#is transferred to uterus.

[lullabiestoparalyze]

🎉🎉🎉

[bugz4evr]

I was like very very much not a fan of children my entire life but ever since I've been living with my bf and their 2 yr old that parental instinct is hitting so hard I would kill God for this baby

[moonlitgourmet]

I wish I had that mutation where you're born without a uterus

[welcometomyoasis]

Seventeen when you are on your period

Synopsis: Headcanons of seventeen’s reactions/ behaviour when you are on your period. Svt x gn! reader | fluff, comfort, established relationship | 1.6k words | warnings: reader has a uterus, menstruation, cramps, hormonal mood swings, medication, food | requested by anon

₊˚ෆ Drama is his middle name (Your pain is his pain)

Seungcheol, Junhui, Hoshi, Dokyeom

↬ There is nothing he hates more than to see you in pain. He hates that you have to go through all the discomfort and pain every single month for years on end. He’s also so sympathetic to whatever you are feeling. It’s as if your feelings and emotions are in sync with his. Seriously, he’s literally sobbing more than you during this time. When he’s with you, he’s shifting when you’re shifting in discomfort. He’s flinching and wincing when you’re writhing in pain. He’s sulking and nodding empathetically when you complain about how bad you’re feeling. 

↬ The worst part is, he feels completely helpless in this situation. He rather shoulder the burden of your cycle, transferring all the discomfort and pain to himself. Alas, he can’t. All he can do is hold you, tend to your needs, and try to kiss away any pain you are feeling. And despite you reassuring him every month that what he’s done is more than enough, that you have been well taken care of, and that you always feel better when you’re with him, it doesn’t do much to settle that helpless feeling that festers within him. So, he swears that he’s going to be the best partner ever when you are on your period! 

↬ He decides that your period = his days off from work or doing anything really. When you’re on your period, he’s extra clingy and cuddly. He wants nothing more than to be by your side as you go through your monthly torture. This is the best time to spend a few days being plastered to your side. He’s already giggling and giddy at the thought. He’s going to baby you even more than normal. Chocolate, sweets, food? Back rubs? Feet rubs? Heat packs? Whatever you need, he’s going to order it for you. You deserve to be pampered during these trying times.

↬ Wait… what do you mean he can’t take those few days off? What do you mean he still has to work? What do you mean he can’t follow you to school/ work? He’s going to be kicking, screaming, and grabbing at the door with tears running down his face dramatically as you either push him out the door, or as the members forcefully remove him from your side. That said, he manages to throw you his credit card, yelling to tell you to get whatever you want before he’s thrown into the car and driven to work. 

↬ Bonus: Whenever he’s being dramatic, you simply shake your head in loving, but grateful exasperation even though you know you will have to take more frequent naps with him because he ends up tiring himself out more after getting so worked up. 

₊˚ෆ Perceptive is his middle name (He’s basically your personal attendant)

Jeonghan, Joshua, Wonwoo, Mingyu, Seungkwan

↬  To say he’s observant, that would be putting it quite mildly. This man is perceptive. Now, what’s the difference you might ask? There’s an added layer of sensitivity to your emotions and behaviour. Every single little change in your position, a minor shift in your breathing pattern, every gasp or wince, or thoughtful look. He knows how you are feeling and what you need/ might need even before you do, bringing it to you in preparation for the exact moment that your brain registers that you need something. 

↬ He can’t even begin to fathom how you feel, and he knows that there’s nothing he experienced that could ever compare to your period. What he does know is that you’re incredibly strong for pushing through all the pain and discomfort every single month. He knows it’s no easy feat. There are so many times when he sees you hunched over in pain, or times when you’re crying because you’re just so uncomfortable. Hence, during this time, he wants to make sure you take it easy, and that you’re extra well rested. 

↬ He’s incredibly well prepared. He’s already done his research on how to help you. He might have asked his mother or his sister for advice. He’s going to be making sure you’re well hydrated, and well fed with all the nutritious food to replenish your energy and the iron in your blood. He knows what medication you need, and which teas/ foods help with cramps and bloating. He might not be the best cook, but you can be sure that he will go the extra mile of trying to cook the food for you. If not, he will go out and purchase it for you. Besides food, he has warm blankets ready for when you’re feeling cold, and the air conditioner ready for when you’re feeling too warm. 

↬ You’re his precious s/o and you’re currently suffering. You deserve to be pampered even more than normal. He’s going to try to wait on you hand and foot, and he will coo at you whenever you whine about wanting something. Whatever you need, he’ll get it for you, don’t you worry. You don’t even need to move. Cuddles? Kisses? He’s wrapped around you like a koala already. You’ll definitely be his passenger princess during these few days (even though you’re basically that all the time anyway). He always tells you that he’s just a phone call away, and even if he’s busy he will make time for you. Of course, he will spoil you rotten. Whatever you want to eat, he’s going to get it for you as long as you make sure to strike a balance between that and the more nutritious meals. He’s also up on his feet in an instant bringing you whatever you need so you don’t have to move around too much. Long story short, your boyfriend during this time is also your personal attendant and nurse.

↬ Bonus: Once you went with him to practice, and you wanted to get something from the cafe. He literally stopped the practice halfway just to get it for you. And when the other members complained about him not getting them anything, all they got was an apathetic shrug as he made his way towards you, hands full of sweet and savoury treats.

₊˚ෆ Adaptable is his middle name (Let him know how he can help)

Woozi, Minghao, Vernon, Dino

↬  Unlike some people (ahem… the drama queens…) he accepts that periods are just something you have to live with. While the discomfort and pain due to the cramps can be debilitating at times, he knows that it’s not like you can put your whole life on pause. You have to go to work, school. Basically, you need to carry on with your life while still being on your period. He’s already very well adjusted to your routines and how to mold your lives around each other. However, during this time of the month, he tries to be even more accommodating and patient than normal.

↬  He knows you aren’t helpless. Even before you’ve met him, you have established a certain routine or standard procedure of what you want to do/ need to do when you’re on your period. You have a stock of pads/ tampons, medications, hot water bottles. You have an emergency stash of your favourite snacks that you like to eat. You even have different clothes you like to wear during your period because you’re going to be so uncomfortable and bloated. After you start dating, he takes note of all these things so he can help to ensure that you’ll have your supplies ready at all times. 

↬  Admittedly, no matter how prepared you are for trying to make yourself as comfortable as possible during your period, there are things which are completely out of control. The biggest thing which inadvertently impacts everything else, is your period hormones. You can’t tell how emotional or irritable your hormones are going to make you. Each month feels like you’re playing emotion roulette. There are times you’re extra cranky, and perhaps the environment you’re in adds to that. But it’s hard to gauge whether other people are really annoying, or whether you just perceive them that way because of your heightened senses and hormones. And then there are other times when you’re a sobbing, sad, mopey mess who feels like crying over everything (inconveniences, genuinely sad things, and happy/ cute things alike).

↬  So, because he understands that your needs are different every single month, he defers to your judgment when it comes to what you need. But, he’s not a mind reader and as empathetic as he can be, he would prefer you to use your words to tell him what you need him to do so that he can care for you as best as he can. Once you do, he’ll indulge you in whatever you need and want. Your requests could be as simple as wanting more cuddles or attention, and he’ll be sure to shower you with as much affection as you want. Or it could be more complicated, like the times you wanted food from a specific restaurant 30 minutes away from your shared apartment. He’ll gladly make the extra detour after work. Like I said, he will try his best to be accommodating and patient with you during this time. 

↬  Bonus: Of course, there are times when you have a particularly difficult time during your period. You’re exceptionally clingy and you don’t want to be away from him. When that happens, he brings you to work with him, letting you sit curled up next to him while he gets on with practice/ producing. 

taglist: @weird-bookworm @wonijinjin @babyleostuff @wishing-fieshes @kwanienies @mayashu @megseungmin @porridgesblog @haecien @mirxzii @scoupsofcherries @eightlightstar @brownsugarbaybee @zaggprincess2 @nonononranghaee @hrts4hanniehae @treehouse-mouse

[ilianaoftroy]

Every once and a while I think about the forced birther here on Tumblr who basically said I was a sociopath because I work as an embryologist and expressed concern for women suffering pregnancy complications due to the overturning of Roe v Wade. They demanded examples and then rationalized the ones provided away. Admittedly, the legit articles I provided were behind a paywall, bc, you know, real research costs money. It was a non productive conversation because this person felt such circumstances were 'rare' and I guess didn't care if those women died.

The next day I performed an embryo transfer for a woman who had suffered five miscarriages requiring medical intervention in the past. Because of where she lives, she got care, still has a functioning uterus, and can try again to start a desperately wanted family with her beloved spouse. Then I signed congrats cards for 6 patients who had sent our office birth announcements.

It's been a year and I still think about the difficulties the patients I work with would face in other states. How I will never relocate places because I could be left untreated until septic, not to mention not have a job. How I have fewer rights than my mother did at my age. Today I came across this pay wall free paper, fairly limited in scope, confirming the complications in healthcare for pregnant people post Roe v Wade. But what I do know. I just work with people with complex pregnancies every day.

[requinoesis]

do the sharks in your universe go through parthenogenesis? if they do, do they have control over the pregnancy or does it happen at random?

That's a very interesting question! I thought about it and yes, parthenogenesis happens to the sharks in my universe. One of the characters, the zebra shark called Aria, is the fruit of parthenogenesis.

As for the cause, even for our science today, it is still unknown how this works or whether the female shark has control over it in any way. It is not known whether the females trigger the phenomenon or whether it happens spontaneously. I haven't found much information either; it's something very new to us. Recently, a stingray in captivity became pregnant by parthenogenesis, for example. Stingrays belong to the same family as sharks.

As there are few answers at the moment, I decided to take inspiration from a fantasy idea about this. What I'm going to tell you now is a fictional vision of the origin of parthenogenesis:

My shark people theorize that parthenogenesis is a kind of "Shadow of Decline", an ancestral ability inherited by female sharks that withstood mass extinction events in the primordial ages of the planet.

They theorize that there were probably times when the male shark population declined, so the females who were able to adapt to create "backups" of their genes through cloned daughters prevailed, while those who lacked this adaptation became extinct.

In short, they theorize that females, in situations of stress and prolonged absence of male sharks, trigger a clone as a type of genetic reserve. As she gets older, she transfers the responsibility to her cloned daughter, who may have a better chance of finding a partner to pass on her genes and ensure the survival of the species.

In the context of civilization, the conditions for parthenogenesis to take place are still unknown. But my sharks link the phenomenon to a stress response and prolonged life without producing offspring.

Maybe it's not a good comparison, but it would be a kind of menstrual cycle that instead of happening monthly, happens randomly between 10~20 years after sexual maturity. (I used as inspiration a female blacktip reef shark that developed a fetus in her uterus after 10 years of living in an aquarium without the presence of males).

Modern shark society offers full support to females who don't want to go ahead with parthenogenesis and are given full assistance to carry out abortions. But there are also many females who choose to accept the phenomenon, go ahead with the pregnancy and become the mothers of these children, while some females give birth but hand the newborn over to "kindergartens", which act like orphanages/schools/universities that provide full support for the child to grow up and become independent or be adopted.

A reminder that children born from parthenogenesis will always be girls and with identical genes to their mother. Because of this, some females are afraid to go ahead with parthenogenesis, as they fear that their daughters will suffer from the same physical or mental health problems as their mothers.

In the case of zebra shark Aria, her mother has a neurodivergence and she feared that her daughter would suffer as much as she did, but she decided to go ahead with her daughter's parthenogenesis. Despite having the same neurodivergence, she views it with a completely different approach to her mother, which gives her hope and support.

That's it! I'm sorry if I've written too much or if my English is strange, I got carried away, maybe I'm missing more details, but that's what I've thought so far. Any other ideas to enrich this would be welcome!

It's a very interesting creative exercise to imagine how parthenogenesis would be viewed in a civilized society like ours.

[biblio-smia]

The prompt from list 1 w/ mike Schmidt? The print where it says “what can I do to help?”

