#and you know what I AM going to talk about her dead husband's sperm | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

lucreziaq2001 · 11 months ago

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•TV show: "Criminal minds".

•Content warnings: Mentions of a baby who died in his mother's womb around 37 weeks into the pregnancy, his mom going through the whole pregnancy without a partner or spouse by her side (by choice), her having to give birth to her son after having found out he had passed away, her having to leave him at the hospital and go back home, mentions of a baby's funeral, her feelings after the loss of her baby (grief, wanting to isolate from her friends and many others), her accepting to meet her friend's newborn baby, but entering into a delusion in which that child is her son, her baby watching over her from Heaven and praying she'll be okay one day and her finally letting out all her feelings with one of her two closest friends helping her.

•This One Shot is an AU in which JJ and Will's second baby didn't die and was born alive in mid 2011. I named her Margaret because Maggie, the name JJ said she would have given her in the show, is not a full name, it's more of a nickname and it is her nickname here too. Emily also didn't go through the "thing" with Ian Doyle and JJ didn't have to leave her team in this story.

•I know JJ and Will weren't married yet in 2011, but to make things easier for myself, I chose to refer to him as her husband, since that's what many people do in my country with live-in partners, mostly if they have kids together. I hope this doesn't bother you.

•I don't fully know how maternity leave works in the USA, especially for an FBI agent, so I made those details up. If you know more about this, feel free to correct me, though.

•I don't know if Emily was religious in "Criminal minds", but even not religious people say that their dead loved ones are in Heaven, so I used that word around the end of the story.

•Tags: @lex13cm, @golden1u5t, @arabellavernierwrites (who helped me write this a pretty long time ago), @asolitaryrose3, @oneshotnewbie, @whotfskai, @marril96, @babiebom.

Until they'd meet again

On July 5, 2011, her first day back at work after her five-weeks-long leave, when Emily Prentiss walked into the bullpen, the first thing she would have liked to do was scream as loud as she could.

Why?

Well, because not really knowing what to say to her, all her co-workers and friends just asked "Are you alright?".

What Emily would have wanted to say was "No, I'm not! Who the hell would be alright just one month after their baby's death?!?", but to avoid worrying her friends and most of all, knowing they wouldn't have been able to understand what she was going through, what she ended up telling them was just "Yes, I'm okay".

She knew they didn't believe her, also because she wasn't able to look them in the eye while saying that.

Most of them were FBI profilers, after all.

Analyzing human behavior was their job.

None of them pressured her to open up, though, and Emily was partly happy, partly annoyed by that.

Less than half an hour after she had arrived at the office, she was already convinced that the worst part of her day was going to be having to stay at work, around people who didn't know how to talk to her, but shot pity-filled looks at her every few minutes, while all she actually wanted to do was go back home, the only place were she would have been alone, lay in bed and just miss her baby boy.

Her beloved Isaac, whom she had gotten pregnant with thanks to a sperm donor, had died in her womb in late May of that year.

His mother had found out about that on May 28, exactly thirty-eight weeks into her -at least until then- healthy pregnancy.

Hearing her doctor say "I'm so sorry. There is no heartbeat" had been more devastating than anything she had ever been through to Emily, and finding out she still had to deliver her son was even harder.

After two days spent locked up in her apartment, mostly crying and staring mindlessly at the TV, in the late afternoon of May 30, Emily had gone to the hospital to give birth to her much loved and wanted little boy.

The next morning, at 10:40 am, Isaac William Prentiss had come into the world, lifeless, but still perfect in his mother's eyes.

For the next two days, Emily held him every second she could, trying to memorize every single one of his features, talking and singing to him and taking more pictures than she could have counted.

Then, the time had come to say goodbye, and leaving Isaac to the nurses while she went back home was one more heartbreak for her to deal with.

For almost five whole weeks, she stayed cooped up in her house, only going out on the day of Isaac's funeral and one evening because her friend Penelope had basically forced her to go out with her.

That night, Emily had just wanted to go home as soon as possible, but on her first day back at work, in spite of her still very present heartbreak, she craved nothing more than to have normalcy and a healthy routine again.

That was why, although it had only been a little over a month since her son had passed and she would have had the right to three more weeks of paid leave, she had insisted on returning to the bureau.

There, however, everyone was tip-toeing around her, going the extra mile to make sure everything within their job maintained some sense of balance.

The team was trying their hardest to provide stability to the grieving mother Emily now was.

The next day, however, their friend and co-worker JJ, who had given birth to her daughter Margaret just three weeks prior, had decided to come see them.

She hadn't brought the baby with her, but she knew she was going to have to bring her up at some point.

Everyone else on the team had already been to her house to meet little Margaret for the first time, and JJ was now nauseous at the idea of having to find a way to invite Emily's freshly broken heart.

"Emily" she said, tapping softly on the door to her friend's office "Can I talk to you real quick before I go back home?".

Hardly looking up from her papers, Emily nodded and just responded with "Of course".

JJ timidly entered the room, still unsure of how to say what she wanted to tell the older woman.

"I thought now would be a good time to talk to you about this. As you know, I just had a baby. If you refuse, I understand. I want you to do what's best for you now. Don’t feel pressured or think that you somehow have to spare my feelings in any way-" she started to explain, but Emily soon interrupted her.

"JJ" she told her "You can ask the question".

JJ swallowed intensely.

"Would you like to meet my daughter?" she then asked.

Even though she had given her friend permission to ask her that, when she heard those words, Emily felt like she had just been punched in the stomach.

She tried to hide the fact that that question had knocked the wind out of her, but even a brief mention of a baby was enough to send her back into the pit of despair she was actively trying to claw her way out of.

"I can’t wait" she still forced herself to say, giving JJ a half-fake smile.

She was genuinely happy for her, but also fighting a losing battle inside.

The idea of her friend's new baby stormed up inside Emily.

She remembered what it felt like to hold her little one for the first time, his soft skin, his tiny fingers and toes and his impossibly long eyelashes.

He was perfect, but no screams had come from him.

Unlike all the other babies there that day, he hadn't been born alive.

So much of Emily was happy that JJ was getting to experience becoming the mother of an alive baby for the second time.

One of the most precious things life could offer was in the palms of her friend's hands.

But still, heartache consumed her.

She was devastated that there was still so much life and beauty in the world, when she had just had to experience a death so earth-shattering.

The idea of meeting JJ's baby made Emily's heart race, but still, she agreed to do it, and a few hours later, there she was, sitting on JJ's couch, an evening full of homecooked meals and genuine conversation leading her up to that point.

"Here she is, Auntie Emily" JJ told her with a smile on her face, placing her baby girl into Emily's protective arms.

The older woman's first reaction to that was a chuckle of disbelief she just couldn't hold in.

Her mind twisted at the memory of her own sweet baby, the one that she had been grieving so violently over.

She wasn’t sure what it was, motherly hormones or just pure reality-distorting heartbreak, but she felt like she was holding her late son.

That thought poisoned her mind, the maternal instinct pumping through her veins, her heart intertwining with the one of the baby in her arms.

"She’s perfect" Emily whispered, overcome with emotion.

"She is, isn’t she?" JJ replied with a smile on her face, taking a seat in a chair across the room, keeping an affectionate eye on the two of them.

"You're just the sweetest thing, aren’t you?" Emily then cooed, completely enamored with the infant in her arms.

She felt like she was getting sucked deeper into the sickening hole of motherly grief.

She didn’t feel real anymore and to her, the baby she was holding wasn't JJ's daughter.

It was her son.

Her innocent child she should have protected from all things evil in the world.

Now she had a second chance, and anyone and anything that would have even tried to harm that baby would have died at her hands before being able to come near the child.

"You just need someone to keep your little heart safe, sweet boy" she cooed as she stroked the baby's big, round cheeks with love "You need your mommy to keep you safe".

By that point, JJ had become weary of her friend's behavior, since she had witnessed a shift behind her grieving eyes.

"Will, how about you go upstairs to see if Henry is sleeping?" she decided to tell her husband, mostly wishing to salvage the image of her co-worker, not wanting anyone else to have to witness what she pretty much knew was coming.

"I can protect you, my son" Emily then promised, still looking at the baby with so much love in her eyes "As your mommy, I swear I won’t let anything ever hurt you".

"I think it’s time she goes back to bed, Honey" JJ tried to tell her, wanting to get her baby back into the hands of someone with a more present mind.

"I can’t" Emily replied, her eyes filling up with tears "I can’t have my baby taken from me again".

"Don’t you want us to have our baby back?" Will, who had come back downstairs by that time attempted to ask her.

As a response, however, Emily shook her head.

"No, he is mine!" she then exclaimed "I have to protect my baby!".

"Come on, she needs some rest" JJ told her, gently rubbing her back.

Suddenly, Emily’s brain felt like it could have exploded.

It was so full of heartbreak, confusion and despair.

The thoughts that had been racing through her mind for weeks pounded on the walls of her skull, desperate for an escape from the pain that brewed in her mind.

She just wanted something she could hold on to, something that she could have a second chance at, something that would stay alive.

"No, I can’t" Emily told her, tears streaming down her face by that time.

All the sternness in her voice had disappeared and there was nothing in her tone except pure defeat.

That was when JJ knew she wasn’t just talking about the baby.

She was talking about everything she had experienced since the day she had found out Isaac had passed away.

Everything that had swept her off her feet in the tornado of losing a child.

She couldn’t do it any more.

She couldn’t live with that missing piece in her life.

She couldn’t plaster on a smile and show up to work like she hadn't just lost the person she loved the most.

JJ was careful, removing her baby from Emily’s arms and quickly giving her to her husband, who took her upstairs to give the two women a moment alone.

"I can't do this" Emily sobbed, her figure collapsing entirely against her friend.

Her body heaved violently as everything that had been building up was let go.

The excruciating experience of losing her baby boy had broken her.

Maybe one day there would have been a way out of all the pain she was experiencing, but at that moment, everything around her seemed dark and the only good things were JJ's arms around her and the fact that in a way, she still had her baby boy in her life.

He was watching her from Heaven, loving on his mommy and praying for her to be able to find peace and the strenght to wait until they were meant to meet again.

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stesierra · 1 year ago

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Find the Word tag!

Tagged by @yesireadbooks. The words are: Space, Down, Special and Cry. I'm drawing from Court Phoenix.

I'll tag @mysticstarlightduck and @avrablake. Your words are cancer, death, knife and sweet.

Space AND down

I sat upon my stool for hours, watching the lordly skitter up to the throne like shorebirds in little flocks of three or four. They kept their distance and threw themselves down on the floor. I’d been rude without realizing it, if that was how you were supposed to greet the sagan. Perhaps he had overlooked my impertinence because of the firebird in my arms. Now she perched upon my legs as if I were a throne. At least she didn't sink her ivory talons into me. A real eagle would have.

Sitting there with nothing to do grew tedious, and my head hurt so badly and my muscles ached so fiercely that it was all I could focus on. I was close enough to the sagan to overhear his conversations, but my misery left no room for curiousity.

No room, that is, until Chujulan arrived. She walked in that empty space every else left alone, a sword girded at her hip. She crossed that undrawn line. And her bow to the sagan was a dip of her torso. No more.

The sagan beckoned her closer. When she stood close enough to touch, he said, “Chujulan. How fares our city?”

She said, “She is well. The herd is fleet, the ferd is strong, and her people are not hungry. You summoned me, Father? The ferd awaits your command.”

“I have no need of the ferd tonight. My commands are for you alone.”

She nodded. “Speak them, and they will be done.”

He steepled his fingers on his lap. “I wish you to go and speak with the Judge in my name. That is my will.”

“Of course, Father. What has Behil done now?”

“She has been quiet as of late. I am curious about her reasons. She sends me innocent letters, but no has seen her except the prisoners delivered to her.”

Chujulan planted her feet and squared her shoulders. “And she’s the last thing they see. I will see to it tonight.”

“Learn why she has secluded herself. And bring me answers.” He dismissed her with a wave of his hand, earning another bow from his daughter.

She strode away, her back stiff, but before she could vanish out into the hall, she noticed me sitting with Hes on my lap. A moment later, she stood over me, hands on her hips. She murmured, “There you are. On display, I see.”

Special

When she stopped in front of me, hands set again on her hips, she said, “You’re an elemental child.”

I bristled. “I’m an adult woman. Isn’t that why you tried to recruit me?”

Her humorless smile stung me. “Adult, yes. But you’re an elemental child.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.” The term was unfamiliar.

“A fireling? Born when one of your village men spills his sperm on dying embers?”

I stared at her. “That's not how it works. At all.”

“Found swaddled in ashes after a widow hurls herself onto her husband's pyre?”

“We bury our dead.” And my mother and father were alive and hated me.

She pinched her chin between thumb and forefinger. “I don’t know much about it, I admit. No one has seen one of your kind in a very long time. The landbound claim they hide you from us, but I know scholars who insist that elemental children don't exist outside of the imagination of bored farmers.”

I hugged Hes closer. “Do you believe them?”

A royal eyebrow lifted. “You are currently on fire.”

I glanced down at my ruined clothes and the pleased fledgling igniting them. I admitted, “That’s happened a lot more since Hes showed up.”

“I imagine so. Well, at Skyfire we will have to commission some fireproof clothing.” She nodded once, as if this was easily done.

“Some of your scholars must believe in us, or you wouldn't know what I am.”

She shrugged. “Well, the legends are inconsistent, especially in regards to how you come about. The worst I've heard says your sort are demons.”

“Demons,” I echoed.

“Mmhm. You hide as humans to trick women into wedding you and giving birth to more of your kind.”

“I'm a woman.” Even if I wedded another girl, there would be no pregnancy.

Her eyes crinkled up, and for a moment she could've been any of my older cousins. “So you say.”

“I am a woman.”

She smirked. “Another story says that once upon a time, your ancestors bedded monsters, and their taint sleeps in your blood and wakes every seventh generation.”

“Why seven?”

“It's just what everyone says.”

“Everyone in the city seems to say a lot of stupid things.”

She laughed at me. “If it's better, another claims you're all godlings.”

“It's not better.” Spirits and ghosts were everywhere, all fishers knew that. But none of us were very big on this idea of gods.

She continued, “When you landbound fall on hard times, you pray for food and good weather. And the gods grant it, but only if you agree to raise their bastard offspring.”

This was ridiculous. “First, my parents aren't gods.” Just very, very disappointed in me.

“Not your human ones, of course. The stories are clear.”

“None of them.”

“And second?”

I hadn't actually formulated a second complaint. I bit my lip, staring at the back of Hes' head.

Somehow, the princess’s voice didn't sound mocking. “Are none of those stories even a little right?”

“Not yet,” I said, still stung.

Chujulan's lips pursed, and her arms fell loose at her sides. Then she said, “My mother used to tell me, when she tucked me into bed, of little landbound boys and girls who were born magic.”

Her mother, the empress? I was intrigued in spite of myself. “Did she?”

“She said it was a gift, given when an element falls in love.”

“With who?”

“Perhaps a brave and clever woman. Perhaps a kind and beautiful man. I suspect fire and water would have very different loves.”

I carded my hands through Hes' contour feathers. “That's sweet, princess, but I was born like this. I think we all are.”

Chujulan said, “Of course. It's a blessing, not a courting gift. Fire cannot sire or birth a baby, but it can leave a kiss upon its brow. One of your parents must be very special, indeed.”

I thought of Father, who was clever and kind, nimble with a needle and thread, and always the one to tend the fire. It wasn't what my people believed, but I could see it. It would be easy to fall in love with Father. The thought, and the knowledge that I was leaving without his blessing, hurt. “That doesn’t sound like a city story.”

“It’s not. My mother doesn’t know any.”

Cry

When we reached the city, the deer-herds helped me get down without losing the vulture. I handed my doe off to them and followed the falconers up the ramp.

At the top, I faltered. I waded through deep water, something dragging my limbs to a crawl. The bird in my arms cringed.

I pushed forward, and the sensation vanished. But sweat lingered at the back of neck. No one else said anything, so I kept my mouth shut. It was just one more weird thing about Skyfire.

The vulture became a lead weight in my shaking arms. My hand cramped from holding its head, but if I let go, it would whip around and gouge my eyes out, and Hes would murder it. She still circled, uttering shrill cries. Jealous brat.

Another hard moment struck as we neared the menagerie. For a second, I swam in sand, drowned in rock, and something stuck my feet to the pavement. The vulture tried to thrash, but I held it in place as I stumbled forward. I told myself I had imagined everything as I caught my breath. Nearby, the palace gleamed, red as the vulture’s blood.

Nergi opened the door for me, and I carried the vulture inside, ignoring Hes’ demanding cries. He told me, “Put it down in that corner. We have surgeons who serve the menagerie. They’ll splint the wing and tend those wounds. By tonight, I’ll have an enclosure ready for it.”

“Thank you,” I said, rubbing my tired eyes.

“Go sleep,” he advised. “And get your phoenix under control.”

Easier said than done, I thought. But as I stepped out onto the street, she dived from the sky and landed at my feet, crying sadly.

I shook a finger at her. “You’re trouble. How long have you been able to fly? Did you just enjoy making me carry you around?”

She strutted on the pavement, fluttering her wings, and then leapt at me. I caught her and let her climb onto my arm.

“Next time I go on an outing, you’re staying home,” I told her. “That poor vulture.”

She hissed, unrepentant, and took off again. As I walked back to our house, she circled overhead, watching over me.

Tag list for everything

@anonymousfoz

@moremysteriesthantragedies

@elizababie

@sm-writes-chaos

@bellascarousel

@palebdot

@macabremoons

@the-dragon-chronicler

@teacupsandstarlight

@vorskra

@wrenofthewords

@amostdelectablescribbler

@savvy-minnow

@mysticstarlightduck

@phantommill

@gracewritesbooks

@aziz-reads

@owlsandwich

@symbioticsimplicity

@squarebracket-trick

@fishythewriter

@koala2all

Just chapters and snippets

@da-na-hae

#Court Phoenix #tag games

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motownfiction · 4 months ago

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curse

cw: frank discussions of miscarriage and abortion

Steph is sobbing in Sadie Doyle’s lap on a Saturday afternoon.

When she was a teenager, she never expected anything like this to happen. For one thing, technically, she’s Sadie DeLuca now. For another, Sam is dead. And for a third, who would have thought she’d be almost forty and still not married? Still without kids?

