#06 duct taped spine

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Blackwing 602: Chapter 4—A Season 2 Caskett Multi-Chap of Indeterminate Length

Title: Blackwing 602, Chapter 4 WC: 1500  A/N: I guess the saga continues? Chapters 2 and 3 are here on Tumblr. Chapter 1 is on AO3.  If you don’t want to read the first part, all you need to know is that in “A Chill Goes Through Her Veins” (1 x 05), Beckett pockets what turns out to be a very expensive pencil when she’s in Castle’s office. This part is  has advanced to  “Vampire Weekend” (2 x 06)

They’re coming up on Hallowe’en, and that seems fitting. It seems seems like an excuse, but the kind of excuse that’s ok—something that will more or less be a bit of harmless theater for two. 

She finds a box for it. It’s a black, watered-silk contraption with a wide satin ribbon that has some deep violet in it when the light hits it right. The sides of the box fall away when she pulls the ribbon, and then she finds a box to go around that. A proper gift box that just happens to be black, too, and flocked with velvet ravens, because apparently people give Hallowe’en gifts these days? That makes her feel a little strange about the whole endeavor, but she perseveres. 

The problem is when to give it to him, though. The party seems obvious, but the problem is, she’s not at all set on going to to the party. In fact, she’s pretty well set on not going, as everyone gets more and more amped up about it, and the more it seems like it’s going to be the kind of affair that belongs to his other life—the one that doesn’t really have her in it—the less she wants to go. 

But then she egg sits for him. Alexis calls, in real trouble, and he races to the rescue, and she . . . egg sits. She has a running, under-her-breath monologue about the fact that she is absolutely not egg sitting. It’s undermined, though, by the nest she spends a not inconsiderable amount of time constructing out of the cardboard innards of a roll of duct tape and the superior men’s room toilet paper she has to sneak in to steal.

He calls her, late and subdued, ostensibly to ask after Feggin, but really to tell her about Alexis’s friend. He downplays it. He forces some bluster into his tone, but she can tell it was harrowing. She can tell he’ll be forever haunted by all the things he simply won’t be able to protect his daughter from. 

She remembers that he is more than he pretends to be, and more than she pretends to think he is. And thanks, in part, to Feggin, she thinks she’s being silly about the party. She thinks it might be a little about the life he has without her in it, but it’ll also be about Lanie and the boys and she can maybe just leave the box mysteriously in the middle of his desk, in sight of the four figures’ worth of pencils she didn’t steal. She thinks stealth, rather than a flourish, might just be what the situation needed all along. 

And then he gets her—he gets her—with that stupid, on-the-fly story about the little boy washing up on the beach. He gets her with the housekeeper’s son, and everything she loves about the book enough that the spine come to rest on her thighs and cracks open to that particular spot is now what she hate, hate, hates him for. So, clearly, she has to go to the damned party to get him back. 

So she goes to the damned party and she kind of gets him back. And the party itself is s almost not at all about the life he has that doesn’t have her in it. He is a goofy, hovering, attentive host. The decorations are over the top and must have cost the equivalent of a hundred pencils. There are theatrical skulls under glass domes and enough dry ice to keep a wave of sinister-looking fog rolling off the cauldron of punch all night. That—the grandeur and the cash he must have dropped on it all is inclined to make her squirm, but then there’s the fact that the food is absolutely silly. 

It’s eyeball this and entrail that. It’s spider web cotton candy from an actual carnival cart and mini corn dogs done up to look like bloody severed fingers. It has all the panache of a Hallowe’en-themed middle school mixer, and the whole thing is almost entirely about the part of his life she is very much in, and it’s fun. The party is a lot of fun, and she almost forgets about the box in her coat pocket. 

She does forget about it until she finally goes in search of said coat. She’s been meaning to leave for a while now, and he’s said he’ll get the coat for her two or three times, never to return with it. She thinks he’s stalling. Warmth comes into her cheeks, because it definitely seems like he’s stalling to keep her there, and some small part of her would like to give in. 

Some small part of her would like to linger and bicker with him as she helps clean up. It wonders if he’d offer her a nightcap—or maybe make her a late-night coffee in the fancy machine he quite obviously must have tucked away to make room for punch bowls and party plates tonight. 

