just come with me tonight
Title: just come with me tonight
Author: thegraduate09
Words: 3219
Fandom: Degrassi
Pairing: Adam/Bianca
Rating: T
Summary: They just sort of... snap together, no matter how much they try not to.
Author's Note: Also for aphrodite_mine. The new longest thing I've ever written. Finished at 5:36 am. It starts out not domestic-pregnancy-fic, but it gets there. And what else is new, there will probably a sequel. At least I have the title for one. The first paragraph... idk. I'm tired.
If you told me, at any point in my life, that I’d end up sharing a living space with Bianca DeSousa, I would have - I’m not even sure what I would do if someone said that to me. But I’d have thought you were crazy. And she probably would’ve punched you. Neither of us expected this - I guess that’s the point of writing all this down. So you, whoever you are, knows - the unexpected happens way more than the expected.
But I should start at the beginning, this will confuse you enough without me adding to the mess. And there are parts of the story we’re both probably going to sound like horrible people. But. Keep reading. We get better.
~~~
The first week of college, Adam Torres is feeling pretty damn awesome. Like he’s achieved the trifecta: college far enough away it’s unlikely anyone will know him, but close enough that he can go home on the weekends for laundry and food. Mostly food. And a dorm room so he doesn’t have to drive that distance daily. Who’s he kidding. So he doesn’t have to live under his mother’s thumb anymore.
But mostly it’s the no one knowing him part he’s psyched about. Rather, no one knowing Gracie. Here, he is a blank slate. No past whatsoever.
The dorm thing was a little worrying at first - his mother had freaked at the very idea - but he made it a point to meet his roommate first, and he’d hit the jackpot there, too. Not even twenty minutes into the conversation, the guy - Daniel - is talking about how tiny the LGBT club was at his high school, and how excited he is to be going to a college with a bigger one. Neither of them asks where the other falls under the umbrella, but Adam’s pretty sure it won’t be a problem.
He’s floating high walking to his first class, Intro to Gothic Literature, and when he sees her, it doesn’t bring him down. So Bianca goes here. So what. It’s a big school, and they’ve never moved in the same circles, and she wasn’t his biggest problem in high school anyways. It doesn’t have to be a problem.
And it isn’t. For the entire first semester. They see each other a few times - never speak, but they both know that they both know they’re there - around campus, a few parties, random coincidences. The past is never raised.
~~~
Somehow, by some twist of fate, she starts dating his roommate. When Daniel tells him, he has to laugh out loud - on one level, the only two people here who know his secret, dating each other, what are the odds? But the really funny part is imagining what she’d said if she knew last month Daniel was dating Scott.
But it’s still not an issue. He only sees her a little more often, they never hang out in their room, - at least, never while he’s there, but he works now - which is her doing, he’s sure, and he appreciates it, and Daniel has no idea they know each other. He pulls a slightly mocking wave whenever she does come by the room, usually to stand in the doorway awkwardly and glance around at nothing while waiting for Daniel to get something. It amuses him, to some immature extent. He blames the T shots for that, which amuses him even more.
But then it does get awkward, very awkward, very quickly - not because of anything that happened in the past, because of what happens in the present.
All Adam knows is, one day Daniel is going out with her, and the next night, he’s locked out of the room for a few hours and there is no question that it’s not her in there, even before the redhead stumbles out of the room. And he tries not to ask, not to get involved, but he only pulls it off for two days before he can’t stop himself from asking if they’re still a thing. And yes. Daniel says they are.
The information haunts him for a week. What is he supposed to do in this situation, really? He doesn’t owe her anything, on the one hand, but on the other. If she doesn’t know, that’s - well, shitty. Of course, maybe she does, maybe it’s not a big deal. Certainly it’s none of his business. Eventually he figures - if she already knows, it won’t matter if he tells her. He’ll look a bit like an idiot, but if she doesn’t know - she deserves to.
On some level. He thinks.
But it is massively uncomfortable, intentionally crossing paths with her and forcing out, “We need to talk.”
She didn’t know, as it turns out. She just glares at nothing, after he tells her, but doesn’t really look surprised - he doesn’t want to know, storms out after a minute, and he thinks he hears her mutter “fuckhead.”
