Track Thirteen: “Kiss”
They had left a note.
Alfie had written it, at four in the morning, on a piece of proper paper with a proper stylus so nobody could accuse them of doing it by comm and being tracked. Gone for the day. Back for dinner. Do not send a rescue party. He had signed both their names, put it on the villa kitchen counter with a bowl on top so it would not blow away, and slipped out with Jordan into the dark before anyone else in the house was up.
The hired sailboat was small and single-masted, belonging to a woman down at the harbour who had asked no questions and given them a chart and a wink. The island she had marked on the chart was uncharted on any official map. A speck of sand and palm and low rocky headland, an hour and a half out beyond the reef, in water so blue it did not look real. Nobody would find them there. That was the point.
They landed the boat on the sand, hauled it up above the tideline, and stood on the beach in the early sun and looked at each other.
The island was tiny. A hundred paces across at its widest, maybe. A crescent of sand so white it hurt the eye, curving around a lagoon of shallow water so calm and clear it barely counted as water at all. A dozen tall thin palms leaning inward, or the Colludian equivalent of palms, with leaves like open hands and small red seed pods hanging in clusters. A low rocky headland at the far end, dark against the sky. No animals. No birds. No footprints but their own. Just the small sound of the water lapping and the wind moving through the palms.
“Ours,” Jordan said.
“Ours,” Alfie agreed.
Then Jordan kissed him, standing barefoot in the wet sand with the sail cracking gently behind them, and it was the first proper kiss of the day, and neither of them was in any particular hurry to end it.
They set up under one of the palms with a blanket, a picnic hamper, a pop-up shelter they had found on the boat, and a small speaker playing some of Warp 5 Forward’s music. Alfie stretched out on the blanket in his swim shorts and put his hands behind his head and closed his eyes. Jordan sat cross-legged beside him in his own shorts and sunglasses, reaching into the hamper for the tube of sunblock.
“Turn over,” he said. “You are going to burn.”
“I am not going to burn.”
“You always burn, Alfie. Every beach. Turn over.”
Alfie turned over.
Jordan warmed the sunblock between his palms first, which was one of the many small considerate things about him that Alfie had never quite got used to, and then set his hands on Alfie’s shoulders and worked outwards, slowly. Not hurried. Not perfunctory. The whole width of Alfie’s back under two warm palms, thumbs tracing the muscle at either side of his spine, pressure just heavy enough to be a proper massage.
Alfie made a small noise into the blanket.
“Good?”
“Very good.”
“Right. Talk to me. It stops you falling asleep, and I have questions.”
“Questions.”
“Well, actually observations which will lead to questions. Beatrice thinks something is going on between Scott and Parker.”
“Mm.”
“She has thought it for three days. I have thought it for two. Have you clocked them at dinner?”
“I have clocked them at dinner,” Alfie mumbled. “If there is something there, then they are being quiet about it.”
“Extremely quiet. Which is either because there is nothing to be quiet about, or because they are being careful. Which do you think?”
“Careful.” Jordan’s thumb pressed just under Alfie’s shoulder blade, and Alfie let out a slow breath. “They went to that country bar together the other night and came back late. Parker has been reading in the shade with a small smile for two days. Scott has stopped looking tired. Perhaps our future alternative slash parallel universe husbands-to-be will get together instead?”
“Careful,” Jordan agreed. He moved down to the small of Alfie’s back and worked around it, and Alfie made another small noise. “Do they remind you of anyone?”
“If there is something there, then us. At the waterfall.”
“Us at the waterfall. Only with fewer people getting pushed into it, apparently.”
“Poor Parker.”
“Parker would push Scott into a waterfall. Parker is quiet, not passive.”
“Fair.” Alfie half-turned his head. “And Henri and Maya? Are they like us?”
Jordan’s hands worked slowly across Alfie’s shoulders. “Henri and Maya are us, at a point. About a year in. When we had stopped pretending to be friends and started pretending we were not serious. That specific stage.”
“Yes.”
“Maya has already worked out she is going to marry Henri. Henri has not worked out that Maya has worked it out. It is going to be a two-year proposal build-up.”
“At least two years.”
“He is going to plan every detail of it to the minute.”
“He is absolutely going to do that” Alfie was smiling now, into the blanket. “And Harren and Luris?”
