30. Ned
NED
Ned ignores the beep of his phone like he’s ignoring that it’s Sunday afternoon. He’s busy laying here drowsily in bed, Abbot half awake next to him, rumpled sheets and sweat drying once again on his skin, and his phone has no business making noise.
If it’s important, whoever it is will call again.
Peggy’s at Jen’s and that’s the only thing that would get him upright.
He’d just talked to her that morning when he’d hauled himself out of bed long enough to walk Baxter and check in with the outside world.
It’s continuing on without him and Abbot just fine, leaving them to busy themselves amassing takeout containers of delivered food downstairs while they camp out in the bedroom.
When was the last time they had a weekend like this? Work forgotten, their phones set aside, just the two of them and the quiet of the house around them?
They should get married more often, if this is what they get in the days afterward. He wants to laugh at that thought, but it’s true, with the dreamy sense of time ticking by but that having nothing in particular to do with either of them, everything of importance in this room.
Yeah, this weekend coming to an end isn’t something Ned has to deal with quite yet. Married, he remembers, and again the word is as jarring as the buzz of his phone.
He reaches over to silence it and then drapes his arm over Abbot’s bare back. “Again?” Ned asks, and they’ll have to get up at some point, but that’s later, and this is now.
“I’m not sure I can.” Abbot’s jaw is dark with stubble.
Ned touches the back of his finger to the roughness. “Me neither, but let’s try.”
Abbot smiles when Ned climbs over him, kissing the warm expanse of his shoulders, letting his weight trap Abbot against the mattress.
No, Ned probably can’t either, his body’s response dulled by this point, but…
But. He tries to focus right here, burying his face in Abbot’s neck to chase after the sweet smell of sex and sweat, drawing a hand down his side, ribs, hips, the top of his thigh and back up again.
But Ned’s going to drive south tonight, and then life will resume, with their intermittent schedule of seeing each other.
Snow drifts down outside. Spring feels far away, and summer even longer from now.
They’ll be working together. It’s temporary, having to say goodbye.
Finite too, the number of times left that they’ll part after a weekend.
Hell, Ned will be able to walk down the hall to Abbot’s office.
Head home with him after work, if he doesn’t have Peggy.
Just be together like he’s wanted to for so long.
Which he gets now, and he kisses behind Abbot’s ear and strokes his side again. Yes, there’s that spark of heat low in his stomach, muted from the weekend they’ve had, but there. “Yeah?” Ned asks, rocking his hips against the swell of Abbot’s ass.
Downstairs, Baxter barks.
Ned ignores him like he’s ignored his phone, shifting his weight onto his knees, easing up from half crushing Abbot. The lube is somewhere in the bed. He fishes for it beneath a pillow that’s knocked askew, and then under the mess of blankets.
Whatever. He’ll find it later. He crawls down Abbot’s back, sucking kisses down his spine, filling his hands with Abbot’s perfect, perfect ass. He kneels between Abbot’s legs, lifting and spreading his ass cheeks, bending down to—
Baxter barks again, stringing sounds together in a row that makes Ned glance at the bedroom door. That’s his Someone’s here bark, not the Come pay attention to me I’m bored one.
“Is that…” Abbot pushes up to his elbows.
“Ned!” a voice shouts, and Ned hears pounding on the front door.
It’s Pat. Ned stands and braces a hand on the windowsill, the air cold around the panes of glass as he leans against them to see. That’s Pat’s mop of red hair standing at Abbot’s door, his phone in one hand, the other hammering a string of knocks.
Ned has four missed calls, he sees when he picks up his phone, and a series of texts in increasing urgency. Answer your fucking phone, the latest one reads, and Ned taps his screen to call Pat back.
“Finally,” Pat says in greeting, a story below him raising his phone to his ear.
“Is everything okay?”
“No, everything is not fucking okay,” Pat says and Ned watches as he knocks on the door again, the sound reverberating through the house, answered by Baxter’s barks. “Are you here?”
“Yeah. Is it Peggy?”
“What? No, it’s not her, it’s—Ned, I need to talk to you.”
Ned glances at Abbot sitting on the edge of the bed, his glasses back on. “Pat, we’re kind of—”
“I know, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I really, really need to talk to you. I’ll owe you one, but please.”
“Um,” Ned says.
Abbot stands and starts straightening up the bed.
That’s enough of an answer. “Alright, but can you let yourself in? I kinda gotta shower. If you come around back, the door by the kitchen is open.”
“I’ll be downstairs. And Ned?”
“Yeah?”
“Nice.”
Ned rolls his eyes and hangs up. “Sorry, Pat’s having some sort of crisis.”
“Apparently.”
“He owes you one.”
“As long as you’re making good on it, and not him,” Abbot says.
Ned gives him a smile as he hurries to the bathroom.
