Current mood:	creative
Current music:	Family Force 5 - Earthquake

Fic: Extenuating Circumstances [16/17]
Title: Extenuating Circumstances
Author: madd4the24
Rating: R
Pairing: Brendon/Ryan (with Jon/Spencer and many others)
Summary: The main difference between Ryan getting pregnant and Spencer
getting pregnant was that Spencer had Jon, and Ryan had Brent.
Disclaimer: *shakes her head* no.
Warnings:Mpreg If you don't dig that, this REALLY isn't the fic
for you.
Beta: willowrootfaery
Author Notes: This was originally written continuously, and not broken
into parts until I realized lj had restrictions, so if the individual chapters
feel a little chunky, it's because I'm being forced to create chapters where
there were none before.
Wordcount: 111,200 (meaning 17 parts as it stands now)



Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen






When it all came back to Ryan the first thing he registered was a dull but throbbing ach in his abdomen. It wasn’t pain per say, but it was a sore ache that reminded suddenly that a baby had exited there once. So he struggled to pry his eyes open. It was a slow process, and he didn’t make any real leeway until he heard Brendon’s voice. He was singing, Ryan realized, in nothing but a whisper, but in way Ryan had never heard before.

When he managed to open his eyes the first thing he saw was the whitewashed walls of the hospital room he was in, but when they slid slightly to the right he could make out Brendon’s form in the soft, artificial light of the room, telling him how late it was outside.

Brendon was seated in a chair nearby the bed looking tired, with a day’s growth on his chin and his head bent so his bangs that were just beginning to grow out were partially obscuring his forehead and eyes. But more than anything else Ryan noticed the securely wrapped bumbled in his left arm. Their son.

“Bren?” he croaked out, his voice feeling weird and not his own.

“Ryan?” Brendon called softly. His head rose and there was a brightness to his face that made Ryan perk up a little. “Hey. You did great. Want to check Jamie out?”

Brendon rose carefully to his feet and Ryan could see the baby was actually being held in a type of sling that was allowing Brendon to cradle the baby against his body. “Check it out,” Brendon said when Ryan noticed. “Jon rigged it up for me, because my right arm is shot to hell and my left isn’t strong enough to hold the tyke.”

“Language,” Ryan balked out and Brendon rolled his eyes happily, leveling the baby up for Ryan to see.

“I think he’s really kind of perfect.”

“Oh,” Ryan gasped out when he gleamed his first glance at the sleeping baby.

Brendon had been right. Jamie was incredibly fair skinned, with beautiful features and wispy light brown hair. And thought he’d been born at a slightly above average weight, there was a sense of delicacy that went beyond infancy. It seemed to Ryan that Jamie was going to be more like him than Brent. He couldn’t wait until the baby woke and Jamie’s eye color settled to see if they’d come out more hazel or a darker brown.

Brendon leaned down and pressed his lips to Ryan’s forehead. “You did good. Really good.”

“Can I hold him?” Ryan asked. He felt a little shaky, but he was sure he could manage his son.

Brendon maneuvered the baby as best he could, taking longer than Ryan would have liked, but the payoff was worth the wait when he had Jamie resting in the crook of his arm, and he was able to reach out with long, shaking fingers and brush against skin so fine he was almost afraid to continue contact.

“We did good,” Ryan corrected.

“We did good,” Brendon agreed.

A nurse retrieved Jamie for a feeding a short ten minutes later and afterwards Brendon said, “You up for a little company? Everyone is here to see you.”

“Visiting hours?” Ryan asked, letting Brendon help him sit up higher in the bed.

Brendon scoffed. “I am a master of charm. The night nurse is going to look the other way for twenty minutes, maybe a half hour.”

Within another minute Ryan found himself surrounded by Spencer, Jon, Pete and Patrick.

“Feeling okay?” Spencer asked.

Ryan nodded, making room for Brendon so he could scoot up on the bed and lay next to him, careful of the IV line. “Sore, but okay.”

“We saw him already,” Pete hurried to say, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “JP is one pretty baby.”

“JP?” Jon asked, eyebrows raised.

Ryan palmed a hand over his face as Pete gleefully explained, “Ryan didn’t tell you? He and Brendon have so graciously decided to name the baby Jamie Peter.”

