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sissytobitch10seconds · 1 month

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The Second Most Influential Night of Kaz Brekker and Matthias Helvar’s Lives

Fandom: Grishaverse: Six of Crows and Shadow and Bone Summary: Many nights could be considered massively influential to the Brekker-Helvar household, the ones where they lost their family probably serving as the nights that changed them the most. This one serves to have the same kind of function to their family- but in reverse. Warnings: Mpreg, pregnancy, graphic birth, premature birth, and cryptic pregnancy Word Count: 14,129 Ship(s): Matthias Helvar/Kaz Brekker

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A/N: I think those of you that knew me saw this coming from a mile away. For those of you that don't know me: I really loved the show I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant when I was younger, so now I've made it my business to write as many fics inspired off of it as I can. I do want to make sure that people head the tags before going into this, it's not going to be one of the super happy stories where everything turns out fine as soon as the baby is born. I wanted to highlight the more difficult struggles people can go through with cryptic pregnancies and surprise deliveries. I hope that you guys enjoy! Stay sissy and bitchy everyone <3

Matthias always knew that he was in for something horrible when he woke up with his back aching. He tried to take care of himself and he succeeded more than any of the other people in their friend group, but it didn’t mean that he was successful every single time. He watched what he ate, he worked out more than he probably should have to build up his muscle mass, and he made sure that he drank plenty of water.

The problem was that it was hard to keep up that kind of lifestyle when one’s husband was on a business trip. Matthias usually worked at a local animal shelter while Kaz ran an empire with their close friend Wylan Van Eck. Every so often, a trip to a place that they both desperately wanted to travel to would come up and Matthias would go with his husband. While they were out of their home they would eat whatever they wanted and Matthias would let himself slip.

He had known pretty much as soon as their plain landed back down in their native city that he was in for a rough ride for the next couple of days. He had always had a touchy system, but during the past couple of months it had been even worse. A change in diet and habit as well as him going off of a medication that he had been on for years was bound to mess with his system.

The blond tried in vain to ignore it for as long as he could. He curled forward in bed so that his forehead was resting on Kaz’s shoulder and then let out a little grunt if discontent when the pain remained just as steady as it had been for the last hour. He let out a sigh that was probably too loud based on the fact that it was very early in the morning and then scooted to the edge of the bed.

The cold of the night air bit at his limbs and made him wish that he was back on the sandy beaches in Novyi Zem where they had been just a few nights earlier. He wondered if that was what Jesper felt like every time he had to put up with the constant, ankle-biting cold of the Kerch winters. It didn’t even snow and give Matthias something nice to look forward to like the winter months in Fjerda had.

He carefully stepped over Trassel so that the dog didn’t have to rouse as well and then shuffled to the bathroom. The nightlight they had as a security precaution, and a Jesper precaution, was attached to the wall and emitting a hard enough glow that he didn’t need to turn the light on. He knew that if he woke his brain up more than the pain had he would never get back to sleep, and after being severely jetlagged that sounded like the worst thing that could happen to him. He shut the door behind him with a soft click and then went about his business trying to relieve the discomfort in his intestines.

Nothing happened but he noticed a couple of dark patches in the front of his boxers that hadn’t been there when he had showered earlier that night. He leaned over the counter so that he could flick the light on and get a better look, the white from the wall plug-in no longer cutting it. He squinted when the harsh overhead from the mirror took over the room. Once he had adjusted, he swore under his breath in Fjerdan.

Dark blood had pooled in the crotch of his underthings and stained them more than even a wet dream would have. He shucked off the clothing item and then reached into the cabinet next to the toilet where they kept all the pads and tampons. He had to get around the sizes that they had stocked for Inej and Nina when the other two were visiting so that he could get the couple of old ones in the back meant for him. He found a clean pair of underpants even if they weren’t his preferred cut and then slipped them over his legs.

Once he was sure that he wasn’t going to get blood all over the rug, he grabbed his boxers from the ground and then flicked the sink’s plug on. He filled it up with cold water and left the garment to soak for a while, too tired to remember the exact steps and not caring that much about a single pair of black boxers. He turned the light off before he opened the door in the hopes that he hadn’t actually woken his husband up with all of his antics.

Matthias knew that he should have known better. Even though he had been on the straight and narrow for a very long time, there was no way that someone could take all the street out of the boy when that boy was Kaz Brekker.

The man in question was laying supine with his head tilted towards the ceiling. The only tell that he was awake at all was the twitching of his left hand and the gentle brush of his eyelashes against his bottom cheek. Matthias slowly lowered himself down onto the bed next to him in the hopes that they wouldn’t have to talk about it, but the left hand jerked over to his arm to get his attention.

“Are you alright?” Kaz asked.

“My cycle started, that’s all,” Matthias sighed as he laid back down against his pillows. They still smelled of Kaz, which was enough to soothe some of the tension in his shoulders even if the cramps were persistently bothering his back.

“This is good,” Kaz informed him in a soft voice. When they had first met, Matthias had been convinced that there was no way for a man that sharp to be soft, but Kaz had systematically proven him wrong as many times as he could.

Matthias opened his mouth to speak again but was quickly silenced by a pair of lips on his. That made a rush of endorphins leak out through his body because he knew that meant that Kaz was dealing with his phobia better than he had been before and the day would be easier on them both. On the other hand, he was still frustrated with what his body was doing and very unhappy about it.

His mind was cloudy with thoughts about how wrong it was for him to be going through this again when he had worked so hard to make it stop. He remembered all the mornings and late nights that he had stolen away from his family and then his foster father so that he could bawl his eyes out over the fact that it felt like every fiber of his being was rebelling against him. He felt the uncomfortable tightness in his back, thighs, and around his front. The bulky feeling of the pad between his legs was another small reminder that he wasn’t shaped the way that he should have been. Everything felt wrong and off in a way that it hadn’t since before he had married his husband.

The husband in question tilted his head forward so that it was resting against Matthias’ forehead, which somehow worked to clear away the thoughts that he was fighting. “I know that this is painful, but this way we can actually start trying to have a baby,” Kaz breathed. Despite the usually stoic expression that haunted his near-gaunt features, a smile now stretched over his pouty lips.

“I know, I know. We’ve wanted this for so long and Djel is finally cooperating,” Matthias smiled back. It was hard to not be infected with the joy that his partner was exuding even if he was uncomfortable and unhappy about the fact that he was actively menstruating again.

A year after they were married they decided that they wanted to have children and the next three years after that had been spent in a mad scramble to try and find a way to do just that. Jesper and Wylan had adopted a little boy a couple of years before they had decided to have children and tried to guide the other couple down that path, but Kaz’s background check had never cleared. Nina and Inej had gone through a sperm donor so tried to work with the same fertility clinic to get Kaz and Matthias a surrogate, but the same black marks on Kaz’s ledger stopped them from getting anywhere that way. Neither of them wanted to have to use one of their friends as a surrogate, so they had decided that the best way for them to have a baby was naturally.

That, of course, meant that Matthias had to stop taking Testosterone. It was a hard decision and Kaz had been adamantly against it because he remembered meeting his husband at the crisp age of eighteen, four years before they had gotten married. Matthias had been an absolute wreck back then because he had only recently gotten away from his abusive foster father and discovered that he was a boy. The struggle that he had with his body was permanently etched into the front of his husband’s forehead, even though he knew how to deal with the feelings of unhappiness and dysphoria far better.

