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rainbowfic2025-12-21 03:07 pm
paradoxcase) wrote in rainbowfic2025-12-21 03:07 pm
Realgar #3 [Tales From the Neighborhood]
Name: Fatherhood
Story: Tales From the Neighborhood
Plot Thread: Michael, Robert, and Stephen
Colors: Realgar #3: Nourish
Styles and Supplies: Gesso, Pastels ("I['ll] miss you" prompt from Dad December, it originally was going to be posted on the 13th, but then I got behind), Fingerpainting (writing mpreg was unexpectedly hard), Chalk (Americans are Increasingly Convinced That Aliens Have Visited Earth), Vaudeville, Stain ("Dream in a pragmatic way." - Aldous Huxley), Novelty Bead (this image, given here)
Word Count: 2360
Rating: T
Warnings: (Really vague and undetailed) Mpreg, Minor Character Death
Characters: Stephen Bren, Victoria Ramirez, Todd Ramirez, Robert Bren, Eva Bren, Jasmine Rai, Michael Wolf, Kim Gaines
Summary: Something is missing from Stephen's life.
Stephen eyed the car that had pulled up into the driveway and parked behind the one that he shared with Michael and Robert. It was a bit on the older side, maybe in need of some new paint. Were they hurting for money, or was she just being frugal? Victoria did love expensive things, but he had never known her to care for cars, so maybe she simply didn’t care for expensive cars, either.
As he strode across the lawn to the car, Victoria stepped out of it, wearing a coat he hadn’t seen her in before that definitely did look expensive. Maybe she didn’t need his money, after all. She went around to the back door, and opened it.
He arrived to see her leaning down to free a child from a carseat. The child looked up at him curiously from eyes that were a glossy black from edge to edge and corner to corner. There were no irises, no scleras — his eyelids seemed to open onto fathomless black holes. It was well-known that the alien hybrids often had black eyes, but Stephen had always thought that meant regular eyes that were just very, very dark, and not something like this. He didn’t have these eyes himself, obviously, but this child was proof that they must be lurking somewhere in his DNA. It fascinated him.
“Hi, Todd,” he said to the child. “I’m your dad.”
Victoria picked Todd up out of the carseat and put him down on the lawn, and the backed away from the two of them, observing from a distance.
“Hi,” said Todd, and smiled, nervously. “I know my eyes are funny. It’s ok. I’m not scary.”
“I know,” said Stephen. “I didn’t think you were.” He sat on the grass, and patted the ground in front of him; Todd took the invitation and sat down facing him. “Are many people afraid of you?”
“Sometimes,” said Todd. “And sometimes they just think they’re really cool.” He grinned a bit. “But sometimes kids try to poke their fingers in them, because they think there’s nothing there. That sucks.”
“Yeah,” said Stephen. “People can be shitty about stuff like that. Don’t be afraid to stick up for yourself. Does your mom stick up for you, too?”
“Sometimes. When she’s not busy.” Todd looked back over his shoulder at Victoria. “Mama said that my eyes came from you. But your eyes are normal. And…”
“I’m green?” Stephen asked, smiling a little. “Yeah. Genetics isn’t just about what you see on the surface. We’ve each got a whole different set of colors hidden inside us, invisible. Somewhere, I’ve got your eyes, and you might have my skin, too, but we just can’t see it.”
“Did your dad have my eyes, too?” Todd asked.
Stephen shook his head. “My dad has eyes like mine,” he said. “My other parent… probably had your eyes. But I never got to meet them.”
“I’m glad I got to meet you, at least,” said Todd. “Mama didn’t want me to. She has so many fights with Grandmama about it.”
“I’m sorry you have to be there for that,” said Stephen. “But remember to stick up for yourself, yeah? If you want to come see me, tell your mom, let her know what you think. Maybe eventually she’ll change her mind.”
Todd was looking at him intently, or at least, Stephen thought he was. It was a little hard to tell exactly where he was looking. “You think so?”
“You never know until you try, right?” said Stephen. “How old are you now?”
“I just turned… four!” said Todd, enthusiastically. “And I got a birthday party! Grandmama and Jacob got me a fire truck! It was so cool but Mama wouldn’t let me bring it to show you.”
“Jacob is your brother?” Stephen asked. None of them had really heard anything about what was going on with the child that Victoria had had with Theo.
