Who: Frank Longbottom and Alice Travers What: Baby surprise + some Order business When: 4 May Where: Their home Warnings: Pregnancy Symptoms
Things had never been more hectic for Alice and Frank than they were right now. Even if the war had been declared ‘over’, they both knew differently and working to clear up case files from the recent battle while also staying useful in the Order took its toll from time to time. Not that Alice disliked what they did or what they’d committed themselves to. She rather enjoyed being busy if she were honest. Having something planned for every moment of her day kept her on track and from worrying about things. Like her family or the one she was supposed to be starting with Frank that had seemingly not come to fruition as of yet. She had been told more than once that two years was a long time to be engaged.
Alice sat on the floor in front of the coffee table with a mug of peppermint tea and an unending pile of cold case files. After the discussion with the Order about looking for powerful and dangerous artefacts, she’d started looking for something that would allow them the excuse to go digging at St. Mungo’s for more information. The tea was more for her stomach than her nerves though. She’d been feeling off lately but hadn’t pinpointed why.
Two years was a long time to be engaged, yes. That engagement had lasted as long as their dating had beforehand. Those were things that Frank knew, but he and Alice had also decided at the start of said engagement that they weren't going to get married in the middle of a war. While their might have been some sort of poetry to such things- drastic times, romantic measures- in the end, they had wanted to focus on ending the dangers that surrounded them before they turned their focus otherwise.
But the war had (ostensibly) been over for a few months now, and Frank would have been lying if he'd said he hadn't wanted to press the issue a bit more.
Emerging from the kitchen with his own mug of tea, Frank eased himself down to the floor across the coffee table from Alice. He set his mug aside for now- it was still too hot- and instead reached for one of the case files that she hadn't yet looked over. "Anything good yet?"
“Not quite,” Alice replied, not looking up from the file in her hands until she’d confirmed it was useless and added it to the reject pile. She looked at her fiance then. “But there has to be something that will work. The DMLE certainly isn’t so efficient that they’ve put away all artefact cases by now.” She made a face of displeasure and held a hand to her abdomen.
He was still looking through that first case file he'd pulled, but Frank noted his spot with a finger when he saw Alice move- even if she was just discarding one file and probably reaching for another one. (What? He liked looking at her.) "The DMLE is many things, but efficient isn't one of them." But then again, who had time for efficiency during a war?
The face she pulled caught his notice, and Frank raised an eyebrow- not alarmed, yet, but curious. "Alright there?"
“Yes, well… maybe we'll get caught up soon enough.” Alice took a few sips of her tea before the cramps finally subsided. “I'm okay. Just have been having some stomach pains recently. Not sure why. My head is hurting more than usual too.” She raised an eyebrow in thought, but dismissed the mystery and went back to leafing through the file in front of her.
As Alice listed off some symptoms- and rather nonchalantly, at that- Frank's eyebrows furrowed and he eyed her somewhat suspiciously. "Have you gone to St Mungo's?" He had a feeling he knew the answer to that question- and it likely wouldn't be the one he wanted, either. "Because you know they're equipped to deal with things like headaches and stomach pains."
“Please,” she shook her head dismissively. “Nausea and headaches are no reason to go see a healer.” Truthfully, Alice would probably have to be crawling along the ground in severe pain to feel the need to go see a healer. “It’s probably just a little bug; it’ll be gone so-” Alice felt her lunch trying to come back up her throat and was up and running to the loo with her hand over her mouth before she was leaning over the toilet.
Frank winced visibly as Alice cut herself off and headed toward the loo at a faster clip than would have otherwise been indicated by healthy. There was no hiding what she was doing there, though he waited several moments before he stood, retrieved a glass of water from the kitchen, and moved toward the loo after her. He stood in the open doorway, glass in hand ready for her. "So about St Mungo's," he deadpanned.
For some reason the truth of her situation seemed to hit her while she was sitting there on the floor of the loo and she glanced up at Frank. “I think I’m pregnant,” Alice said plainly and there it was - the truth of the matter staring her (and him) in the face. She probably would have figured it out sooner if she wasn’t so completely against having kids right now that the thought didn’t even cross her mind.
The glass fell from his hand.
It was something of a miracle that Frank was able to stop its descent with a charm before the whole thing smashed and splashed onto the floor. The whole time, he'd barely blinked, and he hadn't looked away from Alice.
