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justagalwhowrites · 2 days

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Can't Stay Away - A QZ!Joel Miller Fic

Years after you turned to Joel for help getting out of a bad relationship, he can't seem to stop coming back to you.

Pairing: Joel Miller x Female Reader

CW: Angst (duh), Joel is a bit of an asshole (that's the point and it makes him even hotter, I fear), mention of past domestic violence (not described), injury from past domestic violence, threat of continued domestic violence. unprotected P in V sex, breeding kink, fantasizing about pregnancy (doesn't actually happen.) Minors DNI 18+ only, no use of Y/N.

Length: 4.1k

A/N: Shared for the Joel Miller Birthday Celebration found on Tumblr here. This is QZ!Joel with Secret Relationship and Breeding Kink. I hope you enjoy!

Masterlist | AO3

“Where the fuck else is there to go?” Tommy asked, shucking his mud-covered boots and leaving them in a pile by the door.

“Just got business to take care of,” Joel said, voice rough.

“It’s pourin’ rain, man,” his brother said, dropping his drenched pack to the table as if to make a point. “We didn’t even know we were makin’ it back tonight until fuckin’ tonight. Just stay home.”

“Wanna get this done,” Joel said, taking his portion of their haul from his pack and piling it on the table. He left just one thing inside the pack. “Probably won’t be back ’til morning.”

Tommy just pursed his lips, shaking his head a little.

“Just don’t do anything stupid, Joel.”

Joel didn’t say anything back. What did he have to say?

Tommy had every reason to worry about him being stupid. Every reason to believe that Joel was going to do something that would hurt their smuggling operation. Every reason to believe that Joel was going to do something that would hurt himself.

Which, he supposed, wasn’t particularly far off.

You were, indeed, something stupid and something that would hurt him.

You were his biggest indulgence and his biggest risk, the thing that was the largest threat to him here in the Boston QZ.

Ex-wife of a FEDRA guard, Joel should avoid you.

His work was dangerous enough as it was, he shouldn’t make it more dangerous by messing around that close to the people who could execute him if they really wanted, especially not with someone they seemed to take pleasure in tormenting.

But he couldn’t seem to stay away from you.

He couldn’t put his finger on what it was. It wasn’t that he loved you. Not that he’d ever really loved a woman - he’d tried with Sarah’s mom and was sure he’d come up short - but he knew he didn’t have it in him to love anything now. The aching wound of loss took up too much of him, there wasn’t space for anything else.

But he did care. Whether that was because he was attached to you as a person or because you made him come so hard he forgot the world ended for a moment, he didn’t know.

He supposed the why didn’t matter. He cared. He cared enough that he couldn’t lose you without it adding to that wound, one that had damn near killed him and had seemed to have only grown worse with time.

That should be enough of a reason to stay away from you. Hadn’t he learned his lesson by now? That giving a shit only led to pain? That if he was going to keep surviving any of this, he had to be far, far away from something like you?

Still, he made his way through the QZ, the pouring, cold rain fitting the grim environs. Everything here was slightly wrong. It looked something like a city from before but not. It appeared as though things could be normal, somewhere, except they weren’t. It seemed as though Joel had been tailor made for this place, this time. Living some kind of half life where everything was shades of gray, nothing left to live for but - apparently - not able to die. The last gasp of humanity left in him clinging to this world.

That made you a shade of gray, too, one he wasn’t sure what to do with.

It had started years earlier, when you were desperate and willing to trade sex for a gun.

Joel hadn’t taken you up on the offer then, frowning as you watched him with wide, desperate eyes.

“The hell do you need a gun for?” He’d asked. “If you don’t already got one, hard pressed to see someone like you startin’ in on a business that needed one.”

“Does it matter?” You asked. “I’ll give you what ever you want, please.”

“Matters to me,” Joel said. “Not about to arm someone looking to move in on my business.”

“It’s not for that.”

“Then you shouldn’t have a problem tellin’ me what it is for,” he replied.

You looked around, cagey, before lowering your voice further. As though talking about an illegal weapons trade wasn’t enough of a reason to keep quiet.

“I’m leaving my husband,” you said, those wide, soft eyes watching him so closely. “He’s FEDRA and he’s made it clear that he won’t let me go without a fight. I need to be able to protect myself, please, I can give you ration cards as I earn them, I can… I’ll do anything else you might want, I…”

“Stop,” Joel cut you off, tears starting at the edges of your eyes. He took his hand gun from its place tucked in the small of his back and passed it to you as discreetly as he could. “There, now you got somethin’. Meet me here tomorrow, same time, I’ll get you more ammo. Know how to use it?”

“Don’t I just point it and pull the trigger?” You asked, brows raised.

He just sighed.

“Think you can keep from usin’ it until tomorrow?” He asked. You nodded quickly. “Good. I’ll show you.”

“Thank you,” you said, stashing the weapon quickly. “What… what do I owe you?”

The fear in your voice made his stomach turn.

“Nothin’,” Joel said. “Fine on ration cards at the moment. Don’t trade in the other shit. Tomorrow. Don’t be late.”

You just nodded quickly, thanking him with too much earnest hope in your voice for something being spoken to him.

Joel spent the afternoon the next day teaching you how to shoot as best he could inside the QZ. Turns out, the reason you didn’t already know how is that you’d been in Boston during the outbreak. You’d just moved there with your shitbag of a husband a few weeks before it all came crashing down. You’d never really needed to fight, let alone shoot or kill. You never needed a gun.

Until your husband started hitting you.

Joel learned quickly exactly why you felt like you needed to be armed. He’d put a hand on your ribs to adjust your stance and you hissed in pain. Joel pulled away quickly, frowning as you tried to hide your pained expression but it didn’t work.

“You gonna tell me what that was?” He asked, brows raised. You clenched your jaw and stared at the ground.

“It’s not your business.”

“I’m helpin’ you, your husband is a fucking FEDRA officer, if you’re about to haul off and kill him I should know why,” he said, voice heated. “So tell me, he do that?”

Your eyes finally met his and he didn’t need to ask again.

“Lemme see.”

“Joel…”

“Show me,” he said, voice sharp.

You sighed and lifted your sweatshirt, revealing discolored and swollen skin along one side.

Joel clenched his jaw.

“It’s gotten worse,” you said quietly. “I can’t keep pretending it’ll be OK if we just get through this, I can’t pretend like he hasn’t been building toward this for years. I need to get out before he kills me.”

Joel stepped back and you lowered your shirt, your eyes on his.

“He bigger than you?” He asked. You nodded. “Alright, gonna teach you a few more things, too…”

He showed you how to protect yourself without a gun and how to end a conflict with one. He hoped you wouldn’t need to use either. After a few days of showing you how to do the things he’d assumed just came with the territory of surviving the end of the world, you went your separate ways.

But Joel still thought of you, an odd twinge in his chest when he did, something like concern. He wanted you to be OK. He couldn’t put his finger on why that would matter to him but he wanted that, he wanted you to be safe and happy.

So when he ran into you on the street a few months later, he couldn’t help but ask. And you smiled at him, brighter than he’d ever seen you look, when you told him that you had your own place now, that the gun he’d given you had never been fired. It was hard, but you’d survived.

The two of you went to the speakeasy and you bought Joel a drink, saying you owed him for helping you get out of your situation. He let you buy the first round. He bought the second. Before too long, he was in your apartment, pulling off your clothes and touching your body without you flinching away from him.

You became like a drug to him then. Every few nights he found himself outside your door, desperate for the reprieve you and your sex gave him. Some sense of normalcy, the ability to feel something beyond the crushing weight of loss, that brief moment when he was buried inside you and reaching his peak that the rest of the world fell away and he existed on a plane where nothing bad had ever happened to him and he’d never done anything to deserve it.

He tried to pretend like that release is all it was. But then there were moments where he couldn’t deny that it was more. The time where he passed you on the street and your eyes met his and he wanted to go talk to you, to see why your eyes seemed dark and sad, but there was a FEDRA guard watching you from the corner and he couldn’t risk it, not for either of you. The time he showed up at your door and heard yelling and he pretended to be a neighbor to intervene. All the times he held you as you fell asleep nestled against his skin, soft and beautiful and trusting, all things that should have been driven out of you in the QZ. All things you should never have been with him in the first place.

He swallowed those moments, tried to not let the fear and panic they sparked inside of him take over. The last time he loved someone, they died. The last time he loved someone, it almost killed him. He couldn’t love you. He couldn’t risk it.

But here he was, at your door again, anyway.

He tried to stop himself from knocking but all it did was make his hand stutter before he did what he always did: wait for you to let him in.

“Joel?” You opened the door in an oversized t-shirt and boxers, looking groggy. “You’re back.”

You threw your arms around his neck and pulled him inside, pressing your body against his, burying your face in the hollow of his throat and he let himself breathe you in, remind himself that you were safe.

“I was so worried about you,” your voice was muffled in the wet fabric of his shirt. “I heard some things from people at the gate and…”

“The gate?” He frowned, pulling back from you. “The hell were you doin’ down there?”

You looked at him, your lower lip going between your teeth, fingers twisting on themselves.

“What. Were you doin’. At the gate.”

“I heard something at work,” you said quietly. “About a patrol getting overrun by infected and… I wanted to see if there were signs of other people getting hurt, I’m sorry, I couldn’t just sit here and wait for you and not know…”

“You can’t do shit like that,” he said roughly. “It ain’t safe, your fuckin’ husband is always looking for a reason to make your life hell, he would have me and Tommy killed if he knew about us, you can’t just…”

“I know.”

“Then why’d you do it?” He smacked his hand against the tabletop, making you flinch, hating himself for scaring you even for a moment. “I know you fuckin’ know better!”

“Because I care about you!” You yelled, your voice thick. “Is that such a crime?”

Joel crumpled at that, shoulders slouching.

“That’s…” he sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “That ain’t what this is, honey, you know that.”

“I know,” you said again, voice soft. “I’m not expecting anything from you, Joel, I know better than that. I just… I’m not just going to pretend that you’re nothing to me. Life is too short for that.”

His heart thudded against his ribs, so hard it felt like a bruise.

“I can’t…”

“I know,” you whispered, reaching up and cupping his cheek. “It’s OK. I know.”

He should have turned to leave then, he was smart enough to know that. But your hand was soft on his skin, your body was warm next to his, your eyes were welcoming and understanding in a way that nothing else had been since he’d lost the only thing that mattered.

So he kissed you.

It wasn’t something that was soft and romantic, nothing like what you deserved, nothing like how he would have kissed you if he’d known you before. Instead it was fierce, devouring, harsh enough that he knew his stubble must be scratching your skin and he didn’t care. All he cared about was getting more of you.

You tugged him back toward your bedroom, Joel stepping out of his boots as he went. He dropped his pack on the floor and tugged your shirt up and over your head, casting it aside. He ran his hands over your bared skin, your flesh pebbled where the cold, wet of his shirt touched you. He pulled that off, too, before he could do anything that hurt you, even for a moment. Christ knew you had enough of that behind you, the look on your face when he’d lost control just a minute before already a scar in his mind, adding to the scars on your skin from your marriage he wished he could go back and stop.

You undressed each other quickly, desperately, and he all but threw you on the bed once you were naked. He followed you there, shedding the last of his clothes before crawling up your body, his finger tracing your slit to spread you open just enough that he could get his thick, hard cock inside.

He should be more careful with you, he knew that. But he didn’t have the patience and you’d never, even once, asked him to slow down or be gentle. So he pushed himself inside with one sharp, hard stroke, making you gasp and arch beneath him as he groaned at the feeling of your tight cunt. You whimpered as he stilled deep inside, adjusting to how you held him, fighting to keep from coming too quick because you felt too goddamn good but he couldn’t waste it, not this fast.

“You’re OK,” he panted, his mouth against your shoulder. “You can take it, baby, know you can, take it so well.”

He felt you nod against him, your hands trembling as they went to his back, holding him close.

“Just take it,” he said as he started to fuck into you, caving to his baser instincts and letting himself have you the way you seemed so willing to give yourself to him. “Just take it, honey, just let me… let me…”

Your hips rolled to meet his, your nails digging into his skin.

“Feels so good, Joel,” you whined against him. “Fuck, I missed you, you feel, you feel, I…”

He kissed you, swallowing your babbling before you had a chance to complete your thought. He couldn’t hear what he was afraid was coming, a line he couldn’t bring himself to cross. There was so much he couldn’t give to you, so much that he knew you deserved but was too selfish to give you up so you could find it.

