Wake-up Call – Chapter 113 [11.6k Words, NSFW]

[Taylor]

In some ways, Lisa's hopes for our wedding couldn't have been more traditional. It was no secret at all for any of the people involved in the planning that she would play the role of the blushing bride and have me be…

The groom.

It's not something that I'm uncomfortable with. As much as I've learned to accept and appreciate my body after years of constant compliments and borderline harassment when it comes to physical affection, I still prefer somewhat masculine clothes rather than something that emphasizes my feminity. I am tall, slender, and my face is marked by severe lines.

I would make a terrible blushing bride.

But, if Lisa's own blush is something to go by, I make quite a dashing, brooding groom.

"Stop looking at me like this while there're witnesses," she mumbles in my ear, leaning up and forward when the next step of the first dance of the wedding gives her the chance to.

"Never," I laconically reply with as much intensity as I can afford while going through the rehearsed choreography she set for the two of us.

Something nice and simple. Traditional. A ballroom thing.

Until, yet again, the music abruptly changes.

And Lisa's hand leaves my shoulder to slide down my arm until I grab both her hands, and we just… twirl around, filled with reckless energy and smiles that we can't hold back as the ferry station gets filled with the vigorous, rapid-fire lyrics of 'We Didn't Start the Fire.'

The first two layers of her skirt came off after my particular twist on a ring exchange—executed with Alec's gleeful complicity—was done, and we relaxed a bit, the formal part of the event most definitely over and done with, and what now remains of white lace and silk layers flies around her legs, baring her pristine stockings and showing up to the garters when she spins away from me as fast as she's able, pirouetting over the tips of her kitten heels like they're ballet shoes until our linked arms stretch as far as they go and I tug her back to me.

She turns around, wrapping our arms around her like the string of a spinning top, and she ends up with her back resting against my chest, our breathing heavy, color in her cheeks that surpasses the meager cover of makeup I never thought she needed as her eyes keep twinkling with that mix of joy and a hint of tears that's been there since she stepped on the red carpet that would take her to me.

I lean over her shoulder and take her lips as the song ends and our rambunctious guests cheer and clap.

And all of this is, up to a point, traditional.

I let go of her lips and hands, and she takes longer than she should to step away from me, the heat of her bare back lingering on the front of my body as she keeps looking and smiling, giving me a silly finger-wave at one point as we both remain unable to look away from the other.

Then Colin stands by her side.

And I take a step back, resting my own back against the chest of somebody who's still infuriatingly taller than I am.

"May I have this dance?" Dad asks with what I suppose he thinks is a teasing tone.

I roll my eyes and turn around, facing green eyes that are just a shade away from mine, lighter after all these years of him walking away from the dull gray that once swallowed it all.

Then my left hand's on his right and my right on his shoulder.

And the gravelly, marvelously nuanced, melancholy voice of Louis Armstrong tells us What a Wonderful World this is.

Lisa and Colin start dancing the father-daughter dance portion of the wedding, a few sessions in a Protectorate gym making sure that the choreography put together by both Power and Armsmaster's combat algorithm becomes something showy enough to make Aisha's eyebrows shoot up and have Vicky nudging a beleaguered Dean's ribs with her elbow as Dragon, Hannah and Minnie look on with a mix of fond exasperation and the pride of knowing that their man is currently all but holding a glowing sign calling 'All Eyes on Me.'

At the same time…

Dad and I shuffle around.

We sway without much fanfare, just following the simple, almost trite rhythm of a song that was a cliché once upon a time, when the world could afford to have saccharine, insincere moments.

A luxury I keep fighting for every day of my life so that others can one day roll their eyes at an old man saying that it's a wonderful world.

Because it is.

Because it, despite everything, despite all the horrors and tragedies, all the things I wish we didn't do and all the ones I wish we were wise enough to do… It's still…

["I see friends shaking hands, saying, 'How do you do?' They're really saying, 'I love you,'"] Dad mumbles, following the lyrics with his eyes closed, the mayflies dispersed across his gray-blue suit keeping me aware enough of the clumsy scarecrow that we won't trip or he won't step on my foot, or…

His eyes open.

I look up at him like I once did when I was a little girl who knew nothing of vulpine blondes, voices in my head, or grumpy precogs who don't yet realize just how much in love they are.

Like an innocent girl knowing that her father was the strongest, wisest, [tallest] man in the world.

"I am so happy for you," he says with a strangled voice that Louis seems to encourage.

"Thank you. Dad," I say, my own emotional state betraying me as I smile and try not to croak.

"She… She would've been so proud of you, Taylor. So, so proud…" he says, drifting away into what once would've been the end of joy and the return to dull gray.

But his hand on my waist is strong. Reassuring. Firm.

His fingers around mine as steady as they ever were when he held me and lifted me up to the sky, spinning us around in our yard as I giggled, and a tall woman rolled her eyes at us with all the fondness for a trite cliché that she could muster.

I squeeze his hand and lean forward, my face on his chest, the scent of his aftershave as familiar as ever, bringing up so many other memories that I once resented or shied away from.

"I love you, Dad," I mumble, rather than 'How do you do?'

"I love you, my Little Owl," he says.

Sappy.

Trite.

Cliché.

And still making me cry as my unyielding smile hurts my cheeks.

***

[Lisa]

"I am [not] letting you do the toast," I say to Alec.

"You can't do this to me! I've got notes! Cue cards! A teleprompter!" he immediately shoots back.

"A—you [don't] have a teleprompter! You're just messing with me!"

"Lisa…" Brian mumbles with the tone of somebody who would like it very much if nobody noticed he had spoken up.

It's a tone I'm uncomfortably familiar with—no, that's a lie. My life's filled with the likes of Tagg. I [wish] people were skittish and hoping to be unnoticed.

"What?" I ask, as neutral as I can be as I turn around to face the rest of the round table at which my current and former team sits, plus one bratty little sister who has thankfully not triggered yet with any power as obnoxious as she is and a puppy who will [never] see the battlefield if Rachel and I have our way.

[Argos' suitability for PR role—]

Don't have to tell me twice.

Brian, rather than answer, looks at me with tented eyebrows the likes of which Argos could learn a thing or two from, and then tilts his head toward the head of the long, [long] table that is supposed to hold the immediate family of the bride and groom.

Let's just say that Tay's side is… somewhat shorter than mine.

And that's with Mom sitting by Danny's side. Because I don't know who they think they are fooling by not wearing the goddamn engagement rings.

Also, there's a technician installing a teleprompter near where the best man would, if given half a chance, speak his toast.

"This is utterly unnecessary," I say. "You have memorized whatever your diseased mind thinks is an appropriate toast. The teleprompter is just for show."