Maybe reader has her menstrual cycle and she doesn’t want to tell him because she’s embarrassed?

here u go!! enjoy <3 | part of v’s 800 follower celebration!

mike stands beside you at the edge of the bed, hovering over you protectively like an angel. it's clear something is wrong by the way you refuse to get up, your knees tightly curled up to your chest, and the frown that won't disappear from your face. mike is forced to play detective, seeing as you decline to tell him exactly what's going on.

"what can i do to help?" mike asks sweetly. you turn to look at him; his demeanor is gentle, his eyes are full of concern.

you groan. "go away." you roll back over, taking the blanket and pulling it over your head.

"well, at least you're not sick," you hear mike's slightly muted voice say from outside the little cocoon you hide in. a few moments of suspicious silence pass before you feel the spot beside you sink down with mike's weight. you feel him shift beside you, sure that if you stick your head out you'll see him staring at you.

well, you need more air anyway.

you pull the blanket down partially - and as suspected, you're face-to-face with mike. it's quiet, but while mike may struggle to find the right words to say, he wastes no time with the gentle touches. his hand finds your shoulder (only struggling a little), rubbing up and down your arm softly.

"will you tell me what's wrong?" mike's voice is sweeter than sugar when he speaks, not too loud in case your head hurts.

you move, but you move closer and when you groan, it's into mike's chest. the warmth he radiates doubles as comfort, bringing some relief to your body as you cling to him.

"nothing," you insist quite unconvincingly, burrowing your head deeper into mike.

but mike doesn't push. he only digs his way underneath the blanket with you, hands on your back soothingly. he's desperately hoping you'll fess up soon because he's running out of options.

you groan again, fingers messing with a loose thread on mike's shirt as you try to avoid looking at him.

"my uterus is bleeding," you finally admit, looking incredibly deflated.

mike holds back any relief from showing on his face, glad it's just that (he seriously feared you were going to tell him you were breaking up with him) though he currently would not dare to express this to your face. maybe next week.

"okay," mike nods, giving a quick press of his lips to your forehead. "that's fine. that's fixable. well - not fixable, but we can make it better."

you're quiet, still messing with mike's shirt. your fingers ball up some of the fabric as you manage the strength to look up at mike. "we?"

"we," mike nods in confirmation. he doesn't mind expressing the relief he feels when your expression of despair finally cracks with a smile. mike pulls you closer and adjusts until he hears a pleased sigh from your lips.

he holds you there for a few moments, transferring you the warmth from his hands and his chest. mike's fingers draw small patterns on your exposed skin, acting as an all-encompassing, at-your-service heating pad.

mike doesn't mind the new job, enjoying the proximity he keeps to you and pleased to know he's able to do something that makes you feel better. mike notices your eyes beginning to close, glad you're able to get some more rest.

"now will you tell me what you need?" mike asks before you can fall to sleep, wanting to be prepared by the time you wake up.

you groan so softly it's more like a hum, sending small vibrations through mike. "it's a whole list," you complain.

"i'll get everything on it and more."

mike feels your smile against his skin.

[mageofseven]

How about a reader that was pregnant when they were chosen as an exchange student ? Like the baby's father is not in the picture and reader *isn't* involved with boys romantically and when the boys discover readers pregnant after lesson 16 they're just "oh Shi-"

This is an old ask from before my long ass hiatus, but I'm honestly still really interested in this.

Okay so here's some set up info for how Imma do this:

MC knew she was pregnant, but was so overwhelmed about it that she welcomed the fact that she was magically kidnapped into going to demon school and that she had something to distract herself from the literal growing problem in her uterus.

The baby was also transfered to the new body after what Belphie did to her.

Like it was requested, MC is not currently dating any of the Boys.

They found out because they had her get checked by a doctor despite Barbatos making sure she was okay with his time power; this was mostly done out of over-protectiveness and no one actually thought anything would come of it.

I don't do reader posts so obviously this will be MC.

Now that that's out of the way, let's give this a go!

•▪︎▪︎◇°●♡●°◇▪︎▪︎•

Lucifer:

Is visibly shocked by this and has MC explain herself.

When he hears how her boyfriend knocked her up and abandoned her not long before she was brought to the Devildom, the pride demon makes a mental note to ask her for the man's name at another time so he can handle that little pest.

Feels terrible guilty about what she went through and even worse that she went through it while pregnant.

I see Lucifer as this heavily anxious man with a soft spot for kids and that includes babies that are works-in-progress (WIP).

Hovers around her constantly after that, making sure she taking every vitamin and supplement she and her child needs.

Just becomes super protective of her while also trying to pretend he's not.

Eventually takes her off of cooking duty so she'll have one less thing to worry about.

Despite not being the father or having such a relationship with her, he takes full responsibility for all aspects of this from teleporting her here while pregnant to Belphie offing both her and her child in her last body.

Doesn't go as far as to call himself this child's father, but anyone who saw this man hovering over her would definitely think he was.

Like always, Lucifer just wants to take care of his family and now sees MC and her child as such.

Mammon:

Literally freaks out while trying to pretend he isn't.

To him, her being pregnant just made this whole situation 1000000x worse.

Feels bad that he didn't know about her kid.

Like, he's the brother whose been by her side the most and he never even noticed anything was off with her.

He's not the most observant man so I'm not surprised.

He's her First! She should have just told him, or so he tells her.

Keeps an extra close eye on her to keep this crazy freaking human from doing anything bad for herself or her kid

And let's face it, she literally got herself killed not long ago so anything can happen.

The further her pregnancy gets, the more this man tries to keep his brothers away from her.

He just extra possessive as time goes on.

I mean yeah, this kid ain't his but he wishes it was so freaking much but he's still gonna look after the two of them.

Honestly, this man wouldn't be able to handle a single other bad thing happening to his Human.

Leviathan:

Ohmanohmanohman--

Is really freaking out and doesn't even try to hide it.

I mean this is serious!

Not only did MC die but so did her WIP kid????

I mean yeah, they are both back but this all still sucks.

You know the phrase 'kicking a person while they're down'? Well this is like using a freaking flamethrower while the human was already down!

Honestly becomes super awkward with his Henry after learning about her pregnancy

But slowly gets used to it as he discovers that MC just wants him to treat her as he always has.

Yeah! He can do that!...kinda.

He feels bad that he can't help her through most of it.

This man knows absolutely nothing about pregnancy and feels like he is mediocre at comforting people at best.

Still, if she ever needs someone to distract her with anime so she doesn't have to think of the little WIP in her uterus then Levi is her man.

Satan:

Honestly...this man is less than thrilled.

MC is the first person he's ever truly gotten close to and that includes his 'brothers'

So to hear that the person he cares about most is pregnant...

Well on the plus side, he knows there's a human man in the other realm for him to torture so that makes him feel better.

Doesn't like kids, but is at MC's side as much as possible.

One of the brothers willing to hold her hair back during bouts of morning sickness.

Not one to hover, but does get a little protective when Belphie is in the same room as her.

Knows the Avatar of Sloth won't hurt her anymore but...well, he still can't get the image of MC's dead body out of his head

And angy boy is still angy at him for it.

Other than that, he reads a shit ton of pregnancy books to learn what MC's body is going through and different methods to comfort her through it.

Asmodeus:

Honestly, this usually chatty brother was speechless when it was announced.

When he saw all eyes fall on the human and make her overwhelmed, he ran to his friend and hugged her tightly.

Was the one to hype up the other guys and get everyone to say they'll take care of her and that they have her back

Because honestly, this woman and her child literally died for his family; you can bet your ass he's going to make sure each and every one of his brothers does their part in taking care of the pregnant human.

Doesn't immediately think about killing the runaway baby daddy, but if it becomes a family field trip to hunt the bastard and kill him, Asmo is so down for it.

Mostly focuses on what he can do for MC in the moment though.

Another brother to comfort her during morning sickness.

It's gross af but he uses it to remind his brothers that hey! I'm getting close to a vomiting woman each morning so y'all better be as dedicated to the cause as I am.

Beelzebub:

This man literally did nothing wrong, but acts as if it's all his fault.

So much happened in his family right under his nose and things led to such extremes that his twin literally killed this woman and her child.

More or less feels like he needs to step up and pay atonement for what his twin did

And is probably the brother who takes care of her the most.

This situation has shown how much he actually wants to be a parent one day

And literally asks MC later in her pregnancy if he can be her baby's daddy

He doesn't care about genetics at all, just wants MC to let him help her raise the child and make him a daddy 🥺

Literally the sweetest man to ever exist.

MC would be a fool not to accept.

Belphegor:

Probably the guiltiest of all of the men.

I mean, he did it. He killed MC and relished in it.

Granted, he didn't know she was carrying a little hitchhiker, but still.

Belphie lost himself in his pain to such a strong degree that...he wonders that even if he did know...would he have been able to stop himself from doing what he did

And honestly, the fact that he doesn't know scares the hell out of him.

Avoids MC for the first couple months of her pregnancy because honestly, he feels too guilty to even look at her

And... honestly, he doesn't know if he even trusts himself around her.

Thanks to Beel's encouragement, the sloth demon slowly finds himself interacting with the pregnant human

And eventually decides that the best way to atone for what he did (if it's even possible) is to take care of her and the kid the best he can.

He doesn't like kids and just sees pregnancy as unnecessary torture for people with uteruses

But honestly, none of that matters anymore.

He may not have been the one to knock the woman up, but he did fuck up the worst out of everyone in this situation.

Will feel better whenever the family hunting party starts and he can give that pathetic man a taste of what he deserves.

Looks like it's Human Season for this hunting demon.

Diavolo:

Also a man with an overwhelming sense of guilt.

Other than the actual process of making the baby, everything that happened was either because of something he directly or indirectly did to start up the exchange program.

Also regrets not having regular check ups on his exchange students because surely they all would have discovered this sooner and prevented anything from happening to the pregnant woman.

Has regular doctor visits scheduled for MC to make sure she and her baby stay healthy and pays for all of it, including any medications she may need during this progress.

Pregnancy can be really fucking expensive, but the prince makes sure she never has to worry about that side of things.

Just focus on staying healthy and letting your baby grow, MC; he and the other men will handle everything else.

Barbatos:

Knew before everyone else did.

I mean, this man literally had to make sure the baby transfered over too.

This man is seriously a hero that doesn't get the credit he deserves nor does he seek such.

MC and her baby are safe now and that's all that matters to the butler.

Honestly frets over the woman on the inside, but shows no sign of it externally.

Is the man that takes her to all her doctors appointments and was there when she discovered the gender of her baby.

Congratulated her as she sobbed happy tears and was honestly grateful that he could share such a moment with her.

Honestly becomed really attached to MC during her pregnancy and looks forward to watching her child grow up.

Solomon:

Honestly, his intuition had been tingling for a while on this subject.

He suspected this pregnancy, but figured it was none of his business and didn't want to pry into the fellow human's personal life.

If he would have known such an event would happen with Belphie though, he would have stepped in and got answers.

He didn't though. The sorcerer had no clue how events were going to unfold.

Hindsight is telling him that he should have pryed more, but his manners told him it was right to respect the woman's privacy.

Doesn't do too much in regards to taking care of his friend since the demons seem to have it all covered and even seem to somewhat resent the sorcerer when he tries.

Believe it's better not to step on any toes, so to speak.

Is still a good friend to MC though and always offers an ear if they need to vent about the process with someone.

Simeon:

This all happened before the pregnancy had progressed enough for him to sense the baby.

He did however sense...something within the human since he met her, but didn't understand what.

Hindsight is really hurting this poor angel's heart 😔

Become the woman's biggest support in an emotional sense.

Pregnancy is hard and hormones flare and everything can seem so stressful, especially to a scared single mom.

This man is often the one comforting her when she breaks down into tears, even when it's over small stuff like someone ate the last cookie or she lost her pen.

He makes sure MC knows how strong she is and that she will make it through this this difficult time.

Luke:

Demons!!! Back away from the pregnant woman or this chihuahua will bite.

Okay, not really, but the brothers make this joke a lot.

Luke is very protective of MC in this situation.

Since he is just a child, he wasn't told what happened between her and Belphie in complete detail.

