Comedy-Fantasy short. After sex with his merman boyfriend goes wrong, a man has to go to the hospital with a belly full of eggs.
8.6k, rated E, Gen! A story at the Caer Afon Magical Hospital, with Aoife Harkin, at their GUM Clinic. After sex with his merman boyfriend goes wrong, Shore finds he can’t pass the eggs as usual; meanwhile, Aoife accustoms to her new hospital after transferring over.
Contains oviposition and sexy egg sex, and then it’s not so sexy — situations of mild peril, gynecological exams, descriptions of enemas and some mildly unrealistic fantastical cervical situations. This is light-hearted and silly and fun.
CW for descriptions of past violent bullying.
Kissing Cynfab wasn’t like kissing any other men.
For one thing, he didn’t have lips in the same way a human did, nor the same kind of tongue, and when their mouths brushed against one another, Cynfab’s mouth was cool and tasted distantly fresh. Shore had slept with a merman before, back when he was still living in Porthgain, but he’d been a sailor and his colony was undersea — Cynfab was a freshwater man, more amphibious, was from a village on the water instead of under it.
He tasted more like fresh pondwater smelt than he did like oysters.
“Stop sailing,” Cynfab murmured against his mouth as Shore rolled his hips down against Cynfab’s, clenching down round the heavy weight of his ovipositor as it worked further inside him. It was wet and thick, longer than any cock he’d ever taken, and there was a strange bend in it because it wasn’t exactly meant to slot easily into a human cunt.
It felt good.
“Stop sailing?” Shore repeated, laughing as he pulled at the thick strands of reed-like spines around Cynfab’s head, tipping his head back when Cynfab dragged the open edges of his mouth down the side of Shore’s neck, pressing hard when he met the line of Shore’s collarbone. His hands were gripping tightly at Shore’s hips, and Shore could feel the familiar, buzzing thrum through the whole of his body, a wonderful, liquid heat that rushed easy through his veins. “You want me to be a stay-at-home fucktoy?”
“Am I meant to object to that?” asked Cynfab, and then he sucked at one of Shore’s nipples, making Shore groan from low in his throat. “If I fucked you full of enough eggs, do you think you would lactate?”
“No, babe, I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works,” Shore said breathlessly as Cynfab squeezed his hips tighter, shoving the ovipositor the rest of the way into him and making Shore whine.
“I read that you could massage them every day,” said Cynfab. “And if you suck them, too, you can induce it.”
“Let me get this straight,” said Shore, grinding his cock down against the rough, pebbled surface of Cynfab’s belly and feeling the way it made his cock jump, his cunt throbbing. There was a pleasant tension building up in the base of his stomach, and it felt wonderful, was something he’d missed desperately until coming home. “What you want is to induce lactation in me, a man on — yeah, just a little to the left, fuck — on testosterone, and then you want me to go back to work, as what? A boatswain who needs to take a regular tight five to use a breast pump?”
“The solution,” said Cynfab reasonably, “is to stop sailing.”
Shore laughed, and when that made Cynfab’s first set of eyelids close and his head tip back, he laughed harder, clenching down.
“What is it with merfolk and getting off on milky tits?” asked Shore.
“What is it with wynebaes and ovipositors?” retorted Cynfab, and managed to time it just right with the first egg letting down. Shore felt it pop inside him, forcing him a little wider before it worked up the length of Cynfab’s cock.
Shore clenched his teeth as it forced the rest of the way inside him, but the slick the eggs were covered in made the muscles relax, and when he felt it drop into him, it made him moan breathlessly. More heat radiated outward, and he sighed softly, his eyes half-closing as more eggs slid into him, up the length of Cynfab’s ovipositor and dropping into his fucking womb.
“I could never get a hysterectomy,” he mumbled blearily. “You think they do salpingo-oothorectomies without taking the uterus?”
“I don’t know what that is,” Cynfab admitted, “but if you can say that many syllables I’m not giving you a warm enough welcome home.”
Cynfab hoisted Shore’s knees up as he shoved him onto his back, pushing him back into a breeding press, and Shore almost howled as the angle of the ovipositor inside him made him feel like all of his organs were being stirred, Cynfab’s hips knocking against Shore’s arse. Shore’s legs were over his shoulders, thighs pushed up so that Shore’s knees were almost either side of his own head, and Shore could barely think between the eggs dropping into him, Cynfab’s rough-skinned belly rubbing hard against his cock, and most of all he felt the aphrodisiac or venom or whatever you wanted to call it surging through him and making every muscle relax, and it was great.
He felt dizzy as he came, embarrassing noises eking out from his throat as Cynfab kept kissing his neck and the sides of his jaw, his head dropping back onto the pillows.
“Two months at sea,” Cynfab groaned, and Shore shifted uncomfortably, watching the shift and movement of his own belly as Cynfab’s eggs forced his body to make space, made his stomach stretch. “It’s just not the same, fucking other merfolk. They’re not as tight as you are, don’t cry like you do — ”
“Can’t imagine making them lactate like I could?” asked Shore, and it was Cynfab who laughed this time, a vibrating, shuddering sound that came from the base of his gut, a sound that Shore could feel in his cunt.
“What if I got a potion?” asked Cynfab, beseeching. “Just a temporary one?”
“You do realise if you got me to lactate that you wouldn’t even be able to digest it? Even the mildest goat milk makes you sick, babe — why do you think my milk would be any different?”
Cynfab looked down at him in disgust. “What would I want to drink it for?”
Shore laughed, and shifted again. Cynfab’s eggs were popping into him in an easy flood, and showed no sign of slowing down. “Are you laying more than normal?” Shore asked.
