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Four-fingered hands splayed out over Cipher’s abdomen. A gentle caress ghosted over his skin, and goosebumps followed in the wake of his fingertips. As his hands moved, Bill’s head gradually pivoted until his glassy-eyed stare met the human body that he now inhabited.
Looking in the bathroom mirror was odd. Bill didn’t think he’d ever see himself like this. How could he have predicted the chips would fall this way? Tilting his head further to rest against his shoulder, he stared intently at his stomach. Cradling the ever-growing bump carefully in his hands as he became lost in the moment, Bill nearly didn’t feel as though he were seeing himself. The person in the mirror felt like someone entirely different; Bill wasn’t sure he could return to the being he once was now.
The blurred lines of reality and fantasy had gone too far, and now he was unsure of who he was. Cipher hardly knew who he used to be before something was building within him that he couldn’t stop. Pieces to a chess game he didn’t know how to play were already in motion, and every move changed the board.
When he’d heard from the doctors about what the pregnancy would be like, it was horrifying. Bill had hated nearly every minute of the discussion, both as it happened and after it was over. He especially hated it because he was so stressed about the part that came after. The whole “being a parent” thing freaked him out a bit.
After everything they had been through, he’d never thought a day like that one would come: a day in which he’d hold a positive pregnancy test in a human body. A surreal set of circumstances had already brought them to this point, and now things were becoming more complicated.
When they’d figured out Bill was pregnant, there was quite a bit of shouting. After the shouting came the crying, and after the crying came the heavy feeling on their shoulders that dragged them both to sit down. That day was sixteen weeks ago.
The only reason Bill knew how long it had been was because of the diligent calendar Ford kept in the lab. He had insisted on doing extra check ups on Bill in between the typical doctor’s visits. At first, he preferred it, because at least then he was comfortable. Now that the bump was more pronounced, Bill wasn’t comfortable anymore.
It had happened around the 12 week mark, when the bump first became apparent. He’d stared in the mirror just like this as tears pooled in his eyes. It had taken so long for him to accept this body, and now an intruder was going to change everything about it. He began to wonder if Ford saw him this way, how he would feel.
An uncertain dread settled over his bones. Would Ford be disturbed by the ways it altered his state of being? Would he be fascinated if only for the chance to study something new? Most of their conversations these days were that: the scientific parameters of such a thing. There was no true discussion of a child.
Whatever the creature he was creating was, it decidedly wasn’t their child to Ford: it was a new scientific discovery. The insinuation made him sick—although, maybe it was the morning sickness that did such a thing, but Bill wasn't sure which it would rather be. Child or experiment–which was better in their eyes of its father? Potentially, he wanted it to be a secret third option—nonexistent.
Rejoining the present, his eye flicked back to the bump. As he ghosted his hands over his own taut skin and watched the movement in the mirror, he could feel a shiver run down his spine. It was as if the action were happening to someone else, but he could feel the touch all the same.
The sound of his phone chiming snapped him out of the haze. Quickly, he let his shirt cover himself and picked up his phone to see a message from Ford. It was time for one of their check-ins. Swallowing thickly, Bill left the bathroom to head to the gift shop.
The oversized mystery shack t-shirt hid a lot, but it did no good when he knew Ford would be looking under it. Cipher had been skating around the idea of Ford seeing him fully; he wasn’t sure how to handle that fear—the worry that Ford would view him differently, worse somehow.
Anxiety gnawed at him, and to dispel the feeling, he stopped by the kitchen to rifle through the fridge. He ended up settling on leftover scrambled eggs and macaroni and cheese covered in sour cream. Carrying a container and a fork, he chewed and walked before waiting for Ford outside of the vending machine.
Soon enough, Ford joined him, and they started the quiet descent downstairs. Every creaky floorboard and rickety cog of the elevator put him on edge, but Cipher did his best not to think about it. Instead, he focused on the large container of food. He just wanted to get this over with.
The faster they were done, the faster he could go hide again in his room. If he was hiding, then he could let his mind play tricks that this whole thing was happening to someone else. If it was someone else's problem, he wouldn’t be Ford’s lab experiment anymore.
Maybe then he’d be a person instead of a freakshow.
Once they were in the lab, Bill strode over to the nearby worktable and sat on the countertop with his tupperware. Ford picked up his journal specifically for these check-ins and set it beside various medical equipment he’d acquired over the last few weeks. He brought a stethoscope to his ears before holding up its end.
“Take deep breaths…” Ford mumbled as he slid the cold metal under his shirt.
Bill winced at the sensation but tried to calm his breaths despite his wariness. Just stay still until he’s done. The feeling of Ford under his clothing was unnerving, especially because he was wary of all the changes. Bill tried convincing himself as the stethoscope moved across his chest. “Sixer…is all this really necessary?” he asked, slight exasperation in his voice.
