Archive of Our Own ^beta

Six months and she’s undeniably showing now. The men in her office - they’ve put her on desk duty, but only after she begged - have started giving her convert, disappointed glances, and every day it’s harder to ignore the phone calls from her mum. It would be so easy to go home. She wouldn’t even have to admit she was wrong. She could show up on the doorstep with her suitcase and within ten minutes be ensconced in her childhood bedroom, mug of hot chocolate in her hands, watching her mum unpack for her. 

The only thing that stops her is the conviction that leaving afterwards would be harder than sticking it out at work. She can see it all in her mind’s eye - the days turning to weeks, her old job at the cafe, arguing with her sisters over whose turn it is to cook, a baby sleeping in a cot by her bed.

She would lose herself.

Which is how she’s ended up here on Christmas, in this bland open-plan office. Too warm, no natural light, a pathetic string of tinsel over the doorway. 

It’s a world away from last year - entwined with him, drunk on wine, laughing. They hadn’t shut the curtains before falling into bed and the Christmas lights on the hotel opposite flashed blue, green and red through the window, scattering his skin with colour.

“Did you ever think of going into politics? Actual politics, I mean,” she asked. She’d known him three weeks and she was hungry for intimacy in a way she’d never experienced with anyone else, emotional as well as physical.

He frowned thoughtfully at her question, running his fingers slowly down her spine, sending shivers through her body. 

“No. Too dangerous.”

“More dangerous than what you do now?”

“Yes. There are rules in politics that you have to give the impression of following. You have to be careful. Boring.”

She laughed and he laughed with her, pulling her close suddenly.

“You’ve got a beautiful laugh,” he murmured into her hair.

Something in her chest tightened and she closed her eyes. She loved him. For a moment she thought they might spend their lives together.

She had been idiotically naive, she sees that now. She’d never once stopped to think about what she truly wanted until that moment when the double blue line appeared on the pregnancy test. 

And if sometimes she wishes it were different, that she could have had- more. This job that she loves, that she believes in, and him as well. If she does wish that, in her weaker moments, nobody will ever know. She won’t watch disappointment turn to contempt. She’ll prove that this is a one-time mistake, a brief lapse in judgment. She’ll prove herself worthy of the tattoo on her neck.