“Djel, or perhaps what you meant to say was science,” Kaz murmured as he stole another kiss. “If you’re not feeling too poorly then we should try to get some more sleep.”

Matthias only hummed as he fell back against the bed. He wiggled forward so that his head was tucked against Kaz’s shoulder and he was protectively against the body of his lover. Even back then they had been teenagers, Matthias was taller than Kaz. The hormones and his constant workouts meant that he was also broader and more muscular despite his husband being, for lack of a better word, ripped. It was nice to feel like he was the smaller one when he was feeling as vulnerable as he currently was.

---

He didn’t sleep for the rest of the morning. The pains in his lower back wrapped around his front like they were trying to put his entire abdomen in some kind of vice. He had forgotten how bad his period cramps were in the years that he hadn’t had them. He stayed in the bed despite his sleeplessness, if only to enjoy the feeling of his lover wrapped around him.

When the first rays of the dawn began to peak through the blinds and pour down onto their bed like honey into warm tea, he knew that his efforts were futile and he might as well do something worthwhile. So he slowly slipped out of his husband’s arms and then woke Trassel so that the two of them could go on their morning run.

He didn’t bother to go back into the bathroom to change out the water soaking his boxers or change his pad, he didn’t want to think about his period more than he had to. He instead went right to the kitchen so that he could eat one of his protein bars and find his dog’s collar. Trassel was a special type of dog that was very close to a wolf but with the domesticity that came with thousands of years of selective breeding. They were almost native to Fjerda and it was very rare for them to be found elsewhere, but Kaz was a magician and had secured a pet for his husband to the exact wishlist Matthias had made.

The pup eagerly danced around the front entryway while he watched his owner pick which leash he wanted to use. Usually, Matthias went for the one that attached to his waist so that they could run together. Today, though, his midriff hurt something fierce so he went for one that he could hold in his hand. He attached the leash to Trassel’s collar and then wound the lead for it around his hand so that he wouldn’t lose his dog.

They slipped out into the world after he shut the door securely behind him. He knew that Kaz would have his head and a half if he knew that Matthias was leaving it unlocked, let alone if he had left it open.

They lived in a nicer part of town, but not nearly as nice as where Matthias and Jesper lived. It was a gated community with an HOA, something that both he and his husband despised. Thankfully, they had lucked into one of the only gated communities that wasn’t full of bigots and houses that looked exactly the same. They had a smattering of Craftsmen and victorian homes alike, as well as some of the blockier new builds. Their own home was a cottage tucked back behind three very large old-growth trees. The way that they always told people to find them was by recommending that they follow the large pride flag that they had staked out next to their mailbox.

No one was awake at that time of morning, so Matthias was able to do his quick jog around the block and then back get back into the house without much fuss. He usually would have gone much faster and for far longer than he managed that morning, he really was feeling very poorly.

Trassel immediately rushed through the house and then demanded to be let into the backyard so that he could do his business, which Matthias facilitated. While the dog was busying himself on the grass and the smells of the tree, he worked on getting himself something substantial to eat for breakfast. Usually when he got back from his runs he only spent a second or two squaring everything away before he was in the shower. He didn’t want to deal with what he would find in his underthings that day, though, so decided not to.

“Good morning,” Kaz rasped about ten minutes after he had returned from his run.

“Godmorgen,” he replied affectionately. He got a glare for his troubles, but he couldn’t bring himself to actually care about that. Kaz liked to pretend that he hated it when Matthias spoke in Fjerdan, but he knew better than that. Kaz had begun learning his native tongue almost as soon as they had met in the bottom of the Barrel. Nina had told him so not long after they had married.

Kaz walked up behind him and then wrapped his arms around his husband’s waist to bring them close together. “When should we start trying for a baby?” he asked.

He groaned and nearly slammed the spatula that he had been using to make eggs with down onto the counter. “Kaz, I do not even want to think about that right now, I feel awful.”

It had been an impulse to say that and he knew that it had been the wrong thing as soon as the words had left his mouth. He bit the insides of his cheeks as he felt the way that Kaz’s hands held tighter to his chest and how tense the muscles of the other man’s chest had gotten. He was able to reach out and turn the burner to the stove off just in time for him to be turned around. Kaz grasped his chin and then turned his head left and right so that he could get a full look at his husband. “Now that you mention it, you do look poorly,” he clicked his tongue.

“It’s just my cycle, I always used to feel like this,” Matthias shook his head. He wasn’t trying to be dismissive, but he knew how much medical stuff and sickness was a trigger for Kaz. He knew what the fear of something that had killed a loved one was like, on his worst nights he couldn’t even look at a candle or a match. Kaz had it so much worse with his sickness-related fear than Matthias did with fire. Kaz had to watch his brother suffer, alone without any family to help him through it, for days until Jodie had finally passed. That by itself would have been enough to make him anxious about people he loved falling ill, but then he had also gotten sick and no one had been gracious enough to take him to the hospital.

“I don’t remember your period affecting you this much when we were teenagers,” he clicked his tongue like he didn’t quite believe what Matthias was saying.

Matthias didn’t really blame him this time. He had been feeling poorly on and off in bouts since he had stopped taking his Testosterone. He had assumed that it was just his body adjusting to another dose of hormones like it had when he started or when he went through puberty, but he was getting more and more worried the longer that the morning went on. “I watched my cycle like a hawk when we were teenagers because we couldn’t afford birth control for the whole month. I made sure that I was taking painkillers before it began. Since my cycles hadn’t started again, I didn’t have anything to go by this time.”

The shorter man made a worried noise in the back of his throat, which made Matthias take a half step forward. He looped his long arms around Kaz’s waist to bring him into a protective, loving hug. “I promise that I’m alright. Would it make you feel better to have Nina come and check on me during her lunch break or when she goes home tonight?”

“Yes,” Kaz replied into his shirt. Kaz and Wylan would be working late with a business dinner in the evening since they had to cancel their last board meeting. That meant Matthias would be alone for a lot longer than he was used to.

“Then I will,” Matthias leaned down and connected their lips in a gentle kiss. It was all he felt up to doing when he was as poorly as he was. He knew that having at least one menstrual cycle was crucial to the conception of their future child, but that didn’t mean that he was enjoying the process.

---

He and Kaz finished their breakfast and then went their separate ways. Kaz had to get ready to go to work and Matthias was going to rest for a while longer since he didn’t have to work. It was hard when they had schedules that didn’t match, but neither of them would give up their careers for anything in the world.

The first thing that Matthias did once his husband was gone was shove himself into the shower. He didn’t really know why he had to wait until the other man was gone to do it since Kaz had seen him naked even before he had gotten top surgery, but it felt almost too intimate to do anything in front of him. He kept his eyes squeezed shut as he rolled up the pad that was barely spotted with anything and then got into the shower. The water was cold when he first stepped in, which was the shock that his muscles had been aching for the entire time he had been eating breakfast. It warmed up and then soothed the aching pains that he had in his back.

He stepped out of the shower and then dressed in something that felt affirming. He usually didn’t wear his jeans when he was at home by himself with no plans to go anywhere, but the way that the belt clung to his hips always made him feel like a man through and through. He complimented it with a comfortable sweater that Jesper had ordered off the internet. It was meant to be for the Zemini but when it had come, it was the wrong size so had gone to Matthias instead.

