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#apparently Duck tried three times to med her this morning before he had to give up and go to work
naomiknight-17 · 6 months
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Mom and Duck haven't been able to medicate Pekoe, so I had to drag my ass upstairs to help.
She was under Mom's bed. So I moved the bed - she ran and hid under the guest room bed. Closing the door behind me, I pulled that bed out and reached under it and grabbed Pekoe by the scruff (I KNOW it's not great to do that but she needs her meds dangit) and then pulled her up onto the bed.
Pekoe is terrified of me, so she tends to reach a certain level of absolute horror and freeze up, at which point I was able to hold her still while Mom got the medicine into her
That cat already hated me but at this point she's definitely plotting my demise
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carterashofficial · 5 years
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the one where you don’t know your soulmate until you touch them.
it got long but I have no regrets (feat Arcann and Fiika)
He hadn’t said anything as she was dragged away, screaming about wanting to live, screaming his name. Desperation. It’d happened too fast. Vaylin was there. Father was dead.
And this outlander spy had been kind to him for no reason. She had nothing to gain; there was simply nothing manipulative about her kindness.
The chrono on the wall said it was into the early hours of the morning.
Arcann rolled over onto his side and the cortosis covering of his arm socket dug into his flesh. He couldn’t her out of his head, that little bit of kindness, that hand she’d offered to help him up. Father had been shot down, there were tears of grief and fury staining her cheeks.
Her glove was warm against his hand.
The.... the....
Why was she kind?
He turned onto his back, staring at the canopy over his bed.
Fool. You let her be frozen, you didn’t keep you promise to give her whatever she wanted.
She’s alive, in carbonite. Alive.
Is living as a prisoner, unaware of time or yourself, really living? Fool.
Arguing with himself was getting him nowhere. Just conflicted emotions and guilt that, despite everything he’d tried, he couldn’t stamp out. Arcann rose and dressed. If he owed that Imperial spy anything, it would be making sure she was alive. Just... to satisfy himself.
He kneaded his forehead, trying to will the headache away. Izak take the socialites, all of them. Indo Zal was tolerable, at best, but the others... He lacked the patience to suffer through their selfish ploys.
“They think they hold power,” Arcann continued. “Vanity is not power. You understand what power truly is, to change the galaxy with a choice. Your files. They detailed your work to stop Father... He was referred to as Vitiate. He consumed your homeworld.”
Fiika Allos’ carbonite figure didn’t talk back. She never talked back; not for the three years he’d been secretly visiting the trophy room just to speak and vent and think things out aloud to her. Vaylin wouldn’t understand his annoyances; nor would her solutions be... peaceful. But Fiika, the girl who’d been kind once, who he still felt guilt over.
Arcann sighed. It’d been too long. Melting her out now would just... she would hate him. three years, she’d been frozen and the galaxy had changed. He didn’t wish to consider what she would think of him. How she had made a mistake with her kindness; he deserved nothing; he couldn’t even keep a simple promise.
It would be best to not dwell on it.
He headed towards the door to the lifts, and paused. The Force was singing, telling him to stay back, warning him... ever so faintly. Arcann couldn’t pinpoint the source.
So he left.
Arcann supposed he ought to get up off his couch and get ready for bed, but the feeling in the Force, that something was coming, the foreboding in his gut, wouldn’t leave. If something wasn’t wrong yet, it was about to become very very wrong.
And his mind kept drifting back to Fiika.
He’d only thought about her this much during the first few weeks he’d been Emperor; when his conscience get to the best of him and he had to check on her.
The hand she’d offered to pull him to his feet, the casual kindness about it. How she’d thanked him on his flagship. “I don’t think I would’ve wanted to spend the last bits of my life alone,” she’s admitted thickly.
She was.... sincere. No hidden emotions. Honest. The pure fury and grief when she couldn’t be quelled when Father attempted speaking to her.
What am I thinking?
He shook his head. There were too many things to do tomorrow, and the GEMINI-
The Force surged.
Fiika.
Something was wrong, very very wrong, in the carbonate trophy room.
She ran giggling through the streets, her cousins chasing her. Flimsi lanterns, every color imaginable, swung overhead like acrobats. Fiika ducked under one of the stall tables, around a vat of something that smelled deliciously caramel, and burst out into an alley.
Her cousins’ calls of her name died down, the market fading.
A breeze slipped through her school uniform.
