Fic: Still Frames (Bones, Wendell/Hodgins, PG)
Title: Still Frames
Fandom: Bones
Pairing: Wendell/Hodgins
Rating: PG
Summary: Ten snapshots of a life. ~3000 words.
A/N: Part one of the two-day celebration of cinderlily's birthday. As you all know by now, she is one of my favorite girls ever, so I wanted to do a little something to commemorate her birthday. It turned into a slightly bigger something, so I will post the fic today and the other thing tomorrow. Happy birthday, Liz! I know I'm a little early, but I figured you wouldn't mind if I just went ahead and celebrated all weekend. ♥
***
The day Jack realizes he’s in love is the day he comes home from work to find Wendell tilted backwards in his three thousand dollar leather office chair, eyes closed and blond hair sticking out at impossible angles as he sings along to “More Than a Feeling”.
It’s not that he sounds great or anything - he’s a little off key, to be honest - but he’s completely relaxed and he looks more comfortable in Jack’s house than even Jack’s ever been.
Like he belongs there.
It’s the first time Jack lets himself wonder if maybe this could be a permanent thing between them. Something weird blossoms in his chest at the thought, and it takes him awhile to realize that it’s hope.
~
Wendell moves in on the first Saturday after spring semester. He’s already spending most of his nights with Jack anyway, so it’s doesn’t make that much difference, but when Jack wakes up after their first full night of living together to hear Wendell singing off-key in the shower, something about it feels different.
And it’s not even a big deal, except that it is. Because it’s only the second time Jack’s ever asked anyone to move in with him, and this time when he did the asking, Wendell didn’t even hesitate before he said yes. Well, what he actually said was ‘okay’, and he looked sort of shell-shocked at the time, like he couldn’t believe Jack was really asking.
So maybe that’s why this feels different; Wendell wants to be here, so much that he’s still surprised that Jack really wants him around. It’s nice to be wanted that much, Jack thinks as he climbs into the shower with Wendell just in time to catch the end of his song.
~
There’s a room in Wendell’s mother’s house that’s filled with his father’s stuff. The first time Wendell brings Jack home, he barely takes the time to make the introductions before he’s dragging Jack into that room, fingers running over the wall-to-wall shelves until he finds what he’s looking for.
When he finally finds the right one he pulls out the battered cardboard, slipping the record out of its sleeve and dropping it onto the record player perched on a table under the window. He drops the needle on the vinyl and just stands there for a minute, back to Jack while he listens to the song.
For a few seconds Jack wonders if he’s going to cry or something, but when his head starts moving in time to the music Jack realizes he’s just savoring the moment. “You can’t get this album on CD,” he says when he finally turns around, fingers tapping against his thigh and Jack wonders for the thousandth time why he’s so self-conscious about dancing when it comes so naturally to him.
“What is it?”
“Sam Cooke,” Wendell says, humming the melody of a song Jack’s pretty sure he’s heard before. “I mean, they released it on CD, but whoever remastered it completely fucked it up. This is how it should sound.”
Jack has a feeling he wouldn’t be able to tell the difference, but he doesn’t argue. Instead he lets Wendell walk him through his father’s old record collection, pulling out album after album until finally Wendell’s mother drags them back out to set the table for dinner.
Jack’s laying out the silverware when Wendell reaches around him to set a plate down, humming that song Jack thinks he should know as he rests a hand on Jack’s waist to steady himself.
“Cupid, please hear my cry,” he sings under his breath in that off-key pitch that sounds better to Jack than any record in Wendell’s father’s collection. Wendell leans in to brush a kiss across his cheek, grinning against his skin when Jack jumps.
“Your mom…”
“Doesn’t care,” Wendell interrupts. “Honest.”
Jack laughs at that, but he turns until they’re face to face. “So you won’t fool around at work, but you’ll make out with your mom in the next room?”
“She doesn’t pay my salary,” Wendell answers. “She isn’t on my thesis committee, either.”
