Chapter Text
Day 1 - baby fever
in romania, ethan and mia discuss what it means to them to start over.
general warnings: angst, discussion of trauma (i.e. the events of resident evil 7), PTSD/anxiety, PTSD nightmares, discussion of pregnancy, doctor’s offices and scientific weirdness, alcohol (why do ethan and mia have so much wine in the romania house?), mentions of uncomfortable pregnancy things (miscarriages, baby suffering, etc), HAPPY/HOPEFUL ENDING DESPITE EVERYTHING!
smut warnings: smut, unprotected sex, creampies, fluffiness — a great way to start off breedvember if i do say so myself!
“…you can’t just say that like it’s nothing,” Mia said, sharper than she’d meant, and dropped her fork against the plate.
Ethan leaned back in his chair, wine glass in hand, clearly trying for casual but failing. “I didn’t say it was nothing. I just — look, it’s been on my mind.”
Mia blinked at him. “On your mind? Ethan, you’re talking about a child.”
“Yeah.” He took a sip, the wine seemingly burning his tongue more than it should’ve, and set it down. “A kid. Ours.”
The silence that followed wasn’t new, exactly. They’d both gotten used to the pauses, the way whole conversations could buckle helplessly under the weight of things neither of them wanted to name: the Bakers, the swamp, three years lost to Mold and madness, the dent it’d made in them individually as well as together. Nothing was as fluid between them as it used to be.
Already feeling overwhelmed, Mia pressed her hands flat on the table in an attempt to ground herself. She couldn’t tell if she felt more angry at his ability to bring this up so casually, or just genuinely fucking terrified at the mere thought.
“You think we’re capable of raising someone? After everything?”
Her eyes darted to the dripping candle between them, to the window beyond the kitchen, to anywhere but him. There was no way they were having this conversation right now, because there was no way they were ready, by any definition of the word. The past year and a half had been wholly spent trying to find themselves after the Mold had broken them down, then put them back together. Mia still hadn’t found her way back to herself yet, and she wasn’t sure if she ever would.
Across from her, Ethan rubbed his face with one hand, looking exhausted. Truth be told, he hated this part — the hesitation, the logic, the BSAA-sounding voice that lived in both their heads now. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s reckless. Maybe it’s stupid. But after Louisiana…”
His voice cracked, and he swallowed. “After everything, I can’t stop thinking — I mean, what’s the point of surviving if we don’t actually live, right?”
Mia didn’t answer.
She stared at the Romanian wine in front of them: they’d really developed an affinity for it ever since the move, it had become a staple for dinnertime.
“Okay, but do you really think we can give someone a normal life, Ethan?”
Ethan started to answer, but it was too late: her breath was already catching, the haze of delirium was settling in, and her whole chest felt hot. She might not have thought about it several times a day anymore, but that didn’t mean she never thought about it. Mia knew with a glum sort of acceptance that she’d be trapped in here, one way or another, for the rest of her life.
The smell came first — sour rot, wet wood, the sting of mildew clinging to her nose and throat. Then the damp, sticky floor under her bare feet, Mold squelching with every horribly moist step. In the dark, she could hear the tight hallways of the house breathing — walls expanding, contracting, as though it were alive.
As if the house could swallow you whole by itself.
Immediately, her wrists ached with phantom bruises. She was drenched in sweat she couldn’t remember producing. A voice, girlish and shrill, whispered in her skull, even though she knew by now that it wasn’t real anymore, that the doctors had purged all the Mold from her body: Mommy, Mommy, don’t look away.
Something scuttled across the floorboards. She couldn’t see it, but she felt the movement of air as it passed by. The rancid taste of bile rose in her mouth.
I’m suffocating, she thought, panic climbing her throat. It’s filling me. It’s inside me. It’s filling me —
“Mia?”
The word snapped her back. Ethan was leaning forward, his hand halfway across the table.
Everything came flooding back: she was in Romania, thousands of miles away from Louisiana. Sat at the wooden table in their wide, candlelit kitchen. The smell of Mold was long gone, replaced by baked bread and pinot grigio.
She gripped the edge of the table, forcing her voice steady.
That was a long time ago. You’re safe now.
