important author's note:
First: trigger warning for abortion as a primary plot point. if this bothers you, please choose not to read it.
Second: I'm not writing this story as a political statement. Abortion is what it is: a choice that some people make. I wanted to explore an aspect of teen pregnancy that I feel doesn't get covered very frequently in Spoby fic or fic in general.
And finally: I wrote this while listening to The Freshmen by the Verve Pipe but it ended up following a bit more of Brick by Ben Folds, though ultimately, it's its own story. Title is from empires' Homewrecked.
They didn't think it could happen to them.
Of course, nobody ever does, and especially when you're sixteen and invincible, your whole life in front of you, limitless and brilliant, a world of opportunities just waiting for you to come out and seize them.
They were young, sure, but they were in love, and the shimmery hope of new love combined with the fevered hormones of youth and they were caught in the middle, tearing at clothes, kissing at soft skin, whispering and gasping and coming together in a fervent dance, skin against skin. They didn't think it could happen to them, not then, not after, not until, of course, it did.
"What do we do?" Toby peered at the stick as if trying to decipher it. He gave it a little shake, and the gesture was so endearingly clueless that under other circumstances, Spencer would have laughed. Right then, however, Spencer didn't feel like laughing. She ran her fingers through her thick dark hair, took a sip of her tea, and ran her fingers through her hair again. "I don't know," she admitted, and Toby looked lost. Spencer always knew what to do. If she didn't know, how would they ever figure it out?
"We're too young to have a baby?" he said, although with the nerves coiling in his belly it came out more like a question.
"We're too young to...yeah," Spencer echoed. She couldn't bear to say that word. Saying it would only make it real. She wasn't ready for it to be real. Not yet. Probably not ever.
"Well..." Toby peered at the stick again, although now with more contempt, as if he could will the second line away with telepathy. "We could give it up for adoption."
Spencer considered this. She pictured herself in a hospital bed, her stomach swollen. She pictured a baby wrapped in a cotton blanket. She pictured soft dark hair and blue eyes. She pictured it being carried away by some faceless couple. She swallowed hard and shook her head no.
Toby nodded, reaching for her hand. "I guess..."
Spencer squeezed Toby's hand, closing her eyes. "Can I sleep on it?" she asked in a tiny voice.
Toby drew her into his arms, his heart swelling up with love for her, for everything that she was and everything they were together. He memorized the feeling of her hair against his chin, the way she smelled faintly of green tea perfume and peppermint shampoo, the way she fit exactly against him, and he knew: now was not their time, but someday it would be. There was no doubt about that. "For as long as you need," he said, stroking her cheek with his thumb. "I love you. I'll be here for you no matter what."
Tucked against Toby's chest, her body fitted perfectly against his, breathing in his Toby scent of Old Spice and cedar, it was so easy for Spencer to believe it.
She made the appointment for the following Wednesday, and for the whole week they only spoke to each other. They spent every waking moment together, driving aimlessly around in Toby's truck and crashing in Spencer's bed once they were sure her parents had gone to work, cuddling and sleeping and talking. Toby made her a million promises, some of them silly-"I'll buy you a pet giraffe"-but some of them were so serious and said with such gravity that it made Spencer's chest hurt. "We're going to get out of here. We're going to get married, and when you're ready, really ready, we'll have as many babies as you want." Spencer let his words wash over her, forcing herself to believe them. She wouldn't regret this. She couldn't. They still had too much living left to do. This wasn't their happy ending, this was the part in the middle that they had to get through to get to their happy ending. That was all...or at least that was what Spencer was going to tell herself, over and over until she believed it.
The morning of her appointment dawned sunny, but cold. It was fitting, Toby thought as he pulled his truck into Spencer's driveway. Things that looked so shiny on the surface were so often cold and harsh and horrible, and this was one of those things. He took several deep breaths as he cut the engine, trying to get himself calmed enough to go to the door. Spencer didn't need to see him cry. He had to be her strength, had to be the one holding this together. This wasn't the end, this was the beginning of their new beginning. They could do this.
She came to the door dressed in a sweatshirt that she had stolen from him months ago, her hair pulled back into a ponytail and her eyes sleepy. She looked so beautiful that Toby had to close his eyes and catch his breath before reaching to hug her. "Morning," she mumbled into his shoulder, and he held her a little tighter. "Love you," he replied, smoothing her ponytail with a strong hand. "So much."
"Love you too." Her voice was barely above a whisper, but Toby somehow knew that she meant it more then than she had ever before. He kissed her forehead, letting her go, holding out his hand.
"Ready?" he asked, and she nodded, though her face was uncertain. Toby gave her hand a squeeze. "I've got you," he promised. "I'm here."
The drive to Philadelphia passed in near silence. What was there to say? There was nothing, nothing to do except revel in each other's company and the unspoken connection between them. Spencer had forged her parents signatures claiming she had mono and that she was seeing a specialist in Philadelphia and told her parents she was going on a drama trip. There was no need to tell the truth, no need to fuel the rumors that were sure to eventually start circulating in a town as small as Rosewood if Spencer wasn't careful. When she closed her eyes she could picture the sneers, hear the horrible things they would say about her. "Slut," they'd say. "Whore. Baby killer." As if she didn't already say those things to herself in the mirror, as if they didn't comprise the vast majority of Spencer's inner monologue. Those girls couldn't possibly understand. They were vapid and superficial. They didn't know what it felt like to love someone so much and have so much ahead of them. They didn't know that sometimes the best choice was the one that was the hardest to make, because none of them had ever had to make a choice like this. No, it was better to keep this, at least, a secret.
