A/N: This expands upon one of my drabbles from "Five Things That Never Happened to Christine Cagney", but you can read this without reading the drabble first. In case you don't remember how the story of Chris and David Keeler ends in the series, I included an explanatory note at the end of the story. Thank you for reading. :)
Ninth-Inning Baby
"Chris", his voice comes from somewhere behind her. She stirs. Didn't she close her eyes only ten minutes ago? Maybe this is a dream.
"Chris. Someone's hungry." It's not a dream, she can hear whining that is growing more and more insistent.
He lowers himself onto the mattress and she turns around, rolls towards the depression on his side of the bed. Groaning, and without opening her eyes just yet, she props herself up on one arm and begins to unbutton her pajama top.
"Which side did I do last?"
"Right." She has no idea how he remembers these things. They are her breasts and she keeps forgetting.
He sits on his haunches, gently rocking the baby against his bare chest, waiting for her to get ready.
The mewling becomes even louder and she can already feel her milk coming. If she isn't quick now, everything will be soaked again. With fingers still clumsy from sleep, she gropes around and finally manages to unhook the cup.
"Okay, give her to me."
"See, here we go", he says to the little girl and hands her over to Chris. Then he stretches out on his side of the bed and draws the covers back up to their waists.
"Hi sweetheart", she coos, and in a series of movements that has already become second nature over the past few weeks, she shifts a little in bed, slides her arm out from under the baby and cups her head with one hand to guide it, offering her the breast with the other one.
The little girl has stopped crying and is smacking her lips as she searches. What always does the trick is stroking her cheek with one finger. Voilà – she opens her mouth wide, finds the areola and latches on like a pro, then quickly falls into a determined sucking rhythm.
It is only uncomfortable for a moment. Practice does make perfect, she thinks and smiles to herself. With the baby in place and the familiar tingling sensation of let-down enveloping her breast, she lets her head sink slowly back onto the pillow, getting more comfortable. She looks over at him in the semi-darkness. He smiles, too, and reaches out to brush back a strand of hair that has fallen across her forehead.
"I didn't think I would ever get to see this, you know?"
"See what?"
He shrugs. "Us. You. Half-awake at four in the morning, nursing our baby. It still amazes me."
"Tell me about it", she says hoarsely and looks down at their daughter.
Ella has David's dark eyes, her grandfather's strawberry blond hair, and Chris's fair complexion. She is the most beautiful baby. When Chris thinks of the birth, it feels as if it happened forever ago and just yesterday.
Right when she thought she would go insane, white-hot pain gave way to immense slippery relief, and there was commotion and somebody sing-songed a drawn out "Hellooo!" and another voice said "Five thirty-four". Then a pair of gloved hands lifted the baby up from between her legs and onto her chest. And there she was, wide-eyed, silent, looking every bit as stunned as Chris felt.
How she wishes Charlie could have met his newest granddaughter. But she knows that if he hadn't died, there is no way Ella would ever have been born. How's that for irony?
If her father hadn't been the hopeless alcoholic that he was and if his drinking hadn't killed him, she would not have gone on that awful bender when she did, she would not have joined AA, and she would not have let David back into her life.
For a long time, she didn't think that she could ever truly recover from hitting rock bottom like that. The shame and the anger and the desperate yearning for just one more drink were so powerful.
All of life felt fragile, like anything good might disappear again at any moment, without warning, and probably through her own damn fault. The positive pregnancy test two months before her 43rd birthday served as another reminder of everything she might lose.
David was over the moon, but she begged him not to get his hopes up. The fear of having to deal with yet another personal tragedy under the eyes of everyone loomed large, and she dressed in loosely cut blouses and baggy sweaters, scarves and jackets for as long as she could, putting on her best John Wayne act at the 14th.
They all seemed to buy it, except for Mary Beth of course. She cornered her in the Jane one afternoon and forced it out of her, having been worried that Chris had started drinking again, what with the mood swings and the pasty look and the secrecy. When she showed Mary Beth the ultrasound picture, they both cried.
Spring came. She made it past 12 weeks and then 16, outgrowing her last pair of regular pants. David was so sure and so happy and talked to the baby every night, and little by little she allowed herself to believe that this would turn out alright.
The detectives threw her a terrible baby shower, but the specially made NYPD onesie that they gave her almost made up for the indignity.
