Baby, Just Hold On - Chp. 19
Title: Baby, Just Hold On
Author: Jamie jamieall_over
Pairing: Jalex
Rating: NC-17 Overall
Warnings: Mpreg
"Ow... ow, fuck... fuck, fuck, fuck," Alex muttered around a gasp, his eyes shooting open as he sat straight up in bed, successfully scaring Cocoa to the point where she completely ran from the room altogether. His arms immediately moved to wrap tightly around his abdomen before he was doubling over, body slumping to the side until he was whimpering and pressed against Jack's chest.
The Lebanese man was slow to respond, what with having fallen into a heavy sleep no more than an hour prior. His hand reached out to pull Alex closer in his haze, and it was a choked hiss that had him stopping.
"Wha's a matter, baby?" he mumbled, limbs feeling much too heavy and eyelids practically snapping open and closed every few seconds. He was at least mindful enough to not talk any louder than necessary, knowing that both Ashley and Perspicacity would be asleep for another hour and a half-they'd both begun to sleep just a little more each night, and it was like a godsend to the young parents.
"It hurts, Jack, it really fucking hurts," Alex whined, body managing to curl into itself tighter than it had been before. His breathing had become labored and shaky, tears pricking in his clenched eyes and teeth turning his bottom lip as well as the insides of his cheeks raw. "Help, fuck, please, help me."
Jack was much more awake then, sitting up quickly and pulling Alex's trembling form to sit sideways across his lap. He wasn't quite sure what to do, if he was being totally honest. It had been a little over a week since Alex and the babies had first gotten home, and while the eldest Gaskarth-Barakat had had the occasional pain rip through the place of his incision, it hadn't ever been too serious. Not enough to make Alex cry or beg for help, at least.
"Sh, hey, it's okay," Jack tried nonetheless, arms holding his husband close as he rocked their bodies together. He figured that being soothing would be a fairly decent place to start, but part of him was still half asleep and saying that things were fine was the best he could bring himself to do. "You're okay, baby. I'm right here. Everything's okay."
Alex did his best to listen to the things being whispered softly in his ear. It was certainly more than a struggle, having to pay attention to hushed words over his own heavy gasps. All he could really do was shake his head in disagreement, the hand pressed between his side and Jack's front shifting enough to grip tightly at the younger's shirt.
"I can't breathe," he whined quietly. Alex would've sworn that he could feel his chest closing in on him just that little bit more with each breath his overworked lungs pulled in.
Jack took a slight leap of faith at that point, using his right hand to remove Alex's arms from around his torso. A near two minutes of Alex trying to wiggle away from Jack's prying hand passed before gentle fingers began to rub careful circles over the elder's lower stomach, the soft fabric of a v-neck and the new gauze that had been taped over the wound mere hours before being the only barriers between them.
The change in the Briton's demeanor was almost instantaneous as his body slumped into relaxation against his partner, content and approving sigh pushing itself from his barely-agape mouth. His eyes became heavily lidded as he just allowed Jack to massage the pain from his sore torso.
Lips soon began to press blind kisses to Alex's face through the darkness as Jack worked. Everything became so ultimately relaxing that the elder male almost nodded off completely, head resting against his partner's shoulder, arms and legs stuck limply in the same positions as they'd been in when he felt like he was being stabbed.
Jack took notice of a few quietly hummed noises of approval filling the air around him and his husband, and he let his left hand slide along from Alex's left side until it was pressed against the center of the Briton's back. Next came the process of laying Alex back down on his side of the bed while still kneading the cut flesh tenderly. With the blonde's tired body stretched out along the mattress once more, Jack shifted to lay on his side and face his husband, fingers of his right hand not ceasing their incessant prodding as his left arm pushed under Alex's pillow.
The younger man knew he should've just left it at that and gone back to sleep, but after a few moments of silence, his curiosity got the better of him, and he couldn't help but nudge his nose against Alex's cheek.
