Chapter Text
The phrase “blonde bombshell” has been bandied about for decades, and Johnny’s used it to describe more than one woman in his life. Sonya Blade has managed to become the living embodiment of it at this moment, sitting on his couch with her red-lacquered fingers pressed to his lips. He heard what she said, but it just doesn’t register.
“I’m pregnant,” she repeats when he doesn’t respond, his mind still trying to parse the words she’s just uttered. It’s a weekday morning, and it’s just too early for this. It’s not even noon yet. He hasn’t seen her for almost four excessively long months. Cold shoulder for two weeks was bad, three months has been hell, but he’s been determined not to break first.
To top it all off, he isn’t even wearing pants.
“So why are you telling me?” He’s angry - why has she come here, to flaunt some pregnancy, screwing some other guy, in his face? Has he - it crosses his mind like a blow to the back of the head. Is he just a good friend she fucks, and now that she’s knocked up she needs to talk to someone? Just his goddamned luck.
“You fucking idiot.” She glares at him, furious and beautiful. It hits him all at once, and he feels the bottom of his stomach drop out. His vision goes blurry at the edges. He’s thankful he’s sitting down. “Because it’s yours.”
“You’re…” Johnny is slack-jawed. She reaches into the pocket of her army green hoodie, fishing out a small printout and thrusting it at him. He takes it on autopilot and holds it carefully in his hands, still lost for words. He’s holding a live grenade, and any movement might set it off. Black and white and a little fuzzy except for the circle on it, but there have been enough of these from his sister or his friends or in a film that he knows what he’s staring at. He looks at the top, name and doctor’s information and date, estimated due date… He does some mental math, and it all lines up. That night, when she came to LA, when they had their date. “It can’t be… I had a… You don’t look pregnant,” he says dumbly, and she crosses her arms, glaring at him again.
That means she was pregnant those nights in her apartment, pregnant when she took down Quan Chi. She fucking owned those revenants, pregnant. He’s so proud and in love and terrified all at once he thinks his heart might burst.
“Well, I’m about three months along, and it’s yours because you’re the only one I’ve fucked in longer than I want to admit, and I’m here because I want to know what you want to do. I know what I want to do, but - I figured I owed you the courtesy of knowing you knocked me up.”
“Jesus, Sonya.” He looks at his hands, realizing they are trembling ever so slightly, and sets the ultrasound image down on the table. “First, I gotta have words with the surgeon that supposedly-“
“The Jinsei chamber. It has healing properties, remember? It’s indiscriminate with who it heals, and what injuries it heals.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah. So you’re gonna want to get that done again. Before you do this to someone else.” She snaps the words off, staccato like gunfire.
“Not gonna happen. There’s no someone else.” He picks up the picture of his - their - baby again, looks at it, looks at her and the flat plane of her stomach, puts it down again. Maybe there’s some rounding there, or maybe it’s just the way her shirt is rumpled, and the looseness of the hoodie and pants. “I mean… I believe you that it’s mine, so, uh… I guess the first thing is, what do you want to do? I mean, it’s… this is you, and I know your career means a lot to you…” He trails off, all glibness gone. He can’t decide what he wants - the idea of being a father is utterly terrifying. Being responsible for another person, forming another human’s identity, the long sleepless nights and scraped knees and martial arts classes and dating and it makes his stomach twist.
But it’s half of Sonya, too, and he’ll do anything for a little piece of her. He’s let her lead everything, and maybe that’s why she’s been off the grid for almost four months. Pregnant. Knocked up, with his kid. Incontrovertible proof that he got under all that armor at least once. “You wanna keep it, I’m in it for the long haul. Talk to my lawyer, get everything drawn up - college fund, trust fund, everything. You want to do something else, I mean, I’ll… well. I’ll back you with whatever you want to do. I’m footing the bill for everything, whatever you decide. Best doctors, hospitals, everything.”
“Smart answer, but I don’t need your charity.” She presses her lips together in a thin line. “But what do you want? You had a vasectomy because you didn’t want kids. I didn’t come here to drag you to court. Nothing like that. Your position was pretty clear, but it didn’t work that way. And that’s my fault, not yours. I should have insisted on backup, and I didn’t. So - what do you want?”
“I remember what you said, when you took down Quan Chi and I was bleeding out on the floor.” Her eyes widen slightly. “I’m all in, Sonya. I want this kid, with you. If I’m gonna have a kid, there’s not a single person on the planet I’d rather do it with.” He reaches a hand out towards her. “So, LTC, what’s your plan?”
“I… I want to keep it. I wanted to - even if you didn’t. Now that Shinnok’s done, that Quan Chi is… mostly dealt with. We’re mostly safe, as safe as we can be. If I’m gonna have a kid…” she trails off and shrugs. “I can think of worse people to contribute genes.”
“I think I’m flattered.” He drops his hand, and she pokes him in the knee with one foot.
“Go put on some pants and we can talk.”