Whatever force of nature killed Sam that night really must have had it in for Steph, too.

Earlier this week, Sadie told Steph that before Sam died, he sold samples of his sperm to freeze and donate. He did it to earn money when he was opening up his store. Sadie, as Sam’s next of kin, offered the samples to Steph. She knew how badly she wanted to be a mother, and to have Sam’s children … it felt perfect.

It was perfect.

So perfect that Steph is sure she can’t go through with it now.

“I know it’s hard to imagine having his baby without him,” Sadie says, stroking Steph’s hair over and over. “But he was my twin. I know he’d be thrilled.”

“It’s not that,” Steph says, tears in her throat like she’s a little kid. “It’s … Sadie, I think I have a curse.”

Sadie laughs, a little perplexed.

“A curse?” she asks. “That’s ridiculous. You don’t have a curse. You’re wonderful.”

“You want to think I am. But … Sadie, there’s something I have to tell you.”

“If you’re talking about you and Daniel hooking up between tenth and eleventh grade, I already know about that. I’m not upset. I mean … it’s a little awkward to know just how many women my husband slept with before we started going together, but … we weren’t going together. I had a crush on him, not a claim.”

“It’s not about Daniel. Although I really shouldn’t have done that. To you or to Sam. Why were you so forgiving?”

Sadie shrugs.

“I like to forgive people,” she says. “It’s lighter.”

Steph inhales to keep from sobbing again. She doesn’t deserve Sadie. Neither does the rest of the world, really.

“Not this Christmas, but … the last one,” she begins, “I ran into Charlie. He was with Daniel, and I guess it didn’t go very well.”

“No, it didn’t.”

“Right. Well, Charlie … he looked me up the next night, Sam’s anniversary, and … oh, Sadie, I don’t know why I did it. I mean, I guess I wanted to, but why did I want to?”

Sadie makes a face. Steph can only imagine all the little nuances she must be thinking.

“You slept with Charlie?” she asks, almost like she’s hoping that’s not what it is.

Steph nods.

“I just wanted to feel close to someone,” she says. “You have … I haven’t really been right since Sam and I broke up the first time, and when he was … when I knew there was no way I could ever get together with him again …”

“I know.”

“I got pregnant. I thought … well, I knew I wanted to have it, even if it was Charlie’s. Not so that I could be close to Sam that way, even though I did think about that. But because … I was just ready to love someone who wasn’t myself. It had been too long.”

Sadie looks at her with those kind eyes–the ones Steph doesn’t deserve.

“What happened?” she asks, even though she already knows.

“I miscarried about three months in,” Steph says. “Right around the time I would have started to tell people. And I felt … I felt like that must have been a curse. Like because I … betrayed Sam, or his memory, or whatever I did … well, I must not be allowed to have any baby at all. Ever.”

Sadie shakes her head.

“Steph, listen to me,” she says. “You do not have a curse. Even if you don’t like something you did … you don’t have a curse. You’re a wonderful person. If you want to be a mother, then you will be. No one’s holding your choices over your head like you don’t deserve to be happy.”

“I hope so.”

“Did I ever tell you about my abortion?”

Steph looks up. What? It didn’t seem possible that Sadie Doyle would ever have an abortion–would ever want one. She was so … perfect for being a mother.

“What happened?” Steph asks. “Did somebody hurt you?”

Sadie shakes her head.

“Just a night of risky business,” she jokes. “It was a little after Sam died. Daniel and I were trying so hard to … not get back to normal, but to … make some kind of stability with the lives we had now. If we’d gone through with it and had a fourth baby, I don’t think we could have been the kind of parents we wanted to be. Not at that time.”

Steph nods.

“And you don’t regret it?” she asks. “You don’t feel like you have a curse?”

“Not at all,” Sadie says. “I feel like I’m blessed. The fact that I got to choose what I wanted in a single instance … it made me realize what I wanted in the long term. And I realized that much like with doughnuts, three is enough.”

Steph laughs.

“And that didn’t make you feel … less than,” she says. “You know you still did a good job with your kids, and that … that you always deserved to have them.”

“Of course. No one could have raised these kids like I could. They’re mine. Just like your kid will be yours. They won’t know about the things you regret unless you tell them. They’ll just know that …”

“That what?”

“That they love you.”

Steph tries to smile. It doesn’t quite form yet, but that’s OK. She’s getting there. She doesn’t have a curse.

Not as long as Sadie is here.

#drabble #writeblr #ch: steph armstrong #ch: sadie doyle #year: 2006

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young-dumb-and-vaccinated · 3 years ago

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Cult Girl: Doctorate (Hannibal x Female!Reader) pt. 8

Cult girl and Hannibal go through an exhaustive list of potential adoptive couples.

@wisesandwichshark

Trigger warning: sexual harassment, christianity, discussion of pregnancy and family planning, adoption, murder and cannibalism

Step two: find an adoptive family.

Some would say your list of expectations for potential adoptive parents was too extensive. Impossible for any human to reach. But it was really just the bare minimum.

Regardless of if they were two men, two women, one of each, or a few people, the parents had to be trustworthy. It wasn't easy to earn Hannibal's trust, but he could recognize those who had the capacity to right away. It was a little instinct you had dubbed 'friend or food'.

On paper, the apostolic pastor and his wife of 19 years seemed like the perfect candidates. The adoption agency tried to push them on you, as they had a great track record with adopting from them prior. Three boys, all of which were honors students.

Hannibal insisted on a formal introduction, during which you could conduct a proper, though surreptitious, interview. It was an invitation to dinner.

He invited the couple into his office, where a pot of tea and an interrogation was waiting for them. Then there was you. Barely-pregnant little [F/N], feeling entirely safe so long as your fiancé was beside you.

"You're doing the right thing, y'know." The woman, who introduced herself as Mrs. Landon, said upon meeting you.

"How do you mean?" You asked, already knowing the answer.

"All god's life is precious." She said, placing a hand on your not-even-remotely-showing-yet stomach. "You're walking in obedience to the lord by giving this child a shot at life."

Strike one: bringing up religion unprompted. Strike two: touching me without asking first.

You wanted to swat her hand away, but remembered that patience was a virtue. She and her husband took a seat across from you.

"Y'know," The man began, his mannerisms eerily similar to those of his wife. "I don't usually begin with the god talk, but I think a higher power had to have been involved in the conception of this- well, our child. I'd like to think the good lord brought us together today."

Strike three: already believes he is entitled to my child. You're outta here.

"Don't flatter the adoption agency like that, Jacob." Hannibal chuckled, placing his teacup on the side table.

"I'm serious, Dr. Lecter." Jacob interjected. "Faith and I really do believe that god put us on this earth to prepare his smallest soldiers for the spiritual war."

You shot Hannibal a side glance that said 'can we please just eat them now?'.

The answer was no. Hannibal liked to play with his food.

"And your adult children have all moved out?" He asked.

"That's right." Jacob nodded. "We have plenty of room in our five-bedroom house for the new little slugger to run around in."

"And if it's a girl!" The wife interrupted. "We have enough closet space for all the denim maxi-skirts money could buy."

Strike four: arbitrarily genders the behavior of a nine-week-old embryo.

The man then returned the teacup to the table, not bothering to use the saucer and instead leaving a nasty ring of condensation on the polished mahogany.

"Okay." Hannibal huffed, resignedly rising from his seat. He pulled two hypodermic needles from his back pocket and carefully, subtly stuck them onto the couples' necks. They couldn't even scream.

The tacos al pastor that followed (after a few days of marinating, of course) were exquisite.

The next week brought a new couple to your doorstep. Frank and Angela, they were named. Their claim to fame was that their oldest son played football for one of those big southern party schools. Either Auburn or Alabama. There was hardly a difference.

You sat for what felt like hours listening to the man speak in unintelligible football babble, waiting for him to take a breath. Surprisingly, it was the mom who got him to finally shut up.

"Frank, please." She said with more frustration than this one situation even remotely warranted. Either she had enough intuition to know she was being tested, or she’d spent the last decade putting up with this. Possibly both. "You're boring our hosts to death."

"What? No way! She loves it!" Frank replied, then turned to you. Not to Hannibal, just you. “Aren’t you having a great time, sweetheart?”

Strike one: takes advantage of the female socialization to be passive and polite, allowing himself to take up the most space.

You shook your head. “I hate football.”

His wife looked quite pleased with herself.

“Angie, I just wanted her to know what good breeding her son is going to have.” He said, without a lick of irony or self-awareness. He eyed you up and down and licked his lips. “And it is mutual, I see.”

The room went quiet as everyone tried to determine whether he was serious or if it was just a fucked-up joke. The longer the silence lingered, the more you realized he wasn’t kidding. Angela looked like she wanted to crawl into a hole and die.

“I don’t know what the agency told you, Mr. Wyatt,” Hannibal said, trying not to grit his teeth. “She isn’t a surrogate. She’s already pregnant.”

Frank’s jaw hung dumbly open. “I thought you were looking for a sperm donor? I just-”

“No.” You cut him off, raising your hand and covering your face. “I don’t want to know what you thought.”

“Well, I would!” Angela interjected, righteous fury eclipsing what should have been crippling embarrassment. “What exactly did you think this was, Francis?”

“The file said that he was over fifty, so I just assumed--” Frank rationalized, his voice far too loud for the room. “Y’know? That she wanted a baby that wouldn’t come out all funny-looking?”

“You’re disgusting.” You blurted out.

“Francis Howard Wyatt,” Angela scolded as if she were talking to her son. “You are forty-eight and the only increasing part of your body is your blood pressure. Why on Earth would any woman choose you over her smart, handsome doctor fiancé?”

This made Hannibal sit up a little straighter. He wanted Francis on the butcher’s block yesterday, but he momentarily considered letting Angela live.

“They’re not married?” Frank whispered, or whatever the loud-aggressive-toxic-masculinity version of whispering was. He paused, as the dead hamster on the wheel powering his brain crept back to life. “That actually makes sense.”

Angela loudly smacked her hand against her face. “Dr. Lecter, Ms. [L/N], I am so sorry.”

“It’s quite alright, Mrs. Wyatt.” Hannibal stood up, readying the next batch of needles. “It just makes what I’m about to do easier.”

It took quite a bit of restraint to not make their deaths hurt, but he made up for it when it came time to carve. He had fun running his fittingly small penis through a meat grinder. Not with any intent to cook it, though. Just because.

Hannibal wanted to make Francis Wyatt into the least dignified meal imaginable. You quickly recalled going to a friend’s barbeque in Georgia and encountering a horrendously Southern delicacy known as Frito Pie. You proposed the idea to Hannibal, who, after reviling in abject horror at the notion of eating something out of a bag, agreed that it was the most fitting end. He could spare a few pounds of flesh to grind up and make into chili.

The third week brought yet another couple. They seemed smart enough to realize your invitation wasn't the friendly olive branch the others had interpreted it as. Their healthy skepticism was refreshing, to say the least. Then, you met them: Max and Archie.

"You'll have to forgive my partner's paranoia." Max said upon entering the house. He tugged playfully at Archie's hand. "We watched Get Out recently, so an invitation to the suburbs sounded some alarms in his sleep-deprived brain."

"I love that movie." You chimed in. "It reminds me of my family."

"Oh no." Archie's eyes widened in only half-pretend fear. He shot an I-told-you-so look in his partner's direction.

"But my favorite horror flick has to be Midsommar." You added. "My friends and I saw a midnight screening and we didn't sleep at all that night."

"But have you seen Hereditary?" Archie posited.

"Of course." You shrugged. "Aster is totally genius."

You made more than just polite conversation with the couple. Max, despite his young age, was a skilled data analyst and day trader. He attributed his success to the hard work of his immigrant parents. Archie was an environmental lawyer and land activist. He was also a bit of a thrill junkie, indulging in everything from scary movies to bungee jumping.

It didn't take long to realize that you wouldn't be eating them. They were far too pleasant of company to eat.

"So when is this baby planning to make its entrance?" Archie asked, gesturing to you. "You don’t look all that pregnant to me."

You put your hand over your slightly-protruding stomach. "Late August, I believe. If everything goes according to plan."

"You're not far along at all, aren’t you?" Max observed. "That gives us plenty of time to prove ourselves to you."

"Believe me." You put up your hand. "You're doing a great job so far."

“If you like horror stories, we might have to indulge you in the last two encounters we had.” Hannibal commented, leaning back comfortably in his chair. That was a good sign. “No blood was spilled, thank god. Would have ruined my carpets. But believe me when I tell you it came very close.”

The couple laughed along. Archie leaned in like he was about to tell a life-shattering secret. “You wouldn’t believe the hoops we had to jump through to even have the chance to adopt. And I don’t want to say that it’s because we’re an interracial gay couple, but...”

“Agencies aren’t exactly colorblind.” You finished, via his prompting.

“She gets it.” Archie pointed to you. “See, Maxie? She agrees with me.”

Max pushed his glasses up his nose. “I never said I disagreed.”

You spent the rest of the afternoon waiting for the conversation to take a sharp left turn off a cliff, but it didn’t happen. They were wonderful company; polite, intelligent and articulate. Exactly the kind of people you’d want to see taking care of your child.

You’d have to look for you next meal elsewhere.

#hannibal #hannibal x reader #hannibal x you #hannibal lecter x you #hannibal lecter x reader #hannibal lecter #hannibal nbc #cult girl #cult girl 2 #cult girl doctorate

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boldlyvoid · 4 years ago

Text

Amoreena | chapter eleven

chapter eleven

main summary: Heaven is a real place and it's located exactly 14.6 miles away from the FBI, Quantico Headquarters. Off behind a small park, under a fantastical willow tree surrounded by wildflowers, in every colour young minds can imagine.

Don't forget, heaven also comes with angels.

Chapter Warnings: Y/N POV: details of what happened to Stephen, her grandmas cancer, and very detailed explanations of how babies are made (as biologically accurate and not very graphic as possible) this is an angsty trauma filled chapter that made me cry a lot just writing it so I'm sorry in advance

word count: 3K

from the beginning <3

June 13th, 2010

There’s a knock on her parent's door at 4 in the morning, Y/N’s sound asleep on the couch back at her grandma’s, awoken by said grandmother as she hears all the noise beyond the porch. There are 2 cop cars at the main house, worry starts to settle over them.

She puts on a pair of shoes, taking her grandmother's hand in hers as they begin the early morning trek up the road, anxiety seeping in deeper and deeper as they get closer to the lights illuminating their driveway.

Her father is talking to an officer on the steps, her mother is crying behind him. “We’re so sorry for your loss,” the officer says and Y/N’s blood runs cold, numbing her from the impending despair.

“What happened?” Her grandmother asks, rubbing a hand along Y/N’s back in preparation for the worst.

“Evan was in a car accident,” her father says softly, knowing that Y/N knows Stephen was with him tonight. She breaks away from her grandma and without thinking she’s right in the officer's face.

“Which one of them died?”

“Ma’am,” it was never a good way to start the worst conversation of her life with that word or in that tone. She felt like a '40s housewife learning her husband wasn’t coming home from the war, only he wasn’t even her husband yet.

He would have been on next Saturday.

“I’m sorry, Stephen was pronounced dead on the scene,” he says the worst sentence she’s ever heard, and now she’ll never forget it. “The passenger side took the worst of it, once again, I am so sorry for your loss.”

She’s surprisingly calm, managing to whisper, “thank you,” before she’s walking off into the field, pushing everyone's hands away as she travels as far as he feet will take her.

She ends up at the willow tree by the pond as soon as the sun is rising, it happened a lot earlier in June than the rest of the year. The birds singing, the wind blowing against the leaves making them carry a tune in harmony together. The world is still spinning, life is moving on, but how?

She sat there against the tree for a while, picking blades of grass and weaving them into a chain, soothing her brain as she makes a pattern. Giving her hands something to do so they stop going numb, it’s the only thing that really reminds her that she's real, that she’s controlling the twists and tucks, the shape and length and the fact that it was created at all.

Ending the life of the single blade of grass as she picks it, never to be whole again. Snatched from its happy place, where it grew loved and surrounded by other matching green strands as they blew in the wind.

Then she's pulling fist full after fist full of grass out of the dirt, her hands covered in mud as she shouts, throwing handfuls of grass and dirt towards the pond. The once blue water starting to turn cloudy; disrupted and upset with her anger as it swallows her weapons, but it doesn’t make her feel better. All she did was disrupt the earth, changing the way this once beautiful patch of land used to look. She couldn’t help but sob, realizing that she was like this field now and her beautiful green pasture was disrupted, overturned and ruined.

The life that flowed through her died along with the love of her life.

“Stephen was pronounced dead on the scene,” the words echo in her mind in a constant circle like she’s stuck in a tin can.

It starts to reverberate, getting louder and louder as the same 7 words all run around in her head. Bouncing off the walls, smacking her down again and again as she hears them over and over and over… she’s holding her hands on her ears, shaking back and forth, sobbing when she feels someone wrap their arms around her.

She doesn’t open her eyes, instead, she's rushing to push them off of her, struggling out of their grasp as she fights them. Finally, she loses, being held in her brother's embrace as they both cry, he barely has a scratch on him when she finally looks at him.

she’s never been physical in her life, but she punched him right in the face. Her twin brother, best friend in childhood and the person she’s known the longest in her life. He held her close in the womb, crying if they separated as soon as they were born, she loved him deeply and yet she hated him something fierce at that moment.

“It wasn’t my fault,” Evan cries, “we were stopped at a red light, Y/N!”

“I don’t care! He was supposed to be my husband!” She swats at him, smacking his arms again and again as he tries to hold them back, holding her so tightly as she basically screams bloody murder in the field.

All she can see is his face, her beautiful happy Stephen. The first time she ever saw him, standing under a street light in Boston, papers in his hand and wonder in his eyes. The way he looked up at her, the glow of the light making a halo glow over his head.

She should have known he was too good to be true. Always destined to return to the heavens, he was truly angelic with his big emerald eyes that were only the tiniest bit yellow on the edge of the pupil, the way her name sounded on his tongue like a blessing coming true.

They buried him 2 days after what was supposed to be their wedding. Disrupting another beautiful patch of earth to hide him away forever, she placed a single rose on his casket, she never said goodbye and she never planned to.

“See you later, superstar,” she patted the glossy black box once last time before sending him down into the earth.

—

September 2012

This fucking willow tree and 7-word sentences…

“What do you mean you have cancer?”

