"You stink."
"I stink," Paul grumbled, only slightly, as he lifted his daughter into his arms. She'd rushed to him, the second that he came into the bedroom, leaving behind poor Steph who seemed rather miserable that day (being in the middle of her pregnancy, she went in and out of that state quite frequently) and younger sister who was napping beside said mother. "Maybe you stink."
"No."
"Yes." Paul kissed his oldest's head, regardless of the way it made her giggle far too loudly, given that they were in the midst of his other sleeping baby. She didn't stir though, Murphy didn't, though Steph did give him a slight glare.
Dropping Aurora, his oldest, back down on the bed, the three year old crawling right back to his typical spot, where she had a coloring book and crayons to keep her entertained, apparently not up for the nap that his other girls were, Paul headed over to his wife's side of the bed to give her a kiss as well.
"She's right," she chided, though only lightly, "you do stink."
"You women sure are somethin'," he grumbled, leaning over Steph to gently stroke the soft hair of his nearly two year old as well as pat Steph's ever growing belly twice. "Can't ever do nothin' to please you."
"Maybe if you tried showering some times-"
"I just got in. It's hot out. Sue me."
"Don't tempt me."
But they shared a smile as he headed over to the adjoining bathroom, calling over to his shoulder that he'd be back to join them after he'd cleaned himself since, apparently, he was dirty.
"Very," Steph said to which his oldest nodded.
Stupid girls.
He hurried though, in the shower, more than usual, just to get back to them. When he did, the baby was up and annoying the heck outta her sister, trying to eat her crayons, while Steph tried to reign them in, but seemed to still be rather tired herself.
Falling into his spot without even putting anything else on other than the boxers he'd left the bathroom in, Paul pulled Aurora to him immediately, his oldest not liking this, as she was upset about her damn crayons, but she just got a kiss to the head.
"You gotta share, Rora," he told her simply. "You-"
"No! She eats 'em!"
"She's not eating them right now, is she?" Paul frowned over at Murphy who was holding a red crayon in her tiny fist and staring at it thoughtfully. "Just wants to color too, is all. She- And now she is eating it." With a sigh, he let Aurora go before shifting so he could reach over and grab his baby. "Bad Murphy."
"Maybe coloring right now," Steph tried as Aurora snatched the crayon from her sister before going back to her book, "isn't the best-"
"I wanna," Rora complained, frowning over at her mother, just from the thought. "No! I wanna-"
"Just let her color, Steph." Paul had fallen onto his back, leaving his baby on his chest. She liked it up there. "I got this one now. She won't be botherin' nothin'."
Things settled for a bit then as Paul snuggled up his youngest, Aurora went back to coloring, and, though not for long, Steph was able to drift off again. Paul probably would have fallen asleep too, as he sat there, listening to Aurora hum softly while lazily stroking Murphy's head, which was pressed into his chest, had his wife's cell not rang.
She groaned too, somewhat playfully, but mostly from the fact that she honestly was dead tired, as she pushed out of bed to take the call in the other room. Paul figured it was important as she didn't come back for a good while.
Which sucked for her, but was good for him, as it gave him a chance to be alone with his girls for a bit.
"What did you do all day?" he asked through a slight yawn. Murphy was annoyed with him holding her and had taking to beating gently on his chest, but he refused to release her. "Rora?"
"Mmmm..." She thought good and long before glancing over at him with a grin. "Played."
"You played, huh?" When she nodded, he grinned back at her before saying, "You know what Daddy did?" That time, she shook her head, and he quickly informed her, "I got to see Grandpa Vince."
He mocked her too, as Aurora dropped her mouth, as if in shock. She loved her Grandpa Vince. Mainly because he completely and utterly spoiled his grandchildren, but also just because she thought that the man gave the best hugs.
"Really?"
Nodding himself then, Paul let Murphy go when she began to whine, though he only sat the girl on the bed before shifting onto his side. While snuggling her to him that way then, he told his oldest, "Mmmhmm. I had to go up to the office and do some stuff for him. You know Vince; can't get enough of me."
