Just Stay This Little
Summary: Who did little Nyx love the most? A Feysandnyx drabble set post-canon.
Notes:
- For @officialfeysandweek2023's Day 1: Night Triumphant and Stars Eternal.
-Fluff
-Word Count: 562 AO3
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From the moment the Night Court heir was born, he was the most loved child in Velaris. There was no doubt he would be. When those blue eyes blinked with starlight, seeing the world for the first time, he was met with beaming faces of jubilation and relief from his family, who would die to protect him.
The beautiful, chubby little baby with delicate, tiny wings was the center of their world.
There was, of course, no competition over who loved him most. One look at the High Lord and High Lady of Night Court, and even a stranger would know he was his parents' pride and joy.
As he grew from an infant to a toddler to a child to the cutest troublemaker that can both winnow and fly, a playful question was posed in the air.
Who did little Nyx love the most?
It was a question his family loved to harmlessly bicker about on a daily basis.
Was it Auntie Elain who baked the best chocolate chip cookies in the world? Spoiling him rotten every time.
Auntie Nesta, who was the best storyteller when it came to bedtime? Gifting him his favorite books.
Uncles Cassian and Azriel, who were the most fun and gamesome, especially when snowballs were involved?
Auntie Mor, who gave the funniest quirky gifts, or Auntie Amren, who drove all the scary monsters away?
No. No. No. Nyx always shakes his head when asked, refusing to give his squabbling aunties and uncles an answer. Instead he would run to his parents' embrace.
Everyone didn't need to be daemati to know the answer, which was as clear as day. As Feyre kissed her little one's cheek before Rhys tossed him skyward, causing him to burst into giggles, they all knew. No one's affection could ever compare to Nyx's love for his mom and dad.
On days when Rhys and Feyre needed to attend to Night Court duties and were briefly away from Nyx, Nuala and Cerridwen often reported that he had been rather mischievous the entire duration they were away from home.
One thing they consistently observed was him slipping out of his room way past his bedtime and gazing upon a painting hanging in the center of the River House hall.
Night Triumphant and Stars Eternal—a painting of his father and mother lost in each other's eyes as majestic night and starlight surrounded them both.
And so the next time Rhys and Feyre were home, they surprised Nyx with a stargazing picnic with just the three of them. Some alone time bonding with their baby boy.
In a beautiful clearing in the middle of a pine forest, they laid on their backs and watched stars shooting past above a cloudless night sky, happy and content just being with each other.
However, Nyx, a curious child, scratched his head and asked one question. "If you're the night, dad, and mom is the star, what am I?"
Rhys and Feyre shared a knowing look and smiled at their son.
"One more surprise, Nyxie," Rhys said and opened the pocket realm, retrieving Feyre's latest painting—a painting of Rhys and Feyre kissing each cheek of a giggling baby Nyx who shone bright as a full moon.
"You're both the night and stars, Nyx, and our Everlasting Moon," Feyre said to an ever-delighted Nyx.
"And simply, our greatest love."
Thank you for reading! 🩷
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"Gwyn the Baby Whisperer" - Gwynriel one-shot
This scene has been sitting around in my google docs for a long time and I decided fuck it I'll post it.
Summary: Only Gwyn knows how to make Nyx stop crying.
Also some Elain/Lucien interaction. And Lucien is Gwyn's father. Yep.
Read on AO3
Gwyn the Baby Whisperer
Nyx’s wails could clearly be heard on the floor above where the court, plus Lucien, was gathered in the living room before their weekly dinner, which had started to become a tradition these days.
“Sorry for the noise,” Rhys muttered wearily, rubbing his eyes. “Elain’s with Nyx now; he just won’t settle down.”
“Is she…torturing him?” Gwyn asked, glancing up at the ceiling.
Rhys and Cassian both snorted, while Feyre shook her head exhaustedly. “He’s just been fussy the last couple days for no apparent reason. Rhys and I were up all night with him.”
“Why doesn’t she bring him down?” said Gwyn.
“Yes,” Mor interjected eagerly, “Bring him down. I want to hold him.”
Rhys shrugged. “Well, if you don’t mind the screaming…” His eyes turned glassy for a moment while he spoke to Elain in his mind. He nodded. “She’s coming.”
Footsteps sounded on the stairs as he spoke, Nyx’s wails growing louder. A moment later Elain entered the room with the bawling baby in her arms. Elain glanced around, studiously avoiding Lucien’s gaze.
Mor bounded up from her spot in the chair by the fire and took Nyx from Elain, who sat down as far from Lucien as she could get. As Mor rocked Nyx, she made cooing noises into his red face. He only cried harder, his little wings fluttering uncontrollably.
“You’ve got a real touch there,” joked Cassian. Mor made a face at him, shifting the baby to rock him on the other side.
“C’mon Nyxie,” she said into his screwed up face with a syrupy, sing-songy voice, “Be good for your Auntie Mor.”
Gwyn pinched the bridge of her nose like she had a headache coming on, and Azriel swept the curtain of her hair to the side and stroked his hand down the back of her neck soothingly. He glanced up to find Elain watching him. A dark look on her face.
