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0nlythrowharrybeaux · 1 year ago

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Young American - Part 22**^

Ahhh, it's been a long while since I have posted for this series! I lost a bit of interest and got a little discouraged, but we're back! This will be the second to last chapter of this series!

Series masterlist

Warnings: everything about pregnancy, hand job, graphic descriptions of birth, mentions of being estranged from family, loving/gentle breast groping, arguing, mentions of abusive exes, accusations of infidelity, lying/sneaking around

WC: 16.1K

…. APRIL …

Y/N was 28 weeks along now and Harry hadn’t failed to let her know that the baby was in fact the size of a large aubergine and well, she couldn’t really help the horrified expression on her face as she visualized what the size of a large eggplant actually was. She still had a couple months to go, so she couldn’t even imagine how big the baby actually got. She couldn’t help but feel awful about the baby still having plenty to grow. She had been thinking about how quickly she’d wait to give their son a sibling, but now she was a bit hesitant about it. Despite her nerves, she finished getting ready for their little baby shower/house warming party with family and friends.

Apart from this being the baby shower/house warming party, today was also going to be special because they intended on sharing with Harry’s family that they were indeed going to be naming the baby after Harry’s grandfather. They wanted to do that as privately as possible because they knew it would be something emotional for them. So after their other guests left after their brunch, they would have a dinner with everyone that had been able to make it from his family. Julie had also arrived a few days earlier and well, there was a small surprise in this for her too.

Y/N was having a nice time getting to know more of Harry’s family and friends and of course, bonding even more with the people she’d already met previously. Seeing Harry with his friends was really nice, she hadn’t really gotten to know them yet because she’d been setting up their house and well, she couldn’t drive in England yet (the one time Harry had taken her out for a spin to practice and told her to go right she ended up in the wrong lane and a delivery truck was coming and she panicked and almost crashed into a fence), but also she didn’t just want to drop by the shop randomly when he was working such long sessions, so she’d been alone a lot with Hillary and they’d grown quite close. She felt that spending all this time with her was healing the grief she felt for her own grandmother. Hillary was a lot more talkative and more of a riot than her grandmother had been, she was also a lot more receptive and openminded about a lot of things. Hillary had even expressed to Y/N her interest in getting a tattoo for Charlie, the way he had done for her, and this had Y/N crying over how cute she was. And now that Julie was here she was sure she’d have more company, especially as she got closer and closer to her due date.

“Hey love, you’re out of napkins.” One of Harry’s co-workers came up to her as she preoccupied herself with picking up some of the empty aluminum trays they had on the food table.

“Oh, thanks for telling me! I’ll go grab some.” She smiled and hurried into the house, well hurried as much as she could with a large eggplant-sized baby in her tummy. She set the empty trays down and then opened up a new packet of the napkins to take out. She was just about to head back out when Alyssa came in with a sour look on her face.

“Hey Y/N, sorry to bug you, but have you got any sparkling water?” She asked and Y/N nodded.

“Yeah, of course.” She said and turned to the fridge, “Are you alright?” She asked as she looked inside.

“I suddenly got very queasy.” Alyssa explained and Y/N frowned.

“Ugh, was it the food? I told H we should’ve just left the eggs and sausages inside, it’s a bit warm out.” She explained, “We’ve got lemon and blackberry flavors.”

“Lemon, please.” She said, “But, no the food was alright. I don’t see anyone else having issues.” She said with a smile as Y/N handed her the cold bottle.

“Could you perhaps be…pregnant?” She asked as Alyssa opened up the bottle and upon hearing that she sighed and looked up into her eyes apologetically.

“Ummm, yeah actually, I am.” She confirmed nervously and Y/N’s smile grew wide.

“Oh my god! Congrats! When did you find out?!” She asked happily and Alyssa seemed relieved at her reaction.

“Just a few days ago. I’m about 10 weeks along.” She said with a bright smile and Y/N cooed, “We haven’t told anyone though! We’ve been trying to keep it under wraps a bit since it’s your baby shower week and we didn’t want to steal your thunder with an announcement yet-”

“Oh my god, no! Don’t even worry about that.” Y/N giggled happily, “If you want to share it tonight at dinner with everyone please do! We’ve got some news of our own to share so it’ll be nice to share this with your family while they’re all here.” Y/N assured.

“Are you sure?”

“Of course! This is great news, Aly.” Y/N insisted.

“Oh, thank you so much. I’ve been trying so hard not to talk about it.” She confessed through a laugh and Y/N shook her head as she giggled.

“Oh no, this is such big news! But I promise, it’s not a problem with me and I’m sure Harry won’t mind either.” She assured her and she thanked her again, feeling relieved.

“I’ll let Nathan know, he’s been shooting me tortured looks all morning just from looking at the baby stuff.” She said and Y/N pouted.

“Awww, poor guy. He must be so excited.”

“Yeah, he’s over the moon.” She said with a happy smile, “What’s your news? You’re not having twins are you?” She asked and Y/N’s eyes widened and she shook her head quickly.

“Good God, no!” She laughed and Alyssa burst into laughter as well at her response, “Harry’s got this thing where each week he’ll tell me the size of the baby and like it’s so sweet, he gets really excited about it. But this morning he let me know that baby is the size of a large aubergine and I started to panic.” She confessed and Alyssa looked concerned.

“Isn’t that like birthing size already?” She asked in shock.

“Right?! Like if he’s already that big and I’ve still got 12 freaking weeks to go… I don’t even want to know how big the baby will get after today!” She giggled and Alyssa nodded as well.

“Oh god… well, for selfish reasons I’m really glad we’re pregnant at the same time so that I have someone to gripe about this with.” She said and Y/N nodded through a smile.

“Oh definitely! Also, since my aunt Julie had cancer for several years I’ve got tons of natural remedies to help with nauseas and other weird symptoms you might have if you ever need it. Never in my life have I been more grateful for having to look after her and look into all of this stuff because it’s really helped with the pregnancy.”

“Oh I can imagine… is she alright now, your aunt?”

“Yeah, she’s in remission now.” Y/N smiled as she confirmed that and Alyssa looked relieved.

“That’s really great. I’m happy to hear it.”

“Thank you.” Y/N smiled, “Ummm, but our news is just sharing what we’ve decided to name the baby.” She disclosed softly.

“Oh, what’s it gonna be?” Alyssa asked with curious and excited eyes.

“Ummm, we’re naming him after your grandfather, Charlie, well Charles.” She said and Alyssa’s eyes softened at the news.

“Really?” She asked softly, trying to keep her voice down.

“Yeah. Harry has always talked about him to me and I know they were so close.” she said and Alyssa nodded, “And well, I’ve gotten rather close to your grandmother over the last few months being here and it just seemed like the best thing.” She said with a smile.

“Oh, everyone’s gonna love it! I know Gemma really wanted to name Archie that, but she let Skye pick the first name and she got the middle name and decided to give him Marc after their dad. She’s still a bit annoyed at Skye for naming their son Archibald but…what can we do now?” She giggled and Y/N laughed softly.

“Right…I mean he can always change it when he’s older if he hates it!”

“That’s true…” Alyssa laughed softly. “Look, I know you’re probably sick and tired of hearing the same thing from everyone, but really thank you so much for being patient with Harry and giving him a chance.” She said, “He’s literally the best person I’ve ever known and for a long time we all thought that he would just wither away. Like…we missed him, but it was also good to not have to see him the way he was. And we had also accepted that he would probably never come back from America…” she said and Y/N frowned, “It was really bad, Y/N. The person he is right now, that person didn’t exist for years.” She explained, “I think that’s why we all love you so much, he’s got his spark back.” She explained.

“Yeah, but he’s worked hard on himself too. I’ve believed in him all this time and stayed by his side, but I can’t take credit for the person he’s always been, that’s all him.” She said to Alyssa, “He also helped me a lot, so I think we just…found each other at the right time.”

“Well, whatever it was, we’re just all really grateful for you and we wish you both all the best. S’one of the reasons why we decided to hold off on the news of our baby because H deserves to be celebrated and to have his time, especially when he’s finally living a life with everything he’s ever wanted.”

“Well, I do appreciate your consideration with that, but I promise you he’ll be really excited for you as well.”

“I’m hoping for a boy, so that would work out really well with your baby!” She smiled, “If they’re close in age they’ll be like each other’s siblings. Don’t know if I’ll want to do this again after hearing the aubergine thing.” She confessed and Y/N laughed.

“That was my exact thought this morning!” She admitted.

She had fluttered back outside shortly after her chat with Aly, she was playing hostess and Harry had been really sweet, encouraging her to just sit down and relax, but she just wanted to make sure everything was going perfectly. They did a little gift opening thing and they thanked everyone for showing up and soon they were starting to clean up. She was quite exhausted if she were to be honest and her back was aching something awful from all the walking around. She had just leaned against the wall for a second to let the ache subside but soon she felt Harry behind her as he hugged her and smushed his cheek to her head.

“Baby, please take a break. You’ve been fluttering around all morning!” He said and she sighed.

“Of course, I’ve been hosting! And I didn’t want to keep interrupting you with your friends and family.” She said and he tutted.

“Yeah, but you should’ve, it’s our party, love. You can’t do it all, you’ve gotta take it easy, you can say you’re fine but you look exhausted. I appreciate you wanting to give me time with my family and friends, but not at your expense, my love.” He reprimanded her very gently and she sighed.

“I am pretty winded.” She admitted through a smile and he sighed and shook his head, “But I don’t get to do anything all day so I’m also taking advantage, OK?”

“Sure thing.” He said softly before kissing her cheek. He straightened her out a bit and she winced, “What’s wrong? Are you in pain?” He was quickly before her and assessing any visible part of her.

“Nothing, s’just our giant eggplant-sized baby is a little heavy.” She said, “Kinda hurts to stand up straight.”

“Babe.” He frowned, “let me get you upstairs so you can lie down for a bit-”

“Harry, it’s fine.” Y/N giggled, “It’s just a bit sore. Comes with the territory.”

“Yeah, because you’ve been doing too much. They can handle cleaning up-”

“But that’s not fair-“

“They understand, babe. C’mon, let’s go.” He insisted and started guiding her to the staircase, “I’m gonna pick you up-”

“Don’t you dare!” She laughed as they reached the bottom of the stairs, “If you misstep the three of us will get really hurt.” She reminded with caution in her eyes.

“You’re right…let’s go slow then.”

“I’d rather get up there faster than take five minutes to get up there.” She said and he sighed.

“You’re being stubborn.”

“Harry, I know my limits. It’s fine.” She assured him and he sighed.

“Fine. Up you go.” He said starting to walk her up with a hand at her lower back. The warmth from his hand there was helping a bit and when they finally made it into their bedroom he helped her lay down and even put one of the throw pillows under her legs to even out her spine. She was still really tense as she was slightly struggling to just relax, she knew it would ache when she relaxed, but she finally just surrendered to it and she winced as all of her weight just rested onto the bed and her body took several moments to adjust. “Should I get the hot water bottle or give you a little back rub?” He asked her and she hummed with her eyes still squeezed shut.

“A little back rub sounds nice.” She said and he smiled.

“OK. Let me just let everyone know we’re up here.” He said and she hummed and he hurried out. She did kind of hate this, she knew it would only get worse from here on out. Maybe she should relocate to the guest bedroom downstairs and also buy herself one of those maternity pillows. She was starting to regret telling Harry it was a stupid purchase, but it was just so expensive for no reason at all. Harry was only gone a couple of minutes before he came back and settled into their bed beside her and rubbed at her lower back with his warm hands.

“Thank you, baby.” She hummed tiredly.

“Of course, my love.” He whispered and then a silence fell between them for a moment, “Can I tell you a secret?” He asked.

“Of course. Always! I love secrets!” She grinned and he chuckled.

“Nathan accidentally let it slip to me that Aly’s pregnant.” He said and she smiled.

“Oh my god, I know! 10 weeks! She told me earlier.” Y/N beamed.

“Really? He said she was trying to keep it a secret for a bit more.”

“Yeah, but she was nauseous and we got to talking and she just came out with it.” Y/N said, “I told her to announce it while a good chunk of the family is here.”

“I told Nathan the same thing. He was gonna talk to her.” He said and she giggled.

“Love that we thought the same thing. I think it’ll just be another little thing to make this day special. She’s so sweet, didn’t want to take the attention off of our day, but I assured her it was perfectly fine. It’s wonderful news.” She said and Harry hummed in agreement.

“I love you so much, you know that?”

“Mhmmm, you tell me every day.”

“And if I ever forget to, you have my permission to put me back in line.” He joked and she giggled.

“You know, even if you don’t say it I still feel it. Like it’s in the way you look at me or talk to me…I don’t think I’ve ever felt like you’ve not shown it to me before.”

“That makes me happy.” He said, “I feel it too.” He added in and she smiled.

“Good. I told Aly about our announcement too. She was really happy about that. I’m really happy she’s also having a baby, we’ll have plenty of things to talk about and bond over. And you know, I was thinking that if Aly has a little boy too then maybe we can just have the one, you know?”

“Just one?!” He asked with a chuckle and she giggled.

“Baby, as much as this has been such a special experience, I don’t know if I’d want to do this again. It’s been…lovely but also…like having a baby can’t be a fun thing.” She confessed and he chuckled.

“Yeah, that’s probably true.” He hummed, “And really it’s whatever you want, I’d make fifteen babies with you if you wanted them!” He said and she squeaked out a sound that made him laugh, “But if one’s enough for you, then that’s fine with me too. S’not like I’m doing any of the heavy lifting.” He said as he stroked over her belly with his other hand.

“Thank you for understanding. But like I said, if Aly ends up having a little girl we can try for another one and hope for a little brother for baby Charlie.” She said and he smiled and she gasped as she was suddenly on her back and Harry kissed her deeply.

“Yeah… but we’d have to have them quickly.” He said and she giggled.

“How quickly?”

“If we can have them share a nursery that’d be ideal. Like 11 to 14 months apart would be good.” He said and she laughed.

“Not even gonna give me a break…” she sighed and he chuckled and then Y/N winced again, “Ow…fuck…” she whined.

“S’the matter?”

“This child is kicking around and got lodged up on my side.” She winced and rubbed over her side for a bit until the baby repositioned itself.

“S’kinda gross if you think about it…he’s just hanging out in there, swimming around…”

“Yeah, it really is.” She giggled along with him.

“OK, m’gonna shut up now and let you have a nap.” He said and she giggled as he helped get her back onto her side and he continued rubbing her lower back until she had fallen asleep.

“Hi darling, dinner’s going to be ready and served in about 15 minutes.” Y/N heard Anne’s voice gently rousing her.

“Oh god, what time is it?” She asked groggily.

“S’ about 6:30.”

“Oh great, not gonna sleep tonight.” She said with a tired huff and Anne chuckled, “I think you’ll be alright, the more and more the baby grows the more exhausted you’ll be.” She assured. “Do you need me to pull you up?” She asked.

