Hers To Bear - An SVU fic

29.The heart of the matter

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, whatever your celebration, I wish it well. Picking up where we left off so let's jump to it, thanks guys, for being awesome! Enjoy!

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While Olivia had been so engrossed in her phone calls with Barba and then Amanda, she paid no mind to Brian who had gone to the bathroom to grab aspirin for his headache.

He immediately turned on the light switch upon entering from her bedroom and went straight for the medicine cabinet, finding the aspirin and shook two out into his hand before returning the bottle to its shelf in the cabinet and closed the mirror, then tossed the pills into his mouth. He was reaching for the glass that sat beside the sink when he noticed the test stick in the sink where Olivia had dropped it and absently forgot to retrieve.

"What the hell?" he asked himself as he picked it up knowing exactly what it was, his mind flashing back to just last July when Olivia told him she was pregnant with the child she would eventually miscarry, but why does she have a pregnancy test? He wondered. Especially since she'd told him that she couldn't conceive again after complications from losing their son.

He dry-swallowed the aspirin in his mouth as he reached into the sink and picked up the test, turning it so that he could read the result window and feeling himself become lightheaded when he saw that it was positive.

"You gotta be fucking kidding me!" he exclaimed disbelievingly, closing his eyes as he let out a sigh of exasperation. "Is this what she wanted to talk to me about?" he wondered, taking a seat on the tub when it felt like he would collapse under his own weight at any moment.

"We're havin a kid!" he was too stunned to say much more. After making his way back to the living room, he interrupted Olivia who was still on the phone with Amanda and gave her some excuse about needing to get back to work, she had no clue that it was his day off and thought nothing of it, just kissed him goodbye and continued talking to Amanda, never suspecting that he'd seen the test.

Brian went back to his apartment after leaving Olivia's, his mind reeling. To say that he was shocked was a huge understatement; he didn't even know where to begin but he knew one thing, he needed a drink and he headed to his kitchen to grab the whiskey from the cupboard. He was raising a glass filled with the brown liquid to his lips when he realized how insanely early in the morning it still was and poured it down the drain instead. He rain his hands over his short-cropped hair and took a deep breath that he let out very shakily as his mind went back to the test.

"She's pregnant again... How did we let that happen?" he asked himself as he absently picked up the bottle. "Oh, I don't know... could have something to do with the way you and her have been fucking without protection like rabbits on ecstasy since you been back!" he took a swig from the bottle, feeling the burn in his chest before he realized that he was drinking and quickly closed the bottle and put it back in the cupboard.

"I'm gonna be a father."

***

Olivia's apartment, later that morning...

"You are just the sweetest smellin thing on earth!" Amanda cooed to Noelle after planting a barrage of feather-light kisses on her daughter's tiny cheeks and now kissed her little nose eliciting a grin from the baby.

"We won't have much more time together Babydoll" she said to Noelle who now lay contentedly in her arms, her huge blue eyes looking up at Amanda while she sat in the nursery rocking chair holding her. Amanda had just given her her morning bath and dressed her and now sat contentedly talking to the infant.