RENT FIC: Looking for More (23/?)
Author: Jen (jennamajig)
Feedback: Adored
Pairing: Roger/Mimi, Maureen/Joanne, a little Mark/OC, but a Mark centric fic.
Word Count: 2,600ish
Rating: PG-13/T
Genre: General.
Summary: Mark reaches a pinnacle in his life and makes an interesting decision. Set Post-Rent.
Notes: Written for challenge #44 on speed_rent, now expanded. Comments are always appreciated and treasured.
Disclaimer: Rent is not mine, I am simply borrowing.
A/N: Dramatic license taken, of course. I've been watching too much TLC lately :). Feedback, as always, is appreciated by myself and the muse. Rest of story at ff.net.
Kara went into labor during sex.
Well, more accurately, right after they were done. Sure, he’d read about it helping. But he didn’t believe it. There was no medical evidence to prove that sex started labor.
Kara, however, did seem to believe in its powers.
He’d opened the loft door to find her waiting. She’d finished her last rotation early, leaving her a couple of weeks before her due date. But Kara simply wasn’t that patient.
“He needs to get out. We’re having sex. Now.”
He was dragged toward the bedroom before he could even put his bag down. Kara wasn’t usually this forceful and he’d wondered if the time she’d been spending with Maureen was a factor
He really didn’t have much time to consider that as Kara yanked at his zipper. She meant business.
Not that he was really complaining, of course.
In the end, he was still trying to catch his breath when he’d heard an “ow.”
He propped himself up on one elbow, turning to simply stare at her. He blinked. “Seriously?”
She looked at surprised as he did, which he found strange since she was the one that seemed so sure that sex would lead to labor.
“I’m not sure. Maybe it’s just a cramp.” She pushed herself up, rubbing at her back. “An intense and stabbing cramp.”
“An intense and stabbing cramp?” he repeated. “I doubt it. You were the one convinced that sex would lead to contractions. Where did you get that idea anyway?”
“Maureen read about it on of those magazines she always has,” Kara admitted. “She brought it over the other day.”
“You went on a tip from *Maureen*?” He wondered again why Maureen was so intent on being best friends with Kara. Payback for his friendship with Joanne, he supposed.
“Not just Maureen. My OB, two colleagues, and six nurses from the maternity ward swore by it.”
He just shook his head and sat up fully, taking a moment to straighten his glasses. For whatever reason, they’d stayed on and he hadn’t noticed. Was Kara that fast or was he simply loosing touch?
He ignored the thought and scanned the room for his pants. Kara had thrown them somewhere…bingo! He found them on the floor, just beside the bed.
“I’ll go find my watch,” he told her. “See if you’re really in labor.”
Three hours later, they were in a cab, stuck in New York City rush hour traffic. Of course, Mark mused as he gazed out the window. Just like the movies. He turned on his camera, poised to point it out the window and perhaps narrate on the predicament, when Kara yanked both his hand and his attention. She had her eyes squeezed tight, trying her best to breathe.
“Kara, maybe you should-“
“If you mention anything about Lamaze, I will kill you with my bare hands,” she said. “How long has it been since the last one?”
He glanced at his watch. “Three minutes.” He almost did a double-take as soon the words left his mouth. “Shit.”
“Shit, indeed.” Kara opened her eyes and laid her head back against the cab’s seat, letting out a long sigh. “We are still more than 20 blocks away. Why is this happening so fast? No one said sex meant fast. I just wanted sex to mean out and out when we’re at the hospital, after I’ve had an epidural.”
“You’re probably just in active labor,” he pointed out. “You and I both know that can last a few hours.”
Kara just shook her head. “I’m not in active labor, Mark.” She closed her eyes again, biting her lip. “Here’s another one. Time me.”
Mark kept his eye on the second hand on his watch. Without looking up, he asked, “What do you mean you’re not in active labor?”
Kara didn’t answer, just grabbed his hand and squeezed. The strength of her grip startled him and he almost lost track of his watch hand.
Kara finally let out a long breath, her eyes still closed. “How long?”
“65 seconds,” he told her, realizing he’d answered his own question. “You feel like you need to push, don’t you?”
