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The slumber party makeouts aren’t solely to blame, but they’re a pretty big factor.
Jackie had asked Shauna for help, and batted her big doe eyes, and Shauna had agreed to do whatever she asked, even if that meant helping Jackie practice her kissing for Jeff.
The same Jeff that Shauna was fucking behind Jackie’s back.
Shauna decided to unpack it later, when Jackie was asleep, and not now, when Jackie’s lips were pressed to hers, and she could taste the strawberry of Jackie’s lip gloss, and she could smell the vanilla of Jackie’s perfume, and she could feel the softness of the skin she lathered with cocoa butter.
She was good enough to eat.
Jackie pulls away abruptly, a crease between her brows, ‘this isn’t working.’
Shauna is too worried by the comment to react normally, ‘am I a bad kisser?’ she blurts, breaths short and heavy.
Jackie giggles, and kisses Shauna again. Quickly, softly, before pulling away. ‘You’re a great kisser, Shipman. But you kiss like a girl. You’re all soft and pretty. Someone has to be the guy or I’m going to kiss Jeff the way I kiss you.’
‘Well, I don’t know how to kiss like a guy!’ Was all of that bullshit? Had she been kissing Jeff like he was a girl?
Jackie pauses and tilts her head in thought, ‘okay let me try. You be the girl.’
‘I am a g-’ Jackie’s lips are back before Shauna can finish her reply, and Jackie takes a lead this time, and is this what kissing like a boy means because Shauna is on her back and Jackie’s movements are shorter and rougher, like she’s trying to absorb Shauna completely, until neither of them know where one ends and the other begins.
Jackie’s next move is new, leaving Shauna’s lips and placing a kiss on her jaw, then moving to nip at her chin, to suck at her pulse point, and Shauna lets it slip out.
‘Jeff,’ it’s whispered, but it’s the only thing between the girls other than fabric, and Shauna goes ramrod straight and Jackie detaches from her neck, red-faced and breathless. Shauna scrambles for an explanation. ‘That’s, uh, that’s how you should say-’
‘Call me that again,’ Jackie says, before returning to Shauna’s neck, laving her tongue over the sensitive skin.
‘You want me to call you Jeff?’ Shauna asks, confused. Jackie responds by biting down, clamping her teeth over Shauna’s pulse point as her hips rut into Shauna’s. ‘Fuck,’ Shauna breathes.
Jackie pulls away from Shauna and looks up, pupils blown, ‘can I keep going?’
‘Yes, Jackie, please,’ Shauna says, and this is new, too, but she can’t think of a universe where she would say no.
Jackie swats her thigh lightly, ‘not my name,’ she growls.
‘Jeff?’ Shauna asks, tentative, and Jackie nods, ‘Jeff, please, keep going.’
Jackie, who she is currently calling Jeff, places her hands on Shauna’s breasts and squeezes, and Shauna keens at the attention, pushing her chest up and into Jackie’s hands.
‘I’ve thought these were so sexy, ever since you got them.’ Jeff says, eyes fixed on where Shauna’s chest spills out between her fingers.
‘Thought you wanted your own set,’ Shauna laughed breathily as Jeff squeezed again.
‘Nah, they looked way better on you,’ the blonde replies, removing her hands solely to unbutton Shauna’s shirt and expose her bra before replacing them. She lifts her gaze to Shauna again, and raises an eyebrow, questioning.
Shauna wishes she wore a cuter bra for this, but Jeff doesn’t seem to care, reverence in his eyes as he waits for her to agree. She nods, and Jeff doesn’t even bother to take it off, just pulling the cups down and beneath her tits to expose them.
As Jeff lowers her mouth to Shauna’s breasts, she hears, ‘say my name,’ again.
Shauna shouts ‘Jeff’ until her throat is raw.
They don’t address it.
Not when Jackie is in Jeff’s arms. Not when Shauna is in Jackie’s. Not when Shauna is in Jeff’s. But when Shauna calls Jeff’s name, she doesn’t see short blond hair and blue eyes and a douchey smile, she sees a longer darker blonde and big brown eyes and the softest smile she’s ever seen.
Shauna doesn’t think about it too hard.
When the plane crashes, Jackie is useless.
Being the captain of a high school soccer team does not equip her for surviving the Canadian wilderness, particularly not as it edges closer and closer to a bitter winter.
Shauna realises she’s pregnant after a few months, and Tai tries to help her, but the baby grows regardless into something terrible and truthful.
Jackie talks to her, and tries to ignore the jealousy that roars through her at the idea that Randy Fucking Walsh got his hands anywhere near Shauna.
That jealousy doesn’t improve when she reads Shauna’s diary.
Jackie loses her virginity to Travis, because she and Shauna are supposed to do everything together, and there are already plenty of things that they are opposites on, and Jackie doesn’t want another thing to keep them apart.
She feels empty and hollow and wrong when she does it, and thinks of brown hair instead of black and soft arms instead of muscled and eyes in slightly different shade. When it’s over, she’s overtaken by an urge to puke.
It should have been Shauna, and it should have been Jackie. Jackie should have been Jeff.
When she and Shauna fight, she leaves, and lies down in the snow, and waits for death to separate her from Shauna.
She wakes up in a warm bath, Shauna holding her left hand in both of hers, pressing her warm forehead to the cold flesh.
She tries to free her hand and use it to stroke Shauna’s hair instead, and Shauna’s head jolts up.
She grins at first, big and wide and beaming, and Jackie feels her heart skip a few beats. The grins fades quicker than it came, as Shauna drops her eyes to the floor and starts to gnaw at her lip. She looks back to Jackie, only briefly, and Jackie wonders if she should let Shauna sit with it for a little longer, let her suffer, even just for a few hours, even just as long as Jackie suffered from the news.
‘We’re good, Shipman.’
Shauna’s smile is smaller this time, unsure, as if waiting for Jackie to yell psych and drown her in the tub. When she speaks, her voice is small, ‘really?’
‘Really. I love you, Shauna.’
‘I love you, too, Jax.’
Jackie’s ear is missing.
Not like wandered off, just fully gone from the side of her head.
Frostbite, Misty had explained with a smile that would be apologetic if it wasn’t so eager.
Jackie’s first stop once she can stand and walk like a normal person is the mirror. She pulls back her hair to show her left ear. Jackie was never an anatomy whiz but she knows the parts she wanted to get pierced when she turned 18 are gone - her helix, her conch - and the part she already had pierced, her lobe, is gone, with just a little piece of flesh and the part where she’s definitely going to get a tragus still there.
Nat stands behind her, their eyes meeting in the mirror as Jackie traces her fingers around the jagged cut, and Nat gives her a ‘you look sick, cap,’ that only slightly helps Jackie with the view.
Shauna eats the piece of ear she salvaged from the bloody splatter of Misty’s impromptu surgery, because what else can she do?
Time is hard to track without a calendar. Jackie just knows it’s fucking cold. Shauna is committed to not letting Jackie feel the cold for even a moment, swaddling her in shirts and jackets and blankets until Jackie covers Shauna and her ever-growing bump right back. They go back and forth until they come to an agreement, sharing the attic with Van and Tai, sharing a nest of fabric and all of their body heat with each other, until the sun rises and Jackie takes Shauna’s flannel and jacket and Shauna takes Jackie’s t shirt and sweater vest and they go about their tasks.
They judge the pregnancy by how big Shauna is, much to Shauna’s chagrin, and when it looks like Shauna can’t get any bigger, Jackie trades chores with Tai, letting Tai and Van go alone to the lake for water, an apology for ruining the privacy of the attic, while she hangs at Shauna’s heels and attempts to chop firewood.
Javi does, too. It’s something of a surprise to Jackie, but not to Shauna. Javi had gravitated to her after the crash, and Shauna had taken care of him, slipping into the protector role like a well-worn shirt, and Javi was repaying her in kind by making sure Jackie didn’t lose any more body parts while wielding the axe.