"What happened, baby?" he prompted after receiving a slight high-pitched groan of annoyance in response.
"Just hurt," Alex answered tiredly with a shrug, lazily turning his head and cracking his eyes open to peer through the darkness.
"How?" Jack pressed. He couldn't help but be concerned. After all, what were the odds of something not being wrong if Alex was feeling such an intense pain two weeks after the initial surgery?
"It felt kinda like..." Alex trailed out, unsure as to what to even compare it to. "Kinda like another contraction," he decided, "but it was like the last one I got. Not the first ones where it hurt but didn't hurt too bad, y'know?" Jack nodded, though, in actuality, he really couldn't relate to any of the pain his partner had felt those last few weeks... or months.
Admittedly, that information had Jack's mind racing just that little bit more than it had been, causing him to jump to horrendous and inane conclusions faster than he'd been before. "You're okay now? Do you want me to call anyone? Maybe I should bring you down to the hospital."
"I don't need to go to the hospital," Alex said around a sigh and fond roll of his eyes. "I'm fine now. I doubt it'll happen again anyway."
Jack almost, almost made him get up anyway, but he reluctantly nodded for the second time. "You'll let me take you if something like that happens again, right?"
"Or," Alex decided, his left hand reaching up and grasping Jack's own, lacing their fingers together and squeezing in reassurance, "you can just not worry about it. If you really want to, you can call Dr. Cooper or something to ask about it, okay?"
Jack shifted, and Alex knew him well enough to realize that if he so much as got off their bed, he'd be on the phone in under five minutes and demanding answers of someone who was probably just as tired as they both were.
"In the morning, Jay," he chided softly, having to hold in a small laugh. How he'd managed to find the one extreme hypochondriac-the one extreme hypochondriac who cares about other peoples' health over his own, that is-in the entire state of Maryland, he'll honestly never know. "Don't worry your pretty, little head about it. I'll be okay. Just go to sleep for now. We gotta be rested for when the babies wake up."
"You sure? Do you want me to get you anything? Pain meds or one of those big heating pads or something? Maybe you're dehydrated, let me just go get you something to drink. I think the gas station down the road might have Gatorade or some-"
"Jay," the elder cut in around a yawn. He leaned over enough to push his lips against the Lebanese man's... cheek? nose? he wasn't all too sure, really, but he knew it was probably one of those two... or maybe even a mixture of both. "I'm fine. Keep doing what you're doing and I'm sure it won't happen again. Besides, the cut looked fine earlier, right? That's the most important thing. It's more than likely nothing."
"I just don't want anything to happen to you, baby," he mumbled, leaning in to bury his face in Alex's messy hair. "After that dream I had... I can't lose you. I honestly don't even know what I'd do with myself if you were just... gone." In Jack's mind, that was more than a perfectly justifiable reason as to why he was completely prepared to run through town without so much as a second thought.
"You'd have May move in here with AJ, and you'd go back to work, and she'd be your in-home babysitter, and you'd move on because you'd know that that's what I'd want you to do," Alex answered, his voice getting lower with each word and his eyes slipping closed.
"Do you honestly think I'd be able to do that?" Jack mused quietly, squeezing the hand Alex still had linked with his. "Honestly, everything after the in-home babysitter part sounds pretty illogical."
"Jay," Alex groaned, sleep still doing its best to wash over his bones. "Can't we do this, like, some other time? Literally any other time that isn't now? I'm tired." He pouted through the darkness, hoping his words and tone had projected it enough for his husband to hear.
"I can't sleep now," Jack disagreed with an added shake of his head for emphasis. "I'm all worried about you. What if something happens? What if you need me again and I'm too tired to get up?"
"You weren't too tired the first time," Alex retorted, and Jack shrugged.
