A/N: I was watching 3x01 "Sea Change" and the part where she said "You're the one who wanted to go for three" reminded me I've been wanting to write this lol. I wrote one similar but I think it was from Henry's "you're the one who wanted three" comment to Elizabeth.
Hope you enjoy :)
"You're the one who wanted to go for three," Elizabeth said, and Henry just stared forward, stopping in his tracks and sighing. Jason gave them a run for their money, and though he's not about to admit it, he was the one who wanted to go for three.
The conversation had never come up. At some point, most couples ask, "how many kids do you want?" and then they bicker hopelessly or flirtatiously or find out they want the same amount in a grand moment of fate.
But even while dating, their lives were whirlwinds—Elizabeth and Henry both in college, figuring out life together as they started dating and then moved in with each other when he was a senior and she was a junior. It was only after he graduated and knew he was going to deploy that they knew, sensibly, it was time to get married. Even that conversation had been put off, though, because they were so busy. Things just had to…happen.
Which is why Stevie happened. As an accident. Henry had been home from deployment for just a few weeks, and then he was gone again by the time Elizabeth knew she was pregnant. By the time he was back for good, he only got to spend the last three months of the pregnancy with her—but he made up for it in so many ways.
Stevie was the kind of life-altering surprise that they never really had time to adjust to until she was born, and then they couldn't even think about their adjustments because they were elbow deep in diapers and bottles and pacifiers and work. She was born in March of 1993, and by the fall of that same year, Henry had already started his doctorate program at UVA while student-teaching.
They'd had to balance their lives before, but never like they did then—a newborn, a load of classwork and grading that he had to balance while learning how to be a father and a husband to someone who was now a mother, and she had to balance going back to work and daycare and trying to not rip her hair out whenever Stevie cried at night because she was just so exhausted.
But they did adjust—it took them a few months to get into the rhythm they needed, but they found it. They were a happy family of three for a few years until on an early 1998 night of celebration—Henry finishing his comprehensive exams while still working on his dissertation—they became a family of four. Accidentally. Again.
Elizabeth had just been promoted the week before she found out she was pregnant—and she hadn't realized she was until two months along because Stevie had been keeping them so busy with her preschool activities and after-school soccer practice and games that she hadn't even noticed she'd been late at all.
But she stood beside an ecstatic Henry with a barely-one-month Alison in her arms, trying to stop rocking long enough to get a clear picture as he held his doctoral degree in one hand and Stevie on his hip in the other. The picture had turned out…wonky. Stevie was mid-blink, Henry's tassel had gotten in his face, and Elizabeth was bouncing and was blurred slightly.
And then, after that, it felt like they could breathe again. Henry had gotten a job almost right away at UVA in their religion department, and Elizabeth was still finding her footing in the other new position she'd been promoted to between the time Alison was still unknown to her parents and the time she was born.
It was almost a sigh of relief when Elizabeth thought, okay, we're done. We're done having kids because two…that's a lot.
Two meant they weren't outnumbered, even though they definitely were still kept busy. Stevie had started kindergarten which came along with birthday parties and school concerts, and Alison, even in her newborn months, was already a handful. Elizabeth and Henry had talked one night that they'd been tricked with Stevie—she was such a good baby, whereas Ali couldn't be put down at night, had to sleep in the bed with them, and was such a colicky baby that Elizabeth would sometimes just cry in the rocking chair at night.
Two meant that they could function—even if function sometimes (often) meant shoving laundry baskets into closets before company came over or ordering lots and lots of takeout. They'd always been two busy people, and then they became three busy people with a tagalong fourth. By the time Alison had started walking, she'd been talking too, and then she became a busy person, it seemed, way before Stevie did.
Ali was into the Saturday morning dance classes that Elizabeth would take her to, a class built specifically for two-year-olds even though Alison wasn't quite two yet, and Elizabeth would sit and watch while Stevie danced down the hall from her in another classroom. It was comical to watch—the teacher having to round up these little kids like kittens in tutus and ballet shoes.
Two meant they weren't outnumbered, yet were still kept very busy, but not too busy to pretend like they weren't living in a constant, mild state of exhaustion.
So no, they'd never decided on how many kids they wanted, per se, but Elizabeth felt that it had been decided for them.
Which was why she was caught so off guard when Henry brought it up that she choked on her eggroll.
"You ever think of having another baby?"
After she'd stopped choking long enough to get a breath, she gulped down a swig of her water and looked over at him with wild eyes. They were sitting in bed, him grading and her reading over reports, "Excuse me?" she asked, "We already have two and they should be sleeping down the hall. Did you misplace one?"
