Work Text:
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Alina mumbled under her breath. She drew the last word out, stretching the single syllable as far as it would go. This room wasn’t large enough for her to pace properly. Honestly the architect should have planned for the anxiety induced pacing that was inevitably going to go on.
Maybe not so inevitably.
She pulled her lower lip into her mouth to stave off her incessant repeating of curse words. It worked, but nothing could really contain the nervous vibration of her body. If she stopped pacing, her legs would bounce or her arms would need to be shaken out. The energy within her was too great to be contained inside her skin.
She stopped the timer on her phone before the third note of the alarm sounded.
“No, no, no, no, nooooo,” she moaned out. “Fuck! Fuck, no!”
There was no denying the awful cross on the tiny display of the pregnancy test.
Alina kicked at the bathroom cabinet and tossed the test away from her. It skittered around the sink basin with a weird plastic noise and she slid down the wall behind her. After only a moment she sat back up and pulled the test back into her hands if only to confirm the sight she’d already seen.
It was definitely positive. Maybe she could go to the dollar store and buy ten bucks worth of tests? She read a post online years ago that federal mandates made medicine from the dollar store held to a certain standard, and that included pregnancy tests.
She banged her head back against the wall behind her lightly, conscious in the back of her brain that though she was alone in this very moment, she was in no way alone in this apartment.
This shitty, two bedroom apartment she supposedly shared with her childhood best friend, a man who definitely did not like the father of her child whatsoever.
It was Mal’s fault anyways. If he had just been into her when they were teens, she probably would have settled for a passionless, 2.5 nuclear family.
So in a way, 1 part of her situation. The first child part.
“Fuck me,” she moaned under her breath. She let her eyes close out of sheer emotional exhaustion. Too much stress this entire week coalesced into six hours of panic when the intrusive thought hit her that her period was late. By three weeks. How the fuck did she not notice it was three weeks late?
“Alina?”
She jumped nearly a foot when Mal’s voice, accompanied by a heavy-handed banging attempt at a knock interrupted her spiraling silence.
“Alina hurry the fuck up,” he called through the door. “We’ve got that dinner thing.”
Alina met her panicked expression in the mirror and mouthed a single “fuck” to herself. In her six hours of panic, she had entirely forgotten the academic dinner she was due to attend. It was merely an honor roll forum, announcing winners of various grants, academic achievements, and presenting honor roll cords for the upcoming graduation this month.
The graduation that would allow Alina to actually be seen in public with her boyfriend, instead of her blocking out half his office hours, sneaking into his apartment via the back resident entrance, and taking any joint vacations in remote ski towns during off season.
Just normal, graduate things.
“Um,” Alina choked out, her voice cracking on the syllable in a way she hoped Mal didn’t notice. “My stomach feels all messed up, give me a minute.”
Mal let out an annoyed groan. “Alina, seriously just hurry up! We gotta go in twenty if we’re to make it on time!”
“I’ll be ready!” She called back and winced at the overly flushed complexion, messy hair from when she stress-pulled it, and very student-grunge look about her. Her test was tossed into her bag, having been brought into the bathroom when she rushed straight from the door to the cramped room in a haste to take the damn thing.
Sleep that night following the dinner did not come easily. One could argue it didn’t come at all, though Alina was sure at some point she must have fallen unconscious.
Her walk to class was fully on autopilot and spent with her mind racing through the same, endless cacophony of questions about what her next steps were. She was nearly graduated and on the cusp of a decent career. One of her professors had connections to a lab in Os Alta that was promising in its energy research. It would also be a career not directly tied to her boyfriend, which would be a nice change of pace for the potential public image of their relationship.
Or, she could take a gap year, have her child, and start a family.
Would he want a family?
They have definitely never spoken of it. Never even broached the topic of children. She assumed she would be married before even conceiving. Married, with a career, and firmly not hiding her relationship from the Dean of Students and various coworkers of said boyfriend.
