#by that i mean the legion left him to babysit the twins and they came back and a part of the castle was on fire

[hyp3rfixation-h3ll]

hey so this is a rlly short textpost but has ANYONE EVER CONSIDERED.

Olly and Olivia + Legion of Stationary Found Family dynamic. Rubber Band is the mom of the group who wants the best for the twins and Tape is the questionable uncle that gives Olly a gun for his 16th birthday

[pendragonfics]

Did I Hear You Say You Love Me?

Paring: Steve Harrington/Reader

Tags: female reader, inspired by this song, features past Steve Harrington/Nancy Wheeler, D&D, Stranger Things spoilers, dancing, fluff, cutesy. 

Summary: During the school holidays of 1983, Will Byers organizes a DND campaign at his house. Reader, his elder sister, is cooped up in the house while everyone else has dates or social lives. Will and his friends concoct a plan.

Word Count: 1,599

Current Date: 2018-02-11

Being the older twin, it’s hardly an achievement. Everyone looks to you to be the most mature, the one in charge when the adults aren’t around. You’d rather be the one who was born eighteen minutes later, to be honest. Except, Jonathan isn’t much better than you; he’s always acting like he’s Dad, trying to make everything get by in the Byers house. And while it sucks majorly to take care of everyone when Mom was out trying to make ends meet and save the day with Chief Hopper, it’s normal.

You, _______ Byers, are basically a Mom. Sans the kids. And childbirth.

And while that sucks majorly, it was that trait which was the saving grace that you used to whip your friends and brother to action when you saw that something was off about Will. If you were Nancy, Jonathan’s girlfriend, you’d be doing anything to not be the Mom. She’s seventeen, just like you, and while you’re making sure your kid brother’s friends don’t accidently burn down the house making Eggos, she’s got good grades and a legion of friends.

“We’re having a DND night next Tuesday,” Will says, sitting beside you on your bed. You can hear him despite the fact you’re listening to Cyndi Lauper through your little tape deck, and taking off your headphones, you place them upon the ears of your younger brother. “Girls Just Want to Have Fun?” He asks, humming to the tune. “This record is new, how’d you get it?”

You bite your lip. “Harrington. He said he picked up the wrong tape at the music store,” you look at the tape’s cover on the desk, and back to Will, “Don’t know how he confused it for The Eagles.”

Will laughed to himself. “He likes you,” he nudges you. You make a noise of denial. “I’ve seen it! He looked at you the same way Jonathan did when he saw Nancy at the Snowball.” Will says proudly.

“You’re just trying to get me to make a move,” you wave off his theory, clicking the tape deck to stop playing Cyndi. “So, what was it you said when you came in? You’re going to have your friends over to not play DND?”

He shakes his head. “No, we are. Our campaign has us –,”

You groan. “Okay, okay, I hear you. I’ll babysit for sure, if you don’t tell me all about it!” you attack Will with a bout of tickling. For a minute, it’s just like when you were kids, before Mom and Dad divorced, and everything wasn’t crazy wild. “Like, I have no idea what any of it means – why isn’t it the same as The Hobbit? I get The Hobbit.”

“Noo!” He cries. “Stop tickling!” Will laughs, pushing your hands from his armpits, eyes screwed up in laugher, filled with happy tears. “Thanks, _______. Jonathan can’t do it, because he’s taking Nancy to the drive-in to watch some sappy movie.”

You turn to Will, and add, “Just make sure your friends get rides here, okay? Jonathan’s gonna take the car, and there is no way I’m biking around town to gather your friends like the pied piper.”

Will laughs. “You’re weird.” As he goes to get off the bed, he adds, “But you won’t have to do that. Steve’s bringing everyone around, Dustin talked him into it.”

You make a face. “How did Dustin make King Steve do that? I mean, he barely knows him! I barely know him, and I don’t get rides around Hawkins in his fancy car,” you tell your brother.

Will shrugs. “Well, Steve’s nice now. And maybe you don’t get car rides, but he did kind of gave you a Cyndi Lauper tape,” he points out. The walkie-talkie on his side makes a crackling noise, and Will leaves to take the call.

You sit there on your bed, silent.  

-

School holidays are the worst. Not because you’re basically left to your own devices when your Mom is off canoodling with her ‘good friend’ Jim (you really want to pressure her into spilling that she likes Jim as more than a friend, but the last time you did that…it ended up with the other guy dying in the Hawkins National Laboratory). And because you’re honestly a big nerd who has no friends, you’re left mooching around the house like a loser, hanging out with your kid brother’s friends and re-reading those musty old love novels that lay around the house.

Tuesday comes around, and once again, your Mom has gotten a ride into town with Chief Hopper. Jonathan is dressed in his favourite band t-shirt and has taken Nancy out to see Flashdance. And Will’s friends are rolling around, and from the sound of the engine of the BMW, Steve’s coming in too.

You glance down at your outfit, suddenly self-conscious. Your baggy jeans and Jaws t-shirt aren’t exactly a ballgown, and your hair looks like a tumbleweed. But it’s too late to do anything about it, because Lucas and the others come through the front door. Mike is humming the Ghostbusters theme.

