#Jessica McClaren AU

[one-of-us-must-be-crazy]

16!

16. One person pouting, only to have it removed by a kiss from the other person.

Originally this was going to be a really moody bit from early in their relationship about him not understanding that her teasing him was a sign of affection but it took to long and I can feel Depression coming so it was removed and replaced with something Cute.

“Don’t give me that look,” he said to her, softly, quietly, almost mischievously as he caught her pout from the corner of his eye. “We only need a couple more things, and then we go home.” if he could only figure out which of the cough syrups it was Amanda wanted–he didn’t forget exactly, he couldn’t, but Amanda only said ‘get the one that doesn’t take like shit.’

“beeelm.” 

“Yes, you’re right, the one in the green box, that’s what she said. Thank you.” 

Six months old, and starting to babble, their infant was less of an infant by the hour it seemed, and this wasn’t his first time taking her out by himself, but with Amanda laid up, he offered to get groceries and take the little chatterbox with him. 

Jess didn’t seem to agree.

“ffffiblezz”

“I know you’re tired, we’re going to go and pay, and then we can go home,” 

Jess’s face contorted into something close to anger, which, he had to admit, looked comical. 

“mmmmemmmmma”

“Exactly, we go home, you get to see your mama,” he softly fluffed the hair on her head.

“aaaapphfrs!”

“Sorry, sorry, here we go,” he pushed the cart a little, slowly at first to avoid jostling her, the groceries, and the six impulse toys she seemed to look at more intently than the others. Perhaps trusting his ability to care for her wasn’t the reason Amanda wasn’t eager to let them go alone, but becuase they always seemed to come home with…extra.

“pebbbbep”

“No, I won’t ride the cart, I’m not your mother. I would also likely break the cart,” 

“pebbbep!”

“I don’t know what you mean. I am trying to respect your language acquisition process but–”

“pebb. bep.”

I’m sorry, Jessie.”

She made a face, a pout. Christopher had thought that her sweet, quiet expression of anger was something like her mother’s, but Amanda had taken one look at her hours-old daughter’s petulant expression and told her husband that the look was his entirely.

Not sure how to prevent her from breaking out into sobs, not when she was this tired, he leaned forward, and kissed her head. 

Jess stopped pouting, reaching out and smacking his face, or trying to hold it. Perhaps the closest she could really get to a hug as strapped down into her baby seat. He gently held her shoulder, tickled her pudgy chin until she giggled.

“Homeward now, and we don’t tell your mother that all these toys are for you okay?”

“fwip.”

“Perfect.”

[one-of-us-must-be-crazy]

You cannot bait us with Samuels as a parent and then tell us you're never going to write it!

I said I wasn’t going to include it in Lucky Star, but I’d write a one-shot. I just don’t think with the technicalities of things that they’d pursue it long term. Between the “this laboratory smells like eugenics” aspect (I mean…it is technically a dystopia), and the fact that Samuels doesn’t age, and the fact that Amanda isn’t exactly the type I’d see as a parent in the way she’s presented in Lucky Star. And “very tiny fragile human child” tagging along with space pirates and alien hunting doesn’t sound safe–I can’t see them making the, frankly in their case, selfish choice to have their own kid. 

But yeah, Amanda as The Cool Parent™ and Christopher the human (kinda) embodiment of Paranoia? I love. I looooove it so much. At some point I’ll write a proper one shot for it, but in the meantime to apologize for the emotional duress I apparently caused you, here you go:

A vaguely Amy shaped lump on the bed groaned in pain again, and he flinches at the guilt that tugs his central power distributor chord in his chest. She has a high pain tolerance, the medical center’s synthetics told him as much, and the one human doctor that was present at the late hour had repeated it. But from the time they arrived home, and he was finally, finally able to kiss them both (they hadn’t ever experienced it with someone who wasn’t a friend, by the synthetics there recognized what he was immediately, and assumed he was merely an assistant), Amanda hadn’t been quite right.

Christopher wasn’t sure what it was. Maybe that he had only put his hands on the outside of hers as she held the impossibly small human, but took a subtle step back when she tried to let him hold her. 

Now that very tiny, very strange creature was crying in a voice so small and quiet that if it was emitting from a synthetic, he’d be urging it to seek audio repairs as soon as possible. Even Amanda’s human crying wasn’t so fragile sounding. 

“I’ll be up in a second…” a slightly slurred voice said from the bed. Amanda sat up slowly with a hiss of pain.

“Amy–what can I get for you? is the bottle still hot? There’s another two hours before you can take anything else for pain, but I could fetch a half–”

“You’re not–” she let out a small, stifled sound of pain as she wriggled over to get up, “–my medic, despite what the tin can assholes thought. You’re my husband. And I get it. You’re fucking scared. Fine. I’m in pain. A fucking ton of pain, and forgive me if I’m slightly pissed off that you’re the one who’s idea this was, and I’m letting you name her, and you’re….” 

“I–What if–she’s…” standing, statuesque and silent over the tiny sleeping thing, he had watched for hours to be sure that it was still breathing.  

Amanda appeared in his line of vision and picked her up, her voice soft as she tried to quiet her. 

