car keys from the dish on the dresser, and Flux felt obliged to say, “I can come.”

“No, it’s okay, I can get him.”

“You’re tired. Let me drive.”

“Flux,” Saps said calmly, “I can get him.” 

Flux waited on the porch, the outside lights turned on. The summer night was cold and green. Crickets chirped. Lightning bugs flew in short, green streaks around the weeds. Flux dug his hands into them, pulled up dandelions by their roots. White fluff disappeared into the evening; the street was empty and black. He sat there, listening to the silence. It reminded him of the first night after the divorce, or really, the first night that Crow had told him about the divorce. It had been a long time coming, Flux knew. But it had stung to see his parents hate each other in such obvious ways. 

Flux couldn’t fathom it. Marriage and three kids only to divorce like that, breaking open the world. That was what permanence did to people like Flux, to people like Crow: it drove them to awful places. It trapped them in spaces that first felt like freedom, but only clenched tighter around you with time. 

He remembered that night: the chairs pushed up to the table, the thin glitter of the chandelier. Light was one long, broken fragment, pieced across the painted walls. He focused on those spots of white light and listened, in that way thirteen-year-olds often listen, to what was being unsaid. What Flux heard: I have lied to you for your whole life. 

Love didn’t seem like something that could be possible. Until he met Saparata at the college bar on Thursday trivias, the first weekend of his junior year, and walked with him the whole way back to their dormitories, then stayed with him in the hallway for two more hours, neither of them wanting to say goodbye. They’d talked until the sun rose, sitting beside each other in the carpeted hallway. They’d talked until both of them lost their voices. 

The car pulled into the driveway. Sidefall was stumbling and green. Flux caught the tail end of their conversation: “— some water, and some sleep, and maybe some Advil in the morning. You’ll be fine, dude.” 

“Oh no,” Sidefall said, wobbling, eyes landing on Flux. “Please don’t tell Dad.” 

“No one’s going to tell Dad anything,” Saps said encouragingly. He shot Flux a glance; Flux opened the door wordlessly for them and stood in the darkened entryway as Saps and Sidefall headed to the guest room. The bathroom door opened and shut, and Flux heard the sound of vomiting. 

For a while, Flux busied himself with miscellaneous household chores. He washed the dishes in the sink and set them on the rack to dry. He watched an ant wander along the windowsill but didn’t crush it with a fingertip. He simply watched it crawl an odd path through a hole in the white paint. 

They ought to repaint. They ought to redo the whole house at some point. All the ivy crawling up the outside walls and the bougainvillea in the backyard and the water stains on the ceiling and the spot where Saps had somehow exploded a vat of tomato sauce and splattered it across the ceiling and the stovetop, the orange-oil stains of which still hadn’t vanished. All these marks and memories collected together. 

The years collapsed into a pinprick. He was thirteen and learning, for the first time, what love could not do. He was fifteen and sneaking out of home; twenty and meeting Saparata for the first time; their first kiss, first time sleeping together; twenty and drunk-vomiting in the dormitory bathroom; twenty-three and halfway across the world, alone in a graduate program he didn’t love; then twenty-nine and moving in with Saparata, buying the house. He was thirty-four and here, in the darkened kitchen, wondering what it would take to keep loving.

A voice stirred him from the haze. He stood outside the closed bathroom door and listened. 

“That’s it,” Saps was saying, exhausted but nice. “It’s okay. Everyone throws up, it’s like a rite of passage. You should have seen Flux — er, your uncle — oh god, I don’t even know what you call him. You should have seen him as a freshman. He was so awful. He would kill me if he knew I was saying this to you, but he was actually a total nightmare in college.” 

Sidefall made a wet, sad noise. “Really?”

“Yeah. I had to pick him up once from the club. Oh my god, hang on, I definitely have pictures of this. One second.” He went quiet. “You can never tell him I’m showing you this. Here’s Flux when he was your age. And… here’s Flux when he was super, super fucking wasted.” 

Sidefall went quiet too. “That is so weird.” 

“Okay, okay,” Saps laughed. “Chill.” 

“I’m so stupid,” said Sidefall mournfully. “He’s totally going to tell Dad and I’m going to be so fucked and Dad’s going to ground me for a bajillion years and I’ll literally be grounded until I’m eighty. If Dad even comes back for me.” 

“First off, I don’t think that’s going to happen. Ender will definitely come back for you. And second, Flux isn’t like that at all.”

“He fucking hates me,” Sidefall said. “I can tell. I can tell he hates me just like Dad hates me.” 

“He doesn’t hate you. He’s all bark and no bite.” 

“That’s just not true.” 

“No, it really is,” Saps said. “We had — we once had this big argument about doing long distance. We were like — maybe your age, I think. Well, we were a lot older, actually, but like, basically your age. Or it kind of felt like we were your age. He wanted to go to California for his PhD but I was going to be living on the East Coast and we had this huge argument about it, one of those like, screaming in each other’s faces types of arguments, one of the arguments where you really feel like you’re about to break up, ha. And I remember thinking oh my god, this is it, we’re not actually going to come back from this one. Or something along those lines.”

