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Warnings: pregnancy, fluff, erotic but non-explicit oral and vaginal sex, medieval gender norms and childbirth
Words: 5.3k
Rating: M
Summary: Wine mulled to remove all alcohol can be drunk during pregnancy, though it is not good for it to be drunken hot or spiced, as everything the mother ingests and experiences, so does the baby.
I like this idea that the two of you are just finding your footing in your relationship and slowly starting falling for each other meanwhile to the outside all the servants and public you can’t stand to be apart from each other and are the most in love duchess and duke any of them have ever seen
Once again I am not into Dune, though this time I have watched the first and second films and not fallen asleep, so hopefully that puts Leto in character. You guys like dilfs, right? Come get your dilfeed *clang clang clang*
This is a departure from the first piece, both in length and theme, it was requested a long time ago now that I continue Warm, but in my mind that is complete, so this is almost something else. I don’t think you need to read the original to read this one, but it is referenced, and they do align somewhat
AO3 Link
The young Duke Leto Atreides stepped outside the meeting he was attending.
He unfastened and refastened his collar, taking long, slow breaths.
It was so. He was to be married.
Of all the many of suitable blood, it was not one he had met.
He did not want to marry you. He could not pretend that he did. It almost angered him, that he could not have been informed sooner. It seemed everyone knew but him.
He continued to walk, down the halls, he would loop back. He would return and he would accept the information properly. No practiced nod and excusing himself. He would accept it graciously.
He angled to check his reflection in the widow. He looked fine. It was mostly inside.
He could— would marry you, and you would have his children.
As he turned around the bend, a door to the hall opened, and you stepped out. He recognized the dress, your house’s colors, before he recognized your face.
Your eyes met.
You didn’t recognize him at all.
“I believe we’re to be married.” Leto said, his voice echoing in the hall.
That was the duke?
You blinked, stepped back and bowed to one knee.
He was shorter in person.
“Your Grace.” You addressed in reverence.
You were not well behaved. You knew it was why your father had hastened to marry you off. If the duke was displeased with you, if he informed his court, and they changed their mind after him seeing you like this, your father would be far worse than unhappy.
“Please.” He replied, holding up his hand.
You stood.
“What are you doing here?”
“My accommodations were left unattended, and I was tired of waiting for water. I did not intend to wander.” It had been the better part of an hour.
“I will let them know immediately.” Leto said. “That is not acceptable in my house.”
He looked down the hall first one way, then the other. He called out, to no response.
It was a hot day. The house appeared empty.
“Would you come with me, please.” He offered you his arm and you took it, matching gait with him down the halls till you came to a scullery.
He took a large clear pitcher and poured you a glass, holding it up.
Light shone through the window above the sink. He was not handing it to you. He was holding it for you to drink.
You have had drinks held for you, but not since you were a child on the lap of your wet nurse.
Leaning forward, you took a long sip, and then another.
It became difficult to drink at a respectable pace when you were so parched you were nearly lightheaded, but you were in front of the duke, and you acted as such.
It was in that moment you saw his nerves. His hands. The tremor was completely imperceptible from any further away. He blended it into his movement. The slight dip, half as often as a heartbeat at rest.
Something so simple, so tiny, but it salved your worries and embarrassment deeply. He was as anxious as you, in the same way.
He was just a man. A fine-looking, considerate man. You could not look at him any longer.
You wiped your mouth with a kerchief and thanked him.
“I will ensure your every need.” He said, setting the glass back on the counter.
Though you did not yet find him attractive, his words made you burn.
It would not kill you to be married to him.
A servant entered and he called them over, instructing them to attend to you.
“Excuse me, Lady, I am required elsewhere.” Was the last thing he said to you before the betrothal banquet.
He drug his hand down your stomach.
He watched your throat, your breathing as his fingers slowly brushed you apart, then rubbed into you.
You shut your eyes to imagine he was a man you had fallen in love with and were caught in a sweet tryst with.
It didn’t work. You’d be kissing if this were a tryst, tangled in each other’s arms. You would be excited, and you would be much, much hotter.
Your slick began to gather and Leto thought of penetrating you, and it just was. Not an ardent joining, just placement. He would place himself inside of you and move until it was done.
It was not that you were unattractive, he simply knew nothing about you. Nothing that was not known by everyone.
At the wedding he was supposed to meet your eyes, so he did. The veil helped him not think of who you were, just what you were, what you were both about to be.
With that you were his wife. With that he spilled inside of you, a stranger on your wedding night consummating in your marital bed.
He could live with you. You would have an heir to the Atreides house together. That was what mattered.
“You have failed to produce a suitable heir in over a year.”
“Sir, we are trying—” Leto was silenced at the raise of a hand. Embarrassment flickered in his jaw as it closed and nowhere else.
“You will have one born before the new year, or you will take a concubine.”
“Yes sir.” He said, leaving the room.
Produce an heir, provide a child for his bloodline, that seemed to be all he heard these days.
He did not want a concubine, even less than he had wanted you for a wife long ago now.
You were not barren, Leto was sure. You had been taking herbs and elixirs for fertility. It was something he was doing, his diet or timing, his seed had been tested before the betrothal and it was good. He would find out what it was and he would ensure a pregnancy.
You were his. He finally felt in his heart of hearts that were true. If he was needed to take another, he could, but less that he would not enjoy it, he would feel cruel and entitled; broken, guilty. Sex was no longer just obligation with you, should the mood be right, it was loving and impassioned.
You could look and talk to each other during and after. He so liked hearing you speak, embracing you. It was not every time, but since he had brought you closer you had been getting close.
Talking and residing with one another as lovers. Even if it were still awkward, on occasion, and you still felt more friends, than a married couple, it was growing. Planted and strengthening with each day, nurtured by both of you.
Your mistress called you from down the hall and you ignored her, rushing up to Leto and taking his hand.
He looked you down, clearly surprised, unsure what to say about your wet hair, slippers and untidy clothing. It was not court presentable, yet here you were, mere feet from them. Something in him enjoyed it. You were so eager to see him for something you didn’t care.
“My husband,” you nodded to him, and he nodded back with a matched expression.
“Yes?” He was just containing a laugh.
“I am with child!” You said. You wanted to be the one to tell him first, so you had ran ahead, against better judgement and advisory.
“A child!” Leto exclaimed, relief crashing on the shores of his temper. He had not even felt the breadth of the anxiety rising in his chest until it lessened.
“Yes! Male. Seven weeks.”
At the periodic ritual bath, you mentioned you had failed to bleed for a second month, and the midwife had inspected your midsection carefully before calling for a scan. You recounted this to him and he hummed inattentively.
He was thinking of what relief it was to not have to sleep with someone new, even if it was his pick, he severely doubted he could become fond of someone now that fondness was reserved for you.
You told him in the very same hall you met face to face for the first time, that say you had been wandering.
“A boy. A son.” His thumbs found your forearms, kneading gentle circles in your flesh as he couldn’t help but gaze at your stomach, a smile filling his face.
“My son,” he breathed. “This is great news!”
Your excitement faded.
You didn’t know what you had expected.
He was happy. You had wanted him to be. But he hadn’t looked happy at you. He had been, for a moment, to see you, but then you had brashly delivered the announcement, two words, with child, and his demeanor had changed. The whole of the warmth had shifted, down to where your womb lay.
“Thank you. I will let everyone know. They will be thrilled.”
And his eyes were to yours again, but not in them. He was no longer seeing you as he had.
He squeezed your arms gently and praised you in some way again, and then he was gone, hurrying the way he came, his stride brisk, echoing.
“My wife is with child!” You heard him shout, the door down the hall left open in his haste.
Your eyes stung.
He no longer bed you, and you missed the warmth of him, the stutters of his ragged breaths as he came inside. Most nights without fail. If he touched you, he would be inside you.
More than a hundred nights.
It was a mechanism. Functionality. Duty fulfilled, a child in your belly, of course there was no need of it any longer.
You were with his child, and by accounts there were celebrations across the whole of Caladan for it.
Sickness in the evenings and mornings began, your celebrations ended with telling Leto, even with the lavish gifts and parties you couldn’t sit through due to incontinence. You did not care for any of it.
Your belly and breast swelled, your hips widened. You felt your baby, the first flutters, and even as excitement filled you, you felt hollow above the middle, as if it stopped before your heart.
“Can you tell me what is wrong?” Leto asked one night as he found and joined you in his bed. He needed no advisor to tell him you were not doing well. He had asked once before, but you had been in a state you had wanted no one’s hands on you, and as he touched your shoulder you tore into him as if he had struck you.
That was what it had felt like.
You had hated how this pregnancy had changed you emotionally. All the lessons and practice seemed to dissipate, turning you to a glass animal and every manner of thing in the house into hammers. Hammers turned on you.
You didn’t want to be pet, cajoled, complimented, if you could have your way you would spend all your day out of these walls, down the beach. That was where you wanted to be, safety be damned.
It was not just delicacy, you felt heated. Your sex was sensitive and throbbing most hours of the day the last few weeks.
Among that you thought of your child, live and active inside you, and your feelings about him changed. You thought of him as Leto had described himself, confided in you as his spouse, about his childhood.
That was a commonality between you, how you felt about the lives you were born into, how parts of you resented the rules, the duties, the responsibilities and politics. You were the Duchess Atreides. Your word was, within reason, and you had reason.
“I don’t want nurses to take him as soon as he is born.” You said, and he studied your face as you did.
“You will be allowed him, right away.” He said. You were clutching him as if they would whisk him off tomorrow.
“No, I want to decide how he is taken care of. I want to feed him myself, take care of him myself.”
He sat up fully, finding your bump under your nightgown, then your waist, pulling you closer and thumbing your cheek.
“Whatever you wish will be so. He is yours.”
You had trained and studied, he trusted you completely. Whatever you wanted.
“Is that all? You don’t look reassured.”
Your chest rose, and the feelings with it nearly shattered you. You thought you resented him and it hurt so terribly it was hard to speak. How could you resent him when he cared for you so? Because it was all for the child, the heir, his family, it was not selfless or unconditional.
