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franklin_bashTitle: 5 Babies That Were Never Born to Damien Karp or Hanna Linden
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
teh_bug
Pairing: Karp/Linden, Linden/OMC, Linden/Franklin, Karp/OFC
Rating: PG
Words: ~5,681 (…what has my life become?!)
Summary: Babies! In which, Damien Karp and Hanna Linden both have lots of babies.
Warnings: Not quite as fluffy as the title sounds…there is fluff! There’s just a lot of non-fluff before you get to the fluff...
Notes: I refuse to be ashamed of this. I made the mistake of creeping on the flist of franklin_bash and apparently a lot of you want Damien and Hanna to make babies…. I caved. I also refuse to apologize for the resulting fluffiness or the cavities in your teeth upon finishing said fic. Furthermore, I may or may not have spent too much time Googling pictures of babies… You’re welcome. P.S. – Constructive criticism always welcomed and appreciated. :-)
5 Babies That Were Never Born to Damien Karp or Hanna Linden
David Michael Collins
Damien is eighteen and about three months shy of graduating from high school, when he gets Marie Collins pregnant.
It’s stupid. They’ve been having sex for a few months now, and they thought they had the hang of things.
And they didn’t.
He says it’s her fault; she says it’s his fault.
There’s a lot of crying all around and this all really, really sucks, because Damien just got accepted into Berkley in the fall and now he’s all confused about what to do. How’s he supposed to raise a kid and go to college? He really doesn’t want a kid, a baby, he’s too young to be a dad and he’s still pretty much a kid himself and, and, and…
“And nothing!” thunders his father, Bernard Karp, “No son of mine is going to be kept at home because he knocked up some high school harlot!”
Damien licks his lips and shakes. He wants to protest, to tell his dad, that Marie really isn’t a harlot, that she’s really actually a very good girl, because she is. She’s a really good girl who wears long skirts and pretty ribbons in her hair and likes M&Ms and she slept with him because they thought they were in love and they thought were going to get married someday, maybe after college. But things are different now and Damien still really, really wants to go to college and he’s not so sure he loves Marie anymore and, and, and…
Marie Collin’s dad takes offense to Damien getting his darling daughter pregnant. He takes further offense at Damien’s dad calling Marie a whore and at the implication that Damien can just drop off the kid and leave Marie.
“Like hell, you’re getting away from this, kid,” he snarls at Damien, when he catches Damien and Marie talking in the parking lot after the football game. “You think I’m gonna let you run away to college and pretend like this never happened? You think so?”
“It never happened, son,” says Bernard Karp, in a dismissive growl, when Damien tells him about it later. “As far as you should be concerned, you never met the girl. It’s not your fault. If she didn’t want this to happen to her, she shouldn’t have spread her legs so quickly. If her father lays a hand on you again, I’ll sue him so fast his eyeballs will bleed.”
There are lawyers involved.
It ends up going to court.
It is a loud, obnoxious trial and both families are fairly high profile, so everyone knows about it. And everybody talks about it, constantly.
In the middle of it all, Marie goes into labor, her face pale and blotchy and panicked, and gets whisked away to the hospital to have her baby.
The lawyers are still arguing and the parents are still yelling, and the only ones that seem to notice when she leaves the room are the judge who orders the clerk to call for the paramedic and Damien who’s sitting on the other side of the courtroom, covering his ears and trying to smush out the sound of her screams.
Damien goes to visit her as soon as he can, because he feels like he’s supposed to and he’s not sure how else to make it right. Visiting her doesn’t make it right, but it makes it less wrong, he thinks. Maybe.
Marie is asleep when he gets to her room. In retrospect, he thinks it’s probably a good thing because he’s not sure if she still wants to talk to him (if she’ll ever want to talk to him again), but she just had a kid…and it’s their kid…and….
“Oh, are you here to see Marie?” beams a nurse innocently. “I’m afraid she’s sleeping right now. You’ll have to come back tomorrow if you want to talk with her.”
“I…” he hesitates, and peers past the nurse into the room. “I thought she just gave birth? Didn’t she…isn’t…isn’t there supposed to be a baby?”
“Oh!” The nurse giggles in sudden, surprised understanding. “Oh, are you family? Are you…” She leans into whisper conspiratorially. “Are you the father?”
Damien nods. “Yeah…I guess I am…”
“Oh!” The nurse titters into more giggles. “Here! Come this way! He’s on a different floor, but I’ll take you there. I’ll even let you hold him!”
“I…” Woodenly, Damien follows her, but his mind keeps repeating over and over again. He?
He?
“His name is David Michael,” says the giggling nurse, handing Damien a warm rolled up tube of blankets with a pink button nose and a tiny, blue hat on top. “Or at least, that’s what his mother called him. I’m sure you two lovebirds will figure out the details later.”
He? Damien’s mind is still reeling, even as he repositions the baby in his arms. The baby, David, wriggles slightly in his sleep. He is bright reddish-pink, with tiny slits where his eye lids should be and a soft tuft of blond hair peeking out from under the hat onto his forehead.
Cautiously, like he’s touching a glass figurine, Damien strokes David’s tiny, tiny hand. David’s fingers instinctively curl incompletely around Damien’s and then Damien can’t breathe. Oh my god, he thinks. I’m a father…
In the end, though, he’s not.
The Karp family lawyers are smarter, or at least better paid than the Collins family lawyers, so Damien gets off scot-free and sent to Berkley and Marie disappears to go stay with her aunt in Texas for a few years.
He sees her again his senior year at Berkley.
They make eye contact for a brief, awkward, angry (on her part), regretful (on his) moment and then look away just as quickly. He doesn’t catch up to her, doesn’t ask what happened to their son (but he suspects really, really hard), and she in turn doesn’t demand to know why he never stood up for her or what he’s been up to since he left her behind.
Natalie Amber Norsworthy
In hindsight, Hanna thinks, it would’ve been much simpler to get an abortion.
But she is twenty-two and at the end of what her mother will later call, her “trusting years,” back before she decides that all men are useless and easily manipulated. Timothy says he wants to be a doctor and he’s on the right track (majoring in Pre-Med, shadowing doctors, volunteering at the hospital fairs, etc), so she keeps it and marries him (it’s “the right thing to do”) and decides to worry about the practicalities of balancing her career and his career after the baby’s born.
Natalie is born about a month after Hanna gets her LSAT scores back and two weeks after Timothy gets his MCAT scores.
“So you’re still dead-set on going to law school?” asks Timothy one evening several months later, while Hanna is bathing Natalie.
The water from the spray nozzle splashes on Natalie’s round, dark belly. Natalie claps her hands together in delight and tries to smash the streams on their way down. Hanna moves the nozzle back and forth and Natalie’s dark eyes sparkle as she tracks the motion.
“It’s only been my plan since high school,” Hanna laughs absentmindedly, a little caught off guard. But there’s something about Timothy’s question that is three degrees off normal. She freezes for an unsure moment, like she’s stuck in concrete, “why do you ask?”
Behind her, Timothy rustles some papers and clears his throat, but doesn’t answer immediately.
A tendril of apprehension knots itself in her belly. Hanna shuts off the water and scoops Natalie up in a towel. “Timothy?”
Timothy licks his lips, “It’s just…I’ve been going over the bills for medical school and your law school and…I’m not sure we can make it.”
The tendril knot rolls over and twists more forcefully. “Sure, we can,” Hanna says cautiously, gently patting Natalie dry. “We’ll find a way. One of us will go to school first and then the other one will…”
“With a kid?” Timothy snorts disparagingly through his nose, “Be reasonable, Hanna. We’re going to be in so much debt between raising a kid and putting me through medical school, there’s no way we’ll have anything left over for you.”
“You?” Hanna’s voice rises incredulously, scaring Natalie. Hanna takes a deep deliberate breath and lowers her voice to a subdued hiss. “You’re the one that’s going to school? And when did we decide that?”
“When you decided to get pregnant.”
Hanna stiffens; her spine straightens like a rod. “Natalie is just as much your fault as she is mine.”
“Yeah, well, you should’ve had an abortion.”
“You said you’d support me!” Hanna snaps back angrily; Natalie fusses in confusion against her shoulder.