“Uh huh,” said Todd. He continued to tell Stephen more about Jacob and the fire truck, the friends he’d made at school, two older children in his house that Stephen gathered must be very young siblings of Victoria, and a new baby sister whose father was unknown.
All the while, Stephen would see Victoria checking her watch out of the corner of his eye; eventually, she came back over and took Todd’s hand. “It’s time to go, sweetie,” she said.
Todd looked up at her. “Why?”
“Because I said so.” She pulled at his arm, and he reluctantly stood up.
Todd looked from Victoria back to Stephen and said, “If I don’t get to come see you again, I’ll miss you.”
“I’ll miss you, too,” said Stephen. He stood as Victoria led Todd back to the car and strapped him back into his seat, and then followed her over as she shut the door. “You are going to bring him again, aren’t you?”
“I told you you got fifteen minutes today. That’s the only promise I’m making.”
“Don’t I have rights?”
“Actually, no. Officially, his father is unknown, since the alien DNA screws up the tests.”
“They would take your word for it if you just named me, wouldn’t they?”
“Probably.” She looked at him levelly, a slight smile on her face, silently daring him to yell and snarl invective. From inside the car, Todd looked up at him with wide eyes like polished obsidian.
“This is such bullshit,” said Stephen, and turned and stomped back to the house.
One night, Robert was abducted by aliens. It had happened suddenly; Stephen had noticed the lights flashing when he was working at his computer, but by the time he got outside, Robert was gone, and so was whatever ship they’d arrived in. The lights had returned a few hours later, leaving Robert standing in the street, a little woozy and shaken, saying that the last thing he could remember was looking for Mars with the new telescope they’d recently bought.
They all knew what would come next, but Robert was not interested in talking about the process. He turned into a recluse, as he sometimes did, sleeping and waking and eating at odd hours when no one else was around, until the baby was born and he could return to work.
The baby was a girl, and she had both the same green skin as Stephen and also the fathomless black eyes that Todd had had. The dusting of hair that she been born with, and which grew longer at an astonishing rate, was a deep red in color, a different shade entirely from Robert’s mother’s red hair. Robert named her Eva.
After the birth, Robert consented to talk, a bit, and to let Stephen play with Eva a bit — Michael had little interest in her. But all he would say was that his body now seemed to contain new organs that he did not want it to have. The doctors apparently did not fully understand how everything functioned now and were reluctant to make major changes.
“Sounds fascinating,” said Stephen. “I’d love to get a look and see if I can’t figure it out.”
“Get your own, then,” said Robert. “The telescope is right there.”
In fact, they did not use the telescope anymore. Michael had hired a contractor to come in and build a fence around it, with a locked gate and everything. But Stephen often looked at it, and wondered.
Time turned his thoughts back to planet Earth, and to what Robert had said to him before, about Jasmine, when they’d had that conversation in the middle of the night. He’d dismissed it then; Jasmine had never mentioned children as part of their arrangement, and he’d been sure, back then, that it meant that they weren’t on the table. But maybe he’d been wrong. It had just been his assumption, after all.
But when he finally drummed up the nerve to ask her about it, it seemed an awful lot like maybe he’d had it right in the first place.
“What’s the big deal?” he said into his phone, idly rolling one of the pool balls around as he talked. “You have kids with Simon.”
“Yeah, and they’re being raised in a house together with their dad. I’m not going to have a kid who’s raised in a house with someone who’s not his dad, while his actual dad lives on the other side of town.”
“I could take them and raise them here, with me. And we’re not that far away, you could come see them whenever you wanted.”
“Without their mom? Not even any woman in the house? No other kids? Come on.”
“We do have a kid here now, actually,” said Stephen, thinking of Eva.
“Do I want to know how that happened?”
“Well, I do. But… yeah, I guess most people probably wouldn’t.” He thought back to when she’d told him that he deserved to know how he’d come into the world, but maybe it had just been a bunch of words, after all.
“Sounds like one of you guys has got this problem figured out,” said Jasmine. “Maybe you should be recruiting him, instead of me.”
Stephen just sighed.
It was late at night, and the sky was exceptionally clear. The light pollution wasn’t even that bad at the moment, and Michael took a moment to glance upwards and survey all the stars he could see. Stephen had convinced him to unlock the telescope tonight, and he’d had to reluctantly agree; it was the night for it.