You had a purpose, and now it was done, he was done with you.
“Have I been mean to you?” You asked. “Is that why you no longer want me?”
You hated it, so, so much, the way you sounded, acted, and now he did too, didn’t he?
His face darkened, as he became aware in a rush he had been neglecting you. He had been very wary of the advice given him that you would deny him and still want intercourse, contradicting your own words and actions. That sounded archaic and not of moral integrity, and was not something he wanted anywhere near your life married to him.
But he had not asked you. He had been scared to. You had never once yelled at him, and in the fear you would again he had clearly hurt you.
“I want you,” he said, honestly. “My wife, I very much want you.”
He had not meant to. He had thought he was releasing you from the expectation, the preconception. That seemed to be what you wanted, not soft words or kisses, you closed yourself off from him posturally and physically, sleeping turned from him or taking to your own quarters every night.
“Forgive me,” he laid himself to your navel, called you by your maiden name, and you shivered. You were Atreides to all.
“I was trying to make certain I did not put myself upon you, you looked detached when I laid with you the last few times.”
One of the times he must’ve gotten you pregnant. You were, you think. It is hard to remember.
“I did not want to make my pleasure your duty. Not when you had sickness and changes in you, such discomfort.” His nose brushed deep against your skin through the sheer fabric.
Your breathing became ragged. You shifted up onto your knees, pulling and pressing Leto back and feeling him through the seam of his trousers, soft. He leaned to allow you.
You freed him and he groaned, pressing his chin to his chest. You had never touched him like this but for a brief moment, and all at once you were stroking him and he couldn’t breathe but for soft grunts.
“And my pleasure?” You said, and it made him look very drunk.
“I did not know you desired this.” His throat caught a whine unbefitting of a duke.
“I desire you.” You said.
You had not realized, truly, until it had been taken away. You desired your husband.
That was new.
You would have no trouble taking to your own chambers and pleasuring yourself until you writhed, but you wanted him.
When he told you, many months ago now, when you walked out on the balcony, of how he dreamed to be a pilot, a free, working man coming and going as he pleased, the sky embracing and whipping past him, his direction as well as his very life truly and completely in his hands, you had felt a deeper sort of endearment than you ever had for anyone.
That was a private, intimate thing. Something no one but his long dead parents knew, a few of his caregivers many years back. He gave it to you.
“Then you shall have me.” He said, taking your hands before you took everything from him at once.
Your lips connected in a kiss, one that smoldered.
He devoured you. He would not deny you another second. This was your bed as well and he could not get your clothes off quick enough in it.
He took his time to enter you, used his mouth, his beard scratching, prodding you so deeply only climax quenched the flames.
He wiped his parted lips with the back of his hand.
The baby between you was no difficulty for him, and you took him so easily he would not have been certain he were in you if not for your soaking grip on him.
“I will make myself available to you whenever I am able.” He said as he began to thrust.
“Any need I will see satisfied. Only ask.”
The bed, heavy as it was, shook and thudded against the wall. He hilted and didn’t stop, focused completely on you, a flush to his bronzed skin, glistening.
“Ask and all I am is yours.”
“Leto,” you breathed.
“Yes,” he pitched. “What is it?”
“Harder.”
The pregnancy progressed quickly.
Your middle rounded out to a heavy globe, your burden inside turning and moving, restless.
The appointment that morning goes by quickly. He is heavy. Strong. It is week thirty-four, the end of the second to last month.
You joined your husband for lunch, a rarity, and he greeted you warmly.
“May I speak to him?” Leto requested. Of you.
No one has been doing that any longer. The baby was felt and spoken to as if you were not there the moment movement could be felt from the outside.
“Yes of course.”
“My son.” His fingers brushed tenderly down the swell of him, his amniotic sac pushing your uterus up and out, barely room to hold him.
“I want you to know, as you approach your birth, that many people will say many things about you, to you. Ignore them. The only person I need you to listen to is your mother. She knows what is best for you, and until you are of speaking age you will listen to no one but her, and myself, if she so permits it.”
He smiled to you and you smiled back.
You have had more control. Your schedule, what nutrition and regimen you followed.
As the midwives become fussier you are more assured you want to raise your baby as your mother had you at the lesser house. Prioritizing and preserving his needs before any of the house’s as long as possible. No machines, instruments, no witnesses not absolutely required for authentication of legitimacy.
You would give him a quiet birth and infancy.
That night, you were awake in the throes of your first false contraction.
As instructed, you informed the head midwife immediately.
Over the course of the next month your bedchambers were converted, filled with new curtains and furniture and rugs, the walls covered in taut cloth hangings that kept sound and warmth in.
More sporadic contractions came.
You were urged to stay, the last of your duties tapering off, and brought everything you would need the moment you needed it.
It was unbearably comfortable, but it did not ease you as the date approached. You wanted to be held and touched by your husband as you laid tossing and tender. The all female midwives and servants were suffocating.
Several were recruited at the announcement of your pregnancy from your own home, but it did not much help. They were still, even months on, strangers to you. You had six whole weeks to get through before your husband could be let in to see you.
You overheard one of the younger midwives one morning telling another you looked miserable. It made you immediately self conscious. You had been taken out of sight of nearly all the court, haven’t gone anywhere in days and days, but surely you didn’t look miserable. You had handled this pregnancy well, vigilantly.
It got back to you by end of day, the head asking you what they can do to make you more comfortable.
“Leto,” you said, unthinkingly, wistful. He was all you could think about. Everything you had asked for, food, bedding, bathing, assistance, had been granted in full. But you hadn’t been allowed him.
“I want to see my husband for the night.”
“Men are not permitted.” She said.
Of course, not men, but he was your husband.
In marriage were you not one person?
“Please. He can be an exception.”
“I’m sorry, Your Grace.”
It put you beside yourself, the pain and hormones amplifying everything inside. You felt as if you were being punished as you held back weeping.
Leto is the first Atreides male, save the ones being birthed, ever allowed in a lying-in chamber.
His eyes roved the walls, the dimly lit space soft under his freshly washed feet, and all around him as well. There was nothing that could be touched that wasn’t taffeta, cotton, or smooth, solid dark wood.
“It’s nice in here.” He said as he let his weight into the bed. “Like a womb.”
“Leto?” You pulled yourself up, and regretted it as it strained everything.
“Your Grace.” He bowed his head.
You practically tackled him.
He took it effortlessly, supporting your heavy stomach with an arm as he gently wrestled you into the bed, giggling and pressing kissing to your face.
“My wife,” he said, holding you dearly, stroking places and ways only his hands could.
“They have given me so many potions I feel as if I’m about to burst.” You said.
“You look as if you will burst at any moment.” Leto chuckled, pinning your upper half, looking at your stomach, he let you up, hand firmly around your side. His thumb stroked from under your ribcage down to your midriff.
“You look sad. You asked for me.”
You dampened with his observation and statement, he was going to come to some conclusion that wouldn’t be wholly correct.
“Are they not treating you well?” He asked, softly. “I can have them replaced for you.”
“No, it’s nothing like that.”
A contraction came and you stifled, leaning back as pain radiated down through your whole lower half. Leto took your hand.
The midwife left with you stood and you hold up a finger for them to wait, please, you were fine.
It passed.
“I’m frightened to give birth.” You huffed. “Frightened and lonely. I miss you.”
His hand around yours moved higher, up your chest to your face.
“You need not be frightened. You’re plenty strong. I’ve missed you too.”
He pressed his lips to yours, then your throat, and then your breast, hot breath against your skin, he kissed you like you would evaporate if he did not.
Your body relaxed. It felt wonderful.
For all the gentle and firm hands, none of them touched you like they were ravenous for you. No one but your husband has ever touched you like this, and as it felt an irrefutable tragedy before so it then felt joyous.
He was yours, and you were so glad he was.
For a moment you thought you wet yourself, but when you spread your thighs father and lifted your dress you saw blood in it, watered down.
Leto broke from your jaw and looked very confused at the sheets under you.
“Is that the waters?” He asked, concern creasing his forehead.
You both knew he was not ever supposed to touch your waters or menses, or you, then, until you had been bathed again, but he put his hand to it, you let him, and he held it up, fingers together, inspecting it. He picked up a towel, putting it between your thighs.
“Are they supposed to arrive yet—”
“Your Grace you must leave.” The midwife observing you was then by your side, interrupting him.
Leto looked up at her and nodded, taking his hand from your neck and shoulder. It was his last place to argue.
Before he could stand you wrapped both arms tightly around his back.
He said your name, hand over yours, attempting to pull away without forcing you but you held fast, so tight to him his breathing became shallower. He said your name again, more softly, and as the midwives continued indistinctly in the background, tears began to fill your eyes.
You had wanted to see him so badly and he was being taken away from you again, possibly for days more.
You did not want to be having this baby yet, it was too soon, things changed the moment you told him you were pregnant, and they would again the moment he was born.
“I will be back, to see the baby.” He said from behind your ear, his hand finding him between you, shifting as the last of the fluid left. “You are in the best hands. You will be taken care of.”
He whispered the last piece. “I will be back to see you. To have and hold, I will love you however you wish. However I can safely. It will not be long, I promise.”
That made the tears fall. He would be back for you, to see you.
You gradually loosened, prying your fingers from his tunic, finally letting him go, a nod assuring you of what he’d just said, and he was swept out by no less than four midwives.
“Bad luck,” the head midwife said, looking after where he had sat, to the puddle soaking the sheets, the smear on your clothes, and finally after the door Leto left from as you were lifted and the bed was stripped. “Bad, bad luck.”
It was nineteen hours.
You learned firsthand why it was called labor.
By the second stage you were glad Leto wasn’t there to see you like that. Exposed, in pain. You didn’t think he would want any more children.
The room became far too stuffy, the herbal scent which had no longer been pleasant for over a week then became nauseating. And it was your favorite.
