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Nick’s girlfriend is pregnant.
Dylan reacts with the little heart emoji to the ultrasound scan in the group chat, taps out “congrats, dude!!! 🎉” then promptly throws up his granola.
It shouldn’t be a surprise, really. Dylan’s half-accepted that he’s now at the age where upon being told an acquaintance is expecting, the answer is no longer “Oh shit, what’re you gonna do?”. He’s been pretty good at saying the right things, wearing the right expressions when colleagues make their announcements, even if he learned the hard way the first few times.
It’s not like he’s against people having kids. He likes kids. He was a camp counsellor! Voluntarily! Dylan likes kids just fine, and he’s super happy for people who want them. It’s totally fine and totally cool and totally not throwing-up-your-granola-worthy at all. It’s the milk that’s the problem. Totally.
Dylan makes a face as he squirts bleach around the toilet bowl and flushes before washing his hands. He knows it’s irrational, to feel so freaked out by the news. He wants to be happy, truly. He wants his friends to be happy. But it stirs an unwelcome sense of unease in his belly, a weird feeling of being left behind in a race you don’t want to be running.
The kid thing has been the elephant in the room before. He’s gotten really good at ignoring it. But now the first of their friends is having a baby, and the elephant is trumpeting real loud.
Dylan knows Ryan likes kids. Knows he’d be a fantastic dad, though it’s from years of practice he should never have had. Ryan’s good with them, striking the perfect balance of approachable and firm. He does outreach work with black teens in the criminal justice system, advocating for them and diverting them from juvie – Dylan hates that Ryan’s experience of the court case was so different to his own for one stark reason, but it’s given Ryan a passion that he admires every day.
Ryan - his Ryan, moody and mysterious Ryan - waves to babies on the subway, pulls faces to make cheeky toddlers laugh and talks to Dylan about his kids at work with such fondness it’s painful. He’s made to be a dad.
Dylan is… not.
Dylan still struggles to remember to separate his boxers from his jeans in the laundry hamper. He still forgets to take his Adderall and Zoloft at the same time every day, even when he feels like death warmed up if he misses a dose. He spends a significant amount of his day hyperfixating on the ethics of AI and gets paid to do it, but at the cost of, you know, eating sometimes.
Dylan still wakes up in cold sweats remembering the feeling of exploding out of his skin and the terror of maybe-possibly tearing out someone’s throat.
So they don’t talk about it. Totally healthy and cool.
Except now, Nick’s gone and ruined it by moving on with his life. Selfish bastard.
The bathroom door creaks, startling him enough that he stops staring aimlessly at the faucets. Ryan rubs his eyes as he pads in to pee. “Hey,” he mumbles, and Dylan can’t help but smile a bit as Ryan yawns and pulls down his old tartan pyjama pants.
“Nick’s girlfriend’s pregnant,” he says bluntly, while Ryan is mid-stream.
Ryan pauses, finishes what he’s doing, shimmies his pyjamas back up and washes his hands. Dylan taps his feet restlessly.
“Huh. Cool.” Ryan says, finally, then dries his hands and pads out into the kitchen. “You want pancakes?”
Dylan huffs, and follows him, perching at the breakfast bar with misplaced grace. “No, I had granola - Wait, yeah, actually. I threw it up. And ‘Huh. Cool’? Is that it? I’ve just told you world-changing news and you’re sticking with ‘Huh. Cool’?”
Ryan glances over his shoulder as he puts a pan on to heat, brows furrowed in concern. “You threw up? Are you okay?”
Dylan waves his hand. “I’m fine, it’s just the terror. Can we circle back to the giant woolly mammoth in the corner you’re side-stepping?”
Ryan sighs, turns around to lean against the counter and makes a show of switching off the stovetop. No pancakes yet. “I fear you’re reading more into this than I am. What’s up?”
He drops his head back with a groan. “You don’t feel freaked out? There’s gonna be a baby . Things will change.”
“I mean, not really?” Ryan shrugs. “Nick’s in Chicago. I think his kid’s gonna struggle to impact us from over there on a regular basis.”
“No! Like, we might change!” Dylan throws his hands up, frustrated. “Now we have to… talk about it!”
Ryan cocks his head, eyes squinting like he’s trying to read teeny-tiny font. It makes Dylan squirm a bit under his gaze. “Do we?”
“Yep.” He pops the ‘p’ like he’s not choking on his own panic.
“It sounds like you want to talk about it.” Ryan’s moved now to sit on the barstool next to Dylan, one elbow resting on the counter. He looks frustratingly amused.
