March Writing Challenge: 50 Stories. 1 Month.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

#50 – Complaint

Sean loved being a father.

Two of his happiest memories were finding out that he was pregnant – despite the confusion about how such a thing was possible, he adapted quickly to the reality of the situation – and holding Eleanor in his arms for the first time after his C-section.

Likewise, he had no regrets about raising a child with another man. Josh was his partner and the love of his life, while not the only person that Sean had loved, he was the one he had loved most and had loved longest. Josh was Eleanor’s Papa, as much her father as Sean himself and equally responsible for bringing her into this world. For that alone, the telepath loved him; he could think of nothing he wanted more than raising a child, a child he had waited his entire adult life to have, with the other man.

Yet, there were aspects of being a father – not a parent, but a father specifically – that Sean could do without.

The assumption that, as a cisgender man all but married to another cisgender man, he was incapable of raising children generally, and a daughter specifically. As though his daughter’s second X-chromosome and her anatomy were beyond his comprehension. As though his own inability to (and disinterest in, if it had been an option) breastfeed meant that he could never bond with her, because the thousands of hours they had spent during her first year of life alone, feeding her, setting her down to nap, holding her, talking to her, playing with her, reading to her, dressing her, changing her, bathing her, and taking her for on trips somehow didn’t count because of gender mismatch. As though the countless hours, days, weeks, months, years since then didn’t count for the same reason.

Related to that was the idea that, depending on the particular social circle, fathers were only capable of being the disciplinarian (the “wait ‘til your father gets home” threat) or the “fun parent” who undermined the actual parenting of his wife - and due to the stereotypes at play, this made no room for same-sex couples – by goofing around or suggesting ice cream for supper, the person who babysat his children once a week for a couple of hours while his wife ran errands.

The fact that so many Daddy-Daughter activities and relationship role models were terrible. As Eleanor got older, he found this more frustrating than the assumption that a neighbor did her hair, since he couldn’t possibly have done so (or, conversely, that he was capable of brushing and braiding her hair entirely because he shared a bedroom with another man). Those remarks and assumptions came fewer and farther between given how active he was in her school, how active Josh was in the Temple regarding services, holidays, and Hebrew school, and how obvious it was to anyone who saw them as a family that nobody could love her more if they tried.

Sean loathed the fact that every time they went to the store and saw a shirt in her size that mentioned a father, it invariably had some sexist remark about not letting his daughter date. Of course they wouldn’t let her date right now, but that was because she was a little girl, so many years prepubescent that dating was as far from her mind as filing taxes. Sean had no qualms about her dating as a teenager, just as he calmly accepted the fact that one day, she would be an adult and responsible for making all the decisions in her life. But the idea that he would raise his daughter to conform to the rigid binary and gendered double standard, when he would be lax with a son, frustrated him.

Worse than those were the outfits that blurred the lines between parental affection and romanticizing the Jungian Electra Complex. A couple of years ago, Sean had invited everyone in Eleanor’s daycare to her birthday party. One of the parents meant well, surely, but bought her a toddler top that read “My Daddy is My Prince Charming.”

That was one of the only times that the telepath had donated a gift without first using it. He refused to go along with those implications, the idea that a father was supposed to act as a romantic surrogate to his daughter rather than being her parent. He would never try to foster that within his child.

This was why he preferred the activities with local LGBT organizations to those set up for, presumed, fathers in opposite sex relationships. While he didn’t identify as part of any particular gay or bisexual male subgroup (apart from being a parent and a bisexual man in a relationship with a gay man), no member of the Green Mountain Bears had expressed surprise that he and Josh could raise a daughter. Nobody they met through the Tri State Gay Men’s Network obsessed over the notion of a child’s purity or believed that either he or Josh had an obligation to protect it by redirecting it towards either of them. Those roles and stereotypes didn’t matter there.

He could focus on being Eleanor’s Daddy, on being a proud father, in a relationship with another proud father, in those groups, which was all he wanted to be.

[Rory Lennox]

#16 Luck

“Happy birthday, Rory.” Her mother handed the large box she had just produced from the other room. It was bright pink with a white bow on top, Rory’s favorite colors.

The young girl, seven today, was dressed in a sparkly pink gown for her princess party, complete with dazzling glass slippers and a shiny tiara to match. The other princesses would be arriving shortly to celebrate her highness’ birthday with her.

She stared at the package, eyes glittering with excitement. Christmas had just passed, leaving a slew of boxes, dancing attire, and new toys littering Rory’s room. She hadn’t expected something so...big for her birthday.

Her mother set the box gently in front of her daughter. Rory lifted her small hands to open the lid, but pulled back suddenly, startled as the package jostled on its own, a small squeak came from inside. Her eyes snapped up to meet her parents’, both staring down at her adoringly with knowing grins.

“Go ahead, sweetheart.” Her father encouraged.

So she tried again, lifting the top off the box. A tiny white ball of fluff popped up as soon as the lid came off, letting out another baby squeak of bark.

Rory let out her own high pitched squeal, tears of excitement pooling in her eyes as she lifted the puppy out of its box. “She’s so little.” Rory cried, cradling the small dog against her chest.

Her mother and father glanced at each other, their own excited smiles mirroring Rory’s. She’d been asking for a dog for the better part of the year. Her parents had told her that Santa might be bringing her one for Christmas, but the holidays were busy this year. One thing led to another, and they had just forgotten about the whole idea until it was too late.