He leaves the shower running for Abbot and pulls on pants he hasn’t worn since Friday, tugging them over wet skin. He fishes a shirt from the drawer and goes downstairs, ready to see Pat either wearing a cast or in the middle of some prank Ned’s going to walk right into.
But Pat’s sitting on the couch with Baxter, his jacket still on, curled in on himself.
Ned slows, sure he’s never seen Pat so pale. Whatever this is, it isn’t a joke and isn’t a prank, and Ned wishes he’d checked his phone before Pat had to show up here to find him.
“Hey,” Ned says, sitting in the chair across from him. “Is everyone okay? Your mom and dad?”
“Oh.” Pat straightens. “Yeah, sorry to freak you out. Everyone’s good.”
“So what happened?”
“I—Claire—she just—” Pat spreads his hands and his mouth works silently for a moment. “She just drove up this morning. She left already, headed back home. She came to tell me that she’s, we’re—she’s pregnant, Ned.”
“Oh.” Ned blinks. “Oh, shit.”
“Yeah.”
“Congratulations.” It comes out more as a question. “Or not? Where are we with this?”
“I don’t fucking know!” Pat half shouts.
“You don’t know in terms of how you feel? Or whether she’s keeping it?” His mind spins. If his thoughts are going this fast, he can only imagine the state of Pat’s. “Or if it’s yours?”
“It’s mine,” Pat says, his volume collapsing in on itself as he buries his face in his hands. “I mean, she said I was welcome to get a paternity test, it’s not like we were together that long or anything, but she also said she’s entirely sure. And yeah, she’s having it. In October.”
“October,” Ned echoes. “This is soon that she knows, isn’t it?”
“She got super sick,” Pat says. “Like right away, I guess.”
“Is she alright?”
“Yeah, she went to the doctor for what she figured was the flu, and they gave her a pregnancy test, and yeah. She’s good. Feels like crap, I guess, but fine.”
Claire’s pregnant. With Pat’s baby. Pat’s having a baby. Ned waits for his brain to figure out what to say next, but all he manages is, “Did you send soup?”
Pat drags his hands down his face. “Yeah, but should I send more?”
Ned blows out a breath. “I don’t know.”
“You have to know,” Pat says, “Because I’m the one who doesn’t know, so you have to be the one who does know, okay? Ned, okay?”
“Okay,” Ned agrees. “Okay. This is—this is a lot.”
“It’s so fucking much,” Pat says, his voice rising again. “It’s an entire baby.”
“It is,” Ned agrees. A whole-ass baby. Who is half Pat’s. He’s smiling, he realizes. “Congrats, man. You’re going to be a dad.”
“I’m going to be sick,” Pat says.
“Not on Abbot’s nice rug, please. This is awesome. You’re going to have a kid.”
“With—” Pat waves his hands. “With Claire? I don’t even know her.”
“Sure you do. You’ve been super into her.”
“Yeah, but there’s hooking-up into her and there’s having-a-baby into her, and Ned, what am I going to do?”
“You’re going to support the hell out of her while she’s pregnant and then afterward,” Ned says. “It’s a baby. It’s not rocket science.”
“How? When? I live up here. What the actual fuck am I going to do about that?”
“I don’t know. Are you going to keep seeing each other?”
“I’m going to be seeing her for eighteen years!” Pat shouts.
“Well, eighteen from October.”
“I’m not sure you’re helping.”
“Pat, this is awesome. You’re going to have a little baby. I’m going to be an uncle.”
“With a woman I barely know, who lives two hours away. Which famously, as you’ve told me repeatedly, is actually so fucking far and you’ve barely survived that distance!”
“It’s not so bad.”
“That is a lie.”
“Yeah,” Ned agrees. “But you two will figure it out.”
“We will?” Pat asks, his eyes wide.
“Kids don’t come with an instruction book, so everyone is just winging it,” Ned says. Goggles, Charles had smiled about just the other night, which was weird and charming and Ned still can’t quite make sense of it. “You two will do great.”
“I should move,” Pat says. “I should move, right?”
“What about the cafe?”
“I don’t know about the cafe.”
“You’re going to need money. Kids aren’t cheap. Do you want to be without work?”
“No,” Pat says. “But I should live with her, right?”
“Do you want to? Cause a pregnancy and a new roommate all at once, and if you two start arguing about stupid shit now, it’s all downhill from there.”
“Okay, so no moving in together.”
“I don’t know. Just don’t rush into it.”
“I won’t. I’m not. I did maybe ask her to get married.”
“Pat.”
“She said no.”
“Good.”
“Is it?” Pat asks. “Shouldn’t we—fucking hell, Ned! You just went and got married, so maybe I should get married too, right?”
“Are you alright?” Abbot asks, coming down the last few stairs, his hair wet.
“Claire’s pregnant,” Ned tells him because Pat is busy gaping like a fish.
“Congratulations.”
“Due in October,” Ned says.