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sissytobitch10seconds · 2 years ago

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A Quiet Entrance

Fandom: The Umbrella Academy Summary: Nine months after landing in Dallas, Texas during the 1960s, Diego is finally reunited with the rest of his family. They've got a lot to deal with until they're safe and they've got a lot of curveballs coming to them, but they can handle it because they're back together again. Warnings: Pregnant trans character, graphically described childbirth, mentions of mental distress, and period typical transphobia Word Count: 11,618 Ship(s): Diego Hargreeves/Viktor Hargreeves

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A/N: If you've noticed that I'm writing more fics like this, it's because my mutual poked me into watching Call the Midwife and it reignited my special interest surrounding childbirth and pregnancy, so I am combining it with my current fandom obsession. I hope that you guys can enjoy some of these, because there's going to be quite a few of them as time goes on. Thanks for reading! Stay sissy and bitchy everyone <3

After making sure that all four of his already found siblings were listening to him, Five began to explain the situation that they were in. “I dumped you here without permission and we got the attention of the Commission, unfortunately. The Handler has been trying to do something nefarious with it since I joined and she’s using the fact that you’re all here as a way to continue doing that. I went back to the Commission and agreed to stop messing with time and keep certain things a secret as long as they helped me keep all of you safe. They’ve agreed to let us use one of their old safehouses. It’s one of the ones that The Handler isn’t aware of, so I’m sending you all there so that you can be safe.”

He had tried to make it so that his statement left no room for arguments. He didn’t want to spend an unknown amount of time poking, prodding, and reassuring them that it was okay and the right thing for them to do. He just wanted to make sure that the five remaining siblings he had were safe and tucked away until he could return them back to the world that they deserved.

Luther, however, seemed to have not gotten the message. Five should have suspected that he would be the biggest problem out of all of his siblings since their father had reassured him over and over again that he was the leader. “You’re going to go after that entire organization by yourself? Don’t you need the rest of us to help you?”

The oldest-youngest brother shook his head. “I don’t. I’m only going after The Handler and I’ve been given permission to use some of the other agents if I need any help. The thing that is going to help me most is having you all out of the way so that I don’t have to worry about you fucking up the timeline more. The Commission wants you out of the way as well. Two of you have tried to mess with the Kennedy assassination and the other two have made huge ripples in the culture of Dallas and the world as a whole.”

Diego pursed his lips and then folded his arms moodily over his chest as he sank down in his chair. Luther looked a little bit guilty and began to fidget impatiently. Allison let out a huffy noise and rolled her eyes, obviously not having any remorse for the ripples that she had sent through the timeline. Klaus just laughed as he lounged back on the couch that he was already sitting on.

“Do you understand?” Five asked as he looked out over all of his siblings. “If you all continue with what you’ve been doing until I got here then there’s the chance that the Commission will decide that you need to die anyway. You all have to go to the safehouse and stay there until I come to get you.”

Allison spoke up before the rest of them had the chance to, “Are we allowed to go back and say goodbye to any of the people that we loved?”

“No,” Five shook his head. “Not right now. Maybe if you’re all good and you’ve done what I’ve asked I can accompany you back so that you can say goodbye before we got back to where we’re supposed to be.”

She didn’t seem content with that answer, but she also didn’t pitch a big fuss. Five walked his siblings down the stairs so that they were near the car that Eliot had before he had been killed by the Swedes under The Handler’s instruction. “I want you to all go to this address and find Viktor. He’s going by his old name and working as a nanny for the family that lives at this address,” he didn’t bother to explain how he knew that as he wrote the information down and then handed the slip of paper over to Diego.

The aforementioned brother’s face was overcome with a kind of emotion that none of them had ever seen from him before. His brows were furrowed together and his mouth was in a pinched line. He walked to the other side of the car and then got in the front behind the wheel while waiting for the rest of his siblings to follow suit.

As soon as the present Hargreeves, with the exception of Five, had sat down in the car, he started it up. A flash of blue told him that Five had gone off to wherever he was finishing his business, so he pulled out of the driveway to go to the address they had been given.

Klaus struck up a conversation about halfway out of the city and towards the farm where their last brother was living. It was easy to fall into the pattern that they had grown up in, listening to him say something and then groaning or pointing out the inaccuracies in it. This time, even Luther joined in. Diego felt himself relaxing as he thought back to some of the more comforting memories that he had of when they were younger.

The tension and stress that he had felt before were back as soon as they pulled down the dirt driveway of the farm where Viktor was living. There were tire tracks down the path, but no car in front of the barn or beside the house which meant that someone had probably gone out.

Diego hung back in the car while the rest of the siblings piled out. He had a lot of emotions that he had to sort through concerning the brother that they had come to pick up, the least of which being the guilt that was boiling in his stomach at not coming to rescue Viktor from what might have been a very bad situation.

He stepped out after a moment, knowing that he couldn’t run away from it. He turned and then felt like his breath was stolen from his lungs in the best way possible.

His relationship with Viktor had been complicated from the very beginning of their lives, there was no alternative with the way that they had been raised. As they got older and began to come into themselves more as people, it had gotten even more twisted and confusing. He had always thought that the violinist was beautiful, but something had changed since they had last seen each other and the radiance of the other man had seemingly increased tenfold.

Viktor was standing next to a laundry line where he was picking up garments from a basket and then pinning them down so that they flapped dry in the breeze. He was wearing a long blue summer dress that brushed across his ankles and tightened up at the waist. The sleeves were simple and stopped at his mid-forearm with a looseness that allowed for work to be done easily. His hair was cut short again, like it had been right after they left the Academy and formed their short-lived band.

Something about the way that he was standing in the hot Dallas sun, the spring breeze wrapped around him, made him look more beautiful and ethereal that Diego had ever seen him look before. He could only see the side of Viktor’s face and yet the healthy glow that he had acquired since arriving in the past was evident. He was beautiful in the same way that he always had been, handsome yet soft, but at the same time different. It might have had something to do with the fact that he was off of the medication that he had been on his entire life and was finally able to feel his own feelings, but as soon as Viktor turned Diego knew that it wasn’t just that.

“Viktor?” Allison called, quickly getting the attention of their brother.

He turned around and his beautiful brown eyes welled up with tears. They didn’t even hang on his lashes as they often had when they were all children, back when his emotions were being suffocated by the medication that Reginald had kept him on since they were four. “Allison?” he asked.

The siblings had all been getting ready to approach their brother so that they could have a conversation without shouting, but as soon as he turned around they all stopped. He had one hand extended out over the top of a basket that was overflowing with wet laundry and clothespins, but the other one was what they were paying attention to. Even if it hadn’t been placed where it was, the object of their fascination would have been very obvious.

Viktor’s stomach was rounded out from underneath his chest all the way down to between his hips. It looked firm and not at all proportionate to what it would have been had the small man just gained some weight. The hand placed on the very bottom of his stomach made it even more obvious because it cut the dress so that the fabric was tightly formed around him. It was very blatant that he was pregnant.

Diego felt like he was frozen in place as soon as that finally clicked in his brain. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do when he saw the man that he had so much history with before that had been thrown into the equation, but now any ideas that he had were completely thrown out the window.

The rest of the siblings seemed to be similarly astounded that the bringer of the apocalypse, their timid little brother, was harboring a life inside of him. They were just as frozen as Diego and so Viktor had to be the one to make the first move. He dropped the basket of laundry so that they tumbled down onto the packed dirt and grass. He didn’t care as he hurried, as quickly as he could with the heavy weight on his abdomen, towards the siblings he was worried he would never see again.

He paused when he was finally in front of Allison, a mere foot away. “You’re okay?” he asked, his hand twitching at his side as he thought about whether or not it would be okay for him to reach out and touch her.

“Yeah, I’m okay, I’m okay,” Allison immediately nodded. She lurched forward so that she was hugging her brother, saving him from having to make the decision. Viktor had been crying the entire time that he had been getting closer to her, but as soon as her arms were around him he began to sob loudly.

“I’m so sorry that all happened and then I wasn’t even there to make sure that you were okay. I tried to get back to you but then my powers they- they just took over so I couldn’t think anymore and then I woke up in Dallas and I didn’t even know if any of you were out here,” Viktor gasped around sobs.

“Shh, shh,” Allison immediately soothed. She brushed her hand over the back of his head in the same way that Grace had often done when they were younger. She placed a kiss on his forehead and Diego felt a spike of jealousy flare up inside of him as he wanted to be doing that, though he quickly stamped it down as he remembered all of the feelings he had nine months ago when they were in their own timeline.

Allison pulled back then, brushed her fingers over her own eyes to rid them of the tears. “You shouldn’t be all worked up when you’re in this condition,” she sniffled.

Viktor laughed as the hand that wasn’t on Allison’s shoulder, reassuring him that his sister was really there and really okay, moved to his stomach. He rubbed a circle and then settled it back where it had been while he was working with the clothesline.

One of the other siblings slipped out of their surprise then as Klaus walked over to the smallest of the brothers. He wrapped one of his long arms around the violinist’s waist and brought him in to a half hug, “I never thought that we’d see you in a dress again, mein bruder.”

The aforementioned brother let out a half laugh, sounded absolutely exasperated despite how little Klaus had said so far. “How about you try being nine months pregnant in the beginning of Dallas summer and then tell me if you want to be wearing jeans?”

Klaus laughed, tossing his head back so that the black hat that was perched on the edge of his head tumbled back into the grass along with the laundry. “At least you don’t have much longer to go. When is baby supposed to come?” Klaus asked.

His hand moved over to Viktor’s stomach but Allison quickly hit it off. “Klaus! Never touch a pregnant person’s stomach without permission. Just because they’re carrying a baby doesn’t mean that they don’t get to have autonomy and consent anymore.”

The violinist quickly soothed the argument before it could really get started. “Allison, Klaus never asks when he touches someone so it isn’t like this is a pregnancy specific thing.” He then turned towards his brother with a small smile, “I am getting very close to my due date. We’re not sure when exactly because it took a while for me to remember again and then I couldn’t quite figure out conception dates because of how the time travel worked.”

“Remember?” Luther asked. He walked out from where he was standing next to the car so that he was closer to the rest of his siblings. Viktor tensed up a little bit and the wind picked up, but then he took a deep breath and everything settled again.

“I was dumped into a back alleyway when I got here. I was really disoriented because of the kinds of things that my powers had done to my head. I stumbled out into the road and someone hit me with their car,” he explained. “I actually work for her family, she’s been kind enough to let me stay here even with the baby on the way.”