"Well, I [am] a showman—"

"No, you aren't. You're a troll with delusions of grandeur. You're what happens when someone whose life's calling is to become a basement dweller gets an overinflated opinion of their looks and decides it may not be a terrible idea to take a walk outside. You're what a gaggle of teenage girls on Livejournal once thought would be an ideal fantasy before age and experience taught them that jerks with a heart of gold are usually just jerks with a heart of jerk and that any digging to look for proof otherwise should be carried out with a rusty spoon. You're the unholy lovechild of a Lestat the Vampire horny fanfic and Twilight. You're somebody who should've remained locked up on the Internet, where you belong, so that you would be exclusively Dragon's problem if she ever grew melancholy of the Birdcage."

…

There's… a table of former supervillains and one juvenile delinquent staring at me with varying degrees of open-mouthed awe.

It's not as good a feeling as I once would've thought.

"Just… how long have you been sitting on that one?" Brian tentatively asks.

"Spur of the moment," I say, lying through my teeth.

"[Bullshit]," Alec immediately says with what looks like wounded professional pride.

"It's my literal superpower, asshole," I say, tilting my head back so I would be looking at him down my nose if he wasn't taller than me like [far too many people].

"Yeah, no. I call bullshit as well," Aisha says, coming to the rescue of her adopted sibling. "That was [rehearsed]."

"Was. Not."

"You didn't run out of breath. The pauses were precisely where you needed them. You didn't hesitate on a single word," Alec says with narrowing eyes.

"That's because [I] am a showgirl—I mean, show woman. [Fuck]—"

"See? That's precisely what I would've expected if that rant was improvised. Never change, Lisa," the French Canadian says with an infuriating, condescending grin—

"I'll do it," Rachel says.

"What?" too many people at once say.

And she looks up from the hand resting on Argos' head and looks straight at me.

"Your toast. I'll do it," she repeats.

Something clenches in my chest.

And my smile is soon joined by Brian's and, even if slightly disguised, by Alec's.

Aisha… I don't think she really gets it. But it's all right.

They still have years to become a better family than the ones they had.

***

[Rachel]

I'm standing up beside Lisa and Taylor.

There's… food and drink. On the long table. In front of me.

And a lot of people.

Staring.

Lots of people. Some I know. Some I don't. Looking. Looking at the girl without words. At the girl who feels… more at ease with dogs. The girl shy and brutal. Scared. Lashing out.

The girl I was.

On their table, Brian and Alec smile at me. Alec twirls the tall champagne glass in his hand.

And grins.

['It's not so easy, but also not so hard, Rach,' he said, beating a bowl of eggs as hard bread soaked in milk. 'You'll get the trick. One of these days.']

['Great. Now I smell like wet dog,' he said as Brutus laid his head on his lap after a morning walk under the rain. Before scratching my dog.

'I… Aisha is a bit… A bit like Alec. Please try to be patient with her. She loves dogs, though,' Brian said before opening a door.

'I've been talking to Tagg, and… okay, no need for that pitying look, nice as it feels. Anyway! How would you feel about training up the PRT's K-9 unit?' Lisa said before looking over my dog's refuge.

'Just my luck: I finally start living with another girl and she doesn't care for fashion,' Aisha said in what Brian later told me was good-natured teasing before dragging me to her room.

'It's not so easy, but also not so hard, Rach. You're going to kill it,' Alec told me an hour ago, before the dishes came in, as we rehearsed in the place where Lisa had waited for the music to start before walking down a red carpet and making Brian cry.]

I'm anxious. Afraid.

Surrounded by a lot of looks I don't understand from people I don't know.

But I look down to my right, and there… there they are. Sitting. Lisa and Taylor. The ones who made things change.

"I… I've known the brides for years. Years ago, when we all were… different," I say, struggling with the words and the scratchy thing in my throat, trying not to smile or glare. To just… talk. "Lisa made me… she helped. Helped when no one else thought to try. Taylor… she forgave me. And then she also helped."

Deep breath. I take a deep breath, like Lisa told me to do before talking to the PRT agents who would take their dogs away from me.

My hand trembles, and I lower the tall champagne glass.

Then I push.

"I grew up alone. An orphan. Shuffled around from one house to another.

"Until they found me."

Another pause, my eyes itching, Argos nuzzling my ankle under the long skirt that Lisa and Aisha helped me pick. A sky blue, light thing that trails behind me when I walk and makes Argos jump down on it.

It's already torn.

I like it torn.

"They gave me friends. A family. A life."

I look down at them, and Taylor is smiling softly and gently and Lisa is dabbing her eyes with a white napkin.

"I love them," I say. Finally say.

"I love them and wish them all the best. I wish them as much happiness as they gave me.

"And I'll keep… keep trying to give it to them.

"So will most of you.

"Because you also love them. Because they are family and friends.

"Because they…"

I trail off.

My hand is steadier, so I raise the glass of bubbly champagne in front of my eyes, shielding me from the stares of strangers. From people I don't know or understand, whose smiles could be cruel or mocking.

I look at Alec, Brian, and Aisha. At smiles I trust.

And I keep pushing.

"This is a toast. A toast for them. And… And they deserve it. They deserve being celebrated.

"But, even if they didn't…

"They are friends. Family.

"And I love them.

"So, please, [please,] toast for the people I love."

I'm barely able to push the last words out, and I raise the champagne glass higher, trying not to look at people doing the same thing around me. Trying not to notice the smiles I don't know or the murmurs I don't trust, focusing on Argos lying down on top of my feet. On his warm, soft fur, that will grow hoarser when he gets to be as big as Brutus was.

My eyes itch.

And I drink from the glass of golden, bubbly liquid, trying not to cough it up when it tickles the back of my throat.

And then Lisa tackles me and drags me down to sit on her lap as she buries her face on my shoulder, Argos yipping as he's dislodged, and…

And Alec is smiling at me.

A tug on the nerves of my arm has me set down the glass, and another has me return Lisa's hug.

"Love you. Love you too. So much," she says.

And, without Alec's tugging, I hug her as hard as I can, finally letting my arms and breath shake as intimidating clapping surrounds us.

***

[Lisa]

"I'm exhausted," I mutter as I watch some guests finally start to leave, my forced smile still plastered on my face and getting slightly more sincere when I catch Carlos trying to hit on a barmaid around twice his age who looks about as flattered as she is bewildered.

"Good thing we've got a vacation coming up," Taylor mutters through her own forceful smile.

"Yeah. Good thing," I say, my smile not growing brittle in the slightest.

"… What did you do?" she immediately says, pointlessly flaunting her newly gained powers of wifely insight.

"It's a surprise. You'll like it," I say, abandoning all hope of subterfuge, much like Dinah when she walks up to a sitting Chris and grabs his head with both hands before shoving her tongue down his throat.

Missy is trying to drag her away for reasons that, after last night, I'll choose to interpret as a well-meaning friend doing her best to avoid her female, heterosexual friend waking up tomorrow with a hangover full of public humiliation and regrets.

[Likelihood of genuine romantic interest rather than Lisa Hebert's projected Nanoha—]

You leave the hot redhead of mass destruction out of this!

"Really?" Taylor asks, about as willing to let go of a subject as she's always been.