He avoids his dorm room for the rest of the day, and when he does go back - around 8 that night - most of his stuff is outside. He is mildly surprised, but not that upset. He feels like he did the right thing, even if it sucked, and he has some cash, a job, and his car. The backseat will double well enough as a bed until he finds something else.
~~~
About a week later - a week of being late to class and work, and getting told nothing of use by the housing department - he finally learns there are no other rooms available. He’s thinking “Well, fuck,” a mix of angry and self-pity, as he walks out the door, and when he sees her, just ahead of him on the path, puking into a trashcan, a tinge of curiosity joins the party.
He refrains from the standard ‘are you okay,’ instead just waits until she’s done, and offers her a bottle of water.
He doesn’t quite manage to hold back a sarcastic, “Rough night?,” though, and it earns him a glare, and she slams the water bottle into his chest, roughly bites out “I’m pregnant, assface,” and stomps off.
He tries to convince himself it was still somewhat funny, and fails.
~~~
He succeeds at not thinking about it, though. Finding an actual place to live, in between work and classes, takes up all the brain power he has, and it doesn’t really get any easier when he manages to find a surprisingly nice - by which he means not a closet, and lacking in mold and cockroaches - apartment that he can - just barely - afford.
All of that’s only half true. He couldn’t afford it, on his own, and his mother found it - but he only feels a little pathetic at the deal they made - she gets to approve/veto it, and she helps out, pays a quarter of the rent.
It’s a letter that brings it up again, from Clare. He’d completely forgotten that he’d included the run-in in his letter to her, but apparently he did, and her reply is full of questions, where is she staying, is she seeing a doctor, so on. He answers with a mostly non-sarcastic ‘how am I supposed to know?’ but he could already hear her in his head, going on about being a good person, and turning the other cheek, and all the other quotes she loves.
He doesn’t like that it gets him thinking, but it does. Unpleasant thoughts, like what if he had a friend or a relative in a similar situation, and his attempt at reasoning away such thoughts (don’t know that they split, don’t know that it’s Daniel’s, don’t know that the father isn’t completely supportive and rich) falls flat.
And this treacherous voice in the back of his head keeps whispering that there’s another bedroom in his new apartment.
Eventually his better half even gives his darker half a good reason to try and help - what better way to prove you’re better? Which honestly disturbs him greatly, that he thinks of that at all, so he decides - still somewhat taking the lazy way out - that the next time their paths cross, he’ll say something. What, he has no idea.
~~~
He runs through it a few times in his head - decides quickly that the straight forward approach won’t work at all. It takes him a bit longer to decide not to use it anyways. He settles on a fairly see through speech, telling her that he lost his cosy living arrangement because he told her the truth, and now he’s in an apartment he can barely afford. And he realizes that, with her present condition, soon enough she won’t be able to work - but anything would help, and it’s her fault, so.
~~~
It’s a month before he sees her again. She’s hardly gained weight, as far as he can tell, but she looks like she hasn’t slept in much longer than a month. He stops her, makes his argument, and she protests once - then accepts, “fine,” without meeting his eyes. Which is pretty much what he expected, and even a bit of a relief.
~~~
He hadn’t really put anything in that room, so he tells her she can move in whenever, and then offers to help when she glances away and doesn’t say anything. Turns out it’s not the help she needs, just the car, she has virtually nothing - four boxes, or thereabouts, mostly clothes and some random shit, to quote her. It takes just the one trip to get her stuff over, all of an hour, maybe, and then they retreat to their separate corners.
But it’s not too uncomfortable.
~~~
They settle into a weird system - they see each other more often, of course, but they barely talk face to face. All their communication is done through dry erase markers & boards, and that mostly consisting of ‘out of milk,’ from him, and sometimes ‘need a ride here,’ from her.
It’s not quite symbiotic - he drives her to campus in the morning, earlier than his first class, and she waits there until either he’s off work or his last class has let out. He drives her to what odd jobs she gets, via temp agency, and half of the time she’s early, because his schedule is fairly full. She contributes what money she can, when she can, that’s always uncomfortable, despite his best attempts to make it less so, and she cooks - and he reheats her leftovers for nearly all his meals.
It takes him another month to realize he’s never once driven her to a doctor’s appointment, and he’s sure no one else has.