But fuck, did he wish he could give you that. In another time, another place, another reality entirely, he could. He knew that. In some other world, one where humanity wasn’t gone and his daughter was still breathing, he would give you everything. In that world, he would love you. He would open your car door and share inside jokes and care for you in a way no one else could. In that impossible world, you and him lived in a little house with a garden out front and a spare bedroom where Sarah stayed when she came for a visit because she would be an adult now, with a life of her own instead of forever frozen at 14. In that reality, you were his in every way. His ring was on your finger, his roof over your head, his baby in your womb. He wouldn’t need to hide it then, wouldn’t need to tiptoe around FEDRA, wouldn’t need to be afraid of what loving you might mean. He could fuck you until you were full of him, so full that you carried part of him inside of you for months, your body growing and changing with it and then no one would ever question that you were his, fucking his.

Your pussy drew tight around him as your fingers wound tight in his hair. Your nipples were hard against his chest, the plush of your breasts pressed to his front as your thighs tightened around his hips.

He pulled his mouth from yours to kiss and suck his way down your neck to your chest, pressing himself deep inside you and letting himself pretend - just for a moment - that the reality he occupied was one where he could have you, really have you. That the two of you were in a cozy bedroom with furniture he built for you with a room a few doors down that you’d already started looking at cribs and changing tables to fill it with.

“Gonna come,” you panted, your hips stuttering against him as he pressed inside, forcing the head of his cock against the soft, tender place deep within you. “Fuck, don’t stop, don’t stop, I’m gonna… I… I…”

He was so close to his peak that he almost wanted you to say it. He wanted you to say it while he came deep inside you, leaving himself there so it could take, so he could watch you grow his child and take care of you through it, so he could take care of both of you after. Claim you so thoroughly that when you were in the QZ there was no question that you were his, not with his baby inside you and his arm around your shoulders.

He wanted it. He wanted it so bad that, in that moment with his cock buried inside you as you keened below him, he didn’t care if it fucking killed him.

Joel came apart when you did, the fluttering of your tight little hole sending him over the edge, the high of nothing else in the world mattering outside of you and the hot clutch of your body swallowing him whole for one glorious moment.

But, as always happened, he came back down to earth, still held in the cradle of your hips, still breathing the scent of your skin, still lost in the wasteland that was once the world.

He didn’t kiss you as he pulled out of you, collapsing on the bed next to you, closing his eyes for a moment to keep from looking at you too long.

“You gotta be more careful,” he said after a moment.

You were silent long enough that he looked over at you, finding you on your side facing him but staring down at the mattress.

“I know,” you said eventually.

“I’m not trying to be an asshole,” he said, his voice gentle. Or as gentle as he seemed to be able to make it now, anyway. “But you know what happened the last time he thought you were seein’ someone. If killing him would fix it, I would, but I can’t kill every fucking FEDRA guard who’d take it out on you and I’m not gonna be the reason you get hurt.”

“I know,” you said again, looking at him this time. “But I… I just…”

“I know,” he said it this time, his stomach twisting.

You just nodded.

“You deserve better,” he said eventually. “Shouldn’t let me treat you the way I do.”

“I don’t mind.”

“You should,” he snapped and then sighed, staring at the ceiling again. “Sorry for scarin’ you before. When I hit the table. I… I would never…”

“I know,” you said, more confidently then. He looked back to you, frowning. “I’m not afraid of you, Joel. I know better about that, too.”

He was silent again, going back to staring at your water-stained ceiling.

“Should probably take a break,” he said eventually. “Not see each other for a bit.”

“It wouldn’t change anything,” you said quietly. He frowned, watching you again. “I know myself. I know how I feel. It’s OK. I don’t expect anything from you. Not even this.”

His eyes searched yours and he let himself try to reach some other version of him on some other plane, one where things were safe and he was in the bed you shared with him in the home you made together. A version where he could be honest with you and it wouldn’t destroy him.

“I’d give you more if I could,” he said instead.

You smiled ever so slightly, a gentle curve to your lips.

“I know,” you said softly. “Believe it or not, I know you, too, Joel.”

He let himself look at you for a moment, let that terrifying wound at the center of him hurt where he could really feel it, to feel the horror of what letting himself love you would be.

“It’s OK,” you whispered as you reached out and brushed his curls back, your fingertip grazing the scar at his temple. “I’ll just love you, anyway.”

He stayed in your bed that night, lying awake as you slept against him, ignoring the scream of panic at the core of him to run while he still could. He knew it couldn’t last. He knew he couldn’t rest like this, not with you this close, not in this awful place with that awful hurt. But he couldn’t leave you either. Not like this.

“Oh,” he said the next morning when it was still dark so he could slip back to his own apartment before some FEDRA prick was awake to see him leaving your place. “Almost forgot.”

He pulled a scarf from his pack, the one thing he hadn’t left at home after this run. It was thick, the knit heavy, a color that made your eyes shine. Not that he had pictured you wearing it with those eyes of yours when he’d picked it up. He held it out to you and you frowned, confused, as you took it.

“Winter is around the corner and you were cold all the time last year,” he said gruffly. “Don’t want you freezin’ to death.”

You smiled a little, running your fingers over the pattern knit into the yarn.

“Thank you,” you said, holding it to your chest and looking back to him. “I really needed this, Joel.”

He just grunted, pulling his pack on and heading for the door.

“I’m gonna stay away from you for a while,” he said, trying to ignore the pain in his chest at that. “Don’t want anyone catching on.”

“OK,” you said, eyes searching his before you stepped close to him and slowly, cautiously, pressed your soft, warm lips to his own. “Take care of yourself for me, OK?”

You said it like you would say I love you.

“You, too,” he said. He wondered if it sounded the same to you, too.

Staying away from you took work. He wanted to see you, be next to you, get lost in you. But he knew where that would lead and he couldn’t let it, not now, not like this.

So he stayed away for weeks. He stayed away until the first snowfall of the season in Boston and he made an excuse to go stand outside your job. He couldn’t help it. He needed to make sure you were warm and safe so he stood there and watched you leave, his scarf around your neck, You caught his eye with a small smile as you passed a FEDRA guard and he knew, with sinking certainty, he’d be back at your door that night.

He just couldn’t seem to stay away from you.

#fanfic #joel miller x female reader #joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #joel miller x oc #qz!joel #Joel Miller has a Breeding Kink #breeding kink fic #joel miller birthday celebration

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bratbarzal · 12 hours

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On Your Side (NH13) / Chapter Seven

Pairing: Nico Hischier x Fem!OC Poppy Jensen*

*I say it's an OC, it's just a name and third person POV. I use minor character descriptions because I don’t get on with writing vague reader inserts/YN for long-form, story heavy fics, but I will generally try to avoid including race and body type or really any physical descriptors. I’m always open to feedback on my writing, or how to be more inclusive.

WC: 18k (mad)

Chapter Warnings: ok so me and @h1sch13r were having a conversation about the girl with the list (iykyk and if you don't, don't go looking) and I had to put it in here because it was too funny of an opportunity not to (s/o to Rory for the inspo and the trauma where she told me a woman's brain shrinks in pregnancy who knew!!!) so there's some pretty gross things in here about pregnancy and babies lmao, also poppy has well and truly lost the plot tbh but this is why we love her she is nothing if not delusional, mentions of judgemental parents and weak family relationships, talk of pregnancy, babies and thoughts/feelings around the two topics, talk of childbirth kind of but not in depth, sort of angsty but not like ANGSTY!!!!! do you know what I mean? very much moreso on the fluffy side though. a bit of hurt/comfort. poppy is an anxious mess, nico is... nico (I say with love and affection this time I promise)

Series Masterlist

Previous Part (Chapter Six)

A/N: I feel like the speed in which I wrote this is a testament to how much I love writing these two and this story and I LOVE YOU GUYS AND THE WAY YOU LOVE THIS FIC SO MUCH IT MELTS MY WEE HEART I just wanna spend my days reading all the nice things you send me I HOPE YOU ENJOY!!! 💖 the ending is a little bit rushed but I can't keep going back and forth on it or I'll lose my mind

Poppy

Despite having the invitation stuck to her fridge for 6 weeks, and knowing about the event even further in advance, Poppy’s cousin, Elsie’s, baby shower could not have come at a more ridiculous time for her.

She knows she can’t expect everyone else’s world to stop turning just because her own life is spiralling way out of control, but a baby shower is just downright cruel.

Especially when she hasn’t even taken a test yet.

It's been 3 days since she had spoken to Katja Hischier at the signing event.

She had gone straight to the pharmacy once she had finished work, had picked up every single brand of pregnancy test she could find and had swallowed down the embarrassment when the girl behind the counter had looked at her like she was insane.

And she had spent that whole evening sat staring at the bag in which she had stashed them, not even daring to get one out.

The next day, she had gone to work, and had gone straight back to pretending like nothing else was going on in her life - only this time, she had a little trashcan beneath her desk dedicated to the nausea that rippled through her all day like some sort of sick constant reminder of her situation. It was a gross counter measure, but it stopped her having to take constant trips to the bathroom and rousing any sort of suspicion.

If anyone else were to come to the same conclusion Nico’s mom had, and confront her about it, she would have burst into tears on the spot.

The day after that was Saturday, and of all the things she could have done to distract herself from what was going on, she had gone shopping for a gift for her cousin in Manhattan. With her mother.

She had spent the day looking at cribs, and changing tables, little tiny wardrobes to keep little tiny clothes, and God all the little tiny clothes were so small it made her tense up.

On the upside, it was like her body knew better than to get sick in front of her mother - she’d never hear the end of it.

She was getting enough of a backhanded lecture about her cousin’s pregnancy, never mind the potential of her own.

“I can’t believe she’s having another baby out of wedlock,” Priscilla had scoffed as she and Poppy were first checking through the gift registry in Macy’s, “Your father and your Uncle Peter think she’s an absolute disgrace.”

“They’ve been together like 7 years, Mom, that’s stronger than a few marriages I know of. She’ll be fine.”

“It isn’t about how long they’ve been together, Poppy,” her mom swats at her hand as she scrolls a little too fast down the list, “It’s about securing the best future for those children. The man is a glorified construction worker, she could have chosen better in life.”

Elsie’s partner Jared is an architect, but she couldn’t find any use in arguing that point with her mother in the middle of a department store.

If she found out Poppy could maybe be carrying the baby of a hockey player, who she would never marry and wasn’t even in a relationship with, she would have a cardiac episode right in the middle of the shop floor.

“Is it not about her being happy?” She had asked, and the look her mother threw her way was all the answer she needed.

“Don’t be ridiculous. She can’t possibly be happy in that little bungalow with no college education and no ring on her finger. Believe me.”

Elsie’s bungalow had been designed by Jared when she was pregnant with their first son. They owned everything outright from the 4 acres of land it sat on to the final tile Jared had laid in the roof, himself. The house is a labour of love, and every time Poppy visits, Elsie has a smile on her face like she has the whole world at her fingertips.

It has always been something she has envied.

And she thinks it’s envy that creeps up on her in the third day, when she and Nia arrive at the bungalow with their gift bags in tow, and Elsie and Jared answer the door like the picture of once in a lifetime love.

She’s absolutely glowing, mostly through her third trimester now, her bump round and low, her cheeks puffy and her eyes gleaming with unadulterated joy. And Jared looks at her like she’s the only woman in the world.

Yeah, it’s definitely envy.

And maybe a touch of pride at her cousin for sticking it to their family.

“I can’t believe Elsie’s onto her second kid and me and you are glorified spinsters,” Nia comments as she picks up a handful of finger sandwiches.

“I don’t think you can be a spinster at 25, Ni, that’s a little overdramatic.” Poppy responds, swallowing down the arising queasiness at just the sight of devilled eggs on the table set up for food. Elsie is pregnant, for God’s sake, she thinks, she shouldn’t want to be around any kind of eggs.

“Maybe we should just suck it up and marry each other, we’d make cute babies.”

“Again, not how that works.”

“Well obviously you’d carry it. There isn’t a chance in hell I’m ever pushing a little cantaloupe sized head out of my lady parts, I hurt just thinking about it.”

Poppy wants to say tell me about it. It’s all she’s been thinking about herself the last few days, and the last thing she needs as she’s trying to avoid thinking about it is to be surrounded by constant reminders.

Like the little tiny plastic baby clinging to the straw in her lemonade that it takes everything in her to resist launching across the room, or the giant stack of diapers shaped into a four tier cake that sits on the end of the table that she wants to tear apart.

She usually loves babies.

She loves fawning over little boopy noses and squealing at all the cute slogans on their little onesies - like I’m berry cute with a little embroidered strawberry beside it or a little printed dinosaur that says, I’m a-roar-able!

She loves when they get the hiccups, and their wide eyes go round like they don’t know what the hell is happening to their bodies.

She loves when they have those little self-satisfied smiles in their sleep, and everyone argues over whether it’s gas or not.

But as much as she loves all those things usually, right now they are terrifying her.

Every single thing she tries to lay her eyes on to take her mind off of everything is baby themed. Pink floating balloons with teddy bears weighing them down, a message board with a bunch of baby grow shaped cards pinned to it, a bowl of lollipops that are shaped like pacifiers.

