Mikko Lawrence

By the time they had arrived home, Annie’s broken nose had set.  But she was moving stiffly, like her hip was bothering her.

“Didn’t you pull that hip at your last fight?” he asked as he closed the front door behind him.

She shrugged, but also didn’t deny it, going to sit on the couch.  Mikko dropped her bag in the dining room before walking into the kitchen. 

It was a small kitchen, barely any counterspace to cook, but it was what they had.  Only one person could really be in it at a time since the space between the counters was so narrow.  There were dishes in the sink from their dinner.  He swallowed his groan.  He hated doing dishes.

He opened the freezer and pulled out one of the blue cold compresses that Timber and Arnia had given them.  It was one of the fancier ones, a rectangle about as long as his forearm, with separate compartments of gel to let it bend.

He pulled the bottle of ibuprofen from the top of the fridge, stepping back into the dining room to grab Annie’s water bottle from her duffel bag.

He brought the compress and water back to Annie.  She was laying with her injured hip facing up.  He handed her the compress to let her put it down where it hurt the most.

“That guy had a fucking iron knee,” she growled, settling the compress over her hip and pressing it into the dip of her hip socket.

“That bruise is nasty,” Mikko agreed, doling out the dosage of ibuprofen for her.  “What was he?  Frankie said human?”

“Some type of mage,” she said, popping the ibuprofen and washing it down with water.  “Physo-something.  I didn’t catch it.”

He didn’t know anything about mages.

She ran her hand over her locs, exhaling through her nose.  “My hip hasn’t really gotten better since that last fight,” she finally admitted.

Mikko had noticed, but he hadn’t said anything.  Halfshifters were just as powerful as fullshifters, but their bodies broke down faster.  Annie trained hard, and she fought hard—she had been fighting since she was fifteen.  She was twenty now.  Five years of fighting and training had worn down parts of her body faster than it otherwise would have.

“If I can’t fight, I don’t know what we’ll do . . .”

“Mira said that it would be okay.  She said that this job will get her a lot of money.”

Annie’s mouth was tight with worry; she didn’t say anything.

They had all spent so long scrounging for the next payout—for the next bit of cash—that it was hard to imagine a world where they were doing okay.  Mira had done some odd jobs for the living vampires that had paid nicely, but they didn’t have any concept of what this job would do.  And every time she had gotten paid, it had gone down the drain due to health problems or house issues or car issues or anything else that was part of the cost of being poor.

None of them had high hopes for this job Mira was on, even if it was good money.

But Mikko didn’t need to say this out loud.  They all knew.

Instead, he sat down and told her about what they had done that day.

Annie snorted.  “Men always think they so smart until the deaf paramortal steals something from under they noses.”  She shook her head.  “But you really got five grand?”

He smiled.  Her question was quiet, and her expression was smooth, but her eyes gave her away.  They sparkled with disbelieving excitement.  “We did, babe.”

She looked down where she had her compress on her hip.  “Five thousand.  And the house okay.  The car okay.  For now.  Nothing gonna eat it . . .”  She looked up at him with a hopeful smile.  “A good Christmas.”

“Yep.”

She nodded, looking back down at the compress.  The smile on her face was subdued, but he knew how excited she was.

“You cute,” he said.

She looked up sharply, caught off guard.  “What?  Why?”

“You just are.”  He winked at her.  “You try to hide how much you care, but I know better.”

Her eyes narrowed at him, and she scrunched up her mouth.  It was a feigned annoyance that she did when she didn’t know how to respond.  She knew he wasn’t making fun of her, but she didn’t know what to do with the affection.

He was going to wait for her to relax enough with the compress before bringing up going to bed upstairs.  He knew it would be hard for her to go up but—inspiration struck.

“Mira’s gone,” he said, voicing his realization out loud.

“Yeah . . .” she said uncertainly.  “I thought you was here when she left.”

“I was,” he said.  “I just realized—we don’t have to go upstairs.  We can stay in her room.”  Mira always allowed it after Annie had a particularly bad fight, but she always slept with Annie, and Mikko was relegated to the bed upstairs.  It always made him sad to sleep alone.

Annie’s face lit up.  “Oh!  Right.  We—”  She cut herself off with a groan of pain as she tried to sit upright.

“Let me,” he said, standing up from the chair and stepping to the couch.  In a move he knew he was only allowed to use because no one was around, he picked her up, arm under her knees, other arm supporting her back. 

Her breath hitched in pain, but otherwise she didn’t say anything.  She wrapped her arms around his neck.

She weighed about the same amount as he did and was a heavy weight to carry, but he had been doing it for years.  At some point when he was fourteen or fifteen, he had gotten frustrated that she could pick him up so easily, and he couldn’t return it.  It didn’t matter that she was a shifter and he wasn’t—he wanted to be able to hold her the way that she could hold him.

It had taken a bit before he could do much more than piggybacks, but he had finally gotten here.  And he had been rewarded with Annie’s silent appreciation every time he did it.