Kara opened her eyes. “Yes,” she admitted, voice strained.
In the front seat, Mark heard the cabbie turn around. “Oh no. No babies in my cab.”
Wonderful. Just like the movies indeed.
“I’m trying very hard to not let that happen if you could just pay attention to the traffic and get us the hell out of here,” Kara shot back at the driver through gritted teeth. “Mark, please tell me you got to deliver a baby or two during your OB rotation. Because I had the supervisor from hell that didn’t seem to understand the meaning of the words ‘hands on learning.””
“I delivered a baby,” he confirmed. “It just wasn’t-“
“Ours?” Kara finished, swallowing. “I seriously feel like I need to push. But I wasn’t dilated enough before we got in the cab. I was sure of it.”
“That was over an hour ago. I didn’t check.” A tinge of panic crept into his voice.
“Well, check now,” Kara pleaded. “It’s not like you didn’t have your face down in that general area earlier.”
“More than I need to know, folks!” the cabbie injected.
“Just drive!” Kara told him. She started to scoot her back towards the passenger door, lifting her legs onto the seat.
Mark swallowed, feeling his heart beat in his chest. He moved his camera off the seat, half aware that it was still rolling from when he’d been ready to shoot before, but ignored it. He took a deep breath, lifted up Kara’s skirt.
Shit, shit, shit.
“You’re 10 centimeters, alright,” he admitted. “I can see the head.”
The cabbie rolled down his window at those words and was cursing at top volume at the traffic, screaming out for a cop.
Mark took another deep breath and met Kara’s eyes. She gave him a tight smile. “This hurts like hell,” she sing-songed, her voice laced with false cheerfulness.
“You need to push” was his response, though he noted how his hands were slightly shaking.
She paled. “Oh my God, I’m really going to give birth in a taxi cab, aren’t I?”
Kara wasn’t going to be the calm one. He had to be the calm one. Despite the fact that his palms were sweating, hands were still shaking, and his heart was about to beat out of his chest. He was going to become a father by his own hand - literally.
Shit, shit, shit. This wasn’t a sterile environment. There was supervisor around and he was still a couple of weeks shy or graduating, and…
…the baby didn’t give a crap about any of those things. He had to get a grip. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his camera, heard the film spinning.
“Close on Mark’s nose dive,” he muttered under his breath, thinking about the last time he’d used those words. “Will he get out of this alive?”
He took another deep breath. Time to take control, stop shaking. Do what he fundamentally knew how to do. Easy, right? “You to push, Kara,” he repeated, giving her as confident a smile as he could muster. “On the count of three, okay? One.”
“This cannot be happening.”
“Two."
“Fuck, it hurts…”
“Three.”
What happened in the next five minutes was a blur and he’d swear he’d been on autopilot. In fact, it was only when he’d retrieved his camera a couple of hours after Kara the baby were admitted into the hospital that he’d realized he’d unknowingly gotten the entire thing on film.
He’d felt like he was watching a different person.
He’d delivered his son.
His fucking son. A fact that didn’t hit him until he’d felt a tap on his shoulder from a traffic cop whose attention the cabbie had finally managed to get. There was an ambulance on the way and he was sitting there, holding a screaming, slimy baby boy.
Six pounds, eleven ounces. Ten fingers, ten toes. Blue eyes and the tiniest tuff of white blond hair. And one healthy set of lungs, judging from the crying fit he was currently having in the middle of the nursery, kicking his little legs back and forth as fast as he could.
“Mark!” He looked from the nursery window just in time for Maureen to thrust an “It’s a Boy!” balloon into his hand.
“We stopped by the gift shop,” Joanne explained, a few paces behind Maureen. “Congratulations.”
“You’re a dad!” Maureen proclaimed, and stopped to fish through her purse. “Joanne though we were spending too much time in the gift shop, so I only managed to find three cards.” She pressed two of them into his hands. “The last one is for Kara specifically,” she explained.
“Maureen, I don’t need any cards.”
Maureen just shrugged and Joanne laughed. “Think that will stop her?”
“No,” he admitted.