Rory had been disappointed, after she opened up all her presents addressed from Santa, it was clear on her face. But her disappointment was soon replaced with Christmas cheer, temporarily forgetting the promise of a puppy once the rest of her presents had been ripped open.

Still, her parents felt horrible. They had all but promised Rory that she’d be brought one. Thankfully, Rory’s birthday had given them a second chance, and they went out the next day to pick one up while she was at dance class. They’d kept the puppy at Trisha’s sister’s house for the next three days. Until today.

It was worth the wait...at least for them. Rory’s eyes were wide with awe as the little dog nuzzled into her lap, letting out a whiny little yawn before her eyes drifted shut.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!” Rory squealed, jostling the poor pup awake as she leapt to her feet. She hugged her mother first, and then her father, squishing the dog in between them. “She’s so perfect! I just love her so much!” She spun around, and nuzzled the dog’s nose. She couldn’t wait to show all of her friends.

They’d all be so jealous, and fawn over her and her new puppy, begging Rory to let them have a turn to hold her. And she would let them because after they all went home she would get to hold her and snuggle with her all she wanted thanks to her parents.

She was the luckiest little princess in the world.

[Cera Lamprey]

#4 Clip

"D'you like it?" Sam had asked, green eyes shining full of hopeful expectation.

Cera lifted the item out of the box, turning it over in her hands. It was large, almost half a foot tall, two artificial orange slices with a smattering of silk orange blossoms along their top.

"I love it!" Cera squealed, thrilled that her boyfriend had noticed her penchant for fruit accessories. Or perhaps he had asked someone; maybe Graham had mentioned it to Sam. That was the sort of thing he would do, if he knew that Sam was looking to buy her a gift.

"Help me put it in?" She batted long lashes at him and lifted up her hair.

Sam was at her side so fast that she almost thought perhaps he had super speed rather than pyrokinesis. No surprise, there; he always leaped at the chance to play with her hair. At times she wondered if he would like her as much if she stopped dying her hair, but such thoughts were fleeting. He might find her hair enticing, but he seemed to genuinely enjoy her presence.

"There! Whaddaya think?" He asked, gently grabbing her elbow and leading her towards the bathroom. She pushed open the door and gasped in delight at the rockabilly updo he had given her, the hairclip positioned saucily to one side.

"I feel like a pinup girl!" She laughed, delicately patting the hair clip before striking a pose. Her make up wasn't bold enough, and her clothing wasn't vintage enough, to truly be a pinup. Perhaps she could find some cute retro A-line dresses, possibly in polka-dots.

"You could be a pinup babe," Sam assured her, and she giggled with gratitude. His compliments veered into the realm of flattery at times, but they always felt so sincere.

"Thank you," She looped her arms around his neck and pressed a kiss to his cheek. "I love it."

[Tsukiko Aoki]

#11 crime

Sweat poured down her back, drenching the fabric of her yellow blouse. Her hands shook, her voice unsteady.

She had practiced and practiced with Rome and the other bandits back at camp, and while she had improved from barely hitting a wooden target to hitting squirrels running through the treetops, this was different.

She didn't want to shoot a person, even in self-defense. She had seen what bullets did to people, had seen what they did to Rome's friends -- her friends, now. She didn't want to do that to another human being.

But without the threat they couldn't survive.

Without a credible threat they couldn't survive. Did she sound credible? She knew she sounded desperate, which perhaps amounted to the same thing.

Were those in this train car to blame for her desperation? She had no way of knowing that. Some among them no doubt fully supported the anti-miscegenation laws that brought her to this point. But some of them probably didn't, and those innocents could just as easily be her victims as those who supported anti-Asian policies.

This awareness brought a wave of nausea over her, but she remained steady on her feet. Any hint of weakness would be her undoing, and Rome's, too.

She had gone too far to back out now; if she teetered her world would crumble, and there would be no mercy. No judge would accept that the very law he upheld had driven her to this.

Would her actions be another notch in the arguments of those who wished to limit immigration? It probably would be. A Japanese washerwoman turned to a life of railway robbery, certainly not the sort of upstanding people one would want to let into the country.

A country that wouldn't even allow her to wed.

"Nobody move or I shoot."

[Dr. Sean Neville]

#22 – Nature

“Liebling, this is not what I had in mind when you invited me to spend the night.” Joshua eyed the tent critically.

“I know, but this is how I’m spending the night. You can go back to the coven, if you want; I’m fine on my own.”

Nobody could accuse Sean Neville of an inability to take care of himself.

However, he hadn’t invited his lover to come with him tonight because he needed someone to watch over him. He had invited him so they could spend some time together, far away from other vampires, noise and light pollution, and the seven million people who flitted in and out of the Hunter’s telepathic range depending on where his duties took him during the day or night.

“No, I’ll stay,” the Vampire Lord assured his lover, although he continued to study the tent and the area around it. The woods.

Joshua lived in the middle of New York City specifically so that he needn’t deal with the woods or nature. Having lived through a time that involved living in far greater harmony with, and fear of, nature than most currently living humans could imagine, he believed that he had had his fill.

