#jenina

“Jes, if your water bleeds through that towel then I am going to leave you on the side of the road,” Kaz threatened. His voice held that tight rasp that it always did when he was stressed out about something. Jesper had first heard it when he and Inej were working out what they were going to do with their feelings, before they decided that they had to love each other in a way that was not romantic or platonic. It was strange to be hearing it in regards to himself, but he supposed that this was a stressful situation for everyone involved.

Early in the morning, Jesper had woken up with small cramps in the small of his back. He was used to being uncomfortable and in pain since he was nine months pregnant, but it was still something that had made him pay a bit more attention to his body. He had tried to ignore a lot of what was happening to him because while he did desperately want the baby that he and Nina were expecting, carrying the child himself made him feel as though he were drowning. Nina had known that she was a provider since all children in Ravka were tested when they were going through puberty and Jesper had been vaguely aware that he was a carrier, but neither of them thought that meant anything. It was so very uncommon for a provider to be able to get a carrier pregnant when they were more fertile in the other set of sex organs that they had. Still, a single broken condom when Nina was on her period had resulted in Jesper carrying their future child.

He had at least two false alarms already under his belt, so he decided to ride out the pain for a while before he began to panic about his imminent birth. He had gotten up, made himself some breakfast, taken care of Wraith since Inej was off visiting her parents, and then settled down to nap in front of the TV. The pains had then spread down his hips so that they were encompassing his entire pelvis before they gripped his belly so tightly that they took his breath away. He knew that he was in labor then, but he had basically no one to call about it.

His father lived all the way in Novyi Zem and even if they were on better terms than they had been when he had first flunked out of college and joined in with Kaz’s little gang, giving birth wasn’t the kind of experience that Jesper wanted to share with his father. Nina worked at a hospital, even after the accident that she had when her addiction had gotten the best of her and changed her for the rest of her life. She left her phone in her locker when she was on call and Jesper had never bothered to put her pager number into his phone, so he had no way to tell the sire of his child that they were going to be coming into the world soon. Inej was in Ravka, which meant that even if she was awake in that moment she would be absolutely no help to him outside of providing him with Nina’s pager number. Wylan was in a Merchant Council meeting or home with Jordan, who was often sick this time of year and would likely be getting her father sick as well. That left him with only Kaz.

The other man had been quick to drop what he was doing at the Silver Six, the club that they had opened and dedicated to Matthias after the accident that had taken his life back when they were still acting like a gang instead of a group of rather dangerous adults. Kaz had rushed to help Jesper with the labor since he had been there when Wylan had gone through it and knew that it wouldn’t be possible for Jesper to get himself to the car.

His waters had broken almost as soon as the other man had gotten there and hadn’t stopped. He had soaked through the new pair of pants that he had put on after the initial fluid began to leak from him, but they had the foresight to put a towel underneath him before he got into Kaz’s luxury vehicle.

“Do you think that I would just continue pissing out amniotic fluid if I could help it, Brekker?” Jesper asked. He was usually a lot more friendly and goofy when he was hanging out with his best friend, even if they were in a dangerous situation. It was hard to be anything but grumpy when someone had put his stomach into a vice so strong that he felt as though his organs were going to explode inside of him. “You also have a fucking three-year-old, why are you worried about the upholstery?”

“Jordan doesn’t get to ride in this car, she takes Wylan’s,” Kaz corrected. “This is a statement piece that I use for work, it’s not safe enough to have my daughter in it.”

“Oh, I’m so glad that you’ve got me and me soon-to-be born baby in it then,” Jesper said sarcastically. He let out a low groan as he grit his teeth together to try and numb some of the pain and pressure that were overcoming him. His labor had been so slow before he had called Kaz, it felt like now that the universe knew he was getting closer to help it was dedicated to making him panic anyway. The contractions had gone from being about five minutes apart to being barely a minute apart from one another, which made him feel like he had barely any time to recover before he was embroiled in another one.

“I’m driving carefully,” Kaz mumbled. He reached over Jesper and flipped down the handle built into the ceiling so that the other man had something to cling onto. He did so, wrapping his hand around the plastic as tightly as he could and then pressing his face into his arm so he had something to muffle the moans of pain.

They lapsed into silence while they both focused on their own tasks. Kaz made sure that he was navigating the busy Ketterdam streets with the utmost care, he already knew how hard it was for someone in labor to deal with the moving of a vehicle from when he’d had to bring his own husband to the hospital. Jesper focused on trying to breathe and not scream every time he got a contraction. They hurt so impossibly bad and the pressure was beginning to make it feel as though his brain was going to start leaking out of his ears. 

Kaz narrowly missed hitting the car in front of them when it breaked as hard and quickly as the vehicle was capable of doing. He swore into the side of his leather glove as he stared out and above the car in front of him. “Why have we stopped?” Jesper groaned.

