#for context of his source: he is VERY much like hiccup and his dad is VERY much like stoick

[nexus-nebulae]

love our yearly cycle of "get the newbies to watch httyd"

[rideonwings]

The Talk

A/N: This idea was eating away at my brain for almost a month, but I never had time to sit down and write it… except at work. Oops.

A few things before we begin: While the premise of this is funny and awkward, this fic really isn’t meant to be. I feel like this is the conversation that needs to be had with teenage boys, more than just the regular ol’ birds and bees. We always see the super romantic fluffy fics with everyone getting off their first time and being instantly good at sex… let me tell you, not my experience. Therefore, I wanted a conversation about how the key to good sex is really about understanding your partner, rather than just making Hiccup instantly a sex god… I may do follow ups on this, but again… I can only write at work, so…. We’ll see.

I also really wanted to write from Stoick’s point of view, but not sure how well I actually captured him.

Comments & constructive criticism is always appreciated. I did write this really fast, so I apologize for any typos and mistakes.

Takes place after RTTE, before HTTYD2

Word vomit over. On ff.net here https://m.fanfiction.net/s/13358746/1/The-Talk

The Talk

As he slid off Skullcrusher with a thud, Stoick gave a deep sigh of relief. It was good to be back on home soil. As much as he appreciated the efficiency of riding dragons, he missed the days of sailing from a comfort perspective. Sitting abreast a large dragon for twelve hours at a time wore at his old joints.

Still, they’d made great time, arriving half a day earlier than expected thanks to Skullcrusher’s innate ability to find the quickest way home. Stoick chuckled as he removed his saddle from the dragon, watching the beast shake himself in relief, probably appreciating the break from a 300lb man riding him as well.

The sun was just beginning to dip beneath the western hills as the chief made his way towards his home, only to hear a familiar voice.

“Back early, Stoick?” Gobber’s voice rang out from the forge, the man’s head poking out from the service window. Stoick made his way towards the shop, ignoring his sore feet and the twinge in his back. As he walked through the low doorway, greeted by the welcome heat from the forge, he looked around for his son but came up empty. He sat heavily on a bench as Gobber handed him a tankard – he always kept a supply of mead in his shop for cold nights – and sat on Hiccup’s stool across from him, his own tankard attachment strapped to his arm. “How’d the talks go?”

Stoick took a long draw from his drink, sighing happily, before answering. “Good, Beserkers are willing to stick to the terms we agreed to last year, Alvin’s looking for a little more investment to help rebuild Outcast Island’s guard, but we were able to come to agreeable terms overall. There’s been less dragon hunter activity overall, but they’re keeping steady eyes on the west, just in case that Krogan creep reappears.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t take Hiccup with you, considering he helped form all those alliances in the first place.” Gobber replied, reaching down to fiddle with his peg-leg.

“The boy’s been flying all over trying to save the archipelago for going on three years, I figured he could use some time at home. He won’t have many years left where he can just be a boy, you know?” He surveyed his son’s workbench, neatly organized tools contrasting the scattered pile of papers no doubt filled with sketches of saddles and dragons. “Where is he, anyways?”

“He was in early this morning so I let him out about half-an hour ago. Astrid met him, I believe they were going to go for a flight before dinner.”

Stoick nodded, and the two continued their small talk for a few minutes before the chief grabbed his travel bag and bid his farewell.

As he approached his home, he noticed Toothless asleep on the roof, his tail gently swaying back and forth absently. Stoick was slightly surprised Hiccup would be back so soon – it was a beautiful night for a flight after all, and they wouldn’t have many good weather days left – but was too tired to think much of it as he reached for the door.

“Astrid.” He heard as the door opened quietly (Hiccup had fixed the creaky hinge months ago), a soft moan that sounded distinctly unlike his son’s normally pitchy voice.

To his shock (and mild horror), his eyes snapped to the source of the sound finding Astrid straddling Hiccup, who was laying on the floor by the fire, the two of them closely entwined (though thankfully clothed), with Astrid’s lips fastened tightly to the underside of his son’s jaw. Hiccup’s eyes were closed, his hands in her hair and gripping her upper thigh, just under her skirt, as Astrid chuckled softly against his throat.

It said something about how… involved… they were, that neither teen had noticed his approach – he wasn’t exactly subtle when he walked.

Stoick dropped his bag.