However, for better or for worse, the Hunter had him wrapped around his finger in many ways. They fought, yes, but with the past waifs that he had taken up with, he could easily have put his foot down. Instead, Sean had packed up his hideous truck with a cooler, a tent, and assorted other camping gear; to accommodate the vampire, the Hunter had also packed a thermos of blood, and Joshua had not asked from where Sean had acquired it. He had also put a coffin in the bed of his truck.

The vampire had a Ziploc bag of his coffin dirt in his breast pocket. If necessary, he could go to sleep before dawn, and he trusted his lover to bring him back to the coven house in one piece.

He had never trusted a lover that way before; then again, none of his past lovers had ever been quite so willful or willing to set clear boundaries that caused him to reexamine his own.

“Good. I’m going to set the fire because I’m starving and I want s’mores.”

“S’mores? That seems a mite immature, Liebling.”

The Hunter shot him a look but ignored him, instead busying himself with tossing kindling into the ring of stones. “I never get to do anything fun, Joshua; don’t ride me about this.”

“No fun? Liebling, I’m hurt.”

Sean didn’t look at him a second time, instead, he took out the pack of matches he kept on his belt and struck one, before tossing it into the kindling. A flame shot up, and he nodded to himself with approval but said nothing. Turning away from the vampire he reached for a stick and used it to stab a marshmallow before he shoved it into the flames.

It was only after his marshmallow had caught fire so that the outside would turn black and the inside would liquefy that Sean turned back towards the vampire. “We don’t go out on dates.”

“If you want me to take you out, you need only ask,” the Vampire Lord assured him. “We could go to the theater, and I know of a steakhouse where several vampires take their human lovers.” It was expensive, but Joshua didn’t mention that. He knew that Sean was not impressed by his resources, and so he had long since stopped mentioning prices as status.

“That’s not what I mean.” The Hunter sighed and pulled his marshmallow from the fire. He blew on it to put out the tiny flames that danced along the surface. “Pass me the graham crackers and the chocolate bar.”

Joshua did, pulling both from the top of the snack bag that Sean had packed, before handing them over to the Hunter. “Tell me what you mean.” He spoke more gently, a request rather than a demand.

Sean took the food, wiping his marshmallow off onto one of the graham crackers where it stuck to the surface. He unwrapped the chocolate bar, broke it in half, and placed it atop the marshmallow, before rounding out the sandwich with the other graham cracker. “I don’t get many indulgences,” he reminded the vampire.

Joshua knew that was true. His lover didn’t even drink more than wine coolers, and, even then, only one per night. He took no drugs, denying himself anything that might have drowsiness as a potential side effect. He rarely interacted with other mortals socially, rather than when trading favors; his closest friends, he saw primarily when hunting together. The vampire had only ever seen him eat at diners and delis, although he knew that his lover ate a fair amount of takeout.

Nobody could claim that Hunting was glamorous. Sean had never claimed that, always speaking of his duties.

The vampire reached out to pat his lover on the shoulder. “Indulge all you want, Liebling; I won’t make any more comments.”

The Hunter could eat his fill, and then, if Joshua had his way, they could make love. As long as Sean remembered to invite him into the tent.

[Chuck Miller]

#17 rescue

Donna Miller gave her son a strained smile.

"Chuck?" She echoed the name he had requested, expression one of disbelief. "But Iwenjiora is such a lovely name!"

Her fourteen year old son nodded tersely. He had been asking his schoolmates to refer to him as Chuck since he had begun attending Hammel at age eleven, but he had only now worked up the nerve to tell his parents.

He was, however, beginning to feel that perhaps this hadn't been such a good idea.

"You don't really want to disconnect from your roots, do you?" Steven Miller's eyebrows rose so high that, had he had a hairline, they surely would have surpassed it.

Chuck squirmed uncomfortably under their gaze. "But nobody can pronounce Iwenjiora!"

He'd had such difficulty even before moving to Pilot Ridge, but he'd never felt comfortable asking classmates to call him anything different. After all, they would have to interact with his parents, and he hadn't wanted to explain how foreign and different his name made him feel.

His youngest sister didn't understand; she loved her name, and was proud to share her heritage. But Chuck didn't feel proud, only different.

He didn't like feeling different.

He didn't like that everyone back home knew that he was adopted, and that so many of them felt sorry for him, as if his birthplace was a tragedy. No, the fact that he had been orphaned was a tragedy, and the fact that nobody in Nigeria had wanted him. But simply being from Nigeria -- or Africa, as most Americans he encountered considered all of the continent to be one uncivilized mass -- was the tragedy.

He didn't like people to think his parents had rescued him from the horrible fate of a life in Nigeria, as if this was something he needed to escape.

His parents, too, felt this way, he knew. That they had rescued him and his siblings, and that the children should therefore feel intense gratitude. And in a way he did; he was grateful for the life he had, was aware that his life could have turned out differently.

And yet...

He didn't want to be simply the rescued. Nobody could pronounce his name, and oh, he wished that they could. He wished that he didn't have to correct people over and over, and that the simple fact of his name meant people knew that he was adopted, that he had been rescued.

"But you should be proud of your name!" Steven admonished, despite the fact that he wasn't the one who had to live with the ridicule and the pressure.

Chuck wanted to be proud of his name, but he didn't want to constantly defend it, either.

"Please, just call me Chuck."

[Dr. Sean Neville]

#47 - Serendipity

True Love™.

