by Ginger Booth
Cope clarified, “We won’t pay you for another visit, doc. Let’s go, Ben.”
“Best of luck,” said the doctor. “And captain. It isn’t quite true, you know, that you aren’t appreciated. Impressed as hell. Well done.”
“Thank you,” Ben breathed. He dipped his head in salute, then ducked below Cope’s arm as he held open the door.
“He was electrocuted,” Cope reminded the doctor. “His nanites fried. Knocked his brain offline, too.”
“Yes. That happened,” Wankler agreed. “But there are other issues.”
Ben turned to face the doctor warily.
Cope planted a hand on his sternum and shoved him further out the door. “Nothing a little time and love can’t cure. And nanites!” Cope shut the door behind them. Ben’s uneasy gaze on the door made him nervous. “You’re brave, Ben.”
“I’m brave but I’m crying all the time. I love you but I want to throttle you. I want to save all of Denali, but only if I can do it hiding in our bedroom, and not have to face anyone again, I’m so ashamed of myself. And I’m a frill.”
“You really aren’t that frilly.”
“But what if I am?” He met his gaze squarely, with vulnerable eyes, worried.
Cope sighed. Ben’s ‘frill’ fixation was one of those no-win marital traps, like ‘does this make me look fat?’ “Hey, buddy. Take it to your limit. Doll yourself up, frilly as you please. Find out.” He couldn’t help wincing a little saying it. He caught the greedy receptionist’s eyes on him, drinking up their excruciating little drama.
He pushed through the next door, out onto the thronged Schuyler street. Not much better for this conversation. “Get Frazzie to help you. You two love doing girl stuff together.”
After a ‘date’ with their daughter, Ben was likely to return bedazzled in pink and purple, with plucked eyebrows and ridiculous chandeliers dangling from his ears. Frazzie delighted in making a fool of him, the little vixen.
“I’m a space captain. The lead space captain in Aloha. I was.” Ben looked near tears again. The faucet had been running hot and cold for days. “I can’t go out on a date with you looking like a moron. And I’m all over the news now. I can’t –”
“Shh, it’s OK. A romantic dinner at home. Just the two of us. Candles. Whatever take-out food you want. And I promise not to peek before supper.”
Easy promise. Cope married a man, and couldn’t imagine a bigger turn-off than the gorgeously buffed Ben showing up in drag. But whatever he needed to do…once.
“It’s him!” screamed a Denali hunter, pointing his whole arm and half his body. “The guy on the news! Acosta!” Four of his spark-plug-physique buddies coalesced around him, blocking the sidewalk and sneering at Ben.
Cope looked to his ‘frill’ uneasily.
But Ben stilled. His fingertips met in the little Denali prayer gesture toward his accuser. He cocked his head and added a little Italian gesture of his own. “Vuffanculo, you rego yutz! Wanna dance?” He dropped into a fighting crouch.
Cope chuckled at the inherent contradiction that was his husband, moods racing across him like ripples on the reservoir. He researched that time-honored Italian saying, pronounced ‘buff-on-ghoul.’ In order to apply it correctly! He claimed it was a contracted phrase that meant, ‘Go do it in an ass!’
Cope dropped to a crouch beside Ben, and wiggled his fingers. Come get some! They’d had a crappy week. And here, volunteers to blow off steam!
He loved his hometown. And it got better all the time!
5
Ben leafed through a rack of dresses in bemusement. His 16-year-old daughter Frazzie brought him here to the Schuyler open-air bazaar, ecstatic with the ‘dress daddy as a frill’ assignment. He drew out a hanger in horrified fascination, a mini-dress in overlapping gold fish-scales. The neckline plunged to the navel, leaving the shoulders bare.
Frazz giggled and cozied up to him, admiring the monstrosity. She, thank God, was wearing nothing of the kind. He caught her after work, in her uniform cargo pants and T-shirt proclaiming Sin City Hardware. Her high school gave students the option of half days or alternate days for classes. Her job didn’t care, so she preferred full days. She had an hour’s commute round trip to Waterfell, a new Denali shantytown where the chain store did a land office business.
“You realize this is a whore’s dress, right?” Ben confirmed uneasily.
