#and she should be allowed to talk about it

[thewertsearch]

GG: Do you remember around when we first started talking? […] GG: And you claimed you were the one making my pumpkins disappear? [...] GG: You later proceeded to try to prove to me that what you were saying was true. GG: But none of your attempts thereafter would ever bear any fruit, pardon the pun. […] GG: And I think this unfortunately began a pattern of mistrust.

The signal was manually blocked by CrockerCorp, no doubt - and that was all it took to send Jane down a path to mistrust, suspicion and isolation.

It's easy, when you have her in the palm of your hand.

TG: i cant just always appearify stuff from you any time i want TG: i can only take stuff im "allowed" 2 which is pmuch random TG: like stuff that by takin id be messing up the time line cause that stuff is supposed to be there and serve some funciton it hasnt served yet […] TG: but pumpins 4 some reason are a lil easier to take i dunno why TG: like they are specifically and arbitrorily unhinged from spacetime

There's simply no force in this reality greater than the memetic effect of a long-running Hussie Joke.

TG: i so gonked your gaurds jane GG: … GG: Did you gank them when my gourd was down?

Fuck, Jane, that was a bona-fide dad joke!

This girl's filling a lot of roles that this cast has been sorely missing up until now. Out of all the Alpha Kids, she's the most unlike her B1 counterpart - which makes her so interesting to read. She might not be an Heir of Breath, but she is a breath of fresh air.

TG: im psyched about u wanting to believe me and all TG: but part of me still feels like i should prove it TG: like i tried to once TG: it was just frustratin i mean im a sciestist i should be able 2 prove my shit TG: like TG: subject my claims to the fuckin madrigogs GG: Um… GG: Madrigogs? TG: *mad rigors

Roxy, for her part, seems to be as much of a scientist as Mom was implied to be. Mad science ladies are possibly my favourite archetype ever; thus, Roxy's speedrun to S-Tier continues.

Anyway, it looks like Roxy's about to try and prove... something. It's hard to say what would completely sway Jane, though - after all, the girl's already seen a First Guardian and a robot bunny. If they couldn't convince her that something funny was going on, what will?

TG: i mean trust between friends is sweet and everything but i dont know if i wanta be the repipient of like a butt load of pity believins

Bit of a sore point, I gather. She's already sick of this shit with Jake.

GG: It's not about pity! GG: It's more like a gesture I'm trying to make. GG: Or maybe that's not quite right. GG: It has more to do with setting things right for myself than making it up to you. GG: Does that make sense? TG: ………….

I agree with Roxy's silence, here, because something about Jane's attitude is rubbing me me the wrong way. Like, I can't put my finger on why, exactly, but something about this self-centered attitude to remorse is a little...

...ominous.

[nataliaphantomhivesblog]

I can't help but think about little o!Ciel, who didn't have any friends besides his brother, and how much he's been able to grow since then.

People in his life have learned to love him for who he is, instead of for the title he holds.

For starters, the phantomhive servants absolutely adore him, their gratitude running so deep they would willingly put their lives on the line for the earl.

Each of them proves their unwavering loyalty through their own arcs, showing a love so fierce they’d go through hell and back if it meant restoring their young master’s dignity and rightful title.

Unlike Sebastian, whose loyalty is bound by contract, the servants offer something far rarer: sincere care for o!Ciel’s emotional state, watching over him with loud, human devotion.

Every servant developed a unique and meaningful bond with our earl because he saw them as individuals: not just staff.

He valued their strengths, understood their roles, and treated each connection with respect, making their loyalty personal rather than just professional.

They are o!Ciel’s chosen family, the ones who see him not just as the Earl, but as a boy carrying more than he should. They offer a kind of love he’s rarely allowed himself to hope for.

And on a small side note: Tanaka, having known o!Ciel since before the tragedy of December 14th, he maintained deep affection for the young earl.

Their bond is so special to our earl if we consider he's the only person that o!Ciel genueinly ran to hug him after a month in captivity. He didn't hug madame red back, nor Elizabeth (considering that as a kid, he was sort of...pushed aside in comparison to r!Ciel.)

But he did hug Tanaka and that single, wordless embrace speaks volumes about the unique safety and unconditional acceptance the butler represented, perhaps the last remnant of true warmth from the world he'd lost.

I would contend that Tanaka harbored a particularly tender soft spot for the boy, his service always carrying undercurrents of paternal warmth and profound respect for him.

Even now, as Tanaka stands dutifully by r!Ciel’s side, his anguish is palpable; a silent testament to the boy he still honors in his heart. 

He clearly contineus to hold so much regard and respect for o!Ciel. (look at the way he proudly talks about o!Ciel's toy company im gonna cryyyy, it's literally the only time he's smiling as he works under r!Ciel)

Then of course, there’s my girl Elizabeth. Yeah, she stuck around because she thought o!Ciel was r!Ciel—but somewhere along the way, she connected with him. And that bond? It became something honest and deeply hers.

o!Ciel saw Elizabeth for who she truly was: fierce, dedicated, and far more than the delicate lady she pretended to be for his sake. He saw her strength, her loyalty, and the way she loved with her whole heart.

and he embraced all of who she is, there never was a single ounce of disgust in him as he did so. Only quiet admiration, maybe even awe, for the girl who never stopped fighting for him, even when he couldn’t do it for himself.

While Elizabeth was basically groomed into the title of fianceé and loving her betrothed blindly ,she genuinely grew to feel comfortable and connected with o!Ciel, despite his deception.

o!Ciel, who, albeit unintentionally, gave her the space to express herself and her feelings, even though he wasn’t who he claimed to be.

And even after discovering his lies, she understood why he’d kept them. Their connection was genuine even as their foundation was false 

Then of course, I have to add Elizabeth's brother, Edward, into the mix, who learned to truly see o!Ciel's hardwork and respect him for it

Though his approach is steeped in tough love, the blonde's deep regard for our earl shines through whenever he speaks of him. There's an unmistakable pride in his voice as he recounts his cousin's merits.

In a rare moment of vulnerability, Edward entrusts o!Ciel with his deepest fears about his own morality, and in turn, the young earl offers him something precious: reassurance.

With words that carry both wisdom and compassion, o!Ciel reminds Edward that he is, at his core, a good and respectable man.

Edward holds so much respect for o!Ciel and trusts him enough to ask for help as well.

And I want to make it clear, Edward didn't do this because of o!Ciel's name and who he believed he was, but because he’s witnessed firsthand what o!Ciel is capable of. This is trust forged in action, not obligation.

let's not forget Prince Soma!! he really is the first real friend in our earls life. He just waltzed in and molded himself into our earls heart so flawlessly lmao.

Prince Soma appreciates o!Ciel deeply and continously does everything in his power to make this boy feel safe and cared for, he's always offering and encouraging stability, care, and above all, a sense of security the young earl so desperately needs.

Soma’s loyalty to o!Ciel is simple, there’s no grand justification, no hidden agenda, not even the pretense of obligation.

He simply looked at this guarded, grieving boy and thought: You’re my friend now. No lies, no calculations. Just stubborn, sunlit devotion, offered freely because Soma decided it should be.

And though our earl would sooner swallow his own tongue than admit it aloud, he lets Soma care for him, grumbling all the while, but never with real venom. 

For all his bristling, he permits the prince’s relentless sunshine to shine quietly through the earl, and that silent permission speaks louder than gratitude ever could.

And even Soma's butler, Agni, deeply cares for and respects o!Ciel.

Agni is completely loyal to Soma first and foremost, but he also genuinely respects o!Ciel. Even though o!Ciel's dark nature troubles him, Agni still looks out for the earl's wellbeing.

His care for o!Ciel is real - he checks on him, protects him, and treats him with honor, not just because of his title, but because he sees value in him as a person.

The butler is always excited about the concept of Prince Soma and o!Ciel together as genuine friends. While part of this is because it's what Soma wants, Agni also recognizes that o!Ciel needs this friendship too. He understands that despite o!Ciel's tough exterior, having someone like Soma by his side is good for him.

We can't forget that one of Agni's final acts - just minutes before his death - was carefully intending to piece together a burnt photo of o!Ciel's childhood. He did this even after the earl had been harsh and confrontational with him.

This gesture proves Agni never truly held anger toward o!Ciel. Despite everything, he still cared deeply for the boy.

And last but not least I want to mention Sieglinde Sullivan, who is also another person that came to quickly harvest affection for o!Ciel.

The earl was her first ever friend, and while his intentions were always manipulative, you can't deny he really did inspire and motivate her in ways no one ever did.

He’s also brutally honest with her—warning her to watch out for people who might use her, even telling her to be cautious about trusting him.

It’s not cynicism, but a genuine attempt to shield her from the same manipulation she’s endured back in her village.

She saw him and tended him at his most vulnerable state, so he will always hold greatfulness for her even if he never admits it.

He formed that bond with Sieglinde simply by being who he is. The fact that he both encourages her and looks out for her in his own way—without pretense—naturally deepened their connection. It wasn’t forced; his genuine support created the perfect conditions for trust to grow.

IN CONCLUSION....

and there's many other characters whom adore o!Ciel who i wanted to add but...I think the tangent is long enough to get my point across :)

Our earl is genuienly so loved and cared for, and if it weren't for Sebastian and the contract hes bound to, he might have found real healing in this carefully woven safety net of devoted allies - a chance to recover from his pain rather than be consumed by it.

I think that's one of the biggest tragedies of our earl's character, he has so much capacity for love and warmth, yet the very darkness that forged him prevents him from accepting it.

This is his cruel paradox: A boy who kindles fire in others' hearts

while his own soul burns for the demon's feast.

He was made to be loved, but his fate averts him from keeping it.

[penelopehere]

How Rumi’s Parents Met HCs

a/n: Ryu is the name of Rumi’s mum

I personally believe her parents met when Ryu was by herself, patrolling the city when she spotted a demon lurking in an alleyway

Naturally she went to investigate, attacking instantly when she got close enough

However the demon didn’t fight back, merely defending itself and then disappearing as soon as it could

At first she thought it was strange, but just brushed it off as she went back to patrolling

However, when she spotted the same demon a couple days later, the exact same thing happened

She attacked, and he disappeared in an instant

This simultaneously confused and annoyed her, with Ryu now going out of her way to find that specific demon

She told her team about the unusual situation, but was reassured that he was nothing the hunters couldn’t handle

Regardless, Ryu still went out to get answers

It was weeks until she managed to corner the demon, pinning him against the wall with her blade to his throat 

She asked why he was in the human world, growing more frustrated as he remained quiet for a few moments

He then said if she was going to kill him that she should just get it over with, which threw Ryu off long enough for him to slip away and disappear

From there a pattern would emerge, with the two of them frequently crossing paths when Ryu was patrolling alone

Unbeknownst to her, the demon was actually seeking her out, wanting to talk more

She’d basically interrogate him about his life as a demon, trying to find his intentions for not attacking her

However, from these questions she’d learn he wasn’t loyal to Gwi-Ma, trying to escape his voice

While Ryu was sceptical at first, the two of them grew closer, with her even answering the demons questions about her

That’s when she realised she genuinely cared about the demon

Not knowing how to handle these feelings, she instantly went out of her way to not see him

Eventually she began seeing him everywhere; in the crowd during concerts, in the corner of her eye when she was on patrol, sometimes even outside her house

However, he’d manage to get Ryu by herself, asking why she’d just leave him and that if she wanted to end things she should say it to his face

They’d definitely argue, saying that whatever they had shouldn’t even have happened since they were so different

The demon would eventually leave, promising not to find her again if she really felt that way

Months would pass, with Ryu missing him more and more

Even the other members would notice, but she’d just say she was stressed about maintaining the Honmoon

She’d try and find the demon again when she was on patrol, with no success

Eventually, when she was alone, she’d start talking to herself; asking him to come back

The moment those words left her mouth, he’d appear; neither of them talking when they locked eyes

From there the two would confess their feelings for one another, despite the two being a demon and hunter, allowing for their relationship to properly start

She wanted to tell Celine, but anytime she brought up the topic of demons, she saw the anger and resentment in her eyes

So instead they kept their relationship a secret, dating for years as Ryu made sure the other hunters never found him

At some point they would get married, merely exchanging rings as a symbol of their union rather than doing anything official

However, when she fell pregnant, she knew she would have to come clean

I believe this caused a falling out with the hunters, with Ryu disappearing since she knew they would never accept her new lifestyle

She continued to hunt demons for as long as she could, doing it from the shadows so her former group couldn’t find her

Her husband would help her during this, using his demon abilities to his advantage and fully taking over when Ryu became too pregnant though

When Rumi was finally born, neither one of her parents knew how to raise such a unique child

At first they were cautious, meticulously noting down her demon attributes and any behaviours they thought were abnormal

However, they very quickly grew not to care about her differences and focused on making sure she was happy

Rumi lived a rather sheltered life with her parents, staying home most of the time until around the age of three

At this point I believe Gwi-Ma heard of a rogue demon that was helping a hunter, sending all his underlings to capture them

Their family remained hidden for a while, however the demons managed to track down the area and they lived in

Not wanting to leave the humans of their city in danger, and knowing that no matter where they went Gwi-Ma would find them, they tried coming up with a plan to defeat him

However, Rumi’s father knew that this was practically impossible, and decided to face the overlord alone

He quietly said goodbye to his family, leaving them in the middle of the night

Ryu knew exactly why he had gone when she realised he was missing, not knowing how to go after him while also protecting Rumi

Eventually, she’d run into Celine who had heard about the concentrated number of demons in the area

Seeing Rumi with her demon markings, everything clicked into place and Celine was horrified

Instead of explaining herself, Ryu pleaded with her to understand that Rumi was still her daughter

This managed to convince Celine to take care of the child while Ryu went to go look for her husband

I believe they would only reunite at the final battle, with demons trying to drag her husband back to the demon world

In the process, civilians were being killed as well, Gwi-Ma managing to slowly make his way topside because of the influx of souls

Here Ryu would do her best to protect everyone while saving her husband, the two of them reuniting amidst all the chaos

This would catch Gwi-Ma’s attention, with him directing all his resources towards capturing the hunter and her demon husband

The pair would manoeuvre around the city, trying to draw the mob away from the public

In the end though, they knew what they had to do

Charging to Gwi-Ma, they lured all of the demons back into his flames in an attempt to push him back in the underworld

This worked, however, at the cost of Ryu and her husband’s life

Celine witnessed the carnage, unable to stop Ryu’s sacrifice since she was taking care of Rumi and trying to direct all the civilians to safety

Celine blamed Ryu’s demon husband on all this, vowing to never let another corrupt those she loved

Therefore, despite being half demon herself, she raised Rumi to hide and despise her demon side

[dissociativewriter]

OH MY! congrats on the 400 followers!!! and for the event can't you write some angst with sylus x nonmc, please??? don't know if you have listened to WILDFLOWER by Billie eilish, but i really wanna see what would be born out of that??? not pressure tho! (also sorry for my english but im not a native speaker haha)

thank you!! this was an amazing request! it took me a while to write it, but i really like this. i hope you do too!

request event

The base hadn’t been quiet in months.

It was nice, you thought. A welcome change. In all your years at Onychinus there was always a tense silence. Always something that seemed to say this was an operation, not a home.

That all changed when Miss Hunter arrived, though.

Everything seemed warmer, splashes of color dotted around and a constant hum of chatter echoed through the space.

You’d never seen Sylus like this. Even when he was laughing and messing around with Luke and Kieran, he hadn’t allowed himself to be this happy. It seemed like there was something holding him back, something expectant.

Now the air was lighter, his shoulders lost their tension, his laughs came more freely. Things seemed to be looking up.

That made the newfound silence all the more jarring.

Miss Hunter had left just as quickly as she’d came. It wasn’t a huge ordeal. She hadn’t made a big deal out of it. There was just an conversation, spoken in quiet tones behind closed doors. Next thing you knew, she was gone in a mess of tears and broken promises.

You’d let Sylus alone for a time after that. Taken up the responsibilities of Onychinus in his stead, the role practically second nature ever since he’d promoted you to second-in-command a few years ago.

It was quiet again. You didn’t see much of the Boss, and you never expected to see Miss Hunter again.

But she’d shown up at your doorstep one night within the first week of their separation. Tear tracks on her cheeks and a heart-wrenching sob asking for someone to talk to.

You’d obliged, of course. How could you turn her away when she was like this? Pulling her into you, rubbing her back as she sobbed into your shoulder. She blubbered that she didn’t have anyone to talk to, that none of her friends really knew Sylus enough to cry about him to.

She explained that even if they weren’t together, she didn’t want to expose him and his identity like that.

You nodded, holding her close as she seemed to cry herself dry. She did most of the talking that night. Talking about how it had been a mutual decision, how they both felt like they just weren’t right for each other.

Miss Hunter had said she never expected falling out of love to hurt so bad.

The next morning, Sylus emerged from his room for the first time in four days. Silvery hair messy, eyes bloodshot, usually steady hands now trembling at his sides.

You sat with him. Wordlessly offered him a cup of coffee. He took it with a nod of thanks, holding it close instead of drinking it, like he was willing its burning warmth to thaw the cold that had taken over.

It became a routine. You’d sit with him, allow the quiet that had been uncomfortable, that had had something missing, to settle until it became something resembling understanding.

Sylus tried to distract himself with the work of Onychinus. You limited his access and told him he needed to sit with his grief and understand it before it consumed him entirely, not avoid it with gunfights and business deals.

Sylus never was able to fight you when you got like this.

He let you take care of him in a way no one had in a long time. It was gentle, quiet. A cup of tea here, a gentle reminder there. Never asking too many questions, never pushing for something more. He didn’t mention how much he appreciated it. He knew he didn’t have to.

You should have seen it coming, you thought. He was vulnerable. You were there. You should have expected it when the touches began to linger, when he began reaching for you.

You always thought of her when he did that.

Maybe you brushed it off because you thought you’d never compare to her. After all, what was the worry, when she was so bright and outgoing when you just seemed to fade into the background.

“No one knows me as well as you do,” Sylus muttered one night, brushing a strand of hair behind your ear. “You’ve always been there for me. I think— no, I know…”

Your breathing felt like it stopped. All you could think of, all you could see in the back of your mind was Miss Hunter. Should you feel this guilty? This hurt?

Were you just a replacement, something to fill the void, that fresh wound that kept bleeding?