"I promise," I say, reflexively looking down at the golden band on my finger, running the pad of my thumb over the smooth side before I catch myself tracing the petals of the diamond-studded silver edelweiss with a single emerald in its center.

Her hand slides between mine, her forefinger briefly caressing the gem that Dragon made sure would match Taylor's eyes, and I find my breath caught.

"You keep promising things today," she murmurs, her shoulder pressing against mine.

I could answer. A hundred and one things, some of them even appropriate, and a few romantic enough to match her tone and the sheer, novel intimacy of something that should be anything but new at this point in our lives.

I don't.

I, instead, lean against her, regaining my breath only to inhale the perfume still clinging to her tresses and the one wafting from the side of her neck.

It has… a few notes of cherry blossom.

Because of course it does.

Along the edge of the station, near the lapping, tame waves of the Atlantic Ocean, Alexandria dances with Legend and Eidolon, floating in and out of the concrete platform, over stone and water, the three reunited heroes synchronized in something that can have only been born after years of being by one another's side.

On a table that has a despairing Cockblocker, Assault and Battery are making out just shy of the edge of decorum.

Claire, meanwhile, stands beside a tall table filled with empty champagne glasses, Colin's mom trying very hard not to laugh at whatever it is that Tagg says while wildly gesticulating at his wife awkwardly dancing with a Latino boy just shy of being jailbait.

Jessica is rubbing the bridge of her nose with her eyes closed, quite clearly not looking forward to all the people who will get on her case about whether or not Tagg just paid an actor to pretend to be a pool boy—

[Likelihood of—]

Shush. No need for spoilers.

And…

Well.

It's a wedding.

My wedding.

So there are scattered people talking and dancing and drinking. A few single women staring daggers at me after they learned that there had been a Thinker ban on any throwing of bouquets. Some guests gobbling down a last slice of a cake that was more artistry than baking. A molten ice statue of a swan that, for reasons I'll never quite understand, I allowed the wedding planner to slip into the bill.

And my father and his three girlfriends dancing, exchanging partners every few songs, looking as in love as I could've ever hoped when he was lying on a bed with no guarantee that he would ever wake up.

I rest a bit more of my weight against Taylor's shoulder, letting the slow music and the late hour lull me into a comfortable, dreamy daze, and smile a tired smile that's as fulfilled and happy as I think I can possibly be.

Then I catch Piggot awkwardly talking to an Amy who's acting drunker than a biokinetic should be by accident, see Vicky's impish smile from across the room, and Dean hiding his face between his hands as Carol looks about to get up from her seat and cause a [scene].

And a bit of a grin shines through my tired smile.

***

"Was that [really] necessary?" Taylor asks from the speaker in my helmet as her arms surround my waist, and I take us through a night drive along the streets of Brockton Bay.

Like we used to.

Except…

The streets are empty. Not because we are in a poor, overly cautious neighborhood but because the hour is late. Streetlamps light our way forward without any gaps between them, the scent of the sea is clearer, cleaner than it was back then…

And there are no potholes.

I remember racing between them, letting the wheels of my bike skid right along the edge, always a second away from losing control. From careening at high speeds over pockmarked asphalt, spikes of adrenaline shooting through me at threading that particular needle again, and again, and [again].

But there are no potholes.

And we're not in an urgent rush, going from one crisis to the next, always chased by the last thing we pulled while scrambling to plan for what we would need to do next.

No. We are just… taking a slow night drive, meandering through backstreets that have graffiti without gang tags, drifting past broad avenues bathed by amber light, letting the cool night's air wash soothingly over us after a day of exhausting emotions that we'll never live through again even if it signals the start of a life filled with most of them.

Even if we already took a rushed headstart years ago.

"Liz…" she mumbles with a bit of exasperation even as her hands on my belly pull us closer.

"Amy will appreciate it. One of these days," I say with a bit of the same grin I wielded right before New Wave decided to be New Wave and found out precisely why that's such a terrible idea.

"And Emily?"

"Well… Let's just chalk this up as one particularly memorable episode in our ongoing, endearing prank war."

"The prank war that Jessica has been trying to talk you through for the past few months?"

"Shush. Leave that dirty talk for the bedroom."

She tries not to laugh and ends up snorting, butting her helmet against my back in a way that's about half an Argos on my particular scale of cuteness and a third of a Rachel on the scale of heartbreaking… [something.]

I'm so proud of her. Of them.

"I still don't understand them," she says, for once not picking up on my internal change of subject.

"What's there to understand?" I say.

"Everything?"

The arms around me and the voice in my ear contrast with the empty street in front of me. With the city we travel through without being able to look into one another's eyes, broken white lines going under my wheels as the engine rumbles between our legs.

It's… melancholy, in an almost lazy way.

"They love one another but are too scared of crossing a line that would muddle that love even further than it already is," I say.

"I thought Amy was punishing Emily? For rejecting her?"

"I mean… [some] punishment may be going around right now…" I whisper in as suggestive a way as I can manage without adding body language to the scandalous insinuation.

She snorts. Again.

And my cheeks yet again hurt from my constant smile.

She snuggles closer against my back, her helmet rubbing against the white leather jacket I'm wearing over the wedding dress she wove for me, and she falls into silence, dropping the subject and just letting the rumbling of the engine lull us both into a soothing calm after a day filled with so many words that I never want to forget.

Even the ones coming from a flustered biokinetic and a woman with an offensively high Thinker threat rating.

***

"[This] is the surprise?" she says as I push the kickstand in place, careful not to ruin my white kitten heels in the process.

"I mean… what else could it be?" I answer as I dismount, pretending not to be at all anxious when I take my helmet off and try to do half a Taylor with a careless shake of my head to get my hair in—"Hey!"

"A lot of things," she answers with a stony façade that betrays the use of utterly unfair anti-Thinker tactics and nothing else.

"I… Uh…" I eloquently answer while looking up at her.

As she strides forward decisively.

With me in a bridal carry.

… At least I manage not to squeal.

[Lisa Hebert's fondness of romantic clichés—]

Shut up, you utter sap.

[Parahuman abilities interfaces' propensity to adapt to human host dynamics—]

Yeah. Sure. Blame [me] for that, why don't you?

[Taylor Hebert's example better suited for shard interaction protocols—]

You traitor!

… Wait, shard[ interaction protocols?!] What the Hell are you—

[Taylor Hebert's current speed and trajectory—]

You are not distracting me from this! I [can] and [will] focus on the piece of arcane knowledge you just decided to dangle in front of me! I'm not so scatterbrained that—

"Welcome, Mrs. Hebert," the receptionist politely greets me.

Using my [new] name.

As I hang from the arms of my wife.

… What was I thinking about?

***

Taylor doesn't let me go.

I spend the whole ride up the elevator in her arms, looking up at her, receiving her kisses when she deigns to look down at me.

Melting with every one of them.