“Sex worker, Daddy,” she corrected primly. “Only old stretches call them whores. It’s demeaning. Are you going to try it on?” The devilish gleam in sunlit hazel eyes suggested she knew full well how it would fit.
That hemline would barely reach his thighs. “Not my color,” Ben claimed repressively, and shot the dress back into the rack.
“What is your color, Daddy? Purple? Sexy red?”
“Olive drab. Navy blue. Mahina mushroom, like everyone else.”
“No, your frilly you! What do you yearn to wear?”
He clicked through a few more hangers to another stunning monstrosity, an antebellum hooped gown, tiers of frothy lace in pink and white. “Not that.”
“No, your eye catches on what appeals to you.”
Ben steered her by the elbow toward the sari shop next door. “How’s work?”
“Busy! I’m teaching newcomers to program the foamcrete extruders and ground staplers we rent. But they can’t afford it. I feel bad for them. They don’t even have sanitation out there.”
“They use the ground?” Ben clarified in alarm.
“No, they dig pits. But I try to talk them into buying san units. Twenty people could share. But they can’t afford it. So they’re wasting all our water, and everyone’s mad because the reservoir’s falling. And one atmo drop, and they’ll all die. And they’re angry, and the locals are angry.”
“They’re not mad at you, baby.” Ben held up a sari in purple and metallic gold, and correctly surmised it would make his olive complexion look jaundiced.
“I got mugged three times just going to work,” Fraz complained. “Try hot pink.” She draped the swirly fabric across his chest, and giggled. “It’s hideous!”
Ben pursed his lips and held her eye. “Mugged? Did they hurt you?”
His daughter folded the garish sari and returned it to the stack. “Dad taught me to defend myself.” She meant Cope. “Actually, Dad told me to hand everything over, because grown men always out mass me. I only carry my name badge anymore. Got tired of replacing my transit pass. But Nico got the AI working real good now –”
“Working really well,” Ben corrected automatically.
“Fine. Facial recognition. Now he’s fixing it so stolen passes don’t work, and flag the perp for the cops. The cops don’t come, though.”
The 21-year-old Nico was Ben’s adopted son, Frazzie’s half-brother on Cope’s side.
He rummaged a stack of folded blues and purples. “Would you feel safer at the house? I know you love your flop, but –”
“Dad, I’m fine! And Dad promised to help redo my kitchenette. While you’re not working.” She held out a Mahina-colored sari, spotted paisley swirls of wheat and tan. “Did you make an appointment yet to replace your nanites?”
“Not yet. Soon.” He frowned at the sari material, the first dress he’d seen that wasn’t violently objectionable. He draped it over a shoulder and peered at himself in a standing mirror. The colors looked inoffensive. “We went to the doc-in-a-box after a street scuffle. Dad’s Yang-Yangs healed his split lip, but I used the auto-doc.”
He rubbed his fingers together. He’d been stuck in that auto-doc for hours. Nerve damage to fingertips from Denali.
“Take care of yourself, Daddy,” Fraz pleaded. “Get the nanites for me. Promise?” She bent sideways to beam up at him and batted her eyelashes, wheedling him as of old.
“I’m figuring something out,” he claimed. “Soon. I will. Don’t bug me.”
“I don’t get it,” she complained. “But fine. Hey, now you and Dad are home, will you finally level with hi
m about Ari?”
He glanced at her sharply, and decided he could at least try on the bland sari. He hadn’t considered opening that can of worms. Ari, short for Aristotle, was their son Socrates’ Denali twin. Cope still didn’t know the Denali had created him. And now the kid lived here, rooming with Sock at Mahina University. Apparently there was a boy mix of Ben and Teke, too, given life without his consent.
The physicist Teke’s consent was implicit – Denali didn’t consider genetics a personal possession. More like cards dealt to them. If they played their hand well, contributed to the community, their genes were incorporated into the next generation. The greatest physicist in Aloha history, Teke probably had a half dozen Denali offspring, and no shortage of children on Mahina, either.
Genetically, Ben had the two, Frazzie and an unknown son. Bald. The Denali kids got a standard genetic adaptation package against the planet’s brutal heat. He gazed into the mirror, trying to imagine his features mingled with Teke’s, with no eyebrows. He was glad they considered eyelashes important for eye protection. No eyelashes would look weird.
