bakerstreet | Papa don't preach

Papa don't preach

The Parenting Meme

HOW IT WORKS:
➔ Post with your characters, one per comment please.
➔ Others tag your muse with a number choice. Either use the RNG or pick whichever you like. For optimum fun, be adventurous! Throw random characters at each other and see what fun shenanigans you can get up to.
➔ Congratulations! Now you're parents. Hopefully you won't screw this up too much.
➔ Have fun!

01. You’ve just gotten the news, you’re pregnant. Time to tell your spouse. OR You’ve just gotten the news, you’re approved for adoption! Time to tell your spouse.
02. Oh my God, you’re in labor! OR Oh my God, time to meet your adoption prospect.
03. It’s the first night home with your new baby. Good luck.
04. Now you know why they call it the terrible twos. How are you and your spouse coping?
05. It’s your little one’s first day of school. You and your spouse are seeing them off.
06. Sitting in the stands for your kid’s big sports game. You two cheer as loud as you can!
07. The only thing worse than a two-year-old is a teenager. Time to discuss what's an appropriate punishment.
08. Hopefully you’ve got fresh batteries in your camera for prom pictures. Maybe your spouse remembered.
09. Your kid is off to college. You can’t believe the number of boxes you’ve got to fit in your car and carry to their dorm.
10. You’re older, wiser and probably going to cry at your kid's wedding. At least you two still have each other.

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One way or another Kay had failed to do the one thing most expectant mothers jump to first when the inevitable occurs. It'd been a week or so since she'd started occasionally having false contractions, waves that foreboded what was to come but didn't immediately indicate, and she'd stopped even mentioning it because Aaron got jumpy when she did. Well, understandably -- but Kay didn't end up feeling the same way. Body memory was kicking in, and it was tiresome to explain to him every time that she was alright, that it wasn't time yet.

As it was, when things began to pick up and Kay understood that it was time, Aaron had been out. They had had a plan -- she had had a plan -- and rather than hunt her partner down, Kay hunkered down and, half driven by nebulous and ancient instinct, proceeded on her own.

In that case, when Aaron's phone rang, on the other end it was Astren rather than Kay. "Aaron," she greeted, sounding a little less understated than usual, "hello. Are you somewhere that I can come and get you? Kay's in labour."

Oh shit. Aaron nearly dropped his phone, which he'd picked up while in the middle of one of those long highway drives. Unlike some tiny redheaded people, he wasn't able to simply teleport wherever he liked... though if he could, at this moment he certainly would have.

"I'm on the road," he answered, "but I'm on the wrong way out. I'm coming up on Range Road one-eleven. Can you pick me up from there?" He felt his palm suddenly creased with sweat on the steering wheel, the adrenaline that shot through him. "You're handling it?" They'd had an argument about that, Kay and Aaron, when she first brought it up. Hospitals were no good for people like her, but Aaron had initially been against roughing it at home -- weren't there too many things that could go wrong? If she was willing to go through whatever colds and flues came her way, he wasn't sure he was willing to risk all of the possible complications that went along with labour. Still, Astren was an experienced midwife, when it came down to it, and, if nothing else, the blonde knew he could trust Kay's close friend. Even if he felt as though things might still go wrong, he was glad that Astren was on the phone now and that Kay wasn't alone.

"Joey is with her. She's fine. I'm getting things ready," Astren assured him. "Let me know when you've pulled over." With a brief but unharried sign-off the elemental hung up, leaving Aaron on his own again with his adrenaline and nerves. Thankfully the road wasn't far off.

They'd had a contingency plan, too, and that was where Joey came in. She'd be present, having delivered a baby or two herself in her time, though conceding authority to Astren. If anything seemed to be going slowly or too difficultly, though, they would go to one of Joey's spa's private rooms, the nearest thing to a supernatural hospital in the city. There would be more she could do there. It had been her suggestion, a peace offering when Kay had mentioned the ongoing conflict. A hospital was out of the question, as there was an outside possibility of the baby coming out, well, fiery, but the water elemental's skills and expertise could do their part to save the situation and maybe the baby if something went wrong that Kay and Astren couldn't handle.

When Aaron called Astren's number again, no one answered, however a moment later the solid woman appeared beside the car, looking quite at home in the early summer's ditch growth. She smiled at Aaron, waiting for him to exit the car, and when he did she immediately offered, "she's doing fine. Take a moment and a deep breath."

