26

Alex went to take a step forward, but was halted by the small person who held her legs together. She rubbed her hands down the length of her legs and pulled his arms apart and bent down, "what did you say?," she asked him. She knew she heard him correctly, and Piper's face was all the confirmation she'd needed, but how?

"There's a baby in mommy's tummy," he said nodding out each word.

"And how do you know?," she said pulsing her hand through each of her own words. "I saw it," he said with his fists balled up near his face in excitement.

She grabbed his hands and kissed his fists before standing up and dragged her hand along the wall, securing her balance. The heels of her shoes rapped against the wooden floor as she made her way down the hall. She neglected to shed her shoes in normal ritual as she made her way over to Piper. The blonde sat up straight, her eyebrows raised high but narrowed, she pulled her lips inward, her mouth was a straight line.

Alex stood in front of her, a single eyebrow cocked, she put her hand over the side of her face, blocking her mouth from Jamie, and mouthed, "yes?"

Piper nodded her head rapidly, her expression didn't change.

Alex collapsed onto their coach and unbuttoned her coat, Jamie climbed up onto her lap, "they put jelly and used the thingy and went all over," he told her waving a hand in the air over Pipers abdomen. Alex's hand rested on her fire hot cheek.

"Can we go play in the snow now?," he asked them.

Alex blinked slowly, "not right now," she breathed out and fanned her face, "later."

"But," he raised his arms out to the side, "you said when you came home we could go out." "James, I haven't eaten yet and I need to talk to your mother."

He scrunches up his face ready to fight.

"Later," she says sternly, raising her hand.

He gets down from the couch, the tone is quite familiar, there's no use in arguing with that tone. "Soon?," he asks from across the room.

"Yes soon. After I eat."

She ran a hand up the nape of her neck into her hair, pushing her hair up messily, while he walked off disinterested in anything other than going outside.

"How?," she asked Piper. The blonde looked over her wife's face, unsure what she was thinking. "IUI?"

"And he knows, and you didn't tell me," she processes at a whisper. Her hand shakes slightly as it moves back to her cheek.

"I only told him because I had to take him with me," she swallows, "I had some bleeding today... I've had some bleeding for a few days, but they said I could have some spotting after any procedures," Alex moved her other hand to her other cheek and moved the skin back.

"So I tried to be patient. But this was the 5th day," she grabbed one of Alex's hands tentatively and squeezed it, "I called to see if I should go in or if this was normal, but I couldn't get through so I just took him and went."

Her other hand straightened and came away from her face, "I'm so confused, you had IUI done and then you were spotting for 5 days...they wouldn't be able to tell this early." Her breath caught in her chest, "you did IUI without me."

"Al, please don't be upset, I just wanted to make sure it would work before I got you all excited."

"I'm not upset," then shook her head slightly, surprised at her own truth, "I'm just trying to process."

"Al, everything is good. I'm good, our baby's good."

She fought the burn beneath her eyelids, "you're okay... I didn't even know."

"I know."

She closed her eyes and shook her head, "I thought you didn't want this," she pressed her hand into the couch and moved back.

"I didn't think I did either at first. I was so mad that you didn't tell me about paying the storage fee for the sperm, I still am a little."

Alex's eyes peered into hers, uh, I think we're more than even now.

"But the more I thought about it, I knew I wanted it too. Life just got in the way, I never allowed myself any time to think how it could be, to be a family of four."

Alex tilted her neck back. Piper knelt into the couch cupped the back of her neck and pulled her closer, "and I know how much you wanted this...I wanted this," she placed an open palm on her lower abdomen, "for us too."

"So you've known for months that you wanted another one too?" "Yes."

Alex brought her hands up to her face again before getting off the couch. She removed her coat and walked around to their other side of the coffee table.

"But, I couldn't handle going through the IUI and it not work and have to keep telling you month after month that I can't give you a baby. Those six months with Jamie were so hard."