Having a son I’ve never known is weird. He’d only learned of the child during the evacuation, from Frazzie. He was upset, snarky with people for days. But he’d been far too busy to face the matter. And Cope was with him, and he longed to talk with him about it, but determined not to.
“So you’ll keep lying to Dad,” Fraz concluded, with theatrical sigh. “My brother’s name is Texan. I like him.”
“What’s he like?”
“He’s twelve, smart. Outgoing, but he says the MA kids don’t like him. He didn’t skip a bazillion grades like the philosophers –”
“Socrates and Aristotle?”
She rolled her eyes. Obvious, Dad. “He’s like me, normal instead of brilliant like Nico and Sock. Looks more like Teke than you.” She showed him a selfie posed with a shorter boy, hamming it up at a cafe on the bricked plaza in Mahina Actual.
They share the same smile. “Fraz, I want to know him. Texan. I like the name. We can’t decide for Cope, though.”
“Dad, he knows Ari. We’re lying to him.”
“Got it,” Ben agreed. He drank in the picture of the boy a moment more. Texan. Bereft of the drama and trauma of parenting, he didn’t know how to feel. By Denali custom, the boy would have been offered the option to learn about his parents at age 17, five years from now. Whether to connect was the child’s call, not the parents.
He rubbed his face. I should talk to Teke. He dropped his hand. No, I should talk to Cope.
A crystal clear realization struck him. If what he needed was R&R, Mahina was the last place he should be. Here lay the tottering pile of unsolvable problems with the Denali evacuation, the mountain of debt that was his company, and then the home front. Family wasn’t solvable, and Mahina’s patchwork government even less so.
Fraz added another dress to his pile. “Try them on!”
He didn’t see a quicker way out of this. He took the dresses into the small changing tent, with a full-length mirror and a spotlight rigged like a shower head above. The mushroom-swirl sari seemed the least frightening prospect.
The colors were flattering. He looked like himself, a well-buffed guy in a pretty toga.
Which gave him a vicious flashback to Toga Day, on their first trip to Denali. The day they lost their fuel to return to Mahina. Clay died, and Cortez’s pelvis got crushed by a flying anvil of rare earth metals. And a 21-year-old third officer finally faced his EVA phobia. Ben exited the ship to search the precarious clutch of containers for a refill for the auto-doc.
Without Yang-Yangs he felt the terror again. His palms sweated and his heart hammered.
And there was absolutely nothing about dressing like a woman that appealed to him. OK, he was a little vain. But he worked damned hard on his physique, daily, from childhood. He didn’t want to be a frill. He was afraid he was a frill. But he wasn’t! Was he?
Frazzie flipped another dress over the top of his stall, a tight sheath. The satiny teal was admittedly beautiful. But if she thought that hourglass shape would close over his chest and six-pack abs, she was dreaming.
“I can’t wait to do your makeup!” she squealed gleefully.
He clapped a hand over his mouth to smother his mirth. He perched on the changing stool as the sari unraveled to his heels. Once he controlled his laughter, he peeked out. Safe! Frazzie selected garish scarves ten meters away. He slipped out his comm.
“Clay? Ben. Help! I have a fashion emergency!”
6
Cope rose in trepidation from his elegantly arranged dining table, as he heard the bedroom door click open.
You like the outfit, he schooled himself. Whatever it was. Like Ben’s advice after Nico first told them he intended to marry a robotic emu. You like the boyfriend. As a general policy, Cope had to admit it worked.
Ben’s breakdown was ten days ago. They’d been together nearly nonstop. Yet the more he tried to help, the more Ben shut him out. If playing dress-up helped him open up, Cope was all for it.
Ben emerged from the hallway and paused. And Cope felt an authentic smile bloom on his cheeks. “You look great!”
Ben posed with a forefinger in one pocket. Then he turned to show off all sides. His tawny hair was fresh-clipped, jaw perfectly smooth. His Mahina-colored jacket fit impeccably over a slinky olive-drab V-neck T-shirt, tight grey jeans, and half-boots. Not a feminine thread on him. He smelled of fresh figs from the yard, and clean chlorine from their water-reclaiming lap pool.
