Summary: You and Christian are more than ready to take the next steps in creating your family; Christian just needs to learn how to keep a secret for more than ten minutes.
Paring: Christian Pulisic x Fem!Reader
Requested: Nope
Warnings: pre-established relationship, dad!christian, talks of pregnancy and pregnancy symptoms, mentions of periods, a clunky ending because i couldn't get to flow properly, not edited....that's it really....
Notes: i don't know if i like this, it wasn't what i had originally planned for my next dad!puli piece but i'm not really liking that other one either. anyway, did we like? feedback is greatly appreciated.
Muffled morning conversations and the soft sound of the radio carried past your bedroom door and mixed with the soft whimpers spilling past your lips as Christian latched his lips to your neck. "Christian," you say his name like a prayer, fisting your hand into his hair, tangling your fingers in his curls, as you reach back to touch him, "I…Birdy-"
"Is downstairs with my parents," he whispers into your ear, cutting you off before moving you onto your back. His parents were visiting for the week, spoiling their granddaughter with every chance they got, with Kelley nearly refusing to let you cook most nights, insisting that you should take the evening to relax and spend time with Christian and Birdy. You had even managed to sneak in a much-needed date night, getting tipsy on red wine and giggling like it was your first date all over again. "She's probably sweet talking my mom into letting her have ice cream for breakfast." His hand rests against your jaw, cradling your face and holding you still as he leans in, kissing you softly and humming as you reciprocate his kiss. "Let's just enjoy ourselves for a few more minutes."
"A few minutes? Is that all it takes now?" You innocently tease him, giggling when he rolls his eyes at you. For a second, your attention was divided between listening to whatever witty comeback he came up with and your phone, which had just pinged and vibrated against the bedside table. Wiggling free from his wandering hands, you reach across for your phone, quietly mumbling, "oh," to yourself as you take note of the late notification from your period tracker.
The weight shifts, and the bed creaks as Christian sits up, trying to take a peek over your shoulder. "All good?" He asks, intrigued to know what had suddenly captured your attention.
"Yep."
You and Christian weren't trying to get pregnant, but you weren't exactly taking precautions to stop it from happening, either. Sometimes he reached over for a condom, and sometimes, he didn't. If it happened, it happened. Both of you wanted more kids, maybe more so now that Birdy was two, so to be told by some app that you were potentially two weeks late didn't scare you.
Truth be told, you often forgot that the app was ever on your phone, clearing away notifications without reading them, sometimes never noticing them at all. It was lazy of you not to keep track of your period, but between being a full-time mother, undertaking research, and giving the occasional lecture, you just waited for it to surprise you each month.
"I'm late," you tell Christian, tossing your phone elsewhere onto your bed, letting it get lost amongst the duvet cover.
"Late?" The intention behind your words had gone straight over his head. "For what?" He frowns, scratching lightly at the slight regrowth of his beard. "You don't work on Thursdays."
"You're adorable," you shake your head, deciding his misunderstanding was down to him recently waking up, "no, Christian, I'm late, as in late-late, as in Mother Nature has yet to check in for her monthly visit to the red hotel." You hoped the added emphasis might spark a revelation or two. The creases in his forehead disappear, and his face softens as his lips part, but no sound escapes. "Yeah," you hum, nodding your head, confirming the silent question hidden in his tired eyes.
The corners of his mouth gradually turn upwards into a soft smile, showing just a smidgen of the sudden happiness that had overwhelmed his body. "You might - shit, you had wine the other night," he blurts out, leaning against the headboard.
"And I went for drinks with Sophia and Andrea last week too," you reply, dispelling his worries, "besides, it might just be fashionably late this month. It wouldn't be the first time, and I'm sure it won't be the last." You shrug your shoulders, throwing your hands unconsciously into the air. There was no need to get ahead of yourselves. "I might not even be pregnant."
His smile widens. "But you might be."
"Maybe."
Making a come hither motion with both of his hands, you giggle and move across the bed, straddling him as he pulls you onto his lap. Cradling your face, he guides you closer as he leans in, meeting you halfway. The kiss was short and sweet but long enough to convey the happiness and gratitude he was feeling. His joy was contagious and had you grinning like a love-sick idiot.
"Think you're ready for another baby?" You ask, guiding your hand over his, stroking your thumb lovingly over the back.
"Are you?" His answer was yes. One hundred per cent yes. He'd been ready for baby number two, three, and maybe even baby number four long before Birdy was even born. But your comfort and confidence to bring another baby into this little family of yours set a precedent over his longing for a bigger family. "Think you're ready for round two of morning sickness, swollen feet, ridiculous cravings, trying to find a sleeping position that is actually comfortable enough for you to sleep in, terrible gas-"
"Uh, I wasn't the one with the terrible gas," you interjected, feigning your annoyance, giving him a light poke to the chest, "that was all Birdy." You lightly run your fingers through his hair, fixing his curls so they aren't wild and untidy like your daughter's. "And, if I am pregnant, I'm ready for it all," you finally answer, "ready for all the times I'll feel like a whale and all the times I'll blame you for making me feel that way."
