Hello! If anyone is actually reading this I'd like to say a few things. I'm new to this fanfiction writing thing so reviews would be amazing! Also thank you for reading. This will be a long-ish story and I will update daily unless something comes up. Please feel free to check out my other stories too! Thank you! -cheysiu
CeCe gets home at around eleven the day before The huge SIUC charity event. Her nerves are high, but she's exhausted, and so she doesn't even check her messages before taking a shower, brushing her teeth and falling under the covers of her bed. She's almost asleep when the phone, left ignored on her end table, starts ringing, the music from Gunther's ringtone spilling out. She's more than tempted to ignore it.
She throws a hand out to grab at it and finally pushes the green talk button five rings in, and brings it to her ear as she sleepily mumbles, "Gunther?"
"Hey CeCe," He says from the other side of the line. "Sorry it's so late, did I wake you up?"
"No," CeCe admits, "but I was about to go to sleep, so, um, what did you need?"
"Tomorrow's the fifth, what do you think I need?" he says, and she can hear his amusement slip through the sound.
CeCe smiles, and says, "Thanks. It's kind of—I'm a little nervous. I've worked so hard. We all have. But I have a lot to do in the morning, so, um, can we talk later?"
Gunther makes a noise, like a mm, and CeCe grips the phone harder. "Yeah, sounds good. You gonna' have lunch tomorrow? Or dinner? Whatever."
CeCe is two seconds from agreeing, somehow, when she remembers that that's—no. She can't do that anymore, it's not fair to her, or him, or—or the baby. And like it or not, she has to start thinking about stopping this weird arrangement they have. It's not like Gunther will want to keep doing it once CeCe starts showing and everyone figures it out anyway, but she doesn't want to be rejected like that. Her stress levels are already going through the roof and it's only the end of her first trimester now. There are three.
"Tomorrow—it's going to be really busy," CeCe says, finally. Then: "I'm sorry. I—maybe later?"
Gunther is quiet for a second, and then says, "I get it. Later then. I'll call you and we'll make a date, alright?"
She nods against her pillow, and then adds audibly, "Alright."
They hang up. CeCe grips her phone hard until the display turns off to save power. She puts it back on the end table and breathes, closing her eyes. Later—later when? Later when she's grown four sizes? Later when she's shopping for diapers and bottles and baby clothes? Later when? When she has a car seat in the back and a baby gate on the stairs and—
There isn't a later.
CeCe had been pretty sure there was nothing good about being pregnant. The headaches are awful; the fatigue is driving her crazy almost as much as the stress. She's always vomiting at the worst times and she has random urges for things like ice cream and honey or whatever, and when she can't find them, she just eats whatever is in the house instead. It's not even that she's hungry—which she knows is coming—but rather that she just… needs to eat, and she catches herself biting her nails more than once. She doesn't think she's had more than four hours of sleep at a time since before she'd even peed on the stupid stick, which makes her way more cranky than she should be, and she thinks people—like poor Sarah, she's putting up with so much from her these days—are starting to notice.
Except—except then she feels it. She's lying on the couch, and it's late—like almost midnight late, but she couldn't get to sleep in her bed, so she was just changing location as a sneaky tactic or something, but she feels it. It's just a twinge at first, and she adjusts her hips, keeping her eyes closed, but then it happens again. She reaches down with a hand to feel where it hurts—not hurts, exactly, but, halfway there, she snaps her eyes open and lies as still as she can.
It happens again.
The baby—the baby is kicking her. The baby is kicking her. Kicking—the baby is kicking.
Everything is suddenly more than insomnia and nausea and stress. That's—that's real, that's a little human, with little feet, and it's moving—it's kicking. She can't—she sits up, and the little movements stop for a minute. Long enough for her heart to stop too, and she's touching her stomach with both hands, desperately looking for that distinctive pressure, before it comes again, slightly to the left of where it had been the first couple times.
She can't help it when she starts to cry, and she doesn't move her left hand as she fumbles for her cellphone and pushes her Caller ID down, looking for Gunther's name. It takes what seems like forever for him to pick up, and when he does, he's groggy and rumbling, soft and obviously barely awake, as if pulled away from sleep. "CeCe?"
"Gunther," She says, still sobbing, and she almost—she almost says everything, about the kicking and the headaches and the insomnia and the stress and the pregnancy test in the gas station. She almost asks, Why did you forget the condom? Why did you have to forget it right then?
She just cries instead, and talks about the show, and mumbles about anything but babies and sex and how much she wishes Gunther would just come over and hold her, hold the baby, hold them together, like some crazy messed up family. He stays on the phone with her until nearly two in the morning, and CeCe apologizes five times, says she doesn't know what came over her, it was just—insomnia and stress from the show. She hangs up the phone only after promising to have lunch with Gunther next week.
She slips into bed the next night, and takes a shaky breath before she starts to sing, slowly, rock a bye, baby, in the treetop, when the wind blows, the cradle will rock. Her palm is resting flat against her stomach, although the baby isn't kicking right then. She keeps singing until she finishes the song, and then manages to fall asleep easily for the first time in months.
They go to a little café type place that Gunther suggests. He says that his boss' son is actually the one that found it, but doesn't elaborate on the story because they get distracted by a man sitting at the front, near the entrance, playing guitar and singing a cover of Lady Gaga's Pokerface. It's not that bad, really, and CeCe lets Gunther linger there long enough that they listen to the whole song and clap when the man's done, and Gunther gives him a twenty, pulling his arm away from CeCe's shoulder to do so. She jumps, and steps a few feet back to go into the restaurant, wondering exactly when he had put his arm around her shoulder in the first place, and why hadn't she even noticed?
They talk about Ty and Tinka's engagement and Deuce's new tattoo, and the fight that Cece's mom and brother seem to be making into a never-ending sort of thing. Gunther tells a bad joke and CeCe points out the flaws, so he tells it again, only revised, and it's actually still not funny, but she laughs anyway. When Gunther asks if she wants to head back to his place though—watch a movie or something, he says, smiling—CeCe swallows and shakes her head.
"I have to—rehearsal, later," is what she says, getting up so fast that her chair scrapes against the ground, making a loud noise. "I—I'll see you!"
She doesn't know if she's proud of herself for getting out of a Gunther-related event without having sex, or if she's just depressed that she wishes she could turn around.
A couple days later, and completely out of the blue, she walks into the office to hear Sarah on the phone, kind of, um, mad. She's not yelling or anything, but—her shoulders are tight and her eyes sharp. She puts a finger up so that CeCe will know to be quiet, and says into the phone, "Yeah, yeah, I'll tell—what's the official line? 'Moving onto new adventures?' You're kidding—alright, fine, just—I'm not happy with this."
"What's going on?" CeCe asks, and there's a little twinge at her side. She's already pretty good at ignoring the whole persistent kicking thing. (It was amazing the first night, not so much the second or third or… yeah. She's having some sleeping issues.)
"Management—above production's heads, they're saying—has decided Nolan needs to move on. New adventures, they said. He's not going to be dancing for you on the show anymore. They've got a replacement coming in, I guess. We'll meet him in a few days."
"What?" CeCe says, "But—but why? Nolan's—Nolan's great, Sarah, I don't—"
"I don't know. Don't ask me why management do the things they do. I've already put in my piece—they're not changing their minds, sweetheart. We'll have say goodbye to Nolan."
CeCe stays a little upset for the rest of the day, and keeps looking at his phone, ready to text Nolan or something, except Sarah hasn't told him yet, and—it all just really sucks, mostly.