Bruce Wainright has (onerule) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-12-13 01:16:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | batman, red hood, rose red |
Who: Luke, Jack, & Max
What: Visiting baby Delia.
Where: Luke & Wren's house.
When: Recently.
Warnings/Rating: Noooope.
Delia had woken up crying, as she usually did, and Luke was still amazed that babies could be so hungry so often. The initial newness of having a baby had faded a little, as had the panic and the fear, and even though Luke still felt like he had no idea what he was doing he’d gotten more comfortable with his routine. Holding the baby, feeding the baby, speaking babbling nonsense at her without care for how he sounded; it was all starting to feel natural. He hoped Wren felt the same, too, but from what he’d seen she was wonderful with her and there was no sign of the postpartum depression the doctor had warned them about.
Luke had the day off and Wren had taken Gus out to see Santa, which left him, Delia, and the pets for a few hours. The house wasn’t dirty, just a little messy, baby toys and Gus’s stuffed animals scattered on the floor while he fed the baby on the couch. The tree he and Gus had picked out was set up, half-decorated, while boxes of ornaments they hadn’t gotten to yet were piled up around the base. Petti was curled up on the recliner, as far away from Cygne as possible, who was amusing herself with a squishy ball since Finch was lying at Luke’s feet and couldn’t be bothered to play just then. By the time the bottle was empty Delia had quieted down, pacifier in her mouth and tiny arms waving contentedly. He knew Jack and Max would be coming by soon but he couldn’t bring himself to move, not just yet.
Max had a lot on her mind. There had been terrorists communications intercepted that hinted at knowledge of where the school was located, and after Reed's recent run-in, well, she didn't like the sound of any of it. The school itself was still a mess, and she had five recruits shipping out that were woefully under-trained, but there was a shortage, and the CIA didn't care about training the way the Army did. It rankled her, but there wasn't much she could do to change it, and she was having one of those weeks where she wondered if Silver hadn't done the right thing going awol all those years ago. But she had other concerns too. Namely, the fact that Amanda wanted to spend Christmas in Las Vegas. Her precocious daughter had written a very articulate little letter explaining that she had more family in Nevada than in New York, and using her best math skills to point out how much time she spent with her father, in comparison to the rest of her family. Brandon was willing to send her down on Christmas Eve, and Max was having a hard time using a gut feeling to explain why she thought it was a bad idea.
She parked her truck in the driveway of a modest little house, and she was glad to see that Luke wasn't living someplace worse. She'd been expecting something with an unkempt lawn and fewer bedrooms than there were children, but maybe things weren't so bad as she worried that they were. She turned off the radio, grabbed up the two packs of diapers she'd picked up on the way, and slammed the truck door shut behind her. She made the trek up the driveway without even a cane to help her, just sensible boots and a pair of warm jeans and a light sweater. These days, there wasn't even a limp in sight if she wasn't tired, and some of the pain lines had faded from around her eyes. She was about to knock on the door when she heard the rev of a familiar bike engine, and she turned and waited for Corvus to park. After all, she could use the minute to swallow down all the lecturing she was prepared to do. She was there to see a baby, not to tell the kid all the reasons that having the baby was a bad idea. It wasn't like the kid could send the baby back, after all.
"Did you encourage this?" Max called back to Corvus.
Jack had prepared himself a little on the ride over for what this visit might be like. Sure, he’d seen Max at Thanksgiving, and at the school, but they hadn’t been together alone for months and months, hadn’t spoken to each other privately in ages, aside from her petition to get him to join the school. He didn’t really know what was making him feel off balance. Maybe it was just the fact that things had so obviously cooled between them, obviously enough that Luke had seemed reticent to invite them both to the house at the same time without double checking first.
Maybe it was that. Maybe it was just that he hadn’t figured out how to adjust to having a different kind of relationship with her yet. That was going to take a little while, and he wasn’t going to break through feeling awkward without seeing her. Max was still his friend, whatever else there was, whoever else she saw or didn’t see.