Sean didn’t believe in True Love™.

Even as a child, he hadn’t believed in the concept of true love, even when he had believed in an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, all-loving God. Part of that came from the fact that his parents didn’t believe in it, and that was what had been modeled at home; part of it had been that his religious underpinnings revolved around choice, such that he didn’t learn to believe in destiny beyond the afterlife based on deeds and faith.

Decades and an entire lifetime of experience later, and as an atheist now, the psychiatrist’s worldview held no room for the concept of True Love™.

Then again, his worldview also hadn’t allowed for the notion of curses, and, yet, Ryan’s dog had turned into a human being in his lap. Had turned into the missing person whose family had posted signs all over town seeking information about his whereabouts. That was more than mere coincidence and went far beyond the scope of known meta-human powers. It had happened, and so he accepted that it had happened, rather than denying the occurrence to avoid the discomfort of having his worldview upended.

Like it or not, apparently, curses existed. More than that, but the person who had cursed Josh had claimed that he would be able to recognize his True Love™ and that, by virtue of identifying him and gaining some sort of relationship with him (the telepath remained hazy on those details), he had broken the curse.

The curse was real.

Logic dictated that the rest of it was real as well.

Sean didn’t know what to think or feel about that. He wanted to reject the notion, but he couldn’t live in denial; he prided himself on his rationality and open-mindedness too much to stick his head in the sand the way his sister would in similar circumstances.

The thought of Ryan’s dog turning into a fully-grown, very naked man in Kathleen’s lap was enough to earn a smile. Not that it would make sense for Kathleen to be Josh’s true love, considering that he was gay, and she was both a woman and married. Not that he would wish to inflict his sister on the other man in the first place, but it made for an amusing mental image. An amusing distraction from heavy, philosophical implications.

Josh was baseline, which didn’t bode well for the notion of being his True Love™. After all, Sean’s past relationships with baseline humans, at least as far as romantic relationships were concerned (and also with his sister, although that was a confluence of factors) were abysmal. They didn’t instill confidence that a relationship with someone whom he only met - and, as a result, was only interested in him because of being told they were destined to be together – would work out. From what the other man had mentioned, he didn’t know anything about telepaths, had never met a telepath before. How could he possibly come to understand the merge instinct without that experience or knowledge? Could he become used to it where every past partner had found themselves unable to cope? Sean had his doubts, and it had nothing to do with Josh as a person.

He didn’t want the other man to suffer through something he found unpleasant, or, worse, intolerable simply because he believed that he couldn’t do better than a relationship with the telepath. He didn’t want anyone to feel stuck with him.

If True Love™ existed, he didn’t think he could live with himself if his being a telepath managed to tear apart that relationship as well.

At the same time, he liked Josh.

They had begun spending time together – going out to eat, talking on the phone, meeting for walks during their lunch breaks – and they found they had a lot in common. The attorney was a thoughtful, intelligent, engaging man with a passion for justice, similar political opinions, and a good sense of humor. Despite the fact that he looked to be only about forty, he was three years younger than Sean, well within the telepath’s dating age range criteria. Sean didn’t have a physical type, but he thought the other man dressed well (when he wasn’t wearing a dog collar, since that wasn’t Sean’s cup of tea) and had a nice face. And, alone with his own thoughts, since he had seen the attorney in a state of undress, he wasn’t disappointed in that department either.

Of course, none of that meant that they were compatible. Not necessarily.

He had a lot to consider, and there was still so much he didn’t know about the other man. Why was Josh single? How did he describe himself in relationships? What did he even want from a relationship?

They would need to talk about it.

Fortunately, they planned to have a picnic this weekend; Sean could broach the subject then.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

#40 – Swing

Eleanor’s school was hosting a Daddy-Daughter Dance.

She was both excited and disappointed that it was a Daddy-Daughter dance, because she thought it meant that Papa wasn’t allowed to attend.

Sean spoke to her teacher the next day, under the auspices of checking to make sure that her Papa could attend as well, although, as with most areas of life, the telepath could answer that question for her without consulting with the teacher. Instead, he wanted to make sure that this dance wouldn’t have any of the imagery or messages that he found offensive. The teacher assured him that, aside from the color scheme that would tend towards pink and purple (and Josh would have to cope with that), everything was completely innocent. There would be a mother and son dance the week after, and anyone who didn’t have a parent of one gender or the other was allowed to invite a different family member.

Satisfied with that explanation, Sean told Eleanor that the poster said “Daddy” to mean “father,” and so, of course, her Papa was invited as well.

She nearly squealed with delight; she was so happy that she had two fathers to take with her to the dance, rather than one.

The day of the dance, Sean and Josh both took the afternoon off from work, so that they would get there in plenty of time. One of Josh’s clients, who had a child at the same school, suggested he buy a corsage for her, which he didn’t. He didn’t agree with that, and he knew that Sean so vehemently disagreed that even the thought of it was enough to unleash a wave of anxiety.

He met them at home; Sean had picked Eleanor up after school and had taken her back to the house to feed her a snack, to give her a bath, and then to dress her and brush her hair. While the telepath had suggested that she wear the dress she wore to Temple on Saturdays, she had wanted something pink, since that was her favorite color (much to Josh’s chagrin). In the end, she settled on the pink dress with the red, white, and pink flowers along the top and straps that her Aunt Talia had bought her for her birthday. Then Sean braided her hair for her, using red bows that matched the roses on her dress.