Really just thinks the stupid demon hurt her feelings and the angelic boy will not allow it to happen again!

Grows increasingly curious as MC's belly grows; angels don't have kids in this way so this boy has a lot of questions about what's happening to her body.

The fact that there's an actual baby just chilling and growing in her belly boggles this boy's mind.

Is honestly excited for MC's baby and feels like he about to be come a big brother!

This boy is determined to do his part and take care of her just like the adults do.

Mostly just keeps her company and bakes for her when her cravings give her a sweet tooth.

Little Lukey keeps her spirits up and MC loves him for it.

[boldlyvoid]

Bigger than the Whole Sky | Part One: Peter Losing Wendy

Aaron Hotchner x Reader

Summary: Reader has been with the BAU for 2 months when she walks into the bullpen with a fat lip and a bloody nose. Her husband's been keeping secrets and breaking her heart for almost a decade now. However, it takes her 10 minutes to decide she's done with him.

Aaron has been harbouring a crush on our dear reader for as long as she's been on the team... he knew it would never go anywhere when she was married, but that crush goes from a hopeless dream to a heartstopping love faster than he could say "be mine."

Warnings: spousal abuse (physical and mental), infertility, self-esteem issues, friends to lovers, divorce meetings

word count: 8.1k

fic Masterlist

When she transferred to the BAU, everyone knew she had a husband. The thing no one knew was that her marriage was dangerously close to falling apart. No one ever suspected it in her personal life, however, in a room full of profilers… she couldn’t hide the problems for long. 

At this point, the BAU had gone through enough female profilers to know that there was no telling what was going on in their personal lives. Between JJ’s secret time at the Pentagon and Emily’s time with the CIA, they had no reason to suspect their newest agent was in an unhappy marriage… especially not one where she had been trying to get pregnant for years and gaslit the whole time that it was her fault that they couldn’t conceive. 

Peter, her husband, was happy to start trying in the beginning, they ditched condoms a few months into their relationship and she discarded her birth control a few months after they tied the knot. At first, the sex was fun, the first handful of negative tests just caused them to fuck more often and in different positions and times of the day… then the heartbreak settled in as her friends and family around her age started popping out babies while she only saw negatives. 

This went on for years. 8 years to be exact. 8 years of monthly devastation means her heart was broken 72 times and Peter never cared. Each month he told her to get over it and try again… It wasn’t until she brought up going to a fertility specialist that her he finally snapped at her. He said she could go, she could get her hostile uterus checked and get the broken title while he stayed at home. He refused to test his sperm, he refused to go to appointments, he said IVF was a waste of money and a surrogate was too “unnatural” for him to feel comfortable. He didn’t even want to adopt or foster. 

For a year she left it alone. Too busy with work, she put her focus into trying to climb the corporate ladder and land her dream job with the BAU. There, she made friends, she made connections, too… JJ gave her the number for a fertility specialist that she was seeing in private and Y/N made the appointment. 

“Hey, Pete!” She called from her closet as she got ready for work. 

“What?” He showed up in the doorway, buttoning his shirt. “I have to leave, the markets are open already.” 

“I know… I made you an appointment at the fertility specialist I talked to you about, it's tonight at 6. All you have to do—

“Are you fucking kidding me?” He blew up, turning redder than a stop sign. “I said I wasn’t going to one of these fucking—

“WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO?” She yells louder, “They said it’s not me, I’m fine, it’s clearly you—

He charged her, pushing her against the organizing cabinet and holds her there by her throat, “I’m not fucking broken.”

“No?” She croaks out, afraid but trying not to show it. Treating him like an unsub. “Seems to me like you are. Maybe we shouldn’t have any fucking kids if you’re going to be so controlling.” 

The words hurt enough and then he swung, he let go of her throat and punched her right in the mouth, hoping to shut her up. It was just 1 punch but it felt like an earthquake, taking her dreams and turning them into nothing but rubble. He jumps back, realizing what he just did, and his whole body shook with rage.

She remembers it in slow motion. The crunch of cartilage in her nose, the rush of blood down to her lips that caused her hand to come up and cup her chin saving her white shirt from an inevitable stain… if it wasn’t the bloody nose that ruined her white dress shirt, it was the way he ripped her heart out of her chest and threw it on the ground with the rest of her broken dreams. 

He didn’t even apologize. He just stares at his hand, “Do you see what you’ve made me do? I was never going to be the husband who hit his wife. I was never going to become my father. If you didn’t push and push and push to have fucking kids we wouldn’t be here, Y/N! Do you want to know the truth?? Why we haven’t had kids yet? I had a fucking vasectomy before we met. Okay?! Is that want you wanted the doctors to tell you? I don’t want your fucking kids!!! I don’t even want you anymore!” 

“Okay,” is all she says. Her eyes are wide and her breathing is heavy. She’s stuck there, frozen in the moment. She can’t believe that just happened. “Okay.” She repeats, mainly to calm herself.

She can’t say anything else. She just watches him turn and leave, she hears him gather his things and then the front door slams. He’s gone. Just like that, he’s gone. 

At that moment she decided she couldn’t do this. The gaslighting, the name calling, the loneliness… for almost a decade of marriage, she’s spent more time alone than with him. And not because they were working or busy with their separate friends, he just stopped spending time with her after they got married, like tying the knot made her his property and now he didn’t have to try to make her like him. Once he had her, he kept her. 

Not anymore. 

That same day was also the marker of her being with the BAU for 2 months. Everything had been ramping up to this point, she can’t lie and say she was surprised that he snapped and hit her. He’s been getting angrier and she’s been losing interest in him… all she wanted was a baby. The only person who suspected anything at work was Hotch, and in his own Hotchner way, he was dropping little hints that he knew something was going on. He’d ask her about her nights at home, he called her into his office to share takeout when he saw her at her desk well into the night, he always says he’s there for her, but she didn’t know what he meant until now. He was waiting for the day she told him about the abuse. He could sense it. 

Now that she’s staring at herself in the mirror, wondering how she could hide the bruises before work, she realizes he was trying to tell her she was a part of their family. One that would go to war for her if she needed them. So she took him up on that offer and arrived to work with her fat lip and swelling around her eyes on full display. She didn’t even change her shirt. 

“Oh, my god?” Penelope reacted first, rushing over to her with the click-clack of her heels alerting everyone in the room that she was in a hurry. She cups Y/N’s face gently, “Who did this to you?” 

“Holy shit,” Derek says a bit too loud, alerting JJ and Spencer over at their shared desk, who turn and ask “Are you okay?” At the same time.

She was already close to tears before she walked through the double glass doors of the bullpen, saying his name only made her burst into tears. “Peter, he-he—“ she buries her face in Penelope’s shoulder and lets out her cries, sobbing as reality finally hit her as well.

Penny is quick to get her up the stairs and into the briefing room, away from everyone else, she closes all the blinds and politely asks Anderson, who’s already in there, to get some ice and the first aid kit, all while Y/N takes a seat in her usual spot. “I’m so stupid, I should’ve known. I should’ve—

Derek is quick to follow them, he sits beside her and rubs her back, soothingly. “No, no, sweetheart,” Derek stops her, “It is never a woman’s fault when a cowardly man uses violence to feel powerful. No matter what you said or did, it is not your fault. This is all on him. He’s the problem.” 

“I just wanted a baby,” she admits, lip quivering. 

“Oh, honey,” Penelope’s shoulders drop and she tilts her head to the side, “he’s not the kind of man—

“I’ve been trying to get pregnant since a few weeks after our wedding and he always made it feel like it was my fault that it wasn’t working…” She takes a deep breath, shaking her head, she can’t believe this part is even true. “When in reality he had a vasectomy before we even met. He’s been infertile for the last 10 fucking years and made me feel like it was me who had the problem the whole time.” 

“Are you serious?” Penelope can’t believe it. “And he just never told you?” 

She nods, “I think he thought I’d give up trying at some point and just deal with it… but I want to be a mom. I’ve always wanted to be a mom and he just never thought to tell me he didn’t want the same things. He really thought I’d just give up on my dreams like they’re nothing.” 

The icepack and first aid kit don’t show up with Anderson, instead, it’s Hotch who is standing in the doorway, listening to what’s going on before he makes himself known. He clears his throat and starts to enter. “Penelope, Derek, could you give us a minute?” 

“But— yes sir.” Penelope is quick to give up, and Derek follows suit, the two of them don’t want to leave but they know Aaron has it covered. 

“Aaron…” She doesn’t know what else to say. She feels ashamed, she wants to hide. She doesn’t want him to see her like this but then again, he’s the whole reason she showed up at work like this at all. 

He takes a seat beside her and hands her the icepack, “has he done this before?” 

She shakes her head, “no.” 

“Alright,” he believes her as he opens up the kit. “This is fresh… did it happen this morning or last night?” 

“Before he left this morning,” she answers, shaking her head as the tears start. “I made an appointment for him to go to the clinic after work and he lost it. He finally told me the truth about his vasectomy after he hit me.”

“My divorce lawyer is really good,” he explains, peeling open a bandaid for just above her eyebrow. “If we take some photos of this and document it then it’ll help with your case. Did you have a prenup?” 

She shakes her head, “no, he said we didn’t need one, we were in similar tax brackets when we got married and he said he didn’t see us ever getting a divorce anyway. I believed him.” 

“You make more money than him, now, this will ensure he can’t sue for spousal support or anything. I’m going to be frank, you need to leave him before this gets worse.” 

“I know.” 

They just stare at each other for a few moments after that. “Aaron?” 

“Yes?” 

“What am I going to do now? How do I just start all over again? I want kids and I’m already old enough, I can’t just wait to see if I fall in love again and then wait for the right time to ask them for a baby. I want kids now,” she explains. “But I can’t do it on my own, I can’t. I wanted to do it with my husband.” 

“It’s going to be hard, I won’t lie,” Aaron is honest. “But, if I can be honest… you’re beautiful and smart and when you’re ready, love will find you. I know it.” 

“Thanks,” she tries her best to believe it. It’s just hard to do right now. “What’s your lawyers name?”

“Andrea Cortez, she’s the best in the business… but if you really wanted to hurt him back, you should call all the lawyers in the area, pretend to fish around so that when he goes looking for a lawyer, everyone that’s good will have to turn him away.” 

“How do you know this?” 

“It took me a while to find someone who would take on my case,” Aaron admits. “Haley didn’t do it on purpose, she was just trying to find one who didn’t go to college with me but it ended up fucking me over in the long run… and then I found Andrea.” 

“Was it awful?” 

He shakes his head, “We didn’t go to court, we had a mediator and we settled it all ourselves. She got 70% custody, I’d see Jack on weekends and if I wanted him over spring break or during my vacation time then I just had to ask… it’s a lot harder when you have kids already.” 

“So I’ve been told…” 

“Have you thought about leaving him before?” Aaron can hear it in her voice. 

She nods, choking on a sob as she covers her face, her voice comes out in a quiver, “I just never admitted it to anyone.” 

“You have my support when you leave him. You’ll have Penelope and Derek, JJ, and Spencer, too. We’re going to be here for you while you adjust to this and we won’t ever let him hurt you again,” he says in the softest voice, he reaches out for her hand and holds it tight. “I’ll be here, especially. We can have dinner together more often and we can talk… I know how hard it is. I can be your friend through this.” 

She can’t help it, she’s so overwhelmed with emotions that she reaches over and pulls him into a hug that he gladly accepts. He rests his chin on her shoulder and holds her tight and he doesn’t plan to let go until she’s ready. 

—

A few nights later, after a week-long case, Aaron follows her home in his SUV with his gun still on his hip. He makes sure she gets into her home to pack her things without issue from Peter. She packs a few suitcases worth of clothes and Aaron helps her get them into her own car, “is this everything?” 

She nods, “Clothes wise… I’m just going to grab some of my favourite things, too,  I don’t imagine he’d break them but I also never thought he’d hit me, so.” 

“If you need to put stuff in my car, you can,” he offers as he follows her back inside. 