He occupied himself with Trassel for the rest of the morning until he decided to take a nap. The aches and pains in his back were still making him uncomfortable, but it was nothing that a couple of painkillers and a heating pad couldn’t help. When he woke up around lunch, however, everything had gotten so much worse than it had been before.

He jerked awake from the rather pleasant dream that he had been having surrounding himself and his husband with a sharp pain rocketing through his back. He was powerless to do anything other than lay there with his eyes pointed up towards the ceiling. It crept like a thousand tiny knives digging into his vertebrae all the way up his spine before it spread out over his hips. He felt tense and wrong, like he needed to pop a joint but all the way across the bone instead of in one specific point. He thought that it was going to last forever before it wrapped around his abdomen like a vice and he felt a rush of the most intense pain that he had ever encountered in his entire life. His entire mind whited out and he felt his breath get stolen from his lungs, making it impossible for him to even cry out.

Something that his husband had brought up earlier in the day came back to him when the pain had finally released him. Kaz mentioned that he had never seemed like that when he was menstruating before, which made Matthias worry that there was something more going on.

He had already promised his lover that he would contact Nina. It was something that Matthias had already been planning on doing since she was his best friend. The two of them had even tried to date before he had started his transition. They had taken a break and then both fallen for other people, but their connection was still there and strong. They would be best friends past the end of time, he was sure of that. There was no one else that he would want to talk to about the horrible ordeal of having to remember that his body had been created wrong.

He grabbed his phone and sent a quick text to her.

Matthias to Nina: Are you awake/available?

She replied to him almost immediately, which was a rarity for her nowadays. He had been with her through every step of her life, including her lowest moments when she was battling her addiction. Now she was a proud doctor, mother, and wife, but that did mean that she had far less time for Matthias than she did when they were teenagers with no prospects.

Nina to Matthias: for u love?

Nina to Matthias: always!

Nina to Matthias: whats wrong?

Matthias to Nina: Do you remember how Kaz and I were going to start trying for a baby as soon as I started my cycle again?

Nina to Matthias: course i do

Nina to Matthias: what do you take me for a bad friend?

Matthias to Nina: Well it happened. I’m uncomfortable and Kaz is very worried about me.

Nina to Matthias: course he is

Nina to Matthias: idk how ur expecting to be parents if he gets worried about cramps

Matthias to Nina: Therapy is how we’re going to deal with that. And he has gotten a lot better. You remember what he was like when Jesper and Wylan brought the flu back to the Slat and he was the only one not to catch it.

Nina to Matthias: omg

Nina to Matthias: i thought he was gonna DIE

Matthias to Nina: He wants you to come check on me when you have the time. Maybe you could bring Nilu? I miss her.

Nina to Matthias: she misses u toooo

Nina to Matthias: actually

Nina to Matthias: shes three

Nina to Matthias: so she mostly misses trassel

Matthias to Nina: Well he’s here too.

He startled and stared down at his phone like something was wrong with it when the screen flashed and came up with Nina’s caller ID. Matthias came back to himself a moment later and then flicked the answer button before he held the device to his ear. “Hello?”

“Sorry, I wanted to keep talking to you but it looks a lot more professional if I have my phone against my ear instead of in my hand,” Nina explained with that ringing laugh of hers. “I almost ran into a patient, which really isn’t a good look for a doctor.”

Matthias was suddenly so relieved that he had decided to talk to her and ask her to come and visit him. His best friend really was the only person other than his husband that could help him feel better no matter what was happening. “I guess that’s true,” he chuckled.

“So what’s going on that has Kaz so concerned?” she asked.

“Are you going to decide to be a doctor on me or are you asking me this as your best friend?” he asked, unsure what the answer was going to be. When Nina was no longer in her white coat and her scrubs it was easier to talk to her about what his body was doing without her coming at him with actual answers. That was what he wanted from her at the moment, not the diagnosis and treatment that would spring from her mind now that she was walking around her work.

He grunted as he felt another growing pain in his spine. He let out a low breath when he felt it wrap around his front just the same way that it had before. It felt like it was trying to rip him totally apart.

He had apparently been too quiet for too long because his best friend asked, “Matthias?”

“Sorry, I’m having a lot of pain,” he grit out. He could tell that his accent had gotten a lot thicker with the pain, which meant that it was going to be harder to hide it from her. He was overwhelmed with a sense of relief that Kaz wasn’t home because he knew that his husband would have been nearly petrified with fear about it.

“What kind of pain?” she asked. He had gotten his answer through that sentence, she was going to diagnose him. He was just glad that Nina had practiced her bedside manner since they were teenagers and he had first started to get bad cramps.

“I think that they’re because of my period,” he sighed. “They start on my spine and then wrap around my belly.”

“That doesn’t sound like the kind of cramps that you used to have before you started hormones,” she commented. “Do you have any other symptoms?”

Matthias let out a low breath and tried to think about what his body was feeling. He had been ignoring it for most of the day because he hated the fact that he was on his cycle again. He knew that it meant he and his husband would finally, eventually have a baby, but he didn’t really want it to be happening. “I have a bit of a headache but I haven’t had a lot of water today.”

“How much bleeding have you had and what did it look like?” Nina asked. She sounded every bit the mother and doctor that she was, which made a swell of warmth rush through him. He had seen her come so far and he was so proud of his best friend.

“I didn’t check. I have my boxers in the sink in the bathroom, I could check that.”

“Are you soaking them?”

“Yes. Why else would they be in the sink?”

“You and Kaz are weird, why would I know that?” she scoffed. “I’m just asking you these questions because for you to suddenly have cramps that are far worse than what you used to have is worrying.”

“Maybe I gave myself PCOS,” he joked. His mother had the condition and had talked to him about it when he had gotten his first period, to warn him that he might have inherited it. It was why he and his sister had such a huge age gap, because it had been hard for her and his father to conceive another child.

“You can’t give yourself a condition that you don’t have. Plus you’re closer to your thirties which means that if your body was moving all the way back to what your hormones used to be, you would technically have less testosterone than you did before you started HRT,” Nina explained haphazardly. He could hear more voices around her than he had moments before which meant that she was likely walking through the lobby of her building.

Matthias whimpered as another one of the pains began to creep up his back. He felt an overwhelming rush of warmth and then his stomach flipped like he was going to vomit so he darted for the sink, only to feel something wet drip down his legs. “Nina, you have to promise not to laugh,” he mumbled. He was so shocked and ashamed that he wasn’t even sure that he was speaking in Kerch any longer.

It didn’t matter with Nina, thankfully, because of her gift for languages. Her voice was soothing and near placating as it rang through the phone and into his panicked mind, “I won’t laugh at you, Matthias, I’m your best friend and a doctor. Nothing you tell me will be any weirder than what I heard the in ER yesterday. What’s going on?”

“I think that I just peed myself. I… there’s something all the way down my legs and all over the couch. It hurts,” he slowly lowered himself onto his knees so if the pain overwhelmed him he wouldn’t hit his head on the way down.

“I’m going to tell one of the ambulances to come and get you. You need to come to the hospital now,” she said.

“What? Why?” Matthias asked. He had already been trying to push down a feeling of panic when he realized that his body was doing something very abnormal than what he was used to during his cycles. Hearing his best friend get that worried about what he had just told her only made it ten times worse. He felt his heart beating up in his ears and his lungs struggling to take in the air that they needed to keep up with the rush of his blood. He had seen Kaz go through more panic attacks than he could count and yet he had very rarely ever experienced them himself, but it was still a sensation that he was never going to forget

Nina’s voice cut through the panic in his mind as she said, “It’s going to be okay, Matthias. I want you to stay on the phone with me while we wait for the ambulance to get there. I’ll be by your side the entire time you’re at the hospital and we’ll even call Kaz.”

