ari's archive ♡

You have to pee somewhere between fifty and two hundred times a day. Food has become an enemy again. It doesn't smell quite as foul as it did during the first weeks, but every meal is a gamble between the baby accepting an offering and an hour-long session of doomscrolling while you are trapped, constipated, in the bathroom. You get headaches. Backaches, terrible ones, where your lower spine feels like a crushed can and pulses dully through day and night with no option to stretch it in embryo pose, because something that used to be an embryo is now in the way of folding yourself. Then leg cramps. Breathlessness, and a ridiculous one, too. It comes when you have to do so much as get up. The heat causes the already swollen joints to become larger, to the point of you being unable to leave the house because no shoe will host your enormous feet. Once, your stomach went rock-hard and uncomfortably tight in the spot above the belly button and the whole of your pelvis felt exactly like it used to on your period. You wanted to call Duncan, desperately. But the school year has started and he has been busier the last few days, and besides, you are quietly upset with him. So you called the doctor instead, only to hear that this shite is called Braxton Hicks contractions, and that it is normal and a sign of your body preparing for labour. To you it is unfathomable that there are at least ten more weeks until the nightmare that is labour, and you are already being bullied like that.

There are nicer things, too. They make you sadder, somehow, because it feels like every day there is something new and different, and when he is not there to witness it, it is as if you are making it up. Your nameless son moves a lot. He loves singing, you have learned. He stretches his baby limbs and your skin with them, and to think there is a foot or a hand below that roundness is still unimaginable and feels like a miracle. The proof of that lives in your body in the form of red glistening tear lines of stretch marks, and you try your best not to hate them. They have to be there, you tell yourself, and practice being the opposite of your mother, who would sometimes pull her shirt up and show you what you had done to her stomach and breasts.

Then, heartburn. At first it comes and goes, until it settles into something ever-present. Whether you eat or not, the acrid feeling below the throat is there, and you begin to wonder if it is not just some part of the soul aching, because you have been given a thing and then the very same thing has been ripped away from you a second later.

He said I love you. He said it once, cowardly, to the bump. And it might have been just for the baby, not you, but even to hear him form the sentence left you woefully clear on the fact that you would want one for yourself. It made you feel like you could tell him your side of things. That you think so too, genuinely. That he makes you happy and safe and oh, he doesn't even meet you halfway, just comes to your side and seems comfortable in there. That it feels right to have him beside you, inside you, and generally near, and the only wrongness sprouts when, for whatever reason, he is absent.

The other I love yous hurt significantly more. He had to be gone from his body to say them. They came out of him wrung, accidental, and for one second they did some violent little mending in you. Sutures in the split. Thread through the place where duty and want had been left to rot together for months. Then he came to, saw what his own mouth had done, and pulled them out again with shaking hands.

You are no fool. There is a part of you, reasonable and sick with itself, that knows. From the way he watches you move through a room, from the singing, from the key to his flat pressed on you secretly and under the guise of convenience, from every careful hand at your back and every grocery bag. Some lesser animal part of you knows too, which has made the denial feel worse. His fear has become indistinguishable from mistrust. You hope, fiercely, that at least one old stupidity has died between then and now: his conviction that you are built for ladders, always reaching for some brighter rung, and the darker thought trailing it—that your life ought to contain somebody better than him. That would be the sort of irony that brings people to their tragic ends in novels and films. To spend all this time wanting him while he mistakes the wanting for proof that you ought to choose elsewhere.

After all this, after all the body and blood shared though, he still looked at what was between you and flinched first. So your withdrawal came before pride or strategy or any clean decision. Skin closing over a burn. Hand pulled from heat. You went where pain told you to go, which was a little away from him.

In the bathroom that evening, you took your sweet time crying it out. Afterwards you slept with your back to him. His hand came over the belly first tentative, then heavy once he lost consciousness properly. Morning was well-acted by both parties and stiff all the same. You survived tea and the drive and the dry kiss near your cheek, then sighed with deep relief when you could shut the car door and lock yourself inside your own apartment.

You have told no one—too humiliating. You know some of what you think is unreasonable, pregnant nonsense, brain rot from heat and hormones and too many hours alone with mirrors, but knowing has done very little. You have got fat. Ugly too, by punishing mathematics of the bathroom light. What had been cute and rounder has turned enormous, and it has not even reached the full cruelty of its shape yet. Skin has changed colour in odd places. Your nipples, your inner thighs, the line running down from your navel. You look at yourself and feel translated badly. Woman into vessel. Lover into obstacle.

The after comes for you then, not as a thought but as a sentence handed down. You will give birth. Afterwards your body will remain changed. Your stomach will not flatten by itself, cunt will be strange to you for a while at least, no matter how diligently the physio promises salvation through breathing exercises and expensive little squeezes. There will be blood and milk and too much skin, too much laundry, too much need. Too much of everything to manage alone.

And it looks, hideously, as if alone is the most honest word for it. Alone with a mock-up husband who knows how to stand in the father-shaped space and goes pale whenever the rest of the house asks for him.

Even your want has changed. It used to be cleverer than this, more flattering than this. Now it is a gaping feeling, and shamefully domestic. You are horny for being held too long. For fingers in the arches of your feet. For someone making toast, then soup, then cutting fruit because the first two suddenly seem disgusting. For a voice saying you are pretty with enough conviction behind it that you might pretend to believe it for ten minutes. You miss him so badly it turns sour in you. Him from before that night. Unhinged, a little. Bashful after. Always looking as if desire had knocked a cupboard over inside him and he was hoping you had not heard.

You have learned, lately, that some things live better unsaid. Speech puts them under lights. Silence lets them keep breeding in the walls, and for months you had been feeding yourself on that hidden movement. Hope in the plaster. Now the wall has been opened and there is nothing mystical in it, only wiring and a small creature gone frantic in the dark. The hunger left behind is enormous. It hollows you down to the bone and still asks for more.

Everything seems to be an enemy today, even your own bed. It's much too warm. You lie on top of the duvet, trying to survive the heat and other things, when you notice your phone lighting up on the bedside table. Duncan's calling, and not for the first time. You seem to have missed three rings and a bunch of texts. Then, he calls again, so you pick up.

"Christ, there ye are." He sounds distressed. "Hi—I. Are you alright? I've been callin' ye—"

"Hi. Yeah, um, I'm just—sorry. Sorry, it's so hot I've barely done anything. Didn't notice."