She uses some laundry baskets and fills them with pots, pans, throw blankets, trinkets, candles, you name it. She didn’t trust him at all, so she took almost everything that she knew was hers or just things she held dear since their wedding. As soon as it’s all in her car, she realizes just how real this is and she starts to cry again. 

“It’s okay,” Aaron runs his hand over her back. “Are you still going to stay with Penelope?” 

She nods, “Yeah, she said I can have her couch for the time being.” 

“You know what? Derek might have a place for you?” Aaron can’t help but think of when he was leaving Haley, Derek offered one of his houses that he was renovating to him. 

“How?” 

“Hold on,” Aaron digs his phone out of his pocket and calls him. “Hey… do you have any unoccupied homes right now?” 

Her eyes go wide, she didn’t know Derek as well as Hotch did, mainly because she hasn’t worked with him as long. 

“Can Y/N stay in it?… She’d really love that, thank you, Derek. We’ll meet you there… yes, you can bring Penelope,” he says with a smile before hanging up. “You’re in luck, he’s between renters on one of his properties.” 

“Aaron, thank you, really, you’ve made this so much easier than I ever thought it could be,” she can’t even express how much she appreciates him. 

“We’re a family,” he reminds her. “You can follow me, I know the way.” 

And so she does. 

It’s a quick drive, not too far from where she was living but also closer to work now too. She’s going to have to go grocery shopping and… fuck, she never even asked if this place is furnished. 

When they pull up, Aaron takes the road and she parks in the driveway, they sit on the front steps together and chat. Derek said he wouldn’t be too far behind them, he was close by but he takes longer than they expect. When he does pull up, however, he has his pickup truck and the back is full of furniture, including a mattress.

“Thank you,” she whispers so she doesn’t cry. 

“No problem… I have a storage unit with things for when I stage the homes after I flip them, you can use all of it if you want, but I thought we’d start with a bed.” 

“I literally love you,” she rushes out. 

“It’s nothing,” he brushes it off and hands her a key. “Now, while we carry in the heavy stuff, would you get the door for us?” 

“Anything for my knights in shining armour.” 

—

Hotch is a lot more open and soft than she ever expected. On the nights Jack is with his aunt— which are normally reserved for Aaron to do paperwork and stay late at the office, Arron instead, now has dinners with Y/N and watches movies with her on her new couch well into the morning. He even accompanies her to the lawyer's office to be her emotional support when recounting the years of abuse. 

And the abuse has continued even when she’s not in the same house as him or even talking to him. Peter texts her almost daily to say mean and terrible things, calling her a whore and accusing her of sleeping with someone else. He thinks that the reason she was able to leave so quickly is because she’s already with someone new… he even sends her pictures of their security footage from the night she moved out, already forgetting what her boss looked like as he accuses her of cheating with him. 

She wants to block his number but Hotch tells her not to, all the harassment will only help her case going forward. She keeps every message and Penelope prints out the text logs for her every few days to bring to her lawyer, who is astounded by what Peter is able to say every time. 

The day she had the divorce papers served to him, they were on a case in California and he called her phone 23 times. She didn’t answer any of them, she didn’t even listen to the messages he left. She had Penelope go in and forward them all to her lawyer, then delete them all off her cell for her. 

She sends him one last message to Peter that read: “If you have something to say, say it through your lawyer. Please don’t contact me again.” And then she blocks his number. 

They’re at Aaron's house this time, she doesn’t want to be alone tonight of all nights. With a couple boxes of Chinese take-out, they’re sitting at his dining table just talking about their days, like always, when her mind stumbles across her darker thoughts. 

“I took a huge step back in my life today.” 

“No, you haven’t,” Aaron assures.

“I had all these plans, I picked out baby names that went well with his last name, I imagined our nursery and what mothers days would be like and everything… every dream I had with him died and today I buried them.”

“I don’t mean to be rude, but did you really want him to be the father of your kids knowing what you know now?” Aaron asks. “What if he hit your children?” 

“I know… it’s just hard,” she can’t help but feel awful.

“I’m sorry, I know. I know it’s hard, I shouldn’t be saying—

“It’s okay, I need to look at the bright side… I mean, sure, I had some big dreams that will never come true but I can make new dreams. I can become a new person. That girl I was with him is dead but I can make a new me. A better me,” she sits up straight and nods a few times while taking a deep breath. “It’s going to be okay.” 

“See what I mean?” Hotch teases, “you’re so strong, this is all going to work out for the best.” 

“Thank you,” she smiles, feeling bashful, compliments like this mean the world to her. 

“You know… something I tell Jack pretty often is that if we talk about things, memories can’t die and I’m pretty sure dreams are the same. If you ever want to talk about what you wanted, I’m always here to listen to you.” 

“Jack is very lucky to have you,” she compliments him first, her heart is too full to do anything but smile. “I really want a boy… I would be happy with any child but I’ve always dreamed about having a boy.”

“I was fairly certain Haley was having a girl the majority of Jack's pregnancy, she just had such a tiny bump and I could picture us with a little girl,” Aaron shares. “I don’t think I ever told you, but I have a younger brother who is 12 years younger than me, I practically raised him, so I wanted a little girl to get the whole experience, but having Jack was easy because I already knew what I was doing.” 

“You’d be fantastic as a girl dad,” she compliments him again and can’t help herself from imagining having his babies and imagining a whole life with him.

“Thank you,” it’s his turn to smile and blush a little. “I even had a list of girl names picked out, so figuring out a boy name was what was hard for us.” 

“Oh yeah? Like what?” 

“I really like J names, apparently? My list had Jane, Juliette, Juniper… I think they all sound good with Hotchner,” he explains and it’s the cutest thing. 

“I love that, I don’t know many men who would admit to having a baby names list,” she teases. 

He shrugs, “I guess I’m not like most men.” 

“You most certainly are not,” she says with an arch of her brow. “And according to Peter, you’re my ‘hot’ new boyfriend.” 

Hotch just laughs, “Men like him are so insecure they can’t handle the 1 woman who tolerated them giving any other man some attention. He would’ve done the same thing if it was Morgan or Reid at the door.”

“I just can’t believe I let it get to the point where he hit me.” 

“You loved him,” Hotch simplifies it. “It’s hard to just drop that… you’re a rare case where the second he laid his hands on you, you left.”

“For about 20 minutes I just stared in the mirror trying to figure out if I was going to call in sick or just cover it up with some makeup,” she admits. “I didn’t want to hide it from you guys and I didn’t want you to think I’m weak. I couldn’t take everything I’ve learned and abandon it just because I loved him… and then I realized I don’t remember the last time I loved all of him. I loved our memories, I loved the version of him he was when we got married, but I haven’t really loved him in a long time.” 

“You’re incredibly strong, it takes a lot of strength to figure that out,” Hotch can’t help but compliment her again. 

“Thank you,” she says, reaching her hand out over the table to hold his. “I wouldn’t have been able to do this without you.” 

—

Aaron is sitting with her on the plane, on their way to their next case, when she gets a text from her lawyer. 

“His lawyer has reached out to me, he is fine with keeping the house and taking on the rest of the mortgage, he just wants you to pay him back for his half of the downpayment, he says it’s not fair that he will be paying the rest of the mortgage when all you did is pay that original $25k. He is fine without spousal support as long as the abuse stays quiet, he doesn’t want this to affect his own job. If you’re okay with that, I’ll tell him and he will sign the papers.” 

“Are you fucking kidding me?” She says out loud, getting everyone's attention. 

“What happened?” Aaron asks, leaning over her shoulder to read the text as well. “oh… if that’s all he wants, I think it’s a good deal.” 

“I’m going to lose all my savings again,” she admits. “We put up 50 grand together and I gave him a thousand dollars each month for the mortgage, I lost— Reid?”

“25k with 1k a month for 8 and a half years that’s 127 thousand dollars,” Spencer answers right away. 

“Thanks… I have paid more for that house than I currently make in a year,” she can’t believe it. “I also bought all the groceries, all the cleaning products I used to clean the fucking house, I paid to pick up his dry cleaning, I did the laundry every few days, I made sure he had a lunch packed every morning… I did so fucking much for that man, I’m not giving him any more of my money.” 

“So let’s go back with that, we can have Penelope gather all the information from your bank statements and previous taxes and she can total up the amount of money you’ve spent on him and that house and we can argue that he should pay you for your time. He treated you as a maid, you should be paid for your services and if they equal out to 25 grand or higher, then he has to pay you the difference or shut up,” Hotch explains, knowing how to play these games as he was once a lawyer and he’s been divorced.

“Okay,” she agrees, “yeah, I think that would work.” 

Hotch leans over her, towards the TV is, and presses the button on the screen to call Penelope. It dials and calls quickly, and she answers just as fast. “Yes, my lovelies?” 

“Can you do me a favour and gather up all of Y/N’s financial records over the last few years and find out the total she spent on groceries, dry cleaning, house expenses and the money she’s transferred to Peter’s account?” 

“I can,” she says and then looks at Y/N through the screen. “You’re okay with this?”

“Oh yeah, total it all up and send all the findings to my lawyer as well, I’m taking Peter down,” she agrees with a smile spread over her face. “He’s going to wish he never met me.” 

Penelope hangs up after that, slipping into Y/N’s life and doing the lords work, basically. It would take her accountant months to do what Penelope can do in 30 minutes. And god bless her. 

She settles into her seat again with a sigh, everyone else goes back to what they were doing, except for Hotch. They share an armrest between them, he places his hand over hers and looks at her with a soft smile, almost like he’s saying with his eyes that he’s proud of her and that it’s okay. She just smiles back, turning her hand over and interlocking their fingers, “thank you,” she whispers. 

“Anytime.” 

—

Normally on away cases, they all had their own rooms, unless the hotels were overbooked, and this was one of those times. 

Derek is with Emily, Spencer is with JJ and that leaves Hotch with Y/N. She changes into her night clothes in the bathroom, her pyjamas consisting of a plain shirt and blue butterfly-covered pants, nothing too scandalous. When she comes out, she finds him sitting up in his bed, also changed, reading over a case file with his glasses on… she didn’t even know he wore glasses? 

She just stands there in the bathroom doorway and stares at him until he looks up at her, “You okay?” 

She nods, “when did you get glasses?” 

“A couple years ago,” he shrugs. “They’re readers, sometimes I have a hard time reading at night.”

“They look nice on you,” she compliments him, sending a soft smile his way before she puts her work clothes back in her suitcase. 

When she turns back to her bed, Aaron is putting the files on his night table and taking said glasses off. “Are you tired?” 

“Not really,” she admits. Turning the comforter down, she slips into bed and turns to him, “Are you?” 

He shakes his head softly, “I was going to call Jack and then I remembered it’s well past midnight over there, I did text Jess, however, and she said he had a good night.” 

“You’re such a good dad, I hope he tells you that all the time…” it just rolls off the tongue, she didn’t even have a chance to stop herself. But the smile on his face is worth the embarrassment she felt for telling him how she feels. 

“Thank you,” he’s so soft about it. “You’re going to be a great mom too, I know it.” 

She just presses her lips together and hums, shaking her head slightly she bites her lip so she can hold back the tears that want to start coming. “I don’t think it’s going to happen for—

“It will,” he cuts her off. “You’re doing the right thing by getting away from him, I promise you, it’s going to work out for you.” 

She wants to cry, normally she spends most of her alone time crying in her lonely bed, be it at the house Dereks letting her crash in or a hotel somewhere in the country, she always ends up crying her eyes out. Tonight she can’t do that. “I hope so.” 

“It will,” he’s serious about it. “Do you need a hug?” 

She just nods and he gets out of his bed in a hurry to make it over to hers, he slips under the covers and pulls her into a hug and she can’t help but cuddle into his chest. “It just gets loud in my head sometimes, like everything he’s said to me starts to echo around and I can’t help but believe it… like maybe I’m not ever meant to be someone's mom?” 

He just rubs her back and lets her get it all out. “Can I be honest?” She nods against his chest. “I didn’t trust him when I first met him. He seemed off and now I guess I know why. He was keeping secrets and he knew the better you got at your job, the closer you’d be to figuring out all the lies he was telling and he’d be alone again. Men like him tell lies because they know that they can’t keep wonderful women like you when you know the truth about them. And now that you know the truth, he’s making it your problem.” 

