WHO: Rhys & Juliet Nott
WHAT: Don't push a ragingly hormonal Juliet too far or you start to find out things you don't want to hear~
WHEN: Today
WHERE: Their new flat in ~France~

Juliet Nott was not a big believer in higher powers.

People who swore to some unseen, completely and logically non-existent person floating around in the sky were stupid in her opinion. There was never anyone to blame for the things that happened to you but yourself, you were the master of your own destiny, and all the bullshit like that. So why was she suddenly wondering which of those god damned deities floating around above her she'd managed to piss off bad enough to land her in such a position as she was in now.

First, Caradoc got Death Eaters after him and disappeared off the face of the planet. Then, because of that, she was now stuck living in sodding France of all places. And now, now the icing on the cake that January had become--she was pregnant. No, scratch that. She was pregnant.

Kids sucked. Kids were loud and annoying and cried and did stupid shit and never listened. Juliet hated them. She hated taking care of them, she hated being around them, she hated kids. And most certainly, while she did not have the sort of marriage where you sat down with your spouse and had some cutesy, giggly discussion about having them, Juliet was silently adamant that they were out of the picture. Forever. She didn't have to say anything--for all the arguments they had, she and Rhys were relatively like-minded individuals. He knew, and she knew, and that was that.

Except now there were kids. Two kids, Merlin's saggy left ballsack why? This was beyond infuriating, and since Juliet had no idea which deity to blame for this big game they were playing with her life, the current recipient of her death glares from across the dinner table was her husband.

It was his fault anyway.

Her looks were killing his appetite. Like anyone should even have that ability to begin with--- but no, his wife had mastered the art already. Rhys barely felt like he could eat (not that he was hungry, because he wasn't, but that was not the point. He should be able to not eat on his own without any outside forces whenever he wanted to), which left them basically just sitting there. Him unwilling to stare back at her, and she doing the exact opposite. Wasn't that just fun? He wasn't that happy about everything either, but she didn't see him trying to actually kill her with his eyes alone.

Rhys let out a dragged out sigh, his eyes closing shut for a second. There were too many things she could be angry about, he really didn't know where to start, or what to address. At this point, he would rather she just start screaming at him, because at least then he could have a reason for this increasing anger starting to simmer at the bottom of his stomach. It would be easier. Though then again, why would she go and try to make his life easier? Apparently their little... whatever phase that they had been in for the past week or so was over.

"What--- Juliet," the words came out more aggressive than he desired, but too late to fix that. Rhys' eyes snapped open as his palms went flat on the table, finally looking at her straight on. "Why are you staring at me like that?" Simple enough. It always started out simple, because he never had the energy to begin any other way.

Juliet's hard stare did not waver in the least in response to Rhys' sudden address. Well, it wasn't as if she hadn't expected him to snap at one point or another, although that it had taken this long... she had to give him something for it. Most people didn't have it in them to stand up silent to her death glares for more than a few hours, much less days--a fact that she had proven ample times in her life, what with all of the idiots there were in the world to piss her off.

It was these small things for which she occasionally discovered some semblance of respect for her husband. It was a pity that she was too furious at the moment, however, for that respect to register. Still, maybe she would at least speak to him--since he had asked and all.

"I would really like to kick you off a ledge right now."

Alright, so it wasn't the best answer ever, but at least she had broken her silence, right? That's what he wanted, wasn't it? ... Well, maybe she'd give him a little more.

"Some days I really wonder if you have it marked as a goal to make my life as much of a hell as you possibly can."

Rhys stared at Juliet plainly for a few seconds, clearly unable to speak for those few moments. She had to be kidding him. His goal? His goal? "My goal?" Rhys repeated out loud, his face shooting up alive with a small choke. He had to laugh at that, because she honestly couldn't be serious. His life goal to make hers a living hell? Let's trying putting that the other way around, and you got reality. If anything, Juliet had never ceased to make his day to day life as miserable as possible. With the few exceptions for the few hours when the both of them would surprisingly get along.

