"Today's going to be a celebration of the glory and wonder of fatherhood."
"What does that mean?"
"They want us to watch the kids."
 Betty, Stu and Howard - "Vacation".

The Glory of Fatherhood
Acepilot

AN - No.10 in the "Road" series. The return of James. The boys are left to babysit. What could go wrong? Hope you all enjoy. Reviews are appreciated. This one was a bit of a clearing of a mental block - hopefully I'll be back to writing at full pace soon.

Disclaimer - Characters - except James and Amanda - are not mine. Pity, really. I could use the money.

---

"Maybe this isn't such a good idea," Chuckie ventures. His voice is trembling and he's wringing his hands in a manner which I normally only see him do when Angelica's around.

"What could go wrong?" Dil asks, hoisting the diaper bag onto his shoulder. "It's just the park. How much trouble can a single baby get in at the park?"

Chuckie and I exchange knowing glances. "A lot," I offer. "You don't remember much about when we were little, do you?"

Dil shakes his head at us, spreading his arms wide in exasperation. "Guys, come on. Between the three of us, surely we can keep Jimmy out of trouble!" He stuffs a spare bottle in the bag. "Tommy and Lil trusted us to look after him. Doesn't that say something about our babysitting skills?"

"No!" I wail, terror starting to creep into my voice. "It just says that Tommy and Lil are so desperate to have a weekend away that they'll try anything!"

Dil huffs. "Look, the three of us are all going to have to deal with having kids of our own soon enough. So, we should take this opportunity to learn."

"Whoa, hold up," Chuckie says, sticking his hands out in front of himself in a "stop" gesture. "Angelica and I aren't even talking about marriage, much less kids." His eyes light up. "Hey, does this mean that I don't have to -"

"No."

Chuck flinches from the simultaneous, stereophonic answers. "But, really -"

"Really no," I tell him. "If we're in on this, then you are too."

"You're his uncles. I'm barely anything," he defends himself.

I shake my head, grinning. "Nice try, Chuck. You're in for the long haul."

"Well..." he frowns. "I still think the park is a bad idea."

"And I agree," I turn back to face Dil. "Isn't the park a bit of big step?"

"Nah," Dil says, zipping up the now-nearly-overflowing bag. "We've got everything we need, and we can keep an eye on him. Surely."

"I remember the time when all our parents were at the park and I fell off the monkey bars and broke my arm," Chuckie recollects.

"I remember the time when Tommy fell in the rose bushes and cut his finger, and had severe emotional issues for a week," I offer.

Dil looked at us both skeptically. "And I remember all the times that nothing bad happened at all."

"Really? There were good times at the park?" Chuckie asked.

"Go get the baby," Dil sighs. "I'm gonna find a hat or something, then we're going!"

"Why are we taking orders from him?" Chuckie asks after the younger redhead has left.

I shrug. "If something goes wrong, we could blame him."

"Think that'd work?" Chuckie asks hopefully.

"Nup," I tell him. "No way."

Chuckie sighs.

---

He's cute when he's sleeping.

James looks like some bizarre hybrid of me and Dil at his age, with straight, violently orange hair and wide, inquisitive eyes.

Inquisitive. Or sometimes mischievous.

I pick him up gently, trying not to wake him. If I get lucky, he might sleep through the whole thing and nothing will go wrong at all.

Nah. I'm not that lucky. Chuckie is definitely not that lucky. He'll wake up any minute now.

I carry him gently downstairs, careful not to bump into anything. So far, so good.

"You guys ready yet!?"

Damn! Dil, loud as ever.

I wince as James awakes screaming.

"It's okay, it's okay," I mutter, hopefully soothingly, bouncing him gently and patting him on the back. "It's just your moronic Uncle Dylan, the man with the subtlety of a sledgehammer." I rock him gently, hoping that he'll be quiet any second now.

Any second now.

Dil appears in the hallway, a sheepish grin on his face. "Sorry," he says lamely.

I just glare at him. "Where's Chukcie?"

Dil looks puzzled. "He was here a minute ago."

It takes a minute, but we both click.

"Oh no you don't, Chuck," I call out, careful not to startle the baby in my arms. "Come out, come out wherever you are. If I'm going along with this idea, then so are you."

If he has any brains, he's already left.

"Go after him," I order Dil. "I'll get Jim in his stroller and we'll catch you."

Dil nods. "Aye-aye, sir."

I shake my head as the younger man tears off down the hallway. I hold James out in front of me. "Well, this is off to a great start, huh shorty?"

He sticks his tongue out at me and slobbers everywhere.

Definitely more Dil than me.

---

How can something so small be so energetic?

