This came out really long, but believe me, it's worth it. I want to thank everyone who has read and reviewed, I appreciate it sooo much. *hugs* I can't wait for you guys to read this chapter. *squeal!* There's a small thing where Chris is upset and there's some mention about problems in the bedroom…it's not real clear in this chapter as to why or anything, but I'll clear up everything in the next chapter. I promise it'll make sense. Other than that, nothing to really say. *Waits on pins and needles for reviews*
Chris picked up the phone, looked at the tiny numbers, and put it down again. The phone book was splayed out on the coffee table, the yellow pages staring up at him with names of doctors. He'd called a few specialists, but couldn't get in right away, so didn't make any appointment. Maybe he was over reacting about this. He played with the tissue thin pages, his fingers shaky with nerves. Peptic ulcers may be precursors to caaaanceeeer. Mentally, he swatted at the thought, like it was a pesky fly. With a sigh he leaned back onto the couch and watched the image on the t.v. The men in the ring were silent, moving without word or sound, because Chris had muted it to make his phone calls.
Just recently WWE had put out a DVD set showcasing the Ayatollah of Rockin' Rollah himself. He'd bought a copy a few months back in Wal-Mart, Matt joked about it and suggested he buy The Hardy Boyz instead. But anyway, Chris hadn't taken it out of the cellophane package until today. He'd been up and down a lot the night before, worrying over things, not able to feel comfortable, so he'd came down stairs to the couch and tried to sleep there. That hadn't worked out either.
Matt was up and had left some what early to go to the store—he was picking up some things for guests—just what Chris wanted, people over on his birthday, to remind him he was another year older. After his husband was out the door, Chris decided to put one of the DVD's on. The coffee table and floor had subsequently become littered with wadded up tissues, because the water works started, and for a good hour Chris just sat there crying at every match and promo. Everything about it just made him dissolve into tears.
Chris sat up straighter when Lucas started to yap shrilly, his paws clamoring and clattering at the door, signaling Matt pulling in the driveway. Chris quickly palmed the tears from his face and grabbed all the crumpled tissues and got rid of them quickly—stuffing them down in between the couch cushions—before Matt came in and saw him bawling like a baby.
"Chris, can you get some of the stuff?" Matt asked as he came in, arms loaded with bags, Lucas weaving around his feet, narrowly avoiding being tripped over or stomped on.
"Sure." Chris stood up, his back giving him a protesting ache. He rubbed at it a little as Matt dropped his bags onto the table and started to take things out. The dull pain just traded places and roamed from his back down to his hips. With an annoyed sigh, Chris went out to get some more bags. After they both made a couple more trips in and out, everything was unloaded, cluttering the table and counter space. "So are we opening up our own grocery or what?" Chris asked peering into some of the bags. The one he looked in was full of packages of hamburger meat. Innocent little animals…chopchopchop…let's put you on the chopping block, let's cut your head off. Chris look into my eyes, my big brown cow eyes, why do hurt me? Look into my eyes, the innocence, the innocence sizzling on the grill, rolling around in your mouth with condiments. I was some little calf's mother! Chris pushed the bag away and struggled to keep his eyes from becoming fountains. Why the hell am I so emotional, over dumb shit?
"…and it was just by chance that all three brands are taping in Raleigh, so a bunch of the guys are coming. I thought it would cheer you up to see…" Matt trailed off, turning to Chris with a package of bratwursts in his hands. He was standing there quiet, staring down at the hamburger, his lips twitching, blue eyes seeming to glimmer through pools. "Chris baby, you okay?"
"Fine." Chris said quietly. He turned to Matt and was going to try his best to convince his husband that everything really was okay by pressing a kiss to his lips, but Matt stopped him, one hand cupping his chin and tilting his head to the side.
"Chris, your face is puffy." Matt squinted his eyes, concerned, and his fingers started to prod around Chris' neck and under his chin as though he was groping for swollen lymph glands.
"It's called fat." Chris stated flatly, and pulled Matt's hands away. Matt stopped Chris' actions again, this time turning his hands over and inspecting them.
"No, you're hands are swollen too." Matt tugged on Chris' ring, normally it would catch on the knuckle a little before sliding off easily. It wouldn't budge. "You need to go back to the doctor." Matt pulled Chris close to him, wrapping his arms around his waist.
"I am." Chris whined.
Matt brushed a soft kiss against Chris' lips. Even though he was worried for Chris, he tried to keep it from showing, he knew Chris was even more scared than he was, and he wanted to be a source of comfort, not the catalyst for mutual freak outs.
