"Be My Winding Wheel" - Adam/Kris, future fic, PG-13
Title: "Be My Winding Wheel"
Rating: PG-13 for language
Pairing: Adam/Kris
Word Count: 2,064
Summary: For orihara_kaoru's donation at the charity comm. The prompt she gave me: Kradam. Future!fic. They are married. Bringing their (from a surrogate) baby home from the hospital. She wanted lots of sap as well.
Author's Notes: Many thanks to the lovely milliejupiter for her patient beta; blame me for any remaining errors. And a thank you to everyone who encouraged me to step out of my normal zone with this. And thanks to orihara_kaoru who was patient with me as it blew up from 'drabble' to 'normal-sized fic.'
- - - - -
This wasn't how Adam expected parenthood to turn out.
Okay, maybe it's too soon to tell, he thought as he stumbled out of bed, silently wondering where the hell he put his pants. He had been so tired when he finally stumbled into bed - what, less than three hours ago? - that shutting his eyes had been his only priority, not the proper care and placement of his pajama bottoms. Maybe it does take more than forty-eight hours after bringing a baby home to adjust. Adam hoped that was the case, because so far it was nothing like he imagined it.
What did I imagine? he thought as he shuffled down the hallway. He could hear the baby crying in her nursery, by this time a low roar. Adam wondered how long it had been since the crying started, how long it had taken him to wake up.
He hadn't even been sure that he wanted kids when Kris first brought them up - the only real, hands-on experience Adam had with children was holding the babies of not-so-close cousins, and handing them back gratefully when they needed attention that didn't involve talking to them or singing. It had taken at least two years from the time Kris moved in for Adam to even contemplate the situation and another three to make it a reality. Looking at the way Kris was around kids definitely helped open his mind to it - he was nothing short of amazing with kids of all ages, and they loved him just as much. It made the bone-deep feeling of adoration that Adam felt for Kris almost painful with its intensity.
When they first saw the ultrasound, a small alien figure on a fuzzy gray screen, Adam had felt a weird disconnect that he couldn't quite explain - like he wasn't sure what his place was, where his role in all this might be. Kris had shifted his feet and looked down, and Adam knew he was trying not to cry. "Office allergies," he explained on the way home, Adam driving. "You know how doctor's offices are. They're full of gross stuff." In any other situation, Adam would have laughed and called him out, but by the way Kris was clutching the photo printouts of their baby and staring at them like a lifeline, he decided to let it ride.
He stayed quiet the rest of the day while Kris called his family and told them the news, and then called all of Adam's, too, when he felt like Adam wasn't doing it as fast as he should be. "She's perfect," Kris told Leila, speakerphone echoing through the kitchen, and Adam heard her begin to cry.
"What if I'm not any good at this?" he finally wondered out loud as they crawled into bed that night. Kris was wearing his glasses, which normally made Adam think about other things less innocent, but the overwhelming feeling that he was about to fuck up someone else's life was more than a little distracting. "What if I'm like the worst parent in the world or something?"
Kris turned to look at him, propping up on one elbow and peering at him over the top of his glasses. "That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard," he said. "You're good with kids. When we go to family get-togethers at my mom's every kid in the room flocks to you."
"The little ones are good. I think the older girls just want eyeliner tips, though," Adam said.
"You're good for that," Kris said in a tone of voice that Adam knew meant I'm humoring you, but you're being ridiculous, because he'd heard it one too many times before. "Eventually our kid's going to grow up too, you know? She'll probably want eyeliner tips. And you know that's not what all you're good for. You've got a lot you can teach her."
