#anyway i've been super burnt out on my wips lately and needed to pump out something else

[notbang]

r/n + unconventional sleep aid

also on ao3

“I need to see you in my office. Now.”

Rebecca frowns, tucking her phone between her ear and shoulder in order to resume wiping down her countertop. “And good evening to you, too. Also, I don’t work for you anymore. Also, it’s 7 p.m.”

“I’m sorry, that was rude of me,” Nathaniel concedes. “Good evening, Rebecca—hope you’re well. I need to see you in my office. Now. Please.”

The call is terminated before she has time to come back with a witty rejoinder.

“Ugh, fine,” she says, tossing her washcloth in the direction of the back counter. “I’ll bite.”

She rolls her eyes as she steps into the elevator.

*

“I know we don’t see each other so much anymore, but dude. You still could’ve mentioned to me at some point that you adopted a baby.”

She’s not entirely sure what she expected from her gruff summons to the Mountaintop office, but Nathaniel with a small child balanced on his hip definitely wasn’t remotely in the zip code of it.

He shoots her a withering look in response. “This isn’t my baby,” he says. “This is your baby, so I’m going to need you to take her.”

Rebecca takes a pointed step backward when he moves towards her, angling his cargo away from his body and very clearly telegraphing his intentions to pass it over.

“Whoa, nuh-uh,” she says, holding up her hands to reject the transfer. “That is not my baby and you know it.”

“You helped make it,” he accuses.

“Hey, Heather carried it around in her Easy-Bake for nine months. If you’re going to play that particular card, you can call her.”

His expression shifts so quickly from pleading to miserable that she has to swallow back a laugh. Apparently resigning himself to his fate, he readjusts his awkward hold and checks his watch with an irritated flick of his wrist.

Rebecca finally steps out of the doorway, crossing the threshold into the office proper. It feels strange, being back here, and the hour and the lighting isn’t making it any easier. She surveys the room—there’s a portable cot half-kicked under Nathaniel’s desk, his phone still face up on the glass where he’d barked at her on speaker. Nothing that provides any real insight into what exactly is going on.

“So how did you get stuck with my strictly-biological offspring, anyway?”

Nathaniel’s body is making intermittent jerking motions that Rebecca isn’t entirely convinced he’s conscious of; when she realises it’s his absent attempt at rocking Hebby, she has to bite back her grin.

“I’m not entirely sure. Darryl rushed out of here—something about his other daughter and an unfortunate incident on the monkey bars—and since I’m the only person around here capable of putting in a little overtime without coercion—”

“The only one without a life,” Rebecca corrects. “Carry on.”

“—somehow, being the last person left in the office was all the babysitting qualifications required.”

“Well, I’m not sure what you need me for. It seems like you’re doing perfectly fine on your own.”

Nathaniel blinks. “You don’t understand. It won’t stop crying.”

“What are you talking about? She hasn’t made a peep the entire time I’ve been here.”

“Because I picked her up,” he says, like it’s an obvious issue. “As soon as I put her back in her little carrier thing, it’ll be back to uncontrollable wailing. She’s a baby—what does she even have to wail about? She’s too young to have problems.” He gestures at his chest with his free hand. “I have problems. They just got rid of the ChargePoint on Azusa. I’m the one that should be uncontrollably wailing.”

“I mean, have you tried again? She seems pretty settled to me.”

In lieu of a response, Nathaniel switches his hold on Hebby to a two-handed, under-arm grip. True to his word, the second she leaves the comfort of the crook of his arm she starts to fuss. By the time he’s depositing her in the tiny bassinet it’s progressed to what Rebecca has to concede is indeed a full-blown wail.

“You know, I spent a lot of time in this office,” Rebecca crouches in front of the carrier to whisper conspiratorially, “and I gotta say. I can relate.”

When she glances back up Nathaniel’s looking at her with something too much like eight months of memories in his eyes and she clears her throat, suddenly oddly grateful to have a baby as a buffer between them to fend them off.

“I’ll, uh… I’ll just…”

She dips to scoop up the wriggling, wauling mass of tear-streaked pink skin, fitting her to her shoulder in a way that feels slightly less unnatural than it did the last time, one hand wrapping around the back of the tiny, curly head on some kind of hesitant autopilot. Hebby gives the illusion of settling for approximately a millisecond before she’s squirming, her cries ascending in pitch until they’re bordering on a scream, arms extended to make uncoordinated grabby hands in Nathaniel’s general direction. More amused than perturbed, Rebecca holds her out towards him.

