Chapter 14 - Babies and Bugs

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Jay jumped up the steps to the house two at a time and came to a stop on the porch, tapping his fingers on the glass window in the center of the door as he shoved his keys into his jacket pocket with his other hand. On the other side of the door he could hear the shouts and scrambles toward the door and after a minute, the door swings open, Stella shooting the sergeant a wide grin as she greeted him, moving to the side to allow him to come inside the house.

"Kelly's just getting her now, they've been hidden upstairs for a while because they knew you were coming." She says as she shut the front door behind him.

She leads him through to the living room and offers him a seat on the couch as he waits but he shakes his head.

"If I sit down, Mae will weasel a delay out of me, I've gotta be ready to just leave otherwise we'll be here all night." Jay replies, earning a chuckle from the firefighter in return.

Stella turns on her heels to face him completely before crossing her arms over her chest. "Well she's had a great time, and she's been perfect as always."

Jay hooks his eyebrow up. "Are you sure we're talking about the same kid?" He asks.

Stella laughs before deciding to scoot past him and make her way back over to the stairs, standing at the bottom and with a stern voice she shouts upstairs. "Nathan Matthew, get your butt down here!"

Jay's not sure exactly what he hears but he swears there is a pair of giggles coming from one of the rooms upstairs and he locks his gaze with Stella across the room. She subtly shakes her head, unable to help the smirk that climbs up her face. She looks back up the stairs.

"Kelly! You gotta get him." She shouts, and she gets a large hum in return but from the opposite direction she was expecting and she sends a confused look toward the kitchen.

Responding to his name, Kelly appeared in the doorway from the kitchen, holding the youngest one on his hip. "What's up?" He asks.

Stella knits her eyebrows together. "I thought you were upstairs."

With his spare hand, Kelly points behind him into the room he had just left. "I was getting Ben cleaned up," he replies before sending the sergeant a nod. "Hey, Jay."

"Hey," he greets back before deciding to take a shot at it himself, trekking over to the stairs and leaning forward over the first two steps. "Macie, come on!"

From the top of the stairs, there's a faint reply coming from his daughter. "We're not here!"

Jay narrows his eyes, staring blankly in front of him for a beat trying to work out how Macie thought that would work before sending a brief look over his shoulder. "Can I go get her?" He asks, earning a nod from Stella in return before he took off upstairs, following the sound of Nate trying to shush Macie from making any noise and stepping through the partially open door into the four-year-old's bedroom, Jay spots the familiar pair of shoes poking out from under the bed and he leans up against the doorframe, tilting his head slightly.

"Mace, I can see your shoes."

Slowly, the shoes retract under the bed and Jay tries not to laugh. Then a soft whisper could be heard from the floor. "No you can't."

Jay shoves his hands into his pants pockets, crossing one leg over the other. "C'mon Mae, you and Nate can have another play date soon."

"But I don't want this play date to finish."

He bobs his head slightly. "I know but it has to, you have school tomorrow and Nate's mom and dad have work tomorrow so you can't stay here."

"Can't we just have five more minutes?" She pleads.

Jay softly shakes his head, despite the fact Macie couldn't see that. "No, I'm sorry, we have to go."

It's quiet for a minute before Macie crawls out from under the bed, followed quickly by her friend. When Mae stands up, she does the next best thing she could think of, shining the puppy dog eyes she had mastered from her mother that got Jay every time. With a little pout added in there too, Jay almost caved, having to take a deep breath just to shake his head at her again.

"No, come on, you've still gotta have a bath yet."

She groans quietly at losing and approaches her father, turning back around to hug her friend on her way out.

She pouts all the way out the front door, thanking Kelly and Stella for having her with the face on but by the time they get to the car she didn't seem as though she was bothered as much, telling her father what she and her best friend had gotten up to while she spent the afternoon there.

Jay climbed behind the wheel and pulled the truck away from the curb, Macie still talking about her game she had been playing with Nate and when the truck started to pick up some speed on the way to the end of the block, she comes to a stop and with a quick glance in the rearview mirror, Jay spots the way her head turns to one side.

"Daddy, can I ask you a question?" She wonders.

Jay bobs his head, putting his focus on the road. "Of course, what is it?" He asks.

Macie takes in a large breath and says it so casually. "Where do babies come from?"

Jay almost chokes on the air around him and immediately his brain switches to the last time she asked that question four years prior when he and Hailey told her about how she would be an older sister. He swallows thickly and he slowly shrugs his shoulders.

"I don't know, sweetheart," his voice is quiet and he quickly moves on before she can question his response further. "Why are you asking?" He wonders.

Her gaze flies out the window and she watches the houses on the block disappear behind them as they drove past. "Nate told me his Momma is having a baby and he asked her-"

Jay quickly found himself cutting in with widened eyes. "Wait, Stella's having a baby?"

