Up in the Air Part Seven
"You're pregnant?" Arnold repeated disbelief and panic evident in his voice. He studied the expression on her face for a good long moment and realized she looked absolutely petrified. The truth was he was too. She had been having a hard enough time with everything that Derek had done to her. How was she going to handle being pregnant with that son of a bitch's child on top everything?
"I don't know." Helga told him quietly. "That's why I needed the test." She glared at him while grabbing the test box back from him. She took a seat on the couch looking down at the box in her shaking hands, "I woke up a little while ago and I just couldn't wait to find out anymore. I needed to know." She admitted.
Arnold nodded as he sat down next to her. Neither of them said anything for a few minutes. They just sat in the dark in silence. "Why do you think you are?" He finally asked her. "Have you been throwing up?" He thought back to a few days earlier, when Helga saw the picture of the man attacked her when she and Derek met. She threw up that night.
"A few times." Helga admitted. "I was supposed to have my period like two weeks ago." She awkwardly admitted. "I kept hoping it was because of the stress of everything." She blushed, "This is so embarrassing talking to you about."
"Don't be embarrassed." He offered her a small reassuring smile, "I've had girlfriends. I've bought them tampons before." He nudged her slightly in the hope to get her to smile just a little. She didn't. "You have been really stressed." Arnold pointed out, "Stress can do that, can't it? Mess with your monthly…things?" He asked awkwardly.
"Yeah, it can. I didn't have a regular cycle until college. I can thank Bob and Miriam for that one." She muttered. "What am I going to do if I'm pregnant?"
Arnold squeezed her hand, "We'll figure that out once we know for sure. I don't really know how, but for now I just know we will figure it out." While one hand still held her hand, his other went to her chin moving it so she was facing him, "We'll figure it out together. Okay?"
Slowly, she nodded. "Okay." She pulled her hand out of Arnold's gentle grip. "I have to pee. I'm going to take the test now." She didn't wait for Arnold to respond. She just quickly made her way to her bathroom.
Afterwards, Helga and Arnold sat at the foot of her bed waiting the five minutes for the pregnancy test to be complete. "How long has it been?" Arnold asked. The five minutes had to be up soon.
Helga checked her watch, "One minute forty five seconds."
Arnold sighed, "It felt longer than that."
"You need to stop doing that. You're making me even more nervous." She tunneled her fingers through her hair, "Well, maybe if I'm pregnant, Derek won't want to kill me anymore; that could be a plus."
Arnold shot her a look, "That's not funny."
Helga rolled her eyes, "I wasn't trying to be. Actually, I was serious."
"I'm still mad at you." Arnold told her. "You never should have left this apartment without me."
"Ugh!" She groaned, "I was gone for five minutes. If it wasn't for your bladder you never would have known I left. Get over it."
"That's not the point and you know it." Arnold snapped, "What if someone on Derek's payroll saw you? You might know who they are, but they sure as hell know who you are. Did anyone see you when you were out?"
"A couple of drunk college guys buying condoms." She sighed, "And here I was buying a pregnancy test." She glanced at her watch. "It's been five minutes." She took a deep breath and stood up. Arnold followed her to the bathroom where the pregnancy test sat on the bathroom counter.
"What does it say?" Arnold asked, trying to peer at the test over her shoulder.
"It's negative."
"It's negative? That's great!" He studied Helga for a moment, who didn't look anymore relieved. "That is great, isn't it?" He paused, "Were you hoping for a different result?"
"No…I just thought I would feel relief if it came back negative. I just don't. What if it's a false negative?" She sighed, throwing the test away in the garbage. "I just don't think I'm going to feel any type of relief until I know for sure." She sighed, "I hate this. I've been such an emotional mess lately." She quickly wiped away tears from her eyes, "I have cried more times in the past two weeks then I have in my entire life."
Arnold released a sympathetic sigh, "You're not an emotional wreck. You're just someone who has been through a hell of a lot in a short amount of time. It would knock anyone on their ass." He cleared his throat, "Let's just go back to bed and we'll talk more about this in the morning."
Helga only nodded as she followed him out of the bathroom.
