Work Text:
June 17, 2025
“Alright,” Chris says as he turns off the car, pulled to just in front of the porch. He looks at her through the rearview mirror. “I’ll go around and get Charlie first, then it’s your turn.”
“You know I can get myself out of the car, right?” She says, her eyebrows raised and her voice flat. Yes, she had a fairly major surgery a few days ago. And yes, she’d been instructed to take it easy, to be careful about bending and moving too quickly and not to lift anything heavier than their new baby. But she’s nearly certain she can manage getting out of the car. And she’s supposed to be walking, to help speed her recovery.
Chris turns, one hand curled around the back of his seat. “Humor me, please?” She sighs and rolls her eyes, but she also nods. He drops his hand between the front seats to her knee, squeezing it. “Thank you. Love you.”
“Love you too.” She watches him climb out of the car then jog around to the door opposite hers, unbuckling her seatbelt and twisting to look down into the carseat. She runs the backs of her fingers down her baby’s cheek and over his chest.
Chris opens the door and shoots her a grin before unlocking the baby carrier from the car seat base and lifting it gently out of the car. He kicks the door closed behind him and walks much more slowly back to her side of the car. Bracing herself for the admonishment she’s fairly sure she’ll receive, she pushes her door open and turns to rest her feet on the ground outside the car while she waits. He gives her a stern look when he reaches her, but he doesn’t actually say anything, so she takes that as a win.
Shifting the handle of the carrier so that it sits in the crook of his elbow, Chris holds out his other arm for her to brace herself on as she gets out of the car. He knows she’s not handicapped, okay? And he knows all the things the doctor said about what she’s capable of doing and how walking is good for her and all that. But he’s pretty sure he isn’t going to set her recovery progress back by giving her a little support. The thing is, it’s hard for him not to be in control of a situation. Not that he wants to be in control of her, but so much of Charlie’s birth story has been outside of anyone’s control, and it’s made him feel helpless, like he was just sort of flailing, for the last several months. Now he can actually do something. And it may not be much - making sure she’s steady as she walks, handling the car seat, doing most, if not all, of the diaper changes, waiting on Her, for lack of a better term, while she feeds their new boy, keeping a close eye on Addy so She doesn’t have to worry about that - but he’s going to make sure that he’s doing everything he can when it comes to taking care of his wife and their family.
“You good?” he asks once she’s out of the car and has hooked her hand over his forearm, pushing the car door closed with the other.
“Yep.”
“Alright then.” He kisses her temple then walks them carefully to the front door and opens it slowly and quietly.
They can hear Addy with Shanna and her husband in the living room, Addy babbling in half-sentences while Shanna and her husband make sounds of encouragement and affirmation. She and Chris stay quiet, refraining from announcing their entrance until they’re actually in the room with the others. They don’t want to have to yell.
It turns out, though, that they don’t actually have to announce themselves at all, because once they’ve cleared the hall and entered the wider, more open space of the living room, Shanna grins at them and says, “Addy! Look who’s here!” Addy looks up from the blocks she’s playing with and gasps when she spots them.
“Mommy! Daddy!” She pushes herself up onto stubby, toddler-sized legs and runs as best as she can around the end of the couch and straight toward them. She flings herself first at Chris’s legs, wrapping her arms partially around them, then she moves to do the same to her mother. Without giving either of them time to respond, Addy then pulls back and reaches for the baby carrier still hooked over her father’s arm, her little hands opening and closing. “I see Baby Char-wie!”
Chris chuckles. It’s nice to see that it hasn’t taken Addy long to learn her little brother’s name. He wonders just how many times his mom has repeated it to her over and over again these past few days. “Alright, Roo,” he says, dropping his free hand to the top of Addy’s head when he feels Her hand slip free from his arm, “just wait a minute, okay?”
Addy nods and claps her hands together in front of her chest. She reaches down, curling both hands gently over the little girl’s shoulders, and pulls her back against Her legs. Addy looks up at her, grinning and bouncing on the balls of her feet, and She blows an air kiss at her daughter. The little girl giggles then turns her attention back to her dad. The second Chris has the carrier on the floor, Addy wiggles free of her mother’s grasp and inches forward. Before she can get too close, Chris hooks an arm around her waist and pulls her into his side, the baby carrier just out of her reach.