Her grandma let a tear slip from her eye, “I’ve got colon cancer, honey, the doctors said I have another 2 years, maybe 5 if I'm lucky.”

Every time someone sat beside her in this one spot, she learned the worst information in the world. Sure Evan didn’t mean to kill Stephen, doesn’t mean she’s talked to him at all in the last year. with Grandpa dying only a few summers back, her favourite house cat now buried in the yard, she can’t lose her grandma now too.

“Okay,” she starts to plan in her head, her eyes about ready to jump out of her skull as she tries to think of all the things they need to do before it’s too late, “let’s go to England, let’s blow my bank account, you can’t leave me without going to England with me? We were supposed to get tea and pretend to be the queen and princess?”

She couldn’t stop the tears, her whole body heaving as she sobbed into her grandma’s dress, “you can’t leave me too!”

“Your grandfather and I have a fund for you, you were the last baby we got to raise when your mom went back to work, I want you to use it for that baby we talked about,” her grandma’s voice is barely a whisper, softly getting the words over her vocal cords as the tears joined Y/N’s on her dress.

Without another word, she took her hand and walked home, getting in her car together and heading to the closest fertility clinic, she booked her first insemination for February, pre-paying for a round of IVF hormones and everything to start in January, she had 3 months to plan.

Finding the perfect donor was the only hard part. She had 3 different books to choose from with all the clinics in the DC area sharing 1 sperm bank. She finally made her decision 3 weeks before they were set to get her pregnant when they updated the books.

Sample 2319, male 30’s, healthy, high IQ, 6’1, brown eyes, brown hair (curly). “Sounds a lot like Stephen,” her grandma agreed, saying his name for the first time in over 2 years, she knew this was her guy.

—

June 14th, 2021

Peeing on a stick shouldn’t be as terrifying as it is.

She hasn’t been this nervous since the first time Dr. Collins inseminated her. Laying back on the table at a weird elevation to make sure she got pregnant, her whole body tense as she thought of the possibilities of her future child.

Sample 2319 sitting in a cup not too far from her face as she prepared for a man she barely knew to put the semen of another man she didn’t know, inside her. She only picked this guy cause he was smart and tall, no health issues to report and the number made her think of Monsters Inc.

In her mind, she made a baby with a man she named mike wazowski, not knowing his real name was actually Spencer Reid and he was only just down the road at Quantico the whole time. It was the weirdest day ever, and then it became the second-best day of her life

Nothing could top holding her baby in her arms for the first time. Her grandma and mother beside her as they all cried, the perfect purple baby screaming on her chest as they tried to wipe the white gunk off her tiny body. her sweet little coos, seeing her swollen eyes open for the first time, the silence that overcame her as they made their first introduction to each other. Her little person, the love of her life, her wonderful Amoreena.

Her cry was perfect, like music to her ears she wanted to hear her little voice as long as she could because it meant she was alive and real. She was healthy and beautiful and the most perfect bundle of joy she could have ever made.

Now she was hiding in the bathroom to pee on a stick while her 7-year-old had breakfast in the next room. Oh, how times changed, but one thing remained the same, she was finding out alone again. Only this time she meant for that to happen, it was exactly 4 days since her period was supposed to start and it wasn’t there, neither was Spencer.

He had something to do that morning, but he’d be meeting them later that afternoon, it was Amoreena’s last day of kindergarten after all. She wanted time to either enjoy the thought of having another baby or cry in peace because for once it didn’t work, giving her a week to recover before trying again.

Amoreena was a miracle, the easiest IVF baby they ever made at the clinic, apparently. If she was pregnant this easily again it was a sure sign that he was Amoreena’s father too, only he could get her knocked up while not even trying.

She didn’t remember pregnancy tests taking this long, she flipped it over and walked out of the room, unable to think of anything else while she waited for 3 minutes to pass. Amoreena noticed she was being weird, studying her mother's movements as she paced the hall outside of the bathroom door.

“What are you doing?” She asked, curious as ever as she twirled lightly in her new princess dress.

“Can you keep a secret?”

“Always mom, I’m the best secret keeper in all the kingdom, remember?” Amoreena smiled, holding onto her leg as she stared up at her.

“Your dad and I tried to make a baby,” she whispered, petting the litter hairs on her forehead as Amoreena looked up at her, her first little baby. “I’m waiting to find out if it worked, but we can’t tell anyone in case it didn’t, okay?”

Amoreena’s eyes were wider than she’s ever seen them, her mouth opened slowly as she understood the words in her mind. She didn’t look happy or surprised, nor upset or worried. She looked confused, “how?”

She laughed then, shaking her head as she lifted Amoreena into her arms, she would have to know soon anyway. “You know how every month mummy has a bad week where she bleeds and her tummy hurts?”

“Yeah?”

“When people with our parts grow up they make little tiny eggs but we don’t lay them like chickens do, they stay inside our tummies and wait to become babies and if they don’t we have a period and release all the stuff our bodies saved up that month to make a little person. You’ll have one soon too in a few years, probably when you're 12 like I was, and when people with a penis get old enough they’re able to help us make the babies like roosters help the chickens. Our bodies are really special and make some really cool things when we try to,” she explained it in the most simple farmhouse way she could.

“Like when the goats are all born in the spring and they just show up?” She tried to clarify, understanding it at the basic level.

“Kinda, you’ve seen the photos of you in my tummy and how aunty Shannon’s stomach grew when she had your cousins, I’ll get really big like that too if I’m pregnant, the baby will grow for 9 long months till they’re nice and healthy and then we’ll have another person in the family,” she couldn’t help but smile as she thought about it.

“How do we find out?”

She opened the bathroom door then and carried Amoreena inside, setting her down on the sink and pointing at the upside-down test stick. “We create a special hormone when we’re pregnant, it’s something that can be detected in our pee!” she explained it like it was magic, watching her get excited instead of grossed out.

“So I peed on that stick and if it has 2 lines I have a baby in my tummy, if not then your dad and I have to try again.”

Amoreena picked up the test and looked at it, keeping it out of her mothers sight as she did so, “there’s two lines,” she lit up waving the stick lightly as she squealed.

Y/N wrapped her up in her arms and twirled her around, “you’re gonna be the best big sister ever!”

“How do we tell dad?” Amoreena’s soft voice whispered in her ear as she snuggled into her shoulder.

“I have an idea,” she whispered back before carrying her back into the kitchen.

Her All About Me project was sitting on the counter, ready for Y/N to drive her into school today. She set Amoreena down on the floor to watch her as she took some tape and taped the stick to the bottom corner of the project. “Pass me the marker, please?”

Amoreena ran to the counter to get it, coming back and placing it in her mom's hand before leaning in to watch what she was writing.

“I’m going to be a big sister sometime next February!” Amoreena read the words as her mother wrote them, unbelievably excited.

“Your dad can read that at the ceremony tonight!”

“I thought you said we can’t tell anyone yet?” Amoreena questioned her, like always.

“Your teacher can know, the other kids won't know what it means, it’s just important Spencer sees it, but we will wait to tell nanny and poppy, okay? Sometimes the babies don’t always stay, it’s sad so we keep it a secret until they’ve got a tiny little heartbeat in there,” she didn’t want to scare her, but she knew it was always a possibility.

“Then we try again,” Amoreena smiled, “It’ll be easier now that you don’t need Dr. Collins to help you, how did you even make me without Spencer?” She didn't use his real name often anymore, only in times when she wasn't referring to him as her father.

She sat down then, pulling Amoreena into her lap so she could hold her while she thought of the right words. “So we have eggs, but people with penises have something called sperm. When adults, and I mean adults you have to be at least 25 to have a baby it’s the rules,” she teased her slightly, ticking her arms.

“Adults have sex, babies are made when someone with a vagina and someone with a penis get together. But when you don’t have a partner with a penis to help, sometimes they’ll donate their sperm to the doctor's offices to help people like me make their perfect little families all by themselves.”

“Interesting,” is all her little mind can say, she has learned so much in one day, Y/N was surprised she was still listening and surprisingly still for once. “Is it a boy or a girl?”

“We won't know for a while,” she smiled, holding Amoreena closer to her chest. “How do you feel about all this?”

Amoreena was quiet as she thought about it, “is Spencer the guy who gave the doctors the sperm for me?”

“We think so, but we don’t know, why?”

Amoreena looked at her softly, “it wouldn’t be fair, I know he said I don’t need a father but why do they get to have him for both?”

“I think Spencer is your father, you’re just as smart and wonderful as he is, there’s no doubt in my mind that you’re his baby too. but if you want to know if he isn't, when you turn 18 the doctors will tell you who it is, it's completely up to you to find out,” she whispered, the tears starting to fall down her cheeks as Amoreena tried to wipe them away.

"I like thinking he's my father, so he is." Her mind worked in the most wonderful way. Y/N couldn’t help but hold her close as she lightly cried, “I had a dream yesterday that I had 8 sisters,” her voice was so soft and innocent as her tiny hand cupped her mother's cheek.

She gasped lightly at the words, remembering Spencer’s panic in the middle of the night last night, how scared he was to leave her all alone with 9 babies and no one to help her. They knew something that she didn’t yet, cheaper by the dozen seemed less like a dream and more like a prophecy.

“I’m so happy to make your dream come true,” Y/N whispered, “I promise I’m happy, the baby just makes me emotional.”

Amoreena placed her hand on her tummy then, “I love you, baby.”

Y/N stuck her tummy out as far as she could, “I love you too, big sister,” she said in a funny voice to make Amoreena laugh, leaning back in the chair as she held her.

And just like that, getting pregnant with Amoreena was bumped into 3rd place for the best day of her life. Sharing the moment with her and no one else was perfect, insuring she knew that she was just as important moving forward as the little person she was growing this time.

tag list: @shemarmooresfedora @spencers-dria @spookyspence @reidsfish @manuosorioh @mochionly @samuel-de-champagne-problems @jswessie187 let me know if you would like to be added as well!!

#spencer reid #spencer reid smut #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid fanfic #spencer reid imagine #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x y/n #spencer reid x you #spencer reid self insert #spencer reid request #criminal minds smut #criminal minds imagine #amoreena

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krreader · 5 years ago

Text

seven sins | chapter four.

pairing: bts x reader (jeon jeongguk x reader) fandom: bts warnings: non idol!au ; historical!au ; princes!bts ; concubine!reader ; sex genre: smut ; angst

summary: even in times such as yours, you still led a privileged life with nothing to ask for. that is until first your father, then your mother died and you were left to care for your two younger sisters. the position for royal physician seemed to be open and with your father having been a general and your mother having been a maid for the queen, you thought you might be able to get it.. little did you know that your visit to the palace would put a completely different offer on the table.

a/n: what do we love? S M U T? when do we love it? IN EVERY SINGLE CHAPTER

“(Y/N)!” Eun saw you at breakfast the next day and immediately sat down next to you, “You came home very late last night.. where were you?”

“Ah,” you lowered your voice, “I.. fell asleep.”

“Where?” she furrowed her eyebrows, then gasped when she realized you fell asleep with one of the princes, “(Y/N), we don't do that!”

“I know, I know, you don't have to remind me. I was just so exhausted and he didn't seem to mind.”

She let out a laugh and shook her head, “You truly are a special one, aren't you? The princes never let anyone stay for longer than their.. time together. And you just casually slept with one. Genuinely slept.”

“Just.. don't be so loud about it, please,” you saw that some of the other women were watching you, “I don't want to cause any rivalry or trouble here. I just want to.. do what I'm here to do.”

Which is what, (Y/N)?

Correct, to become the royal physician, NOT to fall for one of the princes.

Please keep reminding yourself of that, because it was very important.

“Anyways, I have to go now,” she got up, “Maybe take a walk today. You haven't seen much of the palace so far, right? You definitely should.”

Sou let her go with a smile and got up as soon as you were done with your breakfast. These women here scared you, you didn't want to spend any longer with them than absolutely necessary, afraid that one of them might stab you in the back.

None of the guards had approached you so far today, so you assumed that the princes were all busy. You took that opportunity to actually do wander the grounds, but not to discover what there was to the palace, but to the training grounds.. the one place you used to spend the most time as a kid.

“No, (Y/N), you need to be faster!”

“I'm trying, daddy,” you cried, doing the move again and again, just like your father had practiced, but you just couldn't get it right.

And you weren't crying because you were scared that he'd be angry with you, but because you were frustrated with yourself.

“Stop, stop, stop,” he knelt down in front of you and took the wooden sword out of your hand, “You need to focus. Everyone believes that fighting comes from here,” he pointed at your arms, then at your head, “But what's important is in here.”

“What?” you sniffled.

“Focus is the most important thing. If you focus, truly, truly, focus, you can do it. So take a deep breath, close your eyes and envision what you want to do. And then.. do it!”

Your lower lip still trembled, but you nodded.

Your father took a few steps back, smiling at you encouragingly.

You did what he said.

You closed your eyes, took a few deep breaths until you were calm again and then you..-

“I DID IT! DADDY I DID IT! I DID THE MOVE! DID YOU SEE ME DO THE MOVE?”

“I'm so proud of you my little warrior,” he scooped you up in his arms and spun you around a couple of times, showering you with kisses.

And as you stood there in the middle of the training grounds, you wiped away a lonely tear that ran out of your eyes and whispered: “I miss you so much, daddy..”

“Who are you talking to?” you jumped at the sudden voice and immediately bowed when you saw who it was.

“I wasn't..-”

“Girls like you don't usually come here.. they're better at spreading their legs than holding a sword, you know?”

Were you respectful? Yes. Were you intimidated by the royal family? Yes. Did that mean that you would just let him talk to you like that? No.

“Why don't you pick one up yourself and we'll see who ends up with spread legs?”

Jeongguk was surprised, but not offended in the slightest. In fact, he seemed rather happy.

“Oh, yes. Finally one with guts,” he sprinted towards the wooden swords and came back with two, excited like a young boy who just got a pony for his birthday, “I won't go easy on you, though.”

“Yes,” you, at this point, not caring in the slightest anymore, especially because it was only Jeongguk and you here, untied the ribbon of your skirt, so that you were only standing there in your blouse and the pants you always wore underneath. Then you smiled at him, “That's what your brother said to me too after I made him cum in less than five minutes.”

And that made Jeongguk tremble back, giving you the advantage that you needed.

Within two swift moves, you got him down on his back, the sword at his throat.

“Got you,” you whispered with a smirk.

“I want a fair round.”

You chuckled and helped him back up, “Fine.”

And so you two began your 'fair' battle.

Truth be told, you had no idea if you stood a chance. The last time you had fought like this was with your father as a child, but you weren't going to back down, not now.

Something that you noticed within the first few seconds was that Jeongguk was good. He was swift and delicate, yet he knew when to attack and when to take a step back.

You only barely escaped some of his strikes.

Neither of you kept count, you just sparred with each other for a while, up until you were both completely out of breath.

And then it was ultimately you who knocked him down to the ground and ended up sitting on top of him.

“I'd say that makes me the winner.”

“And here I thought you were only good for one thing.”

“You shouldn't judge people so quickly, your majesty.”

“Maybe I shouldn't,” he bit his lip, then licked it when he fully took that picture of you sitting on top of him in.

It's funny how you were so adamant about putting him in his place earlier about you ending up with spread legs, yet it was now you who got fucked against the stable walls – don't ask, it was just the closest place you could find.

Jeongguk didn't seem to be as experienced as Hoseok, his thrusts were a lot less coordinated, but it still felt good.

He was rough, he was quick and he showed you that – unlike with Jimin – this wasn't about emotions.

And you couldn't care less.

This was releasing tension that you two had just built up from the fight.

“Did my hyungs fuck you like this, huh?” he asked during thrusts when you kept screaming louder.

“No. No, they didn't.”

“That's what I thought,” he laughed, pulling out of you just for a moment to turn you around and push your chest into the wooden wall, then entering you once again.

Jeongguk was looking for release and it wasn't hard for him to get it.

But what surprised you was that he was – so far – the only one who pulled out before he came.

You could feel his sperm run down your back and smiled when he kissed your shoulder blade.

“We should do this again sometime, you know?”

“Well.. if one of your brothers doesn't fuck me, then I'll gladly defeat you again in battle.”

You were clearly mocking him and he actually liked that challenge.

He gave you a hard slap on your butt, “Go wash up..”

“Yes.. your majesty,” you both laughed as he left the stables.

“What's that look for, darling,” the king approached the queen with a grin.

“You should have discussed this with me first.”

“Discussed what?”

“Appointing a new Royal Noble Consort for all seven of our sons!”

“Do I have to remind you that these seven boys are not actually your sons, but sons of such Royal Noble Consorts?” he said with a spiteful tone.

“It still wasn't your place.”

“I am the king. I decide who comes to my court and who doesn't. Not you.”

They watched Jeongguk leave the stables, happily so and the king slowly turned around with a smile and was about to walk away.

The queen, however, kept her eyes on you as you hurried out of the stables, “If she stabs you in the back, you think about my words, dear husband.”

He stopped dead in his tracks, then turned around to look at her again, “What?”

The queen grinned, “It doesn't matter. You decide who comes to your court and who doesn't,” she mocked, then walked away, leaving him with many questions and even more worries.

Did he maybe make the wrong choice? Or was this just another scheme of his wife?

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monkeyspawnskydiamond · 3 years ago

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Transcript of Interview

Q: What do you see as the origins of violence against women? Is it cultural? Is it biological?

I believe that the origins of violence against women are completely in systems of gender inequity. In systems of basically male supremacy and although many proponents of male supremacy would have us believe that this is always existed on the planet, that it's biologically endemic, that it's inevitable, there's nothing we can do about it, etc., that's not true at all. Patriarchy is a relatively new institution, the last five thousand years or so. And you can find a lot of evidence for this in archaeology, in myth, in legend, things that are discredited by contemporary modes of knowledge which have to be understood as patriarchal in and of themselves.

The emphasis on rationality of this kind of direct evidence that myth is seen as just a fable, something that never existed. For examine, in the very area here, New Mexico, the creator of all is spider grandmother who thought, spun, dream wove the world into being. And there was a whole different system, that Allen writes about very eloquently in her book, The Sacred Hoop, which she calls a gynecentric system, in which the emphasis is not on competition, power over, domination, but rather on equality, harmony, balance, tolerance for a wide diversity of life styles, the centrality of powerful women, being absolutely necessary for society to function well, not any kind of belief in corporal punishment of children, extremely low incidence of rape, no idea of an institution of prostitution or pornography because sex as sacred and not associated with any kind of negativity. So, these systems did exist on the planet everywhere, in Europe. When I was a child all I wanted to read was myth, and stories of goddesses or I knew that this betokened another kind of reality, that this one that we live in now is not permanent and it was not here always forever.

