Fifteenth of August:

The handle-bar moustache with delicate twirls at the corners, and the partnering clump of black hairs under Steven's chin, were about to accept their fate with a fresh razor.

He had grown out his facial hair over the summer tour, and although Leah had liked it when he returned home, complimented how it suited him, it was now treated like the plague and any kisses he tried were avoided because he was too bristly.

Steven wasn't in his best interests to argue since Leah was nine months pregnant with their baby, now three days past her due date, and the misery and constant discomfort from the summer heat had reached the point where any of his affection was completely useless.

So, the least he could do for her was shave his face, even if being watched was a bit intimidating.

"Do you want me to shave my head too?"

Sarcasm. It was his natural defence mechanism in an uncomfortable situation.

"What? What kind of question is that?" Leah tutted at his stupidity, knocking the back of her head against the bathroom wall. "Just stop making stupid jokes for thirty seconds, please."

Steven stopped applying shaving cream.

"I was being serious."

He wasn't, but his foam goatee and sunken expression implied otherwise.

"What?" Leah scrunched up her face, but it was in frustration rather than confusion. "Oh, just fuck off with your little...your little...rat's tail."

The mocking gesture towards his hair style didn't insult him, and as for the skinny rat's tail, Steven had tightly tied a few of the ends of his hair so they touched the top of his spine. It gave the appearance he had cut his hair, poofing up around his ears, barely falling past his chin, but he would never shave his head unless he really had to.

Leah had recently had a haircut too, the long length given a reset just past her shoulders. She had a rash desire to go blonde, but Steven managed to convince her out of it until she was feeling sane again, because it probably would have been his fault if she didn't like it.

Her sour moods were something he did his best to sweeten, especially since the due date had passed, but he often crossed the pity line, and he was better being useful around the house and taking Liv places, so he wasn't kicked out the house.

"Are you going to murder me?" Steven was unnerved by the deep frown and folded arms watching his every move.

"What?" It was the same tone as before, but the argumentative nature resolved itself. "No, don't be ridiculous."

"Okay," he mumbled, picking up the razor. "Just checking."

Steven started his task of shaving, but he couldn't help but wonder why his heavily pregnant girlfriend was up here when Liv was on her own downstairs. The four-year-old could be trusted for five, ten minutes, but usually one of them was in the same proximity. And the concerns for the circumstances only grew, because the more Steven tried focusing on moving a cheek muscle, pulling at his face to get the optimal angle to drag the blade across his skin, the more he noticed Leah's visible attempts to hide pain.

She looked away when she caught him staring, closed her eyes briefly, and let out a controlled, but much heavier stream of air. Maybe that was why she was watching him, because she wanted him to help, but wouldn't say.

"I know it's a stupid question, but is everything okay?" Steven hated the silence between them, and hadn't been able to put the right step forward since he had returned home from tour. "You just seem like you really want to kill me today."

Not his finest choice of words, but he seemed to have hit the nail on the head about getting some coherent feelings let out.

"Is everything o -am I okay?" Leah asked back, in such a heated way, it whipped his cool away.

"Y-yeah, I'm just asking. I'm worried about you."

She blinked at him out of shock, and Steven felt like he had been stripped bare, standing with a razor twisting between his fingers, and a half-shaved face.

He didn't dare speak again.

"No!" Leah cried, wildly gesturing from pent up emotions. "No, I'm not okay, because this baby won't come out, Steven! Nothing I do works, nothing you do works, my whole body hurts, and I can't remember the last time I slept for more than two hours at a time! And for god sake, can you please finish shaving? You look ridiculous, and you're giving me another reason to kill you."

Vexed monologue complete, Steven heard the swallow dip in his throat. He continued his role of looking like a fish out of water in expert fashion, having already known the above, because he would never learn to keep his mouth shut.

Caring intentions only, but it wasn't seen that way.

So, before he was shouted at again, Steven brought the razor up to remove the final bits of hair and wash the rest of the foam off. It was just that an awkward, intense silence of staring hard at his work in the mirror, and not daring to speak up, or even look at Leah, only got him so far.

"Arghh, fuck-shit." Razor clattering into the shallow water, Steven pressed his fingertip above his Adam's apple where red droplets were appearing.

"Steven..."

He gave a distracted hum out of second nature, and quickly grabbed a tissue to stop the bleeding. It was an amateur mistake, and the cut he had nicked into his skin couldn't have been in a worse place if he tried.

"Idiot. You complete-"

"Steven!"

Since there was an obscene amount of panic over his name, Steven forgot about stopping the bleeding cut high up his throat.

The fear of not going into labour before forty one weeks, therefore discounting the home birth they had planned and prepared for, was no more. He was staring at what he could only assume was a mess of broken waters, and realisation hit him like a freight train.

"Oh," he said faintly, meeting the equally scared gaze lifting from the floor. "Double shit."

For the longest time, neither of them moved. They didn't even speak. Steven knew he was supposed to be the calm one for more reasons than because he was already a dad, but he was a nervous wreck at Liv's birth, and that panic of being so useless was overwhelming him.

Trauma from the past had been triggered before he could stop it, and he was quick to zone out in a numb body that couldn't move.

"Steven! Don't-"

He wasn't blinking as the images flashed before him, and the desperation over his name was drowned out by cries of pain and machine beeps.

Being dressed in a hospital gown, shoved into a delivery ward whilst nails made tears in his rubber gloves, Steven saw Bebe, mid labour. He remembered it well, in the dazed state he had been in, but he was the hand to squeeze for the final push, and there was a smile behind the mask of the doctor when their baby daughter was welcomed to the world.

