Chapter 16: Field Marriage

Down the hall in the room he shared with Fox, Little Cato, Ash, and Mooncake all looked up as Gary's muffled, high-pitched squawk of disbelief penetrated the bulkheads.

"WHAAAAT?"

"Sounds like the dads figured a few things out," said Little Cato, fighting to keep from laughing.

Ash bobbed her head in appreciation of Gary's lung capacity. "You mean the whole Ventrexian marriage thing?"

The ginger was smugness itself. "Yeee-up."

She grinned. "Heh."

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On the Crimson Light's bridge, HUE quietly murmured, "Oh, dear."

"They figured it out?" asked Nightfall from where she was fine-tuning the navigation array.

"It seems so."

"Took 'em long enough."

"Is that love in the air, or is the fur about to fly?" wondered HUE, delighted with either prospect.

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Down in the makeshift brig, Bodek looked up sharply and demanded, "What was that?"

Fox fought to keep his expression stoic and his squee to himself. "Nothing you need to worry about."

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"Married?"

Avocato paced the short distance allowed by the galley as if trying to outrace this unexpected dimension of their . . . relationship. They had a relationship. Beyond what they had before. Gary watched him, afraid to move, afraid to think, definitely afraid to ask for more information. Luckily for Gary, his newly acquired husband needed to vent.

"Yes! Captain, on Ventrexia, a pact like that between consenting adults, a promise to stay by someone so closely, through good and bad, given in total sincerity and accepted as such and sealed with some sort of physical exchange, is the equivalent of a binding marriage contract!"

"Seriously? Oh, crap – Oh, my crap, Avocato, I said friendship mode engaged. You must have thought I knew what I was talking about."

"I doubt I made that mistake. Did I accept your promise?"

"Yeeee-ah we kinda clasped on it. Uh . . . Isthatabadthing?"

"Clasped?"

He wiggled his fingers before clapping his hands together in demonstration. "Shook hands. Looked into each other's eyes. Flexed. Swore manly oaths to protect and provide eternal back-up. You said it was an unconventional start to a friendship, but that your offer was as real as it gets."

"And then you stayed on Zekatron Alpha to save me when you broke time." Avocato threw his hands up, defeated by Gary's persistence and Ventrexian tradition. "No wonder you adopted my boy – I adopted yours first!"

"Mooncake's not a kid!"

Avocato glared at a defense so watery. "Remind me of that in ten years, please!" He went from shocked to indignant in a heartbeat. "And what the hell took you so long, Goodspeed? You left Little Cato fatherless for months!"

"I – oh."

Falling back into his seat, Avocato dropped his head into his folded arms. For a long moment Gary could do nothing but stare at his friend's pointed ears as they both tried to wrap their brains around this development. Well, it made a hell of a lot of sense in a weird and almost funny way. Then, without ever looking up, Avocato reached out to the end of the table and swatted one of the tumblers across the table to Gary.

"I'll take that drink."

So much for not drinking. Gary couldn't blame him for the lapse. If he needed one this badly, Avocato must be desperate.

"Upgraded to a double," agreed Gary, hastily opening the bottle. He poured two generous shots, clicked his glass against Avocato's, and threw back the liquor. It was sweet and burned all the way down his throat and into his belly, making him gasp in appreciation.

"If it's any consolation," he said, pouring himself another round and topping Avocato's off a bit, "it happens ten years down the road for you. So technically, right now, in this time, you're not married. I am, I guess, but you're not."

"Yet," corrected Avocato in a completely unhappy tone, sitting up. For the first time his normally ramrod-straight posture slumped. He didn't even sniff the blue liquid in his glass – he just slammed it back - maybe hoping for poison - and fought to control his body's desire to wheeze as the drink hit his system. He frowned, slapping the glass down. "That stuff's terrible. I'll take another."

Gary obliged. "Don't take it to heart, Cato. It hasn't happened yet so it doesn't count."

Avocato pointed sharply – literally - with one claw out for emphasis. He was having none of Gary's logic. "It happened to you with me. Yes, it counts. We call it a field marriage. Centuries past, they were common after battles when there was no time for a formal ceremony. It's outdated but still legally binding. It doesn't matter what timelines we're from!"