He took a deep breath. “But I just knew — I mean, I knew it from the moment I met him, really. I knew we were going to make it work. And I kept thinking, we are going to make this work. One of these days, we’re going to live with each other again, and we’re going to buy a house, and we’re going to get jobs in the same city, and we’re going to get married, and we’re going to have it all. We just have to survive through a couple years of nonsense first. I don’t know how else to describe it. I guess it was like seeing a bright white light and following it blindly. No matter all of the times we argued or hated each other or screamed or whatever, I just thought about how good it would be when it finally worked out.

“So,” Saps said, “I think you just gotta trust that things will work out for you eventually.” 

Sidefall was quiet. “That’s a really stupid lecture.”

Saps laughed. “Yeah. Flux is way better at them. You can tell he knows what he’s talking about. Me, I just ramble on and on and I lose my train of thought. But he’s… he always knows what to say.” 

Silence stretched. Then Sidefall said, “Do you think Dad loves me?”

“Oh, for sure.” 

“Really?” 

“He definitely does. You can’t not love your kid. That’s just like, one of the foundational rules.” 

Rudely, Sidefall said, “Then why would he make me stay with you?” 

“I don’t know,” Saps said quietly. “I don’t know. I don’t have a kid, so I guess I don’t even know. But I think that’s just what love is. Making the hard decisions, and making them over and over again, every single day.” 

“I don’t think I’m ever going to be loved,” Sidefall said. “I think I’m going to be a stupid kid forever.”

“That’s just not true,” Saps said. “Hey, I know it’s silly, but — hey, hey, it’s okay. You’re okay.” A deep breath. A choked-off sob came from the bathroom, and Saps’ voice turned quiet, “It’s okay. Let it out, buddy. It’s all good. You’re not the first. It’s okay.” 

Saps found Flux sitting at the kitchen counter. He moved around the kitchen and poured a glass of water in silence. 

“Is he okay?” Flux’s voice felt too loud for the dim evening. Though it was almost morning, at that rate. 

“Totally fine,” Saps said wryly. “He’s experiencing the classic Jagerbomb-induced breakdown. We’ve all been there.”

Flux tried to smile. 

“He’ll be fine,” reassured Saps. 

Anxiety was twisting in Flux’s stomach. “Are you bringing him water?”

“Yep. I’m just gonna hang out with him until he feels better. Poor guy.” 

“Okay.”

“You can sleep,” Saps said, which was more of a command than anything.

Flux abruptly felt sick. “I will.”

But he did not sleep; he stayed at the counter, heartbeat ringing through his skull. It was high-pitched and eerie. You can’t not love your kid echoed in his ears. 

If Flux were to have a kid — and here, he imagined a baby, a scrunched-up face, two fists waving in the air, a wild infant bawl — what were the odds he would end up just like his parents? He already looked enough like Crow, enough to make him flinch away from the mirror at times. He’d followed the same path as his father, going into academia, landing a tenure-track position, fighting with the traditionalist department chairs, supervising undergraduate capstone projects, flipping through blue book exams, despising the position he’d spent years fighting for, despising academia, despising Saparata at times for telling him to keep his chin up, despising their home, and then recoiling at himself for his sheer hatred. 

And a child? Could he hate a child? Had Crow ever hated him? 

He thought of Sidefall for a moment, words muffled over the bathroom fan. Saps’ voice was soothing and gentle in response. 

Flux could see it: all the ways a child would brutalize their relationship, their neat little house. All the ways they’d have to baby-proof every corner, put a plastic stopper in every outlet, stop the toddler from wreaking havoc. Vomit and stomach flus and cold season and forcing their kid to drink Pepto Bismol from the plastic cup, the same way Crow had forced Flux to drink it as a kid. Dragging their kid to soccer practices or swimming relays or whatever Saps wanted him to do — he’d make their kid do a sport. While Flux would encourage him to get into student government or speech and debate, some intellectual practice. The horrors of high school, AP courses, taking the SAT, applying to colleges. Waving their kid off into the big world — they’d be so old at that point. They’d be nearing fifty. Fifty years old and still with Saparata, still aging together in their messy, complicated, tiny house. 

How much effort it seemed to take, to love so endlessly. To keep loving past when the first thrill had run dry and thin, past teenagehood, young adulthood, the trials and tribulations of their twenties. To stay on this path forever, to never stray, to love so deeply and wholly, to want all this, to want it out of spite and irritation and tenderness and care. To hear Saparata talk to their own kid someday. To have Saparata marry him. 

It occurred to Flux, staring unblinking at the dark white light coming from the refrigerator’s water filter, that to love was a choice. Not one but an infinite number of them. Some would be easy and some would be torturously difficult. But they would be made nevertheless. 

