"So, am I ever going to get my turn at planning an anniversary?" Eli asks over his chocolate-colored strawberry that Ty had made him.
"You get Valentine's Day, we're even," Ty retorts, holding up another strawberry to feed to his boyfriend. If they were in public, Eli probably wouldn't have taken it, as they were the grabs it playfully. Then Ty takes a ring shaped box, and hands it to the man before him.
"No, you're not going to be giving me jewelry every year. Besides, I am not ready to say 'yes' to that question."
"Well, I didn't get you jewelry, and I want to keep asking, unless that's offensive or something."
"It's not, I just don't want to hurt you by saying no," Eli says, running his hand through Ty's hair.
Ty bites his lip, "I get all the reasons why you are opposed to just flat-out marriage. But what about something in between?"
"In between? Ty, you are either married or not. I am seriously concerned by the fact that someone I'll probably marry someday believes there is something called 'sort of' married."
"Not like that. I just mean a private marriage. Something where we start living together, and promise to be with each other forever. We just don't have to sign any legal documents."
"And how exactly would I explain that to my parents?"
"Tell them you are my roommate? I mean, you have a roommate now, right? How would getting an apartment with me off-campus be any different?"
"Well, I don't have sex with my current roommate," Eli says.
"Well, we won't tell your parents about our sex lives," Ty teases, touching Eli's knee in a way that has on previous occasions increased Ty's chance of winning an argument.
Eli brushes him away from his knee, "Ty, they're going to figure it out. I mean… the bedroom situation."
"I thought we could have two bedrooms, one of them would be yours, with a queen bed. The other would be mine with a twin. Of course, mine would be a bit less used…"
"I don't want to lie to them," Eli says.
"You're already lying. I'm fine with the truth, but if you're not ready for that… this is an option," Ty shrugs. "If you want to continue living like we have been for two years… talking, kissing, not touching. I'll do that. I just want to start my life with you. I want to share a toaster, and see you when you first wake up in the morning."
"I'm actually pretty gross first thing in the morning."
"I doubt that," Ty says.
Eli looks at Ty's eyes for a moment, before he lets out a long sigh, "Can I give you a 'maybe'."
Ty nods, and gives him a long sweet kiss, "Ok, open the box now!"
Eli opens it to find a note that starts the treasure hunt.
"I mean, the ending is kind of ruined, because you already figured out that I was going to ask you to marry me."
"The box was a dead giveaway. But it could still be fun to go on the adventure," Eli says, kissing Ty.
A Week Later
Ty is talking about something he learned in physics class, or engineering class; Eli isn't sure to be honest. All he can focus on is the way that he stirs his coffee. Two spins counterclockwise, two spins clockwise, to be repeated five times, and followed by a double tap on the side of his coffee cup with his spoon. Eli supposes that Ty has to do something to integrate the massive amounts of sugar that he puts into his coffee.
He knows so much about this man: that he's a genius, that he's kind, the way he has to make sure the cheesiest part of a Dorito is always down on his tongue. Still, there are a lot of things that he doesn't know about this man; not yet anyway. He doesn't know what Ty looks like when he wakes up in the morning, or what color his toothbrush is, or what it feels like to make love to him.
"We should pick a time, then," Eli says, interrupting Ty mid-sentence, and failing to realize that he hasn't given the poor man enough context to understand him.
"For what?" Ty asks, confused.
"To go apartment hunting, of course," Eli says.
Ty's face breaks out into a huge grin, "So you're saying 'yes'?"
"I want to have a private, non-legal ceremony when we move in, but yeah, I'm saying 'yes'."
Ty stands up from his chair, and pulls Eli into the kind of hug that Eli's grandfather used to give him back when his grandfather was strong and Eli was young. The kind of hug that you are not altogether sure you are going to survive.
"What is going on?" Olivia asks as she sets her tray down at their usual table. Blaze rarely eats breakfast, it happens to early in the day, and so Olivia usually joins the boys.
"We're getting married," Ty gushes.
Some little part of Olivia, one that she'd laid aside with her American Girl Doll, wishes that when Ty said those words he was talking about a different 'we'. The rest of her, well, it flings it's arms around the both of them, and gives them a giant hug.
Two Weeks Later
Rya'c walks into the house as Cassie is grabbing her keys. Their three daughters run in after him.
Cassie's eyes bulge, "I thought you were going to take the kids for the whole weekend. Camping, you were supposed to take them camping."
"Right, well Aaliyah is terrified of bugs, and it was raining, so I just figured that I would bring them home. That's not a problem is it?"
Cassie's eyes flick around, "No, It's just… aren't the kids going to be really disappointed?"
"They're fine. They're going to watch the Little Mermaid yet again, so it's probably best to avoid the living room for a while. I know that you really don't want to get those songs stuck in your head. Well, I guess that isn't a problem, because you were going out."
