#the patterns absolutely killed me but i think it turned out nice

[surreal-duck]

chiakana commission for @happypetaldance! had a blast drawing this, thank you for commissioning me ^^

(commission info)

[redhoodinternaldialectical]

"Murder is Werewolves" - Batman

I don't got the SPOONS to do this thought train justice, I have seriously been trying to write this thing for MONTHS so just, idk, have this half baked skeletal outline of the essay I guess:

I don't believe that Batman's no-kill rule is primarily about rehabilitation or second chances.

His refusal to believe that Cassandra could have killed someone when she was eight years old because "how could a killer understand my commitment not to kill" is absolute fucking MOON LOGIC from a rehabilitationist standpoint. No jury on the planet would think for even a second that she could reasonably be held accountable for her actions in that situation! Her past cannot condemn her to being incapable of valuing human life under a rehabilitation centering framework. However, Batman's reasoning makes perfect sense if he believes that killing is a spiritually/morally corrupting act which permanently and fundamentally changes a person, and that corruption can never be fully undone.

Dick Grayson killing the Joker is treated both narratively and by Batman as an unequivocally WIN for the Joker. The Joker won by turning Nightwing into a killer. Note that this is during a comic in which the Joker transforming people was a major theme! Batman didn't revive the Joker because the Joker deserved to live; he revived the Joker to lift the burden on Dick.

His appeal to Stephanie when she tried to kill her dad is that she shouldn't ruin her own life. He gives no defense of Cluemaster's actual life. Granted this is a rhetorical strategy moment and should be taken with a generous pinch of salt, but it fits in the pattern.

When Jason becomes a willful killer, he essentially disowns him, never treats him with full trust ever again, and... Well, we can stop here for Bruce's sake. Bottom line is that his actions towards Jason do not lead me to believe that he thinks Jason can become a better person without having his autonomy taken from him, either partially or fully.

The Joker is, for better or worse, the ultimate symbol and vessel of pure, irredeemable evil in DC comics now. He hasn't been just another crook in a long time. He will never get better, he will only get worse. If you take it to be true that the Joker will not or can not rehabilitate, then there's no rehabilitationist argument against killing him.

Batman does not seem to consider it a possibly that he'll rehabilitate. Batman at several points seems to think that the Joker dying in a manner no one could have prevented would be good. Yet Batman fully believes that if he killed the Joker, he himself would become irredeemable.

Batman's own form of justice (putting people into the hospital and then prison) is fucking brutal and clearly not rehabilitative. He disrespects the most basic human rights of all criminals on a regular basis. It is genuinely really, really weird from a rehabilitationist standpoint that his only uncrossable line is killing... But it makes perfect sense if he cares more about not corrupting himself with the act of killing than the actual ethical results of any individual decision to kill or not kill.

In the real world cops are all bastards because they are too violent to criminals, even when that violence doesn't lead to death. Prison is a wildly evil thing to do to another human being, and you don't use it to steal away massive portions of a person's life if your goal is to rehabilitate them. In the comic world, Batman is said to be necessary because the corrupt cops are too nice to criminals and keep letting them out of jail. I don't know how to write a connector sentence there so like I hope you can see why this bothers me so damn much! That's just not forgiveness vibes there Batman!!

I want to make special note here of the transformative aspect. You don't simply commit a single act when you kill, no, you become a killer, like you might become a werewolf.

The narrative supports this a lot!

Why did Supes go evil during Injustice? He killed the Joker. Why did Bruce become the Batman Who Laughs? Bruce killed the Joker. Why was Jason Todd close to becoming a new Joker during Three Jokers? Because he killed people, to include the Joker.

Even if these notions of redemption being impossible aren't the whole of his reasoning (people never have only one reason for doing what they do) it is a distinct through-line pattern in his actions and reasoning, and it is directly at odds with notions of rehabilitation, redemption, and second chances.

So why does he give so many killers second chances?

Firstly because this doesn't apply to all versions of Batman. Some writers explicitly incorporate rehabilitation and forgiveness into his actions. You will be able to provide me with examples of this other through-line pattern if you go looking for them. The nature of comics is to be inconsistent.

Secondly the existence of that other pattern does not negate the existence of this one. People and characters are complex, and perfectly capable of holding two patterns of belief within themselves, even when they conflict to this degree. You can absolutely synthesize these two ideas into a single messy Batman philosophical vibescape.

Finally and most importantly to this essay: he has mercy on killers the same way that werewolf hunters sometimes have mercy on someone who is clearly struggling against their monsterous nature, especially if they were turned in exceptional circumstances or against their will. They understand that they are sick, damned beasts, cursed to always be fighting against themselves and the evil they harbor within. It is vitally kind to help them fight themselves by curtailing their autonomy in helpful ways and providing them with chances to do some good to make up for their eternal moral deficiency.

I think in many comics Batman views killers as lost souls. Battered and tormented monsters who must be pitied and given mercy wherever possible. (The connections to mental health, addiction, and rampant, horrifying ableism towards people struggling with both is unavoidable, but addressing it is sadly outside of the scope of this essay.)

Above all, the greatest care possible must be taken to never, ever let yourself become one of them, because once you have transformed the beast will forever be within you growing stronger.

To Batman, it is the most noble burden, the highest mercy, the most important commandment: Thou shalt suffer the monsters to live.

[lowkeyrobin]

MCYT ; you ride a bike

includes ; tommyinnit, ranboo, badlinu, nihachu, & quackity

warnings ; language

I love passenger princessing my mom on her trike so here's this

masterlist

TOMMYINNIT

he's absolutely mortified to get on the back with you at first

you convince him to just ride him around the neighborhood nice and slow and he over time gets used to it because you suggest going short distances on it rather than taking a bus and stuff

he grows on it though

his helmet has some stickers on it, one literally says tommyinnit.store in bold font 💀💀💀

either holds on the sidebars thatre there for him to hold or around your waist

he finds the wind against him therapeutic

the butterflies when you turn around and ask if he's okay, especially when it's dark and cold

constantly snapping jack, freddie & tubbo pictures of him on your bike/riding around with you/where you go

posts a lot of pictures on his Instagram

most of them are you & the scenery

"do you wanna learn how to drive a bike?"

"no???"

he unironically loves shouting at shit drivers who cut you off or try to get you killed

"WATCH IT ASSHOLE! YOU ALMOST GOT US KILLED, USE A BLINKER NEXT TIME!"

loves going over bridges

if he has somewhere to be after a ride, he'll gladly show up with his hair a mess and ass hurting since you need to put a few more pounds of air in his seat LMAO

"okay, so-"

"Tommy, why are you limping?"

RANBOO

he's 50/50 on being scared and wanting to get on with you

they man up and just do it after lots of reassuring

so many pictures lmao

litters his helmet with stickers and white marker doodles

has a sticker of the boober particle + one that just says ranboo.fashion in comic sans

he finds the air against him very therapeutic

loves going down backroads and finding new restaurants

always taking pictures, mostly of you

loves wearing his R800 jacket cause it keeps him warm + free promo

makes "I'll jump off rn" jokes

likes spreading his arms out like an eagle and will yell over the engine LMAO

loves bumps even though they'll hurt immediately after

FREDDIE BADLINU

you ask if he wants to come and he shrugs with a yeah

his first ride was at night so he got to enjoy all the lights and night life

takes a bunch of pictures and videos and sends them to Bill or Tommy

changes his insta bio to "my biker partners passenger prince" + bonus points if that's how he softlaunches your relationship

convinces you to go through a drive thru

eating lunch in the sun was a 10/10, will do it again

takes some cute pictures at stops/lights where he's leaning onto you a bit and he holds the phone in front of you to get both of you

wears dumbass hoodies/jackets w the dumb shit on the back to make ppl look at him weird or smile a bit

he'll show up to Tommy's live show (part of the bit) with messy hair and come on stage and tommy will look at him confused

Freddie asks him what's wrong and tommy just points and circles around his hair and the crowd laughs

"I was with my partner"

cue the laughing

"wait what?" Tommy laughs

"we were riding around the city before we got here, sorry"

NIKI NIHACHU

she thinks it's so cool, trust me

but like Tommy, she's very nervous to get on at first

you take her for a little ride around a parking lot and she's like "Okay I liked that let's actually go now"

her helmet has all sorts of stickers on it, but they're placed to look cool

there's a snake hide looking one down the middle and some cool patterned ones on the sides

she loves the wind in her hair and the feeling of being free

loves taking pictures of the scenery and even using you as a model

loves posting those pictures online for her fans to see

her editor fans always edit the pictures you two take together when you're out and about and whatnot it's so cool

you custom made her a leather jacket that fit her aesthetic

and she's super attached to it

she'll change her insta bio to "that one biker chicks girlfriend" LMAO

she spoils you like you're the one with the large social media platform its adorable

ALEX QUACKITY

"SINCE WHEN THE HELL DID YOU RIDE A BIKE???"

he thinks it's really badass tho

he'll gladly jump on with you

he's honestly scared after getting on but loses the fear pretty quickly

lovesss holding his arms out like a bird it's so fun to him

constantly asking you to tighten his helmet LMFAO

he finds it really entertaining in general

although if he's not wearing a full face covering helmet and wearing one of the head covering ones, you'll have to listen to his wailing later

his hair isn't long enough to completely pull back and the wind obviously tangles it up bad

so you gotta sit him down and try and carefully like de-matte his hair

he loves taking pictures and posting them tho, especially ones of you LMAO

sometimes he'll go the extra mile to give it a corny caption too

you change his insta bio to "passenger prince of the year"

always feels a little special and giggly when you ask if he's okay, especially when it's getting darker and much colder

"I told you to just wear the-"

"I know! please just do it for me! it hurts!"

"either grow your hair out or wear the other, lex"

[ghost-proofbaby]

Hi Ghost! Mega congrats on 3k!! 🥳can i get a filthy martini with eddie munson? Maybe with some sneaking around fun? Thankyou!!

thank you so much!! ngl, i'm very proud of this one. i definitely got carried away, but i swear the smut is there, somewhere amongst the 3k+ words!!! this is really just one long love letter to eddie munson. hope i did your idea justice! also got heavily inspired by taylor swift's song "cruel summer", but what's new?

come party with me!

summertime and stardust (eddie munson x fem!reader)

warnings: smut, p in v, raw dog heathen prevails (aka unprotected sex). also a lot of references to mythology. my bad. i think i got too much prose all over my smut. oops.

Hawkins was always boring in the summer, and maybe that’s how the two of you ended up in this predicament. It was a sweltering wasteland of quarries that had started drying up long before July even arrived, and twenty four hour diners that were occupied with waitresses that made it very clear that they were sick of seeing yours and Eddie’s faces before even a week of freedom. Half of the usual hangout spots the two of you had considered hidden gems were quickly overrun by the middle-schoolers and freshmen that now had nothing but time on their hands (Eddie had taken the loss of the Arcade badly). So it was no surprise that you two ended up here, at the shore of Lover’s Lake, side by side on a blanket that Eddie had kept in the back of his van. 

“Which one is that one?” you ask, lifting a finger to trace out a constellation winking down at the two of you. 

“Orion,” Eddie immediately answers, hardly having to squint to make out the stars as you were, “Want to hear the story behind that one?”

“Is that even a question?” 

This is how the two of you had spent the last hour. On your backs, gazing at the stars, exchanging stories and theories that did not belong to either of you. Tales of Greek Gods and Goddesses, smartass remarks and make-believe when one of you couldn’t identify the constellation. There’s nothing else but you, Eddie, and the cicadas this far out of town. A buzz of relief and tranquility to bask in. Every so often, you could make out the lake water lapping at the shore not far from where both your feet rest, Eddie’s stretching past the blanket. 

It was nice. Every night you had spent out here had been very nice.

You turn on your side to listen to Eddie ramble about Orion, somehow both eloquent but still unfairly funny in his side comments of his opinion on the tale. He makes it very clear that he finds Orion to be deserving of losing his sight - “Seriously, fuck that dude!” - and you can only watch on, entranced by the boy and his starry eyes. 

“I think the version where Artemis murked his ass is pretty good, but I also like the idea behind Gaia sending a Scorpion to kill him, because then they’re opposing constellations and sh- Are you even listening to me?” Eddie pauses when you bring a hand up to his chest, fingertips dancing over the damp cotton of his t-shirt. 

You can’t hide the small smile tilting your lips as you nod, biting back giggles, “Oh, absolutely.” 

Eddie rolls his eyes, arms crooked up to rest behind his head, biceps straining against the worn sleeves of his t-shirt. You resist the urge to just bury yourself into him, curl against his side and press, press, press until the two of you conjoin, never to separate again. 

“You’re such a fucking liar,” he lowly chuckles, eyes looking back up to the sky as your fingers begin to trace patterns higher, now skimming his barely-exposed collarbones. 

This is how it usually goes. He’s watching the sky, you’re watching him. Waiting for the right moment. Waiting for the change. 

Everyone in town knew that the two of you are friends; it’s not a secret. You’d met in school, partnered for a chemistry lab, and the rest was history. Everyone knew that you were the first person Eddie showed every new Corroded Coffin song to, and everyone knew Eddie was the last person you spoke to at the end of every day. And surely, they had to know to some extent, that you both reserved your summer nights for each other. 

The change is what they didn’t know. 

Steve and Robin would tease you two when you’d come into Family Video, a new thriller or horror movie always in hand at the checkout. Dustin would make gagging noises when Eddie would dramatically bid you farewell before Hellfire Club would commence, making endless jokes about his wife returning from war, how lonesome he would be now as you walked through the door and out of his sights for the next several hours. Even Mike, even Max, even Joyce, had made off-handed comments about your attachment to each other. 

But they were all always joking. They never saw any purchase in their words, their relentless teasing never serious because they couldn’t fathom a world where those jokes were actually correct. 

They could never fathom the nights you and Eddie would end up cuddling each other while studying, pressed together too tightly to leave space for friendly speculation. They could never fathom the way Eddie would drag you into the darkest corners of the arcade, his hands tight on your hips and your breath brushing his cheek as he nuzzled his way against your neck, teeth and lips alike nipping at you in desperation until you caved and gave him a chaste kiss. They could never fathom the way Eddie had been holding you to him by the end of these nights spent by the lake, pressing his body into yours and reveling in every whimper that was only his to hear. 

No, they couldn’t fathom that half of the story. They knew you two were close, but they didn’t know just how intertwined your lifelines had become with the boy lying beside you. And that was fine, you didn’t care for them to know about those sacred moments laden with secrecy. All you really cared about was that the boy before you was all your summer nights and all your starry skies, brimming with clandestine glances and whispers of worship in moments alone. That was enough for you. Here, in your bubble of privacy by the lake sans persistent cicadas and gentle waves, he was yours. 

“Penny for your thoughts?” Eddie murmurs, bringing a hand up to yours that continues to explore his body innocently, intertwining your fingers with his before resting them over his heart. 

It was drumming in his chest – you could feel each beat perfectly, breaking through the Iron Maiden logo and against your skin. After a few moments, your own racing heart synced with his, a quiet rhythm coursing through your veins. You hope he could feel it, too. 

“Just thinking about how it’s just us out here,” you whisper back, voice low and careful not to break this moment. All of the paths, all of the dead-end streets you had both endured, just for moments like this, “How it’s always just us.” 

You mean more than the fact that you never invite anyone else out on your endeavors, but Eddie takes it that way anyway, snorting. 

“You wanna start inviting the guys out here?” he jokes through more laughter, making you attempt to break your hand free from his in order to smack at his chest. He doesn’t let you, though, only tightening his fingers’ grip on yours, “Think that Gareth would like the show? Or maybe Jeff?”

“Stop,” you whine, starting to fight him with your whole body now, still trying to get your hand free. You nearly roll on top of him, your giggles now joining his, “That’s not what I meant and you know it.” 

He doesn’t reply as the two of you continue to wrestle. At some point, he takes his free hand and begins to tickle you, making your giggles turn into awful screeches, echoing in the warm, stale air around the two of you. You twist and twist and twist, trying to get away from his merciless grip. You’re no longer holding hands, him now utilizing both to attack your sides before moving toward your armpits.

“Don’t!” you gasp out, realizing what he was about to do. He’s on his side now, you flat on your back as he begins to hover over you, “Edward Munson, don’t you dare!” 

But he does dare. And even as you’re slapping at his shoulders, even when he overexaggerated how much your knee knocking against his thigh hurt, even when the weight of him presses you down into the blanket and threatens to bury you into the soft dirty of the small-town beach, you know it in your heart – there is no where else you’d rather be in this moment. 

The compromising position that results from the ridiculous tickling and wrestling is welcome, Eddie’s body heavy between your legs as his torso drapes over yours. Your face-to-face with him, now looking in those dazzling brown eyes for constellations rather than the sky above. 

His grin from the entire interaction has begun to ache, but it doesn’t falter as he bumps his nose to yours gently, “I’m sorry. I get it, I know what you mean. It’s always been just us,” he pauses before scrunching up his face, rearing up to continue to tease you before he playfully mocks, “You and me against the world, baby.”

You smack at his chest with fruition this time, making a soft oomph fall from his lips that pass over yours, “I was just trying to be sentimental, you dick.” 

The grin finally falls away, but the corners of his eyes stay crinkled, “I know.” 

When his lips finally meet yours, it’s like a breath of fresh spring air. You’re no longer in Hawkins’ muggy summer weather, instantly transported somewhere far away where the sun is just warm enough for comfort, where the breeze is just soft enough to wrap around your shoulders like a favorite blanket, where every strawberry is the sweetest and nothing will ever hurt. 

The world can be cruel, both in heat waves and hurting souls, but he never is. He’s a sanctuary – he’s your sanctuary. 