The baby lodged fully in your birth canal, visible from the outside, and you couldn’t think of much of anything but getting him out of you. It felt as if you were being split open, each contraction pushing him further down your spread wide cervix until he started to crown.
It burned, the weight of his head, and your grunts got louder. You gripped the hands in yours even tighter and bore down with the contraction, the pressure like the start of a fissure that wouldn’t erupt.
Even more sweat was wiped from your brow, the fan was helping, but you wanted a breeze, fresh air, it was so, so hot.
The head midwife was speaking but your were imagining the rocky beach, outside, the water crashing over smooth stones and mossy knolls, the cliffside, the cool waves.
Leto beside you, caressing your skin, shrugging your clothes off your shoulders and hiking your skirts up your waist, his head between your thighs on the blanket by the tidepools.
You screamed brokenly as another contraction ripped through you, with it the respite leaving, and with all your strength, breathing like the midwife told you, your baby crowned, and then surged down, head bursting out, followed quickly by shoulders, chest, an arm, another arm, and as he’s pulled by two pairs of hands, legs and feet.
You shuddered hard, the tremendous pressure gone all at once.
A baby cried, and you wondered whose it is before your head caught up with the loss of feeling. The first breaths in his lungs became high, wavering wails, like a gull, or the groan of the metal hull of a ship.
It was disorienting. You felt their hands checking your temperature and heart rate, the weight of your son for nine months, the false and true contractions for weeks and weeks, and now you felt nothing but sore. Empty. Very empty except for the placenta which delivered all at once with much, much less fanfare.
He was bathed and weighed, extra precautions taken as he is not technically premature, but most definitely early.
They showed him to you, laying back in the covers of your bed, cleaned and dried and nodding off, exhausted from the ordeal, and you told them you indeed wanted to hold him, managing with all your might to sit up.
They arranged more pillows around your body, supporting you before you even needed ask.
He had a large port wine stain, a firemark from the bottom of his left eyelid to the corner of his lip.
It was striking. It looked as if he’d been burned.
For a split second you thought that’s what it was, that the first time Leto ignited your loins with his tongue they burnt the baby’s face, you you go red hot from the neck up with shame at the prospect. You shook the thought away.
He was just blemished. He fit in your arms and to your bare breast easily. You wanted to keep him there. He was your son. He looked like it, his features.
You would breastfeed him, and begin tracking after you healed. You did not want another one quickly. You had borne the Atreides an heir and you would rear him to studying age, until he was to be tutored.
You wanted as little stress as possible to befall those hooded eyes.
Leto looked to you first. He climbed into the bed beside you and took your face in his hand. He looked at nothing but you even as your son’s legs began to kick in both of your peripherals.
“They told me he was marked,” he said. “Like hot wine was spilled over him. Should I be concerned?” He looked between your eyes as he awaited your answer.
Your nervous breathing evened. This was a man you knew, who promised he would love your children. He had kept his word to you in all else.
It was mostly cosmetic. It may cause him trouble, later, but it was nothing the house could not make easy care of. The superstitions and gossip were just that. It was why you were alone, now, you didn’t want him to hear it.
“No,” you shook your head. “He’s your son.”
He nodded, smiling as you gave him permission, and looked down at the baby. His eyes widened.
“Oh, they did not tell me it was beautiful…!” He laughed breathily, a smile crinkling his eyes. It brought one to yours as he brought a hand to him, gently brushing back his swaddle to look over the bare skin of his chest and arm. His cord has been tied and cut. He checked it carefully, seeing for himself that he was otherwise in perfect health. The boy’s bony fingers curled over Leto’s ring as he did.
He came back up and brushed the birthmark, down his cheek and back to his ear, very gently tilting his head to the side to get a better look at the intricate patterned color of it, mirroring the one in his hair.
“He’s beautiful.” Leto said. “He is more beautiful than I could have imagined.”
He didn’t know how to say he thought he was the most beautiful baby he has ever seen.
“You did so well.” He was speaking from the heart, overfull, hardly hearing himself, so enamored.
He had thought he was prepared to meet his child. Tears were brimming his eyes, and not for the reason he thought they would.
The boy looked like you, and it delighted him to think he would be as kind, as stubborn, as graceful, as unruly and unashamed. He had thought of them as being his children, of him being their father.
But that was your child, you mothered him, and it showed in everything about him.
His eyes were pinched tightly shut to the huge open window, sunlight encapsulating how brightly Leto saw him, haloed in your arms. It was how he saw you, since that day on the balcony.
He kissed over his mottled eye, then you, feeling your smile against his lips.
“I love you.” He said softly, feeling it all through him.
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I genuinely wonder if people realize how many projects get abandoned because the readership "wasn't there", when in reality, the readership just stayed silent. It's a big thing in trad pub that book series get discontinued because readers pirate the books or wait until the series is finished to buy a copy, leading the publisher to think that nobody actually wants the book enough to continue the series, but it happens with indie creators too.
I've discontinued a lot of free, online series because it's not worth putting 3-5 hours a week into posting a project for no readers. Sometimes I finish the series for me but just never post it again, other times I don't finish it at all because it feels more worthwhile to put my time into other things. Sometimes I hear from readers who are sad or upset that I didn't finish something they were liking, but the *reason* it never got finished is because I didn't know anyone liked it. If you like something, tell the creator, tell your friends, make some noise about it. If you would be sad if a story never finished, make that interest known because one of my biggest considerations before discontinuing a series is "will people miss this? Will I be letting people down" and 9/10 times, I come to the conclusion of "no, it doesn't even seem like anyone's reading this" only to learn after I've moved on that apparently someone was.
I've said this before in a different way, and this post said it so well. With real examples.
If you like something, tell people.
If you want more content from an artist or author, if you like their stuff, tell them. It will give them creative fuel to keep going. And often it gives them other resources as well.
Recommend a work to other people. Leave a comment or a review. It doesn't have to be long, just genuine, a sentence or two.
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so , uh — i kinda became obsessed with that silver streak silver lining hehe on oscar isaac’s head in won’t back down .
it would be hilarious though if it’s just a trick lighting during filming , and i just made it all up in my head .
gifs by @santiagogarcia & @userpoe
gifs by @mr-handsomeeyebrows
but it’s there too in this interview magazine piece , and then there it is again when he’s all shaved for nathan bateman .
so maybe i’m still sane .
sane , however , in terms of hyperfixating on a peculiar hair growth on your favourite actor — debatable still .
Just Wanted to See - Nathan Bateman x assistant!reader
Warnings: pure fucking smut that was part of something I was working on but as these things usually go stopped fitting, fingering, vaginal, the barest dubcon that ever did dubcon (both ways if you can imagine, we are in their heads but they are not in each others, no explicit verbal consent is exchanged for the main sex act), showering together, armpit frigging, squirting, breeding kink, oral
Words: 3.4k
Rating: E
Summary: Ever since your boss Nathan Bateman pulled the stitches in his stab wounds eating you out in his hospital bed, you haven’t been able to keep your thoughts off of fucking him.
I was severely horny guys sorry will happen again
Enjoy the filth leave a heart, non freaks shoo! Shoo! Ew. What are you doing here
This has been sitting a draft for over a year
This is the same AU you can think of if like a tiny spinoff I just wrote some of the stuff I explore better here into something more condensed but it diverges from the events of the rest, this isn’t how it happened
AO3 Link
This was fucked.
But ever since your boss, ‘Nathan’ Nathanael Bateman, pulled the stitches in his stab wounds eating you out in his hospital bed, you haven’t been able to keep your thoughts off of fucking him.
Maybe it was something about nearly losing him. Maybe it was the years of flirting you had thought you both assured remained purely unserious. Maybe because actually getting with him wasn’t ever on the table, but now that bridge had been breached, he was clearly in love with you—
No. You couldn’t cross it. Past unprofessional, as if anything between you was, there was nothing ethical about it, and it was about time that sort of thing was bedded. Even if this vein was considerably less existential, it was for you.
It was dangerous. He controlled your salary, nevermind you had the passwords to all his accounts. He could fuck you over hard, your entire world. You had dirt on him, sure, but you could easily lose your whole life even trying to attempt to take him on, and he wouldn’t even feel it. Not physically, at least.
You had to roll things back.
Even if he’d had his tongue buried in your cunt without regard for his own well being.
That night, dinner, a few weeks after he was discharged, the house was quiet, and Nathan was still in his head about what you couldn’t be sure.
His own mortality, having to completely scrap all of what he’d put so many years into, his practical immunity to the lasting implications. You had ended it, not him, a branch in not just invention but possible human achievement and definition of consciousness, life.
The truth was he wasn’t grappling with it.
It was stewing his oxygen deprivation damaged brain, rethinking everything and getting truly nowhere, who he was, what he was supposed to do, what he definitely wasn’t supposed to do.
He was bothering you by not bothering you, holding his tongue against the roof of his mouth like he had nothing to say. You just didn’t know what you could do about it, about him, about the two of you.
You weren’t rolling it back. Things were staying firmly as they’d been that day and then some, only missing him. You couldn’t get a reaction, couldn’t get that abandon he had back. Maybe it was only temporary, something about acclimating to being back, acceptance, finding normal. A push to feel how far it went, but if that was true he was the other direction, and had to bounce back a little too far sooner or later.
That was tonight, and more than a little.
You snap right in front of his eyes, getting him to look up.
Right. You. Something he definitely wasn’t supposed to do.
He acknowledges you just enough to get you out of his face, which is surprisingly kinder than usual. You sit back down.
A joke about fucking the mood out of him, you’ve said it a hundred times since he’s known you, a brush too close when you pass him to grab the soy sauce, and something changes. He gets his first boner since Heidi Klum when he was twelve that he isn’t conscious of immediately. Just as confusing. Just as brand new.
Yeah, you turned him on, but he wasn’t turned on right now, was he? He was in control of that, he had been since forever.
The opposite of a bombshell, picking your teeth with your thumbnail because you don’t think your shitty line worked or did any better than the twenty previous. You have worn nothing but pajamas for days and he doesn’t think you’ve washed your hair twice since you’ve gotten back. And he doesn’t care. No one could pay him enough to, and evidently, no one could pay you enough to either.
