Who: Neil and Ella What: Retrieving baby Beth. Where: Aria. When: Recently. Warnings/Rating: Nooone.
Two weeks, and Neil had bypassed starting to worry and gone straight to panicking that Beth’s mother might never come back. He knew, at least, that the woman existed, but he had no idea where she was or why she couldn’t wake up. Was she in a coma? Was she dead? Maybe he should have filed a missing persons report, but if the law got involved they’d take the baby and he’d have no control over where she went or what happened. It would be out of his hands, and if the mother did return, she would have a hell of a time explaining where she’d been for the past couple of weeks.
Normally, he wouldn’t have cared. It wasn’t his kid, after all. Not his problem. But that wasn’t quite true, because Ella showing up in his dream had made it his problem-- no, his responsibility, and now he was irrevocably tangled in the well-being of a baby and her mother. For a guy who hadn’t been around kids in a long, long time, he hadn’t done too badly. The suite wasn’t exactly made for kids, but he and Louis had gone shopping for baby supplies, which amidst diapers, a crib, bedding, and formula, had also included those pain in the ass baby-proofing things despite the fact that Beth was a little young to start crawling around and trying to open drawers. Better safe than sorry, though, and Neil had gone into overdrive when it came to taking care of the kid. He could have just stayed at Ella’s place, but he felt weird staying in someone else’s house, just like he felt weird about taking her stuff; besides, it wasn’t like he couldn’t afford it. A few hundred or more spent on baby supplies that he’d never use again wasn’t a big deal to him.
Between himself, Casey and Ash, there had been no disasters, nothing that would scar the nine-month-old for life or cause Ella to press criminal charges. There was a lot of crying, a lot of agonizing when Beth just wouldn’t eat, or wouldn’t sleep, and it took him a while to get the hang of changing diapers, but now it was finally over. Ella was back, she was coming to pick up her kid, and his suite would no longer smell like baby powder and spit-up. And, really, he was no caregiver. Beth needed her mother.
She was blessedly quiet, the baby, though Neil had no idea how that would last for. He had the crib set up in the living room, where he’d been crashing on the couch for weeks, where a variety of soft toys, bottles of baby formula, and blankets were stacked in a sort of organized mess. If a part of him thought that maybe, just maybe, he might actually miss the kid, it was stoutly ignored.
The cab wasn’t in her budget.
Two weeks out of work, the fancy restaurant with the low lighting and the uniform and the soft voices and list of daily specials and the bar on Saturdays - that cramped cabs out of her budget by a long shot, but Ella was buzzing-blank fear that refused to contemplate it, was the ocean-roar of adrenaline in her ears, empty hands and a whirl of movement through the apartment. Keys, keys and she looked for the diaper bag (still there: why was the diaper bag still there? A jolt, fear beating wild beneath her breastbone) and finally the door slammed behind her, the slap of sneakers on the tile floor and running for the street beyond and the nearest cab and the address in her hand, the little book bouncing as she went.
Aria. She watched the rush of traffic past the cab, her knee jittering in the back as the cab’s meter ticked idly and the lights choked red and Ella leaned her head against the cool sleekness of the glass and deliberately didn’t think about knowing it, about knowing the kind of men who lived in suites there. Men who paid out for hotel rooms instead of homes, who purchased company that left when the purpose of it was done. “Can we take another route please?” she heard her voice shake as she leaned forward, tapped the driver on the shoulder; trained singer tension lost in the quiver.
It took too long, the ride, long enough that she shoved a handful of bills sightlessly at him, slammed the door, ran the last two blocks herself. She ignored the concierge desk as she plunged past, sweaty sundress clinging and the rubber squeak of her sneakers into the nearest bank of elevators before pounding the buttons. Check he’s not a sexual predator - Bethie was young, Bethie was a baby, she couldn’t talk but maybe that was some people, it took all kinds. Ella hadn’t worried about sex before; she thought of the song she sang Beth asleep with, the warm weight of her, the particular note of her cry. It took too long, the elevator ride: she ran the length of the corridor and she was fists on the door to the right one, small, mussed blond woman and sleepless-wild, the other side of ‘108’.
