by Laila Blake
Aaron didn’t push further, but, at the natural break, didn’t pull away, top lip resting on her bottom one, eyelashes clotted with the moisture from her cheeks. Her fingertips brushed over his jaw, found the stubble of this beard. Her hands were shaking and she held on tighter.
“I like you, too...” she whispered finally.
“Yeah?” Her words and his dislodged their mouths just enough to reposition, to slide their lips back into place so that their tongues touched and then slipped together. “Good.”
His hand was still at her cheek and jaw, fingers curled behind her ear, arm around her waist, anchoring her to the spot. Her fingers clutched at the planes of his face, the both of them unwilling to let go.
“Emmy!” The first shout was muffled, but the next was not. Aaron jumped, a little, raising his head but Emily was already on her feet.
“Emmy!” Drawn out wail, verging on panicked.
She was there a moment later, pulling open the large door next to him.
“Hey... hey it’s okay, I’m here,” she breathed, fighting the moment of dizziness as she pushed herself into the van and reached for Song. “We were just outside, catching some air. Shhh, everything’s okay.”
Song all but leapt into her arms, burying his face against her shoulder. “You weren’t here,” he sobbed out, already wound up in the precious few moments it had taken Emily and Aaron to hear him as he awoke.
“Ohh, baby, baby Duck, it’s okay. I’m sorry, I’m really sorry... shhh.” She pet his hair, held him close. It suited her right really, sitting under the stars, kissing men who weren’t his dad; what was she thinking?
He nodded, sniffling, nuzzling his forehead hard against her collarbone. Aaron had followed Emily, but stood off to the side, rifle in his hand by his thigh. The roadside was quiet, and empty, but he cast his eyes down the way they’d come earlier that evening, outside the moment between mother and child. He got back into the driver's seat and Emily stayed in the back, and somewhere in the distance, dawn was waiting in grey-brushed steel.
Chapter Eleven
The drive was still quiet almost a day after they’d left the most recent destination on Aaron’s tour. Even Song seemed affected, and Emily and Aaron looked at each other from time to time only to have the words die on their lips before they could make it out into the air.
They had visited what had once been a small town, broken windows, ransacked houses, squalor. The ten or so survivors had blocked off a few houses in a bulwark of disintegration and waste. Emily had seen two children—two or three years old, dirty and hungry, and people who looked angry and dangerous. They had accepted Aaron’s help without offering anything in return, eyed the car instead with greed; Song had not once let go of her leg in the entire hour they had spent in their company.
In the end, they realized the leader had been holding them, distracting them while two others were trying to get at their gas and the rest of their provisions, and Aaron had been forced to hold them at gunpoint while he’d herded Emily and Song back into the car.
Shaken and trying to hide it, he had later promised that things hadn’t been half as bad a few months ago and they had spent a lot of time staring at each other, afraid for the world.
“Can we sleep in a house tonight?” Song finally asked, a hint of a pout in his voice. He had been looking at Pokemon cards, something he’d never been interested in previously, for the past hour, sorting and restacking them by creature type and ability. They had found them in a ransacked gas station that had yielded a few cans full of gas to their store.
“We’ll see what we can find,” Aaron said, at long last, kneading the steering wheel with his fingertips, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth. There was debris on the road, more than he’d remembered seeing; houses and cars were starting to rot, and so were bodies, some stripped clean of their flesh and bones starting to appear as the snow melted. It was one of the reasons they had started to avoid I-spy that day and tried to keep Song’s attention focused on the inside of the van.
“I don’t like sleeping in the car,” Song whined, “It’s smelly and I’m hungry.”
Emily sighed once, allowing for a moment of gathering herself before she clicked the belt open and climbed onto her seat, knees on the cushion and leaning over the headrest to look at him.
“We’ll try our very best, okay, Duck? I mean, it’s not so bad here, right? Like, we aren’t getting wet when it rains and there are still some cookies left...”
