Night's Omen

For once in her life, Capricia actually thought to knock on Connor's door. She stood in the hallway wearing little more than a pair of scrub pants and a white v-neck t-shirt and tennis shoes. From the gym to the shower to the doctor to here, she hadn't had much time to change into something really pretty for him to gawk at. She wasn't showing yet, so that was nice, but she could tell her ass was getting a little bigger, and same with her chest, and neither of those things made her particularly happy.

She had a little manila folder in her hand, and she leaned against the wall while she waited for him to answer the door. It didn't occur to her that he couldn't see perfectly, but she'd probably try to describe what was in the envelope for him anyways.

Thankfully, Connor was both in his office and in a surprisingly good mood.  For all the trouble he had surrounding him anymore, there were a few things going right for him, and among those were Capri and the Guild.  With his sight having (slowly) repaired itself, he was back to training like usual and kicking some ass.  That made him feel a million times better, even if it disturbed him that he was both stronger and faster than he should have been.  That was Val's fault, and he could ignore it.  He wasn't so thrilled that his eyes still looked like he shouldn't be able to see and he still had the scars where that leech bitch's nails had cut his face on either side of his eyes, but they'd grown fainter, and he could ignore them for the most part.  He was lucky those were the only super visible scars he had.  He could go with different popular clothing styles to cover up his wrists, and he just didn't go shirtless anywhere.

Hopefully, Capri never wanted to go to the beach.

He had actually only just finished with a sweaty, tiring training session when she knocked at the door, so he really had no right to worry about what she was wearing, nor could he complain about the extra luggage in her butt and chest.  He wasn't going to EVER mention it because he wasn't dumb, but he'd probably still think she looked gorgeous when she was fit to pop.  Just the fact that he could see her at all made him that much happier, and he loved her.  On top of her already obvious attractiveness, he wouldn't ever be complaining.

In fact, he was rather pleased to open the door and see her there.  "Capri!  Come in, this is a surprise.  You actually knocked, so I thought it was going to be someone I didn't want to see," he teased her easily, and he actually meant it.  Very few people he'd actually want to talk to bothered to knock.  It was like an unwritten rule that if they were his friends, they didn't knock on his door.  "What's that?"

Oh, yes, he'd noticed the envelope. 

She couldn't help but smile girlishly as he asked what was in the envelope. She was actually more nervous than she thought she would be. Initially, she'd wanted to just barge in, scream her news, and then run to her next errand of the day, but she figured he'd expect something like that out of her. She was working on a new thing, being mellow. It was really hard, she couldn't see how other people did it.

"This? Ah, yeah," she said. "Just more baby stuff. Wanna see?" She had an inclining he might freak out at "baby's first photo", and she wanted to get his full reaction when he did just that. If he didn't, well, then she wouldn't try to even begin to explain what the photo was of, but... she'd see what he did.

She approached the desk and sat down on top of it, setting the folder in front of him, still closed.

Did he want to see?

Was that a trick question?

"Of course I want to see!" he told her, grinning rather happily at just the thought.  No, he wasn't absolutely sure that a couple like himself and Capri should really be trusted to take care of a child, but the thought thrilled him nonetheless.  He hadn't put enough thought into it before, but he'd always wanted a family, somewhere in his mind.  He just hadn't realized when he was ever going to manage it, given his lifestyle.  Now, he had Capri offering up a closed folder with 'baby stuff' in it, and he was damned if he wasn't interested as hell to see what was in it.

"Have you looked at it, yet?" he asked, not even sure what was IN the folder as he picked it up, glanced at her, and then opened it to see what was inside.  He was greeted with a photo, and his jaw dropped. Naturally, it was one of those black and white, unclear images from inside the mother's body, but just staring at the image and realizing that it was his baby, their baby, was enough to make his stomach flip flop.  He grinned once more and rather suddenly wrapped an arm around her waist, still holding the photo, and kissed her. 

"It's beautiful."

Capri had to admit she was a little surprised by his reaction. She didn't know what she thought was going to happen, but he looked like he was falling just short of doing a dance. She was twice as shocked when he suddenly kissed her. She smiled.

"She's beautiful. See?" she said, pointing at some nondescript gray patch. "Doctor says she's a bit of a flasher. Looks like she takes after... both of us, actually," she said with a frown. She shook it off and looked back at him. "So at least now I know what colour to paint the spare room in the apartment," she continued. "I'm trying to stay away from pink, so I'm going for this super-light ice purple colour. Hailee already said she'd help. I think she's using it as an excuse to buy things."