When he rumbled up on his bike he came in a little slower than usual. No reason to roar up to the house and upset the baby inside, after all. He parked and climbed off, removing his helmet, carrying it in his left while waving his right to turn away Max’s accusation. “No, can’t say that I did,” he said, smiling a little. “It wasn’t really up to me whether Wren got pregnant, though. I don’t think they decided that one either, exactly.”
He came up beside her in front of the door, and looked from the diapers back to her face, raising a brow. “Think you can hold it all in?” he asked. He knew what she wanted to do. He knew her too well to think she was doing anything but rehearsing the lecture she wished she could recite.
Max didn't feel any strangeness. Corvus was still Corvus.
At some point the prior year, she'd thought that they might actually turn into something, and there was a hint of regret there, but the hurt was gone. And he was back to just being Corvus. And there wasn't anything new to make her feel awkward, not on her side. It wasn't like things with McKendrick were going anywhere, no matter how much of a blatant fool she made of herself. But she was good at falling for men who didn't fall back. It worked for her, so why change it. And she wasn't the type of woman that was in touch with her emotions, so she didn't understand that Corvus might be uncomfortable in the first place. No, for her, this was just another visit. After all, if she'd thought things were strained between them, she wouldn't have invited him to Thanksgiving. And she wouldn't have suggested coming with him to see the baby, but she had, and there they were.
She muttered something about birth control, but she knew she couldn't point many fingers when it came to that. Which she acknowledged by shoving the bags of diapers against Corvus' chest. "Don't even point out my hypocrisy, or I'll shoot you," she warned, a grin and an imperious point of a finger once she'd handed the bags off. "And I'm going to try," she promised about holding it all in. "At least the house is better than I thought it would be," she acknowledged, obviously pleased about that, if a little worried about how high the mortgage must be.
Hands free, now that she'd made Corvus do all the heavy lifting, she knocked on the door.
There was an immediate chorus of barking in response to the knock, as the puppy abandoned her toy and raced excitedly to the door to greet the newcomers. Finch merely raised his head, ears perked, but when Luke gave no sign that whoever was at the door posed a threat he lowered it back onto his paws without a sound.
“That’s Max and Jack,” he told Delia in a hushed whisper, as though she could understand. “You’ll like them. Max thinks you were a bad idea, but don’t worry, she’ll get over it.” The baby merely waved her arms in response and Luke laughed, carefully cradling her in his arms as he stood and made his way over to the door. He nudged the puppy out of the way with one foot and, after some maneuvering, managed to work the locks and turn the door handle, once again using his foot to open it all the way.
If the financial strain of supporting a family was taking its toll on him, there was no sign of it. He looked a little tired, sure, but that was to be expected, and he beamed at them with genuine happiness. “Hey,” he greeted. “Come in. This is Delia,” he added, and blue eyes regarded the strangers as she sucked on her pacifier. “Wren likes calling her Lia for short.”
The very fact that Max seemed so very at ease made Jack relax a bit. Perhaps they were both past it, now, and he could try to forget about everything like it had never happened and never stung. Anyway, that wasn't the point of this visit. The point was to see little Delia, and remember that there were things more important than personal sturm and drang. "When have I ever pointed out your hypocrisy?" he asked, catching the diapers with both hands to keep them from falling, mouth turning up in a good-natured smirk. "The house is nice," he agreed, but before he could say more, the door opened in front of them.
When Luke answered the door with the baby in his arms, Jack couldn't smile, with open surprise at how very beautiful the little girl was, and warmth. "Hi Lia," he said, and looked up with Luke. The happiness on Luke's face was all he needed to see. Planned or not, easy or not, Luke was happy. That was all that mattered, really. "How's your dad doing? Do you have a performance review?" He looked up at Luke. "I think you two did alright by yourselves."