Aurora nodded because she felt much of the same. If she could spend every day with her father, then she would. He was the best. Of course Grandpa Vince, who was the best in his own right, would want to spend time with him too.
"What did Mommy feed you for lunch? Huh?" Paul went on. "Because I didn't have nothing good."
"Nothin'," Aurora repeated to which the man nodded. Murphy was pulling then, on one of his hands, trying to drag it up to her mouth so that she could chew on his fingers. Paul wasn't letting her though. "We eat-"
"Ate."
The nearly four year old nodded once more. "We ate peanut butter."
"Mmmm."
"And jelly!" She said that last word rather excitedly. It made Paul grin.
"Just peanut butter? And jelly? No bread?" He tsked. "Mommy ain't a good mommy, is she?"
That made Aurora giggle. "We ea- ate bread."
He grinned more truly that time, from hearing her correct herself. "Hey, Rora, tell Daddy how long until our birthdays, huh? They're in July and this month is… What?"
"Mmmm..." This took a lot more thinking. When she started frowning, Paul tried to help.
"It starts with an A. Come on, Rora. You know. Do we need to sing the song?"
Yes. And then sing it some more. And then some more when, after having the month, they had to figure out how many until the birthday month Paul shared with both his daughters, which involved counting and, man, for as great as he could be, Daddy sure could be boring some times.
They were in the middle of that when Steph came back. She had a drink in one hand as she went to sit on the edge of the bed on her side.
"Work?" Paul asked to which she only nodded her head. "Something you need me to go do for you?"
"No," she groaned, a bit, before taking a long sip from the diet soda can in her hand, just as quickly moving to set it on the nightstand along with her cell phone. "I just… It's nothing. And I'm sure you're tired of hearing about that sorta stuff, after spending the day with my dad."
"I was just telling Rora here," Paul said as Steph shifted back into the bed, resting against the headboard, "about how much Vince likes palling around with me."
"A whole bunch," she agreed, though the words were twinged with sarcasm. Not that Aurora knew what that was though.
"We were also talkin' about our birthday month."
"Oh yeah?"
Nodding, Paul let Murphy go so that she could crawl across the bed, right over Aurora's coloring book which got her a glare, and to her mother. She was reward with a kiss from Steph for her troubles.
"What about it?" the woman asked as she pulled her youngest up real close.
Part of Paul was dismayed to see that his baby reacted better to this than she had with him, but the other part remembered that Steph was still the chump that had to go through nine months of feeling like shit to pop out the little buggers; she deserved some small payoffs for that.
"Just how far away it is."
"Mmmm. Not very." One of her hands ran across her stomach then, slowly, as she said, "Hopefully this one will be born then too."
"Not on my birthday." Aurora said that quite defiantly. She liked to believe she was the only one that was born on that day and, therefore, owned it. "He can't."
"Maybe on Daddy's birthday then," Steph said thoughtfully, rubbing her stomach gently. The idea was rather romantic for her, in certain aspects. "That's when I thought you'd be-"
"He?" Paul grinned victoriously as he spoke over his wife, who only rolled her eyes. "See? I told you Aurora agreed with me. We need a boy this time. It's been decided. Two to one."
"Right, because that's how it works."
"You tellin' me it ain't?"
They actually had been having just that discussion that morning, though that had more to do, honestly, with the fact that they would be finding out in three days with complete certainty just what they were having. It went about how it always did, with Paul jokingly teasing Steph about how, when she had a boy (because she just had to, he'd said on more than one occasion, there was no way that they could be having another girl), that he and the boy would basically get a chance to rule at the house finally.
Which, of course, got him a flick in the head, like usual, and her telling him that even if they did have a boy (and he quickly reiterated that they certainly would be), he'd still be out numbered, two to three. But then he had to go, because Vince was on the phone and they never got to finish the conversation.
Until right then.
"Yeah, Paul," Stephanie said with a slight eye roll. "I am."
"Huh." He looked over at his oldest then. "You hear that, Rora? Steph says we don't get a vote. Is that fair?"
She was too busy coloring to care, but did offer up a, "No," to his cause.
"See, Steph? It just ain't fair. We want a boy." He lowered his tone then. "We demand a boy."
