Finally done~! Prompt: Curse

[shiromirai]

Fandom:Original - Hinta'verse
Characters/Pairing: Cel/ Nik & Payne / Hugues
Prompt: (Table)
Rating: PG - PG -13
Notes: Any comments/ critiques/ etc. would be welcome. XD All mistakes are mine.
Summary: And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years. Sequel set between Miracle and Saint
 

By the time Cel broke the news to the rest of the household, the response was not any better. Payne and Hugues swiveled between watching her and Nikolai’s deer-in-the-headlights stare as if they were watching a deadly tennis match. 

“You…are pregnant.” Nikolai Cross, one of the coldest, most psychologically impaired criminals she had ever had the pleasure of meeting stressed out each word. 

Cel nodded, her hands flat against her belly. “It’s about six weeks old.”

 Hugues, who looked vaguely disturbed - probably because looking extremely disturbed would have been too impolite for Hugues’ standards - put on a strained smile. “Congratulations are in order then? It…was intentional, wasn’t it?”

 Payne rolled her eyes at him. “As if you needed to ask, the way they’ve been going at it.”

Before Cel could protest – appearances had to be kept up after all, or there really wouldn’t be a shred of morality left in this place – Hugues cut her off by setting down his coffee mug along the lunch counter loudly. He wrapped his arms around Payne – from behind of course, he was no fool – and murmured quietly in her ear. Cel’s left eye started twitching sporadically and she turned away from the sickeningly sweetness before she could get diabetes just looking at it.

 “My dear,” Hugues’s breath brushed Payne’s ear. “It’s always a pleasure to have you in my bed…but we’re staying apart for a few weeks.” 

Payne elbowed him sharply in the ribs. “Ha. If my womb is anything like me, it has been and always will be completely hostile. We’re good.”

Celosia wondered if it would be bad for the baby if she tried to rip Payne's and Hugues' heads off if only verbally, and decided that she should turn to Nik instead. Her handsome, usually self assured lover instead looked suddenly comatose and Celosia sank into her seat, feeling the first of what would be one of many violent moodswings overtake her.

"Why can't anyone be disgustingly happy for me?" She asked as calmly as she could into one hand, the other with a death grip on the arm of the chair. It came out sounding more like a wail and a split second later, the chair splintered under her grasp.

Hugues and Payne had taken a look at the mangled chair, exchanged a look over Nik's head, and had immediately fled the vicinity, speaking of unpaid taxes, sudden audits, and matters of urgent and utmost importance that can not be put off for a second later.

Nik looked like a piece of wet laundry that had just been hung out to dry in a blizzard. "Cel, please understand. I'm completely," he swallowed and when he spoke again, his voice cracked and splintered into several high notes. "happy about this situation, your...preg...your imminent motherho-...your challenge. It's just a shock. Just give me a few seconds."

Upstairs, Hugues and Payne heard a heavy thump, and then Cel was screaming, "Payne! Hugues! Nikolai just keeled over!"

***

When the household had finally calmed down and Nikolai had locked himself in the basement with several tons worth of tea, Cel had a prolonged conversation with her lover through his six-inch steel door.

"Are you sure it's mine?" Nik sounded as tentative as Cel had ever heard him.

She rolled her eyes at the door and resisted the urge to thump her head against it. "No, it's the remenants of an illicet love-affair with Hugues with which I am now trying to cover up by passing it off as a child created by the seed of your loins. And I already dug out Payne's grave - wonderful spot, terribly discreet." 

There was a long pause and Cel could practically see Nik gingerly sipping his tea as he tried to contort his mind around this thing called 'sarcasm'.

"....So...it really is mine." 

Cel would have felt a lot better if it didn't sound so much like a question. "Look. If you don't want her, and I'm not putting any pressure on you about any of this, but if you really don't want her, I can underst--" 

"Wait, it's a her?" 

"Yes, what's wrong with that?" 

"It was an 'it' a second ago! When did it become a 'her'?" 

"It's unhealthy for the baby to be referred to as an object, Nikolai. She might have self-esteem issues --" 

"She, I mean, it doesn't exist yet! It doesn't know that we're referring to it. How do you know it's a her anyway?" 

"Nikolai!" Cel hissed at him, scandalized. She petted her stomach to offer some reassurance.

"I rather fancied a girl." Her voice brooked no argument. "Now, I want to say, I would understand if you don't want to claim her - both of us grew up without parents and we did fine. Relatively. Say, compared to....some of the other people out there. I can go somewhere, raise her until she's a bit bigger, and she would fit in with the Horde right enough. I mean, we do run an orphanage." 