Toby held her hand all the way into the clinic, holding her close under his jacket through the throng of protestors with their garish signs full of blood, flinging words that Toby was fairly certain God approved of even less than he approved of what they were about to do. He held her hand as she filled out the paperwork, held her hand as she walked it back to the desk, held her hand right up until the nurse, a sweet woman in Hello Kitty scrubs who looked so loving that it made Toby's chest hurt, told him that partners weren't allowed into the operating room, but that she should be done in about an hour. "But who will hold her hand?" he asked, but there was no response. The nurse had already taken Spencer away.
For the first time since this had all happened, Spencer was alone. This was the end, she realized. It was almost over. And she was, of course, alone. 'This is the way it's supposed to be,' the hateful voice in Spencer's head said. 'You are always going to end up alone.' But Toby was waiting, Toby was on the other side of the door. The world could take away everything else, but it couldn't take away her Toby.
"Miss Hastings?" the doctor's voice, cool and no-nonsense, was even more calming than the nurse's syrupy one. Spencer let out a breath she hadn't even known she was holding. "I'm Dr Oliver. It's nice to meet you. I'm going to walk you through the procedure and if you have any questions you can ask, okay?" Spencer nodded, but she let Dr Oliver's voice wash over her, tuning her out the way she used to tune out her mother when she would start talking about things Spencer didn't want to think about. She knew what was going to happen. She was Spencer Hastings. She did her research.
She followed Dr Oliver down the hallway, but she had mentally checked out long before, put herself somewhere else. Somewhere warm and safe, with Toby, where nothing had ever gone wrong. She barely registered the ultrasound to check the dates, the screen turned respectfully away from her, barely registered the nurse giving her the sedative that took her even further away, barely registered the pressure of the speculum or the whir of the machine. She drifted further and further away with Toby, letting herself let go. It was over before she had even registered that it had begun.
Outside, Toby had paced the waiting room for ten minutes before he started to drive himself crazy and left, shoving through the crowd of protestors, turning around just before he got to his truck and flipping them off. In the truck he finally allowed himself to cry, head against the steering wheel, until he felt like there were no more tears left. Then he drove toward the city centre, finding a florist that was open at this ungodly hour of the morning and bought her a dozen tiger lilies-her favorite-and then walked across the street to the bookstore to buy a notebook. In the truck he let himself cry again and then, once he'd caught his breath, he began to write, not looking up until he was done.
"It's hard to explain what you mean to me," he began, "because it's so much bigger than anything else I've ever had or felt. From the minute I met you my life has been so motivated by the desire to make you happy and keep you safe and that's what drives me. I want so many things...for you, for us. I want to give you the world and I really hope you know that.
We've been through hell and back, but we're still here and we're stronger than we've ever been. I think that what that says is that this is where we're supposed to be. You and me have always been meant to be together and we're only going to get stronger. I meant what I said about getting us out of here and marrying you. I've been saving money, and we're going to get a place and I'm going to give you a ring, and we're going to have a baby. Or two. Or ten. You're going to be the best mom when we're ready, I just know you are. And until then I'm going to keep loving you. We can get through this. We can get through anything."
When he looked up at the clock, almost half an hour had passed. It was time to go back.
He marched back into the clinic, his head held high, and this time he had the good sense to ignore the protestors lest he get arrested for assault when Spencer needed him most.
She was in a little room off to the side when Toby got there, his sweater draped over her shoulders, sipping from a tiny cup of ginger ale and looking so vulnerable it made Toby's heart swell. "Hi," he said, almost shyly, handing Spencer the flowers and bending down to hug her. She hugged him back as if he was her lifeline, her head buried against his shoulder. "Take me home," she whispered.
He took her to get her prescriptions filled at the neighbouring pharmacy and checked them into a hotel-a nicer one than he usually stayed in-so that she could rest without fielding her parents' questions. He tucked her into bed and fed her rice pudding from the convenience store and sang her songs until her eyes fell closed and her breathing evened out, and he lay down next to her and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, the best he'd had in weeks.
When Toby finally sang her to sleep, Spencer slept soundly, peacefully, better than she ever had. She dreamed of a big white house with a wraparound porch, she dreamed of Toby, she dreamed of somewhere far away. And she dreamed of a little boy with a mess of sandy curls and piercing blue eyes, chubby and sweet with a serious expression on his face. She dreamed of a little girl's voice, somewhere in the back of her mind, but never her face. "He isn't me," the little girl kept saying, "but you love him just the same." She woke up again four hours later, and she was smiling.
It wasn't until ten years later, almost to the day, that she would come to understand the dream-the dream that was, by then, almost forgotten.
"You ready?" Toby asked, wrapping his arm around her shoulder and kissing the side of her head, gazing adoringly at the bundle in her arms.
Spencer glanced down at it too, fussing with their newborn son's hat. "Let's take him home," she agreed. Toby smiled, gently leading them up the steps of the porch and through the door of their house. "Welcome home, Adrian," Toby said, reaching over to muss the soft, sandy fuzz on his new son's head. "We've been waiting so long for you, bud."
As if he understood, the baby stirred, opening his eyes for the first time since they had left the hospital. Spencer gazed down into his bright blue eyes, the same sharp, piercing blue of her husband's, and she finally understood what she had buried since she was sixteen years old. Her daughter was right. They loved him just the same.