Baby Daddy || Chapter 1 (SPxOC)
Summary: ““Surprise?” Natalia manages to choke out, shrugging and sending him a wobbly smile.
Sweet Pea only blinks at her, pupils blown wide as the realization seems to settle in. His arms fall slack at his sides, his jaw dropping open slightly like the new information has actually broken him. And Natalia is about to ask if he’s okay, but then the next coherent thing out of his mouth is, “Shit, did we do something?”
Natalia rips the nearest test off the counter and throws it at Sweet Pea, the plastic stick whacking him in the center of his forehead before falling uselessly to the floor.”
AN: For @sweetfogarty who listened to me ramble about this for like three days. Ask to be included in the tag list and be sure to reblog if you like it!
The two pink little lines are practically mocking her, Natalia hoping that if she stares at them long and hard enough they might change or disappear entirely. But they don’t. None of them do. All three sets of tests sitting on her bathroom counter are exactly the same. Cheap white plastic with a little screen telling her the exact same thing.
How the hell did that happen? Natalia groans, dropping her head into her hands before fisting them in her hair, tugging at the wavy brunette strands until it almost hurts. Tears prick at the corners of her eyes, panic welling in her throat and making it hard to breathe.
Logically, she knows exactly how this happened, but that doesn’t make the situation any better. It really doesn’t make the situation better, considering she knows exactly who the father is and wants him nowhere near her. But that little mistake is resulting in her camped out in her bathroom, an absolute mess with her frizzy hair and baggy sweatshirt that she must have stolen from one of the boys at some point.
This can’t be happening to her right now. Not when she’s eighteen and barely out of high school, still stuck in Riverdale where everyone knows everyone else’s business and living with her best friend in an old trailer, surrounded by Serpents and Ghoulies and fucking Jingle Jangle. And what kind of a name is Jingle Jangle anyway, she’s never understood why they call it that and it’s the stupidest thing she’s ever heard like—
Natalia takes a slow breath through her nose, squeezing her eyes shut tightly as she tries to think of calming things. Like beaches and cute animals and anything that isn’t the fucking pregnancy tests sitting to her right like they aren’t the thing making her want to rip her hair out.
Needless to say, the calming thing doesn’t work and Natalia bursts into tears.
She doesn’t know how long she sits in there crying about the fact that she’s fucking pregnant and followed closely by staring numbly at the blank wall across from her, but apparently it’s long enough for Toni, who’s out of town with her girlfriend Cheryl, to get worried enough about Natalia ignoring her phone blowing up on the counter to call for reinforcements.
It’s apparent who Toni called even before Natalia sees him. The front door of the trailer she shares with Toni crashes open and a set of heavy footsteps pound against the floor. “Natalia?” Sweet Pea calls out, his familiar voice filling up every inch of space in the trailer, seeking her out. Her giant of a best friend wanders farther into the trailer, his footsteps telling her exactly where he is as he heads first to her room and then the bathroom upon finding it empty, knowing there aren’t many places for her to hide in the small home.
He knocks on the door and the sound makes her jump slightly, the sound jarring after the silence she’s been in for what feels like hours. “Natalia?” he repeats, voice low and throaty and edged with a lick of concern that not many people get to hear. “Sweetness, you okay in there?” he continues when she doesn’t respond, not trusting her voice to not betray her. “Toni called me, said she was worried about you.” Natalia bites her bottom lip, trying to swallow back the emotion welling in her throat. Fucking hormones. “Tali?” Sweet Pea tries again. “Hey, talk to me, Doll. Are you hurt? Is there someone I need to beat the shit out of? Because if there is, you’ve gotta tell me.”
It’s enough to startle a surprised, watery laugh from her, which chokes off into a sob, but it’s apparently enough for Sweet Pea. His sigh is audible, even with the door shut between them, and Sweet Pea shifts outside the door, restless now that he knows she’s in there but he can’t see her.
“Talia, you gotta open the door, okay?” She only sits there, frozen in place sitting crisscross on the toilet seat with the pregnancy tests lined up neatly on the table beside her, perfectly incriminating. It’s like she can’t move, rooted in place as her entire chest goes tight and cold, a chilly hand wrapping around her heart and squeezing it. Her silence is met with an edge of desperation this time. “Sweetheart, either you open the door or I’m coming in.” Sweet Pea has never been known for his patience on the Southside, better known for his short fuse and intimidating as all hell personality, and his patience with Natalia is clearly wearing thin, especially with her continuing to blatantly ignore him.
“Fuck, Tali,” he groans from the other side of the door. “You better not be naked,” Sweet Pea warns her a second before the doorknob starts to turn.