Macie nods. "But Nate said when he asked her where they come from and she said she didn't know so I thought I'd ask you but Nate's Momma must be lying because it's the momma that has the baby so they have to know where they come from," she then turns her head to look at her father again. "Do you think Momma will know if I ask her?"

Jay purses his lips, bobbing his head slightly. "Oh yeah, maybe she will." He replies quickly, keeping his gaze trained in front of him as he continues to drive back home.

When they arrived home, Macie ran straight into the house, looking around for her mother. She found her in the kitchen, clearing up dishes from their own dinner before Jay left to pick her up, and she comes to a stop in the doorway. Hailey sends her a smile and asks her how the play date was but rather than answer she skips straight to the point, asking her the same question she had asked to Jay not long before.

"Momma, where do babies come from?"

Hailey stops what she was doing, standing up straight with the plate she was loading into the dishwasher still in her hand. She stares over at Macie blankly for a beat. "Where is that coming from?"

At this point, Jay joins them in the kitchen, standing there for a second and before Macie can explain where her sudden curiosity had come from, he jumps in, pointing behind him.

"I'm gonna go sit with Alfie." He says, turning on his heels and walking down the hall toward the living room.

Hailey watched him as he disappeared with a furrow in her eyebrow and when he's gone she looks back at Macie as the younger one replies.

"Nate's Momma is having a baby and he asked her where they come from and she said she doesn't know, Daddy says he doesn't know so you must know where they come from."

With her head running at a thousand miles a minute, she softly shakes her head. "Sorry, baby, I don't know."

She groans and throws her head back but Hailey doesn't carry on the conversation as her face drops slightly, it dawning on her why Jay acted so strange when he came into the house. So Hailey swiftly changed the subject, shooting Macie a wide smile.

"Hey, why don't you go get ready for bed and I'll put on a movie to watch before your story, how does that sound?" She asks, watching as her daughter's face lights up at that idea.

Macie turns on her heels and runs toward the stairs, running up them to get changed into her pajamas quickly and Hailey finishes up loading up the last plate she had in hand into the dishwasher before shutting the door to put it on a cycle later. She makes her way down the corridor and into the living room, joining Jay on the couch.

Alfie had his head rested on Jay's torso, lying on his back on the couch on the iPad and Jay ran his hand through the toddler's curls. The sergeant looks up when his wife sits beside him and shoots her a smile which Hailey can tell is forced.

"You okay?" She asks.

He nods his head quickly. "Yeah, I'm fine," he responds, Hailey seeing through the act straight away and she just sends him a look and that was all that was needed to tell him she knew he was lying. So he just lets out a slow sigh as he propped his elbow on the back of the couch, scratching the back of his neck. "I don't know, I just think Mae telling me Stella's pregnant got to me a little. We've just had our third negative test, kinda just feels like the universe is laughing at us, which is not true I know that, just hard not to think it. And I'm happy for them, they're amazing parents and I know they will be to this new baby, but it just reminded me we're trying to have that too and the world isn't in our favor as much."

Hailey cut in, shaking her head. "No, that's not true, when it's the right time it will happen for us, we will have it too, I promise. The universe isn't laughing at us, it's pissed because we're planning for it and it can't take us by surprise this time, but it will get over it and it will happen."

She reaches over and grabs his hand, giving it a soft squeeze but before either of them could say something, Hailey's phone dings from her pocket and she reaches for it, pulling it out to see an email from Alfie's preschool. Her eyes scan the screen and she can't help but mumble under her breath as she finishes reading and she puts her phone down to meet her husband's gaze.

"There's been a lice outbreak at the preschool and they're shut for the next three days." She says, watching as Jay sighs and as if on cue, Alfie's hand reaches up to his head and he starts scratching at his hair, making Hailey's shoulders slump.

"Oh crap." She whispers.

After digging high and low through the bathroom in search of the comb, finally finding it hidden behind a box of unopened toothpaste in the medicine cabinet, Hailey just about managed to get Alfie to sit in her lap and she coaxed him with a sucker so make sure he stayed still. She struggles to get the metal comb through his untamed hair because despite the fact she had only combed it after his bath less than an hour ago, the boy's curls were unruly - a feature passed down from his father's side.

It takes five minutes before she finds what she was in search for, one of the bugs the email had warned her about and she wiped it on a piece of toilet paper, calling out to the opposite side of the room where Jay was sat with Macie watching the movie she had been promised.

"We've got a live one."

Alfie cries out a few times when his hair gets pulled and Hailey apologizes profusely every time it happens, wanting to soothe the area where it hurt but fighting the urge each time - she would rather get all the bugs out of his hair before she starts wrapping his curls around her fingers again.