“Mmm,” said Cynfab. “Saved myself for you. Wanted to make you feel it.” He looked concerned for a second, looking at Shore with his head tilted to one side. “Too much?”
“Mmm, yeah,” said Shore, “but it’s good. Hurts. But it’s — but it’s good. I like it.”
He looked down at his belly, felt the rub and shift of more eggs inside him, watched it grow, a rounded weight. It did hurt, hurt on the inside, made him feel so full he thought he might burst, and his skin hurt too, a kind of incredible, strange stretching.
“Gonna come again?” asked Cynfab.
Shore nodded his head, grinning, and ground his hips harder against Cynfab’s.
* * *
It was a sunny Monday morning, and the bright line shone in through the windows of the clinic, leaving bright white squares on the wall with all the leaflets and pamphlets hanging from it. It was bothering her, looking at the leaflets and pamphlets, because some of them were out of order or mixed up or creased and she didn’t have time to put them into place. She was later than she’d wanted to be because the app had lied about how much the bus journey actually took even though it said it provided live updates, and although Aoife had wanted to arrive twenty-five minutes before they were due to meet, she’d actually arrived ten minutes before, and that was only enough time to change into her scrubs.
She hoped no one asked her to go into the rest of the hospital today — part of why she’d wanted a little extra time was to work out some of the best ways between the clinic and other parts.
She would need time to learn all the routes between the main departments, and in hospitals there were always good shortcuts or unexpected ways you could go from A to B, especially if you wanted to avoid the most crowded corridors, which she typically did.
She’d walk around after work for a little bit, moving between the nurse’s changing rooms and some of the other staff rooms, the main food hall, the different departments. It had taken her ages at the Royal to figure out what was where — even after working there two years, she still struggled sometimes to plot a quick route between one place and another, would almost get lost even though she should have known exactly what she was doing and where she was going.
She wasn’t great at directions.
The head of the Caer Afon GUM Clinic was a vampire named Doctor Irene Plummer. She looked to be around fifty or so, although Aoife was aware she was older: she was short and quite thin, wearing her dirty blond hair in feathery curls, and she had hazel eyes. There were freckles scattered over her small snub nose, and when she concentrated on the clipboard in her hands, her nose scrunched up, so that the freckles shifted like constellations from one end of the year to the other.
She didn’t just run the GUM Clinic — she was an obstetrician in her own right, Aoife was distantly aware, and was the primary consultant for the occasional vampiric pregnancies that passed through the hospital. Vampires’ pregnancies could be complicated.
Much like all pregnancies, Aoife supposed, although she never intended to find out herself.
The other two new nurses she’d never seen before. The first of them, Sophia, was tall and creamy-skinned and red headed, muscular in the way that rowers were, lean and strong. Her hair was shaved on one side and longer on the other, and she only wore earrings on one side. Aoife didn’t know if that was meant to be a clue to sexuality or something else.
The other one was the same height she was, but he had rich, brown skin, and his hair was cut into a short cut that she didn’t know the name of, a dwindle or a wane or something like that. He wore earrings, too — he wore a large stud in each ear, red-brown gems too dark to be rubies — were they garnets?
“I’m Irene,” said Doctor Plummer. “I’m happy to have the three of you here — we normally like to have new nurses start out in the walk-in clinics so that you can be outward-facing while you’re still learning the hospital as a whole, although Danny, I know that won’t be a problem for you. It shouldn’t take you too long to get to know most of the other nurses and doctors in the department.”
She blinked up from the clipboard, and for the first time, seemed to look at the three of them, her eyes narrowing, focusing on them. She smiled at Danny, whose name badge read Daniel.
Aoife’s fingers twitched at her side as she wondered which of those appellations she would be expected to use.
“This is Dinah Winston, she’ll be your lead,” said Irene. “I’m fairly hands on, but I go between here and Obstetrics — and Dinah knows everything there is to know about everything.”
She grinned when she said this, and Dinah — Nurse Winston — laughed, clapping together her hands. She had nice hands, Aoife thought. She wore charm bracelets and a cross around her neck, and her hair was thick and natural. Aoife didn’t know if it was called an afro when it was tied up like that — it seemed as though everyone had a beautiful haircut except her, and she didn’t know what any of them were called.
She wondered if anyone would ask her to pierce her ears.
She hoped not.
“And Aoife,” said Doctor Plummer. She said it as though she were finishing a sentence, and Aoife wondered if it showed in her face that she hadn’t heard the first sections of it. “You worked at the Royal, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Aoife. “For two years. I did my internship there.”
There was a moment’s pause, and Aoife remained still, glancing between Doctor Plummer and Daniel-Danny and Sophia.
“Where?” prompted Plummer.
“A&E,” said Aoife. “My bedside manner needs work, but I’m calm and capable in a crisis.”
“Exactly what it says here in my notes,” said Plummer mildly, lips shifting into a small smile. “Thank you. Have any of you done shifts in GUM before?”
“No,” said Aoife as Sophia — oh no, what if she wanted to be called Sophie? — and Danny-Daniel shook their heads.
“Obstetrics?”
“A little,” said Daniel-Danny. “I worked between NICU and Obstetrics in my last hospital.”
“You want to work toward paeds?”
“Yeah.”
“And what about you two?”
“I don’t know,” said Sophia, beaming widely with shiny white teeth. They had to be artificially whitened, Aoife thought, or straightened, or something. They looked unsettlingly perfect. “I’m just happy to help, still figuring out where I belong, I suppose.”
“I liked A&E,” said Aoife.