“I can’t stop remembering,” she admitted, and at least she didn’t sound as pathetic as she felt. “Not what happened. Just…what it felt like.”
“I know, baby. Trust me. I know.”
“No, you really don’t,” she spat, and she didn’t care about how venomous she came off anymore: he would never understand. “When you say ‘mother,’ all I hear is her voice. Over and over. Mommy, Mommy, Mommy.”
Ethan froze, and her eyes were wet, though she didn’t blink. She kept going.
“Do you know what it was like? To have that word shoved into me until it didn’t mean love anymore? Until it meant obedience?”
I can’t breathe, she thought faintly, but she kept going. She couldn’t help it.
“Every time you bring it up, I hear her. I feel her in my head again. I can’t separate it. I don’t think I ever will.”
She was shaking.
The candle flickered slightly, and opposite her, Ethan swallowed, remembering the first time he found her in the guest house, her mouth moving with words that weren’t hers.
I can feel her clawing her way inside me. Get out! Leave me alone!
“Mia…” He reached for her hand, but she pulled it back.
“I’m not sure I can ever be anyone’s mother,” she whispered, a warm and sticky fear pulsating inside of her. Her heart was still pounding irrationally hard. “Not after being hers.”
The words hit Ethan like a punch, and in a blink, he was back, the memory swallowing him whole.
“Leave me!” Mia screamed, but her voice wasn’t hers — it was warped into something guttural. Her eyes rolled white, and she lunged like some unknown, deranged monster, slamming him against the wall.
He remembered the wild strength in her, the way her wrists crushed against his when he tried to hold her back.
“You don’t understand, Ethan!” she had shrieked. “She won’t let me go!”
Her hands around his neck. His boots kicking uselessly against the floor. The sickening CRUNCH of drywall as she threw him.
His breath shuddered out as he forced himself back into the kitchen.
He reached across the table, desperate to anchor himself. “Mia. You’re not her. You’re not what she made you do. You’re still—”
But she pulled her hand back sharply, wine sloshing in her glass.
“Don’t,” she said. The word was brittle, final. She shoved her chair back with an ugly screech against the floorboards. “Don’t look at me like that, Ethan. Like you’re remembering her every time you look at me.”
“Mia—”
“I can’t sit here and pretend this is just dinner.”
She stood up abruptly and left before he could find the words, the kitchen door swinging shut behind her.
With that, Ethan sat alone, blood throbbing in his palm as though she’d just chainsawed his hand off again.
Well, that went great.
Minutes later
Mia was alone in the upstairs bedroom, pacing between the bed and the window, her arms folded tight across her chest. The floorboards creaked under her bare feet every few steps.
Even here, even safe, she could feel Eveline’s voice in her ear. Mommy. Come back.
She stopped dead, feeling doomed. Fuck.
But it wasn’t just Eveline that haunted her, was it? It was Ethan himself. Because—
Mia paused, staring straight at the closed door ahead of her as she struggled to admit it, even in her thoughts.
The thing was, the BSAA had to know. If she knew, then they definitely had to know. How could they not know?
Mia closed her eyes. She could still see him bleeding in Louisiana more often than not, chunks of flesh torn from his arms, a leg hacked nearly clean off by Jack or someone else — yet he’d kept moving, kept fighting. Too much; more than anyone could survive. She had watched him practically stitch himself back together over and over, pouring green bottles of disinfectant over his battered hands and shrugging it off, like this was a normal thing that everyone did when they were fighting off superhuman goop creatures. No biggie. And what she hadn’t seen, Zoe had told her about in the dazed weeks afterward in BSAA custody. By then, she’d pretty much been able to confirm what she already suspected: he was Mold in human skin.
And now he wanted to pass that on. Which, if she were to go along with it — hypothetically, knowing it was near impossible, just to play devil’s advocate, well —
What if it isn’t safe?
What if the baby suffers?
What if I carry a pregnancy only to lose it, lose myself, lose him?
Too many questions arose at once.
Her nails dug into her palms. She hated herself for even thinking about this, but she couldn’t help it: some nights she lay awake beside him and wondered if she was in love with Ethan Winters, or only with what Eveline had left behind wearing his face. Who was to say that that Mold growing inside him might one day split open into something else?
