#2000 words is not a ficlet sig. i digress

[non-un-topo]

College, Car Seats, and Creamy Pasta (ficlet)

(This title, idk.) So I’ve been having feelings lately about the old guard with babies in modern aus, so here’s an experimental, kind of self-indulgent ficlet filled with extreme amounts of softness and bébé feels <3

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There’s an infamous story all the way back from college that Joe loves to share which involves Andy drunkenly rolling her ankle on a beach and Joe having to carry her home--though, she could have walked, but Joe demanded to carry her--and fashioning an ice pack out of the only things he could find in his and Nicky’s tiny, decrepit apartment: A condom, and some ice from a small McDonald’s sprite (their freezer was broken when they moved in).

He lives to tell that story every chance he gets. Especially now, as he reaches into Andy and Quỳnh’s (much bigger and much colder) freezer nearly fifteen years later to retrieve a not-homemade ice pack and wrap it in a clean dishtowel for Andy’s poor crotch.

She’s lounging on the couch, even though she’s proven that she can walk, but Joe doesn’t mind, as she reaches back for the ice pack and shoots him a sly smile that says, Yeah, I know exactly which story you’re thinking about. He bats his eyelashes innocently back.

It’s a balmy Friday evening and Quỳnh’s still at work, though likely on her way home, so Joe has taken the liberty of cooking dinner. Andy begged to order a pizza, but Joe was not having it. And he thought himself to be the lax one of the bunch. If Nicky were in the kitchen at the time, it would have been anarchy.

“Thanks, Joe,” Andy says, as she settles into a more comfortable position on the couch with her ice pack, sighing. He adjusts the pillows at her back, which causes her to snort and slap his hand away.

“I’m not dying.”

Joe sniffs. “Yeah, coulda fooled me. How much did that baby weigh again?”

Andy laughs out a quiet, fuck off. “Nine pounds, eight ounces,” she says, quick as a whip.

“God…”

The baby, the reason for Joe and Nicky’s visit to Andy and Quỳnh’s apartment, is fairly chunky, sure, but he looks awfully tiny and pink, especially when he’s wearing his little hat. The hat with little lamb ears that Nicky painstakingly knit for him months ago, when he was barely more than a bump, that rarely leaves his soft little head. Nicky hadn’t even known how to knit at the time.

The baby’s name is Lykon, after a childhood friend of Andy and Quỳnh. Lykon was born at 4:26 AM on Monday. It’s Friday evening. Joe and Nicky have not left the apartment since Andy and Quỳnh brought him home.

And neither Andy nor Quỳnh have physically kicked them out, so Joe is staying right here.

Nicky had disappeared a few minutes ago to go change the baby while Andy napped, but he reappears then, slinking into the living room with Lykon held against his shoulder--he’s so little in Nicky’s hands, they almost swallow him--and Joe smiles at his husband in greeting before doing a double-take.

“Babe,” Joe says, and Andy cranes her neck to try and see Nicky over the back of the couch. “What are you doing?”

Nicky continues his journey across the living room floor--lunges, he’s doing lunges. Deep ones that make Joe’s eyebrows jump up in appreciation.

Nicky releases a finger from his gentle grip on the baby’s head and presses it to his lips. “Shush.”

“You trying to get your ass workout in while carrying my son? Really?” Andy asks.

Nicky’s response is whispered so softly, Joe can hardly hear him. “This is the only way I can get him to sleep.”

“Put him in the car seat,” Andy says, like it’s the most simple solution in the world.

“He likes it,” Nicky argues, still whispering.

Andy only shrugs. “Okay, but if he spits up on you…”

And right on cue, Joe hears a tiny gurgle, and there’s baby puke sliding down Nicky’s back.

Andy doesn’t say, told you so, but she doesn’t need to. Her smug grin is enough. With a poorly hidden pout, Nicky reluctantly hands the baby, who is now crying quiet little wobbly squeals, to Andy.

“You know,” Andy says, “you guys don’t have to stay. You have other commitments, I know.”

It’s the first time since Lykon’s birth that she’s said something like that, and Joe is only moderately surprised to feel a sudden onslaught of tears in his eyes.

“Or not,” she says, quickly. “We really appreciate your help, boys, it’s just… We don’t want to keep you.”