"You're hurting Murphy's feelings."
Not really. She was mostly annoyed that her mother was speaking with the man and not giving her that undivided attention that the toddler craved, but whatever.
"How?"
"You're acting like there's something wrong with having daughters."
"Am not." He rolled onto his back again, to stare up at the ceiling for a bit. This movement caused Aurora's coloring to be disturbed and got him a heavy glare, but considering she hardly was able to color in the lines regardless, it really didn't matter much. "I got my girls though. First. Right, Rora?"
"No!" That time, she said it quite forcefully and against him because, obviously, he'd ruined her coloring. And, holding up the page as if to show him his transgression, she said, "You ruin it!"
"I ruined it, but yeah, sorry." Paul turned his head to the side to stare at her. She had been coloring a cow, from the looks of it, and basically just colored everything in the picture (the barn, the grass, the animal itself) in purple squiggles with some red thrown in there. "Can you color Daddy a different one?"
"No!"
"Please? He'll be real still. And, if you do, Daddy'll keep it forever and ever."
She was suspicious though. "Promise?"
"Of course, baby. I promise. Won't move an inch."
But he did, as she flipped through the pages to find one that she thought was suitable for him, though it was only his head, just slightly, so that he could stare at Steph and share a grin with her. She even giggled a bit.
"Having a boy around here wouldn't be a bad thing anyways," Paul said after the moment of cuteness had passed and he and Steph got back to the topic at hand. "Sometimes I get tired of tea parties and princess movies."
"What are you talking about, Paul? You never get invited to the tea-"
"That's the point! I'm tired of this girls only business!"
"That is not the reason that you're not invited and you know it."
He grunted. "That damn teacup was too small. That's why it broke when I picked it up. And who let's three year olds play with real teacups, Steph?"
"The three year old isn't the one who broke it, Paul."
"Bleh. See? This is what I'm talking about. Pure woman logic right there."
"Oh, you mean correct logic?"
"When my boy gets here-"
"If we have a boy-"
"-we're gonna, like, uh… Crap. Uh..." He thought hard. "We'll build forts and stuff and you completely can't come in. Any of you."
"What?" Aurora looked back at that. She liked forts a lot. "Daddy-"
"Well, you can, Rora. And you, Murphy." Paul paused. "Basically, I'm just enacting less of a girl ban and more of a Steph ban, I guess."
"Ha ha." His wife didn't find that part funny. Giving Murphy another kiss, she added, "And since you're so excited about your future baby, Daddy-"
"Son."
"-I really need a milkshake right now and it's completely the baby's fault. So-"
"Sorry." He gave a half shrug. "I can't move, remember?"
Steph's daggers were downright terrifying. "Paul-"
"I can't. I promised. You want me to break a promise, Steph? You hear that, Rora?" He glanced down at his daughter who, finding out she would not be being banned from any forts in the foreseeable future, had gone back to dutifully coloring a doggy blue. "Mommy wants me to move and ruin your pretty picture again."
"No!"
"That's what I'm tellin' her."
Making a face down at her daughter then, Stephanie said, "Aurora, do you want ice cream, sweetie?"
That got her attention. Turning around to look at her mother, she dropped the crayon in her hand as she nodded.
"Okay, well Daddy has to get up to get us some, so-"
"You get, Daddy." Aurora left behind her coloring book to go shove at the man, getting a heavy scowl in return. "Let's go!"
"But I prom-"
"Paul." Steph gave him that real tired look again and, well, hell, she didn't have to do that. She should have known that he was going to get around to doing what she asked eventually.
He always did.
"Fine," he griped loudly regardless, because he always did that too. Shoving out of the bed, he said, "Now I have to get dressed though-"
"It's four in the afternoon. Were you never doing that again?"
"Uh, no. I wasn't. Problem?"
Steph raised her eyebrows at his back as he stopped, glancing over his shoulder at her as he stood beside the bed. "Not a bit."
And he was getting ready to retort something back to that when, suddenly, Aurora launched herself off the bed, arms clinging tightly around his neck as his hands instinctively went to catch her feet.