She can’t escape it no matter where she goes or who she speaks to, and so all she can do is hover round Nia like a wordless zombie and wait until there’s a group event where hopefully some normal conversation gets flowing.

Only, expecting any kind of normal conversation at a baby shower is delusional at best.

“Oh my god, a snot sucker! I was just telling Jared how much we need one of these!” Elsie exclaims as she pulls the little box out of a gift bag covered in little rainbows.

“A what-now?” Nia’s face is the picture of disgust, leaning into the circle to get a better look at the present Elsie had just unwrapped.

“Babies can’t clear their own noses when they get congested,” Elsie’s friend, Gina, who had gifted the device, pipes up from across the room, “So you put the little tube up there and suck on the other end. The snot gets stuck in the middle and you just wash it out. It saves you having to suck it out with your own mouth.”

“Oh God, I’m gonna be sick,” Poppy chokes out, bringing her hand to her mouth in what the rest of the group assume is mock disgust, but she can literally feel her stomach turning.

“Me too,” Nia mimics her, “Does the girl with the list know about this? That you have to suck the snot out of your baby’s nose?! Who would even think of doing that in the first place?!”

Poppy jabs her elbow into her side, wincing at the thought and trying to fight the urge to vomit. The last thing she needs is to be reminded of the girl with the damn list. The last time that had come across her feed, she’d added on there that being pregnant can cause your sweat to turn blue. What if she can never wear white again?

“It’s one of those wonderful motherly instincts, you don’t even think about it being gross when it comes to relieving your baby, like sniffing their diapers or fishing their crap out of the bathtub!”

Poppy pushes herself up from her place on the couch, and makes a dash for the nearest bathroom, hearing Nia excuse her with, “She probably shouldn’t have come, she’s been sick all week. Tell me more about the bathtub thing though, is that like a regular occurrence? You just live in constant fear like that?”

When she’s safely inside, she presses her back to the other side of the door, her shaking body calming as she takes deep breaths and fights past the nausea until she no longer feels the need to throw up.

She tries to think of other things. Clean things. No bodily fluids involved. Fresh laundry and Coconut Breeze candles.

It takes a good couple minutes before she feels okay again.

When she finally opens her clenched eyes, she realises the bathroom she had stumbled into is not in fact the guest bathroom, but the one Elsie and Jared had assigned specifically to their son - and Poppy’s god-son - Jensen, who was given his mother’s maiden name, but Poppy has always told him he was named after her.

There is sailboat wallpaper, rubber ducks with different costumes lining the bathtub, a little plastic step up to the sink with Paw Patrol characters on the side, and a cabinet covered in stickers.

God bless her cousin for not raising a beige baby, she thinks.

When she gets a closer look, she realises the stickers are little cartoon versions of Harry Potter characters, and she can’t help the little smile that tugs at the corners of her mouth as she smooths her fingers over one of them, making sure the edges stick back down and don’t start to peel.

Nico would give his kids Harry Potter stickers. He’d let them leave them all over the house, would probably let them stick them to his practice gear and his old sticks. He’d play rubber duckies in the bathtub, give each one a little unique voice and would ingrain each character to his memory for every bath time, and blow bubbles at them until they erupted into little dimpled giggles. He’d stand in front of the sink and brush his teeth beside them, singing a 2 minute song he made up in his head so they’d learn to brush them for longer.

It would all come so easy to him.

Oh God.

She should not be thinking about this. Not in her godson’s bathroom, at least, in the middle of her cousin’s baby shower.

There’s a door off to the side, hooks on the back with a couple hooded bath towels - one that looks like a frog and another that looks like a dinosaur - and she finds herself reaching for the handle before she can think too much of it, pushing the door until it opens into Jensen’s room.

He’s sitting on the floor beside his bed, surrounded by little plastic pieces and trying to make sense of the booklet in his lap, and when he hears the door creak open, he looks up in surprise.

“Hey, Auntie Poppy.”

He would usually shoot up when he sees her - would run and jump into her arms and squeeze until he gets bored, would ask her, is that enough? And she would always tell him no so that he would squeeze her again.

It’s their thing.

But he stays sat, this time, his attention diverting immediately back to the Lego bricks in front of him.

“Hey, bud, you okay in here? What are you doing on your own?”

“I’m just playing.”

Jensen never plays on his own. He usually has the attention span of a gnat, and jumps between every activity he can think of, all while clutching the nearest adult’s hand and dragging them along for the ride.

Poppy lowers herself onto her knees beside him, careful not to push down into any of the bricks, and leans onto the palm of her hand. “You mind if I play, too?”

“Sure! I’m building Ron’s car from Harry Potter!”

He shows her the box, that reads Flying Ford Anglia, and she gives a reminiscent smile as she says, “I’ve never seen it.”

“It’s my favourite! Mommy says if I can do this one she’ll get me the train for my birthday.” She doesn’t even let her mind go where it wants. She’s putting a temporary ban on thinking about him until she’s in the safety of her own home, where her mind can’t wander at the sight of tiny pairs of sneakers sat beside matching big ones and baby grows that are no bigger than her forearm. “I’m gonna be 6.”

She knows that. She remembers the Thanksgiving dinner 6 years ago where his mom had announced to their family that she was foregoing college because she was pregnant at 18. She had never been prouder of anyone in her life, if not for taking centre stage at Jensen Thanksgiving, then for the way she had so casually gone back to eating Turkey legs like it was no big deal while both of their parents argued amongst themselves.

“That’s awesome, how can I help?”

“Could you read it to me? I can read, but I can’t read and put it together at the same time. I’m not an octopus.”

Poppy chuckles, taking the little instruction booklet from him and biting her tongue to save from telling him he wouldn’t need more hands to do both things, he’d just have to put the booklet down.

She observes him mostly as he puts the figure together, blue bricks stacking up until they eventually resemble the car in the picture, and he attaches them with a tiny tongue poking out the side of his mouth that reminds her of his mom. She does the same thing when she’s baking, following instructions left in a book by their grandmother and trying to measure things out to the gram.

He isn’t as chatty as he usually is, and she takes a stab in the dark as to what might be the matter.

“Hey, how cool, you’re gonna get to teach your baby sister all about Harry Potter, too!”

Jensen shrugs, a pensive frown on his face as he stays focused on the Lego. “Mommy says she won’t be able to watch movies with me.”

“Not for a little while. Babies just eat, sleep and poop for the first couple of months, I think,”

“Gross,” he turns his nose up, but his eyes flicker up to Poppy’s in amusement. She may not be a mother, but she knows the surefire way to a kid’s good graces - mentioning poop. It works every time.

“Super gross. But eventually, you’re gonna get to teach her about all the cool stuff you like, and she’ll probably love things just ‘cause you do. When I was a kid, I wanted to do everything my big brother did. We went as Ash and Pikachu for Halloween 3 years running, and I’d spend all my allowance on Pokemon cards for his collection.”

“You were a baby sister?” He asks, and she swallows down the hurt at the fact he doesn’t really know his uncle Oliver. Or his first cousin removed, whatever it is that they are. Oli’s eldest, James, is only a year older than Jensen, and they barely know of each other’s existence, just another name in a Christmas card they’re too young to read.

Their family is a minefield of hidden feuds and bad communication skills, but she’d like to think Elsie is attempting to break the generational patterns.

Maybe she could do that.

“Yeah,” Poppy chuckles, clicking the tiny brick into another and checking it against the picture in the booklet. She hasn’t felt like a little sister in a long time. “We’re not all that bad, as long as you’re nice to us.”

“Yeah, you’re pretty cool.” Jensen nods, and he smiles so big that Poppy notices for the first time that he’s finally missing a tooth.

“Your sister will be pretty cool too,” she tells him, resisting the urge to tell him about a few other guys missing teeth that she knows.

“Yeah, when she stops pooping all the time.” He giggles.

“Definitely.”

He continues building his car for a second, until he asks, “Hey, Auntie Poppy?”

“Yeah, bud?”

“How is she coming out?”

“How is she-,” her mouth flops open in shock. Of all the things in the world he wants to come to her about, he has to be joking with this. Talk about timing. “Your mom hasn’t handled that one?”

“Nope. And she won’t tell me how she got in there.”

“Yeah, that’s not really my area of expertise, kid.” If only he was old enough to understand irony. “How do you think she’s gonna come out?”

“I think they’re gonna have to crack mommy like an egg.”

“Oh, that-,” Sounds like something the girl with the list might be interested in, Poppy thinks, her mind going places she hadn’t yet dared to let it go. “That actually makes sense.”

“I knew it.”

Poppy hadn’t realised she had spent the better part of 90 minutes on Jensen’s bedroom floor with him, but it was the only place that felt safe - building Lego cars and skirting around the question of, if my mommy is my mom cause I grew in her belly, then how is my daddy, my dad?

That had genuinely stumped her.

How do you explain genetics to a 5 year old without getting too graphic about it?

She hadn’t been able to argue with the validity of the question - the kid is curious, God help his parents, and she thinks she might have to turn her phone off later to avoid angry calls from Elsie and Jared about why their son is asking them about DMA and Jeans.

She tried to tell him that he was made up of parts of each of them. That he had his mom’s eyes, and her mouth and chin, but he had his dad’s curly hair and his pointed nose. But that had just caused a whole other slew of questions.

And a whole other bunch of thoughts that she was actively trying to fight.

Thoughts of a baby with chocolate brown eyes and hair that goes a little lighter in the sun. Little pudgy arms that cling around broad shoulders, and soft, tiny lips that press wet kisses into a stubbled jaw and giggle at the way it tickles them.

Thoughts of little clumsy legs that will learn to run before they learn to walk, and, when given the chance, will always run straight into muscled arms and a tattooed bicep curling around their tiny frame, a deep laugh ringing in the air between them and dark eyes meeting hers over a mop of fluffy hair.

Thoughts of 6-foot-something someone sitting on the floor with an almost 6 year old, building Harry Potter Lego trains and patiently directing them on what goes where.

For most of those 90 minutes, she hadn’t felt sick. She hadn’t felt nauseous, or panicky or anxious.

She had felt longing, and hopeful, and full.

And as soon as she had left that room, those feelings had swirled into dread again.

At least Nia had herself a good time.

She had won the game of Baby Bump Balloon Pop, which Poppy is glad she had missed - if she had to watch a bunch of exploding baby bumps, she might have had a heart attack - and had used her almighty eavesdropping skills to thrash everyone at Don’t Say Baby - ending up with 16 clothes pegs and winning herself the esteemed prize of a bottle No-secco, which she has been ranting about the whole drive back to Poppy’s apartment.

“I get that it’s a baby shower, but come on, the rest of us can still drink! When did Elsie become such a bore,” she whines as the two of them make it through the front door, Nia throwing her jacket onto the coat rack and Poppy making her way straight over to sit down. “Hey, I thought you said you were feeling better,”

“I am,” Poppy feels okay to know that it’s only a half-lie. She does think she caught some kind of food poisoning initially, and the sweats and shivers had subsided since last week, but she can’t find anything to subdue the queasiness at every strong smell or icky thought that crosses her mind.

“Then why did you flake on me at the party?”

“I didn’t flake, I told you, I was hanging out with Jensen. He was a little down. Also that conversation about snot was too much.”

“Okay, but you were being weird before that. And you’ve hardly spoken the whole way back here.”

“I’m fine.”

“C’mon, Pop, out with it,” Nia sighs as she throws herself into the couch beside Poppy.

“Out with what?” She huffs in response as she works at unzipping her boots.

“Whatever’s got you wound up tighter than a drum, you’ve been acting super weird all day.”

“I haven’t been super weird.” Poppy frowns, throwing the boot she’s just shucked off with a little more passion than is probably warranted, doing little to disprove her best friend’s point.

“You didn’t crack a single joke about how Elsie’s giving her kid a pornstar name. Mia Moore. She’ll be getting bullied for life, Poppy. Even Jared says it with that stupid Italian hand gesture.”

“Maybe I’ve matured,” she shrugs, pushing herself up from the couch and making her way over to the refrigerator, hoping that sticking her head in there for a second might disguise the fact that she is still turning green from waves of nausea.

“Not likely,” Nia obviously follows, slamming the door shut before Poppy can even adjust her eyes to the light. “You’re being weird.”

“Am not, you are.”

“Oh yeah, real mature,” Nia rolls her eyes before narrowing them at her best friend. “You’re being quiet, and you’re clearly freaking out about something, so why don’t we cut out your very obvious internal meltdown and you just tell me what’s going on?”

Poppy swerves around her, reaching out to where a grocery bag sits on top of her counter, and empties the contents until they scatter across the surface in gentle, staggered thuds.

“Holy shit.” Nia breathes out, carding through each box as if she’s taking stock. “You know you only need one of these, right?”

