[Log] Steph & Vax - Big News for Auntie Steph - Backdated to 7/15

[st_abby]

Vex had news for Vax. That meant Vax had to tell someone about it before he ruptured something. Feels Happen.

After Vex had given him the news and gone off to share in the blessing of the day with the father of her child, Vax had scarcely known what to do with himself. What he wanted to do was shout the tidings from the rooftops, to personally inform every last person living at the Inn (and the staff, why not) with great enthusiasm at exceptional volume. Except the parents wouldn't appreciate it, cautious and private as they were. And while he didn't mind to embarrass them publicly in great style for say a vengeful wedding reception... No, this was very different. Even he wouldn't.

So, what to do?

He had to talk to someone about it, or he was liable to rupture something. Vex had said only family would know of it right away, and Vex wanted to tell Scanlan and Pike and Kashaw and Zahra and Lillith and whoever else herself...

There was only one member of the family he was absolutely sure his sister wouldn't mind him getting to before she did.

So it was that at an awkward hour of the day between afternoon and evening, Vax burst into the spa where he wagered Steph might be, trademark stealth completely blown, expression positively brimming over with the best secret. "Stephanie! Who's here? Are you in here? Are you alone?"

Steph was pulling the sheets off the massage tables and dumping them into the laundry when she heard the racket from down the hall. The sound carried even through the closed door of the massage room, and it was possibly the loudest she'd ever heard Vax be. With her arms full of essential oil scented fabric, she pushed the door open and leaned out into the hall. "I'm here. You're here. No one else is here." The sheets went into the hamper sitting outside in the corridor with a muted thwump. "What's up?" she asked as she shoved sheets down to make room for more.

Once he spotted her, Vax beamed a smile, darting to her side. He felt a thrum of affection for her doing something so pleasantly domestic and mundane and he would hardly even have noticed this morning, but at just this moment he wanted to ink it in his memory so he could recall years later just when he'd told her the news. "Not here," Vax sort-of-not-quite explained, opening the door to the massage room she'd come out of and reaching for her wrist to tug her back in there along with him. "This is better."

Steph blinked at him, at the massage table and back at him. Then raised an eyebrow. "Is this about to turn into a porn? Because I should probably lock the door if it is."

"What? No, it's not that." He turned, hopping his own butt onto the massage table and gathering up her hand in his. "It's news."

For as eager as he'd been to find Steph and tell her - for as eager as he still was, and for all that he still smiled from inside out - his exuberance calmed as he tried to figure out how to say it. Not diminished at all, just... Trying to savor it, to appreciate how special this was.

"News?" Steph considered, then settled next to him on the table. She laced her fingers with his. "What kind of news? Another room to another world? We just had one." That was usually the biggest news they got around here. "Did someone show up?" What day was it? Who would make him look this excited? "Is it Keyleth?"

He looked down at their twined hands, not wanting her to see the twinge of discomfort that the unexpected mention of Keyleth brought with it unbidden. Thinking on her at the same time as the thought of Vox Machina having children was... But it didn't matter here and now, and it was a dull old ache, not a fresh one. "No," Vax said more softly. "Nothing like that, either."

She squeezed his hand in apology. "I was trying to think of something that would make you look so completely excited." She hadn't meant to bring him down. "Tell me already. Before I come up with another theory."

It didn't need an apology, squeezed or otherwise, but he loved that she cared. "...You remember how excited I was to be named gods-father to Kashaw and Zahra's little one? How much fun we're going to have ruining them?"

"Oh yes. Noisy toys and lockpicking tests." He looked excited. Steph's eyes widened. "OMG, is she in labor? It's so early! I mean, it's a little early."

"Zahra's not - I mean, I guess she could be in labor, but not that I know of." Vax knew he should just have out with it and tell her already, but as he reached for the words, his throat tightened, his lips curving, a sheen in his eyes as he looked back at Steph. It was another long moment before he managed: "Vex'ahlia is pregnant."

"Vex is pregnant?" Steph repeated then squealed. "Vex is pregnant! You're an uncle!" She threw her arms around Vax, hugging him fiercely. "Congratulations!"

His smile spread all the wider, and Vax slid an arm around her to gather her up with him in the still-stunned joy of it. "She's going to be such a good mother," he told her shoulder. "Hells, she's been mothering Trinket long enough. And it's... I always hoped she might, some day, but we've never... It was so dangerous in Exandria, our lives anyway."