"Don't be afraid. What ever is going on, it's probably not as big a deal as we—as you're…making it out to be. I'm sure it's something minor. Whatever it is, I'm here, and we're together, and that's all that matters. We can get through anything together Chrissy."
Chris nodded, his eyes wetting with water, his lips pulling up at one side in that half smile that Matt loved so much.
"Thank you." Chris whispered, returning the kiss.
"Hell, don't thank me." Matt kidded, pulling away from Chris and going through the bags again. "I married you. I'm stuck now."
"Assclown." Chris huffed, pretending to be offended.
"Christopher, quit beating around the bush and go call the doctor."
"I'll beat around your bush Matthew!" Chris called as he disappeared into the living room. He heard Matt snort laughter from the other room. So, Chris was back where he had started, sitting on the couch with the phone in his hands.
A few minutes later he was arguing with someone, trying to get them to move his appointment so it wasn't five years before he could get in. Soon a headache was blossoming behind his eyes, and he was so upset he didn't even know what he was yelling into the phone anymore. Matt appeared quickly, tapping Chris on the shoulder and asking for the phone, which Chris turned over to him and sank down onto the couch, massaging his temples. Matt took the phone back into the kitchen and bantered back and forth until he got to speak to a doctor who apologized for any problems and gave Chris a referral to another doctor in Charlotte.
"All done." Matt said coming back into the living room and sitting beside Chris. "You're not supposed to get upset. It elevates your blood pressure." Matt reminded Chris, whose headache was throbbing worse. "Maybe we should check. You know I bought that blood pressure cuff and--"
"I'm fine Matt. Go get stuff ready. I'll just lay down for a couple minutes and I'll be fine."
"Don't tell me what to do." Matt squeezed Chris' thigh. "Now lay down."
"Well if I can't tell you what to do, what makes you think you can tell me?" Chris shot back, glancing over at Matt and raising an eyebrow.
"That's just how it works Jericho. Lay down…and gimme your feet." Matt instructed as Chris reclined back, putting a couple throw pillows behind his head.
"Give you my feet?" Chris smirked. "Well hold on, I have to untie them first." He joked, putting his feet in Matt's lap. Soon Matt had the shoes and socks off, tossed them to the side, Chris' feet were puffy too. God, I really hope Chris is okay. Matt thought, swallowing hard. Please, please, if it's something horrible I don't know if I'll be able to hold myself together. Matt quickly pushed his anxieties to the back of his mind, it would probably stay there for a while, but pretty soon the stink of such a horrible thought would drift back to his conscious mind, like the stench from a carton of take out that was left in the depths of the refrigerator for too long. Everything will be fine. We've gotten through a lot of turmoil together, whatever else life throws at us, we'll conquer that too.
Matt kneaded his fingers into Chris' feet, massaging.
"Hey, Chris?" Matt asked, looking over at him. Chris' cobalt eyes watching him from slits, his eyes starting to droop closed.
"Huh?"
"Are you sure you want to have everyone over? I told you we don't have to. I mean, I just thought…but I can cancel. Maybe I should call them up and cancel, they'd understand, maybe it's not a good idea since you're not feeling well."
"Don't be ridiculous." Chris mumbled sleepily. "I'm not dying. Just a headache. Get out of here." Chris raised his hand and waved it back in forth in a pathetic, drowsy, shooing motion.
"I love you so much." Matt laughed, moving Chris' feet so he could get up. He stopped at the other end of the couch to drop a kiss on Chris' forehead before leaving him alone to rest.
Chris woke up hours later, having slept longer than he'd wanted to. He sat up and groaned at the ache in his back, cursing at it silently. The green numbers on the radio told him people would be flooding the house soon. He went upstairs and got ready while Matt went in and out of the house setting things up.
Soon the back yard was dotted with people, many of whom Chris hadn't seen for years, save on t.v. Lawn chairs were sprinkled here and there, a couple of table were set up with food, the majority of it stereotypical store bought cook-out food, already made because Matt couldn't make potato salad or deviled eggs to save his life. A few of the guys had brought things with them to contribute, John "Morrison" Hennigan brought a vegetable tray which was typical, it screamed 'health food' while all the other food just sat there drowned in 'who gives a shit it's a cook out'.
Matt manned the grill, and Mark and Shawn stood close by watching, Mark nursing a beer and Shawn doing something with comical antics, making both of them laugh. At least it was a good time to have a cook out, in North Carolina it was still pretty mild in early November a sweat shirt or jacket might be needed, but it was still enjoyable.
