"It's not fair," Billie agreed, tone calm, still rubbing her back as she had Danny moving her hips in gentle circles on a massive exercise ball. "But Mother Nature really knew what she was doing when she had us bear the children," she went on. "Do you remember when Fallon had the flu last winter?" she reminded Danny, getting a snort out of Danny.
"He was pathetic," she said, but she gave me a small smile.
See, when I'd gotten sick, she'd gone from teasing me about my man-flu to bringing me chicken noodle soup and pressing compresses to my forehead and forcing me to take my medicine.
"But you're strong," Billie reminded Danny. "And you might be understandably uncomfortable right now, but you are going to get through this."
A few short months later, she did.
I mean, yeah, she cursed so badly and so loudly that even the seasoned nurses looked a little startled, but she'd yelled and pushed, and brought our firstborn into the world.
"Ugh. Nature's cruel joke," Danny said, watching me hold our son for the first time. "I put in all the work, and he comes out looking like you," she said, shooting me a soft smile as I wedged myself onto the corner of the bed with her.
Her hand moved out, stroking a finger gently down his cheek.
"Fallon?"
"Yeah?"
"You know how I was a miserable wretch for the past nine months?" she asked, and I felt myself tense a bit, realizing she was going to tell me that she'd changed her mind, that she was a one-and-done person.
"Yeah."
"Well, I'm sorry but... I think you're going to need to endure that at least five more times," she declared as she slipped her finger into our son's tiny palm.
"I think I can handle that," I assured her, all false bravado since we were riding the high of new parenthood. "So? Which one is it?" I asked, looking at our kid. We'd been going back and forth with names since the beginning until, ultimately, narrowing it down to three, and deciding we'd pick it when we saw him.
"Shaw," she decided, looking up at me with a soft smile.
Shaw.
After, and it sounded nuts, but, The Shawshank Redemption. The first movie we watched together that night her world fell apart. Or, rather, the night everything for us started to fall together.
"Shaw," I agreed, pressing a kiss to her forehead. "Now we have backups for any future boys."
"Oh, no. I'm only having girls from now on," Danny declared, getting a choked laugh out of me.
"What?"
"Yeah, I think that's why I was such a mess. You boys, so fucking dramatic. Girls would be easy-peasy, I think."
She would end up being right, then wrong, then right, then wrong again.
Danny - 15 years
"I say this with all the love I have in my heart, but if you call us, and someone isn't bleeding—and I mean like arterial spray bleeding—or unconscious, I am going to shave your eyebrows off in your sleep," I declared, looking at my two eldest children.
Shaw, who was still a spitting image of his father at almost fifteen. Tall and dark and cocky.
Then there was Max, our eldest girl, named after her uncle, a man better known as Grandpa. She was all me. From her blonde hair to her 'don't fuck with me' attitude. Though where she got her affinity for pink and girly shit was a fucking mystery. In fact, if you looked at her in her pretty, feminine floral sundress and platform sneakers, you wouldn't immediately be aware that she could wipe the floor with you if she felt so inclined.
"We can watch the kids, Ma," Max insisted, shaking her head.
"You called me fifteen times the last time I went to the grocery store," I reminded them.
"Reed was on the roof!" Max said, throwing out a hand.
"Yeah, well, what else is new? You got him down, didn't you?" I said, smirking.
"Barely. And I ripped my favorite jeans doing it," she added, still hung up on that.
"Hey, it's not my fault your little brother came out half chimpanzee, kid. I don't know what to tell you. He's feral."
He was, too.
It was, I imagined, what a little Dezi must have been like. Daring, reckless, completely unbothered by the idea of getting seriously injured or killed.
Those couple white hairs I'd been dying over the past few years? They all came from that one kid, I swear.
We'd gotten a good balance, all said and done.
We had our mini-mes in Shaw and Max. Then there had been a calmer, more even-tempered Cass—short for Cassian. After him was our other girl. And this thing, she was pure sugar and honey. Like, I don't know where the fuck she got it from, but Navy was the softest, sweetest creature the world had ever known.
Then, of course, there was our demon-in-human-form, Reed.
The mix kept us on our toes. And humble. And more than a little bit frazzled.