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“Pssst. Dan.”
Dan groans, stealing a pillow from next to him and shoving it over his head.
“Dannyyyy, come on, wake up,” Suzy whispers, crawling over him and stealing his pillow. He glares at her a bit, not seriously, just so she knows she’s bothering him, and she smiles brightly down at him as she turns on the bedside lamp. “Hi,” she says, still whispering, as she sits her full weight down on his legs to hold him in place. Not that he would go anywhere, since he was trying to sleep, thanks. “I need to talk to you.”
“Yeah, I gathered that,” Dan mumbles back. “Why are we whispering?”
“Becasue I don’t want Arin to hear,” she informs him, as if that was obvious.
“If he’s doing anything with his headphones on he won’t hear anyway, I think we’ll be fine.” Last week he missed Dan breaking two plates and having a whole debate with his mom over the phone over if he needed stitches or not as he tried to bandage his toe, because he was watching Spore speedruns on his computer with noise canceling on, for some reason.
Suzy shrugs, and falls to the side, snorting when she tries to brush some unruly hair out of Dan’s face. “I think he’s pregnant,” she deadpans, still keeping her voice low. Dan blinks at her.
“What?”
“I don’t think it’s a stomach bug, or food poisoning, or a cold, or whatever, I think he’s pregnant,” she reiterates.
“Why do you think he’s pregnant?” Dan whispers back, sitting up now. He’s certainly awake now. Oh, fuck.
“Call it a hunch, I don’t know,” she says, sitting back up, herself, to face him. They’re both cross-legged on the bed now, taking up a comically small corner of their California king. The bed is stupid big, almost too big even for the three of them, but Arin had bought it in a grand, weird romantic gesture for Dan pretty early on in their relationship, as a sort of ‘we both definitely want you here and I want to prove it,’ thing. Arin’s favorite place to sleep is directly on top of the nearest warm body, though, so they hardly ever use all the space.
“Woman’s intuition, or something,” Suzy whispers. Dan rubs his eyes hard, like if he does it hard enough he’ll wake up and this will be a really fucked up and weird dream. When he opens his eyes she’s still there, and when he pinches himself she’s still there, and all the clocks in the room are working normally. This is definitely real.
“How? What?”
“He’s eating weird, and getting nauseous a lot, and he’s kind of, um, sensitive,” she lists. “I think I saw him crying at a video of a marching band playing a Tyler The Creator song yesterday.”
“I cried at that too,” Dan points out.
“You cry at everything,” she replies with a roll of her eyes. “He only cries at most things.”
“Okay, so we're both big pussies, what’s your point? We use condoms.”
“Condoms break.”
“Ours haven’t recently.”
“We ran out that time last month.”
“He took a PlanB.”
“Those fail too. Maybe he took it wrong, or forgot, I don’t know,” she whispers aggressively, slightly exasperated by now. “The point is, I think he’s knocked up.”
“Why are you telling me this and not him?”
“Because I want him to find out on his own so he doesn’t have to tell us right away if he’s freaked out,” she explains. “I mean, you know how he gets sometimes, he likes to process things on his own first before anyone else gets involved, and I think this is a pretty fucking big thing to process.”
“Okay yeah, that’s fair,” he whispers back. “How the hell are we going to get him to figure it out on his own, though?”
Suzy bites her lip. “I was kinda hoping you’d have an idea for that.”
“Fuck, Suz, I don’t know,” he whisper-yells back. “Do we just start buying baby shit and not explain it to him?”
“I don’t know, maybe?” She grabs the bottom hem of the old Giants sleep pants he’s wearing, fidgeting with a loose thread next to his ankle nervously. “That might make it seem presumptuous, though, like, if he figures out we know he’ll think we assume he’ll want to keep it, and I don’t want to sway that decision, or anything.”
“Do you want to keep it?”
She looks back up at him, searching for something in his face. “Do you?”
Dan allows himself to imagine it for exactly one half of a second before nodding enthusiastically. He’s always wanted kids, and none of them are getting any younger, and he adores his nephews, and, holy fuck, would his boyfriend make cute babies. He would make the cutest babies ever.
