Alex was with Anna now, and Jeremiah was pregnant.
He really wanted a beer, or to get stoned, but he couldn’t, not for the foreseeable future. Perfect timing.
His phone chimed again. Like a masochist, he read the text from Alex.
I’m really looking forward to coming to LA.
Jeremiah exhaled slowly and replied.
Me, too.
***
“So, I hear you’re ranting for two these days,” Emily said, pleased at the joke and also genuinely concerned for Jeremiah’s emotional health. The perfect Ellison combo, and she wasn’t even technically an Ellison yet.
“Of course he told you already, even though I specifically asked him to keep it to himself,” Jeremiah groused, even though he wasn’t really mad, mostly performing for form’s sake.
It kind of made it easier, not having to work up to the whole speech again himself.
“Have you decided what you’re going to do?” she asked gently.
He rubbed at his eyes. “I’m keeping it.”
She hugged her knees next to him on the couch, watching him with pure excitement. “Wow, you’re going to have a baby, though.” She smiled, delighted. “That’s so exciting.”
Sometimes Jeremiah forgot how young Emily was. She was articulate and self-possessed and lovingly bossed the hell out of Fabian, so it wasn’t always as glaringly apparent as it was in this moment that she was still in her mid-twenties.
“Yeah, super exciting,” he said dully.
He’d still been drinking over the past few months, smoking the occasional cigarette outside a bar, getting stoned— especially getting stoned. He wasn’t an early-years Drew Barrymore or anything and it probably worked in his favor that he’d been slowing down on the partying significantly compared to when he’d first moved out to LA, but shit. He’d had two beers after dinner just last week.
He put his head between his knees, breathing heavily, teetering on the edge of a panic attack.
He felt Emily put a gentle hand on his back. “Carson, it’s okay. Just breathe. In, out. You’ve got this.”
Usually being lectured on following the basic mechanics of respiration would make him snap at anyone else but Emily’s sweet, calm voice actually was helping him slow his breathing down, the slow pressure of her gently stroking his back soothing him back from the brink.
“You’d make a much better mom than my dumb ass,” he muttered into his knees.
She smacked him, lightly, right between the shoulder blades. “Stop it. You’ll be a great parent.” She paused, making a thoughtful sound. “Wow, that is really weird to say out loud, though.”
“Tell me about it.”
“You ready to sit up now?”
He was. With a deep exhale, he slouched back against the couch. His hand was resting on his stomach unconsciously. He looked down at it, contemplative.
When he raised his head, he saw Emily was watching him too. “Jeremiah said you haven’t mentioned who the other dad was,” she said carefully.
“Nope,” he confirmed. “I haven’t.”
“What do you think your reveal timeline on that’s going to be?”
“Maybe there is no other dad. Maybe I’m just asexually replicating, like a worm. Maybe I’m the next frontier of human evolution, Emily.”
“Hm. Maybe you are.”
They sat in silence, Jeremiah trying to figure out if his heartburn was pregnancy related or because he’d eaten a burrito in under five minutes for lunch. He still didn’t feel any different. He almost wanted some terrible pregnancy symptom to manifest just so he would know this was real.
“I’ll be honest, though. Jeremiah is worried about you. I’m a little bit, too.”
“Why?” Jeremiah snorted. “Things are really going well for me. I don’t want to brag, but if you’ll recall from earlier, I am newly and accidentally pregnant.”
“You don’t have to do any of it alone, though,” Emily said firmly. “I know how you get, you feel like you have to be this hard ass about doing things on your own.”
“Yeah, that’s me, well-known straight shooter and rugged hard ass.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say rugged, necessarily.” Emily took his hand before he could snipe back. “You know what I mean. You don’t have to make things harder for yourself.”
Jeremiah wasn’t quite sure that was true, or if he deserved for anything to be easy, but he let Emily hold his hand for a minute.
After a minute, he offered, “Maybe you and Fabian can just adopt both me and the fetus. Raise us together as siblings.”
“I’ll see what Jeremiah has to say. He did always have his heart set on a thirty-two-year-old aspiring media mogul as a firstborn.”