The two teens froze, whipping their heads towards the door and jumping apart, Hiccup scrambling for a nearby blanket and covering what was obviously a very uncomfortable situation in his trousers. Astrid darted a good five feet back from him, resting her back against a chair and looking at Stoick in horror, while Hiccup clamped his eyes closed as though he could block the whole situation out.

Feeling no more comfortable than they, Stoick cleared his throat. “Honey, I’m home.” He said, hoping to break the tension that had settled in the room like ice.

It wasn’t like he was entirely surprised. The two had become a couple over the last year or so, and their romance had been building for far longer than that. He’d seen them kiss a number of times, soft pecks on the cheeks to once, while looking for Gobber, spotting them tucked in the corner of the forge, wrapped so tightly around each other that he’d need two dragons to pull them apart if he’d wanted to. He wasn’t upset by it. They were clearly in love, and their relationship was solid and respectful.

He remembered being in that kind of swirling love, chasing Val into dark rooms, drawn by her scent and her coy smiles. They’d done far more than he’d just encountered. And, if he were honest with himself, he was pleased, pleased that after everything, Hiccup had found someone that made him happy the way Val had for him.

Still…

That embrace that he’d just interrupted, that had been going somewhere. Their flushed cheeks and shaking hands signaled that maybe this had been more than just a typical necking session.

They’d planned to have the whole night alone…

He hadn’t prepared for this. He hadn’t prepared Hiccup for this.

“Astrid,” he said softly. “Why don’t you head on home.” Astrid’s eyes darted to his, then to Hiccup, then back to her hands in her lap.

“Chief, sir… we weren’t… it was my idea…” Astrid stammered, sounding entirely unlike herself as Hiccup shifted awkwardly, moving towards his prosthetic, which Stoick just noticed he wasn’t wearing.  

Stoick cut her off. “It’s alright, lass, you’ll get him back. I just want to speak with him.” She still didn’t move immediately, wringing her hands. “And I won’t say a word to your parents either.” He finished. Her shoulders relaxed slightly.

He grabbed his rucksack off the floor from where he’d dropped it and moved into his bedroom to give them a moment of privacy. Their soft whispers drifted into the room as he began to sort through his bag.

“I can stay, really.”

“No, go. It’ll only be more awkward.”

A short pause, followed by the soft sound of the press of lips together.

“I’ll see you later, okay?” Astrid sounded guilty as she said it, but as Stoick rounded the corner into the room again, she was helping Hiccup to his feet and pulling him into a hug. Almost defiantly, she pressed her lips to his one last time before gathering her things and heading to the door.

Before she could close it behind her, they heard her mutter to Toothless: “What kind of guard-dragon are you, anyways…” before stomping off.

Hiccup was sitting facing the fire when Stoick turned back to him, his thin shoulders set in a tight line, head hung. Stoick sighed exasperatedly.

“Oh honestly, boy, I’m not going to beat you.” He said, patting Hiccup’s shoulder as he walked behind him. He then walked to their small kitchen and grabbed two tankards, filling them with mead from the small barrel he kept on hand. He handed one to Hiccup as he sat in the chair nearest to him. Hiccup took it, still avoiding his gaze. The lad wasn’t much of a drinker, but they’d both need it to get through this conversation. “It’s not like I haven’t been in your shoes.” Stoick continued, “I was once your age and in love, I can’t blame you for acting on it.”

Hiccup raised his head for the first time, worrying his lip. “I… we… haven’t exactly…”

Stoick leaned forward, meeting those bright green eyes. “You haven’t done the deed?” Hiccup swallowed heavily, then shook his head. Relief coursed through Stoick. “Well, at least I’m not too late then. Go on, drink. You’ll be wanting it.” He paused, drinking from his own tankard for a moment. “How much have you done?” He asked, almost afraid of the answer.

Hiccup sputtered in his drink, coughing as it attempted to go down his airway. “Oh come now, son, if you’re not mature enough to talk about this, you’re certainly not mature enough to do it.”

Hiccup looked like he’d rather be eaten by a dragon than have this conversation, clearly forcing himself to speak as he said, “Nothing… below the waist…. I guess.” He said haltingly.

Stoick nodded, ignoring the squirming feeling in his stomach. It was weird to think of his little boy in this context, but he had to admit that Hiccup hardly looked like a little boy anymore. While still thin and wiry, his muscles had become more defined and he’d filled out significantly. It wasn’t as hard to think of him as a man. A man with urges. Stoick tried not to dwell on it too long.

