Power Ballad pt 94 - Bugs? No Bugs? (Anise)

Anise awakens tangled in a cocoon of blankets. Nick has tossed all of the sheets from himself in the night and is starfishing, his left side drooping off the edge of the bed. A lance of light from their room’s circular mountainside porthole illuminates the graceful span of his thigh. Anise starts to sit up; the lime-green arm draped around her waist stiffens.

Dee’s voice, heavy with sleep: “Not yet.”

Anise taps her hand. “I just have to check what time it is.”

“Uh-uh.” Dee’s other arm settles across her chest.

“Baby,” she giggles. “You gotta—”

The hand on her waist slides across her stomach. Its fingers press into the soft swell of tummy below her belly button. The rest of Anise’s sentence dies off into a taut sigh.

“Not yet,” Dee whispers, and presses her face against the nape of Anise’s neck.

Anise bites her lip as the fluttery urge builds beneath Dee’s bed-warm palm. “Not yet.”

Dee’s grip tightens and drags her, horror-movie style, under the covers.

She extracts herself, eventually, and pads to the bathroom, plucking her watch from her pile of discarded clothes as she goes. She feels her packmistress’s cinnamon-colored gaze on her and turns the bend sinewy and teasing.

She checks the time as she brushes her teeth. Eight in the morning, a solid hour before they all agreed to meet for breakfast. She returns to their room. Dee is continuing her kissing spree on top of Nick, who’s grumbling awake with a sound like c’mon as the packmistress pecks his collarbone.

“Oh, no. Poooor Nick.” Dee licks his neck. “His two sexy girlfriends are waking him up too early.”

“So sad. So cruel.” Anise climbs into bed on Nick’s other side. “Scoot over.”

“They’re making me scoot, even.” Nick wraps Anise in his arm and tugs her with him the rest of the way onto the mattress. “Where’s the justice?”

Breakfast is a flotilla of puffy, scallion-studded flatbreads marshalled before a vast array of spreads and dips. Nick scoots Anise’s chair out for her. It’s little things from him all the time like this. She wonders if he’s always been this thoughtful and she hasn’t noticed, or if he’s just simping hard for her now; she’d happily take either.

Quillbear eat with sheepish politeness amid the mountain-dwelling Kamiyons. Nick has bridged the language gap with a group of tittering goblin kids, who have dubbed him Pinky (they pronounce it peenky) and are sticking to him like fridge magnets. He’s pointing at the various bowls, asking “Bugs? No bugs?” and goofing around, bringing the Bugs ones close to his lips and going through exaggerated clownish expressions of indecision before popping them into his mouth. This invariably summons a peal of laughter and cheering.

Anise glances at Dee, who’s watching her mate with unvarnished tenderness. She nudges the packmistress under the table. “Good with kids, huh?”

Dee’s eyes sparkle. “Uh huh.”

“Can I ask?” Anise folds a flatbread and daubs it into a creamy garlic sauce. “Why aren’t there kids in the pack?”

“Too new,” Dee says. “We were all a bunch of teenagers, basically, when my sister started it up. Only just all hitting baby-makin’ age. Pretty soon we can expect some expecting. Why do you ask?” She grins as she steals a blob of sauce from Anise’s plate. “You feeling a little baby crazy looking at the pups?”

“Noooo, thank you.” Anise vigorously shakes her head. “I had mine already. Wouldn’t trade her for the world, wouldn’t do that again.”

Dee purses her lips. “Tough time?”

“It wasn’t awful, but it was a ton of work. Her dad wasn’t in the picture.”

Dee passes her another flatbread. “He skip out?”

“Not exactly.” Anise licks some jam off her thumb. “By the time I caught on to the bun in the oven, we were already quits. I called him and he hemmed and hawed and said he’d help pay to get rid of it, and it was the way he called it it. I thought fuck you, man.” She laughs; Dee joins in.

“Just as a hypothetical, at first, I went into planning mode and thought about what I’d do to raise a kid as a single mom and I thought hey, you’ve got your shit together, you’re making good money, you’ve got a support network. You could give this kid a pretty good life. And I told him I was thinking of keeping it, and I was ready, and he could do whatever he wanted. He could be there or he could dip. And he dipped.” Anise shrugs. “Which sure, that’s scummy. But I can’t blame someone for taking an option I gave them.”

“And were you? Ready?”

Anise hums. “I don’t know, honestly. It varied day by day. I got through it. Rosalia’s way cooler than I ever was. Kind of too cool for her mom at this point.” She scratches her neck and gives a bittersweet smile. “New York fairfolk, dude. They’re all very en vogue.”

“Well.” Dee rubs her thigh. “I think her mom’s pretty fucking cool.”

“Yo.” Nick waves a spoon at her. “Language.”

“Focking,” one kid announces.

Legendary arrive about a half hour late and tuck in. Holy God, the size of the hickey on Thekla’s neck. She must see Anise’s reaction, the way she flips up the collar of Evan’s button-down (which she’s wearing like a dress).

It dawns on Anise that she probably has a few hickeys, too. The itty-bittiest members of both throuples share a silent look of secret subby solidarity across the table.

Conna sees them off from the lip of the cave. Big, encompassing hugs for Legendary and Anise. Stiff handshakes for the Voraags. “It didn’t work out this time,” she says. “But soon, I hope. We’ll get it sorted out and I’ll come down from the mountain and make music with you again.”

“We never sounded as good on Field Fire as we did when you were singing it,” Evan says. “Lot happened since then, but the music was never less than amazing.”

Conna laughs. “We’ll always have that.” She bows to Sion. “Enjoy the tour, Sion. You deserve a break.”

“Thank you, mistress.” Sion bows back. “My heart will remain here.”