But he wasn’t out here to look at the stars; he was waiting for a date to show up. He checked his watch again, and peered off into the distance in the direction he thought the guy would be coming from. The burned-out street lamps did make the stars brighter, but they also made it harder to see the street.
He jumped a bit when someone touched his shoulder from behind. Turning, he saw that it was in fact the guy he’d met at the bar before, one who was somewhat incongruously named Kim. “I thought you said you lived on 6th St.?” he said.
“Oh, I do,” said Kim, and laughed a little. “I actually swung by here on the way back from a friend’s house. That’s ok, right?”
“Sure.” Michael shrugged. He didn’t care what kind of friend it was, either. “Do you want to go out, or stay in? I was thinking that it’s been a while since I’ve actually had a comfy date at home. We’ve got movies, games, pool. Or do you want to go somewhere else?”
“Staying in sounds great, actually,” said Kim. “Show me your movies.”
They had just started back towards the house when Michael saw a very familiar set of flashing lights in the sky. “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” he said. “I’m sorry, I’ll be right back. I have to go save my brother from a terrible fate.”
The bottom panel of the small spacecraft shimmied open and a face appeared from inside. Green skin and the black eyes, naturally, but those eyes were also shaped like very wide ovals or almonds, and came to sharp points on the sides. Another feature of some hybrids that he’d only heard of, but had never seen in person.
“Sorry, kid,” said the face. “We don’t take hybrids. Only full-blooded humans. That’s the rules.”
“Really?” asked Stephen, archly. “You’re only interested in exact half crosses? You’re not at all curious about what a one-quarter hybrid would be like?”
The face at the opening frowned, seeming to consider this. “You know, that’s a good point, actually,” it conceded. “Let me get back to you. I gotta check with my manager.” The panel eased shut again.
Stephen let out a sigh. He guessed it was probably better than nothing.
Michael suddenly appeared out of nowhere at his side. “What are you doing?” he asked. “You know they’re just going to kidnap you like they did with Robert and do weird shit to you, and then you’ll give birth to another green baby. We already have one of those.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” said Stephen. “What do you think the whole point of this was?”
“I don’t know,” said Michael. “I thought you were doing something… sciency.”
“You don’t think biological engineering is ‘sciency’ enough?”
The panel opened again and the green face reappeared. “You’re in luck, kid, the boss agrees with you.” A bright beam of light followed.
Stephen thought Michael might try to grab onto him to keep him from being taken, but for some reason, Michael wasn’t there anymore. He was distantly aware of a scream, running feet, and a door banging open as his vision faded.
Robert joined Michael as he stood dejectedly in front of the cowplant. He thought he’d been able to make out human-like expressions on its face in the past, and currently, it seemed extremely pleased with itself. A shoelace dangled from its mouth, briefly before an oversized tongue emerged and pulled it inside.
Michael’s fists were balled in grief and anger. “I’m going to put a fence around this, too,” he said. “Should have done that a long time ago.”
“Absolutely,” said Robert. “I’ll help.”
“Before he disappeared completely, he screamed something about it being a terrible date and how he was going to leave me a flaming bag of poo,” Michael continued, his voice breaking in a way that sounded like he might cry. “I’ve never been called a terrible date before.”
“Well,” said Robert, “I don’t think he’s going to be able to leave the flaming bag of poo at this point.”
“I was really looking forward to this date.”
“I know,” said Robert. “I’m sorry.”
They stood there for a little while longer, the sounds of the night filling their ears.
“I guess this means we’ll wind up with more of the cowplant milk,” said Robert, after some time had passed. “Whose turn is it to get younger, this time?”
“Fuck me,” said Michael, and Robert could tell he was angry, because he never used language like that. “I think it’s actually Stephen’s.”
Gesso Notes
New organs that he did not want: The "aliens installed a uterus" thing is actually a reality in my game, thanks to some modding I did. I actually mainly did this so that I could have a trans woman get abducted in order to be able to have a biological baby with her husband, but it works for the cis sims, too. As a result of this, Robert and Michael did actually wind up having an accidental baby at some point later on (which will probably not be a story that gets written up), due mostly to the fact that sims constantly roll wants to woohoo in cars and also that a mod I was using for risky pregnancy for some reason had risky pregnancy from car woohoo set to 35% (!!!). One of Robert's sisters actually had seven accidental babies because of this. I eventually edited the risky pregnancy mod to be more sane, and wrote my own mod to fix the obsession with car woohoo, but the damage had already been done by that point. Robert's uncle has also exploited this to (intentionally) have some biological kids with his husband.