“You said you’d support me!” Timothy steps forward, edging into her personal space. “You said you wanted us to work; you said you wanted me to be happy.”
“I did! I do!” Automatically, Hanna pats Natalie’s back reassuringly, but it doesn’t seem to calm her. “I didn’t realize that you were the only one that got to be happy in this relationship.”
Timothy laughs scornfully, “Well, if you don’t like it, leave. See if I care.”
The words are a crack across her face, like a belt slapped against her mouth.
It takes Hanna almost a full second before she can breathe again. Natalie’s cries echo in the place where her thoughts used to be.
“Fine then,” she says, biting out the words. “I will.”
Hanna tucks Natalie closer against her and tosses the diaper bag over her shoulder. She darts into their bedroom and with her free arm carelessly throws a few shirts into her backpack.
She’ll go to Tanya’s, Hanna thinks. She’ll spend the night at Tanya’s, then she’ll call her mom and figure something out from there. Money will be tight, it always is, but she can do this, she can do this.
Hanna is almost out the door, when Timothy changes his tune. He catches up to her and snags her by the wrist. “Baby, I’m sorry, Hanna, sweetie you know I don’t mean it like that.”
She tries to shake his hold, “Get off me!”
“Please, Hanna,” Timothy begs, “I just…I just get worried, you know, hon? I-I worry about you, about me, about the baby. We’ll make this work, we’ll make this work. W-we can, we can…I’ll go to school and you’ll stay home with the baby, because you’re better with her, you know you are.”
Natalie howls, squinching up her face and screaming like her insides are being torn out.
“And-and then, you’ll go to law school! Like you always wanted to! I’ll stay at home or we’ll-we’ll hire a nanny, if we need to,” Timothy is tearing up, his eyes starting to overflow, “Baby, please! We’ll make this work! Please, don’t go!”
Hanna knows then in the back of her mind, that he’s lying, that they’ll never have enough money for her law school and if they ever do, it’ll be far too late for her to go. She knows even then, that if she agrees, if she stays with him, she is making a deal with the devil, sealing her own fate.
She also knows that there was a reason she married Timothy, even though she wasn’t quite sure that she loved him.
“I’m only staying with you for Natalie’s sake,” Hanna says, to the background of Natalie’s wailing, her voice sharp and jagged, forcing its way out her throat like broken crystal. “As soon as she’s old enough, we’re out of here.”
“That-that’s fine, baby. Anything you want, baby,” wheedles Timothy and she wonders what she ever saw in him. He reaches for the baby, “Here, here, let me take her. It’s okay, honey, it’s okay. Daddy’s got you. Daddy’s got you, now.”
She never divorces Timothy, although she does come close when Natalie is six and again when Natalie is ten and Reuben is three, but she never forgives him either.
Andrea May (卡安美) Karp
“Damien!” pleads Lisa, with teary desperate eyes. “We can make this work, I know we can!”
No, we can’t, thinks Damien, and his fingers work to release her grip on his arm.
“I’m pregnant,” she blurts out. “Should-shouldn’t we at least try to make it work?”
“Oh,” says Damien, and he stops fighting her hold on his arm.
They try.
They try really, really, really hard.
They try through the pregnancy, where Lisa goes through intense bouts of nausea from the smell of coffee and garlic and fish and pretty much anything that has flavor and cringes when her cellphone rings or the TV’s too loud.
“A hard pregnancy means an easy labor,” reassures Lisa’s best friend Molly. (Mindy? Mandy? Damien can’t remember, but he thinks it’s something bubble-headed like that.) She rubs Lisa’s back in long, soothing circles, “It’s going to be okay. This is the worst of it, promise.”
Lisa moans, “I can’t eat anything. My feet hurt. My head hurts. I’m supposed to be on bed rest, but I hate my bed and I hate the couch and I’ve already read everything in the house twice.”
“You’re going stir-crazy,” agrees Damien, attempting at not unkindly, and maybe hitting somewhere around slightly sympathetic.
Lisa shoots him a dark look. “And how would you know? You’re always off working late at the damn firm.”
“That’s not my fault,” says Damien, looking down at his Blackberry. The Saxeys are fighting again and Claire Saxey’s lawyer seems to think she has more evidence of Marc cheating. “One of us is pregnant and on bed rest and the other one, who is supporting the pregnant one, has to keep his job so that the pregnant one and future baby will have something to live on.”
“You could still work fewer hours,” mutters Lisa sullenly.
“Hey, hey, let’s all be friends now,” Molly cuts in, with forced cheer. “You guys are about to have a baby together! Two people in love, creating new life. You guys should be so happy! So proud, right?”
“Right,” says Damien walking out of the room, “ecstatic.”
They try through the wedding, where the Karp and Infeld clans (who never really liked each other much to begin with) meet the Wang and Shi clans and no one really gets along with anyone else, because despite this being the 21st century, apparently those people are not the sorts of people our family marries. (Although, in a stunning display of near tact, neither family deigns to clarify as to whom exactly “those people” are.)
The one clear exception to the rule is Damien’s somewhat off beat (and secretly favorite) uncle Stanton Infeld.
Stanton claps Damien on the back proudly. “I’m so glad you’re marrying Lisa,” he says. “It’s a great honor to merge into the Chinese culture, one of the finest cultures of our time. Regrettably, it’s dying off, has been on a downward spiral since Mao took over and steamrolled over everything that had any sense of meaning. Of course, shortly before he did that, I had an opportunity to hike up to one of the first Daoist temples with one of my best friends…”
“Damien,” Lisa comes up to them with a dangerous smile, “can I speak to you alone for a moment?”
“Oh, yes, yes, of course you can,” says Stanton encouragingly, with shooing hand gestures and a knowing smirk. “Do take him away, it’s your wedding after all.”
“Is everything okay?” asks Damien as Lisa leads him away.
“I don’t like him,” she states flatly.
“Who? Stanton?” Damien blinks in puzzlement, “I know he’s a little eccentric, but he’s really pretty harmless.”
Lisa crosses her arms, “He’s fetishizing my entire family and it’s creeping me out.”
“He is not!” protests Damien.
“Yes, Damien, he is,” Lisa glares upward at him. “The only reason he approves of our marriage is because I’m Chinese and he has a hard-on for China.”
“No,” says Damien slowly, “the only reason he approves of our marriage is because he’s the only one of my family members that has a soul. He’d like you even if you weren’t Chinese. The fact that you are Chinese, just gives him something else to bring up around the dinner table.”
“I can’t even speak Chinese,” Lisa spits out angrily. “I’m third generation, I don’t have to!”
Damien holds out his hands airily, “I don’t think Stanton cares…”
“Ugh,” Lisa huffs and rolls her eyes. “You don’t understand.”
“Understand what?” Damien calls after her.
They try after the honeymoon, which goes surprisingly smooth (great hotel, great beach, great sex, etc) when the real world takes over again and Damien has to go back to work.
“So, I’ll just stay home then, with our baby?”
Damien halts a piece of toast en route to his mouth, “Or we could hire a nanny, if you wanted to go back to teaching?”
“Oh no,” Lisa shakes her head and settles down into a chair next to him at the table. “I don’t want anyone else raising our child.” She leans down and gives the baby swing a light push to start it rocking.
Andrea burbles contentedly at the sudden motion.
“So then, what’s the problem?” asks Damien, going back to his toast.
Lisa sighs and shakes up a bottle of formula, “I guess I’m just afraid things are going to go back to the way they used to be.”
“The way they used to be?”
“You know,” says Lisa bending back down to give the bottle to Andrea, “with us always fighting and you working long hours. And then that leads to us turning into one of those 50s caricatures of a family, with the bread-winning dad who never comes home to see his kids and the Susie Homemaker who manages to raise the picture perfect, rosy faced kids all by herself.”
“Ummm…” Damien takes a long sip of coffee, “but you’re not Susie Homemaker and I like our daughter, I actually want to spend time with her, so why are you worrying? That’s not us.”
“But it could be!”
“But it’s not,” says Damien mentally shaking off the knowledge that if he works late on the Benson case, he won’t have to have this discussion again at dinner time. “So why are you worried?”
They try for the first year of marriage, through long days and longer nights, because that’s supposed to be the hardest year and if you can make it through that, so goes the rumor, than everything else is golden.