He heaved a sigh, and bent his head back over the cards, thumbs running over the brightly-colored images of each creature. Aaron felt guilty, of course, and, after another minute, he slowed so he could look over at Emily.
“We can take a look,” he suggested. “It’s not so rural that we shouldn’t be able to at least check some places out, I don’t think.”
Emily gave him an exhausted smile. She sometimes wondered whether real mothers felt the same way, that every frustrated and disappointed look of their child sent them into spirals of self-doubt. She watched him a moment longer and then flopped back around.
“That would be nice... thank you. But... you know, only if it’s on our way, I wouldn’t want to—” She stopped, not exactly sure anymore what it was she didn’t want to do to him.
“You know you don’t need to worry about that,” he said, and a hint of a smile appeared at the corners of his lips before he turned his attention back to the road, speeding up past a rotted-out car, with bodies included.
It was only an hour before they found the house, tucked off the road, in a cul de sac. There were other homes, too, in varying states of disrepair, all ransacked, but the one at the North edge was mostly intact, and the area had that air of having been left a long time, filled only with ghosts of life before.
Aaron did a round of the small neighborhood, poked his head into the houses. Finally: “I think we’re okay.” He opened Emily's door and offered her his hand to climb out. “Nothin’ fancy.”
“Ah and I was so hoping for gold-encrusted shower taps,” Emily told him with a wry smile and took his hand, hopping down out of the car next to him. The impact made her scrunch up her face as it travelled through her body and into her injured arm but it faded soon when Song clambered out.
“Maybe there will be games!” he enthused, and Aaron and Emily exchanged a glance. There were moments when she envied his priorities.
“I don’t know, it’s pretty picked clean.” He’d swung open every door and checked under the porch to make sure they were, indeed, really alone, and he’d not seen anything. Of course, he didn’t have a seven-year-old’s eyes.
Song stayed close to them as they went inside; they had flashlights and lanterns, as electricity was almost impossible to find anywhere these days but, they found in the kitchen that the water was still running.
“Hey, well, that’s a start. Maybe we’ll find Chutes and Ladders after all?” Aaron suggested to Song, ruffling his hair before going back out to the van, tucked against the side of the house, to empty the supplies.
“Or we can wash some dirty explorers’ hair,” Emily suggested with a grin at both of them. Something about having seen the people at their last stop had reinforced a sense of cleanliness she had almost forgotten about.
“Are you talking about me or Aaron?” Song asked, peering up at her suspiciously.
“Maybe I’m talking about myself?” she replied cheekily and then pulled him to her side. “Or all of us.”
“At the same time?” he asked, eyes positively owlish, while Emily shook her head at the way he already seemed to have picked up far too much of his father’s, and, she supposed, her own, sense of humor.
Aaron was in the doorway. “I think turns can be worked out,” he said, raising his eyebrows as he lowered the box of cans to the ground.
“I would think so!” she asserted, ruffling Song’s filthy hair. “First one gets the cleanest water...”
“I like being dirty,” the boy countered, as if he wasn’t the on
e to complain about the scent of the enclosed van.
Aaron met Emily’s gaze over Song’s head before he spoke up. “Well, yeah, but we need to be clean if we're going to ride together, buddy. I don’t think I can put up with your stinky butt much longer.”
Song glared at him, but it was with that trapped grin of glee. “You hafta!”
“Nope. I’ll strap you to the top of the van so we don’t have to smell ya,” Aaron replied, immediately.
Emily giggled. “My poor windswept Ducky, he’ll get so so cold...” She shook her head tragically, but her own grin chased it away.
“It’s the price you pay when you start dodging baths,” Aaron said, with overt solemnity.
“I wanna ride on the top of the car!” was Song’s next response, bouncing up and down with a triumphant smile, and Aaron caught him mid launch, lifting him up over his head, nearly to the ceiling.
“Like this? Seems very dangerous and maybe scary.”
“M’not scared of nothing!” Song crowed, kicking his feet in the air and it gave Emily a strangely painful pulling sensation in her chest.