Natalia lunges to her feet, trying mootly to look like she hasn’t just been bawling her eyes out as Sweet Pea opens the door with the finesse of a caveman.
The bathroom door is shoved open roughly, banging against the wall so hard that she’s afraid he might have dented the plaster. Shit, Toni will actually kill her if Sweet Pea causes any more damages to the beloved old trailer. Especially after that time he and Fangs set the couch on fire when they high off their asses on the pot brownies Joaquin scammed them into trying.
That hadn’t been a fun night for any of them, with Toni and Natalia being awoken at three in the morning to their dumbass friends lighting shit on fire, all while Jughead watched with an entirely glazed expression on his face, too out of it to stop the other boys. Toni nearly killed them that night, and it was only because she and Natalia wouldn’t be able to hide the bodies alone that a murder wasn’t committed that night.
Sweet Pea’s intense gaze locks with Natalia’s immediately after he throws open the door, heedless of the fact that she could, in fact, be naked at the moment. His dark eyes latch onto hers, pinning her in place for a long second before they scan the rest of her, checking to make sure she’s okay physically before anything else. Living on the Southside of Riverdale, they’ve both had to clean each other up a few times, Sweet Pea less than her, but this isn’t something he can just beat up to make the problem go away.
His eyes jump back to hers after looking her over, narrowing when they latch back onto her pale green eyes, red-rimmed from crying and her entire face a bit puffy. Sweet Pea’s teeth clench together so tightly that a muscle in his jaw jumps at the pressure. He’s never been great with feelings and emotional talks, and they both know it, but Natalia also knows that if she’s upset about something he’ll try to help, even if he has to flounder through it.
Natalia tries to send him a smile, but it falls flat on her face, feeling more like a grimace than anything else, and it only makes Sweet Pea’s frown deepen. She’s entirely too aware of the three pregnancy tests sitting on the counter just two feet away from her very concerned, very volatile best friend. At best, Sweet Pea will be too concerned with her to even notice them, and at worst she might have to distract him a little, because she’s definitely not stable enough emotionally to have that conversation right now.
“Hey, Doll,” he starts slowly, giving her another once-over as he takes a step closer to her, minimizing the distance between him and her and the pregnancy tests in between. “You okay?”
“I—” she cuts off just as quickly as she starts, stomach twisting into sick knots as she tries to figure out how to get herself out of this one. She can’t very well say she’s fine. Sweet Pea has a low tolerance for bullshit, and her being fine is the biggest bullshit at the moment. More than that, she’s never liked lying to Sweet Pea. It’s always left a bad taste in her mouth, even when it was her lying about not planning a surprise party for his eighteenth birthday.
No matter what she does, he’s going to see right through her, and somehow that makes her feel even worse.
“It’s nothing, Sweets,” she promises, sending him another smile when the concern in his eyes only grows, more palpable. Natalia curls her arms around herself, cradling her stomach and the little bump hidden away beneath her sweatshirt. “Just a bad day.” Among other things. It’s not exactly a lie, but it might as well be with the way Sweet Pea stares at her in obvious disbelief.
She’s always hated how easily he can read her, like he can tap right into her head and just know things. It’s been like that since they were kids, living right next door to one another and growing up knowing each other inside and out. At this point he’s seen her at her best and worst, but she thinks this might be on a whole different level.
Sweet Pea opens his mouth, probably to call her out on her bullshit, and steps closer to her, the tests just to the left of his elbow, and Natalia can’t help it when her panicked gaze jumps to them still sitting innocently there on the counter, as if they haven’t fucked up her day enough.
Natalia realizes that was a mistake even before her eyes snap back to Sweet Pea’s, but it’s already too late. His dark gaze follows hers, the concern in his dark eyes melting into something closer to confusion as he blinks down at the little pieces of plastic with their pink lines for a second before his eyes jump back up to meet hers.
He glances back down at the tests, picking one up before taking a step back. “What the fuck is—” he cuts off, looking back up at Natalia and then back at the test in his hand. “Is somebody pregnant?” It takes a second before his brain catches up with his mouth, but a moment later Sweet Pea’s eyes widen. His jaw drops slightly and his gaze rips away from the test and zeroes in on her stomach as if he can see the little bump hidden beneath her sweatshirt.
“Surprise?” Natalia manages to choke out, shrugging and sending him a wobbly smile.
Sweet Pea only blinks at her, pupils blown wide as the realization seems to settle in. His arms fall slack at his sides, his jaw dropping open slightly like the new information has actually broken him. And Natalia is about to ask if he’s okay, but then the next coherent thing out of his mouth is, “Shit, did we do something?”
Natalia rips the nearest test off the counter and throws it at Sweet Pea, the plastic stick whacking him in the center of his forehead before falling uselessly to the floor.
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