Let Myself Fall (2/2)
Part One
Nimueh is half-asleep by the time she meets Ygraine on her train platform, but she wakes right back up again at the sight of her best friend looking a horrid mess, suitcase dragging behind her. Instead of saying any of the things she ought, Nimueh just opens her arms up and lets Ygraine walk into them and spends five minutes saying soothing nonsense while the other passengers empty off the platform.
“Come on,” she says when she feels the tell-tale shake in Ygraine’s shoulders. “Let’s get a taxi back to my place and put you to bed. I’m at the hospital from eight to midnight so we probably won’t be able to talk until the next day, but you’ve at least got someplace to be while you figure out what you’re doing.”
Ygraine pulls back and hooks her arm through Nimueh’s when Nimueh tries to take her suitcase. “I would try to argue that you’re doing far too much for me already, but I doubt you would listen, so I’ll just thank you for being so wonderful.”
“Don’t thank me yet, I am going to be a horrible person for most of tomorrow and I imagine I’ll come home grouchy if you’re still awake then.” She hides a yawn, not very well, and leads them back out of the station. She didn’t tell the cab she had before to wait for her, but there’s luckily a few left in the bank doing pickups of other late-night passengers, so she flags one of them down and pushes Ygraine in.
Both of them doze the whole way back to Nimueh’s flat, but Ygraine rouses enough to pay over Nimueh’s sleepy objections when the cab gets them there. Between them, they manage to get Ygraine’s suitcase up the stairs and into her flat, where they stand awkwardly. “Right,” says Nimueh, collecting her wits, “I’ve got to get up in the morning, so let’s go to bed. Feel free to use the bathroom to clean your teeth and change, I’ll make sure there’s nothing unspeakable on the floor in my room and text Balinor to let him know we’re home safe.”
“You can’t sleep on the couch, really, you really can’t, I feel horrible and you’ve got to work in the morning, you need proper sleep.”
“So we’ll share the bed. It’ll be a tight fit, but we’ve had worse at sleepovers when we were younger.”
Ygraine thankfully stops objecting at that, just gives Nimueh a watery smile and a kiss on the cheek before shutting herself in the bathroom. Nimueh calls herself ten kinds of horrible for letting her heart flutter at that when Ygraine is hurting, texts Balinor (obviously living in a soap opera no other explanation), and throws most of the dirty laundry on her floor into her hamper just in time for Ygraine to come in. “The bed’s plenty big enough for both of us, even though I’m a boat at the moment.”
“You aren’t a boat, you’re just quite pregnant and glowing, rather. Go to sleep whenever, I’m going to wash my face and get some rest myself.”
Ygraine is asleep when Nimueh comes back in the room, curled up on her side and facing away, and Nimueh climbs into bed beside her, careful to keep her limbs to herself even though she’s used to sprawling, and is asleep in seconds.
Nimueh wakes up when Arthur kicks her hand, hard. This is, she realizes when she blinks her eyes open, because she’s somehow ended up spooning Ygraine in the night and her hand is clasped firmly on Ygraine’s stomach. She extricates herself as quietly as she knows how and rolls over to look at her clock. 7:15. “Shit, fuck,” she hisses, and scrambles out of bed without worrying about Ygraine, pulling on the first underclothes and set of scrubs she finds and packing up everything she needs in under ten minutes. She looks a fright, she’s exhausted, and she’s going to be ready to gnaw off her own arm by the time she has time for food, but at least she’ll be on time for her shift.
She checks in and staggers in for her first set of rounds with seconds to spare and a disapproving look from the head nurse as she speed-walks through the pediatric ward, and never manages to get ahead for the rest of the day. There’s an assessment she’d nearly forgotten about in all the excitement, which she passes more by luck than skill because she’s so tired she can hardly see straight. She spends the day catching cat-naps on the break room couch when she can except for the break when Hunith catches her and spends ten minutes extolling Balinor’s many virtues and then fussing over her endlessly when she catches her yawning before Nimueh has to go running for a code.
By midnight, she’s exhausted and snappish and her supervisor sends her home fifteen minutes early, so Nimueh falls asleep on the Tube on her way home and just barely wakes up in time for her stop.
When she gets home, though, there’s a note on her table saying there’s dinner in the fridge, and she devours the chicken and vegetables cold before stripping out of her scrubs (her second set of the day, after a little girl vomited on her) and scrambling in the dark of her bedroom for something to put on for bed. Ygraine is sleeping when she gets in, or at least doesn’t speak to her, and Nimueh doesn’t even remember pressing her face into her pillow before she falls asleep.
*
“Nim? I’m sorry, I hate to wake you, but you haven’t got an alarm set and I don’t know if you’ve got to get up.”
Nimueh peels her head off her pillow and can’t even be ashamed that she was drooling in the night, and finds Ygraine crouched beside her bed, looking tousled and tired but not as if she’s been crying again. “What time is it?”
“Ten. I imagine your phone would be ringing if you’re late …”
“Not working today.” She manages to drag herself up into some semblance of a sitting position, stretching the kinks out of her back. “Thanks, though. I’ll start putting my schedule on the refrigerator or something, if you stay, so you don’t have to fret.”
Ygraine bites her lip and straightens up, hands at the small of her back. “Yes, I thought we might talk about that now that we aren’t falling down of exhaustion. Do you want some coffee and breakfast before that?”
“Shower first, then coffee, then maybe food. But mostly the shower, I smell like hospital, it’s a wonder you didn’t kick me out of bed.”
Ygraine just shrugs and gives her an unreadable look. “I’ll leave you to it, then, and get the coffee going. I’ve been up a few hours, so I’ve already had breakfast, but-”
“But you are my guest, not my housewife,” says Nimueh, and levers herself out of bed. “You go do whatever, and I’ll talk to you in a few minutes when I don’t feel like death badly warmed over.”
“You look it too, if that helps,” says Ygraine, and leaves the bedroom before Nimueh can decide whether or not she’s allowed to throw a pillow at a pregnant woman.
She dawdles in the shower, half because she’s tempted to go back to bed and sleep for another three or four hours and half because she’s trying to come up with arguments against Ygraine, who probably wants to check into a hotel so she can stop “imposing.” Although she might be choosing to go back to Uther, but Nimueh is doing her best not to think about that particular option because she still wants to do horrible things to the man.
Ygraine’s waiting at the table with coffee and toast by the time Nimueh stumbles into her kitchen, at least somewhat refreshed. “Bless you,” she says fervently, picking up the cup. “You didn’t have to, but bless you anyway.” Ygraine doesn’t answer, and after a few more sips, Nimueh puts her cup down and gathers her wits. “So. What happened, the other night?”
“Nothing more than what I told you. Uther told me that Morgana is his daughter and that he’s fond of me, with the strong implication that he never actually loved me. He hasn’t called me since, and as far as I know he’s still in Cornwall, even, because when I went home yesterday morning to pick up some of my things there wasn’t any sign he’d been back.”
Nimueh scoots her chair over so she can put her arm around her, as it looks like she’s going to start crying again. “Do you know what you’re going to do?”
“I don’t have many options, Nim. I could go back to my parents, who have enough of their own problems. I could go to Tristan, who’s got a life of his own, or Agravaine, who certainly doesn’t want his sister mucking up his life even if we were close. I could go back to Uther, even though I don’t know if I can go back to him when our whole relationship was apparently a lie.” Ygraine puts her hand over her stomach. “Or I could try to make it on my own, as a single woman with a newborn son, living off alimony and child support until I can find a teaching position that will take someone whose certification is three years old and never-used.”
“You’ve got me.” Nimueh elbows Ygraine gently before she can object. “No, really. I realize I’m still getting paid a pittance and this flat probably seems the side of a postage stamp compared to what you’re used to, but I’m more than willing to have you here-and Arthur, if it comes to that-as long as you like, and at least until you find your feet.”
“Really? You’re willing to have a friend you’re barely reacquainted with sleeping in your bed every night, and in a few months her wailing son in a crib pushed up against a wall so you don’t trip over it? You’d get no sleep, which you desperately need, you’d have to go elsewhere with your girlfriends because I know you’d never ask me to sleep on the couch, your finances would be stretched thin …”
“And, if you choose to divorce Uther, we’d have child support payments to help out, and you’d find a job eventually.” Nimueh forces a smirk. “And it’s not like I’m some lady-killer, you know. Catrina was the first time I pulled in an embarrassingly long time, and I never was one for casual sex anyway. Besides, what you just described sounds a hell of a lot like a relationship to me, just without the sex, and I’m fine with that.”
“But you won’t be forever, and you didn’t sign on to be taking care of a child-someone else’s child, no less-at the age of twenty-five.”
“If I need sex, I’ll take out my vibrator,” snaps Nimueh, and goes red the next second when Ygraine makes a choked sort of noise. “Oh, shit, sorry, I really did just say that, didn’t I?” Ygraine nods. “Well, the point stands. And if you ever found a man who would be good to you and Arthur, or if you found your feet and didn’t want to have a flatmate with a horrid work schedule any longer, well, I wouldn’t stand in your way, and I’ll still be his godmother and your friend.”
“None of this is fair to you, Nim, and you know it. You won’t convince me otherwise.”
“It’s not exactly fair to you, either.” Ygraine just keeps looking at her, and Nimueh sighs and turns to her properly. “I won’t lie and say that this is what I was expecting out of my near future when I woke up the day before yesterday, but that doesn’t mean it has to be bad. I mean, it is for you, and I am absolutely going to hire a hit out on Uther, or at least give him some serious bodily injury, but it’s really not for me. You’re my best friend, and I want to help you, and Arthur is going to be my godson and I adore him already just from the way he kicks. It’ll make things difficult for a while, but …”
She trails off and tries to figure out how to explain the picture in her mind without sounding entirely creepy. Nimueh working at the hospital and eventually being a fully qualified consultant, but in the meantime having awful shifts that would put her awake at just the right times to be up with Arthur sometimes so Ygraine wouldn’t have to. Ygraine getting a job, eventually, and the three of them getting a bigger flat or even a house as Arthur gets older. She stops herself thinking about the amount of bedrooms, because that way lies madness, and finds Ygraine staring at her, a tiny smile growing. “You’re actually serious, aren’t you? You really mean to take me in and keep me if I leave Uther?”
“What kind of friend would I be if I didn’t?” Nimueh asks, and finds herself wrapped in Ygraine’s arms a second later.
“I don’t know what I did to deserve you,” whispers Ygraine into her hair, and Nimueh thinks she probably ought to be the one saying that.
*
I’m leaving Uther.
Nimueh stares at the text that apparently arrived two hours ago, completely ignoring Balinor until he clears his throat loudly. “Miss a call from your live-in girlfriend?” he says when he has her attention again.
“Not my girlfriend, and also I hear you and Hunith almost got caught snogging in a closet, so you really aren’t allowed to throw stones.” She looks back at the text. It still says the same thing.
“Wait, did Hunith tell you that?”
“Yes. I’m terrible at girl talk, she really ought to try one of the nurses.”
Balinor opens his mouth, probably to interrogate her, and then apparently realizes she’s trying to distract him. Damn. “What’s got you so distracted on your phone, Nim? It’s got to have something to do with Ygraine, I know that much.”
“She’s-she texted me to tell me she’s leaving Uther,” Nimueh says, in something of a daze. “I’d like to kill whoever invented the text message, it’s a horrible way to get news.”
“Hippocratic Oath, it’s a thing,” says Balinor with a sigh, and stands up. “You call her, figure out what happened, and I’ll cover for you for a few minutes so you can get all the information.”
“Bless you. I owe you.” To his credit, he doesn’t actually say “you owe me a lot of things” even though she rather does at this point. She figures she’ll repay him in full when he accidentally breaks Hunith’s heart or vice versa, though, so she doesn’t really mind too much. Instead, he waves and walks out of the break room, leaving her with a snoozing ICU nurse, who isn’t even in the right break room but apparently likes theirs better.
