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rsadellePart 1
If Brandon had entertained any hopes that Alex would let him go back to his own apartment without a fight, they're dashed in the morning when Alex says, after breakfast, "We can go get your clothes and stuff, so you can stay here."
"You can take me home," Brandon says, "and I'll stay there."
"No," Alex says. "You cannot be alone."
"I'm fine," Brandon insists, because, really, they both overreacted a little bit yesterday, but he's fine now and it wasn't, ultimately, that big a deal.
"But what if you were not fine?" Alex frowns at him. "What if you had passed out and not been okay right away? You could have been hurt. The baby could have been hurt."
A shiver goes through Brandon at the thought, but he pushes it away. "Nothing's going to happen."
"It could," Alex says. "And if you were hurt and no one was there, it would be worse. Even Doctor Leblanc said it was good you went to the hospital." The corners of his mouth turn down into a deeper frown. "If you will not live here, you should live with your parents."
It's the second time he's said that, and last night he also said he wanted to be there for the kinds of things that could happen to Brandon and the baby.
"You're really serious about this," Brandon says.
"Yes." Alex makes an emphatic gesture with both hands. "I have been saying that."
Brandon catches both of Alex's forearms. "You would really rather have me go back to London than stay in my apartment?"
"Yes," Alex says with an unhappy nod.
Brandon lets out an exhale. "Okay," he says. It's probably going to be a terrible decision in any number of ways, but he doesn't want to keep having the same argument, and if they're doing this together, he does want Alex to get to be a part of it. "I'll stay here, at least until the baby's born."
Alex's frown eases, but he still looks suspicious. "You will?"
Brandon lets go of Alex's arms and pulls him into a hug. "I will. You're the baby's dad too. I'm not going to move away and not let you be a part of it."
*
Moving in with Alex means moving in with Alex. Alex clears out space in his closet for Brandon, moves his things to only one half of the sink, and moves an empty nightstand from Anna's room to put on Brandon's side of the bed.
It's not what Brandon was expecting, and he should probably say something about it, but it's not like Alex's family doesn't know they've had sex, and Alex sleeps with Brandon when he stays over at Brandon's place, so it makes sense, sort of.
"Moving in with your baby daddy," P.K. says when Brandon meets him for lunch and tells him about it. "Big step."
Brandon makes a face at him. "It's not quite like that."
"No?" P.K. asks with raised eyebrows.
"No," Brandon says.
"Huh," P.K. says. "I thought you'd be all lovey-dovey making a family when you moved in with him."
Brandon laughs at the phrasing and then says, ruefully, "There's no loving." He means it in the sense that they're not trying to create a family and in the sense that there's no sex. He's starting to regret that second part. The pregnancy hormones are making him as horny as he's ever been, and sharing a room with Alex doesn't leave him much chance to do anything about it. He's taken to jerking off quickly in the shower or in their room when Alex is away on road trips. It's uncomfortably like being a teenager again.
"Hm," P.K. says. "You know Chucky will talk to anyone who will listen about how excited he is about you two having a baby."
Brandon didn't know that. He's not around for what Alex is doing with anyone else, although he's intimately familiar with how Alex acts about the baby in private.
"Yeah?" he asks, with an embarrassing amount of probably hormone induced hopefulness.
"He's going to be one of those guys who's always trying to show you pictures of his kid," P.K. says, like he's not forever sharing cute pictures of his nephews.
"You've got both of us on your team," Brandon says, managing to get back into a playful sort of mood. "You're going to see so many pictures of our kid."
*
Brandon's sitting up against the headboard of their bed, not really doing anything at all, not even fucking around on his phone. Usually when Alex comes home from practice he's downstairs hanging out with Inna and Alex Sr. or reading or doing something on his phone or his laptop. It's not actually unreasonable for Alex to ask, "What are you doing in here?" when he gets home.
"Nothing," Brandon says. He knows he's being grouchy and sulky. He knows there's no reason for it. And he's doing it anyway.
Alex comes toward him, worried look on his face. "Are you feeling okay?"
"Yes, I'm fine," Brandon snaps. Then he feels bad about it, bad about all the things the baby's heard him say today, and he goes as far as making an apologetic face in Alex's direction.
"No one else is here," Alex says. "I thought you would be downstairs."
And, great, another way for Brandon to feel worse.
"I yelled at your mom," Brandon admits. He rubs a hand over his face. "She's been so nice to me and I yelled at her and the baby heard me yell at its grandma and now I drove her out of her own house."
"Hmm," Alex says. Then he comes all the way over to the bed and tugs at Brandon's arm. "Come on, get up."
"What? No. Why?"
"Because we are going for a walk," Alex says, like that's a completely reasonable thing to say.
"It's the end of November," Brandon says. "In Montreal."
"And it's sunny outside so it's not so bad." Alex tugs at Brandon's arm again. "Get up. Put on some warm clothes."
"I'm six months pregnant," Brandon says. "It better not be icy out there."
"You're a hockey player," Alex says.
"With a fucked up center of balance."
Alex ignores Brandon and keeps talking. "I will be there too. I won't let you fall."
Brandon grumbles about it some more, but he puts on a few more layers, wraps up in a jacket, scarf, and toque, and lets Alex push him out the door of the house.
The cold air outside is like a slap to the face, but in a good way.
Alex slips his arm through Brandon's, and they walk slowly down the sidewalk.
It's less of a walk and more of a stroll, or an amble. They go slow, even though Brandon could probably go faster, and don't talk much.
Brandon can feel his irritation and grouchiness ebb with every block they pass.
"This was a good idea," Brandon admits when they round a block and start on their way back home.
Alex pats his arm. "You need to leave the house sometimes. You should come to skate tomorrow, to see everyone before we are gone for a week."
"Yeah," Brandon says. "I'll do that." He tugs at Alex's arm, just to get his attention. "Now teach me how to say I'm sorry in Russian."
Alex's family is back by the time they get home. Brandon finds Inna in the kitchen and carefully repeats the words Alex taught him on their walk.
Inna's stiffness eases a little, and she says, "This is a very emotional time."
The fact that she's being nice about it makes Brandon feel even worse.
"I still shouldn't have yelled," Brandon says, and he apologizes with the Russian words again.
After dinner, he gets out his laptop and starts looking up the best way to learn Russian.
*
Brandon goes with Alex to morning skate. He still feels bad about overreacting to nothing yesterday, so he doesn't argue when Alex insists on driving and only shakes his head and laughs when Alex insists he sit behind the glass to watch them skate.
The team is leaving from the rink, and it takes a couple of minutes of jostling for Brandon to get Alex's keys from him.
"You would leave me and your unborn child stranded here?"
"You wouldn't be stranded," Alex says, laughing as he gently fends Brandon off. "You could get a ride. Or take a cab. Or call my parents."
Brandon grabs at Alex's arms. "I'm not calling your parents."
Alex lets him have the keys eventually, with a grin that says he's choosing to let Brandon have them.
Alex softens after that, and talks to the baby for a minute before he hugs Brandon. "Take care of the baby. Call me if anything happens."
"Nothing's going to happen. Score some goals so I can tell the baby about them."
Alex grins at him. "I will." Then he leans in and kisses Brandon softly.
Brandon absolutely does not melt into it.
Alex seems reluctant to leave; Brandon nudges him away. "I'll see you in a week. You can call and talk to the baby."
Alex smiles at him for that. "I'm going to." He rests his hand on Brandon's stomach for a moment, over the baby, and then kisses Brandon again, shorter this time, more a brush of their lips together than anything else.
"No loving, eh?" P.K. asks on his way past Brandon.
Brandon flips him off and heads for the parking lot.
*
Being at home with Alex's family but without Alex doesn't get any less weird, but at least he has the bedroom to himself.
Brandon should be making the transition away from being horny all the time soon, but it hasn't happened yet. And at least while Alex is gone he can take his time and jerk off in bed instead of rushing through it in the shower.
He means to just focus on the way it feels, leisurely hand around his cock. But in bed, he's right in the center of Alex's space, in his room, in a bed that smells like him. He has to reach around the bulk of Alex's child growing inside him to get to his cock.
And then Brandon's thinking about Alex, about the night the baby was conceived, about the way Alex had touched him so softly, about the way it had felt to be with Alex that night, on the heels of such a devastating loss, to have Alex right there with him, the two of them working their way to feeling better together.
Brandon comes with a gasp and the image of Alex's face behind his eyelids.
Well, that's going to be a problem.
*
Brandon wakes up when Alex gets home, even though it's the middle of the night. He pushes himself up on one elbow, really only half awake. "Hi."
"I did not want to wake you up," Alex says.
Brandon half shrugs. "I have to pee anyway." He stumbles his way into the bathroom, swearing under his breath at the cold tile, and back to bed.
Alex is already out of his suit, and Brandon watches him pull on his pajamas instead, and then come to bed.
"Hi." Alex curves his hand around Brandon's stomach and leans in to talk to the baby for a minute, voice soft and affectionate. Brandon's Russian lessons are serving him well; he manages to pick out about one word in three, although he still doesn't quite get the gist of whole sentences.
Alex shifts his focus from the baby when Brandon reaches down and runs his fingers through Alex's hair. Brandon doesn't pull, exactly, but he does guide Alex up until he can find Alex's mouth in the dark and kiss him softly.
"Welcome home," Brandon says.
"I missed you," Alex confesses in the dark. His hand rubs softly over Brandon's stomach. "Both of you."
Brandon puts his hand over Alex's. "We missed you."