“Dad, you don’t… I know how the…” Hiccup coughed, looking to the ceiling, like he was hoping it would come crashing down on his head. “…mechanics work.”

“Oh, I have no doubt of that. You can hardly get to your age and not hear the stories. Hel, you probably heard them before you knew what you were hearing.” He took a long drink from his tankard. “That’s not what I’m worried about, son. I trust you to be safe and do right by her if she were to come with child.”

Hiccup met his eyes, steeling himself before saying quietly, “She’s been taking the herbs1 for a while now, just in case.” He paused before adding. “Since before we were really together. She was worried what might happen if she were captured by Viggo’s men and they… well…” He swallowed thickly, squeezing his eyes tightly shut to block out the horror of that thought. He then took several long swallows of mead.

Stoick’s stomach dropped, both admiring Astrid’s intelligence and horrified that she had felt that might be necessary. “Smart girl.” Was all he said, taking another long drink himself.

His tankard was already nearly empty, and Hiccup wasn’t too far behind. He stood, taking the mug from his son and refilling them before returning to his chair. “Look son, I’m not here to scold you, I’m not even here to tell you not to do it.” He said, reaching forward to hand him his mug, allowing his hand to rest on his shoulder for a moment. “You’ve grown in to a fine young man, you’ll be nineteen in a few short months, you’ve got a solid, healthy relationship with a smart, strong woman. You could do a lot worse.” He chuckled, and Hiccup smiled weakly at him, shrugging his shoulders.

“I’m not telling you not to do it,” Stoick continued, leaning back in his chair, “and I’m not going to give you the typical speech most fathers tell their sons.” Hiccup paused with his tankard halfway to his lips.

“What do you mean?” He responded, confusion lacing his voice. “What…” he trailed off.

Stoick stayed silent for a minute, organizing his thoughts in his head, remembering his first night with Valka. How she’d cried, how horrified and ashamed he’d been to have hurt her, how she’d been so torn up in thinking she wouldn’t make a good wife because she couldn’t enjoy it, how it had taken them a long time to find ways to make her enjoy it the way he did. And some men never tried to learn. Hiccup may not have Stoick’s bone structure or bulk, but without the proper care…

Hiccup would not be one of those brutes.

“Son…” he started, his voice softer, and Hiccup’s eyes showed surprise at the change in tone. “Those men, the men that sing bawdy tales of conquering women and ‘taking what’s theirs’…those men are not real men. Any man that has to tell others what a man he is in bed, is no man you’d want to imitate.”

Hiccup nodded, opening his mouth to speak but Stoick stopped him. “You know that I have no tolerance for rapists on my island, it’s the quickest way to get sent to Outcast Island for sure. But what most men don’t understand is that even in their own marriages, everything should be equal. If the woman isn’t interested, or isn’t enjoying it and the man insists, that’s the same as rape in my mind. It’s just much harder to enforce.”

“I’d never…You know I’d never” Hiccup swallowed, moving to put his mug down before changing his mind and taking another drink. He waited for his father to continue, obviously lost for what to say.

“Look, son… here’s the simplest way to put it.” Stoick said, forcing himself to meet his son’s eyes, which were big and concerned. “Sex, it’s a powerful thing. It’s one of the best feelings in the world for a man, especially when you’re with someone you love. Once you start, you’re not going to want to stop.

“But for a woman… it’s different. Yes, if you take the time and learn her body, if you really take the time to care, it’s the same for them, you’ll have a wonderful relationship and many happy encounters.” Stoick cleared his throat, forcing himself not to think too hard about the fact that this was his son he was speaking to, trying not to picture anything beyond what he had to.

“But if you force it, if you rush into it and hurt her, you’ll hate yourself for it for the rest of your life. They’re more complicated in their pleasure than we are, son. They can be hurt easily and might not say a thing about it because they don’t know they shouldn’t have to.”

He drained the last of his mug, setting it down on the table in front of him. Hiccup followed suit, staring at it intensely, though his cheeks were red from the alcohol and conversation topic.

“I’d never hurt her.” The young man said finally, “You know I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. I love her too much.” He met his father’s eye for a moment. “Anyways, she’d probably clobber me if I did, even by accident.”

“You’d be surprised.” Stoick replied. “Many women think it’s their burden to bear, that they have to go through that just to bear children. Others know different, but many think that sex is not for them to enjoy, just to service their husbands.” He shrugged. “We generally try to dissuade that thinking here, but it’s an old way that’s carried through many generations. Astrid’s a warrior, she might just bite through the pain and not admit to it.”