His sickly sweet kisses continue, taking your breath away in a willing way, leaving both your lips shades of summer blooms and spring flowers. His tongue is a welcome prodding, almost as if tending to your garden as he tries to get the two of you even closer. It’s not possible, but it doesn’t stop either of you; chests crush together as foreheads clash, and you yearn for a world where you could just curl up beneath each other’s skin, clamber your way into his chest and nestle right beside his pounding heart.

Only Artemis knows that he’s already made residency in yours, decorating your ribs and lungs with his flowers of adoration. 

Between desperate breaths and needy hands, hips beginning to roll and curse the clothing you two have yet to get rid of, you silently wonder where the two of you will end up in this lifetime. You hope it’s amongst the stars. You hope your constellation can find his across the night sky. 

 “Baby,” he begs. You don’t know what he’s begging for – for closeness, for your legs to fall further open and welcome him home, for you to swallow him whole with all the love pounding just beneath the surface of you – so you can only kiss him back with more urgency. 

The urgency follows through both of your movements. Urgency is what removes his shirt, your hands shaking as his chest is exposed to you in the moonlight. Urgency is what unbuttons your shorts, prickles of thorns when his fingertips make contact with your nude hip. Urgency is the slip of his hand into your panties, fingers curling and swirling in every right pattern to have you preening against him. 

“Off,” you plead with him once he has you down to just your underwear and him just his boxers. Your palms rack down desperately over the waistband before trailing down to his bulge, fevered movements earning more purpose as you press down on him and elicit a moan. 

He recovers his composure, only to shake his head down at you, curls ticking your cheeks, “Ever heard of a thing called patience, sweetheart?” 

“Fuck patience,” you immediately argue, pulling yourself back from his lips fully, eyes meeting and lips slick with each other’s spit, “We have the entire summer to be patient, Eddie. Just… Just fuck me. Please.” 

You awakened something in him with those words, you saw away whatever restraint he was holding onto so tightly. These nights always ended the same way, but they never felt the same. 

Familiarity waits in the shadows as each graze of his skin against yours ignites something new in you. New flowers, new petals, new budding growths that scream that this can’t last for just the summer. Whatever this is, as he removes your panties and his boxers, is not just a coming and going on the seasons. It’s not just a constellation only to be seen in the quiet of the night by two lovesick fools sneaking off to observe it. The heat of the summer that frizzes both your hair and his repeats it, the cooler breeze that rolls off the lake behind you guys encourages it. It may have taken the summer to tend to it, but this is only the beginning of it. Not the end – never the end.

And he fucks you like he knows it, too. He can hear the whispers of it all, telling him to pull you closer, telling him to take his time as he pushes into you and feels your walls stretch around him. It isn’t quite patience, it isn’t quite cruelty. It’s just you, and it’s just him. 

“Fuck,” he moans out once he’s fully sheathed inside you, cock pulsing as your wetness tightens on him. Really, it’s a shame that no deity will ever experience the devotion you feel pouring off of him as his mouth falls open for you, as his head rolls back and his eyes flutter close. He’s devoted to you – he’s yours just as you’re his, “Always so wet for me, baby. Always so good.” 

He finds a familiar rhythm to have you both gasping and groaning, and it still feels brand new. The way you feel him deep in your stomach, the way your thighs quiver and his abdomen tightens. It is all always new and it is all always euphoric. 

If you lift your eyes to find the stars above you almost winking at you, you can feel that he’s not fucking you as you’d requested; he’s making love to you. He is confessing his past sins and he is professing that he’d spend the rest of his days here, inside you, against you, with you. 

The roll of his hips don’t stay slow for long, though. You both know the love is there, and you both know what the two of you need. Eventually, soft confessions and loud professions become slapping of skin on skin, teeth knocking as you try to keep your lips on his. You swallow every moan and he grabs every mewl. You can feel his hands on your waist, your hips, your thighs. He is everywhere all at once, and it still isn’t enough. 

It’s not enough until his movements stutter, until his voice has grown hoarse from calling out your name for only the two of you to hear. Your nails rake down his back at some point, and you know that come tomorrow night, beside the lake, you’ll be tracing fading red lines that spell out a clear message: he belongs to me because he chose me. 

Your walls flutter around him and he knows without you saying a single word other than ramblings of his name that you’re close.

“Cum for me,” he’s begging again, lifting above you and looking down with wide, wet eyes, “Fuck- I- Please cum for me, baby. Need you to cum. Please.” 

You whine out in response, head tilting back into the grass around the edges of the blanket, consumed by him. Your ears ring as your vision blacks, the last image you see being his face contorted in pleasure, and you can’t decipher whether it’s the lake again that you hear or simply your own waves meeting his shore. 

The echoes of his voice surround you. 

“Just like that, sweetheart.”

“Doing so good for me.”

“Always such a good girl.” 

When his own high has its hold on him, his head is falling to your shoulder, his nose buried into your sweet spot behind your ear as you listen to every grunt and moan. He holds you painfully close, like he’s scared that maybe this is the end. You ponder bruises in the shapes of roses forming on your hips as he buries deep in you and he paints your walls with warmth, with devotion, with something unspoken only between the two of you. 

He collapses on top of you in the afterglow. Savors the moment, lets his lips pucker against your salty skin slick with sweat no longer just from summer. His own hair is matted at the knape of his neck, his cheeks, his forehead. 

You can’t help the laughter that bubbles from your chest. It’s overflowing, mingling with the still crying cicadas. He lifts his head and glances up at you, smiling shyly. 

“What?” 

You continue to laugh, unable to answer him, as he pulls out and cleans you up with his t-shirt. If you weren’t so delirious with unbridled delight, you’d scorn him. 

He doesn’t bother with redressing as he rolls to his original side of the blanket, laying on his back and wrapping his arms around you to pull you into him, “What’s so damn funny, my beautiful girl?” 

You think Artemis, maybe even Orion, would smile down at the sight of the two of you. Perhaps Gaia is sending her well wishes to the love-stricken look you two exchange in the form of a breeze that doesn’t bring more heat, only relief, only sanctuary. 

“We are not inviting Gareth or Jeff out here, ever,” you finally explain breathlessly, “This place is for just us, Munson.” 

He joins you in your lingering giggles, his chest shaking with them more than he vocalizes them as your cheek finds his heart and presses into his cheek. 

Whatever this is, label or not, is good. And it is only the beginning, never the end. Whether the others will ever know or not, the two of you always will, and that’s all that matters for the time being. 

“Yeah, yeah,” he chuckles, holding you just a little bit tighter, “Always just us, you heathen.” 

He brings a finger to your chin, tilting your face up. When he kisses you, it tastes like summertime and stardust, just as it should.

[eldstunga]

Hi! I really love your art! The lines are so bold but the colours so natural that it feels distinct but grounded?? I'm obsessed with the shapes in your work

I was wondering if you had any advice for drawing bodies? Whenever I try it either my proportions are off or an arm ends up looking like a calf or something.

First of all, thank you <3 That's so nice and I think "lines bold, colours natural" is some truly aspirational words to say about my art, I'll strive to be what you say I am <3 I do not, unfortunately, have any great tips on drawing bodies - it's a very wide topic and fundamentally just really bloody hard. I fail horribly 9 times out of 10. How to approach it I think varies a lot with like...HOW you are struggling, and who you are as a person. For proportions and anatomy there are definitely books to look at, and some rules of thumb that can help you - anything from "the shoulders are about 2.5-3 heads wide" through "feet are the same length as the forearm", "elbows are in line with the navel and the navel is two sternums down" etc etc. For me, realising just how big the ribcage actually is and learning how to use that as a unit of measure was a big event (the torso is about two ribcages long). Look at references, Draw over low opacity references and try to look for patterns that help YOU. Like... "Hm, do the shoulders line up with something useful?"

Having a good ref model to double check things helps too. The pen is pointing to about the bottom of the ribcage. But there's also stuff like maybe you're getting too hung up on construction and then it might help more to try to draw from references by ONLY blocking in a silhouette first. This helps me sometimes still:

Or you could be like me, struggle with all of the above and then some - like how to make poses look natural and/or dynamic? Weight distribution is a whole other topic.. gah, it never ends, but it's fun to learn.

Lastly, this took me way too long to realise and I think it should be said: Do not fret too much about STUDYING. The unfair thing is that the better you are at something, the better you will be at actually learning from doing studies and exercises or reading books. We accept this with many other disciplines and sports but rarely art. Mileage is king, and mileage is best gained from having fun and enjoying what you do. If you find studies suffering and frustrating you're probably better off just drawing what you enjoy and fuck it if it isn't "pushing your boundaries" or whatever. Eventually you'll get to the point where studies start to give more than they take, and then you're home free. I'm not gonna recommend a billion resources you likely won't enjoy but here are some things I genuinely found helpful lately: * a physical anatomy model, they're pricy and not necessary but being able to just look at it every now and then, turn it over etc helps. * The "Morpho" series of books, they do not teach anatomy, but they are very useful quick reference books and much more easily digested than most anatomy material. Just try to find a real anatomy book to read once your appetite is up as well.

The zig-zag/Lightning bolt method for arms and legs, fuckin' thing revolutionised how I sketch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCkmB030GpQ

Gottfried Bammes "The Complete guide to Anatomy for Artists and Illustrators" This thing is insane, it's from the 50's and like 600 pages long. You could absolutely kill someone with it, but a lot of the pages are more philosophical or art history you can skip and despite its age and fear factor this dude writes in a witty, clever and just wonderful way that I've seen nowhere else. Fantastic photos. By far, FAR the best anatomy book I've ever seen. It's not a book I'd recommend for someone starting out, I would not have been able to digest it like four years ago, but once you get to a certain point it's amazing.

That's a lot, uhhh, feel free to ask me for more specific tips this was a bit of a rant. Hope some of it was useful!

[tubatwo]

haircuts - huening kai

summary: kai comes back with a haircut and you think he looks cuter than ever

pairing: gn reader x huening kai

genre: fluff; 0.9k words

a/n: guys feel free to leave concepts in my ask box! extra inspo would be nice :) or if you want to chat or gush about a member i’m here!!

it’s been a while since you’ve seen kai, and saying that you feel nervous would simply be an understatement. he went out of town to spend time with family for the summer, and it was your first time experiencing weeks without him. you were happy that he was having a nice time, but being away from him for so long felt like the worst possible torture.

‎ ‎

‎ ‎

after checking yourself in the mirror for probably the fifth time, you hear a pattern of knocks and immediately run to open the door. “hi, babe!” kai looks at you like you hung the stars in the sky. his usual hoodie switched for a soft cardigan, a cap on his head, and in one hand he’s holding a bouquet of flowers. “hi, baby! here, come inside.” you plant a kiss on his cheek and open the door wider to let him in. “I missed you so much.” you hug each other for a while before eventually letting go. “I missed you too, ning.”

“are the flowers okay?” he asks while fidgeting slightly. “beomgyu told me I should’ve hired a marching band, but that’s a bit um…” you giggle and shake your head while searching the kitchen for a vase, “no, they’re perfect baby, thank you.”

after the flowers were put up, you turn around to see kai sitting patiently on the couch. that’s when you noticed that he had taken his cap off and something was different about him. you gasp and cover your mouth, “did you cut your hair?!” kai nods sheepishly as you walk over to him. his arms wrap around your waist and he looks up at you with anxious eyes. “d-do you like it?” he asks. you immediately coo and caress his head softly. “the question is, do you like it?” you ask in return. he blinks at you a couple of times before you continue, “because I think you look absolutely adorable.”

since your relationship is still fresh, you’ve only seen kai with a few styles of hair. it wasn’t the first time seeing it straight, but the shorter length was definitely a surprise. you didn’t think it was possible for him to get any more cuter, and it was a bonus that you knew he had been desperately wanting to cut it for a while.

kai whines and buries his head into you before looking up at you again. “I really like it, and it makes me feel relieved that you like it too.” he admits.

“I like whatever makes you the happiest, ning.” you tell him with a smile. he smiles at this, but after a few seconds he asks, “what would be your favorite haircut on me, though?” you think for a second, trying to come up with an answer besides the cliche how could I choose? you knew that he wanted a genuine answer this time. after all, it was your first time seeing him after such a huge change. however, you also tried to come up with a gentle response that wouldn’t make him feel bad in any way. “well, I do love your usual fluffy hair,” you begin, “especially when you had the mullet that one time!”

he nods and nibbles slightly on his lip. “but… this is my first time seeing you with short hair and…” you trail off. you hold his face in your hands and place sweet kisses on his lips between each word.

“you,” kiss “look,” kiss “so,” kiss “handsome.” you finish with a mwah.

inside, kai is dying. he’s absolutely losing his mind. he spent the entire walk over there worried about what you would think, and now your compliments are making him melt. he feels happy and relieved, but also extremely shy.

his arms are still wrapped around you, and he buries his face into you again, letting out another soft whine. “what’s gotten into you?” he mumbles. “you’re killing me over here, y’know…” you giggle and lean down to place a kiss on the top of his head. “we finally have time to ourselves,” you explain, “so, that means I’m going to be as mushy as possible.”

kai laughs at this and a mischievous look fills his eyes, aegyo mode suddenly activating. “sooo… does this mean I can finally call you my jellybean?” a look of playful disgust takes over your face as he does his signature wiggle, and you both burst into laughter. “we can work on the whole nickname thing in the future, okay?” you say while still trying to catch your breath.

after you both quiet down, you give kai a more serious look. “no but i’m serious, even though I love you in everything, I think this is my favorite style on you now,” you explain, “I can already see the happiness radiating from you.” kai looks down at this and starts to fiddle with his fingers. “you noticed?” he asks. you nod, “of course, I noticed.” you take a seat next to him on the couch to wrap your hands around his hands. “we all have our moments, kai. if there’s anything you need to do to feel comfortable then I fully support you doing it.”

“ever since I got my hair cut, my confidence has been really high!” he tells you with wide, enthusiastic eyes, making you smile. you place a hand on the side of his cheek and kiss him softly. “and that makes me really happy.” you softly boop his nose. “all I want is for you to see yourself the way I see you.” kai brings you in for another kiss, giving his thanks in the form of his love.

“I love you so much.”

“I love you too, ning.”

[esther-dot]

i'm a sansa stan first and foremost, and i tried to ship s@nsan so hard lmaooo but when they start saying shit like "sansa has wet dreams about the hound" and "sansa actually likes older men", argh, i just can't. do. that. i know george said something about playing with it in the books, but i also think that he wanted to raise a few questions with the relationship, one of them being "who protects sansa from her protector?". like, there's TRAUMA in there. it's funny that they accuse jonsas of using sansa as a self-insert bc i don't know if you ever read a s@nsan fic or saw the fanarts, but they REALLY wanna bang that man 😭

(about this ask)

Nothing in the fandom horrifies me as much as Sansan. I’ve had nice Sansans come into my inbox, so I do distinguish between my feelings about the ship and the shippers, but I hate the reinterpretation of the Hound because it minimizes what he did/tried to do to Sansa. Instead of the later scenes where Sansa thinks of him being about her processing the trauma of his assault, suddenly, they become a gross villain whitewashing, victim-blamey, “actually, she wanted it.”

I once even highlighted that whole "who will protect us from the guards" idea you mention because I think it was meant to emphasize what a travesty the Hound’s assault was:

(link)

This isn’t a romance, this is a pattern. The Hound saves her than tries to rape her, Tyrion is kind to her then agrees to marry her, a child, a prisoner of his family, and LF rescues her but then starts to sexually molest her. All the same, in each of these instances, Sansa is grateful, she thinks kindly of them, and I think that says a lot about Sansa that you completely miss if you romanticize it and pretend that the Hound is someone, something to her, that he isn’t. I also talk about the whole cloak thing in that post too because I think the more contextualized reading is the one we’re meant to adopt.

When I did take a look at the meta, I was so creeped out by the nature of it and the art. Although, I want to give credit where it’s due. Apparently they were some of the first people to start taking Sansa seriously and created the reading of Sansa becoming a political factor, so they did change the fandom’s perception of Sansa in a good way. But imo their love of the Hound causes an imbalance in how they read their scenes. The point isn't that the Hound wouldn't have hurt Sansa, the point was that he very well might have but Sansa's actions stopped him which ties into a much bigger idea and important aspect of Sansa's story:

Even after the Hound assaults Sansa, later, she thinks of how terrifying the fire was, as in, even then, she is able to empathize with him, the man who held a knife to her throat and threatened to kill her. It’s laughable to suggest a man who mocked her relentlessly for who she was is capable of the same consideration. In fact, it is in a state of terror that the Hound attempts to rape Sansa and his fans use that to excuse his actions, and yet, while he is assaulting her, Sansa sings of mercy, gently touches his cheek. It’s almost like the very obvious interpretation, that the way to create a better world is Sansa’s method— not his— is what Martin expected people to understand, and his surprise people have turned it into something else altogether is genuine. (link)

As for Martin admitting he "played" with it, here's a clip. It's very short, and he's expressing surprise that his female readers like villains of which the Hound is one, and I think you can tell by his facial expression that the idea of the Hound and Sansa as a couple, is absolutely not where he ever intended to take things, not what he meant when he said he played with it. There are countless old monster movies with the monster being fascinated with a young girl or beautiful woman which humanizes him/shows a soft side. That's similar to Beauty and the Beast, the girl is what allows the monster to become human again, but in these variations, it isn't a romance. You can play with/reference tropes and ideas without it actually being a direct reiteration of the original story.

Anyway, filter and block and curate your fandom experience! 😅

[thestarfishinjootsoffice]

Hiii can I request the slashers x teen! Reader who has Short curly hair but is insecure about it so they straighten it

(I don't care about the type of curly hair it can be up to you but if you want to add one can it be 3c💖)

As a person who has straight hair and literally no one else in my life has curly hair and I've never used a straightener in my life. I'm sorry if I get anything wrong. Just correct me!