*
While Alex is home, he drags Brandon out of the house with him. Brandon goes to practice, they go out to dinner, they go to the movies where Brandon feels very conspicuous with his stomach and Alex hovering next to him.
When Alex isn't dragging him out of the house, he's there with him in the house, casual arm around his shoulders while they watch TV with the rest of Alex's family, hand on his thigh at dinner, curling around him in bed.
Brandon wakes up in the middle of the night one of those nights with a gasp, cock insistently hard and heart racing. It's pregnancy hormones and, he can admit, more than that. It's Alex, having him close and not having him the way he did before his body betrayed him. Brandon rubs at his stomach for that thought, a silent apology to the baby.
"What is it?" Alex asks sleepily. "Everything okay?"
Brandon considers for a moment, but he already knows what he's going to do, and he puts his hand over Alex's where it rests on his stomach and moves it down, so it's resting over his cock instead.
Alex sucks in a breath. "Prusty."
"I want it," Brandon says. "I want you." He rolls his hips, ass back against Alex, cock forward into Alex's hand.
Alex breathes Brandon's name against the back of his neck, and then he curves his hand around the hard line of Brandon's cock. "What do you want me to do?"
His hand feels amazing, even over Brandon's pajama pants and boxer briefs, but Brandon wants more than that, has been thinking about the last time. "Fuck me." He shifts away from Alex, doesn't want to, but has to so he can get to the lube and condoms he knows are in the nightstand.
"Are you sure?" Alex asks, voice careful in the dark. "Is it okay?"
"Yes." Brandon doesn't turn on the light, fumbles to push lube and a condom into Alex's hand. "I asked Doctor Leblanc. It won't hurt the baby."
"You asked?" This time Alex sounds like he's laughing at Brandon.
"Yes, I asked." Brandon loses some of his cool and has to gasp when Alex's fingers rub against him. "The fucking hormones making me horny all the time." He gasps again, sparks lighting up his spine. "I've been wanting." He stops talking because it feels too good, Alex's fingers teasing at him, pushing gently into him, just what he's been wanting.
Alex is careful, fingers insistent and gentle, just like the last time.
Brandon rests a hand over his stomach for a moment, blinking back sudden tears. He's such an emotional mess right now.
Alex pauses, his fingers stilling inside Brandon. "Is that- Are you okay?"
Brandon pushes back onto Alex's fingers. "Yeah, keep going."
Alex does, and it's so good that Brandon forgets about that moment of overwhelming emotion.
The sparks keep running up and down Brandon's spine, and then Alex twists his fingers just right and it's like a jolt of lightning.
Brandon swears and reaches back to grab at Alex's arm. "Alex, come on," he says. "Just get your dick in me already."
He can feel Alex's chuckle against the back of his neck, but then Alex takes his fingers out and there's a breathless moment where Brandon waits for him to get a condom on, and then Alex is getting his dick into him.
Brandon sighs out an exhale as Alex pushes in, and it's good, even better than Alex's fingers were, sends a continuous shiver of sparks up and down his spine, all through his body.
There's a pause when Alex is all the way inside him, the two of them breathing together, and then Alex starts to move, and Brandon has to close his eyes against how good it feels.
Brandon grabs Alex's wrist when he starts to move his hand toward Brandon's cock.
"Don't you want?" Alex asks.
"I'm going to come if you touch me." Brandon gentles his hold on Alex's wrist. "Not yet."
"Okay." Alex kisses the back of Brandon's neck and he moves his hand up, so his arm is wrapped around Brandon and the baby.
Then there's just the pleasure of Alex rocking into him, Alex's arm around him, Alex's breath on his neck. Brandon stays there, feeling it and enjoying it, gasping every once in a while, tangling his fingers with Alex's over his stomach, for as long as he can stand it. Then he uses their tangled together fingers to push Alex's hand down.
Alex murmurs something unintelligible, but he also wraps his hand around Brandon's cock and jerks him off, evenly at first, and then in a jerky, uneven rhythm that matches the way he's thrusting into Brandon.
Brandon comes first. It feels amazing, like something he's been waiting and waiting for. He hears Alex say his name, very clearly, and then Alex comes too, shuddering against him and mouthing wetly at Brandon's neck.
Brandon drifts a little, content and sleepy in the best way. He wakes up a little more when Alex pulls out of him, but slides back into contentment when Alex leans over him and kisses him softly for a long minute. He can hear Alex grabbing tissues out of the box on the nightstand, but he's asleep before Alex finishes cleaning them up.
*
Brandon sleeps late these days, so while he's a little disappointed, he's not surprised when he wakes up alone.
After he takes a shower and gets dressed, he goes downstairs in search of breakfast and Alex. He finds Inna in the kitchen making breakfast, but no Alex. When Brandon asks, in stumbling Russian, she tells him, in slow, careful Russian, that Alex was already gone when she got up earlier. Brandon repeats it back to her in Russian and English to make sure he understood it correctly.
Brandon manages to behave politely over breakfast, but his anger at Alex not being there the morning after - again - simmers enough that he stays out of the rest of the family's way after breakfast.
Alex doesn't come home until late enough that Brandon's taking an afternoon nap. The sound of Alex opening the bedroom door wakes him up.
Brandon pushes himself up so he's sitting against the headboard. "You left," he says. And then, because he's not a good enough person not to and because he's still stung by it, he adds, "Again."
"I went to the rink," Alex says, like that's a reasonable explanation. "I needed to think."
Maybe in a better mood Brandon would accept that explanation, but not now. "You needed to think? And what, you couldn't do that here?" He keeps his voice down only because he doesn't want Alex's whole family to hear him yelling.
"No." Alex says it very calmly for someone being nearly yelled at. He comes further into the room, but stays back from the bed when Brandon glares at him. "I want you all the time."
Brandon blinks. That was not what he was expecting Alex to say next.
"And now," Alex continues, "you are sleeping in my bed and carrying my baby, and then last night. I want you all the time. I needed to be able to think."
"So you went to the rink," Brandon says, at least able to follow that train of thought. For guys like them, a hockey rink is a familiar space where they can go to focus.
"Yes," Alex says.
"And what," Brandon asks, with as much control as he can manage, "did you need to think about?"
"About this," Alex says. This time he ignores Brandon's glare and comes over to sit on the edge of the bed, facing Brandon. "I want you all the time. I want us to be a family with the baby. I want us to be together."
It's not at all the rejection or friends with benefits offer Brandon was bracing himself for, and he needs a minute to take it in. And to figure out how he feels about it.
It's probably time, he thinks after looking at Alex and accepting that he's telling him the truth, to admit that most of what he's been feeling hasn't had anything to do with the pregnancy hormones. Some of it is, he's sure, but most of it is just what he feels about Alex. What he felt about Alex even before all of this. They'd been casually hooking up, but they'd also been friends, and he genuinely likes Alex.
Brandon takes a deep breath and says, "You can't leave. Not, like, you're stuck with me forever, but no more of this ducking out after we fuck. It wasn't fun the first time and it really wasn't fun this time."
Alex grimaces. "Yeah, okay."
"And we're moving out of here," Brandon says. "There's no space for us and a baby and your family. And I don't want to have to sneak around your parents to have sex."
Alex dissolves into laughter, the kind of giggles that make his shoulders shake. "Okay," he says.
Brandon smiles at him, unable to stay mad or unhappy in the face of Alex laughing. "Come here." He holds out an arm. "I want you too," he says once Alex is pressed up against his side. "Even more now. These second trimester hormones are something else."
Alex's laughter shakes both of them this time, and then he turns in to kiss Brandon.
Brandon kisses back, letting himself feel all of the things he's been pushing away. It gets heavy fast, and then they're sliding down to lie down together.
"I can't, on my back," Brandon says. "Bad for circulation." He can't really lie on top of Alex either, stomach too much in the way. They figure it out, on their sides, pressed together as much as they can be, Alex rubbing against Brandon and getting his hand around Brandon's cock.
It's not the same electric feeling as last night, more of a settled pleasure that leaves Brandon drowsy when it's over.
"Are you going to sleep?" Alex asks. "You just woke up."
"You interrupted my nap," Brandon says. "And this kid is sapping all my energy." He grabs at Alex's shirt when Alex starts to sit up. "Stay. Take a nap with me."
Alex kisses him. "I need to clean up." He doesn't go any farther than sitting up to grab a tissue to wipe them both clean, though, and then he curls around Brandon.
*
They spend a lot of the week Alex is home in bed. They have sex a few more times, Alex stays curled around him while Brandon naps, they make out like teenagers a couple of times. They're almost always touching. Alex's family has to notice that they're acting like newlyweds, but none of them say anything about it, at least not where Brandon can hear.
Brandon goes with Alex to the rink before he leaves. There's no practice, just everyone gathering to get on the bus to the airport. Brandon hangs around catching up with everyone and going through a million rounds of, "Holy shit, man, you're really huge," like they didn't see him just a few days ago.
Alex wanders back to him when the guys are actually leaving, and he pulls Brandon into a hug, and then kisses him soft and slow. His eyes are sparkling when he pulls away, and he says, "I'll miss you." He kisses Brandon again, and then murmurs something to the baby before he follows the rest of the guys onto the bus.
"No loving?" P.K. asks.
Brandon laughs, too happy to be bothered by the chirping. "Maybe a little loving," he says.
P.K. laughs as he gets onto the bus.
*
Brandon wakes up when Alex gets back from his road trip. He groans and heaves himself out of bed. "I think this kid is playing two-touch with my bladder."
