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Jimmy and Keegan picked up either end of the long, bulky couch while Skizz stood in the front doorway, directing traffic as friends helped bring boxes back and forth.
Could Jimmy pick up the couch alone no problem? Yes. But it was difficult to move when held alone.
Tango stood near the moving truck, looking at a spreadsheet on his phone of everything they packed and where it all was going. Martyn hauled a box labeled Kitchen in Tango’s messy writing out of the back of the truck and started heading toward the open garage door. Tango marked off one of the kitchen boxes on the spreadsheet.
Aurora rested her elbow on Tango’s shoulder and leaned on it. “Sooo,” she said with a grin. “You excited?”
Tango took a deep breath and sighed. “I haven’t lived in a house since I was seventeen,” he said. “I went to the dorms at the university, and then directly to an apartment of my own when I graduated. I’ve been in apartments ever since.” He gave her hand dangling off his shoulder a squeeze. “I never minded it. A small life. I didn’t have to handle any repairs or pay for them. I honestly didn’t spend much time in my apartment before me and Jimmy moved in together. I was always out doing stuff. The apartment was basically just there for bed and storing food and clothes. And then Jimmy and I got together and home started to sound more appealing.”
Aurora leaned harder against Tango’s side. “And then you got outed,” she said quietly. No one else was nearby at the moment. Everyone here knew the truth, but for the sake of the neighbors, Tango was Mike Waltz and his husband was definitely not Sheriff.
“Yeah,” Tango agreed, keeping his own voice down. “And then I left. And then I came home. And in those early days it was just safer for me to live in Doc’s old lair.”
“Sounds lonely.”
“It was. I missed Jimmy. I missed the cats. Mostly Jimmy.” Tango smiled at that, then his face fell. “But I had promises to keep to the city. I said I was going to be an S-Tier villain and I had to follow through with that. I made Deepfrost my full-time job and I delivered on it. Maintaining that snow for two months wasn’t easy when I was using my powers for other things too, but I did it. And… slowly, I established my fake identity. Jimmy and I got married with that fake name, but we still lived separate. I visited as often as I could but… geez, Rora, it was awful.”
“Oh I can imagine. If Keeg and I weren’t able to live together when we were married, I’d be devastated.” Her eyes were fixed on where their husbands were trying to get the sofa through the front door of the house with Skizz shouting Pivot! over and over. “He’s my best friend. We moved so many times in the first few years of our marriage. But the fact that he and I were always together made it bearable.” She smiled softly. “Home isn’t a place, it’s a person. Isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Tango agreed.
“When you and Jimmy weren’t living together, you were away from your home. He’s your home, isn’t he?”
“Yeah.”
“So of course it was awful.”
“Mmhmm.” Tango nodded. “And finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore. So we finally started looking for a house out in the suburbs. So that we could live together and no one would know us, here. Out here, away from the city center, the neighbors won’t know anything.” He leaned back against Aurora’s weight on his side, balancing them out a little. “And, hey, with our own space now, you don’t have to host DnD at the shop anymore.”
“I think Skizz would never speak to me again if we stopped hosting DnD at the shop,” Aurora said.
“Yeah, but it would open up a table so Skizz could get more patronage.”
“Sure, but you and I both know that’s not what Skizz cares about when he has DnD nights.”
“Good point.” Tango nodded thoughtfully.
Uncle Stephen approached, carrying a big box. “This one doesn’t have a label. Where do you want it?” he asked.
Tango looked down at his spreadsheet. Unlabelled… Probably had some of his backup gear in it. “Stick it in the garage on a high shelf. We’ll sort it out later,” Tango said.
“Got it.” Stephen nodded and headed for the garage.
Tango looked down at Aurora. “You aren’t helping,” he teased.
“I’m keeping you company,” she said. “That’s helping.”
“You also limped over to me,” he remarked. “Your knee giving you trouble again?”
She looked up at the sky and shrugged. “It’s the impending rain. My knee always hurts when it’s about to rain. But I wasn’t gonna send Keegan here on his own. Even if I just took the role of supervisor and coordinator and traffic control. Although at the moment Skizz has that covered.”