“Who are you,” Spencer demanded, “and what have you done with Ryan?”

“It‘s really not that bad,” Brendon said, and Patrick, albeit reluctantly, seconded the notion.

“He really is pretty, though,” Pete said. “Looks just like you, Ross.”

“Much cuter than my kids,” Jon admitted, a hand behind his head. Spencer shot him a dirty look and Jon shrugged. “Admit it,” he pressed, “they were pretty ugly for a while. A week, at least. Ryan’s is cute off the bat.”

Spencer crossed his arms. “He won’t be cute when he’s screaming and shitting everywhere.”

Pete shrugged. “You never know, man.”

“Hey!” Marshall called, coming through the doorway. He had his coat thrown over his arm but when he moved it Ryan was able to see a large cup of coffee. “For you,” he presented it. “This is the biggest size they had, and it’s chalk full of caffeine goodness.”

“You are a god among men, Alex,” Ryan said, snapping the cup and drinking it down as fast as he could just incase a nurse happened to pass by.

“Don’t let him take credit for it.”

Ryan’s face lit in surprise. “Mikey?”

“Yeah,” he called stepping into the room. “You think I wouldn’t come for the birth of your kid? It was my idea to get the coffee. I’m an expert at getting coffee these days.”

Ryan hadn’t even known he was still in Las Vegas. Pete hadn’t mentioned him much lately, and if the way Pete tensed and Patrick looked hard at him meant anything, they still hadn’t fully worked out the tension in their relationship. Ryan had sort of assumed Mikey had gone back east with his brother, but apparently not.

“I haven’t seen you around lately,” Ryan said when Mikey leaned down for a gentle hug.

Mikey thrust his hands in his tight jeans and shrugged. “I got a job interning at an indie label. I think I found what I want to do.” He’d gotten rid of his glasses and swapped them out for what looked like contacts or lasik, and for some reason that Ryan couldn’t place, he looked older, maybe more defined and mature. The look suited him.

“And,” Mikey continued, “Marshall and I ran into a few people in the hallway lurking.”

“Safe to come in?” William asked, head peaking around the corner. “No babies or liquids or anything nasty?”

“It’s safe,” Brendon called out, a laugh in his voice.

“You’re supposed to be watching the store,” Pete pointed out.

William strolled completely into the room, a large stuffed animal tucked under one arm. Gabe and Travis hung back in the doorway and Ryan wondered briefly if they went everywhere with William.

“It’s fine,” William said, “Pat’s there.”

“Pat?” Pete asked, an edge to his words. “You left Pat all alone in the store? On a Friday night?”

“He said he had a couple friends who were willing to help out for a couple sodas and a few bags of chips. I’ll pay, don’t worry.”

Patrick groaned loudly as Pete said, “I know Pat’s friends. That John O is a bad influence. If, and I mean if, my store is still standing when we get back, we’re going to have a long talk about what the hell I was thinking when I said I was willing to leave the store in your hands.” He grabbed William by the wrist and headed towards the door with a wave to Ryan.

“Don’t worry about the last minute touches to the nursery,” Patrick said, gathering up his and Pete’s stuff, “We’ll have it ready for when you bring Jamie home.”

“Saporta, right?” Pete questioned Gabe, his grip loosening on William’s hand as he took in the tall figures in front of him. “You have … great hips. Say, are you employed right now?”

Patrick scuffed Pete over the back of the head as he passed by.

Marshall excused himself another five minutes later, sighting an early morning commitment and Mikey followed suit, Marshall being his ride. Then Spencer said, “You look tired. We should let you get some sleep. I’ll be back tomorrow morning okay?” He leaned down and kissed Ryan in a familiar way.

Brendon tugged at his collar. “That was kind of hot.” Jon nodded silently.

“Quiet you,” Ryan said, then slid a little down in the bed. He was feeling tired.

“Tomorrow,” Spencer promised. Jon gave him a quick hug and after that Ryan and Brendon were alone.

“Feel like a dad yet?” Ryan asked.

“Yeah,” Brendon said, burrowing into his side.

“How does it feel?”