Alex laughs, and he's still smiling when Brandon comes out of the bathroom.
Brandon yawns and stumbles over to where Alex is getting undressed in front of the closet. "Hi." He puts his arms around Alex and leans into him. "Kiss me."
Alex laughs. "Okay." He kisses Brandon softly.
"Don't laugh," Brandon says, still leaning heavily on Alex. It's the middle of the night; he's supposed to be asleep. "It's almost Christmas and I'm carrying your child. You should kiss me whenever I want."
Alex chuckles a little more and kisses Brandon a few more times. "Okay," he says.
Brandon starts to smile at him and yawns widely instead, so he pushes himself off of Alex and gets back into bed. He watches Alex finish changing into pajamas between increasingly long blinks.
"Your parents here?" Alex asks when he slides into bed next to Brandon.
"Mmhmm. They're at my place. We watched your game."
"Yeah?"
"Mmhmm. You were good."
"I know," Alex says, startling a laugh out of Brandon. "I like hearing it anyway. Everything okay with the baby?"
"The baby's fine," Brandon says. He's completely unsurprised by the hand Alex puts over his stomach and the soft-voiced Russian Brandon's too tired to try to understand.
"I missed you," Alex says, and that one Brandon does understand.
"You were only gone for a day," Brandon mumbles.
"I still missed you." Alex kisses him softly, and that's the last thing Brandon remembers before he falls asleep again.
*
Brandon's quiet when he wakes up in the morning, careful not to wake Alex up. His parents arrive while Brandon is sitting around the breakfast table with Anna, Inna, and Alex Sr., and Alex comes downstairs while they're all still hanging out and finishing breakfast.
Alex comes to Brandon first and rests his hands on Brandon's shoulders while he leans down to kiss him. "Merry almost wrong Christmas."
Brandon chuckles and reaches up to cup Alex's cheek without restarting the argument about which Christmas they should celebrate; for now they're doing both and arguing about which one is the real one. "Merry almost Christmas." Then he says, "You remember my parents."
"Hi," Alex says. He goes to shake Brandon's dad's hand and makes a surprised noise when Dad pulls him into a hug instead.
"Good to see you, Alex."
Mom hugs Alex too; Alex seems less surprised about that one.
"That was a good game you played last night," Dad says when they're done with the hellos and Alex is sitting down next to Brandon.
Hockey is a conversation they can all join in on, and it eases them through any awkwardness there might be about having all of them together for the first time. That easily slides into stories about Brandon and Alex playing hockey when they were growing up, which leads them into all kinds of stories from both sets of parents about raising kids.
"It's a curse, you know," Brandon's mom says after one of the stories about Brandon playing hockey in the house. "May you have children." She grins at Brandon when she says it, and it sets everyone off laughing.
They spend a lazy day not doing much other than getting to know each other and figuring out how they fit together as a family.
When Brandon can't stop yawning after lunch, he finally says, "The baby and I need a nap."
Alex says, "Me too," and comes upstairs with Brandon.
"You know we just left both sets of our parents and Anna alone together," Brandon says while he changes into pajama pants and crawls into bed.
"They get along," Alex says. He climbs into bed with Brandon and presses himself all along Brandon's back.
"I'm not worried about them," Brandon says. "But who knows what kind of plans they're making for us and the baby."
Alex chuckles, then rubs his hand over Brandon's stomach and presses a kiss to the back of his neck. Brandon leans into it, and tips his head back a little; Alex takes the hint and leans over to kiss him.
*
Christmas, for all that there are stockings on the fireplace, presents around the tree, and a giant meal, is also a pretty low-key day. Brandon asked his parents not to buy things for the baby in deference to the Russian superstition the Galchenyuks observe, so there isn't the mountain of tiny gifts he expects to be showered on the baby next Christmas. The two Christmas agreement Alex and Brandon worked out means there's only half a pile of gifts anyway; they'll do the rest of them on Orthodox Christmas.
Brandon drives his parents to the airport on Sunday, and comes home to fall into bed with Alex for a nap.
"We didn't even do anything this weekend," he says to Alex, "and I'm exhausted."
Alex leans over him and kisses him slowly and softly. "You're taking care of the baby." He rubs Brandon's stomach. "That's doing a lot."
Brandon groans. "This baby is taking all of my energy. I was never this tired when I was playing hockey."
Alex laughs. "Yes you were." He scoots down to kiss the curve of Brandon's stomach. When he speaks, it's in Russian slow enough that Brandon can follow it. "Don't listen to him. He is happy about you."
"I am," Brandon says. He rests one hand on his stomach and the other on the back of Alex's head. "We both are. You can count on that, kid."
Alex smiles up at him, sweet and soft. He turns contemplative after a moment. "Do you think we'll be good parents?"
"Well, I'm going to be great," Brandon says, and it has the desired effect of making Alex laugh. Brandon runs his hand over Alex's hair. "I think you'll be good too."
"You think so?" There's something very young in the way Alex asks the question.
"Yeah," Brandon says. "You're pretty grown-up, and you'll have me as a role model."
Alex laughs again and he moves up the bed so their faces are level. "I want to be a good dad." Then he smirks. "A better one than you."
Brandon laughs, and he pulls Alex close to kiss him.
*
When Brandon first found out he was pregnant, the seven and a half months until the baby was going to be born felt like forever, but now that it's getting closer, the time seems to speed by.
Brandon takes charge of finding somewhere for them to live, which involves a lot of arguing, some of it long-distance, with Alex over how many bedrooms they want and how big a backyard their house should have and how close they should be to Alex's family. Brandon doesn't mind the arguing part - chirping Alex and getting chirped back is an important part of their relationship, after all - but by the time they're arguing about it when Alex is in Boston at the beginning of February, Brandon is finding that the house hunting part is tiring him out.
"Can we please not argue about carpeting today?" he asks when Alex Skypes him.
"Are you okay?" Alex asks
"Exhausted," Brandon admits. He's lying in bed and he doesn't feel like he's done enough so far today to warrant how tired he is.
Alex frowns at him. "Maybe you should call Doctor Leblanc."
"I have an appointment on Wednesday," Brandon says. He drapes one arm over his forehead. "He's just going to tell me it's normal and that men get more tired in the third trimester than women do."
Alex's frown deepens. Then he says to the baby, in Russian slow enough that Brandon can follow it, "When I am not there, you have to take care of your dad for me."
Brandon chuckles. "I don't think the baby can do that yet."
Alex smiles at him. "The baby can be nice to you," he says in slow Russian. Then, to the baby again, "Stop kicking your dad. He needs to rest to keep you healthy."
Brandon blinks back sudden tears. "I don't think the baby can do that either."
Alex makes a worried noise. "Prusty."
Brandon waves off his worry. "It's just a few more weeks." He dredges up a smile. "Go kick some ass so I can tell the baby how good you are."
Alex smiles at him and briefly accepts the subject change. "Of course I'm going to kick some ass. You take it easy. I will be home late."
"I'm not waking up for that," Brandon warns, even though there's a good chance he will.
Alex smiles at him softly. "That is okay. You need to rest to take care of the baby."
Brandon goes to bed as soon as the game is over but does, indeed, wake up when Alex gets home.
"I thought you were going to rest," Alex says when Brandon mumbles a hello.
"I did." Brandon tips his head up for the kiss Alex comes over to give him. "Your mom tried to make me go to bed after the second period."
Alex chuckles softly and rubs a hand over Brandon's stomach before he walks away to finish getting ready for bed.
Brandon stays awake, sort of, until Alex gets into bed. "I missed you," he tells Alex.
"I was only gone for one day," Alex says.
"You're supposed to say you missed me too."
Alex kisses him, soft and slow. "I missed you too. And you," he adds to the baby in Russian.
*
Alex has a game on Valentine's Day, and they're set to leave on a road trip the next morning, which doesn't leave much time for a lot of celebrating. Not that Brandon feels up to much celebrating. He feels huge and tired, and while he likes it that Alex cuddles up to him and kisses him, sex is the last thing he wants.
He should do something though, so when Alex wakes up, Brandon kisses him and says, "I think I found us a house."
"Uh," Alex says, still blinking at him sleepily.
Brandon smiles and kisses him again. "Get up," he says. "I'll go to skate with you and we can go see it afterwards."
Going to the rink means listening to a lot of comments about how he's "huge, no, really, Prusty, are you carrying a beach ball in there?"
Brandon laughs at most of the comments, even though he kind of feels the same way, and sits behind the glass to chirp the guys during skate.
He hangs out chatting with the guys after skate, and he and Alex have lunch at the rink before they head out to look at the house. Brandon has given up on arguing with Alex's insistence about not letting Brandon drive, so he sits in the passenger seat and gives Alex directions.
"If you don't like it," Brandon says, "we can look for something else. But it's the best one I've seen."
They meet the realtor at the house, and she takes them through the tour Brandon's already been on, then says, "I'll let you two look around a little more."
They wander around the upstairs a little more, and pause in one of the bedrooms.
"This would be the baby's room," Brandon says, and he takes Alex over to the window that looks out over the backyard. "There's enough room out there for a rink in the winter."
Alex puts his arm around Brandon's waist. "I like this house."
Brandon leans against Alex. "The bedrooms need to be repainted. If we put in an offer now, by the time it's done and we have the painting done, it'll be close to the end of the season. We can move in before training camp next year."
Alex turns toward him. "Then this will be our house." He rubs Brandon's stomach. "You will grow up in this house," he tells the baby in Russian.