The next couple of minutes were pretty painstaking, and Aaron managed to creep over the speed limit until he reached the turn-off. A moment later, he was pulling over to the side of the road in a spray of dust and gravel, near where the blocky elemental had re-materialized.

"You've got no idea," he told her, never the less doing as she instructed. The thing was, when he'd first shown up to badger Kay, he didn't expect that he'd get so invested in the body and the fucking life that went with it. It'd sort of crept up on him. Now he couldn't help but take things seriously -- Kay and he had gone through too many scrapes and gotten too many scars for him to treat things flippantly.

Additionally, there was the fact that this was the first sentient thing that he'd ever made with the redhead. Granted, it was going to be a human life and not an AI one... but that was still important. Perhaps there was a layer of weight added, in fact, given that Aaron had a better perspective about what mortality could be like. In any case, he hurried over to the woman and said, "let's go." He didn't want to miss anything.

Astren smiled and put a hand on Aaron's shoulder, and a moment later they appeared back at Aaron and Kay's place.

She'd brought them to the upstairs hallway outside the bedroom, not wanting to have dropped them right in the middle of everything, and given that Joey had the situation under control for the moment Astren let Aaron charge in first.

Kay was not labouring laying down, but instead she had been pacing the room between contractions -- slowly and cautiously, humoring her huge belly, but she was walking. Joey was walking with her, offering support when she had to stop and ride out a contraction and pressing a palm to the elemental's forehead when she did, but her presence at the moment seemed mainly background. Kay had a look to her that was deeply concentrating, drawn inwards. It was a kind of look that Aaron would recognize echoes of in the K he'd known in his timeframe, when she got deeply into something she was building, the kind of concentration that precluded the outside world entirely.

She did look up and see him, though, and seeing him, reached a hand his way, entreating for his presence. "Aaron."

((Have they discussed the details of how she wanted to do this thing beforehand or is her walking around a surprise?))

"How are you doing?" he asked upon entering the room. He grabbed at her hand, squeezing it, and if she'd ever seen him more worried, she'd have to think long and hard before she could pinpoint a time. Joey and Astren fell away from his awareness, he was more or less solely focused on the woman right in front of him.

((Probably a surprise; she wouldn't have gotten this specific in letting him know how she wanted to do things.))

"I'm fine." His worry was... not surprising, but it was touching in that particular way. Kay's assertion was true enough, too, at least in that everything felt as if it was going as it should. Pain was incidental. It demanded all of her attention when a contraction hit, but it was not worrisome.

The redhead squeezed his hand back, and then let it go, instead sliding an arm around his waist, leaning on him -- as much for the literal support as for the affection. Now that Aaron was here, he could serve that purpose, and Joey stepped back, giving the couple some room and going to speak quietly with Astren.

A contraction hit, and Kay's arm tightened around Aaron. She hunched her shoulders, making a terrible face, and groaned through it, pushing.

"Are you sure you wouldn't rather lay down?" the blonde asked, startled by this new development, but holding her tight none the less. He was alarmed but not surprised, if that made sense, that Kay was going to do this the hard way. Everything that he'd read suggested that the most common methods of labour had nothing to do with pacing around and hunching over with every contraction.

"I'll get to it," she told him, coming out the other end of the contraction panting, trembling just a little. "I was earlier."

Then she seemed to shake herself out of her reverie a little bit, enough to toss him up a grin that was a little frayed around the edges. "Figured I might as well move around while I still can. Once this really gets going, I'll be down for a while."

"How long are we talking about?" he wanted to know, casting a glance to the other women. They ought to have a good feeling for what the timeframe would be by now, right?

Astren and Joey had been standing by the door, still talking quietly, but the question from Aaron caught the attention of the two women. Astren looked up, considering the question, while Joey slid over again and put her hand to Kay's forehead once more, a motion that seemed to soothe the elemental. "An hour, maybe," Astren told the worried father. "If things keep going at this pace. It can be hard to estimate exactly, but she's pretty well progressed." Kay, in fact, hadn't called her friends in until she had been well on her way.

"How are you doing?" Joey was asking the redhead soothingly. Kay had closed her eyes, again falling back into that almost meditative state, though she was frowning and leaning more heavily against Aaron

"Fine. It's coming along," she told the water elemental, and after a beat, "Hurts more."

