#mother/daughter au

[artificialqueens]

🏳️‍🌈 The Miracle of Living Pt.2 - Lita

In this world we're just beginning To understand the miracle of living

Lmao I had you in the first half, this is not just a cutesy slice of life family AU and actually gets fucking awful and tragic from here on out, you have been warned. This was originally meant to be a single story but I decided to chunk it into two halves just so it's not unreadably long, which means ALL the suffering gets to be consigned into whatever this is. Anyway, see other part for author notes and shit, apologies in advance xo

Summary: Adore is an adult now, and life is simpler for Bianca. Until an unexpected tragedy shatters her world, and her relationship with her daughter. 

TW: Major character deaths, parental loss, accidental overdose, suicidal thoughts

[1] NEW MESSAGE Ben Putnam ✨🏳️‍🌈 12/9/46 19:08  jinkx is about to call you freaking tf out - don’t listen to them, im basically fine. got into an accident driving home, i look kinda banged up and i think my shoulders dislocated but nothing serious. pls call adore and tell her - if she says shes gonna ditch her concert or anything like that dont let her, she doesnt need to worry. if ur not busy and feel like coming to see me id like that (and i think jinkx could use some moral support lol, theyre taking this harder than i am) but don’t let j convince u that im on my deathbed. love ya, bitch! b xoxo

*****

November 12th, 2046

“Bea…”

Jinkx stands up as Bianca enters the waiting room. Their voice is cloying - too sickly. Too sympathetic.  

Of all of Ben’s various partners since the divorce, Jinkx was definitely Bianca’s favorite. Bianca had been Ben’s maid of honor (or ‘cunt of dishonor’ as he’d affectionately christened her) at their wedding last spring. Jinkx is kind, sensitive - their eccentricities line up perfectly with Ben’s, they’re a good step-parent to Adore, as resistant as she’d been to having a step-parent. However, Jinkx under pressure is prone to amateur dramatics - Ben’s text prediction regarding the nature of their impending phone call had been totally spot-on. 

So Bianca is surprised to see that they look drained - not sad. Not scared. Just tired - their shock of red hair disheveled, eyes puffy and face moist with half-dried tears. Bianca grips the strap of her purse a little tighter. She hadn’t expected this. They had been all catastrophe and hysterics on the phone - sobbing like their life depended on it. Why are they so calm? 

Per Ben’s instructions, Bianca hadn’t dropped everything to go to him. She’d been working late, supervising a bunch of bored, annoyed teenagers doing stocktake - she hadn’t exactly bided her time, heading straight for the hospital as soon as she’d clocked out, but she also hadn’t exactly rushed. 

Two lanes of the freeway were closed because of a car wreck. She figured it wouldn’t be the same one - it couldn’t have been that bad if Ben was awake, coherent, and texting her. As the backed-up traffic crawled past the remains of the scene at five miles an hour, she’d tried not to look. She knew she shouldn’t have looked. But she looked anyway - she’d caught sight of the remnants of Ben’s car at the front of a pile-up, crushed from behind by a smoldering pickup truck, and felt the sting of vomit rising up at the back of her throat. The driver’s side door looked intact. That was something. Ben was fine. Ben had told her himself that he was fine. So Ben was fucking fine. 

On the drive to the ER, Bianca called Adore - anxiety twisting below her ribcage, visions of shattering glass and crumpling metal scorching into her eyelids every time she blinked, desperate for a distraction. The phone had been picked up by her weirdo manager, Winona or Wilma or whatever her name was, who’d decided that a call from her mom, regardless of the matter at hand, wasn’t important enough to bother Adore with before a gig, and had hung up. 

And now she’s been taken into a side room that feels like a fucking morgue, and Jinkx is acting so calm and kind that it’s nauseating. This feels weird. There’s a bible on the table in the middle of the room. What the fuck is happening? 

Jinkx reaches out, and pulls Bianca into an oppressively tight hug. Bianca squirms, determined to extricate herself from the stifling embrace and start asking questions. She’s never known Jinkx to act anything but weird, but this was bizarre even by their standards. When they break away, Jinkx takes Bianca’s hand. It sets her teeth on edge. 

“Jinkx, what’s going on?” Bianca’s voice comes out sterner than she would have liked. 

“Did you call Adore?”

What kind of fucking response is that?

“I tried. Her manager picked up - she’s at a gig, I’ll talk to her tomorrow.” 

“I really think you should try and talk to her now.” 

Bianca really doesn’t like Jinkx’s tone. She also doesn’t know what to do with herself. She figured she was here as emotional support for Jinkx, who seems fine if a bit off-kilter and cryptic - or as a proxy for Adore, who was performing and/or wasted in Austin, enjoying the sudden and somewhat random success of her previously struggling music career. 

“Jinkx, where’s Ben? What happened?”

Jinkx grimaces. They try to convince her to sit down - urging her towards a ugly upholstered chair with their lips pursed. Bianca doesn’t move. 

“Jinkx.” Bianca repeats herself more insistently, folding her arms. Jinkx sits down, clenching their jaw and breathing shakily. “Where the fuck is Ben? I need to see him." 

“…he died, Bea.”

Bianca’s blood turns to ice in her veins. She takes a sharp breath in. 

“What do you mean he died?” Bianca’s voice is thin. Jinkx doesn’t say anything. “He texted me - he was fine like, an hour ago.” Jinkx stays silent. Bianca feels like she’s going to throw up. Why won’t they say anything?  “He’s- Jinkx, what do you mean he fucking died?”

“They thought he was fine,” Jinkx sniffs. “There were other people from the wreck who were hurt worse than he was - he kept saying he was okay so the doctors would focus on them, and then he coded out of nowhere. I think they said he was bleeding in his abdomen or something - nobody realized until it was too late. He was sitting up and talking to me, then he…” Jinkx stops, swallowing hard. Their eyes have welled up. 

“Why didn’t you call me? I would have tried to get here faster.” Bianca’s knees are shaking. She can’t move - can’t admit to the failure of her emotions. Frightening and all-consuming as they are. She’s still wearing her work lanyard, and it feels utterly stupid. Why hadn’t she just fucking left? Why had locking up a goddamn store she could burn to the ground without losing sleep been more important than this? Than Ben? 

“I didn’t know how to.” Jinkx won't make eye contact with her. “I couldn’t tell you over the phone - it didn’t feel right.” 

Bianca sits down before she collapses. Her hands are shaking. Her throat hurts like she needs to cry, but there are no tears. She isn’t crying, and she won’t - not until it’s essential. 

“But you were- you shouldn’t have waited all this time on your own. I would have been here sooner.” Bianca is barely able to talk. “I’m sorry.”

She doesn’t even know what she’s talking for - trying to fill the awful, empty air with some sort of noise, even if it is wilted platitudes. She’s horribly aware of her own breathing; how hard it is, how much effort it’s taking, how it feels like she’s choking. It’s like she’s drowning in the air and the silence - like a goldfish dropped out of the bowl. 

Jinkx puts an arm around her shoulders. There are tears rolling down their cheeks. 

“I really think you should call Adore again.” 

Adore. Adore didn’t get to say goodbye - Adore didn’t fucking know. That was her fucking dad, and she loved him, and she’d never-

Bianca stops. Something in her brain ticks. A somber conversation at the kitchen table. 

“His, uh- his advanced directive. San Juni-whatever -  Cookie heaven-“ Bianca blurts out, ejecting the words as soon as they appear in her head. The comfort feels cold, but it’s comfort nevertheless. 

She looks at Jinkx. Their face has crumpled. They’re shaking their head. No. 

“They tried - it all happened too quickly, it didn’t work. He was gone before they could…” Jinkx bites their lip. “I’m sorry - I know how much it means- meant to him, I know he wanted…”  

Bianca shakes her head, trying to get Jinkx to stop talking. It isn’t fair - they’ve just lost their husband, and yet it’s them trying to comfort her?  

“It’s okay.” 

It’s not. But Jinkx rests their head on Bianca’s shoulder anyway, and Bianca takes their hand, even though she feels like she’s only making everything worse. What warmth is she capable of? Her presence isn’t doing anything besides forcing Jinkx to stir up their own raw emotions, and reminding them both of the cavernous space between them that Ben’s daughter should be filling. 

Bianca fumbles her phone out of her purse with her shaking hands as Jinkx cries a wet patch into her collar. She needs to call Adore.  

*****

November 24th, 2046

The silence in the kitchen is uncomfortable. Neither Adore nor Bianca knows how to fill it. Ben’s funeral was yesterday morning. Bianca doesn’t know if Adore is okay, but she doesn’t know what to say to her either. She hasn’t seen her cry yet. 

She’s exhausted. The last couple of weeks have been a terrible, sleepless headfuck. All of the funeral planning and formality had fallen into Bianca’s lap - Jinkx had been too distraught to try and think about it, and she couldn’t ask Adore. It was the only real help she’d been able to offer; if there’s one thing that Bianca knows for a fucking fact, it’s that she’s awful at providing comfort. But as usual, she’d taken too much on, and she hadn’t had time to process what had happened - time to grieve, or even just to fucking take a breath and figure out where her own head was at. 

Bianca feels hollow. And Adore won’t speak to her. She’s sitting at the dinner table, with her bright blue hair piled on top of her head in a sloppy ponytail, wearing some tattered band shirt that doesn’t really fit her, and she seems…fine. She’s been home since Ben died, but they’ve been floating around the empty house on two completely different planets; barely making eye contact with each other, let alone talking. There’s a mug of coffee turning cold in Bianca’s hand, and her daughter won’t meet her gaze. 

Adore fidgets with the hair-tie around her wrist. She looks nervous. 

“Listen, Mom-”

“Are you okay?” Bianca blurts out, and then cringes - Adore looks at her with frustration in her glazed-over eyes. 

“I need to tell you something.”

“What’s up?” Bianca tries to inject some warmth into her voice. 

“I know I said I’d stay for a little longer, but I’m…”

Oh god. Bianca already doesn’t like where this is going. She clenches her teeth, trying to contain the stupid, defeated little whimper she can feel rising into the back of her throat.

“I got a call from my manager this morning. My new single drops in a week, and there’s- this big-deal band wants me to open for them on their tour. It’s two months on the road, and I know that I shouldn’t- I mean, it’s a huge opportunity, and the money is really fucking good, and I’m…” Adore’s words are stilted and awkward. 

Bianca takes a second to compose herself. 

“When would you be leaving?” Bianca eventually says. It’s the most neutral question she can think of, and her words come out flat and unbothered. She can’t say what she really wants to - can’t beg her to stay, can’t argue back. Can’t take this from her. 

“Day after tomorrow,” Adore says to the floor, still wringing her hands awkwardly. 

“And why do you sound like you’re asking for permission to go?" 

“Because- I don’t know.” Adore says, equally lacking in emotion. It’s felt for the last couple of weeks like she and Bianca have just been going through the motions of their relationship without any feeling. “I mean- fuck, you’re my mom. And everything is just- I can’t leave you right now. If you said no, then I can’t...” 

“Why do I have to say no?” Bianca tilts her head. Her neck is stiff from the sleepless nights. 

“Because I don’t want to.”

That answer frustrates Bianca, and she can tell from Adore’s body language that she knows it. Adore picks at a loose thread on her shirt - she’s never been able to sit still. Bianca pinches the bridge of her nose.

“I’m not gonna be the bad guy, Dorey - even if you want me to. We’re talking about your career here - not doing it would be fucking stupid,” Bianca says, toneless and insincere again. She pauses. “Do they know that your dad just died?” 

“…No,” Adore grimaces. The first small twinge of emotion flashes across her face for a second, and then it’s gone. “They might give it to someone else. They’ll think I’m gonna be unstable or unreliable or something.”  

“Are you?”

“Maybe,” Adore purses her lips. “It’s kinda still not real. Maybe it’ll stay like that if I’m distracted.”

“And maybe it’ll get real when you’re on the road - you need to think about yourself.”

Adore murmurs something unintelligible by way of response, shakily trying to affirm that she can do it. Bianca stares into her coffee cup. They seem to have reached some level of nonverbal understanding that they’re not gonna talk about this any more. Adore is leaving tomorrow, and Bianca better make peace with that. 

“You’re not mad about me leaving you by yourself, are you?” Adore’s meek voice cuts through the icy reticence. 

“What? No - I’m a big girl, I’ll survive,” Bianca shrugs her shoulders. Why does Adore default to the assumption that she’s always mad? Why does she have to be the villain all the goddamn time? Can’t she just be upset? 

“But like…do you have friends?" 

“Yes, I have fucking friends, Adore.”

And then she thinks about it. Her family doesn’t give a shit, and Raja had broken things off with her a couple of weeks before Ben dropped dead out of fucking nowhere - and yeah, maybe she’s close enough with a couple of people from work that she’d be able to talk to them, but the thought makes her squirm.

She’d not so much asked Adore to stick around for a couple of weeks after the funeral as she had begged her to. The loneliness is choking her, and her daughter is the only person she can face - because they never really talked about their feelings, and even this wasn’t enough to make them start. She just needed someone to be quietly sad alongside. The more that she thinks about it, the more she realizes that the only person she wants to talk to about the pain inflicted by Ben’s death is Ben himself. 

Which she should be able to do. She’s grown more attached to the San Junipero concept than she ever wanted to be. Somewhere, in the back of her mind, she’d gotten comfortable with the two of them never having to live without each other. Except that didn't work, and now he’s gone. Forever. 

Bianca had friends. A friend. She’d never needed anyone else, and so she’d never bothered trying to find them. She hadn’t planned for an eventuality in which he’d be dead by forty-six. 

Bianca is crying. Horrible, huge, ugly floods of tears. Adore looks nervous - like she doesn’t know what to do with herself. This isn’t fair. She can’t make Adore deal with her like this. But she can’t stop. Twelve days of awful emotional blockage are clearing themselves all at once, and Bianca’s face is soaking wet and there’s snot running down her chin, and she feels about as disgusting as she probably looks. Adore’s chair scrapes the tiled floor, and she’s standing behind Bianca - wrapping her arms around her, resting her sharp chin on Bianca’s shoulder. 

Adore’s body is starting to heave against hers, and as Bianca tries to blink through some of the blur to her vision and catch her trembling breath, she realizes Adore is crying too. Is this progress? 

“You don’t have to go if you don’t want to, baby.” Bianca takes one of Adore’s hands in hers, running a thumb across her tattooed knuckles. “It’s okay - it’s okay to be sad.”

“I’m not sad.” Adore’s voice is thin. “And I have to go. I don’t want to be here. I can’t be here without him.”

Adore mutters the admission like it’s blasphemy, and Bianca doesn’t like it, but she knows. Ben’s ghost lingers in every brick and board and fiber of this house. It hurts - that she isn’t capable of being what Adore needs right now. But she understands. 

*****

June 7th, 2047

“Don’t fucking put that on me - don’t screw up my childhood and then keep making me miserable as a fucking adult, it’s not fair-" 

“Ob, cry me a fucking river - you had a great childhood!”

“Did I? Getting dragged up by some fucking idiot who didn’t know what she was doing-" 

“I was a fucking kid, Adore - I was trying my fucking best-” 

It’s dark outside. Bianca feels like shit. She wishes Adore hadn’t left. 

She hasn’t been able to sleep without sedatives since Ben died, and she hates it. She also doesn’t know why - she wasn’t there. It didn’t happen to her. It’s not her tragedy. She fishes the blister pack of xanax out of her purse and swallows one with the tail end of her glass of wine. Sleep. She needs sleep. She needs this shitty, awful, horrible day to be over. Maybe when she wakes up, Adore will be over her tantrum. 

She drops the pills on the kitchen counter. The last dregs of the wine are eyeing her up through the bottle. Bianca hesitates for a moment, refills her glass, and swiftly empties it down her throat. 