His smug look fades, and he only resists a moment before reluctantly taking back his charge.

It’s almost comical, the way Hebby claws her way up Nathaniel’s chest, clutching at the fabric of his clothes with frustrated, clenching fingers, as if she’s mad at him for setting her down to begin with, and she wants him to know it. But then she wipes her snotty face on the breast of his jacket and falls quiet, her plump rosy cheek pressed firm against his shoulder.

When she’s not busy being the one terrified at the prospect of caring for an infant, Rebecca supposes she can admit on some objective level that parenthood isn’t as entirely off-putting as she’d like to pretend. Or perhaps objectivity isn’t exactly something she can claim right now, given the treacherous flutter of endearment she’s currently experiencing in the face of another one of her former lovers looking distractingly paternal with a tiny human cradled in their arms.

Between the exhaustion, her ovaries and her overly complicated daddy issues, it’s like she barely stood a chance.

“Wow. The whole Mr Mom look kind of suits you.”

Nathaniel rolls his head away from her, dismissive and embarrassed. “I’m not… Kids aren’t my thing,” he says, clearing his throat.

“Well, neither. But Hebby here says you’re a liar.”

Figures, she thinks, remembering the way Greg had so similarly easily mollified her. Not everything is about the guys, girl, she feels like she’s going to need to caution, just as soon as the kid’s language skills are underway.

“She likes you,” is what she ends up saying aloud, softly, begrudgingly charmed by the chubby hand weakly fisting in Nathaniel’s burgundy tie.

“Well, she definitely didn’t get that from you,” he says, tone vaguely self-deprecating. He must catch something she wasn’t quick enough to conceal in her face because he immediately opens his mouth to backtrack. “I was just—”

“It’s fine,” she interrupts. Her teeth sink into her lower lip. “Actually, while I’m here, I kind of owe you an apology.”

His eyebrows crease up his forehead. “For what?”

It’s the first time they’ve properly seen each other since her recent spectacular nosedive, outside of tight smiles and lingering looks in the lobby. Now that they’re in an enclosed space together the metaphorical elephant in the room seems to be looming twice as high.

“For the other night. Thank you, for sending me home,” she says, with all the unnerving sincerity she can summon.

Nathaniel looks stricken, sucking in a steadying breath. “Oh. You don’t have to—”

“No, listen. My acting out could have played out so much worse if it weren’t for you and Josh, and I know it’s a low bar to set for basic human decency, but I also know what spiralling Rebecca can be like, and it’s not pretty—she’s kind of a manipulative bitch. You were trying to move on and me turning up on your doorstep was so far outside the realm of okay, Nathaniel—I am so sorry. Honestly.”

“Oh,” he says. “Okay. I appreciate it. Did you…” He trails off, wetting his lips, changing tracks mid-sentence from what she can sense he really wants to ask. “Did you get a good night’s sleep, at least?”

She thinks of the bench outside the outpatient centre, the crick in her back and the stiffness deep in her bones when she woke to Dr Shin shimmering in front of her like some kind of mirage. A lifesaver, coming to buoy her back to shore. “Yes,” she says, consoling herself with the sliver of truth behind the lie. “You saw how much I’d had to drink. Slept like a baby.”

Her gaze slides over the sleepy droop of Hebby’s own eyelids, and she can’t help but think of how much she doesn’t want any of this mess for her.

“Do you ever get sick of apologies?” she wonders out loud. “I kind of keep waiting for everyone to get tired of my broken record. I know I do.”

“I’ve never been big on them until recently,” Nathaniel says, offering her a small smile. “The novelty hasn’t worn off for me yet.”

He moves to lean against the edge of his desk, snapping ramrod straight again when Hebby immediately grizzles her protest. The minute he’s properly upright she makes a contented snuffling sound and he hitches her a bit further up on his chest, hesitating. “Can I just…”

“What?”

“I know you were hurting,” he says, swallowing hard, “when you came to my apartment. I know it wasn’t about me, or even Greg, really. I know that, I do. But I—”

“You want to know if I meant any of what I said,” she finishes for him.

She’s gotten stuck on that a few times, too. She isn’t sure she has a satisfying explanation for either of them.

“I was not in a good place. I felt rejected, and when I feel that way I lash out. And I go looking for that attention elsewhere. So I went to you, because I thought, ‘here’s a sucker that’s chosen me, every single time I’ve given him half the chance’.”

