Hi !! Can You Do Jj With “I Can Braid Your Hair For You- I Mean, Only If You Want.” && Character

Awaken Me | Tobias Eaton

pairings — four/reader | divergent au! |

summary : four seems to pick on you especially—and you figure out why. it’s because you both share the same secret.

warnings : none i think?

authors note : i forgot about this and decided to upload it even tho it’s unfinished…

© elliotsblunt 2022. do not repost, modify, or translate.

Your eyes burned slightly as you blinked away tears, confused as to why you couldn't find that certain...

Anger.

Wren, a curly haired blonde that belonged in Amity—somehow landed in Dauntless. But during combat, her frail arms would summon the strength of twice the muscle capacity she contains. If you hadn't seen her flip a man twice her size over her figure—

You wouldn't have believed it.

Anyways, Wren had told you that she had reached that certain level of fighting simply by thinking of what angered her most. The the thing was, nothing horrible had happened to you.

You were born and raised in Amity, where the crime rate remained a negative 0–if that were possible, it would be rated just that.

Your ma and pa sheltered you, as you were their only child. You were also extremely close with them, but after getting your screen test back—it was time to begin a new chapter in your life. One that would drag and smash you to the ground like a bug.

Which is what happened now—basically.

Gritting your teeth, you rolled over to dodge one of your opponents lashes. Fortunately, the girl wasn't a merciless bitch, and let you stand up whilst getting back into position. With shaky fists, you gulped, muttering a quick curse before her own swung towards your chin.

But—

The beating never came. The throbbing rush of warm blood thrashing in your veins never crashed. Your jaw was in tact, and you weren't flopped on the ground like a beaten animal.

Your eyes snapped open, flashing over to the strong hand wrapped around Turner's wrist. Turner, the girl you were fighting, gulped as she stood back from Four. His chest radiated of a warm essence that burnt your cheeks—especially with the smirk dripping off his face.

"Turner," he released her grip, not glancing at you, "It appears the Mary Poppins hasn't improved. Isn't fair to you, is it?"

Your throat went dry, remembering how much of a total prick he was. At first, you thought he was hot, so you deemed him to maybe be a good person. But after you figured one of his life goals was to torment and embarrass you—you checked your values and common sense.

His eyes were dark, but still weren't ever fluttered onto your figure—almost as if he didn't even want to look at you. It damaged your confidence more, knowing you were probably going to be factionless if you didn't shape up soon.

Turner only shrugged, dropping her arm back to her side before placing both hands on her hips. She raised a brow at you as you let out a sharp breath, wiping the imaginary dust off your palms before looking down at the ground and stepping off the fighting podium.

Your ears ring as her blows caused you some damage. Chewing on your bottom lip, you held back your defeated thoughts as Wren threw an arm around your shoulder,

"It's okay. I got a few beat downs my first year here. It gets better," she attempted to cheer you up. You merely hummed as she continued, "Anger, _ _. That's what powers you. You need—“

“I know,” you snapped, stopping your feet before rolling your eyes at her, “I know. But I’m not an angry person, and I’m shit at fighting.”

Her eyes narrowed, “Pity isn’t what makes you a Dauntless, _ _,” she stepped towards you, poking a nimble finger into your heart, “So instead of whining, kid, maybe you should just stop thinking and fight.”

Slowly nodding, you stood there as she headed over to the cafeteria for lunch. You noticed that the boxing bag area was empty—and it clicked in your head what Wren said.

Fight.

Bringing your fists up, you got into a fighting stance and threw your first punch. With gritted teeth, you felt the material bruise up your knuckles—but you wanted to feel it. Feel the pain. If you couldn’t feel the pain, then pity would just Pool around in your chest instead.

And you hated pity.

Hissing as you retracted your first, you did it again. Then repeated on the other fist. Every time the cool leather collided with your knuckles, it sent a sharp pain up your hand. But you stood through it, until the next time you swung, you didn’t realize the bag had made its own hit towards you—swinging and hitting your body with a harsh force.

Letting out a grunt, your body slammed into the cold cement of the training sector. Your ribs ached as you didn’t twitch to get up, instead accepting that you were going to be factionless if you didn’t get back up.

Get back up, _ _. You have to.

Sweat dribbled down your forehead as you landed another punch to the bag. You made it a mission to skip lunch so you could train, because you'd rather starve than be factionless. Breathing harshly through your teeth, you felt the muscles slightly tense in your arms.

"Mary poppins hasn't improved, has she?"

You felt your lip curl as you delivered another brutal hit, finally taking victory in the bag. You released a grunt as your fists kept colliding with it.

You were going to show that stuck up son of a—

"You're supposed to eat in order to gain muscle. Didn't teach you that back in Amity, huh?" You heard a voice quip, a deep and gravelly voice.

Jumping from surprise, your head snapped over to see Four leaning against one of the bags. His eyes were focused on you, smoky and stormy. You looked away from him instantly, but kept your focus on him, "Skipping lunch won't make you a Dauntles—"

"If someone tells me one more time what does or doesn't make me a Dauntless, I might just fucking shoot myself," you raised your voice, feeling the patience that usually you held snapped like a tree branch. Four's eyes stayed narrowed as he now crossed his arms, the muscles protruding from that caramel, ink covered skin of his.

You gulped, "I meant—"

He stood up straight, a smirk creeping into his plump, pink lips as he stepped towards you, "You're nothing but a farmer. You cannot train remotely enough to become one of us," he hissed, venom laced in his words. Something swirled in his eyes, making your jaw lock,

"You don't have anger. You have self pity, and Dauntless don't pity themselves. They fight, and are willing to give up their life for people. How can you fight others when you're fighting yourself already?"

You blinked, feeling anger begin to rise within you. It was a foreign feeling—but you didn't hate it. If anything, your veins welcomed the poisonous rage, but you bit your tongue.

Four laughed darkly, "You can't even speak up for yourself. Surely, you should go back to those farmers," he continued, making your fists balled up at your sides. As he continued to degrade you and your home, well— people who used to be your home, it rose.

The anger rose. It felt as the ground begun to shake, sudden flashes of all the combat you had witnessed before your eyes playing like a rapid slideshow in your mind. The cracks of the bones whenever someone would slip their foot beneath someone—breaking their balance.

Your eyes flickered up to his. He paused right before you, the scent of cologne filling your nose as your chest heaved deeply. Every sense of angst within you was on fire as he tilted his head.

"You don't belong here. But I doubt you'll be able to go home, since your parents disow—"

Your foot slipped under him, trapping him to the ground with a grunt from him. Your teeth clenched as you aimed to punch him, but he immediately snapped his eyes into yours. With furrowed brows, he grabbed your wrist and striked your leg with a harsh kick.

Your knee buckled, a bullet of pain shooting through your muscles. The cold concrete pavement of the training sector burned the flesh on your cheek, ears ringing as a dull ache formed in your back from the landing.

“C’mon, _ _,” Four chuckled, more so in a tiresome way than a tormenting tone. His chest heaved as I blinked, “Get up. Don’t give up now.”

It clicked. Was he…training you?

A boost if adrenaline shot through you. He believed in you. That was the push you needed to balance your wobbling arms off the ground, barely being able to push your body—but you did. Your fists balked at your sides as you gulped, accidentally melting into his cold eyes.

They weren’t as cold, though. As if the ice had slightly melted—but there was still another thick layer.

“Fighting is a dance,” he murmured firmly, grabbing your arm and spinning you around. You let out a harsh breathe as he held your back against his chest, before roughly pushing you away. You hit one of the punching backs, grunting as he smirked, “Until it’s not.”

“Can’t imagine dancing with you,” your eyes narrowed—only making his smirk grow.

But you didn’t hear a response, instead your eyes noticed he was about to take a step forward. Then, you watched his arm twitch—ducking before delivering a jab to his side. He flinched, which broke the barrier, and you didn’t wait to kick him down to the ground.

With a loud thud, you watched as his braid figure slammed against the ground. Picking up your feet, you darted towards him. Every single insult he’d ever thrown at you replayed in your head. He was trying to anger you.

Did he perhaps…care?

Sliding your knee across the ground, you grabbed both of his hands and held him down. Your hair fell over your face, panting deeply, as you used the rest of your strength to fight off his. His hues twitched to yours, something flashing in his eyes as they met yours.

Your throat became dry. Butterflies erupted in your tummy, a warm feeling hugging your heart.

Feeling the cheeks in your face burn—you felt the world slowly silence around you as your eyes melted onto his. You didn’t know if it was your imagination, or the adrenaline pumping in your veins—but you swore you felt his long fingers slowly graze your thigh.

Wait—

How did they get fre—

And in an instant, you were flipped into the ground. His strong hands held you down, gripping your wrist, as his muscular chest held down yours. Bodies pressed against one another, his grunts filling your ears…it was truly a sight.

A musky scent flooded your senses as you felt like you were high, wanting to reach out and touch that sculpted jaw of his. The stubble poking from his skin is probably scratchy against your palm, but his flesh still looked smooth and supple.

Despite his appearance coming off ragged and rough.

“That’s how you fight like a Dauntless,” He taunted darkly, making your brows raise in shock, “You’ll do just fine in ranks if you uh—“

His eyes fluttered to your lips, before he gulped and squeezed his eyes shut. He pushed himself off the floor, away from you, before dusting off his pants, “You should do just fine, _ _.”

Before you could say anything, he cleared his throat and made his exit.

falling for you

or 3 times you fell for joaquín + the 1 time he fell for you

joaquín torres x female!reader cw: female!reader, mentions of a dress, no description of reader's feature (tried to keep it as open as possible), faintings, stupid ideas, fluff

The first time it happened, it was a coincidence.

You were watching a debrief standing on your feet — the room was packed, which was a little bit unusual — when your vision started to go black. You tried to hold on into anything, but it was too late to save yourself from a nasty fall.