“I didn’t know which one was the best, so I got all of them.”

“I think pregnancy tests are pretty universally reliable, Poppy.”

“Yeah, well, they’re non-refundable, so I’ve decided I’m doing every single one and working out the average.”

“Oh my god, the vomiting,” Nia gasps, as if the situation is only just dawning on her - never mind the multiple boxes of tests Poppy has just unveiled on her kitchen counter. “And you had to change your dress earlier, ‘cause it was making your boobs hurt!”

“I didn’t buy these for a fun evening experiment,” she quips, sarcastically, “My period should have been last week, too.”

“Oh my God!”

“But I also can’t be pregnant,”

“Why not?”

“Maybe because then I’d be carrying the baby of a man who wants nothing to do with me?”

“Okay, calm down, Mrs Theatrical.”

“My karma can’t be that bad. I recycle, I adopt a whole pride of lions in Kenya and my $5 a month contributes to them being safe from poachers! Poachers, Nia! I donate to charity, I don’t steal, I don’t lie, I love thy neighbour,”

“I think you loved thy neighbour a little too much,” Nia cracks, swiftly catching the box that Poppy throws straight at her. “What? You laid that one straight out for me!”

“This is not the time for jokes.”

“You’re right, it’s the time for you to put on your big girl pants and go pee on some sticks.” She holds out the box that had just been launched at her, and Poppy swipes it with a levelling glare. “You’re being ridiculous, Poppy.”

“Fine,” she grunts in displeasure, “But I’m gonna remember how unserious you were about this when it’s your turn for a scare.”

“I have an IUD babe, some of us practice caution when we take hunky men into our beds!” She calls out after her, and Poppy hates how she can still hear her laugh when she slams the door of her bathroom.

“Oh, thank God,” Poppy lets out a sigh of relief once the line forms clearly, the lack of a second allowing her heart rate to slow to a bearable speed and the device in her hands feeling a whole lot lighter than it had a minute ago. “It’s negative!”

“Poppy,” Nia yanks the test from her grip, beyond caring at this point where the piece of plastic has been, and throws it into the pile on the table, “Delusion isn’t going to work for this, that’s one out of fourteen. You know damn well you’re pregnant.”

“But all the boxes say they’re 98% accurate! What if this is the only right one?”

Nia swats at her boob, and Poppy clutches at her chest as the pain merges into the ever-present ache she has felt there for the past week-or-so.

“Ow, don’t do that, I told you they’re sensitive right now!”

“Oh, I wonder why!” She contends, “Poppy, you’ve taken like $100 worth of tests here, how many more do you need to do until you come to terms with the fact that you have a baby growing in there?”

“I don’t know! Maybe you should try one!”

“Pop, come on-,”

“No, seriously, because what if I bought a bunch of bad ones? Like placebos or something? And if you get a false positive, then we would know!”

“Why would they make placebo pregnancy tests?”

“Duh, for money! Big pharma, Ni! It’s a real thing!”

“You have to be joking,” Nia throws her arms up in exasperation, “Poppy, you’re vomiting,” she holds up her thumb, “Your boobs ache,” she adds a finger, “You should have had your period by now,” and another, “and I don’t even have enough fingers to take into account how many pregnancy tests have told you so, you’re pregnant! The sooner you accept that, the sooner we can be serious and figure this out!”

Poppy picks out a fresh test from the last packet and pushes it into Nia’s chest, a stern look on her otherwise panicked features, “Go pee.” She demands, and when Nia levels her with a look back, she adds a desperate, “Please?”

“Fine,” she grumbles, before wagging an authoritative finger at her friend, “But this is the last one either of us are doing, okay? And because you’re being ridiculous, I get to gloat when it’s negative.”

“Yeah, fine,” Poppy shrugs with feigned nonchalance, and as soon as Nia disappears into the bathroom, Poppy starts refilling her bladder for the last test in the packet.

“You are unbelievable,” Nia sighs when she returns a minute later to find her chugging at a bottle of water. She snatches the last unopened test away, stashing it down her bra where Poppy won’t be able to get it.

“What? I drink when I’m nervous!”

“Yeah, tequila. You’re stressing me out. We’re gonna set the timer on this and while it’s going down we’re gonna talk about it.” Nia throws her own test onto the empty side of the coffee table before she gets her phone out and starts a timer for three minutes. “Sit down, and for the love of God, give me that bottle.”

Poppy sits, surrendering the drink to Nia with a frown and throwing herself down onto the couch in child-like stubbornness.

“You’re pregnant. We can sit here all night and take a thousand tests, and they’re all gonna tell you the same thing,”

“Not all of them-,”

“Shut up. Do you want to have a baby, yes or no?”

“Nia,” Poppy whines, “It’s not that-,”

“Yes or no, Poppy?”

“Fine, yes!” It almost shocks her how easy the answer comes out.

“Do you want to have this baby?”

“Yeah,” she pouts, tears pricking at her eyes as she accepts her reality for the first time since the thought had so innocently been forced into her mind by Nico’s mom.

She wants the pudgy armed, brown eyed, giggling ball of joy she had conjured up in her brain earlier.

She wants to wrap it up in fluffy animal themed bath towels, pull the hood up just above its eyes and take a million pictures, and tickle at the back of it’s chunky little legs until dimples form in it’s puffy cheeks and her apartment is filled with the sounds of squeaky little laughter.

And she knows that it isn’t all rainbows and sunshine. She knows she’ll never sleep a full night again, knows she’ll never have free time to do what she wants or that she might lose every ounce of sanity she has left, but she feels like the good stuff outweighs the bad.

“Then why the hell are you going crazy, Pop?” Nia sits right beside her, arm wrapping around her to console what could potentially be a weeping, hysterical shit-show.

“Because it’s a gigantic mess, Ni!” She whines, “My hormones are going apeshit, and all I want is to go to Nico, and to tell him what’s going on, but he doesn’t want me, and this is gonna ruin everything! He’s gonna hate me, he’s gonna want nothing to do with me, and I’m gonna have to quit my job, and then I won’t be able to afford living here and raising a baby on my own, so I’ll have to move back home, and that means this poor innocent clump of cells inside me is gonna grow up in a house with my mother because it’s own mom is hopeless and then the baby will resent me because I can’t do this on my own!”

“Poppy, slow down, breathe,”

She knows she’s hyperventilating, but she can’t stop. Can’t slow down until she gets it all out.

“Nico’s gonna hate me. He’s gonna think I’m trapping him, and he’s gonna think I’m crazy and obsessed with him and maybe I am, you know, maybe this is all my fault and deep down a part of me wanted this to happen because who in their right mind doesn’t even stop to think hey, you probably shouldn’t be coming inside me when we haven’t even talked about it,” she sees Nia wince somewhere out of the corner of her eye, “and he’s gonna blame me for getting in the way of his perfect life with his pretty girlfriend and she’s gonna hate me-,”

Nia squirts her with the bottle, underestimating the spout and pretty much covering Poppy’s entire face with water until it’s dripping from her eyelashes and she has to huff it out of her nose.

“Nia, what the fuck?!” Poppy frowns, looking down at the mess of water that covers her legs and is dripping onto her couch.

“You’re going insane! I didn’t know how else to get you to stop aside from slapping you, and I can’t hit a pregnant lady!”

“But you can waterboard her?!”

“Oh my God, how dramatic can you be?”

“Uh, I think I get a pass right now!” Poppy scoffs, swiping at the droplets running down her face and splashing them over at Nia in retaliation. “You’re not being very helpful.”

“That’s because you’re being stupid.” Nia levels, “You’re not hopeless, Poppy, you’re the smartest, strongest person I know. If that idiot can’t see that, then it’s his own loss, and if he wants nothing to do with you then you’ll be fine. You don’t need him. We can figure this out, you and me together. We can find a place and we can live together again, I’ll be the dad, I’ll take care of you.”

“Ni, I can’t ask you to do that,”

“You’re not asking. I’m telling you.” She asserts, taking Poppy’s still wet hands in her own, “And I’m also telling you that as mad as I am at him right now, Nico isn’t the type of guy that would let you do this on your own, Poppy. You know for a fact that I won’t let a man make a fool out of either of us more than once, so I know I’m not wrong when I say that he is not going to hate you, he isn’t going to blame you.”

“He still doesn’t want me.”

“You don’t know that, Poppy.” Nia tries to reason with her, “You didn’t let him tell you what he wanted.”

The shrill sound of Nia’s alarm interrupts the moment, and Poppy sniffles as her best friend reaches for her phone and picks the test up while she’s there.

She hands the test to Poppy, who sighs as she looks over the result, and rolls her eyes before huffing out a jeering, “You win. Congratulations, you’re not pregnant.”

Nia is too busy typing away at her phone to respond, and after a minute of Poppy glaring at her - annoyed that her focus has diverted elsewhere and more annoyed that she has to be right all the time - her face breaks out in a celebratory grin.

“You’re not gonna believe this,” she huffs out a breathy chuckle, the grin widening with every passing second.

“What? What could possibly be funny about this?”

Nia turns the device in her hand so Poppy can see the screen - a picture of a small dusting of what looks like crushed black pepper. It's one of those websites that compares the size of a baby in the womb to different foods.

“Your baby is the size of a Poppy seed,” Nia’s face settles into a soft, loving smile, her eyes rounding in awe as she awaits Poppy’s reaction.

Poppy reads the description below.

At four weeks, the foetus is about 2mm or 0.3 inches long, and weighs less than a gram but is growing rapidly in your womb!

“Holy shit.”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to come up with you?”

The inside of Nia’s car is warm and comforting, the heat cranked so high that Poppy doesn’t want to leave into the cold, even if it’s just for the few seconds between the vehicle and the entrance to Nico’s building.

It’s nothing to do with the nerve-wracking conversation she is about to have.

Nothing at all.

“I’ve got to put on my big girl pants, remember? Let him tell me what he wants before I decide it in my head.”

“I’ll be here if you need me,” she pats Poppy’s thigh in consolation, “And if I need to come up there and kick his ass, just give me a call.”

“I will.”

“Good luck!”

Poppy shuffles out of the car and holds her jacket tighter around her as she makes her way over to the doors of the apartment building, harsh winds whipping at her face and causing her to grimace before she makes it to safety, the doors pressing closed behind her in a gentle thud.

She’s surprised to see Lionel still sat at his desk, a little later than he normally works, but the familiar face gives her a little bit of reprieve, and the friendly smile he flashes her way calms her rampant heart.

“Hi, Poppy,” he stands to greet her, “You here to see the boys?”

“Nico, actually,” she responds, and watches as he presses his button for the elevator without question, typing something else while he waits for the notification it’s on its way down. “You’re here late.”

“So are you.” He gives a knowing smile back, looking at her over the top of his glasses and causing her skin to turn warm. “Our night guy, Evan, just had a baby, I stick around until he can do bedtime with his wife.”

“That’s sweet of you.” She ignores the lump in her throat at the mention of babies. “I bet it’s nice of him to still get that time in the routine.”

She wonders if that’s something Nico would do - fight to make it home for every bedtime, getting one of the guys to pick up his media responsibilities after a game so he could give their baby an evening bottle and a kiss goodnight.

“He makes sure I have coffee and a donut waiting for me on the desk when my shift starts in the morning, so I can’t complain.”

“Oh, wins all around then,” she chuckles, and thanks him as he walks with her to the elevator.

“It sure is, you have a nice evening, Poppy, I’ve sent Mr Hischier a message that you’re on your way up.”

“Thanks, Lionel,” she hums, appreciative that she isn’t springing a visit on him entirely out of nowhere, now. “Get home safe!”

Lionel presses the buttons for her, and gives her a cheerful wave as the doors close between them, leaving her to her own anxiety for company.

The elevator ride up is torturously slow, the numbers rising at a mocking pace, and she can feel her heart hammering with every second that passes. When the doors open, she doesn’t immediately step out, and has to reach a shaking hand to stop them closing again and going back down.

As much as she is dreading this, she needs to get it over with.

Once she has told him, it’s done.

He can tell her what he wants and she can just live with it.

No more running through every nightmarish scenario in her head, no more imagining the other side of conversations and mentally booking flights to faraway countries to get away from her problems.

She will tell him she’s pregnant, and then the ball is in his court. Or the puck is in his rink. Whatever.

Her feet feel heavy as she moves toward his apartment, and when she’s stood in front of his door, she raps her knuckles harshly against the wood before she can convince herself not to.

And then she waits.

And waits.

And continues to wait until it starts to frustrate her, knocking again with the side of her fist in jerky movements that rattle the surface.

He’s definitely home, she thinks - she’d shamelessly stalked him on Find My Friends. Lionel had sent the message she was coming up. He has to be home.

Unless he’s down at Jack and Luke’s place.

She isn’t telling him there. God knows what those two would have to say about it.