“I just can’t believe he was going to let me believe I was broken instead of just telling me he didn’t want kids. Do you know what that does to a person?” She asks as she sits back up and looks him right in the eyes. “I haven’t felt good enough in years… I’ve hated myself for so long, Aaron.” 

“I don’t think you’re broken, I think you’re miraculous and wonderful… exceptional, even,” he admits, staring deep into her eyes like he’s found her soul in there. “And I know what it’s like to try for a long time, Haley and I tried for years and I watched it slowly suck the life out of her, any man that can sit by and watch that and not care, is a sociopath.” 

“Did you and Haley want more kids… before everything happened?” She asks, eyes trailing down to his lips and then back to making eye contact with him, she can read the hurt on his face.

He nods, “I’d still love to have more kids.” 

Her eyes light right up, “really?” 

He nods again, “I would… I wasn’t going to ask you out until well after the divorce was final. I don’t want to get in the middle of everything or ruin the chances of you getting away from him without issue… but I’ve thought you were beautiful since the moment I first saw you.” 

“Aaron?” She really can’t believe it. “What are you saying?” 

“If you want to have a child, I’d gladly show you what it’s like to have a real man love you,” he rephrases it with a lot more confidence and passion in his voice. He knows what he wants and every part of him hopes she wants it too.

She can’t believe it. The words don’t seem real. Part of her thinks she fell asleep quickly and this is all a dream. There’s no way her boss— and the most handsome man she’s seen in her life, is saying this to her. “you want to sleep with me?” 

He laughs, “More than that… which is hard for me to admit because I’m your boss, I shouldn’t like you as much as I do. But I do. I would love to see where this goes… After the divorce.” 

“Aaron, am I dreaming? Are you serious?” She shakes her head and shuffles further away from him. “What the hell is happening?” 

“You’re awake, I promise,” Aaron assures her while also keeping his distance. “I’m sorry, if you don’t feel the same, I’ll back off—

“No, no, it’s not that, I just— I’ve just never been with anyone but Peter, he was my first real boyfriend, I never thought anyone else would ever want me?” She’s honest. “Are you serious?” 

“I’ve been with 3 women,” he admits, it’s not like his number is crazy, but it’s still not what she expected. 

“Really?” 

He nods, “Haley was my first, back in high school, then I slept with someone during my time doing security for U.S. diplomats— Haley and I were on and off again all the time before we got married... And then Beth, last year.” 

“You worked for Emily’s mom,” she knows that story… “did you and Emily—

“It was just a one-time thing. She was an adult and still living at home and also still rebellious as hell… she wanted to piss her mom off, but I didn’t know until after the fact,” Aaron is exceptionally honest. “We’ve always had a good friendship. That’s the one thing all 3 women have in common, actually. They were all my friends first.” 

She hums, following along with a nod, “You are my closest thing to a best friend, currently… I think you’re actually the best friend I’ve ever had in my whole entire life. I just don’t know if I’m ready yet.” 

“That’s okay, it’s more than okay, actually,” he rests his hand on her knee. “I was never going to say anything about how much I like you, I wasn’t going to ruin your marriage or convince you to cheat, I’d never do that—

“I know you wouldn’t, believe me, I know you’re a good man,” she places her hand on top of his and holds it tight. 

“Thank you… I just mean to say that I would wait forever for you.” 

“It won’t be that long, I can promise you that,” she smiles, moving back in closer to him. “Best friends can sleep in the same bed… and my marriage is already over, so it’s not cheating no matter what anyone would say if they saw us cuddling.” 

“Should I turn the light off?” He says with a smirk. 

She just nods, “yeah, get comfy, Hotchner, you’re not leaving my bed tonight.” 

—

Turns out, she’s spent close to a quarter of a million dollars on taking care of Peter and their home over the last 8 and a half years.

That’s not even including the time they were living in an apartment together, before and a few months after their wedding. She has her lawyer go back to his lawyer with this information and the fact she will Not be paying him for his half of the downpayment. He doesn’t like that. So, they come to an agreement to meet with a mediator. This way, she can voice her concerns, he can voice his and they can hopefully get the papers signed without going to court. 

Standing her ground and sitting in a chair opposite him was going to be the best way for her to win this. He is so much more confident on the phone, sending her threats and derogatory comments, he’s not that confident in front of her. Especially not when she has her boss in the chair beside her. 

“Why is he here?” Peter says the second he walks into the meeting room of her lawyer's office. He sits down aggressively and leans back in his chair, exuding an air of fake confidence that both she and Hotch don’t believe. 

“He’s my boss, he’s here to ensure my safety and my lawyer's safety,” she stands her ground. “I’m not about to get choked out again."

“You’re that afraid of me?” He laughs. 

Hotch flips open the folder in front of himself and holds up the photos of Y/N’s face the morning she came into work beat up. “You did this to her, what else are we supposed to think about you?” 

“There’s no proof my client did that,” his lawyer speaks up. The man can’t be more than 30, he must be a new lawyer with less experience than Andrea or Aaron. “She works a difficult job where she gets tossed around by criminals—

“We have the footage from the security camera inside your shared home,” Y/N’s lawyer cuts him off. 

“What?” Peter can’t believe it. “Since when is there one inside the house?” 

“We got them installed after the neighbours were robbed, or did you forget?” Y/N looks at him like he’s an idiot. “You signed off on it, you wanted to be able to see who was in our house if we got robbed like the neighbours did. There is one in the front hall, the living space, your office and our closet. You sent me photos of me and Aaron packing my things. You know it’s in there.” 

“My client—

“Is a liar,” Y/N’s lawyer cuts him off once again. “we have his signature and testimony from the security company saying he was the one who called and asked for internal cameras. They even kept the call logs and we’ve got a copy of the work order from the men who set them up.” 

Peter slumps in his seat. His tongue runs along his top teeth as he shakes his head, “what do you want?”

“I want out.” Y/N simplifies. “You wasted the last 10 years of my life, you lied to me and you abused me. I want you to sign the papers and let me go.” 

“So you can go fuck your boss?” 

Y/N stands with such force her role chair goes flying back, she slams her hands on the table and stares him down the way she would in an interrogation with an unsub, “What I do with my time isn’t any of your concern! This is a 1 party divorce state, if you give me a hard time I will not hesitate to take you to court and get a judge to sign off on this. I don’t need your help, I just thought this would be easier for you, but if you want the whole state of Virginia to know you’re a wife-beater, I can do that.” 

“And she’ll win,” Hotch offers, “I’ve been inside enough courtrooms to know that with this much evidence, you’re never going to see any money from her.” 

“Fine,” Peter gives in with a wave of his hands. “Where do I sign?” 

She sits back down then, biting back a smirk as she’s filled with pride. She really did it. She won. 

“So you’re agreeing to keep the house and she doesn’t have to pay you anything to get out of the mortgage?” Her lawyer clarifies. 

He nods, “Yes.” 

“Okay,” Andrea hands the paperwork over to Peter's lawyer. “This is the original agreement I sent you. It states what items still in the home belong to Y/N and if I remember correctly, you already agreed to her taking those with her at an arranged date and time with a mediator on the premises.” 

“That’s correct.” Peter's lawyer reads it over quickly, assuring it’s exactly what she says it is and then hands it over to Peter, “Sign there, there and on the last page, each spot is marked.” 

“Got it,” Peter says, not caring at all. He signs the 3 spots and slides the papers back across the table. “What now?” 

“What time is good for me to come get my things?” Y/N asks, trying not to smile with happiness. 

“Are you okay to do it tonight?” Peter asks, “I moved most of it into boxes and put them by the door… I’ve had a lot of time to organize. I think I’m going to sell it and move closer to where my parents are.” 

“That would be good for you,” she agrees. It’s weird to see all his aggressiveness fade now that she’s no longer his wife. “Aaron’s going to come with me, is that okay?” 

He nods, “I’m surprised you’re so comfortable bringing your boyfriend around me already.” 

And there it is. 

“You know, I’m not surprised this ended. You’ve always been so insecure about every single man in my life, even my brother and my cousins? Did you really think I’d just stay single my whole life after you? Did you really think you were such an amazing husband that I’d be so broken and damaged I’d never be able to move on? You weren’t anything spectacular and I think you’ve always known that.” 

“I’ll put your shit on the porch,” he says with a huff as he stands up to leave. “Have a nice life.” 

“We will,” Aaron answers, digging more salt into the wound as Y/N waves at him with a smile. 

Finally, she’s free.

—

It doesn’t take long for them to load all of her things into Aaron’s SUV and with Peter's lawyer in the house to supervise. She does one final sweep to make sure she has all her things. It looks good, so she gives Peter one final smile and a wave and then she’s gone. 

She watches the house fade to nothing in the passenger side mirror and her smile only grows. It doesn’t feel like an ending like she thought it would. All those dreams that seemed bigger than the whole sky are nothing but rain clouds that were once disguised as happy shapes… the rain that burst from them washed away all her sadness and left her with a blank space of sidewalk where she could once again be decorated with beautiful chalky colours. 

“So?” Aaron asks, looking between her and the road with a mighty smirk. “What’s next?” 

“I thought you were going to ask me out on a date?” She teases. 

“You’re ready already?” He’s a bit shocked, “I thought we were just pushing his buttons?” 

She shakes her head, “We were… but I’m also ready to be loved by a real man. The same man who’s always there for me, the man who would do anything to protect me. I want you too, Aaron.” 

“Well, okay then, Agent (your maiden name), where should we go for dinner tonight?” He asks, “Do you want to go somewhere fancy or should we order from our regular place?”

“Hmm… as tempting as that sounds, I think I’d like to get dressed up and go somewhere with you.” 

And so that’s what they do. While she’s changing into something nice, Aaron makes a call to a friend who would be able to get them a table at the nicest place in town with only an hour to spare. Luckily, he has good friends in all sorts of places, so before she can even really second guess the date, they’re sat in the back corner of a dark restaurant sharing a candle-lit dinner. 

“So… how is this going to work?” She finally asks, she can’t keep it in any longer. 

“What do you mean?” Aaron asks. 

“Like, are we going to file fraternization paperwork? Are we going to tell the team? Should I transfer to another unit?” 

“Oh… I think we could file the paperwork if you want to and you don’t have to leave, you’d just have to report to Morgan or Cruz, it wouldn’t be that hard.” 

“And are you going to tell Jack?” 

He nods, “Eventually.” 

“Does he even want to be a big brother?” 

Aarons a bit taken aback by that question, “I… I really don’t know?” 

“Cause I don’t want him to hate me, I’ve seen so many cases where kids grow up to hate their dad's girlfriends and new stepmoms and feel like they lost their dad when a new baby shows up,” she just lets all the worry out then and there, there’s no point keeping it from him. He’d figure it out eventually. 

“Well… the best thing we could do is go slowly, I can talk to him about it and see where he stands with it all. I know for a fact he really liked Beth and he was very little when Haley left me so I don’t think he holds any resentment for the divorce, I think it’ll be okay.” 

“Okay,” she repeats while letting out a deep breath. “Cause… I know you like me but I never got to tell you how I feel about you. I think you’re a wonderful man and you’re so astoundingly handsome it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside and—” 

“Really?” He cuts her off with a smirk. 

“Yeah,” she manages to laugh, snapping out of the panic because it’s just so easy with him. “This is how I was supposed to feel with my husband… thank you for making me realize I deserve better and thank you for being what I deserve.” 

“I feel the same way… I mean, I loved Haley even after the divorce, hell, a part of me still does love her and I don’t think it will ever fade. However, it’s so nice to feel like this again,” Aaron agrees. “I’m just a little anxious that it’ll all come crumbling down around me again.” 

“Why?” She asks, not thinking she could ever leave him heartbroken. 

“Our job isn’t the safest environment. If you get hurt on the job I don’t know what I’ll do… my little crush on you was hard enough to deal with out there, and that was when you were married and I thought there was no chance of us being together because I’m not a home wrecker, but now… now I have to watch you go out there into the unknown every day with half of my heart in your pocket,” he explains, almost tearing up.

