#if this was adlerbell bell would be shooting with a gun at his feet jus to make him dance. live entertainment

[altcvnningham]

picture frame {request}

adler x f!reader (pregnant!reader)

request: for anon, who asked for pregnant!reader x adler who does nottt wanna get on reader's bad side!!

tags: fluff, pregnant!reader, reader is ex-cia, domestic, so domestic it's practically an au, adler is ooc but let him be happy, future girldad!adler, author is feeling christmassy so christmas mention wc: 1.3k

a/n: i'm not usually a fan of pregnancy fics or fluff without underlying angst but i enjoyed this one, it was so comforting to write!! i hope i did this justice!! adler is a bit ooc but i don't wanna succumb poor reader to deadbeat dadler, so this is like post-bo6. also had to bind my hands to make sure i didn’t veer off writing an honorary uncle woods segment….. that man already has a whole david mason to worry about never mind miss adler junior. anyway enjoy !!

There isn’t a thing Adler fears in this world, but if he had to choose whose bad side he’d rather avoid getting on, it’s yours.

And that being said, it’s a fear coupled with excitement that verges on delirium- the ex clandestine special officer had never thought himself fit for married life, given his failed attempt in the past, and had all but given up on the faraway white picket-fence dream long ago.

There existed an Adler once, Russ, soft-faced and scarless, who’d dedicated such a dream to a snippet he’d spied once in a magazine; some schlocky, oversaturated Home Style issue perched upon a grocery store counter, featuring a staged photograph of an all-American nuclear family on some Christmas morning by the tree. Husband kicked back in a recliner with a cigar and eggnog, pregnant-bellied wife tinkering with baubles on the tree, two bright-eyed girls at her feet in matching pyjamas tearing into red-ribboned gifts. So sweet and saccharine a picture it verged on tooth-rotting.

A man of twenty or so at the time, already welded to the army fatigues he donned like a second skin, he’d rolled his eyes, checked out his pack of cigarettes, and went on his way. But he’d never forgotten the picture, or the bittersweet sadness lodged in his chest beside it. Perhaps partly knowing that such a life could never be his, fictitious and just out of reach. Were he a different man- a better man- maybe he’d wake up one morning to a pretty wife sleeping beside him, kids giggling down the hall, his hands soft and bloodless. Were he a better man, maybe he’d deserve such a thing.

And Adler is not a better man. Certainly no more than he was the day he’d seen that picture, and even then he doesn’t reckon he was wholly good. So God knows what he’d done to deserve this.

“No, no, a little to the left,” you say as you gesture with a rolled up interior design magazine, lips pursed in a sigh. A hand caressing your belly, crumpling your agitated, paint-flecked face, you’d been working on the nursery for hours.

Adler won’t admit how his aged back strains when he holds the picture frame up to the wall, nor can he hide the amused smile that starts to unfold when he catches wind of your ire. Balancing effortlessly atop the stepladder, he throws you a look back over his shoulder.

“Any more to the left and it’ll be goin’ out the window. You’re asking me to move mountains here.”

“And I’ll be asking you to move out if you don’t get that picture straight,” you tease, half a smile. “I’m not telling our daughter that she can’t know what gramma and pop looked like ‘cause you couldn’t hang a picture frame.”

Adler raises a hand in a surrender as he blithely succumbs to your demands, moving the frame leftward and fastening it exactly as you’d asked. He knows not to provoke your anger, a little pricklier now in your last few months of pregnancy, and though it’s all in good fun he could almost swear he’d near lose his head last week when he’d made a joke about your odd cravings, your empty coffee cup primed and ready to be launched at him.

But he’s as loving as any man with a blackened heart like him could possibly be, doting on you to a degree of obsession that was nigh unimaginable; both of you a world removed from your respective lives within the CIA, a far cry from having to dig out the odd bullet from one another and patch each other up in the midst of gunfights, sheltering for cover behind old splintered buildings. Domestic life wasn’t exactly a warzone, but it had been hard to settle into a vague sense of normalcy, almost like adopting new identities entirely. A prospect he’d joked about, now he was no longer officially CIA, changing your names to Mr. and Mrs. John Doe. Yeah, you’d groused, good luck hiding anywhere with that scar.

Still, it was fair game when he chose to get on your bad side. You’d once laughed, pelting him with your oven mitt after he’d thought it wise to joke about your cooking- your fault for getting caught in the crossfire.

“There,” he groans as he descends from the stepladder, shuffling back next to you so he could glimpse the frame from your perspective. “How’s that please you?”

It was a lovely thing. Not just the picture frame now hanging perfectly above the undecorated cot, but everything. This, your quaint home in the suburbs, away from the noise, playing your little game of house. Between the odd intel request from Woods, who’d jokingly insist he’d trade your help deciphering transcripts for him hosting the next Fourth of July cookout in your backyard, it was, relatively, a normal life. One that in truth you never thought you’d live to see.

It’s the little things, you suppose. Like the picture frame above the cot, in the little pale blue and pink nursery, half-complete.

You caress an idle hand over your tummy, feeling Russell’s own waver on the small of your back. Admiring your shared handiwork, you tilt your head with a smile.

“Mm. Perfect. Looks nice with the walls- wouldn’t have picked it for a girl but I think the duck-egg blue is just right.”

If Adler had resisted the urge to snidely tease just to get under your skin, he’d sorely lost. And if hours of sifting mindlessly through paint swatches had taught him anything, it’s that you took the choice of particular hues deathly seriously. He smirks.

“Oh? I thought it was periwinkle.”

There’s a deafening beat of silence before Adler flings his arms up in defence, warding off your attacks as you smack at him with the rolled up magazine; no amount of time out of the CIA had made your right hook any weaker, and you’re relentless with your barrage of attacks, met only by sounds of feigned agony and raspy laughter.

He doesn’t much remember what that picture in that old Home Style magazine had looked like, as his life slowly assumed the shape of you. He had everything he needed right here, and wanted for very little else. Wasn’t exactly choice to be excommunicated from the CIA after the mess in Panama, but he’s happy working for himself, for Marshall, teaming back up with Woods for the occasional op, only now he has an excuse to actually watch his own six, knowing who and what he had waiting at home for him. Home. A foreign word. It almost frightens him, to think how simple and easy a life he’s got between all the blood and the mess, how undeserving he feels of even a lick of it.

But a month or so later, come Christmas morning, he gets struck with the strangest frisson of déjà vu. Over a glass of eggnog, helping you fix the tinsel that had fallen from the tree again, he looks at you and he sees it. Feels it, some nameless void in him suddenly filled. A blink in the back of his mind and he sees that faded magazine article, only it’s you, rosy-cheeked and smiling as you are now, tinsel tumbling from your hands as you rush wobbling to his side. You let out a frantic gasp, seizing his wrist, and pull his hand to press against your belly, insisting that you feel a kick. And all he can do is laugh, teasing with a dry smile.

“Look at that. Just as strong n’ mean as her mama.”