~~~
That causes an argument, the jewels of which include “Stay the fuck out of my life,” and “This is my apartment, so I don’t have to.”
He’s almost surprised they don’t have a noise complaint from one of the neighbors.
And he’s completely surprised that she doesn’t try and leave in the middle of the night - he stayed up just in case.
He apologizes, via dry erase, but reiterates that it’s a big deal, and the... baby deserves it, and he’s not entirely sure why, but he includes in a scribble at the bottom that if there’s a cost, he can cover it, it’ll just count as his baby-shower present.
The next morning, her answer is a mere fine, whatever, and he ends up making the appointment, but that makes more sense anyways, so he lets it go.
~~~
It goes well. He assumes. He waits outside, in the car, but when she comes out she says the doctor told her everything looked pretty good - as well as could be expected - and she’s supposed to start taking prenatals, so they have to make a stop.
On the drive back, she asks him why he cares. He shrugs, says something about the child being innocent, really, he’s not sure. Honestly, he doesn’t think it matters that much.
~~~
That’s at about four and a half months.
By five months, everything’s changed. She’s starting to show, and god, is she ever cranky about it. And everything else. She no longer spends the majority of her time in her room, she spends the majority of her time wherever he is, complaining about everything she could possibly find to complain about, from him, to school, to work. He does his best to appease her, as far as his personal habits go, and tells her to stop working, at one fed up point, and points out he can’t help with school - mistake.
He’s just glad she doesn’t cry.
Yet.
~~~
Two weeks later, he’s exhausted, and she starts tearing up at small things. He thinks about every word he says, stops watching anything that could be the least bit depressing on tv, they start ordering in food (he can’t cook, he can’t let her - her tastebuds have officially gone crazy, and it’s easiest with cravings), and he reads ‘what to expect when’ secretly at the library in an attempt to avoid more arguments.
They manage, for a while.
‘Til he’s reminded that it’s coming up on the time he’d somewhat planned on having top surgery. It’s going to be difficult, balancing that with everything else, but this is going to be the easiest time, as far as comparisons go - he doesn’t have class to worry about, she can still drive herself around, he’d gotten the time off a while ago... He’d be an idiot not to do it now. But it’s - unnerving, on a basic level, somewhere with his hate of hospitals and lab coats (don’t ask), and telling her is also unnerving.
So he puts it off. Schedules it, but doesn’t say anything to her until about a week before, and even then he handles it awkwardly - like a greeting - enters the front door, spits out “I’m having surgery next week,” while crossing the main room, and next second he’s in his room.
~~~
Thankfully, she holds off on saying anything about it until afterwards - immediately after he wakes up, when he’s still quite a bit drugged up and even more surprised to see her. He doesn’t remember the conversation afterwards, just has this fuzzy recollection of her looking down at him, and he wouldn’t even be sure it actually happened if not for his brother artfully asking what the hell she was doing there.
Talk about your awkward conversations.
~~~
He heals. Their hospital discussion is never... discussed. She avoids his eyes for a little while, until he makes a crack about not remembering the entire day afterwards - not quite true, but it puts her back at ease, and that puts him at ease, so it’s a win all around.
~~~
Month 7, he comes home - he’s not sure when he started calling it home, in his mind - to her sitting on the living room, shirt pulled up over her stomach, bawling her eyes out. He has no explanation for why his immediate reaction is to put his arm around her, and he has no explanation for why he kisses her when she looks at him, and he has no explanation for why he can’t stop, and he has no idea why it’s not awkward, when he’s breathing into the curve of her hip.
But he’s pretty sure she’s pulled out some of his hair.
~~~
Things change again after that.
For one thing, she’s more relaxed. Smiles more often. (Add that to the list of things he doesn’t understand. But likes, anyways.)
It doesn’t happen again. But he finds himself touching her more often, without even realizing it. He’ll just blink, and oh, look, his hand’s on her back as they enter the doctor’s office - he waits in the waiting room now. Oh, look, when exactly did her feet end up in his lap, and when did he start rubbing them - he was just innocently watching wheel of fortune.
It’s not unpleasant.