“Which one is he?” Maureen was peering into the nursery, her eyes scanning the rows of newborns. “Never mind, I found him. You named him Thomas.” She smiled wistfully. “Collins would like that.”
Mark nodded. The second he and Kara had discovered they were having a boy, he didn’t want to name him anything else. Thankfully, Kara understood and happened to really like the name. She’d told him of its significance in the Catholic Church. St. Thomas the apostle was the patron saint of those in doubt.
Mark had almost laughed. Collins had certainly given some great advice to those in doubt, himself included. He just hoped that somewhere Collins appreciated the sentiment as much as he was such Angel appreciated her legacy in the Davis household.
“He’s got your hair, Mark.” As Maureen spoke, she reached up briefly running her fingers though his hair. “How’s Kara?”
“Tired.”
“I’ll bet.” Joanne joined Maureen, staring through the glass. “I assume you called Roger and Mimi?”
He nodded. “A little while ago. Though for some reason, Mimi seemed to know that Kara had had the baby…”
“Because you were on the news!”
He turned at the announcement, finding Mimi, with Angel in tow and Roger not far behind her. Mimi’s body swayed with the excitement. Angel didn’t like the moment and kicked her little foot out in protest.
“The news?” How did he get on the news?
Mimi nodded. “I was watching it at home and there you were. You delivered your baby in a taxi and you don’t remember taking to the lady from channel 4?”
“I was kinda distracted. What do you mean the lady from chan--oh crap.” She was that woman reporting on the traffic and was nosy as hell, scurrying over after cop arrived and the ambulance was on the way. He vaguely remembered the microphone in his face when the paramedics were readying Kara and the baby for transport. Had he even said anything coherent?
Mimi seemed to read his thoughts. “You were dazed, but didn’t say anything stupid.”
“Or more stupid than usual,” Roger piped in, causing Mimi to gently swat his back.
“You know,” Mimi continued. “I think the last time any of us were on the news was-“
“Maureen’s protest that Christmas,” Mark finished. “Though I doubt Kara isn’t going to be as pleased with the exposure as you were, Maureen.”
“Any exposure is good exposure,” Maureen reasoned.
“Not when you’re in labor,” Mimi replied. “You look and feel like shit. Luckily it was only Mark on camera.” Angel let out a wail as if she were agreeing. Mimi sighed. “She’s so fussy lately. You take her, Roger.”
“Fussy is better than puking,” Roger told her as he took Angel from Mimi’s arms. The baby instantly settled, her cries forgotten. Mimi sighed again.
“That just isn’t fair, you know. And it is spit up, not puke.”
“I have the magic touch,” Roger simply said, letting Angel reach out and grip his finger. “And it came out of her mouth after she swallowed it. That is the definition of puke. Calling it spit up does not make it any different.”
Mark watched the entire interaction through a second set of eyes. Angel had certainly changed Mimi and Roger. Roger looked like a natural with the way he cradled Angel is his arms. Angel only had eyes for her father, gurgling happily.
The only reason Mark knew how to hold a baby was because of his OB rotation. He’d been told he was a natural and he was about to embark on a career mood that would forever put him in the company of people under eighteen, but this didn’t even compare.
“Christ, I’m really a dad now,” he said, as if the light bulb had finally gone off in his brain.
Roger simply grinned, patting Mark on the back. “Yeah, you are. Welcome to the club, Mark.”
“Club,” he muttered. His life was forever going to change, he knew. And it was a different kind of change than the one he’d been anticipating for the past four years.
You can’t be broke, starving, and freezing forever. He remembered his conversion with Collin almost three years ago outside the Life. Joanne had just made partner and he’d lamented about the time it took for Roger to shake his stubbornness and accept the fact Mark was staying in school until he graduated. Collin’s words echoed.
“He has to grow up. We all think we can continue like this forever, but we can't.”
We can’t, he mused. Collins couldn’t and proved it when his health had failed. Angel’s early arrival and uncertain future had forever changed Roger and Mimi. Joanne embraced success. Even Maureen appeared to settle a bit.
Things couldn’t stay the same forever.
“I want a baby. Joanne, let’s have a baby!”