Call her a coward for not telling him, she didn’t care. Telling him would only open a can of worms she wasn’t prepared to deal with right now.
Yet — beneath the fear and endless questions came the tiniest flicker. A longing that honestly startled her.
The thought of small hands, of laughter in this house that wasn’t haunted. The chance to prove to herself she could still be more than what Eveline made of her.
A family. That impossible vision: a child who wasn’t born of Mold or horror, but a child who laughed, who lived. A family that wasn’t broken in half by what Eveline had made of them.
Mia stepped forward and pressed her forehead to the cool glass of their window, her eyes burning.
Ethan was wrong to ask her now, but not wrong altogether. Because she wanted it too, didn’t she? To reclaim humanity, to anchor herself to hope instead of memory.
But the question gnawed in her chest: At what cost?
?
The water was warm, sunlit, almost golden, and Mia had no idea how she’d gotten here, but it didn’t matter.
The water lapped at her shoulders and slid through her hair as she floated on her back, the lake cupping her body as if it wanted to hold her, rocking her in a rhythm so steady she almost forgot she had weight at all. Her face was tilted toward the sky, the summer heat brushed her cheeks, and there was nothing here but her and the endless, shimmering water.
Not even Ethan. Just her.
This wasn’t anything like the jarring plunge that was being hurled from the tanker, her heart hammering in her chest as she slammed into the water so hard she wasn’t even sure how she’d survived the initial impact. Back then, she’d been certain she would die with her lungs seizing, her vision fading, her body surrendering to the darkness enveloping her before she even knew she’d survived.
There was none of that here. Just floating in the endless, shimmering, golden water, and finally being able to breathe.
Without much thinking, her hands drifted to her stomach. Rounded, firm, alive — she knew, somehow, that she was carrying, and the thought didn’t immediately fill her with terror. It filled her with something softer, slightly fragile but real: contentment.
Laughter echoed across the water. Not Eveline’s high, piercing giggle, but something lighter, belonging to no one and everyone at once.
Still floating, her head turned, expecting to see a child wading at the shore, but the lake was empty, only rippling light. Still, the sound made her smile, vague and dreamy.
Mia floated there, the sun burning bright above her, and thought: This is what it could feel like. This is what it could mean to be a mother.
The thought sank deeper.
Not Mommy. Not Eveline’s command.
Just…motherhood.
Her chest ached, and for a long moment she simply drifted as the sun shone, letting the water hold her up, letting herself believe.
Later
When she eventually woke in the dark bedroom, with the sheets twisted around her legs and Ethan snoring softly to her left, she almost cried from the loss of it. The quiet was too sharp, too real.
Wait, she wanted to say. I need you.
She pressed her hands to her flat stomach, remembering the shape it had taken in the dream, the way it had felt like possibility instead of ruin.
And for the first time since Ethan brought it up, she whispered into the silent room, to herself, where Ethan wouldn’t hear it, where it didn’t feel as scary —
“Maybe.”
Some time later that same night, Mia stirred at the sudden intake of breath beside her. It wasn’t the first time Ethan had jolted awake like this, but it still tightened something in her chest every time.
She blinked the blur from her eyes and turned her head on the pillow, finding him rigid, his hands clawing at the sheets as though they were chains, looking like he would bolt upright at any moment.
For a moment, her own pulse quickened — because she had seen this before. Not here in their quiet, borrowed home, but in Louisiana, when his eyes went hard and wild and she didn’t recognize him in her rare moments of lucidity.
The thought crept in much too easily: what if the Mold was surfacing?
But then his gaze landed on her, and it stopped him, as if her face had pulled him out of whatever pit he’d been falling through. The tension bled out of his shoulders, his breathing hitched and steadied, and for a heartbeat she almost didn’t believe it. She knew he was seeing her, not some shadow of Eveline or the swamp, and it calmed him, somehow.
Truth be told, this bewildered her each time: she’d snarled in his face, thrown him through a wall, chainsawed his hand off, sent him on a wild goose chase through hell — and yet, in the dim light, he looked at her as if she were the tether, not the threat. Like her face was proof he was still himself.