"What about the baby parts, though?" Adam asked. He wasn't entirely sure - how did you put clothes on a baby without accidentally breaking their arm or something equally horrible? He had a cousin who used to pee every time he got a diaper change, but Adam figured with a girl that wouldn't be an issue. He didn't know how to bathe a baby or how often they were supposed to eat or anything like that. They had talked about all of the big details: insurance and names - oh God, did they ever shut up about names? - and who their emergency contacts would be and setting up a separate account for college and the fact that babies required a lot of fucking attention and neither of them would be going anywhere for a good while, but Adam had the sinking feeling that maybe he should have put more thought into the most specific of details before he and Kris ended up at the fertility clinic.
"There are classes for that," Kris said patiently. "There are moms for that, you know, like our moms. You think both of them won't be here every day telling us what to do? Besides, we still have four months, we can figure it out as we go."
"Okay," Adam said, and took a deep breath. Kris was right. There was no need to panic now. He had plenty of time to figure it out.
He went with Kris to the most boring parenting classes on earth, and he did learn how to dress a baby (okay, a plastic doll, but Adam figured that was close enough) and how to do the swaddle-wrap thing that Kris had issues mastering and even how to test bath water to make sure it wasn't too hot, but it still didn't feel real. Not yet, especially not with the Baby Alive doll staring him down with its glassy marble eyes as he stuffed her into a onesie. We have time, he thought, especially with our moms coming to help.
Of course, things didn't work out that way - Leila had to go out of town unexpectedly, and Kim had the flu and had to postpone her trip. And then the baby came a few days early.
If it didn't feel real, if Adam didn't make that connection before, it hit home as his daughter was handed to him moments after she was born, slippery and crying and looking slightly squished. Oh, he thought, and the weight of the moment pressed into him, heavy and fierce. "We really did it," he said with no small shade of wonder, and Kris was beside him, wiping his eyes and not even trying to blame it on allergies.
They stayed with her as much as the hospital would allow them, and it felt much more natural to Adam than he ever thought it would be, even the diaper changing.
And then Kris had to go and get neurotic. The thing that Adam first noticed was when the nurse at the hospital came out to check their carseat for safety, and Kris triple-checked it after she was done. "Just to make sure that she didn't miss anything," he said nonchalantly as Adam stared him down.
When they brought her home, Kris insisted on putting her bassinet downstairs because he wasn't sure the upstairs was warm enough. When Adam checked the thermostat and pronounced it good, Kris decided that they shouldn't carry her up the stairs in case they dropped her. "She can't spend the rest of her life downstairs, Kris," Adam complained.
Kris only shook his head and went back upstairs. "She needs an extra blanket, I think," he said.
"You're going to suffocate her," Adam called after him, but he was only talking to Kris's back.
Later that night when they wiped her down with a warm cloth - still too soon to give her a real bath - Adam cleaned her face and neck while Kris held onto her like he was afraid she would suddenly sit up and try to leap out of his arms. Then he insisted that they take turns watching her sleep - downstairs, of course, since Kris wasn't ready to bring her upstairs yet.
"Come on, you don't think you're being a little overprotective? Just a little?" Adam asked as Kris dressed the baby. The only response he received was a brief stare-down and a request for a fresh bottle.
The next day was wash, rinse, repeat - Kris was terrified of leaving the baby alone for more than ten seconds at a time, though Adam convinced him to bring her upstairs halfway through the day. When the housekeeper came by to do a quick cleanup after lunch, Kris made her scrub her hands all the way up to her elbows before she came and looked at the baby. Adam would have complained about that, too, except Kris made him do the same thing every time he picked her up.
And the thing is, Adam thought on that second night as he made his way into the nursery, this part is nowhere near as hard as I thought it would be. The difficult part was Kris. It wasn't like Adam didn't feel protective of their daughter - he did, already, even at this early stage. When he looked at her he felt a magnetic pull, a protectiveness that he only felt about Kris and even that emotion paled in comparison.
But she wasn't going to break if someone other than Kris handled her, and he was pretty sure handwashing up to the wrist alone would be okay, and if Adam was being honest, Kris was driving him nuts. Absolutely fucking nuts.