Hiccup looked dismayed, standing up and beginning to pace. “Then how do I know?” The alcohol had obviously loosened his tongue a bit, allowing him to speak more freely without as much embarrassment. “How do I make sure she never feels pain?”

On one of his passes, Stoick grabbed his elbow, his arm dwarfed in the chief’s enormous hand, and pulled him back to his chair.

“You communicate with her. You talk to her, find out what she likes, what she doesn’t… you go slow and take your time and learn her. I can’t tell you what Astrid would like anymore than I could tell you what Gobber would like…” He paused, scowling. “Eh, scratch that, I know too much about that…. The point is, everyone is different, so as long you take your time and are patient and caring, you’ll be fine. The first time will always be a bit painful, just since it’s new, but be gentle and take your time, and you’ll be just fine, son.”

Stoick stood up and walked the short distance to Hiccup, putting his hands on those small shoulders and crouching to meet his eyes. “Hiccup, I know you. You’re the kindest person I know, I don’t doubt you’ll be good to her. I just want you to have the best relationship you can with Astrid, and not make some of the mistakes I did when I was young.” Hiccup looked at his father questioningly. “I made up for it, in the end, but still. I’d rather you not have to.”

Hiccup nodded, draining the rest of his tankard before taking a deep breath. “Thank you, Dad.” He said quietly, “I… I appreciate that you care enough to tell me this. And…sorry, you had to come home to that.”

Stoick laughed. “It’s alright, laddie, like I said, I’ve been there in the past. Now, it doesn’t look like you were planning on cooking dinner tonight, what do you say we head down to the hall?”

It took them a minute to gather their things and make their way out the door. Stoick noted with amusement that Hiccup’s feet were a bit unsteady from the mead, his cheeks flushed and his eyes a little hazy. The boy had come a long way from the talking fishbone he’d been, but he still lacked a Viking’s ability to hold his drink.

As they entered the hall, Hiccup walked beside him as the villagers welcomed Stoick home, accepting pats on the back from the people who had deemed him the ‘Pride of Berk” – a name that still made Hiccup blush fervently.

After filling their plates, they sat down with their respective friends, Hiccup flanked by Tuffnut, who handed him a mug of wine, and Fishlegs. Stoick watched in amusement as his son tried to pretend he hadn’t just had an extremely awkward encounter, drinking from his mug perhaps a bit more heavily than he should.

After a moment, Astrid appeared from the crowd, looking over to Stoick tentatively before walking over to her betrothed with a confidence that the chief was sure was for his benefit. Fishlegs easily made room for her and she sat beside Hiccup, leaning in close and resting her forehead against his own. After a moment, Hiccup dipped his head into the corner of her neck, pulling her tightly to him and whispering something. The other riders carried on obliviously, Tuff and Snotlout arguing back and forth about something nonsensible and Fishlegs making eyes at Ruff across the table.

The two lovers held each other in their own bubble for a few moments longer, soft words exchanged between the two of them, before separating. Hiccup started to eat and Astrid pressed a kiss to his hairline before standing. She made her way to the casks of water and poured two tankards for them, before looking reluctantly towards Stoick, catching his eye. Clearly fighting with herself, she finally gathered the courage to walk his way, stopping by the enormous man with an odd look on her face.

Stoick waited for her to speak, the adults around him engrossed in conversation with hardly a care for the girl’s presence. She leaned in to him.

“Look… I don’t know what you said to him…” She started awkwardly, her voice barely above a whisper. “All he said is that you weren’t mad, and that he never wanted to hurt me, never wanted to disappoint me.” Stoick smiled softly, encouragingly. “I just…” She continued, taking a deep breath. “Thank you… for understanding. And for not being mad.” She paused. “I really do love him, you know.” She said, nodding at him before turning on her heel and returning to Hiccup’s side.

Stoick smiled, watching the girl – no, the woman – move back across the room, sitting beside his son and pressing another kiss to his cheek.

They’d be just fine.

1 I know that herbs probably aren’t adequate birth control…. But come on, we’re in a universe with dragons. I’m calling that sufficient if I want to.

