Home Stretch

There’s something people like to say when journeys near their end: that they’ve reached the “home stretch”. Usually, this is the part of a journey where people start to get comfortable because they’ve almost made it back home.

Jaxon Doryen was far more familiar with heartbreak than comfort.

He was good friends with the demons that lurked in the back of his mind—and he’d become late-night drinking buddies with his sorrow and his anger. Not the kind of drinking buddies that encouraged you to pace yourself or held your hair out of the way while you tossed your guts into the toilet at the dingy bar. They were more the kind to keep egging you on to drink more, to drown your thoughts and soak your liver.

Even through this whirlwind of inner demons and dark thoughts, one singular light shone through. Like the stars that glimmered beyond the warships that seemed to be permanently parked above the atmosphere of every planet in this system, one little spark of hope remained. That spark was his guiding light for four long and grueling years; the hope that one day, his love would return to him.

“I can hear you thinking over there, Sunspot.”

The parched, gravelly voice cut through Jaxon’s thoughts. His tired brown eyes were finally brought back to the present and caught Micah just as he was looking over his shoulder at him from the pilot’s seat. The engine of the stolen ship that carried them through the nameless battle raging between the two nearest planets was a pleasant, quiet hum underneath. Jaxon brushed a lock of dark hair out of his own face as he straightened his back and offered his husband a tired smile.

“You sure you’re fine to fly, my love?” He asked.

There it was, that cocky, crooked smile that reeled him in, the same one Micah had put on when he asked Jaxon to marry him. Even if that smile was marred by cracked lips, dried blood, and a purple bruise, it was just as enchanting. “You found me. You’ve done enough. My turn to take care of you.”

Micah might not have been the most eloquent person in the galaxy. He was brash, he was loud—a former fighter pilot. Eyes like burning blue nebulas, hair a light, ashy blonde, and skin kissed bronze by the sun; albeit rough, he was beautiful. He wasn’t perfect, but he was undeniably and remarkably his. Underneath that rough exterior was a heart capable of loving and nurturing more than any Jaxon had ever known. A faithful and loving husband, and a wonderful father to their two adopted children, Ryanne and Klio.

So, like all things that were right and beautiful in the universe, Micah had been taken away from him.

This bloody war started decades ago. Brother turned on brother, both sides couldn’t tell one from the other. Young faces that hadn’t yet seen twenty years wound up broken and blown apart and spattered with blood. It was always the same old story, and Jaxon couldn’t care less. Let those people tear themselves apart, he had what he wanted: a perfect little place in a small settlement on one of the outer dwarf planets. Beautiful indigo grass and silver trees with soft leaves the color of wine. Their house they built on their own, with the help of Micah’s brother. He could still hear their girls’ laughter echoing among the hills as they played with their family pet, a canid type of xenomorph that Ryanne had insisted on naming Pinkie.

All of that meant so much more than this war. Which is why, when word reached him that Micah had disappeared, Jaxon declared his own.

Four long years. Four years of excruciating heartbreak and dead ends; of worming his way through battles in his own private form of espionage. He missed his girls’ first day of school. Birthdays, holidays, all of it; he hadn’t known the joy and comfort of being at home with those he loved the most.

But the instant, the very second he came to look upon the face of his beloved once more, it was all worth it. His war was won.

Through his sobs, and as he took in the sight of Micah’s battered face, he was only able to whimper: “I found you, I found you, I found you.”

“Took you long enough, Sunspot,” was the reply. Micah’s voice had cracked, and his own joyful tears leaked out of eyes swollen like eggplants. Coming from anyone else, his words would’ve sounded bitter and angry. But in their depths, they held all the tender love that Jaxon always knew, like Micah’s own language.

Now came the home stretch. It was all finally over. Soon, they would be back home with their girls, and could ignore the war once more. He let himself rest.

He shouldn’t have.

He should have realized sooner. He should have known that something was wrong when they passed all kinds of ship debris before they made planetfall. Something should have struck him as odd when he could see the sun, but not the usual blue-purple tint of their home.

His boots never touched the indigo grass again, it was all dirt and weeds as they climbed out of the ship. The silver trees had been downed and blackened. Gaping craters in their beautiful rolling hills. And at the center of it all? A pile of ashen rubble, half sunken in what might’ve been mud at one point. Their family vehicle was still out front but had lost its luster and its windows.

Jaxon fell to his knees in front of the pile of rubble that used to be their front doorway. His devastated scream rang out for miles as he took in the sight of a tiny decaying hand, still clutching a half melted teddy bear.