#the hand under her chin is like….. peak magpie

[trevisos]

i feel sick they’re soooo…….

[lollytea]

How would Guy Diamond and Sating react to an unplanned (but not necessarily unwanted) pregnancy? I need more of this couple sorry.

(Hey kiddos. Who wants to see our favourite sparkly idiots dealing with adult situations? Nobody? Okay, I wrote it anyway. This is completely hypothetical btw.)

Vivid, painted lips curled and puckered. “Oops.” Satin uttered, tightening the fold of her arms, a white stick dangling over her elbow. “Oops? That’s all you’re going to say, is it?”

He was sat on her bed, his entire frame stiff. Guy Diamond slowly shook his head, eyes glassed over, his bottom lip hung loose and quivering gormlessly to find the right words. “I…uh, I-I don’t know what else to say.”

Satin sighed, his lost expression adding pity to the unconventional mix of uncertainty, frustration and panic that was swirling around in her stomach. She couldn’t say she was mad at Guy. They were both equally responsible for the mistake after all. Nervousness may be overtaking her patience here.

“How about ‘Sorry for getting you pregnant, Satin.’” She attempted to exaggerate an imitation of his voice to hopefully lighten the mood.

“Sorry for getting you pregnant, Satin.” He parroted, his pretty features still contorted in shock. After a pause, Guy blinked repeatedly, his brow twitching with a twinge of irritation. “No, no. Let me do that again. That didn’t sound sorry, did it? C’mere,”

Satin gravitated towards his outstretched hand, like a magpie attracted to his glittering rings. She lowered down upon silken sheets, with a slight squeak of the bed as both sets of fingers intertwined.

He faced her. “I’m sorry.” He said quietly, with the upmost sincerity in his steady gaze. “This-this was not something that was supposed to happen and-and I really don’t know what else I can say to you about it. This was my fault and-and I-”

“Do you want to keep it?” Satin cut him off, even her gentlest tone capable of bringing Guy Diamond’s usual prattle to a staggering halt.

“Do I-? Satin…” Guy began, rolling his tongue around the inside of his cheek as he internally pieced his words together. “This… this is something you should get to decide. Like you’re the one who’s gotta…” He gestured vaguely to her stomach. “Y’know, do all the hard stuff. I’m just the dumb boy toy here. I don’t wanna make this decision for you.”

“Firstly, stop calling yourself a boy toy.” She ordered, lightly poking his chest with a sharpened nail. “Secondly, I’m asking you because I have no idea. Guy, I’m not Poppy. Like, she knew she wanted to be a Mom for years and when it finally happened, she-she was totally ready. But I’m just….” Satin threw her hand up hopelessly before it fell to her knee with a jangle of shimmering bracelets. “This wasn’t part of the plan. I was thinking that maybe someday when I’m older but… right now? I’m a designer, I’m an entrepreneur, these are things that I’m certain that I am… but a Mom? Am I a Mom?!”

“Do you, uh, do you want the honest answer here?” He questioned cautiously.

“Please.”

“Now, I dunno if you want to be a Mom but…” Guy met her eyes, almost hesitantly. “I think you’d make a pretty good one. I’ve thought that a couple of times, really…”

A long stretch of silence followed, and it became clearer just how synchronized their breathing had become.

Satin hummed. “Do you know what the weirdest part of this is?” She asked, her fingers having explored upwards to run thoughtfully through his snowy puff of hair.

“What?” He mouthed, squeezing her hand tighter.

“I don’t…. not want it. The baby. I don’t not want the baby.”

For the first time since she told him the news, Guy Diamond chuckled. A warm and welcome sound. “Let me help you out with your phrasing, here. I think what you’re trying to say is ‘I do want the baby.’” It took him a lasting four seconds to process the sentence before his jaw dropped. “W-wait, you do want the baby?! Like-like keeping it?! You wanna keep the baby and be the mom?!”

“Yeah.” Satin said, surprising not only Guy, but herself. “I think I want the baby.” She felt a tinkling laugh escape her throat at his humorously stricken expression. “Is there a problem with that, Sparkles?”

Guy Diamond immediately shook his head as he bent over the end of the bed. “No, no just…. it just hit me. You’re-you’re gonna have a baby.” He wheezed.

“Just me?” Satin raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow, scooching just a little closer to him. She placed a hand on the line of his jaw. His face, instinctively eager for the soft of her touch, was led easily towards her as she met his gaze. “Not us?”

“Us?” It took him a moment to understand before he nodded hastily. “I- of course, yeah. I’ll help you with the baby. I’ll do anything you need me to do, I-”

“Guy. I’m not asking if you’re going to be a babysitter. I’m asking if you’re going to be a Dad.”

“A… Dad?” Guy whispered, his pupils dilating at a rapid rate.

Satin nodded patiently.