On his other side, barely audible under Nyx’s wailing, Azriel could hear Nesta mutter under her breath to Cassian, “I don’t know that I’m ready to have children yet.”
Cassian smirked back at her. “Maybe ours won’t scream.” Nesta gave him a dubious look.
Abruptly, Gwyn stood, pulling out from under Azriel’s arm. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I can’t take it any longer.” She moved swiftly toward Mor. “Give me the baby.”
Mor opened her mouth to protest, but Gwyn swooped in without waiting for an answer and took Nyx from her arms.
She cradled the baby against her chest expertly, one arm around his bottom and the other hand rapidly tapping against his back, just below the wings. “Shh,” she murmured to Nyx, bouncing him in her arms.
Almost immediately, his screaming ceased, although low whimpers still slipped from his spit-shiny lips. He looked up at Gwyn with wide eyes, fisting a handful of her bright copper hair.
Gwyn gave Mor a fleeting look, ever so slightly frosted, matching the blonde’s own face, before turning away. As Mor slunk back to her seat, Gwyn made gentle soothing noises into Nyx’s forehead as she continued to bounce him.
In the sudden ringing silence, Feyre burst into exhausted tears.
Gwyn whirled around at the sound. She snapped her fingers at Feyre to get her attention. “No crying,” ordered Gwyn. “Pull yourself together.”
Feyre stopped out of pure shock. Rhys opened his mouth, looking back and forth between the two of them as silent tears still dripped down Feyre’s face.
“I mean it,” Gwyn said firmly, “You have to keep it together. Babies take their cues from their parents. If you cry, he cries. If you’re unhappy, he’s unhappy. Do you understand?”
Feyre wiped the tears from her face, nodding jerkily.
More whimpering came from Nyx. “I know, I know, it hurts,” Gwyn murmured to him in a sympathetic voice, “Let’s see what’s going on in there.”
Still bouncing him rhythmically, she moved towards the lamp on the side table, turning so the light shined into Nyx’s open, dribbling mouth. She angled her head to look inside, one hand on his chubby chin.
Turning away from the light, Gwyn took a step towards Azriel and reached out her free hand towards him. “Whiskey,” she said. His brows went up, but he held out his glass toward her. She dipped her pointer finger into the amber liquid, tapping off the excess against the side of the glass, and then stuck her finger into Nyx’s mouth, moving it in circles to massage the whiskey into his gums.
“Are you…planning on getting him drunk?” Rhys asked uncertainly. Cassian sniggered.
Gwyn’s lips tightened with mirth. “A drop isn’t going to get him drunk. But it’ll ease the pain, and probably help him sleep.”
At Rhys’ startled look she said, “He’s teething, and at least one is about to breach. He’s probably been in pain for days. Rubbing some whiskey into it and letting him chew on your finger will help.”
Even as she spoke, Nyx was happily gnawing on her finger, one little hand holding onto the side of hers. His other fist still tightly gripped a lock of copper hair. He babbled excitedly, smiling at her around the finger.
“The other thing you can do,” Gwyn continued, smiling down at Nyx at the same time, “is dip a clean damp washcloth in a few drops of whiskey and let him chew on that.”
Feyre’s tired, lined face was painted in anguish. “How did you know he was in pain?”
Looking at her, Gwyn opened her mouth and then closed it. She glanced down at Nyx still chewing happily around her finger. “I know you’re new parents,” she said carefully, “but you need to learn to distinguish the cries. The cry of pain is different from the cry of hunger, which is different from the cry of being wet, which is different from the cry of being tired. You have to listen carefully and learn to differentiate between them.”
Feyre and Rhys both looked dumbfounded.
“I didn’t—I can’t—” Feyre stuttered. “They all sound the same to me.”
“Me too,” muttered Rhys.
“It’s your first kid.” Gwyn’s voice was gentle. “You’ll learn. But you have to listen.”
They both nodded, somewhat chastened.
“How do you know so much about children?” Rhys asked.
Gwyn shrugged. “A great deal of experience. There were many children at Sangravah.”
She kept up an easy rhythm bouncing Nyx in one hand, who had cuddled closer against her body, his miniature wings drooping. Azriel felt a chord plucked deep inside of him, watching Gwyn holding a child like that. Especially a winged child.
A movement in the corner of his eye had him briefly tearing his gaze away from the sight. Elain’s face, he saw, was now twisted up with rage, her usually pretty features clenched into ugliness, and for once she was looking directly at Lucien, who was staring at Gwyn with a soft look, the corners of his mouth turned up. For all Elain’s protesting that she had no interest in her mate, Azriel thought, Lucien’s attention on another female clearly angered her. Even if that female was his daughter. For the thousandth time, Azriel thanked the Mother that Rhys had stopped him from kissing Elain that Solstice night. From starting something he knew now that he’d deeply regret.
He looked back at his own mate, his heart swelling at the sight.
Gwyn pulled her finger out of Nyx’s mouth, who had fallen fast asleep against her chest. “He’s out. Do you want to hold him?” she said to Feyre, who nodded and held out her hands eagerly. Gwyn gently set the sleeping baby into his mother’s arms before sitting back down on the couch beside Azriel and curling beneath his arm, her long legs folded under her.