What if she’s there?

Oh God, she hadn’t even thought about that.

What if he isn’t answering because he doesn’t want Talia to see her there.

Shit.

Before she can duck and run, before her brain can even send out the direction to get the hell out of there, the door swings open, and she clumsily stumbles back with a surprised gasp.

Nico stands on the other side, skin dripping wet, steam coming off him like something out of a movie, and a towel clutched with a tight fist around his waist that also has a grasp on his phone. His hair is soaked, slicked back out of his face and her eyes are drawn to a droplet of water that trails down from his jaw, beneath a gap where the gold chain he is still wearing doesn’t quite sit flush against the base of his neck, and she watches it disappear into the tuft of dark hair that has grown in the centre of his chest.

“Poppy,” he’s breathless, like he’s just booked it down the hall to get to her, no doubt leaving a trail of soggy footprints in his path, “Hi.”

“S-sorry,” she stutters, making a serious mental effort to keep her eyes on his face. “Is this a bad time?”

“No!” He exclaims, eyebrows shooting up in panic, “No, you’re fine, come in.”

“Are you sure? I can come back,”

Nico steps back, giving her space to come in and tilting his head in a silent invitation. “Positive,” he watches as she takes a cautious step into his apartment, and he closes the door softly behind her. “Let me just,” he gestures to his body as if she isn’t actively trying to avoid looking at it, and she presses her lips together to save herself from audibly gulping. “I’ll get dressed. Make yourself comfortable, I’ll just be a second.”

Jesus Christ.

If Poppy’s heart wasn’t about to beat into oblivion before, it sure is now.

He rushes off down the hall toward his bedroom, and she steps a little further into the open plan of his apartment, casting her eyes in a quick glance across the room.

She can’t help herself - one of the few traits inherited from her mother - if she’s invited into someone else’s home, she’s going to be nosey.

She hasn’t spent much time in Nico’s apartment, before. Back before Summer last year, most of their time together was either spent out or round at her place. He had always said it was for convenience - he would rather be the one that had to drive home, and her place was closer to everything else so it just made sense - but she still thinks in the few times she had seen it, it looks different.

He’s rearranged the furniture, he has a new couch, his kitchen has a new coffee machine. He used to have a couple pictures of his family around, but she can’t see them from where she is.

In fact, she can’t really see anything personal.

If she compares it to her own cluttered space, his apartment looks fresh out of a catalogue. Stone walls, grey fabrics, brown leathers, random red pieces like the odd book and some candles, like he’d picked a page out of Bachelor Pad Weekly and handed it over to a designer with the sole instruction to copy and paste.

There’s a floor to ceiling shelving unit that seems to act as a separator, and it has random sculptures and trinkets she can’t see him picking out for himself.

She tries not to think too much about how his place differs from her own. How she still has pictures of the two of them scattered in every room.

Guys don’t put as much thought into stuff like that.

She tells herself as much as she’s reading the spines of some of the books that line the shelves - hardbacks that look more like decoration than anything he would actually read - and she finds herself fiddling with the bunch of plastic in her pocket to ground herself.

There isn’t a single feminine thing about the place - almost like he’s scrubbed clean any trace of a woman ever living with him, which shouldn’t ease the tension in her shoulders as much as it does.

She isn’t here to worry about his choice of decor, or who may or may not have had a say in it.

She isn’t here to question why she sees him in every corner of her home and she is nowhere in his.

She’s here to talk.

“Sorry,” Nico returns, and she swivels where she’s stood to take him in. Sweatpants slung low on his hips, a slight gap between those and the hem of the t-shirt that sticks to his every muscle like second skin. A towel held up to his head to try and drain out the excess moisture. “I wasn’t expecting company so I hopped in the shower, I was ignoring the knocking until I saw the text to say it was you.”

“Yeah, I,” her tongue swipes at her parched lips, and she blinks away the daze he always seems to cast upon her. “I figured we need to talk.”

He takes an eager step forward, gesturing over to his couch and waiting for her to perch down uncomfortably on the edge before he sits on the cushion beside her - keeping a respectable distance between the two of them.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he seems nervous, and it makes her chest feel tight. “I wanted to apologise for the other day. I pretty much cornered you when you asked me for space and I didn’t mean to push you. Especially when you weren’t feeling great. If it helps, my mom laid into me when I drove her back to her hotel.”

“It’s alright,” she squeaks out, meekly, thinking that maybe if she lets him off the hook for that, he’ll let her off the hook for this.

“It’s not. I’ve dealt with this whole thing so wrong, I need you to know I didn’t mean what I said that night in your apartment. Y’know, about-,” he shakes his head as if trying to gather his thoughts, “About what we did. I don’t think we made a mistake. I made one, with how I handled everything after, I-,” she knows she shouldn’t let him ramble on, shouldn’t let him think she needs him to beg for her forgiveness before he knows the full extent of what he’s asking, but she’s spent 4 weeks imagining what he might want to say to her, and she wants to hear it. “You were right the other day, I haven’t been a good friend to you, Poppy, I was selfish and you deserve better. You deserve to make your own decisions and I’m sorry I took that from you.”

Poppy is usually better at catching herself before she cries in front of anyone else - the warning signs of an ache at the back of her throat and the corner of her eyes stinging coming up in advance - but this time, her lip starts to tremble before she’s able to get a grasp on her emotions, and a sob racks through her before she throws her head into her hands.

“Whoa, hey,” she feels a large, warm hand stroking at her back, and feels the couch dip as Nico shuffles closer to her, their knees knocking and his arm swinging around her shaking body. “Please don’t cry,”

“I’m so sorry,”

“No, Poppy, you have nothing to be sorry for-“

“I don’t want you to be mad at me.” She cries, her voice strained as if she’s choking back another sob as she looks up at him, arms cradling herself for a slight reprieve of comfort.

“Why would I be mad?” He questions, his arm still rubbing soothingly at hers as she unravels in front of him. “What’s going on, Poppy? I’m worried about you,”

“Do you promise me you won’t hate me?”

“Mohn,” Nico sighs, running his spare hand through his still-damp hair and making sure it stays slicked back.

“Please?”

“I could never hate you,” He assures her, and, as resolute as he sounds, she tilts her head, urging him to say what she wants to hear. “I promise.”

She takes a second to even out her breathing, in through the nose, out through the mouth, until she no longer feels like she’s about to implode, and Nico waits, watching with his own bated breath.

“I uhm,” she takes a shaky inhale, trying to build the courage to come out and just say it, but her mouth just bops open like a fish, the words refusing to come out. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out the handful of tests she had haphazardly stashed in there, before reaching forward and dropping them carelessly onto the coffee table - the plastic scattering across the surface and making a clattering sound against the solid wood.

Nico’s eyes drop to the sticks that are splayed out in front of him, his own words failing him as if he daren’t speak them into existence. His eyes close a few times in forced, hard blinks, as if he’s trying to determine the reality of the situation, and he reaches out to take one of them in his hand before she presses her shaky fingers to his arm in an attempt to stop him.

“I peed on those, I wouldn’t touch ‘em.”

He ignores the warning, picking up another, bringing them up to his face so he can read what he must already know they all say. The dim light of his living room does little to mask the shock on his face.

“You’re-,” his words drift off, and his eyes flicker back to the two tests left.

“I’m pregnant.” Her voice cracks as she says it, holding back a choking sob that strains her throat. She can no longer stomach the thought of not saying it out loud.

Silence lingers between them like a rubber band, ready to snap. She can feel every liquid ounce of blood rushing through her body, can probably hear the whoosh of it, too, if she focuses hard enough, and she thinks she can see a vein pop in his neck.

“Please say something.”

“It’s mine?”

Their eyes meet, his round and concerned, her’s glassy and afraid, and all she can do is nod.

She doesn’t take offence to the question, knowing he has every right to ask what he needs to. She’s spent the last hour trying to prep herself for the possibility of what he might ask, for an onslaught of potential accusations and finger-pointing.

Even if she only took the tests today, she’s had days to think about this. To ask her own questions, fathom her own feelings, she owes him the leniency to do the same.

She and Nia had gone through some pretty serious breathing exercises before she drove Poppy out here just to calm her down in preparation for it all.

“I haven’t been with anybody else.”

“I didn’t use protection,” he stares blankly ahead as he speaks, as if he’s running through the events of that night in his head, the tests still clutched between his thumb and fingers. She shakes her head, and hopes he can see the action in his peripheral, because her tongue currently feels like a paperweight in the dead centre of her mouth, and she probably couldn’t speak if she tried. “And you’re not-,” he seems just as much at a loss, “Protecting yourself?”

If it were anyone else asking her that kind of question, she thinks she’d be a little more on edge, but she knows he isn’t asking to shame her.

Still, she can’t help the guilt that racks through her entire body. “I was trying a new birth control last year, and it uhm-,” she exhales a shuddered breath, “It didn’t really work for me, so I stopped. I was due back to see my doctor around Christmas, but I pushed it back, and then I- I forgot.” Tears line her eyes again, glossing them over completely until a fat droplet falls straight down her cheek and drips down onto her leg.

“Holy shit.”

She can’t exactly blame him for that response, either. She had said the exact same thing. Nia had even reacted the same way.

“I’m so, so sorry, Nico,” she tries to suppress a sob, but can’t stop the onset of tears, now, her head falling into her hands as her body begins to tremble.

Nico pulls Poppy into him immediately, his arms wrapping around her shaking frame, and he presses his head into the top of hers. Large hands stroke comfortingly up and down her back, trying to hold her as tight as is comfortable so she knows he’s there for her, shushing her and taking slow, measured breaths in the hopes her body instinctively copies him.

Her body melts into his, soaking up his warmth until it eases all the tension in her muscles, and all she tries to focus on is the rhythmic motion of his touch on her spine.

“You have nothing to be sorry for, Mohn,” he mutters into her temple, pressing his lips in a gentle kiss to the skin there. “It’s gonna be okay, please don’t cry.”

He sways her gently, lifting a hand to stroke her hair and keeps her in his hold until she starts to properly calm down - sobs becoming sniffles, tremors becoming the occasional shake, and her breaths evening out so she no longer seems like she’s hyperventilating.

Somewhere in her panic, she had taken to clutching at his shirt, the fabric bundled up so tight between her fingers that they start to ache, and she can feel the sharp press of her own nails in her palms. She lays them flat against his chest, ignoring the growing sting she feels when she applies pressure to the crescent-shaped indents, and uses him for leverage to push herself back a little - only going far enough that she can still feel his arms around her, even if they’ve loosened up a little.

She must look a complete mess - lips swollen, nose snotty, eyes red-raw - but he looks at her only with concern rather than any kind of disgust. He brings a hand forward to swipe at the remaining dampness on her cheek, and keeps it there to cup the side of her jaw, stroking tenderly at her face just as he had done the other day, when she had felt like she was floating out of her body and he had grounded her.

“You took those today?” He gestures towards the sticks that are still on the table, the others that had been in his grasp before discarded somewhere into the cushions of the couch when he had taken her into his arms. She nods, meeting his dark eyes and watching as they flicker between the features of her own face. “You didn’t know when we spoke the other day?”

She shakes her head, vehemently. “I wouldn’t have tried to push you away if I’d have even thought I could be pregnant Nico, I swear. I thought I was just sick.”

“You would have had every right to push me away, Poppy.”

“I came here as soon as I knew for sure.” She places her hand over his, her thumb swiping over the knuckles on his hand and her fingers curling around his own digits. “I mean, I was kind of losing my mind so it took me 13 positives to know, but-,”

“You took 13 tests?” When she takes note of his face, he seems like he’s trying to fight a smile. She hadn’t even realised before.

13 positives to finally convince her, and a baby the size of a Poppy seed, it was always meant to be.

“14 technically, but one was negative,” her lips twist then in slight embarrassment. “I even made Nia take one.”

“Nia knows?”

The would-be smile drops immediately, and the frown that forms on his face almost stops her heart in its tracks.

“I needed somebody to hold my hand, Nico.” She reasons, head tilting and trying to meet his eyes again, his hand drops from her face, hers falling limply with it, and the look he gives her back is one of resigned acceptance.

“It should have been me,” he mutters, and when she parts her lips to respond, he shakes his head, “I know I’m the one who hurt you and pushed you away, Poppy, I just-,” he sighs, he isn’t trying to blame her, he’s trying blame himself. “I’m glad you weren’t alone.”

She threads her fingers through his again, bringing their hands between them and holding his firmly in her lap. “I would have come to you, Nico, I just didn’t want to stress you out if it turned out to be negative.”

“Even after what I did?” His voice is the one that’s strained, now, and the sound plucks straight at her heart strings.

He had hurt her - she knows he understands that - but she doesn’t want him to hurt. She’s never wanted that for him. And with the regret in his eyes and the conflict in his tone, she sees that they’ve both been hurting regardless of what she wanted, so she nods.