Brandon leans in and rests his forehead against Alex's. "I'm really glad we're going to do this together."
Alex kisses him softly.
Brandon takes a deep breath to steady himself against the way his emotions are going wild. "Let's go tell her we want to make an offer on the house and get out of here. My back is killing me."
Alex frowns, and Brandon kisses him to take the look off his face. "It's normal. Just get me home to bed."
*
Brandon is fine all the way through being admitted to the hospital and the surgery prep. Then they let Alex into the room with him and he looks at Alex gowned up like one of the doctors and has a little bit of a freakout.
"Oh, shit," Brandon says, the weight of it hitting him all at once. "We're going to have a baby."
Alex takes his hand. "Yes." He leans in close. "You have known this for months."
"I know," Brandon says, "but what if we're bad at this? What if we fuck it up?"
Alex squeezes his hand. "We won't. You're going to be a great dad. Not as good as me."
The chirping cuts through Brandon's sudden terror, and he manages to chuckle lightly. "I'm going to be so much better than you."
Alex's grip on his hand eases. "No you won't."
"Yes I will." Brandon takes a breath, and then another one. "I love you. Did I say that?"
"No," Alex says, and he leans in close and says, "I love you," in both English and Russian.
The distraction of talking to Alex makes it easier for Brandon to breathe through how weird it is when Doctor Leblanc starts cutting into him. He's numbed up enough that he can't feel the full force of it, but he can feel the tug on his skin, and that's weird enough.
Alex keeps distracting him, all the way until they hear the baby cry for the first time. Then they both stop talking, and Alex squeezes Brandon's hand just as tightly as Brandon's squeezing his.
Doctor Leblanc's head pops over the top of the drape hiding what he's doing, and he says, "It's a boy. We're going to get him cleaned up and checked out, and then Alex can hold him." He still has a mask on, but the corners of his eyes are crinkled up into a smile, so everything must be okay.
Alex bends over and rests his forehead against Brandon's. "We have a son."
Brandon has to blink back tears. "I want to hold him."
Alex brushes his hand over Brandon's hair. "Soon."
They can hear the baby crying, but it takes a little bit before a nurse brings him over and sets him in Alex's arms.
Alex looks nervous at first, cradling the baby carefully, but the nurse adjusts his arms and makes sure he's supporting the baby's head, and then he looks comfortable. He looks right, holding their son. He looks perfect, when he looks up at Brandon with the softest look of joy Brandon's ever seen on his face.
Brandon reaches out, for him and for the baby, and Alex comes in closer to Brandon can see their son. He's beautiful, and tiny. The skin of his cheek when Brandon touches him is impossibly soft.
"Holy shit," Brandon whispers. "Look what we did."
"Yeah," Alex whispers back.
"I want to hold him," Brandon says, looking past Alex at the nurse.
"You'll have to wait until you're in recovery," the nurse says, but she helps Alex get closer, so the baby is right up against Brandon's shoulder, where he can reach out and feel how tiny his son is. He's absolutely perfect, and Brandon can see how people want to just stare at their children.
"He's going to need a name," Brandon says. "Are you going to want to name him Alex?"
Alex laughs. "I think our family has enough Alexes."
Brandon's heart contracts, and he twists to kiss the top of their son's head. They are a family now.
"He could be Maksim," Alex says.
"Max Prust," Brandon tries out.
"Max Galchenyuk," Alex suggests.
Maybe they should have talked about this sooner.
Brandon looks at the baby, at his tiny face, at the soft dusting of hair on his head. He wants his son to have his name, but he's Alex's son too. "Max Galchenyuk-Prust," he suggests. "It's long, but he'll be able to handle it."
"Maksim Galchenyuk-Prust," Alex says. "Okay." He lifts Max up to hold him against his chest. "Our Maksimka."
*
Alex misses a home game against the Leafs, but travels with the team for their west coast road trip. He kisses Brandon lingeringly before he has to leave, and holds Max for a few long minutes, murmuring softly to him in Russian.
Brandon and Max are allowed to go home from the hospital the day after Alex leaves. Brandon has to depend on Anna, Inna, and Alex Sr. to do all the heavy lifting - "heavy" meaning anything heavier than Max - but he still gets to hold Max, and he tries to do as much of what Max needs as he can.
He's tired, despite spending most of the last few days in bed in the hospital, but he's awake when Max is awake, and that means he watches Alex's game with the rest of the family.
"That's your papa," Brandon tells Max when they first see Alex on the screen. Max probably doesn't understand what they say to him now, but everything Brandon read says it's important to talk to kids when they're babies.
They keep the volume down to a level where it won't be too loud for Max, and Brandon keeps up an Alex-centered play-by-play for Max. Alex makes it easy for him by scoring a goal and getting an assist on Patch's.
"Your papa's good at this," Brandon tells Max. "Of course, I am too. You're getting a lot of good genes."
Alex ends up with the first star of the game, and one of the reporters stops him for a short interview.
"Now you have a new baby at home," the reporter says.
Alex was smiling before, but he just lights up at that. "Yeah," he says. "Max. He's home with Prusty.
"What's that like?"
"Great," Alex says, smiling so hard the corners of his eyes crinkle up. "I've only been a dad for a few days, but it feels good."
"You had an assist tonight on your teammate Max Pacioretty's goal. Did you name your son after him?"
Alex laughs. "No," he says, "but he's already trying to tell the guys we did."
"He's a good goal scorer to be named after," the reporter says.
"Yeah, he's a good goal scorer," Alex says with a smirk, "but I got the first star."
"Alex," the reporter says, "thank you, and congratulations on both the first star and the baby."
Alex waves at the camera before he skates off.
"That was your papa talking about you on national TV," Brandon tells Max. He hands his phone to Anna and gets her to take a picture of him and Max, and then he texts it to Alex. He feels so full of love for his son and Alex that he can't even find it in himself to chirp Alex about anything and sends it with a heartfelt, We miss you, as a caption.
Max is asleep in the crib in the corner of Brandon and Alex's bedroom and Brandon is almost asleep when Alex sends back a smiling, off-center selfie with, Miss you too.
*
In the middle of summer, Brandon finds out that traveling halfway around the world with an infant is not an adventure to be envied.
"It's easier right now," Inna tells Brandon. "When they start walking, it becomes much harder."
Those are not vacations Brandon is particularly looking forward to.
They spend the night in a hotel in Minsk before they drive out to the Alex's family's dacha to spend two weeks with the part of the family Brandon hasn't met yet. They get a late start, so everyone is as well-rested as it's possible to be with a three-month-old in tow.
Brandon's Russian is good enough now that he can keep up with most of the greetings and exclamations of Alex's grandparents and uncle. They help by speaking slowly when they talk to him, and only speeding up when Brandon hands Max off to be passed around.
"Come on," Alex says. "I'll show you around."
"Max," Brandon says.
"He'll be fine. They're all excited to see him, and Mom or Anna can take care of him. We won't be gone long."
Brandon shoots a last look at Max, and at Anna and Inna to make sure someone notices that they're leaving, and then follows Alex outside. It is quieter once they're out of the house.
Alex shows him around the dacha - the garden plots, the net stored away ready to be pulled out for shooting practice, the neighbors - and then takes him down a path into the forest.
"This is a good path for running," Alex says. "Have to keep up our conditioning."
"Yeah," Brandon says. There isn't anyone else around, just the two of them on a path through the trees. "Have to do that if I don't want to end up on waivers."
Alex stops walking and stares at him. "What?" Somewhere along the way he stopped looking young to Brandon, but now he can see just how young Alex is.
"I don't know if I'm going to be a hundred percent," Brandon says. "I'm feeling better now, but I couldn't go play a game today. I don't even know if I'll be able to hack it by September. And that's what I have to do, especially if this is my last season." He starts them walking again.
"This doesn't have to be your last season," Alex protests. "Even if you are not at a hundred percent, you will be next year."
"My contract's up at the end of the season," Brandon says. "If they renew it, I'll play, but if they don't, I'll retire."
"But you can still play."
Brandon is the one to stop them this time, turning so he can meet Alex's eyes. "But not in Montreal. I'm not moving away from Max, or taking him away from you."
"Oh," Alex says. "Oh."
"Yeah." There's no one around, so Brandon feels safe putting his arms around Alex and kissing his cheek.
"I'm sorry," Alex says.
Brandon kisses the apology off of his lips. "Don't be sorry." It might be the first time he's said anything to Alex about it, but he's been thinking about it for a while, and he's made his peace with it. "I've gotten to play some great hockey, and I got to play with you, and now we have a son. Plans change."
Alex holds on to him for a few minutes longer, and takes Brandon's hand when they start walking again.
"It's nice out here," Brandon says. "Peaceful."
"Yes," Alex says. "There will be more people on the weekends, but it is quiet out here during the week."
"Hmm," Brandon says. "Quiet and away from your parents. You ever bring someone out here to hook up?"
"No," Alex says.
"Oh?" Brandon tugs Alex toward the edge of the path and pushes him up against a tree. "I think you missed out."
Alex laughs until Brandon kisses him. Then he puts his arms around Brandon and pulls him in close. They make out for a few long minutes, the kind of slow, lazy kisses that are hard to fit in when you have an infant.
"Do we need to get back to Max?" Brandon asks.
"Not yet. We need to take advantage of everyone still wanting to hold him."
Brandon laughs and lets Alex pull him in. Their son is safe, and it really has been too long since he last got to make out with Alex without interruption. He's going to enjoy this chance while he has it.