"You have to be joking," he continued, his voice deadpanning out into sarcasm. So she was finally upset about the move? That was the only thing Rhys could think of that made enough sense. Though, knowing Juliet, it really could be anything--- something he did in a dream wasn't that out of the realm of possibility. But he would stick in reality until she further implied not to.

So it was about the move, then. He could address that well enough."Look," Rhys started, his chin dipping low for a second as he kept his eyes locked on her. "I don't like it here right now just as much as you do, but it was what's best." He nodded slightly to his words, as if reaffirming his beliefs to his words. Justifying them to himself even more. "So for now we're just going to have to deal with it."

There. That left little open to argue over, because there wasn't much they could do about it. She could glare and sneer at him all she liked, but that wasn't going to change anything. Though he wished Juliet was one of those people that gave up on things after a while--- it would make his life easier.

The move. He thought this was about the move?

It took all that Juliet had not to gape at him in all of his stupidity. Of course she didn't expect him to know the real reason, but to think she was trying to kill him with looks over moving to France? Even she couldn't argue that it had been the only thing that they could do, and they both knew how she hated to agree with him, so---really? That he could be so senseless that he thought something like switching countries so they didn't get Avada Kedavra'd in their sleep by the Dark Lord was what had her angry... It was absolutely astounding.

"You are such a bloody moron," she hissed, and stood up from her chair so quickly that it wobbled, threatening to fall backwards. Her hands hit flat on the table, causing the plates and silverware to shake slightly, and Juliet stared down at her husband in scrutiny, as if trying to figure out if that was some kind of joke or not.

Finding that he was giving her nothing, after a few moments she pushed off the table and turned her back to him, clearly planning what she was going to say next. She did not want to tell him this---should she even tell him, right now? She was only contemplating the idea because she was finally boiling over, Juliet knew that, and that made this so much less profitable than it could be... Although, as much as she talked it, where this was concerned, she could care less about what she could get out of telling him at the right time when it came down to it. To be truthful, since she had found out, Juliet had thought very little of Rhys compared to what this all meant for her.

She was not just not ready to be a mother---she didn't want to be one. Ever.

One of Rhys' eyebrows cocked up in surprise to Juliet's little... scene. She had gone insane. Rhys sat in his seat across the table, simply staring at her because there was no other reaction he could muster himself to do. He was simply--- stunned at her incredibly angry and vehement tone. If it wasn't about living here, then what could she possibly be upset about? Well, that was a very broad question, everything seemed to make Juliet angry. But he hadn't changed in the past week. He still went to work (which was beyond intolerable with all the French), leaving her to do whatever she pleased during the day until he returned home. That had never been a problem before. And it most likely wasn't the problem now.

So--- what, then?

He grimaced and looked upon Juliet carefully as he finally spoke. "I'm not the one making a complete scene," Rhys scoffed quietly, breaking his gaze from her to look down at his napkin. Perhaps he should let her get whatever that was bothering off her chest, and just let her run her course without retorting any scathing responses. The past month would have been a bit much to handle for any regular being; maybe this was how Juliet dealt with her inner... thinkings. And problems. Not emotions.

Rhys sighed, finding her glares just plain annoying at this point. What was she going to do, glare him to death? With every passing minute they had less and less effect on him, so she might as well resort to another tactic. But whichever the case, he decided to keep his stinging thoughts to himself, for now. She could consider it a late birthday present, pardoning her temporary insanity for the time being since she obviously had nothing on him.

"Are you going to tell me or not? Because if not, then I would like to leave."

Making a---making a scene? If he wanted to see her make a scene, he could just keep it up, she could grab her knife off the table, and slit him across the throat before throwing him several stories down into the street below. That would be making a fucking scene.

At this point, Juliet could almost feel her blood boiling in her veins, she was so worked up so quickly that it surprised even her. Even if she had been a normal wife, the kind of wife that liked to avoid yelling at her husband (which she was not), she wasn't sure she would have been able to control herself just now. Her fists clenched at her sides in an attempt to not do something more drastic than scream her head off. She wanted to leave, get out of the room and out of the flat and get him out of her sight, but he was standing in front of the only door outside, standing there in her way, driving her fucking insane, just where he seemed to love to be the most.