“Chris. Please. We had a list…if you’re not going to hold her, or sleep with me, then–think of a name? I’ll pick a middle one. I loved all the ones on the list, it’s…” she set the infant back down in her little crib, small as a doll’s, and slowly retreated to bed again, tugging a hot (now merely warm) water bottle to her abdomen that she wished was the form of her lover standing coldly to the side.

Barely an hour passes before the baby’s fussing again, and as much as he’s medically aware of human behavior at all life stages, their emotional processes always catch him relatively off guard, and he’s not sure what’s got the poor thing upset this time. Small, uncomfortable mummers quickly turn again into that weak cry and she’s so pitiful and small.

Weeks spent, months spent, running numbers and genetic coding, structuring and restructuring broken down strands of his partner’s human DNA, I have brown eyes, her mother had brown eyes, theoretically I could have had two parents with eyes like hers but I know she wants even odds on that, a clone, nearly, entirely formed from her own DNA however altered.

Amanda said before they even started home, quietly to avoid the ears of the synthetics or the human doctor in the halls, “I really didn’t think you were going to even the odds on her eyes,” even new born, a hour old, the girl’s eyes were darker than her mother’s.

He hears Amanda make a motion to get up, and every ounce of his programming rebels in multiple directions yet again; help her, help the crying human, the human in bed should stay in bed and is best helped by silencing the crying human, don’t touch the crying human, it’s not dying and that’s the only time a non-fully medical programmed android should ever be handling humans under five years of age, you could kill her too easily, you could–

Amy sniffs a little, and even in the dark he catches the long slow blinks that she does when trying to hide the fact that she’s crying.

“Shh, no more of that,” he says, low as his audio can get, and carefully, slowly goes to lift the girl from the crib. “What’s so upsetting out here? You’re not wet, you just ate,” a half finished, comically small bottle sits on the nightstand. Amanda had been against nursing her from the start. My mom tried to. They sent her out on a job before I was weaned, at least that’s what my grandmother told me when she tried to convince me she was a shitty mother. Sounds more like a shitty job. I wouldn’t drink until I was too weak to cry. 

“She’s scared.” Amanda said lowly, half sitting, propped up on a few pillows, the room-temperature water bottle hugged to her lap and belly. 

“It’s too loud here isn’t it? Strange and silent, and cold, and everything’s too big…” he holds her a little closer, a little firmer, and she quiets. “Things will seem better once you’re well rested precious…”

He’s not sure how he didn’t notice, but Amanda had gotten up, and wrapped her arms around his waist. 

“I love you.”

“You can go back to bed, I’ll be right there,”

“No, no I…”

“You need sleep, badly, probably more than Jess does,”

“Jess?”

“Jessica.”

“I honestly thought you’d go with Elena,”

“Do you want–if you’d–”

“Chris no, I like it. I told you.” 

At first he thought to hold Jessica with one hand, and usher Amanda back to their bed with the other, but at the fear of dropping the still-fussy girl he stopped. Amanda painfully, delicately, climbed back into bed.

“Are you sure you don’t need anything?”

“No, just…sleep at this point. You’re right–” she stopped as he eased back onto the mattress too, still holding Jess. “What–if one of us–”

“I’ll stay awake and hold her, you won’t crush her,” it was sweet, to see her worry, to see her fret in situations where it wasn’t causing her stress or panic and he almost realized why she liked to tease and toy with him so much. “And I think she’s asleep again,” he smiled, a very quiet breath and heartbeat–steady and healthy, despite their softness–emitted from her.

“Thank you,” Amanda settled at his side, kissing Jessica, rubbing softly at her few little hairs (fair, for now, but she thinks she’s awful light to ever look like his), and then kissing her husband’s cheek, and then his mouth when he turned to face her, and smile against her lips. “For everything. For not being scared, for being here at all. It’s–”

“Darling–”

“I’m supposed to be alone. That’s my story, that’s all I’ve ever been, and without you I’d either be dead, or still alone and asking and wandering…You and I, and–”

“It’s the meds, luv.”

“We’ve done pretty good I think,” she smiled a little, pain constant, but livable, it was all livable, even when she didn’t think it was, all her life had been like that. “She doesn’t seem too fucked up yet.”

“No, not at all,” Jessica clung to him faintly, and he adjusted his internal temperature to suit. “Amy?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you,”

“I know,” it wasn’t a joke, not like their usual exchange, but honest in her exhaustion. Christopher smiled, listening close for his humans’ vitals.

[one-of-us-must-be-crazy]

AU: Jessica McClaren.

She’s not overprotected, not by a long shot. Her mother encourages her adventurous spirit and her father her adventurous mind, but when she sets her sights on a space pilot program, neither of them are very excited about the idea. Yet there are pictures in their home and mementos of off-planet missions: her parents met off-Terra and though they never spoke of it, they spent hardly any time on solid ground until she happened so what did they see out there that made them so scared of her flying out?

[one-of-us-must-be-crazy]

AU: Jessica Ripley-McClaren. Weyland Station, Mars

circuit breaker,  part-time racer in an illegal hovercar ring.