Generation 1, Chapter 6 - Sam

Sam Sekemoto didn't want to be here. Maybe that made him a bad person, but honestly? He didn't want to have to spend anymore time in this house than was absolutely necessary. Dylan might not get that now, but he would in a few years. Then, Sam reasoned, he would forgive his big brother for skipping his fifth birthday party.

Really, it wasn't even a party. It was just Dylan, Sam, their parents, and their baby sister. Sam had brought this up in his argument why he should be allowed to leave.

Unfortunately, this argument had backfired on him. Nyx had told him that he needed to be there precisely because there were so few of them. Dylan would notice if he wasn't there.

He'd tried to argue further, but his father had stepped in. He wasn't willing to directly disobey his father, so he stayed. He didn't have to be happy about it, though.

As soon as he'd blown out his candles, Dylan hugged Sam. “Thanks for being at my party.” He spoke softly. He didn't seem to like talking much. Sam nodded, a little bit uncomfortable. Was the kid purposefully guilt-tripping him? If so, it wasn't working. If anything, he was even more determined to leave as soon as he could.

“So… can I go now?”

His dad gave him a death glare. “Not until we have cake.”

Sam scarfed his cake down as fast as he could, then bolted. Maybe he'd regret it later, but he honestly doubted it. He needed to get out of that house.

He went to his usual spot, not surprised to find Kaylynn already there. She nodded at him, and they sat in silence, both of them lost inside their own heads.

Finally, he broke the silence. “You brought the tape?”

She scoffed. “You'd think that you would trust me by now. I don't even need to ask if you have the paint.”

He laughed darkly. “I don't trust anyone. And of course I have the paint, who do you think I am?”

“I could ask you the same question.”

As they continued to bicker, they walked towards the school. When they reached it, they fell silent. Nothing more needed to be said.

They opened their bags and began to create. This was their routine. They'd been coming out here for months, every night adding a little more to their epic mural. They made a good team. Kaylynn was all straight lines and solid colors, while Sam made complicated patterns that made your head hurt if you looked at them for too long.

Both of them enjoyed the feeling of being rebellious while knowing that they weren't actually hurting anything.

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Sam had always liked to paint. He still painted sometimes, on the days he was forced to stay home for one reason or another. He'd decided to give street art a shot on a whim when he found himself in possession of a can of spray paint (long story involving cheap beer, a game of Truth or Dare, and petty theft). It was like he'd discovered his calling. He'd crept out of the house almost every night after that to paint the town (literally).

He'd met Kaylynn a couple of weeks into his new venture. Before that, he'd known her by sight (it was a small enough town that he knew all of the teenagers by sight), but they'd never spoken. That all changed when she found him spray-painting the park near her house one night.

“What are you doing?”

“What does it look like I'm doing?”

“It looks like you're graffitiing the park. You know kids play here, right?”

“I prefer the term street art, and I'm just giving them something nice to look at.”

“It's illegal.”

 “Maybe, but it’s also shockingly therapeutic. Want to try? I’ve got an extra can of spray paint.”

When she didn’t answer, he figured that she’d decided to call the cops. He tensed up, ready to run if he heard sirens. This wasn’t the first time he’d gotten caught. This time was different, though, because when he looked up, all he saw were her dark eyes.

“So where’s that spray paint?”

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They’d been doing this for almost a year now, but they still never spoke at school. She was a year older than him, and they both had their own friends. They rarely spoke while they were here, honestly. All they knew about each other were their names. They didn’t have to be the people they usually were, and they liked it that way. Today, though, Sam felt the urge to break the silence.

“It was my brother’s birthday today.”

“That’s why you were late?”

“Yeah. They made me stay for the party.”

She nodded. She wouldn’t judge. She, too, had things at home she wanted to escape. “How old is he?”

“Five.”

They worked in silence for a little while longer. This time, it was Kaylynn who spoke first. “Feel free to tell me if I’m wrong, but… whatever’s going on at home, it’s probably not your brother’s fault.”

He looked up at her, startled. “It isn’t, it’s just…” He represents the problem. “You’re right, it’s not his fault. It’s just hard sometimes, you know? Looking at him and knowing that they all care more about him.”

She nodded again. “I get it.”

Still, he felt ashamed of himself. Kaylynn was right. It wasn’t Dylan’s fault that their family was like this, but it was still hard not to resent him for it, especially when he was now forced to share a room with the kid.

When he got home, he went straight to bed, as usual. Tonight, though, he hesitated before climbing up to the top bunk. He smiled down at Dylan’s sleeping face. “Happy Birthday, little guy.”