“Please.” Y/N said and Anne smiled as she helped her sit up. “I’m just gonna freshen up really quick.”

“Do you want me to wait and help you get down the stairs?”

“It’s alright, I can still manage.” Y/N assured and Anne nodded and headed out of their bedroom. Of course, Y/N’s mascara had smudged at her lower lash lines and her made up skin had gotten a bit oily and splotchy, so she started to clean that up and once she finished she realized that she had a stain on her shirt and headed into her and Harry’s closet to grab another top. She had just thrown hers into the hamper when Harry came into the closet.

“There you are.” He said and she smiled.

“Yeah, sorry just changing my top, had food dripped on mine.” She explained as she looked through her hangers to find something else.

Harry just took her in for a moment because she was absolutely gorgeous. Her body was a definitely a masterpiece before she was pregnant and he was so excited to get that version of her back so that he could do all of the wild things he’d been dying to do to her but couldn’t because of her current, fragile state. But seeing her like this, glowing and pregnant with his baby no less…it only made him marvel at her and love her more, but it also did things to him that he’d never felt before. In a way, it fed his ego, knowing that he did that to her. He was responsible for her and their baby, it swelled him with pride and with a ferocious and completely unconditional need for her. He felt a bit misogynistic for it sometimes, but how could he not find her so fucking sexy when she was literally carrying the most perfect product of their love for each other? He knew it wasn’t her sole purpose, but her body had literally been built to withstand all of it and then some! It just left him in complete awe of her every time he thought of it.

“What?” She asked upon feeling his intense stare and he blinked a few times as he smiled.

“You look incredible.” His voice was so gentle and sincere as he complimented her and she smiled bashfully. She loved when he’d do this because she didn’t feel incredible a lot of the time now. She felt big and slow and tired. “So fucking perfect.” He said as he stepped closer to her and grabbed her face gently but kissed her hungrily. Y/N felt her entire body tingle at his sudden romantic gesture. Harry’s tongue pushed into her mouth as he brought his hands to her bottom, groping her as he pushed her closer to him. He was so fucking hard and she sighed breathily as she got her hand in between them to rub him through his jeans. Moments later she brought her other hand over to start undoing his button and fly. “Mmmwhat…what’re you doing?” He whispered.

“Need to make you come.” She said and he moaned softly as she reached into his briefs to pull his cock out.

“Shit, baby they’re gonna be waiting for us-”

“Not if you come quickly.” She said and he chuckled breathily as she started stroking his cock between their bodies. “Fuck, you’re already so fucking hard for me.” She panted breathily.

“Yeah, you get me so worked up, baby.” He grinned down at her and she smiled and tiptoed to kiss him quickly before nuzzling her nose to his. Harry moaned as he watched her slip her hand down the front of her leggings and she rubbed her fingers back and forth a few times before she drew them back out and wrapped them around his cock again, all slick and warm with her own arousal and he sighed at the smooth glide of her strokes now that his cock was lubricated with her arousal.

“S’this OK?” She whispered.

“A little faster, my love…shit, just like that.” He sighed in relief as she set a new pace and he leaned further into her, gasping as she gently squeezed around the head, “Fuck, baby…fuck!” He groaned lowly and soon she started gliding up and down his shaft again with a tighter fist and his abs started to clench and his fingers dug into her ass hard.

“Gonna come for me, baby?” She asked softly and he nodded with his eyes squeezed shut, “Good boy, wanna see you shoot out a nice, big load for me.” She encouraged him and he moaned again.

“Fuck babygirl, I’ll give you so much fucking cum. Just keep going like that I’m so fucking close.” He grunted as quietly as possible as he started to thrust into her fist as well. Every time he’d buck up his tip would collide with the bottom of her belly and he looked forward to the short moment of friction before he’d pull back and do it again. It was the steady flicker of pleasure that was building him up at a rapid pace. He started going a bit harder and he started to lose his mind.

“Y/N, Harry? Are two still in here?” They heard Anne calling them and Harry bit his lip to keep his noises in and Y/N grinned up at him and squeezed tighter around his cock and his eyes rolled back as his head dropped back and accidentally knocked loudly into one of the thin panels of a cabinet in their closet.

“He’s jus helping me get changed!” Y/N called out and Harry started to tremble.

“Oh fuck…Oh fuck…” he panted quietly and she smirked.

“Shhhh…shhhhh!” She warned through a quiet giggle.

“Alright, we’re all ready down there.” Anna announced.

“OK, thank you!” Y/N called and just then Harry let out a groan and her hand flew up to cover his mouth as he moaned into it. She could feel his warm cum shooting out against her belly and down her fist as she started to ease up on her strokes, he followed her speed with his hips as he started to get worked up even more. She remove her hand from his mouth as his orgasm had passed but he sighed.

“Fuck, I wanna be inside you.” He said as he continued thrusting into her fist slowly, “Can’t wait ’til we have the house to ourselves.” He said and she smirked up at him and then kissed the underside of his jaw. He sighed as they finally stopped and he pulled her hand up and licked his cum off of it before dipping down to kiss her. Y/N immediately opened her mouth as he smeared his cum-slicked tongue into hers, both of them moaned at his taste and then they pulled away quickly before they got further carried away.

“Love you.”

“Love you.” He smiled. He then hurried to the hamper and grabbed her t-shirt from earlier to wipe his sperm from her tummy. She was quick to get a tank top on and then Harry helped her get into one of his cardigans before they headed down stairs. Dinner was delicious and they were all chattering away, Aly made sure that they were sure about letting her announce her pregnancy and Y/N reassured her about it once again. So after everyone seemed to have finished eating Harry smiled at Y/N before he stood up, instantly commanding everyone’s attention.

“Y/N and I just really want to thank you all for showering us with so much love and support today. Well every day actually since we’ve moved back. I think it’s so incredible how we always show up for each other with so much love and patience and kindness. And uh, moments like this are sometimes a bit bittersweet because…well, dad’s not here, nor is grandad. But I think that we’re honoring them and their fierce sense of responsibility to their family by being here for each other. And ummm…we want to keep their legacies alive and well as you know, the baby is coming in a few short months and so we’ve been busy with everything that has to do with that. And well, Y/N and I recently made an important decision about the baby and we wanted to share that with you all while we have you here.” He said and smiled down at her in her seat and she nodded, urging him to go on. Everyone was looking on with anticipation.

“Ummm, we want to share with you all what we’ve decided to name our son.” He said and everyone gasped in excitement or cooed in endearment, “So ummm, his name is Charles Julian,” he said glancing to Julie who chuckled as her eyes brimmed with tears, “Styles.” His family all cooed as he smiled at Y/N and then at everyone else as they cheered at the news. Hillary was crying tears of joy as Anne hugged her mother and then he and Y/N went over to her for a moment to just hug her, “Alright, that was it. Now ummm, we’re gonna turn it over to Nathan and Aly.” He grinned and everyone gasped as he said this and they stood up with big smiles.

“We’re gonna have a baby!” Aly announced with no hesitation and the biggest smile as Nathan held up a photo of the first sonogram. Everyone started cheering some more and Aly’s parents went over and congratulated them and for the rest of the evening everyone was just smiling from ear to ear.

**********

It had been a few days since the party and Y/N was still having issues with her back. She had evidently outdone herself and now couldn’t sleep from the ache that just didn’t allow her to get comfortable despite the muscle relaxant gel Harry had so kindly rubbed into her lower back before bed. She was so quiet as she got out of bed and slipped her cold feet into her fuzzy slippers as she headed downstairs slowly, her phone’s flashlight lighting her way down. She had a very particular craving and thankfully, Julie had smuggled in the goods; several bags of Y/N’s beloved and most missed snack, Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. Sure they, were available for order in some shops around London but they were outrageously overpriced as they were a delicacy in these parts. She had them hidden somewhere Harry never looked because he would give her so much shit for it, but right now that’s all she wanted.

She wanted the deliciously spicy (but definitely unhealthy) flavored powder tickling her tastebuds once again. Her mouth literally watered as she carefully hoisted herself up onto the step stool they had placed in there to help her reach the higher cabinets when he was gone and she pulled out one of their empty kitchen appliance boxes and she retrieved one of the snack-sized baggies from inside because even she knew that overindulging wasn’t a good move. As soon as she pried the bag open she inhaled the spicy scent of the chips and hummed happily as she leaned against the counter as she started to eat the chips. She was taking it slow, savoring each and every one. All was right with the world until Harry walked in with slightly squinted eyes and then he shook his head as she completely froze right before she tossed another Cheeto into her mouth. His lips turned up in a smirk as he came closer and bit it out of her fingers.

“Really?” He asked through his chewing and she smiled.

“Oh hush, I’ve been so good.” She said to him and he hummed and went in for another one, “Nuh-uh! Get your own.” She said and he smiled at her, “These are for the baby.” She hummed as she reached into the little bag and he scoffed.

“That’s not gonna hold up tonight.” He said as he snatched the bag from her and grabbed a few Cheetos before plopping them into his own mouth. She scowled at him as he munched away at them happily, “I genuinely miss these.” He admitted.

“How do you think I feel? These were like a whole food group for me!”

“Yeah, I know…” he chuckled.

“When I was younger I would eat them with nacho cheese-”

“That sounds like a stomach ache.”

“Oh, for sure! But it’s well worth it.” She assured and he sniggered quietly. “Are you gonna be one of those psycho granola parents because if you are, I’m telling you right now, I will sneak our child the goods behind your back.” She warned and he scoffed.

“That’s fucked up.”

“What’s fucked up is depriving your child of the joy of sweets and junk. Like obviously, s’not gonna be his primary diet, but every now and again we can have junk foods and candies and stuff, not just on special occasions. Like I think it’s smart to feed them mostly healthy food until they start socializing with other kids. My mom tried to be one of those organic, no chemicals moms and as soon as I got to pre-K they would feed us fruit snacks and give us juice boxes and cupcakes for other kids’ birthdays…I would overdo it and be all cracked out on sugar and eventually learned to stash my halloween candy so that I could ration it out for a rainy day.” She recalled and he chuckled.

“Yeah, I definitely don’t want anything like that. But I do think we should set good examples for our son, most importantly showing them balance. That’s all it is for me, just a good balance of each thing.” He assured.

“Why don’t you let me have balance then?” She pouted and he chuckled.

“Oh shut it!” he squinted his eyes at her unfathomable gall, “I know my gran sneaks you Jaffa cakes every day.” He said and Y/N burst into laughter, “And don’t think I’m oblivious to the location of your hot Cheeto stash.” He said with a knowing grin, “I’ve sussed you out.” He smirked at her through a laugh and she sighed.

“Well, I appreciate that you’ve let me believe I’ve been getting away with it this whole time.” She said to him and he smiled.

“Course, baby. Y’deserve it after everything you’re doing for our little baby.” He said with a soft smile.

“I don’t ever want to lie to you, I just felt like you might get on my ass about it and I figured it was just a little, white lie. Nothing harmful, you know?”

“Well I’m sorry for making you feel like you had to lie and sneak around just to have some processed snacks!” He exclaimed with a chuckle and she swore her entire heart just burst with adoration for him.

“I love you so much.” She said softly and he pulled her hand up to his lips and kissed the back of it.

“I love you so, so much.” He hummed against her soft skin, “Is your back still bugging you?”

“Yeah. The gel stuff helped for a little bit, but it wore off fast.” She explained, “I was thinking that it might be a good idea for us to move down to the guest room in a few weeks.”

“Yeah, we can get set up down here.” Harry assured, “And baby, these next few days please slow down until the back thing subsides a bit, yeah?”

“I will. I promise. Your gran and I have been talking about her teaching me how to knit.”

“Oh really? A proper granny hobby for you?” He teased and she giggled.

“Yeah. I bought a pattern to make a little knitted Hedwig.” She pouted in endearment and Harry smiled.

“When does it arrive?”

“A week or two. So she’s gonna be teaching me some of the basics these next few weeks and then we’ll get to the owl.”

“Baby, I absolutely love how much you include her in things. You always do things with her that make her excited to come see you. Mum says she’s been a lot happier lately. Like, not that she wasn’t happy overall, but she did dim down a bit after my grandad passed, you know?”

“I can imagine. But ummm, yeah I have a lot of fun with her. I think we’re helping each other a lot.” She said and Harry smiled.

“I’m glad, baby.” He said and kissed her lips quickly, “Have you spoken to Julie at all about your parents?” He asked and she sighed.

“Nope. Don’t want to. I’m doing so well and I’m so happy right now with everything we’ve got going on, don’t need someone taking a crap in my cornflakes, you know?” Upon hearing this expression Harry burst into laughter and Y/N soon joined him, which definitely helped lighten the mood as they delved into this heavier topic. Once their laughter settled he tucked some hair behind her ear and sighed as he just took her in with the most loving gaze, “Have you talked to Julie about it?” She asked and Harry hummed and nodded to confirm.

“Yeah, for a bit.” He said and she sighed, “I can tell you if you want?” He asked and she bit her lip. It made Harry’s heart hurt for her because she looked so afraid and nervous to hear about anything related to her parents. And well, he couldn’t tell her that they said they were sorry or wanted to be part of her life. As much as he wished he could relay that message, it wasn’t it.

“It can’t be good if you’re asking if I want to hear it.” She said and he sighed.

“Well, it’s not bad either, it’s just…maybe what you’d expect I think.” He said to her and she nodded.

“OK, tell me.” She said.

“Your mum called Julie after getting your letters because obviously, she couldn’t reach you. She was a bit upset that you decided to leave without giving them a proper goodbye or not bothering to tell them about the pregnancy when we found out. Julie said she wasn’t mad, she was just more hurt than anything.” He said and she sighed, “Julie explained that they had made it abundantly clear that they wanted nothing to do with us and you didn’t want to risk sharing all that good news with them just for them to be so openly unsupportive.” Y/N nodded as Harry explained this, “That led to her getting angry and blaming Julie for creating distance between your family because you had never been this selfish and inconsiderate before you moved in with her. Julie knows she was just lashing out because she’s sad and hurt.” He explained as Y/N frowned upon hearing this.

“She then said that you were making your dad sick with stress because you got married without his blessing and she had no idea how she was supposed to tell him that you’re pregnant and have moved to another country altogether. I mean, it’s nothing new from what they always say.”

“Yeah.” She sniffled as she crossed her arms over her chest.

“Julie said she got so annoyed at her that she just hung up and blocked her number.” Harry said and Y/N sniggered through her tears, “She didn’t even tell them she left too so ummm…she wonders if they might show up one day and just find that she’s gone too.”

“God, I fucking hope so. And I hope they realize that now they’re all alone.” Y/N said with an ill-intended smile, “I want nothing to do with them, Harry.”

“Baby, you don’t mean that.”

“Right now I do!” She said and he nodded.

“OK.” He said softly.

“I want the rest of my pregnancy to be good and peaceful, like it has been the whole time we’ve been here. It’s been so good here, I don’t even want to think of them.” She insisted and Harry nodded.

