#Also yeppp you can easily guess who Rachel's parents are :DDD

[seekthemist]

Day 7 ~ Accidental Baby Acquisition

Here we come with @pynchweek Day7, a.k.a. “I can’t believe I almost survived this year as well” XD

I wrote this shamelessly fluffy thing while on a train, and it’s unbetaed so have mercy on my typos.

Paging: @cabeswaterlovesthem, @picapicae, @actuallymollyweasley and @bollywood-and-phoenix-feather This is a very very T-rated ficlet, just check your blood sugar levels :DDD

Partially under the cut for avoid cluttering, but you can always read it on Ao3!

A disembodied and emotionless registered female voice rattles off the loudspeakers of the plane, confirming the route and giving housekeeping announcements while the passengers take their seats.

Ronan looks out of the tiny window and watches airport stuff busying away on the asphalt. He's not such a big fan of flying but there is no other way to go and visit Matthew to make sure he's not getting himself killed in São Paulo, Brazil, during his very random three months stay.

He's still thinking about the neighbourhood of Matthew's accommodation — sensible at the first, second and tenth glance, but you might never know — when something tiny scrambled up the seat next to him.

"Hiiii!" The toddler drags out, immediately after catching his sideways glance. Dressed in a purple salopette and a light green cotton shirt, there is no way of telling if they are a boy or a girl, but they still stare at Ronan with a too-marked fascination. They can't be more than two years old.

"Hey, maggot. Are you here on your own?" Ronan muses, winning a broad smile with short teeth.

"Yes!" The toddler squeaks.

"No, you're not, Rachel" a voice comes from above them before Ronan can express his skepticism about a two years old alone on a plane.

Rachel giggles, all mischief, and looks up   in the aisle, where a tall, slender man is struggling to put his cabin luggage and baby bag up in cabin lock. He's pleasantly tanned by the Brazilian sun and his dusty blonde hair match compellingly with his complexion. There is something absolutely drained in face, as if he's running low even on the reserve gas, and yet his expression is patient and indulgent when he looks down at his kid.

Trust Ronan's luck to deliver him an unreachable hot dad for a several hours flight.

"Sorry, she just likes being silly," the man apologises, kind and courteous, while sitting down beside the kid.

"No problem," Ronan replies, ready to go back looking outside where the plane is preparing for departure. Watching Hot Dad fussing over his daughter is the last thing he needs, surely.

Unfortunately, said daughter seems to have a different idea.

"Whassyuv name?" She munches over words in a rush to deliver them.

It does take Ronan a few seconds to translate it, "What, my name?" He frowns but Rachel nods at him full of expectations. He sighs, "I'm Ronan."

"Raschel!" The kid counters, and slams a tiny chubby hand forward, as if requesting a handshake.

Ronan raises both eyebrows, because no toddler he has ever met tried anything like this, but then he snorts and grabs the tiny hand between three fingers to give it a shake. It's incredibly soft and too smooth not to be at least a bit endearing. "Nice to meet you, Rachel," he muses, looking up.

The men, seated and buckled on the aisle seat, is shaking his head and running two fingers along the side of his nose. "Sorry, she's always like that. Her father is...a bit posh, let's say. She imitates. I'm Adam, by the way."

Ronan bats his eyes for a fraction of a second. Considering that Adam presents himself as unmistakably masculine and yet is around with a kid without being posh, his luck must have delivered him the Hot Gay Dad to rule them all, and put him just out of decency reach. Causality is really a bitch.

"It's fine. Funny but fine," Ronan admits with a half smile, and gets aware that Rachel is still playing with his hand when she reaches the leather bands on his wrist.

“Rachel, let’s leave Ronan a bit of space, okay?” Adam says, persuading the little girl to give up the grip and helping her to buckle up the seatbelt for departure. He moves competently and precisely, expression always approachable, and finishes up the task by tickling Rachel’s belly. Ronan really didn’t need to see this.

When Adam gives Rachel a squared book full of figures — very nicely done in quality, for a kid, but Rachel seems to treat it surprisingly well — Ronan fishes out his iPod and settles in with headphones on. This should be the end of his kid — and Hot Gay Dad — interaction for the day.

As it turns out, he is very wrong.

                                                          ****

Thirty minutes into the flight, a small hand tugs at his sleeve until Ronan turns around and takes his earphones off.

“What, maggot?” Ronan asked, finding himself once again the focus of Rachel’s wide, hazel eyes.

“Roual, read?” she proposes, mauling Ronan’s name in the process. She dexterously unbuckles herself and turns around on the seat to hand Ronan the book.

“Oh God,” Adam murmurs from beside her. “Rachel, what did Mum and Dad tell you about playing with strangers?”

So now it’s Mum and Dad, but it’s weird to think of Adam referring himself as Mum. More confusing by the minute, but Ronan can’t do much more than silently mulling on it.

Rachel bats his eyes, looking at Adam and then back at Ronan. “Read, please?” she amends, as if it’s just a question of good manners.

Adam drags a hand on his face and Ronan snickers before the scolding can be amended. “Okay then, let’s see what you’ve got.”

“You really don’t have to…” Adam starts to say, even while Rachel squeals in delight and shuffles on the seat to get closer to him.

“Nah, it’s fine, it’s not like I’ve got anything else to do,” Ronan shrugs it out and picks up the book.

Adam sighs and unbuckles himself as well, picking up Rachel and settling her on his legs while he sits down next to Ronan, evidently determined not to leave his kid in someone else’s care. Ronand does appreciate not being treated as an impromptu babysitter, even though Rachel is strangely compelling in her whims. “I really don’t know how she’s so hyper,” Adam admits, defeated, circling Rachel’s tiny body with one arm while she settles with her back against his chest, still turned towards Ronan.