She tosses the toilet paper in the trash bag once she made her way through Alfie's hair and she pushed him off her lap and thanked him for sitting still before she gave Jay a look.

"I want to do hers too." She says across the room and with a scratch at the back of his head knowing she wasn't going to be happy about it, Jay sat up and nudged Macie in the direction of his mother.

With the same coax that worked with her brother, Hailey got Macie a sucker and grabbed a hair tie while she out of the room to divide her daughter's hair into two sections to make it easier to manage. Thankfully Macie stayed put throughout the process.

About halfway through and another few squares of toilet paper, because despite Macie's arguments that her hair wasn't itchy, the early life stages of the bugs could be found tangled up at the roots of her hair, she glanced over at Jay and she wipes the comb on the paper again. "Can you get their sheets and throw them in the machine and put on their spare ones?"

He nods, jumping up from the couch and on the way out he shivers slightly, raising his hand to scratch at his hair. "It's making me itchy." He says, earning a small chuckle from his wife as he goes off to change over the kids' bedsheets.

"Why is it always me?" Jay questions with a sulk before he moves his head away once he feels a pull from the comb. "Ow."

Hailey pushes his head back up straight. "It wouldn't hurt if you kept still."

His shoulders fall. "Why do you never get the stuff the kids bring home?" He asks, referring to the point that whenever the kids bring home something from school it only ever seemed to be Jay that would catch it off of them - colds, stomach flu and now head lice.

Hailey shrugs as she runs the comb through his hair again, running into the same problem she encountered with Alfie when the comb would get caught in her husband's curls - yes Jay's weren't as extreme as Alfie's but the fact that Jay was the most reluctant to stay sat there, it was making the pulling of his hair more frequent.

She pulls the comb away and wipes it on the paper, throwing out that square now it had been used enough times. "Good news is you've only got eggs."

"Oh yay me." He mumbles sarcastically before going quiet, allowing Hailey's last words to run through her head another time and her previous conversation with Macie comes up, making her tap his shoulder.

"Maybe that's how we should tell Mae." She suggests.

"Huh?" Jay asks, confused as to what she meant.

Hailey puts the comb back into his hair. "To answer her question, just explain about the eggs and sperm."

Jay moves, instantly making Hailey tug with the comb and it pulls at his hair again. He then looks over his shoulder to meet her gaze. "She's five, we're not saying anything like that to her." He says.

Hailey rests her finger on his jaw and turns it back so he was facing straight again. "Okay, we won't explain it exactly like that, but we do need to talk to her because she will just keep asking anyone she can and she should find out the answer from us."

Jay lets out a quiet yet audible sigh. "How do you tell a five-year-old that though? Without getting overly technical."

Hailey softly shakes her head, running the comb through his hair again. "I don't know."

They both go quiet, thinking of possible solutions before Jay speaks up thirty seconds later.

"Maybe I can text Adam, get some advice on it, he and Kim would have gone through the same thing with Mack."

"But that's gonna raise the question of why she's asking in the first place," Hailey responds. "And if we were going to know about Stella she would have told us, I don't think we're supposed to know yet and we can't let the rest of the unit knowing."

Jay shrugs. "We could just say it was natural curiosity or something if they ask, but I doubt they would."

Hailey bobs her head, despite the fact he wouldn't be able to see that. "Alright, give 'em a text."

Which is how, fifteen minutes later and after Hailey had finished combing through Jay's hair and running the comb through hers just for good measure, they ended up sat on the edge of Macie's bed, Hailey dropping her hands in her lap and pulling her lips into a straight line.

"Mae, Daddy and I weren't completely honest with you earlier when we told you we don't know where babies come from and the reason for that was because we didn't know what to tell you. We've never had to tell anyone before because all of our friends already know how and we were a little confused about how to tell you, but we know you would want us to be honest with you so we are going to tell you the truth and answer your question, and any other questions you have after, okay?"

Macie nods, sitting up in bed completely so her back rested on the headboard. "Okay."

Hailey quickly glanced over at her husband, who had a look on his face that told her he wasn't ready to jump in just yet. One of the key points Kim had told them was not to speak if they felt they couldn't do it so as not to make Macie feel as if they were uncomfortable, so Hailey spoke up first to ease Jay into it if he could.

"So you know how you and Alfie are different because you're a girl and he's a boy, and how that makes you look different?" She asks, earning another nod from her daughter in return. "Well that is exactly the same for me and Daddy. And one thing that makes you and me different from Daddy and Alfie is that we have a special little part in our body that can grow a baby when you become a grown-up. And that special little part has these very tiny little eggs-"

"Like scrambled eggs?" Macie cuts in, the food-driven aspect of her personality showing and Jay and Hailey both let out a laugh because of course she would try to understand it like that. And with that it was as if the blanket of tension was lifted because despite the conversation they were having with their daughter, she was still being her.