They both watched Skizz direct friends with boxes by dancing, snickering.
“I wish I had my camera out right now,” Aurora said.
Tango swapped from his spreadsheet open on his phone to his camera. He managed to catch a few seconds of video before Skizz stopped dancing to be traffic control, spinning his arms around and supplying his own beat with his mouth. He sent the video to Aurora, both of them snickering. “Does that suffice?” Tango asked sarcastically.
“Yes,” she replied with a bright grin.
Jimmy jogged over, effortlessly hauling up another box from the pile of boxes that weren’t in the moving truck at the moment. He smiled lovingly at Tango and took the box inside. Keegan followed afterward, making a kissy face at his wife as he also picked up a box and took it inside.
Tango looked down at Aurora. “I’m glad you found an affectionate husband,” he said.
“Me too. And I’m glad yours is just as loving as mine.”
“Me too.”
A couple approached, coming up the sidewalk. “Hi there,” the woman said. She was probably older than Tango by a handful of years.
“Hi,” Tango greeted.
“You the one moving in?” the man asked.
“I am. Me and my husband,” Tango said, gesturing to where Jimmy had taken a moment to playfully shadowbox with Martyn. “The darker blond of those two.”
“Well. I’m Elise. This is my boyfriend Aiden. We’re just next-door.”
“I’m Mike. That’s Jimmy,” Tango said. It still sounded so bizarre to him to call himself Mike. That was still so fake.
Jimmy jogged back over, slinging an easy arm over Tango’s shoulders. “Everything good, babe?” he asked, kissing the side of Tango’s faux-hawk.
“Yeah! Everything’s great! Jimmy, meet our neighbors. Elise and Aiden,” Tango said. Though he felt their names drain out of his brain the second he said them out loud to someone else. “Elise, Aiden, this is Jimmy. My husband.” Jimmy’s arm tightened around Tango’s shoulders affectionately.
“Well! Howdy! Nice to meet you!” Jimmy said with a smile. He offered his other hand in greeting, shaking Aiden’s hand, then Elise’s. “Like he said, I’m Jimmy. Or Jim, if you prefer.” He brushed his hair out of his face.
“Well, we’re excited to have you in the neighborhood,” Elise said. “If you ever need anything, let us know.”
“Same here,” Jimmy said. “I’m pretty good at lifting some things around. So, y’know. New appliances or anything—just let me know.”
Inside, noise rose as Gem and Pearl started to argue about something. Tango glanced toward the house and shook his head. “I should go handle that. You take it easy,” he said to Aurora. Then turned to the neighbors. “Nice to meet you both.”
“You too!”
He slipped out from under Jimmy’s arm on his shoulder and rushed inside. “Gem? Pearl?” he called.
—
Jimmy set his fists on his hips, looking around. The house was remarkably put together for just one day of having help. The last of their friends and family had finally gone home—Tango’s Uncle Stephen and his daughters, Gem and Pearl, along with Jimmy’s parents—leaving just Tango and Jimmy, alone in their house.
For how put together the house was, it also still felt a little empty and lifeless. He blamed the boxes.
Tango ticked off the last few things on his spreadsheet and shoved his phone in his pocket. “Yeah. We really did get everything,” he announced. Jimmy held one arm out. Tango tucked himself against Jimmy’s side and let Jimmy wrap that arm around him. He kissed Tango’s hair. “Looks like Gem, Pearl, and Aurora wasted no time in getting some of the art on the walls.” He smiled.
“Yeah,” Jimmy said with a smile. “I asked them if they’d be willing to break out the command hooks and the art boxes.” He turned a smile in Tango’s direction. “Aurora found the painting I did of Deepfrost’s hair in the sun. The mountain peak.”
“Oh yeah?”
“She hung it in your office. Along with the wheat field.”
Tango snickered. “She knows me too well,” he muttered. “Did she ask you if that was where I wanted those hung?”
“No, she just realized what they were and figured you’d want them somewhere private and special.”
Tango burrowed against Jimmy’s side. “Well. She was correct. My gifts from you.”
Jimmy kissed his hair. “You look tired.”