“I don’t think I love you anymore,” Lisa whispers to the back of his neck.
“Mmmf?” Damien rolls over groggily to face her. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t think I love you anymore,” Lisa repeats, wide-eyed and solemn. “Why don’t I love you anymore?”
Damien wipes the sleep out of his eyes and peers blearily at the alarm clock, “Because it’s 3 am?”
Lisa ignores him like he hasn’t spoken. “We were in love once, right? That’s why we got married? We were in love?”
“Go back to sleep, Lisa,” says Damien and runs his fingers down her cheek. “We had a long day. We’ll talk about this tomorrow.”
Lisa’s lips tremble and her eyes start welling up, “Did you ever love me? Do you want a divorce?”
“I don’t want a divorce,” says Damien quietly and tries to be consoling, “Divorces are messy and everyone gets hurt worse in the carnage; trust me, I’ve handled enough to know.” He burrows his arm under her and draws her close. “Come here, let’s go back to sleep and we’ll talk about this in the morning when we’re both thinking straight.”
“Did you ever love me?” Lisa repeats against his chest.
When he doesn’t respond, he feels her warm tears melt into the fabric next to his heart.
They try, they really do.
And then they don’t and that’s when the real screaming starts.
They fight about money, they fight about in-laws, they fight about getting a divorce, they fight about not getting a divorce, they fight about the appropriate conditions for raising a child, they fight about who had a better childhood, they fight about who’s most likely to screw up the child. They fight and they fight and they fight, until they run out of words and even anger and they sit in the living room across from each other on separate couches and wonder how it all when so wrong.
“I’m sorry, I just…” Lisa says one night, running her fingers through her hair tiredly. She is past the point of crying, of passionately defending her side in the matter. “I was so sure, you know? I was so sure that if we fought through the rough patches, if we stuck with it, tried something new, had a kid, whatever…” She sighs heavily and defeated. “I was so sure it would work…”
Damien squeezes his forehead, like maybe if he presses the right spot, hits the right button on his brain, the magic words to make everything right again will come to him, like a half-remembered thought. If this were a case, he would advise his clients to settle now before it goes any farther, because the odds of them winning in court are slim and slimming further as they speak.
From down the hall the sound of Andrea crying echoes like a shrill siren. She is teething and screams like she understands what’s going on around her.
“I’ll take care of it,” Damien volunteers in a low voice. He is running he knows, but he is so tired of presenting the same evidence over and over again to a jury who won’t listen and a judge that won’t hear his objections or allow his motion for a mistrial.
Lisa doesn’t look up at him as he walks away.
“Shhh,” Damien croons, scooping Andrea against his chest, “Shhhhh… I’ve got you. It’s okay now.”
Andrea clubs her fists against him and squalls. She has her mother’s eyes and, bittersweetly, Damien thinks, her sense of impatience. She has his features, though, the sharp Karp jawline and pointy nose, and with any luck, his determination.
Damien rocks her until she falls back to sleep, her soft black locks of hair fluttering in the gentle breeze of motion. Oh darling, he thinks and strokes the crest of her cheekbone with his thumb, you probably shouldn’t ever wake up.
Daniel Franklin Linden
The condom breaks.
No one is amused.
Well, no one except her mother, that is.
“It’s not like you’re getting any younger, Hanna,” says her mom, when she brings it up in conversation on their weekly phone call. “Let’s face it, if you want kids that you’ll live to see their college graduation, you should probably get started now.” The couch cushions rustle over the phone line as she shifts position. “In fact, if you wanted to get married now, that would probably be a good idea too. What’s the father like? Is he tall, dark, and handsome?”
“Not exactly, Mom…”
“Oh,” says Jared, gaping open-mouthed like a dying fish, when she corners him at work. “Well, that’s a uh—that’s a little bit of a shocker that is…” He clears his throat and fumbles for something polite to say, “We could- I mean… not that you need it or anything, I mean, you’re clearly capable and a responsible grown up and uh…” To his credit, he tries very hard to be a gentleman. “Would you want to get married?” he finishes weakly.
Hanna stares at him irritably like he’s grown a second head. “To you?”
“Yeah,” Jared nods sharply in uncomfortable agreement. “That’s what I thought you’d say.”
Apparently, she is less tactful when she is pregnant. This is brought to her attention, when even Franklin and Bash start obviously flashing dead-eyed, deer in the head lights looks when they see her coming and Stanton casually mentions that, “You know, Hanna, I understand, you’re going through quite a predicament here, but heaping relentless insults upon your coworkers won’t prevent them from being any less stupid.”
“It won’t?”
“No, sadly, it won’t,” says Karp, sidling up to two of them. He hands her a package. “For you.”
“Chocolates? You’ve never brought me chocolates before,” Hanna says with suspicious eyes. “Not even when we were together.”
“You’ve never been this destructively homicidal before, either,” says Karp, taking care to stay out of arm’s length. “Now, eat your chocolates and try not to kill any of our clients; it’s bad for business and the cleaning staff keeps complaining about the blood stains.”
Hanna looks over at Stanton.
Stanton shrugs in rueful agreement. “It is worth a try, you know.”
She names the baby Daniel, after her father and her favorite bible story as a child (she doesn’t believe in them anymore, but she almost wishes she did) and Franklin out of respect for the boy’s father. When he’s born, has his daddy’s sky blue eyes and wide, goofy smile when he’s happy. He has her nose though, and persnickety personality, which means, she finds out later, that he’s always fussy.
Jared and Peter show up the morning after she gives birth.
“We would’ve been here sooner,” explains Peter, “but someone got hit with a contempt charge.”
“Hey, hey, hey!” protests Jared, “how was I to know that Judge Milton would have an issue with pink, fuzzy handcuffs?”
“I don’t think it was the handcuffs that was the issue, I think it was what you were doing with the…” Peter trails off as the nurse wheels in the baby cart.
“Hi!” says the nurse, all bright-eyed and cheery. “Are you two here to see baby Daniel?”
“I...I…uh…” Jared stares wide-eyed at the little bundle of blue cloth. “Yeah, I guess…I guess we are.”
“He’s the father,” Hanna clarifies for the nurse’s benefit. She adds pointedly, “I think he wants to hold his son now.”
“I do?” Jared clears his throat, “I mean, uh, yes, yes, I do. I would like to hold him. My son. Fruit of my loom…loins…whatever.”
“Is this your first time?” asks the nurse excitedly. She slips her arms under Daniel with practiced ease and scoops him into Jared arms, helpfully molding them into a supportive shape. “Oooh! This is wonderful! I love seeing new dads hold their children for the first time!”
“Hi,” Jared says to the baby, hesitantly adjusting his grip into a more comfortable one. “Where did you come from?”
Hanna watches as Jared ghost-traces over Daniel’s features with a single finger, as if the baby were made out of diamond or precious jewels. His finger dusts over the fat poof of baby cheek and for a moment, father and son smiles match.
“Dude,” says Peter breathlessly, peering over Jared’s shoulder. “You’re a dad!”
Damien stops by later that same evening.
“I’m sorry,” he says, “I’ve been swamped with cases for the past few days and I haven’t been able to get away.”
He’s lying, Hanna knows, she can tell by the awkward cadence of his words, but she’s too sleepy and warm to try and figure out about what or why.
“Do you want to hold him?”
“Sure,” Damien drops his bag to the side, and gathers Daniel gently without waking him, from her arms. “Come here, little guy.”
“He could’ve been yours,” she says, before she can stop herself.
“Could’ve been,” agrees Damien, still looking down at Daniel cradled in his arms. He makes a cooing noise and rubs Daniel’s belly.
Daniel makes a soft sleepy noise in response and tries to snuggle closer to Damien’s chest.
Could still be, Hanna thinks, but this time she stops herself.
Adele Miriam Linden-Karp
Adele Miriam Linden-Karp is born approximately 8 months after the Karp-Linden wedding.
Franklin and Bash find this hilarious. “Oooh! Looks like someone got their hanky-panky started before their honey-moon!”
Stanton finds this greatly fortuitous. “Ah, yes, children are a gift from the gods. Especially children so early in your marriage!”
Damien finds this neither. “We are going to be the worst parents in the world,” he groans, but he is nuzzling Hanna’s neck and his arm is wrapped around her shoulders, so Hanna takes it as a good sign.