James is crawling all over the place, walking occasionally but preferring to get around on his hands and knees - for reasons known to him alone. I sure wouldn't want to crawl around on this grass. Very unappealing. He's done anything and everything that I'd trust a baby of his age to be able to do, and he's still not bored or tired. The kid is unstoppable.

I'll give it to Dil, he might have been onto something with this idea. It's brilliant - we don't have to do anything to keep him amused, there's plenty of stuff already here to do that. If he cries, we come running, comfort him or feed him or whatever, then he just toddles off and is back at it. I'm beginning to understand why we seemed to spend so much time at the park when we were younger.

Chuckie lets out a loud snore next to me.

I shake my head and turn to look at my girlfriend's brother. He's quite happily plonked himself down under the tree and dozed off, his hat across his face and every now and then lifting a little bit off it when he snores.

"I don't see why you get to sleep," I comment, to myself more than anything, considering the intended recipient is asleep.

Or so I thought. "Because I live with Angelica." His voice is muffled by the hat, but I can hear him fine. "It's very stressful and I lose a lot of sleep. I need to catch up."

I bark a short, sharp laugh. "Hey, I live with your sister and I don't get much sleep either, but I have to watch James while you catch forty winks."

He sits up and lifts the hat off his face, looking at me out of the side of his eye. "My sister is not a stressful person to live with."

I hold my hands up in front of me in surrender. "I never said she was. I just said that we don't get a lot of sleep."

I get hit across my head with the hat for that one, but it was worth it. I fall back onto the grass cackling wildly.

"You are a dead man," Chuckie informs me, probably still glaring. "I wouldn't be going to sleep any time soon if I were you."

I'm still chuckling, erratically, when Dil returns with a tray of ice-creams. He raises an eyebrow. I guess we must be a bit of a sight - a grown man lying on the grass having random fits of laughter, and his impossible-to-miss friend glowering at him. "Should I ask?"

"No," Chuckie tells him. "Just no. Phil, go grab James."

I'm struggling to keep from giggling as I get up and wander across the park. "Hey, James!"

There's no immediate reaction.

I look around the play equipment.

There's no red hair in sight.

Oh, god. Oh my good lord.

"Dil! Chuckie! We lost the baby!"

And I'm suddenly aware of the shocked look of a dozen parents all around me.

I grin sheepishly. What else is there to do?

---

"How could we lose the baby?!" I think Chuckie's going to hyperventilate. He's gone ludicrously pale and is taking short, shallow breaths that seem to be getting further and further apart. "They're going to kill us!"

"We'll find him, we'll find him," Dil assures us.

"After all, how much trouble can one baby get in at the park?" I remind him, glaring.

"You weren't watching him!" Dil yells, pointing at me.

"Well...Chuckie was sleeping!" I point at Chuckie in turn.

"Congratulations, Phil. You've come up with the world's thinnest argument."

I glare at Chuckie this time. "Look, he's crawling and toddling. He can't have gotten far." I take a deep breath, and I'm relieved to see Chuckie do the same. If he's unconscious, he can't help us search. "We'll split up. I'll go to the other side of the play equipment. Dil, head back toward the ice-cream stand. Maybe he tried to follow you or something. Chuckie..." Chuckie is still wringing his hands and hasn't regained too much colour. "Keep an eye on the play equipment. If he comes back." He nods feverishly.

I troop across the sandbox, flashbacks from my childhood with each step. Imagining deserts and beaches and all sorts of adventures, going to all sorts of places we shouldn't have and doing any manner of unsafe things. Chuckie yelling "We're doomed," echoes through my mind.

Makes me wonder if our parents got this stressed when we went exploring.

Probably.

So, let's say that James has inherited Tommy's courage and sense of adventure, and Lil's childhood fascination of worms and mud - both fairly accurate. He's sure gone exploring something, and I was very tempted to let him eat that worm before, but I don't think that Lil would have approved of it, no matter how nostalgic it seemed.

Tommy's going to have grey hairs before he's thirty.

I'm frozen in my tracks, though, at the thought that my kids are going to be pretty much the same.

I shake off that thought quickly and step off the other side of the play equipment, onto the grass, heading down toward the walking track.

Where the hell could the kid have gone? I took my eyes off him for less than a minute. Less than a minute! And he's torn off somewhere that I'll never find him.

How can I think of being a parent? I'm a horrible father. And I don't even have kids yet! I'm a horrible uncle. Dil wouldn't have lost him. Dil wouldn't have taken his eyes off him, not for a second. Not if he was in charge of him. If I'd gone to get the ice-cream, we never would have been in this situation.

How do I tell Tommy? How do I tell Lil, my sister, that I lost her child?

