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On Ryan and Spencer’s third day of staying with her, Ginger sends Spencer and the twins to the store while Ryan is napping. He tries to protest, begging her to at least let him wait till Ryan is awake, but she insists that they have to be sure they make it before the stores close, and her son reluctantly agrees. She has a theory to test.
The first thing is, Ginger is pretty sure Ryan is pregnant. It had taken her a while to notice, but the second the thought had crossed her mind all the little things started adding up. She had been sitting in the kitchen, drinking coffee, when her boys had walked in, both looking exhausted. She had offered them coffee, and Spencer had accepted graciously. Ryan, on the other hand, had shaken his head, wrinkling his nose a little, which was very unlike him since that boy had been a caffeine addict from the moment he hit middle school, and she knows because she remembers. He had muttered something about not feeling good, and she had shrugged. She had thought, vaguely, that the only time she herself had ever denied coffee was when she was pregnant, and then she froze. Suddenly, everything had made sense. The way he was sleeping all the time, and not complaining about the (admittedly, kind of large) portions she likes to give him. Also, oddly, the sense of calm he had about him. Ryan has always been a fidgety little thing, but for this whole trip he’s been pretty relaxed. She was like that with her second pregnancy. She had almost no anxiety the entire time, just felt calm and collected. She really hopes it’s like that for Ryan, if he is pregnant. He could use it, poor thing. She could have said something to them in that moment when she had realized, but-
The second thing is, she’s pretty sure Ryan doesn’t know yet. He isn’t acting like he knows, at the very least, and while he and Spencer might think they’re good at keeping secrets from her, they really never have been, so she’d know if he knew. He and Spencer are acting completely normal, well, other than the (obvious, in retrospect) pregnancy symptoms.
So, this morning, Ginger had gone out before anyone else woke up, and bought some tests.
She creeps into Spencer's old room quietly, padding over to the bed to sit down on the edge. “Hey, love,” she says quietly, rubbing Ryans back gently to wake him up. He whines, pressing his face further into the pillows on Spencer’s childhood bed. “Come on, get up. I need to talk to you.”
“Can it wait?” he asks hoarsely, still not opening his eyes.
“Not really. Also, you’ve been out for three hours,” she says with a laugh.
“Oh, I have?” Ryan sits up finally, the blanket falling down to reveal the loose shirt he’s wearing, which she recognizes immediately as one from Spencer’s middle school. He stretches, looking at the clock briefly, before folding his legs underneath him to face her. “What’s up?” he asks, dropping both his hands into his lap.
She hesitates for a second, unsure where to start. If he does already know she doesn’t want to come right out and hand him the tests, because that would be redundant in that situation, but she also can’t just ask , because even if pregnancy does seem to have mellowed him out considerably it’s still Ryan , and he’s easy to scare off. “Have you been feeling alright, baby?” she settles on asking, fussing with an unruly curl on top of his head that’s standing directly upright.
“Um, I don’t know, I felt weird this morning. Why, has anyone been sick recently?” Alright, he almost certainly doesn’t know.
“No, just… I noticed you didn’t want any coffee? And you’ve been pretty tired.”
“Yeah, I suppose I have been kind of off, but I feel fine now,” he furrows his brows, considering. “What do you think that is, some kind of weird half day cold? I guess I’m a little congested.” Yeah, she got congested with her first, too. With Spencer… who is now going to be a father himself. That’s a weird thought.
Instead of answering him she says “hang on,” and leaves to grab the Walgreens bag she hid in her dresser this morning. When she walks back in he’s trying not to look too skeptical, but miserably failing, as he looks up at her from the bed. She smiles at him a little, and kisses him on the top of his head as she hands him a box of three tests.
When she pulls back, sitting down to face him again, he’s just blinking down at it, his face carefully blank. He says a monotone “oh,” and nothing else, sitting stock still.
“You don’t have to take them now, or at all,” she says gently, reaching out to rub his shoulder. “I just… had a hunch. Call it a mothers intuition.”