Ygraine answers her phone after two rings. “I was wondering when you would get on break. I would have called, but I knew you probably weren’t on break and I wanted you to know, I had to tell someone and I can’t face my family yet, so it was you. I’m sorry. You probably didn’t want to get the news that way.”
“Would you calm down? What happened to make you decide that? You still weren’t sure as of this morning.”
“As of this morning I hadn’t spoken to him yet,” says Ygraine, and Nimueh blinks because she doesn’t think she’s ever heard her sound quite this angry.
“What did he do?”
“He didn’t apologize.” There’s an ominous clang on her end of the line. “He called me and treated me like I was some child having a temper tantrum and asked me to come home and be reasonable, and when I asked if he was at least going to apologize for cheating on me, he just brushed over it like it didn’t even matter.”
“And you?”
“I told him to fuck off, and that he’ll be getting divorce papers as soon as I can get them in the mail. I’ve got enough private funds to pay for a lawyer to be sure he won’t take Arthur away from me just out of spite, and I just can’t …” Something else crashes. “I can’t sit across the dining table from him and pretend nothing’s the matter, I’ll never be able to, because it would have been okay if I thought he even knew it was wrong, so. So I’ll be staying with you for a while, if that’s all right.”
Nimueh clutches the phone. “Of course it’s all right, I said it was already, didn’t I? It’s fine.” Another sound, definitely metal bouncing off metal. “If you don’t mind my asking, what are you doing?”
“I’m making coping cake, but all your cake pans are fucking dented.”
“Oh. Sorry, I don’t really make cake that often. Or ever. I made one for Balinor’s birthday last year so I got some pans at a junk shop and then scrubbed them.”
“Right. I suppose the frosting will cover the weird shapes anyway.” Ygraine takes a shaky breath and Nimueh wants to be there to give her a hug so badly she almost considers telling her supervisor she’s having a family emergency so she can go home. “And then we’ll have chocolate cake when you get home.”
“I’ll be there around eight thirty. Try not to dent my kitchen up too much in the meantime.”
“Thank you, Nim,” says Ygraine, and hangs up.
Nimueh gets home that night exhausted and loaded down with books about a procedure she hasn’t had to do in a year that she’s being observed on in two weeks to find Ygraine waiting with a determinedly cheerful smile and a gorgeously-frosted chocolate cake. They eat three pieces each while watching a film and Nimueh wakes up with a crick in her neck and both of them sleeping on the couch; she packs an extra piece for Balinor when she goes to the hospital, since she owes him anyway.
*
It’s remarkably easy to settle into life with Ygraine as a flatmate. She sees Balinor less, but then again he’s seeing Hunith more and more (and Nimueh tries hard not to be worried about how that is going to end up) so it works out all right, and they’ve still got plenty of time in the break room. Besides, he’s got in the habit of calling Ygraine her wife, so it’s best to avoid him until he’s done being ridiculous.
Suddenly, her flat is ten times cleaner than it ever was, even though it’s growing gradually more clattered with the things Ygraine is choosing to pick up from her old home while Uther’s at work (Uther changed the locks out of spite after he received the divorce papers, but the butler still lets her in without fail). There are meals that aren’t some variation on boiled pasta on the table because with two of them paying the rent there’s money for proper groceries and furniture repair and proper cake pans, since Ygraine insists.
Ygraine generally cooks, and Nimueh generally does the dishes, and once a week on whatever day Nimueh is feeling least like a zombie, they do the shopping together. It’s remarkably like being back at school, only Nimueh never shared beds with her roommates at school, and she and Ygraine do most nights, unless one of them passes out on the couch or Nimueh sleeps over at Balinor’s after a piss-up. Most mornings Nimueh wakes up spooned around Ygraine, hand resting on her stomach, and those that don’t, she’s just as likely to wake up with Ygraine’s head tucked into her shoulder. She ignores just how dangerous the situation is getting even when she and Ygraine end up nearly cuddling on the couch every evening Nimueh is home.
It’s not that everything is all sunshine and daisies. Ygraine is miserable most days, even though she tries to put on a cheerful face when Nimueh gets home, and Nimueh’s pretended to be asleep more than once because Ygraine was crying and didn’t want her to know. Uther visits once or twice and condescends until Nimueh throws him out, and he threatens to sue for custody with a significant look around Nimueh’s flat until she takes him aside and tells him very calmly that if he takes Ygraine’s child, she’s going directly to the press with the whole sordid story of the end of his marriage. Ygraine doesn’t ask what their private chat was about, but that’s probably because she doesn’t have to. She gives Nimueh a hug and a “thank you” when Uther’s lawyer mails over papers saying Uther’s only asking for one weekend a month after Arthur is weaned, with visits before that. Nimueh pretends she has no idea what she’s talking about.
Ygraine has a huge argument with her parents when they find out she’s left Uther, which leads to angry voicemails and Tristan constantly on the phone from Paris alternately trying to mediate and threatening to kill Uther and Ygraine blowing up when Nimueh tries to comfort her (and even worse when Nimueh gently attempts to mention pregnancy hormones), leading to three miserable days of them not speaking to each other and Nimueh sleeping on the couch because even when she’s pissed off she’s not going to let a pregnant woman sleep on the sofa.
“All right,” Ygraine says when Nimueh rolls off the couch at five in the morning to get ready for an early shift, waking her up with the crash she makes against the coffee table and bruising up her entire side, “maybe it was the hormones, a bit. Pizza after work?” Nimueh nods, and that’s the closest either of them gets to an apology for it.
They start laying in baby supplies, stuffing Nimueh’s already over-full flat even more, and she stops herself thinking that it’s good she’ll be getting paid more soon and Uther’s child support payments will kick in, as they’re going to need a bigger flat once Arthur gets to crawling. Surely Ygraine will have found someone else by then, even with a baby.
(That doesn’t stop her turning down an offer of a date from Ava, one of the night nurses. She doesn’t even tell Balinor, because he’s started looking at her a bit too knowingly ever since he and Hunith started being whatever the hell they are.)
It’s not exactly what she’d expected to be doing at twenty-five-figured she’d wait on domesticity and children until she was in her thirties and less likely to be working shifts till two in the fucking morning-but she’s surprised herself with how happy she is, being able to make all the plans alongside Ygraine for everything they’ll do with Arthur when he’s born. Happier than she’s been since her mum died, maybe. It’s a lot easier working days-long shifts at the hospital when she knows she’s going home to food in the fridge and maybe a trade of shoulder massages if Ygraine is awake.
Everything settles into an equilibrium until a month before Arthur’s due date, when Ygraine sits up in bed one night when Nimueh was sure she was asleep, gives her a determined look, winds her arms around Nimueh’s neck, and kisses her.
*
Part of Nimueh wants badly for the kiss to be perfect, even while most of her reminds her, loudly, what a horrible idea letting this happen is. It’s not. The lights are out, so Ygraine half-missed her mouth and corrected to an odd angle directly after, and her huge pregnant stomach both gets in the way and serves to remind Nimueh that she is taking advantage of a woman whose marriage just ended in the most horrible of ways. She’s about to pull away when Arthur kicks hard enough that she feels it in her abdomen, and she takes that as his way of saying she ought to stop molesting his mother and pulls back so fast she tumbles off the bed.
They both pant in the dark, and it sounds horribly, hilariously obscene until Ygraine thinks to shift over and turn on the bedside light. Then she’s all backlit and blonde and peering down nervously at Nimueh, though, so it isn’t like the light is helping her desire to kiss Ygraine until neither of them can breathe. “Nim? I’m sorry, did I surprise you? I’ve just-I’ve been psyching myself up to do it for … for a while, so I sort of had to while I had the courage.”
“I don’t need that from you,” blurts Nimueh, which is a horrible way of starting the conversation that they apparently have to have at midnight after a shift full of screaming children and running across Hunith sitting in Balinor’s lap in the on-call room.
“I know it’s not something you’d ever dare bring up-”
Nimueh scoots forward, still on the floor, and grabs Ygraine’s hands. “I don’t need it, Ygraine. I know you feel horribly guilty about invading my flat or whatever and that you think I’ll never get a girlfriend as a result, but this is not something I need from you.”
“Something you need, or something you want?”
“Fuck, are we doing this? Fine, we’re doing this.” Nimueh releases Ygraine to scrub her face with her hands. “Of course I want it, I’m young and gay and not actually blind and I have wanted it since I was seventeen.” Ygraine’s mouth drops open, but Nimueh shakes her head. “But that doesn’t mean it’s right or good for me to have it.”
“Seventeen?” Ygraine manages. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It was sort of difficult to bring up, when we were such good friends but hardly ever saw each other. And also, you’re straight and it would have made things horribly awkward.”
“I’m straight? I just kissed you!”
Nimueh makes a series of gestures that should get her medical degree revoked while attempting to indicate Ygraine’s stomach. “Yes, and you’re pregnant! I assume that didn’t happen from a turkey baster!”
“Bisexual, Nim. Just because I’ve never had a girlfriend doesn’t mean I never thought about it. I didn’t mention it before because I was married and it didn’t matter, and I haven’t mentioned it since because things have been a little mad and I didn’t exactly know how to drop it into casual conversation. ‘Oh, good morning, Nim, want some coffee, and by the way, I like women sometimes as well, and specifically you.’”
“No,” says Nimueh, even though she wants to believe it. “You are my best friend, and my flatmate, and unless and until you decide to move on, I’m helping you mother a child, but this isn’t something I need from you. You just left your husband nearly a month ago, you’re having a baby, and this really isn’t the time.”
“Isn’t that my choice as well? You can’t just make it for both of us.”
“I’m making it for myself, though. I don’t want to feel as though I’m taking advantage of you, and even though you’re saying yes, I still feel that way. You can tell me you don’t love Uther anymore and I’ll applaud you because he’s a bastard, you can tell me you’re bisexual and I’ll believe you after I smack you a few times for not telling me, but there’s no conceivable universe where this is a good idea. Not yet, at least.” She closes her eyes, a hundred times more tired now than she was when she tried to get into bed.
“Not yet?”
“There’s too much going on right now. And I may be selfish, but if you said no after saying yes, I’m a little scared of what it would do to us. This is fine for now. This is what I want for now.” When she opens her eyes, Ygraine has leaned back, and Nimueh can’t see her expression anymore.
“Thank you. For not using the pregnancy excuse and saying I’m not thinking clearly because of that,” says Ygraine after a few seconds, sounding horribly blank and making Nimueh want to hug her like she’s done every time Ygraine’s been upset over the past month. That would be cruel, though, after this conversation. “I don’t … I’m not happy, but thank you for that much, at least. And I’m letting you know that I don’t think I’ll change my mind anytime soon. So, if you change your mind.”
“Fuck. Don’t tell me that. I’m not actually a very nice person and I don’t want to ruin this.” Nimueh struggles to her feet and grabs a pillow, and promptly feels like she’s murdered a puppy when she meets Ygraine’s eyes to find her looking stricken. “I’m not mad, I’m absolutely not, and we’ll try to work our way back to normal soon, but believe me when I say I can’t sleep in the same bed as you tonight and still like myself in the morning.”
“Right. Please kill the light when you go,” says Ygraine and rolls away on the bed, settling back under the duvet. Nimueh hits the switch and walks out, pretending she doesn’t hear a sniffle as she goes.
Both of them ignore the other’s red eyes over breakfast out of some tacit agreement and go to buy a crib, since Nimueh’s got the day off.
*
“You’re pretty fucked, you know that?” says Balinor at the hospital the next day.
Nimueh sighs at her coffee, which is sadly alcohol-free. If it wouldn’t make Ygraine feel guilty forever, she would go out somewhere and get properly drunk, but doing it in the wake of their revelations, which neither of them has quite recovered from even though they’re making an effort not to talk about it, seems like a recipe for disaster waiting to happen. “So you think I should have said yes?”
