until i knew you
For @huntxngbxrd - I hope you have the bestest day that you deserve for being the bestest bean! ily so much <3
Summary:
"He asks her to marry him again in the same breath that she tells him that she’s pregnant. Hunter’s jaw hangs open, his eyes wide, and Bobbi launches into a not-very-well-pre-prepared speech about how she knows that it’s a shock, and she knows it’s not exactly ideal timing but they’ll be fine because they’re together and together they can handle everything and they love each other." Bobbi and Hunter make a baby, and a pretty good one at that. AU family feels.
{Read on Ao3}
or read below :)
He asks her to marry him again in the same breath that she tells him that she’s pregnant.
Hunter’s jaw hangs open, his eyes wide, and Bobbi launches into a not-very-well-pre-prepared speech about how she knows that it’s a shock, and she knows it’s not exactly ideal timing but they’ll be fine because they’re together and together they can handle everything and they love each other.
She breaks off when she’s only really a third of the way through because she looks at Hunter’s face, his hands holding out the engagement ring she once threw in his face years ago, that are stock still, and haven’t moved in the past five minutes.
“Hunter?” She says, snapping her fingers in front of his unblinking eyes. “You doing okay there, buddy?”
“Just… um…” he opens and closes his mouth several times, imitating a fish perfectly. “Bloody hell.”
“I know it’s a bit scary,” she begins, moving towards him slowly. “But we can do this.”
His demeanour morphs and, withdrawing the hand holding the ring, this bright and brilliant smile lights up his whole face. “Well, duh, of course we can. You and me, Bob, can do anything.”
It’s a relief. Not that she was ever worried, of course, because she knows Lance Hunter like she knows her own mind, but still, it’s a relief nonetheless, and probably accounts for why she’s a little bit breathless and uncharacteristically quiet when she takes his hands in hers.
“Yeah? You mean that?”
“Of course, I do, or has baby-brain got to you already?” His grin is the only reason she resists from punching him in the arm.
“I’m glad to hear that,” she tells him. “I’m really glad to hear it.”
“At least you’ll have to say yes to my proposal now.” He laughs, holding out the ring which she allows him to slide onto her finger without protest. “Can’t have grandma Hunter thinking her precious Lance is bringing a baby into this world out of wedlock.”
Bobbi laughs and this time does punch him playfully in the arm. She is happy though, incredibly so. To have a child with, and be married once again to this man that the universe has inexplicably gifted to her as her soulmate is completely unbelievable but truly, everything she’s ever wanted.
-x-
“No offence, but I think she’s cuter than you.”
“None taken.” Bobbi leans her head back against the too-thin hospital pillow, not caring that she can still feel the bedframe through it. She’s exhausted in the most delightful way, too tired to do anything except lie back and stare at her husband cradling their hour-old daughter in his arms.
“Like bloody well cuter. I can’t take my eyes off her.” He doesn’t look away from their baby as he says this, but she knows the expression on his face. It’s one she’s never seen before, but had recognised it instantly for what it was the moment it appeared. That look of undeniable and unconditional love, the feeling of knowing someone completely even though you’ve just met them. The way that they have your entire heart, body, and soul, and that you know, without a second’s hesitation, that you’d die for them, kill anyone who harmed them.
“Don’t worry,” she murmurs, sleep pulling at her eyelids but she battles it off, not wanting to miss a moment. “I wouldn’t expect you to.”
He does look at her, then, eyes filled with tears and this stupid grin on his face like he’s just won the lottery. “You did bloody amazing, love. I am so proud of you.”
His words bring tears to her eyes. Stupid hormones. She closes her eyes briefly so he doesn’t see – she wants this moment to last forever if she can make it. “I’d do it all over again. She was worth it.”
“She’s worth every decision I’ve ever made,” he says, and Bobbi doesn’t think he’s speaking to her anymore, or even their daughter. Perhaps to the universe. To let it know that he’s made his peace with everything that brought this child to him.