How could he still look at her this way?
How could she ever deserve it?
In that moment, she stayed very still, listening to the frantic drum of his breathing, the soft rasp as he buried his face in his hands.
Her first instinct was to reach for him, but she hesitated. Some nights, when she touched him too soon, he flinched like her hand was fire. So she waited, watching his chest rise and fall, his ashy blond hair plastered to his forehead with sweat.
“You’re here,” she whispered finally, not sure if she was saying it for him or for herself. As comfort, or a plea.
When he didn’t answer, only let out a shaky exhale, she inched closer, hoping she wouldn’t regret this.
Slowly, she let her hand hover, then rest over his.
His skin was damp, trembling under her palm, but warm. Flesh, not black goop. Alive.
“I’m here,” he repeated, slowly. Maybe for the both of them.
She rested her cheek against his shoulder. The nightmare would pass, like they all did, but what lingered was harder: the reminder that the Mold was always inside him, the force pumping his blood. In the lull where his breathing finally quieted down, she would worry about what it meant for him, for them, for any life they might try to build — but for now, with his breathing slowing gradually against her ear, she forced herself to believe in the simple truth of the moment.
He was safe. They were safe. And in time, they were going to be okay.
Two weeks later
The doctor’s office was too bright, the kind of fluorescent light that made everyone look pale and sickly. Ethan shifted uncomfortably in his chair while three BSAA personnel shuffled papers, none of them quite meeting his eyes.
Finally, the one in the lab coat spoke.
“Mr. and Mrs. Winters… you asked about family planning. We’ve reviewed the available data.”
Mia’s hands knotted in her lap. “And?”
The doctor cleared his throat. “There are… uncertainties. As you know, Mr. Winters presents with systemic regenerative anomalies. These do not follow conventional Mendelian inheritance patterns.”
Ethan blinked. “English, please.”
The woman beside him gave a tight smile. “It means… we don’t know what traits would carry forward to offspring after your encounter with the mutamycete. Traditional genetic models don’t apply cleanly in your case.”
“So what are you saying?” Ethan asked. “That it wouldn’t work?”
“Not necessarily.” The doctor glanced at his notes like the answer might crawl off the page. “Conception is biologically possible. Gestation… theoretically viable. But the risk of non-standard development is high. We cannot predict outcomes with certainty.”
Mia’s throat felt dry. “Non-standard,” she echoed. “You mean… mutations?”
The word made the doctor wince. “We prefer the term aberrant expression. But yes — there is a risk.”
So it’s possible, but risky.
Ethan leaned back, scowling. “So you’re saying if we had a kid, what — two heads? Gills? What the hell are we talking about?”
The three BSAA people exchanged a glance, speaking in silence louder than words. Finally, the lab coat said:
“It is… unlikely such expression would be so dramatic. But subtle differences — neurological, immunological — cannot be ruled out. Epigenetic inheritance is not well understood in cases like yours. I’m sure you were already anticipating that the BSAA would want to run tests to make sure everything is well.”
Mia’s nails dug into her palms. “Would it even be safe for me if I carried a pregnancy?”
The doctor grimaced, and the answer came too slowly.
“Statistically, maternal risk would be elevated. We…can’t guarantee a normal outcome.”
“Normal,” Ethan repeated under his breath. The word sounded sour. It always did now.
The doctor spread his hands helplessly. “There’s nothing to guide us here. You’re the only living cases of mutamycete exposure, there’s no one else to reference.”
Always Eveline. Always the mutamycete.
Ethan stared at the table, his jaw tight, while Mia felt her stomach turn over. The baby she’d felt in the shimmering lake was slipping away from her so fast — she had no idea why she’d even let herself hope for it. Logically, she knew it was a longshot.
Mia swallowed hard, forcing her voice steady. “So what do we do? Wait? Hope?”
The doctor hesitated, then carefully stacked the papers in front of him with a kind of finality that said the meeting was coming to a close. “Our recommendation is caution. If you pursue this… we’ll want to monitor closely. Regular screenings. Biometric scans. Blood panels.” He adjusted his glasses, not quite looking at them. “And you’ll need to accept that we can’t promise answers we don’t have.”