One minute you’re watching the debrief, the next you have three concerned faces around you from above. You’re definitely on the floor. The lady murmurs a quiet “Thank god.”

“Hey,” Joaquín called your name softly, entering your line of sight, “you alright, chica?”

“Yeah, I just,” you felt a pair of hands supporting your back while you sat up, “low blood pressure.”

“You sure?”

“Afirmative.”

Your answer was enough for the two people to turn their attention back to the presentation. Joaquín watched you closely, helping you to get back on your feet. The debrief was going full force in the background, and while you knew you could pick up the reports and images later, you made the decision to stay until the end. A Lieutenant offered his chair for you, and you’re able to watch everything.

When you were walking back to the Captain America headquarters on the compound, Dana, one of the Senior Intelligence Officers you worked closely with, intercepted you. “Hey, don’t go around skipping lunch anymore.”

“I didn’t, I had a snack between tasks,” you explained yourself.

“I see.” She pointed towards your files and the tablet screen on your hands. “You should’ve seen how Captain Joaquín Torres catched you like, wow, so fast. Like he was paying attention to you, not to the Admiral.”

“You’re crazy,” you scanned your badge on the door. “I promise to have lunch with you tomorrow.”

“I know where you work, girl,” she joked and made her way back to her side of the compound.

You laughed it off. Yeah, no, Dana was definitely crazy. You worked closely with Captain America and the Falcon, but you were just there, in the background, helping with security systems, maps, basically being their eyes and ears when they were on the field.

However, maybe Dana was right: once you reached your table, you found a bottle of Gatorade and a package of salted nuts, with a small note, “Hope this helps” followed by a smiley face and an attempt of drawing a little falcon.

Dana made sure you didn’t skip any meals or anything, but you couldn’t shake the feeling of her words and Joaquín’s action. So you decided it was worth it to test if her observation was right.

On Wednesdays, if they weren’t out of town or the country for a mission, Sam would bring Isaiah to the compound for a challenging training session. Most of the attendees would barely survive it, and it was your perfect excuse to test the theory.

You were just on the outside of the ring, watching Isaiah point out the flaws and, well, mostly the flaws, on each persons’ fighting technique. You stopped just a few feet from Joaquín, checking the corners of your vision to make sure he was still there.

One moment you were fine, the next your body was falling backwards, slowly. And then two arms were locked around your shoulders and you missed hitting the floor — again.

“Shit, are you ok?” Joaquín quickly got you up and led you to a bench.

“Yeah, sorry. I got lightheaded after my round,” you delivered your line like you planned, no more than an hour ago. “Thanks for catching me. Again.”

“Oh, no worries. Do you want to see a doctor or anything? Maybe you should.” He looked quite concerned.

“No, I’m fine. I’ll just get more water and probably tap out my next round.”

“That’s wiser,” he got up and looked over his shoulder, to where Sam looked a little bit suspicious, and added, “you did good today. So pat yourself on the back.”

“Thanks, Joaquín.”

You never got out of the training room so fast in your life. Dana totally skipped the training — her middle forty joints were her excuse —, but was happy to hear all the details over dinner at her place — with her husband spying to understand why you would be so secretive with girls’ talk. Until he caught up and gave his insights: you were either lucky that the lightning struck twice at the same place, or Dana was really right.

“You know I’m right, I was right when I met you,” she pointed out.

“Even if you’re right,” you let your head fall into your hand, “I can’t do this.”

“Why not? You clearly have feelings for him,” her husband added.

“Because I am me. C’mon, guys, the Falcon dating a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, yeah, of course, very likely to happen.” You rolled your eyes. “He just probably has, like, some enhanced senses, I don’t know, anything they are doing to the future Avengers these days is definitely working.”

“You’re so silly, sometimes,” Dana poured more wine into your glasses. “Hear me out, you could try during the upcoming gala. You were invited, right?”

“Oh, I know this look,” he pointed to his wife. “Buckle up, kid.”

The Annual S.H.I.E.L.D. Gala was hosted for the workers, but also for the Senators and politicians to do business with VIP people. A S.H.I.E.L.D. officer would just be another face amongst the crowd, which granted you the free pass to pick something that would steal all the attention from a certain hero. Something breathtaking, but also subtle.

You got your hair and make up done the way you like, all in to complement your green dress, in a shade it would both compliment your skin and send a message. And the dress itself was highlighting your best features, while also showing some skin on the neckline and the back. Thinking backwards, you find this decision kinda stupid, but Dana was convincing enough.

“So, the other day we were at the grocery store and—”, Dana’s husband was talking about their funny encounter when she shushed him.

“Don’t look now, but a birdie is moving towards us,” she whispered, her eyes locked on Joaquín.

“I’ll make a fool of myself!”

“You won’t! And Josh will hold you if anything goes wrong.” She pressed her champagne flute to her lips. “Ok, now.”

You took a step back, just enough to look like you were out of balance, before letting your body fall again. You were prepared for the worst, but magically a pair of hands found their way to your exposed back. You opened your eyes and had an upside down look on Joaquín.

“We have to stop meeting like this.” His smile was playful. He helped you get back on your feet. “Are you alright?”

“Better now,” you batted your eyelashes and smiled. Joaquín looked amazing on the all dark blue suit he picked for the night. His hair was stylised, and he looked like a supermodel.

“Oh, Captain Torres, she is so stubborn. I told her to go see a doctor, but she refused to,” Dana was giving her all for a Best Supporting Actress that night. And her husband was holding his expression as best as he could.

“Funny, I told her myself a few weeks ago,” his eyes narrowed, and you prayed that your cheeks didn’t start burning red.

“You know what? I’m gonna go check if my blood pressure isn’t acting up again,” you went for a not so subtle French exit. “I’ll see you guys later.”

You slipped out of the small circle before your face caught on fire. You found the bathroom, taking slow deep breaths in front of the mirror. No, Dana couldn’t be right. You were in a room full of people, and still Joaquín was the one acting faster enough to prevent a disaster. No, it was just luck, right?

There was no way he was paying that close of an attention to you, to your moves, to how you were standing in the middle of a crowd.

Oh, damn.

Dana was right.

And you weren’t making your life easier when you walked out of the bathroom, going after a drink for you to drown the feelings you tried to keep on the bay.

It was almost two weeks later when you let yourself fall into the couch in a small room you’ve made a base of on the coast of Mexico. You were out there for a mission, and the last fifteen minutes pumped more adrenaline into your bloodstream than your whole life all together. You watched Sam and Joaquín take off and fly back to the base.

And your feelings? Unfortunately you’ve been carrying them around every single day, trying to not show how you’ve fallen for Joaquín faster than you could’ve imagined. And now you were splashed all around the floor, hoping he wouldn’t notice.

“Hey! Did you see me kick that guy? It was awesome!” You’re not surprised when Joaquín entered the room, helmet in hand. Still high on his own adrenaline, as per usual.

“Yeah, I saw that, Torres.” You agitated your hand, and he noticed you on the couch.

“¿Estás bien, chica?”

“Yup, just tired.”

“I know you’re not really fainting,” he blurted out, not really looking at you anymore. He was more concerned with removing his wings after a long day. “I mean, the first time you did look like a ghost, but after that? You were faking it, right?”

Your heart froze. You would look better if you’d come clean, right?

“First time was real, but the other two were my friend’s idea. She had this stupid theory,” and you shut yourself up before the explanation started to sound cheesy. “Nevermind.”

“No, por favor, enlighten me. What was her theory?”  

“No, it’s so stupid.”

You tried to shake it off, but Joaquín and his amazing agility got him closer to you in no time. His attentive hazel eyes were on you, and your cheeks heated up.

“She said you probably catched me the first time because you were paying attention to me, not to the debrief,” your voice died on your throat at every word, until the silence filled the space between you too. “So the other two times, it was a test.”

Joaquín watched you, expressionless face.

“So you were, let me get this right,” he took two steps back, then moved his body back and forth, and looked at you, “Oh my, Joaquín, please, I’m gonna…”

While you knew you fell like a potato bag every single time it happened in the last few weeks, Joaquín gracefully fell over your body on the couch, his arms catching him and avoiding a nasty collision between you. His face was a few inches from yours, the biggest grin on his lips, and if he got one inch closer, you bet he could’ve heard your heart beat.

“I think I reenacted it perfectly.”

“No, it wasn’t like that,” you tried to avoid his eyes. “I was just…”

“You were…” He was still pushing you to say what has been boiling over for weeks now.

“I told you I was faking it! What else do you want me to do?”

“I don’t know. You tell me, cariño.”

You rolled your eyes. Such a tease. And you had to fight back.

“So you were really paying attention to me, hm?”

“What if I was?”

“It means Dana is right,” you rested your hands on his shoulders.

“Yeah, she is,” he looked from your eyes to your lips. “Please don’t do that again.”

“Why not?”

“Because if you wanted me to hold you,” his right hand held your waist, “or kiss you, you just needed to ask.”

You smiled.

Maybe you had fallen for Joaquín more than two times, but he definitely fell harder for you.

a/n: hope you guys liked it! i'm writing a few oneshots and drabbles with joaquín, and i hope to get them posted sometime next week. also huge shout out to @live-love-be-unique for the feedback and encouragement! you're all welcome to send some ideas or requests my way via asks or dm!

Pietro Maximoff x fem!reader

Summary: ask: Maybe Pietro and reader are the only ones in the avengers facility (the other were with their families, on vacation, etc), and he's really excited to spend Christmas with her because he has a crush on her but never really told her (or even done something about it because when he's around her he doesn't know what to do), and he's really excited because it's gonna be just the two of them there and he wants it to be special and surprise her.

Genre: Fluff

Warnings: AU where Pietro isn't dead, this is only a few months after Avengers: Age Of Ultron but in my head Pietro, Wanda, and reader are early 20s!