“No… yeah. Yeah that makes sense,” he mutters to his hands. He finally looks up again when he asks her “where’s Spencer?”
“He’s at the store with the girls. Do you want to wait for him to get back?”
Ryan hesitates for a second, but then he whispers “no, I just… Can you wait with me?”
“Oh, baby, of course.” She pulls him into a hug, rubbing his back like she always used to when he was little. “Of course I’ll wait with you.”
Ryan clings back tightly for a second, but then he takes a deep breath, and pulls back, nodding like he’s stealing himself, and Ginger pats him on the cheek sympathetically before he’s walking to the bathroom, the box clutched tightly in his hands.
When he walks back into the room he looks unsure, shifting on his feet without meeting her gaze. She says nothing, giving him time to process. He eventually settles on placing the tests down on the bed next to her, and she assumes he’ll sit there too, but then he turns his back to the bed, and sinks to the floor, leaning his head against her knee. That’s smart, actually, there’s no eye contact necessary in this position. That’s always helped him. She slowly moves her hand to his hair, scratching lightly at his scalp in the way she used to when he was little and crying over skinning his knee. It’s a lot longer than it was back then, and curlier, although that might just be the result of the length.
They wait in relative silence, nothing but the sound of the clock and Ryan’s almost steady breathing, as Ginger watches six lines slowly appear on three tests, forming little pink plus signs. She’s sure not to have any perceptible reaction to it, but it’s hard, and she doesn’t quite manage to suppress the smile, because-
The third thing is, Ginger is really fucking happy Ryan is going to have her grandchild. Actually, if she had to pick, even if she could choose anyone in the world, she’d want it to be Ryan, and not just because choosing anyone else (other than, she supposes, Spencer himself,) would mean that he and her son would break up. Ryan is just sort of… careful, and warm, and, yeah, he’s kind of her baby, even though he’s not biologically hers, or even her youngest. He’ll be good at this, he really will, but she’s also one hundred percent sure that it’s going to take more than a little effort to convince him of that fact.
“Hey, mom?” Ryan asks after a while, still not moving from the floor.
“Yeah, Ryan?”
Even though he could just turn his head and see the clock, he asks “It’s been three minutes, hasn’t it?”
“Yeah, it has.”
“And I’m pregnant, right?”
She doesn’t stop stroking through his hair, and he doesn’t even seem to breathe as she says “yeah, baby. You are.”
He takes a shaking breath from the floor, pressing into her hand for a second, before he slowly stands up, turning around to look at the tests, and dropping down heavily on the bed. He sits there for a really long time, just blinking down at them, before he just sort of lets himself fall sideways into Ginger, his shoulders shaking a little as he buries his face in her shoulder. She rubs his back again, scratching his back a little to give him something to focus on, and shushes him soothingly, letting him cry it out. He’s going to relearn how to do that, she thinks, because it’s pretty much the only thing that can be done when you’re hormonal, but he hasn’t cried often since he was a kid. He’s an emotional person, but he’s learned to suppress it extremely well.
“Aren’t you supposed to, like, yell at me for not being careful?” Ryan asks eventually, still sniveling a little into her shoulder.
“Ryan, you’re adults. I don’t need to scold you about condoms,” she says gently, still rubbing his back. “And, can I be honest with you?” She feels him nod, and she says “I am really, really happy about the idea of you having my grandchild.”
“Oh.” Ryan pulls away finally, all wide eyes and uncertainty, and says “oh my god, yeah, it’s your- wow.” He stares at her for another long moment, and she barely manages to suppress the urge to hug him again, before he says “can I be honest with you, too?”
“Of course.”
“I don’t really know what to do now,” he says quietly. “Like, I don’t know how to do this, and I’m not sure what I should be doing to, like… to take care of it. And I’m really scared.” That’s fine, Ginger thinks, all of that is totally fine, because she can help with that. He might not know what he’s doing, but she does, and she can teach him.