“Hi _______, wicked shirt!” Dustin says, beaming at you with his new teeth.

You nod. “Thanks, buddy.”

He nods to the porch, where Steve is walking up the stairs. “Is it okay if Steve stays over while we play? My Mom feels better knowing he’s around.” He looks over to the table where the game is set up, and clamours for a good seat. “Shotgun!”

As Steve walks through the door, you feel your breath go short. His hair is nice as always, and the bruises he got from Billy Hargrove that night at your place are finally fading into an ugly brown shade under his skin tone. But he’s still gorgeous, despite the all the scratches, the healing busted lip.

“Hey,” you greet, shoving your hands in your pockets.

“Hey, cool shirt,” he nods, looking to the kids as they muck around by the kitchen table. “Dustin’s Mom asked if I could hang around while they played, she’s a little on edge since she lost her cat, and Barb’s funeral.”

You nod, understanding. Mrs. Henderson was a great Mom; if your Mom had more time in the day, she’d surely be fast friends with her. Will comes into the room and gives El a hug as she walks through the door. “Ready to begin, Mage?”

Max rolls her eyes, taking a seat beside Lucas. El gives her shoulder a playful punch and sits beside Mike. “Ready, Cleric.”

You point behind you to the bedrooms, and call out, “I’ll just be listening to records, shout if you need anything,” you tell the kids. You look to Steve, “If you want to hang out here, it’ll be less boring.”

Your room is a bit of a mess, and realising this, you begin to shove the books into somewhat of a pile, the notepaper where you’ve been doodling cartoons of your favourite superheroes into a pile beneath your math textbook.

“So, what did you have in mind?” Steve asks you, looking at the posters that are in the process of peeling from the wall. Your David Bowie tour poster looks worse for wear, yet, he looks at it like it’s what hung the moon in the sky. “I brought some of my favourite tapes, if you wanted to listen.” From his jean jacket pockets, he produces three tapes, handing them to you.

“Sounds cool.” You nod, inspecting the art on them. “Stevie Wonder, U2, Ramones…these are decent tunes, Harrington.” You beam, turning to place Stevie in your tape deck. “You’ve got good taste.”

“Uh, thanks.” Steve sits on the edge of your bed, looking at your dogeared second-hand copy of Frankenstein. “When I was on my way over, one of the kids said something – I mean they’re probably messing with me or something –,”

You cross your arms, listening to the sweet opening to the first song. “Let me guess. They said that I was super into you.” You twirl your hair over a finger like some valley girl bimbo. “Like, down on my knees, begging God before bed to send me my very own Steve Harrington –,”

He shakes his head. “Mike said that he heard that Jonathan said to Nancy that he heard you talking about the new Cyndi Lauper album, and then Will said that you liked it, and…” he looks at his hands. “_______, ever since I met you in second grade, you’ve been the coolest person I ever met. And it only took me until now to realise that I liked you more than just a friend.”

You frown, just as Stevie Wonder sings the song Did I Hear You Say You Love Me. “Wait…this isn’t you using me as a rebound for my brother’s girlfriend,” you process aloud, “…you like me? Like Han and Leia?”

Steve nods, a blush covering his cheeks, and repeats, “Yeah, like Han and Leia.”

You giggle, and grabbing his hands, pull Steve up to dance around in your bedroom. “This might just be the best Tuesday in the world,” you tell him, dancing like a dork. “Because…I feel the same way, Harrington.”

As you pull him in to kiss, you don’t see the crowd of kids peering through the crack of the half-closed door, watching as you two adolescents finally got together. You don’t see Will beaming, you don’t see Max holding Lucas’ hand.

Your eyes are closed, and you’re close to Steve Harrington, listening to Stevie Wonder. And it is, for you, the best Tuesday in the world. Ever.

[flabbergabst]

Captain Canary Series: Against the Wind (12/13)

Amazing illustration as usual for this Chapter is drawn by @audiovizualna​​ and it could be viewed HERE or click http://audiovizualna.tumblr.com/image/158107644254 

Check it out to be able to visualize a scene in the story!

Story is also available in AO3 + precious chapters’ links available below:

Ch 1     Ch 2     Ch 3     Ch 4      Ch 5      Ch 6

Ch 7     Ch 8     Ch 9     Ch 10     Ch 11

Chapter 12: Fragrant Golden Dews

*Sara’s POV

I felt too tired to open my eyes so I began feeling the things that surround me. The air I’m breathing is cold. Something is covering me—a blanket, maybe. I can feel my feet void of my boots. I can’t feel the heavy leather on my body and was replaced by soft cotton. I tried moving my hands. One did, but my right hand was apparently occupied, being held softly by another calloused hand.

“Len?” I finally opened my eyes and stirred up a bit. I saw him sitting on a chair he must have pulled beside the medbay’s medical bed. He is understandably dozing off all the things that happened within the last 24 hours.

Looking around the room, she spotted a couch that was originally inside the Captain’s study. On it are Luke and Lily sleeping side by side. The crew must have placed the couch inside for my family to look after me.