Q: What causes men to be violent against women? Does it boil down to an underlying inequality between men and women? Does this mean that the answer is equality between the sexes?

What causes men to be violent then is basically an enforcement. That if you have a system of oppression, one group is being subordinated, in this case we're talking about women, and in some way you can propagandize and brain wash the subordinated group into agreeing to this. Well, I really am more passive, I really am subordinate. You know, we're given those messages all the time through the mass media, through religion, in which we're told that women are premordally evil, etc. But obviously, that's not going to work completely, we're going to resist. And we're not going to buy into all that ideology so the second level of enforcement is violence, actual violence. So I see the whole gamut from sexual harassment on the streets, in the office, through rape, through battery, through incest, through sexual murder, through a level of enforcement, to keep women in our place, to tell us that we can't speak out against atrocities and to serve as a lesson to all of the women. This is what will happen to you. You are prey in this culture, you are an object, you be obedient or you're off basically, so I see that violence serves an absolute function. It's not a deviation, it's not a monster from Mars. We have to look at it as absolutely functional to keeping the status quo going, to keeping the system of male supremacy working.

Q: You've said abusive men aren't abnormal or deviant, but the norm. Can you explain? What about rape in the home? You've made an interesting comment that these behaviors are not taboo, that it's talking about them which is taboo.

In that violence, it's not the norm in that everyone does it. It's just I think that there's some deception going on about it that we don't really want incest to happen. There's really an incest taboo. According to a 1992 government finance study, 36 percent of all rapes of women in this country are rapes by a family member. There's some deception going on. What is really taboo is speaking out about that, saying that the nuclear family is not really this haven of comfort and warmth, but that really according to the FBI women are nine times safer on the street than they are in the family. That's where you're most likely to be beaten, most likely to be raped. Eleven percent of all rapes take place of girls under the age, I mean, excuse me, 67 percent of all rapes are under the age of 18. About 29 percent of the girls under the age of 11 -- these are taking place in the home. Eleven percent of all rapes are rapes by a father or step-father. People who talk about family values, it's really a code word for a racist, sexist enforcement of family values, gender inequality, the idea that women and children are the property of the father. These are the values. It's really about control.

Q: What about the theory that violence is an inherent part of male biology?

I think the real stress on biological essentialism right now saying that men are born this way, women are born this way and we also see it in term of racism. For example, when something like the Bell curve, saying that whites or Africans are necessarily more, less intelligent, whites a little bit more so, the Japanese the highest. They put that in to make them not look like white racists. But, you know, all this kind of stuff is a backlash to thirty years of activism saying the culture is responsible for these kind of differences. That even I would argue that what we understand as biology is filtered through our cultural preconceptions. For example, think of the scenario that we all see, whether it be in a movie like "Look Whose Talking" or just what we've understood through education, of when a woman gets pregnant. The sperm is seen as this kind of heroic warrior, traveling up through this dangerous territory to penetrate and conquet the egg. We see that all the time. Really, why don't we look at that as the egg as this magnificent huge dominant fascinating force that draws the sperm to her, etc. We understand biology through cultural lenses. And what is, what was biology in the 19th century is now understood as scientific racism. The sciences of, for example, measuring skulls to prove that women of all races or Africans or Native Americans had smaller skulls and therefore lesser intellectual capacity. I would say that what's happening right now in all this emphasis on men are innately more violent and women are innately more passive and stuff like that is scientific sexism, nothing more.

Q: What sort of role has religion played? Does religion teach that men are superior to women, that female sexuality is linked to evil?

Religion is one of the most important sources of violence against, of the ideology for violence against women. It first gives us this idea of sex negativity. That sex in which women are really always implicated as the sex, we are the sexual ones. Be we mothers or prostitutes or temptresses or whatever. The whole story of Adam and Eve, that Eve was the one responsible.

Religion is absolutely fundamental in perpetrating violence against women. It is one of the key ways to communicate the ideology of male supremacy. First of all, God is male. There is no female principle. It was the people who demanded that Mary even in the Christian religion be given a place of honor. The cathedrals in Europe were built to her to recognize people's understanding that there is something feminine about the divine as well. But patriarchal religions would have us believe that all divinity is male and only male. And that coupled with the idea that female sexuality in women is evil, as for example in the Garden of Eden myth and that it is up to men to dominate both women and the earth, give us a script for all kinds of violence against women, which, of course, I connect up with violence against the earth in that the earth and women are seen as passive, as submissive, as out of control and thereby need to be controlled, dominated, etc. God tells Eve, "This is your husband, Adam, you will submit to him, he will lord it over you and basically you'll love it.” Yeah, right. That's the Bible.

So, religion often promotes an ideology of male supremacy, which as I said I see as the root of violence against women. We also get this whole idea of sex negativity. That sexuality is sinful, that the body is shameful. Then of course women are the sex, so it is our bodies that are seen as somehow contaminated, that we are seen as somehow kind of filthy. And so therefore you're given the choice to be this Madonna, this absolutely pure virgin mother or whatever or the whore, the one who epitomizes sex. These are of course both aspects of one persona. So it seems to me that therefore, it's also Christianity that even though, for example, fundamentalist Christianity rails against pornography that pornography is really Christianity's evil twin, to use soap opera jargon, that it's really the same thing. That both of them depend upon women and the idea of sex negativity, that the body and sexuality is somehow obscene, filthy and dirty. You don't have pornography without that, you don't have Christianity without that. On the submission of women, on a rather deadness, a kind of loss of the sacred involving sexuality that I see in both, in Christianity, the only kind of sex you can possibly have and then you're not supposed to enjoy it too much except as marital heterosexual procreative sex. No idea of ecstasy, of communing with the Universe, in any kind of sacred sexuality which characterizes what are seen as pagan cultures. So, pornography is of course the off-shoot of this terrible negativity, of sex as really just objectification, filthy, obscene, behavior.

Q: Doesn't this also lead to eroticizing the forbidden?

Okay, so what I see as happening in the Garden of Eden Myth is that sex supposedly was the sin that Adam and Eve committed. So then there's this injunction like that's considered to be the forbidden fruit. So we have this whole notion of the forbidden as being something that is also extremely desirable. And it seems to me that what patriarchal culture is about is about eroticizing the forbidden and therefore sanctioning taboo violation, making taboo violation itself an act of sex. An act that someone's supposed to get off on in a way which I see therefore as feeding, for example, incest. It's the forbidden that actually becomes more appealing, it's the violation of innocence. You're really acting out the culture's dicta. I mean, think of "Star Trek," to boldly go where no man has gone before. So there is no limit. No taboo, we just sort of march in uninvited and I think that's an injunction that is tied to this idea of the taboo. That rules are made really to be broken. It's thrilling to march in without invitation, justifying everything from incest to manifest destiny to all kinds of cultural imperialism.

Q: And so we have incest as an ultimate taboo?

Well, as I talk about incest in the nuclear family, obviously incest is not a real taboo. It's committed at an alarming rate. And that's just what is reported. We all know that these kinds of crimes are grievously unreported because of ideas of shame, because of pushing the memories so far back you don't have ready access to them, etc. So, incest in the nuclear family or child sexual abuse by priests, has been hushed up forever. You know, it's not really taboo. Everybody knows it's going on. But the taboo of silence is breaking up. That's what the feminist movement has been about. Breaking that conspiracy of silence: be it against child sexual abuse, wife beating, etc.

Think of what happened to Sinead O'Connor when she was on "Saturday Night Live." That time, I think it was in 1992, when she ripped up a picture of Pope John Paul II. And she was making a political statement. She was protesting the church's complicity in covering up incidences of child sexual abuse by the priesthood. She was excoriated for that in the press and the very next week Joe Peshi comes on and says, "I'm Italian and thank God it's Columbus Day.” And then goes into saying how he wants to smack her around and the crowd is roaring its approval of him smacking her around. So clearly here we see what I'm talking about -- about violence against women as enforcement of women staying in their place. Not speaking out and naming the atrocity, that's the taboo, not committing it. And I find it very interesting that when feminists are always accused of censorship, here's a real incident of censorship, in that when Saturday Night Live repeats these episodes, they censor Sinead O'Connor. They do not censor Joe Peshi advocating battery as a solution to women speaking out against abuses.

Q: What of the inherent differences between the sexes? Doesn't it all boil down to gender difference? Can we discuss these things without discussing gender differences?

I think absolutely we have these ideas that there are these genders, masculinity and feminity and that masculinity is something that all beings with certain kind of hormones and male genitalia have and there's this femininity. I think that differences between men and women, this whole creation of the opposite sex is a way to create male supremacy. You create difference and then you repress one-half of it and you create enmity, you create this kind of opposition. So, I really look at and then everybody says it's nature and it's innate. But why do we have so many cultural, so much cultural brainwashing to make it happen. Little boys, what you wear, how people can speak to you. You know the whole masculine or feminine conditioning which begins right at birth if not before. How you know now that everybody's finding out the sex of their child and probably even treating it differently in the womb when it's a fetus. But okay, what were we going on? I'm thinking, okay, the cultural construction of masculinity.

It seems to me that masculinity in all of the culturally approved avocations of masculinity is somehow associated with force and violence. That men are suppose to be identified by their bodily strength and that almost all the male initiation rights, all the whole culture of masculinity, the heros that we see be it Indiana Jones or Rambo or John Wayne or Charles Bronson, or whomever, they're all predicated on some kind of violent action. Therefore we understand that to be a man and that being a man, you're not born a man, you become a man according to how the culture says what a man is. The culture makes you into a creature who is ruled by a commitment to violence and that male heroes and male villains, be they cops, be they criminals, they're all bonded by their commitment to violence. And so I think what we really need to do is deconstruct masculinity, destroy notions of cultural masculinity and femininity. I would be much more in favor of a world in which we didn't see ourselves as opposite sexes but as existing on a continuum in which the feminine within men as well as within women was honored. And there would be women who be more traditionally masculine even than some men, etc. Understand that we're on a co-continuum, we have much more in common than we have separating us.

Q: What do you think of Robert Bly and his theories?

Robert Bly. I mean, I find him interesting in that I basically like his response of going back to the old tradition, but my liking of it stops about there. He goes back to an extremely sexist fairy tale in which the guy becomes a hero by basically winning in war and then capturing as his prize a princess. I mean this is absolute sexism. Violence initiation, and then you know the princess as object trophy prize. So, the women is a sex object. I think what he preaches basically is that women are inadequate. That men need to find themselves in a separatist community with other men. And I find historically that men having separatist communities, and even right now culturally male fraternities, male sports, etc. These are the sites of some of the worst violence against women. And that's where I think men are suppose to, the way in which one becomes a man in this culture is by rooting out the feminine within the self. By denying the mother, which Robert Bly is all about. Bonding with the father and rooting out all traces of the feminine within the self which he says you can only do in all male communities. That's completely the patriarchal root to manhood. And women are inadequate for this. What Sheri Hite's research shows is that boys who grow up in households run by single women are far more respectful to women, show lower incidence of violence, etc. So you know, I think that's absolute nonsense that women can't really create men. So what my problem with Bly is that I think he's profoundly misogynist. Women are again a lesser contaminating presence and need to be conquered or overcome in order to actualize manhood. That's again the patriarchal script.

Q: Hasn't violence against women been legally sanctioned for centuries?

It's been different throughout the history of patriarchal culture. For example, we talked about patriarchal religion in the early modern period, around the same time as the voyages to the new world, beginning with the use of Africans in slavery, you had the European and the whole enlightenment, the whole ascendence of rationality. You had the burning of women as witches, throughout early modern Europe, and some men. Probably anywhere from 300 thousand to a million. And this was completely legitimated by both church and state. So violence against women there was the law. You had to do it, it was absolutely approved.

Now a'days, we live in this time of that kind of pseudo taboo I was talking about. It's supposed to be taboo but we all know that on "General Hospital" when Luke raped Laura. It makes it glamorous, it eroticizes that kind of violence against women and it makes it appear consensual. As if women seek this out and want it. It makes it extremely normal as well. Let me just think of a few examples. I mean, we all know the notorious "General Hospital" where Luke raped Laura and then later married her, so it made it seem as though rape was some kind of courtship ritual (laughter). I mean Calvin Kline sells this obsession and gives us these very erotic images of a man, of a naked man carrying a naked woman over his shoulders.

It's underscoring both male dominance but also the idea that love is somehow synonymous with obsession. I mean that's what leads to four women in this country every day being killed by men who say they love them (chuckle) but most women in the country who are killed are killed by men who say they love them. That's really obsession and we should never confuse the two, obsession and feeling that the woman is somehow your property. But we're taught this all the time. And "Pretty Woman" considered a light-hearted flick and Richard Gere decides that he wants to marry Julia Roberts after he realizes that marriage is really ownership, he's not just renting her as a prostitute any more. He can actually own her. Remember the scene where he looks at the jewelry and says, "Oh, I don't have to just rent this, I can own it.” And he's talking about her too. So, I think in all kinds of ways it's made to seem either very normative, very happy and beneficial, or very erotic, a very heroic, be it these constructions of masculinity as violent enforcer, such as Rambo, etc.

Q: So, does the media contribute to these notions or merely reflect them?

Well, I think it's a dialogic process. The media both sells us what we want but also decides and conditions us to want what we want. So it's a two-way street. It's always going back and forth. And it's not just sort of an injection, but media puts these things in our heads. But it shapes what we want as well as then satisfying that want.

We all react differently to those messages. That's a real common theme in contemporary cultural studies, that people can negotiate meanings and take something out of it that somebody else didn't get out. For example, and you'll see that argument used to justify pornography all the time. Well, I read pornography and I haven't raped anyone, etc. etc. But what we need to do is take collective responsibility that, for example, the most common sexual activity of serial murders according to the justice department is using pornography. And that even if an individual can look at a particular type of pornography and not cultivate a desire to go out and sexually murder, we have to take responsibility for that a significant portion of the population does use this material to feed those fantasies and to provide a script for carrying out that kind of behavior. And so it's not a question, I think that a capitalist consumer culture always emphasizes, we have this kind of liberal emphasis on individual rights, my rights, my rights, my rights. How about cultural responsibility. Again I think that's a feature of a gynesophical or gynecentric system. That we really do have to look for a common good in some way and take some responsibility. Understand, set some limits. And again, we live in a culture in which limits are there only to be transgressed.

Q: Is the solution censorship?

I would veer away from censorship. That's why I like the law that Andrea Dworkin and Catherine McKinnin drafted that would make it that a woman or anyone injured by pornography could sue in civil court. So I would never give the police power to seize materials and to prohibit because I think that we could go into the kind of society that Margaret Atwood describes in the Hand Maid's Tale in which you have what I talked about as the right wing side of the women oppressive agenda that sort of the Christian woman as object, woman as reproductive breeder and maybe whore on the side and that's it. Right, that kind of circumscription of women's freedom. But I don't want the purely pornographic libertarian you know, all the women getting raped and incested that we have right now either. So, we're allowed to swing back and forth between modes but never to get beyond them. I'd like to get beyond that. So no, I'm not in favor of censorship.

I'm in favor of one kind of collective responsibility, maybe suing in civil court, there's some legal remedies that have been proposed but I'd never give the police power to seize materials. That would be immediately abused. What I think we need is to really create an alternative consciousness and to create change in the culture through what I call in psychic activism, through generating alternative forms of eroticism, alternative forms of erotica, alternative myths, narratives, symbols, stories. And I think what I would call upon women to do is to reverse the kind of sex negativism. Part of our oppression has been to tell us that we're either these pornographic whores or we're completely asexual. To demand and exercise our sexual autonomy, to become what I think of as bawdy women. You know, were really to speak. I mean we're not really suppose to express our sexual desires outside of pornography. Its seen as some how very lacking in taste, a very unlady like or whatever. I think whenever we criticize pornography we have to do it in a bawdy way to affirm sexuality, to reverse the kind of sex negativism of that strain of patriarchy of the Christian side. To be vulgar in the sense of like bawdy, earthy, in touch with our sexuality. And therefore, I think we break those false opposites of sex negativism or pornography. And move into a new paradigm.

Q: There's some controversy as to whether rape is a crime of violence or a crime of sexuality? How are violence and sex intertwined?

I think it's really specious to separate violence and sexuality. I would disagree with some of the early feminists who you know we all change our minds as the theory gets worked out, who would say rape is a crime of violence, not a crime of sex. Because unfortunately in this culture, sex is completely interfused with violence, with notions of dominance and subordination. As I said, I believe our gender roles are constructed so we have these two constructed genders, masculine and feminine that are defined by one being powerful and one being powerless. And so therefore, powerlessness and power themselves become eroticized. And in that violence becomes eroticized. Domination, subordination become eroticized so that whether you know somebody is actually exerting dominance in a sexually explicit way as in pornography or doing it in a mainstream way, for example. That's seen as somehow sexual. Because the domination itself, the violation itself has become sexual according to this gender hierarchy system.

I realize that there are some biologists that would say that violence is just a means men use to get sex as if sex were just this sort of innate thing that we're all born knowing what it is and wanting. Rather I see sex as a culturally constructed in the way our sexuality is expressed. For example, the idea that intercourse between a man and a woman is sex. Right? Preferably with him on top penetrating and thrusting and her lying still. Right? I mean that's a cultural notion and one induced by male supremacy. So this sex that he's getting is really a model to justify, that he's saying is innate, is a model to justify a very oppressive male dominant form of sexuality that is completely culturally conditioned. Rape is sexual, yes in that force and domination of women has been sexualized. That's how it's both violent and sexual at the same time. We need to recognize how they work in tandem.

Also, I mean, some theorists who I would see as whether consciously or not in complicity would rape would say, "Well, it's just that there's this very attractive woman and rape is the only way I can get her or something like that,” that this justifies. But that in no way speaks to the reality of rape in which extremely old women who are seen in this country or in this culture again in a patriarchal culture as completely undesirable are raped, in which little babies are raped, in which it's just a question of which woman is most vulnerable at a particular time, is most easy to be preyed upon. That theory doesn't jive at all with the way that rape is actually promoted. It's based on there's an available victim that I can intimidate and conquer at this particular point.