If Brandon had entertained any hopes that Alex would let him go back to his own apartment without a fight, they're dashed in the morning when Alex says, after breakfast, "We can go get your clothes and stuff, so you can stay here."
"You can take me home," Brandon says, "and I'll stay there."
"No," Alex says. "You cannot be alone."
"I'm fine," Brandon insists, because, really, they both overreacted a little bit yesterday, but he's fine now and it wasn't, ultimately, that big a deal.
"But what if you were not fine?" Alex frowns at him. "What if you had passed out and not been okay right away? You could have been hurt. The baby could have been hurt."
A shiver goes through Brandon at the thought, but he pushes it away. "Nothing's going to happen."
"It could," Alex says. "And if you were hurt and no one was there, it would be worse. Even Doctor Leblanc said it was good you went to the hospital." The corners of his mouth turn down into a deeper frown. "If you will not live here, you should live with your parents."
It's the second time he's said that, and last night he also said he wanted to be there for the kinds of things that could happen to Brandon and the baby.
"You're really serious about this," Brandon says.
"Yes." Alex makes an emphatic gesture with both hands. "I have been saying that."
Brandon catches both of Alex's forearms. "You would really rather have me go back to London than stay in my apartment?"
"Yes," Alex says with an unhappy nod.
Brandon lets out an exhale. "Okay," he says. It's probably going to be a terrible decision in any number of ways, but he doesn't want to keep having the same argument, and if they're doing this together, he does want Alex to get to be a part of it. "I'll stay here, at least until the baby's born."
Alex's frown eases, but he still looks suspicious. "You will?"
Brandon lets go of Alex's arms and pulls him into a hug. "I will. You're the baby's dad too. I'm not going to move away and not let you be a part of it."
*
Moving in with Alex means moving in with Alex. Alex clears out space in his closet for Brandon, moves his things to only one half of the sink, and moves an empty nightstand from Anna's room to put on Brandon's side of the bed.
It's not what Brandon was expecting, and he should probably say something about it, but it's not like Alex's family doesn't know they've had sex, and Alex sleeps with Brandon when he stays over at Brandon's place, so it makes sense, sort of.
"Moving in with your baby daddy," P.K. says when Brandon meets him for lunch and tells him about it. "Big step."
Brandon makes a face at him. "It's not quite like that."
"No?" P.K. asks with raised eyebrows.
"No," Brandon says.
"Huh," P.K. says. "I thought you'd be all lovey-dovey making a family when you moved in with him."
Brandon laughs at the phrasing and then says, ruefully, "There's no loving." He means it in the sense that they're not trying to create a family and in the sense that there's no sex. He's starting to regret that second part. The pregnancy hormones are making him as horny as he's ever been, and sharing a room with Alex doesn't leave him much chance to do anything about it. He's taken to jerking off quickly in the shower or in their room when Alex is away on road trips. It's uncomfortably like being a teenager again.
"Hm," P.K. says. "You know Chucky will talk to anyone who will listen about how excited he is about you two having a baby."
Brandon didn't know that. He's not around for what Alex is doing with anyone else, although he's intimately familiar with how Alex acts about the baby in private.
"Yeah?" he asks, with an embarrassing amount of probably hormone induced hopefulness.
"He's going to be one of those guys who's always trying to show you pictures of his kid," P.K. says, like he's not forever sharing cute pictures of his nephews.
"You've got both of us on your team," Brandon says, managing to get back into a playful sort of mood. "You're going to see so many pictures of our kid."
*
Brandon's sitting up against the headboard of their bed, not really doing anything at all, not even fucking around on his phone. Usually when Alex comes home from practice he's downstairs hanging out with Inna and Alex Sr. or reading or doing something on his phone or his laptop. It's not actually unreasonable for Alex to ask, "What are you doing in here?" when he gets home.
"Nothing," Brandon says. He knows he's being grouchy and sulky. He knows there's no reason for it. And he's doing it anyway.
Alex comes toward him, worried look on his face. "Are you feeling okay?"
"Yes, I'm fine," Brandon snaps. Then he feels bad about it, bad about all the things the baby's heard him say today, and he goes as far as making an apologetic face in Alex's direction.
"No one else is here," Alex says. "I thought you would be downstairs."
And, great, another way for Brandon to feel worse.
"I yelled at your mom," Brandon admits. He rubs a hand over his face. "She's been so nice to me and I yelled at her and the baby heard me yell at its grandma and now I drove her out of her own house."
"Hmm," Alex says. Then he comes all the way over to the bed and tugs at Brandon's arm. "Come on, get up."
"What? No. Why?"
"Because we are going for a walk," Alex says, like that's a completely reasonable thing to say.
"It's the end of November," Brandon says. "In Montreal."
"And it's sunny outside so it's not so bad." Alex tugs at Brandon's arm again. "Get up. Put on some warm clothes."
"I'm six months pregnant," Brandon says. "It better not be icy out there."
"You're a hockey player," Alex says.
"With a fucked up center of balance."
Alex ignores Brandon and keeps talking. "I will be there too. I won't let you fall."
Brandon grumbles about it some more, but he puts on a few more layers, wraps up in a jacket, scarf, and toque, and lets Alex push him out the door of the house.
The cold air outside is like a slap to the face, but in a good way.
Alex slips his arm through Brandon's, and they walk slowly down the sidewalk.
It's less of a walk and more of a stroll, or an amble. They go slow, even though Brandon could probably go faster, and don't talk much.
Brandon can feel his irritation and grouchiness ebb with every block they pass.
"This was a good idea," Brandon admits when they round a block and start on their way back home.
Alex pats his arm. "You need to leave the house sometimes. You should come to skate tomorrow, to see everyone before we are gone for a week."
"Yeah," Brandon says. "I'll do that." He tugs at Alex's arm, just to get his attention. "Now teach me how to say I'm sorry in Russian."
Alex's family is back by the time they get home. Brandon finds Inna in the kitchen and carefully repeats the words Alex taught him on their walk.
Inna's stiffness eases a little, and she says, "This is a very emotional time."
The fact that she's being nice about it makes Brandon feel even worse.
"I still shouldn't have yelled," Brandon says, and he apologizes with the Russian words again.
After dinner, he gets out his laptop and starts looking up the best way to learn Russian.
*
Brandon goes with Alex to morning skate. He still feels bad about overreacting to nothing yesterday, so he doesn't argue when Alex insists on driving and only shakes his head and laughs when Alex insists he sit behind the glass to watch them skate.
The team is leaving from the rink, and it takes a couple of minutes of jostling for Brandon to get Alex's keys from him.
"You would leave me and your unborn child stranded here?"
"You wouldn't be stranded," Alex says, laughing as he gently fends Brandon off. "You could get a ride. Or take a cab. Or call my parents."
Brandon grabs at Alex's arms. "I'm not calling your parents."
Alex lets him have the keys eventually, with a grin that says he's choosing to let Brandon have them.
Alex softens after that, and talks to the baby for a minute before he hugs Brandon. "Take care of the baby. Call me if anything happens."
"Nothing's going to happen. Score some goals so I can tell the baby about them."
Alex grins at him. "I will." Then he leans in and kisses Brandon softly.
Brandon absolutely does not melt into it.
Alex seems reluctant to leave; Brandon nudges him away. "I'll see you in a week. You can call and talk to the baby."
Alex smiles at him for that. "I'm going to." He rests his hand on Brandon's stomach for a moment, over the baby, and then kisses Brandon again, shorter this time, more a brush of their lips together than anything else.
"No loving, eh?" P.K. asks on his way past Brandon.
Brandon flips him off and heads for the parking lot.
*
Being at home with Alex's family but without Alex doesn't get any less weird, but at least he has the bedroom to himself.
Brandon should be making the transition away from being horny all the time soon, but it hasn't happened yet. And at least while Alex is gone he can take his time and jerk off in bed instead of rushing through it in the shower.
He means to just focus on the way it feels, leisurely hand around his cock. But in bed, he's right in the center of Alex's space, in his room, in a bed that smells like him. He has to reach around the bulk of Alex's child growing inside him to get to his cock.
And then Brandon's thinking about Alex, about the night the baby was conceived, about the way Alex had touched him so softly, about the way it had felt to be with Alex that night, on the heels of such a devastating loss, to have Alex right there with him, the two of them working their way to feeling better together.
Brandon comes with a gasp and the image of Alex's face behind his eyelids.
Well, that's going to be a problem.
*
Brandon wakes up when Alex gets home, even though it's the middle of the night. He pushes himself up on one elbow, really only half awake. "Hi."
"I did not want to wake you up," Alex says.
Brandon half shrugs. "I have to pee anyway." He stumbles his way into the bathroom, swearing under his breath at the cold tile, and back to bed.
Alex is already out of his suit, and Brandon watches him pull on his pajamas instead, and then come to bed.
"Hi." Alex curves his hand around Brandon's stomach and leans in to talk to the baby for a minute, voice soft and affectionate. Brandon's Russian lessons are serving him well; he manages to pick out about one word in three, although he still doesn't quite get the gist of whole sentences.
Alex shifts his focus from the baby when Brandon reaches down and runs his fingers through Alex's hair. Brandon doesn't pull, exactly, but he does guide Alex up until he can find Alex's mouth in the dark and kiss him softly.
"Welcome home," Brandon says.
"I missed you," Alex confesses in the dark. His hand rubs softly over Brandon's stomach. "Both of you."
Brandon puts his hand over Alex's. "We missed you."