I'll try to post more consistently I SWEAR THIS TIME!!!

Also extremely sorry for the pov changes, I change the pov writing depending on the characters if this bothers you please let me know.

Apology for disappearing on you guys for 3-2 months 😍

Warnings: reader being pretty insecure about their hair, they're straightening their hair 24/7 here apparently. Not much stuff.

Slashers included: Michael, billy and stuu and jasonnn

Relationship: platonic.

Slashers x teen! Reader who's insecure about their short curly hair! (3c)

Michael

He didn't really care at first how your really curly hair suddenly goes straight the next days and after. And just when it started to curl more it goes straight again.

At first he thought you straightened it because it must've been in your way or maybe you felt hot?

But inevitably it was a repeating pattern he saw. On really rare occasions you let your curls show in its true glory.

But he didn't really do anything about it or care because... Why would he? He's got people to kill.

......

That night he sat down on the couch with you. The electricity went out just before you could've straightened your hair. It was getting more puffy and curly.

Tugging on the ends of your hair to make it look a bit straight. (And also to distract yourself from looking noticeably nervous.) You stayed still uncomfortably as Michael sat eerily silent next to you as he always does. But he was sitting while looking at you so it was especially creepy.

"Uhm... Did I do something wrong?"

The only source of light was the burning candle slowly melting. Giving it a nice look.

The fact he didn't answer for a few minutes freaked you out even more. Suddenly the floor and literally everywhere else where Michael isn't in your line of sight looks interesting.

You jump a little when you feel a hand on yours where you were tugging on your hair and lift it down.

You look over to the mask of Michael and stare into the black sockets of the holes where his eyes should be visible. He points to your hair and then he gives a thumbs up. It was a bit slow, but he was telling you he really meant it.

At this point you don't even know how to feel. Your apathetic seemingly emotionless psychotic serial killer father figure was telling you that he thinks your hair looks good?

You feel a couple tears prickly at your eyes. Feeling a slight burning sensation in your throat and nose. Without much of a thought running through your hair you hug him, he absolutely does not like physical contact of course but right now he feels like the most safest person at the moment.

(Ps: *whispers* he loves your hairrrrr)

Billy n stu

It was without a doubt they love your hair but you still decided to be a teenager.

Setting your straightener on your table with a 'thud' sound, You stare at how your hair looks in the mirror. Sighing slightly you move yourself from your chair and head down stairs to your two psycho dads.

Stu was the one to immediately point it out after he saw you, "hey y/n! Why do you always straighten your hair?"

Whatever excuse-answer you gave them they weren't completely convinced but didn't want to push you any further. Well Billy did. Stu is just.... Stu. (Stu was stopped luckily)

After the day went by and you were in your bed. Today wasn't so bad. You were planning to either sleep and hope when you wake up it's not a bad day Or just burn your eyes with your phone in the dark.

Just when you were about to lie down you heard your door creek ajar. You turn your head around and see your dads just standing there in front of your door. They both looked kind of nervous.

You were about to ask a question but billy walked up next to you, setting himself down on the mattress of your bed you feel it dip a bit. Stu followed closely behind. Billy gently places a hand on your shoulder.

"What's this interrogation?"

"Uh- well we wanted to talk to you about something." Stu smiles though it looks a bit forced.

"... Well what is it?"

"Well... Do you like your hair??"

"... You made it seem so intense, and all you wanted to ask was if I liked my hair or not?" You honestly thought they were going to say the cops were outside or something. Not asking you that.

"Yes, now answer the question." Billy said it looking directly at you. If it were in a nutshell he would've probably had a gun pointed at you.

You were debating whether or not you wanted to be truthful.

"I guess so..." Your answer sounded extremely doubtful and uncertain. Which of course wasn't gone unnoticed by the two killers attending by you.

"Y/n.." Billy said softly.

"What's wrong?"

His question was met with an agonizing short but seemingly endless streak of silence. Both the men in the room already knew what was wrong but wanted to hear it from your mouth.

Stu sighed, he leaned against you.

"Y/n, if there's anyone who's bothering you , you can always tell us. If not... Then I'll teach my teenage child that they can't rebel love against their hair."

You smiled at this.

For them to act so serious on something so small...

You realised all your energy has disappeared and right now you want to shut your mind and body down for a couple hours.

Jason (let's just say there's electricity in one of the cabins)

He didn't understand. Didn't understand why you seemed to always straighten your hair. He loved the way your hair just bundles up into curly twirly shapes.

He does love your straight hair but he loves your natural hair even more. He tries hard not to let it get to him but overtime it starts to curious him greatly.

Another day of hunting down rabbits or other small creatures or going swimming for you to survive. Jason doesn't need it but eats whatever you make because who doesn't like sitting down eating their child's home cooked meal?

You noticed your hair had started to get more puffy. Feeling a wave of discomfort and insecurity you start to head to where your room was.

"Hey dad, I'm just gonna do something real quick."

Nodding he went to grab the vegetables and other ingredients while he waited for you. 5 minutes nothing. 10 minutes also nothing. After 5 minutes he went to check up on you but then you barged out of your door.

"Sorry! It took longer than i thought it would."

The first thing he noticed about you was your now straightened hair. He frowned in the inside of his mask he stared for a while

"Is something wrong? Did I take too long?"

He shook his head slightly. He turned around and lead you to the kitchen.

---------

He placed the empty dirty plate and bowl in the sink as he watched you clean the table.

His eyes lingered on the back of your hair. He takes a few silent steps next to you and waits until you either notice him or finish cleaning. He was pretty nervous if he was being honest. But it's not like he can't do anything about this kind of thing.

"Okay I'm do-" You had 3 jump scares and 5 heart attacks that you managed to keep inside you when you turned around and see your masked huge behemoth of a father right. Next. To your face. You back up a bit.

"Do you need something?" You asked with a nervous smile and laugh. He doesn't say anything for a few seconds but he raises both of his hands, tbh rn. You're pretty fucking scared even though he's technically your father he's never done something like this before.

His hands are on the sides of your hair and then he starts scrunching them. The ends of your hairs directly lying on his palms and he starts squeezing them softly for a second, letting go and repeating it again.

It takes you a hot minute to even have an idea of what he was trying to do but then you realised he was trying to curl them up! You don't do anything. You don't even know what to do. You look at him speechless after he's done.

Your hair is probably really messy and uneven right now but you can't pay it that much mind when he gives you an ok sign.

Before you could react he has you in a crushing hug. You don't really mind how strong it was this time though. Just the warm feeling of your father's bone crushing hug.

_________________

Wanted to write for Hannibal but didn't know wtf he would do 💀

[vickyvicarious]

You saying rip Second Mate makes me think... the Second Mate sacrificing his own sleep for the ones he cares about, in retrospect, heralds a pattern between the main heroes, doesn't it? (For example Mina for Lucy, Jack for Lucy, Mina for Jonathan, the three suitors taking turns to guard the Harkers' door in the asylum...)

Also second instance of a brave person getting killed by Dracula, after the mother...

Huh, now that you mention it! I've not really thought about the pattern of willingly sacrificed sleep so much as disrupted sleep thanks to Dracula, but... that's a nice reframing of a lot of these, actually.

Jonathan in the castle, Lucy (eventually, not yet), and later on Jonathan's sleep again (being kept asleep), I think maybe Renfield at one point, certainly Mina * - they are all directly affected by Dracula messing with their usual sleep patterns. It's not always a direct loss of sleep; sometimes they seem to end up getting more sleep than usual, even, but it's not normal/restful sleep.

But there are so many other instances of people being sleep-deprived because they chose to be in order to look after and care for someone else. Sure, we can still blame it on Dracula, but they're also making a choice out of love. Mina here in Whitby, Jack and Van Helsing for Lucy, Mina for Jonathan, the suitors guarding the Harkers... You make a great point that there is so much willing sacrifice of sleep in order to protect others. Sometimes to foolish extremes (why did Jack and Van Helsing not get someone else in to help them so they weren't completely exhausted themselves?) but the love is definitely there.

Unfortunately, losing sleep is much like losing blood: it might be necessary, and sure it can be a grand gesture, but it also is somewhat incapacitating for the one doing it. Thankfully, not usually in the sense of "Dracula kills you and throws you overboard in the middle of the night" but still. Honestly, some of my absolute favorite moments are kind of the opposite, sort of: when Mina deliberately sleeps on the train because she knows she will need energy in order to help Jonathan through his illness. When Arthur insists that Jonathan go to sleep so that he'll be well rested later. To an extent even when the suitors take turns guarding the Harkers. Basically, when they're a bit more sensible about it, haha. I know they can't always do that, but it's all the more impactful for me when they do, because it shows planning put into the caring in a way I personally really love. It's more sustainable too, obviously. Of course, you can usually only do that when you have the ability to rely on other people and so that's where all the lost sleep circles round to being Dracula's fault again as far as the themes of him deliberately isolating people and breaking/weakening support networks come in.

Anyways.... yeah, I like this a lot. And also, yeah. The tally of people who have died being brave in a way that does not help at all against Dracula has just gone up, sadly.

* maybe also Van Helsing, if you count the super conveniently timed sleep approaching the castle as a) magic and b) Dracula.

[soullessjack]

it genuinely kills me very slowly to think that some people can only ever think of jack as the destiel kid and not like an actual person with a myriad of maladjustments or silly funny personality quirks. like he has a whole special red and white fleece lined Christmas jacket and is canonically acknowledged as looking like a stupid hot white boy without any thoughts behind his eyes. He killed a whole fucking archangel and then decided that he really wanted to try making some friends like a week later. they wanna be normal and nice so bad and pretend to be some normal small town boy next door all the time but they were literally so angry once that it took three gunshots fired in the back to make him calm and reasonable.

he stress eats and stays in their room for weeks on end when they’re depressed or upset. they line their shoes up and fold their shirts and wear bright yellow vans and red hi-tops. he’s narratively paralleled to Anakin but his favorite character is Ahsoka. he pretended to be a coke addict and pretended to be a pretty new boy next door again to flirt with a hopelessly romantic girl. women want him and he’s absolutely clueless about it. women and men and probably fish fear him too. he dresses like a combination between an elderly man and a 70’s sitcom hippie. he was literally called Bieber and Suite Life. they like stripe patterns and Hawaiian pizza and movies and computers.

they’re literally an autistic person who just explodes shit when they get overstimulated. They watch riverdale and constantly sweep their hair back in a specific stylistic choice bc he likes looking like that. he fucking decapitated a whole Gorgon and then stole the guy’s snake as a trophy. he says shut up when he’s mad and calls things stupid and says they suck. he’s a teenage girl. he’s. A Teenage boy. He’s non-binary. He sat on the throne of god in grass stained jeans and clunky grandpa sneakers and left it all behind without even blinking as soon as his shitty bunker home called out to him. He sticks his tongue out when he’s focused on something and his left eye pulls up into a squint when he smiles reallt wide and his smile is crooked and he has sleepy eyelids . They decided to defy death herself just to rescue someone he mildly remembered caring about once and then blackmailed a reaper into helping with said rescue plan.

He got turned into the tiniest ugliest dog ever and got a thermometer shoved up his ass in the same episode where he’s narratively symbolized by the ouroboros symbol and makes the deliberate choice of destroying his soul just to selfishly keep his family bc he legitimately cannot handle thinking about losing them without going insane. his nicknames are sweetheart and darling boy and pal and buddy and Jackie Boy and slugger and he apologized to a girl for upsetting her like two episodes after ripping a man’s heart out and eating it raw. He literally actively wants to be a silly little guy that everyone likes but he’s so insane and unwell at the same time. he’s the best character ever and I need the entire world to understand this and to see him as more than just the destiel baby or I will also explode. .

[soft-pine]

1.11 scarecrow

LOVE OF MY LIFE EPISODE OF ALL TIMES

first off, TUMMY!!!

second, we get some all time banger dean lines:

"i don't understand they're going to kill us?" / "sacrifice us. which is, i don't know, classier, i guess."

"i hope your apple pie is freakin worth it!"

lastly, scarecrow sets in place and affirms threads that will literally carry us through the entire rest of the show.

in the pilot john leaves dean coordinates for his next hunt. in 1.04, they find john has turned his phone back on (but isn't answering it and is directing people to dean). in 1.10 john texts dean a case and now in 1.11, he calls!

to dean, i think, this means he's been doing good. working the cases john sends and not getting distracted trying to hunt john down. he follows orders and in exchange is rewarded with slightly more contact.

sam, on the other hand, is angry. he's mad at john for not telling him what's going on. he's mad at john for not letting him help hunt the demon that killed jessica. he's mad at dean for just wanting to do what john says and not pushing back.

the whole time sam is on the phone with john, dean is desperately trying to get it. he wakes up shirtless (vulnerable) but almost immediately, he's fumbling to get a shirt on (armor) while reaching for the phone.

to me, nothing will ever beat dean's worried, "dad, it's me. where are you?" to him straightening his shoulders and going, "yes, Sir," in like three seconds.

the case john sends them to is a town sacrificing couples to a prosperity god brought over from europe when settlers colonized indiana.

in the car on the way, sam gets so mad at how dean's just wanting to follow john's orders and be "a good son" that he pulls the car over and leaves. so dean investigates burkittsville on his own and ends up being kidnapped and left by the townspeople as one half of the annual sacrifice. emily, the antagonists' niece is chosen as the other sacrifice.

the layers here are so dense! because, well, first off, we have dean paired with a woman who he is very friendly with but has absolutely no romantic interest in. but this coerced "couple" is what the townspeople intend to feed their fertility god in order to continue their vision of the colonial project. dean is both forced into the costume of heterosexuality and sacrificed for the american dream. this is maybe my favorite theme in spn.

however, rather than romantic partners, emily and dean are in fact mirrors. one of emily's first conversations with dean is about her love for her aunt and uncle and the town. and it echoes dean's compliments of john's work putting together the case file and in general, dean's desire to be a good son.

EMILY: Everybody’s nice here. DEAN: So, what, it’s the, uh, perfect little town? EMILY: Well, you know, it’s the boonies. But I love it. I mean, the towns around us, people are losing their homes, their farms. But here, it’s almost like we’re blessed. 

DEAN: Yahtzee. Can you imagine putting together a pattern like this? All the different obits Dad had to go through? The man’s a master.

but this all sours. emily's family is not nice. in fact, they try to kill her. and not only that - they tell her to just go along with it, to do as she's told. in essence, just to be a good niece.

what does this mean for a story where we know john has used his kids - and especially dean - as bait? where 1.02 finds them following instructions from john which result in dean kidnapped and nearly eaten before he and sam agree he should play the obviously well-worn role as bait. it makes me think of 1.16 when john says he showed up just in time to see meg fall out the window. but is that true? how do we know he wasn't there watching sam and dean tied up and toyed with?

it certainly wouldn't be the first time john has sat in the shadows while leaving his kids in the line of site for the monster. 1.18, 1.20, and 15.16 show that much. (and i really need to stop talking about every episode while just discussing one (and im going to do a whole post about the finale soon) but when i tell you the vamp case in 15.20 that they pick up was one john was working in 86 when dean was 7. and the pattern was the vamps were going after kids between 5-10 who were isolated and living at the edge of town....)

in 2.14, meg (possessing sam) is forcing jo to talk through what she knows about her dad's death.

JO: Our dads were in California: Devil's Gate Reservoir. They were setting a trap for some kind of hellspawn. John was hiding, waiting, and my dad was bait. MEG!SAM: That's just like John. Oh, I'll bet he dangled Bill like meat on a hook. Then what?

that line eats at me. "like meat on a hook" because see the thing is...

stacy, emily's aunt, tearfully tries to console her twice throughout the episode. she knows it's hard and emily's scared but stacy begs her to understand, it's for the common good. when emily is tied to the apple tree, crying and begging, stacy gently strokes a strand of emily's hair, trying to soothe her.

STACY: Try to understand. It’s our responsibility. And there’s just no other choice. There’s nobody else but you. EMILY: I’m your family. STACY: Sweetheart, that’s what sacrifice means. Giving up something you love for the greater good. The town needs to be safe. The good of the many outweighs the good of the one. 

it reminds me of the conversation john has with dean in the hospital at the end of 2.01. the theme of family and sacrifice and the greater good. and no other choice. and nobody else but you. the gentle cruelty.

HARLEY: It’ll be over quickly, I promise.

JOHN: Don't be scared, Dean.

[swords-of-a-soilder]

The Healing Process

Chapter 4

Dreedful revilation

"A coffin?!" Philza confirmed; he was seated at Cellbit's dining table reviving information of the night before. After Phil's midnight episode Cellbit would drag him, well mostly the coffin, to his home so he could properly rest.

"That you built yourself yes," Cellbit explained, "Phil I must say with the recent events this seems more like possession."

The thought the cursed king had taken his antonym was absolutely terrifying. There was no chance of fighting back, the entity was on a higher level than he was, than anyone was, he didn't want to fight a losing battle with his own body.

"Phil," Cellbit threw him out his thoughts, "the vision you had." Phil groan in annoyance as he tilt his gaze. "I know you don't want to talk about it, but this is clearly important.

"I don't even know where to start." Phil began with a sigh, "I know this is connected to my dreams, it's so much of a longer story than you think."

"I have time." Cellbit reasured, he watch Phil sit in silence a little longer starching at the table in an clear attempt to smooth his nerves. He reached out and brought Phil's hand to a stand still, successfully gaining his attention.

"Phil, Bolas to Bolas let me help you." Cellbit requested.

Philza exhaled deeply then gently pulled his hand from Cellbit's grip, "Ok." He began, "I think it started with the dreams, for as long I could remember I've been having dreams of another world.

"what kind of world?"

