Fandom: Grishaverse: Six of Crows
Summary: The introduction of their first child makes a lot of difficult emotions return for the Crows.
Warnings: Pregnancy, off-screen birth, parenthood, and mentions of canon trauma
Word Count: 3,832
Ship(s): Nina Zenik/Jesper Fahey/Matthias Helvar/Wylan Van Eck/Inej Ghafa/Kaz Brekker
Archive link!
A/N: So this is self indulgent and has all of my favorite things in it. It is inspired by the song mentioned in the tags, but in a strange warped kind of way because I chewed pretty hard on this series when I first got into it and started making weird stuff lol. I hope that you all like it! Stay sissy and bitchy everyone <3
If Jesper was hyperactive on a normal day, he was basically bouncing off of the walls now.
The whole polycule was very nervous about the arrival of their first baby, despite the reassurances from the midwife that everything was going smoothly and it was all normal. It was a given that they would be nervous, all first time parents were and they had trauma to compound it. Some of them were handling it better than others, of course. Inej and Wylan were stable enough that they were allowed to stay in the upper room with Nina and Matthias. Kaz and Jesper had been sent downstairs almost immediately, and were joined to be supervised by Wylan about three hours after their banishment.
The pregnancy had been a revelation that they all should have seen coming but somehow didn’t. It had been a long time since they were all touch-starved teenagers that had fallen into each other so that they could get the affection that they needed to live. Kaz had worked through his inability to touch people so that he was able to have bare skin contact with them almost every day. Nina and Jesper no longer felt the need to cling to each other or their partners every chance that they got. Wylan and Matthias admitted that they did need to be held and touched and it didn’t make them weak or selfish to ask for it. Inej had also discovered that she could have pleasure without pain or panic, though her trauma resurfaced more than the rest of theirs did. They had a healthy sex life and a healthy non-sex related romantic relationship with each other.
Having three people in their polycule that had the ability to get pregnant meant that they should have seen it coming as an inevitable eventuality, especially when they were all too happy to be in each other’s arms to realize that they should have been using protection. Inej rarely wanted to have actual intercourse with any of them since basically any position she could have it in sent her back to her time at the Menagerie, it was unlikely for her to ever actually conceive. Kaz’s sickness meant that any fertility that might have scraped through the special alkemi-made tonic he took to transition was basically non-existent. They had assumed that the same had happened when Nina’s powers shifted after taking the jurda parem in the beginning of their relationship.
They had been dreadfully, delightfully wrong. It was something that she realized almost two months after the conception date, which was only something that they found out two more months afterwards when they had actually found a midwife that they could trust. She had come to Inej first and revealed that her cycles had stopped, which she at first believed was a side effect of her powers and not because of a potential life growing inside of her. Afterwards, when they had told the rest of their partners what was going on, Wylan had made a test using the barley and oats like the old wives tale. It had come back positive and then they had lived in denial before they had gotten it confirmed both by Nina’s growing belly and the midwife.
A lot of trauma had been worked through in the five months after that. Inej had to make peace with the fact that she wouldn’t be able to raise the child the way that her parents had raised her or the way that she had thought she would have been able to raise her family. Kaz had to make peace with the fact that he was going to have a massive vulnerability that would be unable to take care of themself the way that his partners could. It was easier than admitting that he did have a vulnerability since they had already helped him work through that when they first started their relationship with him. Nina had worked through her fear of being a mother and what kind of a parent she would be with her new set of powers very quickly since she had wanted to be a parent for quite a while. Matthias was scared that in their line of work they would die and leave their child alone, as he had been, but the others had soothed the worry every time that it had come so he felt more steady in his abilities. Wylan hadn’t been that worried about being a parent other than the normal things that came to expectant parents, especially with his mother there to reassure him that she would help.
Jesper was probably the biggest mess, which was only made worse based on the fact that he had shoved most of his fears away into the bottom of his head to deal with at a later time that would never come.
Nina’s pregnancy had been relatively smooth, all things considered. She had to pull back with her involvement in the Dregs. They had created a story about her going back to Ravka so that she could visit with her other Gisha, but really she was just sequestered away in the Van Eck mansion to be pregnant and comfortable. She had barely any morning sickness and had handled the shifts and changes as her body made more room to accommodate their growing baby very well. Matthias had made sure to pamper her by rubbing her hands, calves, and ankles when they became swollen in her later trimesters. The biggest change was her appetite, which had somehow grown even more than it had been before. They were happy to accommodate with her with her favorite sweets and savory meals from her favorite restaurants.
