Ch.1: How did I fall in love with you?

It was early. In fact it was too early.
Too early for the alarm to be singing that loudly on a Sunday morning, but apparently weekends do not exist when you work in a hospital. Faith growled and attempted to sink deeper in the mattress, regretting spending the night over at Loki's, he was the one working, not her, and yet the alarm was waking her up too.

"Loki, turn that damn thing off and get up." She mumbled half asleep. Loki said nothing, and the annoying ringing was shut off. "Get up." Faith nudged him at feeling Loki's arm curl up around her waist, resuming its previous position.

"It's still early." Loki whispered against the bare skin of her shoulder, adding a few kisses that turned into nibbles as he pressed his body closer to hers.

Faith sighed. "Thor is going to kick your ass if you're late again."

"I took precautions this time." He said with a smirk she didn't see, his hand slid under her tank top and she rolled over to face him.

"What kind of precautions?" She asked amused.

"What time is it?" He said kissing her neck and her jaw. Faith looked over the clock and noticed it was 7am. Sunday's shifts started at 9. "We have time…plenty of time." He said as he hovered over her and kissed her hard.

.-

A little over an hour later, Loki was in the shower and Faith was in the kitchen making breakfast. Or trying, as the smell of the coffee was making her sick. In fact every scent present in that kitchen was making her nauseated. It wasn't exactly weird: for the last few weeks Faith had felt the same morning sickness that prevented her from having anything to eat before lunch. She held her belly and took a deep breath right before Loki entered the kitchen, and shrugged it off.

"Morning, again." He said kissing her cheek and grabbing his coffee mug. "Aren't you eating?"

"Too early, I just wanna go back to bed." Faith said rubbing her face.

"Are you feeling okay?" Loki asked. "You're pale."

"It's 8am on a Sunday and you want me to have some color?" She said turning away from him and took another deep breath before the bile in her stomach decided to burst out.

Loki kept staring at her, but didn't ask anything else.

A while later, he was gone and Faith sunk back in bed, thinking. She knew what was wrong with her: she was a physician, for fuck's sake. She didn't need anyone pointing out the obvious pregnancy symptoms. She actually wondered how Loki hadn't noticed already.

Faith clutched her belly again. Being pregnant opened a whole lot of personal dilemmas: all of them having to do with being a single 34 years old woman without a serious relationship. Because, okay, Loki was there and he wouldn't bail out of parenthood, right?
But what were they?

Nothing.

And everything.

Best friends and confidants. Fuck buddies. Someone who was there when no one else was.
When Faith was fucking around with a married man who all of the sudden decided to grow a conscience right after his wife got pregnant with twins.
When Loki was cheated on by his fiancée only a couple of weeks before their wedding.
When both of them obviously still had feelings for their exes.

Who else could possibly understand the whole situation? No one, just them. It was a comfort thing and they were perfectly fine with it, why make it complicated with a baby? It was ridiculous.

And there was another… reason… that kept her from telling Loki. Even if she was a surgeon, someone bound to think and act by facts, she was still a woman driven by her instincts. Faith had learned to trust her gut when she was still in med school and her OB internship showed her that women's instincts when it comes to their babies are never wrong. Steve was an OB and he'd tell her about his supernatural moms every week.

Her gut was talking to her, in a cold and empty language that kept her from even going to the store and get a fucking pregnancy test.

But she had pushed that moment away for too long, 9 weeks was too long and she needed an answer.

It was already past noon when Faith left Loki's house, heading to her own. The detour to the store took less than five minutes and when she arrived to her apartment, she ripped the box open. Following the simple instruction and waiting a few minutes, Faith confirmed what she already knew.

The test was flashing positive and she had run out of excuses.