That silence again. Fluorescent buzzing filled the gap where reassurance should have been.
Finally, Ethan gave a short, humourless laugh. “That’s it? ‘Maybe, maybe not’? Hell of a consult, guys.”
The doctor flinched but didn’t argue. “I’m sorry. I wish we had more certainty.”
Mia reached for Ethan’s hand beneath the table, lacing her fingers through his even though his were stiff. She didn’t know if she was trying to comfort him or herself.
Before she could help it, she pictured the lake again, sunlight dappling across the water, her belly round and warm under her hand. The image felt so far away now, already dissolving under the glare of the office lights. But even though it was crazy, even though it was probably more dangerous than it was worth, she held on to it anyway.
I need this, a voice she didn’t quite understand whispered from inside of her.
The house was too quiet when they got home. Ethan locked the door behind them, then hovered awkwardly in their entryway like he didn’t know what to do with his hands.
Mia slipped past him, heading straight for the kitchen. She didn’t bother with the lights — just the dim glow above the stove, soft and yellow, nothing like the sterile glare of the doctor’s office. She filled the kettle and set it on the burner, the sound of running water filling the silence neither of them wanted to break.
Ethan finally followed as the burner was brought to life, pulling out two mugs like it was muscle memory. He set them down a little harder than he meant to, porcelain clinking.
“Guess that was a load of comfort,” he muttered.
Mia leaned against the counter, her arms wrapped around herself. She felt the same way, but she wanted to reassure him, somehow.
“They don’t know anything, baby. They’re just guessing.”
“Yeah, guessing with words like ‘aberrant expression.’” He gave one of his humourless laughs. “What the hell does that even mean?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted, staring at the floor. She was trying not to show it, but a part of her felt defeated.
Opposite her, Ethan shrugged. “Pretty sure that’s what I looked like the first time I tried cooking dinner for you.”
She rolled her eyes, but she was smiling: she couldn’t help it. She glanced up, and Ethan had already seen — of course.
“What?” He was smirking a little. “You’re telling me that lasagna wasn’t an aberrant expression?”
Her laugh softened the tightness in her chest. “It was edible. Barely.”
Her memory slowly coming back to her after a year of lucidity was a gift.
The kettle whined softly, building toward a boil. Ethan sighed, rubbed his face, then crossed the kitchen to stand beside her. For a long moment he just rested his hand over hers, warm and steady.
“We’ve been through worse,” he said finally, his voice low. “If it’s something we want… we’ll figure it out. No doctor gets to tell us otherwise.”
When Mia looked at him, all she could see was the man who had walked through hell to bring her back, again and again. She felt something break in her chest — fear, maybe, or maybe even hope — and leaned into him, her forehead pressing against his shoulder.
“You’re not scared?” she whispered into the fabric of his sweater.
“Of course I’m scared.” His arm came around her, pulling her close. “But I’m more scared of giving up before we even try.”
The kettle shrieked, sharp and insistent. Neither of them moved.
Eventually, they carried their steaming mugs into the living room, leaving the overheads off. Only the lamp by the couch was lit, throwing a small circle of amber glow across the room. That was all they needed.
Mia curled up in her usual corner, tucking her legs beneath her. Ethan settled beside her, not too close at first, like he wasn’t sure she wanted space. She didn’t — she reached over and tugged at his sleeve until he shifted closer.
For a while, they just sipped in silence. Just them, the tick of the clock, the steam rising from the tea, his solid warmth pressed against her side.
“You know,” Ethan said finally, staring at his mug, “when they started throwing around those big science words… I kept waiting for them to say it straight. Like, ‘Don’t even try. It’s impossible.’” He shook his head. “But they didn’t.”
Mia tilted her head, watching him, unsure of what he was about to say. “No, they didn’t.”
He gave her a half-smile, faint but stubborn. “So… maybe that’s something. Maybe it means we’re not crazy for even thinking about it.”
Maybe? the quiet voice in her head repeated hopefully as her heart pounded harder.
Maybe, her fear answered. It seemed like the first time those two parts of her were in agreement about something.
She supposed she could live with that.
