harrison chase.

Willow breaks into giggles.  They are nervous and excited ones and she thinks that anything will set her off right now.  This is not how she pictured the night ending up but she finds that she is more and more glad that they are here now.  Yes, there are some very real questions to be answered but they will get through it.  Together.  Like they are meant to be.  “We probably should refrain on calling him or her that in public,” she cautions with a pointed look.  “People might think we are strange.”  Although she doubts they are the first to name their child something like that.  

He is so good to her.  So easily able to see where her fear is going and able to derail it before it pulls her down with it.  She wonders if he likes being her knight — because he truly is.  It’s a bit of a silly comparison but it feels apt.  She had avoided moments like this, men like him after Shiloh but Chase had proven to her that she is worth it.  She nods her head.  “You’re right.  People do it.  We figured it out early enough.  I can watch what I put in my body from here on out.”  And she would.  She wouldn’t be able to stop herself from doing so.  She needs to make sure that this baby is healthy. 

Willow echos his grin and knows just what she is going to wear (she is going to take advantage of the last vestiges of heat and the lack of a visible baby bump).  “Let’s go celebrate,” she tells him before disappearing into their room. 

The sound of Willow’s giggles make Chase’s heart melt. He is putty in her hands; always has been, always will be. The smile on his face might as well say it all. “Ahh, who cares what they think! We’re in love, soon to be parents, and this is our little Lima bean in here.” He rests a hand over her stomach to drive the point home. “If our happiness is strange to people, that’s their problem.” He says so with a lively enthusiasm, every second making this reality feel all the more real. This is their life now, and he couldn’t be happier.

He knows just how staggeringly things are about to change, but that’s what life is all about, isn’t it? He gives himself about three days maximum before he impulsively stops at the book store after work and picks up a backpack full of parenting books. “Man... is it weird that I’m excited just to make an appointment with you at General Hospital? I’m even excited to buy prenatal vitamins for you.” Chase laughs at himself, and shakes his head. He’s lucky enough to be having a baby with the love of his life. Even if it’s a little ahead of schedule, Chase knows that not everyone is so lucky.

Just look at poor Michael. Not only did he have to cope with the mother of his child being Nelle Hayes of all people, but he never even got to be a father to Jonah. He’ll have to think of the best way he can break the news of Willow’s pregnancy to Michael — the last thing he wants to do is tear open his friend’s old wounds.

“Funny enough, I think I like Lima Bean better.  It just seems…cute somehow,” she admits, her face scrunching up before she just can’t help but laugh.  She tries to picture what that looks like and ends up with an absurd vision of a Lima bean floating around her tummy.  Not even close to what it really is but somehow it seems comforting.  

Maybe because it has been Chase who coined it.  Her baby’s father.  The man she loves. 

This just feels right. 

“I am not sure how far…” She furrows her brows and thinks back to the last time she actually had a period.  With her job and life changing swiftly over the last few months, she hasn’t exactly been consistent but then she has a distinct enough memory to help them.  “About a month I think.  Wow, I’ve had wine…” Her eyes go wide.  “Do you think that is okay?” She is not a heavy drinker but she definitely has had a glass or two in the past few weeks.

She tells her self she shouldn’t panic.  For now, she should concentrate on the immediate good news.  “We should do something,” Willow agrees.  That is a good idea.  To start this out right and make it nothing but good memories.  “I think I could eat.  Nothing too crazy of course but I do like the idea of putting on one of my pretty little dresses for you.”  She reaches up to brush a hand over his cheek. 

Chase smiles, a big goofy one across his face. “Our little Lima bean.” He can freak about what they are going to need to do before their baby’s arrival later. Right now he just wants to be happy with Willow, and focus on starting their little family of three. Just saying that makes his stomach flutter with nerves, but right now they are all good ones.

His necessary level-headed nature as a cop helps out there, as well as when Willow mentions having wine in the past month. He’s a little nervous at first too, but then shakes his head. “Yeah, I’m sure that’s fine. You’re definitely not the first woman who’s had a little wine before they knew they were pregnant.” Some women have done a lot worse for a lot longer, and a lot of them still have relatively healthy infants. “Besides, this baby is definitely a little fighter like their mom.” That thought has him strolling down the lane of wondering whether their child is a boy or girl, but he’s sure they’ll get to find that out soon enough.

The excitement is starting to work its way into the room.

It is tentative at first, and she figures they are both trying to work out what this means in the long run.  She wants to laugh because she is pretty sure there is still a box or two of her things that she hasn’t gotten around to unpacking yet. But she is happy.  Truly.

