Fic: Come Daylight 18
Title: Come Daylight [18/18]
Author: wanderingjasper
Rating: FRT
Characters: Morgan/Reid, ensemble
Word Count: 2844
Themes: Fluff, romance, life!angst, mpreg.
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters, but I do take liberties with them for no financial gain.
Warnings: Non-sexual intimate nudity.
Notes: Previous chapters here. Finale. See additional notes at end.
Summary: Now they're home, the new chapter of their life begins in earnest.
“A baby's cry is precisely as serious as it sounds.” - Jean Liedloff
Clooney had truly earned the title of “good dog” since the new addition had been home. Morgan had taken one of Sam’s first blankets to the house when he went to check up on the canine, and reported back that the dog was fascinated with the smell and hadn’t chewed or bitten the fabric. It took the dog a full day before he disobeyed orders that he had to be in his bed when both he and the baby were in the living room. He got up and padded towards where Reid was sat on the sofa with Sam up against his chest, her head resting on his shoulder as he alternately rubbed and patted her tiny back, attempting to burp her after her feed.
“Stay,” Reid said, with much more confidence than he’d had when he first met the canine, and Clooney immediately stopped in his tracks half way across the room. Clooney hadn’t been allowed close yet, as they gradually got him used to the smell and presence of the new arrival. Morgan had been taking him for several walks a way to drain his excess energy, which Reid was sure was also giving him the extra attention he needed; he’d never had such regular walks with his masters when they worked at the BAU.
“Slowly,” he said, and Clooney started walking again at the designated pace, putting one paw deliberately in front of another. Reid was thankful for all the training Morgan had done, and what he’d then instructed Reid to do in turn. “Sit,” he said when Clooney reached him, and the dog obeyed, looking unwaveringly at Reid.
Sam let out a little burp, and Reid craned his head to see if she’d spit up - she hadn’t - he’d experienced that already, and had a towel over his shoulder in preparation.
“There we go, Sam,” he cooed. “Someone wants to say hello, I think.” He took Sam off his shoulder and transferred her to his arm. He’d found it easier than he imagined to hold her; she was so tiny, she fit perfectly. He wasn’t as confident as Morgan, who could carry her around with one arm with perfect ease, but sitting down he was able enough to do so, freeing up his other hand to reach out and scratch Clooney’s head.
“Good dog,” he said, and the dog relaxed as he was rewarded with affection for following commands. After a moment his interest was caught by Sam, and he inched forward to sniff her. She fussed as the warm muzzle made contact with her, nudging her. Reid stroked her head, ready to push the dog away or command him if he did any more than sniff around.
“This is Sam,” he said. “She is a very tiny human, you have to be gentle.”
“He will be.” Morgan was standing in the doorway, smiling. Apparently even a new baby couldn’t match the excitement of being a dog that hadn’t seen his master for all of twenty minutes. He trotted over to Morgan and got a good rub around the neck and ears with both hands for his trouble. “You being a good dog?”
“He is.”
The doorbell rang as Reid was getting up from the couch. “You go,” he prompted, readjusting his hold on Sam, “she’s making what I’m pretty sure is her poop-face.”
When he came back to the living room, Sam - in a clean cloth diaper - was crying as he held her against his chest, a short staccato cry which he thought meant she just wanted comfort; the cry she made when she was hungry was much higher in pitch. He bounced her slightly, making shushing sounds. Morgan was sat on the couch, and there was a large hamper on the coffee table.
“Who’s that from?” he asked.
“Don’t know.” Morgan held out his hands, and Reid passed over the crying baby with care. “Hey little girl,” he cooed as he held her like Reid had. “What are you fussing for? Daddy’s got you.”
“It’s from Lila,” Reid said as he read the inside congratulations card. “She says ‘Congrats on your new arrival. Wish I could come say hello, but as I’m currently filming in Australia, I thought I’d send along this gift in my place. Don’t forget to look after yourself. Love, Lila.’”
“That’s nice.”
“Yeah,” Reid said as he began to open the hamper, but there was a heavy feeling in his chest.
“But?” Morgan prompted, seeing through Reid’s attempt to smooth over his feelings.
He sighed as he lifted out a bottle of champagne from the basket. “Ethan hasn’t called. Or sent a card. Or made any attempt to contact me. I thought he’d get over it in a few days, but...”
“Spencer, if he’s still hung up on being an ass, it’s his loss.”
“I know. I still wish it hadn’t ended up like this.”
“I know you do. But you couldn’t have done anything to stop it.”
“Yeah. Look, Lila didn’t send us anything for Sam, it’s all for us.” He smiled; it was nice to be remembered through the flood of baby-feelings everyone was having. “DVDs, books, snacks, bath stuff, oh, and spa tickets.”
Morgan didn’t pursue their discussion on Ethan, instead took the proffered tickets from Reid. “Have you ever actually been to a spa? Not on a case,” he added as Reid opened his mouth.