“Yeah,” she softly agrees. “Mine, too.”
“We’ll need to think of a name, you know. Baby girl’s cute and all, but I don’t think my nan would like it if it was her actual name.”
Bobbi chuckles gently, still a bit too sore to give the full laugh. “Since when do we care about what your grandma thinks?”
“Since always I’ll have you know, Bobbi. I’m her favourite.”
“Must not have a lot of good options to choose from then.” She sticks her tongue out at the indignation on his face. “But you’re right. Baby girl only works until you’re three days old, then the cuteness wears off.”
“Please, her cuteness will never wear off, will it?” He coos at the baby who sleeps on soundly in his arms. “You take after your old dad like that. The Hunter charm never fades.”
Bobbi could certainly think of a few times where ‘the Hunter charm’ did indeed wear off, and wear off for a while, but now is not the time to mention it. Not when he looks so happy. “Sure, whatever you want to believe.”
She’s so tired now. Given permission, knowing her daughter is in safe hands (the safest she can imagine), she could gladly fall asleep. It’s only the thought that, if she does, in the middle of a conversation about their baby’s name, Hunter might take it upon himself to give her the craziest name he could think of, just because he could and she wasn’t there to stop him. And while Bobbi likes to think he wouldn’t do that, she’s honestly just not sure.
In the end they discuss it for a quick ten minutes, but she falls asleep in the middle of debating Lucy and Delilah. When she wakes up in the morning, she notices that her daughter’s cot has a little name badge now stuck to it, but the writing’s too small to read what it says. Oh, if he’s done it then she’s actually going to kill him. It’s been less than twenty four hours, for goodness sake, and he honestly only had the one job and that was to not do a damn thing!
The man himself strolls into the room, looking suspiciously fresh for someone who supposedly slept on the floor in a sleeping bag. He’s whistling a tune as he comes to kiss her on the forehead, and it’s with remarkable restraint that she doesn’t reach out and squeeze a hand around his throat.
“I notice the cot has a name badge, now,” she says icily.
His expression doesn’t change; he still looks as calm and collected, as content with the world, as he did when he walked in. She wants him to feel real fear, because if their baby daughter is called something like Calamari just because he thought it was funny then his death is going to be slow and painful indeed.
“Yeah. I thought I’d pick one for you, you know, seeing as you were so tired last night and all that. Just cut right to it.”
“And what, God help you, did you choose?”
“Sophie. It’s what you wanted, wasn’t it?”
It was, actually. It had been the name she’d been thinking about for her daughter before she was even thinking of children. There had been a point, though, where she’d never thought it was going to happen and so she’d buried it, deep, and never thought of it again.
She forgot she told him. She forgot that he would remember.
“It was,” she says softly, looking at her sleeping Sophie in her cot. She aches to hold her but she doesn’t want to wake her, so she hugs her brilliant husband instead.
“Have a little faith in me, sweetheart,” he laughs into her shoulder, and she hugs him tighter in response.
-x-
“Alright!” Bobbi booms, shutting the front door so hard that it rattles the entire house. “Who broke Mrs. Bishop’s window?
She walks into the living room to find her husband and four-year-old daughter sitting at the coffee table, teacups filled with orange juice and a plate of biscuits in front of them. Both have a pirate’s eyepatch on their left eye, a feather boa around their necks, and SHIELD hats (they had to take some swag when they were disavowed) on their heads.
“Wasn’t us, love.” Hunter says innocently, holding a teapot in his hand. “We’re having a tea party.”
“Daddy said biscuits were okay before dinner,” Sophie chimes in.
“Snitch,” Hunter tells her.
“Biscuits aren’t the issue here, you two.” She feels as though she has two children sometimes. “Who broke the window? I’ve just had an earful from Mrs. Bishop and she’s very upset.”
“Ugh, that old bat’s always upset about something,” Hunter moans, pouring some more orange juice into his teacup.
