InsaneJournal

Gansey didn’t remember getting into the Pig, or how fast he even drove to the store. He didn’t remember getting out, shoving his keys in his pocket, walking into the store. He didn’t remember the absent wave that he gave the worker that greeted him.

But now he stood in front of the display of pregnancy tests and it was like he’d teleported here. His vision, blurred at the edges, narrowed in on the entire aisle and he had to take a deep breath. He’d expended all of his pep talk for trying to calm Blue down via text, and now he had to find a little courage of his own.

They’d talked about this. But then they’d also given themselves another year. It was also possible this was a false alarm, but somehow it felt like a weird prophecy that his child would follow just months after Adam and Ronan’s.

The internet couldn’t give him a solid answer on exactly which test was best. Every single one of them had pros and cons, good reviews and bad. Nothing that could be trusted. Gansey shoved his phone back in his pocket before opting to just collect one of every single box. It couldn’t hurt to be overly prepared, right?

When he dumped all twenty-six boxes on the counter to check out, the cashier gave him a look and all Gansey could manage was a weak chuckle and shrug. The next few minutes was a continued blur, paying, feeling the heaviness of that bag in his fingers, slipping back into the Pig, revving the engine.

He didn’t believe in any specific sort of God, not in the way that Ronan did, but when he felt the Pig hum happily, there was a relieved sigh. The sigh of a man that could not afford to have his car break down now, of all times. It was like the Pig had felt his desperation, and didn’t torture him as it drove smoothly all the way back home. There was not going to be any way to hide what was in the shopping bag he carried if Ronan or Adam were home, but by some strange chance, the pets were the only beings he ran into on his path to find Blue.

Gansey held out the bag, “I wasn’t sure which one to get.”

Blue regretted not going with Gansey to the store. Not because he bought every pregnancy test possible and she could have prevented that, as evidenced by the heavy bag in his hand, but that she was left alone to panic. And she didn't like panicking. She liked being sensible—maybe she missed her period because of a new diet, or because she was stressed, or the fact that she was exercising in new and strange ways (throwing more axes and shoveling more holes for posts now that waitressing was out of the picture.) It honestly could have been her body giving her the middle finger for funsies, which she was also not okay with. Vagueness never sat well with her.

But the spiral she was currently in could have been easily stopped if she had just said wait. Instead she paced around their room, realized she was going to have to pee on some sticks, and her bladder felt suddenly empty. By the time Gansey came back—and okay, a small nervous part of her worried that Gansey might need his own breather and wouldn't be back so soon—she had torn through half a gallon of water, which Chorizo was currently licking the condensation off the side from.

Blue shot up to her feet, stared at Gansey in her little shock-awe-concern, then the bag, then back at him. "I don't think I drank enough water for all of those," Blue said, immediately. Because if she thought about why she needed them, she was going to freak out again. She wasn't supposed to be pregnant yet. But then again, she didn't really know when they had Owen. Maybe it was always supposed to be this way. But why didn't anyone tell her?

Nothing made sense, and she was ripping the bag from his hands and pulled out the first one. It didn't matter which. "Nobody should panic. It could be nothing." Even that sounded like a lie to herself.

“It could be nothing,” Gansey nodded, trying to agree with her to be helpful. He’d learned years ago - not long into their relationship - never to tell her to calm down, so agreeing felt-- better, in this case. Softer.

But he was still Gansey, and still at least somewhat determined to help her through any panic she was feeling even if she insisted there was no panic. He wanted to reach out to her, but just followed behind and let her exist in her own space for this moment as they both worked through their internal panic. “But if it’s not nothing, that’s okay. We’ll figure it out either way, and we have lots of time to adjust to not nothing.”

Gansey already knew on his end that if this did turn out to be nothing, he’d have to push away any disappointment. There was no question that there would be disappointment with nothing, which was a far cry from just the nerves and anxiety of not nothing.

Blue knew what Gansey was doing. Normally, she'd tease him, say something like "don't patronize me" but then kiss so that he knew that she wasn't actually annoyed. They had learned a lot from one another over the years, which combined with weirdness and memories made it almost a decade. She tried to not think about that, not right now. Or maybe right now. Maybe it was easier to know that whatever this nothing was or wasn't, she had Gansey with her no matter what.

She realized that in all her quiet messy contemplation, she was still holding the box. "Yeah, I mean if it's not nothing, and it is something, then we know that the something isn't nothing and we can make plans for something rather than nothing and—ugh," Blue groaned. She was confusing herself by trying to play it cool. She probably should have ran to the bathroom immediately. But despite the water consumption and her nerves, she thought her bladder was betraying her by not needing to go.