He’s got a point, but that doesn’t mean Jack won’t keep trying to get him to loosen up at the lab. Technically Jack pays his salary - or his company does, anyway - and he’s not above using that fact to get what he wants.
~
In retrospect, How do you feel about kids? probably wasn’t the most romantic proposal ever. And maybe if Jack had stopped and thought about what he was saying before he said it, he would have found a better way. But they’ve been together long enough for Wendell to be used to Jack blurting out whatever’s on his mind, so it doesn’t take him that long to recover.
When he does he looks kind of scared, but he squeezes Jack’s hand where it’s wrapped around his anyway. “You mean in general, or are we talking about something bigger here?”
That’s the moment it hits Jack what he’s asking, and his heart skips a beat when he realizes that if he says the words out loud, Wendell will say yes, and this time it will really happen. He should be terrified, because he’s always planned to settle down, sure, but another man was never part of the picture until Wendell came along.
It complicates everything, but at the same time his entire life’s been easier since they got together. For once he knows where he stands, and it’s a place he can see himself standing for a long time.
Then there’s his family legacy to consider. Assuming he doesn’t run the Cantilever Group into the ground eventually, someone’s going to have to take it over when he dies. So he needs an heir, which is so weird when he thinks about it, but that doesn’t make it any less true.
He knows enough not to say that, at least. Because Wendell’s right, this is big, and he’s not going to make a joke out of it. Instead he turns until he's facing Wendell, leaning in to press a chaste kiss to his lips before he answers. “I always saw myself with kids. You know, marriage, family, happily ever after. So I guess I’m asking if you’re interested.”
“Did you just ask me to marry you?”
“I think so, yeah,” Jack answers, and when he grins Wendell laughs and pulls him forward for a hard kiss. It takes a couple minutes to get an answer, at least verbally. But by the time Wendell whispers a breathless yes against his mouth, Jack already knows what he’s going to say.
~
They get married in Boston, in an outdoor ceremony that starts off small, but somehow grows and grows until even Wendell isn’t sure who all the guests are. Which is what they get for letting his mother get involved, but she’s smiling almost as wide as her son, and Jack gave up trying to say no to that smile a long time ago.
They dance to The Beatles at their reception. Wendell pulls him close, murmuring the words under his breath as they spin around the dance floor in the perfect rhythm born of years of practice. And he’s sung this song a hundred times before, but when he presses his forehead to Jack’s and whispers ‘love you forever and forever’, Jack’s heart swells like it’s the first time.
By the end of the song he’s blinking back tears, laughing as he reaches up to wipe at his eyes. He’s saved by the sudden transition into “For Once in My Life”, and focusing on the waltz he’s made them practice for weeks distracts him from the tears he promised himself he wasn’t going to shed today.
Wendell picked the music, of course. The deal was that Wendell got to pick the songs and Jack got to pick the dances, and he’s glad now that he forced Wendell to learn a complicated smooth waltz, because focusing on the steps means he can stop feeling for a few minutes and just listen to the music. Except that he knows that performing such a complicated dance in front of half of Boston makes Wendell more uncomfortable than even the Cantilever Group events Jack drags him to, and the fact that he’s willing to do this for Jack just makes him tear up all over again.
Then Wendell pulls him close, cheeks pressed together as they spin. “It’s our wedding, I think you’re allowed to cry,” he whispers in Jack’s ear, and Jack laughs and reaches up to wipe away fresh tears.
“The real question is: are we allowed to sneak out of here any time soon?”
“Only if you want my mother to kill you before we make it to our first anniversary.”
He’s still laughing when the song ends, and the next thing he knows they’re surrounded by other dancers and Wendell’s mother is cutting in to dance with her son. Jack has a feeling it’s going to be awhile before he gets anywhere near Wendell again, let alone gets him alone, but when Wendell looks over and grins at him through his own tears, Jack knows it’ll be worth the wait.