“Scary.” Brendon’s fingers slid through Ryan’s. “And wonderful and numbing and did I mention scary? Really fucking scary.”

“But good?”

Brendon kissed him softly. “You tell me.”

“I think,” Ryan said, “we’re going to be really good parents.”

“We’re going to be the best.”

Ryan sighed and pulled his blanket higher. Later he and Brendon would talk about the conversation he’d had with Brendon’s mother, and about the things they still needed for the baby, and everything else that had been left hanging. All he wanted now was to spend as much time with Brendon alone as possible, before they had Jamie in their lives full time and nothing was the same ever again.

On Saturday Brendon and Ryan spent the day getting used to the idea of being parents. While Ryan rested in the bed, trying to recover enough to go home the following day, he and Brendon spent as much time with Jamie as the hospital would allow, learning feeding techniques, changing the first few diapers and bonding. Although Ryan had resolved to talk to Brendon about his mother, the subject never came up, and he was easily distracted by the squirming mass of newborn in his arms.

Spencer came by in the morning, and Patrick in the afternoon. Patrick looked tired and explained he’d spent the precious night and current day dealing with the ramifications of William leaving Pat and his friends alone in the store. “Chaos,” he mumbled, “from these guys Garret and Kennedy deciding to go bowling with paper towels and lettuce heads, to Pat’s friend Jared helping Pat gorge him on almost the entire fruit isle.” Patrick shuddered visible. “And then there’s this John O character.”

Mikey dropped by after that, just before Patrick left, but they were cordial to each other and Ryan didn’t sense a tremendous amount of bad blood between them. But Ryan was sure that was a reflection of the kind of people Mikey and Patrick were.

However by the end of the day Ryan was feeling nauseas. Brendon stepped out to grab a bite to eat around seven and when he returned Ryan was running a fever. An hour after that he was vomiting up all that he’d managed to get down that day. The doctor that visited him deduced it as inflammation of the surgical wound with a chance for infection, prescribed him a round of antibiotics and medications, and told him to wait the unease out.

Ryan spent Sunday curled up on the hospital bed. Brendon was there, rubbing his back, keeping him company, but Ryan hardly registered him. He didn’t see the baby that day.

Monday, however, was a whole different story. By Monday all of his symptoms had cleared up, he was feeling much better, and Jamie was more than ready to be released from the hospital. “Can I take my baby home?” Ryan asked the doctor. His stomach still hurt, it was tense and sore and the skin was tight, but he felt like he could rest at home as much as he could at the hospital. Plus, the hospital bills were only continuing to add up.

Brendon held Ryan’s hand as the doctor slowly shook his head. “We would have released you if you hadn’t had that scare yesterday. I want to keep you for at least another twenty-four hours, just in case.”

“But Jamie,” Ryan protested.

“It’s okay,” Brendon soothed, “he can stay here with you for another day. It’s no big deal. He’s busy wrapping all of the nurses around his finger anyway.”

“No,” Ryan said somberly. “He needs to … I want him to start getting used to the house as soon as possible. I want … Brendon, I want you to take him home today.”

“You sure?” Brendon asked seriously. “You had your heart set on walking through the front door with him and being the one to put him down for his first nap in the nursery.”

“I’m sure.” Ryan did his best to smile.

Parting with Jamie was difficult, but Ryan honestly thought it best. He wanted his baby out of the hospital as soon as possible and sleeping in what would be his home. He wanted Jamie to get used to the pale yellow wall paper that Pete and Brendon had put up, and the musical instrument mobile that Patrick had picked out. He wanted Jamie to hear the white noise generator that Spencer had insisted had helped with soothing the twins, and he needed to know that Jamie was okay with the baby friendly air fresheners that Jon had picked up on a shopping trip a week ago. More than anything, he just wanted to know that people he loved and trusted were going to be there, watching over Jamie, ready to hold him at a moment’s notice, and give him all the attention he needed or wanted, and handle him with individual care, and not just the kind of generic attention he’d receive as any other one of the babies in the nursery.

It was better that Jamie went home with Brendon.

“He did just fine,” Brendon reported the follow morning when he visited Ryan early. He delivered into Ryan’s arms a fresh set of clothing and helped him dress quickly, the discharge papers having already been signed. “Didn’t sleep a wink, really, except when he he’d cried himself out, but still.”