“OK, we won’t.This is our family, OK? We can build it and grow it however the fuck we want. And as long as we’re not like…joining a cult or something completely out of pocket like that,” he said and she giggled, “My family won’t meddle or try to change things.” He assured.

“It’s OK if they do. I mean, if it’s gonna help our family be like your family then I want that.” She said and he smiled and reached for her face, wiping her tear stains with his thumb.

“I hope our son is like you. So strong, and open, and brave.” He said quietly and she just surged forward and hugged him tight.

“Ughh, I love you so much.” She sniffled and Harry smiled as he rubbed her back gently, “I hope our son looks like you though because I’ve done those gender swapping filters and I do not make an even remotely decent-looking guy.” She confessed and she pulled back to look at him as he chuckled.

“You’re perfect.” He tutted.

“As a female-presenting person, yes! I agree, I’m so cute!” She stated with certainty and he chuckled, “But as a male-presenting person…ehhh…it was…a jump scare.” She giggled and he laughed and shook his head.

“I love that you know your limits.” He said and she laughed loudly at his response.

“Baby?”

“Yes, my love?” He asked pulling back to see her better.

“You’re literally my favorite person ever. It’s not lost on me how lucky I am to get to do all of this with you.”

“Oh hush…” he said warding off her compliment and she tutted.

“Baby, it’s the truth. Acknowledge it!” She insisted and he smiled bashfully as he looked into her eyes.

“We’re both so fucking lucky to be doing this with each other. That’s all you’re getting.” He said and she smiled.

“When are you just going to be a little bit cocky about something, H?” She huffed.

“I pulled you, didn’t I? M’very cocky about that. And well, if our son looks like me, specially after what you’ve just told me, I’ll definitely be cocky about that.” He said and she burst into laughter and playfully slapped his chest as he laughed along with her, “I am serious, though.”

“Trust me, I know.” She assured and he grinned smugly, “Alright, ready to head back up?”

“Yeah, c’mon.” He hummed as he grabbed her now empty Cheeto bag and tossed it in the garbage before walking them back up to their bedroom. They brushed their teeth again and were soon cuddled up in their bed, sleep seeming far away now that they had been up for a bit.

“Baby, I have a small request.” She whispered.

“What is it?”

“From this week onward, please don’t tell me what object or food size our baby is. It’s really starting to freak me out.” She confessed through a giggle and he chuckled and kissed her forehead.

“OK, I won’t. I promise.” He said and she sighed in relief, “I’m just really excited, didn’t mean to freak you out.”

“I know you did it with good intentions, babe.” She assured him, “I just feel like if I have a visual of like how big it’ll be I’ll feel like I can’t do it when the time comes, you know?” She explained quietly and well this made Harry frown when he fully understood her point of view. It made so much sense, sometimes ignorance truly is bliss!

“Yeah, see I never thought of it in those terms. I was just excited that our baby is becoming a baby, you know? I’m sorry if I made you feel nervous or incapable with that, I really hadn’t even thought of what that would make you feel-”

“It’s OK. I mean, I hadn’t really been thinking about it like that until the whole eggplant thing.” She assured with a little giggle and he sniggered as well, “That one did start to freak me out. Like…how?” She asked and he sighed.

“I really don’t know, but I mean, clearly it’s possible.”

“Well I know that, like I get it, but like… your vagina is one thing, obviously very stretchy, but the cervix…mmmm, I don’t know how? Like the circumference of a baby’s head isn’t just 10 centimeters, but that seems to work out, I just never thought of it as like…stretchy.” she expressed her doubt through an unsure little hum and he literally stopped breathing for a moment.

“Wait, what has your cervix got to do with anything?”

“Baby, the cervix is what dilates, s’the first thing the baby comes through.” She reiterated and he sat up.

“No.” He said flatly.

“Yeah, H!” She chuckled.

“But it’s so tiny…s’just a tiny little thing!” he said with concern.

“I know, hence the reason I’m freaking out…” she stated as he laid back down.

“I’m so sorry…you poor thing.” He said monotonously and she burst into laughter.

“Yeah, s’pretty fucked up.” She said to him and he shook his head, still in complete disbelief. He was deeply disturbed now, he was so confident that he knew how all of this worked, but he had never really bothered with understanding the internal mechanics of it all and now he truly did feel bad for her.

“It is. OK, so one baby is perfectly fine, love. I don’t want you to have to do that ever again now that I know that…fuck.” He huffed and she giggled, “And well, with that knowledge in mind I might actually pass out…” he confessed and she sighed.

“Good god, Harry…”

“I’m an empath!” He defended and she laughed quietly at him, “Don’t laugh…it’s gonna be harder than I realized to have to-”

“Don’t even go there. It’ll be a cake walk for you.” She said and he sighed.

“Sorry…maybe I just don’t have to watch it happen. I mean, I’d want to, but maybe it’s not a good idea.”

“Definitely not if you’re going to pass out.” She giggled, “I’ll need you fully conscious. Don’t think I could do it without you.” She said.

“Fuck, and now I feel bad for getting you pregnant.” He said softly and she knew he was mostly joking, but a part of him did feel bad that this was going to be a lot more intense than he had realized and they fell silent for a few moments until he spoke up again, “Are you sure it’s the cervix?” He asked and she laughed.

“Baby, how did you think this happened? Obviously the baby is not just like chilling in the…canal!” She said and he burst into laughter.

“Obviously! But like… I don’t know what I thought happened…” he mumbled and she grabbed one of his hands and kissed it.

“Well, now you know.” She said and he sighed.

“Much to my chagrin.” He mumbled and she giggled, “Hopefully he’s a tiny baby.”

“I don’t think the size really matters unless they’re over the normal range, like a 12 pound baby or something monstrous like that…you’ll still have to open the same for even a tiny baby.” she concluded.

“What? 12 pounds?!” she’d never heard him sound so English in her life, it made her start to laugh at the thickness of his accent, even his tone of shock was somehow super English, “That cannot be real.” he exclaimed in horror as she trembled with laugher.

“Oh, it’s very real.” She assured.

“No, babe…” he whined with a grimace surely on his face, “That’s so fucking awful…”

“I’m sure it is.” She agreed “Any other questions you might have about where babies come from?” She asked playfully.

“No. I definitely have enough information on this to last me a lifetime.” He assured with an evident feeling of concern in his tone and she giggled.

…. MAY …

On the days that Aly was feeling too queasy and sick due to her pregnancy she’d head on over to Y/N and Harry’s to hang out with her and her grandmother. True to Hillary’s word, she was teaching the two how to knit and well, Y/N was a bit impatient for not being able to go fast like Hillary, but she was at least precise about it. And well, getting to bond with Aly was also really nice and well, for the most part they would talk about what would be going on I everyone’s lives, it wasn’t gossip, it was just a recounting of information is what Hillary would say because she thought gossiping was very ugly and Y/N and Alyssa couldn’t agree more.

“-but regardless of what he says, Mr. Jones did in fact eat the neighbor’s takeaway! And that’s why Harry’s going to be over early on Sunday to help install one of those cameras.” Hillary shared with the girls before she slurped up some of her Pho. She’d never had it before until she tried it with Y/N and now she was hooked, it was sweet really.

“Do you really think Harry can install a camera?” Aly asked and Y/N giggled, “No offense to your husband’s skill set.” She said and Y/N shook her head.

“No you’re fine, I was thinking the same thing.” She said softly.

“Oh, he’s young and smart! He’ll figure it out.” Hillary said.

“Gran, Harry is so technologically challenged!” Aly said through a giggle.

“It’s true, I had to do his assignments for his Procreate certificate.” Y/N added in.

“Oh god, should he even be tattooing then?” Aly asked and Y/N giggled.

“I mean, he just does all his stencils and designs on paper. He really hates virtual art.” She said and Aly nodded. “You should’ve seen when he learned about ChatGPT, he literally would not stop going on about it for days!”

“What on earth is a ChatGPT?” Hillary interjected.

“Artificial Intelligence, gran. AI!” Aly explained briefly and Hillary’s eyes widened.

“Already?! In my lifetime?”

“I think it’s really cool.” Aly said.

“I mean it is, but I think as a person in a creative field it does take away people’s integrity, it’s like taking the easy way out. So I do agree that it can be a great tool, but we need to moderate it before it like…gains too much consciousness and we’re in a live action Avengers film or something.”

“I wouldn’t mind that all too much…that Chris Hemsworth is dreamy isn’t he?” Hillary said and Y/N and Ally giggled.

“What in the world are you still doing here?” Harry suddenly asked as he burst in through the garage door startling all three of them.

“Announce yourself y’bugger!” Hillary scolded him with a pout as Harry kissed the top of her head with a mischievous grin as he went around to Aly and greeted her next.

“What are you guys chatting about?” He asked as he then came over to Y/N and dipped down to kiss her lips, “Hi, my love.” He mumbled against her lips.

“We were talking about how shit you are with technology since gran said you’re installing some cameras at theirs.” Aly said and he immediately pulled away.

“Ummm, no I’m not.” He scoffed.

“Please Harry, you’re completely inept. I know about your procreate assignments.” Aly said with a smirk and he turned back to Y/N with a pout.

“How could you?” He asked her with feigned insult and she smirked.

“Not to mention you’ll be working with the home’s electrical! Are you sure you don’t want to have someone professional come and install it, gran? What if you’re out of power for a week because this idiot fucks a fuse or-”

“Oh hush, leave my handsome boy alone.” Hillary said to Aly and Harry rounded the table back over to her and knelt down to hug her all while flipping Aly off and she just rolled her eyes. When Hillary saw she joined him, demonstrating her own obscene gesture.

“Well, that’s my cue to go.” Aly said through a giggle and Y/N chuckled as well.

This was Harry’s last week of work at the shop and as much as he loved being in the shop, he was excited to get to spend these final stages of the pregnancy with Y/N. Y/N was at 31 weeks now and getting far too big for comfort and she just constantly needed more help than what Hillary could give her at the moment. While it was in Julie’s plans to help take care of Y/N as she got closer to her due date, it was also summertime and Anne’s flower shop had been immensely busy with a variety of events, almost back to back some weeks, so Julie was recruited for that because Anne really couldn’t do all this on her own. Thankfully, Aly’s wedding had put her on the map with some of her friends and those friends told their friends and so she’d experienced an uptick in demand that she couldn’t pull off on her own, so Julie was enlisted to help. And really, ever since she’d arrived Y/N hadn’t seen Julie as much as she expected, she was acclimating really well and she supposed it was because there really hadn’t been anything tying her down to the U.S. anymore.

As they had discussed a few weeks prior, they had moved down a bunch of her stuff to the guest room because getting up all those steps was brutal. And well, of course Harry slept down there with her, so she wasn’t all alone. She heard him coming back in from having taken Hillary back to Anne’s and she was just lotion-ing up her tummy and hips and well, her boobs as well because they were starting to grow a bit more and they were getting rather itchy and sore with the process. Harry just happened to walk in on her about to do that and he just smirked at here with lustful eyes. She had just come out of the shower and she had gotten her shorts on, but she needed to get this done before getting her top on, it was just easier that way.

“Perfect timing.” He said as he walked into the ensuite and immediately washed his hands and she laughed softly. He was thorough with his washing and then dried them off, “I’d love to help.” He said as he came and sat beside her on the bed.

“I’m sure you would.” She said with a grin and he chuckled as he pulled her out into the bedroom.

“Do they hurt?” He asked as she handed over the little jar of lotion, it’s one that Gemma swore by and well, it had been helpful thus far. But also her growth had been rather consistent thus far, but she knew that towards the tail end she would probably blow up and inevitably get stretch marks, but she’d do as much preventative work as possible as futile as it seemed.

“Just a little bit, nothing I’m not used to so far.” She assured and he hummed as he dipped two fingers into the lotion before spreading it in his palms as he shuffled around to sit behind her and she just let her weight back against him as he kissed her bare shoulder before reaching beneath her arms and gently taking a hold of each breast and starting to lather the moisturizer in.

“Oh…they do feel bigger.” He mused.

“Yeah, I’ve definitely gone over just one cup size now.” She sighed. Harry was so gentle and delicate with her, of course her nipples peaked in his big, warm, veiny hands and as much as she wanted to let herself get turned on by this as much as he was getting turned on, she just wasn’t feeling it and she winced as he playfully pinched at her nipples. “No!” She frowned as she sniggered through a wince and he chuckled and did it again which made her reach down and pull at the hair on his thigh and he winced and let go to rub over the spot on his thigh. “Serves you right.”

“M’sorry, baby.” He apologized, “Just got a little too excited.”

“Yeah, I can tell.” She sighed.

“You’re just so fucking beautiful. I get really excited over the fact that we did this.” He said as his hands ran down to her bump. “And I know that it’s not easy by any means, so I just…admire you more and love you more for it.” He said quietly.

“I know, baby.” She hummed, “I have an appointment next Monday, 7 month check up.” She said.

“Okay, great! Can’t wait to see the little guy.” He said with a smile that she could hear in his voice.

“I know… and I was thinking that maybe with you around I can just be a bit more active than just walks with your gran.” She said and he smiled.

“Yeah, we can do that. A few light things, yeah?” He asked and she nodded, “Well lucky for you, I’ve actually been looking into this yoga class, it’s specifically for pregnant people. They meet three times a week in the evenings. Obviously, we don’t have to go every day if you don’t want, but it’d be something nice to do together.” He suggested and she nodded.

“Yeah, I think I’ve been too sedentary, apparently more exercise will help with my back pain. Seems counterproductive but, it’s science.” She said and he chuckled.

“Maybe you can learn some stretches for it or something. But I think it’d also be a good way for me to like get in tune with your body in terms of like the birthing part of everything. Apparently they show different poses as well, so you can find what’s comfortable.” He explained.

“Yeah, that sounds really nice actually. But I’m not all that bendy, m’sure it’s worse now but I’ll definitely try it out.” She responded and he smiled.

“We’ll work on the bendy thing down the line, don’t you fret.” He said and she giggled.

“That’s slightly terrifying.” She said and he chuckled.

“I promise you’ll like it.” He hummed confidently and she just smiled.

“Can you get my shirt please? If it’s not beside you it’s under you somewhere.” She said and he searched around for a moment before helping her get it on.

“There you are my queen.” He hummed and she shook her head.

“No. No, we’re not that king-queen couple.” She said as she just let herself fall back onto the bed. It took a lot of core strength she didn’t really have at the moment to be able to lay back in a controlled manner. Harry was laughing quietly beside her because he knew how cringey she found that.

“It just slipped out. I promise!” He chuckled and she grinned as he settled into the bed beside her.

“Just as long as I never have to hear that again.” She said and he laughed.

“Promise.”