“You like a fast-paced environment?” asked Doctor Plummer.
“Yes,” said Aoife. “Less time with individual patients.”
Beside her, Daniel-Danny snorted, holding his laugh behind his hand, and Aoife glanced at him before looking to Sophia and Nurse Winston and Doctor Plummer, none of whom were laughing, although Doctor Plummer was smiling slightly.
“Well, you’ll normally be working through people quite quickly in here,” she said mildly. “We might have referrals from A&E coming down to us from upstairs, and the three of you will likely be working shifts in other parts of the hospital at least once or twice a week once you’ve settled in here. As well as Dinah and myself, the main people you’ll see coming through here are others in Obstetrics, as this clinic is really an extension of the Obs budget — Colleen Pike is our clinical lead for the nurses, and you’ll meet some of the other doctors as well, especially Doctor Whipp — Ollie — and Doc Ephraim Margolis. You already know Ephraim, don’t you, Aoife?”
“Yes,” said Aoife. “He treated me before.”
“You were pregnant?” asked Sophia, leaning in to ask the question, and Aoife pressed her lips together.
“No,” she said. “For — ”
“Sorry to cut the chit-chat short,” said Doctor Plummer, “but now I’ve hit the three of you with a barrage of names we’d just like to give you a quick tour before we get to work.”
Aoife liked that the clinic was limited in its design, that it didn’t have a lot of extra entrances and exits. The main entrance was from the hospital’s central square, two big double doors and a side entrance that came up from the ramp, and then one corridor led off toward their small canteen and a set of lockers before branching off into Obstetrics and the other departments. One internal entrance, one external one — that was more than enough, she felt, and was easy to keep track of.
“… anything at all you’re unsure of, just let me know. Some patients will just say to you that they’re not comfortable seeing a nurse at all — that’s completely fine, just let Bea on the desk know, and advise the patient they might be in for a bit longer of a wait. You’ll learn the names of our regular docs soon enough. Aoife?”
“I’m not a doctor,” said Aoife.
“I know,” said Doctor Plummer. “Can I just have a word with you?”
Aoife nodded her head, and as Sophia and Daniel went off to their own exam rooms, ready for the clinic opening at ten, she and Doctor Plummer went into exam room two — Aoife’s, for the day.
They were roomy for what they were — the GUM clinic had eight exam rooms and two offices, as well a few bathroom stalls. It was four or five times as much space as should have fitted into the space allotted, and Aoife could feel the strange flow of space stretched thin as she moved between the corridors and individual rooms. It wasn’t uncommon for hospitals to use dimensional magic to make more space — she’d be more surprised a hospitals that didn’t — but this work was sophisticated and smooth, very modern.
The Caer Afon hospital was newer than the Royal, but more than being newer, it was more sensibly designed, and it seemed to her that strong warding and space enlargement were considered from the point of architecture, so that everything could fit together.
The air at the Royal had felt messy at times, conflicting magics overflowing and spiralling around one another on the air, in the walls, under the floors, so that the whole place sometimes felt rife with tension on busy days, even before you took the patients into account.
“I didn’t mean I disliked patients,” said Aoife as she swiped her fingers over the enchantment plate at the end of the examination chair, making it glow pink for a moment as it was sterilised. “I just don’t like having to talk to the same ones all day for weeks, that’s all.”
“Oh, no, this isn’t about that, exactly,” said Plummer. “Ephraim has talked a little about you. He also mentioned you struggle a little with argumentative patients, with finessing anyone who’s a bit more difficult. I just wanted to say if you have any trouble with anyone, just let me know and I’m happy to help.”
Aoife looked down at her hands for a moment, taking that in. “Is that what he said?” she asked. “Finessing? Argumentative?”
“He didn’t use those words exactly,” said Doctor Plummer.
“No,” Aoife said. “I didn’t think he did.”
* * *
It was nearly nine in the morning, and Shore was still sprawled back in the bath, barely able to move. His stomach hurt, the muscles cramping every now and then, and he was having to piss every other fucking minute. He hadn’t been able to lay the eggs like usual last night, but sometimes it was the case that some eggs stuck in him before he could get rid of them, so he’d just figured he’d leave them for a bit — and it wasn’t bad to sleep with the eggs in him, it wasn’t like they could take, given that they were all unfertilised.
He’d gotten up a few times in the night, each time hadn’t been able to get rid of them, and he’d finally given up trying to sleep at five. The hot, steaming water normally made his body give up the last two or three eggs when he had some stuck in him, but he hadn’t even been able to lay one, let alone all of them.
Shore rubbed over the swollen surface of his gut, which could be called pregnant, except that most of the time when people had a pregnant belly, he didn’t know that it had quite such a nobbled texture under your hand.
Cynfab looked in through the door at Shore in the bath, and if he could have frowned, perhaps he would have — as it stood, the spiny leaves that made up his equivalent of eyebrows shifted, and his mouth opened slightly. Shore watched his gills twitch.
“You have a plug in?” he asked.
Shore sighed. “Nope,” he muttered. “I’m cramping like fuck.”
“You should have passed them by now,” said Cynfab. “It’s been sixteen hours, at least. You know they aren’t fertilised.”
“I know they’re not fertilised,” Shore muttered. “I’m not trying to bear your children, babe. You have to take me to the hospital.”
“You think they’ll cut you open?” asked Cynfab, with a distant curiosity, and Shore felt a little nauseous at the thought.
“If they do,” he said, “I’ll get a hysterectomy just to spite you.”