She walks through the empty living room, put off by the silence. It’s too quiet in this house. She wishes she hadn’t kept it. Ben deserved it more - he had a partner, and a good life, and hope for the future. Not the pathetic remains of half a dozen short-lived, shitty relationships, and a dead-end job. Adore loved him - she clearly can’t fucking stand Bianca. There would still be life in these walls if he’d taken it, and Bianca had hiked all her stupid clothes and coffee table books and vanity and venom to a crappy bachelor apartment.

It was Ben’s fucking house - it was his career that had paid for it. Bianca felt sick enough with guilt and frustration that he’d insisted she stayed and he left, and then kept ‘forgetting’ to cancel the mortgage auto-payments when he was still alive - just like he kept ‘forgetting’ to stop making her car payments, or kept sending her cheques from some ‘investment account’ they’d apparently set up years ago that she had no memory of. She’d stolen a better quality of life than she was owed from a guy that she was tethered to based on one night of bad decisions when they were in their twenties. It would have been easier on her conscience if Ben had resented her for it. But he didn’t. He’d looked out for her and loved her right up until the ugly end and she didn’t deserve any of it. 

If Ben had stayed here, he would have had to drive a different route to work. That’s why they bought the house - it was close to his job. Maybe he’d still be alive. Maybe it would have been her that died after a rush hour car wreck, of an internal hemorrhage that every medical professional in the vicinity was too busy and too stupid to notice. Maybe things would be better that way. 

The house is too quiet, and there’s too much space - Bianca traipses up the stairs, her fingers brushing over the lingering texture of Adore’s childhood crayon-on-wall scribbles, long since painted over. 

The wine is making her feel worse. She’s angry - hurt, frustrated, upset. But not with Adore. With herself for making her this way. 

Ben was warm, Ben was supportive. Ben could never see a single fault in her - not like Bianca. Bianca was the Bad Cop; the enforcer, the prison warden. Bianca nagged Adore about her homework and her curfew and her room being a mess - Bianca questioned her judgment, Bianca shat on her fashion choices. Bianca tried her best to make sure the kid didn’t turn out like she had. And she’d done it - Adore was successful, she was living a life she could look back on and be proud of. So, no fucking wonder Adore’s ideal future was one that didn’t have Bianca in it.  

“Bull-fucking-shit. You weren’t a kid, you were in your twenties-“ 

“I was two years younger than you are, you think you’d be great at raising a child now? Forget about finding out you’re pregnant when you were twenty-one and having to give up everything you’ve ever wanted in life for-“

“Nobody asked you to do that.”  

“No, they didn’t - but I had to do what was fucking best for you. Fuck my dreams, fuck what I wanted. You think anybody is working in a goddamn Urban Outfitters age forty-fucking-seven because they want to be?”

“I’ve been out of your house for five years, you’ve had time. Go live your dreams, since I’m not a fucking burden on you any more-“

“You’re not fucking getting it - the ‘living my dreams’ ship has sailed, since I had to drop out of fucking college for you. I had to put my life on hold indefinitely for you, and so did your father, so stop being such an ungrateful little shit-“

Bianca keeps replaying the fight in her head. Tonight had started well. Adore was back in town between tour dates and album sessions - not for Bianca. To see friends, and to meet with some record execs that Bianca was too uncool to know the names of. But when Bianca had asked if she had a free night, Adore had humored her. They’d ordered pizza, bought a couple bottles of wine, and for a moment, things felt the way they used to. Bianca was happy, for a fleeting second. 

Adore had been her best friend until she was thirteen. Then some awful melting pot of Adore’s pubescent bitch tendencies and Bianca’s stubbornness and short fuse had kicked off a bizarre ongoing war between the two of them that only seemed to mellow out once Adore left home and they weren’t constantly in each other’s way. It was normal teenager shit - Bianca remembered things being the same way between herself and her mother when she was in junior high. Her mother that she doesn’t fucking speak to any more. 

Bianca loves Adore so much that it’s physically painful, and she felt like a monster the entire time they were at odds. But she didn’t know how to stop it - she didn’t know how to be whatever Adore seemed to need from her. 

Not that there hadn’t been good moments. Adore’s first concert. The family vacation to Cancun. The weekend shopping sprees. Every so often, Bianca caught a glimpse of the fully-formed human being that Adore was starting to become, and she…well, adored her. But sooner or later, the shit would start again; Bianca could feel herself failing her daughter in real time. 

Just like when Adore was a teenager, things had fallen apart tonight just as Bianca was starting to enjoy the good.  

It was her fault. Like usual. Bianca had too much to drink too quickly, and she got emotional. She’d phrased some stuff poorly. She’d upset Adore. It was always her fault - it was always her that made the first wrong step. Adore just reacted to her shitty parenting.  

She’d made an off-handed comment about Adore ‘abandoning’ her. Which, in her crappier moments, she often felt but resolved never to say to her. Adore was an adult with her own life and her own burgeoning fame to deal with, and she’d lost her dad less than a year ago. Bianca’s feelings didn’t matter; she should be seeking her emotional support from someone her own age. So fucking what if Adore had better things to deal with than her mom’s grief and loneliness? 

But she’d said it anyway, and then she’d doubled down. Just like she always did. Adore started crying. Bianca got frustrated. God, she misses Ben. He wouldn’t have let this happen. 

“Leave Daddy the fuck out of this, he’s the only person I never doubted cared about me and I-" 

“Yeah, he did. He really, really fucking cared about you - enough to spend nearly his entire adult life closeted because he wanted to give you some semblance of a normal childhood, enough that the night he fucking died he didn’t want me to call you because he didn’t want to worry you-“

“That’s not a good thing! I wish I’d been there! I wish I knew, instead of coming offstage to find out that my dad had fucking died and my stupid, selfish, uptight bitch of a mother didn’t think it was worth her time to tell me that he was in that accident-“ 

“I told Willam - she said it wasn’t important enough to get you on the goddamn phone! Blame her!”

“You should have tried harder!”

“I didn’t think I had to. Your dad didn’t know how bad it was, he didn’t know what was going to happen - none of us knew, obviously if we did I would have put you on a flight as soon as I-“

Bianca has been trying to write that stupid fucking San Junipero bullshit out of her will for months now. If Ben wanted it and didn’t get it, she’s sure as shit not doing it now. However, the process is a fucking nightmare - eight hundred stupid phone calls to eight hundred useless morons who need to refer her to the next person, to try and sell her on an upgrade or ask her if this is because she wants the payout for the unused credit on her plan. It’s demoralizing and exhausting - the evil spiritual stepsister of canceling fucking cable, but a hundred times harder and with constant reminders of her fucking dead ex-husband and the last request he never got. 

Everything is depressing and shit, and she’s tired. She wants it to end - she wants to return to a normal that she can never get back. 

Bianca lingers at the open door of Adore’s teenage bedroom. It’s a shitshow. She hadn’t tidied up after herself when she left after Ben’s funeral - if anything she’d made more mess, rummaging around in her things and packing and unpacking for that fucking tour she had to go on. Which had done good things for her. In the last six months, her opening spots had turned into festival headliners and talk show appearances; she had an album in the works, and was watching her teenage dream blossom in real time to heights she’d never imagined it would reach. Bianca is glad that she went. Even if she hates her for it a little bit.

Bianca doesn’t want to touch anything. She treads carefully across the messy floor, trying not to disrupt anything; trying to preserve her daughter’s chaos, learn to live in it and love it as she did. Adore’s bed is unmade. The sheets smell like her. 

There’s a framed picture by her bed - a print of a blurry selfie taken at Ben’s niece’s bat mitzvah. She remembers that night. Adore had just turned twenty-one and her hair was purple. They’d gotten irresponsibly drunk on kosher wine, and Adore had climbed into Bianca’s lap to take the picture, pressing her gloss-sticky lips to Bianca’s cheek and telling her she loved her. They’re both smiling like maniacs. 

Adore had just turned twenty-one. That picture hadn’t been there when Adore last occupied that room - she’d moved into her college dorm a few days before her nineteenth birthday. She’d brought that here. And left it here. Bianca feels queasy. She picks it up gently, like it’s a precious artifact. The frame is bright red hard plastic, shaped like a heart - painted on one side, in Adore’s endearingly shitty handwriting: LOVE YOU MOMMY XO

Bianca’s eyes well up. It was a fucking gift that Adore never gave to her. Probably because she’d ruined Adore’s last visit home. Just like she ruined tonight. Just like she ruined her. Bianca drops the frame like it burns to touch, and she hears the glass shatter against the hardwood floor.  

She closes the door as she leaves, hearing it slam and her own breath becoming frantic. She feels that familiar ache, a sob building up in the depths of her chest.  

She’s pressed against Adore’s wall and staring directly into Ben’s old room. She’d transformed it into a pitiful sewing workspace that she’d barely used when he moved out - a weird attempt to kick some sense of purpose back into her life when Adore had flown the nest and Ben was out living his own life, picking up an old hobby that had dominated her teens and fuelled her plans for the future. Plans that had died a death in the bathroom of her old apartment downtown. The mannequin torso sits gathering dust, half-finished sketches litter the table. A waste - like everything else. 

She can’t do this. She doesn’t want to be here. She wants Adore back. Wants to hold her in her arms, breathe in her scent and her warmth, and tell her she forgives her for every horrible thing that had come out of her mouth tonight. 

No, she wants to tell her that she’s sorry. For everything. 

Sleep. She needs to sleep. 

“You just don’t want to admit that you screwed me out of a chance to say goodbye! You feel like I’ve abandoned you? Fuck you! You didn’t love him!” 

“I did-" 

“He was your friend - he was my fucking dad. Don’t try and pretend that what you’re feeling right now is anything like what I’m feeling, because it’s not.”

“It doesn’t have to be - Dorey, we can deal with this together. I want to be there for you. I want to help you. And I miss you, is that such a fucking crime?”

“You miss being a bitch to me - you miss telling me that I’ve wasted my life. You miss having someone else to boss around, because that’s all you wanna do.”

“Adore, I tried my fucking best for you. I didn’t have it in me to be a perfect mother - I didn’t have one, I wasn’t set up to be good at this. I tried my best, and if you feel like I’ve failed then I’m really fucking sorry. But I love you, and-“

Why the fuck are her pills on the kitchen counter? Bianca pops one out and swallows it dry, desperate for her mind to shut the fuck up. She’s drunk and confused and alone and fucking sad, and she wants to sleep.

Should she call Adore? No, that feels desperate. She needs to leave her alone; let her get over this at her own pace, let her come back on her own. If she wants to come back. She’ll come back. 

Bianca didn’t come back. Bianca didn’t forgive her mom for the sin of setting her expectations too high, so why the hell would Adore do the same? Maybe her mom feels the same way about her - maybe she feels deprived of a presence in the life she created, and maybe she loses sleep and paces around the house at night like a madwoman and cries over her too. That feels vindicating - so why does it hurt so much that Adore is probably gonna commit her to the same fate? 

Bianca collapses into the couch. Her body feels heavy. The clock on the wall says it’s just after midnight. There’s an empty pizza box on the coffee table. Adore’s lipstick is stained onto the rim of her glass. 

“God, can you not go five minutes without trying to make me feel like shit? I know. I know you tried, I’m sorry I didn’t turn out the way you wanted me to-“

“Do you think this is what your dad would have fucking wanted?”

“Don’t talk about what he would have wanted - what he would have wanted doesn’t matter. He’s dead, mom. He’s fucking gone. He’s gone, and I’m never gonna get him back, and now I’m stuck with you.”  

“The fuck do you mean ‘stuck with’ me?”

“You know exactly what I fucking mean.”

“What, you wish it was me? You wish I was the one that had fucking died? If that’s what you mean, say it.” 

“If I have to choose one of you then yeah. Yeah, I wish it was him that was still here.”

The couch is soft and warm and Bianca is falling asleep. She’s comfortable - but she feels wrong. Her head is swimming. 

It’s getting dark outside. Bianca watches for headlights in the driveway. Maybe Adore will come home and forgive her. Bianca is tired, and her head is heavy, and she wants to go to sleep. Sleep and forget. Maybe Adore will love her again when she wakes up. 

*****

[1] MISSED CALL  Adore DR 💕😻👩‍👧 00:21

[3] NEW MESSAGES  Adore DR 💕😻👩‍👧 00:23 mom im rlly sorry. i love you. can we talk <33 mom are you okay? talk to me 

[3] MISSED CALLS Adore DR 💕😻👩‍👧 00:29

[4] NEW MESSAGES Adore DR  00:34 mom PLEASE answer ur phone  im sorry  talk to me please im coming over

[5] MISSED CALLS Adore DR 💕😻👩‍👧 00:58

[3] NEW MESSAGES Adore DR 💕😻👩‍👧 01:01 im outside answer the door  mommy i know ur mad at me but i want to talk to u, im rlly sorry i love u so much pls answer the door mom MOM

[8] MISSED CALLS Adore DR 💕😻👩‍👧 01:07

[2] NEW MESSAGES Adore DR 💕😻👩‍👧 01:11 mommy please  im sorry. i love you. 

****

Pride Challenge Points: 6662

#rpdr fanfiction #the miracle of living #lita #bianca del rio #adore delano #adore & bianca #mother/daughter au #bendelacreme #jinkx monsoon #san junipero au #black mirror au #fic challenge #dystopia #angst #tissue warning #parenting au #dead dove do not eat #tw major character deaths #tw grieving and depression #tw parental loss #tw suicidal thoughts #tw accidental overdose

[zepskies]

Calculated Risks

Pairing: Soldier Boy/Ben x F. Reader

Summary: You and Ben argue about your commitment to being a working mom. When a rogue supe gets loose at Supe Affairs, mayhem ensues, putting not only your life at risk, but your daughter’s as well.

AN: Welcome back to the BMD-verse, friends! Did you miss these two as much as I did? Plus, get ready for a heavy dose of fan-favorite Frank. (And Lila, of course!)

Word Count: 7K

Tags/Warnings: Familiar bickering, a mission gone awry, angst, hurt/comfort, fluff.

Catch up on the BMD-verse. ⤵️

💚 Break Me Down Masterlist

In four years of marriage, one thing that had never changed between you and Ben was this.

“All right, you’re being a little too much right now,” you said in irritation. “Of course I’m not sitting this one out. I’m the one who found us the damn lead in the first place.”

The man was following you from the adjoining bathroom and back into your shared bedroom, where you began getting dressed for work in the blouse and pencil skirt you’d laid out for yourself.

Your husband had already donned his supe suit, sans helmet. He stood just behind you with his arms crossed, a familiar surly frown on his face. When you turned around, he hadn’t moved an inch.

“I’m being too much? You’re the one who’s not being fucking reasonable,” he said.

You rolled your eyes and moved past him to find your shoes. For this skirt, you really needed heels. Your most comfortable black pumps would do. You grabbed the closet doorknob for balance as you slipped them on, giving him a look of exasperation.

Ben held firm on his stance, but inside, he had a feeling you’d chosen this outfit on purpose. You knew he liked this whole sexcretary look on you, with your hair let down around your shoulders. The skirt and heels just brought his eyes to the delectable curve of your ass.

But again, he was holding firm.

He’d been called in on this case partly because Annie was on maternity leave. She was due in just a few weeks. Which meant “Soldier Boy” was definitely needed to help out Butcher and his merry band of assholes. By now, Ben had gotten used to them.  

“Look,” you said, “Slingshot has been causing a lot of havoc, and the police haven’t been able to catch him. You heard Grace. This is an ‘all hands on deck’ situation.”

“She always says that shit. Doesn’t make it true,” Ben retorted.

“This time it is,” you said. “I’ve already put in tons of man hours on surveillance for this guy. I want to get him off the street.”

Ben held you by your arms. “That’s exactly my point. You’ve been putting in way too many hours.”

