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"Do you want kids?"
Of all the questions Courtney could have expected or wanted to hear shortly after being thoroughly fucked into her mattress, that one had to be somewhere near the bottom of the list. She wasn't exactly the superstitious type, but it did feel a little like tempting fate.
She turned over to face Robert. "Kind of an awkward thing to ask five minutes after filling me like one of your favorite donuts, don't you think?"
He chuckled at the crass comparison, nervously running one hand through his sweaty hair. "Yeah, sorry, I realized that a split second too late to stop myself from saying it."
"It's fine, post-nut honesty can be a real bitch. It's not like I've never said weird 'on the mind, out the mouth' stuff after sex."
"Like the time you asked if I was breastfed as a baby?"
"No, I meant that one. You really like sucking my tits, I was just thinking there might be a reason for that."
Robert dropped his head back against the pillow and let out a sound somewhere between a groan and a laugh. "They're nice tits, and you clearly enjoy having them sucked. It's really not deeper than that."
She couldn't help but giggle at the blush that crept across his cheeks, visible even in the dim light. "Okay, freak, keep telling yourself that."
It wasn't that she was trying to deflect from the question he'd asked. Or maybe she was, just a bit. Not to avoid it entirely, but just to put it off a little longer. They'd only recently started talking about moving in together, any future plans beyond that seemed impossibly distant.
And then, of course, there was the issue of her being genuinely unsure of how to answer a question that at one time she wouldn't have even had to think about.
"It's definitely been on my mind," he admitted after a moment.
"Well, do you want kids?" Clearly, there was no getting out of this. Time to go on the offensive. Or was turning the question around on him going on the defensive? Whatever.
Surprisingly, Robert went along with it. "If you'd asked me that maybe six months ago, I would have said absolutely not. Lately, though, it's been less absolute."
Not exactly the answer she'd expected. She could work with this. "So less of a 'hell no' and more 'maybe?'"
"I don't think it was ever really a 'hell no.' More like I just assumed it wasn't in the cards for me."
"Because you didn't think you'd live this long," Courtney already knew where he was going. She could relate. Stable relationships and families weren't for people who went by names like Invisibitch, so she hadn't seen any reason to think that hard about her future.
"Right," he slid his arm over her, pulling her closer. "I was going to die in the suit, I felt pretty certain about that. I didn't want to be another father who was never around and then gone for good too soon."
"Understandable. And now?"
"Now that I'm finally letting myself believe I have a future, I'm rethinking a lot of things." Robert continued. "And then I'm second-guessing those things. I start thinking that I could be a better father than I had. Then I start thinking that sounds spiteful, and spite is a shitty reason to have a kid."
"It's not the worst reason I can think of. Don't some people have kids and then push them to be actors or football players so they can mooch off of them?"
"Depressing, but true. You want to hear something fucked up?"
She propped herself up on one arm, leaning in closer. "Always."
"I was only six when my mom died, so I guess it makes sense that I don't remember much about her. But I had ten more years with my dad, and it hit me recently, I don't feel like I knew him any better."
"Shit," Courtney exhaled. "Yeah, that's kind of heavy."
"Sorry," he reached out and caught her wrist, kissing it lightly. "I know, I could have had it a lot worse."
"You also could have had it better. I don't know, maybe thinking about having kids and being better than our parents doesn't have to be spiteful. It's not like either of us would have to try too hard to be better parents than we had."
He seemed to sense the slight shift in her tone and went along with it. Dark humor as a coping mechanism was nothing new to them. "Let's see, we'd both have to be alive, and present."
"We wouldn't be having a kid right out of high school, so we've already got my parents beat there. But we'd both have to stay sober, and sane. Well, relatively sane. And if we had more than one kid, we'd have to keep them both alive." She felt him tense at that and rolled her eyes. "It's fine, Robert, you can laugh about my fucked-up, depressing family. I do it all the time."
"You don't have to just laugh about it, though. If it helps to actually talk about her-"
"It probably will, at some point. I've kept it all buried for twenty years, I'm just starting to dig it up in therapy. I'll get there." Courtney lay back down, resting her head on his outstretched arm.
"No rush," he pulled her against him and kissed her forehead. "I'm just glad you've felt comfortable opening up to me about it at all. I can't imagine how hard it was to carry something like that by yourself."
"It helps that you're easy to open up to." Not that long ago, she would have added a joke about opening up to him in a different way, just to push down the emotions that she now let herself sit with for a minute. "Anyway, I think this weird little post-sex trauma bonding session started with you asking me if I want to bear your spawn?"
"Don't think that's how I phrased it, but sure, let's go with that."
She took a moment, letting herself just feel him next to her. Warm, solid, and real. Offering her a glimpse of a potential future that she'd never allowed herself to even think about, much less want. "Not to be totally unoriginal, but if you'd asked me six months ago I would have said absolutely not. Now it's less absolute."
He lifted his head, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "So that's a maybe?"
"A maybe that's leaning a little towards yes, I think? Not anytime soon, obviously. We've both got a lot more baggage to unpack. And I want you all to myself for a while."
"Can't argue with any of that. But I think I'm leaning a little more towards yes, too."
In the dim light from the street lamp outside her window, she could just make out his face. Her body reacted automatically to the way he was looking at her, his gaze becoming heated. "Wait, are you getting turned on thinking about getting me barefoot and pregnant, like some kind of neanderthal-"
He cut her off with a kiss, smiling against her lips. "Well now that you brought it up, I am picturing what you'd look like pregnant."
Courtney smacked him in the middle of his chest and let out a shocked, entirely undignified sound. "Oh my god, you're seriously imagining me all fat and bloated and smiling about it? You really are a perv."
"You are way too easy to rile up," he overpowered her easily, grabbing her wrists and pinning them to the bed with one hand as he moved over her. "Actually, I was thinking that just because we're not ready to think seriously about having kids doesn't mean we can't, you know, practice."
Her irritation melted away in an instant, the energy between them shifting when his free hand trailed down her body, hooking under her knee to draw her leg over his arm. "You are such a fucking dork. But I guess you do have a point."
"So if I'm a dork, what does that make you?"
"Stupidly in love with a fucking dork," she sighed, winding her arms around his neck and pulling him down on top of her.
"Love you, too," Robert laughed softly before claiming her lips in a deep kiss.
Just before he made her mind go completely blank, she realized that not too long ago, this conversation would have sent her running. There was still a voice somewhere in the back of her head, telling her things were getting way too real, that the inevitable crash back to reality was imminent and she'd be better off getting out now.
She ignored that voice, instead letting Robert's hands on her body and his weight on top of her keep her grounded in the moment.