Chapter Text
35 weeks pregnant
Daniel woke up to a weird noise followed by Armand swearing very loudly in Russian. But Armand wasn’t next to him in bed or even in the room.
“Where are you?!” Daniel yelled while he sat up and threw the covers out of the way.
“Kitchen!” Armand yelled back. There was some clanging and more swearing.
Daniel ran like he had never run before and slid into the kitchen on his socks just seconds later. “What happened?! Are you oka – what the FUCK?!”
Armand stood at the kitchen island, in his pajamas. He was completely covered in bright purple goo. So was most of the kitchen.
“Babe… What the fuck?” Daniel repeated breathlessly. “What happened?”
“I forgot to put the lid on the blender,” Armand said with the energy of a toddler coming into his parents’ room in the middle of the night to tell them he threw up.
Okay, that explained some of it.
“Wha…” Daniel shook his head in an attempt to clear his thoughts. “What were you doing? How did you even get that color?”
“It’s beetroot and cauliflower. I’m preparing baby food. To freeze. So we’re ready when the baby gets here. It’s very important that we’re ready for when the baby comes.”
“Baby’s not due for a while, babe.”
“I know, but if – oh, no. It got on my iPad!” Armand reached for the device.
“Don’t. Your hands are all… Let me do it.” Daniel walked over to the counter and picked the iPad up. “You go sit down or something.”
Armand bristled. “I’m not an invalid, Daniel.”
“No, you’re just eight months pregnant and exploding the kitchen at, ” – Daniel checked the iPad for the time – “4:13 in the morning. Wait.” He scrolled down the page the iPad was opened on. “Are you on tradwife TikTok?”
“It’s very important,” Armand repeated, emphasizing every word, “that we’re ready for when the baby comes. Babies need good food. Organic. With – with nutrients and – and no additives and…” He gestured wildly around the kitchen with a manic glint in his eyes. A blob of purple goo fell from his hair onto the counter.
Daniel grimaced. Seeing Armand like this kinda broke his heart. “Baby, no.”
“Yes!”
“No, I mean, this isn’t who you are. I mean, the blender thing is, and being anal about what the baby eats, but this 1950s housewife schtick? No. For fuck’s sake.”
“Mrs. Smith says,” Armand started, gesturing towards the iPad.
“Babe, Mrs. Smith is bullshitting you.”
Armand let out a scandalized gasp. “She’d never!”
“Yeah, she would. She’s an influencer. This,” – Daniel pointed at the iPad – “isn’t real life. These women don’t actually live like this. You realize that, right?”
Armand blinked at him but didn’t say anything, so Daniel went on. “Creating content like this is their job. It – it’s all monetized. Like those bullshit ‘My husband is mad at me, should I kill myself?’ videos Lestat used to do before the marriage counsellor told him to knock it off.”
“Oh,” Armand said. “Oh. Ew.”
“Yeah.”
Armand seemed to deflate. He let out a long sigh. “I exploded the kitchen,” he pouted.
“Only partially.”
Armand sighed again. He finally sat down on the one breakfast bar stool that hadn’t been effected by the blast. Daniel handed him a piece of paper towel to wipe his face.
“I just want to make sure the baby has everything they need,” Armand said. “I don’t want them to want for anything or wonder whether or not they’re wanted or loved.”
“And they won’t,” Daniel assured him. He got himself some paper towel as well and started wiping down Armand’s iPad. “Trust me, this kid will know they’re loved.”
Armand just pouted at him, his bottom lip sticking out so far it was almost comical. Daniel wiped some goo Armand had missed with the towel from Armand’s face with his thumb.
“You remember when I was freaking out over the crib?” Daniel asked. For some reason, he stuck the tip of his goo-covered thumb into his mouth to clean it off. He made a face – he'd forgotten how gross unseasoned baby food could be.
“Yes,” Armand replied.
“Yeah, I feel like this is sort of a similar situation.”
Armand was silent for a few seconds. Then he asked, “Am I being ‘weird’?”
Daniel shook his head. “Not noticeably weirder than usual.”
Armand scooped a piece of uncooked cauliflower from the counter and threw it at him.
Daniel held up his hands in surrender. “I think freaking out a bit at this stage is probably pretty normal, actually. But the baby will be fine. Won’t need solids for the first six months or so. And you’ve got two private chefs on your payroll who you’ve already sent to very expensive baby food classses. Much to the detriment of their professional pride, I might add.”
Their head chef, who had held no less than two Michelin stars in a previous life, had very nearly raised his voice at Armand when said baby food classes had first come up.
Daniel finished cleaning the iPad and handed it back to Armand. “Our kid will have a small army looking after them. And you’ll run that army with an iron fist and everyone will be at least a little bit afraid of you, and everything will be fine. The only thing I’m maybe worried about is making sure the kid doesn’t end up a little tyrant.”
“Do you think I’m a tyrant?” Armand asked softly. He had never looked less tyrannical in all the years Daniel had known him.
Daniel took his hand and squeezed it. “Not quite. But I think we can all agree you’ve got great tyrant potential.”
Armand snorted then let out yet another deep sigh.
“We’ll be fine,” Daniel said. “We’ll do it together.” They were still holding hands.
Armand looked around the kitchen. “Are we going to clean up this mess together?”
“Nah, this is one of those things I’m perfectly fine with you throwing money at to make it go away. I’ll give Rashid a heads-up and you can give the cleaners a nice cash bonus.”
Armand nodded.
“Come on,” Daniel said. “I’ll run you a bath.”
