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On Your Side (NH13) / Chapter Ten

Pairing: Nico Hischier x Fem!OC Poppy Jensen

WC: 22k (one day I'll write like a normal person)

Chapter Warnings: I'll highlight the important stuff first - poppy's part has a pretty heavy scene with mentions of stillbirth/miscarriage/child loss/birthing complications and genetic disorders. poppy is safe, cheeto is safe and it's a backstory thing so if you are triggered by mentions of those topics, it's technically skippable (you can message me and I'll write up an overview without the mentions in there so you're not missing out) and at the end of the first scene of her section, the beginning of it will be marked in red, and the end will have the usual divider. other than that, there are sprinklings of angst in here - mentions of anxiety around flying, self doubt, Poppy and Nico have their little family bubble kind of burst, a bit of hurt/comfort, long distance longing and it's otherwise generally fluffy. some sexual references but not smut. some EXCESSIVE declarations of love. like we get it. you're into each other.

Series Masterlist

Previous Part (Chapter Nine)

A/N: I wrote and rewrote so much of this I've kind of driven myself crazy i’m not sure if this chapter will be everyone’s cup of tea tbh but it’s important to the characters as I close this story up. I'd like to dedicate this to my HATERS (aka the anons I literally asked to trash talk me for motivation it actually did work lmao I love you) I know that quite a few people have found this story since the last chapter so thank you for all your lovely messages, and all the stuff you guys send to me in my inbox, or tag in your reblogs it means the world 2 me!! I honestly have seen so many nice things said about this fic and my writing over the past few weeks it really really makes me so happy I love you guys so much!! I feel like putting out the bonus chapter hopefully eases some of the tension from this one, but like I said, and like you can read in the extra chapter where Cheeto is born, she's safe, don't let my warnings put you off unless those things do trigger you, I'm quite proud of the way an arc starts to wrap itself up in this chapter!!

Nico

There are quite a few routines that Nico has fallen into with Poppy over the last couple weeks where they have been much closer.

There’s mornings with Poppy, more often rushed than not after the two of them refuse to leave whichever bed they’re in, cuddling up under the covers and hitting snooze as many times as they possibly can before they really need to get up.

There’s the beautiful dance they have mastered in the bathroom, brushing his teeth while Poppy does her skincare routine, jutting out his chin for her to put some moisturiser over the centre of his face and letting her rub it in with soft fingers.

There are routines in the evenings, where Nico usually gets home a lot later than Poppy, her key now on his keyring so he can let himself in whenever he needs to, finds her on the couch waiting for him, and brings her back something to eat, even if she’s eaten already that night.

And lunchtimes might be his favourite, making the most out of the times he’s at the arena, and not on the road, stopping by her office, the two of them going for walks now that the weather’s nice again, and trying all the different spots close by.

Returning to her office and going giddy with affection, pressing wanting kisses to her lips where he’s never had the pleasure of doing it so casually, before.

It’s how they’ve ended up where they are now, Poppy sat on the edge of her desk, legs spread for Nico to stand between as his mouth works eagerly at the skin of her delicate neck, drinking up the soft sounds she makes for him, quiet enough that only he will hear.

“We can’t do this,” she gasps at the feeling of teeth nipping, her ass scooting forward until it’s right on the sharp edge of the wood. “Not here.”

“We’ve ticked off every other spot,” he hums just beneath her jaw, nipping at the skin there teasingly until her body arches into the attention. “Your car,” he moves further down her neck, “My car,” and further, “Every single surface in both our apartments,”

“The dryer was fun,” she reminisces, her fingertips reaching out to clutch at his shirt.

“May as well cross your office off the bucket list.” He shrugs, smirking right against her ear where he mutters the words.

“Someone could walk in.”

“Even better.”

“Nico,” she whines as he remains unrelenting in his pursuits.

“Lucky them, getting to see you all pretty for me like this,” his hands press into either side of her thighs and push at the hem of her skirt until it bunches all the way up, parting her legs even further so he can step in between them. “Wanna touch every inch of you,”

“Thought you were doing that this morning,”

This morning, he breaks out into a dopey grin at even the thought.

All these years, he has thought he was living his dream, making a successful career out of his talent, playing in one of the greatest leagues on the planet - all that before he ever experienced co-existing with Poppy.

Coming home to her after a strenuous trip away, falling asleep with her in his arms, being woken at least 10 times in the night to her repositioning herself in her sleep, eyes drifting open in the morning and looking down to see her cheek smushed into his chest, hair matted into the small space left on his pillow, taking up half of his side of the bed, drooling onto his skin as soft snores still puff out from between her parted lips.

That’s his dream, now - to wake up like that every day for the rest of his life.

And he had told her as much when she came to, shamefully wiping at the spit on his chest with the collar of his shirt that she was wearing, kissing and kissing at her despite her protests of morning breath and needing to pee. He had followed her into the bathroom, all privacy long thrown out of the window as he brushed his teeth while she relieved herself, and Poppy did the same, and it was at the bathroom counter where he had made his first efforts to stretch out their lazy morning together.

Hoisted up beside the sink, legs wrapped around his waist as he pressed minty kisses into her neck, nipping and sucking at her skin until she tugged at his hair and pulled him up to meet her lips.

He had told her he could do this everyday, and had meant it. But the two of them had been in such a rush to do something while they had the time, that he hadn’t really dived deeper into the topic of it being an actual possibility.

Of the two of them actually living together. Of him giving her the key to his apartment he had cut for her, and proposing that the two of them get a head start on a nursery before he has to potentially leave for the World Championships in a week.

They then moved from the bathroom to the kitchen, from the kitchen back to bed, and then from bed to a late morning start in work, entirely too distracted for him to pick back up where his thoughts left off.

“Lost count of where I got up to, gonna have to start again.” He smirks into her skin.

“You’re crazy.”

“Your fault.” He mutters with lips pressed to her jaw, “This could technically be our last shot here, Poppy,” he leans back a little to get a good look at her, head thrown back in distracted pleasure like she isn’t the one trying to get him to calm down. “You’ll be on leave by the time we get back, who knows when the next time we’ll both be in your office is,”

“I do.” She chuckles, “In 3 hours when you think you miss me too much to function, again.”

“Hey, I was checking up on you,” he presses a kiss closer to her lips, “Couldn’t have you in here all alone, know how worked up you get after a little while without me, huh?”

“I get worked up?” She scoffs, gesturing to the hands splayed out beside her hips on her desk, “You literally can’t keep your hands to yourself,”

“Can you blame me? Look at you,” he hums, kissing at the space between where her mouth curves up at the corner and her cheeks puff into a smile. “Go crazy thinking about you.”

She places soft hands on either side of his face, taking a grip of his jaw and moving him in front of her. “You can’t sweet talk me into fucking you in my office, baby,” she tells him, unable to stop the fully-fledged smile that forms when he grins back.

“Not even if I take my shirt off?”

The look she casts down his body makes him feel exposed, an electric tingle shooting down his spine - so much that he just wants to press into her to quell it, somewhat.

“Might be worth a shot,” she shrugs, hands shifting until fingertips dance at the sensitive skin on either side of his neck, tickling back into his hair as she grasps at it, just a little. “No promises, though.”

And it’s just as he leans back in to kiss her that a hard knock rattles the door to her office, the two of them shooting apart as if shocked by electric, Poppy shimmying off her desk until she’s standing, pulling her skirt back into place and smoothing down her hair.

Nico takes a few steps to the side, putting a good few feet between them so their closeness doesn’t rouse suspicion when Poppy invites the intruder into the room.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Josh says with a meek smile as he steps in and closes the door behind him, not at all perturbed by the presence of Nico and Poppy, and seemingly not sorry at all, “Something’s come up and I figured I should run it by you.”

“I’ll leave you to it,” Nico says, doing his best not to sigh or grumble at the fact he has been so rudely disrupted from his new favourite part of the day.

“Actually,” Josh steps back to block the door, “It concerns you too.”

Nico frowns, glancing back towards Poppy, who’s swiping a thumb at her smudged lips and shrugging a little when she meets his eye.

“What’s up?” She asks.

“So, uhm,” he seems nervous, now, the bravado he had when stopping Nico from leaving disappearing as he swerves around him to put the little folder he is carrying on Poppy’s desk, “It seems like the fans have picked something up from an interview you did after practice today, Nico.”

Shit.

If PR are involved, it has to be something bad.

But he’d just talked about the mood in the locker room, if he remembers right? The morale amongst the team after their loss yesterday in Philly. He hadn’t cursed, hadn’t said anything offensive or troubling.

Maybe he’d pouted a little, been a little frustrated, but that’s to be expected of the position they’re all in, surely?

And why would Josh be running it by Poppy?

“Did I say something bad?”

“No, it’s not anything you said.”

Nico watches as Poppy takes the folder, slides it across her desk and opens it, and from what Nico can see from where he’s stood, it looks like a screenshot of a bunch of tweets.

Whatever they say, it seems like overkill to print them out. Couldn’t he have just pulled up twitter like a normal person?

“Oh.” Poppy frowns, and Nico finds his feet carrying him toward her just at the sight of the expression on her face as she reads down the page.

As he leans over her desk, he sees that they are tweets. The first being a video of the interview he had done after their morning skate today, and the second being a couple of screenshots - each picture zooming further and further into something in the background.

With the paper upside down, Nico can’t quite tell what that something is, but at least it isn’t something he said.

That’s good, he thinks, right?

The confusion must be evident on his face, because once she’s looked up at him for any sort of reaction, Poppy turns the sheet around on the table, and Nico is able to zero in on exactly what the tweets are getting at, sinking into the seat on his side with bated breath.

In a crystal clear quality he didn’t even know the cameras brought into the locker room could deliver, he sees his copy of Poppy’s latest scan, sat front and centre on the shelf of his locker.

Fuck.

His eyes skim over the rest of the tweets on the page, an influx of capital letters and exclamation points, the words barely registering in his brain until he gets to the bottom of the page.

Sentiments of ‘Nico is having a baby?’ line up against mentions of Talia, of the two of them still being together, of all the variations of shocked, mind-blown emojis.

His heart starts to hammer in his chest as he reaches for the next page, hoping there’s a tweet from someone with an ounce of sense on there.

But this page is worse. So much worse.

‘He’s with someone else. Served them at my work last week in NYC!’

And attached is a picture from when he and Poppy went to lunch with her parents.

If this whole situation didn’t flood his system with panic, he’d be able to admire just how cute the pictures are - Poppy sat beside him, looking up at him in adoration as he jokes with her father. It’s the kind of thing he doesn’t really get to see or notice when he’s not looking at her - just how infatuated she is with him. It makes his skin tingle and his chest feel warm in the best way.

Their seats are so close that they’re practically pressed together, his hand disappearing under the table where he remembers it sat on her lap the entire meal, her fingers either tangled with his or tracing little shapes into his palm.

‘She’s cute.’

‘Where do I know her from?

‘She works for the Devils! Seen her at a few events with the foundation!’

Nico takes a shaky breath as the rest of it unfolds in front of his eyes.

Poppy’s name, her job, the about us section from the foundation website, her private social media pages with requests to follow, pictures where she’s in the background or smushed into a group shot. She didn’t sign up for this, he thinks, people having such little regard for her privacy online.

His interview in the locker room had been an hour ago, maybe two, and all they had to go off was a single blurry screenshot of a scan picture. And now they have pictures of her, of the two of them together, of her parents. They know her name, her place of work, and on the very last page, when he reads, ‘She lives in my brother’s building’ he thinks his heart stops.

“You guys aren’t in trouble, or anything,” Josh reassures her, reaching out in Nico’s peripheral and placing a comforting hand on her shoulder that he really wants to shoo away. “I mean, everybody here knew, I wanted you to see everything so you can figure out how you want to handle it. Or if you want to handle it at all.”

“What do you mean?” Nico gulps, speaking mainly to divert Josh’s attention from her, to try gain back some semblance of control on the situation, himself.

“I mean, we don’t really get involved in personal stuff like this, but I could help you come up with something to say between yourselves?”

“Something to say?”

Maybe Nico has been ignorant, this whole time, to the possibility that this sort of thing could happen. It’s not like they’ve been hiding it, not really. They’re out in public a lot together - they go to the convenience store sometimes, they eat out, they grab breakfast at the same spot if neither of them have the energy to make it, themselves, waiting in the queue with Poppy perched beneath his arm and him pressing kisses to the crown of her head.