Nothing really went very well, Matt burned the first round hamburgers to a crispy sizzle so people started wars with them, throwing them back and forth at each other and rolling around on the ground laughing with ashy smudges all over their clothes. Paul Wight tripped over Lucas and fell into the French doors breaking one of them down and running glass through his hand, his night ended in the emergency room with blood pouring down is arm. It finally fell apart completely when Chris disappeared inside for some twenty minutes. Matt handed over grill duty to Mark and found Chris upstairs, sitting on the edge of the bed. He was silent, staring down at his hands.
"Chris, you not feeling well baby?"
"It…it happened." Chris said quietly, barely able for Matt to hear.
Matt furrowed his dark brows, not knowing what Chris was meaning. He sat down on the edge of the bed and draped his arm over Chris' shoulders.
"What happened?"
"All that stuff I used to say in the ring…old used up wrestlers..." Chris' voice faltered, he sniffled. Why am I so damn emotional? "Everyone out there still looks good. Mark, Shawn, they're both pushing fifty now and they look great. I became what I used to bitch about all the time. I feel horrible out there. I don't want anyone looking at me I look so…" Chris' sentence ended on a soft whimper.
"Chris look, I-I should have just canceled this." Matt ran a hand through his curly hair, his stomach was knotting itself, he hated seeing Chris this way, and it scared him. He didn't want Chris to be sick, he didn't want him crying all the time, feeling so bad, it broke his heart. "Baby don't worry about how you look right now. There are more important things."
"Not just that, it's everything Matt. Everything hurts, I'm always tired, sick, and…and then there's…" Chris burst into a full gale of tears, sobbing pathetically.
"Chrissy I said we weren't going to talk about that."
"I-I d-don't care Matt, I don't ca-care! It matters to me—a lot—I want to-to make love to you. Do you know how…empty…how…incompetent…it-it makes me feel!" Chris' words were barely understandable as he wailed, coughing and choking on his sobs. Matt wrapped him up in his arms, trying to calm him.
"Talk to the doctor about it when you go babe, if it bothers you that much, it's a common problem. Please calm down Chris, please."
"No, I can't. I can't…God…my head…" Chris shoved his palms into his eyes. The pain thundered around behind them. He laid back on the pillows, and felt Matt get back on the bed, he was sitting next to him taking one of Chris' hands away from his face and holding it between his own, rubbing it gently.
"Chris, everythings going to be fine. The last thing we need to worry about is our sex life. There's always Viagra." Matt tried joking, hoping maybe that would break through Chris' melt down. He remembered what the doctor said about Chris' blood pressure, and just like the ulcers, Matt had immediately searched the net for info. Chris accused him being a worry wart, it was true. Right now Matt was practically fighting off a panic attack, Chris' sudden headache could be from him getting so upset, his blood pressure spiking, and a headache was not a good sign. If he didn't calm down shortly, Matt was going to drag him kicking and screaming to the car and haul ass to the hospital.
"Um, hey. Is everything okay?" A familiar voice said from the door way. Matt looked up to see Jay standing there, looking awkward at what he'd walked in on. Matt shook his head in a silent negative.
"Hey Reso, can you get people to start leaving? Chris isn't feeling well." Matt added, turning back to Chris and brushing away some stray tears with his finger tips. When Matt turned back, Jay had disappeared.
Matt sat up all night, fussing over Chris, who mumbled sleepily at Matt to stop babying him. Matt ignored that, and every time Chris woke up, Matt played with his hair, running his fingers through it, until he drifted back to sleep.
The next day found the two of them making a trip to Charlotte. Chris slept most of the way there. The wait was surprisingly not very long. Soon Chris was in the doctors office, nervous as always, picking off a list of symptoms to the doctor who spoke to him in a thick middle eastern accent. A few basic things were taken care of, the dreaded scales, where the numbers were once again higher than before, ditto with the blood pressure cuff. Finally he was laying on the exam table, the doctor checking him over. His hands roamed over his body, finally getting to his stomach and prodding around to feel it. Chris was shaking, trying not to, but he hated the doctor and all the worst case scenarios kept rushing through his head. He watched intently as the expression on the doctors face changed from pleasant, to serious.
"Hm." The doctor mumbled and went to his desk, grabbing a pen to scribble something down.
"Wha-what does 'hm' mean?" Chris asked, sitting up and trying to swallow the lump forming in his throat.
