Chapter Text
Sara picked up a few random things around the CVS. Band-aids (she didn’t have any, and you never know when you’ll scrape something), toothpaste (she still had half a tube left, but once she used that half a tube, she wouldn’t have it anymore), hair conditioner (she actually did need that), and finally, a pregnancy test.
Just another thing to toss in the basket casually. This was normal. She was just picking up a few things it was handy to have.
Going to CVS, grabbing a pregnancy test, checking it out and leaving felt like a major overreaction to missing her period by a week and a half. She was probably just late. Significantly later than normal, but still, it was possible. She was on birth control, which could technically mess with your period, but she’d been on it for a while, and she’d had one every four weeks the entire time.
Then again, the birth control posed a pretty strong reason why this should not be a concern.
So instead, she was on a regular CVS run, picking up a few things it was handy to have. Including a pregnancy test, because it couldn’t hurt to check, just to be sure. And also conditioner, because she had to keep her hair looking soft, and also toothpaste, because dental hygiene was important and she was already halfway through her other tube.
Just to further drive the point home, the first thing she did after getting back was hop in the shower and wash her hair, working the conditioner through it and shaking her head exaggeratedly as she washed it out. Once she’d gotten out, dried her hair, and changed, she put the band-aids away in her medicine cabinet and put the toothpaste in the drawer under her sink. And then, only then, after taking care of the more pressing matters worthy of her attention, did she turn to the pregnancy test.
I’m just being responsible and making sure, she told herself. Just in case. In the very unlikely scenario that I’m pregnant. Which is a very unlikely scenario indeed.
—
Neal hugged Elizabeth goodbye. “Listen, if there’s anything else you need, even if it’s just company, immediately call me, okay? I don’t care if it’s 3 AM. Call. Got it?”
Elizabeth nodded, blinking hard. “Thank you, Neal. You have no idea how glad I am to have you with me during… all of this.”
Neal felt the same. He knew he couldn’t imagine how Elizabeth felt, being his wife, but Peter was like family to him, and knowing he was in prison for something he didn’t do, for something his own biological family did… it was tearing him apart.
When he got back to his apartment, he was surprised to find that Mozzie wasn’t waiting for him, working on… whatever he was working on. Neal’s mind had been otherwise occupied, and he still couldn’t find his father. He’d called his phone more than once, but it just rang out. That meant it was still in service, but that didn’t mean his father hadn’t ditched it somewhere out of an abundance of caution, which Neal had to admit was something he would do.
Which meant he had zero leads.
And his father walked out of his life once again, leaving Neal’s family torn up in his wake.
Neal found that most of his wine cabinet had been depleted (so Mozzie had been here), but he still had enough to pour himself a glass and collapse onto his couch. He took a sip and then rubbed his head, like he could make the giant headache that was the last two weeks disappear.
Right on cue, there was a knock at the door. “Come in, Moz.” He’d probably be happy to drink on his couch with him and wallow in sadness. Though he’d probably have a few unhelpful “wise words” and quotes to accompany the wallowing.
The knock sounded again.
Seriously?
It occurred to him that it could also be another friend visiting. Maybe Elizabeth needed a change of scenery and chose to come instead of calling. Maybe one of his friends at the office, perhaps Diana, was coming over to check and see how he was doing (spoiler: not great). Maybe it was his father, and he’d listened to one of Neal’s voicemails and had a change of heart.
(The last one was the least likely of all, but until he opened the door, it was technically possible.)
He opened the door.
“Sara?” he said, surprised, stepping aside for her to enter. “I thought you already left for London.”
“I did,” she said, fidgeting with her hands. That was odd. Sara rarely fidgeted. “But… I came back.”
“To visit?”
“Maybe,” she said, taking a deep breath. “Or… maybe for good. I think I’m going to stay here. We’re still in a transition period, and it’s not too late for me to take my old job at Sterling-Bosch in New York back.”
“I don’t understand,” Neal said, shaking his head in confusion and ignoring the part of his heart that leapt at the idea that she was coming back and her first thought was to visit him. “I thought the job in London was what you wanted.”
“It was,” Sara agreed, looking away nervously. “But… that was when advancing in my career was the most important thing to me.”
“And now something else is more important,” Neal concluded, searching her face for any sign of what that might be and why it might lead her to him and hoping desperately that it wasn’t him. If she’d come back because of their relationship, because she wanted to be there for him while Peter was in prison… if he was the reason she was choosing to give up the job she wanted…
But all he could find on her face was nervousness.