His relationship with her has never been something that he felt like he had to hide, or had to protect, not in that way, anyway.

Especially compared to when he was with Talia. When her social media presence became catered to hinting at the two of them. Cut off shots of his arms on tables, wearing clothes he had just been seen in, posing in front of his car, in the family suite at the arena - and that had all been before he found out she had been sharing their private pictures with gossip accounts, too.

Poppy doesn’t court attention like that. All her pictures with him or of him are hers, and hers alone. Printed out and put on her refrigerator or framed in her apartment. Or there’s maybe one or two that she rotates as her phone background, but he does the same with her so he can’t exactly complain about that.

It’s cute, he thinks, the small ways in which she tries to keep him close.

He’s just been assuming the two of them would be on the same page about the whole thing, wanting to keep things as they were, just between them, but also not going to extra efforts to hide their relationship, to erase all essence of normality and routine they’ve managed to build.

Especially considering the fact that for so long, even they didn’t know what they were or what they would be.

He still doesn’t know, if he’s being completely honest.

Poppy isn’t a grand gesture kind of girl, he knows that. She likes things simple, likes things easy, and as much as he might want to tell everyone that she’s his girlfriend, they haven’t really had that conversation yet. And he’s trying to let her take the lead on the whole milestone thing. He doesn’t want to push her into something she’s still building herself up to in her head.

So what is he supposed to say?

“If you don’t say anything, they might continue to dig.”

“I don’t think there’s much left for them to find,” Poppy scoffs, speaking for the first time as she flicks back through the pages on her desk. “Maybe my social security number, or my dental records or something.”

Ok, she’s cracking jokes, he thinks, casting a concerned glance her way as she finally meets his eye over her desk.

She doesn’t look angry that he’s catapulted them into this mess. Doesn’t look hurt or disappointed. She’s chewing on her bottom lip and her eyes are wide looking back at him as if she’s expecting him to say something.

“Do we have to decide now?” Nico asks, despite knowing the answer.

The last game of the season is tomorrow. Home against the islanders. Leaving things to chance and having all eyes on him will only fuel the fires of online speculation.

“I’ll leave you two to talk about it, if you want?”

Nico narrows his eyes at the hand that still rests on Poppy’s shoulder, patronisingly patting at the curve of it before she sends him a thankful, forced smile, and he has to bite his tongue when Josh does the same thing to him on his way out.

The silence that lingers following the click of the door to Poppy’s office is tense, elongated enough that Nico starts the feel the throbbing of his pulse in his ears.

His eyes are cast down, but he can feel Poppy’s cautious gaze on him, can sense as she rises out from behind her desk and circles around to his side, perching herself on the edge, sat beside the damning evidence that has caused this mess.

“What are you thinking?” She asks, softly.

“I’m thinking I messed everything up.” He sighs, leaning into the chair with tension in ever muscle, back stiff, jaw clenched. “I’m so stupid, I forgot it would even be visible, I just like having it there, so I can see her all the time, I didn’t mean for this to happen, Poppy, I swear,”

“Hey, I know,” she consoles him, pushing straight off of her desk and standing in front of him, crouching to his level. “Our bubble was bound to burst eventually, Nico, it’s okay,”

“Maybe we can fix this,” he thinks out loud, “I know a guy, a hacker, he’s really good, he could probably do something,”

“He must be really good if he can turn back time, babe,” Poppy scoffs, and he straightens in the seat, adjusting his positioning and gesturing for her to sit on his lap, as awkward as it might be. “How the hell do you know a hacker, anyway, Mission Impossible?”

“His name’s Myles, he lives over in The Heights,” he hums in response, large hand cupping at her thigh to hold her in place, “Maybe he could get the pictures scrubbed from the internet, or something?”

“Is that what you want?”

“I just want to keep things the way they are,” he sighs, “I want our bubble back. I liked our bubble.”

Poppy smiles, soft and affectionate, and cards her fingers through his hair to push it back, nails scratching soothingly at his scalp.

“I liked our bubble, too.”

The two of them sit like that for a minute, thoughts racing between the two of them, but the tension slowly easing, the silence becoming a little more comfortable as they both take a moment to think about what it is they want to do.

Poppy’s fingers stroke at the back of his neck and his stroke soothingly into her thigh.

“We don’t have to say anything, if you don’t want to,” She’s the first to speak, and Nico’s heart hammers at the sound of her voice, more than usual, at least. “We can just wait it out, it’s the last game of the season, these things just go away after a while, right?”

“I don’t want it to go away, Poppy.” He huffs. “I don’t want to hide you, or pretend you don’t exist, pretend we aren’t having a baby together, pretend we aren’t-,”

His fingers tighten in their grip on her flesh, and he lets out a heavy sigh, trying to refrain from laying his heart on the line in the possibility she might trample on it out of heightened emotion.

“I can ignore it,” she says, “The stuff online, I don’t really use social media, they can say what they want about me, about us, it doesn’t really matter, right? They don’t know anything.”

“They know where you live, apparently.” He scoffs, and despite the voice in him telling him to reel it in, the voice that, for so long now, has been telling him to hand the reins over and let her guide him down whatever path she wants to be on, the next thing comes out without much thought behind it. “Maybe you should move in with me, my building is a lot safer.”

He had been wanting to ask her, anyway, right?

He has the key in the glove compartment of his car, ready for her to claim. They spend enough time at his place, it’s the same distance as hers from the arena.

And the timing is almost perfect. He’ll have some time to move her in before he leaves for Europe. Have some time to get her settled before they’re separated, just for a bit. They can keep sharing these routines they’ve built so well, together.

She’ll have an all access pass to all the clothes she so often likes to lounge around in, and he’ll have an all access pass to her, to all the developments with Cheeto, to-

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

What?

In what world is it not a good idea?

“I don’t think we’re ready for that, yet.”

Not ready?

What about them isn’t ready?

“Poppy-,”

“I have a meeting in 5 minutes, I should really fix myself up.”

She pushes herself up from his lap, despite him pawing at her to stay, and rushes back to her own side of her desk, tucking her hair behind her ears as she tries to make herself look busy, avoiding the way in which he chases her gaze.

What the hell just happened?

“We need to talk about this, Mohn,”

“We will,” she reassures him, “Later, I promise. Dinner at Jesper and Nic's, yeah, with the team? I'll meet you at your place.”

His place.

No, he thinks, it should be our place.

His heart hammers in her chest as he watches her, tries to get a gauge on what on earth she’s thinking, why the hell she’s distancing herself after, I liked our bubble, too.

“Poppy,” he tries again, stepping and trying to convey something in his tone that might bring her on side, might make her reconsider.

“I can’t be late, Nico,” she sighs, “I’ll come straight over after I finish work, okay?”

“Okay,” he sighs, shuffling over to the door with the weight of the world now on his shoulders.

How the hell had he gone from the morning from heaven, to this?

Exiled from Poppy’s office and shot down like the thought of living with him turned her stomach.

“Love you,” he offers as a goodbye, a hand on the door handle with his neck craned back to see her one more time, to meet her eyes and try and ingrain the sentiment to her memory.

“Yeah,” she smiles, tight and half-hearted. “Love you, too.”

Nico can’t recall a time where he’s ever been this stressed in his life.

And that seems like an almighty feat considering the year he’s had, so far. All the stuff with the team, with losing their manager half way through the season, with injuries, and fights on the ice, with trying to organise his place in the national team. With Poppy, with her parents, with navigating their relationship, navigating the fact he’s going to become a father soon.

But no, 3 missed calls to his girlfriend-but-not-his-girlfriend-but-she’s-carrying-his-baby-and-he-wants-her-to-be-his-girlfriend’s phone and he’s literally having heart palpitations and breaking out into a cold sweat.

He’s pacing, for God’s sake, shoes tapping against the hard wood of his apartment as he waits for any sign of life.

They’re all going straight to voicemail, and beyond driving all the way back to the Rock and trying to retrace her steps, he doesn’t know what to do.

Despite where they had left things earlier, despite the way she stomped all over his hopes and dreams, she had told him she’d meet him here straight after work, and it’s been almost an hour since she was due to finish.

It’s 30 minutes from the arena, maximum.

He should have stuck around and given her a ride, he thinks. At least them he’d know where she was.

But then she’d feel smothered, a whiny voice rings through his head as he presses to dial her again, the same tone ringing straight through to her machine. She doesn’t want to live with you, she probably doesn’t want to be in a car with you, either.

“C’mon, Poppy, pick up,” he sighs, trying one more time, holding his breath as he presses his phone straight to his ear, wanting to throw it against the wall when the same thing happens, again.

He can’t calm himself down. He hasn’t been able to all afternoon since he left The Rock, driving home without any music playing, coming up to his apartment and not being able to sit still for the past few hours.

She doesn’t want to live with him. She doesn’t think they’re ready.

Despite the fact that they’ve shared a bed every night, almost - aside for when he’s been on the road - for the past two weeks. Despite the fact that all he’s done since February is try to prove himself to her.

Prove himself as a partner, first and foremost. There for every appointment, accommodating her every craving, her every need.

He’s even learning to cook, for Christ’s sake, beyond pasta and breakfast food, and knows her breakfast order by heart.

He’s tried replaying their entire conversation in his head, tried figuring out which part had soured her entirely to the idea, and all he has been coming up with is blanks.

And now, she’s blanking him. Now she’s saying love you with weak smiles that make his heart ache, and he doesn’t know what to do about it.

He’s pacing so much, stomping so hard, that he almost doesn’t hear the knock at his door, stopping in his tracks just to catch the end of it and shooting over so quick he almost stumbles and crashes to the floor.

Seeing her isn’t enough for the tension to drop from his body, not entirely, not yet - not even when she gives him a guilty smile and immediately goes in for a soft, sweet kiss against his bitten lips.

“‘M’sorry,” she mutters into his mouth, “My phone died and I left my charger in your car.” She waves her blank phone screen in between them as if to prove her point, and Nico thinks back to getting in his car to come home, earlier, huffing and puffing about all the wires in the centre console and throwing them onto the passenger seat.

He kisses her back, almost in an unspoken apology for getting so worked up, not that she had any idea just how worked up he was getting, and hums, “It’s okay,” in response. “Are you okay?”

Are we okay? He wants to ask, but doesn’t.

She’s here, now. They have to be okay.

“Yeah,” she smiles, and he wants to take it at face value. She’s had a long day at work, she’s probably exhausted. Her smile isn’t half-assed or forced. She wouldn’t be here if she didn’t want to be. “The guy who’s covering my maternity is a board-certified yapper, Nico, God help you when you have to work with him. You’re gonna miss the hell outta me.”

“Won’t have to miss you, Mohn,” he chuckles, despite the fact that it isn’t entirely true. He wouldn’t have to miss her, if she lived with him, but the way she smiles back eases his worries, a little bit.

There’s the summer to figure things out, he realises.

There’s no rush, and he keeps getting into the habit of thinking there is.

Baby steps.

She takes them with such ease that it really makes him look like an idiot, he thinks.

“You ready to go? Do you need a drink or anything?”

“I think I’ll last the ten minutes it takes to get there,” she rolls her eyes fondly as she takes his hand in hers, and the two of them make their way down to the parking level.

Nico bites at his tongue the whole way to Jesper and Nicole’s place.

He’s trying his best to take whatever she’s willing to give him, and if ignoring the problem at hand is what she wants to do, then he’ll do it. He won’t ask her if she’s thought any more about things, despite her telling him earlier that they’d pick it back up. He won’t ask if she’s still willing to ignore all the outside noise.

Won’t ask her why she doesn’t think they’re ready to live together.

And he bites his tongue all night, really.

It becomes easy to do so as the two of them sink into the familiarity of the team dynamic. Loud and boisterous, fun and carefree, like they haven’t got a game left tomorrow. Like they all aren’t going to have to sit and watch the playoffs play out, thinking what if, and why not me?

Like they all aren’t getting separated for the summer, scattered across the globe with the ever so slight chance they won’t be reunited again.

Not in this format, at least.

But Poppy’s hand holds his in her lap. Poppy rests her head on his shoulder as she listens to Timo tell her all about Switzerland, hyping her up for all the cool things they’re all going to get to do together, and her looking up at Nico with a beaming smile and eyes like twinkling stars.

Poppy stays glued to his side for the group picture Nicole insists on taking, sandwiched between Nico and Timo with the biggest, cheesiest grin on her face, and he thinks he’s probably looking at her as the camera flashes - meets Nicole’s eyes when she’s looking back at the photo and knows he isn’t looking into the lens.