So this must mean—everything’s over and…I missed the whole thing?!

“Leonard,” I said again, squeezing his hand tighter. “Wake up, honey.”

Len groaned and used his other hand to rub his eyes. “Sara? Are you okay? You’re awake?”

“No.”

I watched him smirk and shake his head slightly before standing up from his seat and moving next to me without taking his hand off of mine. “The snark is an indication that you’re fine. Now, how do you really feel?”

I placed my left hand on his cheek, caressing it. Len closed his eyes and leaned into my palm and kissed it. For the first time in a long time, he doesn’t look stressed. He looks relieved and just…relaxed. “I feel fine,” I replied. “Side doesn’t sting. I’m assuming Gideon healed it. But, god, my muscles are aching. I’m not as limber as I once was.”

“You still kicked ass, hon.” Leonard looked at the sleeping kids and then back to me, giving me a small smile. “It’s done, Sara. We can go home.”

I took that time to close my eyes and breathe. I swear I can see the Scrabble board laid out on our coffee table. I swear I can smell Len’s hot chocolate. I swear I can feel the blanket he draped on my shoulders.

“Tell me everything.”

We both asked Gideon not to inform the heroes about my recovery yet. I needed the time to know what happened. Besides, it seems like all of them are either resting in each other’s quarters, eating in the mess hall, or being complete nerds and discovering the Waverider further.

It took a while for Len to organize his thoughts, starting from the moment he carried me to the Waverider to what he heard from his comms. It also included stories from Ollie, Barry, and Mick which they shared to him while he’s waiting for me to regain consciousness.

He then started:

“Gideon helped in tracking the Legion inside the warehouse. They split themselves in three vantage points and left their minions scattered around to distract the rest of them from ganging up on them. The speedsters took on Thawne. The best possible course of action. Merlyn was already knocked out before I got to you, being taken care of by Oliver. The Legends took on Darhk. The rest of them, the archers, the shooters, all disabled the minion. Pretty neat plan by Mick.”

“He was a thief. Of course he makes the best plans,” I immediately replied with a smile on my face, feeling incredibly proud of one of my best friends.

Len was shortly interrupted by Luke’s light snores. We both turned our heads towards the couch to check on them and sure enough, they’re still deep in their slumber.

He looked at me once more and tilted his head. “According to Barry, which may not be 100% true, he took Thawne down. Finally. Kid Flash went in first, circling Thawne and in every attempt from Thawne to pass through, Jessie would bring him back in the speed circle. I’m not exactly sure if what happened next is true but he claimed that some speed ghosts of some sort detected the high concentration of speed in the location. Turns out, they’re after Thawne. Barry barely had to do anything and poof, one of the Legion gone. He mentioned that it was all for Eddie. You remember when Snow told us about him?”

“Yes. His death was now not done in vain. And Barry helped a lot, hon,” I told him. “You have to admit it at least once.”

“Okay, fine. He deserves a lot of thanks,” Leonard said. “Who’d you want to know about next?”

“Merlyn. You said Ollie had him?”

Len sighed and then continued. “Raymond and Cisco devised a plan to knock down Merlyn. The plan needed me to go head-to-head with him so I could trap him on a dead-end and create an ice wall, so they could pump in gas to knock him out. Queen arrived and told me to just get on with it. Kill the bastard for killing you. I said that isn’t my call to make. It’s theirs. His and his sisters. Queen refused to tell me details so I went to Thea. Her brother put an arrow on Merlyn. She said she made a speech prior to that—telling Merlyn that he was never her father, Robert Queen was.”

“That’s very brave of her,” I replied. Thea has always told me how much she admires how Leonard is to our kids. It was something he never got from Malcolm, but something she received unparalleled from the person she knows is her father.

“The Legends came for Darhk,” Leonard continued. “Raymond and Firestorm got him cornered. Nate knocked him down but it was Mick who killed him. Burned him like he burned Savage…”

Before Leonard could finish, Mick entered the medbay with a box of doughnuts on one hand.

“I did a little speech, too,” the man said, extending his arm for me to be able to take the box from him. “Told him he messed up with my family one too many times. Haircut didn’t even try and stop me. Bastard went out screaming.”

“That’s dark,” Leonard replied, grabbing the box from me and placing it on the bed-side table.

“He deserves it. Now all four of you can go back home and be a normal family.”

When Mick left the medbay, we took time for ourselves to reunite and to assure us that both of us are alive. Leonard was in the middle of telling me an overly-exaggerated version of how he heroically carried me and rushed to the kids to check that they’re safe when we both heard a shuffling from the couch across us.

Lily woke up first, rubbing her eyes with a small pout I adore so much.

“Hey baby.”

“Mommy?”

Lily looked at me, then at Lenny, as if asking if what she’s seeing is true.  

“Come over here, little bird. I think Mommy wants to say hi,” Leonard said, holding my hand and squeezing it.

Lily shook Luke’s shoulder, making our eldest stir. She then removed the jacket Len draped over them, letting it fall on the floor. She took her time walking to the bed I’m in. And from the lights overhead, I can see unshed tears glimmering in her eyes. Her little feet slowly brought her near, her lips shaking, a pout forming.