In one smooth movement he grips your arm tight, stands, breathes in and knocks your heads together so hard you bruise, mouth latching to yours, hand squeezing the back of your neck.
His tongue was in your mouth, so fast you couldn’t think, much less react except to groan your assent. Yes, something. Finally.
“You better have fucking meant that.” He gets out and gasps. The air between and in you has no oxygen left, and that sensation is overwhelming.
Your head felt so light. He kissed you. He actually kissed you.
You drop the empty meal container you had intended to toss in the trash, gripping his head hard in both hands.
He winces when you brush the thick, flat, staple indented scar in his chest. They are nearly completely healed, but the skin is still raw, the weakened muscle around it tender and hypersensitive.
His hands are on your ass, you’re around his waist, grinding into him.
He hasn’t been inside a flesh and blood woman’s pussy in over a decade, probably longer. There’s some difference and it’s there in the fact you’re not really riding his thigh, palming him like you’ve only just remembered where his dick is at. He doesn’t even know where to even begin to criticize you, any of it. You’re all talk. Last time you got laid was fuck never. Sex with you would suck. He wants it.
He tugs your shirt up off your tits, his sweats under his junk, your underwear down, and hooks his hand under your knee, pulling you right up close and pushing his cock between your slippery folds, bumping your clit.
You sway, nothing to brace against but him, and him you, like one of those partnered yoga poses where you have to balance.
Shit, he’s right there. It’s so fucking close and you both want this so badly and there really is no magical force stopping you.
He’s human. You’re human. It’s only sex. It had been too fucking long.
You’re both breathing so hard, not looking at each other.
The words were nothing. Empty catalysts. Barely conveying the depth of things.
You weren’t going to say anything. Here, maybe he needed you to.
He set your leg back down.
Your shirt falls back over your chest.
“You’re my fucking assistant,” he breathes, feeling his forehead.
The moment’s over.
He pulls back up to his full height, trying to compose himself.
“I’m gonna go get a shower. Haven’t had a good fuckin’ shower since I got back.”
It’s forced, casual, he hasn’t been in there at all except for you to help him wash his scars, the one he can’t reach.
“You gonna go jack off in there?” You’re trying to sound suave.
“Yeah. Yes I am going to jack off in there.” There wasn’t anything to be gained by lying about it.
“I—”
“That’s fine,” he cuts you off. “You got… you got stuff to take care of.”
He pats your bicep once and leaves, calmly walks down the hall and up the stairs to the bathroom with his dick still out.
The steam did the opposite of clear his head.
He couldn’t jack off, it was doing literally nothing. Well he could, maybe, but he would be thinking about you and it would be worse after than when he started.
It’s like no time at all before you knock on the bathroom door.
“You almost done in there?” You call. “I need to use it! Y’know I’ve been lookin’ to get in there all day.”
He blows air out his mouth and pulls back the frosted glass, padding over and opening the door so he doesn’t have to shout over the water.
“You have your pick of options for bathrooms.” He says.
The door’s wide open. He’s still hard. It’s gone up and down but it hasn’t gone away. You’re getting a good look at it. He’s still hot as fuck.
“You’re in the good one.” You say.
“It’s my house.”
“You haven’t tried to pull that one in a long time.” You chuckle.
“I shouldn’t have done that. At the table.”
Is that an apology?
“You shouldn’t have eaten me out either.”
Is he gonna take that back too?
He couldn’t, he could try, and that alone would be entertaining, but there was no playing that off now.
Eye contact isn’t happening. He can’t think about what you taste like right now. He practically can taste you with how close you’re standing.
“You know you smell like shit, right?” He diverges, or tries to.
“I’m aware. I’ll skip it, shower tomorrow.”
He wants you to go, you’ll go, but you don’t think he wants you to.
He grabs your wrist and pulls it up, sticking his face in your pit, inhaling through his nose. Your face goes hot.
“It’s bad.”
“You– you absolutely did not have to do that.” You say as he straightens, still holding your hand.
“Get in the shower.” He says, dropping your arm.
He rubs plain bar soap into a big swirl in his palm, careful not to get it anymore wet under the stream while you strip your shirt off over your head and step in, back to front.
He scrubs it up into your armpit, which is fine, it lathers a little in the water there. Then it becomes sticky. He moves to his fingers, and presses, stroking back and forth, deep in the recess there.
“What the fuck,”
“Lot of nerves there.” He says.
He rubs faster, pressure just shy of painful, and you double over, pressed against him and his hard on, thighs squeezed tight. It’s ticklish and carnal and gross all at once.
“Too much?” He asks, and you shake your head.
“You’re weird as fuck.” You laugh out.
“Really, me?” He says. “You’re the one that doesn’t get in there.”
He moves to the other side, doing the same, nails scraping up soap through your body hair, he rinses his hand before pulling and directing the water over you, warming your muscles and getting the soap off.
He squeezes down to the full of your breast, starts to move his hand lower, then stops. You’re pits are clean, he’s done. You can take care of the rest.
He steps out, pulls down a towel, and dries himself, heading for the sink, having to dig to find what he’s looking for.
You’re not much longer in the shower, you hear him working and hurry it up.
He finishes shaving his head, shutting the clippers off. He rubs over the silver ellipse right on top, the streak. He’s smaller, lost some muscle definition. A lot of muscle definition. You can see it, can’t you? You’ve seen it. Him at his absolute lowest. Possibly the only constant.
What was wrong with him, really? What was wrong with you that you were still here?
He could just make you out behind him in the mirror. You’ve seen each other naked and almost naked so many times. Your shape, peeing after he felt you up. You’re scratching your scalp, probably because you’ve been watching him buzz his hair off.
He almost wants to ask if you think he looked better with short, blunt waves. If you were into it. He doesn’t. He just sets his glasses back on, neatens up his neck, packs the thing away and waits for you to finish so he can walk you back to your room. No goodnight, just assurance you weren’t following him back to his. He shuts your door, starting back to his room.
He stops in his tracks. It’s so soft, under the crack, but it’s unmistakable.
Your vibrator.
The handle doesn’t turn fast enough.
It’s exactly what it sounds like.
“What the fuck are you doing?” He says.
You click it off.
“I thought you were some kind of genius—”
“No, fucking stop this. Whatever this is, just stop.”
Your room is a mess. Food containers, you’ve been clearing out the freezer, clothes, bandages. Doesn’t smell any worse than you did, at least.
“Okay.” You put your hands up and lay flat on your back, then fold them over your stomach.
He starts to close your door, then stops.
“You’re gonna use it.” He says. He feels out of it. It’s so obvious.
“Waiting for you to get to your room.”
Stalemate.
He leaves, you get off on your own. He stays, you fuck and he can’t take that the fuck back.
“Why do you need this so bad?” He says. “I know I ate you out good but you can get yourself off, why do you need me?”
You sit up. “You came into my room. My vibrator. Why do you think this is about you?”
“You’re thinking about me while you mash that thing against your bean! You want me to hear it. You need me so fuckin’ bad you won’t leave me alone.”
You smile, big and wide. Him being even half as frustrated as you is so satisfying.
“I don’t need you, Nathan; I want you.”
That’s what you’ve been about, all evening.
He doesn’t shut the door behind him, there’s no need to, it is literally only you two in the entire world right here, right now.
No one, real, mechanical, artificial, can hear, see, anything.
He doesn’t know if that makes it better or worse.
He pulls his shirt off, then his pants, leaving them right where they land and walking up to you.
He gets on his knees astride your hips on your bed, pressing you back by the shoulders, maneuvering you, up, you don’t even have to move, he puts you right into position, one leg out, over his hip, then the other.
You can’t keep your hands off him, his freshly shaved head, his back, he brings his mouth to your throat and sucks down your collar as you wrap a leg around his ass.
He looks you in the eye as he notches his cock to the whitish mucus smeared lips of your opening, rubbing his head through it before he catches, bumps past the slight resistance, then slides deep into you.
It was a stretch, a fit, manageable, especially since you had toys up there recently, but it’s still tight. Really tight. You groan through it.
Not thinking, because you want to be lost in this, in him, inside you.
You gasp, because as soon as he bottoms out and pulls back, he is— and there is no other word for it— pounding into you. Shoving your whole body upwards again and again, making sparks of pleasure and your slick explode from your sopping cunt with each thrust, rendering you open mouthed and completely speechless, not even breathing, just holding on for dear life, clinging to him, shoulder and waist, between your grip and his girth.
Your hand flies up and hits the headboard and he didn’t let up, the sound of bare wet skin colliding, splattering, the bed legs scraping, his hips punching harsh breaths out of your chest.
You were only breathing with his thrusts, and it was driving you wild that he’s so easily reduced you to this, unable to move, talk, breathe, just clench and grip and press your shoulders back to raise your hips as much as you can.
Your whole body feels irradiated, red hot, lightheaded, your g-spot like his new button of yours he wants to press till it breaks. Till you pop. His fingers rub up your folds till he finds your clit and with mind numbing contrast gives it slow, deep flicks.
Harmonizing, physically and vocally, he works fast and smooth into your with scary precision.
It comes on heavier with every second until you fizzle, abdominal muscles spasming, and your sex goes from tightening in bursts to clenching hard.
You squirt, trembling, soaking his thighs and the sheets, pulsing around him, viced. Your fingers definitely dig in too hard.
He grunts, pace wavering just a little before slowing, pushing up on his hands and knees, savoring you sucking him in, teetering on the edge of climax.
The ebb heats your extremities, along every muscle, a heavy molten metal spread through you like a cast, completely full.
“N-Nathan?” You rasp, finally able to get something rational out of your head.
“Yeah?” He grunts back, laser focused.
“I’m not on the pill.”
Five words cut deeper than any kitchen knife ever could.
He slams into you, hard, letting out a strangled cry through his teeth, grinding the base of his cock against your pelvic bone, twitching with the release of years and years of pent up tensions, glances and jokes and little gestures and escalations that stayed in his head, in all of him, culminating in one simple statement. Fuck.