***********

Y/N was now 32 weeks along and after his first week at home, Harry soon recognized that the routine Y/N had with his grandmother was not one that could easily be broken. Within the first few days at home everything that needed to be built and set up he’d taken care of. When he didn’t have that to do he tried to learn to knit with them, but they were at a much different skill level than him and he felt inferior. He knew logically, that it wasn’t a competition, but knitting was boring, so he had to do something to spice up the experience for himself and decided he could finish his wing before Y/N. And well, that resulted in a very deformed wing for the knitted Hedwig they were working on and Y/N had to redo his. When she finished it in about an hour after he’d been working on that for at least three hours, he decided that he would try and introduce new activities to the pair that would also be fun for him. If he was to be home, he also needed to have a good time, it was only fair.

“What if we go to the park and have a picnic today?” He asked them on this lovely morning. The weather was perfectly warm. During the last few days or so they’d been ranging anywhere from 23 to 26 degrees (mid 70’s to 80 in Fahrenheit). He figured Y/N wouldn’t mind this as being from California she was used to much more intense heat.

“Baby, that’s way too hot for me to be walking around and sitting in the sun right now. My body temp is already running a bit high according to the doctor.” She reminded.

“Oh c’mon, you’re used to much hotter. I know you can handle it.” He said with a grin before sipping on his coffee.

“Yeah, maybe I could when I was literally a third of the size I am now. I was sweating on my morning walk and it was only 70 degrees.” She said.

“She’s right, H. It’s easier for her to overheat and overexert herself with the extra weight from the baby and it’s not good for the baby if that happens. We’re in a heatwave, H.” His gran reminded.

“Well I don’t want to just sit around all day. I want to do something different today, just get out of the routine.” He reasoned.

“Well aren’t you two still doing that yoga or something in the evenings?” His grandmother asked.

“Yeah, but that’s part of the routine already.” He said. “Forgive me for wanting to spend some quality time with my wife and make memories with her.” He said with some snark and they both chuckled.

“If you want to go out so badly, go out and do something, H.” Y/N said and he frowned.

“Alone?” He asked as if she had suggested he fly himself to the moon.

“Baby, this is your hometown, you’ll be alright. It’s just getting really hard to move around and keep up with you. I just don’t have the energy to go and explore with you right now.” She explained and he huffed.

“M’just gonna go to the gym then.” He decided before finishing his coffee and heading upstairs to change. Harry’s feelings were hurt at her rejection to go out with him; he didn’t think he was asking for anything ridiculous. He went up to their bedroom to get changed and when he was heading back downstairs he saw her waiting at the foot of the staircase.

“Hey, I ummm…I feel like you’re upset that I didn’t want to go out with you.” She said and he shook his head in a fib.

“M’not, it’s whatever. You wanna spend time with my gran and-”

“Are you jealous of your grandma?” She asked with a grin and he chuckled.

“No. I just…thought we would be able to spend more time together is all. Just doing things that we enjoy doing.”

“I mean, we can have that picnic, just in the backyard?” She suggested and he sighed.

“Baby, the point of the picnic was to get out of here. I didn’t think we’d basically be prisoners in our home.” He explained how he felt and she pouted upon hearing that.

“Well, you’re not a prisoner, H.” She said softly as his words stung her heart a bit. He immediately sensed that he’d made her upset and shook his head.

“I didn’t mean it like that.” He mumbled.

“Then what did you mean?” She questioned and he sighed, sensing that even his explanation wouldn’t get him out of this one.

“Just that it’s a little bit…slow being stuck in here all day. I don’t see why you can’t knit at the park or anywhere else, babe.”

“Harry, your explanation is not really making what you said better.” She said and he groaned.

“I’m sorry. It’s just that we’ve got just a few short weeks before the baby comes and I just feel like you don’t want to spend time with me. Clearly you have a well established routine that you refuse to budge on and if that’s the case then maybe I should’ve just waited until your due date to stop working. I mean…everything’s going to change for us soon and we won’t be able to do stuff together that don’t involve the baby for a long time.” He vented a bit and she sighed and tried not to roll her eyes because well, his feelings were his feelings. But that didn’t mean he hadn’t upset her and she was going to clear that up right now.

“I’m sorry you feel that way.” She said with a frown, “But let me just enlighten you a bit though, H. Everything changed for me the moment I got pregnant.” She said, “I’ve been living a completely different life from day one! And in the state I’m in right now I can’t even picture myself having a good time anywhere outside of this house. It’s harder than you might think and like, I know you have your own needs but I feel like you’re being really dismissive of my needs right now.” She said.

“I don’t mean to be-”

“I know that, but you are. Like…at this stage more than ever, I feel like even my body is not my own anymore.” She sighed, “And you’re right, things will only change even more once the baby comes. Like our lives are not gonna be our own for a bit and it is a bit sad, but I don’t think it’ll feel like we missed out on life alone. It’s just going to be different and like…I’ve already had that crisis and made peace with it, so I need you to get past this because you’re projecting and it’s making me feel like I’m being a shitty partner to you when it really has nothing to do with me.” She said and he sighed.

“Well I can’t help how I feel, baby.” He said.

“I know that. Trust me, I do, I felt that way too at the start. And I’d give anything to be able to have the energy to do more outdoorsy things with you and make more of our time, but I just can’t right now. Like…I’m not sure what you expected from paternity leave, H. But it’s not a vacation, not in the slightest.” She said and he sighed.

“Cleary.” He mumbled, his feelings still hurt.

“You’ll have to find your own kind of routine to keep you occupied when you feel…like you’re trapped.” She said with a hint of spite and a frown. It was hurting her feelings that he felt stuck. That feeling would only get worse and worse the closer she got to her due date, more stress, more urgency, always on standby, it wasn’t going to be easy. It worried her that he would continue to feel stuck even after the baby came. Maybe they had moved too quickly? And before she knew it a lump was forming in her throat as her eyes brimmed with tears as this massive wave of anxiety washed over her.

“Hey, what’s the matter?” He asked quietly when he saw her tearful eyes.

“I just, ummm…realized that you said that being at home with me makes you feel like a prisoner. I don’t want you to feel that way with me.” She said with a sniffle and he pouted.

“Baby, it was a poor choice of words.” He said as he reached for her hands and she pulled them out of his reached and crossed them over her chest.

“The way you said them made me feel like you’ve been feeling that way for a bit. And like…this is only your second week at home.” She pointed out and he sighed. “If you hate it this much then maybe you can just do your own thing until I absolutely need you around-”

“Baby-”

“Don’t try to take back something that you sincerely meant, Harry.”

“I didn’t mean for it to hurt your feelings.”

“I know, but you have. Just…go find friends to hang out with or something, shake off the feeling. It’s fine, I know you didn’t have that intention. Just go get a breather.” She nodded.

“I feel like this is a trap.” He said and she sighed.

“Well I’m sure it’ll beat being caught in this trap.” She said and turned around and walked back to the kitchen. He sighed when he faintly heard her start sobbing in the kitchen and he just knew she’d really prefer some space right now and he would whip up a really big apology and make it up to her when he got back.

*********

Harry had the least productive workout of his life. He had quite literally been googling “how to make up with your pregnant wife after a fight” while he leisurely peddled on the stationary bike at the back of the cycling class he’d joined. What she had said about things changing for her from the start of the pregnancy, well obviously he knew things had been different physically, but he’d never considered that it may have taken a toll mentally before. It was painfully obvious, but often times those are the details that are most overlooked. He was feeling badly though, because the way he had communicated his inner turmoil had been really hurtful to Y/N. He was just afraid and he tended to just be really projective and defensive when he was feeling scared or insecure and well, now Y/N was mad at him. He was still scrolling through his phone trying to come up with something that he could do or get her that would aid in her forgiving him…

“Class is over, you know?” He heard a familiar voice and quickly glanced up only to lock gazes with a familiar icy blue pair of eyes. Suddenly he felt his stomach flip as the woman before him smiled at his shock, she did always like to cause a scene.

“Chloe, hi.” He said softly with disbelief. Still in shock at seeing his ex-girlfriend standing there, grinning smugly at him. He felt so anxious just seeing her before him. He had done everything under the sun to get over all of the hurt she had caused him. He had effectively prepared for any possibility except this one; the one where by some insane and ill-turn in his luck, he’d run into her.

“Hi Harry. I heard through the grapevine that you were back.” She said with a smile and he nodded, “Knew you wouldn’t last overseas for too long. Though, I must say it was a good plan.”

“Plan?” He asked and she sighed and nodded.

“Yeah, that was part of your plan to…to move on right? And to heal?” She asked and he didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of admitting that she had wrecked him. He knew her game and she thrived on leaving her mark on people. “Look, I’m not saying that to patronize you. I just ummm… I hope the move helped you.” She said and he looked at her cautiously.

“Well, thanks.” He responded and she sighed and chuckled.

“Well, did it?” She asked him and he didn’t want to entertain her, but he also wanted to show her that he had moved on and that he had healed and that he had everything she had told him he could never have because he wasn’t good enough for it. He was frustrated at the argument he had with Y/N and had been thrown off by Chloe ambushing him in this fucking cycling class. He wanted to get in the final jab to really stick it to her, so he didn’t really think about any consequences when he raised his left hand to her, showing off his wedding band.

“Ummm yeah, I’d say so.” He chuckled, trying to keep the smug look off of his face when her mouth dropped open in shock.

“You’re married?! Wow!” She gasped with a smile and he nodded. “You’ve been gone all of two years!” She giggled with a smile and he started to feel less worried about her intentions. She seemed to be happy for him, “When did you do it?” She asked and he chuckled.

“Yeah, we did it just this January, actually. We’ve got a baby due in a few more weeks.” He informed with pride and her eyebrows arched up.

“Oh! So it was that kind of thing.” She said with a small smile and he furrowed his brows.

“Oh no, I’d proposed way before the pregnancy.” He explained and she hummed in understanding.

“Well good, as long as it’s not some baby-trapping situation. I know plenty of friends who got sucked into those kinds of situations.” She said and as her words registered, he realized that this idea of him suddenly feeling trapped had been a projection of his previous bad experiences. His little meltdown had just been a version of the person Chloe had trained that was still stuck in there somehow. How could he feel trapped when he literally had everything he had ever wanted with Y/N? When he had everything he had been made to believe he never could or would have because he was made to feel like he would never be good enough for that kind of commitment and that kind of role. “Harry?” She asked and he hummed as he snapped back into reality from that little mental trip of realization.

“Sorry, m’just a bit distracted today.” He chuckled and she hummed.

“Is everything alright?” She asked and he suddenly wanted to prove to her that everything was in fact perfect and that he had come out stronger after everything she’d put him through.

“Yeah, s’just a bit of a transitionary period, you know? Being a husband and a father.” He said and she hummed, not really validating how far he’d come. How he’d done what to her was always out of his scope of possibilities, “I’m not really doing anything after this would you like to grab a coffee or something and catch up for old time’s sake?” He found himself asking her. She looked surprised at his invitation as their breakup had been a complete shit show and her lips turned up in a smile.

“Yeah, that’d be cool.” She said nonchalantly and he nodded.

“Cool. We can freshen up and I’ll meet you up front?”

“Perfect.” She agreed and they both headed out of the studio and into the locker rooms.

For Harry, this was a pride thing. He was suddenly blinded by his need to prove to her that she didn’t have power over him any more. That she couldn’t affect him how she had before. He was so convinced that he had the upper hand, that he was suddenly completely blind of the epiphany he’d had moments earlier about how somehow, she was still in his head. What they’d had were four years of the most insane and toxic back and forth relationship that a person should be allowed to deal with. There was never a dull moment, and not in a good way. When he met Chloe he was broken and sad and he needed someone to prove to him that he was worthy of love him because he couldn’t believe that for himself at the time. And at first there was so much love and care and attention from her. But after a month or two, the mood swings started and it became impossible to not make her upset. But he was still riddled with so much self-loathing that he felt that he deserved the hurt she’d cause him. With Chloe the lows were horrifically low, but when she was in a good place she loved him fiercely and overwhelmingly. He felt on top of the world during those moments, but their happiness was so fragile and that’s when he started to lose himself. When he was so desperate to feel her love that he compromised every part of himself to ensure that he stayed in her good graces and she loved that.

When Eddie had talked to him about love-bombing and abusive partners he was enraged. And well, Chloe had warned him that people would try to break them up and come between them like that, so he was extremely defensive when Eddie questioned the health of their relationship. But every piece of evidence Eddie showed him about how his relationship was abusive was literally chipping away at his composure and sanity. He didn’t acknowledge Eddie for a week after that, he had been so hurt and angry that everything he had shared with him about his relationship had been seemingly turned against him. He felt attacked and was in this mindset of “it’s Harry and Chloe against the world” for quite a while. When the news of Gemma being pregnant with Ivy came to him along with an invitation to a little party at her house he decided that he would show up, despite Chloe asking him not to go. He was scared of how going would make Chloe react, but he was more afraid to show his face after ages of shutting out his family. But the moment his family saw him it became more of a “Welcome home, Harry” party than a pregnancy announcement party. He was overwhelmed by the warm reception from his family. He thought about it for weeks after and soon realized that love wasn’t something to be earned, love was to be freely given to those you care about. Even when you’re upset or in a fight with someone the love doesn’t just disappear, like he’d been experiencing with Chloe. It took him a bit, but he soon apologized to Eddie profusely for his attitude and that’s when Eddie talked to him about a plan he had to open a shop in LA in the next year or so and well, the rest was history.

When he changed back into his street clothes he went outside and had originally started typing out a text to Y/N that he ran into someone he knew and would be going out for a coffee, but quickly decided to not send the message. That should’ve been the first red flag that he was heading down a dangerous road. But he rationalized that away by telling himself that this would be a quick coffee and catch up, he didn’t want this to be a big deal. It was a one-time thing that he was doing for himself; putting the final nail in the coffin of his twisted and painful past. Harry hadn’t and didn’t want to recount all of the shit with Chloe to Y/N. By the time he’d gotten to LA he and Chloe had been done for nearly a year and he’d gotten away with not really talking about it to anyone and he was not about to start now. He felt that he had done a lot of the hard work to move on and he felt prepared to face her again without any consequence or negative impact to himself.

“Hey, ready to go?” He heard Chloe again and he turned to her and smiled as he shoved his phone in his pocket.

“Yeah. Should we go to the one just down the street. S’pretty good if I recall correctly?” He asked and she nodded.

“Sure.Do you want to walk? It’s really nice out today.” She suggested and he smiled.

“Yeah, I could go for a stroll after doing absolutely nothing in that cycling class.” He chuckled and she laughed along.

********

It was nearly 3pm and Harry hadn’t come home yet after leaving a bit after 9am. Y/N and Hillary were both starting to worry because he had said he was going to the gym. She knew that they hadn’t left off on the best of terms and she was anxious to have a proper conversation with him to find a middle ground about how to proceed from this point forward and of course, apologize for the argument. But he’d been gone nearly 5 hours without even returning her text that she’d sent about an hour before, asking when he was coming home. She’d chewed through her fingernails and had started to tear away at the sides of her thumbs when the front door finally opened. She got up from the couch and hurried to the front door as fast as she could. She opened up the door to the entry way and sighed in relief when she saw Harry close the front door behind him.