But the larger part of her has an early morning, The larger part of her knows she’s probably lived dangerously enough for one night and it’s not a good idea to hang around until the other guests have gone, until Martha and Alexis have drifted upstairs.

The larger part of her wins out. It goes in search of her coat, though that, as it turns out, is no mean feat.  

“On the bed, honey,” Martha says absently when Kate taps her apologetically on the shoulder. She’s deep in conversation with Ryan about God knows what. “Richard’s bed,” she adds, gesturing vaguely with her cigarette holder. 

Kate feels a flush creep along her skin to pain the vee of skin above her black top. She can’t very well march into his bedroom in search of her coat. And what’s a millionaire doing piling coats up on his bed like his mom’s out of town and he’s throwing a kegger? 

She’s annoyed with him. The larger part of her is definitely annoyed, and even the smaller part of her that was flattered at the idea he might be stalling is coming around. Irritation makes her impulsive. She decides that she not only can march into his bedroom, it’s imperative that she does it and calls his bluff. 

She threads her way through the thinning crowd and heads for the gap in the bookcases that leads to his office. The door sits most of the way open. She pauses with her hand splayed against the brushed stainless edging as though the point of contact can help refresh her memory of the layout—desk straight ahead, wall of windows to the left, a matching door to what must be his bedroom off to the right. 

She takes a breath, steels herself, and strides, shoulder first, into the murky light filtering in from the street. She strides, shoulder first right into him. 

“Kate!” His hands reflexively come up to steady her. Something slithers to the floor. A mortified glance informs her that it’s her coat. “You must have—“ 

“I was looking for—“ 

They’re babbling over one another. They stoop at exactly the same moment and nearly knock heads. He comes up laughing, holding one end of the coat. She comes up embarrassed, holding the other. 

“I’m sorry.” He flaps the sleeve sheepishly. “I told you I’d get this like half an hour ago.” 

“Forty-five minutes,” she blurts, wishing immediately that she hadn’t. “But who’s counting?” 

“You, I guess.” He says it in a genial enough tone, but there’s something a little disappointed—a little guarded, maybe—in the way he looses his hold on the coat. “Sorry you had to come looking for it.” 

“Not a total loss.” She fusses with the coat. She’s working her nerve up or something, working to get back the easy feeling that’s flowed between them almost the whole night. “Got to visit the Bat Cave again.” 

“The Bat Cave!’ He brightens. She sees the memory bloom in him. “The first time you came here.” 

A warm grin spreads across his face. It’s wide and a little dopey, and she knows for certain that it matches the one on her own. She shifts the coat in her arms. She feels the sharp outline of the raven-flocked velvet box in the pocket and knows this is the right moment. She knows she should hand it over with a flourish right now. 

But Lanie has other ideas. Martha and Esposito and Ryan and three or four other people she doesn't really know have other ideas. They’re crowding into the office behind Kate looking for coats, looking for the powder room that’s completely on the other side of the loft, looking to settle a bet. 

He looks at her over the mini-sea of bobbing heads. She looks at him from around Martha’s hat. They share a rueful smile, and the moment is gone.  A/N: A gift block? That’s lame, Brain. Been a long time since I wrote anything where moments connect to moments. Rusty. And dumb, as always. 

[newssplashy]

Paetyn, an impish 1-year-old, has two fathers. One of them gave birth to her.

As traditional notions of gender shift and blur, parents and children like these are redefining the concept of family.

Paetyn’s father Tanner, 25, is a trans man: He was born female but began transitioning to male in his teens and takes the male hormone testosterone.

“I was born a man in a female body,” he said.

His partner and Paetyn’s biological father is David, 35, a gay man.

Their daughter, they agree, is the best thing that ever happened to them.

“She’ll grow up in a very diverse home,” David said. “We surround her with people who are different.”

In addition to their day jobs — David works at an insurance exchange, Tanner at an auto-parts store, a cleaning service and a bar — Paetyn’s fathers are both drag performers at a local club near their home in upstate New York. To protect their privacy, only their first names are being used.

Trans men have conceived on purpose, but Tanner isn’t one of them. In his case, it happened by accident after he missed a few doses of testosterone, and he didn’t suspect he was pregnant until the morning sickness hit. It was a shock, but he and David said that from the start, there was no doubt that they wanted the baby.

