Page 57 of Habibi: Always and Forever

Tristan reaches across the table and places his hand over mine.

“You’re the best dream I ever had,” he says plainly and it floors me how much the little things he says make me feel so big inside, even after ten years of hearing it, because Tristan has never once in all the years I’ve known him, held back on the way he feels about me.

“You’re the best thing that ever happened to me, Tristan. I’ll never stop being thankful that you chased after me. Best ten years ever,” I tell him thickly.

He smiles and raises his glass of red wine. “I’d say here’s to another ten years, but you know, this lifetime and the next ten lifetimes are already set in stone.”

I laugh at that because it’s such a ‘Tristan’ thing to say. “Almost like we were written in the stars,” I tell him while picking up my glass and clinking it against his.

“No ‘almost’ about it, Qi. I’ve already shown you the exact cluster we’re written in,” he says pointedly and I laugh at the memory.

It was during the summer break when we first started dating when he took me to the observatory in his parent’s house and pointed out the cluster of stars in the sky that he said were there just for us.

His spare hand is over mine and he continues to brush his thumb over my knuckles until the waiter shows up with our food.

For a little while, we just eat in silence.

Both of us are a bit sentimental at the moment and I’m kind of just taking him in.

I had it pre-arranged for us to get the same table this time that we sat at ten years ago, and it’s a little hard to not picture a ten-years-younger Tristan.

He looks much the same, if not even more attractive with age.

The well-groomed layer of hair along his jawline does nothing to hide the sharper angles he has now that he’s grown out of the leftover baby roundness he had when I first met him.

Not that most of his lingering softness wasn’t already gone at the time, but even his cheekbones and the shape of his lips have grown slightly sharper with age.

He’s also thinner. He’s traded in the heavy weight-lifting of his youth for a more cardio-based workout.

He’s still pretty fucking ripped, but he’s not bulky like he was when he was playing quarterback for the football team.

And his hair is slightly shorter. He’d cut it short less than a year ago, but neither of us liked it.

He didn’t like the maintenance, and I missed running my fingers through it, so he’s been steadily growing it back out and it’s right about at his shoulders now.

Tristan’s eyes flit up to meet mine and he flushes a bit when he notices how hard I’m looking at him. “What?”

I just shake my head with a little smile. “Nothing, baby. Just remembering us being here ten years ago.”

He smiles at that. “Still love it when you call me baby,” he winks flirtily. It’s not something I call him often. Sweetheart, honey, love, Tris, are all nicknames I call him by more often.

“Why were you running so far behind today? Usually you beat me home,” I ask, changing the subject. I immediately regret it when his smile dips into a frown and a heavy crease folds across his forehead.

“The twins,” he says heavily, and I can see the stress working its way through him.

“Oh no, are they okay?” The four-year-old twins are Tristan’s favorites of the kids he works with.

He doesn’t treat them any differently than he does anyone else, but there’s something about the twin brothers that reached in and grabbed Tristan’s whole heart.

They are currently in a group home because finding a home for Braxton wouldn’t be difficult if he wasn’t so possessively attached to his brother, Brayden.

Neither of the twins have been officially tested or diagnosed, but Brayden is nonverbal and shows heavy signs of being autistic, and it’s difficult to find people willing to house a neurodivergent child.

Braxton seems like a neurotypical child on the surface, but Tristan is convinced that with proper testing it’d show Braxton is on the autism spectrum as well, he just doesn’t require as many accommodations as Brayden does.

But Brayden clings to Braxton, and Braxton refuses to be separated from Brayden.

No matter how many times someone comes along willing to take Braxton, but not Brayden, Braxton digs his heels in and throws tantrums big enough to scare the potential foster parent away.

The system is only going to allow it for so long before they forcibly separate the brothers and I know that eventuality hangs heavily on Tristan.

“Not really. They tried to put Braxton in a different room to get him used to being separated from Brayden while in the same facility with the hope that Braxton won’t throw such a fit if they find a home that won’t take them both, but it didn’t work.

He was calmer by the time I’d gotten there because they’d put him back in the room with Brayden, but he’s…

he’s just a kid, for fuck’s sake. Taking care of Brayden is all he knows.

It’s a part of who he is. He’s too young to process losing that, and I think there’s a big part of him that’s incapable of processing that,” he rants out emotionally.

I let out a heavy sigh because my heart breaks for them too. “They need to find a home that will take both of them,” I say, knowing it’s an obvious necessity but one that’s highly unlikely to be met.

“You know as well as I do that finding someone to willingly take in a child with Brayden’s needs is going to be next to impossible.

He needs accommodations, and health care, and mental health care, and to be honest Braxton needs all of that, too.

He’s been through hell and back with trauma and I see signs of autism in him as well, it just shows differently in him than it does Brayden.

If he gets placed with people who don’t recognize that he’s neurodivergent, then he’ll most likely grow up undiagnosed and masking which can be detrimental,” he grates out.