We don't take hybrids: In the unmodded game, there is a single alien pollination technician who is the father of all of the alien babies, and since he does appear as their parent in their family trees, normally when an alien hybrid gets abducted they don't actually come back pregnant, because this would make the family tree of the baby look weird and incestuous. However, if you have a mod that adds multiple custom alien pollination technicians, then if the one that is randomly selected to be the alien parent is one that was not the parent of the abducted alien hybrid, the hybrid can still come back pregnant. In this case, Stephen's alien parent is my pollination technician with brown hair, and he got abducted by the one with red hair, so he did in fact come back pregnant. Later on, I actually went on to remove all of the pollination technicians from everyone's family trees, so now there are no restrictions about who can be impregnated by which pollination technician.
Flaming bag of poo: Terrible dates do usually result in the datee showing up with a flaming bag of poo later. This has never actually happened to any of my sims, though, because this is the one and only time I ever managed to get a terrible date score.
Sim Notes
Technically Stephen's wish for a child here is a little fictional, since he never actually rolled the want. I made this happen entirely because I wanted a 3/4 alien baby, and kind of made up a character reason for it after the fact. However, Stephen and Todd did actually develop a close relationship purely through them autonomously calling each other on the phone, without my direction, which was something that did not happen for any of Victoria's other children and their miscellaneous fathers, so I figure that is good enough to motivate this characterization.
Todd Ramirez is a born-in-game sim, the son of Victoria and Stephen. This is his college portrait:
I am really pleased with how he came out looking, I think he is one of the most interesting-looking sims in the neighborhood. His cheek/chin shape and hair and eye color are from Stephen's alien parent, but otherwise he looks completely human. He sort of looks like he's wearing sunglasses all the time, underneath his eyelids. He does actually also have Stephen's green skin recessively. One of his current romantic relationships is with one of Edith's alien twins, so he could theoretically have kids who are homozygous for both the green skin and the black eyes.
Jacob Ramirez is indeed Victoria's son with Theo; he will show up as a college student in another story, along with one of Victoria's younger siblings who was mentioned here in passing. Victoria's new baby is named Naomi and will also show up in a later story as a teen, and is biologically Robert's daughter, although unlike with Stephen and Todd, they have never met and do not know each other. Todd's Grandmama is Victoria's mother Tessa Ramirez, who was an EA-created sim, although she starts the game out as a child. There will be a story about her later, and I have another story about Todd planned for the far future that she will appear in, as well.
Eva Bren is a born-in-game sim, the daughter of Robert and my red-haired alien pollination technician. This is her portrait as a teen:
She has basically the same thing going on with her eyes as Todd (alien color, human shape), but with the green skin as well. I don't think she got any of the alien face shape at all. She is into gardening, and I've been thinking of turning her into a plantsim at some point.
The baby that Stephen gave birth to after this is named Jessica, and she was also spawned from the red-haired pollination technician:
Like Todd, she has the face shape and coloring of Stephen's alien parent, mostly. She is also homozygous for both the green skin and black eyes, which means that all of her children are guaranteed to have green skin and they are very likely to have black eyes, also. She is also into gardening, and may also become a plantsim later.
Kim Gaines was a random townie that Michael was into, I have no idea which one, because he was on-screen in my game for such a short amount of time that I don't have a real solid memory of what he looked like anymore. The last part of this story really did happen exactly as written: I had Stephen trying to summon aliens with the telescope, and Michael was also calling Kim over for a date, on his quest to satisfy whatever insane dating want he had rolled at the moment. Literally as soon as Kim showed up on the lot, Stephen got abducted, and I got pulled away into the extremely long abduction cutscene. By the time I returned from the cutscene, Kim had been eaten by the cowplant. I really did get a message about it being a horrible date, and I was a little worried that his ghost would actually show up later to leave a flaming bag of poo, but fortunately this did not happen. This was very annoying, because at this point Michael is trying to achieve 30 lovers, but the neighborhood seems to be running out of queer men that he has positive chemistry with and I am only at I think 24 prospects so far. Kim could have been number 25, but not anymore.