If she had been left to her own devices, earlier - if the baby shower hadn’t conjured up so much anxiety that she erupted on her best friend - she would have ended up in this exact spot. Poppy knows that with everything in her. She would always have come to him.

When she had had her not-so-mini meltdown with Nia earlier, it was his reassurance she craved.

“You wouldn’t have stressed me out.” He tells her, squeezing back at her hand, and she knows he isn’t putting on a brave face just to make her feel better. “In fact, I feel weirdly calm right now.”

“Yeah, I think you might have calmed me down, too.”

His constant touch, his serene demeanour, he’s done everything in him to make her feel relaxed.

He hasn’t raised his voice, hasn’t pushed her away, hasn’t blamed her or shamed her or made her feel like she is a burden in any way.

He’s just held her in his arms and told her it will be okay, and she doesn’t think she’ll ever be able to show him how much she appreciates it.

She had made herself entirely hysterical with an abundance of what ifs and hypotheticals that she knew in her heart he would never live up to.

If she had been thinking rationally at all, earlier, she’d have known he wouldn’t get mad, wouldn’t hate her, wouldn’t react in any way other than the way he has. With tender-hearted acceptance and love born from empathy and the long-withstanding trust they share for each other.

Her mind had spiralled so far beyond the realm of possibility that it had created a version of him in her head that he would never be. One that would have shut her out, left her to deal with her emotions alone. Even when he’d pushed her away the last time, she had been the one to shut the door.

“I-,” he starts to say something, but is interrupted by the buzz of his phone on the coffee table. “Why is Nia calling me?”

“Shit,” Poppy curses, shooting up and dropping his hand in the process, “She’s waiting downstairs for me, she was gonna drive me home.” She pats around her pockets before realising her phone isn’t in them, and it dawns on her she must have left it in the passenger seat of Nia’s car - a really useful spot for it to be.

“It’s alright,” Nico focuses more on consoling her than answering the call, and it rings out before he remembers he should probably have picked it up. “She’s parked on the street?”

“Yeah, right out front.”

“Wait here,” he commands with gentle authority, a hand on her shoulder pushing her softly back down onto the couch. “We need to talk about this, I don’t want you to be home alone, you can stay here tonight,”

“Maybe I sh-,”

“I’ll go down and tell her,” he says with finality, leaving the living area in search of a hoodie he can shrug on.

“Nico, she isn’t exactly your biggest fan right now,” Poppy warns, following him toward the door to his apartment with a slight bout of panic.

If he goes out there, there’s no telling what Nia might say to him. She’s been on one for weeks about how disappointed she has been in him, and he could be marching straight into the firing line without a clue as to what is waiting for him out there. And he might return with his defences raised.

“I’ll be fine. I’ll be back in a few minutes, just make yourself comfortable, okay?”

He doesn’t really give Poppy much of a choice before he’s dashing out of his apartment, and she doesn’t exactly have the energy to chase him.

She steps back around the couch, feeling a little out of place again as he has, for the second time in one night, left her to her own devices in his space.

She starts to pace, feet padding softly around the pattern of the rug, focused entirely on matching up her steps to the patches within the fabric until she starts to get dizzy.

Then, she finds herself looking around again. Snooping around shelves, eyeing up the cabinet where he keeps odd bits of Devils memorabilia, newspaper cut outs of his biggest games and even a patch of a Switzerland jersey framed in dark wood.

The rest of the space is minimal, as she had taken notice of before. A couple generic pieces of artwork, nothing too personal anywhere other than that cabinet. A large mirror hung on the wall, that she doesn’t really want to look in, through fear of catching sight of her ghastly reflection, but something else captures her attention in it, entirely.

She turns quicker than she probably should, and her lips part as she steps closer to the wall that had been behind her.

She’d been too focused on her thoughts before - hadn’t noticed it in her initial snooping.

A landscape canvas, framed in the same dark wood as everything else he had in the room that had been a personal touch, large enough to be the only artwork on that wall - a focal piece in the heart of his apartment.

A patch of dainty red flowers seemingly waving in the breeze beside a picturesque coastal view, peaceful waters and some tiny sailboats in the background.

And beneath it, a small plaque just above the base of the frame that reads; Childe Hassam. Poppies, Isles of Shoals, 1891.

Nico

Nico has never really given much thought to having children, before.

He doesn’t have any problem with kids - he enjoys his mentoring sessions, loves meeting the kids who come to games donning his name on their back and looking at him like he’s their hero, and will always go out of his way to meet fans if he hears there’s a bunch of kids excited to meet him.

But being a part of one of the youngest teams in the leagues means he doesn’t exactly have a lot of dad friends. Sure, a couple of the guys have kids - they bring them to games, to team events and he’s met his fair share of them at family skates, but he isn’t that actively involved in any of their lives.

Whenever he pictures his future, it’s really just hockey. It’s captaining his team all the way to lifting the cup, it’s winning gold in the Worlds or the Olympics, representing his beloved home country and succeeding at the top level with his friends.

And if he’s ever thought about anything outside of that, it’s just been experiencing as many new things as he can before he doesn’t have those kinds of opportunities anymore. Travelling, flitting around Europe with his friends back home, climbing mountains, going to festivals, trying his hand at whatever sport he can.

He’s never had any inclination for that to change.

Until the thought of having children with Poppy fell into his lap. Or onto his coffee table in the form of a handful of positive pregnancy tests.

And once the initial shock had subsided, once his brain had comprehended the switch between missing her and screaming not to let her go, he had found comfort in the concept of knowing that something about his future was now an almost-certain.

Poppy will be a part of it.

And he will be a part of hers.

It’s with the conviction of those facts that he finds himself jogging across the street to Nia’s Mazda with misplaced confidence.

Poppy had tried to warn him that she wouldn’t be welcoming and he had shrugged it off, knowing already how pissed her best friend was going to be with him.

A couple nights after she had kicked him out of her apartment, in the depths of his despair and on a lonely evening in a hotel room in Tampa, all he could think of doing to make himself feel better after a loss was to check up on her. Every time he had tried to see her at the Rock the first few days that week before they had gone on the road, she had practically ran the other way, and so as he lay in his hotel bed, muscles aching, mind racing, heart hurting, he had taken to stalking her instagram to see what she had been up to while he had been away.

Her story had been of Nia, the two of them had gone together to get their nails done, and when Nico had clicked on where Nia was tagged in the hope that maybe she had posted a picture of Poppy, it had taken him to a private account he no longer had the privilege of following.

She had removed him.

And as he raps his knuckles against her car window, he can see why.

She’s angry.

“I didn’t call you so that you’d come down here, I called to check on my best friend.” She snaps, the brisk winter air invading her car and making the annoyed huff she gives come out in a misty cloud.

“She’s fine, she’s gonna stay over-,”

“Like hell she is,” she goes to unbuckle her belt, and when she reaches for the handle of the door to open it, Nico promptly pushes it back shut. “Let me out.”

“Come on, Nia,” Nico sighs, “Poppy’s okay, I got her to calm down and we need to talk about things, I don’t want you having to wait out here all night until we do.”

“Right, ‘cause the last time you two had a sleepover, it turned out so well for her.”

Nico finds himself clenching his jaw, not in anger but in shame. Yet another reminder from another person just how much he has messed this all up.

“I’m gonna wait here until I know this is what she wants to do,” Nia holds out Poppy’s phone, and Nico takes it, immediately thrusting it into the warmth of his pocket. “You make sure she texts me so I know you’re not holding her hostage up there. We have a code. If she doesn’t send it to me in the next five minutes, I’ll literally scale your building to find you and make you hurt in ways you can’t even comprehend.”

“I’d expect nothing less.”

He misses the way Luke had subtly threatened him back in the locker room. That was a lot less violent, and while he had taken it seriously at the time, he was a lot less scary than Nia.

She narrows her eyes at him, and he tries to morph his face into one that reflects the gravity of the situation.

He has no intentions of ever making her sad again. He knows that. Hell, Nia probably knows that deep down.

“Thank you for being there for her.” He knows it’s a risky thing to say - Nia and Poppy have been friends since their childhood, there would never be a question over her being there for Poppy - but he’s hoping that she understands what he’s trying to get at. “With the tests and all, holding her hand. I’m glad she has you.”

“You won’t be glad if you don’t get back upstairs in time,” she shoos him away with the flick of her hand, and before he can fully jog back across the street, she calls back out to him. “Hey Nico,” he turns and watches as she leans out of her window a little, voice shouting out as if she has no worries about the repercussions of threatening him so brazenly, “If you ever make my best friend cry again, there isn’t a corner of this Earth that you’ll be safe in, do you understand?”

“I understand.” He nods, before he dashes back into the safety of his building.

Despite the visceral way in which his life has just been threatened, he finds himself walking with a newfound spring in his step, bounding through the lobby and sending Lionel a friendly salute as he passes him, the old man shaking his head fondly in return.

The elevator flies straight up to his floor, and he’s back inside the warmth of his apartment in no time - all that much warmer now that he has his favourite girl back inside.

“Have you ever seen the movie Taken?” He huffs as he pulls off his hoodie, his head popping out of the neck of the garment in a way that makes his hair fluff out. “I’m telling you, Nia could give Liam Neeson a run for his money. She’s scary.”

He finds Poppy stood in his living room, staring at the wall - not exactly where he had left her but she’s never been one to sit still for too long.

“Poppy?”

“I like your painting.” Her voice is much softer than it had been, before. A little deeper, less strained, like she’s found comfort and isn’t as anxious to speak anymore, which delights him just a little. The energy in the room has shifted since he had left, and what he has returned to is comfortable and serene.

He steps in line beside her, eyes cast upon the canvas she is admiring, and he feels his lips twitch upward. “My mom got it for me,” he chuckles, stepping just the slightest bit closer. “She said my place lacked character.”

She had said some other things, too, about how she’d seen the painting and it had immediately reminded her of him and how it would bring some much needed colour to his apartment, and make it feel more like home but saying those things feels like overkill, and he thinks he’s shared enough for now.

Plus, Poppy knows what the painting means, she doesn’t need him to spell it out for her.

He needs to keep some of his dignity in tact.

“Sounds about right,” Poppy mutters with an astute smile.

The silence that falls between the two of them is one of familiarity and understanding, and he nudges playfully at her side before stepping away.

“I told Nia you’d be staying here. She says you need to text her your code before she murders me.”

“How long did she give you?”

“Five minutes,”

“Dang,” she checks the time quickly on the screen, “I think I might have forgotten it.”

“You’re not funny, Poppy.” He responds, but he’s sure the fond shake of his head and the way he battles the oncoming smile gives him away. “You have a minute left before I’m snatching that back and assuming your code is please don’t kill my baby daddy.”

“That’s a good one.” The smile she gives this time is tired, and for the first time all night, he takes in just how exhausted she looks. Shoulders slumped, shadows under her eyes, slow blinks every time she looks up at him.

He watches as she types her message to Nia, a feeling of contentment settling in the pit of his stomach despite the intensity of the situation.

She’s here. She’s making jokes. She’s looking him in the eye and smiling like he never hurt her.

She’s carrying his baby.

However small it might be, a part of him is growing within her, and she doesn’t seem all that perturbed by the idea.

He knows that there’s a lot more to talk about, for him to think about even, but he’s content for now just knowing that.

“I think you should get some sleep,” he suggests, his tone comforting and his cadence smooth, “We can talk more tomorrow, but you look beat, Poppy.”

“Yeah, I haven’t really been sleeping right lately.”

“You can take my bed,” he offers, “My mattress is like sleeping on a cloud,”

“No, I can’t kick you out of your bed,”

“I’ll sleep in the spare, it’s fine,”

“No, I’ll sleep in there, I don’t mind!”

“I shoved a kit bag in there before we broke up for All-Stars, before I got the chance to get it washed, I don’t think you’ll get on too well with how that room smells, Poppy.”

“Oh,” she pouts, an adorable frown forming on her face as Nico finds himself almost blushing at the sight of it. “Gross.”

“Yeah,” he chuckles, “Do you want me to make you anything before you go to sleep?”

“Were you gonna eat?”

“No, I was gonna head to bed early, I have an early morning training session with a couple of the guys. But I don’t mind cooking for you if you’re hungry,”

“No, that’s fine,” she shakes her head, looking up at him with a soft smile, “Nia and I ate before she brought me here. Are you sure you want me to stay if you have plans?”

“Yeah,” he answers with shameless urgency, “I’ll be back early, I can bring you breakfast.”

She bites at the corner of her mouth like she usually does when she’s thinking too much, and he reaches out to swipe his thumb at the side of her chin to pull her lip from the clutches of her teeth.

“I want you here, Poppy. I want to talk about this properly, after you’ve had a good night’s rest and you’re not upset.”

“Okay.” She breathes, “I’ll stay.”