Until, finally, we're right in front of a door I remember all too well, and I fumble with the keycard, apologizing to my wife for making her wait while still carrying me with tense, hard arms that still make my eyelids flutter after all these years, reminding me of all the times I've caught her in our home gym with what basically amounts to underwear and sweat pearling or running down her skin, detouring around the creases between taut muscles, tempting me to join her even if only to stare at her for a while longer…

"Liz… Don't take this the wrong way, but you're heavier than I make it look," she says with a wry grin.

"You're so lucky we never got that couch in here…" I mumble, finally managing to open the door and…

And Taylor walks me past the doorway, in her arms, and I can't help but let out a small squeak of excitement at it being…

The room we hid in after I shot Sophia in her civilian identity.

The nondescript room of a hotel that I've preserved despite the betterment of the surrounding area. The hotel that I bought just because of purely sentimental, sappy reasons.

And the room where I proposed to Tay, just for her to turn that around on me and making me accept [her] proposal. The one that I've clung to until a rainy Valentine's Day when we restated our promise, and…

It's…

It's still what I remember. A bed with a better mattress than anything else in this hotel that I paid a small bribe to the receptionist so that I could replace the old one with. An armchair where we spent a whole night cuddling after my adrenaline-induced motormouth made Taylor first banish me and then join me.

The one place where I talked tearfully about another world. One without powers. One where I would've run into a brunette reading a book on the boardwalk and asked her if she wanted a cup of coffee, only for the oblivious, self-absorbed, leggy girl to maybe tell me that she preferred tea and me making a quip with a posh, faux British accent, and…

Taylor sits on our bed, the soft mattress sinking under her as I cling to her neck and bury my face in her shoulder.

"I… Thank you. For the surprise," she says with a raspy voice that doesn't quite match just how tearful I am.

"I swear… I thought I would already have run out of tears…" I tell her, rubbing my face against the satin lapels of a black tux that fits her as marvelously as I thought it would.

"Me too," she says.

Her arms tighten around me, possessive and protective. The arms I have chosen to spend the rest of my life within.

So it's understandable that I take more than a moment before I lean away and smile at her, tilting my head toward the armchair where a few brightly-colored parcels wait for us to open them.

"I thought we had already gotten all the presents?" she says with adorably clueless blinking.

"I think these are the ones they didn't want us to open in front of other people," I say, remembering Dinah swearing me to secrecy just minutes before getting as much liquid courage as I suggested she didn't drink.

She looks at the small pile with a bit of apprehension, then at me, then at the bed.

"I'm [really] tired—"

"Our friends and family put a lot of effort into choosing that for us," I counter before she can finish, which, as usual, makes a delightfully disgruntled yet slight frown cross her brow.

"Liz, you know as well as I do that, if we get caught up opening those, [something] will happen, and we'll end up going to sleep much later than planned," she tries to offer reasonably.

"What? You mean you didn't plan on ravishing your wife today of all days?"

"I barely slept yesterday, we spent most of the night talking and dancing, and today has been a [marathon] of emotions and—you're messing with me."

"Whatever gave me away?" I say, fluttering my eyelashes intentionally.

For once.

"You [opened your mouth]," she answers.

"Are you saying I can't mess with you without words?" I say with a carefully calibrated, vulnerable moue.

And wiggling on her lap.

She, for reasons known only to people who rudely engage in anti-Thinker tactics at the drop of a hat, lets out a small grunt and relaxes her arms around—

"Carry me," I breathe out.

She goes ramrod straight.

And her arms tighten yet again before she stands up with me in them.

"You're milking this for all it's worth," she grumbles.

"I'm only getting married once," I answer with what tries to be flippant rather than… rather than something that makes my lips melt into yet another sappy, nearly tearful smile that is soon matched by the lips above mine and the gentle brush of cherry Chapstick flavor.

So we end up sitting on the floor in front of the small pile of presents like it's Christmas and…

I take out the first one.

['I'm just returning the favor. Love, Dinah,'] it says in the precise and neat handwriting of somebody who still has a deep-seated need to look older than she is and has yet to realize that the crowning achievement of adulthood is to write with as much grace and poise as a doctor's prescription.

[Lisa Hebert's pettiness—]

Look, I don't see why anybody would ask me to manually fill out all those forms other than as a power play or gleeful sadism. It's only fair that I pay them in kind.

"What is it?" Taylor asks after I stare for too long at the envelope and…

"A comic collection," I reply with very little hesitation, given the dimensions, weight, and slight give of the material under the wrapping paper.

"Right. [What] comic collection?"

"I mean… I think I could guess, seeing as—"

"Liz?"

"Yes, hubby?" I ask, with due deference to her husbandly title.

"Don't ever call me that again. And open our presents."

"Yes, dear," I say, momentarily taking away the husband's role from her.

"Sunstone?" she asks when the paper tears under my [maybe] somewhat eager assault.

"Never heard of it," I say, looking at the admittedly gorgeous drawing of the two girls on the cover and how one of them is a somewhat familiar brunette and…

…

Oh. Oh dear.

"That's… Not something I would've expected Dinah to be into," Taylor comments with as little inflection as she can get away with sans Arachne's assistance.

"I… I think this is what Dinah thinks [we] are into," I say as I keep my stunned browsing of the pages of a [very explicit] comic about two young women who seem to be rather involved with a certain… [lifestyle].

A lifestyle involving leather, ropes, and [maybe] some hair-pulling.

"We don't have a sex dungeon," she absent-mindedly comments, looking over my shoulder.

"Do you want one?" I can't help but ask.

"Wha—[no!] I mean, how would that even—do [you] want one?"

"… There's absolutely no way for me to answer that question right at this very moment."

"I'm pretty sure that you can—"

"Open the next present? Oh, what a great idea! Let's get on with it," I say, putting aside (for now) the pretty drawings of pretty women and reaching for a thin package that looks to be a tablet, but that's about as impersonal a gift as I could imagine, so it better be something entirely different—

… I'm melting.

[Canine standards of aesthetic qualities—]

"What… Is that…" Tay starts, her hand reaching around me to tilt the tablet so she can see…

The video of a fox kit scampering around an agility course. [Rachel's] agility course.

['This is from Rachel and me; she's been modified to be as tame as any dog and more intelligent than any breed. I hope we aren't imposing too much on your lifestyle; I promise to babysit her if you ever need me to – Love, Dragon,'] a scrolling message says.

"… Of all the things she could've given us—" Tay starts.

"I love her. I adore her. You won't take her away from me, you merciless woman."

"I'm not—[merciless woman?"]

"I was there when you took on the Nine, Tay."

"You planned the whole operation. If anyone was merciless there—"

"It was Dragon. Dragon and her hunter-seeker drones armed with antimatter rockets."

"[You] were the one who decided to take out the human factor when dealing with Jack Slash," she says, her hand still pointing the video of a fluffy, slightly overactive, and prone-to-leaping fox at us.

"And you were the one who got Amy to design ceramic-eating arthropods to deal with Mannequin. What's your point?" I airily reply.

