Daddy Overnight
An OTH Fan Fic
By AlexB
Three
Nathan looked from the woman to the baby, then back to the woman again. Unconsciously, he took a step back.
"I don't have a son." He said. "I don't know what Rachel told you, but that baby isn't mine. Can't be. We were careful. Always. She would have told me."
Why couldn't he breathe? Why wouldn't his body take in any air?
"She should have told you." The dark haired woman said as the baby she held let out an agitated squall. She rocked and patted the baby's back as she moved to the small couch. Laying the child down, she reached for the diaper bag on the floor beside it with one hand.
"She went back and forth on that decision, many decisions, all throughout her pregnancy. And, in the end she decided that it would be best that you not be told."
Nathan didn't hear anything that the woman was saying. His gaze was riveted on the small being on in front of him. His eyes were open, but they looked at nothing. But Nathan's eyes, they saw everything. He was so small. Little fingers had pushed at the cap on his head as the baby rubbed at his face. A shock of almost black hair sat on the top of his head. Something in Nathan compelled him to move closer. To see more.
When he stood not two feet away, Nathan wished that he never came. He wished that Anna, whatever-her-last-name was, had never called him. He went as far as wishing that he had never met Rachel Gattina, because there was no denying what was right in front of his face. It was like looking through his baby book. The hair, the eyes, the hands the feet, hell, even the ears. It was him. It was all Nathan.
He had a son.
His vision went dim, the room spun, and for a split second, Nathan thought that he would pass out.
This was not happening. It couldn't be. They were careful.
"We were careful." Nathan said. Surprised at his voice behind her, Anna's head wiped around as she looked over her shoulder. Nathan's eyes weren't on her, but on the baby that lie on the couch. His little palms spread out as he stretched. His little mouth opened on a wide yawn.
"Nothing is one-hundred percent." The woman murmured.
A she redressed the baby boy in his white sleeper and wrapped him again in his blue blanket, Anna continued to speak.
"She wanted me to be the one to take care of her baby if something were to happen to her. Her parents were dead, and she and her sister hadn't spoken to each other in years. They were all that I had, and that's okay, because all they had was me."
She rose slowly, rhythmically patting the small bundle as she rocked him in her arms. She looked Nathan in the eye saying, "And I would have kept her promise. Not just because she asked me to. Not just because she was my best friend, not because I loved her. Love her; but because this baby is all that I have left now. I'm just selfish enough to want this boy for myself. But I'm also human."
She said as she took a step forward. Nathan's eyes again shifted from the woman in front of him to the baby in her arms. He had his eyes closed, his fingers in his mouth. No doubt he was nearly asleep. He had to fight the urge to reach out and touch the small being. To make sure that he was real and not some trick in his overly stressed out mind.
"I couldn't just go on and not let you know that you had a son." She continued. "I'm giving you an out, right now."
Nathan's gaze jumped back to hers.
"If you don't think that you can do it, if you don't want to be a father, I'll take him. I'll take him and raise him just the way that his mother wanted. You just say the word, and were gone." Her black eyes were pleading; both fear and hope dueled for a place in their shadowy depths.
He didn't know if he could do this.
-
"Nathan?"
"Yeah. I know that it's late, but I need to see you."
He had to force himself to unclench the hand that was griped to the steering wheel, and to give his car more gas. He was going at least ten below the limit. The last thing that he needed was for a cop to stop him for driving too slow.
"What's the matter?" The woman's anxious voice asked over the phone line. Nathan could hear rustling in the back ground. The sound of a man's voice had his fist clenching on the steering wheel once more, giving him second thoughts about even making the phone call in the first place. He was just about to hang up when she spoke again.
"Nathan, what's wrong?"
"I don't want to talk about it on the phone." He told her. "I'm ten minutes away. I'll see you in a few." He hung up without letting her reply. Throwing the phone to the seat next to him, he looked into the back seat from his rearview mirror for what had to be the millionth time since he'd left the motel.