"Well, yeah, but it'll all start to add up. It's nothing now, but next time it might be too much o-"
Alex groaned, almost a little too loudly for the otherwise silent room. "Fine," he stressed in a whisper that started off being just a bit too harsh. "Stay awake if you really want to, just please, please let me sleep. I can't... there're too many questions being asked right now, and I'm fucking exhausted. I just... I need to get a little more rest before the babies get up next in, like, an hour. We can have this talk in the morning. I love you so God damn much, and you're being especially fucking sweet right now, but please, please, for God sake, shut the hell up."
Jack bit his lip as a grin stretched across his face. Call him crazy, but sometimes he liked getting Alex all riled up like that-even though he was sincerely worried about his husband's well-being at that moment. He knew it couldn't go any further, what with the reason he was awake in the first place, and so he merely sighed and pressed a kiss to Alex's hair before shifting down just enough to tuck his nose into the crook of the elder male's neck.
A mumbled, "I'm sorry, baby, go back to sleep," was all he offered up before kissing at the patch of skin nearest his lips, and Alex huffed.
"You better be." It was silent between the two men for less than thirty seconds before Alex was speaking up again, voice a mix of half-asleep and warning. "And if you even think that this is a good excuse to be pissy tomorrow morning, I swear to God I'm gonna cut your dick off, and then I'm gonna... gonna get it stuffed and turn it into a dildo."
Jack breathed a slight laugh despite himself, and before he even got the chance to respond, he could hear Alex's breathing dip down a notch further than it'd been beforehand, signalling that he'd already fallen back asleep.
Each minute filled with nothing but the quiet snores of his three babies that passed over Jack's restless mind seemed to pass much too slowly. His fingers alternated between drumming lightly and massaging soothingly against Alex's stomach with each little click of the red, digital numbers of the alarm clock on Alex's nightstand. Tap on odds, knead on evens.
It was getting onto four in the morning, nearly an hour after Alex had woken up clutching desperately at his sides, that Jack had started to feel his limbs become increasingly heavier, eyelids slipping closed just light enough that he could still see the blur of the bright digits staring back at him.
Then, as if she could read her baba's mind, Perspicacity began to cry.
Author: Jamie jamieall_over
Pairing: Jalex
Rating: NC-17 Overall
Warnings: Mpreg
"Ow... ow, fuck... fuck, fuck, fuck," Alex muttered around a gasp, his eyes shooting open as he sat straight up in bed, successfully scaring Cocoa to the point where she completely ran from the room altogether. His arms immediately moved to wrap tightly around his abdomen before he was doubling over, body slumping to the side until he was whimpering and pressed against Jack's chest.
The Lebanese man was slow to respond, what with having fallen into a heavy sleep no more than an hour prior. His hand reached out to pull Alex closer in his haze, and it was a choked hiss that had him stopping.
"Wha's a matter, baby?" he mumbled, limbs feeling much too heavy and eyelids practically snapping open and closed every few seconds. He was at least mindful enough to not talk any louder than necessary, knowing that both Ashley and Perspicacity would be asleep for another hour and a half-they'd both begun to sleep just a little more each night, and it was like a godsend to the young parents.
"It hurts, Jack, it really fucking hurts," Alex whined, body managing to curl into itself tighter than it had been before. His breathing had become labored and shaky, tears pricking in his clenched eyes and teeth turning his bottom lip as well as the insides of his cheeks raw. "Help, fuck, please, help me."
Jack was much more awake then, sitting up quickly and pulling Alex's trembling form to sit sideways across his lap. He wasn't quite sure what to do, if he was being totally honest. It had been a little over a week since Alex and the babies had first gotten home, and while the eldest Gaskarth-Barakat had had the occasional pain rip through the place of his incision, it hadn't ever been too serious. Not enough to make Alex cry or beg for help, at least.
"Sh, hey, it's okay," Jack tried nonetheless, arms holding his husband close as he rocked their bodies together. He figured that being soothing would be a fairly decent place to start, but part of him was still half asleep and saying that things were fine was the best he could bring himself to do. "You're okay, baby. I'm right here. Everything's okay."
