black diamond.

“Is teaching really just staying up for entire nights grading things?” sterling mumbled, stifling a yawn with the back of his hand.

He had to have been dreaming, clearly, because THIS couldn’t be happening. “n-no, we... h-how, um...” he shook his head in an attempt to find the words -- or, at least in an attempt to find SOME words. “w-we can’t,” he finally said quietly, the words coming out as more of a trainwreck than a complete thought. “we can’t have a baby. we CAN’T have a baby, shasta.”

“Yeah,” he mumbled, the jolt of pain he felt from her touching his hands enough to wake him up a bit more. “i just -- i need to, um... sit. i can’t-can’t go out like this, um...” he looked up at her a bit sadly for a moment and then... things kind of faded to black from there. he slumped over onto the bench -- onto a few of the clean towels he hadn’t used to clean his face up a little. he came to after about a minute and blinked up at her. “did i win?”

“Hey, so um...” rowan wasn’t sure how to approach the topic -- really, he wasn’t sure how the topic had come to NEED to be approached in the first place. they’d always been safe, ever since they’d started dating and even when they moved in together a year later, so he was sort of at a loss. “i-i found this,” he said softly, holding up the small, pink, EMPTY cardboard box with P R E G N A N C Y  T E S T in large purple letters on the top from the bathroom trash. “did you... like -- you-you took it?”