He softened more than a little when he came into the nursery - and he'd pushed hard for the nursery to be less traditional and more fantastical with deep violet hues and gold edging and an intricate star pattern painted on the ceiling by an old friend - and found Kris sitting in the floor, baby crying in his lap.
"I can't figure out what her deal is," Kris said miserably as Adam sat down in front of him.
Adam shook his head. "She's a baby," he said, picking her up and looking her over. "No deal here. Diaper's changed, she's been fed, all that, right?"
Kris nodded. "She just… I rocked her and I sang to her and she just keeps crying and I didn't know what to do," he said.
Adam stretched out his legs and nudged Kris's with his feet. Kris obliged, raising his own legs so Adam could slide his underneath. They sat face to face and Adam reached up, tugging a blanket hanging over the crib railing, and folded it in half, laying it in the space that was their shared lap.
He turned the baby over and laid her on her stomach between them, rubbing her back as she settled into the space. "Maybe she senses you were stressed out," Adam said patiently. "Maybe she sensed you needed some help."
"I just want to do everything right," Kris said in a rush, shaking his head. "I don't want to mess her up or anything. This isn’t going to be easy for her, right? Having two dads and being the kid of famous people and all that? I figure the least I can do right now is make sure she's taken care of, and that she's safe."
"She will be," Adam said, mentally marveling at how he and Kris had swapped points of view in the last few months. "It'll be fine. She'll be fine and we'll be fine. She's not going to grow up like we did, you know? And we're a part of that, whether we wanted to be or not. Remember what you told me when I freaked out, months ago?"
"We can figure it out as we go," Kris said, nodding. He took a deep breath and looked down at the baby, who had stopped crying and was taking deep little post-tears breaths as she went to sleep, Adam still patting her back.
"It was good advice," Adam admitted. "Can you take your own advice?"
Kris covered Adam's hand on the baby's back with his own, his wedding band brushing quietly against Adam's. "Yeah, I think so," he said. "We can figure it out as we go. Emphasis on the we."
"We do make a great team," Adam said with a grin. "The best team ever."
-end-
Rating: PG-13 for language
Pairing: Adam/Kris
Word Count: 2,064
Summary: For orihara_kaoru's donation at the charity comm. The prompt she gave me: Kradam. Future!fic. They are married. Bringing their (from a surrogate) baby home from the hospital. She wanted lots of sap as well.
Author's Notes: Many thanks to the lovely milliejupiter for her patient beta; blame me for any remaining errors. And a thank you to everyone who encouraged me to step out of my normal zone with this. And thanks to orihara_kaoru who was patient with me as it blew up from 'drabble' to 'normal-sized fic.'
- - - - -
This wasn't how Adam expected parenthood to turn out.
Okay, maybe it's too soon to tell, he thought as he stumbled out of bed, silently wondering where the hell he put his pants. He had been so tired when he finally stumbled into bed - what, less than three hours ago? - that shutting his eyes had been his only priority, not the proper care and placement of his pajama bottoms. Maybe it does take more than forty-eight hours after bringing a baby home to adjust. Adam hoped that was the case, because so far it was nothing like he imagined it.
What did I imagine? he thought as he shuffled down the hallway. He could hear the baby crying in her nursery, by this time a low roar. Adam wondered how long it had been since the crying started, how long it had taken him to wake up.
He hadn't even been sure that he wanted kids when Kris first brought them up - the only real, hands-on experience Adam had with children was holding the babies of not-so-close cousins, and handing them back gratefully when they needed attention that didn't involve talking to them or singing. It had taken at least two years from the time Kris moved in for Adam to even contemplate the situation and another three to make it a reality. Looking at the way Kris was around kids definitely helped open his mind to it - he was nothing short of amazing with kids of all ages, and they loved him just as much. It made the bone-deep feeling of adoration that Adam felt for Kris almost painful with its intensity.