“Do I have to?” He exaggerates the whine, just to see the annoyed smile light across her face. She pokes him again, harder. “Fine. Don’t go anywhere.” He vanishes into his bedroom and panics quietly for a minute, making an Edvard Munch-meets-Home-Alone scream face but not a sound. Pregnant. Baby. I’m gonna be a dad. Sonya fucking Blade is pregnant with my kid. Our kid. He clenches a fist and exhales in a hard puff as he pulls on underwear and pants, the first things to come to hand. He debates a shirt but thinks better of it - it’s his condo, and he’s not cold, and if she didn’t like how he looked she wouldn’t have taken him to bed three times.
He comes back out a little more collected, but not much. She’s swept the beer bottles off his table and is eyeing the state of his sink with an expression he’s usually seen reserved for extras who met camera eye line.
His baby mama is not impressed.
“I thought I told you not to move.”
“I couldn’t see the table for the beer bottles, I went to go put them in the recycling, then I wanted a glass of water, and then I saw the sink…” she trails off. “This is a mess. How can you live like this?”
“What, you want it shipshape and Bristol fashion?”
“That’s the Navy, idiot. Am I Navy?”
“No, you are Army. Actually, you’re leggy, but-“ He ducks a swing he’s not sure is joking or not, catching her fist in his hand. “Chill, Sonya. You want a drink?”
“I don’t think I can exactly do shots of rum,” she says acidly. “Just water. From a clean glass.”
“I told you not to go anywhere.”
“I didn’t think you meant not even your kitchen,” she snaps, and reclaims the couch, grabbing a pillow and holding it in her lap like a shield against the mess of his kitchen. He fills a glass with water and ice for her, and then pours himself a few fingers of white rum and downs it before refilling with water. And another finger of rum, to be on the safe side. He walks back over, handing the glass with ice to her, and sits down on the couch a little closer to her. For all that they know each other intimately, there’s an awkward sort of boundary. There’s line he’s afraid to cross, but he has no idea where the line’s been drawn.
“So, I haven’t heard anything about Jax in a while. Since the note. How’s he doing?”
“Better. They got him some new arms - not Quan Chi’s - and he’s working on his own. He literally bought a farm,” she adds, mouth relaxing into a smile. “Got himself a girlfriend, too. She’s an engineer or something. They met in one of his… meetings.” She trails off, and pulls out her phone. “We’ve gone out for lunch a couple of times. I like her a lot.”
“Got a picture?”
“Yeah.” She fusses on her phone, and shifts a little closer to him, and hands the phone over. There’s a photo of a farmhouse, a fantastically wrecked barn straight out of Steinbeck with a battered tractor. Another photo, Sonya covered in grease and dirt looking up from the tractor hood with sheer satisfaction. A photo of Jax and a very attractive black woman, her hair in two braids down the back of her head. She looks good, and happy. There’s a look on Jax’s face that might be happiness, too. Johnny has, admittedly, not had much experience with Jax and that expression.
“They look happy.”
“Trust me, I think Jax’s ready to pop the question already.” Sonya rolls her eyes and takes her phone back, sliding through more pictures too fast for him to follow. She doesn’t seem to find what she’s after so she pockets it. “Man is head-over-heels for her, and I can’t blame him. She’s good for him. He’s… adjusting, slowly. It’s a lot to get your head around.” She rubs at the back of her own, letting out her ponytail and working one hand against her scalp. “So we’ve been commiserating.”
“Am I the last one to know?”
The pause goes on, a little too long for comfort. “Not the last,” she says finally. “He was the first to know.” Johnny’s indignation must be clear, because she laughs a bit, and pushes at him. “He’s my best friend, Johnny. Of course I’m going to tell him. How else do I explain why I’m puking my guts out every morning and I don’t care how good his barbecue is, the idea of eating meat makes me sick? He’s not stupid.” She snorts. “No, he knew almost as soon as I did, when they dropped my ass to desk duty. Then I talked with my mom. And then Fujin-“
“Wait, what the fuck. You talked to Fujin first? Before me?”
“I needed to ask him,” she says blandly, “about the Jinsei chamber. Since stuff lined up a little too neatly. If it would have - affected things.”
“Jesus, I really was the last to know.”
“What would you have had me do? Hi, Johnny, just peed on a stick and guess what, you’re a dad?”
“Okay,” he admits, “maybe that wouldn’t have gone over so well. But Quan Chi, and-“
“Don’t you start.” She pokes him in the chest. “I already got that shit from Jax, and Vera when she found out, and my CO, and it was-“ she snaps her mouth shut. “Only got my ass out of it by playing a card I don’t like to play.”
“Not your mother?”
“She doesn’t know the details.” Sonya sighs, and he slings an arm around her shoulders, pulling her towards him. “I don’t share them, she doesn’t ask. She’s happier that way. Don’t blame her.”
“Well, I’d probably be panicking every time if I knew what you did, too. Hell, I know what you do, and I worry.” She rolls her eyes and relaxes ever so slightly into him. He pulls her onto his lap, and she rests her head on his shoulder. One of his hands slides along her shoulder and arm and settles on her tee shirt, over her stomach. “So, this is it, huh?”