“Oh thank god, you had me worried!” She said and he turned to her with a small smile. He looked sweaty and a bit tired, figures if he had the longest workout known to mankind.

“I’m sorry, love. I ended up leaving the car at the gym and ended up in SOHO-”

“SOHO?”

“Yeah, I lost track of time out there. It was just such a lovely day.” He explained.

“That’s alright. I’m just not happy about how we left things this morning. S’why I was trying to reach you.” She said and he frowned.

“I understand, love. I’m sorry my phone was on silent. But ummm, I was also being a prick. I don’t feel trapped or like…imprisoned with you. I mean, we’re living the dream, yeah?” He asked.

“I would say so.” She replied softly. “And ummm…I know that this transitionary period is hard and I could’ve been more understanding. Especially since I went through it too. I’m sorry for making you feel bad and for snapping at you. It was wrong of me and I love you so much and I’m sure we can figure some things out to still have a little fun here.” She said and he nodded, “Just nothing with cards because your grandma stopped playing nice now that we’ve built trust.” She said and he chuckled and just hugged her and kissed her forehead.

“Deal. I love you.”

“I love you too.” She replied feeling relief now that they had spoken and apologized to each other.

“Well, you know maybe getting out on my own a bit is not so bad. I just have a lot of kinetic energy built up and just need to be able to get it out, you know? Maybe I can do my own workout or something a couple times a week, you know?”

“Yeah, I think that’s a great idea and when we’re here I’ll be more inclusive about the things we do.” She said and he nodded.

“Thank you, my love. Now if you don’t mind, I’m gonna have a shower because I am quite sweaty.” He said and she nodded.

“Yeah, go head.” She said moving so that he could make it into the home and then he headed down the hall to the guest room where they were currently set up.

After that, the rest of the day had gone well. Anne and Julie had come by for dinner and they all got to chatting before Y/N started to get sleepy and headed off to have her own shower after saying goodbye. She could hear everyone still chatting when she made it out of the bathroom and then she saw Harry plugging his phone in and setting it on the bedside table. He huffed when he saw that it wasn’t powering on yet.

“Should I head back out?” She asked and he just continued looking down at his phone and she cleaned her throat to get his attention.

“Huh?” He asked turning to her and she giggled.

“I said should I head back out after getting dressed?”

“Oh no, they’re just picking after themselves. I’ll walk them to the car don’t worry.” He said and then looked down to his phone, trying to power it on again.

“OK.” She said noticing how entranced he was by getting his phone back on, “Is everything alright? You seem anxious to check on something.” She said and he shook his head.

“Oh, s’nothing crazy. Just a review I was waiting for, Eddie said he’d reach out about it.” He said and she hummed, “Alright, make yourself comfy I’ll be back soon.” He assured and she proceeded with her routine.

In the time that he was gone his phone powered back on and as soon as it did, it chimed with a message. Y/N was just about to get into bed and just decided to check to see if it was the message he was expecting from Eddie. After the day they’d had she would be pleased to give Harry some good news. Y/N and Harry had never been private about their phones, so it wasn’t odd for her to just check his phone. She smiled upon seeing Eddie’s name on the screen and just pulled his phone off of the charger and opened it up to check his message. When she got into his messages app she accidentally opened a message that came in right then as Eddie’s was pushed down the queue on the screen and as she skimmed the beginning of it she felt her stomach twist and a lump to form in her throat as she continued to read what was on his screen…

She felt her dinner working its way back up her stomach. Her heart ached and her eyes welled up with tears as she tried to find some logical explanation as to what scenarios other than rough sex would lead to a woman having sore pelvic muscles and legs. She barely made it to the toilet when the wave of sickness hit her, and when she finished she hoisted herself up and flushed the toilet before heading over to the sink to brush her teeth once again. When she opened up the faucet her wedding ring shimmered in the light and she just took a long and calming breath before letting it out slowly. She didn’t know what this was…she needed to trust Harry. But he did appear kind of disheveled when he got home... She groaned and shook it out of her brain before brushing her teeth.

When she headed back into the room she quickly plugged his phone back in and hurried to her side of the bed and got in before her mind started to flick through the friends of his she’d met. She was trying hard to place a Chloe, but she wasn’t coming up with anything. She’d never heard of a Chloe…maybe Alyssa or Gemma would know? But before she could reach out she decided to just keep this to herself until she had actual proof of anything else remotely suspicious. But then again, the message hadn’t been addressed to Harry specifically…but then she said she was glad he was back in town…so it had to be to Harry. Once again she was picking at the skin at the sides of her thumbs as she got lost in this spiral and avoided lunging over to look at the message again. She just laid down and kept spiraling down her thoughts until Harry suddenly came in.

“Has my phone gone off?” He asked and she nodded.

“Yeah, something came in from Eddie.”

“Sick.” He said as he hurried to his side of the bed and opened up his phone. She watched as his eyebrows arched up a bit as he glanced down at his screen but said nothing about it. The text was now read, so Harry knew Y/N’d seen that. He cleared his throat and just went to Eddie’s text message,“Ummm, TattooMaster is going to publish my tattoo and this review of my work and the shop in their September edition.” He shared with a smile. Y/N wanted to be happy at his news, but she was still really on edge and confused from the other thing she’d seen.

“Wow baby, that’s great!” She said as enthusiastically as possible.

“I know…shit.” He chuckled as he started typing away on his phone.

“So uh…do you have any friends that live nearby to us?” She asked and he turned to her.

“Ummm, not really. Why?” He asked, hoping that she’d just ask what he knew she wanted to ask, but instead she just shrugged.

“S’just that maybe if you had anyone close by you could hang out with friends when you need to get out of the house a bit, you know?” She said and he hummed, “S’just a thought.”

“Well sadly my last several years here were not my best and ummm…I kind of burned all of those bridges except for Eddie. And well, a lot of the old crew I worked with before I left are also doing their own thing, so not really anyone for me to hang out with apart from you guys. Not that I mind.” He explained. Hoping that by him saying that he was fully addressing her concern over that text from Chloe that he knew she’d seen. Y/N hummed in understanding. “OK, I’m gonna turn down the lights to let you get some rest.”

“Thanks.” She said as she settled into her pillow and prayed that she had the guts to ask about it if he didn’t say anything by the next day. She would just show him the message and ask him to explain - it wasn’t that hard, was it?

But the next day she wondered if she had been delirious and imagined that suspicious text when she’d glanced at Harry’s phone again because the message was gone. And then another thought came to mind…why would be delete the message?

She waited the rest of the week and nothing else ever came in from the number. If he had been with another woman then all evidence pointed towards this being a one time thing, probably a mistake that he never wanted to think of again - hence deleting the message. But then on Saturday morning he went for “a run” and came back with some pastries for her from a bakery she soon realized was in Hampstead, which was quite far for a run. It made absolutely no sense since he hadn’t taken the car. Later that night he received a new message from Chloe saying it was nice to “grab a coffee” and that was all she needed to confirm that he was in fact hanging out with someone else. Every time he’d go out for more than an hours he’d get a text that night and it’d be gone by the morning. He still hadn’t saved her number though, which was odd to her if they were just friends. She had never been a paranoid person, but she was starting to become that way and she felt like she was going crazy.

… JUNE …

She was 35 weeks now, the Sunday roast was taking place at their house and Y/N was a bit concerned about how things would play out. Harry had been off, just something was off with him since he started hanging out with his new friend a few weeks before. He had been drinking throughout the afternoon and was being a lot more crass in his humor and had regained an arrogance that she hadn’t experienced since the first few months they had known each other. Almost like he was going backwards. She needed to say something because she was losing her mind trying to figure this out. She didn’t want him to think that she was accusing him of something because she really had no proof of anything, but he just wasn’t himself.

“God Harry, help your wife!” Gemma scolded as Y/N tried to push herself out of her seat, she needed to do something about this. Harry turned to her and saw her back arched as she tried to get up, the seat was a bit lower than she thought. He immediately stood and helped her up and she smiled at him.

“Thanks.”

“Yeah, love.” He hummed.

“Baby, can I use your phone?” She asked and his eyebrows furrowed.

“Ummm why? For what?” He questioned her and that was an immediate red flag, he never cared before.

“I can’t seem to find mine and I was supposed to call G, he wanted to run through his anniversary dinner plans with his man really quick.” She said. “I just want to find it, I’m gonna call from mine, don’t worry.” She said and he bit his lip and nodded.

“Ummm sure. Yeah, of course.” He said before getting it out of his pocket and she grabbed it and typed in his password and it was wrong? “Oh, sorry forgot to mention I changed it. Archie knew it and downloaded a shitload of games on it and-”

“It’s fine, Harry. You don’t need to justify it to me. I trust you.” She said as she looked into his eyes and he frowned a bit.

“Right.” He chuckled and he took it and she wasn’t sure if it was subconscious or not, but he brought it up, out of her line of sight so that she couldn’t see the new password.

“Thanks. I’m gonna go look for my phone.” She said and he nodded as she headed back inside. She really was just going to call G, because she needed to talk about this with someone who was too far to start a fight over this with him. But seeing him hide something from her, whether he realized it or not, pushed her slight doubt in him into complete mistrust. She was going to call this Chloe chick.

***********

She had called Chloe and unfortunately, Chloe had done nothing but stoke the fires of Y/N’s feelings of betrayal. Chloe played coy, like she didn’t know he was married, but that obviously wasn’t the case when she slipped up on a few things, like knowing about her being pregnant and then mocking her that he hadn’t even lasted a year without being able to cheat on her. Y/N had learned 3 things from this conversation. Well it was more like rampage for Chloe. But she now knew Chloe was his ex-girlfriend. She knew that Chloe was clearly not of sound mind or psychologically stable in any capacity. And she knew for a fact that Harry hadn’t slept with her. Chloe was trying too hard to convince Y/N of something she knew wasn’t the truth. The Harry she described was nothing like Harry that Y/N had married. Maybe it was the Harry Chloe had known years ago and something like the one Y/N had first met, but it wasn’t at all like him now.

He had been sneaking off with his ex though. And he was still actively hiding it and lying about it which was worrisome to Y/N. Maybe he missed her? Or had started to like her again? Maybe seeing her again just made him realize that what he had at home wasn’t enough? It made her feel that way given everything he had told her already about feeling trapped and clearly he had been talking to Chloe about how he was feeling because she was throwing it back in her face and was not even hesitating to twist the metaphorical knife. Y/N refused to be manipulated by this woman though, she would not give her the satisfaction.

“Well, thank you for telling me all of that, Chloe. I guess Harry and I have a lot to talk about-”

“Open the door, Y/N.” She heard Harry through the door and she bit her lip nervously. Maybe she had taken it too far by calling Chloe but she just needed to know what was going on there because he wasn’t telling her. Y/N swallowed the lump in her throat, barely hearing what Chloe was saying to her now.

“-I just think you need to stop kidding yourself. You seem like nice girl and he’s just not the person you think he is. I know you might be angry at me for being the one to tell you this but you deserve to know.” Chloe said playing sympathetic, Y/N could already hear the victory in her voice though and she couldn’t let this person get away with feeling like she’d won.

“Right, well this conversation was actually very enlightening. Thank you so much for looking out for me.” She responded sarcastically and immediately hung up the call before she could say anything else. She did feel bad for going behind Harry’s back but it had to be done. She was about to have his baby, she needed to know if he was in this with her or out. Y/N walked the few steps towards the bedroom door and took a deep breath and held it for a moment before exhaling. Time to face the music.

… TO BE CONTINUED …

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stronghours · 10 months ago

Text

Nice Nurses

Clay could recite to the thread what he’d worn that early-summer brunch at Roscoe’s apartment; the loose, worn cords that were so easy to pull up his legs one-handed with the nice button that behaved in the cute little pants-slot (button eye? Hole, simple-pat? Jules would know, but he hadn’t met Jules just yet, if details were the thing). The cords were light green. Over this, he wore an oversized t-shirt, grey, one he could pull over his head without a battle, and over that a very long-sleeved chambray shirt he did not button because he enjoyed when it billowed behind his underarms. It made him feel like a famous painter, and nothing untoward showed to upset anyone. A recitation by rote and not of recollection, as Clay hadn’t found the need to recollect much for twenty-five years. Why bother, when it was such a pretty May Day, and the sidewalks were beginning to stay warm, and a robin plumped over there, in that very shrub?

And a soiree! How fun! Phil of all people opened the door for him. Strange, since Roscoe was quite host-y about these matters. “Here we are,” Phil said, with his standard dissected warmth. “Now the party’s started.”

“Darling,” said Clay Carrell, “I hope if already has.”

“And fashionably late, too.”

“I arrive, exactly as I have always arrived, when I intend to.”

He took a turn around the front room, received his acknowledgements and the few respectful touches or kisses some guests felt fit to grant him. He breezed by the goody table (it wasn’t nice manners to show undue interest in the food, directly after your entrance) and treated himself to a peep out the window. Roscoe did not have curtains to sensuously fling aside, a pity. Roscoe!

“Where, now?” He asked Bo G., who unlike others, solidly clapped Clay’s trim shoulder.

“He’s in the damn kitchen.” Bo G. understood him perfectly. “With that damn kid.”

Clay knew, theoretically, about the presence of a damn kid, but memory lay in the eye of the beholder and Clay had never managed to see him. He’d heard bizarre rumors Roscoe kept him stuffed in the shop basement; Clay thought that was a senseless place to store a child. Knowing now he must see at last, off he swanned to the kitchen entryway toward the damp clatter and crash of soapy dishware. He rapped the doorframe smartly. “Now you,” he said, “you, who did not answer your own door! I see you now!”

“Oh Clay,” Roscoe half-turned, smiled vaguely, and held up his bubbling hands. “That’s Clay,” he said to the long, young creature beside him who dangled on a tall stool. It didn’t answer. Clay thought that was only fair, as half the child’s face was a healing fog of yellows and burgundies and eggplant, all in evil gradients, descending from a half-swollen blue-skinned eye before dispersing and reconnecting among a strip of unbecoming, hairy stitches encrusted smack in the middle of the cheek. It could hardly have hurt to tape some nice white gauze over it, but not everyone knew the niceties of Gloria Vanderbilt as well as Clay.

“Clay,” Roscoe continued in the solid, directorial voice he affected whenever Clay was in the room, “Clay, this is Jules. I don’t think you two have run into each other.”

“I am so incredibly charmed,” Clay said. He noticed right away that Jules was looking down, with a teenager’s cruel intent, to work out if Clay’s squashy white shoes truly fastened together with Velcro. “Hideous whispers informed me you were stuck in a basement somewhere. I’m so glad you’re not; people belong aboveground.”

Titters in the room behind Clay. The events could have been connected; he was a witty person. “I can see you’re being very helpful to our lovely man – that’s fine, Roscoe works too hard to arrange the fun then misses out on it.” He scanned automatically over the child’s hands, which were long and battered, adolescently screwboned. He didn’t store them awkwardly like other wallflowers.