"I haven't missed that," he chuckles, his laughter soft on your ears as he presses a kiss against your neck and then against your shoulder. His hands drifted lower, one holding your hip as the other settled against your belly. He was letting himself get carried away with the thought of you potentially being pregnant again, the thought of either your second daughter or possibly your first son together, being somewhere under the palm of his hand. "Do you want me to go to the store for you?" He asks, guessing you had no tests stashed in the bathroom cabinet.
"And let you come back with half of the shop again?"
"How was I meant to know there were different types of tests?"
"Some of them weren't even pregnancy tests."
He lets out another groan, wiping the sleep from his eyes as he rubs his hands against his face like he was trying to rub the memory away. It was a favourite memory of yours, seeing his panicked face as he bought back a shopping bag full of several different brands of pregnancy tests, tipping them all onto your bed, and telling you he didn't know which one to buy so he just bought them all. Even the ovulation tests.
"It's okay, I'll go," you mumble, kissing his cheek as you leave the bed.
He follows shortly afterwards, retrieving a pair of shorts and pulling them over his legs. Doubling back to the messy bed, he lazily straightens the pillows and does his best to lay the covers as neatly as possible. No mother would be happy with the result, but he grunts and shrugs approvingly. "Are you sure you don't want me to go?" He asks, checking his phone, swiping away unwanted notifications, making a mental note of the ones he needed to return to before tucking it into his pocket.
You look up to see him reflected in the bathroom mirror, his head tilting off to the side as he leans against the frame. "I'll be fine going myself," you smile, rinsing the head of your toothbrush under the tap. He nods, drumming his fingers against his thigh, lingering at the door for a few more seconds, just wanting to watch you as you finished your morning routine. It mesmerised him how you made applying face cream look like a form of art, delicate hands working to rub the cream into your skin like brush strokes on a canvas. "Give Birdy a kiss for me?" You ask him, your hand on his arm bringing him back to reality.
"Of course," he answers, humming as he bends down to kiss your temple.
Getting changed and jogging down the stairs, you followed the sound of music and the smell of bacon, finding his dad standing in front of the countertop stove, flipping strips of bacon, cursing under his breath as fat spits at him. "Morning," Mark greets you first, wiping his hand on the dishcloth hanging over his shoulder, "he's not still asleep, is he?"
"Nope," you shake your head, instinctively opening the fridge to reach for the orange juice, frowning when you find it missing from its usual spot. Leaning away, you spot it on the table outside, where Kelley is sat with Birdy on her knee, making her smile with whatever it was she was saying to the two-year-old. "He'll be down in a second," you tell him, grabbing your keys from where you had left them on the counter.
"Everything okay?" Mark raises the question, looking at the keys in your hand and then back at you. Nodding, you swallow back the temptation to blurt out the news of your possible pregnancy. It was hard for you to keep a secret from your father-in-law. "You sure?" He chuckles, sensing a significant change in your demeanour. He could've sworn you had a glow that wasn't there before, but it could've just been the bright lights in the kitchen.
"We're...just out...of toilet roll."
Mark shakes his head, returning to the bacon frying before him. "You're a terrible liar, little lady." He removes the last of the bacon from the pan, stacking it together, remembering to leave the less cremated pieces for you on one side of the plate. "Come on," he pushes, taking the pan off the stove, "spill the secret."
"I would if I could, but I can't, so I won't." You lean across the counter, trying to pinch a piece of bacon and successfully doing so before Mark can pull the plate away, which you were sure he would've done if he had been faster. You take a bite, sighing happily as the greasy taste floods your mouth. "See you in fifteen, old man."
---
01:45
01:44
01:43
You watched the seconds tick by on your phone, the edge of the bathtub becoming increasingly uncomfortable as you sat and waited for two minutes to pass. Two minutes. Two single minutes. That's all you had to wait. In one hundred and twenty seconds, you were to receive either good or bad news from one of the three tests laid on the bathroom counter, and yet it felt like you had been waiting for an eternity.
00:34
00:33
00:32
"Oh my god," you groan, looking up at the ceiling, "just hurry up and tell me I'm pregnant, already!"
00:06
00:05
00:04
"Three..." Your heart was hammering in your chest like it was trying to break free, making you feel lightheaded when you finally rose to your feet. "Two..." Taking a deep breath, you reach for the middle test, whispering, "One," as you turned it over.
Positive.
You flip the other two over to be greeted with the same result. Every single one of the tests were positive.
You were pregnant again.