“You were hit with a car?” Allison gasped.

“Yes, but don’t worry! She stopped as soon as she could so it basically just threw me down to the ground. I didn’t break any bones and the baby wasn’t hurt at all. I had a concussion for a little while and some scrapes but we’re both fine,” Viktor immediately soothed. He then flushed a little, no doubt ashamed that he had assumed they were worried about his and his baby’s health because of how he had been treated when they were younger.

Diego felt like he was suffocating, like the air around him was slowly seeping out. It reminded him of some of the training that he had done when he was younger, back when Reginald was trying to figure out if his breath-holding applied to anything other than world. His chest was beating up in his ears so that it made it hard to hear what his siblings were saying, but he was also hanging off of every word. His thoughts were rolling over and over in his head as he tried to figure out conception dates on his own.

“We should get going. Five said that we had to go straight to the safehouse after we picked him up,” Luther said as he glanced back towards Diego, who was still hanging back at the car.

The look got Viktor’s attention back in that direction as well. His eyes widened when he noticed that the brother he had been closest to as teenagers was there as well. He ducked his head down, though without the curtain of hair that he had all the way up until their sixteenth birthday, it was hard for him to hide the way that he was feeling. His eyes were wide and the tips of his cheeks were colored red with a nervous flush. Diego had seen that look a lot back when they were trying to, futilely, get their band off of the ground.

“Safehouse?” Viktor asked.

Klaus let out a sigh as he got ready to explain, “Our dear Fivey has been very busy since he dumped us here. He only got into Dallas about three days ago and he’s been working rather tirelessly to find us all. We were all dumped in different times because of how messy his powers are. Apparently we caught some nasty attention and so now he’s having to squirrel us away while he gets it all cleaned up and we get to go back home.”

“I can’t leave just yet. I told Sissy that I would get some chores done around the house and she might worry if she comes back and I’m just gone,” Viktor shook his head. He detached himself from Klaus and Allison as he slowly made his way back over to where the laundry basket was. Diego noticed, with affection swelling his heart, that Viktor had a little bit of a waddle now because of the size of the baby.

“Here, let me get that,” Allison quickly said as she moved past him and gathered the laundry up from the ground. She winced when she saw that one of the shirts had spilled out into a patch of mud and was now soaked. She placed that over one arm while she put the rest of the laundry back where it went and then handed it to Viktor.

“Thank you, I can’t reach stuff that falls as much as I used to. I refuse to be one of those people that just doesn’t pick things like that up because it’s harder, but it’s nice not having to do it every time,” he laughed as he took the basket. He turned back to his siblings. “Can you let me finish up the chores I need to do around the house and pack up some things?”

He was taking everything in better stride than they thought that he would given what their last interactions had been like. It was kind of hard to believe that the brother that they had seen up on that stage, bathed in white energy while trying his very best to kill everyone coming too close to him, was the same that was standing here. The Viktor that they had seen the last time they were all together was all blue-hued and cold while this one was full of rosy golden warmth.

Diego spoke up before anyone else had the chance to. His words had been stuck in his throat, much like his body had been stuck in place. “We have time, you can pack.”

From a few feet away from the car, between the vehicle and their pregnant brother, Luther whirled around with wide eyes. Despite his reluctance to help Five in the saving of the world earlier that day, he seemed to have jumped on it now. The idea of letting someone have more time than the rest of them also seemed to tick off Allison, but she didn’t say anything about it.

Viktor turned to face Diego for a moment, his eyes full of nearly-unreadable emotion. When they had been working together on starting their band, before Diego had flunked the police academy and blown away in the wind like bad dandelion seeds, the marksman had gotten very good at reading those emotions. He had to be since Viktor was shy and quiet and rarely ever spoke what he was thinking. “Thank you,” he whispered. He turned back around to his work so that he could finish hanging up the wet laundry on the line.

The lone girl of the family sent a half-pissed look at her brother, which just confirmed that the pregnancy was the only reason she wasn’t fighting against his decision the way that Luther was. She walked over to their brother and took the basket from him so that she could help him. Viktor was pulling garments out and then pinning them to the line while she trailed slowly after him while keeping the basket steady.

“What the Hell, Diego?” Luther demanded as he stormed back over towards his brother.

“You didn’t even want to save the world the last time that Five came to ask you for help,” Diego snarled.

“Why does he get more time than the rest of us to wrap up his shit? Five said that we had to get to the safehouse as quickly as possible because of the danger that the Commission is posing to us right now. If we stick around for too long they might figure out where we are,” Luther argued.

Diego felt a flare of anger burning up inside of him. He thought that he had left those kinds of feelings behind when he had dropped into this world. Despite the barbaric treatments of people in 1960s mental institutions, some of the things that he had talked about while in therapy had helped him with some of his issues. He had a couple of sessions of therapy under his belt before he even got there, so he just built their basic suggestions on the more modern ones he already knew. He had worked very hard to try and get over the issues that he had with his brother, to ration that it was their father that had turned them against each other like that.

He had forgiven Luther around the fourth month of being in the institution. The more that the other man was pushing this specific issue, the less he wanted to keep on that streak. “Because he’s fucking pregnant, Luther! You weren’t around him enough to see how much being forced to pretend that he was a girl messed him up. Pregnancy in the 1960s isn’t going to be fucking nice to him so we have to be gentle for two different reasons. I don’t think you want anything bad happening to him or the baby, do you, Luther?” he snapped.

“Something bad is going to happen to him, Diego!” Luther shouted. “There are dangerous people out there with guns that are going to hurt him, the baby, and the rest of us if they catch us!”

“They’re going to have to fucking wait until Viktor feels safe enough to go anywhere! I’m not going to push our pregnant brother into doing something he isn’t comfortable with,” he was basically seething at that point. They were going to be going back and forth like that for a while longer before one of them got bored and stopped fighting. It was something that they had done often when they were younger and were pushed against each other by their father. It was something that he often goaded them into and they fell into very easily. Diego also needed to burn off some of his anxiety and the other feelings that were swirling in his gut.

Meanwhile, Klaus had wandered off to talk with Viktor and Allison. “So what have you been doing since your little ending-the-world rendezvous?” he asked as he snagged one of the clothespins to play with.

The pregnant man pursed his lips and shrank down into himself. Allison opened her mouth to object over their brother bringing up that topic, but she was shut down before she really got to, “I’ve just been living here. Like I said earlier, Sissy hit me with her car and then brought me to the hospital. I had a pretty bad concussion and had no idea who I was so they brought me back with them to take care of me since I didn’t match up with any missing person’s reports. My memory slowly came back and we tried to reach out to you guys but I was too pregnant to get a job so that I could get an apartment. I work as a nanny here so that Sissy can focus on the farm.”

“They’re not working you too hard, are they?” Allison asked, her eyes drifting down specifically to Viktor’s domed stomach.

He chuckled and placed a hand on his swollen bump. “No, they’re not. I mainly do household chores and watch after Harlan. My midwife said that getting the exercise that I do is actually good for me and the baby. Makes it so they can grow up to be healthy and strong. Also means that I’m not liable to go into labor sooner than I’m supposed to,” he grabbed the last garment from the bag and then took the basket from Allison.

Viktor turned back towards the car, trying to catch some kind of a glance at Diego, when he saw the two brothers fighting. “Allison, why don’t you go see if you can talk Luther down and then send Diego into the house with me? We need to talk.”

He didn’t give them any room to argue as he drifted back into the house to finish up the remainder of his chores before he had to leave. Klaus and Allison glanced at each other knowingly before doing as they had been asked.

The back door that Viktor had just come through slowly opened and then closed as Diego walked through it into the kitchen. Viktor was placing the shirt that had gotten dirty when the basket fell back into the washing machine so that it could be washed with the next load. He set the basket down on the ground next to it and then slowly pushed himself up into a standing positon, one hand going to his back for extra support.

“Allison said that you had something you wanted to talk to me about,” Diego said softly as he walked over to one of the counters in the kitchen.

“Yeah, I do,” Viktor nodded. He turned around to that they could have their conversation face-to-face but then paused as he felt the burning, searing pain beginning to grow in his back. He placed his hand on the wall to support himself as he took in a deep breath through his nose. The muscles along his spine tightened painfully and then wrapped around his gravid belly for a solid thirty seconds before they all released. The pain fled and he was flushed with endorphins before he remembered everything that was happening. “Um, would you mind making another tally under the four on that paper for me since it’s behind you?”

Diego had been staring at him the entire time that he had been standing there, he was able to feel the other man’s eyes boring into his very being. It was only after he said something that the spell or captivation that had been placed on him was finally broken. He turned around to grab the paper and pencil that had been requested of him before he paused. “Viktor, what is this?” he asked.

“It’s just something that my midwife asked me to keep. A log book of all my false labor contractions to make sure that nothing is wrong with baby,” he replied. “Which is kind of what I need to talk to you about.”

“False labor?” Diego asked, trying to play stupid to give himself more time to process the information on the paper. It was broken up into seven sections, each with several numbers spread evenly throughout. Underneath each number was a certain amount of tallies, with some being more frequent and most of them being devoid of the marks altogether. The one at the bottom that was marked with their current date was what had caught his attention, however. The tallies increased as the day got later, to the point where there were already five in the column underneath the four.

“No, the baby,” Viktor shook his head. He snagged the paper and then set a tally mark down where it needed to be. “I know that you and I haven’t always had the… most stable relationship,” he winced.

Diego snorted, “You could say that.”

“Do you remember right when we found out that Dad died? You got distracted when you were doing your whole Batman-thing and came to me to get patched up, like you always did. And we…” his ears were burning red as he fully trailed off.

The memories of that night came flooding back to them both. It was like whenever they were seated that close together, on the poorly tiled floor of Viktor’s tiny bathroom, something drew them even closer. They had become intertwined as they had many times before, but they had become so giddy with the news of their father’s death that they had forgotten to be as careful as they usually were. It had resulted in them having to shower to get all of the blood from Diego’s cut off of them and Viktor complaining under his breath about having to pick up a Plan B on his way to work the next morning.

“I never did it. I was late going to orchestra and then the funeral happened and now…” he placed his hand on his swollen stomach.

“Are you saying…?” Diego felt his eyes widen as the words got stuck in his throat. That had happened so often when they were younger and Viktor had always been the most patient about it, struggling with his own words more often than not. The thought had flit across his mind as soon as he had seen the state that his adoptive brother was in, but he pushed it away quickly after reminding himself that nothing good ever happened to him.