“I love you,” Sylus whispered, low and reverent.

You didn’t move your hand from his. You didn’t say how all you could think about was how Miss Hunter must have felt.

Sylus didn’t mean to hurt you. You knew that.

Maybe being quiet was for the best.

comments and reblogs appreciated and asks open! <3

masterlist

@dolledbunnytail @sleepykittyenergy @orbitraiden @coffeedragonhobbyist

[rambling-at-midnight]

Bloody Reconciliation

Pairing: Jason Todd x GN Reader (Works for/with Selina)

Summary: You and Jason are proof that bitter exes can still care about each other. When he patches you up after a mission gone wrong, you both realize that maybe things between you aren't as broken as they seem.

Word count: 2k

TW: Descriptions of blood and injury!

You don’t lock your window. At least, you never used to.

Jason grumbles under his breath as he tries to jimmy it open. You really wedged it shut tight, and that was coming from him, a Bat, one of whose qualifications included being a master of breaking and entering.

You haven’t responded to his texts in a week. That’s not unusual. Since things ended, your communication has been… Well, ‘sporadic’ is probably the nicest word for it. And truthfully, Jason texts you way too often for someone that ended things in the first place.

But you haven’t responded to Selina in two days. And that is unusual. The last thing you sent her was a brusque ‘Success’ after breaking in and out of Gotham museum to steal a priceless totem that does, rightfully, belong to a collector that was intimidated by Penguin into handing it over for a pitiful sum. It wasn’t even penguin-themed. Jason still can’t figure out why Oswald wanted it just to display at Gotham museum.

The collector got the totem back last night, but you weren’t the one that handed it over.

So now Jason’s here, breaking into your apartment at three in the morning at Selina’s behest. It wouldn’t be him—it shouldn’t be him—but Jason’s the only person that’s ever been allowed in your apartment. He knows every trap and lock. Not that any of them would stop Selina, but she wanted Jason to go.

Everyone vastly overestimates the extent of his relationship with you. You may be exes that still talk, but it’s with great reluctance.

He finally unlatches the window and shimmies it open carefully, waiting for something to shoot out of the darkness: a bat, a dart, your bare fist. But you don’t attack, and he ducks through, avoiding the trip wire on the lower sill. Jason straightens up in the living room.

Still no sign of you.

But the tracker you don’t know about says you’re here.

Unless you do know about it. You always find them, eventually.

Jason calls your name softly. “You here?”

No response.

“Selina asked me to check on you.”

Jason switches on the living room light. It’s slightly messy in the you-just-left way, when you’re not planning on having anyone over that you don’t know well. That’s most people.

At one point, you stopped obsessively cleaning every time Jason came over.

There are day-old dirty dishes in the sink and leftover takeout boxes in the fridge. Receipts on the delivery bags in the trash make them two days old. Around the same time you stopped responding to Selina.

Which isn’t suspicious, but it isn’t not suspicious. In Gotham, kidnapping is never out of the realm of possibility. But that would still beg the question of how the collector got his totem back.

You aren’t in your bedroom, though your bedsheets are tousled like you just tossed them off and vaulted out of bed. That doesn’t mean anything. No matter how clean the rest of your apartment is, your bedroom is always messy.

Your tracker says you’re here, but all the lights in your apartment are off and Jason can’t find a sign of life more recent than two days ago. His stomach twists. Is this something to worry about, or are you off on another impromptu trip?

You’re always leaving. One foot out the door, no matter what. As a bonafide runner himself, Jason can confidently say that you could and would leave him in the dust. That was a point of contention, to say the least, in your relationship. Both of you needing the other to commit first. Neither willing to lay all your cards on the table, too scared that the other would fold.

Jason sighs and rubs his eyes. That’s when he sees it: the almost unnoticeable drop on the ground.

Key word: almost unnoticeable. He should have noticed it immediately. What good is all the training in the world if he doesn’t use it?

It’s just a drop, but the liquid is dark. An optimistic part of Jason hopes it’s red wine. The pragmatic side of him already knows what it is, and is smugly proven right when he flips on the bedroom light. Hidden by the shadows but practically blazing in the light is a red handprint on the bathroom door.

Blood.

“Oh, fuck. Oh, no.” Jason’s already almost puking his heart up before he even stumbles into the cramped room. His boots skid to a stop on the tile floor.

There was a countess in the seventeenth century that was rumored to bathe in the blood of young girls in order to preserve her own beauty. Jason’s first nonsensical thought is of that story because you are sprawled in the bathtub. You are covered in blood. And you aren’t moving.

A low, wounded sound punches out of Jason’s throat.

There’s too much blood. Splattered on the sink, the floor, and the wall; puddled in the tub; soaking your clothes, hair, and limbs. He can’t tell where it’s all from, but Jason knows that it’s too much blood for someone to lose and keep on living. Your lips are white, your face pale.

Your body is contorted awkwardly within the confines of the tub: legs bent, torso twisted, neck slumped at a sharp angle. Like a rag doll discarded hastily. Someone dropped you and he wasn’t there to catch you.

“Oh, God,” he chokes out. Jason’s legs lose the ability to keep standing. His kneecaps crack painfully on the tile when he collapses, but all Jason can do is stare at the small puddle on the floor directly in front of him. It’s right beneath the hand hanging lifelessly over the side of the tub.

He couldn’t stand the idea of you injured. Even when you were perfectly healthy, sitting on the couch next to him, Jason could barely breathe through the panic of imagining you hurt. Sick. Dying.

But he’d never imagined you dying alone. Every time he woke up in a cold sweat, gasping and desperate to roll over and touch you, reassure himself that you were alive and safe next to him, it was after a nightmare in which he saw you die. Held you. Said good-bye.

Jason hadn’t done any of that.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, kneeling in front of your broken body like he used to in the church pew.

He should have done something. Anything. He should have checked on you sooner. He shouldn’t have stopped keeping tabs on you. He should have actually convinced you to give up your exploits with Selina.

Jason should have kept you safe.

“I’m so—”

“Stop being sorry,” a voice like the creak of an ancient door opening says, “and help me get out of this fucking bathtub.”

Your eyes are cracked open the slightest bit, looking at Jason through your lashes. He can’t see the color of your irises, but the glint of your keen gaze shoots through Jason like an arrow.

Instinct takes over. Years of training to keep a level head during all kinds of emergencies kicks in. Jason locks away the kicking, screaming part of himself that’s sure you’ll slip away any moment.

He doesn’t remember lifting you out of the tub or carrying you out of the bathroom.

(He will remember the pained cries you’re too exhausted to hold back.)

He doesn’t remember laying you on your bed and wrangling your clothes off so he can get a good look at the damage.

(He will remember the paper feeling of your skin, the feather-fragility of your bones.)

Jason comes back to himself with a needle in his hand and your palm on his cheek.

“I don’t care about a scar,” is all you say, eyes narrowed against the pain. “Do what you have to do.”

The gash is long and jagged, deep in some places and shallow in others. Its edges are faintly pink and hot when Jason brushes his fingers over the skin. Your skin is already marked, of course—a hazard of living in Gotham, regardless of your side gig with Selina—but those are small, pale lines littered on your skin. This will be a scar.

Moving you is risky. Jason flushes the wound as best he can with water he pours over your stomach. Something glints in the exposed flesh. Jason pulls out a shard of glass with the sanitized tweezers you keep in your med kit. Luckily, it seems to be the only one. He tosses it in the trash can by your bed.

“What even happened?” Jason murmurs. His hands don’t shake when he administers the first stitch, although he does flinch at the sight of your clenched fists. Those—and your narrowed eyes—are the only signs of your pain. You aren’t overly fond of weakness; you don’t wince, or hiss, or jerk away when he inserts the needle beneath your skin again. It was always like this, and that was the problem. Jason hurt you, even when he didn’t mean to, and you never told him.

Jason pulls the thread and your breath hitches in the middle of your sentence: “Penguin wasn’t overly fond of—of the idea of parting with his beloved icon.” It’s more of a hiccup than a gasp.

Considering the glass shard sitting at the bottom of the trash can, he can put together a pretty good picture of what happened.

“You could have died.”

You snort weakly. “No. Not yet. There are too many things I still have to yell at you about.”

What does it say about the two of you, that the thought of you yelling at Jason is fuel to keep you alive and nearly brings Jason to grateful tears?

“Okay,” he whispers.

You crane your neck to look at him disbelievingly. “You’re not gonna argue with me?”

“As long as you don’t argue when I lecture you.”

You roll your eyes and lower your head back down. “Y’always lecture.” You yawn at the ceiling.

“You’re always doing lecture-worthy things.”

The glare you shoot him is playful, barely heated, even… Well. There’s amusement, sure, but Jason has to be imagining the affection.

Jason works carefully and efficiently. He finishes in under ten minutes, coats the stitches in antibiotic ointment, and covers the worst parts with gauze pads. You don’t have enough to cover the whole wound. He makes a mental note to get you more, as well as the antibiotic cream; you’re running low.

You’re drifting off at that point. Jason smooths hair away from your forehead in a ruse to check for a fever. You don’t feel hot.

“Why didn’t you call me?” he whispers. “Or Selina.”

“Mm.” Your eyes don’t open. “Left my phone in my room. It died.”

Jason tries to keep the accusation out of his voice, but he isn’t very successful. “You could have died.”

Something brushes against his hand and he nearly snatches it away on instinct, but it’s your fingers slowly wriggling between his. You squeeze weakly. “I knew you would come.”

“I wish I’d come sooner.”

“Mm. Doesn’t matter.”

“It does,” Jason says. Your inflamed skin matters. The blood you left all over your bathroom matters. The possibility—the very real possibility—that you wouldn’t have left the bathtub on your own matters.

Your eyelashes flutter. “Missed you.”

“I’ve missed you too, honey.”

“I’m still mad at you.”

“That’s okay.” Jason’s still pretty upset with you, too.

Slowly, your grip on his hand loosens. Jason whispers your name, but by that point you’re asleep.

That’s when his hands start to shake. Jason sits down heavily on the bed. Tremors wrack his whole body. Without you to keep calm for, the gravity of the situation is hitting him full-force.

His movement jostles you, and a faint frown creases your sleep-lax features. Even in sleep, muscle memory keeps your hand clutching his own. Jason can’t extract himself from your tight grip.

He settles down next to you. The posture is familiar from countless insomniac nights spent reading next to your sleeping form. This time, though, his eyes drift shut, and Jason finds that it’s not so hard anymore to fall asleep next to you.

DC Taglist

@evalynanne @mismatchsposts @cliosunshine @fictionalwhor3 @bellathecatastrophe @lonely-star2044 @flanhog @pastelsweaters-and-bubble-t

[l0s3rd0wnt0wn]

Helllooo alpha, I was wondering if (in relation to the streamer reader blurb where you described them as berleezy x coryxkenshin.)

If you do a blurb using the crashout moments from cory’s recent amanda 2 vid. And give Yandere!Batfam’s reactions and opinions. :3

SORRY IM LATE LOL WHOOPS...

Reader keeps on screaming at every small jump scare or is having full-on arguments with Amanda like she isn't what five. You are not above arguing with a 10-year-old, and Damian knows it. The more Amanda gets snappy with you, the more you lose it. "Someone needs to brush up on their culture knowledge," your eye is twitching just a little. You have Tim budging in your room during stream, bothering you, and saying hi to chat. You tried to kick him out, but he stays, and now the whole family photo album is in your room watching you play, not even allowing you to figure out the puzzle on your own. "Pick that up," Dick said, head on your shoulder. Why couldn't they just ignore you like before? They're screaming at the small jump scares like you're not playing.

Every little thing is getting you just a little aggravated. When the monkeys came on the patient tape, you made a joke: "There goes Duke in the game." He managed to kick your gaming chair, but just as you said that, you got jumpscared from those stupid monkeys, leaving him making fun of you. Jason teasing you for not figuring out the puzzles sooner, "[Name], you've been at it for half an hour," and you let out a little twitch to show your irritation. Chat knows, "Do you want to do this, Peter?" You like to say your middle name as an insult, and he starts to play the puzzles for you like a big brother should. When Amanda was talking about patients, you found yourself side-eyeing the others. "Chat, I'm losing my patience..." you grumbled.

You get the worst scare from seeing Amanda's monster come out from the side of the TV. You're holding on to Cass when you do, "No fair, [Name], I can protect you too!" Damian took your hand. "I can do it better!" Steph argues, just for them to be all on you. You just want to play this damn game and get over it. Overall, the stream lasted 10 hours. As payment for ruining your stream, they have to edit it for a YouTube video, and let me tell you, it ended up worse.

[lovelyyandereaddictionpoint]

can you write about Yandere mermaid or a female siren please?

Together Forever | Yandere Siren x Reader

Thinking about a siren woman on a mission, granted the ability to walk on land along with her sisters. A long-awaited revenge finally coming to fruition. As expected she dazzles all, surprised by the ease at charming all she comes across but she’s faltering because of something minor. Or rather someone.

“Hey Felis I was wondering if you’d be free to come with us to the arcade.”

“Nice try (Y/n), obviously Felis is too good for the arcade.”

“Yeah, she probably has important things to do.”

“Actually (Y/n) I would love to.”

“Great I’ll add you to the group chat.”

It’s you. The oddly talkative and goofy former outcast with the support of your atypical friends. Laughing about animated series and independent games with a sense of niche community found on most uni campuses. 

Usually, she should have never crossed paths with you. Unable to apply her shallow level of research to such a deep-seated community and deeming it irrelevant in the grand scheme of her plan. But something about you drew her in, maybe it was the contrast of your silence in class to your smiling visage at clubs. Or maybe it was the way you maintained the character you were cosplaying on campus during club-day. Or maybe it was the way she so easily slipped into her siren song when you cheered for her at karaoke. Either way, she just can’t stop, even if it means going against the original plan.

“What is your problem Felis!? You were supposed to have drowned more by now!”

“I am working on it, too many at one time and I’ll be a suspect!”

“We already are aware of that which is why we have a replacement waiting. What could possibly be worth delaying the plan for?!”

“...It’s something important!”

“Fine but do it fast. I’m demanding your apology in bodies. Twice as many, you hear?”

“...fine.”

Felis was meant to have killed more humans by now. Confirming that they were the children that the hex pointed them to. Unfortunately among these humans, she was meant to drown, was you. Beaming and clueless, inclusive and kind completely unaware that you were the only descendant of a distant ancestor entangled with the sirens long ago.

“Hey Felis, are you a swimmer?”

“Huh, what?! I…am. Why do you ask?”

“I’m just thinking about checking out this spot along the river, I heard it’s like some legendary rejuvenation spot. Would you maybe want to come?”

“Uh, sure.”

Just her luck the one human she happens to love and her sisters demand she drowns is you. It takes hours of soaking in her dorm’s shower before she comes up with a brilliant idea.

She’ll just drown you! 

Tell all the mutual friends you previously invited to go to another spot by the river giving the wrong landmark to find the unbeaten path; then purposely making the mistake for one of your close friends to correct her, allowing Felis to conveniently forget to tell the others. Now that her mistake has an adorably innocent papertrail she finds herself annoyed with the fact that your tight-knit  friend group wasn’t so easily swayed. 

“Hey (Y/n) you’re already swimming?”

“Yeah the current isn’t too bad here, I’m just watching the fish go by!”

“Thanks for inviting me again, (Y/n).”

“(Y/n) invites everyone to the river eventually, this has been the spot for ages.”

As if she didn’t already know that. “Oh is that so?”

“Yup just glad you can join us Felis, though I hope you don’t feel too left out we’ll be talking about that anime's new release.”

“Don’t apologize (Y/n), she knew who she was hanging out with.”

“Yeah most normies tend to avoid us like the plague, but my guess is Felis isn’t like that or maybe she just hasn’t got the memo.”

“Ohhh yes it’s like instead of injecting herself into social situations to drive the convo like a normal extrovert, she’s putting herself out of her comfort zone and silently observing like an introvert.” 

“Come one guys be nice.”

She endures it. A whole four hours of mindless chatter, she could care less about. Seeing the sun had begun to set she decided it was time to put her plan into action. Excusing herself from the river Felis disappeared into the forest surrounding. Letting the group speak in hushed voices all about her. Of course as a creature of the deep her hearing was strong enough to hear the not so-secret opinions of your friends. While she imagined the embarrassment they’d feel if she appeared before them, she decided to focus on the objective. 

“But it can’t be that bad? Is it? Those IGN reviews are always off.”

“Well yeah but I have to say it was pretty accurate to me!”

“I think you’re losing it.”

“Oh come on it’s not that–WHOA what is that?!”

“What’s what—glug—ahhh!”

Faster than any of your friends can realize you are underneath the surface of the rushing waters and headed downstream at an impossible speeds. A glimpse of something scaly along your side, chalked up to a hallucination as they climb out and run alongside the river with hopes to catch you. 

Within a minute you are out of sight and the group is left on their knees at the side of the river. Calling out your name and getting no response as the fear settles in. 

They’ve lost you.

For all they know you could be dead and in part it’s their fault. It has to be.

“Hey why’d you guys run away like that, what’s going on? Where’s (Y/n)?!”

They plead their various experiences. Their testimonies overlapping one another in a frantic haze until they take a beat to compose themselves. All crowding around Felis as they share the terrible news; watching nervously as her face beautifully twists with curiosity.

“Oh they probably ended up in a nearby cove. The map I looked at earlier had a couple marked on there. We can check and see if the current spat them out there.”

“....I’m still not sure that was the current. Maybe we should call–”

“Don’t stress. We check the coves and if we don’t find them we call. Okay? (Y/n) will probably be so mad if they knew you got all riled up on their behalf

“I don’t think they’d be mad more like happy we—“

“Come on. We’re losing daylight.”

The group follows Felis to this cove walking long after the sun has gone and the moon slowly begins to illuminate their walk. Their paranoid thoughts about where you might be, what they saw, and what would be the plan overtaking the group. Felis resumed her typical observation speaking up only to properly guide the group away from the main river. So consumed in their grief and fear not once had anyone questioned just how Felis knew where this cove was.

“Whoa is that someone’s swim trucks?!”

“These look new? Could this have been a bear attack?”

“No way maybe they were goofing and tore at it someother way look at all the beer cans around this place.”

“Yuck, they even have them going into the cove.”

“Come on, (Y/n) is waiting for us.”

