APHONOUS
A/N: Only a short chapter this time guys, but it packs a wallop. To answer some commonly asked questions: the one sided conversations pan out so well because a) I wrote another story for another fandom where a character didn't talk. Although it was when I was young and viral and it's so bad haha. b) I'm not a talker. It's much easier to do from Jules POV, but I only switched perspectives because I was getting sick of triple writing Sam (I'm writing him for Just-World too and for another story. After awhile I need a break). The team will reappear before chapter 10. And for those of you waiting for Jules to talk, remember the name of the story. Aphonous Chapter 7 Positive Two months later she's back in the sanctuary of the locked bathroom. Last night she and Sam had their first spat as a married couple. She's honestly amazed they made it a full two months without a single altercation. She wanted to communicate something very important to him. Needed to, needed his support, but somehow they ended up starting a war in the living room. He yelled. She threw things, slammed the bedroom door and wasn't seen for the rest of the night. The neighbors, who share the living room wall, banged so hard on the thin partition she thought they were trying to bring it down. Cut to her sitting ridged on the covered toilet seat, short clad legs sticking to the perspiring plastic in the June weather because their rental apartment didn't come with air conditioning. She reaches out a hand and jiggles the crystal doorknob. It's the heavy kind seen in wartime style houses. Her house had them when she first moved in. Whoever fixed up this place obviously forgot the majority of the bathroom. Half of it is swallowed by the modern walk-in shower. Clumped in the remaining four feet is a leaky pedestal sink with ancient star faucets, it looks like it's from the 1920s. Then the peach colored toilet with the cracked basin, cheesy painted flowers on the tank and random mood swings where the handle needs to be jiggled for any plumbing function to occur. She thinks it's from the 1950s. She doesn't know why she locks the door when Sam's obviously not home. Maybe in overcompensation. Maybe she's going insane from listening to the constant tick, tick, tick, that she could use as a metronome. The drip, drip, drip from the pipe under the sink, water plummeting into a metal bowl. The couple upstairs moves around their chairs for the fifth time since Sam left for work a few hours ago. She thinks they ballroom dance. The whole situation is so hopelessly fruitless. She knows the answer already, there's only going to be one eventual outcome. On the narrow sink ledge a few inches from her face, the egg timer counts down like a bomb. Increased sense of smell, fatigue, nausea, tender breasts, constantly having to pee, literally wanting to rip every single person limb from limb because all she wants is a Tim Horton's coffee. A missing period. She's never been late, not when she was shot, not when chemicals whitewashed her lungs, not during all the stress she endured after moving to France, not during all her years at the SRU. She's three weeks late, she's obviously retaining something more than water. Her hands wring together, then straighten the hem on her shorts, then fan out her bangs, then tighten her ponytail, then fall back to the hem again. Finally she catches them between her thighs and tries to act as casual as she can while freaking out in the mausoleum of a bathroom quickly heating up in the afternoon sun. After the whole day is concentrated in two single minutes, two pink lines materialize like jail bars on the test and her stomach swells with a mixture of feelings. Despondence, she's not going back to the SRU, at least not within the next year as planned. Even then they'd have found a replacement for her; she can't just step back onto Team One expecting them to kick out the two, three, four or five year substitute just because she's simply ready to go back to work. Sam wasn't fond of her going back to begin with; the addition of a baby is just going to underline his protective streak. Anxiety, how can she be a mother when she can't even talk? How can she connect with this baby inside of her for nine months, when she can't stare down at her burgeoning stomach and whisper shared secrets? Or more likely growl expletives because of the shit this baby will put her through. Communicating with Sam is difficult, and he knew her voice, knew the cadence it held, and knew her base reactions to most things. How will this baby learn anything from her when she has no way to teach it? Yet somehow she's completely at peace. Like the general idea of this baby infiltrating her body unannounced or unrequested is the most natural thing in the world. Toronto General better be ready for the world's quietest labor. The rest of the day is spent reclining on the chunky couch with her hand on her flat but solid stomach. She wonders just how long this baby has been incubating. The laptop is in sleep mode and she contemplates writing an email to the Team, but she still hasn't told them about the impromptu wedding. Bringing up both life changing events in the same email is only going to prompt 'shotgun' comments. Really it was just blind luck they happened to get married when they did. Sam comes home with a bag of groceries because it's Tuesday and they were supposed to go together but the fight marred their usual schedule. She can't even remember what it was about; they usually begin small over miniscule things like him leaving the toilet seat up and bloom into rampant e-text conversations about how neither of them appreciates what the other does. He kicks the door closed behind him and it slams shut. An angry groan stifles only a fraction when he notices her. He's still apparently upset he had to get the groceries, because he just finished work. She made the list. Wrote down to make a game out of it, see how fast he could do it. If this were any other day she would complain he can speak the goddamn language with his own goddamn voice, but the fight seems so superfluous now. The paper bag sets on the kitchen counter and his eyes flicker to hers only for a moment before darting away. "Jules, I had a really bad day okay?" He shrugs off his spring jacket and hangs it on the coat rack behind the front door. "The new recruits are going to kill themselves with those bombs. Can we not get into this now?" The sun still filters through the goddamn window in the kitchen. A cool wind wafts through and rustles the sheer black curtain. She approaches him at a casual speed and he only watches her. This is where their communication falters. He doesn't know whether she's going to embrace or attack him so he stands ramrod straight expecting either response. Instead, she grabs one of his hands in hers, large palm warm and a little sweaty from nerves