When they first saw the ultrasound, a small alien figure on a fuzzy gray screen, Adam had felt a weird disconnect that he couldn't quite explain - like he wasn't sure what his place was, where his role in all this might be. Kris had shifted his feet and looked down, and Adam knew he was trying not to cry. "Office allergies," he explained on the way home, Adam driving. "You know how doctor's offices are. They're full of gross stuff." In any other situation, Adam would have laughed and called him out, but by the way Kris was clutching the photo printouts of their baby and staring at them like a lifeline, he decided to let it ride.
He stayed quiet the rest of the day while Kris called his family and told them the news, and then called all of Adam's, too, when he felt like Adam wasn't doing it as fast as he should be. "She's perfect," Kris told Leila, speakerphone echoing through the kitchen, and Adam heard her begin to cry.
"What if I'm not any good at this?" he finally wondered out loud as they crawled into bed that night. Kris was wearing his glasses, which normally made Adam think about other things less innocent, but the overwhelming feeling that he was about to fuck up someone else's life was more than a little distracting. "What if I'm like the worst parent in the world or something?"
Kris turned to look at him, propping up on one elbow and peering at him over the top of his glasses. "That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard," he said. "You're good with kids. When we go to family get-togethers at my mom's every kid in the room flocks to you."
"The little ones are good. I think the older girls just want eyeliner tips, though," Adam said.
"You're good for that," Kris said in a tone of voice that Adam knew meant I'm humoring you, but you're being ridiculous, because he'd heard it one too many times before. "Eventually our kid's going to grow up too, you know? She'll probably want eyeliner tips. And you know that's not what all you're good for. You've got a lot you can teach her."
"What about the baby parts, though?" Adam asked. He wasn't entirely sure - how did you put clothes on a baby without accidentally breaking their arm or something equally horrible? He had a cousin who used to pee every time he got a diaper change, but Adam figured with a girl that wouldn't be an issue. He didn't know how to bathe a baby or how often they were supposed to eat or anything like that. They had talked about all of the big details: insurance and names - oh God, did they ever shut up about names? - and who their emergency contacts would be and setting up a separate account for college and the fact that babies required a lot of fucking attention and neither of them would be going anywhere for a good while, but Adam had the sinking feeling that maybe he should have put more thought into the most specific of details before he and Kris ended up at the fertility clinic.
"There are classes for that," Kris said patiently. "There are moms for that, you know, like our moms. You think both of them won't be here every day telling us what to do? Besides, we still have four months, we can figure it out as we go."
"Okay," Adam said, and took a deep breath. Kris was right. There was no need to panic now. He had plenty of time to figure it out.
He went with Kris to the most boring parenting classes on earth, and he did learn how to dress a baby (okay, a plastic doll, but Adam figured that was close enough) and how to do the swaddle-wrap thing that Kris had issues mastering and even how to test bath water to make sure it wasn't too hot, but it still didn't feel real. Not yet, especially not with the Baby Alive doll staring him down with its glassy marble eyes as he stuffed her into a onesie. We have time, he thought, especially with our moms coming to help.
Of course, things didn't work out that way - Leila had to go out of town unexpectedly, and Kim had the flu and had to postpone her trip. And then the baby came a few days early.
If it didn't feel real, if Adam didn't make that connection before, it hit home as his daughter was handed to him moments after she was born, slippery and crying and looking slightly squished. Oh, he thought, and the weight of the moment pressed into him, heavy and fierce. "We really did it," he said with no small shade of wonder, and Kris was beside him, wiping his eyes and not even trying to blame it on allergies.
They stayed with her as much as the hospital would allow them, and it felt much more natural to Adam than he ever thought it would be, even the diaper changing.
And then Kris had to go and get neurotic. The thing that Adam first noticed was when the nurse at the hospital came out to check their carseat for safety, and Kris triple-checked it after she was done. "Just to make sure that she didn't miss anything," he said nonchalantly as Adam stared him down.
