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“Sazahk.”
Sazahk’s breath caught at the sound of his own name murmured in Garin’s soft, fervent voice. Garin’s hand appeared in Sazahk’s periphery and slowly, giving ample opening for Sazahk to push it away, reached toward him and hooked a finger under Sazahk’s chin.
Garin lifted Sazahk’s gaze to meet his. “I don’t think you’re excess.”
Sazahk licked his lips. “You are the eldest Human child of four. You have very different sensibilities about what constitutes an acceptable family size.”
“I think this galaxy would be worse off without you in it, no matter what the rules of responsible family planning say.” Garin’s eyes flickered to Sazahk’s lips before staring into his eyes again. “And I, personally, am glad that you were born.”
An alarming heat built in Sazahk’s eyes. He tried to blink it away, but it spread down the back of his throat into a space behind his heart. Garin’s words touched a hurt in Sazahk’s psyche, and like pouring alcohol on an open wound, pain lanced through him and he wanted to cry out even though he knew the wound was being healed instead of exacerbated.
“Will you come here again?” Garin’s hand in Sazahk’s lap caught Sazahk’s fingers and gave him an inviting tug.
Sazahk ducked his head and slid into his spot against Garin’s side, tucked under his arm. He wrapped his arms around Garin’s midsection and buried his nose in the hollow where Garin’s shoulder met his chest, hiding his face.
“There you go.” Garin closed his arms around Sazahk, not holding him down or penning him in, just blocking out the rest of the world.
Sazahk inhaled deeply and cringed when his breath shook. He knew there were other people who were glad he’d been born. He had done a lot of good for a lot of people in his life. There were plenty of individuals who, were they to balance the cons of his existence in their lived experience and the pros of his existence, would find the pros more substantial. And yet…
“I’m glad you were born, and I’m glad I met you.” Garin rubbed his cheek against the top of Sazahk’s head.
And yet to hear the words snapped something inside of him like a bone being rebroken so it could be reset.
It hurt.
For several long minutes, they sat in their blankets, surrounded by glowing mushrooms, while Fauna A rustled about their little camp. Garin kept stroking him, with his cheek against the crown of his head, with his thumbs, or with his hand over his hair. In their ears still echoed the laughter and bright conversation of a party neither of them had attended.
Eventually, Sazahk turned his face out of Garin’s shirt to keep watching the screen.
Not every Human sibling relationship was positive and loving. Dominic and Oliver Turner were arguably greater sources of each other’s trauma than their father, though Sazahk still suspected it all wrapped around to him and their mother once all was said and done.
But the Garin siblings looked like a billboard advertisement for family harmony. They smiled at each other, helped each other, teased each other, defended each other. Their postures were loose and relaxed, their movements easy and casual. No one scowled at anyone in anything other than playfulness.
Ethan crammed his face into the camera’s view with a half-eaten slice of cake. “Thanks for the cake, Kevin!”
Lucas yelled from out of sight. “Yeah, thanks Kev! And thanks for the tablets, too!”
Sazahk cocked his head at the sudden realization that should have been obvious but felt surprising. “Does your family call you Kevin?”
“Yeah.” Garin nodded, his cheek still resting on Sazahk’s head. “They’re the only ones that do, though. I don’t even think of myself as Kevin anymore.”
“What do you think of yourself as?”
“Garin.”
“Why?”
Garin shrugged, jostling Sazahk in his arms as he did. “That’s what they called me at the academy. It’s what my Vanguard buddies called me. It’s what my civilian colleagues call me.”
“You didn’t want your friends to call you Kevin?” Or your lovers? But Sazahk kept that question to himself.
“No.” Garin played with Sazahk’s braid again. “I guess when I left home, and I became Garin, I kind of…became my own person again. Kevin has so many responsibilities and so much pressure and my family needs so much from him all the time. Garin…has a little more space for himself, if that makes sense.”
“It does.” Sazahk nodded. “Families can be smothering. Even the ones that love you.”
Chapter Nine
Normal subconscious behavior.