*
While Alex is home, he drags Brandon out of the house with him. Brandon goes to practice, they go out to dinner, they go to the movies where Brandon feels very conspicuous with his stomach and Alex hovering next to him.
When Alex isn't dragging him out of the house, he's there with him in the house, casual arm around his shoulders while they watch TV with the rest of Alex's family, hand on his thigh at dinner, curling around him in bed.
Brandon wakes up in the middle of the night one of those nights with a gasp, cock insistently hard and heart racing. It's pregnancy hormones and, he can admit, more than that. It's Alex, having him close and not having him the way he did before his body betrayed him. Brandon rubs at his stomach for that thought, a silent apology to the baby.
"What is it?" Alex asks sleepily. "Everything okay?"
Brandon considers for a moment, but he already knows what he's going to do, and he puts his hand over Alex's where it rests on his stomach and moves it down, so it's resting over his cock instead.
Alex sucks in a breath. "Prusty."
"I want it," Brandon says. "I want you." He rolls his hips, ass back against Alex, cock forward into Alex's hand.
Alex breathes Brandon's name against the back of his neck, and then he curves his hand around the hard line of Brandon's cock. "What do you want me to do?"
His hand feels amazing, even over Brandon's pajama pants and boxer briefs, but Brandon wants more than that, has been thinking about the last time. "Fuck me." He shifts away from Alex, doesn't want to, but has to so he can get to the lube and condoms he knows are in the nightstand.
"Are you sure?" Alex asks, voice careful in the dark. "Is it okay?"
"Yes." Brandon doesn't turn on the light, fumbles to push lube and a condom into Alex's hand. "I asked Doctor Leblanc. It won't hurt the baby."
"You asked?" This time Alex sounds like he's laughing at Brandon.
"Yes, I asked." Brandon loses some of his cool and has to gasp when Alex's fingers rub against him. "The fucking hormones making me horny all the time." He gasps again, sparks lighting up his spine. "I've been wanting." He stops talking because it feels too good, Alex's fingers teasing at him, pushing gently into him, just what he's been wanting.
Alex is careful, fingers insistent and gentle, just like the last time.
Brandon rests a hand over his stomach for a moment, blinking back sudden tears. He's such an emotional mess right now.
Alex pauses, his fingers stilling inside Brandon. "Is that- Are you okay?"
Brandon pushes back onto Alex's fingers. "Yeah, keep going."
Alex does, and it's so good that Brandon forgets about that moment of overwhelming emotion.
The sparks keep running up and down Brandon's spine, and then Alex twists his fingers just right and it's like a jolt of lightning.
Brandon swears and reaches back to grab at Alex's arm. "Alex, come on," he says. "Just get your dick in me already."
He can feel Alex's chuckle against the back of his neck, but then Alex takes his fingers out and there's a breathless moment where Brandon waits for him to get a condom on, and then Alex is getting his dick into him.
Brandon sighs out an exhale as Alex pushes in, and it's good, even better than Alex's fingers were, sends a continuous shiver of sparks up and down his spine, all through his body.
There's a pause when Alex is all the way inside him, the two of them breathing together, and then Alex starts to move, and Brandon has to close his eyes against how good it feels.
Brandon grabs Alex's wrist when he starts to move his hand toward Brandon's cock.
"Don't you want?" Alex asks.
"I'm going to come if you touch me." Brandon gentles his hold on Alex's wrist. "Not yet."
"Okay." Alex kisses the back of Brandon's neck and he moves his hand up, so his arm is wrapped around Brandon and the baby.
Then there's just the pleasure of Alex rocking into him, Alex's arm around him, Alex's breath on his neck. Brandon stays there, feeling it and enjoying it, gasping every once in a while, tangling his fingers with Alex's over his stomach, for as long as he can stand it. Then he uses their tangled together fingers to push Alex's hand down.
Alex murmurs something unintelligible, but he also wraps his hand around Brandon's cock and jerks him off, evenly at first, and then in a jerky, uneven rhythm that matches the way he's thrusting into Brandon.
Brandon comes first. It feels amazing, like something he's been waiting and waiting for. He hears Alex say his name, very clearly, and then Alex comes too, shuddering against him and mouthing wetly at Brandon's neck.
Brandon drifts a little, content and sleepy in the best way. He wakes up a little more when Alex pulls out of him, but slides back into contentment when Alex leans over him and kisses him softly for a long minute. He can hear Alex grabbing tissues out of the box on the nightstand, but he's asleep before Alex finishes cleaning them up.
*
Brandon sleeps late these days, so while he's a little disappointed, he's not surprised when he wakes up alone.
After he takes a shower and gets dressed, he goes downstairs in search of breakfast and Alex. He finds Inna in the kitchen making breakfast, but no Alex. When Brandon asks, in stumbling Russian, she tells him, in slow, careful Russian, that Alex was already gone when she got up earlier. Brandon repeats it back to her in Russian and English to make sure he understood it correctly.
Brandon manages to behave politely over breakfast, but his anger at Alex not being there the morning after - again - simmers enough that he stays out of the rest of the family's way after breakfast.
Alex doesn't come home until late enough that Brandon's taking an afternoon nap. The sound of Alex opening the bedroom door wakes him up.
Brandon pushes himself up so he's sitting against the headboard. "You left," he says. And then, because he's not a good enough person not to and because he's still stung by it, he adds, "Again."
"I went to the rink," Alex says, like that's a reasonable explanation. "I needed to think."
Maybe in a better mood Brandon would accept that explanation, but not now. "You needed to think? And what, you couldn't do that here?" He keeps his voice down only because he doesn't want Alex's whole family to hear him yelling.
"No." Alex says it very calmly for someone being nearly yelled at. He comes further into the room, but stays back from the bed when Brandon glares at him. "I want you all the time."
Brandon blinks. That was not what he was expecting Alex to say next.
"And now," Alex continues, "you are sleeping in my bed and carrying my baby, and then last night. I want you all the time. I needed to be able to think."
"So you went to the rink," Brandon says, at least able to follow that train of thought. For guys like them, a hockey rink is a familiar space where they can go to focus.
"Yes," Alex says.
"And what," Brandon asks, with as much control as he can manage, "did you need to think about?"
"About this," Alex says. This time he ignores Brandon's glare and comes over to sit on the edge of the bed, facing Brandon. "I want you all the time. I want us to be a family with the baby. I want us to be together."
It's not at all the rejection or friends with benefits offer Brandon was bracing himself for, and he needs a minute to take it in. And to figure out how he feels about it.
It's probably time, he thinks after looking at Alex and accepting that he's telling him the truth, to admit that most of what he's been feeling hasn't had anything to do with the pregnancy hormones. Some of it is, he's sure, but most of it is just what he feels about Alex. What he felt about Alex even before all of this. They'd been casually hooking up, but they'd also been friends, and he genuinely likes Alex.
Brandon takes a deep breath and says, "You can't leave. Not, like, you're stuck with me forever, but no more of this ducking out after we fuck. It wasn't fun the first time and it really wasn't fun this time."
Alex grimaces. "Yeah, okay."
"And we're moving out of here," Brandon says. "There's no space for us and a baby and your family. And I don't want to have to sneak around your parents to have sex."
Alex dissolves into laughter, the kind of giggles that make his shoulders shake. "Okay," he says.
Brandon smiles at him, unable to stay mad or unhappy in the face of Alex laughing. "Come here." He holds out an arm. "I want you too," he says once Alex is pressed up against his side. "Even more now. These second trimester hormones are something else."
Alex's laughter shakes both of them this time, and then he turns in to kiss Brandon.
Brandon kisses back, letting himself feel all of the things he's been pushing away. It gets heavy fast, and then they're sliding down to lie down together.
"I can't, on my back," Brandon says. "Bad for circulation." He can't really lie on top of Alex either, stomach too much in the way. They figure it out, on their sides, pressed together as much as they can be, Alex rubbing against Brandon and getting his hand around Brandon's cock.
It's not the same electric feeling as last night, more of a settled pleasure that leaves Brandon drowsy when it's over.
"Are you going to sleep?" Alex asks. "You just woke up."
"You interrupted my nap," Brandon says. "And this kid is sapping all my energy." He grabs at Alex's shirt when Alex starts to sit up. "Stay. Take a nap with me."
Alex kisses him. "I need to clean up." He doesn't go any farther than sitting up to grab a tissue to wipe them both clean, though, and then he curls around Brandon.
*
They spend a lot of the week Alex is home in bed. They have sex a few more times, Alex stays curled around him while Brandon naps, they make out like teenagers a couple of times. They're almost always touching. Alex's family has to notice that they're acting like newlyweds, but none of them say anything about it, at least not where Brandon can hear.
Brandon goes with Alex to the rink before he leaves. There's no practice, just everyone gathering to get on the bus to the airport. Brandon hangs around catching up with everyone and going through a million rounds of, "Holy shit, man, you're really huge," like they didn't see him just a few days ago.
Alex wanders back to him when the guys are actually leaving, and he pulls Brandon into a hug, and then kisses him soft and slow. His eyes are sparkling when he pulls away, and he says, "I'll miss you." He kisses Brandon again, and then murmurs something to the baby before he follows the rest of the guys onto the bus.
"No loving?" P.K. asks.
Brandon laughs, too happy to be bothered by the chirping. "Maybe a little loving," he says.
P.K. laughs as he gets onto the bus.
*
Brandon wakes up when Alex gets back from his road trip. He groans and heaves himself out of bed. "I think this kid is playing two-touch with my bladder."