Alex did his best to listen to the things being whispered softly in his ear. It was certainly more than a struggle, having to pay attention to hushed words over his own heavy gasps. All he could really do was shake his head in disagreement, the hand pressed between his side and Jack's front shifting enough to grip tightly at the younger's shirt.
"I can't breathe," he whined quietly. Alex would've sworn that he could feel his chest closing in on him just that little bit more with each breath his overworked lungs pulled in.
Jack took a slight leap of faith at that point, using his right hand to remove Alex's arms from around his torso. A near two minutes of Alex trying to wiggle away from Jack's prying hand passed before gentle fingers began to rub careful circles over the elder's lower stomach, the soft fabric of a v-neck and the new gauze that had been taped over the wound mere hours before being the only barriers between them.
The change in the Briton's demeanor was almost instantaneous as his body slumped into relaxation against his partner, content and approving sigh pushing itself from his barely-agape mouth. His eyes became heavily lidded as he just allowed Jack to massage the pain from his sore torso.
Lips soon began to press blind kisses to Alex's face through the darkness as Jack worked. Everything became so ultimately relaxing that the elder male almost nodded off completely, head resting against his partner's shoulder, arms and legs stuck limply in the same positions as they'd been in when he felt like he was being stabbed.
Jack took notice of a few quietly hummed noises of approval filling the air around him and his husband, and he let his left hand slide along from Alex's left side until it was pressed against the center of the Briton's back. Next came the process of laying Alex back down on his side of the bed while still kneading the cut flesh tenderly. With the blonde's tired body stretched out along the mattress once more, Jack shifted to lay on his side and face his husband, fingers of his right hand not ceasing their incessant prodding as his left arm pushed under Alex's pillow.
The younger man knew he should've just left it at that and gone back to sleep, but after a few moments of silence, his curiosity got the better of him, and he couldn't help but nudge his nose against Alex's cheek.
"What happened, baby?" he prompted after receiving a slight high-pitched groan of annoyance in response.
"Just hurt," Alex answered tiredly with a shrug, lazily turning his head and cracking his eyes open to peer through the darkness.
"How?" Jack pressed. He couldn't help but be concerned. After all, what were the odds of something not being wrong if Alex was feeling such an intense pain two weeks after the initial surgery?
"It felt kinda like..." Alex trailed out, unsure as to what to even compare it to. "Kinda like another contraction," he decided, "but it was like the last one I got. Not the first ones where it hurt but didn't hurt too bad, y'know?" Jack nodded, though, in actuality, he really couldn't relate to any of the pain his partner had felt those last few weeks... or months.
Admittedly, that information had Jack's mind racing just that little bit more than it had been, causing him to jump to horrendous and inane conclusions faster than he'd been before. "You're okay now? Do you want me to call anyone? Maybe I should bring you down to the hospital."
"I don't need to go to the hospital," Alex said around a sigh and fond roll of his eyes. "I'm fine now. I doubt it'll happen again anyway."
Jack almost, almost made him get up anyway, but he reluctantly nodded for the second time. "You'll let me take you if something like that happens again, right?"
"Or," Alex decided, his left hand reaching up and grasping Jack's own, lacing their fingers together and squeezing in reassurance, "you can just not worry about it. If you really want to, you can call Dr. Cooper or something to ask about it, okay?"
Jack shifted, and Alex knew him well enough to realize that if he so much as got off their bed, he'd be on the phone in under five minutes and demanding answers of someone who was probably just as tired as they both were.
"In the morning, Jay," he chided softly, having to hold in a small laugh. How he'd managed to find the one extreme hypochondriac-the one extreme hypochondriac who cares about other peoples' health over his own, that is-in the entire state of Maryland, he'll honestly never know. "Don't worry your pretty, little head about it. I'll be okay. Just go to sleep for now. We gotta be rested for when the babies wake up."