“No.”
“We should go. In a few weeks, yeah? When you’re healed. Garcia will be begging to get a chance to babysit by then, anyway.” He turned the tickets over, examining them. “Wow, I’ve heard of this place. It’s classy. Hey, and maybe we can cross a sauna off our list of places to have sex.”
Reid smirked at Morgan’s mischievous grin, and leaned over to kiss him lightly on the mouth. Automatically his hand went to Sam, between each of Morgan’s hands and rubbed her back. Morgan took his hand off the back of her head as Reid’s moved up to replace it, and instead put it around his husband and drew him in close.
---
“You okay with me taking one while you’re feeding her?” Morgan asked, holding the camera aloft as Reid sat with Sam latched on his breast.
“Yeah,” Reid sighed. “I wrote about breastfeeding in my letter anyway.”
“We could go and see your mom, you know,” Morgan said as he knelt to get a good angle.
“I think we should wait until she’s older,” Reid said, though he didn’t look up. Feeding Sam was still mesmerising; watching her suckle with her little fist clenched against his skin. He’d already noticed that during morning feedings she kept her eyes open, looking around at what would be fuzzy shapes in her vision. “If I keep sending pictures hopefully by the time we visit she won’t be shocked, even if she’s not completely lucid.”
“Your call, babe.”
“You know you haven’t called me baby since about the eighth month of pregnancy?” Reid noted.
“Haven’t I?”
“No. She’s your baby now, I get it. She was your baby then too, even though you consistently used neutral language to make me feel comfortable. Then you started using singular ‘they’, which was still ambiguous but allowed you to give the pregnancy the personal significance you needed to.”
“You used ‘they’ too,” Morgan pointed out.
“I know. It got to a point that while still technically a fetus, the baby had a good chance of survival if born prematurely and I was already thinking of them - of her - in the terms of being a person.”
“Do you miss me calling you baby?” Morgan asked as he stood over them, taking a picture from a high angle.
“Not so much that it causes me distress,” he smiled.
“I can try to do it if you want?”
“Don’t force it.” Reid stroked the side of Sam’s head, around the shell of her ear. “I don’t mind what you call me.”
Morgan came to join Reid on the couch, setting the camera aside. He pulled a small book into view from the coffee table, and Reid recognised it as something called a ‘Promise Book’ that Garcia had given to them. The premise was to write promises to your child on each page; fill the book in their first year or so, and then put it in a sealed wooden box and not open it until said child’s eighteenth birthday.
“I wrote a couple,” he said.
“Did you? Tell me.”
Morgan opened the book, and turned to address Sam as much as Reid. “I promise to love you forever.” He turned the page. “I promise to help you grow. I promise when you’re a teenager we’ll only embarrass you a little bit.”
Reid laughed. “Well, it would be impossible to keep all of those promises.” He paused. “She is going to be happy.”
“I know.” Morgan leaned his head on Reid’s shoulder, and watched their daughter feed. “She takes her time on you, doesn’t she? When she has a bottle she wolfs it down.”
“Milk flow is easier from a bottle.”
“You doing okay with it?”
“Yeah, but it hurts if she doesn’t latch properly.”
“I’m sorry I can’t help you take that,” Morgan said. “If we’d thought of it I could have pumped to induce lactation...”
“Derek, you’ve been getting up to feed her. I didn’t do any feeding last night, and only one the night before. You really are helping. We’re making a good team.”
“We’ve always been a good team, Spence. Ever since we met, we’ve worked well together. Though our work was never really nurturing.”
“Well, not in the same way this will be.”
“No.” Morgan closed the book and hunkered down, resting his head on Reid’s shoulder. “You deserve a promise, too. I promise you, we’re in this together, forever, pretty boy.”
“I don’t think you’ve ever made a promise to me you didn’t keep,” Reid murmured, sparing the hand that wasn’t supporting the baby to search out Morgan’s and lace their fingers together. He squeezed, and wondered just how long things could stay so perfect, if there was a limit, or if they’d finally made it; if everything they’d seen and fought was over, and they could now have happiness without cost. That was a promise neither could make, even though the promise to give everything they could to see it happen was implied.
---
They’d been at home with Sam for a week, and even though both of them had been on hand to look after her, they were both tired. Day four had brought Spencer’s first session of random crying; one of his nipples was very sore, and when it was his turn to feed Sam she wouldn’t latch. He’d burst into tears, certain they’d somehow messed her up by alternately breast and bottle feeding her. Morgan, in an attempt to not upset Reid further, had phoned JJ instead of the lactation consultant for advice. She’d suggested Sam might be gassy, and probably wouldn’t want to feed. So they spent an hour holding her in different positions to burp her, with Reid getting more and more worried as Sam cried and cried. Eventually, she let out a huge belch which seemed to abate her crying, and Morgan had never looked so proud. After that she latched fine and fed like a champ, and the new parents had overcome their first hurdle.