“We can’t all be you, cowboy. Not all of us manifested with superhuman endurance. Some of us have to have normal human levels of athleticism. We get tired sometimes.”
“Let’s rest. We can unpack more in the coming days.” Jimmy bent down and scooped Tango up. Tango chirped in surprise and then smiled, leaning his head against Jimmy’s shoulder. Jimmy carried him upstairs to their bedroom. The bedframe had already been built back up—thanks to Uncle Stephen, probably—and the mattress, bedsheets, and covers had been put on. Jimmy set Tango gently on the mattress. “Time for bed?”
Tango arched a brow. “Do you mean bed-bed? Orrrrr… beeed?” He smirked cheekily.
Jimmy turned a bit red under his freckles and set his glasses on the box on the bedside table. “Whichever you want. You really wanna break in the new house? I thought you were tired.”
“I always have energy for spending a couple hours in bed with my husband.”
Jimmy thought for a moment. Then smiled. “Then I won’t refuse.” He crawled over the bed and lowered Tango down onto it with a long, luxurious kiss.
—
“What are you wearing?” Jimmy asked in confusion as Tango strolled into the kitchen.
Tango looked down. Brown cargo pants and a black running jacket with a high collar and leather fingerless gloves, shorter than the ones he used as Deepfrost, with some old combat boots. “My costume?”
“But that’s all stuff from your closet.”
Tango arched a brow. “Why do you think I picked it?” He gestured to the dining table. “But I also gotta finish that part. But I need to do yours before everyone gets here.” He threw a bundle of fabric at Jimmy. “Put that on while I get my glasses ready.”
Jimmy changed in the kitchen. “What exactly are we going as again? You said it was a couple’s costume?”
“In a vague sense, yeah.” Tango picked up the large pair of flat red sunglasses that were a large visor rather than individual lenses and started applying red tape over about where his eyes would be.
“Why my junk shirt that I wear to mow the lawn?”
“That goes under the jumpsuit so the body paint doesn’t smear everywhere.”
“So I shouldn’t pull the jumpsuit all the way on?”
“Not yet.” Tango turned to see Jimmy basically ready. “Okay. I’m gonna paint you now.”
Jimmy, smiling, shook his head. “Tango, what is going on? What are these costumes?” he demanded, good-natured but confused.
“They’re from a book. It’s good,” Tango replied. He picked up a book, a tube of body paint, and a sponge from the dining table. He passed Jimmy the book first. “Here. Read it while I paint you.”
“Finality’s Fault, by Dr. A. Paracosm,” Jimmy read off the cover. “What’s it about?” He opened to the first couple pages and looked at the table of contents, noting the chapters and their titles.
“It’s a post-apocalypse story about survival and guilt and the stubbornness of human nature to keep going. While also exploring the nature of humanity and how far from humanity can someone be removed from it and still be considered human or a person.”
“Oh so nothing you relate to at all,” Jimmy remarked sarcastically as Tango started painting his arm.
“No, of course not,” Tango said, also sarcastic but blithe.
“But why am I being painted silver?” Jimmy asked.
“We’re going as the two main characters. I am the cyborg because I’m the shorter one and you are the android because you’re the taller one.”
“You’re making me a robot?!”
“Android,” Tango corrected. “There’s a difference.”
“I know there’s a difference but… why?”
“Because you’re taller and model LEA-Zero-Zero-Three is taller than the main character. Plus you look sexy in a jumpsuit and I already had everything the main character wears in my closet. Except the eyes.”
“Yeah. The eyes. What about them? What’s with the glasses?”
“Main dude doesn’t have eyes. He lost them when he came into contact with a presumably-fictional substance called ‘miasma’ that usually kills people if it targets their brain first. But if it targets something else first, they can probably survive. Main guy had his eyes targeted. So he’s got cameras in his eye sockets that are wired to his brain so he can see and has a red display visor over them to have sort of the appearance of eyes.”
“That’s… kinda freaky.”
“That’s just the beginning, cowboy,” Tango said. He was mostly done painting Jimmy’s forearm. “I think technically LEA-oh-oh-three has a long-sleeved jumpsuit on but I couldn’t find one that would fit you.”