“Whaddya think?” he asks her.
“I hold him,” Addy answers. She'd been asking to hold him since the first time Lisa brought her to the hospital to meet him, the day after he was born. They'd held her off with warnings of it being "against the hospital rules" (look, sometimes you have to tell your 18-month-old a little white lie, okay?) and promises of "when he comes home." It's not like they never wanted her to hold him, they just felt better about doing it in their own home, on furniture they know and trust and in an environment they can control. Chris looks up at his wife and She only smiles and nods a little toward the couch.
“Alright,” Chris says, nodding at Addy. “But you gotta go sit on the couch first.” In a matter of seconds Addy wriggles free from her father’s grip and runs back to the couch. Everyone laughs, and Shanna’s husband pulls his phone out of his pocket and points it in Addy’s direction.
She watches, Her hands opening and closing at her sides and her bottom lip trapped between her teeth, as Chris undoes the buckles holding Charlie into the seat and lifts him carefully, one hand behind his head and the other under his butt. She trusts Chris with her own life, but she can’t help but be anxious as she watches. Charlie’s just so tiny, and fragile - he’s not even supposed to be out in the world yet. It’s not about trusting Chris to be careful and safe, it’s just about being this perfect, helpless being’s mother and having an undeniable urge to protect him. Charlie doesn’t even wake, though. He just squirms a little in Chris’s hands, both arms stretching over his head as his face scrunches and twists, before relaxing and going still again. Chris brings Charlie close to his own body, tiny feet tucked against Chris’s chest and his eyes shining as he looks down at his son.
Chris looks over at his wife, and a full conversation passes between their eyes. We’re not going anywhere without you, his direct look tells her, while her long blink and almost shy smile says in return Thank you, I love you for that, just before she steps closer and rests her hand on his lower back. The kiss to her head tells her I got you , and the wink he follows it up with promises This is going to be fun.
Still holding Charlie gingerly and with Her hand still on his back, Chris makes his way toward the couch until he stands, his wife at his side, right in front of Addy. “You gotta be still, okay?” he cautions his little girl. Addy nods. “And very gentle.” She nods again. Chris lowers himself to one knee in front of her and waits while his wife wedges a throw pillow between Addy’s leg and the arm of the couch then lowers herself to kneel beside him with her butt resting on the heels of her feet.
She can feel Chris’s hesitation; it’s practically rolling off of him in waves. It’s comforting, in a way. It means that these things she’s feeling right now, the overprotectiveness, the fear and paranoia over anyone else being responsible for her baby for even a second, the deep, primal need to wrap herself around him and shield him from every bad thing in the world, aren’t just her being hormonal, or worse. If Chris is feeling that too, then it’s just about being a good parent.
It’s physically difficult for Chris to move his arms. He knows, realistically, that laying Charlie across Addy’s lap is perfectly safe. It’s not like he can go anywhere, with Addy sitting on the couch practically surrounded by pillows, both of her parents directly in front of her. And they’ve been working on the concept of ‘gentle’ with her for a while now, so he’s not worried about her hurting him. He just … he can’t seem to bring himself to let his boy go. He tries to remember if he was like this when Addy was first born. He had to have been, to an extent, but it’s different this time. It’s not like he loved Addy any less, or was any less protective of her, or anything like that, it’s just that … well, she came into the world like the sunrise, peaceful and (relatively) quiet and just casting everyone around her with a glow once she’d arrived. Charlie, well, Charlie’s birth was more like a thunderstorm, with hail and tornado warnings. It was terrifying and no one really felt like they could relax until it had fully passed, hours later. And something about that anxiety is just sticking with him.
But then his wife reaches over from where she sits on her heels next to him and rests her hand on the small of his back, her palm sitting right along the waistband of his pants and her thumb slipping under the hem of his shirt to drift over his back. She has more right to be scared than anyone, but, with the understandable exception of those first few hours after she woke up from surgery, she’s been fearless. He doesn’t really know how she does it, just that she does. And if she can, then so can he. Or at least he can pretend to.