Mira’s door was slightly ajar.  A tap of his foot made the door open enough to let them through.

The room was crowded with overlarge furniture from when her grandmother had been alive.  The bed was an oversized king sleigh bed with a heavy wooden headboard and baseboard.  It was stacked with pillows, but it only had a sheet with a thin blanket on top.  There were two large windows on the wall next to it, one outfitted with an AC unit.

A heavy wood dresser sat opposite the bed, at waist height, with a mirror that almost reached the ceiling, it was so tall.  The top of the dresser was strewn with jewelry, make-up, and other grooming knickknacks. 

Those two pieces of furniture were the only things in the room, but they took up so much space that there was only a strip of floor to maneuver around.  Mikko chose the side of the bed closest to him for Annie.  He shimmied between the wall and the bed before placing Annie down as gently as he could.  She rolled to lay on her good hip, still holding the compress to her bad hip.

He went around to the other side of the bed, cursing as he tripped over some clothes Mira had left on the floor that he couldn’t see.  He stripped off his shirt and jeans, leaving just his boxers.

He climbed into bed next to Annie, throwing some of the pillows off to the side.  There were so many.

Annie snorted when one bounced off the wall and hit Mikko back in the face.

“Why do this woman need so many pillows?” he grumbled, shoving it off the bed before finally shimmying under the blanket and sheet.

“Infinite comfort items?”

Mikko rolled his eyes, settling against the pillow he had chosen.  It was thick and fluffy, pressing against the sides of his head.  “Excessive.”

Annie didn’t say anything, snaking one arm under the space beneath his neck.  He pressed closer to her, careful not to jostle her hip.  He pressed his forehead to hers.  “How you feeling?” he asked.

“Ibuprofen and cold helped,” she murmured.  Her words were already slurring with sleep.

He kissed her forehead.  “Good.”

“Mmm.”

Her breath eased into a steady rhythm quickly.  The endorphins from fighting always extinguished quickly for her; her body put her to sleep to heal her.

“Good night,” he whispered.

Mikko awoke to a crash and pained cursing.  He bolted out of bed to see that Annie was gone and the light behind Mira’s curtains said it was mid-morning.  He heard more cursing and then a loud splash.  He followed it without thinking.

He found the source of the cursing upstairs in the bathroom with Annie inside of the bathtub, the cabinet next to the tub laying on the floor, shampoo, towels, and bottles strewn around it.  A blast of hot, warm air hit him as he opened the door.

The bathroom had been the pride and joy of Mira’s grandmother.  The only upgraded room in the whole house, she had renovated it just before she died.  Her plan had been to slowly renovate the whole house with new floors and a state-of-the-art kitchen.  After she died, Mira’s mom had smoked the rest of the money Mira’s grandmother had saved up.

The floor was little tiles of black and white hexagons, edging up to light blue walls.  The vanity had a nice sink with a bright silver faucet and handles with a granite counter.  A mirror sat over the sink, completely fogged up from the steam. 

The toilet was in a bit rougher shape, having needed to be plumbed and replaced after someone broke it (he was pretty sure it had been Sloane).

But the thing that Mira’s grandmother had taken the most pride in was the bathtub.  A deep, wide claw foot bathtub, it fit one person fully stretched out and luxuriating, or two people who wanted to spend intimate time together.  It was cast iron, white porcelain.  It sat beneath the window, allowing bright, natural light to filter through a gauzy curtain.

Annie looked like a child in the tub.  It was so big, and she was so slender.  She was sunk into the water to her chin, scowling towards where the cabinet lay fallen on the floor.  She had put her locs in a cap to keep them from getting wet.

“What are you doing?” he asked her.

“I was hoping heat would help my hip.”

He grimaced.  “Still hurt?”

She nodded grimly.

“It’s not just sore,” he said.  It wasn’t a question.

She bit her lip, looking down.  “I’m worried there’s something wrong with it.  I can’t even fully put weight on it.”

He knew Annie had been sore for a few weeks.  It had made them wonder if she’d broken something during one of her fights, and it had healed funny.  Normally she would be okay within a week or two, but this had been going on for a while.

But if she couldn’t even walk today . . .

He bit his lip.  “Annie . . . do we need to go—”

“No—it’ll eat up all the money we have.”

“Babe, if we let this go on, it might get worse.  You’re not healing like you should be.”

She shook her head.  “If we go to the doctor—”

“We can just go to the free clinic,” he argued.

“And if they have to do an X-ray?  It’s not free then.”

“We can afford it,” he pushed back.  “An X-ray is like five hundred max.  We made enough money yesterday, Annie.”

She bit her lip, looking down at the water.  “What if . . . what if I need surgery or something?”

He didn’t have an answer for that.  They couldn’t afford a surgery if she needed it, and they knew it.  They had made a few thousand dollars the day before, but that would never pay for a surgery.

He huffed out a sigh.  “Let me wash your hair.”