“Harren and Luris,” Jordan said, thoughtful, “are us at the very beginning. Secret. Hidden. Terrified of anyone finding out. Back when we used to enjoy spending time in each other’s bedrooms before we got transferred to the Astra. Pretending we were studying. Kissing in stairwells.”
“We never kissed in stairwells, Jord.”
“We kissed in a Jefferies tube on the Odyssey precisely twice, once behind the replicator in your parents’ quarters, once in a turbolift while your father was on the same deck, and once, memorably, in the Telemachus’s captain’s ready room while your mother was in the corridor. Do not correct my sample size.”
“I stand corrected.”
“So Harren and Luris are us before anyone else knew. Only with worse luck, when they go hydro-sailing, they have the press following them.”
Jordan finished the shoulders. He put a small extra kiss on the back of Alfie’s neck, screwed the cap back on the sunblock, and said, in the specific voice of a man declaring victory, “Turn over. My turn.”
Alfie turned over. Jordan handed him the tube. Alfie warmed it in his hands the same way he had watched Jordan do it, sat astride his fiancé’s waist, and set about returning the favour with equal thoroughness.
Jordan closed his eyes and did not talk for a while, which Alfie decided was fine.
Later, they swam.
The lagoon was as warm as bathwater and shallow for a long, long way out, and Alfie waded until it was chest-deep and then dived under and came up to find Jordan standing three feet behind him, grinning.
“No, Jord,” Alfie said.
“Yes, Alf.”
Jordan cupped a hand and sent a wall of water into Alfie’s face. Alfie retaliated with an entirely unfair full-body splash that soaked Jordan from hair to shorts, and for a good long minute they were nine-year-olds again, laughing and splashing and diving under each other’s legs in a lagoon on an island that belonged, that morning, entirely to them.
When they finally settled, floating on their backs, Alfie caught Jordan’s hand under the water and held it. “So, the wedding,” he said, to the sky.
“The wedding.” Alfie echoed, intrigued by what Jordan was going to say.
“I was thinking, we should do it on the Odyssey.”
“Yeah, I like that idea. The Odyssey is where we grew up and had our first date.”
“We should have the ceremony and reception in the Auditorium and perhaps ask Captain Niro to officiate.”
“The captain would love that. He would take it deadly seriously. He would deliver the ceremony perfectly. And it means our parents get to enjoy it. All four of them. Any of them could officiate. Dad certainly could. Mom too. Your dads either of them. And they would be honoured to do it, all four, if we asked. But I do not want to ask. I want them to be parents on the day. Not our superiors.”
“Yes, agreed.”
“We should ask Beatrice to be our joint best woman,” Alfie suggested.
Jordan somewhat nodded in agreement while in the water. “Because she would never forgive us if we didn’t ask her. And because she belongs to both of us equally.”
“Theo and Henri as my joint best men.”
“And Will as mine.” Jordan squeezed his hand back. “Beatrice paired with Will walking down the aisle. Beatrice holding my ring, Will holding yours. Which is the only sensible arrangement, because Theo and Henri cannot be trusted with actual jewellery.”
“They cannot.”
“Athena paired with Theo. Lillia paired with Henri. Which will delight Theo and horrify Henri, because Lillia is a foot taller than him.”
“Perfect.” Alfie agreed.
“Scott, Parker, Jameel, Brook and Jib as ushers and Starfleet honour guard. Full dress. The whole cohort behind them as guests.” Jordan stated.
“All on the Odyssey.”
“All on Odyssey. It is home in every direction.” Jordan tilted his head sideways in the water to look at Alfie. “Both of your parents walking you in. Both of my dads walking me in. Symmetrical.”
“So when do we do it?” Alfie asked, all smiles.
“Next summer. After we graduate, I want a pip on my collar when I say the words.”
“Agreed. Next summer.”
“That gives you a year to lose your nerve.”
“You have not lost your nerve for anything in your life, Alfie Thomas.”
“Not on this one, I have not,” Alfie said. He rolled slightly in the water and kissed him, salt on both their mouths.
“The reception.”
“Theo sings,” Jordan suggested.
“Theo sings.”
“Not a question. Theo sang at my dads’ wedding, unaccompanied at the toasts, and made Tobias cry into a napkin. He has been the family wedding singer for as long as any of us have known him. He would be personally hurt if we did not ask.”
“So we ask him,” Alfie stated.
“And the rest of the boys?” Jordan checked.
