Against my better judgement

Chapter 23: fresh start

Sleep didn't come easy to Flip that night. He had lain, propped up by his own arm as her breaths grew deeper and deeper beneath him, falling into a slumber with her face rested against his chest. He had felt the tickle of her hair against his chin while she nuzzled into him half asleep, determined to find the right nook in his body to lay her head. He had even smiled as she murmured to herself, noises that sounded close to his name slipping from her lips. He had not been granted the same rest, though the source of his insomnia had evaded him. It was not for a lack of tiredness. There was fatigue deep in his bones. And yet, no change of position, no re-plump of his pillow, no night-time mantra could see him off. In the odd moment he caught himself slipping, he would stir sharply as if shaken, often earning a groan from her in response before she drifted back off a moment or two later. He never had trouble sleeping. His body was always too tired and his shifts too long for him to worry about losing sleep. Only in his first few months home from his draft had he struggled, and even then, it wasn't a problem a stiff brandy couldn't fix. Back then, he had worried what he might see if he closed his eyes. Images of the war conjuring behind his eyelids, flashes of bodies and blood. This wasn't like that. This time he feared the darkness of sleep, the dullness of it. Feared the lack of any dream might take him back to the depths of his coma, where a blackness had consumed him for what felt like an eternity. The last time he had closed his eyes, he had risked losing her forever. Tonight felt no different. As if sensing his discomfort, she snuggles closer to him in her sleep, rests her head in the crook of his neck, one leg sprawled across his own and hand draped over his chest, fingers loosely clutching at his bicep. The thoughts of his past ebb away, replaced by the simple joy of his present. He feels the growing tension in his muscles ease, and finally, with the faint scent of her moisturiser filling his nostrils, he feels his eyelids grow heavy.

He rolls onto his stomach with a  groan sometime later that morning, the bedroom cast in a dim brown glow as the daylight seeps through the curtains. He palms the sheets for her instinctively, yearning for the warmth of her company. His palm surveys an empty bed. He is instantly upright, body alert despite his previous lethargy. There is no sign of her in the room, not even a hint of her warmth on the mattress.

            "Sweetheart?" He calls, the worry of his findings seeping into his voice.

He hears a faint murmur from the bathroom, something he can't quite make out between the doors separating them. He bursts from the sheets, still agitated from last night's train of thought as he rushes into the bathroom still in his boxers. His findings do nothing to soothe the panic brewing in his stomach as he finds her bent over the sink, wretches echoing around the basin.

            "Shit, are you alright? What's happened? Are you sick?" His words are almost too fast for her to register as he says them, a hand instantly coming up to rest on her back, the other checking her forehead for any sign of fever.

            "I'm fine, I'm fine," she utters through heavy breaths.

The sound of gushing water fills the silence between them as she turns on the tap and splashes water over her face, thinks of the brewing confession she has been undoubtedly forced into. She had hoped to be granted the privilege of telling him about her pregnancy on her own terms. Clearly, the child had other ideas. If she wasn't so nervous, she might have laughed.

            "You don't look fine sweetheart, you must be sick, maybe it was the food maybe it was—" he blabbers.

            "Flip."

The single utterance of his name is spoken firmly enough to silence him as she lovingly guides his hand away from her face, straightens up and stares at their reflection in the small cabinet mirror. Concern is written all over his expression: the crumple of his brows, the softness of his eyes, the quickness of his breaths. Surely a man who cared about her this much could not condemn her for carrying his child. Though she knows that, feels it deep in her core, the thought of telling him terrifies her. She takes a few moments, stills her breathing before she turns around to face him, lower back resting on the basin as she looks up to his height. A frantic confusion dominates his expression as she takes his hands, holds them in her own, rubs her thumbs in small circles over his calloused palms. There were a million different ways she could tell him, a variety of heartfelt confessions she had practiced in her own time, but in they escape her in the moment. She guides his hands to her still flat stomach, feels his wide fingers spread across her skin and admits in perhaps the softest voice he has ever heard her speak in: