The view from the window at Sunrise Hospital was reminiscent of a hotel. The room was pale yellows, soothing and lined with flowers along the top, and it looked nothing like a delivery room anymore. Wren had avoided all the pre-birth visits, lamaze and breast feeding classes, so this was the first time she'd ever been inside the hospital. It hadn't been what she'd been expecting, not after Reno, and not after the messy comfort of Evie's house when Daisy was born. And maybe she'd made a really, really big fuss about even getting into the wheelchair to get up to the room a day earlier, but it all felt really silly now. The nurses had been sweet, and the doctor had been patient, and Luke didn't run away and pass out, and she wondered how two experiences could be so very different. After Gus, she'd been so sick she couldn't even move. Now, after a few hours of sleep, she felt fine. She was a little slow moving around, but no worse than she'd been in the past few months, and the baby was okay too. A little early, but the doctor said that was normal, and that everything had tested great. She wasn't really sure what kind of tests they were talking about, but she was glad they'd turned out okay. It gave her a little spike of panic, not knowing, but she didn't let it rouse her from the recliner hear the window, where she'd been dozing since waking up and finding Luke gone to shower and change, according to the nurse. It had been thirty hours, and she was going to send him back home to sleep, if he didn't agree to lie down on the room's couch and take a nap. She'd gotten a few hours of sleep, at least, and a warm shower hadn't hurt anything, either.
The baby was off being fitted with a security device, and Wren thought it sounded a lot like a house arrest anklet, but it ensured no one could walk out of the hospital with an infant, since the babies at Sunrise slept in the room with the mother. And anyway, it was only for a day. Everything had gone right, which meant they would be sent home tomorrow.
And that was something that Wren didn't really want to think of very much.
Babysitting Daisy sometimes, it wasn't the same as being always responsible for something so small and fragile. At a little under six pounds, the baby weighed less than any of the pets in the house and, while that was the kind of comparison Gus would make, it was also really, really scary. She wondered how her maman, at thirteen, had managed it. Wren remembered thirteen, and she'd barely been able to see clearly to the next day then. It was one of the reasons she was so unable to hold anything against her maman. To be someone's parent at thirteen, she didn't even understand it. And she didn't blame her for the life she'd chosen either, because no one hired thirteen year olds.
And she was already a parent, but Gus had come to them with all the important stuff taken care of. Even then, he'd been able to talk a little, and he'd been walking and running. There wasn't any chance of dropping him, and he slept through the night, even then. He didn't need special foods, and he didn't need to be changed. He'd been like a tiny person, and that hadn't been so hard, and she'd only had Gus a week before he went to live with Luke and Jack.
The door was right there, and while running away in white nightgown might be awkward and slow going, Wren was sure she could manage it. After all, running away was something she was wonderful at. But the doctor had told her about postpartum depression, and she'd promised herself she wouldn't make any decisions right then, not while she was scared and tired and overwhelmed. Luke would get upset, and he had to be so, so very tired. She hadn't made the past few weeks easy for him, and she knew it. So she stayed where she was, and she watched as Vegas' neon lights became brighter with the falling of evening. It was nothing like the Keys, where the sound of the ocean carried further than any lights did. She tugged the blanket that was over her legs higher, hiking one corner up against her shoulder, and she dozed on memories.
Convincing him to leave had taken the efforts of two doctors and three nurses, not to mention fifteen minutes of arguing, even though the baby was fine, Wren was fine, and the hard part was over. That was what they reassured him over and over, at least, but Luke didn’t want to go, despite still being in uniform and having been so for more than a day. The squad car was still parked outside, too, and eventually logic wore him down despite his fear that something bad would happen between the time he left and the time he returned. He worried about the baby, who’d been so very small, and he worried about Wren, who was so scared of motherhood, and had only weeks ago been determined to leave as soon as the baby was born. But the nurses promised to keep an eye on her, to tell her where he’d gone and that he’d be right back, and so he went. He returned the car, he showered, he changed into the first pair of jeans and hoodie he grabbed haphazardly from his closet, and he managed to reassure Gus that everything was fine and answer his excitedly babbled questions in succession. Yes, his maman was fine. Yes, the baby was okay, and no, he couldn’t see her yet, but they’d be home tomorrow and then he could. In the end, Gus told him (with childlike solemnity) to say hello to the baby for him, to tell his mother that he loved her, after promising to be a good boy for the sitter.