The baby hadn't made a sound and Nathan was tempted to pull over just so that he could check to see if he was breathing. Both fists gripped the wheel now, and he could feel the sweat beading at his temples, on his neck, slide down his back.
There was no going back now. He'd made his choice, and now he would have to live with it. And he was scared. Nathan was scared to death. He wouldn't have called his mother otherwise. He wouldn't be driving over to her place in the middle of the night if this wasn't a life or death situation. And it was most definitely was.
Giving into impulse, he pulled the car to the side of the road. Pocketing his keys, he pressed unlock button on his car door before stepping out into the night. Sliding into the backseat, closing the door behind him, Nathan lifted the blanket from the car seat. It was faced backward so the baby was facing the back window of the car. He didn't know it was supposed to be that way. He would have had the baby in the front seat, or hooked up the car seat wrong if Anna hadn't have showed him otherwise.
He was sleeping. Inky lashes rested on small cheeks. A blue knit cap covered his head. His little fists were doubled, held to his chest. She'd changed his clothes. He was wearing blue pajamas with little cows on them now.
Would he have to by such nauseating clothing now, too?
It wasn't the shopping that had Nathan slowing hard; it was the fact that he was responsible. He held a human life in the palm of his hands. A life that he had made. A life that he hadn't known about.
And he chose to be responsible.
He didn't know how long he had sat there, lost in his thoughts. The sound of his cell phone ringing had him jerking to attention. Looking back to the baby in the seat, he saw that it hadn't fazed the child. The boy was still sound asleep. Nathan grabbed his phone as he started the car again and easily pulled into traffic.
"Where are you?" His mother asked him. "I'm standing out here on the porch. You said ten minutes. It's been eleven."
"I had to stop." Was all that he told her.
"Are you hurt?"
"No."
"Sick?"
"No."
She hesitated before saying, "Has something happened to your father?"
"Why would you care?" The words came without hesitation; without remorse. Hearing his mother sigh over the lines did very little to rouse any sympathy, or apology in him. Things were what they were. Nothing could change that.
"I don't want to fight with you, Nate. And if that's what this is about-"
"It's not."
"Then what?"
"I told you I don't want to talk about it over the phone."
"Why not?" His mother demanded. The fear in her voice not totally overcome by her impatience.
"Because not even you will believe it until you see it."
As advertised, Nathan's mother was standing on the porch in her pajamas and dark purple slippers. Worry etched around her dark eyes as she stepped from the porch and on to the lawn that lined her home. The door was opened behind her. A man stood just inside it. He stepped out of the car just as his mother reached him.
She looked him over more than once, tears brimming in her dark brown eyes. For a second, she didn't know what to do. When she threw her arms around his neck, he didn't hug her back, didn't push her away, although his mind screamed at him to.
She held his face in his hands, assured that Nathan wasn't hurt. At least not physically.
He pulled away from his mother's touch, moving to the back door of his sports utility vehicle. Deb watched with confusion. Her eyes widened when her son emerged with a baby carrier in his hands. She looked from Nathan to the blanket covered car seat, then back to her son again. She opened her mouth to speak, but words escaped her.
Following closely on his heels, Deb passed her husband; Keith closed the door behind them.
"What in the world?" Nathan heard the man's voice grumble. He followed the lights into the living room. Walking about the back of the huge sectional, he carefully set the seat down on the cushions in front of him only to be muscled out of the way by his mother who pulled the blanket from the car seat setting it slowly on the couch next the contraption. Hand to her mouth, Nathan saw the first tear fall. Again he had to swallow hard.
"Oh, Nathan," She said as she slowly went to her knees. Reaching out, Deb worked the seat so that the heavy plastic handle was pushed to the back and she could get a better look at the child inside. Deb didn't need to ask if the boy was her son's. She only had to look. His little head was covered, but Deb would put money on the baby's hair being so dark it was almost black.