Corvus was acting normal, and that was all that mattered to Max. After months of strained relations, the past few months had been different, and she was willing to take that at face value. So much so, that she didn't even notice any of Corvus' pensiveness. And when Luke opened the door, she was still quirking an eyebrow at Corvus' jab about her hypocrisy, but there was a grin that went along with it, one that was much easier and less tight than any of her smiles had been in the year since the accident in Bangladesh. "Kid, Corvus is implying I'm a hypocrite," she said easily to Luke, and she edged inside, helping by nudging the encroaching puppy with her. She let Jack have the first look at the baby, and she regarded Luke instead. Alright, so he didn't look like the life was giving him a nervous breakdown, and that was something positive. She still couldn't believe he was married with two kids, but she had trouble believing Amanda was over four-and-a-half feet tall.
"Hand her over," Max finally said, once she'd let Corvus coo for a few seconds. She had a rough start with learning how to handle Amanda, but she'd gotten over that eventually - not quick enough for Brandon's liking, but eventually. "She's small," she said, while she waited for Luke to get over whatever panic he felt at handing over the newborn. "Was she early?" she asked, intentionally attempting to keep any criticism out of her voice. Who was she to judge? Amanda had been born at 28 weeks, and hadn't that been a picnic? And she'd had no one to blame but herself. She reminded herself of that as she looked around. "Where's the zookeep?"
Like any proud new father, Luke wanted to show off his daughter and he was pleased by Jack’s reaction, pleased that he seemed to be as enamoured by her as he’d hoped. Neither he nor Max were blood but they were still the closest thing to family he had, and that counted for a lot. “I don’t think I’m ready for a performance review yet,” he laughed, looking down with no shortage of fondness. “She probably thinks I’m ridiculous. Don’t you, sweetheart?” He smiled again before looking up when Max spoke. Personally, he thought Jack’s implication was on the mark, but he just shrugged and stifled a laugh. “I can’t imagine why,” he said, deadpan. “Did Jack bring the diapers, or did you just make him carry them?” He knew that she worried about them financially, which was why he was betting on the latter. Okay, so kids weren’t cheap, but he was working and once Wren was feeling better she’d be doing the photography thing, which was better than anything else she’d come up with thus far, so things wouldn’t be so bad.
He was reluctant to hand the baby over, not because he didn’t trust Max but because he was still at the stage where he worried a lot and Wren was the only other one who could hold Delia without it making him panic. “She was a little early. A couple of weeks,” he shrugged, and very carefully deposited the baby into Max’s arms, biting down on the inside of his lip all the while. “But the doctor said she was fine.” He lead the way into the living room for something to do, lest he take Delia back, and the puppy followed at their heels, tail wagging happily. “Sorry for the mess. We’re still kind of in the middle of decorating,” he explained. “Gus is with Wren. They went to see Santa, and I bet he’s asking him for a zoo.”
"I would have, but they wouldn't fit on the back of the bike," Jack said, which was true enough while being a joke. He was going to have something sent to Wren and Luke for the baby, but not yet. He'd wanted to see the house first, and figure out what they didn't have for the infant no one had planned for, but was welcomed all the same. "And I never said you were a hypocrite," he added, to Max, as they stepped inside. He set the diapers down close to the door. "I just implied you could contradict yourself." He smiled, and smiled a little more when Luke handed over Lia with so much obvious anxiety. He knelt down to pet the puppy, looking up at Luke. "I think if Gus could fit one of every animal on Earth in this house, he'd ask for them."
Lia was small, but as Luke said, she did look hale and healthy enough, and nothing else mattered. “How is Gus taking to having a sister in the house?”
Max almost rolled her eyes at Luke's reluctance to hand the baby over. "Look at you, acting like a first-time parent," she said, easily settling the tiny newborn into her arms. "I'm not going to drop her, kid. Don't worry." And she guessed it made sense. After all, Luke hadn't known Gus when he was a baby. She made her way over to the couch and sat, setting the infant on her thighs and smiling down at her, fingers tracing along the little cheeks until the baby smiled around the pacifier. She wanted to ask questions, mostly about weight and how much the baby was eating. By the feel of it, the newborn didn't even hit six pounds. Babies lost weight the first few weeks after being born, and she'd learned that lesson during those first panicked weeks in the PICU in Seattle. But she didn't want to worry the kid, so she kept it to herself (shocker), and just smiled at the tiny infant and smoothed down the little reddish tuft of hair atop the tiny head. "She's gorgeous, kid.I hope you're ready for lots of sleepless nights. Amanda's just starting to tell me about all the boys she's kicking in the shins on the playground. It's the beginning of the end of the peaceful years." She smiled, and she looked up at Jack. "And you meant I was a hypocrite, but I'll forgive you since it's the holiday season, Corvus."