So he pulls Charlie slowly - so, so carefully - away from his chest. He lifts him first, pressing a soft, careful kiss to the downy blonde hair on top of the baby’s head, then moves him to lay on his back across his big sister’s lap. Even as he settles the tiny boy’s head on Addy’s leg, partially supported by the pillow wedged beside it, he moves his hand only to the front of said pillow, letting it rest there. Just in case.
She’s vaguely aware of her sister and brother-in-law on the other side of the room, aware enough to be grateful for the video that she knows Shanna’s husband is capturing, but really her focus has almost fully narrowed to the three people nearest Her. Chris hovers, his hands resting on the couch, one at Charlie’s head and the other by his feet, ready to spring up at any moment. Charlie wriggles as he settles onto his big sister’s legs, his own tiny legs stretching long before curling back in as his hands come up beside his face. And still, his eyes remain closed tight, his body peacefully resting. But as beautiful as both of Her boys are, and while she could happily watch either of them all day, it’s Addy who quickly has her transfixed.
Addy’s left hand moves slowly to rest on Charlie’s stomach, her eyes getting big as it rises and falls with his breaths. After a moment of this, she moves that same small hand to curl around Charlie’s even tinier one. She seems to watch her own thumb move over her brother’s fingers, then she turns to look at his face. Her right hand comes up then from where it had been resting at her side and she moves her palm so slowly, so softly, over the top of his head. She and Chris both hold their breath, ready to intervene the second it seems like she might go too far, but that moment never comes. Addy simply strokes Charlie’s hair, her touch whisper-soft, then, her hand still curled softly over the top of his head, resting on the pillow, she looks up at her dad with big eyes.
“Beautiful Char-wie,” she says in her precious little voice, that voice that melts both of them, that voice she’s gotten much more comfortable using over the past few months.
Instantly, Chris feels his eyes fill with tears. This moment is the culmination of everything he’s wanted, everything he’s worked for, nearly his entire life. He has a great career, and he’s proud of it. He’s proud of the work he’s done and the projects he’s been a part of that have inspired people and shared important messages and widened the scope of representation in the entertainment industry. He’s proud of his work with ASP and the platform’s ability to bring light to topics that have flown under the radar for far too long. But on a personal level? This was always the goal - surrounding himself with people he loves, who love him back, building a life with a woman who’s his partner, bringing children into the world with her and loving them and teaching them to be good people and to love one another.
Chris looks over at his baby sister. He doesn’t remember when his parents brought Scott home from the hospital, just like he can only assume that Addy won’t remember this moment (aside from the video that his brother-in-law is filming), but Shanna? That he remembers. He remembers himself as a freshly minted five-year-old, just as excited to meet the tiny bundle his mom carried as Addy is right now. He remembers laying on his parents’ bed, staring at her where she lay between him and Scott. He didn’t know enough at the time to question why his mother hadn’t been pregnant, or where the baby came from. He just knew that this was his baby sister and that, for the rest of his life, he was going to love her and look out for her and protect her from every bad thing he possibly could. Addy’s not as old as he was when Shanna came to them. She’s not even as old as he was when Scott was born. But when he looks at her, with Charlie on her lap, he sees those same feelings, those same instincts in her.
“I love you, beautiful Char-wie,” Addy says, and Chris feels his wife’s hand press more firmly against his back as she presses her face to his shoulder. He turns to kiss the top of her head then rests his cheek where his lips just were.
Hours later, they’re all in bed, Addy in her own room and Her, Chris, and Charlie in the master. She’s nursing Charlie as Chris reads aloud to her the litany of messages he’d received over the course of the day from family and friends and responds to them. When Chris puts the phone down, facedown on his nightstand, and reaches across his body to grasp one of Charlie’s feet between his thumb and forefinger, She says, “We did good, huh?”
“You did amazing,” he whispers, his eyes never leaving the baby as his thumb drifts back and forth over the top of his foot.
“No, Chris,” She says, turning the foot closest to him to kick his calf under the blankets, “we did good. With Addy. I know it’s early still, but I feel like she loves him so much already.”
“She does,” he agrees.
“Did you hear her telling Dodger to be gentle when he was sniffing Charlie and me?”
Chris chuckles under his breath. “I didn’t.”