Unhooking the seat belt, Deb got to her feet, bringing the baby to her. Nathan had fallen to the couch on the other side of the en-table. His head was down, and he had all ten gingers rammed in his hair. He listened as the baby squeaked and started to cry, only to be soothed by a mother with years of experience.
"How?" He heard his mother ask. Her voice cracked on the word.
"I think that it's obvious how." Was her husband's dry reply. "The question is whether or not he's going to be responsible."
Nathan's head shot up at the other man's words. "You're a fine one to talk about responsibility." Nathan growled.
The man sighed. "You really want to do this again?" He asked. "Right now?"
"I didn't come her for you, so why don't you do us both a favor and go crawl into a bottle or something."
"Hey!" The word was soft for the baby's sake, but where was enough starch in it to make both men close their mouths. Deb shot her husband a warning look, then turned to her son.
"Start talking, Nate." She said, again her words soft.
"A woman called me today. She said that she had something that she needed to speak to me about. She said that her name was Anna, and she knew Rach."
"Rach?" Deb asked him.
"Rachel. A woman I was seeing before my knee blew out." Nathan rubbed a hand over his face. "I hadn't heard from her in months, and it shocked me that she would go through this Anna person just to get to me. When Rachel walked away, I thought that it was over. That she would find someone new. We weren't serious." He looked up at his mother. "But we were careful."
He stood up, pacing. "I thought that she walked because I couldn't play the game anymore. Turns out that she was pregnant. She was pregnant and she didn't want me to know."
"Why?" He ignored Keith's question. Looking toward his mother, Nathan didn't have to hear her ask to know that she wanted to know the same.
"I don't know. Maybe she didn't think that I could handle it. She didn't think that I would want to be a father to my kid."
"Where is this Rachel?" Deb asked. She'd since then sat on the couch; the baby lay to the side of her.
"She's dead." Nathan said. "Rach died in a car accident, and she left him behind.
-
"Nicholas?"
Deb read the name that had been sewn into the baby's blanket, and then raised a questioning brow at her son. Nathan only nodded. Nicholas David Gattina was what his birth certificate said. Rachel hadn't even given the boy his last name. And why would she? He asked himself angirly. She wasn't even going to tell him that he was her baby's father.
"Your grandfather's name was Nicholas." She sent a quick smile to her son before going back to the baby nestled in her arms. "Well someone needs a change," Deb said as she took the small cap from her grandson's head, smiling as she ran a finger through the cool silkiness of the baby's hair. "And Nathan, I didn't see you bring in a bag."
"I left it in the backseat." He replied running a hand though his own dark hair. "I'll go-"
"Keith, could you get it for me?" Deb asked without looking up. The man said nothing. With a look at Nathan, Keith went to do his wife's bidding. It was only when the other man was out of the room that she again spoke to her son.
"What are you going to do, Nathan?"
"I wish that I knew."
"Oh, I think that you know just well what you're going to do. Seems to me that you just need to come to terms with it. Figure out what to do next."
"She gave me an out." Nathan's voice was so soft that he had to clear his throat before he said the words again. "She gave me an out, Mom."
"And you didn't take it." Deb said to him.
"She told me," he went on. "That I could walk away right now, and she would have raised the baby. Anna had no one else. Rachel and the baby were it. She didn't want me to know, and Anna brought him to me anyway."
"That's right, Nathan." His mother said. "She brought you your son. You wouldn't have taken this boy if you didn't think that for one second he wasn't yours."
"Look at him, Mom." Nathan's voice rose. Nicholas jerked. Startled, began to cry, only to be soothed again by Deb's voice. Nathan started to pace again.
"I don't know how to be a father." He told her. "I don't want to screw this up. I don't want to screw him up."
"Nicolas." Deb said in place of Nathan's "him." "No one knows how to be a parent when they first start out."