Story: Tales From the Neighborhood
Plot Thread: Michael, Robert, and Stephen
Colors: Realgar #3: Nourish
Styles and Supplies: Gesso, Pastels ("I['ll] miss you" prompt from Dad December, it originally was going to be posted on the 13th, but then I got behind), Fingerpainting (writing mpreg was unexpectedly hard), Chalk (Americans are Increasingly Convinced That Aliens Have Visited Earth), Vaudeville, Stain ("Dream in a pragmatic way." - Aldous Huxley), Novelty Bead (this image, given here)
Word Count: 2360
Rating: T
Warnings: (Really vague and undetailed) Mpreg, Minor Character Death
Characters: Stephen Bren, Victoria Ramirez, Todd Ramirez, Robert Bren, Eva Bren, Jasmine Rai, Michael Wolf, Kim Gaines
Summary: Something is missing from Stephen's life.
Stephen eyed the car that had pulled up into the driveway and parked behind the one that he shared with Michael and Robert. It was a bit on the older side, maybe in need of some new paint. Were they hurting for money, or was she just being frugal? Victoria did love expensive things, but he had never known her to care for cars, so maybe she simply didn’t care for expensive cars, either.
As he strode across the lawn to the car, Victoria stepped out of it, wearing a coat he hadn’t seen her in before that definitely did look expensive. Maybe she didn’t need his money, after all. She went around to the back door, and opened it.
He arrived to see her leaning down to free a child from a carseat. The child looked up at him curiously from eyes that were a glossy black from edge to edge and corner to corner. There were no irises, no scleras — his eyelids seemed to open onto fathomless black holes. It was well-known that the alien hybrids often had black eyes, but Stephen had always thought that meant regular eyes that were just very, very dark, and not something like this. He didn’t have these eyes himself, obviously, but this child was proof that they must be lurking somewhere in his DNA. It fascinated him.
“Hi, Todd,” he said to the child. “I’m your dad.”
Victoria picked Todd up out of the carseat and put him down on the lawn, and the backed away from the two of them, observing from a distance.
“Hi,” said Todd, and smiled, nervously. “I know my eyes are funny. It’s ok. I’m not scary.”
“I know,” said Stephen. “I didn’t think you were.” He sat on the grass, and patted the ground in front of him; Todd took the invitation and sat down facing him. “Are many people afraid of you?”
“Sometimes,” said Todd. “And sometimes they just think they’re really cool.” He grinned a bit. “But sometimes kids try to poke their fingers in them, because they think there’s nothing there. That sucks.”
“Yeah,” said Stephen. “People can be shitty about stuff like that. Don’t be afraid to stick up for yourself. Does your mom stick up for you, too?”
“Sometimes. When she’s not busy.” Todd looked back over his shoulder at Victoria. “Mama said that my eyes came from you. But your eyes are normal. And…”
“I’m green?” Stephen asked, smiling a little. “Yeah. Genetics isn’t just about what you see on the surface. We’ve each got a whole different set of colors hidden inside us, invisible. Somewhere, I’ve got your eyes, and you might have my skin, too, but we just can’t see it.”
“Did your dad have my eyes, too?” Todd asked.
Stephen shook his head. “My dad has eyes like mine,” he said. “My other parent… probably had your eyes. But I never got to meet them.”
“I’m glad I got to meet you, at least,” said Todd. “Mama didn’t want me to. She has so many fights with Grandmama about it.”
“I’m sorry you have to be there for that,” said Stephen. “But remember to stick up for yourself, yeah? If you want to come see me, tell your mom, let her know what you think. Maybe eventually she’ll change her mind.”
Todd was looking at him intently, or at least, Stephen thought he was. It was a little hard to tell exactly where he was looking. “You think so?”
“You never know until you try, right?” said Stephen. “How old are you now?”
“I just turned… four!” said Todd, enthusiastically. “And I got a birthday party! Grandmama and Jacob got me a fire truck! It was so cool but Mama wouldn’t let me bring it to show you.”
“Jacob is your brother?” Stephen asked. None of them had really heard anything about what was going on with the child that Victoria had had with Theo.
“Uh huh,” said Todd. He continued to tell Stephen more about Jacob and the fire truck, the friends he’d made at school, two older children in his house that Stephen gathered must be very young siblings of Victoria, and a new baby sister whose father was unknown.
All the while, Stephen would see Victoria checking her watch out of the corner of his eye; eventually, she came back over and took Todd’s hand. “It’s time to go, sweetie,” she said.