Clay felt keen, momentarily. “What do you play?”

The child’s one fully open eye was merely surface-bright and dark and blank. “Piano,” he said. He talked out one side of his mouth and his teeth didn’t show when he spoke.

“You do?” Roscoe was surprised. Their acquaintance was, apparently, short.

Clay dandled his stronger hand in front of his chest. “No-no,” he clarified, “you play?”

“Instruments,” Roscoe tried.

“Cards, my darling.”

“Oh.” The child – J name, Clay would need to hear it a few more times before it could be swallowed – cupped his hands and touched his thumbs together, the poor form of shuffling. “Right. I play.”

“What’s your special?”

“Anything.”

“How did you learn?”

“Old people.”

Clay, delighted, clapped his stronger palm against his weak knuckles. “Marvelous,” he declared. “They’re the best teachers because they’ve played so long – and so sour about it! I bet you have superior attention span to other babies your age. I bet you could play me right now. Roscoe?”

The little foundling looked to Roscoe. Either through injury or through stupidity, his face didn’t appear to express much.

“Sure, you should go and play if you want to play,” Roscoe encouraged. “I got it covered here.”

Clay always made sure he had large pockets, and he always carried a pack on him if suspected a social situation. He steered the child through the crowd out front – everybody seemed to be looking their way with one big grin – directly to the tiny second room and gestured for the magazines to be cleared off one of the end tables. “And pull up that little chair for your young bones,” he bossed. “And I will sit on the couch, and then we will play Gin Rummy – consider this your audition.”

Two men sharing the same chair in the corner yelped together. “Don’t let Frank hear you saying that, Clay!”

“Leave Frank to me.” Clay dismissed them all and cut the deck one handed. He braced his other wrist as firmly as he could against the table, to use it as a base to shuffle against. At this point, those who didn’t know Clay generally said please, I can do that for you! But this one just stared at the feat.

“Now.” Clay settled in after he served out two shares of ten and established the discard. “You must remind me of your name again, and then you may draw first, seeing as you’re brand new.”

“Jules,” said Jules. He drew and then discarded an ace of hearts, which Clay’s brain filed away of its own accord, along with the name as well, if he was lucky.

Clay graciously helped himself through three rounds of passive, plodding gameplay on Jules’ part. He appeared to be thinking merely through muscle memory and allowed Clay to initiate the knocks. Several times he failed to spot where his deadwood coincided with Clay’s melds, requiring a sporting nudge of the shoe on Clay’s part, who briefly worried, after three Gins, that despite the automatic nature of his play, the boy was a little stupid after all. Then he looked round and noticed three other gentlemen had thronged alongside the two on the chair and were absorbing the proceedings quite immodestly – a relief, the only problem at present being the teenage disease of self-consciousness.

“For goodness sakes.” Clay snapped his fingers, a rudeness he did not like to resort to. “If you please?”

The attention dispersed and they continued.

“You can’t mind people when they don’t even know what we’re doing,” Clay suggested.

“I can do whatever I want,” Jules muttered, rude enough. Clay wondered if he was in pain. He was playing one-handed himself, insistently rubbing the unblotted side of his jaw, and he kept jerking his chin apropos to nothing. Whenever a partygoer wandered into the room all these tics would halt for a time, before forcibly sputtering through his body to reignite the cycle. The agitation made him more aggressive in play, and Clay gradually realized he had (pardon his French) a real bitch on his hands. Frank’s opinion be damned – he’d get along just fine.

Now he just needed an opening to extend the invitation, but Clay was not much of a talker in play, and Jules seemed to mirror him. Roscoe wandered in with two orange juice glasses, the dearheart, and being the sensitive kind, left without pestering – minus a small jab at Clay. “You’re not wearing your bracelet,” he scolded.

“It’s ugly,” Clay explained. “Now, you can see we’re busy.”

Roscoe put a brief hand to Jules’ shoulder, who only looked up when he departed. He peered with sudden plaintiveness past Clay’s shoulder, then downward, spotting a folded napkin Roscoe had placed beside his cards. His face absented itself again. Without an expression, the wounds on his face became ghastlier and stood out sharply, deeply nuzzled as they were in winter-sallow skin, teenage skin or no. It was difficult to tell if, after healing, he would be pretty or ugly.

“You came to us very suddenly, I hear,” Clay said.

“I don’t want to know what you heard.” Jules spoke decisively through pink teeth and put the napkin to the corner of his mouth because he was, Clay finally noticed, bleeding. Clay discarded this data as a distraction.

“You’re a lucky little boy,” Clay continued, as Jules’ eyes revolved nastily around the room. “Roscoe is a very nice person. I myself am part of a very exclusive club, that could benefit you socially.”

“Oh, thure.”

“Oh, yeth. Did your old people teach you how to play bridge?”

“Hell,” Jules said. “Since, like, ten? Whatever.” He sipped from the orange juice, pulled an awful, squint-eyed face, and shook his head very slowly. The rim of the glass came away red and slimy and he was reluctant to swallow. “My gran had her old ladies, and I had to round out the play. My boyfriend’s mom played too –” It took him forever, in this state, to spit out the words and without the scaffold of cardplay, Clay had to mentally sweat to grasp the information. “– But he didn’t like me to play with her.”

“Who?”

“My boyfriend didn’t like –”

“Oh, forget him.” Clay waved away all these superfluous people. “I won’t allow almost ten years of experience to be sneezed at.”

He laid out the parameters of the card club to Jules, who rested the unharmed side of his face against balled knuckles and appeared to doze right through it. “They won’t like it,” he murmured, after Clay outlined the sparkling personalities of Frank F., Bo G. (introduced) and numerous others. “They’ll say I’m too young. And I’m tired of old people.”

“But you’re used to them.” Clay, a smooth fifty-five, considered himself a world apart from Frank and Bo.

“I’m doing stuff for Roscoe. I need to find a real job, too.”

“We meet multiple times a week – we have many people to satisfy!”

Jules’ slit eyes popped wide. He gradually lifted himself from his worn slouch. Clay noted Phil’s dour presence piercing his shoulder, and a bowl of pretzels placed sacrilegiously over the discard pile. “Give it up,” Phil said, in his never-ending mildness – amused by everything, and happy about none of it. “Bo already knows what you’re up to with our battered bride. He told me Frank’s gonna rip you a new one after he tattles.”

“Frank can’t rip his own farts,” Clay said. “He suffered chilblains in his youth.”

“I’ll tell him that for you and save you the trouble.”

“A number of people would!” Quite a few in fact, following Phil’s scalpel-edged lead, had taken the second room for open and were dousing it in separate conversations. Jules sat far back in his seat as if to observe, but Phil was the only one he kept his healthy eye on.

“Who’s winning?” Phil directed the question to Clay but put a hand against Jules’ spine and squeezed snappily. Jules twisted away.

“I am,” Clay said, modestly as possible. “But I have many unfair advantages. I’m on the home team. And being as I’m vice-president of the club –”

Jules worked his jaw until it clicked. His hand jerked toward his chin, but he caught himself and fished for the pretzels instead, which he gnawed on uneasily. The color he’d possessed, unattractive as it had been, had drained from his face leaving him claylike and nervous.

“–With all privileges,” Clay continued, “afforded to me thereof, regarding membership –”

Jules gagged – an abrupt and distinctly un-partylike sound that silenced the room in an instant – and as easily as if he were part of the organic conversation occurring between Clay and Phil, he sat forward and ejected a neat spout of blood from his mouth, dirtying the juice and the cards, and overtop all this he spat and scattered a single sharp dirty pearl of a tooth.

The blood put pause deep in Clay’s gut, but, he noted, the color returned rapidly to Jules’ face, a vast improvement too; his body must have been relieved to rid itself of the little nag. The boy automatically wiped his speckled chin, but he’d already put his fingers through the mess on the table. He couldn’t take his eyes off the tooth. Neither could Phil.

“I believe we need a napkin,” Clay said to the room at large – certainly everybody could look, but nobody would do! The problem of crowds. Phil stepped back. He smiled, for whatever mysterious reason people behaved untowardly in odd social situations.

Jules simply got up, his hand politely clasped over his gushing mouth, and calmly left the room as though he’d been called away.

“For goodness sakes.” Clay followed suit; He had the vague inclination he must find Roscoe, to play mother. He left the cards and dental trash for others to sort – people had a bad habit of tidying up after him.

Once, a stranger’s voice floated up behind, I knew a guy who told me it was better the less teeth they had –

“Shut up Louis,” Phil’s voice responded, uncommonly hard. “I’m tired of hearing about what you’ve been told.”

“He’s too young!” Frank F. barked.

“I’m young – almost the youngest one here.” Clay sipped his coffee, which he didn’t like, but drank during card meetings for conviviality. It was important to belong to the group. “And an injection of youth and energy could be what we, as a gathering, have been yearning for.”

Frank glared around the folding table, at anybody on the committee who had dared to yearn without disclosing the fact. “Well?” He demanded. “Who’s found our energy wanting?”

“We’ve been in odd numbers for two months,” Alan M. helpfully pointed out. “Bo doesn’t have a partner, since Gregory.”

“Gregory. Right there.” Frank pointed. “Started here in his sixties, unretired, and I had my doubts – too young!”

“For god’s sake Frank,” Clay said. “The man dropped dead.”

“He couldn’t handle the stress.”

“Cease with Gregory,” Alan (sixties) requested, rubbing his chest anxiously. “Gives me the creeps.”

“I’ve never set eyes on this fabled kid,” Frank said. “Just how young is he?”

Clay, who had pumped Roscoe for information, drew this one out, for his own pleasure. Everybody leaned forward.

“Oh,” he said, with delicacy. “Around, say, nineteen or so.”

Frank bashed the table with his fist. “There!” He roared. “Too young!”

“A very new nineteen, at that – at least Roscoe says so.”

Frank F., overwhelmed with passion, got up and left the room to do something loud and rackety in the kitchen. Clay sat back and basked while everybody fought it out, not worried a jot. Committee days were so stimulating.

“Young is one thing, Clay,” said Alan, conveniently as Frank returned to the table. “A teenager is a whole other thing.”

“Half a thing,” Frank declared.

“He’ll have to be working,” Bo G. said. "He'll be hopping jobs. No consistent schedule."

“He’s going to get his first fucking boyfriend,” Frank added, “and the second that happens – goodbye, card club!”

“Oh, he’s already had a boyfriend.” Clay had no idea how he knew this – maybe he was lying. “And he’s not bound to get another for a while – I saw him at Roscoe’s brunch, and he looks very ugly.”

Frank turned to Bo. “He’s ugly?” He demanded.

Bo G., perhaps taking his own pleasure, took a long time to put his coffee down. “I saw him at Roscoe’s too. He’s not ugly. Somebody just worked his face over damn good.”

Frank jabbed his finger at Clay. “He’s going to heal up,” he predicted. “And bam – a boyfriend!”

“Who worked him over?” Alan asked, alarmed. “Somebody here?”

The facts, from Roscoe, were few enough, but Clay had written them down to assist his memory. He took out his little spiral pad. “Not here,” he soothed. “He arrived – approximately a month ago – from Indiana – probably nineteen –”

“Probably?”

“The bad thing happened; no Alan, I don’t know who – and voila – arrives at Roscoe’s. Who is kind enough, mind you, to lend a helping hand to a helpless, ugly urchin.”

“If Roscoe had any damn brains,” Bo said, “he’d find some understanding lady or a dyke, so he could work out these fatherly instincts in a less disruptive way.”

“Dykes want to keep their own babies – they’re the ones looking at us gents.”

“That’s what Martin did,” Bo said, pulling the empty mugs together into a friendly group at the center of the table. “Got pinned by some girl, not long after Val died, remember. What, ’88? – he’d carry this stacked blonde girl in with him from New York, when he came to visit Roscoe and Phil. Knocked her up and had to follow her to San Francisco.”

“Who?” Clay asked politely.

“Nobody expects you to remember important things,” Frank snapped. Such a shot, in mixed company, would have inspired somebody to scold Frank, but in the confines of the card committee, Clay was left to fend for himself, which was bliss – for Clay, polite, socially able, a smart dresser, a knower of vocab and etiquette, and demon card shark, was also tough. Most people had forgotten.

“His grandmother taught him to play when he was ten,” Clay announced. “He’s been playing as part of a group for years. Among other games, if we’d like him for our mixed open house – I played a two-on-two with him at Roscoe’s brunch before disaster struck, and he’s perfectly teachable. The groundwork is all there.”

“Disaster?” Frank was no dummy, unfortunately.

“Oh.” Clay flapped his hand at the inconvenient details. “Nothing. He lost a tooth and was mortified.”

“He’s still losing his baby teeth. It’s going to look like an elementary school in here.”

He spoke like a man who’d already made his decision. Everybody hopped on the ball, but Frank held them in suspense. He gave the floor to Bo.

“Considering,” he said, “You’re the one short a partner. This is an egalitarian club.”

Clay, who’d known from the start he would win, let his attention drift. Bo G., maybe unaware yet of the victory, worked it out to himself. He turned to Clay. “He’s not a complete dumbass, is he?”

“Haven’t the slightest.”

“Oh, go to hell.” Bo stood up and gathered up the bouquet of mugs. “Let the kid in. Let’s see what happens.”

“What,” Alan suggested, “would Gregory say about being replaced by a nineteen-year-old?”

“The problem with death is that’s it’s boring,” Bo G. mumbled to himself, as he stumped toward the kitchen. “Jesus Frank, what did you do in here?”

“I love egalitarianism,” Clay chirped. “It always seems to mean I win.”

Frank F. rubbed his spotted temples. “Clay,” he requested, “just shut the hell up.”

Months along, Clay Carrell tripped down a burning sunny sidewalk on his way somewhere – to Roscoe, maybe – it was a beautiful day again and he needed no reason to be out and about, as an independent man.

He passed by a line of parking jobs and as curiosity merited, he peeped into the windows until coming upon a mouse-colored car that still contained its driver. Clay peeked closer and to his delight, recognized Jules, even though his face was turned away and resting on his folded arms against the steering wheel.

Clay rapped the window. Jules jumped and shouted, saw Clay, and slouched back against the seat. The window buzzed.

“Don’t scare me, oh my god.”

“You’re a silly child,” Clay pronounced. “Because there’s nothing to be frightened of. Where are you going?”

Jules glanced around him, as if surprised to find he was still in the car. “I don’t know,” he said. “Somewhere, I guess.”

“Well, you’re in luck. I don’t know where I’m going either.” Clay trotted around to the passenger seat and helped himself inside – the door was unlocked. “You should secure that if you’re just going to loiter,” Clay said. “Any stranger could help themselves inside and do away with you.”

“You just said there’s nothing to be scared of.”

“You should always obey your instincts,” Clay advised. He buckled his seatbelt. “One of the first things I was taught, on independent living, was to lock the door behind me. I put a sticky-note on the wall to remind me, for that very purpose. Naturally I don’t need that anymore. Now, let’s be off.”