Despite the haze that was clouding his thoughts, he knew that was a bad idea. He already felt like his entire world was crashing down around him and he didn’t need his husband to be an absolute mess on top of that. Something was still leaking out of him and into the pad that he had trapped in between his legs, making the cotton soaking wet.

He let out a small gasp as he collapsed down next to the couch, his knuckles white around the edges while he tried to push the pain out of his mind, “N-no, he will just get worried.”

“Matthias, if what I think is happening actually is happening then you’re going to want him by your side,” she said. “But that’s something that I can worry about when you get here. Have I ever led you astray?”

“Yes,” he let out a little laugh. Another pain had crept up his spine and wrapped around his belly while she was talking to him so he wasn’t able to give her any kind of example.

She laughed along with him. She asked him more questions about their time together and what he was experiencing while they waited. It only took about ten minutes before the ambulance arrived at his doors. He had to haul himself up to his feet so that he could get it for them, limping along so that he could unlock it. His fingers trembled as he grasped the deadbolt and then slid it over so that he could wrench the door open.

He felt a breath of relief wash over him for the first time since he had felt that horrible pain after waking up from his nap. He couldn’t recall their names, but he knew that the EMTs that had been sent to him were close friends of Nina. He always worried when he had to go to the hospital that it was going to result in him being misgendered and absolutely miserable the entire time. With these two people, he knew that he didn’t have to worry about that at the very least.

“Let them have the phone so that I know you’re not lying to me,” Nina said. He knew that there had to be another reason that she was doing that but he wasn’t willing to fight with her.

“Alright,” he mumbled as he handed the phone over to the one on the left. The one on the right reached for his hand and then carefully led him down the step so that they could close the door behind him. While her partner spoke to Nina, the EMT holding his hand got him laid down on the gurney and then began to roll it back to the ambulance.

Matthias tried hard not to think about the fact that their neighbors all knew that something had happened to them and were watching his shame. He hated the fact that they were all aware of something that he didn’t even know the full details about. His pain and condition, whatever it was, felt too personal for strangers to be prying on.

“What’s your name? Do you have something you’d prefer that we call you?” the EMT asked once they were safely locked away in the back of the ambulance.

“Matthias,” he gasped out as he got a pain.

“Time it,” the one on the right said. They had finished the call and then slipped his phone into a bag full of personal belongings that they would be able to get him once he was at the hospital.

“What’s wrong with me?” he grit out as he tried to overcome the massive wave of pain and the pressure that was echoing with it. The pains were only coming about seven minutes apart and it felt like they were over almost as soon as they had started, but it was still overwhelming.

“We don’t want to make a diagnosis until we have some more information,” the other EMT said. They checked his vitals and then wrote them down, holding his hand and guiding him through breathing while they sped to the hospital.

Matthias placed one of his arms over his eyes when the doors to the ambulance opened to reveal the ER loading dock. He had been there once before, when he had broken his leg at fourteen thanks to something that Brum had done to him. It brought back so many memories that he wasn’t entirely prepared to deal with given how much pain he was in.

He shifted his arm down to his side once they had finished lowering the gurney just in time to see Nina push her way through the crowd. “How are you doing? Were they good to you?” she asked, his native language rolling off her tongue like she had spoken it her entire life.

“I feel like shit. They won’t tell me what’s wrong with me,” he grit out.

“That’s probably for the best if it turns out that what I think is wrong actually is,” Nina replied. She reached over the edge of the gurney and then took his hand while they quickly wheeled him through the ER. On any other day the entire place would have been packed with people, but it seemed like the gods were smiling on him for once in his miserable life. Instead of having to wait or being placed out in the hall, he was moved into a room made of more than a couple of curtains strung up from the ceiling.

Before he could clock anything else about what was happening to him, his mind whited out with pain again. He wrapped his arms around his belly and leaned forward just as he felt a hand slip against his palm, letting him grip as tightly as he needed.

“Woah there, you’re alright,” someone said through the haze of anguish that his brain was floating in. “We’re going to get you something to deal with the pain, but we need you to relax a bit first.”

“I cannot relax when I hurt that badly! I would like to see you try it,” Matthias growled. He felt immediately bad when he saw the kind nurse that was helping treat him shrink back into herself. He was sure that she had endured worse in the past, but he didn’t like being part of the verbal abuse that medical staff had to get as part of their jobs.

He collapsed back against the gurney for a moment and tried to blink away the tears that were already collecting on his lashes. Nina brushed them away with the thumb of the hand that wasn’t against his own. “Shh, shh, it’s alright,” she soothed.

“Don’t leave me, Nina, please don’t,” he whispered. He was more scared than he had been since he had sat as a witness at Brum’s trail all those years ago.

“I promise that I’m not going to. Come on, we need to get you into the bed and then changed,” she said. She jerked her head towards the door and the other nurse quickly left. Nina had changed out of her usual red scrubs into her day clothes, which today happened to be a pair of comfortable corduroy pants and a loose t-shirt. Matthias knew that she had likely been getting ready to go home to her wife and child when he had called her, but he couldn’t think of anyone else he would want by his side when he was going through something that terrifying.

Once the door clicked shut and they were finally left alone, Matthias slid to the edge of the bed and then stood with Nina’s help. He removed his shirt and his pants so that he could place the hospital gown over the top of them. As soon as he was no longer dressed, Nina helped him lay down on the bed and then brushed her hand over his head. “I promise that we’re going to figure out what’s going on with you, okay?”

“I trust you,” he whispered. He caught her hand and gave it a squeeze before he released her so that she could return to get the other nurse. He meant what he said. Even though they hadn’t ended up working out together romantically, he was sure that she was something of a soulmate to him. He couldn’t imagine his life without her and he knew that she would be there for him no matter what happened to either of them.

The gurney was removed from the room and then the nurse from earlier placed an IV into his arm. They began to administer a safe pain medication so that he could be eased into something akin to comfort without hurting anything until they figured out what was going on with him.

“We’re going to perform an ultrasound, alright? That will let us know if there’s anything wrong with your uterus like a cyst,” the nurse said. Nina had returned back to his side, though her green eyes were focused on her coworker instead of flitting down to Matthias to comfort him about the ordeal. That made him nervous.

They rolled up his hospital gown after placing a blanket over his legs so that he couldn’t catch a chill. They then lathered his stomach with the gel and placed more of it on the wand. He had been surprised to hear that it wasn’t going to have to be a transvaginal one like it had been when he had gotten his IUD placed and then later taken out. He supposed that they didn’t want to have to deal with him kicking them if he got another one of his pains.

It was as if thinking of the pain had summoned it to come back to him. Nina had already been holding his hand while the other nurse was doing the prep work, so when the creeping up the base of his spine started, he leaned into her. She pet his hair and murmured into his knuckles until it had subsided.

He was out of breath from the action and the pressure in his abdomen, so he closed his eyes and tilted his head back. He felt the wand touch his stomach and spread the gel around before the movements got slower. He knew that the nurse was looking for something but he couldn’t bring himself to stare at the screen and try to decipher the gray blobs of his organs on a monitor he could barely see.