I had to hold back my tears right then and there. I could only imagine how the last few hours went for the kids from having to leave the ship to waiting whether or not their parents would ever go back to them.

Lil stopped beside Len. He then grabbed her by the sides and lifted her up to sit on my bedside. I followed her eyes to where it landed on my arms, seeing bruises and cuts. There’s warmth in my stomach that crept up to my throat. Tears blurred my vision and all I can feel was Leonard’s hand holding and squeezing mine.

“Are you okay, Mommy?”

And that did it. I stopped trying to hold the tears back. My little girl, asking me if I’m okay. It should be me asking them that.

“We were worried, Mommy,” Luke finally said, rushing to my other side. His eyes are still puffy from sleeping and crying.

“I’m okay, Lucky,” I replied, my free hand running over his dark hair. “You two okay?”

Luke nodded. “Uncle Rip looked after us after Daddy went to get you back. He kept asking Gideon to play movies for us but Lil and I can’t really focus. We were waiting for Daddy to bring you back. I’m glad he did. We were worried, Mommy. But is it done now? Is it finished? Are we gonna go home now?”

I smiled and looked over to Leonard. He’s already looking at me and nodded.

“I still have some people to thank,” I replied, “but I guess, yeah. We’re going home.”

Mick gathered everyone at the Waverider bridge so the heroes could go back to their respective cities. Rip helped Gideon set a shield of some sort to put the effects and harshness to the time-jump since the ship can’t seat all twenty four of us.

People slowly piled in, some of them taking a seat, some just strolling around, leaning on banisters.

“We’re off to Star City first. Your city needs your mayor. Then we’ll go to Central and bring the Snarts home,” Mick typed in the coordinates and turned to face me, giving me a wink. “Legends, we’ll bring Rip back to his fancy white office and I’m taking requests for our next stop. We need a goddamn break from—“

“Words. Kids,” Leonard drawled from behind me.

“Sorry. Ready to roll?”

I stepped up and touched Mick’s arm. “Can I say something before we go?”

Mick nodded and whispered, “Anything for this ship’s previous captain.”

 I stepped up and cleared my throat. My heart is trumping and only when I looked at Leonard did I found my voice again.

“Hey everyone…

I just want to…I really want to, um. Thank you. Just…thank you. All of you. For even coming in and helping us. It’s been years since we thought we took care of the Legion and I know you all have your own lives and problems in your own cities and, um…

Yeah.

Rip, thank you for coming in. Thank you for babysitting the kids, too.

(“I looked after them, not babysit…”)

Barry, thank you for doing this for us. Len still won’t admit it but we’re really thankful. We couldn’t do this without you. You had to leave Iris with the twins and that’s a huge sacrifice to make. Thank you.

Caitlyn, I know you’ve been trying to control your powers for the longest time and you used them to help us.

Cisco. You and my husband have been annoying each other for as long as I remember but you’re still willing to help us.

(“I did it for the kids…”)

No, you did it for Lisa. She would kick you out of your house if you didn’t help her niece and nephew and her brother and his wife. She’d probably call off your wedding, too.

(“That’s 100% true.”)

Wally and Jessie, thank you to the both of you. It would be Wells and not the Legion who’d kill me and Len if we don’t bring you back safe.

Rene, Rory, Eve, you have been too kind to our family. As much as Star City needs you, you three still came to help.

Curtis, thank you for sharing your brain. You, too, Felicity. You probably didn’t want to leave your kids with Lyla but I know you. You can’t resist a good adventure.

Dig. Remember the first time we argued? I told you I didn’t need your back-up. I told you that your training is like kindergarten compared to the League. But from then until now, you keep proving me wrong. How can I even start thanking you?

(“Anything for you, Sara.”)

Thea, I know you’re busy, being Mayor and all, and that you’ve long been retired from this action...I mean, most of us are…but you’re still here, wearing the same red leathers. I know my kids will look up to you. I know I do.

(“I need a break from the office anyways. This is a great change.”)

And Ollie…

(“I know.”)

I know you do. I also know my husband has plans of drinking with you. Now, you’re a tough guy and all but like Mick, I could easily drink you under the table. Len could pretty much do the same. Just saying. He has is ways of saying thank you. This is mine.

And my dear Legends. Oh, where would we be without all of you.

Nate, not once have you said no to us. You know by now that Len and I are very much ready to return the favor anytime.

(“No biggie.”)

God, Amaya, if you were ever hurt while saving my ass, Mick would never let me on the Waverider again. Thank you.

(“Mick would never do that, you know.”)

Martin. You haven’t been on board since we figured out how Jax could become Firestorm on his own. I know you said you want to spend all of your days with Lily and Clarissa and that your days as time-traveller has ran its course but you’re still here. Doing it again for us. My kids adore you, you know? For that alone, Len and I are incredibly thankful. But for the both of us to find friendship with you and your wife is extremely beyond me. We haven’t had our Saturday dinner ritual ever since chaos began again. I promise we’ll host this time.

(“There’s nothing more I look forward to than that, dear.”)