He exhales hard at that. “Ouch.”

“Yeah. Like I said—she’s a bitch. But as for what you’re wondering—the answer’s messy.” She tilts her head at him, giving him a sad smile. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think about you.”

His palm is rubbing back and forth across Hebby’s baby blue romper in broad, firm strokes, and if he wasn’t otherwise occupied she imagines he’d be subjecting the back of his neck to the same motion. They’ve spent enough time in the company of each other’s bodies to know their tics and tells.

“I’m starting to realise that life is made up of loose threads, and maybe I need to accept that I can’t untangle all of them. I just gotta let some of them dangle, and kind of catch on things until they fall out.”

He lets out a wry chuckle. “The knots on this one run pretty deep, huh?”

“I’ve got a couple of those,” she admits. “And the stab wounds to show for trying to stitch them back together. Sometimes I feel like I quit because it’s hard, but it’s only because I’m scared of it becoming a different kind of hard, you know?”

She needs to focus on something that isn’t Nathaniel’s imploring face, so she turns her attention to lightly stroking the back of Hebby’s squishy fist, unable to stifle the coo that comes out of her mouth unbidden when five tiny fingers wrap themselves around her pinky on unconscious reflex. The only thing she failed to consider was how much closer she’s brought herself to Nathaniel in the process.

“Hey, look at that—out like a light. You’ve got the magic touch.” She carefully extracts her finger and steps away, crossing her arms and regarding the now-fast asleep Hebecca with amusement. “I think,” she begins, grinning because she knows exactly how much he’s going to hate it, “that maybe, you remind her of Darryl.”

She doesn’t bother to tell him that she only meant it height-wise—the excessively put-upon sigh he makes a show of heaving in her direction is everything she’d hoped for and more.

*

Rebecca jolts awake to a stimulus she can’t remember, but she thinks it might have been someone calling her name.

She hadn’t meant to doze off, but politely turning away when Nathaniel had started humming self-consciously into the crown of a hiccuping Hebecca’s head had led to stretching out across his leather couch, and stretching out had led to closing her eyes for just a moment, and… well. At least one of them had been lulled into placation by his lullaby.

“No naps,” she mumbles with insistence. “I’m not napping.”

She pulls herself into some approximation of upright against the arm of the couch, and it’s only the motion of it slipping down that draws her attention to Nathaniel’s suit jacket and the way he’s draped it over her shoulders while she was sleeping. Wrapping her fingers around the dark blue wool of the lapel, she tugs it back into position, resisting the heady impulse to inhale.

Its owner is perched on the edge of the desk in front of her, exposed shirtsleeves haphazardly rolled up to his elbows, his face radiating a flattering fusion of exhaustion and warmth, and she has to actively tamp down on the burst of fondness that sets itself free in her chest at the sight of him.

“Hey,” she says, still groggy. “Where’s Hebby?”

“Darryl just left. He said to tell you thank you.”

“Who, me? I barely did anything. Except fall asleep, apparently.” She looks up at him, sheepish. “I’ve started some new medication, and… yeah. Inconvenient side effects.”

“Ah.” He smiles. “Well, I appreciated the moral support. Even if it was entirely lacking. Pleasant dreams?”

“Beat a park bench, that’s for sure.”

Ignoring his funny look and dragging herself to her feet with extreme reluctance, she holds his jacket in front of her like some kind of shield that will help her keep her messy feelings in check. “I guess I should, um…” She gestures towards the door.

“I think about you too,” he blurts out, then runs a hand over his face. “Not… I mean, I do, but that’s not what I’m trying to say. There’s a voice in my head, now, telling me to be better. And it kind of sounds like you.”

A giddy sense of pride effervesces in her bloodstream at that—for all their dysfunction, it’s encouraging to know there was some kind of positive takeaway.

“I’m honoured. Really. And it may not seem like it right now,” she says, nose wrinkling as she gifts him a tiny smile, “but the best part is when the voice doesn’t sound like anyone anymore. It just becomes… you.”

It’s too quiet, too intimate; the lamplight too invitingly low, and she needs to leave before she starts to unspool. She steps closer to him as if she’s moving through liquid, sure to come just short of invading his personal space, and when she presses the jacket back into his hands, she’s careful to not quite let their fingers brush.

“Goodnight, Nathaniel,” she says gently.

She stops herself from letting her gaze linger over her shoulder at him as she leaves.

mini fic prompt meme.