Alex nods recalling their past before getting back to the moment, "what could I have possibly said to you, if the IUI hadn't worked, that could made you want to do this alone?" She continued her waltz around the table.

"It's not what you could've said," Piper explains to her while folding her knees and drawing them closer to her chest, "I worried if it didn't work after a few months, that I wouldn't be able to handle continuing. It would've been a tease."

Alex's lips parted, she squinted her eyes, ready to tell her that she would've been happy that she'd tried, but she knew she would've been lying to her, that she would've done anything to urge her in continuing if it hadn't worked.

"It worked the first time," the blonde's voice snapped Alex's focus back to her. She saw Piper's blue eyes look up to the heavens, "and then I wanted to tell you, but we were still fighting about that fucking bill," she tensed her hands into open fists. "And then I thought well what if something goes wrong, it's still early and I'm even more high risk for abnormalities."

Alex stretched her arms up and folded them behind her head and walked in the opposite direction around the coffee table before sitting beside Piper. She placed a hand on her bent knee, "you shouldn't have gone through that alone."

Piper leaned her face into her shoulder, "and as devastated as I would've been if something was wrong, I wouldn't even have known where to begin if I had to tell you," she pulls her head back and shakes it, "no, I don't regret it," she tells the both of them.

Alex nodded, she understood completely, holding something out of fear of the unknown. After the guilty hell that Piper had just put her through, she should've been mad, but she wasn't. She crossed her legs,

"so you said it worked the first time... which was?" "October," she said hesitantly.

The brunette pushed her fingertips under her glasses and pressed them harder against the skin of her forehead, trying to calculate, "so you're..."

"Ten weeks."

"Piper," she breathed out. She pressed her open palms along her thighs.

"I know, I'm sorry...," slight guilt in her tone, but then she shook her head again and gently laughed, "but I'm also not."

She watched Alex pull at the fabric against her knee, a nervous habit.

"I'm willing to bear whatever you want to lay on me for this, but it's much easier for me to tell you that it worked, that our baby's healthy, no chromosomal abnormalities, and the bleeding was a normal side effect of the CVS."

"Easier," she could hear Alex's voice shake from the back of her throat. "CVS?,"

"That's the test I did five days ago. It's one of the tests we declined with J because there's a risk of miscarriage, but now I had a 1/100 chance of having a baby with an abnormality. I needed the diagnostic test."

"And they can tell you for sure with that one?," her bottom lip quivered.

"Yeah , and because I was there today they let me know everything was negative."

Alex rubbed that sweat that had accumulated on her hands over Piper's thighs. "You told me just a few weeks ago that you couldn't confidently give me a second baby... but you were already pregnant," her fingertips flared up from Piper's legs.

She grasped Alex's hands, "I didn't know if it was healthy yet Al. There were so many things that could've been wrong. I needed to know first."

She watched the brunette blink, the tears ran down her cheeks. Piper pushed her wife's glasses back onto her head, Alex leaned in an pressed her lips against Piper's, letting them linger.

"What if I had changed my mind," she gently laughed and wiped away her tears, "that was pretty ballsy."

"Yeah right!," Piper exclaimed, "I knew you'd probably be a little upset, but I knew you'd be happy."

"Chutzpah," she says with a smirk.

"I like to think of it as trust, an insurmountable level of trust."

Alex slowly kissed her again, savoring the moment, realizing the trust that she thought was irreparable was the same trust that grounded Piper's decision. She pulls away as they hear Jamie coming.

"Can we please go outside and play?"

Alex contorted her lips, he catches her face, "mom!," he says frustratingly.

"Let me order a pizza and then well go after okay?," she tries to compromise, having totally forgotten about her stomach and now realizes how hungry she is.

"Ugh, its gonna be dark!," he goes on.

"We'll go in the dark then!," she says getting up, "do you want pizza?," she asks him so she knows what kind to order.

"I want to play in the snow," he says looking up at her.