Ray, you’re a hero. You’ve always been a hero from the moment I met you and I will always look at you as the hero who helped saved my family.

(“Are you seriously crying, Haircut?”)

I am incredibly proud of you, Jax. Do you know that Len used to talk about you all the time? He’d tell me how proud he is of you. How much he has learned from you and how much you taught him things he wished he had known at your age. And the little kids clinging on to you now are proof of how grateful our family is.

(“Anything for these little ones.”)

And Mick…

(“It’s nothing, Blondie.”)

No, it’s not nothing, Mick. You’ve always said you’re helping us because you owe Leonard and I a lot but that has long been repaid. Long before we even got married. Now we owe you our lives. We’re here because of you. Because you took care of us, you called all of them in, you hid us and fought for us. You fought with us. I’ll forever be indebted to you and please know that if the day comes you want to hang your Heatgun…there’s a room in Central City waiting for you with fresh sheets and six-pack of beer on the bedside table. We love you, Mick.

(“Of course I’d do that for all of ya. You’re my family.”)

(“Everybody knows you’re an honorary Snart,” Leonard said.)

Thank you, everyone.

Len, hon, I love you with all that I have. And kids, how does going back to Central sound like?”

Windows were shattered and the doors were left unlocked. The inside isn’t really that different. Picture frames were knocked down and the TV was on the floor. My first reaction was maybe we were mugged while we’re away but then Len saw boot tracks of what appears to be similar to what the Legion’s minions wore.

Of course they dropped by our house.

The only thing that keeps my cool at the sight of our trashed house is the fact that I know we got out before the Legion arrived here. That would’ve been the end of the four of us.

“What the f---“, Mick exclaimed upon coming out of the jumpship.

“Rory, language,” I had to swat his arm upon his cussing.

“To be honest,” Len said as he scanned the house, “I’m not really bothered. We’re all safe, that’s all that counts.”

Lily tugged my right arm and I lifted her up to let her position herself on my hips. “How about our stuff, Mommy?”

“Do we have to but new things?” Luke peered beneath Len, scanning the inside the house as well.

“No need,” Mick said, kicking a throw-pillow that somehow landed on the porch. “We have a replicator in the ship. I can’t necessarily ask Gideon to build you a house but it could make all the materials you need to renovate this. Appliances, too. Well, 2100s appliances, if you’re into holograms and shi—“

“Cuss in front of the kids one more time, I’ll cut your tongue.”

“Sorry,” he replied to me unapologetically. “That or you could just…I don’t know…get a new house?”

“But Daddy and I planted flowers around the yard,” Lily replied to Mick. “We can’t move them. I’m staying here!”

“You heard the boss,” Leonard chuckled. “When will we start?”

Having speedster friends come in handy when you need a fast clean-up of the mess a bunch of idiotic bad guys ruin your home. In a flash, slight pun intended, every single thing we have on our house was already on the yard and all the broken glass and broken things disposed.

Ray and Nate helped carry the plywood and the glass and metals from the ship to our yard. The kids were too hands-on on choosing their new things and all that could replace the stuff we lost and broke. Jax and Amaya are helping them out, making sure they stick to the grey-blue-white theme our house has.

It’s early in the day and I’m already feeling exhausted. Must be the tiresome day that went before this. I did got shot on the side not twenty four hours ago. Although it was just a graze of the bullet it still drained me. My age betraying me. I could usually handle a gunshot easily, but then again, it’s been so long since I’ve been on a fight. The last time I’ve had bullets raining on me, I wasn’t a Snart yet. The last time I’ve felt this weak was when I had Lily. But I’m not pregnant. We’ve been too preoccupied with running and hiding that we didn’t really have time to…oh. Christmas at New Zealand under the aurora. But then again, I might be over-thinking things.

I went straight from the fabrication room to the Medbay, wanting something for the intense headache I’m having.

“Gideon, aspirin please.”

“I’m afraid I can’t give them to you, Mrs. Snart,” Gideon chimed in from the overhead. “Aspirin could be dangerous to your child.”

Feeling wuzzy, I sat down on one of the medbay beds I was in yesterday. “It’s not for Luke or Lily, Gideon. It’s for me.”

“I’m well aware, Mrs. Snart. That is why I’m not giving it to you. Pregnant women can’t take aspirin.”

Wait. Hold on.

“Am I...?”

“Yes. Congratulations,” Gideon greeted me flatly.

“But I was shot, Gideon. I was here yesterday. You patched me up. Len was here. You didn’t tell us anything the whole time we were here…”

“You just came from a battle. I don’t think that’s a good time to announce that you’re carrying a human being inside you. You don’t need to worry. The embryo isn’t harmed. You are just a month into your pregnancy and I’ve already given you…”

“We’re gonna have a baby…”

“…vitamins to strengthen the child’s hold, similar to the one I gave you when you were carrying Mr. Luke…”

“Oh, the kids are gonna freak out…”

“…and this is your third child. I don’t need to remind you of what to eat and what not to eat…”

“Leonard is gonna cry…”

“Do you want me to do anything else?”

“Nothing else. Thank you Gideon.”