When they brought her home, Kris insisted on putting her bassinet downstairs because he wasn't sure the upstairs was warm enough. When Adam checked the thermostat and pronounced it good, Kris decided that they shouldn't carry her up the stairs in case they dropped her. "She can't spend the rest of her life downstairs, Kris," Adam complained.
Kris only shook his head and went back upstairs. "She needs an extra blanket, I think," he said.
"You're going to suffocate her," Adam called after him, but he was only talking to Kris's back.
Later that night when they wiped her down with a warm cloth - still too soon to give her a real bath - Adam cleaned her face and neck while Kris held onto her like he was afraid she would suddenly sit up and try to leap out of his arms. Then he insisted that they take turns watching her sleep - downstairs, of course, since Kris wasn't ready to bring her upstairs yet.
"Come on, you don't think you're being a little overprotective? Just a little?" Adam asked as Kris dressed the baby. The only response he received was a brief stare-down and a request for a fresh bottle.
The next day was wash, rinse, repeat - Kris was terrified of leaving the baby alone for more than ten seconds at a time, though Adam convinced him to bring her upstairs halfway through the day. When the housekeeper came by to do a quick cleanup after lunch, Kris made her scrub her hands all the way up to her elbows before she came and looked at the baby. Adam would have complained about that, too, except Kris made him do the same thing every time he picked her up.
And the thing is, Adam thought on that second night as he made his way into the nursery, this part is nowhere near as hard as I thought it would be. The difficult part was Kris. It wasn't like Adam didn't feel protective of their daughter - he did, already, even at this early stage. When he looked at her he felt a magnetic pull, a protectiveness that he only felt about Kris and even that emotion paled in comparison.
But she wasn't going to break if someone other than Kris handled her, and he was pretty sure handwashing up to the wrist alone would be okay, and if Adam was being honest, Kris was driving him nuts. Absolutely fucking nuts.
He softened more than a little when he came into the nursery - and he'd pushed hard for the nursery to be less traditional and more fantastical with deep violet hues and gold edging and an intricate star pattern painted on the ceiling by an old friend - and found Kris sitting in the floor, baby crying in his lap.
"I can't figure out what her deal is," Kris said miserably as Adam sat down in front of him.
Adam shook his head. "She's a baby," he said, picking her up and looking her over. "No deal here. Diaper's changed, she's been fed, all that, right?"
Kris nodded. "She just… I rocked her and I sang to her and she just keeps crying and I didn't know what to do," he said.
Adam stretched out his legs and nudged Kris's with his feet. Kris obliged, raising his own legs so Adam could slide his underneath. They sat face to face and Adam reached up, tugging a blanket hanging over the crib railing, and folded it in half, laying it in the space that was their shared lap.
He turned the baby over and laid her on her stomach between them, rubbing her back as she settled into the space. "Maybe she senses you were stressed out," Adam said patiently. "Maybe she sensed you needed some help."
"I just want to do everything right," Kris said in a rush, shaking his head. "I don't want to mess her up or anything. This isn’t going to be easy for her, right? Having two dads and being the kid of famous people and all that? I figure the least I can do right now is make sure she's taken care of, and that she's safe."
"She will be," Adam said, mentally marveling at how he and Kris had swapped points of view in the last few months. "It'll be fine. She'll be fine and we'll be fine. She's not going to grow up like we did, you know? And we're a part of that, whether we wanted to be or not. Remember what you told me when I freaked out, months ago?"
"We can figure it out as we go," Kris said, nodding. He took a deep breath and looked down at the baby, who had stopped crying and was taking deep little post-tears breaths as she went to sleep, Adam still patting her back.
"It was good advice," Adam admitted. "Can you take your own advice?"
Kris covered Adam's hand on the baby's back with his own, his wedding band brushing quietly against Adam's. "Yeah, I think so," he said. "We can figure it out as we go. Emphasis on the we."
"We do make a great team," Adam said with a grin. "The best team ever."
-end-