“Andy, shut up.”

She laughs, loud and open-mouthed. “Okay, Joe, okay. I love you guys.”

“We love you too,” Nicky says. Then he leans over the couch to peer into Lykon’s squishy little face. “And we especially love you.”

His voice changes when he talks to the baby. While Joe can’t control the way his voice raises several octaves and the way he coos gibberish, Nicky’s voice softens and hushes to something so comfortable, barely audible. It’s the way he would talk to a fussy toddler, Joe thinks, given the opportunity. He would level his eyes with them and speak to them like a person equal to him, providing the safest and most non-judgemental space for them.

Joe thinks. He hasn’t had many opportunities to see his husband speak with toddlers.

“I would be worried about you guys kidnapping him,” Andy says, “but I think it only counts as kidnapping if you leave the apartment.”

Joe snorts, and then he hears the water boiling over on the stove, so he dashes.

When Joe met Andy and Quỳnh, he had been a wide-eyed twenty-year-old, freshly out of the closet and already hopelessly in love. Well, that hasn’t changed, which always delights him to realize, after all these years. It was the love of his young life--Nicky, of course--who introduced him. Andy and Nicky were family friends, more like siblings, really, and of course Andy and Quỳnh had been together since the dawn of time. It took Joe no time at all to find a family in the four of them, inseparable as they all were.

Andy and Quỳnh had actually surprised him when they started talking about kids. That unexpected and world-changing conversation had been the beginning of a long and at times heartbreaking four years, before they finally got their donor, then suffered through a little over a year of IVF. They had almost given up, Joe remembers, between the frustration and the arguments and doctors telling Andy her eggs were too old. But, there he was, at the end of the journey, coming into the world flipping off everyone who said they couldn’t do it: Baby Lykon, the little warrior.

Joe remembers all of it vividly. The phonecall when they told him and Nicky they were pregnant, the panic to help them find a bigger apartment, the indulgent shopping trips, though Andy tried to keep a cap on those, and the weight and warmth of the baby in Joe’s arms the very first time he held him, barely thirty minutes after he’d been born.

Joe had sobbed, of course (something Andy and Quỳnh had anticipated so strongly they bet money on how long he cried for), and he looked into the baby’s big brown eyes and promised him the world.

They had talked about kids. Of course, they had. He and Nicky. But life was busy, and in the last five years between Joe finishing his dissertation and Nicky’s mother getting sick, the subject of kids just hadn’t come up. Besides, Joe thinks now, he’s only thirty-three.

Quỳnh comes home as he’s dishing up dinner for everyone--a creamy, cheesy pasta, because it’s the best comfort food--and her eyes brim with tears when she gets to hold Lykon again. She hasn’t been able to get a lot of time off work, even after becoming a new parent, which Joe thinks is frankly outrageous, but the work she does as a crisis counsellor is of course monumentally important.

They huddle around the couch to eat dinner, but Nicky pulls up one of the rickety chairs from the kitchen table and sits next to the baby, who is snoozing in his car seat on top of the coffee table. Joe doesn’t know how he does it, but Nicky manages to eat his dinner, drink enough water, and hold a conversation while keeping Lykon’s car seat rocking gently so he doesn’t wake up and scream.

Joe watches him as he chews his pasta mindfully and leans close to peer into the car seat. Beautiful. He’s always so beautiful, especially now. The way he looks at Lykon--their nephew, Joe realizes, elated--makes Joe’s head spin off his shoulders. He feels like he’s twenty.

“Crazy how tiny he is,” says Quỳnh, her voice soft and reverent. She already sounds so much like a parent. Joe’s eyes are still on his husband, so he sees how brightly Nicky smiles at that.

Andy makes an indignant noise. “Shut the fuck up.”

Quỳnh laughs, though she tries with obvious effort to keep quiet. She pulls Andy closer, her arm draped over her shoulder, and presses three kisses to her cheek. Then Quỳnh catches Joe’s eye and winks.

Andy shovels another forkful of pasta into her mouth and moans as she chews. With a full mouth, she says, “Joe, this is perfect. Please, boys, never leave.”

Joe shrugs bashfully, pretending to be shy. “It’s Nicky’s recipe.”

“What did you use,” Quỳnh asks.