“You were right, Dr. Zenik,” the nurse said. “I can see the head here, it’s already engaged with the cervix but the fetus only looks to be about thirty three weeks.”

“Early but not the end of the world. Get the OB on call and let the ER staff know that we have to move him up to labor and delivery,” Nina said. She was using her doctor voice.

Matthias felt like they were both speaking underwater, the sound waves traveling to him slower than they were moving and sounding murky. He knew that his mind was growing foggy with pain and confusion. What they were saying was something that he had half dreamed, the realization of a child that was half him and half his husband, but it didn’t make any sense. He had never begun to menstruate again and they weren’t even sure that Kaz would have been able to reproduce given the massively high fever he had caught when he was a child.

His breath caught in his throat as he began to cry.

If he were completely rational and part of himself he would be able to admit that he didn’t quite know why he was crying. He just knew that he was upset and he had to let it out. The entire world felt like it was crashing down around him and he had no idea how to stop it. It was worse than when he had the crushing realization that the new father figure in his life was hurting him, or why he had always felt so out of sorts in his body, or that he was never going to get to see his family again. Back when all of that was happening, he had been unstable so had been ready for more shaking to come bring things in his life down. Now, he had been stable and happy in his marriage for years and it made everything feel so much worse than it actually was.

The whirlwind of the hospital didn’t stop just because he was crying. They ushered him up to an actual room in a ward that he hadn’t caught the name of and then several people breezed in and out of the room. He was given a couple of sets of shots, both into his IV and into the muscles of his ass. By the time that they had all gone and things had returned back to a waiting game, he had two bands around his belly and his vitals were happily ticking away on the monitor next to him.

The tears had long since stopped and he had started to stare resolutely up at the ceiling, trying to figure out what had happened. He knew that no one was talking to him because he was so emotionally wound up but it was drowning him now. He had to find something that would help him float so that he could be the rock his husband would no doubt need now that he had been admitted. “Nina, I don’t understand what’s going on,” he said hoarsely.

She tilted the bed up and then sat down beside him. She looked tired and worn out, but the kindness that was ever-present in her eyes shone out on him just like he needed it to. “You stopped taking your hormones several months ago, right?”

“I did,” he nodded.

“Right,” she breathed. He could tell that she was collecting her thoughts before she admitted what was going on. He had seen the same look on her more times than he could count when they were young, stupid teenagers. “There’s something called a cryptic pregnancy, where the pregnancy can go undiagnosed until either right before or during labor. That’s what’s happening to you right now.”

“I-I’m pregnant?” he asked. It felt like the best news that he had ever received and the worst at the same time. He and his husband had been trying and failing to have a child for so long that they almost felt like it would never happen. Him stopping his transition so that they could do it naturally had not been a decision that either of them had made lightly, so to know that it had happened without him having to suffer through a visible pregnancy was a kind of blessing. On the other hand, he was terrified that he had done something to hurt their unborn child without realizing it.

Nina brushed her hand over the long blond hair struggling to stay back in the braid she had done while people were giving Matthias his shots. “At some point, likely around thirty three weeks ago, you got pregnant. Your body was still trying to sort out hormones and you work out a lot. Some people just don’t have any symptoms and can only tell because they stop having periods. Since you didn’t have any, I’m guessing you had a symptomless pregnancy and that your uterus is sitting pretty far back. We already know that the baby is around thirty three weeks and the placenta is on the front, right about here,” she traced her finger over his belly close to his pelvis.

“What does that mean?” he asked. He remembered seeing some of the flickery black and white images on the screen when he was down in the ER but he had been too out of his mind with pain and fear to really clock what that meant. He sucked in a hard breath as his body began to shake through a massive contraction, but it was almost easier now that he knew what they were.

“It means that you didn’t feel the baby move because there was too much in the way,” she explained. “We saw them moving on the monitor and were able to get a good heartbeat, see?” she pointed to a line on the screen next to him, which he stared at the entire time he was dealing with his contraction.

They were quiet for a while longer before she let out a low breath and then said, “I think that you should call Kaz. You’re going to want him here when the baby is born.”

“I don’t want him to worry,” he shook his head. He knew that she was right but he was scared and confused, which left him irrational.

“You’re going into labor, not even,” she sighed. Her green eyes flickered shut as she processed what she wanted to say and got all of her words in order. “Matthias, I want you to listen to me. We’re not going to be able to stop your labor since your water has already broken. We gave the baby steroids to help develope their lungs so that when they’re born they can have a better chance at survival, but with chance there’s always the flip side. Not only is birth very traumatic for even a parent that has a full time baby and a standard pregnancy, but your little one is going to be kept in the NICU for weeks or maybe even months. You’re going to want your husband to hold your hand throughout all of that.”

He knew that she was right and that she had needed to say it that way so that it would actually permeate his thoughts, but it still made his heart shatter. He had only just wrapped his brain around the fact that he was going to be a parent soon, so the idea that his newborn baby was going to be whisked away from him as soon as they were born shattered him again.

“Alright, can you please get my phone for me?” he asked. He was rapidly blinking so that he could keep the tears at bay and he had to swallow down a sob every time he took a breath.

She brushed back his hair and then kissed his forehead as she said, “Of course I can. All you had to do was ask.”

She disappeared from his room as she went in search of the items that they had to remove from his person when he was in the ambulance. That left Matthias alone and he was suddenly drowning in the horrific reality of the situation that he was in. He was pregnant but he hadn’t known it, which meant that he could have done something that would warp the wonderful blessing that he and his husband had been given. He was also in labor far earlier than he should have been and was preparing to deliver a preemie. So many things could go wrong when a baby was born early, even three weeks.

Before he had the time to really spiral, he was overwhelmed with pain. He rolled onto his side despite the fact that the bed was elevated so that he had already been sitting up. It was more comfortable to have his legs bent and towards his chest than straight out, and it alleviated a strange pressure on his hips when he was tilted towards the wall. He was also able to reach out and grasp the plastic handle of the bed, his knuckles white with the force that he was exerting.

Nina returned with his phone. She waited long enough for him to work through his contraction before she handed it over. Matthias didn’t even debate about whether or not he wanted to tell Kaz what was going on before or after he arrived at the hospital. There were no words on his mind, only the I need you that repeated over and over again on the tip of his tongue.

He flicked through his contacts until he found his husband and then dialed it while placing the phone against his cheek. He breathed in through his nose and then out through his mouth in even measures at Nina’s careful instruction. She had moved onto the edge of the bed and was running her carefully clipped nails up and down over his back. She had done that once when he had gotten the flu back when they were eighteen and living in the shittiest apartment they were able to find for their highest budget.

A sob broke through his lips when he heard the man that he loved ask, “Matthias? What’s going on?”

“You’re not going to lecture me for calling you while you’re at work?” he asked. He knew that he would have to get down to the real issue eventually, but he wanted to drag it out while he worked through all of the mess in his mind.

“You were sick when I left this morning and then you never told me that Nina cleared you. What’s going on?” Kaz asked again. His voice had the bitter sharpness to it that it always did when he was stressed or worried about something. In any other situation it would have been something that Matthias melted over, he loved being adored in the way that Kaz cared for people.

It wasn’t any other situation and he still felt like the riptides were pulling at his legs. He could feel the cool tears leaking down his heated cheeks as he said, “Is Jesper there with you? Or Wylan?”

“Bear, you’re scaring me,” Kaz said. “Yes, Jesper is here with me. What’s going on?”