“We’re going to be amazing parents,” disagrees Hanna. Adele is asleep in her arms, looking for all the world as if she were just as safe and comfortable in a blanket of clouds. She sleeps as though time and reality stop and swirl around her in a vortex of protection and good feelings.
“She’s beautiful,” says Damien. He kisses Hanna’s temple. “You did good.”
“We did good,” Hanna smiles and cranes her neck to look at Damien. “She’s yours too, you know.”
“She is, isn’t she?” A gentle, almost drunken smile curls up the corners of his mouth, unconsciously as he gazes on his daughter. It’s a good look for him, Hanna decides.
“She’s lighter than I was expecting,” says Damien thoughtfully.
“She’ll probably darken some as she gets older. My cousin’s kid did. Disappointed?” She teases.
Damien shakes his head in amusement, “Never.”
They stay like that for a long while in comfortable silence.
“When’s Stanton expecting you back?”
Damien shrugs and reaches over to outline Adele’s button nose. “Whenever he’s convinced that his new favorite great niece is healthy and happy. He’ll probably stop by sometime tomorrow with unbelievable stories about his time with the Mongols helping the chieftain’s wife’s personal midwife.”
“I love your uncle.”
Damien snorts a laugh through his nose and makes a disparaging noise. “I can’t go back to work. Last time I was there, Franklin and Bash flooded my office with balloons and baby toys. I narrowly escaped a baby shower.”
“Mmmmmm,” Hanna chuckles sleepily, “Who won the betting pool?”
Damien pauses for a moment and tickles Adele under her tiny, tiny chin. “Franklin, I think. Bash for beastly boy and Franklin for fierce female…or something like that…I really can’t remember.”
“Sounds like them,” Hanna forces down a yawn. “Always getting into trouble.”
“You should sleep,” says Damien, stroking her hair. “You’ve had a long day.”
Deep down inside, there’s a part of Hanna that bristles and wants to protest, and closer to the surface there’s a part of her that’s irrationally afraid that if she closes her eyes, releases her baby, this will all disappear like some fantastic whimsical dream.
But her eyelids are heavy and talking has suddenly become so much work.
“Mmmm, no, I’m good,” she half-heartedly protests.
“Sure you are,” Damien ignores her, and swoops Adele up into his arms. He reaches down and pulls up the covers with his free hand, tucking in the blankets around Hanna like a cocoon. The sunlight glints in his day-old stubble and Hanna thinks he’s never looked more handsome.
“Go to sleep,” he tells her pressing another kiss to her forehead. “We’ll be right here when you wake up.”
Bonus:
The three Linden-Karp princesses, as Jared referred to them, arrived on their doorstep at exactly 7pm, in matching light pink dresses and pigtails, accompanied by their relieved and more than marginally tickled parents. The bravest one, Adele, paused briefly to hug Jared and Peter’s legs, then darted past into the living room with her Barbie backpack in tow.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” protested Peter. “I mean, are you positive you really want to leave your kids with us, again?”
“Not really,” muttered Karp, bending down and straightening Diana’s dress. He cupped her chin so that he could look her in the eye. “Now remember, if it looks weird, don’t eat it.”
“See!” said Jared in sudden, sincere agreement. “We have lots of weird food! You probably shouldn’t leave your kids here with us.”
“You’ll be fine,” said Hanna, warmly, handing over Elena and detaching herself from the one year old’s grip. “Here’s her bag. If you need anything, the nanny’s number is in the side pocket.”
“I’m just saying, I’m starting to pick up on a distressing trend that happens when you leave your girls here,” Peter automatically tucked Elena against his shoulder crook and brushed a fluffy fly-away tuft behind her ear. Elena gurgled out a happy noise and patted his cheek.
“Yeah,” Jared nodded adamantly. “They tend to multiply.”
“You should probably stop feeding them after midnight, then,” said Karp standing up. He patted Diana on the back and scooted her forward. “Go find your sister. She’s probably in the kitchen with Pindar.”
“Pindy!” Diana tottered off. “Pindy!”
“Three years ago, you left us with one kid,” continued Peter. “The next year it was two, this year it’s three.” He gestured with a dramatic finger to the sky. “I’m just saying…”
Hanna laughed and took Karp’s hand as he led her out the door. “Night boys, see you tomorrow.”
The door to the once manly Man-Cave clicked shut with a deafening finality.
Peter and Jared looked at each other.
“Seriously, how did we get ourselves into this mess?” said Peter gently bouncing Elena
“One of us should’ve objected at their wedding,” agreed Jared.
“On the grounds of two forces of evil uniting together to produce more evils.”
“Three little evils.”
From behind them in the kitchen, came the sound of a crash, Pindar saying something panicky about sticky hands, and the sinister chirrup of a toddler’s laughter.
“Three little a-dor-able evils,” Peter sing-songed. He tickled Elena’s belly.
Elena giggled happily and grabbed at his nose.
Jared shook his head sadly in resignation. “Not you too…”
“Hey!”
Peter and Jared turned at the sound of a tiny impetuous voice.
“Yes, Adele?”
Adele thrust up a magenta DVD as high as her four year old arms could stretch. “I wanna watch My Little Pony! Daddy said I could.”
“Well, if Daddy said you could…” Jared clapped a hand on Peter’s arm, comradely. “Alright, bro, I got this one. You get Barbie Princess Sunflower or Flowerwood…or whatever the next one is….”
“It’s Princess Barbie and the Sunshine Flowers!” Adele stamped her foot, crankily. “Get it right!”
Jared took a deep breath. “Oh, it’s going to be a long night.”
Author:
teh_bug Pairing: Karp/Linden, Linden/OMC, Linden/Franklin, Karp/OFC
Rating: PG
Words: ~5,681 (…what has my life become?!)
Summary: Babies! In which, Damien Karp and Hanna Linden both have lots of babies.
Warnings: Not quite as fluffy as the title sounds…there is fluff! There’s just a lot of non-fluff before you get to the fluff...
Notes: I refuse to be ashamed of this. I made the mistake of creeping on the flist of franklin_bash and apparently a lot of you want Damien and Hanna to make babies…. I caved. I also refuse to apologize for the resulting fluffiness or the cavities in your teeth upon finishing said fic. Furthermore, I may or may not have spent too much time Googling pictures of babies… You’re welcome. P.S. – Constructive criticism always welcomed and appreciated. :-)
5 Babies That Were Never Born to Damien Karp or Hanna Linden
David Michael Collins
Damien is eighteen and about three months shy of graduating from high school, when he gets Marie Collins pregnant.
It’s stupid. They’ve been having sex for a few months now, and they thought they had the hang of things.
And they didn’t.
He says it’s her fault; she says it’s his fault.
There’s a lot of crying all around and this all really, really sucks, because Damien just got accepted into Berkley in the fall and now he’s all confused about what to do. How’s he supposed to raise a kid and go to college? He really doesn’t want a kid, a baby, he’s too young to be a dad and he’s still pretty much a kid himself and, and, and…
“And nothing!” thunders his father, Bernard Karp, “No son of mine is going to be kept at home because he knocked up some high school harlot!”
Damien licks his lips and shakes. He wants to protest, to tell his dad, that Marie really isn’t a harlot, that she’s really actually a very good girl, because she is. She’s a really good girl who wears long skirts and pretty ribbons in her hair and likes M&Ms and she slept with him because they thought they were in love and they thought were going to get married someday, maybe after college. But things are different now and Damien still really, really wants to go to college and he’s not so sure he loves Marie anymore and, and, and…
Marie Collin’s dad takes offense to Damien getting his darling daughter pregnant. He takes further offense at Damien’s dad calling Marie a whore and at the implication that Damien can just drop off the kid and leave Marie.
“Like hell, you’re getting away from this, kid,” he snarls at Damien, when he catches Damien and Marie talking in the parking lot after the football game. “You think I’m gonna let you run away to college and pretend like this never happened? You think so?”
“It never happened, son,” says Bernard Karp, in a dismissive growl, when Damien tells him about it later. “As far as you should be concerned, you never met the girl. It’s not your fault. If she didn’t want this to happen to her, she shouldn’t have spread her legs so quickly. If her father lays a hand on you again, I’ll sue him so fast his eyeballs will bleed.”
