The rise of AI slop & the endless waves of books that feel written to spec by people who are terrified of their own audiences has given me a new appreciation for Anne Rice. It's not even that she didn't give a fuck; she cared passionately and was famously, publicly hurt by the reception of at least one of her novels, but she never let that distract her from her mission of writing whatever the fuck she wanted. No one could write Anne Rice's books except Anne Rice. They are singularly, entirely hers and while I won't pretend she was a perfect person or it's wrong for readers to be offended or uninterested in spending their one and only life on earth reading something that offends them, I also think her work is valuable and humane and also often hilarious and it's not a crime to have a muse you adore.
“papa, go— agh!” lucian squeaks like a chew toy when sylus squeezes him tighter in his arms.
kyros relishes in the feeling, chest gently tucked beneath the weight of his father’s forearm.
“go, out! time t’sleep!” lucian insists, pressing his palms against sylus’s jaw. they are met with little pecks and kisses from the stubborn dragon. “my race car bed!”
kyros is already half asleep.
“lucian, i thought we talked about sharing.” sylus titters, eyes closed. he rubs salt in the child’s woes when he snuggles further into the pillows.
sylus doesn’t budge even a little. “shh, your brother is asleep.”
“hmph!” having given up, lucian wriggles out of his big lizard papa’s embrace, takes his blanket and his worn out stuffed dragon, juice, and trudges out of the bedroom.
“lucian!” sylus calls, but makes no movement to follow.
he grumbles. it looks like he’s upset two of his family members today.
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you don’t turn when the door to your bedroom swings open. still brewing in the upset your husband has caused you after an extended mission held him back from coming home early.
it was the no contact that got you. and while it was technically no fault of his own, it still ticked on your nerves how he came back all cavalier and cool, acting as if he’d just gone on vacation instead of this life threatening affair.
and while he tried to appease you and apologize for his behavior, you are already too far gone and want nothing to do with him— for maybe about twenty minutes.
well, now it’s been fifteen, and he’s surely come back to make up again.
you’ll chew his ear out for coming back prematurely— you had five minutes left to sulk, after all— but thats mostly for the drama at this point.
but your tongue freezes in place when the shock of white hair that you open your eyes to is not of sylus’s, but lucian’s.
“baby?” you wonder, pulling him close when he successfully gets his little feet under the covers and cuddles up angrily to his dragon. “woosi, what are you doing here?”
“papa take my race car bed, hmph!” he huffs. if you hadn’t been this close, you would have missed the smoke that puffs from his nose when he does. “and—and kee-ro sleepin’ there too.”
you gasp lightly. peppering his forehead with kisses to make him feel better. sympathy coats your voice. “no space for you?”
“no more space for woosian!” he thumps his heel against the mattress and pouts into your cheek. as if ashamed of his tantrum.
your heart gives way for his pain. gently nudging yours aside for the meantime, you realize this is partly your doing. sylus has always sought comfort immediately from you after fights and quarrels, but since the boys, he’d found also that going to them can make his own sorrows cease if only for a little while.
“sorry, angel.” you sigh, brushing back his hair from his teary eyes. “this is my fault. papa made me mad so i asked him for space.”
“papa made mama mad?” he frowns, brow creasing like sylus’s does.
“yes, but i’m okay now.” you sit up. straightening your back, you take him up by the armpits and give him a squeeze. “i’ll go call papa and you can have your race car bed back. how’s that sound?”
you get as far as pushing the covers off before lucian is pulling them back on.
“papa sleepin’ now.” he tells you. eyes big and round full of processing emotions and quiet understanding. “not nice to wakey.”
“oh?”
“woosian have space here.” he tells you, crawling off your lap and back in place where you plucked him from. where juice patiently waits for his return. “woosian stay with mama.”
you swallow down your own building tears.
because how could such a little heart have so much space for you and your feelings?
how could he possibly understand?
and yet, here he is. blinking, waiting for you. respecting the five minutes left of distance between you and his father by giving up his own right to his own bed.
“lucian…” you coo, propping his head up your arm and kissing his nose. “your heart is pure as gold.”
“my heart have blood.” he says, eyes screwed shut. his childish way of putting himself to sleep and acting nonchalant about it all. “mistoo waf says that in skoo.”
“yes,” you giggle, already feeling better. “but mama says your heart is gold, and i’m your best friend and also! i made you.”
“in your belly?” he asks.
“in my belly.” you affirm.
“we best fwends in your belly?” he opens his eyes, the concept exciting him.
“yes.” you grin.
“i like dat.” he giggles, shy into your shoulder. you gift him another kiss on the cheek before drifting off to sleep.
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later, sylus will come, kyros dangling off his arm like a stretchy kitten, and find that he has no space on his big red bed.
in his place, the wife he’s wronged is curled around his hatchling that he has also betrayed, foreheads touching as they sleep.
he can’t help the pride that surges in his chest at the sight. and the fact that his son had come in to offer you comfort when he could not.
he places kyros down under the covers beside his brother, and leans over to feather a kiss on your forehead.
on his way, he pets lucian’s hair. “good job, angel.”
only eyes as keen as his could have caught the plump of the cheeks that form into a small smile.
It's summer, it's so hot that Eddie spends all his time at Steve's.
Everyone is convinced they're having a secret relationship, but Eddie defends himself by saying he's just there to enjoy Steve's pool. As everyone knows, he can't stand the heat, and Steve is kind enough to let him use his pool. If there's any secret relationship going on, it's between Eddie and the pool, certainly not between Eddie and Steve.
Everyone seems more or less convinced by Eddie's arguments and moves on to something else. Everyone except Robin…
And she's absolutely right not to be convinced, because Eddie and Steve have been having a secret relationship for several months already.
(Robin cornered Steve to make him confess the truth. He tried to deny it by echoing Eddie's arguments, but she gave him a “not to me, Steve Harrington” look, and he was forced to confess everything. As if he could hide anything from his platonic soulmate, anyway).