Cynfab nodded sagely. “While they’re in there, might as well,” he said, and Shore tossed an empty shampoo bottle at him, which Cynfab caught and frowned down at. The concept of soaps as it applied to surfacers had never quite sunk in for him, let alone the difference between hair products and otherwise. “You okay?”
“I’m fucking embarrassed,” muttered Shore. “But I’d like to be able to do something with my shore leave other than sit here full of eggs. Get a taxi, would you?”
“Why? What’s wrong with my bike?”
“What’s wrong with your — I’m the size of a fucking cow, that’s what’s wrong with your bike.”
“You’ll still fit,” said Cynfab. “I’m not paying for a taxi.”
“You won’t pay for a taxi? You’re the one who did this to me.”
“Well, it’s you who won’t spit them out again. Besides, do you want a taxi driver wishing you good luck on your evident pregnancy?”
For a moment, Shore scowled at Cynfab, who looked back at him unflinching until Shore broke. “Jesus Christ, fine, just — help me out. I need to piss.”
* * *
The work itself didn’t bother Aoife.
Doctor Plummer had said once or twice in their first week, as did Nurse Winston frequently, that the trial by fire of the GUM Clinic was in getting over one’s embarrassment. Aoife didn’t know that she had any embarrassment, although sometimes it was frustrating when she was trying to ask a question and the person in front of them kept shrinking away from it or trying to change the subject.
“How many sexual partners have you had in the past three months?”
“Do you experience pain or discomfort during sex?”
“How often do you engage in penetrative sex?”
Asking the questions was easy. Getting the answers wasn’t always — sometimes people would go quiet, or they’d mumble their answers, or they’d obfuscate around the answer and say something that was almost relevant but wasn’t quite. Becoming impatient was not what she was supposed to do, and she became impatient very quickly — she’d learned that explaining the reasons for the question she was asking helped sometimes, but not always, and it took longer.
That was one thing, though, something she could cope with — what troubled her, really bothered her, was when they got irritated or angry, and suddenly snapped at her that it was none of her business, or why couldn’t she just do the test and get on with it, or give them over to the doctor. As soon as they raised their voices, she flinched, went stiff, couldn’t deal with it, and one or two of them had said that she was being sarcastic or making fun of them, and those ones had gotten aggressive.
Both times, after, she’d had to leave the room and let someone else go in — both times, Nurse Winston would make her go sit down with a cup of tea and tell Doctor Plummer, who’d ask her later on how she felt about it, if she was alright.
But she didn’t mind taking swabs, or checking people’s pulses, delivering medication, explaining prescriptions, explaining contraception, explaining abortifacients, explaining anything. She liked to make sure she was going slow, make sure people were understanding, although she was always so certain that some people didn’t understand even though they nodded their heads and said they did, but they wouldn’t tell her they didn’t for reasons she struggled to grasp.
She liked nursing. She liked delivering care, liked ensuring that people’s injuries didn’t last as long and that they recovered quicker from their illnesses, liked relieving people’s pain, even liked explaining things so that people had a better understanding of what had happened or was happening to their bodies, when they did understand.
But she wasn’t good at people.
She’d never pretended to be.
“Hello, Aoife,” said Doctor Ephraim, coming over to where Aoife was sitting alone in the hospital canteen, and Aoife looked up at him as he sank down across from her, his big body making the bench creak slightly. Ephraim Margolis didn’t have a beautiful, modern haircut, and he didn’t have piercings in his ears, and he didn’t wear make-up or wear very fashionable or attractive clothes like Danny (he preferred Danny) or Sophia (she preferred Sophia) or like Ollie (he preferred Doctor Whipp, but for some reason, neither Danny nor Sophia liked to call him that). Doctor Ephraim had grey and black hair balding on the top of his head and a beard, which always seemed a bit overgrown even if he’d just been to his barber, and he wore simple, normal clothes that were comfortable and practical. “How are you settling in?”
Aoife liked Doctor Ephraim’s accent — when they’d met, she hadn’t been able to see, had had bandages over her eyes to let them heal because they were so photosensitive, and she’d commented on it when he’d come to se her. He had a nice voice, rich and low and with a slight crackle to it like many older men had, but his accent was slightly musical — he was Polish, but he never said he was Polish on its own, always said he was a Polish Jew.
“I’m not,” said Aoife, and Ephraim laughed his affectionate laugh, reaching over and patting her arm, and she didn’t flinch like she did when Sophia touched her unexpectedly, which she did often. Ephraim didn’t grab at her or try to pull her close the way that Sophia kept doing out of friendliness — he just pressed his fingers against the back of her wrist for a moment, then withdrew it and began to eat his meal.
“That bad, is it?”
“I don’t know if it’s bad,” said Aoife, taking a sip from her bottle.
“You’re making friends?”
“No,” said Aoife, and Ephraim smiled down at her, but it never felt like it was making fun of her when he smiled at her like that, just felt warm and affectionate and really quite comfortable. “They hate Doctor Whipp.”
“Who? The nurses, all of them?”
“Sophia and Danny.”
“Oh, that’s a shame,” said Ephraim, frowning so that his big, bushy eyebrows knitted together, but he didn’t look or seem surprised. “Have you had many encounters with him?”
“We’ve crossed paths,” said Aoife.
Doctor Whipp was a much smaller man than Doctor Ephraim — he was shorter than Sophia and Danny, too, both of whom were quite tall, although taller than Aoife by an inch or two. He didn’t like that he wasn’t taller than people, Danny said, and he always stepped up close to Danny and Sophia when he was telling them to do things, but he didn’t do that to Aoife, or hadn’t so far. He reminded Aoife of one of those dogs that was overbred and ended up constantly anxious — he was almost always vibrating with some stress or other, tightly wound like a spring, and trembling with the effort not to come undone, which he frequently did regardless.
