A/N: Okay, y'all, time for a brand new installment of the Devilishverse! Are you pumped? I'm pumped! Let me preface by saying this is not the WIP I've been toiling away at for a couple years. I'm very close to finishing that one (I think), but here is a shortish multichapter to tide you over in the meantime. Eight chapters total and a little over 26k words. I'd been wanting to write a follow-up to "P'sghetti" and "Mother's Day" anyway, and this is it. That said, it takes place after the events in the as-yet untitled epic, which begins in May of 2022 ("the future" when I started writing it, if that tells you anything about how long it's taking lol). So, think early spring '23 as the setting for this one. Expect vague references to things you haven't read about yet. Also, there's mention of child sexual abuse and some underage exploration of sexuality here, so trigger warning for those. And I wanted to briefly address a question someone asked in a review a while back: I don't have any plans of bringing Stabler in at any point, no. I'm not a fan, and I prefer to keep the Devilishverse a Stabler-free zone. Thanks for the input, though. :) Happy reading!

1. Paper Rings

. . .

"Do you, Jesse Eileen Rollins-Benson, take Jillian Luna Wright to be your . . . awfully weddinged wife? To have and to hold her hand, from this day to infinity and beyond, even if she's sick or forgets her lunch money or she won't share her best crayons with you?" Noah lifted his chin with authority, confident that the little girls wouldn't notice any discrepancies in his speech. He didn't really remember what all the minister at his moms' wedding had said, but he'd seen enough ceremonies on television and in movies to know the basics. And the girls were only seven. At nine years old, he was much more grown up.

"I always share my crayons with her," Jillian whispered, looking a bit concerned that her generosity was being called into question. The nicest of Jesse's friends, she was also the one who worried the most.

Noah's moms had explained to him that Jillian's autism made her a little more sensitive than some kids, and to be patient and encouraging when she got anxious or upset. Noah didn't mind too much; he liked being a big brother, and he knew some autistic kids at school too. Most of them were a lot nicer and smarter than the regular students. They didn't make fun of him for being a dancer, and one boy even requested to see whichever new dance moves Noah had learned that week. "You're really good!" the boy always told him. "I don't know anyone else who can do a real backflip!"

"It's just an example," Noah said in an aside to his sister's best friend and pretend bride. He had figured it was okay to play along and marry them when they asked, since it wouldn't be a real wedding. You had to be adults and have permission for that, he was pretty sure. Plus, it had to be done in a church or someplace more important than the bedroom your younger sisters shared. "It means you'll be good married people and not fight or be mean to each other."

His moms fought sometimes, but that didn't count as bad married people because they always made up, and lots of times they laughed about it afterward. One of Noah's school friends said his parents yelled swear words at each other and sometimes even hit each other when they fought. That was called domestic violence, and Noah was really glad his moms didn't do it. There were a couple times he thought they might, especially last spring, but he hadn't seen or heard any evidence of it the mornings after—and he'd looked. Mostly they had just seemed tired and sad, like they might have been up late, crying.

Those mornings, he tried hard to be as helpful and responsible as he could, whether it was getting his sisters ready for school or taking breakfast dishes to the sink. Uncle Fin always called him the man of the house, and Uncle Sonny always told him it was important to look out for his sisters, and he took the men's advice very seriously. He liked girl stuff like dancing and weddings and flowers, but sometimes a boy needed to do boy stuff too. When he did, Ma often called him "little man" and play-wrestled him to test how strong he was. He liked that a lot, especially when he won.

But sometimes a boy just had to help his sister marry her best friend too. He didn't think his ma would mind that, since she was married to his mom and said all the time that Mom was her best friend. Even more than Aunt Daphne.

"I do," Jesse said, reciting the line Noah had fed her prior to the ceremony. It was super easy, and she hoped Jillian didn't get embarrassed and forget it during her turn, like when the teacher called on her in class. Jesse didn't care if she messed up, but it upset Jillian to do things the wrong way. "Do you, Jilly? Promise to do all that stuff Noah said?" There. A little prompting should get the other girl to repeat Jesse's words back to her and keep Noah from making another long speech. Pretty clever, if you asked her.

"I do," Jillian agreed. She didn't sound bashful about it either, like she did most everything else. She looked right at Noah when she said it, and she didn't giggle nervously or anything. "I promise to do all that stuff too. Just like Jesse."