Alex laughs, and he's still smiling when Brandon comes out of the bathroom.
Brandon yawns and stumbles over to where Alex is getting undressed in front of the closet. "Hi." He puts his arms around Alex and leans into him. "Kiss me."
Alex laughs. "Okay." He kisses Brandon softly.
"Don't laugh," Brandon says, still leaning heavily on Alex. It's the middle of the night; he's supposed to be asleep. "It's almost Christmas and I'm carrying your child. You should kiss me whenever I want."
Alex chuckles a little more and kisses Brandon a few more times. "Okay," he says.
Brandon starts to smile at him and yawns widely instead, so he pushes himself off of Alex and gets back into bed. He watches Alex finish changing into pajamas between increasingly long blinks.
"Your parents here?" Alex asks when he slides into bed next to Brandon.
"Mmhmm. They're at my place. We watched your game."
"Yeah?"
"Mmhmm. You were good."
"I know," Alex says, startling a laugh out of Brandon. "I like hearing it anyway. Everything okay with the baby?"
"The baby's fine," Brandon says. He's completely unsurprised by the hand Alex puts over his stomach and the soft-voiced Russian Brandon's too tired to try to understand.
"I missed you," Alex says, and that one Brandon does understand.
"You were only gone for a day," Brandon mumbles.
"I still missed you." Alex kisses him softly, and that's the last thing Brandon remembers before he falls asleep again.
*
Brandon's quiet when he wakes up in the morning, careful not to wake Alex up. His parents arrive while Brandon is sitting around the breakfast table with Anna, Inna, and Alex Sr., and Alex comes downstairs while they're all still hanging out and finishing breakfast.
Alex comes to Brandon first and rests his hands on Brandon's shoulders while he leans down to kiss him. "Merry almost wrong Christmas."
Brandon chuckles and reaches up to cup Alex's cheek without restarting the argument about which Christmas they should celebrate; for now they're doing both and arguing about which one is the real one. "Merry almost Christmas." Then he says, "You remember my parents."
"Hi," Alex says. He goes to shake Brandon's dad's hand and makes a surprised noise when Dad pulls him into a hug instead.
"Good to see you, Alex."
Mom hugs Alex too; Alex seems less surprised about that one.
"That was a good game you played last night," Dad says when they're done with the hellos and Alex is sitting down next to Brandon.
Hockey is a conversation they can all join in on, and it eases them through any awkwardness there might be about having all of them together for the first time. That easily slides into stories about Brandon and Alex playing hockey when they were growing up, which leads them into all kinds of stories from both sets of parents about raising kids.
"It's a curse, you know," Brandon's mom says after one of the stories about Brandon playing hockey in the house. "May you have children." She grins at Brandon when she says it, and it sets everyone off laughing.
They spend a lazy day not doing much other than getting to know each other and figuring out how they fit together as a family.
When Brandon can't stop yawning after lunch, he finally says, "The baby and I need a nap."
Alex says, "Me too," and comes upstairs with Brandon.
"You know we just left both sets of our parents and Anna alone together," Brandon says while he changes into pajama pants and crawls into bed.
"They get along," Alex says. He climbs into bed with Brandon and presses himself all along Brandon's back.
"I'm not worried about them," Brandon says. "But who knows what kind of plans they're making for us and the baby."
Alex chuckles, then rubs his hand over Brandon's stomach and presses a kiss to the back of his neck. Brandon leans into it, and tips his head back a little; Alex takes the hint and leans over to kiss him.
*
Christmas, for all that there are stockings on the fireplace, presents around the tree, and a giant meal, is also a pretty low-key day. Brandon asked his parents not to buy things for the baby in deference to the Russian superstition the Galchenyuks observe, so there isn't the mountain of tiny gifts he expects to be showered on the baby next Christmas. The two Christmas agreement Alex and Brandon worked out means there's only half a pile of gifts anyway; they'll do the rest of them on Orthodox Christmas.
Brandon drives his parents to the airport on Sunday, and comes home to fall into bed with Alex for a nap.
"We didn't even do anything this weekend," he says to Alex, "and I'm exhausted."
Alex leans over him and kisses him slowly and softly. "You're taking care of the baby." He rubs Brandon's stomach. "That's doing a lot."
Brandon groans. "This baby is taking all of my energy. I was never this tired when I was playing hockey."
Alex laughs. "Yes you were." He scoots down to kiss the curve of Brandon's stomach. When he speaks, it's in Russian slow enough that Brandon can follow it. "Don't listen to him. He is happy about you."
"I am," Brandon says. He rests one hand on his stomach and the other on the back of Alex's head. "We both are. You can count on that, kid."
Alex smiles up at him, sweet and soft. He turns contemplative after a moment. "Do you think we'll be good parents?"
"Well, I'm going to be great," Brandon says, and it has the desired effect of making Alex laugh. Brandon runs his hand over Alex's hair. "I think you'll be good too."
"You think so?" There's something very young in the way Alex asks the question.
"Yeah," Brandon says. "You're pretty grown-up, and you'll have me as a role model."
Alex laughs again and he moves up the bed so their faces are level. "I want to be a good dad." Then he smirks. "A better one than you."
Brandon laughs, and he pulls Alex close to kiss him.
*
When Brandon first found out he was pregnant, the seven and a half months until the baby was going to be born felt like forever, but now that it's getting closer, the time seems to speed by.
Brandon takes charge of finding somewhere for them to live, which involves a lot of arguing, some of it long-distance, with Alex over how many bedrooms they want and how big a backyard their house should have and how close they should be to Alex's family. Brandon doesn't mind the arguing part - chirping Alex and getting chirped back is an important part of their relationship, after all - but by the time they're arguing about it when Alex is in Boston at the beginning of February, Brandon is finding that the house hunting part is tiring him out.
"Can we please not argue about carpeting today?" he asks when Alex Skypes him.
"Are you okay?" Alex asks
"Exhausted," Brandon admits. He's lying in bed and he doesn't feel like he's done enough so far today to warrant how tired he is.
Alex frowns at him. "Maybe you should call Doctor Leblanc."
"I have an appointment on Wednesday," Brandon says. He drapes one arm over his forehead. "He's just going to tell me it's normal and that men get more tired in the third trimester than women do."
Alex's frown deepens. Then he says to the baby, in Russian slow enough that Brandon can follow it, "When I am not there, you have to take care of your dad for me."
Brandon chuckles. "I don't think the baby can do that yet."
Alex smiles at him. "The baby can be nice to you," he says in slow Russian. Then, to the baby again, "Stop kicking your dad. He needs to rest to keep you healthy."
Brandon blinks back sudden tears. "I don't think the baby can do that either."
Alex makes a worried noise. "Prusty."
Brandon waves off his worry. "It's just a few more weeks." He dredges up a smile. "Go kick some ass so I can tell the baby how good you are."
Alex smiles at him and briefly accepts the subject change. "Of course I'm going to kick some ass. You take it easy. I will be home late."
"I'm not waking up for that," Brandon warns, even though there's a good chance he will.
Alex smiles at him softly. "That is okay. You need to rest to take care of the baby."
Brandon goes to bed as soon as the game is over but does, indeed, wake up when Alex gets home.
"I thought you were going to rest," Alex says when Brandon mumbles a hello.
"I did." Brandon tips his head up for the kiss Alex comes over to give him. "Your mom tried to make me go to bed after the second period."
Alex chuckles softly and rubs a hand over Brandon's stomach before he walks away to finish getting ready for bed.
Brandon stays awake, sort of, until Alex gets into bed. "I missed you," he tells Alex.
"I was only gone for one day," Alex says.
"You're supposed to say you missed me too."
Alex kisses him, soft and slow. "I missed you too. And you," he adds to the baby in Russian.
*
Alex has a game on Valentine's Day, and they're set to leave on a road trip the next morning, which doesn't leave much time for a lot of celebrating. Not that Brandon feels up to much celebrating. He feels huge and tired, and while he likes it that Alex cuddles up to him and kisses him, sex is the last thing he wants.
He should do something though, so when Alex wakes up, Brandon kisses him and says, "I think I found us a house."
"Uh," Alex says, still blinking at him sleepily.
Brandon smiles and kisses him again. "Get up," he says. "I'll go to skate with you and we can go see it afterwards."
Going to the rink means listening to a lot of comments about how he's "huge, no, really, Prusty, are you carrying a beach ball in there?"
Brandon laughs at most of the comments, even though he kind of feels the same way, and sits behind the glass to chirp the guys during skate.
He hangs out chatting with the guys after skate, and he and Alex have lunch at the rink before they head out to look at the house. Brandon has given up on arguing with Alex's insistence about not letting Brandon drive, so he sits in the passenger seat and gives Alex directions.
"If you don't like it," Brandon says, "we can look for something else. But it's the best one I've seen."
They meet the realtor at the house, and she takes them through the tour Brandon's already been on, then says, "I'll let you two look around a little more."
They wander around the upstairs a little more, and pause in one of the bedrooms.
"This would be the baby's room," Brandon says, and he takes Alex over to the window that looks out over the backyard. "There's enough room out there for a rink in the winter."
Alex puts his arm around Brandon's waist. "I like this house."
Brandon leans against Alex. "The bedrooms need to be repainted. If we put in an offer now, by the time it's done and we have the painting done, it'll be close to the end of the season. We can move in before training camp next year."
Alex turns toward him. "Then this will be our house." He rubs Brandon's stomach. "You will grow up in this house," he tells the baby in Russian.