She nods her head at his insistence that they can make this work.  She knows that there are real logistics to consider.  She is a waitress right now, hardly the most high paying job and he works long hours with the PCPD.  This apartment — well, it might fit a tiny baby but someday that baby is going to need room to grow.  It might not be the best fit.  But she is getting ahead of herself right now.  They can take it all one step at a time.  Together, just like he says. 

When Chase kneels to talk to their baby, she melts.  She can’t help it.  There are tears in the back of her eyes, happy ones of course.  She cards her fingers through his hair and laughs a little.  “Lima bean?  This is the one time I will admit to liking them,” she tells him.  “And your daddy is right, we both can’t wait to meet you properly.” She smiles down at him.  “Celebrate?  What did you have in mind?”

The most important thing to him right now is making sure that Willow feels safe, comfortable, and secure during this pregnancy. He can’t imagine how scared she much have been when she was pregnant with Wiley two years ago, just twenty-two years old, all alone, and carrying her rapist’s baby. The thought makes him furious, but he quickly casts those feelings away (the best he can, anyway). This is a time to celebrate and be happy. They just got life changing news.

The good kind, time time. There’s a big smile on his face the more he thinks about it and the new future they are going to have. Chase rests his hands on Willow’s hips after he gets back up on his feet, fully soaking in this moment. “Yeah! Lima bean, maybe even a peanut. How far along do you think you are? You have to be a few weeks, at least.” Since moving in together they’ve spent even more time together in bed than usual, so it’s not like they’ll be able to easily narrow it down. Chase always uses condoms as well; one of them must have broken without him realizing it. It only takes once, clearly.

Willow stands there, letting the news wash over her.  She looks down at the test once more, reading the words once more.  She needs this.  She needs the quiet moment that has settled over them so she can decide just how she feels.  She knows that she shouldn’t overthink anything or compare it to Wiley. She had been terrified and in a bad place with Wiley.

Right now she is standing across from the man she loves.

She looks to him, noting the way his face changes.  She knows he is happy and just that, as if she has taken her cue from him, she is happy too.  Her face splits into a wide grin and she nods her head to his statement.  “We are having a baby,” she echos.  

Wow.

They haven’t planned this.  In fact they haven’t really discussed it.  She figures it would have come up at some point.  They had already taken that big first step and moved into together.  Plus she loves him. Kids seem like one of those steps they are meant to take.  They just have stumbled down a few to land on this one.  

She chews on her lip, setting the test back down and then reaching out to take his hands in hers.  “I know…this is not exactly what we had in mind, at least not right now,” she says, deciding to voice the truth.  They can’t avoid it anyway.  “But we can make this work right?  We can do this?”

As much as this still feels like a dream, the idea is slowly starting to sink in. Ready or not, they will be parents in a few months. It’s not the perfect time for them, but there’s nothing they can do about it now. This baby is coming, and they’ll have to make themselves ready in the next eight or so months. If he had any doubts before, seeing the smile on Willow’s face as she she says those five big words out loud is all the reassurance he needs.

“We’re gonna be parents!” He exclaims, still a little in disbelief, but the positive pregnancy test is right there in Willow’s hands. As the truth continues to settle, Chase’s heart starts racing out of the most bizarre combination of excitement and fear he’s ever felt. But it’s a good kind of fear; a new chapter of their lives just started. As Willow sets down the test and looks to him for reassurance, Chase nods and gives a gentle squeeze to her hand. “We can. We can, and we will. I know we have a lot of challenges ahead of us, but I have no doubt that if we take them on together, we’ll make it through just fine.”

She takes her comfort in him, holding on tightly as if she can absorb his quiet strength.  She feels that she is definitely the more nervous one in their relationship (hell, she even freaked out over the idea of them moving into together) and she often needs him for moments like this.  Thankfully, he is good at what he does and he does not seem to mind helping her.  

She closes her eyes and listen to his heartbeat for a moment longer than she needs to.  A slow smile crosses her face.  “I love you,” she tells him quietly.  She wants him to know that because she can’t predict what is about to happen or what her mind will do with that information.  She realizes she didn’t get this with Wiley.  She didn’t get a chance to hold her breath and center herself.  One moment she had not been pregnant and the next she was — all with the spectator of Shiloh breathing down his neck. 

Finally, she looks up at him giving him a small smile as he takes her hand.  Together they make their way to the bathroom.  It is her that reaches out to lift the test.  She knows how this goes.  Now a days these tests are foolproof.  No symbols to read.  Just the words pregnant or not pregnant.  She takes a deep breath and looks down.  