“Not officially. But Theo, being Theo, will invite them as personal guests, and at some point in the evening two or three of them will end up on the stage with him, and that will be a family thing, not a Warp Five Forward thing.”
“Exactly how it will happen.”
“Exactly.” Jordan kissed him again. “Which songs, Theo will decide. He will not tell us. He will plan the whole set list eight weeks in advance and refuse to share it. He will destroy the room at the toasts.”
“He will destroy the room.”
They floated for a while longer, hands still linked. The two moons were up now, faint against the blue sky.
Somewhere above them, a wisp of high clouds crossed the sun.
Lunch happened on the blanket in the shade, sitting cross-legged facing each other, eating cold flatbread and slices of something Colludian that tasted mostly of pear with their fingers.
“What about our postings?” Alfie asked, around a mouthful.
“I have been avoiding the conversation.”
“I know. We are having it now.” Alfie said somewhat firmly.
“Fine.” Jordan tore off another piece of flatbread. “I want the same ship as you. Straight out of graduation. First tour. Together.”
“So do I.”
“We put it in writing. Jointly. Signed. We send it up through to your dad’s office.”
“He is not going to interfere.”
“He does not need to interfere. He just needs not to veto it.”
“He will not veto it.”
“Good.” Jordan looked at him. “And what if the posting we are offered has only room for one of us?”
“We say no.”
“Alfie.”
“I mean it. We say no. We wait for the next one. There will always be another posting. There will not always be us.”
Jordan looked at him for a long moment, then leaned across the food, put his flatbread down, and kissed him properly.
“Alright,” he said. “Yes. Alright.”
“Which of them,” Alfie said, sitting back, “are we going to turn out like?”
“Which of who?”
“Our parents.”
“Oh.” Jordan considered a slice of the pear-thing. “I am going to be like my dad, Tobias. Obviously.”
“Obviously.”
“In charge of the day-to-day. First officer track. Knows every crewmember by name. Runs the ship. Not a strategist. Not a flag officer. I am not doing what your dad does.”
“No.”
“And you are your Dad. Big ship command. Emotional about the crew. Terrible at delegating. Cries at weddings.”
“I do not cry at weddings.”
“You already cry at weddings.”
“I do not.”
“You will at ours,” Jordan remarked. “Which means I am proposing to serve under a captain who cries at weddings.”
“You are proposing to serve alongside me and let me take the meetings. You have been proposing that for a year.”
“Deal.”
“Deal.”
They ate the rest of the flatbread in a comfortable silence, and then Alfie, without saying anything, leaned over and put a small piece of the pear-thing into Jordan’s mouth, and Jordan let him, and neither of them said anything about it because it was not the sort of thing that needed saying.
After lunch, Alfie went to the boat and came back with a small orange ball, which he tossed into the sand at Jordan’s feet.
“Up.”
“Alfie,” Jordan whined.
“Up. I have been sitting for two hours. I will fall asleep if we do not move.”
Jordan groaned but got up. They kicked the ball back and forth across the sand between two palm trees they nominated as goals, barefoot, no rules, no keeping score. Jordan was faster. Alfie was better at reading the ball.
They were, roughly speaking, evenly matched, which they had known since they were fifteen, and neither of them had ever seen any reason to test properly.
“Theo,” Alfie said, chesting a pass down.
“Mm.”
“He is going to be fine on stage.”
“He is going to be extraordinary on stage. He is always extraordinary on stage.”
“The parents landing in a few days.”
“A few days.” Jordan retrieved the ball from behind his palm. “Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Mostly. My folks would have finished their final debriefings with Starfleet Command and your dads are travelling in with them. All four of them in one place for a week. It is going to be a lot. But it is a good lot.”
“Good.” Jordan booted the ball back. “And Theo.”
“Theo is fine. Genuinely. He said so at the pool, and I believed him. He is enjoying being single; management prefers it; his brothers are both settled; and he gets to watch it and be part of it. He is content. He said so out loud, and Theo does not say things like that out loud unless he means them.”
“No.”
“Someone will come along for him when the time is right. He believes that. So do I.”
They played for a while longer, and then Jordan collected the ball, sat down in the sand with his knees up, and looked at Alfie.
“Children.”
Alfie sat down opposite him. “Whose children? Ours?”
“Yes.”
“What about them?”
“I want at least two,” Jordan said, as if it were a fact he had established years ago. “Not right away. Not until we are settled and both of us have a few years’ service under our belts, and we know what we are doing. But yes. Two. Maybe three. Maybe four.”