“Where?”

Irritated by this passiveness, Clay swept his hand at the potted road. Endless possibilities! Jules turned the key, and off they popped. What a relief, Clay thought, to be moving somewhere faster than usual. He checked the sun, saw they were heading vaguely west, and that was enough for him, context-wise. He settled back to let the young people do the work.

Jules, for his part, looked mildly amused, his usual expression around Clay. Driving a car, he looked more relaxed than Clay had ever seen. His face, a few months down the line, had healed in fits and starts, and now struggled to throw off the scrubby laceration on one cheek, and a stubborn blackened crescent hung on the bone underneath the eye. To the disappointment of the committee, Jules was not ugly – when the swelling cooled off, he was a fine-faced youth with a hawk nose braced by huge, dark eyes that were at turns combative or entirely closed away. He had black, vainly tousled hair and what Alan called an intriguing mouth before Frank told him to shut the hell up.

To everybody’s relief, these physical positives were usually obliterated by Jules’ general sourness, a bad attitude that occasionally banana-rotted into downright childishness. This was not a problem in the club, where squabbling was half the reason for arriving. The first significant interaction he provoked with Bo G. was a fight about Bo bringing up, too much in their first partnered scrimmage, what Gregory would have done in that scenario.

“I’m just saying,” Bo had said, “that Greg wouldn’t have overpromised on that bid, especially if he was aware he was a stranger in a new situation –”

“Go dig him up,” Jules suggested, “and see what bid you’ll get out of him now, asshole.”

Clay, in the present, snooped through a collection of CD cases hidden in the door’s side pocket. “Oh my,” he said. “Throbbing Gristle. Sounds disgusting. What is it?”

“Put it in and see.”

Clay did; He sat for several minutes through a groaning, desexed voice with a foreign accent working out some struggling words overtop an auditory ambiance of what Clay thought resembled seasick trains.

“How interesting,” Clay said. “It makes me feel ill.”

“That’s what it’s supposed to do.”

“I suppose nowadays bands function in all sorts of interesting ways.”

“They’re not nowadays, they’re from the seventies.” Jules, ignorant in many ways, still felt perfectly free to get snippy and rude with Clay. “They did this song,” he explained, “they did this one song based on this letter this mail-artist did from back then, about working in a burn unit.”

Clay felt the need to check for the sun’s location. “Really now?” He said politely.

“Yeah, about this woman in there who was burned so badly she couldn’t sleep. From the waist up she was like, just meat. She had no ears or nose or eyes, it was that bad. But they had to keep her alive.”

“Ah,” Clay understood. “Like me.”

Jules shut up – a rare feat – and Clay stared out at rushing traffic, wondering where everybody needed to be in such a damn hurry. He was curious to see if Roscoe had attempted, in his appropriate way, to fill Jules in. Apparently not.

“Uh,” Jules said. He flicked his eyes from the road and flashed them, with obligatory understanding across Clay’s weak, folded arm. “Sorry?”

“Oh hush,” Clay dismissed. “You couldn’t know.”

“I kind of just thought you were paralyzed for some reason,” Jules continued brashly, to Clay’s relief.

“I certainly am,” Clay confirmed. “Paralyzed. And disfigured! It’s very ugly.”

“Your hand looks regular, just kind of little.”

“I was involved, incidentally, within a grease fire. A freak accident. The muscles shrank. The rest of the arm isn’t regular,” Clay said. “Nor the shoulder it connects to, or part of my chest and stomach. I try to be sensitive to the – the sensitivities of onlookers.”

“Can I see?”

Clay pierced him with a pretty decent look. “Darling,” he said. “Use your brains.”

Stopped at a red light, Jules could turn his head and bare his teeth in the approximation of a happy grin. His teeth, bless him, were getting awful scarecrow on one side. “It looks bad, right?” Jules asked.

“I suppose some don’t care about ugliness.” Clay turned to the CD library in his lap. “Cannibal Corpse,” he observed. The cover was so lurid he had to flip it over. “Good lord. Were you raised in a whorehouse?”

“In a regular house,” Jules said. “So, worse.”

Because it made sense, Clay insisted they stop for lunch at his absolute favorite restaurant, Panera Bread. They were on an interstate at this point, and Jules had to flip around on the exits to get them there. “I don’t really have much money,” he said.

“What a coincidence, neither do I.”

They went halfsies on one meal. They both shared weak appetites and lanky, girlish figures.

“I want to ask you a question,” Jules said.

Clay assented; how novel.

“What do you think about Phil?”

Clay wondered if the privacy of the booth was affecting him. It had been so long since he’d been asked for his opinion, outside of the context of cardplay or his health, that he completely forgot the question. “Pardon?”

Jules repeated himself patiently.

“I suppose I’ve known him for years,” Clay said. “The same way I’ve known Roscoe for years. He’s not exactly a man you have opinions on – he doesn’t share himself well.”

Jules dissected his half of the sandwich. He didn’t appear put out by the lack of information.

“Why do you want to know, dear?”

“He talks to me sometimes.”

“Well, that’s only polite. He’s around.”

“He’ll go out of his way to talk to me,” Jules clarified. “Kind of in a different way than other guys. And I want to talk to him back, which doesn’t really happen with anyone else. Except Roscoe sometimes.”

“Then there you have it.”

“But it’s different than with Roscoe.”

“Why?”

This question was beyond Jules’ capabilities. “I don’t know,” he said, and looked straight at Clay, hiding nothing. For the first time since Roscoe’s brunch, Clay saw he really was nothing more than a helpless, untrained child. Others might have been alarmed at him playing chauffeur.

“And then,” Jules continued, “he’ll stop talking to me for a long time. I’ll try and he’ll ignore me. And I don’t get why it bothers me. I don’t know if I even like him.”

“I don’t think you could like him,” Clay said. “Not in any significant way. He’s vulpine – you’re equine.”

“I’m what?”

Clay trotted the salt and pepper shakers across the tabletop. “Have you never seen the Kentucky Derby?” He asked. “And observed all the pretty horses? How they stamp their feet beforehand and toss their beautiful manes, when after all, there can be only one winner, draped with roses? Not only have we trained them to want to compete, we’ve taught them the difference between winning and losing. They’ll suffer forever, knowing the reality of competition – and they want it, despite the cruel reality of only one getting ahead, all the others left behind. Equine. That’s you.”

“I’m born to suffer.” For someone with such an egregious taste in music, he seemed put out by the prospect.

“You’re an aggressive competitor,” Clay explained. He knew enough from the club. “You seek out games to win. Losing fuels your spirit even more than a win might. Phil avoids other people’s games – I can’t tell you how many invitations he’s received to the miscellaneous open-house – but he’ll slink behind other people’s finish lines all the same. Just to see how they act when he’s spotted. If he chooses to be. Vulpine.” Clay had looked this up in the dictionary – it was defined in one of his many spiral notebooks. “Foxy, darling. Of sneaky temperament.”

“I know what it means,” Jules whined. “I’m sneaky.”

“You are a mean little pony who spits out his sugar,” Clay said. “That does not a fox make, my dear.”

“You’re mean,” Jules sulked.

“It goes so often unobserved in me,” Clay agreed. “Because I’m most beloved and well taken care of. But that means I’ve been stuck in the stable for years – hellish.”

“You’re not in the stable,” Jules, ignorant, insisted. “You’re right here with me.”

“Wait and see,” Clay said. “Just wait.”

A problem of Clay’s existence was his inability to seek people out. Certainly, he could come across people in the bounds of everyday back-and-forth – he could spot someone at a gathering, or loiter, in acceptable places, where others were known to loiter. But if someone didn’t want to be found, Clay could not find them. He had limited addresses, phone numbers, emails. Computers frightened him. He had no end of ways to get ahold of Roscoe – they were all pasted up on Clay’s refrigerator, and an ugly collage they made, too.

Weeks, and months, slipped by, and Clay, even with the aid of his notes, lost why he’d been interested in speaking to Phil in the first place. The memo in his social calendar read 8/19/2006 – Jules in car at PB, talk of Phil – it signified nothing, except that Clay truly hated his handwriting. He was glad he hadn’t written more. He could have shown Jules and asked for clarification, but there were certain facts Jules didn’t need to be aware of yet. And Roscoe, if deputized, might tattletale and turn the boy against him, and just when he and Bo G. were starting to find a rapport not based on conflict.

Around Halloweentime, in fact, he overheard the most bizarre and intimate conversation between the two.

It had occurred during a rubber open play in Frank’s basement. Clay had no details, except that Jules had shown up for a couple weeks peaked and pale. His face, other than that, was of normal color, but forebodingly swollen around the nose and eyes. Clay thought he’d been coming down with something. Frank agreed and threatened to send him home – he’d been playing without ardor anyway. Jules hadn’t fought, for once – Bo G., of all people, ordered him to stay.

Clay had gone upstairs to freshen his seltzer. The screen to the patio was unguarded, and the kitchen was cool and buffeted. He saw Jules and Bo outside on the little concrete stamp, dashed overhead by a browning tree as they guarded their cigarettes from the wind. It was spooky – Clay hadn’t noticed them leaving the basement, and he briefly entertained the possibility of two copies of each body – one pair outside, one pair stashed underground.

He plastered himself against the wall, obeying the twitching muscle of an instinct he could no longer attach to a situation. He waited.

Jules spoke first. “I think Harper knows.”

“Did you tell him?” Bo G.

“No. I think he guessed.” The wind carried inside a crusty leaf and some mentholated air. “He says I should tell.”

Bo snorted, forcefully. “What does he know?”

“He says it’ll happen again if I don’t.”

“Maybe it will. You’ll never know. It’ll be to someone else.”

Jules had no answer to that.

“It’ll be someone else,” Bo said. “It’s done. You got it over with – think of it like that. You know what you need to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“You put it away,” Bo said. “You take it in your hands, and you put it away, and you shut the lid. You don’t look at it ever again. It only has to happen to you once. You did that part. That’s all you’re obligated to survive, that – the initial experience of it. Thinking it over – that’s the stuff that’ll kill you. You know what’ll happen if you think it over?”

Jules had yet to think of an answer.

“It’ll happen again,” Bo said. “To you. Again, and again. You’ll arrange the situations. You’ll put yourself in them, without knowing…”

Clay watched some crumbs of ash light across the kitchen, but by the time they reached the stove they’d cooled.

“Have you seen him again?” Bo demanded to know. He sounded angry, for reasons Clay could not possibly discern.

“I’ll always see him. I can’t not. He’s around.”

“For christ’s sake.”

“Do you know who I’m talking about?” Jules was beginning to sound shrill. “Do you know?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want to know. Don’t tell me.”

Sniffle, sniffle, clack. Somebody’s lighter flared up and died.

“I know this isn’t easy to hear.” It was odd to hear Bo G. attempt to behave gently. “Don’t think I don’t know. I understand.”

“Shut up. You don’t want to hear about me. I don’t want to hear about you. I don’t care what happened to you. Fuck what happened to you.”

“I know because I’m older than you –”

“You don’t know anything!” The sentence began loudly, and ended in a crazed whisper, as if Jules had realized too late they weren’t in total privacy. “You don’t know anything because you’re older! You’re all so fucking old and useless. I fucking hate all of you.”

“Jules –”

“You’re all so fucking old and stupid and miserable and alone and I hate all of you.” The hacked whisper began dissolving damply halfway through.

“Don’t start crying,” Bo ordered. “You can’t cry about this.”

“I can do whatever I want.”

Jules’ voice, crying, was about as ugly as his injured face had been, but Clay was already having trouble recalling it. Drawing – now there was a talent. Writing, frankly, sucked.

“You can’t do whatever you want.” Bo’s voice shifted, as he moved presumably closer to Jules. He sounded lost. He sounded like he was repeating some unlikeable stranger. “You have to be a man about this.”

“I’m not a man. That’s why it happened.”

“You are a man. You’re a man. If someone tries to push you around like that again, you have to stand up for yourself. You can’t wait until it’s too late – do you want to end up like Clay? Okay – Here – a little bit longer.”

Jules, crying, sounded like a little cat trying to throw up.

“Get it out,” Bo counseled. “Get it all out, then put it away. You don’t have to think about it again.”

“I made a mistake,” Jules sobbed. “It’s my fault.”

“It was an accident. Accidents happen.”

“I thought he liked me.”

“Accidents happen,” Bo repeated. He appeared stuck on it. “Accidents happen. They happen. You’re too young to know any better.”

“I thought he liked me.”

Clay took all this, and his empty glass, back down the stairs. He collided with Frank at the bottom.

“Don’t tell me he’s being sick up there,” Frank grouched.

“Nobody’s sick.” Clay pressed him back toward the tables. “He’s been a little stressed about work,” he explained. “Let Bo handle it.”

Lying was a treat he could rarely indulge in. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d done it. He could only guess if it had done any good – but that’s not where the pleasure was.

Christmastimes – happy times. And no snow yet! A shame. Clay wrote NO SNOW on his big calendar on the wall. He’d been getting hung up on details lately, when normally, he did not sweat the small stuff.

Wanting to be helpful in the spirit of the season (he made lovely cards, but true presents were rarely affordable) Clay found himself in the shop basement with Roscoe, sorting through the endless memorabilia through the years. Jules was present too, working, if lazily, at a little sloped desk with a harsh, bendable lamp clamped on one edge. He was doing strange things to two pieces of smelly rubber. A sharp alcohol stink pricked Clay’s head. He found himself getting snippy by turns, and, feeling bad, forced an abundant cheer. “You’ll be sorting this garbage forever,” he declared, cheerfully. “Val was collecting for years and years, all the surplus of his events.”

“Some tell me it’s history,” Roscoe said, looking up with interest for some reason. “But either way, it sure brings in the mice.”

“I saw one yesterday,” Jules called over the desk. “It ran right around the glue trap. You’re training them to be smart.”

“Do you know where the humane electric trap is? That looks like a little box?”

“I stomped it. The mouse. When you get smart, you get slow.”

“Marvelous. Spare me the details.”

“I heard it’s little bones break,” Jules chanted. “All the guts exploded out its mouth. It’s eyeballs –”

“You watch too much morbid stuff. You need to expand your horizons.”

“He’s a grim little boy,” Clay added. “He can be funny, though. Jules, what’s the funny word you showed me the other day?”

Jules started giggling and said noooo shut up! Clay, realizing he was being drawn into a contract, started giggling too. He looked toward the little desk to make sure he was matching the hilarity, but the desk light had swollen, swallowing all detail in Jules’ face to the point of bloodless beheading.

“Come on,” Roscoe said. “What was it?”

It came to Clay – painfully, with an equal throb in his good hand. He put down the little tin he was holding and had been struggling to open. “Faggotron,” he declared, with much purpose.

Jules snort-wheezed dismally. Whatever he was dipping his weeny paintbrush into smelled abominably.

