You and Me, Babe, How About It?
Title: you and me, babe, how about it?
Author: heavyhart
Rating: PG (baby fluff)
Pairing: Ryan/Keltie/Brendon
Summary: Someone can't sleep, and someone else doesn't mind staying up with her.
Notes: 1,928 words. Written for sceaterian
"Brendon - hey, Brendon, babe, do you mind? Ryan's--"
"Shut up and sleep," Brendon says gently, kissing Keltie's forehead and rolling out of bed. As he tugs on a pair of sweatpants he watches Keltie snuggle back up with Ryan, leaning her head on his bare chest, and he smiles so big his face hurts. He doesn't stand there long, though, because someone's hungry.
-
"What's wrong, baby girl?" Brendon asks when he walks into the room, leaning over the crib and picking up Molly. Her face is sad and her eyes are wet and he holds her to his shoulder, rubbing slow circles over her back. It's been three months and she's gotten better at sleeping through the nights, but there are some nights where she just gets lonely. Brendon gets that.
"Shhh," Brendon says, padding softly to the kitchen to warm up a bottle for her. She makes quiet sniffling noises that would almost be funny but Brendon just keeps rubbing her back, humming the song he and Ryan worked on all day.
It's summer and Brendon grabs a blanket and goes out on the back porch to feed her, still humming when he settles down on the swing. The shoulder of his shirt is damp and Molly has one of her little hands fisted into his sleeve, clutching the material, but she doesn't start crying again when Brendon pulls her back from his shirt, looking at her beautiful, big eyes, tears still clinging to her eyelashes. Her eyes are soft and brown, her hair dark and soft too, if not a little messy from bed-head, and Brendon loves her more in this moment than any moment before. He loves her more each day, loves her more with every new day of her life.
Brendon smiles and sticks out his tongue but Molly just stares expectantly at him, so Brendon laughs and cradles her back into his arms, propping her up slightly, picking up the bottle and touching it to her lips. Her hands come up to grab at the bottle like she wants to hold it herself and she sucks, her lips moving in a way that's so adorable Brendon is tempted to coo at her.
Instead, Brendon leans back and sings nonsense lyrics to the song he and Ryan had been writing, because he'll be damned if he can remember what words Ryan had written down for it. They were so excited to be writing new stuff that they called up Jon, but they only talked to him for about five minutes before Cassie demanded to talk to Molly and Keltie stole the phone away.
Molly's mouth stops moving and Brendon pulls the bottle back for a second, staring down at her face for a moment before sitting her up, alternating between rubbing and patting her back.
She's so perfect, in every way a human could be perfect, but Brendon's possibly biased. Brendon remembers way back to Keltie telling Brendon she wanted a baby, to Ryan telling Brendon that he wanted Brendon to be the biological father. He remembers the way they all fit together that night, and the night after, and the night after just to make sure. He remembers Keltie jumping on him when she found out, remembers how much time they spent taking care of Keltie, talking and singing to her belly and giving her massages, coming home from tour with three months to spare and not letting her out of their sight since then.
Brendon remembers seeing Keltie and Molly together for the first time, both girls exhausted and a little cranky, even though Keltie couldn't stop smiling with the baby in her arms. He remembers holding Molly in his own arms, tears welling up in his eyes at how beautiful she was, their tiny baby girl. Brendon loves her with everything in his heart but he can tell that Ryan does too - he thinks that if it weren't for certain features, you wouldn't be able to tell who the biological father was (Keltie asked him once if it made him jealous, and Brendon shook his head and said it made him smile).
Molly finishes burping and her fingers flex as she opens her mouth for the bottle again, so Brendon tilts her back down and slides the bottle to her lips. She drinks some more and in the warm night air, the stars sparkling above, Brendon tells Molly everything she has to look forward to. He has big plans for her, how he's going to teach her piano and Keltie's going to teach her to dance and Ryan said something about hockey, Keltie's eyes lighting up for a moment in true Canadian pride, but Brendon secretly hoped they were kidding. He tells her how she's going to go on tour with them when she's old enough and how awesome piggy-back rides on Zack are. He tells her about how much Uncle Jon and Uncle Spencer are going to spoil her, and how as soon as they get their acts together she'll have some friends to play with (he thinks Haley might take some hard convincing, but he knows Cassie's too far gone in love with Molly, and that it's only a matter of months before she shows up pregnant and happy).
Brendon braces his feet against the ground and pushes the swing back and forth as he tells Molly about sandboxes, about the beach and the zoo and Disney World, about pillow forts and sleepovers and the trampoline at Grandma and Grandpa's house, which she definitely will not be jumping on from the second floor like he used to. He tells her about school and coloring and writing and singing, and he tells her how no boy will ever be good enough for her (words straight from Ryan's mouth, already the overprotective father).