“Named after nobody in either of our families.”
“Agreed. I don’t want them named after nobody in either of our families. I refuse to raise a small Max or Tobias.”
“That is fair.”
“I am serious.”
“I know you are serious.” Alfie reached across the sand and took his hand. “Two or three or four children. With you. On a ship. Both of us in Starfleet. Both of us home in the evenings.”
“Both of us at every school play.”
“Every one.”
“You crying at every one.”
“Every one.”
Jordan leaned across and kissed him again, sand on both their hands, and they stayed like that for a long minute with the ball forgotten between them.
The sun started to lower.
They gathered driftwood along the tideline, a piece each, then two, then an armful between them, and built a fire ring on the sand above the tideline where the pale grasses ended. Alfie stacked the wood the way his dad had taught him, small pieces underneath, larger above, a small hollow at the base for the flint spark. Jordan replicated a firestarter from the boat’s kit, and between them, in the warm blue light of the two moons rising and the low sun, they got a fire going.
They sat side by side on the blanket, Jordan pulling a light blanket around both of their shoulders, and watched the flames catch.
“I am going to miss this,” Alfie said quietly.
“What?”
“This. Just the two of us. On a beach. With nobody watching. In a few days’ time we are back to being Alfie and Jordan in front of everyone. I do not mind it. I love my family. But this,” he gestured at the sand, the sea, the two of them, “this is the one I want to keep. This is what marriage is going to be, mostly. Not the ceremony. The two of us finding a beach.”
“Then we will find one, every year. On the anniversary. Whichever ship we are on. We will find a shore leave and a beach, and we will do this again.”
“Deal.”
“Deal.”
Jordan pulled him closer against his side under the blanket. Alfie leaned his head on his shoulder. Neither of them said anything for a long time. The fire cracked once, softly, and settled.
Then Alfie turned in and kissed him.
Jordan kissed him back and did not stop for a long time.
When they broke, only briefly, Alfie put his forehead against Jordan’s and breathed him in.
“This is perfect,” he whispered. “All of it. You. Me. This island. The boat. The wedding. The life we’re going to have. The children we will raise together. All of it.”
“Alfie.”
“I love you, Jord. I love you so much I do not have language for it half the time. I cannot wait to spend the rest of my life with you. Not one day of it. I want all of them. Every single one. I want to wake up next to you on a ship every morning until we are old and grey and Theo is still calling us to complain about something.”
“Alfie.”
“I mean it. I love you.”
“I know you love me.” Jordan’s hand slid up the back of Alfie’s neck and into his hair. “I love you too. Come here.”
He kissed him again, deeper this time, and Alfie let out a small sound into it that Jordan filed away for later. The blanket slid down off their shoulders. Alfie ended up half in Jordan’s lap, Jordan’s hands sliding down his bare back and settling low, and for a while there was no talking at all, only the sound of the fire and the sea and their own breathing.
“Jord,” Alfie said, eventually, muffled against Jordan’s neck, “I meant every word of that. Every single word. I want you to know that.”
Jordan laughed, low, into Alfie’s ear.
“Alfie.”
“Yes.”
“What did I tell you the other morning?”
“Hmm?”
“About what happens when I get into the mood.”
“Ah.”
“You talk too much.” Jordan turned his head and kissed the corner of Alfie’s mouth. “Stop talking. I know. I know all of it. I feel all of it. I want all of it back. But I would like you, right now, on this blanket, on this beach, in the light of that fire, to stop using words for a while and just kiss me.”
Alfie stopped using words, smiled and kissed Jordan.
The tide came in slowly around them, and the fire burned down to embers, and the two moons climbed the sky, and neither of them noticed any of it for a good long time.
They sailed back in the last of the light.
Alfie steered. Jordan sat at the bow and watched the moons on the water and, quietly and without turning round, sang under his breath a song from the Warp 5 Forward album he had somehow ended up learning most of the lyrics to over the last few days, presumably because a certain brother-in-law to be had been playing it around the villa. Alfie caught the song, smiled, and did not join in.
The villa lights came into view as they rounded the reef.
Alfie brought the boat in.
Jordan hopped down onto the jetty and reached up a hand. “Ready?”
Alfie took his hand. “Ready.”
They walked up the path to the villa together hand-in-hand. As they approached the first step, Alfie stopped and kissed Jordan one more time.