Viktor nodded, tears welling in his dark brown eyes. “I think so. I- there’s a chance that it could be Harold’s because we weren’t… there was a time, right after my powers went haywire when Allison triggered me with her rumor that he… and I didn’t really have the brain space to be able to tell him that I didn’t want to or that he had to use a condom,” he gave a shudder.

Immediately upon hearing that, the amazement and wonder was replaced with burning rage. He had already felt a huge surge of protectiveness over his pseudo-lover when they found the body of the poor woman who had first chair violin in Viktor’s orchestra, but knowing that the murder had taken advantage of Viktor during a vulnerable time in his life made his blood boil. Diego had often initiated forceful sex and kissed without asking first, but he had always immediately backed off without any attempt at coercion when he had been told no.

He was brought out of some of the darker thoughts when he watched Viktor wiping at his face with both of his calloused hands. “Sorry. I haven’t been able to think about it much during the pregnancy, I’ve kind of decided that they’re yours already because I can’t bare the idea that he could have gotten me pregnant on top of everything else.”

Diego’s hand twitched at his side and he slowly brought it up to Viktor’s stomach, giving the other man ample opportunity to say that he didn’t want it. Instead, Viktor reached up and took his wrist so that he could lay Diego’s palm flat against his stomach, right above his belly button. “I had sex with you first and we know for a fact that you were ovulating then and we didn’t use protection. The chances are pretty damn high that this baby is mine,” he whispered.

Normally he wouldn’t have been able to say something like that because it all would have felt too overwhelming. While he always wanted to be a father, a child was a big responsibility and having a baby suddenly dumped on his lap when he didn’t have any time to think and panic about it made him want to throw himself into a lake and live there eternally. The impulse didn’t plague him now, though, because he knew that Viktor needed that reassurance. The baby would be born soon, especially if Viktor’s midwife was right about due dates, and he needed to be strong for the blossoming family and the man that he loved.

Diego took a deep breath as he leaned forward and pressed their foreheads together. It was an intimate gesture that used to be very common for them, back when they were playing small gigs in the back of pizza parlors and abandoned garages. Viktor had always been nervous, even when he was back on the medication that their father had given him, and that was one of the only ways that would properly soothe his nerves. “It’s a lot to take in, huh?” Diego asked.

He felt like he was going to shake apart at the seams as his brain really began to process everything that had happened. One day it felt like he was going about his normal life, working as a janitor in a gym by day and being a vigilante at night. The next his father was dead, he had some of the best sex of his life, and then he was at his father’s wake. Everything after that, finding out that Viktor had powers, that his sort-of lover was dating someone new, that someone turning out to be an obsessive murderer, watching his mother die twice, watching his childhood home crumble, being forced to sit silently as Viktor begged him to let him out of the cage they had locked him in, and then watching powers none of them understood taking over their brother. That had all been before the time travel, the asylum, the second end of the world, and everything that had happened with Lila.

Now he was standing in a stranger’s kitchen, trying to work through all of those events while also processing that it was very likely he would be a father before the week ended.

“I don’t think I’ve had the chance to process it all since it began. I was back here and then I was pregnant and I had that to worry about. Still do, and then I’ll have the baby. But there’s always time for a panic attack later, right?” he chuckled.

Diego cracked a smile at that. Despite the nervous energy that was thrumming through his body because of everything happening around him, that nod back to their band days helped him feel immensely better. It wasn’t something that they had enjoyed at the time and it had worried him then, but now it made him feel warm. It reminded him of back when they thought that they had a chance for the future, that they would never hurt each other because they understood the other too well. That hadn’t lasted long because Diego was shit at managing his life and had a mean mouth to boot, but he had changed a lot since then.

“Yeah, there will be time for panic attacks later,” he murmured as he rubbed his hand over the swollen bump on his brother’s abdomen. The idea that their child was inside of the smaller man, nestled away from the world and safely growing until they could make their debut was the most exciting and terrifying thing that Diego had ever thought about.

He felt a small kick to his hand just as Viktor’s face fell from the delicate smile he had been wearing. He let out a small hum in the back of his throat as his spare hand moved away from Diego's shoulder and to his back, supporting him through another one of the pains.

Diego kept one hand on Viktor’s bump while the other moved to support his brother. They slowly walked over to the dining room table a few feet away from the kitchen. He helped Viktor lower himself down until he was leaning back in the chair, finally sitting down and off his feet. “So I’m not exactly an expert on this, but I don’t think that false labor contractions happen this often,” he gestured with his head over to the note that he had snagged on their way to the chair.

“I’m not in labor,” Viktor shook his head. “When my midwife came to the house yesterday she said that I still had a couple of days. Nothing is on the move yet, so we should have plenty of time for Five to finish doing whatever it is that he needs to get done.”

There was no argument in his voice and Diego was too worn out from having all of the information dumped on him to try and find the words. He merely added another tally underneath the hour and sat with Viktor until the other man felt steady enough to get back up. “Do you think that you could help me with some of the packing? I’ve already done most of the chores that Sissy asked me to do while she was away.”

“Of course,” Diego replied. He was standing and helping Viktor to his feet in an instant. Knowing that the other man still loved him, at least in some way even if it wasn’t the more direct way that he had been hoping for, had directed some of his attention away from all of his other thoughts. He had been of the opinion that the fathers-to-be that were obsessed with their spouses when they were expecting had been cheesy and unrealistic. He had never been around someone that was pregnant all the way from the beginning to the end when he was that young, but his opinion had stayed the same as he got older. He had figured that nothing much could change in the way that someone loved just because their partner was pregnant. He now knew better than that, because he felt completely enamored with Viktor now that he knew the other man was responsible for making him a father.

“Just through here,” Viktor explained as he waddled towards the living room. The couch had a stack of blankets and pillows carefully made up on one side and there was a suitcase full of clothes next to the chair.

Diego felt his mouth flicker down into a frown. He was grateful that this family had taken in Viktor when he needed them but he wished that it had been a slightly better situation. If the apocalypse hadn’t happened Diego might not have been able to offer Viktor a better place to stay himself, but at least in their own time the pregnant man had his own apartment and an actual bed to sleep on.

“Where’s the baby stuff?” Diego asked as he searched for it.

“Under the couch. It’s bigger than you think,” Viktor chuckled. He walked over and hefted the suitcase up onto the chair so that he could flick it open and look through it. It was full of clothes from throughout his pregnancy, though there weren’t a lot of garments in there. It was about half full with a half dozen pairs of pants, three button ups and a pair of overalls. There was plenty of room for him to move the baby clothes that he hadn’t prepared yet into it.

Diego slid everything that had been nestled underneath the couch out and then began to help Viktor fold them and get them packed away. The smaller man had another two contractions while they were working but waved away Diego’s little concerned noises every time.

Eventually, the domesticity of the situation was interrupted by another one of their siblings. They had been in the house for longer than they thought and the others were beginning to get worried that they were hanging around for too long. “How’s it going in here?” Allison asked as she looked over the baby clothes that they were sorting through. It was two full boxes worth of clothing items, everything that Sissy had saved from when Harlan was born and a few that they had gotten just in case the baby was a girl.

“Good,” Viktor smiled. He turned towards her to give her more details but then stopped as he felt another one of the building pains. Diego was on his feet in an instant, allowing Viktor to use the other man’s hands so that he could stay upright and steady.

Their sister turned towards Diego and their eyes met. A whole conversation exchanged between them in the silence of Viktor’s contraction. “Are you in labor?” she asked, keeping her voice low and compassionate as she walked over to help keep him steady.

“No,” the smaller man objected. He stood up straight with a little grunt in the back of his throat and then a splattering noise sounded through the room.

Allison let out a little giggle as she said, “I think that baby is determined to prove you wrong. Unless you just peed yourself, I think that was your water breaking.”

He slowly tilted his head down so that he could see the growing puddle of water in the middle of the living room. Despite being nine months pregnant, he had never had an issue with his bladder other than feeling like had to pee more often. He was also aware enough of his own body to know that the clear fluid leaking out of him certainly wasn’t urine. “I thought that I was going to have more time…”

Another silent conversation passed between the other siblings. Diego grasped Viktor’s elbow with one hand and placed a hand on his back with the other. “Come on, we can go out to the car and wait there while people finish up here,” he said softly.

“Wouldn’t it be a better idea for me to go out to the car with him? I’ve had a baby before,” Allison argued.

“That’s why I need you in here,” Viktor replied as he nodded towards his suitcase. “You know more about baby clothes than Diego does. He can sit with me in the car and hold my hand or whatever people are supposed to do when they’re around other people in labor.”

She looked like she wanted to protest, but he had made a good point. Instead of wasting what little time that they had before the baby got there and it was a lot harder to get to the safehouse, she gathered up the items from the couch and basically forced them into Diego’s arms. The duo were then shepherded out of the backdoor and towards the car so that Viktor would have a semi-stationary place to labor.

Klaus and Luther were talking about something amongst the white sheets that were now billowing in the hot desert wind, but Viktor didn’t really pay much attention to either of them. He had been so wrapped up in his feelings and everything that was happening before his water broke that he barely noticed when the contractions came and went. Now that the protective bubble of the amniotic fluid had left and he was focusing on how soon he was going to meet his baby, everything felt a lot more present. He had to pause every time that he got one of the pains, which was thankfully only once as they made their way out of the house and to the car.

They paused in their conversation to watch the slow way that Viktor was walking while almost clutching at his stomach. He was sure that the lower half of his sun dress was almost soaked with the fluid that was still trickling down his leg when he moved the wrong way. He tried not to think about it too much because the idea that he was going to give birth soon was almost too much for him to handle.

Diego opened up the back of the car and then carefully helped Viktor into it. The only section of the vehicle that Luther fit in, they found out, was the trunk, so even though Viktor would have more maneuverability back there, it was off limits so that they could get the entire family to the safehouse.

The marksman laid down one the blankets on the backseat and then another in the footwell so that there was some cushion no matter how he decided he needed to be. “Can you run back into the house and get some more towels? I have a baby blanket but that’s not going to be of any use to us until baby is at least a little bit clean. Especially since we have no idea what this house Five is stashing us at is like,” he explained.

