A Slow Burn // Brian 'Otis' Zvonecek // Chicago Fire ✔️

60 || FOSTER

- a few months later -

Three minutes.

That was all. Just three minutes until Riley found out whether the future of her and Otis's life would change forever, or whether it would stay the same as it had been.

Riley leaned against the bathroom counter, her fingertips tapping absently against the cold marble beneath them. Her eyes remained focused on her phone, her gaze following the orange circle that surrounded the numbers, watching as it slowly ran down as the countdown neared its end.

It was only three minutes but in that moment it felt like three hours. Her stomach was in knots. Her heart was pounding fast and each time she watched the numbers change it pounded harder. And when the chime of the alarm meeting it's end began to fill the bathroom, she could have sworn she felt her heart stop entirely.

Shakily, and after shutting off the alarm, Riley reached out to grab what she'd been waiting the longest three minutes of her life for.

A pregnancy test.

When her time of the month didn't arrive on the day it usually did, Riley couldn't help but think that she might be pregnant. Ever since she and Otis got married they'd stopped using protection and Riley had stopped taking her birth control too as she hated the way it made her feel. So when her period was late, it filled her with mixed thoughts as to the reason why.

Closing her eyes for just a second, Riley took a deep breath and once she reopened them, she was staring down at the white and blue stick in her hand, the result of which had her unsure what she should be feeling.

"Negative?" Riley whispered, lowering the stick to lean her hand against the counter top again, her eyes never once leaving the faint red lines that could so easily change a persons life.

She wasn't sure whether she was happy that she wasn't pregnant or whether she was disappointed that they weren't about to start a family. Sure not being pregnant meant she could still go to work, still be a firefighter, but the longer she and Otis had been married, the more she'd started thinking about what it would be like to have a little Russian-Irish-American baby running about the place, getting up to all kinds of mischief just like their father.

In the biological sense, Riley was technically already a mother when it came to Rose, but that was different. She hadn't raised Rose, hadn't given birth to her and legally she wasn't even her mother, and never would be. And Riley was happy with that arraignment, otherwise she'd have never given her eggs to Ryan and James when they asked, but she couldn't deny that over the past few months she'd thought about nothing more than being a mother.

Wrapping the test in toilet paper, Riley buried it in the bin where hopefully nobody would ever see it. She was unsure whether to tell Otis she'd even taken one as there didn't really seem like much point when it was negative, but at the same time she thought he deserved to know.

After taking a second to compose herself and after washing her hands, Riley headed back out to the bedroom where Otis was still sound asleep in their bed. She sat gently down on the edge of the mattress, her hands shaking a little as she held them against her thighs. She couldn't tell him, could she?

Riley knew how much Otis wanted to be a dad and with the way he was with Rose and with his nephews, she knew he'd be a great one. But she was scared that telling him she'd had a pregnancy scare only to find out it was negative would crush him and the last thing she ever wanted to do was get his hopes up in terms of something he wanted more than anything.

For all she knew, she could never have children. For all she knew, she could be infertile or at risk of life threatening injuries if she got pregnant. It happens often, Riley had seen it. It's what happened to Gabby, it's part of the reason why she left, why she took Chief Hatcher's offer to move to Puerto Rico to help those in need. It happened often, and in all honesty, it scared Riley because the last thing she ever wanted was to be unable to have children with the love of her life.