on the safe side, part 3

January 15, 2084 - Hayden Phoenix is 34, Piper Wilson is 29, Ryanne is 13.

Soundtrack: "Because of You," by Kelly Clarkson.

Hayden has been through this two times before; there won't be anything there to see for a few months still. But Piper swears there's a bulge, a small one, a bloating. He only smiles and lets her believe it, lets her stand there in front of the mirror, holding her belly, their little bean. Her boobs are bigger already, she says, she's never had big boobs in her life.

She'll hardly even be showing by the time they're married this spring. Piper has plenty of nieces and nephews, and he knows she knows this too, but still she stands there every morning, cradling her still flat belly, as if she might see it start to grow before her eyes.

The first time he'd been through this, he was fifteen years old. There was little magic about that pregnancy. It was mostly panic, indecision, and the transforming end of two childhoods before they were ready for it. This time feels like a fresh start. Mostly.

"Do you want to be there when I tell Ryanne?"

"No," Piper says quickly, masking the fret in her face with a smile. Lines begin to form around her eyes at just the mention of his daughter. Of course they expected there might be friction. Of course they weren't so naive to think Piper might come into a family with two teenage girls with no problems at all. Or maybe they had been that naive, because they did hope. "No," Piper says again. "She hates me."

"She doesn't hate you," Hayden says, though he isn't sure what to call it. It's something. He knows Piper isn't making that up. He's seen the way Ryanne looks at her, at them both, with her eyes like daggers sometimes. "It's not hate," he says.

It's early still for a weekend morning, and Ryanne hasn't come out of her room for the day yet. Hayden and Piper have already spent their morning making quick, quiet love under their bedsheets, having breakfast and coffee, and then showers. They saved Ryanne some pancakes. Inside her room, the music is loud, but not loud enough that he'd make a fuss over it. Some battles are just not worth fighting.

"Trespassers will be PROSECUTED!," her door reads. In the fine print, it insists, "By Federal Law." It's just a thin aluminum sign she stole from somewhere, but for an instant he imagines her taking him to court for entering, with a lawyer pleading her case. Possible jail time. He turns for the extra bedroom across the hall instead.

The empty, unfinished spare bedroom is slightly smaller than Ryanne's room. When he steps inside, he is vaguely aware that he's circumventing the conversation he knows he needs to have. It's a happy one - Ryanne's going to be a big sister. Shouldn't she love that? For as much as she loves her own big sister, now she'll have the chance to be one herself.

Yet Hayden knows it won't go over so smoothly as that. He isn't that naive.

So he'll start the carpeting job instead. For now. There's really no time limit on this conversation. It could happen today. It could happen next week. It has to happen eventually; that's all he knows.

They're doing the nursery in yellow for now - they'll add pink or blue accents later, when they know if they're having a boy or a girl. There are boxes of baby things still in the closet, things he kept from Summer and Ryanne. It will be easier if they have another girl - with all the pink dresses and purple knitted hats - though beyond what makes sense, part of him is actually hoping for a boy.

Over his staple gun, he doesn't hear Ryanne's music stop, or hear her bedroom door open. He just turns once to find her standing there, and he isn't sure how long it's been. He can also see across the hallway into her bedroom, which he hasn't seen for weeks. It's cleaner than he thought it would be.

"I don't have carpet in my room," she says.

"Do you want carpet? You can have carpet if you want, what color do you like?"

"No," she says, shaking her head. "I don't want carpet. Why do you want carpet in here?"

There, an opening. Now could be the time. He looks at her, puzzled and unsure of how to proceed. He just doesn't know how to say it. "Just thinking about the future, I guess."

"The rooms were fine at the old place," Ryanne says. "It was fine, it was next to Grandpa and Grandma. They have a pool. We don't have room for a pool here."

"But the house is bigger," he says. "That's the thing, the old house, the condo - there wouldn't be enough room."

"But Summer went to college" she says. "There was plenty of room."

He stands, wavering on his feet. He feels like such a kid sometimes, not like a man. Like a brother rather than a dad, a guardian, a babysitter. Rhianna always had a better handle of this than he did.

"Piper and I are getting married," he says.

"Duh," she says.

"And well, how would you feel about getting a little brother or sister?"

For a split second, her eyes go wide with panic, before morphing into a grimace. "Eeew," she says.

This must be what Piper feels with her, these little daggers. They do hurt.

"Well, I mean, whatever," Ryanne adds.

She moves quickly from the room and closes herself inside her bedroom again. The music starts - hard, screeching, wailing music. It makes him think she's crying in there.

He sits down, not carpeting, not even trying to. Piper keeps asking him to dig out those boxes of old baby things - she wants to rewash the clothes and sort through everything, to see what's still usable, what they have to start with before her sisters spoil her with new baby things. But he hasn't done it. He doesn't want to. Somehow, it all makes him feel sad. It reminds him of when Summer and Ryanne were little, just tiny little babies. Even if it doesn't always seem like it, even if he wasn't well equipped for the job, they were his baby girls once, his responsibility. And how many ways has he failed them?

He comes back downstairs. Piper is dressed and ready to start their weekend. "Did you talk to her? How did it go?"

Hayden sighs. "It didn't."

*******

notes: the one in which we'll pretend the fabric rolls on the floor are actually rolls of carpet, lol!

Thank you all for your patience in these past few (several?) months. It feels good to be working on this story again! :)

ETA: oh! Forgot to mention Piper's due date is September 16th (and we have a TON of babies due in September of 2084!). According to the preggy calculator, she and Hayden conceived on Christmas day, lol!