“A Dad.” He repeated, as if testing the taste of the word on his tongue.

“Are you okay?” She asked, choking back a snigger at the look on his face.

“A DAD!” He yelled, his entire body bucking backwards. “Holy fuck, Satin! If you have a baby, I’ll be a Dad!”

“I’m glad you figured that part out.”

“I’m like thirteen years old!”

“You’re twenty-four, you ditz.”

“Even worse!” Guy cried, wringing his glittering hands. “How the Hell am I gonna be a Dad?”

“Well, getting me pregnant was the first step-”

“This-this is like grown-up step number five. I haven’t even gotten to step two yet!”

“What’s step two?” Satin cocked her head in confusion.

“Well, I’ve been trying for months to save up for that ring but I’m still not getting any closer because-” Guy stopped, seeming to realize just how loose his lips had become in the heat of pregnancy-induced panic.

“There’s… there’s a ring?” She asked softly.

Guy Diamond shrugged, eyes rooted to the carpet. “I mean, I guess that’s up to you. It was meant to be a surprise but I’m an idiot so…” He peaked up. “There doesn’t have to be a ring if you don’t want one.”

“Of course I want the ring, you beautiful dumbass.” She teased, slapping a hand down on his knee. “But… we can put the ring on hold for a while. We…” They both took this moment to glance at her abdomen. “We have some other stuff on our plate right now.”

Guy nodded, his face ashen. “I guess I’m investing in some childcare books.” He managed a strained smile.

“You’re worried, aren’t you?” Satin murmured.

All it took was a soft question for him to crack. “Am I too immature to be a Dad? I mean, I’m still trying to figure out how this whole adult thing works. But now, a kid? I don’t-”

“Do you want the baby, Guy?” She asked.

He opened his mouth to vomit out another ramble before Satin continued.

“Just think about the baby for a minute.” She pointed to its current location. “The one in my belly right now. The one that we made. Our baby’s in there. Do you love our baby?”

Guy was staring transfixed at her stomach before taking a deep breath and nodding. “I do.” He said with finality. “At least I think I do. I just… I’m just afraid I won’t be able to-”

“Jokes.” Satin said bluntly, laying back against the bed and propping a hand under her chin.

“What?”

“Bad jokes. You’re constantly making them. I might even call them Dad jokes.”

Guy Diamond furrowed his brow in mild annoyance. “Satin, just because I-”

“Although,” She carried on, as if she didn’t hear him. “You’re not all bad jokes, are you? Under that bleached as Hell mop of yours, there’s a brain, isn’t there? What is it Poppy calls you again? Sparkly wise man friend? Well, isn’t a good Dad is a wise Dad?”

He rolled his eyes. “Satin, that doesn’t necessarily mean that I-woah!”

In one swift motion, she had yanked him by the jacket and pulled him into a lying position next to her. The bed groaned in protest.

“And let’s not forget the most important thing.” She said playfully, pecking his forehead as her hands wound around his neck. “You love and you love and you love. Babies need a lot of love, y’know?”

Guy gazed at her, as if trying to hold on to his worry but he was very unused to seeing her smile without smiling himself. He cracked a grin. “Okay, I might have some of the Dad stuff down. But not everything just yet..”

Satin nodded, beaming as pulled him in closer. “And, hey. We still have nine months, don’t we? Whatever we’re not sure of, we’ll figure it out.”

“We’ll figure it out.” Guy repeated softly, their lips bumping together.

After a moment of settling acceptance coupled with budding anticipation, he pulled apart from their kiss. “I just realized something.” His fingertip ran along her cheekbone. “So, this is one of the most beautiful faces on this planet, yeah?”

“Obviously.” Satin scoffed.

He gently took one of her hands and guided it across his own face. “And so is this?”

“Of course.”

“Satin…”

“What?”

“You’re going to give birth to a fucking deity!”

“Holy shit, you’re right….”

[solomonfiore]

Marzepam

(for Alexandria Chrisman)

There are no such things as mistakes when we’re together. Busy bees and bearded billies bouncing and buzzing from rock to rock, we live for nothing save to savor the inner bliss we’ve created for the other.

At such high altitudes amongst mountain peaks is where I reside beside you. Basking in the balm of your sting - a black and yellow burn the size of a cigar burn, its circumference lined with the pus of cells that’ve died to be reborn to you: constricting, expanding, coruscating, dangling from your pupil like a hangnail. Held hostage by your hypnotic stare, it shatters into a billion fragments then reconvenes a fraction of a second later, the wound swelling with your promised devotion.

I absorb every last one of your sorrows. There is no one I’d rather be with, nothing you could ever say to make me think less of you. Your face is an aurora borealis in the desolation of winter, a heavenly refuge rising up from a savage aftermath. Your gaze is a pair of rhombic pyramids converging, cupped together like the palms of an angel. You hold the power to heal in your hands.

