Breaker
"Baby, what the fuck is that?" I asked, walking into the house after two days away at a job, desperate for my bed, my woman, and something to eat that didn't come in a paper fucking bag.
"What? You said to decorate while you were away," Alex said, shrugging as she closed her laptop, unfolded her long legs, and attempted to get up off the couch.
Attempted.
Skinny little slip of a thing like her with a giant belly made most movement difficult for her. And laughable for me. Though after getting a remote thrown at my head the last time I laughed at her attempting to get out of an armchair at Paine's mom's house, I had learned to laugh on the inside. Even when her legs were peddling in the air, and it was funny as shit.
Because, well, Alex was easy to rile on a normal day. Pregnant, hormonal Alex was borderline psychotic, and it wasn't exactly wrong to be fearing for my life at night sometimes when I, apparently, breathed too hard for her to be able to sleep.
Alex was not a happy, glowing, nesting pregnant woman.
She was a surly mess who had given up on pants since she couldn't bend forward properly to pull them up and she Is not some kind of fucking gymnast who can do backbends to get them up over my ass - I had, wisely, not mentioned that she somehow managed to get her panties on though - and who took her usual sedentary life to the extreme now that she had an excuse.
And holy fuck did I hear it about how what I did to her prevented her from having her computer on her lap like she needed to work.
I had spent hours finding the perfect rolling laptop table thing that she could position over her belly after about a week of that bitching when she finally popped.
"Yeah, Alex, but that is not the tree."
In fact, it was a strand of green lights twisted across the wall in the shape of a tree, kept in place by golden thumbtacks. She had also cut out a piece of printer paper and colored it yellow for the star.
While the actual artificial tree sat next to the fireplace where I had dragged it and set it up for her next to the plastic container full of lights and ornaments.
This was hardly our first Christmas rodeo. She knew how the tree decorating went. Usually, we did it together. And by 'together,' I mean that I did most of it while she claimed I had blind spots or too many ornaments in one place. But it had been a crazy as fuck December with work for some reason, and I had needed to be out of town more than I liked. Especially with a heavily pregnant woman at home.
But that was the reason I did it too.
She was another month and a half out.
When the baby was born, I wanted to take a good six months off to help her out. To do that, I needed to do as many jobs as possible before he was born so I could sock the money away to hold us over for all that time.
This last job had been enough to give us eight to ten months of no work without me touching our savings if I needed it.
But it took me out of town over the weekend when we (I) usually decked the house out.
"Listen here," she said, finally standing, putting her hands to her lower back and bending backward to stretch it out a bit, "I got those goddamn lights out and sat on the floor to test them all out and everything. And then I had to fucking crab walk back to the couch to get some leverage to get me off the floor. I gave up after that."
"Know what I think?" I asked, moving toward her, my hands going behind her back to brush her hands away so that I could work at the knots myself, something that always made her make this hot as fuck purring noise.
"I have a feeling I don't want to know," she guessed, correctly.
"I think your ass is just being lazy," I told her, making her try to jerk back and pull away, but my hands were holding her too tight, so all she could manage was to small-eye me and cross her arms over the top of her belly. "Come on, admit it. Maybe the tree was asking too much. But the stockings required exactly no sitting on the floor. Or the wreath for the front door."
"I can't have coffee, Breaker. Coffee. The nectar of the gods. The stuff that makes up two-thirds of my bloodstream. The stuff that gets me out of the bed in the morning. I can't have it. Like at all. And, on top of that, I can't sleep with you gone."
"You can't sleep with me here either," I reminded her, even if I maybe liked it too much that she liked not-sleeping with me beside her. "Because I breathe too loud. And take up too much of the bed."
"And are too hot," she added. "You can't forget that. You're too freaking hot. It's like sleeping beside a furnace."
"Right. I'm too hot too."
"Yeah, but I'd rather not-sleep with you here." At that, her arms uncrossed, her hands sliding up my arms to settle at my shoulders.
"Well, luckily, I am done now. I will be there to piss you off for no good reason every night until you force me to go back to work."
"I was thinking about that," she started, giving me her serious face. "We could always just switch roles. I can be the breadwinner; you can be Mr. Mom."
Alex was worried about being a mom.
She hadn't exactly confessed it, but it was right there in just about every conversation we have had since she missed her period after switching to a birth control that, apparently, was not as effective as her old one.
While her mom had been there for her, had loved her, she had been battling her own demons even before Alex was born. Alex had, in a lot of ways, needed to raise herself. Then after her mom's suicide, she had been almost completely on her own in the world. It had made her a bit more reserved emotionally, more repressed, and - she thought - colder.