Her concerns about the kind of man he was wouldn’t have surprised him; in fact, Neil fully expected Ella to be panicking terribly just then. Any mother would, and one dream was a poor judge of character. He wasn’t horrible, and he wasn’t a sex offender, but she didn’t know that. So when he heard the frantic knocking on his door he was on his feet immediately, and it was open a few seconds later. He took her in, mussed hair and sleep-deprived eyes, and then he stepped back wisely, not wanting to get in the way of a mother being reunited with her child. “She’s okay,” he said, the crib well within view of the front door. “Sorry, I should’ve-- left a note or something, letting you know I’d brought her here.”
Ella didn’t think of notes and she didn’t look at him beyond the initial flitter of gaze it took to see he was the same man who’d lain on too-green grass in a dream that was ragged, muzzy at its edges. She pushed past instead, and she gathered up Bethie, all strange smell clinging over familiar baby-scent, warm weight against her hip, below her breastbone and she tipped her chin down, lips to the tip of Beth’s head and breathed in safety, breathed in comfort. Then - and only then, hands smoothing down shoulders and spreading tiny hands, she looked at him, damp-eyed apology and smile. “Y’all should have left a note.” The voice was soft South and the quiet chiding was blunted off by it; she didn’t sound as though she said much that was annoyed at all.
“But she’s fine,” it was soft, it was addressed to the baby who pressed fat hand against Ella’s shoulder and showed a remarkable lack of anything like consternation at her sudden return after two weeks of absence.
“I’m sorry, I should have started with a thank you,” and now she looked, at the heavy opulence of a suite and at the man that stood in it, and the couch behind him loaded down with things Beth had never owned in her life. “Y’all look like a baby factory blew up in here.” A bewildered smile.
No matter how well taken care of the baby might have been while she was under his roof, Neil knew there was no substitute for a mother. He hung back tactfully, watching with only a hint of wistfulness as they were reunited, because this was what he’d wanted. No more crying, no more baby smell, no more waking up every five seconds because the presence of someone so young and vulnerable made him feel like he had to be alert at every moment. It was sweet, really, and while he’d had no reason at all to doubt Ella’s mothering skills--no one could control the doors, much as they wanted to--if he had, it would have been wiped away in that moment. “I know,” he admitted, sheepish, when she reminded him that he should have left a note. Idiot, of course he should have. “Sorry. I guess I just wasn’t thinking.”
She was fine, though, and he nodded, eager to agree. He wasn’t experienced and he wasn’t particularly parental, but he had tried. “No, it’s okay,” he insisted, vaguely uncomfortable in the presence of gratitude. “Don’t thank me. I just-- you know, I went to check it out, because my dreams aren’t usually like that, and I couldn’t just... do nothing.” He gave a sort of half shrug, unable to explain why he was so capable of apathy but, in this case, hadn’t managed to not care. He looked around at the suite, as though just realizing the amount of stuff he had, and laughed. “I didn’t want to take your things. I mean, it’s no big deal, all of this. I went shopping. You can keep it,” he added. “I don’t need any of it, and it was all for Beth anyway.” He paused again, and realized he hadn’t properly introduced himself, save for his name being visible on the forums. “I’m Neil, by the way. Neil Donovan.”
Ella didn’t think Beth had owned as much stuff as all the things crammed into the suite in her little life, and she thought either the man had more money than sense (how many babies needed so much?) or he knew nothing about babies at all; it was a vague look of something too polite to be disbelief as she slid the baby onto her hip with the comfort of long-practice, her left arm curled around Beth and her hand tight on the baby’s back and she walked the floor beside the crib. It looked like the man had emptied a damn store of everything that they sold for babies - and after the disbelief wore off, it was sweet. Real sweet. She turned up a smile at him, easy-open gratitude and shy embarrassment and, “I should probably have asked y’all your name but dreams don’t make much sense. Nice to meet you, Neil, Neil Donovan. You have much to do with babies before?” She eyed the couch.
Dreams didn’t make much sense but he’d gone on over to check it out and she’d come busting in, scared to death and Beth was in whatever baby-heaven was. “I owe you a whole lot. I hope you like cookies or something, because I got no real way to say thank you, otherwise.” Beth blinked benignly against her shoulder, small sovereign in a hastily-made queendom. “And I’m real sorry about the door. They said it only took twenty-four hours, a whole day maybe but not two weeks. I hope she wasn’t too much trouble?” Ella’s voice held hesitation, a step away from true embarrassment; a sitter was one thing, pushing in on a man who didn’t need to bother was another.