~
It’s Wendell who finally lands them the perfect surrogate. They argue about it for long enough that Jack starts to think it’s not going to happen at all, because Wendell seems to think it’s weird to pay ‘some stranger’ to carry their kid, and Jack thinks it’s weirder to ask someone they know to hand over a baby and then pretend she never had anything to do with it.
The biggest fight of all comes when Wendell suggests asking Angela, then gets mad when Jack puts his foot down. And it’s hard to believe he’s still jealous of a mistake Jack almost made what feels like a lifetime ago, but he’s pretty sure that’s why Wendell brought it up in the first place.
And yeah, it would be pretty weird to ask the woman he almost married to carry his kid, but the real reason Jack doesn’t want to ask Angela is because he knows her. He knows she’d agree to it, that she’d claim she could handle signing away her rights and handing over the kid with no strings attached, but that’s not how it would work out. She’d bond, and then she’d want to be a part of the baby’s life, and that would make her part of all their lives, and that would be weird.
It takes him awhile to get Wendell to see it, and he’s starting to think this is the one stumbling block they won’t get over when Wendell comes home one day with a new plan. Some cousin of his in Boston, a starving artist type who needs the money and wouldn’t mind coming to stay with them in D.C. while she’s pregnant.
“You met her at our wedding,” Wendell says, though Jack doesn’t remember much from that day besides panicking at the ‘speak now or forever hold your peace’ part, then collapsing in their hotel room without even taking their tuxes off.
But she’s drug-free, and she’s willing, and she shares Wendell’s DNA, right down to the blond hair and the big blue eyes. Which means their kid will be biologically both of theirs, or at least as close as they’re going to get, and in the end it works out better than either of them could have imagined.
~
He cries again when Alex is born, but he doesn’t bother trying to hide it this time. She’s just so…perfect, little fingers and toes all where they’re supposed to be, eyes already bright and taking in everything around her.
Booth’s already clapped them on the shoulder and stuffed cigars in both their pockets, scooped Alex up into his big FBI agent hands and promised to teach her how to block a puck the second she can stand up on skates. Dr. Brennan came in with him, commenting on the symmetry of Alex’s features until Booth slides the baby into her arms, and then she devolves into cooing noises Jack never would have expected from her.
Wendell’s on the phone, of course, calling all seven hundred of his relatives to tell them that the baby’s fine and his cousin’s fine too, and everything went exactly the way it was supposed to.
Jack doesn’t have anybody to call, because pretty much everybody he knows is already here. There’s Zack, of course, but he’ll stop by the hospital when things calm down and show him more pictures than Zack will probably want to see. For now, though…for now he’s just standing outside the nursery, watching his daughter - his daughter - looking up at her hand as she flexes her tiny fingers.
“She’s beautiful.”
“Yeah, she really is,” he says, taking his eyes off Alex long enough to glance up at Angela.
“This is what you always wanted, isn’t it?” she says, and Jack’s heart skips a beat as he looks back at the baby. He’s got someone who loves him, and they’re going to be responsible for this whole other little life now, and it’s terrifying, but she’s right. He’s got a family now, and it’s the only thing he’s ever really wanted.
“More than anything.”
She nods when he grins at her, then she pulls him close for a quick, tight hug. “I’m glad you got it, then.”
“Well, I am a great catch,” he says when she lets him go. “It was bound to happen.”
She laughs and pats him on the shoulder, and when she walks back toward the waiting room he turns back to the nursery. Alex’s bright little eyes are closed now, her tiny chest rising and falling as she sleeps. And he hasn’t got the first clue what to do with a baby, but he already loves her more than anything in the world, so he figures the rest will work itself out.
~
They take their first real family trip that doesn’t involve visiting Wendell’s mother when Alex is six. By the time they actually get to the hotel Jack can’t tell whether Wendell or their daughter’s more excited at the prospect of meeting Mickey Mouse, but he pays for the character breakfast without too much commentary.