“C’mon, I’ll find you something to wear to bed.”

He holds out his hand, expecting her to swerve it and grasp at his arm instead, but she slides her fingers between his and lets him guide her through his apartment to his bedroom.

When they’re both inside, he manoeuvres her to sit on the edge of his bed while he looks through his closet, and comes back out with some boxers and an old t-shirt. Poppy always wears shorts when she’s at home, and he figures she’ll be more comfortable in these than any sweatpants he could find. “Here you go, I promise they’re clean.”

“I trust you,” she snorts as she takes the garments from his clutches and stands to change in his en-suite.

Nico follows her in, and when she turns to question him, he opens up the medicine cabinet above his sink. “I don’t have a toothbrush for you but I have spare heads for mine,” he offers one out to her from the pack, one that has a blue band at the bottom so she’ll be able to tell the difference when she takes the head he uses off. “There’s soap in there too, and clean washcloths if you wanna take a shower. But if you need anything just let me know and I can pick it up for you on my way home in the morning.”

Before he can step back to head out, Poppy throws her arms around him, discarding the clothes he had given her to the floor and pressing her body firmly into his.

His own arms circle around her waist, tightening around her frame as his large hands press into her back to keep her close. She’s raised up on her tip toes, her face is shoved into his neck, and he presses his lips to the side of her head, closing his eyes to bask in how good it feels and taking a deep breath of the faint smell of her coconut shampoo.

She pulls away after a minute or two with a quiet sniffle, but only puts a little distance between them before she looks up at him with tears brimming her eyes again.

“Thank you.”

“You don’t have to thank me, Poppy,” he reaches a hand to wipe at a stray tear, “I’m here for you, whatever you need.”

“I was really scared earlier,” she hiccups out, “I was driving myself crazy, I was driving Nia crazy, and I-,” her lip trembles, and she shakes her head as if to rid herself of the onslaught of emotions, “I should have just come straight to you. I’m sorry you weren’t the first to know.”

“Hey, no,” he gently grabs either side of her face, stroking at her cheekbones with the pads of his thumbs, “You have nothing to be sorry for, I mean it.”

“But I-,”

“I like how you told me.” He affirms to her - and as much as he had wanted to be the first person who knew, earlier, he knows he means it. Nia is Poppy’s person, if there was one other person in the world he would be okay with knowing over him, it would be her. As much as he likes to think he would have been able to make her feel better in the moment if she was panicking, he doesn’t entirely know if he wouldn’t have panicked himself if things weren’t already confirmed. If he would have slipped up and made her feel worse or said something stupid. “You throwing your little pee sticks down onto my coffee table like some kind of performance art and telling me not to touch them after I already had. It’s kind of funny.”

She giggles, glassy eyes crinkling in the corners until they push a tear that runs into his thumb.

She places her own hands on top of his. “You still haven’t washed your hands, by the way.”

“Shit, sorry,” he grimaces, immediately taking them off of her skin. “I’ll let you get ready, I’m across the hall if you need anything, and I should be back before 11. I’ll bring you whatever you’re hungry for.”

“Okay, I’ll try not to vomit everywhere in the morning while I wait for you to come home.”

Come home. His feels like his heart does a somersault in his chest, bouncing off of each rib that protects it in its place, and the feeling reverberates throughout his entire body.

“I appreciate that.”

He takes a hold of her face again, his fingers tucked behind her ears as he pulls her head to his lips, pressing a firm and affectionate kiss to her crown, just like he used to whenever they said goodbye.

And in a way that melts his thumping heart, she does the same, bringing his face down to her lips to press them into the warm skin of his forehead.

“Goodnight, Nico,” she hums, her eyes sparkling and her lips spread into a fond smile.

“Sweet dreams, Mohn,” he replies, feeling the press of the dimples in his cheeks and the rush of blood to his head.

When he retreats to his spare bedroom, and collapses onto the firmer-than-he-would-like mattress, he can’t stop the surprising curve of his lips, a soft smile etching itself into his features that feels like it could be a permanent fixture.

He should be terrified. His heart should be beating out of his chest, he should have broken out in a cold sweat and not been able to form words. He should be panicked out of his mind and sick to his stomach.

But there’s a girl he loves more than anything laying in his bed in the room beside his, she’s wearing his clothes, her head is on his pillow, she is wrapped up in his sheets, and she is carrying his baby.

And despite never picturing much of this part of it before, he can see a glimpse of his future ahead of him.

A future where Poppy’s belly grows round and presses into his whenever she’s close enough that he can pull her into him. A future where tiny sticky hands press into one side of the plexiglass while he’s out warming up on the ice, and his large, gloved hand presses to the other. A future where he comes home to find her battling sleep with a snoring baby held to her chest, highlights playing with lowered volume on the TV, and they’d snuggle up together until they both pass out, and he gets up to do the middle of the night feed-and-change so that Poppy gets her rest.

And all those worries he had before about never being enough for her fade to nothing, because now he has no choice.

If Poppy can grow a little human with a tiny beating heart, who is half of him, and half of her, then he can step up for her.

Whatever she needs him to be, whatever she wants him to be, he’ll be it - and he’ll be it with this same lovesick smile that he now can’t shift.

So with a content sigh, and a deep longing for the girl laying not even 20 feet away from him, he falls asleep for the first time in 4 weeks at peace with his actions.

—

Over the last four weeks, Nico has spent way too much time retracing his steps to the point where he had so royally screwed things up with Poppy that she had wanted absolutely nothing to do with him. So when he wakes up the next morning before the sun shows any signs of rising - when he quickly gets himself ready to head off to practice, sneaking through his room to go brush his teeth, planting a minty kiss to the sleeping girl’s forehead and making sure she has something to drink for when she wakes up - he places a note beside the glass of water on his nightstand, in preparation for when she wakes up.

This time, he won’t leave her to wake up without him without some sort of explanation. Without an assurance that he’ll be back as promised, and that he can’t wait to see her, and that she should text him when she wakes up and let him know what isn’t going to turn her stomach and he’ll get it for her.

Which is why, when he checks his phone after his training session at the arena gym finishes at 9:30, his heart drops to the pit of his stomach when nothing is there.

It’s still early, he tells himself after a quick shower. She might still be asleep, he thinks as he packs up his toiletries, sets his things aside to be washed and tries to act like his thoughts aren’t eating him alive. She might not have seen the note, he convinces himself as he does a quick round of the grocery store - grabbing her some essentials and replenishing some of the basics he knows he is low on anyway. She wouldn’t have left, he thinks as he watches the numbers go up in the elevator, his feet tapping against the floor nervously as he awaits his stop.

And when he makes it into his apartment, and she isn’t on his couch, isn’t in the kitchen, isn’t in the bed where he had left her that morning, he starts to panic - until he hears something through the closed door of his bathroom.

“Poppy?” He asks softly before pushing the door open to see her sat on her knees on the floor beside his toilet, sticky hair matted to her paled skin, and bleary eyes looking weakly up at him. He sinks down beside her, perches himself on his knees and pushes the strands of hair off her forehead and out of her face. “Why didn’t you call me?”

“My phone died,” her voice is strained, and he doesn’t need to look into the toilet bowl to know why. “I tried to find a charger but I couldn’t get up without feeling sick.”

He hadn’t even thought to get her one when he had left her in here last night. “I’ll get you one,” but when he goes to push himself off the ground, she wraps her shaking fingers around his wrist.

“Could you just sit with me for a little?” She asks, “I know I’m gross but I just need you to hold my hair if it happens again, I didn’t bring a hair tie.”

“Of course,” he lowers himself back to the ground beside her, “C’mere,” he swings an arm over her shoulders, pulling her body into his until her head falls weakly into the crook of his neck. He strokes at her hair gently, tucking it behind her ears where she can and trying to soothe her into some sort of comfort. “Have you been here all morning?”

She nods, and he lowers his other arm to tuck his hand under her legs, unbending them as best as he can and stretching them out over his own so that she won’t loose the feeling in them.

They stay like that for a while, her taking deep breaths to alleviate the nausea and him stroking tranquilly at whatever parts of her he can reach. The soft skin of her thighs and the outsides of her knees with one hand, the slope of her neck and the curve of her shoulder with the other. One of her arms stays bent between them, but the other stretches out in an attempt to touch him back, languidly resting on his torso and occasionally her fingers dance lightly across the fabric of his t-shirt with just enough pressure to make his stomach clench in anticipation.

“You should take a shower,” he suggests after peeking down at her to make sure she hasn’t fallen asleep. “You might feel better.”

“Am I that bad?”

“Doesn’t feel right to chirp a pregnant woman, Poppy.”

The laugh she gives him in return feels like a cherished gift, and his chest swells with pride when she looks up at him and her eyes glimmer under the overhead lights.

“I got you some things from the store.”

He had spent almost 5 minutes trying to find coconut scented shampoo and conditioner, unscrewing several bottles and trying not to get caught, but he won’t be telling her that.

“And here I was counting my lucky stars you have such an extensive hair wash routine all morning.” She jibes, pointing over to the toiletries inside Nico’s shower. “If you were a 5-in-1 guy I would have seriously reconsidered our friendship.”

“It’s a good thing you don’t have to worry about that, wait here.”

He goes to retrieve one of the bags he had discarded when he got in, and takes it back to Poppy in his bathroom before emptying it out onto the counter beside the sink.

Shampoo, conditioner, a hairbrush, a new toothbrush, deodorant, some face wipes, an unscented body wash, and a packet of anti-nausea medication he had specifically asked the pharmacist for with the assurance it was okay for pregnant women.

“Oh wow, I must be that bad.”

“Not at all, I just wanted you to feel more comfortable.” He reassures her, and opens a drawer below the sink to get her a washcloth and a fresh bar of soap. “There’s clean towels in the cupboard behind you. And if you want to raise the pressure of the shower, it’s the dial at the top, temperature at the bottom.”

“Got it. Thank you, Nico,” she smiles, and Nico smiles back at the sincerity in her eyes.

“I’m gonna put together something to eat while you’re in there. You don’t have to eat if you don’t feel like it, but is there anything you think you can stomach?”

“Something cold,” she requests, swiping at the packet of medication and curiously reading the label, “That doesn’t have any kind of smell.

“I’ll see what I can do,” he chuckles, “I’ll put some fresh clothes on my bed, just call out if you need me, yeah?”

Poppy nods, and gives him a little salute with a pill packet between her fingers.

Something cold that doesn’t have any smell.

He had got her fruit from the store - strawberries and pre-cut watermelon, Pink Lady apples because he knows they’re the only kind she will eat - as well as yoghurt, some cereal, some bagels and some eggs and bacon. The eggs and bacon are out of the question, as much as he’d want to make himself a decent breakfast bagel after his training session, but the rest of it seems pretty safe.

He cuts up the fruit anyway, even if she won’t eat it now, he can always send it home with her later. He puts the yoghurt in the fridge so it will stay as cold as possible - he had gotten her coconut flavour, remembering how she had once said it was her favourite, but only the greek type that has the taste of coconut but not the texture. He leaves the bagels to the side, thinking that toasting them and potentially burning them is a little too risky without asking her first, and lays the boxes of cereal in a row on his counter so that she has her choice of the bunch if she wants some.

The pharmacist had recommended ginger shots to help with the sickness, but Nico has tried one too many of those on their own before, and they would make even the healthiest person gag, so he had bought some pre-made smoothies to mix them into. He decides he’ll leave her to pick, and blend it over some ice when she isn’t looking.

And as he flits around his kitchen without giving any of these things a second thought, he feels for the first time in a long time like he has thing figured out.

He can so do this. He can look after her like it’s just second nature to him. He can pick up whatever she needs from the store without panicking down every aisle and googling what is or isn’t okay for her. He can sit and hold her hair while she pukes her guts up and not get freaked out by it even in the slightest. He can go to practice, go to training, go to games, and come home and care for her like how she deserves.

He can do it with his hands tied behind his back, he feels.

He’s full of bravado, and hope, and excitement, and it’s a tornado of feelings that plough straight through whatever he had been feeling before - doubt and anxiety and insecurity.

The only thing that remains is regret.

Regret for what he had done to her, what he had said, the way he had ended things. All of it seems so stupid now. It seems so impulsive and he feels like he had been so blind.

Blinded by uncertainty, blinded by self-doubt, blinded by the poison spewed by Talia that he wasn’t good enough for anyone.

He should have listened to that tiny voice within him that had told him he could have been good enough for Poppy. Then he would never have hurt her. Would never have spent 4 weeks longing for her and hoping things could be different.

“You’re gonna have to get me a key cut,” her voice rings down the hall before she appears on the other side of his kitchen island, donning sweatpants that she has had to fold at the waist and a sweatshirt where the arms hang beyond the tips of her fingers. Her hair is damp, her feet are bare, and she looks like she belongs. “I don’t ever want to use another shower in my life.”