He traces his hand from your hood out your lip, up the back of your thigh to your kneepit and calf and finally to your ankle, which he presses to his jaw, up on his knees with his other hand on your hip to deepen this because he doesn’t think it could ever be enough.
He stutters breathless shouts, like he’s begging, you hear a slurred something somewhere in strings and strings and spend seeping out around the seal of his dick.
He felt all of it and swore it was the hardest he ever came in his life, he could barely hold it, he was falling back like you were hot the moment the last rope left him.
He collapses beside you panting, still throbbing. You can feel him leaking down your ass.
He adjusts his glasses, somehow still on his face, pulling himself up onto his elbows.
“You’re not on birth control?” He says, far too evenly for how much of a desperate, primally driven mess he had just been.
His system is flooded, all the best hormones, so the sex didn’t suck.
He shakes his head from side to side, hand up, spread. “Since when?”
He knew everything you ate and bought and before Ava, he would see you get ready over the cameras daily. It had to have been since he got back.
“I forgot.” It was a formality. Deniability, as if it existed here. You had forgotten, at the hospital, but you were back home now, has access to it, and you had just barebacked your boss in your own bed.
Did he seduce you? Since the hospital, through all of this. You never would have gotten this far if you were both in your right heads, he was sure of it. There was a trust, there, always, that anything like this was too far.
This was really fucked.
“I stopped after you came back.” You say. “Wanted to know how I would feel. What you would do.”
You stopped taking it because of him. His heart pumps faster.
“What I would do?” You had been doing.
You shrug. “Just wanted to see.”
He can’t stop thinking about it. Knowing your hormones have been changing and your body has been what? Becoming fertile? For how long? A week, two weeks, since he was discharged? He hasn’t been present, it could have been this whole time he was twiddling his thumbs, brooding when he could have been fucking breeding you senseless.
You were different, your mood. It was like you were brighter, smoother, the highs and lows weren’t as blended flat or spikes. They were a wave. You were bolder, too. Physically. You’d say anything to him but now you’ll push him, really push him. It’s been driving him nuts, now he knows why. The closest thing humans had to pheromones. He loves it like nobody’s fucking business.
Before you can ask what he’s doing he has grabbed your legs and is swiping his tongue up your crack and deep into your cunt, closing his lips over it and sucking, eating his and your come out of you. His beard drags through your slit with each work of his jaw, and you bite back a whimper, swollen and sensitive, sore from how thoroughly he’s fucked you.
He stares at your gaped pussy, your legs spread completely limp, wide, at the smear of his come he can’t see but knows is there too deep for him to reach. He plunges two of his fingers in to feel it, still so warm.
“I think I have a new project I want to start with you.” He says, a smile you haven’t seen in months brightening his features.
It looks so good on him.
“Yeah?” You ask.
He pulls his fingers from you, and sticks them in his mouth.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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Summary: Weirder than fiction, the only description of what’s become of your life with first Steven, then Marc, and now someone who refuses to show themselves.
or
How all Marc’s lies unravel in an adventure that tests just what you’re willing to look past to be with them.
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The sequel people did ask for??? Well it’s finally here, it’s queer, it’s grinding on Jake Lockley
Not much healthy is happening and uhhh I can’t for the life of me write actual plot so it’s loosey goosey, some references, whatever
AO3 Link
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Nonfiction. Your boyfriends’ favorite genre.
Reading about it has only helped so much. Nothing could capture quite how weird it really was.
“I still think you’re doing an accent.”
Dating an American guy was never really on your things you were just going to do without good reason list, but Marc was not what you had expected. He was a good reason, kinda. He was sexy and awkward and made dry jokes that felt forced but still laughed like the last guy at the party hanging back by the drinks table. Steven was confident acting awkward. Marc was awkward acting confident.
You felt like maybe it should’ve been a little weird they were essentially using sex with you as a negotiation tactic, but at the same time, the sex was really good. It was hard to care if it was partially about them getting along.
“And since when do you speak Spanish?”
The last few weeks had been even weirder than usual with them. Marc had been weird.
“I speak a lot of languages for my work.”
He was a mercenary, in the biz through some big shot called Khonshu, told him where to go and what to do. He was apparently the worst boss around, even by the market’s standards.
Things had been steady on three months. Slow, deliberate. With both of them. You never even considered a relationship like that before, but sharing a body helped loads, as much more of a hurdle it was in most other ways.
“You’re lying abou’ something.” You say as you set your book aside. He finishes undressing and joins you in your bed.
Marc (and Steven’s) life was a goddamn rabbit hole. Matc didn’t talk much. You think he thought it made him mysterious, then it just clicked he was autistic and hiding things. And good at it. He managed to keep this part of himself a separate secret for something like twenty years. You’d be impressed if it hadn’t messed up Steven so bad.
They didn’t talk about that. You didn’t talk about it.
Marc eyes the book you’ve been reading and you can see him burying the disapproval.
He hums, hooking both hands under your knees.
“We doin’ this or not?”
Him being back was not something Marc could accept. He’d rather have six new guys than him.
You were comfortable. Possibly the most comfortable he’d managed to get in his life, which was wild, considering you tangled Steven up with him. It was nice to talk to Steven, though. He hadn’t since he was a kid.
“Can I have my chest back?” Marc asks, stroking down your shoulder. He would’ve been content to stay in your bed the entire day, but he had to let Steven get his shopping in for the week before he left the country. He was saving a ton on less trips, staying instead of getting flights back and forth, he wanted to keep that going. Reap the good out of this. Enjoy it while it lasted.
“Can I see Steven before you go?” You pull your head up to look at him. You always feel so weird asking for one of them when you’re looking at the other. It’s even weirder watching him change.
Marc grumbles.
“We’ve got time, Marc. C’mon.”
You’re giving him eyes. Big ones. He’s such a sap.
“Yeah. Yeah okay.” Marc lets his eyes back, and the tension leaves his eyes and body back to the soft Brit you adore.
“Hey love.”
“Steven.” You press a kiss right in the center of his lips.
“Good to you?”
“He is great to me.” You shift up a little. “He’s like my dad, all soft on the inside.”
“Good.” He smiles. “Think we could stay for lunch?”
“Steven, we don’t have time—”
“Please. I hate his shag and dash.”
“I’ve been set up.” Marc draws out loudly, pulling at Steven, but he’s firmly to front, not going anywhere.
“Steven, can you tell me about your parents?”
You’re sat at the kitchen table of your apartment, a place both boys have very gotten familiar with.
Neither you nor Steven are fully dressed. It’s Friday, no one needs to. No one needs to do anything, really, and it’s wonderfully freeing.
You’re topless and Steven still acts like it’s the first pair of breasts he’s ever seen outside of a picture. Because you are.
“Well I haven’t seen my dad in a good while now, but I actually live in my mum’s apartment.” He says. He doesn’t stare. He isn’t staring, he’s eating his crisps. He actually does pull his attention into his thoughts, answering the question. You love that you can be yourself around him.
“She travels,” he goes on. “So, when she’s not using it…” unease deepened in Steven with every word. That didn’t fit with what he knew now about Marc, how he was a mercenary, how he’d led this double life in him and whoever he was out there in the world.
Come to think of it, his mum hadn’t sent him a postcard in forever, which wasn’t like her at all. The last he could remember getting was about the time he walked himself in to get signed up for his first therapy session, and surprisingly gotten sat down that same day just a few hours later.
“I er… hold on, sorry. Can I use your bathroom?”
“Sure.” You wipe your hands on a napkin, pouring yourself another cup of tea.
Steven locks the door, striding right up to your mirror and staring Marc down.
“Marc.” He says when he refuses to speak first.
“What.” Marc deadpanned. He could hear the berating edge in Steven’s tone. He was in for it.
“Is… did you lie to me about our mum? Is she ‘live?”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t she be?”
“Well because you’ve manufactured maybe just about every detail I’ve ever thought about myself.”
“Our brain did that. I didn’t lie to you. I just reinforced it.”
“Through lies.”
“Water under the bridge.”
“I think the bridge is submerged…”
“‘Ey, forget the bridge, wrap up in there. You need food, okay, smart ass?”
“Wait for real? I thought you were sayin’ that we—“
“What’s the point of having a code if you never use it! Yes! We’re tracking him down and cutting his face off.”
“Alright, you don’t have to be rude about it. And no one’s face is getting cut off.”
“Yours is if you push me, buddy.”
He walks back out to the kitchen and three things happen.
First, you knock your teacup onto the floor, and it smashes into a dozen pieces.
Second, he quickly pulls his and your chairs out so you can pick it up.
Third, your front door bursts open at the lock and two heavily armed men stomp into your apartment.
Marc steps out instantly, putting his hands up. He knows they’re here for him.
“Look. I can get you your money, okay?” He says.
You stay right where you are, eyes wide, ribcage pressed to the table leg. He took to it so coolly you didn’t actually believe two strangers just broke down your door. Marc promised you no such thing would ever happen. You believed him.
One of the men looks at you and Marc goes for the guy closest’s gun, twisting it out of his grip and whipping it across his temple.
Bullets fly through your stereo and into your bedroom as Marc hits the deck.
Your ears feel like they burst over and over, your whole head full of sharp fat worms, putting pressure on your skull, hands pressed hard doing nothing.
You don’t see what happens, you just feel a gloved hand wretch you up by the elbow.
There’s a gun pointed at you, then there isn’t, it’s skidding across the floor, Marc punch him so hard the force made his head bounce against the tile.
“You alright love?” Steven asks you, hands on your shoulders. You nod. You would’ve said no to Marc. Probably would’ve headbutted him if you had the presence.
“Get back by the shelves. You’re gonna be just fine.”
You did not feel you were gonna be just fine but you crouched and rushed to the opposite end of the kitchen anyway, it really wasn’t a time to argue.
Steven looks back out to them. They’re both recovering, balaclava clad faces training on them by the sink.
“Steven you either need to do the thing or give me the body!”
