OH WHAT A NIGHT

danny jane. teacher, cat lover, food eater. not associated with any rpg.

[explcsicns-blog]

        “Cute in like a… ‘I want to sacrifice you in a volcano’ type of way? I could see it,” she said as she texted the picture to herself. “But, it was your camera, not mine.” She smiled as she looked over at him. The more she thought about it, the more she realized she wouldn’t trade what they had for the world. Sure, the circumstances weren’t perfect, but he loved her, and she loved him. Mia really couldn’t have asked for anything more.

[dannyboyjane-blog]

“Exactly like that,” he said, taking his phone back. He somehow forgot that she'd had his phone, but that was a brain fart and that happened a lot to him. He liked to think it was part of his charm. He smiled at her when she looked at him. He leaned close and kissed her on the temple. “I love you, weirdo.”

[explcsicns-blog]

      “Did she? I don’t know. Who cares? She was queen of the underworld, that’s fucking awesome,” she laughed out before putting on the camera app. “We don’t have any pictures together,” she frowned. Which was true—they had none for some reason.

[dannyboyjane-blog]

“Yes, it definitely was,” Danny agreed, grinning at her. God, how he loved this woman. She was as weird as he was. It made them a wonderful match. He leaned in when she pulled out the camera app, nudging her lightly so she was prompted to make a silly face alongside him. They took a less joke-y one after that. “Did your camera explode from my cuteness?”

[explcsicns-blog]

       “Hm,” she hummed, reaching in Danny’s pocket to grab his phone. And of course, she knew the passcode. pulling up the internet, she was quiet for a few minutes, searching for something perfect. “There was a queen of Hell named Persephone. She’d probably hate us for naming her that, but I mean, she’d be queen of the underworld, who cares?”

[dannyboyjane-blog]

Danny only locked his phone so his wife didn't go through it – his password was easy to guess if you tried hard enough. He waited patiently for Mia to come up with something, and he couldn't help but laugh at her suggestion. “Didn't Persephone hate the underworld, though?” He asked.

[explcsicns-blog]

         “Shouldn’t you give that name to a dog?” she questioned, trying not to laugh. She was happy he was there. If he hadn’t been sleeping over, she wasn’t entirely sure she could have called him. Not because he didn’t deserve to know, but because she didn’t want him to worry. He already had plenty of things to worry about. “You’re going to get another cat, just for that purpose, aren’t you? But what about.. Dante. You know, like Dante’s inferno.”

[dannyboyjane-blog]

“That’s why it’s be funny to give it to a cat,” he said simply. He didn’t answer when she asked about him getting another cat, he just smiled. He’d been planning to get a third for a while now, but now the name was going to have to be debated. He’ll get it eventually. “Dante is cute, I like Dante. What about a girl’s name? “

[explcsicns-blog]

             “Something.. hell related,” she said, bringing up a hand to brush a few strands away from his forehead. “After all, I am satan’s niece. It’s only fitting.”

[dannyboyjane-blog]

“I was going to suggest Hellhound, but we should save that for a dog.” He paused, thinking. “OH! Or a cat! That’d be funnier.”

[explcsicns-blog]

     She smiled and kissed him back. They were safe and everything was going great between them. “I hope we have a boy and a girl, now that I think about it…”

[dannyboyjane-blog]

“I think we should start working on the names, babe. Now that we have two to come up with.”

[explcsicns-blog]

       She let out a laugh as she leaned in, resting her forehead against his. “I might leave you for the cookie monster, be careful.” She let her eyes flutter shut and let out a sigh. “I’m just.. happy they’re okay. I was so scared I-I was going to lose them,” she said, barely above a whisper, her voice trembling slightly.

[dannyboyjane-blog]

“But they’re okay, yeah?” He said, leaning forward slightly to kiss her lips lightly. “And there’s two of them. It’s just a new adventure.”

[explcsicns-blog]

      She was quick to mold into his body, tangling their legs, the only thing in their way was her growing stomach. Mia didn’t know why she didn’t suspect twins before. She was only three-and-a-half months pregnant and she looked about five. “So tomorrow when I get to leave the hospital, you’ll strip for me? I mean, we should go out a buy a pole for my apartment for this sole purpose. Guidance counselor by day, stripper by night. What if I said you had to start out in a Cookie Monster outfit to start out with because it tuned me on, would you do it then?”

[dannyboyjane-blog]

“The cookie monster turns you on?!” He said, looking at her in silence for a few seconds while he came up with an amazing joke to follow this up. “I’ll need to be careful what our kids watch while you’re around,” he decided on. “Let’s do it.”

[explcsicns-blog]

        She couldn’t help but to smile at him. Danny really did make everything better. No matter how stressed she was starting to get about this—Danny always knew the right things to say. 

       Mia moved over slowly, making enough room for him on the bed. At this point, she didn’t care. She just wanted to be held and to be told everything was going to be alright. “You could strip for me? I’d pay you.”

[dannyboyjane-blog]

Danny took the hint pretty quickly and crawled into bed with her, not really caring if it was allowed or not. He was able to squish in comfortablly and wrap his arms around her, holding her tightly.

