Cleaning Up

“Hey, uh, babe?” Hector called out hesitantly, watching the little circular machine roving around their apartment, sweeping up as it went. They’d had it for a while by then, and she was very much part of the family. But there seemed to have been a very recent development. 

“Oh hey, welcome home! I’m in the kitchen.” He received back. His fiancé was preparing dinner like he always did on Sunday nights since Hector himself worked a later shift. 

“Babe,” he said again, hanging his keys on the little hooks by the door, peeling out of his jacket. It had been a long day with the usual Sunday morning emergency ‘can you come cover a shift?’ call. He’d already been dressed and was making his coffee by the time it came in, like clockwork. Stupid Shanon never wanted to work after getting absolutely blitzed the night before. But all of the things he’d been practicing in the car and preparing to tell Nadeem about what had happened at his restaurant shift didn’t seem as pressing as he watched the Roomba slide easily under the living room table. “Babe, why, uh, why does Muffin have a knife?”

A booming laugh came from the kitchen, and his fiancé appeared in the doorway with his own. “Oh my God, isn’t it hilarious? I saw it on Tumblr. Well, I saw it on a screenshot of Tumblr from Twitter when I was on Pinterest today. I found the absolute cutest little centerpieces today, I wanna show you so we can talk to the florist this week about what they’d cost.” 

Muffin reappeared from underneath the table, following the regular path. She navigated off the carpet and headed towards Nadeem’s home office. It wasn’t so much an office as it was a very overloaded desk and bookshelf set, with too many full cork boards lining the wall behind them. Post-It notes that always ended up on the floor, which Muffin inevitably would try to eat. Thumb tacks that both of them wore slippers to avoid stepping on. And computer cords that seemed to suddenly be in danger. 

“Oh, no, no, no…” Hector dropped his jacket, marching over before she got too close. He gingerly lifted the Roomba just enough to turn her around, being very careful of the blade duct taped to her back. “Babe, this is dumb, why did you do this. How did you even get it to stay on the edge like that?”

Nadeem protested gently, no hint of being upset in his laughing voice. “Oh, leave her alone, she’s fine. I thought it’d be funny.”

“She’s gonna hit a wall and we’re never gonna get our deposit back. Look! Look at that! She’s gonna shank the couch!”

“Calm down,” he chuckled, watching as Hector chased after the little soldier, turning her away from the inexpensive sofa and their cheap, horrible walls. “We weren’t getting our deposit back anyway, someone dropped a whole glass of red wine-”

“I asked you to stop bringing that up,” Hector frowned, pinning the unwilling Roomba down to pull the tape off. 

But Nadeem set his own knife down on the counter, coming over to stop him. “Oh come on, Heely, leave her alone, it’s so funny.”

“It’s not funny, it’s gonna kill us in our sleep. It’s not funny, it’s idiotic.”

His fiancé folded his arms as Muffin was demilitarized. “It’s just a joke, Hector, seriously. I thought it’d be funny. What’s got you in such a piss-poor mood?”

“I’m not in a piss-poor mood,” he imitated his fiancé’s voice, “I just didn’t expect to get stabbed when I got home.”

Nadeem moved to let him into the kitchen, watching him go to the sink and start searching in the cabinet beneath for the gum remover. “No one’s gonna stab you but me later tonight, if you want.”

But he completely ignored the generous offer, muttering to himself, “Now the handle’s all gross, this is gonna be a mess to get off…”

“Oh my god, babe, just leave it, I’ll take care of-”

“I just don’t know why you’d do something so dumb, I-”

“I saw it online,” Nadeem’s voice escalated, “I thought it was funny. I thought you’d think it was funny. I can’t believe we’re arguing over this.”

Hector put the orange bottle down harder than he probably would have meant to otherwise. “No one’s arguing, Nadeem, it’s not an argument if one party is clearly right.”

“Wow, okay.” Hector didn’t like the face Nadeem was pulling. “What the hell did I do, why’re you being such an ass right now?”

“Well, for one, you taped a knife to our Roomba. So that’s one thing the hell you did.”

“It was a joke,” Nadeem cried, exasperated. A loud series of knocks sounded with a broom handle from below them. He stamped his foot with his words in reply. “Oh shut up, you hag! We know, we know! We’re in the middle of something!” 

Muffin wandered into the kitchen, motoring along the walls, sweeping up the little bits of things that accumulated there since she’d come by last. “And there’s gunk all on her, too, that’s such a pain.”

“Literally what’s wrong with you, what happened? What, did you get fired or something?”

Hector got very quiet and very still, sitting on the floor with the knife in his hand, waiting for the strong smell of orange to set in enough that the residue would come off with ease. A deep sigh left his nose as he stared at the bottle.

Immediately Nadeem’s entire being froze. “Babe,” he started quietly. “Babe, what happened?”

Hector swallowed hard, his eyes not leaving the knife. It was from their best set, too. Their only set. An engagement present from his parents. “I…”

“Babe, it’s alright,” Nadeem went to him, his other half, joining him on the floor. “We’ll figure this out together, I can cover rent for a little while while you-”

“I…” Hector’s lip trembled, finally meeting Nadeem’s gentle, understanding eyes. 

“Oh, Heely.” And he wrapped his arms around him, both of them careful of the knife in his hands that he set calmly on the floor. “Heely, it’s okay. It’s okay. Tell me what happened, tell me everything. It’ll be okay, we’ll-”

He returned the embrace, holding him back strong. “It…it just all happened really fast. One minute I was talking to customers and then all of a sudden everyone started…started screaming, I…”

“Hector, what happened?” He asked a little more urgently, touching him as if to look for injuries. Hector could feel Nadeem’s heart pounding.

“They…they told me they’re catering the entire wedding for free.”

“Oh baby, it’s…what?”

Hector grinned. “The wedding. They want to cater the wedding. For free. Chef told me today, they had a huge sign and everything, everyone was cheering. I’ve got the balloons in the car.”

“They…” he held him at arm’s length, watching the smile spread across his lips. “Oh, you!” And he slapped his shoulder as Hector began to laugh.

“You should have seen your face! ‘Babe, it’s alright, it’s alright.’ Classic, absolutely classic.”

“You piece of shit,” Nadeem was laughing then, too, “why would you do that to me! I almost had a heart attack.”

His grin widened. “I thought it was funny.”

“You’re crap, you know that?” 

“Yeah, I know. Chef wants us to call him tomorrow, talk about menu options. Sound good?”

“Yeah,” he laughed, “sounds good. Oh my god, I hate you so much.”

“That was to get back for that stupid alarm thing you pulled on me last week.”

Hector pressed a kiss to Nadeem’s forehead as he calmed down. “Oh come on, now that was funny.”

“Yeah. Yeah, that one was pretty funny.”

After dinner they looked at centerpieces and planned the time for a lengthy phone call as Muffin roved around the apartment, happily armed with a wooden spoon that hopefully wouldn’t cost them any more of their deposit.