#tw existentialism

You can hardly walk anymore, but Epel carries you often. Any chance he gets, he scoops you up, kissing your cheeks and neck. You hate it. Your waddling is awful, and you’re tired, and to top it all off, your tits are sore.

Epel keeps taking you to his apartment. You like it more than your own, though you should not. It’s smaller, but cozier. The rug in his bedroom is apparently a textile his “meemaw” handmade for him. It’s beautiful, a pattern of deer, apples, bells, and bottles in a soft, welcoming array of pinks, blues, and violets. Epel looked almost ashamed to show you his place at first, but you genuinely like it in his apartment. Comparatively, yours is a cold, beautiful coffin. Epel has a roof that leaks and his boiler smells weird, and there’s a stain on his wall from something that he doesn’t know, but it’s lived in. The space feels alive. And the food he cooks tastes more like food and less like sand when it’s made by him in his apartment.

The only downside is that every time you spend the night there, you have these terrible dreams. You’re running, and you can hear garbled screaming and shouting. There’s thumping, and you seem to be in your apartment, but you’re also not sure, as everything is blurry.

It took you a while to figure it out, but it’s a replaying of the night whoever your body used to belong to fought with Epel for the last time. From what you can understand, the last inhabitant of this body was frenemies with benefits with Epel. He wanted more than casual sex and the occasional hatefuck, and whoever you were had a pretty severe psychotic break when he wouldn’t drop it. They scream in your dream and you wake up screaming, which makes Epel concerned and grouchy as he wakes up with you. You haven’t told him exactly what the issue is.

So you ask not to spend the night too often, but you don’t have much of a choice as you still don’t know this city very well. Besides, wandering around at night pregnant isn’t a stellar idea. It doesn’t matter as much anyway, since ironically, Epel seems to strongly prefer your apartment to his. He seems far more pleased to lounge over your legs with his ear against your growing belly on your couch rather than his.

You must be getting dumber… or complacent, because one day, as he’s doing just that, you hear yourself talking before you understand what you’re saying, “If you move in with me, or we move somewhere else together, can we use your furniture? I like the rug in your bedroom.” Epel freezes, then sits up to stare at you, those pretty blue eyes watery like always, “You wanna get a house together?” “A house?” You repeat dully.

Epel leans up and kisses your forehead, then your eyelids, then your nose. Then he leans back, “Honey, that’s a big step. You sure you’re ready?”

“I’m… going to shove out a baby in less than two months. I think that’s a bigger step than… than getting a house together.” 

His cheeks redden and you don’t feel bad for him. It’s like he didn’t think about any of this aside from the initial idea- get you pregnant and be together. You’re sore, physically and emotionally. Your poor tired nipples, your poor swollen ankles, your weak, weak, pathetic soul-

He leans in again, kissing you, and you can’t help but feel even more irritated when he stands up, stretching, and says, “Well, I’ll start lookin’. We can keep the stuff from my place.”

Starlo, on set, has also taken to speaking to your belly. You hate this, for many reasons, the most of which is that it makes you feel like a fancy incubator more than a person. Pepper seems disturbed by how round you’re growing- like he’s never seen a pregnant belly before. Belle talks to you more than your belly, but her questions feel increasingly vapid, and you don’t retain any of them but one.

“When did you guys really get together?”

You don’t know. As far as you’re aware, Epel thinks you’ve always been destined for each other. He references things that you should know, but don’t because you aren’t you. Is it destiny if one of the destined is not alive anymore, a different ghost possessing their form?