He spends four days following the two of them around Disney World, and he tries not to complain the entire time. He doesn’t even roll his eyes when Alex insists on a full Disney Princess makeover, and by the end of the trip he concedes that there are a few attractions in the park he wouldn’t mind seeing again.
Still, there’s a lot of sensory overload involved in a Disney vacation, and he’s relieved when they’re back home where there’s nothing featuring mouse ears. Well, almost nothing, he reminds himself as he watches Wendell climb onto their bed on their first night back.
“You’re deranged,” he says, shaking his head against the pillow as Wendell plants a knee on either side of his hips.
“You love it,” Wendell answers, but when he leans in to kiss Jack his Mickey ears slide off and hit Jack square on the nose.
“Ow,” Jack says, reaching up to rub the bridge of his nose as Wendell laughs and tosses the ears onto the night stand. Which leaves him in nothing at all save a pair of boxers silkscreened to look like Mickey Mouse’s red shorts, and he still looks ridiculous, but at least Jack’s pretty sure he’s safe from falling objects now.
~
When they decide to have another baby Wendell calls his cousin. She doesn’t move in with them this time, mostly because she spent the money from the first surrogacy opening a gallery in Boston, and she doesn’t want to leave it in someone else’s hands for nine months while she has another kid for them.
And Jack knows they can trust her to take her prenatal vitamins and avoid caffeine, but that doesn’t mean he’s happy about the fact that their kid’s going to spend the first nine months of its life away from them.
Once they make the decision to have twins he sort of hopes she’ll back out, just so they can hire someone closer to home. But she doesn’t even hesitate, and Jack can’t really resent her once Wendell reminds him what they’re getting out of it.
So they burn through most of their vacation time with long weekends in Boston, and Jack pulls some strings to make sure The Jeffersonian’s paternity leave policy is as generous as possible. Because he doesn’t want to give up his job, but they’ve got three kids to think about now and he knows all too well that they won’t stay little for long.
“Are you sure it was such a good idea to let ourselves get outnumbered?” Jack asks as they stand in front of the nursery window for a second time, watching their sons cry in their bassinets while Alex sleeps curled up in a waiting room chair next to her grandmother.
“Too late now,” Wendell answers, and when he grins Jack’s pretty sure they’ll be okay. They’ve already been through it once, anyway, so how bad could it be with two more?
~
“Billy, get off the phone, it’s family day,” Wendell says, but he’s got his head buried in the fridge so he misses the eye roll from across the kitchen.
“Haven’t you heard? He’s going by ‘Will’ now,” Jack says, leaning in to whisper conspiratorially.
Wendell looks up from the fridge long enough to glance at their youngest son, born a full seven minutes after his brother. “He’s what?”
“He says it sounds more ‘mature’,” Jack answers, fingers curling into air quotes on the last word. “Personally, I think it has something to do with that girl who’s been calling him every five minutes.”
“Girl?” Wendell says, pulling orange juice and milk out of the fridge. It’s a tradition that started back when Alex was barely out of diapers; Sunday morning pancake breakfast, and even though they won’t admit it, it’s the tradition their kids look most forward to now that they’ve all moved out.
Nate and Billy - Will - have only been away at college for a semester, but the house has felt a lot emptier than Jack expected since they’ve been gone. It was hard when Alex left, but they still had two teenagers at home to distract them from missing her too much. Now, though, the house is quieter than it’s been in a long time, since back before Wendell even came into his life.
So it’s nice to have them back, and he’s willing to call them whatever they want as long as it means they keep coming home.
“Don’t ask,” Jack advises, reaching for the eggs. “I already made that mistake, and all it got me was a lecture on minding my own business.”
Wendell grins and pulls the eggs out of Jack’s hand, setting them on the counter before he leans in to press a kiss against his mouth. “Thanks for the warning.”