“Well,” she starts, “first, you listen to your body, because it knows how to do this. You know how you’ve been hungrier, and taking more naps? That’s exactly right. It’s the same with coffee making you sick, that’s an easy way to cut down on caffeine.” He keeps looking at her, hanging off her every word, and she says a gentle “so, how do you feel?”
“Um.” He blinks down at his hands, chewing his lip a little, before saying a hesitant “hungry? And my head kind of hurts, but I think that’s maybe from crying.” He tries to laugh weakly.
“Okay, then we’ll get you some food, and maybe a Gatorade. Sound good?” He nods a little stiffly, and Ginger kisses him on the forehead again before standing up to go to the kitchen. He moves to follow, but she pushes him back to the bed, saying “don’t worry about it. I’ll bring them here.”
When she returns with a lemon lime Gatorade, his favorite, and a whole box of peanut butter crackers she finds Ryan sitting hunched over, the duvet wrapped around his shoulders. He has the tests sitting right in front of him now, just staring at them. She hands him the items silently, and he mutters a little “thanks” as she moves up to sit next to him against the headboard.
“What are you thinking about?” she asks gently, knocking their shoulders together. Ryan unwraps a package of crackers gingerly, his long fingers still shaking a little as he fights with the serrated edge.
“I don’t know, a lot of things,” he says after a second. “It’s just a lot all at once, I guess.” He leans his head on her shoulder, slumping against her a little. “It’s cool that it’s your grandkid, though, I like that. We all know you’re functionally my mom, anyway, but it makes me happy that my kid is your grandkid biologically, too.”
“You two will be good dads,” she says, resting her head on top of his.
“God, I hope so,” he replies around a mouthful.
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When Spencer gets back home, both arms loaded with as many grocery bags as he can fit on them, his mom is nowhere to be seen. The girls don’t seem to notice, bickering about something related to who’s putting what away, but Spencer goes looking for her immediately, because he doesn’t know where to put half this shit. When he passes by his bedroom, he hears hushed voices coming through the door, and he stops. He hesitates for a second before knocking gently, to give them a warning, and pushing the door open.
Ryan is sitting on his bed, a blanket around his shoulders, looking small and scared, and every instinct in Spencer that recognizes this is absolutely screaming at him to go comfort him. His mom has beat him to it, though, sitting across from him and giving him a comforting smile. As soon as he sees Spencer in the doorway, Ryan grabs something from the bed quickly, pulling it under the blanket he has wrapped around himself.
“I’ll let you two talk,” his mom says, hugging Ryan briefly as she kisses him on the forehead. Forehead kisses, shit, that’s not a good sign. That means this is serious. She pulls Spencer down to kiss him on the cheek, and whispers “just be there for him,” against his face. He doesn’t know what she’s talking about, but he nods anyway, and she leaves the room with a warm smile.
“Are you alright?” Spencer asks, taking up the spot his mom was just in across from Ryan on the bed. Ryan chews his lip, clearly debating something mentally, before he just reaches an arm out of the blanket and places something down on the bed between them.
That is a pregnancy test. That is a positive pregnancy test. Spencer blinks down at it, trying to get his mouth to close so he can maybe stop staring so dumbly at it, but he can’t.
Pregnant. He’s pregnant. With Spencer’s kid. Holy shit their fucking kid . He manages to tear his eyes away from the tests and up to Ryan’s face, which looks nervous, and searching, and so fucking beautiful , wow. Has he always been this beautiful? The answer is yes, because Spencer has been in love with him for as long as he can remember, but Spencer doesn’t know if it’s ever hit him this hard before. God, their kid will have his eyes, since brown is dominant, and that’s awesome because his eyes are so pretty.
“Spencer, please say something,” Ryan begs, his voice sounding weak and shaky, and suddenly Spencer is snapped violently back into the here and now. Right, oh fuck he must be terrified.
Before he knows it he’s crossed the space between them, and pulled Ryan to his chest. Be there for him, that’s what his mom said, just be there for him.
“Ryan. Ryan, oh my god, honey. Holy shit,” Spencer babbles incoherently, his hands moving kind of frantically over his boyfriend. “Fuck, I love you so much.”