“No.” She blinks at him, because that was really not the answer she’d been expecting, especially with him half in love with Hunith and being a bit soppier than usual (which is still less soppy than the average person, but still). “You’ve both had quite a lot of upheaval in your lives in the last month or so, so while I like Ygraine and think she probably does have feelings for you, it’s probably too early to tell.”
“So what am I supposed to do?”
“Hell if I know, Nim. Just keep on as normal, I suppose. You’ve got a baby coming in a month, neither of you can really afford to have a huge fight at the moment or anything.”
“I should have dated Ava.”
“Or you could just wait a while and have reasonable conversations like an adult until you figure out whether or not you want to give it a shot.”
“God, I hate you. You’re supposed to come up with some brilliant alternate solution to doing that which won’t lead to both of us getting our hearts broken.”
Balinor pauses. “When have I ever done that?”
Nimueh considers the various relationship decisions she’s seen Balinor make since she’s known him, up to and including starting to date an eighteen-year-old when he’s planning to move out to the country in about two years. “You have a point there.” She takes another few gulps of coffee and wonders if she’ll ever sit in the break room again without needing someone to play agony aunt. Judging by the last few months, the answer is no. “Why is this my life? I could have met a nice girl in university and settled down with someone not pregnant with her recently-ex-husband’s child.”
“You met a nice girl before university,” Balinor points out, and finishes his coffee. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to do rounds. Try not to drown yourself in your coffee mug.”
“I’m never letting Ygraine cook you dinner again,” she says, voice rising as he leaves the room, and he just laughs like that proves his point.
Nimueh doesn’t get home until six thirty the next morning, but she caught a few hours of sleep in the on-call room, so she’s actually feeling prepared to be a human being. She isn’t prepared, however, for Ygraine to meet her at the door, dressed for the day (which is very rare, Ygraine is fond of sleeping late), carrying her purse, and beaming. “Are you exhausted? I really hope you aren’t. I want to take you out for breakfast.”
“What are we celebrating?” Nimueh manages, before realizing that Ygraine might mean this as a date.
Luckily, Ygraine answers before Nimueh has to find a way to tactfully ask. “I got the call last night, but I wanted to wait and tell you in person. The divorce is finalized-Uther pushed it through. No alimony awarded because my parents are rich, but the child support payments are larger than I was expecting because he is. So we’re free of him, other than visits with Arthur. Thus, breakfast unless you’re too exhausted.”
“For that, breakfast may even be followed by a walk in the park.” Ygraine raises her eyebrows. “I had a lot of coffee in my last few hours at the hospital. I am not going to be able to sleep for quite some time, so I may as well make the most of my energy.”
“You have a horrible relationship with coffee. Especially when Alice keeps gently hinting that I shouldn’t be having any at all as opposed to just cutting down. I’m doing wonderfully on the alcohol, but not so much the coffee.” Nimueh finds herself with Ygraine’s arm through hers walking back down the stairs even though she’d been about to offer to get out of the sweatpants and t-shirt she’s had stuffed in her locker at the hospital for shifts when her scrubs are a complete loss afterwards. There’d been a bit too much vomit, not to mention other substances, and Nimueh had ended up having to borrow a scrub top from one of the nurses, one cheerfully patterned with teddy bears.
“Poor you. I would offer to go cold turkey with you, but then I would probably kill patients, and, if we’re being brutally honest, also you. Nobody has separated me from my coffee mug since my first year at university.” Ygraine laughs, and Nimueh tells her about having to change scrubs, just because she knows she’ll appreciate it.
“I’m getting you a set of scrubs with some ridiculous pattern on them for Christmas,” Ygraine warns when she’s finished laughing. “You want to go into pediatrics, you need something ridiculous to wear for the children sometimes.”
Nimueh retaliates by threatening to get Ygraine holiday sweaters when she starts teaching so all her students will mock her, and everything continues from there, easier than it’s been for days, until they go back to the flat so Nimueh can take a nap and Ygraine can continue to try and fail to knit a pair of baby booties.
*
Embarrassingly enough, it takes Nimueh another week after that to figure out Ygraine is wooing her. They’ve always been affectionate, and since she moved in and doesn’t have a job at the moment, Ygraine does a great deal around the flat. Since she thought they mutually and silently agreed to leave the subject of romance for a while, perhaps even till Arthur is born, she doesn’t really pay attention to extra hugs and cuddling on the couch, her favorite meals on the table, the fact that they’re now starting their nights out spooned together, not just ending that way. They go out to do more than just the shopping, including Nimueh getting dragged along to the signing of the divorce papers and getting glared at by Uther the entire time, and she knows intellectually that all the waitresses and passerby don’t assume they’re friends when Ygraine is always taking her hand or her arm. Balinor has them for dinner at his flat, which Hunith cooks because apparently she’s worried if he keeps eating takeaway five nights of seven and food in the caf the other two he’ll have a heart attack before he’s thirty, and the whole thing feels horribly, wonderfully cozy.
It still takes coming home to find a bouquet of orchids on the table for her to figure it out. They’re bright red, and extravagant in the way that she never admits she enjoys, and Nimueh stares at them for a good five minutes after she walks in the door at five in the morning, having offered to take on a few hours in A&E because they got swamped from a large accident and needed a few extra pairs of hands. “Fuck,” she whispers, because she was completely stupid to think Ygraine gave up for the time being. She might be sweet, but she’s also stubborn, and hard to resist under the best of circumstances. Nimueh has no chance whatsoever. “Shit,” she adds for good measure, and goes to bed.
Ygraine wakes up when she climbs in, of course, because Nimueh’s life can of course never be anything approaching easy. “It’s late, are you just getting home? I thought you got off at midnight.”
“They asked me to stay a few more hours, didn’t you get my text?”
“My phone is in the trash can, I think. At least, that was where it sounded like it landed, I wasn’t really paying attention. I’ll ask you to call it in the morning.” Nimueh does her best to make an inquiring noise while she settles on the bed, only for Ygraine to immediate turn over and curl up around her. “I think Edward got Uther drunk, he called me.”
“I’ll kill him in the morning,” Nimueh promises hazily. Then, “You got me flowers.”
“Is that something lesbians don’t do? I don’t really know the etiquette. I just wanted to get you flowers.”
They should probably have another disgustingly mature conversation about how Ygraine just got divorced and Nimueh doesn’t want to be a rebound, but she’s too exhausted for that. Instead, she rests a hand on Ygraine’s stomach and closes her eyes. “They’re very pretty. I’m still not kissing you yet.”
“That’s okay, we’ve got time,” says Ygraine, and then Nimueh is falling asleep properly and misses it if she says anything more.
The flowers look a lot more ominous in the light of day, but Nimueh can’t help smiling when she sees the arrangement over breakfast (which for her actually happens at noon, while Ygraine is eating lunch). It makes Ygraine beam at her, and she steels herself while she brews coffee and pours a bowl of cold cereal because she hasn’t got the energy for anything else. “I’m not expecting anything from you. Everything’s gone a bit mad, and you don’t need to woo me to make me love you, or whatever. That’s …” She barely manages to keep from saying right out that loving her is a done deal, but it comes through anyway. “We just need time to make sure. Or I do.”
“I know you don’t expect anything, and that’s what makes me want to do ridiculous things like carry a bouquet that big halfway across London on the Underground and call Balinor for advice-”
“You didn’t.”
“Of course not, but I considered it.” Ygraine smiles at her. “The point is, I like doing things for you, that’s all. Time is fine.”
Nimueh shoves a bite of cereal in her mouth and prays without much actual hope that Ygraine doesn’t notice her turning bright red. She leaves the subject alone, but she makes a point out of opening doors for Ygraine and putting her favorite chocolate in the basket when they go out to shop for groceries.
*
Ygraine ends up in the hospital with what they discover are Braxton Hicks two weeks before her due date, and Nimueh misses the whole thing. Alice pops her head in when Nimueh is heading towards the cafeteria for lunch. “Are you on your way to see Ygraine?”
“What?” Nimueh cries, and barely gets the room number out of Alice before she’s tearing off to where Ygraine is chatting with a few nurses, back in her own clothes and looking rattled under her smile. “What happened?” she asks, half out of breath.
As luck would have it, Ava is one of the nurses in the group, and she gives Nimueh a wry, overly-understanding look that probably means something mortifying like You could have just told me you had a pregnant girlfriend. “Why don’t you two stay in here for a few minutes, sort yourselves out? We don’t need the bed just yet.”
“Thanks, Ava,” says Nimueh, and stares uselessly at Ygraine while they clear out, clucking collectively in that faintly disapproving, fond way that only nurses seem to be able to manage. “Alice said you were here but I didn’t get the chance to ask why, what the fuck.”
“I think I’d like a hug, please,” Ygraine replies in a small voice, and Nimueh goes over to her without a second thought and wraps her right up. “It was just some false contractions. I texted you while I was on my way, but I figured I could have them page you if I actually went into labor.”
“Definitely. If I’m here when you do, have them page me, or get me somehow. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” Ygraine exhales shakily into her shoulder. “Now, are you okay? You seem pretty upset.”
“Having one of my bouts of periodic terror over bringing a child into the world. I’ve been avoiding them recently because I’ve had other things to worry about.” Nimueh just nods and keeps on holding her. “And what if I’m not even there? My mum nearly died with me, and when Uther and I were trying to get pregnant the doctors said it was extremely lucky when I did because I’m not very fertile, and-”
Nimueh puts on her best doctor voice. “Everything is going to be fine. Alice keeps telling you this is a textbook pregnancy, and false contractions are normal. You and Arthur are going to walk out of this hospital and come back to our tiny little flat where neither of us will get enough sleep for the next several years, and we’ll take care of him and make Hunith babysit when you decide you’re ready to find a job, and deal with Uther probably trying to turn the poor boy into a miniature businessman. And it will all be lovely.”
Ygraine laughs a bit and pulls back, looking slightly less panicky. “God, Uther absolutely will, won’t he? We’re going to have to spend all our time assuring Arthur he can be an astronaut if that’s what he wants because Uther will be buying him bank playsets.”
“Do they even make bank playsets?”
“They do, it’s awful. If Uther gets him one, we’re accidentally breaking it.”
“Am I allowed to get him a doctor playset?”
“I suppose so, as long as he also gets dinosaurs and building blocks and whatever else he wants.”
“And Hunith will knit him stuffed toys because she seems the sort to do that and Balinor will drop him on his head a lot until Hunith teaches him better for when they have their own inevitable brood of brats. I’m sorry, Arthur is inevitably the test child. We’ll screw him up royally, but if we’re lucky, he’ll love us anyway. You’ll be his beloved mum and I’ll be his cool Aunt Nim who takes him to fun parks and patches up his skinned knees before you kiss them better.”
“You’ll just be Nim, if you won’t take on a mum-ish sort of name, I’ve always found people who ask their children to call their significant others Aunt or Uncle to be ridiculous.”
Nimueh opens and closes her mouth a few times before deciding not to argue that. Just because she can’t let them do it yet, it doesn’t mean she doesn’t suspect it’s sort of inevitable. “Just Nim, then. I refuse to let him call me mum, we’ll just confuse the lad like that.”
“Very well, then.” Ygraine takes a deep breath before finally pulling back a bit and smiling at her. “If we can pull it off, it won’t be such a bad life.”
“Not a bad one at all,” says Nimueh, and steps out of the hug because she’s still meant to be working. If they keep standing there like that, eventually they’re going to start kissing, and she doesn’t want to get in trouble for that. “And, now that we’re finished with that, I’m actually glad you’re here, because I was going to talk to you about this when I got home, but I might have a job for you until you get your teaching certification brushed up and current.”
Ygraine smiles and smoothes down her shirt. “I swear, you’re my fairy godmother or something. Tell me about the job.”
“The pediatric ward is always hiring tutors, for the kids who are in there for longer than others, to keep them caught up on their school work. You don’t need a teaching certification, but they’ll see yours and practically cry with happiness. You’re a shoo-in, once you’re ready to leave Arthur for a few hours at a time, and he would probably be able to stay in the hospital daycare, especially as he’s … part mine.”
