Everyone needs time to wind down. You can't spend all of your time awake moving. You'd lose your mind. How much time people need, however, is relative to the person. For example, Joy apparently has to get up after half an hour of relaxing. And in contrast, Sadness needed at least two hours of chill time immediately after work to get back to her comfort zone. But what happens when one of them gets pulled out of her comfort zone a little.
Joy tried to fidget in a way that Sadness wouldn't notice, but of course she did. Sadness put her hand on Joy's head and slowly began drawing circles in the blue spiky hair. "You don't have to do this if you want to."
"No no no! I do!" Joy replied hastily. "I've just never really sat still for his long. It might be getting to my head."
"That's OK." Sadness whispered back. Joy smiled, and snuggled in closer to Sadness. It struck her once again how very different they were. But unlike the various other times she would realize this when she would smile and move on, now she held onto that thought. She let it stir in her mind. And maybe that's why she giggled and said "Imagine what our kids would be like."
To Sadness's credit, she took this sudden mention of little ones very well. She didn't stop rubbing Joy's hair, and she didn't tense up. She did always figure Joy would be the first one to mention kids, she just didn't know when. "We're having kids?"
Joy's face flushed an adorable pink (in Sadness's opinion) when she realized what she said. But she didn't backpedal. Sticking to her guns, she replied in an uncharacteristically quiet voice "I would want to have kids with you."
"How?" Sadness said. She made sure she kept the hair rubbing constant. Maybe it wasn't right, but Joy was unknowingly taking a test right now. A test Sadness desperately hoped she passed.
"I don't really know. Any way you want. There's adoption obviously. But I've heard of invitrofertilization, where they take half of one woman's DNA and use it to impregnate an egg. If we did it that way, it would actually genetically be our child."
"Any way? What about any when?"
"Any when. I would never want to force you into something you don't want. Even if it's never."
Sadness gave up on rubbing Joy's hair to pull her closer. She had passed the test.
"Well, I wouldn't say never, but it's not going to be now." "Whatever you want baby." Joy said, loving the way the pet name rolled off her tongue. She could get used to this down time.