A transition later and Steven looked down at the wrapped up neonate awkwardly held in his arms, gums bared with cries, eyes screwed up in distress, and a tuft of dark hair stuck on the back of her head, but Liv was taken away before he had the chance to say a simple hello.

The hospital faded away to his apartment with Bebe, a blur of moments in those six months as a family, before a single gunshot made him yell out, and police sirens accompanied the delivery of news that broke his heart.

Ray's hope. Drugs. Dirty money.

Steven saw it all, the past being replayed to him in split second sequences, the good the bad and the ugly with Leah at the centre from the moment he saw her- hate, love, the breakup, a make-up, and everything in between that had brought them to where they were. So when he found himself back in a hospital environment, running and bursting through doors, he couldn't place it into a memory.

It was a figment of his imagination, traumatising with an uncertain truth.

"What's happening?" Steven was saying desperately, fighting against tears. "Where's my- why is no one saying anything! What's wrong with my son!"

Nurses looked glum, peeling away from the intense baby incubator unit. Steven was over in an instant, clutching the sides. He felt sick looking at the wires of ventilator equipment attached to his tiny, unmoving boy.

"Why is he-" The panic set in when he traced the wires back to the power sockets, and found they were all switched off. No monitor beeps. Just silence. "Why is he not breathing? Why aren't you doing anything!? Help him! You have to help him!"

Questions choked him up as he tried to turn on the ventilator, and because he was sobbing his pleas, he didn't see someone come up behind him and yank his shoulder back.

Steven stumbled with the strong movement, almost losing his footing on a slippery surface that when he looked was a pool of blood, and drew his terrified eyes upwards.

The doctor had blood splattered across his gown, intimidating height casting a shadow of trepidation, and as he lowered his mask to his chin with an equally red hand, it was an evil glinted smile Steven dreaded.

"Oh dear, oh dear Steve...It looks like your son is dead."

"Steven, pleeeasee! Don't have one of your flashbacks please- oh shit...please not now."

Leah was shaking his wrist, which was the physical contact that managed to snap him out of it. Freakishly cold in his own skin, but away from Matty dressed as his son's doctor, and away from a haunting fear that was appearing again.

"No, I'm here." Voice weakened, Steven touched the hand clasping his wrist. It was probably to assure himself more than anything. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

In relief, Leah dropped her cheek to his shoulder, an arm looped tightly around his middle to keep herself upright. With the outward hug, Steven turned his face into her hair, but failed to shake off if the fate of their baby had been hinted at.

"Can you..." Leah was clutching his t-shirt at the ribs, the pauses she took to breathe chopping up her words. "I need you to call the midwife...rightnow... andgeteverything...ready."

Steven wanted to slap himself when all he did was vaguely nod. He must've looked like a blank wall, a messy strip of unshaved hair under his chin, and completely emotionless because it was all going on inside.

"Oh god, I really need you." Leah was almost laughing through gritted teeth, as she took a step back. "So please don't take this to heart."

The connection of her palm to his cheek, knocked his face to the left before Steven registered the impacting arc of her arm upwards. It was executed well, and the sharp slap was what he needed to get out of his messed-up head for now.

His face returned forward, brown eyes steadying with focus instead of being glazed orbs of fear.

"Thank you."

The fact Steven cradled her face with such passion and kissed her forehead before he rushed into their bedroom, showed just how much he appreciated being slapped in the face.

It didn't stop him thinking about what he saw, especially the significance of a son that was still a fifty-fifty chance as neither of them knew, but Steven was moving and being more useful than he was thirty seconds ago.

He grabbed his phone, jamming it between his ear and shoulder to call the midwife, and at the same time prepared a plastic sheet, towels with cooling mats underneath, to cover a portion of their bedroom floor.

Everything was efficiently checked off, partly because it was all ready, including an emergency hospital bag and a birthing bag that had been dropped off for them, but also because this was one of the few times he was really needed and couldn't afford to let Leah down.

He refused to let his fractured, distressing memories and imagining dark situations that weren't real, defeat him.

"Hey." Optimistic, but Steven feathered a smile as he touched Leah's back. "Let's get you comfortable."

He knew she had moved, requiring the support of something when a contraction hit, but now that he had returned, she clutched onto him for dear life.

"What did you see?"

They stopped after a couple of slow steps, Steven frowning at the unnecessary interest.

"That's not important," he dismissed, adjusting his supporting arm. "Come on, the midwife will be here in less than ten minutes."

For the rest of the short distance, Leah couldn't pester him for details, because she was gnawing her pain into any part of him she could. Steven had dodged an interrogation bullet with the constant tight squeeze to their held hand, but every grimace or groan started to give him doubts about this home birth.

He was scaring himself now, negative thought after negative thought, and if he wasn't careful, a panic attack was waiting to pounce on him.

"It was bad, wasn't it?" A sense of desperation coated Leah's voice, her seated posture stiff. "You're never this unnerved."

Guilty, Steven looked up, one hand on top of the bed behind her head, the other resting on the large bump of her stomach. He had frozen again after helping her sit, and he continued to testify with silence speaking the words for him.

"I can make guesses," Leah continued, when she really shouldn't have been talking. "I'm not...stupid."

It was so much worse when Steven knew she knew, because when they were both invested in each other's mental health and well-being, there was nowhere to hide.

Leah wasn't looking at him anymore, concentrating in her own zone where an idiot boyfriend wasn't there to curse labour with a horrific fear when it was already terrifying enough. And when Steven could tell he wasn't wanted, he ducked his chin to his chest in his awkward, half-kneeling position, and made his hand slip from the bump of his unborn child.

They really were going to need more than a miracle to get through the birth...if they did at all.

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