Q: What do you think about developing alternate notions of eroticism?

Anything that I talk about with pornography, I stress the needs of developing an alternative notions of sexuality alternative notions of erotica. I think we have to have a counter culture. I know Newt Gingrich has declared war on the counter culture. But that's because I think that's the reason he does it, I think is because that's where the most powerful force is for change. If we change cultural attitudes, behaviors, desires, I mean, all these things are culturally constructed to begin with. Male dominance is a cultural construct. It can be deconstructed and changed and we do that through every day acts, through subversions, as a title of a book by a woman I don't know but it's a good title, Every Day Acts in Small Subversions. That we don't believe them that it's inevitable. And that power is only exercised from the top to the bottom. That we recognize that creation is ongoing every day.

There's a social construction of reality that we participate in and that we can become the creators of an emerging alternative reality. It's happening now. Thirty years ago you would go to medical journals and find no references to wife beating. Not its they're trying to put it back they're trying to say incest is all false memory, etc. They can't completely put it back in the box, we have broken that conspiracy of silence and we're not going to shut up. And not only do we have to tell the truth about the abuses that are heaped on us, but we have to articulate a new emerging consciousness in reality and practice of sexuality that is not based upon that sex negative norm of what the heterosexual monogamous procreative couple, etc. We have to encourage sexual experimentation, the wiring and production of erotic materials, the infusion of the resacrilization of sexuality. Understanding that is why I really hate porography because it teaches us that the life force can be commodified, packaged and sold.

There has been a division in the feminist movement between feminists who are opposed to pornography and feminists who say we shouldn't concentrate on that because it's antisexual. But I see and I think they have a point but I think we need a medium ground here and I understand that pornography is anti-sexual, its about destroying packaging containing exploiting, abusing the life force. Pornography teaches us that the life force can be consumed, used and abused. Then women, children can be consumed, used, abused, the planet can be consumed, used and abused, etc. I see pornography as paradigmatic of other kind of abuses that are taking on. So I think some of the solutions would be to treat, to teach notions of respect for other life forms whether they are human or not, to understand that if you don't treat the life force with respect, understand that you cannot take without giving back, that you have to respect limits, boundaries. The life force will strike back at you. We're always told that there's no limits, that we can boldly go where no man has gone before, a dictum that I see justifying both incest and manifest destiny. I might have said that already.

Q: So how do we begin to change things? How do you inculcate a sense of respect for all life?

This notion, celebrated on "Star Trek," that we can boldly go where no man has gone before, recognizing that's a dictum that justifies everything from incest to manifest destiny, and that what we really need to understand is that we can't go everywhere, that we need to expect an invitation, to understand that you can't take something without giving back in equal measure. That we need to respect, not only other human beings, but all creatures in the land, the land, I would say herself. And then if we don't, the life force will strike back. We talk about with such arrogance that humans can save the planet or not. I mean, you know, we'll only destroy ourselves if we go on in this way. I see all this violence against women as very apocalyptic in some way. I mean it is about destroying and contaminating the future and the life force itself and it's folly. An absolute folly!

Some people say that for things to change the punishment for crimes against women must be severe. What do you think?

Oh, punishment. I have to say in terms of punishment, I mean yes, I think that some abusers are so far gone they're just going to keep doing it and they have to be kept away from the rest of the population. While I certainly agree that we have to say this is not allowable, you know clearly many rapists get off, I mean, it's not a highly prosecuted and convicted crime rate, etc. Batterers continue to do this, people see it as just a lover's quarrel. We do have to change cultural attitudes about that. I'm not in favor of any kind of police state idea of avenge, punish, torture, etc. I'm much more in favor of a model that if somebody cannot change, if somebody is really a danger they should be banished in some kind of segregated way. They have to be, and all modes should be put toward prevention. I mean, I just see sadomasochism and even like punishment itself has become so sexualized under the parent of patriarchal pornographic role view that I'm seeing, that I think we need to really break with all those kind of attitudes.

Q: So how do we break with all those attitudes?

Remember I talked before about grandmother spider creating the world through telling stories, story-telling is what creates consciousness and through consciousness reality is created. And, so the media is our contemporary story teller, and it's in a way, very much like religion. It gives us parables, it gives us values to live by, it gives us role models to emulate, saints or whatever. If you will, new deities almost whom we worship, as in celebrities. So the media has to be recognized as the cultural story teller and understand that it is there to enforce the status quo. We can resist it occasionally. For example, in horror films are where you'll see the most vehement critique of family values. I mean, families are always insane and the father's always out to kill everybody in families, if you think about it, he's like the step father.

I think some people talk about teaching media literacy and I would completely agree with that, that we need to be able to critique the advertising , recognize when there's pictures of little girls posed like Marilyn Monroe when they're four years old. Recognize that images of rape in the ads selling us jeans or something like that so we are consciously aware of them, and I think they lose some of their power over us. But I think on the other hand, we have to get beyond that because these images are meant to appeal like cocoa, he says, they're going to the back of your mind, to your subconscious and we are programmed by our culture to respond to certain things, to react in certain ways and what we as activists have to do is reprogram, recondition, create, and that is through generating what I talked about before, these alternative myth narrative. If we give people an alternative erotica which I see in some women's communities, a lot of lesbian erotica. There's something like Four Fat Dikes, and it's this movie in which women, fat lesbians, who are despised by this culture, right, who are seen as everything a woman should not be, celebrate their bodies and their sexuality. That to me is fabulous and it is also erotic. And it is about celebrating the life force. So those are the direction I think we need to move in as well.

Q: Tell us about your book, The Age of Sex Crime.

The Age of Sex Crime is my first book in which I analyze the phenomena of how serial sex killers have become hero figures in this culture, which goes back to my argument that these are not deviants, these are not monsters from nowhere, they're actually performing a cultural function in enforcing misogyny in showing that women are prey, etc. and acting out masculinity in totally dominating the feminine. So that's the base, and what I mean by that is that the characteristic act of the serial sex killer like Jack the Ripper, sort of the founding father of the movement was the mutilation of a woman's body. And leaving her out for display and it seems to me that the mutilation, particularly of the sex organs is a paradigmatic, a model for the other kinds of abuses that are going on. Be it splitting the atom, be it raising an entire old growth forest or whatever, that kind of again destruction focused on the life force, the generator.

I think particularly in native American philosophy, we're taught that you can only go so far with that before retaliation sets in, that the life force will not let you, the life force does strike back. So do women. Can I say something about "Thelma and Louise?" Why was that movie hated so much? It was one movie in which women bonded, and in which women fought back. They killed one man, who had initiated the violence. But it was seen as this terribly violent movie. And I think that shows about the power of the kind of narratives that I'm talking about. The power to just as Jack the Ripper has become legend, we hear that "Thelma and Louise" live forever on the T-shirts or the bumper stickers. So we've projected into that legendary realm and are able to fight at that level too.

Q: Not all men obviously are violent and they all grow up in the same culture. So, why do you think some men are violent?

As to why individual men are violent, there isn't just one cause. I mean patriarchal science would tell us there's cause and effect and you have to be able to scientifically study it and link it, well experiment on all these college students and see if after watching pornography they'll go rape or something. That's nonsense. That's not how it works. Listen to the anecdotal stories of narratives of people who have lived through violence and abuse and there's always different kinds of reasons. I mean, we can all watch a beer commercial and some of us will go out and drink beer and some of us will even become alcoholics, so there's complex reasons - what happened in the boy's childhood, how much violence he was exposed to. How susceptible he was to images from the media, how strong an influence his mother was in his life, etc. and I mean usually the influence of the mother is a good one generating respect for women as opposed to what movies like Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock's patriarchal narratives, would have us believe. Does that answer it well enough?

What of the media? How does its portrayal of women reinforce certain notions,particularly in advertising?

We see these kinds of advertisements everywhere. I mentioned Calvin Cline's Obsession. There are adds for jeans in which women are shown licking the floor. That's a common technique in domestic violence, not just hitting the woman, but humiliating her. Either with words or through making her perform demeaning acts, etc. Lots of images of couples seeming to tussle and the woman on high heels ready to topple over which we're told again. It normalizes violence, it makes it seem as just a love spat, etc. What other ones did I talk about? Movies? Movies, even if you go back. "Gone with the Wind” is of course classic in that we do see a scene of marital rape and the woman is made to smile as if seeming to enjoy it. Now, hopefully race, consciousness of racist oppression has made us realize that the slaves weren't really enjoying life on the plantation as "Gone with the Wind” shows. I think we should also recognize that Scarlet would not in actuality have enjoyed being raped.

Another movie I love to hate (and I found profoundly distressing because so many children see it and see it uncritically), it's Disney, it's "Beauty and the Beast." If you look at that movie, a young girl, no mother, there's never any mothers in these movies. She lives alone with her father, she ends up getting taken prisoner by the beast. She's literally a prisoner, all the household help conspire to hide the fact of how violent he is and then he actually turns violent on her, breaking furniture, threatening her, a scene of absolute domestic abuse, but we're told that she just loves him enough, he can change and the beast will turn into a prince. That is an extremely dangerous myth to give young girls. That if you just love a man enough you can change him. It also says that it's men's nature. They're beastly. The bestial nature. Not a cultural construction that makes men violent towards women. So I think the movie is deceptive on all these counts but also in particularly in telling the young girl, if she just loves the beast enough, he'll turn into the prince and that keeps a lot of women waiting around, hoping, hoping he'll change. And he keeps telling her that.

We see this also graphically in an adult movie, "Internal Affairs,” in which the character played by Andy Garcia, and both these movies are very racist. The beast when he turns into the prince changes from being bestial into being like Apollo or something like that. This blonde god and the darkness and the bestial is associated with I think people of color very graphically. Andy Garcia in "Internal Affairs” beats his wife in public. And then, he breaks into Spanish right after beating her in public which makes it seem as if you know this hot Latino kind of thing. So again, it's somehow associated with race here, not with just male supremacy and privilege. And then he goes home the next day and she fights back. She's angry at him for beating her in public and he tells her he's jealous of her and he's seen her with another man and he's saying....He goes and spends the night drinking and with women of color are whores, so again the racism and I mean whores, oh, I'll have to start again. He beats his wife in public and she of course is a blonde, white trophy kind of desirable woman in a racist-sexist culture. He goes and then spends the night with the so-called despised women, women of color who are then whores. He then goes home the next day and confronts her and starts accusing her of sleeping with other men, etc. and tells her if you ever do that I'll kill you, I'll kill you!. At this point they fall to the floor and make passionate love while he keeps reminding her - I'll kill you, I'll kill you. This is not foreplay, these are not words of endearment. When women hear that they should get out and not be told by the movies that this is a prelude to the greatest sex you're ever going to have.

Q: What about portrayals of women in music videos and elsewhere?

Guns and Roses in, for example, Axl Rose has been accused by two of his former wives and/or girl friends of beating them. And he shows women being beaten and murdered by himself, by him in many of his videos including "Don't Cry,” "November Rains,” etc. So, very clearly there's this idea that it's completely normal and acceptable for a heroic figure like Axl Rose to beat women. What else on MTV? I know because I've done some of these.

Q: It goes all the way back to Shakespeare. Think of "Othello."

I've never read "Othello," so I can't tell. Again, you know you're getting into this where it's so much easier for a racist culture to select out men of color and say they're the ones who are doing this. They're the rapists, they're the beasts, etc. And I'm saying that men of color don't abuse women, they do. I'm just saying they're given disproportionate attention in a racist media. And its all, they're scapegoated. It's all put on. They're the ones who are doing it. And then women we're told, we're sex objects, white women particularly young, blonde white women are said to be the trophy objects, the objects to claim and of course, the most common reason men give for abusing and/or killing women is the jealousy and the idea that if I can't have her, no one can. She's my property. There's a T-shirt that's actually sold that says, "If you love something, set it free, and if it doesn't come back, gun it down and kill it." Yeah, which I see as like the mantra for the abusive generally femicidal man.

But think how often in the media that when we're taught that when a man begins to show jealousy, that's when he's in love, no that's when he's obsessed and use you as property. And you should get the hell out. But you know "Pretty Woman,” that's one where the minute Richard Gear begins showing jealousy, the audience says, Oh good, he loves her. You know, that kind of thing and that's again one way we're seduced to these attitudes that condone, legitimize and endorse in this case wife beating.

Q: How does the mass media make women sex objects?

Women being sex objects and what we mean by that is that we're reduced to things. Property, objects to consume, to use, to abuse, to own. Which is related obviously to the issue of jealousy. But if you look at the mass media you'll see an endless supply of women being portrayed as what I call fem-bots, these kind of sex robots. For example, there's a very famous, not famous, it's famous on college campuses because it shows, it's up so much in the men's dorms. It's an ad for a motorcycle that just shows a woman's body fused into the motorcycle. And her rump is where the man sits and drives her. So woman as the object that you can own and use at your pleasure, at your will, that image says it but all the kind of rituals in which women are -- the cheese cake things. The cultural rituals or the images that show us as objects, that we are there to be looked at, that we are there. Let me think of some other images I have that show this kind of objectification going on. But see when I'm saying that, I can give you some images of women as that motorcycle image -- the woman as yeah, that we are therefore, we're not recognized as significant human beings. We are rendered soulless when actually it's the ones who are soulless who are trying to portray women as like these kind of simple dolls, objects, puppets, and it's very curious. Ted Bundy, and many people think that he wasn't, that he was just copying this idea that pornography made him do it the last minute. He talked about that since he was caught in 1979 how pornography, not just pornography but Coppertone ads in which women were just shown as display items, were used, you know, draped on cars, that he became identified with the car. That women were literally sex objects to them. He says he never talked about the women as she but as the object, the puppet, the doll.

Q: Can you think of responsible portrayals of women?

"Thelma and Louise" Let's see. It's harder to come up with responsible portrayals of women I think that we can certainly find some. I think Allison Anders film, "Gas, Food and Lodging" is a very complex, it's a female initiation story. It's a female coming of age story. There's a movie called "Desert Bloom,” that's again interesting. I think "Thelma and Louise” is genuine feminist art. "Daughter's of the Dust” by Julie Desh which is, she the first African-American female filmmaker to make a feature film. You know which shows the combined racism and sexism in the system that thus far there have been, she was the first just 19, just three years ago I believe. Ah, the responsible portrayals of women.

Roseann. I think Roseann is marvelous. I mean, you know obviously I'm going to quibble sometimes, but Roseann proclaims her autonomy, her power, her sexuality. The show deals with complex issues. I love it.

I'm going to surprise you with this, but I think that sometimes in soap operas, because they are pitched toward a women audience, that you will find, for example, on the "Young and the Restless,” more responsible treatments of date rape, battery. For example, in movies like "Sleeping With the Enemy,” we see a woman stranded. She's being beaten by her husband and she has nowhere to go. She's completely on her own. There is no social system to support her. On the "Young and the Restless” there are friends who intervene. She goes to a battered woman's shelter and talks about her problem. They all give her the support to leave her husband. So that I consider that to be a genuine feminist portrayal. And another instance of a treatment of a date rape on the "Young and the Restless,” the sexual harassment, excuse me, an episode of examining sexual harassment on the "Young and the Restless,” which again has a lot of problems. I'm not portraying it as pure feminist intentionality or anything like that, but there was a very interesting treatment of sexual harassment in which the male lawyer harassing the younger female lawyer at the end tells her, "You know, just between me and you, you really wanted it, you really desired it. And you know you secretly were yearning for it.” She faces him down and says "Absolutely not. You were trying to use your power to dominate me. You get off on power. I don't get off on powerlessness.” something to that effect. I'm not quoting her exactly. Again, these kind of shining feminist moments on soap operas. Which is, of course, seen as a degraded women's kind of form of amusement.

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callioope · 4 years ago

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Month after month after month. For seventeen months. Seventeen months of figuring out when I’m going to ovulate. Seventeen months of timing. Of ovulation tests. Of paying way more attention to my body and its symptoms than seems sane. Seventeen times: hope, disappointment.

I thought by now I’d really figured out my body’s symptoms, but apparently not. I really thought this would be the time. I really thought I knew it, like in my bones, that this was it. You may recall last month posting how I could tell the difference between symptoms. They seemed different this month, they really did.

And we needed a win this month.

I have not talked about this yet, but last month, my father-in-law suffered a heart attack. He was driving with my husband’s stepmom, and fortunately had the ability to pull over in time. But she does not really speak good English, and she had to get out of the car and flag someone down to call 911. It took the emergency responders 8 minutes to get to him, but we have no idea how long it took to place the call in the first place. They say if it takes 10 minutes -- 10 minutes of the heart not pumping blood to the brain -- they declare a person dead upon arrival.

But it took them 8 minutes, so there was a chance. And that meant 3 weeks in a coma, monitoring brain activity that wasn’t getting better. They were able to treat his heart, and the doctor said he could have survived the heart attack. He did survive the heart attack. He did not survive the brain injury sustained because of the heart attack.

As my father-in-law is Turkish, the family agreed that he’d want to be buried in Turkey. So my husband flew with his body to Turkey last week to bury him. He had to spend a week there, I think he said that was the minimum in order to get the round trip fare at a reasonable price. And with COVID, the whole idea of him travelling that far has been especially worrying.

He came home last night, but he’s quarantining at our place while I say with my parents in New Jersey. Their home is small and there’s really not a lot of space for me to work, I’m having to sit on a recliner and it’s really hard to feel energized to work. Especially with all the cramps and heartbreak of everything. I should probably just ask for the day off, but there’s an important meeting I need to attend at 1. Maybe I’ll sign off after that, I don’t know...

I just wish I could be with my husband right now.

Our anniversary is on Tuesday, I was .... I was dreaming of calling him up and telling him we’d finally succeeded. We.... we talked about naming the kid after his dad... if we succeeded....

It feels like it’s never going to happen. It feels like I’m trying so hard for nothing. It feels like I don’t deserve it, it feels like the universe is telling me to give up, that I wouldn’t be a good mother, that I’m not worthy. It feels like something is wrong with my body and every time I talk to the doctor, they don’t seem worried, and well, in the moment, I’m like “herp derp they are a professional I should trust them” but then three -- five -- seventeen months later, I have nothing to show for that trust and a million questions. My friends got bloodwork done when they first started trying so they could address any hormonal roadblocks that could make conceiving more challenging. But my doctor said that wasn’t necessary because “when I get pregnant they’ll do the bloodwork.”