~ i hope you like this @thewinterv 🤍~

Normally, around the 20th of December, the Avengers Tower would be buzzing with the sounds of voices, the hum of machinery, and Tony's unrelenting playlist of 80s Christmas hits. But this year, it was dead silent.

Most of the team had scattered for the holidays; each of them returning home to their families. Tony was spending Christmas away with Pepper at some romantic destination no one knew about, Thor had returned home to Asgard, and Cap was spending his holidays with his friend, Bucky. Natasha, like almost every year, was spending Christmas at Clint's family house and this year Clint had opened the invitation—

Because Pietro disliked spending holidays away from his sister, and Wanda had told him her and Vision were spending he holidays with Clint, he'd been considering the offer.

However, when you'd told him in passing that you'd politely declined the invitation, Pietro's heart sank. You didn't want to impose, was your excuse, and it didn't sit well with him.

He didn't want you alone on Christmas.    

So, he found himself lingering in the common area of the tower, his foot tapping anxiously against the wooden floor. He felt the anticipation bubbling up inside him as he shakes his hands, a mixture of excitement and nervous energy bouncing inside him. He glanced at the clock hanging over the door for the tenth time in the past twenty minutes.

You were here, probably in your room. The thought alone made his heart speed up. The two of you were the only ones left now and all that was left was his excitement. For months now, Pietro had been harboring these feelings for you—feelings he never quite knew how to express. Around you, his usually confident self, became a jumble of awkward smiles and half-finished sentences.

But this Christmas, he was determined for that to change.

You wander into the kitchen, yawning. It's Christmas morning and Pietro is standing by the stove, stirring a pot with uncharacteristic focus. His usual blur of motion is replaced by small, deliberate movements, and you can't help but smile.

"Merry Christmas," you say, leaning your hip against the counter. 

Pietro's head shoots up, his icy blue eyes widen in surprise as he spins around. "Y/n," he exclaims, his Sokovian accent more evident in the early morning. "Happy Christmas," he smiles and continues to stir, "Ah, I made horká čokoláda, ah what is the word… hot chocolate? It's… traditional, yes?"

You smile, pushing some hair away from your tired eyes. "Very traditional, Piet," you say, leaning over some more and smelling the air. It smells sweet. "Smells yummy. Can I get some, or is this all for you?" you ask with no hint of annoyance in case he had made it for himself.

His cheeks turn pink, quickly ladling the hot chocolate into two mugs. "Of course, for you too. I made it special."

"Special?" you echo, taking the offered mug. You taste the hot chocolate and it tastes quite normal, but still delicious. 

"Yes," Pietro whispers, finding his words again. He feels nervous again but he swallows down the nerves. "For you. I made it special for you." 

Your smile widens and you take another sip, hot chocolate coating your upper lip. Pietro leans in and wipes it with his thumb. He's pauses, hesitating, but when you don't pull away he relaxes. "Thank you," you say honestly, feeling an unfamiliar warmth in your stomach. Pietro just grins, feeling his nerves disappear. 

Later that day, Pietro leads you to the training hangar, though he continuously refuses to explain why. Once you arrive, however, your jaw drops. The massive space has been transformed. Twinkling string lights crisscross the rafters, and a makeshift skating rink gleams at the center, its surface a mirror of ice. Soft holiday music plays from a speaker in the corner.

"Pietro," you breath, turning to him. "Did you do all this?'

He looks a little sheepishly. "Friday helped and I had some time. Plus, speed also helps," he admits, rubbing the back of his neck. "Do you like it?"

"Like it? Piet, it’s amazing," you exclaim, stepping onto the edge of the rink, feeling the ice. It's cool and smooth beneath your fingers. "But I don't have any skates."

"Pshh, already handled." Pietro speeds away and returns in a blur of blue lightening that dances around you. he steadies himself and holds two pairs of skates in his arms. He holds one out for you in your size. "For you, Princezna (Princess)."

You laugh lowly, seeing how his hair sticks up a little. "Do you ever slow down?"

Pietro thinks for a moment, rubbing his nape. "Only for you," he says softly, the words escaping before he could really stop them. Your cheeks warm, but you don't look away. Instead, you smile and walk to a bench in the corner, lacing up your skates. Pietro does the same, basking in the comfortable silence.

One on the ice, you struggle while he moves with surprising grace. He skates circles around you, teasingly close but careful not to knock you off balance.

"Show-off," you say, flapping your arms desperately. Pietro skates up to you and holds out his arms, not touching you but keeping an eye on you in case you fall.

"I have to impress you somehow," he quips, but his tone sounds lighter than usual, less guarded, and you like the change. He's acting like how he does with everyone else, not as stiff as he is when he's around you usually, and you like it.

The two of you continue to skate for what feels like hours, laughing and sharing stories. At one point, you almost slip, and Pietro reaches out and catches you, his arms wrapping around your waist.

"Are you ok?" He asks, his breath warm on your cheek. You nod and for a moment, you both don't move.

"You're really good at this," you whisper, trying to steady your heartbeat as your nose almost touches his. You pull away a little.

"I had a good reason to learn," he replies, his voice barely above a whisper. "Wanda and I used to skate a lot at home, with Mama and Papa."

"Must have been nice."

"It was," he reminisces, smiling at you and then he pulls away.

After you're both finished and your feet start to hurt, the two of you return to the lounge, where the electric fireplace is crackling softly. Pietro had prepared another surprise: a small, slightly lopsided Christmas tree, decorated with whatever he could find around the facility. Paperclips served as makeshift hooks, holding up ornaments fashioned from lab equipment and some minimal leftover holiday decorations Tony had lying around.

"Oh," you say, wrapping your arms around yourself as you smile. "You really went all out, hm?" you tease, sitting beside him on the couch.

"I didn't want you to spend Christmas alone," he says simply, as if it's nothing. When you look at him, he hesitates, then adds, "You deserve it all."

"Pietro," you whisper, placing your hand on his arm. You don't even know what to say.

He takes a deep breath, his usual bravado faltering as it always does when you're around but he swallow it down. “I like you. A lot," he admits, the words stuck in his throat as he confesses;

"But when I'm around you, I never know how to act. I'm nervous. Very nervous. Which is ridiculous, because I'm never nerves around girls. But with you, I want to be careful. Because you're important to me. I want to impress you. I want you to like me."

You stare at him, your heart pounding. "Pietro, I like you too. I've always liked you, I've just been waiting for you to say something."

"You have?"

You nod, a smile tugging at your lips. "Yeah, you aren't the only one who is nervous, you know? You're quite intimidating."

Pietro laughs, taking your hand in his. "Me? Nesmysl (Nonsense)," he chuckles and strokes his thumb over yours. He smiles, his blue eyes locked onto yours. He leans in, his lips suddenly brushing against yours as he closes his eyes.

The kiss is hesitant at first, then it becomes more certain when you kiss him back, your hand finding themselves in his hair. The world seems to stand still, a rare moment of stillness that Pietro actually enjoys.

For once, he wishes he could stop time forever.

When you finally pulls away, Pietro is grinning like a love-sick school boy, his cheeks flushed pink. "Best Christmas ever?" he asks, his tone teasing but very honestly hopeful.

You return his grin and squeeze his hand, resting your head on his shoulder.

"Best Christmas ever."

the angel that fell from the sky [joaquin torres x fem!reader insert]

author's note; if you haven't seen cap 4, please go see it. also slight spoilers below!

warnings; none; just fluff. please enjoy!

"'The Angel that fell from the sky.'" "The 'Angel'?"

"That's what they're calling you."

You heard the squeaking of wheels from Joaquin's chair as he pushed himself towards you. He peered over your shoulder, bracing one arm on the desk to get a closer look at your monitor. His breath fanned your cheek as he mumbled aloud the headline of the article you had been reading.

"Sounds a bit dramatic, don't you think?" he asked before pulling away and plopping back into his chair. You looked over your shoulder to catch him wincing as he nursed his broken arm that was still in a sling. "But if it gets me closer to meeting Ant Man, I'll take it."

You stifle a soft laugh before clicking from the article and typing away on the screen you were working on before. "Glad to see the fame hasn't gone to your head."

"If months of physical therapy and being told over and over by you and Sam to 'take it easy' is the price of fame...I don't know know if it's all worth it," he joked with a laugh that made you roll your eyes.

You continued to type away. "Well, sorry that we're worried about you," you said, feeling your cheeks grow warm as you the felt the atmosphere shift a bit. "But to be fair, you did almost die."

"Huh."

Your typing ceased and you looked over your shoulder to find him grinning.

"What?"

"Nothing, nothing." He was leaning back in his chair, studying with an amused grin. You rolled your eyes again and decided to take him for his word. You faced your monitor and went back to typing.

"It's just that..." You groaned and ceased typing once more, though you didn't dare look over your shoulder as he continued. "I could've sworn you just said you were worried about me." He used his feet to make his chair roll towards you.

Biting the bullet, you looked over shoulder and met him with a harsh stare, though it was accompanied by a subtle smile you couldn't seem to hide this time around. "I said Sam and I."

"Which," he continued on as if presenting his final argument to a grand jury, "implies that you do, in fact, care about me too." He leaned his good elbow on his knee and propped his chin in the center of his palm as he gazed at you, tickled pink by this revelation. "I'm starting to wonder who's head over heels now?"

You laugh a bit, already in the process of turning back to your computer. "So am I."

You had long ago sworn off telling Joaquin your real feelings despite knowing his feelings towards you were mutual. But every time you or Joaquin mustered up the courage to share your true feelings, things went wrong.

The first time it had been a simple miscalculation resulting in minor scrapes and bruises that landed him in the infirmary. This time it was the ICU. You balled up your fists in your lap as you recalled the long wait in the waiting room, the sight of him strung up to wires that monitored his fragile heartbeat; and the black and blue bruises that littered his skin.