Henry huffed, sounding kind of like a laugh, and she took it for a laugh because he was smiling as he looked down at his papers. He hadn't ever even looked up at her, though she'd been staring at him like he'd grown another head. Surely that's the head this came out of—the other alien one, not Henry's. Not my beloved Henry McCord's who is a Doctor of Religion and—
"I'm serious," he said, picking up his papers and stacking them more neatly as he finally looked at her. He had his brow arched, and that told her he really was serious about this. Her mouth hung open as he continued, "What if we had one more?"
She almost snorted while she turned away and blinked in absolute astonishment, looking down at where she'd laid her eggroll on the little paper bag it came in. "You want to be outnumbered with McCord children?" she asked, "McCord children, who might I remind you, already have us booked throughout the week with school activities, after school activities, and soon enough, before school activities?" She had no actual before school activities plan in her head, but it sounded like it could become a thing at this rate.
He was about to speak, but she put her hand up.
"No, no," she said, shaking her head, "McCord children, too, who are already—" she stopped herself and smacked him on the arm with the back of her hand, "So ridiculously smart that they genuinely could outnumber us even though physically there's two of us and two of them."
"Why'd you hit me?" Henry asked, rubbing his arm and looking extra wounded.
She rolled her eyes exaggeratedly, "Oh please," she said, "You're smart—which is why I hit you. They got at least half of their brain from you. The other day, Stevie was quoting Bear in the Big Blue House like he was Socrates!"
"It was Mr. Roger, actually," Henry corrected.
She just turned her head with wide eyes and looked at him, tilting it over slightly as if to say, one more strike, Henry McCord.
"Okay, okay," Henry said, taking a deep breath and letting his hand slide off his arm. It was a little red, she noticed, but mostly from where he'd been rubbing it like a wimp. "But it's not like we don't know what we're doing at this point."
"That is exactly the problem at hand, Henry," she said, having turned back to her report just long enough to read one word before looking at him all appalled once more, "We do know what we're doing, and I for one know that it's a lot."
Henry shrugged and looked at her again, his brow arched and infuriating her, "I don't know," he breathed, shaking his head and looking at her report blankly. "I've just been thinking about it a lot."
She stared at him a moment longer before turning her head forward, sliding her palms up her face, and plopping backwards into the headboard. She slouched down slightly and just let her hands cover her eyes as her head swirled. "Henry," she mumbled, her wrists slurring her speech by putting pressure on her lips, "I love you, and I love our kids, but I also really love the idea of getting a full night of sleep again one day."
"Oh, come on," he said, and she just looked over by peeking through her finger at him, frowning deeper, "Alison's—"
"In her terrible twos," Elizabeth cut in for him.
"I was going to say," he said pointedly, looking at her, "We're already in the trenches. What's one more?"
She laughed. She couldn't help but let out a shrill, one-breath laugh when her hands fell down from her face and into her lap. "You say that like it makes any kind of logical sense, Henry!" She was so appalled at his thought process, this smart, beautiful, genius-like husband of hers trying to apply this illogical version of logic to this conversation. "'What's one more?' Henry, that's like saying, 'Oh, we're already exhausted, let's just double down on the exhaustion!'" she exclaimed, her voice cracking.
"You're going to wake her," Henry warned quietly.
"You say that like you're telling me I'm about to wake a dinosaur, Henry, and there's good reason for your concern," she reminded, "Because you know that if she does wake, that she's going to be right here in between us in this bed."
"You're getting really worked up over a hypothetical," he murmured.
She looked at him and felt her blood rush through her head. He wasn't backing down from his accusation, though, and she took a deep breath through her nose and adjusted a little, the eggroll rolling onto the comforter without her realizing. "Henry James McCord," she said, her voice low and seething, "I know you. And I know that you don't even really work in hypotheticals. You're pitching this as a hypothetical question, but I know the real translation: 'Hey Babe, we should have another kid.'" She threw her hands around for good emphasis as though he talked with his hands that much. She looked a bit like a marionette as she bounced on the bed and the eggroll stopped itself against her ankle. "And then you'll start wearing me down until I agree."
"You say that like it's a bad thing," he said, reaching over her leg. She stared at him with one brow lowered and one raised, watching him wildly and wondering what he was doing until she saw him reaching for her eggroll.
Immediately, she swatted at his hand, "No sir," she said.
"Oh come on, you weren't eating it."
She picked it up and shoved the whole thing in her mouth, about a quarter of the roll.
As she attempted her first few chews, she noticed he was just staring at her, and she made a face at him.