You shook your head. He just didn’t get it.

“If I hadn’t, we wouldn’t have this opening now,” you said. You gave him a smile to try and lighten him. “Now he’s all teed up for you and the guys. This should be in and out. Practically a milk run for you.”

“Yeah, but not for you,” he pointed out. “And not for Lila. You’re stretching yourself too damn thin. It’s not like we need the money.”

Ahh, now we get to it, you thought. Yet again, he was bringing this up. In his mind, you should’ve cut your hours at Supe Affairs after Lila was born.

You did take an extended maternity leave of an entire year and a half, which was much more than women usually got from their jobs. However, because of your relationship with Grace and the entire team, you’d been allowed to come back whenever you felt ready. 

Ben had often felt it necessary to point out that with his money, you didn’t have to work at all. 

He knew very well that for you, this work was more than a job. 

“I’m not the first working mom in existence, Ben,” you said, pushing out of his hold. “And I’ll remind you that Supe Affairs has a great daycare program. Lila’s very happy there.”

Plus, she was almost three and a half years old. In less than a year, Lila would be off to preschool.

“And look, it’s not about the money,” you added. “I told you before Lila was born. I am a mother, and I’m your wife. But I’m still me.”

Ben processed that for a moment, meeting your gaze.

“The situation’s changed,” he replied. He grasped your hips this time. His thumb gently brushed over your belly, which had a small bump under your high-waisted skirt. 

You were finally pregnant again. Three months, in fact, and you were having a boy. You knew that Ben had several reasons to be more protective than usual…but still. You thought you were already taking every precaution to keep you and your children safe, even with the occasionally extensive hours of your job.

“These cases can be long and difficult, not to mention dangerous,” said Ben. His green eyes met yours as he looked down at you through furrowed brows. “You’re putting yourself at risk.”

You blew out a breath and tried to placate him, soothing a hand over his chest. 

“I’ve stopped doing field missions,” you pointed out. “And Supe Affairs is the most secure building in the city. Do you think I would bring Lila there if it wasn’t?”

The security team at the S.A. was bar none, not only because Loco was a part of that team. Frank was also your personal bodyguard; Ben hired him back when you found out you were pregnant with Lila.

In fact, Frank was coming to the house in a few minutes to pick you all up.

Ben frowned. “I think you’re being stubborn just to be fucking stubborn.”

That sparked at your temper. Again, you withdrew from his arms and crossed yours.

“I think you need to face the fact that I’m protected as well as I can be,” you said. “I also think that you’re trying to use this as a way to shoehorn me into some antiquated idea of what you still think a wife should be. I’m gonna tell you right now. That’s not me! It’s never been me. And you know that.”

He opened his mouth to give an angry retort, but you beat him to it.

“It’s like you don’t even care about what I want,” you snapped. “Just what you think is right—for me to be here waiting for you to come home, quite literally barefoot and pregnant, ready to rub your balls!”

Cliché as it might’ve been to say, if the shoe fit, then you were certainly not going to be the one to wear it.

“You know what, you can accuse me of being stuck in the fucking past all you want,” Ben said, raising a finger, as well as his voice. “But the problem here isn’t me. It’s that what you want is goddamn idiotic!”

Your mouth fell agape. “Excuse me?! I can’t even believe you right now!”

Ben fairly loomed above you when he shouted back.

“Well, that makes fucking two of us!”

His voice was loud enough to reverberate on the walls. You even flinched, but you held your ground with a glare…

Until you heard a whimper.

You and Ben paused, and turned to find Lila. The three-year-old was cowering a bit in the doorway to your bedroom. Her eyes welled up with tears, and she began to cry.

Your heart broke.

“Oh, honey,” you breathed. You were both apologetic and mortified as you quickly went to her.

Ben was close behind you, but while Lila was quick to melt into your arms when you picked her up, she shied away from his attempt to reach out to her. What would’ve been a placating hand on her head, turned into him pausing in surprise when she ducked.

“Lila?” he prodded.

He tried to mask how put out he was by his daughter hiding her face from him, burrowing into your neck instead. She was usually a daddy’s girl, through and through.

You shot him a knowing frown, while rubbing her back in comfort.

“It’s okay, baby,” you told her. “Your dad and I were just…talking. He didn’t mean to shout.”

When Lila only whimpered in response, Ben’s gaze dimmed in understanding. His lips pursed.

You saw that look on his face, and you wanted to sigh. Part of you felt bad for him, at the way Lila had flinched away from her father. In a way though, maybe it was a lesson he needed to learn.

Frank arrived a few minutes later in a black SUV, like he did every weekday morning to bring you all to work. Ben was quiet and taciturn climbing into the backseat on one side, and you clipped Lila into her car seat from the other side. He still made sure that she was strapped in correctly, and even tried to earn his daughter’s gaze.

She snuck a glance at him a couple of times, but quickly lowered it to play with one of her favorite stuffed animal toys (a little German shepherd that he had gotten for her).

Ben let out a long breath through his nose. He gave Frank a nod through the rearview mirror, and the other man peeled away from the house.

The four of you rode in silence away from your house in Scarsdale, towards New York City.

Ben’s mood remained grim, even when you all got to Supe Affairs. Frank held back while you and Ben stopped in the hallway with Lila. You were carrying her, and she was holding onto you and her stuffed animal like a lifeline instead of looking anywhere else—namely at Ben.

You sighed and tried to pull her back enough to see her face.

“Daddy’s gotta go to work now. Want to say goodbye?” you encouraged.

All Lila could manage was a shy look in his direction. Ben laid a gentle hand on her head, over her dark hair.

“Bye, sweetheart,” he said.

Lila didn’t answer him. She just bit her lip and stayed withdrawn.

You and Ben shared a glance. He was hiding it well behind his usual stoicism, but this was hurting him. There wasn’t much either of you could do about it now, however. You both had work to do, and the mission would have to come first.

“I’ll be online in a bit,” you told him. 

First, you needed to take Lila up to daycare before Frank accompanied you to your office. There you’d be able to join the mission from your computer and put your headset on. Aside from surveillance, you were their virtual eyes on missions. 

So Ben tacitly agreed, and the two of you parted ways.

You went up to the second floor to drop Lila off at daycare, where you set her onto her feet. You could see that she was quiet and almost sad, not as bright and talkative as usual. And she was clinging to your hand. You bent down the best you could in your skirt, so you could meet her eyes.

“Are you still upset with your dad?” you asked. 

After a moment, Lila replied, “Daddy’s loud.”

You couldn’t help a rueful smile. 

“Yeah, he can be,” you nodded. “But he’s gonna work on that, okay? He loves you very much.”

She finally smiled a little when you pressed a few sweet kisses to her cheeks. You felt a little better about leaving her with Sarah, the woman who ran the daycare center. She was kind, but well-organized, and good at her job of wrangling fifteen or so toddlers on a daily basis.

And she was hovering off to the side with a smile, waiting to shepherd Lila over to where the rest of the group were starting at the arts and crafts table.

“Okay, baby. I love you. I’m just downstairs if you need me,” you said, caressing Lila’s cheeks, brushing her hair away from her face.

She nodded and waved goodbye. Sarah then stepped in and guided the girl over to the crafts table. The other kids were already drawing and coloring with crayons and markers.

With a sigh, you knew you had to get to work. You joined Frank out in the hall.

“Did something happen this morning?” he asked. You gave him a weary look.

“Something always happens. I’ll fill you in when we hit the elevator,” you said.

“Kids are resilient. She’ll bounce back,” said Frank, when you two got off the elevator down to the basement, under the first floor. This was where the “heavy stuff” happened at the S.A.

“That’s not the point, Frank. He hasn’t snapped at me like that in a long time, and he really scared her. That’s not fucking okay,” you said. “He needs to learn to control his goddamn temper.”

He sent you a knowing glance. You rolled your eyes.

“Okay, I know I don’t always help. But in this case, I was justified,” you said. “Ben was being an ass.”

“Right,” Frank nodded. “It’s not at all that he’s worried about you.”

You narrowed your eyes at him. “Whose side are you on?”

The man remained silent, but his stoic face wasn’t fooling you. He’d been your friend for much too long, and he knew Ben just as well…which was why you found yourself reconsidering what happened this morning.

“You really think he has a point?” you asked. “Am I working too much?”

Frank shook his head and opened the door for you into the Surveillance Department. The two of you ventured to your office, where your quadruple monitor setup was waiting for you. He also had a desk for himself, since he often spent the long hours of your day with you.

“When you were pregnant with Lila, you were on maternity leave by now,” he pointed out.

“Because we had no idea what was going to happen,” you countered. You went to your desk and started up your computer. “I had to meet with Tonya once a week, ultrasounds and blood tests all the time, making sure Lila was healthy, that I was healthy. This time around, we have a better idea of what to expect.”

For example, you were experiencing bouts of super strength once again, but it was still intermittent. Although, you pretty much never needed coffee. Maybe the supe genes coursing through your system, thanks to your unborn son, was part of the reason why you’d been able to go such long hours for these cases.

He's already brightening up my life, you thought with a little smile, holding a hand over your lower belly.

“It’s your choice,” Frank said at last. “But it is possible that Ben cares about more than just making you a suburban housewife.”

At that, you sighed. There was nothing wrong with being a housewife, you knew. It just wasn’t…you.

Once your computer and monitors were booted up, you connected to the right channels and put on your headset.

Already you could hear M.M. bitching about keeping the weapons trunk organized, not just tossing things in haphazardly. 

“It’s a simple fucking system, Frenchie. You can at least abide by it,” M.M. said. “We don’t have time to be scratching our asses while you try to find a—”

“Hey, Bert and Ernie. Would you shut the fuck up already?” Ben groused.

Your mouth twitched at his grumpiness.

“A little testy this morning, ey guv?” Butcher remarked.

“Gargle my ball sack,” Ben replied, with an even grouchier deadpan than usual.

“Do you kiss your child with that mouth?” Frenchie teased. 

“Nah, just your mother’s French hole,” Ben slung back. You rolled your eyes. 

“All right, all right. Put the measuring tapes away,” you interrupted. “I’m online, locked on your GPS.”

“Well, if it ain’t Mrs. America herself,” Butcher drawled. “Got a lock on Slingshot’s location for us?” 

“You know it,” you replied. “Sending to the group chat now. Slingshot’s been spotted entering a strip club in Chinatown.” 

“Jeez. A little early for tits and booze. It’s 10:00 a.m. on a Tuesday,” said Hughie.

You heard Ben huff in amusement. “It’s never too early.”

You snorted at that.

“Right. I’ll remember that next time you fall asleep watching Family Feud,” you clipped back.

You heard the other guys trying not to laugh as they got into Butcher’s van. Part of you felt bad for teasing Ben, knowing he was already in a bad mood, but you were feeling a bit petty about what happened this morning.

You had to bite your lip against a smile, as you could picture the ill-tempered face your man was likely sporting.

And we’re off.

Lila wasn’t having a good day. 

She didn’t feel like coloring, and the toys just weren’t fun today.

She just didn’t want to be here. The other kids smelled like old Cheetos and feet (especially the boys).

She missed you. And though she hadn’t wanted to admit it to you, she missed Daddy too.

Lila wanted to go home…she wanted her mom. 

“I’m just downstairs if you need me,” you’d said.

Lila had a kind of plan percolating in her mind, all through the morning, and even through lunch time. She didn’t want to get in trouble, but when she’d asked Miss Sarah if she could go see you, she’d said you were at work and couldn’t come get Lila until later. 

But that’s not what Mommy said, Lila thought.  

After lunch, she laid on the napping mat with her pillow and blanket, even though she was wide awake. She didn’t want to nap with the other kids, even though Miss Sarah told her it was time to sleep. 

Again, Lila didn’t want to be bad. She didn’t want to get in trouble either, but she really, really just wanted to see you.

And you’d said it was okay to go downstairs if she needed you, right?

Lila closed her eyes while Miss Sarah was looking, but she waited until the teacher went into her office to answer a call. Then, Lila carefully put Charlie, her stuffed dog, against her pillow, tucking the blanket up to his neck. 

She crawled off her mat and snuck over to the door while Miss Sarah was distracted on her phone. Lila reached up and was just tall enough to twist the doorknob. It led her out of the room, and out into the empty hall. She then looked both ways for a clue on where to go. 

She heard a ding, and looked over at a nearby pair of elevators.

The mission went more or less according to plan. Slingshot’s abilities allowed him to stretch every part of his body like elastic. It not only made him hard to catch, but even harder to maim without collateral damage. 

A whole block in Chinatown was wrecked in the takedown, but your idea of ripping the cables from a nearby utility pole to electrocute him let Ben finally subdue the elastic supe. Kimiko knocked him out, and Butcher slapped some tight-ass cuffs on him and dragged him into the van. They returned with the rogue supe in custody. 

You were mentally exhausted from helping them track down routes to pin down Slingshot, but you were relieved to be done. You were also satisfied that another danger to society was neutralized, for now.

You took pride in your work, and you didn’t think Ben saw that, or thought it was important. You supposed that was what upset you the most about that fight with him.

Sometimes, you wondered if he would ever truly change.

You grabbed your purse and made sure to slip in your gun and taser. You left your office and greeted Frank, who had just finished making his rounds in the building with Loco’s team. Frank joined you on the way to the elevator.

“I meant to ask you, how’s Alana doing?” you asked. Alana was his daughter, who was now in college.

“She’s changed her major yet again,” he said wryly. “This time to philosophy.”

“Philosophy? That’s interesting. What does she want to do with that?” you asked.

“No fucking clue,” he replied, hitting the button for the first floor. “I just hope she gets bored and picks something practical. Like…teaching, or dentistry.”

You shot him a bemused look. “Dentistry?”

“As much money as I put into that girl’s braces, it’d be good for her to pay it forward,” Frank said, in a surly tone that reminded you of Ben. You had to laugh.

You and Frank exited the elevator and started down the hall.

You planned to touch base with Grace Mallory on the safety measures of Slingshot’s containment before he was put into custody. The idea was to house him in a prison cell that could actually hold him until he went through the legal process. 

But you’d only gotten halfway down the hall before the supe in question literally stretched past you on unnaturally long legs—in a blur of his white and blue supe suit. Your eyes widened on a gasp as you watched him head toward the elevator you’d just come off of. 

“Fuckin’ hell, we’ve got a runner!” Butcher shouted from down the hall. He along with Ben, M.M., Frenchie, Hughie, and Kimiko were rushing your way. 

It all happened so fast. 

You registered Frank shooting out a protective arm in front of you. You turned back to see the elevator doors had opened back up, and Slingshot rushed inside. He made eye contact with you.

Then his arms shot out like rubber bands. One of them knocked Frank into the far wall. You gasped and froze on reflex. 

Ben shouted your name; he was running towards you, getting closer. You were able to meet his wide eyes for a brief moment. He reached out for you, but those stretching arms closed around you first. You gasped when they slung you backwards.

You cried out in shock when your back met a surprisingly solid chest.

Meanwhile, Ben barreled the rest of the way down the hall as the elevators closed just short of his angrily furrowed face.

The stretched arms holding you were tight around your torso, making your grit your teeth as you tried to pull away. They twisted you around so you could face your captor. Or so he could see you.

His natural height was around Butcher’s—dark hair, blue eyes, angular features. He gave you what was probably meant to be a suave smile as those baby blues dragged down your body.

“Hey, baby. Nice heels,” he said. You rolled your eyes.

“So that’s why they call you Slingshot,” you said, still a bit breathless. The elevator started to move. He’d chosen the top floor. “Where do you think you’re gonna go?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” he snarked. “Anywhere but here. And you’re gonna help me.”

“How? Being a human shield?”