She shakes her head softly and reaches out for his hand, “Aaron, I’m always going to come home with you. Even if I get a little hurt, I know I’ll always fight to get back to you… and I have the same worries, I never want to lose you and physically see it happen or know I could’ve been there to stop it. It’s going to make the job harder, sure, but we could also just get better at what we do because we love each other.” 

She watches all the worry fade from his face as his jaw drops for a moment. “You love me, too?” 

She can’t help but laugh, “Yeah, Aaron, I love you.” 

Just as they lean in to kiss over the table, Aaron's phone starts to ring in his pocket. With a disgruntled sigh, Aaron sits back down in his chair and takes his phone out, answering it with his last name, she watches him go devoid of feelings. “Yes sir, we’ll be right there.” 

She sighs, “I’ll get the car, you get the check.”

They stand up at the same time and before she can get too far, he pulls her in close. Hand on her lower back, faces inches apart, “I’m going to show you just how much I love you when we get home, okay?” 

“Okay,” she smiles, leaning into their first kiss.

Still smiling as their lips touch, she could swear sparks fly around them as the restaurant fills with the screaming sound of a million colourful fireworks.

General Taglist

@ncsls0515 @stevesmunsons @reidsbookclub @sweetyyhippyy @manuosorioh @mrs-dr-reid @k-k0129 @squishyturtle @katsukis1wife @babybisexual @marsmunson86 @x-a-delama-x @kylakins88 @harrypotteranna23-blog @moonlightspencie

Bigger than the whole sky taglist:

@ssamorganhotchner @mrs-ssa-hotch

[russellsppttemplates]

Your mummy is my hero (Lance Stroll)

Lance and Y/N continue their journey into parenthood

Note: english is not my first language. Like the last pieces, this piece is written from experiences I know and not from such a scientific point of view, so it is probable that there are some mistakes as I'm not a doctor. Still, I've tried to treat this as respectfully as possible as this is very close to my heart.

Thank you so much to everyone who likes and reblogs, your feedback is appreciated 🤍 and I'm taking requests so if you have any ideas or concepts you want to share, feel free to do so as I'll try to get to them the best I can!

my masterlist

Tw: mentions endometriosis, fertility issues and treatments and associated topics (needles, blood), pregnancy, baby feeding

Tag list: @myloverjk-blog

"Hey, darling", Lance greeted, setting the wooden spoon on the counter and wiping his hands on the towell by the cabinets, "how was your day?", he walked up to you, placing his hands on your waist as pulling you to him close enough so he could kiss you, "it was good, but I'm really tired, like, really really tired", you hummed before blushing at your own admission.

Lately, the smallest efforts, both physical and cognitive, were leaving you with a tiredness you couldn't recognise. Pairing that with the fact that Lance had been extra doting on you since the transfer, which meant cosy nights in his chest always available for you to lay on, there hadn't been a night in the last week where you hadn't been in bed by the time the news finished on the TV.

"And you managed to eat lunch?", he asked, walking back to the stove so he could finish plating up the food he just cooked, "yes, it was fine. I think this whole eating and going to bed routine, as lovely as it is, is not agreeing with my stomach", you shrugged.

Approaching him so it would be your turn to hug him, you positioned yourself so you could get close enough to his neck, kissing the thin skin there and whispering in his ear, "am I crazy if I think this means our little bun is making themselves warm and cosy in my uterus?".

"I think it's okay, because I'm hopeful, too", he whispered back, smiling as he kissed your cheek, "tomorrow we will know for sure", Lance offered, "until then, I have one of your favourite dishes and some cuddles that hopefully won't turn your tummy upside down", he smiled, holding your plate out so you could bring it to the table and you could both eat dinner.

.

"Dr. Marlin will call you shortly", one of the nurses informed as she escorted you out the the room she had taken your blood in, smiling warmly at Lance.

"Everything okay?", your husband asked, "yes, at this point, I don't even mind it", you reassured him, holding his hand in yours, "whatever happens today, we'll get through it, okay?", he whispered. Even though he cried happy tears when you had the transfer, he had gotten back to be the strong person in the process. He was the one caring for you and making sure you were both standing with your feet on the ground, regulating any emotions and allowing you to breakdown every time you needed to, never failing to bring the smile back to your face.

"I have your results back", Dr. Marlin said once you had sat down and had small talk, "congratulations, Y/N! You're pregnant", she announced.

Lance was quick to pull you to his side, hugging you as best as he could and kissing the side of your head as you cried, "I'm sorry, but these good news are also a lot to take in", you chuckled, wiping the tears with your thumbs before looking at Dr. Marlin, sensing she wanted to carry on.

"It's okay to feel like this, it's completely normal", she offered, "while this is still early, so we have to be careful, your levels looks really good", she pointed the screen so you could see your results and the interval they have to be for successful procedures, "everything is looking good, your HCG levels are very good even. You already know the risks and what you should keep an eye out for, but so far, we are headed in the right direction, congratulations!".

After prescribing you prenatal vitamins and booking the next appointment, Dr. Marlin sent you both on your way to enjoy the rest of the afternoon, "I love you", Lance said once you sat in the passengers seat, kissing your lips passionately, "I love you, too, handsome, so much", you smiled, cupping his cheek softly and rubbing the skin with your thumb quickly before he moved so he could close the door.

.

"And then I was like 'wait, I've learnt how to do this in a better way!', so I gathered the things I needed and so far, it's going along well", you said as you walked around the bedroom, grabbing your underwear from the drawer and putting it on, untying your robe's belt as you walked to the head of the bed so you could grab and put your pyjamas on, "and what about you?", you asked your husband, "did they change the shape on the front wing?", you asked, taking off the robe completely.

"Yes, they ran some tests and it looks promising, and I also d- woah", he gasped, adjusting his position onto the bed, "it wasn't there last night", he whispered, rolling on the bed so he could approach you, his head in line with your midsection.

"What wasn't th- oh", you noticed, too. The swell under your boobs was prominent. Not like whenever you had a little bit too much of your mother's cooking or whenever your period left you feeling heavier, but rather like a baby bump.

"It still feels surreal", you whispered, pulling your shorts all the way up so they sat lowly on your hips and sitting on the bed next to Lance, his hand going straight to caress your skin while you pulled the thin material on to rest just under your boobs, "our little one is growing, made themselves cosy and warm inside mummy? You're very clever already", he spoke to the bump as his hands continued their ministrations on your skin, pressing his lips above your belly button and leaving small kisses there, "you still have a long way to grow, but mummy and daddy are here so excited to meet you, love".

.

"She's growing my baby, and I don't mean this to sound so animalistic - maybe it's that instinct though -, but she's growing our baby that we made together and she's the best, she's taking everything like a champion. I know that there are hard days, but she's still doing it 24/7", Lance said.

"Well, it's not something you can tag out or have a break", Chloe retorted despite knowing where her younger brother was getting at.

"I know, but- she's been through a lot, we've been through a lot, and we're finally so close to meeting our daughter", he admitted.

You didn't want to make a big fuss around it, but you insisted on gathering both families for a dinner to celebrate your baby and to spend some time together before your routines changed. You and Lance spoke to a caterer who delivered the food at your place while Chloe, Scotty and your husband set the big table while you played with your nephew, the little boy forever entertained with your games and occasionally kissing your clothed bump like he had seen his uncle do so many times.

When Chloe brought the small box with balloons, her smile was beaming, "open it, open it! I'm very proud of myself for not taking a peak, but please, open it!", your sister in law beamed, clapping her hands as the rest of the family members waited expectantly for you and Lance to rip the tape and lift the lid of the box.

When you did so and it revealed lavender coloured balloons with silver writing announcing "it's a girl!", everyone cheered and clapped, Lance hugging you as one hand travelled to your bump whole the other pulled your closer, "ready to be a girl dad?", you teased, kissing his chin, "I was born ready for this, my love".

Knowing you were carrying his little girl made Lance even more attentive to you, if that was possible, and it brought out an even softer side of him. He tried to be there for all the appointments he could, had organised a list with you so you could both have input in what you'd need to buy for your baby girl, and anytime he saw something he liked and thought "she absolutely needs to have this", he would bring it home along with your favourite dessert in a take out bag.

"I'm back", you announced as you walked back into the living room, "hopefully she'll let me sit for longer than an hour and not use my bladder like a dance floor", you chuckled, seeing Lance open his arms so you could sit next to him as he hugged you sideways.

"Have you thought about names? I remember me and Scotty went back and forth with so many names until we found the one that felt right", Chloe questioned.

"We have a list with a couple of them", you began, "and we're set on one, Addalynn. It's a strong name, we can do Addy for a short nickname", you explained, rubbing your bump as you felt her kick, "and she seems to like it, too! She always wiggles harder whenever we say it!".

.

The rumble in the corridor was practically unheard inside your hospital room as Lance exited the bathroom after washing his hands, looking over to you and seeing your sleeping figure. The labour had, as expected, taken a lot of energy from you, so after the medical team made sure you were in good health and after you fed your babygirl, they urged you to rest for a little bit, reassuring you that they'd be around if anything happened.

"Hey, little love", Lance cooed, noticing his daughter give a little scrunch in her bassinet and prompting him to take her out and hold her against his chest, "what a delicious scrunch you've got there, hm?", he complimented as he grabbed a blanket, sitting down and covering her back with the blanket after making sure she was in a good position, "Mummy is resting now, you gave her a hard time to come out here, did you know that?"

"Mummy and I have dreamed of this day for a really long time, and you've made our dreams come true", he cooed, softly touching Addalynn's soft chubby cheeks, "mummy put her body through a lot so we could be a family, and that's why she's my hero", he noted as she made a small noise, meaningless to the conversation and yet Lance felt like she was reacting to what he said.

"I know, right? She's sleeping now, but you probably fell in love with her the minute you were put on her chest, like we did with you. Mummy is kind, selfless and resilient. Sometimes she's stubborn, too", he chuckled, "but that means she loves extra hard, too, and that we just need to keep an eye out when she's taking too much of a burden so we can share it. You and I are going to be a team for that, okay? Always keeping an eye out for mummy", he smiled, kissing her forehead, "your mummy is my hero, and from now on, you are both my priorities", he promised, the sigh from his daughter's lips as she opened and closed her mouth, "are you hungry? Mummy is asleep, isn't- Oh, she isn't, hm?".

You chuckled, rubbing your eyes as you smiled tiredly, "were you two having a chat? Without me?", you feigned offense as you watched your husband get up so he could place your daughter on your chest, "let's have some food, hm? Such a gorgeous girl, you are, and maybe me and you can also have a chat about daddy. I'm sure you've figured it out already", you added as you lowered your top, "but he's the best daddy ever".

[mostlysignssomeportents]

At long last, a meaningful step to protect Americans' privacy

This Saturday (19 Aug), I'm appearing at the San Diego Union-Tribune Festival of Books. I'm on a 2:30PM panel called "Return From Retirement," followed by a signing:

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/festivalofbooks

Privacy raises some thorny, subtle and complex issues. It also raises some stupid-simple ones. The American surveillance industry's shell-game is founded on the deliberate confusion of the two, so that the most modest and sensible actions are posed as reductive, simplistic and unworkable.

Two pillars of the American surveillance industry are credit reporting bureaux and data brokers. Both are unbelievably sleazy, reckless and dangerous, and neither faces any real accountability, let alone regulation.

Remember Equifax, the company that doxed every adult in America and was given a mere wrist-slap, and now continues to assemble nonconsensual dossiers on every one of us, without any material oversight improvements?

