My Guardian Vampire

Gerard and I had never talked about if we had wanted to know the baby’s sex.
In fact, we hadn’t talked about a lot of things. I knew Gerard loved me, and I was sure he knew I loved him, but we weren’t ready for a baby, no matter how much I wished it was different. I knew we weren’t. Gerard wasn’t a 200 year old vampire like Billie, he was my around my age, just a few years older. I hadn’t honestly known if I had wanted children at all.

Gerard and I had also only briefly talked about abortion after it first happened. It seemed like forever ago, but it was only over a couple of months…

“Hey Al,” Gerard said, “what did it say?” He sat down on the couch next to me and held my hand.

“I’m pregnant,” I breathed. He squeezed my hand and then put his arm around my shoulders.

“So, what do you want to do?”

“I…don’t know,” I choked out, and began to cry. “Holy fuck Gerard. I’m pregnant. I can’t be pregnant. I’m not even out of High School.”

“I know,” he said, and turned my face. “Ali, you know I love you. And I know you love me. But do you think we’re ready for this?”

“I don’t know Gerard…I don’t-I can’t even process this.” I ran my hands through my hair and sunk into the couch. "I mean...there's always abortion. But I don't know how you feel about that...I don't know how I feel about that."

“Well…” he said. “Honestly, I don’t mind the idea of having a kid. No wait, that sounds awful. I just mean…” he trailed, and looked at me. “I do want to have a kid. I thought for a few years now that I’d never be able to, and it was an awful feeling. I never want to go through that again. I look and parents with their kids, and I wished to have that so badly. I couldn’t even adopt, being a vampire. But with you…” he looked directly at me. “I think I could have a kid. I could make it work with the person I want to spend the rest of my life with.” He gave me a kiss and we broke apart after a moment. “So it’s up to you, kiddo. I’m just going to let you know that I would like to have children with you eventually, if you’re willing. But it doesn’t have to be now. So it’s your call.”

I stared at him for a long, long while. I knew we wouldn’t be ready for a child yet, but in nine months, we could be. I loved Gerard more than anything in this world, and I knew a child could ruin a relationship…
I looked at my stomach, and rubbed it.

At that moment, I knew we could do this together, even if we weren’t prepared. It could even make us stronger.

“I’m in,” I said, and smiled.

“Gerard, I can’t believe we never talked about this. We were almost going to be on our way to it right now.”

“Well, in our excuse, we didn’t plan to risk going to a hospital for another few months.”

“Very true…” I agreed. “But still. You and I need to start thinking about things we haven’t talked about yet, even if it is really awkward.”

And awkward it was, though I was not sure why. Unlike the quote-unquote normal (not that we were ever normal to begin with) couples, I was the one that didn’t like to talk as much about personal things. That’s not to say our relationship was platonic- god forbid, not at all. I felt like I could talk to Gerard, which was why he was so very dear to me. I knew I could talk to him about anything…in due time. No one in my family really talked, per sé. There was always the “Oh hi, how was your day? Well, you deserved the kick in the gut and the dirt in your face, you stupid disappointment…” But we never talked about problems.

After all, there were no problems in the Reed household, whatsoever. Well, except for me, because I was the reason the bills weren’t paid, the pluming was frozen, work went badly…Whatever it was, Ali Reed did it. It was all Ali Reed’s fault…

But the specifics weren’t important. What was important was that I had a hard time talking about problems. But Gerard and I were working on it, truthfully. We had certainly learned the importance of talking after what had happened with Bert, and the thoughts I was having that I was so afraid to talk to anyone about. We had realized that most of what happened between us was because of this communication problem: if he had just told me in the beginning about his brother, and what was going on with him (though he had good reason to hold back, admittedly), if I had just told him about the thoughts I was having (though he said it was completely understandable not to want to tell anyone when you thought you were going insane), we could have not had each situation be so goddamn drastic. We promised each other no matter how much it might have frightened the other, we would talk about it. We would communicate.

And things would be okay.

“Would you like know the sex of the baby?” Gerard asked. I pouted, and hoped he couldn’t read my mind. I didn’t want to go first and effect his decision.

“Uhm…meheh,” I groaned. “Can you go first? I don’t want to effect your decision.”

“That’s not fair,” Gerard complained. I knew it wasn’t either, and sighed.

“I know. But what’s a fair way to do this?”

“Uh…” He squinted his eyes tightly, looking like he was either constipated or having a hard time forming an idea, forcing me to suppress a smile at his direction. “Fuck this. Why don’t we just write it down? I promise I won’t cheat and try to read your mind.”

“Sure,” I agreed. Mike tore us some paper, and tore a piece for himself.

“In case there’s a draw,” he laughed.

I wrote my answer on my torn piece as Gerard wrote on his. I crumpled it up and handed it to Mike, and then Gerard did the same.

“So, moment of truth,” Mike said, unfolding the two papers and looking at them.

I looked at Gerard, and he smiled at me. He reached over and held my hand.

“And the winner is…”