Poppy rests her free hand on her bump, strokes little shapes absentmindedly on it in a way that makes Nico’s heart soar with pride.

Poppy sinks into his side when he’s talking to Nicole’s brother, and who doesn’t flinch when Nico introduces her as, “Poppy, my girlfriend,” in a way that just rolls of the tongue with little to no thought behind it.

And Poppy doesn’t bring it up until they’re sat back down at the large, extended dining table, mostly deserted and the room a lot less rowdy now that a few of the guys have cleared out for an early night.

“I’m your girlfriend, now, huh?”

Shit.

“Sounded nicer than Baby Mama,” he chuckles, the laughter quickly dying down when he sees Poppy’s reaction to his words. It’s that same weak smile she had given in her office, earlier. Resigned and reluctant. “To be honest, I didn’t really know how to ask you about it.”

“Usually starts with will you and is followed by be my girlfriend?” She teases, turning into him a little more as he leans into her, opening herself up more to him than she has all night.

“Don’t you think we’re past that, though?” He smiles softly, thankful for the soft beaming light that returns to her eyes. “Girlfriend feels,”

He doesn’t want to say small.

He doesn’t want to say not enough.

He doesn’t want to say anything that might upset her enough to retreat again, but it’s what he means.

He can’t help it.

It just feels juvenile and insufficient.

She’s so much more than that.

And, because she’s Poppy, and because she can’t help but take the burden of having to say it away from him, she takes his hand in hers, thumb rubbing at the top. “I know what you mean.”

Thank God.

“I called Nia earlier, and she called you my boyfriend, and it sorta freaked me out a little.”

“Freaked you out?” He gulps, nerves settling in the pit of his stomach at the fact that taking the next step with him is freaking her out.

“Yeah,” she sighs, “Like boyfriend seems,”

And she looks like she’s found herself stuck in the same rut he had been in, moments prior. Knowing what she means, but unable to voice it.

“Limited,” he realises, after a moment of consideration for the way he feels just when he looks at her. “Casual, even.”

“Yes!” She agrees, lips twisting into an approving smile. “That’s exactly it! You’re so much more than my boyfriend, Nico.”

“So much more,” he hums, leaning in to press his lips straight to hers, trying to memorise how the shape of her smile feels against in the hopes that he can use it if he ever gets that stressed again. Can remember how easy she makes it to wriggle one of these out of her, to make her eyes gleam like they hold all the love in the world in her irises. “Like your husband,” he speaks the words into her mouth like speaking them into existence, drinking up the sound of her laughter when she pushes him away with fingers to his chest.

“Don’t push your luck, baby."

He comes to the conclusion that he was probably moving a little too quick, or a little too reckless earlier that day. He had told himself as much, before the fact, constantly trying to pull himself back and follow Poppy’s lead on things, because she does make life easy in a way he can never comprehend.

How he got from pacing the floors of his apartment in a panicked, sweaty, discombobulated mess mere hours ago to laid beside her in his bed, heart lulled back into a steady, comfortable rhythm, he doesn’t know.

Only the steady rhythm doesn’t make it through the night. Not when she’s clearly mulling something over beside him.

He had thought at first she was thinking so loud he could hear her blink, but when he had looked over, she was turned the other way, and her breaths were coming out in long, slow drawls - similar to those of when she is sleeping, so he had drifted back off.

And then the tossing and turning started. Huffs and puffs and mmphs that she couldn’t seem to control. Facing him, facing away, facing up.

And then she was up, trudging over to the bathroom with slumped shoulders, spending a minute in there before returning to the bed, and plonking herself down in it with little care for how he might be asleep.

Not that he was.

“It’s 3am, Poppy, why aren’t you asleep?”

“Not tired,” she huffs, arms crossing over her chest.

“You’re always tired,” he chuckles, easing his hand into the crook of her elbow and tugging to uncross them. He pulls until she’s sinking closer to him on the mattress, but her body is stiff with tension, and he just wants to ease the load. “Growing my baby is exhausting, remember?” He tries his hand at humour, but she just sighs, shuffling to get comfortable. “Poppy, talk to me.”

“I want to move in with you.” She blurts out, and he feels like he’s going to get whiplash from the flurry of emotions that passes through him.

Relief, gratitude, happiness, confusion.

“That’s what’s keeping you awake?” He asks, like the concept of her sat worrying about that when he’s the one who asked her in the first place is crazy. All this huffing and puffing and interrupted sleep, for what?

“Well, yeah,” she drags out like it’s obvious at all, “Because you asked me and I said no.”

“I remember, I was there,” he chuckles. “Did you change your mind?”

“No.”

“I don’t understand.”

He really doesn’t.

“I didn’t say no because I didn’t want to, Nico,” she almost snaps, her voice tired and her tone direct.

“Poppy,” he levels, “It’s 3am.”

“What are you, talking clock? I know the time! I’ve been staring at it for the past like 4 hours.”

Nico lets out a heavy exhale, sitting up in bed and trying to meet her eyes in the dark. “Why did you say no?”

“I said no because I thought you only asked me because it was something convenient for us to do.” She pouts, “And I want you to want to live with me because you love me, not because your building is more secure.”

“I do love you,” he frowns, like his infatuation with her isn’t the most painstakingly tangible thing in the world. “And I want you to be safe, and to be happy,”

“Are you in love with me?”

“Is that not what I literally just said?”

“You said you love me,”

“And that’s not the same thing?”

“I don’t know, is it?”

Jesus Christ, he curses to himself, refraining from once again pointing out the time.

Is this a pregnancy thing, he wonders? Losing your mind like this in the middle of the night? Is this what all those dreams have accumulated to? Is this his fault?

“If you’re asking me if all those times I told you that I loved you, did I mean I was in love with you, then yes. I thought that was obvious.”

He’s been in love with her way longer than he feels like he can communicate at such an absurd hour, but he’ll do it if he has to. If tomorrow when they both leave for the arena, he can slip that key he has stashed away onto her keychain and can move on with his day without the stresses of earlier.

“Oh.”

“Was it not obvious?”

“I don’t know.”

“Poppy,”

“What?”

“Do I have to lay it out for you?”

“I mean, only if you want to.”

“It’s 3am.” He reminds her, one last time.

“It’s never too early for declarations of love, Nico.” Her lips twist, and his gut does in response, amusement evident even in the darkened room, eyes glistening with mirth as they meet his.

“I just told you, Mohn, I’ve declared my love over and over.”

“Maybe you should do it again.”

“I’m in love with you, Poppy,”

“With feeling,” she encourages him, shuffling closer until their legs tangle in his favourite way.

“Even when you’re annoying and you won’t let us sleep.”

“Declarations of love can’t include the word annoying, baby.”

Maybe she’s right. How can he be annoyed when she’s calling him pet names and looking at him like that? He’s so in love with her that he’d do anything.

“I’m in love with the way you press your freakishly cold feet between my legs and send my whole body into shock every morning.” He starts, shuffling himself until they’re in his favourite position, facing each other, limbs tangled, her bump pressing into his own stomach, and her hands splayed on his chest. “And when you try to make me breakfast but you for some reason can’t touch a bagel without burning it, and I leave the house every morning smelling like burnt toast.”

“I’m trying my best, there’s a really fine line between them being done and over-done.”

“Whatever you say. I love you when you’re grumpy and hormonal, and you get really specifically annoyed and nothing I do is right but you won’t tell me that so you just huff and puff like a child.”

“I had every right to huff and puff. You asked me to move in with you because your building is safer. That’s not romantic, Nico.” And despite his earlier stress and anxiety, all he can do looking back now is laugh. He’d been so caught up in the mantra of Poppy doesn’t like grand gestures that he hadn’t taken his own words into account. “Is there anything good you love about me?”

“I’ve loved you from the day I met you, Poppy, there’s plenty of good.” And when she raises a brow, urging him to continue, he chuckles, deep and hearty and in a way that wracks through him in delight. “I love how you’re kind, and you’re funny, sometimes I even think of you and laugh,”

She frowns, and Nico can see the argumentative cogs turning in her head. “Well, that’s not-,”

“How you have something to say about everything, even the way I’m baring my soul to you.” He grabs gently at either side of her face, only just smushing her cheeks teasingly before releasing the pressure and holding her in place. “I love how you’ve given a new purpose to my life. How it’s not just me and my job anymore, it’s us and our family, and I never feel like any of this is out of my control. I want you to move in because you’re like home to me, Poppy. I want to wake up every morning I can next to you, I want to finish a long day and end it with you. I want to lay awake half way across the world and think of you in our bed, in our apartment, and know that you’re safe, and nothing can get you here.

“I don’t know how I ever pushed these feelings down for so long, Mohn, because they consume me now. I’ll never get enough of you, of your pretty smile, or that really dorky, snorty laugh you do when you’re tired, or how you always put too much sugar in my coffee and now every time I taste something sweet I think of you.”

The smile she’s giving him might be his favourite, teary eyed and so wide he thinks it must ache in her cheeks. Her lips tremble slightly and her fingertips dig deliciously into his chest.

“The thought of you being the mother of my child, of her having that dorky laugh, and your pretty sparkly eyes, and me never getting a second of peace between the two of you talking back to me, I feel like the luckiest guy in the entire world. Is that enough feeling for you?”

“Just about.” She whispers, leaning up to press her lips straight to his, cautious not to get too lost in it before he utters his response straight into her mouth.

“Great. Your turn.”

“It’s 3am, Nico,” she scoffs, rolling her eyes, playfully. “I love you too, Jeez, are you ever gonna let me sleep?”

“Are you in love with me?”

“I’m so in love with you, that if I weren’t already pregnant right now,” her voice is deeper as she moves closer to him, lips edging toward his ear until they press at the skin just below on his neck, whispering her next words, teasingly. “I’d so let you put a baby in me.”

Nico’s so relieved he doesn’t have neighbours he could possibly wake up with the laugh that comes out of him. A loud exclamation of joy that shines straight back to him through Poppy, a wide grin and shaking shoulders as she giggles back at him.

“That’s an outrageous thing to say considering we’ve only been together officially for,” he checks his watch over her shoulder, “Like 8 hours.”

“Yeah, well,” she shrugs, offering a wink he’s thankful to catch, “When you know, you know.”

“You’re crazy.”

“Ask me again.”

“Will you move in with me, Poppy?”

“Yes.”

Moving Poppy into his apartment - their apartment - had been easier than Nico could have ever hoped.

She had parted ways a little too easy with most of her furniture, under the sneaky compromise that keeping his stuff and moving into his building, meant that she was owed more closet space as some form of compensation.

And Nico had figured that it was only a small sacrifice compared to what she was doing - giving up the last remaining scraps of her independence and leaving behind the beautiful home she had built for herself. The home where their relationship had began to flourish. The apartment where the wheels had been set in motion all those months ago for their baby girl to be brought into existence.

He’s sort of thankful her lease situation isn’t entirely sorted yet, with her moving out but still paying the rent until they can figure out what to do with all the stuff she’s leaving behind. Even he isn’t quite ready to say a proper goodbye.

But that’s a problem for when they get back at the end of summer.

A problem for him, at least, because he knows he won’t want her stressing about any of the technicalities at that point.

It makes him less anxious to leave her, knowing she’s safe in their shared space, and has the benefits of Lionel being downstairs if she needs someone.

Knowing that his initial worries for her safety ended up, thankfully, being an overreaction, entirely, after Nicole had posted her picture of the group to her public instagram, and the gossipers online had taken that as all the confirmation they needed and swiftly moved on.

Knowing that Poppy’s fully moved in, and they’ve had the luxury of properly co-existing, back in their perfect little bubble for just over a week before he has to leave.

Just over a week of shared mornings, stretched out to the fullest capacity, sometimes even into the early afternoon, the two of them only leaving bed for food and bathroom breaks.

Late afternoons, when Poppy gets home from work, and curls up with Nico on the couch, him getting more comfortable cooking for her when she ends up falling asleep melted into the cushions, and wakes when her senses kick in and she can smell food being made without her.

Evenings sat cross-legged on the floor, mapping out an idea for the nursery that will be going into Nico’s mostly-unused home office. Making the travel plans for Poppy to fly out and meet him once all her work back in Jersey is wrapped up, and his work with the national team is over.

And nights spend curled up under the sheets, Nico promising to show her all the parts of his world that he’s been telling her about all these years.

It’s a life Nico gets a little too lost in, and before he knows it, before he can grasp just how much he loves what they’ve built here, already, it’s time to say goodbye to Poppy.