During the sixth year of his PhD, when all he had left was the dissertation, Flux had visited Saps during the summer. He had lied about doing archival research in the grant proposal and had received five hundred dollars in travel funding in return. But he was really arriving in DC to visit Saps, his little home, the enormous broad windows that spanned one wall of the apartment. Saps picked him up at the airport and flung himself at Flux with such force that it knocked him off his feet. 

It was childish and embarrassing to hug like this in the airport. But Saps wrapped his arms around him and spun, and he tucked his head into Flux’s hair and whispered, “Oh my god, I missed you,” and Flux thought that he would give up everything for this if he could have it forever. 

Saps put him down. He was reluctant to let go of Flux. He held his hand all the way to the car, then held it again over the center console. They spent the whole evening tucked into each other. Saps chatted about everything in the world, and Flux was content, for once, to stay silent.

On the weekends, Saps volunteered at summer camp to teach kids soccer. Flux sat on the rusted bleachers at the middle school and watched his lover with a hideous orange baseball hat on, an equally hideous orange jersey, a whistle hung around his neck. He walked six-year-olds through the process of kicking deflated soccer balls through yellow cones. He was a gracious teacher in the way that Flux never could be with his undergraduates. Where Flux was harsh and easily annoyed, Saps never seemed to possess that stern spirit. He was so gentle, Flux thought, as he knelt to check on a kid’s skinned knee. 

Saps hefted the kid on his shoulders and walked him to the office. The kid was crying. Blood streaked from his grass-stained knee. Flux could hear Saps saying forcibly-cheerful things to him. He braced both hands on the kid’s shoulders and said you’ve got this, buddy. Wanna get back out there? And the kid was back to running in minutes. 

Afterwards, Saps was sweaty and heatsick. He flopped on the sidewalk while Flux squinted up at the boiling sun. 

“They really like you,” Flux said at last. 

“I love them,” Saps said. His eyes were closed. He was grinning in that dazed, beautiful way. “Sometimes I think I should just quit banking and be a middle school teacher.”

“Both of us can’t be teachers. Someone has to be the breadwinner.”

“Oh, I see, you’re just using me for my money.”

“Every last penny,” said Flux dryly. 

“And for my enormous muscles,” Saps added. “Don’t forget about those.”

Flux pinked. He’d been staring, and both he and Saps knew it. “Don’t get arrogant.” 

“Hey, it’s not being arrogant if it’s true.” Saps was grinning, then, and Flux felt himself go hot all over. “You really couldn’t stop staring at me, for the record. I could feel it the whole time.” 

“It was cute,” Flux said. “The kids, I mean. Not you.”

“You think I’m cute?”

“I think you’re annoying, actually.” 

“You love me,” Saparata smiled. “You love me so much. You don’t even know what to do with yourself. That’s how much you love me. Look, you’re blushing because you know it’s true.” 

Flux was smiling as much as he tried to repress it. “Do you talk to all the boys like this?”

“Nope. Just my boyfriend.”

“Oh, you have a boyfriend? That’s a shame. I hoped you were single.” 

“Why yes, I do,” Saps said, now beaming, “Oh, where do I even start with him? He’s wicked smart, maybe the smartest person in the world — he’s doing a PhD right now, if that says anything, and he’s a fucking genius. He’s so witty and funny and clever. He’s the hardest-working person in the world. Not to mention he’s hot as fuck. God, you really should see him sometime. His eyes… his beautiful hair… ugh, fuck, don’t even get me started on his body —”

“Alright, okay.” Flux had gone red. “Sounds like you really love him.” 

“Of course I do,” Saps said. “I’m gonna marry the fuck out of him someday. He doesn’t know it yet, obviously. But one of these days, I’m gonna get to call him my husband. Nothing he can do about it.”  

That night, Flux came to bed an hour later. To his surprise, Saps was still awake; he was reading the book that Flux had put down earlier that day. He bookmarked the page instead of dog-earing it, the way Flux always snipped at him to do. Exhaustion lined his face. He looked younger, uncertain, reaching across the bed for Flux, and Flux fell into his embrace. 

Saparata was here. It was five in the morning and it was a true morning, all the headaches and alcohol and regrets and worries, and still Saparata was here. 

Flux took a slow, deep breath. Then he steadied himself and said against Saps’ chest, “I’ll marry you.” 

“We don’t have to,” Saps said quietly. “We only have to do what you want.” 

“But I want it,” Flux said. “I don’t want to be afraid of it any more. I don’t want to be afraid.” 

“Okay,” Saps whispered, and he kissed the top of Flux’s head. “Okay.” 

And it was late enough, or perhaps early enough, that the summer sun was rising, pink and gold, washing the horizon in soft blue. It was a bright white light, sharp enough to cut through all that Flux had known and might ever know. The future could hold so much if he could let it. There was only so long summer could last.