“He cried a lot?” Ryan asked sharply as Brendon tied his shoes. “But Jamie was such a quiet baby.”

Brendon shrugged. “Maybe he missed you. Maybe he’s colicky. All I know is he seemed generally agitated. I called Spencer, he said babies are just like that when they’re brand new. Spencer says they miss being all nice and warm and in a safe, familiar place. I think in a few days time he’ll get used to his room.”

Ryan gave a sharp nod and slid off the bed and into Brendon’s embrace. “Are you scared for today?” Ryan asked him quietly, his breath ghosting across Brendon’s cheek.

“Fine, fine,” Brendon insisted. “The surgery, it’s actually pretty noninvasive from what I know. They’re just going to put me under, open my shoulder up, jab some pins in there and put me back in a sling. If everything goes good they’ll release me tomorrow morning. Nothing like having a baby.”

“Good.” Ryan let out a breath.

“Everything will be fine,” Brendon insisted. “Especially if you’re going to be there when I wake up, and I know I’ll get to come home to you and Jamie.”

“And Pete and Patrick,” Ryan pointed out, but there was a grateful tone to his voice. More hands helping with a brand new baby, even for a few days, especially with Brendon about to be laid up in bed for a little bit, was a great advantage. Ryan had seen Spencer with the twins, and he’s seen Jon with them, and they worked best together, and not just because there were two babies who needed attention. Ryan was convinced when it came to babies, teams were the way to go.

“We have to throw them a going away party,” Brendon pointed out.

“I know.” Ryan looked down at the watch Brendon handed him and asked, “What time do you have to be checked in?”

“Nine.” Brendon looped an arm around Ryan’s waist, surprised to feel it fit comfortable. He’d almost forgotten about Ryan’s slim figure. And though there was still plenty of baby weight to be dropped with exercise and good eating, he’d downsized considerably after having Jamie. However he said none of this to Ryan, who had noticed that Brendon had brought him stretch pants as opposed to jeans. “Walk me over there?”

Ryan rolled his eyes. “Of course.”

They were standing in the hospital, Ryan’s hospital bag swinging between them when Brendon said, “I talked to Doctor Hale the other day.”

“What?”

“She came to check in on you, but you were kind of out of it at the time.”

“Where was she?” Ryan asked.

Brendon leaned back against the wall of the elevator, watching the numbers click by. “One of her other patients went into labor early,” he said, and there was something about his tone that Ryan take notice. “There were complications, and Doctor Hale … I talked to her, you know, and she told me, when tragedies happen there’s always an investigation, just, you know, to be sure. She wanted to be here, Ryan.”

“Oh.” Ryan’s head fell back. “Oh.”

“Come on.” Brendon tugged at Ryan’s arm when the elevator door opened.

They had a quick bite to eat in the cafeteria, Ryan moving slowly and Brendon assisting him. “I saw my phone at the house,” Brendon remarked lowly around a bite of cinnamon roll. “Or what’s left of it.”

Ryan nodded, more picking at his bagel than eating it. “About that …”

“I’m not angry,” Brendon hurried to say, “even though you know I totally loved that phone. I’m willing to forgive you for it, because I got something better in return.”

Ryan slumped forward and pushed his chin into his palm. “I got a call from your mom the day I delivered Jamie,” he said bluntly, startling Brendon. “And I think the argument I got into with her is why I went into labor early. I was … really mad.”

“What did you talk about?”

Ryan wondered about the expression on Brendon’s face. There was no denying an underlying curiosity, one that told Ryan no matter how much Brendon tried to distance himself from his family, they were still his family. But there was also something else there, something that Ryan couldn’t quite pick out, but it made him uneasy.

“She said …” Ryan paused. Suddenly the look made sense. He understood all too well the way Brendon’s face lit up a little when Ryan mentioned is mother. Maybe it had taken Ryan so long to recognize it because he’d grown up without his own mother, but it was clear as day now. And he couldn’t destroy Brendon, not by telling him that his mother had called to tell him that his father had been the one to land him in the hospital. Ryan had to protect him.

“Ryan?”

