“I know!” He wailed the words.
“Can we sit a minute before we go stroll?” Laird led him to the comfy couch in the waiting room.
Sniffling, he nodded and let Laird settle down next to him, grabbing his hands and holding on. Laird took a deep breath and then let it out. “Look, I can tell I bungled the hell out of all of this, and it wasn’t intentional. I promise it was just stupidity. But I think we need to talk about it a little bit before we head out there.”
“I’m sorry,” Devon started and Laird cut him off.
“No, you don’t have to be sorry for anything. You don’t have to be sorry for being mad at me, and you don’t have to be sorry for telling me. I want you to know that. That’s important. You are allowed to feel what you feel.” Laird held his hands tightly, squeezing a little bit. “And don’t excuse yourself by saying that it’s the hormones talking or that it’s just the time of year that has you down. That’s not fair to you.”
Tears started to dry up and Devon tried to breathe, too. He tried to calm down and talk about all this in a rational way, although it was hard because he wasn’t emotional and he was feeling the pressure of the season and being pregnant was wildly emotional.
“Okay, that’s fair.” He gave Laird a smile. “And I should have said something to you before now. I should have.” He paused, trying to put his words in order because this was important and he didn’t want to misspeak. “I pushed it down because I just thought this wasn’t important to you. The holiday. So I didn’t want to burden you with it.”
“And I didn’t even think about it because when you’re a single EMT, you’re the one who gets all the weird shifts during the holidays. In fact, I volunteered for them up until this year because if you have no family, then you help the guys out who did.” Those bright blue eyes shone with regret, and Laird scrubbed a hand over his clipped beard. “Ididn’t volunteer this year, but I got assigned, so I resigned myself to working them one last time.”
“Do you feel guilty because you’re going to be leaving?” Devon wanted to have his knitting in his hands, but instead he held on to Laird like he was a lifeline.
“A little.” Laird nodded, then tugged him even closer until he was leaning on Laird’s side, head on Laird’s shoulder, one big arm around him. “Not because it’s real, and I have any reason to feel guilty, but because it just is what it is. Nick’s going to be sad when I go.”
“I know you two will stay friends, and he’s welcome over any time. But it’s not the same as working together every day in an ambulance.”
“Exactly. So maybe I felt like I owed the guys one more holiday season. I don’t know. One way or the other, I should have been more attuned to what you wanted, and you should have spoken up and told me that I was being a dick.”
He searched Laird’s bright blue gaze, then smiled and nodded. “I should have. And I shouldn’t have just come and sat here and pouted like a whiny baby.”
“You’re not a whiny baby. You were sad and you were on call and you couldn’t think of anything else to do. But Naomi’s coming in and then we can go do our thing, okay? Do you have enough warm stuff to bundle up in?” Laird looked him over, lips pursed, and he knew he wasn’t dressed for the holiday stroll, but he did have his parka, gloves, hat, and scarf out in the closet.
“I do. I want to go with you. I want to drink hot chocolate. I want churros or crepes or whatever it is that Fuel is making out at the street. I want to buy us our first Christmas ornament.”
“That sounds amazing.” Laird kissed the topof his head. “I’m so sorry, baby. Promise me we’ll talk from now on. I’ll make sure to ask you about my schedule before I just blithely make it.”
Tears threatened again, but this time because Laird was being so sweet. “Thank you. I know it’s probably hard for you.” He thought Laird would be proud of him for stopping himself from saying it was probably silly.
“It is different for sure. Not difficult when you think about it; it’s just a matter of making myself think about it, and it’s not any kind of reflection on you. It’s totally something I have to figure out.”
“Now we can figure it out together.” Devon knew he couldn’t let Laird take all the blame for this. He’d been unwilling to just speak up because he was always afraid Laird was right on the cusp of leaving him. “I don’t want to lose you because I’m being a bitch. I mean, you’ve already moved and changed your whole life. I guess I’m just jealous.”
He shrugged. It was weirdly hard to do Halloween alone and Thanksgiving over at Raven’s. Everybody had looked at him like he was pitiful, which he guessed he had been. He felt a little pitiful.
He could be honest; he felt like a dipshit.
“Weare changing our lives, huh? You let me in your home, and we got pregnant together. It took both of us. It’s going to take both of us for the rest of our lives.”
“Yeah?” He blinked up at Laird. “You mean it?”
Laird nodded. “The rest of our lives. I mean it.”
Devon took a deep breath, then kind of lunged at Laird, hugging him so tight. “I love the sound of that. This morning I wasn’t sure I did, but I do.”
Laird patted his hip. “Come on, let’s go play for a littlewhile. This will be the only time that we’re ever doing this that we’re not dads!”
Devon looked at him, “I know; it’s wild. This will be my first time to ever do it as part of a couple, and my last time to only ever do it as a couple.”
Laird shook his head. “No, no, because at some point all the kids will be grown and we’ll be waiting on grandbabies, and we’ll go just as a couple. Hell, by the time our children are teenagers, they’ll want to do their own thing.”
It blew Devon’s mind the way Laird thought about them in terms of decades. His experience with families was very much contained to infancy.
Mostly he spent most of his time dealing with fetuses.