You didn't even want to dwell on the possibilities on how much worse things could get. Which is why it was much easier to bottle up your feelings and hope that they would wear off eventually. After all, in your mind at least, it would save you both the emotional damage of losing one another.

Your heart suddenly skipped a couple more beats as Joaquin reached out to stop your chair from turning away from him. You let your feet go slack against the hardwood floor as he used one arm, with little to no effort, to gently tug your rolling chair towards him so you were facing him again. You came to a slow stop as your knees briefly touched. It was during this moment that you felt your brain turn to mush.

"It's me."

You blinked. "What?"

He reached out to touch one of your fists resting on your thigh. Slowly your fingers began to uncurl from your palm.

"I'm...head over heels...for you," he said with nervous laughter.

You laughed too, unsure of what to say. "Did Sam tell you say that?"

He chuckled, his cheeks turning a shade of red you've never seen before. He gave your loose fist a soft squeeze. Eventually, his infectious grin turned into a subtle, nervous smile.

"I want to give us a chance—"

"Joaquin—"

He threaded his fingers in the spaces between yours. You were too distracted by the bundle of nerves in your chest to feel them.

"Y/N, I've kissed death one too many times not to at least let you know how I feel...not that you don't already know." The corners of his lips turned upwards just as yours did.

He was right. It wasn't like you didn't know how he felt about you. Ever since he came wandering into your uncle's gym, he didn't once shy away from letting you know how he felt. Be it a lingering gaze; his signature grin of approval when you successfully hit the punching bag right; or the occasional conglomerate of words that fell out of his mouth that sometimes didn't make much sense—though you always understood what he was trying to say. His feelings for you had always been right there within your reach.

As if reminding you of this, Joaquin squeezed your hand, eyes yearning for a response.

"You know Sam will tease you endlessly when he hears about us," You said, apprehensive of the consequences to come.

Joaquin inched forward, the wheels of his chair scraping the floor. "I think I can handle it. He already does that to me now, I'm used to it."

"Good point," you said with a shrug, your body naturally inclining forward. "But, you'll only hear me complaining twice as much for you to take it easy."

He let go of one of your hands, his bruised fingers reaching forward to stroke your warm cheek. "Child's play, mi amor. I could never get tired of you nagging me."

The beating of your heart grew louder than your thoughts.

"Then there's Captain America..."

"Yeah, yeah. You mentioned Sam, already," he said, his thumb stroking your skin as he leaned forward, your foreheads brushing against each other. He glanced at your lips.

"No, I mean...the other Captain America."

Joaquin paused. "Your uncle?"

You nodded. "You know he still never got over you calling him 'gramps' when you first met."

His shoulders slumped a bit, slight disappointment lacing his features. "But I thought he liked me?"

"I like you." The words fell out of your mouth before you could stop them. His grin returned at this. You squeezed his hand, the one that was still holding your cheek. "But he won't go any easier on you if it's me you're after."

"So I'm up against two Captain Americas?" He whispered, eyes growing wide at this sudden revelation. You laughed and shook your head in amusement.

Before you could respond, he pressed a kiss to your cheek. Just as he pulled away, he managed to murmur, "Game on," before pressing his lips to yours.

because you’re mine (it seems like we’re meant to be)

reader x elliot // bonfire fluff

warnings: drugs , alcohol use

a/n : i know this is very random, considering i’m a bts account, but recently euphoria has been giving me motivation to write, so feel free to request more!💫

the white shafts of daylight have passed, gone are the shadows of evening. flames from the fire rise boldly against the black sky. before that great fire their skin is glowing red, orange and gold. every eye is reflecting the flickering light, each iris containing a small picture of the bonfire before them. yet, it isn’t simply just the sight that has you mesmerized, so too has the crackling and the woody fragrance of smoke. you end up being put in front of elliot’s legs, feelings his knees against your back. you feel something press against your lips. as you look down to see a cup and elliot’s face, peering up at you imploringly as he offers the drink to you.of course, you take it, pulling it away to peer into the contents.

 “what is this?” you ask; it’s bright blue and looks like there’s glitter in it.

“i made it,” says elliot, and that’s enough of a reason to believe that you won’t die drinking it. so you knock back half of it in one go, swallowing and then frowning as you hand the cup back. 

“it’s supposed to taste like blueberry slushie, but i’m not sure if i got it right”.

you smack your lips. “tastes more like synthetic syrup” you admit, moving your hand to run your fingers over the nape of elliot’s neck.

his lips curl back into a hazy grin, reaching up to plant a kiss on your lips “i guess you’re right” elliot says moving back, but you kiss him back, a little harder than necessary; you’re not nearly drunk enough, but you kiss elliot like that anyway.“alright, alright,” rue calls. “don’t start fucking with all of us here”

elliot pulls back, turning to look at her, then pecks your cheek smiling, “there’s a first time for everything.”

beside rue, lexi makes a pained noise and immediately gets up. 

you pull back from elliot just enough, although you’re still tangled together as the rest of you dissolve into another conversation.

you let yourself listen to the lazy conversation as elliot wraps himself around you, clingier than usual thanks to the alcohol. elliot can still remember the new year’s eve, when you’ve crushed through the door trying to find rue, as cliche as it sounds, he knew you’ll mean a lot to him in the near future. 

and you did, still do.

maybe it was inevitable, then, for you to fall together the way you did—under the stars, and the entire world at your feet. when you kissed him for the first time out there, elliot told you it was probably a bad idea. but as soon as your lips met, both knew, there was no going back.you bring the joint to your lips and inhaling before you let out a long stream of smoke as you stare up at the stars.

there’s a light touch of elliot’s fingers caressing your sides.

you look up at him with that same lazy grin; there’s only the light of the moon and the fire, but it’s enough to see the way elliot looks at you. 

you want to blame it on the alcohol and the drugs, but elliot always kind of looks at you like he can’t believe you are real, like no high or euphoria could ever compare. you understand. it’s the way you look at him, too.

you take another drag of your joint and then lift your chin up, and elliot gets it immediately, leaning down and over you until your lips are nearly touching. you hold it for a second, at least until elliot gets impatient and bites your bottom lip, and then you open your mouth and breathe the smoke into his mouth. you can feel elliot grinning as your lips brush together, and then you lift your head up an inch to press your lips together into a kiss.by the time you resurface—or elliot pulls away, letting you back into the rest of the world, because it’s always hard to focus on anything else—the others have started their own conversation.

“you two are making me sick,” says nate.

“you’re fucking sick,” says fez.

you’re too lost in your own thoughts, brought back to the present only by elliot tickling your chin, leaning in and whispering, “are you sleeping?”

you grin, keeping your eyes closed as you murmurs “just thinking.”

“about?”

you hum. “you.”

elliot kisses your nose. you finally open your eyes, looking up at elliot looking down at you.

“i love you, you know,” says elliot, not taking his eyes off you.

you thumb at the corners of elliot’s mouth,“ i love you too,” you answer, breathless.

---

red lipstick | rc

| pairing: (non canon) rafe cameron x female reader

| genre: fluff, college rafe, halloween fic

| content warnings: swearing, mentions of alcohol/drinking, mentions of food, a few tears

| précis: you get your boyfriend to dress up with you.

| word count: 1,512

You could barely believe it yourself when your boyfriend agreed to coordinate costumes with you.

Well, scratch that—you could believe it, but it was the particular costume you’d chosen that he agreed to—that shocked you.

Keep reading

---

Goth CC Finds + Links ☠

So since the new goth kit is coming out, there is a lot of controversy surrounding it. Many people saying its not enough, not the correct style, or they simply cant afford it. Today I present you with an alternative! Shining a light on the CC community, I have for you 30 links to different packs, clothes, hair, accessories, and makeup revolving around the goth style.

Please enjoy these finds & keep in mind that the Goth style is very broad & has many types of styles to it, as this is my own interpretation. ~ DelSolSasha

from left to right

✩| 1 2 3 4 5 6 |✩

✩| 7 8 9 10 11 12 |✩

✩| 13 14 15 16 17 18 |✩

✩| 19 20 21 22 23 24 |✩

✩| 25 26 27 28 29 30 |✩

Also, don't forget to check these cc creator's full websites & patreons because there is sooooo many great goth finds on their pages!

Thank you to the wonderful cc creators who are beyond talented | @bluecravingcc | @evellsims | @bloodmooncc | @sixamcc | @madlensims | @simcelebrity00 | @daylifesims | @aharris00britney | @aladdin-the-simmer | @pralinesims | @trillyke | @/reginaraven | @uxji | @luumia | @/tomichan | @busra-tr | @atomiclight | @lonelygravescc | @/YNRTG-S | @pinkycustomworld | @remussirion | @/seleng |

today I'm showcasing a bunch of mods that I have been recently using to enhance my gameplay

download links

functional skincare mod (early access) by qmbibi

functional bodycare by qmbibi

razor default replacement by largetaytertots

functional perfume and cologne by qmbibi

bathroom clutter kit becomes functional by cepzid creation

build skills with earbuds by mizoreyukki

airpods 2 default replacement by @nuribatsal

brand new bedsheets by llazyneiph

laundry default replacements (1) (2) by largetaytertots

tidy pods by @diabolicalsims

visible hidden needs by zero's sims 4 mods

watermate waterbottle recolor by @yuroge

walk normal by mizoreyukii

sponge father default replacement by @apricotrush

customizable standing idle by zero's sims 4 mods

functional magazines by largetaytertots

fenty beauty makeup override by @myxdollyt

noctium gym by @rhdweauni0

entrance fee on community lots by @littlemssam

flowfit by @simrealist

let's get fit modpack by cepzid creation

sunrise alarm clock by lot51

sunrise alarm clock recolor by @blarffy

habit (a morning routine) mod by triplis

waking up animation overhaul by @littlemssam

youtube / tiktok / twitch / patreon / gallery id: largetaytertots

make some noice y’all!

something borrowed

(dearly beloved part 2: electric boogaloo ! ; tashi duncan x fem!childhood best friend!reader x patrick zweig ((x art donaldson?? a little?)); nonlinear narrative; playing fast and loose with tenses; where do i start; patrick and reader are their own trigger warning; tw pregnancy and childbirth; major major tw for talk of abortion; tw depression and antidepressant talk; cw breeding kink centric smut; more artashi wedding scenes; baby lily !! ; art donaldson #dadding out; grammy donaldson mentioned ! ; tw vomit again i’m so sorry lol; cw more menstrual talk; tw adultery but i mean come on; baby names; lasagna; we all have annie’s reblog to thank ((blame)) for this)

‘ JESUS: Judas—

JUDAS: You forgave Peter and bullshit Thomas—you knocked Paul of Tarsus off a horse—you raised Lazarus from the fuckin’ dead—but me? Me? Your “heart”? . . . What about me??!! What about me, Jesus?! Huh?! You just, you just—I made a mistake! And if that was wrong, then you should have told me! And if a broken heart wasn't sufficient reason to hang, THEN YOU SHOULD HAVE TOLD ME THAT, TOO!