Suzy smiles a bit sheepishly. “Me too,” she admits.
“I mean, we’ll support whatever he wants, of course,” Dan cuts in, snapping himself out of imagining it before he can start getting too excited. “But I hope he wants it.”
“I think he will,” she says. “I mean, we discussed kids, even before you, and I assume he didn’t expect to be carrying them at that point, but I doubt he’ll mind. He’s not exactly precious about his ‘summer beach body,’ or whatever.”
“Yeah, he’s really not.”
They smile at each other for a moment, clearly trying not to be excited, before Dan snaps out of it. “Okay, fuck, so Arin is pregnant, or might be, and we need to, what, start making conspicuous comments about it?”
“Pretty much, yeah, that was my plan. And we need to do the litter boxes, and stuff like that. Toxoplasmosis.”
“Toxic what?”
“I’ll send you an article,” Suzy says, waving her hand dismissively. “The point is, we need to get him to act like he’s pregnant before he knows, and we also need to try to get him to figure it the hell out.” She pauses, thinking for a moment, and adds “And we probably need to do some research about pregnancy.”
“Yeah, clearly.”
“Right, anyway. Goodnight,” Suzy says with an innocent little smile, patting him on the shoulder before standing to leave the room, presumably to go back to hanging out with Arin.
“That’s it? Just ‘goodnight’?”
Suzy shrugs. “Not really sure how to end this conversation, so, yeah, goodnight. Good luck trying to sleep,” she says with a little chuckle, and then Dan is alone in the bedroom again.
He flops backwards and stares at the dim ceiling. Okay, sure. Fuck.
----------
The next morning Dan cannot stop staring at Arin. They both let him sleep in a little bit longer than normal, and while Suzy goes to make them breakfast, Dan just sits there watching him. It might be a little creepy, but whatever. He’s getting used to the idea. Now that he’s slept on it, it feels way more real, like his brain processed everything for him in the night. He’s always liked that about sleep: the way it can process things for you when you can’t handle doing it manually just yet. A therapist had told him, once, that sometimes when you’re obsessing at the end of a long day, the best solution can be to go to sleep and just give up. If nothing is getting done, stop forcing it. You almost always feel better in the morning.
Dan doesn’t know if better is the right word for this. Clearer, maybe. He brushes Arin’s hair back from his face a bit where it’s fallen over his eyes, and he stirs, but doesn’t wake up.
He’s beautiful, he really is. Dan would be over the moon to have a baby with him and Suzy. He knows it isn’t his choice, though, and he’s fine with that, really. Mostly, his concern right now is with making sure Arin is okay. For now, that means keeping all his activities pregnancy friendly without letting on to the fact that Dan and Suzy already know, so that he’ll have the space and the control to navigate that situation how he wants to, but after that happens, Dan is happy to make sure he’s okay by accompanying him to whatever appointments come next, whether they keep the pregnancy or not.
He does think that Arin will want to see it through, that’s his prediction, but, even if he doesn’t want to carry for whatever reason, Dan thinks that perhaps, after this, the kids discussion should be seriously considered pretty soon.
Arin starts to stir as Dan brushes his hand through his hair, and Dan starts to kiss his face, making it look like he was intentionally trying to wake him up like this instead of creepily petting and staring at him. Arin grumbles, pushes his face further into the pillow, and Dan scratches behind his ear a little, getting him to shiver.
“Good morning, princess,” Dan says lightly. Arin grumbles something incomprehensible. “Breakfast is ready.”
“It is?” Arin asks, finally sitting up a bit. His hair is all fucked up on the side he was sleeping on, and Dan snorts as he flattens it down for him. “What time is it?”
“Ten,” Dan says. They don’t have to be in until noon today. “Suz was up early, so she let us sleep and went down to make pancakes.”
“Oh.” Arin still looks confused, out of it, from having just woken up. “That’s nice of her,” he comments, dropping onto his back to stretch. Dan smooths a hand down his side as he does it.
“It is,” he agrees. “Shall we go join her?”