“I think that there was an accident with the road up ahead,” Kaz said quickly. He backed up a couple inches before he looked in the rearview and saw that they were completely blocked in by the traffic around them.

“Kaz,” Jesper groaned, dragging the vowel out as long as the contraction lasted. It felt to let some off the pain and pressure out through vocalizations, it was better than the half pushes that he had been doing to try and assuage the pressure building in his gut.

“I’m trying to figure out a way to get us out of here,” Kaz snapped back at him. “Sorry, I know you’re in a lot of pain,” he said.

Jesper just whimpered. He shrugged off the jacket that he had managed to tug on before they left the house. It felt like his entire body was being turned into a raging fire, his skin felt so sensitive that it was almost peeling off when the fabric brushed against it in the wrong way. He needed to block out some of the damned light that was reflecting off the rare snowfall from the night before. It was so bright, he remembered that from when he had visited Fjerda with the rest of them, and it was all shining into his face at once. He laid the jacket down over his head and then vocalized once more.

He heard the door unlock and open, which made him peak out from the little cave that he had made for himself. He saw that Kaz had stepped out to see what was ahead of them and causing the hold up like many of the other drivers had. 

“Sir, please get back into your vehicle!” one of the stadwatch officers that was trying to control the public immediately said.

“Why should I? Nothing is moving in either direction. What are you knuckleheads going to do so that you can let people such as myself off the road?” Kaz asked.

“We’ve had multiple accidents because of the freezing temperature. I’m afraid that you’re just going to have to wait like everyone else. I’m sure that you’re company will understand a missed or delayed meeting,” the officer said. 

Jesper felt another gush of amniotic fluid fall out of him and onto the towel. He knew that poor piece of fabric was completely soaked and likely ruining the fabric seats underneath, but that thought could only stay in his mind for a second before he had another contraction. He cried out at the sharpness of the pain when it consumed his belly before he took in a shaky breath. “I think I have to push,” he called to Kaz.

There was a string of curses from both his friend and the officer as they realized the direness of the situation. Kaz sat back in the car with the door closed so that he would stop letting out the heat of the vehicle. If the baby was coming now then they wanted it to be as warm as possible for the newborn.

“I’m sorry Kaz, I’m sorry! I know you said not to ruin your seats, but there’s so much coming out of me. Fuck, I’m so scared. Nina said that it would be fine and that she would be with me, but she’s not! Why couldn’t she have been the one to have the fucking kid?” Jesper was fully panicking. He could feel the way that his heart was hammering in his chest as he thought about all the complications he had heard Nina talk about during her career at the hospital.

His placenta could pull away from the wall of the uterus before the baby was out, causing them both to bleed out and die. He could have some kind of clot that caused him to die before the baby was born. The contractions could be cause the baby to not get enough oxygen or cause heart decels and he would have no way of knowing. The baby could be breach or in some other unfortunate position that prevented them from being born into the world properly.

“Kaz, I have to push but we’re not at the hospital!” Jesper cried. He could already feel the tears welling in the corners of his eyes and then dribbling down his face in rapid succession.

“Jesper, you’re going to be fine,” Kaz told him quickly. He wasn’t sure if his friend actually believed that or if he was just saying it to try and soothe the anxiety that was running through them both. “Take a deep breath and focus on doing what your body is telling you to do. That’s what our midwife told Wylan to do.”

The taller man nodded his head and then took a couple slow, deep breaths before the next contraction overtook him. He kept all of the vocalizing that he wanted to do inside while he directed that effort down into pushing the baby inside of him out into the world.

There was a knock on the window and Kaz rolled it down, something that Jesper was just barely aware of. “We can get him to the police hospital in one of the cars, do you think that we can get out and walk?”

“Do you think that you could walk with something the size of a cantaloupe trying to come out of your ass, dickhead?” Jesper shouted through the next contraction.

“Uh, guess not. I’ll direct you both on how to get onto the sidewalk, we’ll make this work,” the stadwatch officer said instead.

Jesper was barely aware of everything while he focused instead on the contractions that were rushing through his body. The pressure was so intense that it consumed his mind entirely when the pain reached its peak. He could feel the car humming under him and was aware that he was tipping from side to side as they drove up onto the sidewalk and then onto a side street that was a lot more empty than the road that they had been gridlocked on.

He opened his eyes and removed the jacket when his breath began to be pushed back into his nose, the foul smell making him nauseous alone. He let out a manic laugh when he saw the peaks of the hospital nearing them, which meant that his girlfriend was going to be close enough that she might actually catch the birth of their baby.

That thought brought him back to what he had been doing for the last ten minutes or so while they had been driving. He shifted and then felt the blood drain down from his face when he realized that he was crowning. His body was so hazy with adrenaline that he hadn’t clocked the fact that the baby’s head was nearing the entrance where they were going to be born. “I have to get my pants off, drive slow,” he said.