His hair was still wet when he headed back to the hospital and his eyes were tired, the result of having gone without so much as a nap for so long, but he didn’t care. The past thirty-odd hours ran through his mind as he drove, and he’d thought the delivery was simultaneously the most amazing and the most nerve-wracking thing he’d ever experienced. But it had gone smoothly, as smoothly as giving birth could go, and so he was grateful for that much. He felt like he was still on a high, like he couldn’t quite wrap his head around the fact that they had a baby, but while he was happy that happiness was tinged with fear; fear that he wouldn’t be a good father, fear that he would somehow hurt the tiny little bundle that was now their responsibility, fear that Wren would leave, even now, even after he’d tried so hard to talk her out of it. He wished, briefly, that they could be like other people, people who didn’t worry about their spouses running off and instead focused on their new child, but it was a fleeting thing, and he tried not to dwell on it. This was new for both of them, since they’d missed out on Gus’s infancy, and it was scary, but they’d get through it. He had paid vacation time saved up for work, which would get him a week or so, and beyond that, well, he’d see how things went. But they’d be fine; he clung to that hope, and he refused to let go.
He smiled at the nurses as he made his way through the halls and back to Wren’s room, and since he’d already proven himself to be quite the worrier they told him where the baby was before he went inside, as to avoid any panic. He nodded and let himself in, trying to be quiet in case she was asleep, not wanting to disturb her if she was. His expression turned fond when he caught sight of her in the recliner, covered in a blanket, and he made his way over to her, making as little noise as possible, content to stare instead of rousing her.
She didn't know what woke her. It could have been the door, footsteps, the strange room or the fact that it was him standing there, looking at her. But something did wake her, and she stretched and cracked open sleepy grey eyes. She hitched the blanket higher against her shoulder, and she smiled a fondly tired smile as she looked at him. She didn't say anything at first, keeping the room's strange and silent still, and she scooted back in the recliner, tucking herself into the corner of the large seat. She patted the space beside her, knowing he'd have to sit a little on the edge, but not really caring. It was a big chair, and she was small, and she just wanted him close without needing to go all the way to the bed, which seemed really far away just then. "Did you flash your badge and demand to know where your daughter was as soon as you stormed through the door?" she asked, because she knew precisely how much he worried. She was pretty sure he would get her fitted with a security anklet if he could manage it. And maybe that shouldn't have made her smile, but it did, and her fingers traced the seat of the recliner as she patted it for him.
"I was going to send you right home to sleep once you got here," she admitted, and then she shook her head guiltily. "But I don't want you to go, even if I should, because the nurses make it sound like we're never, ever going to sleep for a full night ever again." That wasn't even an exaggeration. The nurses talked about feeding every four hours, and the feeding process felt like it was going to take forever, and that didn't account for all the crying in-between. It all felt a lot overwhelming, and she had to take a deep breath to calm herself down before she started panicking. "Do you ever wonder how your parents managed it when you were really small?" she asked, the question hearkening back to her thoughts from earlier. And she was scared. She and MK didn't talk anymore, and Evie had been really busy since her père had come back. She was pretty sure Anaïs didn't know anything about babies, and she'd never missed her friendship with MK like she did just then.
She shook the thoughts off a moment later, because they weren't going to help at all, and she focused instead on the plastic baby bed that was sitting empty. "You're going to have to give the nurses a name for her. I wouldn't do it, and I think they wanted to shake me a little," she confessed. "They didn't say so, though," she added, not wanting him to worry. The nurses had been really, really patient with her refusal to do anything at all. She didn't think that was going to last very much longer, but maybe it would be easier now that he was here. She suspected he'd take to the baby just like he took to Gus, making it seem effortless. She'd had to fight every little tendril of insecurity and uncertainty with Gus, and she could already tell this was going to be the same. It almost made her want to apologize in advance, but she just bit her lower lip and pulled the blanket tighter against her body.
There was a moment of regret when she stretched and opened her eyes, because he knew she needed her rest and sleep wouldn’t come easily for the foreseeable future, but he smiled nonetheless, soft and quiet but no less genuine. He didn’t mind the silence that lingered as they looked at one another, and even his laugh was more air than sound when she asked if he’d flashed his badge upon arriving. “No,” he said, moving forward when she patted the space beside her. “I didn’t need to.” She was right in thinking that, were it possible, he’d outfit her with a tracking device too; it was hard to tell who he worried about more, really, but more often than not it was her. The baby and Gus were less likely to run away without warning, after all. Despite the chair not quite being made for two people he managed to maneuver himself next to her, one arm immediately finding its way around her shoulder.