"It's not like I had the best role model when it comes to being a dad." Nathan pointed out. "His-Nicolas's," he clarified Deb's look, "Mother is gone. How do I be both mother and father when I can barely remember to eat breakfast in the morning?"
She studied her son as he made his way across the carpet once more. "Have you held him, yet?" She asked him. When Nathan stopped in his tracks, doing nothing more than look at her, Deb already had her answer. "You're scared of him." She sensed.
"He's so small."
"You were small." His mother informed him. "You cried all the time while you were in the hospital. But you didn't cry at all when you were with me. Only when you needed something. You never slept in the hospital nursery." His mother continued. "I wouldn't have it. You cried the whole two seconds you were there."
"He hasn't cried." Nathan said. "Not much."
"He knows you mean well." His mother said. Wordlessly, Deb took the bag Keith brought to her and went about changing and feeding her grandson. Nathan watched in awe. His mom made it look so easy.
"He'll stay with us tonight."
"What?" Both men asked at the same time.
"Until Monday evening." Deb specified. "You have until then Nathan to get used to the idea that you are a father now, and that this baby comes before everything, including you.
"I don't have any of your baby things other than your clothes that I refused to let your father throw out. Since Dan decided that he weren't having any more children after you, he got rid of you crib, your swing and the lot. You'll have to get those." His mother informed him.
Dan, Nathan though when he closed his eyes. He was going to have to deal with Dan over this. Yet another thing that he didn't look forward to.
"Don't let this be about him." Deb said as she put the baby to her shoulder, rubbing slow circles on his little back. "We aren't this boy's parents, and you know better. You've lived it, and no matter what you thinking, Nathan, you are not him."
-
When he woke up the next morning, Nathan wasn't stupid enough to think that last night had been a dream. He had a son. He was a father, and he had the next forty-eight hours to get used to it.
"Talk about a miracle." Nathan voice sounded in his room as he situated himself over the edge of his bed.
Like every morning, Nathan's knee throbbed like he'd fallen on it, and like every morning, he didn't take nothing for it. Standing up, he pulled a pair of black sweat pants up over his hips and somewhat limped to the bathroom.
He looked himself in the face and saw the baby his mother held last night. The ears, the hair, the eyes, even the faint cleft Nathan had in his chin had showed up on the baby named Nicholas. He mother would want to call him Nicky.
Nathan would stop that. Nicky was a girl's name whether it was spelled with an I or a Y.
He didn't bother to shave, but he washed his face, brushed his teeth, and then stood under the shower for what fell like only minutes. It was close to an hour. Cooling water didn't deter Nathan from washing every inch of his body, and washing his hair like he did every morning.
He tired to make sense of something that seemed so easy, but nothing would come.
Towel around his hips, he again stared at himself in the mirror. He had to talk to someone. Jake was the logical choice. His friend had a child, a daughter that he didn't like to talk about. They were essentially in the same boat. Jake didn't know about his daughter until she years older. The only had a picture of her that was years outdated. Nathan didn't want to mess with a wound like that, but he needed help.
He'd actually picked up when his mother called. It gave him a real funny feeling in his stomach. The first words out of his mouth were "Is he okay?" His mother had assured him that the baby was just fine. She sounded somewhat choked up, although she tried to hide it. He really did feel bad for the way that things were with he and his mother, but he didn't make them that way. He was just dealing with the fall out the best way that he knew how. Nathan felt the way that he felt, and he wasn't about to change that just because everything had changed on him.
Jake's car was in the back lot when he made it to the bar. It was like the guy never left. Dependable, reliable, Jake. He really hoped that his friend could shed some light on a few things.
Jake nearly belted him when Nathan came into the bar through the kitchen.
"Scared the hell out of me, man!" The man had whispered harshly. "You never come in the back."
"Sorry." Nathan muttered. "I figured you'd be in the kitchen doing something. Didn't mean to scare you, guy."
Jake shook his head, rubbing his knuckles over his rapidly beating heart. "No worries." He replied. Then frowned, looking at his watch. "What brings you by so early in the morning?"