Ford nodded solemnly before removing the device and jotting down notes. “Yes, what if those doctors miss something? The situation is unprecedented,” he replied easily. The words sounded so clinical in his throat, as if he were speaking to someone else–someone unimportant.
The situation is unprecedented. Bill pressed his lips into a fine line and tried to follow instructions, inhaling deeply then exhaling slowly over and over until Ford was satisfied. As he disassociated from the scenario he’d been placed in, his mind wandered to what he knew Euclidean pregnancy had been like.
Vaguely, his mind combed through what little he remembered. The Euclydean body didn’t change nearly as much as his human one currently was. Children were non-invasive during development, and the whole process wrapped up within a few months as opposed to a year. The bump wasn’t a thing, let alone all the pesky symptoms that were steadily making his life more difficult.
Between the soreness that radiated throughout his body, the nausea and the overheating of the meat suit, he felt increasingly ready for it to be over. However, Bill knew he had a long way to go before he’d reach the finish line. The doctors had made that fact explicitly clear during his visits because he was constantly asking.
Cipher barely noticed himself as he set a hand on the bump to rub small circles while he thought and Ford wrote. It wasn’t until the mortal turned and his eyes flicked to the movement that Bill became hyperaware. “Are you in any pain?” Ford asked, standing straighter and taking a blood pressure cuff from the table beside him.
His hand froze in its patterns, but he didn’t let it drop to his side. Instead, he cradled it and presented his other arm for the blood pressure cuff. Even if this was an intruder, he found something oddly comforting about the gesture. His mind wandered as he considered his own mother doing something similar when she was pregnant with him.
A new wave of nausea hit him, and this time, it wasn’t morning sickness. “No…I’m not,” he spoke absentmindedly. His mind was somewhere much farther away as Ford fastened the cuff around his bicep. “I was just thinking, that's all.”
Ford hummed in acknowledgement as he went through the motions. “About…?” he asked simply. Cipher noted that he didn’t sound entirely uninterested; Ford was only minorly distracted. These days, a minor distraction was a miracle in and of itself.
Sitting up straighter, Bill tried to find his composure. “Just…this.” His voice was slightly strained as he gestured to his midriff. “This isn’t really a thing where I’m from…” Bill supplied. He wished he didn’t sound so pathetic about it.
Tilting his head slightly, Ford replied, “Pregnancy? Then how did you reproduce?” A newfound curiosity resided in his tone; in a different time, that would have piqued Bill’s interest. However, such a tone now had the exact opposite effect.
Rolling his eyes, Bill retorted, “We had pregnancy, Smart Guy—it just worked completely different.” Ford seemed to wait for him to elaborate as he removed the cuff and started scribbling again. “The process was more…streamlined, I suppose. The child essentially sat above the Euclidean body and was tethered to the mother somewhat magnetically…”
Ford listened intently, noting it down in the margins of his current reporting. Bill went on to explain how much care the mother was given to ensure nothing went awry and how the child would essentially detach from that magnetic hold once born. There wasn’t any mess or weird symptoms, no alteration to the physical form. Not to mention, it didn’t take nearly as long to form a child.
Mumbling something about it having to do with the simplicity of the Euclidean body, Ford had moved from margins to an entirely new page. One side had facts Bill had told him verbatim, and the other had Ford’s theories on why those facts worked that way. It was entirely more detailed than it needed to be, but that was how Ford functioned when it came to learning something new.
All the while, Bill rubbed small circles across his stomach and spoke at length. He wanted to be annoyed with those differences, but in this case, they almost made him melancholic. Before he knew it, tears had welled up in his eyes and fell without resistance.
When Ford glanced up from his writing, he dropped his pen to turn to him. “What’s wrong?” he asked, his gaze softening as he stepped closer to the table. Reaching up, Ford cupped his face to brush the tears away as they fell.
Through staggered hiccups, Bill replied, “It’s just—this wasn’t supposed to happen…not like this, and I—I don’t know what to do with myself…” His breathing picked up as the anxiety swelled in his chest. Ford’s thumbs against his cheeks grounded him slightly. “Everything is just happening so fast, and you’re—”
Bill cut himself off, snapping his mouth shut as he wished he hadn’t started this to begin with. Articulating how he felt seemed impossible. Cipher was attempting to scale Everest without the proper equipment. Each step was strenuous as he wandered uphill with the wind biting at his face. The tears flowed over, forging a path he desperately wished he didn’t have to tread down.