No, that wasn’t right. Fiika frowned down at the red skirt and worn shoes. She was too old for school, and besides, she could afford a new pair of shoes. Mum and Luuko-
Fiika tried to run back into the Ziost market. 
No, no, let that be a nightmare-
Logic told her that this was the nightmare. She was too old for the school uniform, her cousins; Mum, Luuko, Uncle Garo- they had been on Ziost when-
No, no no no no-
The market was empty. The lanterns torn, colorless. No delicious scents; only... nothing.
A fat flake of snow drifted down, leading the charge. More and more slowly tumbled from the heavy clouds. They didn’t stop, not until the whole street was just fields of white, blinding white-
She was too cold. The uniform coat wasn’t meant to keep her warm in a snowstorm, the stockings under her skirt weren’t thermal-
The light was burning through her eyelids-
There was a flash of warmth before the sensation of falling gave way to blackness.
He could feel how cold she was through his sleeve.
Fiika was blue-lipped, eyes rolling around deliriously, clinging to him. Ice was still clumped in her hair, crusted in her eyebrows. The scientists could figure out how the carbonate freezing had failed later.
She was too cold, dangerously cold. 
‘Arcann! I want to live! I WANT TO LIVE!’
Memories of her yells echoed in his mind. He owed her that much. Fiika had to live, she had to survive- Guilt flared up in his chest. Guilt that he could have killed the one person who’d been kind to him, when he wanted more of the kindness he never deserved-
The lift opened and he ran down the corridors. The med-bay would be prepared for her, the doctors would save her, they had to-
This one source of kindness could not die-
A doctor was waiting, cot surrounded by medical droids. Behind them, a kolto tank bubbled away without it’s lid.
Arcann handed her over.
His bare thumb brushed her temple, her skin, and something shifted, something turned whole- Something that Mother used to sing about before she left.
Something he pretended he hadn’t felt, but would analyze later.
That moment was seared into his brain, the- the- He didn’t even know what to call it, but it’d made Fiika his weakness. An obvious weakness, one that even Vaylin could see and tease. She made a point of it, before she left, to remind him that his little crush on Fiika Allos was silly and foolish.
She hadn’t sensed the horrid battle he was raging against himself on the inside.
His flagship would be down within the hour. SCORPIO and the GEMINIs had betrayed him. The Fleet was firing on his flagship, the Gravestone alternating between targets.
Arcann had lost.
Mother and Vaylin and that Jedi Pattik were somewhere dueling, the Sith was fighting his knights-
He could sense her, right outside the bridge door. Arcann flicked the switch to open it.
Fiika, but not Fiika, thundered in. Father’s eyes glowed orange over the rim of the Knight shield, she carried herself as the galaxy would revolve around her. Arrogance was not one of Fiika’s traits, either.
Arcann watched her.
The embers in her eyes flickered as she fought for control.
Do not let him win.
She was screaming for it all to end; the nightmares, reliving Ziost’s fall, his force-damned bloody awful voice in her head.
Fiika was nearing the door to the bridge; eyeing the Knights guarding it-
She was stepping over the Knights, purple lightning arcing off her hands, Valkorian chuckling in her ears-
Get out!
‘I have saved you the effort of fighting these Knights.’
Out of my bloody head you foul louse!
Fiika watched her hands adjust how they held the Knight shield and pike. It felt awkward, but Valkorian was apparently in control-
Bastard!
The bridge door opened and she put full effort into at least holding the shield properly to block a force-thrown anything.
Valkorian’s chuckling halted when Arcann didn’t attack instantly. With that, she had full control of her body back.
Fiika dropped the pike and shield as she broke into a run towards Arcann. “Kill me!”
She’d been expecting him to either not listen, or gladly do as she said. They were enemies, he’d already near-fatally wounded her on Asylum, hunted her across the galaxy, put a bounty the size of a Hutt’s pleasure barge on her head.
Obviously he would want to kill her.
He didn’t even draw his lightsaber.
“No!” Fiika whirled out a dagger and spun at him, trying to goad him into fighting back. Then she could miss a parry, and-
Arcann wasn’t even using his lightsaber. He was dodging her strikes or blocking them.
“KILL ME! KILL VALKORIAN!” She needed the nightmares to end, the pain to end. Valkorian had to die, he had to. And he was in her, so she had to die. He would die, and she would stop seeing Ziost in her dreams. 