 I didn’t hear what she said next. I was already rushing to the fabrication room to get Luke and Lily. I remember just briefly asking them to come with me back to the house Jax and Amaya just shrugged, so did Nate who was on his way inside the room we just vacated.

With Lily’s hand on mine and Luke’s footsteps after own, we journeyed outside the front hatch of the cloaked Waverider onto our yard where I see Ray installing security cameras on the lawn.

“Where’s Len?” I asked, panting.

“He’s inside with Mick. They’re painting. Is everything okay?”

The kids looked at me for answer, too. I could feel the rush from inside me—my cheeks getting flushed. “Peachy. I’ll see ya!”

 I walked in, wincing as I smell the fresh paint around me. The two were in the middle of their loud conversation when Leonard saw me. I squeezed Lily’s hand and let go and rushed over to Leonard with a huge smile on my face.

“You’re acting weird, hon. Everything okay?” Len said as he puts down the paint roller and wrapped his arms around my waist.

I nodded, biting my lower lip.

I can’t wait to kiss him.

But first…

“Mick,” I said without tearing my gaze at Leonard, “could you step out for a while?”

Mick continued painting over the wall.

“I know you heard me, Mick.”

He sighed heavily. “You want Lenny to yourself? Do I need to take the kids? Damn, Sara, can’t you at least wait till we leave?”

I rolled my eyes annoyingly and I saw a flicker of fear and uncertainty in Leonard’s eyes.

“Snart family meeting,” I said sharply, finally turning my head to my amused friend. “Anyone not married to me and didn’t come out of my womb could step out now.”

Of course I know he was making it difficult for me. Mick did eventually stepped out, grumbling about how we’re never gonna finish anything, but left with a wink.

“Okay,” Len said, testing the waters. “What’s the family meeting for?”

I smiled at him and let my hands work their way up to the back of his head, massaging his scalp. The kids are too stunned and too confused to even say a single word.

“Len…”

“Yes?”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

I placed a hand on his chest and another trailing his jaw. “I have a favor to ask you.”

He raised an eyebrow at me. His right hand drawing circles on the small of my back—a classic Leonard fidget. “And what would that be?”

“I just need you…to love another Snart.”

“W-what? Who?”

“I know I don’t have to ask this from you because you’re gonna love this one anyways but we’ll have to wait eight months to know who this is…”

“Are you telling me…”

“…because I’m only a month along…”

“Sara…”

“…but I think the kinds wouldn’t mind having another sibling…”

“Mommy?”,

“Is this real?!”

“…and we finally have a use for that spare room beside Lucky’s room…”

Leonard lifted me up off the ground and had my feet swinging. I framed his face with my hands and kissed him, slowly deepening it and only stopping when I heard giggles from behind me.

Leonard finally puts me down, without removing his forehead from mine. He pulled me closer, almost hugging me. He’s beginning to breathe deeply. “This is amazing news, Sara.”

“Ready to change diapers again?”, I asked, hands roaming on his chest and shoulders.

“Only if it’s with you.”

And the news is sealed with a kiss. As every important thing is.

—post-script—

*Third-person POV

Mick and the rest of the Legends immediately found out when Lily announced the good news aloud even before her parents got out of their house.

“Mommy’s having a baby!” Lily rushed outside, hugging Mick when she bumped into him. “Uncle Mick, we’re having a baby!”

“I heard you, little bird.”

“I’m gonna be a big sister, Luke-y!”

Luke high-fived Ray and Nate who were both cheering. “I got two little ones to look after now.”

 Not much was done after the announcement. Everyone stopped Sara from helping out despite her arguments that she’s done this twice already and that she’s not even big yet. But none of them were taking their chances. The Legends promised to come back everyday just to help the Snarts build their home again.

That night, the couple was looking for their kids, wanting to kiss them goodnight. Unfortunately, both of them weren’t in their respective rooms.

“Where did they go?” Leonard asked as he closed Luke’s door. “They didn’t jump in the Waverider at the last minute, right?”

“No. I helped Lily clean herself up a while ago.”

Just like fate, they heard muffles of whispers from two small voices coming from the vacant room beside Luke’s.

 “I hope the baby is a girl so I could play with her,” Lily said, lying down on the carpeted floor with a pillow beneath her head.

Luke was also lying down beside her, hands on the back of his head. “I want a boy,” he said, “but a girl is not too bad either. You’re a good sister. Maybe the baby will be a good sister too.”

“Are you happy that we’re back home, Luke-y?”

“I am,” the boy replied. “I missed my friends. I miss school. But what I miss the most is seeing Mommy and Daddy happy.”

“Me too,” Lily said after a yawn. “My classmates would never believe me when I tell them this story.”

“You could tell it to Dawn.”

 From outside the door, Len had his arm wrapped around Sara’s waist.

“You know you have to carry them back to their rooms, right?” Sara whispered.

Leonard chuckled and held her closer. “I know. Let’s just let them sleep first.”

 “Why are we sleeping here, Luke-y? It’s empty. Mommy said we have to wait eight months more. That’s a long time,” Lily moped, teary-eyed from her series of yawning.