“Except water and soap, apparently,” she deadpanned up at him, smiling and stretching herself a little.
“He’s not afraid,” Aaron countered, flipping Song, easily, down over his shoulder so he could tickle his side. “He’s just protestin’ the existence, right? Fight the power?”
“Fight the power!” Song yelled, and, as it was, Aaron had no idea that was something Emily and Sullivan had taught him to say when he was barely out of diapers. Emily raised her brows at Aaron, who of course, very much represented the elusive power of once upon a time, and shook her head at him, chuckling.
“I’m the power now?” she asked with a spectacular pout of her own. “That can’t be true, I’ve been fighting the power straight out of the womb!”
“You look it,” Aaron said, with a nod, before he heaved Song back to the ground. The boy flopped on the dirty carpet and beamed up at them.
“No bath,” he said, panting through his giggles.
“No bath, he says...” Emily sighed as though giving in and then stared at his head, miming shock. “Wait... sit veeery verrrry still. I think, oh bloody hell, there’s a DIRT MONSTER in your hair! Run, run from the smelly dirt monster boy!” And she did dash away up the stairs, inspecting the rooms there and giggling when Aaron followed on her heels—she more winded than he.
“Emmy!” Song shrieked, and then was pounding his way up the stairs after them, crashing into the room right after them. “Ha! I'm the best at hide and go seek.”
“That was hide and seek?” Aaron scoffed. “That was nothing. You try hiding, I’ll seek.” And unload the car, which they’d left half unpacked.
“It was more like tag...” Emily said, clearly not too happy with the idea of more exertions, but when Song scuttled off to hide, she looked at Aaron with a grin.
“Fight the power, eh?”
He shrugged. “I had rebellious years, too,” he said, nonchalantly. “You’re not the only one.”
Grinning slightly, Emily shook her head at him and felt a momentary longing to be back in his arms. They’d barely touched since that heated kiss under the stars, and she quickly pushed the thought away.
“I guess we have a dirty boy to find,” she said loud enough so that Song would probably hear. “We might try using his smell...”
Aaron reached out and tweaked her nose before touching her cheek briefly with his fingertips.
“I suppose I’ll go look outside,” he added, low voice all but booming.
There was something about the gesture that made Emily’s mouth open once and then she managed a grin. She was plenty experienced at seeking Song.
It was only the first of many rounds—and she had to admit seeing Aaron trying to hide and look inconspicuous with his ridiculously long legs that seemed to poke out from everywhere was pretty funny. They made an attempt to wear out Song, but she felt like the worn-out one after an hour, flopping onto the dusty sofa, yawning and proclaiming that she was fighting the power, and they could continue if they wanted to.
They did, and she started a fire outside to heat some water. It felt nice against her palms too, and she still tried to figure out how she felt about the way Aaron and Song were getting chummy and cuddly. She wanted Song to have people, he deserved people who liked him and she didn't want him to think about his father every time a man was kind to him, the way she did. But it also seemed painful and dangerous. The more people you liked, the easier it was to mislay some of them, and Song had a bad track record of losing people. They both did.
It wasn’t until after dark that Song decided he’d had enough of the game—more likely, he was getting scared in the dark alone—and Aaron carried him out of the house over his shoulder to drop him down next to Emily.
Song’s hair was a mess and his cheeks flushed bright pink in the light of the fire. “I did find games,” he announced. “Way up in a closet, there are like a billion games. I saw ‘em. I did.”
“A billion?” Emily asked rather impressed and pulled him against her. “We’ll have to play them all!”
“You can’t do that, Emmy,” Song sighed, shaking his head but snuggling into her arms like the small child he was.
Aaron chuckled, wiping the bit of sweat off his face that had accumulated there from running after Song, and only really succeeded in smearing dirt over his cheek. “We can give a go, though.”
“We totally can, we have days and days and days... and some fresh room in the van.” She grinned at Aaron apologetically but she couldn’t help it.
