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Happy Birthday, darling.
Agatha groans, rolls over, and hides her head in her pillow. Don’t remind me. Her back prickles with faint, remembered pain, each scar aching not quite unlike that first time, and with her eyes closed, Agatha remembers falling, remembers the shards of glass, remembers the hospital and screaming—
Cian’s hands slip beneath Agatha’s shirt so that their fingertips can rub gentle along her scars. It’s okay, they croon. I’m here.
You were there then, too. Agatha considers rolling back over so that she can stare up at them, so that she can meet their mossy green eyes with the fierceness she always carries within her but worse on her birthday, but then their fingers begin to press into her tightly wound muscles, and oh, she does not intend to stop them.
You’re right, Cian murmurs as gentle as anything. I was there. They kiss the back of Agatha’s neck so feather soft she barely notices it, except that they kiss her again, a little further down. When she lets out a muffled groan of approval, they grin against her skin. Is this helping, my love?
What do you think? Agatha rolls onto her back just as Cian’s hands find the small of her waist. Then she smirks up at them. It’s a little early to be that handsy, babe.
Cian’s eyes widen, brows raising in mock surprise. Is it? Their thumb brushes against Agatha’s hipbone where it just juts against her skin. I believe it was you who told me it was never too early.
I didn’t say too early. Agatha leans up and kisses them. Just early. She hums with approval as one of Cian’s hands moves, as their fingers wind through her hair, and smiles against their lips. Happy Birthday to me.
Afterwards, Cian curls up against Agatha’s back and holds her to them. Their fingers find the nearly flat curve of her stomach and rest there. I can feel a heartbeat.
Don’t. The word slips out before Agatha even thinks about it. She places her fingers over Cian’s, tangles them together, and lays them flat. It’s only been a few weeks. She doesn’t mention how she’s felt it herself once or twice, usually when she’s in the shower, when her own hands trace her not yet swollen stomach and she stands beneath the spray and thinks.
Cian kisses the back of her sweaty neck and snuggles closer to her. This one will stay. I know it.
Don’t, Agatha repeats. She absolutely refuses to get her hopes up this time. Absolutely refuses. They’ve made it to the heartbeat stage so many times by now, but her body hasn’t been able to sustain anything. Or maybe the child simply doesn’t want to be hers. (It’s neither. Bodies act the way bodies act. It’s not really anything she can control. She mourns the unnamed children that could have been all the same.)
Once, she’d made it to the second trimester; once, she’d been able to feel her child moving within her; once, she’d taken Cian’s hand and placed it on her stomach and saw their face light up with wonder. Three days later, she lost the child. It’s hard enough to keep trying, to keep hoping that—
It’s my birthday, Agatha reminds her love. Not today. She bites her lower lip, scars starting to ache once more, and pulls herself out of Cian’s arms. She sits naked on the edge of their bed, fingers pressing into their mattress. Sometimes, she wonders what Cian sees when she does this, if they just look at the knot of scars, if they can see through the wild tangle of dark hair that she’d rather hide all of it, if they remember when she’d been nothing more than skin and bones. (Skin and bones is easier than broken hope, and she has had such broken hope.)
Cian shifts. They curl against Agatha again, wrapping their arms around her waist, and all Agatha can think of is their intentional scars pressing up against her unintentional ones. She aches.
My apologies, dearest one. Cian kisses the tip of her shoulder blade, and she aches. You know that I never mean to harm you.
But Agatha’s brain is stuck in a spiral now. She wants to say that of course Cian never means to harm her. It’s never about what’s meant but what is done. She disentangles herself from their grasp once more. I just need to be alone. Just for a little bit. She tugs strands of hair over her shoulder, strings them between her lips. Is that…is that okay?
She doesn’t have to turn to know the way Cian’s head nods once, low, when they say, Of course, doesn’t have to turn to know the worried fondness loud in their mossy green eyes. In fact, it’s the latter that keeps her from turning at all. Sometimes, their love hurts her more than it helps.
Sometimes, she thinks it’s their hope that catches her in flames.
Her brain always gets to her on her birthday. Today is no better and no worse. The flashes of memory rock through her even in the hottest of showers – so hot her pale skin turns a bright, sunburned red; so hot she breathes in nothing but steam and nearly chokes on the water coating her lungs – and she finds herself leaning hard against the tile with her eyes closed, trying to let them finish before she carries on with the rest of her day.
This is, of course, a lie. It doesn’t matter if she lets them come harder, faster, earlier in the day. They’ll come back later. They always do. That’s what her birthday means now. That’s just what it means.