“For a start,” he smirked down at you. He backed up a step just to take another proper look at you, and he whistled lowly. He took your chin between his sweaty fingers, making you grimace when he stroked your cheek. 

“Down boy,” you said warily. “Trust me, you really don’t want to do this.”

This jackass hadn’t even realized you had a small, but noticeable baby bump.

“Why not, babe?” he grinned. “You’ve got the whole sexy librarian thing going on.” 

You heard a loud creaking sound outside the elevator doors. The compartment itself came to an abrupt stop, making the lights flicker. 

“What the fuck?” Slingshot muttered. His hold around you loosened. 

You had an idea of what just happened, with grim satisfaction. You also took advantage of his distraction and managed to slip a hand into your purse.

You pulled out your taser. Slingshot noticed and tried to grab you again, but the elevator somehow started to move in reverse, about a foot a time. It made both of you lose your balance and utter sounds of surprise.  

As soon as you regained your footing, you aimed the taser at the most sensitive place you could think of—the supe’s dick and balls.

His howls of pain were loud enough to reach Ben, Frank, and the rest of the team on the third floor. Ben’s face became edged with a smirk. 

He kept pulling the elevator cables down until the compartment’s doors were in reach. There he grabbed the doors and pulled them open with his bare hands, crunching metal under his fingers. The moment he saw you, the relief in your eyes, he grabbed your hand and pulled you out, into his arms. 

Slingshot was angry, though he managed to recover, rip off the taser’s metal prongs and wires, and evade Kimiko, M.M., and even Butcher when he slithered his way out of the elevator and around their guns. The bullets ricocheted off the walls, and off his body as they followed him down the hall.

Ben focused on you. He brushed his half-gloved hands over your shoulders and sides while he quickly looked you over. There was worry in his eyes, disguised as anger. You caught your breath and held a protective hand over your lower belly out of reflex. 

“You okay?” he said, but you were already nodding before he asked.

“I’m fine,” you replied. “Just get him. I’ll get Lila.” 

Ben nodded. He shot one last firm look at Frank, who was back at your side. Frank laid a hand on your shoulder as Ben took off down the hall to find Slingshot. 

“The stairs are safer at this point,” Frank said. 

“I would have to agree,” you said, steeling yourself with a breath. 

While you and Frank went downstairs to the second floor, you didn’t see the second elevator ding, its doors opening to your daughter, who ambled out alone. She looked one way down the hall, but hearing her father’s voice carrying down the opposite way, she started venturing in that direction.

If she couldn’t find you, then she’d find her dad. 

“What the hell do you mean you lost her?” you shouted at Sarah, the woman who was supposed to be looking after your daughter. “How do you lose a three-year-old at nap time? What kind of incompetent fuck are you?”

Yes, Ben had unfortunately rubbed off on you. 

Sarah was in tears by the time you were not even halfway done, but Frank calmed you down with another touch to your shoulder. You had tears of panic stinging in your eyes when you met his gaze, your mouth trembling.

“I just radioed in and put Loco and the rest of the security team on looking for Lila. She can’t have gotten far,” he said. 

“Come on! Keep up with me, old man,” Slingshot taunted at Ben. His super flexibility allowed him to keep several steps ahead, dodging any attempts to grab him and any weapons fired with easy dips and playful deflection. 

“When I get my hands on you, you flaccid fuck, you won’t know your ass from your ball sack,” Ben growled. 

But he crashed into the wall when he took a corner too hard trying to tackle the other supe. He picked himself up from the debris of crumbled wall and plaster, ignoring Kimiko’s offer of a helping hand. 

“Big fucking talk from the walking AARP commercial,” Slingshot snorted. He turned around and once again prepared to run. “Try not to shatter a hip, asshole!”

He took off down another bend in the hallway. Meanwhile, Ben shook himself off and joined the others in running after this cocksucker. Ben looked over at Butcher.

“What’s your fucking plan?” he grated out. 

Butcher seemed to have an idea growing in his mind. “What’d she do to him in that elevator?”

“Tased his dick, by the sound of it,” Ben replied. He knew what weapons you kept in your purse, and that you'd know better than to fire a gun in an enclosed elevator. Butcher snapped his fingers.

“Electricity. Bloody brilliant,” he said. He pointed at Hughie and grabbed Frenchie by the collar. “You, with me. I’ve got an idea. The rest of ya, get him pinned down.”

“Easier said than done, motherfucker,” M.M. grumbled. But he followed Ben and Kimiko to find their errant supe. 

Slingshot played a cocky game, but inside, there was fear. 

They’d caught him once, and now, this building was crawling with security, let alone the assholes chasing him.

He was panting for breath when he nearly ran straight into…a kid? 

She was wandering around, trying to open a locked door. He skidded to a stop in front of her, and she looked up at him wide-eyed. He tilted his head. She was a cute little thing with brown hair and green eyes. She wore a blouse with cartoon ducks on it over her jeans and sunshine-yellow shoes. 

“Hey, cutie. Where you going?” asked Slingshot. “Are you lost?”

“Looking for my mom,” she answered, a bit timidly. The supe gave her an easy smile; inside, he knew he’d just found his collateral, and his ticket out of here. 

“Okay. What’s your name?” he asked. 

“L…Lila,” she said. 

“Pretty name for a pretty girl,” he said, with all due charm. He struck a pose, with his fists held up to his waist. “I can help you, Lila. I’m a superhero.”

Her eyes widened. “Really? Like Daddy?”

“Oh, yeah. Your dad and I are friends.” Never mind that he had no fucking clue who her daddy was. He offered her his hand. 

Now, Lila knew not to talk to strangers, but if he knew her dad… 

After a moment of reluctant indecision, she took his hand. Slingshot tapered a smirk into a more friendly smile. 

“Let’s go find him.”  

Ben was ahead of the pack, but he soon came to an abrupt stop with wider eyes. He finally found Slingshot, except he had Ben’s daughter by the hand. Slingshot wore a cocky grin as he took the child up into his arms. 

“Hey, guys. Who’s this little peanut belong to?” he asked. “Said she was looking for her daddy.” 

Ben’s breath turned to lead in his lungs. Lila’s eyes lit up with recognition when she saw him. 

“Daddy!”

Ben’s softer gaze shifted from her, hardening once it reached the other supe. 

“Let her go,” he growled lowly. 

Slingshot’s grin deepened incredulously as he laughed.

“Oh shit, she’s yours?” he exclaimed. “This’s just too fucking perfect.”

“Lila!” your shout came from behind Ben, and you stepped around M.M. and Kimiko.

Ben held out a hand to keep you at bay. He kept his eyes on Slingshot, but Ben heard your gasp. His stomach dipped, knowing your worry had to be reaching new heights as you took in the situation.

“Ben,” you uttered. 

“I’ve got this,” he said to you.

“You don’t got shit, old man,” Slingshot snapped. He shot you a smirk next. “She’s your bitch? Figures.”

“Just let her go,” you implored. You had tears brimming in your eyes. “We can negotiate your release if you promise to be more responsible.”

Ben shot you a glance then. He didn’t intend for this fucker to live, let alone walk the streets of New York again. But he supposed any bluff was worth it at this point.

Meanwhile, seeing the distress on her parents’ faces made Lila begin to break down into tears. She whined, pushing against the supe holding her, wanting to be let go. 

“It’s okay, sweetie,” Slingshot cooed. “You’re just gonna take a little trip with me.”

“No!” a ragged shout tore from your throat when he took a few backward steps down the hall. 

Ben held you back from following him, all while he tensed with rage. M.M. and Kimiko were also poised to try and stop the supe. But Slingshot tightened his hold on Lila in warning.

“Back the fuck off,” he demanded. “Once I get to JFK and get my ass on a plane, maybe, maybe you see your daughter aga—”

He had to stop short, as he sensed something just outside of his peripheral vision.

It was Butcher, coming at him to swing a baseball bat at the supe’s head.

You screamed in protest, but Butcher was relying on the supe’s reflexes to dodge the bat. He wasn’t disappointed. Slingshot dodged. Though in his distraction, it gave Ben the opening he needed to step into his orbit and land a solid punch across Slingshot’s face.

It not only cracked his jaw, but also caught him off guard enough for his grip on the child to loosen. Ben grabbed his daughter and turned her away in a protective embrace.

Then Frenchie brought Slingshot down with the prongs of a massive taser clipping onto his nipples. He jolted and screamed—and went down hard on the tile floor. 

While Hughie and M.M. ushered in the rest of the security team to swarm in and take the supe into custody, you raced forward to Ben and Lila in tears.

Lila was also crying and clinging to Ben’s neck, shaking like a leaf.

“It’s okay, sweetheart. I’ve got you,” he said quietly, so only she could hear. Lila whimpered and burrowed tighter against his neck.

Tears streamed down your face, but you tried to breathe through it. You rubbed her back and checked her over, making sure she wasn’t hurt. 

For Ben, the force of his relief was pounding in his ears. He briefly closed his eyes as he held his daughter closer. 

When he opened them again, he met your gaze. You couldn’t speak. All you could do was grab onto his wrist for support. He gave that to you, wrapping his free arm around your waist and pulling you into his side. 

“Frank,” he said. His voice was a sharp command. The other man was ready to carry out whatever Ben asked. He also looked relieved to see that Lila was all right.

“Pull the car around,” said Ben. Frank nodded, and went to do just that.

Ben turned to watch in satisfaction when Frenchie and M.M. hauled up a still twitching Slingshot. Butcher slapped a pair of electroshock handcuffs on him that would keep him better contained this time—courtesy of the S.A. armory. He nodded over at Ben, and the latter returned the gesture. 

You missed it all, as you were preoccupied with comforting your daughter.

“It’s okay, honey. We’re going home,” you gently whispered to Lila, who was still hiding her face in Ben’s neck. You shared a look with him, and he gave you a short nod. His hand moved to the small of your back, both protective and possessive as the three of you moved towards the garage exit. 

There Frank waited with the car that would take your family home.

You watched Ben with the beginning of tears brimming in your eyes. You managed to hold them at bay while he set Lila down in her bed. You’d just finished giving her a bath and helping her get into her pajamas after a quiet, somewhat tense dinner. 

Lila still seemed upset in her unusually quiet mood, which you knew was understandable. Ben sat at her bedside and soothed a hand over her head, brushing her cheek with his thumb. 

“You’ve had a crazy friggin’ day, huh?” he asked. Lila didn’t want to look at him, but he encouraged it with gentle fingers brushing her chin, teasing the tip of her nose. She hinted at a smile and finally met his eyes. He smiled back at her, if more reserved. But his expression turned serious again.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. He could see it. She had been more or less fine throughout dinner, but now she’d turned quiet and withdrawn again. She only got like that when she was upset about something.

Lila toyed with the ear of her stuffed animal, Charlie. Frank had retrieved it for her from the daycare.

“Sorry I talked to strangers,” Lila mumbled.

You had to bite the inside of your lip so you wouldn’t cry. You came over to sit on the other side of her bed. You sniffed and shook your head, but Ben beat you to what you wanted to say. 

“You’re not in trouble, all right? We’re not mad,” he said. 

Lila’s lower lip wobbled. Ben sighed and picked her up, plopping her down in his lap. She hugged him as tight as she could and he held her back, warm and secure.  

“You know I’m always gonna be there to keep you safe. You never have to worry or be afraid,” he said. 

You carded your fingers through Lila’s hair so she knew you were there too. Usually, the roles were reversed, where you were doing the comforting and Ben was the solid support. Right now though, you just didn’t have the words. Not when guilt was eating you from the inside out.

Fortunately, your husband did have the words, after he heaved a sigh. 

“I might raise my voice, sometimes, but uh…you never have to be afraid of me either. Okay?” he said.

"Mhmm," Lila agreed.

You laid hand on Ben's arm, gently squeezing. He met your gaze, and knew what you were prodding with just that look in your eyes.

Briefly, he hesitated before he looked back down at his daughter.

"I'm sorry I scared you," he said.

Lila nodded against his chest. “It's okay.”

“Good,” he said, laying a kiss on her forehead. “All right, you ready to go to bed?”

She clung to him and made a sound of refusal. 

You were finally able to crack a smile. You leaned down by her ear. 

“You want Daddy to read you a story first?” you asked. 

Ben shot you a look at the way you volunteered him for that. He was tired and drained. 

But one hopeful, shiny look from his daughter, and he folded like a deck of cards.

Later, when Lila was asleep, you tucked her in one last time and Ben turned out the light. He kept the door cracked open, just in case she called for either one of you tonight.

Then, somehow, you and Ben ended up in the kitchen instead of the bedroom. As exhausted as both of you were, you needed this moment to decompress, with one of your old favorite pastimes…

He broke out the whiskey while you found an appropriate midnight snack, and then a seat with him at the breakfast bar. The two of you shared a companionable silence, as well as a large bag of sea salt and vinegar chips. 

That was sort of how you felt inside.

“Today can’t happen again,” Ben said, breaking the silence. 

You looked over at him, but he was looking beyond you. Maybe so he didn’t have to show you how deeply he’d been rattled. You knew him far too well for that. 

“Of course not,” you replied. And you released a sigh. “So here’s what I’m thinking. From now on I’ll work from home, so I can watch Lila until she goes to preschool.”

Ben got ready to argue, but you held up a hand. The other went to rest over your belly. You had scheduled an ultrasound with Dr. Tonya Baker tomorrow, just to make sure all was well after this ordeal.

“I already plan to take my maternity leave when this guy rolls into town,” you said with a smile. “Then, when I’m ready, and if it’s feasible, I can continue to work from home until all the kids are in school.”

Ben’s lips twitched humorlessly. He should’ve known you’d continue making this a negotiation. He set down his glass, and he reached out to slide a hand over yours, across your belly. He took in a deep breath. But when he let it go, you sensed you still hadn’t convinced him.

“Listen, I know you don’t want me to work—” you began.

“It’s not that,” he said. He made sure you looked him in the eyes when he said it. “It’s not.”

Despite yourself, you read the sincerity in his words. It had you pausing, waiting for him to continue.

“You know damn well…that just being around me is dangerous,” he said. “To you, and to Lila. But you being connected with Supe Affairs, working these missions, even from behind a desk, it’s a fucking risk. It’ll always be a risk.”

You considered that with new understanding. You took his hand with both of yours.

“Ben, this life, this work…it’s the same for me as it is for you. It’s all I know how to do. It’s what I’m wired for. So that’s why it’s hard for me to turn down that dial,” you explained. “But look, I understand what you’re saying. Believe me, I do. And today…today was…”

Your breath hitched as tears stung in your eyes. Ben shook his head and tugged you closer.

“Come ‘ere,” he said.

You left your chair to go to him. You stood between his long legs while he pulled you into a warm embrace. Logically, you knew that what happened today wasn’t your fault. However, part of you still felt like a failure of a mother for underestimating the risks of having your daughter at the S.A.  

You should’ve known better, you berated yourself. And yet, it was Ben’s words that stopped your train of thought.

“Today wasn't on you,” he said. "Get that thought outta your head."

He knew you well too, and this was one of those times. You wept harder against him, pressing your face into the crook of his neck. He held you, comforted you until you began to calm down.

“Take your maternity leave early,” he said. His deep voice was a rumble. “You’re going to have your hands full with Lila when I’m not here. Unless we hire someone to help you.”

It was an idea you could consider, but who could you trust? That was the question. 

Maybe your mother? you thought. You knew she was thinking of retiring from her job in a couple of years anyway.

You sighed and slipped your fingers through Ben’s hair. Your hand came to rest on the back of his neck as you leaned against him.

When Lila came into your lives, you had been so excited to start a family that you hadn’t considered the non-physical side effects. Namely, the sacrifices you would have to make in order to keep your family safe. 

Before you met Ben, your job was your life. But today reminded you that your daughter…and your unborn son, were more important to you than your job. No matter how important that job might be for the rest of the world. 