"Let's just say what it is, because I'm just confusing myself, and I know you're trying not to panic. And I'm trying not to panic. But we kind of already talked about this so it's nothing to panic about. It's just something that is happening, which is a baby. I might be pregnant. So we shouldn't freak out but we also shouldn't get our hopes up," Blue said, flipping the box over for the instructions like they were going to somehow be different. Notably, she realized she said we when it came to hope because after everything she had been a little—a lot—excited for the possibility, too.

"I was a surprise baby, you know."

Gansey followed her train of thought even if it took a second, because he wasn’t going to force her to say the words before she was ready, so he just nodded. And nodded again. He had to play it cool even if on the inside he was ready to burst. With excitement? Nerves? Anxiety? All of the above. He felt this same way on the morning of his wedding, where he knew it’d work out as long as they had each other, but there was still always that what if something goes wrong feeling in the back of his mind.

He’d probably always be like that. They could still have children back home, they could learn how to circumvent things. But there it was outside of the bubble of a protected home they’d built here. It felt different.

“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me, given who your father is.” How does one plan to have a child with a tree-spirit? “I suppose we should be glad this isn’t ancient egypt? Their method for pregnancy tests was to pee on barley or wheat, because the hormones would cause it to sprout quickly. And shockingly that was about 75% effective.”

Somehow the fact did something weird to her nerves. Made them less so? Maybe it was just the idea that Gansey with his depth of knowledge and strange historic trivia was so him that it calmed her. This was unbelievably working. "Good thing we're out of barley and wheat and I can pee on this very modern, 99.9% effective pregnancy test," Blue said, holding up the box where it claimed its accuracy.

"I'm just gonna—" Blue gestured toward the hallway's half-bath because she couldn't do anything else until they knew. "I should use more than one, right? Like a few of them, just in case. I mean, there's that point-one that could be wrong. And sometimes they only have the two lines which feels like it ups the margin of error, you know? And then there is the digital readout, but if you get it wrong on the first shot, then the digital readout is going to say inconclusive and I will just need to do it again."

Oh, she was rambling. She really was. The nerves were back, or never left. She started to walk toward the bathroom, and wildly gestured to Gansey to follow her. "Just tell me more facts outside the door. It will help. I think."

Gansey nodded. He felt like that was all he was doing, but at the same time that felt like all he could do, in this case. “Battery might be dead. There’s always that point-one percent chance leftover. And we do like to prove things wrong, in fact I’d say it’s one of your best traits.” The pair of them were very good at breaking the mold, it would be just their luck that they’d have to go through several pregnancy tests to get an accurate result.

He did follow her, keeping up until they reached the door of the bathroom. Before she could go in, Gansey caught her arm and pulled her back just a step, into his chest. He placed a kiss to the top of her head, and just existed for a moment. In the quiet of the hallway, Gansey gave them just a few seconds of peace in an effort to ground their anxiety, “Whatever the result is, we’ll be okay. If it’s no, then we’ll just move on and look at this as experience for later.”

Another pause, and he smiled into her hair. “If it’s yes, then we’ll pester Ronan into adding on another addition to the house and I can finally buy that minivan everyone keeps talking me out of.”

Blue was taking big steadying breaths, bracing herself for the bathroom of all places, which she would probably never look at the same again. She couldn't be afraid of a bathroom, this was going to be so ridiculous if—oh. Oh. Gansey pulled her into him, kissed the top of her head. And she needed that. Somehow he knew she needed it. Her check against his chest, the box clutched tightly in her hand, his cologne a welcome reprieve to inhale to calm her down. It was a balancing act, a way to put her steady from the warmth of him and the cold chaos of what she was about to do.

"I know, I know," Blue said, calmly, before slowly peeling herself away from him. She gave him a concerned little worried look, which morphed into a little disgusted. "If the minivan looks like a box on wheels, I'm allowed to make fun of it." Knowing Gansey it would be safe and full of features for their little family and.. Blue was getting ahead of herself. One step at a time.

"Okay, I'll be, uh, right back," Blue said in a rush, before throwing herself into the bathroom and slamming the door shut. It was like ripping off a band aid. A weird, complicated, and possibly glorious band aid.