“She wanted to know how you were doing.”

“Really?” Brendon leaned a little closer. “Like--”

“She wanted to know about Jamie, and about you and about … she wanted to know if she could come see you today.”

“And you said no?” Brendon asked blankly.

“Hate me?”

Brendon kissed him softly on his cheek. “No. Your call.”

But Ryan could see the want. The need.

“You can go home,” Brendon told Ryan after he’d signed paperwork, been assigned a room and changed into a hospital gown. “You have to be dying to spend some time with Jamie. And I bet Pete and Patrick are going crazy dealing with the crying. I’m not kidding, I think the kid misses the sound of your voice.”

“Once I know you’ll be fine,” Ryan said, “then I’ll go home. After the surgery.”

“But you’ll be here when I wake up?” To Ryan, he sounded every bit the eighteen year old about to go into the hospital for surgery that he was.

Ryan squeezed his hand as an answer.

When Brendon disappeared down the long hallway towards the surgical rooms an hour later, Ryan drifted around the waiting room. He made a quick call home to Patrick who assured him that while Jamie was being a little difficult, nothing was wrong. Then afterwards he settled into a seat, absently flipping through a Home and Garden magazine while watching the TV broadcasting the muted but captioned news.

Brendon was forty-five minutes into his surgery, about halfway done, when Ryan’s eyes caught sight of a lurking figure. He recognized her a second later. Brendon’s mother.

“I told you not to come around,” he told her firmly but quietly when she drifted close enough.

She looked tired as she said, “He’s my son.”

“He wasn’t your son when you told him to get out of your house.”

“People make mistakes,” she said desperately. She sunk into a chair next to Ryan and observed dully, “You had the baby.”

“I had Jamie,” Ryan confirmed, lips pulled tight in an effort of self control. He felt the need to say, “And Brendon’s great with him. Brendon’s going to be a great father. He’s going to do for Jamie what you didn’t do for him--love him unconditionally.”

She leaned forward, forearms braced on her thighs. It made her look more than tired and worn, she looked defeated. She was such a beautiful woman, regal and elegant, but all Ryan could see were the frayed edges.

“It’s so hard,” she said, voice wavering as if she might cry, “to love your son, and then realize he’s not at all who you thought he was. It’s devastating to realize you don’t know who he is at all, and it’s because he couldn’t trust you to accept him as he truly is, and rightfully so. As a mother, it breaks my heart.”

Ryan wasn’t sure what to say in response, so he remained silent.

“I do love him,” she told Ryan. “I bore him. I raised him. I still love him.”

“Just not enough to stand up to your husband about Brendon’s preferences?”

“It’s not a matter of standing up for myself,” she said patiently. “When we spoke earlier I told you that you wouldn’t understand. I’m straddling a line you will never understand, between what I have been taught, the principals that I understand to be true in my heart, and loyalty to my son, and the promise I made when he was born to see to it that he smiles every day of his life.”

Ryan ran fingers over his eyes, rubbing softly. “Is it so hard to accept him? Is it so hard to understand that who he sleeps with does not define the person he is, the moral character he has, the sort of unbelievable kindness he in his soul? Brendon is … if we had more people like Brendon …” he trailed off, not sure how to articulate what he was trying to say. He finally settled on, “Brendon loves me. Brendon and I are going to be a family. Brendon’s going to be a husband and a father and a grandfather and the fact that he’s going to be gay at the same time, doesn’t mean a damned thing.”

“Ryan--”

“Can we just sit here?” Ryan asked shortly. “Can we just sit here and not talk? You pray for Brendon, and I’ll keep you company.”

“Okay,” she agreed after a slight hesitation, then her head bowed in what was likely a prayer and Ryan closed his own eyes. Brendon’s surgery lasted a half hour more and they said nothing to each other during that time.

Ryan got to see Brendon for a couple minutes afterwards, the younger male looking pleasantly knocked out and resting comfortably, swathed in bright white bandages. Ryan kissed his forehead, promised to come back later that night when the doctors assured him he’d be awake, and then took a taxi home.

“Where’s the baby?” he asked Pete when he stepped through the front door, setting his hospital bag down and shrugging off his coat wearily. The time was creeping into the late afternoon and Ryan was starting to feel a burn in his stomach.