"That's the thing it's hard to explain.. I guess a domain would be the right term? It's like this space in-between homes of like..Gods."

"Right.." Cellbit respond in mock confidence, admitly unnerved at the mention of Gods.

"these a few of them, but the antagonist is The Ender King, he steal biomes and part of others domain, it became a problem and so they flood his domain."

"I'm assuming that killed him, being an Ender and all?" Cellbit inquired

"yeah, actually it's weird.. I'm wasn't there when this is happened I'm discovered The story after by finding things buried in the ground, scrolls but.."

"But..?"

"it's like I can still feel them there..all of them.."

Cellbit bit his tongue at that information, all would imply the Ender King as well, but a being that has the ability to steal bomies surly must be powerful, would drowning him even work again?

"Phil if you don't mind, I'd like to observe you sleep, it might help us figure out how to stop this," Cellbit made a quotation gesture with his fingers, "Ender King."

"Wait you mean like sleep here?"

"Yes, I'll make you a proper room with a comfortable bed."Cellbit explained, "you deserve it, UNLIKE SOME PEOPLE!"

"Oh stop complaining you big wussy." AbueloRoeier excalimed as he entered the room.

"Why are you even here?" Cellbit pushed, "didn't I dropped you in the old folks home?"

"Ha! Nice try bitch you can't get rid of me!" He responded Before slowly walking to the other room.

"Anyways..it would do good to observe your sleep pattern from start to finish." Cellbit explained further

"I see, you're not gonna let me sleep in a coffin again right?" Phil teased

"Well, I will have back up.." Phil tilled his head in confusion at Cellbit's respond.

Phil lied in his temporary king size bed as he stared up at the celling; the room was mostly dark aside from a dull red light for a nightlight that supprisly was making him more tired.

He glanced over at the camera in the corner of the room, there he knew Cellbit was watching him from. He consider asking him to play some form of music or rain sounds, anything to help him forget that despite the comfortable nature of the bed he was sleeping in a reinforcered box.

Instead however Philza turned on his side, determine to fall asleep despite the knowledge of being watched. On the other side Forever placed a cup of coffee next to Cellbit then sat nearby with his own as they watched the camera.

"how's he doing?" Forever asked

"He still hasn't fallen asleep yet." Cell informed as he pulled his cup closer.

"bond to happen when your being watch I supposed, the six sense that tells you when you're being watched."

"Hm, we have all night either way." He took a sip of his coffee.

As the night dragged on Cellbit consumption of coffee increased. He rub the exhaustion from his eyes as he watch Phil stir in his sleep, the most activity he'd seen in the past two hours .

He then looked over at Forever whom was passed out in his chair, leant back with his feet on the desk and his head pointed to the calling. His chair was also standing on the two back leg, he look like he would fall at any moment.

He quickly turn his attention back to phil, noting the sudden knocking on the wall below the camera. He raised his eyebrows as Phil stared up at him, like he was look directly into his soul.

Cellbit dragged his clipboard close by then transferred the information down however his process would be interrupted by yelling, he looked up at the screen again.

Philza was now pacing the room and yelling his voice at lest five Octanes deeper. Cellbit focussed his attention on his subject admittedly concerned for his behavior, soon Phil turned to pulling at the reinforced door.

Cellbit stood up halfway in preparation to run downstairs, there was no way he'd break though the door! While Cell was hopefully unfortunately it wasn't quite enough to hope as Phil or whoever was possessing him broke apart the door then made his exit.

Cellbit lifted Forever's legs out the way, waking Forever in the process, he Yelp in surprise as the chair tilted over then sat back up garling at Cellbit, "what was that about?!"

"He's escaped!" Cellbit announced before exiting the room, Forever quickly followed him. They would chase Philza on foot, bealry keeping up with his speed

Suddenly Philza took of, supprisly the wings he calmed to be broken carried him into the air; they stopped in awe, painful awear they wouldn't be able to catch him.

Thankfully for them his wings suddenly gave out thus he came crashing to the ground. The duo ran quickly to Phil's unmoving body, Forever then gently attempt to pick him up. "help me out please?" He requested

Cellbit apologizes then help Forever throw Phil over his shoulders, much to his dismay and he suddenly found the engery to Punch Forever's back repeatedly.

Regardless they carry on, practically dragging Phil kicking and screaming, back to the castle and into the original room, Cellbit observed the surrounding area for the door but found nothing more than ramble.

"He broke the door, it'll take a while for me to make a new one!" He explained

Forever glanced around the room, than turned his attention back to Cellbit, "just block it in." He suggested.

Cellbit rumish through his inventory for blocks, "are you sure you'll be able to handle him?" He asked recalling the extreme strength he had before.

Forever agreed before gently drooping Phil on the bed, then made his way to the further cover; He sat on the floor, staring Phil down.

He observed as Phil push himself up partly, the purple glow in his eyes, the way his head hung in desperation. But what shoke him soul was the incredible deep voice that left his mouth, the mer presence of which filled him with dreed.

"How dare you beast?" Phil spoke.

Forever inhaled deeply as rubbed his hands together, still keeping his eyes on Philza, "So you wanna talk huh?" He began, "Ok let's talk; what are you, what do you want?"

"I Just.. want to..Rest!" He spoke with a booming voice, "Do you have any idea what it feels like to be aware for four thousand years?" The room slowy filled with water; Forever push himself up with one hand to the wall, a hand that glow a deep navy while he whispered to himself in Portuguese.

"Do you have any idea what it feels like, to burn for you nature?!" Forever swore he could hear Phil's regular voice in the word burn, he'd make a mental note of it. "Was it such a sin, for me to take what's mine until the end of time?"

Despite the room being completely filled with water, forever found he could breath just fine. He therefore approached Phil slowly his left hand still glowing dully in the shade of the water.

"I just want to rest.." Phil wouldn't move yet his now purple eyes stared at forever though damp locks, his pupils incredibility dilated.

"But, this is rather counter productive isn't it?" Forever commented once he got closer, he climbed on the bed, then grasp Phil's face with no hastation, Phil's eyes immediately darted up to met his own. "If you're tired then sleep."

Almost immediately after Forever statement Philza's eyes fell shut as he drifted into sleep then onto Forever's lap. The water began to drain into seemingly no where leading forever to the conclusion the spirit had finally leftt.

Forever turned to the camera in the upper corner of the room, curious how much of that Cellbit saw. Denounced to him Cellbit was still staring at the video feed in absolutely appalled at the events that played out.

[soaring-kite]

Hi I saw your khr dc crossover and it's great . Can u do one where it is in the same universe where the Mafia doesn't touch anything Gotham related with a 10 foot pole , skull is dick Grayson maybe taking a vacation and ending up with the acros. Then maybe his identity comes out renegade or Robbie Malone or agent 37 and the acrobaleno see the personality shift or something .

MMMM nice, i don't think it's exactly what you wanted but it's what came to mind so, here you go! I had fun with this so i miiiight be extending it idk

it got sort of long so i put it under a cut

Quick Synopsis: Dick Grayson is ready for a break, ready for some fun, ready to fuck up some human traffickers, and absolutely down to---was he in the fucking mafia?

Italy. A country with great food, great people, and some truly terrible sunlight. At least in Dick's opinion as a Gothamite. Seriously, there was sun everywhere and he was certain that if either Bruce or Tim took a step into the country, they'd spontaneously combust like the pasty vampires they were.

Thinking about it like that, it may be the reason Dick had been the one to go undercover in Italy than anyone else.

Oh, sure Bruce called it a "well-deserved vacation" and Damian needled him about "going on break while the rest of us must work continuously," but it was undercover work no matter how Dick looked at it. Dye your hair purple, get contacts, don a new name, create a half-new personality, and join a travelling circus that was most probably the front for a human trafficking organisation. What else could it be but undercover work?

He hummed as he ran a hand through his now-purple hair, twisting a lock between his fingers and tugging at it absently. In his other hand, he held the thick envelope carefully. It was old-fashioned and coloured like cream. It was even sealed with golden wax.

Dick had found it moments prior, when he'd noticed something distinctly off as soon as he'd entered his assigned caravan. The feeling was still there. Casually, still holding the envelope in a gloved hand, he backed up slowly to his bed and sat down. Dick held it up to eye level and, pretending to examine it a bit more, he slid his eyes over the caravan's interior.

Nothing looked like it'd been touched.

But then again, nothing ever really did if someone had planted bugs.

Were the circus onto him? This could end up being trouble. Depending on what had been planted, be it cameras or recording or even tiny little bombs, Dick could be in some deep fucking water.

He sighed and rolled his neck. Dick said to the envelope, voice pitched higher than would speak naturally, "The question now, I suppose, would be whether I risk opening you or throw you out."

On one hand, there could be all sorts of chemicals or magic or something entwined into the envelope. On the other hand, it could be really important.

"I would," a smooth voice said from behind him, "appreciate it if you chose to read it, Mr. de Mort."

Dick flinched and turned it into a twist and elbow-to-the-face movement. His elbow went through the intruder's face and Dick clocked three things in that instant.

The first: the intruder was a man, wearing a green-checkered pattern and silver domino.

The second: magic was obviously involved.

The third: this man knew him only as Skull de Mort, it seemed, and not Dick Grayson or Nightwing. That changed a few things.

Twist, elbow, and Skull de Mort would---scream.

"Who are you?!" Skull wailed. "How did you get into the great Skull's caravan?! Are you here to kill me?! I'm warning you, I took three years of karate!"

The intruder smiled indulgently, one leg crossed over the other and giving some serious creepy vibes.

"Quite the opposite, Mr. de Mort. I'm here to give you the opportunity of a lifetime." He uncrossed his legs and got up from the bed. "I plan to gather the very best, the strongest seven in the world to serve a grander purpose. You, Skull de Mort, just happen to be one of these best and strongest."

Oh, he was good. Whoever this guy was, he was really, really good. He'd obviously done a lot of research onto Dick's made-up background for Skull and doubled down on the false personality's easy acceptance of flattery and ego feeding. At the same time, this would be supremely easy and supremely difficult.

Someone who'd done their research was easier to fool; just like this man, they were so confident in their investigation that Dick was certain they wouldn't dig deeper. On the other hand, someone who'd done their research was infinitely harder to keep an act around. Discrepancies wouldn't be tolerated.

Skull shifted on his feet. He puffed out his chest and tossed back his head. "Well, that's---it's only natural you would acknowledge my abilities! Haha! Are you a fan, my good man? What's your name, I'll give you a personalised autograph!"

"No need," the man said. "And, ah, you may call me Checker Face."

"Eeeeeh? A pseudonym? How cool!" Skull gave Checker Face a double thumbs up. "Are you like a superhero?"

Checker Face twitched slightly and Dick zeroed in on it.

Oho. Now that was interesting.

"I suppose so. Now, you'll find all necessary information regarding the first meeting enclosed in the envelope. Do try and get there, Mr. de Mort. I eagerly await your grand entrance."

Skull blinked, and Checker Face vanished. He shrieked and whipped around this way and that, eyes wide and hands frantic.

"Magic!" he cried.

Dick Grayson traced the burner phone in his pocket discreetly. He may end up having to hand this case over to Tim.

[meanbossart]

I've been really enjoying your fic and it got me curious about how your campaign went??? I got the important parts (your Durge denied Bhaal, Shadowheart spared nightsong I think, Astarion obviously didn't ascend) but what else happened? Will we ever see any of the other companions?

Thanks for enjoying the story! I can say with pretty much certainty we won't be seeing any other canonical characters from the game, Jaheira, Minsc and Halsin would have stayed behind in Baldur's Gate, as well as Wyll. My Durge killed Lae'zel early in the game and Karlach also died at the end of my campaign.

Gale's character decided to go after the crown, and while he was the staple fourth member of my party the relationship had always been uh... Tense. This was before they apparently patched out how needy he was, but frankly it made for a really interesting story since i just kind of assumed his character was kind of a creep wearing a nice-guy's face. Also, to be fair, I DID fall for his "wanna see a magic trick" line but that just kindled the fire to my theory that he's actually a fairly manipulative person (and perhaps he's unaware of it). MIND YOU PLEASE that this doesn't mean i don't like his character - honestly i feel like I got a REALLY interesting side of him in my campaign and i wouldnt have it any other way - this was a party composed of the dark urge, Astarion, Shadowheart and GALE and to have us all turn down power and glory only for the goody-two-shoes wizard of the camp to turn kinda evil and power-hungry made for a really satisfying narrative.

... Sorry i ended up rambling about Gale LOL to actually answer the rest of your question, my campaign went like this:

I made a Fighter, champion sub-class, BIG hulking drow because i thought it would be funny. Because i went in blind I started off as a confused homicidal murderer who is a liiiittle weirded out about his urges but he doesnt stress TOO much about it. Is fairly standoffish and distrusting toward all of his companions which made for a weird start. Motivated by gold, killing things, getting this worm out his head and making off-color jokes. Ends up siding with the Tieflings because i also decided that, as a very hedonistic character who thinks we should be lunatics because we want to rather than because a cult is telling us to be, my durge would profoundly hate the absolute. As a male drow he also really hated Minthara so yeah, easy choice there. As mentioned above, I also killed Lae'zel when she tried to murder-suicide everybody.

I wasn't going to fuck anyone, believe it or not, so during the tiefling party i went with Gale because it SEEMED like he just wanted to show me something neat (it ended early because i failed his checks and i guess he can't get hard unless i can cast fireball). Also, at this point even though i made mostly "good" moral choices i *was* still a dick the whole time - despite this, everyone in camp wanted to fuck me BESIDES Astarion, which was so fucking funny and devastating that I decided my Durge would, from that moment on, turn on the charm and the flattery and make it his mission to bang him. So yes, they were manipulating each other. I don't have to explain why that made for a really really fun little dynamic. Also Astarion had to tell me he was a vampire through dialogue instead of biting me and i got to say "yeah duh" which was hysterical.

I finally banged him sometime during the underdark (didn't go to the creche at all) and during Act 2 I followed the same pattern of doing mostly the Good Thing while being arrogant the whole time, I fell into a kind of chaotic-neutral/true-neutral aligment and watched my little homicidal maniac cluelessly stumble his way into a hero's journey. I had also really grown to like Shadowheart at that point after having a really negative first impression of her character and she basically became my durge's best friend. Astarion also grew on me for all the reasons we know and love and he did his confession to me sometime in late act 2. I Never met Araj (though i think i mention her in the fan story only because her interaction is interesting) so I got the dialogue that isn't prompted by her encounter. I also had to "break up" with Gale at this point which boy that sure came as a surprise to me! I also didnt break the shadow curse.

Because I didnt kill isobel (Again, my guy didnt like people telling him what to do or not to do), my little butler guy made me wanna kill Astarion. I SWEAR this happened pretty late in game, maybe even in the first night in baldur's gate which i realize is unusual. Naturally I didnt and I decided that would be the turning point where my Durge decides to not just Go With The Flow of things but actively fight his urge and pursue its root cause. He tried to be more of a good person from that point on which was kind of a clumsy effort lol

He completely antagonized the emperor immediately upon him revealing his true identity, stole the orphic hammer from Raphael's house, betrayed Gortash after setting an "alliance" with him, killed Orin (she kidnapped the orphan and killed her in front of me because i failed the check :| ) stopped Astarion from ascending and helped Shadowheart kill everyone in the house of grief, i let her make her own choice regarding her parents and she decided to kill them. I also encouraged her to not immediately align with the Selunites just because of her past.

I got Astarion the thing that helps him read the necromancy book and i cannot tell you how satifyins it was that, after giving up unspeakable power by killing Cazador, that dude and his little ghoul army basically mauled Orin and her grandad for me practically by themselves while I was down on the floor with 1 health. PROUD OF YOU BUDDY.

Gale spoke to Mystra as well at some point and i swear I NEVER encouraged that guy to take the crown for himself. It was always either "do whatever you want" or "i think thats a shitty idea." At this point my Durge was super sick of him so they had a bit of a crappy relationship which may have something to do with how things turned out.

I betrayed the emperor, released Orpheus and when he asked if any of us wanted to be a mindflayer i went "Fuck No" big time and luckily the guy just did it for me. Chaos ensues, I kill the emperor and the absolute in an epic battle that took me like a whole day. I also killed Orpheus when he asked me to. Karlach died ( :c ) and Gale told me he was gonna fuck off to get the crown. In the final Astarion dialogue I told him we would find a way to get him to walk under the sun again.... AAAAAnd thats it i think? Man this game is huge lmao i swear i wasnt trying to be long-winded.

[xx-slug-xx]

For the choose violence ask game 1, 7, 12, 17, 18, and 21 (Some of these are like blank part of canon ones so feel free to choose any media you enjoy for them)

Using Homestuck once again for this :D

1: The character everyone gets wrong

Equius, full stop. You are not a true Equius fan unless you accept his character flaw and don’t try to defend him at every turn. Or, if you hate him and only see his flaws. Yes he’s a creep, yes he deeply cares about his friends, yes he’s classist, yes he’s great moirails with an Olive, yes he sweats when he gets worked up over anything at all, yes he’s hypersexual, yes he’s autistic, yes he built Tavros legs when he really didn’t have to, yes he chose his kinks and ingrained submissiveness to highbloods over his own life and got his moirail killed too, yes he said he’d deal with Gamzee and it ended in nothing (wow, heir of void moment). What about it?

