A/N: Time for a shorter one-shot! Barring I don't keep adding stuff in to make it longer, ha ha.

Thanks for the reviews, by the way!

This is one where they are older, so it's domestic fluff. A little more realistic in terms of today's society, though, but you will see. This is one of the one-shots I mentioned that I had to raise the rating for just for mentions of sexual themes, ha ha. No worries, no sex scenes in these stories, though I may eventually write a one-shot series centered around that. Still debating on it, though. If I do, it will be posted over on AO3 because god forbid this site lets you write about that. Freedom of expression doesn't exist here if it includes anything sexual, but blood and gore is a-okay. Just like television and movies!

Um, anyway, here's the story.

Story 6: Daddy James

The silence of the night air that hung over Retroville was pierced by the sudden wail of an infant as two young parents groaned, awoken from their slumber.

"You get her," Cindy mumbled as she turned over in their shared bed, away from the noise.

"But I got her last night," Jimmy grumbled, pulling the covers up over his head in a poor attempt to block out the noise. "You get her tonight." A sudden kick to his ankle made him yelp in surprise and pain.

He sat up in bed and rubbed his now sore ankle, glaring down at his girlfriend of nine years, not fooled one bit by the 'innocent' smile that adorned her face. "Was that really necessary?"

"Yes, now go take care of our daughter. Besides, I have work in the morning, you don't," she said, sleepiness lacing her voice as she started to drift off once more despite the racket of their infant. Jimmy grumbled under his breath before slowly getting up out of bed and walking the short few steps over to the bassinet that held his wailing daughter.

He sighed silently as he carefully picked up his daughter and held her securely in his arms.

"Come on, baby girl, let's go see what's wrong," he mumbled as he started out the bedroom door, nearly ramming into it in his tired state. He was so thankful they had bought a single-floor condo, he did not know how they would have fared with stairs at that moment in time.

Yawning, he headed to the nursery that was down the hall where they kept everything for their child, aside from her bassinet. Cindy had insisted on her sleeping in the same room as them for as long as possible for developmental reasons. Well, Jimmy was not one to argue with the woman who spent months researching childcare while she was pregnant.

In all honesty, Marie, their daughter, was their little unintentional miracle baby. He had developed the strongest contraceptives for the both of them eight years ago, and everything had been fine up until ten and a half months ago. He still could not figure out how she had ended up pregnant through them, even with the multitude of tests he had ran on the both of them. Everything had come back saying they were still working and that left the two of them baffled.

Jimmy never believed in fate, but apparently, in this one instance, Marie was meant to be born. He would never not love her, regardless. The lack of sleep and a sex life, however, was killer on the both of them.

Sighing, Jimmy laid his daughter down on the changing table and proceeded to change the full diaper with practiced ease, all the while chuckling to himself as he thought back to his eleven-year-old self and how dumb he was in things like this.

"You know, Marie, your daddy used to be pretty stupid when it came to babies. I didn't even realize you had to change a diaper when it was full, I just thought you had to clean it and it would be good as new. Ah, how much simpler and cheaper that would be, eh?" he said, mostly talking to himself as his daughter's baby blue eyes stared up at him in fascination.

As he was lost in his thoughts, a sudden realization came over him and a small frown appeared on his face. "Hey wait a minute, she doesn't have work tomorrow, we both took the year off from school and work!" He let out a huff of slight amusement as he finished changing his daughter.

"Rule one, Marie: Mom always wins," he told her with a small chuckle and picked her up and held her against his left shoulder. "There, all clean. Let's see if you're hungry, hm?" Jimmy yawned and headed for the 'fridge' he had built specifically to keep milk fresh and at a perfect temperature. It was his own girlfriend's breast milk that she pumped on a daily basis for him to feed their daughter at night when he was taking care of her.

The 'fridge' was an amazing piece of technology that he was planning on patenting and selling in the future. He had spent months planning it, building it, and testing it to make sure it did not malfunction as neither of them wanted to waste what amounted to a several week's supply of breast milk.

He had yet to come up with a name for the thing, but that was unimportant at the moment.

Jimmy pulled out a bottle with his free hand, kicked the door closed, and walked over to the rocking chair, sitting down with a satisfied grunt. They had picked out and bought the most comfortable chair they could find, and they often fell asleep in it because of it. Thankfully he had modified it to recline and detect when they fell asleep so they would not drop their baby or accidentally crush her by using soft, gentle restraints to keep the occupants in place.

Quickly testing the milk to make sure the 'fridge' had not malfunctioned, Jimmy held it up to the side of Marie's mouth to let her root for it naturally if she was hungry, which she was. He watched as she latched on and began suckling in earnest.

He gazed down at her with a tender smile, love shining in his tired eyes as he watched her nurse the bottle with gusto. The twenty-year-old genius began rocking the chair at a soothing pace, gently brushing aside his infant daughter's light brown hair.

"Daddy will always love you, never doubt that for one second," Jimmy whispered before another yawn escaped him. His tired mind began to wander in a million different directions as he waited for her to finish her bottle.

'She's going to look so much like her mother.'

'I wonder if she will be a genius?'

'What do I want for dinner tomorrow night?'

'I wonder...'

"...if I can convince your mom to let grandma and grandpa take you for a couple of days?" he finished out loud. "Mommy and daddy need some alone time, and you'll love your grandparents. Plus, they've been dying to babysit you anyway." He chuckled, yet another yawn escaping him.

They were both sexually frustrated after six weeks of absolutely nothing, so he thought that now would be a good time to convince her to let his mom and dad babysit Marie for a couple of days. Cindy had been strangely possessive over their daughter in that regard, as though letting someone else take care of their baby for a short time was a cardinal sin of some sort.

He had been trying to convince her his mom and dad could handle taking care of Marie for a few days with little to no luck. She had absolutely zero trust in his dad, and she had lost contact with her own parents a couple of years ago, so they were a no-go. Sure, his dad was a bit eccentric, but he was harmless. After all, Hugh had managed to raise him without too much incident, right?

Jimmy sighed as he watched his daughter finish her bottle. He tossed the bottle into a nearby basket for dirty bottles; grabbed and laid the burping towel that was nearby over his shoulder before gently lifting her and softly, but firmly, patting her back. One too many times of her throwing up all over their shoulders and backs made the two young parents learn a lesson in keeping a towel handy.

Thankfully this time she did not sick up, much to Jimmy's relief. He shifted her to his other shoulder, removed the towel, and continued to rock in the chair. The silence of the room started to bother him after a short while, so he began to hum a soft lullaby which slowly lulled the both of them to sleep for the rest of the night.

Which is where Cindy found them the next morning.

END

A/N: So yeah, like I said, a shorter one for you to read.

In my various AUs, they have 5 kids in this order: Marie (pronounced muh-ree by the way), Isaac, Holly, Michael, and Carter. Carter, the youngest, ends up becoming a criminal mastermind because he's born a sociopath. A genius sociopath. Let's just say he ends up in jail for the rest of his life, hm? If you want a one-shot about that, I might write it, but it will be a standalone story since there's zero fluff about it.

A couple of other things I didn't explain here:

1) They've got money in the bank, which is how they can afford to take a year off from everything to raise their child.

2) No, they are not married. They were planning to get married after they finished college and started up the business they had been planning to start since their early teens.

3) If you are good at math, I'm sure you can connect the dots on some things here, ha ha.

Anyway, until next time. Toodles!