Best laid plans.
When he entered her lecture hall, only making eye contact as he skimmed the classroom, she had a surreal moment about what this meant.
Right now, she was pregnant with her professor’s child. And he had no idea. The person next to her didn’t even know they had fucked on that table at the front, that he had taken her from behind against the podium. They didn’t know he had pressed her up against the wall that was now projecting conceptual theories a professor out of the University of Nova Kribirsk put forth on new battery concepts and their use in rural areas.
The part of her that was always thrilled with the secret of this relationship was almost turned on by the idea that she held a secret not even he knew. A part of him was within her, growing in this moment.
One of the boys that belonged to the Advanced Robotics Team for the university opened a bag of Pork Rinds behind her and the savory, salty smell immediately hit her nose and roiled her stomach. The morning sickness that had yet to make an appearance finally reared its ugly head.
She grabbed her belongings with a speed she wasn’t aware she possessed and stumbled with zero subtlety to the end of the row, completely ignoring her professor’s startled, “Miss Starkov!”
Alina made it to the bathroom in time to throw up in the sink. Her textbook and notes hit the floor and scattered mid heave. She coughed the last bit up and swallowed water directly from the faucet. When she looked back up into the mirror above her, she winced at the glassy look in her eyes and puffy, red cheeks she now bore.
She skipped the rest of class.
It figured she would have to make a decision faster than she expected. There was no denying how quickly she left that auditorium. He noticed amongst all of her peers and after three years she wasn’t going to lie to him when he asked her directly what was wrong.
Her phone was already buzzing with his texts, sent the minute following class ended. She’s almost surprised at his restraint. He’s always been impulsive when it comes to their relationship. While frustratingly patient with his work, her anxiety surrounding her schooling, and almost anything else, he was impatient and demanding of their relationship. She nearly broke up with him in their first year from how possessive he could become. He was jealous for months over her moving in with Mal and only after she broke down in an ugly, sobbing screaming match that she had to move somewhere post-dorm life, she couldn’t very well move in with him, could she?
He held her tightly for hours after that, crying his own tears into her hair over their predicament. She couldn’t transfer and neither could he without effectively ending their ability to see one another with any degree of regularity.
She opted to skip her next class, emailing her professor with apologies and a lie about a stomach flu.
His house was located about ten minutes from campus, thirty if you walked, which she did. It was rare she did walk here, usually meeting him away from school and being driven so as to arrive within his garage and out of sight from any neighboring eyes.
This time, she looped around the block behind his house to approach from the direction away from school. She sincerely doubted anyone would be paying attention at 11 AM on a Friday, but in her shoes she opted to be careful.
She let herself into the gate to the backyard and entered through the back door. His house was a three bedroom home with one of the guest rooms dedicated as an office and the other a room for when his mother came by sporadically. She had never met the woman, something that had bothered her their first year of dating but less and less as their relationship grew serious.
It was odd to her, when she considered that. Usually things worked the opposite. His mother was a professor in her own right, working further upstate at a private university as a Russian Literature Professor. Alina had looked up the woman one night after one too many beers with Mal and felt wholly inadequate after seeing the number of publications referenced in her bio.
Today, she took a seat at the oversized island counter in his kitchen and pulled out her laptop to at least work on something while she waited.
Her texts back to him didn’t reference her coming over. It would be a surprise when he came home later that day. She would be damned if he canceled classes so close to finals when she knew students like herself desperately needed that face to face time with him to answer last minute questions.
The laptop sat open on the counter with a partially filled word doc open on half the screen and an excel sheet of data on the other half, but Alina did nothing to further the work. She couldn’t focus. Her gaze kept wandering between the neatly stacked dishes by the sink, rinsed but waiting to be loaded into the dishwasher, and then over to the minimal, mid-century style couch that sat in his living room. She loved this space. It was so him.
And now, sitting here with his child inside her, she felt more at home in that moment than any previous in the last three years.