7: What character did you begin to hate not because of canon but because how the fandom acts about them

I love all the characters for their own reasons, so I can’t really say I hate any outright (or for any reason). However, I really get annoyed with peoples’ interpretation of all the Dancestors. It’s ether “uwu they are perfect” or “they are horrible and suck and if you like them, you are awful”. Very few people are normal about them and it makes me not like as much content that depicts them since it feels like nobody gets them

12: The unpopular character that you actually like and why more people should like them

The entire Midnight Crew. Everyone focuses on the trolls and humans and I feel like they get forgotten about. Carapacians are really interesting and all the Midnight Crew members are really likeable characters. They are fun, violent, and cool as hell. My fav is Clubs Duce! But their alternate counterparts are also cool and I feel like people forget about the versions from other sessions besides Jack Noir (Save me Draconian Dignitary, Courtyard Drool, and Hegemonic Brute!)

17: there should be more of this type of fic/art

Unironically nsfw and smut. Since a large part of the HS fandom is made of antis who think if you sexualize any of the characters, regardless of aging them up, then you are a pedophile, it really makes the kinky alien sex smut fics/art lacking in terms of amount. The Alternian trolls having underaged sex is integral to their survival, that’s part of the canon anyway. Like, hs smut and nsfw is so fun to explore since it’s alien emotions and cultural views on sex! It’s my absolute favorite! But so many people are called pedophiles, even if you use the characters who are IN Beyond Canon and are old as shit (they aren’t old as shit, but it’s funny to say it like that lol). Shit makes me upset

18: It’s absolutely criminal that the fandom has been sleeping on

Already answers this one, but I can add on to what I previously said :)

Classpecting based on personality instead of just “what class/aspect would thematically look nice”. This is for Classpecting other fictional characters aswell as one’s self. ESPECIALLY one’s self! It’s about personality traits and patterns more than anything else! Players with the same Classes and/or Aspects always have similarities in their personal being! No matter what! Also though, there’s too many knights, princes, and heart players out there and it’s mostly because people kin or have fictives of the Striders imo. Fictive are cool, and are not necessarily included in this. However, I don’t give a fuck if you kin the Striders. There are not this many Knights, Princes, or Heart players! Do your research and find what suit you best! Don’t use the class/aspect quizzes online as you 100% this is what you are! Use them as a base line and for inspiration!

21: Part of canon you think is overhyped

This is hard because if anything, I think of the parts that are underhyped more lol

Probably Dirkjake. Not the ship itself, just their canon interactions. I love the ship since it’s tragic and toxic as hell. But based on the way fandom mostly seemed to treat it when I read HS, I thought it was going to be so much more tbh. It was minuscule and you never saw them together, but the majority of the fandom at the time treated their relationship like it was some perfect yaoi and I was tragically misinformed. Thankfully, the Epilogues gave me more substance to work with lmao

Also Aranea as a villain. People make her out to have played a major role in Game Over. No, she died almost immediately. She’s a great character, but she’s not as great of a villain as I’ve seen people try to make her out to be. She made things worse, but everyone probably would have died anyway even without her influence since Vriska wasn’t there to change things

[sissytobitch10seconds]

Expanding the Flock

Fandom: Grishaverse: SIx of Crows Summary: The five times that they tried to have a baby and the one time that it worked. Warnings: Trans male pregnancy, miscarriages, mentions of self harm, canon backstories/trauma, brief sex scenes, and childbirth Word Count: 16,873 Ship(s): Kaz Brekker/Jesper Fahey/Inej Ghafa/Matthias Helvar/Wylan Van Eck/Nina Zenik

Archive link!

A/N: So I'm back on my bullshit when it comes to writing things that only I will like. I love angst, my autistic interest is pregnancy/birth, and Kaz is one of the characters I love to torture here. I hope that whoever else this appeals to enjoys it! Stay sissy and bitchy everyone &lt;3

1. Jesper

He had gone out on a nice date with his husband that night. They had stopped by their favorite cafe and shared a bottle of wine and more pastries than their wife needed to know about before they had gone to the new opera house to watch a show that was a shared favorite of theirs. They had held hands as they walked along the side of the river and giggled together over the jokes that the actors had made. It had been a wonderful night and it was going to be topped off with what he hoped would end up with them both sweating and cuddled up together on their big bed.

That had been before two incredibly stupid looking goons had stepped out from an alley that they were passing by and started yelling at them. The one on the left had long red hair that was brushed out so that it had almost become as fluffy and big as Jesper’s hair, but down to his waist instead of tucked up against his head. He was wearing a pair of mismatched socks that were only on display because his pants had been hacked off at the knee with what appeared to be safety scissors. The one on the right had short black hair and his left arm was such a tight network of scars that it hung uselessly down at his side. They were both dressed in a very distinctive pink and orange polka dot pattern and they were both holding guns. 

“Don’t resist, come with us quietly!” the one on the left almost screamed. Jesper would have felt bad for him if the wasn’t threatening his husband.

“Are you attempting to kidnap us?” Kaz asked, raising a brow as an amused smirk began to pull at his lips. Jesper was so unafraid of what the thugs had to offer that he turned his head to the side so that he could admire the absolute beauty that was his husband. It sent flutters of butterflies up from his stomach to his heart and then down to his fingertips. Kaz was bathed in the flickering yellow light from the oil lamps and the silvery moonlight. His skin almost glowed when he was in this kind of mood and it was addicting.

Jesper snapped his attention back to the attempted fight at hand when the thugs began to move. He flicked his coat back and pressed his thumb to the pearl handle of his revolver just to remind himself that it was there if he ended up needing to use it. He didn’t really want to have to kill the new thugs since they hadn’t learned their lesson, it likely wasn’t even their fault. Whoever had sent them to try and do business with Dirtyhands and his sharpshooter should have told them what they were getting into. Maybe he could convince Kaz to just knock them out and then leave them in the alley they had jumped from, since he was already in a good mood. 

They looked towards each other and then turned back towards the duo. “We-we’re mugging you!”

“You’re mugging us? I don’t think that anyone has mugged me like this since I was seven,” Kaz snorted.

“You weren’t even in Ketterdam when you were seven,” Jesper whispered through a snort. He saw the dark sparkle in his husband’s eye and knew that Kaz was enjoying toying with the two thugs.

“We’re mugging you!” the thug on the left replied, though he dropped one of his hands from his gun to itch at his leg.

“Likely,” Kaz hummed. “If you want to get money from people in the Barrel then you should learn how to run a con or pick-pocket. If you can’t manage either of those then you could always attempt to sell yourself to one of the whorehouses, though they don’t take the extra guests.”

That got the thugs angry enough that they actually launched themselves at Jesper and Kaz, which was about the stupidest thing that they could have done other than coming after the Bastard of the Barrel in the first place.

They seemed to have the same idea about how they were going to deal with their new problem, thankfully. Jesper went for the one on the right and Kaz went for the one on the left, neither of them bothering to pay attention to the other because of how many fights that they had endured alongside each other. Jesper grabbed the thug’s wrist and then slammed it down onto the streetlamp that they were next to so that the nerves frayed. It caused the thug to let go of his pea shooter, which clattered noisily down to the ground and shot the lackluster bullet through the night air.

“Damn, you really need to up your weapons if you’re going to try and go after people like us,” Jesper laughed. He wrapped one of his lanky arms around the back of the man’s neck so that he could cut off his air. He pressed a little bit harder when hands began to claw at his skin to try and get him to let go. He counted to ten before he felt the body leaned up against him go completely limp. He dumped the thug down onto the ground and then turned to his husband, fully expecting the other thug to be incapacitated as well.

He forgot that Kaz was recently recovering from a cold, or at least that was what they had assumed it was. After everything that Kaz had been through when he was a child, it was almost impossible to get him to admit that he was actually sick when he was. The recovering and slowness meant that Kaz hadn’t quite taken down his thug. The man in question was already beat to a near pulp but was persisting on regardless. He had a black eye and several cuts on the arm that was holding onto his gun, but was standing strong. Jesper walked over and grabbed the revolver on his right hip. He made eye contact with Kaz as the two of them communicated silently.

Kaz lurched forward with his cane clasped in his hand at the same time as Jesper, both of them knocking their weapons against the thug’s head so that he crumpled down to the ground. What they hadn’t been expecting was for him to fall forward and onto Kaz, knocking the already unsteady man down onto the ground.

Immediately after seeing his husband on the ground, Jesper jumped into action. He grasped the thug and tossed him off Kaz with no particular care before he offered his hand out. Kaz was already holding his cane so if it turned out that he had been triggered and needed to not touch someone, he would be able to get up on his own.

He had been doing a lot better lately, thankfully, so he was able to reach out and take Jesper’s hand. He used his cane and his husband to right himself properly. His gloved hands brushed over his suit, Jesper helping but really just using it as an excuse to try and reignite the mood that had hung in the air between them at the time. The sharpshooter only paused his ministrations when he smelled the thick coppery scent of blood and pulled his hand away after feeling something damp.

“Kaz, love, did you get hurt in that fight?” he was trying to keep the fear from his voice. It had been a long time since any of them had been involved in something that could be considered deadly, but he still had nightmares about holding the dead bodies of his partners in his arms.

“He only hit me a couple of times and it was mostly in my arms,” Kaz replied, his face grim and a little bit gray.

“Then why do you smell like blood?” Jesper asked, growing more worried by the second. If it turned out that they had misidentified the sickness that Kaz was suffering from and he was far more ill than any of them had anticipated, he wasn’t sure that he was going to be able to handle it. He had already lost someone that was very dear to his heart once and it had torn him to shreds. 

Kaz was quiet for a bit, staring down at the ground. He pressed his hand to the lower half of his stomach and then let out a shaky sigh. “I think that I was pregnant, Jesper.”

His mind had been whirling with the thoughts of what might be wrong with his husband and the ways that they could fix it before he lost another person that held his heart. As soon as he heard what Kaz had said, every thought flashing through his mind ground down to a halt. He blinked a few times and then asked, “What?”

“My cycle was late. I didn’t have one last month,” he bit out. He was already limping in the direction of their home, his cane clacking loudly against the ground. Jesper hurried after him, his hands twitching as he wanted to comfort his distressed husband but wasn’t quite sure how he could do it effectively. “I didn’t want to say anything because I know that the Firepox messed up my system. I’ve heard of it causing infertility in people that get it as children.”

“But you had cycles even after you recovered,” Jesper said before he realized that it was a stupid thing to say.

He moved on instinct after that, looping one of his long arms around the back of his husband’s waist so that they were pressed together. He walked them slowly down the streets of their city so that they could find their way back home. Whatever was hurting Kaz wasn’t going to stop soon, so the best place for them to deal with that was back in their own house and away from prying eyes.

They were quiet through the entire walk, Kaz only pausing when they got to the front entrance of their home in Geldstraat. He kept his head bowed down and his body began to quiver, so Jesper tried to pull back. Kaz’s arm tensed from where it was looped over the other man’s body so that he had to stay where he was. “Please don’t leave me,” he whimpered.

“Never, baby, never,” Jesper whispered in promise. He pressed their bodies closer together and then helped Kaz through the front door of their home and down the hall to a parlor. He sat his husband down and then knelt in front of him, their hands still clasped together but no longer quite as close as they had been before. “What did you say was happening, again?”

“I’m having a miscarriage, Jes,” Kaz pursed his lips into a thin white line. It was as if speaking the words into the open air between them had made them all the more real, made them sink low and deep into both of their minds.

They had never talked about children, but it was always kind of understood that they might happen at one point. They had all already opened themselves up to the danger of having something that they loved so adding pets and kids didn’t seem like that far of a leap, not when they were as powerful and intelligent as they were. Still, they hadn’t talked about it and no one had really dwelled on it. Jesper wasn’t quite sure how he was supposed to feel about it.

He didn’t have to try to sort out his own thoughts as quickly as he was anticipating, thankfully, as Nina’s cheery voice rang out through the grand halls of their mansion, “Welcome home!”

Wylan and Nina walked into the parlor to greet their spouses but then stopped when they saw the ashen expression on both of their faces and the blood that was slowly turning Kaz’s pants crimson red through the navy black. “What happened?” Nina immediately asked as she rushed over to her husband.

So that they didn’t overwhelm the poor man, Jesper stood up and tried to brush the blood on his hand off on his pants. He didn’t even know when he had brushed against the part of Kaz that was bleeding to get it, but the idea of keeping it on him made his skin crawl. “We got in a fight on the way back. Just two low-brow thugs that thought that they could get something good out of us,” he explained.

“Did you get shot?” Wylan asked, worry evident across his features.

Kaz shook his head. “I think I was pregnant. Got knocked pretty hard in the stomach and I guess my womb isn’t good enough to hold onto a baby after a little bit of damage,” he pursed his lips again and then turned his head to the side.

None of them knew what to say to try and make it better. None of them had even known that Kaz had the ability to get pregnant, not after they had all spent nearly five years since the Ice Court heist fucking like rabbits with nothing happening. Still, they had to support their husband in the tumultuous time that he was going through before they gave themselves the grace to process their own emotions.

Nina was the first to act, giving him a gentle kiss to his forehead. “Come, let’s get you cleaned up and then into bed. I’ll make you some tea and a hot water bottle for the cramps.”

Kaz didn’t say anything as he took her hand and then limped after her. He kept one hand grasping the head of his cane and the other pressed to the very base of his belly, where their baby might have grown had Jesper just been a little bit faster in protecting him. He winced when he realized what his thoughts were flying towards, so pulled Wylan aside to talk to him so that he could work through his worries. They were going to have to tell Inej and Matthias what had happened soon too, but Jesper had to get his thoughts out of the clump they had formed first.

---

2.Inej

She hadn’t seen any of her partners in far too long, which meant that she had been in her room taking a nap with Koshak for nearly two hours. 

Inej didn’t claim to be particularly clingy, she thought that she was one of the more distant members of their polycule. Kaz and Matthias had to spend most of their days in a room with one or more of their partners present to feel sated while Nina and Jesper had to be touching someone at least every five minutes or they acted like they were going to die. Out of everyone, she and Wylan probably had the least damage when it came to aggressive separation anxiety.

Still, she missed them and she wanted to spend some time with them. So, Inej rolled over on her bed while trying very hard not to dislodge the cat from where he had curled up in a happy spot of sunshine. She stood gracefully from her bed and then pulled on the slightly uncomfortable trousers that she had chosen to wear that day. She was still getting up as early as she had during her last voyage, but she was staying up later than she had while she was at sea. It made her more tired throughout the day, so she spent a lot of time napping. She had been doing said napping with Kaz more often than not because he had also been struck by some sort of exhaustion that he refused to talk to anyone about.

Inej had been informed of the loss that the polycule had suffered while she was out at sea. It was one of the reasons that she had chosen to face more of her attention to the land persecution of slavers and bad rich men instead of hunting down ships. She wanted to be there if something like that happened again, and she knew that Kaz was going to be more reckless now that he had another tragedy hanging on the forefront of his mind.

Something in the very back of her brain was letting her know that there was a specific reason that Kaz had been so tired outside of him trying his best to match her own sleep schedule. She wasn’t able to track his cycles the same way that she could with Nina, which was how she made sure that her wife wasn’t unknowingly expecting whenever the other woman made something strange for dinner. She was still a spider and the Wraith, even if she didn’t do as many crimes as she had before they had taken down Van Eck.

She felt bad for employing the same tactics that Kaz had taught her back on him, but there was no other way that she could really figure out what was wrong with him. He seemed to be tired no matter how often he slept, often dozing when Matthias read in the evenings or when Jesper and Nina were arguing about something. He was also clingier than he had been, usually choosing to sit on the couch with one of them instead of in his chair to get his requested space. He had been eating a little bit more than he usually did, but Inej was also fully aware that he did that often when she came back into port so that he wouldn’t be caught mistreating his body.

She hadn’t been able to put her finger down on any type of conclusive proof, but she was beginning to suspect with every nap that her husband took that they might have another pair of feet running around their home before the year was out.

The thought both terrified and excited her. She had always wanted children, it had been something that she had clung on to even with her trauma from the Menagerie. She was glad when she fell in love with two other people that had the ability to carry children because it increased her chances to have the huge family that she knew that her heart was chasing after even if she wasn’t ever able to have sex enough to conceive herself. The idea of having children was overwhelming, especially so early into her slaver-hunting career and with what had happened to her. She knew that they were far more powerful and wary than her own parents had been, so no child that they had would ever have to go through what she had.

Inej shook her head to get rid of her thoughts. She noticed that her braid had begun to come undone around her neck, so she started unweaving the strands so that she could replait them. She opened the door to her room with her foot and then slipped silently out into the hall in search of some companionship. 

Wylan had a Merchant Council meeting that day and he was bringing Matthias with him so that he could have the upper hand when arguing about why they should handle the shipping of items to Fjerda in a very specific way. Nina and Jesper hadn’t mentioned having anything to do when they had gotten up to pretend to help her with breakfast that morning, so it was likely that they were also somewhere in their home. Kaz was probably either taking his own nap or down in his office.

She decided that she was going to patrol the house until she ran into someone, like she was a ghost haunting her own halls.

Her first stop was down in the kitchen, which was empty other than a long-cooking meal in a pot on top of the stove. Her hand twitched at her side as she longed to lift the lid so that she could see whatever concoction one of her spouses had whipped up that time, but she knew better than that now.

So she continued through the empty dining room to the family room where most of her spouses hung out when they weren’t working or sleeping. She smiled fondly when she finally came across one of her partners, taking in the sight before she let them know that she was even present. 

Jesper was splayed out on the couch so that his lanky body took up the entire piece of furniture. Nina was laid out on top of him, wearing only a chemise and a set of bloomers instead of being dressed in her grandeur like she usually was by that time of day. Jesper had one of his arms around the back of her hips to keep her up on the couch and her arms were pillowing her chin. They were looking at each other and talking in soft voices, neither of them paying attention to a single other thing in the world.

“Have either of you seen the others?” Inej asked as she stepped out of the shadows. 

