Every time I'm happy, it hurts
Tags: no fandom, original work. fem!reader, pregnancy, angst, grief, loss of a relative, overall pain, some comfort in the end.
You were heaving while you lied on the bed, and he hugged you from behind, laying soft kisses over your shoulder. Your body was shuddering with the sobbing, and your hands clutched desperately to the pillow, trying to ground yourself from completely falling apart.
He was worried, given you had been to one of your ultrasounds without him, and that was how he found you at the house after you ignored multiple calls and texts messages asking if everything was okay.
"Love, what is going on? I'm worried" he cooed against your hair, as you tried to recover any rhythm to your breathing. He laid his hand over your baby bump, and caressed in gently with his thumb. "Are you okay? What happened?"
"I-... I..." Words were getting tangled and dissipating in your throat before you could push them out into existence. He buried his face in your shoulder and pressed his body against yours, thinking that if he did, this might help.
You halted your breathing for a few moments, and it helped ease the pulling sensation hiccuping on your lungs, before you could answer. "I'm... Okay. The baby is too. It's-" you heaved, "it's a girl."
"You're not okay, honey" he said, pulling your hand and laying his lips gently on your knuckles. "Please, what happened?"
"I'm fine physically. It's just-" your eyes began watering again, and you shoved your face against the pillow, trying to see if drying tears would dry your pain, too.
He was silent, waiting for you to meet him halfway, and tell him why you were crying.
"He's never meeting our children."
You hiccuped painfully with a heavy heart before continuing. "He will never meet any of them. He always said how much he wanted a niece, how he would pamper her and spoil her beyond repair, be the best uncle ever, and then... Nothing. He will never get to meet her."
He hugged you tighter, kissing your temple, unable to steal the grief away from you.
"Every single time I'm happy, it hurts. It hurts because I want to share this happiness with him, but I can't anymore. I never got to tell him I got into engineering school, I didn't get to introduce him to you, he wasn't at our wedding, and now, he's never going to know I'm having a girl, the niece he always wanted. This interrupted existence that never ceases to linger on for me. I'm so afraid."
"What are you afraid of, my love?"
"Forgetting" you said, brushing your hand over your cheek, cleaning the last tears that streamed down your face. "I'm afraid of forgetting the sound of his laughter, and how his brows furrowed when he was thinking too hard, or the smell of burnt eggs every time he failed to make breakfast. I'm terrified of forgetting. Each setting brick of a new milestone, it feels like he gets buried deeper in the past, halted in time. I'm afraid."
"That's impossible" he said, kissing your cheek.
You sighed, feeling a little better after you got some of the pain out of your system. "Why?"
"Because you see his face every day when you look at yourself in the mirror. Every time you laugh, it's his laugh too. And all the times you nearly gave me food poisoning, well, I like to believe it was also him."
You let out a chuckle, and rolled over your back to hug your husband, as he pecked his lips at your face lovingly.
"You see... He's permanently woven into your life. You won't forget him."
You locked your gaze to him, feeling so small you'd fit in the palm of his hand.