~~~
By month 8, he’s eerily aware of her. A portion of his attention is just always on her, and even when she’s not around - rarer and rarer - he finds himself looking around for her. He notices her looking more and more - scared. And it’s harder not to mention it, and one night, when he wakes up around half past midnight, thirsty, it’s impossible. He can hear her, from the kitchen, and even while he’s telling himself it’s an invasion of privacy, he can’t stop himself from going in her room, and coercing her back into his, holding both her hands.
It’s even more scary, how not wrong it feels, to have her fitted against him, to inhale the smell of her with each breath, to have his arms around her. It’s scary how easily he falls asleep listening to her breathe.
~~~
He decides just to go with it.
~~~
He forbids her to go into her (old) room for the end of the pregnancy. Spends an insane amount of his time trying to get her to be somewhere else, as he attempts to paint and put things together and finds out he is not the handy type, not at all. And those papers, that say instructions, they lie.
~~~
His plan falls through, anyways, when she comes home ready for war. This time, she’s standing, arms crossed, in the living room, rattling off about how there’s no way in hell he can expect her to move out now, she doesn’t care what or who he’s remodeling for, and she’s just started tearing up, when he interrupts her at “I’ve got nowhere else to -”
For the second, official time he kisses her, he thinks it works pretty well. Even when she keeps crying at the half finished attempt at a kid’s room. And, strangely, it makes him feel incredibly happy when he whispers in her ear that he doesn’t want her to leave.
~~~
He makes love to her that night. She can say what she likes about that being the cheesiest, most ridiculous thing to call it - and she does - but that’s what it was.
~~~
She goes into labor early - a complete surprise to everyone, the doctor had said he expected she might go over (he waits in the room with her now), and he’s not even going to try and say he wasn’t scared shitless when she woke him up with a punch to the arm and a slightly broken sounding, “Hospital, fuckhead.”
And yes, he speeds. Toss another cliche on the pile, he could care less.
~~~
Hours and hours and a couple broken fingers (not from her, he may or may not have freaked out at her screaming, and he may or may not owe the hospital money for the pathetically small amount of damage to the wall) later, there’s a tiny, so tiny, baby girl screaming even louder than her mother.
~~~
Don’t tell, but he almost passes out when she asks if she can write his name under ‘Father.'
Everyone says Karma’s a bitch, but personally, all he can think is he got the best pay out ever.
Author: thegraduate09
Words: 3219
Fandom: Degrassi
Pairing: Adam/Bianca
Rating: T
Summary: They just sort of... snap together, no matter how much they try not to.
Author's Note: Also for aphrodite_mine. The new longest thing I've ever written. Finished at 5:36 am. It starts out not domestic-pregnancy-fic, but it gets there. And what else is new, there will probably a sequel. At least I have the title for one. The first paragraph... idk. I'm tired.
If you told me, at any point in my life, that I’d end up sharing a living space with Bianca DeSousa, I would have - I’m not even sure what I would do if someone said that to me. But I’d have thought you were crazy. And she probably would’ve punched you. Neither of us expected this - I guess that’s the point of writing all this down. So you, whoever you are, knows - the unexpected happens way more than the expected.
But I should start at the beginning, this will confuse you enough without me adding to the mess. And there are parts of the story we’re both probably going to sound like horrible people. But. Keep reading. We get better.
~~~
The first week of college, Adam Torres is feeling pretty damn awesome. Like he’s achieved the trifecta: college far enough away it’s unlikely anyone will know him, but close enough that he can go home on the weekends for laundry and food. Mostly food. And a dorm room so he doesn’t have to drive that distance daily. Who’s he kidding. So he doesn’t have to live under his mother’s thumb anymore.
But mostly it’s the no one knowing him part he’s psyched about. Rather, no one knowing Gracie. Here, he is a blank slate. No past whatsoever.
The dorm thing was a little worrying at first - his mother had freaked at the very idea - but he made it a point to meet his roommate first, and he’d hit the jackpot there, too. Not even twenty minutes into the conversation, the guy - Daniel - is talking about how tiny the LGBT club was at his high school, and how excited he is to be going to a college with a bigger one. Neither of them asks where the other falls under the umbrella, but Adam’s pretty sure it won’t be a problem.
He’s floating high walking to his first class, Intro to Gothic Literature, and when he sees her, it doesn’t bring him down. So Bianca goes here. So what. It’s a big school, and they’ve never moved in the same circles, and she wasn’t his biggest problem in high school anyways. It doesn’t have to be a problem.