She had to bite the insides of her cheek to keep from giggling when they both startled and nearly fell off of the couch. She walked over so that she could kiss them both as payment for frightening them. Once Nina had finished huffing her way into more affection, she finally answered her wife, “I think that Kaz said he was going to work in his home office. He might be taking a bath, I thought that I heard the water running.”

Inej startled slightly at that and worry overwhelmed her. Baths were a rarity for Kaz, both because they took quite a lot of time to get the trouble to be worth it and because being entirely submerged in water often reminded him of the worst trauma that he had ever endured. “I’m going to go check on him, I’ll see you both later!”

“You’re always welcome to join the cuddle pile, Inej,” Jesper said, his words slurred with comfort and sleep now that his surprise had faded.

The warmth from her spouses was enough to temporarily drown out the feeling of panic that she got about hearing where her husband was. She carefully stepped up the stairs of their home, skipping over the boards that creaked despite their higher quality of the building compared to the Slat. She paused when she got to the second floor, wondering briefly if she should check Kaz’s office before she resigned herself to continuing with the main mission. She wasn’t going to allow herself detours if it turned out that Kaz really needed her or something else had gone wrong.

Inej paused when she got to the door, knocking first instead of just entering right away. “Kaz, are you in there?”

“Go away,” he rasped back in reply. His voice sounded worse than it had before her nap, almost like he had been shouting or crying.

That only got her worry to increase so she grasped the handle to the door and pressed it open without asking. She knew that Kaz was going to demand that she leave, even scream or yell at her, but if something was wrong then she was going to help him. He didn’t have to sit alone with his fear and pain, not after so many years of companionship and marriage.

Before she had even had the chance to properly look at him, he did exactly what she was expecting he would and yelled, “Get out!

“Kaz, I’m not stupid, I know that something is wrong,” she snapped in reply. She stepped onto the heated tile of the bathroom and then closed the door behind her so that they could have a shade of privacy, though the rest of their partners could get through the locks in the house or open the doors themselves.

She took in the bathroom then, placing her hands on her hips so that she didn’t look as timid as she felt. Kaz very rarely yelled at her anymore so when he did it reminded her of the time before she had gotten her ship and learned how to be more than just his Wraith.

There was a heap of clothing on the ground between the counter with the sink and the toilet, which was usually where they all tried to hide something if they had been injured. Kaz was sitting in the tub, which was full of rather murky looking water. His hair had been perfectly styled that morning but now it was rumpled and hanging down over his pale forehead into his dark eyes. His shirt was off, which exposed his puffy chest to the open air and made his dark nipples stiff. The most peculiar thing about the whole situation was that he still had his smalls on even though he was submerged into the water.

“Inej, get out,” Kaz growled, doing his best imitation of a feral animal. He then let out something close to a whimper as he wrapped his arms around his belly and hunched forward. His jaw set, which meant that he was in pain, but his eyes also squeezed shut and his mouth twisted, which meant that he was upset about something.

It was then that Inej noticed that his once-white smalls were soaked through with blood in the crotch alone. His slacks were likely stained with the sticky red substance as well.

Her heart sunk low in her chest as she realized what had happened.

Inej cursed her saints for what they had done to answer her prayers. She had asked them to make sure that she was back with her partners if something like that ever happened again, which was why she was staying more in Ketterdam instead of sailing the seas. She was grateful that she had made that decision when she thought that Kaz was pregnant, but now that it was evident that he was having another miscarriage she wished that she hadn’t asked in the first place.

She gracefully closed the space between them so that she was kneeling down beside him. “I’m not going to touch you but I want you to know that I’m here.”

“Inej,” he sobbed. “I don’t want you to see me like this.”

“I’ve seen you vomiting after the first time that we had sex and fainting in a prison carriage, being by your side while you go through trauma is kind of my thing,” she said. He wasn’t going to respond well to gentleness or kindness, she knew that after all of the time that they had spent together. 

“I know how much you want children,” he sniffled. His good leg moved so that his knee was almost pressed into his chest, trying to make himself smaller so that he felt protected. Kaz groaned when the shift caused something inside of him to send pain throughout his entire body. He put his leg back down and leaned against the lip of the tub so that he was somewhat close to her.

It was true, he did know how desperately she wanted children. It was so hard for her to imagine herself growing old without a child to take care of, a mind to foster, a baby in her arms. She also knew that this wasn’t something Kaz could control, he hadn’t been in any fights like he had the last time that he had suspected he was pregnant. 

Inej took a deep breath so that she could steady her own mind and resist crying. She began to weave her fingers through his hair to put it back where it went, continuing the motion when she saw the shakiness of his shoulders stop. “Talk to me about what happened,” she murmured when his most recent cramp passed.

“Why?”

A small smile played at her lips despite herself. He was always going to be the same bastard that she had fallen in love with, even if his emotional range had expanded exponentially during their time together. “It will make you feel better.”

Kaz was quiet for a while longer before he started talking, “I thought that I was pregnant. I… I know that you noticed the way that I was changing. I was going to do something sweet to tell all of you, but then I was down in my office and I started to feel pain. By the time that I finished up my work and came up here to check what was going on…”

She leaned down and pressed a kiss to his temple. She kept her lips there as she murmured a prayer in the language that her parents had spoken to her, something to send the soul of the child they might have had to their next incarnation. “We will have a child one day, Kaz. It might not come from you and it won’t be in nine months, but one day. This wasn’t your fault.”

He stayed quiet, which made the worry inside of her increase tenfold. There was nothing that she could do about his thoughts, about the way that his mind worked. The only thing that she could do was stroke his hair and remind him that she was there.

---

3.Nina

She felt an arm around her waist twitch and then shudder as the nightmare increased. It was enough that it woke her up from her light doze. It was hailing outside, the droplets of ice shooting against the window loud enough to keep reminding her of what it had been like in the Druskelle ship when Matthias had taken her. She could never sleep well when there were storms, and she knew several of her other partners couldn’t either.

Slowly, she shifted in the bed so that she had turned around to see who was having the nightmare. She wasn’t able to soothe the emotions of people any longer since her powers had changed, but she could still hold them or talk to them when they woke up.

Inej was sleeping directly on top of Matthias, his long arms looped around her tiny frame so that he looked almost as if he was cradling a kitten against his chest. Wylan was sleeping with both of his hands over the top of his eyes and Jesper’s head resting on his shoulder. Kaz was the one that had ended up next to her even though she had come to bed first and him last, which meant that he was also the one having the nightmare.

“Kaz,” she whispered just loud enough that it would be able to rouse him from his sleep. She didn’t want to touch him because there was a good chance that the nightmare was a flashback to the Reaper’s Barge, which meant that he would feel oversensitive and panicked if he woke up with someone’s hand on him.

Her husband’s eyes flew open and he sat up in bed. His chest was heaving to bring in the breath that he needed to survive. His eyes had that wild, panicked look that they always got whenever he was thinking about something that scared him.

Nina carefully slipped from the bed and then placed her hand down on the top of the blanket so that it would pull on him and get his attention. “Love, come on. Let’s go to the kitchen,” she murmured. She didn’t want to wake any of their other partners but she did want to be able to break through the haze of post-sleep panic to get through to Kaz.

He didn’t respond for a second before he gave a shaky nod. He moved to the edge of the bed and then waited as Nina found his cane and handed it to him. That was something that they had done a lot during the beginning of their relationship, when nightmares were far more frequent than anyone in their polycule really wanted to admit.

Once the crow’s head was grasped in his pale, bare hand, he stood up and carefully followed after her. They were both completely silent other than the sound of shuffling feet on the wood floor until they reached the kitchen. “Did you have a nightmare?” Nina asked. She didn’t even turn to look back at him as she lit the stove and got out a pot so that she could heat up some water for tea. 

“I suppose that you could call it that,” he rasped. He sat down on the stool that had been tucked underneath the counter next to their icebox so that he could ease the pain in his leg.

She was quiet for a bit longer as she searched through the cupboards to find one of his favorite cookies. The tin was almost empty but there was enough that they could share a few while they talked. She still didn’t touch her partner as she knelt down beside him and then offered him one of the sweets.

Kaz turned his head to the side, his pale skin tinting green as he gave a minute shake. “I’m not hungry.”

“Are you going to be able to handle some tea?” she asked then. She wasn’t going to force Kaz to drink if he wasn’t up to it, but the tea usually soothed them both back to sleep when they had a bad dream.

“I think so,” he replied softly. Something was off about him but Nina couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Her powers had changed so much since she had taken the parem, so much so that she barely knew how to interact with other people now that she didn’t have the natural benefit of her Corporalki powers. Luckily, she had been together and married to her partners for long enough that she could read them decently even without the ability to sense their heart rates without thinking about it.

She carefully placed the lid back on the tin without taking one of the cookies for herself. Her husband was acting strange enough that the idea of taking one of his favorite treats made her skin crawl. She tucked the tin back up into the cupboard and then sat down in front of him. That gave Kaz the ability to reach out and touch her if he wanted, but didn’t force him to if he was feeling overstimulated like she suspected. “Kaz, what’s going on?”

“Can you still feel heartbeats if you focus? Without relapsing?” he asked instead of answering her question.

Nina felt even more unsteady than she had before. The distance in his eyes and the hunch of his shoulders told her that he had had a bad dream of some kind, but it wasn’t the type that usually plagued him based on the way that he wasn’t shying away from her whenever her dressing gown brushed against him in their small kitchen. She also knew that he never brought up her powers because he didn’t want to send her back down into the near-depressive spiral that had been triggered when she had gone back to Ravka and was unable to get her powers back to what they were before.

She took a deep breath as she told herself that whatever was going on with Kaz wasn’t something that required her to panic quite yet. She was sure that he would explain himself in time, he always did. “I can sense heartbeats without wanting more parem. I think that it has something to do with my ability to control the dead. They aren’t really dead if their heart is still beating,” she chuckled to try and lighten in the mood but the only thing that it did was make several watery tears raise in her husband’s eyes.

That by itself was rather terrifying and her heart began to beat a million miles a minute in her chest. She wasn’t sure what the dream had been or why it was upsetting her lover so much, but she wasn’t quite sure that she wanted to figure it out yet.

Kaz reached out before she could ask any more questions. Her breath hitched in her throat when she felt the callouses on the tips of his fingers from too may hours holding a lockpick brushing against her wrist. Her arm moved so that it was out straight and her hand was flat against the base of Kaz’s stomach, her fingertips just barely brushing against his hipbone. “Do you feel anything?”

It clicked in her brain then, what he was asking of her. 

She glanced towards the calendar and suddenly it made sense. She kept a little red circle that would be filled in so that she could keep track of her cycles, just in case her powers began to interfere with the natural way that her body worked. She had noticed that a blue version of the system had joined her when Inej had come back and then a black one had started to show up two months after that.

That month her dot was right beside Inej’s, but the black was still unfilled. Nina took a deep breath as she turned back to Kaz and asked, “Do you think that you’re pregnant?”

“I wouldn’t be asking you to search of a heartbeat in my belly if I wasn’t, Zenik,” he growled. “I do know basic human anatomy.”

She didn’t respond to his goading this time. Usually when he said something like that it was because he wanted to fight with her and then they would end up falling into each other with teeth and tongues and grabbing hands. This time he was saying it because he was scared, which was understandable if what he thought was happening really was.

Nina moved so that she was kneeling in front of him. She placed both of her hands on his lower belly and then let her eyes fall closed so that she could focus on what he had asked her to do. After she had recovered from the drug, it was harder for her to sense heartbeats, it was much easier for her to feel when there was the absence of one.

Still, she was going to work as hard as she could so that she could meet her husband’s request. She focused on pulling at that dark, empty place inside of her that had been left after the fall. She let out a low breath when the echo was returned to her with nothing, the same way that corpses did. 

At the end of the day, no matter what she did, she was still a criminal and a spy. That meant that she was usually very used to having to say hard things to people and was very sharp-tongued. This time, when she tilted her head up so that she could look at her husband, all of the words that were swirling in her mind had completely disappeared. “What other symptoms have you been feeling, love?” she asked, not moving her hands.

“Don’t stall, just tell me the answer,” Kaz replied bitterly. She could tell by the dark look in his eyes that he already knew what it was going to be before she even said anything.

“I can’t feel a heartbeat. I think that you were definitely pregnant but the only thing I can feel is…” she trailed off, unable to say anything. This was the third time that Kaz had conceived that they knew of and the third time that they had lost the baby before they even had the chance to grow. She wasn’t sure what that was doing her spouse if he felt even half as heavy as she did.

She watched the sharpness in his dark eyes dull slightly. Nina kissed his forehead as she pulled her hands away from him, forcing thoughts of a happy pregnancy into her mind to stave off the sadness for a while. She handed him the tea that had finished steeping and then sat with him until the rest of their partners could get up and help her take care of their husband.

---

4. Matthias 

After three miscarriages from unknown conceptions in four years, Kaz had finally told them that he was pregnant. 

They had all been absolutely overjoyed and nearly exploded all over him when Wylan put together the words found in the notes that Kaz had left all of them in a song. They all knew that the next several months were going to be spent treating Kaz enough like glass to soothe their own worries while not enough that he would snap at them.

Matthias was very careful when he opened the backdoor to their home before he reminded himself that Koshak had gone with Inej and Nina to Ravka. He closed the door tightly behind himself and then walked further into the house. He dumped his exercise equipment where it belonged in the mudroom before he stepped into the kitchen. He was searching through one of the cupboards for his favorite cup so that he could have some water when he felt another body press up against his back. A while ago, that would have made him feel so aggressively overstimulated that he wouldn’t have been able to handle it. Enough time had passed that he knew that it was his husband and what was going to happen.

An ungloved hand pressed onto one of his shoulders while lips kissed at the other. Kaz rasped, “You’re going to drive me insane.”

“That was certainly not my intention, karaste,” Matthias chuckled. He turned around and his hands easily settled down onto his husband’s hips to bring him closer. “I was simply giving you a show to keep you entertained.”

“Well I can think of something else that I would prefer entertain me,” Kaz grinned. Now that they were facing each other, he let his bare hand slowly trail down Matthias’ shoulder and abs down to where his pants were barely clinging to his hips.

The taller of the two men resisted the urge to grin maniacally. That was exactly what he had wanted to happen when he went outside to workout that morning. He could barely contain himself as he reached out and took hold of Kaz’s hips, which gave him the ability to lean down and connect their lips in a very passionate kiss.

Carefully, he let his hands slip around the back of Kaz’s hips so that his palms were pressed to the perky ass hidden beneath another pair of perfectly tailored trousers. He gave a cheeky squeeze before he let himself continue down to hold onto Kaz’s thighs. The other was able to pick up on what he was doing almost immediately, so Matthias lifted his partner up into the air and then turned them around so that he could place his husband down onto the counter. The kiss didn’t break even for a second while he was doing that, both of them meeting together over and over again.

He only stopped when he could feel himself beginning to get lightheaded from the effort that it took to keep the kisses going without taking a breath. “Is it okay if I fuck you right here?”

Usually Matthias was a lot more chaste when he spoke about sex, years of repression and purity culture telling his mind that it was indecent to say such things even though he was already going against those teachings by being married to so many people at once. He was riled up enough that he could barely think about the teachings that had been enforced in him for as long as he could remember, though.

“Of course it is. I would have waited for you to come find me in the bedroom if I was having a bad pain day,” Kaz snarked.

Matthias drank the words in like he was a dying man and Kaz was air. He used to hate the way that the Kerch man spoke, the vile bitterness that was pumped into every word feeling like a poison to his already fragile mind. Now he loved it more than he knew was possible. He longed for the dirty words and bitter musings whenever they were away from each other for a few hours. This time the words made him smirk. His hands moved to begin undoing the front of his husband’s pants as he said, “So ravishing me was an inevitability?”

“Of course it was. I’ve been so horny since you knocked me up that I got off in the office of the Crow Club last week,” he grumbled.

The idea of his dear husband sitting behind his desk, one gloved hand plunged down the front of his pants while lewd noises emitted from his dripping wet cunt was enough to make Matthias speed up the process. 

He nearly ripped the fabric when it wasn’t getting off of the pale thighs he wanted to sink between fast enough. Once it was finally off, his breath caught in his throat and he spent a long moment looking at the curls of neatly trimmed dark hair resting just underneath the barely changed curve of Kaz’s stomach.

“You’re not wearing anything under your trousers already? Should have made sure to knock you up when we first met,” he mumbled as he began to work on the ties of his own pants, only to find that his husband’s nimble fingers had already taken care of that. He was sure not to mention the pregnancies that they had lost on the way to getting to where they were now, since it would kill the mood immediately.

“Shit, if I had known that me getting knocked up would have made you this horny I would have let you,” Kaz groaned. They both knew that it wasn’t true since they had hated each other when they first met, but neither of them were going to say that.

As soon as they were both nude from the waist down, Matthias slotted himself back between his husband’s legs again. He curved the leg with the good knee around his waist to keep him in place and then bracketed Kaz in with his hands against the counter. Their lips met in another tender kiss as he pressed forward and into his lover with practiced precision. He gasped when he felt the slick wetness and heat waiting for him with every inch that he pressed inside.

“Oh, oh fuck, Matthias,” Kaz groaned when the other man bottomed out so that he was completely full. He looked debauched already and they had only been going for a little while. It was enough to make Matthias want to go entirely feral, ripping Kaz apart with his teeth and sharp thrusts. That was going to have to wait for another time because he was going to take his time while they fucked, he had already decided that when he went outside that morning.

As soon as they had both adjusted to the new flood of sensations that were overcoming them, Matthias slowly pulled out and then pressed back in. He knew that Kaz liked to be held down against every surface and used almost like a toy when he was having his good days, but Matthias was so excited about the little potential life that had burrowed its way into the famed Dirtyhands that his thrusts were slow and worshipful.