"Wow," he snickered. "Rora-"
"I come too."
"Of course, baby." He headed over to the closet. "You can be my little helper."
That was an always thing too.
Time seemed to pass slowly for the next few days. A lot of things were kind of muted, honestly, as far as excitement went about them, with the third pregnancy.
Sure, Steph and Paul still enjoyed feeling the baby kick or watching her stomach grow and he definitely would snuggle his wife up real close at night, just because it meant keeping his baby close too, but those were things they'd done before. They had been giddy over Aurora, and inexperienced, while they were a little less of the first and a little more of the second with Murphy.
Now on their third, they had all of the major parts of Steph's pregnancy mapped out. It was still exciting to them, no doubt, and Paul was very thrilled with the whole thing, but, really, there was only one mystery to them by that point and it was rather simple.
What would they be having?
Paul felt those old nerves kick up in his stomach as he sat in the doctor's office, watching that stupid ultrasound thingy that mostly just made the baby look like an alien (which he'd told to Steph, once, the first time around with Aurora, and gotten in rather big trouble for it, so he'd kept the thoughts to himself ever since) and held Steph's hand as they waited. The last time they were there, the nurse hadn't been able to make out anything useful, but Paul was hoping rather hard for something then, so he could finally start planning for his son.
You know, until, as he sat there, Steph's hand gripping his, when the woman informed them that they very much so were not having a son.
"Another girl?" Stephanie did that weird thing where she kind of hunched her shoulders and gave him this really goofy smile. Paul was still staring at the ultrasound machine though. "Can you believe it?"
No.
Not at all.
Still, he knew that at the moment Steph wanted confirmation that, yes, he too was excited over this, so Paul only leaned over in his chair to give her a kiss to the cheek.
They were having another little girl.
His wife gushed on and on about it on the way home that day. She kept giggling and was texting everyone (other than their parents, who they would be calling, of course) as he drove silently, nodding and grinning in all the right places.
Aurora, who was very pro brother before (although that was mostly because Paul had plied her head full of all sorts of fun things you could do with a brother; like play action figures or wrestle or any of the other stuff she saw Declan, Shane's son, do; and as the older sister, she'd be allowed to do all those boy things with him because he'd love her and not exclude her), was as thrilled about the news that she was getting another sister as her mother.
Well, sort of. Aurora had been about Murphy's age when she became a big sister the first time, so this was a bit different. She didn't realize just yet what a big girl they were going to be counting on her being and how her life was going to change, yet again. Declan would come into play here, as he'd try to explain this to her, and how it wasn't nearly as cool as she thought, but it was one of those things you only knew from experience.
Still, that afternoon when she found out, she cheered with Steph and clapped and got Murphy all giggly as Paul smiled along with them and tried not to feel bad.
Because he shouldn't feel bad. At all. He'd love his daughter. To hell and back. Just like he loved his other two.
So...why did he feel so funny?
Maybe he'd gotten his hopes up too much. That was probably it. He'd honestly thought that they'd be having a boy that time, felt it, down in his gut, and now was just wrong.
And Paul hated being wrong.
"At least now," he told Steph that night as they laid in bed, her going through her phone and him mostly just lying there, listening for either Aurora or Murphy to start up from their rooms and need something, "we don't have to worry about redoing the nursery."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, we're having another girl, so-"
"We still have to redo it a little."
He tried hard not to groan.
He failed.
"Stephanie-"
"We have to touch it up. At least a bit."
Rolling onto his stomach, the man tossed his arms over his head and folded them before grumbling against the pillow, "Yeah, well, that's a you thing, babe, so-"
"Don't be sour, Paul." She made a face at him. His head was buried in the pillow, but he knew that she did. "Just because you didn't get what you want-"
"I'm not," came his muffled reply, "sour."
"Oh, whatever."
"I'm not." That was clear, as he lifted his head and stared over at her. His hair was down and fell in his face, but he didn't move to push it out of the way. "At all, Steph."
"I know you are." She was back to her phone then, over on her side of the bed, and didn't glance at him. "You wanted a boy. It's fine."
"Yeah, I did, but I'm not sour about it. At all. So don't say I am."