“Our daughter has terrifying taste in clothes,” Ben confided. “I called Clay to come save me. He found an emergency tailor to salvage this jacket from my closet. Didn’t fit me any more. I lost weight this summer. The jeans and T are new.”
Cope reached to finger the fabric, and peered closer. Ben wore subtle eyeliner, and his complexion was a tad too clear to be true. His lips looked sexier somehow, though not lipstick.
Apparently his gaze lingered too long. Ben traced his lower lip with a finger self-consciously. “Lip pencil. Frazzie worked hard on the makeup. I thought it looked kinda good.”
“You look fantastic!” Cope encouraged. “Can’t tell you how relieved I am.”
They both chuckled. “You look great, too,” Ben assured him.
Cope gave a self-mocking turn of his own. He wore a casual suit over his usual steel-toed cowboy boots. He dressed it down with a maroon T-shirt. His waistband too offered a few spare centimeters after the grueling Denali summer. Maybe I should check out that tailor.
He reached to pull out a chair for his husband.
“No.” Ben knocked Cope’s hand off the chair back and sat for himself. “Thank you, that was illuminating. I have examined my frill question, and find it foolish. I’m a guy. I like being a guy. And the way your face lit up!”
“Hell yeah. Because I fell in love with a guy. But I mean, I love you, whoever you are.” His ex-wife had turned into someone else, one he couldn’t love. Don’t bring up Delilah.
Ben smiled. “This is elegant. For take-out. Oh, my prince! Aloha three-world ramen! And water. Good choice.”
“There’s wine if we need it to relax. And don’t mind falling asleep on the couch.”
“Water is smart.”
They dug in. Ben started to say something, then thought better of it. Cope beseeched himself to think of something romantic. Their love was born while reading technical manuals in their bunks on Thrive One, or shooting the breeze in the testosterone-hued crew bathroom. Romantic wasn’t their strong suit.
“Had a flashback today,” Ben offered. Cope tensed. “Toga Day. Cortez needed an auto-doc refill. I went EVA to get it.”
Toga Day would long live in infamy. But Cope’s only memory of the EVA event featured Wilder poking him awake on the bridge until the baby officer returned aboard. They chose not to disturb Sass while she mourned Clay, temporarily dead. “Was I conscious?”
“Not very. You were sweet, though. Worried I was too terr
ified. You offered to go instead. If only you could stand.” He flashed a teasing smile.
“Flashback?”
“Oh, I tried on a sari. Took one look in the mirror and said, ‘Toga Day!’ Heart pounding, hands sweating. The feelings are so vivid.” He rubbed his fingers thoughtfully against his palm.
Cope took a puzzled sip of water. “Saying ‘Toga Day’ is enough to set me off.”
“But do you feel it again? Like you did then? Heart racing?”
“Bit of a thump.” He frowned in question. “Twenty years. The trauma’s worn down. Mostly. Necrotic bakkra can still get me going.”
Ben recoiled. “Urk. My point was, I could really feel it. You know?”
“Not really.”
“I enjoy being nanite-free. I never realized how Yang-Yangs changed me. Hell, that knee-jerk ‘frill’ thing, was that a nanite side effect? Who am I really without these microcopic –”
“Nanoscopic.”
“Small robots teeming through my veins. Maybe I’m not a hot-shot. Maybe I’d have gone for a master’s in business. Quit space because it was scary out there.”
“You regret Spaceways?”
Ben slapped the table. “Of course not! But if I was really this scared all along, what does that mean?”
“OK. What does that mean?”
“I don’t know! That’s my point!”
“Hunh.” Cope decided the better part of valor was to focus on his wiener schnitzel and fries. His space captain husband wondering whether he belonged in space invited comparison to his final days with Delilah before she nearly killed the baby. Don’t mention Del! He swallowed uneasily. Two spouses in a row going mental worried him. Did he drive them crazy? No, tonight he wanted to ask Ben to let him in.
“Ben –”
“Cope –”
“You first.”
Ben breathed in deep and launched into it. “I’ve been dishonest with you.”
