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Leo is eight, and he prays every night that Heavenly Father will make him a boywife.
Leo is smart. He's skipped two grades and even so he's bored; the teachers let him read textbooks from the grades ahead in the back of the class. But he's small and he's clumsy and he likes playing horses with the girls more than he likes playing football with the boys. The other boys are large and confusing and they hurt him. He comes home from school with black eyes and scrapes and he doesn't tell his dad where they came from. He might still grow up to be a husband, and husbands are supposed to protect and defend their wives.
Men grow up to work construction or drive trucks or farm, and that scares Leo-- jobs outside that leave you sweaty and tired once you're done, jobs for large men who are good at sports, having to be around men who swear and spit and make him want to cry. Boywives get to read books, he's seen them. The books have shirtless men on the cover and he's not allowed to read them until he's bigger, although he doesn't know why he'd want to read them anyway. It doesn't seem like there's any math or science or history in them at all.
Maybe it makes more sense when you're a grownup.
Leo spends hours cuddling his little brother and sister, counting their toes and kissing their noses and reading them board books. He wants to play with his sister-wives' babies and read them stories and teach them their numbers and their colors and their letters. He wants it so badly it hurts.
You're not supposed to speculate about Heavenly Father's will. But Leo knows exactly who he wants Heavenly Father to choose for him: Marlo, four years older than him. Marlo found out some boys were hitting Leo and told them that next time they could pick on Marlo instead of picking on someone littler than them, and since then Leo has hardly had any black eyes. Marlo is brave and noble, like a hero in a storybook, and Leo wants to wear a white dress and marry Marlo and kiss him and be held by him and be sealed to him for eternity.
Leo is eight, and the prophet has just had a revelation, and he is the happiest boywife in the world.
--
Leo is ten, and he's stupid.
He's slow and stupid and it feels like he's thinking through molasses, and he has to read the page three or four times before it sinks in and he keeps making stupid mistakes on all his math problems and he never finishes all of his homework no matter how hard he tries.
His mom got pregnant when the baby was only five months old, and she's so tired, she's so so tired, and he has to help his mom watch the younger kids as soon as he gets home from school and then he's up all night with the baby so his mom can get some rest and-- he knows it's important to help out but he's so stupid.
He starts getting B's on tests. Then C's. Then D's. Then he fails, and the teachers start talking about holding him back a year.
His mother says, "it's all right. You were ahead already."
--
Leo is twelve and he doesn't go to school anymore. Boywives don't need to go to school. He'll learn everything he needs to learn from his mom, and she needs the help around the house, with all the kids.
He borrows the textbooks from a friend and tries to read them but he usually can't get more than a page in before he falls asleep.
--
Leo is fourteen, and he's awkward and gangly and somehow simultaneously too skinny and too fat and he has a big nose and acne and he tries not to imagine how disappointed his husband would be to get him.
He won't end up with one of the important families. Heavenly Father picks, but somehow Heavenly Father ends up picking the most beautiful girls and boywives for the most powerful men. Boywives don't ever wind up being a man's first wife; the first wife should be capable of having children.
He doesn't dream, anymore, of marrying Marlo, except at night, when his hands are between his legs and he's doing something he's pretty sure a good boywife is not at all supposed to do.
He hopes for an older man. Someone kind, gentle, understanding. Patient with him, if he wants to go slow. A man whose other wives would be understanding. A man whose children are all old enough to sleep through the night, and whose wives are too old to have more, so he can get some rest.
--
Leo is sixteen, and he's not married yet. His mother says that Heavenly Father knows she needs the help. Leo suspects the shy awkward ugly boywife who keeps falling asleep during church is not as popular as one might hope.
The textbooks have gathered dust, but sometimes late at night he can think, and he knows his Bible and his Book of Mormon well enough to think about them even when the baby has been crying for three hours, and he has... questions.
He tells his mother that he's taking the toddlers to the library today, and he lets them play in the children's section, and he searches on the Internet for "questions about Mormonism" and then "questions about Mormonism atheist" and he reads and his stomach sinks to the floor.