The labor was the most dangerous part of the pregnancy and what was stressing them out the most. Wylan had looked almost like he was going to vomit the first time that she had a practice contraction and Matthias had almost broken his ankle in his struggle to be by her side every time she had one. They had lost so much and the idea that they had the potential to lose Nina during the arrival of their baby was terrifying to them all.
Kaz was running fewer missions than he usually did so that he could spend time with his family the closer that Nina got to her due date, but they were still out a lot. That had been the case when Nina’s labor had actually started. They returned home at almost eleven bells to find her kneeling in front of their couch with Inej holding one of her hands and Marya fussing with something in the kitchen. Matthias had immediately gone to her side while Kaz had slowly sunken down into a chair in the living room, his eyes fixed on her like she would disappear if he so much as blinked.
Her labor was moving quicker than they were expecting it to after all of the information that they had been given from their midwife. She had moved up to their bedroom to labor there when the twelfth set of bells rang out over Ketterdam. Kaz had stayed downstairs and Jesper had only made it to the doorway of the room before Inej had shooed him out. Wylan had gotten to stay for another hour before the room had gotten too crowded and then had decided that it would be better if he watched the other two boys.
So the three of them were left in the downstairs of their mansion while they listened to the quaking cries and aching groans coming from their wife upstairs while she worked to bring their baby into the world. Inej would come down and tell them what kind of progress they were making every half hour, and Marya had made them try to nap when the second morning bell had rung.
Jesper was so full of energy that it was basically out of the question for him to sleep. His entire body felt like it was alive, thrumming just under the skin, but in a different way than it had when he was allowed to indulge in his gambling addiction. It felt almost like he had swallowed bees and they had found their way into his heart and then through his veins. He was unable to sit for longer than a couple of seconds. The longest that he had managed since Nina went upstairs was an hour and that was only because Kaz had requested that they cuddle to soothe his own nervousness.
Wylan and Kaz napped through the night but Jesper stayed awake. He paced in the hallway, snuck upstairs to listen in on what was happening on the other side of the door, and then returned back down to his remaining spouses before they could notice that he was missing.
The light of dawn was beginning to creep over the mountains when they finally got some actual news. Things upstairs had gotten a lot quieter than they had been before. Nina’s screams of pain and discontented shouts of anger towards whoever had gotten her pregnant died out about a bell prior. They went quiet and listened for any kind of signal about what was happening, but were met with moans and groans of pain instead. They could hear the midwife, Inej, Matthias, and Marya all being encouraging towards Nina but none of them particularly knew what that entailed.
Jesper flopped down in the chair closest to the couch and kicked his legs out in front of him. He reached down to the shirt that he was wearing and had been since earlier that day. Despite all of his anxiousness and impatience, changing out of his working outfit into something more fit to meet his future child hadn’t even occurred in his mind. He turned his head up towards the ceiling and began to fidget with one of the buttons, doing it and undoing it over and over again.
“What if this had been me?” Kaz asked suddenly, startling Wylan out of the dozing nap that he had been taking on the other man’s shoulder.
“What do you mean?” Wylan asked, stifling a yawn.
“What if I was the one that had fallen pregnant?” he further explained. He was holding his cane with both of his hands and staring down at the sharp point of the beak, refusing to meet either of their eyes.
Jesper turned a little bit so that he was able to look at his boyfriend. “I thought that we determined that wasn’t possible.”
“We don’t know that. It’s harder for women that have had firepox to have children if they’ve survived because of the fever that it gives you but it doesn’t make them infertile,” he shook his head. “What would we have done?”
“Probably the same thing that we did with Nina. We would have just handled your disappearance from society a little bit different,” Jesper shrugged.
Wylan knocked his leg against Jesper and shook his head. “We could have also arranged an abortion for you if you didn’t want to carry a child. It’s not like anyone other than Nina and maybe Inej were really anticipating parenthood in our future.”
“Mostly because none of us can think of a future,” Jesper mumbled. The present was the only thing that had ever existed for him so it was weird to contemplate that upstairs, his girlfriend was bringing another human into the world that he would have to nurture and love until they could make their own way in the world.
They went quiet again when the line of conversation was dropped. The idea that Kaz could have gotten pregnant out of all of the members of their polycule that had that ability was strange but not outside of the realm of possibility now that they were expecting their first child. Everything felt more like it was up in the air now that there were so many changes happening inside of the bubble that they had made the safety of their home into.
Jesper startled into a proper sitting position when the sharp, shrill cries of a baby finally wrang through the estate. They heard gasping from their wife and then sobs from the rest of the partners, which was to be expected in that kind of overwhelming situation. A set of almost-silent footsteps echoed down the stairs before Inej whirled into the room. Jesper sprang from his seat and then wrapped his arms around the delicate girl that he had fallen so deeply in love with to spine her around in a circle.