“Do you…”—Rhys glanced at Azriel before looking back at Gwyn—“...want children of your own?”
Gwyn’s copper brows raised. She pointed upwards and said, “You mean, in addition to the thousand we already have?” Humor coated her voice. Azriel snorted as the shadows swooped down to swirl around her excitedly. Thrilled with the designation she’d just given them. Gwyn tickled a few of them before waving them back to Az’s wings.
“Do you?” asked Lucien, leaning forward with his forearms on his knees.
“Want children? Eventually, I suppose. I need a good long break before that.”
“I love children,” Elain said suddenly. “I would have them as soon as I could.”
Lucien’s gaze shot to his mate, but her eyes remained on Gwyn, shifting briefly to Azriel then back.
“And how many have you raised?” Gwyn asked dryly, not missing the way Elain’s eyes slid to the shadowsinger.
The look on Elain’s face faltered. “N-none,” she conceded.
Gwyn gave her a small smile. “I love children too, but it looks a whole lot different on the other side of fifty.”
“You’ve raised fifty kids?” Nesta exclaimed astonishedly, sitting up straighter.
Gwyn’s eyes flickered across the ceiling for a moment, like she was counting, before she looked back at Nesta. “At least. It might have been more.” Her mouth tightened. “A half-century of war made a lot of orphans. Many of them were sent to Sangravah.”
Nesta pouted at Gwyn. “I wanted us to have kids together.”
“Then you’re going to be waiting a while,” Gwyn replied with a grin.
“What’s a while?”
Gwyn sighed. “I want at least a year—”
“I can do that,” Nesta said immediately.
“—for every kid I’ve raised,” Gwyn finished.
Nesta groaned and slouched back on the cushions.
Cassian’s eyes were wide as he gaped at Nesta. “You’re going to make me wait fifty years?!”
Nesta lifted her palms upwards before letting them drop back down to her lap. “Gwyn’s in charge,” she said matter-of-factly.
Leaning over Azriel, Cassian rounded on Gwyn. “You’re going to make me wait fifty years?!”
Gwyn rolled her eyes. “I’ve been raising children since I was seven and need a break. You can start any time you want.”
Cassian grumbled, “Nesta just said you’re in charge. You think I’m going to be able to argue with that?”
Gwyn smiled sweetly. “That sounds like a you problem, not a me problem.”
Cassian let out a huff of air, scrubbing his hands over his face and flopping back onto the couch. Azriel smirked at him. Cassian muttered, “Oh shut up.”
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I'm probably going to fuck up the phrasing, so apologies in advance if I come across as weird, but I stumbled upon your blog and I really appreciate the nuanced takes you have with fandom because the whole anti/pro thing is so polarized and it made me feel a little bit insane because I felt like you can't really talk about issues in depiction/treatment of characters without getting labeled as an anti.
Thank you!
Yeah, the internet sadly encourages to think in really binary terms, and reality is rarely ever so extreme or simple.
I tend to have a lot of sympathy for antis, but that's coming from a combination of a.) history and b.) social media cynicism.
On the history side: while Prohibition was largely ineffective, had awful ramifications for how Americans approach intoxicants, and the movement was ultimately overtaken by religious extremists, a lot of people forget that it was started by women as an attempt to counteract domestic violence. A lot of women noticed violence happened a lot more when men were drunk, and tried to curb drinking as a result. It spectacularly misunderstood the true source of that violence, but it was also a rational conclusion to arrive at, given what they observed and the information they had access to at the time.
Now the social media side: the prevalence of antis makes a lot more sense when you realize that a.) most of them are teenage girls, frequently sharing classrooms with b.) boys whose opinions on relationships, sex, and sexuality have been heavily shaped by toxic influencers like Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate, and by the amount and type of porn they consume. Porn is getting more violent - not in the sense that kinky porn is getting "worse", but that aggression and violence is getting increasingly normalized in vanilla porn targeted at young men. Combine that with the rise of the alt-right, and it's no wonder that lots of teen girls blame porn and social media content for the increased misogyny they are observing or experiencing on a day to day basis - and, lacking the understanding of where it's really coming from, they're lashing out at the 'porn and content producers' they have the easiest access to (which is us).
On top of all this, most of our social media platforms make it increasingly difficult for people to curate their own experiences. Just blocking content you don't like means absolutely nothing if the majority of your experience on the Internet is apps shoving things onto your phone/screen on the basis of it being tangentially potentially related to your interests.
These kids can't do much about the rise of misogynist influencers, violence in porn, or algorithmic internet experiences, just like late 19th/early 20th century women couldn't do much about patriarchy, trauma, or economic turmoil.
That doesn't mean I think any of them are right, by the way, nor does it mean I'm trying to downplay the harms their puritanical harassment campaigns have on people. What I am trying to say is that I disagree with most proshippers on why the anti movement exists. It's been overtaken by bullies, much like the American Prohibition movement got overtaken by religious zealots. But both the anti movement and the Prohibition was started by women who were afraid of the men in their lives and using whatever tools they had at their disposal to solve the problem at the nearest visible source.
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