*****003:

Rafe had stuff down at the main studio today, a lot of it. I'm not sure what, but the main studio he used was in LA. I'd heard snatches of his and Ben's convo, it had words and names like talk to Liver, a nickname for Oliver Elliot, Rafe's personal manager, who did a number of amazing things for him always, like a magician. He just appeared and disappeared at will in our lives. I'm sure it wasn't a mystery to Rafe and Ben, but it was to me.

"We were children...."

"Be a dead man with no friends...."

"Don't take yourself so seriously....."

"Capitalism is not my enemy....."

"Shure microphones guy classic...."

"I'm too private, guarded....."

As I rinsed Rein off in the yoga room shower after our family workout, these words and others wafted in to me. They washed through me like so much feathers and dross. I wasn't really processing, but it occurred to me that some of the statements did sound interesting like I could follow up.

Bending over this way hurt my back.

Everything hurt my back.

I straightened, and Rein instantly got the soap in his eyes. I hurried to rinse him and get him a washcloth to hold over his face. His crying brought Rafe.

"What's up, my little man? Momma got soap in your cute little chocolate bear eyes?" Rafe stepped into the spray fully dressed, having not showered yet, too busy talking shop talk with Ben who had participated in yoga uncharacteristically this morning. Normally, he did this at a private studio downtown and then worked out in a private gym with his private trainer.

Rafe standing in the walk-in spray, in front of it so that it suddenly changed direction caused it to spray me liberally. Across the shower-- we have these multiple person showers here-- not sure how long that'll last, but in our defense, we are newly-weds righteously endeavoring to make a forever family out of three newly adopted troubled kids. Across the shower, Virgil was naked, standing with his back to the lower nozzles and using the hand-held to massage his upper thighs. It looked suspiciously like he was simply playing with the shower head.

Felicity was actually, at four, across the bathroom hallway, in the other side of the walk in shower down here, with lower spigots on as well, leaning over, spraying the shower head up her peepee. I spied her and stepped into the water over there, now fully wet. I took the shower head and she screeched.

"Baby girl, if you spray water up there like that you can hurt yourself." I turned it off and let the standard faucets finish rinsing her.

"You guys are the weirdest showering family I know." Ben articulated from outside the bathroom somewhere.

"Join us, Ben, it'll make things go faster this morning." Rafe invited. 

I knew it wouldn't have been the first time Ben and Rafe had showered in each other's presence, they'd known each other throughout Junior High and High School and they'd played on the same basketball teams. And my touring showers were legend. Just the thought of it all made me shudder. I sincerely hoped Ben would not actually come in here.

My hopes were dashed. Buck naked our friend came strolling in. I snatched the glass door (on what I now thought of as the girl's side) closed and sighed in annoyance. Leftover idiosyncrasies of Axis before Aubrey occasionally haunted us and maybe always would. Showering fiascos were one of those things.

Almost instantly the glass door reopened and Rafe, carrying Rein stepped inside, also buck naked now.

"Why'd you shut the door? It's only Ben, he's like my brother." Rafe was joking, he counted on my utter and complete modesty; he would never willingly expose me to another man. I knew that now. Although there had been a time—again referring to the tour days—when he had taken as much liberty as he could, even exposing me to scrutiny from his band, whom he honest to goodness did consider family.

Still.....

I pulled the wet maternity t-shirt over my head and unclasped my bra. Rafe's eyes widened, but he decided to play it out. Guys are so transparent. I looked down, raised my brows and looked back into his dark, intense eyes. Two can play at this game, boyfriend.

He set Rein down on the tiles.

"I closed the door to preserve our daughter's modesty. She may only be four, but--." I sighed as he smiled into my eyes, having captured my lips with his for a ruthlessly enjoyable kiss. His hands loosened the elastic on my maternity yoga pants, and reached inside, to scoot them off my legs. "Since you held my modesty in such light esteem on tour, Ben has probably seen everything." I laughed against him, as Felicity played with the shower head again.

The baby bump looked like I was eight months compared to my almost five. His hands traversed the stretched tight skin, and he drew in his breath sharply as the water cascaded over us.

"Yeah, I've seen it all, maybe I should--." Ben's voice was far too close for comfort. I backed into the shadowy recesses of the shower which was shaped like a huge rectangle with four spigots and lights on the far end next to the tiled wall. A bench adorned the floor against the wall as well.

"Yeah, well, I doubt you've seen this." Rafe turned his back to the door, shielding me completely, and then wrapped me in his arms nearly frontal, which pressed the baby belly hard, so he'd have to bend over it, and kicked open the door. Then he was kissing me passionately, rubbing his hands down my sides as the water caressed us and the children watched and Ben stood in the doorway wrapped in a towel.

I at least had underwear on.

Ben made some oinky throat noise, and sizzled his fingers at us, then slammed the glass door hard enough to shake the timbers. Rein and Felicity were squirting each other, and they stopped momentarily to stare at the door as we could see the shadowy figures of Virgil and Ben go into the dressing area.

Rafe pressed me back into the spray from the farthest spigot, kissing me hungrily with that funny way he had of making actual eating noises. I was reminded of cotton candy and our first kiss, and that was really arousing, because it brought back a lot of memories of first date tension and excitement.

"I'm here to dress the kids!" Abbie's voice hummed into our awareness and her completely dressed figure could be seen through the foggy, wavy glass.

"Great! Two of them are in with me and I need my clothes too." I called hoping she'd see that Ben was still in the bathroom and not accidentally come across him dressing. A large towel came over the top of the glass door and Rafe grabbed it before it fell on the wet ground or in the actual spray. He wrapped it around himself, gave me an air kiss and a salute, as I admired his amazing tattoos before he stepped out.

"I want Aubrey to dress me," Felicity said as she squirted her private parts again with the shower head. My eyes widened and I took it away from her. She screamed in frustration.

"What did I tell you about that?"

"That it could hurt me. But it doesn't hurt." Her big brown eyes stared up at me slightly mischievously, the long dark lashes all clumped together, and I would have laughed at her innocent look, when I knew this precocious four-year-old was anything but perfectly guileless. She was an imp, and I was absolutely on to her. In that moment, the shower head actually slipped out of my fingers, and landed on the tiles right in front of Rein who had a Buzz Lightyear toy in hand, but who dropped it in favor of controlling the shower head, which he instantly trained on his privates also, and then pee'd on the drain. He looked up at me in shock, and I started laughing. Felicity screamed and danced out of the way. Rein, of course, couldn't stop and in sudden mortification, he burst into tears and dropped the shower head.

I had to pick him up. Poor little dude. And as I turned off the water and lifted him up to slippery cuddle him against me, two towels came sailing over the glass door. One landed on the door, the other on my head. Perfect.

"Did Rafe and Ben go upstairs?" I called, knowing it was Abbie who had given me the towel.

I was met with an awful echoing rendition of our amazing date night wolf howl. Yep, ear-splitting as it was, and it was joined by my six-year old's voice. The restrained child on a schedule had also been trained to howl. And he was joined inside by our other two munchkins, howling away for no apparent reason.

Which was reason enough.

Howling gave us identity, and crazy showers-- well-- I don't know what they gave us.

*****