Fiika threw her dagger aside and wailed at Arcann. “FIGHT BACK!”
“No.”
“KILL ME, I-” The words were caught in her throat. “I can’t fight him anymore. And if he wins, if he- he- there’ll be another Ziost, and I’ll have to witness the nightmares again and again and again-”
Arcann had gone still, and she took her chance, vision blurry through tears. Fiika lashed out, boot aimed towards his center of gravity-
And he dodged her.
She crumpled to the ground.
Valkorian would win, he would take her body, destroy her soul. More Ziosts, more death, more pain and- and- She couldn’t witness it anymore. Sobs wracked her body. If she didn’t die, if she and Valkorian didn’t die- Fiika couldn’t face another night of seeing Ziost fall.
“Please,” she whispered, voice rough. “Please, I can’t- If you kill me, you kill him. End this, Arcann, please.” 
Arcann was standing over her. His lightsaber had been dislodged from his belt whilst avoiding her clumsy attacked.
Fiika picked it up, thoughts racing too fast through her mind for them to seem coherent. Perhaps it was the sleepless nights. She could always use the lightsaber herself.
He seemed to read her expression, and knelt beside her. “Fiika.”
She swiped at the tears. “Please. To end Valkorian.” And she pressed the lightsaber into his palm, her bare fingers pressed against his.
It was like something smacked her in the chest, something clicked, something became whole and warm, like one of her old childhood scratchy sweaters had been forced onto her soul.
Something that changed everything and nothing.
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mollymauk-teafleak · 7 years
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Okay last one: "We make damn beautiful babies." your modern AU
Hope you like it, sweetie!
-
There were certain words that made Alex’s stomach hurt; they made it tense up and jump and feel oddly hollow, like there was nothing inside him but dry, useless air. It was like he was allergic to a list of very specific words, the sound of them alone like sandpaper on his immune system, taking his legs out from under him and making his eyes burn with tears.
He tried to tell himself that this was perfectly normal. Everyone must have this reaction, it must just be that everyone hid it better than Alex did. He couldn’t be the only eight year old on the planet who had to make a break from the classroom and go hide in the toilets, rocking and hyperventilating, while the other kids were happily constructing their family trees from glitter glue and craft paper. He couldn’t be the only young man who could go from bar to bar, having different one night stands but never being able to bring himself to kiss any of them, who promptly made his excuses and fled if anything beyond the next few hours was mentioned. He couldn’t be the only one whose first language felt a little too heavy on their tongue, who felt eyes staring at him in blank, accusatory judgement whenever he used it. He couldn’t be the only one who felt cold sweat drench him and the lining of his throat thicken at that last scene of that one episode of the Simpsons, Homer staring at the stars in silence after watching his mother drive away. He couldn’t be the only one whose throat went dry at the acrid smell of cigarette smoke, who suddenly felt himself propelled back to being small and scared and counting the tabs in the ashtray on the kitchen table to try and assess if his father had burned through enough to put him in a good mood. It couldn’t just be him.
Because if it was, what did that say about Alex?
So there was a handful of words, an unspoken, deliberately thought around list of words Alex couldn’t stand to hear, that he had to dance around and stumble over. He’d just accepted a long time ago that he would have to adapt to it, limp along as best he could. Those words were closed off to him.
And then he’d met Eliza Schuyler. He’d somehow been brave enough to love her, to tell her, to marry her and now they were starting a family. He’d earned a few of those words back thanks to her.
And one of them, maybe the most important to him was home.
Now home wasn’t a sickening feeling of falling, it wasn’t a lump in his throat that wouldn’t go down no matter how hard he tried to swallow. Now home was a quick journey on the A train, rattling, screeching rails, a short walk through the heights, a flight of stairs where if felt like the building manager added a few more every day while he was at class, just to annoy him, the way the librarians seemed to add a handful more pages to his textbooks to make them heavier. Home was knocking the heavy door open with his hip, dropping his bags carelessly in the short hallway, forgetting them for at least a while. Home was the tiny apartment, feeling instantly small in a way that was a little claustrophobic to most other people but Alex was like a cat, he craved tight spaces and close walls so he could feel safe; cluttered from floor scuffed and covered with rugs to chipped ceiling, piles of books and clothes and mugs from the morning’s hasty breakfast, pictures tacked onto the wall where they had no frames, homemade paintings on the walls to cover the marks, the furniture all pushed close together, the smells of baked sugar and mejorana, warmth and the cool outside air creeping in through the cracks in the windows. And more than anything, home was Eliza. Eliza smiling, Eliza laughing, Eliza teasing the wisps of his hair that escaped his ponytail, Eliza dancing around the kitchen lazily, Eliza leaving little notes in his pockets for him to find in the middle of class when he went searching for a pen to replace the one that had run out of ink in the middle of class. More recently, Eliza vastly pregnant, arms wrapped around her belly like she was hugging whoever was tucked away inside, shaking him awake at three in the morning to feel the restless nudging against her skin, having conversations with her stomach about him in a loud voice he was definitely meant to hear, falling asleep on his shoulder in the evenings and letting the blanket she was embroidering for the baby fall to the floor.