Jackie learns, slowly but surely. She makes herself learn. She doesn’t like having a preteen tell her how to not injure herself, but she accepts it when she sees Shauna smiling over at the pair of them. Anyone can fetch water, but making fire takes skill, and it is a skill she is determined to provide.
Shauna asks her one day, however long after Doomcoming, ‘why have you forgiven me?’
Jackie brings down the axe, almost cutting cleanly through the log, and decides to let the axe sit there for a moment, three quarters through the piece, as she turns to Shauna, ‘because that’s my baby, too.’
Shauna snorts, ‘what are we, sister wives?’
Jackie’s face turns serious, solemn, ‘no, Shauna, that baby is mine. I gave it to you.’
‘Fuck, you’re losing it, too. Jackie, I-’
‘Call me Jeff,’ Jackie replies, not waiting for a response, returning her hands to the pommel of the axe and lifting and dropping it to split the end of the wood.
‘Jackie, honey-’
‘I’m Jeff. I put that baby in you, and I’m going to be their dad, and right now I’m going to chop firewood to keep my girl and my baby warm.’
Shauna doesn’t argue. She walks inside, and, against all better judgement, actively seeks out Misty.
‘Could Jackie have brain damage? From being outside?’
Misty considers it and shrugs, ‘anything is possible. What’s wrong with her? I’ll happily give her a full workup.’
Shauna hesitates at that, ‘no, I don’t think it’s that major.’
When Van and Tai get back, Shauna follows them up to the attic. They sit by the window and watch as Jackie, red-faced from cold and exertion, continues swinging at the logs she’s gathered.
‘Bernice has left her cake out in the rain,’ Van says sagely, causing Tai and Shauna to exchange looks with each other, and then, in sync, turn their looks on Van. Van looks between them, ‘Priscilla!’
Shauna says it, Tai thinks it.
‘What the fuck are you talking about?’
Van begins to outline the plot of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, when Shauna walks towards the attic exit, navigating the narrow entry and the steep ladder with her rounded stomach, cursing all the way.
She runs into Lottie next.
Lottie thinks it’s a psychotic break.
‘Not some wilderness bullshit?’ Shauna asks.
Lottie snorts, ‘the wilderness would never be connected to a man.’
Shauna doesn’t ask further.
Nat is next, just around the corner from where Lottie was, her lips suspiciously pink and swollen, her jacket slightly askew. Shauna decides to ask about it later.
Nat sends her to Ben.
‘I’m not sure I’d call myself an elder,’ Coach Ben says, propped against the headboard. ‘Queer, sure, but elder is a stretch.’
Shauna hadn’t noticed it at all, but between Nat and Van and Misty, Shauna had decided the best way to ask Ben was to enter the bedroom without knocking and call him a homo to see how he reacted. It worked.
‘You’re older than me,’ Shauna replies, ‘what the fuck is going on with Jackie? I don’t know what it is, but it definitely falls somewhere under queer.’
Ben shrugs, and Shauna considers breaking everyone’s shoulders if it means people will stop shrugging at her. ‘She could be a lesbian. Dykes love doing shit with pronouns. But if she’s more focused on being Jeff than being a guy, she probably wanted to, uh,’ Ben points at Shauna’s belly, and Shauna remembers Jackie’s words earlier.
‘She wanted to knock me up.’
Ben stutters and then nods. ‘So she’s either so obsessed with you she thinks that she can just pretend to be the father of your child, or she actually wants to be the father of your child. Either way, not much of a friend thing.’
‘Aren’t they doing weird shit with like sperm and stuff? She doesn’t have to be Jeff to get me pregnant.’
‘I don’t think she’s thinking all that scientifically.’
Jackie comes in, red and splintered and grinning, and kneels to stoke the fire, adding logs to the flames, pulling Shauna to sit beside her next to the heat as Mari fries off pieces of pika that Travis found that morning, and everyone tries not to think of how cute the pika was before Shauna skinned and deboned it.
When Shauna shivers, Jackie stretches out her legs and pulls at Shauna’s waist, until the brunette is slotted neatly between Jackie’s thighs, her back pressed against the blonde’s front, the heat lapping her face and chest. Jackie’s hands drift over the bump, and she places a kiss to the back of Shauna’s head.
No one says anything as Jackie traces circles over Shauna’s belly.
No one says anything when Jackie picks up a piece of meat and places it on Shauna’s lips until she opens her mouth and accepts it.
No one says anything when Jackie pulls a sleepy Shauna up, and helps her climb the ladder to the attic.
When Shauna wakes, she feels Jackie’s hand on her stomach, rubbing the same circles over it. She feels her lips next, chapped to the point of cracking and placing kisses and blood onto the hopelessly stretched butterfly shirt Shauna stole. Jackie’s eyes flicker up when Shauna stretches, and she smiles at seeing Shauna looking back.
‘Good morning, sweetheart. I was just talking to Jeff Jr here.’ Shauna’s face must show more than she thinks, because Jackie immediately adds, ‘what? Guys name the kids after themselves all the time. But we can pick something else.’
Shauna sits straight up, looking for help to the other end of the attic, but Tai and Van are nowhere to be seen. She tries a softer approach. ‘Jackie, please, you’re scaring the shit out of me.’
‘I’m not Jackie.’
Shauna brings her knees up as high as she can around the bump, and circles her arms around it protectively, cutting off Jackie’s access to it or her. ‘You are. You are Jackie Taylor, my best friend in the whole world, who is very probably having a psychotic break right now, so I need you to stop.’
Jackie sits back on her heels and wraps her arms around her knees properly, a position Shauna envies her for still being able to do.
‘All I know is I don’t want to be Jackie. I never did.’
‘In a my life sucks way or in a psych way?’
‘In a being a girl makes me feel like clawing at my skin all the time way," Jackie says, looking to Shauna. Shauna sits quietly, knowing that the drumming Jackie begins, of her fingers against her knees, means she isn’t done talking, and she listens. ‘My parents want this perfect daughter and I don’t want that. And I thought it was like a self esteem thing, y’know? Like I can’t be perfect so I don’t want to be their daughter. But being with you and then being out here and away from all the bullshit back home, when I’ve been in this space that just lets me exist without anyone judging me or making me be something, I… I don’t think I’m a girl. When you said Jeff’s name at our sleepover I felt like I was Jeff for a second, and it felt fucking amazing, Ship. I felt like I was flying. And now I know why you really said it but I can’t stop thinking about it. About being a guy. It’s like… you know when you’re getting ready for a party, and you try on a bunch of outfits, and then you get to one of them and you say ‘yeah, this is it. Why didn’t I try this first?’ That’s what being Jeff feels like.’
‘But Jeff is a douchebag,’ Shauna says, and Jackie laughs, a real laugh that comes from deep in her chest and bursts from her throat and spreads to Shauna, making the pregnant girl bury her face in her hands as her shoulders shake with giggles.
When the laughter slows, Shauna asks, ‘why Jeff?’
Jackie’s gaze flits down to where Shauna’s legs still cover her belly, and then back to Shauna’s eyes, an eyebrow raised and a sheepish grin slipping across her lips. ‘That’s the kind of guy I want to be.’
‘A guy who thinks ‘trust me babe’ is viable protection?’
‘The guy who takes Shauna Shipman’s virginity.’
They don’t have time to address that one, because a pool of liquid is gathering between Shauna’s legs, and Jackie is tripping over her own hands and feet as she crawls to get to Shauna’s side. Shauna takes a moment to grab Jackie’s hand and assess the situation, ‘my water broke,’ she says, as if it isn’t obvious, but Jackie is glad she said it because she actually wasn’t sure, and the next few minutes are a flurry of Jackie easing Shauna down the ladder and shouting for help and watching the girls trickle into the cabin.
‘Yellowjackets, with me!’ She shouts. Shauna doesn’t hear what Jackie says next, only reaches for her hand as her contractions begin. They count the time between each one in Mississippis, and Nat and Jackie work together for possibly the first time ever to sit Ben between Shauna’s legs and convince him to help with the delivery as Akilah and Misty assist.