"… I don't even know anymore."

"Good," I say as I discreetly set aside the video of Eevee scampering around under Rachel's watchful guidance and somewhat flustered chasing.

"If she ever pisses on the furniture—" Taylor starts, as unable to let things go as ever.

"She's been trained by [Rachel]," I not so gently remind her.

"[Fine]. Okay, what's next? Is there anything in this pile that's actually for me?"

"I'm pretty sure it's not a coincidence that the brunette in the comic looks identical to—"

"You were the one who got Dinah into comics. Don't even try to pretend."

"[Fine]. Let me—" [Nearly identical package with reversed color scheme—] "There. Here you—oh."

"What—oh."

We stare.

At the other tablet in my hands, one displaying a video of the unholy cross between a jumping spider and a peacock spider dancing along its branch, shaking its multicolored limbs, the scales shifting and changing their hue in harmony with the waving motion of her upright abdomen like some sort of belly dancer who really let go on the belly.

"… Cute," Taylor says.

"'This one is far more long-lived than any arachnid in the world and intelligent enough to follow semi-autonomous commands. The colors can change with enough precision to convey written messages, and it has no reproductive drive unless artificially induced. Enjoy, Taylor – Dragon, Amy,'" I lifelessly read.

[… Arachne's present—]

Wha—[absolutely not!] This is a present for Taylor. [You] don't get to be jealous of our wedding presents.

[Lisa Hebert's acquaintances inconsiderate—]

Nope. Not listening.

[Lisa Hebert's cruel disregard for life-long companion—]

Fine! Fine! I'll get you those material sciences papers by Dragon and Colin on the nanoscale applications of chrome! Happy now?[

Anthropomorphizing of parahuman abilities interfaces—]

You utter [brat].

"Power was jealous?" Taylor accurately predicts, her warm voice in my ear more amused than rightfully exasperated.

"Yeah. Had to promise him the papers he was going to get [anyway]."

[Lisa Hebert's inadequate sense of gratitude—]

Fuck off.

"Okay, I'm mollified," Taylor says. "What's next?"

I look at the rest of the pile.

I can easily guess what the framed picture from Mom holds, and I… I appreciate it. A lot. But I also don't want to see a still sharp shard of the past right now, so I'll leave it until tomorrow. There's something uncharacteristically bulky that I'm almost certain is a pair of the motorbike helmets Colin unsuccessfully tried to design behind my back, so that can wait until I'm in the proper headspace to mock the Swiss Army knife utility crammed in a (hopefully) elegant frame. A book signed by Minnie that I very much hope is not a copy of The Three Musketeers or that fencing manual she had been dropping hints about after she caught me reluctantly going through one of Power's cataloged taekwondo poomsaes, a pair of what, by weight and sound, are clearly Hannah-approved gun kits that she'll want us to assemble together with her, and…

A box.

A big box.

So… Okay, I'm tired. Exhausted. I really should've waited to do this tomorrow morning, with my emotional energy reserves replenished, but… We're already doing this.

So, let's end it with a bang.

"What do you say we open the big one and go to bed?" I ask, throwing a fond smile over my shoulder that is easily answered in kind.

"No wedding night shenanigans? I'm pretty sure that's grounds for annulment."

"And then we'd have to go through this whole thing all over again? God forbid," I say. "I guess I'll just lie back and think of England."

"That's as good a way for you to finally learn to appreciate tea as I can imagine," she says.

And then we stop holding back and burst into giggling before she lies a single peck on my lips, our soft smiles matching one another as I hope they always will.

Then we stay there, and…

"Open the present, Liz," she says with a resigned sigh.

"Yay!" I dignifiedly answer.

So I reach for the biggest package in the room, one that is enigmatically unsigned, and tug on the red ribbon, the whole thing gracefully falling apart with something that suggests either Tinker assistance or Thinker planning, and then...

Then music blasts at us at a volume that would get me some complaints if I hadn't reserved the whole building for tonight.

"What the Hell?!" Taylor says after a moment of shocked stupor, right as the wrapping paper unfolds by itself to reveal a screen covering the entire side of the box, one showing a music video of something that I only recognize due to Power's obsession with the Internet—

[Lisa Hebert's trite deflection tactics—]

And, on a day marked by sentimental music chosen because of who Taylor and I were, are, and hope to be, I never expected to get [this] shoved in my face:

["A girl like you needs something real. Wanna get you somethin' from the heart, somethin' special girl. It's my dick in a box~"] Justin Timberlake and Andy Samberg sing.

I blink in utter confusion, neither Power nor I coming up with anything that would justify this display.

And then Taylor's arms go rigid around me.

And my eyes shoot wide open.

***

"Are you… sure?" she says as I keep nervously biting my lower lip and looking between her hands.

"Not in the slightest," I admit with a raspy voice.

"We… don't need to do this. Not tonight, at least. It's… [something]," she says, futilely trying to articulate… [something].

[Lisa Hebert's adroitness with words—]

Fuck you. Unless you're trying to distract me from the incoming anxiety attack, in which case: thank you and fuck you.

"I…" I look up into her eyes, the nervous glances going from me lying on our former bed to an organism designed by both Amy and Dragon that, according to the note, has undergone the input of all our female acquaintances and the utter refusal of our fathers to take part in its blasphemous creation, no matter how indirectly.

Vicky, in particular, seemed [enthused].

"It's… I always thought we would adopt," Taylor says.

"We can still adopt. Or, even better, we can have an actual conversation because you never told me [you wanted kids]."

"I mean… isn't that the assumption?"

"For a pair of Sapphic Superheroines? How the Hell did you ever come to think that assumptions were a safe thing to make?"

"I… Liz, you've been making googly eyes at every baby we've come across for [months]."

"Well, yes, but just because my biological clock is ticking in suspicious proximity to my [ixnay]—"

"Stop saying 'ixnay!' We're already married, for God's sake!"

"I will stop panicking about something going wildly offscript when the honeymoon is over, and you can't tell me that isn't a sensible stance. Case in point? [The dick in a box.]"

She looks down between her hands.

The dick in a box twitches.

"Wha—is it supposed to do that?!" I ask, not at all panicked, flustered, or even the slightest bit curious about how it compares to our double-headed dildo.

"You live on the Internet! [You] tell me!"

"Tay, I don't know what you expect from the Internet, but if you were hoping to find in there some kind of thorough, intricate description of a penile-shaped semi-autonomous organism that has had the nervous system of an arthropod grafted onto it so it can interface with your power and senses to eject viable semen with your DNA whenever you orgasm, and for that description to somehow end up on Google's top search results… you'd be sadly correct."

"… Who do I need to murder?"

"A lot of people on PHO. Some of them may even be related to what we're talking about."

"[I'll kill Vicky with my bare hands]," she says.

I think about pointing out that Vicky has a bulletproof forcefield and super strength.

Then I close my mouth before something stupid comes out.