He opened his mouth to argue, stubbornly unwilling to go back home and leave her here, but then she said she didn’t want him to go and he relaxed a little. “Good, because I’m not going anywhere,” he told her. And maybe the nights would be hard, between feeding and changing and crying, but parents all over the world did it, so it couldn’t be impossible. “We probably won’t be getting much sleep for a while,” he admitted, “but not forever. She won’t be a baby for the rest of her life. And we’ll take turns, so one of us won’t always be sleep deprived.” He might have been making it sound easier than it really would be, but he knew she was scared and he shoved his own fear aside in order to reassure her. His own parents were gone, so he couldn’t call them up to ask for advice, and he wasn’t going to be doing that with Thomas, not anytime soon. There was Max, but he doubted she’d be pleased when he finally got around to telling her, and while Jack would undoubtedly be willing to help he wasn’t a father either. He wished, with an intensity that surprised him, that his parents were still alive, but it was useless to want the impossible. “Yeah,” he said, after a few moments of quiet. “The thought of taking care of something so small… a lot of people do it, but it seems almost impossible.” He turned to look at her. “I know you’re scared. I am, too,” he admitted, thinking maybe that might help. “But we’ll be okay. We have each other, and you know Jack and Evie will help too.” He pointedly didn’t mention Adam or MK; they’d just try to tear them down, so why bother?
As for a name, he almost asked why she hadn’t just given the nurses one herself. Almost, but he stopped himself in time, and nodded instead. “Okay.” He paused. “I’m sure they understand, baby,” he assured her. He noticed the way she pulled the blanket tighter against herself, and he moved a little closer, just a little, his arm tightening around her in a similar fashion. “Did we decide on a name?”
She smiled softly when he said he didn't need to flash his badge at the nurses. "Does that mean they already know you're a worrier, and that they gave you an official update as soon as you walked in the door, so you didn't pull rank on them?" she asked as he acquiesced and sat down on the cramped recliner. She made the tiniest sound of discomfort as she scooted forward to lean against his side, beneath his arm, and then she closed her eyes again, after resettling her blanket. Her eyes didn't stay closed long, though, and she cracked them open every so often to look at him, as if he might disappear again if she looked away for too long. One of her arms slid along his back, her fingers bunching the fabric of his hoodie at his far hip.
She laughed when he opened his mouth to argue about not going home, face upturned and the sound tired and quiet. "That's why you should go rest, because we won't be getting much sleep," she told him, but she knew he wouldn't go. "They'll bring the baby back soon, and you probably won't get any sleep at all here. They keep saying things we need to go over, so I don't think they're going to let us sleep. But you're going to try. Promise?" she said, pointing to the couch with her free-hand. But it was a contradiction, really, because the hold she had on the fabric of his hoodie just tightened, so he wasn't going anywhere right away, not just then, not right away And she wanted to insist she'd take care of everything once they got home. It was the least she could do, since she didn't work like he did, but she wasn't sure she'd be able to do everything, and so she didn't offer. She thought, maybe, that some women just knew what to do, that it came natural to them. But then she remembered how hard a time Evie had when Daisy was born, and all the public posts and phone calls about the fact that Daisy hated her, and that Daisy wouldn't stop crying, no matter what she did. In her estimation, if Evie couldn't do something then it had to be really, really hard. "Evie said that Daisy hated her a lot at first," she finally said, biting her lip after voicing her concern. But it helped that he was scared too, it did. He was great with Gus, really great, and maybe it he was scared then it was just normal to be scared. Because she knew he'd be great with the baby; she was absolutely sure about that, and she rubbed her cheek against the fabric of his hoodie and inhaled home.
"Did you see Gus?" she asked, knowing he would have when he went home. "Was he okay?" she asked of the quiet, somber little boy, and she was still worried that he'd decide he didn't want to be anyone's brother. She slid the toes of her foot beneath the hem of his pantleg, looking for warmth, and she closed her eyes again. "Delia. We can call her Lia for short, and it's three letters, like Gus, which I like a lot." She smiled a little. "Maybe it'll make up for not naming her Zebra."
She described the situation so perfectly that he couldn’t help laughing, which ruined any chance he had at denial. “I’m pretty sure they just didn’t want another new father having a panic attack and causing a scene in the middle of the hospital,” he teased. There was a flicker of concern when she made that sound of discomfort, however small it was, but he liked having her close too much to even think of putting distance between them. He kept his chin tilted downward, looking at her, not wanting to look away, and he just smiled when she insisted that he should go rest. Maybe he should, but they both needed their sleep and he’d make sure she rested first before himself. “The stuff to go over probably won’t take all night,” he said, and he pulled a face when she asked him to promise to try. He didn’t think he’d be able to, but trying couldn’t hurt, right? “As long as you promise to try too,” he conceded, following the direction in which she pointed, to the couch, before looking back at her with a grin. “You don’t think they’ll let us share the bed?” He didn’t mind that her fingers tightened on his hoodie, because he didn’t want to go anywhere, and he traced over limbs covered by her blanket with the fingers of his free hand. The most experience he had with babies was Amanda, though he’d mostly been in the background for that; he’d even been too nervous to even ask to hold her. But if Max and Thomas, the two people most unlikely to be parents, could raise a baby, then surely they could too. “It probably felt like Daisy hated her,” he began slowly, “but that doesn’t mean she did. I don’t think babies can hate.” He tried to be logical, to ground her in reality, since one of them had to take on that role and he doubted that she could, with all her insecurities and her fear. “I’ve never done this either, and it’s scary, and it won’t be easy, but it will get better. Look at Daisy and Evie now,” he reassured her. “You’ll be a wonderful mother, I know you will, and I’ll always be here to remind you in case you forget.”