He felt a hand reach up to his shoulder, fingernails digging into the skin and muscle there. He was worried that he was going to lose all control if Kaz ended up begging him like he always did, but his mind was immediately snapped out of that line of thought. Kaz whimpered and said, “I need you to stop.”

Matthias pulled out and took a step back from his lover almost immediately. He knew what it was like to get overwhelmed from touch without a phobia coming into play, so he could only guess how much worse it was with one. He held his hands out to the side so that Kaz could see them and knew that he wasn’t going to advance forward again.

What Matthias was met with again surprised him. Kaz looked down to the space between his legs and then let out a startled sob when he saw the sticky crimson that was beginning to spread between onto the counter.

“Love, what happened? Are you alright?” Matthias asked. He looked down and saw that his cock was also streaked with the sticky material, which reminded him of the time that Nina had started her period in the middle of them having sex. Given that Kaz was pregnant, the period was a non-option, but that meant that the blood was being caused by something else entirely.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Kaz whispered as tears began to streak down his face.

They were both aware of what was happening, they both knew it and neither of them were able to admit it out loud. Saying the words would make it all the more real and that felt more damning than the blood that was slowly seeping out of Kaz. All of their hopes and dreams were spilling in crimson, just like they had thought that they would when Matthias had a bullet lodged in his shoulder and broken aspirations in his mind.

This time, he was not the broken eighteen-year-old boy that he had been back then. He leaned forward and pressed their foreheads together. He didn’t bother to try and dress again since it would only ruin his clothing. He was going to have to strip out of it again when he got them to the bathroom. “It’s alright, it’s alright,” he murmured as he pressed gentle kisses to Kaz’s forehead.

He brought them up to the bathroom and then lowered Kaz down into the tub. He took a cloth from under the sink and washed them both off before he got Kaz a pair of the underthings that he wore when he was on his cycle so that they could track the blood, just like they had done with the last three miscarriages. 

He had just settled Kaz down into bed when the other turned to the side so that he was looking at his husband. Matthias felt his heart break a thousand times over in his chest and he had to ask, “Did I do this?”

“No, I was having cramps yesterday. I assumed that it was normal, I lasted so much longer than I had with all of the other ones,” Kaz whispered. “I broke the hopes of everyone again… you were all so excited to finally be parents.”

Matthias realized he shouldn’t have brought up his own guilt to the person that was going through the most pain in the situation. He brushed Kaz’s hair to the side with a slightly trembling hand and said, “It will happen, Kaz. One day we will have a child. No one is going to blame you for what happened, it was simply not the right time.”

---

5. Wylan

He didn’t work in his lab as much as he did before. Despite his rampant protestations to the contrary, Wylan did like making bombs and whatever other chemical compound Kaz required for his newest job. The compounds made sense and the rush of being able to control that much destruction was enough to make him forget about the weakness that had been assigned to him for so much of his life. With the combination of his Merchant responsibilities and having as many high-maintenance partners as he did, he barely got the time to spend with the bombs as he used to.

Today was one of the rare times that he was basically alone in the mansion, while also having no work to do for the empire that he had inherited from his father. That meant that he got to do what he pleased, and this time he chose to experiment with some of the powders and chemicals that Kaz had gotten him for his birthday. Nina and Matthias were meeting with some of her old teachers in the Embassy, Jesper and Inej were staking out a new brothel that they were working to take down, and Kaz was going back and forth between the house and his clubs for business meetings. Wylan missed his partners, but he was excited that he got that time by himself.

He heard the door behind him open slightly and assumed that it was Koshak since the cat hated being alone. Inej had originally gotten him to keep the mice out of her vessel, but she became very attached to her little companion. They were in the process of socializing the creature with dogs so that Matthias could have a pet of his own.

He turned his head and then startled slightly when he saw that it was not, in fact, his wife’s cat but rather one of his husbands. Kaz was standing in the doorway to Wylan’s laboratory with a rather pained looked on his face. His suit was still immaculate, tailored lines making him look angular and dangerous in a way that got them all very riled up. He had his gloves securely on over his hands even though they were back in their own home, which meant that it was one of the days were he was feeling too overwhelmed for even his partners to touch him. He was also leaning very heavily on his cane.

“Kaz!” Wylan gasped, adrenaline rushing through his system from seeing a figure much bigger than what he had been expecting. He set down the vials that he had been toying with and then stripped off his work gloves. He also removed the goggles that were not serving a purpose other than keep his red-brown curls out of his eyes. “I thought that you were going to be working today.”

“I was,” he replied. His voice was tight, like he was hiding something that was upsetting him.

Wylan carefully brushed his hands off on the cloth that had been resting next to his chemicals on his work table. He didn’t technically need to be doing that because what he had been working with wasn’t that dangerous and he was wearing gloves when the was touching it, but it gave him something to do. He always struggled to figure out how to move around Kaz when either of them were too overstimulated to be touched. He understood the emotion since he had experienced it enough himself, but he was so awkward and malformed when it came to being in a relationship with anyone.

“Oh,” he nodded. Something about the energy of the room had changed when his husband entered. It was making him feel a lot more like he did when Jesper first came to get him from the tannery so that he could make bombs for them for the job that they did in Ravka. His stomach was tied up in knots and his hands were beginning to get shaky with worry. “Um, not that I don’t love being around you, but why are you here?” He did adore his partner almost more than life itself, but it was rare for Kaz to come all the way up to Wylan’s lab and even rarer for him to come in and then stay there.

Kaz walked from where he had been standing near the doorway to the little seating area that Wylan had next to his worktable. It was supposed to be so that he had more places to sit down when he was being flighty, but Jesper and Nina primarily used it to take meals with him when he was too distracted to come down to the dining room for dinner. Slowly, the man lowered himself down into the seat, though Wylan was unable to miss the wince on his face.

“D-do you need more pain meds?” he asked as he fluttered over to the edge of the table. Something had shifted in his husband so that Kaz felt almost completely unrecognizable to who he had been that morning, his face unreadable and his body language stiff.

“I’m not sure that I can have medication in my present condition,” he replied, tilting his head down towards his lap so that he didn’t have to meet Wylan’s eyes.

The cryptic way that he was speaking was enough to get the other man to pause. The anxiety began to drain from his system now that he had a puzzle that he could help riddle out. He set the cloth that he had been grasping down next to him and then settled himself at the table. He traced one of the grains in the table just so that he wouldn’t have to look up at his husband as he asked, “Are you pregnant?”

“I might not be for much longer, unless you have something to help me,” he said, his voice rasping even more since he was speaking quietly.

Wylan’s mind stopped and then jumped to the next thought all at once, so quickly that he almost gave himself whiplash. The thought of them getting another chance at being parents when the last pregnancy that had been announced to them had ended far before its time was exciting. He was also terrified of the idea that Kaz was expecting out of the three members of their polycule because he was the one that had been through the most out of them all concerning that kind of loss. It took him a moment to process the fact that Kaz had just admitted that he was pregnant after the fight that he had with Inej the morning before when she had asked him. He then finally caught up to the present when he realized that Kaz was asking him to make something that would chemically stop another miscarriage.

“Oh, love,” he whispered. He wanted to reach across the table so that he could take his spouse’s hand but he knew that it wasn’t the day for that. “I… I’ve never heard of something that can stop a body from rejecting a pregnancy. I don’t think that I have the stuff to make it even if I had.”

“Then just the painkiller is fine. Leave it outside of my room when you finish,” Kaz said briskly. He pushed himself up from the desk and silently walked out of the room, leaning even heavier onto his cane than he had before. 

Wylan didn’t take it personally. He had seen Kaz go through four miscarriages before and knew the drill at this point. Even if Kaz was simply anticipating losing the baby before he actually had, he was going to be going through that same cycle of grief that he had every time before. Wylan got up so that he could move aside the explosives that he had been working with so that he could get make what was asked of him.

By the time that he was able to get the bottle up to his husband, there was a pair of blood stained pants sitting on top of Kaz’s dresser with his husband curled around a hot water bottle. The pain reliever was the only thing that he could do to help, so after he dropped off the first batch he went downstairs back to his lab so that he could make another.

---

+1 Kaz

He thought that his partners were never actually going to pack up and leave. They all had something that they were supposed to be doing out of the house that day. Normally that would bother him, but today he wanted them gone. He also knew where they were all going and was sure that they would send someone back to the house to tell him if plans changed so that he could find them if he had need. 

Matthias was going to be visiting a local breeder so that he could pick out a puppy or work with the dogs, whichever ended up working out best for him. Wylan had a meeting with a couple of interested investors but nothing serious enough that he had to bring someone else along. Nina was going to be spending some time with the friends that she had made while working at the White Rose, which meant that she was going to be coming home with a new dress. Inej and Jesper were going out on their monthly date to their favorite cafe and then likely to a bookstore so that Inej could pick something new out for her upcoming voyage. Kaz himself was supposed to be heading into work so that he could finish up the tax paperwork for the new Barrel empire that he had been shaping up since the day before.

He knew that wasn’t going to happen. He had been trying to get as much work done as possible before what inevitably was going to happen ended up happening, though it was turning out to be a little different than he had expected.

Kaz hadn’t necessarily meant to keep his pregnancy a secret from his partners. He also hadn’t meant to tell them about it, but he was half expecting someone to force it out of him. Inej had known every other time he had ended up pregnant, sometimes even before he did, afterall. He wasn’t not telling them about his pregnancy out of some sort of malice, but rather because he was terrified of seeing the disappointment on their faces when he miscarried again.

He had been pregnant five times before and none of them had even lasted long enough for him to pass something that resembled a baby when he started miscarrying. Every single time that had happened, he had to deal with the sorrowful looks that his partners wore when they tried to take care of him and the grief that they carried about the disappointment he had handed them. He wasn’t sure that he would be able to handle that again, and so he had actively worked to keep his pregnancy hidden as soon as he noticed that he had missed one of his cycles.

It had started while Inej was out on her ship, which meant that the person most likely to notice that something was off with him was gone. It had been easier to hide the cravings and increase in appetite, especially since he didn’t have any morning sickness. The exhaustion and increase in libido had been harder to pass off but Jesper and Nina were excited enough to nap with or fuck him that they were able to subsconsciously help the others brush it away as well.

He found that even when he passed from the first trimester into the second, his body hadn’t changed all that much. He had put on a bit of weight but blamed it all on Matthias’ increase in baking to put off his stress about getting a new dog soon. Even when Kaz finally got to the blessed third trimester, his belly had only swelled ever so slightly. He had regressed back into not letting his partners touch him more than a few brief kisses or hand holding when he got to that point because he knew that if they felt his belly they would feel the butterfly-wing movements of the baby inside of him or the rounded nature of his torso.

Kaz really had meant to tell them when he finally passed the first trimester. He had been secretly seeing a midwife to make sure that everything in the pregnancy was going smoothly and she had informed him that was when the ‘danger zone’ passed. He had meant to tell them for the last five months, but every time he opened his mouth to say it all he could see was blood covering his underthings and their sad faces.

So he had kept it a secret, trying to figure out ways that he could explain the sudden appearance of a child that none of them had known he was carrying or find another way that was easier to inform them of their upcoming parenthood. Nothing had come up and now he feared that it was too late, though he was also in denial about that.

He had gone to bed the night before feeling a tiny bit out of sorts. It was mostly a foggy head and vague cramping in his stomach, but that also could have been because he had no appetite that entire day and had thus barely eaten anything. When he woke up the next morning he had felt even stranger than he had when he went to sleep, but he wasn’t willing to show any of those symptoms until his partners had finally left.

Once he was alone, he slipped from his bed and walked to the mirror hanging in the corner of his room. He looked himself over to make sure that he was presentable and his belly wasn’t noticeable in the suit that he had had chosen for his meetings that day as he got ready to head down to the club. For a reason beyond him, he was still planning to go to work despite his anxiety around his pregnancy the night before.

He got to the top of the stairs that would lead down to the rest of the house before he had to stop. It was an almost overwhelming feeling when he finally let his brain process what was happening. There was a stark pressure building up along his spine before it spread out through the rest of his hips so that it was hugging his entire pelvis. It shifted into bone-shattering pain only when it wrapped around the front of his stomach.

It wasn’t the first time that he had a contraction, he had several practice ones that the midwife he was seeing had warned him about. They were very similar to what had happened when he was miscarrying but more intense. The contraction that he was currently experiencing was like the practice ones had been ramped up to ten and like the cramps he had with his other five pregnancies times twenty.

It left him winded and leaning on his cane so that he didn’t sink down to the ground. When his mind finally returned to him, the only thing that he could think about was the panic he had felt when he realized that he was losing his pregnancies the last several times that he had conceived. All he could think about was blood and gore and the sorrow that came with knowing that he was too bad and too monstrous to actually bring good life into the world.

He decided against going into work that day. He turned around and slowly made his way back to his bedroom so that he could change into a fresh pair of sleep things. He laid down on the bed with his back propped up with half of the pillows they kept spread out on the master bed. He wasn’t sure what was happening but he knew that he had to be in the safest place that they had in their entire house.  

About seven minutes had passed before he got another one of the pains. By that point, his panic had ceded enough that he was able to realize what was happening. It made him anxious to think that he could be in labor before he had the chance to tell his partners that he was even pregnant, but the thing that scared him more was the fact that it was about a month too early.

He had heard of babies being born early and then nursed into full health by their parents, but he had also heard of babies that were born looking raw and red and without breath because they were far too small. Part of him was worried that he had gotten his dates wrong even though the midwife had assured him that everything was alright. He didn’t know what was going to be waiting for him at the end of his labor, but he did know that he was going to be facing everything alone.

Kaz relaxed back into the bed and tried to keep his mind about him so that he didn’t lose himself when his child needed him. His thoughts eventually began to drift over the past few months as he started mourning the things that he could have shared with his partners, the things that he had denied both them and himself from having with his own fear. 

He could have been worshiped and waited on the same way that Alys had been when they kidnapped her by Matthias, who was always eager to cherish them. He could have told Nina about his cravings and had her fatten him up even more with her delicious cooking. He could have sat with Inej in front of him while she rubbed that oil that her parents had brought them when they heard that they were trying for a family during one of their visits. He could have slept in Jesper’s arm as the zowa sang Kaelish nursery rhymes to his belly. He could have sat with Wylan while they both worked, helping each other get thing squared away so that they could enjoy the first couple of months with their baby without the panic of work on top of it. He could have watched Matthias build the baby’s first cradle. He could have spent days with Wylan discussing traditional Kerch names. He could have cuddled with Inej while they both napped during her adjustment back from sea life. He could have taken long walks with Nina in the garden while she told him all about the place that she had come from. He could have watched Jesper struggle to make their child’s first soother.

But he had denied himself and them all of those things because he had been too afraid to tell them that he was pregnant simply because he didn’t want to let them down again. By refusing to give them that disappointment, he had offered himself another by keeping the baby a secret to himself.

He was basically writhing on the bed by the time that the noonday sun began to creep over the slanted rooves of Ketterdam. He had started crying while imagining how his pregnancy would have gone if he had trusted that information to his partners, and he hadn’t been able to stop when the pains overcame him.

Kaz had tried to stand up and sway against the bed like his midwife had encouraged when they had talked about what would happen while he gave birth. He found that whatever position his little one had taken was playing games with his hip and he was basically imobile from it, so was stuck in the bed. 

Eventually he was overcome with a rush of energy and had to move around. He grabbed his cane and began to pace up and down the hall while leaning heavily on it and the wall on the other side. He paused every time that he had a contraction, letting his head rest on the cool plaster. It was one of the only things that brought him any relief. His entire body felt hotter than a fever, but without the cool sweats that made him feel clammy. His stomach was clenching around the nothing that he had eaten and his mouth was dry with panic. His hand couldn’t stop moving to his stomach when he was having a contraction, trying to feel any movement from the baby that would reassure him that they were okay.

“Shit, shit, shit,” he swore as he leaned heavily against the wall when a particularly strong contraction chose that exact moment to try and make him feel horrible. He leaned so heavily against the wall that he was basically sliding down it. But then there was the feeling of relief that came whenever the pain left him, right before something splashed along the floor and soaked through his pants.

He stared down at his toes that were now soaked with clear fluid, blinking a couple times when the only thing that his brain was able to bring up was blood and viscera.

His labor was steadily progressing now, even though it was a month early and he was completely alone. He certainly wouldn’t be seen walking the streets of Ketterdam while moving into the second stage of labor and he had no one that he could send to his midwife, not that any of them would know where she was working. His water breaking only confirmed the thing that he had half been denying, so he stripped off his pants and his smalls and left them in the hallway over the top of the puddle because he didn’t have the energy or ability to lean down and clean it up properly.

When he got back to his room, he continued his pacing. He was restless, almost like a caged animal in the back of a zoo or a royal palace. He was surrounded by gold and opulence but he didn’t have the one thing that he really needed, companionship.

After his water had broken his labor began to progress even faster than it had before. He could barely walk at all now that the pains were coming less than five minutes apart. He knew what it was to be so sick that pain was the only thing that he felt, and he had been scared that labor would be similar to that every time he had gotten pregnant. Now that he was in the midst of it, he knew that the sensations were completely different and the only thing that he could see in his mind’s eye was his babe.

Kaz hiked himself up onto the bed when his knee began to scream at him, informing him that the pacing had to stop if he wanted to be able to walk normally for the next week. He wasn’t sure that he would be able to do that regardless, but he was okay with laying down because he was beginning to get tired. He leaned back against the pillows that smelled like his partners, allowing his brain to drift off into the thought of them surrounding him like he so desperately wanted.

