Home [EthanxApollo]

“Just get home as soon as possible, okay?”

 

Ethan traced the counter with his thumb. The marble was cold. No matter how many times he washed it, the stains would never come off. That was his favorite part about this kitchen. The stains, each a little memory that would trigger when he stepped into the room. A little piece of the life he had once known could be relived. Cooking wasn’t as fun anymore. If Alistair wasn’t cooking for him, he’d be eating a microwavable meal. Why make more stains on the counter? He wanted to preserve it the way it was.

 

Ethan took a step back from the counter and let his eyes fall onto the stove. Barely used by him. Not anymore. He loved that thing. He could still hear Apollo’s excited voice on the other end of the phone. “Just get home as soon as possible, okay? I want to show you something, and no you don’t have to worry. It’s nothing bad.” Ethan had dropped what he was doing and headed home right away. He needed to see what had his husband so excited.

 

“It’s just a stove,” Ethan had once said. “What’s so exciting about it? Our old one was fine.”

 

“It gets hotter,” Apollo said. “Which will take us less time to make our food.”

 

“Oh, now I get it.” And Ethan had winked, as he was always doing to make Apollo flustered. “So then, we have time to makes things a bit hotter as well.”

 

Ethan smiled at the memory. He could see now that it wasn’t just a stove. It was something very important to him. He’d never replace it. He didn’t need anything hotter. What he needed was what he had always had in front of him. If it had ever went out, he’d be hesitant to get another. Because, he couldn’t replace Apollo. No one would be able to hold a candle to the sweet male.

 

He hoisted himself onto the dining table behind him and let his eyes wander the small kitchen. It had been only him and Apollo for a while after Jeff and Charlotte had moved in together. Now, it was only him and Alistair. Two people who should have been dead long ago, still holding on to what Alistair believed was a blessing, and he a curse. Immortality in the face of time. Because as the years would go by, things would become updated, and he’d still be the same man looking at the same stove, thinking the same things, of the same man.