The baby is a boy, and Shauna doesn’t have a name for him yet, and the girls are quick to offer suggestions, everything from Logan to Bart, and Shauna almost considers them until Jackie tells the team to stop suggesting Baby-Sitters Club boyfriends.
Javi offers to babysit, and Shauna gently tells him that she and Jackie aren’t going anywhere in this storm so a babysitter isn’t all that urgent. When he looks downcast, she shows him how to hold the baby, how to support his head, and how to change him, just in case.
Ben offers Shauna the bed, and Jackie looks smug in a way that suggests she told him to, and when the three of them - Jackie, Shauna, and someone Shauna has been mentally referring to as Baby Boy Taylor - curl up on an old mattress with rusty springs that feels like laying on a cloud after months on the floor, Shauna offers Jackie a deal.
‘Find a name that you like, that isn’t Jeff, and we’ll make him a Junior.’
When Shauna wakes up, Jackie is watching both of them with watery eyes.
‘What’s up?’ Shauna asks, groggy and weak.
‘Do I seem like a James to you?’ Jackie asks. ‘Jack is short for it, so I wouldn’t have to tell the girls just yet, and we can call him Jack Jr or Jamie or JJ.’
Shauna hates abbreviated names. Always has. Could never explain why exactly. Something about the JJs and AJs and JRs of the world just tended to piss her off. She thinks it’s because they tended to be rich and preppy and that meant entitled and annoying. Usually.
Jackie, however, has always been the exception.
Another thought occurs to Shauna, and she frowns, ‘wait, like James Taylor?’
Jackie blushes, and Shauna can see it even in the dark. ‘I just like the name.’
‘I think anything would suit you, James,’ she says, and James beams. ‘Does this mean you’re a guy now?’
James pauses before replying, ‘it means I’m James, and you can call me Jack, and this is Jack Jr, and I’m his dad. Can I get a raincheck on the guy thing?’
‘Sure, but how do I talk about you?’ Shauna asks, and Jack looks at Shauna blankly until she clarifies, ‘do you want me to say oh, him, or she’s over there?’
Jack pauses, and tilts his head, ‘either works for now. Can I raincheck that one, too?’
Shauna smiles indulgently and nods, making James smile wider.
‘Do you think he’ll look like me?’
Shauna isn’t sure what to say, and so she watches as Jack leans over the bassinet someone wove for them, JJ's little arms and legs sticking out from within Jack’s sweater vest. Jack isn’t looking at Shauna, but at his son, his blue eyes and his tuft of dark hair and the soft bridge of his nose, and fuck, she hopes he does.
She wonders if the ear helped. If eating that piece of Jack changed Jack Junior’s DNA. If that made Jack into Junior’s father.
‘Wouldn’t rule it out,’ Shauna replies carefully, ‘my family, the mom genes tend to cancel out everything else. But he’ll talk like you, and walk like you, and think like you.’
Jack laughs, ‘oh, god, no. He deserves to have your brains.’
Shauna steps closer, placing an arm around Jack’s shoulders. ‘Well, I think that the world needs more of Jack Taylor.’
Jack’s head turns at that, and suddenly Shauna is being kissed, the first real kiss she’s had in months. Jack doesn’t smell like cocoa and vanilla, and she doesn’t taste like strawberries. A tear on his lip splits open and Shauna’s tongue chases the flavour of copper. They pull away, both flushed and breathless, and Shauna decides it’s the best kiss she’s ever had.
‘Would you still like me if I was a guy?’ Jack asks into the darkness of the bedroom one night.
‘Of course I would,’ Shauna replies from where she’s using Jack’s shoulder as a pillow. ‘I like guys.’
‘Do you like girls?’
‘I like you.’
‘You like normal guys like Jeff.’
‘I like guys like you, Jack. Or girls like you.’
‘So you just like me?’
‘Yeah, I guess so.’
‘Even if I can’t get you pregnant?’
Shauna snorts, ‘Jesus, at least let me recover from the first teen pregnancy before you bring that up.’
‘Shauna,’ it sounds like a whine, and Shauna turns her head to drop a kiss on the shoulder she’s leaning on.
‘There’s all sorts of cool sciency shit going on. You could totally put a baby in me. Just wouldn’t be the fun way. But let’s figure it out and agree that we won’t be doing sciency shit any time soon.’
‘Right. Okay. Cool.’
Jack doesn’t say anything after that, and Shauna feels his breathing become more regular as he drifts off to sleep beneath her.
When Jack wakes up, Shauna is sat against the headboard, feeding Jack Jr.
Jack has seen it before, kind of.
He’s glanced before, and looked away, wanting Shauna to have some privacy, and she tries to do that now, but she can’t stop staring.
When Shauna sees him, open-mouthed and wide-eyed, she snickers and grabs the pillow beside her, throwing it at his face.
Spring comes, and the cabin is warm, and the sun is bright, and the animals are moving.
Their food supply triples overnight, and Jack brings a block of smooth wood, a squirrel, and a knife into the bedroom and asks Shauna to show him how to butcher.
Shauna motions for Jack to hand her everything, and she starts off the demonstration, skinning a third of the body.
She hands the knife to Jack. It’s carnage, instantly. Blood spatters on the sheets, on their faces, on Shauna’s chest. More blood than either of them thought a squirrel might have.
Shauna wordlessly takes the knife back and finishes butchering the game quietly, as Jack grabs some wet rags to clean them both off with.
Shauna gets out of bed despite Jack’s pleading, and walks to the meat shed to handle it herself.
Jack hangs out with Jack Jr, attempting to identify any signs of squirrel-based trauma in the infant while his mother works.
‘How do you know you’re a dude?’ Jack asks Ben over watery coffee.
Ben coughs on his drink and then shrugs, ‘I don’t know, I just am.’
‘You never thought you might be a girl?’
He hesitates slightly. ‘Can’t say I have, no.’
‘So if I think I might be a guy?’
‘Yeah, you might be a guy. But I don’t know. I’m not in your head. It’s one of those things you have to figure out for yourself.’
‘Like being gay?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And you knew you were gay?’
‘Yeah.’
‘How?’
Ben pauses again before replying, ‘I knew there was something about me that wasn’t the same for the average guy. Took me a minute to realise I was thinking about other guys a lot more than they were.’
‘So if I like girls, what if I’m a lesbian? And wanting to have a guy name and not liking being a girl is just like… I don’t know… patriarchy.’
‘Some lesbians use guy names. Even use he/him, get surgery, all that shit. It’s about whether you feel like a lesbian or like a straight man?’
‘Fuck, I don’t know coach, can’t you just tell me?’
‘How the fuck am I supposed to know that, Jack? Put it in a calculator?’
When summer comes, and they head back to the lake, Jack becomes acutely aware of his own body in entirely new ways.
Before, it had been about his ability to fill out a bikini, the size of his hips and his stomach, the way he felt standing next to Shauna, and now it still is about that, just in the opposite way.
He stands in the bedroom, holding a pair of Javi’s swim trunks because Travis only had the one and Javi had brought three for whatever reason, but Jack was grateful regardless.
‘In case he shit himself in the pool single every day in Seattle,’ Shauna had said.
Jack pulls the red shorts on, and tightens the drawstring thanks to months on a starvation diet, and turns to Shauna with his arms spread slightly as if asking for a verdict.
‘You need to do something about your… top,’ Shauna says, ‘girls wouldn’t mind it but it’s, um-’
‘Not quite the look I’m aiming for.’ Jack says, helping Shauna find the words she isn’t sure about.
Jack ends up in a sports bra and grumbles all the way to the lake, but when Shauna removes her plaid shirt to show a bra and panties that don’t quite fit her post-baby, Jack forgets why he was upset in the first place. When Shauna hands JJ to Jack, and sits at the edge of the lake, and takes JJ back to sit him on her lap as the water ripples beneath him and he giggles and slaps at it, Jack forgets about his top and his hips and his lack of swimwear, sitting beside Shauna to slip an arm around her and use the other to stroke soft lines across JJ’s face and stomach, with a grin so wide his cheeks hurt.