“Right!”
You watch him stand, dressed in nothing but his pants and one of your shirts, as cloth wraps around him from nowhere. Sleeves, trousers, a mask. A three piece suit. He pulls each cuff and the lapel before reaching behind him and brandishing a truncheon in each hand, gripped tight.
He says something unbearably, generically witty and proceeds to beat the everloving daylights out of the intruders. They try to team him and it doesn’t work, bullets do nothing but punch dry little holes into the fabric and heads don’t take well to the edge of your sink.
You poke your head out when it’s done. They’re both (hopefully) unconscious face down in your carpet, disarmed. But you’re not looking at them. You’re staring at the figure dressed in white with glowing eyes who seems to have forgotten you exist. He’s turned away from you.
“Well that’s taken care of then,” he says quietly, pushing the guy closest just a tad with his foot.
“Oh,” he says aloud like something’s just occurred to him. “She was right there. She saw!”
“Yeah– Steven, she’s looking at us.”
“Oh. Shit!”
The mask pulls away from Steven’s face as you turns right back to you, hands out.
“Timeout,” he says. “I can explain. For real this time.”
“You are shitting me.” You have your head in your hand, finally dressed.
“Believe me I wish I was.”
Your living room is only somewhat destroyed. You only calm down after Marc offers to pay for everything. And you mean everything.
You knew you recognized him. That suit. The gold colored weapons. He was all over the news.
Why couldn’t he have been a normal guy in the caf with normal problems? The blanket Steven put around your shoulders is helping, but only just.
“So Khonshu—”
“Isn’t a guy, no. He’s the actual deal.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Yep. Not as nice, though. That was about my reaction when I found out.”
“You– you just found this out?”
“After I told you about the– about the sleep? I told you, and then you met with us, and Marc an’ I started working on… well a bit of a mess.”
You let out a long sigh. That was so long ago. He kept this from you for months and months.
“They pointed a gun at my head.” You sigh.
“They did, yeah.”
“I should break up with you.”
“That would be a rational response.”
You look up at him. His hair’s a mess.
You take in a breath. “Where’re we goin’ from here?”
“You are not going anywhere.”
You’ve never slept in a shipping container before. You think it’d be more fun if you weren’t seasick.
“Well do you have a bloody phone charger then?” Marc’s been a warden since you left dock.
He’s ‘keeping you out of it’. He says again for probably the five hundredth time. You’re quite literally in it but you respect his caution. You’re scared. It’s just you can only remain huddled so long.
“I’ll take care of it.” He plucks the device out of your hand and shuts the door behind him, setting himself into the cot in the corner, pulling open a ThinkPad, plugging it in.
He does something into a command line and the thing bricks. He hands it to you and it won’t turn back on.
“Hey!”
“I’ll recover it when we get back to London. I told you to leave it.”
Or it may have slipped his mind. All he can think about is this is the most foolish thing he’s ever done. Khonshu agrees. But what was he supposed to do with you? Your apartment was compromised, so Steven’s had to be too. He couldn’t just leave you with the police, if they got whiff of him you’d be charged too. Steven Grant was burned. There was no where in the UK you were safe.
“You don’t need it for anything anyway.” He shrugs. “I’m working everything out with these guys.”
You don’t know what’s more overwhelming. The gunfire or that you can’t understand a word your boyfriend (Marc?) is saying as he reloads. He looks like he’s been beaten. You’re conflicted on if it’s better it’s his blood on him.
He gets the magazine in and returns fire around the corner of the container. You don’t look where the bullets hit. You’re too busy squeezing your skull closed to the sound.
The last guy falls and it stops. The yelling, the bullets. He spits blood and looks up at you, sliding up from where he’s had his weight let into the corrugated metal.
“¿Estás bien?”
You know what that means. You nod.
Before you can ask what the hell he’s been on about Marc has your arm and you’re halfway to your rental tucked in an alley.
You almost want to protest. He’s being so unnecessarily rough. He opens up the passenger seat then stops. He walks you around the car and puts you at the wheel, then gets in and points for you to start it. You do.
He presses his head back and sighs.
You ask when you’re gonna be heading back home and Marc says soon. He needs to get this artifact back, it’s giving these goons super strength annnd you space out through the rest of his explanation. He’s getting pointers from Steven, you’re sure.
You ask him about the Spanish and he goes quiet, dismisses. Won’t look at you. You don’t know what to think. He looks tortured. Like he’s being stretched on a rack.
You’re glad he’s letting you drive because this so called adventure has been nothing but sitting on your arse and getting shot at so far.
The road leads on seemingly endlessly in front of you. You check with him this is where you’re supposed to be going and keep driving along the cliff shore, through bends that snake like winding tails.
You don’t pass a single car. This part of the world seems to be completely empty except for you and him in this car and whoever else is in his head.
“Before I got swept up in this…” he finally says as it’s getting dark, you’re up in the countryside, misty grass. “Swept up in you– I didn’t really have anyone. I mean family, friends, it was just me. Well. Us. I just want you to know that you mean a lot.”
That’s possibly the most Marc has ever said to you. You feel honored and aggressively wary.
“What are you going to do?” You ask seriously.
“Well I don’t have to do anything he tells me.” Steven answers effortlessly. His brow lifts and his jaw loosens and that seemingly permanent bone deep nasolabial crease becomes semi permanent.
“Steven what is Marc going to do?” You demand and he doesn’t meet your eyes.
“We can’t just run.” He says. “Not with you. We have to face it. And you’re not a superhero.”
“You’re not dumping me.”
“No! Of course not,”
“Then what’s Marc so sentimental about all the sudden, huh? You guys gonna ghost me?”
He presses his lips flat.
“Do you think I can’t hear you when you talk?” You say.
“I think I hope you can’t.” He says quietly. It was embarrassing, he thought.
“We’re not dumping you,” he continues. “We’re just getting you somewhere safe until this is over.”
“Is that what he told you?” You grip the wheel tighter.
He doesn’t answer.
Your relationship finally felt like it had gotten somewhere. Like you could actually be a part of each other’s lives. But of course there were more secrets and problems and now lies.
So you weren’t cut out for this. That was a given. That didn’t mean he could just sideline you like this. Without ever saying. He was going to ghost you, you could feel it.
No. He was too caught up in this righteous protector martyr bullshit to see that you weren’t pulling away. That this was off the rails but you were staying on the train with him. All of him. You trusted him with the brake. To know when to jump.
You’re eating something with incredibly thin spicy noodles and all the leftover fried shrimp he picked aside out of a styrofoam box in the center of a hostel bed, crying. This wasn’t like when he left to take care of something. He was gone.
He said he was gonna get a shower. That was six hours ago.
An envelope with two thousand Madripoorian dollars cash, a fake passport, and the number of some guy you’re supposed to call with a flip phone he also left sitting on the dresser was there when you woke up. If he was going to uproot your entire livelihood the least he could do is stay. Stay with you.
You had known for months something could happen and you stayed. Through everything. You could date other people but you didn’t want to. You knew the risks and it didn’t bother you. Your apartment, bothered you. But this? You liked them. With your whole heart. Nothing was a real or as hard in your life as them.
And you loved simple but you’d lived with simple forever, in everything. He was what, you didn’t completely know, obviously, but you wanted to. Moon Knight was a step closer, not a chasm between you. He saved people. Real people. More than you even imagined. Traffickers, drug smugglers, weapons dealers, down to domestic abusers and cops. People on the streets, alone. He protected them. Before you thought they were just a side effect but they were the medication. It was what he did, who he was. And you loved him for it.
But now you’re alone. You don’t know what he even expects you to do.
A thud comes from outside your door. Like someone hitting a wall.
Your eyes fall to the lock and you pull the pistol out from under the bed, checking it’s loaded, clicking the safety off and training it dead ahead.
Silence. Then footsteps.
The door bursts open at the lock and Marc falls face first down to the floor. You rush from where you’re ducked behind the bed to check the hall; empty.
You drag him in through the threshold and shut the door. He’s really out. Your heart beats even faster. You roll him over and blood meets your hands. He isn’t breathing.
He’s in different clothes. As you pull back his jacket to start chest compressions a wallet falls out, open to a driver’s license.
Jake Lockley.
He’s healing. Slow. Whatever he was stabbed with caught him off guard and went deep. It can’t be from this world because Khonshu hasn’t seemed to be able to heal it yet.
He doesn’t speak English. You’re stuck playing charades without your phone once he wakes up.
Tú. You. He keeps saying you. You don’t know what you have to do with anything, not to him.
You gave him CPR and he only just coughed back to life. He’s avoided you, been nothing but abrasive. Now he has his hand on your arm stroking like he needs it to comfort himself.
He needs you for something, that’s all you can gather.
“Jake?”
“Sí.”
“I need to talk to him. To Marc. Can you do that? Let me talk to Marc.”
“No, Marc. No, no.”
He pulls away, close to tears.
“Marc.” He clenches his fist hard, teeth grit.
He starts to get up and regrets it when pain forces him back down.
He curses and feels his forehead. He looks down himself and then up at you. His cheeks burn. You can see it. How he keeps looking away.
“No puedo conseguir a Marc.” He says, exhaling.
He turns back to you and you put your hand behind his head, stroking his hair. He wets his lips, won’t meet your eyes.
“Siento, señorita. No sabía a dónde más ir.”
He looks apologetic. Guilty like he caused all of this. He’s still showing his teeth.
“You don’t have to be sorry. I’m just glad you’re here.”
“Cómo lo dices...“ it was physically there in his head. He could hear it, sound it out. “Estoy aquí para ti.”
I’m here for you.
He couldn’t say it no matter how much he wanted to. Not in a way you could understand.
“Estoy aquí para ti…”
Your noses brush and you kiss him, notching your lips together like you have so many times and yet not like any of them. He doesn’t tilt his head. Doesn’t part his lips. He doesn’t move at all except to press you together at that one point.
You lean back. He follows, desperate not to let them break apart.
“Por favor, cariño.”