"What's up, Bug?" You place your hand on your belly, smiling as you look down at yourself. You were possibly six or seven weeks along, meaning they were roughly the same size as a baked bean. Tiny. So small you could rest them on the tip of your finger. "Ready for an adventure?" You ask, rubbing your thumb soothingly against yourself. Tears of overwhelming joy prick your eyes, dampening your cheeks as a few roll away. You quickly wipe them away, a soft chuckle spilling from your lips as you do so. "It's going to be a big one, so you take all the time you need, Bug," you sniffle, "we'll be waiting for you. All of us. Me, your daddy and the best big sister you'll ever know."
The thought of Birdy finally getting the opportunity to be a big sister was a dream coming true for you. "You're going to love Birdy," you resume talking to your unborn child, "and she will love you more than anything. Well, maybe not more than she loves your daddy, but she'll be your number-one protector."
Now all you had to do was go downstairs and tell Christian.
He jumps a little as you appear behind his chair, his hand curling lightly around your wrist as your arms wrap around him. "You okay?" He turns his head to look back at you, taking his eyes off Birdy, who was playing happily in the sandbox. It was a recent addition to your back garden, one that Christian had suggested himself, and your daughter was obsessed with it. You nod, turning to brush your lips against his cheek. "You sure?"
"Positive."
His eyebrows stand to attention. "Positive?"
"Get ready," you whisper into his ear, giggling as you feel his grip tighten, "because the caterpillar is in the cocoon, baby."
He lifts your hand to his lips, kissing the back of your fingers. His touch was so light that you could barely feel his lips against you. "I knew it," he chuckles, turning your hand over, kissing the inside of your wrist, "I knew it from the second you told me."
"Knew what?"
"Don't bother," Mark shakes his head at Kelley, making you laugh as he turns away, pretending to give you both, but specifically you, the cold shoulder, "they're probably discussing their secret." He sighs dramatically, glancing over his shoulder as he reaches for the newspaper. "And, apparently, we're not good enough to know about it."
"Love the dramatics," you reach out, giving him a soft tap on the shoulder.
Meanwhile, Kelley was looking at Christian was pinched eyebrows and a frown. "You're keeping a secret from your own mother?" She asks, a little disgusted and oblivious to Mark's dramatics.
"No," Christian quickly answers, looking up at you to save him, "we don't have a secret, do we?" He rubs his hand nervously against his thigh. If there were was one thing he couldn't do, it would be to keep a secret from his parents, especially his mum. After all, he was a mama's boy. "Who said anything about a secret?"
"You're dad just said something about you two keeping a secret-"
"He's clearly lying," you gesture to your father-in-law as you mistakenly interrupt her.
"Are you calling me a liar, little lady?" Mark's head snaps to your attention, the newspaper now resting across his lap.
"Well, I ain't calling you a truther, old man," you fire back, the corners of your mouth twitching until you finally let them curl into a grin.
"Look, Mommy!" Right on cue, Birdy shouts out, throwing a heap of sand into the air as she lifts her arms to get your attention, distracting you all from your original topic of conversation. She has a red plastic spade in her hand, one that matches a red plastic bucket, and waves it excitedly in the air. "Look, Mommy! Tending!" She drives the spade into the sand, the red plastic flicking sand up hazardously into the air. She wipes her tongue with her hand as a few stray grains of sand land in her mouth. "Ew!" She cries, driving the spade back into the sand. "Not nice, Mommy! Don't eat!"
"I won't eat it, sweetie," you giggle, leaving Christian to join her in the box.
"Birdy, why don't you tell Mommy who you were pretending to be?" Kelley encourages, refilling her glass with more orange juice.
"Mommy," Birdy mumbles, her tongue poking out of her mouth. Her concentration face mirrored Christian's. You had noticed his mannerisms had quickly become hers over the last couple of years, leaving you to joke one or two times about how you were raising a clone of your husband. Only this one enjoyed wearing a frilly pink tutu with her cleats. "Look, I show you." She grabs one of her toys and drops it into the hole. You watch her cover it with sand, patting it down smooth the way her Pops had shown her, before digging through the sand with her hands to find it. "See," she holds the toy up, "tending like you."
"You were pretending to be me?" Birdy nods her head, collecting the sand together into a small pile. You cast your eyes over to the patio, smiling at Christian, who took a second to check his phone. "You hear that, baby?" He rolls his eyes, dropping his phone into his lap. "She was pretending to be her mummy."
He shrugged his shoulders, pretending like he didn't care about his little girl idealising you for a change. "That's fine," he says, readjusting his shorts, pulling the ends further down his thighs, "baby number two is going to be just like me." You look at him with wide eyes, a little stunned to react. You couldn't believe he had let your secret slip so easily past his lips after only knowing it all of about ten minutes. Maybe less. "Oh, shoot!" He mumbles, hiding his face.
Mark folds up the newspaper and drops it onto the patio table. "Told you they had a secret."
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