“I absolutely don’t,” Dylan insists. “I want to continue ignoring it like we’ve successfully done for seven years so nothing has to end.”
“What would end?” Ryan asks, in the same tone he uses with his particularly distressed charges. Dylan hates it.
“This,” he gestures around them vaguely. “Us.”
Ryan frowns now. “Wait, we’re all good, right? Why would we end?”
“Because you’re born to be dad and I can’t give you that,” Dylan says limply. He means to make a joke but the truth slips out instead. Ryan sighs softly and puts an arm around his shoulders, pulling him in close.
“Dylan…”
“Don’t. I want to be happy for him, Ryan. I do. And I want to want kids. I want to see you be a dad and for us to have a family. But I don’t know how we – how anyone who’s seen what we’ve all seen – could bring a kid into the world and not feel insanely guilty and afraid.” He keeps his gaze resolutely trained on the misted-up kitchen window. Ryan’s hands play idly with his hair - it's a display of nonchalance Ryan’s worked hard to master, even when he's far from feeling nonchalant.
“I get that,” he says softly.
“I used to want to be a dad, you know? To have a little buddy to take care of and watch grow.” Dylan winces internally at how cringe-worthy it sounds. Ryan ‘hmms’ softly to encourage him to carry on. “I kinda liked looking after the kids at camp, being someone they could look up to. But after… everything…” he shivers. “How can Nick know what’s out there, what we became and be okay about this? Happy even?” The last word comes out as a sob and he hates it. “How could I look after a kid, raise them up, then send them out into a world where they could lose their fucking hand when they should be having fun at summer camp?”
“Dylan,” Ryan murmurs, his arm solid and reassuring. “Dylan. It’s okay. It’s okay.”
He holds Dylan for a while in relative silence, stroking his hair while he sobs. This happens sometimes. They’ve both worked hard to cope with the trauma, to move forwards. Therapy is great but Dylan likes to think of it like a margarita – when things get rough, you need a top up, but he doesn't want to be reliant on it.
“Sorry,” he mumbles, after what could have been an hour but could have been ten minutes. Ryan squeezes his shoulders.
“It’s cool,” Ryan says, and Dylan believes him. “I love you.”
Dylan’s heart aches a bit at that, in the good way, not the ‘oh fuck, I’m gonna lose a limb’ kind of way.
“I don’t- Hm. I love kids. And I’m really happy for Nick,” Ryan says, slow and considered. He’s irritatingly good at regulating his emotions. “But I don’t think I could be a dad. I think I’d get too anxious, you know? Maybe it’s the trauma, or my job, or my childhood, but I’m pretty happy as we are. We can be fun uncles.” He smiles, tilting Dylan’s head up a little by his chin. “We’re still a family.”
It’s soft and cheesy and overwhelming, so Dylan chuckles wetly and says “I love you too,” like those four words can encompass every feeling he has all at once. He’s never been one for low expectations.
“But,” Ryan says, letting his thumb stroke Dylan’s cheekbone, feather-light. “I think we should look at-”
“Yeah, yeah, some sessions with Jeanette,” Dylan rolls his eyes, fond and knowing he’s already losing the battle. “I’ll email her. She’s probably just closed my file and I’m gonna pop back up again with another emotional crisis. She’s gonna blacklist me.”
“Therapists can’t blacklist you,” Ryan laughs, pushing himself up and pressing a kiss to Dylan’s forehead before moving back to the stovetop. “Well, they can. But she probably won’t. You pay her too well.”
“What can I say, I’m a complex case,” Dylan grins, crossing one long leg over the other. His phone buzzes on the counter-top – the others are waking up to the news. He considers, before pressing the ‘mute’ icon, giving him time to process properly. How very emotionally mature of him. They grow up so fast. “Have we got syrup for the pancakes?”
“When do we not?” Ryan laughs, back facing him as he starts measuring out flour. Dylan takes the opportunity to stand and slide his arms around Ryan’s waist, relishing in the soft warmth of him.
“You’re too good to me,” Dylan grins, with a soft kiss to the top of Ryan’s head. “I could never share you with a toddler.”
Ryan snorts, but he doesn’t challenge it. They’ll probably need to talk about this again, after he’s spoken to his therapist and processed some of his… stuff, but for now, they’re okay. The mammoth in the room shrinks back down to a baby elephant. Easier to ignore and a hell of a lot less scary. He reaches for his phone and opens up emails. He listens to Ryan humming some indie song out of tune as he taps out a message to his therapist. They’ll be okay.