Arin relaxes, nods, and then allows Dan to nudge him out of bed. Dan follows a few paces behind him, snatching his phone from the bedside table to google ‘can pregnant people have coffee’ quickly before they make it downstairs. Yes, they can. One cup. Cool.
“Morning,” Arin says as he walks into the kitchen, wrapping both arms around Suzy from behind as he buries his face in her shoulder.
“Morning, sleepy,” Suzy says, reaching up to pat his head before she scootches the last pancake onto the stack she has on the plate next to her.
“Want some coffee?” Dan asks him. When Suzy raises her eyebrow, Dan holds up his phone as an explanation. ‘Googled it, it’s fine,’ he tries to communicate, and she seems to get that, because she nods.
“Coffee would be awesome,” Arin says, and Dan grabs two mugs from the cabinet.
“Suzy?”
“Already had some,” she informs him. “That pot is still fresh.”
“Awesome,” Arin mumbles, hugging her visibly tighter.
“You feeling okay, honey?” Suzy asks, glancing nervously at Dan. Arin shrugs.
“I’m kinda off,” he says, and Dan and Suzy stare at each other for a moment, unsure what to say. Morning sickness. That is what this is. “Maybe I’m starting to come down with something.”
“Maybe,” Suzy says, thinking a little tiny bit faster than Dan. “Do you think you’re going to be good to go to the office?”
“Yeah, it’s just, like, a weird malaise,” he shrugs, finally straightening up again. “Maybe coffee will help,” he adds, making grabby hands at one of the mugs. Dan laughs, grabs the creamer from the fridge, splashes some into both cups, and hands one to Arin.
He takes a sip, looks into it, confused, and asks “Is this a different brand?”
It’s fucking not, Arin, you’re pregnant, Dan’s head screams at him, but out loud he says “Maybe,” with a shrug, and Arin hums, taking another sip as he walks to the table. Dan and Suzy share a look after he leaves. Maybe this is going to be harder than they thought.
----------
Things are fine and normal at the office, thank god, and after work Arin is going out to dinner to catch up with some friends, so it winds up being Dan and Suzy alone in the house. Suzy has some orders to do, and Dan has some emails, so they wind up hanging out in separate rooms for the most part, each focusing on their own tasks.
At about eight, though, Suzy peeks her head into the living room where Dan is now sitting, on his phone, next to his recently abandoned laptop.
“Pssst,” she says, and then she holds up a twelve pack of White Claw. “We need to drink these.”
“We do?” Dan laughs.
Suzy nods, pushing his laptop to the side so she can sit next to him instead. “Arin drinks them sometimes, and we need to have a reason that he can’t if he feels like it, so-” she holds up the case. “Let’s drink.”
“We’re both lightweights,” Dan points out, although he takes a can when it's offered to him.
“We can pour some down the sink if we’re too fucked. Want to watch what we do in the shadows, or something?”
“Yeah, sure, fuck it.”
They work their way through the drinks slowly, and with lots of snack breaks in-between, cuddled up under the same blanket on the couch. Dan knows his stomach will be mad at him for this later, but he’d rather take one for the team to protect Arin than protect his own delicate constitution right now. Suzy loves this show, and Dan hasn’t seen a whole lot of it, but it’s funny even without context. It’s kinda like the office, but with, like, sexual vampires. It’s pretty good.
They get more wasted than originally intended as they passively watch the show, and by their fourth episode the case is gone, which was the goal, so yay, and they are thoroughly hammered, falling on each other laughing every time there’s a joke. When Hulu finally asks if they’re still watching, neither of them bother to find the remote to play the next episode.
Dan has his chin resting on Suzy’s sternum now as she leans back against the arm of the couch, and she’s absently playing with his hair, twirling individual curls around and around her fingers. “Can I confess something?” she asks, a little hazy in her intoxication.
“Sure.”
Suzy giggles a little bit. “I’m so fucking glad it’s not me,” she eventually says, and then they both burst into a fit of giggles.
“Me too,” Dan confesses, moving face down to laugh into her chest.