The baby got all her attention as Corvus pet the puppy, and Max didn't bother asking if they needed a new puppy. Nope, she didn't even think about asking it. "Corvus informed us at Thanksgiving that he's dating someone," Max finally said, all joke and tease and the memory of the headache that had plagued her for days after.
Luke shook his head. “You don’t have to bring anything. And thanks for the diapers, Max, but you didn’t have to bring anything either,” he said, but it was fond, because he knew they both meant well. Max might lecture but it was only because she worried, and he understood that. Sometimes he did the same. And he managed a smile when she assured him that she wouldn’t drop Lia, because he knew that he was anxious, and he knew he didn’t really need to be; he just couldn’t help it. “Technically I am a first time parent, you know. At least when it comes to this part.” There was no need to elaborate and so he didn’t; they all knew he hadn’t been around for Gus’s baby years, and they all knew why. The puppy was thrilled with the attention, and her tail wagged wildly as she attempted to lick whatever part of Jack she could reach. “Yeah, he would,” Luke laughed, since Gus’s love of animals was pretty well known. “He’s taking it pretty well, actually. We were worried that he might feel neglected, you know, with a new baby around, but he hasn’t said he wants to send her back or anything yet. We’re making sure to keep him involved, too. He’s just not a fan of the crying,” he admitted with a grin.
He tried not to hover, he did, but he couldn’t help watching Max with his daughter all the same. “Yeah, I’ve been expecting the sleepless nights. Amanda is so giving her shin-kicking lessons once she’s old enough.” Dating and boys were things he didn’t even want to think about, not yet, and he still had quite a bit of time before he’d have to deal with either. His attention was caught, however, when Max mentioned Jack seeing someone, and he looked over with raised eyebrows. “Oh, yeah? Have you been holding out on me? Not cool,” he teased.
"I said no such thing," Jack protested, laughing a little. "You're just turning my words around on my all over the place today." Now that the puppy had been adequately petted, he turned his attention to the infant in Max's arms. "I don't think anyone is a fan of the crying, but if anyone could make you forget all about that, it's that face." Jack reached up and carefully took one tiny hand between his fingers. What a strange and good thing, to be there when Wren and Luke finally had an opportunity to really make a go of having a child together from the start. It felt like the slate had been wiped clean. And Jack had faith that Gus would treat his sister right.
Jack shook his head, looking up at Luke. "Max is exaggerating. I was...a little tipsy, and I said I was saving myself. It was just a joke. I don't think I could keep a secret like that from you guys if I tried." No, duplicitousness wasn't really his best area. And he wasn't seeing anyone. Sure, there was the arrival of Jenny on the journals, but she was an ex. And she deserved better.
Max waited until Corvus was done touching the baby's hand, and she carefully transferred the tiny infant into Jack's arms without preamble. She knew Luke was hovering like a mother hen, and it made her chuckle. She didn't even have to look at him to know he was probably tensing up, and she couldn't remember herself ever being like that with Amanda. But then she'd always worried more about carrying Amanda herself, than about letting other people do it. She was pretty sure Jack didn't have any experience with infants, but it was time to learn, since she suspected he would be the go-to babysitter in times of crisis. "You're welcome for the diapers, kid. Anyone who doesn't bring something when they come visit a baby for the first time is an ass, like Corvus here," she said teasing, the grin on her lips easy and genuine.