Cel took pride in how reasonable and calm her voice came across. It wasn't as if she was trying to trap him into marriage or anything ridiculous like that. Suddenly tired, she leaned forward and rested her forehead against the cool metal, wanting something to steady herself. She didn't need his support either, though the thought of going back to Ellen and Flare and facing those old-moneyed families ranckled like nothing else. She'd do it though, even if it meant eradicating any chance of coming back  here- Payne and Hugues' families were too well-connected, too rich, too entranched in the upper epchalons, for them not to know who she is, or was, should she go back to her old life.

Nik's tentative voice broke through her frantic train of thought. It was so soft she didn't think she had heard right. "I didn't say I didn't want...her." 

Cel's head snapped up and almost broke her nose against the door. "What?"

"I said that you should keep her." Nik's voice grew a little stronger. "I...wouldn't mind. I wouldn't mind at all. I mean, it's not the baby, it's just I never thought you'd be pregnant or I'd be a father." 

Cel heard a thud followed by much a string of cuss words. But this time, instead of sounding like a drowning man, Nikolai sounded almost reverant. Nikolai had very precise tone.

"I'm going to be a father." 

"Yeah."

"You, you'd stay right ?" She could hear him scrambling to undo the locks on the door. "You'd stay and we can fix up the side rooms and there's the baby furniture we'll need and--" 

"Yes," she replied, maybe a little misty eyed. She'd blame it on hormones later, or maybe relief, that they got through this conversation without traumatizing anyone for the worse. "Yes. All of that. I'll stay." 

*** 

Over the course of the next six weeks, Celosia learned many things about herself and the other people who shares a roof with her - things which she was quite happy not knowing.

For one thing, who would have pegged Payne as a worrier? But after the heavily - tattooed young woman pulled her aside for the 23rd time (she counted) to reassure herself that Celosia really was 'fine' and 'sure'. Cel never really figured out what she was 'fine' or 'sure' about but the slightly crazed look in Payne's eyes as she beamed at Cel's completely flat stomach prevented her from ever answering in the negative.

She remembered Payne remarking at some point that she had, as a child, really wanted a sibling.

She didn't remember Payne being so passive-aggressive. Not that the latter was anything new, but passive and Payne didn't go together in one sentence.

It took some finely-timed loud discussions about morning sickness and strange cravings and  three different mood shifts at the dinning room table but entire household left her alone after that.

The effects of the pregnancy had enlarged her originally very generous attributes and Cel found it much easier to clasp a hand to a heaving bosom even if it now seemed to resemble something more along the lines of tectonic shifts.

***

The Horde (Cel and Nik's nickname for the kids at the orphanage) took the news in stride, probably along the lines of thought that since they survived their time under not only Celosia and Nikolai's guidance but also Payne and Hugues', the baby would be fine fending for herself. Some of the older girls were already dividing up babysitting duties among themselves and sudden gifts of small knitted sweaters or hats or little booties showed up along the kitchen counter.

By the time the six-week period had come and gone, there was not a drop of real coffee left in the house as everyone was forcibly converted to decaf.

Payne, eyes hazy as she stumbled downstairs one day, had growled at the last remenants of coffee in the bag. "It's a damn communal pregnancy!" 

A dead silence not so much as fell as dropped like a three-ton weight.

Cel's voice cut through the air, like acid. "What's wrong with that?" 

The two women glared at each other, each feeling deeply oppressed. A slight shuffling sound - what might have been an aborted try for safety - brought their attention to their men sitting at the counter.

Nik and Hugues tried admirably effort at making mad dashes for the exit look like everyday occurances, but consuled each other with alcohol, reruns of football games and other manly rituals as they camped out on the sofa that week.

Naturally no one would confess to the sudden appearance of matron-dresses (which Payne had tried to make a joke of about hot-airballons and sails before being bodily removed from the room by Hugues so that she did not come to harm).

*** 

And after multiple assurances by various people at a variety of different times of the day (and night) that Celosia absolutely, definitely, without doubt did not resemble a bleached whale, no matter what Payne said, the household somehow managed to prepare itself for the newborn.

All edged objects were removed from the living room and the baby's bedroom; and to save themselves the trouble, they simply sealed up the other rooms. The way Nik and Hugues saw it, anything else would be tantamount to buying a new house.

All electric outlets were plugged up, and Hugues' four precious laptops were actually disconnected for a short amount of time, causing Hugues much emotional trauma at the sudden lack of information on stocks and companies and the like, before Payne calmed him down. Nik wisely did not ask how she managed such a feat.

Baby items were bought, discarded and bought again and both Nik and Cel made the decision to not check the baby's gender. They had both reasoned, or rather Cel stated and Nik meekly agreed, that either gender would be perfect (though Cel was still holding out for a girl). Friends, acquaintances and even some enemies picked out gifts in neutral colors (from a sickly puke colored green to a dazzling fish-orange) which Nik and Cel secreted away in order not to hurt feelings but still spare their own eyes. And everything was set for the big day.