You slide your hand down to the back of his neck. “It’s gonna be okay, okay?”
“Tengo esperanza…”
“You’ve been waiting for that for a long time, haven’t you?”
“Tal vez si mis hermanos no pueden ver, está bien.” He murmurs to himself, eyes pressed tightly shut, tears on his cheeks.
He opens them and gazes up at you, pulling you in closer, arms under yours.
“Solo quiero estar dentro de ti. Estoy harto de esconderme.”
“Yeah?”
You move back. He looks distressed for a moment, that is until you straddle his hips and he sucks air through his teeth, hands around your waist.
“Dios, duele.” He grunts, pressing his head back into the headboard.
“Is this okay?”
“Sí, no te atrevas a parar. Sí, sí.” He nods his head. You keep going.
His hand comes to your ass. You bend forward and press closer together, starting to pant.
You kiss him again and when you find the right spot shudders rock your whole body.
You both wake up clothed, which you aren’t sure if you’re happy or sad about.
He’s breathing deep and when he opens his eyes he lets out a groan.
“Shit,” he closes his eyes again.
You’re practically on top of them, with no plans to move.
“Of course he did.”
“Marc, I know about Jake.”
“Of course you do. Frick!” He put his face in both hands. “What’d he tell you?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
He slides his hands down and gives you a look. A long, weird look.
“Me?”
“I don’t think the bloke speaks English. He’s a real quiet type, even so.”
“And he will be dead!” Marc shouts, sitting up, throwing you off him. “I’ll do it myself!”
He inhales, tearing his eyes down. “Sorry, n-not you, the… yeah.” He sighs.
You pull yourself up. “Tell me about him. Come on. You owe me that.”
“Well he’s a prick. That goes for both of them.” He glares briefly up across the room. “He’s been on the inside. He just protects us, okay? I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“I think he does a bit more than that.”
His smile had looked so hurt. He sounded broken. Scared. Of Marc.
“Why did you keep him from me?”
“I didn’t–! I didn’t keep him from you.” He groans, slicking back his hair with his hands. It does nothing. “He didn’t want to be here.”
That isn’t the whole truth.
“You were going to leave me.” You digress.
He sighs hard, pushing back and lying up against the headboard, feeling the raw skin of his chest through his shirt and wincing. “Yeah not sure entirely where that went wrong.”
He blacked out. Completely. There was nothing. But he knew why Jake had come back here.
Hearing him say it you can’t believe he really feels nothing.
“Where’s Steven?”
He shrugs and you want to hurt him.
“Marc where is he!”
“I don’t control it, okay!? When we’re– when we’re divided I can’t even hear him, alright? Last he had the body he gave it to me to go after the guy responsible for all of this. Then this fiasco. If I can’t hear him, you can’t see him right now.”
“You’re a selfish twat.”
“Yeah, I’m aware. Kept you alive. You know how many bullets I’ve taken in just the last four days? Lot more than you could.”
“Look. I ripped someone off,” He says. “I knew it was a bad idea, but he’s a piece of shit and I didn’t think it through. I didn’t think he knew it was me, but somehow he found out. This artifact he’s using on his gang, it’s only accessible to descendants of families of Sobek, are you following? You’re one of those. This artifact is like a battery, but it can be shut down. You can shut it down. Drain and sever the connection to the Overvoid.”
He sees your face and quickly adds.
“I wouldn’t ask this if it wasn’t life or death.”
You can’t believe he would ask you now.
“I wanted to figure something else, but I guess that didn’t work out.” God, he wished he could keep just one day straight in his head. What he was doing, where he was going. Even more so lately his missions had been back and forth, messing up.
When he woke up next to you he thought it was Steven that did it and was even more frustrated he seemed to have more control than he’d ever had.
“I’ll make this right. Soon as we can breathe. I swear. So, what do you say?”
It’s pitch black. The white of Marc’s suit spills through the night like light into cracks.
Slinking between huge wooden crates and pallets, you’re as close behind him as you can be.
You know you still don’t have the full story. Steven’s somewhere in there grieving your relationship or else too ashamed to speak and you have to at least try for him.
He’s so quick at it. You’re in from a high window into what looks like an empty helicopter hanger. It’s so dark. Which makes your goal obvious. A large block topped with a stature of a figure with the crocodile head, covered in hieroglyphs, glowing with a pulse like sunlight.
You heave yourself up onto the statue’s base, able to make out most of the room from the vantage point.
You see Marc only because you’re looking for him, he’s silently choking out a guard.
You make eye contact with a man retreating and your eyes go wide.
It’s your dad.
You can’t tell if he recognizes you, you’re too shocked to speak.
Marc calls your name. “What are you waiting for! End this!”
You grasp the statue’s wrists tightly with both hands. You feel it rush up into you, through the heels of your hands, up your arms and through your spine.
You gasp as just as quickly as it came, it’s gone. The glow disappears. It’s just a hunk of rock, now.
You hear something collide near the entrance and when you look up Marc has your father on the pavement.
“Marc stop stop!”
Marc looks at you, then back at the man under him. He definitely recognizes you now.
“He’s my father.” You say.
The resemblance is there. He swallows back all the ungodly things he’s seen this man do. It doesn’t work. He chokes on it.
He slices the blade clean across the man’s throat, practically in half, he doesn’t get a chance to sputter.
Your chest empties. You stare with wide eyes, unable to look away. The blood gushes, a few more pumps before it stops.
“I’m sorry, baby.” Marc shakes his head, standing. The head slumps. “He orchestrated this he knew—”
“Get away from me.” You back up and nearly trip on another corpse.
“I didn’t want you here. If it were up to me you never would’ve seen this.”
“I said get away from me!” You scream.
“He was going to kill you!” He stands in front of you. “They weren’t after me. They were getting me out of the way. They wanted security in this power, nothing to take it from them. I saved you.”
He breathes out hard.
“You wanted to be with me I’m right here.”
You can’t hear him. You don’t want to hear him.
Finally, he takes a step back.
“Love?” He looks around him, dropping the still dripping blade from his hand. “What the hell’s happened here?”
Your head is spinning. You can barely see.
You force your feet forward and Steven into a tight hug.
It’s over.
You and Steven find a hotel.
Marc is ashamed, he finally breaks.
You talk with all of them for the first time.
Steven’s been in total darkness. He trusted deeply, when he realized what Marc was doing, he shutdown, he couldn’t take it. Less that Marc would do this, but that he let him.
Jake’s been in love with you since the moment Marc woke up in your apartment. He wanted to tell you so many times. He thought doing so would push Marc over the edge; he was right.
The mum Steven’s been leaving messages to has been dead for almost a year.
Your dad had been trying to kill you. He’s not the person you remember.
You’re back on square one. They feel like strangers to you.
You sit at the foot of the bed, legs out, ankles almost touching.
“I knew this would be a lot.” You say quietly.
“I can’t believe you’re still here.” Marc. He shakes his head against the sheets.
“Yeah, well.”
“¿Por qué?” Jake.
“I said I liked you.” You grip their hand. “I still do.”
“I know, but, this is like,” Steven. “You like us like this?” He turns to you.
You won’t stay like you were. You can’t. It’s all out. You can decide where to go.
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Warnings: awkwardness, pregnancy, Poe is upset about the sex of the baby, poor communication
Words: 2.6k
Rating: T
Summary: After the war, a Republic reporter reaches out to interview you and your husband as part of her ‘Childrearing after Resistance’ piece on rebels starting families.
What marrying for love does to a mf
One of these days I’m just going to write 20k of Poe talking transcript style I want (in) his head so bad
AO3 Link
“Is it– is it on? Is it working?”
Poe fiddled with the tiny mic on his shirt flap.
It was as lowkey as you had hoped. Just the reporter, her cameraperson, and an assistant. No makeup, no training, just a conversation.
The interview was divided into three segments. Both your individual one on one interviews, and then the joint interview, your answers to be cut together later.
Poe went first. He was in a great mood.
It was early afternoon, natural light sweeping in from the bay windows to the back yard, a back yard lined with tall, billowing jungle trees.
The breeze made the light ripple through the back kitchen and dining room.
“How many kids do you want?”
“That’s the first question?” Poe asked to confirm.
“As many as she wants.” He nodded confidently from where he sat on his living room couch, arm over the armrest. The seating area around them was round and warm, handmade furniture and textiles, local wood, cloth woven in every color of the rainbow.
“As many as he wants.” You shrugged, unknowingly in the same spot Poe had been a half hour ago, one leg up to spread your lap comfortably.
“I was an only child, and I hated it. I just want my home filled with joy. I don’t wanna say there’s a limit to how many I’ll have. Whatever feels right. Have one, have another, keep going. I love kids.” Poe chuckled, genuinely warm at the thought of a baby in arms, toddlers underfoot, children in the yard and teens picking up their studies and interests, needing the speeder. He wanted all of it.
“Haven’t been around too many. I wanna prosper, y’know?” He continued. “I try to excel at everything I do. I need to have things to do with myself. This is my next mission, in a way. I try not to think of it that way, but it’s how I see life. You gotta be doing things to have done things. You need a plan. Or to wing it. Gotta pick one and go!”
“Poe and I waited so long for this. I mean, we can’t keep off of each other. I think we’re going to end up with a ton just because we’re not against it. We want it together.” A smile pulled at your mouth.
“I… it’s like, we work so well together. Our kids are going to be real stubborn.” You were trying not to smile too big, thinking about Poe, working with him, what your babies will be like is distracting, you want to go on about how headstrong and exuberant he is.
“Someone tells me they think I can’t do something, that it’s half baked, I’ve gotta do it, now. I’ll find out for myself. I always go for it.” You said.
“Thoughts on gender? What do you think your having right now?” The next question is answered very quickly.
“Definitely a girl. And I’m not just saying that because she thinks it’s a girl, I genuinely think it’s a girl.”