"Okay, okay. We're married." Saying it was actually sort of nice, so he said again, "We're married. Look at it this way – you're how old now? Thirty?"

"Thirty-one."

"Okay. Forty-one-year-old you is going to be able to make an informed decision, knowing what's going to happen." He softened his tone. "Cato, every time I've met you for the first time, I'm getting older and you're getting younger. Maybe that's just chance, but I'm beginning to think there's more to it than that. And every time we meet, your previous conduct suddenly makes loads of sense to me and you've taken what you've learned from future Gary and applied it so that things work out to bring us back together."

He caught the look of disbelief thrown at him with all the force of a full-scale trebuchet and scrambled to explain.

"Case in point – how do you think Little Cato got the blast doors of the Kalibar's battlebridge open?"

Avocato considered. "He shouldn't have been able to from the outside after the ship decompressed. Only command-level officers have codes to open those doors."

"He had your codes."

"My . . .?"

"You taught them to him."

"That would be a security violation!"

"No, that would be survival. Because you know now that a boatload of idiots from the future saved you, and you have to give your kid the means to do it. See? So last year when I said I'd stand by you through everything the universe lobbed at us, you knew that even though I didn't know that I was proposing, eventually I'd be watching over your son and keeping him safe until things worked out to bring us back together. I had no clue a promise like that was a marriage contract. You said you had nothing to give me in return, but I was in it for friendship. For a brother. You called it friendship, too, but maybe it meant more to you than that. Hearing it in those terms, I think I'm pretty okay with the marriage thing. I mean, we've got a kid and we've been living together on and off since we met."

Avocato emptied his glass, then held it out for a refill, clearly determined to get smashed in record time. "I hardly know you!"

Gary smiled and poured another round. "Actually, you do know me. And you trust me. And I trust you. I always have."

"What about your – what about Quinn?"

"We'll figure it out. Just like you and I will figure this out."

Avocato lifted his glass, then set it back down, defeated. "Gary, the Lord Commander can never learn about this. Even if nothing comes of it, he can never find out we're . . . we're . . ." He made a face of disbelief, and finally choked out, "We're married?"

Gary fought to keep from laughing. There was no denying Avocato's week was probably his weirdest on record. Today alone had been the mother of all emotional roller coasters.

"We don't have to be if you don't want to be."

That gave the general pause, and he stared at Gary for a long and thoughtful moment, weighing such an offer. Gary wondered if divorce came as easily as marriage on Ventrexia, and if that was going to be the next topic of discussion. He really didn't want it to be. In the few minutes that he'd discovered he'd been married, he'd really grown to like the idea that he was with Avocato and that there were two of them to face the universe together. It was remarkably comforting and reassuring.

"No," Avocato finally said. "If I accepted your promise, I had good cause to do so. I won't second guess myself."

Gary kept his sigh of relief to himself. He could depend on Avocato to refuse to back down. Such self-confidence was impressive, and one of the things Gary . . . loved about Avocato. Avocato braced himself, then gulped the contents of his cup. Gary followed suit.

"But I'm completely serious. The Lord Commander cannot get this information. He would –"

"Use me to control you?"

"No. He would destroy you. Don't forget, I'm part of his collection. He won't tolerate me being in a relationship he hasn't approved and from what you tell me . . . "

"I'll never be the Cosmic Turd's favorite. I get it. I promise, Cato, he'll never hear about us from me."

Suddenly Avocato stiffened. "Have we ever . . . ?"

"Slept together? Often, as a matter of fact. On the Galaxy 1, after the surgery on my arm, you slept in my bed with me to keep an eye on me. You kinda insisted. I guess that was our wedding night. After that, you did it because I asked you to. You were the first living being I mingled with in five years. I needed the companionship. Badly. Like, really – okay, I was desperate. I guess it just became normal for us."

"And did we . . . ?"

"No," Gary said, amused by his companion's relief and reluctance to talk about sex. This younger version was definitely a lot more uptight than his older counterpart. He poured the next round and could not resist clicking his glass against Avocato's as he added, "But if you ever want to give it a go, I'm game."

The pissy, hissy, off-putting, growling, snapping glare he got in reply from the man in uniform was the hottest thing Gary Goodspeed had seen since Quinn Airgon had wound up to punch his lights out, and substantially less painful. It made the whole episode worth it.