I Love
I love this house. I grew up here, and when I was little, I used to want to leave, to explore the wild world, to see what was beyond it, to see the outside. But now I can’t get enough of it, I love being here, love walking its halls, entering its rooms. I love the very feel of the place. It has a warmth that no other house I’ve been in has. Mom says it’s love, the love that this place was saturated in when I was growing up. Dad says it’s just because you live here, too.
I only laugh when he says that, but I believe it, just as he does. I think that if you didn’t live here, it wouldn’t be as warm, wouldn’t be as comfortable.
It wouldn’t be home, if you didn’t live here.
I walk these halls on a regular basis, trailing my fingers down the walls, feeling the soft bumps of the textured wallpaper, eyes trained on the picture frames that line the walls. My grade school self, gap-toothed and grinning, hanging next to a somber, far too grown up counterpart in you. Our graduation portraits, in those stupid robes you hated and snarled about having to wear. Candid shots of our friends, of me, of you, of us. The new family. There’s a couple of my parents and a couple of yours, even a couple with both, hard as that can still be to believe.
I love this chronicle of our lives, the way you smile just a little into the camera, like you’re worried that it’s going to jump and go ‘boo’, the way you always seem to have your arm around my shoulder, or a hand on my arm, or lean against me in every one of them. I love the sparkle in your eyes, the glint of promise that hovers.
I love the stupid trophy that sits on the bookshelf in the den, engraved with “The Commander and Jetstream”, that somehow we ended up with, and neither of us bothers to hide it, despite the whole stupid secret identity thing. No one ever notices, and I love the way it sits there, gleaming dully, a reminder of the first time we actually worked together. As a team.
I love the flames tattooed on your forearms, love that I have the same ones on mine, a mirror image, a perfect symmetry. I love that you have little wings tattooed on your shoulder blades, that you tell me they’re to remind you that together, we fly.
No one thought we would ever last, you know. They expected that we’d burn out like a too hot flame, ‘no lasting power there, they said’. I love that we prove them wrong every morning when we wake up in the same huge bed in my parent’s old room, and when we go to bed each night in that same room, curled around each other. We were unpredictable in everything, including our lives. No one expected us, we were the wildcards, and I love that about us.
I love that you come home every evening, smelling of fortune cookies and dim sum, that your hair has to be pulled into a tight bun to keep it out of the way and that when you let it go, I can smell chicken fried rice in its strands. I love that you wear black spandex under your bleach stained t-shirt, ready to dash to the rescue at any moment, that you keep your tacky red cell phone in your back pocket, set on vibrate. That you don’t even care if I call it in the middle of the day because I’m bored or because the project isn’t going so well or because I miss you even though I saw you not three hours ago at breakfast. I love that you just sigh, and grin that lazy grin, and you say you’re busy, but you talk to me anyway. I love that you came home from work early to just sit and listen to us gush when Layla came over to tell us she was expecting.
I love the little scar on your left shoulder from the time you dove in front of a bullet for me when we were fighting Death Dealer, even though you knew I was invulnerable. I love that you insisted that you were fine despite everything, and that I could barely even hold you down to let you get the bullet taken out and get it stitched up. I was exasperated with you, yes, and I hated your stubbornness at that moment, but when you insisted that I was the one who needed to be taken care of because I’d pulled a muscle trying to save you from your own rescue attempts, I loved you even more.
I love the gold hoops in your ears, I love the way you never call me by my first name unless it’s important, and I love the way you hug me tight when it is.
I love the way you gasp and scream in bed, the way you flip pancakes in the air, the way you always pretend to forget anniversaries and birthdays, and then I find presents tucked under my coffee mug or on my pillow or under the cushion on my desk chair. I love the way you’ll play the guitar when no one is listening, and the way you sing when you realize I am. I love how you take too long in the shower and never spend any time on your hair.
I love the little wrinkles you’re getting at the corners of your eyes, the white streaks in your perfect black hair, the way you spoil Zach and Magenta’s sons and the way your eyes light up when Layla’s daughter runs in the room. Your little princess is nearing twenty now, and I think she grows more like her uncle W’ren everyday. She’s saving the world in her own right these days. You gripe about the kid heroes trying to take over, but I love the way you turn smile at me, proud, when I walk in the room and see you watching the news, and our little Elementa is saving the world somewhere again.
I love that I’m still the perfect height to fit against your shoulders, and hold you tight. I love that I’m growing old and you are too, and I love the fact that in the firelight, our golden rings fairly glow.
Most of all though, Warren Peace-Stronghold...
I love you.
Go back to Sky High.