He tries to drag it out as much as he can.

He sets an earlier alarm, despite her grumbling protests, just so he can spend another 15 minutes with her in his arms.

He drives them both to the airport for her to drive back, spare hand holding hers over the centre console and squeezing in patterns of three every time they hit a red light.

And he had followed Poppy’s advice, begrudgingly, arriving at the airport with plenty of time to spare, which meant he could take that little longer saying his goodbyes before he really had to go.

Goodbyes that Poppy made harder than he ever thought they could be.

“And I left my shampoo for you to use,” he mumbles into lips that continue to chase his, back starting to ache a little from leaning over the middle of the car but he couldn’t really care less.

“And if I run your water bill up high enough, would you come home to me to investigate?”

“Well, when you make it sound so tempting,” he kisses her, this time, before muttering, “Poppy, you’ve got to let me go.”

“But I just got you,” she pouts, chasing another kiss, “I don’t think we’ve done enough to catch up for all that time we wasted, I think we need to try out your backseat again, one more time for good measure. I promise you can leave straight after, no funny comments from me about it.”

“As nice as that sounds,” he chuckles, “Airport security scares me, I’m not getting into trouble with those guys because my girl is insatiable.”

“You’re boring,” she frowns.

“It’s 4 weeks.”

“That’s so long,” she huffs, still holding onto the front of his shirt.

“I know,” he kisses her again. "But then we have all summer together,” and again, “and by the time we get back here, we’re gonna be getting ready for baby girl to come,” and one more time for good measure. “Just 4 weeks. Maybe not even that,”

“4 weeks. My man has a medal to win.”

His chest swells at the thought of it, and he smiles, in a way that feels like might never fade. “That reminds me,” he jolts, reaching into his pocket for what he had stashed in there when clearing out his locker back at the arena the other week. He zips down the inner compartment and pulls out something that makes her gasp.

“You kept it?” She reaches out, taking the bracelet into a gentle gasp and looking at it with eyes that shine brighter than the jewels bezelled into it.

“Of course I did,” he smirks as he takes it back to clasp it around her wrist, looking up into her eyes with a sly smirk spreading across his lips, “it was really fucking expensive.”

She swats hard at his chest, trying so hard to suppress an aching grin from taking over her pretty features. “Promise me you’ll look after yourself?”

“Of course, I have precious cargo,” she smiles, hand cradling the bottom of her growing belly, where his reaches out to join, settling his softened gaze on the roundness of it before looking back up at her.

“You’re precious too, Mohn.” He whispers, and he can’t help himself, kissing her one final, passionate time before pressing his forehead to hers, closing his eyes and breathing her in as much as he can before he leaves. “I’ll see you soon.”

“I love you, Nico,” she whispers, words meant just for him, just to settle the growing ache in his bones that won’t be relieved until they’re reunited.

“I love you too, Poppy.”

Poppy

Poppy has always loved having a space of her own. Ever since moving into her apartment, after having lived with Nia through college and a a little while after, she has relished having a place that is exclusively hers - where she doesn’t have to share responsibilities, doesn’t have to lay down boundaries, or protect what is hers, because everything is hers.

Her comfy Facebook Marketplace couch, that she had found for a steal and her and Nico - mostly Nico - had lugged all the way up to her apartment not long after she had moved in, and holds an abundance of memories, especially lately, that warm Poppy to her very core. Memories of being cuddled up with him, large hands rubbing soothing circles into her belly to try rouse any sort of premature movement in there, while he distracted her entirely from the Harry Potter movies he was supposed to be getting her invested in.

Her big cosy bed, with mountains of pillows Nico constantly grumbles at having to remove when he stays over, cloud-like heaps of blankets that she has to trap him in so that his legs stay under, and she can wrap hers around them before he manages to stick them out in the cold.

Shelves lined with keepsakes and trinkets - which now includes little framed scan photos, a small pregnancy memory journal sent over by Nico’s mom, where the two of them have been writing little daily messages to their baby girl for her to read one day when she’s older.

And she always thought that when it came to sharing her space, when it came to being in a relationship with someone, progressing to the point of living together, and having a home be theirs and not hers, she’d have wanted it to be somewhere that had been hers, first.

She never thought she would leave her apartment, never thought she’d haul her belongings a few blocks over, give up her couch, her bed, all the random pieces of furniture she had sourced over the years, pack up her trinkets and say goodbye to the last scrap of independence she would ever have with an all-too-ecstatic wave and immerse herself so wholeheartedly into someone else’s home.

But Nico had made it easy. He makes everything easy, Poppy has very quickly realised.

It’s all he has done since they found out she was pregnant.

Any fears of feeling like an intruder never even had the chance to materialise in her thoughts before he was calling his place theirs, referencing their home like it had always been that way, like she was always destined to be a part of his life, like there’s more to that word for him than walls and belongings.

He had told her as much all those weeks ago, wrapped up in his sheets in the early hours of the morning, when he had told her that she was like home to him. And she had thought the same - she still thinks the same, but being here without him, she still feels it, despite him being so far away for so long.

She doesn’t feel like a house-sitter, or something temporary.

She feels it in her new routine, in figuring out his appliances, in adjusting his thermostat and shower temperatures to her liking, in replacing some of the books on his shelves he most definitely has never read with her books, her trinkets, her pictures. Their pictures.

It has become a stark contrast to all those months ago, when she had walked into this space with heavy feet, the weight of the world on her shoulders and the fear of rejection weighing on her heart - when she had taken note of the lack of warmth, or the personality she knew all too well.

His kitchen shelves are now lined with books of recipes she can’t wait to cook for him when they are co-existing - when summer is over, and their baby is here, and their lives have officially begun.

She tells him as much when he calls every night, usually when she’s making dinner, and he utters the same sentiments, his features softening into that dopey smile she loves so much when he comments about missing her cooking. He’s usually propped up against the utensil pot, watching intently as she flits around their kitchen, the drawers now memorised so she no longer has to ask him where a tin opener might be, and every time she looks over, he has this far away look in his eyes like he’s watching back a dream.

His call had come a little earlier, today, after she had sent over a voice note she had taken for him at her routine scan. It had been just long enough for him to listen to it before the tell-tale FaceTime ringtone had rung out from her pocket, just as she had been hauling her groceries down the hall to finally make it home after a long day at work.

“Did you send that by accident or is it a distress signal?”

Poppy smiles down at her phone as she makes it through the front door, heading straight for the kitchen and putting the bag of groceries on the counter.

“That’s out daughter’s heartbeat,” she chuckles, admiring the way he leans down onto whatever table he has her propped up on, heart thudding as she realises he’s still out in public, despite it being late where he is, not even able to wait until he gets back to the privacy of his room like normal to call her. “Strongest one this side of the Hudson, so I’ve been told.”

“Oh really?” He rests on his forearms and uses them to support his chin, his smile tired and exhaustion seemingly creeping into his bones. It’s been almost 3 weeks now since they have seen each other, and every night Poppy sees a difference in him - focus increased and motivation teetering. There isn’t long left, though, until she leaves Jersey. Until she heads straight for him and they finally get some time together with no other responsibilities than to be with each other. “You get any pictures?”

“Whoa, kinky,” she smirks when she sees him roll his eyes, heat creeping onto his cheeks, and she huffs out a slight sigh of disappointment when he runs a hand through his hair, and she can see the ear buds carrying her voice to him. She’d only slightly been hoping to embarrass him in public. She deserves the little pleasures, she thinks.

“Of our baby, Poppy,” he huffs, his annoyance entirely forced and the way she charms him evident in the glint in his eyes, even through a phone screen.

“Duh,” she rolls her eyes as her fingers swipe through her phone, looking for the pictures she already had primed to send over to him.

“If you have any other pictures though, you can send them through. I'll be back in my room in 10 minutes.”

“Nice try,” she scoffs, waiting for the blue line to run the whole way across her screen as the pictures and videos start sending. “That second video, when she turns a little, you can see she has your nose, it’s so cute,” she sighs, dreamily, as she settles the phone back onto the counter, leaning down to watch his reactions as he receives them. She can feel warmth spread through her chest as she takes in the movement of his eyes, flickering across all there is to take in from the latest scan - the tiny developments since the last one, especially considering she had opted for the 3D scan despite how much she thought it might freak her out.

Seeing her baby girl all curled up, tiny hands supposedly waving, little features scrunched up in a mirror image of the man Poppy loves the most in the world - it had really set her emotions off that morning. She had to sit in her car for a good 20 minutes before work, sobbing into a snotty tissue and cursing the time difference for the fact that Nico was probably asleep, not wanting to disturb him just to call and worry him.

“I think she looks like you,” he mutters, entirely hypnotised by the videos, lips stretched into a soft smile, dimples pushing into his cheeks, emphasising the fresh gash below his eye that she has actively been trying not to look too much at. “She’s so beautiful. Did you get copies?”

“Yeah, I’m gonna put them straight into my carry on so I don’t forget to bring them over. Got a copy for your mom, too.”

“She’ll love the nose thing.”

“It’s a cute nose,” Poppy hums, “A strong one, too, swear she’s like a sniffer dog in there, I’ve been craving mac and cheese all day since she smelled someone else’s lunch yesterday. Had to go buy a grater just so I can make some from scratch.”

“I don’t have a cheese grater?”

“Not that I could find,” Poppy frowns, having searched high and low in every cupboard and drawer when she got home last night, “Although neither of us should be surprised, Nico, you don’t even have a full set of pans,”

“Why would I need a full set? I only ever use one at a time.”

“You’re giving yourself too much credit, baby, we both know you live off of meal prep delivery.” She jokes, and he shakes his head in silent denial. “But don’t worry,” she picks her phone up and switches the camera to show him the pan set she had brought home with her yesterday, “I’m here to improve your life one pot at a time.”

“Is that how you’re spending your evening?” He asks, “Stocking our kitchen with new stuff?”

“That’s the plan for tomorrow, actually,” she smiles, picturing all the shopping she can do as she starts unpacking all the ingredients for her dinner, “My dad said he found a bunch of old baby clothes in their garage, he had a meeting this way today and is gonna bring them over for me to look at tonight.”

“Your baby clothes?”

“Yeah, I’m hoping, you should see the way they dressed OlI when he was a baby, like half of his genetic structure was colour-block Gymboree.”

“I have no idea what that means,” he frowns, adorably, eyes gleaming still with the beginnings of a fond smile.

“Trust me, you don’t want to, he looks like a clown in all his baby photos. Hideous.” She shudders as she focuses her attention back on the phone, catching a glimpse of Nico stifling a yawn and checking the time. He isn't usually out of his room at this time, usually getting settled in for the night, lounging in his bed so he gets to say goodnight to her. She doesn’t really want to keep him if he’s tired. “He should be here soon, so I’ll let you go get your beauty sleep.”

“Yeah, I need all the help I can get,” he chuckles, a finger wagging toward the cut on his cheek with a tired smile. “Text me before you sleep, so I can wake up to it?” She nods. “Love you, Poppy,” The casual manner in which he utters the words does little to quell the excitement they arouse.

“Love you too, Nico.”

Poppy feels lighter than air as she pads around the apartment after their call has ended, unpacking her groceries into the refrigerator, keeping out what she needs so that she can start cooking up her dinner - her grandmother’s mac and cheese, the secrets of her recipe finally bestowed upon her now that she has someone to make it for - her phone hooked up to his speaker system, filling the space with her favourite music in a way that already makes it feel like she has been there forever.

She cuts up her cauliflower and puts it in a pan to steam before she gets to work making her sauce, grating an almost excessive amount of cheese and giving herself an almighty ache in her arm.

It isn’t too long before she gets a message from Lionel - him now texting her to alert her of any visitors coming up, the familiarity ironing out that last crease of imposter syndrome where she had feared she might have to run is by Nico, his concierge now treating her like a proper resident.

So when the knock at the door comes, she practically skips over, a giant smile pushing at her cheeks as she reaches to open it, only for it to drop at who’s on the other side.

“Don’t look too excited to see me, Honey,” Poppy’s mom rolls her eyes as she pushes past her, trailing two large holdalls behind her as she steps into Nico’s apartment, dropping them just past the door before she stretches her arms dramatically.

Poppy cranes her neck out of the open door to look for any sign of her dad, any sign of a buffer or safety net to fall into, because there’s no way in hell she’s going to have to suffer her mom’s presence on her own, right now.

“Is dad bringing more bags up here, or something?”