Well, he thought, as he caught Joanne's gaze, maybe some things were better off not changing.
Feedback: Adored
Pairing: Roger/Mimi, Maureen/Joanne, a little Mark/OC, but a Mark centric fic.
Word Count: 2,600ish
Rating: PG-13/T
Genre: General.
Summary: Mark reaches a pinnacle in his life and makes an interesting decision. Set Post-Rent.
Notes: Written for challenge #44 on speed_rent, now expanded. Comments are always appreciated and treasured.
Disclaimer: Rent is not mine, I am simply borrowing.
A/N: Dramatic license taken, of course. I've been watching too much TLC lately :). Feedback, as always, is appreciated by myself and the muse. Rest of story at ff.net.
Kara went into labor during sex.
Well, more accurately, right after they were done. Sure, he’d read about it helping. But he didn’t believe it. There was no medical evidence to prove that sex started labor.
Kara, however, did seem to believe in its powers.
He’d opened the loft door to find her waiting. She’d finished her last rotation early, leaving her a couple of weeks before her due date. But Kara simply wasn’t that patient.
“He needs to get out. We’re having sex. Now.”
He was dragged toward the bedroom before he could even put his bag down. Kara wasn’t usually this forceful and he’d wondered if the time she’d been spending with Maureen was a factor
He really didn’t have much time to consider that as Kara yanked at his zipper. She meant business.
Not that he was really complaining, of course.
In the end, he was still trying to catch his breath when he’d heard an “ow.”
He propped himself up on one elbow, turning to simply stare at her. He blinked. “Seriously?”
She looked at surprised as he did, which he found strange since she was the one that seemed so sure that sex would lead to labor.
“I’m not sure. Maybe it’s just a cramp.” She pushed herself up, rubbing at her back. “An intense and stabbing cramp.”
“An intense and stabbing cramp?” he repeated. “I doubt it. You were the one convinced that sex would lead to contractions. Where did you get that idea anyway?”
“Maureen read about it on of those magazines she always has,” Kara admitted. “She brought it over the other day.”
“You went on a tip from *Maureen*?” He wondered again why Maureen was so intent on being best friends with Kara. Payback for his friendship with Joanne, he supposed.
“Not just Maureen. My OB, two colleagues, and six nurses from the maternity ward swore by it.”
He just shook his head and sat up fully, taking a moment to straighten his glasses. For whatever reason, they’d stayed on and he hadn’t noticed. Was Kara that fast or was he simply loosing touch?
He ignored the thought and scanned the room for his pants. Kara had thrown them somewhere…bingo! He found them on the floor, just beside the bed.
“I’ll go find my watch,” he told her. “See if you’re really in labor.”
Three hours later, they were in a cab, stuck in New York City rush hour traffic. Of course, Mark mused as he gazed out the window. Just like the movies. He turned on his camera, poised to point it out the window and perhaps narrate on the predicament, when Kara yanked both his hand and his attention. She had her eyes squeezed tight, trying her best to breathe.
“Kara, maybe you should-“
“If you mention anything about Lamaze, I will kill you with my bare hands,” she said. “How long has it been since the last one?”
He glanced at his watch. “Three minutes.” He almost did a double-take as soon the words left his mouth. “Shit.”
“Shit, indeed.” Kara opened her eyes and laid her head back against the cab’s seat, letting out a long sigh. “We are still more than 20 blocks away. Why is this happening so fast? No one said sex meant fast. I just wanted sex to mean out and out when we’re at the hospital, after I’ve had an epidural.”
“You’re probably just in active labor,” he pointed out. “You and I both know that can last a few hours.”
Kara just shook her head. “I’m not in active labor, Mark.” She closed her eyes again, biting her lip. “Here’s another one. Time me.”
Mark kept his eye on the second hand on his watch. Without looking up, he asked, “What do you mean you’re not in active labor?”
Kara didn’t answer, just grabbed his hand and squeezed. The strength of her grip startled him and he almost lost track of his watch hand.
Kara finally let out a long breath, her eyes still closed. “How long?”
“65 seconds,” he told her, realizing he’d answered his own question. “You feel like you need to push, don’t you?”