Jeremiah put his feet up on the coffee table, flagrantly defying Fabian’s emphatic No Feet On The Coffee Table rule.
“I bet I’d be a handful. I’ll probably turn out to be gay, go through a real rebellious stage in college, try too hard to earn Fabian’s approval. I’ll be such a headache. Ask my real parents.” Emily hummed sympathetically. He pointed at his belly. It still felt weird to touch it too openly in front of other people. “This one, though. This is gonna be a good one. I can tell.”
Emily hummed again. “Yeah, I think so, too.”
***
Things were off with Fabian for a few days.
He’d taken the news that Jeremiah was going to move forward with the pregnancy well, hugged Jeremiah, got a little sappy and talked about being an uncle. He and Emily invited Jeremiah over for dinner every night, fussing over him, asking borderline invasive questions about morning sickness and swelling feet and his doctor’s appointments. Emily had breezed easily from surprise into genuine anticipation, but Fabian kept eyeing Jeremiah when he thought Jeremiah wasn’t looking. Fabian wasn’t crafty, though. Jeremiah caught him every time.
He seemed to watch Jeremiah the most when they were having endless planning meetings done, brainstorming with Alex on the line, laughing as Jeremiah raved but still watchful. It wasn’t like Fabian and it made him nervous.
Jeremiah knew he was being paranoid. There was no way Fabian could know anything.
But then, out of nowhere one day-
“So you’re really not going to tell the dad?” Fabian asked.
“Not right now,” Jeremiah hedged. “Soon, though. I’m just-I just need to get some stuff figured out first.”
He knew it was killing Fabian that Jeremiah wouldn’t tell him who it was. Mostly it seemed to hurt his feelings that Jeremiah wouldn’t share his pain or whatever, which was strangely a lot more difficult to deal with than if he was mad at simply being left out of the know, which is what Jeremiah would have been feeling.
“You can’t keep secrets like this from people,” Fabian said sternly.
Jeremiah threw his head back, laughed. Felt deeply unsteady. “Jesus, Fabian. You worked for the government. How can you still not understand that sometimes, you need to keep things from people for the sake of national security?”
“This isn’t national security-related, though.”
“Yes, it is,” Jeremiah muttered, mutinously. Alex would understand. And that just made him feel shittier, thinking about Alex, so he stopped.
He was already thinking about Alex too much. That night in San Francisco, in particular, was haunting him.
He kept getting wisps of sense memories. Alex shoving him into the wall, biting at the hinge of Jeremiah’s jaw, sucking on his tongue as he kissed him. Alex was a surprisingly sloppy kisser, in a weirdly hot way. Like he couldn’t be bothered to make it neat and organized, he was too desperate to taste Jeremiah, get his mouth on every part of him.
He remembered the sound of Alex muttering in Jeremiah’s ear as he fucked him, breathless and intense. Gritting out, “Oh, god,” over and over, almost feverish, “oh my god, Jeremiah.”
Alex hadn’t been able to stop touching him, reaching for Jeremiah again and again throughout the night.
They had fucked for
hours. Even in the moment, it was already like a memory, too hazy and good to be real.
Jeremiah woke up exhausted and sore and dehydrated, Alex wrapped around him and still asleep, snoring softly into Jeremiah’s neck. It was like suspended animation before something horrible happened, right before a bomb going off, slow-mo before the disaster.
Jeremiah had never before or since felt such a deep stab of terror, not even when he found out he was pregnant.
Fabian pulled him out of his thoughts. “Listen, I know you’re dealing with a lot right now, but I just don’t want you to do something that you might really regret later on.”
Raising an eyebrow, Jeremiah clarified, “Like having a baby out of wedlock?”
Fabian laughed. “Wedlock? Yes, Carson, I’m worried about the legitimacy of your unborn child. No, I mean-keeping this from the other dad, just because you’re maybe feeling like it might be hard to tell them right now.”
“That’s not what’s happening, I’m going to tell them. Soon.”