There are lawyers involved.
It ends up going to court.
It is a loud, obnoxious trial and both families are fairly high profile, so everyone knows about it. And everybody talks about it, constantly.
In the middle of it all, Marie goes into labor, her face pale and blotchy and panicked, and gets whisked away to the hospital to have her baby.
The lawyers are still arguing and the parents are still yelling, and the only ones that seem to notice when she leaves the room are the judge who orders the clerk to call for the paramedic and Damien who’s sitting on the other side of the courtroom, covering his ears and trying to smush out the sound of her screams.
Damien goes to visit her as soon as he can, because he feels like he’s supposed to and he’s not sure how else to make it right. Visiting her doesn’t make it right, but it makes it less wrong, he thinks. Maybe.
Marie is asleep when he gets to her room. In retrospect, he thinks it’s probably a good thing because he’s not sure if she still wants to talk to him (if she’ll ever want to talk to him again), but she just had a kid…and it’s their kid…and….
“Oh, are you here to see Marie?” beams a nurse innocently. “I’m afraid she’s sleeping right now. You’ll have to come back tomorrow if you want to talk with her.”
“I…” he hesitates, and peers past the nurse into the room. “I thought she just gave birth? Didn’t she…isn’t…isn’t there supposed to be a baby?”
“Oh!” The nurse giggles in sudden, surprised understanding. “Oh, are you family? Are you…” She leans into whisper conspiratorially. “Are you the father?”
Damien nods. “Yeah…I guess I am…”
“Oh!” The nurse titters into more giggles. “Here! Come this way! He’s on a different floor, but I’ll take you there. I’ll even let you hold him!”
“I…” Woodenly, Damien follows her, but his mind keeps repeating over and over again. He?
He?
“His name is David Michael,” says the giggling nurse, handing Damien a warm rolled up tube of blankets with a pink button nose and a tiny, blue hat on top. “Or at least, that’s what his mother called him. I’m sure you two lovebirds will figure out the details later.”
He? Damien’s mind is still reeling, even as he repositions the baby in his arms. The baby, David, wriggles slightly in his sleep. He is bright reddish-pink, with tiny slits where his eye lids should be and a soft tuft of blond hair peeking out from under the hat onto his forehead.
Cautiously, like he’s touching a glass figurine, Damien strokes David’s tiny, tiny hand. David’s fingers instinctively curl incompletely around Damien’s and then Damien can’t breathe. Oh my god, he thinks. I’m a father…
In the end, though, he’s not.
The Karp family lawyers are smarter, or at least better paid than the Collins family lawyers, so Damien gets off scot-free and sent to Berkley and Marie disappears to go stay with her aunt in Texas for a few years.
He sees her again his senior year at Berkley.
They make eye contact for a brief, awkward, angry (on her part), regretful (on his) moment and then look away just as quickly. He doesn’t catch up to her, doesn’t ask what happened to their son (but he suspects really, really hard), and she in turn doesn’t demand to know why he never stood up for her or what he’s been up to since he left her behind.
Natalie Amber Norsworthy
In hindsight, Hanna thinks, it would’ve been much simpler to get an abortion.
But she is twenty-two and at the end of what her mother will later call, her “trusting years,” back before she decides that all men are useless and easily manipulated. Timothy says he wants to be a doctor and he’s on the right track (majoring in Pre-Med, shadowing doctors, volunteering at the hospital fairs, etc), so she keeps it and marries him (it’s “the right thing to do”) and decides to worry about the practicalities of balancing her career and his career after the baby’s born.
Natalie is born about a month after Hanna gets her LSAT scores back and two weeks after Timothy gets his MCAT scores.
“So you’re still dead-set on going to law school?” asks Timothy one evening several months later, while Hanna is bathing Natalie.
The water from the spray nozzle splashes on Natalie’s round, dark belly. Natalie claps her hands together in delight and tries to smash the streams on their way down. Hanna moves the nozzle back and forth and Natalie’s dark eyes sparkle as she tracks the motion.
“It’s only been my plan since high school,” Hanna laughs absentmindedly, a little caught off guard. But there’s something about Timothy’s question that is three degrees off normal. She freezes for an unsure moment, like she’s stuck in concrete, “why do you ask?”
Behind her, Timothy rustles some papers and clears his throat, but doesn’t answer immediately.
A tendril of apprehension knots itself in her belly. Hanna shuts off the water and scoops Natalie up in a towel. “Timothy?”
Timothy licks his lips, “It’s just…I’ve been going over the bills for medical school and your law school and…I’m not sure we can make it.”
The tendril knot rolls over and twists more forcefully. “Sure, we can,” Hanna says cautiously, gently patting Natalie dry. “We’ll find a way. One of us will go to school first and then the other one will…”
“With a kid?” Timothy snorts disparagingly through his nose, “Be reasonable, Hanna. We’re going to be in so much debt between raising a kid and putting me through medical school, there’s no way we’ll have anything left over for you.”
“You?” Hanna’s voice rises incredulously, scaring Natalie. Hanna takes a deep deliberate breath and lowers her voice to a subdued hiss. “You’re the one that’s going to school? And when did we decide that?”
“When you decided to get pregnant.”
Hanna stiffens; her spine straightens like a rod. “Natalie is just as much your fault as she is mine.”
“Yeah, well, you should’ve had an abortion.”
“You said you’d support me!” Hanna snaps back angrily; Natalie fusses in confusion against her shoulder.
“You said you’d support me!” Timothy steps forward, edging into her personal space. “You said you wanted us to work; you said you wanted me to be happy.”
“I did! I do!” Automatically, Hanna pats Natalie’s back reassuringly, but it doesn’t seem to calm her. “I didn’t realize that you were the only one that got to be happy in this relationship.”
Timothy laughs scornfully, “Well, if you don’t like it, leave. See if I care.”
The words are a crack across her face, like a belt slapped against her mouth.
It takes Hanna almost a full second before she can breathe again. Natalie’s cries echo in the place where her thoughts used to be.
“Fine then,” she says, biting out the words. “I will.”
Hanna tucks Natalie closer against her and tosses the diaper bag over her shoulder. She darts into their bedroom and with her free arm carelessly throws a few shirts into her backpack.
She’ll go to Tanya’s, Hanna thinks. She’ll spend the night at Tanya’s, then she’ll call her mom and figure something out from there. Money will be tight, it always is, but she can do this, she can do this.
Hanna is almost out the door, when Timothy changes his tune. He catches up to her and snags her by the wrist. “Baby, I’m sorry, Hanna, sweetie you know I don’t mean it like that.”
She tries to shake his hold, “Get off me!”
“Please, Hanna,” Timothy begs, “I just…I just get worried, you know, hon? I-I worry about you, about me, about the baby. We’ll make this work, we’ll make this work. W-we can, we can…I’ll go to school and you’ll stay home with the baby, because you’re better with her, you know you are.”
Natalie howls, squinching up her face and screaming like her insides are being torn out.
“And-and then, you’ll go to law school! Like you always wanted to! I’ll stay at home or we’ll-we’ll hire a nanny, if we need to,” Timothy is tearing up, his eyes starting to overflow, “Baby, please! We’ll make this work! Please, don’t go!”
Hanna knows then in the back of her mind, that he’s lying, that they’ll never have enough money for her law school and if they ever do, it’ll be far too late for her to go. She knows even then, that if she agrees, if she stays with him, she is making a deal with the devil, sealing her own fate.
She also knows that there was a reason she married Timothy, even though she wasn’t quite sure that she loved him.
“I’m only staying with you for Natalie’s sake,” Hanna says, to the background of Natalie’s wailing, her voice sharp and jagged, forcing its way out her throat like broken crystal. “As soon as she’s old enough, we’re out of here.”
“That-that’s fine, baby. Anything you want, baby,” wheedles Timothy and she wonders what she ever saw in him. He reaches for the baby, “Here, here, let me take her. It’s okay, honey, it’s okay. Daddy’s got you. Daddy’s got you, now.”
She never divorces Timothy, although she does come close when Natalie is six and again when Natalie is ten and Reuben is three, but she never forgives him either.
Andrea May (卡安美) Karp
“Damien!” pleads Lisa, with teary desperate eyes. “We can make this work, I know we can!”