"Maybe you should lie down again," coaxed Joey. Kay was rarely one to admit to pain, but it'd've been surprising if she hadn't at all, in this context. Another contraction hit and Kay squeezed her eyes shut, clinging to Aaron and riding it out with a late cry.

Then she stood straighter again, on shaking legs, and tugged Aaron towards the bed, unwilling quite to make the journey on her own suddenly uncertain feet. "Maybe I will."

If it weren't for the very specific situation that the woman was in, he'd have scooped her up and brought her over to the bed, himself. As it was, he helped Kay hobble over one careful, gentle step at a time until she was ready to be lowered down onto the bed. "You should have said something earlier," he murmured to her, having realized what, exactly, having only an hour's long labour left meant.

Kay looked up at Aaron from the bed, sitting now, dropping away the wrap which had been the only thing she was wearing. The woman was hot to the touch, but not sweaty; for this, she had to stay constrained to her human body, to the critical limits in which the baby would be alright. "I was distracted," she told Aaron, the awful excuse lacking her usual irony.

Joey followed the pair over to the bed, telling Aaron, "sit with her. If you want, it might be more comfortable if she leaned back against you." Astren had relocated, too, taking herself to the end of the bed and sitting down. Of all of them she was the quietest; Kay had enough cheerleaders, she was just keeping a careful eye -- literal and less literal -- on the expectant mother.

Given that he had no idea that there was a chance that the outcome of this labour would end in a ball of fiery ash or some other horrific non-human infant, Aaron was oblivious to Astren's attentive quietude. He did, however, take note of Joey's suggestions, rearranging himself until Kay seemed comfortable. "How's that?" he wanted to know. He was still holding her hand, intense but more worried than it seemed any of the women were. As much as he found her changed body somewhat unnerving -- in the sense that she'd been slowly changing, and now all of that was coming to fruition in one single point in time -- he had to watch in wonder when she went into another contraction. He squeezed her hand again, unnerved by the intensity that he was witnessing second-hand.

Wrapped up in the process, Kay didn't respond to Aaron's query except to lean heavily against him and pant. The hand with which she was holding his squeezed with bone-creaking intensity through another contraction, and this one she did yell through. Then she turned her head and pressed her cheek against Aaron, brows drawn together and eyes closed as she recovered. It was getting more intense. She was glad that her body and the baby had seemed to agree to hold off until Aaron arrived, in a bleary kind of manner; she had to suppose that maybe it hadn't been very charitable to fail to call him home. "I'm glad you're here," she told him, the open statement of affection remarkable.

"Me too," Aaron replied, without as much triteness to the words as there very well could have been. He delicately removed his hand from hers, substituting it for the other while he stretched out his fingers. "You know, you could have just cheated your way through this," he eventually tossed her way, in a lull. The words were gentler than usual, teasing but kind.

She opened her eyes again long enough to look up at him wryly, and tell him, "Wouldn't be the same." At that she even smiled, closing her eyes again. The lull between contractions was enough at least for a short conversation. "Admit it. You're feeling part of it now, too. There's something to this. It isn't like anything else." Really, never did they talk frankly about why either of them was doing this; why either of them was playing a game at being human in the sense that they were. These were the kinds of experiences unique to being a fleshy creature.

"It's better than the other shit I've been put through," Aaron chuckled. But a long conversation wasn't likely a possibility for now, so he cut his reply short, instead running his free hand through her hair, keeping it out of her face as he squeezed her hand with warm affection.

That was wise enough, as in short order Kay was at the whims of her body again. Astren moved up alongside the bed, and interrupting their moment she got to checking on Kay again, feeling her forehead, her belly, moving onto the bed to sit for a few minutes between Kay's legs and physically see how things were going. Certainly it was stranger than a hospital setting, but Astren's sensible demeanor was encouraging, and Joey on standby was a good reassurance.

As it was, the earth elemental's assessment had been more or less accurate, at least in that as the minutes of the hour began to pass Kay drew more into herself, her yells louder and more frequent along with the inexorable pangs of birth. She squirmed and shifted, panting, a restless creature in this state.

Finally she struggled to sit up and urgently went to slide over the edge of the bed, impatient and frustrated with laying prone. Astren was up and moving with her, quick for her, accompanying the redhead to the floor with a look of concern. "Are you sure?"