Keeping the Empress of the Honeycomb contented - this has been my sole focus ever since you blessed me with your treasured sweetness on that day both drab and droll preceding your emancipating entrance. A reawakening occurred when you’d made a beeline for my dwelling, buzzing between the bars of my very own prison’s door. All that lay dormant in my shadowy surroundings was uncharacteristically roused to attention. I’d been sitting in the corner of my dungeon for centuries. My mistress and employer had paid me a visit, the immortal monarch we all know and hate, still ruling over the baffled peasantry: The Duchess of Disappointment. There’d been no need to chain me to the wall of my chambers or implement any of the myriad devices designed to oppress and instill suffering around us. The spells of her seduction were far more expedient and rewarding to put into practice. They also left far less of a mess, I might add. With a few scraps of tissue she merely dabbed at the milky dollops which offered proof of her midnight magic and its sultry efficiency. The opaque puddles were the chinks in my defenses necessary to actualize her sinister plans before completely incapitating me. Swiftly and intently, she sopped up the pearly globules around the rosary of her stomach and inner thighs, the extractions acting as a wax seal to our pact. The fresh seed of my insignia notarized it; my vow of unconditional allegiance, she insisted, could never be broken.

Braided together with stars from plagiarized constellations, her lasso tightened around my neck and choked off any further bleating, the Pan of Plastic Kingdom rendered Paper Tiger from that point forth. The traumatic recollection haunts me to this day: her deceptively assuring voice and the promise of a promotion from side chick to exclusive thot, pricking up my ears like a naïve Easter bunny being told it was April. Had it been that month in spring, t’would have been the first because I’d been played a fool on that fortuitous day in the murky torture chamber where I’d pronounced my loyalty to my female superior through the diligent expression of my passions taken out on the prisoners placed in my charge, committing untold heresies on each and every one of them in the name of my belle’s regime, the relationship reminiscent of the executioner Girika and the Prince of Pataliputra before the latter’s conversion to Buddhism. Alas, it was actually the fourth of July as would be so cruelly indicated to me by the fireworks lighting up the sky later that evening, viewed through the bars of a sealed window above my head. The Duchess was celebrating her independence. (From me, at least. She’d returned to the privileged life of the castle with King Blarney, where she’d crawl back under the thumb of his dominion to concoct another strategy for her next conquest.)

To ensure my subordination, she tossed a pair of her panties at me, her back coldly turned to her victim as she escorted herself out the dungeon. Though lighter than the feather of a magpie, they weighed me down like a blacksmith’s anvil after landing directly under my chin where I would lay in a state of dejected resignation until my emancipation would finally come to pass with your arrival. Entranced into a state of stagnation ensured by the dizzying scent of jasmine and myrrh wafting up into my nostrils in curly wisps like snapdragons, the garden bed from which they’d been rooted being the crotch of the monarch’s underwear, only a power as strong as the sun itself, your honeycomb smile sweeter than a billion raven-haired baronesses, proved capable of dispelling the horrid curse of my former playmate turned traitor, her vindictive streak made manifest by the unresolved daddy issues she continues to play out with King Blarney and her concubines to this day.

I thought myself doomed until you came. Then, within an instant, growth hormones sprang into action; muscles thought atrophied suddenly swelled into bloom; and brittle bones became pliant once again. My dissipated health assumed the stamina of an athlete in the light of your ambrosial entrance.

Now this pygmy goat’s been promoted to the position of worker bee. I can look skyward knowing I’m a slave to a righteous cause. I buzz here, there, back and forth, and everywhere throughout the day, keeping your appetite for love satiated. For every time you laugh the lock to another animal’s cage is jimmied; the door creaks open after hours; another member of your brethren is freed from the zoo. Your happiness breeds playgrounds in place of prisons; another garden covers a toxic landfill as I proceed to tickle your fancy with my prehensile tongue, the rack of my horns gripped tightly to ensure the spasms of irrespresible joy don’t buck you off your throne.

From high above you hover, but you’ve erected your own platform instead of hanging from the strings of the predictable puppeteer. From the velveteen surface of a square frustrum overlooking odysseys you have yet to brave, you shine with the virility of a marquise diamond before plunging from your summit.

Together we traverse the heaving oceans inside us with new mysteries unraveling at breakneck speed. Your hips are a tornado in sway, locked in step by a psychic bond, the exhilaration paced by a single circadian pulse working in tandem between us. Submerged in vats of oxytocin, sweet nothings echo through your mind as I nibble on the pale fruit of your earlobe. I curl my horns around your supple waist so that you may lean on me in your most private hardships. Let my hide serve as a canteen that never leaves your side, my Queen, its contents overflowing with our felicity’s elixir.

Solomon Fiore

September 24, 2018