And it isn’t. For the entire first semester. They see each other a few times - never speak, but they both know that they both know they’re there - around campus, a few parties, random coincidences. The past is never raised.
~~~
Somehow, by some twist of fate, she starts dating his roommate. When Daniel tells him, he has to laugh out loud - on one level, the only two people here who know his secret, dating each other, what are the odds? But the really funny part is imagining what she’d said if she knew last month Daniel was dating Scott.
But it’s still not an issue. He only sees her a little more often, they never hang out in their room, - at least, never while he’s there, but he works now - which is her doing, he’s sure, and he appreciates it, and Daniel has no idea they know each other. He pulls a slightly mocking wave whenever she does come by the room, usually to stand in the doorway awkwardly and glance around at nothing while waiting for Daniel to get something. It amuses him, to some immature extent. He blames the T shots for that, which amuses him even more.
But then it does get awkward, very awkward, very quickly - not because of anything that happened in the past, because of what happens in the present.
All Adam knows is, one day Daniel is going out with her, and the next night, he’s locked out of the room for a few hours and there is no question that it’s not her in there, even before the redhead stumbles out of the room. And he tries not to ask, not to get involved, but he only pulls it off for two days before he can’t stop himself from asking if they’re still a thing. And yes. Daniel says they are.
The information haunts him for a week. What is he supposed to do in this situation, really? He doesn’t owe her anything, on the one hand, but on the other. If she doesn’t know, that’s - well, shitty. Of course, maybe she does, maybe it’s not a big deal. Certainly it’s none of his business. Eventually he figures - if she already knows, it won’t matter if he tells her. He’ll look a bit like an idiot, but if she doesn’t know - she deserves to.
On some level. He thinks.
But it is massively uncomfortable, intentionally crossing paths with her and forcing out, “We need to talk.”
She didn’t know, as it turns out. She just glares at nothing, after he tells her, but doesn’t really look surprised - he doesn’t want to know, storms out after a minute, and he thinks he hears her mutter “fuckhead.”
He avoids his dorm room for the rest of the day, and when he does go back - around 8 that night - most of his stuff is outside. He is mildly surprised, but not that upset. He feels like he did the right thing, even if it sucked, and he has some cash, a job, and his car. The backseat will double well enough as a bed until he finds something else.
~~~
About a week later - a week of being late to class and work, and getting told nothing of use by the housing department - he finally learns there are no other rooms available. He’s thinking “Well, fuck,” a mix of angry and self-pity, as he walks out the door, and when he sees her, just ahead of him on the path, puking into a trashcan, a tinge of curiosity joins the party.
He refrains from the standard ‘are you okay,’ instead just waits until she’s done, and offers her a bottle of water.
He doesn’t quite manage to hold back a sarcastic, “Rough night?,” though, and it earns him a glare, and she slams the water bottle into his chest, roughly bites out “I’m pregnant, assface,” and stomps off.
He tries to convince himself it was still somewhat funny, and fails.
~~~
He succeeds at not thinking about it, though. Finding an actual place to live, in between work and classes, takes up all the brain power he has, and it doesn’t really get any easier when he manages to find a surprisingly nice - by which he means not a closet, and lacking in mold and cockroaches - apartment that he can - just barely - afford.
All of that’s only half true. He couldn’t afford it, on his own, and his mother found it - but he only feels a little pathetic at the deal they made - she gets to approve/veto it, and she helps out, pays a quarter of the rent.
It’s a letter that brings it up again, from Clare. He’d completely forgotten that he’d included the run-in in his letter to her, but apparently he did, and her reply is full of questions, where is she staying, is she seeing a doctor, so on. He answers with a mostly non-sarcastic ‘how am I supposed to know?’ but he could already hear her in his head, going on about being a good person, and turning the other cheek, and all the other quotes she loves.
He doesn’t like that it gets him thinking, but it does. Unpleasant thoughts, like what if he had a friend or a relative in a similar situation, and his attempt at reasoning away such thoughts (don’t know that they split, don’t know that it’s Daniel’s, don’t know that the father isn’t completely supportive and rich) falls flat.
And this treacherous voice in the back of his head keeps whispering that there’s another bedroom in his new apartment.