“I know we had talked about maybe having more, having something more like what you grew up with.” Charlie has stopped nursing and is completely asleep, so she pulls him away from her breast and passes him carefully to Chris so that she can get her nursing nightgown put back together. “And I’m sorry we can’t do that, at least, not biologically. But what we have now, what each of our kids has, is already so much more than what I had as a kid that it’s actually kind of overwhelming. In a good way.”
Chris rubs circles over Charlie’s back where he has him propped on his chest and shoulder, coaxing a burp out of the boy. “What we have is good,” he tells her, but the second the words are out of his mouth he knows they’re not enough, that they don’t actually convey what he’s trying to say. “It’s perfect,” he adds. “Would I have kept going, if you’d wanted to and it wasn’t physically dangerous for you? Yeah, I probably would have. Am I disappointed now? Absolutely fucking not. These two, they’re the children we were meant to have. This is our family, and there’s not a single thing I would do to change that.” Charlie’s breath puffs out onto Chris’s neck as he burps and Chris smiles then gives his back a couple more rubs before standing carefully.
She watches him walk around the foot of the bed to come to her side and settle Charlie in his bassinet. She could have done it, if Chris had passed him back to her, and there will certainly come a time - in just a couple hours, actually - when she will lift him out of it, but she’s not going to argue with Chris about doing it now. It’s likely that his action is just as much about simply wanting to do it himself as it is about preventing her from having to do it. Once Charlie is settled, Chris perches on the edge of the mattress next to her knee and lets his hand sit on her thigh over the blankets.
“Honestly?” He says it like a question and she nods for him to go on. “I’m glad you’re overwhelmed. Don’t take this the wrong way, because you know I love and respect the hell out of your mom, but you’ve always deserved more than what you had then. I just feel like, you were made to have a close, loving family that looks out for each other and loves each other’s company. Now you’re getting that, and I get to be a part of it, and that’s fuckin’ awesome to me. And in case you ever doubted it, any time you start to get overwhelmed in a way that’s not so good, that’s what I’m here for, to reassure you and to work through it with you. Because let’s face it, I know my way around dealing with siblings. And you are way better with the whole ‘calming influence voice of reason’ thing than I am. So between the two of us, I think we got this, yeah?”
She could answer. She could say all kinds of confident, reassuring things about what a great team they are (because they are) and how well they work together as parents (because they do), but she doesn’t. She simply lifts her hand to his neck, curling her fingers around it and resting her thumb on his jaw, and pulls him forward. He squeezes her leg as he leans forward, and when he kisses her she slips her hand into his hair.
The kiss goes on until he pulls away; even then, she would have kept kissing him. But he pulls away and kisses her nose, then her forehead. “You know I’d be happy to do that all night,” he tells her, “but you need some sleep.” She nods, though she’s reluctant to agree. She does need the sleep, it’s not that, it’s just that she’d really like to kiss him a bit more first. Still, she knows that sometimes that’s hard on him - no pun intended - all the kissing that doesn’t - can’t - lead to anything. Hell, it’s not like it’s easy for her. It’s been difficult these past few months, sharing a life and a home and a bed with him and not being able to be physically intimate in the way they’re used to. But as frustrated as she’s gotten at times since she’s had to limit all physical activity, it doesn’t make the kissing any less enjoyable. And while it’s challenging for her to hold back sometimes once they get going, the ramifications of withholding pleasure are a bit more … physical, for him. So as much as she wants to ask him to kiss her a little bit more first, to do that thing he does with his tongue and grip her hair the way she likes, she doesn’t.
Chris rubs his thumb over her leg and turns his face into her palm when she slides her hand to his jaw. He kisses the inside of her wrist then stands off the bed, lifting the covers as he goes so that she can slide down under them. After tucking the blankets around her shoulders he goes back to his own side of the bed to climb in behind her. He’s careful to avoid her incision, resting his hand on her hip instead of wrapping his arm around her waist as he normally would, as he wraps his body around hers from behind. He knows they’ve only got a couple hours to sleep before Charlie wakes them up again, but that’s okay. And that knowledge doesn’t stop him from taking a few extra minutes to think about everything he has, which is everything he’s ever wanted.