by Olga Menson
Later we woke up together, feeling very close. I made us some sandwiches and we ate them, barely wearing anything out on our porch. We fucked there afterwards, on the day bed, me spooning her. It was slow and loving, to the sounds of the stormy sea. It was the start of a wonderful blur of just being ourselves, making love when we wanted to, reading, talking about everything and anything. By the end we were more in love than ever.
We'd made it through the storm. We were stronger and closer than ever. Maybe we weren't ready for anything, but I felt, for the first time in a while, real hope. We would protect each other, and our child.
We would be all right.
* * *
Infinite Endings
* * *
"Oh my god, look!" Jamie said, bursting into the living room.
She was holding a box. This wasn't odd since it seemed like half of our things still resided in boxes. Her excitement on the other hand seemed deeply unnatural to me as our life for the past months had involved a lot of opening containers and looking for lost things.
"Um?" I said, hopefully. God I hope she didn't wake him.
"Oh," she said, remembering the sleeping infant not twenty feet away in our barely affordable two-bedroom apartment. Thankfully he was like his mother and could sleep through just about anything.
"But look," she continued softly, "it's your birthday gift."
I looked. I was confused as my birthday wasn't for another month. At least the last time I checked. This had been a confusing year. Speaking of confusion...
"Is that...a S.T.A.R.S. Uniform?"
She smiled, a little slyly and just a little sinfully.
"This is what I made for you last year. I was going to be dressed up as Jill Valentine when you got home. Got the wig and everything. But then..."
Her face fell, she didn't even like to talk about the accident. I hugged her. Also, I really wanted to be close to her because that was about the sexiest thing I'd heard in my entire fucking life.
"So, uh...do I have to wait until the next one comes around or can I unwrap my present now?"
"Hmm. I'm not sure I'll still fit. I'm still carrying around some extra weight..."
I looked at her. She was carrying around some extra weight, although remarkably little. Mostly around the bust and hips. I thought it looked really good on her, but she wanted to lose it all. I had no complaints either way. We were together, and I had realized years ago that I would find her sexy pretty much no matter what the circumstances.
"Well, I mean, if it's not too uncomfortable, I'd love to see you in it."
This was the understatement of the year. Jill Valentine was the hottest video game character of all time. You may disagree with me but you are wrong. The idea of Jamie dressed as her had made me hard in record time. She looked down at the very obvious bulge in my shorts.
"Someone definitely wants to see it. The baby will be sleeping for a few hours...yeah. Let me go see if I can get it all on. Don't be too disappointed if I can't," she warned as she walked to the back room to change.
"If all else fails, just return naked and I shall endeavor to overcome my disappointment," I said.
She just looked back at me and rolled her eyes. But she was happy. I think part of her still worried that I'd find her less attractive after she had the baby. That part was wrong. I loved her more now. I couldn't explain it, but once little Irwin came along, my life felt complete. Yes, we named him after his "father". I still had no idea how we were going to work out the mechanics of telling him his family history, but I suppose that could wait for at least eighteen years.
Mom and Dad missed their grandchild, but they came to see him, regularly. They were very impressed with all the things I did to help Jamie and said that I'd make a fine father one day. I had to struggle not to tell them that day was today. They talked about moving to be close to us but we persuaded them to hold off, and that we'd bring them their grandchild frequently as he grew older.
Irwin came out pretty regularly to see "his" child. Typically Rebecca and/or Trina came too, if they weren't home enjoying being the third connection in that love triangle. I thought I was a player. I don't know how he lucked himself into that situation but I wished him the best. The other benefit of Irwin coming out here with either or both of his women, was that, like us, they could just live their true life. No one here knew us as brother and sister. We were very careful to compartmentalize and keep all of our friends here separate from anyone who didn't know the truth.
I suspected, although I couldn't be certain, that we ran the only haven for incestuous couples at Caltech. Well, near Caltech. In Pasadena in any case.
Mom and Dad insisted on sending us money to help with the baby, which I was in no position to refuse, although I did make fairly decent money now as a licensed physical therapist. It helped with Jamie's continuing education, although she had quite a few scholarships. She was my brilliant baby sister, after all. Her most recent professor declared her understanding of systems engineering and model-based design to be "radical, intuitive, and borderline magical". She felt bad sometimes about not being around more, but I was willing to do more than my share until she ended up with her inevitable PhD. I had a suspicion that when all was said and done that she would be the breadwinner and I'd be the stay-at-home dad. I was more than fine with that.
The truth was that we were happy, we had a wonderful child together, and that, unlike a lot of young couples, we worked hard to be in love. We'd had to get past our fears, conceal our love, overcome injury, and more. We understood what was at stake, so we made time for each other. Hell, we even fought over things in a healthy way. And there was always make-up sex.
"Holy shit," I said quietly as I saw Jamie coming back down the hall. Or, Jill Valentine, who she looked remarkably like now. The one from the REmake, too. The best one.
She smiled her little sinful smile. This was the way things were. I had no complaints.
THE END
