du_vallon | (no subject)

(no subject)

With the good news at hand, Porthos has been wanting to celebrate quietly. It's not that he doesn't want to shout it from the rooftops because he does, but he's also read plenty of books that talk about how dangerous things can be for the first while. It's why he wants to take this a touch slow, make sure that he's not rushing to scream it. Still, he wants to tell someone and of all his mates, he knows Nikita will guard a secret like no tomorrow.

It's why he's invited her for a drink at the Tintern, setting beers on the table with pleasure as he takes a seat to wait for her. Maybe he can't tell everyone, but this is a good start. Besides, soon he'll have to start thinking about things like parties and baby proofing and his life is going to change as he knows it.

He doubts he'll get nearly enough time for drinking, then.

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She was always happy to get a call from Porthos. Sometimes he needed her to provide backup for something, sometimes he just wanted to have a drink. Tonight seems like more just like a drink. It was convenient, too, because she'd been thinking since her somewhat-inadvertent confessional with Phil that she might tell Porthos about Section. Porthos knew the most of anyone here already, but it was bits and pieces. Prison, being kicked out at 12, her mum's stellar parenting. None of that added up exactly to why she had the skills she had.

She arrived at Tintern and scanned the place before she spotted him and wove her way through the crowd.

"Getting started without me?" she teased him as she sat down.

"With my build, you can assume I'm always starting without you so we're not stuck here forever," he jests back, giving her a warm smile as he settles into his seat once she's here, lifting a hand to order another round. "Glad you're meeting me now and not a week ago. I'd have tried to take your money off you."

"That could have been entertaining," she agreed, "Since I probably wouldn't have looked particularly favorably on that. Did you wake up all kleptomaniac one morning?"

She smiled at the server when she got her round and sipped it. As always, Porthos bought good alcohol.

"I just got finished returning everything," Porthos sighs, as if maligning his own past. "I was a little too much of a minx, too. I almost jumped Aramis and Athos at least a few times, trying to get in their trousers." He grins a touch wickedly, lifting his glass. "It's all worked out now, though, hasn't it?"

"Too much information," Nikita reminded him, but she didn't mean it. She was still happy for them all to have found a relationship that worked well for them.

"So exactly how old were you, best you can tell?"

"Fifteen," he says ruefully, with a look on his face that says how much he already regrets being that age, seeing how awful he had been both in misdemeanours and then attitude. "I'm surprised anyone puts up with me, given how awful I was during that time."

"Yeah, I remember you telling me months ago that that would be a bad year for you to be. So of course you were, because that's how his place works," she noted wryly.

"Fortunately for everyone, the teenage years don't last forever."

"And here, they're as short as a few days," Porthos agrees, more than happy that his little transformation hadn't been longer. He's not sure Aramis and Athos could've taken the stress. "I was fifteen, stealing everything I could, arranging blackmail just in case, and didn't trust a soul."

"Luckily, I've got two very forgiving men in my life."

"And they knew that you were the product of your age," Nikita agreed. "Which means if you ended up the age you didn't want to be, get ready for me to be nineteen again next month. We'll see if I can shock you with the number of curse words I can fit into a single sentence."

Porthos grins. "I'm a bad influence. I'd probably just encourage you to do all the things that you shouldn't be doing," he admits, drinking. He moves his foot around a touch nervously, because this isn't what he'd invited her here to talk about. "I sort of did want to tell you something, though. It's all brand new, but we're slowly telling people."

"We're going to have a baby," he says, smiling nervously to speak the words.

She raised her eyebrows in surprise, then grinned at him. She didn't have much maternal feeling or desire to have children, but she knew that wasn't the way it was for a lot of people. Porthos and his partners would be great parents.

"Well, that does call for a round of drinks," she agreed. "Congratulations. How far along is the mother?"

"Enough to have told us, so I think it's about a month? Or maybe a little over," he says, knowing that they would only tell them once it's taken. "I know I'm going to have to spend all my time trying to make sure Aramis doesn't go after her and stalk her to shove vitamins in her mouth," he jokes, happy to be able to drink tot his.

"Yeah, usually takes about that long to be sure, I think," Nikita agreed. Sometimes it took longer, but anyone working as a surrogate would be paying extra attention to that sort of thing.

"And Athos doesn't try to guard her into never doing anything dangerous ever again."

Porthos' smile presses into something a little tighter, not really wanting it to, but his face has always been too easy to read. "I'm not sure if he's going to be as actively protective," he admits. "I mean, he'll be involved and he wouldn't abandon us, but this is something we sort of pulled him into, instead of something he's actually excited for."

"Ah," she said simply. She was sure lots of discussions about this had happened in the Mousquetaire Household plus some in the offices of the surrogacy agency, so she wasn't going to wade into it.

"Well, as someone who's got all the parental feelings of your average fish, I don't really blame him for being unsure about this. But I know you wouldn't have gone into it without knowing that everyone was in enough agreement about it all."

"Truth be told, there's still moments I'm not sure I'm cut out for it," Porthos admits. "And then I think about all the fathering I've helped do for the stable boys, the things we've taught d'Artagnan. Plus, I know what it's like not having a father, so I know all the things I wanted when I was younger. For me, it's a bit like filling in the gaps," he admits.

"Problem is, the stakes are insanely high if I mess up."

"And you will mess up," Nikita said. She didn't say it to be cruel, but he would. Everyone made mistakes.

"But I know you'll do a better job raising this kid than anyone ever did raising either of us, so there's that."

That's the problem. He doesn't want to mess up because he doesn't know that his heart could stand for any child of his to look at him with anything less than the utmost of respect and love. "It's not like I have anything to guide me. That's the thing I'm worried the most about. I haven't got a good example to take from."

Nikita wasn't worried at all about this. But Porthos was, and he had reason to be. If he hadn't been worried, it might actually be more concerning, actually. Parenthood wasn't something to just jump into without thought, even though a lot of people did.

"But you're not the only one raising the kid. You have the other two and you've got friends, and they'll all help you. And I'm sure you could fill a library with all the books about how to parent, if you wanted to study it."

"Yeah, but I don't want to fail," he says, very seriously. That's the issue. He wants to be a good father and he knows he's going to end up having a lot of help, but he wants to be able to do it without that help. He wants to be a good father without the example. "Aramis is practically made for it, but I don't want to just take a backseat to him."

"Sometimes you probably will. And other times, he'll take a backseat to you. You're both gonna have your strengths with raising a kid just like you do with fighting," she suggested, sipping her beer.

"And when you're ready for the kid's juvenile delinquent lessons, just send them over to Auntie Nikita's house."

"You gonna be willing to cope with one of my kids? I mean, you've heard enough stories about me, but Aramis and Athos aren't without their own little quirks. Any son or daughter of ours is bound to be a handful," he teases, but he's more than willing to hand off a baby to be sat to Nikita.

"I'm sure it'll be fine. I'm supposed to feed them soda and cookies at every meal, right? And they don't need to take naps or go to bed on any schedule," she noted innocently.

"Don't ask me. I'll probably have spoiled them plenty before they even get to you," Porthos admits with a huff of a laugh, seeing as he doubts that he's going to be the stern one. Without even asking for the job, he knows it's likely to be Athos in that role.

"Yeah, they'll have you wrapped around their little finger the moment you look at them. After that, it's all downhill."

She'd seen the effects of spoiling kids too much. They'd had a couple of spoiled brats appear and try to be big and tough runaways now and then. Usually they either figure out what life was really like or they went back to their previous world.