Yowzah Oneshot Collection (1)

95(G)

He shows her around their new place like it’s a newly discovered universe, only better. After making their reservation on the balcony he’d gone a bit overboard, admittedly. He’d managed to talk the restaurant construction team into building the cottage they’re now standing in. He tells her all this because he’s so excited he can’t help but ramble as she wanders around their living-room - their living-room! - taking it all in.

“And then I pulled one of the builders aside, scribbled down a list of things I knew you’d like and coordinates on where to find them, so you might recognise some of the furniture. Just had enough time to stick some food in the fridge, then head back to make your Christmas present and change into a proper suit before you came to. So.” He clasps his hands together, grinning at her. He’s untouchable tonight, he’s feeling about a thousand years younger, he can’t wait for her to kiss him for this. “What do you think?”

She’s standing apart from him, too far away, looking not at their new home but out of the window at the twilight and the Towers. When she turns to him there’s a smile on her face, but it’s the wrong one. Too sad.

“I can’t do this.”

The spark buzzing around his head short-circuits. He blinks, smarting, scrambling to read her. All through dinner she’d teased him with a laugh in her voice about his inability to sit still, rolling off predictions of the bizarre hobbies he’d take up here to entertain himself, wagering bets on how long he’d last before he went totally screaming insane by reason of domesticity. Now she’s looking at him like she finally believes him and like, somehow, that’s so much worse.

“Oh.” He stings all over, like fingertips pressing on a bruise.

“I’m sorry,” she offers desperately. “There’s something I haven’t told you.”

“Oh?” Something else, he thinks blithely, something new about herself that she hasn’t shown him yet because she thinks he’ll mind. Given that he’s just followed her around the galaxy like a puppy as she tried to murder a husband he didn’t know she had and his reaction was to invite her to move in, he’s momentarily stumped as to why she looks so torn up.

No. Her voice is in his head, all around it, the tingle of mental connection like water rushing in his ears. She grabs onto his thoughts and throws them aside, and he tries to keep his unfurling worry where she can’t see it because there are very few things she has ever communicated to him in this way, in this silent, sacred space that no-one else can enter.

Despite their ridiculous inability to say things out loud, despite their boundless, time-halting love manifesting far too often in fights and tears and distance, they have their moments of transcendence. As her mind reaches out and wraps around his the way only hers can, the way no human could ever hope to understand, a surge hits him like a punch to the stomach. There’s no language that possesses the words he could use to explain the feeling, the discovery of a faint hum at the frays of her mind that’s new and separate and unique, but suddenly he just knows. They are not alone here.

She withdraws completely before his thoughts can cling to her, and the moment passes. She says it out loud to make it real, to bring it out into the universe.

“I’m having a baby.”

The words suck the air out of the room. He wants to ask, because he doesn’t want to make the assumption he may have before today, but words have failed him.

“Yours,” she offers, a whisper, because of course she always knows. He didn’t know that was the answer he was hoping for until the word spins him dizzy with relief.

“How…” He swallows. His throat feels like it’s full of tar. “How long?”

“Four months. After Manhattan.”