Standing there, looking at all the crap he’d bought through her eyes, Neil realized he might have gone a little overboard. Yeah, the saleswoman kept giving him strange looks while he was paying, and Louis had followed him around the store with a perpetual expression of bewilderment, but he hadn’t known what babies needed and better too much than too little, right? He watched, slightly apprehensive, as though his excessive spending meant he’d done something wrong, which concerned him far more than it should have. But then she was smiling, and he brought his shoulders down in relief. “Yeah, I know. I don’t really meet a lot of people in dreams either.” He considered bluffing, just for a moment, but decided honesty was the best way to go. “No,” he admitted. “I have a lot of younger siblings, but I kind of just watched, you know? I had some help, though. Ash, my sister, she babysits a lot, and Casey, my brother, loves kids. Louis helped me with the shopping. Sort of a joint effort, I guess.” During the daylight hours, at least.
She didn’t owe him anything, really, and he would have continued to insist had she not mentioned cookies. Maybe cookies were fine. Money he wouldn’t take, but cookies were harmless, and he wouldn’t have to feel guilty about it. “I’m good with cookies,” he said with a grin. “Don’t worry about it. The doors, I mean. You don’t have to explain. I get it. Sometimes stuff happens, and you can’t do anything about it. Usually you get kicked after twenty-four hours, but maybe something was going on in your door.” Two weeks was a long time, but maybe something had gone wrong. “She wasn’t,” he assured her. “It was fine. Really.”
Ella counted; Ash, that was one and Casey, that was two. Louis made it three and that was a family big enough to count on, solid enough to be reassuring. You didn’t grow up with siblings all over and turn out wrong, did you? He didn’t seem wrong in the least, this Neil who clearly had enough to live in Aria. “I make real good cookies. Maybe not two weeks of childcare good, but real good,” and if it sounded a little too clearly like guilt, she was fussing over Beth, head lowered so she didn’t have to look at him carefully, “I can’t pay you back for all the things, I can try maybe, if you don’t mind it going slow.” She kept her head down, the small knot of guilt wound tight and it ached against her ribs, she pressed lips to Beth’s smooth cheek to make herself stop thinking about the budget and how she could find the wherewithall and enough work through Anna to make enough to pay him back for baby stuff she didn’t need.
“I don’t like the doors much,” she said, and when she looked at him, it was eyes very blue and very direct; Ella was candid in a way that was small towns and knowing people and strangers not strangers very long. New York hadn’t shaken it out of her in four years there, “But I think the people are fine.” Ella drew out ‘fine’, she made it sound like ‘fine’ was a grand thing to be. “Y’all have been real helpful. You got all those siblings,” Ella sounded wistful, “Must be nice to have all those people right here. You like kids much?”
“I know it was a dream and all, but I remember your cookies being pretty good,” he said. “Two weeks of childcare good, I’d say.” Neil immediately shook his head when she mentioned paying him back, because it would be ridiculous, really, to accept her money when he had more than enough of his own. “No. I don’t want you to pay me back. I don’t need money, and I’m not taking yours. All this stuff? I don’t need it, so you might as well take it back with you.” He wasn’t angry, or even insulted, but his voice was firm; he wasn’t going to budge, not on this. While he wasn’t absolutely sure of her financial situation, he suspected paying back a stranger would make it difficult for her to make ends meet. Hell, if anything, he should be offering her money, but he didn’t want to come off like he was offering charity and unintentionally insult her in the process. Sam was like that; he had to pull teeth just to get her to let him help, and they actually knew each other beyond one dream.
He could definitely relate to how she felt about the doors. “I don’t like them either,” he admitted. As for his siblings, he shrugged. “Yeah, it’s nice. Ash is staying with me, but she’s out doing her own thing right now. Having family around helps.” Though he refrained from mentioning that he and Louis didn’t always get along. “Yeah, I like kids. I mean, I don’t know if I’ll ever have any of my own, but I like them. I have a bunch of nieces and nephews back home.” He’d always thought he would make a horrible father, in all honesty, and he was pretty sure he could find a handful of people to agree with that.