“We get to have a child that’s biologically ours, which is an opportunity a lot of people in our community don’t have,” David said.

The first time they saw the fetal heartbeat on ultrasound, they wept.

“I can still see it as clear as day in my head,” David said. “It was a life-changing moment.”

Tanner said, “On the first one, she looked like a little peanut. Next time, boom! It was a baby. You could see the spine and everything. It was so cool. I saw her hands, and it was like, ‘You’ll be a drummer or learn sign language.’ It blew my mind.”

Tanner had to stay off testosterone until the birth, but he had no interest in ever identifying as female again or dressing as a woman.

“Yeah, I’m a pregnant man,” he told friends and acquaintances. “What? I’m pregnant. I’m still a man. You have questions? Come talk to me. You have a problem with it? Don’t be in my life.”

Starting in his teens, Tanner’s transition from female to male had been a series of steps over a number of years. As a child, he was a tomboy who preferred boys as friends and played tackle football. “I always felt different,” he said.

Puberty, and the changes that came with it — especially the developing breasts — were torture. Suddenly, he was no longer allowed to play outside without a shirt. His first bra, a happy rite of passage for most girls, brought him to tears.

He began struggling with anxiety and depression connected to “gender dysphoria,” the sense that his body and outward gender did not match his identity.

“It’s a constant battle,” he said. “Being uncomfortable in your own skin makes for a negative life. You’re suffocating in your own body.”

He felt attracted to girls, but had been brought up to believe that being gay was wrong. Still, he came out as bisexual during his freshman year of high school, and then as what he called a butch lesbian.

During his freshman year in college, he saw a drag king performance for the first time — women performing as men — and thought, “I need to do that.”

He tried it — and sensed he’d found his identity at last. To hide his breasts while performing, he would wrap his chest painfully tight in duct tape.

He began to transition socially — to live as a man, asking friends and family to refer to him as he or him. After a year, he began taking testosterone. Gradually, his voice dropped, facial hair grew in, his periods stopped, his neck and jaw thickened, and his body fat shifted, giving him a more masculine build. It felt right.

“When you transition, you’re free,” he said. “It was the best decision of my life.”

He did not expect to fall in love with a man, but that is exactly what happened with David, a longtime friend — who had not quite envisioned himself with a trans man as a partner.

“David came out of left field,” Tanner said.

Tracing his own path — from bisexual to lesbian, drag king, trans man, gay man, pregnant man — Tanner laughed and said, “I’m literally every letter of LGBTQ.”

David and Tanner have a big network of friends and family — straight, gay, trans and every other possible variation — but both have encountered hostility in their hometown often enough to make them wary.

As his belly expanded into its unmistakable shape, Tanner spent more and more time at home, fearful that out on the street, the sight of a pregnant man would invite trouble. And, he said, “I just didn’t want to be judged.”

When he did go out, he wore an enormous black hoodie of David’s. “That hid it well,” he said.

He had always hated his breasts, even before transitioning, and as they swelled with pregnancy, he wore a tight sports bra to try to conceal them.

“The chest, that was what really messed with my head,” he said.

As fathers to be, they got some of their most enthusiastic congratulations from the drag world — the regulars at the club where both men perform, dancing and lip-syncing, Tanner as a drag king and David as a sassy, 6-foot-tall drag queen in a tight skirt and size 12-wide high heels.

Tanner, fluent in sign language, signs the lyrics as well — Bruno Mars, Michael Jackson and Pentatonix are among his favorites — and has a big following among deaf drag fans.

Apart from home, his only real comfort zone while pregnant was the bar where he and David performed.

At first, Tanner hoped the baby would be a boy.

“I thought it would be easier for me,” he said. “I’m not in tune with being feminine anymore. I’ll have to explain the transition. I don’t want her to feel that being female is a bad thing. ‘Dad used to be a girl. Now he’s not.’ I don’t want her to feel being a girl is wrong and you have to transition to fit in.”

They had one baby shower at a rented cabin and another at the club, with more than 150 guests, who gave so many diapers that Tanner and David didn’t have to buy any for months. They asked for books, as well, and got enough to fill a bookcase.

Being pregnant was difficult. “I didn’t enjoy it,” Tanner said. “I kept to myself.”

In the obstetrician’s waiting room, other patients, especially older women, gave him strange looks.