“Do you hate him?” asked Ephraim, sounding hopeful. Aoife wondered if that was the sort of voice he employed when he was asking people if they hated Aoife.
“No,” said Aoife, not because it was the answer she knew he wanted, but because it was true. “I don’t like his attitude — I think he’s too stern too quickly, and he mistakes criticism for attack. Constantly. He would be a competent doctor if he didn’t keep doing that.”
“Mm,” hummed Ephraim. “I agree, and I’ve told him so. He has no bedside manner, either.” He didn’t mean, he can’t take criticism, and has no bedside manner either. He meant, he doesn’t have any bedside manner, the same as you. “He’s getting better — he will get better. I just hope he doesn’t ruin his relations with the other doctors and nurses here before he learns.”
Aoife picked up her sandwich and took a few bites, chewing as Ephraim looked thoughtful, and then he said, “The work?”
Aoife swallowed. “People keep not answering the questions.”
“Not everyone’s comfortable being asked about their sexual health.”
“Seems a bit stupid to come to a sexual health clinic, then.”
Ephraim laughed, the sound quiet and rich. “Necessity wasn’t built to breed comfort, my girl. That they have to come doesn’t mean they’ll be comfortable. Irene seems to like you — and Dinah says you’re a hard worker, and that your paperwork is properly filled out, which she’s a bit of a stickler for. How about the other two new nurses, Sophia and Danny, is it?”
“They don’t like me,” said Aoife.
“Have they told you that?”
“No.”
“They calling you names, being cruel to you?”
“No,” said Aoife. “They just don’t talk to me, that’s all, and they keep laughing when I say things, especially Danny.”
“That doesn’t mean they don’t like you,” said Ephraim, which Aoife had been hoping he would say — and almost knew he would say, although she didn’t really know it until she heard him say it. “They just don’t know how to talk to you just yet, hm?”
Aoife didn’t say anything, and kept eating.
“Nightmares?”
“The same as ever,” said Aoife. “Manageable.”
“Pain?”
“Constant,” said Aoife. “Manageable.”
“Irene said you’ve had a few patients lose their temper with you. How’s that been?”
“I shut down, I guess,” said Aoife quietly. “I’m not very good with it still. I need practice. I’m getting practice.”
“The GUM is a good place to get it,” said Ephraim. “Are you finding you cope less well with conflict here than you did in A&E?”
Aoife frowned, looking across at him, and he chuckled quietly. “How did I know?”
“How did you know?”
“A&E had outside pressure that kept you moving. Here, you’re not typically under that duress — the patients you get are non-urgent, so when they shout at you, you freeze up, and there’s no sudden flow pushing you along the other direction. You just freeze and stick there.”
“Okay,” said Aoife.
“And Bristol?” pressed Ephraim. “You like Bristol?”
“Yeah,” said Aoife. “Yeah, I like it.”
“Who do you live with?”
“No one. I live at the Bayett.”
“Ah,” said Ephraim, and his face lit up, his eyes shining gold. “My sister runs the Bayett, you know. Angela.”
Aoife had met Angela Moscona twice since she’d come back to Bristol — once when she’d arrived to Bristol, and once a few weeks ago when she’d eaten at the Bayett’s central restaurant. The hotel campus was sprawling and huge, was massive, and was large enough that although it always had many guests, you weren’t necessarily going past them all the time.
Angela was a stout, strong woman with a calm demeanour, was kind without being pushy about it, and Aoife liked her well enough. She was the general manager of the Bayett Inn, and the owner, too: as a child, Aoife had thought of her as a great deal taller than she really was, more commanding, somehow.
“I didn’t know she was an angel.”
“She is, she is,” said Ephraim. “Bayett — bayit — it means home. It’s a very old building, has been here for a long time, the Bayett Inn. Are you in a hotel room or one of their apartments?”
“It’s a cottage on the bit of land nearest the edge of the hotel campus — it used to be a groundskeeper’s building, but they changed it over. It’s nice. It’s really — My aunt organised it, just because it’s such a quiet space, she knew it’d suit me, but being on the hotel campus I don’t have to worry about magical outbursts, and I get to stay independent without living with her.”
Ephraim nodded approvingly. “That’s good,” he said. “You’re going to settle in here, Aoife. It’s all going to be alright, hm?”
Aoife nodded, and this time when Ephraim touched her, it was her shoulder, and he squeezed and put pressure on it but didn’t grasp it with the whole of his hand, just gripped the outer corner of it. She smiled slightly.
“You’re off Friday, yes? You’ll come over for shabbat dinner,” said Ephraim — it was not a question. “Meet some friends of mine. Colleen will come, you know Colleen?”
“Colleen Pike? Clinical lead?”
“Of course.”
Aoife was still smiling, and Ephraim looked at her very kindly, warmly. She knew it was strange, that it wasn’t normal, that she was so excited at being invited over for dinner to Doctor Ephraim’s — she knew that apart from Colleen Pike, who was around forty, his friends would probably all be in their fifties and sixties, that a lot of them would be quieter, slower, than people her own age.
She’d liked it when she was still a kid, and Ephraim had been her regular doctor, going to his house so regularly, being introduced to other kids or just talking with friends of his from temple or from the hospital. Ephraim liked music and conversation and debate, and his friends were often extroverted, but he always had one or two friends that were quieter and only observed, and no one ever pushed Aoife to talk if she didn’t want to.
“Ollie will come, of course,” said Ephraim. “He’s a nice boy.”