Josh wore a navy blue suit, while Sean opted for black, but with a blue tie, since he knew how much his partner enjoyed when he wore a color that complemented his eyes. The telepath had briefly considered wearing his kilt, but he decided that was overkill for this dance. Josh would enjoy it, of course, but the dance was for their daughter, not for the attorney.

He could always make it up to his partner another time.

Eleanor talked the entire drive to the school, asking what type of music they would play and what the room would look like. After his conversation with her teacher, Sean had a fair idea, and so he vaguely described the decorations, couching them as guesses; he didn’t want to ruin the experience for her by taking away the surprise. For his own part, Josh asked her what type of food she wanted them to serve. Because she was her Daddy’s daughter, half her ideas consisted of baked goods and candy.

They followed the signs that led from the front of the school to the gym. Eleanor’s eyes went wide, since this was her first real school dance, and she was young enough to be impressed by just about anything. Pink, red, purple, and blue balloons adorned the floor and the ceiling. Crepe paper and streamers in similar colors covered the walls. One of the teachers that Sean had only seen before in passing manned the music corner, acting as the DJ, and, thankfully, playing child-friendly music.

Abba’s Take a Chance On Me rant out from the speakers, which was a curious choice given the fact that it was the late 2010s, but the beat was peppy and upbeat. Both Sean and Josh had survived the Swedish Invasion, as well as the popularity of Mama Mia on Broadway.

Along the opposite wall, the school had set up a snack table filled with a big punch bowl, a chocolate fountain, and plenty of sweets like cookies and cake pops. There was also pizza cut into child-size squares and a giant fruit salad. A bunch of goodie bags were lined up at the edge, each labeled with a particular child’s name; Sean would make sure Eleanor took hers before they left.

“Let’s dance!” Eleanor said, grabbing her Daddy’s hand with one of hers and her Papa’s with the other.

Sean wasn’t much of a dancer, in that he didn’t like dancing. He could dance well, and, in fact, he had already resigned himself to teaching Eleanor to waltz if she ever asked to learn, although, unlike with his own parents, he wouldn’t force her to learn any of those skills. He would prefer that she dance with Josh alone.

However, her bright blue eyes held such eagerness that he couldn’t bring himself to suggest that, at least not for the first dance. So he nodded in acquiescence, and both he and Josh walked with her out onto the dance floor.

Immediately, she began to twirl around the way small children do, with utter disregard for formal dancing. Josh did one of the club dances he used to do, before they’d had a child. Sean moved his hips and arms in time with the music.

When the song ended, the teacher put on You Really Got a Hold On Me which was too slow to allow that type of dancing. Sean found it the perfect time to bow out, and so he leaned over and suggested, “Why don’t you dance with your Papa for this one?”

Eleanor didn’t object. Instead, she scrambled over to Josh and climbed atop his feet so she was slightly taller. He grabbed her hands to hold her in place, and then he moved back and forth slowly in time with the music. Both of them had wide smiles on their faces.

So did Sean, while he watched. He only wanted them to have a good time, and, perhaps, to sample the food table.

[Joshua Bernstein]

#39. Point of View

Talia had long known (or rather, strongly suspected) that her older brother was involved with his best friend. Yes, Sean had occasionally dated women and once even become engaged to one -- unsurprisingly to Talia, the engagement had fallen through -- but it was evident to her that Sean and Josh were an item. It was so evident, in fact, that she had been known as a college student to refer to Josh as her "gay brother" when talking to her friends.

But Josh had never come out to her or, to her knowledge, to anyone else in the family.

She hadn't expected the nature of his coming out.

"Pregnant?" She had asked incredulously over the phone. This was scientifically impossible, but Josh was utterly sincere in his insistence that he had impregnated his best friend. "Oh my god, Josh, didn't dad ever tell you about condoms? I thought he gave you and Matt both The Talk."

Josh had sputtered indignantly. "We usually use condoms!"

Which was, admittedly, more than she actually wanted to know about her brother's love life.

"So when's the due date?"

---

Matt had only realized that his younger brother was gay when he noticed that Josh's breakup with his college girlfriend "Shana" (whom had never been mentioned previously) had coincided with moving out of the apartment he shared with his best friend.

That was...suspicious, to say the least.

Although somehow Josh and Sean had remained friends, such that Sean still attended all of the Bernstein milestones. Matt had never known quite what to make of that, although his younger sister had said they were obviously still a couple.

But he, too, had never expected pregnancy news to be how Josh chose to tell him.

"Only my brother would get another man pregnant," He sighed over the phone.

He could feel Josh glaring at him through the phone. "What's that supposed to mean?!"

"It means you're weird," Matt had informed him. "So have you told mom yet?"

"Nnnnnnoooo...."

---

Charlotte Bernstein had been utterly taken aback when her son came out to her. She'd spent five decades wondering when he was going to find a nice Jewish girl to settle down with, never dreaming that he and his friend ("that nice young Sean fellow") were more than close friends.

She had very vocally disapproved of The Gays and their strange customs, but Josh was her favorite, and besides....

"Oh, boopkie! I knew you'd give me a grandbaby one day!" She cooed. "Now, I do get to help with the baby shower, don't I...?"