“Let’s talk about this more tomorrow,” you said, shaking your head. “I can’t think anymore.”

After a beat of hesitation, he agreed with a nod. Like so many battles before, whatever compromise you and Ben finally reached would be hard won. His hand found your cheek and caressed your skin.

“You still try my fucking patience, you know that?” he muttered.

You smiled tiredly. “Did you really expect that to change?”

He scoffed. Even so, he guided you off his shoulder so that he could claim your lips. His kiss tasted like the burn of whiskey. You met his demanding lips in kind, though you were the first one to part from him slowly. 

“I love you,” you whispered a reminder. 

Ben nodded and pressed a kiss to your forehead. He lingered there for a moment, as if he could pause the world for a while. 

He eventually let out a breath through his nose and allowed himself to be honest.

“I love you too,” he said.

With that shared understanding, he stood from his seat. He drained the last of his glass before he bent to gather you up into his arms. You yelped in surprise, clinging to his shoulders.

“Time for some rest,” Ben said. There was a certain smile on his face, gentler than usual.

He forged a path towards the bedroom. You sighed and laid your head against his chest. 

For once, you didn’t argue with him.  

AN: I've been wanting to put this one out for a while now. 💚💚 I so hope you enjoyed this chapter of the BMD verse! Do you like how their little family is evolving? 😘

Ko-Fi Me ☕

Break Me Down Masterlist

Soldier Boy Masterlist

Main Masterlist

Series Tag List (Part 1):

@deans-spinster-witch @this-is-me19 @waynes-multiverse @samanddeaninatrenchcoat @spalady26

@spnwoman @syrma-sensei @wirdbeimaufhebengebunden @muhahaha303 @123passwort

@mrsjenniferwinchester @lyarr24 @xoxovienna @lollag0w0 @globetrotter28

@nancymcl @ashbatz @secretdreamlandmentality @kristophalis @wonderland2022

@emily-winchester @shelh93 @sl33pylilbunny @spoonmynoodle @chernayawidow

@buckybarnes-1917 @asgardprincess97 @sometimes-i-sing @itsyellow @theonlymaninthesky

@kimberleymjw @is-this-a-febreze-commercial @iamsapphine @sanscas @se-fucking-hun

@lassie-bird @jessjad @yepimthatperson @fromcaintodean @stoneyggirl

@spnfamily-j2 @im-a-slut-for-fluff @lacilou @venicesem @mimaria420

@tearsfortheyouth @agalliasi @chriszgirl92 @kazsrm67 @deansbbyx

#Calculated Risks #Break Me Down #BMD-verse #soldier boy #soldier boy x reader #soldier boy x you #soldier boy x female reader #Soldier Boy/Ben #daughter!OC #the boys #the boys AU #the boys season 3 #the boys amazon #soldier boy fanfiction #billy butcher #mother's milk #hughie campbell #jensen ackles characters #jensen ackles #soldier boy/ben #zepskies writes

[secondary-colorentimy]

evie…..mal….my beloveds 🤲💕

#fanart #disney descendants #descendants #evie #evie descendants #mal #mal descendants #UGH I LOVE YOU EVIE DAUGHTER OF THE EVIL QUEEN!!! #I LOVE YOU MAL DAUGHTER OF MALEFICENT…..and hades 🤫 #disney #as a malfeicent and evil queen fan i tried to make them look a bit more like their mothers :3 #again like uma these are their primary outfits for that twst x descendants au :p #which flavor of gay are you? the evie….the mal

[shriika]

Lilich sister portrait

#part of my bold AU where the kains actually hang up family portraits and not strange art they think is cool #aglaya lilich #nina kaina #pathologic #мор утопия #guests to the crucible would probably assume this is a mother daughter portrait... #except if it actually was nina and maria victor would have had that shit blown up to 200cm and framed in gold. trust. #u can tell i gave up on the second one but its like. for scale mostly shhhh #shriikadraws

[goldenamaranthe-blog]

Apple Seed 7: Demons

Charlie: (nestled into bed and surrounded by a maternity pillow to help prop up her heavy set baby belly) Are you sure you're alright with me going to bed early? I can stay up a little longer and help with the new residents' paperwork.

Vaggie: (cups Charlie's cheek and brushes her thumb over the bright red circle, slipping her finger into the well hidden dimple camouflaged underneath) I'm sure, hun. I can handle it just fine. I'll be in bed in about two- (checks the bedside clock) -two and a half hours.

Charlie: (pouts) But-

Vaggie: (presses a finger to Charlie's lips) No, no hables más, mi amor. You've been sleeping horribly for weeks. If you're tired, you should sleep. I can take over so you can rest. ¿Comprende?

Charlie: (huffs childishly but eyes slowly soften as she kisses Vaggie's finger) Yes, Ma'am. I understand. (snuggles under the covers and strokes her belly) I love you, Vaggie.

Vaggie: I love you too, querida. (kisses Charlie's forehead) Good night. (slowly exits the room and shuts the door with a soft click)

Vaggie: (sighs heavily and shuffles down the hall with an uneasy stride and hunch in her shoulders) Mierda... What am I going to do?

Vaggie: (enters the office and sits behind the desk, slowly opening a side drawer to reveal a hidden flask and pulling it out to take a pull of the liquor inside) Fuck.... Now, I'm drinking by myself because of this... Shit....

-Silence-

Vaggie: (bites her lip and pulls out her phone) I cannot believe I'm doing this. (dials the number and sets the phone to speaker)

-Brrrrrrrrd! ....Brrrrrrrd! ....Brrrrrrrrd!-

Carmilla: Carmine Industries. State your business.

Vaggie: (nervous) Uh, hello, Ms. Carmine. This is Vaggie Morningstar.

Carmilla: I'm well aware who you are, Vaggie. That's the point of caller ID. What do you want?

Vaggie: (under her breath) Gee, aren't you just as perky as ever. (clears her throat) I'm... in need of some... ugh...shit.... advice.

Carmilla: .............I'm listening.

Vaggie: You have two daughters.

Carmilla: How astute of you.

Vaggie: Smartass comments aside! (gets quiet and nervous) How... do you do it?

Carmilla: ..........I must say. Normally, I'd pride myself on being able to understand most nonsensical babbling, but I'm not quite following yours. Elaborate.

Vaggie: (sighs and sinks into the chair) How do you do it? Hold your kids when you have blood on your hands? (stares at her palms and flinches as flashes of deep crimson blood stain her fingers before returning to normal)

Carmilla: I see. This is about your prior Exorcist work and the baby on the way, isn't it?

Vaggie: (nods sullenly before remembering that she's on a voice call) Fuck! Yes! This is about that! How can I hold a perfect little being after everything I've done?! After all the people I've killed here in Hell? (flood gates open as her emotions run wild and tears sting her eyes) I know Charlie has forgiven me, but what if I hurt them? What if... I'm not good enough?

Carmilla: .............

Vaggie: (slowly calms down and wipes the tears from her eyes)

Carmilla: (softly) Because when that child is born, the hands that you once used to kill will be used to protect something even more precious than you could ever imagine.

Vaggie: (blinks) Carmine?

Carmilla: That innocent, perfect little baby will rely on you for everything the moment they're born. Your wife will rely on you to help her shoulder the burden. Do you honestly think that child will care about the people you killed when they only know the love you've given it? The care you've provided to it and it's mother?

Vaggie: But.... what if I-

Carmilla: Taint it? (huffs a laugh) With what? Slightly sullied hands that may or may not be covered in spit up? A child isn't tainted by the past sins of a parent, stupid girl.

Vaggie: (glances at her hands and watches as the blood washes away to a gross, white milky substance and cringes at the thought of spit up) Not sure how much I want that either....

Carmilla: Just remember to burp the child thoroughly between changing breasts if the princess is breastfeeding, and especially after. It should help with any projectile vomiting.

Vaggie: (smiles softly and relaxes) Do... you have anymore words of maternal wisdom for me? I... uh... feel pretty useless right now.

Carmilla: Hmmph. (sits down at her desk and leans back in amusement) Grab a notebook, and I'll give you a few tricks of the trade.

#apple seed au #apple seed #part 7 #angst #chaggie #vaggie #pregnant charlie #charlie morningstar #carmilla carmine #nervous dad vaggie #ptsd #good grandma carmine #mama carmine #inner demons #mother - adopted daughter moments #thanks anon for requesting some light vaggie angst #thank you maricantstandyou for requesting some carmine advice

[alexiethymia]

a flower by any other name would taste as poisonous

A butterfly flaps its wings and a hurricane happens in a far-off place. 

In this case an old eunuch decides to take a different route from his usual one. It takes him by the Garnet Palace, where he’s just in time to stop a loving attendant from feeding an infant a spoonful of honey. Sufficiently warned, the attendant never bears the crushing weight of guilt for the rest of her life. 

The infant still dies though. It’s nothing surprising. Infants before a certain age would always be vulnerable and susceptible to natural illnesses. It is no one’s fault. 

If the child still died though, what did this change? Surprisingly, a lot. 

Eight years later a boy is crying after having a favorite toy taken from him once again. 

A girl, merely a year younger than him, asks him in a dispassionate tone where it hurts. 

Startled, the boy stops crying. Eyes shining, he looks at this girl who resembles a wood sorrel and decides she’s his new favorite. 

How is it that those two seemingly random encounters could lead to this particular scene, one resembling a painting?

On one side, an existence like a celestial nymph, voice of sweet honey, a beauty that could topple nations if he so wished.

One would think that no one could compare, and yet the beauty on the other side was not overshadowed. She was a vision no less stunning for she was once known as a top courtesan of the pleasure district. 

It was perhaps fortunate that no one was a witness to this display for no one could hope to count how many hapless victims would be felled by such visions of loveliness. 

As to what these beauties were doing, no one could have guessed for in between them stood a single Go board.

tap

tap

“I must admit that while I was expecting a visit from his Imperial highness soon, I didn’t think it would be for this.”

The celestial nymph flushed. 

“Apologies for taking some of your precious time, Feng Xian-dono.”

tap

tap

The unfettered beauty took her time deciding her next move. The man who was also called Jinshi did not fool himself into thinking it was because he was a worthy opponent. Although he was used to using his excellent looks as a weapon, why is it that before this woman he felt as if he were merely a mouse being played with? A finely sculpted brow conveyed enough with one gesture. He felt as if he were playing two games at the same time.

“And? What is so important that the Prince of the Moon felt the need to risk Lakan’s wrath to come here? Why, you even roped Lahan into this plan of yours.” The cold beauty didn’t smile but he had a sense that she was amused.

Jinshi wondered. Did he rope Lahan or did that miser rope him? It didn’t matter. Shaking his head, he hoped he was equally composed when he answered, “I must admit it was that esteemed personage’s recommendation that sent me your way. Aside from him, only you could fight on equal ground with our honored strategist.”

tap

tap

Seemingly bored but only just, such that she could not be accused of disrespecting him, his opponent continued her queries, “And? Surely, you don’t hope to best that girl at a game of Go? She has utterly no interest at the game. It’s a wonder if she takes after us at all. I often wonder how she came to be so uncute, though of course Lakan would disagree.”

Jinshi would as well. Or to be more accurate, he both agreed and disagreed. While that girl was often distant, on the whole he could not help but find her adorable.

And from the shadow of a smile he could spy on his opponent’s face, he gathered that she was much the same, and could only dote on her daughter in this roundabout way. Although parent and child both claimed no similarity, he thought in this manner you could not doubt their familial tie.

Likewise with her father, though she only had disdain for the man (not that it would stop that eccentric’s entreaties to be called Papa from happening, thought Jinshi with a shiver). He’ll leave it up to Gaoshun to commiserate. 

That wary cat only showed affection for her honored grand uncle. In much the same way, as much as she protested, she and her sire were a lot alike. There was also their utter disinterest in anyone ordinary and unexceptional.

Like him.

Any other family would have accepted just by virtue of who he was. But it mattered not to this particular family who cared not for prestige or power. This family was content to keep to itself and occupied with its members’ various obsessions. Rather than consider it an honor to be connected to the noble line of the rulers of this nation, Jinshi thought that Lakan rather saw him as some annoying fly. 

And for that annoying fly to not only buzz around his beloved daughter but also to dare be in the proximity of his beloved wife, the only two people that eccentric fawned over and adored with all his heart, ah surely this was a perilous gamble indeed. 

But for an ordinary person like Jinshi, no Ka Zui Getsu, this was the only thing he could do.

Ironic that when he wanted it most, he could not rely on this excellent appearance of his, the only thing extraordinary about him. This family cared not a whit for that. At first he had wondered why that apothecary continued to be unaffected by him, but to have someone like this for a mother, he realizes she must have already been bored by the sight. (She had actually scoffed at him after they had seen each other once again in the rear palace.)

It left him scrambling, but also strangely relieved. 

“It’s not that I want to best her. At most I hope to be on equal footing.” Slightly abashed, he shakes his head. “In truth, it is our honored strategist whom I wish to have a match with. Though it may be impossible, the Sage tells me my best hope lie with the only person to have bested the Grand Commandant more times than even him.” 

Seemingly intrigued if the slight lifting of one brow indicated such, the once courtesan inquired, “Oh? And to what end if I may ask?”

How to answer.

Grappling with something in himself, Jinshi finally admitted, “Merely to be acknowledged, I suppose. To be seen and recognized.”

To be accepted. 

By whom, his companion seemed content not to ask if the curl of her mouth was any indication.

Maomao had often complained (though she would deny it with a blank look if asked) in a bland tone that she thought she must surely be adopted by the one she called father, for surely she had no resemblance to this beauty in front of him. Chicken bones she called herself. (Incidentally, she was adamant that she was not ugly enough to be related to the fox. She was, in her own view, perfectly normal. Jinshi almost spat out his tea upon hearing this if only it wasn’t unbefitting his station.) 

But seeing what could pass for an amused look on this normally expressionless face, Jinshi for the first time in front of another great beauty, blushed for he could only see traces of the one he yearned for in this visage. 

Truly, they were mother and daughter indeed. 

He was caught in a daydream of a scene years into the future, with Maomao dressed in such finery, of when he could finally lavish her with all his attentions as he pleased. 

tap

tap

The harsh clack of the Go stones brought him back from his musings and his attention onto the board. Upon seeing how he was completely dominated, he let out a deep sigh. 

“A long way to go, your highness.”

As if echoing his thoughts, an imperious voice declared his resounding defeat. If not for the twinkle in her eye he could detect, he would no doubt feel as if he was not even worth the heel of her shoe, never mind that he was the current Imperial heir. Distantly, he wonders if this was the sight that bewitched and entrapped that eccentric so long ago. 

Privately laughing at his own folly, he decides he was no better for it was the same look from that tiny wood sorrel that sealed his fate. Flowers could heal, but they could also be poisonous. He knew better than most. No matter. Regardless of the outcome, he would swallow her whole.

Truly there was a long way to go before he could turn that dream into anything close to reality. He doesn’t mind tasting defeat again and again for the chance of victory one day. 

Once more, he resets the board.

notes:

Jinshi and the Imperial brother are still switched at birth so he still doesn’t know who he really is.

The imperial brother still dies in infancy but not so soon after his birth. Since Luomen manages to stop the honey incident, the tragedy with Aduo’s head maidservant doesn’t happen later on. He doesn’t get punished nor does he get driven out.

Because he doesn’t get driven out, Lakan isn’t pressured into a military expedition to reclaim the honor of the family. He manages to redeem Feng Xian immediately.

Lakan still somehow ends up the head since his younger brother doesn’t really see himself suited to the position. He still ends up taking the headship from his father probably because Feng Xian was insulted or something and he wants to spoil her. His father and sister-in-law probably still end up leaving on their own like in the original timeline rather than being driven away. One way or another, Maomao, Rahan and Rahan-nii end up being raised together.