“We need to make sure, Lil.”

“Make sure that what?”

“That the room doesn’t have monsters in it so that the baby can sleep,” Luke answered. “Now that you’re a big girl, I need to tell you what Daddy told me before.”

“And what is that?”

“We always look after each other. We look after Mommy and Daddy. We look after our family. Soon, we’ll look after the baby.”

 Sara can’t help but place a kiss on her husband’s cheek. Leonard was walking Sara back to their room when a thought hit her.

They’ve lived most of their lives in regret. They’ve had their fair share of mistakes and bad moments they could never forget even if they tried. But after the death of the Legion, after spending months away, and having another child, one realization hit her: Destiny must have taken pity on her for once and gave her the life she only used to dream about.

 ---epilogue soon---

I know we initially plan a 12-chapter long story but a fun and fluffy epilogue came to mind upon talking to my partner. We *had* to make another one. The entire story is far from perfect but as my first multi-chapter fic, I’m pretty proud of it. I hope this gives me confidence to write more multi-chapters. I just want to thank everyone who hang on to this despite the delayed updates and typos and all the issues that came with it. I’m so, so grateful. Enough for now. The rest of the thank yous would go after the epilogue.

Thanks again. Y’all are gems.

[how2to18]

OFFICIALLY, AIMEE MOLLOY’S debut novel, The Perfect Mother, is a thriller. You might call it “grip-lit,” a new term for an old thing: a good suspense novel by a woman. More accurately, by a woman and for women, which The Perfect Mother certainly is. We’ll come back to that part, but first, I don’t think this novel is a thriller at all. To me, it’s a horror story.

First, there’s the visceral horror of the plot. A group of Brooklyn parents who call themselves the May Mothers (there’s one dad; the moms nickname him Token) go out for a drink one hot July night, most leaving their babies for the first time. They’re two drinks in, just starting to relax, when one gets a frantic call. She’s asked Alma, her nanny, to babysit for the group’s one single mother that night. Alma put the baby, Midas, to sleep, and all seemed well — until she went to check on him and he was gone.

Soon, Baby Midas is a cause célèbre in New York. There are prayer vigils, press conferences, and magazine covers about Midas and his mother, Winnie. A cable host named Patricia Faith begins a round-the-clock campaign against Winnie, her friends, and any other mother who has the gall to leave the house before her child turns five. There are prayer vigils in Prospect Park, middle-aged women waving flyers that announce, “Child neglect is a crime,” then cite Isaiah: “Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb?”

Meanwhile, the rest of the May Mothers are frantic with guilt and fear. Guilt because they lured Winnie out for a drink and persuaded her to stop looking at the baby-monitor video on her phone — or, as Patricia Faith would have it, to “forget her nursing child.” Fear because they all went out, too. They all left their babies. Who knows why this happened to Winnie, not to one of them?

That’s the first horror: the it-could-happen-to-anyone kidnapping, the baby there one second and gone the next. The second horror is sneakier, and more interesting. Every woman in The Perfect Mother is haunted, and hunted, by the pressure to be exactly what the title suggests. The protagonists, Nell, Colette, and Francie, can’t go outside without strangers weighing in on their bodies, careers, and lives.

The opinions about what a mother should be come first and foremost from the media. There’s Patricia Faith and her prayer ladies, a smarmy New York Post reporter named Elliott Falk, and Nell’s boss at a thinly veiled Condé Nast. In one brilliant scene, Nell suggests that the company’s flagship magazine, Gossip!, “rise above” the Baby Midas scandal, and her boss snaps back, “Rise above it? That’s not our job, Nell. Our job is to create it.”

There are plenty of opinions closer to home, too. Each chapter opens with an email from a Brooklyn parenting network called The Village, which sends perky little reminders to hire a lactation consultant, walk off your baby weight, and start having sex with your partner again. The protagonists’ mothers tell them what to do: Baptize your baby! Go back to work! The May Mothers compete overtly with each other, exchanging homeopathic tips and displays of vulnerability like currency. Even Nell’s piggish boss has ideas about how a mother should be: he makes her return early from maternity leave, then shames her for gaining weight and missing her child.

It’s not news that when women become mothers, a whole new world of judgment snaps open. On a recent post on the fashion blog Man Repeller, the site’s founder, Leandra Medine, writes that after the recent birth of her twins, “I’ve noticed an uptick in the number of negative comments that populate my pictures. ‘Put your phone down and be with your babies,’ they will say.” You don’t need to look far — or try to look at all — to hear and read about experiences like this.

Of course, the idea of motherhood is always waiting for me. I’m 26, straight, Jewish. Every person in my life expects me to have children; I expect it of myself. And I want to, which is different, and less explored. The Perfect Mother doesn’t explore it at all. This is fundamentally a novel of expectations. In its characters’ world, wanting children — having always wanted children — is assumed. Colette, the only May Mother who didn’t get pregnant on purpose, admits to Winnie, “I called the whole thing a mistake for months. I’m excited now, but it’s been a process. I was not ready for her.” As she says this, she thinks of “the other women [in the group], who all seemed as if they’d spent their whole lives just waiting to become moms.”

