Work Text:
She loved her baby.
It was something she’d felt the moment she knew she was pregnant. An overwhelming kind of love that had made her knees go weak the second she saw two lines staring back up at her from the pregnancy test in her hands. Aaron had walked in to find her sitting on the closed toilet seat, the test still clasped in one hand whilst the other was pressed against her still flat belly. It was everything they’d been wanting for a long time, everything she thought she’d never get to have.
She loved her baby, but she hated being pregnant.
She was sick from the very start, nausea hitting her just days after she found out she was pregnant. She had nosebleeds all the time, she was exhausted, her nose was always blocked, and any symptom that she’d been told would fade when she made it past her first trimester, but they hadn’t. They’d lingered, some had got worse, and she was more miserable than she thought she’d be.
There were moments of joy, beautiful, life-changing joy that made everything else seem insignificant. The first time she felt the baby move, the day found out they were having a little girl, whenever she saw her daughter moving on an ultrasound screen. They were moments she held on to when her nose would start bleeding in the middle of a meeting, or when a food that had been safe for weeks suddenly made her feel sick or, even worse, tasted like metal.
She was endlessly grateful for Aaron. He was sweet and attentive, and he listened to her, even when she wasn’t entirely sure she was making sense herself. He knew when she needed someone to look after her, and he knew when she needed space from his - and Jack’s - wellbeing, but often over the top affection.
It had happened today. She was sore and annoyed and just so pregnant, and she was quickly losing her patience with Aaron for insisting he wait on her hand and foot, taking her doctor’s warnings about her blood pressure a little too seriously. She’d snapped at him, told him that she was capable of getting her own snacks - 33 weeks pregnant or not - and he’d simply smiled and nodded, apologising as he stamped a kiss against her cheek.
The bastard had calmed her down with nothing more than a press of his lips against her skin, and if she didn’t love him so much, she thinks she’d hate him for it. He’d sent her out, told her to go to the bakery she loved to get a cake and her one cup of coffee a day for a rare moment to herself. She already feels better on the drive there, the roll of her baby in her belly and the promise of cake cheering her up.
“What are you thinking, baby girl?” She says, rubbing a hand back and forth over her bump, “Chocolate cake? Carrot?” The baby kicks particularly hard, and Emily chuckles, “Okay, no carrot cake, I promise. But Daddy will make us eat vegetables later.”
One upside to pregnancy was her apparent ability to part crowds like they were the Red Sea. Everyone got out of her way and very often let her skip to the front of a line if somewhere was busy.
She’s distracted by the cake when it happens. She’s picking between chocolate and red velvet when a stranger next to her gasps in delight and presses a hand against Emily’s bump.
“Oh, look at you, how far along are you?”
“Uh,” Emily says, taking a small step back, irritation licking in her gut when the woman’s hand follows her, still pressed firmly against her bump, “33 weeks.”
“Oh, so you’re getting close then,” she replies, her smile getting wider when the baby kicks, “Oh, he’s a fierce one.”
“I’m having a girl,” Emily explains, correcting the stranger in the hopes that her mother’s lifelong tactic of being overly polite to people would work, “But yes, she kicks a lot.”
The woman sighs happily, “When I was having my-”
“I’m sorry,” Emily says, cutting the woman off, the feel of her hand still on her bump burning through the sweater she’d thrown on before she left the house. “Could you not touch me?”
“Oh,” the woman replies, her hand falling away, her expression falling like Emily had just called her every name under the sun. “I see.”
“It’s just, you don’t know me,” Emily says, placing her hand on her bump as if to protect her unborn daughter, “I don’t know you-”
“I’m Joan.”
“Okay…Joan,” Emily says, “I’d just rather not be touched by a stranger.”
Joan huffs and shakes her head, and she grabs her coffee from the counter before walking off, muttering about how ungrateful people were these days, just loud enough for Emily to hear.
Emily blinks a couple of times to try to regroup, half convinced she’d wake up and realise she’d fallen asleep on the couch again, but she’s pulled back into the moment when two slices of cake are placed on the counter in front of her - one chocolate and one red velvet. She looks up at the barista, a woman whose name badge lets her know is called Hannah, and she tilts her head.
“I didn’t order anything yet.”
“On the house.” Hannah says, smiling at her as she tilts her head in the direction Joan had gone, “I saw you eyeing them both up, and I thought you could do with the pick me up.”
“That was weird, right?” Emily replies, grateful for the reassurance that she hadn’t overreacted. It was hard to tell these days because of her hormones. She’d lost the ability to control her emotions months ago, any walls she’d built around herself reduced to rubble around her feet.
“ So weird.” Hannah confirms, and Emily smiles, her hand on her bump as she steps side to side, desperate to relieve some of the pressure building in her lower back.