Javi splashes his way back to shore and offers to take JJ for a few minutes, and Shauna nods, and Javi takes JJ to a point where the older boy is waist-deep in water, and JJ’s legs can kick beneath the surface, while Jack pulls Shauna onto his lap and buries his nose in her hair, ‘thank you for giving me this,’ he mutters. Shauna doesn’t ask for clarification.
‘So I ate your ear,’ Shauna says one day as she watches Jack change JJ.
Jack glances at her before resuming his task, ‘the one that fell off?’
Shauna rolls her eyes, ‘no, babe, the one still attached to your head. Can’t believe you didn’t notice me rip it off last night.’
Jack says nothing, lifting JJ’s legs and sliding the new diaper (or as close as they can get to one, really just some cloth and a piece of string) into place.
‘How do you feel about that?’ Shauna asks in the face of continued silence.
‘Like a piece of me is in both of you,’ Jack replies with a smile, picking up JJ.
‘Can you talk to me like I’m a boy?’ Jack asks in bed.
‘What does that mean?’ Shauna asks. ‘Do I need to know about sports and beer?’
Jack’s nose wrinkles in the darkness, ‘god, no. Just… like how you’d talk about Jeff.’
‘A douchebag who I only let fuck me because I was a dumb and desperate slut?’
‘Shauna, I know I can’t just tell you to not feel bad about that because that’s not how you work, but I love you so it would be nice for me to not hear you talk about yourself like that, okay? If nothing else, be nice to yourself because it makes me sad.’
‘Fine.’
‘I just meant like call me a guy. A he.’
‘I can do that.’
‘And maybe call yourself a great person, girlfriend, and mother who is not dumb, desperate or a slut while you’re at it.’
‘I’m your girlfriend?’
‘Yeah, you are.’
‘Okay, then I suppose I can try.’
Jack kisses the top of his girlfriend’s head, ‘thank you, baby.’
Telling the Yellowjackets isn’t planned, but neither is JJ’s first word.
‘Dada,’ he says as Jack puts him on the cabin floor for tummy time.
He can’t be that old. Summer has just started to fade into fall. Jack has no idea when kids start saying words but he feels young for it all the same. But his boy was born tough. If any kid would be doing cool shit early, it would be JJ.
Misty hears it, ‘did he call you dada?’
Jack debates it for a second. He could lie, but he isn’t sure how far it would get him. He worries that if he brushes it off, he might know somehow, and never do it again.
‘Yeah,’ Jack says, ‘I’m his dada.’
It’s spread through the Yellowjackets by that evening.
‘Can you say Javi?’ Javi asks, offering JJ some mushed up berries. ‘Ja-vi.’
The girls don’t know what to make of it, so they laugh and call Jack daddy in teasing voices for the next week. Jack doesn’t hate it. Shauna does.
Jake hands Tai a knife and kneels, head bent.
Tai murmurs an apology and slices.
Blonde hair, lightened by the sun, falls to the dirt.
‘How do I look?’ Jack asks Shauna.
‘Like a medieval page boy.’
Shauna straddles Jack’s lap, for better reach she says, and leans over and presses her breasts in Jack’s face as she cuts his hair into something reasonably stylish.
The result is slightly shorter than Travis’, and if Jack wets his hair and then runs his hands through it, he can make it stand almost straight up, until it falls back slightly and curls over what used to be a whole ear.
‘How do I look now?’
Shauna cocks her head from her place on Jack’s lap, ‘kind of like Captain America.’
Shauna runs her fingers through it that night, brushing it up as she tugs at it softly.
Jack angles himself just right, using his hips to better leverage his fingers to keep his rhythm perfect, pacing himself carefully and tracking his timing in his own head, until Shauna softly whispers, ‘good boy’, and Jack’s limbs go weak.
The rescue is quick and efficient, which is nice to know after being left for dead for months.
Yellowjackets get wheeled in and out of the light blue double doors. Everyone gets something, a bottle or a bandage or a referral to a doctor that should be equipped to handle a group of teenagers (and Ben and JJ) stranded in the woods for eighteen months.
Lottie is suggested for admitting, and the team stand shoulder to shoulder as if malnourished teenage girls can stop the big burly orderlies from picking Lottie up and taking her to a padded white room. It works, though, and the doctor suggests outpatient treatment. Way more than any of the other girls, but enough to let Lottie sleep in her own bed from now on. Nat clings to her like a lifesaver when she’s pushed back through the doors, and Shauna wonders if Lottie will be sleeping alone in that bed of hers.
Jack doesn’t let go of Shauna or JJ.
When they take them to a hospital, they say they have to separate them. Jack refuses outright until Tai and Ben appear next to him, a hand each on his shoulders.
Shauna drops his hand with a final squeeze, and a doctor appears in front of Jack with a promise that the sooner Jack cooperates, the sooner they see Shauna again.
The doctor calls Jack ‘Jacqueline’, and asks about her periods and her hormones and her girl shit, and she asks to examine Jack’s body, and Jack wants to throw up. It’s not about the pronouns and it’s not about the name and it’s not about the body, it’s that Jack is not Jacqueline.
He hasn’t ever been Jacqueline. He is Jack. He loves being Jack. He wants to be Jack and he wants to be with Shauna and Jack Jr and instead he’s being asked about his tits when he’d much rather chop them off and throw them into the hazardous waste bin by the door.
‘Where’s Shauna?’ He asks. ‘Where’s Jack Jr?’
‘Jack Jr?’ The doctor asks. ‘After yourself?’
‘Yeah. I’m his father.’
It’s a slip, and it’s the wrong thing to say, and Jack knows it as soon as he says it but it’s already too late to take it back as the doctor stands and leaves the room and returns with a psychiatrist.
Shauna and Jack Jr return to the waiting room, both not entirely healthy but not sick enough to stay. Shauna has supplements to pick up and formula to buy and a feeding schedule to adhere to that she is really going to need her boyfriend for, and when she turns to look for him, she doesn’t see him anywhere.
So she sits, and she waits.
The team waits with her, watching the door that their captain went through.
Jack returns after several hours, a thin grin on his face as he wiggles his fingers at the doctors behind him.
Shauna is first to stand, careful to not wake JJ. ‘Baby, what happened?’
‘Not here,’ Jack’s whisper is urgent and harsh, so harsh he has to fight a wince of his own and his heart breaks at how Shauna flinches.
Jack walks ahead, out of the main doors and into the parking lot and through it and out to the street and on the pavement he places his hands on his knees and vomits up the hospital food they gave him.
Shauna is there, JJ balanced in one arm, the other rubbing at Jack’s back. Ben is several paces behind them, adjusting to his new crutch. He turns around when he reaches them and extends a thumbs up towards the window where their parents stand watching.
‘What happened?’ He asks.
‘I said I was JJ’s dad and they tried to fucking admit me.’
‘Oh shit.’ Ben mutters.
‘What the fuck?’ Shauna says at the same time.
‘I had to tell them it was a joke, that I was your friend and when we were out there I helped you out and the dad thing was all a joke and I had to lie to them because if I didn’t then they’d lock me up and I wouldn’t see you or JJ again.’
Ben’s face is grim as he says, ‘transgenderism is classified as a mental disorder. Normally they’ll leave you alone, but in this sort of situation… fuck, Jack, I’m so sorry I didn’t warn you.’
‘You couldn’t have known,’ Jack says, wiping his mouth.
Shauna is overcome with the urge to kiss him, regardless of the bile on his lips, but the hospital is far too close to do it and people are still watching from the waiting room window, so she hugs him with her free arm and offers him JJ, and Jack brings his son, who they have worked out is almost an entire year old, into his arms, and Jack strokes his cheek and smiles with watery brown eyes.
They start to walk back, Ben behind, Jack holding JJ, Shauna holding Jack.