Her breathing is still heavy as she towels off, as she drapes herself in clothes that won’t rub poorly against her back. Pulls her hair back so that it sits out of her face, ties it off with a lavender ribbon so that she doesn’t get a headache from it being tied back too tightly. Wipes the fog from the mirror and looks at her own bloodshot eyes.
It is what it is.
Normally, when she leaves the bathroom on a day like this, Agatha smells whatever Cian is cooking. What that is differs due to time of day or how creative they’re feeling – or how much they’ll think she’ll eat. Today, she smells nothing, which makes her admittedly empty stomach drop. Maybe they’ve given up, too. Maybe they’re okay with today being a day where she doesn’t have to eat, doesn’t have to do anything, can just stay in the bed curled up against them and not be anyone or anywhere.
Not even be.
But when Agatha explores the house, searching for them, she finds Cian waiting for her in the kitchen just like they always do first thing in the morning, a mug of tea grasped between their hands. As soon as they see her, they set the mug to one side, move to her, take her hand in theirs, and lead her to the door that connects the kitchen to the garage. C’mon, they say. We’re going out.
No. Agatha digs her heels in. I’m not presentable like this, Cian. She flushes with embarrassment. I’m not even wearing a bra.
Cian tugs harder. C’mon, they repeat, just as gentle and soft as they had before. We’re going out.
Cian—
But Cian is stronger than Agatha is, and they lift her up and carry her into the garage. Normally, their strength is attractive; normally, Agatha gets a rise out of being lifted like this. Even now, she reaches out for that feeling, finds it curling up in the center of her chest, and tries to fan it into flame because that would be better than everything else. She wraps her arms around Cian’s neck and buries her head in their chest. It’s my birthday, she mumbles feebly. Please don’t make me do this.
Cian chuckles, the sound rumbling through their chest. You don’t even know where we’re going.
Agatha glances up and meets their eyes with a glare. I know that we’re not taking that fucking death trap of a car that you think—
No, no, dear. I would never make you ride in the DeLorean. Not on your birthday.
Agatha nods. That flame of anger flees as quickly as it arrived, and she feels nothing more than empty again. She lets Cian set her in the passenger’s seat, lets them buckle her in as though she is nothing more than a child, lets them drive away without even trying to get out and run back into the house. She leans up against the window and closes her eyes.
Agatha doesn’t crack her eyes open when Cian takes them through a drive-through – she doesn’t like fast food because she doesn’t like food, most days, particularly when she’s like this, but when she does eat fast food, on the days when she feels at her best, this is the one that she likes best – but does, finally, when the car rumbles to a stop. She glances out on one entrance to her favorite trail – Cian’s favorite trail – and lets out a deep breath. Why are we here?
C’mon, Cian murmurs. You need to get moving.
Agatha drags herself out of the car. She wraps her arms around herself; she’s cold because she didn’t plan on actually getting out and so hadn’t clothed herself so as to keep herself warm. Not that it much matters.
Then Cian wraps her in an even thicker blanket, which helps. When they start forward, she starts forward. They hand her an egg sandwich. Eat.
She doesn’t want to eat. She needs to eat. She doesn’t particularly care enough to eat. But she cares enough about Cian to eat something, so she takes the sandwich, unwraps it, and takes a bite. It tastes like ash. To be fair, everything would taste like ash right now. Cian also hands her a cup, which warms her hands, and when she takes a sip, the hot chocolate within burns her tongue. Not that she minds.
Cian hands her more food, which she eats. None of it tastes good. But she doesn’t feel like fighting with them about it. Eventually, they step off of the beaten path over to an area that she knows quite well, and that warms her heart even more than the hot chocolate had. She follows them to the bench and sits down next to them.
When she was much, much younger, Cian had explained being nonbinary here. Agatha admitted she liked girls and might have liked Cian, too, although she hadn’t been that specific. She’d known it, then, but she’d been seventeen, and while she’d admitted it to herself, she didn’t want to admit it to them. After the birthday that she doesn’t want to remember but can’t help but remember, they’d walked up and down this trail many, many times, often stopping here so that Agatha could catch her breath or so that they could eat something before continuing. (Sometimes, Cian wouldn’t let her continue without eating because that was part of the problem to begin with.) This was where Agatha finally kissed Cian when she was nineteen, because she didn’t know how to put into words how much she liked them, and where they’d kissed her back, although she’d never expected that at all.
It’s also where Cian proposed and where they got married – a very small group of just family before a much, much larger reception.
As Agatha sits down, Cian wraps an arm around her shoulders, and she leans against their chest. Thank you, she murmurs, snuggling closer to them. She shifts the blanket wrapped around her so that it covers them as well.
Of course, my love.
Agatha leans up just enough to kiss Cian’s jaw and then buries her head against her neck. It’s not much. It doesn’t have to be. She just needs to feel warm again, and here, she does.