[Lisa Hebert's learning capabilities—]

My Thinker rating is [your] Thinker rating. Tread carefully.

"I…" Tay starts before looking up from something that would be right at home in a Lovecraft-themed hentai and into my eyes. "Do you… do you still want to try?"

I look back at her.

At my girl—my [wife], looking at me with uncertain eyes, her hair out of the ponytail she had worn through the entire ceremony and haloing her in darkness only broken by the amber lines of streetlight coming in from the half-closed blinds of the window, her tux jacket open, her firm bust pushing up the white shirt underneath, her tie still held in place by the pearl-capped silver needle, the line of satin traveling down her left sleeve moving back and forth along a web of light that firms and softens as it goes from glossy fabric to black wool.

And the thing in her hands.

It's… somewhat cute?

The skin matches Taylor's tone, and the shape… well, I'm not straight. Never have been, according to Mom and a former gymnastics teacher who filled her leotard well enough.

But we've used toys before.

And… a part of me wonders.

Just how different would it be to have flesh rather than plastic? To feel warmth pulsating with my lover's heart rather than just my body's heat seeping into a toy that Tay uses on me, holding me down wordlessly, just with that gaze she has when she…

When she loves me and forces me to be loved.

My breathing is shallower than a moment ago, and the familiar, pleasant flush of embarrassed warmth is climbing up my cheeks.

I am biting my lip.

And I don't even have to nod before she smirks.

She places it… She places her [cock] on the bed, in front of her, and her hands travel up the sides of her body, slowly dragging the back of her fingers between her white shirt and black jacket, detouring around her breasts and going up her neck before brushing her hair back in that way she knows drives me wild or speechless, depending on circumstances and possible witnesses.

My breath catches.

The right corner of her mouth rises.

And her hands go down her neck, around her collar, tugging the knot of her tie away—

"Leave it on," I blurt out without even knowing why.

She pauses for a brief moment, the rhythm broken, and then she slowly, meticulously, pulls out the silver needle, looks into my eyes, and licks up the metal shaft and around the grey pearl.

Something in me clenches, and I spread my legs, slowly tugging my skirt up.

Her smirk is back.

And she unbuttons her shirt, glacially—no, not glacially: like molten lava slowly advancing, burning everything in its path, as long as 'everything' is my sanity.

She pulls the white cotton out of her pants, and the lapels hang open, the black tie nestled between them and over her equally black bra, a thing of lace and satin that I've never seen before, that gleams with the amber lines of streetlight, that crisscrosses pale skin and pushes her breasts higher than usual, the flesh rounder than I've ever seen other than when my hands grasped her and made her moan as I tried not to lose myself in sheer admiration of the woman writhing under me.

She shrugs, and the jacket falls to the floor with as gentle a susurration as the thick fabric can make on the not-so-plush carpet.

Then she slowly uncovers one pale shoulder after another, letting me see the lack of straps of the bra digging into her sides, the pale skin ballooning over and under the single band surrounding her body.

She's… gorgeous. Beautiful.

Mine.

I have to swallow when she smiles at me with something knowing and complicit that tells me everything is for my benefit. That she knows what she's doing to me and how to do so much more. That this is not only the start of the rest of our lives, but the continuation of the years of blissfully sleepless nights that came before.

She unbuckles the leather belt, and the gesture is mesmerizingly masculine. Abrupt. Demanding.

Then the pants slide down her legs, and I can't help but remember the first time I saw something like this, when black silk flowed down her form before she joined me on the bed she had tied me to.

When I first saw her pale skin emerging from liquid shadow. When I fell deeper in love and lust than I already was.

When I stared like I'm doing right now at the slight sway of her slender hips as she steps out of the clothes pooled under her, and she looks down at me, only in her bra and matching panties.

Her hands sink into the mattress as she leans forward and over me to lie a single kiss on the inner side of my left knee, her lips burning me through the white stockings I'm still wearing.

I pull my skirt higher, trying to distract her from my hitching breath and failing to look away from her intense stare. From Taylor yet again holding me down without even a touch, with just the suggestion of warmth and softness over my quivering knee.

"Are you sure you're ready for this?" she almost growls.

I shake my head.

She smiles.

"Good," she tells me.

And she pulls away, her fingers tugging down the sides of her panties, offering me the spectacle of lace and satin tightly sliding down her legs, the firmness of the muscle below not impeding the elastic band from digging into soft skin as she reveals that she's prepared for tonight and the nights to come.

That she's fully shaven.

Though, of course, she now has something in mind other than riding my face as I drown in her pleasure.

I [think].

Or, well, 'think' may not be the right word. Not when she grabs the… the cock. When she stares straight at me as she spreads her feet into a wider stance, standing with her legs open as she gets it near to her lower lips, sliding the back of the biotinker creation along the gap between her thighs and then [pushing], her eyes closing for a moment as her lips thin into a tight line that grows paler when she corkscrews the thing deeper inside her, her hands turning it right to left and left to right, getting it deeper than our double-headed dildo usually goes until something intimidatingly thick, veiny, and curved stands up from between her legs, past her glistening labia, a droplet of transparent, thick fluid flowing out of its slit.

I lick my lips. Swallow.

And slide my drenched panties aside.

She leans forward yet again, the bed shifting as her weight joins mine, and Taylor crawls forward.

Over me.

One hand on each side of my cinched waist, her face over my still-covered belly, her body's heat pushing down on my spread thighs.

"Do you want it like this? In your wedding dress?" she says.

I lick my lips.

"It's for you. It's always been for you," I answer.

She nods.

And she kisses me.

My body sinks into the plush comforter that I bought just for this room. Just for us. The goose, silk, celadon green duvet bunching around me as I squirm at the chemical taste of cherries and at Taylor's tongue going past my lips. At her weight fully resting on me, the black tie pooling over my cleavage, and the unfamiliar heat of something hard and throbbing pushing down over my folds.

I pull my thighs open farther until they rest on the cool, smooth fabric. Until I'm completely defenseless under her like I always want to be.

Her mouth slides away from mine, peppered kisses marking her path down my cheek and toward my ear, forcing me to anticipate her teeth once again closing down on my fleshy earlobe, glad that I took out my earrings before dropping on the bed, even if I also adore when she tugs at them, adding a thrill of metallic danger to her already predatory possessiveness.

My arms wrap around her, and I slide my hands along the taut lines running parallel to her spine, the muscles I've massaged so often to relieve tension that I wasn't [always] the cause of, pushing under the thick band of her bra before pulling her closer to me, feeling the heat of her body going past the dress she wove for me. The dress she made to surround me, to mark me as hers, to [bind me].

"Taylor…" I whisper with as much hunger and need as I ever did.

"Liz… My Liz…" she says with feverish devotion.

She pushes forward, and her cock glides over my clit, forcing a whimper out of me and making my thighs tremble, the inguinal tendons standing out like the taut strings of an instrument made to mewl and surrender.

"Again," I beg.

She answers.