Pregnant.

She lets out the breath she has been holding and then looks to Chase with wide eyes.  “I’m pregnant,” she tells him, her voice tentative.  Her mind is trying to wrap itself around this.

Even though they’ve said these words to each other hundreds of times at this point, Willow telling him “I love you” is just as special to him now as it was when she first said it to him. He didn’t know it was possible to love someone as much as he loves Willow, but that love grows for her by the day. “I love you back. Forever.” It might be a pretty weighty statement to make before they even hit their two year anniversary, but Chase means it.

He doesn’t want a future that doesn’t include her in it. When he thinks about himself in five, twenty, or forty years from now, Willow is by his side. So are their children; Chase thinks he wants two or three. Whether or not their first one is going to be here in the next couple of months, they are about to find out. His heart lurches in his chest as Willow picks up the pregnancy test, and it feels like time screeches to a halt while she reads what it says. Just by the look on her face, he knows the answer before she says it.

She’s pregnant. She’s pregnant with his baby — their baby.

“I know,” she says and for the first time, there is confidence in her voice.  The initial shock to her system is subsiding and she is able to look at things more logically.  None of this is like before.  She is in love, she is safe and if she is pregnant, her baby will also have those things.  She hadn’t been able to give them to Wiley personally but she knows he has it Lucas and Brad.  She will be forever grateful to them for that.  Just like she will be forever grateful to Chase for whatever happens next.  

So when he agrees to get the test, she takes another calming breath.  She stands as he readies to leave.  “I am not going anywhere,” she tells him and wraps her arms around herself.  She has no idea what to do with herself while he is gone.  In the end, she simply sits on the couch, reliving all those key moments with Wiley: when she realized she was pregnant, the first time he moved, the birth… 

Is she really about to do that again?

She is about to find out.  She stands as Chase returns, immediately reaching out for the test. “I am overly ready,” she admits. She gives him a small smile.  Disappearing into the bathroom, she does the necessary thing to take the test.  Carefully she sets it on the edge of the sink, washes her hand and returns to the living room.  “We have a few minutes…” She says and then takes his hand.  “And then we know whether or not if things are going to turn on their head.”  She moves forward resting against him and closing his eyes, gathering strength from him.  After a moment or two (which feels like forever), she tips her head back to look up at him.  “Are you ready to see?” There is no way they are doing this any way but together.

The drive to the pharmacy is both the longest ten minute drive he’s ever taken, and a short blur he can hardly remember. There’s so much to consider regardless of what the pregnancy test will tell them that Chase doesn’t even know where to begin. All he knows is that he doesn’t even want to start down that train of thought without Willow right beside him. Whatever decisions they make, whatever thoughts they have, he wants them to share every minute of it with each other. That will be the best thing they can do right now.

He’s back home before long, test in hand. His heart is thumping out of his chest, but Chase can’t honestly say what result he’s hoping for most right now. Not pregnant, because it’s too soon and too sudden, or pregnant, because that means he’ll get to start a family with the woman of his dreams. “No matter the result, we’re gonna be okay,” he reminds her one last time, handing off the test to let her go take it.

Willow takes a deep breath, focusing her energy on not jumping to all the wrong conclusions.  There is still a lot that they don’t know, still so many what ifs for her to take the entirely wrong route and overreact.  She knows that it is human nature for the mind to overreact but she wants to limit the damage before she totally does or says something ridiculous.

“Right, right, this is not what I think is.  It am making it out to be something terrifying — which, I mean, it is.  But just not in the way my brain has made it,” she says and then wonders if he can make any sense of it at all.  He probably can.  He’s so good at reading her.  She loves him so much.  So if this is the path they are about to be set on and they are about to become parents, she has the best person by her side.

That realization helps her calm down enough to think more rationally.

“There is no sense in talking about the what ifs when we don’t know which way we are going.”  Willow’s voice is more firm now. “We should know first if I am pregnant.  Then…we can figure the rest out.  If it is just a scare than maybe we should be talking about what that means down the road.  If…” She gives him a look.  “Well, then we have other things to figure out.”  She leans forward a little to rest her forehead against his.  “But we’ll do it together.”

Just thinking about the fear Willow must have felt when learning she was pregnant with Shiloh’s child makes Chase angry. It’s not an obvious kind of angry; it’s the quiet boiling in his chest kind. It’s insidious and nothing he’s ever felt before, which makes him happy that Shiloh is rotting away in prison for his crimes. Willow will never have to be afraid of him or for Wiley ever again. Or for their child, whether they come now, or in a few years from now.