Maomao is still the same. Sure, she’s raised as a noble lady but she still spends half of her life at the pleasure district with Feng Xian, her sisters and penny-pinching granny. I doubt Lakan would stop them since this isn’t a conventional family after all.

Luomen probably sneaks in town undercover to still be an apothecary for those who might need it most, with Maomao accompanying him.

Since Maomao is raised as a noble, one way or another she ends up as Jinshi’s playmate. Of course, Jinshi still ends up attached. And of course Lakan puts a stop to it as soon as he can. It doesn’t have anything to do with any political maneuvering. He’s just an overprotective papa.

Maomao still ends up in the rear palace, this time as Luomen’s apprentice so of course she ends up crossing paths with Jinshi once again when they’re older.

And so the adventures of the young prince and apothecary still continue, fates still intertwined.

#jinmao #maomao x jinshi #kusuriya no hitorigoto #knh #the apothecary diaries #jinshi #maomao #fengxian #a preventable and inevitable tragedy #we already had a mother and daughter-in-law talk #I wanted to imagine a mother and son-in-law talk #I can’t even imagine the interactions with fengxian #let’s admit it both jinshi and lakan are just simps *coughs coughs* masochists for their loves who would sooner look at them like a bug #au #fic #ficlet #fanfiction #writing #kusuriya no hitorigoto spoilers #the apothecary diaries spoilers #knh spoilers

[bonefall]

My birthday was a couple days ago, and I got to see my bio dad for the first time in a while. He surprised me with the fact that I have a little half-sister, whom I've never met and who was adopted about two years back. So, I wondered if any situations in BB mimic this or have a theme of "secret siblings" or "secret family"? Sorry if this is a weird ask; this blog is honestly just such a cool little place and I love the way you approach the subject matter and take the flawed misogynistic foundation of the WC books and make them so much better (JUSTICE FOR BUMBLE!!!). I've also learned a lot about healthy and unhealthy relationships here and am really glad for your deep dives on Squilf and Bramble. Thanks, Bones!

Not weird at all! I really like exploring all the little nooks and crannies of complicated familial dynamics. I think one of the untapped strengths of WC (that the writers seem to be unaware of) is how their MASSIVE cast allows them to present all sorts of unique dynamics. So I like to pick up on it, since they don't.

For secret siblings...

I'm pretty heavily leaning towards Ambermoon being adopted by Wildfur, as a surrogacy. Something feels correct about it. Especially since Icecloud is getting retooled into a post-Battle of the True Eclipse birth, and a major supporting character in AVoS-era stories as a friend of Alderheart.

Thinking about it, I should zoom in and expand this. Maybe have Icecloud, somehow, acquire forbidden knowledge that would invalidate the Queen’s Rights and he (transman) struggles with if he's going to use it to expose his parents as an excuse to help Ambermoon.

(Especially since Ambermoon and Icecloud are basically nothing alike. Amber is independent, bold, and vain. Ice is jessie pinkman big-hearted, disorganized, and deceptively meek if you look past his "chill" demeanor)

But that's wip-- there's also Breezepelt and the Three, who are going to have an actual friendship. In particular I can't unsee Breeze and Lion having a deep one. I know I commit the Cardinal Sin of borderline himbo-ifying Lionblaze in BB, but I can't help it.

Hollyleaf ended up nabbing a bunch of his most violent roles to make her villainous descent smoother narratively, so BB!Lionblaze's story ends up being more focused on Ashfur's abuse, comic relief with cats in other Clans (something that the very serious Jay and Holly have a hard time providing), and the emotional fallout of the big reveal and Bramblestar's turn on them. Breezepelt slots neatly into that.

They were friends. Lionblaze's whole life came down around the reveal, everyone looking at him and his siblings differently, like they're suddenly something terrible. Why can't we find a silver lining, Breezepelt? Why can't we call ourselves brothers if the whole world is going to do it anyway? So much is changing, but THIS doesn't have to, we will take their weapon and turn it to armor, my ally, my friend, my brother.

(and when Breezepelt is lashing out at the three because of the Dark Forest's influence, Lionblaze is there, taking the blows and trying not to give in to the impulse to send him flying with a single paw)

There's also Harespring and Kestrelflight of WindClan and Owlclaw of ShadowClan. All of them are from a single litter between Whitewater and Mudclaw. She was going to raise the three of them alone as ShadowClan cats, but when the sire was smote, Whitewater felt they were cursed.

She was able to give the oldest two to their bio-uncle, Torear, but the weather was so bad that day and the runt was so sickly and small that it surely would have killed him. I don't think Owlclaw ever finds out why his mother always treated him with suspicion, but it did mess him up horribly.

Over in BB!DOTC, Thunder Storm is getting more half-siblings earlier. Clear Sky and Falling Feather had two daughters-- Pale Sky and Tiger Sky.

I want to explore the way that the various stages of Clear Sky's life acted on his kids. How any little curiosity Thunder Storm had about the life he might have had if he wasn't abandoned is crushed by seeing kittens who weren't. How Clear's favoritism of his oldest child set the trio against each other from the start. How this idea of "love" is toxic yet intoxicating.

It feels good to be the golden child. The power it gives you over his sycophants is satisfying. To know you, and you alone, have what someone else craves. Problem is, that's conditional, and it's cruel.

What Thunder Storm learns from his time with his biodad is that Clear Sky is not his father at all. He's taught him exactly what he DOESN'T want to be. There may be similarities-- in temperament, in physical prowess (though BB!Thunder is three-legged, he's still ripped), in taste and senses. But Thunder Storm's father is Shaded Flower.

(BB!Gray Wing died in the first book, rescuing Shaded Flower from being trampled by a horse. Xey're a patron of wisdom, Shaded Moss is taking the role of fatherhood to Thunder)

His sister is Rainswept Flower. His mom is Bright Storm. If there was a bond he could have had with Tiger Sky and Pale Sky, it dies simply and cruelly on the knife they used to cut each other out.

Pale might have wanted to mend it, she was the gentler one. But she dies in the First Battle along with her mother. Tiger Sky is too stubborn to accept any help, should Thunderstar offer it, and Thunderstar isn't in the business of begging for others to like him.

Naturally I'm lowkey obsessed with them lmao. I need to make a BB!DOTC overviewww

#I have a perspective on half siblings colored by a dynamic in my family #The generation above me has two siblings who had an awful biodad and an amazing stepdad (who did officially adopt them) #And there was nothing ''natural'' or good about how one of them was obsessed with their biodad. #It was influenced by his surroundings and did nothing but drag an incredibly toxic man back into his sister's life #Over and over #But anyway the son used to tell me ''theres no half in siblings'' #The daughter adored her halfbrother through the mother who raised them-- but was adamant that her biodad's newer kids were nothing to her #I guess I agree with the son. But not in the way he believes it #There's no half in siblings because you either Are. Or you are Not. #You have a shared experience with having that person as a parent or you don't. And that's what's unchanging. #It's not the blood; it's the sweat and tears. But anyhoo #Personal details of my life aside #Tiger Sky and Pale Sky are Clear's Dead Angel Fetus Children in-canon. I think that was Weird. #So instead I made them. Not. Dead angel fetus children.... #They're characters now lmaoo #Better bones au #I think Tiger Sky (i call her Tigs in my head a lot) is one of my favorite kit saves ever though #She's not going to be from the last litter either. I haven't picked who the mom is yet but he does have even more #At least one of those is going to make a grab at power but um. Sparrow Heart will not react Well. #BASICALLY lads I'm cooking. My revamps of the DOTC characters basically write themselves because I am very fond of them. #Clear's youngest: ''OH I JUST CANT WAIT TO BE KI-" #Sparrowstar: ''-lled.''

[thecryptidart1st]

So the moment I saw that Elizabeth was Vanessa's mom in the Alive AU I could not help but imagine them being the pettiest shits to each other. Elizabeth suggests Vanessa dyes her hair red? Vanessa dyes her hair, like mentioned in game, rainbow. Why are you so mad, Mom? There's red in there!

At least Gregory and Cassie think it's cool.

It’s very much “Full Time Girlboss, Part Time Tiger Mom with severe insecurities installed by her Father” vs “Angsty Teen who learned how to find loopholes in contracts from her Mother” level of petty

But yes, the younger Afton cousins admire Vanessa for her rebelliousness

#fnaf #five nights at freddy's #fnaf security breach #elizabeth afton #fnaf vanessa #vanessa afton #fnaf cassie #casssie afton brooks #fnaf gregory #gregory emily afton fitzgerald #prepare for a whole week of petty mother daughter shenanigans #bc i have a lot of asks about elizabeth and vanessa #vanessa’s aged down in this AU #she’s 18/19 #she is doing computer coding classes at her local community college and staying at home to spite Elizabeth #soldered wires #soldered wires au #alive au #answering asks

[artificialqueens]

🏳️‍🌈 The Miracle of Living Pt.1 (Bianca Del Rio/BenDeLaCreme ig??) - Lita 

In this world we're just beginning  To understand the miracle of living

Hello everyone! Welcoe to the long-awaited prequel to the Bitney San Junipero AU that I technically started writing five years ago (???) but recently decided to try and breathe new life into and complete. In theory this can stand alone as its own story with a few vague references to Black Mirror future tech sprinkled in, but it's really just setup to the main fic that kind of got away from me. The story has gotten a complete overhaul, so if anyone from Ye Olden Days remembers it - please do stick around and read this new version, I promise it's better. 

Massive thank you to @veronicasanders for giving me the kick up the ass required to get this story back off the ground, throwing her ideas at me, and being my Google when it comes to divorce court and the American college system. Love you mom - I hope this story is everything you'd dreamed of &lt;3

Summary: Bianca is twenty-one, flunking college, and - thanks to a night of drunk bad decision-making - she's pregnant with her gay best friend's baby. 

Los Angeles, California

 January 17th, 2022

“BEN!” 

Bianca’s furious voice rings out through the small apartment. She’s sitting on the toilet with her pajama pants and underwear around her ankles, willing the second blue line to disappear. If anything, it’s getting darker. 

“Uh…yeah?” The reply comes from the other side of the bathroom door.  

“I thought you said you wore a fucking condom!”

“I did!” Ben protests. Then, meek and cautious: “...It might have split.” 

“It might have what?”

Two and a half months ago, Bianca and Ben had gone out drinking to commiserate the ends of their respective relationships - Ben had found out about his long-term boyfriend’s secret Grindr profile and dumped him, then Bianca’s longest-lasting FWB had called it quits with her less than a week later. When they got home, drunk and dumb and miserable, they’d started making out with each other on the couch - as a joke, just for something to do. And then, since they were shitfaced and apparently didn’t know any better, one ‘joke’ led to another, and they’d woken up naked in Ben’s bed. They had laughed it off the morning after, hunched at the kitchen table over alka-seltzer and black coffee - too much liquor, too many emotions. Shit happens. 

And then tonight, Bianca had mentioned offhand that she was incredibly overdue her period, and suggested going out to buy a test half as a joke. Ben had gone along with it a little too willingly, and he’d been overly-energised and super fucking weird on the walk to the drugstore. Really, Bianca should have known something was up when he detoured via the liquor store across the street, and came back with two bottles of tequila. 

“Ben, are you fucking kidding me?” Bianca says through her teeth. 

“I was gonna tell you,” Ben replies, sounding flustered. “Is the door locked? Can I come in?”

Bianca wants to say no, but it was Ben’s curiosity about her vagina that got them here in the first place, so who cares about whether or not he sees her now? She reaches over to turn the lock. Ben shuffles into the room in his leopard-print boxers and an oversized pajama shirt, and perches on the edge of the bathtub, looking at the floor. 

Part of Bianca wants to burst into tears - another part of her wants to scream until she throws up. Not now. Not fucking now - not like this. She’s twenty-one; Bianca doesn’t even know that she wants a goddamn kid at all, forget about one fathered by her gay best friend. 

“Look, I didn’t notice until after we were done. And I didn’t want to freak you out - I figured it would probably be nothing, and then there was never a good time, and then you told me you were late and I…” 

“You’re a faggot, we were hammered, we fucked because we thought it would be funny - if you knew that there was any chance whatsoever that you’d knocked me up, you should have fucking told me!” Bianca snarls through gritted teeth. 

Ben doesn’t say anything for a moment. He doesn’t really react either. He just sits there and looks at her; composed, taking it in. 

Bianca met Ben at a theater summer camp when they were sixteen. Ben had just moved from Seattle; he was about to start junior year at the private school across town. They led fundamentally different lives - Bianca had found herself seethingly jealous of him and his cakewalk of a fucking existence when she first met him, resolved that she had no other choice but to hate him on premise. But they’d been assigned as duet partners for the end-of-summer showcase and, faced with no other choice but to get along with him, she’d discovered that they were fucking made for each other. Ben didn’t mind that Bianca was kind of a bitch; he laughed at her jokes, he seemed to understand her. All three qualities she’d never experienced from other kids her age. One juvenile performance of Waltz for Eva and Che later, and she’d found an apparent friend for life. 

And then, once high school drew to a close and Bianca was confronted head-on with the unblinking abyss of her future and its hopelessness, he’d offered her an exit route. He was freaked out by the idea of sharing a dorm with a stranger, so his dad had eventually relented after months of begging to privately rent an apartment - he just needed a roommate. She’d never expected that that offer would land her here. 

“So, you’re pregnant?” He asks cautiously. 

“Yeah - no shit, Sherlock.”

“Do you think you should take another one? To make sure or whatever?” Ben asks. Bianca presses the heel of her hand to her temple, still not breaking eye contact with the pregnancy test. 

“Nope - that looks pretty positive to me,” Bianca shows it to him, wiping the mist of stress-sweat from her brow. Ben pulls a vaguely disgusted face. There’s a moment of pause - Bianca bites her lip, struggling to make sense of the messy cocktail of emotions swirling around inside her head. 

“Are you okay?” Ben tries to take Bianca’s hand. It feels weirdly violating to have someone touching her while she’s sitting on the toilet. She swats him away. 

“I think so. I need a little time to get my head around…everything.” Bianca grits her teeth. 

All the scary new problems are dawning on her all at once, like she’s being descended on by a swarm of wasps. College. How to tell her parents. Hospital bills. College again. The apartment is too small for another person. She’ll probably be a shitty mother. Ben. Ben’s pending status as an absent father. She’s never changed a diaper before. College. Fucking college.  

She’s currently scraping through year number four of her two-year community college program. Which, as it turns out, only takes two years if you aren’t working full-time to try and keep yourself fed and housed. Ben’s impending graduation from USC - full ride for a screenwriting major, family that gave a shit about him - made that feel even more grim.  

This whole convoluted, stupid journey to something better had felt both never-ending and deeply hopeless for the last thirty-six months, and now the whole endeavor is decisively fucked. Even if she does make it to that prophesied something better - enough credits to earn her a spot in the fashion merchandising major she’d been declined acceptance to straight out of high school - there’s no way she can handle real college with a fucking screaming infant permanently attached to her. She can feel the dream crumbling in her hands.  

Bianca makes a silent resolution that she’s not putting her own kid - who still feels very much like a hypothetical even though it very much isn’t - through the same shit. You’re eighteen now, you’re not our problem any more. It really didn’t help that every screaming argument with her mom in the leadup to her high school graduation had been silently spectated by her brother - in all his uneducated, unemployed, twenty-seven year old glory - from his position fossilized into the living room couch with his PlayStation controller in his hand. We’re not paying for you to stay in this house and fuck your life up - why her specifically? 

Her desire not to be their problem had trailed her from NOLA to LA with Ben, and that was its own issue. She leaves on her terms and she’s abandoning her family, even though it was their sharp insistence that she got a job or an apartment or fucking something else that didn’t involve her living at home and taking up too much space that had pushed her in that direction in the first place. What the fuck was there for her at home anyway? Community college and shitty waitressing jobs? At least she could do the same shit against a prettier backdrop on the other side of the country. 