No, we can’t, thinks Damien, and his fingers work to release her grip on his arm.
“I’m pregnant,” she blurts out. “Should-shouldn’t we at least try to make it work?”
“Oh,” says Damien, and he stops fighting her hold on his arm.
They try.
They try really, really, really hard.
They try through the pregnancy, where Lisa goes through intense bouts of nausea from the smell of coffee and garlic and fish and pretty much anything that has flavor and cringes when her cellphone rings or the TV’s too loud.
“A hard pregnancy means an easy labor,” reassures Lisa’s best friend Molly. (Mindy? Mandy? Damien can’t remember, but he thinks it’s something bubble-headed like that.) She rubs Lisa’s back in long, soothing circles, “It’s going to be okay. This is the worst of it, promise.”
Lisa moans, “I can’t eat anything. My feet hurt. My head hurts. I’m supposed to be on bed rest, but I hate my bed and I hate the couch and I’ve already read everything in the house twice.”
“You’re going stir-crazy,” agrees Damien, attempting at not unkindly, and maybe hitting somewhere around slightly sympathetic.
Lisa shoots him a dark look. “And how would you know? You’re always off working late at the damn firm.”
“That’s not my fault,” says Damien, looking down at his Blackberry. The Saxeys are fighting again and Claire Saxey’s lawyer seems to think she has more evidence of Marc cheating. “One of us is pregnant and on bed rest and the other one, who is supporting the pregnant one, has to keep his job so that the pregnant one and future baby will have something to live on.”
“You could still work fewer hours,” mutters Lisa sullenly.
“Hey, hey, let’s all be friends now,” Molly cuts in, with forced cheer. “You guys are about to have a baby together! Two people in love, creating new life. You guys should be so happy! So proud, right?”
“Right,” says Damien walking out of the room, “ecstatic.”
They try through the wedding, where the Karp and Infeld clans (who never really liked each other much to begin with) meet the Wang and Shi clans and no one really gets along with anyone else, because despite this being the 21st century, apparently those people are not the sorts of people our family marries. (Although, in a stunning display of near tact, neither family deigns to clarify as to whom exactly “those people” are.)
The one clear exception to the rule is Damien’s somewhat off beat (and secretly favorite) uncle Stanton Infeld.
Stanton claps Damien on the back proudly. “I’m so glad you’re marrying Lisa,” he says. “It’s a great honor to merge into the Chinese culture, one of the finest cultures of our time. Regrettably, it’s dying off, has been on a downward spiral since Mao took over and steamrolled over everything that had any sense of meaning. Of course, shortly before he did that, I had an opportunity to hike up to one of the first Daoist temples with one of my best friends…”
“Damien,” Lisa comes up to them with a dangerous smile, “can I speak to you alone for a moment?”
“Oh, yes, yes, of course you can,” says Stanton encouragingly, with shooing hand gestures and a knowing smirk. “Do take him away, it’s your wedding after all.”
“Is everything okay?” asks Damien as Lisa leads him away.
“I don’t like him,” she states flatly.
“Who? Stanton?” Damien blinks in puzzlement, “I know he’s a little eccentric, but he’s really pretty harmless.”
Lisa crosses her arms, “He’s fetishizing my entire family and it’s creeping me out.”
“He is not!” protests Damien.
“Yes, Damien, he is,” Lisa glares upward at him. “The only reason he approves of our marriage is because I’m Chinese and he has a hard-on for China.”
“No,” says Damien slowly, “the only reason he approves of our marriage is because he’s the only one of my family members that has a soul. He’d like you even if you weren’t Chinese. The fact that you are Chinese, just gives him something else to bring up around the dinner table.”
“I can’t even speak Chinese,” Lisa spits out angrily. “I’m third generation, I don’t have to!”
Damien holds out his hands airily, “I don’t think Stanton cares…”
“Ugh,” Lisa huffs and rolls her eyes. “You don’t understand.”
“Understand what?” Damien calls after her.
They try after the honeymoon, which goes surprisingly smooth (great hotel, great beach, great sex, etc) when the real world takes over again and Damien has to go back to work.
“So, I’ll just stay home then, with our baby?”
Damien halts a piece of toast en route to his mouth, “Or we could hire a nanny, if you wanted to go back to teaching?”
“Oh no,” Lisa shakes her head and settles down into a chair next to him at the table. “I don’t want anyone else raising our child.” She leans down and gives the baby swing a light push to start it rocking.
Andrea burbles contentedly at the sudden motion.
“So then, what’s the problem?” asks Damien, going back to his toast.
Lisa sighs and shakes up a bottle of formula, “I guess I’m just afraid things are going to go back to the way they used to be.”
“The way they used to be?”
“You know,” says Lisa bending back down to give the bottle to Andrea, “with us always fighting and you working long hours. And then that leads to us turning into one of those 50s caricatures of a family, with the bread-winning dad who never comes home to see his kids and the Susie Homemaker who manages to raise the picture perfect, rosy faced kids all by herself.”
“Ummm…” Damien takes a long sip of coffee, “but you’re not Susie Homemaker and I like our daughter, I actually want to spend time with her, so why are you worrying? That’s not us.”
“But it could be!”
“But it’s not,” says Damien mentally shaking off the knowledge that if he works late on the Benson case, he won’t have to have this discussion again at dinner time. “So why are you worried?”
They try for the first year of marriage, through long days and longer nights, because that’s supposed to be the hardest year and if you can make it through that, so goes the rumor, than everything else is golden.
“I don’t think I love you anymore,” Lisa whispers to the back of his neck.
“Mmmf?” Damien rolls over groggily to face her. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t think I love you anymore,” Lisa repeats, wide-eyed and solemn. “Why don’t I love you anymore?”
Damien wipes the sleep out of his eyes and peers blearily at the alarm clock, “Because it’s 3 am?”
Lisa ignores him like he hasn’t spoken. “We were in love once, right? That’s why we got married? We were in love?”
“Go back to sleep, Lisa,” says Damien and runs his fingers down her cheek. “We had a long day. We’ll talk about this tomorrow.”
Lisa’s lips tremble and her eyes start welling up, “Did you ever love me? Do you want a divorce?”
“I don’t want a divorce,” says Damien quietly and tries to be consoling, “Divorces are messy and everyone gets hurt worse in the carnage; trust me, I’ve handled enough to know.” He burrows his arm under her and draws her close. “Come here, let’s go back to sleep and we’ll talk about this in the morning when we’re both thinking straight.”
“Did you ever love me?” Lisa repeats against his chest.
When he doesn’t respond, he feels her warm tears melt into the fabric next to his heart.
They try, they really do.
And then they don’t and that’s when the real screaming starts.
They fight about money, they fight about in-laws, they fight about getting a divorce, they fight about not getting a divorce, they fight about the appropriate conditions for raising a child, they fight about who had a better childhood, they fight about who’s most likely to screw up the child. They fight and they fight and they fight, until they run out of words and even anger and they sit in the living room across from each other on separate couches and wonder how it all when so wrong.
“I’m sorry, I just…” Lisa says one night, running her fingers through her hair tiredly. She is past the point of crying, of passionately defending her side in the matter. “I was so sure, you know? I was so sure that if we fought through the rough patches, if we stuck with it, tried something new, had a kid, whatever…” She sighs heavily and defeated. “I was so sure it would work…”
Damien squeezes his forehead, like maybe if he presses the right spot, hits the right button on his brain, the magic words to make everything right again will come to him, like a half-remembered thought. If this were a case, he would advise his clients to settle now before it goes any farther, because the odds of them winning in court are slim and slimming further as they speak.
From down the hall the sound of Andrea crying echoes like a shrill siren. She is teething and screams like she understands what’s going on around her.
“I’ll take care of it,” Damien volunteers in a low voice. He is running he knows, but he is so tired of presenting the same evidence over and over again to a jury who won’t listen and a judge that won’t hear his objections or allow his motion for a mistrial.
Lisa doesn’t look up at him as he walks away.
“Shhh,” Damien croons, scooping Andrea against his chest, “Shhhhh… I’ve got you. It’s okay now.”
Andrea clubs her fists against him and squalls. She has her mother’s eyes and, bittersweetly, Damien thinks, her sense of impatience. She has his features, though, the sharp Karp jawline and pointy nose, and with any luck, his determination.