“You liar,” Jimmy retorted, beaming and laughing. “You just want to show off my arms and make the paint worth it.” He flipped to the first page of chapter one of the book.
Tango squeezed Jimmy’s bicep. “Can you blame me?”
Jimmy thought for a moment. “Mm… no. I suppose not.” He scanned the first few lines of chapter one. “Has anyone else actually read this book or are we just gonna be the mystery costume to all our guests?”
“Aurora has. That’s her copy of the book.”
Jimmy peeked at the inside of the front cover. Sure enough From the Library of Aurora Knight was stamped to it. Like she did with all her books. “Do you only read books Aurora tells you to read? I swear every book you read or listen to was because of her telling you to read it.”
“No. I listen when she recommends things. She has good taste in books and she also knows what I like in media. This one is pretty hard science for science fiction and it scratches my itch for realistic sci-fi. Which is helpful when she basically shoved this book into my hands and told me to read it. And, in fairness to her, she was right. It’s really good and I like it a lot.” Tango chuckled. “The problem is now I notice every single time she pulls something from it for DnD.” He continued painting Jimmy’s other arm.
“This is a very big book. How much of it have you read?”
“All of it,” Tango said. “I read it mostly in one go while I was waiting for some Deepfrost stuff to pan out. Would’ve rather listened to it so I could multitask more but the audiobook’s not out yet. So I waited until I had a task that would require a long wait time and read most of it all at once.”
“How long did that take you?”
Tango shrugged. “Hours and hours. Worth it though. Good book.”
Jimmy kept reading chapter one while Tango painted him, but was forced to set the book down when both hands were covered in silver body paint. Tango moved to paint Jimmy’s neck and face. Jimmy, dutifully, held as still as he could.
Once his neck and head were silver, Tango dragged him out into the backyard and sprayed his hair silver too.
“There we go! Put the upper half of your jumpsuit on, and you’re ready!” Tango announced as the two of them went back inside.
Jimmy slid his black silicone wedding ring on. The one inaccuracy he and Tango were both allowing. Tango sat at the dining table and started putting the red tape on his visor in the appearance of LED eye displays. “I should’ve asked Doc to make a functional one,” Tango muttered as he stuck his tongue out in concentration as he smoothed some tape into place. He had some sort of dry erase marker on the visor to guide the eyes he was making.
“Yeah, and then you’d have to explain to our neighbors, who don’t know you’re Deepfrost, where you got a visor that can actually track your eyes and expression and change accordingly.”
Tango sucked the insides of his cheeks. “Fair enough,” he replied.
He finished taping the eyes on his visor, muttering about how he hoped he’d still be able to see through it well enough, and then started cleaning up. Jimmy’s paint-covered hands were finally dry enough that he could flip the pages on the book, reading it on the table gingerly to try not to stain the paper. Jimmy didn’t know Aurora particularly well compared to Tango, but he knew she was precious about her books.
Ding-dong!
Jimmy’s head snapped up toward the front door.
Tango looked toward it too. “I betcha ten bucks that’s Aurora and Keegan. That girl doesn’t know how to be anything less than on time, if not five minutes early,” he said. He dumped the roll of red tape, scissors, spray hair dye, and body paint in the kitchen’s junk drawer and went over to get the door.
“Hey!” Aurora greeted as the door swung open, Keegan standing right behind her. “We brought cookies, I hope that’s okay.” She displayed the tray in her arms, showing off a spread of chocolate chip and sugar cookies cut out like pumpkins and frosted orange, the whole thing ringed with Halloween Oreos as a black-and-orange border. She was holding the tray rather delicately, trying not to get it too close to the black, witchy outfit she was wearing.
“Of course cookies are okay!” Tango said. He took the tray from her. “Come on in!”
He led them inside. Aurora looked him up and down and then saw Jimmy waving from the archway between the living room and dining room.
“Oh! You two are dressed as the FinFault guys!” she said, sounding delighted.
“Yep. You can have your book back now,” Tango said. “I needed it longer for reference.”