[sending-the-message]

White Noise by Sergeant_Darwin

I’ve never been much of a man. I barely crack 5’6”, can’t handle my liquor, and I’ve never been in a fight in my life—but when Lainie got pregnant, I decided it was time for a change. I started working out. I learned how to change the oil and tires on the Buick. Hell, I even bought a pistol. I was going to protect them, Lainie and my unborn child both, whatever it took.

I could tell Lainie thought it was all a little silly, my newfound quest for manhood. It was easy for her to say. She was doing her part. Carrying the burden of life inside her, while all I could do was hold her hair, in the early stages of pregnancy, as she puked into the toilet—and sometimes I even fucked that up. She seemed to think she could do it all herself, and she was probably right. When I brought home the gun, she was livid. All we needed, she said, was a baseball bat. And someone strong enough to swing it, she might have added.

I took it back the next day and bought a Louisville Slugger instead.

The baby came without a hitch—little Annika, looking just like her mommy—and what we lacked in protection, Lainie made up for with near-neurotic preparation. She had it all; the books, the vitamins, the breastfeeding techniques. But perhaps her favorite new mom-toy came in the form of a Kiddos Baby Monitor that she got at the baby shower. I can’t remember who gave it to her.

It gave off a small hum, scarcely a whisper, every single night. Vague static; white noise—interrupted, only on occasion, by a cough or hiccup or whimper from sweet Annika. She wasn’t a fussy baby at all. The monitor rested on Lainie’s nightstand, securing my wife like a second quilt. A small red dot, indicating the device was alive and well, dimly bathed the room in crimson, and an optional display provided a blue-tinted camera feed aimed at Annika’s crib. We could hear her, we could see her, and all was well in paradise.

Oh, there were tough times, sure. The jaundice was bad and it led to things even worse. Pneumonia. Strep. Infections no fun for an adult but an enormous goddamn deal for a baby. We spent plenty of time in the hospital. The nurses all loved Annika. They always remarked on what a well-behaved baby she was.

The marriage grew stale, but what marriage doesn’t? The sex was rare and forced, just another thing for Lainie to check off her to-do list. Was it ever really not that way, though? I tried to remember, but life before Annika seemed trapped in a cloudless haze. Becoming a father seemed to alter the very structure of my brain.

The first year came and went. The Kiddos Baby Monitor ran out of batteries, and we never bothered to replace them. Annika was crawling. Then walking. The first word, spoken at the dinner table, which Lainie and I were both there for: Mango.

The words kept coming. Mommy. Diaper. Full. They were all expected, yet all met with excited applause from her mother and me. And then, one day, while Lainie was at spinning class and I was doing the newspaper crossword on the couch, Annika piped up from her playpen with a word I did not expect.

Fa-ther.

I sat up, straining silently to listen, sure I had misheard. But then it came again, even clearer than before.

Fa-ther.

Most dads would be thrilled. I was confused, and frankly, a bit unnerved. I had no idea where she’d learned that. I was always ‘daddy.’ In fact, as far as I’d seen, nobody had ever so much as breathed that word in front of her. Yet there she sat, squawking away, giving voice to a word uncomfortably formal as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

Father. Father. Father.

Lainie didn’t seem as interested as I did. In fact, she seemed more than a little bit miffed—Annika had been growing more distant from her lately. This was the age children usually clung tightest to their mothers, yet Annika seemed to have no such proclivity. One doctor theorized that Annika might be having her needs met through another source—did she have a stuffed animal she was particularly attached to? A blanket, maybe? We could think of nothing.

We had her tested for autism. Hell, we had her tested for everything. Nothing could explain her level of detachment from us, nor her remarkably tame behavior. The professionals had never seen anything like it, but didn’t seem to think it much cause for concern.

“Count your blessings, friend,” one of them told me in a heavy English accent as he escorted me from his office. “Between you and me, nine out of ten kids her age is a right little shit.”

Still, we couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. One night, Lainie had decided she’d had enough. She dug the old Kiddos Baby Monitor out of a box in the attic. She put new batteries in it, rewired the camera in Annika’s room, and for a few hours, the white noise hummed beneath our sleep once more.

I awoke to the sound of Annika babbling away in her crib. I turned toward the monitor, and my eyes swam, barely open, in the sea of crimson from its light. She was repeating the same word, again and again.

Fa-ther. Fa-ther.