“No, he got held up with a working dinner, I said I’d bring this stuff over.”

She watches her mother as she slowly steps further into the apartment, casting a judgemental eye around in a way that immediately gets Poppy’s back up, feeling protective of the space already, hesitant to close the door in an attempt to give the negative energy a way out.

She can’t keep it open forever, though, not when her mom seemingly has no plans to leave.

“Is that grandma’s mac and cheese?” She asks as she enters the kitchen, lifting the lid on the pot of steaming cauliflower.

“Yeah, she finally gave me the recipe for the sauce, and I’ve been craving it all week.”

“You’ll need to take that off the heat, soon, or it will be like mush at the bottom.”

Poppy’s eyes roll by instinct as she lets out a huff, stomping toward where her mother is stood and flicking the switch for the burners. “I know what I’m doing, I literally have a step-by-step,”

“You don’t have to turn everything into an argument, Poppy, I was just saying.” She steps away from the stove, narrowing her eyes at her daughter. “God forbid I try to help you.”

“You’re not trying to help, Mom, you’re hovering,” she scoffs, “Like you literally came over just to judge.”

“You’re so dramatic,” she scoffs, “I’m hardly judging, I’ve said one thing.”

Poppy bites her tongue from retorting, one thing too many, but something starts bubbling inside her, too strong for her to swallow down, this time.

She thinks it might be Nico’s doing, this new instinct to defend herself - defend herself to her mother, at least, because God knows she has no troubles doing it with anyone else. She had always thought she had a handle on her, could control herself, could throw quick jabs back to lessen the blow of scrutiny and shame that’s usually sent her way by her mother, but hearing how Nico had stood up to her dad, she realises she’s just been masking a problem this entire time. She’s never really stood up to her, never really let her know all the ways in which she’s been hurt by her mom’s judgements over the years, too scared to stick around for what might be the final blow, too scared of the impact, or that neither of them may ever recover from it.

But it has to be better than this - than the constant holding of her breath in anticipation of it coming. It isn’t doing either of them any favours. There’s only so far her sarcasm will get her, now.

“I swear you hate that I don’t rely on you,” she says, softly - not through trepidation or doubt, but because she doesn’t want this space to be one where voices are raised, where tears are brought to her eyes and lumps to her throat. “I’ve lived on my own for years, cooked for myself every day almost, and it’s like you can’t even fathom for a second I might not need or want your help.”

“I’m not arguing with you over macaroni, Poppy.”

“This isn’t about macaroni, it’s about you having an incessant need to make me feel like crap. It’s like you can’t stand that I can do things on my own.”

“Maybe I can’t.”

Well, there it is.

Poppy hadn’t been expecting it to take her aback quite like this, breath held, shoulders tensed, mouth agape. There’s a shrill, nagging voice that harps, I told you so, in her head, but it does little to help. She hadn’t really wanted to be right.

If she’s entirely honest, she wanted her mom to shut her down, again. To tell her she’s being stupid, to tell her she’s proud of her independence, and is just being catty because that’s who she is. That’s who she’s always been.

“What?”

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe I can’t stand the way you behave. Maybe I loathe it,”

Her hand falls almost by instinct to cradle the curve of her bump, like she’s trying to lessen the impact, to not let the hurt she feels seep all the way to where her baby girl lays in her belly, peaceful and darling and blissfully unaware of the pain that can be inflicted by a mother’s sharp tongue.

“Maybe I wish for once in your life you’d be serious, and think about things before you just dive headfirst into situations you have no business being in. And subjecting a baby to them, nonetheless. God, Poppy, I’ve always known you to be impulsive but this,” her mother’s hand flops almost dismissively her way, hard eyes set straight on her stomach before twirling on the spot and gesturing around them, “And all this, you think you’re being independent? You’re being careless and selfish.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Not raising her voice goes straight out the window, “First of all I’m irresponsible for not living with Nico, and now I’ve moved in with him, I’m careless? Nothing I do will ever be enough for you, will it?”

“It’s not about me,”

“Yeah, right,”

“This is about your baby,”

“Don’t act like you care about my baby,” Poppy scoffs, “She’s not just another thing you can try to control. You don’t always know what’s best, Mom, and I don’t want my daughter feeling the way I feel around you, it isn’t good for any of us, so I’m gonna ask you one more time to stop.”

“Stop what? Trying to help you-,"

“You’re not helping! I don’t know how many more times I can say it! I don’t understand how I can try my best to get everything right and you just pick out all the flaws!” Here come the tears in her eyes, and the lump in her throat, too.

Of course it would have been her mother to burst her happy bubble, yet again.

“Because somebody has to open your eyes to the fact that this isn’t the dream you think it is, Poppy! Pregnancy, being a mother, it isn’t all sunshine and rainbows and handsome boyfriends who move you into their fancy apartments and promise you the world-,”

“Oh, here we go again,” Poppy fires back, “What is it then? I gave you lopsided breasts and thin hair so now you get to ruin my life?”

“Not you-,”

“Right, like you’d ever give golden boy Oliver this kind of grief,”

“Your sister.”

Poppy can feel a rush of blood to the head.

Her what?

She knows deep in her heart her mother would never do crack, but maybe she picked up something else at one of her luncheons. Maybe she accidentally stumbled into one of those botox parties and they injected a little too deep into her forehead.

No, Poppy thinks, she can see frown lines, still.

“Her name was Primrose. Rosie. She was my first.”

There’s a steady, softer tone to her mom’s voice that Poppy hasn’t heard in years. An undertone of reminiscence and longing. Of love.

Her feet carry her by instinct, rounding past her mother and heading for the couch, patting the space beside her and meeting her mother’s eyes with a somewhat solemn gaze.

“She was from a relationship I had before your father and I got together. I was nineteen, and in college, and I had all these great things lined up for my future. I had this concrete plan, and there was nothing in the world that was gonna take me away from it. Build a career, build something for myself, and then start a family. But then I met a boy.”

It isn’t exactly how things had worked out for Poppy, but the outline seems the same. Career focused, strong minded, independent, and then, bam! Nico.

“His name was Charlie, he was an aspiring chef, working a bunch of jobs to get him through culinary school, he was a real grafter, that’s what your grandpa used to say. He was so charming, made me feel like the whole world revolved around me.” She smiles wistfully as she looks back on that time in her life, a softness to her that Poppy doesn’t quite recognise. One that’s already bringing those tears straight back to her eyes and that lump straight back to her throat.

Charming, made her feel like the world revolved around her. Yeah, that’s a familiar outline, alright.

“And you know how your grandparents are, they encouraged it, if anything. Grandma is always drawn in by the dreamers, she used to tell me all the time how good he was for me.”

The lump intensifies, her blood running cold at all the possibilities of where this could go.

“Everything was so perfect, until it wasn’t.”

He better not have hurt her, she thinks. She doesn’t care how old he may be now, or how pregnant is. She’ll find Chef Charlie and beat him black and blue.

“Rosie had Downs Syndrome, we found out around half way through the pregnancy.”

For as long as Poppy has been alive, her mother has worked with the Downs Syndrome Association, hosting galas and fundraising events every year - helping raise money through sponsorships to assist with education, and to support those affected as well as their families. It’s the one thing she’s always loved doing with her - seeing her so passionate and focused. And now she’s cursing herself for never wondering why - always taking that devotion to the cause and paying too much attention to her brother’s mouth in her ear, telling her not to look a gift horse in the mouth, not to question why her mom only ever lit up in that environment.

“That’s why you run the benefit.” It’s not really a question, at this point. A realisation, more than anything, the weight of it settling into her spine.

“It makes me feel closer to her.”

“What happened?”

“Charlie, he had all these plans for what our life was gonna be after he found out I was pregnant. He was going to work his way up in a restaurant, was gonna do everything he could to support us and build something for the three of us that was more than what he had growing up. My parents offered to support, but he was so set on being the provider. He made everything seem so perfect and so easy.”

Easy, like Nico, Poppy thinks. She had the same sentiment about him, earlier.

“Having a kid with special needs didn’t fit into this version of life he wanted to live, so he bowed out the first chance he got. I made it to 32 weeks on my own before she-,”

Of all the things she can say about her mom, Poppy doesn’t think she’s ever seen her choked up like this. It makes her blood run cold.

“After 28 weeks, a miscarriage is considered a stillbirth, you have to physically give birth, there isn’t another way, so they induce labour, and I didn’t want to take any time to think about it so I had them do it as soon as I found out. Your grandparents were on a cruise off the coast of Greece, and Charlie was nowhere to be found. I had to deliver a baby I knew was already gone, on my own, with nobody to hold my hand.”

Poppy takes a hold of it immediately, as if clasping her fingers around her mother’s now will make up for having no one around to do it back then, when she needed it the most.

“She was so beautiful, Poppy. She had this little button nose, she looked so delicate I didn’t want to touch her too much when they let me hold her, she was so tiny and fragile.”

Her scan earlier in the day had been 3D, a multidimensional view of her little girl’s features, little nose, pouty lips, tiny hands. To think about the size of her in context, around the size of a mango or a large tomato, she can’t fathom what it would be like to hold her in her hands. Despite only being 19 weeks along, the thought of it makes her heart thud rampant and uneasily in her chest.

“I had all these ideas of what she could do, and what she would be, and I never let go of those, even when she was diagnosed. I had prepared myself for what life with a special needs child could be, I’d read all the books, I’d gone to a support group at the local community centre, and I’d dreamed up this great life for her. And we just never got to live it. No amount of therapy of counselling can ever erase that version of your life from your head.”

Poppy thinks about all the dreams she has for her little girl, all the ideas she already has of what she might be, might look like, might act like. To never get to see that would break her entirely.

“Your dad helped me through it after. I knew him since we were younger, always knew he was an option, but he was safe, and I always pushed him to the side. But after Rosie, after Charlie, I didn’t really want to be a dreamer anymore, didn’t want to think up these idealistic scenarios that would never come to be. Going down my own path, with Charlie, with all of it, it took me somewhere too dark to ever fathom a way out. And then your father became my light.”

Her parents have never been the lovey-dovey kind of parents, the ones that would make their children yuck with PDA or sentimentality, but they’ve always been solid. Always on the same page, always showing up for each other.

She's always thought her mom was the backbone of the two. Her father is strong, that has never been in question, but her mother has always seemed unwavering in her resilience for life in a way her dad doesn't measure up.

“Getting through my pregnancy with Oli was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, but he was so easy. I never really got sick, all his scans were clear, his heartbeat strong, he moved all the time. His delivery was so quick it was like I sneezed him out.” That same wistful smile returns to her lips, and Poppy can feel the but coming a mile off, can sense her defences building back up at the impending jab, at the certain comparison where Oli always comes out on top. “And then you came.”

The you sounds more defeated than pointed. The smile drops, but not entirely, and tears begin to well in her mom’s eyes again.

“You never wanted to be where the doctor wanted you to be, you kept your legs crossed for so long every time we thought we were going in to find out your gender, we’d leave disappointed, and your dad ended up deciding we should just leave it until you were born to find out. Not do the extra tests. Let the cards fall where they may. You didn’t move that often, and I was always anxious something was happening to you.”

Cheeto’s been moving more, lately. Within the last couple of weeks, Poppy has started to feel it. Routinely, in fact, so she can’t imagine what it would be like to go days without it, now. She’d be the same, worrying all the time, thinking something was wrong - and that’s without ever having experienced any problems before. Having a previous loss looming over her head must have driven her mother crazy.

“It wasn’t until you came out after 12 hours, where they had to manually reposition you at one point when you were breached, and just as they decided they might cut me open, you started crowning. After all that trauma, you came out and you were a girl, and your dad was so happy, but I-,” Poppy sort of knows this part. Her father had been praying for a girl, had celebrated as if the Giants had won the Super Bowl. And all she knows of her mom is what she’s told her in the plainest words. She had pretty bad postnatal depression after Poppy was born. She was pretty much nursed by nannies, and Poppy had always just assumed that’s where the rift stemmed from. “I just remember sobbing. Your dad bonded with you straight away, but every time I looked at you, I thought of her. Of Rosie. They tried putting me on medication but it never really took this feeling away that something was off, and, looking back, when I found out I was having another daughter, I think I projected a lot of what I wanted for Rosie onto you. I was always planning to be her caretaker for as long as it took, so I probably tried to control you a little more than I did Oliver. And I understand that’s unfair, but bringing a girl into this world is more difficult. You have this responsibility to prepare her for the weight of it.”