‘I love you so much, baby,’ he tells his son.
‘Dada,’ JJ replies with a gummy grin.
‘Let’s go back in, grab our shit, and go to my place. Deb left a couple hours ago to get baby stuff. Never seen her so excited.’
‘I don’t want to impose.’
‘Jack, you’re the only person my mom likes more than me or JJ. You’re fine. Come on, let’s have a sleepover. Please.’
Ben chimes in. ‘Don’t make the girl beg, Taylor.’
They don’t do everything they used to do at sleepovers, but they come pretty close.
Lips are red and kiss-swollen when they fall asleep. Jack wakes up when the alarm goes off and sends Shauna back to sleep as he makes a bottle of formula for JJ. He holds his son and feeds him and burps him and changes him, and climbs back into bed with Shauna after. She curls up against his chest, and his arms wrap around her, and he realises with a pang that he didn’t even see his parents at the hospital. Shauna sighs against him, and the ache goes away as he kisses the top of her head and joins her in sleep.
Jeff is there the next morning. The real one, taller and blonder than Jack with the same blue eyes Jack Jr has.
‘Hey, Jackie,’ he says when Jack answers the door, ‘I was just looking for you.’
‘At Shauna’s house?’
He huffs in frustration, ‘sounds like you know, then?’
‘I do.’
‘Look, babe, it was an accident.’
‘You accidentally slept with my-’ Jack cuts himself off, not sure what Shauna would want Jeff to hear, not sure what Jeff could use against them if suitably motivated, ‘my best friend for several months while you and I were dating?’
He offers Jack a cocky grin and leans against the doorway, ‘yeah, babe, but let me take care of this and we can pick up where we left off.’
Jack experiences a full body shudder that he hasn’t felt since he took a snow nap in the Canadian wilderness. ‘Yeah, no. I’m a… very different person now.’
‘I mean you got a dykey haircut but you look the same to me. You can grow it out and it’s like none of it ever happened.’
Jack stares up at Jeff for a second, before pushing the door closed, ‘fuck off, Jeff.’
His shoe interrupts the door closing, and his face appears in the crack. ‘Okay, fine. You’re sticking up for your bestie, girl power, whatever feminist bullshit. Just let me see my kid.’
‘He’s not yours.’
Jack doesn’t offer further explanation, just slams the door on Jeff’s foot repeatedly until he pulls it back, letting him close it properly.
He doesn’t come back.
Javi knocks next.
‘Just wanted to check on you all,’ he mutters, bashfully staring at his shoes.
Jack grins, ‘come on in.’
Jack applies to a job in the post office. Just something to do.
‘Wait, Jackie Taylor?’ The woman behind the desk asks.
Jack doesn’t get the job, and he doesn’t go back.
‘I want to be James properly,’ he tells Shauna a few nights later.
‘So you want your name to be James Taylor? Officially?’ Shauna asks.
James grins, ‘exactly. Good luck looking me up with a name like that.’
James’ parents leave a voicemail on the Shipman machine every few months asking how he is, and James leaves one on theirs saying he’s fine.
James curls up around Shauna and JJ, and doesn’t leave.
They re-enrol in school and James takes the same classes as Shauna despite sucking royally at most of them.
They put JJ with Deb or in daycare, and James calls every chance he has, spending several dollars a day on the school payphone.
James celebrates turning 18 at some point in their time away by gaining access to his trust fund, and buys JJ so many toys and clothes that Shauna has to put a ban on bringing new baby products into the house.
Shauna doesn’t let James buy her anything, but if a new pair of earrings or an early edition of a book she loves appear in her room, she gives him a kiss and tells him to not do it again.
James stocks himself up, too, with buttoned shirts and slacks and jeans and sweater vests. He decides that binders are the greatest invention of all time.
He sees his mother at the store. She doesn’t recognise him.
It’s freeing.
James tells Lottie and Nat at the same time.
He didn’t have much choice.
Finding one without the other these days is like finding gold in a coal mine.
Shauna sits beside him and squeezes his arm affectionately and Nat makes disgusted faces at them until Lottie kisses her.
Trust fund money is nice, but it isn’t plane crash settlement money, and when that arrives, James knows exactly how he wants to spend it.
Top surgery is a bitch.
Things have to drain and get compressed and scar over.
Shauna is there the whole time, and James didn’t realise he could love her more than he already does until she’s kneeling next to him and swapping out the clogged tube that goes into his chest with surgical precision.
What’s left goes towards a house.
It’s not like the mansion James grew up in, or the apartment then shoebox home Shauna came from. It’s a 3 bed, 2 bath, in East Providence, and they get it for a steal because the wood is rotting in several places, both inside and out.
James and Shauna take turns watching JJ around tools and fixing the damage.
Brown is 17 minutes drive exactly, and Jack takes great pleasure in kissing Shauna goodbye as she gets in her car each morning, and waving goodbye with JJ from the driveway.
James tries a few hobbies while Shauna studies.
He wants a schedule, and something to do.
A trust fund and a settlement and a hardworking girlfriend can spoil a guy.
He loves to cook, he finds, when he’s not frying off chunks of squirrel over a shitty little fire. He upgrades the kitchen to entirely too expensive brand names that Shauna says they don’t need, only for James to point out that she doesn’t cook. Shauna backs down.
He comes to realise that cooking has to be timed specifically for when Shauna will be ready to eat, because he’s not letting the mother of his child go hungry after a long day of studying, and JJ is, against all odds, turning out to be a fairly clean toddler, so he can’t distract himself by tidying after him.
He tries baking, and sets off the smoke alarm multiple times on the first day. He gives it a fair shot, he thinks, trying pastries, cakes, and cookies in turn. None of them work out. It’s down to his instincts, he thinks. If he sees a pinch of salt on the recipe, he’ll grab a handful, the way he would for pasta. If a recipe calls for a cup of flour, he’ll eyeball it because how much difference can it make. A stir is quick and easy, enough to just start to mix everything together because he assumes the recipe will do the rest, only to find out that it won’t.
His next idea is gardening. He swears the flowers wilt as he approaches, as if knowing he’s about to ruin them and choosing to do it themselves instead.
He danced as a kid, and played recorder. His centre of gravity is off now, and he doesn’t have anywhere to dance. Shauna pulls the recorder from his lips and kisses him passionately and tells him that if she hears another note she’ll shove it inside him, and there’s already a musician named James Taylor, anyway.
The art class isn’t planned. He goes to meet Shauna for lunch at Brown, and as she kisses him goodbye and he starts to walk away, he sees a sign for an open art class. It starts in less than five minutes, so he slides into the back of the class, expecting a mildly interesting lecture on some ancient artist, only to see a ring of easels and canvases and a bowl of fruit in the middle of it.
He plans to slip back out as if it never happened, but an older man, not old-old but old enough to have salt-and-pepper hair and a matching beard, walks over with a smile. James introduces himself, because it’s only polite, and the guy, the professor, offers a wry smile that suggests he doesn’t buy James Taylor as a name, and he can tell that James is artificially lowering his voice, and tells him that there’s a spare canvas if he wants to stick around.
James stays.
His first painting isn’t great, but it isn’t bad.
The professor, who tells James to call him Tony, invites James back the next week, and James awkwardly tells him that he isn’t a student, and Tony tells him that he knows.
James tells Shauna over dinner, and Shauna is supportive, and when he tells her about the flyer she tells him that there are a handful of classes available as tasters, to audit for free and decide if you want to commit to the full paid class and all the shit that goes with it.
James goes back the next week.
James is finally authorised for testosterone, and he and Shauna had agreed to consider it in full before he started, but they don’t even pretend to debate it, not when James is physically bouncing on the balls of his feet in excitement and Shauna feels like her face might split in half from how wide her grin is.
James sees Tony at the pharmacy, a few places before him in line, and decides to not say hi, because what if Tony is picking up something private and James inadvertently forces him to make small talk while he’s holding medication for a raging rash or an STD or viagra.