Relief unfurled, bloomed hot and warm in her throat, calmed her heart right down from flittering too fast. Ella didn’t like owing things, she didn’t like it a little bit but she liked the stack of bills even less - it wasn’t giving if she didn’t take any of it, not one bit. It wasn’t wrong then. “I don’t need anything,” Ella said quickly, stubborn as a drill sergeant, all heels dug in with a smile to take off the sting. Maybe he could return it? She looked around a little helplessly at baby paradise, and the sweet powder smell layered on over whatever it was ritzy suites were supposed to smell of when you lived there instead of dropped by. But she could give him cookies, and if it wasn’t nearly enough then at least he was pretending it was.
“Yeah, I guess family would help,” and if there were three of them all in the suite, maybe it was a little less crazy, maybe they split those hotel bills between them all? Ella had only paid a hotel bill the once, the one-step-up-from-a-motel Coop had taken her to, giggling all the while and when there hadn’t been enough cash in his wallet, they’d split it. She didn’t know how much a suite like the one they were stood in cost, but she knew how much the men in them paid for entertainment. “Back home? That’s ...England?” Ella made the guess, all soft bright smile for a passel of nephews and nieces. It wasn’t worth the free background check on this man, who stood tall in the middle of all the mess like it hadn’t bothered him one bit to have a baby for two weeks. “Why wouldn’t you have ‘em, if you like ‘em?”
Donating all the baby stuff seemed a waste when there was someone right in front of him who could use it, but Neil knew stubbornness, and he knew he could argue and cajole all he liked; Ella wasn’t going to budge. Short of delivering everything to her place when she wasn’t home, he could do little else. Maybe he’d hold onto some of it for a while, though. Just in case. “Alright,” he conceded. He wouldn’t return it; what he didn’t keep, he’d make sure found its way to people who needed it more than he did.
It would have been awkward, not necessarily difficult, to explain that he could afford this suite on his own. He never liked talking about money, and while he was more than willing to spend it, he felt like the fact that he got to live it up because his family just so happened to be wealthy wasn’t quite fair. “Scotland,” he said, with just a touch of wistfulness. “That’s where we were, in my dream. Home.” As for why he wouldn’t have kids, that earned a shrug. “I just never saw myself as the father type, I guess. I’m better as Uncle Neil.”
“Scotland,” Ella repeated, and she gave it all the magic and all the mystery of fairy-stories and growing up somewhere that was as far away as possible, with a wistful sound all her own. “Don’t you miss it, all the way over here?” She missed home something crazy, even after all the years in between and New York its own kind of home. Vegas had colored lights and madness, it had doors that walked you through to other worlds, it had women who shook it all for cash and men who laid it all down on the turn of a card - its own kind of fairy-story. The dream had been cool green and wide-spread trees and the kind of blue above she remembered, thin tissue of a dream at fingertip’s edge of a reach.
“All those siblings of yours, they have kids?” He didn’t look like the not father type, with a room full of baby things just because - a room full of things that a pushy salesperson could only account for so much of. Ella’s smile darted teasing, “Next y’all be telling me you’ll miss having a baby around.” There weren’t many people who’d miss a baby not theirs, it was mild disbelief and a note stealing in, almost laughter. “Your dream was pretty. Did I say sorry for coming in like that? I didn’t mean to spoil it.”
Did he miss home? Neil tilted his head to the side as he considered the question. In some ways, yes, he did. He didn’t necessarily miss his parents, but he missed a large chunk of his relatives, and he missed the familiarity, the safety of a warm bubble where he knew everything and everyone and they knew him in return. He’d lived a ways out from any city, and at night there had been no bright, man-made lights; the stars provided illumination. When he thought about it, really thought about it, at its core, home was his dream; peaceful and quiet, not necessarily connected to people. “Sometimes,” he admitted. “I did a lot of traveling, though, so I’ve gotten used to missing it. And I have some family here. Friends, even.” Not a lot of those, but there was Sam, and she counted for a lot even though he never knew where they stood on any given day.
The baby things were a result of overzealousness and too much money, rather than any real knowledge of what babies needed. “Not the ones here,” he said, “but some of the ones back home do. Louis, I don’t think he’ll ever have kids. Casey, maybe. Ash will, someday. I can imagine her being a mother.” In fact, if her husband hadn’t died, he was certain Ash would already have a kid or two to speak of. He blinked, and then shook his head, because he’d never admit that maybe, just maybe, he would miss having the kid around. It was crazy. It didn’t make any sense. “You didn’t, but you don’t need to,” he said, of her saying sorry. “It was kind of boring until you showed up, actually. And it worked out in the end, didn’t it?” At least in the sense that he hadn’t ended up being some kind of serial killer.