That makes Ygraine beam at her as Nimueh finally drags her out of the room because the nurses will only give them so long and there’s already going to be gossip all over the hospital. Especially since Nimueh probably ran out of break time five minutes ago. “That sounds perfect. Am I allowed to apply and go directly to maternity leave?”
“I’m afraid not, but I’ve got to get back down to the ward anyway, and I can drop you by the admin office on the way so you can get your name in. Dr. Jones will adore you, she gets sick of the uni students who generally apply.”
Ava winks at her as they walk by, and Nimueh does her best to ignore it.
*
“Doctor Lake,” says her supervisor a week later, and Nimueh looks up from lying to a child about vitamins being just like candy. “Your girlfriend is screaming down the gynecology ward asking for you. It didn’t occur to you to ask for some time off?”
“Wait, she’s what?” asks Nimueh, straightening up and going immediately into panic mode. “She’s a week early! And I’m sorry. About not asking for the time. I sort of assumed that since we aren’t married I wouldn’t get any.”
“We’ll work it out. Now, you’re off for the rest of your shift, get over there.”
Nimueh manages something garbled that she hopes sounds like thanks, and runs. Alice catches her the second she runs into gyno. “Thank God. Get in there with me and tell her to breathe properly, or she’s going to hyperventilate. Contractions are still about six minutes apart and she’s got several centimeters yet to dilate, nothing abnormal so far.”
“Right, good,” says Nimueh, following down the hallway behind her and hearing Ygraine, obviously in the throes of another contraction, halfway down it.
Most significant others of pregnant woman giving birth, Nimueh considers when she enters the room to find Ygraine red-faced and hospital-gowned, panting out the last of her contraction while a nurse hooks her up to a heart monitor, don’t have the benefit of gynecology training. At the moment, she can’t decide if that’s a good thing or not. She repairs to the head of the bed so she doesn’t get tempted to start acting as acting physician instead of moral support and takes the hand that Ygraine holds out. “Ah, fuck, contractions hurt, can I change my mind and have a C-section?” Ygraine asks, though she doesn’t really sound serious.
The nurse mutters something that sounds suspiciously like “wasn’t so cooperative ten minutes ago” and Alice coughs. “I’m afraid you can’t, not as long as it’s going well,” says Nimueh, as apologetically as she can manage. “Did you call anyone before you left for hospital? Uther’s not due back from New York until tomorrow, but-”
“I texted him-ow, fuck-in the taxi on my way over, Balinor knows because I called Hunith because her parents have a car, but they’re using it today so she couldn’t give me a ride, I called Tristan and he said he would take care of Mum and Dad, is that everyone?”
“Everyone urgent, at least.” Nimueh kisses her on the forehead. “You look miserable.”
“The real reason babies are adorable is because otherwise their mothers would hatethem.”
“That’s … actually a really good theory.” Ygraine’s face twists up with another contraction. “They’re getting closer together pretty quickly, then?”
Alice interrupts. “Seems like it.”
Ygraine kisses their clasped hands quickly when she comes down. “They’re much better with you here, but I’m afraid I’m going to be a complete childbirth cliché and break your hand.”
“You’d better not, I need this to work and I’m already getting glared at for not asking for time off.”
One of the nurses pulls up a chair eventually, because Ygraine’s contractions seem to have leveled off some now that Nimueh has arrived and she still isn’t fully dilated. They chat about nothing in particular for the next while, while nurses wander in and out, and Alice does the same, though Ygraine is the only woman on the ward actively giving birth at the moment so when she’s out it seems mostly to be to give them privacy.
Eventually, though, the contractions start overlapping more and more and Alice and the nurses start murmuring at each other. Nimueh reminds herself that she is not a midwife or doctor on the case and she’s here as moral support, not to deliver the baby, and keeps half-crooning nonsense about what they’re going to do with Arthur once he’s born, including some horribly ridiculous things about keeping him away from little girls like Guinevere because of course his name is going to be some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. Ygraine doesn’t pay much attention to her nonsense as she’s too busy swearing and threatening to marry Uther again just so she can divorce him again (which makes the nurses double-take) because she apparently has the lowest pain threshold in the world.
Alice interrupts their little world after who-knows-how-long, giving Nimueh a smile that’s just a shade more amused than it is sympathetic. “Ygraine, are you ready? You’ve got to breathe properly and push now, do you understand?”
“Right, pushing,” says Ygraine, and wails.
Things get gory from there, and Nimueh’s medical training comes in handy because she knows better than to look at how things are going and just keeps her eyes trained on Ygraine, who is panting and crying and too worn out to shout any more by the time Alice says “Come on, darling, one more big push, we can see the head, we just need you to get it out and it’s all downhill from there.”
A few big pushes, a few more sobs out of Ygraine, a few more encouragements from the nurses, and one “ow, fuck fuck fuck, you’re going to break my hand for real, stop that” later, there’s a sudden bustle of motion in the room that Nimueh can’t interpret through trying to mop the tears off Ygraine’s face until there’s a sharp cry and Ygraine straightens right up. “Give him here, I want to hold him,” she says, sounding exhausted but holding her arms out anyway.
“Just let us cut the cord,” says Alice, and Nimueh makes a point of distracting Ygraine, scattering kisses all over her face and telling her how well she’s done, because she’s never met a mother who liked the indignant, unhappy sounds her baby made while the cord was cut. Arthur’s certainly got a healthy set of lungs, and he uses them while the nurses clean him off efficiently and swaddle him up in a blanket to hand him to Ygraine, shifting her up on the pillows so she can take him properly.
“Oh,” Ygraine whispers, touching him gently on the nose, and he stops crying abruptly, looking more affronted than any baby has the right to, and staring up at her. He’s just as squished and blotchy and gorgeous as every other baby Nimueh’s seen in this hospital, with bright blue eyes and the beginnings of blond hair. “Oh, isn’t he lovely?”
“He’s going to look just like you,” Nimueh manages around the lump of sentimentality in her throat. This is her family, for now and maybe, if she’s very lucky, for the rest of her life, and Ygraine might be the one who just gave birth and they might not even officially be dating yet, but that’s her son too. “Hello, Arthur,” she adds, and he gives her a suspicious glare before going back to staring at his mother.
When Nimueh looks up at Ygraine, she’s smiling at her. “Are we done waiting now?”
Nimueh brushes her thumb over Arthur’s head and gives Ygraine a kiss, a proper one this time, and doesn’t care that they’re both disgusting and tired and sweaty, since she figures that will be their default setting until Arthur’s sleeping through the night, or possibly eighteen. “We’re done waiting,” she says, and turns to Alice when she clears her throat.
*
There’s hot soup on the stove when the three of them get home from the hospital two days later, because Balinor has no compunctions whatsoever about giving Hunith the spare key to Nimueh’s flat. Not that Nimueh minds, as otherwise she’d have to cook and she’s feeling overwhelmed and strangely fluttery, a bit like when she has to show a guest her flat for the first time, which is stupid because Arthur is still looking hazily at the world when he isn’t crying or sleeping and doesn’t know the place is tiny. “Welcome home,” she tells him, even though he’s asleep, wrapped in a baby blanket Hunith actually knitted for them in Ygraine’s arms. “Want some soup?” she asks his mum, who’s beaming around like she’s been away for years and not days.
“Please. I’ll set Arthur up in his carrier at the table so I don’t have to hold him, he’s due for a feed soon.”
Nimueh ladles out some soup, wondering when she actually developed a ladle. She suspects Ygraine is behind that. Once they’re all served up and Arthur’s been gently transferred into his carrier, they sit and stare stupidly at each other over the table, Ygraine shifting uncomfortably in her seat as she’s been doing for the past few days. “Hi,” she says just as Nimueh is beginning to worry about the silence stretching out.
“Hi.”
They beam stupidly at one another, which neither of them can seem to help doing. Balinor came to visit while they were both in the room and laughed until Alice stopped by and kicked him out, but he later texted Nimueh told her he’d rallied the other foundation year students to take her shifts over for the next week, which means he approves, in his own way. “I feel as if we ought to be doing something terribly romantic and not family-friendly at all,” Ygraine admits after a few more seconds of silence, “but frankly, the thought of sex at the moment makes me want to cringe.”
Nimueh has to bit her fist when Arthur starts making unhappy noises at her laughter. “Don’t worry, we’ve got time for that. Mind you, it might have to wait until we can leave Arthur with someone else, because with only one bedroom things are going to be horrible, but will you think I’m ridiculous if I say that doesn’t really matter to me yet?”
“Not at all. I thought I was going to have to wait until Arthur was toilet-trained or something before you would give in, so having you at all is amazing.”
“It’s probably still too soon, but I don’t care anymore. It’s probably all these maternal hormones.”
“What maternal hormones? You practically throw him at me whenever he starts to cry.”
“Because he’s always hungry! He is going to eat us out of house and home when he’s a teenager.”
Ygraine just smiles. “Yes, but by then you’ll be a rich doctor and I’ll be making actual money that isn’t just child support, so we’ll have plenty of money to feed him.” She eats several spoonfuls of soup before making a face. “Well, Hunith means well.”
“She’s eighteen and a better cook than I am, I’m really not going to complain.” Nimueh tastes it and deems it better than any of the soup from a can she would be heating up. “Is Helen a good cook? Maybe when she and Tristan come we can make them cook for us.”
“Tristan’s actually an excellent cook, he dated a culinary student at university. I don’t know about Helen. Either way, though, I’ll be using them more as buffers between Uther and me than kitchen workers.”
Nimueh makes a face. “Is he still coming back from New York and coming right over tomorrow? And what kind of father doesn’t end his business trip early when his son is born?”
“The kind I got divorced from,” says Ygraine, rolling her eyes. “And you’ll be polite. He’s good with kids, he’s just horrible with wives. Perhaps Viv and I can get together and have the kids play when Arthur gets past the point of being fascinated with his own feet.” Nimueh gives her an incredulous look. “He should grow up knowing his sister, even if I’d love to strangle Viv.”
“I suppose.” Ygraine shakes her head and leans over to give her a quick kiss. “Sure we can’t just have Viv offed and start up a collection home for Uther’s illegitimate children? We could take Morgause in as well, I suppose, even if she is a terrifying little girl. I think I’d be better with girls than boys.”
“Shut up, you’re going to be wonderful with him. He’ll undoubtedly like you better.”
“He’ll love us both.”
Arthur picks that moment to wake up and start making snuffly, confused, edge-of-tears noises that Ygraine cuts off by picking him up and cuddling him against her chest. “Good morning, darling. Were we being too noisy? Are you hungry?”
“Just lonely, looks like,” says Nimueh, because Arthur’s quieted right down again now that he’s with his mum and the whole thing is almost painfully lovely. She’s going to have problems if she gets this soppy every time she sees Ygraine holding Arthur.
“Oh, good, then you hold him, I’m starving,” says Ygraine, and Nimueh holds her arms out automatically and gets an armful of Arthur, who seems rather sanguine about the transfer. He’s got used to her over the past few days, and probably thinks of her as the large person who doesn’t feed him (thereby distinguishing her from the large person who does feed him).
Nimueh stares at him stupidly for a few seconds, and he returns the favor before deciding that it’s much more interesting to flail an arm free of his blanket and attempt to grasp her hair. His fists don’t quite work yet, so she leaves him to it, shaking her hair into closer reach for him before looking back up at Ygraine. Who is smiling at Nimueh just as indulgently as Nimueh was smiling at her a minute ago. Obviously this is a problem they share. “I love you,” she says. “And you,” she adds when Arthur manages something somewhat resembling a tug on her hair.
“I am so glad I found you again,” says Ygraine, and Nimueh smiles at her helplessly until Arthur decides he isn’t getting enough attention and starts crying. She breaks the moment and bounces him gently in his arms, making the ridiculous cooing noises she used to judge parents for. They’ve got plenty of time to say everything they need to say.