Aoife must have looked sceptical, because the old man’s laugh was soft and easy, but he shrugged his shoulders slightly.
“He can be,” he said. “When he isn’t working, he’s better.”
Aoife nodded her head, but didn’t argue — she believed Ephraim, always believed him, had never learned to do otherwise.
“Shall I make something?” asked Aoife.
“You? No. You’re a terrible cook,” said Ephraim, and Aoife smiled, nodding as she looked back to her food.
“I’ll buy something,” she said quietly, feeling all of a sudden very at-home even though the hospital was still too big and it took too long for her to navigate and some of the patients were too stressful. She suddenly felt very at-home indeed.
* * *
Shore needed help to be pulled to his feet out of the bath, and he wore a thick hoodie that slightly obscured his belly but didn’t actually hide the shape of him once he was sitting up, a set of tracksuit bottoms, shoes. He felt fucking sick, and while he’d eaten only a little he felt uncomfortably full, and as soon as he so much as drank a mouthful of water he’d be ready to piss like a racehorse.
Cynfab’s bike was uncomfortable — he needed Cynfab’s help to climb onto the back of it, but couldn’t actually grasp at Cynfab’s back to hold himself steady without crushing his belly and making him feel like he was about to burst, so Cynfab immediately got off and swapped their places, anchoring Shore in front of him and bracketing him with his arms.
“I’m gonna fucking kill you,” Shore groaned in pain when Cynfab kicked the engine on, and Cynfab laughed, backing them out onto the street. The vibration of the bike underneath them jiggled the whole packed-tight mess in him — they’d been in him for too long and they felt slightly dry, had probably absorbed moisture or whatfuckingever, and although there was a weird throbbing ache behind his cunt that almost felt good, it was overshadowed almost entirely by the cramp of his muscles and the uncomfortable tug and shift of the eggs inside him, all of them in one big clump.
He leaned heavily on Cynfab once they were at the hospital, waddling awkwardly up the ramp because he definitely couldn’t handle the fucking stairs, and into the reception at A&E.
He collapsed into a seat and let Cynfab go to the reception — he was not encouraged by the way that the receptionist looked over at Shore, frowned thoughtfully, and then pointed down a corridor.
“Please, no,” he said as Cynfab came back over, his helmet in his hand, and Cynfab laughed.
“Downstairs,” he said. “He says GUM Clinic.”
“I just sat down,” groaned Shore, but he took Cynfab’s arm when the other man offered it, and leaned into his body as he limped toward the limp. He wanted to demand that Cynfab carry him, but he knew that that would just make the pain worse, Cynfab trying to arrange him in his arms.
They turned down the corridor at the elevator downstairs, and as soon as they crossed the threshold into the clinic downstairs, a receptionist gave them a winning smile and said, “Room 3.”
The woman waiting for them was a nurse sitting at a computer, a pale little thing with dark hair and a blank expression.
“Good afternoon,” she said. “How can we help you today?”
“He pumped a wombful of eggs in me,” Shore grunted, dropping too heavily into a chair and groaning in pain. “And I can’t fucking get them out.”
She stared at them, then glanced down at Shore’s belly, then turned back to the computer. The next few minutes passed in a flurry of names and dates of birth and her bringing up his patient record, and Shore wished he was fucking dead.
“You’re a merman,” she said to Cynfab, as if it wasn’t fucking obvious. “What family are you?”
“Corbwll,” said Cynfab.
“How long ago?”
“Last night,” said Shore. “Nine or ten o’clock, something like that.”
“You’re used to oviposition?”
“It was our first time together after a while apart,” said Shore irritably. “He’d been saving himself, it’s more than I normally take, like twice as much, and I can’t open up and get them out.”
“Sixteen or seventeen hours is more than enough time for your partner’s venom to wear off,” she said, which made Shore curl his lip — as if he didn’t fucking know that. She was Irish and she spoke very flatly, condescendingly, and it was driving him fucking mental. “Have you tried a hot bath? The steam and hot water can — ”
“Do you really think I’d be at the fucking hospital if I hadn’t tried a fucking bath?” demanded Shore, and she stared at him for a second or two, face unchanging.
“Hot bath unhelpful,” she said slowly, writing down the note. “Did you take a muscle relaxant?”
“No,” muttered Shore. “But it feels fucking — It feels dry, uncomfortable. They don’t feel as liquid and as lubricated as they did before, and they’re not moving as much.”
“Even unfertilised eggs are meant to absorb moisture from their surroundings. In the absence of a fertilising fluid they’ve likely absorbed moisture from — ”
“I fucking know that,” Shore almost shouted, and this time she didn’t flinch, but she leaned back slightly — Cynfab put his hand on Shore’s shoulder, frowning down at him. “Sorry. Just — Can you put me in touch with a fucking doctor, please? Somebody?”
“These notes are to help the doctor,” said the nurse.
“I don’t fucking care,” said Shore, eyes burning, “I just need these out of me, please, I can’t — I can’t do questions, right now, I feel like I’m gonna fucking burst.” The nurse stared at him, her face still blank, unchanging.
“I’ll be right back,” she said, and left the room.
He dropped his face into Cynfab’s thigh, and Cynfab stroked his hair, curling his fingers through it.
“You going to fucking say sorry?” asked Shore.
“What for? Fucking you?”
Shore pinched his hip, and Cynfab tugged gently on his hair in response — he expected they’d be waiting a lot longer, but the door opened and a skinny boy doctor only a bit taller than the nurse came in. He was blond and wore glasses, and he took one look at Shore and then raised his hand.
“I’m Doctor Whipp,” said the skinny boy. “Aoife says you’re in a bit of discomfort.”