She realized that it may break her if he doesn’t want to share this child with her.
And then she realized that she was definitely keeping it. She had made that decision within herself. Fuck her career. It would be there in a year, probably. And she had friends who could help her. Mal likely wouldn’t kick her out until her child started teething, but by then he’d be far too attached as her child’s uncle he wouldn’t do it. Genya would definitely help her design a nursery. Zoya would probably be the one to hold her hand during birth, giving her straightforward instructions and not letting her give up.
But if she could do all of that with him….
His front door opened at 6:23PM. Aleksander froze the moment he spotted Alina perched at the counter with a laptop in sleep mode but sitting open in front of her.
He dropped his keys in the ashtray by the door that was always more a catch-all dish than one for actual cigarettes. She loved the architecture of this house. The dark floors and high ceilings. The frugal part of her sees them as a testimate to poor heating efficiency. The part of her that Aleksander has nurtured and encouraged has seen them as comfort, safety, and maybe home. His footsteps echo down the hall and into the living space she occupies now.
“Hey,” she said quietly. He looked confused by her being here. Maybe it was because she didn’t bother to turn the lights on when sunset began to set in.
“Alina,” he finally greeted. She loved his voice. It was warm, almost a little rough, but he had a lilt to it that spoke of old money and status that was just so incredibly attractive to her. “Why are you in the dark?”
So it was the dark that drew his expression.
“Lazy,” she shrugged.
“How’re you feeling?” he asked and flipped on the switch to turn on the under cabinet lights. She squinted for a moment but gave him a smile.
“I’m feeling better, promise,” she reassured and pulled him down to kiss her with a gentle hand on his jaw. He gave her a long, tender kiss and she felt slightly guilty for worrying him. He was so protective of her.
He pulled back but kept their foreheads touching. “You should have told me you were here, I would have come.”
“It’s finals,” she said.
“Fuck finals,” he said with a rough edge to his voice. It made her laugh.
“As your student, I wholeheartedly agree,” she teased and he just shook his head, finally pulling away from her.
“As my other half?” he teased lightly. There was a nervous edge to his voice though, one that never seemed capable of shaking completely off no matter how much she reassured him. He was always so ready for her to run.
“As your other half I say focus on your students because I’m fine.”
He let his shoulders relax a bit and took the chair next to her.
“Why did you sneak over here today, Alinochka?” He pulled her hand into his and held tight, tethering her to him like she was a flight risk.
Alina bit her lip and let her gaze fall to some middle ground over his shoulder.
“Alina?” He asked again when she hesitated too long. “Are you sure you’re fine?”
“I’m not ill,” she said by way of dodge and met his gaze again. The emotions that had been roiling within her all afternoon were bubbling to the surface in an unstoppable force. “Aleksander, what’re we going to do after graduation? Do we just pretend things between us happened right after and move on?”
He looked so lost, brow furrowed and his eyes betraying the way his mind was clearly trying to work out how she got here.
“We stop hiding,” he said. “I don’t care what they say afterwards. You’ll have your degree, they don’t need to know the details.”
“And my friends?” she asked. “When they ask me how I started to date the most intense professor of my department, of my degree?”
“Tell them the truth, we met in school but we saw each other outside of it.”
“So a half truth.”
“That is our truth, Alina,” he replied. The harsh edge to his tone when he got defensive was starting to appear. “Why are you doing this? Why are you mad at me for what we have known was coming for three years?”
“I’m not mad, Sasha,” she promised. He seemed to relax at his pet name. “I just don’t think I really accepted we’d have a life beyond here. Beyond our bubble.”
Aleksander stared at her for a moment and looked lost for words. He finally leaned in infinitesimally and asked, “Are you leaving me?”
Alina snapped backwards in shock. Horrified shock. That was not her intent with this questioning at all.
“No!” she cried out. “God, no!”
“Then why are you asking this? Do you think we won’t survive if people know about us? Know my love for you?”