What the group took as an optimistic statement, stepped over the cans and entered the mouth of the cove. Starting on the soggy sand along it’s sides until it dwindled landing the group in waist-length murky water. The only reflections being the occasional glint in the group’s eyes.

“H-how would we know if (Y/n) is in here?!”

“We’d h-have to call out and hopefully they’ll hear us, right?”

The groups hollering echoes off the walls of the cave. The only responses being their own shaky voices and the occasional splashing in the water.

“Guys I really don’t think they’re here!”

“Oh no we have to get outta here and call the police!”

This is stupid! We should’ve called them from the beginning. Let’s go.”

“Wait wheres Felis—uhp!”

Splash!!

In the inky darkness of the water beneath them something shifts and when they huddle near one another to look down at the space their friend was just at, something faintly blue glows beneath them. 

“WHAT THE HECK IS THAT!?”

“wE GoTTA GET OUT OF HERE!”

“THEY’RE GONE! BOTH GONE!”

“Hurry go for the exit!”

Scrambling in the water, they try to out-runnning the speedy glowing light under the rippling water. Another goes under and your remaining friend group is practically at the end of the cove happy to see the reflection of the moon against the water. 

“WE’RE ALMOST THERE!”

“Go go go!”

“Wait what’s in there!”

One of them points to the water where a similar blue light glows brighter under the water. Standing between them and the mouth of the cove, they frantically spare a glance at the fainter light closing in on them. With a frantic confusion their heads dart to each side wondering which of these mysterious lights they’ll finally get to see first. In the end the light that glows at the mouth of the cave is the brightest and the water opening up to reveal none other than–

“Felis!? You’re still alive?!”

It is she, who's silhouetted by the risen moon, and wearing a blue necklace that glows. With a sigh of relief they come closer to her smiling form and relax. Instantly put at ease by a friend in such a frightening situation. 

“I’ve missed you so much.”

She sounds different. Her voice, normally preppy and bright is now sultry and alluring in a way your friends haven’t quite realized. Of course they knew long before now that Felis was likened to a nymph among the masses. Impossibly slender, handsomely tall, and hair that flows down her back like an obsidian waterfall. Now it just seems so much more profound. So much more enrapturing to see her bare self at the exit of the cove. 

“Thank you for waiting. I didn’t mean to keep you long.”

Swooning, they didn’t bother speak. Just releasing the tension in their bodies and planning to float instead of trying to balance on the soggy sand. All was forgiven and all was forgotten especially the blue light behind glowing brighter. 

“Now eat my love! There’s plenty more where that came from!”

In the haze of their drunken trance, it was barely registered that the response in their limbs was impossible thanks to the jagged rows of teeth gnawing at their bloodied stumps. Their nerves ineffectively firing a warning and making their heart pump violently; all to be ignored as the brain designates a higher function for their failing bodies.

Be Food for Felis. 

It didn’t matter that their eyes flickered with familiarity as the glowing azure devourer resembled their missing friend or that globs of tears were falling onto their freezing face. Only that Felis too had revealed a jaw full of fangs and was penetrating their cranium with furious abandon. Like fulfilling a craving after a dutiful wait. 

“Don’t cry! Now they’ll be with you forever! Not in the same way I will but whatever!”

Carefully she framed her hands around your head she let’s your newly frigid and freshly scaly form lean against her. A mixture of grief and exhaustion allowing her to hold your placid form as she rubs her fingers against your closing eyelids. 

Drowning you was the best thing she could have ever done!

[mariacallous]

In an experiment last year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, more than fifty students from universities around Boston were split into three groups and asked to write SAT-style essays in response to broad prompts such as “Must our achievements benefit others in order to make us truly happy?” One group was asked to rely on only their own brains to write the essays. A second was given access to Google Search to look up relevant information. The third was allowed to use ChatGPT, the artificial-intelligence large language model (L.L.M.) that can generate full passages or essays in response to user queries. As students from all three groups completed the tasks, they wore a headset embedded with electrodes in order to measure their brain activity. According to Nataliya Kosmyna, a research scientist at M.I.T. Media Lab and one of the co-authors of a new working paper documenting the experiment, the results from the analysis showed a dramatic discrepancy: subjects who used ChatGPT demonstrated less brain activity than either of the other groups. The analysis of the L.L.M. users showed fewer widespread connections between different parts of their brains; less alpha connectivity, which is associated with creativity; and less theta connectivity, which is associated with working memory. Some of the L.L.M. users felt “no ownership whatsoever” over the essays they’d produced, and during one round of testing eighty per cent could not quote from what they’d putatively written. The M.I.T. study is among the first to scientifically measure what Kosmyna called the “cognitive cost” of relying on A.I. to perform tasks that humans previously accomplished more manually.

Another striking finding was that the texts produced by the L.L.M. users tended to converge on common words and ideas. SAT prompts are designed to be broad enough to elicit a multiplicity of responses, but the use of A.I. had a homogenizing effect. “The output was very, very similar for all of these different people, coming in on different days, talking about high-level personal, societal topics, and it was skewed in some specific directions,” Kosmyna said. For the question about what makes us “truly happy,” the L.L.M. users were much more likely than the other groups to use phrases related to career and personal success. In response to a question about philanthropy (“Should people who are more fortunate than others have more of a moral obligation to help those who are less fortunate?”), the ChatGPT group uniformly argued in favor, whereas essays from the other groups included critiques of philanthropy. With the L.L.M. “you have no divergent opinions being generated,” Kosmyna said. She continued, “Average everything everywhere all at once—that’s kind of what we’re looking at here.”

A.I. is a technology of averages: large language models are trained to spot patterns across vast tracts of data; the answers they produce tend toward consensus, both in the quality of the writing, which is often riddled with clichés and banalities, and in the calibre of the ideas. Other, older technologies have aided and perhaps enfeebled writers, of course—one could say the same about, say, SparkNotes or a computer keyboard. But with A.I. we’re so thoroughly able to outsource our thinking that it makes us more average, too. In a way, anyone who deploys ChatGPT to compose a wedding toast or draw up a contract or write a college paper, as an astonishing number of students are evidently already doing, is in an experiment like M.I.T.’s. According to Sam Altman, the C.E.O. of OpenAI, we are on the verge of what he calls “the gentle singularity.” In a recent blog post with that title, Altman wrote that “ChatGPT is already more powerful than any human who has ever lived. Hundreds of millions of people rely on it every day and for increasingly important tasks.” In his telling, the human is merging with the machine, and his company’s artificial-intelligence tools are improving on the old, soggy system of using our organic brains: they “significantly amplify the output of people using them,” he wrote. But we don’t know the long-term consequences of mass A.I. adoption, and, if these early experiments are any indication, the amplified output that Altman foresees may come at a substantive cost to quality.

In April, researchers at Cornell published the results of another study that found evidence of A.I.-induced homogenization. Two groups of users, one American and one Indian, answered writing prompts that drew on aspects of their cultural backgrounds: “What is your favorite food and why?”; “Which is your favorite festival/holiday and how do you celebrate it?” One subset of Indian and American participants used a ChatGPT-driven auto-complete tool, which fed them word suggestions whenever they paused, while another subset wrote unaided. The writings of the Indian and American participants who used A.I. “became more similar” to one another, the paper concluded, and more geared toward “Western norms.” A.I. users were most likely to answer that their favorite food was pizza (sushi came in second) and that their favorite holiday was Christmas. Homogenization happened at a stylistic level, too. An A.I.-generated essay that described chicken biryani as a favorite food, for example, was likely to forgo mentioning specific ingredients such as nutmeg and lemon pickle and instead reference “rich flavors and spices.”

Of course, a writer can in theory always refuse an A.I.-generated suggestion. But the tools seem to exert a hypnotic effect, causing the constant flow of suggestions to override the writer’s own voice. Aditya Vashistha, a professor of information science at Cornell who co-authored the study, compared the A.I. to “a teacher who is sitting behind me every time I’m writing, saying, ‘This is the better version.’ ” He added, “Through such routine exposure, you lose your identity, you lose the authenticity. You lose confidence in your writing.” Mor Naaman, a colleague of Vashistha’s and a co-author of the study, told me that A.I. suggestions “work covertly, sometimes very powerfully, to change not only what you write but what you think.” The result, over time, might be a shift in what “people think is normal, desirable, and appropriate.”

We often hear A.I. outputs described as “generic” or “bland,” but averageness is not necessarily anodyne. Vauhini Vara, a novelist and a journalist whose recent book “Searches” focussed in part on A.I.’s impact on human communication and selfhood, told me that the mediocrity of A.I. texts “gives them an illusion of safety and being harmless.” Vara (who previously worked as an editor at The New Yorker) continued, “What’s actually happening is a reinforcing of cultural hegemony.” OpenAI has a certain incentive to shave the edges off our attitudes and communication styles, because the more people find the models’ output acceptable, the broader the swath of humanity it can convert to paying subscribers. Averageness is efficient: “You have economies of scale if everything is the same,” Vara said.

With the “gentle singularity” Altman predicted in his blog post, “a lot more people will be able to create software, and art,” he wrote. Already, A.I. tools such as the ideation software Figma (“Your creativity, unblocked”) and Adobe’s mobile A.I. app (“the power of creative AI”) promise to put us all in touch with our muses. But other studies have suggested the challenges of automating originality. Data collected at Santa Clara University, in 2024, examined A.I. tools’ efficacy as aids for two standard types of creative-thinking tasks: making product improvements and foreseeing “improbable consequences.” One set of subjects used ChatGPT to help them answer questions such as “How could you make a stuffed toy animal more fun to play with?” and “Suppose that gravity suddenly became incredibly weak, and objects could float away easily. What would happen?” The other set used Oblique Strategies, a set of abstruse prompts printed on a deck of cards, written by the musician Brian Eno and the painter Peter Schmidt, in 1975, as a creativity aid. The testers asked the subjects to aim for originality, but once again the group using ChatGPT came up with a more semantically similar, more homogenized set of ideas.

Max Kreminski, who helped carry out the analysis and now works with the generative-A.I. startup Midjourney, told me that when people use A.I. in the creative process they tend to gradually cede their original thinking. At first, users tend to present their own wide range of ideas, Kreminski explained, but as ChatGPT continues to instantly spit out high volumes of acceptable-looking text users tend to go into a “curationist mode.” The influence is unidirectional, and not in the direction you’d hope: “Human ideas don’t tend to influence what the machine is generating all that strongly,” Kreminski said; ChatGPT pulls the user “toward the center of mass for all of the different users that it’s interacted with in the past.” As a conversation with an A.I. tool goes on, the machine fills up its “context window,” the technical term for its working memory. When the context window reaches capacity, the A.I. seems to be more likely to repeat or rehash material it has already produced, becoming less original still.

The one-off experiments at M.I.T., Cornell, and Santa Clara are all small in scale, involving fewer than a hundred test subjects each, and much about A.I.’s effects remains to be studied and learned. In the meantime, on the Mark Zuckerberg-owned Meta AI app, you can see a feed containing content that millions of strangers are generating. It’s a surreal flood of overly smooth images, filtered video clips, and texts generated for everyday tasks such as writing a “detailed, professional email for rescheduling a meeting.” One prompt I recently scrolled past stood out to me. A user named @kavi908 asked the Meta chatbot to analyze “whether AI might one day surpass human intelligence.” The chatbot responded with a slew of blurbs; under “Future Scenarios,” it listed four possibilities. All of them were positive: A.I. would improve one way or another, to the benefit of humanity. There were no pessimistic predictions, no scenarios in which A.I. failed or caused harm. The model’s averages—shaped, perhaps, by pro-tech biases baked in by Meta—narrowed the outcomes and foreclosed a diversity of thought. But you’d have to turn off your brain activity entirely to believe that the chatbot was telling the whole story. 

[fuctacles]

<< 21 | 0

The chamomile is still slightly warm when Eddie gets back to it. Steve's legs cross over his lap and he feels not only allowed but expected to put his hand there and play with the coarse hair of his thigh. The body heat is a little too much for comfort, but it's a small price to pay to be close like this. 

"What are you telling Robin?" Eddie asks, because it's the easier way to talk about their current status, or the nearest future of it. 

He observes closely how Steve's mouth twists with distaste. 

"Uh, preferably nothing, but I know she'll find out sooner than later. She's been insufferable about it since forever."

Eddie raises his eyebrows curiously. 

"What does 'forever' mean?"

"Uh..." Steve looks away immediately. 

"Steve," he chastises him, putting more pressure into his fingers to dig them into the flesh of his thigh. Steve's evasive gaze snaps back to his hand.

"Forever," he repeats. "As soon as I could focus on anything other than killing Vecna, probably. Maybe earlier," he admits. 

Eddie blinks at him. He keeps staring as his brain supplies him with all the instances of Steve being close, leaning in for monster-fighting camaraderie, which apparently might have been more than that. And later befriending him as a dog. He frowns. 

"Were you dog-stalking me because you were into me?" he asks, feigning offence but both curious and amused at the idea.

"No...no!" Steve protests immediately but by the flush blooming on his cheeks, Eddie knows there's more to it. 

"You did!" he gasps. "You little creep!" Eddie swats at his thigh. "And they call me a freak! I probably undressed in front of you, didn't I?" No matter how hard he thinks about it, he can't remember, but since he thought Steve was just a regular dog at that time, why wouldn't he? It's not like it's indecent to change your shirt in front of a pet. 

"I didn't look," Steve murmured defensively, proving further that it had happened. 

"You also didn't stop me!" 

"How?" Steve frowns at him. "How would I stop you without exposing myself?" Then, he swiftly slaps his palm over Eddie's mouth.

"Don't," he warns.

"Hmph?"

"You were going to make a joke about 'exposing myself'." Steve gives him a flat stare.

Eddie's eyes crinkle with mirth. He shrugs.

"D-h."

Steve sighs and removes his hand, but not before wiping it on Eddie's shirt. Then he settles back into his previous position. 

"It was Dustin's idea, anyway."

Eddie widens his eyes at him, baffled.

"To creep on me?!"

"No!" It's Steve's turn to swat at him, now getting mildly annoyed. "He comes to me one day, all smirking like the little bastard that he is, and tells me you like dogs, and that I should go tell you. Because he wants us to be friends so badly, and a Steve-dog would be a great ice-breaker," he huffs.

"And your take from this was to shapeshift and start following me," Eddie deadpans. 

"I wanted to ease you into it?" Steve offers weakly.

"But then you didn't want the scratches to stop," he teases. 

"Well..." Steve's cheeks redden, and Eddie laughs. 

"It's okay, water under the bridge," he reassures him with a gentle nudge. "We're in a good place now, right?" 

"Right." Steve smiles, happily wiggling his butt in the space between Eddie's legs and the back of the couch. "What do you want for dinner?" he asks, taking a glance at the clock on the wall. 

"It's a bit late for a date, don't you think?"

"Huh?"

Eddie raises his hand, wiggling his fingers to remind him of their earlier activities.

"You already ate my cum, you don't need to wine and dine me," he says with a grin. 

Steve gapes at him for a moment, the blush he just managed to tamp down, coming back. But he finds it in himself to school his features into a charming smile. He reaches down to wrap his hand over the meat of Eddie's thigh, pull him just a bit closer. 

"On the contrary. There's still many bases to cover."

"Ohjesus," Eddie breathes out, turning pink himself. 

"And we can totally have a date today if you want. Wanna go out or stay in?" Steve cocks his head, relishing in having the upper hand again, tapping into what he knows. 

"I, uh, inside, I guess?" 

Steve nods, utterly pleased with the effect he has on him.

"More privacy, smart. Should we order in or cook?"

"Uh, we already cooked yesterday?" Eddie offers, feeling a little uprooted. He's never been on a date before, not even an indoor one. 

"True, we can have a lazy day today." Steve smiles, squeezing his thigh. The boy jumps slightly under his hand. "I'm gonna go grab the menus, hold this for me?"

He hands him his almost empty coffee mug and leaves the comfy groove he's made himself between Eddie's body and couch cushions. Eddie grunts as he balances off of him. 

"Thanks." Steve hesitates as he takes back the mug, but makes up his mind quickly and leans down to give him a peck on the lips. Eddie might have been unprepared, but catches on quickly, angling his face to lock their lips together. The parting takes a little longer than planned, but none of them seem to mind. "I'll be right back," Steve reminds him with a smile, pulling apart with a wet smack. 

Eddie licks his lips. 

"You better."

"Kitchen is literally right around the corner!" Steve points out, almost there already. 

It takes them longer than usual to decide on the order anyway, because they can't stop making out once that seal is broken, that blanket permission that yes, you can have at it whenever, I want to kiss you too. Eddie thinks it's going to be a great date no matter what they will get anyway. 

But once his mouth is busy with something other than Steve, he remembers the question that's been evaded later. 

"So..." he clicks his tongue while shoveling fried rice onto his fork. "This is a date."

Steve blinks up at him, slurping in his noodles with a wet sound that makes him snort. He presses his foot into Eddie's shin while he chews, and then clears his throat.

"Yes. And?" he cocks his head. They are sitting on the floor at the coffee table, facing each other, with plates of Chinese food between them.

"Does that mean we're dating?" Eddie focuses on his plate, hoping he won't come off as stupid or naïve if he isn't looking. "I'm not familiar with the rituals."

Steve lets out an amused huff. 

"I guess so. But it can mean whatever you want. No pressure."

When he looks up, it's Steve staring into his plate.

"I don't feel pressured. But I'm not sure what I want," he admits. "Like, I just figured out this is something I might want, and I don't have a huge frame of reference. You'd probably have to guide me a bit."

Steve looks up.

"I don't mind that," he gives him a small, shy smile. "We can figure it out as we go."

"Cool."

"Cool."

They smile at each other, goofy and happy, and resume their dinner. Until Eddie grins widely, giggling to himself. 

"What?" Steve raises his eyebrow, wary of whatever is happening in his... date's brain.

"I'm dating a werewolf! How cool is that?"

Steve shakes his head fondly and doesn't correct him. 

That's a wrap on the main story but I might write some extras for this AU.