Then Rhys opened his mouth again to speak.

In a fraction of a second--before she could think, before she could think to care--all hell broke loose. Juliet spun around to face him again, looking ready to kill.

"I'M PREGNANT, YOU BASTARD!"

Oh.

Rhys stood perfectly still, very sure he was unable to move an inch even if he wanted to. All his previous thoughts flew out the window as his mind tried to wrap itself around the meaning of one very small, but very significant eight letter word. His eyes went blank despite the fact that he continued to stare at her sharply, and his mouth dropped open a little. Many, many moments later Rhys had managed to come to one simple conclusion that put everything into perspective: that was not possible.

Juliet being pregnant was not possible because they weren't parents people. They were hardly people that cared about anything outside the realm of themselves, so it made absolutely no sense as to why, suddenly in nine months, they would have to devote the rest of their lives to... something else. The universe knew that sticking a child in either one of their hands was just a catastrophe waiting to happen, an unnatural thing to not even be uttered. So--- no, unimaginable, absurd, inconceivable (---ha), ludicrous, preposterous, beyond the bound of possibility, the list went on!

So she was obviously--- Rhys' heart reared into over drive, pumping liters of blood a minute, and answering his own question to whether or not Juliet would be making this up. No... she wouldn't lie about something like this, because this was one of the few things they never had to speak about, because they were on the same page in the pregnancy book. And that was never opening the damn thing. They at least had the respect for each other to never joke about something like that. But that meant that they were going to be---

Dealing with other people's children were different, they weren't yours, and you never had to care about them over the time span of a day. It was--- not the same, because you could put in as much effort (or as little) as you wanted and it wouldn't make a bloody--- Will and Anneliese were parents people, hence why they were having a child. So, so---

He had to speak. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Rhys registered that it had well been over five minutes since she had screamed out to him. If he didn't respond soon, more secrets he was not ready for would most likely follow. Like the sex, or---- the due date, or--- "I---" Rhys fumbled for any form of an intelligent response, but that was far beyond him at that point. He would be lucky to speak a language Juliet understood. His chest began to take in deep breaths of air, and suddenly the need for nicotine finally kicked in. "Are you----" He needed a fag, he needed a fag, holy shit. "For how long?"

"Three weeks, give or take."

Juliet surprised herself with the readiness of her answer. But he had been silent for so long that it seemed to have shocked her into this weird state where she wanted Rhys to say something. She wanted to hear his voice, a negative or a positive response, whatever it was, but---he couldn't just shut up at a time like this. Because---the sorry bastard had gotten her knocked up and he would be forced to say something to her about it, damn it!

And why the fuck was she screaming about this in her head, he had responded so she didn't even know what she was going on about. She was going nuts, these parasites--because that's what they were, parasites stealing both her energy and her sanity--were quickly driving her insane to the point that she didn't even care about how shocked the husband she normally so enjoyed tormenting was at the news of their existence.

She shouldn't have felt so sedate and helpless all of a sudden. So like she just wanted to sink down against the wall and curl up into a ball. This wasn't her, she should be---she should be---

She didn't know what she should be. She didn't know what she was supposed to do--not with this.

And at that moment, it hit Juliet that he still didn't know the very best part of the story yet, the biggest part of why she felt so royally fucked about it all---so royally fucked, in fact, that as the damned word made its way past her lips, she nearly choked on it. "Twins."

Twins? Three weeks? Twins? For three weeks the rest of the world had known about their--- his impending doom, while they--- he had been-- well, not necessarily blissfully unaware, the past three weeks had been hell (perfect, only their children could be created out of a horrendous state)-- but nonetheless unaware of what was really happening. And what was the possibility of having twins for fuck's sake? So not only had these--- two managed to practically conceive themselves out of--- well not no where--- but now there were two of them, instead of one.

Two.

His hands were working. He just remembered that. But he didn't have any fags on him, they were upstairs, which would mean his legs would need to be working which he--- wasn't sure about. Jerkily, Rhys raised his right hand up to his forehead and took in a deep breath. "That's---- great," he muttered, suddenly feeling extremely detached.