“You don’t need to pay me for me to strip for you,” he said simply. “Except not while we’re here, they’ll put me in the psych ward.”

[explcsicns-blog]

       She stared at him, not entirely sure what to say. Should she be happy they were going to have twins? Or terrified? She couldn’t help but to feel a bit of both. Not only was she just eighteen, but every factor that made this hard before, just seemed… to get harder.

       “i’m sorry,” she said quietly. She wasn’t entirely sure why she said it, but she was starting to feel guilty for everything. Guilty for flirting with him when he was still her guidance counselor, guilty for getting pregnant a few months after dating, guilty for his job being at risk, and guilty for not only about to bring in one baby into the world, but two.

[dannyboyjane-blog]

“No no, don’t apologize,” he said automatically, something he was used to saying in relation to this - none of it was her fault, and he’d be damned if he let her be upset over it. They could do this, he was confident about that. He had to be. He was the rock. The dad. The big cheese.

“We can handle two kids,” he said, looking down at her with his danny-like smile. “We can get a bigger crib, it’s not like we need two. They can share stuff. I’ll get a second job if I have to. Work as a  stripper, maybe.”

[rlymia-blog]

        “—Y-yeah, I mean.. the first ultrasound didn’t show that. You don’t—They don’t—It’s not like they just magically split into two fetuses out of no where,” she paused. “—That can’t happen right?”

        She didn’t know what to believe when the doctor said one of them might have been hiding behind the other during the first ultrasound. They weren’t having one baby, they were having two. She was eighteen—only eighteen. She didn’t know how to take care of one never mind two.

        Once she had gotten blood drawn and was in a gown in her own room, something attached to her stomach and hooked up to a monitor, both of the babies’ heart beats going. When they were alone, she looked at him. “Twins..”

[dannyboyjane-blog]

He looked from the doctor to his girlfriend a few times, the doctor's words finally registering in his mind. “Oh,” he said when it did, blinking a few times like he was realizing he'd just been hit in the face with a brick. A nice brick, a soft one, but a brick nonetheless. “Oh.”

He turned to Mia once they were alone, nodding when she spoke. “Yeah,” he said, surprise clear in his voice. “Twins. Two of them!” He pulled up a chair to sit next to her, but ended up just standing there, not making a move to sit down. “We'll have to get double of everything.”

[rlymia-blog]

       Mia was shaking the entire car ride. Normally, she’d tell Danny to stop speeding, but she didn’t even notice. She couldn’t stop staring down at her stomach. If Danny had said anything, she wouldn’t have noticed. She couldn’t hear anything but ringing in her ears. She had barely missed the nurse at the front desk asking her what happened. Everything was becoming a blur, she couldn’t focus on anything, the panic preventing her. That was until she was on a chair and a doctor was doing an ultrasound.

       “The babies seem fine, but we’ll take blood work and keep you over night.”

       She almost didn’t catch what he had said, “—Babies?”

        “You’re having twins.”

        As much relief as she felt, she couldn’t help but to whip her head to Danny’s direction, staring at him with slightly wide eyes. They were having twins.

[dannyboyjane-blog]

Danny was nervously watching, afraid of what the doctor was going to say. A thousand possibilities went through his head, none of them good, and none of them being the one that came out of the doctor's mouth.

He looked at Mia at the same time she looked at him, his eyes wide, then he looked back at the doctor. He was silent for a few seconds before he managed to get something out. “Tw – what? No. No way. That wasn't on the original ultrasound,” he insisted, sure he'd warm up to the idea once the shock faded.

[rlymia-blog]

Her mind was going a mile a minute but everything stopped and landed on the worst. What if she was miscarrying? She nodded slowly as she slowly walked towards her room. She couldn’t feel her legs, they felt completely numb—she wasn’t even sure how she was walking. Staring blankly at the floor, she pulled on a sweater, jacket, sweatpants, and shoes. Looking up at him, her bottom lip trembled. “I-I don’t want to lose the baby..”

[dannyboyjane-blog]

“We're not, okay? We're not,” he said quickly, trying to reassure the both of them but not being sure at all. Everything would be okay, everything would be fine. It had to be. He threw as much as he could fit into the bag he found then quickly led her out the door towards her car. He helped her in then pulled them onto the road – practically jogging to the driver's door and stomping on the acceleration like it was a videogame and he was desperately losing. He reached for her hand once they were on the road, wanting to hold it and reassure her, because he didn't know how to speak. They reached the hospital pretty quickly – he may have been speeding a little bit – and he all but carried her towards the emergency doors.

[rlymia-blog]

Tears were quick to blur her vision as she watched the sight before her mold into one. She bit down on her lip hard as she shook her head. She could feel the lump in her throat as she opened her mouth to speak. “I-I’m bleeding.. I’m not—” she took a deep breath and wiped at her tears. “Something’s wrong, Danny..”

[dannyboyjane-blog]

He looked at her, trying to figure out what to do. There was a long silence before he blinked hard and came to a decision. “Fuck, you – okay, I'm sure it's nothing bad. We just.. we'll just go to the hospital,” he said quickly, reaching out for her to lead her out of the bathroom. “Get dressed, I'll pack a bag.”