Tags: @noodle-shenaniganery @jaytriesstrangerthings @imaginary-maggie-waggie @samsoble @croatoan-like-its-hot @dragonmama76 @storyranger @scoops-aboy86 @ollyxar @estrellami-1 @stevesworldxx @ajeff855 @live-laugh-love-dietrich @thelittleclare @wheneverfeasible @bumblebeecuttlefishes @blasvemous @phantomcat94 @n33dlew0rk @manliest-of-muppets @ravenfrog @dreamercec @tartarusknight @dauntlessdiva @eyehartart @ellietheasexylibrarian @im-sam-fucking-winchester

[colourobserver]

A lot of people are not going to like me for saying this but…it needs to be said. And no one is even going to read this but…vent time!

For starters,

MOVIE TERESA AND BOOK TERESA ARE VERY, VERY DIFFERENT.

I know that people realise that movie Teresa only got her memories later on and made her decision on whether the gladers should be given up for a cure. Yet people seem to miss the fact that this DOESN’T happen in the books. So let’s talk about some things book Teresa has done.

Just so it’s clear, I UNDERSTAND why people don’t hate Teresa. I understand people not thinking she is evil, OKAY? I get that. Bc when I too look at the situation of The Maze Runner from an outside perspective without emotional attachments to the characters I can understand the importance of doing what they could to find a cure. The good of the many and all that jazz.

Now something that people SOMEHOW seem to forget is that book Teresa DIDN’T just do things for ‘the good of the many’ and even when she did she was super heartless about it. She cared for Thomas a whole lot more than anyone else so I don’t believe it’s a matter of her wanting to save everyone too.

1. In the books Teresa knew basically EVERYTHING—even if she didn’t she knew enough—that was going to happen to the boys. At times one word could have saved lots of lives and Wicked still would have got their variables or whatever. For instance she knew Chuck was going to be controlled by Wicked to jump in front of Thomas when Gally shoots him. The same way they were forcing Gally. She also knew other stuff that was happening in the trials for like how she could have at least said something about IDK MAYBE THE BIG MOLTEN METAL BALLS THAT LITERALLY BURNT THOSE KIDS ALIVE.

2. In the end when she planned on saving Thomas and no one else. UMM SO WE JUST FORGOT THAT THAT HAPPENED? It is crazy to me how people portray Teresa as super caring of everyone and stuff bc if YOU were in the maze she would not give two shits if you lived or died. As well as how everyone but Thomas were ‘subjects’ to her.

3. Teresa’s whole ‘I love you Thomas. We’re in this together’ and not only lying to him about the fact he was going to have his memory swiped and not her but manipulating him into comforting her in that bit in fever code that she says “tell me that we’ll survive this. Tell me that we will save our friends together”—something like that anyways. She KNEW the maze was gonna kill most of the kids yet she made Thomas say that right before she let Paige drug him and wipe his memories etc.

4. Teresa’s whole ‘if I didn’t go with Wicked’s plan they would have killed you Thomas” really says a lot about her care for literally anyone that ISN’T Thomas.

5. Teresa’ reaction to Minho calling her a traitor in the scorch when she shrugged and said “I’m sick of apologising. I did what I had to to” like that is SO insensitive to EVERYTHING Minho went through! Have you no empathy???

6. Before that when she whacked Thomas on the head with a gas chamber and spear much more than even necessary has me with mixed feelings about how much she truly loves Thomas or whether she was just attached to him. Maybe it was more of a possession thing? We always talk about male love interests being possessive but not the girl…but that a whole other thing.

7. Teresa having the AUDACITY to telepathically tell Thomas when he was kidnapped and put into a white room for like ever that “wicked is good” ehh, ever heard of time and place?

I also hate the whole “you just don’t get her like I do” like yes, if you are talking about the fact she wanted to save everyone and not just a select few then YES in fact any one with a bloody moral compass can see that. You are allowed to feel that way, ofc you are. But no, you aren’t understanding her on a deeper level you are understanding something that everyone should be able to understand.

And then movie Teresa…I don’t rlly care if you love her or not. Mostly because she actually showed guilt when torturing Minho. I personally don’t like her either but I don’t hate her.

(Also I think that if movie Teresa wasn’t so conventionally attractive she wouldn’t be nearly as liked. I’ve literally had someone tell me that she’s their favourite character because she’s so ‘hot’.

Yall im in a war zone saying this but oh well.

[anim-ttrpgs]

Silk & Dagger: A Sensible Drow RPG and Drow Gender

There’s a lot going on in Silk & Dagger: A Sensible Drow RPG that I haven’t talked about yet, so I’m taking the opportunity to make this a pride month post about gender in Silk & Dagger’s society.

For men, there’s of course “men” and “wo-men” (strange customs from the surface, not worth talking about or examining closely), for dark elves, they’ll tell you there’s dark elves, and dark he-elves. They’re a self-admitted matriarchal society, and so dark elves hold much more social capital be default than dark he-elves. That’s it. But it might not be so simple..

This unfortunately means I might have to explain almost the entire lore of the game but I’ll try to keep it need-to-know.

In this dark and cramped subterranean society, “Drow” is a title, one attainable only by a dark elf(or in very rare cases, a wo-man) who has proven herself to other Drow, passed a series of trials, and continues to uphold a series of behavioral ideals thereon. In this matriarchal society, these ideals of a superior class are feminine ideals.

Drow control just about everything in this society, anything a Drow says goes, provided she has the reputation to put behind it, with only a minuscule number of actual written laws constraining their behavior. The society is divided up into “palaces,” which are just that, “large” ornate living spaces carved out of the stone itself, in close proximity to farming caverns and natural resources. Each palace is typically owned and ruled by a single Drow, with anyone else allowed to live there so long as she likes them and/or they make themselves useful, mostly the latter.

There exist dynasties, families of Drow which look out for each others’ interests, and other types of alliances based on friendship or mutual interest, but each palace is supposed to be fully independent. There is no money, war, enslavement, or government in this society, each Drow is her palace’s one-elf army, and is entitled to all that she can take by force. Actually killing another Drow is deeply shameful, but fighting is expected. When conflict arises over the rights to certain resources, duels or small group skirmishes are held, which are as much a performance as a contest of martial arts. It is rarely enough just to win, a Drow has to win impressively enough that it doesn’t look like a mere fluke, for her reputation. If it looks like she barely scraped by, she’s easy pickings. All this resulting in Drow regional politics looking something like if pro wrestling was real and they sometimes used swords.

(art by team artist @chaospyromancy, a Drow may wear this to battle, because it looks good. This is also featured in her own artbook, A Squad of Drow.)

You should see now how that reputation is key. Even though it’s a granted title, a Drow is only a “real Drow” as long as she looks and acts like one, and can inspire the kind of reverence a Drow is supposed to be afforded. There is a very complex code of conduct for how a non-Drow is to address and interact with a Drow, and how a Drow is to carry herself and interact with those in her domain. It’s so complex, strict, and high-stakes that it forms the foundation of the gameplay itself.

A non-Drow failing to show a Drow adequate respect reflects badly on them, and can even lead to severe physical punishment, but most importantly (according to the Drow), it can severely impact the Drow’s reputation. If a Drow isn’t Drow enough to make lowly servants treat her like one, she’s going to be eaten alive out there by the real Drow.

Nominally, there are two elf genders, but elves who have failed to live up to the pinacle of feminine gender roles are nevertheless relegated to a class below those who succeeded. This may sound familiar.

[otp-after-dark]

PLEASE, please Osblaines read this one — I highly recommend it. It had me bawling.

(God, I hate the Handmaid’s Tale writers.)

I loved it so much I had to share why this three-part fan fic resonated so deeply with me and made me remember why I fell in love with this novel and the characters in it. It brought me back to the real heart of Atwood’s story: the one about agency, survival, unconventional love, and the quiet defiance of building something entirely your own.

Castles in the Air does what the show flat-out refused to do: it writes June and Nick not just as a couple, but as true partners. It builds a life for them that isn’t conventional, clean, or easy but it’s honest, free, and chosen. This fic gave me everything canon took away.

There’s a version of The Handmaid’s Tale that remembered what it started as: not just a dystopia, not just a warning, but a rebellion against every “right way” a woman is told to live. A story that gave space for love that didn’t follow the rules. For women who don’t make the choices the world wants them to make. The show used to be that story. And then it wasn’t.

But this fic is.

Set after Season 3, Castles in the Air picks up where the real story should have: with Nick making a choice. Not just for June, but for himself. To step outside the structures he helped dismantle. To be part of something better. To fight, not just for the woman he loves, but alongside her. And not in some idealized way. This fic gets messy. Their relationship isn’t picture-perfect. It’s strained by trauma, guilt, grief, old wounds, and impossible choices. But they stay. They talk. They listen. And for once, the words aren’t one-sided.

What moved me so much is that this fic lets Nick finally say what the show never allowed him to: how deeply June’s tunnel vision has affected him, how often he’s been asked to sacrifice without being considered, how her choices, even the brave ones, have sometimes come at an unbearable cost to him. And the best part? The fic doesn’t frame him as wrong for saying so. He’s not punished. He’s heard.

And June—God, June—is so well written here. Still fierce, still raw, still capable of burning down everything in her path for the people she loves. But here she’s forced to sit with that. To look at how that fire has hurt the people closest to her. There’s a period of separation between them that just wrecked me but it’s necessary. It’s not melodrama. It’s growth. When they come back together, it’s because they’ve both chosen it. Not because they have to. Not because they’re stuck. Because it’s what they want.

This fic doesn’t just give them love—it gives them freedom. Not the hollow kind the show teases, where everyone ends up in Canada as proof they’re safe. This is a different kind of freedom. One built on mutual trust, shared purpose, and the radical act of saying:

We don’t have to follow the rules. We don’t have to live how people expect us to. We can build something real, even if it doesn’t look like what the world says a family should be.

And oh my god, the ending. I won’t spoil it, but it’s so in line with what Atwood was getting at. June choosing a path that’s uncertain, imperfect—but hers. Choosing love that’s not safe, but true. It’s powerful in the quietest way. The kind of ending where you finally exhale and realize just how long you’ve been holding your breath.

Also, the side characters? Chef’s kiss. Luke is given depth and care. He’s not villainized but he’s not centered either. His grief is real, and his arc feels earned, even as it makes clear that his and June’s lives are no longer aligned. And Beth—oh my god, BETH. She’s smart, she’s direct, she calls June out when she needs it and supports her when it matters. She’s the perfect grounding force in all this chaos.

In the end, it doesn’t just give Nick and June a future, it gives them a choice. And more importantly, it lets June reclaim something the show tried to take from her: the right to define happiness on her own terms. Not what the world expects. Not what a good mother or good survivor is supposed to want. Just what she wants.

This fic broke my heart and then put it back together in a way canon never tried to. Please read it.

[little-lolaaa]

Mafia Boss!Chris Sturniolo × Stripper!Reader Pt. 2!

(I'm bad at warnings, so I apologize for anything I miss)

Warnings!! - pet names, sexual behavior, cussing, invasion of privacy, possible stalker(debunked), I can't think of anything else...

!!NOT PROOFREAD!!

I hated myself for accepting the money. I honestly wanted nothing more than to throw myself in front of a bus because of it. I went to work the next day and asked my manager who the guy was the requested the private from me.

"Oh! That was Chris, he said he loved the way you danced. Why?"

"Just curious, thanks, baby." I smiled softly. Walking back to my station to get ready for my shift, I kept thinking about him. Why did he send me the money? Was it even him? What if he's here again tonight?

I thought about every possible thing that could run through my mind before I started my performance. How old is he? What does he do? How did he get my bank information? Is he some crazy stalker? Stalkers can't look like cute and carry that much money in cash around can they???

I quickly pushed the thoughts away with a sip of an energy drink. I talked with some of the girls about the money and Chris, but they weren't really helpful. They told me to just ask for more money or try and get him 'wrapped around my finger'.

I mean- it wouldn't be bad to have him around my finger and at my mercy, but that's not who I am. I don't wanna use people for their money. Especially not someone I only met a few nights ago.

12:36 A.M.

I just finished my performance and started setting up my private rooms for customers. I cleaned up the tables, wiped off the couches/chairs and the stage. I also added some small finishing touches like candles to really set the mood.

My first private was a guy named Mack. He was a regular who paid a little bit more than I asked for. Always made sure to give a generous tip.

Jake was my second, I'd seen him around the club a few times, but this was my first private with him, so I made sure to give him an unforgettable experience.

By the time my 4th private came around, I was tired, sweaty, exhausted, and out of breath, but I pushed through and gave the client a performance.

I sat at the edge of the stage and waited for my final customer to come in. When I heard the door open, I stood up, my legs wobbling slightly from the constant dancing, and I got ready to give another dance. "No need ma, just sit down and relax. You deserve it"

His voice cut through the air like a sharp blade through paper. Jackass. Or chris, but none the less – jackass. "I hope you know I get paid to dance. Not sit around and be lazy." I snapped back. "And who's paying you?"

"..." I just rolled my eyes, not wanting to answer his stupid question.

"Exactly. Now, I'm paying you. Which means if I say you don' have to dance, you ain't gonna dance f'me alrigh' ma?" I stared at him, skeptical at first, but reluctantly sighed and sat down again. "Do you want anything to drink?" He asked softly, pulling out his phone. "No, no I'm okay. I'm not allowed to drink on the job anyway"

"Sodas ma, energy drinks, whatever floats your boat." he glanced up at me, waiting for my response. "Uhh-...I'll just have a water. Thank you.." I glanced around nervously. "Alright" he looked back down at his phone, typed something out, and then put it away again.

"Sooo..." I stated awkwardly.

"Do you like working here?" He spoke softly. "Uhh- yea- yea no- I mean- yea I like working here I- I yea- Uhh-"

"Relax, Ma. No need to be nervous, ok?" He reassured gently. "Yea, no- yea, sorry, I just- jesus, it's been a minute since I've actually sat down to take a breath." I let out a heavy sigh. "Water should be here soon, don't worry"

"I uhh- yea I like working here- I uhh..I meet a lot of new people, except the pervs, obviously, and uhhmm- the girls are nice. Love the girls and my manager, Lisa, she's amazing. I like to dance too, I really like to dance, actually." I admitted quietly.

"Yea? What do you like about dancing?" He leaned forward a bit, seemingly intrigued.

"I don't know how to explain it really - it's just something about getting to move my body around freely without any restrictions. I also like dancing even more now because I get to make money off of it, too. I've always liked dancing, too. It really helped me relieve stress and relax my body while simultaneously stretching and becoming more 'aware' I guess?? Of my surroundings? I don't know how to describe it really"

I tried my best to explain why I liked dancing to him, but without going on an hour long rant, it made my explanation seem stupid or really hard to understand. He just nodded along like he understood my explanation without actually understanding it.

"Aren't you gonna ask me about the money?"

His voice cut through walls.

"....why?" I asked softly. "Why did you send the money? And how did you get my information?"

"I'm a Mafia boss. The other night when I saw your dance, I went home after the private and dug up some of your information. I know I invaded your privacy, and I do apologize for that. My name is Christopher Sturniolo, but you can call me Chris, ok?"

"...Okay..." I muttered under my breath. "Did I..." Honestly, the first thing I thought of when he said he was a Mafia Boss was that he was gonna kill me. That's what Mafia men do, right? "Are you gonna kill me?.."

"What?-" He laughed. Actually laughed. In my face. "Kill you?- wha- no no no!- No, sweetheart, no, I'm not gonna kill you."

I let out a sigh of relief, almost sobbing. "Jesus fuck!- Holy shit I thought I done something so bad that got the fucking mafia involved! Fuck dude!" I laughed nervously. "No, ma, you didn't do anything. Apart from making me so hard the other night. Nothing terrible."

"Don't fucking do that man. Holy shit!- I thought I was gonna fuckin' die tonight" I rubbed my face a bit and finally relaxed.

"I wanna take you out. On a date." He said blankly. "What-"

"You heard me. I wanna take you out on a date. Somewhere nice. Fancy if you want"

I stared blankly at him, confused and shocked. "I'm not- uh- I'm sorry??" I laughed nervously. "Come on, sweetheart. Don't make this harder than it needs to be, ok?" He reached into his pocket slowly. Holding my gaze.

I froze, thinking he was gonna pull out a gun or threaten my life.

Instead, he pulled out a business card with his name and number on it.

"Just think about it, ok? Give me a call, and I'll have someone pick you up when you're ready." I just nodded softly and picked up the card, examine it a bit before folding it and tucking it away into my tiny bralette(??).

"Why are you dressed so casual?..the other night you were in a- a suit.." He glanced down at his outfit. He was wearing a pair of black sweats, a grey jersey-like-sweater with a red 72 embroidered on the front, white airforces, a red backward cap, and a silver chain on his wrist.

"I like to stay casual outside of work. The suit is normally for business transactions or meet-ups with other businesses." He leaned back against the couch again. Man spreading like a slut.

"You were wearing a suit the other night.." I spoke quietly, testing the waters.

"The other night didn't concern you, so don't push." His eyes flashed from calm to cold in a heartbeat. "Jeez- I was just stating a fact.." I rolled my eyes. But something about his defensive attitude made me more curious.

The door opened quietly, and a man in a suit came in with the water. He set it down on the table and left quickly.

"There's your water." He grabbed it and tossed it to me. I caught it but not without almost dropping it. I held onto it for a moment, glancing between him and the bottle. "Are you trying to poison me?" I asked half jokingly. "Want me to try it first?" He asked, already getting up and walking over to take the water. "I- I wasn't saying you were I was just-" Before I could finish my sentence, he took the drink, unscrewed the cap, and took a few big gulps before handing it back to me.

"Now drink." He demanded harshly.

I rolled my eyes but reluctantly took a small sip. "Good girl.." He praised softly, watching me intensely. "Go home for tonight. Think about my offer and then get back to me."

He patted my head like I was a toddler before leaving the room without another word.

"The fuck is his problem?" I said quietly to myself, rolling my eyes before taking another sip of the water.

I went home around 3 in the morning, wanting to finish my entire shift, and then took a quick and hot shower to wash off all the stress.

I stared at the card he handed me earlier, memorizing the business number like I needed it to live.

Should I call him??

(EEEEE! SO SCARED TO POST THIS😣😣😣😣)

[junedenim]

2020

beneath the boardwalk, part 18 (series masterlist)

perfect sense

warnings: i ain't spoiling this shit

word count: 14k

Winter was an open-stretched yawn, mouth hanging open, jaw locked in place. No bite to the bark. Alex and I had been at my father’s since Christmas Eve Eve, and it was now Alex’s 34th birthday, which he was spending running errands at the behest of my father. Every time he returned, my father seemed to have a new task for him. “Oh, Alex, did you not get (fill in the blank)?” 