Pete smiled knowingly. “Nursery. Patrick just got him down for a nap.” Pete’s smile fell away and he put his hand on his hips seriously. “A baby is a lot more work than I expected, Ross. I’m glad you’re here. You can do diaper duty now.”

Ryan passed Patrick on his way to the nursery and hesitated briefly outside the space that used to be storage for all of Pete’s old music memorabilia. Then he took a deep breath and stepped into the room, making his way directly to the crib. The white noise generator was playing softly, the sounds of waves lapping against a beach soothing to his ears. And above his head a ceiling fan spun lazily, kicking up a mixture of what smelled like febreeze and vanilla.

Then he leaned over the crib and his heart almost beat out of his chest.

He’d held Jamie in the time following his birth, and he’d reveled in the squished face and clumpy hair that he could already see twisting into the most beautiful baby in the world, but nothing had prepared him for the sight before him. No amount of imagining or wishing. Nothing. Because a few days out in the real world had done the baby a magnitude of good. He was still tiny and scrunched up, but everything else was different. He, laying on his stomach with a pale blue blanket pulled up to his waist, was more than anything Ryan could have ever dream up, with pale, perfect skin, thinly splayed dark brown hair and long, pale eyelashes. Ryan wasn’t sure if he looked like either Brent or himself, but this was better, he decided.

Then Jamie’s eyes blinked open, light brown in the natural light streaming in through the curtains, and Ryan reached down for him. “Hey,” he said softly, fingers running across Jamie’s back. “You’re supposed to be sleeping, mister.”

Jamie made a fussing sound and Ryan reached into the crib with his other hand, hoisting the baby up so carefully and cradling him against his chest. “No crying, okay? I have it on good authority that you spent all last night crying. You almost gave your daddy a heart attack, he thinks you’re colicky. So how about you back me up when I tell him you’re a good little baby.”

Jamie kicked gently, eyes searching the room, focused on anything but Ryan, yet he remained quiet for the most part, so Ryan counted it as a win.

“You are my messiah and I will pray to you from now on.”

Ryan frowned and turned to the doorway where Pete was standing, his eyes a little wide.

“Why?” He rocked Jamie a little.

“That baby has done nothing but cry,” Pete said with a shake of his head. “It took Patrick an hour to get him down for a nap. Then in you come and he’s all …” Pete gestured wildly.

Ryan smiled brightly and held Jamie a little more tightly. He didn’t have a clue how to handle a baby, and his parental role models had been shaky at best, but there was something so natural about holding his child in his arms, and Ryan was sure on some kind of level Jamie too felt the connection. So he told Pete, “I’m his father.” He was sure that was enough.

“How long ago did you feed him?” Ryan asked, cradling Jamie with his right arm and bringing his left hand up to smooth carefully through wispy hair and trail over too soft features and gentle contours.

“About an hour and a half ago. He should be good for a while. Brendon was feeding him about every four or five hours yesterday.”

Ryan hummed in response.

Patrick appeared next to Pete. “Brendon do okay?”

Ryan smiled genuinely. “Yeah. He’s going to be fine. I’m going to go see him later tonight at the hospital. He’s sleeping now.” Ryan added, “His mom came.”

“His mom?” Patrick asked.

“We didn’t … I didn’t …” Ryan paused, shushing Jamie when he made sounds of protest. “I don’t like her. I don’t forgive her.” He was trying to say that he understood that she needed to be there. He wasn’t sure why he understood, and he wished he didn’t, but he did. And he felt sorry for her, which was why he hadn’t fought her on staying. That and she’d seemed so desperate.

“Did Brendon know?”

Ryan shook his head. “She didn’t even go see him, either. She just stayed until she knew he was going to be okay and then she left. She didn’t say anything. I think she felt guilty. Not so much sorry as guilty.

Jamie had drifted off to sleep as Ryan explained and he carefully set the baby down in the crib, replacing the blanket that had fallen to the wayside. “She made me think of my own mother.”

Patrick gestured him down the hall and down to the kitchen where Pete was busy at the counter top fixing a sandwich. Patrick and Ryan muscled their way in a half second later and within ten minutes they were seated at the table with an open bag of chips in front of them and various types of drinks.

