Carlos don't know how he'd feel about the baby prior to the birth, but when, with one hand deep in Cecil's gut, he felt the tentacles wrapping around his fingers..

He knew.

Cecil was unaware that anything had changed. Pale and breathing uneven, his eyes tightly shut, he didn't notice the hesitation. Or if he did he said nothing.

The scientist began to withdraw his hand. Thick slippery tendrils grasped his dark hand as they slipped out after him, more and more of them coming out, more and more and..

The not-quite-man heard his boyfriend's sharp intake of breath. He opened one eye just a crack. "Everything okay?" He breathed.

"..No."

"N-no?" Weak but charged with adrenaline, Cecil struggled to push himself up onto one elbow. "Carlos, d-dear, wh.."

"Cecil." Carlos held up one bloody and dripping hand. The mass of squirming tentacles now nested atop Cecil's stomach blinked blearily at him, several appendages still clinging to Carlos's wrist and hand. "This?" His voice was quiet. "This is /not/ a baby. Not by any scientific standards."

Both eyes open he looked with a bit of sudden pleased surprise at the shape before fully registering Carlos's words. He shifted his gaze up at him. "T-there's nothing wrong, she's fine. She's alive and healthy, see? What's going on?"

"This is..fascinating, but /wrong/." His eyes narrowed. "This is wrong, Cecil, can't you see? This-" A quick jerk of his wrist, shaking loose one of the tentacles, "-this is something that belongs in a lab. Preferably on a dissection tray, and then in a jar of formaldehyde."

Cecil's eyes were wide. Violet half-moon irises shone bright. "Carlos, I d-"

"There is no debating this. It needs to be tested."

The radio host reached out toward it, pleadingly. "L-l-let's keep her here, please, I want.."

"Cecil."

"Carlos, she's beautiful and I want to keep her and I-"

"Do you now."

His smooth caramel voice was a shade deeper than usual.

Cecil swallowed hard and nodded, once, quickly.

Carlos shut his eyes and let out a long breath. He opened them after what seemed like forever. "..Fine."

"What?"

"Fine." The scientist's face twitched. "Fine. You want it? Fine, keep it."

Cecil watched as the scientist shifted his weight again, back on top of his legs. He couldn't figure out what was going on. "Carlos?"

"Just take it back." Carlos's voice was a soft murmur, and it was unclear as to whether he was speaking more to Cecil or to himself. One hand pressed softly on his hip. And then, all of a sudden, the fingers tightened.

"Take it back."

Before the radio host had a chance to reply, he felt a hard shove.

Carlos had taken a handful of the offspring's tentacles and was cramming them and his fist back into the cut.

Cecil gasped at the discomfort and pain, spine arching reflexively against the sensation. "C-ca.." He couldn't speak.

"You want it?" Another slam. "Here. You know what, I don't want it anymore. Not knowing that it came from you." The small creature shrieked in some incomprehensible and impossibly ancient tongue as her appendages were twisted and yanked. "Take it back. I don't want to see it," he growled. His nose wrinkled in distaste as she struggled against his pushing.

Head thrown back, tears pouring down his face, Cecil was too weak to fight back.

Shaking, he lay, sobbing silently on the blood-soaked sheets as Carlos left him, lying there in his own liquids, angry red gash across the underside of his stomach swollen with the tentacles of the little creature that had been so agonizingly rejected from the world.