“It’s nice, huh?” He chuckles as he leans down onto the countertop, watching her as her feet pad closer, “I sometimes just stand in there for a good five minutes when I’m done, the pressures nice when I’m all achey after a game.”

“I bet, if I didn’t feel hungry for the first time in 2 weeks, I would have stayed in there for like an hour.”

“You feel better?”

“So much better.” She smiles up at him, leaning over the counter and cupping his face with both hands. “You, Nico Hischier, are a gift from God for those pills.”

She pulls him further over the island and plants a big, wet, somewhat minty kiss on his head, and he finds himself closing his eyes and breathing her in while she’s so close.

Where he expects to smell the coconut shampoo he had searched high and low for, he breathes in something different. Something familiar for an entirely different reason.

She smells fresh, like citrus-bergamot, and a little woody like cedar and musk.

She smells like him.

“The girl at the pharmacy said they should help short term until you can get in to see a doctor.” He tells her as he shakes himself out of whatever spell she had just cast on him.

“Thank you, Nico, you didn’t have to do all of this.”

“I wanted to,” he shrugs, straightening up and moving some of the fruit he had prepared to the counter between them. “I technically caused all of your problems.”

Her lips twist, and he watches as she lifts herself onto one of the stools, swivelling until she’s facing him properly and reaching out to take some of the watermelon. He makes his way over to the refrigerator while she chews on a piece.

“Did you get any-,” and before she can finish her sentence, he brings out the pot of coconut yoghurt and puts it down in front of her. “You’re good.”

“I know, it’s weird.” He leans back down and watches in amusement as she dips her watermelon into the yoghurt. “I was stressing a little on the way to the store about what I could get you, and then as soon as I got there it was like my legs just knew where to go.”

“Maybe you’re gonna be one of those sympathy-pregnancy kind of dads,” she smirks, and his knees start to feel a little like jelly at her use of the word, “Like your boobs will start to hurt and you’ll get all hormonal and cry at everything.”

“I don’t have boobs, Poppy.” He chuckles, reaching out to try watermelon dipped in yoghurt for himself.

“You know what I mean.”

Poppy works her way through quite a bit of the fruit before she hangs in the towel, and he decides not to subject her to the ginger shot quite yet - her nausea having subsided enough already that it’s probably an unwarranted form of torture at this point.

She helps him put everything away, and the two of them work around each other in the kitchen like a well oiled machine. It feels completely normal to have her in his space. He doesn’t feel the need to busy himself with mundane tasks to occupy his hands or his mind, and she makes everything seem so easy - cracking jokes and making conversation like nothing else is happening in their world.

He could have had it this good this whole time, he thinks.

He could have it this good forever.

The reality of it dawns on him when they eventually make their way over to the couch, the pregnancy tests still discarded where they had left them the night before, two sticking out from the couch cushions and two remaining on his coffee table. He plucks one out from between the seams of his couch, still not caring much for where it has been before, and stares down at the two lines with the kind of smile that makes his cheeks hurt.

“Have you ever thought about it before?” Poppy asks, and as he watches her lean into the back of the couch, he gets the sense she’s starting to build her guard up in anticipation of a blow. “Having kids, I mean?”

“No,” he replies, honestly. “Not properly. Not beyond thinking, like, it might be nice.”

“Do you still think that?” She chews at the corner of her lip, “Is it something that you want?”

“It is now.”

“Now?”

“Yeah.” He gives her what he hopes is a reassuring smile. “I think it’s that I could never picture it happening, before. I’ve never really had anyone I could see myself doing it with.”

“Not even Talia?”

He cringes inwardly at even the mention of her name. “God, no.”

“Really?” She seems as if she doesn’t believe him entirely.

“She’s not-,” he starts, “We weren’t-,” he tries again, and his mind races with a hundred ways to say what he wants to say without Poppy thinking he’s an asshole. “I don’t know.”

“Nico, I really need you to be straight with me here.” She sighs, sitting up straight and shuffling a little closer to him.

“I’m always straight with you.”

“No offence, but I don’t think you are,” she says, and before he can even give a rebuttal, she adds, “It’s not that I think you keep things from me maliciously, but you don’t always give me the full picture, and I,” she takes a deep breath, rolling her shoulders to prepare herself, “I jump to conclusions super easily, and I end up hurting myself when you don’t say whatever it is that you mean. And I think we can avoid all that if we’re just honest with each other. I don’t want us to get into dumb fights and it get in the way of us being friends again.”

He feels his heart come to a thunderous stop. Friends.

“If we’re gonna do this co-parent thing, we need to be honest about what we think and how we feel.”

Co-parents?

“Okay,” he responds, and it comes out like he’s on auto-pilot.

Okay?

“I know she’s back in the picture, you don’t have to keep pretending.”

“Back in the-“ He shakes his head, his thoughts racing at a million miles an hour. “What?”

“I heard you talking to her, before you left my apartment after we-,” Poppy gestures to her belly, where both nothing and everything has changed all at once, and Nico’s eyes get stuck there as she carries on. “Y’know, and then you broke things off, it hardly takes a genius to add it up.”

“Poppy, no.” He doesn’t remember ever being so direct with her. “No, no, no, that wasn’t-“ She had heard him? “I’m not-,” he takes a deep breath to alleviate the swirl of panic. He needs to be straight with her. “She got herself into some stupid mess, and she thought it was my fault but it wasn’t. I had to help her out, but she’s gone, she isn’t back in the picture, Poppy, I promise. I don’t even know if she was ever in the picture, I-.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that?”

His eyes dart up to meet hers, and where he holds his breath in the anticipation of seeing how much she has been hurting, has been assuming the worst of him and thinking the littlest of herself, he sees everything he loves about her shining back at him. Patience, generosity, forgiveness.

“After I left you without a word, and came back and ended things before they even began, would it have mattered?”

“Nico, this whole time I thought you shut things down because you wanted to be with her but you just-,” she shakes her head like she can’t bring herself to say the rest, and his throat starts to feel drier by the second.

How could he have ever been so stupid? He had thought he’d been miserable the past 4 weeks, second guessing his choices and wanting nothing more than to just talk to her, and she’s spent that whole time thinking he had discarded her like a used toy and gone back to someone else. Someone who could never compare to her in any universe.

“I really fucked this up, huh?”

“Yeah,” she nods, her lips twitching as the silence settles between them for a second.

He watches as she thinks for a second. Watches her brows furrow and relax, her eyes dart around to different spots between the, her bottom lip get tugged between her teeth, and released into a pensive pout, all before she says, “You can make it up to me,” and she gives a gentle and reassuring smile, reaches out for his hand and presses the soft pads of her fingers to his knuckles before pushing them through the spaces in between.

Although it pains him to say it, he tells her, “You have to stop letting me off so easy, Poppy.”

“Trust me,” she says, “I won’t be letting you off easy. Us Jensen women are super scary when we’re hormonal. Super demanding and bratty.”

“I’ll take it.” He promises. “And I’ll give you whatever you want, whatever you need.”

“Right now I just need to know that you’re in this with me,” she requests, so vulnerable in her tone that is makes his chest ache.

He reaches up with his free hand and cups his palm around her soft cheek. “I’m in this,” he whispers, leaning into her and pressing his forehead to hers. “I can't begin to tell you how much I want it, Mohn.”

“Okay.” She whispers back, and when her eyes flutter closed at the proximity, and she surrenders to his touch, Nico gives in to his instincts.

Entirely caught up in the intimacy of the moment, he leans in, and when his mouth presses to hers, he feels the culmination of 4 weeks of longing, of missing her, of regretting everything, of anticipating seeing her, of worrying, of needing of wanting, explode into something vibrant and loud and inevitable.

It’s like a fireworks show, sparks of anxiety, of excitement, of hope and doubt and insecurity clashing together in pops and bangs and fizzes, raining down on him in a mixture of colour and sound.

“Mmph-,” she squeaks out a protest as his lips meet hers, and despite his primal instinct to persevere, to give her a second to adjust to the kiss and to eagerly accept his advances, to bask in the beauty of it all like he is, he pulls straight away with a furrowed brow, eyes meeting hers in concern as he creates an inch of space between them.

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t think we should do that,” her eyes dart down, lashes fluttering as she avoids his gaze chasing hers back.

“Do what, kiss?”

“Yeah.”

“Why not?” He doesn’t even feel ashamed at the way he practically whines when asking.

“Would you want to kiss me if I wasn’t pregnant?”

How could she possibly even doubt that? He thinks.

“I always want to kiss you, Poppy.” Again, it’s pointless to second guess those feelings. He’d told her something similar after the first time he had done it, and he had meant it as much back then as he does, now.

“Would you want to be with me?”

That isn’t a matter of want, but this time, he hesitates.

He’ll always want to be with her.

He’s wanted nothing else the last four weeks they haven’t been talking. For the last few years he has known her. He wants to be with her when he’s alone in his apartment, when he’s away with the team, when he’s back home with his family, he has always wanted that.

And especially now that she’s carrying his baby, as minuscule as it currently may be, it’s going to grow in her belly with eyes that sparkle when it smiles and a brain that thinks exclusively in razor-sharp wit and biting sarcasm.

“Poppy, I,” he sighs, knowing he can’t undo the damage he had caused that night in her apartment all those weeks ago. Even after clearing up her misconceptions on what was behind it, it doesn’t change what he said. That was never about not wanting her. It was about not wanting to hurt her. But every time he tries to explain it - to her, to Luke, to himself, even - he just sounds like an idiot. “I don’t know.”

He does now. Of course he knows, but something within him tells him that she won’t believe him this time when he tells her. There’s only so many excuses he can give for what he did.

“We can’t just be together because I’m going to have your baby, Nico, that’s not-,” she takes a shuddered breath. “I don’t want you to want to be with me because it’s convenient.”

“That isn’t what this is.”

“I don’t think you even know what you want,” she says, her tone light and comforting despite the harsh reality check being served, “And that’s okay, but I’m not gonna be a guinea pig for you to figure it out. That isn’t fair to me.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that sometimes you make decisions in the heat of the moment when you might not mean or want them.”

Nico lets her words dawn on them for a second.

If only she knew how much that were true.

“I don’t say that to be an asshole, either, I just,” her tongue darts out to wet her lips, the ones he had pressed his own to barely a minute ago and hadn’t savoured enough while he was there. “Rushing into things is what got us into this, and I don’t want to,” her eyes meet his again and he holds his breath in anticipation. “I don’t wanna get hurt again. Especially not now.”

He wants to say he would never hurt her, but he can’t make promises like that when those are the thoughts that caused such a mess in the first place.

He had hurt her before whether he intended to, or not, and what’s to say he isn’t going to fuck this up again along the way.

“I want this, too. I want it so much it drives me a little crazy, but it feels right. And I think there’s a way that we can do this where it might hurt a little now but it stops us hurting later down the line, where it has the potential to do some serious damage. Does that make sense?”

Maybe she’s right.

Maybe they can do this another way. A way where neither of them are left disappointed.

He gets his friend back, and she gets hers.

And they both get a baby.

A baby that has two parents who love each other more than anything in the world still. Who share so much of their lives together, but might never take that final leap into something more.

He nods, wordlessly.

“I’m not saying that we can’t go back to how we were before, but we both let things get too intense, and I know I’m probably at fault for that, but I think we’ll be better off if we just take things slow.”

“Slow.” He repeats, like he’s trying to get a taste for the word. He doesn’t entirely like it, but he doesn’t hate it like he thought he would.

“Yeah, like being a little more cautious of how far we take things. We start as friends and see how we get on with that.”

“Like baby steps,” he mutters.

Poppy smiles. It’s the slow kind, that builds from something soft to something beaming, something beautiful, and turns into joyous laughter like music to his ears. It’s vibrant and wonderful, and it makes his heart ache all the more. “Yeah,” she lets out a breathy chuckle, “Exactly like baby steps.”

Next Chapter

Taglist: @alwaysclassyeagle @bunbunbl0gs @idgaf-if-youre-here @youflowerr-youfeast @thearchersstuff @bellsdi0r @wonderheartz @jjgsunflower @butterflies35 @kenziepickle @josierosie @laheyxlover @mrsmattytkachuk @dasiysthings (sorry if your tag hasn't worked btw)

#nico hischier #nico hischier x oc #nico hischier fanfiction #nico hischier imagine #nhl fanfiction #*oys #*writing #I had a very rough draft of the nico and poppy convo but other than that the rest of this came from nowhere this week #I've had eNOUGH of angst now I wanna get the good times rolling #also in case anyone thinks of it a go piss girl joke didn’t fit the mood okay it felt too meta in the poppy nia scene #I had to seriously resist temptation #I linked the painting referenced cos it's super pretty and the idea of his mum trolling him with a poppy painting is too good

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