Diego looked a little anxious at the idea of having to leave his heavily pregnant and laboring partner, but he also knew better than to argue. He slipped out of the backseat, but thankfully he didn’t have to go far. The other two had been watching the interaction that they were having and slowly drifting over. Diego explained about the contractions and how Viktor’s water had broken when they were in the house, which only served to make Luther look a little pale and clammy. “Can one of you go get some towels? It sucks that we have to steal from this family but it’s not like we want this baby to be born with nothing if this house Five is sending us to ends up being empty.”

Klaus immediately agreed, turning and rushing off to do as he had been asked. Luther slowly trailed after Diego as the marksman returned to his lover. He paused when he got about a yard away from the car, turning to look around like attackers could be coming from anywhere. It was a little silly since Five had guaranteed that they’d be safe for a few hours while they drove to the house, but anything that made him feel better was getting a pass in Diego’s book.

It took about ten minutes for them to all be ready to go. Viktor was in the backseat with his forearms pressed together on the backseat of the car, kneeling down in the footwell behind the front. Diego was right beside him with a bowl of water snuggled up to the door and the crease in the seat so it didn’t spill. He would douse a cloth in it and then either use it to wet Viktor’s lips or run it over the back of his neck to keep him cool. It was kind of beautiful and terrifying to see what his lover was going through to bring their baby into the world.

Eventually Allison and Klaus both came out of the house. The suitcase full of things that Viktor would need for the newborn was placed into the trunk alongside the towels and the kit that the midwife had dropped off for his delivery. Klaus was driving and Allison was sitting in the passgender’s seat, though there had been a brief argument about who should be the one sitting beside Viktor.

None of their siblings knew about their band or what their relationship had been like after Five left and Ben died, when they could only find solace and companionship between the two of them. Allison’s argument for her being back with him was that she had been in labor and delivered before, but Klaus was quick to chime in and tell her that she had a c-section so she wasn’t really going to be a huge help during the delivery part.

Viktor barely even noticed anything had changed when the car started moving. Despite not having done it for most of his life, Klaus was fairly good at driving so even the transition down the long dirt driveway away from the farm was fairly smooth. They drove through the endless streets as they tried to get to the safehouse that Five had set up for them. Allison sat so that her back was pressed to the door and she could see both out of the windshield and her laboring brother, which was the only way that she allowed Diego to stay in the back with him.

“He’s so quiet,” she whispered after almost half an hour of driving. Viktor had been swaying back and forth and breathing rhythmically the entire time, which made it very hard for her to time how close his contractions were.

“I thought that the screaming and shouting and throwing things during labor was a stupid movie trope,” Luther piped up from the back. He was nervously worrying a blanket in between his fingers to try and settle down. He kept checking behind them like he was suddenly going to see the FBI and Commission coming to chase them down, as though they didn’t look like any other family trying to get where they needed to go before a baby came into the world.

Allison moved her hand back and forth. “Yes and no. I didn’t tell Patrick that I hated him or I never wanted to have sex with him again when I had Claire but I still made noise. Contractions are probably the most painful thing that I’ve ever been through,” she explained.

Viktor was lulled by the sounds of his families’ voices all around him. He had always wanted to be surrounded by their love and warmth and he had been denied that for so long when he was younger. It was nice to be around them when he already felt so zeroed in and focused on what was happening. His brain was fuzzy and distant like it had been when his powers took over his body, but in a much different was. The only thing that he could focus on was the steadily raising tide of pain and pressure. Each wave would overcome him for about thirty seconds and then recede before the next one came in. He could feel every distinctive thing happening in his body as his baby stilled and made their descent into the birth canal.

His body had basically taken over the entire situation. He didn’t feel like he had to worry because Diego was a steady, constant presence beside him and his other siblings were all within grabbing reach. He could just focus on the pressure low in his pelvis and the steady descent of his baby.

He leaned forward and shifted so that he was up on his feet instead of his knees. It spread his pelvis at least a little bit wider, which was much more comfortable now that he was at this point in his labor. Viktor grasped the blanket that Diego had spread out over the seat of the car so that his knuckles had turned almost white as he felt the overwhelming urge to bear down. He wasn’t going to deny his body what it wanted after years of his life being consumed by only that alone. He also wasn’t sure that he was physically capable of resisting the urge.

Almost as soon as he had made the choice to start pushing, the pressure was alleviated off of him entirely. It was enough of a relief that he let out a small whimper when he breathed out after the contraction passed.

“You doing okay, V?” Diego asked as he brought the cloth over. He had wrung it out so that he could place the entire thing over Viktor’s head and cool him down. It did the trick as the water weighted down his feathery brown locks just enough that his scalp was bathed with cool.

Viktor turned his head to the side so that he could meet his lover’s eyes. He gave him a tired smile and said, “Yeah, s’just a lot.”

“You know that you can cry out, right?” Allison asked, reaching over so that she could rub his back with one hand. “We know that it hurts. No one is going to get mad at you for making noise while your body literally prepares to birth a child.”

He gave a small nod as he returned back to what he had been doing before. He wasn’t making noise not because he was scared to, but because the pain didn’t seem all that terrible to him when his mind was as fuzzy as his was. The pressure was what was wearing him out since he dealt with low level pain almost every single day. The steady movement on his back was just the right amount of stimulation that he needed to keep his body from freaking out. It was something to focus on other than the baby’s head slowly descending down his birth canal.

The tension in the car was so thick that it could have been cut with a knife. They were all worried about being able to make it to the safe house that Five had set up for them in the time that he had given them to show up. Luther was basically staring out of the back window like he was going to be able to summon a monster for him to fight just to get his nerves to settle down. Klaus was focusing on driving, though he kept muttering to someone that none of the rest of them could see. Diego was focused mainly on Viktor, but images of having to fight while his boyfriend was giving birth to their child alone kept flashing through his mind and it was making him feel restless. Allison kept twitching back and forth, her eyes never hovering on any of the siblings for long but taking more time with Viktor than she ever had before.

Suddenly, she jerked forward and asked, “Is he pushing?”

Diego’s attention was snapped out of his thoughts and day-mares so that he could focus entirely on the brother that he had been taking care of during their long drive. “V? Hey, baby, I need you to look at me,” he made sure that his voice was soft and compassionate as he said that.

Viktor had, in fact, been pushing for the last ten minutes at least while they sped through Texas. He shifted so that he was leaning back against the front seat and looking towards Diego. His chest was heaving for breath but he focused on panting like he had practiced with his midwife when they were preparing for the birth.

None of the siblings said anything about the inherently romantic pet name that their brother had just called the laboring man, focusing entirely on the way that Viktor was cupping something between his legs. His hands had moved under the sundress that he was wearing somewhere in the twenty minutes that they had all been quiet. The billowy material of the outfit was enough that none of them could make out what it was.

Diego brought the cloth down and brushed the edges of it over his red-hued cheeks to try and help him cool down. “Just breathe, baby, just breathe. You’re doing so well, working to bring our kid into the world. Don’t worry about anything else, we’ve got it.”

The words rushed over him like the soothing water from the cloth. He felt some of the tension in his muscles relax as he continued to let his body do what it needed to. His eyes fluttered shut for a moment as he felt the head, which had been crowning for quite some time, finally reach the apex and then slip out of him entirely. He had been feeling the soft, dirty, downy hair of his baby while he waited for that very thing to happen. Now that it had, he simply cradled the little head while he waited for the next pain to take over him.

Allison and Klaus shared a look with each other as they realized who the father of their brother’s baby was. It wasn’t like the pseudo-incest that any relationship between the Academy kids had been taboo. Allison and Luther had been making moon-eyes at each other since they were thirteen and they had all been raised as child soldiers instead of siblings like others might have been. It was just surprising because up until that very moment, all of them had assumed that the duo hated each other based on the way that Diego had acted during their father’s wake.

Soon, Allison recovered from the shock and turned around so that she could continue to enquire about the situation. “Diego, is he pushing?”

During the time that she had been asking him that, Viktor felt another contraction come on so he pushed harder. He let his head fall back against the front seat of the car and then whimpered when the shoulders of the baby finally slipped from him and into his waiting hands.

One second he was pushing with all his might to rid his body of the tiny infant coming out of him and the next both of his hands were full of baby. He completed the movement by removing the baby from underneath his dress and placing them on his chest, cradled protectively in his arms.

“Holy shit,” Diego whispered as he felt his eyes go wide. He might have gotten faint at the sight of needles, but blood and whatever else the newborn was covered with weren’t affecting him in the slightest. He had never felt more awake than he did in that very moment, staring at the squirming body of his firstborn.

“What? What just happened?” Klaus asked as he tried to glance back into the backseat using the rearview mirror. They had just passed by a rest stop so the amount of cars that they were passing increased enough that he had to pay attention to the road.

“Oh my God,” Allison gasped as she watched her brother slowly sink down into a sitting position with the baby grasped in his arms.

All of the noise and Allison’s insistent questions was enough to tear Luther away from where he was staring out the back window for any threats. He was now staring directly ahead, where all other eyes were, on the sweaty forehead of their brother next to the grimy body of the newest Hargreeves family member. “Viktor literally just gave birth,” he said as a way of explanation for Klaus.

Diego was the first to recover from the shock. He turned around and then flipped his body over the back seat. Luther barely even noticed that he was there, until the taller man was pushed almost unceremoniously to the side so that Diego could grab the delivery kit from where it was on top of the suitcase full of baby clothes. He also snagged a towel before he turned back around and dumped the former of the two items down. He handed the towel over to Viktor as he slid down onto the floor.

“You did this, you brought this baby into the world,” he smiled so wide that his cheeks hurt. It was hard for him to really grasp, that in a moment, without even knowing it, his baby had been born and he had become a father. The mere idea that Viktor had been that quick and efficient in giving life to another human made him all the more amazed with his boyfriend.

“S-sorry I didn’t tell you, I got too wrapped up in trying to get it over with,” Viktor replied breathlessly as his eyes flit up to where his sister was staring at the baby in dazed wonderment.

Diego leaned down and pressed a kiss to his wet forehead. “You have nothing to apologize for. I would take being surprised that I’m now a dad over you suffering or feeling uncomfortable any day,” he explained. He set the towel down over the other side the baby so that they were sheltered entirely from the rest of the outside world.

The smaller man brought his hand up so that he was rubbing small circles on the baby’s back to start cleaning off some of the birth goop. He let out a small, adoring laugh when the newborn took in their first breath and began to wail so loudly that he was sure the cars passing by could hear. “Hi baby, hey,” he whispered happily. He shifted a little bit, with Diego’s help, so that he was laying against the door with his legs spread out so that his knees weren’t bent any longer.