He huffs. "Lassie, don't ye do that to me. You got me worried sick. The app said—"

"Dunk, spare me," you whine. "I'm barely moving. It's fucking suffocating and everything feels like it's having a go at me, I don't need you to join in."

For three seconds there's dead silence. Then, quiet: "I only meant—" A swallow. "I only meant to check in, lass. There's a warning to not go outside and I jus'—I haven't seen you in days."

You consider this gravely. Yes, it's been six days of texts and short phone calls. Which one of you has decided that it would be so, you've no idea. "I thought you'd be busy with the school starting," you say. "Didn't want to add to it."

"Sweetheart—" Duncan breathes, and you cringe on your end of the line. "You ain't addin' to nothing. If anything, yer missing. I will, uh… Can I come see ye? Can I, um. Bring ye something? Do ye need anything?"

He sounds so earnest it almost offends you. There's plenty that comes to mind. Yes, please, ice pack. Or an ice bucket. Peanut butter and peaches, or no, actually just cold water. Frozen watermelon. Fish fingers. Aloe Vera. Anything that has cold in the description. Or no, actually—bring me yourself, and ready to treat me like a wife, not just to be a dad.

Tears start coming, involuntary and hot like everything else today, and you try to hold back a sniffle but fail. "N-no," you stammer. "I'm… I'm fine. You c-can come if you want, but I don't want anythin'—"

His breath hitches in the speaker. "Baby—" he coos. "Talk to me, lassie. Please, I want to help."

You cover your eyes with one hand. Beyond cross with yourself too, because what is this downpour. It's like watching your own hand setting fire to something, but the hand doesn't feel yours. You persist.

"I don't need anything," you say, hearing yourself sounding like a three year old. It's a terrible lie. You know it, and Duncan most likely knows it too because he stays silent. "But you can come over," you add by the design of weakness, and hear him breathing out a laboured breath.

"Aye," he says. "Aye, I'll be there soon. And if you change yer mind text me, all right? I'll pop to the shops."

"Okay," you say. Then, you hang up before making an even bigger idiot out of yourself.

Duncan feels like he's been weighted with bags full of iron. He feels so guilty. He knows damn well what he's done, but it's troublesome to imagine the way you sound has anything to do with it. He's been pondering that stray I love you, or rather, the entire army of them, ever since they left his mouth. They were true when he said them, and that is the rancid part. He could've been mad with grief and desperate rutting misery, but none of that put falsehood on his tongue. Only a gate got loosened, and the words had simply been waiting behind it with their little caps in hand.

He’s thought back to that first night more than would be reasonable. Back when you spoke as though joy and love were spectacles made for other people, and all you had been allotted was the looking. Duncan found that unbearably sad. He wants to give it all to you. Because he does fucking love you. But feeling so and saying so are different kinds of beasts. He thinks of you all the time, especially when he finds a hair tie on his sink or a receipt gone soft in his pocket from whatever shite you craved and then hated by the time he brought it over. All ordinary objects get tender to the point of violence. He misses you terribly. Thinks of kissing you and feels his eyes prickle. Of holding you, and he has to stop whatever he is doing for a second. His teeth ache with it.

What he cannot get his head around is the other thing. The pulling back and the cowardice after. Some ancient skin on him went aflame with pins and needles of that same fear that made him shut down after he was almost adopted and then wasn't. It had grown into a well-oiled machine once he began to be a burden to his exes who gradually withdrew. So he must have seen the sentence and marked it as danger and debt and, plainly, another way to put himself where he might be too much. He just didn't expect it to be the case with you. He had tried to clean it off you while it was still wet. Spare you, he'd thought, give you room and choice. Instead he had left you with the worst version of him: a man who says the thing and then snatches it away before you can decide what to do with it.

You came back from the bathroom that evening with red eyes and slept with your back to him the whole night. Then he drove you home the next day and there was only a dry kiss on the cheek. And nothing solid. You said you'd see him later and later is now and in the time between then and later Dunk feels like it's been long years.

He'd managed to sort Egg out, somehow. After dropping you off he had picked Daeron to text, of all people, asking how things were. Daeron only sent him a picture of Egg in the arcade on the pier and then himself with a Diet Coke, and Duncan had thought, bitterly, that it proved naught, for all he knew there could've been booze in that bottle anyway. He decided to not spoil another good thing and left it as it was, texting Daeron a thumbs-up.

On Monday Daeron brought Egg to school before one of the last summer games and Duncan had to spend a very awkward three-quarters of an hour with him while they both waited for Egg outside the counsellor's office. She only came in because Duncan had asked her, but, thankfully, made no fuss about it.

To this day Duncan has no idea what was said in the room, but Egg came out seeming a few stones lighter on the soul. When Daeron left, Egg had told Duncan that Duncan had been promoted to Egg's first contact if anything happened at home and Maekar would be informed thoroughly of the whole timeline of events but was not to talk to Egg about it. It was Aerion and Daeron he'd be instructed to keep in line, so his brothers' lives would become more difficult so that Egg's life could become less difficult. The counsellor would visit Egg's house unannounced to take notes on the progress. All in all, the solution was crude, but seemed possible to work out.

Duncan wanted to tell you about it desperately, but had only brought himself to text you, to which he'd got no reply. He tried again the next day and you texted back with something mild. Then, the school year started in absolute chaos, because kids had been reassigned between classes. The memo somehow missed the parents, so wrong kids kept appearing in wrong rooms. Half of the pupils kept missing P.E. for the first two days while the biology class was running out of desks. Duncan offered to stay after hours to help sort the mess out, and it did two things for him: helped him keep his mind off you, and kept him away from you.

Since then he has only been sending you messages and calling sometimes, but the chats have been stiff. He knows you've seen Rowan once and that Lyonel has reached out, so all that has calculated itself into two days out of your schedule. Then more time has passed, making Duncan even more scared. The distance has grown gaping, and now it's been six days, and even though in the past Dunk would go on without seeing you for a month or even two, those six days feel like his personal failure.

The app has shown him an alert saying that in this kind of heat a pregnant woman nearly thirty weeks in should do her best to avoid the outside. So he's texted again. Called. Called again when you didn't pick up. He's managed to get himself all worried and full of scenarios where you've fainted at the mall, or worse, in your apartment with no one to know of it. Sweat has begun to soak his T-shirt and temples when he finally hears your voice, and Duncan doesn't think he's ever heard you sadder. Not even when you had a cold. Not even that night when he washed your hair for the first time and got himself into your bed by some benevolent miracle. He hasn't had you in his hands for six days and he feels withered with it. He's only smelled your scent on his shirt and hasn't washed it since.