You’re just caught up in the science of it all. Maybe that’s what made things harder, how cold the man who was once his partner now was. All of this was some strange discovery for one of his journals, something new to pull apart and haphazardly glue back together.
It was as if this wasn’t a child; it was an intrusion and an experiment. Something that would have been celebrated in his home dimension and met with such warmth was now entirely too cold. Since they had gotten the news, Ford only regarded him as a patient. Any sweet nothings and soft touches were a long forgotten memory.
Truly, the lack of affection may just have been the tipping point. It was already bad enough that he was hindered in movement and ability, but losing one of the few connections he had reforged was breaking him more than he’d like to admit. The intruder within his very flesh and bones wasn’t something he could do anything about now, but he thought there would be a way to salvage what he once had. However, he was failing on all accounts.
Perhaps he was just emotional; the doctors had said that would occur. Sighing in frustration, Bill wiped at the tears on his cheeks. Before such an invasion had happened, he would’ve been able to compose himself better. It was another problem to add to his pile, and Bill wondered when those issues would overflow and suffocate him outright.
Nudging his chin, Ford coaxed Bill to see eye to eye with him. “I’m what?” He sounded softer than Bill had heard him be in ages. “Is something bothering you?”
Ford’s gaze was critical yet strayed from the coolness of the past few weeks. It was as if the icicles that had formed in his eyes were gradually melting as he watched Cipher lose himself. The mortal was beginning to see the frayed edges of his former partner’s resolve.
Choking on the words, they felt too large to leave his throat. “You’re…you’re excited about the science of it…” he sounded defeated while pushing Ford’s hands away. “You haven’t said anything about—about the baby…”
In a slight daze, Ford’s face faltered, and he let his hands fall to his sides. Bill didn’t bother looking up at him; instead, he hopped down from the table and scurried off to his room. It felt pathetic to need to remind Ford of such a thing, to even need to acknowledge that his body was creating a person. It felt even more pathetic to want Ford to see it that way.
Through blurry eyes, he rushed back and slammed the door shut behind him before heading to the adjoining bathroom. Turning on the shower, Bill shucked off his clothes, and his eye snagged on his reflection in the mirror. Even if it was warped around the edges, he knew what he was looking at.
A body that didn’t feel like his own. It had taken him ages to feel semi-comfortable in this skin he’d been given. Now, he felt foreign in it. The amalgamation of life within his body was seemingly pushing him out to make room for itself. Shakily, his hands reached up and left a ghosting touch to his stomach.
Hiccuping and blinking the tears away as they fell, he willed his hands to rest there. It felt wrong. It’s not…is it? Is this wrong? He couldn’t be sure; there was no true way to be sure. I just have to accept this. This is reality now. This is my reality.
There were no start overs, no retries, and no undoing what had been done. A baby was what they had now, whether Bill particularly wanted them or not. Do I want them? A strangled hiccup clawed up from his throat, and he quickly shot the question down. Those were four words that felt like a serrated knife lodged firmly into his brain. How could he ask himself such a thing?
Bill’s breaths were labored as he caressed the bump that was making it more and more difficult to pretend this wasn’t happening. As he nearly doubled over, there was a knock at the bathroom door. He jumped slightly before glancing back at it.
On the other side, Ford cleared his throat. “Can I come in?” he called out, just loud enough to hear his voice over the spray of water. Bill was tense for a moment and didn’t reply, but he reached out to gingerly turn the lock.
The door creaked open, and the sound was filled with every lasting bit of apprehension in Ford’s body. He peered in from the threshold and took in the sight of him, in a miscellaneous state of undress and sobbing. His hand still was pressed to his stomach and the other soon joined it as it fell from the doorknob.
Even as Bill’s body was building a child, Ford could see the fear in his eyes that showed Bill might feel like he was still one too. Carefully, Ford stepped into the small bathroom and pulled his former partner into his chest. Whatever had been left untouched after the initial breaking of his soul shattered at their feet as he openly sobbed into his sweater. Crying out and clinging to him for any semblance of support, Bill’s emotions couldn’t handle quiet melancholy a moment longer.
At first, Ford rubbed his back and let him cry until he was merely sniffling to himself. Then he pulled away slightly to appraise his disheveled state. “I’m sorry I haven’t been more…supportive,” he started, dipping his forehead down to rest against Bill’s own. “I just got caught up in it and have been quite worried about you and me and—” Ford’s eyes softened as his eyes trailed lower. “And the baby.”
Cipher blinked rapidly as his fingers tangled themselves in the knit pattern of Ford’s sweater. He hadn’t called it that before; he’d only referred to both the child and Bill like some set of test tube experiments. The admission felt like warm rays of sun against his face, and Bill couldn’t help but smile a bit at the sentiment.