Bianca realizes she’s staring dementedly at the test in her hand again. She sniffs, trying to blink away tears she hadn’t noticed forming.

“I really didn’t see being a single mom in my life plan,” she mutters - thinking out loud.

Except she had. In her bleaker moments - the ones in which she was seventeen and terrified of what would happen if she never got out of her hometown. She hadn’t had that nightmare since she and Ben had packed his car and left at the beginning of September four years ago. 

“Who says you have to be a single mom?” Ben tilts his head, reaching a hand out for her again. 

Bianca scoffs. 

“What? No- Ben, I really don’t want to date you - one night was bad enough.”

“That’s not what I’m saying. But like…if you’re gonna go through with this, I’m not just leaving you by yourself to do it. Both of us did something dumb, and now we’re here - so, both of us should have to parent the consequence.” 

There’s a quiet, sympathetic smile on Ben’s face. Bianca still wants to fucking kill him. She eyes him up, searching for any hints of deception or fake-niceness. Surprisingly, he passes the on-the-spot analysis. 

“You’re just saying that so I stop being mad at you.”

“No! Anyway, I can’t let you raise it by yourself - I love you, but the world really, really doesn’t need two of you.”

“Ha-ha, go suck a dick,” Bianca rolls her eyes. She can’t help but crack a smile. 

“If this is what happens when I try to go outside my comfort zone, then yeah, that’s what I’m sticking to.”  

****

2nd May, 2022

“That was less excruciating than I thought it would be,” Bianca arches her back as she perches on the edge of the bed, stretching out. Her hair is still elaborately styled; what little of her makeup had survived the day still on her face.

She’d abandoned her dress on the floor the second that they got to their hotel room. She’s basically naked, which Ben seems perplexingly unbothered by; married, heterosexual life seems to have changed him quicker than she thought it would. It’s a relief, finally being alone with him. She’d have preferred to actually be alone, but after a day of forced smiles and overwhelm, he was better than nothing. 

“Absolutely,” Ben nods, sitting down to untie his shoes. He’s still wearing his tux - his black curls are coiffed back from his face, and he’d almost pass for straight, were it not for his meticulously groomed eyebrows. “I mean, I could have done with maybe seventy percent less beer and sports talk from your dad - I was starting to think he was onto me.” 

“I thought everyone knew there’s no home runs in football - that’s not a gay thing, you’re just dumb.” 

The shotgun wedding hadn’t really been a part of the plan, but after Bianca’s mom had found out that she was pregnant, and then proceeded to call her non-stop for weeks in order to berate her for bringing shame on the family like it was the fucking 1800s, Ben had suggested it. Her mother’s bizarre and endlessly changing standards of behavior continue to baffle Bianca.  

The decision to go ahead with it seemed a bit weird, but ‘weird’ had become a default preset of Bianca’s existence since January. Ben had thrown himself into the organization with immediate, over-the-top passion - opening up Pinterest and starting on the moodboard five minutes after Bianca had agreed to it. It had kept him entertained and out of the way, which was nice - he’d already started reading parenting books, and was being a little overbearing about prenatal vitamins and whether or not Bianca had made her birth plan yet. 

Outside of picking out her dress, Bianca hadn’t really had to do or think about anything. Marrying a gay man had its perks. She’d had a brief reprieve from Ben’s preemptive helicopter parenting, which gave her more energy to focus on finding bigger apartments, since otherwise the kid would be sleeping in the closet, and trying to convince her job that no, four weeks definitely wasn’t enough maternity leave. 

The wedding day had been quietly excruciating - her family, her mom specifically, engaging in that grim unspoken facade of keeping up appearances. Pretending that everything was completely fine and normal, denying any knowledge of Bianca’s pregnancy when asked about it. It would be embarrassing if it wasn’t so fucking normal for her. The atmosphere had been thorny, and Bianca had spent most of the day choking back alcohol-free prosecco and waiting for it to be over. 

Ben’s family - who seemed confused but generally enthusiastic about the whole ordeal, probably only half-buying Ben’s assertion that he was actually bi and Bianca was definitely the one - seemed to like Bianca though, and that was refreshing. Some kind of normalcy in As Yet Unnamed Kid’s extended family was deeply necessary. They, and Ben himself, had been the only bearable part of the whole thing. Plus they’d fronted most of the expenses and organized the reception at their country club, which was a damn sight better than the social hall of the church that Bea’s family pretended to attend. 

“Anyway, I’ve got proof that we’ve fucked at least once, so I don’t think anyone was super suspicious,” Ben continues as Bianca flops back onto the plush bed, letting out a heavy sigh. “How is she doing?” 

“She’s fine - she let Mommy keep all of her food down today, so that’s something,” Bianca says. 

She’s kind of starting to show now; although just to the point where she looks spectacularly bloated, rather than recognisably pregnant. They didn’t actually know what gender she was yet - but Bea had a feeling. Maybe it was more of a hope, actually; if it was a boy, Ben got to pick the name, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about calling it Raphael. 

The kid had been a little bitch recently - whenever Bianca tried to complain about it, Ben would just laugh and remind her that she clearly took after her mom. After a lot of smugness about how she’d not had morning sickness at all, it hit her like a truck for some reason the moment she hit her second trimester. She’d spent the better part of the month before the wedding bent over a toilet bowl. Bianca is already pretty fucking sick of being pregnant, and she’s not even halfway done - she’s always tired, and her boobs hurt, and she misses comfortable sleep and coffee. She thought that nine months with no booze would be the hard part, but dragging herself through life without caffeine is proving to be the real kicker. 

“This is weird,” Bianca muses, staring up at the ceiling.  

“What’s weird?” Ben turns to look at her, eyes landing on and then immediately flashing away from her exposed tits.  

“Try and think about it for like, slightly longer than you wanna think about it. You’re my husband, and I’m pregnant with your kid,” she says plainly. “In what universe was that ever something either of us would have wanted a year ago?" 

“Okay, so maybe you’re kind of messy and annoying, and you talk with your mouth full like, all the time and it’s really gross, but I can think of worse people to spend the rest of my life with,” he shrugs. Bianca swats at him with a pillow. 

“Thanks a lot.” She aims for pissed, but a smile cracks its way through. “Anyway, it’s not the rest of our lives - play pretend for a few years, then split up and go and live our truths or whatever once she moves out, like we agreed,” Bianca says. Ben nods knowingly.  

That was another aspect of things that she was a little hesitant about. Ben had meant what he said about sticking around and raising the kid, but they’d always planned for something more like coparenting. They’d have the baby, and then grow the fuck up and get their own relationships and apartments and lives while splitting custody. 

So, the sham marriage thing had interfered with that master plan quite a fucking lot. The situation had divulged into a years-long commitment to lying to people - no dating, since what was gonna happen when the kid started talking and blabbed to whatever set of grandparents about Daddy’s boyfriend? They were gonna be stuck living together for the foreseeable. So, even more keeping up of fucking appearances, which Bianca can’t stand doing it. But the ring on her finger is a glaring, expensive sign that she’s already committed.  

They’d talked about it already; pretend to everyone, including the kid, that everything was entirely fine and normal until she was old enough to understand it, get a divorce in about eighteen years, and go their separate ways while continuing to be friends if they could still stand the sight of each other. Easy. 

“Thinking about it like that just makes it sound worse,” Ben leans back to lie next to her, loosening his tie. “It’s gonna be fine. One step at a time.”

“Sure,” Bianca replies, distant. 

“I mean,” Ben rolls over onto his side, lowering his eyelids into an expression that Bianca imagines is supposed to be seductive. “It is our wedding night - how about round two?”

“Ew - no, never.” Bianca cracks a smile, pushing him away. Ben laughs. 

“Thank god, I barely got through saying that without puking.” He starts unbuttoning his shirt and glancing around the expansive bridal suite - still a mess from Bea getting ready that morning. “Do you want me to take the couch?”  

Bianca thinks for a second.

“Nah - that doesn't feel fair. I’ve been averaging getting up to pee about ten times a night though, so you can look forward to that.” She looks down at her belly, putting both hands around her barely-noticeable bump. “I hope you know you’re already a gigantic pain in my ass, baby.”  

****

September 29th, 2022  

Ben had left to go and get coffee - which is probably a good thing, since Bianca was getting tired of looking at him. He’d been…way too intensely supportive, to an extent that she’d found a little smothering. But at least he’d been there. Throughout the last nine months, Bianca had been worried that he was eventually going to get sick of her shit and leave her to deal with it by herself. She’d given him no shortage of shit to get sick of. 

The epidural hasn’t quite worn off yet; Bianca has no idea what sort of state her pussy is in, and she’s not sure she wants to know. She’s sweaty and exhausted, but she feels…good. For some reason. 

Her water had broken that morning. Ben had been at work - fatherhood looming over him and in desperate need of something more secure than his old three shifts a week at TGI Fridays, he’d picked up a job doing data entry or some other boring crap in an office full of middle-aged straight women about two months ago. Apparently it had been hilarious to watch his reputation as the super fun token gay guy shatter in real time when he’d announced to his boss in front of most of his coworkers that he had to leave because his wife had just gone into labor. 

Yeah, he’d been fucking insufferable with the constant ‘you’re doing amazing’s, but he was trying his best. Bea couldn’t exactly be mad at him - he’d just put up with eight hours of her screaming bloody murder and telling everyone who came near her to go fuck themselves. And she’s pretty sure she’d been gripping his hand so tightly she came close to breaking a couple of his fingers. 

The room is quiet now. It’s bliss, compared to the chaos of the last few hours - the mad rush of doctors and nurses and blood and sweat and swearing. It’s getting dark outside, the glow of the city lights flickering through the thin curtains. There’s a plastic crib next to Bianca’s bed, with a pink label on its side. Adore Del Rio, 6lbs 3oz. 

No matter how disgusting and tiring her day has been - and it was really tiring, and really, really fucking disgusting - a sense of enormous, beautiful calm had washed over Bianca when she held her daughter for the first time. Her daughter. 

She’d never felt anything like this before, looking down at the tiny, squishy, pink bundle in her arms. She’s asleep now, wrapped in a blanket and held to Bea’s bare chest. She’s so…little, and so delicate, Bianca thinks as Adore - her fucking daughter - wriggles and murmurs, reaching up for her with one perfect, miniature hand. The delicate curls of her wispy brown hair, and the gentle rise and fall of her chest as Bianca holds her close - she can’t believe that she fucking made her. She’s so perfect, and so goddamn fucking small - and Bianca feels both blissfully zen, and absolutely ready to tear anybody who tries to take Adore away from her limb from limb. 

She’s barely been here for an hour, and Bianca loves her more than she’s ever loved anything else before. 

*****

March 18th, 2041

“Did you finish your homework last night?”

“Yes.” Adore, lacking in any semblance of enthusiasm, grunts from the kitchen table; pulling out one of her earbuds and looking at Bianca with a mix of indignation and fury.   

“Then how come I’m getting emails from the school - again - about you not turning it in?” Bianca places the last clean plate on the dishrack and turns around, leaning against the counter and drying her wet hands on the ass of her jeans. That fails to elicit any form of response from her asshole teenager, and she tries again. “Come the fuck on, Dorey- it’s like you don’t even want to graduate.”

“Maybe I don’t?” She tilts her head, shit-eating grin on her face. That was a deliberate attempt at pissing her off - Bianca has gotten pretty good in recent years at telling those apart from Adore pissing her off without meaning to, and she tries not to let it. Even if her blood is already quietly simmering. 

“Oh, you absolutely do if you wanna keep living in this house-”

“Leave her alone, Bea.” Ben laughs, sitting opposite from Adore, as he looks up from the article he’s reading on his tablet. 

He only got home from work about an hour ago - most of Bianca’s days off fall on weekdays, so she’s been at home all day, doing pretty much nothing of note until Adore got home from school. They’d had a minor screaming match about the state of Adore’s room - Bianca had threatened to withhold phone privileges and her car keys until Adore relented, threw out the fifteen water bottles she’d been accumulating on her nightstand, and hid the rest of her mess in the closet. Fuck it, good enough. 

They only seemed to either argue or ignore each other when Ben wasn’t home which was…just fucking great. It made Bianca feel totally awesome about herself. But Ben is back, order has been restored, and Bianca is cleaning up after dinner like nothing had happened. 

“Whose side are you on?” Bianca replies, faux-shocked. “Fucking traitor.” 

“Clearly mine, because I’m his favorite,” Adore smirks. You don’t know the fucking half of it, Dorey. 

Bianca isn’t saying anything, but the way that Adore is looking at her tells her that she probably still looks mad. This recurring point of tension is getting several million miles up Bianca’s ass. 

Adore’s latest thing, with her last months of high school on horizon, has been threatening not to go to college. She’d gotten her applications in by some fucking miracle, and by even further fucking miracle had been accepted for a songwriting major at some prestigious music school that Bianca couldn’t remember the name of - and was now adamant that she wasn’t going, in favour of driving around the country with the ‘band’ that her and her dumbass friends had formed last summer, playing gigs in basements and doing god-knows what else. 

Bianca feels like she knows on some level that this is all talk; of course Adore is gonna graduate and go, she’s not stupid. But she’s been in the midst of a prolonged rebellious phase since she was about thirteen. Every time they fight about it, Bianca wants to shake Adore and tell her you’re gonna fucking do this because I couldn’t, stop being fucking ungrateful - but her failed aspirations aren’t Adore’s fault. 

It just annoys her. Adore, in every possible way, has had an easier life than Bianca ever did and she struggles not to hate her for it. Her future is available to her on a silver goddamn platter, she’s looking for reasons to not take it, and for fucking what? Being cool? 

Ben, against what had seemed like all odds when they were in their twenties, had really fallen upwards from the joint error that had changed the trajectory of both of their lives. That first ‘pay the bills’ office job doing whatever-the-fuck had unlocked Ben’s secret talent for playing corporate ball, and a little less than eighteen years later he was the CFO of an LGBT charity, and making what Bianca deemed to be a fucking stupid amount of money. Enough to afford their too-nice house in a too-nice neighborhood in West LA, and Adore’s too-nice performing arts high school. 

Bianca had climbed about as far up the ladder as she’d been able to, but given that she was a college dropout with no real experience in anything else, the depressing non-failure of retail store management was about the best she could manage. It wore her down; the feeling of uselessness and guilt as she inhabited this existence that felt a million miles above her means. 

“This is insane - have you guys read about this new Cookie Heaven thing they’re trialing?” Ben looks up again, breaking the frosty silence - Bianca disinterestedly flicking through her phone, Adore disinterestedly pretending to finish her homework. “Guys?” 

Ben had been bizarrely fixated on this emergent technology for the last year or so - some shit about consciousness transfers and virtual afterlifes that Bianca didn’t understand and didn’t care to. It made her skin crawl, not that she had any idea why. Truly, the rate at which Cookies as a principle had been developed, outlawed, un-outlawed, given rights, made illegal again but only in certain situations - it felt like it dominated the news, and with every possible turn it got weirder. Their trajectory had felt like trying to find a point for something that had been invented pointlessly. Criminal justice, entertainment, smart home tech, medical advances, god knows what else - Bianca just thought they were a bit macabre. 

“Nope, don’t want to. It’s creepy.” Bianca shudders, kicking off the process of shutting him up about it before he talks about it too much and gets under her skin. “Is this like that chick who died in that AR art thing at Burning Man and got stuck in the Cloud? Because that freaked me the fuck out.”

“Why? I think it’s really nice. According to this, they’ve been successful with people who’ve been uploaded prior to death, so now they’re looking at trialing it for long-term coma patients, end-of-life care, people with Alzheimer’s - it could be really promising.”