JESUS: Don't you think . . . that if I knew that it would have changed your mind . . . that I would have?

Pause. ’

Stephen Adly Guirgis, ‘The Last Days of Judas Iscariot’

“Is it one of those ugly ones?”

You’re not special; you, too, hate hospitals. Not the least because your parents ralphed up all that cash for med school and you tanked like a castiron anchor. But there’s so much else to feel guilty for. You feel guilty for being alive while people are dying. You feel guilty for wanting to die while people are being born. You feel guilty, and nauseated, by this sickly visceral fume of birth and babyflesh, and the fact that you’re so upset.

You’d marked it on your calendar, is the thing.

March eleventh, Doomsday, the purge, the end times.

Tashi Duncan’s Caesarean section.

Timely and clinical, fittingly so. You’d bought a little beanie for the occasion. The beanie is soft and grey and pink. It has a cartoon flower embroidered on the side of it.

But then this is the spawn of Art and Tashi Donaldson. The baby is inherently desperate, and eager, in that order.

It’s February twentyeighth.

It’s probably for the best, you think, while you and Art are on either side of the hospital bed, and he’s grasping Tashi’s hand more tightly than she is holding his, even though she is the one whose innards are being shat out. You don’t believe she could take another scar.

You grimace as she crowns. Art is sobbing and sniffing. He looks at Tashi like he’s getting to watch God populate the world with greenery. It makes your mouth tug sharply to one side, and you close your eyes, briefly, escaping the bright white light.

You watch the papery sheets go redder and redder with every gush from the cavity of her torso.

The baby is not rosy pink so much as she is carmine. Before this, as an idea, she’s existed mostly in black and white. Aminocentesis results on a MacBook screen. The sonogram on their coffee table. The concrete wall of your abject jealousy. The living colour of her, it shocks you more than her glass-shattering screech.

Art holds the baby first, of course, since Tashi is somewhat incapacitated. You soothingly caress her damp hairline.

“What was that like?” you whisper, wincing down at her.

Tashi sheds a few tears and manages a smile that’s part relief and all agony. “Remember…” she croaks, “Remember when Tre fuckin’… like, roundhouse kicked you up the crotch?”

You blink, quirking your brows. Then you snort in surprise, grinning. “Oh my God, yeah,” you giggle. “When Yas and Matteo got that trampoline.”

Tashi nods weakly, her desiccated mouth twitching at the memory, her eyes shivering gently closed.

The baby is tiny against Art’s body, cradled so carefully in his arms. He’s counting all her toes and fingers.

“Hey there,” he murmurs to her, like they’re the only two people on this earth Tashi made. Then he sinks down onto the stool by Tashi’s head, and holds this tiny, beautiful thing out toward her. “Say hi to momma,” he says, his voice soft as gauze.

Tashi reaches out. Her hands are trembling but all of her is trembling; both you and Art tried to get her on the epidural, but fuck if she’s not stubborn. She crooks the tip of her index finger into the fleecy receiving blanket, pulling it down just a little so she can see the baby’s entire pink face.

The baby opens just one bleary eye, only halfway, but it’s enough for her to see you, for you to feel yourself being seen.

Tashi sobs and Art sobs and you wonder, momentarily, if her obstetrician can reach up the cavity of your body, too, and tug out your heart.

So, of course you hate hospitals, and of course you feel guilty. For many reasons. Chief among them being how, the very moment your dear, gutted friend conks out, you’ve stolen to the hall to ring her ex. And he’s asking you, hopeful, if her fucking newborn is one of those ugly ones.

You sigh into the receiver, shaking your head all solemn. You’re sure any passersby think you’re delivering horrific news. “She’s beautiful,” you confess sadly.

“Fuck!” Patrick says forcefully, like he’s just stubbed his toe.

You can hear the hum of the highway on his end of the line, and he’s definitely a bad enough driver that he shouldn’t be calling you right now, because you don’t want to be back here at his bedside when he’s in a fullbody cast after a nearfatal accident—and you would come to visit, actually, if he were in the hospital; maybe that’d just be the guilt again—but this is pretty urgent.

You frown, tucking your hand under your armpit and managing a smile at a passing couple cautiously rolling their precious trolley to the NICU. “They named her Lily.”

Patrick scoffs. “Those fucking assholes.”

“Right?”

You appreciate his company in your deplorable sorrow. There’s a special corner in the firescape for the two of you, but at least it’ll be the two of you.

“That’s a beautiful name for a baby girl,” he says, practically insulted.

You sigh again. “I know,” you pout.

They’d planned the wedding, as they did all other things, a bona fide team. A well oiled unit. Art and Tashi. A&T. Handing off tasks with practiced efficiency, like another one of her hyperintensive drills, wherein he would sooner keel over heaving than drop the ball. The wedding planner was effectively ornamental once they really got into it.

And they really got into it.

Tashi was one of those little girls who stuffed a stream of toilet paper in her ponytail and pictured the vinyl flooring of her home’s warmly lit passage as a ceremonial aisle on the Amalfi Coast at sunset. Here comes the bride, aluminium foil wedding band, ramshackle wildflower bouquet picked from the backyard, et cetera.

Most times, she’d have you play groom.

But you don’t internalise that too much. Because she had you play a lot of things. And sometimes she’d have their senile Mastiff Mutt, Franklin, play groom, too. Really, the most important part was her having you at all.

And, apparently, as a little boy, Art used to page obsessively back and forth through the decrepit scrapbook of his grandparents’ Peoria union, the pictures frayed and hued dandelion. So it’s great that they found each other, and so many dreams were coming true, and everything was fine. Everything was better.

You’d been happy she was happy, really, you had. You hate big endeavours in your name. If she’d married you, you’d have made her elope to Puerto Rico.

And now she was all sprawled three-ring binders, pen behind each ear, Game Face On. And Art was there, talking place settings in full sincerity, so yeah. It’s fine. Better, even.

She let him intercalate all the mawkish, ubercorny bullshit—the Fleetwood Mac, the garter toss, the pictures of his grandmother at the centrepiece of every table. Because they were a team and it was his wedding as much as hers. And you’d told her, too. You’d told her that she’s going to have a mawkish, ubercorny bullshit wedding to a mawkish, ubercorny bullshit guy. But she’d waved you off with a dismissively sentimental smile. I just want to marry him, she’d told you, which had felt like a million and one serrated spurns all over.

A getaway car, really? you’d deadpanned. Then, leaning closer to her phonescreen, eyes narrowing at their shared twodozenpage Pinterest board, incredulous and disgusted, Are the cans really necessary?

Apparently so.

You were standing at the foreshore, toes all grainy, shoes in hand, pistachiorose and Patrick Zweig on your tongue, your ass still seadamp. Art and Tashi pulled up in front of you, cans rattling, like a justmarried Lyft order.

When you climbed into the backseat, they were in the middle of sharing in dulcet laughter over something or the other. Something that did not concern you. Which was fine, and better, and the flower arrangements were spectacular. And, anyway, you’re busy trying not to get sand on this vintage carpet.

“Shouldn’t you two be honeymooning?”

Art looked back at you, his arm outstretched, wrist resting on the bend of the wheel. He gave you this smile you couldn’t discern, which most of his smiles were, and are. He blew a raspberry from his rubicund mouth and tsked.

“What, without you?” he scoffed, wry but playful, and you realised that, though he teased, and wanted you to know as much, his goodnature was sincere.

And your fingers twitched to wrap his seatbelt—because he was wearing the seatbelt—around his rosy throat five or six or seven times and tug hard.

Tashi threw her head back and laughed into the humidity of the night, of their wedding night.

Tashi squirmed in the leather passengerseat of the ivorycoloured 1960 Ford Thunderbird convertible.

You were leaning over in between them from the back, straddling the armrest. And she watched Art turn his head and kiss you. His hand looked huge on the messy, delicate bone of your jaw. It felt cool and clammy, you remember. Tashi sucked in a breath. You two broke apart after a moment, laughing, your palm coming down on his forearm like he’d just made a joke.

“That,” you said, making a puerile face as he absently brushed a thumb over your cheek, “Was too far.”

Your eyes were still shining with tears.

Art nodded, grinning, slipping his hand from your face and running it through his sweaty shoresand hair. “Anything for you, baby, but maybe not that.”

Tashi was flushed and florid and tamping her thighs tighter together and she wanted you both to put your hands on her.

Her arm slunk across the centre console to press her palm into his chest. And she ran her nails along the tender skin of your inner arm. And Art looked back at you like he was asking for permission, which was the first time in a long time he’d done that. And probably the last time since. And you don’t know why you nodded, but you did.