He nodded when she asked about Gus, his voice soft-fond in the quiet room. “Yeah, I did, and yeah, he’s okay. Asked a million questions about you and the baby.” There was a small yet insistent fear that Gus’s attitude would change, that he wouldn’t want a baby sister, but for now he seemed thrilled by the prospect. “I’m supposed to tell you he loves you, and I’m supposed to tell the baby hi for him,” he added. He was, admittedly, pleased that she liked a name he’d chosen, and he tugged absently on the blanket without thinking. “Lia,” he repeated. “I like it. And maybe. I’m sure it’ll grow on him.”
"I'm sure most new pères just assume their babies are okay," she said with a smile at his laugh and lack of denial. "And I'm sure most new pères don't think their baby's maman has run off in the five minutes they were gone, either." She rubbed her cheek against his shirt with a soft, contented sigh, giving even more indication that she wasn't really going to send him away. "And it might take all night. If she cries, they'll want us to handle it, while they watch and try to be helpful. I think it's supposed to make sure we don't do anything really, really wrong once we're home." Like drop her, which Wren had already been worrying about on and off since she woken up. Sharing the bed made her smile, and she shook her head. "Not for four weeks," she told him, though she knew that wasn't literally what he meant. "It'll give me time to take some of this pudge off," she said, sliding her fingers down to poke herself in the belly through the safety of the blanket. His hands along her limbs were nice, and she closed her eyes and took a deep, long breath. "That feels really, really good," she muttered, tipping her head back and forcing her eyes open so that she could look at him again. "Evie said Daisy cried for hours at a time, and she wouldn't ever stop for her," she said, remembering just how upset Evie had been at the beginning with Daisy. All that changed months in, but it had been really hard at first. "But you're right, Daisy likes her now, so maybe we shouldn't be scared if the baby cries and cries and doesn't seem to like us." She emphasized the word seem for his benefit. She smiled warmly at him a moment later. "Luke, you'd tell me I was wonderful even if I was forgetting all the important things, like feeding her," she told him knowingly. That made her think of being alone with the baby, which immediately made her start worrying, and she sat up a little without remember to be careful of the movement. "Do you need to go back to work right away?" she asked, a little panicked and with a hiss of pain.
But Gus was a safe topic, a distracting topic, and she smiled when he said the quiet little boy asked a million questions. "I hope he likes her," she said hopefully, unwitting echoing his thoughts. Gus hadn't had very much time with them at all, and she was worried that he'd feel ignored or unloved, though she couldn't really imagine Luke ever letting that happen. She looked down when he tugged on the blanket, the pull distracting her for a minute, and she smiled and looked back up when he agreed about the name. "He might call her Zebra anyway when we aren't around," she said, because Gus was always talking to the animals in tiny whispers that stopped whenever she got within hearing range. The thought made her grin, and she raised a hand and slid her fingers along his cheek. "Hi."
His expression turned sheepish when she teased him about thinking she’d run off, because he had worried about that very thing despite asking the nurses to keep an eye on her. It wasn’t that he thought she wanted to leave, but she got impulsive when she was scared and, well, the party coupled with the fact that she’d done it before left him perpetually fearful; sometimes it was just more muted, less prevalent. “I guess I’m not like most fathers,” he admitted, but with the admission came a smile; he could laugh at himself, at least about this. The thought of having a crew of nurses watching them while they tried to handle the baby, along with the fear of doing something wrong, made his smile vanish, but he tried not to let his nervousness show. “Oh.” He paused, took a breath. “That’s not too bad, I mean, that way we’ll be prepared. Them helping is good, right? And it can’t be that complicated.” He’d read books, or tried, but suddenly he felt like all that knowledge was useless and he knew absolutely nothing at all. But he couldn’t let himself feel like that, not when Wren was scared herself and he had to be there for her. He laughed when she took his question literally, and his nerves calmed a little. “I didn’t mean like that,” he said, and his smile turned teasing as he looked down at her. “Four weeks, huh? I bet you’re counting down the days.” He nudged at her hand when she poked at her belly, pulling a face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he told her. “You’re beautiful.” It was as much for him as it was for her, the way his hands moved over her blanket-covered body, since he’d always liked touching her, and he kept up the rhythm when she said it felt good. “I won’t stop, then,” he said, quiet and warm. He stayed quiet as she spoke, just listening, and he wondered how he’d keep himself from panicking when the baby cried and wouldn’t stop. “I think we just need to remember that all babies cry a lot, and it doesn’t mean she hates us,” he agreed. She was right in thinking that he’d claim she was wonderful regardless, proving his bias, but he just shrugged. “You are wonderful, and you wouldn’t ever forget to feed her.” He was firm in that belief, but concern spiked sharply when she sat up. Her panicking was the last thing he wanted, and he sought to reassure her as best he could. “It’s okay, baby,” he soothed. “I have some vacation time. I’ll still get paid and everything. I don’t have to go back right away.” And if he had to take some unpaid leave, well, she didn’t need to know that; he’d make up the money somehow.