Eventually his better half even gives his darker half a good reason to try and help - what better way to prove you’re better? Which honestly disturbs him greatly, that he thinks of that at all, so he decides - still somewhat taking the lazy way out - that the next time their paths cross, he’ll say something. What, he has no idea.
~~~
He runs through it a few times in his head - decides quickly that the straight forward approach won’t work at all. It takes him a bit longer to decide not to use it anyways. He settles on a fairly see through speech, telling her that he lost his cosy living arrangement because he told her the truth, and now he’s in an apartment he can barely afford. And he realizes that, with her present condition, soon enough she won’t be able to work - but anything would help, and it’s her fault, so.
~~~
It’s a month before he sees her again. She’s hardly gained weight, as far as he can tell, but she looks like she hasn’t slept in much longer than a month. He stops her, makes his argument, and she protests once - then accepts, “fine,” without meeting his eyes. Which is pretty much what he expected, and even a bit of a relief.
~~~
He hadn’t really put anything in that room, so he tells her she can move in whenever, and then offers to help when she glances away and doesn’t say anything. Turns out it’s not the help she needs, just the car, she has virtually nothing - four boxes, or thereabouts, mostly clothes and some random shit, to quote her. It takes just the one trip to get her stuff over, all of an hour, maybe, and then they retreat to their separate corners.
But it’s not too uncomfortable.
~~~
They settle into a weird system - they see each other more often, of course, but they barely talk face to face. All their communication is done through dry erase markers & boards, and that mostly consisting of ‘out of milk,’ from him, and sometimes ‘need a ride here,’ from her.
It’s not quite symbiotic - he drives her to campus in the morning, earlier than his first class, and she waits there until either he’s off work or his last class has let out. He drives her to what odd jobs she gets, via temp agency, and half of the time she’s early, because his schedule is fairly full. She contributes what money she can, when she can, that’s always uncomfortable, despite his best attempts to make it less so, and she cooks - and he reheats her leftovers for nearly all his meals.
It takes him another month to realize he’s never once driven her to a doctor’s appointment, and he’s sure no one else has.
~~~
That causes an argument, the jewels of which include “Stay the fuck out of my life,” and “This is my apartment, so I don’t have to.”
He’s almost surprised they don’t have a noise complaint from one of the neighbors.
And he’s completely surprised that she doesn’t try and leave in the middle of the night - he stayed up just in case.
He apologizes, via dry erase, but reiterates that it’s a big deal, and the... baby deserves it, and he’s not entirely sure why, but he includes in a scribble at the bottom that if there’s a cost, he can cover it, it’ll just count as his baby-shower present.
The next morning, her answer is a mere fine, whatever, and he ends up making the appointment, but that makes more sense anyways, so he lets it go.
~~~
It goes well. He assumes. He waits outside, in the car, but when she comes out she says the doctor told her everything looked pretty good - as well as could be expected - and she’s supposed to start taking prenatals, so they have to make a stop.
On the drive back, she asks him why he cares. He shrugs, says something about the child being innocent, really, he’s not sure. Honestly, he doesn’t think it matters that much.
~~~
That’s at about four and a half months.
By five months, everything’s changed. She’s starting to show, and god, is she ever cranky about it. And everything else. She no longer spends the majority of her time in her room, she spends the majority of her time wherever he is, complaining about everything she could possibly find to complain about, from him, to school, to work. He does his best to appease her, as far as his personal habits go, and tells her to stop working, at one fed up point, and points out he can’t help with school - mistake.
He’s just glad she doesn’t cry.
Yet.
~~~
Two weeks later, he’s exhausted, and she starts tearing up at small things. He thinks about every word he says, stops watching anything that could be the least bit depressing on tv, they start ordering in food (he can’t cook, he can’t let her - her tastebuds have officially gone crazy, and it’s easiest with cravings), and he reads ‘what to expect when’ secretly at the library in an attempt to avoid more arguments.
They manage, for a while.
‘Til he’s reminded that it’s coming up on the time he’d somewhat planned on having top surgery. It’s going to be difficult, balancing that with everything else, but this is going to be the easiest time, as far as comparisons go - he doesn’t have class to worry about, she can still drive herself around, he’d gotten the time off a while ago... He’d be an idiot not to do it now. But it’s - unnerving, on a basic level, somewhere with his hate of hospitals and lab coats (don’t ask), and telling her is also unnerving.