So when you pick up, another guilt layers itself on top of the old one. He feels guilty of neglect. A decision calcifies in him because of that, one that you might hate, but blinded with remorse, Duncan sees no other option. He wraps up school quickly, sees the kids off and runs home to pack a bag. You'll most likely send him off and he tells himself he'll survive it, but before that happens he believes, firmly, in the righteousness of his argument. It is ridiculous to have to worry like this. If the last weeks are going to be difficult, he'd better be there whenever he can.

Then, despite no text coming from you, he stops by the shop and buys a bunch of things that make him look like he's troubleshooting a kindergarten birthday party. Biscuits, Tayto, peanut butter, various kinds of tea, two buckets of ice cream because he does not know if it's better to buy a fruit flavour or a creamy one.

He drives to you with all that makes him culpable drilling his chest, then shows up on your doorstep with approximately four bags. You open the door and Duncan gets hit with what woe looks like personified.

You are in one of his T-shirts, one of the monstrous ones that hangs too large even on him. On you it makes a tent of itself, mercifully away from the skin, though the collar has gone dark with sweat and sticks a little at the throat. Your hair has been gathered into something that used to be a bun before it got intimate with the pillow. Bare feet. Damp forehead. Neck glistening. Lashes clumped at the corners as if even blinking has become labour. You look so tormented he nearly drops one of the bags.

Then he sees the belly.

Duncan wishes, with immediate, turbulent ferocity, that he had missed it. Somehow it has grown, or shifted forward, or announced itself in a new way while he was away being a coward. A person meets someone after a while and notices their hair longer, their face thinner, some small betrayal of time. This is worse. You and the boy have crossed some border together and left Duncan standing on the wrong side of it. Six days. Christ. Six days, and the two of you have entered the next thing without him.

It's a knee-jerk to step in and reach for you. He puts the bags down, swings the door shut with his foot, and then his arms grow long and he has them around you, but before he gets to actually hold anything, your palms meet his chest. And push.

"No, don't," you say, making him wonder if one can bleed out from internal haemorrhage. "Sorry, I just—it's so hot. It's too bloody hot."

"A-aye," Dunk says. "Course."

You prop yourself by your sides and either to avoid his gaze or simply to get some conversation started, your eyes follow the bags he's trying to conspicuously stuff in the kitchen. "I told you I didn't need anything," you say.

"I know, I jus'—" he starts. Sorts things respectfully into the freezer, the fridge, and onto the counter. "It's all just in case."

There's a nod. Then, your foot nudges his gym bag. "What about this one?"

“That one’s mine,” he says.

Your eyes come back to him. “Yours?”

“Aye. I was thinking.” Duncan scratches at the back of his neck, then stops because his hand is damp. “I thought I might stay. Here. For a bit.”

“For a bit.”

“The last weeks, maybe. When I can. Most nights, if you’d have me.” He looks down at the bag, as if it might finish the sentence in a more sensible voice. “This… this is not good, lass. Ye being like this alone. I think it’s proper I’m close by. Reasonable.”

You roll your eyes. Properly, too. Tired and hot and fed up with him, and it is the first clean anger he has had from you in months. Horribly, some low part of him stirs at it. There you are, sharp and alive with him, and he is still enough of a bastard to feel it in his blood.

“Okay,” you say.

Duncan blinks. “Okay?”

“Sure.”

“Unless ye don’t want me here.”

“Dunk, you can do whatever you want.” Your hand goes to the collar of the T-shirt and pulls it away from your skin. “It’s your baby. Sure, you can stay if that gives you peace of mind.”

“Sweetheart, but I—”

“Please don’t sweetheart me,” you say quietly. “You can stay. It’s very kind of you. I can manage though, I am fine. I just don’t like the heat, that’s all.”

Duncan stands there with fingernails cutting into the meat of his palms. “What can ye manage?”

You look at him. Shrug. “Whatever I have to.”

For a second he cannot find a single answer fit to live outside his mouth, so he just stands there, stunned.

He has to tell you, he realises. No matter how much it will warp him in your eyes and how pitiful it could make him seem, he must tell you that there was no one in his life to teach him how to love people and not lose oneself in the process. But to do this, he needs to put on the skin of someone braver.

His feet bring him closer to you. When there's no flinching, Duncan takes both your hands and rolls them into fists. You're just looking at him, unsure. Then, he beats one fist against his chest. "Do ye need a punching bag?" he asks. "If you don't want help. Or anything to eat. What do ye need?"

You stare him in the eye with all the repulse of someone who's just got reluctantly perceived. "Don't do this," you tell him. "I don't want to hit you."

"All right," Duncan says. "Then come with me."

When you don't move an inch he takes your shoulders and starts guiding you to the bathroom. "What's happening now?" you ask.

"Yer taking a shower to cool off," he says.

"I don't want to take a shower," you huff and dig your heels into the floor so hard he almost tips you over.

"Girl, don't—" Duncan grunts. "Stop misbehavin'."

"Misbehaving? I think fatherhood has gone to your head a little, huh?"

"N-no, I just—" He sighs. "Ugh, why don't ye want to shower now? I thought ye were too hot."

"I am."

"So?"

Nothing. Just an insolent stare.

Duncan looks you over, trying to figure out a reason. Then, it dawns on him. “Do ye not want to be in there alone?”

The stare changes flavour. Still angry, still hot with it, but suddenly spoiled by shame. Your mouth tightens and your eyes go somewhere past his shoulder.

Duncan feels it in his own stomach. “I’ll come in with ye.”

“God, no.” You push the heel of your hand to your eye. “Fine. I’ll shower. Jesus.”

Then you start marching to the bathroom by yourself, which would be grand if he believed you for even half a second. He follows.

“Dunk,” you say without turning. “Go away.”

“No.”

You stop at the sink and look at him through the mirror. He has never found it so difficult to stand his ground. Women are scary, first of all. You especially, when bothered and barefoot. Second, he would sooner put his head through the bathroom cabinet than hurt you more tonight.

“Keep the shirt on,” he says, and reaches past you for the shower knob. “You can change after. This is only to cool ye down. Nothing else.”

The pipes knock in the wall. Water starts hitting the bath with a mean little rattle.

For a moment you say nothing. Your hands hang at your sides, then close badly in the hem of the T-shirt.

