We need to talk [Nathan] on Sonora Lounges

Isis Carter

August 13, 2018 5:12 PM

We need to talk [Nathan] by Isis Carter

It wasn’t a stomach bug. Oh dear God it wasn’t a stomach bug. It was so much worse than a stomach bug.

When the nausea didn’t fade after a few more days, Isis had decided to check in with the medic, just to make sure it wasn’t anything more serious. She had been certain that it was nothing, that she was wasting both of their time. She had certainly not in any way, shape, or form thought that it would be… well, this.

She had to tell Nathan. Unfortunately, their schedules did not seem to be very oriented to this goal today; at every turn, she missed him. Occasionally she would pop into a location just to be told, “Oh, you just missed him!” At this she would groan but try not to let on too much, thank the person for their help, and continue on her way.

It was evening now, with classes all done, so she hoped that finding the Herbology professor would be less of a difficult task. After some wandering and searching, Isis happened to cross paths with her fiance in the hallway just outside the staff lounge. “Hey!” she called, a bit frantic. She speedwalked closer to him, and in one surprisingly deft motion - an impressive feat given Nathan’s stature and build compared to hers - she opened the door and pushed him into the lounge. “I have to talk to you,” she said, scanning the room to guarantee they were alone. Fortunately, they were. A lump tried to form in her throat, but she swallowed it down. Why couldn’t it just be a stomach bug? “Now.”

12 Isis Carter We need to talk [Nathan] 31 Isis Carter 1 5

Nathan Xavier

August 14, 2018 11:01 AM

Eep? by Nathan Xavier

Nathan missed the summer already. He was sure he’d get back into the swing of teaching once he had a couple weeks under his belt and wasn’t regularly comparing it to months relaxing next to the ocean, but right now it just felt so busy. Also, there seemed to be so many people around after a summer of primarily just him and Isis in their isolated little cabin on the shore. Sure, there had been visits to see family, and his brother’s house with their three teenaged boys was chaos incarnate, but they’d had to make intentional effort to run into other people. Not so now.

Now it seemed like they had to make intentional effort to see each other.

Which Isis was doing right now, but in a much more intent and worrisome way than he had been considering. He knew she’d been feeling a bit off the last few days, so he’d been planning to invite her to his room for bland food and a massage. But kidnapping him into the staff lounge worked, too, he supposed. Pecari directness at work.

“I have to talk to you. Now.”

Nathan felt his eyes widening and his heart speeding up at those words. This did not sound good. In fact, it sounded downright terrifying.

“What’s wrong?”

1 Nathan Xavier Eep? 28 Nathan Xavier 0 5

Isis

August 14, 2018 11:45 AM

Correct by Isis

“What’s wrong?”

“Everything,” she answered a bit too quickly, primarily because she hadn’t been intending to say that out loud. Isis took a deep breath in to calm herself, but much to her own chagrin, it seemed to have the opposite effect. The moment of pause have her more time to think, more time to remember the last time.

There was something she had to tell Nathan, something she’d had to tell a man before. To say the previous experience had soured her a bit on the matter was a gentle phrasing: this was an immediate nightmare to relive. Everything was different now, and Nathan was the literal polar opposite of Nevaeh’s biological father, but the memory stood. Almost being killed - and watching someone else die - was a scar that didn’t fully fade.

She tried to speak, but nothing came out, a lump forming in her throat that she couldn’t seem to swallow this time. Isis stared up at him, fears past and future clear in her foggy eyes, her dark complexion dropping shades as she paled out. Not knowing what else to do but needing to convey, Isis reached out sharply and grabbed Nathan’s hand, pulling it back just as quickly to rest on her abdomen. “We have a serious problem,” she managed at last.

12 Isis Correct 31 Isis 0 5

Nathan

August 14, 2018 12:31 PM

Oh, well, right then by Nathan

At first he didn’t understand. He got that there was a problem. He saw quite clearly that it was scaring the very color out of Isis. But it took entirely too long for the penny to drop, for him to realize there was significance to where she placed his hand on her body that had nothing to do with her ongoing stomach upset.

And then the penny did drop.

He gasped and his eyes widened further and he first paled and then flushed as his mind supplied visual memories to literally answer his unspoken question of ‘how?’ Right then. Well.

“Oh,” he said somewhat inadequately.

He supposed he ought to say more than that, but he had no idea what he should say, what Isis wanted him to say. What Isis feared he would say. Clearly she feared something, so he definitely needed to not say that, whatever it was.

“That moves up out engagement plans then, I guess?” he ventured cautiously. He was internally relieved he’d already asked (well, mostly asked), so she knew he wanted to marry her for her, and not because he felt obligated to do so now, because of this. “And I suppose we’ll have to tell Selina sooner rather than later about those plans and that we’d like to have shared staff quarters now. Are there even family quarters here?” Sophie had lived off campus, but her husband wasn’t also a teacher . . .