Author's Note: This chapter was a lot longer than previous chapters, but that might be a more normal length in the future. I really dislike writing in first person, and this style is a lot easier. Anyway, sorry about any inconsistencies in the pictures. My game crashed halfway through the picture-taking process, and of course I had forgotten to save since the beginning of the chapter. So Dylan might look a little different and the light may change over the course of the chapter, mostly because it's a pain to take nighttime pictures with teenagers. You may recognize Kaylynn Langerak from Sunset Valley. I made her over, as I am wont to do with premades, but I didn't alter her face. I think she's interesting-looking. Also, Sam isn't eligible for heir, so it doesn't matter what his kids look like. Anyway, here's a CAS picture of Dylan.

I love putting glasses on my genius sims. His new trait is good.

Generation 1, Chapter 5

During those nine months, I spent most of my time with Dylan. Lee avoided me when we weren’t in bed together, and Sam spent most of his time holed up in room painting.

I was fine with it, though. Dylan was good company. He might only be a toddler, but he was smart enough that sometimes I forgot he wasn’t older. He was my special little boy, and I always reminded him of that.

He really was a smart cookie. Lee had bought some toddler books that we both read to him on occasion. Well, one day I walked into his room to see him reading one of those books on his own! Apparently, we’d read them to him enough that he could match the words we said to the words on the page. After I told Lee about it, he bought Dylan some more books to read on his own. He really seemed to enjoy them.

Dylan adored his peg box, but it seemed like he had pretty much mastered it by the time he was four, so Lee surprised him with a new block table. It wasn’t really new, of course. It was a hand-me-down from one of Lee’s coworkers at the science lab. I was a little bit reluctant to take it, but Dylan loved it so much that I couldn’t deny him his fun. Sam sometimes even played with him when he wasn’t doing homework or painting.

Sam did love his younger brother, of course, but they were too far apart in age to ever be really close. Sometimes I thought that Sam might resent me -- and by proxy, Dylan -- for not letting him have friends over. He didn’t understand the danger that letting strangers into our house would open us up to. He had been too young to remember when his mother was taken and killed, and Lee and I agreed that we wouldn’t tell him about it until he was a teenager. But for the time being, he resented me.

Both boys loved their father, though. At times I was jealous: why did I have to work so much harder to make them love me? All Lee had to do was show up and smile, and they would do anything for him.

Then he smiled at me, and I melted. How could I judge the boys when the same thing was true for me?

Anyway, I didn’t really know what to do about Dylan. Lee and I were both smart enough to get along fine, but I knew that Dylan would pass both of us up someday. But what to do about it? We couldn’t afford any sort of specialized tutoring or a different school or anything like that, and I didn’t want all those strangers around my baby anyway.

I asked Lee about it one day. By that time I was heavily pregnant, and he’d pretty much stopped avoiding me. He agreed with me that there wasn’t really much we could do, so we decided that we would let Dylan learn however he wanted and get him the things he needed. Once he started school, his teachers should be able to help him. They would want to help him realize his full potential, we assured ourselves. Neither of us had enough education to help him with that.

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My pregnancy was progressing quickly, and I still had no idea how to make Lee stay with me after the baby was born. It was true that he didn’t seem so distant lately, but I knew it was only a matter of time before he decided I was a lost cause and left.

I just couldn’t come up with any ideas! It was almost depressing. I had always been so good at planning, but my mind was a complete blank when the only thing that mattered to me was on the line. He knew I loved him, and if he didn’t love me after all this time, there wasn’t much I could do about it. The only hope I had was that he knew I couldn’t survive without him. He was a better person than me: he would never let someone die when there was something he could do about it.

I took a break from my worrying for Sam's thirteenth birthday. It was honestly a little bit disturbing. I still felt like a teenager most of the time, and now I was expected to parent one?

While we ate our cake, Lee asked Sam what he wanted to do to celebrate.

“It would be nice to be able to show my friends my house, but since that's obviously not going to happen, I'll settle for going out with my friends and pretending I have good parents.”

 He slouched off, leaving the two of us staring after him in shock. Lee shook his head. “And to think I was even worse than that as a teenager… I almost feel bad for my parents.”

“Almost?”

“About half of my angst was over them splitting up when I was a kid. That was entirely on them.”

He went back to eating his cake, unaware that he had just made me the happiest woman alive.

He would never leave me, not as long as the kids were young enough to be traumatized by it. I patted my stomach, silently thanking my baby for giving me that much more time with its father.

Finally, the day came for the baby to be born. I was better prepared for it this time, but I was still relieved when it was over.

I named my little girl Ayla, and celebrated that her father would stick around for long enough for her to grow up.

Author's Note: I need to go on a little bit of a rant here. First, here are toddler CAS pictures of your two candidates for heir.

Dylan

and Ayla. 