Kara opened her eyes. “Yes,” she admitted, voice strained.
In the front seat, Mark heard the cabbie turn around. “Oh no. No babies in my cab.”
Wonderful. Just like the movies indeed.
“I’m trying very hard to not let that happen if you could just pay attention to the traffic and get us the hell out of here,” Kara shot back at the driver through gritted teeth. “Mark, please tell me you got to deliver a baby or two during your OB rotation. Because I had the supervisor from hell that didn’t seem to understand the meaning of the words ‘hands on learning.””
“I delivered a baby,” he confirmed. “It just wasn’t-“
“Ours?” Kara finished, swallowing. “I seriously feel like I need to push. But I wasn’t dilated enough before we got in the cab. I was sure of it.”
“That was over an hour ago. I didn’t check.” A tinge of panic crept into his voice.
“Well, check now,” Kara pleaded. “It’s not like you didn’t have your face down in that general area earlier.”
“More than I need to know, folks!” the cabbie injected.
“Just drive!” Kara told him. She started to scoot her back towards the passenger door, lifting her legs onto the seat.
Mark swallowed, feeling his heart beat in his chest. He moved his camera off the seat, half aware that it was still rolling from when he’d been ready to shoot before, but ignored it. He took a deep breath, lifted up Kara’s skirt.
Shit, shit, shit.
“You’re 10 centimeters, alright,” he admitted. “I can see the head.”
The cabbie rolled down his window at those words and was cursing at top volume at the traffic, screaming out for a cop.
Mark took another deep breath and met Kara’s eyes. She gave him a tight smile. “This hurts like hell,” she sing-songed, her voice laced with false cheerfulness.
“You need to push” was his response, though he noted how his hands were slightly shaking.
She paled. “Oh my God, I’m really going to give birth in a taxi cab, aren’t I?”
Kara wasn’t going to be the calm one. He had to be the calm one. Despite the fact that his palms were sweating, hands were still shaking, and his heart was about to beat out of his chest. He was going to become a father by his own hand - literally.
Shit, shit, shit. This wasn’t a sterile environment. There was supervisor around and he was still a couple of weeks shy or graduating, and…
…the baby didn’t give a crap about any of those things. He had to get a grip. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his camera, heard the film spinning.
“Close on Mark’s nose dive,” he muttered under his breath, thinking about the last time he’d used those words. “Will he get out of this alive?”
He took another deep breath. Time to take control, stop shaking. Do what he fundamentally knew how to do. Easy, right? “You to push, Kara,” he repeated, giving her as confident a smile as he could muster. “On the count of three, okay? One.”
“This cannot be happening.”
“Two."
“Fuck, it hurts…”
“Three.”
What happened in the next five minutes was a blur and he’d swear he’d been on autopilot. In fact, it was only when he’d retrieved his camera a couple of hours after Kara the baby were admitted into the hospital that he’d realized he’d unknowingly gotten the entire thing on film.
He’d felt like he was watching a different person.
He’d delivered his son.
His fucking son. A fact that didn’t hit him until he’d felt a tap on his shoulder from a traffic cop whose attention the cabbie had finally managed to get. There was an ambulance on the way and he was sitting there, holding a screaming, slimy baby boy.
Six pounds, eleven ounces. Ten fingers, ten toes. Blue eyes and the tiniest tuff of white blond hair. And one healthy set of lungs, judging from the crying fit he was currently having in the middle of the nursery, kicking his little legs back and forth as fast as he could.
“Mark!” He looked from the nursery window just in time for Maureen to thrust an “It’s a Boy!” balloon into his hand.
“We stopped by the gift shop,” Joanne explained, a few paces behind Maureen. “Congratulations.”
“You’re a dad!” Maureen proclaimed, and stopped to fish through her purse. “Joanne though we were spending too much time in the gift shop, so I only managed to find three cards.” She pressed two of them into his hands. “The last one is for Kara specifically,” she explained.
“Maureen, I don’t need any cards.”
Maureen just shrugged and Joanne laughed. “Think that will stop her?”
“No,” he admitted.