And maybe it was true that no one would meet Alex and immediately think Now that woman was born to be a mother!
That didn't mean, however, that she didn't have it in her. She did. She couldn't cook for shit, and she didn't get her jollies keeping house, and maybe she didn't exactly go run to the cribs of the babies the people around us had been popping out, oohing and ahhing over the kids, but that didn't mean she didn't have what it took to be a mother.
She was just going to be a different kind of one.
It didn't mean dick that she wasn't going to be able to bake cookies without burning them. What mattered was that no matter how many times she turned out ones burned to ash, she kept trying for my birthday and for holidays.
And it didn't matter that she didn't shriek and fret and wring her hands when I sliced a finger open on a knife, or came home bloodied and bruised. What mattered was she rolled up her sleeves and made sure I was patched up and taken care of.
It was hard for Alex to love, but when she did, she did it fucking deep. She did it to the marrow.
I was pretty sure she didn't see it the way I did. So she was convinced she was going to fuck up this kid beyond reason.
But, hey, I was convinced that was the right mindset to have. People who were convinced they were going to be the best parents known to mankind generally ended up being the ones who did damage with all their well-meaning and high standards.
"Said it a thousand times already, baby, but I will keep saying it till you fucking believe it - you're gonna be a great mom. Stop stressing so much about it."
"I just think--" she started, but was cut off by the pounding at the door.
And at this time a year and this late at night, it could only be one person.
"Dunno why you bother knocking, Shoot. You got a key," I called, regrettably pulling away from Alex to stride across the room when there was just more knocking.
I pulled the door open to reveal Shoot, stubbornly without a jacket even in the freezing weather, his white tee and skinny black jeans doing nothing to fend off the cold. His hands were full of a coffee tray and a bag of - I imagined - donuts.
"Sorry, hands full. Are you gonna let me in, man?" he asked as I took the bag from him and moved aside so he could pass.
"No!" Alex shrieked as soon as the door closed, her eyes falling on Shooter.
"No?"
"How dare you come in here with coffee? You cruel, evil, sadistic bastar..."
"Oh, the radiant, glowing mother to be!" Shoot declared, completely immune to Alex's anger. "Cheeks are even dewy and shit. Motherhood looks good on you, sugar, honey..."
"Don't Sugar, honey, darling me, Johnny Walker Allen," she snapped, small-eyeing him as he put the tray down on the table beside her, reaching for one of the coffees.
"But I come bearing decaf coffee," he declared, holding it out, waving at it like one of those models on a prize show. "I even trolled the menus of all the local coffee places to see which ones decaf had the lowest caffeine content. I figured you must be miserable without it," he added, giving her one of his smiles, the ones that always disarmed her. Plus, bearing decaf coffee, there wasn't a damn thing he could do wrong in the world right then. "And I brought you three jelly donuts. Two for you, one for Johnny Junior," he declared dramatically, joking.
He was not yet aware that we planned on naming him Johnny, but calling him Junior.
It was a card we were playing close to our vests, something to spring on him when he came to see us in the hospital.
"Not that I didn't need this after being on the road for four hours," I said, saluting him with my coffee when he handed it to me, "but shouldn't you be getting your surprise by now?"
"Amelia is behind," he declared, dropping down on the couch, kicking his creeper-clad feet up on the coffee table.
Shoot and Amelia had this tradition where she kicked him out on Christmas Eve, and she planned some kind of surprise for him.
He reached for the donuts, pulling out a Boston Cream, and considering it for a second before taking a bite, giving Alex a closed-mouth smile when she snatched the bag away from him. Leave it to Shoot to be able to be charmed by her even when she was surly. "She told me about two hours ago that I needed to get lost and not come back until she texts me. I thought maybe it would be a naughty lingerie surprise like the first year, so I just drove around town. But when an hour passed, I decided to drag my ass up here to check on my favorite pregnant lady. And her underserving man."
"Did Amy get the thousand texts from Kenzi today?" Alex asked, waving her phone at him.
Traditionally, since Shoot and I didn't have any family of our own, we spent Christmas with Paine's over-the-top clan. Kenzi the loudmouth boss, Reese the quiet do-gooder, their aunts, their mom, us, and now our women, who were welcomed into the fold as if they had just been away on a long trip.
Amelia got on a little better in the kitchen under dictator Kenzi's rule since she was actually capable of cooking. Alex, not so much. Sometimes she was relegated to tasks like stirring the gravy or putting ice in the cups since Kenz was convinced that Alex could burn rolls just by looking at them for too long.