Diego got up onto the seat of the car and began to unpack what was in the birth pack the midwife had sent. He got out the clamps first so that he could cut the cord like he needed to. “Roll them out towards me?” he asked Viktor.

The other man complied, shifting the baby around so that the neonate was facing up towards the ceiling while still protectively wrapped up in the towel. “A little boy. We’ve got a little boy, Vik,” Diego was almost crying as he got a good look at his son. He would have been happy with either sex and he would be happy with any gender that his child may or may not decide he wanted to be in the future. He was more marveling about every little detail he got to know about his baby now that the little one was finally there.

“We do, he’s our little boy,” Viktor beamed at him before he looked down at the newborn with a fascination that only a brand new parent could have.

Allison instructed Diego on about how far down he had to cut the cord based on what she remembered from when she gave birth to Claire. They gave it an extra little bit just so that they could be sure they weren’t hurting the newborn.

He shifted again, placing the clamp back in the bag now that they had tied and cut the cord. He wet a towel with the water from the bowl and handed it to Viktor before he dumped the rest of it out of the rolled down window. He then placed the bowl on the ground of the car so that they could use it to catch the afterbirth when it finally came. He knew that much from the mandatory lessons about childbirth they had to take during their first aide training.

“We’re about an hour away from the safehouse where we’re going to be able to bury it, sorry,” Klaus said as he checked the roadsigns that they were passing by.

“It’ll fly by now that we’ve got him here,” Viktor whispered as he looked down at his son. He had finished washing the baby off so that he was now spotless, pinked skin and kicking his chubby legs like his life depended on it.

They managed to get some clothes from the back thanks to Luther rooting through it until he found something that looked to be about the right size. Once the baby was changed into a diaper and onesie, Viktor wrapped him up in the baby blanket that Sissy had given him when he first found out he was pregnant. “You wanna hold him? I have to pass the afterbirth and then I want to change into something so I can feed him.”

That question was one that, for some reason, he hadn’t really been expecting to be asked. He knew that the baby was his and eventually he would hold his son, especially since he wasn’t going to be distant like some of the fathers he had seen in the sixties or his own. Still, it came as a bit of a shock to him and sent his brain reeling.

He ended up just opening his arms for the newborn instead of being able to give an affirmative properly. All of his words were stuck in his throat, like they got every time he was worried about something. He carefully took the baby into his arms and then sat back on the seat of the car while staring down at the tiny face of the newborn. His son was still wailing loudly since it was overwhelming and confusing to be out in the world when he had been in the protection of Viktor’s womb only moments before.

The aforementioned man moved so that he was in a squatting position above the bowl and grunted as he pushed one last time and the afterbirth came out of him. Allison ended up looking it over with a pair of gloves from he birthing kit so that they could make sure it was the entire thing.

Viktor was changed out of the now completely ruined sundress into a pair of baggy pajama pants and one of the button up shirts for ease of access when he was breastfeeding. His belly was still there but it wasn’t nearly as large or hard as it had been when the baby was inside. Diego got him set up on the seat part of the back with the pillow they had grabbed from the house propping him up against the door. He sat on the floor, though the blanket that had once been down there was now rolled up on the other side with the afterbirth bowl tucked inside of it so that no one had to look at it.

The rest of the siblings were quiet, each of them processing the fact that they had just become uncles and an aunt. Luther was staring out the back of the car to protect them from attacks in that direction and Klaus was focusing on driving.

Diego brushed his fingers over the soft hair on the back of the baby’s head while Viktor focused on helping the baby get his first feeding. “It’s hard to believe that he’s real. I know he’s mine though, he’s already got my nose and lips.”

“He’s got your eyes too. The shape of them. The blue will go away eventually,” Viktor said affectionately. “I think. It’s possible we’ve both got blue eyed parents and we don’t know.”

“I know he’s all squished and lopsided right now but he really does look like us.” He was marveling over that fact for several minutes until he finally asked, “What are we going to name him?”

“I was hoping that we could name him something Russian. I know that you’re Spanish and that’s also very important to you but… I just wanted something to connect him back to my own mother since I was thinking about her a lot when I was pregnant,” Viktor said, his voice small and nervous.

“Something Russian,” Diego hummed as he thought about it, not even questioning it.

“Rasputin,” Klaus said from the front seat. That got a laugh from the rest of the siblings, which was enough to make them all relax a little bit. None of them seemed to realize how the nerves of the baby being born on top of fleeing to a safehouse had worn on them until that joke finally broke the tension like a ball of glass.

They went quiet again, though it was a lot more easy this time. Diego brushed his fingers over the back of the baby’s head. “Aleksei?”

Viktor looked at him, tearing his eyes away from their baby’s now sleeping face for only a moment. “Aleksei Benjamin Hargreeves. I like it.”

In the front seat, despite being the person that had been most relaxed through the entire process of driving to the safehouse, Klaus tensed up. He turned to the side where Allison was sitting, though it was pretty obvious that he wasn’t looking at her. He glanced to the backseat and said, “Ben says he’s honored.”

None of them could say anything about that, but Viktor leaned forward so that he wasn’t directly crying down onto the baby as he suppressed a sob. Diego moved so that his boyfriend was laying down in between his legs and surrounded by his warmth. They stayed like that until they got to the safehouse, forty five minutes after Aleksei had been born.

Luther carried Viktor into the house, which they found to have two bedrooms and be completely furnished with anything that someone would need to live there for upwards of two weeks. Diego was put in charge of getting all of Viktor’s clothes set out along with setting up the cot for the baby to sleep in. Luther was in charge of digging the whole for the afterbirth while Allison and Klaus worked on getting some food ready for the rest of their family.

Viktor chose to be in the living room while all of that was happening. He had been separated from his siblings for his entire life and he had just been through something deeply traumatic and frightening, so he didn’t want to be away from them again so soon. Aleksei seemed to be soothed by being around Diego anyway, and he was building the small cot in the living room where there was more room.

Another half hour had passed by the time that the tell-tale pop of Five teleporting sounded around the room. “You all got here safe, good,” Five breathed out. He looked worn out and tired, like he had lived an entire life between when he had told them to come here and that moment.

“Hey, do you want a grilled cheese? I know you prefer that peanut butter monstrosity but Viktor got to choose because… well,” Klaus waved the cheese-covered spatula towards the aforementioned brother.

Five’s brow furrowed together with confusion before he turned towards Viktor. He was laying on the couch with a blanket draped over his legs and part of his chest as he nursed the newborn again. The eldest-youngest brother blinked a few times and then said, “What the fuck?”

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sissytobitch10seconds · 2 years ago

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Happens Each Time a Boy Falls In Love With a Girl

Fandom: The Umbrella Academy Summary: After a half decade living where nothing else was, Five and Viktor have returned back home. Now they have to face the hardest battle they never thought they would get to have: parenthood. Warnings: Pregnant trans character, mentions of recovering from starvation, graphic depictions of childbirth, and canon-typical mentions of child abuse Word Count: 8,263 Ship(s): Five Hargreeves/Viktor Hargreeves

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A/N: We've finally reached the end of this series! I may come back and write some other snippets if I ever get the inclination to do so, but I don't think that I have anything else I want to say about them here. I'm very happy with how this turned out, especially the title lol. Thank you all so much for reading both this oneshot and all the ones that came before it! Stay sissy and bitchy everyone <3

Having his husband back was the second best thing that had happened to Viktor. The first was finally being freed from the wasteland just in time for him to have a healthy baby growing inside of him. He wasn’t sure what kind of person he would have become if he lost his child after so much had already been taken from him. He would have had Five by his side, he had even after they returned back to their proper time, but he would have lost every chance at a bright future. Their child, the pregnancy as a whole, was something that shouldn’t have happened. It was much like they had been, life where there should have only been death.

Viktor’s life had changed drastically in the last five months.

A small smile crept over his face as he mulled them over once more. He had been thinking about all of the changes that he had endured often recently, mostly because he couldn’t sleep. Grace had reassured him time and time again that it was perfectly normal for the stage of pregnancy that he was in. Apparently insomnia and restlessness was one of the biggest complaints that people had when they got into the third trimester.

He thought that it was odd that exhaustion was primarily his symptom when he was first pregnant and now he couldn’t sleep at all. He knew that a portion of that was his body’s natural instinct to get everything around him prepared for the baby, something that his siblings had been helping him and Five do now that they were both awake and coherent enough to ask.

They had gotten a nursery set up across the hall from the two rooms that the duo had picked out for them to stay in while they figured out their lives. Reginald was dead and thus couldn’t interfere with what any of them wanted to do, so Viktor and Five were planning on either taking over the maintenance of their childhood home since they had the fewest traumatic memories of it or staying in the mansion until they felt stable enough to move out on their own. They had to stay with Grace for a little while after the baby was born anyway since she was slowly coaxing them out of their starvation and into a healthy bodies. Viktor wasn’t sure that he trusted anyone else with the health of their baby anyway.

The itching to get up and do something was slowly taking over him to the point where he couldn’t ignore it anymore. He had gotten comfortable in the hospital bed that he was now sharing with Five every night when they went to sleep for the first time in a month. It had taken them a long time to figure out the ratio of pillows and the placement of them so that they supported his fragile hips and heavy belly, but now that they had gotten there, the nesting instinct was consuming Viktor whole.

He decided that if he was going to be awake and thinking about the nursery then he might as well go and visit it. “I love you,” Viktor murmured as he pressed a kiss to Five’s cheek as his way of saying goodbye. He had decided right when the insomnia started that he wasn’t going to wake his husband every time he couldn’t sleep. One of them was going to need to be rested for when their babe finally arrived.

Carefully, he shifted on the bed and lifted himself up into a standing position. He grabbed the crutch that he had been using to walk around the house as his body began to get stronger. He was on a high enough calorie diet that the baby was getting sufficient nutrients, and growing so big that he wasn’t sure how they could have possibly been related, and he was beginning to regain his own muscle tone. Five often commented on how his face was fuller and his hands looked more like a musicians’ than a starving man, eyes shining with pride that he had protected his family.

Viktor adjusted the crutch so that the handle was comfortably resting in the palm of his hand. He then pushed himself off of the bed and into a standing position. Carefully, he stepped out of the room and into the hallway. Everyone else had already returned to their homes or rooms for the night, even Klaus. He and Allison had agreed that they were going to stay at least until the baby was born since they had come so close to Viktor’s due date anyway. Allison had made a couple of trips back to LA already to visit her husband, but Klaus had stayed in the house the entire time.