Ryan makes a kind of choked noise, and then he takes a hitching breath, and Spencer feels his shoulders start to shake under his hands.
“Hey, it’s okay. It’s okay. I’ve got you,” he says gently, shushing him comfortingly. He slowly pulls them both backwards until Ryan is laying on top of him, hands fisting in the front of his shirt. Spencer pulls the blanket up so it’s still wrapped around his shoulders, keeping him all wrapped up and safe.
“I’m so scared right now,” Ryan manages to choke out against his neck. “What if I- my dad, I- Spencer. Spencer, I can’t,” he says frantically, cutting himself off on a sob. It doesn’t make any sense at all, really, but Spencer knows what he means.
“Hey, no. You’re okay. We’re okay. You’re not going to be like that.” Spencer grabs him by the waist, pulling them as flush together as they can get, and says “you’ll be good at this, I promise. Just trust me.”
Ryan doesn’t say anything after that, but Spencer feels him nod, and he runs a hand through his hair until he manages to calm down enough to pull away.
“I’m sorry,” Ryan manages eventually, pulling back to swipe at his eyes. “ Fuck I hate crying. This is going to be a long nine months.” He laughs weakly, leaning away a little so he’s laying on his side with his head on Spencer’s outstretched arm. It’s then that Spencer realizes how ridiculous their positions are, laying down diagonally with their feet by the headboard, but Ryan looks comfortable enough, so he doesn’t really care.
He brings his hand up to brush some curls out of Ryan’s face, biting his lip. He doesn’t really know what to do now, truth be told. Comforting him was fine, that’s familiar, he’s been doing that for years, but now everything is quiet, and it’s just- What the fuck do you do when your boyfriend is pregnant? What’s the procedure here? For the first time in probably a decade, Spencer looks at Ryan and feels out of his depth. The novelty of it might be interesting if it wasn’t so fucking scary.
“Can I do anything for you?” He asks hesitantly. “Like, do you feel okay? Do you need anything?”
Ryan gives him an impatient look, and says “no, we’re not doing that. Don’t get weird and overbearing on me, Smith, you know I hate that.”
“Sorry.”
Ryan shakes his head lightly. “It’s fine, just- I think we both need a little time to get used to this.” Spencer hums in agreement, moving his hands to stroke through Ryan’s hair again, and he closes his eyes. “I really don’t want to raise a kid in another Ross household. I’m not happy about subjecting anyone else to that.”
“Then don’t be a Ross,” Spencer shrugs. Ryan opens his eyes again, furrowing his eyebrows, so Spencer continues. “Do you like Ross-Smith or Smith-Ross? Or just Smith works too, I guess, but it’s kind of boring.” This isn’t how Spencer planned to do this, but it just feels right. He had a few ideas for places to take him, and he was planning to run them by his mom, but this kind of seems more fitting, more them.
Ryan blinks owlishly at him. “Are you asking me to marry you right now?” he asks disbelievingly, adding “is this just because you knocked me up?”
“No, I can go get the ring, if you want,” Spencer says, feeling his heart rate pick up. Ryan looks a little shell shocked, but he nods, sitting up so Spencer can move from the bed. He goes to his bag, digging the box out from its hiding place inside a pair of socks in the lining, and moves back to sit on the bed in front of Ryan.
“Ryan,” he starts, opening the box to hold out to him. “I have loved you for as long as I can remember, and I will love you for as long as I live. There has never been, and never will be, anyone that compares to you. You’re it for me, and I have never been as sure of anything as I am about spending my life with you.” Ryan continues to stare at him, seemingly having a hard time deciding whether to study the ring or Spencer’s face. “Will you marry me?”
Ryan just keeps staring at him, studying him with wide eyes, and Spencer starts to get uneasy, squirming a little under his gaze. “Ok, now you say something,” he jokes weakly, giving him a nervous smile.
“Sorry,” Ryan mutters, “I just wanted to memorize this.” He sticks his hand out, presenting it to Spencer with a grin, and says a firm “yes.”