Calliope & Erica

Chapter 3

I stepped inside and walked into the living room, pushing Kernel off of me as he jumped up to greet me.

"Edith!" I called, searching around the corners to find her laying on the couch. Daphne and Althea were draped across her lap, and an episode of Orange Is The New Black was playing on our 110 inch flat-screen. She turned to me and grinned as I approached her, patting the empty space beside her on the worn seat.

"What's up? D'you want to hate-watch The L-Word with me?" I tried not to laugh at her. Our dates normally consisted of a cute restaurant or pizza, at home, with an L-Word marathon or a musical about six gay girls in a band, or rewatching Blue Is The Warmest Colour. I scooted into the seat next to her, and Kernel shot into my lap.

"Of course." I laughed, pushing Kernel to the side so that I could curl into her chest. I pressed a soft kiss to her neck, barely touching the skin, and then rested my head on her shoulder. She sighed happily and reached for the remote, but I reached out and grabbed her hand instead.

"Wait a second- E, can we talk about something really quickly?" I asked, my cheeks flushing red as I sat back up to meet her eyes. She smiled encouragingly up at me and intertwined our fingers in response.

"Is that 'something' the fact that She Keeps Me Warm has better representation in under five minutes than The L-Word could cram into all of its' seasons combined?" She paused when she saw the concerned look on my face, leaning in to kiss my cheek. Her thumb ran over my knuckles, and I could see the question in her eyes before she said it aloud- "What's wrong, honey?"

"I... I know that you don't like kids very much, and I'm not sure if you're ready to have them yet, but I want kids, Edith, I really do. I want to raise them with you, and I want to raise them to be better people than any of those stupid, ignorant kids we knew growing up. I want them to know that this thing we have between us means more than the hate the other kids around them can ever throw at their parents; and I want to teach them everything with you by my side."

She was unbelievably silent for a moment, and I worried that I'd said something wrong. Then, slowly, her face broke into a grin.

"Okay, time for a Super Secret Society of the Super Lesbians meeting." She laughed, and I bit my lip to keep from grabbing her close and kissing her all over her perfect, beautiful face. I knew what she meant- we never argued, we had SSSSL meetings to find a compromise. That meant that she was genuinely considering this.

I'd never been more in love with her than I was in that moment. (That line sounds cheesily straight. Let's be clear that it was totally homosexual, as heteronormativity is quite possibly the worst thing ever and we were both very gay.)

I giggled and pushed myself into her lap beside Daphne, who huffed and whacked me with her tail.

"So, what do you want?" I asked her, smiling as I kissed her cheek.

"I want my room to myself, I want to keep all of my dogs, and there's going to be an even number of everything at all times." She told me, brushing a stray bit of hair from my face. "And there will be no small, angry gremlins in my stomach at any time."

"Deal," I responded. "I want to have at least one biological kid. We can adopt another one, and I want them to have their own room. Also, they're gonna grow up watching Glee."

"Deal, but we need at least a year to find the perfect kid from foster care, and we need nine months for you to be an angry pregnant woman who yells all the time and insistently eats all of our food. That means that we have a lot of time to plan." She grabbed my hand and took a deep breath. "I'm making the nursery. No gender roles, ever. And if the small, vaguely passive-aggressive demon thing hurts my dogs, I will leave them with that couple of gay men that work at the Starbucks. The sex of the kid doesn't matter, we dress them the way they want, and we don't tell them that they have to be anything. No pressure to do anything but be a good person, regardless of sex or gender or sexuality."

"... Deal. I love you."

"I love you, too." She reached over me to grab the remote, flicking on an episode of The L-Word. "We can go get you pregnant with a demon creature that'll never have gender roles or a good haircut in a couple of months or so- will they let you do it quicker because you're a nurse? I have no idea, can you-" she turned and gaped at the screen mid-sentence. "Oh my gosh. We'll talk more about this later, they're doing it again."