“What are you doing?” you ask, when his own shirt ends up halfway up his back. He peels it off and drops it by the laundry basket, then works at his shorts. Gets them to mid-thigh before the look on your face stops him.

“Only down to my underwear,” he says. “Promise.”

“Duncan.”

“Aye. I know.” He swallows. “I’ll keep my hands to myself unless ye ask.”

That seems to make it worse and better in the same breath. Your chin does something small and wounded. He hates most of all that manners have had to come back between you. He kicks the shorts off anyway.

You look away first, which is new and awful. Then you step into the bath, holding the curtain out with one hand and the wall with the other. Duncan is cross about it, but waits until you have both feet planted before he follows.

The first touch of water goes wrong. He reaches for the shower head, gets his thumb half over the spray by accident, and sloshes you across the front of the shirt. You shudder. “Sorry,” he says. “Ye want it warmer?”

“No. This is fine.”

Duncan leans over and turns the knob a fraction warmer.

“I said it’s fine.”

“Yer teeth are locked.”

You huff, but leave him to it. That is almost a victory, in the sodden country the two of you have entered. He draws the curtain with one hand and keeps the shower head angled down with the other. “Hold on to me,” he says.

Your hands move strangely in the wet air. Awkward, hovering, as if his body has become something requiring permission slips and sensible supervision. Duncan feels a tiny spark of temper. He puts the shower head back on its handle, takes both your wrists and sets your palms against his sides.

“Here’s fine,” he says. “Don’t act on me like I’m a stranger all of a sudden.”

You give him a terrifying look. “Look who’s talking.”

He scowls. You do not let go. So he takes the shower head again and starts at your legs, water running over your shins and feet and the floor of the bath. “That all right?”

“Yes. Colder, actually.”

He does as he is told. The next pass goes over your knees, then higher, careful round the hem of the shirt, and when you make no complaint he brings the spray over your stomach. The cotton drinks it greedily. Darkens. Starts clinging where the water weighs it down. Duncan looks very hard at the shower knob and nowhere useful. His face goes hot enough to defeat the whole enterprise. He shoves his glasses up onto his forehead with a thumb.

“Dunk.”

“What?” he says. “I’m only trying to be decent here.”

For a second, through the water and all the wrongness, he thinks your mouth nearly moves into something. Then it is gone.

He wets your chest through the shirt, your shoulders, the back of your neck. “Do ye want your hair washed?”

“No. Just wet it.”

“Aye. All right.”

He shields your forehead with his palm and tips your head back a little. The water goes into the messy knot of your hair and runs behind your ears. You sigh. The grip on his sides loosens by one degree, becoming less a thing you are doing under protest and more a place your hands have decided to stay. He registers it with the pathetic gratitude of a dog allowed on a rug.

When he is done, he jerks his head forward so the glasses drop back onto his nose. Regrets that instantly. You look gorgeous wet. Damp lashes, long and stuck into points. Brows mussed. Mouth soft from heat and water, and glossed over too. You stare at him, waiting.

“Right,” Duncan says. “Hang on.”

He steps out of the bath first, boxers dripping cold down his thighs, then turns back and offers both hands. You take them without looking pleased about it. He holds you while you step over the side, slow and careful, until both feet are on the mat.

“There ye are,” he says, wrapping the towel round your shoulders. “Better?”

Your eyes close. The breath leaves you heavily. “Christ, yes. Better.”

Duncan thinks, with pathetic hope, that maybe you hate him a little less now.

“Wait there,” he says.

He goes out to change into dry things and bring back another of his T-shirts. Then, after a brief and shameful detour into your underwear drawer, dry knickers too. He leaves his gym bag in the bedroom and returns with the clothes folded against his chest. You take them, then glance at him.

He turns round. “I’ve seen ye a million times,” he says to the bathroom door.

“Doesn’t matter. I don’t want you to see me today.”

That lands cleanly. Reasonable, even if it wounds him. Duncan nods, though you cannot see it. “All right,” he says.

On the way out he takes the hairbrush from the sink and the cooling lotion from the shelf, then follows you to the bedroom. There, he draws the curtains closed and puts on a fan. You sit on the edge of the bed. Your shoulders sag. He feels like he's the largest, the most awkward cat hunting a fly when he tries to get himself behind you. The whole mattress jerks and wobbles, and you with it, though you do not say a word to him. He takes a strand of your hair and starts brushing.

"Dunk," you mutter. "You don't have to."

"I want to," Duncan says, meaning he wants to do his atonement in service, but if you chose flogging, he'd go with flogging too.

"Fine," you say, defeated.

It's dead silent after that. He's careful with where your hair's so matted he's risking pulling at it. It drips a little onto the sheets. He reaches for a towel and soaks up the excess water. Then he keeps brushing. Slowly, because the heat has made some snarls stubborn and because your silence has a bite to it. He watches the movement of your breathing instead. Small lifts at the ribs, visible through the shirt. Calmer now and less trapped. It gives him something to believe in.

When the brush starts going through cleanly, he parts the hair into three. Behind the curtain of it, you almost scoff. “Are you braiding my hair?”

“Y-yeah.”

“How do you know how to do that?”

“I’ll have ye know about half my students are girls,” Duncan says. Then, lower, as he folds one section over another, “And I had girlfriends too.”

It comes out like he's reporting a previous conviction. He sees your throat move when you swallow. Hears it too.

“You braided their hair and they let you go?” you quip. “Unfathomable.” It sounds like you're trying, with all your might, to stab him some.

His ears go hot. “More like they told me to go.”

The room goes quiet again, but altered. Your hand moves behind you and finds his thigh. Rests there, warm on the border between hem and skin. “Dunk,” you mutter. “I’m... I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he says, because that is easier than deciding what kind of sorry you mean.

He finishes the braid and brings it over your shoulder. It sits there thick and damp, darkening the front of the shirt. Then, he gets up and swaps the brush for the lotion. At your feet, he kneels and reaches for one ankle.

You jerk it away. “I’m better now. You really don’t have to do more.”

Duncan catches it back, more annoyed than gentle for one second. “Hush, girl.”

Your eyes sharpen. He starts rubbing the lotion into your foot regardless, thumb moving carefully under the pulpy arch. “Your feet are swollen.”

“Thanks for letting me know.”

He groans. Cannot help it. His hand closes round your calf and he looks up at you, long and serious enough that your mouth loses some of its fight. “Listen to me,” he says. “I know I’ve hurt ye, all right?”

“What?” Your face pales. “What do you mean?”