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/07/20/equifax-settles-with-ftc-cfpb-states-and-consumer-class-actions-for-700m/

Equifax's competitors are no better. Experian doxed the nation again, in 2021:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/30/dox-the-world/#experian

It's hard to overstate how fucking scummy the credit reporting world is. Equifax invented the business in 1899, when, as the Retail Credit Company, it used private spies to track queers, political dissidents and "race mixers" so that banks and merchants could discriminate against them:

https://jacobin.com/2017/09/equifax-retail-credit-company-discrimination-loans

As awful as credit reporting is, the data broker industry makes it look like a paragon of virtue. If you want to target an ad to "Rural and Barely Making It" consumers, the brokers have you covered:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/13/public-interest-pharma/#axciom

More than 650,000 of these categories exist, allowing advertisers to target substance abusers, depressed teens, and people on the brink of bankruptcy:

https://themarkup.org/privacy/2023/06/08/from-heavy-purchasers-of-pregnancy-tests-to-the-depression-prone-we-found-650000-ways-advertisers-label-you

These companies follow you everywhere, including to abortion clinics, and sell the data to just about anyone:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/07/safegraph-spies-and-lies/#theres-no-i-in-uterus

There are zillions of these data brokers, operating in an unregulated wild west industry. Many of them have been rolled up into tech giants (Oracle owns more than 80 brokers), while others merely do business with ad-tech giants like Google and Meta, who are some of their best customers.

As bad as these two sectors are, they're even worse in combination – the harms data brokers (sloppy, invasive) inflict on us when they supply credit bureaux (consequential, secretive, intransigent) are far worse than the sum of the harms of each.

And now for some good news. The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, under the leadership of Rohit Chopra, has declared war on this alliance:

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/08/16/cfpb-looks-to-restrict-the-sleazy-link-between-credit-reporting-agencies-and-data-brokers/

They've proposed new rules limiting the trade between brokers and bureaux, under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, putting strict restrictions on the transfer of information between the two:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/15/tech/privacy-rules-data-brokers/index.html

As Karl Bode writes for Techdirt, this is long overdue and meaningful. Remember all the handwringing and chest-thumping about Tiktok stealing Americans' data to the Chinese military? China doesn't need Tiktok to get that data – it can buy it from data-brokers. For peanuts.

The CFPB action is part of a muscular style of governance that is characteristic of the best Biden appointees, who are some of the most principled and competent in living memory. These regulators have scoured the legislation that gives them the power to act on behalf of the American people and discovered an arsenal of action they can take:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

Alas, not all the Biden appointees have the will or the skill to pull this trick off. The corporate Dems' darlings are mired in #LearnedHelplessness, convinced that they can't – or shouldn't – use their prodigious powers to step in to curb corporate power:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

And it's true that privacy regulation faces stiff headwinds. Surveillance is a public-private partnership from hell. Cops and spies love to raid the surveillance industries' dossiers, treating them as an off-the-books, warrantless source of unconstitutional personal data on their targets:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/16/ring-ring-lapd-calling/#ring

These powerful state actors reliably intervene to hamstring attempts at privacy law, defending the massive profits raked in by data brokers and credit bureaux. These profits, meanwhile, can be mobilized as lobbying dollars that work lawmakers and regulators from the private sector side. Caught in the squeeze between powerful government actors (the true "Deep State") and a cartel of filthy rich private spies, lawmakers and regulators are frozen in place.

Or, at least, they were. The CFPB's discovery that it had the power all along to curb commercial surveillance follows on from the FTC's similar realization last summer:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/12/regulatory-uncapture/#conscious-uncoupling

I don't want to pretend that all privacy questions can be resolved with simple, bright-line rules. It's not clear who "owns" many classes of private data – does your mother own the fact that she gave birth to you, or do you? What if you disagree about such a disclosure – say, if you want to identify your mother as an abusive parent and she objects?

But there are so many stupid-simple privacy questions. Credit bureaux and data-brokers don't inhabit any kind of grey area. They simply should not exist. Getting rid of them is a project of years, but it starts with hacking away at their sources of profits, stripping them of defenses so we can finally annihilate them.

I'm kickstarting the audiobook for "The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation," a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and make a new, good internet to succeed the old, good internet. It's a DRM-free book, which means Audible won't carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/16/the-second-best-time-is-now/#the-point-of-a-system-is-what-it-does

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

[mariacallous]

(CNN) - In new clarifying guidance announced Monday, the Biden Administration said that federal law preempts state abortion bans when emergency care is needed, and that the federal government can penalize institutions or providers that fail to provide necessary abortions to treat medical emergencies.

"Under the law, no matter where you live, women have the right to emergency care — including abortion care," HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a news release Monday. "Today, in no uncertain terms, we are reinforcing that we expect providers to continue offering these services, and that federal law preempts state abortion bans when needed for emergency care."

In more than a dozen states, legal fights are underway over abortion bans and other laws that strictly limit the procedure after the US Supreme Court ended a constitutional right to an abortion on June 24.

In a letter to the nation's health care providers on Monday, Becerra said a federal statute called the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) protects providers' clinical judgement and the actions they take to provide stabilizing treatment to pregnant patients who are experiencing emergency medical conditions, regardless of restrictions in any given state.

EMTALA has been on the books since 1986. It specifically requires all patients get the appropriate medical screening, examination, stabilizing treatment and transfer to an appropriate facility if necessary.

The administration said examples of emergency medical conditions may include, but are not limited to, ectopic pregnancy -- when the fertilized egg grows outside a woman's uterus -- and complications of miscarriages. Stabilizing treatment could include abortion.

Becerra said if a state law bans abortion and does not include an exception for the life and health of the pregnant person, that state law is preempted by the federal statute.

"We heard a lot from physicians that we needed to be clearer on these points because people were still too scared to treat people," a senior adviser with HHS said in a background briefing with the media. The guidance today is "meant to try to provide that reassurance here on the clinical judgment of these physicians and hospitals."

HHS said it will do everything within its authority to ensure patients get the care they need.

The statute applies to emergency departments and other specific clinical settings. Providers also will not have to wait for a patient's condition to worsen to be protected by this statute.

If a hospital is found in violation of this statute, a hospital could lose its Medicare and Medicaid provider agreements and could face civil penalties. An individual physician could also face civil penalties if they are found in violation.

Under the statute HHS may impose a $119,942 fine per violation for hospitals with over 100 beds, $59,973 for hospitals under 100 beds. A physician could face a $119,942 fine per violation.

"We are making enforcement a priority," a senior HHS official said.

A memo from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said that hospitals should ensure that all staff who may encounter an emergency situation with a pregnant person be aware of the hospital's obligation under EMTALA.

The statute also contains a whistleblower provision that prevents retaliation by the hospital against its employee who refuses to transfer a patient with an emergency medical condition that has not been stabilized by the hospital. A link on the CMS website allows people to file an EMTALA complaint.

The enforcement of EMTALA depends on people making a complaint to the government. An investigation can only follow if a complaint is made.

"Health care must be between a patient and their doctor, not a politician," said Becerra in a news release. "We will continue to leverage all available resources at HHS to make sure women can access the life-saving care they need."

[topguncortez]

A Gift To Remember || Whumptober Day 10 - B. Floyd

whumptober masterlist

synopsis: you and bob had been trying for a long time to start a family of your own. and right when you start to see the light at the end of the tunnel, it gets snuffed out

@ailesswhumptober prompt: abandoned

word count: 2.4k

warnings: mentions of pregnancy, mentions of miscarriages, failed IVF, mentions of female anatomy, cursing, grammar errors.

You wanted to cry. The hot tears behind your eyes held both the excitement and fear you had been holding in for the past three minutes. You tried your best to not look at the ticking black dots on the small screens as you waited. It was only driving you crazier, but you couldn’t look away either. Everything that you had been waiting and praying for was about to be determined in a matter of seconds.

It had been three years of being treated like a human science experiment. Three years of being told your chances of conceiving were slim to none. Three years of doctor’s appointments, spreading your legs so some doctor could take a swab of your uterus to test the thickness of the lining. You didn’t even know that was something that had to be done. The lining of your interior organ was too thin apparently, not suitable for an embryo to latch itself onto. Three years of being treated like a pincushion, dropping your pants for Bob to inject you at the same time, in the same spot, every day. Three years of tears and failed transfers because your body decided to not do the one thing you were put on this planet to do.

Bob never blamed you. He had supported you, holding your hand through all the procedures and tears shed. He was right by your side, making sure you took your meds, that you were mentally okay, and injecting your thigh with hormones. Bob was your rock, always staying strong as you were broken after every “failed” appointment.

But your most recent transfer had been a success. Your lining was thick enough and your doctor went ahead with the transfer, transferring one of the three fertilized embryos. Bob held your hand tightly, watching the screen as the doctor implanted the egg into you. He had stayed up for hours, talking to your belly, encouraging them to grow, as if they could hear him, or if they had even stuck. It had been over two months since the transfer when you had started noticing the small changes. The constant headaches, the nausea, and the achy breasts were all signs you normally got but the one that stood out to you was the lack of a menstrual cycle. You had sprinted to the drug store, buying a 3 pack of Clearblue pregnancy tests and a bottle of water.

The small screens were haunting you as the words read back. The wording ingraining into your eyes: POSITIVE. All you could do was grab onto the sink to stop you from collapsing. They had never said that before, they were always negative. Not once did you ever get back a positive pregnancy test. You let out a squeal of excitement, covering your mouth as you cried.

The sound of a car door slamming shut, had you turning your head to the closed bathroom door. You could hear Bob greet your dog: Bosco as he came in. You quickly grabbed all three pregnancy tests and ran down the hall. Bob smiled as he kneeled down to pet his dogs and noticed your frantic running down the stairs.

“Whoa babe where’s the. . . “ All you could do was hold the pregnancy tests up, as Bob’s eyes did his best to read them, “. . . fire. Are those positive?”

“They’re positive!” You smiled big. Bob stood up from the ground and ran over to you on the stairs, taking all three in his hand.

“Oh my god. . . oh my god! They’re positive! Oh my god!” Bob yelled and threw his arms around your middle hugging you tightly. He kissed your cheek and nuzzled his head into your neck, letting his own tears fall down his face.

He had been waiting for this moment just as much as you had. He had never shown you his emotions throughout this process, to him, it was important he was the strong one. He wasn’t the one who was being injected and examined and their body was failing them constantly. Bob hid his emotions well, locking himself in the bathroom at night while you were sleeping, putting a towel underneath the door jam, and breaking down. Silent sobs would leave his mouth and he prayed that you wouldn’t wake up and hear him. He cried almost every night, feeling like a failure too. He didn’t understand, it was so easy for the people around him to get pregnant without trying, but for some reason, it was mission impossible for you guys.

Bob let you go, setting you back down on the step carefully. He leaned his forehead against yours, cradling your face in his hands, “I love you, so fucking much.” He whispered against your lips.

“I love you too, Bob,” You whispered back, your hands finding their way to his face. You two stood there in silence, in each other’s embrace, soaking in the moment. The moment that you had wanted since day one. Bob always wanted to be a dad, and you always wanted to be a mom.

------------------------

You and Bob had been on cloud nine for a week after finding out you were pregnant. Bob had told the dagger squad. The boys had known about your guys’ fertility issues, they had also been a rock to help you and Bob stand tall after failures. Bob had confided in each of them, Jake more than his own brothers. They had gotten close after the Uranium Mission, Jake considering Bob to be one of his brothers. 

They were beyond ecstatic that you and Bob were pregnant. They all had their own little families, and could see the painful looks on your guys' faces anytime they would come visit. Jake and his wife did their best to give you time with their babies, but you had started to gently decline, your own pain becoming too much to bear, and didn’t want their pity.

Bob held your hand tightly as his knee was bouncing quickly. You guys were at your first doctor's appointment, the first time you will be able to see your baby. Bob’s hands were shaking and your heart was pounding in your chest. Usually, these appointments were disappointing, telling you guys that the transfer process was being halted or had failed because of you. But for once you were optimistic. The hardest part was over, and now you just wanted to see your growing little baby.

“Knock, knock,” The doctor said, poking her head inside the exam room. You smiled up at her as she walked in, “Y/N, Bob, let’s take a look at that baby, shall we?”

“Oh fuck yeah,” Bob breathed out. You smiled at him as he kissed your hand. He stood up from the chair he was sitting in, standing by your head, his eyes trained on the ultrasound machine screen.