That made Jesse feel warm and happy inside, as if she had taken a drink of hot chocolate with lots of melty marshmallows on top. She wasn't sure why she felt that way around her friend, but she thought it must be for the same reason her mommies acted so silly around each other sometimes. They would laugh at things Jesse didn't quite understand, or start playing kissy-face when they didn't know she was looking, or do snuggle time together on the couch, whether or not the kids and dogs joined in. Jesse used to be grossed out by it—mostly just pretend grossed out, though, because it made everyone laugh—when she caught them kissing. Now, she wanted to do it too.

Jillian had shown her how. It was a secret they weren't supposed to tell anybody, and while that usually made Jesse want to tell everyone, she had decided to keep this one to herself. She got the vague sense that it might be bad, what they had done, and she did not want to get her best friend into trouble. Jillian got scared if their teacher even just looked at her funny, and a couple of times she'd cried when the bigger girls in class threatened to tattle on her for things she hadn't done. Jesse's mommies wouldn't scare Jilly or make her cry, at least not on purpose, but they had told Noah one of his friends couldn't come over anymore when they overheard the boy swearing at a video game. If they found out what Jillian had taught Jesse while they hid in her bedroom closet, there was no telling what Mommies would do.

It wasn't an under-the-clothes touching game or anything; Jesse knew better than that. If anyone, even her very best friend in the whole wide world, tried to play those games with her, she was supposed to tell her mommies right away—and she would. But when Jillian explained that grownups put their tongues in each other's mouths for kissing (she'd even seen Jesse's mommies doing that, she said, on the night Jesse puked after eating all the meatballs!), then asked if she could try it with Jesse, the game became more of an experiment. They had learned about those in science class, so Jesse didn't think it was against the rules . . . until Jillian's tongue swiped across hers, and she had known instinctively it was a private thing they were doing. Private enough, special enough, that she didn't want anyone else to know about it, not even Noah, to whom she told everything.

She liked it a lot, the kissing game/experiment, and wanted to do it again. Jillian had been too worried about getting caught to play for very long last time, which is what gave Jesse the idea that they should get married. If they were wives, they would have to live together and they could kiss and hug all the time, just like her mommies. Maybe not right now, because they were only in second grade, but in a few years they should be able to call the shots themselves. Certainly by sixth or seventh grade. In the meantime, they could revisit the closet once in a while, she hoped. It was easy talking Jillian into doing things—she hardly ever said no—and Jesse was almost positive she could convince the girl to give her more kissing lessons.

Especially now they were married.

"By the power in my vest," Noah proclaimed, though he wasn't wearing a vest and didn't know what that particular item of clothing had to do with matrimony, he'd just heard it a lot on TV, "and New York City, I now pronouns you wife and wife. You may kiss the bride." He directed that part to his sister, the bossier of the two girls. Jesse was the bossiest of most girls, but it didn't really bother him. She usually wasn't mean bossy like that girl Reagan in his dance class, she just had lots of big ideas about how to do things. Her ideas were usually pretty good too, he had to admit.

Surprising everyone, including herself, Jesse was the one who went shy and giggly at the green-light to kiss. Both of Jillian's hands were in hers, the way her mommies had stood at their wedding, facing each other and making goo-goo eyes, and Jesse swung their arms back and forth like a jump rope. She ducked a cheek against her shoulder and shuffled her feet, suddenly unsure what to do with them. Sometimes her mama stood on tiptoes to kiss her mommy, but that wouldn't work—she was taller than Jillian.

In the end, she ruined her big moment by leaning forward and hastily pecking Jillian on the cheek, as if she were kissing some yucky boy she didn't like at all. On the cheek! Not that she would have done the closet kind of kissing in front of her brother, but she still could have on-the-lips kissed Jillian like you were supposed to when you got married. Boy, had she blown that one. Jillian didn't seem to mind, though; she grinned at Jesse when she stood back, and for the first time in their friendship, Jesse noticed there were golden-brown flecks mixed in with her dark green eyes. She also had freckles like a connect-the-dots pattern, sparse and spread out, with no apparent rhyme or reason. Jesse wanted to trace in the lines with her finger and see what they drew.