“Shit, fuck, ow,” he swore when he felt the babe he had been secretly carrying begin to shift lower down inside of him. It was only just then dawning on him that it was all real and happening right then, and that he had no control over it. Fear overwhelmed him so that his breathing was rapid and his heart felt like it was trying to break through is ribcage. He could barely stop the tears that were running down his face as he grasped at the bedsheets with his ungloved hands. He wanted his parents, his brother, his spouses, anyone to be there with him and reassure him that he was going to be okay.

The urge to push started to overwhelm him just as the day began to creep into evening, which was when his partners were allegedly going to be coming home. Inej and Jesper were likely going to come home last unless one of them got worn out. Wylan and Matthias were both a toss up about when they were arriving, but Kaz was honestly surprised that Nina wasn’t back yet.

As soon as he felt the urge he knew that he had to give into it. He was usually so good about controlling his body and what it did that it wasn’t a concern what he wanted, just what he had to do. This time there was no question about what he was going to do, so he placed both of his hands on the top of the headboard and began to push so hard that his body curled forward over his tiny baby bump.

When the urge passed and he had no more strength, he collapsed back against the bed and panted so that he could get desperately needed air. He could feel his arms shaking with the force that it took to keep himself in one place.

He was so tired and so scared. The only thing that he wanted was his partners by his side, to tell him that he was doing well and give him their strength. The images of a happy, gurgling baby and happy spouses interacting with their firstborn had been replaced by angry faces and a limp body. It only served to scare him more. He wanted to go back and correct all of the mistakes that had made, to tell them that he was pregnant so at least he wouldn’t have to go through the traumatic loss of his sixth baby on his own.

He knew that he couldn’t hand them the pain of having missed his pregnancy and helping him through a stillbirth instead of a miscarriage. He hadn’t given them any of the joy of seeing the minute changes of his body as their baby grew or letting them feel the baby move, so he didn’t deserve the comfort they would provide him. The thought of not getting to have them made a pain erupt in his chest that was more intense than even his contractions.

His attention was brought back to his labor and his baby when another contraction wrapped around his belly. He grunted as he leaned forward and pushed as hard as he could to try and make as much progress as he could. He felt the baby inside of him slowly moving down further into the birth canal. 

His mind began to scream at him to call for help so that he at least had someone else with him when he heard the door at the front of their home open. He could tell by the pace of the footsteps that it was Matthias, but he was walking slower than he normally did. The part of Kaz’s mind that was always looking for the most information he could get to help keep him safe was able to process the fact that he had a dog with him. He had to physically bite the insides of his cheeks until he tasted hot, coppery blood seeping from his tongue and gums to resist the urge to call out to him. He wasn’t going to ruin the happiness that Matthias had just earned by getting another canine companion with a dead baby.

A sob escaped Kaz’s mouth when he leaned back against the bed so that he could try to catch his breath again. He felt almost as if he were drowning, like he was never actually going to be able to overcome the agony that he was in while trying to birth a human.

He could hear Matthias moving to the living room, his deep voice reverberating through the home while he talked to his new companion. Kaz briefly wondered if he would talk to his child that same way but with different affectionate nicknames, or if he would want to speak to them like an adult. 

The contractions kept relentlessly coming and Kaz kept pushing. He heard the door open again before he had made any more progress and then Nina’s voice joined in with Matthias. They were both laughing and shouting at each other and the dog, but in the way that meant they were overly excited and had lost the ability to control their volume instead of being upset with one another.

Kaz’s entire body was shaking with the force he was exerting to not only birth their child but to hold himself back from calling out to them. He could almost feel the way that Matthias would hold him in his strong arms, helping him bend forward. He could almost feel Nina’s calm hands moping the sweat that was running down his forehead off of him. He wanted them so badly that his entire chest felt hollow with the ache and yet he refused to let himself have it.

He had to move to make more progress, so he painfully raised himself onto his hands and knees and then into a squatting position while grasping the rails of the headboard to support himself. “Please, baby, please,” he begged, though at this point he had thoroughly convinced himself that the lack of movement meant that he had once again lost his child. He wanted to wail and scream in pain as he pushed down hard enough to get the head to come to his opening, spreading him wide so that all of the nerves down there burned with the fire of nothing he had ever felt before.

When he gasped and stopped pushing, surprised by the pain, all of the progress he had just made left. He felt like crying when he felt the sliver of his baby’s head slip back into him. His entire body was quivering with effort and aching with hurt but he was going to get no relief. He must have pushed without any change for about ten minutes before he got the entire head to crown. He had collapsed down so that he was kneeling instead of squatting at that point, but he released one of his shaking hands from the headboard so that he could touch the slimy, blood-covered downy hair on the top of his baby’s head.

His heart was already mourning the loss of the child once he did, he knew that it was temporary. This baby was not going to last, just as the other one’s hadn’t. He was doomed to never create anything good, to be a monster that could only bring forth pain and misery. He knew that Inej and Nina would tell him that he was being stupid, that Wylan would reassure him that he could make great things happen, that Jesper would give him that sad look, and that Matthias would just kiss his forehead and say that demons did not look like him. He wanted them with him so badly, but he knew that he couldn’t have them no matter how badly he wanted it.

That pain was amplified to the point that he started crying again when he heard the door open. He wanted the others to be waiting for Wylan so that they could tell him the happy news, that they were moments away from being parents, but instead he had to listen to them ask him about work as if Kaz were an intruder in his own house. He knew that he had to be quieter now that one of the more aware people had returned. Nina was a spy and could hear things easier, as was Inej, but Wylan had had to listen for his father and danger at all times so was more attuned to noises than the rest of the polycule was.

He was trying to push while staying absolutely silent, but he almost felt like the effort that he was expending on keeping himself quiet meant that he was making less progress than he had before. He was in so much pain, he just wanted the entire process to be over with. He couldn’t move out of the position that he was in despite the red hot burning pain that was spreading through his body from where his knee had been bent for too long.

On the floor below, the door opened and his last two partners came home. Everyone that he loved and cherished that was still loving was now in his home and he had no way to reach out to them for help. He knew that he could scream and shout and they would come running, but the pain was swirling together with the panic in his brain so that he felt so vulnerable he thought that he would disintegrate into nothing. He also couldn’t ruin the joy that Jesper and Inej had brought with them, both of them laughing happily. It was the laugh that he could get drunk on, the one that made him feel safe and warm and happy, the one that he would sooner kill himself than cause to disappear.

He was certain that forcing Inej to see him go through another grisly, bloody loss like the one he was sure he was about to face would be enough to strip the rest of the joy from her life. So he kept his jaw clenched so tight that he was going to crack his teeth and kept pushing to try and finish the ugly process that he was embarking on.

Kaz gave a grunt of discomfort as he pushed again and the head slipped entirely from him and into his waiting hand. He kept it there while he shifted positions so that he was laying back against the bed. He wracked his mind with the panic of a man being hunted for sport while he tried to remember everything that the midwife had said about that stage of the delivery.

Finally, he was able to connect what it was and ran his fingers around the base of the baby’s neck to check for the cord. There was nothing, but he was given the overwhelming sensation of feeling their little face for the first time. His hand moved almost reverently down across a tiny nose and a little puckered mouth, then two eyes that were still closed.

He was barely aware of the sounds out in the hall where he had left his bottoms when his water broke and then hurried footsteps coming towards his office. He jumped slightly when he heard two doors bang open and his partners calling his name throughout their massive house. He had to ignore it as the urge to push overwhelmed him again and he had to listen to it. He kept his hand underneath the head of the baby as he let out a small, strangled noise.

The door to the grand bedroom opened just as he gave a final push and the baby was born. He was quivering like a leaf in the world’s worst storm, his hair was caked to his forehead with sweat, and fluids from the delivery a babe were now covering his bottom half and their bed. He could barely think about any of that as he held his tiny little one in his hand and stared straight ahead at his partners.

Inej was leading the charge with Nina right behind her, peaking over her shoulder at what was happening. Wylan was standing beside Inej with his face as pale as paper and his mouth covered with one of his delicate hands. Jesper was holding onto Matthias like he was going to fall over, his eyes as wide as saucers. 

“What is that?” Jesper asked, astounded and terrified.

“A baby,” Kaz replied weakly. There were no cries, no movement from the little limp body in his hands. He had known that it was coming, but it was still too much. He didn’t know how he was supposed to handle the overwhelming surge of energy in the room when his partners had piled into the space and the death of the fist baby that had actually been able to hold.

“Kaz-” Inej started.

She was cut off by their wife shoving past her and into the room. Nina stopped by the edge of the bed and then carefully reached down so that she was holding the baby. “Matthias, go and get me some hot water from the tap in the kitchen. Wylan, I need you to find as many towels as possible. Inej get me the suture kit,” she commanded as she took the baby. She sounded every bit the trained soldier that she had been when they first met her.

“She’s not crying, Nina, she’s not crying,” Kaz sobbed. He had lost so many people before, and yet he hadn’t known that it was possible to experience grief like the kind that was currently washing over him. There would have been a time that he wouldn’t have thought twice about a dead baby in the streets, just focused on his own rage. It was so different when it was his own child, the one that he had longed for with his entire heart and soul.

“Shh, shh, it’s okay. Babies take a little bit of time to perk up sometimes,” Nina soothed easily. She knelt down on the edge of the bed so that the cord didn’t have to stretch between Kaz and the baby quite as much as before. She then placed one of her fingers into the baby’s mouth with a scooping motion towards her little throat. 

The entire house went completely silent as they heard the tiniest cough and then the shrill cry of a baby who had been through something terrifying. 

Wylan had stopped in the doorway, his pale face flush with exertion as he looked on to their eldest daughter taking her first deep breaths. Inej had returned with the suture kit and was smiling so wide that her cheeks had to hurt. Downstairs, Matthias could be heard whooping loudly as he no doubt cued in to what that sound meant. Jesper let out a little broken noise as he staggered over to the edge of the bed and looked down at the tiny face of their babe. 

“There we are, there we are,” Nina crooned as she carefully cradled the newborn in her arms. “Kaz, we’ve gotta put her on your chest while we get everything settled out. Are you okay with that?”

“Please,” he nodded so quickly and eagerly that his head actually dizzy because of it. He barely registered what was happening when he got pushed forward by Jesper’s calloused hands so that they could remove the shirt from his pale body, which revealed the tiny bump that he had been sporting in secrets for months. Neither of his present partners said anything about it as Nina carefully moved the newborn so that she was laying against Kaz’s chest.

His entire world shrank down to her like he knew that it would if he ever got the chance to have an actual child. She was grimy with mucus, blood, and vernix, but she was so utterly perfect that he couldn’t believe that she was really there. Her skin was as pale as his had been, but there was the chance that it could darken as she got older. Her tiny body was still curled into a tight ball against his skin even though she had already been born. Her little legs were tucked up into her stomach and he could feel the feet that had been battering his kidneys for months pressed against his lower belly with ten perfect little toes in a line. Her arms were close to her face, wiping at herself while she cried. She had wispy black hair and likely blue eyes, but those were also things that would change when she moved out of the newborn stage. Even the idea that she would eventually move out of that phase of her life sent a thrill of joy throughout his body.

“I’ve got you, Papa’s got you,” he whispered quietly to the newborn now cradled in his arms. She soothed when she felt the vibration of his voice against her tiny body, likely remembering it from when she was inside of him only moments prior.

“Love, this is very important, have you been going to see a midwife?” Nina asked. She had taken the suture kit from Inej so that she could tie the cord off in two spots and then cut it, which allowed Wylan to carefully take the newborn so that he could wash her with the warm water Matthias had just brought upstairs in their biggest pot.

“Yeah,” Kaz nodded sleepily. His entire body ached like nothing else, but he knew that he was safe because his partners were there and his baby was crying.

“Thank the Saints,” Jesper whispered from the spot that he had taken up behind his husband. Kaz barely even remembered him moving back there but he was so happy that he had. He wished that was the place that Jesper could have been during his entire labor and birth process. “Hate to think about the pain you might have gone through all on your own if you actually hadn’t told anybody.”

“I’m sorry,” Kaz whispered morosely. He was, truly and deeply. He had wanted them to share the moments of his pregnancy that he had rejoiced after, but he had let fear reign over him the same way that he had after Jordie’s death. He whimpered and shied away from his own body when he felt another small cramp and then something wet and slippery move out of him. 

Nina soothed him with a gentle hand on his knee. “Just the afterbirth love. The entire thing is out now so this is really over. I’m going to check to make sure you didn’t tear anything too badly and then have Nej sew you up,” she explained. The two woman worked in tandem like a well-oiled machine as they got him fixed.

As soon as they had finished, Jesper’s lanky arms wrapped around his knees and his back as they shuffled towards the edge of the bed. “Come on, my love, we’re going to get you into something clean. Do you want a bath?”

The idea of having to be submerged into water after thinking that he was to be surrounded by death in the same way almost made him vomit. He focused on swallowing down the bile and giving his head a strict shake. “Okay, no bath,” Jesper said softly. Instead, he settled his lover down on the chest at the end of their bed. Matthias and Wylan worked together so that they could strip the bed and replace the sheets with the emergency set that they kept just under the frame. Kaz felt bad for ruining such expensive items with his ignorance of just how messy birth was, but he could barely focus on that. 

Jesper took a wet towel and began in the messiest part of his lover. He cleaned off the blood that was caked between his legs, along with all the fluids that had dribbled through his smalls when his water broke. As soon as he had done that, Inej appeared with a pair of the period smalls that belonged to him. She and Jesper worked together to get Kaz’s hips tilted up enough that they could slip the garment over his wrecked body. They were soft and compressive enough that he felt grounded, to the point where he began listening for the sounds of his baby.

Kaz had turned his head to the side so that he could look for the newborn girl while Jesper finished up his work, ridding Kaz of the sweat that was sticking to his skin. He smiled and relaxed softly when he saw Nina speaking delicately to the baby in hushed tones that he couldn’t hear from his distance as she got the makeshift nappy pinned into place.

He was dressed in a soft pair of cotton pants and then one of his sleep shirts before he was placed back down onto their blissfully clean bed. The others were still whirling around the room as they got into the process of soaking the blood and fluids out of the sheets, as well as disposing of the suture kit that they had used to clean him up. He could barely pay attention to any of that as his body finally got the chance that it needed to relax.

His world turned miniscule again when his daughter was carefully placed back into his arms. Nina knelt beside the bed so that she was looking over her husband’s shoulder at the baby. “She’s going to need to be fed. Are you comfortable with doing that?”

Despite the panic that he still got at times when his own partners touched him, there was something different about having his baby pressed up against his warm skin. He hypothesized, in the back of his very tired mind, that it was because she was a part of him. He had wanted her so desperately when she was growing in the safety of his belly that all he could think about was how much he wanted to keep her safe. The lapping of water at his ankles wasn’t something that even crossed his mind.

“I can do that,” he mumbled. Awkwardly, he shuffled forward so that he could lift up his shirt and help his babe find his nipple. By the time that she had gotten the hang of suckling and was greedily drinking down her first meal, everyone else had finished what they were doing. Inej and Wylan were sitting at the end of the bed, their hands clasped together but every other part of their body separated from the other. Jesper and Matthias had made their way up onto the bed so that they bracketed Kaz and their baby in, keeping them both safe from the outside world. Nina was fussing slightly but eventually got dragged down into the bed by their husband so that she also had to be still.

“Why didn’t you tell us, Kaz?” Inej asked, her voice small and slightly scared. Kaz wasn’t sure what she wanted the answer to be or what she was expecting, but he was so tired that the only thing he could say was the truth.

“I wanted to. I wanted to tell you all the second I noticed that my cycle was a week late, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t bear the thought of you all getting to excited about the potential to be parents just to have my body kill off that hope because nothing good can ever happen to me. I… I wanted you to be there for all the parts of the pregnancy but then I was just so scared,” he didn’t realize that he was crying until his daughter let out a tiny, fussing noise.

“Sorry, sorry baby,” he mumbled as he wiped the tear from her head. He leaned into the touch that Jesper offered to him, curling into the warmth and protection that it offered.

Wylan reached out to offer Kaz a blanket so that they could burp the baby as he said, “We’re not mad at you, Kaz. We’re all a little bit scared and shocked that this suddenly happened because I don’t think that anyone even realized that you were pregnant, but we’re not mad.”

“We could never be mad when we have this,” Matthias whispered reverently. Kaz had always known that Inej and Matthias were going to be the best parents out of all of them since they had the longest to go without trauma and the nervousness that came with everything Jesper did. It still made him feel like he was melting when he watched his husband’s huge hand brush over the top of their baby’s head, though.

The others gave a murmur of agreement. As soon as the baby had finished her first meal and been burped, he wrapped her up in the blanket that Jesper had found in between helping Kaz get cleaned up and settling into the bed. Matthias was the first to hold her, but she made her rounds with every one of her parents so that they could all meet her for the first time. Kaz kept himself awake so that he could savor those first few moments of her life, reassuring himself that she was okay every time he saw a blissfully pink nose or heard a little gurgle of discontent when she was shifted the wrong way.

She had finally landed back where she belonged in his arms when Nina asked, “What are you going to name her?”

Despite having thought about so many things when she was carefully hidden away in his belly, a name had never crossed his mind. He had so many names that were assigned to him through his life, from the one that his mother had given him to the one that he had chosen when he was five and figured out he was a boy, to the last name that he had chosen after Jordie died. “I… I like the name Posey but if any of you have something that you need to name her then we can also do that.”

“I like Posey. It’s a good Kerch name, in between the stupid upper class names and the peasant ones. Gives her opportunity to do a lot in her life,” Wylan grinned.

“Posey,” Inej whispered softly as she moved forward to look over their daughter. She placed a gentle kiss to the baby’s forehead and murmured a prayer to her, the only word of which Kaz understood being the newborn’s name.

He fell asleep with his partners carefully tucked around him and his daughter steadily breathing in her sleep. They had wanted that for so long and they finally, finally had it.