“Well I’d be upset, too, if our window was just broken by a ball that looks suspiciously like the one we had in our backyard this morning.”
“The boys from next door stole it,” Sophie tells her, the one visible eye wide with excitement at the drama. “Me and Daddy saw them and he shouted at them but they wouldn’t give it back.”
Oh. Bobbi calms down considerably, especially because now they don’t have to fork out for a new window and the ‘distress damages’ Mrs Bishop had hinted at, also.
“So, you see, Bob, we were just here having an excellent tea party, no window-breaking whatsoever. Tell her it was those little horrors from next door and that she can’t be accusing a respectable family like us of such nonsense.” He swishes the end of the feather boa over his neck and grins at her. “Now come and have a seat.”
“I can’t,” she says apologetically, thinking of the million things she has to do.
“Oh please, please, please,” Sophie begs her, hopping up and down in her chair. Her smile is so like her father’s that sometimes it takes Bobbi’s breath away. A smile she would die for, she knows that for sure.
“Yeah, love, come on. Have a seat, take a biscuit and some orange juice and relax.” Hunter blows her a kiss and hands her a spare eyepatch.
-x-
“Barbara Morse, you cannot phone the school just to make sure that our daughter has not been swallowed up by a giant sea-monster that has appeared from nowhere and has disappeared to depths unknown.”
She huffs, both at the use of her name and his blatant over exaggeration. “I was just going to make sure that she was doing okay, but thanks for that, Lance Hunter, because now I’m actually worried that she’s been swallowed up by a giant sea-monster that has appeared from nowhere and has disappeared to depths unknown!”
It’s silly, Bobbi knows it is. Millions of children, all over the world, start school and don’t get swallowed up by sea-monsters. They come home with rosy cheeks splattered with paint and grinning with the biggest smiles their parents have seen on them. They make friends, they make fun, and they become even more themselves.
Except it also means they’re growing up, that they’re on that path – albeit a long one – to becoming adults and that one day her precious Sophie, who still needs her to turn on the bathroom light and who can’t quite figure out how to tie her shoelaces just yet, will no longer need her parents the way she does now.
It’s silly, for children aren’t permanent things and were never supposed to be, but Bobbi can’t help the lump in her throat when she thinks of the inevitable future that now seems to be coming at her a lot faster than she once thought it was.
And it’s even sillier, because out of the two of them she’s not really the emotional one, and yet here she is, teary eyed at the thought that her daughter might even be enjoying school, while Hunter stands on the other side of the kitchen, seemingly unaffected by the whole thing.
He had been a bit tearful earlier, when Sophie had run up to him asking if he thought she looked smart in her new outfit, with her new schoolbag and her hair done just so. Bobbi heard him blow his nose in the bathroom.
“You can’t phone them, Bob,” he tells her again, firmly.
She knows but also, she doesn’t. She’s a mother. It’s well within her right.
“I don’t see why not. Just a quick phone call is all. Just to make sure she’s settled,” she pleads with her husband. “Please.”
Hunter comes around to stand in front of her, taking her hands in his. “You can’t phone them,” he says again, looking her straight in the eye. “Because ten minutes ago I just did.”
“You’re amazing sometimes, you know that?” She kisses him, thinking she has never loved him as much as she does right now.
“Only sometimes?” He scoffs, but then he chuckles and smiles that grin that intensifies and also eases her ache for Sophie just a little. “I know.”
-x-
“I still vote for suing them, or at least putting toilet roll all over that instructor’s house.”
“Hunter, we can’t do that. Plenty of kids will break their legs at karate. We signed the insurance papers.”
“It’s because of that instructor’s bloody incompetence that my precious Sophie will have her leg in a cast for the next six weeks, Bob! I can’t believe you’re willing to stand for this.”
“I’m not standing for anything. I’m just saying that we can’t do that.”
“What? You have a better idea?”
“Yes, actually, I do.”