“Stop it, girl.” He rubs at the muscle under his fingers, slow and firm, because if his hands stop he may lose the rest of himself. “I know ye think me dumb, but I ain’t that dumb. I’ll tell ye something. Something I should’ve told ye long ago.” His thumb passes over the knob of your ankle. “With the other thing I just... I need some more time.”

For a second you only stare. Then something in you gives. No sound at first, just your forehead knitting gives away the thread that has snapped in the middle of a normal task. Then the sob comes, wet from the start, and Duncan is up beside you before he remembers standing. You turn into him with one shoulder tucked hard against his chest, clutching at his shirt.

“Where have you been?” you mumble into him, and hit his chest with the side of your fist. “Why did you go for a week?”

“I thought ye didn’t want to see me.” His voice breaks. “I’m so sorry—”

“I didn’t,” you cry. “But you should’ve come anyway.”

Duncan laughs then, horrific and small, and feels his eyes dampening too. “Aye. That’s fair.” His chin wobbles. He holds you tighter and wipes your cheeks with both thumbs, pointlessly, because more tears come straight after. “There ye are, my sweetheart,” he says. “There ye are. I missed ye, you know that? Your belly’s got bigger and I wasn’t here to see it happenin'. I’m sorry.”

He lifts the shirt, gets the lotion on his palm, then spreads it over your stomach with one flat hand. You moan and lean your head into the pillow of his bicep.

“Will ye listen to me while I take care of you, hm?” he asks.

You nod with your eyes closed.

The skin of your belly feels cooler now from the shower, but still slightly too warm underneath. Busy with blood and baby and the labour of being lived in. Duncan rubs in slow passes. You keep your lids shut.

“Ye know how we never talk about our folks much,” he says. To that you squint at him, a little. “I know yours weren’t...” His hand slows. “Kind. The way they ought to’ve been.”

“Duncan,” you murmur.

“Aye.” His fingers drum once on the round of you, then stop. “Mine just. They just weren’t.” You say nothing. That helps more than it should.

"There's a place back home," he says. "Called The Home, mostly. That's what folk called it, anyway. An orphanage for kids like me."

His thumb finds a place where the lotion has not taken and works there. The words come easier when he has a task, though they still come poorly. "I was there until I was eighteen," Dunk says, feeling you inhale under his palm. "It weren't all bad. There were good people. I had um—Arlan. Uncle Arlan. He worked there, then he sort of—well. Looked after me more than he had to. Taught me things. Took me along when he could. Football, mostly. How to hold a drill. How to cook eggs and wash your own underwear, ye know the sort. Useful things."

Your hand comes up and rests over his wrist.

"He was the closest thing I had," Duncan says. "To a father, I mean."

The fan turns its head slowly across the room. The curtains move and settle.

“He wanted to keep me,” he says, quieter. “For a bit. Or I thought he did. Maybe he did. I still don’t know. Things happened. Money. Papers. People changing their mind. Folk always had reasons." His hand stops on your stomach. The boy gives one small movement under his palm. Duncan looks down at it because looking at you might ruin the telling.

"Aye, ye don't need to listen to that. I will never happen to you," Duncan murmurs. He smooths there anyway. "After that, I got strange about being wanted. Got worse when I got older. And then, well. Nobody wanted a grown up lad, so I stayed until I could go to school, and then life just sort of happened."

"Darling," you say.

He shakes his head a little, but leans into the word.

"I ain't telling you all that for pity, sweetheart," Duncan says. "I'm jus' thinkin' you ought to know me a bit better, is all."

When he looks at you, your eyes have gone glassy enough that he can see a warped bit of himself in them. You are not crying, though. He appreciates that fierceness, because his own cheek has gone wet and he has to wipe it with the back of his hand.

You lift your palm before he can finish and cup his face. Your thumb takes the next tear. "Thank you for telling me," you say.

Duncan sniffs. “That’s it?” Then, he snorts.

To see his teeth now is a blessing. It's been so long since you saw them. Wonderful crooked things, milky and large and making him look like a boy who doesn't have all those worries. No, there is more, you want to say. First, there is an overwhelming wave of sympathy in you that you try to not let tip into condolence. Then, kinship. He is careful because this is fragile. He needs more time because this is too large. Despite having a queue of phrases lined up, like telling him anyone who didn't want him was wrong, that all of his exes are wrong, like you ought to be loved, unconditionally, you chose to say nothing. Let him have this without pity and while being seen.

Your knuckles brush his cheek. "That's it," you tell him.

You both cradle each other for a bit. The heat eases off by a few degrees. After a while he turns his mouth into your palm, just briefly, and then tucks you back against him. His hand goes to your lower back and starts moving there. It is the sort of touch that asks for forgiveness by doing an ordinary job well. You let him have it. Your own fingers find the hair above his collar, still damp at the roots, and play there until his shoulders soften and lower.

At some point Duncan clears his throat. “Have ye thought of names?”

You blink against his shirt. “Oh.” Your hand pauses, then starts again. “Some. Have you?”

“Aye," he says. "A few."

He's sweet. Abashed with it. You lift your head enough to look at him. “Are we comparing lists?”

“If ye like.” He rubs the heel of his hand down the sore place near your hip and back up again. “Say one each, maybe.”

You glance down at your belly. “Are we giving him a brand new name?”

Duncan follows your gaze. His hand slows. “I’d like to. If you would.” He swallows. “Feels right, somehow. Let him start with his own.”

You take that in quietly. His own. It does feel right.

“I like Fionn,” you say.

Duncan’s face changes with recognition. “I've got Fionn on my list too.”

“You would.”

“It’s a good name.”

“It is.” You settle more firmly against his side. “What else?”

“Ciarán.”

“Okay, good one too.”

“Rían.”

You try it under your breath. “Rían. That’s sweet.”

“Senan too, maybe.”

“God, you’ve been busy.”

His mouth bends a little. “You?”

“Oisín.”

“Aye. Good. Pretty one.”

“Lorcan.”

“Strong.”

“Tadhg,” you say, and then say it again with a less confident mouth. “Tadhg?”

Duncan gives you a look.

“What?”

“No one outside of this sodden country will know how to say that.”

You pull a face. “Fair.”

A small laugh gets out of him. It comes rough, used poorly, but there are his teeth again. You feel absurdly grateful for them. After a few names you realise all of his have arrived from the same place. Irish, each one. Quietly chosen. You do not say that aloud. It feels too tender to put under lights.