“I’m just worried, Sasha, that is all,” she sighed. Her chair creaked slightly as she slumped back in it. His hand tightened on hers.
“Alina, you are everything to me,” he said in a rough whisper. “We don’t have to go public until you feel comfortable. But I want to walk in the daylight with you by my side and have everyone know you are mine.”
“And I want them to know you’re mine,” she promised. “I’m only afraid of the optics.”
He shrugged. “So we’ll move.”
“Sasha, no,” she gaped at him. “My friends are here, Baghra is here!”
“Baghra is fine. She’s moved and come back several times over the years. She only returns to pester me.”
Alina fixed him with a pointed look. “She’s your mother.”
He scoffed but didn’t contest her point. “I will follow you no matter where your career takes you, Alina.”
“You’re almost up for tenure,” she reminds. “We’d be foolish to throw that away.”
“I’d be far more of a fool to let you slip from my fingers,” he says. “We shall tell people about us in however long it takes you to be comfortable. I have no qualms about walking up to the Dean of Students the moment you cross that stage and letting him know how much you mean to me.”
She laughs lightly at the ridiculous imagery. “Perhaps we should wait a bit after, to make sure the degree is settled.”
“However long,” he promises. “We could tell Baghra now, if you’d like. I’ll call her.”
Alina’s eyes go wide. “Oh, no, let’s give it a day. I don’t think I could face your mother in this moment.”
The truth was, she was terrified at the thought of meeting his mother. In the three years she’d seen him, they had deftly avoided crossing paths with her. Aleksander always said she could spot a lie like no other, and telling her would mean breaking their safe bubble.
The bubble that now included a child, apparently.
“Soon,” he said with a small smile and she nodded to him.
“We can tell her before my friends,” Alina promised. “Unless you’d prefer they know before her.”
“In any order,” he promised. He had such a contented look on his face. She reached her free hand up to hold his cheek, brushing the fine hairs of his beard lightly. She never thought she’d love a man with facial hair. It had always seemed so absurd of a taste until she caught his eyes on her first class with him.
“I love you,” she whispered and he leaned further into her touch.
“And I you, Alina,” he replied. Aleksander shifted his gaze between her eyes for a moment before a frown settled across his features. “What is wrong? Is it still your stomach?”
She huffed a sigh and smiled. She needed to tell him but he words felt trapped in her throat, too big to escape her. Instead, she pulled away from him and dug through her bag. She’d tossed the test inside in a hurry to escape the too small confines of her apartment bathroom yesterday. Now it appeared her haste was a blessing and she wouldn't have to vocalize the words she hadn't even really said aloud to herself yet.
Her fingers closed around the small stick, no bigger than a table knife in width but slightly shorter in length, and withdrew it from the bag.
Aleksander looked nervous when she turned back towards him, barely tracking what was in her hand until she placed it on the counter in front of him.
She could tell the moment it registered what he was looking at by the sudden shock that crossed his features. His mouth opened slightly and his eyebrows crept higher towards his perfectly combed hair. She sat back and let him process the moment. He looked... not mad. Disbelief, perhaps, maybe shock in the rawest form of the emotion.
“Alina, is that…” he trailed off. He looked between her and the capped off pregnancy test.
“Yes."
“And I’m…” he started to say and looked back at her. Aleksander, for all the no-nonsense mystique he held in the classroom, wore his heart on his sleeve in private. She gave him a small smile and nodded back at his unfinished question.
He didn’t hesitate to pull her into his arms, enveloping her so tightly she had long term concerns on her ability to breathe. He pressed his lips against the crown of her head in some semblance of a drawn out kiss. Her eyes shut and she let herself just enjoy the moment.
“You’re pregnant,” he breathed out against her scalp and squeezed her shoulders just a little tighter for a brief moment.
“I am,” she nodded against his chest. “We’ve never talked about this before.”