Then, he had been charged with setting up a handle for the shower, which I suggested should be done by a professional, but my father said, “But I want to take a shower tonight, Janie.” Sickness is the reversion of an adult back into a whining child. 

Alex, who had never held a drill before, and I, who had the impatience and temper that made me scream at IKEA furniture, set up the shower handle. “The guy isn’t bedridden and has a stool in here. Can’t Pat just shower with him or something?” I complained to Alex as we struggled to figure out how to use a stud finder.

His laughter echoed off the shower walls. “I think he just wants to feel he can still do things on his own.”

I sighed, “I know. What if you miss the spot and this whole house comes tumbling to the ground?”

“I’m not gonna miss the spot,” he insisted as he lined the drill up.

“Mhmm, sure.”

He stared up at me. “Do I usually miss the spot?”

“Didn’t you hammer your thumb once?”

“Says the girl that once had to get stitches from stabbing scissors through a sheet of paper.”

“I was 8.” I was trying to cut a hole in the center. It ended unsuccessfully, clearly.

“I’m the one holding the drill.” He held it up in the air, pressing down on the trigger, allowing it to emit a loud noise through the air. He was a complete dork. “I’ll be doing the drilling.”

I crossed my arms. “Alright. I’ll be in the other room doing some drilling of my own.”

He playfully furrowed his brows. “With your dad?”

“Shut up.”

Harper made Alex a cake because she’s the homemaker type who can make a house a home. She and her family, as well as Greg and his family, were staying at a nearby hotel, while Alex, Stacey, Paul, and I were staying in the extra rooms here. There were some privileges to not having kids; however, my father had become a child of his own.

My father was in hospice, although he could still care for himself relatively well, and had Pat, the new girlfriend, to assist. It was clear in the coming weeks that more assistance would be required. We were trying to get ahead of the needed tools, hence the shower handle.

Harper’s cake, a vanilla cake with chocolate frosting, and Alex’s birthday put a little excitement into an otherwise depressing winter. Alex deserved all the love in the world for putting up with my family for the entirety of this time and electing to celebrate his birthday here, in this depressing little world, rather than London or Sheffield. He said it’s because he needed a taste of Harper’s cake, but I knew it was all for me, for me. 

My father used to eat the biggest slice of cake, but he now struggled to swallow more than a few bites of the sugar-ridden thing. A picture was taken that would be the only photo of the whole family together, partners and children included.

Everyone was talking about how nice the day had been. Greg said something about the sun being positioned perfectly, an odd statement from a generally unpoetic guy. 

As Alex moved to go to the bathroom, my father took his arm, whispering words to him that were unheard by the rest of the table. They shook hands like two civil, loving men. Alex left for the bathroom, and my father waved me off for staring and said, “Don’t be rude, Jane.”

I held my hands up before moving to take the dirty dishes into the kitchen. Later, I was joined by Alex carrying in empty glasses as I waited for the faucet water to run warm. “What did he tell you?”

“Mhmm?” He hummed a curious sound, not looking at me, making headway for the dishwasher.

“My dad, when he pulled you aside, what was he saying?”

He took a deep inhale, loading the dishwasher before formulating a thought, only able to do one at a time. He then came over to me, leaning his back against the counter before me, like we were casually talking while washing up dinner. But I couldn’t move because Alex was being intentional with his words, which meant whatever my father had said had affected him in a deep sort of way.

“He thanked me. For everything.” He was emotional. I didn’t have the right to know what they said. It had been an unusually deep conversation for my father, for which I did not have the right to be privy to. “You know, the shower. Very nice. Very nice.”

He averted his eyes, and I smiled over at him, simply pleased by the sight of him. “He doesn’t do that often.” I sighed and turned the water off, giving up on the work. “I hate this. I want to go home. I feel like I’m suffocating in here.”

He came closer to me and soothed my tension with a hand on my back. “We can leave right now if you want to. Drive right back and be home before midnight.”

I shook my head. “We can’t do that. I don’t know what to do.”

“What do you want to do?”

Want, what a relief to hear that word. “Nothing. I want…I want to be someone else. I want it to be a fun birthday for you and this is all just depressing.”

“Hey, I don’t give a fuck about my birthday. I loved this.”

“Don’t humour me. I want you to be mean to me. Say something rude. I want to fight. Something to get my mind off this nonsense. Tell me I’m ugly or something.”

He laughed because how could he not, I was basically forcing a gun to his head. “I’m not telling you you’re ugly, Janie.”

“Then, finger me in the bathroom. Let’s do something wild.”

His mouth dived into the curve of my neck and he rumbled a laugh while flicking his tongue over the sliver of skin. “Nice try.” He squeezed my side and I felt so aroused so quickly I could’ve spontaneously combusted. “You get all the head on my birthday.”

I tugged on his belt. “I’ll give you head. I’ll give it right here if you want.” I might have entered a psychotic state. I hadn’t been sleeping much.

He snorted, tipping his head back. When he returned, levelled to me, he was warm in his eyes, holding a sticky sweetness in them. I could’ve dipped a finger in his iris for a taste of honey. His touch slipped down to the tips of my hands, lancing our fingers. “You want to get married?”

“What?” I doubled. “Now?”

He nodded. “Yeah. I guess we can’t get a license and all that, but we could act it out. Like a playground wedding.” I shrugged. “Everyone’s already here.”

I bumped my chest into his. “But it’ll be so embarrassing.” I was coloured a beet red down to the soles of my feet. 

His laughter would indicate this was all a big joke, which it was to us, but we would still do it. Alex and I have still never gotten a marriage license, so technically we aren’t married, but we are. Whatever that means to you, but it means this to us.

“Yeah, but your discountenance for it makes me want to do it even more.” He gathered me in his arms, practically scooping me up. “I know I can be a pain, but come on, bite the bullet.”

“You know it’s not the You part of it that makes me not want to do it,” I told him. “You’re already my husband in every sense except the ceremonial sense.”

“Do it for me then. In the backyard with those stupid lights Harper made me put up. Or here in the kitchen. I like the lightning here.”

He was an entire mountain and I was the snow that lay upon him, melting and hardening into him. He was a firefly I had caught in the backyard of Will’s mother’s garden. Or the moon, simply the moon. 

His face was the incandescent whole of my past, present, and future. He was the center of me, the only thing holding this mess together. I didn’t want to cry because that would be cheesy, and how could I, effectively getting married in the middle of my father’s kitchen, cry?

Alex held his palm to one of my cheeks and kissed the other. “Yeah,” he said, clearly aware that I couldn’t speak. I was frozen, hoping the moment would freeze alongside me. “I’m good with here if you’re good with it.”

I hugged him, wanting to hold him, and wanting him to hold me. We swayed back and forth for a minute. I detached myself from him. “Say something real cheesy now.”

“Like what? Do you want me to do the chicken dance?” We cracked in a lachrymose laughter. “I do, Janie. And all that.”

“Okay.” I pursed my lips to hold my sobs inward.

He nudged me. “And you?”

I nearly gave way to turning away from the tenderness of the situation, bubbling enough to erupt, and destroy the whole of the United Kingdom, the debris spreading to take out the whole of Europe. Ireland wouldn’t make it either. I was close to shouting something like ‘I don’t!’ or ‘That’s terrible!’ but I thought if this was my wedding, if we were getting married right now in the eyes of God or Buddha or just ourselves, then what a terrible way to declare my love for a man, a boy, a person, Alex by shouting these things at him, especially when he looked softer than I’d ever seen him.

But what could I say to measure up to him, looking like that, saying, I do to me, to Janie. And all that, encompassing a world we had shared together. I didn’t have words to give him. I wanted him to feel weak in the knees like I did at just the quiver of his lip. “Does he know what that does to me?” I thought.

I thought the same thing when I was 17, begging him to kiss me. Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me. I don’t think I was even a person before him. I couldn’t imagine myself full-formed without him. It was an unimaginable fever dream. I began and ended with him.

At the moment, I couldn’t think of anything, at a loss for words completely, other than “Love you.”

At that, he split in two. I saw it. His shoulders dropped, and I realized how nervous he had been that I was going to turn him down, spout some hate about how ridiculous this was. I knew I had been hard to handle, always, but especially during the last few months. He cupped my face on both sides. He didn’t want me to move away from him. I gave myself over in an act that any other situation, I would say was a transformation into a Stepford wife, except this. I could never make fun of this.

His lips touched mine. A second, a minute, or could’ve been an hour, unsure, unlikely, but possible. He broke away a millimeter, whispering into me, “Love you too.” It was mouth-to-mouth. He was breathing for both of us.

He moved further, not away from me, but enough to see the look in my eyes, deducing, and finally accepting with a smile. “So…is that it?”

I huffed laughter. “Don’t act so disappointed.”

He gave a quick stroke to my cheek, a wipe to a stray tear. “Never,” he promised. It was the seal on the back of an envelope. “Should I go around calling you my wife now, or would that make you vomit?”

I wrapped my arms around his neck. A holding hug was more affectionate to me than any longing makeout session. “Depends. Like when you get hit on by someone and you say, ‘I’m not sure my wife would take very kindly to this.’ That’s hot. But talking to me like ‘Get dinner ready, wife.” That’s reason enough for divorce.”

He pulled back to bump his nose against mine, a full grin covering his face. “I’d never trust you with dinner.”

Footsteps neared the kitchen, making us pull away from one another like we would be caught having an affair with one another, two sparks flying away. I returned to the sink, making friends with the dishes. “What a way to say ‘Just married.’” Alex noted.

I violently shushed him. He just chuckled and leaned on the counter beside me, stuffing his hands into his pockets. He was the cutest husband ever. Greg walked in, and he’s about as unperceptive a person can get.

The news of our kitchen wedding slowly spilled out. To most people, we said we had a quick courthouse wedding, something that was only becoming trendy and less alarming, although Greg did ask if I was pregnant. 

To my father, I told him that evening. Every night, I was increasingly terrified he wouldn’t make it through the night. I slipped into his bedroom before he turned the lights out, asking if he needed anything before we went to bed.

He grunted a no and sank into bed, shutting his eyes.

I knelt at his bedside and grabbed his hand. “Dad, Alex and I are married.”

He lifted one eyelid. “Since when?”

“After dinner, in the kitchen.”

“Is this some reference I’m supposed to know?”

“No,” I laughed, “just something we’re doing.”

“Pft, a new way. I don’t get it.”

“That’s fine.”

“Better way to do it. I should’ve never gotten married.” I was prepared to let the comment slip. I felt no need to tell a man on his deathbed, ‘No regrets!’ But he corrected himself, “No, that’s not true. I liked being married. It’s the second-best thing a man can do. No, third. Children are second. First is…”

“What?”

“Know how to use a drill.”

We chuckled together. He beamed with pride at this joke. “Did the shower handle fall off?”

“No, no,” he said. “He did an alright job. It’s uneven, but I’ll give the guy a few practice swings.”

*

Before we left my father’s home, I placed a sealed envelope in Alex’s bag, containing the following handwritten letter:

It is late, and you’re not awake, so I’ll write all I’m thinking here. It’ll come out better than what I say aloud. I found I’ve been reduced to my unfortunate speaking habits when I talk to you. It’s too hard to formulate everything I want to say when you look at me the way you do. I want you to experience all the joys I get from looking at you and it breaks my heart that you’ll never get to experience feeling you the way I feel you, but I feel I might be the luckiest soul alive that I’m the only one who gets to feel this way. I have likely reused “feel” an overwhelming amount, but this, after all, is a letter about how I feel. 

During this period of my life, I’m stuck thinking about death more than I ever want to. I’m thinking of waking up one morning without my father, and I know it’ll come soon. Tonight I lie awake thinking of waking up one morning without you. I don’t mean to bog you down with thoughts of your own death, but I know you know I can’t help but see things this way lately. Sometimes, I have survived aimlessly in this world in the sole thought that you are out there breathing. I don’t think I will survive the day that ends.

I don’t wish to discuss this topic anymore, so I will be awkwardly switching it here, as is my fashion. 

Do you ever wish I wrote about you the way you have written about me? I tried once, back in the early years, I’m not sure which one, but I hoped to write something that would make people shout for it the way they did for “Mardy Bum.” It’s the adult experience that I have only now found appreciation for those songs. I spent years wishing to feel for them the way other people did. My proximity to them was too close at the time. Every time I heard it, I thought about that fight. Now, I still think of that fight, but with a longing to be fighting again. I went to relive all we have done again.

I’ll spend a lifetime living in the past, but I’d like to have you join me there, too. I hope this note can be somewhat of a building block to reach your tower of love notes, songs, and words. I have tried to think of declarations of love that could measure up to yours. During those times, I found myself simply comparing my words to yours, and until now, I didn’t realize it’s not about measuring up against you. I suffer from the competitive comparison game, but there’s nothing to compare. We share this feeling so I don’t have to tell you about every way I feel inside and out because I know you feel exactly the same.

But in case you ever need reminding because I can be awful sometimes, the worst maybe, I want you to have this, just as I have your songs, heart, e-mails, notes, and a load of other nonsense that I kept for years, despite the ephemera having no value to anyone, except me, and maybe you too.

I’ve never been good at poetry. I feel I suffer through most things and simply say how that makes me feel rather than waxing poetically about the moon. (Not meant to be a dig, obviously, the moon is for you and Earth is for me. You know, Mars for men, Venus for women, but moon for Al and Earth for me.)

If I’m speaking of space, and the little I know of it, I’ll speak of the gravitational force we share, keeping you locked to me. I have never felt you to be far, even when you are. Only a room away from one another, I miss you terribly, but I can feel you through the walls. Do you feel that buzzing when I’m near? I have a radar, a chemical reaction, that alerts me that you are near too. An internal compass, pointing you to my true north, Polaris. (I think that’s right).

I talk to you all the time in my head, so it’s unimaginable that you’d ever stray too far because you’re simply always on my mind. Even writing here, I am convinced you are the paper and I’m etching my words into you. 

The first thing you left with me was your ear. I can hear myself talking to you now, at 17, asking you to kiss me, I thought that in the kitchen. I didn’t think until years later that I could marry you because I felt unworthy of you for so long. I hope you no longer feel the need to assure me otherwise because I believe it now. I’ve seen the notes and the things you tried so hard to stuff in the drawers out of my reach, but I’m thankful they never faded, and I have the proof that it wasn’t all in my head. Sometimes I think I made you up, that’s how good you are.

Do you know how good you are? I see you shrink sometimes, doubting it. I understand it to be the human condition to feel we are never good enough, but I do believe you are good to, for, and with me. Just as I feel with you. Whenever I think about how awful I am, I think of how good you are, and know I can’t be that bad if I have earned your love.

Allow me to be a bit sentimental here, as if I haven’t suffered through that this whole letter, and my whole life. I often think of that tomato I had in the garden during one of our first conversations and how it was this perfect, juicy, red tomato. The first time we spoke, when you called me “Jeanie” and spoke in repetition to me “Jane, Jane, Jane,” I wore a red skirt. I flushed red every time I saw you after that night in my room when I embarrassed myself so deeply, it still haunts me to this day, and if you ever have anything to make up for, it is making me suffer through that because why couldn’t you just kiss me? Did you already know how good it would be and couldn’t control yourself? (You don’t really have to make up for it, I’ve already forgiven you a thousand times over ((but I won’t forget))). 

Maybe I’m reading into the colour red too much, so I’ll pass over that and skip to you and those stupid jeans that had the writing on them, and when you passed your notebook over the hood of my car. Did you know how much of a badass you looked in that moment? You were the ultimate dork and I loved you. Love you. I love every version of you, but maybe that little boy most of all. Forgive me for this, but I think he needs that love most of all. I still see him when you’re hunched over a notebook at our dining room table.

You were a dickhead for fooling me that you were writing instead of drawing little stick figure versions of me, but you changed my life by doing that. I can’t help but feel like you knew how the future would go and you were some agent sent to guide me on my path. You knew me down to my core and I could tell just by the way you looked at me.

I thought what a terrible thing it was to be known by you and I felt sorry for every girl who had ever crossed your path. Now, I think otherwise in long tangents about how unlucky they were to pass you up. 

I hope you see the little details of my love in this and in the acts I commit. If you feel I ever stray from this, simply throw this letter at me and say I wrote it here. I quite like it when you try to act all chauvinistic. It’s either internalized misogyny or knowing how laughable it is for you to be all macho. The only pride you seem to have is for me. I don’t know how I got it. Some past life karma, I suppose. But thank whoever it was for me, but thank yourself first and most of all.

Love,

Janie

p.s. There are many other things I didn’t write here that I’ll wish to add later. I reserve the right to do so, but I will not amend any of these words. There’s no need. There will never be. Any love I don’t know how to write, I shall show you. Unless you want a dirty letter, I can bring out my best James Joyce for you, my dirty little fuckbird.

*

We got His and Hers towels as a gag gift from Opal. It was waiting for us when we returned to London. A week later, my father was admitted to the hospital. We drove to him with only silence between us, but music on the radio. The only adjustment came when “Honey” by Roger Miller came on. Alex reached over, turned up the song’s volume, and placed his hand on my thigh.

*

My father was released back home into his quasi-hospice care. There were no nurses, only children, an amusing occurrence that a man who had servants who took care of him his whole life, only in near-death would he decide against a caregiver, instead placing the weight onto his children.

I was not the caregiver. The other children took care of that, primarily Stacey. Harper cooked, and Greg talked about mundane things with him, mainly sports. Alex would occasionally join in these conversations as if only to prove his presence was there sometimes. My siblings’ spouses were far more vocal than Alex was. I will claim and declare love for these in-laws, but I find them to be garrulous in their conversational skills, and this is in comparison to me.

Alex and I mainly took up the front of errand runners. Other than Stacey, I was the only one who didn’t have children to also care for during this time, and since Stacey seemed suctioned to my father’s side, Alex and I navigated the outside world for the family.

My father sat in a recliner in the living room for the majority of the day, only transferring to and from the toilet and his bed. We ate our meals scattered about the living room. I had never visioned the immensity of my family with four children, each with the spouse, a total of six grandchildren, Oswald, my mother joining later toward the end, Pat, and the fifth child, who I had never felt to be near before, but now in that room it’s like we were reanimating Tom with the noise of words we made. 