“Which one is he?” Maureen was peering into the nursery, her eyes scanning the rows of newborns. “Never mind, I found him. You named him Thomas.” She smiled wistfully. “Collins would like that.”
Mark nodded. The second he and Kara had discovered they were having a boy, he didn’t want to name him anything else. Thankfully, Kara understood and happened to really like the name. She’d told him of its significance in the Catholic Church. St. Thomas the apostle was the patron saint of those in doubt.
Mark had almost laughed. Collins had certainly given some great advice to those in doubt, himself included. He just hoped that somewhere Collins appreciated the sentiment as much as he was such Angel appreciated her legacy in the Davis household.
“He’s got your hair, Mark.” As Maureen spoke, she reached up briefly running her fingers though his hair. “How’s Kara?”
“Tired.”
“I’ll bet.” Joanne joined Maureen, staring through the glass. “I assume you called Roger and Mimi?”
He nodded. “A little while ago. Though for some reason, Mimi seemed to know that Kara had had the baby…”
“Because you were on the news!”
He turned at the announcement, finding Mimi, with Angel in tow and Roger not far behind her. Mimi’s body swayed with the excitement. Angel didn’t like the moment and kicked her little foot out in protest.
“The news?” How did he get on the news?
Mimi nodded. “I was watching it at home and there you were. You delivered your baby in a taxi and you don’t remember taking to the lady from channel 4?”
“I was kinda distracted. What do you mean the lady from chan--oh crap.” She was that woman reporting on the traffic and was nosy as hell, scurrying over after cop arrived and the ambulance was on the way. He vaguely remembered the microphone in his face when the paramedics were readying Kara and the baby for transport. Had he even said anything coherent?
Mimi seemed to read his thoughts. “You were dazed, but didn’t say anything stupid.”
“Or more stupid than usual,” Roger piped in, causing Mimi to gently swat his back.
“You know,” Mimi continued. “I think the last time any of us were on the news was-“
“Maureen’s protest that Christmas,” Mark finished. “Though I doubt Kara isn’t going to be as pleased with the exposure as you were, Maureen.”
“Any exposure is good exposure,” Maureen reasoned.
“Not when you’re in labor,” Mimi replied. “You look and feel like shit. Luckily it was only Mark on camera.” Angel let out a wail as if she were agreeing. Mimi sighed. “She’s so fussy lately. You take her, Roger.”
“Fussy is better than puking,” Roger told her as he took Angel from Mimi’s arms. The baby instantly settled, her cries forgotten. Mimi sighed again.
“That just isn’t fair, you know. And it is spit up, not puke.”
“I have the magic touch,” Roger simply said, letting Angel reach out and grip his finger. “And it came out of her mouth after she swallowed it. That is the definition of puke. Calling it spit up does not make it any different.”
Mark watched the entire interaction through a second set of eyes. Angel had certainly changed Mimi and Roger. Roger looked like a natural with the way he cradled Angel is his arms. Angel only had eyes for her father, gurgling happily.
The only reason Mark knew how to hold a baby was because of his OB rotation. He’d been told he was a natural and he was about to embark on a career mood that would forever put him in the company of people under eighteen, but this didn’t even compare.
“Christ, I’m really a dad now,” he said, as if the light bulb had finally gone off in his brain.
Roger simply grinned, patting Mark on the back. “Yeah, you are. Welcome to the club, Mark.”
“Club,” he muttered. His life was forever going to change, he knew. And it was a different kind of change than the one he’d been anticipating for the past four years.
You can’t be broke, starving, and freezing forever. He remembered his conversion with Collin almost three years ago outside the Life. Joanne had just made partner and he’d lamented about the time it took for Roger to shake his stubbornness and accept the fact Mark was staying in school until he graduated. Collin’s words echoed.
“He has to grow up. We all think we can continue like this forever, but we can't.”
We can’t, he mused. Collins couldn’t and proved it when his health had failed. Angel’s early arrival and uncertain future had forever changed Roger and Mimi. Joanne embraced success. Even Maureen appeared to settle a bit.
Things couldn’t stay the same forever.
“I want a baby. Joanne, let’s have a baby!”
Well, he thought, as he caught Joanne's gaze, maybe some things were better off not changing.