He and Ben spent a lot of time together when the duo wasn’t also hanging around with Five and Viktor. He enjoyed being able to see the sibling relationships that had been developing when he left flourish now that they were all adults and had seemingly become relatively healthy.

“You’re going to have a great life, you know that?” Viktor asked as he placed a hand on the bottom of his rounded stomach. He was flabbergasted every day that his body had managed to change so much to accommodate the life that was growing inside of him. He knew that someone had to go through pregnancy and some form of childbirth for every single person that lived on the earth, but it was so different to watch his own body do all of that.

He chuckled as he felt a foot tap against his hand in response. The baby had started moving frequently in a way that other people could feel right around the time that Five woke up, which was a relief. Viktor was overjoyed that his husband was the first one to feel their baby moving. So much of his pregnancy hadn’t been able to be shared with him, which made the moment that they did get to share in the relative privacy of their hospital room all the more special.

Slowly, he traveled through the darkened halls of his home until he got to the other side of the house entirely. He had stopped a few times to sit down and deal with the pain that had been plaguing him since the day before. It wasn’t something that he was really concerned about since he almost always had aches and pains what with his body changing so rapidly. The pain was centered around the lower half of his belly and his back and came for about thirty seconds in sporadic bursts. It was just uncomfortable enough that he didn’t want to be walking while it happened, but not so much that he felt like it was worth telling Grace about. So, whenever he felt one of the pains begin to creep up on him he would find the closest place to sit down and then rest there until it had left.

He got to the nursery without much trouble. He had gotten a lot stronger over the past couple weeks, which meant he was steady enough to walk all that way with his crutch. He pressed the door open with the hand that wasn’t supporting him and then carefully walked inside. He had gotten very good at that, though it wasn’t really all that hard since the doors in the part of the house he was in were designed to stay open when pushed since they had served as their original nurseries decades ago.

Viktor hummed a lullaby he barely remembered from his first nanny as he walked over to the rocking chair that was positioned next to the changing table. He removed his hand from his bump only long enough to help his body lower down into a sitting position once more. He let his crutch flop against the wall behind him, confident that it wouldn’t fall over since he had gotten very familiar with the angle that was needed to prevent that from happening.

The nursery was one of his favorite rooms to ever exist, second only to the bedroom that he and Five had been making in tandem with their baby’s room. Diego and Ben had worked together to paint the walls a lovely shade of pastel yellow that gave the room a healthy amount of color while still being a bright enough that it made it feel bigger than it was. There was a new crib in the corner since Viktor had refused to use the ones that they had been raised in unless it was absolutely necessary. The furniture was all a pleasant shade of cherry brown with the exception of the couch that they had just in case one of them felt the need to sleep in the same room as their newborn. The couch was burgundy velvet and had a homemade quilt that was a mix of pinks, blues, and purples that made different flower shapes along the edges draped over the back.

The bookcase along the underside of the window, which had the blinds and curtains drawn to block out any light other than the glow-in-the-dark stars and moon on the ceiling, was already collecting more children’s stories and stuffed animals than they knew what to do with. The closet had another bin full of toys that the baby wouldn’t be able to play with for a while. They had stuck to mostly displaying the stuffed animals their siblings got for the new arrival and some of the black, white, and red toys that Grace had informed them were good for newborns and not overstimulating them.

“You’re going to like it here, baby, I promise,” Viktor murmured as he brushed his hand over where the baby’s head was pressing into the skin there. He winced as he felt the unborn babe inside of him begin to shift. That wasn’t abnormal, the baby often rolled or moved away from someone’s hand when they were touching Viktor’s bump. It was an alien sensation, one that he adored but was never sure that he was going to get used to.

A voice from the doorway brought his attention away from the sensation of the baby shifting. “Viktor?” Five asked, clinging to the doorframe to help keep himself up. He was weaker than his husband was since he had used more of his powers and hadn’t had quite as long to practice getting his muscles back up to where they should have been.

“Hey,” Viktor replied softly. He carefully rose from the rocking chair and sat down on the couch before he patted the spot next to him.

“What are you doing up?” Five asked. He sat down where his husband had non-verbally asked him to and pulled the quilt off of the back of the couch. Neither of them cared that they would have to fold it and put it back before they left so they wouldn’t be chastised for leaving the hospital room, which had already happened a couple of times. The others were just as nervous about the health of the baby and even more concerned about the duo’s own health than Five and Viktor were themselves.

“I couldn’t sleep so I came to show the baby their nursery again,” he said softly. He cuddled closer to his husband as Five carefully draped the blanket over their laps and tucked it around Viktor’s bump.

He leaned down and brushed his fingers over the rounded belly, pressing a kiss to the top. “I hope that you’re being good for your father, little one. I’m going to be very cross with you if you’re the reason he’s still up.”

The smaller laughed. He knew that his husband could never truly be mad at their child, especially before they were born. He wasn’t sure how he and Five were going to handle punishments when they were both overflowing with more love than either of them knew that they could possess, despite being infatuated with each other for decades.

“They haven’t been keeping me awake, I’ve been having some trouble sleeping lately,” he explained. His calloused, talented fingers immediately made their way to Five’s hair to run over the short locks. He looked much better now that he was able to shower with shampoo on a regular basis, and Viktor could already feel the softer inch at the end where his hair now had enough nutrients to grow healthily.

“You’ve talked to Mom about it?” Five asked as he sat back up properly. He removed his husband’s hand from his hair and wove their fingers together. Viktor rubbed his thumb over the part of his hand where their wedding band should have been resting. They had decided that they were going to go pick out some jewelry for their wedding and file a marriage certificate as soon as the both of them were healthy enough to be out in public once more. It was going to take a while, especially since the pregnancy was stalling Viktor’s healing process, but they were very excited for it.

“I did,” Viktor yawned sleepily to assuage his husband’s nerves. They sat together in silence for a while longer, cuddled together in the safety of their future child’s nursery. It was strange for Viktor to think about, especially since he had been pregnant the entire time that he was in the correct place in the timeline. One day, in the very near future, their baby was going to be sleeping in the crib while Viktor and Five nurtured them so they could grow up to be strong and healthy.

It was easy for the married couple to be silent with their own thoughts and each other. They had spent enough time with only the other for company when they were in the wasteland that it had become a well-practiced skill. “Five,” Viktor groaned after almost ten minutes, breaking the silent reverie around them. He clenched his husband’s hand in his own as he felt a pain crawl up the back of his spine and then wrap all the way around his stomach.

“Are you alright, beloved?” the other man asked immediately. He had only been dozing since it took him so long to get to sleep, but the moment that his husband called out in need for him he was as alert as he would be in the morning.

“I think I’m having a contraction,” he replied with a soft groan. He rubbed the bottom of his swollen stomach with his free hand to try and soothe the aching pressure that had formed.

“Breathe with me,” Five instructed gently. He wound his arm around the back of his husband’s body to bring him a bit closer and placed his chin down on Viktor’s shoulder. He took in a deep breath and then held it while he waited for his husband to follow. As soon as he had, they both released it slowly and evenly. Five continued the pattern until Viktor sagged against him and he could tell that the pain had passed. He brushed his long fingers through his lover’s hair as he shifted them around so that they were reclining on the couch. Viktor was positioned between Five’s legs with his head on the other man’s collarbone. Five made sure that he sat with his hips up on the arm of the couch so that Viktor was reclined but not supine.

“Do you think that was a real one?” Five asked after a moment, trying to hide the worry in his voice. Logically he knew that their child was going to have to make an entrance into the world eventually, but he and Viktor had both been kind of hoping that they could stave it off for as long as possible. Things had just begun to feel like they were returning to a new normal and bringing another human into it felt like too much, too soon.

Viktor was quiet for a moment as he thought about the best way to answer the question. “It certainly felt more… forceful? I don’t know how to describe it, but it felt different than the practice ones,” he worried his lip in between his teeth.

Knowing that his stress was adding to his husband’s and that was the last thing that Viktor needed presently, Five pressed a kiss to the side of his head. “We can handle this. You know that we can. Our baby is going to have so much love and support through our siblings and so are we. If you are in labor then we can handle it. We have the nursery and our room all made up and the bassinet can be moved up to the infirmary.”

“Do you think that we’re going to have to tell them that they were born while we were both in the hospital?” the smaller man groused as he looked down at his belly.

“I think most babies are born while at least one of their parents is in the hospital,” Five teased as he nipped at Viktor’s ear playfully.

“Shut up, you know what I mean,” he grumbled in reply.

Five only laughed at that. He adored his husband more than he was ever going to be able to express. “Do you want to move back up to our room and try to get some more sleep?”

“I suppose. If you promise to lay with me like this I might actually be able to fall asleep,” Viktor smiled.

The portal-jumper rolled his eyes. He carefully tilted his husband forward so that Viktor was once again sitting upright. As Five stood from the couch he said, “You know that you won’t.”

“But I like cuddling with you,” Viktor pouted cutely as Five handed him his crutch. Once they were both standing, Five leaned down and gave him a tender kiss.

The walk back to their room was silent so that they didn’t wake any of the other occupants in the house. Despite the massive size of the mansion, the walls seemed to be paper thin and noise traveled amazingly well. They had both theorized, with some input from Klaus and Luther who had been there longer than any of the others, that Reginald had done that on purpose to prevent them from acting up when they could easily be caught.

They got back up into the bed that they had been on before Viktor had gone walking and cuddled up together in a way that left them both comfortable. Neither of them could sleep now, too on edge about the idea of their baby being born in the next couple of days. Their fingers stayed woven together and their noses almost touching in their desperation to be as close to the other as possible.

---

The morning came quickly afterwards, which brought Grace to their room with Luther following after her. It turned out that when he was the only one left and stopped going out on missions to focus on his school work, he had begun to help her with meal prep. He cooked about half of the food that they ate nowadays and he was getting better at it every time he tried.

“How are the two of you doing today?” Grace asked as she walked over.

Viktor slowly moved so that he was sitting upright and blinked blearily at them. He desperately wanted some of the coffee that Five was being handed by their brother but he knew that he couldn’t risk any caffeine given the health that their baby’s heart might have been in after the first couple months of gestation. “I think I might be in labor,” he mumbled as he took the food being offered to him.