"You sure? Do you want me to get you anything? Pain meds or one of those big heating pads or something? Maybe you're dehydrated, let me just go get you something to drink. I think the gas station down the road might have Gatorade or some-"
"Jay," the elder cut in around a yawn. He leaned over enough to push his lips against the Lebanese man's... cheek? nose? he wasn't all too sure, really, but he knew it was probably one of those two... or maybe even a mixture of both. "I'm fine. Keep doing what you're doing and I'm sure it won't happen again. Besides, the cut looked fine earlier, right? That's the most important thing. It's more than likely nothing."
"I just don't want anything to happen to you, baby," he mumbled, leaning in to bury his face in Alex's messy hair. "After that dream I had... I can't lose you. I honestly don't even know what I'd do with myself if you were just... gone." In Jack's mind, that was more than a perfectly justifiable reason as to why he was completely prepared to run through town without so much as a second thought.
"You'd have May move in here with AJ, and you'd go back to work, and she'd be your in-home babysitter, and you'd move on because you'd know that that's what I'd want you to do," Alex answered, his voice getting lower with each word and his eyes slipping closed.
"Do you honestly think I'd be able to do that?" Jack mused quietly, squeezing the hand Alex still had linked with his. "Honestly, everything after the in-home babysitter part sounds pretty illogical."
"Jay," Alex groaned, sleep still doing its best to wash over his bones. "Can't we do this, like, some other time? Literally any other time that isn't now? I'm tired." He pouted through the darkness, hoping his words and tone had projected it enough for his husband to hear.
"I can't sleep now," Jack disagreed with an added shake of his head for emphasis. "I'm all worried about you. What if something happens? What if you need me again and I'm too tired to get up?"
"You weren't too tired the first time," Alex retorted, and Jack shrugged.
"Well, yeah, but it'll all start to add up. It's nothing now, but next time it might be too much o-"
Alex groaned, almost a little too loudly for the otherwise silent room. "Fine," he stressed in a whisper that started off being just a bit too harsh. "Stay awake if you really want to, just please, please let me sleep. I can't... there're too many questions being asked right now, and I'm fucking exhausted. I just... I need to get a little more rest before the babies get up next in, like, an hour. We can have this talk in the morning. I love you so God damn much, and you're being especially fucking sweet right now, but please, please, for God sake, shut the hell up."
Jack bit his lip as a grin stretched across his face. Call him crazy, but sometimes he liked getting Alex all riled up like that-even though he was sincerely worried about his husband's well-being at that moment. He knew it couldn't go any further, what with the reason he was awake in the first place, and so he merely sighed and pressed a kiss to Alex's hair before shifting down just enough to tuck his nose into the crook of the elder male's neck.
A mumbled, "I'm sorry, baby, go back to sleep," was all he offered up before kissing at the patch of skin nearest his lips, and Alex huffed.
"You better be." It was silent between the two men for less than thirty seconds before Alex was speaking up again, voice a mix of half-asleep and warning. "And if you even think that this is a good excuse to be pissy tomorrow morning, I swear to God I'm gonna cut your dick off, and then I'm gonna... gonna get it stuffed and turn it into a dildo."
Jack breathed a slight laugh despite himself, and before he even got the chance to respond, he could hear Alex's breathing dip down a notch further than it'd been beforehand, signalling that he'd already fallen back asleep.
Each minute filled with nothing but the quiet snores of his three babies that passed over Jack's restless mind seemed to pass much too slowly. His fingers alternated between drumming lightly and massaging soothingly against Alex's stomach with each little click of the red, digital numbers of the alarm clock on Alex's nightstand. Tap on odds, knead on evens.
It was getting onto four in the morning, nearly an hour after Alex had woken up clutching desperately at his sides, that Jack had started to feel his limbs become increasingly heavier, eyelids slipping closed just light enough that he could still see the blur of the bright digits staring back at him.
Then, as if she could read her baba's mind, Perspicacity began to cry.