dr_robchase | [For Gwen] - Sunday Morning

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gwen cooper

[For Gwen] - Sunday Morning

He'd tugged a lot of things along with him that Sunday morning. After booting the Doctor out of the room with a playful foot to his behind, he'd gotten Gwen, the cookies, muffins, and some crossword puzzles from Sarah Jane before settling in for the morning, locking the door for privacy and keeping the little terrace door open.

It was lazy, as per usual, but Chase liked to think he only worked in lazy. Except for the fact that instead of doing his crossword puzzle, he kept straining his neck to memorize definitions from the psychiatric textbook he had on the bed, a couple feet from Gwen.

"So, you still avoiding me?" he teased, barely glancing up as he fed Atalanta several crumbs of the muffin.

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"Yes, can't stand you," Gwen absently replies without looking up from her crossword. "Can't you tell?" Already sprawled across the bed on her back, she tosses her legs across Rob's lap, just because he happens to be there.

"Six letter word for novice, ending in T," she murmurs to herself as she peers up at the puzzle she's holding in front of her face. "Student... no, that's seven- Ah, infant." Chewing intently against her bottom lip, she pencils in the letters and moves onto the next clue.

Chase adjusted with her legs, almost...well, quietly surprised and pleased that he's garnered no reaction. It wasn't that Gwen's not hot or sexy, which she was, but lately, he didn't want anyone but the Doctor. His body didn't even react otherwise.

Absently, he pet Atalanta as he read his own medical books. "So is Peter still freaking out about your birthday thing?" he asked distractedly.

Gwen stills a moment, her fingers tightening against the crossword book. "He's not mentioned it, so I guess not," she answers, and then resumes chewing on the end of her pencil.

Chase just glanced at her, sympathetic on her behalf. "Do I need to go kick at his shins?" he asked curiously. "I'm good at kicking. Used to punt for football."

"No," is Gwen's quiet reply, and she sighs, letting both of her arms fall to her sides on the mattress with a thump. "I thought he was going to propose to me, how bloody stupid is that? Three months in! I've never been interested in getting married to anyone." Her head cants a bit so that she can get a better look at Rob. "Was with Rhys for years, thought we'd have a baby, never once thought we should get married, and now- God, it's daft. It's like the idea got in there and now I can't get it out. What the hell is wrong with me?"

Chase curiously looked at her, shifting to abandon his books and sprawl out beside her, idly toying with her hair because he can. "So you want family over marriage, no big deal. Some people just don't want marriage." But that brought up a different question. "Three months happens. Hell, three weeks happens," he pointed out.

"I wanted it to be true," Gwen admits in a whisper, and then looks away to the ceiling. "I don't even know why. Marriage was never important to me before. Why should it be now? I don't have to be married to have a family." Not that she's discussed either of those things with Peter.

"No, but it's a sacrament," Chase pointed out, fingers resting just lightly on Gwen's neck, warm and present. "It's a promise between you, him, and God to devote your whole lives to each other, to serve and care for, to cherish and love. It's a whole other state of being. And...to be honest, I think it's almost more stable for kids. Least, when the marriage works."

The touch is good, she needs it, and Gwen's eyes drop closed with a quiet sigh. "I feel like I'm a teenager again," she says, and then looks back to Rob. "Jack told me to talk to Peter about it, but I have no idea how. How, after only being together with someone for four months, do you say to them that you just happen to want to marry them and bear their children? What if I scare him off?"

"What if you don't tell him and miss your window?" he asked, playing the devil's advocate. "Sure, you might scare him off, but if you think he's that guy, well...can't hurt to bring it up as a hypothetical."

He could tell her. It would probably make her feel better.

"The Doctor and I had that conversation," he bit the bullet and said, with a shrug. "Doesn't mean we're rushing to do anything. We've just talked."

"Miss my window?" Gwen echoes incredulously. "How can I 'miss my window' on something like that, Rob? If you want to spend the rest of your life with a person, and they feel the same, isn't your window your whole life?" Gwen, however, isn't exactly an expert on this.