Her hand rests lightly on Ella's back, rising and falling with each breath and swallow. Every now and then a little foot kicks her in the stomach. She still has a hard time looking at her postpartum body in the mirror, seeing herself like that, with stretch marks and a squishy leftover belly and boobs that wouldn't look out of place on a porn star.
"In the mornings, when you're gone and her crying wakes me up, sometimes I'm so confused, you know? Just for a second, and then I remember that she's here now and I feel horrible because I forgot", she admits quietly.
"Chris, you're exhausted, that's all. And she's only five weeks old. We're still settling into this."
"I know. I just don't want to screw everything up."
"You're not, and you won't. I think you're doing a wonderful job. And Ella thinks so, too", David nods towards the baby, who is making little grunting noises as she drinks.
"I love her so much."
"I know", he says evenly. "Me too. And I love you."
"I love you too."
After a brief pause, she continues. "And I am happy. A lot happier than I thought I could be. Or I guess than I thought I deserved to be."
"Of course you deserve to be happy, Chris."
At first she can't say anything in response because of the tears tingling at the back of her throat. All that comes out is a sniffle, followed by a helpless laugh. "I don't even know why I'm crying."
"There doesn't have to be a reason."
Sometimes she worries about genes. What else besides the hair color and pale skin Ella might have inherited from the Cagney side. But then she reminds herself that the little girl is half David, too, and there is a lot of comfort in that thought.
When he comes home at night, the first thing he does is take Ella off her hands, so she can be alone for a while and go take a shower or nap for a little bit. Over the past couple of weeks, she has found him in his shirtsleeves and dress pants, preparing dinner while wearing Ella strapped into a carrier; asleep on the sofa with Ella curled up on his chest, also sleeping soundly; swaying to one of Charlie's old big band records with Ella in his arms.
She knew that David would be a wonderful father. But nothing prepared her for how terrifying and beautiful it feels to see him with the child they share. Sometimes she has to look away because she is afraid that if she doesn't, her heart might burst.
Oh, she is sure that there will be times when she will feel trapped. When she will resent being tied down like this. She has a less than stellar relationship record. But if she has learned one thing from getting back together with David, it is that life and love are not zero-sum games. They can disagree on almost everything and still love each other, they can give each other space and find their way back, they can share a life and still have their own hopes and dreams. Maybe those aren't such bad lessons for a little girl to learn from her parents.
As if she senses that now is the time for some comic relief, Ella suddenly detaches from the breast with a smack and a pop.
"Are you done already?" Chris sniffs, cupping the little head in her hand. Ella fusses. "I don't think you are." Then, to David: "I'm going to try the other side."
Careful not to squish or jostle the baby, she sits up in bed and proceeds to fasten the right cup and unhook the other, then lifts Ella into her lap and quickly gets her to latch on again. She winces when she starts sucking with the full force that all nine-and-a-half pounds of her can muster. Definitely not done yet.
David sits next to her, leaning against the headboard, and presses a kiss onto her cheek.
She smiles. "If you had told me two or three years ago that this was going to happen, I would have laughed you out of town."
"Then I'm glad I didn't. I like it here." He kisses her cheek again, longer and wetter and closer to her mouth.
"Oh yeah?" She angles her head towards his until their lips meet in a lazy kiss.
He smiles against her mouth. "Yeah. And have I told you recently how happy I am that you changed your mind about having a ninth-inning baby?"
"Mh-m", she hums and looks down at Ella. "We really knocked that one out of the park, didn't we?"
A/N: In the season 7 episode "Hello / Goodbye", Chris and David Keeler get back together and David proposes to her. It turns out, however, that David has an idea of their future together that is fundamentally different from Chris's. He imagines them having children (and eventually grandchildren) together. She agrees that David should have kids, seeing as he would make a great dad. She, on the other hand, doesn't want to have what she calls a "ninth-inning baby" at age 42. Saying that she doesn't know whether a husband and children were ever part of her dream and that even if they were, that has changed now, Chris turns down David's proposal, also on the grounds that she wants them to see each other if and when they want to, not because they have to. David, who wants to share a life with Chris, breaks up with her. Later on, Chris explains to Mary Beth that she sometimes struggles with the thought of never having her own children, but that she is okay with it most of the time.
I love Chris with David, they have great chemistry and it would have made me happy to see her end up with him.