Then, after a moment, he remembered there was something more immediate to ask than those practicalities. “Are, are you okay with this?”

That her verbalizations so far had been ‘everything is wrong’ and ‘we have a problem’ suggested that she probably wasn’t, but he hoped that had more to do with the timing and surprise factor than because she objected to having children together at all.

1 Nathan Oh, well, right then 28 Nathan 0 5

Isis

August 14, 2018 6:38 PM

Pretty much by Isis

Of course.

Of course Nathan was trying to plan and make things work even though it was a total wrench in all of the existing plans. Of course he was going to make sure it was all okay, even if it wasn’t. Of course he wanted to fix it all while she stood there stupid with her head spinning. Because Nathan was amazing and perfect and so goddamn good, a true Teppenpaw until the very end. But Isis wasn’t. And for the Head of Pecari, she didn’t feel very flexible and adaptive at the moment, either.

“Are, are you okay with this?”

Her hands rose to her head, first covering her face for a moment and then dragging over her shaved scalp and settling like a vice grip where her neck and shoulders merged. She pulled away from him as she did this, pacing a bit, but her fearful eyes came back to him. She shook her head, first stiffly and slow as if she almost couldn’t and then gaining momentum. Isis suppressed tears, mostly. “No,” she reiterated. “Not really.”

“Nathan, I’m just…” The substitute professor gave a weak laugh, and her arms fell against her sides in frustration, or perhaps defeat. “I’m really, really bad at being a mom.” Maybe if she’d been older, if Nevaeh had been planned, if Deontay hadn’t... Well, maybe then things would’ve been different. But they weren’t. She had started out too young, and she’d done nothing but make mistakes ever since. The only right choice she’d made was giving up her parental claims to the Reeds.

She looked at him with the rarest, rawest vulnerability and said the only two words she had left in her body: “I’m scared.”

12 Isis Pretty much 31 Isis 0 5

Nathan

August 15, 2018 10:26 AM

We’ll figure it out by Nathan

Nathan let Isis move away. He understood that sometimes people just needed to move when they were distressed and Isis was clearly distressed. His heart sank a little when she declared she wasn’t okay with the situation, and he felt a stab of sadness when she claimed to be a bad mom. He suspected that was the root of her distress. It was a terrible thing to believe about yourself (Nathan didn’t think it was true, but he wasn’t sure how to convince her otherwise) but a small tension inside him loosened because as uncertain as Isis was of her ability to parent, at least the problem didn’t seem to be that she didn’t want to parent. That was important.

When she said she was scared, he went to her and silently wrapped her in a hug. He said nothing for a long time, partly because he just wanted to be there with and for her, and partly because he was trying desperately to figure out what he could say to ease her fears and admittedly justified anxiety. Isis did not exactly have the best relationship with her current daughter and had voluntarily given up her parental rights to her firstborn. It was hardly a background that inspired confidence in future child rearing activities.

Nathan himself was forty-nine years old. He had basically written off the opportunity to have children as lost almost a decade ago. When he asked Isis to marry him, he’d known children would be a sticky topic and had decided he would leave that choice up to her. He wouldn’t pressure her, or even raise the suggestion until she gave a sign that it was something she wanted.

Well, that plan was smashed down into paste.

So he was scared too. Maybe knowing that would help her. So he admitted, “I’m scared, too. I’m almost fifty. I figured this ship had sailed for me. But we’ve got each other. We’ll learn this parenting thing together, the old man and the false start mom. That’s something you didn’t have last time around. We’re a team, and we’ve got support.” He gave a gentle smile, “My mom has been bemoaning that all her grandsons have outgrown her babysitting and how much she misses it.”

Nathan would not deny that such pointed bemoanings had influenced his decision to pop the question sooner rather than any later, but he had warned his mother not to expect grandchildren or even the wedding anytime soon.

That plan got smashed to paste, too.

“And my brother raised three boys who all survived to their teen years, so we can ask him questions, and Sophie’s youngest will just be a couple years older, so maybe she’ll be interested in playdates.” He chuckled in a way that was only a little forced. “She may even try to foist old baby things off on us to get it out of her house.” His brother had done the same when Dylan was getting too big for those things. Not to Nathan, of course, but to his wife’s cousins who were having babies.

“And I think even Louisa will be glad to have a baby visit her. She asks after Nevaeh often enough.”

He pulled back and squeezed Isis’ hands. “We’ll figure it out. This time you’ll get a fair shake at being a mom.”

1 Nathan We’ll figure it out 28 Nathan 0 5