A/N: Thank you so much for the reviews on Chapter 1. While this isn't the fluff we are usually known for we promise it won't be all doom and gloom. So bear with us. Like all Banna stories, they have to experience some obstacles before they reach their happy ending. Reviews are always appreciated; they are a writer's bread and butter after all. And we really like bread.
Disclaimer: Same as Ch. 1
"Anna!" John called out as he walked into their home. He had seen Anna's car in the driveway and she wasn't usually home this early. "Love. Where are you?" John called out in a somewhat playful tone. Perhaps she had come home early to put together some surprise for him. John could already smell the scent of lasagna baking in the over. He poked his head in the kitchen but couldn't find her. "Darling?" John asked with more concern in his voice. He made his way back to their bedroom and could hear the sound of Anna crying, when he tried to open the door it was locked. "Anna," John called out in a panic. When she didn't respond he was ready to bust the door down but then he heard the click of the lock and the door creaked open. He walked in slowly and saw that her eyes were puffy and red, the tear stains were still fresh on her cheeks. "Anna, are you alright?" he asked. John really wasn't sure what had happened or what the problem was, but something had clearly upset her.
"It came again," she sighed in defeat. Anna stared back at the underwear she had left to soak in the sink because the dreaded red stain had shown up once again to taunt her. "I started my period." Anna sat on the edge of the tub unable to look him in the eyes, she felt like such a failure. How had she allowed herself to get her hopes up again? She had been counting down the days on the calendar, dreading them even. Every time she thought she felt sick she had convinced herself that maybe this time it was caused by something more. She let her face fall into her hands and cried her heart out.
"Oh love," John said as he crouched down in front of her. He removed Anna's hands from her face, "It's alright. We'll keep trying."
"We've been trying, John. It's not working. Something must be wrong with me," she snapped. She hadn't meant to sound so harsh but the frustration of being unable to bear his child, their child, was slowly wearing on her.
John half chuckled, "Sweetheart, for all we know it's something wrong with me. We really haven't been trying that long."
"A year and a half now, John," she stated solemnly.
"Really?" he asked. John hadn't meant to sound like he didn't care, but he really hadn't noticed how quickly the time had gone by. It seemed like just yesterday they had gone on their honeymoon, but the more he thought about it he realized they really had been trying that long. Longer if one counted the few times they had sex in the months leading up to the wedding without any protection. John just couldn't fathom why two relatively young people that were healthy couldn't seem to get pregnant the old fashioned way.
"Yup, twelve more days and it will have been eighteen months since we married," Anna replied.
John wiped away her tears and handed her a tissue from the dispenser by the sink. He pulled her closer and squeezed her as tightly as he could as he pressed kiss after kiss into her hair. "My darling, we will have a baby. One way or another. I don't care if I have to buy one off the black market," he said in an attempt to make her smile. She did as she wiped away her tears and John felt a small leap of joy in his chest knowing he had been able to do that. "You are a good person, Anna May Bates. There's no one else on this earth that would make a better mother than you. You have so much love to give and I can't wait to watch you share it with our son or daughter and impart your wisdom to them. And hopefully your looks too, because I feel sorry for the little mite if they end up looking like me." She chuckled slightly and pulled back to wipe the tears she had smudged on his dress shirt. "I love you more than I did yesterday and I'll love you even more tomorrow. And whenever we have a baby I know that will be the stiffest competition for my heart. Because I can't imagine loving anyone more than you."
Anna shook her head in awe. Sometimes her husband knew just what to say and could build her up like no other when she was feeling sorry for herself. "How did I end up married to someone like you?" she asked.
"Just lucky I guess," he replied with a half smile. "Now promise me no more tears tonight. It breaks my heart to see you in pain."
She nodded her head silently in agreement and John kissed her forehead once more before she threw her arms around his neck and kissed his lips.
That night John woke up from a horrible nightmare. He'd never had one quite so real in all his life; truth be told since he'd met Anna he'd never slept more soundly. In his dream Anna was crying hysterically beside an empty crib and he couldn't get her to stop or find a way to bring her back to him. It scared him and made him wonder if he could ever keep Anna truly happy if they never had children. When John rolled over to hold Anna closer to him he realized she wasn't sleeping in their bed. In fact her side of the bed was cold like she had been gone for hours. John promptly hopped out of bed and walked out to the kitchen to see if he could find her nursing a cup of tea. Sure enough she was sitting in the recliner by the window with the glow of the laptop cast upon her face in the darkness. She hadn't heard him, or if she did, Anna gave no indication of it. "What are you doing up so late?" he asked in a gruff voice. John rubbed at his eyes tiredly as he tried to adjust to the bright illumination from the screen.