She smiled, realizing she'd breezed right over the whole, "You're having a daughter" thing. "Unless you have anything different to add?" She leaned forward to kiss him on the nose, a strangely cute gesture from the otherwise callous hunter.

"She?"  He looked at the spot on the photo that Capri pointed to, not really seeing anything that happened to be useful to him, but he believed Capri and the doctor if they said the baby was a girl.  A baby girl.  A daughter.  He almost wanted to do a dance, but he somehow managed to refrain, if only because she glazed over it all so quickly and started talking about paint colors.  Purple instead of pink?  Fine with him, he didn't mind.  He found it amusing as hell that the doctor said his daughter was 'a bit of a flasher' and that she seemed to take after both of her parents, but he did have to hope that didn't mean she'd take after them in other ways.  It'd drive him up the wall later on if she tried getting into what they did, for one thing.  He wasn't about to consider that anytime soon, though.

"Purple sounds great, and thank Hailee for her help for me," he said agreeably, unable to stop that happy grin from turning into a genuinely content smile when she kissed him on the nose like that.  She may have been surprised at his reaction to the photo, but she was consistently shocking him with her new attitude.  She was more mellow and stable than he'd ever seen her, and though he liked her spontaneity, it wasn't so far gone that he really had anything to miss and she was being incredible to deal with.  Except when it came to him wanting her to stop hunting, but that was something they'd probably never agree on.  It was to be expected.

He was still caught up on the 'daughter' thing, really.  He slipped in his thoughts and his smile widened again, and he looked back to the picture.  That little girl was destined to be spoiled.

"So I'm roughly 5 months pregnant, now. The doctor said because of my exercise regiment I might be able to keep my figure for a little longer, but eventually I am going to start showing. The discussion now turns to - when do we tell people? It's going to get obvious in about two or three more months," she said, frowning. "I'm still not ready for a baby shower or anything. I haven't even told my brother yet, because he might try to kick your ass." She paused. "Actually, he might thank you for trying to make a normal woman out of me. And then I might kick his ass."

She smiled as he drifted off into la-la land of babydom. "Connor, come on. Input."

"We tell people whenever you're ready.  You know that once we do, it's going to be a lot of things to think about, including the risks of others knowing you're pregnant on a hunt," he pointed out.  Yes, he was dealing with the fact that she was still hunting at five months pregnant, but nobody knew she WAS pregnant and therefore they couldn't use that as a weakness for her OR him.  He didn't want to even think about how bad that would be.  "And your brother can try to kick my ass, if he thinks it's necessary."

He smirked, not thinking it was going to happen in the other man's favor.  It wouldn't if Capri tried to beat her brother's ass, either, so really, the male Varekova sibling needed to tread lightly.

"I think that when you make the announcement, a few things are going to happen that you can't really control, including some of the female hunters organizing a baby shower or something.  I don't know much about that kind of stuff, but it seems to start up and just gain speed like some weird, pastel-colored storm.  My advice is to just smile and keep your head down," he said helpfully.  Or not.  Depends on how you looked at it, since he really had no idea how to escape those things.  Fortunately, he didn't get invited to them.

Capricia laughed out loud when Connor referred to women gathering and gabbing about baby things as a pastel coloured storm, and leaned in to give him another peck on the cheek before she got her little file back together.

"Well, you're going to be hearing it, too, Connor. I don't know if you know this, but this might end up being a bigger deal than anyone planned for. I mean, you're... you. And I'm, well, heh. I have a feeling there's going to be a betting pool on who will kill the other one off and eat the offspring first." She smiled wryly. Capricia knew her temper was infamous, and it didn't bother her as much as it should have. Alternately, she actually thought it was funny, although she didn't like the idea of her daughter being brought up in conversation about it.

"They'll figure it out on their own, I guess. Hailee, Vin, Dom, Christian, and Loreanna know, and that's enough for now. I think I've pissed off enough of the seedy underworld of vampires to become a big shiny mark of my own, especially now that... yeah. We'll wait."

He was NOT about to complain about the kiss on the cheek, though that and the laughter at his little comment were rather pleasant.  He wasn't about to lie and say that it didn't make him feel good, but then she was talking, so he made sure he paid attention.

He had to agree with her, particularly the part about killing each other.  It was something he was already worried about, without even taking most of the problems in.  "I wouldn't be surprised if there was betting about which one of us was going to kill the other.  I can promise it won't be me, though," he offered, actually meaning it.  He just hoped she could say the same.