I want to scream, I feel like you can’t trust medical professionals to catch any red flags. They didn’t take my seriously until the third time I mentioned that my periods are sort of worryingly light every month, when I specifically phrased it “they’re lighter since I came off the pill,” and even then, they just went “Oh? Hmm. Weird.” And didn’t follow up. No, all they said was, “well you got pregnant within a year so you must be fine.” (Miscarried in May, if you didn’t know. And they say that it’s so easy to get pregnant after you miscarrying. That like, most women get pregnant within 3-4 months of miscarrying. Further emphasizing that something is wrong with me and my body.)

I am going to be 33 in January. They say at 35 your chances start to reduce significantly. I worry about this all the time. I worry that I have PCOS and that it’s going to take me two years just to conceive the first time. I worry that the universe wants me to give up, that something is wrong with me physically or mentally, that I just don’t deserve it. I have so many friends who get pregnant immediately after going off the pill, like it’s so easy. We’d dreamed of being parents together, of shared play dates, and their child gets older and older and...

It just feels like it’s not in the cards.

I recently (accidentally) read an untagged pregnancy fic where they had trouble conceiving -- a whole whopping 4 months. I remember when 4 months felt like forever. I feel like a fool now, of course, and it made me so angry to see that. They said in that fic that it takes 78 times of having sex to succeed, but I don’t understand that statistic because -- they say most couples conceive with one year, although most conceive within 3-4 months of trying. But they also say that you shouldn��t have sex too frequently because it doesn’t give the sperm enough time to regenerate. (You should wait two days between trying.) Also, there’s really only like 6 days per month worth trying, that’s during your fertility window. But you have to have sex every other day during that 6 day window, so that means 3 times per month for 12 months is only 36 times.

AT ANY RATE.

YOU SEE. YOU SEE THE MADNESS involved in this process? Every month I pee in a cup and I take a test to see if I’m ovulating yet. And it SUCKS. I HATE IT. I hate doing it. But if I don’t do it, I won’t know when I ovulate, which means I won’t time it right.

And sex starts to feel like a chore.... and it shouldn’t. It feels like it should just be magical. And it isn’t.

It’s so hard. It’s so demoralizing. It’s so frustrating to see babies. My mom going on about how fertile her friends are and how they’re having another kid. Hearing that the friend in HS who told me, when I said I wanted to have kids some day, that she “wanted to amount to more than a baby making machine” .... and she just.... immediately got pregnant and here I am. A dream I’ve had, to start a family, a dream that has been mocked, and I’m still waiting.

I’m so tired.

And I feel guilty because I know that some people have waited even longer.

And I feel scared because I know that some people have waited even longer.

I feel scared with the limited knowledge I have of what the fertility process looks like. I don’t want to have to go to the doctor every other day. But it looks like maybe I’ll have to? At least, eventually?

It’s just heartbreaking. I really needed a break this month, but 2020 continues to be demoralizing. Sometimes it feels like... what am I even doing trying this hard to bring a kid into this world at all. Maybe that’s what the universe is telling me. I certainly had friends in HS who said as much -- that they couldn’t fathom bringing a child into this horrible world -- and that was like, back in the 2000s, before a disaster like 2020 could even be imagined.

Well. Anyways. Thanks for reading my rant. This was cathartic, screaming into the void.

#trying to conceive #this is really sad so #you don't have to read it #i just needed to scream into the void #the latest with liz #also talks about death of a family member #just as a warning #2020 really fucking sucks y'all #feel pretty bummed and depressed #also this is long

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once-in-a-blue-moon-rising · 5 years ago

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SO it’s time for another La Casa de Papel stream of consciousness, this time about the spectacular and perfect Nairobi, and some questionable choices made for her in Part 4. Not that one. The other one.

Spoilers below the cut

I am of course talking about the scene where she asks the Professor for a sperm donation so she can have another kid, and the dance party with the other ladies that follows.

Now, fundamentally I don’t think it was an awful idea for a storyline, and could have actually been incredibly sweet if handled correctly (and included earlier - I’ll get to that later). However, I think it was handled very very badly and as a result was completely terrible.

But let’s start with things I liked about it:

Nairobi is super maternal, We know this. So it makes sense that she’d want to have another kid at some point, particularly as it’s going to be so difficult to contact Axel.

It actually kind of makes sense to ask the Professor. They are family now, and although she could scour sperm banks for a super-hot rocket scientist donor, she knows and trusts him.

It’s not framed as a Nairobi-hitting-on-him thing - we know she fancied him previously, but even the joke about ‘the traditional way’ is just that - a joke.

I actually even don’t hate that he didn’t ask Raquel. I’m not sure that he’d see it as a big deal (aka in conflict with their relationship) and, in any case, it very much is his decision. I have a long-term partner, but if a friend of mine desperately wanted an egg donation, I’d make that choice by myself, and it would probably be yes. (I mean, I’d tell my partner, but I wouldn’t consult him.)

However

I do think it is a problem that Raquel clearly doesn’t know, particularly when she happily celebrates Nairobi’s impending pregnancy with her. I also think that, if she does ever find out, this is the thing that will bother her, not the fact that Sergio agreed.

And you know what - I think it’s Nairobi who’s out of character here. Nairobi doesn’t let people’s husbands or boyfriends treat them like shit. Nairobi stands up for other women, and although we don’t really see much of her relationship with Raquel, I can’t imagine that they wouldn’t get on.

So I think that Nairobi would have been the one to include Raquel in the decision-making - either asking them together, or even just giving Raquel a heads-up first.

She just wouldn’t have deliberately hidden it from a woman who might have been hurt by the exclusion.

On the Professor’s side, he probably should (and would) have mentioned the history of debilitating illness in his family.

But there’s more. I don’t just object to the questionable characterisation - I also think it’s very suspicious timing.

In my opinion, this storyline was put in to make Nairobi’s death sadder, something that was a) unnecessary and b) not the way to do it.

We already love Nairobi

More than that, the Professor already loves Nairobi, and I think it’s him that they were really trying to clobber here. Shortly before she dies, he’s stressing out about how he might be having a kid with two members of the gang, and then after she dies you get those flashbacks to them hugging after he agrees to be her donor.

And it makes me mad, because of all the great things about their relationship, him agreeing to give her some sperm is actually pretty insignificant. You don’t need to have a kid with someone to care about them. I can’t think of a gang member he wouldn’t be distraught about losing. He cares so much (and that’s what makes him interesting).

(It also makes zero sense insofar as when Nairobi was shot at the end of Part 3 [or even during her recovery at the beginning of Part 4] he wasn’t freaking out about how the two mothers of his kids were in danger - he was upset because his friend was fighting for her life, and upset because his not-yet-wife was - as far as he knew - dead. That was better.)

I know it’s a minor plot point, and tbf I do think it’s pretty much the only choice that I actively dislike. Still, it feels like a cheap attempt to add emotion to a very emotional moment, and a plot point that will either have to be dropped and forgotten about, or one that will cause totally unnecessary drama later on.

#la casa de papel #money heist #lcdp the professor #lcdp lisboa #lcdp el profesor #lcdp lisbon #lcdp nairobi #nairobi #raquel murillo #sergio marquina #agata jimenez #writing

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deans-baby-momma · 5 years ago

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The Padackles Link-Chapter 65

A/N: This story was supposed to be on hiatus but of course, some life got blew into it. The next chapter is already in the making also.

After the fantastic makeup sex, life for Jensen and I returned to the way it was before Dani's manipulative behavior.

We took turns caring for Jackson and enjoyed time together every evening after the baby went down for the night. Our first official summer hiatus as a family was going great!

That is, until our best friends come to us for a favor.

Jensen's phone rings as we are finishing the breakfast cleanup. Saturdays had been deemed the perfect mornings for a nice, big, hearty breakfast and this morning had been no exception.

Pancakes with mixed berries, bacon and coffee had filled us both and we were clearing the mess we had made when a tiny food war had broken out.

"Hey Jpad!" Jensen said as he answered the phone. I could only hear his side of the conversation. "Yea. No, not much. Just lounging around the house today."

After a small pause, he continues. "Yea, sure. No problem. Come on over."

I finish stacking the last of the dishes in the dishwasher and close it, pressing the button to turn the machine on.

"So, we got company coming?" I ask as I turn.

"Yea, Jared said he and Gen have something to discuss with us."

"Ooo, sounds foreboding," I joke, earning a smile and laugh from my boyfriend. "I'm going to go take a shower before they get here; get the flour out of my hair."

"Need help?" Jay asks, wiggling his eyebrows.

"No sir," I tell him. "You are on Jackson duty."

"You're no fun," he pouts as he approaches me and leans down to kiss my lips.

"I know. I'm just awful," I quip, kissing him once more before heading to the bathroom.

An hour and half later the Padalecki's arrive, sans kids and I really begin to wonder what they need to talk with us about.

Are they splitting up? Have they been having trouble and with everything going on between me and Jay, I'd just been oblivious? What a friend I am! I berate myself as I watch my boyfriend greet the couple.

After getting drinks for everyone, I join them on the patio. The weather is perfect for sitting outside; sunny skies with just enough clouds to combat the rays and give relief.

"So," Gen speaks up after taking a sip of her beer. "We want to talk to you guys about something. Something big."

"Oh god!" I mutter, making all heads turn to me. I blush at the attention. "Are you guys breaking up?"

Jared and Gen both throw their heads back and laugh.

"No sweetie," Gen answers once she composes herself. "We are nowhere near breaking up. We are as strong as ever. Right Jare?"

Jared nods and I breathe a sigh of relief.

"So what is it?" Jay asks. He has never been one for mystery and pussyfooting. He is more of a "get to the point" kind of guy.

"We want another baby," Gen says as she links her fingers with her husbands.

"That's wonderful," Jay says with a smile. "But how does that involve me and Drea?"

Gen explains to him about what happened when she gave birth to Shep and had to have an emergency hysterectomy, deeming her sterile and unable to get pregnant ever again.

"We want Drea to be our surrogate," she finishes and my mouth falls open.

They want me to carry their baby and give birth to him/her?! Were they crazy?

"Wha-?" I said, still slack-jawed. "Are you serious?"

"Yes." Jared was the one to answer. "We have discussed it in depth. We want you to carry the third Padalecki."

"Dude, you are not sleeping with Drea!" Jensen demanded, his voice full of venom. He slammed his bottle onto the table and glared at his friend. Once again, Jared laughed.

"I knew that's what your reaction would be," he said. "I thought the same thing when Gen first brought it up. Baby, please explain to our simple-minded friend how this would work."

"IVF stands for In Vitro Fertilization. The doctor would take my eggs and fertilize them with Jared's sperm and then implant them into Drea's uterus. No sex involved….well, no sex between unwilling partners."

I watch as the tension and hostility melt from Jensen's shoulders. "Oh," he said and then turned to me, smiling. "It's really up to Drea. It's her body."

After some more discussion about what exactly was expected from each party, I happily agreed to become the surrogate for Jared and Gen.

After a physical exam and consent from my doctor, we would begin preparations for the procedure to begin while the guys were home for Christmas break.

The end of hiatus comes too soon and I find myself in the SUV with Jensen, Jared and Gen heading to the airport to send the guys off.

"I'm going to miss waking up to you everyday," I whisper to Jensen. He and I are cuddled in the middle seat of the vehicle; Jared and Gen in the back row.

"You're going to miss the help with Jackson," he answers with a smirk. "It all lands on you now."

"Yea, your right," I joke and he growls as he pulls me closer and kisses the top of my head.

"Are you nervous?"

"About what?" I pull back to look up at him, confused. Was he talking about having to take care of our son alone?

"Your appointment. It's next week, right?" he says. "I hate that I can't be there with you."

"Jay, I'll be fine. Gen is going with me."

"I know, " he says as he hugs me tighter. "I still wish I could be there in case…." he trails off and I catch onto what he is worried about.

"Babe, if I get bad news, I'll be alright. It'll suck that we won't be able to have more kids but I have you and Jackson. I'm happy."

Gen and I stand at the window and watch the plane that is carrying our men out of the country take off.

"Clean bill of health," I say as soon as Jensen answers the phone. "The doctor says I am healthy and everything is good to go."

"That's great Drea," he says and I can hear the smile in his voice. "I've been thinking about you all day."

"More like worrying about me," I laugh. "Hopefully it didn't screw up filming too much."

"Na-ahh! Hey, buddy." I listen to his and Jared's conversation through the phone. By the sounds of it, Gen had called Jared and told him the good news the same time I called Jay.

"Your girlfriend is good to go to carry my baby," Jared's voice rings out down the line.

"Dude, not so loud!" Jensen admonishes him. "People will get the wrong ideas."

I laugh as I listen to them banter back and forth before Jensen gets back on the line.

"Sorry, honey. Jared is a jackass!"

"Baby, he's excited. So is Gen. I thought she was gonna cry when the doctor okayed the procedure."

"I'm happy for you Drea," he says. "I love you but I gotta get back. Gotta get thrown around by a demon."

I laugh at that. "Don't get dead."

"Eh, I'm Dean Winchester. Even if I get killed, I won't stay that way for long. Nothing stays dead on Supernatural."

We hang up and I go to find Gen to celebrate the good news we received.

@lostinaseaoffictionalbliss @carryonmywaywardcaptain @darlingpeanut @sunskittlex

@sis-tafics @sea040561 @pretty-fortune

@squirrelnotsam @death-unbecomes-you @sandlee44 @internationalmusicteacher

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@closetspngirl @starfirerules @vickiq9761 @rainflowermoon @spnbaby-67

@drakelover78 @jessieray98 @81mysteriouslyme @travelingriversideblues-x

@akshi8278 @keymology @topthis808 @lilulo-12 @onethirstyunicorn @i-love-superhero @tftumblin @markofdean79 @thevelvetseries @larajadeschmidt13

#Jensen Ackles #the padackles link #Jared Padalecki #Genevieve Padalecki #Drea Murphy #jensen x drea #romance #angst #Smut #pregnancy #spn rpf #rpf fiction

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naturaldisasterfanfiction · 4 years ago

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15.

I am a little shocked that Robyn has decided to not tell her mother, she actually hasn’t even told Jahleel, she is kidnapping him and just said a trip and then Dennis is like what is happening and where, also the little Chinese one, Tina I think that is her name, Robyn has only told Mel this and the rest are slightly confused on what is happening but I am shocked she is keeping it away form her mother, unless she thinks her mother will be negative about it but we are leaving for Mexico and all we have is the same mansion we stayed in for the reveal, we are just going to do it I guess and I am here for it but now I am nervous, but Robyn is on it now she is just jumping in the deep end. It’s funny because Robyn is wearing the engagement ring and nobody is questioning it at all, Mel just keeps on smiling at me which is funny to me “I can’t believe you are already leaving Robyn, you said you was staying for a few weeks before going London? This has made me so sad, why?” Monica questioned, we are practically ready to go but Robyn is saying her goodbye’s “you will see me in London mom, don’t worry. I love you so, so much. I can’t wait for you to come and see my new home” I have my own issue here, I am going to miss Royalty’ soccer game and I have no clothes left, Jahleel gave me a top, which is big on me so I am now thinking what the fuck do I do. Sorry daddy is busy getting married, that is all I say to her is that I am busy “I will see you in London too?” Monica said to me, woke me out of my daze “uh yeah” I breathed out smiling “ok good, I am just worried. I don’t want you to go Robyn, I want you to stay here so I can look after you. Out there nobody is nice Robyn, they will try and get pictures, they hound you” Monica is concerned, and I don’t blame her “mom, stop it. I am ok and I can really handle myself. Once I am in London, my doors are closed mom, don’t worry come on now” Robyn hugged her mom “I just want to look after my baby, I love you. Please call me when you land” that is cute to see “look after my daughter Chris, please” Monica said “I will” I am saying that but she be looking after me “men can’t even handle themselves, I will be looking after him and me and the baby. Anyways, stop, I need to go now” Robyn knows.

I haven’t posted on my Instagram for so long, I just sit on here and like Royalty’ posts because she will get offended if I don’t and think I don’t care, she is sensitive. I have two sensitive ladies in my life, with a third one on the way but I haven’t really paid much attention to this at all. I haven’t posted in weeks actually. Backing out of my Instagram and onto Google, searching ‘pink’ in images. Saving a solid pink colour block and then going back onto Instagram, uploading the image onto Instagram. Captioning the image ‘I love this theme, everything pink’ pressing post “I am back” Robyn sat next to me “so anyways, can you all gather. Well there is only three of you, but Mel already knows” locking my phone and placing it down on the table “it is me of these tables on the jet are getting too close?” Robyn said so confidently and it now very confused that it is the tales’ fault “you are being dead ass?” I said laughing “don’t you think? Look at it?” looking at the bump and then at her face “Robyn you are pregnant, you are slow” Robyn laughed hitting my arm “fuck you, it is the table fault anyways. Welcome to my office, come on now” shaking my head staring at Robyn “what? I am right ok, look at that. Can’t even eat right and your judging me” she licked her thumb and then wiped the corner of my mouth “lick your finger, tell me what it is?” Robyn snorted laughing, wiping her thumb on my tee “now why would I do that, stupid” wiping the side of my face “you not used the skin care Chris, I know. You better start” she caught me out, I did kind of forget to use it.

Jahleel raised an eyebrow just looking at us both “so we are going Mexico, it’s something that has just come up. I can’t say what will happen, but we are just going to go with the flow. Just like I got pregnant from my sperm donor, and it just happened. This has also just happened” frowning at Robyn, she knew I was staring at her in annoyance “what!?” she spat, I love that she is so happy. Just the simple fact she seems so light hearted and ever so happy “sperm donor that is sat right here?” she giggled “well anyways, we just ignore him. I am joking but something happened” Jahleel gasped “no way! I see it!” he pointed at her finger “you didn’t?” he looked at me “I am going Mexico to get married” Jahleel jumped up from his seat, Tina just froze in utter silence staring at us. Laughing at Jahleel shouting in shock and then he came back over to us “no way” he walked off again “I felt the same way. When she told me. You believe them two? They are crazy” Mel said “awww the ring is beautiful Robyn, oh wow. Oh my god, why am I crying” Tina waved her hands in her face “I love you so much oh my god” I didn’t expect Tina to be crying “you both are actually getting married? Did he get down on one knee? Oh my god! This is like the most fucked up and lovely love story, oh my god. I am just in love with you both. Robyn!? You’re going to be a wife? Are you capable of that?” Robyn laughed at Jahleel “I am capable of it asshole! Ok? You ain’t my fake husband anymore” Robyn pointed at him “you can still have her Jahleel, trust me” I said laughing, I like him a lot. Her team are a mess, like they all here crying. Dennis is just stood there in shock, not sure his reaction “I just, don’t know what to say. Congratulations and I can’t wait to be the guy to say I was there. I am feeling emotional, to picture your gender reveal, baby shower, now your ceremony and then your birth. I am pretty shook because nobody is going to expect it. I am happy, wow. Congratulations to you both, to Mr and Mrs Brown. We will make sure we make the best for you” Dennis reached over, shaking his hand “good luck” he said which made me laugh “I am excited, but wait till Jen finds out” Jahleel is right, Jen doesn’t know “I just want it to happen and then I will deal with that after, too many opinions is never good” Robyn got a point.