When he unconsciously shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans, Jake new that there was something up. "Spill it." Was all that he said. "You know that I'll do anything that I can to help."
Nathan let out a heavy breath, the tension so high in his body it was like a live wire. "I need your help."
-
A baby, the man thought. Jake rubbed his knuckles over his chest again. His heart wasn't beating out of his chest. It was breaking for the millionth time since he himself had found out that he had a child of his own; a daughter that he would never know.
"A son." Jake spoke softly to himself. His brows rose as he watched Nathan pace the floor beneath them. Leaning against the sink behind him he crossed his arms over his wide chest.
"Congratulations?" He didn't know what else to say. He couldn't tell how his friend felt about being a father either way.
"I don't know. I don't know about any of it. What the hell do I know about being someone's father?" Nathan said to him. "I mean, look who I had as a role model. How do I know that I won't mess any kid up, let alone my own, the way my dad did me?"
Jake shook his head shrugging his broad shoulders. "You don't."
He only had a little bit of an idea what he had been like for Nathan to have grown up as Dan Scott's son. Jake didn't like the man himself, and only tolerated him as a paying customer.
"You don't." He stood up straight, his own hands slipping into his pockets.
Nathan stopped in his tracks, looking his friend right in his eye.
"I don't know if I'll wake up tomorrow morning and have my life up to this point have been a really bad nightmare. You don't know, Nathan and that's the point. You can't worry about the way that your dad was. You're going to cheat your self and your son if you do."
Nathan worried the fourth finger of his left hand. It was a habit that he'd thought he'd stopped.
"Will you stop with that?" His father had berated him on more than one occasion. "Your mother does that, and it drives me nuts. Just…just cut it out."
"You're scared, and that's okay. We're all a little scared sometimes. I know you came to me because I'm someone's father." He pushed away from the freezer behind him. "But I wouldn't know the first thing about this because I never got the chance. You took responsibility for a reason, Nate. So, if there's one thing that I can tell you, it's this. Don't miss a minute. Be there and enjoy everything that your son brings to you, and that you can give to him. Because I can guarantee you that if you give that up, let something else take that away, it will eat at you for the longest time. You'll have hole that you cannot fill. And I don't wish that on you. I wouldn't wish that kind of pain on my worst enemy."
"I shouldn't have come to you with this."
"It's what friends do."
-
Keith Scott watched from the door as his wife bathed her grandson.
A grandchild.
He still couldn't believe it. Nathan was a father. And where was he? Not where he was supposed to be that was for damn sure. He made it no secret that he didn't agree with letting the child stay with them until Nathan got used to the fact that he was going to be a father. Deb should have made the man take his son home with him last night and let Nathan get used to being a father by being one.
"Stop brooding." Deb spoke over her shoulder. Keith stood up straight. His hands automatically went into his pockets.
"I'm not. I'm just wondering why you're letting him do this."
"Do what?" She asked distractedly. She had her back to him as she wrapped the baby boy in a tight bundle, drying his head and face.
"I think that you're setting yourself up for a world of hurt, Deb."
"Keith,"
"For years, that kid wouldn't talk to you. You've been calling his house every morning since the day he moved back here trying to get him to speak three damn words to you, and everyday he's given you nothing. Not one damn thing. Then out of nowhere he calls you, and comes here. Not because he wants to make things right but because he has a kid with him. A kid that he should be raising because he's that child's father, not dumping off on you because he needs the time to get used to it."
"He's not dumping anything."
"He's using you, Deb. And I'm not about to let it go on any longer."
"Nathan is my son. Nicolas is my grandson. And if this little boy will help things get better between me and my child then Nathan can use me to his heart's content. He is never going to except that you and I are together, Keith. If this is all I have, all that he will give me," she said with so much conviction, her voice was tight with it. "Then I'm taking it. I'm taking it, and I'm holding on to it. With both hands."