Brendon stops talking when the bottle's empty and he sets it on the ground, holding Molly back up to his shoulder and rubbing her back slowly, giving little pats every so often until she burps. He rests his cheek against her face and closes his eyes, listening to her soft breathing close to his ear. After a few minutes she starts to squirm, making little impatient noises that tell Brendon she could totally cry right now if she wanted to, so he holds her against his shoulder and grabs the blanket and bottle, moving inside to the living room.
They got new carpeting before the baby was born - thick, fluffy, green carpet that feels like pillows but was hell to teach Hobo and Bogart not to eat. Brendon sits down on the floor in front of the couch, bending his knees and bringing them up so he can hold Molly in front of him, resting her back against his legs.
Molly's toes poke Brendon in the chest and he puts his index fingers in her palms, smiling when her little fingers curl around his, squeezing.
"Hey pretty baby," Brendon sings to her, making faces and watching her as she stares at his face, eyes wide and observant. She looks at him like she wants to memorize everything about his face and Brendon thinks she's got it all wrong, that she's the one he has to memorize before she changes, becomes more of a Molly and less of his Baby. Brendon always wanted children, always knew he'd love them, but he never realized how much their baby would become his whole world.
"You're a smart one, little heart-breaker," Brendon continues in a quiet voice, singing her one of her lullabies. At the height of Baby Fever (that's what Spencer calls it, but Brendon notices when Spencer refuses to let Haley hold the baby, hogging her to himself) they wrote and recorded seventeen lullabies for her, putting them on an album that only the four of them and their families own.
They wrote lullabies about growing up and about staying small forever, about balloons in the sky and stars in the dark and about having a mommy and daddies that love her. Sometimes Ryan and Brendon sing them together, and sometimes Keltie sings them when she thinks no one is listening.
Sometimes, though. Sometimes when it's just Brendon and Molly he softly sings to her about when summers lasted longer than they do, his own special song that he secretly hopes she loves. If she's the only one that ever loves it then that's enough for Brendon.
Molly yawns, her mouth stretching wide and a small noise escaping her throat, and Brendon mirrors her action. The red bull helped keep him up earlier but he can feel himself winding down now, watching Molly get sleepy and feeling himself get sleepy in return.
"Molly," Brendon says her name like it's as precious as she is and brushes his finger against her soft, round cheek, watching as she blinks her eyes at him. "Mooolly."
Brendon picks Molly up and holds her in front of his face, putting his mouth to her bare stomach and blowing raspberries on her tummy, making noises and listening to the giggles that bubble up in her throat. She's been smiley ever since he remembers but the laughing is new, a noise that makes Brendon's heart swell with pride and love every time he hears it. It's the most real, happy noise he knows.
Brendon kisses her tummy one last time and leans back into the couch, holding her to his chest and kissing her cheeks, smelling her hair. She smells like soft and clean and "the way a baby should smell," Brendon's mom told him, sighing and cradling Molly in her arms. Brendon didn't understand it at first but it's true, she smells pretty amazing.
Molly yawns again and Brendon can see how heavy her eyes are getting, so he holds her to his shoulder and presses his cheek to her soft hair, getting in one last snuggle before he goes back to join her mommy and daddy. Molly rests her cheek on his shoulder and he can feel her nodding off, too tired to even pull at his hair.
Brendon walks slowly to Molly's room and lays her down in the crib. He pulls the side down so he can lean in next to her, kissing her forehead and her tiny fists that clutch the blanket beneath her, and when she lifts her legs up he leans in and kisses her toes, too. Her feet are soft and tiny and she lets out one more bubbly giggle as he noms on her toes, watching as she smiles toothlessly down at him.
Brendon gets back up and pulls the side of her crib up, locking it and letting her curl her hand around his finger as she falls asleep. Brendon hums, quiet and wordless, and with dark eyelashes brushing her cheeks and lips in a tiny pout, she finally drifts off into slumber.
Brendon slips his finger out of her fist and kisses her one last time, walking slowly out of the room and back into his.
Brendon spoons up behind Keltie, hand sliding down to cup her waist, and Keltie asks in a groggy voice, "Everything okay?"
Brendon smiles, pressing a quick kiss to the back of Keltie's neck. "Everything's fine."
-
(Later - several years later - Molly's hockey team makes it to the state play-offs the same weekend as the VMAs. Panic at the Disco is mysteriously absent from the Video Music Awards that year, but afterwards Ryan shows off Molly's trophy to literally every single person he knows.)