He tries to hide as Tony walks past him, but Tony sees, and he smiles and waves with the hand that is holding the medication, almost like he wants James to look, and James does but he can’t make out anything beyond a white packet with a blue swirl, and when Tony has left and James is at the front of the queue, he realises that his prescription is the same as Tony’s.
It’s a strange feeling of solidarity. There is another guy who he knows and he’s just like him, like seeing another Yellowjacket in the middle of the grocery store back in Wiskayok. A face in the crowd who has your back, even if it’s only because they’re bonded by this shared thing about them.
James upgrades to the paid class and stocks up on canvases and paints and soft pencils to practice at home, and inevitably Tony gives him homework.
Still life, but not books or fruit or leaves this time.
A person.
A nude person specifically.
Tony will have a male model in the classroom over the weekend if anyone needs a reference.
James doesn’t want to use the guy. He asks the only person he wants to paint.
Shauna says no.
James pouts.
Shauna says, ‘if my face is in it, I’ll kill you.’
Shauna isn’t sure how James got her to pose naked.
She remembers big brown eyes and a pouty bottom lip and a ‘please, pretty girl,’ and now she has a sheet draped over her crotch that she keeps pulling up to cover her chest and stomach and James keeps pulling back down with her consent and a kiss.
She doesn’t look at the canvas. She watches James’ face as he studies her, and wraps the sheet around herself properly when he’s done, and walks past the easel as he goes to wash up.
James ends up with two paintings. One with Shauna’s face, and one without.
The one without makes it to school. The one with is hung in their bedroom as a surprise for Shauna.
Shauna is definitely surprised.
‘Is this how you see me?’
‘You didn’t look?’ James asks.
‘I didn’t want to know.’
‘Do you not like it?’
‘No, it’s just…’
‘Just?’
‘You must really like me.’
Javi and Travis visit them for Javi’s 16th birthday, and Javi tells Shauna excitedly about starting high school and learning to drive and Shauna smiles through it all.
‘Javi really likes you,’ James observes that evening, unsure what to make of it.
‘Honestly, he kind of feels like my kid, too, sometimes,’ Shauna shrugs.
James decides to stay out of it.
Lottie and Nat move about two hours away from them, to Salem, and Shauna snorts with laughter when she finds out.
‘Only town that can handle them,’ she says as she helps JJ get dressed for the day.
James mutters an agreement as he makes a round of eggs, bacon and cheese for him, veggie for Shauna, and scrambled eggs with all of the above as options for JJ because Shauna doesn’t want to force him to be kosher any more than James wants to force him to not be. James sets JJ’s plate down first, then turns to get his and Shauna’s, and by the time he turns around, again, JJ’s bacon has vanished from his plate, and Shauna is wiping grease from the side of his mouth with a smile.
‘Postcard says Lottie has a crystal shop and yoga studio up there,’ Shauna adds.
That makes James cackle into his coffee.
Lottie and Nat come to visit, and James wonders if he should shave the beginning of his facial hair so there aren’t too many surprises for the women, but Shauna takes the razor from his hand and kisses him and strokes the wisps on his chin, effectively ruling against it.
If Lottie is surprised, she doesn’t show it, only nodding in a self-satisfied way, and Shauna remembers how Lottie had said, smugly, that the wilderness would never be connected to a man, and how little James had connected to the wilderness, and she thinks that if the crystals and yoga don’t work out she could make a living off some form of psychic bullshit.
Nat rakes her gaze over James, lingering for long enough that both Shauna and Lottie feel a pang of jealousy, before settling on, ‘you look good, cap,’ and ruffling James’ hair until his practiced quiff sticks out at odd angles, and Shauna and Lottie realise they have nothing to worry about as James huffs and attempts to smooth it back into something neater amid Nat’s snickers.
They stay for a couple of days, and sleep on the couch, and Shauna takes Lottie to one of her electives on business management, and Nat drags James for coffee which turns into shopping.
Nat pulls James into a sex shop, and asks, completely free of shame in a way that only Nat could manage, ‘help me out here. I need something for Lot, what do you use?’
James is attempting to bury his face completely in the neck of his shirt as he replies, ‘nothing.’
Nat raises both eyebrows, ‘seriously?’
James offers a shrug.
‘I mean, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to and you can do whatever you’re comfortable with, but it’s not, like, a bad thing. It’s not shameful, y’know? It’s a whole new century, you can have a cock if you want.’
James is bright red as he chokes on a laugh and allows Nat to steer him to a wall covered in dildos. He adamantly refuses to touch any of them, but when his eyes alight on a starter kit, complete with a flesh-coloured toy, harness, lube and cleaner, he snatches it quickly from the shelf and ignores Nat patting him on the back and telling him she’s proud of him.
Nat picks up something much bigger and rippled with purple and black, and James’ eyes widen when he sees it compared to Nat’s forearm.
At home, he kicks it under the bed, and then goes to make dinner.
When Nat and Lottie are gone back to Salem, he reaches for the black plastic bag beneath the bed.
He can’t find it.
Which is how James ends up on his hands and knees, flashlight in hand, searching for it, first beneath the bed, then beneath the dresser, then in the back of the closet in case he somehow hallucinated the bed thing.
‘Looking for something?’ Shauna asks from behind him, and he turns around to see her holding the harness between two fingers, the attachment dangling from it.
‘Oh, thank god!’ he blurts, smacking his head on the closet door as he withdraws from it, ‘I was worried JJ found it.’
‘Just me,’ Shauna replies, tossing it to him gently.
James almost fumbles the catch, ‘I was just thinking I might… throw it out there.’
‘Right,’ Shauna’s smile is indulgent. It’s the face she makes when she has him cornered. Feral. Animalistic. So fucking sexy. ‘So, do you want to… throw it out there?’
‘Uh, yeah, sure,’ he says, looking at the toy in his hands, fiddling with a buckle.
‘So are you gonna ask me?’
His eyes shoot up to meet Shauna’s, and his mouth opens and closes a few times before he stutters, ‘uh… do you… do you wanna?’
Shauna’s smirk grows wider and she begins to saunter towards him slowly, ‘do I wanna what?’
‘You know,’ he says, his voice only slightly whiny.
‘Use your words, baby,’ she says, voice like silk.
He licks his lips, and prepares to try again.
Shauna is fucking stunning when she rides him.
Completely naked, her knees on either side of his thighs as she fucks herself on the dildo. Her hair bounces from the movement as she tilts her head back, bottom lip between her teeth, and her nails dig into his shoulders to stabilise herself. James leans forward and takes one of her nipples between his teeth and she jerks forwards. His hands are on her hips, and he’s trying to guide her movements, but she’s a goddess and he’s only human, unable to do anything but stare.
His lips leave her breast and she keens, pushing her chest forward towards his face. He blows gently on her nipple, and licks the neglected one before blowing on that, too, making Shauna moan at the attention, before he sits back against the headboard properly, wanting nothing more than to watch.
‘You’re so goddamn beautiful,’ he tells her and she tilts her head down towards him, bending to bury her face in his neck, keeping her rhythm as best she can. He feels a kiss on his neck, and he responds with a kiss on Shauna’s own neck and a murmur in her ear of, ‘so sexy, my pretty girl, riding my cock so perfectly.’ Shauna bites him. His hands find her breasts and squeeze, and Shauna bites harder. One strokes down, from Shauna’s breasts to her waist and then to her stomach, ‘gonna put a baby in here. You want that?’
Shauna comes.
Shauna graduates magna cum laude, and spends the entire length of time between final grades and graduation lamenting that she didn’t make summa. James reassures her and it works, until Shauna finds out that she was only a couple of percent away. She blames him for her not taking a few more extra credit assignments, but she doesn’t mean it. James points out that the papers would pick it up if she did manage it, and Shauna snorts, ‘yeah, at least I’m not some wanky tragedy survivor makes good bullshit.’
James gives Shauna her graduation gift the next day. Plane tickets and a list of reservations, 2 adults, 1 child.