Alex had a home now and it was better than anything he could ever have imagined.
The thought alone made him smile as he made his way back from Friday’s classes. They’d seemed to drag even more with the knowledge that two days of blissful sleep were in front of him, of waking up with Eliza in his arms and not having to disentangle himself, where he could finally finish making notes on the seventh baby book he’d gotten from the library, make more of the honey muffins Eliza had been craving since she’d eaten the last batch he’d made in one night, finish assembling the bookcase for the baby’s room. Still being busy, buzzing with activity and energy the way he liked to be, but on his own terms rather than law school’s. That was as close to relaxing on the weekend as Alex ever got.
He found himself in an inordinately good mood as he practically bounced home, winding his way through the busy, crooked streets, knowing the faster way home in between the bodegas and takeaways and tiny, bustling stores, away from the main streets. Alex took lungfuls of the not exactly fresh, when was the air ever fresh in New York City, but at least cool December air. The autumn this year had been stifling, apparently just to turn his poor pregnant wife into a grumpy raincloud, and he was glad to feel winter was behaving itself, even if it meant he had to burrow closer into his thick, oversized jumper, one of his thrift store finds, and curse himself for still not finding a suitable winter hat.
He ducked into the bodega they favoured, the one that was just a stone’s throw from their apartment, the one that had been keeping them afloat through so many hits of random cravings at odd hours of the morning. They’d barely recognised Alex the first time they’d seen him when he hadn’t rolled out of bed two minutes prior to walking through the doors.
Mimi, the bodega’s cat, came prowling around his legs, seeking scratches behind the ears and tickles under the chin, her low, rumbly purr probably asking where the lovely, soft lady he usually came in with was, the one who would scoop her up and give her cuddles and usually slip her a little treat.
“She’s kind of hibernating these days, hon,” Alex whispered fondly in answer, “Little one’s tiring her out. I’ll tell her you said hi though.”
They had a little list of things they needed, Alex did his mental maths of what they could afford, how much money they had left for the week, what could be sacrificed and what was essential, as he weaved through the aisles, Mimi shadowing his steps. He’d been earning a little here and there, writing articles for student websites, Laurens had got him a few gigs for a pittance that had kept them from the razor’s edge. The aim was just to not have to ask Eliza’s parents for anything, Alex wouldn’t allow that and Eliza agreed, both of them determined to survive off their own backs, prove their point. If he had to go without his meds for a few months, if they had to still sleep on a mattress sans actual bed frame and put on a jumper when they were cold rather than turning the heating on, then so be it.
Alex found them some milk, some bread, a few eggs, some rice and found to his delight that he had enough leftover to buy a bouquet of the slightly limp but still brightly cheerful flowers for Eliza. That would make her smile.  
After a short, friendly conversation in rapid fire Spanish across the counter, a goodbye tummy rub for Mimi and a few more blocks, he was taking the stairs two at a time, feeling the need to see his Betsey grow more and more insistent as he approached their door, as the time until he had her smile back in his life grew shorter.
“Honey, I’m home!” Alex called out brightly, making the same joke he always made.
“Alex!” her voice returned, full of sunshine with only an edge of tiredness, but undeniably delighted to have him home. As much as he tried to do it, as the clouds in his mind whispered to him on his worst days, when he actually opened his eyes and saw and listened he could never doubt that Eliza loved him back, every bit as much as he loved her.
And wasn’t that a wonder.