"It's just that that was really hot," he said, a smirk coming to his lips.
She rolled her report up and thwacked him over the head with it while he laughed, crawling quickly over his own papers and rushing out of the bed as she chewed. She couldn't get any words out, and it was probably a good thing because she probably would've woken Ali up.
"Just think about it," he said, standing and hugging the doorframe to the bathroom as though he were hiding.
"Oh," she said with her mouth still full, swallowing a very large amount, "I'll think about it alright," she said threateningly.
Yet, he still smiled sheepishly at her, batting his eyelids playfully. "Thank you, my love."
"Oh, stop," she mumbled, shooing him away and unrolling her papers. She finished swallowing the rest of her eggroll and regretted eating the whole thing at once—now she had no snack to keep her awake while reading these reports.
As she listened to him fumble around with his toothbrush and the water faucet, she scanned the pages but didn't read because she was too busy thinking about the fact that, eventually, Henry is going to look at her with that quiet, steady belief of his, and she's going to give in.
She sighed loudly and swigged her water again, turning the page back over to the beginning so she could start over.
She hadn't thought much more about it—Alison's birthday had come and gone, so had Thanksgiving, and Christmas was winding them down with a little off time from UVA for Henry and off time from Langley for Elizabeth. The girls were out of their preschool and kindergarten classes, too, and they'd gotten to do family things on weekdays—which was nearly impossible up until then.
And then, Christmas Eve when Elizabeth had gone out for ingredients to bake cookies for Santa while Henry stayed home with the girls, she saw a little baby in a carrier. It couldn't have been more than a week old, she thought, and its mother had the carrier sitting on top of the cart where Elizabeth got a great view whenever the mother turned and grabbed something off the shelf.
She almost whimpered at the cuteness—the way this little baby was so bundled up for the cold, the cold that seemed to carry over into the grocery store, too. She got a little closer to the mother, ultimately to the baby too, and the mother caught her watching. "Oh, I'm sorry," Elizabeth breathed, "Just…those cheeks are too cute. How old?"
"He's five days," the mother said tiredly, smiling a little. "His dad has big brother at home sick—we're trying to stay away in hopes that Ben here doesn't catch it."
"Ben," Elizabeth said, smiling a little, "That was my dad's name."
The woman smiled, but Elizabeth realized it had gotten weird.
"Well, good luck on missing the illness—I have two girls and know how that goes."
She smiles, "Thank you," she said.
"And congrats on the new baby," she added, pulling herself away and cursing herself once she'd gotten around the corner for how terribly awkward that was.
When she'd gotten home later, she and the girls—mostly she and Stevie—made the cookies and placed them out on a plate for Santa Claus. Elizabeth had made sure that she'd put extra chocolate chips in them—just the way Henry liked them.
"Alright, you two," Henry said about nine, "It's past your bedtimes."
"Daddy," Stevie whined, and Elizabeth looked on from the couch as Ali snuggled up in her arms—a rare moment for the nonstop little girl these days. "It's Christmas Eve!"
"That's why we watched Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph, baby," Henry said softly, rolling over and tickling Stevie's belly. They had both been laying in the floor, and so was Alison until she'd crawled up in Elizabeth's arms about halfway through Rudolph. "We have to go to bed so that Santa can come tonight," he said, "Remember?"
"I know," Stevie said in her most disappointed voice.
"Santa?" Ali asked, looking up tiredly at Elizabeth.
She looked down into those big, brown eyes that looked like a copied version of Henry's, and she just smiled a little and nodded, "Yes, baby," she whispered, "Santa is going to bring all the gifts tonight and eat the cookies and drink the milk."
"And he's gonna give the carrots to his reindeer," Stevie said as Henry was standing up, and shortly she was following suit.
"That's right," Elizabeth added, sitting up and helping Henry grab Alison from her arms. She stood up, too, and kissed Ali goodnight and told her Merry Christmas Eve in a soft, whispering voice. They all went upstairs and Henry tucked Ali in, and then Elizabeth tucked Stevie in. She was getting to that age where she didn't want to be tucked in as much, but Elizabeth was enjoying that tonight, on this Christmas Eve, Stevie decided to let her have a miracle.
"I love you," Elizabeth whispered, pressing a kiss to Stevie's head.
She looked down and noticed her eyes were wide, but with each blink, they were slower to open. "I love you, momma."
"Merry Christmas Eve," she said as she walked to the bedroom door, shutting it behind her.