Prepare her, control her, be her caretaker. She supposes they all link. It makes sense, trying to stamp this life she had dreamed up on Poppy because she never got to do it with her sister. She never stood a chance to try forge her own path, not really. Small failures in her mother’s care after that initial loss set the foundations for the rest of Poppy’s life - an ignorance to the pain she was struggling with, and belittling of her grief, resulted in someone clinging so desperately to her own control that she flattened her daughter with it.

“No one ever prepared me, Poppy. I love your grandparents, but they didn’t set me up to handle what I went through. And despite everything that I tried to warn you of, despite everything I tried to mould you to be, all the ways I tried to protect you, all you ever wanted to do was defy me. All the time. All the way down to those scars on your knees from not wearing the pads on your bike.” Priscilla’s hand gestures to where Poppy’s legs rest between them, a reminiscent scoff falling from her lips. “I tried so hard to shield you from a life you just wanted to dive headfirst into, no helmet or anything. You never listened, you wouldn’t make a plan for your future, you attend a college doing a degree for something that isn’t a guaranteed career path. In fact, you deny having your hand held down a guaranteed path when your father offered you all those jobs. You move into a city on your own, into a high crime neighbourhood, into a job surrounded by boisterous men, and somehow you hold your own.”

There’s an underlying sense of pride that Poppy can feel now - for all the ways her mom wants to paint these things as faults or inconveniences, she also sees them as strengths.

Maybe a part of her has all a long. A version of herself from before life came at her full force, a version of her clinging to whatever surface she can find to hold on and prevail.

“And you fall in love with one of them, with a boy who isn’t safe. Who knocks on your door out of nowhere one day, and you tell me he’s there to whisk you away, and it takes me straight back to being nineteen again, to having a man who, despite making me feel like it revolved around me, turned my world upside down. So maybe I can’t stand to see you making the same mistakes, knowing what kind of pain it can cause.”

Poppy remembers the day her mom had met Nico for the first time. They had been getting ready for one of the fundraisers for the Downs Syndrome Association - her mom on edge all day, micromanaging everything Poppy did, and she had answered a knock at the door to see Nico on the other side. Her dislike of him had been brewing even before then. It isn’t even Nico she dislikes. It’s everything that he represents, crashing into her life at a time that things were resurfacing. It all makes sense, now. “That’s why you got so hell-bent on setting me up?”

“Nico seems like a good enough man, Poppy,” She doesn’t know the half of it, Poppy thinks. “And I see that he makes you happy, I’m not blind to what the two of you have, or have had for a while now. But his life, his career, it’s not a sure thing. He has a lot of pressure outside of your relationship, and he might not be the best bet for when things go wrong. I just wanted you to have something more stable.”

Poppy lets the words linger for a minute. To dwell on the situation as a whole - a lifetime of anguish between the two of them, and finally she knows the cause.

She really wishes she could have a drink right about now. It would probably ease the tension a whole lot more, sharing a bottle of wine with her mom to really break bread.

But the more she thinks, the more she’s sure of her response to all of it.

“I’d bet on him.”

There’s no use in telling her mom she’s sorry for what she went through. She hopes her presence is enough of an indication of that - that she’d never want to even think of her mother dealing with that kind of grief, alone. 25 years of control isn’t going to be resolved with one conversation, she knows that - knows her mom knows it, too. And it doesn’t entirely explain a lot of her other behaviours, either, so it probably isn’t going to be the only heart to heart they have. But all she can now do is explain herself. Tell her side of the story she’s trying to write for herself and hope her mom ends up too invested in the ending to close the book completely.

“I’d bet everything I have that he won’t let me down. And you might think that’s shortsighted, or naive, but I need it to be enough for you. What Nico and I have, it started off impulsive, and a little chaotic, and messy, but I promise you, it’s stable. We’ve both put a lot of work into what we have to make it safe, I really need you to trust me on that.”

And Poppy isn’t saying it for argument’s sake. She isn’t trying to defend something she isn’t sure on, herself. Nico would never leave her when things get hard, he’s proven as much to her already. He’s taken the baby steps, he’s integrated her entirely into his life, into his family, into his home - and even disregarding all that, it isn’t in his character. He’s loyal, and supportive, and honest. He won’t let her down.

“I may be a little hard-headed, and defiant, and stubborn when it comes to what you want for me, Mom, but I would never be reckless when it comes to what’s best for my baby.”

“I understand what you’re saying, Poppy, but I thought Charlie was the best-,”

“Nico isn’t Charlie.”

She feels a little harsh to say it, but it’s the truth. Her mom can’t hold her own misfortunes over Poppy for the rest of her life, it isn’t fair.

“And as much as you might think I’m not prepared enough to come to that conclusion, that I don’t know until something happens, I know him. And I know myself. I’ve spent years trying to push these feelings that I have down and it’s done nothing but hurt me. If you gave him a chance, you’d have seen it for yourself, he doesn’t give up, not for anything.”

There’s another prolonged silence as her mom mulls on her thoughts, and Poppy can practically see the transition of emotions pass through her. Hesitation, doubt, confusion, deliberation, and then finally, acceptance.

“Maybe when the two of you get back from your time in Europe, we can put that to the test.”

Poppy can feel her face drop, mouth agape, eyes widened, brows raised, but she can’t find it in her to care how dramatic she might look. Her mother, who would rather have her hands hammered or swallow nails than admit she may have been wrong, is willing to give her a real shot to prove herself to her.

“You’ll really give him a chance?”

“Let’s not be rash. Baby steps, darling,” her mom rolls her eyes playfully.

Poppy can’t quite believe the serendipity of the situation.

It had been in this exact spot, in this exact apartment, that those words had been uttered to her those few months ago. Hands held between her and Nico, and a promising glint in his eyes and certainty to his tone.

And she feels the same optimism that she had back then.

She feels her face break out into an almost aching grin, tears welling at her eyes as she leans in to hug her mom, feeling the gentle rub of maternal comfort ease into her spine.

She invites her mom to stay for dinner, the two of them working in tandem to make her grandmother’s mac and cheese, Poppy actually accepting her mother’s helping hand, and they eat together while Poppy catches her up on all the latest with her scans and tests, and all the ever developing symptoms of her pregnancy.

And as she burrows herself into her and Nico’s bed later in the night, body swallowed in sheets that smell of his detergent, surrounded by everything that reminds her of him, she just feels warm all over.

She thinks to herself that maybe this place is magic. Maybe he’s magic, healing a lifelong rift between her and her mother from over 4,000 miles away.

And there’s no maybe about the fact that she can see forever with him.

That, she’s sure of.

Poppy has never had any issues when it comes to flying.

Having being fortunate enough to have vacationed with her family every year up until she turned 16, and her parents stopped inviting her, she’s never been bothered by planes or airports or travel.

In fact, she quite likes the whole process. Packing everything meticulously into little cubes, organising those into co-ordinated cases pulled at either side of her body as she ambles through the terminal, mooching around the shops for little trinkets and stocking up on copious amounts of candy. Lounging around her gate until it’s time to board and settling it in, ears cushioned by thick headphones and a nice mellow playlist to calm the chaos of her day so far, or to set the mood for the flight ahead. She likes watching in-flight movies, even likes the gross in-flight meals, always food she’d never dream in a million years of eating outside of whatever tin can she’s residing in for the next few hours. She doesn’t even mind turbulence.

But she hasn’t travelled such a long distance in a few years.

And she has never done so whilst pregnant.

All the glamour of travelling overseas, along with all the small pleasures she has found over the years, is quickly outweighed by the fact she now has to wear compression socks. Now has to keep drinking water throughout the day, which means she has to keep peeing, keep walking around despite the muscles at the bottom of her back begging her to sit back down.

And she had thought in the days leading up to her flight that she had been keeping a brave face on her daily calls with Nico, not letting her stress about the whole thing impact his mood, or his focus leading up to semifinals of the world championship, but she’s never been so thankful for someone’s stubborn perception than when she had opened her door the night before her flight to see his sister stood on the other side of it.

“Nina?” She asks, dumbfounded, before slender arms are thrown around her, rubbing gently at her back as she sways a little into the cuddle.

“Hey, travel buddy!”

“What’s going on, what are you doing here?” Poppy asks as she welcomes her in, heart jumping erratically at the sight of her. Nina was supposed to meet her on the other side of her flight, being her ride from the airport to the hotel while Nico would be in training, and she kind of feels like her nerves have manifested her into the apartment like some sort of thirst-induced mirage.

“Nico was getting all antsy at the thought of you travelling alone, so I’m supposed to say we decided as a family for one of us to come out and travel with you, but the truth is I may or may not have been bribed.”

“What did he bribe you with?”

“Said you’d name your daughter after whoever came.” She smiles victoriously as she makes her way through the apartment with ease, throwing herself onto the couch, just beside where Poppy has two big open cases splayed out on the floor, almost fully packed. “I had to literally pull my mom out of a cab to beat her to the airport.”

“Sounds just like the kind of Hischier family dynamics I was promised, to be fair,” Poppy chuckles, joining her in the living room and perching herself on the floor beside her cases, carrying on with her previous task of organising that she had been preoccupied with before the mysterious knock at the door. “You’re just in time actually, I was about to order some food, I’ve cleared out the refrigerator so you can take your pic of what we get if you want!”

Nia had been around earlier in the afternoon, and had helped Poppy prep the apartment to be left empty for a few months, which included clearing out all the perishable food and hauling it down to the waste disposal room because the bag wouldn’t fit down the chute, and neither of them wanted to be held responsible for clogging it up for the whole building. She had helped her figure out what to pack, as well as bring over some travel essentials she had picked up from CVS, creating a little kit for Poppy to take on the plane with her.

Face mist, hand sanitiser, an eye mask, ear plugs and intensive lip balm - a lifesaver considering the amount Poppy has been nervously chewing on her bottom lip for the past few days straight.

And then she had left, in an emotional goodbye where Poppy had waited until Nia was in the elevator to burst into tears, distraught at the thought of not seeing her best friend for the next few months.

It isn’t the first time they’ve ever been apart this long, but Nia has been her rock throughout her pregnancy, and leaving her behind just as all the fun parts of the whole experience are starting to kick in feels sad. But with promises made to call as often as possible, and assurances that Nia will spend the next few months meticulously planning a welcome home-baby shower hybrid, the tears soon cleared up as Poppy distracted herself making sure she wasn’t forgetting anything.

“Aren’t you craving anything?” Nina asks as she slips down onto the floor beside her, the two of them kneeling next to each other.

“To be honest, I felt sick before you got here, so I hadn’t really thought about it.” Poppy shrugs. She had been planning to go to bed, try and sleep away her anxiety, but she doesn’t want to seem irresponsible, not to Nina. “There’s a really great Italian place not too far from here that delivers, though. And now that you mention cravings they do these little tubs of tiramisu and if I don’t get one before I leave it’s all I’ll think about for the next four months.”

“I’m sold, we could share if you’re not too hungry.”

“We’ll share pasta, I share dessert with no one.”

“That’s fair,” Nina chuckles as she helps Poppy push herself up, her bump becoming more of a hinderance to her usual habits with every day that passes.

She ambles over to the TV console where her phone had been discarded and works at ordering the two of them dinner through her PostMates app, agreeing to share some lasagne and get a tub of dessert each.

Nina helps her sort her cases until they’re ready to zip up, and agrees to do one final check of her bag she’ll be taking on the plane so she has a fresh set of eyes to suggest anything else she might need.

“You know your hotel room will have pillows, right?” Nina scoffs, pulling one of the pillows from Poppy’s bed out of the carry-on. “Why do you have one in your bag?”

“You’re gonna think I’m crazy.” Poppy sighs, collapsing onto the couch with a heavy sigh.

“You’re having a baby with my little brother, Poppy, that ship has already sailed.” She laughs, turning to look at Poppy with the same look Nico usually gives her, exasperated somewhat but entirely fond. It makes her miss him that much more. The same dark chocolate eyes, same dimpled smile. “Promise I won’t judge, girl talk is a safe space.”

Poppy smiles, fond in her own way.

She hasn’t spent much time alone with Nina. They’ve met a few times before, hung out with Nico, with his parents, with the team - at bars, restaurants, even the arena - and Poppy remembers a couple times where Nina and her had both uttered the same sentiment. It’s nice to have another girl around.