Later that morning Arnold woke up just after eight. He showered right away, hoping it would wake him up a little bit. After Helga's brief disappearance and then her revealing she that might be pregnant, he didn't get much sleep. The initial relief he felt when the test came back negative was short lived. He quickly realized Helga was right. It could be a false negative. He knew it was a possibility that she took the test too early to detect pregnancy. He had no reason to believe that Helga and Derek had not been sexually active up until she saw Derek murder Tom. They could have conceived a child that morning for all he knew.
He felt himself cringe at the thought of Helga being intimate with that monster. It truly made him sick to think of all the ways Derek had manipulated Helga. If Helga had known anything of Derek's real dealings she never would have dated him, let alone slept with him. He thought about Vince Longhorn and how Derek had apparently gotten him to attack Helga in order to meet her. He could only imagine how terrified Helga must have been when Vince had her pinned against her car. He'd seen Vince both in picture and in person and he was a big guy. There was a very good reason why he was one of Derek's muscles and he was a giant next to Helga.
After showering Arnold decided to momentarily distract himself by watching television until Helga woke up. He settled on a Friends marathon. Four episodes later, Arnold became slightly concerned that Helga hadn't come out of her room yet. He frowned. She was in her room, wasn't she? He jumped out of his seat and jogged towards Helga's bedroom and flung the door open.
"What the Hell?" Helga shrieked from her bed, "What's going on?"
"Sorry." Arnold apologized. He had clearly woken her up. "It's after ten and you weren't up yet…"
"So you decided to come barging into my room? Criminy, Arnold. You scared the crap out of me. You do remember someone tried to kill me a couple weeks ago, right?"
"You're usually up by now…I was worried you left without telling me again."
Helga looked at her bedside clock and saw it was 10:40. She couldn't remember the last time she slept that late. "Well, I've been through a lot lately, so forgive me if I need to sleep in once in a while." She snapped angrily. "You could have at least knocked before barging in and practically giving me a heart attack."
Arnold had to bite his tongue. He wanted so badly to snap back at her, but he knew that wouldn't help anything. Truthfully, she had been through a lot lately. It wouldn't be right yelling at her just to argue with her, especially if she really was pregnant. So instead he just sighed heavily and apologized, "You're right. I'm sorry. I was just worried…"
"I'm sorry too. I guess I shouldn't blame you for being worried. I mean I'm the one who gave you a reason to worry in the first place."
"It's weird when you apologize."
Helga rolled her eyes, "You're an idiot."
Three days later Arnold was sitting in the living room flipping through channels on the television when Helga practically skipped into the kitchen. "Guess what?" She asked as she opened the cupboard next to the refrigerator.
"What?" Arnold asked, glancing over his shoulder.
"I'm not pregnant! I'm celebrating." She nearly squealed holding up a bottle of whiskey. "You want to celebrate with me?" She didn't wait for him to answer. Instead, she took out two glasses, filling them with ice and a shot or so of whiskey before filling the rest of the glass with Yahoo soda.
"You're not? Are you sure?"
Helga nodded, "I'm sure." Even from his seat on the couch Arnold could see Helga smiling as she took a drink. She took the seat next to him and handed him the glass she didn't drink out of. "To me not being pregnant." She toasted and they 'clinked' glasses and both took a long drink.
"Damn, this is strong." Arnold made a face before taking another drink, slowly getting used to the strong taste of whiskey. "If we are going to be celebrating like this all night I'm ordering us a pizza."
Two hours, an entire pizza, and several drinks later Arnold and Helga were both feeling the effects of alcohol. They were sitting on the floor between the couch and the coffee table. They had spent the last hour reminiscing. "Remember when we went to Chez Paris in fourth grade?"
"Which time?" Helga questioned before taking a drink of her Yahoo and whiskey.
"What do you mean which time? We were only there once."
"We were there twice Football Head. When Gerald and Pheebs were with us and that time I pretended to be your pen pal." She laughed, "Man, I did some crazy things back then. What was her name again?"
"YOU WERE CECILE?" Arnold nearly shouted. "Are you serious?"