Extreme nervousness.
Which really wasn’t Sara Ellis’s style.
“Sara, what’s wrong?” Neal asked, stepping forward and taking her hands. He ran his thumbs over the back of her hands, trying to help calm her while also showing his openness to whatever it was she seemed to want to tell him.
“Nothing’s wrong. I decided that a few days ago,” she said.
Vague. Okay. “Then what’s important?” he asked, referring to what she’d said before. “More important than your career?”
“Making sure my child grows up with his father,” she said, struggling to say both the words child and father. “And… not having to go through making that child alone.”
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
He’d been prepared for a lot of things, even the possibility that his father would walk through the door, but he hadn’t been prepared for this.
“You’re pregnant?” he checked, trying not to sound happy or disappointed, so he could adjust immediately to however she was feeling. Clearly she wanted to keep the baby, but the situation was inherently complicated. “Happy pregnant or…?”
Sara laughed, a few of her nervous tears breaking free. “Yes, happy pregnant. That’s what I meant when I told you I’d decided nothing was wrong. I wasn’t sure, at first. I was scared. I didn’t want this. But… I do now, if it makes sense. I mean, I was terrified to death that the test would be positive, but then it was, and suddenly I was overwhelmed with the knowledge that I’m growing a human being made from me and you, and… I really want to bring that child into the world.”
“Okay,” Neal said, nodding as he processed the information. “Okay.” Then he broke out into an uncontrollably wide grin. “Oh, God. You’re pregnant. With my baby. We’re going to have a baby.” He laughed and pulled her into a hug. “Wow, this is complicated. Especially now. For me. And you. And yet, I… really can’t stop smiling.”
“Right?” she said, laughing. “It’s unbelievable. I never would have chosen this, and yet...”
“And yet,” Neal agreed, pulling back from the hug just enough to press a slow, sweet kiss to her lips. Then something occurred to him. “How?”
“What do you mean, how?” Sara raised an eyebrow. “You, me, and the past few months, that’s how.”
“I thought you were taking birth control.”
“I was,” Sara agreed. “But you know what they say. The only 100% effective form of contraception is abstinence.”
“Yeah, we didn’t use that one.”
“Nope. We didn’t.”
Neal exhaled. “Wow. We’re going to have a baby.”
“We are.”
“That’s terrifying.”
“It is.”
“But it’s also… really amazing.” Then another basic reality landed. “Oh my God, I’m going to be a father.”
“Right? And I’m going to be a mother.” Sara shook her head. “We’ll figure it out. Somehow.”
Maybe you will, Neal thought. He couldn’t even imagine what being a parent looked like. His parents were both terrible references, Ellen acted like more of an aunt, and the first person who came to mind for him to model after was Peter, which probably was his best reference, but their relationship wasn’t parent-child, really, it was handler-felon on work release with a touch of chosen family tossed in. So, really, Neal had zero references. He had no idea how to be a father. He could use his parents as examples of what to not do, sure, but he was pretty sure he could have figured out that being constantly drunk and ignoring your kid wasn’t a great thing to do, as would be conning them into destroying evidence of your past crimes, framing their friend, and then disappearing into the wind.
Neal had a lot of very valid reasons to panic, but panic wasn’t what Sara needed right now. “We will,” he said with a lot more confidence than he felt. Confidence was what he did. “We have to.”
“There’s… one other thing I wanted to talk about,” Sara said, and suddenly the fidgeting was back. “I want us…” She trailed off.”
“You want us to what?”
“I want us to get married,” she rushed. Then she added, “If you want to, of course. I just… really want to do this right.”
Do this right. “Sara, I don’t want you to feel like just because you’re pregnant, you have to—”
“I don’t want to marry you because I’m pregnant,” Sara said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “I want to marry you because you proposed to me. Idiot.”
Well, when she put it that way… “Oh.”
“Look, you said you meant that one. Would you still have meant it if my ‘yes’ had any chance of becoming reality?” It was a genuine question, and her eyes were shining with apprehension.
“When you say ‘do this right…’”
“I mean us. I want to do us right. I’m not going to lie and say I’m not scared by permanence, but this child I’m growing inside me is pretty permanent, and… I don’t want us to keep being on-again-off-again based on the complications in our life and relationship. I want us to be us, through the good and the bad—”
“In sickness and in health,” Neal said wryly.