“It’s true,” Aaron agreed, pouring some of the water she’d heated into cups to brew tea and coffee. “Finally something other than the question game!” he added, winking.
“I was mostly growing tired of spying trees and your sweaters,” Emily shot back, and stretched herself in the warm circle of light around the fire.
“My sweaters are great to look at,” Aaron drawled with a mock glare, passing a cup to each of them, before digging out some jerky and cookies while they warmed some tinned soup in a pan.
“They are always the same,” Song intoned gravely as though it was Aaron’s fault that I-spy was getting boring, and Emily turned away to giggle again.
“Well, okay. I suppose I could use a make-over.” Aaron considered the brown sweater he’d been wearing for the last week and could concede that, indeed, it looked like the green one in the van, and the grey one, too.
“It always starts with a bath,” Emily told him—but mostly Song very seriously, trying not to grin, “and a new haircut. And then we can give Aaron a make-over, what do you say? We should be able to find something?”
“Yes,” Song cried, hissing out the S-sound at the end of the word, in a manner he clearly found menacing, and Aaron made the appropriate face at.
“I know for a fact you don’t have make-up,” he protested, then, but was smiling at Emily anyway.
“But we might have some ribbons,” she smiled back. It was getting easy to slip into banter and teasing. It had happened gradually and she hardly noticed it, but both Song and she were better, and not just physically.
“But... first things first. Dirty boys need cleaning,” she sang, wriggling her finger in front of Song’s face.
“Dinner first?” he asked, making his eyes as round as possible and pouting his lip massively, turning his whole face into something like a cartoon, a bunny rabbit begging for its life. If there was a trick to resisting this expression, Emily had yet to discover it, and so she smiled and nodded.
“It’s almost done anyway. We’ll take it inside in a bit.”
Immediately, the pout vanished and back was the grinning little boy, rather triumphant. “Good.”
Aaron shook his head and started ladling the soup into the tin bowls. “He’s got you wrapped around his finger,” he said, smirking, and Song examined his finger curiously. Emily chuckled and poked her tongue out at Aaron.
; “Like you do any better. Besides it’s a really pretty finger to be wrapped around.”
Song snorted and took his bowl and spoon; it was simple chicken noodle soup from a can, but familiar, and he slurped it up happily once they were inside, along with the last of the cookies, and some campfire bread Aaron had made earlier in the week.
The house was still, and quiet. A little musty, but in rather good condition considering it had been tossed around by survivors at some point. Aaron did another tour of the perimeter, and the small neighborhood, while Song and Emily cleaned up dinner and prepared a bath for the boy.
They used what facilities they had—the tub in the bathroom, a bucket to carry the water. They didn’t get a really hot bath together considering how much they had to dilute it, but at least it wasn’t freezing and Emily found some shampoo and soap, too: discolored and cracked from months of disuse, it was better than nothing.
“Soooongy...” she sing-songed through the house when the water was ready. She found him curled up on the sofa, hiding under his blanket.
“Nooooo bath!” he whined, flopping once she uncovered him. “I’m not dirty, I’m... I’m a boy!”
“Awww, but boys bathe, baby!” Emily asserted, dropping to the floor next to him and gently lifting the blanket. “It's fun. And when you come right now, it’s even still warm...”
He whined, but seemed to know better than to argue, letting her take his hand and lead him to the dark bathroom, lit with the emergency candles they carried. He continued to pout, however, as he got undressed and into the tub, splashing his hands against the tepid water.
“I wish I still had my ducks,” he said, suddenly, holding up both hands so water dripped off them.
Emily squatted next to the tub, nodding. She took his hand, kissed it and placed the bar of soap onto his palm.
“I know,” she said quietly. They both had a long, long list—Sullivan topped it, but somehow every little item brought it back home that he was gone. So were the ducks and her studio.
“I’ll wash your hair, okay? I promise, I’ll be super careful, no tears or anything.”