An odd look crosses Nick’s face at that. Dee’s turned away from the departure, focusing on the horizon and their path back to the pack. “Best get a move on,” she says. “Reckon they’re about ready to roll down there.”

“Be well, Dee,” Conna gives her a wave.

“Yep.” Dee gruffly returns it. “Uh, you too. Nick.” She jerks her head in a beckon and her mate falls in. They confer in low, furtive voices. A quick final group hug (sans Sion) before the rest join them on the downhill trek.

Through the rocky pass again. The guards who brought them up in chilly silence are today chittering and laughing with Thekla and her spouses. Noisy farewells as they arrive back at the rhinos and the trailer. A long, ornate rifle, its stock hung with tassels, is pressed into Thekla’s hands, and re-pressed no matter how many times she tries graciously to return it.

Dee taps Anise’s shoulder as Legendary file into the trailer. “Ride with me?”

Anise redirects herself to Hammer and lets Dee’s warm hands clasp her waist to boost her onto the rhino’s back. “I always feel like a princess when you do that.”

“Funny you mention it. I always feel like a knight.” Dee clicks her tongue and the rhinos are off, pulling the trailer behind them. “Wanna say sorry,” she says. “I was a cock to your friend.”

“It’s okay, Dee-dee.” Anise leans back into her knight. “You’re protective. I like that you’re protective. And I promise Conna’s not…” What does she promise? Conna told some pretty massive lies. Conna destabilized the planet. “I promise she isn’t evil.” That seems safe enough.

“Didn’t seem it.” Dee sighs. “But I gotta explain myself. My thing with dragons. I have some heavy stuff to lay on you, hon.”

Nick nudges Doink closer to them, so that he can reach across the mounts and rest a fortifying hand on Dee’s back.

And they descend from the mountains and Dee tells Anise about her sister, and the tragedy, and the dragon Conna offered to guide them to. It’s mortifying, shedding tears about this old story when Dee isn’t, but the packmistress assures her she’s already wept enough for a few lifetimes over it. “Just outta salt about it, I guess. Ask me again once that asshole’s head is mounted on my yurt pole.” She clears the solemnity out of her throat. “Nick didn’t cry about it, th0ugh. My sad backstory. Ice man over here.”

“I cried,” Nick protests. “I cried quiet manful tears. You were busy steering Hammy.”

Dee passes Anise a handkerchief. Anise gratefully blows. “You ever think about telling us any of your Earth stuff, Nicky?” she asks.

Nick shakes his head. “I was born last month in a snowdrift.”

“Shoot.” Anise places a parting snuffle into the handkerchief and folds it up. “We’re cradle robbers, Dee.”

  *

Some shows, you remember how amazing your job is. Some shows just cook. Some Old World crews are near-Earth quality. Some venues are gorgeous and some crowds treat you like you’re immortal. Some nights are great nights.

That’s their last night in Arvanistan.

Legendary perform in a cliff-side amphitheater framed by the rushing roar of a sky-descending waterfall. The great floating impossibilities of Arvanistan’s skybound mountains mark their passage across the night sky by obscuring the dazzling array of stars that fret the sky.

Anise rocks joyfully out to Legendary’s set, whooping and cheering from the wings after every bone-crushing song. Dee is right with her, fangirling out—the pack jovially refuses to let her work through the sets any longer. “Too twitchy, too distracted,” Graila told her. “Your mate-crazy ass is gonna trip on a cable and we’ll slide into the canyon.”

And there’s that word again. That little termite in the foundation of Anise’s happiness. It’s nothing she didn’t sign up for. She’s a big girl. And she’s never felt less than completely loved by Nick and Dee. So it’s not even a problem, really. Why would it be a problem?

But Nick and Dee are mates. And Anise isn’t. She hears it sometimes—the sudden skip of a heartbeat when Dee sees Nick, the noise in the back of Nick’s throat at the slightest brush of Dee’s shoulder against his. Like Kell, and how she gets with Evan and Thekla. They’re chemically dependent on each other. They need each other. And they don’t need Anise. They love her, but they don’t need her.

And that’s okay. It’s fine. It’s healthy. It’s a healthy, adult relationship. Think of it like this, she tells herself: you are dating Nick and Dee. As a unit. One two-headed lover named Nickandee. Nickandee and Anise. They cherish you. How greedy could you be to ask for more?

“Hanem Canyon!” Thekla cries out into the wash of feedback and applause. “We got one more for you. And we have a little surprise.”

Nick steps into the backup mic as he unplugs and slides his guitar strap off. “Ladies and gentlemen. Put ‘em together for Sion fucking Benefice.”

He jogs backstage as the Hanem Canyon crowd loses its mind. Sion, his silver Prelate glittering in the light like an unsheathed broadsword, steps out from stage right and latches himself into Nick’s abandoned jack with iceberg calm.

Dee leaps into her mate’s arms as he breaks the curtain. They share a blissful kiss as the first thorny passage of Trapped Like Rats, Sion’s flagship song, winds out into the amphitheater. Nick detaches briefly and beckons to Anise. “C’mere, boss. Five minutes till we’re on the clock again for load-out.”

And Anise does not say no, it’s okay. Be with your mate for a second. I’ll get things organized. She doesn’t make any excuses like it’s a canyon, we gotta get the gear moving early or we’ll be here forever. She doesn’t self-sabotage, and she doesn’t self-pity. She’s old enough to be this beautiful couple’s mother. And they like that, she reminds herself, as her lips find first Dee’s, then Nick’s. Her life is wonderful and will keep being wonderful. Mates or no mates.

And if there’s this little empty piece at the core, well. That’s a lot fuller than she’s felt in decades.