“What makes you think that, my dear?” Grace asked, handling what he said with the same calm demeanor that she had when he had decided something as a young child. It was reassuring and comforting for her to always be that stable force in his life. Luther, on the other hand, whipped towards him with wide, scared eyes.

“I had a couple of contractions last night, they seemed different than the Braxton Hicks ones,” he explained. He shifted on the bed as he felt a building pressure that made him extremely uncomfortable when he leaned too far forward for too long.

“We’ll get you strapped up to a monitor and see, alright?” Grace smiled. She went about her normal checks for the both of them and made sure that they took their medications. Viktor was on prenatal vitamins and iron supplements while Five had to take calcium and vitamin-D. She made sure that their heart rates and blood pressures were both at a healthy level before she got the doppler out and checked for the location of the baby. “They do seem to have dropped since I last checked them, which probably means that your labor is going to start soon. Have you noticed anything else?”

Viktor shook his head, his mouth too full of hashbrowns from their breakfast to say anything at that moment. Grace then fixed a monitor around his stomach so that she could keep track of his contractions and another one to watch the heart beat of the baby while he had them. She ushered Luther out of the room before he could do or say anything that might make them even the slightest bit more anxious.

---

The couple was left alone again for the rest of the morning. Klaus brought lunch up to them and hung around until it became clear that Viktor was actually in labor based on how quickly his contractions were coming. They had made themselves into a steady pattern since they had woken up officially for the morning, lasting about seventeen seconds and coming every eight minutes.

Ben and Grace returned back upstairs around two in the afternoon so that Grace could check on how Viktor was doing. “Hello, dear,” she soothed as she caught them in the middle of a contraction.

“It really hurts, Mom,” he whimpered.

“I know, little one, I know,” she grasped his spare hand and let him squeeze it as much as he needed. Once it was finished, she gave him new instructions, “I want you to put your feet together and put them as close up to your bottom as you feel comfortable. I’m going to insert two fingers into your vagina so that I can feel the cervix and tell how dilated and effaced you are. Five, do you want to stay in the room for this?”

The other man immediately tightened his grip on his husband. His arm had been draped around Viktor a moment ago but now it was gripping him in a way that would make them difficult to separate but not hurting his husband in the slightest. “I don’t want to leave his side.”

Ben held up his hand, “He may not want to but I do. I’ll come back in when she’s done and tell you my offer.”

That got a little laugh out of the laboring man. Ben slipped out of the room, shutting the infirmary door so that they had a bit of privacy compared to before. Viktor shifted on the bed so that the bottoms of his feet were pressed together and then were as close up to his bum as he could get them. His joints were damaged from malnutrition enough that it wasn’t what was probably desirable for a check like that, but Grace made it work. When she inserted her fingers, gloved but warmed by her robotic insides, Viktor turned his head away.

“You’re doing wonderfully,” Five informed him, his voice gentle and adoring. “Just think, a little more of this and you and I will be parents.”

Viktor smiled softly at that. As terrifying as it was, he did want to be able to hold his baby in his arms. They had worked so hard for them, fought against seemingly impossible odds, and now it was all coming to fruition.

“I think that you’re doing very well, too, Viktor,” Grace chimed as she righted herself once more. “You’re already four centimeters dilated and coming along beautifully. Six more and your water breaking and we’ll have the baby here.”

She left the room without saying much else. They knew that she would be back to do the next check whenever she felt it was time so they didn’t call after her. Instead, Ben rounded on the door and walked over to take her place now that he knew the check was over. Viktor had shimmied his pajama bottoms back over his waist by the time that his brother appeared.

“I was wondering if you wanted to go on a walk. I’ve heard that can help labor along,” he offered. They usually went on a walk together, the three of them, and talked about the book that they were all reading.

“I don’t think I can walk outside right now, but getting the labor further underway sounds amazing,” he groaned. His contractions were almost unbearable when they were actively happening but he had refused any pain medication that Grace had offered him out of fear that he’d be the slimmest margin of people where something went wrong. His life seemed to have that kind of grandiose luck and he didn’t want to take any more of those risks.

“We can walk up and down the hall. There should be plenty of places for you to sit down if you need to. And I already got Mom to sign off on this, so you don’t have to worry about going against her wishes,” Ben explained.

Viktor nodded. He carefully removed the two bands around his belly that were monitoring the baby. He had been in serious labor for hours now and nothing had changed in a way that was concerning, so he didn’t have to be monitored for anything other than his own peace of mind.

Five wiggled out of the bed and then stabilized himself with the help of their brother. Walking was easier for him than it was for Viktor in the mechanical sense, but since Five had been under the sedation longer he was a lot weaker than his husband was. As soon as he was steady, Five walked around to the other side of the bed and helped Viktor up. He and Ben helped the smaller man out into the hallway after detangling him from the wires of the monitors so that he was free from them entirely. They began to walk up and down the long stretch at the pace that Viktor set.

They talked about the book that Ben had brought and some of the other goings-on of their siblings. Apparently everyone had been informed that the arrival of the newest Hargreeves was imminent by Grace at lunch. Viktor was surprised that she had been able to contain the news of his labor that long at all based on how excited she had been when she was around him. He was grateful for it though, because it meant that Allison was going to get back when it was time for him to start pushing instead of being there the entire time. He adored his sister but she wasn’t the best about picking up on the fact that he and Five wanted to be left alone sometimes.

Every time Viktor got a contraction, Ben would jot it down in a notepad that he had apparently been keeping in his pocket. Five would help his husband find the closest location to sit down on and coax Viktor through the breathing exercises that Grace and Allison had been kind enough to teach them in the preparation for that moment.

---

Eventually Viktor wore down enough that all he wanted to do was return to his room, so Ben and Five happily obliged. He spent the rest of the afternoon dozing between his contractions since he couldn’t really sleep when his entire stomach was gripped in a vice. Grace brought them some more food during the afternoon, though Viktor had almost entirely lost his appetite at that point and stuck to sucking on ice chips.

“I don’t ever want to do this again,” he mumbled into the bed. He had moved so that he was sitting on a yoga ball, provided by Allison in her research as she prepared to start a family with her husband. His arms were folded on the edge of the mattress and his face was resting on the sheets. He would turn his mouth down so that it was pressed into the sheets and groan loudly, muffled by the fabric, every time a contraction hit. “How has my water not even broken yet?”

“Mom said that she would break it if it hadn’t when she came in here next,” Five soothed. He was kneeling on the floor, with a cushion underneath his knobby knees at Grace’s insistence, with his hand making soothing circles on Viktor’s lower back. “You can do this. You’re eight centimeters dilated, the baby is going to be coming soon.”

“We said that last night,” he breathed. He shifted so that he was sitting with his back straight and his hands braced on the plastic part of the bed underneath the mattress.

He chuckled at that. He knew that his husband was in pain and tired from it, but he couldn’t help the elation dancing around in his veins. He had waited so long and worked so hard to help their child have a healthy entrance into the world and now the finish line was well within sight. The idea that they were becoming parents was no longer an abstract idea that he rolled around in his head every so often, it was vivid and real and in front of him.

Grace walked into the room then, a bright smile on her face. “Five, why don’t you step out into the hall and eat with your brothers? You’ll be close enough to Viktor that you can get back to him should something happen but you’ll also be keeping your strength up,” she suggested.

His brows furrowed and he pursed his lips. The feral part of him that had been born from living in the wasteland for half a decade didn’t like that idea very much. “Can’t I just eat it in here?”

“No,” Viktor gagged. Luckily, Grace had been programmed with the ability to read her children very well. She grabbed the trashcan that had been just underneath the window and handed it to Viktor before he actually puked.

Five wrinkled his nose at the sounds and smell that followed but nodded in understanding. The pain was too much for Viktor to have an appetite and the anxiety was making him nauseous, on top of all the hormones that his body was pumping throughout his system. “I’ll be right back, love,” he murmured as he brushed Viktor’s sweaty hair away from his forehead as soon as he was finished hurling.

“You better be. Baby’s coming soon, remember?” he gave a tired smile.

The other man hesitantly rose to his feet and then walked out of the room so that he could join his brothers down the hall. They were in the room across from the infirmary with a makeshift dinner set up. The room had been mostly empty since Reginald’s death, so they had each fashioned themselves a table out of the boxes of books that had been collecting dust along the floor. Five took the only empty one and began to eat his food. He wanted to wolf it down as quickly as he could so that he could return across the hall to his husband, but he knew that if he did that then his body would reject it entirely.

Viktor, on the other hand, was glad to have a moment where nothing was happening. He wanted Five to be with him for every step of their child’s emergence into the world, but he was beginning to feel suffocated with all of the hovering.

“Do you want to try laboring in the water for a while?” Grace asked. “I can break your water to help speed things along and we can get you in the tub.”

“Do you think that giving birth in the water would be okay for them? I don’t want them to inhale a bunch of water when they’re born,” he worried. He had tried hydrotherapy to help with some of the chronic aches and pains that his body now possessed and with the amount of pain that he was in currently, he knew that if he got in the tub it was unlikely he’d be able to get out.

“Even if they do get a lungful of water we’ll be able to get it out very easily. It’s likely we’ll have to do that anyway because that’s what happens with most babies. I know how to handle any emergency you or your little one throw at us, Viktor,” Grace soothed as she brushed her fingers over his forehead.

Vitkor let out a little sob as another contraction began to start. His moment of reprieve was gone so the only way that he could answer her question was to nod at her. She made sure that he was stable where he was rotating his hips on the yoga ball and then slipped into the bathroom connected to the infirmary.

While the water in the tub automatically heated and filled, she returned to her son. She helped him back onto the bed and then had him position his legs like he always did whenever he was getting a check. After she placed a new pair of gloves onto her hands, she grabbed the metal hook that had been placed on the sterile tray the last time that she had checked on them. She carefully inserted it through his vagina and up into the cervix until it hooked onto the amniotic sac. With a careful, perfect movement, it ripped and clear liquid burst from Viktor and down onto the sheets.

He let out a gasp as the feeling of the contraction changed immediately. Before it had been so much pressure, and now there was pain and the feeling of his baby sinking down lower into the birth canal. “It looks like I peed myself,” he moaned, heat raising in his cheeks with how embarrassed he was.

“I promise that it doesn’t, we know that you’re in labor and the liquid is clear,” she soothed as she walked over to her brother. She had obviously just gotten home since she was wearing what she called her ‘airport outfit’. She removed her hat and sunglasses and left them on the chair next to the door. “Do you still want me in here or would you prefer it if I was on brother duty?”