Brandon leans in and rests his forehead against Alex's. "I'm really glad we're going to do this together."
Alex kisses him softly.
Brandon takes a deep breath to steady himself against the way his emotions are going wild. "Let's go tell her we want to make an offer on the house and get out of here. My back is killing me."
Alex frowns, and Brandon kisses him to take the look off his face. "It's normal. Just get me home to bed."
*
Brandon is fine all the way through being admitted to the hospital and the surgery prep. Then they let Alex into the room with him and he looks at Alex gowned up like one of the doctors and has a little bit of a freakout.
"Oh, shit," Brandon says, the weight of it hitting him all at once. "We're going to have a baby."
Alex takes his hand. "Yes." He leans in close. "You have known this for months."
"I know," Brandon says, "but what if we're bad at this? What if we fuck it up?"
Alex squeezes his hand. "We won't. You're going to be a great dad. Not as good as me."
The chirping cuts through Brandon's sudden terror, and he manages to chuckle lightly. "I'm going to be so much better than you."
Alex's grip on his hand eases. "No you won't."
"Yes I will." Brandon takes a breath, and then another one. "I love you. Did I say that?"
"No," Alex says, and he leans in close and says, "I love you," in both English and Russian.
The distraction of talking to Alex makes it easier for Brandon to breathe through how weird it is when Doctor Leblanc starts cutting into him. He's numbed up enough that he can't feel the full force of it, but he can feel the tug on his skin, and that's weird enough.
Alex keeps distracting him, all the way until they hear the baby cry for the first time. Then they both stop talking, and Alex squeezes Brandon's hand just as tightly as Brandon's squeezing his.
Doctor Leblanc's head pops over the top of the drape hiding what he's doing, and he says, "It's a boy. We're going to get him cleaned up and checked out, and then Alex can hold him." He still has a mask on, but the corners of his eyes are crinkled up into a smile, so everything must be okay.
Alex bends over and rests his forehead against Brandon's. "We have a son."
Brandon has to blink back tears. "I want to hold him."
Alex brushes his hand over Brandon's hair. "Soon."
They can hear the baby crying, but it takes a little bit before a nurse brings him over and sets him in Alex's arms.
Alex looks nervous at first, cradling the baby carefully, but the nurse adjusts his arms and makes sure he's supporting the baby's head, and then he looks comfortable. He looks right, holding their son. He looks perfect, when he looks up at Brandon with the softest look of joy Brandon's ever seen on his face.
Brandon reaches out, for him and for the baby, and Alex comes in closer to Brandon can see their son. He's beautiful, and tiny. The skin of his cheek when Brandon touches him is impossibly soft.
"Holy shit," Brandon whispers. "Look what we did."
"Yeah," Alex whispers back.
"I want to hold him," Brandon says, looking past Alex at the nurse.
"You'll have to wait until you're in recovery," the nurse says, but she helps Alex get closer, so the baby is right up against Brandon's shoulder, where he can reach out and feel how tiny his son is. He's absolutely perfect, and Brandon can see how people want to just stare at their children.
"He's going to need a name," Brandon says. "Are you going to want to name him Alex?"
Alex laughs. "I think our family has enough Alexes."
Brandon's heart contracts, and he twists to kiss the top of their son's head. They are a family now.
"He could be Maksim," Alex says.
"Max Prust," Brandon tries out.
"Max Galchenyuk," Alex suggests.
Maybe they should have talked about this sooner.
Brandon looks at the baby, at his tiny face, at the soft dusting of hair on his head. He wants his son to have his name, but he's Alex's son too. "Max Galchenyuk-Prust," he suggests. "It's long, but he'll be able to handle it."
"Maksim Galchenyuk-Prust," Alex says. "Okay." He lifts Max up to hold him against his chest. "Our Maksimka."
*
Alex misses a home game against the Leafs, but travels with the team for their west coast road trip. He kisses Brandon lingeringly before he has to leave, and holds Max for a few long minutes, murmuring softly to him in Russian.
Brandon and Max are allowed to go home from the hospital the day after Alex leaves. Brandon has to depend on Anna, Inna, and Alex Sr. to do all the heavy lifting - "heavy" meaning anything heavier than Max - but he still gets to hold Max, and he tries to do as much of what Max needs as he can.
He's tired, despite spending most of the last few days in bed in the hospital, but he's awake when Max is awake, and that means he watches Alex's game with the rest of the family.
"That's your papa," Brandon tells Max when they first see Alex on the screen. Max probably doesn't understand what they say to him now, but everything Brandon read says it's important to talk to kids when they're babies.
They keep the volume down to a level where it won't be too loud for Max, and Brandon keeps up an Alex-centered play-by-play for Max. Alex makes it easy for him by scoring a goal and getting an assist on Patch's.
"Your papa's good at this," Brandon tells Max. "Of course, I am too. You're getting a lot of good genes."
Alex ends up with the first star of the game, and one of the reporters stops him for a short interview.
"Now you have a new baby at home," the reporter says.
Alex was smiling before, but he just lights up at that. "Yeah," he says. "Max. He's home with Prusty.
"What's that like?"
"Great," Alex says, smiling so hard the corners of his eyes crinkle up. "I've only been a dad for a few days, but it feels good."
"You had an assist tonight on your teammate Max Pacioretty's goal. Did you name your son after him?"
Alex laughs. "No," he says, "but he's already trying to tell the guys we did."
"He's a good goal scorer to be named after," the reporter says.
"Yeah, he's a good goal scorer," Alex says with a smirk, "but I got the first star."
"Alex," the reporter says, "thank you, and congratulations on both the first star and the baby."
Alex waves at the camera before he skates off.
"That was your papa talking about you on national TV," Brandon tells Max. He hands his phone to Anna and gets her to take a picture of him and Max, and then he texts it to Alex. He feels so full of love for his son and Alex that he can't even find it in himself to chirp Alex about anything and sends it with a heartfelt, We miss you, as a caption.
Max is asleep in the crib in the corner of Brandon and Alex's bedroom and Brandon is almost asleep when Alex sends back a smiling, off-center selfie with, Miss you too.
*
In the middle of summer, Brandon finds out that traveling halfway around the world with an infant is not an adventure to be envied.
"It's easier right now," Inna tells Brandon. "When they start walking, it becomes much harder."
Those are not vacations Brandon is particularly looking forward to.
They spend the night in a hotel in Minsk before they drive out to the Alex's family's dacha to spend two weeks with the part of the family Brandon hasn't met yet. They get a late start, so everyone is as well-rested as it's possible to be with a three-month-old in tow.
Brandon's Russian is good enough now that he can keep up with most of the greetings and exclamations of Alex's grandparents and uncle. They help by speaking slowly when they talk to him, and only speeding up when Brandon hands Max off to be passed around.
"Come on," Alex says. "I'll show you around."
"Max," Brandon says.
"He'll be fine. They're all excited to see him, and Mom or Anna can take care of him. We won't be gone long."
Brandon shoots a last look at Max, and at Anna and Inna to make sure someone notices that they're leaving, and then follows Alex outside. It is quieter once they're out of the house.
Alex shows him around the dacha - the garden plots, the net stored away ready to be pulled out for shooting practice, the neighbors - and then takes him down a path into the forest.
"This is a good path for running," Alex says. "Have to keep up our conditioning."
"Yeah," Brandon says. There isn't anyone else around, just the two of them on a path through the trees. "Have to do that if I don't want to end up on waivers."
Alex stops walking and stares at him. "What?" Somewhere along the way he stopped looking young to Brandon, but now he can see just how young Alex is.
"I don't know if I'm going to be a hundred percent," Brandon says. "I'm feeling better now, but I couldn't go play a game today. I don't even know if I'll be able to hack it by September. And that's what I have to do, especially if this is my last season." He starts them walking again.
"This doesn't have to be your last season," Alex protests. "Even if you are not at a hundred percent, you will be next year."
"My contract's up at the end of the season," Brandon says. "If they renew it, I'll play, but if they don't, I'll retire."
"But you can still play."
Brandon is the one to stop them this time, turning so he can meet Alex's eyes. "But not in Montreal. I'm not moving away from Max, or taking him away from you."
"Oh," Alex says. "Oh."
"Yeah." There's no one around, so Brandon feels safe putting his arms around Alex and kissing his cheek.
"I'm sorry," Alex says.
Brandon kisses the apology off of his lips. "Don't be sorry." It might be the first time he's said anything to Alex about it, but he's been thinking about it for a while, and he's made his peace with it. "I've gotten to play some great hockey, and I got to play with you, and now we have a son. Plans change."
Alex holds on to him for a few minutes longer, and takes Brandon's hand when they start walking again.
"It's nice out here," Brandon says. "Peaceful."
"Yes," Alex says. "There will be more people on the weekends, but it is quiet out here during the week."
"Hmm," Brandon says. "Quiet and away from your parents. You ever bring someone out here to hook up?"
"No," Alex says.
"Oh?" Brandon tugs Alex toward the edge of the path and pushes him up against a tree. "I think you missed out."
Alex laughs until Brandon kisses him. Then he puts his arms around Brandon and pulls him in close. They make out for a few long minutes, the kind of slow, lazy kisses that are hard to fit in when you have an infant.
"Do we need to get back to Max?" Brandon asks.
"Not yet. We need to take advantage of everyone still wanting to hold him."
Brandon laughs and lets Alex pull him in. Their son is safe, and it really has been too long since he last got to make out with Alex without interruption. He's going to enjoy this chance while he has it.