He gave you another strange, cursory kiss on the corner of your mouth, then leaned across the centre console and nipped at Tashi’s earlobe. The whetted burst of pain sent a visible shiver through her bones. She bit her lip and sighed.

“Mrs Donaldson,” he’d murmured, all husky and low. His white buttonup was all sweatrumpled and unfurled. He looked handsome and disheveled like a fallen angel or those illustrations on the covers of erotic paperbacks.

You swallowed, overwhelmed by it all.

You pressed the seam of your lips to the skin where her neck met her shoulder and her lithe fingers encircled your wrist and guided it between her legs.

You and Art are friends—good friends, by now—but sometimes you feel more like business partners. Cofounders of Keeping Tashi Duncan Happy and Okay Inc.

So, when he cannot stomach all the vomit—so, so much fucking vomit—for all his earnest, anguished, tearful trying, he calls you. Because he and his hairtrigger loins can’t help her right now.

And you don’t tease, or berate, or say it should’ve been you.

And he doesn’t protest, or control freak, or remind you it wasn’t you, it was him.

He dips out to stock up on crackers and barley sugar sweets, and you stay with Tashi and stand sentry on emesis duty.

You hadn’t known that any one thing was capable of maiming her this way. Tashi Duncan, your impenetrable infanta. Fast to get up, faster, still, to dry her tears. But this baby is wringing her bone dry. She’s feeble, swollen, and practically debilitated.

You feel her spine shift as she shakes and heaves into the toilet. You hate her like this. At mercy to her bones.

You can’t help the archaic scorn. None of this, none of any of it, would’ve happened, had it been you. But it wasn’t.

You cradle Tashi’s feverish head in the bend of your knee. You thread your knuckles through her sweaty curls. You rub your fingers into her collar, tracing her bones where they have been swallowed by her plummy sallow skin. In college, you used to give each other lymphatic drainage massages.

You’re on Virginia Key Beach with T and her brothers, at the edge of the ocean. You’re, like, fourteen. Tevin’s mouth is a comically fluorescent shade of blue as he topes down a Slurpee. Tre hops over waves. Tre keeps saying the sharks will get you, they’ll smell it, blood in the water, blood in the water and Tevin keeps holding the Slurpee so high that the ultramarine of it obstructs the sun. And Tashi is yelling I’m not even on my fucking period! even though she is red and wet between her thighs, and give it to me, Tev, it’s mine, you took mine! as she reaches and reaches and reaches, unable to grasp what she wants.

There are some women unmoved by such trivialities as their own blood. Eightinch stilettos, eight months in. People will assume Tashi Duncan, pulchritude and powerhouse, to be one of these women.

But you’ll know better.

She’s so good at the tennis, ultimately, because she listens to her blood. She lets it move her. Lets it give her power. She is a mesmerising glass carafe of red.

But when it spills, it pours. When she breaks, she shatters.

Art Donaldson’s child writhes inside her, swills her blood. And you watch.

Patrick takes you home from the hospital. You were planning on sinking into the void of your couch while forking miserably into a whole tray of lasagna by yourself, but you feel bad. You feel guilty and lonely. So you invite him in.

You thunk your stoneware roaster on the granite of your peninsular countertop. He’s sat on a barstool and you’re standing across from him, and he wastes no time tucking in. You nudge at the broiled cheese with your fork.

You’re crying, which he doesn’t mind, but it’s a little distracting while he’s trying to eat, is all. He peers up at you, circumspect, as he chews.

You roll your eyes at him. “Please don’t make me cry alone,” you tell him.

He chews, swallows, licks some pasta from his gums. He rests the fork against the edge of the tray and dusts his hands off.

“I don’t cry,” he says, shrugging like it’s out of his hands. The corner of his mouth quirks up as you fix him with a sullen glare.

“I’ve seen you cry,” you say pointedly, dropping your own silverware.

He shrugs again. “Yeah,” he says, “One time. That was the only time I’ve ever cried. Ever.”

He has this way of saying things like he absolutely means them. This hamfisted sincerity, serrated deadpan. And, when you’re emotional like this, all husked and raw, it’s unfortunately an extremely effective way to make you laugh. His eyes gleam with victory as you duck your head and giggle wetly.

“You feel special?” he smirks.

You roll your eyes again, tears still trickling pools into the tender shadowed skin beneath your eyes. “I feel especially depressed,” you reply thickly.

He flits his eyes back and forth between the both of yours a few times. You’re reminded of the abject tedious torture of sitting through one of Art’s tennis games. “Are you really? Or are you just moping?” he asks you.

You reach into your pocket and pull out your little Effexor prescription vial, rattling it twice, and tossing it his way. It’s a sloppy underhand, but he catches it easily.

“Huh,” he muses, turning it between his fingertips. “That’s why you look so different? I thought you were just putting on sympathy weight.”

Your lips wobble, and your eyes burn and blur again, your throat swelling shut like fucking anaphylactic excoriation, and you catch your face with your hands and cry.

“Don’t be mean right now,” you blubber.

Patrick blinks, sobering with a smart, the humour seeping off his face and replacing itself with an almost comically disturbed frown.

“Okay, okay,” he says, his voice light with a culpable urgency reserved for a triggered, irate straitjacket patient. He reaches over the lasagna, the savoury brume warming his forearms, and he takes your wrists and peels your fingers from your eyes. “Hey, I’m sorry.”

You hiccup breathlessly. Your tears slithering down your cheeks in rills.

“I’m sorry,” says Patrick. He presses his thumbs into your pulsepoints, like he can quash your distress through your radial arteries. “You look hot, okay? Really, you do.”

For his part, he seems genuinely contrite, and utterly concerned, and he probably means it. He is rarely insincere, even when his tongue is in his cheek. But your sulky inner voice says he’s bargaining. How about I quit being an ass and you stop with the ugly crying and I can finish this pasta and hotfoot it out of here? But this is your house. And your pasta. And you think you should get to mourn his exgirlfriend’s womb, if you so choose.

You sob harder, shoulders quavering. His brows raise in quiet alarm when you wrest your arms from his fingers.

You snuffle and swallow. “Please stop,” you moan sadly.

Somewhere between the cake cutting—which walked that revolting, quintessentially Art and Tashi line between sweet and sexy; she daubed some frosting on his nose, he licked it off her finger—and your purloining of a slice or two for your and Patrick’s beachside bitchsesh, the speakers are thumping with ‘I Wanna Be Your Lover’.

Everyone is wasted.

You don’t even mean to, but one of Art’s cousins, who is clearly eking out his fraternity days that have long since started mouldering, keeps ordering you shots from the open bar. And you keep downing them, one after the other. He’s wearing a practically lurid red polo that really errs on the ‘optional’ side of Black Tie Optional, but he has a really charming smile, the light glistering off the white of his teeth as you dance.

And—fuck it—he’s hot. And he’s looking at you like he wants to kiss you in the middle of this dance floor, grinding against you like you’re teenagers at a CYO dance.

The lights are scintillating technicolour and the music is so loud you can feel it in your rib cage and it doesn’t take long for the room to start spinning like the world’s trippiest ferris wheel.

Cody—or Connor, maybe—goes to the bathroom to piss, and you track down the newlyweds on the other side of the room. Tashi’s beautiful eyes, already aglow, light up even more when she sees you.

“Hi, baby!” She kind of has to yell over the music. God, it’s been a while since you’ve seen her let loose like this. Either of them, really. They’re having a great fucking time. The Happy Couple. It makes you feel sick. “You good?”

“I’m fucked up,” you smile blearily, because all of a sudden the room’s spinning has increased in velocity.

You fight the urge to grab for her hand for some fleeting sense of stability. Because, if you do, you’ll tackle her to the ground and kiss her until someone hauls you off.

And her husband’s right there.

“Me too,” says said husband. He is flushed in the face, grinning elatedly, his eyes drunkenly disfocused, Tashi’s glossy, nudepink lip-print on his cheek.

Tashi, as ever, seems appreciably more put-together than Art looks and you feel. All silken and nitid. Art’s holding her with the desperate adoration of someone who knows, in the far far end of his bevvied mind, what you’re thinking right now. You narrow your eyes at him. Then,

“Do you wanna dance?” you ask on a whim.

“Sure,” Art shrugs, a sloppy smile curving on his lips. And by now Tashi’s turned to exchange polite smalltalk with some or other extended family member, so he impishly adds, “Let me ask the missus.”

He and Tashi have a short conversation that you can’t quite hear, and then she’s pulling you in by the wrist to whisper in your ear,

“Don’t let him drink anymore, okay?”

She pecks a kiss onto your cheek before you have time to question this rule, but you know her well enough to know she’s also surreptitiously telling you to slow down. You spitefully nab another shot on your and Art’s way to the dance floor.

Art’s a good dancer. You would certainly not have pegged him as one, if asked. But when he’s twisting and moving his feet and putting his hands on your waist in a halfway facetious impression of a slow dance, you realise it’s true.

“Congratulations, by the way,” you shout when you get close enough to his ear. “Happy for you.”

He winces at your volume, raising his fingers to his ear and laughing and looking at you and shaking his head. “No you’re not.”

Patrick watches you sob for a few more moments before smacking his hand against the counter.

“Let’s make one,” he says, declaratively.

You snivel and sweep some tears away, looking up at him. “What?”

“Let’s make one,” he repeats, more urgently now, “If we make one right now, it’ll show up before the end of the year, and we can still weaponise it. Come on.”

He’s sliding off the stool and reaching across the counter to grab your hand and tow you out of the kitchen.

“Patrick,” you whine in demurral, stumbling after him.

But he pulls you along even harder, making a decisive path toward the hallway. “Come on!” he insists, “I’m serious.”

“You’re broke.”

