Entangled

Chapter 9

A plus sign? One line or two? Some other arcane symbol he would need to ask Aleister Black about? Seth isn't sure what he's supposed to be looking for. He's seen plenty of commercials for at-home pregnancy tests, but he never paid much attention to them before. Now that he's faced with three of them on the bathroom vanity, he wishes he had paid more attention. A snide voice in the back of his head adds, Your exes probably wish you had too.

Since he doesn't know what to look for on the testing sticks, so carefully laid out on tissues that they remind him of an artist's favourite brushes, Seth looks at Becky instead. Then he realizes he's not sure what to look for in her expression either. A pregnancy—no matter the duration, human or wolf or in between—would sideline her career for months, but he also knows she's always wanted children. Will she see this as a warning to be more careful, or a sign that it's time for her to focus on her desire for a family? We should have discussed this sort of shit, Seth thinks as he notices a twitch in her jaw. "What... um, what are we looking for?" he stammers. "Symbol-wise, I mean."

"Three for three," Becky murmurs, pointing to the first stick. She has the boxes set up in some order that must make sense to her, and she points to each stick in turn. "Two lines. Turns blue. Plus sign."

It all sounds like some sort of enigmatic haiku to Seth, but he follows her finger to the various indicator windows. Two lines across one, a blue tint to the second, a plus sign on the third. "So they're all positive?" he asks. He doesn't care how stupid he sounds; this is an instance where he wants to be absolutely sure he knows what's going on.

Becky nods so jerkily Seth is almost surprised her head doesn't tumble off her shoulders and fall to the floor. "Yeah. I mean, they aren't as good as a witch or a test in a doctor's office, but...."

Seth can't help but think of a slot machine with all its symbols whirring past. These three don't match, but they've combined in a way that makes Becky eerily silent; instead of hitting a jackpot and winning big, she's lost something, even if she isn't quite sure what it is yet. Even when she's quiet, he can normally hear the beat of her pulse or some sound she makes because she's fidgety, but not now. Stepping behind her, Seth wraps his arms around her and rests his chin on her head. "But I'm a werewolf too," he points out softly. "The other times you took—"

"No." Becky saves him from trying to find the words; she's never had a problem with bluntness. "Any of my other pregnancy scares were with humans."

He can't stop staring at the sticks and their mysterious symbols, but when Becky leans back against him and sighs, Seth remembers that this isn't about him. "What were you looking for?" he asks softly. He's not sure if he has the right to ask that and he knows Sasha should be included in this conversation, but Sasha's also made it very clear that she will be a proud aunt to any children born to her Four Horsewomen sisters, so she's biased.

"I told you." Becky doesn't sound terse as she gestures back to the testing sticks. "Two lines on the first one means it's positive. The second one goes blue if it's positive. The digital one has a plus sign—"

"That's not what I asked." Kissing the top of her head, Seth reconsiders. "Well, it's not what I meant, anyway. What answer were you hoping for?" When he feels her tense up in his arms, he adds, "There's no wrong answer, Becks. I'm just trying to understand it from your point of view...."

Becky turns around in his arms and sighs, her breath warm on his chest. "I don't know," she says softly. "I mean, I know I want kids—eventually. But I always figured I'd have time to plan. That I'd be done wrestling and doing whatever I do next and...." She twines her arms around him and strokes his back, much the same way she idly pets Sasha's dog when they're hanging out at her house. "I guess I just never thought it would be like this."

"Or with me." The words tumble out before Seth even realizes he thought them, but they taste too true to regret. Becky might not be as religious as her parents, but her beliefs still matter to her; he knows she wants her future children to have a solid family base.

"Seth." Becky steps back, reaching for his face. She doesn't kiss him into silence, though, the way they use sex to avoid some of their problems. She holds his gaze steadily, and he's not surprised to see some tears glistening in her eyes. "That's not what I meant and you know it. I just always felt like I was smart enough to avoid an unplanned pregnancy, but I know it's not about being smart or even careful. Things happen. I just always thought I'd be prepared, which is a laugh, because when has my life ever gone according to plan?" She laughs softly, but it's brief and bittersweet.

After kissing her forehead, Seth goes still, lips pressed to her skin. "But that's not always a bad thing, right? If your life had gone according to plan, you wouldn't have been in NXT with me and Sasha; you probably would have been on the main roster for years by that point, so you would probably have met someone else by then and we wouldn't have this."

This. Calling it a threesome feels crass. Relationship feels too bland.Pack works, but it falls far short of everything they are to and with each other. Holding Becky close, Seth tries to steady his breath. He knows the guys in the locker room think it's all about sex, especially with Sasha; to their credit, they're polite enough not to talk about it in front of her husband. But it's so much more than the ways their bodies fit together.

"I know." Becky buries her face in his chest and he hates that he can't see the look in her eyes. She knows how to lie to him with smiles and words and even with touches, but never her gaze. "But a pregnancy might take all that away." When she lets out a long breath, it seems to curl around him like smoke. "But there's still the witch...."

Seth steps back and tries to hold her at arm's length so he can read her gaze, but Becky's already heading back to the vanity, tossing the empty test boxes into the plastic bag. How many times had one of his exes brought a pregnancy test home just like that, cloaked in a simple shopping bag, and he was none the wiser? Because I didn't WANT to know, Seth thinks. Surely there must have been signs: a box in the trash, a watch left on the vanity, an instruction sheet fallen to the floor. But now I do. It's not the only thing he wants from the equation, but he knows he's only a part of it, a third.

When Becky finally meets his gaze, he can see the brightness that belies her anxiety, using cheer as camouflage. "We should really wake Sasha up and let her know. The witch might be calling soon...."

He opens his mouth to reply, but wisdom keeps the words back. As much as he wants this moment to stay between the two of them, he knows it's not right to exclude Sasha. Is this how it's going to be now? he wonders, watching Becky cast a last look at the pregnancy tests on the vanity; since she hasn't swept them into the garbage, he guesses she wants to show them to Sasha too. Two and one, not three? As much as Sasha would be involved with the child, she wouldn't be a biological relative; as much as he would want to support Becky through the pregnancy, he would never be able to understand the changes her body was going through the way Sasha could. Is someone always going to be left out? The whole point of being a pack—of being together—was for a sense of unity, but maybe three is a magic number after all.