Joe hums. He juts his chin to the kitchenette. “Your parmesan, mostly, and that fancy milk.”

“What fancy milk,” Andy asks, absolutely stuffing her face.

“Y’know.” Joe waves a hand. Chews, swallows. “The milk in the fancy bag, from the fridge.”

Andy and Quỳnh both stop eating, their eyes bugging out. Quỳnh slaps a hand over her mouth, poorly hiding a laugh and clearly choking a little, and Andy looks… Oh, Andy looks furious. Her face is red.

“J-” She forcefully lowers her voice, shooting a fearful glance at the baby. “Joe,” she whispers through her teeth. “Did you use my fucking breast milk?”

“Dio.” Nicky sticks his fork back into his dish.

“Oh,” Joe says, like an idiot. “Um.”

Andy’s cheeks puff out and somehow her face turns an even darker shade of red.

“I pumped…” she whispers, low and lethal, slow. “...For so… long…”

“There’s more in the fridge, babe,” Quỳnh says, and Joe fears for her life for a hot second. Then she brings her hand out to hover over Andy’s chest. “And it’s not like the tap is running dry, or whatever.”

“So I’m a milk bag.”

“A badass, sexy milk bag who--oh, who is murdering me with her eyes right now.” Quỳnh turns on Joe, then, scooping another forkful of breast-milk-pasta into her mouth and jabbing the fork in his direction. “You’re gonna be up all night paying my wife back for this, genius. See how skilfully you can wipe meconium from his bum.”

Joe only nods in shame. Fair enough.

Lykon signals that he’s awake, then, with a series of soft little snorty grunts that devolve very quickly into shrieking, wobbly sobs. Nicky launches into action with a speed that rivals the pitcrews at NASCAR. He lifts him from the car seat with such gentleness and oh, Joe’s heart breaks to see the baby’s little lips trembling as he cries, the way his little feet kick out against Nicky’s chest as he holds him over his forearms. Nicky is about to pass him to his moms when Quỳnh smiles softly up at him and says, “Looks like you’ve got him.”

He throws her a glance as if to ask, are you sure, and Quỳnh and Andy both nod. Joe’s sure they’re grateful to have the small amount of rest time and, looking at them now, curled together on the couch in their soft clothes, exchanging light kisses, he knows he and Nicky haven’t come close to overstaying their welcome.

“Look at you, Nico,” coos Andy as Nicky carefully holds the baby against his shoulder to peek at his diaper through the waistband his tiny pants. “You’re making us look bad.”

Nicky only chuckles lightly and shakes his head. The diaper must be clean, because he leaves it be and brings a hand up to cup the back of the baby’s wispy-haired head more steadily, and begins to hum, almost a whisper, and Joe’s heart flutters.

“Do you think he’s hungry?” Nicky asks Andy when the baby continues to fuss.

Turns out he is hungry, because he quiets almost immediately when Andy brings him to her chest. It’s not silent in the apartment--Joe can hear some sirens through the window on the streets far below, can hear the air conditioner groan to life, can hear Quỳnh and Nicky’s forks clink against their plates as they continue to eat the questionable breast-milk-pasta (good lord). And, Joe can hear the soft little grunts and snorts that the baby makes as he feeds.

Joe watches his oldest friends--they’re parents now, he can hardly believe it--as they huddle close on the couch and watch their son. Quỳnh wraps her arms under Andy’s so they’re both holding him, and his little chubby fist twitches and flings out every once in a while against Andy’s rolled-up shirt. His feet look impossibly small. Joe remembers the sounds he made when he and Nicky went shopping for all manner of baby supplies to help shave some stuff off Andy and Quỳnh’s list. He’d nearly sobbed when Nicky came up to the cart holding a pair of incredibly tiny socks (and then he had teared up and nearly passed out when Nicky popped the socks over his thumbs. A lot of people stared).

Joe would be lying to himself if he said he hadn’t been thinking of revisiting that store with Nicky every day since.

Now, he looks at his husband to find him already watching him, his heart in his eyes. Nicky slowly moves his gaze to their friends, to the baby, and Joe follows it. When their eyes meet again, Nicky’s are a little damp with tears, but he’s smiling, and there’s something inquisitive and hopeful in his eyes. Joe matches him and slowly, they both nod.

Yes.