‘We’re gonna start in Madrid, then Paris, Vienna, Rome, London, and then home.’
JJ nearly gets lost in the airport, so James pays a small fortune for a backpack that looks like a monkey and has a leash attached.
‘It looks like you’re walking a dog.’
‘At least it’s a cute monkey.’
JJ jogs ahead, his four-year-old legs fighting to pull them towards a Lego store.
Madrid is hot, so hot that the milk they buy at the store spoils before they get back to the hotel. Shauna and James take turns, one smothering JJ in sunscreen while the other one stops him from running away.
Paris has the best bakeries, and JJ’s bloodstream is likely 90% cocoa by the time they leave. James takes him to run in the park while Shauna visits the libraries on her checklist.
Vienna has the best cafes, better than Paris, and better museums. JJ asks if they have to leave this one.
Rome is even hotter than Madrid, if that were possible. The hotel room has a smaller room inside, giving Shauna and James some much needed privacy and JJ space to unpack all of his toys without his parents tripping over them. Shauna wears a light blue sundress and sits on the window ledge with the early morning sun behind her, her nose in a book and her eyes glowing in the daylight, and James begs her to take a photo.
London is grey and everyone is miserable, but Shauna appreciates the break from the scorching weather and James appreciates the streets of Soho and JJ appreciates the massive robotic dinosaur in the Natural History Museum.
At every stop, Shauna buys a round of postcards for Lottie and Tai and Nat, and a snowglobe for Javi.
All three of them are relieved to get through their front door a month after leaving.
JJ starts school, and Shauna starts working at the local paper, and James hates an empty house.
Tony asks James how he feels about picking up some work in his class. Some days he cleans paintbrushes. Some days he grades papers. Some days he helps set up for a specific class.
James fully enrols at Brown thanks to Tony’s recommendation, and becomes a TA.
Shauna offers her full support.
It’s better than doing nothing, but it isn’t quite what he wants to be doing.
Tony is out one day, and asks James to run the workshop for him.
James wasn’t expecting to like teaching, but he does.
When the time comes to pick his courses, he focuses on art, but throws in something on sports science and something on education. Just to see if he really likes it.
Tony puts on an art show, and James has to stop him from adding the nude of Shauna to the collection until he talks to her.
She says no.
A deal is made.
The next week, James gives Tony a new piece. A brunette woman in a light blue dress on a Roman window ledge, the sun behind her. Just close enough to Shauna to know it’s her, but just far enough that she isn’t completely mortified by it.
Tony takes it, and a few weeks later James is officially a paid artist, and Shauna’s portrait is being placed in a nearby gallery that showcases local artists.
The first thing James buys with his commission is a bottle of champagne.
The second thing James buys is an engagement ring.
James doesn’t tell JJ, just in case of Shauna saying no or his son being a snitch.
He keeps it classic. A nice restaurant, a table at the back to avoid it being too public, a ring box placed beside (not on or in, because they both find that gross) a dessert of chocolate mousse.
A minor miscalculation in timings means Shauna says yes before he even asks the question.
James is legally invisible, according to a lawyer.
He and Shauna take a road trip to Maine.
They stop by Salem to leave JJ with Nat and Lottie and a girl called Lisa who looks like the two of them somehow combined their genetics and created a girl just a few years younger than them, and she smiles warmly at James and asks if he’s going to Maine for the same reason she went, and James realises why Lottie and Nat were so chill about him.
Once in Maine, James presents proof of his surgery, his name change, even his student ID card, and leaves with a new birth certificate that has an M on it.
James uses his legal invisibility to marry Shauna officially at home in Rhode Island.
The ceremony is attended by half a dozen people.
Javi walks Shauna down the aisle. Ben is James’ best man. Nat and Lottie monitor JJ through the short ceremony. Van and Tai drive all the way to Rhode Island for it.
James Taylor becomes James Shipman to avoid the comparison.
No one bats an eye, with a name like that.
James gets more into his sport science courses, and starts going to the gym again.
It’s strange to be able to work out shirtless.
He loves it.
The Shipmans send their son off to school.
James gets involved with the PTA, and the mothers of the PTA try to get involved with him, until Shauna comes with him to a meeting and all but threatens the other women. James knows it’s toxic for Shauna to mark her territory like this, and he knows he shouldn’t encourage it, and he knows that it implies that Shauna doesn’t trust him, but none of that stops him from dropping to his knees in front of Shauna back at the house and begging her to make the growling sound he heard from her when they first arrived.
He broaches the topic again one night, as they’re lying in bed and watching a dating show on TV.
‘So, about the whole baby thing.’
Shauna’s reply is instant, ‘you’re so fucking obsessed with getting me pregnant.’
‘Well, yeah.’
‘Sure.’
‘Really?’
‘Do you want to talk me out of it?’
‘No, god, no. Let’s do it. But like, when?’
‘When were you thinking?’
James hadn’t expected to get this far, but he’s able to pull a reply together, ‘I was just thinking with me being in school I can take care of them. And I’m at the end of first year so, like…’
‘Sooner the better?’ Shauna asks.
‘Yes!’ James’ reply isn’t meant to be that loud, that eager, but it bursts from him excitedly.
Shauna snorts, ‘you wanna knock me up so bad it makes you look stupid.’
James doesn’t care.
‘No, we’re not naming her fucking Callie,’ Shauna says from the couch, a pillow between her stomach and thighs, supporting the weight of her belly. ‘Callie isn’t a name, it's a nickname. Our children deserve entire names.’
‘We basically did that for JJ.’
‘We did not basically do that for James Junior,’ Shauna replies, stressing both parts of her son’s name. ‘I like Callie, but it needs to be short for something. I want her to have the option.’
‘Calista?’
‘Like Ally McBeal?’
‘How about Camilla?’
‘Like the homewrecker?
‘Caroline?’
‘I don’t think you can get Callie from Caroline, babe.’
‘How about Calliope?’
‘... I’ll think about it.’
Calliope Laura Shipman is born a week after her brother turns five, and he grumbles all the way to the hospital about how he absolutely will not share a birthday with a girl.
Shauna is asleep, so James hands Callie to JJ, showing him how to support her head and how to avoid any accidents, and JJ looks at her for a moment before speaking, ‘she smells funny.’
‘She’s a baby, bud,’ James tells him, extending his arms. ‘Here, I’ll take her back.’
‘No, I wanna hold her,’ JJ says, making James drop his arms as JJ leans down to kiss Callie’s forehead.
The ten year reunion is weird.
Lottie’s yoga studio has a cult following.
Nat has gone full housewife, which James would tease her about if he hadn’t gone full househusband, at least until he finishes his degree.
Tai and Van are broken up, but James sees them kissing in the parking lot before he sees the ring on Taissa’s finger and decides to not ask questions.
Misty tells them all that she isn’t coming because she feels unwanted, and the Yellowjackets decide to ignore it, knowing she’ll show, which she does.
The boys all arrive together, Ben driving Travis and Javi, Ben and Travis each offering James a strong handshake and a firm nod that makes James tear up just slightly.
Javi wraps his arms around Shauna before racing off to play with JJ and Callie, the twenty-two year old picking up the five and ten year olds and running with them under his arms like footballs while they giggle.
No one outside of the team recognises James.
Allie even gives a speech about how horrific the crash she wasn’t there for is, and how hard it was on her to nearly end up on the plane, and how tragic it is that Jackie Taylor couldn’t make it tonight, but tells her audience that Jackie is a close personal friend who she talks to every week, and that Jackie sends them all her love, and glares at the Yellowjackets for snickering into their drinks.
‘Do you think she’s desperate for attention, or mom has just made a fake girl version of me?’ James asks the table.
‘Maybe you have an evil twin,’ Nat suggests.
‘Maybe she’s locked you in her basement and all of this is a coping mechanism you’ve dreamed up and only exists in your head,’ Misty replies.
Shauna levels Misty with a glare that she typically reserves for rapists and Republicans.