She walked down the hall toward their bedroom with a heart that felt, somehow, a little heavy yet also like it was about to float out of her chest. Maybe it would float out if it weren't being weighed down by some kind of anchor in her stomach. As she walked by Ali's room, she caught a glimpse of her little hand curled around his sweatshirt hem as he brushed her hair with his hand, pushing it back away from her face. "You have to go to sleep so Santa Claus can come," he was reminding her again.
Elizabeth quietly leaned against the doorframe, making sure it didn't creak underneath her weight and distract either of them from their time together. Her thoughts from earlier in the grocery store bubbled up as she crossed her arms silently, tugging them into her chest. The contentedness had always been there with her little family—their little family. She loved these two girls, these two pieces of Henry, and she was proud of the way they were growing up.
It suddenly felt like she was fighting some weird impulse—her mind had been chewing on the idea since seeing Ben and his tired mom. Chomping, even.
She moved away from the door quietly when she saw Henry standing up and a slowly fading Ali closing her eyes. She walked over to their bedroom and into the bathroom, brushing her hair and putting it in a ponytail before flipping off the light switch and coming back into the bedroom to see him coming in, too. "Ready?" she asked him, giving him a tight grin.
He nodded, "Ready, Mrs. Claus," he said quietly, smiling at her as she walked past him.
She walked down the stairs and felt his presence behind her, a heavy, strong presence that made her feel like she was losing her breath tonight. They worked together to pull the gifts out of their hiding spot—the guest room closet—and they sat down on the living room floor to wrap the last three that had been left.
Henry was biting into a chocolate chip cookie and moaning, "Mmm," he said, "These are really good."
She looked up sheepishly and smiled tightly at him again, tucking her hair behind her ear that had fallen from her ponytail, "Good," she cooed.
Her hand fumbled with the wrapping paper and she had to start over. She was thinking about the way she'd felt when she looked at Ben, wondering what the hell had gotten into her, and what the hell was getting into her right now, too.
But she knew. She couldn't keep denying it.
Elizabeth glanced up quickly when she felt him staring. "What's going on?" Henry asked her, and she just froze and stopped breathing.
She shrugged one shoulder finally, resuming both the wrapping and the breathing as his gift that he was supposed to be working on set unwrapped in front of him, some cookie crumbs falling down onto the paper instead, "Nothing," she said softly, "Just…thinking about Christmas and all."
"Seriously," he said, and then she saw his hand sliding to reach hers. She noticed then that her fingers were shaking as she tried to rip the tape off and stick it onto the paper. He gently took it from her hand and placed the tape on for her. "What's up?"
She shrugged again and rubbed her palm across her forehead.
"You're off," Henry added.
She looked at him for a moment with her hand still over one eye, "I've just been thinking about us."
He looked up at her quickly, a frown resting on his face, "Us?" he asked, sliding the gift over into the pile under the tree, "I think we're okay, right?"
"What's next, I mean," she said, realizing he probably was thinking there was about to be a bad talk with the worst timing ever. "For us. What's next."
He didn't push, but she could see him itching to. "What do you mean?"
She stopped and fumbled with the little stuffed animal in her hand, realizing at some point while staring at it that it'd be just as cute with a bow around its neck and set on top of the tree with a tag. She set it aside and exhaled, unsure why she felt so awkward saying it. "Maybe…having another baby?" She said it more like a question, but she could see his smile wanting to poke through.
"Really?" he asked.
"Yeah," she whispered shyly, looking down and away at the pile of toys and clothes.
"You're sure you're not just feeling sentimental because of the holidays?" he asked softly, and she knew it was a genuine question, but it still annoyed her just slightly.
She gave him a look and sighed, "No," she admitted, "I just…seeing you with those girls, Henry," she whispered, picking at her finger as she played the night back in her head—the way Henry just loves them so much. And really, the way she loves them so much. She'd do anything for those two little girls, and so would he. "You're such a good dad, and…I don't know…maybe a third feels right to just cap off our little family." She looked down for a while longer until she heard him sliding across the rug, and he pulled her body into his.
He wrapped his arms around her and laid his chin on top of her head just the way she has always liked, feeling cocooned in his body. "Only if you're ready," he whispered, "I know that it's not easy for you, on you, I mean."
She took a shaky breath, "I've done it twice," she said softly, shrugging a little, "What's a third?"
He snorted and pulled away slightly, looking down at her and rubbing her arm through her Christmas pajamas, "Isn't chocolate an aphrodisiac?" he asked playfully.
She snorted and bit her lip, feeling the immediate redness want to rush to her cheeks. "I may have had that in mind when I bought two bags of chocolate chips at the grocery today."