Alex makes a face at him. Piper nudges her with her foot, causing her to turn around "there's gonna be two," she whispers.

She caresses Piper's blonde hair and whispers, "thank you," before walking away to get the menu and fights with Jamie, telling him if she goes outside right now she's going to fall over into the snow and he's going to have drag her back inside. She orders their pizza and comes back with him still arguing. Alex motions her hand for him to get out.

Piper pouts her lip some as he walks out annoyed, "he's not gonna be the baby anymore." "He's always gonna be the first baby."

"No, Finn was my first baby," she says laughing. She sighs, "ugh, everyone's old now. Every time I see that kid he's just...I don't know, he's so mature. Especially if I think of him in relation to Jamie, it's just... weird."

"Can I ask you something?," Alex asks her after a while with a serious tone.

"Mmm."

The doorbell rings, Alex gets up to go answer the intercom and waits by the door.

"Alex you cannot set me up to fear this question and then wait by the door, c'mon."

"I might milk that you did this to me for a few weeks," she turns her back to Piper and opens the front door waiting.

Piper shoves her outside and closes the door behind her.

"More pizza for me, I don't care," she hears Alex say from their hallway.

Piper unlocks it and goes back to the living room. Alex plops back down, and opens the box and inhales the scent. She hands Piper a slice, and Piper notices Alex thinking about her words.

Alex opens her mouth slightly, still feeling a little on edge. "Just say it," Piper demanded.

She focuses her eyes on Piper's. She felt a little uneasy but knew Piper went about this in a way to preserve her feelings.

"When we got back from Jamie's swim lesson, the time we took Nicky," she calculated the time lapse, "you were still really pissed off at me, but you already knew, didn't you?"

Piper nodded her head, "I got my first sonogram that day, I was so excited but I was still so pissed that you wouldn't apologize for hiding everything from me, and then I was frustrated with myself for doing the same thing."

"So your errand, that's the first time you saw the baby."

"Our baby... yes. I thought by then we would've talked everything through and been on better terms."

"And then in the same day, you see me packing up."

Piper stopped chewing for a moment, then continued and swallowed. "My stomach dropped. I was already starting to feel nauseous anyway, but then just when I was ready to really sit down and talk to you, I thought you'd had it and every horrible thought just started tumbling out of control when I saw you packing."

"I'm so sorry," she tried to think of that day from Piper's perspective, "I was so upset, I thought you didn't care that I wanted this and it had been a long time since I felt that way from you."

"I had just come back from talking to Nicky, I almost slipped and told her that it wasn't even about the baby, that we already had one on board, it was just all the dishonesty," she bit into her pizza again, "but she cut me off and I was ready to talk to you, put everything behind us. I was so excited on one hand to know everything on the sonogram appeared normal but then they talked to me about invasive testing because of my age and I was so worried, oh it was such a mess," Piper looked disgruntled, she tossed her crust into the box.

Alex picked up her crust and started nibbling on it when Piper exhaled deeply.

"I feel so relieved now," she said lying back resting her head onto the pillow against the arm of the couch and put her feet in Alex's lap. "I really hated that you hid it from me. I can only imagine what it felt like to have wanted to this for so long and then managed to not express it to anyone." Alex frowned and tossed the tiny piece of crust that was left. "When I longed for Jamie I feel like at some point, every time I saw Polly, it worked it's way into every conversation."

"It was sort of this constant yearn but at times it hit harder than others, the little things that you or Jamie said or did. It sent me over the edge at times." Alex leaned over and separated a slice from the rest of the pie and handed it to Piper. She rubbed the crumbs away on her pants, and rubbed Piper's foot.

"I'm sorry I made you feel like I didn't care. I was really overwhelmed," she bit into her slice, "I literally wasn't expecting you to ever tell me you wanted another one. It took a while for you to finally tell me you were ready for one at all."

Alex's mouth dropped, "because it's a big commitment to make, I knew our lives would change forever, it was fuckin' scary." Piper lifted her eyes, no shit.