Nimueh is half-asleep by the time she meets Ygraine on her train platform, but she wakes right back up again at the sight of her best friend looking a horrid mess, suitcase dragging behind her. Instead of saying any of the things she ought, Nimueh just opens her arms up and lets Ygraine walk into them and spends five minutes saying soothing nonsense while the other passengers empty off the platform.
“Come on,” she says when she feels the tell-tale shake in Ygraine’s shoulders. “Let’s get a taxi back to my place and put you to bed. I’m at the hospital from eight to midnight so we probably won’t be able to talk until the next day, but you’ve at least got someplace to be while you figure out what you’re doing.”
Ygraine pulls back and hooks her arm through Nimueh’s when Nimueh tries to take her suitcase. “I would try to argue that you’re doing far too much for me already, but I doubt you would listen, so I’ll just thank you for being so wonderful.”
“Don’t thank me yet, I am going to be a horrible person for most of tomorrow and I imagine I’ll come home grouchy if you’re still awake then.” She hides a yawn, not very well, and leads them back out of the station. She didn’t tell the cab she had before to wait for her, but there’s luckily a few left in the bank doing pickups of other late-night passengers, so she flags one of them down and pushes Ygraine in.
Both of them doze the whole way back to Nimueh’s flat, but Ygraine rouses enough to pay over Nimueh’s sleepy objections when the cab gets them there. Between them, they manage to get Ygraine’s suitcase up the stairs and into her flat, where they stand awkwardly. “Right,” says Nimueh, collecting her wits, “I’ve got to get up in the morning, so let’s go to bed. Feel free to use the bathroom to clean your teeth and change, I’ll make sure there’s nothing unspeakable on the floor in my room and text Balinor to let him know we’re home safe.”
“You can’t sleep on the couch, really, you really can’t, I feel horrible and you’ve got to work in the morning, you need proper sleep.”
“So we’ll share the bed. It’ll be a tight fit, but we’ve had worse at sleepovers when we were younger.”
Ygraine thankfully stops objecting at that, just gives Nimueh a watery smile and a kiss on the cheek before shutting herself in the bathroom. Nimueh calls herself ten kinds of horrible for letting her heart flutter at that when Ygraine is hurting, texts Balinor (obviously living in a soap opera no other explanation), and throws most of the dirty laundry on her floor into her hamper just in time for Ygraine to come in. “The bed’s plenty big enough for both of us, even though I’m a boat at the moment.”
“You aren’t a boat, you’re just quite pregnant and glowing, rather. Go to sleep whenever, I’m going to wash my face and get some rest myself.”
Ygraine is asleep when Nimueh comes back in the room, curled up on her side and facing away, and Nimueh climbs into bed beside her, careful to keep her limbs to herself even though she’s used to sprawling, and is asleep in seconds.
Nimueh wakes up when Arthur kicks her hand, hard. This is, she realizes when she blinks her eyes open, because she’s somehow ended up spooning Ygraine in the night and her hand is clasped firmly on Ygraine’s stomach. She extricates herself as quietly as she knows how and rolls over to look at her clock. 7:15. “Shit, fuck,” she hisses, and scrambles out of bed without worrying about Ygraine, pulling on the first underclothes and set of scrubs she finds and packing up everything she needs in under ten minutes. She looks a fright, she’s exhausted, and she’s going to be ready to gnaw off her own arm by the time she has time for food, but at least she’ll be on time for her shift.
She checks in and staggers in for her first set of rounds with seconds to spare and a disapproving look from the head nurse as she speed-walks through the pediatric ward, and never manages to get ahead for the rest of the day. There’s an assessment she’d nearly forgotten about in all the excitement, which she passes more by luck than skill because she’s so tired she can hardly see straight. She spends the day catching cat-naps on the break room couch when she can except for the break when Hunith catches her and spends ten minutes extolling Balinor’s many virtues and then fussing over her endlessly when she catches her yawning before Nimueh has to go running for a code.
By midnight, she’s exhausted and snappish and her supervisor sends her home fifteen minutes early, so Nimueh falls asleep on the Tube on her way home and just barely wakes up in time for her stop.
When she gets home, though, there’s a note on her table saying there’s dinner in the fridge, and she devours the chicken and vegetables cold before stripping out of her scrubs (her second set of the day, after a little girl vomited on her) and scrambling in the dark of her bedroom for something to put on for bed. Ygraine is sleeping when she gets in, or at least doesn’t speak to her, and Nimueh doesn’t even remember pressing her face into her pillow before she falls asleep.
*
“Nim? I’m sorry, I hate to wake you, but you haven’t got an alarm set and I don’t know if you’ve got to get up.”
Nimueh peels her head off her pillow and can’t even be ashamed that she was drooling in the night, and finds Ygraine crouched beside her bed, looking tousled and tired but not as if she’s been crying again. “What time is it?”
“Ten. I imagine your phone would be ringing if you’re late …”
“Not working today.” She manages to drag herself up into some semblance of a sitting position, stretching the kinks out of her back. “Thanks, though. I’ll start putting my schedule on the refrigerator or something, if you stay, so you don’t have to fret.”
Ygraine bites her lip and straightens up, hands at the small of her back. “Yes, I thought we might talk about that now that we aren’t falling down of exhaustion. Do you want some coffee and breakfast before that?”
“Shower first, then coffee, then maybe food. But mostly the shower, I smell like hospital, it’s a wonder you didn’t kick me out of bed.”
Ygraine just shrugs and gives her an unreadable look. “I’ll leave you to it, then, and get the coffee going. I’ve been up a few hours, so I’ve already had breakfast, but-”
“But you are my guest, not my housewife,” says Nimueh, and levers herself out of bed. “You go do whatever, and I’ll talk to you in a few minutes when I don’t feel like death badly warmed over.”
“You look it too, if that helps,” says Ygraine, and leaves the bedroom before Nimueh can decide whether or not she’s allowed to throw a pillow at a pregnant woman.
She dawdles in the shower, half because she’s tempted to go back to bed and sleep for another three or four hours and half because she’s trying to come up with arguments against Ygraine, who probably wants to check into a hotel so she can stop “imposing.” Although she might be choosing to go back to Uther, but Nimueh is doing her best not to think about that particular option because she still wants to do horrible things to the man.
Ygraine’s waiting at the table with coffee and toast by the time Nimueh stumbles into her kitchen, at least somewhat refreshed. “Bless you,” she says fervently, picking up the cup. “You didn’t have to, but bless you anyway.” Ygraine doesn’t answer, and after a few more sips, Nimueh puts her cup down and gathers her wits. “So. What happened, the other night?”
“Nothing more than what I told you. Uther told me that Morgana is his daughter and that he’s fond of me, with the strong implication that he never actually loved me. He hasn’t called me since, and as far as I know he’s still in Cornwall, even, because when I went home yesterday morning to pick up some of my things there wasn’t any sign he’d been back.”
Nimueh scoots her chair over so she can put her arm around her, as it looks like she’s going to start crying again. “Do you know what you’re going to do?”
“I don’t have many options, Nim. I could go back to my parents, who have enough of their own problems. I could go to Tristan, who’s got a life of his own, or Agravaine, who certainly doesn’t want his sister mucking up his life even if we were close. I could go back to Uther, even though I don’t know if I can go back to him when our whole relationship was apparently a lie.” Ygraine puts her hand over her stomach. “Or I could try to make it on my own, as a single woman with a newborn son, living off alimony and child support until I can find a teaching position that will take someone whose certification is three years old and never-used.”
“You’ve got me.” Nimueh elbows Ygraine gently before she can object. “No, really. I realize I’m still getting paid a pittance and this flat probably seems the side of a postage stamp compared to what you’re used to, but I’m more than willing to have you here-and Arthur, if it comes to that-as long as you like, and at least until you find your feet.”
“Really? You’re willing to have a friend you’re barely reacquainted with sleeping in your bed every night, and in a few months her wailing son in a crib pushed up against a wall so you don’t trip over it? You’d get no sleep, which you desperately need, you’d have to go elsewhere with your girlfriends because I know you’d never ask me to sleep on the couch, your finances would be stretched thin …”
“And, if you choose to divorce Uther, we’d have child support payments to help out, and you’d find a job eventually.” Nimueh forces a smirk. “And it’s not like I’m some lady-killer, you know. Catrina was the first time I pulled in an embarrassingly long time, and I never was one for casual sex anyway. Besides, what you just described sounds a hell of a lot like a relationship to me, just without the sex, and I’m fine with that.”
“But you won’t be forever, and you didn’t sign on to be taking care of a child-someone else’s child, no less-at the age of twenty-five.”
“If I need sex, I’ll take out my vibrator,” snaps Nimueh, and goes red the next second when Ygraine makes a choked sort of noise. “Oh, shit, sorry, I really did just say that, didn’t I?” Ygraine nods. “Well, the point stands. And if you ever found a man who would be good to you and Arthur, or if you found your feet and didn’t want to have a flatmate with a horrid work schedule any longer, well, I wouldn’t stand in your way, and I’ll still be his godmother and your friend.”
“None of this is fair to you, Nim, and you know it. You won’t convince me otherwise.”
“It’s not exactly fair to you, either.” Ygraine just keeps looking at her, and Nimueh sighs and turns to her properly. “I won’t lie and say that this is what I was expecting out of my near future when I woke up the day before yesterday, but that doesn’t mean it has to be bad. I mean, it is for you, and I am absolutely going to hire a hit out on Uther, or at least give him some serious bodily injury, but it’s really not for me. You’re my best friend, and I want to help you, and Arthur is going to be my godson and I adore him already just from the way he kicks. It’ll make things difficult for a while, but …”
She trails off and tries to figure out how to explain the picture in her mind without sounding entirely creepy. Nimueh working at the hospital and eventually being a fully qualified consultant, but in the meantime having awful shifts that would put her awake at just the right times to be up with Arthur sometimes so Ygraine wouldn’t have to. Ygraine getting a job, eventually, and the three of them getting a bigger flat or even a house as Arthur gets older. She stops herself thinking about the amount of bedrooms, because that way lies madness, and finds Ygraine staring at her, a tiny smile growing. “You’re actually serious, aren’t you? You really mean to take me in and keep me if I leave Uther?”
“What kind of friend would I be if I didn’t?” Nimueh asks, and finds herself wrapped in Ygraine’s arms a second later.
“I don’t know what I did to deserve you,” whispers Ygraine into her hair, and Nimueh thinks she probably ought to be the one saying that.
*
I’m leaving Uther.
Nimueh stares at the text that apparently arrived two hours ago, completely ignoring Balinor until he clears his throat loudly. “Miss a call from your live-in girlfriend?” he says when he has her attention again.
“Not my girlfriend, and also I hear you and Hunith almost got caught snogging in a closet, so you really aren’t allowed to throw stones.” She looks back at the text. It still says the same thing.
“Wait, did Hunith tell you that?”
“Yes. I’m terrible at girl talk, she really ought to try one of the nurses.”
Balinor opens his mouth, probably to interrogate her, and then apparently realizes she’s trying to distract him. Damn. “What’s got you so distracted on your phone, Nim? It’s got to have something to do with Ygraine, I know that much.”
“She’s-she texted me to tell me she’s leaving Uther,” Nimueh says, in something of a daze. “I’d like to kill whoever invented the text message, it’s a horrible way to get news.”
“Hippocratic Oath, it’s a thing,” says Balinor with a sigh, and stands up. “You call her, figure out what happened, and I’ll cover for you for a few minutes so you can get all the information.”
“Bless you. I owe you.” To his credit, he doesn’t actually say “you owe me a lot of things” even though she rather does at this point. She figures she’ll repay him in full when he accidentally breaks Hunith’s heart or vice versa, though, so she doesn’t really mind too much. Instead, he waves and walks out of the break room, leaving her with a snoozing ICU nurse, who isn’t even in the right break room but apparently likes theirs better.