I just remembered what Dennis said now “hold up, you’re going to be where? At the birth?” I questioned “yes I am” Dennis said so confidently “he about to be all in Robyn’ coochie, chile. He loves to see it” Jahleel laughed “really? Is he going to be there?” I asked “yes, I am going to give it a few months and I will be bringing out like a personal documentary to me. Because I am closed off now, I will bring out what I want and there will be clips of this, some of it anyways. It’s just all Dennis for this, it’s personal to me and I will be releasing it to the fans, but he won’t be like in coochie thank you very much. But actually, Melissa! I have something I need you to do for me. I need you to get Chris a ring. I don’t care for what he got on, I want it to be from me” looking at my ring I already wear “I am just married to myself, that is why” I laughed “well I can’t do it so I need you all to help on this and get something for him, nice too” I cooed out, that is cute she wants to get me one “like a friendship ring?” I said laughing “friendship? Nigga don’t try me now” I chuckled, I love her so much and I can’t wait to marry her.

Robyn is working and doing her thing, I said I would have a nap, but I just can’t. I am thinking too much, I promise Royalty I would be there for her game and I won’t be. I don’t want to leave Robyn alone either to go, I mean how is this going to work. I don’t want to leave Mexico just to go there, but then I promised. Let me just get this over with, if I am going to dance around it and leave it last minute I will look even worse. Let me call Nia first because then she will know if Royalty decides to be sad about it, I mean she will I guess. Dialling Nia’ number, looking over at Robyn as she is in a circle with her people working along, as she does “dad! I saw your name” Royalty picked up the phone “you picking mommy’ phone now, give me that now?” Royalty laughed as Nia said in the background “she jumped on your name, hey Chris” Nia said “hey” I dragged out “uh how is she?” I asked, I am making small talk “you don’t sound good, uhm she is ok. She is supposed to be doing homework right now but then she saw my phone ringing, you are nosey. He is speaking to me now go” Nia said to her “I am good, just uhm. Something came up and I can’t make it to her soccer game” Nia sighed out “she’s been looking forward to that Chris, seriously? What is so important? You have known this for weeks this is coming up, it’s like her championship game, you have missed so many. I am not telling her anything and she is staring at me so you can tell her, I just yes” this is not good “damn” I breathed out rubbing my head, I am like choose Robyn over Royalty but I am, but I do love her, this is a mess and I didn’t think Robyn would jump on a jet to do this “I am guess you’re going to let me down” Royalty said down the phone “I am sorry baby, something has come up and I can’t come but I will” Royalty put the phone down on me “man” putting my head in my hands, this is a mess because I never meant for it to hit like that.

Nia called me back “don’t put the phone down on him now, come on” hearing Nia say, “he is letting me down again mom!” I cringed, I mean she has a point because that is what I am doing “Roro, listen to me. Please, look I am sorry. I know I mess up a lot, but I don’t do it on purpose, are you listening to me?” I hope she is “I am not listening really” I knew that “I have stubborn women in my life, I said to you that I will tell you soon, but I can’t. This is important to me baby; I know you would understand if you knew but I can’t. I am busy doing something for me, it sounds selfish, but I am doing this for me. I won’t be there in time Royalty and I know you will kill it like you always do” I feel bad that I have upset her “I don’t want to see you dad, don’t call me” that kind of hurts “Roro please, I love you don’t do that to me. I mess up but I am trying here, I appreciate you so much I know it’s a lot and I kept promising you about the game but this just happened, it was out of nowhere please, you’re hurting me here” resting my head back on the headrest “then come to my game, I want my dad there. No meme just dad, I don’t want no friends, just my mom and dad. You said you would do all these good things and you didn’t dad, you take too long. You said daddy and daughter holiday too” she put the phone down on me again, throwing my phone on the table shaking my head.

Happiness in one hand, and then this on the other hand. My phone started to ring on the table, seeing my mom. This can’t be, did Royalty snitch on me but I have been waiting for Royalty to ring but she hasn’t at all for a good hour. Answering the call “yeah” I said, “you’re useless you know that, what did you do?” well this is a mess “you know what I have done, why are you asking a question when you know already?” clearly she does know but is asking dumb questions, seeing Robyn sit across from me “I do know but what are you doing? Royalty doesn’t want to come with me and said you lied, you promised you would come” I groaned out “maybe I just don’t want to see anybody anymore? Ever thought of that, you haven’t even called me since, but you call me now? You just funny” my mom is laughable “you upset my grandchild Chris! What are you playing at, you are losing kids left and right, you have nobody left and you are where?” she is at Nia’ home still, I can hear Nia saying don’t argue “I am nowhere, just leave me alone. I don’t know what you want me to do, just please call me when you want money” disconnecting the call on my mom, everything is so difficult “you done your little work thing” looking at my messages, it’s bullshit things as always “not really, I just heard you ranting from across the jet. What exactly is happening?” I suppose I was being rather loud with my call.

I feel awkward telling Robyn “it’s just you know child issue” I shrugged it off “if you are marrying me then I guess that is my issue too, so don’t be shy, do tell” she got a point “uhm so, I promised Royalty that I would be there for her little soccer game but like I didn’t expect things to take a turn so quick, I assumed I would be back in time for it, so I just cancelled on her and she is upset and is saying that I am always cancelling on her, she is really upset. I have let her down before. I was supposed to tell her mother about taking her to London, daddy and daughter holiday but I have let her down with it all. So I pretty much just upset her, she does let me off, but I think I have been pushing it. My mom has found out too and is on my case that I am useless, and I have lost kids here and there. I am trying, I just want to make you see happy, you my number one” which is true, I put Robyn first “your mom just ranted to you? Didn’t she like talk? She does like rule the whole grandchild seeing thing?” Robyn questioned “pretty much, I don’t have Royalty at all. Just now, recently I been calling to see her, also she has been wanting it. My mom doesn’t fuck with me like that anymore, it’s always love but that is it. I think once she found out about Royalty she pretty clung onto her and made me just there. My mom changed once she got to Cali, it is what it is. She gives up with me but yeah” Robyn frowned “mhm what is Royalty like?” I chuckled “she is me, without the bipolar, she just a mini version of me. Loves big, she just adores me and at times I don’t know how to handle that. Just pure love, the guidance from my mom was you see her when she comes, then just pay” I shrugged “when is the soccer game Chris?” rubbing my chin “this weekend, but I don’t want to leave you alone” I really don’t “I will be in Miexico with Dennis and Tina, you go back with Mel and Jahleel and you see her game, it’s important she feels your love. I wanted my dad’ love but it was hard because I saw a lot, go there and come back. I am not stopping you from anything, just if those women start being reckless then you know I won’t allow that but go and come back. I heard you saying I said to you that I will tell you soon, but I can’t. This is important to me; I know you would understand if you knew but I can’t. I don’t hold no hate against any child, this is not their fault. And I am marrying you, would she keep a secret?” Robyn asked “Royalty and I have secrets all the time, she feels that if she tells meme well my mom that she won’t let her go with me. If she can see me she will lie, she lied to her mom and put a backpack full of clothes to stay with me” Robyn cooed out.

“I have been selfish in not letting you tell anyone but adults are wack, if you can work it out then you can bring her to Mexico but that if you think she will shut her mouth and not say a word. I feel weird saying this but this is my future and I need to get it together. So if you want to bring her then you can, I am nervous to see her but it would be ok so you can spend time with her and have fun without a judgemental environmental” I can’t believe what I am hearing “really?” my voice broke, then I just cried “Chris, why are you crying” Robyn doesn’t understand how people think of me as this bad crackhead guy, trying to gather myself “nobody trusts me, her mother only does it because Royalty doesn’t let her get away with it and you are just there doing this for me, not even my own mother would say that” I sniffled “it’s all a learning curb Chris, it’s new to me and there is one thing I will do is be there for you always, you deserve some peace and you need help with that” wiping the tears that fell.

#Chrianna #Chrianna FF #Chrianna Fanfiction #Fanfic #Fanfiction

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kelyon · 5 years ago

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Nephila 2: Unexpected

The long-awaited (and totally unplanned) next chapter of Nephila, aka The One Where Rumple is a Giant Spider

In this chapter, Belle talks to Ruby and figures out what she needs to do

Read on AO3

In a perfect world, Belle French would have never known that you can buy pregnancy tests at the dollar store.

Wandering through the aisles of the Dahllah Hahbah, Belle imagined what that perfect world would be like. In a perfect world, she wouldn’t be alone for this trip--unless she had a plan to surprise the co-parent of her child, but even then she would probably have brought Ruby along with her. In a perfect world, she and her significant other would have gotten the most precise pregnancy test available. It probably would have been expensive, the sort of thing you need a prescription to get. In a perfect world, this would have been an expected baby, a wanted baby. In a perfect world, Belle would have already been trying to conceive, with the help of a committed partner. She would have been charting her cycle and taking her basal temperature and regularly injecting her uterus with human sperm.

In a perfect world, she wouldn’t have to specify human.

Without really thinking about what she was doing, Belle piled junk into the green plastic shopping cart. Halloween candy was half off, and the tiny packs of beef jerky were only a dollar. She had been especially hungry for meat lately. In the clearance section, orange and black spider decorations stared at her. Their googly eyes were equal parts friendly and ominous.

She backed away from the Halloween stuff, back into the comparative comfort of a Christmas display. She grabbed a box of candy canes and made her way to the check out lane.

The middle-aged cashier in a green polo shirt wore the dead-eyed glaze of someone who isn’t getting paid enough to express emotions on the clock. She didn’t talk to Belle as she scanned her purchases over the blinking red light. If she noticed the pregnancy test amidst all the junk food and paper products, she didn’t mention it.

And that was fine by Belle. She didn’t want people to mention it. She didn’t want it to be real. That was part of why she had gone to the next town over to make this surreptitious purchase. She didn’t want to run the risk of anyone recognizing her. Even if no one saw the test, even if they were supportive and encouraging, Belle didn’t want to think about what was happening at all. If not thinking about something could keep it from being real, then Belle would have no troubles in the world.

There was a used book store in this town, with a wider variety of subjects than the university store’s collection of last semester’s textbooks. Belle parked her car on the street and walked in. Maybe the smell of books would help her calm down.

It was the best kind of used book store, with towering shelves and hidden nooks and endless rooms leading into each other. There was even a cat wandering around, pestering patrons to pet her. Belle breathed deeply, content even in the sections that had no appeal to her. She brushed past cookbooks and theology, lingered briefly over a shelf of “Personal Relationship/Self-Help,” and eventually found herself in the most daunting section of all.

There were several copies of The Book. The book she didn’t want to admit she was looking for. After all The Book was the sort of thing the average woman only needed for nine months out of her life. Belle would probably donate her copy once all this was over with. However it would be over. However it could be over. There was so much that she didn’t know. It would be good, at least, to have a baseline of information, to know what was normal for a human woman carrying a human child.

She held The Book in one arm, making a conscious effort not to cradle it. As at the Dahllah Hahbah, she tried to camouflage The Book by surrounding it with decoys. She picked up a romance paperback, a history of lobster fishing, and a handbook for learning American Sign Language. After a moment of hesitation, Belle also pulled out a hardcover copy of Arachnology Through the Ages. When the stack of books was heavier than she could hold, Belle decided she was safe to check out.

Unlike the Dahllah Hahbah, this bookstore was staffed solely by the woman who owned the place--a retiree with her long hair in a loose bun and reading glasses on a chain around her neck. Midmorning on a Wednesday, she was obviously thrilled to chat up each and every customer who walked through the door.

“Looks like you got a good haul!” the woman said brightly.

Belle made herself smile and put the books on the counter. “It’s mostly gifts for people.”

“Early Christmas, that’s a smart move!” The owner began to ring up the books. “Oh, Texas Destiny is such a good read! Wait til you get to the part with the wild horses. Do you like horses?”

Her smile was still fixed in place. “A… little.” Belle didn’t give a shit about horses, but this was not the time to talk about it. Maybe if the shopkeeper was distracted by Texas Destiny, she wouldn’t notice--

“Oh!” The woman’s voice rose to a pitch that could only mean the worst thing in the world for Belle: She had seen The Book.

Belle could only be grateful that there was no one else in the store when the woman held up the copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting.

The shopkeeper looked Belle up and down, her smile even wider than before. “So can I say congratulations?”

Belle bit her lip and looked down. “Maybe? I--I don’t really know yet.”

“Oh sweetie!” the woman said. “If you’re buying this book, then you know. And even if it’s not this time, it’ll be soon, I can tell. You look very fertile.”

Mortified, cheeks blazing red, Belle couldn’t say anything.

The woman just kept talking. “This is the gold standard for moms-to-be. And they say it’s easy to read, doesn’t make anything too science-y.”

At that, Belle found her voice. “I’m actually working on my PhD at the University of Maine. I’ve already completed my masters in Zoology. Science-y stuff doesn’t bother me.”

The shopkeeper took that in stride. “And your... husband? Boyfriend? Partner? What do they do?”

Lives in a cave and spins gold webs, Belle thought but couldn’t say. Instead she pulled out her wallet. “It’s kind of complicated. Where do I swipe my card?”

“Oh, we’re cash only, sweetie.”

“Sure,” Belle barely kept the annoyance out of her voice as she put away her debit card and pulled out the twenty she saved for emergencies. “Of course you are.”

****

When she got back to her crappy apartment, Belle thoroughly read and re-read the instructions on the pregnancy test. She wanted to believe that this was a complicated, mysterious process. Maybe she had been wrong the whole time. Maybe she had misread the signs and miscalculated the dates since her last period. Maybe she would go to the bathroom and find her underwear stained with blood, wouldn’t that be great? Wouldn’t that be so much better than the alternative?

Overthinking was a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the longer Belle dithered and avoided the inevitable, the more worked-up she found herself getting. She would have less anxiety as soon as she had some idea of what was happening.

On the other hand, every second she didn’t know if she was pregnant was another second when she could pretend she definitely wasn’t pregnant. It could be true. She could be just imagining things. But she wouldn’t know until she peed on the goddamned stick.

Before she began, she set the kettle on for a cup of tea. By the time the water boiled, it was done. Belle held her mug of Earl Grey close to her chest and looked down at the little blue plus sign.

It had happened.

She was pregnant.

From a motherfucking spider!

****

“I’m coming over and I’m bringing margarita mix!”

Ruby’s voice was loud, even considering the amplification of being on speakerphone. She had to shout to be heard over the noise of the road and the static of her phone and the pounding of Belle’s blood in her ears.

Belle had managed to keep her composure for five entire minutes before the reality of her situation had come crashing down over her head and left her a sobbing mess. In her distress, she’d called her best friend, and Ruby had answered with her usual love language: girl time and booze.

“But I can’t drink!” Belle wailed. “I’m fucking pregnant and tequila will fucking kill my baby!”

“Don’t worry, I’ll drink your tequila, and you can just have the lime juice. Vitamin C is good for zygotes, right?”

“I don’t know.” Trying to pull herself together, Belle wiped her eyes with the heel of her hands. There were all kinds of vitamins she needed to be taking now--or at least, there would be if she was having a human baby. What would a spider baby need? What kind of thing had taken up residence in her body? “I don’t know anything!”

“Okay, okay,” Ruby tried to soothe her. “Don’t panic. Everything will be worse if you panic. I am so close to your apartment, Belle. Just hang on until I get there. How about you look at the table of contents for your new book?”

Normally, there was nothing that calmed Belle down more than reading the table of contents to a book. There was something so comforting about knowing the progression of a text, to have all the steps and developments laid out in a simple outline, to get little teases as to the meat of the book. It was like reading the menu before sitting down to a feast, anticipating all the good things to come.

But if Belle looked at the table of contents to What to Expect When You’re Expecting, she would be peeking into the progression of the next nine months of her life, and that was not a timetable she could think about right now.

“I’ll be okay,” she told Ruby through wobbling lips. “Are you bringing food, too?”

“What, you think I’m an amature? I’m gonna hang up now so you don’t hear me freak out about parallel parking, but I’ll be up soon, hun. Okay?”

“Okay.” Belle nodded, even though Ruby couldn’t see it. She hung up the phone and took a deep breath.

Ruby’s breezy confidence was exactly what Belle needed right now. It made her feel normal, even in the middle of the most un-normal thing she’d ever heard of. Ruby had been an RA while they were undergrads, a faithful post-breakup bar companion, and the recipient of teary late-night calls from friends going back to her high school days. She knew everything about how to deal with someone who was scared and alone and crying her eyes out. Belle wasn’t the first person to call Ruby up in tears, and she wouldn’t be the last.

It helped to think that her problems were not unique. Every day, women all around the world discovered that they had an unplanned pregnancy. For every one of them, it was the end of one world and the beginning of another. And Belle was just the same. The unorthodox manner of conception didn’t change the fact that Belle was merely one of thousands or millions of women who had been put in this exact same situation since the dawn of time. And, like so many of her countless sisters, Belle found solace in reaching out to other women, to find help and comfort and solidarity.

Laden with grocery bags, Ruby burst through the unlocked door like an inverse Santa Claus. Instead of a fat old man bearing gifts for the nice, Ruby was a skinny young woman offering solace to someone who had been decidedly naughty. Belle was more happy to see her friend than she had been on any Christmas morning of her life.

“Hey,” she tried, with a watery smile.