Alex continued, "but once he was here, well not the second he was here, but once we got back to sleeping the majority of the night, I knew I could do it again."

Piper mimed a tear running down her cheek.

"You know, you tell me that you like when I talk to you like this, but then you mock me, its endearing, really," she moves Piper's foot off her lap, and goes to get up.

Piper puts her foot on her lap, and pushed her back down with the force of her leg, "no, no, I'm kidding. You were saying, life is altered...what's one more? Go on."

"Seriously though, once you have one your life changes, your priorities align differently, you're able to not sweat the little things and see what's really important."

Piper gnaws at her pizza, still listening intently at her wife's, now audible, inner thoughts.

"I just see myself differently now than I did back then and having another one just seemed to naturally be the next piece."

Piper leaned back into the pillow supporting her neck and looked around the living room, Jamie's snack bowl was on the table with one of his books but otherwise it was relatively neat. "You ready for the baby stuff everywhere?"

Alex shuts her eyes and inhales, nodding her head, "and the baby soaps and lotions."

Piper widens her eyes as a huge smile crosses her lips at how Alex just reminisced, muffled laughter escapes, "he still uses the baby lotion."

"Yeah but it just doesn't smell the same, he's so big." She drags her hand through her hair, over her face and lets it rest on her chest, "I just miss him laying here forever, being able to smell him," she inhales deeply, "baby smell."

"Soon enough, you'll get it back," Piper hands her her crust. Alex takes a bite and talks around it, "nothin' like it."

"Uh you realize this one will eventually be bigger too, yes?," she pulls her leg away and sits up straight, leaning into Alex. "I'm not doing this every time they grow up. Oh no, this shop is closed after this."

"It's a garden."

"Shut the fuck up!"

Alex laughs and reaches her hand along the waist of Piper's jeans. "This is it, I promise. I'd like to be alive... to see them grow up."

"64," Piper throws the reminder of how old she'll be when this kid will be legal and ready to leave the nest, "we're already playing with fire."

Alex bites her lip some, "I said I promise." She leans back a moment later, "can't believe I won," her shoulders shake with laughter.

"You're incredible."

"I love you," Alex tells her, "really really love you."

"Mmm, I still wish you would've talked to me about it sooner," she thinks of how having done this two years ago might have helped some of her anxiety throughout the last few weeks, "but now that everything's done- I'm over it."

"I hate when you say that," she says pushing Piper onto her back

. "I know," she shoots her mischievous smirk.

Alex hands her another piece of pizza. Piper raises her eyebrows interested, but then tells herself she shouldn't. Alex splits it in half and gives it to her, Piper takes it.

"I can't eat like this all the time."

"Pizza is really not the worst thing in the world to eat,"

"It's not the best either...calorically."

Alex pinches her ribs, which tickles Piper, she sits up. "We could find out the gender," she chews, "the test they did, it's a chromosome analysis, so they know."

"You'd want to know this time?"

"We could find out if you want to."

Alex lips pull to the side and she shakes her head, "I don't want to know."

"Really? I kind of want to this time!"

Alex raises a finger, "eh!,"

"We won't, we won't, I know...payback."

"I liked finding out the day of. It's hard to wait but it was a nice surprise."

Piper relents, "okay," her eyes go wide covering her mouth, "I have a picture... from today," she says getting up.

Alex's mouth is full, she shakes the backs of her hands towards Piper, go, GO!

She comes running back over with her purse, Alex stands up, rubbing the back of her hand over her mouth incase there was any sauce. The blonde rummages through and fishes out her wallet, she hands her purse to Alex who throws it on the couch. She pulls the sonogram photo out of her wallet, and hands it to Alex.

She brushes her hand over the picture and pushes Piper down to the couch, "fuck," she starts to cry again, "it's little nose," she says and holds the photo for a while before kissing it and places it next to a picture of the three of them on the end table.

"James," she calls out, jumping up and down and fans her eyes, "ready?"