They are both mutants. Dylan got that awful greenish-brown hair, which I changed to Nyx's father's hair color (dark brown, in case you don't remember/didn't read the prologue) and didn't even feel bad about it. I figured that the other kid would have black or red hair. Then Ayla was born blonde, and I'd already saved, so I just quit the game in frustration. I cannot stand the ridiculous mutation genetics. Almost every child born in my game who does not have four living grandparents gets them. After this particular incident I installed a mod that allows for advanced genetic blending and reduces the mutation chance, but Ayla is still blonde. I suppose I should just be glad that they're not clones. Other than the mutation hair, though, I think they have potential. So far Dylan is a clumsy genius and Ayla is a perceptive light sleeper. 

I'm excited to write some actual plot that isn't just Nyx's domestic angst. Speaking of which, I think this is going to be the last chapter in first-person point of view. Honestly, it's not the way I normally write, but I gave it a shot. I don't think there's any way I can really do the sort of plot I want to do for the kids if I'm limited to Nyx's POV, so I'm not going to try. The rest of the chapters of the first generation will each focus on a single character. If you want to see more of any character, comment to let me know and I'll try to take your wishes into account. Sorry for the novel, but I thought it was important. Join us next time for an experiment in point of view!

Generation 1, Chapter 4

I adored my baby boy.

It seemed like no time at all before he was crawling around and getting into trouble.

I sometimes wished that he would just stay a baby forever. I wanted to keep him safe from all the dangers I knew from personal experience were out there in the world. Sadly, he was growing faster than I knew how to deal with.

Lee seemed to handle it better than I did. I supposed it was because he'd already gone through this stage with Sam.

He was the one who taught Dylan how to walk and talk. I preferred to just savor my time with him instead of encouraging him to grow up even faster.

I knew Lee loved Dylan just as much as I did, though. While he seemed to still be slightly upset with me, he adored our son.

He was warming back up to me, though. He could never stay mad at anyone for long, and he did love me… or at least he said he did.

I was becoming more and more paranoid about that, though. Did he really love me? Had he ever? It was hard to imagine that he could love someone who killed the woman that he really loved. Was he just humoring me because he felt sorry for me? Maybe that was it. Maybe he had been with me out of pity at first, then stayed because of Dylan.

I tried to push my worries away, but they always nagged at me from the back of my mind. He was here with me It didn’t matter why he stayed, just that he did. As long as he was here, I would be fine.

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I’d taken as much time off as I could, but eventually the day came when I was supposed to return to work. The problem was, I really didn’t want to. I had gotten the job because I needed a source of income. Now Lee lived with me, and he had a job. Money might be a little bit tight for a while, but it would be worth it to no longer have to compromise my moral code every time I went in to work.

Lee didn’t mind. He had never liked my job. He didn’t understand why I couldn’t just get a different job, but I convinced him that this was for the best anyway. Now I could stay at home with Dylan full time, and we wouldn’t need to hire a babysitter. I didn’t trust strangers in my house. What if my father had sent them? We were far away now, but there was nowhere we could go that would be completely out of his reach.

So it was decided. I would stay home with Dylan while Lee was at work. He told me I could go out after he came home, but I never did. I didn’t really like going out. What if someone saw me and connected me to my father? No, it was much safer to just stay in my house, with Lee and Dylan and Sam. They were the only people I really cared about anyway. I had never bothered to make other friends.

Sometimes Lee tried to convince me to come out with him and some of his friends from work, but I always refused. Lee knew them, but I didn’t, which meant that I couldn’t possibly trust them. He didn’t understand, though, and I could feel him pulling away from me. I knew that if I didn’t do something, he would leave me. Even Dylan didn’t seem to be enough to convince him to stay, as much as he loved him. He could take Dylan with him, after all. Who would stop him? We weren’t married, and I would never be able to take him to court. I was living under a false name and I couldn’t even leave the house without having a panic attack. So in my panic and desperation, I made a plan.

One evening while he was playing with Dylan (our little genius always knew where the blocks went), I crept up behind him and hugged him.

When he turned around, smiling, I stood on my tiptoes to whisper in his ear.

“I want another baby.”

He hesitated, but when I batted my eyelashes and smiled as charmingly as I could manage, he willingly followed me to the bedroom.

He wouldn’t leave me while I was pregnant, which gave me nine months to think of a better plan.

Author's Note: I'm revealing the rolls here because there really isn't any point in keeping you in suspense any longer.

Family Structure: Step Children
Number of Children: 3
Primary Career: Criminal (Thief)
Secondary Career: Science
Generational Goal: Idle Careers
Miscellaneous Fun: No Strangers

The no strangers thing will come up every now and then (it's the main reason I had Nyx quit her job), but the rest of the rolls will probably never be mentioned again. On a different note, Dylan is kind of a weird looking toddler. I think he'll be cute when he's older, but Nyx's square jaw really doesn't look great on toddlers. Anyway, join us next time for the last child of the first generation!