Author: heavyhart
Rating: PG (baby fluff)
Pairing: Ryan/Keltie/Brendon
Summary: Someone can't sleep, and someone else doesn't mind staying up with her.
Notes: 1,928 words. Written for sceaterian
"Brendon - hey, Brendon, babe, do you mind? Ryan's--"
"Shut up and sleep," Brendon says gently, kissing Keltie's forehead and rolling out of bed. As he tugs on a pair of sweatpants he watches Keltie snuggle back up with Ryan, leaning her head on his bare chest, and he smiles so big his face hurts. He doesn't stand there long, though, because someone's hungry.
-
"What's wrong, baby girl?" Brendon asks when he walks into the room, leaning over the crib and picking up Molly. Her face is sad and her eyes are wet and he holds her to his shoulder, rubbing slow circles over her back. It's been three months and she's gotten better at sleeping through the nights, but there are some nights where she just gets lonely. Brendon gets that.
"Shhh," Brendon says, padding softly to the kitchen to warm up a bottle for her. She makes quiet sniffling noises that would almost be funny but Brendon just keeps rubbing her back, humming the song he and Ryan worked on all day.
It's summer and Brendon grabs a blanket and goes out on the back porch to feed her, still humming when he settles down on the swing. The shoulder of his shirt is damp and Molly has one of her little hands fisted into his sleeve, clutching the material, but she doesn't start crying again when Brendon pulls her back from his shirt, looking at her beautiful, big eyes, tears still clinging to her eyelashes. Her eyes are soft and brown, her hair dark and soft too, if not a little messy from bed-head, and Brendon loves her more in this moment than any moment before. He loves her more each day, loves her more with every new day of her life.
Brendon smiles and sticks out his tongue but Molly just stares expectantly at him, so Brendon laughs and cradles her back into his arms, propping her up slightly, picking up the bottle and touching it to her lips. Her hands come up to grab at the bottle like she wants to hold it herself and she sucks, her lips moving in a way that's so adorable Brendon is tempted to coo at her.
Instead, Brendon leans back and sings nonsense lyrics to the song he and Ryan had been writing, because he'll be damned if he can remember what words Ryan had written down for it. They were so excited to be writing new stuff that they called up Jon, but they only talked to him for about five minutes before Cassie demanded to talk to Molly and Keltie stole the phone away.
Molly's mouth stops moving and Brendon pulls the bottle back for a second, staring down at her face for a moment before sitting her up, alternating between rubbing and patting her back.
She's so perfect, in every way a human could be perfect, but Brendon's possibly biased. Brendon remembers way back to Keltie telling Brendon she wanted a baby, to Ryan telling Brendon that he wanted Brendon to be the biological father. He remembers the way they all fit together that night, and the night after, and the night after just to make sure. He remembers Keltie jumping on him when she found out, remembers how much time they spent taking care of Keltie, talking and singing to her belly and giving her massages, coming home from tour with three months to spare and not letting her out of their sight since then.
Brendon remembers seeing Keltie and Molly together for the first time, both girls exhausted and a little cranky, even though Keltie couldn't stop smiling with the baby in her arms. He remembers holding Molly in his own arms, tears welling up in his eyes at how beautiful she was, their tiny baby girl. Brendon loves her with everything in his heart but he can tell that Ryan does too - he thinks that if it weren't for certain features, you wouldn't be able to tell who the biological father was (Keltie asked him once if it made him jealous, and Brendon shook his head and said it made him smile).
Molly finishes burping and her fingers flex as she opens her mouth for the bottle again, so Brendon tilts her back down and slides the bottle to her lips. She drinks some more and in the warm night air, the stars sparkling above, Brendon tells Molly everything she has to look forward to. He has big plans for her, how he's going to teach her piano and Keltie's going to teach her to dance and Ryan said something about hockey, Keltie's eyes lighting up for a moment in true Canadian pride, but Brendon secretly hoped they were kidding. He tells her how she's going to go on tour with them when she's old enough and how awesome piggy-back rides on Zack are. He tells her about how much Uncle Jon and Uncle Spencer are going to spoil her, and how as soon as they get their acts together she'll have some friends to play with (he thinks Haley might take some hard convincing, but he knows Cassie's too far gone in love with Molly, and that it's only a matter of months before she shows up pregnant and happy).
Brendon braces his feet against the ground and pushes the swing back and forth as he tells Molly about sandboxes, about the beach and the zoo and Disney World, about pillow forts and sleepovers and the trampoline at Grandma and Grandpa's house, which she definitely will not be jumping on from the second floor like he used to. He tells her about school and coloring and writing and singing, and he tells her how no boy will ever be good enough for her (words straight from Ryan's mouth, already the overprotective father).