"She is on potato au gratin this year. What does she have you on?"
"Trying not to ruin anything," Alex declared, pulling apart her donut so she could dip the parts that didn't touch it into the jelly. "I told her that I couldn't make any promises. And that maybe I should be allowed to stay in the living room this year since my belly can clear counters now."
"How's it cooking in there?" Shoot asked, getting close to, but not actually touching Alex's stomach. Which he learned the hard way was a hard no.
Why the fuck do people think it is suddenly acceptable to go around and touch peoples' fucking stomachs just because there's a lifeform in it? The next person to get within six inches of my stomach is getting their fucking hand broken, I swear.
She declared that in a crowded store after some woman she had never seen before pressed her hand to the bump and asked when she was due.
"The damn timer needs to go off. I need him out. Like now. He uses my bladder as a pillow," she declared, voice grave, and I knew this was going to be another 'I don't think this is a miracle; it is really creeping me the eff out' speeches. "And sometimes, if I am sitting still, he moves and, ugh, so gross... you can see parts of him popping out of my skin. It's some straight up Alien shit."
Shooter laughed at her, reaching over to twine his pinky with hers. "But just think, soon he will be out, and you can have coffee again. No? What did I say wrong?" he asked when she yanked her hand away and got up on a growl to go into the kitchen. "What'd I say?" he asked, looking over at me.
"She's gonna nurse," I explained. "So no coffee for at least another six months."
"Shit. No wonder she's so miserable. I found this shirt for her for Christmas," he said, lips twitching. "Pregnant lady shirt with writing on the belly that says Don't Fucking Touch Me. I think she will wear out the seams she'll wear it so much."
"I might have to get one for each day of the week," I agreed as Alex reached into the fridge."
"Pickles?" Shooter asked, smirking.
"I wish. Fucking hot peppers in hummus. Hot. Like if you put your mouth anywhere near hers within twenty-four hours of her eating them, your lips feel like they're burning off. And she eats them every day."
Before the baby, she had avoided spicy food like the plague, claiming she just didn't have tastebuds that could handle it. Now, she couldn't get enough. I once tried to replace the super hot ones for only mildly hot ones to save myself. But she'd taken one bite, small-eyed me, and told me not to fuck with her.
Luckily, I found Alex's brand of prickly amusing as fuck, and it was only amplified with her long list of new things that made her irritable.
"Make her drink some milk after. You know, for the baby," he suggested, looking back from where Alex was balancing the hummus on top of her stomach as a little table.
"Yeah, and how do you suggest I make Alex do anything?"
"Got a point there," he agreed, sipping his coffee. Having a bit of a headstrong woman himself, he got it. "What'd you get her? Her Christmas list wasn't exactly romantic."
Except, to Alex, computer components were romantic.
So I got her some of those.
But I had also tracked down something infinitely more sentimental.
My goal was to make my little hardass at least tear up.
It was no easy task. Even with a few years together, I think I had only seen it happen twice.
In case you were wondering, no, one of those times was not when the stick turned blue. That had been complete and utter paralyzing terror.
"Get Amy anything interesting?"
"Got her some normal crap, but I think she's gonna bug out about a trip back to Alabama." It didn't happen often, but once and a while, his accent came on thicker than usual. And, for whatever reason, every time he spoke of his home state, it was heavy. The words stretched and rolled. "Dade is offering for us to stay in his guest cottage thing on his ranch. Amy really likes him. And she has always wanted to learn to ride a horse. She's already a little fed up with the cold this year. She could use a break. We're leaving the day after Christmas and staying till after New Years. Don't worry," he said, seeming to pick up on the train of my thoughts, "we are gonna be back in more than enough time to see that kid be born. Well, not see it," he said, shivering a bit in dis-ease over the whole idea, "but you know."
"No one is seeing anything," Alex called, putting her peppers away and reaching for her coffee, a combo I couldn't fathom trying to mix, but she did so without a grimace as she came closer. "Breaker is already under the threat of castration with a plastic butter knife if he tries to even look below the waist while that crime scene happens."
"Well, then can he film you cussin' and swearin' at him, telling him he will never get to fuck you again? 'Cause I'd like to see that."
"You wanna see that, you can just stop by just about any night of the week," Alex admitted, shaking her head a little. "I'm sure he's told you I've been nothing but a damn shrew this whole time."