"Amanda says she'll never have any siblings besides Luke, since Brandon and I are complicated, like a Facebook status." She rolled her eyes fondly, because her daughter could be a serious nuisance. "I told her she could have a sleepover with Gus once she got here, because she wouldn't shut up about it, so be prepared for that." And as for Corvus and his exaggeration, she scoffed. "He was wasted. We were all wasted, except for the weird tattooed guy that my sister brought to dinner. Being wasted was good. No one fought, and everyone got along. Corvus didn't swing at McKendrick. I didn't throw cranberry sauce at Ella. It was a good Thanksgiving." And, strangely enough, it had been. Things were bad at work, and the hairs on the back of her neck were prickling more than ever at the fact that something just wasn't right, but Thanksgiving had been good. Maybe Christmas would be too.
It was nice to see Jack and Max interacting without any awkwardness or tension, at least none that he could detect. Usually he was pretty decent in picking up on that sort of thing. He smiled at their back and forth about Max being, or not being, a hypocrite, managing to relax a little as the seconds ticked by. “It’s impossible to stay annoyed by the crying and the sleep deprivation,” he admitted. “She’s going to try to get away with so much when she’s older.” His smile wavered when Max handed the baby over to Jack without warning, and he tensed up again without realizing it; it wasn’t that he didn’t trust Jack, just like it hadn’t been about not trusting Max, but up until now only he and Wren had handled the baby. He hadn’t even liked it when the nurses had picked Delia up, and they were professionals. Still, he kept himself from rushing forward and taking her back or trying to control how he held her. “Be careful,” he said, an unthinking thing, because she was so small and even he was afraid of dropping her sometimes.
“He’s not an ass,” he said loyally, though he knew she’d only been teasing. “You’re too hard on him.” His gaze never moved from Delia and Jack, despite his words being aimed at Max. The baby didn’t seem bothered by being passed around, if the smile around her pacifier was any indication. As for Jack’s mystery woman being an exaggeration he didn’t think he would outright lie, so Luke accepted it without question. “Oh. I knew you wouldn’t hold out on me like that. Sounds like a fun Thanksgiving,” he added. His own had been quiet, but he didn’t mind that. It had been nice, just the four of them. “Gus would love a sleepover,” he told Max, because he knew the little boy liked Amanda and he’d be thrilled at the prospect. “I don’t know what you guys are doing for Christmas, but you’re welcome to stop by if you want,” he said with a shrug. He and Wren hadn’t talked about plans yet, about whether they’d be inviting her cousin or Evie, and he knew Bruce would want some time, but the holidays were about family and he figured the invitation couldn’t hurt.
"I remember being pretty annoyed by the crying and the sleep deprivation," Max said, though it wasn't entirely true. Brandon's place had been huge, and it had been hard to hear any sounds from the nursery. And, of course, they'd had a nanny, because she hadn't been the best mother ever put on the planet. But she did believe that the tiny baby in Corvus' arms was going to get away with absolutely everything. She couldn't picture Luke or Wren as disciplinarians. And she laughed when he cautioned Jack to be careful. She didn't really blame him; the baby was frighteningly small. But she knew Corvus would die before dropping her, and seeing Luke worry was entertaining.
Luke's defense of his friend earned him a quirked brow. "Please. I'm generously easy on him," she assured the kid. She hadn't been expecting any invitation, and she looked away from the baby to try to determine if Luke meant it, or if he was just offering. "I promised Rawlings and Ella a meal. You're welcome to come. If not, we can stop by after. Ella's more than a decent cook, which isn't surprising." Because Ella had gotten all the female skills.
Her phone buzzed, and she took it out of her pocket and eyed the number with concern. A glance at Corvus and a nod of her head toward the baby indicated that Corvus should hand her back to Luke. "I have to run. If you don't mind me borrowing Corvus, I'd appreciate it?" Another security breach at the school, and she'd already realized this was more than coincidence.
"She's beautiful, kid," she assured Luke with a grin, an honest one, no sarcasm present. "If you ever need a sitter, Corvus here will do a great job." She grinned, smacked Corvus on the back, and turned for the door.