A Stroke of Love

Pancakes and Beer

A small beam of light had snuck its way through the curtains. It had woken me up and I flipped over to avoid it. When I moved, I had landed my head right on Levi's chest and I felt his chest rise and fall slowly and steadily. Ever since we got engaged, he had begun to overcome his insomnia bit by bit. And it had gotten so well after the wedding that sometimes he is able to sleep throughout the night. I was happy to see that last night was one of his good nights.

I laid there, not wanting to disturb him and watched him. Every beautiful eyelash laid perfectly against his cheeks. His mouth was slightly open and tempted me to kiss his beautiful lips. How many years had it been since we got married? Six? How long will I be amazed by his beauty? Forever.

My own eyes had finally, slowly begun to close, when our door clicked. I quickly closed my eyes and listened to the intruders giggles and shushes. The door slowly opened and I waited in anticipation for the attack. A five year old body flung itself at Levi and I, shocking my spouse into consciousness.

"Aaaaaaaaahg!" I yelled as I wrapped the tiny girl up in my arms. "You got usssssss!"

She giggled uncontrollably and I couldn't help but notice how perfectly she resembled Levi.

"Where's your brother?" Levi said, wiping sleep from his eyes. I saw two tiny hands grasp the edge of the the bed and attempt to climb up. Tossing our daughter onto the bed playfully, I bent over to help little Shouta onto the bed. The three year old immediately pounced onto his sister.

"Kisa! Kisa! Kisa!" With every shout of her name, he jumped on her.

"Alright buddy," Levi grabbed Shouta and rolled off the bed with him, "let's not murder your sister, please."

"You want pancakes?" I asked Kisa to which she answered with a violent nod. And hopped off of the bed. The four of us migrated into the kitchen.

Kisa began running around after Shouta started to chase her with a toy light saber. When she took refuge behind Levi's legs, I nabbed the assailant. I rubbed my hands through his thick mop of light brown hair.

We had gotten a surrogate to help us create a family, a lovely woman named Hannah who gladly carried both of our babies. We were lucky that Kenny was ecstatic to have new grandbabies and paid for it all. Levi and I actually combined our sperm so that we wouldn't know was  the baby's biological father, but as soon as the two had begun to develop hair and facial features, it was obvious that Kisa was his and Shouta was mine.

I listened to the pan sizzle as Levi poured pancake mix into the pan. He still was no master chef, but he had stepped up from his strictly eggs and tea menu.

In no time, us and the kids sat at the table and I turned the tv on to the Saturday morning cartoons. I looked to Levi.

"How's everything going with the shop?"

Levi put his fork down, "it's going great. Three of the applicants actually showed up for an interview so I think we'll be able to have more hands on deck. And then you can focus more on your studies."

I smiled at him, "That'll be great."
I turned my head to the kids. "Hey, your uncle Connie is coming."

Happiness made their eyes sparkle, "woohoo!!" Kisa said, and Shouta copied, he seemed to imitate everything his elder sister did. Our old friends always visited every once in a while. Armin lived over in Corvallis to study genetics at Oregon State University, so he was a bit closer to us, but still not close enough. We always got together for the holidays and on special occasions through the years, but we were usually the ones who drove down to Eugene. This time, though, everyone wanted to see how the tea shop was going. It was sad though, Jean and Marco eloped out of nowhere and moved to Pennsylvania so none of us had seen them for years.

I smiled at Levi once again before leaning over and planting a kiss on his lips. Levi kissed me back but the uproar of "ew"s from the kids had us pull away.

Laughing I yelled at the kids, "You should be happy your daddy and I love each other!"

And like that, the day went on. Everyone visited and drank to their hearts content. We all played board games till it was 3am, long after I but the babies to bed. Armin, Mikasa, Hanji, Mike, Erwin, Sasha, and Connie all slept over, too drunk to go anywhere. The good thing about drunk sleep overs is that they all had no objections to just sleeping on the ground in the living room.

I laid sprawled out on our bed and Levi crawled on top of me. He placed a kiss on my lips then on my cheek then on my neck. I wrapped my arms around his neck in an embrace.

"Hey Levi," I asked in a drunken stupor, "are you happy?"

He looked at me for a second and then a smile spread across his face. "I couldn't be happier."

I still admired his rare smiles like they were the most expensive jewels. I smiled back. "Me too."

And both of our smiles were enveloped with a kiss. Our arms wrapped around each other and we never let go.