Fabian didn’t look entirely satisfied, but he nodded. He looked at Jeremiah’s belly. “How’s the littlest straight shooter doing today?”
Jeremiah smirked. “Fine.” He still didn’t feel any different. He kept having nightmares that he’d go in in six months and they’d open him up and find nothing but an empty cavity, no baby to be found.
Weird that that was starting to feel like a nightmare, and not the actual having a baby part.
When Fabian looked away, Jeremiah snuck a hand over his stomach. He kept getting this weird urge to touch it lately. The fetus probably couldn’t feel it, but it calmed Jeremiah down a little bit. Saying hello. Reminding himself that he wasn’t alone. There was the two of them, at least. Jeremiah would take care of the little parasite.
He could promise to do his best, at least.
***
That night he stared at his phone for thirty minutes before getting up to pace a few laps around his entire house.
Already his gait was changing, his already short-legged stride becoming ungainly. This pregnancy thing was truly going to suck, it seemed.
He collapsed back on the couch and picked up his phone.
Hey, quick question for you
He hit send and had to take a bunch of deep breaths, his heart pounding.
Maybe Alex wouldn’t respond. He was busy most nights nowadays. It was part of his insufferable work-life balance kick he was always going on about since leaving the politics scene.
What’s up, Jemmy?
Jeremiah hated that nickname. He told Alex to never call him it. Alex ignored him, like he always did when he thought Jeremiah was being unreasonable.
When are you going to finally move to LA you asshole?
It wasn’t quite what he’d meant to say, but it was a fine enough placeholder as Jeremiah worked up his courage.
Why, you miss me?Alex sent through a little blushing emoji. God, this guy. He was the worst there was.
Not even a little and sometimes I even forget your name, Jeremiah typed back immediately, feeling halfway serious and mean about it, piqued that Alex had the gall to be cute right now.
I miss you and Fabian too, Carson
Jeremiah and Fabian. Not just Jeremiah. Of course not just Jeremiah. Why would he miss just Jeremiah. He was being petty, he knew he was, but the feeling was so overpowering he couldn’t begin to fight against it.
Instead, he pressed on: so, does that mean you’re moving to LA soon or what? it’s stupid to make plans with one of us remote all the time. That sounded pretty legitimate. A well-worn whine on Jeremiah’s part.
It’s not that simple.
Jeremiah typed out something horribly sarcastic but before he could hit send, Alex responded again.
I really like it here. I like the city. I feel really happy for the first time in forever.
There was a long pause as the dot-dot-dot pulsed on Jeremiah’s screen. Numbly, Jeremiah deleted his last reply.
I know that’s kind of cliché. finding myself in California like some hippie.
Alex sounded sheepish, even over text. Jeremiah wanted to say LA was California too, and Alex could easily find himself here, and the property market was just as overpriced, Alex would barely notice the difference, but he didn’t.
Jeremiah remembered in vivid detail what it was like those last months Alex was still working in politics. Every time they’d Skyped Alex had looked wan and pale like a Victorian heroine about to succumb to some terrible wasting disease. He wasn’t sleeping for anything. Jeremiah used to wake up to strings of texts about infomercials from him sent at two, three, four in the morning DC-time, when he knew Alex had to get up at five most days. He was even worse than after he split up with Caroline, and Jeremiah and Fabian had been mere moments away from an honest-to-god intervention, then. The final days had been agonizing to watch from afar, knowing Alex had been on the edge of a nervous breakdown and not being able to do anything. He hadn’t been happy, to say the very least.
But now he was. In San Francisco. With Anna, apparently, who Jeremiah had only met twice but had still managed to make a lasting impression on him as very gorgeous and charmingly bubbly and incredibly smart.
He sent through, you’re a huge cliché, so it fits. Then, after a minute, he added, I get it, though.
He did. He’d been the first to move away, after all. It hadn’t quite ended up a massive success, but he treasured the memory of those first few months of freedom, unwinding from the depressing hangover of DC life, learning to sleep in again, getting a tan. Feeling, if not happy, because Jeremiah didn’t really know when he’d last been happy, then at least content, for the first time in a while.