“Jules, you know better,” Roscoe was scolding. “– get both of you in trouble –”

“Good god,” Clay exploded. “Whatever you’re working on, child, close it up – it stinks.”

“I have surgical masks. Gimme a sec –”

“Jules, now.” Roscoe said. “Clay, do you feel okay?”

“How could I not be well? Discussing mouse insides, among all this dust, and that piercing light –” Clay struggled to his knees.

“Clay, sit back down, alright?”

A ghastly sense of return, a return to a far worse time, froze Clay’s spine. The adrenaline forced words through his throat, more chemical than logical. “Where is Val?” he demanded. “Tell me this instant. Where did he go?”

“What’s happening?” Jules shrilled onward and upward in hideous alarm, but Clay’s visual perception shrank to exclude him. Roscoe vanished too, more purposeful in disintegration than he was in life. Clay heard a decisive voice call a strange spell – NO staywhereyouare – the always-herald of the big black brick whanged upside his head, a splitting log, the muting of the light he ached to perceive despite the pain, the smell of spitting, overflowing fat – though nobody ever believed him, when said that was what he always smelled. They didn’t believe him even when he wrote it down.

Time out of time out of time out time again and again. Alas. Clay snapped to on a squalid concrete floor. He turned his head and spied Roscoe, a couple feet away, his heavy thighs arranged in a runner’s lunge, consulting his watch. “You alright?” he asked, in utter calm.

From the bottom of his heart, Clay hated him – hated him with ease and abundance of an illogical baby. “Goddamn you to hell,” he said. “Did you put a finger on me?”

“You were going to hit your head on the floor,” Roscoe said. Clay hated him even more, knowing he was telling the perfect truth. “There was nothing soft to put in your way. I made sure you got down okay, then I let go.”

“You’re a beast for touching me,” Clay spit. “A beast. A wild animal. Fuck you.”

“I’m sorry,” Roscoe said simply. “Do you want to try sitting up?”

Clay’s good hand ached horribly. It would stress him for days, the idea of losing both hands. The anticipation was foul. Clay sat up. “How long?” he asked.

“About a minute. Fifty-eight and some milliseconds. I think that’s around the last one. We need to write it down in the little book.”

“You ruined my life.” Again, a cruel muscle flexed, one that understood something beyond Clay’s conscious understanding. “You ruined my life.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I was beautiful, and you destroyed me. You’re an animal.”

“I’m sorry.” Roscoe would take everything he did not deserve, and it only made Clay hate him more.

Beast himself, Clay looked around his enclosure. “Somebody else was here,” he said.

“Jules was here.”

“Where is he?”

“I made him go upstairs. He couldn’t deal with it.”

“He’s a tiny stupid coward.” There was nothing and nobody Clay wouldn’t smash to bits right now. “Childish bitch. What does he have to be afraid of?”

“You’re his friend and he was scared. I don’t think he’s seen something like that before.” Roscoe made his attention scarce, and Clay recognized, for dignity’s sake, he was supposed to check to see if he’d soiled himself. Came up negative. He recalled visiting the bathroom all day outside of all logic, with mounting anxiety. He was sure that was written down somewhere too – useless.

“And if you ever wore your goddamn bracelet,” Roscoe accused, “he might have had some idea of what to expect. Don’t go calling him a bitch or a coward. He’s just a kid.”

The only time Roscoe ever got irritated and demanding of Clay was immediately after witnessing one of the seizures. If Clay did not irrevocably and acutely despise any poor soul who became the main witness of one of his seizures, this propensity would have made him feel more tender toward the man. And now that Jules had seen one, his own time was coming.

“How long has Val been dead?” Clay asked.

“Twenty years. A long time.”

“I know his name. I can’t remember anything of his face.”

“You knew him before I ever showed up. I’ve known him dead longer than I knew him alive – I can’t picture his face either. Not without help.”

“How miserable it must be – that I’m one of the pieces of trash you’ve inherited from him.”

“You’re my friend.”

“Oh no. We’ll be friends again in a few days when I’ve forgotten all this. You’re counting down the seconds, as it gets foggier to me.” Clay raked his nails over his temples. He felt a dent and a curious, inorganic hardness deforming his fine skull. His hair was thinning. Fifty-five. How long since thirty-five? Going to sleep and waking old. “Being robbed of that – that I can’t even be angry at you, at anyone, all the time!”

Roscoe sat through all of this with his forehead balanced on his fingers, as if he were too tired to care. As if he’d heard this a dozen times before, this important speech of Clay’s. “What do you want to tell Jules?” he said.

“I told him about the burns,” Clay said. “And now he knows about this disgrace. And that’s as far as it should go, frankly.”

“If he doesn’t hear it from you, or from someone who cares about you, he’s going to get the details in a bad way.”

“Why shouldn’t he – as nasty gossip? That’s all it happened for – for nasty gossip.”

“You wrote it down once in your own words, remember? When you had that good health aide years ago; she helped you with the police report and court documents and – and the X-rays and things. Show him that – it’s in one of your binders.”

Clay had been told about this magic essay many times. Roscoe attached most importance to it, as an independent effort of self-authority. Clay, to his recollection (which was often wrong) had never shown it to anyone but himself, again and again. He would bring it out before bed, the time of day when he felt at his worst, and parse the stubby, emotionless sentences written by some imbecile who deserved whatever he got.

“He needs to know how these things happen.” Roscoe going on, and on, and on. “If we hide this stuff, it’s just going to repeat itself.”

“You’re far too late,” Clay said. “He’s already some slut.”

Roscoe got up and walked toward Jules’ little desk. He turned off the little light. When he was truly inspired to high anger, he always walked away. Not like a man at all, Clay thought. He couldn’t think of a worse person to teach Jules how to stand up for himself. If the child was lucky, he’d lose the next teeth on the other side of his face – invite some symmetry.

“Have Bo G. tell him,” Clay said, surprising himself.

Roscoe was surprised too. “Why Bo?”

“He was around during that time. He knows what to say. They’re partners, after all. Tell Bo I said so. I won’t ask myself. I won’t take responsibility –” Clay used a filing cabinet to help gather his feet underneath him. “Nobody allows me to take responsibility. So I won’t. Make Bo tell him. And just watch. He’ll treat me differently. He’ll treat me like all of you treat me.”

“I’ll tell Bo.”

“I want to go home now. You take me home. And I don’t want to be bothered tomorrow.”

He would have liked to say I hate you again. Such a vibrant phrase; but already, the stimulating anger was giving way to a constricting drowsiness. Roscoe, like he hadn’t heard Clay insult him and close friends, like he hadn’t said awful swear words he would never repeat in company, came over and helped him pick his way out of the historical mess he’d fallen within.

Time and time again – everybody became another year older. Clay got older. Roscoe got older. He helped Clay find a big new calendar for the wall. Jules, a new nineteen, presumably became a new twenty at some point. After a time, a more experienced twenty. It hardly made a difference to his maturity. He partnered so often with Bo he became a solid figure in Clay’s mental foreground – and for all Clay knew, he’d been there as long as Roscoe and Phil and the rest.

Another seizure, in writing, if not in memory. Clay saw it on the calendar. This time overseen by Alan M., in Frank’s kitchen, after the house had emptied from a post-tournament cocktail hour. Small mercy.

Exciting pastimes: Jules and Clay, driven to madness after begging a pack of Rider-Waite cards from an occultist friend of Roscoe’s longhaired shop cashier, tried their hand adapting it to the French Tarot and to introduce this to the club at large; rejected by Frank, Clay suggested a portes ouvertes of antique French parlor games which, using more conventional decks, Frank could hardly decline. Jules, though not part of the upper committee, had established himself socially as Clay’s deputy, and he was an efficient bully.

At one of these novel events, a blistering cold March afternoon, Clay was reminded of yet another novelty – the arrival of someone new. Which, as it turned out, was someone old. Roscoe said Clay had known Martin since the eighties. He was back from sunny California, for reasons Clay might have learned before he forgot.

He showed up among the basement folding tables that day, unfashionably early to take Frank to some expo or whatnot in the suburbs. A clumsy faux pas, Clay commented, as he oversaw a trial Piquet scrimmage between Jules and Bo G.

“I know what he’s here for,” Bo commented archly.

“Shut up,” Jules said.

Martin worked through the tables. Gregarious as he was, he always seemed to stop short, childishly bashful before Clay, unsure as to the amount of kid glove required in the interaction. Clay had piled up enough consistent interactions with the man to form this sustaining judgment.

“You are so very kind to safely usher our favorite senile gentleman,” Clay said, after the initial awkward greeting took place. “Not many would be so generous.”

“Let him crash,” Bo said. “Put him out of his misery. Then I’ll be president.”

“As vice-president,” Clay corrected, “I will be president.”

“I’m going to put rat poison in one of Alan’s gross fucking brandy alexanders,” Jules joined in. “And then I’ll be treasurer.”

“Is it safe for me to be overhearing this?” Martin asked, directing the question to Jules.

“Stick around and find out,” Jules grumbled.

“As a club representative, you must be more polite,” Clay scolded. “You’re a young man now. And Martin is an old friend.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Martin said. He put his hand gently on the table. “Am I old enough to learn what the hell this game is?”

“Show him, Jules. Start a new game.”

“He doesn’t have to do a damn thing,” Bo said, abruptly. “Shut up, Clay.”

Jules, ignoring them both and shutting down any expression in his eyes, steered Martin to an empty table and forced him down into a chair. Clay snooped enough to spy Jules, in a nasty masterstroke, laying out a hand of Solitaire. Martin was too good-natured to pick up on the slight. He sat attentively under Jules’ pointed posture and followed his jabbing fingers, a docile lamb.

“He’s too old for him,” Bo G. declared. He smothered the gameplay and restacked the cards.

Clay sat down. “We’re all too old,” he said. “Isn’t it a tragedy?”

The Stock, Jules’ instructions floated over his head. The Waste. The Foundations. The Tableau. Undisciplined Martin gazed not at the cards, but at the face that made the words. He’d have to smarten up, Clay thought, if wanted to survive Jules’ bossing. After that he looked away. The sight made him melancholy.

Departing the remnants of the occasion that evening, he left Frank’s at sundown for the first time all day and was struck dumb by the stifling blanket of snow that had fallen. Clay’s mind, geared toward spring and daffodils and birds’ eggs and shining sun, whirlpooled a split moment into terror. Then he caught himself. How nice – a final, light-bright hug from jack frost.

Despite this pep talk, he had trouble moving. He tingled all over, his body recalling other falls in that cold cushion.

“Clay?”

“Oh gracious.” He turned around toward the porch. “Now, would you look at this landscape? And what on earth were you doing in there, without my noticing?”

Phil descended the steps easily. He stepped inside Clay’s tentative footprints. “Miscommunication,” he explained. “I thought Martin was going to be here, but he got shanghaied by Frank.”

“Appreciated, too.”

“Salvatore caught me and gabbed my ear off about a damn hour.” Phil reached out and took Clay’s elbow and started leading him down the unshoveled walkway. “Let me drive you home. You don’t get around so great in this stuff.”

“You’re a doll.”

Clay enjoyed riding in cars. It was something he wanted to do more. It was cozy inside Phil’s, with the big soft flakes suspended in the air as the spaces between all foundations darkened to black.

“Martin is not comfortable around me,” Clay said.

“Nobody’s really comfortable with you,” Phil explained. “You’re not a person to anybody. You remind people.”

Clay was fond of bluntness, even when he couldn’t understand what lay behind its’ motivation. “Of what?”

“That we can’t trust anybody – not even the people we’re closest to - who we see every day.” The tires zizzled pleasantly through a wet right turn. “Martin is just embarrassed. Since fatherhood made him mature, he’d prefer to think he was always that way. But he knows we all remember what he did to Drake.”

“Who, now?” Clay asked.

“Drake. He started sniffing around the neighborhood for you, after your group home closed. Years and years ago."

“Hmmm?”

Traffic piled up against a red light and Phil could turn to look at Clay. “You know something interesting I wonder about sometimes?”

“What could it be, darling?”

“If you remember more than you let on,” Phil revealed. He said this with no urgency or true amusement. Phil always spoke as if held no worries and felt no significance. He was most relaxed. Here was a man you could have a seizure around. “If you remember everything, and you’ve just been having fun with us this whole time.”

“What an idea!” Clay had to laugh. “And a tempting one. You want to know what I remember, dear?”

“Tell me.”

“Nothing. Not a speck. Zot. If only I could have fun with you all.” The cars inched forward. “I’d like to thank you, you know.”

“For what?”

“I have a feeling,” Clay said, “that you’ve always been very frank with me. And frankness is something I appreciate. You know who you remind me of? You remind me of Jules.”

Phil, driving comfortably with one hand on the wheel, pushed his head gently against the driver’s seat. He started to smile, close-lipped.

“Jules once asked me if my arm was never going to work normally, or look normally, then why didn’t the doctors simply amputate? Can you imagine anyone else having the nerve? But I appreciated being asked, all the same.” The question had pleased Clay so much, he’d made Jules write it down himself in the little notebook.

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him I was hardly in a state to be consulted.”

“You know how to get Jules to shut up?” Phil said in turn. “You get him on his stomach, and you grind his face into the floor.”

Clay cackled at such an absurd image. “Now stop,” he said. “That’s quite mean!”

“You get your knee pressed in real low on his spine,” Phil continued quietly, “and you shove his face in, and you twist. You don’t stop until his nose starts bleeding. After that he quiets down and gets to liking it."

“That’s quite enough,” Clay insisted, patting his own mouth to discourage his giggles. “Don’t tease him when he’s not here to defend himself.”

Phil steered down the narrow enclave of a one-way street. They were entirely in the dark now, purged in fountains of orange light. Clay squeezed Phil’s wrist. “Stop!” he asked. “Just stop. Stop a moment.”

Phil braked. Eventually, he shifted to park. They watched the unseasonal snow drowse in the air, suspended in swags of streetlight. Clay could not see the end of the road. Nobody was out and about. A pleasant enclosure calmed his heart.

“Now just look at that,” he said, still holding Phil’s wrist. “Why must artists always act like they’re so miserable? If I could paint this picture, I would never be sad again.”

“Yeah,” Phil agreed, dreamily. “I see what you mean.”

He was watching the snow – Clay checked to confirm, and it made him glad. Watching together, faces trained out within a safe shelter like clever woodland creatures, Clay could believe he had somebody by his side who understood him by instinct, if not through conscious effort. He could communicate, through the act of sitting together, all the secrets his brain and body held away from his knowledge. It was the darkness that reminded him – not doing for oneself, not eating for oneself, nor speaking nor toileting for oneself, in a mass of years so long he could no longer comprehend; and lighted hour upon lighted hour, lying there and anticipating the moment of terror – terror he had yanked pleasure from, after many years of practice – when the light would go out.

Clay sat there and he wished to make this known – in goodwill, in peace, in love, surrounded, with no respite, by his beloved friends.

#safeworld #2006 2007 & 2008

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