Callie chooses that moment to clamber onto James’ lap, begging him to help her in hide-and-seek with Javi, and James drapes his suit jacket over the giggling lump of his daughter.
Shauna looks for Javi and JJ, and sees Javi standing between JJ and Jeff.
She’s up in a shot, storming over and pulling her son behind her, Javi moving to Shauna’s side as if to help shield the boy.
‘Is that-’ Jeff begins, only for Shauna to interrupt.
‘My son, yes.’
From the corner of her eye, she sees James easing Callie off his lap and onto Shauna’s chair, saying something to her and getting her to stay under his jacket as he walks over, the rest of the team unashamedly looking at the scene starting to unfold.
‘Hey, kid, how old are you?’ Jeff asks, raising his voice.
‘Don’t answer that,’ Shauna tells him. ‘Jeff, let’s go somewhere and talk.’
‘I’m fine talking right here, Shauna,’ Jeff says, drinking from the brownish liquid in his short glass. ‘I want to be as close to my son as possible,’ he adds, before leaning in, ‘unless you wanna get out of here.’ Whiskey, Shauna thinks, as she smells it on his breath.
James appears next to Jeff, grabbing his arm, ‘you heard my wife. Outside.’
Jeff protests, but James practically shoves him towards the side door, and Jeff begrudgingly goes with him, Shauna a few paces behind. He mutters something to James, whose other hand clenches into a fist, and the second they are out of view, that fists swings into Jeff’s nose.
Jeff laughs bitterly, turning to Shauna, ‘this is the guy you let around my kid?’
Shauna ignores him, turning to her husband, ‘what did he say?’
James hesitates before telling her, ‘he called you a whore.’
Shauna hands James her purse before her fist connects with Jeff’s cheek.
‘I just thought the poor guy should know what he signed up for. Got me to fuck you when I was dating your friend. Neither of those kids look like him. If I were him I’d get a good lawyer.’
James grabs Shauna’s hand with the hand that isn’t holding her purse, and strokes her knuckles with his thumb. Jeff uses the sleeve of his right hand to wipe at the blood starting to trickle from his nose.
‘Do you have anything important to say to either of us, Jeff?’ James asks, irritation oozing from his tone.
‘Not to you. To my kid, though.’
Shauna barks out a laugh, ‘the same kid I cucked my husband with? The same kid you just acted like you had no hand in making? I got you to fuck me, yeah? And you had absolutely no control over that? And a decade later you want to be a daddy?’
Jeff uses his left hand to wipe at his nose, and something glimmers on his ring finger.
Shauna scoffs, ‘you’re married?’
Jeff tilts his head, ‘why, Ship? You wanna break up my marriage, too?’
‘Watch how you talk to her,’ James says, voice low and dangerous.
‘Ask her what she did to her best friend before you say that,’ Jeff shoots back.
‘I know what happened between the three of you, and if you call my wife a whore again it’ll be the last thing you ever do.’
Jeff backs up slightly, just a few paces, just enough that James would have to reach for him to take another swing. Shauna is still looking at him expectantly, and he sighs, ‘yes, I’m married.’
‘Kids?’ Shauna asks.
Jeff sighs again and shakes his head. ‘Allie and I, we can’t… she can’t have them.’
‘So you can’t have kids with Allie and you’ve decided you want mine?’
‘Ours,’ Jeff tries to correct.
‘Ours doesn’t include you. JJ is mine and James’ son. You can’t just decide to step up now.’
‘We can ask the state of New Jersey about that,’ he replies, smug, and James wants to punch him again.
Shauna just smiles. A small, serene smile that James hasn’t seen in years, ‘sure. You can ask. But you won’t be asking New Jersey, you’ll be asking Rhode Island, where we live. Rhode Island backdates child support so you’ll have to start by making up ten years of financial help. What do you do for work, Jeff?’
He hesitates, and the smugness is gone, replaced by wide eyes and crumpled posture, ‘dad’s store went under a while ago. I’m a cashier.’
‘Wow,’ Shauna says, as if impressed, ‘well, the average amount of support is about $450 a month, but I’ll be nice and take off that 50 given the circumstances. 400 times twelve months in a year is 4800, times ten years means you owe me about 48k. If you don’t have it set aside already, there are payment plans available, but I wouldn’t take too long because you need to catch up before the next eight years of payments kick in. That’s another 40k. So, do you want to meet your son, or?’
‘Fine, fucking fine, you win. I’m leaving.’
‘I have a confession to make,’ James says on the drive back to Rhode Island that night, the kids sleeping in the back seat. ‘When we first got back, Jeff came by the house to see you. I told him that JJ wasn’t his.’
‘He isn’t,’ Shauna says immediately, reaching over to squeeze James’ thigh. ‘He’s yours.’
‘You’re not mad?’
‘Of course not,’ Shauna replies, ‘if anything I’m grateful. You saved us from coparenting with a moron who clearly only wants our kid now he knows he can’t have more.’
James grabs Shauna’s hand in his, stroking over her knuckles.
‘And I have my own confession to make,’ Shauna adds, not taking her eyes from the road. ‘I don’t actually know if they would backdate child support. I looked it up before we went, just in case, and it said that it’d only be in some situations, not guaranteed, and where he’d file is actually up to him.’
‘How did you know he wouldn’t know that.’
‘It’s Jeff. He’s always been a moron. Didn’t think that’d change in adulthood.’
James graduates, nowhere near the top of the class, but with something of a reputation in the local art scene and a job offer at the local high school, he’s happy enough with it.
Coach Shipman is well-liked by the kids, except for JJ when he shows up a few years later.
Shauna considers getting into teaching, too, but decides she doesn’t like children other than her own. She moves from the small local paper to a slightly larger one in Boston, and uses the internet existing as a reason to work from home.
They go for a third kid when Callie is three.
One last one, they promise. Just to round out the Shipman clan. They debate using the same donor as Callie, but decide against it. Callie is growing into Shauna’s clone, so Shauna unanimously decides to pick someone as close to James as possible. James denies any accusations of a pregnancy kink even as he openly ogles Shauna’s swelling chest and stomach.
It’s twins.
Shauna openly plots out the most painful ways to make James pay for it, knowing James won’t claim it isn’t his fault, because they’re his kids through and through. James soothes her with foot rubs and ice cream and when they move to a larger house only a few blocks away, James paints a mural in the nursery.
Scott and Sophie complete their family.
Ben clears his throat and pretends he isn’t choked up when he hears Scott’s name.
Javi doesn’t hide any tears, greeting all four Shipman children with unrestrained affection before crushing the teenagers on Mario Kart.
Travis jokes about James getting a vasectomy, and James swats his arm.
Nat makes the same joke, and Shauna swats her because James won’t hit a girl.
Taissa offers a trade - free babysitting in exchange for crashing on their couch until her divorce clears and Van takes her back - and Shauna warns Tai that if she and Van traumatise their children via couch sex, she’ll wish she was only kicked out.
Lottie brings tea for Shauna, meant to enrich her breast milk with good vibes, and Tai subtly puts it in the garbage while Shauna mouths a ‘thank you’. Lottie gifts the two older kids skateboards, recommended by Nat, which James hides until he can buy them helmets and pads, and dreamcatchers for the twins, which he hangs above their cribs because he has to let Lottie have one win on this visit.
Two decades after the crash, they gather at the new Shipman house for Hannukah.
James finally introduces Ben to Tony, and the twins weave between adults under Javi and Lisa’s watchful eyes (and if someone catches Javi and Lisa in an alcove together towards the end of the night, it’s age appropriate and therefore no one’s business, even as Lottie hugs Shauna and tells them that they’ll be in laws), the teens amuse themselves with a game of dreidel and a stack of gelt, and the three couples - James and Shauna, Lottie and Nat, and Tai and Van - take a sofa each and cuddle while pulling faces at each other.
James squeezes his wife’s waist, and she leans up and places her face in his neck, warm despite the snow outside.
It’s perfect.
It’s theirs.
And it’s entirely down to slumber party makeouts.