“This is going to be cold,” The doctor said, picking up the gel and squirting it on your belly. You were used to the feeling by now, once a month you had an ultrasound to get lining measurements.

The doctor placed the transducer on your belly, and moved it around, getting the view of the inside of your body. You looked up at Bob with a smile, who shot one back down at you, before his coffee colored eyes went back to the screen. Your eyes went to the doctor, who had a puzzled look on her face. She clicked on several keys on the keyboard, while moving the transducer around to get a better look. She moved it around several times, pressing harder as she moved along. She glanced over at you, a grimm look on her face as she took a picture of the inside of your uterus, and put the transducer down.

“I’m sorry, Y/N, Bob, but I’m not seeing anything,” She said softly.

“What?” You asked, your voice light and confused, “B-But I’m pregnant. I took three fucking tests and they were all positive.”

“I’m sorry, it was a false positive. Your blood work sent up a flag, but there’s nothing on the ultrasound. I’m afraid you're not pregnant,” The doctor said. You bit your lip and shook your head, not wanting to believe anything she was saying. Bob’s grip on your hand loosened as he was absorbing the words the doctor had just said.

“T-this doesn’t make fucking sense!” Bob yelled and you flinched at the sound of his voice, “H-How can three fucking tests be wrong!?”

“I don’t know,” The doctor answered honestly, “But I do see some good signs, your lining looks within good measurements, your hormone levels do too. I know this transfer had failed, but things look optimistic for the next one.”

You nodded and looked away from her. She handed you a cloth to wipe up your belly, and you took it, mumbling a thanks. She apologized once again before leaving you and Bob alone in the room. The feeling of dread falling over the both of you. You were back to the beginning. The feeling of heartbreak and misery filling the room. Neither of you two spoke as you walked out of the room and back into the main waiting room, which was filled with expecting mothers. You felt like they were all mocking you with their protruding stomachs and bright smiles on their faces.

You two also didn’t say a word as you drove home. You didn’t even touch each other, being as far away in his car as you could possibly get. Bob pushed past the dogs, not greeting them like he usually would as he walked into the kitchen, grabbing the kettle and filling it up. You greeted the dogs and slowly walked into the kitchen as Bob had his back to you, looking out into the backyard. You sat at the kitchen island and put your head in your hands.

“At Least there was some good out of that,” You sighed. Bob scoffed, still looking out the window, “My lining is still thick and my hormone levels are good. That’s something is positive.”

Bob pushed off from his spot as the kettle started to whistle, opening up the cupboard and slamming it shut, mumbling something under his breath. You squinted at him, feeling the anger rolling off his body.

“What was that? I couldn’t hear you.”

“It’s nothing,” Bob grumbled. He still had his back to you as he poured water into two mugs, placing tea bags in both.

“No, what is it.” You demanded from him.

He sighed and finally turned around to face you, “I can’t keep doing this. The false positives, the tears, the appointments, the ounce of fucking happiness for it to get stripped away in a matter of seconds.”

You stood up from your spot, and walked over to him, placing a hand on his bicep, rubbing your hand up and down it slowly, “I’m sorry. But when it’s our time, it’ll be our time. We still have frozen eggs and you heard the doctor, things are looking really good right now.”

Bob looked you in the eye, his face unreadable, as he shoved past you, “Your optimism makes me sick.”

Your jaw dropped. He had never said anything like this to you before. Usually Bob was the one picking up the pieces after disappointing appointments like todays. You followed Bob into the living room, as he set his mug down on the mantle, and ran his hands through his hair. His body language looked like he was ready for an argument, but his head and heart were telling him to just let it go.

“What the fuck!” You sneered, “Why would you say something like that?”

“Because you don’t realize this shit is fucking with me too!” Bob’s voice cracked as he yelled, turning around to face you. Tears were running down his face, leaving red streaks down his cheeks, “I am here too! I go through this pain too! I lost a child too!”

“I’m not saying you fucking didn’t, Bob! Or you’re not in pain too!”

“You don’t fucking acknowledge it!” Bob yelled, and stepped back, running a hand over his face, “I told my brothers and my best friend. I told my mother. Now I’m supposed to say ‘sike! It was all a lie! Y/N’s still not pregnant, again.'”

“You’re not the one who’s walking around like a constant fucking failure!” You screamed, “You’re not the one who is constantly getting asked when we are having kids! Everyone around me has kids and everyone looks at me like I’m fucking broken!”

“That’s not my fucking fault,” Bob said back, shaking his head and pointing to himself, “I have done everything I can to help you, Y/N!”

“I never said it fucking was, Bob!”

“You’re fucking acting like it!”

You screamed and stormed back into the kitchen. Bob hot on your heels. You two had never fought like this before. You both had a mutual understanding that this was hard on both of you. It took two to make a baby, no matter how that baby was made. Bob had felt just as guilty and sad about the failures along the way as you did. Bob had promised you time and time again that he never blamed you for what couldn’t happen.

“Real fucking mature, Y/N! Throw a fucking tantrum!” Bob yelled, as you gripped the counter, your back to him to hide the tears running down your face now too.

“I’m immature!?” You yelled turning around, “You’re fucking immature Bob!”

“It’s not my fucking fault your body can’t do the one thing it’s supposed to fucking do! I’m not the fucking defective one!”

As soon as the words left his mouth he regretted it. The look in your eyes said everything you were feeling. Bob had felt like he had just punched you in the chest, and that’s what it felt like. You covered your mouth as you let out a sob. Bob said what you had been feeling all along, defective. From the moment the doctor had told you about your fertility issues you had internally labeled yourself as defective. You had even broken down to Bob, calling yourself out loud defective and broken. Bob assured you that you were neither of those things and that your time to be a mother would come one way or another.

You shook your head, digging deep to find your voice, “If I’m so fucking defective, how about you just leave.”

“Fine,” Bob scoffed, “I will.” Bob turned on his heel and walked out of the kitchen to the front door.

“If you walk out that door. . . don’t plan on ever coming back.”

Bob froze his hand on the knob. His mind couldn’t even think clearly, as he pulled the door open and walked out, letting it slam shut. The only sound in the house was the sound of your sobs as you fell to the kitchen floor in tears.

taglist: @els-marvelvsp @sarahsmi13s @topgun-imagines @cassiemitchell @xoxabs88xox @seitmai @a-reader-and-a-writer @bradleybeachbabe @kmc1989 @senawashere @beautifulandvoid @ohtobeleah @rogersbarnesxx @oatmealisweird @dempy @devil-angel-winchester @gillybear17

[pineapplerightsideupcake]

u do know cis women can be born with xy chromosomes. and yes, they will be assigned female at birth. also cis men can have xxy(yes, xxy) chromosomes and assigned male at birth? anyways, trans women are women,and u just want an excuse to hate minorities.

XXY males are just fully male. They don’t even have ambiguous genitals. From a cursory internet search

As for XY women, that is CAIS or Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome. Wherein the cells don’t respond to masculinizing hormones during fetal development. Babies born with CAIS have a female phenotype but a male karyotype. CAIS is therefore typically discovered during puberty when the body doesn’t begin to menstruate or go through other expected stages of sexual development. This is because there is no uterus, a shallow vaginal canal, and undescended testes rather than ovaries. They are of course infertile.

Because women with CAIS have a female phenotype body they are usually raised as girls. It is phenotype that determines how we are classed as male or female and therefore I would posit that people with CAIS are female. Some may disagree and indeed as far as science is concerned this is a male disorder of sexual development.

Now here’s the part that really matters:

99.99% of all human beings have a phenotype that matches their karyotype. The vast VAST majority of trans people have an unambiguous sex.

CAIS cases result in a vulva and vagina, not some third thing.

There is no third gamete in human beings. Genitals that are ambiguous at birth still belong to either a male or female body.

Intersex conditions are not evidence of a third sex, nor do they disprove the gender binary. For the same reason a baby born without kidneys doesn’t “disprove” that humans are meant to have two. Because inevitably intersex conditions do not result in a fully functional body. Besides infertility, many intersex conditions come with other health issues ranging from things like endocrine disorders to intellectual disabilities.

Stop using people’s medical conditions as gotchas when 99.9% of trans people are perrisex.

Edited because I was unaware of XX men (caused by a very interesting case of the X chromosome inherited from the father absorbing enough of the Y to transfer the SRY gene)

[estellxli]

Banana (Kazuha x Reader)

It was just an afternoon, like any other, with the winds blowing a soothing tune from the outside. The room warmed from the invited sun. A piece of ham plops into the sizzling pan accompanied by another. With a spatula in one hand, Kazuha’s thoughts drift elsewhere.

His brows furrows and the grip on the spatula tightens. The heat coming from the pan did not compare to the rage building inside him. He mindlessly flips the two hams over and takes a deep breath. Maintaining a cool mind. Nonetheless, if any of his suspicions were true he would—

The kettle's loud angry scream drowns out the sizzling; disturbing Kazuha with his thoughts. 

His hands move to put out the fire, for both the pan and the kettle, and grabs an empty plate. The spatula transferring the ham to the porcelain plate. Kazuha moves swiftly in the kitchen , preparing sweets, sliced cheese and a newly made sandwich all placed in a wooden tray. 

He grabs the now calmed kettle and works his way into making a matcha latte. One that he bought after arriving back in Inazuma from his trip with Beidou. Apparently, it helps in menstrual pain, something about an acid that helps relax the muscles of the uterus… or something along those lines that a saleslady said to him. 

Kazuha makes way to your bedroom with the wooden tray in his hands. He uses the door ajar to his advantage, his foot placed in between the space created by the door and the wall and using his hip to open the door wider. 

You were on the bed just the same as he left the room. All curled up in the blanket like a pita pocket. 

“Y/N.”

You turn to him, with your head barely popping out of the thick fabric. The corner of your lips immediately turn into a big smile as you squeal. Cries from your insides all momentarily gone as you sit up and excitedly pat the empty side of the bed. 

All because of Kazuha. 

… 

Mostly because of the food. 

Your boyfriend chuckles at your childish actions. You eyed at the wooden tray as you felt the bed embrace his weight. The chocolates are your first pick. 

Kazuha’s eyes remained on the bruise that stained your skin as you took a bite of the chocolate. Lips still curled upwards while chewing. 

“Is it to your liking?”

“Very.”

His eyes drop on the tray, noticing the ripples of the matcha. “Here, try this one too, I heard it helps with the cramps?”. 

You grab the chawan cup from his hands, nodding at his warning that it's still hot. The matcha warms your insides, something that the hot compress laying at your stomach couldn't do. 

Kazuha gulps. 

“Y/N”

“Hm?” You look at him innocently, palms still embracing the warm cup. 

“Is someone bullying you?”

Your doed eyes turn into confusion.

“Look, if someone ever tries to harm you, you know you can always come to me. I'll burn them with hot iron, slice —”

You chuckle at him, his turn now to be confused. You chuckle even when you hear the seriousness in his voice. When he's offering help and protection. 

“Kazuha, no one is harming me. Whatever makes you think that?” you say as you place down the cup

“Your bruises.” he says, soft and stern altogether. 

“Ah… that.” you stare at the bruise painting your skin, and you giggle even more. 

You turn your eyes into another direction and cover your lips to stifle the laughter, but you couldn't help it.

“Sorry, sorry.. it's just.. pfft…”

You look back at him, your lips still smiling. 

“I promise no one is harming me. I mean that genuinely. It's just that… I bruise very easily whenever I'm on my period.”

Kazuha’s brows furrow even more into confusion. 

“I'm serious!... Every woman has different symptoms when they're on their period. Some don't feel cramps, some do to the extent of fainting. Women bruising easily isn't common, but they exist.”

“I see.” 

Kazuha’s confused state now returns to his usual one. He raises his hands and hides his chin over his index. 

“Mhm!” you exclaim happily with the misunderstanding out of the way. 

He looks back at you and smiles, his hands now reaching for a piece of chocolate. 

“For you to bruise easily like that, you're practically like a banana.” he chuckingly teased. 

“A what!?”

Kazuha grins, carefully shoving the chocolate into your opened lips as he mouths, 

“A banana"