“That’s the first time that’s happened to me.”
Hannah hums, “It happened to me all the time when I was pregnant with my son.”
“Huh,” Emily says, looking down at herself, and she realises how different she looks from normal. All rounded edges and soft material instead of the sharp lines of the suits she used to wear to work, “Well,” she says, smiling wryly, “I usually carry a badge and a gun, so maybe I look less intimidating than normal.”
Hannah chuckles, “Do you want a coffee with your cake?”
“Yes, please, can I get a black coffee with two sweeteners?” Emily asks, and Hannah nods.
“You go find a seat, I’ll bring it all over to you.”
Usually, Emily would argue, but she wants to sit down. She wants to ease the ache in her back and protect her bump from the wandering hands of any other strangers. As she lowers herself into one of the chairs, she feels her phone vibrate in her pocket, and she smiles when she sees it’s a text from Aaron.
How are my girls doing?
She types out her reply as Hannah brings over her coffee and her slices of cake, and she thanks her, making sure she puts a $20 on the table as a sizable tip before she forgets to do so.
Good. Made some new friends and I only told one of them off. I call that a success.
She can already see he’s typing a response when she cuts off the end of the chocolate cake with the fork, and she smiles to herself as she eats it, Aaron’s confused response making her laugh as the first taste of chocolate hits her tongue. Her smile fades when the taste of chocolate immediately gives way to metal, as if she’d filled her mouth with pennies, and she groans, shaking her head as she looks down at her bump.
“When you get out of there, you’d better be the cutest thing I’ve ever seen, kiddo.”
___
“A stranger touched your bump?”
“Yes.” She nods, her arms crossed and resting on top of her bump as she stares at her husband. She’d text him some of the details, mostly so he didn’t end up coming to the bakery himself, probably half expecting to walk into some kind of carnage. “She just came up and touched me. And then she looked offended when I told her to stop.”
Aaron presses his lips together and clears his throat to swallow a laugh, knowing it wouldn’t do him any favours if she thought he was making fun of her. “And then your cake tasted like pennies?”
“Yes,” she exclaims, throwing her hands up, well aware she was pouting but not caring enough to stop it, “It’s not fair. I already have so little control over my body,” she complains, shaking her head as her hand lands on her bump, “I love her, you know that, but everything I eat tastes like metal no matter what, I keep having nosebleeds, I have more acne than I did when I was a teenager. And apparently, I’m now also open for anyone to touch my bump just because they-”
He cuts her off with a kiss, his lips firm yet soft against hers as he calms her down, undoes all the tension that strangers had created by their unfamiliar touch with his familiar one.
“You know what the doctor said about your blood pressure,” he says, and then he kisses her again, watching how she fights a smile when he pulls back to look at her, one of his hands on her bump. “I’m sorry that happened, sweetheart.”
“It’s not your fault,” she says, and she huffs out a breath. “I’m just fed up with people touching me. That’s all.” She grumbles, and she watches as he deflates, his hand slipping away from her bump, and she rolls her eyes as she grabs his hand, “Not you,” she says, smiling as she places her hand on her stomach, her smile getting wider as the baby kicks, “ Never you.”
He smiles and kisses her, “It happened to Haley, too,” he says, his smile turning wistful like it always did when he thought of her, a strange mixture of sad and happy that was painted across all of his memories of his ex-wife. It was bittersweet, something he wished would fade but also something he worried he’d forget. “She lost it at an older woman in the grocery store once. Told her that her husband worked for the FBI and that I’d get her arrested for assault.”
Emily laughs outloud and bites her lower lip in an attempt to capture it, still not used to the type of unbridled joy she felt all the time these days. She wondered if she’d ever get used to it. Part of her hoped she never would, that it would always take her breath away, that she’d never take any of this for granted.
“Well, I’ll keep that in mind for next time,” she quips, and he raises an eyebrow at her, “Although I’ll be able to say that I work for the FBI. That might work a little better than what I did today, which was just…glare at the woman. And tell her off a little.”
He kisses her cheek, “Just as long as you don’t flash your badge to scare them, I don’t think we’ll have any problems.”
She hums, “I can’t make any promises.”
“Want to know the worst part?” He asks, and she narrows her eyes, not entirely sure that she wants to, but she nods anyway, “When the baby gets here, strangers will try and touch her too while they talk about how cute she is.”
Her eyes go wide, and he sees a dozen emotions flash across her face in a few seconds, before she settles on anger, a type of protectiveness that only Jack or the baby girl growing under her skin seemed to bring out of her.
“If anyone ever tries to touch my baby, me flashing my badge will be the least of everyone’s problems.”