“I’m in the hospital,” he breathed out. “I’m not dying, I promise you that I’m not dying.”

He heard the heavy sound of Kaz collapsing down into a chair and then clattering as his cane fell to the floor and then rolled away from him. “Thank fuck. I can’t lose you. What’s going on, then, if you’re not dying?”

“I want you to leave your keys with Jesper and then have him drive you to the hospital. Wylan can get them from him and then drive your car home. We’re going to be here for a while yet,” Matthias said instead of answering him for the second time. It was suddenly too hard to think about the baby inside of him and the labor wracking his body.

He let out a low breath and then scrunched forward again as he got another contraction. Nina cooed lovingly at him like she did to her child and continued to rub the tenseness out of the muscles in his hips. “Love, what’s wrong?” Kaz asked, the worry unable to stop from bleeding into his words.

“I can’t tell you over the phone, it’s too much,” Matthias managed to bite out around another massive wave of pain. He wasn’t sure how much longer he was going to have to do this for, or how much longer he was going to be able to tolerate the aggressively high amounts of pressure wracking his body every three minutes.

He felt bad for not being able to tell his husband what was wrong with him over the phone, he knew that it would have assuaged at least some of Kaz’s fears. He was half worried that the other man was going to faint when he found out what was going on and half worried that he would demand to take his own car to get their quicker despite his mind not working. So Matthias left his explanation as what it was despite the flicker of upset that he could hear through the phoneline. “I’m going to get there as soon as I can,” Kaz informed him.

The line went dead and Matthias passed his phone back over to Nina. Not a second later, the door opened and another person walked in. She had a kind smile and her hair was plaited back against her head, which contrasted with the ruffled look of her red scrubs. She was obviously another one of Nina’s coworkers instead of the nurses and residents that had helped Matthias get settled. “You must be Matthias Brekker-Helvar. I’m Dr. Koh, the OB on call. I’ve heard that you had quite the scare when you came in today. Is now a good time to talk or would you prefer I come back in ten or fifteen minutes?”

“Now,” he grumbled as the pressure of his most recent contraction finally dissipated. Nina threaded their fingers together even tighter than they had been before so that her thumb could trail over his knuckles. Her hands were nice but they didn’t have the callouses on the tip and down the forefinger like Kaz’s, which made Matthias miss his husband even more.

The OB sat down on the stool in the corner of the room and then wheeled over to the side of the bed. “I want you to know that at any point if you start to get overwhelmed or want to hold part of the conversation for later, you can just let me know and we’ll do it another time,” she said. Her smile was kind and it relaxed Matthias at least a bit. If she was acting like this when Kaz got here then there was a chance that he could avoid his husband losing his mind with overprotectiveness.

“The first thing that we should talk about is what you, and our team, should expect from this delivery. You’re already in labor and your waters have broken, which means that this is happening now and we can stop it until we have more information. From the look of the ultrasound that we got while you were down in the ER, we think that the baby is around thirty three weeks. I noticed on your chart that you don’t know the date of your last menstrual cycle, so unfortunately the only thing that we can use to get the date is the thigh measurement, which isn’t always reliable. The baby could just be small or closer to date, but we’re going off the information that we have right now. Thirty three weeks is premature by about three weeks if we’re doing last menstrual period instead of conception date. That means that the baby will be small because they’re not finished baking, but they’ll also have trouble regulating body temperature, breathing on their own, digesting, jaundice, and may have some vessel problems as well.”

Matthias felt like his entire world was crashing down again. He may have only known about his unborn baby for a couple of hours, but he didn’t want to lose them. It felt almost more cruel to know that he could have his baby die before he ever really knew them than to get attached to a child and then to lose them. Nina leaned down and kissed his had when she saw that tears were already beginning to well in his eyes, “Matthias, keep listening to her. This is just the risks, it’s not definitive.”

He flicked his eyes open in time to see Dr. Koh flash Nina a smile of appreciation. She then turned back to Matthias and continued explaining to him in the blunt way that he needed if he was going to digest the information properly, “If this baby was born even twenty years ago the moderate preterm would have been a very, very high risk. Fortunately now, we have jaundice beds and incubators. We’ll be able to do everything in our power to help the baby grow up nice and strong so that they can be discharged from the hospital in a few weeks. Which brings me to my next concern, who will be assuming custody of the little one when they are released?”

The idea of giving away the child that he already loved so much combined with another contraction made Matthias let out a wet sob. He leaned forward and held tightly to his best friend and the side of the hospital bed as Nina gave him a couple of encouraging words. “They’re our baby,” Matthias said immediately after the pain had let up enough that he could speak. “My husband and I wanted a baby, we were trying for one. It-it was an accident that we didn’t realize that I was pregnant.”

“I just wanted to make sure. You’re not my first cryptic pregnancy,” she chuckled warmly. “Now, I would like to do a cervical check so that I can see how dilated and effaced you are, but I understand if that makes you uncomfortable.”

“I don’t care about me, I want you to do whatever is going to keep the baby at their best,” he replied.

Dr. Koh shared a quick look with Nina and the latter of the two women took over the conversation. She leaned over the rail of the bed and pet his forehead, “We want to make sure that you’re comfortable and mentally prepared for when the baby gets here, so make sure that you’re actually taking these questions seriously.”

“I want to make sure that my baby is okay over my own comfortableness with my body, it will only distress me more if I tell her no,” he explained in his own language.

Nina nodded reassuringly and then let the other doctor know that she was okay to continued. Dr. Koh washed her hands in the sink and then put on a pair of rubber gloves as she sat back down on the stool beside his bed. “I want you to put your feet together and then press them as close to your bottom as you can, that will give me plenty of room to check how you’re doing.”

He nodded and then did as he was told. He had to flip over so that he was on his back again, but he adjusted so that he was holding the other rail to the hand that wasn’t clinging to Nina. He wanted Jesper to be safe as he drove Kaz to the hospital but he also very much needed his husband to be by his side while this was happening.

Dr. Koh carefully inserted her fingers and then felt his cervix, which felt invasive and wrong. When she withdrew her hand, she gave him a pleasant smile. “I trust that Dr. Zenik has already asked that you call the baby’s other father?”

“Yeah,” he nodded. He squinted his eyes shut and whimpered. Something about the contraction after she had checked him felt different than the one before had, but he wouldn’t have been able to describe just what about it that it was. “What’s going on?” he breathed.

“You’re very close to full dilated and I can already feel the baby beginning to engage. You’re going to be a parent very soon.”

“Gods above,” Matthias whispered, squeezing his eyes shut so that he could wake up from the nightmare around him. He knew that this was reality, that there was no escaping the life that he was in, but he wished that he could. He wished that he could enjoy all the wonderful things about a pregnancy that Nina had gotten to when she had her daughter, or the excitement of knowing that it was going to happen like Jesper and Wylan had. Instead, the arrival of his child was met with panic, confusion, and outright fear.

Eventually, the OB finished telling Nina the information that Matthias wouldn’t be able to process and then left the two of them alone. She had just passed through the door when Kaz came barreling in, walking so quickly that the stick of his cane was grasped in his hand instead of the head. “What’s going on? What happened, Zenik?” he demanded as he stepped inside of the hospital room.

Jesper appeared in the doorway, looking frazzled and out of breath. “I got him here as quickly as I could and without him falling to pieces for you, Matthias!” he gave a thumbs up and then disappeared from the doorway, leaving the three of them alone.