[Dr. Sean Neville]

#24 – Boat

Sean had fantasized about this before.

Most of his students, and several of his coworkers, likely doubted that he was capable of fantasy at all, since they viewed him as eminently practical, and, in the case of some of his students, utterly humorless. More was the pity for them, because the telepathy granted Sean a particularly vivid imagination.

When single, he fantasized about having a long-term relationship and a family. With Josh, he fantasized about what he and his partner could do together after work, or when on vacation; he fantasized about making the other man happy, because so much of his mental and emotional energy was bound up with the attorney. Such was his merge instinct.

Still, because he was a planner, this led to fantasies about his future, even if he ultimately dismissed them as impossible for whatever practical reasons outweighed his idle desires.

Despite his pragmatism, this fantasy reoccurred with increasing frequency as he grew older.

Were he honest with himself, he could admit that this went beyond idle fantasy. He wanted this.

He wanted this more than he wanted many other things.

True, he wanted it less than he had wanted to have children, but, at his age, he had come to terms with the fact that he would never have children. His and Josh’s experiments in fostering had not worked out the way they had planned, even if he remained happy that Bailey had blood relatives willing to adopt her. In the end, her needs had to come first; such was parenting.

He also wanted this less than he had yearned for Josh during the period between The Break Up and their reconciliation, but that was a meaningless metric. Josh was the other half of his soul, which made it impossible for him to yearn for anything more than he desired a relationship with his partner. More importantly, they had reconciled, and he had Josh in his life again, by his side, sharing a home together, sharing a life together.

Beyond those desires, he wanted this more than he could remember wanting anything in recent memory.

He was sure part of that came from the ability to share this with his partner. He wanted to share this with Josh, particularly as they slid from middle age into their golden years.

The fact that they were in their golden years certainly added an urgency to the fantasy that hadn’t existed when he had first begun mulling this over years – decades – ago.

Much like with fostering and adoption, he had a large file of paperwork in his study that he had collected for some time now.

The more he researched, the more feasible it became. It would be expensive, of course, but he had an excellent pension from all of his years of service. Josh had been paying into an IRA. They both would earn peak Social Security benefits, and each man had investments...

It was more feasible than fantasy after all.

Over supper, Sean decided to share this with his partner. Looking across the table into Josh’s eyes, he asked, “How would you feel about a houseboat?”

[Sunar Chugani]

#10 Vault 

Sunar watched the television with wide eyes. Gymnasts did somersaults and cartwheels and handsprings across the screen, dazzling the audience with their acrobatics.



They certainly dazzled the preschooler. He ran around the living room, trying to flip himself over the sofa, knocking pillows to the floor in the process.



"Sunar!" His mother scolded him, picking him up and placing him back on the solid ground. "Don't do that! You'll crack open your head."



But as soon as her back was turned he was trying to do handstands.



His parents enrolled him in gymnastics not long after, worried that if he didn't have training he would injure himself. Of course, there was always a risk that he would injure himself during class, but that paled in comparison with the dangers of a child trying to teach himself how to do cartwheels. The thought of trying to keep their four year old still on the couch with a neck brace or a broken bone was enough to send a chill down the spines of both Neela and Vijay.



Gymnastics turned out to be a brilliant choice; Sunar had always had seemingly boundless energy, and expending it on gymnastics meant that occasionally in the evenings he was tired enough to sit still, watching cartoons rather than tearing about the house.



That was a relief to his parents; running after him could be so exhausting.



But during gymnastics classes themselves he was full of enthusiastic energy, bouncing in ball pits, jumping on trampolines, and springing over the vault.The first time he performed the vault he had been so proud that he had immediately run off the gymnastics floor to his parents to ask if they had seen, and his teacher had to run after him to escort him back.



His parents smiled and clapped, and assured him they had seen, and then they shooed him back to class.



"Let's see you vault again."

[Joshua Bernstein]

#21 Ancient

He was afraid of death. Or, rather, he was afraid of his own death. Had he been afraid of death in a more general sense would he have ever sought out this house? The house had seen more than its share of death, because that was the exchange the inhabitants made; the death of others for their own immortality.

He was too young to die; he had only just turned thirty. But with every blood stained cough he could feel death coming closer. The doctors could do nothing for him, but an acquaintance had mentioned this house -- shown the scars on his neck from where he had given blood to a lover -- and Joshua had pushed aside his misgivings and come.

He coughed fitfully as he stood outside the door, waiting for an answer. His acquaintance, the one who had pointed him here, held his elbow and occasionally glanced towards him in consternation.

When the door opened his acquaintance nearly shoved him inside. "Here. He wants to become one of you."

The man who had opened the door caught Joshua before he could fall to the floor, looking him over critically. After a moment of silence he said, "Very well."

His accent was difficult to place; he wasn't Prussian, that much was plain. Even had he not spoken, his dark skin and oil-slicked dark curls suggested a more Mediterranean heritage.

"I'm from Sumeria," The other man told him, seeming to guess what Joshua was thinking. "And yes, I can read your mind."

Joshua coughed again, spitting up blood into the carpet.

"Come with me," The Sumerian grabbed him by the hand and then turned to the other mortal. "You, leave. He'll wake up ravenously hungry, and I like you too much to see you become someone else's meal."