“No she can’t,” Jimmy retorted. “I need to finish it now.”
Aurora burst out laughing. “Oh good. Glad it hooked you too,” she remarked. “Who else are we waiting for?”
“Everyone. You’re literally the first to arrive,” Tango said.
She laughed. “Okay. Put us to work, then. How can we help set up?”
Tango gestured around at the food already on the counter island and the decorations. “Nothing. We did it all.”
“Excited about hosting?”
Tango nodded. “Oh hell yeah.”
—
The party was in full swing, playing Jimmy’s Halloween playlist over a handful of Bluetooth speakers scattered throughout the main rooms. Tango and Jimmy got a lot of confused compliments on their costumes.
“I’m surprised there’s no alcohol,” one of the neighbors remarked to Tango while he was refilling his cup of soda.
“Neither Jimmy nor I drink,” he replied. Jimmy didn’t because his metabolism meant he couldn’t get drunk at all, and Tango didn’t because alcohol got him too drunk too fast where it clashed with his powers as a depressant hitting cold. “We honestly didn’t even think about it.”
The neighbor sipped from his cup of the homemade root beer Jimmy had insisted on making with dry ice to recapture his childhood. “That’s probably for the best,” he remarked. “Less money and you don’t have to worry about someone getting drunk and making a mess.”
On the ‘less money,’ Tango couldn’t help but scoff. “You seen the price of soda these days?” he muttered, high-pitched but sarcastic. The neighbor laughed. “But yeah. I think everyone can deal with a party that involves fun without alcohol. Forces everyone to have a personality and win people over with that, instead of being party animals. Always fun to watch.”
His Uncle Stephen stepped into the kitchen, dressed up like Mario with a pillow shoved down the front of his overalls, and jerked his head.
“Excuse me,” Tango said to his neighbor. He crossed over and followed his uncle out of the kitchen. They stole up the stairs and into Tango’s office on the second floor. Tango shut the door and clicked a button, engaging soundproofing around the room. Which Stephen had installed for him. He pulled his visor off. “What’s going on?”
“Sorry, kid. I didn’t want to drag you away from your party. But I just got an update about the thing we were working on together.” Stephen glanced around the room, not quite trusting their privacy. Old habits died hard.
Tango arched a brow. “Do we need to go? Right now?”
“It can wait till later. But it’s ready.”
“You wanna go right after the party?”
“I think that’d be best.”
Tango heaved a sigh, rubbing his eye. “Okay,” he said. “This is gonna be a long night.”
“Halloween party was your idea.”
“Shut up. I wanted Jimmy to be happy.” Tango flashed his wedding ring as though that was all the explanation he really needed to give. Which Stephen definitely understood.
“Let’s get back to it, then, before anyone realizes we’ve left and comes looking.”
Tango grunted and disengaged the soundproofing. “By the way,” he began sarcastically, “I can’t believe you’re pretending to have a gut.” He poked the pillow under the overalls.
Stephen laughed. “Accuracy is important. I don’t even know who you’re supposed to be.”
“Character from a book. Jimmy’s dressed as the other lead.”
“Who I assume is a robot.”
“Android.”
“Right, of course.”
They trotted downstairs and split up. Tango found Jimmy and tucked himself under his arm. “Hey,” he said softly. “I gotta jet right after the party’s over. Work thing came up.”
Jimmy looked down at him with a sigh. “Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. I’ll clean up while you’re gone.”
“What? No. Babe, you should go to bed. I might be gone all night—”
Jimmy pulled him away from some guests as he protested. “Absolutely not,” he replied, dropping his voice. “Because you are going to join me in the shower and help me get all this freaking body paint off. And we’re going to make a night of it.” He gave Tango a mischievous smile.
And Tango couldn’t help but giggle. “If you insist,” he whispered. He kissed his fingertips and pressed them to Jimmy’s mouth so he didn’t smudge the body paint. “Let’s make the most of the rest of it, then, yeah?”
“Come on. Come be social,” Jimmy agreed, pulling Tango back toward the guests.
Tango rolled his eyes, putting his visor back on. “Extrovert,” he accused playfully.