Fall Into Me

.I.

"You busy?" Avery poked her head around the door frame to Minerva's home office. It was just after eight in the evening and Minerva was packing up.

"Not any more," she said, shutting down the desktop and standing, stretching out her back and arms. "Everything okay?" She asked, walking around her desk and wrapping Avery in a warm hug.

Avery was tense and Minerva pulled back.

"Avery, love," she touched her cheek gently, studying the crease in the woman's brow, the way her teeth worried her lip. "What's wrong?"

"I need to talk to you," Avery said quietly, voice firm.

"Of course," Minerva replied, leading her to the sofa set in her office. "What is it?"

Avery didn't respond for a moment, and Minerva watched her face.

"I'm pregnant," she announced. Minerva felt her breathing hitch and her eyes widened slightly.

"You're... pregnant?" She asked, brow furrowing in confusion. "But that's...," she trailed off and anger began filtering into her body. "Did someone touch you? Has someone hurt you?"

Before she could begin seething, Avery shook her head.

"No! No, nothing like that," she protested.

"Then how?" Minerva asked, the anger fading away and leaving her confused. "I can't get you pregnant. Unless you're sleeping with someone else."

"No, Minerva, not that either."

"Avery," Minerva was lost, chuckling a little in her confusion.

"I went through IVF," Avery revealed and Minerva pulled her hands away from Avery. "I've always wanted children and-,"

"But I don't."

"Minerva, please, you'll change your mind, I know you will, but we're not getting any younger so I thought I'd go ahead and do it."

"Change my mind?" That anger began creeping back into her. "Avery, I despise children. I don't want children, I never have wanted children. I told you this the moment we got together."

"Yes but, imagine it, a little one running around-,"

"Taking away my sleep, my time, my energy, my money," Minerva listed. "Being loud, obnoxious, spoilt, bratty, messy, destroying my things, ruining my mental health, no, no I don't want children."

"Please, I dont ask you for much."

"Don't ask me for much?" Minerva stood then, "is that a joke? Avery, I have changed almost every part of me for you. I have become someone I barely recognise, someone my friends barely know, to please you. How dare you say you don't ask me for much!"

"You knew I always wanted children, you knew this would be a part of our lives eventually!"

"But I didn't want children!"

"So I had to sacrifice my hopes and dreams for you?!"

"I sacrificed who I am!" Minerva shouted. "I haven't been in my playroom in eighteen months because of you! I have had boring, unfulfilling vanilla sex to keep you happy!"

"Sex isn't everything in a relationship, Minerva."

"Maybe not to you, but it is to me," she snapped. "I thought I could give that part of me up because I love you, because I saw myself spending part of my life with you. Not all of it, not by a long shot, but enough of it that I could shelve that part of me for a time."

"I am having this baby, Minerva!"

"Then we are done!" Minerva hissed. "You betrayed me! I didn't want children! You used my money to do something I never wanted!"