A tear slips out of Cassie's eye, and Rya'c lifts his hand to whip it away, with a question on his face. "You weren't supposed to know."
"What am I not supposed to know?" he asks.
"It wasn't even supposed to happen. We were careful. We were so careful!"
"Whatever it is, I can help," Rya'c says.
She falls into his arms, and cries.
"Do you need me to drive you somewhere? I could call someone to watch the girls?" he asks softly running his fingers through his hair.
"I'm not going anywhere. I was only going to go somewhere when I thought you wouldn't know about it… now…"
Rya'c can't think of any explanation apart from the fact that she is cheating on him, and the way she is leaning on him seems to eliminate that possibility.
"Ok, then let's get you to bed, and I'll make you some lunch, yeah? Maybe you'll feel like putting together sentences that contain complete thoughts after lunch."
"Don't be nice to me. I'm pregnant," she whispers.
He pulls back his head in surprise, "You told me you couldn't get pregnant."
"What I meant by that was, if I got pregnant it would die."
"Oh," Rya'c's face grows somber, and he holds her tighter, "So how long do we have? Are you in any danger? Were you going to the doctor? I'll go with you. I can't believe that you weren't going to tell me! I want to be there."
She pulls away, "Sixteen, it will die when it's sixteen."
"Days?"
"Years."
He looks at her with wordless shock.
"Well, it might be the sixteenth birthday, or it might be a first kiss. It's kind of unclear, because in my case they happened at the same second time."
Rya'c takes a step back, "Sixteen? She's going to die in sixteen years? How did you think you were going to keep me from seeing it? You were going to kill our baby?"
"It's not a baby yet, it's a bundle of cells. I was trying to do this before it became a baby. Before I held it and loved it, and took it to preschool."
"So it's all about you, then?" Rya'c accuses her.
"No, I tried to save you from any of this. If you had just taken the girls on a camping trip, you never would have known. By the time you came back, I would be up and around. You never would have had to suffer; it was all going to be me."
"I'm talking about the baby. If you kill it now, you don't suffer, but it doesn't get sixteen years of good life."
"Stop saying 'killing'," she whispers.
Rya'c nods, "Ok. You're not going to do it now, though, right? You're not going to have an abortion?"
Cassie sits for a long second without having any reaction.
Rya'c sighs, "I'll take care of it. The baby."
"You said you were ok with not having any kids."
"Yeah, when I thought my fiancé was telling me that she couldn't have kids. Not when she was talking about aborting one that already existed."
"I can't do this. If I carry this baby around inside me for nine months, I'm going to love it. If it lives in this house with us, it's going to hurt when it dies."
"Again, you're not thinking about the baby," Rya'c says, touching her arm.
"I am doing this for the baby! It's going to be born with an expiration date on it. It's going to miss all the good parts in life!"
"If you have this baby, it won't miss ring-around-the-roses, chocolate cake, and those little footie pajamas. Besides, we have sixteen years to save this baby."
"I almost died from this," she says, looking at him.
"That sickness that made you move things with your brain?" he asks.
She nods her head, "There was a fever, too and…"
"It hurt?"
Cassie nods her head.
"We're going to make sure that our baby has a really good life, and we'll do everything we can to save her," Rya'c says.
"I don't want to do this," she says, and he takes her into his arms again, running his hands through her hair.
"I'm going to help you. I'm going to do a lot of the childcare stuff, when it comes. I'll get an operation so we don't have to go through this ever again. It is going to be ok."
She sniffles against his shoulder.
"Mommy, I want popcorn," Keisha says, coming into the room.
"I'll get it for you. Can you go take Mommy and give her some snuggles?"
"Yep," Keisha says, putting her hand in her mother's.
Cassie narrows her eyes at her husband. He knows how sick of this movie she is.
"And that is all the revenge you'll ever get from me; consider yourself lucky, my love."
A Week Later
Daniel sits on the porch, and smiles when Cassie comes to sit next to him. "Is it ok if I join you?" she asks.
"I got the sense at that big family dinner that you wanted some alone time with Daddy. I came out here just for that."
Cassie nods her head.
"What's wrong sweetie?" he asks, pulling her into a side hug.
"I'm pregnant," she says.
"Right. I'll contact the SG-C, and they'll start working on a cure for that… retrovirus thing. We'll probably need some blood samples after the baby is born."
"Do I tell it? At what age are you old enough to deal with the fact that you are going to die?"
"We're all going to die, sweetheart," he says, kissing her temple.
"This is different."
"Would you have wanted to know?" he asks.
"No," she says.
They sit together in silence for a bit before he says, "So, getting excited about my new grandbaby, is that going to make it better or worse?"
"Not yet," Cassie says with a smile.
"Ok, so I will celebrate after you leave."
"I don't want to love it."
"You can't help that, it's your baby."
"Yeah, it is," Cassie says, putting a protective hand over her belly.