What was he--- was was he suppose to say? Regular people were always-- happy to find out about having children, so--- but they were most certainly not regular people, they hardly constituted as a regular married couple so. How exactly was he suppose to feel right now? Juliet was no help, all he could visibly get from her was anger. Perhaps nausea.

"And we are--- keeping them?" Rhys twitched at the phrase, not liking how it came out. It wasn't exactly something that you were suppose to say, only think about. But there was definitely no filter from his brain to his mouth at this point, so he couldn't have stopped it even if he had wanted to. But he had to ask, it was just--- there was no reason getting hung up about this (or, for that matter, attached on the concept), if it was going to become... nothing.

We are keeping them?

Shouldn't her blood have been boiling right about now? Normal pregnant women--didn't they get angry when such a blunt, crude---such a heartless sort of question was asked about their children to be? Didn't most anything her husband ever uttered make her angry anyway? So why didn't she feel---anything, she didn't feel anything even as the words repeated themselves over and over in her mind. Either she was numb, or she had just discovered a rare semblance of the person she remembered being, before all of this shit with Caradoc and France and babies happened. It was her instinctive practicality, bless it all, that had survived all of that.

Well, that was a relief. Sort of.

"I don't know," Juliet answered, crossing her arms over her chest. It wasn't as if she hadn't thought about it before--about just getting an abortion and having this ridiculousness over with. In fact, before tonight, she had thought that if that was what she decided she'd just do it before Rhys knew any the better and then neither of them would have to bother with this conversation.

She would be happier with an abortion. He would be happier. They wouldn't be much less miserable, but they wouldn't be any more miserable at least.

But---she didn't know. Even for her, the woman who murdered house elves (although in her defense, that stupid creature had had it coming for 18 whole years) and had fun tormenting the people in her life, the idea of killing a human was daunting. It was---weird. Annoying. Juliet Nott was not daunted by anything, and yet this---

And so she didn't know. Not knowing, that was painfully uncharacteristic, just like all of the rest of this. She would be so glad when January was over, this living hell of a month just needed to be over already.

"What do you think? I suppose they're---yours, too." Ugh, that sounded considerate. Fucking hell. "I don't know what---to do. About this."

What did regular people do in situations like this? Well her certainly wasn't going to start crying, or yell at her for being so inconsiderate. They were simply... being responsible. As heartless as it may appear, they were honestly trying to... think of the best thing for everyone. All--- four of them.

His eyebrows shot up again in response to Juliet's words. She didn't know? That was not the answer he was looking for. All Rhys wanted was a definite yes, or a definite no. Not--- a maybe gray. He couldn't live with a maybe, let's-think-about-it-for-a-while and get back to each other on it a week later; he would go insane. If Juliet would just choose for him like she always did nearly ninety percent of the time, then he would live with it. He was use to that, so whatever she wanted he would---

wait. Did that mean he would be alright with suddenly having a legitimate family of his own? That... if she decided to keep these babies, that he would be willing to be their--- father? For the rest of his life-- their lives. Yes, that was what he was saying, indirectly. Not that he favored one over the other, just that... he would be alright enough with it to accept it.

Whoa.

"I---" Rhys started, his face contorting into its first real emotion for the past fifteen minutes. His hand fell to his forehead as he continued to think, trying to find the right words as his head whirled with this new realization. Well, he should tell her, then. That he would be alright, with it. He supposed. He must be delusional, he couldn't seriously be thinking straight if he was alright with this.

"I--- will support whatever you--- choose to do," he started slowly, his eyes still closed as he continued to think about what he wanted to say. Eventually Rhys' hand dropped and he brought his gaze to Juliet's face. "If... you think that we're not ready--- then I will understand because we never... planned on this happening. Or if you think that we are, and you want them..." Then what? Rhys still fumbled for what he wanted to say here. Holy shit, he was a solicitor for fuck's sake, wasn't it part of his job to think on his feet?

"Then--- of course, after some time to--- get use to the fact, I will be--- happy." Happy was too strong of a word. That wasn't what he wanted to say, he meant--- he wasn't sure what he meant.