Her hips move back and forth in a movement we've already practiced with our toys, but I look down to find burning, emerald eyes, and I know that it affects her more than it usually does. That she shivers when she drags the head right over my own erect clitoris. That her firm arms tense harder when she pushes forward, and the full, [warm] length slides over me, making my own eyes flutter and roll back.

"I should be afraid," I whisper.

"Not with me. Never with me," she answers, making something inside of me clench.

I crane my head down, searching for her lips, and she answers me with a kiss more rushed than the last one, our tongues tangling around one another as I slide a hand out of the band of her bra and down her back to grab her ass. To sink my fingers into the well-trained muscle and pull her forward as I tilt my hips up, grinding in small circles against her, delighting in the sudden rush of her tongue around mine, on the frantic licking along the inside of my cheeks and the roof of my mouth.

I pull back, and I could swear there are clouds of steam wafting between us as she looks at me with burning, betrayed eyes.

"Take me. Make me your wife," I say with a smile that is too many things for me to list.

She unnecessarily wets her lips, slowly letting the lower one out from the suction, the moist flesh glinting with the passing light of a car on the street below.

And she pulls her hips back.

I go to help her, to grab her [cock] and guide her inside of me, but…

It moves.

Because [of course it does].

"I don't know whether to strangle Amy or get her canonized," I mumble.

"Patron saintess of pent-up lesbians?" she quips.

"I mean… I could argue this counts as her first miracle…"

We smile with silent laughter, our eyes meeting and softening, and she leans forward to rest her forehead on mine, softly and gently as she ever is when she means to.

"I love you," she says. Unnecessarily, yet everything that I need.

"I love you," I answer, offering back everything that I can for what she gives and keeps giving me.

We pause, then and there, just… tremulous eyes looking into one another for the first time except all the other times.

"Liz… Do you want this?"

"I [need] this."

"No. Not the sex. The… Children. In this world."

I close my eyes and let gentle darkness, soft skin, and warm breath surround me.

And think.

It's… It's not like what Dinah does. I don't have Janus to show me myriad shards of futures that will never be. But Power and I… We have a web. A collage of connected images, sounds, smells, and everything that he's helped my senses catalog over the past few years. I can be almost as precise as a spectrograph at this point, and that's just…

Trivial.

I don't need all of that to recognize Taylor's tone. To know that this is something that's entirely on me. That she [wants this] and has wanted it for long enough, even if she always feared bringing it up, and I wasn't ready to talk about it until today.

Until I dealt with all the things that I wanted done before I wore a ring on my finger that told the world I was hers.

Until I did everything I could reasonably do to ensure that there would be a future for us to be one another's.

And…

This is stupid.

A rush of feelings and hormones. My brain getting overwhelmed by a day designed by me and some other powerful Thinkers to make me as much in love as I've ever been. This is me falling for my own manipulations and traps. This is…

[Origin of emotions irrelevant to their effect. Effect divorced from genesis. Lisa Hebert's emotions valid datapoints.]

I almost cry.

Thank you, Power.

"Yes," I say, opening my eyes and looking straight at her so intensely that she almost pulls away. "Yes, I want this. I want you. I… make me a mother, Tay. Make me bear your child."

"But—"

"The world? I will bend it. I will force it to be better. I will make it safe for our daughter to grow up in. I will give it to her after you're done with it."

"Your villain is showing, Liz."

"Does it turn you on?"

Her cock lifts over my clit and slaps down on it, making me let out a yelp that doesn't quite match the tone I was going for.

"Does that answer your question?" she asks with a grin smug enough to make my eyebrow twitch.

"It actually raises[ a lot] of questions," I say with a bit of a frown.

"Let me answer them for you," she says, her tone instantly dipping into heat and possessiveness.

It would've made me whimper, years ago, when I was a teen living together with my girlfriend for the very first time.

It still does, when she looks at me like this.

I crane my head down to touch her forehead with mine, and my smile is something that… something tremulous and still slightly unsure.

"Take me," I say. "Take me like you already own me."

"I do," she says.

Again.

And my smile is… shy. Happy. Exhuberant. Trembling.

Free.

Right before she takes me.

Her glans is softer on me than I would've guessed, the warm flesh pushing my wet lips apart, spreading me just a tad farther than our usually favored toy does.

And it's warmer.

So much warmer.

"Still okay?" she says, fretting over me in delightful ways until I open my eyes wider and nod to have her push deeper inside me.

To have the head fully inside, the ridge sliding past my opening, making both of us gasp when I clench right behind it, holding her in place at the same time that I tug her toward me, my hand on her ass closing harder on her flesh, the one under the band of her bra working one of the three hooks free.

"How… how is it?" I ask as I feel like she's pushing the breath right out of me and replacing it with a branding iron.

"Like… Like you're fingering me, but… but the reverse of it. Like you're surrounding me rather than pushing inside. Like you're welcoming me. Calling for me."

"I am," I say with as erratic a tone as two syllables can manage.

"And you?" she asks, pulling back and forth without quite moving, just changing the angle of the pressure of her cock inside of me.

I bite my lip and arch my back, my hardened nipples pushing against the reinforced fabric of the dress holding my breasts together and her soft chest above.

I undo the second hook.

"Like… Like you fulfill me. Like you're… Like you're about to change me. Forever," I say.

It's not what she asked. Not a listing of the minute differences between her cock and our toys.

But it's what I feel. Right now. For her. For us.

For the life she will plant inside of me.

And her lips take mine.

Soft yet intense, her tongue taking its time to come out, and when it does, it's to lick along the line between my lips. To entice me with what's about to come and how much deeper it will be.

To make me focus on the softness and tenderness. On the utmost care she rains down on me. On her hands sliding between the silk comforter and my back, grasping at my shoulders, thin, strong fingers massaging my flesh, reminding me of what we learned to do for one another. Of the shared baths and lazy nights when we didn't have sex but shared as deep an intimacy as we did under sweaty sheets.

To make me forget all about the glans between my folds until she suddenly pushes deeper and wetly slides forward, swallowing my surprised moan and silencing me with her thrusting tongue, the tenderness still there but now mixed with raw passion barely leashed.

I undo the last hook.

The elastic band of her bra falls open, and I pull it away from between us, blindly throwing it toward the armchair she once banished me to before I bury that same hand on the hair falling down her nape, grabbing the long tresses and [pulling].

She abandons our kiss, making me yearn in sudden loneliness even as I delight in her surprised gasp, and I close my legs around her, hooking my feet behind her, pulling her closer to me, making her sink even deeper as I launch forward and pepper suckling kisses around her dangling tie and over the top of her breasts, the small yet full shapes trembling under my lips as the pale skin reddens under my assault and her gasps turn to moans.

Her hands under my back pull, and, suddenly, I'm not lying under her, but sitting on her lap, staring into her eyes.

And we move.