“Fuck, I feel bad, because he’s kinda miserable, and I don’t want him to be, but, god, I do not want to be pregnant right now,” Suzy laughs. “Like, if it was me, I’d keep it, and everything, but I would much rather it be him.”
A bit of tension Dan wasn’t quite aware he was holding dissolves as he realizes that Suzy, at the very least, doesn’t see him as an intruder in this situation. He knows he’s welcome in this relationship, he knows they both see him as an equal, but sometimes, in intense situations like this, he needs a little bit of a reminder, especially when he and Suzy both know that, biologically, this baby isn’t hers. It doesn’t matter to Dan, and it doesn’t seem to matter to Suzy, but, still, he can’t help but worry occasionally.
“We’re so lucky he’s such a bottom,” Dan jokes, and Suzy laughs harder, kicking one leg up next to Dan’s side as she cackles.
“We’re lucky I’m a fujoshi and I like to watch you come in him,” she elaborates, making Dan cackle into her chest. They’ve both got the drunk giggles now, and it’s unlikely that they’ll manage to stop. As much as he famously has this sort of chemistry with Arin, he was pleasantly surprised, after they started getting closer, to discover that he has the same comedic chemistry with Suzy. She's more deadpan, sometimes, but sometimes that really gets to Dan. She can just say anything the way Arin can, probably from being around him so much, but she’s better at saying it without laughing. Dan loves the way Arin laughs at his own jokes, don’t get him wrong, he thinks it’s adorable, but Suzy’s ability to tell a joke and just smile as everyone else loses it is kind of silly, funny, and somehow sexy, all in one.
“The first time you told me I could come inside your husband was the best day of my entire goddamn life,” Dan says as he sits up to look her square in the face. That catches her off-guard enough that she does that caught off guard, yell-laugh, more of a scream than anything.
“I think he’d say the same thing,” she says through her laughter, and Dan is gone by this point, just giggling into her chest, absolutely losing it. It hits him, in that moment, just how much he fucking loves her. He loves her laugh, and her humor, and her, like, fucking face, or something. He doesn’t know. He’s drunk. He’s drunk and he loves her.
He fell for Arin first, that’s sort of a given. He spends pretty much all day every day around him, getting to know the big and the small things about him, from what he likes to order from Starbucks to the ins and outs of his fear of failing, Dan got to learn it all slowly, over the course of years and years of shared proximity. He fell for him slowly, but surely, and every day for years and years he thought he couldn’t fall further, but then he did, every time. Even now, sometimes, Arin will so something so fucking funny, so sweet, so insightful, and Dan will go ‘oh, I can fall further. I just did.’
Suzy was different. Dan fell for Suzy fast. He thinks it was because he fell for her through Arin’s eyes. At first, she was just a new friend, the same way Arin was, and he knew she was hot, but mostly in the nebulous, congratulatory way that you notice any of your friend’s significant others are hot. He didn’t want to step on any toes, but he was happy for Arin, as much as he could be with that much repressed gay jealousy in the way. Eventually, though, they became friends in their own right, and once she gave her blessing for him and Arin to explore whatever was happening between them, they only got closer. He started seeing her the way Arin did: as sanctuary at the end of a long day, a rock to hold onto to weather the tides. It sort of felt like they had gone from friends to married; from ‘see you soon, man,’ to ‘spaghetti for dinner tonight, darling?’ and Dan doesn’t think he’d have it any other way, frankly. He loves her. He loves to love her, and he’s not particularly miffed to have missed the awkward pining phase with her. He got enough years of that with Arin to have his fucking fill, thanks very much.
“You think he’ll look cute with a baby bump? I think he’ll be adorable,” Suzy muses, like it’s not even funny, and Dan laughs so hard he goes quiet.
He squeaks out “That’s the creepiest thing you’ve ever fucking said,” and Suzy loses it again as well. “You sound like such a pervert,” he cries, his voice going all high from laughing. “‘Yeah, baby, you’re gonna look so good pregnant,’” he adds, managing to stop laughing just long enough to do an impression of a creepy, mouth-breathing guy. Suzy laughs even harder.