Kaz did as he was asked, his face pale and sickly with the fear and adrenaline that he himself was experiencing. Jesper would usually made a joke to try and lighten the mood when one of his friends looked like that, but he knew that he didn’t have it in him in that moment. Instead, he just focused on what he had to do to bring his baby into the world.

He slid forward on the seat, leaving behind the soaked towel underneath him. He spread his legs out far and almost moaned at the relief that gave him now that his pelvis was in a more comfortable position than it had been before. He reached underneath him and then tugged down his boxers, soaked pad and all, with his sweatpants so that they were pooling around his ankles instead. He reached his hand down and felt a head full of hair, coiled like his own but matted with the vernix and fluids that came with birth.

“Oh fuck, oh shit, oh Saints beyond,” he groaned as he continued to push with the next contraction. The baby’s head slipped out of him and onto part of the towel and part of the seat. There was definitely no stopping this now and he hope that Nina would be able to snap Kaz back into place before he teased Jesper too much about ruining the upholstery of his fancy statement car.

“You’re doing well, Jes,” Kaz said. He got out of the car with his phone in his hand, waving his cane high above his head. Jesper didn’t really like being alone while he was going through something like this, but he was relieved that the vehicle was finally no longer in motion. He had begun to feel sick about halfway through their drive to the hospital and he didn’t want to vomit when he met his baby.

He vaguely remembered something about the shoulders needing to move when the baby came out. So, he reached his arm up and grabbed the plastic handle in the ceiling of the car and braced himself on the front dashboard as he raised himself up. The baby was then hanging out of him, especially after he moved one of his legs, now free of the clothing from before, up onto the seat to open his pelvis again. 

The door of the car opened then and he turned his head to see what was going on. “Nina,” he gasped as more tears welled in his eyes. “I tried to wait, I’m sorry.”

She was kneeling in the slush of the parking lot with two of the other nurses she worked with on either side of her, holding a tarp or sheet over the opening of the car so that the sleet coming down on the windshield wouldn’t be able to get through the door and chill father and baby. She had a bag beside him that she was already fiddling with so that she could be ready for the next crisis she had to deal with. Her brown hair was tied back as it always was, but a couple of strands were loose around her flushed face to demonstrate how wild she felt inside.

“You have nothing to apologize for, lovie. Babies come when they want to and at the speed that they want to. You’ve never given birth before, so it’s not like you would have known that things were going to come this quickly. Now push for me, dear heart. Baby wants to come inside and get warm at mama’s work,” Nina said. She spoke quickly enough that Jesper was able to understand all of it before the next contraction that descended upon him, but clear enough that the words were still perfectly separate.

He let out a grunt and cry as he pushed and the burning intensified. He knew that he had already torn to some extent when he was pushing, but the shoulders were so much wider than the head had been. “Nina, I am never doing this again!” he cried as he bore down.

“You don’t have to! Babies only have to be born once,” Nina laughed. She reached up and caught the infant before they had the chance to hit the towel underneath their father, wrapping them up in the hospital blanket that she had brought with her. “You did amazing, Jesper, we’ve got a little boy.”

“Oh my Saints,” Jesper breathed. He felt almost euphoric, the rush of the pressure and pain finally being gone because the baby had been born mixing with the knowledge that he was a parent after seven months of waiting for it.

He reached down with shaking hands and took his little boy into his arms as Nina helped him out of the car and onto the gurney that they had brought through the parking lot. He focused on keeping the blanket over the little boy’s face while they made their way into the warmth of the hospital’s walls. Their baby was screaming as loud as his little lungs would let him, which confirmed that Jesper had brought him into the world properly.

They were brought to the delivery room that had been prepped for him when Kaz had paged Nina to let her know that they were en route. There, Jesper was cleaned up and stitched back together from the two massive rips that he had sustained while giving birth. Their son had his birth certificate filled out, his weight and other vitals taken, and then was cleaned up so that he wasn’t quite so goopy. After that, Jesper was brought to his recovery room with his son in his arms.

Kaz and Nina were waiting for him inside, and his girlfriend helped him transfer into the bed. “Little tyke just wanted to meet his mama as soon as he could, didn’t he?” Nina cooed down at their baby. They had chosen the name Matty, after the closest friend that they had lost in their lives.

“If he wanted to meet you so badly then he should have chosen you to carry him,” Jesper joked.

“I agree. I think that Nina would have been able to keep him inside long enough that he didn’t ruin my seats,” Kaz snarked.

Jesper and Nina gave him matching disapproving looks, which made him grin at them like they were teenagers again. “Congratulations to both of you. I’m sure Matthias would be honored to know that he had given his name to such a cute baby. And Jordan will be excited to know that she finally has her cousin,” he said once they had let the moment fade.