His acquaintance inclined his head and scurried out of the way.

"Th-thank you," Joshua breathed, and the Sumerian patted him on the arm.

"You're fortunate that you're pretty or I would prefer to simply eat you."

Joshua wasn't sure how he felt about that, but the pain in his lungs kept him from dwelling too long on what that might mean. Instead he was merely grateful that he would be allowed another life.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

#33 – Clutter

The anti-meta backlash following the Holiday Bash had spread like wildfire after news of the events went viral. This was unsurprising, given that this election cycle featured a bigots openly proclaiming the human rights violations they would enact in order to secure the nomination of a major political party.

Once videos of the Holiday Bash hit the Internet and news coverage, and PUSE members turned towards state-wide and national ambitions, rather than focusing on local protests, it had been easy enough to recruit people to the side of “fairness” when faced with the notion of people with superpowers.

As though meta-humans had somehow been a secret before that.

As though meta-humans hadn’t been lobbying for decades for fairness under the law.

As though meta-humans hadn’t already been integrated into the bureaucracy of the court system or the military; as though meta-human status wasn’t already a consideration for refugee status when considering applicants from China, Russia, and parts of Africa.

Suddenly, Hammel had become a political target, with members of Congress railing against the so-called secret training academy hiding in plain sight.

Members of the appropriations committee who funded Hammel every year and knew for a fact that it wasn’t a training Academy. Students were forced to attend so that they could control their powers enough to live amongst baseline humans upon graduation; it was hardly the makings of a dystopian war culture.

Until politicians and fearful citizens chose to paint it as one.

Unsurprisingly, Congress, with wide popular support, voted to strip Hammel of its funding and authority and to shut down the school effective immediately. This created problems with the nations of origins for the International students, and for the sovereign nations of the indigenous people with whom the government had signed individual treaties authorizing Hammel to recruit, because there existed no easy alternatives, either due to distance, language barrier, or other specific reasons that had necessitated attending Hammel instead of one of the other schools in the first place. International students were sent back to their nation of origins, any students enrolled in sovereign nations were sent back to their homes, and all of the U.S. children were returned to their families at once, pending registration.

Of course the government had passed a law mandating registration of meta-humans, complete with all identifying information and a complete breakdown of their powers; after all, they had toyed with the idea of registering citizens based on their religious practices. By comparison, this was an easy sell to the general public, and meta-humans (and their friends and family) made up such a small portion of the population that they had no political power whatsoever.

Hammel’s administration was ordered to turn over their recruitment files, as their last official duty before being fired.

The administration responded by shredding everything, and the school technopaths crashed all of the digital backup data.

Then the arrests began. Not of every meta-human in the country, but of Hammel staff members for obstructing government administration. Federal crimes, facing heavy prison terms.

So they scattered, with many of the former faculty going underground.

Sean and Josh included. The telepath had never been happier that he had talked Josh into opening joint bank accounts, since the other man could walk into a bank and withdraw all of their funds, as well as clean out the valuables from their safe deposit box.

Then they loaded everything they could take with them, Mopsy included, into the van and drove away.

They had discussed this possibility, since all of the Hammel faculty were on America’s Most Wanted List, such that their passports had been deactivated and they were effectively trapped within the U.S. In a society of increasing surveillance, the likelihood of them surviving beyond notice together was unlikely. Sean had proposed a backup plan, only if it became necessary, which Josh had fought at first.

However, as days became weeks of them living on the lam, he relented. The older man assured him that he took no pleasure in it, and that it was only as a last resort.

A couple of months into their now transient lifestyle, they had pulled into a rest stop (at night, it was always at night), and, although Josh was the only one to go inside to buy supplies, someone spotted Sean in the restroom, and called the police.

I’ll come back for you, Sean had promised Josh, as he slipped away, using his powers to obfuscate the people around him.

The attorney had been taken into custody, although treated well, because he had information and the xenophobia and metaphobia that had been drummed up was careful to allow decent treatment of those who aided and abetted the Hammel faculty, because the official story was that most of the baseline humans were being forced against their will by the scary powers.

“Where did he go?”

“I’m invoking my Fifth Amendment right to remain silent, and I’m also invoking my Sixth Amendment right to an attorney.”

“You aren’t in trouble, Mister Bernstein,” the agent had told him, “And so those rights don’t apply. However, if you’re unwilling to cooperate, we do have methods of verification.”

Of course the psychics working for the Department of Justice were exempt from the laws governing meta-human powers. Idly, Josh wondered how they could stand working for a government that had turned on the rest of their own people, but he didn’t ask that.

“I have nothing to hide,” he said, which was true enough, certainly truer than if he claimed that he wasn’t afraid. In truth, he was terrified, because he knew something they didn’t. Something that became apparent when the DOJ telepath entered the room and touched his face. The attorney tensed in anticipation.

As the telepath touched his mind, her face turned form questioning to pained and angry. Her breaths came more quickly, and sweat poured down her face; eventually, her partner had to pull her back.

“What’s wrong?” He half-asked/half-demanded.

“His mind is on fire; I can’t see anything.”

“Is he meta?” All of their intelligence had said that one Sean Neville was involved with Joshua Bernstein, Esquire, an unremarkably baseline human attorney. He had certainly disappeared from his life and job one day along with the former psychiatrist. But perhaps they had been wrong.