"Paul, it's not that big of-"
"I wanted a girl too."
That time he got a look. A roll of the eyes too. "You wanted a boy. There's nothing wrong with that. I kinda...wanted one too." She shrugged. "I mean, we've never had one before so… But we're not. I'm sorry."
He frowned heavily at her final sentence before shoving up completely. Shifting closer to her, he said, "You don't have to be sorry, Steph."
"I know. I just-"
"No, really." He gestured down at himself. "I think it's a more of...me thing, right? That determines that sorta stuff? So-"
"Oh, Paul, shut-"
"C'mere." He moved to toss an arm right underneath her tummy, curling into her then. Stephanie frowned down at him, but Paul just nuzzled his face against her belly. Softly, he said, "Yeah, Steph, I did want a boy. Pretty badly, I guess. For the same reason as you, sort of. Because we've had little girls before, but a little boy… It'd be different."
"I know. I-"
"But… I have nephews, you know," he pointed out, "for that sorta stuff. Who think I'm freaking awesome, by the way."
"I think you think that everyone thinks that about you."
He lifted his head to stare up the bed at her. "You tellin' me they don't?"
She gave him a look back, raising an eyebrow before saying, "Yeah, Paul, I am."
"Huh." Dropping his head again, he nuzzled her belly some more, finally getting the woman to drop her phone and push at his head. Humming, he said, "I wanted a boy, fine, but I wanted another baby more than anything. A healthy one. As long as she's that, I don't care none. I just-"
"We could try again," she said slowly, as if unsure. They'd always wanted three kids. Always. It had been a plan from the beginning. If anything, after they had Aurora, they thought about not even having another one, they were so content. They started trying with no expectations and somehow wound up lucky. And the third was just because it felt right, at the time.
A fourth though…
And he could hear it in Steph's voice, which is why he sat up once more, staring into her cyan eyes, before reaching out to rest a hand on her chin. Stroking gently, he said, "You don't have to try again, baby, when you already hit perfection. The fuck I wanna think about another baby for when I got the best one right here? Huh?"
She was making that face then, the good one, the one that meant, flat out, that he had done well and impressed her. Paul grinned too, as he leaned down to brush a kiss across her lips, both muttering something along the lines of their love to one another at the same time.
Then he fell back onto his side of the bed, this time on his back, before saying, "You're still not allowed in any forts from here on out."
"What? Paul-"
"If I can't have some damn tea when I want to-"
"You broke the cup! I had had that set since I was a little girl and-"
"It wasn't age appropriate."
"Aurora wasn't the one that broke it!"
"Yeah, well… Go to bed, Steph." He reached over to snatch her phone, doing so rather easily as the woman was done with it anyways. Setting it then on his nightstand, he told her, "It's late. We have to get up early in the morning."
Oh, did they. Always. Murphy was in a rather horrible sleep cycle recently where, bright and early, at five-thirty, she had to be fed. Neither was sure how this had happened, but if they didn't get her a bottle or her mushy breakfast food (as well as a bit of whatever they were having) then they'd have a full on temper-tantrum going.
Aurora wasn't that much of a monster until about two and a half, but Murphy seemed to be settling into the role quite early.
And even though he had wanted a boy, it felt good for both him and Steph that night, to go to bed, finally knowing just what they were getting. She drifted off with thoughts of what great times they'd have, her three daughters, all being so close in age, and how much fun she'd have with three, while Paul thought mostly then of names, finally, truly, considering each that came into his head thoughtfully, though he knew, of course, that Steph would be the final decision maker.
She was in everything else, anyhow.
Mmmm. Another girl. Paul could do it. He knew he could.
And maybe, finally, the new one could get him a dang invitation to those tea parties of theirs. Or, at the very least, one of those damn cookies that Aurora always withheld from him because he wasn't an invited guest and, therefore, wasn't allowed to have any.
Either that or just buy some dang plastic teacups and invite his own damn self.
Seemed much more up his alley.
Katlove88 asked for a one-shot where Paul reflected on not having a son, so here it is. I'm all out of requests though now, guys, so if there's anything else you want to see, just ask.