“Stop, stop, fuck, I’m gonna die,” Suzy says through her laughter, and that sets Dan off again.
They hear keys in the door, and they both try to quiet down, to little success. Arin comes into the house to the sounds of them quietly giggling, and then, as he peeks his head into the living room, they both completely lose their minds again.
“What the hell are you guys laughing at?” Arin asks.
“We were talking about how hot your ass is,” Suzy half-lies. Dan starts giggling again.
“Are you guys drunk?” Arin laughs. Dan nods his head as he continues giggling.
“Why?” Arin asks, not mad, just confused in a slightly amused way.
“Suzy is very persuasive with the White Claw,” Dan says sincerely, and Arin snorts.
“Is she now?”
“She is.”
Arin laughs at them, and walks over to help the both of them stand up from the couch. “Come on,” he says, hauling them both to their feet. “Let’s get you two to bed.”
“Oh! Please don’t do the litter boxes, I just did them earlier,” Suzy cuts in as they’re walking down the hall, and Dan loses it again. This is such a fucking ridiculous situation, and in his current state he can’t stop laughing at it.
“Okay?” Arin laughs. “I won’t. We’ll all go straight to sleep.”
“Okay,” Dan says with a giggle while he strips out of his pants. Suzy is too busy petting Arin to even undress herself.
“I love you,” Suzy is saying, looking into his face adoringly. “I love you so much, baby. You’re so beautiful.”
“You are too,” Arin laughs, pushing her back onto the bed so that he can pull her jeans off for her. “And I love you too, and I love Dan, but you guys need to sleep this off,” he says, and Dan has to agree. He’s so sleepy now.
“Love you too,” he says, and he can vaguely feel Arin and Suzy climb into bed with him, and that’s the last thing he remembers before he passes the hell out.
----------
After a week, Arin throws up. Dan hopes it’ll make something click, but it doesn’t.
“I think it was that weird vegan Wendy’s chicken burger thing,” Arin says as he’s hunched over the toilet, Dan holding his hair back for him as he waits to see if he’s going to throw up again. Dan is torn between the urge to wrap him up in blankets and comfort him and the urge to shake him by the shoulders and yell at him to take a pregnancy test.
At this point, Dan doesn’t even think the test is all that necessary.
“Do you think you’re good to go to the office today?” Please say no. Please say no and stay home and google your symptoms and take a pregnancy test.
“I don’t know,” Arin says, and Dan resists the urge to pump his fist in the air. “I feel like hell.”
“Why don’t you stay home, baby,” Dan suggests, rubbing his back. “If it’s just food poisoning and you feel okay later you can just come in at noon, or something.”
“Yeah, that sounds like a good idea.”
Dan and Suzy set Arin up on the couch with some blankets and crackers and gatorade, and kiss him on the forehead about thirty times between the two of them, and then they both pile into Suzy’s car to head to work.
“God, I fucking hope he googles his symptoms. I’ve never said that sentence in my life, but I really hope he googles it,” Dan says as he stares forward through the windshield. Suzy is doing the same thing, her hands at ten and two in the unmoving car as she just sits and stares forward.
“Me too,” Suzy agrees. “This sucks. I want to hold his face and kiss him and tell him it’s just the baby making him miserable, and coddle him without it being suspicious.”
“I hope he gets more sleep,” Dan adds. “He needs it. I looked up, like, first trimester symptoms, and the tiredness is a big one. He needs a nap. I’m gonna bring a few more pillows and blankets to the office soon so he can sleep on my couch more.”
When Dan looks over, Suzy is already looking at him, smiling a little. He asks “What?”
“Thinking,” she responds, reaching over to tousle his hair before she starts the car and reverses out of their driveway.
“Thinking what?”
“You’re gonna be a really good dad,” she says, almost as if it’s casual. Dan fights the urge to giggle and blush like a school girl.
“You’re gonna be a good mom,” Dan returns, and she smiles at him again out of the corner of her eye.
“God, I want him to figure it out so I can fucking hug him,” Suzy says. “He’s so goddamn cute, and he’s gonna make the cutest fucking baby, and I want to hold him so bad and tell him that.”