She smiled, all that family unwound and unpicked; Ella could imagine it, that warm certainty in others. He sounded happy, he sounded like his family was the kind you didn’t pull apart, didn’t return letters or leave phone calls unanswered. Not the kind that disowned one another. “Someone told me you might be a child molester,” Ella was frank, the kind of blunt that was all artless lack of edge, and wide, clear blue eyes. “I don’t think you are but I don’t think y’all would tell me if you were. Beth is okay, and I’m real grateful you looked after her. Even if you got enough stuff for three kids, not the one.” A grin. She shifted Beth onto her hip, the weight change a thoughtless, casual and comfortable sort of thing and she looked around a little bit at all that richness for a long minute.
“I think friends sometimes, they’re even better than family but family goes down way deep when you need ‘em,” and Ella was certain, because even if blood didn’t do it, then Coop had, and Coop and she had been there, it, the end of the line. “You need a body buried at three in the morning, family’ll do that.” Another grin and the tension that had been threaded through small shoulders had seeped to the kind of calm that was entirely relaxed. “I better get on out of your hair. And if I can return a favor,” a shrug, one that encompassed the suite, the baby things, the wide vastness of favors impossible to return. “Y’all let me know, right?”
Of course when children were involved, precautions needed to be taken, but Neil still blanched when she said someone had suggested he might be a child molester. He might not have been perfect, but hell, he wasn’t that, and for some reason her knowing he wasn’t any kind of sicko was important. “Yeah, I think the sitter was worried about that too,” he said. “I had to show her my ID and everything. I think she might’ve done a background check, or wanted me to think she was going to.” He paused, awkwardly, trying not to seem too earnest in his desire to convince him that he didn’t, and never would, hurt kids. “I’m not, though. I mean, I know if someone was, they’d say they wouldn’t, but I’m not. You can check with any of my siblings, or-- I don’t even have a criminal history. I was a little stupid back in college, sure, but nothing serious.” He stopped there, before he could get into actual rambling territory, and smiled. “I’m just glad you got back okay. A kid needs her mother.” As for the surplus of stuff, he shrugged. “I figured better safe than sorry.”
He saw the logic in her words. He and Louis, for example, didn’t always agree, didn’t always get along, even, but he’d been there for him when he’d hit rock bottom, disapproval aside. Not a lot of people would put in the time and effort to sober up their drunk screw-up of a brother, after all. “Yeah, that’s true. We don’t always get along, my siblings and I, but we’re there for each other, no matter how pissed off we might be.” he agreed. He didn’t think he’d ever call on her for a favor, but he appreciated the offer, and he nodded. Asking to see Beth again, that would be crossing the line. “I will. You do the same, if you ever need anything.”
She shifted Beth from one hip to the other, all squirming warm weight and she grinned at all that protest, one word after the next until they knocked about like bowling pins; there wasn’t a bit of Neil that sounded like he was wrong, the smooth-edged kind of wrong you couldn’t pry up with your fingernails. Ella had met plenty of wrong and she didn’t think the man whose words slid over one another and a list of sources to check on in with, needed a background check to prove it. Her smile slid on to sober, something about the eyes that wasn’t all laughter, “That’s real nice. Don’t let that go. You’ve got siblings like that, you keep them.” And she didn’t want one minute of thoughts sliding over to Max, for a woman she’d not seen in years, for ‘there for each other’ that hadn’t been.
She hitched up the diaper bag and she smiled at him, bright, all deliberate sunshine and Beth on her shoulder with her fingers stuffed in her mouth. “Honey, you’ve done more than enough for both of us. You want to visit, you come on by,” teasing, “And I’ll drop in those cookies. You tell me after if you dreamed ‘em right.”
Sam and his siblings were two surefire ways to get his smile to soften into something more genuine, despite his occasional issues with both. “Yeah, I intend to. I don’t want to lose them.” Even growing up, Neil had been closer to his siblings than his own parents, and that still rang true now. He wasn’t sure whether or not he should take her invitation seriously; if he did, and it wasn’t meant as such, it would be incredibly embarrassing, but if he did and she had meant it, that was admitting he had, to some degree, actually missed the baby. “Alright, I’ll let you know.” He smiled again, dropping his gaze to the baby, and he wiggled his fingers in an attempt at a child-like wave. “Bye.”