Aleksander pulled back slightly but left his hands on her shoulders. “No, we haven’t.”
She gave him a weak smile. Ever present nerves settled low in her stomach. Despite the sudden hug he gave her, she really had no idea how he wanted things to play out long term. He could suddenly flip a switch and decide things were too soon for them.
Or... He could want this child as much as she wanted it. Her child could grow up within these walls, be excited for their father to return home from school, be ready for their mother to break down physics into something a child could digest.
Her friends would find out she was sleeping with her professor the last three years in the same conversation as the one that she was going to be a mother.
She was going to be a mother.
And his mother would only find out she existed because of this.
“Sasha,” she began and she desperately wanted to eliminate the nervous edge her voice had. But he’d already heard it, and she could see the protective barrier Aleksander held around his heart start to shutter in place.
“You don’t want it,” he concluded. She opened her mouth to protest but he was already dropping his hands from her and slumping back in his chair, gaze anywhere but her or the test in front of him. “I suppose that is your choice. Like you said, we’d never talked about it.”
“Aleksander, look at me,” she said and tried to grab his hand but he shifted it away. She let out a petulant huff and he at least met her eye. “Please don’t be dramatic right now. I am emotionally exhausted. I just need you.”
“Only me?” He questioned and she closed her eyes and counted to five. It was something Genya had encouraged in her. Her friend was the only one to tell her just how immature the habit she had of rolling her eyes made her seem.
“I need you to be here for me in this moment,” Alina said instead. “I just don’t know what type of future you wanted for us. We haven’t even told anyone we’re dating and now I’m pregnant. It is a bigger mess than we foresaw.”
He stared at her and finally, finally, released some of the angry tension that had taken over his frame.
“I apologize, Alinochka,” he whispered. “No, we never talked about this.”
“I do want this,” she told him in a small voice. His mouth opened slightly only to snap shut just as fast. It only took her a moment to recognize that he was on the verge of relieved tears. Aleksander's eyes were growing glassy while he pressed his lips together in what she could only guess was his attempt to stop them trembling. “Oh, Sasha,” she whispered and tugged at his shoulder.
He fell into her grasp, face coming into the crook of her neck with the ease of familiarity. She felt his arms wrap around her middle and his hands clutch at the back of her shoulders. Her hand ran across the back of his perfect hair and she let her nails trace down his neck in the way he loved. The faintest shudder was the only hint he was crying.
“I love you,” she whispered to him and his response was to clutch at her a little tighter. “I love you, Aleksander.”
He didn’t respond, but instead leaned back just enough to allow him to press his face to her stomach. As his weight settled onto the tops of her thighs, she choked out a happy sob. Finally, she could relax.
When Aleksander finally pulled back and smiled at her she laughed again and pulled him in for a kiss. He smiled against her mouth and clutched her face as close to his as he could manage.
He rested his forehead against hers and she couldn’t help but mirror the contented smile that resided on his face. “We’re going to have a baby.”
“We are,” she said. “We have so much to figure out.”
“Later,” he shook his head. “We can figure it all out later.”
“Okay,” she agreed.
“I love you,” he told her. He started to lean in for a kiss only to abruptly jerk back and stare at her with wide eyes. “You were sick this morning. That was morning sickness.”
Alina tipped her head back in a deep laugh.
He frowned. “That’s not funny. This will affect your studies.”
She raised her eyebrows. “My final month of studies?”
Aleksander, to his credit, appeared embarrassed he forgot finals were upon them and she was due to graduate. He pulled her back into a hug, tucking her face against his chest. "I'm really happy right now."
"Me too, Sasha," she whispered into his shirt. "Me too."
After a long moment of silence, he whispered out, "I hope it's a girl."
She hugged him just a little harder in reply. It was going to be okay. She would graduate, they would go public slowly, and she would build a family with him. The thought warmed something deep within her, a future she once thought she’d never have. But now she had it. And it was all three of theirs.