Brendon stops talking when the bottle's empty and he sets it on the ground, holding Molly back up to his shoulder and rubbing her back slowly, giving little pats every so often until she burps. He rests his cheek against her face and closes his eyes, listening to her soft breathing close to his ear. After a few minutes she starts to squirm, making little impatient noises that tell Brendon she could totally cry right now if she wanted to, so he holds her against his shoulder and grabs the blanket and bottle, moving inside to the living room.
They got new carpeting before the baby was born - thick, fluffy, green carpet that feels like pillows but was hell to teach Hobo and Bogart not to eat. Brendon sits down on the floor in front of the couch, bending his knees and bringing them up so he can hold Molly in front of him, resting her back against his legs.
Molly's toes poke Brendon in the chest and he puts his index fingers in her palms, smiling when her little fingers curl around his, squeezing.
"Hey pretty baby," Brendon sings to her, making faces and watching her as she stares at his face, eyes wide and observant. She looks at him like she wants to memorize everything about his face and Brendon thinks she's got it all wrong, that she's the one he has to memorize before she changes, becomes more of a Molly and less of his Baby. Brendon always wanted children, always knew he'd love them, but he never realized how much their baby would become his whole world.
"You're a smart one, little heart-breaker," Brendon continues in a quiet voice, singing her one of her lullabies. At the height of Baby Fever (that's what Spencer calls it, but Brendon notices when Spencer refuses to let Haley hold the baby, hogging her to himself) they wrote and recorded seventeen lullabies for her, putting them on an album that only the four of them and their families own.
They wrote lullabies about growing up and about staying small forever, about balloons in the sky and stars in the dark and about having a mommy and daddies that love her. Sometimes Ryan and Brendon sing them together, and sometimes Keltie sings them when she thinks no one is listening.
Sometimes, though. Sometimes when it's just Brendon and Molly he softly sings to her about when summers lasted longer than they do, his own special song that he secretly hopes she loves. If she's the only one that ever loves it then that's enough for Brendon.
Molly yawns, her mouth stretching wide and a small noise escaping her throat, and Brendon mirrors her action. The red bull helped keep him up earlier but he can feel himself winding down now, watching Molly get sleepy and feeling himself get sleepy in return.
"Molly," Brendon says her name like it's as precious as she is and brushes his finger against her soft, round cheek, watching as she blinks her eyes at him. "Mooolly."
Brendon picks Molly up and holds her in front of his face, putting his mouth to her bare stomach and blowing raspberries on her tummy, making noises and listening to the giggles that bubble up in her throat. She's been smiley ever since he remembers but the laughing is new, a noise that makes Brendon's heart swell with pride and love every time he hears it. It's the most real, happy noise he knows.
Brendon kisses her tummy one last time and leans back into the couch, holding her to his chest and kissing her cheeks, smelling her hair. She smells like soft and clean and "the way a baby should smell," Brendon's mom told him, sighing and cradling Molly in her arms. Brendon didn't understand it at first but it's true, she smells pretty amazing.
Molly yawns again and Brendon can see how heavy her eyes are getting, so he holds her to his shoulder and presses his cheek to her soft hair, getting in one last snuggle before he goes back to join her mommy and daddy. Molly rests her cheek on his shoulder and he can feel her nodding off, too tired to even pull at his hair.
Brendon walks slowly to Molly's room and lays her down in the crib. He pulls the side down so he can lean in next to her, kissing her forehead and her tiny fists that clutch the blanket beneath her, and when she lifts her legs up he leans in and kisses her toes, too. Her feet are soft and tiny and she lets out one more bubbly giggle as he noms on her toes, watching as she smiles toothlessly down at him.
Brendon gets back up and pulls the side of her crib up, locking it and letting her curl her hand around his finger as she falls asleep. Brendon hums, quiet and wordless, and with dark eyelashes brushing her cheeks and lips in a tiny pout, she finally drifts off into slumber.
Brendon slips his finger out of her fist and kisses her one last time, walking slowly out of the room and back into his.
Brendon spoons up behind Keltie, hand sliding down to cup her waist, and Keltie asks in a groggy voice, "Everything okay?"
Brendon smiles, pressing a quick kiss to the back of Keltie's neck. "Everything's fine."
-
(Later - several years later - Molly's hockey team makes it to the state play-offs the same weekend as the VMAs. Panic at the Disco is mysteriously absent from the Video Music Awards that year, but afterwards Ryan shows off Molly's trophy to literally every single person he knows.)