Ygraine answers her phone after two rings. “I was wondering when you would get on break. I would have called, but I knew you probably weren’t on break and I wanted you to know, I had to tell someone and I can’t face my family yet, so it was you. I’m sorry. You probably didn’t want to get the news that way.”
“Would you calm down? What happened to make you decide that? You still weren’t sure as of this morning.”
“As of this morning I hadn’t spoken to him yet,” says Ygraine, and Nimueh blinks because she doesn’t think she’s ever heard her sound quite this angry.
“What did he do?”
“He didn’t apologize.” There’s an ominous clang on her end of the line. “He called me and treated me like I was some child having a temper tantrum and asked me to come home and be reasonable, and when I asked if he was at least going to apologize for cheating on me, he just brushed over it like it didn’t even matter.”
“And you?”
“I told him to fuck off, and that he’ll be getting divorce papers as soon as I can get them in the mail. I’ve got enough private funds to pay for a lawyer to be sure he won’t take Arthur away from me just out of spite, and I just can’t …” Something else crashes. “I can’t sit across the dining table from him and pretend nothing’s the matter, I’ll never be able to, because it would have been okay if I thought he even knew it was wrong, so. So I’ll be staying with you for a while, if that’s all right.”
Nimueh clutches the phone. “Of course it’s all right, I said it was already, didn’t I? It’s fine.” Another sound, definitely metal bouncing off metal. “If you don’t mind my asking, what are you doing?”
“I’m making coping cake, but all your cake pans are fucking dented.”
“Oh. Sorry, I don’t really make cake that often. Or ever. I made one for Balinor’s birthday last year so I got some pans at a junk shop and then scrubbed them.”
“Right. I suppose the frosting will cover the weird shapes anyway.” Ygraine takes a shaky breath and Nimueh wants to be there to give her a hug so badly she almost considers telling her supervisor she’s having a family emergency so she can go home. “And then we’ll have chocolate cake when you get home.”
“I’ll be there around eight thirty. Try not to dent my kitchen up too much in the meantime.”
“Thank you, Nim,” says Ygraine, and hangs up.
Nimueh gets home that night exhausted and loaded down with books about a procedure she hasn’t had to do in a year that she’s being observed on in two weeks to find Ygraine waiting with a determinedly cheerful smile and a gorgeously-frosted chocolate cake. They eat three pieces each while watching a film and Nimueh wakes up with a crick in her neck and both of them sleeping on the couch; she packs an extra piece for Balinor when she goes to the hospital, since she owes him anyway.
*
It’s remarkably easy to settle into life with Ygraine as a flatmate. She sees Balinor less, but then again he’s seeing Hunith more and more (and Nimueh tries hard not to be worried about how that is going to end up) so it works out all right, and they’ve still got plenty of time in the break room. Besides, he’s got in the habit of calling Ygraine her wife, so it’s best to avoid him until he’s done being ridiculous.
Suddenly, her flat is ten times cleaner than it ever was, even though it’s growing gradually more clattered with the things Ygraine is choosing to pick up from her old home while Uther’s at work (Uther changed the locks out of spite after he received the divorce papers, but the butler still lets her in without fail). There are meals that aren’t some variation on boiled pasta on the table because with two of them paying the rent there’s money for proper groceries and furniture repair and proper cake pans, since Ygraine insists.
Ygraine generally cooks, and Nimueh generally does the dishes, and once a week on whatever day Nimueh is feeling least like a zombie, they do the shopping together. It’s remarkably like being back at school, only Nimueh never shared beds with her roommates at school, and she and Ygraine do most nights, unless one of them passes out on the couch or Nimueh sleeps over at Balinor’s after a piss-up. Most mornings Nimueh wakes up spooned around Ygraine, hand resting on her stomach, and those that don’t, she’s just as likely to wake up with Ygraine’s head tucked into her shoulder. She ignores just how dangerous the situation is getting even when she and Ygraine end up nearly cuddling on the couch every evening Nimueh is home.
It’s not that everything is all sunshine and daisies. Ygraine is miserable most days, even though she tries to put on a cheerful face when Nimueh gets home, and Nimueh’s pretended to be asleep more than once because Ygraine was crying and didn’t want her to know. Uther visits once or twice and condescends until Nimueh throws him out, and he threatens to sue for custody with a significant look around Nimueh’s flat until she takes him aside and tells him very calmly that if he takes Ygraine’s child, she’s going directly to the press with the whole sordid story of the end of his marriage. Ygraine doesn’t ask what their private chat was about, but that’s probably because she doesn’t have to. She gives Nimueh a hug and a “thank you” when Uther’s lawyer mails over papers saying Uther’s only asking for one weekend a month after Arthur is weaned, with visits before that. Nimueh pretends she has no idea what she’s talking about.
Ygraine has a huge argument with her parents when they find out she’s left Uther, which leads to angry voicemails and Tristan constantly on the phone from Paris alternately trying to mediate and threatening to kill Uther and Ygraine blowing up when Nimueh tries to comfort her (and even worse when Nimueh gently attempts to mention pregnancy hormones), leading to three miserable days of them not speaking to each other and Nimueh sleeping on the couch because even when she’s pissed off she’s not going to let a pregnant woman sleep on the sofa.
“All right,” Ygraine says when Nimueh rolls off the couch at five in the morning to get ready for an early shift, waking her up with the crash she makes against the coffee table and bruising up her entire side, “maybe it was the hormones, a bit. Pizza after work?” Nimueh nods, and that’s the closest either of them gets to an apology for it.
They start laying in baby supplies, stuffing Nimueh’s already over-full flat even more, and she stops herself thinking that it’s good she’ll be getting paid more soon and Uther’s child support payments will kick in, as they’re going to need a bigger flat once Arthur gets to crawling. Surely Ygraine will have found someone else by then, even with a baby.
(That doesn’t stop her turning down an offer of a date from Ava, one of the night nurses. She doesn’t even tell Balinor, because he’s started looking at her a bit too knowingly ever since he and Hunith started being whatever the hell they are.)
It’s not exactly what she’d expected to be doing at twenty-five-figured she’d wait on domesticity and children until she was in her thirties and less likely to be working shifts till two in the fucking morning-but she’s surprised herself with how happy she is, being able to make all the plans alongside Ygraine for everything they’ll do with Arthur when he’s born. Happier than she’s been since her mum died, maybe. It’s a lot easier working days-long shifts at the hospital when she knows she’s going home to food in the fridge and maybe a trade of shoulder massages if Ygraine is awake.
Everything settles into an equilibrium until a month before Arthur’s due date, when Ygraine sits up in bed one night when Nimueh was sure she was asleep, gives her a determined look, winds her arms around Nimueh’s neck, and kisses her.
*
Part of Nimueh wants badly for the kiss to be perfect, even while most of her reminds her, loudly, what a horrible idea letting this happen is. It’s not. The lights are out, so Ygraine half-missed her mouth and corrected to an odd angle directly after, and her huge pregnant stomach both gets in the way and serves to remind Nimueh that she is taking advantage of a woman whose marriage just ended in the most horrible of ways. She’s about to pull away when Arthur kicks hard enough that she feels it in her abdomen, and she takes that as his way of saying she ought to stop molesting his mother and pulls back so fast she tumbles off the bed.
They both pant in the dark, and it sounds horribly, hilariously obscene until Ygraine thinks to shift over and turn on the bedside light. Then she’s all backlit and blonde and peering down nervously at Nimueh, though, so it isn’t like the light is helping her desire to kiss Ygraine until neither of them can breathe. “Nim? I’m sorry, did I surprise you? I’ve just-I’ve been psyching myself up to do it for … for a while, so I sort of had to while I had the courage.”
“I don’t need that from you,” blurts Nimueh, which is a horrible way of starting the conversation that they apparently have to have at midnight after a shift full of screaming children and running across Hunith sitting in Balinor’s lap in the on-call room.
“I know it’s not something you’d ever dare bring up-”
Nimueh scoots forward, still on the floor, and grabs Ygraine’s hands. “I don’t need it, Ygraine. I know you feel horribly guilty about invading my flat or whatever and that you think I’ll never get a girlfriend as a result, but this is not something I need from you.”
“Something you need, or something you want?”
“Fuck, are we doing this? Fine, we’re doing this.” Nimueh releases Ygraine to scrub her face with her hands. “Of course I want it, I’m young and gay and not actually blind and I have wanted it since I was seventeen.” Ygraine’s mouth drops open, but Nimueh shakes her head. “But that doesn’t mean it’s right or good for me to have it.”
“Seventeen?” Ygraine manages. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It was sort of difficult to bring up, when we were such good friends but hardly ever saw each other. And also, you’re straight and it would have made things horribly awkward.”
“I’m straight? I just kissed you!”
Nimueh makes a series of gestures that should get her medical degree revoked while attempting to indicate Ygraine’s stomach. “Yes, and you’re pregnant! I assume that didn’t happen from a turkey baster!”
“Bisexual, Nim. Just because I’ve never had a girlfriend doesn’t mean I never thought about it. I didn’t mention it before because I was married and it didn’t matter, and I haven’t mentioned it since because things have been a little mad and I didn’t exactly know how to drop it into casual conversation. ‘Oh, good morning, Nim, want some coffee, and by the way, I like women sometimes as well, and specifically you.’”
“No,” says Nimueh, even though she wants to believe it. “You are my best friend, and my flatmate, and unless and until you decide to move on, I’m helping you mother a child, but this isn’t something I need from you. You just left your husband nearly a month ago, you’re having a baby, and this really isn’t the time.”
“Isn’t that my choice as well? You can’t just make it for both of us.”
“I’m making it for myself, though. I don’t want to feel as though I’m taking advantage of you, and even though you’re saying yes, I still feel that way. You can tell me you don’t love Uther anymore and I’ll applaud you because he’s a bastard, you can tell me you’re bisexual and I’ll believe you after I smack you a few times for not telling me, but there’s no conceivable universe where this is a good idea. Not yet, at least.” She closes her eyes, a hundred times more tired now than she was when she tried to get into bed.
“Not yet?”
“There’s too much going on right now. And I may be selfish, but if you said no after saying yes, I’m a little scared of what it would do to us. This is fine for now. This is what I want for now.” When she opens her eyes, Ygraine has leaned back, and Nimueh can’t see her expression anymore.
“Thank you. For not using the pregnancy excuse and saying I’m not thinking clearly because of that,” says Ygraine after a few seconds, sounding horribly blank and making Nimueh want to hug her like she’s done every time Ygraine’s been upset over the past month. That would be cruel, though, after this conversation. “I don’t … I’m not happy, but thank you for that much, at least. And I’m letting you know that I don’t think I’ll change my mind anytime soon. So, if you change your mind.”
“Fuck. Don’t tell me that. I’m not actually a very nice person and I don’t want to ruin this.” Nimueh struggles to her feet and grabs a pillow, and promptly feels like she’s murdered a puppy when she meets Ygraine’s eyes to find her looking stricken. “I’m not mad, I’m absolutely not, and we’ll try to work our way back to normal soon, but believe me when I say I can’t sleep in the same bed as you tonight and still like myself in the morning.”
“Right. Please kill the light when you go,” says Ygraine and rolls away on the bed, settling back under the duvet. Nimueh hits the switch and walks out, pretending she doesn’t hear a sniffle as she goes.
Both of them ignore the other’s red eyes over breakfast out of some tacit agreement and go to buy a crib, since Nimueh’s got the day off.
*
“You’re pretty fucked, you know that?” says Balinor at the hospital the next day.
Nimueh sighs at her coffee, which is sadly alcohol-free. If it wouldn’t make Ygraine feel guilty forever, she would go out somewhere and get properly drunk, but doing it in the wake of their revelations, which neither of them has quite recovered from even though they’re making an effort not to talk about it, seems like a recipe for disaster waiting to happen. “So you think I should have said yes?”