"What do we do now?" Jillian asked. She had never been to a wedding before, so it was up to Jesse and Noah to guide her through it, being experts in the field themselves.

"We hold hands wherever we go, that way people know we're together. And if they still don't know, we show them our rings and say, 'Back off, buddy, I'm taken.'" At least that's what Mama had done the time she and Jesse were at the market and a strange man kept trying to talk to them. Jesse thought it was hysterical when the man had literally backed off and bumped into a pastry display, knocking donuts, baklava, and cannoli every which way. "We also sit together at lunch, no matter what. And we only play with each other for the next two weeks. It's called our honeyed moon."

"Honeymoon," Noah said, exasperated. He wasn't sure how honey and moons went together or why married people had them, but at least he knew the proper terminology. "I think it's like a vacation. Remember how Moms went to that caveman place . . . the Caveman Islands, after their wedding? That was their honeymoon."

"Oh, yeah." Jesse nodded sagely, though she barely recalled their mothers doing any such thing. To be fair, she'd only been five back then, so she remembered it about as well as any given day of kindergarten. And after last spring and the long, hot summer that followed, she was used to being away from her parents for days—sometimes even weeks—at a time. She disliked it, but now she had Jilly, and no one was going to take her away. "Well, maybe we can ask our mommies to take us to Coney Island for a honeymoon?"

Jillian's eyes widened and turned a brighter, sparklier shade of green. Though she went along with Jesse on most things, only a limited few generated real enthusiasm. Apparently, Coney Island had been the perfect choice. "My daddy said he'd take me there sometime! We can ask him! His new 'partment is close to it. We can spend the night, but you'll probably have to sleep on the couch."

A trip to Coney Island sounded like a lot of fun to Noah too, and he was already thinking of ways to help the girls talk their moms into taking them to the amusement park, until Jillian brought up her dad. Jesse went right along with the suggestion, but it made Noah uneasy. He didn't like strange men being around his little sisters or his moms—especially his moms, since they were the ones who kept getting hurt by bad guys. They had both been in the hospital a bunch of times, he couldn't even remember how many, because some man had done bad things to them. He didn't know exactly what those things were, just that it took them away from him and his sisters, and it made them terribly sad for a long time after, even when the bruises were gone and they could walk without limping.

"You better ask our moms first," he advised Jesse, trying not to sound too much like he was telling her what to do. She might follow him around and copy everything he did most of the time, but when it came to making decisions, Jesse had her own mind and you were just asking for trouble if you tried to change it or say she was wrong. "They hafta know whose house we're staying at before they say yes. So they can check if it's safe."

"My daddy's safe." Jillian frowned a little, looking as though she didn't understand why Noah would imply otherwise. Her mommy must never have gotten hurt by a stranger before. Of course, her mommy wasn't a police officer either, and that probably made a difference.

None of Noah's school friends seemed to know the secret—that scary stuff happened to parents too, not just other people—or to get why he no longer thought it was cool that his moms were cops. Oakley's dad was a firefighter, but it wasn't the same. That kid thought it was sick and badass that his dad ran into burning buildings for a living; he didn't care that his dad could get badly injured or maybe even die. Oakley was kind of dumb, in Noah's opinion, but Noah hadn't realized the same thing could happen to his moms until recently, so he didn't have much room to judge. He'd bragged through most of third grade about his moms carrying guns at work. Jillian was only a second-grader, and her mom's job wasn't dangerous. He felt a sort of obligation not to ruin her illusion of safety by revealing the truth. He'd protected his sisters from it for this long, he might as well include Jilly too.

"I don't mean him. Our moms just check on everybody, no matter who it is." Noah shrugged like it was no big deal, and in fact, that was mostly true. Mom and Ma did insist on background checks for all the adults in their kids' lives. Even his dance teacher Miss Lavender hadn't been exempt.

"Oh. Okay."

"Don't worry, Jilly, my mommies like your mommy. I heard them say she's sumiss— submist— submiss-something. It means she's a good friend." Jesse caught the smaller girl by the hand and gave a slight tug. She wasn't allowed to play rough with her younger sisters, and though Jillian was technically a bit older than her, she sensed that the restriction applied here as well. "They'll like your daddy too. Let's go ask now, while my aunt Daphy is here. She always puts my mama in a good mood!"

. . .