Leo is sixteen and Marlo has disappeared with Malcolm LaBaron's boywife and he thinks: "why couldn't that be me?"
--
Leo is sixteen seventeen eighteen and he's not brave enough to leave the only life he's known to go out into the real world, the world of sex and drugs and sin, where he'd have to be one of those real men whom he still doesn't understand at all and who still scare him to no end, to work construction and take care of a family and have opinions about sports, the world where it matters that he's stupid and slow and can't think right. And he thinks about it all the time but he's not brave enough for the other way out either.
Leo is eighteen and Malcom LaBaron keeps looking at him at church and Malcolm's fifty years old and has three wives and six babies and Leo knows Heavenly Father is going to give the prophet a revelation soon and the thought of touching the man makes him want to throw up and he knows what his life is going to be--
"And I've wanted to marry you for. A while."
(More than half his life, but who's counting?)
"Then I'm glad I can give you that," he says, and then squeezes and lets go.
Marlo is!!!! So good!!!!
"Unfortunately, I'm really boring, so I don't have a lot to talk about."
"It's.... bigger. I knew there were going to be lots of people I didn't know and never could but that's different from walking around and only seeing unfamiliar faces, you know?"
"Yeah. Obviously it wasn't the only weird thing but honestly I think that was the weirdest."
Maybe the walk can be over now and they can return safely to Leo taking care of his younger siblings, a situation he totally knows how to handle.
And Sasha goes home with Marlo and clings to him at night and tries not to think to hard about anything much.
Leo had always expected to have more time to-- prepare, to get to know his husband, perhaps to fall in love.
But the wedding happens in a rush. He suspects someone is pushing it to happen quickly, before the prophet can change his mind, and he has barely talked to Marlo alone for twenty minutes by the time he's wearing a suit and standing before the prophet to vow to be sealed to him for eternity.
He and Sasha hadn't had a real wedding. Marlo looked forward to his wedding day for — he doesn't know how many years — and he's not sure how he feels now that it's happening; he vows to be sealed to Leo for eternity and thinks I'm going to keep you safe, I swear it as hard as he can.
And they're alone, together, in the bedroom, and he's supposed to--
His father's boywife took him aside, before the wedding. Explained to him how sex works between two men, that it hurts, that he should keep sweet and take pleasure in his husband's pleasure and he will be rewarded in Heaven.
Leo doesn't believe in Heaven, but Marlo rescued him, and he will do anything to make Marlo happy.
It's his wedding night and the thought of touching Leo that way makes him feel — well, he's felt slightly to the left of himself since he arrived in this town, but more to the left of himself. And Sasha is sleeping somewhere else tonight; he doesn't have a steadying hand to cling to.
He sits down on the bed, for lack of anything else to do with himself.
Leo sits on the bed and rests his head on Marlo's shoulder.
"Maybe you can hold me for a bit first?"
Oh. That's easy.
"Of course," he says, and collects Leo in his arms, cradles him the way Sasha likes with one hand on the back of his head.
Being held by Marlo makes him feel safe and loved and okay, and Marlo is warm and strong, and he's so tired (he's always so tired), and it's easy to close his eyes and drift off and rest--
Before he knows it, he's fallen asleep.
Marlo kisses his forehead and moves them both so they're lying down, drapes an arm over Leo's side and keeps holding him and closes his eyes too.
He blinks his eyes open after ten hours of uninterrupted sleep, an experience he has not had since he was nine years old.
Marlo reaches forward and tucks a piece of hair behind his ear.
"Morning, beautiful."
"Morning," Leo says, and curls up on Marlo's shoulder. He probably should feel anxious, but he's drowsy and Marlo is holding him and it is hard to be scared of anything at all. "Sorry about last night."
"There's nothing to be sorry for. Also, separately, you were very cute."
Does Leo like when Marlo plays with his hair as much as Sasha does?