Todd looked up at her. “Why?”
“Because I said so.” She pulled at his arm, and he reluctantly stood up.
Todd looked from Victoria back to Stephen and said, “If I don’t get to come see you again, I’ll miss you.”
“I’ll miss you, too,” said Stephen. He stood as Victoria led Todd back to the car and strapped him back into his seat, and then followed her over as she shut the door. “You are going to bring him again, aren’t you?”
“I told you you got fifteen minutes today. That’s the only promise I’m making.”
“Don’t I have rights?”
“Actually, no. Officially, his father is unknown, since the alien DNA screws up the tests.”
“They would take your word for it if you just named me, wouldn’t they?”
“Probably.” She looked at him levelly, a slight smile on her face, silently daring him to yell and snarl invective. From inside the car, Todd looked up at him with wide eyes like polished obsidian.
“This is such bullshit,” said Stephen, and turned and stomped back to the house.
One night, Robert was abducted by aliens. It had happened suddenly; Stephen had noticed the lights flashing when he was working at his computer, but by the time he got outside, Robert was gone, and so was whatever ship they’d arrived in. The lights had returned a few hours later, leaving Robert standing in the street, a little woozy and shaken, saying that the last thing he could remember was looking for Mars with the new telescope they’d recently bought.
They all knew what would come next, but Robert was not interested in talking about the process. He turned into a recluse, as he sometimes did, sleeping and waking and eating at odd hours when no one else was around, until the baby was born and he could return to work.
The baby was a girl, and she had both the same green skin as Stephen and also the fathomless black eyes that Todd had had. The dusting of hair that she been born with, and which grew longer at an astonishing rate, was a deep red in color, a different shade entirely from Robert’s mother’s red hair. Robert named her Eva.
After the birth, Robert consented to talk, a bit, and to let Stephen play with Eva a bit — Michael had little interest in her. But all he would say was that his body now seemed to contain new organs that he did not want it to have. The doctors apparently did not fully understand how everything functioned now and were reluctant to make major changes.
“Sounds fascinating,” said Stephen. “I’d love to get a look and see if I can’t figure it out.”
“Get your own, then,” said Robert. “The telescope is right there.”
In fact, they did not use the telescope anymore. Michael had hired a contractor to come in and build a fence around it, with a locked gate and everything. But Stephen often looked at it, and wondered.
Time turned his thoughts back to planet Earth, and to what Robert had said to him before, about Jasmine, when they’d had that conversation in the middle of the night. He’d dismissed it then; Jasmine had never mentioned children as part of their arrangement, and he’d been sure, back then, that it meant that they weren’t on the table. But maybe he’d been wrong. It had just been his assumption, after all.
But when he finally drummed up the nerve to ask her about it, it seemed an awful lot like maybe he’d had it right in the first place.
“What’s the big deal?” he said into his phone, idly rolling one of the pool balls around as he talked. “You have kids with Simon.”
“Yeah, and they’re being raised in a house together with their dad. I’m not going to have a kid who’s raised in a house with someone who’s not his dad, while his actual dad lives on the other side of town.”
“I could take them and raise them here, with me. And we’re not that far away, you could come see them whenever you wanted.”
“Without their mom? Not even any woman in the house? No other kids? Come on.”
“We do have a kid here now, actually,” said Stephen, thinking of Eva.
“Do I want to know how that happened?”
“Well, I do. But… yeah, I guess most people probably wouldn’t.” He thought back to when she’d told him that he deserved to know how he’d come into the world, but maybe it had just been a bunch of words, after all.
“Sounds like one of you guys has got this problem figured out,” said Jasmine. “Maybe you should be recruiting him, instead of me.”
Stephen just sighed.
It was late at night, and the sky was exceptionally clear. The light pollution wasn’t even that bad at the moment, and Michael took a moment to glance upwards and survey all the stars he could see. Stephen had convinced him to unlock the telescope tonight, and he’d had to reluctantly agree; it was the night for it.
But he wasn’t out here to look at the stars; he was waiting for a date to show up. He checked his watch again, and peered off into the distance in the direction he thought the guy would be coming from. The burned-out street lamps did make the stars brighter, but they also made it harder to see the street.
He jumped a bit when someone touched his shoulder from behind. Turning, he saw that it was in fact the guy he’d met at the bar before, one who was somewhat incongruously named Kim. “I thought you said you lived on 6th St.?” he said.