“What’s your favourite?” you ask.

Duncan looks at your belly for a long second. “Aodhán.”

“Aidan?”

“Aye.” His thumb moves once over the side of you. “With Irish spelling.”

“Aodhán,” you say again.

He watches your mouth shape it.

“What does it mean?”

“Little fire,” he says. “Or born of fire. Depends who ye ask.”

You try it again. Aodhán. Aidan Pennytree. “I like it,” you say. "A lot."

“Yeah?”

You nod. “I love it, actually.”

Duncan goes still for the length of one breath. Then his hand starts moving again at your back, very carefully, as if the name has come alive between you. "So," he says. "We've got it?"

"I think so. Yeah," you say. "He deserves a good one like that."

He smiles. Nods. Looks you over and asks, "Would ye sleep some now? Are ye feeling better?"

"Yeah," you tell him. "Would you mind if I did?"

"I wouldn't. I'll get myself busy."

You only sigh to that and fall out of his arms onto the bed. Duncan watches you for a while, up until your breathing deepens and limbs loosen enough to lay unarranged. It's still warm enough that your forehead shines, so he makes a mental note to check in on you every half an hour or so.

He takes a small satchel out of his bag and goes to the baby's room. Aodhán's room. Pulls one of the blankets from the drawer and sits on the floor by the window. It's one of the useful things Arlan has taught him, how to mend a tear or stitch one's name onto a shirt so that everyone knows who it belongs to.

Nothing boastful, just a simple stitch, and a wonky one too, for Duncan doesn't really own a special needle or a proper hoop for embroidery. He pulls the material over his knees and picks out a thread that he hopes is blue and will go well with what he thinks is beige. Hums to himself while he does so.

The first letter comes out too large. Duncan frowns at it, picks the thread out with the tip of the needle, and starts again smaller. He has to slow down for the fada, absurdly careful with the tiny slant of it. The thread knots twice. He bites one loose, mutters at the other, then smooths the blanket and keeps going. There is something decent in putting a name where his own hands can see it. When he is done, the letters sit a little crooked and blue against the pale wool. He rubs his thumb over them once, then folds the blanket and puts it back in the drawer.

In the bedroom, you are still asleep. Or near enough to it. On your side, facing the edge of the mattress, one hand tucked close to your chin. Duncan crouches beside you rather than sit and make the bed lurch again.

Your eyes open heavily. He stays there, caught. “Hi,” he says.

“Hi,” you say back, rough with sleep.

For a moment the two of you only stare at each other. The fan moves air over the room in weak turns. The pillow has pressed a line into your cheek.

“Are ye sad?” he asks.

Your mouth moves before sound comes. “A little.”

Duncan nods. His hand shifts on his knee, then stops. “Do ye want tea?”

You shake your head.

“Tayto?”

Another shake.

“Ice cream?”

There is a pause that gives him hope. Then your lips tuck down and you shake your head again.

He puts his hand on your cheek. Only that. “What do ye want then, girl?” he asks.

Your lips part. Duncan sees the answer arrive there before he hears it. A small working of the mouth with breath gathering. The lower lip catching for one tiny beat, as if the words have to climb over something sore. It is almost no sound when it comes.

“Hold me.”

The room tips a touch. He does not know how a whisper can take hold of a body his size, but it does. It gets deep and pulls him forward. Duncan rises slowly while trying his best for gracefully, too, and climbs over you to the empty side. Then, he lies behind you.

His arm hovers above your stomach, because permissions have to be re-learned. You take his wrist and press his palm to the belly yourself. Then you breathe in, deep, and his hand rises with it. He sets his face close to the back of your head. Wedges his free arm under your neck, but after a minute you swallow loudly and make a small unhappy sound.

“Too hot?” he asks.

“A little,” you say. Your fingers tighten on his hand. “But don’t go.”

“All right.”

So she shifts only to give you air. Frees his arm and props himself on its elbow to lift the braid away from your skin and lay it over the pillow. It brings him close to the place behind your ear. There, you're warm and fragrant. His eyes close, and Duncan pushes his nose in, and sniffs you in deeply.

“Ye smell different,” he says.

"To what?"

"To the usual," Duncan says, forgetting himself some. He splays his fingers on your head and rubs the lobe with his nose. "Usually it's biscuits. With clementines."

You breathe out. Your cheek rises in something he thinks is a smile. "And what is it now?"

"Hmm, yer wearin' my shirt," he hums. Mine. "More manly."

You chuckle, once and dry. It is an unlikely compliment for a girl who smells only of sweet things on her own, but to Duncan it's an improvement. He enjoys it tremendously, this humane way for you to wear his skin on yourself. He opens his mouth against the tendon in your neck and lets the soft inside of it rest there. His breath comes back damp from your skin, hand starts climbing your front by slow possession until the whole arm has your belly banked into it. The hold makes his head go quiet.

With your throat offered and head pressed to the pillow he has you set to him like supper. All the good of you gathered into the crooks of his body, and there is guileless romance to it, for Duncan loves necks. He loves them long and sweaty and corded with what the voice box withholds from light, and he loves the feeling that comes with making a girl's breath hitch. The ingenuous part is holding his son at the same time. It's confusing. He's a father and a man, and a hopeless inept lover that's afraid of the loving part, and finds himself perplexed by the accidental eroticism of servicing. When he cooled you the shirt stuck itself to your tits, water made your nipples harden, and Duncan had to remind himself that his excitement comes with your misery attached. Now you are pliable and balmy next to him and he's doing his best to remember there is misery still. That under his palm there is a baby whose mother is suffering in heatwave, and it better not matter how good her arse feels pressed into his groin.

It matters, though. It would seem that to Duncan salacity lives in the same country as domesticity. That what he finds sexy are things of mundanity and sincerity and he's guilty of corrupting them with the misbehaviour of his blood. Large T-shirts are pretty on you. His ordinary washing powder smells delicious when embellished with your scent. Domesticity makes his balls laden, and before he knows it, Duncan is afflicted with a love-boner making itself known in the meat of your buttocks.

He breathes you in again. His glasses press a dent in your neck. You shoulder lifts and fingers tighten around his wrist.

"Duncan—" you huff. "Too hot."

"Oh." He comes off you, blinking. "Sorry."

His hand reaches to brush some stray strands off your face first while all of him wishes to put his mouth back where it was. Your skin stands bare collarbone to ear. Duncan looks at it for too long, then bends and lays his tongue broad at the base of your throat. Then, he licks.