“No,” the telepath said around harsh gulps of air. “He’s a trap.”

Josh stared straight ahead, doing his best to ignore the two agents conversing in front of him.

Sean, if you can hear me, come soon, he begged, projecting with all his might.

He hoped the other man was close enough to hear him.

Then the telepathic agent cried out in pain again, despite the severed connection. That was Sean, he knew, or, rather, what Sean had left behind to self-replicate.

His partner had made him interrogation-proof, but he didn't know how long that would last, just as he didn't know the current mandatory sentencing guidelines for erasing a federal agent's mind, but he knew he needed to get out of here soon.

[Chuck Miller]

#45 suitcase

Chuck was a heavy sleeper; he had been known to sleep even through fire alarms. Genevieve was counting on this tonight, because she was ready to leave, and she didn't want to see him cry.

Not now, not when she had finally made up her mind.

She had loved him, once upon a time. He had been so different from the types of guys she normally dated, but he had seemed so adorable, and he'd been so romantic. But now...

She hated this town. She hated even more that Chuck was so clearly enamored of it, despite the fact that he complained that being around too many meta-humans gave him migraines. Why he wanted to live in some dumpy rural town where he was doomed to be surrounded by other meta-humans made no sense to her.

He seemed perfectly content to stay at home, doing nothing. Well, not nothing, but boring things, like reading books of poetry. Sometimes he asked her opinion on a line he was reading, or tried to write a verse himself.

His interest in poetry had seemed so romantic when they'd first begun dating, but truthfully she didn't understand poetry or like it very much.

And, another point of contention for her, Vermont was so white. Chuck had agreed with her there when she complained, but he also didn't seem especially interested in moving somewhere they wouldn't be 1% of the population.

He told her that Pilot Ridge meant a lot to him, but she didn't understand. She couldn't understand, because she wasn't a meta-human, she didn't know why Hammel had the loyalty of so many of the people that she met.

And so while Chuck slept she quietly packed her belongings up. She didn't have very much, in the scheme of things. She had her clothes, and her make up, and her books; that was one thing she and Chuck had in common, was they both loved to read. She liked science fiction, and she liked romance novels. They had both enjoyed Dune, but otherwise their taste in books didn't overlap very much.

She didn't have so many books that she couldn't fit them all in one suitcase, though.

There were some items she might ask for, later, but she wouldn't take them, because otherwise he would have nothing to cook with. And then some of the furniture had been hers, but she couldn't move that tonight.

A flash of headlights through the windows told her that her ride was here.

She took one last look at his sleeping form before she picked up a suitcase in both hands, and then she walked out of his life.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

#35 – Mind

Sean had suffered for months. The illness had come on swiftly, but he had done everything he could to hide it from his parents for as long as he could. He didn’t want them to worry about him; he was the oldest, and he had to set a good example for his younger sister.

Yet, the voices kept him awake at night and interfered with his concentration. The headaches and migraines became so painful that he couldn’t keep food down, and he began to lose weight, not that he had had that much to spare to begin with, as his parents had always stressed healthy food and exercise. He felt tired all of the time, everything felt so heavy. He cried so often, left alone in his room, that his throat grew raw and he often found himself covered in phlegm.

Finally, he realized he was dying.

It was the only explanation.

He was dying, and he knew that he needed to tell someone, since he was only twelve, and it was a terrible tragedy that he was so sick. Yet, he didn’t want to worry his parents more than he already had, and he knew more about that than he could explain. He knew that his mother and father argued about him every night after Kathleen had been tucked in and he had been left to fend for himself.

Every night they argued about him, because they could tell something was wrong (he wasn’t as good at hiding as he had tried, although, he thought, considering that it had stared in June and it was August now, hiding for the better part of two months wasn’t bad, even if it fell woefully short of what he needed to do).

Yet, there were no illnesses going around, nothing he did or experienced matched any symptoms that William Neville could identify, and, besides, the rest of the family felt fine, and all of their neighbors remained blissfully unaware.

Sometimes, Sean’s family was blissfully unaware too, when he wished hard enough that they wouldn’t worry about him. A few times, he had wished that when his mother came in to give him soup, or when his father came in to check his forehead. They would blink in confusion and leave, as though they didn’t recall why they had come into his room in the first place.

He didn’t know what he had down to earn this type of punishment or to inflict it upon his family, upon the people he loved most in the world. Worse, if this was retribution from the Lord, what could be done about it apart from praying for a quicker and less painful death?

He did that at night, when Kathleen was asleep and after his parents had stopped arguing about him. Every night he prayed that way, although he received no answer.

Not until the men from the government appeared at his house one afternoon in September. He was home alone with his mother, as his father was at the hospital and Kathleen had just begun the fourth grade.

“May I help you?” she had asked, and he could hear through his door, left slightly ajar so she could check in with him periodically.

“We’re here about your son.”

“Sean?” His mother had been so surprised. “Are you from the hospital? I know William has been reaching out but-”

“We aren’t from the hospital, Mrs. Neville. And your son isn’t sick. We have reason to believe he’s a meta-human.”

As soon as Sean heard that, for the briefest moment, he felt relief that he wasn’t crazy or dying after all. Then, as the repercussions sank in, he rolled out of bed and began to pray again.

If only he had been crazy, ill, or dying after all.