“We’ve stuck together this long, no reason to stop now.”
Fandom: Bones
Pairing: Wendell/Hodgins
Rating: PG
Summary: Ten snapshots of a life. ~3000 words.
A/N: Part one of the two-day celebration of cinderlily's birthday. As you all know by now, she is one of my favorite girls ever, so I wanted to do a little something to commemorate her birthday. It turned into a slightly bigger something, so I will post the fic today and the other thing tomorrow. Happy birthday, Liz! I know I'm a little early, but I figured you wouldn't mind if I just went ahead and celebrated all weekend. ♥
***
The day Jack realizes he’s in love is the day he comes home from work to find Wendell tilted backwards in his three thousand dollar leather office chair, eyes closed and blond hair sticking out at impossible angles as he sings along to “More Than a Feeling”.
It’s not that he sounds great or anything - he’s a little off key, to be honest - but he’s completely relaxed and he looks more comfortable in Jack’s house than even Jack’s ever been.
Like he belongs there.
It’s the first time Jack lets himself wonder if maybe this could be a permanent thing between them. Something weird blossoms in his chest at the thought, and it takes him awhile to realize that it’s hope.
~
Wendell moves in on the first Saturday after spring semester. He’s already spending most of his nights with Jack anyway, so it’s doesn’t make that much difference, but when Jack wakes up after their first full night of living together to hear Wendell singing off-key in the shower, something about it feels different.
And it’s not even a big deal, except that it is. Because it’s only the second time Jack’s ever asked anyone to move in with him, and this time when he did the asking, Wendell didn’t even hesitate before he said yes. Well, what he actually said was ‘okay’, and he looked sort of shell-shocked at the time, like he couldn’t believe Jack was really asking.
So maybe that’s why this feels different; Wendell wants to be here, so much that he’s still surprised that Jack really wants him around. It’s nice to be wanted that much, Jack thinks as he climbs into the shower with Wendell just in time to catch the end of his song.
~
There’s a room in Wendell’s mother’s house that’s filled with his father’s stuff. The first time Wendell brings Jack home, he barely takes the time to make the introductions before he’s dragging Jack into that room, fingers running over the wall-to-wall shelves until he finds what he’s looking for.
When he finally finds the right one he pulls out the battered cardboard, slipping the record out of its sleeve and dropping it onto the record player perched on a table under the window. He drops the needle on the vinyl and just stands there for a minute, back to Jack while he listens to the song.
For a few seconds Jack wonders if he’s going to cry or something, but when his head starts moving in time to the music Jack realizes he’s just savoring the moment. “You can’t get this album on CD,” he says when he finally turns around, fingers tapping against his thigh and Jack wonders for the thousandth time why he’s so self-conscious about dancing when it comes so naturally to him.
“What is it?”
“Sam Cooke,” Wendell says, humming the melody of a song Jack’s pretty sure he’s heard before. “I mean, they released it on CD, but whoever remastered it completely fucked it up. This is how it should sound.”
Jack has a feeling he wouldn’t be able to tell the difference, but he doesn’t argue. Instead he lets Wendell walk him through his father’s old record collection, pulling out album after album until finally Wendell’s mother drags them back out to set the table for dinner.
Jack’s laying out the silverware when Wendell reaches around him to set a plate down, humming that song Jack thinks he should know as he rests a hand on Jack’s waist to steady himself.
“Cupid, please hear my cry,” he sings under his breath in that off-key pitch that sounds better to Jack than any record in Wendell’s father’s collection. Wendell leans in to brush a kiss across his cheek, grinning against his skin when Jack jumps.
“Your mom…”
“Doesn’t care,” Wendell interrupts. “Honest.”
Jack laughs at that, but he turns until they’re face to face. “So you won’t fool around at work, but you’ll make out with your mom in the next room?”
“She doesn’t pay my salary,” Wendell answers. “She isn’t on my thesis committee, either.”