“I didn’t know…” Bill replied, averting his gaze to the floor. “I just thought you didn’t want anything to do with it—with us.”
He realized that was what might hurt more, if Ford didn’t want anything to do with the baby or with Bill since he was tethered to it. In his mind, rosy tinted memories of family members having children in Euclydia floated to the surface. He’d never imagined he’d be in this position, but even then he didn’t think he would feel like this.
Cipher didn’t think it would feel so isolating. Everything was out of sync within his body and outside of it. He and Ford had fallen out of their equilibrium when they had gotten the news and it displaced everything else.
In the life he’d had long before this one, a child was a blessing. There would be so much joy and fanfare and the shortened time period meant celebrations and preparations started earlier. In the life he was experiencing now, there was no such thing.
Ford combed his fingers through Cipher’s hair absentmindedly and tilted his face to see eye to eye. “I do…I just didn’t—don’t know how to handle it,” he replied, searching his eyes for the answer to a question he was too afraid to ask. “I’ve never been in this position before, so I guess I just…did what I do best…” His voice trailed off, and Bill gave him a small nod. “I apologize.”
They stared back and forth until tearing their gazes away to see themselves in the mirror. The edges had fogged up from the shower water, and it blurred their edges. It couldn’t blur the ebbings of fear on their faces, the tension in their bodies, or the shallow breaths exchanged between them. The pair shared the same space, they held the same emotions, and for a moment, they were swept into a trance.
As if he were a man possessed, Ford let his open palms hover over Cipher’s midriff. Swallowing thickly, his eyes looked between Bill’s face and his hands in the mirror. “Can…can I?”
The question caught Bill off guard, mostly because Ford hadn’t asked to do that before. No one had, except the doctors, which were for clinical purposes. Unable to find the words, he nodded and stared in disbelief as Ford’s palms rested against his skin. His first takeaway was just how much warmth radiated from a simple touch.
A thumb drew lazy patterns while they took in the same rare air. It was akin to stopping time, as if the pair could stand in this moment forevermore. The only thing that broke it was movement. Small in nature, it was as if his organs were shifting to the point that he could see the skin move.
Movement.
Bill’s hands twitched as he settled his hands over Ford’s in an instant. “Did you see that?” he asked in a hissed whisper, his eyes shooting up to look at Ford’s face. “Or feel it? That—that was—”
Ford had wide eyes; his thumb had stopped drawing. Beneath it had been the pressure for a fleeting blip in time. He almost thought he’d imagined it, but then it happened again. “They’re moving,” he cut Bill off breathlessly. “Has this happened before?”
Bill shook his head no, and they stood with bated breath to see if the child would move again. Gently, Ford coaxed Bill to sit on the edge of the tub and turned the shower water off. He then settled on his knees at Cipher’s feet. “Maybe the child is reacting… Did this occurrence happen with Euclidean pregnancy?” Ford asked, glancing up at him before setting his hand back against the bump.
“No; because the child and parent weren’t physically fully connected, there wouldn’t be movement like this,” he replied, slightly dazed. His own hands splayed out beside Ford’s, and they waited. More movement occurred, and he sighed, nearly relieved.
Out of all the byproducts of their circumstances, this might be the one he was enjoying. Cipher didn’t feel so isolated when the child moved; at least then he would know he wasn’t truly alone. Easily, he could feel his emotions welling up again at the thought. Bill realized this might not be so awful, this experience—maybe it would bring him something new.
The tension in his shoulders ebbed away as he gave the child a small smile they couldn’t see. It suddenly felt odd to wonder if he wanted them; to wonder if he would ever not want them. Perhaps he could give them all the things he never had. Perhaps they could be “not lonely” together–as a family.
Leaning forward, Ford pressed his face to Bill’s midriff, and everything reached a point of focus. “I wonder if it’s because we’re together…” he mumbled, listening as if he could hear the child speak.
They both knew that was impossible, but he still listened anyway. He heard Cipher’s heart beating incessantly in his ear and felt content. There was a serenity here that they hadn’t experienced before.
Together, huh? Bill mused idly.
A hand moved to smooth Ford’s hair back, and he didn’t shy away. They sat like that on the bathroom floor, feeling a flutter of a new beginning taking shape, and Bill came to the conclusion that all the strife was worth this moment. Just because it wasn’t anything he could have imagined before didn’t mean it wasn’t something he could imagine now for the future.
That was what redemption was, right? A fresh start, a new beginning—that was something he had spent all this time working toward. Even as Bill had lost the family he had once had millennia ago, the one he was currently building—the child growing within him and the man laid at his feet holding him close—was everything he could ever need. If they had this closeness, that would always be enough.