[rlymia-blog]

dannyboyjane

Mia was half asleep on the toilet. It wouldn’t be the first time she woke up in the middle of the night having to pee since the pregnancy. She never thought anything of it. That was until she saw a little bit of blood.

Swallowing hard, she could feel the panic start to set in, her eyes automatically watering. Whether it was because of the panic or how easily it was for her eyes to tear up now because of the pregnancy—she had no idea. All she knew was this wasn’t good.

“Daniel!” she called out as loud as she could as she pulled up her pajama pants, hoping it would wake him up. Her breathing picked up as the panic bubbled beneath her skin, one of her hands covering her mouth.

[dannyboyjane-blog]

Danny was sound asleep, lost in his dreams, which were usually much less confusing but a little less satisfying than the real world. When he was woken up he was slightly disoriented, taking a few seconds to register what was going on and where he was.

Wiping the drool off his chin, which only happened when he fell asleep without meaning to, he slowly made his way to his feet then stumbled to the bathroom door, standing there and looking at her.

“Huh? Are you okay?” He said, rubbing his eyes. He finally registered her panic and he frowned, feeling his own panic start to wake him up. “Mia?”

[rlymia-blog]

Mia noticed his smile right away. It wasn’t a full one, but it was enough to count for her. It was something rare for her to see anymore. When they still had Persephone with them, the two of them smiled plenty—mostly for their daughter’s sake, but they still did.

After her death, it took Mia a week to function. She didn’t sleep, she didn’t eat, and she didn’t speak. She knew Danny had been a mess as well, but he managed to keep it together—perhaps because if he lost it as well, there was no way they’d survive. In that time Danny had managed to find a house for them to board up and stay in until Mia slowly came back. Day by day, she began to be able to function more and more. After that, Mia tried her hardest to make Danny smile, but nothing worked. Since then, it had been a rarity. Something she would have forgotten what it looked like if she didn’t have a family picture with her. But his laugh—that was a sound she couldn’t even recall.

She leaned up to press her lips to his. Even if she was sitting up high, that didn’t change how tall her fiance was. “Maybe in another life we’ll get another shot. Go on plenty of dates. Do stupid things—get kicked out of places and have a laugh about it.” She paused as she brushed his hair out of his face. “Maybe when we leave this place we get a second chance.” She knew it was something stupid to say, and she knew it wasn’t true. But she couldn’t help it—she’d give anything to have a second chance with her family.

[dannyboyjane-blog]

They say time heals all wounds, but for Danny, time wasn't really doing shit. That was why the most she could get out of him was that half-assed smile, perhaps a full one if they had enough time to try and make it work; and a laugh was rare out of his mouth. He simply didn't see much of a point to it anymore; in true stereotypical grief-ridden man fashion, he'd hardened himself when his daughter had died – because it was easier than confronting it.

Death was something he'd thought about a lot, but the thoughts scared him. He liked to believe that their little girl was in a better place, a place where they'd be reunited with her after they, too, were dead, but it didn't seem like a possibility. It was the optimistic way to look at things, but optimism didn't run through his veins anymore.

Still, he knew it was best to humour the idea, if only to make Mia feel better. “It sounds good to me. Hopefully there's still pizza in this other life,” he said – sort of regretting mentioning it as soon as he said it, because his cravings had been too much lately. “I guess we'll find out someday.”

[rlymia-blog]

She pulled herself onto the high reception desk to give her feet a quick rest. Before they did anything—Mia just wanted to see Danny’s smile. This was supposed to be something happy, even if the world around them was falling apart. All she wanted to see was the man she fell in love with shine through the cracks, even if it was briefly. 

She reached out and hooked her fingers in the loops of Danny’s pants, pulling him closer as she rested her hands on the side of his hips. Her eyes were locked with his, the small smile on her lips still. “I’m still telling you, I can’t sew anything and I could have sewn better costumes than that.” Her hands traveled up his body until she wrapped her arms round the back of his neck. “‘Member when we booed really loud at the end and had to duck from security?”

She paused, biting her lip. “I think that’s one of my favourite dates you ever took me on. That was the first date we didn’t have to sneak around and the first time we had the day to ourselves in like eight months. I had a lot of fun that night, even if their costumes were shit and the music was terrible.”

[dannyboyjane-blog]

He embraced the physical contact, placing his hands on her hips. His touch was gentle and his face softened. When she went on, his mouth pulled up in a half smile. He remembered it fondly; their dates were always like that, the two of them acting like idiots and having a good time. They were never “serious adults”, but that was what made them work.

Danny had many regrets, but one of them was definitely not taking her on more dates. It wasn't until the baby was already born that they could come out about their relationship, and from that point on making dates was hard. They hadn't even taken a vacation as a family together like he'd planned.

“It was a good time,” he agreed. “We had to sneak in next time,” he said, remembering how Sarah had gotten her big break here and they'd gone, having to sneak in through the back because security knew about them. The thought of it had his half smile falling as unwelcome memories made themselves known. “I miss dates like that,” he said softly, looking at her.