Her chest tightened, but not in the same way as before. She set her mug down on the table and leaned into him, her head resting on his shoulder.
“You’re ridiculous,” she murmured. “But I love you for it.”
He chuckled, slipping an arm around her and pulling her closer. “Good. Because I’m not going anywhere.”
The warmth of him seeped into her, familiar and aching. But when she lifted her face to look at him, it wasn’t just comfort sparking in her chest — it was something sharper, older, a pull that had lived between them long before the mutamycete or the BSAA.
It was true that they were both struggling to feel like themselves after Dulvey. But at least they had this.
Her heart pounded. He must have felt it too, because his gaze dropped to her mouth, just for a beat too long.
Mia’s breath caught. She hadn’t realized how badly she wanted this — not just the reassurance, but the proof that underneath everything, they were still them.
She brushed her fingers over his jaw, testing, and Ethan leaned into her touch without hesitation.
“Mia…” His voice was low, warning or pleading, she couldn’t tell.
But she closed the space between them anyway, soft at first, then deeper when he kissed her back. The taste of tea lingered on his mouth, but beneath it was the ache she remembered — the want that made her clutch the front of his shirt and pull him closer.
The lamp hummed faintly. The tea cooled on the table. Neither of them moved away.
The mugs went forgotten on the table. His hand slipped to her waist, and she pushed herself up, climbing into his lap like it was second nature. Her knees pressed against the couch cushions on either side of him, her fingers tangling in his hair as the kiss turned hungry. Their closeness had a kind of molten lava pooling in her veins.
I can do this, her thoughts whispered. We’ll always have this.
When she broke away, breathless, she rested her forehead against his. She wasn’t trying to talk so much — but there was still so many questions that needed answers. Answers that she couldn’t bear to go without.
“You’re not scared?” she whispered again.
His thumb stroked her hip through the thin fabric of her shirt.
“Terrified,” he admitted. “But not of this.”
That was all she needed. She kissed him again, harder this time, swallowing the sound he made when her body pressed fully to his. His hands tightened at her back, anchoring her, like if he held on hard enough, the rest of the world couldn’t touch them.
Mia kissed him again, harder this time, and when his hands slid beneath her shirt, his palms were warm against her bare skin. She gasped into his mouth, her hips moving against him almost involuntarily.
Ethan broke the kiss just long enough to look at her — really look — and it was then she noticed that his pupils were blown wide, and his chest was heaving. “You sure?”
She nodded, not trusting her voice. Her fingers were already tugging at the hem of his shirt, desperate to feel him the same way. He lifted his arms to help her, and she peeled the fabric away easily, revealing the broad plane of his chest. Scars marked his skin — reminders of everything they’d endured — but to her, they only made him more real. More alive.
(Maybe he wasn’t completely Mold, something evil inside of her thought, but she pushed it away.)
The truth was, Ethan had so many scars. His chest was a constellation of pale seams running across his ribs, jagged divots at his shoulder, faint ridges like old burns along his side, the faded nibbles of Marguerite’s mutated bugs here and there. All three of the infected Bakers had clawed and slashed and burned their way onto him, that was for sure.
But it wasn’t just the Bakers, was it?
Her gaze travelled downward.
She knew he had uneven, faded pink lines at his wrist, where that old filthy chainsaw had chewed through bone and flesh. She knew with a kind of unique horror that she’d done that to him, and the guilt of it burned hot like all the other times she’d caught a glimpse of his damaged wrist. Zoe’s staples had kept flesh and sinew snug initially, but after the BSAA had taken them out, the skin had never healed smooth. It puckered and ridged in uneven seams, a grotesque proof of what he’d endured.
Her chest tightened at the sight of it, shame and longing tangling together, and before she could stop herself, she bent to kiss the scar, tracing the old chainsaw mark with her mouth.
Soft, reverent, claiming. Eveline was gone, and this was hers to heal. Ethan’s pulse thudded steady against her mouth, hot and alive beneath all that ruin. As she moved on to the tiny crescents of healed cuts and pale lines ran across his fingers, he felt the sharp intake of breath above her — not in pain, not a moan, but something that spurred on the dripping lava inside of her nonetheless.