It draws a wet road on the overheated skin, from clavicle, through the notch, then higher to the below-ear again. Your head tips back, neck lengthening in his hand's shadow and the sound you make has sleep still caught in it. He lifts his face to see what he has done. The stripe is glossy, filthy and medicinal both. Duncan leans and blows over it.

"Oh—"

It hits you cold and exhilarating. For ten seconds the two square inches of you are relieved of burning.

"Dunk—" you moan. Then, your hand finds the jut of his hip and closes there, less tenderly than either of you has been behaving. The grip consists of short, decisive nails and a damp palm and fingers sinking where the bone sits hemmed into meat. It reminds you that he has bones, too. Long, white, breakable things, if the basher is dedicated enough. His breath snags over the wet on your throat as he tries to keep up an act of aiding you, but he's been reduced to a body already. A plain obstruction, thick through fabric, lodges hot against the split of your buttocks and proves that opportunity makes a mockery of kairos.

The conflict begins to present itself as friction in the muscles, and you both get stuck in the inconvenience of arousal. You're too hot and bothered to take him properly, but too unloved to ignore him, so you accept the prospect of getting fucked. He is too liable to ask but too confused between his father-hand and his lover-body sharing the same nervous system, so the hunger wins him over. Your ass presses into the bulge. A groan rattles the hinge of his jaw, then ribs, then causes his cock to give one swollen kick against you.

"Lass," he says, badly.

You grip the hip firmer and press again, which undoes the cooling enterprise somewhat. His mouth opens on your neck and stays open. Hand reaches to cup your forehead with enough pressure to keep your head lolled back. The arrangement ought to feel bossy but arrives instead as relief; your skull, throat, belly, all dreadfully overtaxed, get briefly supervised by a body larger and guiltier and more willing to be blamed.

Another roll comes, meaner and equipped with knowledge from the spine. A small spite within it, innate to a woman who's been lonely for six days and has found, behind her, the exact weight of remorse she prefers. His cock rides up against you, trapped and dense. Duncan makes a sound he's tried to disown in the past and got scolded for it, so now he surrenders the whimper right into your ear.

"Jesus," he breathes. "You're—"

"What?"

You swallow. The tendon under his mouth moves when you do, so his tongue comes out to follow the movement. "Ye want me then?"

"I think it's you who's wanting now," you say, despite the obvious, shameless yes being right there. Right between your legs, where your cunt grows heavy with thickening ache. You go damp, which is less a consequence of temperature and more a signature of desire. It annoys you, how swiftly he can do this. It comforts you too. Both facts occupy the same sore chamber and refuse to take turns.

"Aye, it is," Duncan says. "I always want ye, girl. My gorgeous girl—"

"Don't—" you wince. "Please don't. You can, just—don't talk like this."

"Like what?"

"I don't feel particularly gorgeous," you say as your hips stiffen.

Duncan pulls you back into him. "None of that," he says. "I don't want to hear it. You're the most beautiful girl and I always want ye." His palm slides from your forehead to cover your eyes.

The darkness is immediate and strangely kind. His hand smells of lotion and anything a hand would smell of. Everything he's touched lingers there, soap and metal of the tap, and your thighs. Through it, you hear him breathing behind you, disciplined to the point of pain. His cock seems harder for being denied, and when he angles your hips just so, his teeth close, softly, on the air behind your neck.

"Ye can be cross with me," Dunk says. "But not rude to yourself."

"Can I?" you ask. "Be cross with you?"

"Aye," Duncan says. "Are ye?"

You nod under his hand. It travels through Duncan with a low, almost formal finality, as if someone has stamped him guilty and handed the papers back across the desk. His free arm comes alive with alarming efficiency, abandoning the gentleness for something merely adjacent, while the gentleness waits for its name to be called again. He performs the work in hurry—hooks the waistband, tugs the cotton from the crease where it had sealed itself into skin. It all bares you arduously, with fabric rolling and elastic digging into flesh. His knuckles scrape at the top of your leg, hasty to learn how much of your anger has made itself liquid.

Fingers come. Checking. Inspecting. How cross, then. Door-in-his-face cross. Make-him-stand-there-and-take-it cross. Kneel-and-beg-for-forgiveness cross. He parts you, slides the pads through the slicked seam and comes away with answer shining on him.

The kind that has been sitting alone in bed for six days becoming cunt-wet and bitter and ashamed of its own appetite.

"Good," he says. Then winces into the back of your neck, stricken by his own wickedness. The smallest tremor shakes his thighs. He gives himself one more touch of you anyway. The roughness of his finger-pads drags over swollen skin, making your arse push itself out, eager. Eyelids flutter under the hollow of his hand. He lets you know it's been felt by losing a sweet little sound.

Then, he is gone. For one second, only vacancy. Your body, which has morphed itself into grievance, furnace and complaint, contracts round it furiously. Behind you cloth is being fought with, fabric rustles, his hip shifts under your grip. There is fumbling and an irritated sound on his breath. Finally, he returns, bare, and you are met with the head of his cock pressing between your legs. "I mean—" He swallows. "Show me then."

Your laugh comes out nearly soundless. Mean little thing. Hurt little thing.

So you show him. Take him in one determined swallow, pushing back despite the burn sparking through your womb. All of those months of him being ready for everything and glad of anything have roused a part of you that yearns to crush him, a little. Make him come too soon. Humiliate him a bit. Play in this depth, too vast for sweetness to keep its pretty face on.

It seems to empty him of speech. His hand clamps harder over your eyes. Cock slides home too fast for the tenderness he usually worships. Too full and sudden, together forming a gorgeous insult to a body already overrun. The ache pleases you with such violence that you nearly hate him for providing it.

“Ah—fuck,” Duncan chokes. The word breaks in two places. “Girl, Christ—”

You drive your claws into his hip.

His whole body jerks, held in place by the wound of your nails. There is a strange satisfaction in finding him breakable. In locating bone and hair and the mortal seam within him. Cowards, you think with a cruelty that has love’s fingerprints all over it, should be robbed of dignity. Pointed to their place. Made useful under accusation.

“Stay there,” you tell him.

"Aye," he groans. “Aye, sweetheart.”

“Don’t move.”

Another sound, lower. “Aye.”

Then his hand comes between your legs, and he obeys you by disobeying the rest of himself. Three fingers, crude and flat, take the whole wet mess of you at once: clit, lips, the slick place where his cock has disappeared and stretched you open. He rubs with a bluntness that ought to be offensive but somehow becomes thrilling. You clamp your thighs together and trap him there while he keeps working, and reach behind yourself seeking his hair. Your fist closes. Tugs.