Matthias slowly hiked himself into a sitting position despite the near constant pressure in the base of his belly. He reached out and took Kaz’s hand in his own so that he could focus on the slowly growing warmth of the leather against his callouses. “I want you to promise me that you won’t freak out.”

“It’s a bit late for that, treasure,” Kaz replied. His voice had the bitter snipe that it had when they had first met, which let Matthias know that he was struggling to get over his flashbacks and anxiety. He knew that would have happened regardless of how they were able to make a baby, but it was likely worse because of the surprise nature of it.

“I’m pregnant,” he breathed.

“What?”

“I’m pregnant,” he repeated. He kept his voice as level and calm as he could so that he didn’t spook Kaz, but he was unable to stop another wave of tears rushing from his eyes.

The other man had turned into a statue, his coffee black eyes wide with shock as he leaned forward. He wrapped his arms around Matthias and then held him there as he looked to Nina for help. “Are we losing the baby? He said that he thought his cycle had started this morning.”

He had never been more grateful for his best friend than when she took over and began to explain the situation to give him a much needed break. “Matthias never had a full cycle. You got him pregnant the first time he ovulated after he stopped taking the T. It’s called a cryptic pregnancy and it actually happens more often than you think, so he’s pregnant right now and has been for months. He’s in labor and we think that the baby is going to be born premature. There’s nothing that we can do to stop it and the baby will have the best possible medical care and a very high chance of survival for preemies,” Nina explained. “If you’re going to throw up please don’t do it on him.”

That got a small laugh out of the taller man. “I’m sorry that I couldn’t tell you over the phone, I’m very scared,” he whispered.

“This shit is so fucking scary,” Kaz muttered. He pulled his husband back and then cupped Matthias face with both of his hands. He really had to be struggling since he hadn’t removed his gloves when that was something he usually did before touching Matthias post their marriage. “I’m going to be with you the entire time. If we lose them we’ll do it together. I promised that I would be with you for the rest of your life and that counts now.”

He nodded, desperately trying to keep the rest of his tears at bay. He bit his lip to prevent a whimper from escaping as he bowed forward to try and help deal with his contraction. Nina pushed her body against the rail of the bed and then began the same soothing motions that she had been making the entire time that they had been together. “What’s going on?” Kaz panicked.

That was what Matthias had been worried about, but thankfully his best friend appeared to have it under control. “He’s having a contraction. It’s his body getting ready to deliver the baby. It’s a bit painful but it’s more uncomfortable than anything. Matthias and I have already found a couple of ways that help him work through it.”

“Well, what are they?” Kaz demanded like she had just stolen away his favorite toy.

He and Nina had been friends for less time than Matthias and Nina had, but they still knew each other very well. She wasn’t offended by his tone or the fact that he was already beginning to bat her hand away with his gloved one. She knew that he wanted to be able to help Matthias because he felt helpless to fix the situation and wanted his partner to be as comfortable as he could be. So, she showed him what to do instead of arguing with him, “Rub his back, right along here.”

Kaz shuffled around so that he was sitting in a chair beside the hospital bed. Nina had put down the railing so that he could reach his husband better without having to stand. Kaz ran his hand, now bare form the glove, along his lover’s back to try and soothe some of the tensed muscles there. “You’re doing wonderfully, this is going to be fine. We’re going to make it through this,” he murmured. The words were as much for his mind as they were for Matthias’.

It only took about another ten minutes for the OB to return. She had Matthias get in the same position that he had been in before and then let him know that it was time for him to start pushing. He didn’t have as many options as he would have had it been a normal labor and delivery process. There was also a whole team from the pediatric wing of the hospital prepared to take the baby as soon as they were born.

He had just gotten his legs into the stirrups so that he could push when he had the sudden realization about what was going to happen. He had already been working through the idea of giving birth while they were trying to get pregnant and there was one part he knew he couldn’t go without. He could deal with the room full of strangers, the house completely unprepared for his babe, and the dog that didn’t know he was about to get a brother. He could deal with not having a name and the hours of time that were soon to be spent in the hospital NICU, but he had to have the one thing that he had always dreamed of. “I want to touch them, please, when they’re born. I don’t know if we can do skin-to-skin like a normal delivery, but I have to touch them when they’re born before they’re taken,” he said quickly.

“We can do that. Does your partner want to cut the cord?” Dr. Koh asked as her eyes flickered over to where Kaz was standing.

Kaz looked down at Matthias, who was only able to give him a brief nod before he had to focus on pushing. Nina was on the other side of the bed and whispering encouragements to him as she held his hand, giving him the strength that Kaz was too scared to lend easily. “I do,” the other man finally got out. “Yes.”

“Alright, we’ll make sure that we can do that. Right team?” the OB asked the room. There was a chorus of confirmation back which sent a shock of warmth through the couple, reassuring them that they were in good hands.

The entire world went gray as Matthias focused on the pain and pressure. The pressure would finally be relieved when he pushed, but it was still painful and the sensation of the baby descending inside of him was one of the weirdest that he had ever experienced. He could hear Kaz and Nina speaking to him, the instructions from the medical team, but everything else had fallen away. The only thing that he could focus on was getting through this horrible process so that they could start their new journey as parents.

He felt like he was being split open as the head began to crown. Another thing had passed that should have been in his birth plan if he had only known that he was going to have a baby. He wanted to feel their hair, their head as it was born into the world, but there was no time for that. He pushed again and felt himself open as wide as he had ever been, his nerves going red with it.

Dr. Koh gave a triumphant noise as she said, “I’ve got the head, I want you to stop pushing. Just pant and look at your husband, focus on him and not what I’m doing.”

He did as he was told, leaning his head back against the pillows. His chest was heaving for air and his neck was dripping with sweat, all from the exertion of giving birth. He turned towards his husband and saw that Kaz was tilted down towards the baby instead of looking back at him. His near-black eyes were wide with shock and held a reverence that Matthias had never thought he would get to see. This was something that he had wanted and thankfully had gotten despite the extreme circumstances.

He panted and tried to keep his body from pushing despite the near-irresistible urge that was fluttering through his system. “You’re so close, Matthias, so close,” Nina whispered as she pressed his knuckles to her chapstick-covered lips.

He didn’t want to hear that he was close, because that meant that his baby would be a step closer to being in the world. If his baby was close to being born then he couldn’t keep them safe where they belonged inside of him. His baby would be out in the world, where they would be hurt if something happened to him or Kaz, where they could get sick or hurt themself. If the baby stayed inside of him then they could continue to grow instead of coming out too small and sickly. When they were born, he wouldn’t be there to share his body with them and help them grow.

He let out a whimper as Dr. Koh said, “Alright, Matthias. No cord around the neck and the shoulders have turned now. I want you to push with the next pain, alright?”

“Okay, okay,” he breathed. There had been no stopping his labor and the delivery of their little one when he was admitted to the hospital, there was no way that it was going to happen now. The head of his baby had already been born so he might as well continue through the process so that he could see the beauty that they would bring with them.

He grasped hold of Kaz’s hand tighter than before so that he could give himself a bit of extra strength and then pushed with all his might. The nerves in his vaginal canal and legs had gone a bit numb from the constant pain and pressure that the birth was causing, but he was still able to feel the rest of the baby slip out of him and into the waiting hands of the doctor. As soon as it was all over, his body was flooded with endorphins and he collapsed back onto the bed.