Gus’s feelings towards the baby was something he worried about, just as much as he worried about the little boy feeling neglected or shoved aside. But she was right; Luke would do everything in his power to keep him from feeling that way. “He will,” he said surely, more for her sake than anything else. The boy probably would call the baby Zebra regardless, and that reality made him chuckle. “Yeah, he might. It can be her nickname.” His expression turned fond as her fingers slid along his cheek, and he leaned into her touch with a sigh. “Hi,” he echoed, shifting his weight slightly so he could lean in closer and kiss her.
She knew exactly why his expression turned sheepish like that, but she really couldn't blame him. Blaming him would mean pretending that she didn't know that she'd developed a really, really bad coping mechanism. Running had saved her once, when she was young and scared, but it hadn't done either of them any favors in the past five years. She knew, but that didn't mean she could stop the reaction when she was caught up in the middle of it. But just then, he was pretty safe. If she tried to run away, even without the baby, she was positive they would call him immediately, and they kept a really, really close eye on the new mamans. "It's not your fault," she told him fondly. "Most new pères don't have wives that run away like teenagers whenever something scares them." If he could laugh at his fears, the least she could do is acknowledge that they were very, very valid fears. As for his nervousness about the baby, she thought maybe all pères went through that. All the old wives tales made it sound like mamans were supposed to just know what to do, but that it was harder for pères. She didn't actually think those old wives were right, not given what she knew about how very good he was with Gus, but she thought it was pretty normal for him to be nervous; it was kind of adorable, even if she didn't believe what he was saying about it not being that complicated. And she really did expect the nurses to be standing at the door, little imaginary clipboards in their hands, deciding if they were good enough to be parents. Or worse, she thought the police would come and take the baby away when Luke wasn't there, because she wasn't fit to be left alone with an infant. But the worries abated when he said she was beautiful, and the soothing touch of his hands made her wish the nurses would let him sleep in the bed with her. She snuggled closer when he spoke, responding to that warmth in his voice, and she was smiling when responded drowsily. "I remember when you were so scared to touch me," she said, reminiscing. And she did remember. She remembered shaking hands and trembling fingers and so much tentativeness. Her fingers tightened in the fabric of the hoodie at his nip, and she rubbed her nose against the soft fabric beneath her cheek. And four weeks did seem like a really, really long time. "We can hold off until Christmas, and that can be my gift to you," she said of sex, a tip of head and a smile that was tired and playful by turns. And his words were reassuring, all of them, and the panic calmed into something softer, something that didn't make her want to jump out of the chair and run. Not that she thought he'd actually let her get past him.
"We'll call her Lia, and he'll call her Zee. She's going to be so confused," she said of the baby, and she only hoped the little girl liked animals and not something like ballet. But even that worry faded when he echoed her greeting, and she sighed into the kiss, trying to slid closer to him in the recliner that really didn't allow any extra movement, not with two people sharing it. Her fingertips wound into the hair at his nape, and she contented herself with that touch, a slide of fingers and a rain of kisses along his lower lip.
When the door opened with the nurse carrying the baby in a swaddled white blanket, Wren didn't even notice, and the woman slipped in and out, settling the baby into the little plastic baby monitor without saying a thing. Had Wren noticed, she would have realized the nurses weren't going to be quite as overbearing as she expected, but she didn't notice, not right away. And the baby was asleep and quiet, blue eyes closed, little hands tucked into the fold-over sleeves of the white shirt they had her tucked into, a green, hospital-issue pacifier between her bowed lips, and a little white cap covering a tuft of cinnamon hair.