“It’s definitely terrifying,” he says, adding a quiet laugh under his breath for levity. “But you’ll be safe. And if you are pregnant, the baby will be safe, too. And loved.” He doesn’t want Willow to doubt any of those things, not even for a second. Every time he looks at Willow with Wiley, Chase knows how much she wants to be a mother. Her maternal kindness and strength is just one of the many reasons he fell in love with her so hard and fast.

Thank God she has realized this with him sitting right beside her.

If it had happened a few hours before she would have been a ball on the floor by the time he came home.  Instead Chase is right beside her, his touch grounding her and ensuring that she doesn’t go too far off the deep end.  She shifts her gaze so that she is looking directly at him.  “It’s going to be okay,” she forces herself to repeat. “No matter what.”  She shakes her head as if she is convincing herself of this.  

“I should…” She can’t expect him to do this.  She should be the one to get the test.  But she finds that she is too far caught in the memory of when she realized she was pregnant with Wiley.  The fear, the uncertainty — her circumstances are completely different now but she can’t help but let those emotions tinge her view.  So she nods.  “Okay, okay.”  

She settles back on the couch, pulling her knees up so she can rest her chin on them.  “I am sorry, Chase.  You’re right.  We don’t know anything and if it turns out that I am, this is not like it was with Shiloh.  I’m safe.  If there is a baby, he or she will be safe too.”  She takes a deep breath.  “I am sorry that I am freaking out.  It’s just…a lot to take in.”

He doesn’t want to get to far ahead of himself, not when he needs to be the voice of reason right now, but he can’t help it. If Willow really is pregnant... their lives are going to change. Their apartment isn’t really built for a baby, but they’ll have to make it work. Money will be tight, but they’ll have to make it work. Chase is already thinking about what he can do or sell in the next eight or nine months to prepare for the arrival and expenses of a baby.

Second thought has him telling himself to take about a thousand steps back. Her period is late, and she’s been a little nauseated. That doesn’t necessarily mean she’s pregnant. He needs to take this one step at a time. “Hey, hey... there’s nothing to be sorry for, okay? Not even a little bit.” He shifts enough so that he can still look her in the eyes as she pulls her knees up. Chase can’t even imagine the conflicting emotions she’s going through right now. Her first pregnancy had been under constant threat of Shiloh — of course those feelings are going to come rushing back.

under the weather

Now that the idea had bubbled up through her subconscious and she had said it aloud, Willow couldn’t stop thinking about it. Pregnant.  She could be pregnant.  She remained as she was, frozen in place as she played out the thought process.

She couldn’t help but compare it to Wiley.  She couldn’t help but think of how she had felt in those first few days before she had been sure.  Of course, those feelings had been mixed up with her fear of Shiloh and what he would do once he found out.  She had to separate them, to concentrate on the physical.  She remembered the tiredness.  The difference in her overall state from one moment to the next.  

Finally, she looked at him, sitting up fully so that she was straight and rigid on the couch.  She nodded her head at his question. “I never really thought about it until now,” she confessed.  She had been trying to adjust to how her life changed in the past little while.  She had lost her teaching job.  She had begun to work at the Bistro Cafe.  She had moved in with him.  It had been a lot at once and she had spent some time wrapping her head around it.  She hadn’t been paying attention.  Her hand came to cover her mouth.  “Oh…”

She was trying her best not to panic but it was coming anyway.  Just like the urge to throw up, she could feeling it moving through her.  Her hand slipped to her chest.  “We never talked about this.  We never thought about a moment like this….” She began, looking at him with impossibly wide eyes.  “What are we going to do?”

He can see the panic set in Willow, and Chase does his best to be her rock and the calm voice of reason. All the while his heartbeat starts to pick up within his chest, but he doesn’t want to do anything until they have all the facts. The detective in him is the reason for that, but Chase is careful to walk the fine line between concerned boyfriend and cop mode. 

He takes her hand in his once she sits up, and Chase can only watch as he sees all the gears turning in Willow’s head. Some of those same gears are turning in his head as he goes back and forth between wondering how good it would be to have a child with Willow, to how potentially bad it could be. They haven’t quite hit their two year anniversary yet. They’ve only just moved in together. And most of all, he’s worried how it might make Willow feel in terms of Wiley. Chase knows she wants more children down the line, and so does he, but that’s exactly it.

Down the line.