#sorry that this challenge is basically becoming a chapter work about this stupid unvierse

[passivenovember]

Ice Machine.

Harringrove April, Day Fifteen : Sun.

--

Two years before Dawn is born on a rainy Tuesday in March, Billie Joe Sinclair makes contact on the hottest day of summer, like a burst of cosmic energy. 

Humid, bright. 

A fallen star somehow searing through the fabric of a fuzzy pink hospital blanket when the nurse admits they’re all out of blue. 

Billy chokes on a glob of spit when the baby starts making noise. The kid’s so tiny, so cute, like a little old man--

“Stop crying now, dumbass.” Max says fondly. “Be cool.”

“I am cool.”

“Yeah, okay.” She readjusts the baby blanket, grinning. “You haven’t stopped whimpering since the first contraction, cool older brother.”

Billy hadn’t even realized--

He scrubs at his cheeks. “I was crying?”

“Was. Are. You were zero help.” She bounces the meatloaf sized bundle against her chest, drawing away when Billy somehow teleports closer to the edge of the bed. 

Max raises her eyebrows. “You wanna hold him?”

Billy guesses, through. 

A cloud of haze and fear, that. 

“Yeah.” He holds out his hands. “Give him to me.”

“I’m sorry? Give him to me?”

“Yeah.”

“This fucking guy.” Max grumbles, shaking her head. “Give him to me,’ he says. I just got the kid.”

“Well, you’re hogging him.”

She stares blankly, for. As long as it takes for steam to start pouring out her ears. “Fourteen hours pushing a watermelon through a keyhole, and you wanna fucking--”

Billy gags, suddenly lightheaded for the six hundredth time in the last hour. Max ignores him. Catastrophically unsympathetic to the dude who attended all those birthing classes, letting Max hold his hand in public and shit, all in preparation for Lucas being out of town. 

The things Billy saw in this delivery room.

He deserves some kind of award. 

But Max isn’t done. “Do you have any idea what labor feels like? My ribs were seriously breaking, you fucking--”

“Actually, they seriously weren’t.” Billy pulls up a chair, knowing that despite a fourteen hour labor and five hour delivery, this is going to take a while. Maybe even longer. “Jesus, I thought motherhood was supposed to mellow chicks out, not turn them into a fuckin’ sailor’s dictionary.”

“If I wasn’t bead ridden I’d kick your ass, Harrington.” Max snarls, but.

It’s fond. 

Aggressive, and hostile, and so fond. Their exact brand of love. 

“Watch your mouth, Maxine.”  Billy grins, pointing to the baby, like, “Kid’s already learned all the swear words he’ll need for the first, what, year of life?”

“You’re such a--”

“Let me hold him.” Billy says. Reasonable, clam. “If only to protect his innocence.”

Max shakes her head. “I’ve earned the right to hold my son for fucking ever if I want to.” 

Billy gasps. “Not letting the baby meet his dad as the result of a personal vendetta against me? That’s real nice--”

“Oh, fuck off. Why don’t you go throw up again, tough guy?” 

They continue on like that, poking at old bruises and creating new ones, not realizing when the door opens and nurse walks in with a shoddy brown clipboard.

She asks for a name. 

At which Max, laughing now, stalls. Her pale, sweaty forehead wrinkles and she blinks. Squeezing her eyes shut and opening them again, as if waiting for the name to come to her. 

“I don’t.” She says softly. “We never decided on one?”

Billy starts, leaning forward sharply. “You never decided?”

“No.”

“Well what the fuck--” The nurse makes a noise in the back of her throat and Billy holds out a hand. “Sorry, Heck. Were you doing this whole time?”

Max leans back against the pillow, frowning. “Who knows? Painting the nursery something gender neutral? Accepting unsolicited advice? Panicking.”

The baby starts fussing again and Max rocks him slower, humming under her breath as if posessed. 

Every good mother in history rolled into one.

Billy’s sister is a mom now, and.

He realizes, for the first time, how tired she looks. Absolutely exhausted, like the last ten months have taken everything from her and she only just now got it back, with the cry of a newborn baby. 

So he stands.

Wipes his hands on the ass of his jeans, like, “I got it.”

To which Max, nodding off now, snorts. “Oh, you got it?” She struggles off the pillow, wincing at something painful in her gut. “How do I know I can trust you?”

Billy would be lying if he said it doesn’t sting. “Ow.”

“No, I mean like. How do I know you aren’t going to name our baby something stupid? Like Metallica, or Camaro, or Steve--”

“Max, I would never, and you can quote me on this--” Billy leans forward, pushing the hair out of her face. “Name your baby Steve.”

She laughs. 

He takes in the sight of Max and her baby. The two of them together. “Let me do this for you, kid.”

She stares into his face, eyebrows pinched together, for what feels like an eternity. “Okay,” She mutters. “I’m trusting you to pick something good.”

Billy follows the nurse out of the room. “I will.”

“Nothing too manly.”

“Alright.”

“And nothing too girly either.” She calls. “Something gender--”

The door slams shut and Billy.

Can’t think of a single name. The nurse stares at him expectantly, clearly irritated that it took this long for an answer, and demands, “Alright, gorgeous, what’s the kids name?”

Billy can count the times he’s thought about this on one finger. 

All the names the can think of don’t sound right, so. He decides to stick with the basics. The tried and true. 

“Can I name him after someone we already know?”

The nurse blinks. “Kid, you could name him Salami for all I care, I just want to take my lunch break.”

“Alright, okay. Gimmie a second.”

Billy scrubs a hand across his face. There’s only room for one Steve in his life. Just like there’s only room for one Max, one Lucas, but.

He. Himself. 

That’s a horse of a different color.

“Billie.” He says. “With an i.e.”

The nurse squints at him. “Isn’t that your name?”

“Yeah. Uh. Add a Joe in there. Billie Joe Sinclair.”

Billy’s flying by the seat of his pants on this one.

The nurse catches him right away. “Isn’t that the name of that punk rocker?” And she says it, like. She’s got some sort of stake in this. Like naming your kid after someone who bleaches their hair is some cardinal sin.

Billy doesn’t have time for this. “My sister loves that band.”

“Yeah, but. Enough to name her first born son--”

“Alright, Salami it is.” He cocks an eyebrow, and a hip for good measure. “Salami Joe Sinclair, our mother will be thrilled--”

“Little Billie Joe does have a ring to it.”

“Joey for short.”

The nurse smiles at him. “Joey for short.”

--

Max takes it better than he thought she would. “It’s kinda cool.” She says, grinning. “Well. Slip of the tongue.”

“What?”

“B.J.” Max shrugs, like, “He’ll have one hell of a time with that in middle school.”

“Yeah. I’ll be there to protect him.”

Max calls him a sap and Billy leans back in the chair, fallin heavy with exhaustion just as the sun rises on a new day.

Dawn breaking, clear and bright.

When the baby starts fussing Max stares into his wrinkled, chubby face, like. “I’m not rewarding this behavior or encouraging it.” and the kid calms right down, just from the sound of her voice. 

So his sister’s a mom.

Huh.

Billy thinks it suits her.