“Well, she’s a kid.”

“I know, I know, but we’ve been travelling since 6 o’clock this morning, she had her food before check in, she should be destroyed!” Adam protests, even while they open the book and Rachel quietly humming to herself while she shuffle around the pages and Ronan holds the book.

Ronan casts a careful look to Adam, skin tensed and eyes a bit glossy, circle with a couple of exhausted bags. Still stunning, Ronan’s treacherous mind provides unprompted. “I’m think you’re feeling this more than her.”

Adam leans more heavily against the seat, with a self-conscious smile. “Damn, I am. But her parents need to stay in Brazil for more than they planned to, so I’m bringing the little hell spawn back home.”

“Uncle Adam, we going granny?” Rachel pipes up, looking at him with all the trust and adoration of the world, uncaring about the hell spawn just as she was to Ronan’s maggot.

“Yes, sugar, I’m bringing you back to your grannies.” Adam confirms, more softly in addressing the toddler directly and with a vague drawl in his words that almost sounds Virginian to Ronan’s ears. “If we can survive this trip, I mean,” he adds, smiling at Ronan sideways.

Uncle Adam. So the kid is not his, and Hot Gay Dad is thus Hot Relative With Unknown Sexuality. Thank God for small mercies.

“Sure we can,” Ronan encourages, feeling a bit less on the spot in his helpless, intimate lusting. “Come on, brat, let’s see what you’ve got.”

They read it together, between the three of them, with the same infallible kid logic for which their favourite book is always entertaining. All things considered, Ronan must admit, it is a fairly entertaining book, the tale of a king sleeping under a mountain and the magic adventures of this group of mismatched kids trying to find him and wake him. It’s wonderfully illustrated and full of silly word jokes that make Rachel giggle her heart out even though she must already know them by heart, by now.

“Okay, this is kind of funny, you know?” Ronan confesses to Adam, at some point. “It might work also as a grownup book, with a bit of tweaking around.”

Adam laughs, kissing the crown of Rachel’s head and her thin dark hair. “I’ll make sure to tell it to Gansey. The author. Incidentally Rachel’s father.”

“Wow, maggot, I didn’t know you had conflict of interest!” Ronan tells to Rachel, that probably doesn’t understand the words but catches the playful tone and chirps out an excited laugh.

After that, Adam conscientiously brings Rachel to the bathroom, to make sure that she uses it and that her nappy is changed before disasters. Ronan eyes them between the edge of the seats, walking hand in hand in small steps, a bit wobbling from the toddler’s part. Rachel wins some cooing and elicits some smiles but doesn’t climb on anyone else.

When they’re back, Adam is evidently hoping to regain control of the situation and putting things in order for the rest of the travel, but Rachel jumps back in the middle seat and launches herself towards Ronan again, picking up the book from where it rested on Adam’s seat.

“Roual, read more?” She bats her really compelling doe eyes to him, seemingly unaware that the only reaction a guy of Ronan’s build and with Ronan’s attitude usually elicit is carefulness. “Please?” she adds, manners still remembered with some delay in favour of the excitement.

“Jesus Christ…” Adam defaults on the seat and picks Rachel up again.

“We could do,” Ronan suggests. Maybe because reading the books seems to compel Adam to make some adult chats with Ronan. Maybe because Adam is so evidently exhausted Ronan feels the need to do something.

“You’re spoiling her,” Adam points out, but still turn to Rachel. “Ronan is being very kind and playing with you but we read it this once and then we’re done. Do we have a deal?”

Rachel looks back, hearing the serious business tone that Adam is using for the ground rules. “Okay,” she nods, solemnly, but she’s still a bit bossy in pushing the books back in Ronan’s hand.

They settle back and this time Ronan, knowing the story, lets himself chat a bit over it — adding tales of the farm he grew up in, some childhood shenanigans with his brothers and some of the crazy story Niall used to tell the three of them when they were little.

Adam laughs together with Rachel, seemingly endeared. “You’re a very good storyteller,” he says.

So Ronan goes on, because if being a good storyteller is what makes Adam smile at him that way it’s easier to keep on talking than to look at him in the eyes.

He notices when Rachel falls asleep because she lulls back and forth a bit and then she curls onto Adam’s chest. He hadn’t noticed that Adam fell asleep — before her, even — but he definitely does now because he slides a bit more on the seat and tilts sideways, resting his head on Ronan’s shoulder.

Ronan stares at him up close, startled by the tension and by the feel of almost tenderness sneaking around his ribs. There is no way in hell he would move him, or wake him, so Ronan spends the rest of the flight as Adam’s pillow, while Rachel stays nested in the embrace of Adam’s arms.

It’s weirdly peaceful.                                                          ****

Rushing off to take his taxi, Rachel peaking up behind his shoulders where she’s buckled up in his hiking carrier, Adam grabs Ronan’s arm, suddenly. A pen in his hand, he scribbles on the back of Ronan’s hand.

With a tilted handwriting undoubtedly influenced by Ronan’s skin, he has written Adam Parrish, and what looks like a phone number.

“You should call me,” Adam says, easily but with a charged smile full of suggestions. “Bye, Ronan!”

He skips off, then, Rachel waving her tiny hand at him in turn. “Byeee!”

Ronan watches them go, bewildered and blinking stupidly but still waving his hand. This was definitely the weirdest, most successful flight he has ever taken in his life.