“Whoah! Oh, damn, Bobbi, I like it. Let me get my balaclava and I’ll get you in the car in twenty minutes.”
-x-
“I don’t know whether to mention the fact I was in the SAS, or that I was a mercenary for hire first.” Hunter looks over at her. “What do you think?”
“Mercenary for hire. Kid’s probably never heard of the SAS.”
Hunter nods in assent but mumbles ‘bloody Americans’ under his breath.
Sophie’s brining her boyfriend to meet her parents for the first time. Understandably, she hasn’t told them much about this young man she’s been dating for the past two months and so, understandably, Hunter and Bobbi have been wondering about what to say (and quite possibly do) should this kid turn out to be less than ideal for their daughter.
“I think you should bring the batons out, sweetheart. Just leave them lying on the table and the kid’s bound to notice them.”
“I feel like it’s not subtle enough. We don’t want to be downright terrifying on the first go.”
“Hmm…” Hunter drums his fingers on the kitchen table they sit at. “How about we put them on the wall? We make it look like an ornament, right? And then I make some off-handed comments during dinner about how great you are with them. We suitably terrify him so that he doesn’t muck around with our daughter, but not so that he’s scarred for life?”
Bobbi considers it. It would certainly work. She never thought they’d be the type of parents to be scheming this way, but anything for their child. It brings out the best and worst in them, sometimes, their protective instincts.
“Yeah, okay. Add it to the list.”
-x-
“I still can’t believe she’s gone.”
Bobbi doesn’t say anything, can’t, because now that it’s night time and she’s lying in their bed in their suddenly very empty house in Hunter’s arms she’s suddenly got tears choking her.
She thought she was fine. It was Hunter who cried, earlier. Hunter, who, when they were putting boxes into Sophie’s car (“I can go myself, guys. Seriously. I’ll be fine.”) had had to excuse himself for a whole thirty-minutes to go cry in the bathroom. Hunter, who, when Sophie had driven away to uni, had gone up to the attic and spent the next three hours weeping over baby toys and baby pictures and the feather boas that they had once worn to their tea parties that happened what feels like a lifetime ago.
“What are we going to do now?”
“She’s an adult,” Bobbi manages to choke out, sounding very unlike herself. “We have to let her be one.”
“Stupid kids,” Hunter moans into her shoulder. “They’re all cute and they make you love them and then they just grow up and leave.”
“It’s what they do.” She tries to be diplomatic but she’s rather inclined to agree with him. Kids are stupid, but she loves hers to pieces. “We did it at one point.”
“Oh my God.”
“Exactly.”
It seems to have gone too quickly, these past eighteen years that they’ve nurtured this little person so she can grow and go into the world as her own big person. Sophie is their entire world, all squished into this blonde-haired, sparkly-eyed, dazzling grin-bearing human. To think that they’ve entered this new stage, where the entire dynamic between them has now changed, is more than she can bear.
“I’m going to miss her. A lot.”
“Me too,” Bobbi agrees, feeling the lump come back. “But she’s following her dream and living her life and that’s what we raised her to do.”
“Maybe we did it a little too well. Going to university hundreds of miles way was not what we thought of.”
“We raised her to make her own decisions,” Bobbi says firmly, trying to convince both Hunter and herself. “This was her decision and it was a good one.”
Hunter pulls her tighter to him. “We made a good one.”
She should have put some tissues in her pillow because at this rate it’ll be sopping wet all night. “The best.”
Things fall silent for a bit, and Bobbi, after consoling herself with the knowledge that Sophie said she’d phone tomorrow, almost manages to fall asleep.
Then Hunter taps her not-so-gently and whispers insistently in her ear, “and you remembered to put the panic button in her bag, show her how to use it and all that?”
She smiles into the dark. Well, they couldn’t be entirely normal parents. After all, they’re Bobbi and Hunter. Normal is never something they’ve aspired to be. “You know it.”
He sags against her, visibly relieved. “That’s my girl.”