He’s got a point, but that doesn’t mean Jack won’t keep trying to get him to loosen up at the lab. Technically Jack pays his salary - or his company does, anyway - and he’s not above using that fact to get what he wants.
~
In retrospect, How do you feel about kids? probably wasn’t the most romantic proposal ever. And maybe if Jack had stopped and thought about what he was saying before he said it, he would have found a better way. But they’ve been together long enough for Wendell to be used to Jack blurting out whatever’s on his mind, so it doesn’t take him that long to recover.
When he does he looks kind of scared, but he squeezes Jack’s hand where it’s wrapped around his anyway. “You mean in general, or are we talking about something bigger here?”
That’s the moment it hits Jack what he’s asking, and his heart skips a beat when he realizes that if he says the words out loud, Wendell will say yes, and this time it will really happen. He should be terrified, because he’s always planned to settle down, sure, but another man was never part of the picture until Wendell came along.
It complicates everything, but at the same time his entire life’s been easier since they got together. For once he knows where he stands, and it’s a place he can see himself standing for a long time.
Then there’s his family legacy to consider. Assuming he doesn’t run the Cantilever Group into the ground eventually, someone’s going to have to take it over when he dies. So he needs an heir, which is so weird when he thinks about it, but that doesn’t make it any less true.
He knows enough not to say that, at least. Because Wendell’s right, this is big, and he’s not going to make a joke out of it. Instead he turns until he's facing Wendell, leaning in to press a chaste kiss to his lips before he answers. “I always saw myself with kids. You know, marriage, family, happily ever after. So I guess I’m asking if you’re interested.”
“Did you just ask me to marry you?”
“I think so, yeah,” Jack answers, and when he grins Wendell laughs and pulls him forward for a hard kiss. It takes a couple minutes to get an answer, at least verbally. But by the time Wendell whispers a breathless yes against his mouth, Jack already knows what he’s going to say.
~
They get married in Boston, in an outdoor ceremony that starts off small, but somehow grows and grows until even Wendell isn’t sure who all the guests are. Which is what they get for letting his mother get involved, but she’s smiling almost as wide as her son, and Jack gave up trying to say no to that smile a long time ago.
They dance to The Beatles at their reception. Wendell pulls him close, murmuring the words under his breath as they spin around the dance floor in the perfect rhythm born of years of practice. And he’s sung this song a hundred times before, but when he presses his forehead to Jack’s and whispers ‘love you forever and forever’, Jack’s heart swells like it’s the first time.
By the end of the song he’s blinking back tears, laughing as he reaches up to wipe at his eyes. He’s saved by the sudden transition into “For Once in My Life”, and focusing on the waltz he’s made them practice for weeks distracts him from the tears he promised himself he wasn’t going to shed today.
Wendell picked the music, of course. The deal was that Wendell got to pick the songs and Jack got to pick the dances, and he’s glad now that he forced Wendell to learn a complicated smooth waltz, because focusing on the steps means he can stop feeling for a few minutes and just listen to the music. Except that he knows that performing such a complicated dance in front of half of Boston makes Wendell more uncomfortable than even the Cantilever Group events Jack drags him to, and the fact that he’s willing to do this for Jack just makes him tear up all over again.
Then Wendell pulls him close, cheeks pressed together as they spin. “It’s our wedding, I think you’re allowed to cry,” he whispers in Jack’s ear, and Jack laughs and reaches up to wipe away fresh tears.
“The real question is: are we allowed to sneak out of here any time soon?”
“Only if you want my mother to kill you before we make it to our first anniversary.”
He’s still laughing when the song ends, and the next thing he knows they’re surrounded by other dancers and Wendell’s mother is cutting in to dance with her son. Jack has a feeling it’s going to be awhile before he gets anywhere near Wendell again, let alone gets him alone, but when Wendell looks over and grins at him through his own tears, Jack knows it’ll be worth the wait.