If she thought that they were ready? How could he possibly conceive that she could ever think they were ready for this? Of course--taking care of a baby, she could do that, it wasn't N.E.W.T. level Arithmancy or something (which she had gotten a O on anyway, but--). You fed them and dressed them and changed them and made sure that they didn't get into anything dangerous. And when they grew up, you just---taught them not to be idiots and let them go on their own.

No, the actual raising of the children was not what she was concerned about. It was about them, about her actually devoting the rest of her life to doing just that---she was not ready to do that, and the idea of having to honestly scared her to death.

But to get rid of them---get rid of, like they were trash---

They were half her. How could she do that to something that was half herself? She hated to venture to think that there was anything about these two that she could find to care about, but the truth was that despite all of her cursing at them for their fucking with her body and emotions, for coming into her life at a time like this, Juliet could not forget that she had helped to create them. And just that one thought stopped her, just in the slightest.

Fuck, why couldn't he just give her a yes or no? If she had to decide this herself--she didn't know if she could decide this for herself. He would support her, but that was not going to help right now--the only support she needed was an answer, because if he didn't answer, it would be too late. By the time she gathered up the nerve to take care of this, it would be too late.

Juliet took a deep breath and ran her hands back through her hair. So that was it, then. She knew---that was how this was going to go. If he wasn't going to---she knew what would happen, and---

"Rhys," she muttered, in a softer tone than she had probably ever used with that name (hell, she hardly used his first name like that, this must have really fucked her up for that to be coming out of her mouth that way). "You have to tell me, if you---don't want this, you have to tell me now. Because I can't make that decision alone, so you---if you don't say it now, you have to know what you're doing."

This was the strangest experience Rhys had ever encountered with Juliet in their entire relationship, in his entire life. Not only were the both of them completely apprehensive, but they were actually stating so bluntly. And they were talking nicely, with tender and calm tones to each other. All while still standing... a good amount away from each other. His hand went back up to his face again, his palm pushing into his forehead for a few seconds to stop a headache from forming.

So she wanted an answer, she wanted--- she wanted him to decide for them? He halted momentarily at that thought, now completely understanding what heavy of a decision Juliet was handing him. That was it, then? But by doing this, didn't that show that she did... care enough to want them already? And if she wanted to keep these two, why should he stop her? Juliet would definitely make his life a living hell if made her--- not that that was the issue, but if he did---

A sudden strange pang shot through his body as he thought about suddenly not having these--- two. Not that--- Rhys certainly wasn't attached, but not necessarily--- well they were part him, for fuck's sake, it wasn't like they were talking about a piece of moldy bread, here.

So---

"Yes--- then," Rhys stated suddenly, knowing that if he let his stream of conscious continue any more, he would discover more treasures about himself he knew he did not want to uncover yet. One revelation for the night was enough for him. "I think---" he had to stop thinking, just turn off the side comments and just say whatever comes out of his mouth. People did that all the time, yes? Naive honesty? Rhys took another deep breath, and quickly closed the space between him and Juliet, because--- this was important.

"---we should--- keep them."

He looked down at her closely, his heart raging back to life, even pounding through his ears. And sweat was definitely collecting in his hands. Holy fuck, he was having children.

This was surreal---this was beyond surreal. Actually, Juliet felt like she was living in someone else's life entirely at the moment.

This sort of moment didn't happen in her marriage--in her relationship with Rhys for however long it'd had gone on, period. They had had their share of serious conversations in the past four weeks, but none in which the both of them were so solemn that they were just... being nice to each other. It was like being in some alternate reality, and the weird thing was, Juliet wasn't entirely sure that she didn't appreciate it. Of course, she worried because this was not normal of either of them, but this was one topic she had not wanted to get into a screaming match over. Beyond all belief, the both of them were actually serious enough to be understanding of not only what was going on, but each other too.

Ugh, was she going to be like this for the next eight months? Juliet hoped not. There was no way she could let Rhys start to think he could walk over her.

"So--- I guess that's it, then," she said as she looked up at him, suddenly right in front of her. "We're going to be.. parents."

This was going to be interesting.