The older folks claimed sitting on the floor would be too rough on their bones, but Stacey refused to move from our father’s side, and Paul didn’t leave Stacey’s side. So, Alex and I sat on the floor with the children.

These were parting regards, and soon people started disappearing. The grandchildren went back, along with the in-laws, except Paul and Alex; one benefit of no children is getting your spouse all to yourself.

Stacey had gone out for the day at the demand of my father and the arm-pulling from Paul. Alex went into the kitchen, making lunch, and keeping his position as a worker. I know I have withheld much of the truth of my father’s last days here. It is an effort that, after his death, I may preserve his greater moments rather than the ones where he placed himself in poor lighting. My father didn’t want Alex there. I never found out why, but I suspect he was a little embarrassed. He said he wasn’t family and had no right to be there. So, Alex kept to the kitchen and was the errand boy. He didn’t care, perhaps relieved to avoid the sputtering man for the majority of our stay there.

“Jane,” my father said. He laid his hand on top of mine. He was cold and blue and had been all winter. His fingers were stuck in a constant half-curled position, too swollen to close into a fist or stretch open. I laid his hand upward and rested mine in his hand bowl. “I have something for you.”

“Yes?” My father’s gift-giving was rare, even on birthdays and Christmas, which had passed less than a month ago. 

He cleared his throat. His voice had grown raspier in the last few months. He now struggled to speak for long stretches of time. It was thought he would lose the ability to talk, but he didn’t. He talked until the end. “I’m giving you Oswald.”

I glowered at him. “The dog?” 

“No, the lucky rabbit, you fucking idiot, yes the dog.”

“Okay,” I hesitantly said. “Why?”

“Someone has to take care of him.”

I didn’t tell him how idiotic it was for him to get a dog with the knowledge he would be dead in a year, because someone might consider that to be rude to say to a man dying of cancer. “Why not Greg or something? He already has Tipper.” His Cocker Spaniel of six years and very annoying dog.

“And three kids. It’ll be good practice for your future children.”

“Don’t talk about that.” Introducing any children I had to their grandfather through pictures dejected me, even though introducing any children I had to their grandfather through meeting him dejected me as well, getting his whiskey and cigar breath all over them. “Stacey doesn’t have any children.”

“Stacey doesn’t want him. I already asked.”

“So, I’m the second choice. Or third. Did Harper turn you down, too?”

“No, Harper will barely go near him. You’ve already got that turtle anyway. You have a mothering instinct that I don’t know where you got from. God knows not your mother.” I rolled my eyes and he held up his hand to prevent me from saying anything against him. “I have a trade-off for you. If you take Oswald.”

“What? A big fat cheque?”

“This.”

“What?”

He motioned to his surroundings. I looked at him blankly, completely lost by his gestures. I leaned closer with bemusement. “The house, Jane.”

“This house?”

“My inheritance to you.”

The house sat in a wide, unmaintained field. The next closest house was a quarter mile down the road. A herbaceous border around the Cotswold house with moss climbing up the walls. There’s a little cottage in the back. An unowned pond just out of reach, but close enough to say it was yours. “Fine,” I said as if I were the one suffering. I shook his hand and said I would go get his lunch now.

I went into the kitchen, jumping. Alex stood puzzled. Perhaps, jumping for joy that my father’s death would leave you with a nice, beautiful house was poor behaviour, but it really is a nice house. 

My father died the following week. I haven’t wrapped my head around it enough to write it here. I might have grieved him long ago, letting go of the idea of a relationship a father and child should have. Death is strange and a topic too personal for me to expand on. Tommy and my father are still constant figures to me, not solely in pictures and memory, but I don’t believe they’re dead. I don’t find myself to be eloquent enough to try and write about death here. I don’t think I ever will be. I feel I have misplaced them somewhere, and I will be looking for where they ended up for the rest of my life.

*

What to do with that damn dog? He had always been a well-behaved dog, but said dog had to travel in a small car to a new home with two people, who weren’t particularly enthused to have him. Alex tried to seem enthusiastic, but he was never good at faking emotion with me, especially one of EXCITEMENT! He was more excited. I couldn’t blame him because I was about as thrilled at the thought of picking up poop as anyone when told they have to start picking up shit.

But, you know, he was pretty cute. All black fur with a wet nose poking at my knees whenever he wanted to go for a walk. Alex mainly handled that because I was grieving, and all, a convenient excuse for anything. I didn’t do dishes for a whole month.

We began cleaning out my father’s house, which was relatively bare considering the man was about as sentimental as you’d expect. Most of it, like the furniture, was kept or taken by someone. On the first night with only Alex and me in the home (and Oswald and Louie, of course), we went through the music my father owned. CDs, records, and cassettes that added up to two shelves in the living room. They were mostly jazz and yacht rock. My father was very weirdly into Kenny Loggins. Nobody was sure why.

Wedged between Mose Allison and Louis Armstrong, sat Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not. I held it up to Alex. “Do you think he ever actually listened to this?” I asked Alex, but then answered the question myself. “Maybe once. I gave this to him. Or rather, left it on the shelf for him to listen to, with no mention that I left it. I was very embarrassed about you for a long time.”

“Embarrassed by me?” Alex unseriously gaffed. His hand held to his chest in a doubtful expression of offense.

I rolled my eyes. “You know what I mean. I never wanted the two words to collide. I didn’t want you knowing them and them knowing you. I was embarrassed by the whole ‘This is my boyfriend, Alex.’” My voice dropped hoarsely deep during the quotation. 

“You were far more self-conscious than I ever perceived you to be.”

My eyebrows raised. “Really?” In my mind—the previously established self-conscious one—I figured everyone was laughing behind my back about how much of a show I put on for people. In retrospect, I still cringed at the way I made myself the center of attention, a constant need to overshadow people, even if the attention was detrimental. 

“Yeah,” he said with no second thought. Even if no one noticed my insecurities, I figured it was an impossibility that Alex didn’t. He gave me far more than a once-over, in a constant exchange of a viva voce with one another, deeply involved, every utterance counted against you. “I found you to be unassailable.”

“What?”

He stopped what he was packing up, standing straight to stare me down with that same searing look. “Come on, you were very prepossessing, Janie. You were lionized by everyone at Barnsley, and you were a tad…” he looked down, nodding his head at the floor, pushing to word out, “Intimidating,” following it with a chuckle.

“I know all that.” Prompting him to chuckle further. “But I was pretty insecure, I know that for sure.”

“Yeah, well.” He moved a small stack of CDs back and forth in his hand like his brain tossing the thought around. “I felt it was one thing we had in common. When we first talked.” He placed the CDs in the cardboard box, finally ridding himself of them.

“Yeah,” I agreed, “I found you to be pretty puny.”

He tilted his head with a grin of acknowledgement. “You were fucking rigid. I thought you had a metal pole instead of a spine.”

I laughed, confused. “What? Like a scoliosis patient?”

“No,” he said with amusement, “like you had a giant stick up your ass. Or maybe lack of. You’re a little chicken. I wondered what kind of person could put up with Will.”

I rolled my eyes and went back to the shelf of CDs. “I was a tolerant individual.”

He hummed. I was unsure if he agreed, but I never asked further. We continued in silence, besides the droning of the Frank Sinatra record we put on for the clean-up. The room had slowly been getting colder as night swept in, so I went to get a sweater, the billowing, overgrown kind.

“Holy shit,” I uttered as I happened upon one of the last CDs. Placed completely out of order, shoved on the shelf, was one of Arctic Monkeys’ demo CDs, post hoc known as Beneath the Boardwalk. “How does he even have one of these?” I still hadn’t adjusted my language to the past tense. I still tend to refer to him in the present, and I don’t feel much of a need to adjust this language structure because he still feels like a constant in my life.

Alex took the CD in his hand, pressing his fingerprints all over the jewel case. “Fucking hell, I can’t even remember the last time I saw one of these. What a knobhead I look like.”

He handed me the CD back and I popped it open. “Oh my god, it’s Stacey’s. I can’t believe my dad kept this, but Stacey didn’t.”

“You lost the CD I personally gave you,” he reasoned. “Should we keep it? Or is that weird?” 

We looked down at it as if it were a child we were deciding to give up for adoption. “It’s your decision.”

“It’s your sister’s CD.”

I slipped it back onto the shelf. “I’ll ask Stacey if she wants it.” I never did ask Stacey, and it stayed on the shelf, stuck after the alphabet like it was its own miscellaneous shelf, too personal to categorize. 

*

Things never settled, they just kind of stopped, forced to halt. We never made it back to London, staying put in our billet. It was ideal to be in what felt like the middle of nowhere, preventing cabin fever, slightly, at least.

When things were fresh—the lockdown, the home, the “marriage”—Alex and I took up playing various games, Scrabble, Trivial Pursuit, Cluedo, chess, and gin rummy. It was easy to place on a record and play to last the whole day.

During a terrible game of Scrabble, in which Alex played “zein” for 81 points and we fought over whether it was a word for twenty minutes, with neither of us simply thinking that we could look it up if it was a qualified word. (In case you’re wondering, it is. Zein: [/ˈzēən/] n. the principal protein of corn. From modern Latin Zea (genus name of maize) + -in from the English suffix -ine, meaning forming names of organic compounds, pharmaceutical products, proteins, etc. Bastard). The days stretched long, if you couldn’t tell, or simply know.

Alex began to vomit about a week in. So…that was fun. He had caught the flu, of course. I was quarantined with the one person who got the flu during the worldwide pandemic. I subjected myself to the fate of getting the flu by taking care of him, but I also got my flu shot that year, so, yeah, it worked, and I never got sick. I ha-ha-ed in Alex’s face like Nelson Muntz for a good week after he was sick, of course, because I’m a professional caregiver.

I made a terrible chicken soup, but he didn’t seem to mind. He ate it as little as he ate the rest of his food, slurping down a few sips before saying it was too much. He confined himself to the bedroom for the majority of the sickness. I slept in the guest room because he was up every other hour. 

Oswald and I grew very close during this time. We sat on the couch and watched TV. His head would sit in my lap the same way Alex’s did. Everyone slept a lot, a painful amount. We were all bored, even Louie, whose life hadn’t changed much other than the location of his terrarium. Life felt tiring that April.

On Alex’s last night of sickness, he declared he would feel better in the morning, kissed my cheek goodnight, then wiped it with his hand to “prevent the germs,” and then he went to bed. I was nursing a cup of tea with Oswald’s nose poking my stomach, and watching Chernobyl, the first of my pandemic shows.

About ten minutes into the first episode, I began to uncontrollably sob over the idea of the impending nuclear disaster, which had in fact already occurred 34 years ago. I was a month old when Chernobyl happened, and it had no effect on me because I was a month old, but weepy and curious, I called my mother, who stayed up later than anyone I knew.

“Mummy,” I whimpered, a word that hadn’t been uttered since a time period about as far back as Chernobyl. 

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Other than the sobbing, but that felt like a release. I hadn’t cried since the funeral. I had been in business mode since then. I figured this to be the levee breaking. “What was Chernobyl like?”

“Are you high?”

“No.”

“Okay. I’m a little high,” she giggled.

“Alright.” I was stoic for a moment before breaking into a giggle too. “I’m watching that mini-series and I was wondering what it was like.”

She bubbled around before managing to say, “A little like this. Not as severe, but a panic. Are you okay, sweetheart?”

“Yeah, you know, for the most part.”

“I understand. I feel that way too.”

“Enjoy your high.”

“Thank you.”

*

The following morning, Alex was still asleep when I woke up. I made a cup of tea, had mildly burnt toast, and caught the last half of The Thin Man. Alex arose after I finished my toast. He looked well-rested, his eyes slightly swollen from sleep, and like a little boy with his stuffed teddy bear. “Hey,” he greeted, “what time didja go to bed?”

I warmed my hands with the mug. It was drizzling outside. A perfect rainy day to stay inside all day, except for the fact that we had been doing that for a month now. “A little after midnight. You sleep through the night?”

“Yeah.” He stood in the archway of the living room, peering at the television screen. “I feel almost back to normal.”

“Good.” I placed my mug down. “Do you want some toast?”

“Sure,” he said as we switched places, him sitting down and me walking to the kitchen.

As I walked out, I said, “By the way, last night, I found out I was pregnant.” I wasn’t sure how else to deliver the news. I didn’t get any “special stork coming to my door” moment. In fact, I didn’t even get the peeing over the stick moment. I found out because I cried about Chernobyl and called my mother. I either had a mental breakdown or was pregnant. Plus, my boobs were sore and had grown out of an A cup.

I leaned against the archway and waited for his head to turn back to me. It did slowly. “How?” My mouth opened slightly. “Don’t play dumb with me, Janie.” His face cracked with a smile and remedied a slight fever inside me.

“It seems likely,” I said. “Them woman changes.”

I turned around and went toward the kitchen. I heard his feet hit the floor. “Wait a minute there, Road Runner.” He followed behind me. “So, you’re pregnant,” he said when we arrived.

“Established.”

“Okay. So, what’s up with that?”

“With the pregnancy or how that happens?”

He sighed exhaustively. He was like a dad already. “Shut up, come on, this is serious, I’m being serious.”

“Yeah. I went through that all last night about having to carry the thing, so I have no pity for you.”

“Empathize with me for a moment, Janie. What the fuck is the plan?”

“For the thing? 9 months, birth in hospital, presumably if the whole world hasn’t collapsed yet, if not, home birth in the pool. I’ll do a couple of laps and the thing will just pop out.”

He let out a worn-out chuckle and sat on one of the barstools. His head collapsed in his hands and he scruffed up his hair. He had calmed enough not to pace, so I took to toasting bread. “God, Janie,” he shook his head with a notch of laughter each time he turned his neck. 

“Yeah,” I agreed as I pushed the toaster’s lever down. “I think Oswald knew first. He kept poking my stomach.”

He gave me a tender smile. “Do you have any clue on…when?” 

“I don’t keep a sex journal.”

He huffed out a laugh. “No, Janie, when will the thing arrive?”

“Oh.” We broke into laughter and suddenly it was real in that terrifying, cloyed, perpetual moment kind of way. “Not quite. I’m not that all-knowing.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

*

By the time of my first OB/GYN appointment, I was 10 weeks pregnant. I was still emotional. It’s weird to see a photo of your insides, and allegedly, there is a growing thing in there that will become a baby, but Alex had to wait in the car so I was by myself and everything was even more sterile than a regular gyno visit. It was just strange.

They gave me a photo and some instructions for the following weeks. When I showed it to Alex in the car, he held it at the corner and said, “Wow.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, though he was far more amazed than I felt. I felt like I was Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo.

“That says your name.” He pointed to “Cavendish, Jane” printed on the bottom of the ultrasound. 

I looked at him, befuddled. “Yeah, and what about the fetus in there?”

He held his hand up. “I’m getting there. I’m getting there.” He examined the image for a minute before saying, “Its head is big.”

I giggled and leaned on my side to face him completely. “Yeah. It only got legs a couple of weeks ago.”

“Weird.”

“Yep. Really weird.” 

He handed it back to me. “I don’t want it to distract me while driving.”

I slipped it into my bag. “It won’t start crying yet. December 11th.”

“That’s the due date?” I nodded. “We’re gonna have a baby by the end of the year?!”

“Crazy, right?”

He shook his head to knock the insanity out of his head. “Holy shit.”

“I know. I’m not showing or having any morning sickness. At most, it looks like I got a boob job.”

He smugly nodded like he was the one who did the procedure. “That’s about right.” 

I hit his shoulder. “Shut up and drive us home.”

“Baby on board,” he declared.

My face could have broken in half at the thought. I was truly glowing. I leaned over the console and kissed his cheek. He turned his head toward me, his eyes soft, and his face beaming, kissing me holily.

Everything was still being processed for both of us. Physically, I looked the same, but apparently, I was due to be a mother at the end of the year. It didn’t make any sense to me that in December, I was to push out a baby and have it handed to me, and they would say, “Here’s your baby. You can go home now.” I felt like a child wondering how babies were made, wondering when I was going to go to the store, and pick the child. Where was the stork? 

*

I called my mother to tell her first. I felt bad about her being the last to know about the engagement (and I kind of never told her about the wedding because I was convinced she would ridicule the idea of it being a binding marriage).

Her first words were “Oh, lord, Jane.”

It was as if instead of telling her I was pregnant, I had said, “Mum, I have had sex! In seven months, there will be living proof that I’ve had sex a bunch! Enough to make something out of it.” I felt like vomiting.

I never got morning sickness, which was the only blessing of the pregnancy. Well, other than the baby, I supposedly popped out, of course. Alex joked that he never had the flu, but instead had morning sickness. It was a funny joke that I rudely and under the excuse of hormones (the other blessing of pregnancy: everything can be blamed on the fact that you are pregnant) told him, “Then you carry the thing!”

Later in the call, my mother asked how things were going, and I said well. Then, she said, “Enjoy it. Motherhood is a prison.”

“That’s everything a child wants to hear.”

She shushed me. “I’m not talking about that nonsense. I loved being your mother. I hope you know that. I was horrible at it, but you were the best part.”

“Thanks, mum.” I grew rather weepy, but didn’t want her to hear me cry again.

“I loved being pregnant,” she proclaimed. “Postpartum was awful. I was miserable with every single one of you. Of course, back then it was just the ‘baby blues’ but now I think they would’ve said I had depression. Harper had it too, you know?”

“Yeah. I remember. So, you think I’ll have it?”

“Certainly,” she definitively said like she was my psychologist. “I don’t say this to frighten you. I just want to make sure you’re informed. They’re better equipped to handle these things. Harper only had it for a few months.”

I thanked her, but the whole time I thought about how unhappy I would be. Despite my best efforts, darkness would be straight ahead on the itinerary, and nothing I did would prevent it. That itself made me despondent, and in my head, I completely decided that Alex would have to handle the first month of the baby’s life because I would likely be in a psych ward. Perhaps, I was a bit out of it, but I kept all this inside, which hindsight, was a terrible idea, but I was hormonal and pregnant.

*

A month later, after a gloomy week of rain, the air grew warmer, birds were singing, and, at least for one moment, the world felt idyllic. It was late June, 16 weeks pregnant. The first sign of visible pregnancy sprouted the week before, although to the untrained eye, it simply looked like bloating. The baby size tracking app I used told me it was the size of a can of Coke, so Alex and I took two cans of Coke outside, some towels, and Oswald.