Matthias tilted his head upwards despite not being able to life the rest of himself so that he could see his baby. The doctor had caught them with one of the blue towel-blankets and was rubbing their back as she held them up so that he could see better. As she continued the motions, she stood from the stool and took a step forward. With a single fluid movement, she had placed the tiny baby down on his chest

She had been working with the baby while another member of the medical team leaned over and began to tie off the cord in two places. Matthias could barely pay attention to the or his husband as he focused on the tiny face of his baby. He could see that they could have gone with a couple extra weeks of growing and developing, but they were still the most beautiful thing that he had ever seen in his entire life.

Their brow was basically pulled from Kaz’s forehead and then shrunken down so that it lay underneath grimy red skin. Their nose and mouth held a shape that was reminiscent of Matthias’ mother, but he wasn’t sure if that would last. He remembered that his sister was basically identical to his father when she was born but then had grown to look like a combo of both their parents.

None of the time that he had gotten felt like enough and he was sure that it never would. Even if he had gotten days to stare down at the life that his body had made and birthed in secret, it would have been over too soon. The babe was lifted from his chest and whisked away to the warming station and NICU team in the corner as soon as Kaz had finished cutting the cord.

“What did we have?” Matthias asked, exhaustion raging in his body now that the contractions had dampened down and the adrenaline was beginning to flood from him.

“A little girl,” Kaz said. The way that he was speaking reminded the other two of when they were teenagers had he had faced his abusive foster father for the first time since he was nine. He was quiet and lost in his thoughts, plotting something that neither of them would be privy to for some time.

“Go with her,” Matthias urged. “I’ll be fine here with Nina, don’t argue with me. I want you to go with her so that she doesn’t feel alone. If she doesn’t make it then she has to know how much her fathers loved her.”

The tears choked his throat before they all came pouring out of his eyes and down his face. He was shaking slightly in his bed as he stared at the warming station being rushed down towards the NICU so they could help the baby, who had only just begun to cry. “Are you sure?” Kaz asked. He only left his husband’s side when he was met with a quivering nod and Nina’s chiding.

---

Matthias would have gladly welcomed a much longer labor compared to the wait that he had to do afterwards. He had delivered the afterbirth and then gotten stitched up from where he had torn. Then he was moved into a recovery room where he would be watched to make sure he didn’t hemorrhage or develop any post-birth conditions. Nina had come with him, and Wylan was able to bring them some of the things that she had asked of him after an hour. It was nice to enjoy their company, especially when it was in addition to the food that his friend had brought with him. The only person that Matthias really wanted, however, was Kaz and his daughter.

Guilt was swirling low in his stomach every time that he thought of what was really happening. She didn’t have a name and he didn’t even know her status. He wanted to be the one that had been allowed to go with their daughter so that he could see how she was doing. He wanted to be the one to see her first moments, to hear the doctor give her a prognosis no matter what it turned out to be. He was glad that he had sent Kaz so that she wasn’t alone, but his parents had always both been there for him and he couldn’t help but feel them judging him for not being able to do the same for his own baby.

Luckily, Nina was by his side the entire time. She held his hand and pressed her lips to his forehead to try and soothe the anxiety that had made itself at home in his heart. He was so grateful that she had chosen to be his friend when she easily could have had anyone. He leaned on her like she was a crutch, his head against her shoulder and their fingers together. It reminded him a little bit of when he had found her after her first OD, though he was the one in the hospital now.

“It’s going to be alright, Matthias,” Nina repeated every time she noticed the spike in his heart monitor. The only thing that he could do was nod in agreement with her. The idea that things could be bad, that he could be on the way to losing the daughter he had barely known that he was going to have, was simply too much for him.

Kaz was able to find him after about three hours. He looked frazzled, his hair a mess over his forehead and his eyes wild with stress. He slumped down into a chair on the other side of the bed from Nina, taking a deep breath before he leaned forward in search of his husband’s other hand. Matthias eagerly reached out for him while trying to keep his millions of questions behind his teeth.

“She’s alright,” he started. “They had to get her on a feeding tube and they’re going to start bottle feeding her as soon as they can. Her lungs are developed thanks to the steroids that they gave you when you came in. She has some jaundice but apparently that’s more common in babies than we first thought it was. She’s going to have some time on the sun beds or whatever they call them.”

Kaz’s voice broke and he tilted his head down. Nina slipped off of the bed and then out of the room so that the duo could have some privacy, which Matthias was eternally grateful for. He scooted to the edge of the bed as easily as he could with how damaged he was from the birth. He took both of his husband’s hands and then kissed Kaz’s knuckles to try and accentuate his affection. Kaz leaned up and caught his lips in a wonderful, deliberate kiss.

It was a shock but certainly not unwelcome. Matthias had expected Kaz to be in the throws of a panic attack the entire time that he was hospitalized. That was why they were looking into therapists before they actually became parents and thinking of healthy ways to do exposure therapy, after all. Usually when Kaz was anxious or stressed about something, it was a lot harder for him to touch people. Matthias understood that and loved him no matter how well they could physically show it to each other. He was pleasantly surprised, though, that he could get that touch-related affection from his spouse when he was aching for it.

Kaz broke the kiss and then pressed their foreheads together, his entire body quivering because his bad knee had too much weight on it. Matthias had just opened his mouth to tell him to sit when the other man began to speak, “Bear, she’s absolutely wonderful.”

“I wish that I could have gone with you to see her,” Matthias whispered. His heart was mourning that, he had always had some kind of idea that a parent would hold their baby and coddle them after they were born. He had seen those beautiful moments when both of his friends had their children, but he knew as soon as the reality of his situation had sunk in that it wouldn’t be happening for him. He had tried to make peace with it, but he wasn’t sure that it was really working all that well.

“You’ll go soon enough. She-she needs a name,” Kaz cleared his throat. “You made her, you need to give her a name. I can’t think of anything.”

“Kaz,” Matthias laughed. He knew that his husband was going to be awkward and nervous about becoming a parent, but this was more adorable than he could handle at the moment. “I don’t have any names right now.”

“We’ll figure something out eventually,” Kaz said. He grabbed his cane and began to pace around the hospital room with the face that he had used for scheming when they were dumb teenagers. “She’s small, so we’ll have to get some preemie baby clothes on top of taking the remnants of Machiel’s newborn clothes that Jes and Wy offered us. We’ll also have to get a carseat just for her, I know that Nina and Inej still have the one from Nilu but it’s kind of trashed and my girl needs to have something better than that. What color nursery do you want?”

“Kaz,” Matthias sighed as he relaxed back into the bed. He was sore and tired, he had just been through something incredibly traumatic for someone that knew they were pregnant, let alone what he had just done. “Whatever you pick will be good. When you’re finished ordering and panicking will you come lay down next to me so that I can sleep with my head on your shoulder?”

“Of course,” he replied like it wasn’t even a question. Matthias was glad to see that even though she was a surprise, Kaz was already fiercely bonded with their daughter. He could only hope the same would be true for himself.

---

Their entire worlds had changed many times before. They had both become entirely different people when they had lost their families. That was what had made them what they were now, what they would always be. It was something different to have the slow progression of love and healing that had led to their marriage. While only Kaz had lost the last tie to his humanity in the walls of a hospital, they were both handed a new life and a different way of being that day. Ida Delilah Helvar-Brekker would be the most cherished child in the entire group, even if they had to wait another three months to get to bring her home from the hospital.

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