I sit back in my chair and twirl an empty glass in my hands for a moment while I let that sit, because I’ve seen a few people who weren’t diagnosed with autism until they were in their early twenties or later.

I’ve watched the anxiety that chewed them from the inside out slowly over the years, the meltdowns, the skill regression, and the inability to put the mask back on.

I’ve seen the damage going through that has done and watching them have to relearn how to restructure themselves and their lives around their autism.

“We know,” I whisper out, an idea forming in my head and a desire to have that now that it’s brewing in there.

“Well, yeah, we know, but that doesn’t–” Tristan starts to say but I shake my head and cut him off.

“But it can, though, if we adopt them. We aren’t wealthy by any means, but we have good insurance and a stable, loving home.

And I mean, you know as well as I do that we got married because we love each other, but a huge part of getting married so young was so we could eventually adopt,” I remind him because that’s all true, too.

Tristan nor I are really committed to the heteronormative structure, but we both knew we’d want to adopt children someday and while there aren’t actual rules that say you have to be married to adopt, it’s still an expectation.

Presenting what society deems a stable, loving home, comes with good careers, and marriage, along with a multitude of other things.

That presentation becomes even more important with same-sex couples, because being a same-sex couple automatically challenges the heteronormative expectation.

Tristan and I knew that. It’s the biggest reason we got married so young; so we could build that longevity, and that presentation that would make us likelier candidates for the system to allow us to adopt someday.

“Are you serious right now?” Tristan’s voice is dazed, but his face is so hopeful it cracks something open inside of me and I know there’s no way in hell I’d take it back now.

Not that I wanted to anyway. I knew as soon as I suggested it that I wanted this.

It feels like the right time and these boys feel like the right fit for us.

They need us and I think we need them, too.

“Tristan, you’ve never held back about your desire to adopt children.

I’ve always known and I’ve always wanted that with you.

We’ve shaped our lives around being able to be parents one day.

So why not now? We could be good for them and they could be good for us,” I tell him, my voice building in strength as the conviction that this is our future grows in my chest.

Tristan’s face cracks. “We shouldn’t have this conversation in a restaurant,” he says thickly before reaching up and pinching his eyes shut with his fingers.

“Why not?”

“Because I’m gonna cry,” he sniffles. I almost laugh at that, but instead I move my chair around so I’m close enough to pull his face into my chest. He’s always been an emotional sap.

It never takes much to make him cry, but he doesn’t really like the looks people give him for doing it.

Not so much because he cares that they're judging him, but more because the act of them judging him reminds him how prominent toxic mindsets towards masculinity are in society.

He burrows deep and I run my fingers through his hair until his shoulders stop shaking.

He pulls away from my chest and looks up at me with blotchy cheeks and wet eyes while I reach up and wipe his tears away.

“Do you really mean it?” he almost whispers.

I nod my head. “Yeah. Maybe you getting so attached to them is a sign that they’re meant to be ours.”

His smile spreads wide across his face, and the amber flecks in his eyes are sparkling so bright they’re practically blinding. “ Ours .”

I nod my head, and bump my forehead lightly against his. “Yeah, ours.”

“Let’s do it then, Qi. Start the next phase of our lives as parents, yeah?”

“Yeah,” I smile at him before nudging his nose with mine. “Our parents are going to be absolutely obscene when they find out.”

Tristan snorts and lets out a wavering breath, the rest of the tension eases out of his face as pure radiance takes over. “Let’s wait until we have it sorted out a bit more before we tell them.”

“Good plan,” I laugh.

“Happy Anniversary, Qi. I love you so fucking much and I can’t wait for what’s still to come,” Tristan says, his fingers brushing a strand of my hair out of my face.

“Happy Anniversary, Tristan. I love you just as much and I’m so thankful you found me,” I whisper back, my heart is so fucking full it’s clogging up my throat.

Tristan smiles and nudges my nose with his. “So we’re still on for bath cuddles after this, right?”

I raise my hand in the air to call for the check.

I think we both could use a heavy dose of bath cuddles after this.

Luckily, while I may not have anticipated opening a discussion for becoming parents together, I still anticipated him wanting to curl up in the bathtub before the night was through, so I already have a bottle of red wine on ice waiting for us when we get home.

Tonight was just supposed to be an anniversary dinner.

I didn’t expect it to go the way it did, but come Monday morning, we’ll be starting the process of bringing little Brayden and Braxton home with us and expanding our family.

I spent a chunk of my youth feeling like no matter how much I wanted a life like this, I’d never get it.

But Tristan walked into my life and changed everything.

He’s the love of my life, my greatest gift, and I can’t wait to start this next phase of our lives together.

* * *

W ant to know how Qi & Tristan started? Grab your copy of Bidding On You: A One-Size Does Not Fit All Asexual Spectrum Romance here: My Book