I rolled over toward Lainie. She was still asleep—Annika wasn’t being very loud. I stumbled out of bed, wiping my eyes, and picked up the monitor. My fingers fumbled for the switch on the back, and when I flicked it, a dull blue glow sprang from nowhere. I squinted my eyes to see into Annika’s crib, and I let out a strangled cry. The monitor slipped from my hands and crashed to the floor. Lainie woke with a start, mumbling.

“Whatsamatter?”

But I couldn’t speak.

Someone was holding my daughter.

Without a word, I ran into the hallway, not even bothering to grab the Louisville Slugger from the closet. The door to Annika’s room was open. My socks slid out from under me and I crashed to the wooden hallway floor as I reached it, and as I lie prone I had a clear view into the bedroom.

Annika sat up in her crib, crying wildly for a change, startled by the noise. Nobody was holding her.

“I swear to God, honey—”

But Lainie wasn’t having it.

“The first night we start using the monitor again, and it just happens to be the night an invisible man breaks into our house? And leaves her placed all neat in her crib where he found her?”

“He wasn’t invisible, and I can’t explain it, Lainie, I’m telling you what I saw.”

“Alright,” she said, as though humoring a child. “What did he look like?”

At this, I drew blank. I couldn’t exactly describe him—I hadn’t looked long enough. I felt that I had seen him before, though. Somewhere. I felt that seeing him at all, even in a completely non-threatening context, would have made me deeply uncomfortable. But I didn’t know how to explain this to Lainie, this vague recognition. So I just shrugged. She scoffed.

“Jesus. What am I supposed to do with this.”

But the whole thing had her spooked, I know it. That night she told me—if you hear anything from the monitor, anything at all, you wake me up right away. So I did.

Father. Father. Lainie’s voice rang out above the dead white noise.

Lainie snatched the cooing monitor from her bedside table less than a second after I’d woken her. She sat up and flicked the switch.

Lainie shrieked a horrible sobbing shriek. She flung the covers from her and leapt from the bed in one fluid motion, leaving the monitor face-up on the sheet behind her. On it I could see the man, cradling Annika with a light bounce, more clearly this time. And in a flash I knew exactly who he was. And this time, I stayed right where I lay.

It took Lainie a long time to calm Annika down—that scream had put a good scare into her. I don’t think Lainie even noticed that I never came in. By the time she got back to our bedroom, the lights were on and I sat on the bed, spread out with a couple of her old college photo albums.

She walked into the room and stopped in her tracks. She looked at me, at the albums, and back to me. I think in that moment we both knew it was over.

“He wasn’t in there,” she said after a long pause. “I know what you’re thinking, but it wasn’t him. Nobody was in there.”

“Fine,” I said. “But he was on the monitor. You know he was on the monitor. Why, Lainie?”

She looked down at the albums, at the old pictures from which Will Harding’s dumb fucking face grinned up at both of us, feigning innocence.

“Father...”

She looked at me, and the guilt shone in her eyes.

“Will’s the father. Not me. Will Harding.”

She started to cry. I stood up and walked out of the room, pausing a few inches from her face to say, softly, almost sweetly:

“You’re a real bitch, you know that?”

Then I left the house and never walked back inside. Lainie brought all my stuff to my new apartment a couple days later. The divorce went through quickly; she didn’t want it but she understood. She, of course, got custody of Annika, having the tremendous advantage of not only womanhood but of actually being Annika’s biological parent. I didn’t fight it. It’s amazing how quickly I stopped loving both of them.

Will Harding was a big, brash man. He had tattoos, muscles, and watched football and drank beer and got mean when he did. That’s why Lainie left him, after two passionate, terrible years. She once told me she married me because I was everything Will was not. But it wasn’t long before she realized that by the same token, Will was everything I was not. I guess old habits die hard. And three months after Annika was born, so did Will. He found out that Lainie had had a baby and came to the house. She shut him out, screaming at him that he wasn’t the father, he wasn’t, he wasn’t. But he knew—she was lying. So he got real drunk and real mad and didn’t put on his seatbelt and on his way back to our place he sped his fucking Camaro up a curb and into a big brick mailbox.

Lainie went to his fucking funeral. She told me she was getting her teeth cleaned.

She sent me a Christmas card last year—she and Annika, smiling underneath a hearth in cheesy red sweaters, stockings hung on either side of them. I looked at the little girl I used to call mine, now seven years old, and felt nothing. I wondered absently if I should feel guilty, and if I’d somehow failed as a dad. But those thoughts, often though they came, never lasted long. She didn’t need another father—she already had one, after all, and she seemed to like him just fine.