"There seems to be a…mass in the abdominal--"
"A-a…mass?" Chris stuttered weakly, feeling faint at the weight of that one word, trying to wrap his mind around it, it couldn't be.
"I'm going to have an MRI. It should take only a short time. This will show us what we're looking at and we can go from there."
Chris only nodded, his mouth dry, his head feeling painful like a drill was eating at it. The doctor swooped out of the room leaving Chris there with his words just sitting on his chest like a weight. Soon a nurse was in, giving Chris some gown to put on and explaining how the MRI worked, which Chris didn't even care about.
The MRI took an hour, a freaking hour in that damn tunnel like machine, taking pictures of this thing inside of him, this thing that could be killing him. The whole time Chris had to focus, think he was somewhere else, or he was sure he was going to suffocate in there from claustrophobia. He thought of Matt, and tried to push away all of his fears about what the results were going to show. After it was done, Chris got back into his clothes and went out to the waiting room where Matt was chewing his nails down to nubs. He explained to Matt what was going on, despite how scared he was, he didn't have another melt down like the night before. He and Matt just sat waiting for the results, hands linked and going numb from the tightness of the hold, neither one of them caring.
Time crawled so slowly, Matt thought he was going to lose his mind. Chris had been talking most of the time, rambling on about anything and everything just out of nervousness, but Matt had tuned most of it out not on purpose but just because his mind was launching itself into a flurry of catastrophic thought. Everythings going to be okay, everything will be fine. Occasionally he blinked back at Chris, tuning in to what he was babbling about, but he was pretty sure Chris didn't know what he was talking about either, he was just trying to distract himself from focusing on the possibilities.
"Mr. Christopher Irvine-Hardy?"
Both Matt and Chris jumped up together, like twins conjoined and the hands. Both of their faces drained colorless at the look on the doctor's face. It could only be described as shock. For a moment, the physician moved his mouth up and down, fumbling for words.
"Oh my God…" Chris felt his knees go weak, and he quickly sat down again, not trusting them.
"Chris, Chris it's okay, I promise baby I promise…I'm here." Matt babbled, tears over flowing from his soft, warm eyes.
"Sir, I um—I'm going to need to do another test, to…to confirm." The doctor was stuttering almost as bad as Matt.
"To confirm what?" Matt asked, helping Chris to his feet. The doctor's twitching, buggy, eyes looked back and forth between the two men, and he avoided answering them.
"This way please."
He took off at a brisk place, clearly frazzled, the file in his hand shaking, which was not at all reassuring to Chris and Matt. They ended up in a small room, Chris again on an examining table, as the doctor smeared a clear gel onto Chris' stomach. Chris swallowed hard, trembling all over, feeling like he was going to throw up at any minute just from the fear. Matt was still entwined in his hand, neither of them could feel their fingers anymore.
The doctor picked up an instrument attached to a computer. In their state of near panic, neither Chris or Matt realized what the machine was. The doctor turned to them, his hand tremoring so violently he could barely hold on to the thing. He pressed it against Chris' pudgy stomach and moved it around, it seemed like everything in the room stopped—everything in the world halted to a dead silence—not even a breath was heard.
A grainy picture appeared on the screen, before Chris or Matt could see it, the doctor moved in front of the screen, uttering a cry at whatever he saw, and the silence was broken by a steady sound—woosh-woosh, woosh-woosh, woosh-woosh.
"What the fuck is that!" Chris yelled, grabbing Matt's hand so hard the younger man thought his fingers might be broken. The doctor was still silent, seemingly entranced at whatever was on the screen. Woosh-woosh, woosh-woosh.
"Doctor?" Matt whispered, almost afraid to speak, wondering if he could even find his voice. He cleared his throat, and tried again louder. "Do-doctor…sir…what is it?"
"It's…it's a fetus."
"Wha-wha-what did you say?" Chris asked, his voice coming out in a shriek. He was sure he hadn't heard right what the doctor had said, he'd spoken so low, so quietly, he had to have mistaken what was said. Chris looked over at Matt, he was as still as a corpse, his mouth hung open ready for a fly to buzz in, his eyes wide and blinking, nothing seeming to comprehend. Did he hear what I thought I heard? Chris thought frantically. "What is it? What's wrong with me!" Chris demanded, barking his words, feeling like he was going to go mad at any moment and just throw the doctor across the room so he could look at that damn monitor. Chris didn't have to, the small, dark, man turned back to the two of them, and moved out of the way of the screen. The physicians shock only mirrored theirs.
"Sir, you're—you're—pregnant."