Anna quickly shut the cover of the laptop. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to wake you," she apologized.
"You didn't, I had a bad dream. Then I couldn't find you when I woke up. I don't know which was worse," John said with an exasperated sigh as he sat beside her. "What were you looking at?" John asked innocently.
"Nothing," she said. But the moment the words left her mouth she regretted it. John had always been able to read her like a book and she knew he would know she was lying the moment she spoke.
John slowly opened the lid and saw all kinds of medical related searches and sites up on the screen. He squinted without his reading glasses but he was able to make out the headlines in bold print, "Having trouble conceiving?", "Problems Getting Pregnant and Possible Causes", and "Getting Pregnant: Easy Ways to Encourage Fertility". John's eyes widened and he looked back at Anna. "Anna...this...this is not nothing," he said sounding furious as he rose from the chair.
"I'm sorry," she apologized.
"For what? For keeping this fear from me? Or for making light of it and saying it was nothing?" John said as he paced the living room with his hands on his hips.
"I didn't keep it from you," Anna said with a little more courage. "I told you months ago I was worried," she said.
"Not like this. I didn't realize it had reached this magnitude," he said. "That moment we shared earlier in the bathroom. I thought I had been able to reassure you, only to find out that now you are going off to find answers on your own. I don't want to be left in the dark." He ran his hands up and down his face before pushing his hair back and out of his eyeline. "I want to have a baby, love. I really do. And I want it to be with you. But to see this, I feel like our love making is just becoming something on your 'to do' list. I want to feel like we're both enjoying ourselves; it shouldn't be work."
He genuinely sounded hurt and she hadn't meant to make him feel that way. Somehow 'sorry' just didn't seem like enough. Anna wouldn't apologize for being upset and she wouldn't apologize for doing everything in her power to ensure they had a baby. But she didn't mean to leave him out; that wasn't them. They had always been a united front. So why was this time so different?
"Have I not made you happy?" John asked almost dreading the answer that may follow.
"What?"
"I just need to know if our whole marriage is going to hinge on this. I will do whatever you want to try and make this happen love. But I need some reassurance that if this doesn't happen for us that you'll still be happy with what we have." John noticed the way his words had stung her but the thought had been rattling around his brain throughout dinner.
"John Bates... of course I love you. And there is no way to measure my love for you because it is infinite. You can't begrudge me the desire to want to carry and have a child that is a little piece of you."
"I would never..." John began to speak but Anna rose from the chair and silenced him with her fingertip.
"I know you wouldn't. I'm just thinking out loud. I know we agreed before to just let things happen on their own...let nature take it's course. But John neither of us is getting any younger. I think we need to start actively trying and if it's still not working..." Her voice trailed off. Anna couldn't even say the words.
"If it's not working we can talk to a specialist and get a better handle on this," John offered up. "But at the end of the day I will love you just the same."
"I'm sorry I didn't confide in you. We should have been doing this together," Anna spoke into his chest as she hugged him. She could hear his heart beating and the slow pace calmed her down, so much so that Anna suddenly felt very tired. Having carried this burden around with her for months, she now felt like she was sharing some of the load with her husband. It didn't make the problem go away, but she certainly felt better after having spoken to him. Anna felt her muscles begin to slacken as he ran a hand through her hair and massaged her back.
"It's alright sweetheart. We're going to be okay. I'm not mad at you. I'm only sorry I can't do more to make you feel better," John said. He held her there in the darkness of their living room for as long as she needed him to before he got her to shut off the laptop and agree to come to bed.
John came home the next day after a game of football with the boys to find Anna cooped up on the couch with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders and her laptop open. He snuck up on her behind the couch and pressed a kiss to her head but she barely acknowledged him. John noticed she had her reading glasses on so it must have been important, whatever it was. He removed his jersey and left his white undershirt on. "You seem very involved in what you are looking at," John commented as he took a swig of water from his water bottle. He would have inquired further but then he took noticed of the rest of the room. There were pamphlets, books, and calendars all about how to improve one's chances of getting pregnant or increasing fertility spread out across the couch and coffee table.
Anna stopped long enough to look up at her husband who was sweating through his shirt, his knees covered in dry patches of dirt and slightly scuffed from a tumble. "I was going to wait until you showered. I want us to discuss this seriously, together," she emphasized.
"Alright," John said. "I'll just be a moment."
When he returned from his shower Anna had a plate of food ready for them to share. A half sandwich for each of them and a side of diced up fruit paired with a pitcher of ice tea to share. "This is quite a spread," John commented.
"Thank you," Anna replied. "How did the game go? I meant to ask but I was sort of wrapped up in what I was working on."