Pregnant. The word came rushing toward him, heavy laden with expectations and demands. But what could he say or do? The deed- such as it was- was already done. There was no changing it- and would he have wanted to, if the option was presented to him?
Well, that wasn't his choice to make, in the end.
"Alright."
Frank almost dropping the glass didn’t really phase her much; she was more concerned about what they would do. For starters she could get off the floor. Alice took the glass he’d brought in and washed her mouth out at the sink, drinking the rest before she turned to her fiance. “Alright?” She certainly wasn’t alright. No, she didn’t know it for certain, but she had a good idea at this point and she was basically terrified. “That’s it?”
He watched her, somewhat warily, but didn't yet move from his spot in the doorway. "I'm not sure what else there is to say, Alice," Frank admitted, finally. He reconsidered for a moment, then offered a different take. "Alright, well, maybe that's not entirely true. I can think of about two dozen things to say, but none of them much matter until I know what you want to do about this."
Alice raised an eyebrow, leaning against the counter next to her. “Well then say them. I want to know what you think, y’know.” She wasn’t sure why he was saying that she had to make a decision first. They were in this together; she certainly didn’t get pregnant on her own. “This affects the both of us, so we need to make any decisions together, Frank.”
He was hardly trying to imply that she'd done any of this on her own- or, worse, that she was somehow at fault for this. No, Frank knew that they had gotten to this point together, but even knowing that, he still thought that it was Alice's prerogative to make the decision about how they moved forward.
"I don't get to decide whether or not you're keeping it, Alice," he said, finally. "Yeah, it affects both of us, but it's your body. So this part, right now? That's for you to choose. I'll support you either way- one-hundred percent, I swear it. But I can't tell you what to do."
Alice watched him for a moment after he spoke, walking forward right after and wrapping her arms around his waist. If she hadn’t already known that he was amazing, this certainly would have confirmed it. “Thank you,” she said into his shoulder, holding on a moment longer before pulling back to look at his face. “I want to know what you want too, though. I don’t want to make the decision without you. Obviously this is not where I expected us to be right now, but I’m not just going to say ‘no’ because it wasn’t what I planned for.”
Frank's arms wrapped around Alice in return, all too happy to keep her pulled close to him. This wasn't an easy conversation, but their closeness helped.
Though she also seemed pretty well determined to draw his answer out of him, no matter how he wanted to hear her own first.
"The thought of being a dad scares the piss out of me," he admitted, finally. "But I also make a living of doing things that would scare normal people, yeah?" Technically they both did, come to that. "If you want to keep it, I think we'd figure out how to be pretty fantastic parents, Alice. And if you don't, then we're still us and we're still going to get married and if we have this conversation again in five or ten years then maybe the answer will be different."
“It scares me too,” she admitted, glad at least that they were on the same page there. They hadn’t even gone through with their wedding - in no small part because of her - so how the bloody hell was she supposed to be a mother on top of that? And she did believe him, mostly, but it was hard to fully comprehend at that time. “You really wouldn’t resent me if I said I wasn’t ready and you actually were?” She already knew how he would answer, but she couldn’t stop from asking anyhow.
"I wouldn't resent you for that, Alice," Frank insisted. He assumed, too, that she'd known how he would respond- but he understood that she'd want to hear those words aloud all the same. But how could he answer any other way? He'd been willing- still was willing- to fully give up the decision-making process to her, and to go along with whatever eventuality she desired. He couldn't do that if there was anything even resembling resentment in his heart.
“Okay,” she said and placed her hands against his chest. “I will need to sleep on it, if that’s alright. Maybe a few days? I’m not sure. I suppose I also need to confirm it.” She hated going to St. Mungo’s, but it was necessary at this point. “Besides, I could kill two birds with one stone and get the official request on the cold case while I’m there. We just have to find one before I go in.” And that was that. Business as usual until she had a definite answer and a few days to consider a new reality.
"You can sleep on it as long as you need." Well, hopefully not too long- not months long, anyway, since then the decision would be pretty well out of their hands. But a few days could be spared easily enough. Frank offered a tentative smile. "Back to the search then, Travers." He leaned down and pressed a kiss to her forehead. "Let's go."