"Yes," the redhead snapped, panting. She was kneeling on the floor beside the bed, bracing herself with crossed arms on the bed proper, hands grabbing for Aaron's so that she could hold onto him instead. "It's almost here --" and then she yelled again, a proper scream, and Astren was scrambling to crouch low and see what was going on. Joey had slid over as well and was holding onto Kay's hips, bracing her and keeping her still for Astren as another contraction hit. Kay bowed her head and yelled into the bed instead, nails digging into Aaron's hands.

Aaron felt helpless in this situation, and so he was at the whims of Kay and the women, providing a hand and some support. This didn't look as though it ought to be proper, but if the redhead wanted it that way, he wasn't going to interject about right and wrong. It was hard to place a soothing hand on her head when she was digging into the one that he'd given her to hold, and he couldn't help but respond, "god damnit, woman, you've got a tight grip," though the remark was not malicious.

He looked to the other two women to ensure that things were going well, hoping to divine from their expressions what, exactly, was happening.

Neither of the other elementals looked scared or nervous, though Astren was crouched and busy with her hands between Kay's legs and Joey looked on high alert. The water elemental, seeing Aaron's entreating look, cast him a reassuring smile. Taking a pause in the reassurances she was offering Kay, she passed one Aaron's way, telling him, "you're doing fine. It won't be much longer."

And it wasn't. Kay's grip didn't let up, and neither did her yells, instead growing louder and almost yowling in tone; she writhed and Joey did her best to keep the woman still. Astren told her, "good, good; come on, Kay, one more, just one more big push," and she seemed to oblige, her next yell carrying on and peaking into an agonized scream that broke and picked up again.

It was hard for Aaron to see exactly what was going on but Astren suddenly grew very busy, and Joey let go of Kay's hips to go help. The pile of supplies that had been prepped and then for a time forgotten about was retrieved, and in a series of quick motions Joey fetched the broad, warmed washclotch, then Astren fetched the sterile knife, and a long, tense minute later there was the high, thin squall of a newborn. Astren emerged holding a mottled, red, messy-looking bundle wrapped up tight in a blanket that dwarfed it.

Kay, legs trembling, had collapsed into a sit on the floor, but she was craning her neck, looking to see the baby.

"There she is," Astren announced, sounding fond as she showed her to the anxious pair.

The entirety of those last few intense minutes, Aaron was pressed close to Kay, suffering through her agonized shouts and yowls with a half-deafened ear. It had his heart racing, to see her like that, but when the towel with its squalling contents was presented to the pair, Aaron found that the fear was replaced by something of a sense of confounded wonder.

"That's it?" he had to ask, bemused -- no, amazed. The infant was so tiny and insignificant looking, so vulnerable. He put his arms out tentatively, afraid that he might break the little thing.

"She's not small, for a newborn," Astren told her with a mild chuckle. Much of the intensity had drained from her bearing when the process had been finished with, although she was conscious of cleanup still needing to be done and messy after-effects to be dealt with. She handed off the baby girl to her father, the tiny squalling creature hardly noticing the change.

She was so wrapped up in blanket that even if Aaron had managed to drop her, she probably would have bounced. Still, she had a strong kick and when he cradled her, she demonstrated, squirming in her swaddling and asserting her very first moment independence as an arm wriggled free of the blanket, tiny, balled fist waving.

"Come down here," Kay asked, almost pleaded. Worn from the birth, nevertheless she had to see the baby more closely. "Aaron, bring her down here."

He obliged with only half an eye towards slipping off the bed, onto the floor next to the new, exhausted mother. "Here she is," he said, his voice strangely quiet.

The girl waved her arm furiously in her mother's direction, even when Aaron passed her over. "Careful," he advised, regardless of the fact that he knew next to nothing of the mechanics of newborn holding!

"Yeah," she whispered, though what it was in response to was vague. She took the baby girl, looked down at the tiny, scrunched-up face, and the strained expression Kay had been wearing relaxed and passed into a kind of satisfaction. She slumped, resting back against the bed, leaning into Aaron's shoulder and looking down at the baby. "Yeah, here she is."

Papa don't preach

OH CRAAAAP IT'S #2

Cassie or Evan?

I was thinking Cassie; first-parent jitters are cute. If you want to swap, that's fine too!

Sounds good to me. :D

:3

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