Enjoy your housing crisis and your damp weather then, I guess.
He bit his lip hard, refusing to let it wobble as he watched Alex’s response come in.
I will. And I’ll be in LA soon, stop being dramatic. you’re not on the moon.
Penny put her paw on his knee, whining a little. He put down his phone for a moment and exhaled. Took another deep breath and let it out. Did it a few more times until his throat felt less clogged and he could type out one last response.
I’m glad you’re happy, Alex.
Thanks, Jeremiah.
So that was that, then.
He dropped the phone to his side, ignoring it as it slid off the couch and thumped to the floor. Instead, he brought his hand to his belly and after a brief hesitation let it settle there, pressing firm through the pocket of his ratty hoodie.
He could feel the slight bump, even if it wasn’t especially visible yet. He hadn’t felt any movement inside, which Dr. Stevens told him was relatively normal for a first pregnancy. It was still unnerving knowing something was in there, growing,and he couldn’t see it happening.
He was starting to feel something, though. Gradually. The only way he could describe it was a fierce, almost bloodthirsty protectiveness.
He rubbed lightly at his belly, giving himself the luxury of feeling every spike of pain in his chest for a full two minutes.
Then he forced himself to push it all away.
There were bigger things to worry about, now.
***
Alex was scheduled to come visit from San Francisco in three weeks.
He was still making noises on their conference calls about why it didn’t make sense for him to move yet, most of which sounded like bullshit excuses to Jeremiah, but what did he know, really. He was too distracted to argue much, letting Fabian carry most of the weight of making Alex feel guilty for insisting on having his own independent life from them.
Jeremiah didn’t try to tell Alex about the pregnancy again. In fact, he barely spoke to him at all outside of work. Alex still texted him, the messages becoming successively more tentative as Jeremiah’s frostiness was impossible to ignore, until Alex was only sending Jeremiah a picture of a dog or weird graffiti around his neighborhood every few days or so.
He knew he was being a dick, but the longe
r it went on, the less he knew how to course correct.
Somehow, in the meantime, they continued their work.
He called his parents one afternoon to tell them, cuddling Penny in his lap, embarrassed by how scared he was. It turned out his instincts were half-right. His mom had sounded puzzled but like she was putting in the effort to sound mostly excited; his dad had stonily refused to say anything but, “What do you mean you don’t know who the father is,” coldly, like it was the worst possible thing he could imagine.
Maybe it was for him, Jeremiah allowed, even worse than the male pregnancy part.
He knew his dad would come around eventually and he just needed to give a token performance of being the biggest stubborn dick in the universe first, but it still sucked. He was always so baffled by Jeremiah, and that had only grown when Jeremiah came out, and then when they’d found out he was a carrier and his parents had had to have the painfully uncomfortable conversation about how Jeremiah had to take precautions all the time, different than most other guys, no matter what.
So he didn’t talk much to his parents for a while. He figured they all needed some space to process.
Also in the meantime, Jeremiah started to finally show.
It felt like it happened overnight. He had a feeling he’d been on the cusp for several weeks now, but it was like now that Jeremiah knew, every subtle change in his body was blunt as a klaxon when he looked in the mirror. His stomach was rounding out, which was annoying because he’d already gained a little weight in the last year or so and he’d had big plans to finally get his act together this summer and hit the gym and slim back down to his fighting weight, but that was obviously a pipe dream. His ass and thighs felt sturdier than normal, teetering from thick out into soft, and it was all very unpleasant.
One night he ate two and a half frozen pizzas for dinner and the only reason it wasn’t three was that he’d broken down crying six slices into the third and was sobbing too hard to finish the rest, Penny whining and jumping up to paw at him in distress.
It was a low point.
He did end up eating the rest of it in the morning for breakfast, though.
He refused to be one of those pregnant people who whined about being so fat when really they were just pregnant, and he stuck valiantly to that vow for about five days until he caught sight of himself in the hallway mirror in Fabian’s and was abruptly horrified by the hunching sweaty troll person he saw reflected.
Omega's Joy: An MPREG Romance Page 2