***
36 weeks pregnant
“Ah, good, it’s here.” Armand snatched the package that had just been delivered from Daniel’s hands.
“What is it?” Daniel asked.
“iPad.”
Daniel frowned. “You need another one?”
Armand was already ripping open the box. “Of course not. It’s for the baby.”
Daniel stopped sorting through the mail that was still in his hands. “For the baby?”
“Yes.” Armand sat down at the kitchen island and continued his unboxing.
“The baby that is currently still inside your womb? At 36 weeks gestation. That baby?”
“That’s what I said, Daniel.”
“Do we need to have a conversation about infants and screentime? Because I’m not sure the baby needs an iPad just yet.”
Armand put down the iPad and let out a deep, long-suffering sigh. “The baby isn’t going to use it to play Candy Crush, Daniel. It’s just a fancy baby monitor. We’ll put it up on the wall in the nursery and use it to keep track of the their feeding and sleep schedules. Play them calming music and white noise. Do some climate control.”
“Oh. Okay.” Now Daniel felt like a bit of an asshole for making assumptions.
Armand picked the iPad back up. “And then when they’ve had their first birthday, they can use the iPad to learn chess.”
“I don’t think babies learn chess at that age.”
“Of course they do. Lestat says Claudia knew how to play before she started crawling.”
“Yeah, I think he might have been messing with you there.”
“You do?”
“Yeah.”
Apparently Armand hadn’t considered that possibility yet. “Well,” he said after a second or so, “our baby will learn to play chess when they’re one.”
“Of course they will, babe.”
***
39 weeks pregnant
Daniel was working late in the living room, his computer in his lap. He was trying to finish a couple of research pieces early so the paper could print them while he was on paternity leave. He was taking six weeks, which was the longest he’d ever taken off since he’d gotten his shit together.
Armand shuffled into the room, barefooted. He was only wearing pajama bottoms and one of Daniel’s cardigans hanging open over his bare chest. His hair was a frizzy mess and he looked exhausted and extremely dejected.
“Hey, what’s going on?” Daniel asked. He moved around some papers to make room.
Armand lowered himself down on the sofa next to Daniel with a grunt and leaned his head against Daniel’s shoulder. “My nipples are so sore,” he said in a manic sort of way that sounded both like laughing and crying at the same time. “They’re so sore. And they chafe against my shirt, but if I take my shirt off, I’m too cold.”
Daniel put aside his laptop, reached for the box of blankets underneath the coffee table, pulled one out and draped it around Armand’s shoulders. He kept his arm around Armand, pulling him into a side hug, careful not to cause any more nipple-related discomfort.
“I hate the miracle of childbirth,” Armand pouted.
“Do you want solutions or do you just need cuddles?”
“What solutions are there? I’m at the end of my last trimester. This is my life until the baby is born. Which is, by all accounts, when the ‘fun’ really starts.” Armand buried his face in Daniel’s neck.
“I don’t know, baby. Maybe you can put some cooling lotion on your nipples or, uh, do we have cucumber?”
Armand straightened up a little. “Cucumber might not actually be a bad idea.”
“I'll go check the fridge.”
When Daniel returned a few minutes later and handed Armand two slices of chilled cucumber, Armand absentmindedly brought them to his mouth.
“Babe.”
“Oh. Right.” Armand lay down on the sofa on his back and placed the cucumber over his nipples. “This feels very silly.”
“Does it help, though?”
“A little.”
Daniel nodded. “You want me to get you some more cucumber to snack on?”
“Yes, please.”
Armand ended up also putting two cucumber slices over his eyes. He had a hot water bottle wrapped in a towel on his chest, at a safe distance from both his nipples, and a bowl with more cucumber balanced on top of that.
Daniel and his laptop had moved to one of the armchairs.
“Daniel, my love?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you still find me attractive now I’m enormous and have sore cucumber nipples?”
“You’re perfect, baby. And it turns out cucumber nipples are a fetish I never knew I had, so you’re golden.”
Armand snorted.
“I can barely contain myself,” Daniel added dryly.
“Well, you'll have to contain yourself. I am not in the mood.”
“I know, baby. That’s fine.”
Armand hummed and ate another slice of cucumber.
***
40 weeks, 5 days pregnant
Armand lay on the sofa face down. He was producing a very high-pitched, seemingly-never-ending humming sound.
“Am I allowed to ask if you’re okay?” Daniel asked.
Armand made a shorter, more pitiful sound.
Daniel sat down at his feet. “Just let me know if there’s anything I can do.”
Armand sighed deeply and turned his head to the side, so his face was no longer hidden in the sofa cushions. “I know I said babies don’t know how to read a calendar, and that a due date is just an estimate, and that I would be accepting of that.” He paused to draw in a deep, shuddering breath. “But this has been the longest week of my life.”
Daniel just sort of grimaced. It had been a very long week. His own paternity leave had started on Armand’s due date and they’d mostly been sitting around watching TV, playing games and waiting.
“And I just went to the toilet ten minutes ago,” Armand went on, “and I have to go again. And I know what you’re thinking.”
“I’m not thinking anything, baby.”
“I would probably need the toilet less often if I wasn’t lying on my stomach, but for some reason this is the only position that even remotely approaches ‘comfortable’ right now.”
Daniel didn’t know what to say. There probably wasn’t anything he could say. “You wanna watch Bladerunner again?”
“No,” Armand said on another sigh. “I’m going to go pee. And eat some more celery sticks. And then I’m going to lie back down in this exact position and rot until the baby gets here.”
“Okay,” Daniel replied stupidly, but what else was he going to say?
“At least my nipples don’t hurt today.”