Battling the Loss You Live For.

Not much had actually changed in the past six months. Apart from the fact that… it was August, I guess.

Dymian and Marilyn were growing up, and fucking fast. They could both kind of tell us when they were hungry, and kind of… gesture to the kitchen. It was more of a whinge and a wave of their arms in the direction of the kitchen, meaning that they wanted food.
They had moved on to bottle feeding now, thank god. Although, Sazzy was right, I did kind of need to get over it, and I think I did. I didn’t cringe every time, anyways.
They could also crawl. It was unreal, if you put Dymian on one side of the room and Marilyn at the other, they’d both start crawling and meet each other at the centre of the room. They couldn’t be apart already.
They were also old enough now for proper toys like teddy bears and rattles. They were very clever and careful kids, they learned from their mistakes quickly. For example, the other week Dymian was playing with his rattle, hitting himself by accident on the head. Naturally, it hurt and he cried. Marilyn saw this, and ever since, she and Dymian have never hit themselves or anyone else with a hard object.
Sazzy had also lost all her baby weight. She was just ecstatic that she could fit back into her favourite pair of skinny jeans.

“Frank Anthony!”
…What have I done now?
“Yeah, babe?” I called from the basement, cringing slightly.
“Can you get your fu-bloody ass over here?!” Sazzy cried, stopping herself from swearing. We’ve been trying to stop swearing around the kids. I hauled myself up from the sofa in the basement – the new place of escape for me and Pansy – and trudged up the stairs and into the kitchen. Sazzy had Dymian resting on her hip while she spoon-fed Marilyn in her high-chair.
“Can you please, for the love of God, take your son and change his nappy? I can’t feed Marilyn properly!” she cried, as Dymian grabbed a hold of my collar, trying to get me to hold him. I took him off her, letting him snuggle in the crook of my neck. He did stink a bit.
“…You take after your uncle,” I said to Dymian, walking into his shared bedroom with Marilyn.
“Your uncle Gerard makes the whole house smell nasty sometimes,” I said, shaking my head.
I changed his diaper, and then with him on my hip, I walked back into the kitchen, Sazzy still feeding Marilyn a mashed up banana.
“Uncle Michael is here!”
He walked through, grinning like an idiot. He totally got laid this morning.
“So how’s Sophii?” I said, fighting back my laugh. He rolled his eyes, with that grin still evident on his face.
“I don’t wanna hear about my brother’s sex life, ew!” Sazzy said, cringing as Marilyn giggled at Mikey, Dymian looking from me to Mikey and back again, holding his arms out to Mikes.
“Oh, yeah! Because I’m the best uncle in the world, aren’t I just, Dymi?” Dymi is said like ‘day-me’. I thought it was the weirdest nickname ever, but it was better than ‘die-me’ or ‘Ian’. The name Ian reminded me of an old middle-aged divorced man. Sazzy said that Ian was the name of an old dude in an English soap called East Enders, and said that if anyone called Dymian ‘Ian’, she would ‘shoot them in the face… and then in the knee’. I remember watching it once or twice… Ian was a prick.
“If he pukes up on you right now, though, I’ll laugh,” I said, laughing anyways. Mikey gave me a look, making me laugh even more.
“I so want them to talk! What do you want their first words to be?” Mikey said, sitting on a chair with Dymi in his lap.
“I don’t mind… as long as it’s not a swear word or something like ‘gay’. Do you know how many times kids say the only word they know? They’ll be saying ‘gay’ all the time!” I said, realising how stupid my outburst sounded.
“…What the hell have you been smoking?” Mikey asked, genuinely amused.
“That’s the thing, I think its lack of,” I said, shaking my head. I had really been cutting down. I’m kinda going cold turkey in a weird way – from smoking ten a day to about one or two a day. I hated the fact that I’d smell of fags around my children, and that so much money is getting spent on my fags. They’re not exactly cheap, are they?
“…Well, I don’t really mind, either. But wouldn’t it be cute if their first word was something like ‘butter’ or… ‘food’?” Sazzy said, getting a little excited.
“Do you want our children to be obese?” I said, receiving a blow to the side of my head.
“Ow!”
“Don’t be an ass!” Sazzy said, giggling.
“What about the standard ‘mama’ or ‘dada’?” Mikey asked, looking down at Dymi on his lap. He was playing with his rubber-and-plastic baby fork.
“I don’t know… I don’t know if I want to be called Mama yet or just Mum…” Sazzy said, her head tilting to the side absentmindedly.
“What do you think, babe?” she asked me, looking over her shoulder at me.
“I dunno. I don’t really care what they call me, as long as it doesn’t involve swear words or something. Mama sounds pretty sweet,” I said, grinning at her. She let out a small chuckle, spooning the last bit of banana in Marilyn’s mouth.
“All finished, baby!”
“Hey, let me burp her,” I said, standing up and pulling out Marilyn from her hair-chair, balancing her on my hip as she immediately rested her head on my shoulder. I walked out into the hallway, pacing softly as I rubbed her back gently.
“Frank, Frank!” Gerard called harshly, seeing me standing there in the hallway.
“Give her to Sazzy or Mikey, now.”
“What the hell is going on?” I whispered back, “don’t let Sazzy hear you, she’s gonna get upset.”
“Just do it, quickly, Frank. I mean it,” Gerard said urgently, jabbing his finger to the doorway of the kitchen. I did as he told me, letting Marilyn lie on Sazzy for a while.
“Burp her, please… I’ll be back in a second,” I said, passing her Marilyn and then walking out the door again, leaving her confused.
“What is it?” I asked Gerard, who was waiting by the door.
“…Lets go to the study. I need to talk to you,” he explained, leading the way to the third and unused bedroom. He sat on the swivel chair as I sat on the old chest of drawers, opening the window and lighting up a cigarette quickly.
“What the fuck is going on?”
“What does Kevin look like?”
I was really taken aback. My eyebrows scrunched together, and I sucked on my cigarette, sighing a little.
“Uh… dark hair, dark eyes… kinda reminds me a little of Johnny Rotten but not in a good way. I guess you could say that he was alright looking… why?”
“Does he have a gash… here?” Gerard asked, trailing his finger diagonally towards his left ear on his forehead, above his eye.
“Y-yeah… I- how did you know?” I was utterly shocked.
“I think I just saw him outside.”