Duncan hisses. It has pleasure and pain mingling, because he's been given the exact sentence he wants. He keeps himself buried while you use him by stubborn pressure. Have him spread you with each backward rut, expand cruelly against tissue made tender by warmth and pregnancy. Grace is unavailable, so your body invents another virtue: persistence. You move against his hand and cock and the slab of his thigh behind yours, taking what can be taken sideways, half-blind and sweating. He fits the raw place as well as he fits the intact ones. Acts as if anything you do could actually hurt him. As if some hair pulling and scratching can maul any part of his great body. Through the sealed darkness he becomes enormous and reduced: parts of him only—mouth, fingers and cock—all organised around endurance.

“More,” he grunts into your ear. Rolls his hips upward until he's deeper. Has you near bursting at the seams, that one, with how heavy and full of effort it feels.

"More of what?" you breathe.

His mouth drags along your neck, proving that the cooling game has been long since corrupted into selfish licking only. "Be mean to me," he says. "I can take it."

"Duncan—"

"I can." A breath. Then, right into your ear: "Sweetheart, I want to take it."

That almost gets under the anger and ruins its structure. He tends to do that to you—there is only so much of the pissed off energy in you until something that's an integral part of him comes to dampen the fire of vexation and stokes one of a different kind. It can be him pouting over something no grown man should pout over. The way he makes owning eyes into an art. The way his biceps fill out the sleeves of a T-shirt. And simply because he turns owning up to one's mistakes into something exciting. No matter if it's worth penalty or not, to your how to do you plead? Duncan would always say guilty, because it's not punishment at all if it's delivered by your loving hand.

You rut back, forcing his cock past the tender resistance so the head of him can rub where your body has gone overfull and foreign, and desperate too, though you'd rather not admit it. His fingers stay crass and jerky but it's the exact friction you need. A millstone turning in the pelvis until everything in you is meal. It's kind of him too—making a service of the same body that fled the words when they arrived too alive and bare to survive daylight.

"Fuck me harder," you say.

The grip over your eyes tightens until no light threads between his knuckles. Your fist answers that with a cruel twist. There's refusal in him still, the penitent. He only lets his hips quiver and gasps softly into your neck. Then, he gives you the first proper thrust, upward and inward, enough to have your neck try to wrench itself on its hinges and oh, thank God he's there to hold you.

"Like that," you tell him. Then tell him again, with hands, when his muscles waver with indecision. He seems to understand, or merely comply, because another thrust comes. Then another. Harder, because you've asked and better because he already knows all angles. He decompresses into the idea of anger being a permitted contact and that despite it, you don't want him away. It needs impact, a thing to burn through and out, and the more Duncan gets it, the more his care degrades into thirst.

He lets himself limber up. Finds a way, somehow, to carry cowardice and bravery on either of his shoulders, and absorbs the ire until it dims. It gives him a place to exist. While you fuck yourself on his brutish cock he tries to convey through hands what he can't by mouth.

That it is complicated, but he's not going anywhere. That if you trust him, he will break his neck over trying to be more valorous.

While he thinks, vigorously, all those promises, his palm loosens around your eyes. Cradles your temple instead. Your movement begins to flow less barbed, and he finds a caveat he can endure. He wraps an arm round your shoulders and holds them, and lets the fingers between your legs go at you softer. In his hair the grip sweetens until you're brushing through the roots and scratching his scalp. Duncan moans at that. "Yes," he says. "Christ, ye feel good, lassie. Ye are so pretty."

You smile. There is a shift of appetites. You start choosing pleasure over rebuke. Tenderness returns, changed and earned, with a limp in it. He fucks you and you fuck him back, and the lame reciprocity of it seems to settle him where finer assurances failed. His hips come up; yours come down and back. The arm banding your throat stays careful while the rest of him grows less so, and the fingers between your thighs are made clever by confinement. Your thighs have his wrist imprisoned and Duncan appears grateful for the inconvenience.

“How are ye?” he asks, voice torn small against your neck.

Your answer takes effort. “Close.”

That reaches him badly. His mouth moves to your ear. “Me too,” he breathes. “Will ye come with me?”

You only have a nod for him, but it's enough. By the end, it's purely him that nudges you off the ledge. His grunts, his breath, his chest, broad and safe, despite the thing inside it being so skittish. It's an orgasm by necessity. It comes as compulsion more than bliss, and when you lock your thighs together so hard his knuckles crack, Duncan surrenders to drowning in his own reprieve. He moans and chokes a little into your cheek. Buries himself deep and keeps jerking at whatever you are wrenching out of him. Worry, maybe. Or doubts, you hope. With whatever thing attached it comes, it feels good to be full of his warmth again. A new default, and you realise you've been angry about that being gone, too.

After a couple of laboured inhales, he starts shifting. Frees you from the yoke and makes space between his chest and your back. Air gets in there and due to everything getting so hot, it feels cooling on the damp cotton of your T-shirt.

"Don't go," you say, holding his thigh.

Duncan is quiet for a long moment. Then he readjusts: his hand returns to your stomach and fingers start combing through the hair gone damp and stray at your forehead. His nose finds its place in your neck again. He nuzzles there, then sniffs. “Are ye less cross?”

You consider it properly. “A little.”

Against your ear, his mouth quirks. His fingers slide lower to play over your face, and you tip your head sideways. Duncan leans forward a notch until the two of you can look each other in the eye.

He says nothing. Only brings his hand up and traces your mouth with his forefinger and the third, catches the corners, tugs them upward. When he lets go, your mouth drops back into its serious crescent.

“I can live in it, I think,” Duncan says. “Ye cross with me and ye want me here, aye? That’s how it’s done in here?”

You nod. “Yes.” Your hand comes to his cheek. “You’ll be cross with me too sometimes, and I won’t go either.”

“All right,” Duncan says.

He kisses your forehead, then lies back down behind you. His hand rubs over your belly and he begins to soften, inside and out. He grows heavier too, and stretches himself along the bed until your feet rest on his shins.

When you fall asleep, it's all inconclusive. Nearer to mercy than forgiveness, but more useful than either. The baby turns under your skin, slow and secretive, and Duncan's fingers spread over him, unconscious. The heartburn remains, awfully familiar, though for the first time all week it has to share the body with something larger.