When he set her down, she kissed both Wylan and Kaz on the cheek and lips respectively. “We have a little girl! She’s the prettiest thing in the entire world, ten fingers and ten toes,” she beamed. She then turned to Jesper, taking his hands so that he was forced to focus and look down into her intense eyes, “She has your hair, Jes. She looks almost just like you.”
“You mean…” he trailed off as he felt his heart stop and start again. He needed her to say it explicitly before he finally believed what his mind was beginning to tell him.
“She’s Zemini,” Inej nodded.
He leaned down and wove his arms around her waist so that he could pick her up again. He was burning off the extra energy that fluttered under his skin so that he would be more presentable when he went to visit Nina and the new arrival. When he set Inej down, she was giggling, which only increased when he began to pepper kisses all over her face.
After they had finally separated from each other, Kaz had already risen off of the couch and was moving towards the staircase. Inej walked over to Wylan and grabbed his hand, weaving their fingers together as they followed after him. The trip to the bedroom that Nina was using to deliver their child was a short one. They passed the midwife and Marya in the hallway, who were taking a bowl containing the afterbirth and several bloodied sheets to be disposed of elsewhere.
When they got to the room, Jesper paused in the doorway to admire the scene in front of him. The walls and floors of the Van Eck estate had become very familiar to him since they had moved in almost half a decade ago. They had changed a lot of the furniture in placement and style to what they preferred. They had a large communal bedroom and then their own individual bedrooms for when they needed some time apart as well. The room that Nina had chosen to bring their child into the world was the one that she had decorated to remind her of home.
A desk was underneath the window, covered with papers and pens and whatever else it was that Nina was working on at the time. There was a closet carved in the Ravkan style with a matching cedar chest that had been turned into a place to sit for people visiting her. There was a four poster bed pressed into one wall with Corporalnik red colored silk hanging down around it, tied around the posts to create swooping beauty. The bed itself had recently been stripped down and her favorite quilt was tucked away in the closet so that it wouldn’t be ruined if she went into labor.
She was laying back against what had to be every pillow on the floor, looking exhausted. Her hair was matted against her head with sweat, which also made her flushed face shiny. Her chest was uncovered but still hidden from sight by the baby in her arms, suckling down her first meal. The baby was already in a diaper and tucked in the blanket that Marya had been making since she found out that she was going to be having her first grandchild.
“Hey there,” Wylan greeted as he walked over to his partner and then knelt down next to her. He glanced over at the baby while she continued to suckle away, his finger moving over her tiny little hand as she grasped at Nina’s breast.
“How are you feeling?” Kaz asked, his eyes also glued to their new daughter but asking about his wife.
She looked up at her husbands and a very tired smile covered her face. She was radiant in everything that she did, especially now that she had settled into her new power and used it enough for the Grisha healing factor to settle in. “Exhausted. I’m so glad that she’s here though, she’s absolutely beautiful,” Nina beamed as she looked down at the newborn in her arms. While she spoke. Inej ducked under Jesper’s arm and then folded herself on the edge of the bed so that she could look over the domestic little setting.
“What did you decide to name her?” Kaz then asked. He sat down on the cedar chest against the wall of her room. He was likely very overwhelmed and nervous about the idea of touching the baby but wanted to watch over his family.
“Jade,” Nina grinned proudly. “I thought that it was a nice Zemini name, one that I always wanted to use if I got to go there on a mission. Before I had met all of you, of course.”
“Of course,” Jesper replied as he snapped out of his trance.
The midwife and Marya returned so that they could finish up what they had been doing. They taught Nina how to properly burp the baby and then got her swaddled since she wouldn’t be getting Nina’s skin-to-skin warmth. Nina was basically falling asleep the entire time, so once they had finished and felt comfortable leaving the new family alone, she passed the baby over to Inej. “I love her so much that I feel as though I am bursting, but I also know that if she stays the rest of the night in here then I’ll just stay up watching her. Would you take her on a little tour so I can get some sleep? You can bring her back once she needs to be fed,” she yawned again.
“Of course, love,” Inej replied. She elegantly slipped off of the bed and prepared to walk out of the room without jostling the gurgling newborn in the slightest. Jesper moved out of the doorway and gave Nina another soft kiss to apologize for getting her pregnant, which had resulted in her having to go through the pain of her labor. She didn’t seem to mind as she sighed wistfully over the baby making a departure from the room.