This is true of the kidnapper, too. She’s a woman driven insane by expectations — her own and everyone else’s. She’s so desperate to be a perfect mother that she ends up possessed by perfection. She hallucinates, dissociates, commits terrible crimes in its service. And for a long time, no one can tell. Her friends find her performance of motherhood intimidating, and to the rest of the world, she’s just another Brooklyn mom with her stroller, going to baby yoga, popping probiotics, doing it right.

Horror stories rely on this dynamic. There has to be a character who’s haunted, or possessed, or stalked by some evil force, and the world around that person has to be unaware. The whole genre would be ruined if everybody believed in demons and ghosts. If Jack and Wendy in The Shining trusted their son’s premonitions, they wouldn’t stay a single night in the Overlook Hotel. In Jac Jemc’s recent novel The Grip of It, a couple moves into a haunted house, then lets their marriage dissolve rather than acknowledge the haunting. Carmen Maria Machado’s gorgeous “Horror Story” has the same premise, but in her version, the couple stays — the most relatable reason — because “the landlord had rented us a haunted house for above market rent and we didn’t have the money to move.”

In the Biblical story of Legion, which I’ve always considered the original horror story, Jesus encounters a man who’s possessed by a violent legion of demons, or else by a violent demon named Legion. He drives the demon(s) from the man into a herd of pigs, which immediately runs off a cliff. Afterward, the people in the town where the man lives aren’t grateful. They “plead with Jesus to leave their region.” He’s just saved them from a threat both spiritual and physical, and they can’t stand to face him — or face what he saw.

The demons in The Perfect Mother are not literal. But a demon is always a metaphor — those suicidal pigs in the Gospel of Mark aren’t important as pigs. The ghosts in the Overlook Hotel matter less than Jack Nicholson chasing his wife with an ax. It’s enough for the woman who kidnaps Midas to be driven by the pernicious ideal of perfection, something that came from outside her but to which she gave a home.

The Perfect Mother is a novel about internalized sexism, specifically as it relates to motherhood. And I do mean motherhood, not just privileged, gentrified Brooklyn motherhood, though I wish that weren’t the book’s context. The Perfect Mother could have been set nearly anywhere else in the United States, and should have been. Still, I hope its message will resonate as far past Park Slope as Molloy clearly intends it to. She seamlessly integrates commentary on the wage gap, on unpaid maternity leave, on male abuse of power in the workplace. Each protagonist has a demon of her own to fight, and with it, a new angle on the fundamental question of how a woman can reject the world’s beliefs about who she should be.

My favorite version of this is Colette, a ghostwriter married to a rising literary star. When the novel starts, she’s unhappily behind on a project her husband, Charlie, won’t take seriously. A few years ago, she ghostwrote a memoir for a charismatic young teacher who is now mayor, and he wants a follow-up. It’s going to be targeted at book clubs and at the “middle-aged women standing in line [at the mayor’s favorite diner], hoping to spot him at a table in the back,” and of course, it’s going to be a best seller. Charlie, though, couldn’t care less. Colette mentions that her deadline is a month closer than his, and he responds, “I know, baby. But you know what’s riding on mine.” To me, that would be grounds for a shrieking fight, but Colette just nods and agrees. Skip forward 100 pages, and she’s selling a novel to Charlie’s publisher.

I’m not going to give away everyone’s story line. Suffice it to say there’s a good Monica Lewinsky parallel, some enjoyable commentary on celebrity, and a few stories of heartbreaking sexual exploitation. There’s an underdeveloped but crucial arc for Alma, the nanny who was there when Midas vanished, whose immigration status and ability to raise her own child are threatened by the media frenzy around the case. And there’s Francie, who only needs to learn to speak up for herself. When the novel begins, she doesn’t even know that could be her goal. By the end, she’s the hero.

Francie shouldn’t need Midas’s disappearance to teach her how to speak up. Colette shouldn’t need it to understand the scope of her ambitions, nor Nell to argue with her sexist boss. This, I suspect, is Aimee Molloy’s agenda. She uses the drama of a kidnapping plot to shake readers awake. Her real goal is to show us the demons of motherhood in broad daylight, to make us admit the house is haunted. In Machado’s “Horror Story,” she’d be the psychic who comes over and opens the dryer, “which caused her to snap into the air like she was hanging from an invisible crucifix and recite something in a language we didn’t recognize, but which sounded unfathomably ancient.” After that, you can’t pretend there’s nothing going on.

I promised I’d return to the claim that The Perfect Mother is for women. I meant that. What I did not mean was that this is a novel for only women to read. It’s a novel written to champion women. It’s a powerful reminder that the consequences of telling a person who she is can be deadly. The Perfect Mother is set to be one of the year’s biggest crime novels, as well as a film starring Kerry Washington. I hope it keeps a whole nation of advice-givers awake all night.

¤

Lily Meyer is a writer and translator living in Washington, DC.

The post Aimee Molloy’s Maternal Horror appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

from Los Angeles Review of Books https://ift.tt/2sS2MwI via IFTTT