He spent most of the pregnancy fighting nausea and heartburn and was put on bed rest for the last trimester. Toward the end, he developed pre-eclampsia, a dangerous complication that landed him in the hospital — a man on the maternity floor.

He had pounding headaches and saw spots before his eyes; his blood pressure shot up to 187/111. The only cure for that condition is to deliver the baby.

It was not an easy birth. Doctors began to induce labor on a Friday, and Tanner struggled through labor all weekend. He had an epidural while watching the Super Bowl. It did not work.

On Monday, monitors suddenly showed the baby’s heart rate slowing, and doctors rushed him to the operating room for an emergency cesarean.

“Do you want to cut the cord?” a nurse asked David.

“They gave me scissors, and it felt like cutting a rubber band,” he said. “Then they gave Tanner the baby, and we cried.”

Tanner recalled thinking, ‘This is not real life. It’s some crazy soap opera.’ He felt close to passing out, but struggled to stay conscious. “It was awesome. Happy awesome.”

On the birth certificate, he is identified as Paetyn’s mother, something that he and David hope eventually to have changed so that they are both listed as fathers.

Tanner could not bear to nurse Paetyn: Breasts epitomized the gender he had abandoned. A few months later, he underwent “top surgery” to have them removed.

After Paetyn’s birth, he went back on testosterone.

“Once I started taking my T again after the baby came, it was kind of like a relief, because for me taking it makes me feel like I’m at the level where I should be mentally and emotionally,” he said. “It helps chill me out. I still have anxiety and depression, but not as much.”

They’d like another child. David hopes Tanner will become pregnant again. Some days Tanner likes the idea, and other days not — depending on his body dysphoria. Sometimes he thinks they should adopt.

“It’s what gay and trans people do,” Tanner said. “There are kids that have crap lives, and we could help them.” But he has mixed feelings: He knows couples who started the adoption process, only to have the birth mother take the child back.

“My parents and family and friends have had to transition right along with me,” Tanner said.

Tanner, whose father is a drummer, has taught himself piano, guitar, drums, beat box, French horn, tuba and saxophone. He plays by ear. Music is everything to him, and Paetyn seems born to rock.

At the first note, she is grinning, twitching her hips and waving her arms to the beat. She even manages to dance sitting down.

She’s a smiling, curious, easygoing baby. Her fathers dote on her, scrambling eggs or cooking cereal and mixing it with yogurt for her breakfast. She chugs bottles of formula. When David comes home from his day job, he scoops her up and cuddles her. She grins at his kisses.

“She is so awesome,” he said.

Their lives match those of most families with young children: an exhausting jumble of work, cooking, diaper-changes, endless piles of laundry and the wrangling of baby sitters.

About 65 people joined them to celebrate Paetyn’s first birthday. Her favorite gift was a Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood band set from Tanner’s sister. But a big empty cardboard box was still hard to beat.

What do they imagine for Paetyn?

“I hope she’s independent, has a successful career and an amazing family, and I hope she runs some sort of movement at some point for equality,” David said. “I think she will because of having two gay parents and a dad that had her.”

He also wishes for her to have a better childhood than he had.

And, David said: “I hope she’s a lesbian. Then we won’t have boys coming to the house and we won’t have to worry about her getting pregnant.”

“I hope she’s straight,” Tanner said. “It’s hard, to struggle with coming out, not feeling safe. Anyone in this community, they’re always walking around looking over their shoulder. There are people who will hurt you just because you’re gay or trans. It’s scary. If you’re straight and white in this society, you’re kind of better off. I’m half-black. People would pick on me because of my skin color. I didn’t fit in. I was too dark for the whites and too light to hang out with black kids. So I just made friends with everybody.”

He added, “My hope for her is that she learns to face fears and stare hatred in face and not be intimidated by it. I want her to overcome and not let people bother her. I want her to raise above all of it and prove everyone wrong, and make something of herself.”

“She’ll feel how she feels,” David said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

JACKIE MOLLOY and DENISE GRADY © 2018 The New York Times

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vampire roadtrip <3

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einarr..........

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helena

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echolocating vampires :3

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bat before he was bat

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tfw u grew up in ancient times and could only socially transition at the time.jpg

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minecraft

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a child of impatience

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of course he'd relate