The fact that his fears were valid only scared him more, bordering on expectation, but he thought that once they got through the first month or so things would calm down. She was scared now because it was new and unknown but once she saw that she wasn’t a bad mother, that she could take care of their daughter, she wouldn’t feel that urge to run anymore. He just had to make sure she didn’t slip and take off before then. And worst case scenario, if she did, he’d just bring her back. “Well,” he said slowly, “I guess it’s lucky that I’m the kind of man who won’t let his wife run when she’s scared, because I know it’ll pass.” He’d let it happen once, and he wasn’t going to make that same mistake again. There was permanence now, with Gus and the baby, a family he didn’t think he’d ever have and still didn’t think he deserved, and he so badly wanted to keep it. He didn’t put much stock in old wives’ tales and he didn’t think it was fair, the assumption that mothers were just supposed to know what to do; no one deserved that kind of pressure. But he’d make sure she wasn’t too hard on himself, and maybe him being just as scared, just as nervous, would help her see that it was normal. He smiled when she said she remembered when he was scared to touch her, because he remembered too, like it had only been yesterday instead of five long years ago. “I know,” he said quietly. “I wanted to get it right. I was scared of doing something wrong. I liked touching you then just as much as I do now, but I’m better at it.” He was better at letting himself lose control, better at showing her how he felt without tripping over words to try to describe it. Tired as he was, he thought he might be able to fall asleep there with her warm against him, but he fought back a yawn and forced himself to stay awake. “That’d be one hell of a Christmas present,” he teased, of holding off, “but it’s a long time to wait.”
He laughed at the thought of the baby being confused, eventually, at being called two different names, but he knew he wouldn’t have the heart to tell Gus otherwise. “Only at first. Then she’ll like having two names.” It was all too easy to lose himself in the kiss, to let his hands slide over her hips, and he sighed in pleasure as she kissed his lower lip. The nurse entering was a flicker in the back of his mind, something he registered without reacting to, and it wasn’t until she was gone that he pulled back, slowly, and nudged her. “Look,” he whispered, turning to do just that, and his expression softened as he looked at his daughter. Their daughter. He wondered, briefly, if this was how Thomas had felt when he’d looked at Amanda; he thought the answer might be yes. “She’s beautiful, just like her mother.” He’d already shed his tears but he felt his eyes well up all over again as he looked at her, hastily trying to blink them away.
Maybe he was right. Maybe in a month or two, all this worrying would seem so very silly. But just now it wasn't silly, and his slow assurance that he wouldn't let her run away was like a balm. It was hard to believe that just days earlier she'd been planning on doing precisely what he thought she was going to do. Leaving once the baby was born, it had seemed like the right choice when she'd been sitting in that church, while leafing through hymns and beliefs that weren't her own. But now, now she wasn't so sure anymore. There was still doubt, but it wasn't an overwhelming thing. She could breathe through it a little, and his assertion that her fears would pass was something she was willing to cling to for the moment, fingers wound tight around the words and the promise they offered. "You might spend a really, really big part of your future chasing me and bringing me home," she said, slightly sheepish and accompanied by worrying of her lower lip. His uncharacteristically confident comment about being better at touching her now, that made her smile, though, and maybe it would all be okay. Maybe she would figure out it, and maybe not being around when Gus was a baby wouldn't be such a very big deal. "You were always wonderful at touching me," she told him honestly. "Now you're just not as scared." Because tentative or forceful, it had always been about the fact that it was him that was touching her, and not about what he was doing with his hands, not at all.
She smiled when he swallowed down that yawn, and she began to order him to sleep, but his teasing about Christmas made her smile, and it took a second longer for her to remember that she'd meant to order him away, over there, across the room. And then he was commenting about the baby having two names and, really, what did it matter? She wouldn't have minded a hundred names when she was little, not if it meant there was someone else there who really understood her. And she wanted that for Gus, for him to have someone besides her and Luke, just in case. But none of that mattered when he kissed her, and she didn't come down to earth right away when he spoke. The whisper confused her, though her gaze eventually settled on the plastic baby bed just a few feet away from them. "Oh," she whispered, shoulders tensing with nervousness. "Something so small shouldn't be so scary," she muttered, going back to biting her lip and slinking back as far as she could in the chair. But the compliment made her eyes water, and she shook her head and pressed her fingers against her closed eyelids. "You're not allowed to make me cry," she told him, which was a little belated, since her eyes were already more than damp, fingers staunching the tears or not. She kissed his cheek, scooting forward just a tiny bit to do so. "Pick her up?" she suggested tentatively.
He’d stopped trying to understand why she didn’t just not run, if she meant what she said when she claimed to not want to leave him. It was just who she was, that fear linked to distance, and instead of getting angry his approach was to be a solid, reassuring presence that would always bring her back. Not that he would let her leave in the first place, but he couldn’t be with her 24/7. “You’re worth chasing after,” he told her. “I’ll bring you back as many times as I have to. If you manage to get away from me, that is,” he added, trying to add some humor to an otherwise somber topic. He looked at her in surprise when she said he’d always been wonderful at touching her, because he’d been so certain that he was horrible at it back when they were teenagers, with his inexperience and nervousness making him clumsy and hesitant. Sometimes, just for a moment or two, he could remember what it felt like to be a teenager, when everything was all so new and unknown. “I guess I’ve gotten better at not doubting myself,” he admitted. Now he believed that she wanted him, and he believed that she liked what he did.