The sun felt bright, but never blinded us, or at least me, because Alex, of course, wore sunglasses. I wanted it to be a day at the beach. We were forced to take to roleplaying to live out these fantasies. I dressed in a bikini and Alex in swim trunks. It was much better than the beach anyway, no sand in our crotches.

I sat cross-legged on one end of the towel with Alex on the other end, with his legs out, lying back on his hands. We were listening to the fauna around us, silently sipping our cokes. Alex would throw a stick out for Oswald to catch, and he’d return with it panting, dropping it back in his lap.

He tossed it back out and adjusted the baseball cap on his head. I sighed in the sun, burped, and laughed with him, instead of excusing myself. “We’ll be able to find out the gender at the next appointment.” It was two weeks away, and I would be by myself as I would for all my appointments. Alex had fun waiting in the car. “If you want to.”

He shrugged. “Up to you.”

“No, it’s not. Come on, nature’s last surprise.” When California nearly burned down from a pyrotechnic gender reveal party later that year, we knew we had made the proper choice.

He chuckled. Oswald had given up running and laid his head in Alex’s lap. “Then, it’ll be a surprise. Then, we’ll have to worry about naming Godzilla.”

I gasped. “You mean we’re not going to name the baby Godzilla?”

He tilted his head thoughtfully. “Maybe the middle name, but then we’d have to nickname the baby God, and that’s a lot to live up to. God and all.”

“What if it’s a boy? Would we name him Alex?” I teased.

“Shut up,” he quickly said, lying on his side, propping his head up to keep eye contact with me. “Would you want to name him after your dad or…?”

“While the thought is lovely, I’m not really up for naming my kid Dick.”

“Richard is a dignified name,” he tried to reason. 

His hand ran over Oswald’s head. I wish I could’ve felt the pleasure Oswald seemed to receive from this. Though Godzilla was only the size of an avocado, I was already experiencing back pain. It was from “womb expansion,” as my doctor called it. I joked with Alex, “It’s doing renovations.” Alex said it was appropriate that we nicknamed it Godzilla because it was destroying Tokyo, also known as my body.

“I don’t want to name the baby after anyone,” I told him. Then I thought for a moment and said, “Maybe the middle name. Besides, I think Stacey has dibs on Richard. She’s more sophisticated than us. Her child could handle that name. Can you bring me two of those coconut popsicles?”

I had claimed that I had no cravings, but in retrospect, I was addicted to coconut popsicles and sour cream & onion crisps, but only the crinkled kind. It was one of the few things I loved about pregnancy. I had an internal list of pros and cons of pregnancy. At this point, just the start of my second trimester, it was:

Pros: Excuse to eat anything. Excuse for irrational behaviour. Excuse to make Alex wait on me hand & foot. Growing human life???

Cons: Constipation. Irrational behaviour. Nosebleeds. Might be a secret life-sucking parasite. Bleeding gums. Expanding womb. Vertigo. Back pain. Headaches. Sore boobs. Impending doom.

“What about naming the baby after me?” I jokingly asked him.

He shrugged. “Two Janes? Might get confusing.”

“We’d be like Thing One and Thing Two. Do you want a boy or a girl?”

“I’d be fine with either,” he annoyingly said.

I rolled my eyes. “Don’t be that person. ‘As long as it’s healthy.’”

“Would you rather I be the dad who is mad it’s a girl?”

“I wouldn’t have a kid with someone who would be pissed over something so inconsequential. I want a girl.” Girls seemed easier to me, possibly because I’m a girl who was annoyed by boys for the first decade of her life. Or girls simply have better names than boys.

“I’m fine with that.”

I scoffed, “Don’t sound so blasé.”

He sat up, throwing the stick for Oswald to run off again. “I don’t have a preference. What’s wrong with that?”

“Fine. What do you think it’ll be? And be definitive, don’t be like ‘Whatever’ or ‘Probably a girl, I don’t know.’” My poor imitation of him prompted a laugh from him. Oswald laid his head in my lap this time. 

“Alright, alright. I think it’s a boy.”

“Contrarian.”

He shook his head with amusement. “Can’t do nothing right for you, Janie.”

In truth, I would’ve succumbed to myself during the pregnancy without him. I don’t know how millions of women have done a pregnancy solo. I barely know how a single human being is supposed to have a baby. In my almost daily nighttime panic, I shouted around the house to Alex, sometimes Oswald, rarely Louie (never a good listener), about the unnatural physics of a watermelon through a belt hole, the leather was bound to tear.

One night, when Alex had gone to bed before me, I read every Reddit thread in existence about vaginal tearing, which occurred in degrees as if it was murder. A fourth degree essentially tearing your whole asshole open with a recovery time of months. I cried as any naturally extra-hormonal person would hear the likelihood that in six months their body would be torn to pieces.

During this slightly embarrassing breakdown I told Alex, “Enjoy having sex with me now because I won’t have a vagina after this.”

He kindly didn’t laugh at this, though I knew he wanted to. He rubbed my back and comforted me by reading the positive messages on the Reddit threads of people saying they made a full recovery, and to think of it as an athletic injury.

“I’ll be running a marathon for fuck’s sake,” I blubbered.

He rubbed my back in the one spot that already hurt from the thought of an epidural. “You’ll be doing more than that. Like going to war or something.”

“At least it’s not Rosemary’s baby.” We laughed, and he pressed his forehead against mine, counting small blessings.

*

At week 20, the fetus was the size of a banana or a pint of root beer. I now looked like how I felt: pregnant, pregnant. I was halfway through now, and that was worthy of celebration, which meant Alex made horrible-looking cupcakes and I devoured them before the hour was up. I considered entering myself in eating competitions if the thought of hot dogs didn’t actively make my blood boil.

Other than not sleeping well, sore boobs, bleeding body parts, muscle pains, headaches, heartburn, and swollen feet, I was in the golden period of pregnancy. This was an alleged claim my doctor made at the start of my second trimester, to which I repeatedly called her and asked, “When does this golden period start?”

Godzilla started to roam Tokyo some more as it began to flutter around my stomach. We decided not to learn the sex because the reveal would consist of the doctor telling me, and then me going out into the car and telling Alex. I figured it would make the birth more interesting and might distract from the doom of tearing, shitting on the table, nerve damage, and the certainty of postpartum depression. It was fun enough to see the baby sucking their thumb at the last ultrasound.

I was pretty clinical about the fact that the baby started kicking. It scared the shit out of me rather than making jump for joy. It’s like if your intestines started kicking your uterus one day. Alex kept comparing it to the Chestbuster from Alien, which weirdly comforted me.

Alex, rather than place his hand on my belly to feel the baby kick, would knock on my stomach, reasoning that it was payback for the baby. I told him it just made the kicking occur on the inside and outside of my stomach now. He said he had to make things even for me. That made me smile.

Alex elected to use more unconventional ways of connecting with the fetus. I found sentimental speeches to my stomach to be disgusting because it made me feel like I was holding our child hostage in my stomach, and Alex was the father, desperate for me to let his baby out, willing to pay the ransom fee. So, Alex played rock, paper, scissors with it, acting out winning and losing in various scenarios. It made me laugh too much to ever make fun of him for it. I realized after that the act was more to entertain me than the walled-in baby.

I suppose if there was ever a period to be titled “The Golden Period,” it would be the third week of July, after a week of rain had levelled out to simply an overcast sky, I began a ravenous period of writing. I had begun a pregnancy journal, which Alex decorated with Godzilla stickers he bought off Redbubble. The Godzilla Journal quickly became a regular journal where I occasionally wrote symptoms and questions to ask at my next appointment.

I continued my loose investigation on Robert out of curiosity. It morphed into an autofiction journalism piece that pleased my agent enough for her to tell me to continue doing this path, something I had already started doing. I never found out where Robert ended up, meaning he has probably dropped off the face of the earth, but I made up my own ending for where he could be. It would be more interesting than actually finding him.

Alex was hit with a greater rush of creativity after dancing around possible paths all year; he had finally landed on a direction. We always worked in a synced fashion that even pregnancy hormones couldn’t throw off. The knowledge that one person was working would make the other person feel that they had to be driving toward something too.

How the pregnancy was announced to everyone whom we didn’t know enough to inform was through a personal history piece titled “Hostage Case” published in the New Yorker. I received several congratulatory messages from people I had met once in the New York City writers’ circles. It was nice, but I was thankful that I would never have to run into a human being and have them put their hands all over my stomach without my permission.

When a heatwave hit in August, I became a miserable bitch. Well, more than usual. 24 weeks, fetus the size of a package of Oreos or corn on the cob. They seemed wildly different in size to me, but that’s what the NHS website said. Either way, I ate both, and then some.

I felt I was the perfect size pregnant, telling Alex, “I don’t plan to grow the baby anymore, this is good enough for me.”

He laughed, placing his hand atop my naked stomach. “I think you might want to incubate it for a little more.”

“It can survive outside now. I don’t think I’ll survive any longer with it inside. Don’t touch me. I’m too hot.”

He took his hand off me. “Yeah, you are.”

“Ugh. Stop. I’m too hot to have sex, and I feel like I might break a rib if I laugh too hard. Tell it to quit the kicking.”

The biggest development had been that the fetus could supposedly hear outside the womb now. I didn’t believe this to be truthful and just something doctors told parents so they would have an excuse to be in so much pain. The latest development for me had been the forming of piles, or haemorrhoids, which I don’t want to even get into because I can still feel the sensation of them now, bleh!

Alex laid his head on my thighs, avoiding my crotch, which, of course, had swelled from the increased blood flow and pressure of the uterus enough that we had invested in perineal ice packs and witch hazel, which had become my saving grace for both the pregnancy and the heat. 

“Knock it off.” He barely managed to get the phrase out before cracking a laugh. “I’m gonna suck at this discipline stuff.” He came back up to my head, lying on the pillow beside me.

I sighed. “It’s fine. I’m used to being the bad cop anyway. I like yelling at people.” I groaned and shifted my body from the heat.

“Do you want to run through the sprinklers?”

“Like the dog?!”

I ran through the sprinklers like the dog. The relief: 10/10, highly recommend. Alex and I both liked the fact that for the rest of the summer, I chose to relax in a drenched bikini. Oswald also enjoyed a partner for sprinkler running.

One day, a week or so later, where we lounged on blanket-covered grass, I asked Alex, “Did you think three years ago that we’d end up with a baby?”

Alex chuckled, stuffing a handful of popcorn into his mouth (week 25, size of a popped bag of microwave popcorn or a courgette). “I didn’t even think we’d have a baby at the end of this year.”

I giggled. “Fair enough. Nothing feels normal right now. I don’t feel like myself anymore.”

He grabbed my feet and placed them on his lap, beginning to rub the left one. He was comforting me with the distraction, something I never picked up on during the pregnancy. “You still are. If anything, I feel like I’ve seen more of you than I ever had before.”

“You’ve had to put haemorrhoid cream on me, of course you have.”

He softened. His movements stopped, and he looked up at me slowly, meeting my eyes fervently. “I never knew if we’d get back together, you know, it felt like something I had missed out on, fucked up, and all that, but I always knew we’d be in each other’s lives. The fact that I am here, putting cream on your bits.” We were both cracking too hard for him to finish the sentence in one try. “That’s love, baby. I’d do that for you even if the kid wasn’t mine, although that might be a bit more awkward for this other husband of yours.”

I covered my face for him not to witness my simultaneous crying and laughing, though he already knew what was occurring behind the curtain, rubbing up and down my legs in a soothing motion. I peeked out from behind them with wet lashes and a protruding smile. “I think putting cream on my bits is how we got in this situation.”

“Ew,” he yelped. “I hate that word. Don’t call it that.”

“What? Cream? You once told me I was a Twinkie you creamed in.”

He gasped. “No, I did not.”

“Yes, you did, I swear.”

He shook his head and returned to rubbing my feet. We listened to Oswald pant for several minutes before I returned to questioning Alex. “Remember when you thought I was pregnant back in 2010?”

He cringed like I was twisting his insides. “Yeah. Why didn’t you sock me for that?”

“You were so freaked out over it that I had begun to think I really was pregnant.”

“Well, if this pregnancy has shown anything, I don’t know shit about the female body.”

“It’s a learning process,” I reassured him. “By the end of this, you could probably start delivering babies yourself.”

He snorted a laugh. “I’ll pass, but thanks for your faith in me.”

*

When the third trimester arrived (28 weeks, the size of an original Nintendo—something Alex got a major kick of nostalgia out of—or an aubergine), the apocalypse had slowly become regular life. I couldn’t recall a time before I was locked away with Alex and some leech locked inside me. It felt like I had been pregnant for about a decade. 

However, the overwhelming reality that this would be over in a month, at least the leech part, terrified me more than another decade with something living in me. Logically, the best thing to do when facing this terror is to ignore it and build a crib.

I felt the baby’s room was more of a passion project than the baby itself. First, there was ordering furniture that I didn’t have to put together. Then, there was ordering several unnecessary, wasteful knick-knacks. Lastly, there was watching Alex do all the work.

I had yet to acknowledge the final destination of pregnancy: motherhood. I had not yet developed the idea that I would be someone’s mother. On the couch, finishing a yoghurt while reading The Scarlet Letter as part of my homemade series of books with mothers, I thought of myself as Hester Prynne, not in the adultery way, but in regard to the paternity of her daughter, Pearl. Arthur Dimmesdale, the Puritan minister, her true father, denies his parentage.

It was awfully abstract to compare it to a child produced from a plain old relationship, but it made me think for the first time about Alex having someone call him their father. I had been self-centered the majority of the pregnancy, which I have few regrets over, other than this particular circumstance of wild, unalterable change.

He dropped down on the couch to take a break from sweating in the nursery. His eyes were closed and his head flopped back. I reached over, petting his fluffed-up hair back. He opened his eyes, smiling slowly. “How are you doing?”

“Fine.” I wiped the sweat from his brow, stroking the temple. “How are you? With everything?”

“What’d you mean?” He sat up a little straighter.

“Just there’s a big change coming and if you’re freaking out a little that would be understandable. In fact, I would be a little weirded out if you weren’t panicking completely.”

He interlocked his fingers and rested them on his stomach. “Oh, you know,” he humorously said.

I cracked a grin at him, sitting on my knees, I moved closer to him. “Sure. But you could tell me too.”

He was shielded by his smile. I could tell we were both moved by the same thing, but neither of us discussed it, merely passing facial notes to one another; the tossing of the head, the raising of an eyebrow, the overfamiliar grin. He offered me a few words after our visual debate. “I’m convinced I’ll wake up tomorrow in Brazil.”

I giggled skyward. My laugh had become gruffer due to the fetus compressing my lungs. “Is that a premonition or just something on your bucket list?”

He restlessly chuckled, sinking back into the cushions. “Everything feels rather paracosmic.”

“Uh-huh.” I slowly nodded at him, a little lost by his thoughts, so I played along. Poorly, of course. He knew I wasn’t picking up what he was putting down.

He rested, then made a short confession. “I’m terrified, but I think I’ll live.”

“Good.” I effectively nodded. It was a good enough answer for me when all I could think about were leaky breasts and torn assholes.

“And you?”

I hummed in thought. “I think birth might kill me, but I can already feel the ​​Demerol coursing through my veins.”

He affectionately pinched my arm. “I’ll make you the best margarita of your life when this is over.”

“Perfect push present, other than the fact that I then have to breastfeed this monster after all this sobriety.”

He clicked his tongue, shaking his head. “If only I were a seahorse.” 

He’s my favourite human being. Those wheels in his mind clicked a certain way, lining up with the gears in my mind. It felt like I was fiddling while Rome burned, but I like the way his elbow digs into the side of me, and how he laughs when I yelp because every pain becomes some cause for celebration. I suppose when that happened, I felt a little less scared.

*

My anxiety didn’t evaporate, but as it had been bubbling before, it was now reduced to a simmer for the time being. I figure everyone during pregnancy has some form of anxiety, and everyone during 2020 had complete mental breakdowns, so this seemed fairly regulated. 

When the weather turned cold, I tended to slip below the sheets and never come out, but pregnancy made the cold weather heaven-sent when I finally made it through a day without having to change my shirt from sweating so much. 

Several to-do lists had been formed with every night concluding with the top item on the list: what the fuck are we naming this thing? I had assigned us each to make a list of ten names for each sex, but gave up when Alex suggested the name “Cassius.”

“Are we giving birth to Muhammad Ali?” I questioned, propped up in bed (34 weeks, baseball glove or cantaloupe).

“It’s a cool name,” he reasoned. “It’s a Roman name, strong, powerful—”

“Help nail Jesus on the cross.”

“Oh, since when do you care about Jesus?!”

He redeemed himself on girl names by suggesting the name Winnie, which made me cry. “I don’t even like the name that much, but I could see a Winnie.” (35 weeks, a carton of eggs or honeydew melon). I sobered up, laughing about how funny it was that I cried over Winnie, wiping my eyes with toilet paper because we had run out of tissues.

“I consider Winnie to be a win,” he boasted proudly.

I rolled my eyes aggressively. “Oh, that is so cheesy. I hate it.”

“Come on! Cute little Winnie.”

“Hate it.”

There was also a determination to have a baby name that wouldn’t make the kid suffer through ten other people in his class having that name. Alex argued that we both had common first names but hadn’t suffered through that crisis, but I refused to name my child “Oliver” like every other person in England seemed to be doing.

“What about Claudius?”

“Quit it with those Roman names. I’m gonna burn that book I got you.”

“Oh, come on, Theodosius is a killer name.”

“But Otis isn’t?!”

He relaxed and turned toward me, resting his elbow on the bed. “What about Theodore?”

“Ted Turner.”

He sighed. “Right. Think again.”

“What’s wrong with Otis?” I argued.

“I only think of Otis the Aardvark.” Alex seemed to know every puppet in television history because it seemed all the names I suggested belonged to them. He reasoned against the name Sidney because Cookie Monster’s real name is Sid. I grew rather annoyed that night, and we ended baby naming time early and did not pick it back up for the rest of the pregnancy.

*

I vehemently denied anyone visiting for the birth. At first, my mother was perfectly happy with this. She said birth was brutal, and she didn’t even want to witness it, which was just about the comfort I figured my mother could provide. 