or anger. She shifts the test so he's holding the proper end of it and turns her back to him so he can fill in the blanks while she puts away the groceries. She tried to tell him last night she'd been in denial for three weeks. How she actually ventured out of the house earlier in the day to the pharmacy and picked up a generic pregnancy test much to her chagrin and their pharmacist's delight. How he just kept saying things about bébés and M. Braddock. How he gave her the pregnancy test for free and wished her 'bonne chance'. She unpacks the single bag, the same generic food greets her. Milk, bread, peppers, mushrooms and a slab of red bloody meat her stomach clenches. She pulls out a bundle of kale and shakes her head. He probably meant to get spinach, but grabbed the wrong green instead; he's not going to like kale. It's bitter. The rustling of the bag is louder than Sam, and while untangling stalks of kale she glances to him. He's working a quick cycle between staring at the test, staring at her, and staring at her stomach. Does he even know two pink lines equal a positive? Isn't it common knowledge? She should have got a test where the answer key is printed right on it. If she really wanted to piss him off she could shove a couch cushion up her top and gesture to it wildly until he got the idea. She was expecting either a positive or negative reaction. Any reaction is better than none at all. No reaction means he doesn't care. If he doesn't care— "Is this positive?" Idling, he showcases the test. Like she doesn't know what he's referring to. She can't stop the expression she makes. Judging, confused, jumbled eyebrows. Eyes wide as her agape mouth. Why the hell would she give him a negative pregnancy test? To rub his face in it, the idea they could have had a child? Maybe if he cared more? Was present more? Even after their fight she's not that harsh, not that malicious. She grew up in a household set in those ways; she doesn't want to emulate them. A whole new wave of harmful emotions courses through her at his intentions. But he's moving, stops a few feet before her, settling the test on the side of the kitchen sink. The seeds of a grin growing on his face. "You're pregnant?" Outside in the street the sound of children's laughter echoes. She can't look at him. Can't look out the window. Can't look at anything. Looks at her stomach. Hand gravitates towards the firmness and she nods once. "Oh my God." He laughs; it's a genuine laugh he carries buried in his throat for the rarest of occasions. The last time she heard it was the day they declared her completely healthy at the hospital and discharged her. Sam held her in her living room and laughed. Breathed her in as they basked in the luxury of being in her own house. Now he embraces her much in the same way. Hot body pressing against hers, caring hands cradling the back of her head, fingers playing with her ponytail as he laughs into her neck like she's granted him some miraculous wish. He keeps repeating, "Oh my God." He kisses the side of her neck, her jaw, and her cheek. It's not meant to be passionate, but to show his gratitude. He's experiencing the surge of emotions she did in the bathroom. Only eight hours of lounging on the couch lessened their impact. The rough pad of his thumb strokes her cheek when he kisses her lips, soft and lovingly. He looks into her eyes and she sees his excitement, his panic. "We're really going to have a baby?" She nods her head in his hand. "Oh my God." He hugs her back to him. "I'm going to be a dad. You're going to be a mom. You're to have our baby—" And while he's going through listing obvious genetic connections she finds the hand not crushing her and settles it between her top and her waist band. Immediately his rambling stops. "Oh my God." The words hold more meaning this time, are spoken in a gentler tone as he slides away from her to observe her stomach. The sturdiness, the protectiveness already present in her body and not from the workout routine she adopted a few months back. "It's really in there." She nods again. Patient with his stupid questions. If he asks her where it's going to come out she might have to punch him. His hand rubs back and forth, thumb brushes above her navel. Maybe he's trying to elicit a response months in advance, or maybe he's just trying to figure out when this, all of this, happened. "I love you Jules. And I love this baby. And I love you for this baby." She remembers what he said when he proposed to her, about how she could never make his life any better. She didn't know at the time it was a lie. They both spend the rest of the night reclining on the couch coming to terms with the immediate future ensconced with them. His hand never leaves her stomach and ever half an hour he rouses from the happiness induced stupor to babble some aimless thing they now have to do. Like tell his parents. Tell Natalie. Buy a car seat. Baby proof her house. Make a doctor's appointment. Get 'those' vitamins. Think of names. Some are more important than others. He tells her he wants to know everything about how she's feeling, because she is a very private person. Despite him being her husband, despite what it took to get a baby to grow inside of her. She leans her head back and gives him a half-lidded expression telling him he'll learn what he needs to learn when she wants to correspond it. "I'm serious Jules. We're in this together. If you're craving something, or, I don't know you get a leg cramp or something—" Leg cramp? This is a pregnancy, not the Tour De France. "I should know. I want to help you. I'll go out and get whatever food you're craving. I'll cook it. I don't care what time it is or how unnatural it may be—" Yeah, unnatural like she might actually start to enjoy the food here. The only thing she's been craving for the last nine months is a Tim Horton's coffee. Which now she can't even have. Well there's decaf, but it's just not the same. "It just." He sighs and massages her stomach softly. "We're married, even if we weren't, we're in this together. Don't try to do it alone." Touché. Apparently talking to himself within the apartment walls for the last nine months has made Sam quite the orator. Her head relaxes on his arm and she nods, excepting his stake in their fetus. Next Chapter: The chapter everyone will hate (I mean aside from the last chapter because I left the ending very open)
Again, thanks to those who took the time to review/favorite/alert and of course read. I know things are especially hectic around this time of year (I JUST did my Christmas shopping) so the next time I can barricade myself in my room and pull myself away from Just-World, I'll update.
Lastly, this chapter goes out especially to SYurri. Hopefully this will bring her out of her bad day because I wrote it kinda just for her.
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