“Agony, frustration, and the enamel on my teeth being shot from constantly puking up everything? Yeah. Your fault.”
“I guess it’s a good reason for locking me out for four months.”
“I couldn’t decide if I wanted to kill you or not, or how I wanted to tell you, or if I wanted to. If I was just going to make my decision and - whatever.”
“So you’re keeping it,” he says carefully, trying to see if he can feel any change in the muscle of her abdomen. “And I’m going to get in to my lawyer tomorrow and make sure I get everything drawn up. Trust fund, college fund, share of the royalties and everything from all my stuff, shunted over to Blade-Cage, and your name-“
“Excuse me?” She pulls back and her head shot up, almost fast enough to knock into his jaw.
“What, you want Cage-Blade? I can do that. Hyphens either way, it’s fine, I just - my name,” he says almost stupidly, “and your name, and-“
“Johnny, stop running your mouth. You get no say in naming this kid,” she says mildly. “With my luck you’d pick something horrendous. Like, what was that actor? Red Buttons?”
“Homage to a fine actor? We could do that.”
“No, oh hell no,” she laughs, and he clasps her against him. “No. Normal names. Normal, everyday, easy, simple names. Nothing ridiculous. Nothing… Hollywood.”
“We’ve got a few months to figure it out. You know if it’s a boy or a girl yet?”
“No,” she says, and her voice is distant. She shakes her head a moment. “Not sure I want to, really. Why, do you?”
“Kinda,” he admits. “But I’m not going to rush it. We’ve got some stuff to figure out first. What’s the likelihood of you staying the night? Or the weekend? Kinda… figure maybe we should talk some of this through. And celebrate.”
“I remember what happened the last time we celebrated.” Her eyes narrow and she looks down, pointedly. He wiggles her fingers against her belly. “But I suppose I can’t exactly get more pregnant.”
“We could try.” He grins down her. “But seriously, babe… Thanks.”
“For what?” She turns her face, tucks it into the side of his neck, and he sticks his hands in her hoodie’s pockets. He kicks his feet up on the table and she stretches her long legs out over the couch sideways. He tries to think of how to phrase everything bubbling in his mind, how to pull it out and explain it to her without sounding like an idiot.
“Telling me. Not giving me an ultimatum. Trusting me enough. Not calling me screaming about how I fucked up your life.”
“I considered it. Considered it a lot, mostly when I was puking my brains out and couldn’t keep anything down. But we both made choices that night, and I’d be an asshole and a hypocrite to totally blame you. Eighty-twenty.”
“Whoa, what the hell? Eighty-twenty?”
“Well, you always want to headline, and want more of the credit, right?”
He laughs, and shakes his head. “You know me too well. So, is that a yes that you’ll stick around - at least tonight? I mean… c’mon. What’s the likelihood of you moving in down here?”
“What, you want me to ride a desk?”
“Like you to ride other things, but I’ll take what I can get.”
“You’ve got a one-track mind.” She sounds exasperated. “I’m off ops, for now,” she says. “It’s just physical training and paperwork and administrative bullshit. It would be pulling a lot of strings, and I can’t promise that,” she adds, narrowing her eyes, “but I could maybe see about coming down here a little more often.”
“I want you to move in,” he repeats, surprised by how strongly he feels about it. “I’m willing to start with a couple of times a week - long weekends or whatever - but I don’t want you having to do this solo. I’m in this too. It’s not fair for me to ask you spend all your time solo. I’m - I mean, this place is pretty much paid for, maybe we could see about finding some place up by your base. I can always stay here if I have filming, or use it for weekend getaways if we want to.”
She sits quietly and thinks while he just keeps his hands tucked in her pockets, feeling the reassuring weight of her. “I appreciate the idea, I really do. I just - I haven’t had a roommate for a very, very long time. And we’re talking a lot more than that.” She pauses, and lets out a startled laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
“I think this is the first time - maybe the second - that I’m grateful my father’s not around for something.”
“Why?” Johnny blinks and he realizes the implications. “Oh shit.”
“Uh-huh. Texan soldier? He’d’ve had your ass riddled with shotgun pellets right now. You’d be marching your ass down an aisle soon as paperwork allowed.”
That silences him. He’s been meaning to say something to her anyway, and he might as well give it a go. He nudges her off his lap and walks back, reaching unerringly for a bag he’s kept in the corner of his nightstand for the past six months. He comes back a few minutes later, sitting back down beside her. He takes one of her hands, unfolds her fingers, and drops something onto her palm. He meets her eyes, and then steels himself as she looks down at the weathered gold band.
“That was my grandmother’s,” he says. “I’m not - I’m not asking you, now. I’m just saying that it’s an option on the table, if you want it. To prove I’m serious.”
She drops the ring like it burns, and leaps to her feet and is out the door faster than he thought possible.
He finds the ring from where it glints accusingly on the carpet, closing his hand around it carefully. That wasn’t the reaction he was expecting. He was pretty sure she wasn’t going to jump for joy, there wouldn’t be declarations of undying love - but he wasn’t expecting Sonya Blade to go into full retreat.
First time for everything.