I'm horrible, I shouldn't be allowed children. Kimmi should just -

I spy orange hair in the distance, on the bike track.

I spy bikes.

I don't know how I did it. One moment I was fifty meters away, the next I was on the bike track scooping a rather startled James into my arms and coming off the other side. Thankfully he didn't cry, just looked at me with a rather frightened expression on his face.

"Sorry, sorry," I whisper in his ear, rocking him softly. "I'm so sorry, James."

He googles something indiscernible and rests his head on my shoulder. I keep rocking him softly.

I'm not a bad father. I'm just still in training.

"Come on, short stuff. There might still be some ice-cream left, if Uncle Chuckie hasn't eaten it all in a panic," I tell him, heading back towards the play equipment.

I can see Dil already back with Chuckie as the blanket we laid out comes into view. "You found him!" Dil yells enthusiastically, leaping up and rushing over. He's behind me and making baby faces at a very amused James moments later.

"Yeah, he was over on the bike track," I tell them, handing him to Dil and looking for the ice-cream tray. It's still there, thankfully, short three ice-creams.

"The bike track!?" Chuckie yells. He looks like he's going to hyperventilate again.

"The bike track," I confirm, and hold up the lone remaining desert. "Where's mine?"

Dil grins at me. "I was hungry."

I glare at him again, but it's half-hearted. "Well, you owe me an ice-cream then, kiddo."

He glares at me for that one, and Chuckie laughs.

"Well, Philip, I'll see if I've got any change left."

I raise an eyebrow. "You'd better, Dylan."

"That's it, DeVille! Meet me under the monkey bars!"

"Bring it on, Pickles!"

James growls at the two of us, bringing back to our attention that he's waiting on an ice-cream. Chuckie lifts him out of Dil's arms and takes the cone out of my hand. "Come on, James. We'll let your uncles solve their little dispute while we get high on sugar."

---

I'm never going to forgive my sister. I'm never going to forgive my fiancé. And I'm never going forgive Tommy.

I'm lying on the couch, but only because I don't have the energy to sit up. I think Chuckie has passed out in the chair.

Dil's still going strong. He's always not known when he should be exhausted.

James is cackling wildly and pulling at Chuckie's pant leg. Dil has gone to get a bottle for him, and I'm sincerely looking forward to him getting back. Maybe he can get my nephew to be quiet.

"God, you guys are wusses," he offers from the kitchen doorway.

"No, you're just not normal," Chuckie tells him, without opening his eyes. "And you had more ice-cream than the rest of us."

"Come on! We've had a great day with our nephew, and what are you doing? You're lying scattered across the lounge room like the victims of some kind of horrible virus!" Dil shakes his head sorrowfully. "If only the girls could see you now."

"If the girls could see us now, we wouldn't be in this position," I point out.

Dil shrugs. "Whatever." He scoops James up in his arms. "How's it going, shorty?"

"You reckon we were this exhaustive when we were kids?" Chuckie asks me.

"Probably," I tell him. "And there were more of us. If James alone can do this, then what's going to happen when you and I and Dil have kids?"

"I shudder to think," he yawns out. I have a new appreciation for Didi and Stu. To have babysat all of us time and time again and still willingly volunteered to do it...either they're crazy, or they're masochists.

Or they're where Dil gets his tirelessness from.

---

"They look so cute when they're sleeping."

"Almost hate to wake 'em, huh?"

"Why bother? We'll just have to deal with them if they're awake. They'll want to be fed, and then they'll be too full of energy, and we'll be putting up with them into the wee small hours."

"Good point. Let's just wake up James."

I don't open my eyes. "Ha, ha."

I feel someone plant a kiss on my lips and I hope to god it's Kimmi. "I knew you were just faking."

"How can anyone sleep when they hear three women clomping around wearing the remains of my bank account?"

She hits me over the forehead. Yup, Kimmi alright. "We did not spend that much, thank you."

I smile. "I know. But I never get tired of teasing you."

I feel her caressing hair out of my eyes. "You want to stay asleep? We can see to James if he wakes up."

"No." I shake my head and reluctantly open my eyes. "We've got to get up sooner or later."

She drops a kiss on my forehead, and I hear Angelica making wretching noises. Amanda giggles. "Oh, get over it, Angie," I suggest, sitting up very delicately. "You and Chuckie have your moments." I pause for a second. "Not many of them, but I'm sure you have them."

She glares at me. I inspire that from a lot of people.

"So, how was your day?" Kimmi asks me, while helping me to my feet.

I sweep my gaze across the room, from Chuckie lying unconscious on the couch to Dil collapsed against the chair with James snuggled into the crook of his neck.

"It was an experience."

---

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