"It's alright Tom and I didn't beat Matthew and Robert too badly. Just a game between friends," John answered back as he ran a hand through his wet hair. Anna set two empty glasses down in front of them and he quickly set to pouring the tea for each of them. Even though John was sure he knew the answer he asked anyway out of habit, "How about you? How was your morning?"
Anna had been staring down at one of the pamphlets and was so engrossed in her reading she hadn't even heard the question. "Hmmm?"
"How was your morning of research?" John asked with a cheerful lilt to his voice. He was trying to remain optimistic. It was a foreign concept to him, since it was usually his Anna that was the sunshine to his gloomy rain cloud of a personality. But where his wife could not take up arms, John quickly filled in with reinforcements.
"Well, I see room for improvements," she said rather methodically. "Who knew it was so hard to have a baby? People seem to be having them left and right. Mary and Matthew already have George and they've barely been married two years. Tom and Sybil are on their second now, with only a few months gap between the two," Anna replied.
"Everything happens in it's own time," John replied back as he rubbed her shoulders. His wife didn't seem to pleased with the credo that John had taken on. "So what are these improvements we need to make?" he asked before biting into his sandwich.
Anna did some math on her fingers and began marking a calendar in front of her. "We'll both need to cut back on the occasional glass of wine," Anna said.
"Done," John answered back after he swallowed the bite that was in his mouth. "Never much cared for the stuff," John fibbed. "And what are we doing here with the calendar?"
"I have to start tracking my cycle to find out what days I'm ovulating," she explained.
"Can we only have sex on the days you are ovulating?"
"No, but we should be making a point to have sex on those days without fail," Anna replied. "I need to buy a home fertility kit for the both of us to find out what my egg quality and quantity is like."
"Both?"
"Yes, you'll need to take a test to check your...erm," she blushed at the comment and gazed down towards his lower region, "sperm concentricity."
"Christ. Is it that serious already?"
"Well at more than a year, yes. I'd say we have entered territory for serious concern, John."
John could only shrug and agree. He knew better than to go against his wife when she was passionate about something. "Whatever you say dear." John didn't mind having sex with his wife. In fact he rather enjoyed the idea of having guaranteed days when they would be intimate. But how intimate could one get when they were being so scientific about everything now?
"No more trips to the sauna at the gym or the hot tub," Anna added.
"I think I can manage that. Though you may need to rub my leg when it begins to seize up," John commented.
"Let's see, we don't smoke so that shouldn't be an issue," Anna said. "And you already wear boxers so no worries about the brief situation."
John nodded in agreement as he took another bite from his sandwich and craned his neck to read over her shoulder. He nearly spit out his mouthful of food as he read ahead, "Is that supposed to be a list of foods we can't eat?"
"Yes, both of us. In fact, I have to cut back on my caffeine intake on top of all the stuff you have to cut back on," she said.
John bit back the opportunity to groan in protest. He knew how much this meant to her; to both of them. "Anything else, love?" John asked as sweetly as he could.
Anna blushed at his inquiry, but was giddy to see what his response would be. "Well according to this we should be trying more often."
"More often than now?" he asked with eager fascination.
"Not necessarily more than once in a day, but every day wouldn't hurt," she replied with a raised eyebrow.
For the first time that day she smiled and looked genuinely happy. "Well, I'm all for this improvement," John replied with a wicked grin. "Maybe we can start working on that one first," John observed as he began kissing her neck.
"John..." Anna began to protest. But the way her breath caught in her throat said otherwise. John's fingers ran up and down her arms before he began to undo the buttons on her blouse. "You're not taking this seriously."
"Oh but I am," John responded as he let her hair down. "See it says it right there on the list 'no stress' and 'more sex'. We're killing two birds with one stone," he whispered into her ear. John nibbled on her earlobe before leaving a trail of blistering kisses along her collarbone.
Anna could feel her body responding, but was trying to stay committed to the task at hand. "John."
"Anna," John said as he brushed the pamphlets and books aside on the coffee table. He picked the laptop up and set it down before lifting Anna up in his arms. "John! What are you doing?"
"I'm trying to make a baby," he encouraged with a hearty laugh before capturing her mouth once more with his own.
"You've lost your damn mind," she chided him playfully.
"I'll be sure to tell our child those are the words you said the day we conceived them," he teased.
"Don't you dare," Anna shot back.
It hadn't taken any more convincing that that. While John may have been the instigator, Anna was just as eager of a partner and was more than willing to reciprocate. The two of them had fallen into one anothers embrace and explored each others bodies with their hands and mouths. Their drive being fueled both by their love for one another but also a desire to fulfill their need to start a family.