A dance better rehearsed than what we did earlier. Me sliding away and toward her, gliding over her toned lap, the layers of white silk fresh on my skin as they rumple and straighten with every oscillating sway of my hips, with every lengthening pass that has her go deeper and deeper inside, claiming places she never reached with her fingers, gifting her touch to lonely parts of me that had only been taken by toys so far.

Her eyes burn.

Like they so often do.

And I have to smile. To wordlessly tell her how much I love her, to clench around her when the thickest part of her breaches my opening and I pulse around her, delighting in the way she bites her bottom lip and Tay, [my] Tay, briefly loses control, her hands tightening on my shoulders and her head going back, baring her throat to me as I pull on her hair yet again.

The one thing that used to make her so defenseless. That made her go wild.

The thing that made her feel truly accepted. Desired. Claimed.

Because, years ago, her hair was the only thing of her that Tay accepted as truly beautiful. The thing that I could rely on to convey how much I wanted her. The thing that opened her defenses when she allowed herself to feel the shock and surprise of being loved.

But that was years ago.

Now… now me playing with her hair is just…

Something ours.

So I lean forward and close my lips around the side of her neck, over the black band of satin, sucking on pale skin hard enough to break the delicate capillaries underneath it. To mark my woman on our wedding night.

To give her something to boast of when we leave for our trip around southern beaches tomorrow.

But not before a night of remembrance and celebration. A night where it all started.

Other than the room that she tied me in…

"What is it?" she says when I pull away, and she notices my grin.

"Nothing," I say with a hint of a taunting lilt.

"Liz…"

"What, am I teasing you? The big bad superheroine feared the world over?"

"You know precisely what you're doing."

"Maybe…" I say demurely, tucking my chin in, teasing my lower lip with a tugging forefinger. "Why? Are you going to punish me?"

Her eyes narrow.

I [thrill].

And then her hands are not on my shoulders, but on my nape and ass.

And she thrusts [up].

The world goes white.

When I come back, I'm gasping, my arms around Taylor's neck, my head falling forward between them.

"Again," I beg.

She answers.

Her hips move between my thighs, rubbing the inner, sensitive skin, making me all too aware of my silk stockings and the tight, shifting pull of my garter belt for the brief second my world doesn't revolve around the rigid bar of meat pulling away from me before pushing forward yet again, driving the breath out of my lungs even as she makes me feel more filled than ever, more than the piece of blue, flexible rubber we sometimes share does.

I am kissing her neck, mumbling, whispering, begging.

And Taylor's fucking me.

Claiming me.

Thrusting hard heat in and out, shifting under me, bouncing the both of us on our bed, steadily finding a rhythm I cling to as hard as I cling to her.

"Love you, love you, love you," I keep telling her.

"[Liz]," she growls with the same voice she often says, ['Mine.']

And she speeds up.

The tempo grows erratic, the impact of her hips on mine turning into a syncopated staccato, her strong body tensing in anticipation, and…

I'm tempted to call her a quick shot. To appeal to her [masculine] ego so she'll get rougher with me and try and fail to avoid the inevitable.

I throw my head back and [moan].

"Yes! Yes, Tay, come inside me! Fill me up! Give me your daughter!" I say, the words interrupted by her thrusts and my bouncing.

Her hand clenches on my ass, and she dives forward to bite [my] neck. To give me a matching mark. To claim me.

And then she does.

My breathing cuts off as my eyes and mouth open wide and incredulous as she [floods me]. As warm—as molten heat travels up my canal, splashing against my walls in audible bursts until it races even deeper, and Taylor's heat spreads into my belly as I convulse around her, milking the last few drops of liquid ecstasy until my arms go limp and I fall back as far as Taylor's embrace lets me.

I keep shuddering, the waves of sensation traveling across and through me, discharging on my spasming legs, making my loss of control entirely evident even if Taylor hadn't already learned everything there's to know about how to turn me into a pile of incoherent, babbling mush.

And, like so many times before, she gently lowers me to the bed, getting my hair out of the way so it won't uncomfortably pull at my scalp while I'm all but unable to move without her assistance, only to then lie on top of me, her breathing more ragged than it should be as she keeps trailing the tips of her fingers in gentle circles around my cheek.

"Love you," I mumble yet again out of sheer reflex.

"Forever," she demands.

"Forever," I agree.

And… And it takes me a bit to calm down enough to turn and look at her with my silly, satisfied, cloying smile, as overcome with valid datapoints as I was years ago, and…

"You're still hard?" I ask with a [slight] measure of alarm.

"It works on [my] refractory period, not the other way around," she says with a mildly sadistic grin.

"… You don't have a refractory period," I unnecessarily state.

"[Precisely]," she thrillingly answers.

And then her hands go under my skirt, grab my hips, and flip me over, making me giggle in delighted alarm as Taylor makes sure I won't ever forget our wedding night.

And, at the rate she's going, the night I got pregnant.

***

I'm sweaty, exhausted, out of breath, and it's very likely that tomorrow I'll ache all over.

Totally worth it.

"That was… [something]," I say.

"Hn," she answers.

"I… was it the wedding dress? The cock? The idea of getting me pregnant? What did it for you?"

"[Hn]," she says, an arm draped over her sweaty brow covering her closed eyes.

"Like… I'm [dead]. Slayed. Can't move my legs," I continue, nuzzling the soft skin over her chest with my chin and cheek.

"Hn…" without moving in the slightest.

"And I just… Wow. Really. You just made this night even more unforgettable than it already was. Heck, I don't think [my body] will be able to forget it," I continue, playing with the end of her black tie and trying not to giggle at the brief memory of riding her while pulling on it.

"… Hn."

"Like… I admit that Dinah's comics had me pondering some… [ideas]. But… now there are [other] ideas, and—"

"Liz?"

"Yes, dear?"

"Let me sleep, [Honey]."

"Yes, dear," I say.

And then giggle for about fifteen minutes straight until she regains enough strength to pet my hair and lull me to sleep with her soft, warm breath over the crown of my head as we lay on top of wet, likely ruined, celadon green silk.

As she holds me until my eyelids finally acknowledge the exhaustion of the rest of my body and drop closed, warm darkness welcoming me as much as Taylor's warm arms around me.

Then, as I sink into spiraling colors and the world blurs into someplace else, a place that's ever-shifting yet still familiar…

Well.

Do you know what's the best part about dreaming?

[Urgently needed preparations for baby's room and home renovations—]

In my case, it's that I get to see my little brother.

The End

======================

So.

This is it.

I'm going to let the story breathe and speak for itself until the afterword gets posted rather than bloat this note's section. For now, just… let me know what you all think.

And see you soon.

As always, I'd like to thank my credited supporters on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/Agrippa?fan_landing=true): aj0413, LearningDiscord, Niklarus, Tinkerware, Varosch, and Xalgeon. If you feel like maybe giving them a hand with keeping me in the writing business (and getting an early peek at my chapters before they go public, among other perks), consider joining them or buying one of my books on https://www.amazon.com/stores/Terry-Lavere/author/B0BL7LSX2S. Thank you for reading!