The tension in her shoulders was palpable, and he found her hand with his and squeezed reassuringly. “I know,” he whispered, because he was terrified of doing everything wrong. He’d been scared with Gus too, but he was older, less small and fragile. He was walking and talking and he could understand things; he couldn’t soothe the baby’s tears away with words. The compliment had been an unthinking thing, and he squeezed her fingers again since he hadn’t meant to make her cry. “I didn’t mean to, but it’s true.” The kiss to his cheek made him smile, at least until she suggested that he pick the baby up; he froze. He’d never handled babies before, since he’d been too afraid to even ask if he could hold Amanda back in Seattle. But he had to set the example. He had to show her it wasn’t so scary, that it was possible to be a good parent. So he nodded, swallowing hard, and got to his feet, approaching the baby’s bed quietly as though one wrong move might wake her. He stood and looked down at her for a long, long moment, trying to breathe, trying to remember all those stupid books but drawing a blank. And then he thought that if Thomas could do this, if Max could, then so could he, and he exhaled heavily. He bent over the bed and, half expecting the nurses to burst in and stop him, slid one hand under the baby’s head and the other lower, beneath the blanket, and drew her up carefully to his chest. She made sudden discontented sound, like the start of a cry, and he drew in sharp intake of breath and held it in the expectation of screaming and crying to begin. But she didn’t wake, and she didn’t cry, and he exhaled in relief.
He held her in his arms like she was made of glass, remembering to support her head (all the books had emphasized that) and smiling. “Hi,” he whispered. “Hi, Delia.” He hadn’t been this happy since finding out about Gus, since he and Wren had gotten married; it felt like his heart was about to burst from his chest. He made his way back to the recliner and eased himself onto the edge, trying to make his movements as smooth as possible. “Here, you hold her,” he coaxed. “It’s okay. Really.”
"I can be really, really sneaky," she teased of getting away from him, her smile warm and adoring when he said she was worth chasing after. And that surprised expression on his face made her smile widen and brighten. "You're just more grown up," she said of his becoming more confident. It was the very first thing she'd noticed when she saw him again after all those years. Gone was the scared little boy she'd met in Seattle, and the man in his place was very different. Different, but still strangely the same beneath the skin. He was still shy and sweet and good, and all those things sneaked in when she was least expecting to see them. Like now, with that sweet look of surprise on his face when she'd least expected it. And the realization just made her cry more, cry in earnest now, and the reassuring squeeze of his fingers on hers only made it worse. She laughed a little. "You're making it worse," she told him, sentiment making it hard to stop crying. "How am I supposed to not cry when you're being so sweet?" she asked. And he was always sweet. He always was, from the time he kissed her goodbye in the mornings, when he thought she was still asleep, to when he kissed her goodnight. "I make your life really, really hard, and you're always so sweet." Forgotten, then, were the fights and the moments of lost tempers. And, really, they'd gotten better at those with the passage of time. No, that wasn't right. He'd gotten better at calming the ocean of her unreasonable fears, and in the quiet still of the room she could admit that to herself. That her fears were unreasonable. She didn't fear losing him just then, and she wasn't worried that she was ruining his life inside and out, not in that moment. And it was a little clear, and she settled back with a soft sigh, her fingers not giving up their claim on the fabric of his hoodie, merely shifting to his back and winding themselves there.
When he froze at her suggestion that he pick up the baby, she almost retracted it. But what would they do then? They couldn't just sit there forever, could they, staring at a plastic bassinet. Even she realized that. And since he wasn't going to let her run, and he wasn't going to run away himself, there wasn't much of an option. So she stayed quiet, and maybe she held her breath a little as she watched him. She bit her lower lip when he picked the tiny ball of blankets from the plastic bed, and she couldn't even believe it was a baby, really. She was so tiny, and while the doctors said the baby was close to the bottom of the acceptable weight spectrum, she was still safely within it; Wren had asked over and over. But it was still hard to believe, and she tried to scoot back further when he sat on the edge of the chair, wanting to give him all the room he could possibly need. And the tears, which had finally abated, started again when he whispered at the teensy, tiny thing in his arms. And the happiness on his face was something she hardly ever got to see, not with the craziness that was their lives. But it was genuine, and it chased away the last lingering fears that she'd forced him into this. He wasn't a very good actor, and he was terrible at pretending, and there was no way that smile wasn't real. It made her laugh a quiet, nervous laugh, the kind of thing born of months of worry, and she looked over his shoulder at the tiny, sleeping face of the tiny girl in his arms. "Bonjour," she whispered, her chin against the fabric of his sleeve and her finger pulling on the fabric at his back. And then he suggested she take the baby, and she was too scared to shake her head, too scared to say no, too scared to protest in the hundreds of ways she wanted to. She just bit her lip, and scooted back, so that she wouldn't drop the baby on the floor if she messed up. "If she cries, you promise you'll take her back? Promise?"