“No.” She blinks at him, because that was really not the answer she’d been expecting, especially with him half in love with Hunith and being a bit soppier than usual (which is still less soppy than the average person, but still). “You’ve both had quite a lot of upheaval in your lives in the last month or so, so while I like Ygraine and think she probably does have feelings for you, it’s probably too early to tell.”
“So what am I supposed to do?”
“Hell if I know, Nim. Just keep on as normal, I suppose. You’ve got a baby coming in a month, neither of you can really afford to have a huge fight at the moment or anything.”
“I should have dated Ava.”
“Or you could just wait a while and have reasonable conversations like an adult until you figure out whether or not you want to give it a shot.”
“God, I hate you. You’re supposed to come up with some brilliant alternate solution to doing that which won’t lead to both of us getting our hearts broken.”
Balinor pauses. “When have I ever done that?”
Nimueh considers the various relationship decisions she’s seen Balinor make since she’s known him, up to and including starting to date an eighteen-year-old when he’s planning to move out to the country in about two years. “You have a point there.” She takes another few gulps of coffee and wonders if she’ll ever sit in the break room again without needing someone to play agony aunt. Judging by the last few months, the answer is no. “Why is this my life? I could have met a nice girl in university and settled down with someone not pregnant with her recently-ex-husband’s child.”
“You met a nice girl before university,” Balinor points out, and finishes his coffee. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to do rounds. Try not to drown yourself in your coffee mug.”
“I’m never letting Ygraine cook you dinner again,” she says, voice rising as he leaves the room, and he just laughs like that proves his point.
Nimueh doesn’t get home until six thirty the next morning, but she caught a few hours of sleep in the on-call room, so she’s actually feeling prepared to be a human being. She isn’t prepared, however, for Ygraine to meet her at the door, dressed for the day (which is very rare, Ygraine is fond of sleeping late), carrying her purse, and beaming. “Are you exhausted? I really hope you aren’t. I want to take you out for breakfast.”
“What are we celebrating?” Nimueh manages, before realizing that Ygraine might mean this as a date.
Luckily, Ygraine answers before Nimueh has to find a way to tactfully ask. “I got the call last night, but I wanted to wait and tell you in person. The divorce is finalized-Uther pushed it through. No alimony awarded because my parents are rich, but the child support payments are larger than I was expecting because he is. So we’re free of him, other than visits with Arthur. Thus, breakfast unless you’re too exhausted.”
“For that, breakfast may even be followed by a walk in the park.” Ygraine raises her eyebrows. “I had a lot of coffee in my last few hours at the hospital. I am not going to be able to sleep for quite some time, so I may as well make the most of my energy.”
“You have a horrible relationship with coffee. Especially when Alice keeps gently hinting that I shouldn’t be having any at all as opposed to just cutting down. I’m doing wonderfully on the alcohol, but not so much the coffee.” Nimueh finds herself with Ygraine’s arm through hers walking back down the stairs even though she’d been about to offer to get out of the sweatpants and t-shirt she’s had stuffed in her locker at the hospital for shifts when her scrubs are a complete loss afterwards. There’d been a bit too much vomit, not to mention other substances, and Nimueh had ended up having to borrow a scrub top from one of the nurses, one cheerfully patterned with teddy bears.
“Poor you. I would offer to go cold turkey with you, but then I would probably kill patients, and, if we’re being brutally honest, also you. Nobody has separated me from my coffee mug since my first year at university.” Ygraine laughs, and Nimueh tells her about having to change scrubs, just because she knows she’ll appreciate it.
“I’m getting you a set of scrubs with some ridiculous pattern on them for Christmas,” Ygraine warns when she’s finished laughing. “You want to go into pediatrics, you need something ridiculous to wear for the children sometimes.”
Nimueh retaliates by threatening to get Ygraine holiday sweaters when she starts teaching so all her students will mock her, and everything continues from there, easier than it’s been for days, until they go back to the flat so Nimueh can take a nap and Ygraine can continue to try and fail to knit a pair of baby booties.
*
Embarrassingly enough, it takes Nimueh another week after that to figure out Ygraine is wooing her. They’ve always been affectionate, and since she moved in and doesn’t have a job at the moment, Ygraine does a great deal around the flat. Since she thought they mutually and silently agreed to leave the subject of romance for a while, perhaps even till Arthur is born, she doesn’t really pay attention to extra hugs and cuddling on the couch, her favorite meals on the table, the fact that they’re now starting their nights out spooned together, not just ending that way. They go out to do more than just the shopping, including Nimueh getting dragged along to the signing of the divorce papers and getting glared at by Uther the entire time, and she knows intellectually that all the waitresses and passerby don’t assume they’re friends when Ygraine is always taking her hand or her arm. Balinor has them for dinner at his flat, which Hunith cooks because apparently she’s worried if he keeps eating takeaway five nights of seven and food in the caf the other two he’ll have a heart attack before he’s thirty, and the whole thing feels horribly, wonderfully cozy.
It still takes coming home to find a bouquet of orchids on the table for her to figure it out. They’re bright red, and extravagant in the way that she never admits she enjoys, and Nimueh stares at them for a good five minutes after she walks in the door at five in the morning, having offered to take on a few hours in A&E because they got swamped from a large accident and needed a few extra pairs of hands. “Fuck,” she whispers, because she was completely stupid to think Ygraine gave up for the time being. She might be sweet, but she’s also stubborn, and hard to resist under the best of circumstances. Nimueh has no chance whatsoever. “Shit,” she adds for good measure, and goes to bed.
Ygraine wakes up when she climbs in, of course, because Nimueh’s life can of course never be anything approaching easy. “It’s late, are you just getting home? I thought you got off at midnight.”
“They asked me to stay a few more hours, didn’t you get my text?”
“My phone is in the trash can, I think. At least, that was where it sounded like it landed, I wasn’t really paying attention. I’ll ask you to call it in the morning.” Nimueh does her best to make an inquiring noise while she settles on the bed, only for Ygraine to immediate turn over and curl up around her. “I think Edward got Uther drunk, he called me.”
“I’ll kill him in the morning,” Nimueh promises hazily. Then, “You got me flowers.”
“Is that something lesbians don’t do? I don’t really know the etiquette. I just wanted to get you flowers.”
They should probably have another disgustingly mature conversation about how Ygraine just got divorced and Nimueh doesn’t want to be a rebound, but she’s too exhausted for that. Instead, she rests a hand on Ygraine’s stomach and closes her eyes. “They’re very pretty. I’m still not kissing you yet.”
“That’s okay, we’ve got time,” says Ygraine, and then Nimueh is falling asleep properly and misses it if she says anything more.
The flowers look a lot more ominous in the light of day, but Nimueh can’t help smiling when she sees the arrangement over breakfast (which for her actually happens at noon, while Ygraine is eating lunch). It makes Ygraine beam at her, and she steels herself while she brews coffee and pours a bowl of cold cereal because she hasn’t got the energy for anything else. “I’m not expecting anything from you. Everything’s gone a bit mad, and you don’t need to woo me to make me love you, or whatever. That’s …” She barely manages to keep from saying right out that loving her is a done deal, but it comes through anyway. “We just need time to make sure. Or I do.”
“I know you don’t expect anything, and that’s what makes me want to do ridiculous things like carry a bouquet that big halfway across London on the Underground and call Balinor for advice-”
“You didn’t.”
“Of course not, but I considered it.” Ygraine smiles at her. “The point is, I like doing things for you, that’s all. Time is fine.”
Nimueh shoves a bite of cereal in her mouth and prays without much actual hope that Ygraine doesn’t notice her turning bright red. She leaves the subject alone, but she makes a point out of opening doors for Ygraine and putting her favorite chocolate in the basket when they go out to shop for groceries.
*
Ygraine ends up in the hospital with what they discover are Braxton Hicks two weeks before her due date, and Nimueh misses the whole thing. Alice pops her head in when Nimueh is heading towards the cafeteria for lunch. “Are you on your way to see Ygraine?”
“What?” Nimueh cries, and barely gets the room number out of Alice before she’s tearing off to where Ygraine is chatting with a few nurses, back in her own clothes and looking rattled under her smile. “What happened?” she asks, half out of breath.
As luck would have it, Ava is one of the nurses in the group, and she gives Nimueh a wry, overly-understanding look that probably means something mortifying like You could have just told me you had a pregnant girlfriend. “Why don’t you two stay in here for a few minutes, sort yourselves out? We don’t need the bed just yet.”
“Thanks, Ava,” says Nimueh, and stares uselessly at Ygraine while they clear out, clucking collectively in that faintly disapproving, fond way that only nurses seem to be able to manage. “Alice said you were here but I didn’t get the chance to ask why, what the fuck.”
“I think I’d like a hug, please,” Ygraine replies in a small voice, and Nimueh goes over to her without a second thought and wraps her right up. “It was just some false contractions. I texted you while I was on my way, but I figured I could have them page you if I actually went into labor.”
“Definitely. If I’m here when you do, have them page me, or get me somehow. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” Ygraine exhales shakily into her shoulder. “Now, are you okay? You seem pretty upset.”
“Having one of my bouts of periodic terror over bringing a child into the world. I’ve been avoiding them recently because I’ve had other things to worry about.” Nimueh just nods and keeps on holding her. “And what if I’m not even there? My mum nearly died with me, and when Uther and I were trying to get pregnant the doctors said it was extremely lucky when I did because I’m not very fertile, and-”
Nimueh puts on her best doctor voice. “Everything is going to be fine. Alice keeps telling you this is a textbook pregnancy, and false contractions are normal. You and Arthur are going to walk out of this hospital and come back to our tiny little flat where neither of us will get enough sleep for the next several years, and we’ll take care of him and make Hunith babysit when you decide you’re ready to find a job, and deal with Uther probably trying to turn the poor boy into a miniature businessman. And it will all be lovely.”
Ygraine laughs a bit and pulls back, looking slightly less panicky. “God, Uther absolutely will, won’t he? We’re going to have to spend all our time assuring Arthur he can be an astronaut if that’s what he wants because Uther will be buying him bank playsets.”
“Do they even make bank playsets?”
“They do, it’s awful. If Uther gets him one, we’re accidentally breaking it.”
“Am I allowed to get him a doctor playset?”
“I suppose so, as long as he also gets dinosaurs and building blocks and whatever else he wants.”
“And Hunith will knit him stuffed toys because she seems the sort to do that and Balinor will drop him on his head a lot until Hunith teaches him better for when they have their own inevitable brood of brats. I’m sorry, Arthur is inevitably the test child. We’ll screw him up royally, but if we’re lucky, he’ll love us anyway. You’ll be his beloved mum and I’ll be his cool Aunt Nim who takes him to fun parks and patches up his skinned knees before you kiss them better.”
“You’ll just be Nim, if you won’t take on a mum-ish sort of name, I’ve always found people who ask their children to call their significant others Aunt or Uncle to be ridiculous.”
Nimueh opens and closes her mouth a few times before deciding not to argue that. Just because she can’t let them do it yet, it doesn’t mean she doesn’t suspect it’s sort of inevitable. “Just Nim, then. I refuse to let him call me mum, we’ll just confuse the lad like that.”
“Very well, then.” Ygraine takes a deep breath before finally pulling back a bit and smiling at her. “If we can pull it off, it won’t be such a bad life.”
“Not a bad one at all,” says Nimueh, and steps out of the hug because she’s still meant to be working. If they keep standing there like that, eventually they’re going to start kissing, and she doesn’t want to get in trouble for that. “And, now that we’re finished with that, I’m actually glad you’re here, because I was going to talk to you about this when I got home, but I might have a job for you until you get your teaching certification brushed up and current.”
Ygraine smiles and smoothes down her shirt. “I swear, you’re my fairy godmother or something. Tell me about the job.”
“The pediatric ward is always hiring tutors, for the kids who are in there for longer than others, to keep them caught up on their school work. You don’t need a teaching certification, but they’ll see yours and practically cry with happiness. You’re a shoo-in, once you’re ready to leave Arthur for a few hours at a time, and he would probably be able to stay in the hospital daycare, especially as he’s … part mine.”