“Oh, I do,” said Kim, and laughed a little. “I actually swung by here on the way back from a friend’s house. That’s ok, right?”
“Sure.” Michael shrugged. He didn’t care what kind of friend it was, either. “Do you want to go out, or stay in? I was thinking that it’s been a while since I’ve actually had a comfy date at home. We’ve got movies, games, pool. Or do you want to go somewhere else?”
“Staying in sounds great, actually,” said Kim. “Show me your movies.”
They had just started back towards the house when Michael saw a very familiar set of flashing lights in the sky. “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” he said. “I’m sorry, I’ll be right back. I have to go save my brother from a terrible fate.”
The bottom panel of the small spacecraft shimmied open and a face appeared from inside. Green skin and the black eyes, naturally, but those eyes were also shaped like very wide ovals or almonds, and came to sharp points on the sides. Another feature of some hybrids that he’d only heard of, but had never seen in person.
“Sorry, kid,” said the face. “We don’t take hybrids. Only full-blooded humans. That’s the rules.”
“Really?” asked Stephen, archly. “You’re only interested in exact half crosses? You’re not at all curious about what a one-quarter hybrid would be like?”
The face at the opening frowned, seeming to consider this. “You know, that’s a good point, actually,” it conceded. “Let me get back to you. I gotta check with my manager.” The panel eased shut again.
Stephen let out a sigh. He guessed it was probably better than nothing.
Michael suddenly appeared out of nowhere at his side. “What are you doing?” he asked. “You know they’re just going to kidnap you like they did with Robert and do weird shit to you, and then you’ll give birth to another green baby. We already have one of those.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” said Stephen. “What do you think the whole point of this was?”
“I don’t know,” said Michael. “I thought you were doing something… sciency.”
“You don’t think biological engineering is ‘sciency’ enough?”
The panel opened again and the green face reappeared. “You’re in luck, kid, the boss agrees with you.” A bright beam of light followed.
Stephen thought Michael might try to grab onto him to keep him from being taken, but for some reason, Michael wasn’t there anymore. He was distantly aware of a scream, running feet, and a door banging open as his vision faded.
Robert joined Michael as he stood dejectedly in front of the cowplant. He thought he’d been able to make out human-like expressions on its face in the past, and currently, it seemed extremely pleased with itself. A shoelace dangled from its mouth, briefly before an oversized tongue emerged and pulled it inside.
Michael’s fists were balled in grief and anger. “I’m going to put a fence around this, too,” he said. “Should have done that a long time ago.”
“Absolutely,” said Robert. “I’ll help.”
“Before he disappeared completely, he screamed something about it being a terrible date and how he was going to leave me a flaming bag of poo,” Michael continued, his voice breaking in a way that sounded like he might cry. “I’ve never been called a terrible date before.”
“Well,” said Robert, “I don’t think he’s going to be able to leave the flaming bag of poo at this point.”
“I was really looking forward to this date.”
“I know,” said Robert. “I’m sorry.”
They stood there for a little while longer, the sounds of the night filling their ears.
“I guess this means we’ll wind up with more of the cowplant milk,” said Robert, after some time had passed. “Whose turn is it to get younger, this time?”
“Fuck me,” said Michael, and Robert could tell he was angry, because he never used language like that. “I think it’s actually Stephen’s.”
Gesso Notes
New organs that he did not want: The "aliens installed a uterus" thing is actually a reality in my game, thanks to some modding I did. I actually mainly did this so that I could have a trans woman get abducted in order to be able to have a biological baby with her husband, but it works for the cis sims, too. As a result of this, Robert and Michael did actually wind up having an accidental baby at some point later on (which will probably not be a story that gets written up), due mostly to the fact that sims constantly roll wants to woohoo in cars and also that a mod I was using for risky pregnancy for some reason had risky pregnancy from car woohoo set to 35% (!!!). One of Robert's sisters actually had seven accidental babies because of this. I eventually edited the risky pregnancy mod to be more sane, and wrote my own mod to fix the obsession with car woohoo, but the damage had already been done by that point. Robert's uncle has also exploited this to (intentionally) have some biological kids with his husband.