“Right, yes,” Sara said. “Exactly that. If you don’t want to do it, we can just… I don’t know—”
“I do. I don’t want you to think I don’t want it,” Neal said immediately. “It’s just… I don’t want you to feel stuck with me.” He was a bit limited at the moment, and he didn’t want her to regret tying herself to him in that way.
Sara looked at him like he’d just said the stupidest thing of all time. “Neal, I just flew back from London and decided to give up my new job because I want to raise our child together. I’m here with you whether you like it or not. We might as well make it legal.”
Neal sighed. “I should be moving with you to London,” he muttered. “If we were a normal couple, getting married and starting a family, that’s the thing to do here. But I can’t leave these stupid two miles.” His radius seemed even smaller now than it had before.
“In another time and another place,” Sara agreed. “But we’re not there. We’re here. And we’re going to make it work in this life, because it’s the only one we get, okay?”
Neal nodded. “Okay,” he said, surprised that he was a little choked up as he said the word. “Okay.” He pulled Sara into another embrace, clinging to her tightly. “We’re going to get married. And we’re going to have a baby.”
“Yes we are.”
“Sara, I need you to understand that I’m not going to be a perfect husband or father. I might not even be a great one.”
“And I’m not going to be a perfect wife or mother. That’s not how those things work. But the point is that when those things are hard, we’re going to do it together. I know that’s a hard concept for you, because it’s hard for me, and I’m not…” She couldn’t seem to find an end to that sentence, but Neal got it just the same. “I’m used to just taking care of myself and cutting people out when I or they have problems. It’s going to be an adjustment for me, but it’s one I want to make. Is it…?”
“I want to do it too,” Neal agreed. It just seemed like a really daunting task.
As if reading his mind, Sara said, “I don’t need it to be easy, Neal, I need it to be us.”
“Us,” Neal repeated quietly. “I can do that.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“How do you feel?”
“Like I’m on a roller coaster,” he answered immediately. “A really scary one. And I’m going to scream my head off the whole time, but I’ll also be having the time of my life.”
“That’s kind of how I feel too. Excited. Terrified.” Sara put her hands on his shoulders. “I don’t just want you because of the baby. My excitement when I realized I was pregnant made me realize that I want you. All of you, everything that comes with you, even the hard and dangerous things, because I want you. Okay?”
“I want to share that life, too,” Neal said. “I’m so excited to share our lives. Sara, I could cry.”
“You’re already crying.”
“No I’m not.”
After that, they both ignored each other’s tears, because they knew they were tears of joy.
—
“Look, I have no way of knowing if you’re even listening to these,” Neal said into his phone later, “and I know no matter how many times I ask you to do the right thing, you won’t, but I’m leaving another message on the off chance that you really are listening. That it really does matter to you to hear my voice, because I’m your…” Neal pressed his lips together and blinked hard. “Listen, I just wanted to tell you… I don’t know why it matters to me to tell you. I guess it’s my last ditch effort to get you to do one decent thing as a father. Cause I…”
Neal took a deep breath to collect himself, and forged onward. “I just found out that I’m going to be a father. I’m excited. I love her. You met her; it’s Sara. But I’m also terrified, because what am I supposed to do, shoot a guy and frame the kid’s friend for it? Teach him to never take responsibility? Always let someone else take the fall?” He winced. He wasn’t doing a good job of saying the most likely words to appeal to his father to actually confess, but the odds were low he was even listening, and saying the right thing had already tremendously failed. “Look, if Peter is found guilty, which with this evidence, he will be, I go back to prison too. Sara will go through the rest of this pregnancy alone, probably wishing she didn’t mix up with me in the first place, and I won’t even be there when my child is born. I’ll get out before their first birthday, but… I shouldn’t have to miss any of that. And as someone who missed almost everything when it came to me, if you care about that at all, please don’t let that happen. You’re the only one who can fix it. All you have to do is be honest.”
Neal knew Sara said she wanted him and all the complications that came with him. But seeing as she came back to be with him, how would she feel if one of those complications turned out to be not being with him?
He would literally break out of prison again. He would. No matter if he was a fugitive forever. He’d get new passports for him and Sara, fly them to some unknown corner of the planet and hope she really meant that thing she said about wanting him no matter what.
“If you refuse to testify, at least leave a voicemail or something. Some kind of evidence that would hold up in court,” Neal said quietly into the phone. “Please. If you care at all.”
He hung up and hoped, probably in vain, that his father would listen.
And he hoped, probably also in vain, that if he listened, he would care.