After that night, Alias began to be ’loved’ every night. Since the house was finished, there was not much to be done.

So they all began to plant vegetables in the spaces that were not occupied. Sometimes, Theo and Alias would brush shoulders, which would send a jolt down Alias’s spine as he always kept recalling the way Theo had touched him.

He would look at Theo’s lips and recall how they had been wrapped around his shaft.

At some point, his physical reactions moved from mere jolts and flinches to an actual erection.

In broad daylight, he would feel a tightness in his pants just from watching Theo flex his biceps and make eye contact with him.

At first, he thought there might be something wrong with him because Theo didn’t get hard this easily, but he was wrong. When he talked to Theo about it, Theo leaned in and took Alias’s hand, whispering in his ear,

"You’re not the only one whose body isn’t listening," then, he dropped Alias’s hand to the front of his pants, where his cock was just as hard, but only thoroughly hidden.

Alias flinched.

"You too, Theo?" He asked, surprised, his face flushed.

"Yes. There’s nothing wrong with us, okay? It’s just our bodies reacting because we love each other." He whispered and brushed his lips against Alias.

Alias responded, pushing his face forward and seeking the warmth of Theo’s lips when Maya called out.

"Lunch is ready," Alias flinched, ducking his head down, his face turning crimson.

He didn’t know why, but he was sure Maya should not be seeing them like this. His heart was racing, and Theo let out a small chuckle, planting a kiss on Alias’s forehead.

"We’ll deal with it after lunch." He whispered. "So try to take your mind off me for now."

Alias nodded.

For a week, the ’fairy tale’ held.

The domestic life they had built was a symphony of simple joys. Aside from learning how his body as a man functioned, Alias leaned into his humanity with a quiet, observant intensity.

He learned how to knead dough with Maya, his hands initially too gentle before Theo stepped behind him to guide the pressure.

He learned how to tend to the fruit trees, not just with divine intent, but with the physical labor of clearing away dead leaves.

And every night, the house was filled with the soft, grounding presence of love.

Theo was a man transformed, though the shadow of his lie remained tucked away in the dark corners of his mind.

He worked with a vigor he had never known in the slums, building fences for the animals and carving furniture for their rooms. Every time he looked up and saw Alias—his silver hair catching the light as he laughed with Maya—Theo felt a fierce, terrifying need to protect this peace at any cost.

But there was no such thing as a forgotten lie.

One afternoon, while the heat was shimmering off the sand in waves that usually distorted reality, Alias felt something—a flickering, fading pulse of life out beyond the ridge.

It felt like a bird with a broken wing, gasping against the vast, empty silence of the desert. But it was not a bird. This life did not have wings, and while it was only faint, he could feel their struggle.

What was it?

Alias looked back, but Theo and Maya were busy inside organizing the new kitchen.

It would only be for a quick moment. He needed to see what the slowly dying pulse he was feeling was.

And so, Alias stepped out into the desert. He followed the pull, his feet barely taming the hot dunes until he reached the slump of a small body nearly entirely covered in sand.

He turned the body over and saw that it was a boy.

The boy was tiny, his skin parched to the color of clay, but it was his face that made Alias’s breath hitch. He had the same strong brow as a certain someone he knew. The same stubborn set to his jaw, and even in his half-conscious state, the resemblance was uncanny.

Do all humans from the same region look this similar? Alias wondered, a strange, cold curiosity settling in his gut. But he didn’t dwell on it. He knelt, lifting the boy onto his back.

The child was as light as a feather, nothing but bone and desperate heat.

Alias didn’t have any grand plans, but he had no plans of leaving a dying child out in the scorching desert.

When Alias walked over the dune back toward the house, he saw Theo pacing near the entrance, his face a mask of frantic worry.

It was only when he saw Alias that his heart began to beat again.

"Alias! Where did you—" Theo stopped. His voice died in his throat as his eyes landed on the child slumped over Alias’s shoulder.

Alias walked forward and gently lowered the boy onto the grass by the water. "I found him in the sand." He said.

Theo didn’t move. He just stood there frozen, his axe dropping from his hand into the dirt with a dull thud.

As the water touched the boy’s lips, his eyes flickered open—a piercing, familiar set of blue eyes peered into the world.

He looked at the massive man standing over him, and a small, cracked voice whispered a single word.

"Papa?"

The boy didn’t say anything else. He shrank back, his eyes wide and fearful, crawling toward Alias’s legs as if seeking a shield.

He didn’t speak again, his mouth clamping shut in a hard line, his gaze darting around with a shy, haunted intensity. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

The silence that followed was suffocating. Alias looked from the boy’s face to Theo’s. The map of their features was identical. The same nose, the same curve of the ear. The ’data’ was undeniable.

"Theo," Alias said, his voice sounding unsure, as he felt a sharp, creeping coldness spreading from his chest to his fingertips that he could not understand. "Why did he call you that?"

Theo’s face had gone a sickly shade of grey. He looked like a man watching his executioner approach. He didn’t even know this child existed—he couldn’t.

He hadn’t seen that girl since the night he’d tried to drown his sorrows in a bottle of cheap rotgut. But looking at the boy, he saw his own ghost staring back.

"I... I don’t..." Theo started, his voice cracking. It had to be a mistake, right? But what kind of mistake was so accurate?

He looked at Alias, and the sight of Alias’s calm, expectant face was worse than anger.