By the time Sam was ten days old, her umbilical stump had fallen off and healed, and they decided to move on from the sponge-washes they’d been giving her.
“You sure you don’t want to be the one to do this?” Morgan asked, testing the temperature of the bathwater with his hand as he pulled off his boxer briefs with the other. “First bath, and all.”
“I’m sure. I can’t hog all the firsts,” Reid smiled, holding onto a naked and freshly fed and changed Sam as Morgan got into position. “Besides, I can’t get in and out of the tub.” There was also something about the idea of bathing with a large wound that didn’t sound appealing, but he left that out. Instead he sat down in the chair they’d put by the side of the bath, with all the necessary things within reach, as Morgan settled down in the water. As he handed Sam to her other father, he hoped she wouldn’t cry and fuss; Morgan had been so looking forward to bathing her, and it had developed quickly into taking her into the bath with him, at Reid’s suggestion that the opportunity for skin-to-skin contact might help her not to panic.
Morgan put her against his chest and leaned back, supporting under her backside as he eased into the warm water. She wriggled as she was half-submerged in the warm water, and Morgan grinned.
“You like that, Sam?” he asked her, as her little legs kicked out experimentally and she made a small sound. “Yeah, you do. Just don’t get too relaxed and pee on Daddy, okay?”
Reid chuckled, and watched as Sam started to cry. Morgan didn’t panic, just sloshed water on her back and kept touching her, stroking along her back to reassure her. It was a half-hearted cry to begin with, and after a few minutes she settled down.
“If we get a bath mat, we could take her in the shower with us,” Morgan said. “This is nice, but baths take a while.”
“When I’m healed better. You know I have to brace in the shower because the heat’s been making me unsteady after a while.”
“We’ll buy a shower seat, too. It might come in handy.”
“All the stuff we didn’t plan,” Reid mused. “Shower seats, afternoon naps, sore nipples.”
“My nipples feel fine,” Derek teased, as he picked up the washcloth from the side of the bath with his free hand and dunked it in the water. Reid leaned forward and took it, wringing it out a little and spreading a mild soap on it. He handed it back and Morgan began to wash Sam, turning her slightly on his chest to get to her stomach. She was quiet and calm, clearly content between the warm water and her father’s warm chest and hand.
“Got to get you nice and clean, little baby,” Morgan murmured as he washed over her rear and legs and down to her tiny feet. Reid smiled as he watched them, and knew Derek could tell his eyes were on him. He’d noticed it too, when he was interacting with her, Morgan would just watch them, smiling contently. There was nothing that had made him feel as happy as watching him interact with their daughter in a long time. It wasn’t as if their relationship had been lacking at all, or that they had been incomplete, but he hadn’t been able to comprehend just how quickly and spectacularly he could come to love another human being.
“I never want to be pregnant again,” he said suddenly into the relative quiet. Morgan spared him a lopsided look as he used a jug to carefully rinse Sam of soap and make sure she stayed warm. “I mean-” Reid went on, “well, I mean I don’t want to. Ever. But I don’t regret it. I am so glad we did this, Derek. She’s perfect, and I love her.”
“I love her too,” Morgan said, leaning down to kiss the top of her head.
He carefully ran the cloth over it, washing her scalp. Reid leaned over to wipe at her face with another cloth, carefully cleaning around her mouth, her eyes, her nose. She began to cry again, and Morgan smiled as he tried to sooth her.
“Baby girl, don’t fuss.” She didn’t seem responsive to being calmed, so they both carefully worked to rinse her free of soap. “She might be getting cold. You better take her.”
“Here we go,” Reid cooed as Morgan handed her over, and wrapped her up in a fluffy towel, gathering her up in the folds and moving away to give Morgan some room. “Shh, shh, shh,” he sounded as he carried her through into the bedroom. “Daddy’s going to get you dry, okay?”
She’d settled down in the warm towel by the time Morgan came out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist. Reid smiled at him, but didn’t expect the man to come over and sweep him up, wrapping his arms around them, pressing Sam securely between them.
“That was fantastic,” Morgan murmured. “She’s so tiny and brilliant. We made her,” he added, sounding like he’s just realised it and was amazed.
“Yeah, we did.” Spencer grinned, and as Sam snuffled between them amongst the folds of towel, he knew that although he’d never imagined his life ending up here, he wouldn’t change a single moment of it.
“There are words in the soul of a newborn baby, wanting and waiting to be written.” - Toba Beta
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A/N: That's the end of Come Daylight! It's been a long run to get this story finished. I've learned a lot along the way. Thank you to everyone who as read, commented, and given support and help.
Don't worry, this is not the last story you will see in this 'verse. I will continue to write in the Come Daylight 'verse, but there will be no more chaptered stories. It will likely be one-shots, as and when I get inspiration for them. Also, I can't guarentee they'll be in chronological order (though I will list them as such on my fic index). I hope you continue to enjoy what this 'verse has to offer.