She didn’t linger for too long at his hand, just let her mouth trail up again until she was back at his lips, straddling him now. His hands tightened at her waist, pulling her flush against him as if he could anchor both of them in the same breath. He needed this as much as she needed it.
Her hands slid over him, down his ribs, lower, until his breath caught. He pulled her tight against him, and she felt him hard beneath her.
The sound that slipped from her throat was half-whimper, half-laugh, that kind of voice that didn’t sound like herself. “Bedroom?”
“Couch,” he rasped, and before she could argue, his mouth was on her neck, teeth grazing just enough to make her shiver, reverberating in her spine.
Her fingers fumbled at his jeans, and he groaned when she freed him, his hips bucking into her touch. Wrapping her hand around his length, she was grateful that at least the Mold hadn’t taken this from her.
For a moment, the world fell away — no BSAA, no mutamycete, no past horrors. Just the heat of his skin and the raw, desperate need binding them together.
When he pushed her panties aside and sank into her wetness, Mia’s breath hitched so hard it almost broke. He filled her completely, grounding her in a way nothing else could. It felt like scratching an itch: oh yes, this is exactly where I’m meant to be.
Ethan buried his face in her shoulder, muffling a curse. “God, Mia—”
I know, she wanted to say. I know.
“Let me put a baby in you,” he mumbled into her shoulder, making her flush. “Please.”
I need this.
Her hands clutched at his back, nails digging in as she moved against him, finding a rhythm that made the couch creak beneath them as Ethan’s cock slid in and out easily. We’re here, we’re alive, we still belong to each other. Baby or no baby.
She bit her lip, stifling a cry as heat coiled in her belly. He wasn’t gentle, not tonight. He held her hips firmly, driving into her like he couldn’t get close enough.
When she came, it tore through her like a wave breaking, sudden and overwhelming. She clung to him, trembling, and felt him follow a heartbeat later, his body shuddering against hers. She felt it as cum gushed in hot spurts into her.
After, they collapsed together, tangled in sweat and breathless laughter. His heart pounded against her ear, frantic but alive. She could already feel the cum dripping out of her.
For once, she didn’t think about what was inside him, or what it meant. She thought only of this — of the heat dripping out of her, of her lungs working overtime to keep her breathing, of the sweat dripping down her back.
Weeks later
The test sat on the bathroom counter, thin plastic holding their whole future. She was sure the past two minutes had been the longest of her life.
Even though she knew the result had now been sealed, Mia couldn’t bring herself to touch it. Her fingers hovered and then curled away from it, trembling. She stared at the floor, at the cracks in the tile, anywhere but that tiny window.
Ethan was behind her, close enough that she could feel the heat of him but not touching. He’d been quiet the whole time, watching her stare at the ground, contemplating whether to flip the test over or not. She’d stare, pace, then stare. Pace again.
When she finally stopped pacing, her arms folded tight around herself, he reached out and steadied her elbow.
“Together,” he murmured.
She swallowed hard, and nodded once. Her hand shook as she turned the test over. One single word bore their fate:
Positive.
For a moment the world went soundless — the clatter of the test hitting the counter, the humming pipes, even her own breathing dropped away. There was only the sharp sting of tears in her eyes and the impossible clarity of that tiny word.
Her knees gave out before she realized she was falling, but Ethan caught her, arms immediately wrapping around her like he’d been waiting for it, pulling her into his chest. She pressed her face against him, sobbing once, raw and startled.
He held her tighter, his own breath shuddering. “Mia… we’re—” His voice broke, and he laughed through it, incredulous and shaky. “We’re gonna have a baby.”
Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god.
She clutched fistfuls of his shirt, nodding against him, the word baby sparking something fierce and aching in her chest. For the first time in years, it didn’t feel like something stolen from her. It felt like something given back.
Somehow. Somehow.
Ethan’s hand slid up to cradle the back of her head, grounding her.
“I don’t care what they said,” he whispered into her hair. “This is ours. No one gets to take it from us.”
Mia tipped her face up to him, eyes blurred with tears, and his lips met hers. She felt the warmth of it rush through her body, steady and filling, like he was sealing a promise. The test lay forgotten on the counter, but they didn’t need to look at it again.