The news that Rob and the Doctor have discussed marriage doesn't come as any great surprise to Gwen, and she arches a knowing brow his way. "Somehow I doubt rushing is an option, there." She still remembers the fuss they'd made over 'officially' living together, when for all intents and purposes they were already doing just that.

Chase glanced up at Gwen curiously. "I don't know, and...rushing to have a kid? Yeah," he said, eyes wide and almost stricken. He ran his hands through his hair slowly. "I guess it just boils down to how much marriage means for each of you. How important it is to have that. Maybe for you two it's nothing, maybe for Peter, it means the world."

"And," he offered. "I think that he might have known, just maybe, subliminally, what his gift meant."

"Wait, wait, back up," Gwen says, sitting up cross-legged on the bed and peering down at Rob. "You've talked about kids?" Is everyone going to have children except her? And why hadn't they said anything to her? What is she, chopped liver?

"Kids, not marriage," he agreed, more than a little pale now. "And the kids thing was more me than the Doctor. It was a status conversation?" he tried to define it and found he was failing horribly.

"You know, like...we've been together this long, by the way, I've always wanted a little boy, please don't leave me?" he mimicked himself.

"Oh, Rob," Gwen cries, her expression softening as she reaches to squeeze his closest hand. "I had no idea, sweetheart, you never said! What did he say?"

Chase was smiling, but it was barely there, almost half-hidden, half-reserved and he shrugged. "He said yeah," he agreed. "And we agreed that we're both too damn selfish to even be looking at this for a couple of years down the road." Because even if he wanted a boy, he didn't want that to intrude on the happiness he'd finally found.

"So see? There's no harm in just having a conversation to establish where you each stand," he said, almost mostly logic and some smugness.

"Easy for you to say," Gwen protests with a petulant little frown. "You're not a woman pushing thirty surrounded by babies and pregnant women. Years? God, I think my ovaries would implode by then."

Moaning, she tips forward and presses her face against Rob's stomach. "What if he wants to wait? What if he thinks he'll get home and doesn't want to start a family with me, here? What if he doesn't think he's ready for kids?"

Chase just laughed at that, ruffling up her hair before petting it like she's the puppy in the room and not Atalanta. "Oh, poor you," he teased. "With the capability to produce an heir without bribing some unsuspecting woman who will have to not meet the Doctor if I want her to stick around for nine and a half months."

He eased back until he was lying down on his back, peering up at the ceiling before glancing to the side and at the stairs that led to the downstairs half of their room. "Gwen, they're all what-ifs," he pointed out. "What if he says 'sure, by the New Year' or..." he drew out the word. "Or 'I can't imagine anyone else being the mother of my kids' or...hell, what if he just says yes?"

He gave her an almost-critical look. "Or are you afraid?" It was getting hard now to turn the psychiatrist-in-training off.

Gwen's shoulders lift with a large sigh. "I'm terrified," she admits, and turns her head to the side to look Rob in the face. "I'm so afraid that he doesn't want the same things I do." She's been disappointed on that count before, and it wasn't so long ago.

She blinks once, slowly, and then quietly adds, "I would have thought you'd ask me."

Chase just watched her for a long moment before what she was saying settled in. "Maybe I'm terrified for you," he said quietly, not really joking, "that you'll never ask and miss out."

And then...that. "Gwen," he managed, a bit of a laugh. "It's a big deal, the whole 'bear my child' thing. And scared or not, you have Peter."

That stings, for reasons both justified and immature, and Gwen pushes herself up again, flipping her hair over her shoulder and pointedly not looking at Rob. "I know it's a big deal," she replies, and takes up her puzzle book again. "And what if I don't have Peter? What if he says no, or he disappears tomorrow?"

"Then you won't have a steady boyfriend who'll come beat me up when I want you to be pregnant for nine and a half months of your life to give me a kid. Me and the Doctor," he amended. "Sorry, I'm getting used to that still. I didn't expect him to want in."