His fingers shone slightly as the bed lowered itself, and Shore slowly pulled himself to his feet, sliding himself onto the bed instead and letting Cynfab pull his tracksuit bottoms off. He groaned in pain as he leaned back on the bed and spread his legs apart, and watched the doctor pull on gloves.
“There’s no chance the eggs could have taken?” asked the doctor, and Shore shook his head.
“I didn’t fertilise them,” said Cynfab, and Whipp nodded as he took the speculum that Aoife handed him. Shore winced, expecting it to hurt or at least be cold, but Whipp had warmed it with easy magic the same way that he’d dropped the bed, and he’d lubed it pretty fucking generously.
“If there’s an egg lodged in the entrance to the cervix, I can probably just move it,” said Whipp, twisting the dial on the speculum and making it open outward bit by bit. “Because the eggs sound as if they’d dried up a bit, they won’t necessarily all just slide out again, but a few of them should. It might just be that the eggs are in slightly the wrong place to drop down — it can be uncomfortable to palpate your belly yourself, I know, but I might be able to massage them out of place.”
“And if you can’t?” asked Shore.
“Will you have to cut him open?” asked Cynfab, but he didn’t have the same curiosity he did have earlier — he genuinely sounded anxious, and Shore would have been crowing over it were it not for the fact that he had a child in a lab coat peering into his fucking cunt.
“We’d only have to approach this surgically if you’d done serious damage to the cervical canal, which I feel like you would have mentioned.” Shore frowned at his tone, not much liking it. “You’d probably feel it, in any case… Ah.”
“Ah?” asked Shore.
“Do you mind if I penetrate you?” asked Whipp. “It’s going to feel a little uncomfortable.”
“Penetrate away, I’m not fussy,” muttered Shore, and scrunched up his face as Whipp touched him deeper than he expected he’d be able to — was that magic, too? — with his fingers brushing and pressing up against his cervical wall. “Is there an egg stuck?”
“No,” said the doctor. He moved with a swab, taking a little sample. “Unfortunately, it looks like the muscle here has clenched tightly shut — had you not had sex for a while before last night?”
“Two months,” said Cynfab.
Doctor Whipp raised his eyebrows. “Yeah,” he said, standing to his feet and gently removing the speculum. “That’ll do it. The muscle relaxant that accompanies your eggs has a small amount of what effectively amounts to glue — it helps the eggs cling together, helps them stick to the uterine wall, and the longer you, uh… save yourself, the more of that will be present in your, ahem, emissions. You’ve got some irritation on the cervical wall here, and the cement itself was sticky enough before you developed a reaction to it — did you try to pass them last night?”
“Yeah,” muttered Shore.
“You left them for a few hours first, though?”
“Two or three.”
“You don’t have to pass them immediately as a rule, but if you take a big clutch like this again, it’s best to try to pass them within half an hour or so,” said Whipp, pulling off his gloves and tossing them aside. “For now, you’ll need a douche to break down your partner’s cement and to soothe the reaction, and then I’ll give you a muscle relaxant — hopefully, that’ll be enough to let you pass most of the eggs. If they’re stubborn, a manual massage, and a full enema.”
Shore was torn between wanting to punch the skinny doctor in the face for his smugness and wanting to kiss him full on the mouth. “That’s it?” he asked. “No surgery?”
“No surgery,” said Whipp. “You’re dehydrated though — I assume drinking’s difficult with that pressure on your bladder? — so I’ll put you on a drip when I admit you next door. Pop your clothes back on, and I’ll arrange for a bed for you — it might be a little bit of a wait, just because we’ll have to mix the balance with this sample, but it shouldn’t be longer than an hour. The douche will be easy, will take ten minutes — if you then pass the eggs, perfect. If you don’t, opening your cervical canal up will take a bit, and then once the enema’s in, you’ll have to hold it for half an hour or so.”
“Thanks,” said Shore, only slightly miserably.
“Would you like a wheelchair?” asked the Irish nurse.
“Please,” said Cynfab, and they both disappeared at once.
“We’re never having sex again,” said Shore. “You put fucking cement in my vagina.”
“I didn’t know there was cement,” muttered Cynfab, looking mystified.
“It’s your cement! You should fucking know!”
“I know now,” said Cynfab, and helped him put his trackies back on.
* * *
“Are you okay?” asked Doctor Whipp that evening. Aoife was putting on her coat, ready to go home, and she glanced at him feeling distant surprise — it was obvious that Danny and Sophia were also surprised, but they showed it a lot more obviously, Danny’s eyebrows raising, Sophia’s lips parted.
“I’m fine,” said Aoife, putting her scarf around her neck. “Thanks.”
“He wasn’t yelling at you, the guy full of eggs,” said Doctor Whipp. “He was just stressed.”
“Yes,” said Aoife.
Whipp stared at her, his lips pressing together, and then he gave a stout, hard nod, and left the room.
“Oh my God,” said Danny.
“That was incredible,” agreed Sophia.
Aoife tightened her scarf.
“Ah ah ah ah,” said Danny, grabbing her arm on one side, and Aoife went stiff, her lips pressing together. “Where are you going?”
“Home,” said Aoife.
“No, no, no,” said Sophia, looping her hand through Aoife’s arm on the other side, making her feel like her skin was too tight. She clenched her jaw. “You’re coming out drinking with us.”
“I don’t drink,” said Aoife.
“We’re off work tomorrow,” said Danny.
“I don’t drink whether I’m working or not.”
“You can have one,” said Sophia.
“No, I can’t,” said Aoife. “I don’t take any mood-altering or disinhibiting substances where it’s avoidable.”