So he puts it off. Schedules it, but doesn’t say anything to her until about a week before, and even then he handles it awkwardly - like a greeting - enters the front door, spits out “I’m having surgery next week,” while crossing the main room, and next second he’s in his room.
~~~
Thankfully, she holds off on saying anything about it until afterwards - immediately after he wakes up, when he’s still quite a bit drugged up and even more surprised to see her. He doesn’t remember the conversation afterwards, just has this fuzzy recollection of her looking down at him, and he wouldn’t even be sure it actually happened if not for his brother artfully asking what the hell she was doing there.
Talk about your awkward conversations.
~~~
He heals. Their hospital discussion is never... discussed. She avoids his eyes for a little while, until he makes a crack about not remembering the entire day afterwards - not quite true, but it puts her back at ease, and that puts him at ease, so it’s a win all around.
~~~
Month 7, he comes home - he’s not sure when he started calling it home, in his mind - to her sitting on the living room, shirt pulled up over her stomach, bawling her eyes out. He has no explanation for why his immediate reaction is to put his arm around her, and he has no explanation for why he kisses her when she looks at him, and he has no explanation for why he can’t stop, and he has no idea why it’s not awkward, when he’s breathing into the curve of her hip.
But he’s pretty sure she’s pulled out some of his hair.
~~~
Things change again after that.
For one thing, she’s more relaxed. Smiles more often. (Add that to the list of things he doesn’t understand. But likes, anyways.)
It doesn’t happen again. But he finds himself touching her more often, without even realizing it. He’ll just blink, and oh, look, his hand’s on her back as they enter the doctor’s office - he waits in the waiting room now. Oh, look, when exactly did her feet end up in his lap, and when did he start rubbing them - he was just innocently watching wheel of fortune.
It’s not unpleasant.
~~~
By month 8, he’s eerily aware of her. A portion of his attention is just always on her, and even when she’s not around - rarer and rarer - he finds himself looking around for her. He notices her looking more and more - scared. And it’s harder not to mention it, and one night, when he wakes up around half past midnight, thirsty, it’s impossible. He can hear her, from the kitchen, and even while he’s telling himself it’s an invasion of privacy, he can’t stop himself from going in her room, and coercing her back into his, holding both her hands.
It’s even more scary, how not wrong it feels, to have her fitted against him, to inhale the smell of her with each breath, to have his arms around her. It’s scary how easily he falls asleep listening to her breathe.
~~~
He decides just to go with it.
~~~
He forbids her to go into her (old) room for the end of the pregnancy. Spends an insane amount of his time trying to get her to be somewhere else, as he attempts to paint and put things together and finds out he is not the handy type, not at all. And those papers, that say instructions, they lie.
~~~
His plan falls through, anyways, when she comes home ready for war. This time, she’s standing, arms crossed, in the living room, rattling off about how there’s no way in hell he can expect her to move out now, she doesn’t care what or who he’s remodeling for, and she’s just started tearing up, when he interrupts her at “I’ve got nowhere else to -”
For the second, official time he kisses her, he thinks it works pretty well. Even when she keeps crying at the half finished attempt at a kid’s room. And, strangely, it makes him feel incredibly happy when he whispers in her ear that he doesn’t want her to leave.
~~~
He makes love to her that night. She can say what she likes about that being the cheesiest, most ridiculous thing to call it - and she does - but that’s what it was.
~~~
She goes into labor early - a complete surprise to everyone, the doctor had said he expected she might go over (he waits in the room with her now), and he’s not even going to try and say he wasn’t scared shitless when she woke him up with a punch to the arm and a slightly broken sounding, “Hospital, fuckhead.”
And yes, he speeds. Toss another cliche on the pile, he could care less.
~~~
Hours and hours and a couple broken fingers (not from her, he may or may not have freaked out at her screaming, and he may or may not owe the hospital money for the pathetically small amount of damage to the wall) later, there’s a tiny, so tiny, baby girl screaming even louder than her mother.
~~~
Don’t tell, but he almost passes out when she asks if she can write his name under ‘Father.'
Everyone says Karma’s a bitch, but personally, all he can think is he got the best pay out ever.