“Not sneaky enough to get by me,” he countered, some of his fear ebbing away in the face of their banter. Surely if she was really considering running away, she wouldn’t joke about it. His expression turned almost shy when she said he was grown up, which was stupid, but he hadn’t completely left the boy he’d been behind and she was the one person who could bring that part of him to light. “More grown up. I like that, even if I don’t feel like an adult most of the time.” He didn’t necessarily feel like a teenager either, but sometimes he just felt really young, too young to have children. But he liked being a father; he couldn’t deny that. He wasn’t expecting her to cry even harder, and he looked momentarily bewildered before shaking his head. “I don’t mean to make it worse,” he protested, half-laughing. “I don’t mean to be sweet either. It just comes naturally.” Which wasn’t exactly true, considering he had a bad temper and, while it had improved over the past two years, he still got angry sometimes, and they still fought. But everyone did, and he didn’t think it was some horrible thing that would destroy them. Not anymore. “You don’t make my life hard,” he insisted with a mock frown, which became a smile when she settled back and sighed.
The baby was small enough that he knew he would worry more than usual, and yeah, there was no way he was going straight back to work. Thinking about Gus being this small made him ache inside, because there was no way to get those lost years back, but the warm glow of having his daughter in his arms was enough to override it completely. He couldn’t seem to stop smiling and his vision was blurry, but he didn’t care. It was important, he thought, that Wren hold her, that she bond with the baby, and he took her nervous laughter to mean as much. “I promise,” he said, “but she won’t cry. You’ll see.” Maybe he couldn’t know that for sure, but he sure sounded like he did. He was just glad, really, that she didn’t outright say no, and he turned towards her when she scooted back on the chair. “Here, hold out your arms and just…” Whatever explanation he’d intended to give faded away, and he abandoned trying to explain entirely; it wasn’t like he really knew what he was doing either. Everything he did with the baby had been careful and this was no different, a gentle shift of weight from his arms to hers, slow as to not disturb her.
She was sure she could be sneaky enough to get by him. Maybe not here and now, in this tiny room with the nurses right outside, but normally. But she didn't say that, because she didn't want to upset him, not now. Now, she just liked how the fear ebbed from his features, and how it made him look younger. And that turn of shyness, that just made her smile at him like the teenager she'd been briefly, for that tiny period in Seattle after he'd decided he liked her, before she'd ruined everything by leaving New York. "And beautiful," she added, tacking the statement onto his admission that he didn't feel like an adult most of the time. She'd always felt like an adult. Even when she'd been in the Keys, barefoot and sundress and the sand between her toes, she'd felt like she was thirty, forty, fifty. In a strange way, she felt younger now than she did then. Not always, but there were glimmers of it, cracks in the surface of who she was, and they always took her by surprise. Like now, when she should feel so much more older and mature. Two children and a husband and so much responsibility looming, but she felt very young there, sitting in the chair with him, happy tears streaming down her cheeks. She kissed him when he said he didn't mean to be sweet, because teasing or not, it was such a change from the things he'd been saying just weeks before, after that party convinced him that he wasn't good, and that he wasn't sweet.
She could barely see through the tears as he held the little girl in his arms, and she felt a momentary pang of ache-sharp guilt at having denied him this with Gus. Having denied Gus too. She hadn't meant to, but it had happened, and she couldn't absolve herself like he did. And maybe it was fitting. Maybe some scars were meant to stay, no matter how other people wanted to will them away. But even the remorse didn't change the fact that her soul melted as she looked at him, and she thought she could stay there like that all day, just watching him with the tiny bundle in his arms. "I'm not sure I can breathe," she whispered, as if she would disturb everything if she spoke above a hush. And she knew he couldn't predict whether or not the baby would cry, and she knew he was just saying it to make her feel better. But she knew, too, that she needed to do this, and it would be easier with him there. Everything was easier with him beside her, no matter how dependant that sounded.
She took the baby carefully, holding her breath as she did, and she inhaled a second later, when a tiny whimper calmed and no screaming or wailing ensued. And she forgot to be scared right away somehow, though she didn't even notice at first. She leaned back in the chair, and she looked down at the tiny little thing she was holding, and she smiled and ducked her head, hair sliding along her cheek as she kissed the baby's nose. It resulted in a sleepy yawn from the baby, and Wren whispered quiet words in French, hushed and sweet.