Damien rocks her until she falls back to sleep, her soft black locks of hair fluttering in the gentle breeze of motion. Oh darling, he thinks and strokes the crest of her cheekbone with his thumb, you probably shouldn’t ever wake up.
Daniel Franklin Linden
The condom breaks.
No one is amused.
Well, no one except her mother, that is.
“It’s not like you’re getting any younger, Hanna,” says her mom, when she brings it up in conversation on their weekly phone call. “Let’s face it, if you want kids that you’ll live to see their college graduation, you should probably get started now.” The couch cushions rustle over the phone line as she shifts position. “In fact, if you wanted to get married now, that would probably be a good idea too. What’s the father like? Is he tall, dark, and handsome?”
“Not exactly, Mom…”
“Oh,” says Jared, gaping open-mouthed like a dying fish, when she corners him at work. “Well, that’s a uh—that’s a little bit of a shocker that is…” He clears his throat and fumbles for something polite to say, “We could- I mean… not that you need it or anything, I mean, you’re clearly capable and a responsible grown up and uh…” To his credit, he tries very hard to be a gentleman. “Would you want to get married?” he finishes weakly.
Hanna stares at him irritably like he’s grown a second head. “To you?”
“Yeah,” Jared nods sharply in uncomfortable agreement. “That’s what I thought you’d say.”
Apparently, she is less tactful when she is pregnant. This is brought to her attention, when even Franklin and Bash start obviously flashing dead-eyed, deer in the head lights looks when they see her coming and Stanton casually mentions that, “You know, Hanna, I understand, you’re going through quite a predicament here, but heaping relentless insults upon your coworkers won’t prevent them from being any less stupid.”
“It won’t?”
“No, sadly, it won’t,” says Karp, sidling up to two of them. He hands her a package. “For you.”
“Chocolates? You’ve never brought me chocolates before,” Hanna says with suspicious eyes. “Not even when we were together.”
“You’ve never been this destructively homicidal before, either,” says Karp, taking care to stay out of arm’s length. “Now, eat your chocolates and try not to kill any of our clients; it’s bad for business and the cleaning staff keeps complaining about the blood stains.”
Hanna looks over at Stanton.
Stanton shrugs in rueful agreement. “It is worth a try, you know.”
She names the baby Daniel, after her father and her favorite bible story as a child (she doesn’t believe in them anymore, but she almost wishes she did) and Franklin out of respect for the boy’s father. When he’s born, has his daddy’s sky blue eyes and wide, goofy smile when he’s happy. He has her nose though, and persnickety personality, which means, she finds out later, that he’s always fussy.
Jared and Peter show up the morning after she gives birth.
“We would’ve been here sooner,” explains Peter, “but someone got hit with a contempt charge.”
“Hey, hey, hey!” protests Jared, “how was I to know that Judge Milton would have an issue with pink, fuzzy handcuffs?”
“I don’t think it was the handcuffs that was the issue, I think it was what you were doing with the…” Peter trails off as the nurse wheels in the baby cart.
“Hi!” says the nurse, all bright-eyed and cheery. “Are you two here to see baby Daniel?”
“I...I…uh…” Jared stares wide-eyed at the little bundle of blue cloth. “Yeah, I guess…I guess we are.”
“He’s the father,” Hanna clarifies for the nurse’s benefit. She adds pointedly, “I think he wants to hold his son now.”
“I do?” Jared clears his throat, “I mean, uh, yes, yes, I do. I would like to hold him. My son. Fruit of my loom…loins…whatever.”
“Is this your first time?” asks the nurse excitedly. She slips her arms under Daniel with practiced ease and scoops him into Jared arms, helpfully molding them into a supportive shape. “Oooh! This is wonderful! I love seeing new dads hold their children for the first time!”
“Hi,” Jared says to the baby, hesitantly adjusting his grip into a more comfortable one. “Where did you come from?”
Hanna watches as Jared ghost-traces over Daniel’s features with a single finger, as if the baby were made out of diamond or precious jewels. His finger dusts over the fat poof of baby cheek and for a moment, father and son smiles match.
“Dude,” says Peter breathlessly, peering over Jared’s shoulder. “You’re a dad!”
Damien stops by later that same evening.
“I’m sorry,” he says, “I’ve been swamped with cases for the past few days and I haven’t been able to get away.”
He’s lying, Hanna knows, she can tell by the awkward cadence of his words, but she’s too sleepy and warm to try and figure out about what or why.
“Do you want to hold him?”
“Sure,” Damien drops his bag to the side, and gathers Daniel gently without waking him, from her arms. “Come here, little guy.”
“He could’ve been yours,” she says, before she can stop herself.
“Could’ve been,” agrees Damien, still looking down at Daniel cradled in his arms. He makes a cooing noise and rubs Daniel’s belly.
Daniel makes a soft sleepy noise in response and tries to snuggle closer to Damien’s chest.
Could still be, Hanna thinks, but this time she stops herself.
Adele Miriam Linden-Karp
Adele Miriam Linden-Karp is born approximately 8 months after the Karp-Linden wedding.
Franklin and Bash find this hilarious. “Oooh! Looks like someone got their hanky-panky started before their honey-moon!”
Stanton finds this greatly fortuitous. “Ah, yes, children are a gift from the gods. Especially children so early in your marriage!”
Damien finds this neither. “We are going to be the worst parents in the world,” he groans, but he is nuzzling Hanna’s neck and his arm is wrapped around her shoulders, so Hanna takes it as a good sign.
“We’re going to be amazing parents,” disagrees Hanna. Adele is asleep in her arms, looking for all the world as if she were just as safe and comfortable in a blanket of clouds. She sleeps as though time and reality stop and swirl around her in a vortex of protection and good feelings.
“She’s beautiful,” says Damien. He kisses Hanna’s temple. “You did good.”
“We did good,” Hanna smiles and cranes her neck to look at Damien. “She’s yours too, you know.”
“She is, isn’t she?” A gentle, almost drunken smile curls up the corners of his mouth, unconsciously as he gazes on his daughter. It’s a good look for him, Hanna decides.
“She’s lighter than I was expecting,” says Damien thoughtfully.
“She’ll probably darken some as she gets older. My cousin’s kid did. Disappointed?” She teases.
Damien shakes his head in amusement, “Never.”
They stay like that for a long while in comfortable silence.
“When’s Stanton expecting you back?”
Damien shrugs and reaches over to outline Adele’s button nose. “Whenever he’s convinced that his new favorite great niece is healthy and happy. He’ll probably stop by sometime tomorrow with unbelievable stories about his time with the Mongols helping the chieftain’s wife’s personal midwife.”
“I love your uncle.”
Damien snorts a laugh through his nose and makes a disparaging noise. “I can’t go back to work. Last time I was there, Franklin and Bash flooded my office with balloons and baby toys. I narrowly escaped a baby shower.”
“Mmmmmm,” Hanna chuckles sleepily, “Who won the betting pool?”
Damien pauses for a moment and tickles Adele under her tiny, tiny chin. “Franklin, I think. Bash for beastly boy and Franklin for fierce female…or something like that…I really can’t remember.”
“Sounds like them,” Hanna forces down a yawn. “Always getting into trouble.”
“You should sleep,” says Damien, stroking her hair. “You’ve had a long day.”
Deep down inside, there’s a part of Hanna that bristles and wants to protest, and closer to the surface there’s a part of her that’s irrationally afraid that if she closes her eyes, releases her baby, this will all disappear like some fantastic whimsical dream.
But her eyelids are heavy and talking has suddenly become so much work.
“Mmmm, no, I’m good,” she half-heartedly protests.
“Sure you are,” Damien ignores her, and swoops Adele up into his arms. He reaches down and pulls up the covers with his free hand, tucking in the blankets around Hanna like a cocoon. The sunlight glints in his day-old stubble and Hanna thinks he’s never looked more handsome.
“Go to sleep,” he tells her pressing another kiss to her forehead. “We’ll be right here when you wake up.”