That makes Ygraine beam at her as Nimueh finally drags her out of the room because the nurses will only give them so long and there’s already going to be gossip all over the hospital. Especially since Nimueh probably ran out of break time five minutes ago. “That sounds perfect. Am I allowed to apply and go directly to maternity leave?”
“I’m afraid not, but I’ve got to get back down to the ward anyway, and I can drop you by the admin office on the way so you can get your name in. Dr. Jones will adore you, she gets sick of the uni students who generally apply.”
Ava winks at her as they walk by, and Nimueh does her best to ignore it.
*
“Doctor Lake,” says her supervisor a week later, and Nimueh looks up from lying to a child about vitamins being just like candy. “Your girlfriend is screaming down the gynecology ward asking for you. It didn’t occur to you to ask for some time off?”
“Wait, she’s what?” asks Nimueh, straightening up and going immediately into panic mode. “She’s a week early! And I’m sorry. About not asking for the time. I sort of assumed that since we aren’t married I wouldn’t get any.”
“We’ll work it out. Now, you’re off for the rest of your shift, get over there.”
Nimueh manages something garbled that she hopes sounds like thanks, and runs. Alice catches her the second she runs into gyno. “Thank God. Get in there with me and tell her to breathe properly, or she’s going to hyperventilate. Contractions are still about six minutes apart and she’s got several centimeters yet to dilate, nothing abnormal so far.”
“Right, good,” says Nimueh, following down the hallway behind her and hearing Ygraine, obviously in the throes of another contraction, halfway down it.
Most significant others of pregnant woman giving birth, Nimueh considers when she enters the room to find Ygraine red-faced and hospital-gowned, panting out the last of her contraction while a nurse hooks her up to a heart monitor, don’t have the benefit of gynecology training. At the moment, she can’t decide if that’s a good thing or not. She repairs to the head of the bed so she doesn’t get tempted to start acting as acting physician instead of moral support and takes the hand that Ygraine holds out. “Ah, fuck, contractions hurt, can I change my mind and have a C-section?” Ygraine asks, though she doesn’t really sound serious.
The nurse mutters something that sounds suspiciously like “wasn’t so cooperative ten minutes ago” and Alice coughs. “I’m afraid you can’t, not as long as it’s going well,” says Nimueh, as apologetically as she can manage. “Did you call anyone before you left for hospital? Uther’s not due back from New York until tomorrow, but-”
“I texted him-ow, fuck-in the taxi on my way over, Balinor knows because I called Hunith because her parents have a car, but they’re using it today so she couldn’t give me a ride, I called Tristan and he said he would take care of Mum and Dad, is that everyone?”
“Everyone urgent, at least.” Nimueh kisses her on the forehead. “You look miserable.”
“The real reason babies are adorable is because otherwise their mothers would hatethem.”
“That’s … actually a really good theory.” Ygraine’s face twists up with another contraction. “They’re getting closer together pretty quickly, then?”
Alice interrupts. “Seems like it.”
Ygraine kisses their clasped hands quickly when she comes down. “They’re much better with you here, but I’m afraid I’m going to be a complete childbirth cliché and break your hand.”
“You’d better not, I need this to work and I’m already getting glared at for not asking for time off.”
One of the nurses pulls up a chair eventually, because Ygraine’s contractions seem to have leveled off some now that Nimueh has arrived and she still isn’t fully dilated. They chat about nothing in particular for the next while, while nurses wander in and out, and Alice does the same, though Ygraine is the only woman on the ward actively giving birth at the moment so when she’s out it seems mostly to be to give them privacy.
Eventually, though, the contractions start overlapping more and more and Alice and the nurses start murmuring at each other. Nimueh reminds herself that she is not a midwife or doctor on the case and she’s here as moral support, not to deliver the baby, and keeps half-crooning nonsense about what they’re going to do with Arthur once he’s born, including some horribly ridiculous things about keeping him away from little girls like Guinevere because of course his name is going to be some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. Ygraine doesn’t pay much attention to her nonsense as she’s too busy swearing and threatening to marry Uther again just so she can divorce him again (which makes the nurses double-take) because she apparently has the lowest pain threshold in the world.
Alice interrupts their little world after who-knows-how-long, giving Nimueh a smile that’s just a shade more amused than it is sympathetic. “Ygraine, are you ready? You’ve got to breathe properly and push now, do you understand?”
“Right, pushing,” says Ygraine, and wails.
Things get gory from there, and Nimueh’s medical training comes in handy because she knows better than to look at how things are going and just keeps her eyes trained on Ygraine, who is panting and crying and too worn out to shout any more by the time Alice says “Come on, darling, one more big push, we can see the head, we just need you to get it out and it’s all downhill from there.”
A few big pushes, a few more sobs out of Ygraine, a few more encouragements from the nurses, and one “ow, fuck fuck fuck, you’re going to break my hand for real, stop that” later, there’s a sudden bustle of motion in the room that Nimueh can’t interpret through trying to mop the tears off Ygraine’s face until there’s a sharp cry and Ygraine straightens right up. “Give him here, I want to hold him,” she says, sounding exhausted but holding her arms out anyway.
“Just let us cut the cord,” says Alice, and Nimueh makes a point of distracting Ygraine, scattering kisses all over her face and telling her how well she’s done, because she’s never met a mother who liked the indignant, unhappy sounds her baby made while the cord was cut. Arthur’s certainly got a healthy set of lungs, and he uses them while the nurses clean him off efficiently and swaddle him up in a blanket to hand him to Ygraine, shifting her up on the pillows so she can take him properly.
“Oh,” Ygraine whispers, touching him gently on the nose, and he stops crying abruptly, looking more affronted than any baby has the right to, and staring up at her. He’s just as squished and blotchy and gorgeous as every other baby Nimueh’s seen in this hospital, with bright blue eyes and the beginnings of blond hair. “Oh, isn’t he lovely?”
“He’s going to look just like you,” Nimueh manages around the lump of sentimentality in her throat. This is her family, for now and maybe, if she’s very lucky, for the rest of her life, and Ygraine might be the one who just gave birth and they might not even officially be dating yet, but that’s her son too. “Hello, Arthur,” she adds, and he gives her a suspicious glare before going back to staring at his mother.
When Nimueh looks up at Ygraine, she’s smiling at her. “Are we done waiting now?”
Nimueh brushes her thumb over Arthur’s head and gives Ygraine a kiss, a proper one this time, and doesn’t care that they’re both disgusting and tired and sweaty, since she figures that will be their default setting until Arthur’s sleeping through the night, or possibly eighteen. “We’re done waiting,” she says, and turns to Alice when she clears her throat.
*
There’s hot soup on the stove when the three of them get home from the hospital two days later, because Balinor has no compunctions whatsoever about giving Hunith the spare key to Nimueh’s flat. Not that Nimueh minds, as otherwise she’d have to cook and she’s feeling overwhelmed and strangely fluttery, a bit like when she has to show a guest her flat for the first time, which is stupid because Arthur is still looking hazily at the world when he isn’t crying or sleeping and doesn’t know the place is tiny. “Welcome home,” she tells him, even though he’s asleep, wrapped in a baby blanket Hunith actually knitted for them in Ygraine’s arms. “Want some soup?” she asks his mum, who’s beaming around like she’s been away for years and not days.
“Please. I’ll set Arthur up in his carrier at the table so I don’t have to hold him, he’s due for a feed soon.”
Nimueh ladles out some soup, wondering when she actually developed a ladle. She suspects Ygraine is behind that. Once they’re all served up and Arthur’s been gently transferred into his carrier, they sit and stare stupidly at each other over the table, Ygraine shifting uncomfortably in her seat as she’s been doing for the past few days. “Hi,” she says just as Nimueh is beginning to worry about the silence stretching out.
“Hi.”
They beam stupidly at one another, which neither of them can seem to help doing. Balinor came to visit while they were both in the room and laughed until Alice stopped by and kicked him out, but he later texted Nimueh told her he’d rallied the other foundation year students to take her shifts over for the next week, which means he approves, in his own way. “I feel as if we ought to be doing something terribly romantic and not family-friendly at all,” Ygraine admits after a few more seconds of silence, “but frankly, the thought of sex at the moment makes me want to cringe.”
Nimueh has to bit her fist when Arthur starts making unhappy noises at her laughter. “Don’t worry, we’ve got time for that. Mind you, it might have to wait until we can leave Arthur with someone else, because with only one bedroom things are going to be horrible, but will you think I’m ridiculous if I say that doesn’t really matter to me yet?”
“Not at all. I thought I was going to have to wait until Arthur was toilet-trained or something before you would give in, so having you at all is amazing.”
“It’s probably still too soon, but I don’t care anymore. It’s probably all these maternal hormones.”
“What maternal hormones? You practically throw him at me whenever he starts to cry.”
“Because he’s always hungry! He is going to eat us out of house and home when he’s a teenager.”
Ygraine just smiles. “Yes, but by then you’ll be a rich doctor and I’ll be making actual money that isn’t just child support, so we’ll have plenty of money to feed him.” She eats several spoonfuls of soup before making a face. “Well, Hunith means well.”
“She’s eighteen and a better cook than I am, I’m really not going to complain.” Nimueh tastes it and deems it better than any of the soup from a can she would be heating up. “Is Helen a good cook? Maybe when she and Tristan come we can make them cook for us.”
“Tristan’s actually an excellent cook, he dated a culinary student at university. I don’t know about Helen. Either way, though, I’ll be using them more as buffers between Uther and me than kitchen workers.”
Nimueh makes a face. “Is he still coming back from New York and coming right over tomorrow? And what kind of father doesn’t end his business trip early when his son is born?”
“The kind I got divorced from,” says Ygraine, rolling her eyes. “And you’ll be polite. He’s good with kids, he’s just horrible with wives. Perhaps Viv and I can get together and have the kids play when Arthur gets past the point of being fascinated with his own feet.” Nimueh gives her an incredulous look. “He should grow up knowing his sister, even if I’d love to strangle Viv.”
“I suppose.” Ygraine shakes her head and leans over to give her a quick kiss. “Sure we can’t just have Viv offed and start up a collection home for Uther’s illegitimate children? We could take Morgause in as well, I suppose, even if she is a terrifying little girl. I think I’d be better with girls than boys.”
“Shut up, you’re going to be wonderful with him. He’ll undoubtedly like you better.”
“He’ll love us both.”
Arthur picks that moment to wake up and start making snuffly, confused, edge-of-tears noises that Ygraine cuts off by picking him up and cuddling him against her chest. “Good morning, darling. Were we being too noisy? Are you hungry?”
“Just lonely, looks like,” says Nimueh, because Arthur’s quieted right down again now that he’s with his mum and the whole thing is almost painfully lovely. She’s going to have problems if she gets this soppy every time she sees Ygraine holding Arthur.
“Oh, good, then you hold him, I’m starving,” says Ygraine, and Nimueh holds her arms out automatically and gets an armful of Arthur, who seems rather sanguine about the transfer. He’s got used to her over the past few days, and probably thinks of her as the large person who doesn’t feed him (thereby distinguishing her from the large person who does feed him).
Nimueh stares at him stupidly for a few seconds, and he returns the favor before deciding that it’s much more interesting to flail an arm free of his blanket and attempt to grasp her hair. His fists don’t quite work yet, so she leaves him to it, shaking her hair into closer reach for him before looking back up at Ygraine. Who is smiling at Nimueh just as indulgently as Nimueh was smiling at her a minute ago. Obviously this is a problem they share. “I love you,” she says. “And you,” she adds when Arthur manages something somewhat resembling a tug on her hair.
“I am so glad I found you again,” says Ygraine, and Nimueh smiles at her helplessly until Arthur decides he isn’t getting enough attention and starts crying. She breaks the moment and bounces him gently in his arms, making the ridiculous cooing noises she used to judge parents for. They’ve got plenty of time to say everything they need to say.