“Can you stay in here at least until Five comes back? I know you probably want to rest,” he mumbled. Allison was always exhausted when she came back from LA because the only reason she went there in the first place was to film and spend time with her husband, which usually meant she got very little sleep.

“I can be a little exhausted if it means you’re more comfortable, V. Giving birth is a big deal and everything is about you right now,” she promised as she took his hand.

He thought about it for a moment, suffering through another contraction, before he breathed out, “Then yes, I want you there when the baby is born.”

“We’re going to transition to a water birth to help with the pain,” Grace explained. “Would you mind helping Viktor change into something more suited for that while I get the bathroom finished?”

“Of course,” Allison replied. She helped Viktor to his feet and then got a top from the assortment of clothes that Grace had prepared for his labor and delivery. They changed out of his boxers and pajama pants, now soaked with amniotic fluid, and into something that was light and wouldn’t feel repulsive when wet but also left his bottom half free so Grace could have ease of access during her checks.

Once he was dressed again, Allison carefully walked with him to the bathroom where Grace was waiting for them. Both women helped him place his leg over the edge of the bathtub so that he could lower himself down into the water. A lot of pain was alleviated once his body was buoyant, no longer having to fight against gravity but cushioned by the weightlessness around him.

“Just a little bit longer to go, you’re doing so well,” Allison praised as she brushed her hand over his shoulders.

“When is Five coming back?” Viktor grumbled. He was shifting back and forth in the water to try and soothe what was left of the aches and pains that he was still having. The contractions were mostly just centered on the pressure of bringing his uterus down on the unborn baby to help them into his birth canal, but the muscles still whined in pain every time one of them happened.

“I don’t know. He’ll be back soon, I’m sure,” she replied gently. “He’s going to be here when you start pushing. He wouldn’t miss it for anything.”

Viktor let out a little noise of disappointment. He wanted his partner by his side again even if he understood why Five had to step out. It was important for his husband to be able to keep his strength up since Viktor was going to be pretty exhausted once their child actually arrived. Five was going to have to watch over them while Viktor recovered from the birth.

Allison focused on helping him maneuver around in the tub to find more comfortable positions. He wasn’t able to stay stagnant for longer than ten minutes anymore, finding that moving meant the pressure was often relieved for at least a little while with each new position. Just as they began to worry about where Five might have been, the man in question rushed into the bathroom as fast as Grace would allow.

“How are you doing, beloved?” he asked gently. He was dressed in a pair of loose swimming trunks and a t-shirt. He got into the bath alongside Viktor and guided his partner into a reclined position. That hadn’t been something that he had been able to try with Allison because there was nothing to support him until another body had joined him.

“I’m so tired. I just want this to be over,” Viktor whimpered as he curled back into the body of his husband. A lot of the anxiety that he had been ignoring finally left his body once he knew that the other man was alive and well at his side, which left him feeling even more drained than before.

Grace knelt next to the tub with a pair of gloves. She did another one of her checks in between Viktor’s contraction, which Allison respectfully looked away for. She was feeding her brother ice chips every now and again to keep his fluids up, which was something Five couldn’t do since he was holding both of Viktor’s hands. “Well you’re about to be done, my dear,” the robot soothed once she had finished up.

“Really?” he breathed, tears gathering in his eyes as he thought about the fact that he was really nearing the end.

“Yes. You’re fully dilated and completely effaced. At the next contraction, I want you to give me a big strong push for as long as you can feel like you can,” she instructed. Allison knew what to do and began to get the items she might need closer to the robot instead of spread haphazardly around the bathroom.

It only took about thirty more seconds before Viktor could follow her instructions. He remained where he was before. Five was laying with his back against the smallest part of the tub, with his legs pressed to either wall so that Viktor had plenty of room. The aforementioned man was reclined back so that his lower back and butt were on the floor of the tub with the rest of his back and his shoulders pressed against Five’s stomach and chest. Their hands were linked so that Viktor’s arms were raised a little bit and he could use that to stabilize himself. When he started pushing, he moved his feet so that they were resting on top of Five’s calves. It changed the shape of his pelvis and open it up for the baby to move through.

“Good, good, that’s it,” Grace praised when she could already tell the progress that he was making.

Five gently rocked his husband back and forth every time that he collapsed after pushing. When he was in the throws of a contraction, Viktor would bend forward so that his chin met his chest and his shoulders curled a little bit. As soon as the pressure had left him his entire body went loose and flopped back against Five. “They’re going to be here soon, Viktor, you’re doing so well,” he whispered into his husband’s hair.

The progress was slow but steady. The baby began crowning after Viktor had been pushing for fifteen minutes, but he was wearing out quickly. “I can’t do this,” he whimpered the fourth time that he thought he had made substantial progress just for it all to go away as soon as he stopped exerting force. “I can’t do this, Mom.”

“It’s a little late to decide that now, my dear,” she chuckled. “You can do this. You’ve worked so hard to get the baby here, now all you have to do is keep pushing and then they’ll be in your arms.”

“You can do this, you’re so strong, Viktor,” Five whispered. “Do you need music?”

“Yes, please,” he was crying but he couldn’t stop it and there was very little he cared about in that moment.

Five immediately turned to Allison, who was the most disposable person in the room. “Can you go get Luther’s record and put something on? The music helps Viktor feel more in control.”

It was something that they had discovered when he had first started going off of his medication. At first they had been singing to each other to try and soothe the nightmares that they had while stranded in the desolate wasteland. The fact that it invigorated Viktor was something that they used to try and help him create rain when he was feeling particularly worn out after missions into the crumbling remains of the city.

Allison rushed off to do as she had been asked. Viktor had another half dozen contractions while they were waiting for her to get back. By the time that she did, the baby had fully crowned and everything was far more painful than it had been. He was trying to focus all of his energy on pushing and not grunting or screaming to release the endorphins that his brain was sobbing for. The moment that the music reached him he felt another wave of strength rush through him.

It took two more pushes for the baby to slip out of him and into Grace’s waiting hands. She lifted the newborn out of the water just in time for them to take a deep breath and begin wailing. “You’ve got a little girl, congratulations!”

“She’s here, she’s here, Viktor,” Five was openly weeping as he looked at the newborn being placed down onto his husband’s chest. She had a button nose and chubby cheeks, but her eyes were closed so neither of them knew what they looked like yet. Her entire body was coated with a layer of fat that made her look absolutely adorable and very healthy. She was scrunched up with her toes curled and her hands balled into fists as she sought out the warmth that she had once been submerged in. Her skin was covered in a layer of white vernix with spots of blood from the rip in Viktor’s vagina.

The second that the baby was placed down onto his chest, she became his entire world. He could barely even hear his husband sobbing behind him as he focused on the squalling infant laying on him. “Hi baby, hi,” he whispered as he brushed his finger over the side of her goopy face. Grace placed a towel over them both to prevent the baby from getting cold due to the water evaporating from her skin.

“I can’t believe she’s really here,” Viktor whimpered as he began to cry as well. He turned back to look at Five, which was the first time that he had removed his eyes from their baby since she had been born. “We’re parents, Five, she’s real.”

“I know, I know, you did so good,” he laughed. He leaned down and kissed him softly, before they both turned to look at the newborn.

Grace shifted the blanket so that she could clamp the cord in two places before she offered the scissors to Five. “Would you like to cut it? I’ve heard that’s something that’s commonly done by fathers in hospitals.”

“Yeah,” he took the scissors and then did it as he was instructed. When the baby was no longer attached to Viktor, they removed her from his chest and handed her off to Allison who began to wash her off for her brother. Viktor delivered the afterbirth and was removed from the tub with Five’s help so that he could stand on shaky legs.

The next several minutes were spent with all of them getting cleaned off and dry. Viktor was dressed in a pair of boxers with a pad to catch any bleeding that might happen as well as a some loose sweatpants. He chose a button up flannel so that he had easy access for breast feeding and there was enough room for his stomach, which was now a deflated version of his bump. Five changed into something dry and then focused on replacing the sheets on the bed from where Viktor’s water had leaked through the towels. He placed everything back on the bed the exact way that it had been when they woke up that morning.

Soon, they were laying together with their daughter cradled in Viktor’s arms. Allison was carefully helping him maneuver her around so that she could get her first meal. Grace cleaned up all of the blood and other medical equipment from the birth so that the room looked like it had a few days before the arrival of the newest Hargreeves.

Once the hustle and bustle had finally calmed down, she asked, “Do you want to let your brothers in to meet her?”

The married couple glanced at each other before Five said, “It’s up to you. You did all the hard work today.”

“Yeah, they deserve to see her. They helped her get here big and healthy, after all,” he smiled. They had fought for so long and worked so hard to make sure that their baby was going to thrive after she was born and now the fruits of their labor was curled up in his arms in the pink baby blanket Grace had knitted them.

The robot smiled kindly before she went to retrieve her other children. When they walked into the room, they were quiet and nervous as they approached the edge of the bed. “Pink blanket means a g-girl, right?” Diego asked, the first out of all the brothers to speak.

“Everyone, meet Aoife,” Viktor smiled as he shifted the baby towards her uncles. She was sleeping moments before but now that there was more sound in her room she blinked sleepily at them.

“She’s so small,” Luther whispered as he leaned over the edge of Ben’s shoulder to get a better look at her.

“Have you seen our brother? She wasn’t going to be big,” Klaus snorted. “You both did a wonderful job, she’s very cute. She’s also going to be very spoiled.”

“Aoife, that was your mother’s name, wasn’t it?” Ben asked as he turned to Five. Names were something that they had all been thinking about a lot recently since they had discovered that Pogo left out the check stubs of their purchases before he had left to go and work with NASA like he had always wanted to. It was also a commonly brought up topic as they all tried to suggest names for the baby.

Viktor smiled and answered for his husband, “It is. Since Five was never able to figure out what name he wanted from Ireland we figured that we would give the baby an irish name. If she had come out a boy we would have named her Eoin.”

“Her middle names are Tatiana Grace. That way she named after all three of our moms,” Five smiled proudly down at his little girl.

Their siblings hovered in their room for a little while longer to marvel over the tiny human that their siblings had made before they were told that they had to leave the new parents alone by their mother. Grace made sure that Viktor had eaten a little something before she placed Aoife down into her cot next to the bed and left them alone as well. The tiny micro family slept soundly, knowing that they finally had the rest of their family there to protect and support them.

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