We don't take hybrids: In the unmodded game, there is a single alien pollination technician who is the father of all of the alien babies, and since he does appear as their parent in their family trees, normally when an alien hybrid gets abducted they don't actually come back pregnant, because this would make the family tree of the baby look weird and incestuous. However, if you have a mod that adds multiple custom alien pollination technicians, then if the one that is randomly selected to be the alien parent is one that was not the parent of the abducted alien hybrid, the hybrid can still come back pregnant. In this case, Stephen's alien parent is my pollination technician with brown hair, and he got abducted by the one with red hair, so he did in fact come back pregnant. Later on, I actually went on to remove all of the pollination technicians from everyone's family trees, so now there are no restrictions about who can be impregnated by which pollination technician.
Flaming bag of poo: Terrible dates do usually result in the datee showing up with a flaming bag of poo later. This has never actually happened to any of my sims, though, because this is the one and only time I ever managed to get a terrible date score.
Sim Notes
Technically Stephen's wish for a child here is a little fictional, since he never actually rolled the want. I made this happen entirely because I wanted a 3/4 alien baby, and kind of made up a character reason for it after the fact. However, Stephen and Todd did actually develop a close relationship purely through them autonomously calling each other on the phone, without my direction, which was something that did not happen for any of Victoria's other children and their miscellaneous fathers, so I figure that is good enough to motivate this characterization.
Todd Ramirez is a born-in-game sim, the son of Victoria and Stephen. This is his college portrait:
I am really pleased with how he came out looking, I think he is one of the most interesting-looking sims in the neighborhood. His cheek/chin shape and hair and eye color are from Stephen's alien parent, but otherwise he looks completely human. He sort of looks like he's wearing sunglasses all the time, underneath his eyelids. He does actually also have Stephen's green skin recessively. One of his current romantic relationships is with one of Edith's alien twins, so he could theoretically have kids who are homozygous for both the green skin and the black eyes.
Jacob Ramirez is indeed Victoria's son with Theo; he will show up as a college student in another story, along with one of Victoria's younger siblings who was mentioned here in passing. Victoria's new baby is named Naomi and will also show up in a later story as a teen, and is biologically Robert's daughter, although unlike with Stephen and Todd, they have never met and do not know each other. Todd's Grandmama is Victoria's mother Tessa Ramirez, who was an EA-created sim, although she starts the game out as a child. There will be a story about her later, and I have another story about Todd planned for the far future that she will appear in, as well.
Eva Bren is a born-in-game sim, the daughter of Robert and my red-haired alien pollination technician. This is her portrait as a teen:
She has basically the same thing going on with her eyes as Todd (alien color, human shape), but with the green skin as well. I don't think she got any of the alien face shape at all. She is into gardening, and I've been thinking of turning her into a plantsim at some point.
The baby that Stephen gave birth to after this is named Jessica, and she was also spawned from the red-haired pollination technician:
Like Todd, she has the face shape and coloring of Stephen's alien parent, mostly. She is also homozygous for both the green skin and black eyes, which means that all of her children are guaranteed to have green skin and they are very likely to have black eyes, also. She is also into gardening, and may also become a plantsim later.
Kim Gaines was a random townie that Michael was into, I have no idea which one, because he was on-screen in my game for such a short amount of time that I don't have a real solid memory of what he looked like anymore. The last part of this story really did happen exactly as written: I had Stephen trying to summon aliens with the telescope, and Michael was also calling Kim over for a date, on his quest to satisfy whatever insane dating want he had rolled at the moment. Literally as soon as Kim showed up on the lot, Stephen got abducted, and I got pulled away into the extremely long abduction cutscene. By the time I returned from the cutscene, Kim had been eaten by the cowplant. I really did get a message about it being a horrible date, and I was a little worried that his ghost would actually show up later to leave a flaming bag of poo, but fortunately this did not happen. This was very annoying, because at this point Michael is trying to achieve 30 lovers, but the neighborhood seems to be running out of queer men that he has positive chemistry with and I am only at I think 24 prospects so far. Kim could have been number 25, but not anymore.
no subject
That's a lovely way for him to explain it to a child.
And poor Robert! LOL again, though, at the turns the whole alien thing makes this take - I was reading through the human-alien family drama and then suddenly: more alien abduction!! (Poor Robert).
no subject
Thank you, I'm glad you liked it!
I really didn't intend for Robert to be abducted. I use mods to tweak the rate of alien abduction a bit so that it's not quite as rare as it is normally, and at times the rate has been set a little high and stuff like that happened.