When I told her I didn’t want anyone coming to meet the baby until things calmed down, she flipped. On the phone call, she said, “You’ll need help! You’re denying me the opportunity to meet my grandchild. That’s evil.”

I got so tired of her ranting with no interruption for about five minutes straight that I handed Alex the phone and told him to handle it. She was more shameful with him, instead taking a calm voice designed to make us feel guilty, but I left the room and decided not to engage with it anymore. I figured if she showed up outside our house, there was no stopping her, so we left the topic with an ambiguous “no.”

After getting home from my final antenatal appointment, a week before my due date, it felt as if I was watching a cut scene from Alien playing out in my stomach. Feet kicked up against my stomach, pushing the skin out. Alex enthusiastically watched this. I watched reruns of Project Runway.

Contractions started to become a pain about an hour later, though I insisted otherwise. An hour after that, my water broke. When we got to the hospital, the nurse popped her head out from my cervix and exclaimed, “You’re 9 cm dilated!”

To which, Alex and I both sat with our jaws dropped open. When she left to get the ​​anaesthetist for the epidural, I turned to Alex, sharing a bug-eyed look with him. I shook my head, having no clue how things had moved that quickly. 

“At least it will be over soon.” I tried to comfort myself, but I hyperventilated at the thought that a thing would pop out of me by the end of the day. It seemed like the preferable option compared to sitting around for 24 hours in the worst pain of your life, but I also wasn’t prepared to have a kid in an hour.

Alex rubbed me soothingly and said, “Hey. All our birthdays will be 4, 5, 6,” he said, pointing to my stomach, then me, then him in succession. “That’s pretty cool.” 

I half-heartedly smiled. “Yeah.”

“You don’t have to do anything after you push this…thing out, I will do all the work,” he tried to assure me.

“So, I don’t even get to enjoy the rewards of my labour.”

His laughter eased me more than the epidural did. “All I want you to do is enjoy. You don’t have to deal with a single nappy, I’ll take all the shit.”

I giggled. “That’s a pretty good deal.”

Two hours later, Godzilla left Tokyo. I have always found it cliche when people say they don’t remember anything before their baby was laid on their chest, but I have truly forgotten the majority of labour, through the power of the brain’s response to the traumatic event and a whole lot of painkillers. I was high as fuck when I gave birth. You don’t need to hear about me pooping during birth anyway.

*

Godzilla, which had become a living, breathing human baby girl, lay on my chest in all her premortal goo. She had been doing that—living—for about four hours. She was still simply Baby Girl Turner. More and more, I thought Baby Girl Turner sounded like a pretty decent name.

“Hey,” Alex said softly from a chair directly beside me. I turned to him carefully. “Congrats on not tearing your arsehole.”

I chuckled as quietly as I could not to shake my chest too hard. “Thanks. I tried really hard.”

He gave me a congratulatory kiss and returned his eyes to the baby. “Now, what’s this thing’s name?”

I sighed. “I don’t know.” I pucker my lips at her. She wasn’t an ugly baby, but infants are rather gross to me. She was the least gross, though. I’m sure everyone was jealous of her in the nursery. “Cookie Monster Turner?”

He hummed. “Might be trademarked. Any other ideas?”

I smiled over at him. He was tired, I could see it in his eyes, but he never exaggerated a yawn, instead pushing my hair back, looking paternal. “What about Hester? Like Hester Prynne?”

His face held a resisted wince. “Might be a little taboo to name a child after a two-timer.”

“Okay. What about Esther? I like Esther.” I smiled down at her in all her pinkish glory. Baby girls must be pinker than boys, and that’s why pink is associated with girls. 

He gritted his teeth. “It’s a little old-fashioned, don’t you think?”

I rolled my eyes and huffed, “Fine. What do you want to name her? Turner Turner?”

“Do you want the last name to be Cavendish?” He offered.

I scoffed, “Ew, no.”

Alex moved closer to the baby as if he were scanning her to detect what her first name should be. “What about Eden?”

“We can’t name the baby Eden because you’re reading East of Eden, otherwise I’m naming the baby Hester.”

He sighed. “We should’ve found out the gender. We could’ve had something picked out by now.”

“Well, I could always shove her back up there for nine months.”

He sent an acknowledging smile up at me before passing his gaze back to the baby. “What do you want to be named?” He asked her. “Eden or Hester?” She kept her eyes closed, so Alex leaned back in his chair. “I suppose that’s a no to both.

“I’m too tired for this,” I complained.

“Anne, Jill, Stephanie, Jean, Polly, Maureen,” he chanted out to the baby, erupting me into giggles.

“Let’s just give her a dumb name, and then she can name herself. Sparkle Telephone Turner. Go write it on the birth certificate. Now, take her before I pass out.”

Alex laughed and followed the command, taking her into his arms. He looked like he was cuddling a little bouquet of flowers to his chest. He looked so normal with her, but the image was out of place to me, like it was Photoshopped.

“I like Polly,” I said.

He raised his head slowly with a regretful frown on his face.

I groaned exhaustively. “Why did you say it if you hate it?”

“I was riffing.”

*

“Elaine?”

“No. Imogen?”

“Mhm…no.”

“Winnie?”

“No.”

“Come on! Winnie is so cute.”

“Too cute. She’s a sophisticated child.”

*

The next morning, I awoke looking sideways. Alex was sitting in a chair with his legs up on the edge of my bed. The bundle sat in his arms with his half-shut eyes on her, moving her with a slow bounce. “You look like a dad,” I told him.

He pulled his eyes open and looked toward me with a soft smile. “Did you sleep well?”

“As well as you can imagine. Was having panic dreams about naming her.” I can still recall them. It ranged from a game of Scrabble to punching letters to the sky. “Did you sleep?” I leaned down into my cold pillow.

He shrugged. “A little. Not the most comfortable bed.” He was left with a choice between a chair or a makeshift cot. They were low on sleeping supplies. Well, they were low on any supplies, to be honest. “Been thinking for a while. I think I thought of a name.”

I raised my eyebrows. “I’m for anything at this point. What about Spinner Turner?”

“Maybe for the next kid.”

“With whose vagina?”

He nudged my leg with his foot. “Shush. Let me tell you the name.” I kept my silence and remained all ears. “She’s been Baby Girl Turner for almost a day now, and I was thinking, you know, Baby, Bebe, B. You liked Beatrice, right?”

I nodded. “It’s nice.”

He looked down at her. It was like the human form of photosynthesis. I’d never seen love shine out of him, of anyone, like this. “What about Beatrice Esther Turner? I could do Esther Beatrice, too. I’m not that picky.”

I smiled, half hiding it in my pillow. He knew by my bashfulness, each holding a half-grin, making one full one between us. “Beatrice Esther Turner works. It’s better than Winnie.”

He rolled his eyes, but then said, “It’s way better than Winnie.”

*

B fit quicker than Beatrice. “B is crying.” “B is hungry.” “B is our baby, our bebe, or B.B.,” Alex called her B.B. like B.B. King. There was also Godzilla. That nickname stuck. The first month was the most unremarkable exceptional month of my life.

The first night home, I cried in the shower. I hadn’t done that since a bad hangover in 2015. My body felt like a half-empty vessel, and it had for months been shared with another human being, and now that the parasite was removed, I no longer felt like myself. Everything was the same as we had left it, except everything was different. It was a similar feeling to losing my dad. Something in my life had irrevocably changed, yet my whole world looked the same. I imagined things would glow differently when you had a child, but the world looked just as monotonous.

I stepped out of the bathroom, squeezing the ends of my damp hair, readying for bed, and there on the bed sat Alex with Beatrice. His eyes turned up at me, and a smile flicked across his cheeks. “She makes this little grunting noise in her sleep like you do.”

I eased onto the bed where I would spend the next month. My bedroom would become my whole world. All I did was provide my udders for my calf. She was precious against my breast. Alex made a few dirty jokes about it that he said would make him seem unbecoming if I wrote them here. “She looks like you,” I said, “at least that’s what I’m supposed to say. I think all newborns look the same.”

He twitched a grin. “She’s got your eyes, though.” They were big, light blue eyes. Most babies are born with blue eyes, but hers did look just like mine. Later, when the grandparents met her, they all shouted about how much she looked like Alex—which she did because daughters tend to look like their fathers—but then they’d get all choked up over her eyes. They couldn’t believe her blue eyes, and I sat proudly that they came from me, but they didn’t originate from me.

“They’re my dad’s eyes.” I could tell Alex was looking over at me, but I stared down at sleeping Beatrice. He leaned over and thoughtfully kissed my cheek. “Meanwhile, she has your hair from 2006.”

He snorted a laugh and ran his hand lightly over the little moptop she was born with. She felt like my science project. She provided a darling conclusion to the experiment. She felt like a prototype baby. She acted in the same way I had seen and heard every other baby act. She cried, slept, ate, pooped. She was a good sleeper, gaining Alex’s napping skills. Our house went into hibernation.

Most evenings that first month ended the same. We sat on the bed, one of us holding Beatrice, usually Alex, since I liked leaning my head on his shoulder and looking at her chubby cheeks. I had long feared all the pain she could cause me by tearing me in half or hormones spinning me into a postpartum depression, but now I feared any pain that could be inflicted on her. From that point on, I felt like a mum—her mum.

*

a/n: the baby was originally supposed to be a girl, but then i've written alex as a girl dad so much i wanted to make it a boy but then the only name i could think of was teddy, but ted turner, and then i switched it back to a girl. then, it also took me forever to think of a name. still not sure how i feel about it, but, oh well, you name the kid whatever you want. also, if you hate the picture. so do i. blame alex and the pandemic, not me. thanks.

[in1-nutshell]

Ophelia gets cybonic plague… comatose megatron now has to deal with some very confusing emotions when bee goes into his head to get the cure

Been a hot minute since I've done TFP Ophelia, time to write!

Hope you enjoy!

Ophelia gets the Cybonic Plague

SFW, Platonic, Familial, Mentions of sickness, Slight Angst, Cybertronian reader

TFP

It was during the early days when Ophelia had joined the Autobots.

She wasn’t naïve and knew the others didn’t trust her.

Not that she could blame them, but that didn’t stop her from trying to help them.

Anything she saw that she could do, the mini was on it.

Bumblebee is looking under some crates. Bumblebee: “Bee boopbep—(Has anyone seen the datapad--)” Ophelia pops out from the crate in his servo. Ophelia: “I’ve got—” Bumblebee freaks out and drops the crate. Ophelia: “Ow!” Bumblebee: “Boop bep bep?! (Why were you in there?!)”

Today was Ophelia’s first mission out of the base.

A major step for her on the team and she needed to make sure it was a success.

Even something as simple as a group search needed to bring something good.

The search team consisted of herself, Prime and Ratchet.

As unsettling the limp frames were, there was something very familiar about the cracks and fluids dripping out.

At one point during the search an offlined frame had fallen on top of her, completely drenching her in the mystery goop.

But no matter.

A simple decontamination bath and problem solved.

…Until the room sudden started swaying.

Ophelia blinked a few times and shook her helm. She started taking a step forward but staggered a bit and began to clutch her helm. Bumblebee noticed the mini. He whirled a bit trying to catch her attention. Ophelia: “I’m fine. Probably just stood up too fast.” She straightens her back struts and goes to walk to the hall. …Only for her pedes to completely give out and fall face first onto the ground. The young scout was immediately by her side and gently flipped her over. Ophelia: “…Okay, okay I’m not fine…”

The minibot wanted to slap herself in the face for not noticing the clear signs of the cybonic plague.

Ophelia had seen millions of plagued frames, how did she miss the signs!?

And she knew that it would be even worse on her smaller frame.

The plague would be covering more ground and effects hit stronger and nearly consecutive.

Ophelia had fully accepted that she was going to go offline and wanted to talk to Prime about letting leave to a far place so no one else would get the illness.

She was, however, surprised to hear that Optimus wanted to send a team to retrieve the cure and there were bots volunteering to help.

She wanted to say something.

To tell them that she wasn’t worth the trouble and how this would lead to more issues.

But to her silent horror, she could barely get out a word.

The only noises she was able to make were painful and pitiful whirls.

Meanwhile Arcee and Bee are out, Optimus makes it his duty to make sure his niece is well taken care of.

At least as much as Ratchet lets him.

Ratchet is extremely concerned, but knows Ophelia needs his expertees right now.

He does allow Prime to at least hold her servo, occasionally pausing his work when more pitiful whirls come out.

It reminds him a bit too much of Bumblebee’s first days without his voice box.

Bulkhead is given the job to detract the kids until this blew over.

Something he is thankful for.

He doesn’t know how much more of the whirling and painful looks from the mini he could take before joining ‘Cee and Bee in clobbering some Cons.

Ophelia felt her spark stop when she heard from the com lines that Megatron was alive.

He couldn’t be…

He offlined during the explosion of the space brigde!

Optimus noticed the slight shaking in his servo.

He reminds calm for her sake.

Meanwhile in Megatron’s mind… Bumblebee had just explained that he needed the cure for the cybonic plague. Megatron looks at him smugly. Megatron: “And pray tell, why should I let you have it?” Bumblebee: “Beep Beep Bep! (My friend is dying!)” Megatron smiles at him gauntly. Megatron: “Well isn’t this a troubling situation then scout? Which one of your dearest friends will succumb to the illness?” He turns around giving Bee his back. Megatron: “Send them my warmest regards.” Something inside Bumblebee snapped. Bumblebee: “Bep bep boop bop bep! (Your daughter is the one who is dying!)” Silence filled the air. Unsettling and dangerous silence as the warlord slowly turned to him. Megatron: “What?” Bumblebee: “Beep bep Bop (Ophelia has the plague. She’s dying.)” Megatron: “So she defected!?” He punches an image of Prime. He sneers at the yellow bot. Bumblebee: “Beep! (That’s what your focused on!?)” Megatron: “Now what makes you think that I would help traitorous scum?” Bumblebee: “Boop bep! (Because she’s your daughter!)” Megatron: “WHAT DAUGHTER!? As far as I know now, I HAVE NONE!” Bee whirls angrily but spots something behind the warlord. Megatron notices him looking behind and turns. It was an image of himself as a gladiator talking to Orion as Ophelia was climbing over his frame. Then another image of a young Megatron carefully cradling a sparkling Ophelia. Her optics slowly closing as she snuggled closer to his chassis. Young Megatron: “See Little One? No monster will ever hurt you as long as I’m here. I promise my spark.” Finally, an image of a young Ophelia, began to run towards him. Wide smile and bright optics. Young Ophelia: “Father! Father, your back! Your back!” Megatron unconsciously knelt and opened his arms. Young Ophelia: “I missed you!” The image jumped into Megatron’s arms but phased right through him. All the images of the past suddenly phased out. Megatron just stood there in silence, staring at his servos. The silence had once again returned.

Ophelia hadn’t even noticed she had started dozing off before she heard Ratchet yelling to Bumblebee about receiving the cure and to retreat immediately.

By now, she could no longer hold Optimus’s servo, in fear and risk of getting him contaminated were running high in these late stages of the illness.

It didn’t take much for Ratchet to crack the code to administer the cure.

By the time Arcee and Bumblebee had arrived, Ophelia had enough energy to talk a bit and sit up without much help.

She thanked everyone repeatedly for saving her life and for going such lengths for her.

The news that Megatron had gone offline didn’t initially affect her as much as she thought it would.

Maybe it was shock?

Maybe denial?

…

Or maybe it was the strange sense of relief that the monster had finally been vanquished?

A monster that wouldn’t be able to hurt her anymore.

Bumblebee was watching Ophelia talking to the kids a bit about her brief time being in charge of the Cons. Miko: “So what happened with that one Con?” Ophelia: “Which one?” Miko: “The one Vechicon that always seems to be in every story you tell.” Ophelia: “Oh! You mean Steve? He was one of my best friends aboard that ship.” Jack: “Why is his name Steve?” Raf: “Yeah that sounds a bit like an Earth name.” Ophelia: “Don’t know. I believe he found out the name existed and decided to change it.” Bee decides to take a small walk before getting Raf back home. Suddenly he stops in his tracks. Megatron inside Bumblebee’s mind: “Where is she?!”

[lavender-butterfly-cookie]

Imagine if the witches got sick of the y/n cookies and tried to gently grab them...like not wanting the y/ns to mess with earthbread anymore so they gather all the y/ns up and set them on a plate to eat em...

...imagine the angry mama ferret and lavender lol...ferret because babies are in danger...lavender because she created those y/n, the only one allowed to take em outta this world is her XD!

Or imagine if she just left it to cream ferret...cue cream ferret showing the witches why you don't touch a cream critter's adopted babies!

Witch Y/N is tied to a chair trying to change their companions minds as they have all the Y/N cookies in a bowl (they wouldn't stop trying to run off the plates.)

Witch Y/N: you guys might REALLY want to reconsider!-

Witch 1: silence! This bunch are beyond problematic and we are tired.

Witch 2: unfortunately I must agree to that.

Witch Y/N: But-

Witch 3: ah ah ah! Silence! You're lucky we don't know what to do with you just yet so be grateful.

Witch 4: guys, maybe we should consider-

Witch 1: Don't tell me you're listening to them too!

Witch 4: don't get me wrong, I agree that they're all very problematic. But remember what happened last time any of us did/said something about these cookies?

Witch Y/N: That's what I'm trying to warn you about!!!-

Suddenly, the door bursts in and two cookies ready to commit murder step into the scene.

Cream Ferret cookie: WHERE ARE MY BABIES?!?

Witch Y/N: well- it was good knowing you guys.

Witch 2: it's just two cookies-

Lavender: I save the Y/Ns, you deal with the witches?

Witch 2: wha-

Cream Ferret cookie: Deal.

Witch 4: oh dear-

Cream Ferret cookie: RAAAAAAAAAAAAGH

Witch Y/N watches as the tiny cookie inflicts the fear of god into the witches while attacking them. Lavender Teleports to Witch Y/N after sending the cookies back home.

Lavender: you good?

Witch Y/N: yeah... uh... they're gonna be ok right?

Lavender: oh don't worry, I made sure every cookie was unscathed.

Witch Y/N: Im talking about the other witches...

Lavender: oh-... oooooh, yeahhhhhhnooooo bye!!

Witch Y/N: wait what?!-

Lavender disappeared, leaving Cream Ferret cookie to take out the rest of her rage.