"He's said no such thing," Shooter assured her, giving her bare knee a squeeze, used to her pantslessness at this point. "And you're allowed to be miserable. You got a parasite in there eating up all your food, growing hair and nails and shit. That'd put anyone in a mood."
"Not helping," I grumbled at him, watching as he gave me a 'not my problem' smirk.
"It'll all shake out," he assured her, reaching for his phone as it buzzed in his pocket. "Welp, I gotta go. My angel is waiting for me. Hopefully in nothing but a Christmas ribbon. Take care of your woman," he told me, clamping a hand on my arm as he moved to stand then move toward Alex, reaching to tilt her head up to face him. "Little tip, sugar," he said, leaning down close to her, "a cup of milk after those hot peppers. For your man's sake."
With that, he was off, wishing us a Merry Christmas, and saying he would see us in the morning.
"Why didn't you say anything about the hot peppers?" Alex demanded as soon as we were alone again, using the arm of the chair to drag herself up out of it, moving across the floor to the kitchen where she went right for the milk.
"They keep you happy."
"Be a lot happier if I didn't know you were getting burned when I kiss you."
"Well, in my defense, I never told you you were burning me."
"Yeah, what's up with that?" she asked, rubbing some milk on her lips before licking it off.
"What's up with what?" I asked, getting up, and moving toward her.
"What's up with you not telling me that kissing me is like kissing a dragon? Hm?"
"You're mad at me for not picking a fight with you?"
"I don't want to be treated with kid gloves, Breaker," she insisted, trying to cross her arms at me again, but I reached for them, pulling them to rest on my shoulders instead.
"Never treated you with them, Alex."
Her air whooshed out of her, making her shoulders relax for the first time in weeks. "I'm being kind of a bitch lately, huh?"
My lips twitched as my hands moved around to her lower back. "Hey, you said it, not me."
"Wanna test out the milk theory?" she asked, going up on her toes, sticking her ass out, so her stomach wasn't quite so in the way.
"Always wanna fucking kiss you, babe," I agreed right before her lips closed over mine.
She broke away a long minute later, slamming her forehead down onto my shoulder with a grumble. "He needs to get out," she told my shirt. "Preggo sex weirds me out," she admitted for the first time. I mean, I had been suspecting as much since her stomach really popped, and our sex life went from nearly every night to almost never. "You can't get close. And then I look down, and there's my damn belly. It's just a mood killer. But once he's out, and my lady business is all I dunno... put to rights again, I don't care how tired we are, we are breaking that bed back in."
"Got no complaints there," I agreed, willing my cock to just be patient for a couple more months. We'd managed this far. "So how about we do presents now? I know waking your stubborn ass up in the morning to head over to be bossed around by Kenz is gonna be hard enough. We won't be able to fit presents in before that."
We moved over to the 'tree' where her pile of presents for me was stacked, and I went down to the basement to get mine, finding that Alex was the nosy sort if I wasn't careful.
"See? You really do love me!" she declared dramatically, holding some fucking computer thing to her chest like a little girl with a doll on Christmas morning.
"Got one last one," I told her, reaching for the box I had kept by my side that she had eyed every time she reached for her next present.
"Gimme," she insisted, taking the big box onto her thighs, something I chose so she wouldn't know what it was immediately. "Oh," her air whooshed out of her when she pulled the record out of the box. "This is the song my mom used to sing to me."
"Babe, flip it over," I offered, watching as her brows furrowed at the cover of Nat King Cole's "Smile."
"Oh my... this can't be hers. Bryan..." she said, looking up from where her hand was touching the little scribble on the back. Her mother's name.
There it was.
A glisten.
"You were rushed off to foster care so soon after her suicide. You didn't get to grab shit that belonged to her. When I looked into it, the township sent in an investigator who eventually concluded there was nowhere to unload her stuff, so they got rid of it. Vinyl hasn't been in-demand until recently. Even so, not many people are after Nat King Cole. So I went looking at all the record shops in the area. Came across this."
"But... how did you know to look for this?" she asked, trying to hug it to her chest, but accomplishing hugging it to her belly instead.
"You told me she had a huge vinyl collection. When she was sad, she listened to it. And judging by the way you hum this song all the time without even realizing it, this was the song she listened to the most."
Her hand rose, swatting at her eye as she tried to stand, tried to hide it. But I saw it. I got through to her.
She moved across the room to her record player I had gotten her for her last birthday. There was a pause, then the static, then the song as she turned back, and made her way toward me, sitting down, then curling into my chest.
My arms slid around her, my chin resting against her head.
"Merry Christmas, baby."