“I haven’t washed his pillowcase since he left,” she admits, feeling her cheeks flush already, "And I just carry it around the apartment and sniff it sometimes when I miss him.” It only barely smells like him still, but it had gotten her through those first two weeks more than she’d like to admit, shuffling over to his side of the bed to breathe him in every morning like he’d only gone out for training, and would be back before she knew it.

“Yeah, that’s weird.”

“You said no judging,” Poppy pouts.

“I lied.”

“I was gonna take it on the plane with me tomorrow.” Her flight is in the late afternoon, and she has no doubts around the fact that once her butt touches base into her designated seat, she’ll be out like a light. If it weren’t for her constant need to pee, and warnings to have intervals on her feet, she would hope to sleep the whole way through. What’s better than closing her eyes in one country and waking in another? The miles between her and Nico reduced to mere double-digits, she can’t wait for this heaviness on her chest to dissipate into nothing the second she’s breathing the same air as him. “Figured if I’m gonna be uncomfortable for 9 hours straight it might help.”

“So happy that you’re reuniting soon, because I think you’ve lost your mind,”

“Yeah,” Poppy sighs in agreement, because there’s really no use denying it, now. A month without him, longing to be with him, missing him in even the most mundane ways has well and truly sent her off the handle. Nia had told her as much, earlier, too. And Luke when she’d text him asking if he happens to see Nico in passing while he’s overseas to please send her pictures like a crazed stalker. “I thought I’d be better at this whole thing, but I miss him more than I ever have before.”

“That’s cute,” Nina smiles, sympathy glimmering in her dark irises as she tilts her head and watches the way Poppy’s own features shift.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“He has this thing whenever he talks about you, like his eyes get all animated and turn into hearts,” she smirks, “Yours do the same. It’s sweet.”

Poppy feels her mouth stretching, a deep smile tugging at each corner of her lips. “Cheeto kind of does the same thing, shuffles a little in my belly when she hears him.” She’s noticed it the last few days, slight movements whenever Nico calls, whenever his voice rings out from the confines of her phone and warms her entire body. And despite everything she reads online about how it isn’t possible for her baby to hear anything outside of her body yet, she doesn’t care. Maybe it’s a reaction to the way Poppy’s heart sings for him, instead.

“Baby Nina, you mean?” Poppy rolls her eyes fondly as Nina settles beside her on the couch. “Are you sure she isn’t trying to shield herself from how sickening the two of you are?”

“Possibly,” Poppy’s lips twist, “I can’t believe I’m sat here whining about how much I miss him when it’s been a few weeks, you don’t get to see him for most of the year.”

“It’s different,” Nina places a comforting hand on Poppy’s arm, “You two are building a life together, as much as he’s my brother and I love him, my world doesn’t revolve around him like your world does.” Poppy nods, mulling that fact over in her head. “That came out sounding worse than I meant, I think-,”

“No, not at all,” she reassures her, shifting her arm to take her hand, “You’re right, it’s so weird being at this phase of my pregnancy and trying to wrap my mind around how everything is gonna work and him not being here, it’s a little like a mental block.”

Having her world revolve around him isn’t a bad thing, she doesn’t think.

Telling the Poppy from a year ago that she’d be at peace with having her world revolve around any man would have had her throwing punches. Telling the girl who valued her independence like her hottest commodity - who barely liked to share her time, let alone her space, her day, her bed, with anybody else - that she would have moved in with her boyfriend, ready to start a family together and planning their final child-free summer over text threads would have been like telling her the moon was made out of cheese.

Ludicrous, but ever so slightly intriguing.

But it’s all so familiar now. All so right.

“One more day, Poppy,” Nina just so happens to echo the sentiment that Poppy has been telling herself all day. All week, all month, ever since that day outside the airport, counting down the days until this one, twisting the bracelet around her wrist nervously as if it’s a tether straight to him. “This time in 24 hours, we’ll be almost there.”

One more day, she repeats in her head, nodding with a smile to Nina and taking a deep breath.

She can do one more day.

Only one more day turns into almost two until Poppy is reunited with Nico.

She thinks she cursed herself, if she’s honest, whispering to her bump just before she had gone to sleep that night that they would be reunited with daddy before either of them knew it.

And then the travel day from hell occurred.

She thinks if she didn’t have Nina, she would have had an almighty breakdown - but every time she looked over and met those warm eyes, the tears in her own dissolved.

It had started with traffic on the way to the airport, a police incident on the skyway tripling the usual 20-minute travel time, and the only thing Poppy could find to be grateful for is that they had got an Uber instead of her driving, knowing her stress would have been tenfold if she was stopping and starting all the time.

Lucky for her, she always allows for delays in her planning, and they made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare, check-in going without a hitch, thankfully, and still giving them time to peruse for snacks to keep Poppy’s cravings at bay for the 9 hour flight ahead.

Time that, in the end, didn’t matter, because their flight kept getting delayed.

At first it was an hour, a problem with the initial departure of the inbound plane, and Poppy could deal with that. They were due to land in the early hours of the morning in Prague, anyway, so getting there an hour later didn’t really bother her. She had Nina for company, an abundance of snacks, and access to clean toilets in the airport lounge. She could have been trapped on the tin can, so all things considered an hour was too little of a delay for her to get worked up about.

That hour soon turned into two, which turned into three, and Poppy could feel her resolve dwindling as she watched the clock tick down. The first hour was more of an inconvenience than a problem. The second hour meant she probably wouldn’t make it to the hotel in time to spend some time in the room with Nico before he left, which was disheartening, but not entirely earth shattering. The third hour meant she wouldn’t get to see him at all before he left for the arena.

Nina was trying her best to keep on top of Poppy’s nerves, but even the power of those glimmering Hischier brown eyes couldn’t outweigh a delayed flight and an irksome lack of communication from the airline.

The only silver lining to the whole situation is the depth at which two people can bond when forced to just sit and wait together.

She learns more about Nina than Nico could ever tell her - about her career, her passions, her interests. Her love for volleyball, and various other sports, for travel, including her bucket list of countries to visit, and an already-planned itinerary of what she would want to do in each one. The two of them shared stories of their own travels over the years, gushing over secret spots they had both visited in the few spots they shared an interest in. Nina regaled Poppy with childhood stories of Nico, ones even her parents weren’t privy to - and it reinforces a lot of the things Poppy has learned herself about him over the years - of his love for learning, always wanting to educate himself, better himself. His love for trying new things, and how, despite being the youngest sibling, always encouraged his brother and sister to do the same.

They talk about music, about movies and TV shows, fashion, podcasts, food, their differing experiences in college, and by the time it is finally time to board their flight - after replenishing their stock of snacks - their conversation carries on seamlessly until half the journey has passed, almost.

Talking to Nina is easy. She’s friendly and charming, in a way Poppy is sure must run in their genes - hopes it does, and is passed down to her daughter like their brown eyes and dimpled smiles - and there isn’t a second of hesitance when it comes to her caring for Poppy like a little sister.

It’s the kind of sibling bond she has never really had before.

Her and Oli didn’t argue that much when they were kids, but their difference in age created an unmovable barrier between the two of them, and so they were never as close as the Hischier siblings appear to be.

It makes Poppy think of her mom, again. Think of Rosie, and the what-if of growing up with a big sister, herself. Would they have bonded over things like clothes and music? Would they have been each other’s shoulders to lean on? Knowing that it was ever a possibility makes her feel a lack that wasn’t there those couple of weeks ago, when she hadn’t ever known of her sister’s existence.

And she knows it’s strange to hope that building a relationship with Nina might fulfil that - edging herself into whatever gap the Hischier family might leave for her might make up for this gap in her own heart that now she feels will never be filled again - but spending the day with her makes her long for something she never spared a thought to before now.

She looks after Poppy in the way a big sister would, too. Makes sure she’s getting up and walking around intermittently, makes sure whenever the beverage cart comes around, she’s ordering refreshments to make sure Poppy stays hydrated. She keeps a watchful eye on the WC when Poppy starts shifting in her seat, lets her know when the vacant sign lights up above the door so Poppy can amble over and relieve the growing pressure on her bladder from trying to constantly drink.

And when Nina finally lets herself drift off, Poppy can’t help but stay awake, teary eyed, wondering how she ever got so lucky.

How she was lucky enough to have a partner like Nico, so in tune with her emotions that he sent his sister over to keep her company when she didn’t even know at that point it would be exactly what she needed. How she was lucky enough to have an extended family that cared enough about her to agree to it, to fight over the responsibility, as Nina had implied her and Katja had done. How she was lucky enough to get on so well with Nina, to talk to her almost non-stop for hours on end, to bond over their appreciation of so many things that stretches so far beyond their shared love of Nico.

She gets so caught up in her appreciation that she eventually drifts off with a dopey smile on her face, the dimmed lights of the cabin soothing her to sleep for the rest of their flight, and she lets the contentment she feels seep into her bones so much that when they’re delayed another hour on the tarmac when they land, she doesn’t let it get to her. When she's stuck behind a group of pensioners who don't know how to operate the scanners at passport control, she withholds her huffs and puffs. When her bags are the last to come out on the luggage carousel, she refrains from complaining.

She’ll see him, soon. She might not get her hour alone in their hotel room. She might not get her kiss goodbye in the hotel lobby. She might not even, at this rate, catch the beginning of the game, despite it being the only thing the two of them have talked about for weeks - the possibility of the team making it to the finals in the world championships, to her getting to see him live out his dreams live in action. Between taking her bags to the hotel and travelling to the arena with Nico’s family, not yet accounting for the inevitability of further traffic on her way, because that's just her luck, she’s probably going to get there part way through the first period, and the optimistic part that remains within her tells her, at least she's getting to see him at all.

But she’s in the same country, now. When she gets out of this god forsaken airport, she’ll be breathing the same air, kind of. And the months, that turned to weeks, that turned to days, have now turned to hours.

She can definitely do hours.

She can do anything for Nico.

In all the lead up to Poppy flying out to Europe to meet Nico, the two of them had never really accounted for it turning out like this.

If she really thinks back on it, she thinks she was giddy, too caught up in the romance of it all, of the whirlwind nature of everything that unfolded - of flying overseas to be with him, of preparing to spend the summer together, surrounded by his family, in his favourite place on earth, of getting to watch him play again like the weight of the world isn’t on his shoulders.

The ending to the Devil’s season had been tough - and he would never show it, not to Poppy, not when the two of them were spending so much time together, but it had taken a toll on him. She knows Nico doesn’t back down. She had told her mom as much. Nico doesn’t fold to pressure. He builds himself back up, builds those around him back up like the true captain he is, and he never lets the outcome of a game get to him.

For most of the season, there’s always the next game. Always room to improve, always a chance to claw things back in his favour. But those final few months, with playoff contention just slipping further and further out of his reach, his relationship with his own game had suffered a little.

She would watch him come home with a slump in his shoulders, eased away only by her gentle embrace. Would take notice of the way he would talk about work less, shifting the subject or speaking in phrases without much heart behind them.

And seeing the spring return to his step at the thought of playing in the world championships, of initially captaining his national team, had flooded her with pride, and with hope.

Every time the team progressed, their plans would change.

The first plan had been to meet him at home in Switzerland. She had work to wrap up, keeping her in Jersey, and he was going to get his apartment over there ready to fit the two of them for the inevitable future. And then the team kept progressing. Kept winning. And plans to fly out and stay with just him turned into plans to fly out and stay with the family, his opportunity to get things ready getting shorter and shorter the better they played.

And then rolled round the quarter finals. The semi finals only two days after, the day before she was set to fly out - and no matter what the result of that game was, she would be jetting off to Prague, instead.

And she hadn’t really said it to him, not wanting to jinx anything, but it was like she had known somewhere in her heart that he would make it all the way to the end.

It’s what Nico does. He fights tooth and nail to get to where he wants to be, and she knows, after the season the Devils had, that Nico wanted that gold medal more than anything.

And when she had been sat on that plane, waiting on the tarmac for the delayed opportunity to disembark, and had decided at that point that there was nothing she wouldn’t or couldn’t do for the man she loved, she hadn’t entirely prepared herself for the possibility that anything could mean consoling him after such a heartbreaking loss.

She would like to think she’s good at comforting him, would like to think she’s mastered it over the years of knowing him. In those first years of their budding friendship, where she might have seen him after a few games, he might have dropped by her desk, or later her office, in the days after a game, she’d do her best to pick him back up. Some dumb jokes, a hug or two, eyes meeting and sticking in what she now remembers as a heated gaze until he would melt, would give a bashful smile and crack a joke back.