“I’m thinking of calling her,” Ryan said finally, sandwich in hand. “My mother, that is.”

“Your mother who’s dying?” Patrick asked carefully.

Ryan took a bite from his turkey sandwich and considered, “Maybe I’m in the wrong. She’s making an effort. She wants a last chance. I’m angry and I’m never going to forgive her, but maybe I need to think of someone other than myself. She’s dying. Maybe Jamie deserves to know her for as long as possible.”

Of course all Ryan could think was that if he let her back into his life, if he let her into Jamie’s life, she could do to them what she had done fifteen years ago. Or worse, she could be the mother he’d always dreamed of having, one like Spencer’s mother, and then he could loose her all over again. Either way, he was scared. But having a baby, becoming a parent, it put things in perspective. It made him wonder.

“You have her phone number?”

The thing was, Ryan did. He’d always meant to delete it. It was stored under an unknown name in his phone’s address book and he’d nearly deleted it a half dozen times, but he’d just never gotten around to it. “Yeah.” And said nothing more on the subject.

He went back to the hospital that night to visit Brendon, but found leaving Jamie was harder than he’d imagined. His son’s life consisted of sleeping, eating and going to the bathroom, but to Ryan it was all new and interesting and adorable and worthwhile. He wanted nothing more than to sit at home with Jamie in his arms, but he’d made a promise to Brendon and he wanted to be there for him.

Brendon’s mother wasn’t there when Ryan got there and Brendon gave no hint that he’d seen her, so Ryan kept his mouth shut and kept a drowsy Brendon company until he fell asleep for the night.

Ryan got to bring him home the next day. Spencer was waiting for them in the front lobby when Brendon signed his discharge papers, Ryan supporting him as Brendon was still unstable on his feet.

“Thanks,” Ryan told Spencer quietly after he’d gotten Brendon situated in the back of the SUV that Spencer and Jon had purchased almost directly after the twins had been born.

Spencer shrugged and smiled happily. He looked different to Ryan now, with a beard. He looked older--like a dad. “You know me,” he said with a laugh, “I like to build up those best friend points for something special.”

“And it’s going to cost me big, isn’t it?”

Spencer backed out of the parking lot with a knowing look on his face.

Neither Pete nor Patrick were home when Ryan and Spencer maneuvered Brendon through the front door and towards the bedroom.

“Enough already,” Brendon protested when Ryan fussed with the bedding. Brendon hissed uncomfortably as he jarred his shoulder shifting on the bed. “It’s fine. Now get me my baby. I missed him.”

Ryan scoffed but left only to return a few minutes later wit ha squirming baby. “How do you want him?” Ryan asked, gesturing to the hard sling Brendon’s right arm and shoulder were trapped in.

“This one is fine,” Brendon assured, left arm flopping around. “Come on, come on.”

“Calm down,” Ryan said, shifting Jamie very carefully into Brendon’s good arm. He settled against Brendon’s good side to help support the baby, all too aware of his son’s fragility.

Brendon let out a long sigh. “He’s really kind of perfect, isn’t he?” Jamie let out a loud shriek and Brendon winced. “Except for the fact that he hates me.”

Ryan laughed. “He doesn’t hate you. You just can’t hold him the way he likes. He likes two arms, really secure, and a warm chest to lean against. It also helps if you rub him down while holding him.”

“You’re a much better parent,” Brendon remarked morosely. “I never would have picked up on that.”

“Trial and error,” Ryan assured, fingers rubbing over the baby fine skin of Jamie’s hands. “Plus, screaming and crying are what babies do best.”

Jamie really started in then, screaming loudly, body twisting around a bit. His pale face started to take on a tint of red and Brendon looked over at Ryan, a little panicked.

“He’s already been fed, changed and played with. I’d say he just wants attention.”

Brendon gave a scarcely confident nod and leaned down, pressings his nose against Jamie. “I’m here, J,” he whispered, lips dropping light kisses on Jamie’s forehead. “your daddy is right here. You’re okay, buddy.”

Ryan’s head dropped onto Brendon’s good shoulder and he closed his eyes. Content. Happy. Perfect.