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“You smell… really good.”
It’s a rare evening: Donnie’s actually in bed with you, no one got hurt today, everyone made it home, and with the success of the latest supply run there’d been food enough to go around. Your already-smiling face brightens further at his words, and you laugh as he presses close to burrow his face in your shoulder from behind.
“So you’re going to crush me into the mattress?” you ask, expecting him to make some kind of quippy retort about how he does that most nights anyway; but he doesn’t. He’s still smelling you, like your scent is intoxicating him somehow. “…Donnie?”
“Shhh,” he murmurs, his beak running over your skin, his brow furrowing as he concentrates. It’s a confusing mix; his intense study makes you a little nervous, but he’s holding you so gently and filling every inch of your personal space with himself, making it nearly impossible to think about anything else.
“Don? Is everything okay?” you ask after a moment, going to roll over to face him only to freeze when he clutches at your body and pins you in place, a low rumbling sound from deep inside his shell searing straight to the animal place in your brain that screams for you to obey your mate. Shivering, worried, aroused, you comply.
…He’s still scenting you.
“Donnie. Donnie.” Urgency fills your voice, and though you don’t move—not that you could, what with how he’s got his hand on your shoulder and his legs strategically on yours—you do put enough emphasis in your tone that he finally pulls out of whatever turtle-brain part of himself he’d sunk into.
“…You…” he starts, his voice something that sounds a bit like wonder.
“Donnie, for fuck’s sake, what—”
“You’re pregnant.”
This time, you freeze without his command. The word bounces around in your head—pregnant pregnant pregnant—and bruises the sides of your skull for how hard it hits.
“…Is that… Is that even possible?” you ask, trying to turn. Again, he puts pressure on you, not letting you move. He isn't on top of you, not quite, but you're not going anywhere. One part of you wants to scream in frustration, but you can also feel the way his weight calms the panic that you see just on the edge of your reaction, its gnarly tendrils ominous and bleak. “How is that—We can’t—?”
“Apparently we can,” he says, slightly muffled from where he’s still scenting you. “Fuck, you—you smell so good. I have to get up in a few hours. I’m supposed to be sleeping right now. All I can think about is fucking you while you smell like this.”
His hot words, combined with the way he uses his grasp on you to roll his hips against yours, make you keen into the dark air of his lab. Still, you claw your way back, refusing to let him melt your brain. This is—This is important, you have to—you’re fucking pregnant in the apocalypse, there’s so much you need to—
“Donnie, we have to—” you start, but he cuts you off by sinking his teeth into the curve of your shoulder, one hand sliding down to press low on your stomach as he arches into you again, then again. Fuck; he knows your body better than you do, and with a twist of his fingers he has you nearly begging for him.
“Yeah. We do,” he murmurs, talking about something completely different and, infuriatingly, still managing to set your blood on fire. “You’re so pretty. Always feel good. Amazing. You’re incredible.”
…Oh, you think, hearing it in the tremble of his voice. Feeling it in the way that his fingers go light on you, the way he’s curling around you more than he is crawling on top of you. The gentle, gentle, gentle weight of his palm against where it’s not just you inside your body anymore. The curve of his mouth against your skin between the wet kisses and nips where he's drunk on you.
“…You’re happy?” you ask quietly, uncertainly, and that, that’s what finally pulls him to you.
“Of course,” he says, like it’s an absolute not to be questioned. “Why wouldn’t I be? I love you.” Then, going still, he seems to consider that there might be an alternative reaction. “…Are you happy?”
You stare at the wall in front of you, mismatched and haphazardly scraped together. Just out of your hearing range, you know there are millions of hungry aliens looking to erase the very memory of you and the ones you love off the surface of the planet. It’s cold in the winter and sweltering in the summer. There’s almost never enough food. Only Donnie’s desalination machine keeps water from being an issue, and it’s a delicate, delicate heartbeat for the entire operation. Any day, you could die. Any day, you could lose him. Hope is a butterfly wing between you all; beautiful but gossamer-thin.
You roll over to face him. This time, he doesn’t stop you.
He’s—god. Happy doesn’t even begin to touch it, you think, cupping his cheek with your hand and tracing your thumb at the line where his mask would be if he were wearing it. You haven’t seen his eyes this bright in… in… maybe ever, you think. His mouth is frowning now, waiting for your reaction, tempering his own, but you can see the shape of where he’d been smiling stupidly a mere moment ago.
“I’m… worried,” you tell him, whispering softly between you. “I’m scared. I’m—I’m so, so scared. I’m shocked. I’m…”
Donnie puts his hand over yours, keeping your palm pressed to his skin. It’s all you need.
“…I’m happy.”
His mouth goes back to that easy smile, his forehead pressing to yours as he pulls you close. This close, you can see the way his eyes are a little wet, and, oh, oh, he’s—he’s so much more than happy. It’s contagious; his delirious joy spilling over and making you giddy with the very idea of getting to share something like this with him.
Sniffling, you press a quick kiss to his lips, laughing wetly when he chases you for more, tucking his face into your throat and inhaling deeply like he can’t stop. His hand finds your skin beneath your shirt, and his teeth find you again, the low rumbling churr of hunger intermingling with the light chirps of jubilation. He’s his own symphony of contentment, filling the lab and drawing from you giddy little laughs that tickle before the two of you fall to familiar whines and keens and mewls instead. Through it all, he's careful; gentle; worshipful; a reverence of you that makes you tremble even more than his sweet touch.
There will be time for the rest of it, you decide, letting his fingers coil with yours above your head as he slides inside on a gasped chant of love you love you love you that fills you to your very soul.
For now… you’ll just be happy.