The rest of them, with the exception of Matthias who wanted to stay with her to make sure that she was okay, left the room to go down to the parlor as well. Jesper finally felt settled enough that he was able to fold himself into a chair without fidgeting into another dimension. Kaz and Wylan tucked themselves into the same spot on the couch, deriving affection from each other as they watched Inej pace around with their newborn.
“Would anyone else like to hold her?” she asked when she was finally beginning to wear down herself. She hadn’t been able to sleep either since she had been helping Nina with her labor before the rest of them had even gotten home.
“I think that Jesper should,” Wylan piped up before the other two got a chance to say anything.
Inej beamed at the idea. She walked over to him with the grace and elegance that only she was able to possess. She leaned down and moved Jesper’s arms into the position that hers had to be in so that he could cradle the newborn before she settled Jade down against his chest. She gave him a kiss on the cheek before she knelt down on the floor next to him.
It felt like the entire world zeroed in on just them, just Jesper and his firstborn daughter. She had his nose and Nina’s lips, which opened into a yawn that revealed pink gums and the most adorable mouth that he had ever seen. Her hands were curled around the edge of her blanket and also the tiniest things he had ever touched. The hair on the top of her head curled just like his did when it was cut short though it was sparser than his because she hadn’t had as much time to grow it.
He felt tears well in his eyes as his heart surged to grow a million times the size it had been before. He didn’t know that it was possible to feel love that was that intense despite being head over heels for so many people that he had to use a whole hand to count them. It felt like he was bursting at the seams with the desire to be able to protect the tiny, fragile being that he had participated in making. Someone had slaved over every little bit of her perfect body for nine months and then went through grueling hours to bring her into the world, someone that he loved very dearly. She was perfect because she was made of Nina, but also because she was his.
“Jes?” Inej asked, placing her hand on his arm to check on him.
“Sorry,” he sniffled as he turned his head away form her.
“What’s wrong?” Kaz asked, his voice rasping from underuse that night.
“I just… I don’t know how my ma did it. How could she leave me to save someone that was a stranger when I was waiting at home for her? I would never do something like that to Jade, I would always have to be there to protect her,” he shook his head and then looked back down at the now sleeping face of her daughter.
Inej sighed and settled into a sitting position on the edge of the couch. “She wanted to make sure that no parent ever felt the pain of losing their child, like mine had to. She sacrificed herself so that they didn’t have to lose all of the love that we’re feeling,” she explained. “She didn’t do it because she wanted to leave you, she did it because she loved you so much that she had to make sure that other people didn’t go through that kind of pain.”
It felt different, to think about his mother and everything that she had done to better their community. He loved his daughter more than he thought he had room for, but he also knew that he was going to go to great lengths to make sure that other parents didn’t have to go through the pain of losing that wondrous feeling of love.
Carefully, he tilted the baby up and pressed an adoring kiss to her forehead. She squirmed a little bit under the attention but then settled perfectly, wonderfully, back to sleep in his arms.
the first time they met the gaydar was absolutely real and kaz was low key shocked to silence when nina immediately slapped jespers ass
they call each other pet names that get more and more ridiculous the drunker they get
“hey my little bunny honey pie” “why hello you beautiful snuggly baby cakes”
and the chaotic bi when they’re both drunk? unreal
they regularly embarrass kaz at the crow club and jesper gets threatened with the cane more than any enemy gang member when he repeatedly tries to get kaz to dance with them
as they are both sexy and smoke weed, naturally they often have sexy smoking photoshoots that inej is roped in as the photographer for
being fellow animal lovers they bring back stray cats and dogs all the time
kaz isn’t even surprised anymore when he comes back to the slat to see a slew of puppies running around
and proceeds to endure tons of whining as he makes them set them free
“no one will be intimidated by a house infested with adorable animals, zenik”
“but... PUPPIES”
they’re not longer allowed to do jobs just the two of them because even though they’re practically unstoppable together, the extraness makes everything 10x more messy than it has to be
kaz, rubbing his temples as a headache comes on
“was it really necessary to set off a cannon full of glitter as you exited”
jesper and nina replying in perfect unison
“abso-fucking-lutely”
waffle eating contests are a monthly staple, though you know nina wins pretty much every time
they also have coffee drinking contests and end up downing so much coffee they’re practically vibrating
along with inej they have matching friendship bracelets that they never take off
often spend late nights daydreaming about being rich, the parties they’d go to, the gaudy outfits they’d wear, and the huge mansion they’ll live in
speaking of clothes nina is definitely the culprit of encouraging jespers various outrageous outfits
their life motto is “why be a boring fucker like kaz when you can be fun and extra”