He genuinely couldn’t find her at first in the press of their apartment, looking at it sometimes was like looking at one of those magic eye pictures where you had to squint in a certain way to bring things to the foreground and see they had been there all along, just out of focus. It was just so busy, clashing patterns and colours that didn’t quite go together, too much stuff in really too small of a space. But that was how they liked it, it just gave it all such a sense of being theirs, put together and lived in and loved by just the two of them. Neither of them had ever really had a space of their own, Eliza living with her family all her life and Alex being shifted from foster home to foster home before escaping to another country entirely, and now that they did and got to share it with the person they loved to boot, it was like all of their excitement at the prospect had had to cram into this tiny, kind of poky, kind of ramshackle but much loved apartment in the heights. There was a reason the instant they’d seen this place, they’d known instantly, with just a bright eyed look passed between them, that this was where they would live.
“Over here!” Eliza laughed, suddenly ducking into his view, appearing from low down, crouched in amongst the little library corner that had long ago spilled from the one bookcase trying to hold all their books to tall, precarious piles growing like a forest from the floor.
“Hey, gorgeous,” Alex smiled, closing the distance between them and dropping to his knees so he could cup her face in his hands, kissing her long and slow and insistant, like they’d been separated for days rather than hours.
“Hey,” Eliza’s face was flushed and her eyes were bright by the time they broke apart and she could reply, “There’s my boy!”
“Here I am,” he chuckled, spreading his hands in kind of a presenting gesture before it sank in what she was doing, “Betsey, sweetheart, I said I’d do this when I got home, you should be sitting down.”
Eliza gave a slight roll of her eyes, letting the books she’d been organising fall from her hands and clunk on the floor, “Busted. Okay, okay, I thought I’d just make a start…”
“Damn right you’re busted,” Alex nodded firmly, helping her up, helping her maneuver her clumsy new shape back over to the musty, sagging couch they’d gotten from a thrift store, where the nest of blankets he’d carefully constructed for her that morning to hide in until he came home, with everything she might possibly need in her reach, lay.
“You going to punish me then?” she sighed, playfully long suffering, though quite happily curling back down into the warmth and softness, even better now she could pull Alex into it all with her.
“Maybe later,” Alex shrugged, kissing her upturned nose, “But for now…” He chose that moment to produce the flowers from the shopping bag with as much of a flourish as he could manage, “Ta da.”
“Oh, Alex!” Her reaction was exactly as he’d hoped, his Betsey had a real fondness for flowers. Their megre little balcony was already overflowing with flora so much so Alex was a little concerned it would give way one of these days and a miniature version of a parade would come crashing down on some poor soul’s head.
“You didn’t have to,” she murmured as she rubbed one of the soft, butter yellow petals between her fingers, enjoying the feel of it, “But thank you, they’re lovely.”
“I thought you’d like them,” Alex shrugged coyly, his face darkened a little, especially after she covered his face with a flurry of quick, soft kisses, every part of him she could reach, “Hey!”
They collapsed into giggles for a little while, the dust and exhaustion of his day rattling from overwhelming class to overwhelming class, telling himself that he had to keep his head above the water because he just didn’t have any other choice, fell away and he felt his chest filled with the humming, warm sensation that he’d learned only Eliza could ever give him. He slid his arms around her middle, happy to note she was at least still wearing pyjamas, nuzzling at her neck, satisfied for a moment to know that this was why he did everything he did. For her, for their baby, for the years ahead of them they had together.
“Can I get you anything? You hungry?” he mumbled against her soft skin.
She shook her head, leaning into his embrace, “I’m fine. Feel like I’m going to burst.”
“Still, you have to eat,” Alex sighed but he wasn’t going to push it. He’d left her with an apple, a banana, three glasses of water on the coffee table and he was appeased to see them all dutifully consumed. He could understand that her appetite was a little off these days, with someone else taking up much of the real estate inside her stomach. He’d insist on it later but for now, he saw no reason to leave the couch.
He studied what she’d made of the other treasures he’d left her as she happily arranged the flowers in a mug on the table. Fortunately the trash can was unused; her nausea had thankfully settled down a lot in the last few weeks, he didn’t know how he’d have made himself leave her all day if she was still miserably throwing up every three hours. Fruit, eaten. Remote in a different place from where he’d set it down, so at least she hadn’t been bored. Phone had moved too, one or both of her sisters must have called or maybe Martha Manning or Dosia Burr. Her embroidery had grown a little more too, that was good to see. Her bookmark had sank a few more chapters deep.
And the baby book he’d left her was still lying exactly where he’d left it for her, spine untouched, the scraps of paper he’d been using to mark certain passages he wanted to reread and get a better handle on, maybe make more notes, stayed regimented in place.