"She's a married lady now. She can have all the babies with Percy. He's going to want a nanny or something. Rich people always want nannies." Steph settled into Vax's lap and kissed him exuberantly. "How pregnant is she? When's she due? Who else knows?"

"Those are the very good questions I ought to have asked," Vax admits, snuggling her up with him and basking in the cheer. (It could still be a porn maybe, in a bit.) "She only just found out. I dunno, when can a woman even tell?"

"Well," Steph draped her arms around his shoulders and thought back. "I remember that I missed a period, which wasn't that weird. Gymnasts do, sometimes. But I also had ralphed breakfast three days in a row. So I grabbed like, four of those home pregnancy tests from the drug store and...yeah. I think when I went to the doctor, he said I was...six or seven weeks? They count from your last period. It really just depends. I know some people who didn't know until month four because they were having the world's easiest pregnancy."

"In that case, I have no idea whatsoever," he admitted. "I'll have to ask how long it might be. But I can tell you she and Percy are being quiet about it, for now. They'll let the rest of our misfit family know soon, but I don't think they mean to tell everyone here until Vex starts looking like she's swallowed a whole melon. That's why all the secrecy, and my equally dire need to spill my guts about it to you immediately."

He looked at her thoughtfully then, quiet for a moment, as if he was working on a question but wasn't sure if it was going to happen. A pregnant pause, some might call it.

"That's smart. A lot of stuff can go wrong in the first three months. No one's fault, it's just biology." She looked at him. "What? You're thinking deep thoughts."

"I wouldn't go that far. It's..." He stopped and started again. "Is it hard for you? Watching these women having babies all of a sudden? Or is it okay?"

Stephanie grew very still, a little of the light dimming in her as she absorbed the question. Her eyes dropped from his face to somewhere on his chest or neck, not that she really saw anything. "I...," she began, then halted and fell into thought. For several long seconds, she was silent and when she finally did begin to speak again, it was soft. "I was 15. And I was scared and confused and...I think part of me always thought there'd be another chance. After I was older and my dad was gone. But then a couple years later, when I died, Doc T told me that because of the torture and the scarring from it, I had to be careful not to get pregnant. Because I probably could...but it would be dangerous. And...I haven't really thought about it since."

She laughed, nervously. "That's not really answering your question, is it? Um. No, it's not hard. Because I've accepted it. And I'm happy for Zahra and Vex. Babies are awesome, even if I can't have them myself."

Part of him immediately regretted having asked, but the other bit thought he should know for sure, one way or the other. He didn't want to go hurting her unintentionally, and once he got too far into his own head about something, it was hard to stop to think about the next person - even someone as important as his girlfriend. If he didn't ask now... He wasn't sure he would, and then what a bloody mess it might make of things later.

Where she laughed for it being uncomfortable, Vax just nodded silently, to show he'd listened, and he'd heard.

She swallowed and tipped her head up to smile at him again, almost shy in a way she never was. "You've got a broken girlfriend. I should be asking you if that's okay, since your twin is going to have babies and all." They did things together, she knew. Twins in the truest sense, where they never parted paths for long.

His heart ached to hear her say it, and it was reflected in his eyes as he reached to cradle her cheek. "I never thought of you as broken. Not for one minute. Changed, maybe, scarred even, but who isn't by the time they're grown?"

He almost left it at that. But he didn't want her thinking he was making some big sacrifice by being with her, that it was suffering a loss. "Steph, I... My sister and Percival having children makes all the sense in the world for them, and it means everything that they can have them here and now. But I don't know that children were ever going to be a part of my story." Even at his best, he could be reckless and foolish, adrift, and his had been a violent life. He should have died a hundred times over really, and it was some kind of dumb luck that he wasn't done yet. Now that his life wasn't even his own anymore...

He took one of her hands, lifted Steph's fingers to his lips for a kiss before he looked back up at her. "I'm overjoyed, that I'm going to get to be Uncle Vax - that you'll get to be Auntie Steph. Babies are awesome, even if I can't have them myself."

She rested her forehead against his. "We're going to spoil them rotten and get away with it."

"We're going to be the best of the worst, or the worst of the best," Vax promised, closing his eyes and squeezing her close.