Helga's eyes widened, "You didn't know?" She began laughing nearly hysterically, "I thought you knew! How did you not figure that out?"
"I had no idea." Arnold buried his head in his hands. "I kept your shoe for years. I still think of that night every Valentine's Day."
"I don't understand how you didn't know. How did you not figure it out after all these years? It's not like I was wearing some clever disguise. I wore my hair over my eye. Oh! Wait…" Helga pushed her bangs over her right eye, "Look, now I'm Cecile." She laughed, shaking her head, "How did you become a member of the FBI when you are this oblivious?"
"I don't know how I didn't know….Maybe it was because you were nice for a change." Arnold accused. "We hung out all the time in junior high and high school how had we never talked about this?"
Helga shrugged, "I figured it was one of those things we never talk about. Like that time we tangoed. Or that time professed my love for you on the rooftop of the FTi building. I just thought it was one of those things we were never going to bring up again."
Arnold looked at her for a long moment, "You meant what you said that day at FTi, didn't you?"
Helga shrugged. Her already pink cheeks turned even pinker, "Does it really matter? It was such a long time ago."
Arnold looked at her, "How...How long did you like me for? I mean, when did you stop?"
"I'm not really sure." Helga told him truthfully. "I think it was a slow process…" She paused, "It was like one morning I woke up and didn't feel that way towards you anymore." She finished off her drink. "I need to stop drinking. It makes me tell the truth and makes me look like a total idiot." She looked down away from him, clearly embarrassed.
Arnold felt bad. He could see that she was embarrassed by the whole thing. He sighed; he knew a way to ease her embarrassment. He needed to make a confession too. Arnold downed the rest of his drink.
"I had sex dreams about you in high school. A lot of them."
Helga snapped her head towards his, "You what?" She laughed, "You can't be serious?"
Arnold nodded, "I am…I was fifteen when I had the first one. Remember, we were in the same gym class? We were running the mile and you were ahead of me and your gym shorts kept riding up…And…" He groaned, "You were always wearing those baggy jeans, I never realized you had such a nice…" He blushed, "I just realized how nice your body was."
Helga blinked, so flabbergasted she didn't know what to say, "So what did we do in these dreams?" She couldn't help but ask.
"I…I don't know….The normal stuff." He stuttered, he decided it would be best not to tell her about the sex dreams that involved her yelling at him during the act. He closed her eyes, imagining her so perfectly barking out instructions on what to do to her. Touch her here, kiss her there, do her harder…
His eyes snapped open. He needed to stop thinking about Helga like that.
"Why didn't you ever tell me?"
Arnold raised an eyebrow, "Are you serious? I thought you would have killed me thinking of you that way. I guess we both had our secrets to keep growing up."
"So when did you stop thinking of me that way?" Helga asked, nudging him slightly.
Arnold's breath hitched. Seeing her again, spending time with her again, he wasn't sure if he ever stopped thinking about her that way. Of course, in the years he didn't see her he didn't really think of her much. But now…
He needed to give Helga an answer, "I guess it was kind of like what you said…It just went slowly went away."
They sat in silence for a few minutes. "We should probably go to bed. I think enough embarrassing secrets have been revealed enough."
Arnold nodded, standing up. "You're probably right." He held out a hand, helping Helga up. He and Helga began collecting the paper plates, pizza box, and napkins from the coffee table in silence. After throwing away the garbage and putting their glasses and silverware in the dishwasher they said an awkward goodnight to one another. Helga disappeared into her bedroom and Arnold went to the bathroom.
After using the toilet and brushing his teeth Arnold splashed some cold water on his face. Looking at his reflection, he sighed heavily.
Old suppressed feelings about Helga were coming flooding back and Arnold didn't know how to stop them.
As always, if you enjoyed please review.
And a question for everyone...If Arnold and Helga end up having sexy times (nothing too explicit) would you all be okay if I post a 'sexy time' warning in the beginning of the chapter and if you choose you can just skip through it or would you rather I post it in a different post with an M rating. For what I may or may not have planned now I'm not really sure it constitutes for an M rating and I definitely don't want to change this to an M rating, especially if the content will only be for a few chapters. Please let me know what you think.