Alex sighed and stretched out his arm, bringing it into his grasp with a few straining fingers, “You get to the last chapter yet?”
“Um, nope,” Eliza hummed, delicately unapologetic, “Not yet.”
Alex smiled in that knowing, crooked way he did that made so many people assume he was an arrogant asshole. Which he was, but not because he smiled that way. For other reasons.
“And why is that?”
“Cos I don’t want to,” Eliza shrugged, burying her face against his neck, still not meeting his eyes.
“Baby, you do realise that it’s happening, right?” Alex huffed gently. He’d been trying to get his wife to read the chapter on childbirth for a fortnight now, she kept evading him, “And this is the best book out of all the one’s I’ve read, it’s really useful.”
“Don’t care,” Eliza said primly, “I’m not thinking about it until I absolutely have to.”
“Eliza…” he chastised gently, though he couldn’t exactly blame her, he’d winced the first time he’d read it too but he’d also learned a hell of a lot, “The more prepared you are, the easier it’ll go….”
“Nope. Nuh huh,” she gently knocked the book out of his hand, back into exile on the coffee table, “I have Martha and I have you. You guys can be prepared, I’ll just…take a back seat.”
Alex snorted, “I don’t think this is the kind of thing you get to take a back seat on really…”
But then Eliza’s lips were back on his own, silencing every other thought in his mind other than christ, she has such soft lips, how does she do that and her perfume smells so good and when they eventually parted with a small sigh from him, she’d somehow won the argument without saying a word. There was no way he was going to keep badgering her about this when there was the promise of more kisses in her playful, triumphant smile.
“We’re not done with this conversation,” Alex mumbled, pulling her down so she could rest her head on his shoulder, winding her arms around him and cuddling him close.
“Won’t matter in a month or so anyway,” Eliza pointed out. As fidgety as the conversation made her, the thought made her smile. She wanted to see the face, the eyes and the smile, that were attached to the gentle nudges and kicks she felt.
“Five weeks and two days,” Alex smiled, letting his eyes drift closed, kissing the top of her head, “And what, about six hours?”
“You know that precisely?” Eliza giggled, squeezing him.
“Countdown on my phone, dude,” Alex chuckled, digging his phone out of his pocket and showing her, it was the very first thing that came up, “Gonna be the best and scariest day of my life, I’m not about to miss it.”
“I’m pretty damn sure I’ll notify you,” she admitted, pressing herself closer to him, “But that is the sweetest damn thing I’ve ever heard in my life. Oh! Oh, you even have the sonogram as your lockscreen.”
“Of course I do,” Alex smiles, blushing a little self consciously, a little happily, “So I can look at it when class and work and everything just…gets to me.”
Eliza felt her heart ache a little, feeling Alex’s pain in turn with her own, simultaneously hating that he felt like that when he was out of her reach, when she couldn’t hold him so tight her fingers turned white, but immeasurably thankful that he had something to hang on to and make him feel better. She’d give anything in the world to take away some of her husband’s burdens, the weights he carried around with him that made him look in turns older than he really was and yet somehow painfully young, too young to have seen everything he’d seen. If their baby would start to help heal some of it, she’d thank every god she could name.
“I like looking at it too,” she smiled softly, peering over his shoulder so she could see it, her finger tracing the edges of the odd, fuzzy collection of black and blue and grey shapes that made up their baby as they currently were. Or rather, as they had been a few months ago. They were growing so quickly.
“It’s cute isn’t it?” Alex beamed, “We make damn beautiful kids, Betsey.”
Eliza giggled, “Yep. We make really, really beautiful collections of smudges.” She was joking but she understood exactly what she meant. In that incomprehensible clutter and jangle of absorbed sound, there lay their future. And it really, really was beautiful; there was no other word for it.
The rest of their evening was spent happily curled up together, dozing a little, chatting a little, half watching the back end of last night’s movie, a lot more kissing. Even the short handful of steps felt too long, the three at most from the couch over to the mattress hidden in the pile of blankets and pillows that served as their bed, they’d spend the money to replace the frame on the baby’s crib. But it was soft and it was warm and Alex could hold Eliza from behind, his palm tracing a slow arc across her tight skin to soothe the baby inside back into sleep if they woke in the night.
He could regain every one of those words he’d lost but none of them, not a single one, would ever mean as much to Alex as home.
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