Which is true. He’s been snipped off from the trust fund, which you’d thought was purely the stuff of Murdochian nightmares. But he whipped out his Chase Mobile app and showed you the negative balance to prove it. He’d rather bum it out than suit up and schmooze. So he’s not spoiled for funds right now, nor is he spoiled for wins, and you aren’t equipped with great confidence in a potential future as his baby mama.

“They’re pissed, they’re not cruel,” he tells you, effectively shoving you into your room and kicking off his shoes. “I’ll be back on the payroll with a kid on the docket, I promise. My mom would love it, actually. My sister just had a hysterectomy, this’ll be like a family miracle. You’ll have the child support of a Kardashian.”

He grabs your head and kisses you sloppily—he tastes like tomatoes—clumsily walking you back into the bed.

You think he’s too old to be fingering you the way he is. Rubbing your clit all clumsy, like a faulty button on an old remote. You’re a little sticky, but not enough for what he plans to do here. He sighs and leans back.

“This isn’t working,” he says, all pensive, sitting back on his heels. It’s a little difficult, though, to take him seriously, when his cock is on the front end of halfmast and still rising.

When Tashi first started seeing him, you remember her barrelling into your room all stiff and saucereyed and clamorous. As though a particularly warhankering pigeon had just been elected president, or an alien society had been discovered in the thick of the Amazon. But no. She held your shoulders and shook them wildly and yelled, I’m telling you, it’s fucking huge!

She made a point to you that she’d never be caught dead gushing about his dick to his face. She said it was important to humble him.

So you want to maintain that tradition.

And, anyway, it’s a big dick, not the cure to cancer. You don’t even know what he needs it all for. It’s probably all he has left. You can’t imagine it even gets him very far.

People have frontiers. Parameters. Limits. To their patience, to their bodies. Patrick used to kill the sprinting drills, back in school. He likes going end to end, reaching those limits. But once you start pissing someone off and/or ramming into their cervix, everything else is probably a nonstarter.

You sit up, drawing your knees to your chest. “Uh, yeah. It isn’t.”

“Well, is there something I can do? Should I act like her? Will that get you going?” He asks, but he doesn’t wait for your answer. He huffs and crosses his arms and imitates Tashi’s angry moue.

And his dick is still hard, harder now, so you splutter into laughter. You laugh really, really hard. Then he guides your legs back open and swipes his fingers between them again.

And he grins and says, “Bingo.”

You got really into Pilates for about a month or two mid last year. You’re starting to think you should have kept at it. Your knees are hooked over his shoulders, the undersides of your thighs pressed to his chest. Your hips ache, but it feels, regrettably, really fucking great otherwise.

It’s eminently uncomfortable, sure. For your part, it hasn’t really occurred to you to let a man fuck you raw. Your lingering childishness still recoils a bit at the very idea. And it feels strange, that gauche drag of skin on skin. You’d need to be really wet for this to be working, and that hilarious necessity makes you wetter in response, and then he’s slipping in and out and fucking you raw and he doesn’t even seem to be trying too hard.

He’s a little relieved. You’re letting this happen and taking it like a champ and your pussy’s deep enough to give him room to work.

So he does. Because he knows how. He knows how to work things from here.

He’s had more sex than you’ve attended pilates classes.

The thought of you, splayed and tensile across a reformer, gets him pretty hot. Very hot, actually, and he can tell because the surface of his skin is bloomed pink, and your fingers blench away from his shoulders like he’s caught aflame.

He knows by now how tremendously warm he runs in these moments. He usually asks about a girl’s AC before things get going.

Should he say that aloud, or will it piss you off?

You probably see your appending to the convoluted list of unfortunate holes to sheathe the great penis of Patrick Zweig as a little beneath you.

This is his chance to remind you that Tashi Duncan doesn’t go back on her word for just any heavy pair of balls.

He angles your hips to get deeper, experimenting with ways to evoke a reaction. He’s working you like you’re paying him.

You’re trying really hard not to say anything too nice about his dick. But he’s plunging hard and fast into you, rolling his hips with all the dexterity of fucking Magic Mike, and—well—you wouldn’t be able to, even if you wanted.

The words you’re saying are not in the dictionary. You’re sweating, panting, tugging a little mercilessly at his hair. Patrick bends your legs and hoists your pelvis. He can’t keep a trainer right now, but some adrenalinefueled strength is allowing him to support your body like it’s nothing. He wasn’t bluffing about you looking hot. He’s groping you all over with the ferocious depravity of a necrophile.

There’s some real blasphemous perversion slipping off his tongue. Ersatz porno shit that should be giving you early onset morning sickness, but he’s going all Daniel Day Lewis with it, and you’re kind of buying it.

Fucking come-slut… fuckin’— fuck… gonna breed you… gonna put a baby in you.

You’re audibly wet. The air around you grows practically mephitic. You’re losing your fucking mind. If this shit falls flat, and he can’t get you pregnant tonight, and you dump and block him and never want to speak to him again, he at least hopes you remember this for a long time.

And—you know what—fuck it if that wasn’t memorable enough, he thinks, feeling his cock twitch as he slooshes molten litres into you. Because he’s pulling out, flipping you over, and hiking up your hips. Maybe this’ll be.

He fucks you, he comes in you. A lot. He needs a second to replenish.

You steal to the kitchen. Your inner thighs are chafed and viscid. You cover the lasagna dish and cache it away, and take a second to scoff at some vapidly controversial Twitter thread. You yelp when you feel his arms around you again, lifting you off the tile and carrying you back to the bedroom.

Patrick’s never really thought too hard about his come. It’s an ancillary deluge. A mess to clean most often. Maybe he’s considered meliorating his diet when someone’s gleaned a taste and gagged.

But right now it’s serving a purpose. And he is, among other things, relieved for that, too. He’s not gonna sit around and mourn this while it happens and ask you if you’d really have his child. He’d rather look you in your beautiful, milky pussy than a gift horse in the mouth.

He refuses to waste a drop of himself. He makes sure to coat your insides with it.

He lies sheathed inside you for many minutes after he comes, gripping your hips harshly to him, groaning like this were the real orgasm.

Afterwards, he holds your knees to his chest and lifts your ass and presses his palm to your cunt as if sealing an entrance, making sure nothing escapes. He’s trying to give his guys a fighting chance.

You were, at first—as in, after two or three rounds—a little amused by this stupid, elaborate routine. Something out of an old maid’s pastel mommy blog. You were amused, and frankly weirded out, by what seemed like a laughable lack of dignity on his part.

Now—now you’re feeling aroused by it. Because being aroused disrupts the dumb ritual and kind of annoys him.

When he is holding your knees up and your cunt twitches, he rolls his eyes.

“You already got off,” he chuckles, shaking his head. He sounds a bit spent, too. He’s usually flaked out by now, in his actual customary postcome routine. “Just stay still for a second.”

The fact that he doesn’t want you to come makes you almost desperately want to. He holds his palm over your cunt but he offers no friction.

The simple touch is enough, though. You can find your own internal rhythm.

Your head falls back against the pillow.

“Oh fuck.”

And maybe you’re being particularly loud and lewd in this moment, while he’s trying to be serious, and get something done. Because you’re still doing this longcon in calling his bluff. You don’t think he knows what he wants.

You don’t want to believe that you two are really so bitter as to start a life out of spleen.

You still don’t know if he knows whether or not he actually likes you.

“What the fuck?” he laughs, “I said don’t.” He squeezes your cunt like he wants to tear flesh from bone, trying to render you still again.

But it only makes you moan louder.

“Oh, fuck, that’s so good,” you mewl indecently, smirking a bit, because you’re joking, but you also sort of mean it, “It feels so good having your come inside me, I can already feel your little fuckass kid crawling around in there. He’ll grow up loving bagels, I just know it.”

These taunts are supposed to disgust him or hurt his feelings or simply turn him off, and Patrick does sort of look like wants to throttle you. Because he’s tired and a little grumpy and he knows you’re not letting him stay the night. But a part of him has always found you funny. So he just ends up getting hard again. Your crude, glib moaning brings him to such a pitch of want that he yanks you into his lap and fucks you roughly, gripping your jaw.

And you grin as he brings your head close. You feel it’s some kind of victory.

Even though you’re just prolonging this dumb, bitter, unfulfilling farce. Making sure there’s more of him inside you.

You two should not be parents.

By the eighth or ninth round, he starts getting conversational.

“I was one of those babies that never shut up,” he tells you, fucking up into you in cowgirl. He grunts and makes a thoughtful face. “Colic? Is that what it’s called? Yeah, I think I was a colicky baby.”

You make a face down at him. “I thought you said you’ve never cried,” you pant, rocking your hips back and forth.

He rolls his eyes again.

“Yeah, obviously I was lying. I cry all the fucking time.”

You consider this, your hips stilling, your palms resting against his hairy hotplate chest.

“Over what?” you ask, “Tashi?”

He blinks, scowling a bit, like he thinks you’re making fun. Then his grips your hips and starts to move you on his dick again. He doesn’t answer. Your pussy feels warm and raw.

Geez, how long have you two been at this?

He asks, absently, about baby names.

“I thought every girl had, like, a whole fucking list of them,” he says, pushing his semen back into your used cunt with his long fingers.

You don’t entertain that presumptuous conversation, but you don’t underestimate his commitment, either.

He’s back the next day, and the next, like clocking into a shift. He brings supplies. Sliced pineapple, fresh honey, ground cinnamon, cough syrup, two boxes of ClearBlue.

“I read acupuncture helps too,” he says.

“Absolutely not,” you say, but you let him feed you baby aspirin while you ride him in reverse on your couch watching Selling Sunset.

He feigns disinterest, but keeps tilting to look past your shoulder whenever the arguments start riling up.

“Ugh, Nicole’s a bitch,” he mutters.

Then he grunts and comes inside you, grasping your hips to sink you down and hold you still.