And that had progressed to him coming over to her apartment. To collapsing onto her couch with a heavy sigh and trying to blend himself into her routine, to erase the part of himself that hurt and cover it up with the part of himself she made feel better.

He picked up the same sort of habits when the two of them had fully reconciled, seeking solace in just her company, even if they weren’t properly together at that point. Comforted by fleeting touches, the holding of each other’s gaze, and all the soft, affirming words spoken between the two of them. And by the end of the season when they were together, it was by intimacy, the moments shared underneath her sheets that weren’t explicit, the bump of noses, the fluttering of lashes against cheeks, the soft whispers of unspoken worries that were trapped by a duvet pulled over their heads, their doubts not allowed to seep out into the blissful world they’re trying to create together.

But this kind of pain is a crease she fears can’t be ironed out by the simplicity of touch. Of kisses in the dark, of hands on hearts and legs intertwined.

When she hears the soft beep of his key card to his hotel room, listens for the heavy footsteps that carry him down the hall, and looks up to see the man she loves, defeated and remorseful, in front of her, her resolve shatters into a million pieces.

For all the lows she has held his hand through, nothing compares to this moment.

That night in the bar at the end of the season last year, where she had rested her head on his chest and heard the clunky beat of his broken heart, doesn’t even come close.

It’s the rattle of a shaky breath he lets out that has her own heart breaking, shooting up from where she had been perched, picking at her fingers nervously on the edge of the hotel bed, and launching herself at him.

She pulls her body straight into his, wrapping her arms around him in the hopes that such a small gesture could ever possibly convey the love she has for him.

She had thought seeing his sorrow blasted across the jumbotron earlier in the arena had hurt. She had thought their initial, rushed reunion after the game, where he had put on a brave face and told her he would meet her back in the room, the pressure of his kiss the only giveaway to his internal anguish, was bad.

But this is so much worse.

Holding him as he chokes out a sob, the initial flimsy wrap of his arms around her turning into fingers clutching with a white knuckle grip at the shirt on her back, trying to conceal his pain through muscles that tense around her, restricting his shaking frame from giving his emotions away.

She holds him for as long as she feels like he needs to be held, until that tension eases a little, those shaky breaths even out, and his body starts to sway a little.

When their bodies part, she can’t bring herself to entirely leave his orbit, pressing kisses to wherever she can reach as he basks in her affections, eyes fluttering closed like he’s still trying to hide from her.

“I’m so sorry you didn’t get your dream, baby,” she hums into the corner of his mouth, leaning a little to press a gentle kiss to the scar forming deep into his cheek, his neck craning to make it easier for her to reach.

His eyes squeeze tighter, keeping the warmth of his irises from her softened gaze, and she’s too close to see the bob in his throat, but she does see the clench of his jaw, stress still present in every fibre of his being. She wants to be his relief, wants to be the one to make things okay, make things better, but even she knows sometimes that isn’t for the best.

He needs to let these emotions, as heavy as they are, pass through him. He shouldn’t have to cover them up just to make her more comfortable, make their time together more enjoyable. She has the rest of her life to enjoy him, if he’ll let her.

So she clutches at the shirt covering his chest and pulls him back toward the bed, sitting him down and perching herself beside him, a comforting hand on his lap and a shoulder ready for him to cry on, literally.

She doesn’t even have to prompt him, then, to open up - the nature of their relationship thus far prevailing in the way he sniffles, turns to her with knees knocking, and starts to fiddle with her fingers resting on his thigh.

“I feel like this was my last chance to prove something,” he starts, his voice hoarse and his posture folding, “This year has just been so rough, you know?”

Poppy nods, because she does know, even if he hasn’t explicitly said it before now. Nico wears his resilience like armour, but she sees him when he’s bare. When the clunky metal that protects him from everyone else is removed, and his vulnerabilities are exposed, only to her. She sees the heavy sighs, the slumped shoulders, the forced smiles. She sees discomfort, unease, exhaustion.

“We got hit by all those injuries, and we didn’t make the playoffs, and the boys were all so down, and I,” he lets out an elongated exhale, tongue swiping out to wet the corner of his mouth, “I feel like I’m not living up to what’s expected of me, or what I expect of myself.”

She rubs soothingly at his knuckles, biting her tongue to withhold from telling him that’s he’s everything and more, because it isn’t what he’s asking of her.

“I just needed a win.” He chokes out, and as a tear slips from his watery eyes, Poppy reaches to catch it with her thumb, swiping at his skin. “I just needed to feel like I could achieve something like this before it slips away from me.”

“Where is it slipping away to?” Poppy frowns, letting her touch linger on his cheek.

“We’re having a baby, Poppy,” he speaks through swollen lips, glassy eyes meeting her gaze in the dark of the room. “When she comes, my dreams are gonna be different. My priorities will be different, I owe it to the two of you to be better. You deserve better.”

“It’s not one thing or the other, Nico.”

“Isn’t it?” He asks, “I have to put you first-,”

“You already do.”

“It won’t be enough when she comes, it’s not fair to either of you,”

“Says who?”

“Says everybody. Says Talia, says your mom, says me chasing this stupid medal and leaving you to travel half way across the world on your own while you’re 5 months pregnant only for me to lose-,”

“Stop it,” she commands him, firm, despite the growing ache in the back of her throat, both hands clasped on either side of his jaw and levelling him with a stern look. “You don’t have to give me any more of yourself to be enough, Nico. I wasn’t on my own, I had Nina, because you have this little section of your beautiful brain,” she taps on the side of his head to point it out, “That, despite being worked to the bone for almost 9 months straight without a real break, and despite all the chaos of us figuring everything out, and you chasing after your dreams, which are not stupid, by the way, saw straight through me trying to pretend I wasn’t completely losing my mind these past few days and sent your sister out just to make sure I wasn’t alone-,”

“You wouldn’t have been alone if I were th-,”

Poppy places her hand over his mouth, the rest of his sentence mumbled into her palm as she narrows her eyes at him. “I said stop, didn’t I?”

He nods, his shoulders sagging and his eyebrows doing all they can to express the emotion that she’s covering him from speaking through his lips.

He’s far too good for her, she thinks.

So good that she has struggled to put it into words, basking selfishly in his affections, bathing in their love so long that the water has gone cold by the time it’s his turn to sit in it.

She has felt it for as long as she can remember, this crippling adoration for him, this warm devotion that cushions the blow of everything else life tries to throw her way - but she hasn’t said it. Not clear enough, anyway, for him to not doubt it’s there.

Not in the way he had, all those weeks ago back in his bed - their bed - at 3am. He had poured his heart out to her, and she had drank it all up with nothing left to spare.

“You do all these things for me, you send your sister half way across the world just to circle straight back, you call my dad and my brother out, you shame my family into loving me more so that they can live up to the ways that you do it, and you don’t even understand how much of yourself you already give to me. I could sit here all night and not run out of ways to tell you how you make things better. Every part of my world that you touch, you make it good, you make me good. And a lot of that comes from who you are outside of our relationship.

“So I’d never want you to think you have to give any of the other stuff up to be enough for me. I fell in love with the parts of you that you give to the foundation, to the community and all the causes we help. I love the parts of you that you save just for the ice. I love the parts of you that you leave at the Rock, in the locker room with the guys, or in the parking lot when you stop and sign stuff for the fans waiting in the cold. And whatever parts of you are left to come home to me, or that you dedicate to me when you’re not home, God, Nico, I don’t think I’ll ever even be able to measure how loved you make me feel. I can’t wait for our daughter to feel that.”

His eyes are watering, and tears drop until they run their course down his cheeks, stopped by her fingers still clasped over his mouth, fingers she removes to hold his head again, the scratch of his grown out beard tickling at her palms, to hammer her point home.

“I know that this hurts right now. I know how hard you worked for this, how bad you wanted it, and it’s okay to have wanted it so bad that it kills you that you didn’t get it, but don’t let it take away what you mean to me. This isn’t your last chance to prove yourself, Nico, not to me, not to our baby, I promise you.”

Poppy knows how it feels to want to have achieved certain things before their little girl arrives. She’s worked herself up enough about it since finding out she was pregnant, but being a parent isn’t about who she was before. She’d realised that when she had sat down with her mom, when her dad had started making more of an effort. When the two of them had made promises to try, and it had glued together small parts of her heart that she thought could never be fixed.

All they can do is be the best version of themselves in the moment. When their daughter comes, it’s about who they are then, not what medals they won, or what trophies they lifted, or milestones they hit. They can still do those things with her there, and those moments will be all the sweeter for experiencing them with their daughter.

“Can I speak yet?” He whispers, dark eyes more intense than she thinks she’s ever seen them, staring right into the depths of her soul.

“No,” she replies, in the same hushed tone, “One more thing.”

She shoots over to where she had discarded her carry on, earlier, digging through to the bottom where a small leather box sits - where it has sat since the day Nico left Jersey all those weeks ago, and she had felt an impulse too strong to ignore to get him something after he had given her bracelet back.

When she goes back to stand before him, he parts his legs, and pats his thigh until she perches herself on it, careful not to drop all of her weight until a hand curls around her waist and holds her in place.

“It’s a signet ring,” she smiles softly as she takes it out of the box, tugging his right hand closer and sliding it onto the finger beside his pinky. “They’re supposed to be a sign of family. Usually they’re engraved, but I thought we could figure that out later and go do it together.”

“You have one, too?” He asks, admiring the way it glints as he takes it in, the band thick and heavy below his knuckle, the perfect fit.

“I will when my hands aren’t like blown up surgical gloves.”

And through teary eyes, for the first time all night since they have been reunited, a laugh bubbles up from the pit of his stomach, hearty and deep, eyes crinkling in the corners and cheeks dimpling into that beautiful smile she loves more than anything else in the world.

“Aren’t I supposed to be the one getting you a ring?”

God, she thinks, how could he ever possibly think he isn’t enough?

Melting her heart with such a question, accompanied with an ever-so-innocent glint in his eye.

She’s still holding onto his finger, twirling the ring around on it until it starts to tickle, starts to seemingly twitch with the need to hold her back.

“Only if you want to,” she shrugs, lips twisting as he raises his hand to cup her cheek, fingers swiping her hair behind her ear and the cool metal of the jewellery pressing to her warm skin.

“I do.” He promises before he kisses her, meaningful and deep, a whole month of longing wrapped up into the searing press of their lips.

Poppy wakes the next morning to soft, continuous buzzing and a wash of light spread almost heavenly over the room. The space beside her is empty, but warm, the sheets crumpled as if only just vacated, and it’s as she starts to gain consciousness and make sense of her surroundings that she realises what the noise is.

“No, no, no, no, no!” She exclaims as she kicks the tangles sheets from her bare legs, them balling up in a messy pile as she shoots up off the bed and stumbles toward the bathroom. “Do you hate me or something?!”

“What are you talking about?” Nico chuckles deeply, the morning rasp to his voice not quite enough to distract her from the device he’s holding in his hand - the hand she had only just last night brandished with a ring, for God’s sake.

“I literally professed my undying love for you not even 12 hours ago, Nico, and this is how you repay me?”

“Maybe I’m testing the limits of the undying part,” he shrugs, amusement flickering across his stupidly beautiful eyes - and the part of Poppy that’s over the moon to see him smiling, is quickly shot down by the part of her that’s been waiting to get her hands on that bearded jaw for weeks.

“You’re testing my patience, is what you’re doing,” she scoffs, reaching to snatch the clippers from his grip. “I didn’t even get to have a turn!”

“What am I, a carnival ride?” He laughs heartily as he pulls them just out of her reach, her body stepping into his so that he can land his free hand on her hip and keep her close. “It had to go, Poppy, I looked like a caveman. Coach said we all have to clean up a little for today.”

“Your coach is a traitor,” she pouts, allowing him to crowd her back until the base of her spine bumps against the counter. “You’re my caveman. My gorgeous, sexy, caveman baby daddy who I’ve only got to see through a screen for four whole weeks, you can’t do this to me with no warning.”

“You wanna finish it off?” He asks, head tilting as he smirks down at her.

“It’s only fair I do,” she sighs, placing her hands on the counter and hoisting herself up onto it with a huff, parting her legs so that he can step between them. “Maybe I can salvage something,” she mutters, running delicate fingers over what remains, an untouched moustache and some growth left on his chin. “Can I give you a goatee?”

“Do your worst, Mohn, I’m at your mercy to defile.”

“You’re gonna regret that.”

“I’ll never regret anything where you’re concerned.”

Next Chapter

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big fan of boys on ice. 🏒