"Right, of course, I'm being unrealistic," Gwen replies as she locates her pencil and attempts to find where she'd left off. At least he's confirmed for her that she's got her head in the clouds, even if he'd not intended it. She'll not talk to Peter.

Chase gave a mock-groan and abandoned his books to ease closer to her and hug her without a word of warning. "Gweeeen," he drew out the word, almost whining.

"I need to go," Gwen says aloofly, attempting to prise herself from Rob's embrace. "I told Peter I'd meet him for lunch," she lies. "I need to start getting ready."

But Chase didn't move at all, just tightened his embrace around her, like a rock, really, sitting atop. "Nope," he said decisively. He pressed his lips to her hair. "See, cuz, I wanna talk with the eventual mother of my child, if you're serious."

"Stop it," Gwen snaps, frowning. "Don't placate me, Rob, I'm not in the mood." Realizing that he outweighs her and she won't be able to escape until he deems it so, she's stopped moving, and is staring across the room with annoyance.

He scoffed. "Placating you? Gwen, the only reason I'm not marking you down in my calendar as 'getting knocked up by me' is because Peter will be pissed, it's a huge commitment and I'm..." he trailed off, hesitating, "well, I'm not sure you're not just saying it to placate me."

"You think I don't know how big a commitment it is?" Gwen shoots back, swinging her gaze around to Rob. "That I've not given any thought to how big a risk it is to have children in this place?" She swallows hard, but her eyes are suddenly shining with unshed tears anyway. As Rob's likely clued into already, this isn't really about him not asking her to have his baby.

And he understood, all too easily and very suddenly and felt horrible all at once. "Gwen," he said quietly, trying to only hug her tighter. "Tell me? About what you've thought? What you want?"

Gwen's face crumples a bit, and she finally hugs Rob back, turning her face in against his neck. "I've wanted a family so long," she mumbles. "Even before I came here. And now Tosh is having a baby, and it's not fair. It's not fair." It's purely selfish on her part, and irrational besides, but Gwen's never been especially rational as a rule.

"Jay has a daughter," he pointed out, so quiet that it might as well have been inaudible. "And a soon-to-be-wife. Trust me, Gwen," he spoke, words only for her, "when I say I understand how unfair things are." He gave her a weak smile, stroking her hair from off her face, just a little. "Maybe I'm stupid, but I think your time's not up yet at all. And you'll get it."

"I should be happy for her," Gwen sighs, and then grits her teeth, her jaw flexing. "But it's Owen. Owen." Which is insult to injury, really.

Leaning back, she shakes her head in dismay at herself. "I don't want to push Peter away," she explains. "Rhys and I had been together years and had only casually discussed children. I've been with Peter four months." Logically, she knows this should make a difference. Should encourage her to divert her attentions elsewhere. But there's a very large part of her that's insisting it's long enough, because she knows. For the first time in her life, she knows that she doesn't want to be with anyone else. For the first time, she's looking at a man and not thinking that she wants a child, but that she wants his child, and it's been an overwhelming epiphany for her.

"Gwen, don't psyche yourself out because time is no constant," he reminded her. "I mean, four months is a long time. Four months can be the end of a lifetime for a cancer patient or...or the changing of the entire world. Four months is no petty bit."

Eyes downcast, Gwen bites furtively against her bottom lip. Rob's words mingle with Jack's in her mind, and then with her own as she insisted to Peter that she didn't want to lie anymore. This, she knows, is as good as a lie. Holding everything inside, keeping from him what she's feeling. Waiting for the other shoe to drop and sabotaging herself when it doesn't.

"Alright," she quietly relents, not looking up.

He idly gave her back a simple rub, easing away and collapsing on the bed, staring at her upside-down from where he was. "If you want it, you deserve it," he insisted firmly. "Says me."

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[For Gwen] - Sunday Morning

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