“I can’t believe you got someone pregnant,” Kane stated, narrowing his eyes at Vex from over the copious amounts of food they had ordered at the restaurant.

Kane was still sporting a thick bandage across his throat but today had been the first day he had felt like he could swallow real food again.

As a nod to the joyous occasion, Kane had persuaded Vex and a few of their other friends to join him at a very expensive restaurant in the nearest town.

“Accidents happen,” Vex shrugged.

“Doesn’t your father normally make accidents go away?” Namrah pouted.

“Is that what you think I should have done?” Vex raised his eyebrows as his friends awkwardly shifted in their seats.

“Is it really that aquatic demon though?” Kane shook his head. “That’s what I can’t understand. Not exactly your type.”

“Alcohol,” Vex sighed, already having rehearsed his answers.

“What Kane is taking years to actually ask,” Namrah huffed, leaning across the table and studying Vex carefully, “is did you actually fuck him or are the rumours true?”

“Do you even need to ask?” Vex laughed, affecting his most salacious looking grin.

“Well not everyone believes it,” their friend, Bracks, announced, inhaling a wedge of wasabi slathered tofu. “Scylla Chloro says apparently that fish man –“

“Ciel,” Vex interjected without thinking.

“Apparently Ciel,” Bracks continued, “was rumoured to be concocting some sort of summoning spell for months.”

Vex took a deep breath and began to absently drown his own plate in soy sauce. He found it hard to believe that Ciel would be lying about what happened, but then again the other man seemed to keep surprising Vex.

Plus it wasn’t like Ciel was all sweet and innocent, Ciel had repeatedly demonstrated to Vex quite what a nasty temper he had.

Vex brought his chopsticks to his mouth, wincing at the overload of salt as he recalled how terrified Ciel had been of his father, how genuinely hurt he had looked at Vex’s barbed jokes and the way his dark cheeks had flushed cherry coke when he had noticed some of the more x-rated items in Vex’s cabinet.

“Scylla says a lot of shit,” Vex concluded as his friends shrugged at each other.

“You’re going to be a father,” Kane announced with a disbelieving grin.

“No,” Vex replied tightly. “Fathers raise their children, I’m just a sperm donor.”

“Ouch,” Bracks laughed, “True to the Dubois name.”

“What does Ciel even look like?” Namrah asked, glancing expectantly around the table.

“Well,” Bracks clapped his hands together, “imagine an emaciated Smurf –“

“Fuck off,” Vex muttered as his friends began to snort with laughter.

“No, but seriously,” Bracks continued undeterred, “he’s got bright blue hair,”

“Oh,” Namrah wrinkled their nose, “aquatic.”

“Yup,” Bracks nodded, “with the limpest tail you can imagine, plus my five year old sister’s got bigger fangs. No horns, of course.”

Vex rolled his eyes, not every demon had horns but it had become somewhat of a desirable feature in halfling society.

Tails were a standard on everyone with demonic lineage and Vex knew some students who spent hours a day preening and polishing their lower appendages.

The ultimate symbol of demonic power of course was wings, but very few halflings ever grew wings and even then it was rarely before the age of two hundred.

“And some sort of skin condition right?” Kane frowned, “Or are those just fish scales?”

“Oh hell, he must smell awful,” Namrah laughed, covering their mouth with their hand.

“I said enough!” Vex snarled, standing up and causing the porcelain dishes on the table to clink ominously together.

“Sheesh Vex,” Kane murmured, “we were just messing about.”

“I’m going to get some air,” Vex muttered, ignoring the questioning looks of his friends as he stalked out of the restaurant and into the cool evening.  

“Sorry,”

Vex slumped as he heard Kane’s voice behind him.

“It’s okay. I know I’m not acting like myself,” Vex sighed.

“Yeah, normally you’d be finding this shit funny,” Kane smiled, walking up next to Vex and leading them both over to perch against an uncomfortably damp wall outside the restaurant.

Vex could make out a small cohort of wait-staff crouched in the nearby alleyway, smoking and checking their phones.

“How did your father take it?” Kane asked, drawing out a large black cigar, fat and musty and glowing amber as he lit up the end.