“Absolutely not - when I die, let me rest in fucking peace.” Bianca pulls a face.  “Don't throw some gross little computer clone of me into a weird simulation and force me to live forever - it’s weird. I don’t like it." 

“Bianca, Cookies aren’t just computers-” 

“It’s messed up.”

Adore shuffles uncomfortably in her seat, pushing her earbuds in further. Bianca half-watches her, pursing her lips. 

“I think it’s sweet. It says in the article that if this trial thing works, then they’re going to look at options for letting family members visit,” Ben says a little wistfully. 

“Ah.” It takes a moment of thought, but Bianca feels like an asshole. 

“Look, I just think that if something like that had been around thirty years ago, it would have been…” he stops, not sure how to finish his sentence. Ben’s mom died when he was ten, and that tragedy has been underpinning Adore’s entire adolescence; his constant anxiety over something happening to himself or Bianca, not wanting his daughter to have to suffer through the same lifelong, unshifting grief. “Think about Adore-”

“Yeah - maybe think about me enough to not have this conversation right in fucking front of me?” Adore bolts to her feet, her hands clasped at her sides. Her eyes look moist. Bianca half-opens her mouth, trying to say something, but no words make their way out. “This is freaking me out - stop it!”

She scrubs at her eyes furiously with a balled fist, storming out of the room and letting the door swing shut behind her with a thud. 

“Dorey-” Ben calls out weakly after her. 

“What the fuck was that?” Bianca walks around the table, slumping down into the seat Adore had just been occupying. She hears Adore’s bedroom door slam from upstairs. 

“I dunno - I guess that got a little heavy? I mean, who wants to sit around and listen to their parents talking about what’s gonna happen when they die?” Ben looks uncomfortable, chewing at his bottom lip. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”  

“Yeah,” Bianca replies distantly, not really listening. 

“I do mean it, though.” Ben says, leaning across the table - looking past Bianca’s folded arms and frosty expression. “If I’d had some way to still talk to my mom - even if it wasn’t fully real, even if it was just a simulation - I’d have wanted that. And I don’t think it’s fair that we should stop Adore from having that chance.”

“What, so I have to commit to being alive forever even when I don’t want to, for her benefit? I don’t think she even likes me anymore, Ben - she wouldn’t care.” Bianca sounds more morose than she wants to, but it’s true. She loves Adore, but god knows the kid is going out of her way to make that difficult. 

“Believe me, she would.” Ben looks at her a little too seriously. “I’m just saying I think we should look into it.” 

“Look into it all you want - I’m not doing it.” 

“Seriously, Bea-” Ben is looking at her with puppy eyes and it’s making her feel nauseous. “For Adore?”

There’s loud music blasting upstairs, and Bianca is wondering if it’s Adore picking up an old habit of putting her speakers on when she’s crying, so that nobody can hear her. She wants to go and check on her, but she’s glaringly aware that any interference from her is perceived as a pending attack by Adore right now - how powerless she feels hurts. Bianca looks at the floor, picking at her cuticles. 

 “Fine.”

*****

August 4th, 2042

“So, I’m sure this isn’t gonna come as a shock to you, but your dad and I got a divorce.” 

Adore’s eyes practically pop out of her head as she spits her coffee out. More of it gets on Bianca’s face than she would have liked. 

“What?” 

“I don’t think I left much room for interpretation there, Dorey,” Bianca grimaces, wiping secondhand iced latte off of her cheek with a napkin. 

“Yeah, okay, whatever. Why the fuck did you get a divorce?” Adore looks sullen. Almost angry, actually. 

Regardless of how different they’d seemed to become as she’d grown up, every so often Bianca was hit with a very, very strong reminder that Adore was her mother’s daughter. Calm and rational, per fucking usual. 

She’d debated back and forth with Ben about who should tell her. They’d been dancing around the subject since June, when Adore had first come home for summer; practically rehearsing the conversation. Eventually they’d settled on Bianca - Ben had admitted himself that Bianca’s at times abrasive directness was the way forward. Adore didn’t hold well with people pussyfooting around her, and Ben was always a little too delicate with her feelings. He’d been the ideal Good Cop to Bianca’s bad one when Adore was little - but she was nineteen now, had moved out almost a year ago, and was as close to a real adult as she was realistically ever gonna be. She needed someone to be straight with her. And, well, out of the two of them, Bianca was probably the closest thing to straight. Even after nearly twenty years of marriage. 

The split itself had been more than amicable, since years of planning had gone into it. The only slight point of contention had been, in the process of unpicking and rewriting both of their advanced directives, Ben had been pretty insistent on her keeping the part about San June-whatever-the-fuck - that weird Cookie Heaven thing which she’d hoped would just be a passing fad when Ben brought it up last spring, but had only gained more traction and more apparent success. 

She’d tried to reason with him about Adore being a grown-up now, and how she’d made it through the last year without shuffling off this mortal coil, and so their respective deaths were probably a far-future issue that they shouldn’t be so worried about right now, but it hadn’t flown. Bianca had spent long enough in lawyers’ offices debating bullshit to have any useful argument left in her. She’d thought the divorce process would be less of a nightmare since it was agreed upon by both parties prior to the fucking wedding, but apparently she’d thought wrong.

“Because we…” Bianca sighs, facepalming. Adore has tears in her eyes. Shit, she really hadn’t been expecting this. “Because he’s gay, Adore.” 

Adore’s eyes pop again. Bianca clamps a hand over her mouth before she gets a chance to cover her in overpriced coffee again. 

“Daddy’s gay?” Adore blurts out as soon as she manages to swallow. 

“Duh?” That just tumbles out of Bianca’s mouth without any real thought. “Are you really telling me that you never suspected anything?” 

“No? I thought he was just like…I dunno, really into theater. Did you just find out? Holy shit, are you okay?” Adore reaches for Bianca’s hand a little frantically. Bianca laughs, shaking her head. 

“Nope - I’ve always known. Dorey, I…” she sighs again, realizing how ridiculous this sounds. “Listen, when a gay man and a bisexual live together, and they get really, really drunk this one time…” 

“Ohmigod, you’re bi?” 

How unobservant is this fucking kid? 

“Yeah - surprise. Now you know why we were so fucking chill about it when you cut all your hair off and started begging for a pair of Doc Martens when you were twelve,” Bianca says, chuckling. 

A confused look washes over Adore’s face. “But I…you always seemed so in love.”

“We decided we were gonna get married and pretend to be normal so that we didn’t fuck you up,” Bianca shrugs. “Which clearly worked super well.” 

Adore cracks a smile. It feels good to see her smile. 

Since Adore moved out for college - miracle of fucking miracles - the rift between them that her teenage years had created seemed to fill itself in. Bianca felt closer to her; felt the warmth of her love without hesitation or denial for the first time in years. She was like a different person. Happy - blossoming into herself. She’d started posting her music on social media, and was getting enough buzz to land gigs here and there. And she hadn’t just stopped pushing Bianca away, but had started actively reaching out for her. She called her at least once every couple of days because she missed her; messaged her constantly. Just frivolous little updates about her days, or pictures of dogs that she’d seen - silly little shit. But it felt good. 

She’d worried that it wouldn’t last. But Adore had come home for summer, and as it trailed to an end, there’d been no second coming of their years-long bitch-feud. Everything had been fucking glorious. 

“Boo, you’re mean,” Adore says playfully. 

“For the record, we were good at faking being in love because we both love you,” Bianca says, reaching out to take Adore’s hand. She’s bitten off two of her acrylics again - Bianca is a little suspicious about which two exactly, and briefly debates calling her out for it. Whatever - she’s an adult, she can do what she wants. But Bianca is taking her to get a manicure once they get done oversharing in the middle of this cafe, because it looks like shit. “That’s not gonna change. But you’re probably gonna end up with stepparents.” 

Adore looks down. She’s always done this cute little smirky thing when she’s embarrassed - eyes fixed to the floor, quietly smiling to herself. Bianca loves it. 

“Are you dating anyone right now?” 

Bianca rolls her eyes. 

“We’re not dating-dating. But yeah - her name is Katya, I met her online.”

“Is she hot?”

“None of your business - she’s too old for you anyway,” Bianca shoots Adore a warning look. “Your dad was on a date last night, too - some guy called Darius, apparently it went really well. But I’m gonna look into getting his room soundproofed.” 

“Ewwww,” Adore clamps her hands over her ears, laughing. “You’re being gross. Stop being gross.” 

“Don’t ask questions you’re not prepared to hear the answer to,” Bianca grins. “Are you good now? Or do you feel like spitting coffee all over me again? I really enjoyed it that first time.” 

“Honestly? I always wondered why none of my friends’ parents had their own bedrooms,” Adore thinks out loud. Bianca shakes her head, chuckling. 

“I love you so much, you fucking moron.”

Pride Challenge Points: 10,312

#rpdr fanfiction #the miracle of living #lita #bianca del rio #adore delano #bendelacreme #fic challenge #bianca x dela #adore & bianca #mother/daughter au #s6 #san junipero au #black mirror au #parenting au #m/f au #tv crossover #dystopia #accidental pregnancy #fluff #rpdr art

[eskawrites]

Pause.

Karen Wheeler gets Vecna’d.

She’s been a target since summer of 1985, since a shadow whispered to Billy Hargrove, shut her up, kill her, bring her to me.

And oh, what a target she is. So miserable with her perfect life. Already reaching for the bottle, grasping for any escape, however dangerous it is. Drowning in the guilt that she regrets her choices, regrets her family, regrets her children. Maybe if she didn’t, maybe if she could just be happy with her life, she could be a better mother. And maybe, if she was just a better mother, she could protect her kids from the danger that always seems to lurk in Hawkins.

So Karen starts getting headaches. She attributes it to the stress of sending Mike across the country, of figuring out what to do with Holly during spring break, of worrying about Nancy, wearing her Emerson shirt and standing with one foot out the door already.

It’s easy to forget about it in the chaos of everything happening after the championship game. And it makes sense that everyone else is too distracted to notice that something is wrong.

Meanwhile, the Hawkins gang saves Max and immediately decides to figure out who the next victim will be. They gear up with walkmans and cassettes and scribbled out lists of everyone’s favorite songs. Nancy feels herself pulled in all directions—trying to keep Max safe, putting on a brave face for the rest of the kids, coming up with plans to keep the group moving, worrying about Mike and Will and El and Jonathan half a country away, reconnecting with Steve while trying not to break his heart again, and fighting this increasingly overwhelming draw she feels toward Robin Buckley of all people. It’s too much for one person to deal with, but she’ll never admit that. What choice does she have but to keep going?

Until a police car pulls up at wherever the group is hiding out now, scaring everyone half to death. But the sheriff only asks for Nancy with a weary expression. “Your mother’s been acting strange. I don’t know what’s going on with you kids, or anyone else in this town for that matter, but your father’s no help and she seemed rattled enough we don’t really want to leave her on her own.”

Nancy presses for more information, tries to get details, but she already knows. Before the others piece it together, before Max realizes even, Nancy knows.

God. She doesn’t even know her mother’s favorite song.

They split the party, half of them going with Eddie to hide out at Steve’s house, but Nancy, Max, Robin, and Lucas head back to the Wheeler’s.

Cue trauma and shenanigans from there, like Ted really being no help at all, and Holly not knowing much but knowing that everything is wrong, and Karen barely even looking at Nancy no matter what she says or does. Robin searching the entire house for something that seems like it could be Karen’s favorite song, trying to get answers out of Ted and earning herself a place on his bad side as she does, bumping into Holly and awkwardly trying to make her feel better by asking for her help finding the right song. Max and Lucas hovering awkwardly, but Max refuses to leave because if Vecna strikes maybe she can help, and Lucas refuses to leave because it’s Max, he’s always going to be there for her. The rest of the kids staying in touch with walkies and trying desperately to get a hold of Mike back in California.

And maybe Nancy still has her vision, but this time Vecna taunts her with her mother, the final victim, standing right in front of her and she can’t do anything to help her. And Nancy has known she’s cursed, that she poisons everything she touches, since that stupid party back in 1983, but it has never been so paralyzing as it is right now.

#this post brought to you by a girl who should’ve gone to bed like 3 hours ago #just thinking thoughts #stranger things #stranger things au #and a hint of #ronance #there is a Venn diagram of ronancers and Karen wheeler stans and the target audience for this post is right smack dab in the middle #writing things #I guess idk I’m sleepy #someone gets vecna’d fic but make it mother-daughter trauma

[shrimperini]

AAAAH I LOVE UR GLADOS!! i love that you made her part welsh ( im welsh and i dont see many characters being seen as part welsh )

HEHE YAY TYSM half welsh glados came from me looking up the origins of her human au name gladys.. her welsh roots are from her mom’s side :) i like to think caroline was born there and moved to the US when she was young so she assimilated the american accent. Even after caroline’s passing gladys still keeps in touch with that side of the family in wales >_<

#portal human au #i have many thoughts about caroline and gladys mother-daughter bond #gladys loves her mom and her side of the family a lot #the father’s side? not so much 💀

[blaithnne]

is it truly possible for lauren and kaisa to put aside their differences so they can yell at anders?

Oh absolutely. I think they’d passive aggressively do father/daughter activities together just to fuck with him

#I’ll explain Lauren and Andrew dynamic properly eventually #I swear lol #but yeag #they both hate him LMAO #context btw Kaisa and Lauren never have a full mother daughter relationship like how Hilda and Kaisa grow to #in my au at least #cause Lauren is. a grown woman LMAO #but they do eventually become close and consider eachother family even if they still fight all the Tim #e #and underneath all that they have a general understanding that if push came to shove‚ yeah that’s Kaisa’s daughter #and Lauren’s other mum #but they don’t say it out loud and Lauren never calls Kaisa mum #it’s just sort of an underlying thing that they both know how much they mean to eachother and thwt their family #it just looks a little different for them #hilda #hilda the series #netflix hilda #hilda netflix #ty for the ask! #Lauren hilda #Kaisa hilda #Hilda kaisa #hilda lauren #Hilda oc #oc #my oc #q #<- taking inspo from wife and starting a queue tag

[simpin-on-noodles]

marinette’s character sheet ^^

I made her one Like three times, but I wanted to add more stuff and plus my art style’s gotten better

#darkwing duck #darkwing duck oc #dwd #dwd oc #oc character sheet #darkwing duck character sheet #She’s got that knickknack PaddyWhack drip on #Darkwing duck Negaverse #Negaverse #darkwing duck life the negaverse and everything #darkwing doubloon #darkwing duck pirate #darkwing duck pirate au #Darkwing duck clash reunion #Over the years she looses PaddyWhack’s features #Like mother like daughter #Beatrice is next if anyone cares

[gearbroth]

(TF2) (Space-au)   Admin Pauling Earth*Moon

#tf2 #miss pauling #administrator #tf2 announcer #tf2 space au #spaceau #myart #im leaving their relationship vague for a reason so up to interrpratation #but don't interpret them as mother/daughter #theyre more like #goddess and alcolyte #and boss and assistant #also i drew these back in january ive just been sitting on them orz

[alphaalnitak]

The Hazbin Family

#vaggie and charlie are not siblings! angel just loves them both like theyre his daughters in this AU #nor is niffty angels mother or husk alastors brother #but you get the idea #the addams family #hazbin hotel #radiodust

[rubys-forest]

Queenie and Mu doodles!!!

#a hat in time #ahit #a statche in time #swap au #ahit swap au #ahit queen vanessa #queen vanessa #ahit au #ahit au vanessa #ahit swap vanessa #swap vanessa #ahit the queen #the queen #mustache girl #ahit mustache girl #ahit swap mustache girl #swap mustache girl #mu #i love these two #the mother daughter duo ever #ahit au mustache girl