Bonus:
The three Linden-Karp princesses, as Jared referred to them, arrived on their doorstep at exactly 7pm, in matching light pink dresses and pigtails, accompanied by their relieved and more than marginally tickled parents. The bravest one, Adele, paused briefly to hug Jared and Peter’s legs, then darted past into the living room with her Barbie backpack in tow.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” protested Peter. “I mean, are you positive you really want to leave your kids with us, again?”
“Not really,” muttered Karp, bending down and straightening Diana’s dress. He cupped her chin so that he could look her in the eye. “Now remember, if it looks weird, don’t eat it.”
“See!” said Jared in sudden, sincere agreement. “We have lots of weird food! You probably shouldn’t leave your kids here with us.”
“You’ll be fine,” said Hanna, warmly, handing over Elena and detaching herself from the one year old’s grip. “Here’s her bag. If you need anything, the nanny’s number is in the side pocket.”
“I’m just saying, I’m starting to pick up on a distressing trend that happens when you leave your girls here,” Peter automatically tucked Elena against his shoulder crook and brushed a fluffy fly-away tuft behind her ear. Elena gurgled out a happy noise and patted his cheek.
“Yeah,” Jared nodded adamantly. “They tend to multiply.”
“You should probably stop feeding them after midnight, then,” said Karp standing up. He patted Diana on the back and scooted her forward. “Go find your sister. She’s probably in the kitchen with Pindar.”
“Pindy!” Diana tottered off. “Pindy!”
“Three years ago, you left us with one kid,” continued Peter. “The next year it was two, this year it’s three.” He gestured with a dramatic finger to the sky. “I’m just saying…”
Hanna laughed and took Karp’s hand as he led her out the door. “Night boys, see you tomorrow.”
The door to the once manly Man-Cave clicked shut with a deafening finality.
Peter and Jared looked at each other.
“Seriously, how did we get ourselves into this mess?” said Peter gently bouncing Elena
“One of us should’ve objected at their wedding,” agreed Jared.
“On the grounds of two forces of evil uniting together to produce more evils.”
“Three little evils.”
From behind them in the kitchen, came the sound of a crash, Pindar saying something panicky about sticky hands, and the sinister chirrup of a toddler’s laughter.
“Three little a-dor-able evils,” Peter sing-songed. He tickled Elena’s belly.
Elena giggled happily and grabbed at his nose.
Jared shook his head sadly in resignation. “Not you too…”
“Hey!”
Peter and Jared turned at the sound of a tiny impetuous voice.
“Yes, Adele?”
Adele thrust up a magenta DVD as high as her four year old arms could stretch. “I wanna watch My Little Pony! Daddy said I could.”
“Well, if Daddy said you could…” Jared clapped a hand on Peter’s arm, comradely. “Alright, bro, I got this one. You get Barbie Princess Sunflower or Flowerwood…or whatever the next one is….”
“It’s Princess Barbie and the Sunshine Flowers!” Adele stamped her foot, crankily. “Get it right!”
Jared took a deep breath. “Oh, it’s going to be a long night.”
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Date: 2011-08-07 04:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-07 06:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-07 06:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-08 07:19 am (UTC)Honestly, I didn't have a clear picture of what their babies would look like before I started Googling baby pictures (thus the research...), but I do now! :D
Baby Jared would be either this guy (http://www.visualphotos.com/photo/2x4626568/mixed_race_baby_rubbing_nose_bld061276.jpg) or this guy. (http://www.babble.com/CS/blogs/droolicious/2009/05/heidi-klum-5139-5.jpg)
And then Adele (http://www.biracialbabiesrock.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/P10105601.jpg), Diana (http://image.shutterstock.com/display_pic_with_logo/57715/57715,1137171557,2/stock-photo-a-beautiful-mixed-race-little-girl-with-big-brown-eyes-881798.jpg), and Elena (http://i253.photobucket.com/albums/hh78/amber32034/lala.jpg) would look this, but with longer hair so that Daddy Damien could braid their hair or put it in pigtails for them, because, yes, I strongly desire that level of cuteness in my life, lol. :P
P.S. I can find you pictures of the other babies if you want, but I figured these were the ones you were most interested in. :-)
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Date: 2011-08-09 03:55 am (UTC)Oh adorable baby pictures are adorable and baby Jared (either one could be a the baby -the second one could be a slightly older version of him =])
I can see Damien learning fancy ways of doing his princesses' hair (I've always found fishtail braids awesome ^_^) The cuteness should be in everyone's life!
AH, now I want a continuation of this (would begging convince you to? cause I have no shame for that =p)
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Date: 2011-08-09 06:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-10 03:29 am (UTC)Other F&B stories? cause I would sure love to read them ^^
Mind if I friend you?
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Date: 2011-08-10 03:48 pm (UTC)Right now, I don't have any more FnB finished (although, I have some really, really want to be finished...), but as soon as I'm done with them I'll post them here. :-)
Friend me, please! :D In fact, I will friend you first! :P I always have room for more friends. :)
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Date: 2011-08-12 04:20 am (UTC)And Ive friended you, so I guess we're officially friends =]
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Date: 2011-08-07 07:41 am (UTC)And I loved all the ones leading up to that, and I love the way you write Hanna and I love her so much, and I love Damien, I love the way he wears shirts, sorry, that's not really to do with this fic, but it's true. And you write them all so well, their voices, perfect.
“Why don’t I love you anymore?”
Damien wipes the sleep out of his eyes and peers blearily at the alarm clock, “Because it’s 3 am?”
I loved that. Very Damien, and very touching.
And I love that they eventually had a baby, and I love that they left their children with Franklin and Bash, that was and awesome bonus bit at the end, and OH GOD I hope they make them look after a baby next year, I know it's a terrible cliché, but PETER WITH A BABY, it would just be very.
::loves::
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Date: 2011-08-07 11:10 pm (UTC)YES! Because Damien is really trying to be all hands off, because "not my kid, not my problem" but then he sees Hanna and baby and starts randomly dropping by with baby presents and then it all spirals into happiness from there! :D
LIES! That has everything to do with the fic! Hanna is not blind! How he wears shirts makes her wonder how to get them off! :P (Also, I really, really super liked him when he was in jeans and I kinda even liked the purple plaid...)
Heehee! I love Damien, like whoa, but there are some times he just doesn't get it.
I need babies with FnB! Need, need, need! Like, they could all just pass around a baby and the adorableness would rub off and the entire viewing audience would spontaneously combust!
*huggles* :D :D :D *loves back*
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Date: 2011-08-07 08:56 am (UTC)Also, love the bit about them multiplying whenever left at Uncles F&B
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Date: 2011-08-07 11:17 pm (UTC)Heehee, yeah, Damien and Hanna only get so many nights off a year. They're bound to make the best of it. :P
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Date: 2011-08-07 09:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-07 11:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-07 03:29 pm (UTC)P.S. Too bad Stanton's story about assisting the Mongol chieftain's personal midwife ended up on the cutting room floor.:)
P.P.S. The concept of Jared and Peter attempting to throw Damien a baby shower is hilarious too.
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Date: 2011-08-07 11:35 pm (UTC)Hee! Hint: It involves using the intestines of a freshly slaughtered deer, a harsh snowstorm, and the baby being named after him. :P
Heehee! Because they totally would! :D
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Date: 2011-08-08 02:13 am (UTC)Of course the baby is to be named after him--how else can you repay the man for his assistance at such an important time. Hope it wasn't a girl. Maybe the Mongol equivalent of Stacey?
Peter and Jared would try really hard to give Damien a baby shower. I applaud Damien's ability to outrun them. Fun times!
I've written slash for the first time in forever and am ... hesitant to post. But the damn idea just got stuck in my head and ... and ... I totally think Damien would entertain the concept with Peter, but maybe not Jared.
But I digress. Had fun with this!
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Date: 2011-08-08 07:28 am (UTC)Ahem. *clears throat* Er, I mean, if you've written, why not post? Rarepairs encourage other writers and sometimes drag them kicking and screaming onto your ship where they hopefully will write more, so you don't have to... >.> <.< >.> Not that I've thought this out or anything... :-P
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Date: 2011-08-30 06:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-30 08:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-28 10:02 am (UTC)Each little bit was so full of story and feeling. Sad and happy and wonderful all at once.
I loved the bonus at the end, I can just see the girls running amok at the Cave and Jared and Peter being fake stern but loving it really.