She felt like she was in the bathroom forever. Instructions that were simple felt foreign when she read them. There was some kind of procrastination from her bladder when put on the spot. She huffed a lot, then ran the tap so that Gansey couldn't hear her go even though she asked him to stay by the door. When she was done, she stuck only her arm out the door, holding the pregnancy test. "One down."

Any other situation and Gansey might have made a little joke about being married to Blue, and that running the water was unnecessary, but he also didn’t want to cause any extra stress, so he let the silence speak for itself.

Well, not true silence. She’d requested more facts, and it may have taken him a minute to think of something because his brain had opted to forget every fun-fact he had about history locked away in his brain.

“Um,” He took the pregnancy test without complaint, just a little noise that-- Oh, so this was very real. Okay. “When Alexander the Great was a young boy, he was chastised by a teacher for burning too much expensive incense at the altar to the Gods. When he grew up, he conquered the area where the incense was made and had about 14 tons of it sent home to that teacher with a note that told him to stop short-changing the gods. It’s not a pregnancy fact, but one of my favorites.” How long was this supposed to take? One minute? Five?

​​"Do you think if we ordered 14 tons of incense, someone would take it as a mid-life crisis and a fun prank? We don't really have gods to pray to, and to be honest, I don't think they would care," Blue said as she completed another test. This one seemed a little off-brand, where the results showed a baby face or a baby face with a line through it. A little more direct but also a lot of room for error. How opaque did the line need to be to be considered not pregnant?

By the time she had emptied her bladder, she was five deep in the pregnancy tests and holding them like a hand-held fan or series of dealt cards in a poker game as she exited the bathroom. "All out. I have to reload," Blue said, trying for levity and knowing she didn't want to even consider that any of the tests were ready to view. She stared at Gansey, and a little worried line creased between her brows.

"I've also had some time to think in there," Blue added as if it wasn't obvious where there was. "And I think, I think I want it to be—I want it to be positive. I started to think about what it would mean if it was negative, and I started to get sad. Because even if I'm terrified, it's because of other things and not because of you or the future of whatever our family becomes."

Blue leaned into Gansey's chest, still clutching her other sticks like her life depended on it. "Maybe it's a peace of mind thing, I'll probably be freaking out in two minutes. So enjoy this while you can," Blue said, just as the first pregnancy test beeped in Ganseys hand.

Gansey’s smile was a slow blossom on his face, he’d been doing his own similar brand of thinking while out in this hallway, waiting for her. He paced a little, talked silently to himself, weighed pros and cons.

Almost everything came away in the pros, but the main con being-- if Blue wasn’t ready, they weren’t ready, period. He knew he could handle that, was solid in the belief that they would be together for a lifetime and if they weren’t ready now, they might be in a few years. He was probably a little too optimistic when that smile grew as she was honest.

“That makes it a lot easier, then, for--” He turned over the test and the pregnant sign flashed on the little screen and stayed there, no not appearing anywhere to be seen. He wrapped his free arm around her shoulder and tried to be a calming force despite the bubbling excitement and anxiety in his stomach. “Freaking out yet? Or should I give you another minute?”

Blue tried to keep her anxious bouncing to a minimum, as Gansey looked at the test. And now that she was watching him for any sign of an answer, she felt that her 'freaking out' was building. But so was this strange sense of calm, this certainty that no matter what happened they would be okay. Blue took a deep breath at his question, and shook her head.

"I don't need any more time. I'm ready," Blue said, stretching up on her tip-toes to kiss him, because that felt right. The last one before things officially changed. It felt right, but this also felt right too—grabbing his hand, pulling it down to her eye level, and taking a second, then two, to read the results. She didn't react immediately, mosty because she wasn't surprised. As much as she tried to be, as much as she didn't want to have expectations or be disappointed, Blue knew. A hundred pregnancy tests wouldn't change her mind.

"Are you excited to be a dad?" Blue asked, her grin stretching wider. "Are you freaking out? Do you need another minute? Maybe I should use a few more, before we start telling people."

Gansey’s grin was probably all that needed to be said, but he was never one to leave well enough at that. “I am. I’m not going to be able to last long before telling Adam and Ronan but, I can handle a few more minutes of just us.” To drive his point home, Gansey leaned in to kiss her again, and again. One more for good measure.

He took a second to throw the pregnancy tests in their shopping bag before briefly, very briefly eying Blue up as Gansey debated throwing her over a shoulder. He quickly remembered the earlier nausea and decided it was probably best to keep both of her feet on the ground, but dove in for another kiss instead. “Let’s go for a drive? Just the two of us. Then we can tell people.”