“Baby!” Ruby dropped the bags on the ground and pulled Belle in for a hug. “Or--no. That was a bad choice of words, wasn’t it? How do you feel? Am I allowed to say the B-word?”

Belle laughed and cried at the same time. “It’s fine,” she shook her head. “Don’t worry about saying the word ‘baby.’ That’s what it is, kinda.”

Ruby let Belle go and started unpacking her bags. “I know,” she said. “But ‘baby’ is an emotionally charged word. We can say ‘embryo,’ if that makes things easier on you. We’re almost doctors, Belle. We can be scientific about this.”

Scientifically, the word we should use is ‘larva,’ Belle thought but didn’t say. Ruby was her best friend and the most supportive person in the world right now. But even she would balk if she knew what Belle had really been up to on her trip to Australia.

Together, they cleared the clutter and books off the coffee table. Then Ruby made Belle sit on the couch and watch while she spread out her feast.

“Okay, so the tequila is just for me, but I did bring Sprite--it’s caffeine free and it’ll work with the margarita mix. Additionally, chips and gauc, cheese puffs, cheesecake bites, chocolate chip cookies--”

“Did you sort your shopping list alphabetically?”

“And--” Ruby went on, “a whole goddamned rotisserie chicken. I figured we could just rip into it with our hands like old-timey kings, like we’re going to throw the bones on the floor for the dogs.”

Belle let out an incredulous giggle. “That’s ridiculous! And perfect. Thank you so much, Ruby.”

“Oh! I also got this fancy salt for our margaritas. It’s made with black ants! Can you believe that?”

“Ants?” Belle whispered as her hand drifted over her stomach. Suddenly nauseous, she leapt off the couch and ran to the bathroom.

When she finished throwing up, Belle stayed on the ground next to the toilet. Ruby had lingered in the doorway but didn’t come in until Belle was done. She offered her a glass of water and Belle took it gratefully. Ruby sat on the edge of the bathtub, her face full of concern.

“Has the morning sickness been bad?”

“I don’t know if this is bad, I’ve never had it before!” Belle took a sip of water and closed her eyes. “Isn’t it supposed to be bad? Isn’t pregnancy supposed to be divine punishment for promiscuity?”

“If it’s punishment for anything, it’s for poor planning. I thought you were on the pill?”

Belle shook her head. “I kept it up for a few months after Will and Ana got back together for the fifth time, but when it looked like they were sticking I didn’t bother to refill my prescription. I don’t have sex with men often enough to justify taking a pill every day.”

“Except for when you do.”

“Yeah,” Belle took another drink. “Except for when I do.”

Ruby took a breath and rubbed her hands over her knees. “Listen, you know I’m here for you no matter what, right?”

Belle was still shaky, but she rested in that certainty. “Right.”

“And I’m not going to pressure you or make you do anything. You don’t even have to make any decisions today, okay?”

“Okay.”

“But I gotta ask: Belle, what do you want to do? Have you thought about your options? Do you want to keep it? Do you want to… not keep it?”

Leaning her head back against the cool tile of her bathroom wall, Belle opened her eyes slowly. It had been such an ordeal to even confirm that she was pregnant, the thought of what came next had been too much to consider until now.

She took a deep breath, eight counts in, eight counts out.

“I think ‘abortion’ is an even more emotionally charged word than ‘baby.’”

“It doesn’t have to be,” Ruby said. “It doesn’t have to be a big deal. I can drive you to Planned Parenthood, I’ll be with you every step of the way. If that’s what you want.”

“I know,” Belle said softly. Ruby’s support was unconditional. She would paint a nursery or hold Belle through a difficult procedure, both with equal willingness and sincerity.

But Belle had an instinctive terror at the thought of going to a doctor’s office in her condition. What would a real urine test reveal about the nature of her child? What kind of image would show up on an ultrasound? Even if she wanted to get rid of this thing, would a regular abortion procedure work? Or would they have to go into her uterus with insecticide?

“I don’t want to go to a doctor,” she said softly.

Ruby’s eyes widened. “But you have to go to an OB! Or even just talk to Victor. I mean, if you’re going to stay pregnant, you have to stay healthy and safe.”

“I know,” Belle closed her eyes again. What could she say? How could she explain any of this? “But… I… I don’t know what will happen.”

“What, like with insurance or something?”

Belle’s eyes shot open. That worked. “Yeah,” she lied. “I don’t want to deal with crazy medical bills.”

Ruby nodded thoughtfully. “Does Australia have universal health care?”

Now it was Belle’s turn to nod, slowly, saying words only slightly after the thoughts came into her head. “We… do. I should go back home… because of the healthcare.”

“Yeah, no, you definitely should. Besides, your parents are there!”

At the mention of her parents, Belle’s tenuous hope crumpled. “Oh God!” she let out a wrenching cry. “My parents are gonna kill me!”

“Nooo,” Ruby crooned. She slid off the bathtub edge and joined Belle on the floor, pulling her into her arms and slowly rocking her back and forth. “I know it’s scary, but parents can be okay with things. My mom didn’t want to tell Granny about me until I was almost born, but it all turned out fine!” She gave Belle a chaste kiss on the temple. “Even if your mom and dad freak out at first, they’ll come around soon. Babies are cute. They’re easy to like.”

Belle shook her head and let the tears fall silently. “Not this baby.”

“Don’t say that.” Ruby held Belle by the shoulders, twisting their bodies so they could look into each other’s eyes. “If you’re gonna keep this baby, Belle, you’ve got to own it. It will be a lovable baby because it will be your baby. You’ve got to fight for it! If you’re this thing’s mom, you have to be its biggest fan. Does that make sense?”

Still teary, Belle nodded. “It’s my baby, right or wrong.”

“Unless you want to go to Planned Parenthood. That is entirely up to you. But once you make that choice--” Ruby balled her hand into a fist and shook it in a display of fierce determination “--then it’s yours.”

“Mine,” Belle whispered. Her hand drifted down to her stomach. It was still flat and lifeless. There was nothing about her body that spoke of the life that grew inside her. Nothing that could tell her what manner of creature her child would become. But Ruby was right, it was hers. And not just hers. “I should tell the father too.”

“Yeah, you never mentioned what happened! Who was this guy? What was he like? How was the sex?”

“The sex was amazing,” Belle admitted with the candor of the overly distraught. “But it was just sort of a one-night stand. I didn’t think I’d ever see him again.”

“Do you want to see him again? Do you think he’ll want to be involved?”

“He’ll have to be involved,” Belle said with a dawning sense of relief.

Of course the creature in the cave would be a part of their offspring’s life. If she was going to give birth to a spider, then it would have to be raised by a spider! And that thing… that thing was intelligent. It could care for its young. Maybe it could even take care of Belle.

She just had to see him again.

Belle felt like a weight had been lifted off her shoulders. As she stood up, she nearly floated off the bathroom floor. She offered her hand down to Ruby and helped her get up.

“Tomorrow morning, I have to call Dean Mills to see if someone can teach my classes for the rest of the semester.”

Ruby cocked her head at Belle. “And why is that?”

“Because I’m going back to Queensland.”

#Nephila #rumbelle #rumbelle fic #sorry there's no smut in this one #not a lot of spiders either #next time baby

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rosesnink · 5 years ago

Text

Woman Up

A/N: Hello there! Today I bring y’all a different piece of writing that I enjoyed writing a whole lot. It is inspired by @lorirwritesfanfic ‘s incredible one-shot Ladies’ Rant which I absolutely reccomend!

Summary: In Cheryl Addams’ 21st birthday, she meets up with some of her friends and bond over one particular and annoying thing.

Books: The Royal Romance, Ride or Die, Desire and Decorum (modern AU) The Royal Masquerade (modern AU) A Courtesan of Rome (modern AU) Mother of the Year, The Freshman, Bloodbound, Wishful Thinking.

Characters: Eclipsa Ice(TRR), Cheryl Addams (ROD), Celestine Walker (D&D), Grace Everhart(TRM), Aphrodite Catauni (ACOR), Toni Day (MOTY), Vanessa Lewis(TF), Cristina Sanders(BB), Nyx Martin (WT)

Warning: Language

The women sat as they cheered for Cheryl’s 21st birthday. The blonde woman beamed at her shots as she looked around, a relieved smile on her face

“I’m finally free! Can you believe that?”

Cristina laughed as she adjusted her rather scandalous purple dress that gave a glimpse of what she was hiding “Yeah, I barely remember anything from my birthday. I just remember how drunk I was and that I hooked up with some hot girl in the bathrooms”

Vanessa looked at her with wide eyes as she commented “Well, my 21st birthday was pretty smooth. One last dorm party with my friends and my fianceé. I never knew that growing up you’d grow tired of these things”

Eclipsa laughed at them both as she said “My 21st birthday was pretty boring. A few shots, a big burger, the birthday song and then I had to keep working”

Grace blinked “Sometimes I forget that you used to be a waitress before heading to Cordonia”

“And that you are one of the elder nobles of the Cordonian houses! And recently engaged with the Crown Guard Kayden Vescovi no less. She’s hot indeed”

“Oh, you have no idea”.

“How do you feel now, Cheryl?” Aphrodite asked.

“I feel… like I can finally set free of my father”.

“Yeah, I know how that feels” Celestine smiled at her.

“Fathers can be very sexist when it comes to ‘protect their princesses’ but eh, your brother or cousin can go and fuck whoever they want. Nice mansplain, dad” Eclipsa huffed.

Cristina lifted her whiskey with an ironic smirk “Bold of you to assume I ever had a father that loved me”.

“I directly don’t know who the fuck my father is” Grace added.

Vanessa and Celestine looked at each other, concerned as Vanessa spoke up “Should we shut up about how great our fathers are…?”

“Of course not! Do speak about them, don’t let our shitty lives feel bad about yours” Grace said.

Cheryl looked at the grown women around her and asked “Tell me about your love life. Who holds your heart?”

Eclipsa beamed at the question “My wife Hana is the best thing I could ever have with our dear Missimiss”

Cheryl awed as she commented “Your daughter is the cutest thing I ever seen. Even though, can’t Liam produce his own heir, marry someone who can really love him?”

Eclipsa frowned “I fear that he doesn’t seem capable of love again. And the idea of my baby being Queen of Cordonia one day… it’s difficult, but I trust that Liam will make of her a great ruler”.

“Well, right now I just got engaged with my girlfriend Kayden!” Grace beamed, showing the simple, yet elegant ring in her finger.

Everyone cheered as asked for another round of shots and hugs.

Vanessa smiled at Grace “Congratulations, Grace. I wish you a happy marriage like the one I have with Becca”.

Cristina smirked at her “I have heard a great deal of your wife, Vane. She invented the song Boss Bitch by Doja Cat. She’s the baddest lawyer of the Estates”.

“Uh, can we talk that you’re the wife of a 2000 years-old sexy vampire Queen, Cris?”

“Ah, yes, my Kamilah is the best at everything, especially on bed” She said, a big smirk on her face.

The girls roared and whistled, making Cristina laugh. Celestine looked at them, quite embarrassed about their lives “Am I really the only one married to a man?”

Vanessa took Celestine’s hand as she smiled at her “Don’t worry, C. We love you anyways and you’re still valid! It’s not like your bisexuality is a secret”.

“I was so relieved when Ernest said that he didn’t mind who I loved and that he’d love me anyways”.

“He sounds like a great man”.

She smiled at her friend “He is. The best husband a girl can ask for”.

Nyx beamed when she saw her lastest interview on TV “Eeee! I’m trending again! Bitch, I’m thriving!”.

“Hmm, I’ll drink to that! My Eiko is always featured on the scientists news” Toni beamed.

Cristina looked at her “I have one question for you, Toni” The young mother looked at her “Does Eiko talk about science in bed?” The Latina woman wiggled her brows and all the attention was now on her. She smirked as she nodded and everyone cheered.

They all drank their shots as they made selfies and Pictagram stories. On the news, it was announced a new ‘dead woman’ who was victim of domestic violence. Some women scoffed as the others roller their eyes.

“Come on, dude, say it! Her misogynistic husband murdered her!” Toni shouted. All the ladies preached her as some old men whispered among them, shaking their heads.

Cheryl growled as she glared at the old men, who had been looking at her like some piece of meat to heat up and eat. Nyx spoke up “God, I know many men are amazing, but some others… Ugh they can be so tiring, like, I’m trying to do a street interview and some dude kisses my cheek! I was called an exaggerate bitch and I should calm down. Thank God my Anna has them all scared down”.

“Hmm, try to survive in English nobility! That maggot of Richards tried to assault me for no reason than his own ego and thank God Ernest was there to assist me to get rid of him or God knows what would’ve happened!”.

Cristina’s eyes went wide in realization “You’re the lady that kneed that creepy duke in the balls?! Dudette, I still have that photo and use it as a meme!”.

The women laughed loudly as high-fived the Countess “Between you and I… It was very satisfactory to see the look on his face” Celestine confessed.

“Good for you, girl” The duchess preached her.

“I will always remember when I slapped the creep of Lester Castellanos” Cristina beamed.

“Hitting is nice, but have you tried roast him in the middle of a debate for governor?” Nyx taunted.

“Oooh, and get a preached detective and his minions of bad boys in front of your high school with your criminal gang?” Cheryl said.

“Try expose him on your wedding day with half of London’s nobility and the Queen of England watching”.

“I liked it better when you defeated that little bitch of Payne with a wedding dress and a big ass sword” Eclipsa commented.

“There’s no better satisfaction than watch him dragged to the mud with the amazing help of your lawyer because he has no fucking clue of who his own daughter is” added Toni.

“Or a speech to charm a conqueror’s gentry and make them love you and hate him”.

“Bitch, that was iconic!”.

Grace sighed “To think that all of us has suffered and still suffer because of the opinions of some grown men who think that knows about us and our struggles and tell us what to do!”.

Eclipsa agreed as she added “When I still give my opinion in the Royal Council or suggest something to make Auvernal get off our backs, I can see the noblemen scowl or roll their eyes. And I have Grace here as a witness”.

“I remember I made an essay of corrupt police in my university, Langston, and many men interrupted me with nonsensical questions and called me a communist and feminazi!” Cheryl grimaced at the memory.

“When I first wrote my book, that is now out, they asked me all about my personal life or if I wanted to have children and even asked me about how I’d manage to have a family with another woman instead of focusing on the damn book! It was so frustrating” Vanessa scowled.

“When I join the men for a debate about the Parliament, many of them grimace and if it weren’t because either my husband or my brothers say ‘I think Celestine is trying to say something’, they’d ignore me!”.

Cristina mumbled “And then they ask me why I’m gay…”.

“Oh boy, have I told you how frustrating straight men can be with lesbians? I’m making out with my girl and there’s always this gross dude who asks ‘Can I watch?’ and I just wanna punch him” Aphrodite scowled.

“The thing that Hana and I are the first gay noble couple to be open about it and have our own family without a man being the head of it can be so tiring” She mimicked the voices of reports “Who is the lucky man who donated his sperm? Don’t you wish he were in Stephanie’s life? Is it hard to be mothers?” She huffed as Toni nodded.

“People always whisper ‘Poor Livia! She has one part her father who doesn’t care about her and two moms! Scandalous!’” She scoffs as she nods at Eclipsa “Being a gay mom is hard”.

“That’s why Kayden and I don’t want children. We’re fine on our own, alas, with Lord Pompadour and my dear bear Scooby, we’re fine, but people won’t stop calling us selfish for not wanting to be moms! Like, grow the hell up, old man”.

Cheryl and Cristina chanted at the same time “OK boomer!” They laughed.

“And if you have kids, they always ask you about the next one. ‘Won’t you give little Vincent a sibling? Perhaps another brother to play with?’ Like, what if I give him a sister? What’s wrong with birthing girls?” She slammed the hand in the table, frustrated “People complain about Lydia being ginger and everyone said for a while that I cheated on Ernest! Like, it’s genetics? People call me a whore for having an active sexual life with my husband and tell me to chill, like, can’t I enjoy sex with a man I am comfortable with and have a great time? The amount of anons who send a ‘close your legs, slut’ is incredible. That’s why I never give directions. So what if when I’m alone with my husband I want to have sex all night? Who the hell are you to tell me what to do with my sexual life?”.

All the women agreed with her.

“The pressure for us to marry and have children in incredible. Like, it was so difficult conceiving my little Stephanie! I thought of giving up once or twice” Eclipsa stated.

“I never expected to have Livia, but in that moment Guy and I were so happy and excited, but then reality hit, he made me drop my studies and take care of the girl as he did the job. They called him a hero and they called me an ungrateful whore” Toni grimaced “I married him under pressure, like if you’re pregnant, marry your baby daddy!”.

They all nodded as silence filled the room and Cheryl commented shyly “I wonder what it’d be of me if I were a man. Probably many men would be sucking on my dick”.

“Hmm, I’d be called an hero and more worthy of the Crown than Liam”.

“I’d get my heraldy quicker in my royal house”.

“I wouldn’t have to marry if I didn’t want to for win a place as an heir of Edgewater”.

“My boss would preach me and I would have never noticed about Carmichael’s antics”.

“People would respect me more”.

“I would be the best single Dad of the century”.

They all chuckled as they shook their heads “But no matter what, I love being a woman. I have to admit… men can be really dumb sometimes. They’re weaker than we think. I have met few men who can control themselves and not being violent aside of my husband. Despite everything, I love being a woman”.

“Me too. We make magic. We can create lives!” Toni beamed.

“When we do something, it’s really hot” Cristina pointed.

“We can be really mature and we are more subtle”.

“Have someone mentioned that when we make out with people, we don’t have a bundle on our pants, making it hurt?” Vanessa commented.

They all agreed with her as Cheryl raised her glass “To the women. The best creation that God has ever made”.

Toni raised it next “To our daughters, who will become as badass as you ladies”.

“And to the elder women and female ancestors, who have done so much for us to reunite us today”.

Their glasses clinked as they chugged their glasses, cheering.

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Perma Tag: @marlcasters @hellospunkiebrewster @park-nazario @isabella-choices @desireepow-1986

Possible interest: @missameliep @brightpinkpeppercorn @choicesarehard @choicesyouplayandmore @isabeladraws @kamilahsqueen @melodyofgraves @deathbedofchoices @ineedskyecrandall

#playchoices fanfiction #desire and decorum au #ride or die #wishful thinking #the royal masquerade #the freshman #the junior #the senior #a courtesan of rome #mother of the year #bloodbound #mcs interacting

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