“Soon, Suz,” Dan assures her, praying, himself, that he’s right.
The day comes and goes without so much as a mention of babies or pregnancy or anything of the fucking sort from Arin, though, even after he comes into the office late, while declaing that the ‘sickness was only bad in the morning,’ and, as he’s in the bathroom brushing his teeth while Dan and Suzy stare at the ceiling of their bedroom, Suzy asks “Do you think it’s time to just tell him?”
Dan sighs. “Maybe,” he admits. “I’ve even been dropping hints at this point, but if I get any more obvious with it the fucking fans are gonna figure it out before he does.”
“Tomorrow,” Suzy decides for the both of them. Dan nods.
“Tomorrow.”
----------
Arin throws up again the next day, and he stays home again, too. Dan tells the office he’s come down with some sort of a stomach flu, and spends the day in his office pretending to work while researching OBGYNs in the area. He’s going insane not doing anything, just thinking about it with no action, but research is the closest to helping he can get right now, so research he fucking does. By the end of the day he’s learned the names of seven different hormones he’d never heard of previously, and added ‘nipple guards’ to his shopping list.
When they get home, Arin is in the kitchen, wearing nothing but a t-shirt, an apron, and some boxers. Dan will realize, later, that the three course meal Arin’s making is a great indicator of the fact that he’s nervous, but, in the actual moment, Dan is too nervous, himself, to process that.
“Hi,” Dan says as he walks into the kitchen. Arin’s hair is up in a messy bun, and his arms keep flexing as he mixes something in a bowl. He looks fucking fantastic, even as strands of his slightly stringy, two-day-unwashed hair fall into his eyes. Maybe this is that ‘glow’ people always talk about. “Feeling better?”
“Yeah,” Arin says, offering them a little smile. “Much.”
“Good,” Suzy says, wrapping her arm around Dan’s waist. “We, uh, wanted to talk to you about something.”
Arin stops stirring, and looks over at them with a slightly nervous expression, his brown eyes going a bit wide while he peers through his bangs. “Yeah?”
In the car, they decided Suzy would do this part, so Dan doesn’t elaborate, he just nods as Suzy says “Yeah.”
“About?”
Suzy clears her throat. “So, um, fuck, I don’t know how to say this,” she laughs nervously. Dan rubs her shoulder, and Arin looks on the verge of panic.
“Nothing bad!” Dan cuts in. “Shit, Suz, don’t scare him,” he laughs.
“Sorry,” she concedes. “We just- um, well, you’ve been really sick, and sleepy, recently, but the sickness has only been in the, uh, morning, if you catch my drift…”
A slow smile starts to creep onto Arin’s face as he looks between Dan and Suzy’s nervous expressions. “You fucking assholes,” he says with a big grin and zero bite. “You knew this whole time.”
“You, um- you want to take a test?” Dan suggests, caught off-guard by the knowledge that they jumped the goddamn gun. Smooth, Avidan. Fuck.
Arin laughs lightly, ducks his head down, and says “I want you two to go play on the switch or something while I finish dinner, and then let me do this how I planned it.” His hair falls into his face a bit as he resolutely refuses to make eye contact with either of them, but he doesn’t look upset at having his plans interrupted. The opposite, actually, his shoulders look a little further from his ears as he resumes stirring. He seems happy to have confirmation that they’re not freaking out, or upset, or anything.
And he clearly wants to keep it, which is making something bright and hopeful well up in Dan’s chest. You don’t tend to make your partners a big fancy dinner to tell them you’re having an abortion.
“Okay,” Suzy says, unable to hide her grin. “Call us when it’s done.”
“I will,” Arin promises, and with that Dan and Suzy politely leave the room.
Once they’re in the living room Dan says “We’re so stupid,” and Suzy ignores that in favor of wrapping him up in the biggest hug she can manage, bouncing up and down a bit in her excitement.
“Who fucking cares?” she laughs. “We’re having a baby!”