"Wait.  Dom and Vin know?  As in, you told Verde?" he asked suddenly.  He could understand her telling Kiev, cause from what he could tell, the guy was a bit of a sap about women, but the asshole Spaniard.  "Why?"  He would have assumed the guy would be obnoxious about THAT, which probably would have ended in Capri trying to kill him.  He couldn't fathom how it could have gone at all well.

Capri smiled serenely as Connor had his little moment about Dom knowing the ins and outs of the situation. She sat down on the desk and fished her hand into a small candy dish, picking out some black jellybeans that had no doubt sat there since Easter. Jellybeans didn't expire, at least she didn't think so. And anyways, she wouldn't be worried if they had. She'd eat them anyways.

"Connor," she said, gently interrupting his mental imagery of no doubt all the shitty things Dom was known for. "If it wasn't for Verde, I never would have told you in the first place. It's because of him our daughter survived for 3 months, let alone 5. So have a care?" She raised her eyebrows.

He watched her pull some jellybeans out of a dish that he'd actually almost forgotten was there.  The only reason was because Chase liked Jellybeans, and she'd been in and out of his office over the past year.  She'd put them there.

"Are we talking about the same guy?" he asked, though of course, he knew they were.  It just seemed out of character for the guy to have been involved at all, nevermind as an encouraging force.  Strange.  "And would you really have just vanished without telling me something that big?"

Yes, she would have.  She'd already said she would, and he hated that, and it actually made him even more uncomfortable about what he wasn't telling her.  That was big, too.  She deserved to know, but she was going to freak out, and a lot more than he had over the pregnancy issue.  Somehow, he had the feeling that he would have taken this set of news better than she was going to if the roles were reversed, but then, she had been a lot calmer and more reasonable lately.  Maybe she wouldn't spazz out and do something crazy.

"Actually, nevermind about Verde or any of that.  I have something I really need to tell you, but I also need you to promise that you'll try not to freak out.  Okay?" he asked warily, already worried that just asking her not to freak over something might get a bad reaction.  If she got too upset just at that, he might not be able to even tell her.  At five months pregnant, her reaction was a big deal, so he wouldn't have bothered at all if it wasn't important.

"And would you really have just vanished without telling me something that big?"

She stared at him blankly for a moment. She didn't think that she needed to answer that question. She loved Connor, true, but love did not dictate Capricia's life. She'd seen how berserk it had made people around her, and she figured her own special level of insanity was just enough without any additives.

When Connor started in with his next question, though, Capri was immediately defensive. She was brought back to that moment in Pulp Fiction where Vincent asks Mia to promise not to be offended. "You can't promise something like that.  I have no idea what you're gonna ask.  You could ask me what you're gonna ask me, and my natural response could be to be offended. Then, through no fault of my own, I woulda broken my promise."

She blew strands of hair away, already annoyed because Connor knew not to ask her things like that. "I'll try," she said flatly.

Funny how she thought of Vincent and Mia, considering how horribly that had turned out.  Fortunately, they wouldn't have to worry about quite the same drug-induced, near-death ending, but it could be just as bad or worse.  He had to force a tight smile, though.  She'd caught just the part he'd been stressing.

"Trying is all I asked, babe," he remarked, and then he sighed.  He didn't WANT to start this mess and tell her, but he'd already started, and she needed to know.  He just hoped she didn't freak the hell out.

"Okay, I was blind, remember?  Eyes torn up, not working, all that," he started, looking at her carefully.  They weren't a mess anymore, which hadn't struck most people as odd because he'd had sunglasses, but Capri had pulled his glasses off to see.  She'd probably been thinking a witch helped.  Something like that.  His eyes weren't green anymore in favor of a very pale blue, but he didn't know if she would have noticed that.  Not many people did.  "Well, someone I thought I trusted dragged me in to see that voodoo creep, Aristide, and he fixed them.

"He...uh...bonded me to a vampire in the process, though.  We haven't figured out how to undo it, and he says he can't," he added, his voice getting a little quicker as he told her what he'd been dreading, and he resisted wincing in preparation for her response, instead just watching her warily.  Now that he said it, he thought she was going to explode, and he didn't want her to.  He was wondering again if he should have.

She stared at him as he spoke, lips pressed tightly together as he tried to gradually immerse her into the information. She nodded a few times, made a few noises, and then as he finished up, sighed and smiled brightly.

"I've gotta go," she chirped, and picked up the manilla folder she had set down on the desk. She made a beeline for the door, damned if Connor was going to stop her. That was a lot of information to process, and after her last doctor's visit, she didn't need any extra stress. She was lucky she wasn't bound for the couch, but she'd promised the doctor she'd try to take it easy... this was NOT taking it easy.