Her name, for the better or worse part of the first and second trimesters, was actually Stella.

Art’s grandma used to love that Philip Sidney poem, and Pam’s favourite film is Streetcar. It’s just that Tashi got sick of the name, and all other things, at a stage. So it didn’t stick.

They were oscillating between Lily and Rooney towards the end, and only made the final call when they saw her.

But, for a while there, she was Stella.

Stella’s craving peanuts, Stella’s the size of a rutabaga, Stella’s a kicker. And, boy, was she.

She’d ram her foetal feet into Tashi’s ribs over and over like she was on a treadmill. Which Tashi was starting to think of as karmic consequence for all the times she’d have Art doing cardio until he fainted.

You crouch down between her knees, resting your head against the amorphous motion of her distended stomach.

“Hey hey, Stella girl,” you whisper, “You wanna stop giving your mom a hard time?”

Tashi chokes out a wounded laugh from above you.

“That’s how Art talks to her.”

“Ugh, don’t ruin it,” you frown, moving to stand up.

But she sticks her leg out to halt you, grabbing your hand and tugging you back down, shifting her hips and spreading her thighs further apart.

You never could resist her sweet face when it was all crumpled up in asking. Because she got all soft and wet, like a flower caught in a gale.

She looks even softer now, over the horizon of her bloated body.

You gently tug her cotton shorts down and put your mouth on her and Stella stills.

“One more,” you say anxiously, eyebrows knitted in concern as Patrick sighs and unboxes a another pregnancy test—the fifth one—and you quaff down another glass of water to get your bladder teeming, because no way.

No way, right?

You’ve been taking him raw at all angles, and swigging shots of cough syrup, and weaning off the antidepressants, but no way.

“I don’t know what you thought was gonna happen,” he calls from beyond the bathroom door as you’re pissing on stick number six.

It’s just that you don’t feel anything.

You think you should be feeling more.

You think of Tashi, writhing and groaning like a bullet victim, miserably clutching her turgid body. You think of newborn Lily, her cottonsoft, tiny eye peeling open and seeing you. Deep steeped coffee, gleaming in the sterile light. Tashi’s eye. Tashi’s hair. Tashi’s baby. That tender absorption, that vivid creation.

If this kid is taking nothing from you, it’s gonna come out all Patrick. And—just—you don’t have the bandwidth to contend with such a prospect right now.

He drives you to the clinic every time. Every single time. One night, you rouse sharply from a morbid dream punctuated by the squall of wailing children. You call him. It’s 2 AM. He answers, and comes over, and drives you to the clinic, and tries not to nod off as you’re filling out the medical paperwork for the dozenth time. He also tries not to express any overt reaction to you changing your mind again.

Is it a kindness, to tease a man with the brutal decimation of his unborn progeny? No, of course not. His mum’s already preemptively enrolled the thing into a fancy German daycare.

But you hate that he’s given you an ultimatum and put it inside you. That’s the worst place, in relation to you, for an ultimatum to be.

If you tell Tashi, either he’s in, or you’re out. And those aren’t really odds you’re keen on rolling.

There are all sorts of ways to be a shitty friend. You opt for evasive gambits via claims of hectic work schedules and immovable errands. Any retching you do is that of guilt. You’re loathe to lie to her, to house this wretched zygote, to stay away. But she used to be able to tell when you’d changed your shampoo. She’d sniff him on you, in you, in a second. She’d just know. And she shouldn’t. She can’t. And if you could just unearth this presentient betrayal and toss it in a petri dish, she doesn’t have to.

You don’t know what matters more.

He drives you to the clinic. Teary teenaged girls, redcapped pickets out front. The receptionist knows you two by name by now.

Patrick slumps beside you. He’s still slogging through the first chapter of Last Child in the Woods. He’s pretty sure he’s never sat and read an actual, physical book to completion before in his life. But he’s too easily abstracted for Audible. So he’s working on it.

You’re groaning frustratedly and thunking the clipboard repeatedly against your skull. He absently slips a hand over your forehead, shielding the next few collisions before you huff and drop the board and turn to face him. He looks at you askance.

“You can change your mind,” he shrugs. Again, he generously omits.

You scoff at him, incredulous and a little irked. “I’m not gonna change my mind,” you grumble.

He shrugs again. “Okay.”

He knows what it’s like to have a mother in sackcloth and ashes. To be less of a son than a sentient thing of regret with little arms and legs. To not know what to do with that, or yourself. He wouldn’t do that to a kid.

You watch him thumb through Richard Louv for a few more moments.

Then, “You’re probably sick of me, aren’t you?”

He smiles a bit before schooling it stoic, slowly lowering the book and fixing you with this wry but incongruously tender look. “Of course I am,” he tells you.

“Get mad at me, then.”

He smiles again.

He knows what that’s like, too. Dad mad at mom. Stilted five course dinner. Dad telling him and Saskia what a goddamn headache mom is on the drive to school. Of course he’s sick of you, he’s always sick of you. But he likes you. And his head feels fine.

He turns back to the book, shrugging.

“Can’t,” he says simply.

You feel for baby Lily. She’ll never be able to get away with anything.

It’s Art who sniffs it on you, in you.

Tashi’s asleep upstairs when, after a fortnight and a bit, you rally up the guts to come over. Art opens the door and looks surprised for mere moments, and there is perhaps a flicker of concern, but then he smiles. And there’s only very mild ire there. The rest is fatigue and goodnature.

“Hello, stranger,” he smirks, turning to filch a set of keys from the marble catchall in the foyer. He is wheeling Lily out in the thirteenhundred dollar stroller he had lost six nights of sleep picking out. “You coming?”

So now you’re on a walk.

Lily lays on her soft belly in the stroller. The walls around her are a breathable mesh, and she fights to hoist her head and gawp at passing trees. This is, apparently, the only way she’ll do tummy time.

“And the only time she gets any sleep,” Art adds, jutting a finger over his shoulder in the general direction of their home down the street.

Lily’s wearing a ruffly lavender romper. Her skin is a healthy shade of linen and her hair is dark. Her fists have tiny moony fingernails that—when you comment how, Her nails are long. Like, sharp—Art explains how he keeps trying to cut them with a pair of tiny silver scissors. But they make Tashi nervous, their sharpness and its proximity to Lily’s fleshy hands.

“She said she wants her to get a grip on the world,” Art chuckles.

You snort, and you have to skip a bit to keep up with his brisk strides. “Oh, that’s definitely what she said,” you confirm.

Lily tosses and turns a bit in the strollerbed. She gurgles an impressive spit bubble, by Art’s standards. Most things she does are probably impressive to him, quite frankly. He tells you how, the other morning, she had thrown up breakfast onto his shoulder with such verve and accuracy that they’re already talking tennis lessons.

“Oh God,” you grimace. Not at the story, but at the memory of his nauseous pallor in the throes of Tashi’s own gravid sickness. “How’s that been for you?”

Art flashes a selfdeprecating simper. “I’m managing.”

When she casts her little coral taglet security blanket curbside, Lily scrunches up her face, grasping, gearing up for the Big Scream. Art sighs and says, “No, please?” as he stops to pick it up and give it back to her, and his arm, when he sticks it in, blooms with little ruddy strings as she claws at him.

He looks more than a little surprised she isn’t crying.

Apparently, in that meantime, you had jutted your fingers into the cot and offered her a pinky as a peace offering. Versailles-style, like you’ll be punished later.

But he seems content with how she’s chewing you and figures you guys can stop here, for a bit, beneath these treemottled springtime sunbeams. In the garden of the home in front of which you’re standing, huge orange bougainvillea loll their petaltongues in the breeze.

“I just…” Art flounders for his words, then scoffs a not unkind, but vaguely embittered, sort of laugh, shutting his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose. “Why him?”

You groan. “Don’t ask.”

“How is he?”

“He’s—” you waver, then shake your head, before finishing, “Ugh.”

“Patrick’s ‘ugh’? Patrick? Wow. Should we call all the outlets? I mean, that’s never happened before. Patrick. Ugh. You’re blowing my mind.”

You snort, and Lily laughs, and Art informs you that that is a very hard reaction to glean. And he rubs his temples, because all the wails sort of tremor at that same migrainous pitch. No matter if they’re amused or rabidly apoplectic. But you can enjoy it, the laughter.

“Can you just tell her for me?” you frown helplessly up at him.

That flicker in his tired eyes that wants to agree is purely paternal, but he sighs and shakes his head. “You know I can’t.”

He’s genuinely sympathetic.

“She’ll forgive you,” he tells you. You roll your eyes and hang your head, kicking piteously at the wheel of the stroller. He intercepts your foot with his, lightly shoving it away before bending to search for your gaze. “Hey,” he says, “She really will.”

You huff. “She’s never had to.”

You instinctively press your fingers into your womb, through your shirt. You feel the strange sensation of something starting to swell beneath the flesh.

“You’ll be a good mom,” says Art.

It’s a small relief, for you, to feel your face screw into its shut-the-fuck-up-Art expression. It’s something you know how to feel, a well trodden path. Maybe, once they drop you like a bad habit, he’ll still send you those furtive pictures he likes to take of Tashi sleeping. And you and Patrick can dualmasturbate to them, pretending your swollen belly isn’t in the way.

What you like about them, all three of them, is that they have all always loved you so simply. Tashi is severe, and Patrick is flippant, and Art is occasionally insincere. But they each care about you, to varying degrees, in their own ways. And they do so without reservation, even when you’ve been an ass.

You think that’s how you’re supposed to love your child.

You should probably figure out how he does it in the next five to ten seconds.

You ask, “What makes you say that?”

And his eyes flick down to where Lily is still gumming your knuckle like a dog with a bone, then back up to you, and he gives you one of those smiles. Your face screws. Shut the fuck up Art. Then, he tells you, “You love harder than you give yourself credit for.”

Lily gags around your pinky.