“Delighted, as you might imagine,” Vex groaned, rubbing at his eyes and stretching his neck from side to side. "He sent me a message afterwards basically implying that he was disappointed I hadn’t possessed the good sense to call Torrance as soon as I found out about the pregnancy.”

“Isn’t Torrance your father’s um…‘fix it’ man?” Kane winced.

“You mean the guy we call when we want things ‘disappeared’,” Vex stated numbly, it had started to rain and flecks of droplets were smattering across his face. The wait-staff in the alleyway were mumbling in discontent, raising their jackets up over their heads and stamping out cigarettes on damp cobblestone.

“Fuck,” Kane whistled. “That’s brutal.”

Vex eyed Kane for a moment. Kane came from the Lazero clan, almost as well known and powerful as the Dubois. Vex wasn’t the only one bearing weighty expectations for his future.

“What would you do?” Vex asked as Kane’s lips curled in a small smile, as if he had been waiting for that question.

“Honestly? Not sure, I guess I always figured there would just be a termination,” Kane laughed. “You just had to go and screw the one half aquatic demon in the vicinity didn’t you?”

“Actually,” Vex shrugged, “I’ve noticed a couple of them around.” Ever since the business with Ciel, Vex had found himself strangely attuned to flashes of blue hair across the campus, only to discover it seemed there were more aquatic halflings that he had previously assumed.

Vex supposed before he had simply not registered their presence. Nobody seemed to know much about aquatics or really give them any passing thought.

“Do you think it will be aquatic?”

“What?” Vex frowned.

“The kid,” Kane began, “do you reckon it –“

“I don’t know,” Vex snapped, blanching. He had tried not to even think about the child at the end of the pregnancy, especially as he knew that he would have nothing to do with them.

Perhaps he should feel pity for the unborn demon. With Ciel as its only parent it was bound to turn out vicious and difficult, probably with a tail the girth of a limp noodle.

“And I don’t care,” Vex added firmly.

“Come on then,” Kane grinned wickedly, “let’s go have some sushi.”

***

“Well there it is,” Vex announced as he turned the corner only to find Felix leaning up against his bedroom door humming to himself.

“There’s what?” Felix asked, raising a blond eyebrow.

“Proof that I’m cursed,” Vex clenched his jaw striding forwards and prising his cousin away from the heavy paneled door.

“I only came to give you the good news!” Felix laughed, adopting an innocent pose. “Ciel had his first ultrasound today and –“

“He what?” Vex snapped, his fingers fumbling with his door key as it fell to the ground with a metallic clink.

“His ultrasound,” Felix repeated slowly as if Vex was being an idiot. “You do remember you knocked someone up right? The cute little demon with the raspberry slushie hair?”

“You-“ Vex growled, feeling his fangs throb with irritation. He wasn’t sure what was upsetting him more, Felix’s eat shit attitude or the fact he had called Ciel ‘cute’. Probably the latter, it was clear that Ciel was anything but cute from the way he had pounced on Kieran the other day. Then again, Kieran had probably deserved it.

Vex sighed, rubbing frustratedly at his brow and willing his Charybdis of whirling thoughts to slow the hell down.

“Are you – are you upset he didn’t ask you to come?” Felix suddenly gasped, his eyes widening in surprise and what looked suspiciously like glee.

“Of course not,” Vex hissed. “I want nothing to do with him.”

“Pity,” Felix sighed, deflating somewhat. “He was awfully nervous you know, I think he really could have done with someone to hold his hand.”

“Is that all you came to tell me?” Vex huffed, but inside his mind was loud and muddled. Did he feel annoyed that no one had thought to invite him to the scan? After all, he was meant to be pretending that he had feelings for Ciel so as to protect him from his father.

“Actually I came to give you something,” Felix grinned, drawing out a small postcard sized picture from his pocket and passing it face down to Vex. “See you later dear cousin.”

Vex made sure he heard the swing of the door at the far end of the corridor, indicating Felix was far away enough before turning the card over. He froze, spit drying on his tongue, it was a black and white screen shot of a pregnancy scan, completely unintelligible with bubbles of white standing out against the shadows.

Vex stared at it for far too long before concluding that he could identify nothing, Felix might as well have given him a screen grab from Kane’s endoscopy, in fact, he may well have.

All the same, Vex entered his room quietly and thoughtfully, walking over to stash the scan safely in his top drawer.