~
It’s Wendell who finally lands them the perfect surrogate. They argue about it for long enough that Jack starts to think it’s not going to happen at all, because Wendell seems to think it’s weird to pay ‘some stranger’ to carry their kid, and Jack thinks it’s weirder to ask someone they know to hand over a baby and then pretend she never had anything to do with it.
The biggest fight of all comes when Wendell suggests asking Angela, then gets mad when Jack puts his foot down. And it’s hard to believe he’s still jealous of a mistake Jack almost made what feels like a lifetime ago, but he’s pretty sure that’s why Wendell brought it up in the first place.
And yeah, it would be pretty weird to ask the woman he almost married to carry his kid, but the real reason Jack doesn’t want to ask Angela is because he knows her. He knows she’d agree to it, that she’d claim she could handle signing away her rights and handing over the kid with no strings attached, but that’s not how it would work out. She’d bond, and then she’d want to be a part of the baby’s life, and that would make her part of all their lives, and that would be weird.
It takes him awhile to get Wendell to see it, and he’s starting to think this is the one stumbling block they won’t get over when Wendell comes home one day with a new plan. Some cousin of his in Boston, a starving artist type who needs the money and wouldn’t mind coming to stay with them in D.C. while she’s pregnant.
“You met her at our wedding,” Wendell says, though Jack doesn’t remember much from that day besides panicking at the ‘speak now or forever hold your peace’ part, then collapsing in their hotel room without even taking their tuxes off.
But she’s drug-free, and she’s willing, and she shares Wendell’s DNA, right down to the blond hair and the big blue eyes. Which means their kid will be biologically both of theirs, or at least as close as they’re going to get, and in the end it works out better than either of them could have imagined.
~
He cries again when Alex is born, but he doesn’t bother trying to hide it this time. She’s just so…perfect, little fingers and toes all where they’re supposed to be, eyes already bright and taking in everything around her.
Booth’s already clapped them on the shoulder and stuffed cigars in both their pockets, scooped Alex up into his big FBI agent hands and promised to teach her how to block a puck the second she can stand up on skates. Dr. Brennan came in with him, commenting on the symmetry of Alex’s features until Booth slides the baby into her arms, and then she devolves into cooing noises Jack never would have expected from her.
Wendell’s on the phone, of course, calling all seven hundred of his relatives to tell them that the baby’s fine and his cousin’s fine too, and everything went exactly the way it was supposed to.
Jack doesn’t have anybody to call, because pretty much everybody he knows is already here. There’s Zack, of course, but he’ll stop by the hospital when things calm down and show him more pictures than Zack will probably want to see. For now, though…for now he’s just standing outside the nursery, watching his daughter - his daughter - looking up at her hand as she flexes her tiny fingers.
“She’s beautiful.”
“Yeah, she really is,” he says, taking his eyes off Alex long enough to glance up at Angela.
“This is what you always wanted, isn’t it?” she says, and Jack’s heart skips a beat as he looks back at the baby. He’s got someone who loves him, and they’re going to be responsible for this whole other little life now, and it’s terrifying, but she’s right. He’s got a family now, and it’s the only thing he’s ever really wanted.
“More than anything.”
She nods when he grins at her, then she pulls him close for a quick, tight hug. “I’m glad you got it, then.”
“Well, I am a great catch,” he says when she lets him go. “It was bound to happen.”
She laughs and pats him on the shoulder, and when she walks back toward the waiting room he turns back to the nursery. Alex’s bright little eyes are closed now, her tiny chest rising and falling as she sleeps. And he hasn’t got the first clue what to do with a baby, but he already loves her more than anything in the world, so he figures the rest will work itself out.
~
They take their first real family trip that doesn’t involve visiting Wendell’s mother when Alex is six. By the time they actually get to the hotel Jack can’t tell whether Wendell or their daughter’s more excited at the prospect of meeting Mickey Mouse, but he pays for the character breakfast without too much commentary.
