Mr Van der Linde | Dutch x Reader

Year III - Term II

A/N: TW for somnophilia hehe - yes we have skipped a term but there are two parts for the next one so <3

Summary: It's a particularly stressful time, and Dutch tries his hardest to ease the pressure weighing down your shoulders.

Chapter word count: 6,360

You were right. Following the wedding of his older brother, John had asked Abigail to make things official.

On the night of the wedding, you'd stayed in Dutch's room and returned to your own to find that none of its other inhabitants had stayed there that night either, making the situation much easier since you didn't have to make any excuses and could easily lie about sleeping in your assigned room.

Karen had slumped in early the next morning, announcing that she and Sean were back together as an afterthought while she made a hot drink. You'd laughed, unsurprised.

But when Abigail came in, her eyes bright and with a spring in her step, the two of you already knew what'd happened.

Everyone was overjoyed. You'd all been waiting for this moment for a long time, none more hopeful than Abigail about the prospect, and had even gone out to celebrate once you were back at university. John seemed calmer somehow, more focused on university work and with an air of sensibility about him - at least compared to how he was previously.

However, the sweetness of the announcement only lasted so long, before another piece of news made itself known; one shrouded in much more uncertainty and stress.

Abigail was pregnant.

She'd knocked on your door while you and Karen were in there chatting while the boys were at football, and entered with tears down her face and broke the news a month before the Christmas break. She hadn't told John, and it took a full week before she plucked up the courage to do so.

These things happened. It wasn't unheard of for contraception to not do its job, but then Abigail came to you a couple of days after she'd informed John and told you something you hadn't expected.

She was keeping the baby.

You'd assumed she wasn't going to keep it. You'd all assumed that. Even John, who'd been relatively calm when Abigail told him about her positive test, had brushed you off with the reasoning 'it's not like she's going to keep it'.

It was a whole new situation when she told him she wanted to have the baby.

John was eerily quiet, like a ghost haunting the walls of your shared house. He barely left his room, until one evening when the boys convinced him to go the pub and he'd apparently broken down in tears while out. You'd gone to see him the next day, and the two of you hugged it out, and you could see plain as day the fear that'd overtaken his face.

It'd taken time, but everyone had settled into the new normal. Abigail was pregnant. Abigail would continue to be pregnant, all being well, for the next nine months.

She displayed the most immeasurable sense of bravery and level-headedness about it all. In her eyes, the timing was good; she could finish third year, her exams, and even graduate before the baby arrived. Even in the early few weeks of her pregnancy, she'd asked for your and Karen's advice on baby names.

The news had stayed decidedly within your house. Some of Abigail's coursemates knew, apparently, but she hadn't told her family. She was confident that when she told them over Christmas, it would all work itself out.

John was less optimistic.

So much so, that he didn't want to tell anyone about the baby. In fact, when you all returned for second semester, the news came out that his family still didn't know a thing.