“We sure fucking are,” Dan laughs, going along with it when Suzy silently pretends to scream silently. He giggles, and she kisses him on the mouth forcefully, both of them smiling too much for it to be very good.
They don’t wind up even booting up the switch, both of them playing New York Times games on their phones as they wait for Arin to tell them they can come back. Suzy gets the Wordle in one less guess than Dan, but Dan gets Connections right on the first try, so it’s sort of a draw.
When Arin tells them he’s done with dinner they practically scramble up from the couch, and Arin laughs at them as he puts the last plate down on the table. It’s an impressive dinner, admittedly, with pasta and roasted carrots, and Arin tells them “There’s a pie cooling in there,” with a nervous little smile, as he stands up to look at them.
“Cool,” Dan says.
“Yeah, awesome.”
There's a beat of silence where nobody knows what to do. Dan and Suzy stand next to each other, practically vibrating with anticipation, and Arin shifts nervously from foot to foot as he looks between them.
“So,” Arin says eventually. “I’m pregnant.”
Dan can’t look at anything but him. He assumes Suzy is smiling, judging by how hard Arin starts grinning as he looks between the two of them, but he can’t seem to tear his eyes away from Arin. He opens his arms for a hug, and Arin rushes over without hesitation, wrapping his arms around Dan as tight as he can. Suzy hugs Arin from behind since he’s pressed himself so fully to Dan’s chest. Dan grins at Suzy over Arin’s shoulder, and she looks as teary as he feels as her hands snake around to rest on Arin’s stomach between them.
Arin laughs tearily, and Dan kisses the side of his head, swaying the three of them from side to side.
Dan means to say something actually helpful, like ‘I’ve found an OBGYN we can go to’ or ‘do you want to merge our offices to make room for a nursery?’ or something, but what comes out of his mouth is “I fucking love you so much,” and Arin laughs at him.
“I love you too,” he replies. “Both of you.”
“I love all three of you,” Suzy replies, moving her hand on Arin’s stomach for emphasis, and Arin laughs again, sounding a little bit teary. Dan runs his fingers through his hair, and smiles at Suzy over his shoulder. He knows he’s crying now, he can feel it, and Suzy reaches one hand up to wipe a tear away from his cheek.
“Suzy said you’re gonna look really cute with a baby bump,” Dan blurts out, and Arin loses it, leaning fully into him as he laughs. That’s the best sound in the world, he thinks, one of the people he loves most in the world laughing at something he said.
“I told you that in confidence!” Suzy protests. “Drunk, shameless confidence!”
Arin laughs harder, turns around in Dan’s arms, and looks at his wife. “You knew all the way back then?”
“Darling, I’ve known for weeks,” she confesses, and then Arin hugs her instead of Dan.
“Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?” he laughs, burrowing against her.
“We wanted you to figure it out for yourself!” Dan protests.
“If we told you, you would have had no time to process, and you would have been freaking out, and we would have been right there watching, and we wanted you to have time to think about it alone,” Suzy explains. “We didn’t want you to feel pressured.”
“That’s really thoughtful, actually,” Arin admits with a little laugh. “You guys are sweet.”
“We just love you,” Dan says, hugging him from behind now the way Suzy had done earlier. He puts his hands on his waist tentatively at first, but quickly gives up on being shy about it, wrapping his arms around Arin’s midsection tightly as he kisses the back of his neck. Arin laughs, leaning his head to the side to give Dan more access.
“I love you too,” he says, sighing heavily. Dan can feel him relax slightly in his arms.
Eventually, Arin lets go, and not-so-subtly wipes his eyes as he pulls away. “Okay, come on, let’s eat before this gets cold.”
“Okay,” Dan agrees, sharing a brief grin with Suzy. He goes up on his toes just a tiny bit to reach Arin’s cheek, kisses the area just next to his eye forcefully, and says “Let’s eat, then. You need it. You’re eating for two.”
“Shut up,” Arin laughs, and Suzy grabs him by the waist to kiss him again before she’ll let him sit down.
Dan stares at Arin so much over the course of dinner that he gets kicked in the shin no less than three times for not eating his food, and he wouldn't have it any other way.