He spends four days following the two of them around Disney World, and he tries not to complain the entire time. He doesn’t even roll his eyes when Alex insists on a full Disney Princess makeover, and by the end of the trip he concedes that there are a few attractions in the park he wouldn’t mind seeing again.
Still, there’s a lot of sensory overload involved in a Disney vacation, and he’s relieved when they’re back home where there’s nothing featuring mouse ears. Well, almost nothing, he reminds himself as he watches Wendell climb onto their bed on their first night back.
“You’re deranged,” he says, shaking his head against the pillow as Wendell plants a knee on either side of his hips.
“You love it,” Wendell answers, but when he leans in to kiss Jack his Mickey ears slide off and hit Jack square on the nose.
“Ow,” Jack says, reaching up to rub the bridge of his nose as Wendell laughs and tosses the ears onto the night stand. Which leaves him in nothing at all save a pair of boxers silkscreened to look like Mickey Mouse’s red shorts, and he still looks ridiculous, but at least Jack’s pretty sure he’s safe from falling objects now.
~
When they decide to have another baby Wendell calls his cousin. She doesn’t move in with them this time, mostly because she spent the money from the first surrogacy opening a gallery in Boston, and she doesn’t want to leave it in someone else’s hands for nine months while she has another kid for them.
And Jack knows they can trust her to take her prenatal vitamins and avoid caffeine, but that doesn’t mean he’s happy about the fact that their kid’s going to spend the first nine months of its life away from them.
Once they make the decision to have twins he sort of hopes she’ll back out, just so they can hire someone closer to home. But she doesn’t even hesitate, and Jack can’t really resent her once Wendell reminds him what they’re getting out of it.
So they burn through most of their vacation time with long weekends in Boston, and Jack pulls some strings to make sure The Jeffersonian’s paternity leave policy is as generous as possible. Because he doesn’t want to give up his job, but they’ve got three kids to think about now and he knows all too well that they won’t stay little for long.
“Are you sure it was such a good idea to let ourselves get outnumbered?” Jack asks as they stand in front of the nursery window for a second time, watching their sons cry in their bassinets while Alex sleeps curled up in a waiting room chair next to her grandmother.
“Too late now,” Wendell answers, and when he grins Jack’s pretty sure they’ll be okay. They’ve already been through it once, anyway, so how bad could it be with two more?
~
“Billy, get off the phone, it’s family day,” Wendell says, but he’s got his head buried in the fridge so he misses the eye roll from across the kitchen.
“Haven’t you heard? He’s going by ‘Will’ now,” Jack says, leaning in to whisper conspiratorially.
Wendell looks up from the fridge long enough to glance at their youngest son, born a full seven minutes after his brother. “He’s what?”
“He says it sounds more ‘mature’,” Jack answers, fingers curling into air quotes on the last word. “Personally, I think it has something to do with that girl who’s been calling him every five minutes.”
“Girl?” Wendell says, pulling orange juice and milk out of the fridge. It’s a tradition that started back when Alex was barely out of diapers; Sunday morning pancake breakfast, and even though they won’t admit it, it’s the tradition their kids look most forward to now that they’ve all moved out.
Nate and Billy - Will - have only been away at college for a semester, but the house has felt a lot emptier than Jack expected since they’ve been gone. It was hard when Alex left, but they still had two teenagers at home to distract them from missing her too much. Now, though, the house is quieter than it’s been in a long time, since back before Wendell even came into his life.
So it’s nice to have them back, and he’s willing to call them whatever they want as long as it means they keep coming home.
“Don’t ask,” Jack advises, reaching for the eggs. “I already made that mistake, and all it got me was a lecture on minding my own business.”
Wendell grins and pulls the eggs out of Jack’s hand, setting them on the counter before he leans in to press a kiss against his mouth. “Thanks for the warning.”
“We’ve stuck together this long, no reason to stop now.”