She didn’t say anything, but she did finally settle into the bathtub, leaning against the back of it.

The bathtub was high, coming up to Mikko’s hips.  There was a step stool in front of it that even Mikko himself used to get into the huge thing.

There was another stool, this one for sitting, in the space between the wall and the back of the tub.  It was for whomever was bathing Lina, to keep an easy eye on her and wash her hair.  The wall was close enough that it was pretty easy to just sit on the stool, feet up on the edge of the tub, leaning against the wall.

It was also easy for the rare times that Mikko washed Annie’s hair.

He stepped over the mess of the cabinet and toiletries, grabbing the shampoo Annie used as he did, along with a plastic cup that lived in the bathroom.  The cup had Nemo on it—something Lina had gotten at a birthday party.

He set the shampoo on the windowsill before carefully taking the cap off her head.  Her dark brown locs spilled out of it, landing in the water with small splashes.

Nowadays, her locs went as far as the bottom of her ribs.  She kept them swept up a lot of the time, because of the heat, and because of her fights.  He only ever really got to see them unbound right before bed, just before the bonnet, or in the morning before putting them up.

He ran his fingers over them.  They were soft and spongy.  He had always loved the texture of her hair, but he rarely ever had much chance to run his fingers through it.  He had watched people touch her hair without her permission so many times over the years that he rarely touched it unless they were doing something like this.

He filled the Nemo cup before gently tilting her head back.  He poured water on her head, making sure to get it into her scalp, running his fingers through to saturate her hair with water.  He poured over a few more times before he moved onto the shampoo.  The scent of mint and rosemary hit his nose.

“When we was kids, Daoine always wanted to do my hair.”

Mikko smiled.  Annie didn’t talk much about her childhood before he met her, but it always involved Daoine.  “Yeah?”  He massaged her scalp with the shampoo, working the lather into her roots.

“We’d take baths together.  And she wouldn’t get out of the bath until she could help with one thing.  And sometimes I’d get mad cuz I was so sick of white people trying to touch my hair during the day, and she was here doing the same thing.”

He knew bits of this, but he still liked listening to her talk.  Annie’s voice was smoky and even.  She wasn’t a particularly excitable person, but she always spoke with warmth when she talked about her cousin Daoine.  It always reminded him of hot tea after a stressful day.

“My mom was white—like Daoine and her mom.  But my mom learned how to do my hair right.  I guess one of the women she worked with was the daughter of a lady who owned a hair salon.  When my hair was long enough, my mom would take me to that salon and learned how to do my hair.”

He nodded along, pulling the parts of her hair that were in the water out, and starting to work the lather down through her locs.

“After Daoine started to control her shifting, she started trying to mimic me.  And she would ask my mom to do her hair so she could learn how to do my hair.”

“That’s . . . so sweet.”  And so very in line with Daoine.  Daoine was an anthroshifter—meaning she could transform into any other human form.  What Annie was describing was that Daoine would transform into Annie to learn how to do her hair.

Annie smiled, nodding gently.  She shifted in the water and winced but didn’t complain.  “After I got into foster, Daoine would still do my hair for me.”

He knew that.  Even now, any time Daoine came over, if Annie was doing anything with her hair, Daoine asked to help.  Annie had been annoyed by it when they were younger, but as they got older, it had become a ritual for them.

“She’s going to be jealous that I did your hair this time.”

Annie snorted.  “You don’t need to retwist it—I’ll let her do that.”

He smiled, working his way down to the ends of her hair.

They sat in silence like that, the only sound being the water as Mikko dipped the cup into it and began to rinse out Annie’s hair.  He moved carefully, making sure not to get any suds into her eyes. 

Annie had stretched out as they talked.  She had relaxed more, and her head was nodding slightly, not quite like she was dozing, more spacing out.

A few minutes passed with the pouring of water and the soft scratching of his fingers in her hair and scalp.

“I’ll go to the doctor,” she finally said.

Mikko paused from where he had started to pour the water.  “Yeah?”

She nodded, almost knocking into where he held the cup over her head, but he pulled back, resting it against the edge of the tub.  “If I have to get surgery . . . well, who knows if I actually need to.  But at least I’d know what I’m dealing with, right?”

He leaned over and wrapped his arms around her shoulders.  He was grateful he hadn’t put a shirt on over his boxers because her hair was soaked.  It bunched between his shoulder and his neck, ringing out against his bare chest. 

“Exactly,” he murmured into her neck.  “Let’s just get an idea and see what we can do from there.”

She nodded, smearing his face with water and soap residue as she did.  He sputtered as some smeared across his lips, pulling back to wipe it off.

She laughed, turning back to look at him.  “You okay?”

“Soap,” he grimaced, the bitter taste filling his mouth.

“Maybe don’t eat it.”

He gave her the finger, and she laughed again.  Her laughter made him feel warm.

The sound of heavy knocking on the front door thunked from downstairs.