“… Well,” said Danny, squeezing her arm and making her wince. “You can have a coffee. Or — or a soda. A mocktail.”
“Fine,” said Aoife. “Let go of my arm, please.”
This was the wrong thing to say, apparently — Danny gave her a weird look, but he took his arm away even though Sophia didn’t, and Aoife twisted her arm away, feeling the weird sensitivity crawl over her skin and shaking herself off.
“So,” Sophia said, in the voice of someone desperate to change the subject. “He likes you.”
“… What?”
“Ollie,” said Danny, winking. “He was giving you the eye.”
“He was all over you!” agreed Sophia.
“He was being a lot nicer to you than he is to anybody else,” said Danny.
Aoife wrinkled her nose. “Right,” she said. “No,” she said immediately after.
“Oh, come on,” said Sophia. “He’s not bad-looking!”
“You’ve been saying he’s so thin you could cut yourself on him for the past several weeks.”
“He’s got nice eyes,” said Sophia. “His hair is good.”
“He smells good,” said Danny, waggling his eyebrows.
“I haven’t smelled him,” said Aoife. Things had become clear, though — they were going to a bar to gossip. Which was good, theoretically. It was an extension of friendship.
She wasn’t in the mood for friendship tonight.
“He was asking after me because Doctor Ephraim told him to,” she said, watching Sophia and Danny put on their coats, then their scarves and hats. “We’re both going to his house for dinner on Friday evening — Ephraim will have mentioned me.”
“Doctor Margolis seems like such a cute old man,” said Sophia.
Aoife had no idea what that was supposed to mean.
“You said he treated you before?”
“When I was a teenager.”
“But not here,” said Sophia immediately after.
“No. Ephraim’s background is in paediatrics — he likes midwifery and working with pregnant people and young babies, but he’s done work with children of all ages.”
“Were you sick a lot as a kid?” asked Danny.
“I was bullied a lot when I was younger,” said Aoife. “I came to live with my aunt after some girls my age tried to kill me.”
“They didn’t try to kill you, surely,” said Danny, apparently automatically.
“They pushed me off of our school building,” said Aoife. “It was a six-storey drop.”
“Oh,” said Danny.
“Oh, wait, you’re from Ireland, right?” asked Sophia, in an understanding tone that was somehow more condescending even than Doctor Whipp’s worst. “Was it like, a Protesant-Catholic thing?”
“… No. They were Catholic as well. I broke my arm and fractured my skull — my magic moved instinctively to protect me, so I have some spell damage, but it cushioned my fall so that I didn’t die. Ephraim helped me with my physical therapy.”
Both of them were quiet. She shouldn’t have said that, shouldn’t have told them any of that — they weren’t asking about Doctor Whipp anymore, but they were thinking about this, which was maybe worse.
“I wish my brothers had had that kind of magic,” said Danny, and Aoife looked at him as he pulled on his gloves. “I have two — I’m the middle brother, right? My big brother, Jeremiah, Jerry, he used to be really into chemistry and alchemical experiments when we were kids; my little brother, Ross? He does parkour, BMX stunts, freeclimbing, anything you can think of. Literally every month when we were kids, one or the other one would be in A&E — my mum’s a nurse, and I started out nursing with them two.”
“Oh,” said Aoife, and nodded. He was looking at her as though he expected her to say more, so she said, “I see.”
“You really don’t find him hot?” Sophia asked, tilting her head and grinning at her. “Come on, you must do.”
“Doctor Whipp?” asked Aoife. “No.”
“What kind of guys do you like?” asked Sophia immediately, and Aoife inhaled, trying to remember the best way out of a conversation like this.
“Do you find Doctor Whipp attractive?” she asked.
“What? No!”
“You look for something else in men.”
“Uh, yeah, kinda. Let’s see… I like tall guys — ”
Sophia talked about the sort of men that appealed to her for quite a long time. Aoife couldn’t decide whether it was a relief, or it was worse — but they walked out to the bar, and neither of them grabbed at her again once she stood on the outside so that they were stood together and could grab at one another instead.
“Did you have a hard time today?” asked Danny once they were sitting down. “Is that why Ollie asked?”
“I don’t do very well with being shouted at by patients,” said Aoife. “I shut down.”
“You’d think they’d know better when we hold their penises in our hands,” said Sophia in a wise tone, and Aoife frowned even as Danny laughed.
“Right,” said Aoife, for want of a better thing to say. She drank the mocktail when it was put in front of her, and was surprised to find she actually liked the taste.
* * *
Shore laid down that night over Cynfab’s lap, a hot water bottle underneath his stomach and Cynfab’s hand sliding back and forth over his back. They were watching TV, but Shore was a little bit out of it from the meds he was on, and couldn’t really concentrate.
Obviously, he’d had to have the full fucking enema, and his insides hurt a little from the massaging they’d had to do to work all the eggs out of him. No sex for a few weeks, and he had an unguent he was meant to rub on his belly — it was a potion, something he’d absorb and that would help his uterine lining, or whatever.
They’d given them a booklet about safe sex between merpeople and their partners, and Cynfab kept reading it and picking out interesting facts which were not interesting, and were, in this context, incredibly annoying.
“I hate you,” mumbled Shore against Cynfab’s thigh — he kept saying it, just to keep Cynfab reminded.
“None of this would have happened if you were my stay-at-home fucktoy,” Cynfab said reasonably, and then made a winded noise as Shore elbowed him in the side.
To make sure Cynfab couldn’t see his smile, Shore pulled a thicker cushion under his head, and closed his eyes.
FIN.
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