“Poe thinks it’s a girl.” You rubbed your bump. “I told him my mom craved sour stuff when she was pregnant with me and a couple months in– well a couple months after we found out, so three months along– I asked for lemon ice, and he just got convinced. He won’t be disappointed, but…”
“I would be content if they were all girls.” Poe said, a chuckle in his tone. “I know most people want it to be like the Force, or something, they want balance, I think that’s not a comparison. I don’t care. All girls.”
“We’re gonna raise them the same. Same skills, same opportunities, same respect, safety, education.” You nodded. “Doesn’t matter.”
“I think society is women. Men live in it, but if you actually look at what builds and binds and creates; it’s women. And that’s as much of a responsibility as it is a privilege, to raise. Sexism is still a thing even if we continue to pretend it isn’t and no girl should be raised with that. It should feel like the slap to the face it is the second someone tries to reduce her to her gender, her femininity, any of that. It’s strength. It’s real strength and it’s something, y’know, men just don’t have. They should, I think they can, that it’s possible, but they don’t.”
“It doesn’t make a difference.” You shrugged.
The interviewer hummed.
“Did you plan for this before the war was over?”
“Yeah, you know, this was kind of always the plan? It was always a goal. Meeting my wife just made it possible.”
“Oh, gosh no.” You shook your head, twisting his mother’s wedding band around your finger. “I couldn’t have even thought about it until it was over. He talked about it so much, I think it– it got him through some times. But I wasn’t ready to make it happen until that day. It was one of the things that made it so special. I mean, I probably would have gone on with it eventually anyway, but it was celebration; we’re gonna have that baby now!”
“It was never hypothetical. Both my heroes were mothers. They both turned out very differently. There’s no world, win, lose, where I don’t have a kid. I’d do it all myself if I could. I feel a responsibility to.”
“This is like– we did it. I’m not trying to say it’s like a reward, it’s an honor, it’s something we can have, now.” You laughed a little. “That’s what winning gave us: life.”
“Are you planning to raise them here?”
“Yeah. I grew up here. I love the greenery, we’re gonna be outside a lot. My dad lives just across the way, my mom passed when I was a kid, so, y’know– I still want them to have a grandparent nearby. Her parents aren’t uh… well they were never big fans of her joining the Resistance.” Poe frowned. The idea of the grandparents of his child never meeting them really got to his heart.
“Yep, right here, this house.” You said, patting the couch next to you.
Yavin was gorgeous. You wouldn’t want them to be anywhere else.
Poe pulled his earphones out and sat beside you, immediately putting his arm around your waist.
“Having fun so far?” He asked.
“Easier than I thought.”
“Yeah? Same here. I thought they’d be more existential or we’d be getting into the war, service, but it’s all basic stuff.”
Stuff anybody knew. Obvious stuff. You were an open couple, always had been.
He sat up straight when she gestured they were rolling, pulling his hands to himself.
The interviewer adjusted her notes, looked nervous for just a split second before it disappeared behind abject professionalism.
She asked the first question.
Your husband’s eyes met your just as briefly.
“Are these the same questions we already answered?” Poe asked.
“Yes. You’re going to answer them jointly now.”
You were suddenly very hot and disoriented, already blanking on your answers. You had felt completely free and comfortable thus far, now it felt like a test.
“How many kids do you want to have?”
“Two?” You answered, hand on your belly.
“Like, two.” Poe cleared his throat, hands folded over his lap.
“Two.” You nodded. That was respectable.
You took his hand to stop him picking at his nails.
“What do you think you’re having right now?”
You took as deep a breath you could.
“It’s a boy.” You said.
“It’s a boy??” Poe shifted up in his seat, he furrowed his brow at the interviewer before turning, you could feel his eyes going over your expression.
“The student messed up, they thought I already knew, they were so embarrassed I couldn’t even be upset.”
“What the hell. We– it wasn’t—” Poe wiped his eyes and inhaled. A boy. You weren’t pulling his leg.
“Are you okay?” You said while adjusting your mic.
“Of course. Of course it is.”
It had been a girl. He was certain of it.
The interviewer looked between you both.
“Can we—”
“Yes! Continue,” Poe all but snapped, leaning up in his seat, pulling himself back into it. He couldn’t place how he was angry. Why was he angry? There was nothing to be upset about.
You were having a baby boy and that was wonderful news.
“Did you plan for this before the war was over?”
“No,” Poe said, anticipating your answer.
“Yes.” You said, anticipating his.
You made a face and Poe scratched above his ear.
This had always been the plan. Since you met, started dating, got married.
Would it have been if you didn’t win?
He pulled his hand from yours.
“Okay. Last question. Are you planning to raise your children here?”
“Poe was born here. It’s really important to him his family’s here.”
“I mean– I’d be fine moving closer to– to your parents.” He said. “I mean if you wanted.”
“My parents?” You were too stunned to say anything more.
He couldn’t be serious.
You just looked at each other.
“And that’s everything. Thank you for your time.”
“We’re having a boy?” Poe asked as soon as the door shut.
“Yeah.”
It was getting on in the day. Almost evening.
It was sperm that determined the second X or a Y chromosome. So it was him, really. He made the baby a boy.
“I know you wanted a girl—” you started and Poe couldn’t even let you.
“No, no, oh my goodness… no, it– it doesn’t make a difference. I’m being ridiculous. I’m just happy you’re pregnant.” He meant it, even if he felt about it.
There was nothing wrong with it, no one had done anything wrong.
Boys were alright, he was a boy. His love for his kids would never, ever be conditional.
“I’ll love a boy just as much.” He promised. Sincerely. He would. “I just have to get used to it.”
“We need to talk more.” You said.
“We do.”
You thought you talked a lot.
Food, bills, pensions, utilities, correspondence. Maybe you just exchanged information. You hadn’t really sat down together for more than a couple minutes since your wedding, now you think about it. Where had all that time gone? Where had you both gone?
“You want to be closer to my parents?” You could barely get the words out.
Closer was a reach. Know at all was closer.
“I– I just don’t want… him, to grow up without them. I think we should at least try. If you could call them—”
“Poe—”
“Imagine it was our kid. This kid. We didn’t understand why he was doing what he was doing but he had a baby of his own and we never even knew about it. I mean, wouldn’t you rethink the things you said? Believed?”
You wanted to say yes to him. You did.
“You don’t know them.” You said.
“I want to.”
You let out a harsh, round sigh, an ache creeping though you, stretching your back against the weight of your sixth month bump, bracing your hands on your lumbar.
You cursed as Poe gripped your shoulder and massaged down your back, reliving the tense muscles with his palm one at a time. He kept it up till you were loose and sore.
He put his arm around under your armpit and across to your other shoulder, rubbing your bicep, and the other around your waist, hugging you gently from behind.
“Will you please think about it?”
“I will think about it.” You said, then more quietly, both hands over your son. “Are we really only having two?”
“Kriff no. I want as many as you want.”
“Four?” You said, cautiously.
“Six, eight—” he moved his head from side to side.
“Ten.”
“Ten.” He breathed a laugh, then nodded. “I can make that happen.”
“You wanna see how we feel after? After this one comes, after a few?” You asked.
“We’d need at least one more bedroom.” He’s thinking logistically, strategically. Trying to, anyway. He was stuck on that baby, that little boy, now. What he’d be like when he was out. “We’d need some multiples unless we keep the gap under two years. That’s not exactly within our control.”
“We’d do two as close as we can, then have a gap, than two more.”
You had thought about this. Planned it out in your head. He isn’t sure how to say he wished he’d been in your head.
“Still. Being pregnant for– seven, seven and a half years…”
“Yeah.” You mused. “Honestly it sounds great to get whatever I want whenever I want from you for that long.”
He chuckled low. “Absolutely.”
Your smile faded into the quiet.
“Poe I can’t wait until this baby’s here, and I can hold him. I wanna hold them so bad.”
“How do you think I feel?” He could only hold him through you. He wouldn’t say he was jealous, but, it didn’t feel fair he couldn’t carry them at least half the time. Some days he wanted to so badly it made him sick.
“I wanna hold him in my arms and sing to him. Take his hand and just let him hold my fingers.”
You felt a foot or a hand press to the lower right of your navel. Tiny, firm.
“I’m sorry I acted like that. We didn’t know. I shouldn’t have been so sure.”
“You got excited.”
“I did.”
“Are we like that article about post war families, how they had so many kids because they felt they owe it to rebuild, to be happy?” You stroke up his sleeve, under it, over his arm.
“I want kids because I want the rest of my life filled. I had so little family. I’m having all the kids my parents and grandparents couldn’t. If that’s what that is, I don’t care who wrote what about it.” He said. “It is what it is.”
“I want enough kids this house isn’t so quiet. I wanna fill the couch. I wanna cuddle with all my limbs and spend hours getting one photo for holiday cards.”
He held you tighter.
“Yes,” He said with his whole chest. “I want that so bad.” He pressed his face hard into the side of your neck, eyes watering.
“Wow. This interview got in my head.” He cleared his throat.
“Think it didn’t get into mine?”
“Humiliating.” He stated.
“I think we need to do it more.”
“Huh?”
“I think we need to have like– an interview night, with each other. Once a week?”
“Write down questions and–”
“Answer them. Just us. No cameras.”
“Same time? Next week?”
“I know I want the maximum amount of time to recover.”
“Yeah.”
He moved his hand down, over the swell of your stomach.
“We’re gonna figure this out, and I swear to you, no matter what we’re not getting any sleep for the entire foreseeable future.” He said. “We will fill this house.”
“At least one girl.”
“Please,” he stressed. “If we have any more we gotta have at least one girl.”
“Are we gonna be really indecisive parents?” You asked in almost a whisper. “Like go ask your dad, well what did mom say, I dunno let’s ask her, but last time dad said—”
“Shit. I think so.”
“Agree on one thing?” You shifted your weight back into him, cradling the back of his neck with your hand.
“What’s that?”
“Marrying was our best idea.”
“My idea.” He said flatly.
“You ass–!” You stand up fully and turn around.
“Marrying me was your best i—”
You kiss him so deep, hands in his hair, backing him till he has to brace against the wall, he can’t do anything but shut up.