Hailey shakes her head fast. "No, nothing like scrambled eggs," she says before falling back on to topic. "But, uhm, there's also these tiny swimmers that are like fishes that Daddy has, and when the egg and the little fishes meet, it becomes a baby."

Macie's eyebrows furrow and for a spilt second, Hailey and Jay prepare themselves for the question they are about to be asked. Sure enough less than a second later, Macie's curious voice fills the room.

"Well how do the fishes and the egg meet?"

Jay clears his throat, having expected that question but even though that his silence proves he doesn't have an answer so Hailey takes charge again so Macie wouldn't get impatient whilst waiting for the reply.

"Well when two grown-ups love each other very much, like me and Daddy, and Nate's Momma and Daddy, most of the time they will decide that they want to have a baby, so they'll make the baby."

Jay's eyes grow wide at the way Hailey leaves her sentence and it takes her a beat to realize the openness she had left it for Macie to ask a particular question they didn't want to answer and the sergeant feels his breath hitch in the back of his throat when he hears his daughter's voice speak up again.

"Most of the time? What does that mean?"

Jay feels the breath escape again and he takes this one, feeling his chest go down as he responds. "Sometimes they don't have to talk about having the baby first, sometimes it just happens."

"And what happens then?" Macie wonders.

Jay purses his lips. "Well its a surprise for the grown-ups because they didn't talk about it first, so they have to talk about it after there is already a baby growing, and then it all carries on the same way. The baby grows and then the baby is born."

"I have one more question," she announces, preparing her parents for it. "How long does the baby grow in there for?"

Hailey reaches her hand forward, placing it on top of Macie's leg over the sheet and sent her a smile. "About nine months."

In most cases anyway, you were born at seven months and your brother was born at eight. That thought rushes through both of their heads simultaneously but neither of them say anything, waiting a minute to see if she had any further questions but when she doesn't ask anything else, Hailey quirks her eyebrow up.

"Is there anything else you would like to know?" She wonders.

Macie ponders her response for a moment before slowly shaking her head. "No, that's it."

Hailey bobs her head. "Okay, come on, you've got school in the morning." She says, leaning forward to tuck her daughter under the sheet before both her and Jay stand up from the bed, taking turns to kiss the top of her head, whispering her a goodnight on their way toward the door.

Right before they can step outside the door, Macie looks over at them with the same curious look on her face. "The people that don't talk about having a baby first, are they happy with the baby even though they didn't talk about it first?" She asks.

Jay feels the corners of his lips pull up into a smile and he bobs his head up and down. There's a quiet pause before he responds. "The baby is the best part of their life," he says and she seems content with that answer, turning over on to her side and falling further into her pillow. "Goodnight, Mae." Jay says, following behind Hailey to step out of the room and softly close the door.

They make it down the hall before she comes to a stop, turning on her heels and she smirks. "The best part, huh?"

Jay jerks his head to the side. "Well.. one of the three best parts."

Hailey takes a step toward to him, slowly wrapping her arms around his waist to bring him closer. "Oh yeah, what is that?" She wonders.

He brings his chin down to his chest and looks down at her, darting his gaze between her eyes. "Macie, Alfie... and you."

"You're cheesy, you know that?" She asks, unable to help the smirk that was on her face regardless of how cheesy her husband was being.

He bobs his head confidently before he leans down, catching her lips on his. His hand moves, resting on the nape of her neck and he feels her stand up on her toes so he didn't have to bend down as much. She tightens her arms around him, pulling her chest into his torso and after a beat she pulls away, Jay hovering above her lips.

"Did you put a new sheet on the bed?"

He slowly nods his head, humming slightly in response.

She steps backwards, reaching for his hand as she pulls him toward the stairs. "Come on."

She tugs on his hand again when they reach the stairs and with her two steps up, her height met his and he stopped.

"What about our little.. bug problem?" He asks.

She tilts her head to one side. "Why would you remind me of that?" She asks. "You were clean, it's fine." She adds, trying to pull him up the stairs again but he doesn't move.

"You and I both know I wasn't completely clean." He says.

Her hand moves forward, trailing her fingernail across his collarbone. "Jay are you gonna keep arguing with me and cockblock yourself or are you gonna follow me upstairs?"

His response is immediate, his face falling of any hesitancy. "I'm gonna choose the second one."

She leans closer again, holding herself mere inches away from his face and she drops her voice down to a whisper. "Smart choice."

She bites the inside of her cheek when she watches his eyes change, his pupils growing wider and he throws himself forward, locking his lips on hers again. His hands quickly travel down her back, hooking around her legs to pick her up as her hands already start clawing at the neck of his shirt, itching to remove the clothing as he carries her off up the stairs toward their room.

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so there was another jump from the last chapter, this chapter takes place in the later end of november if that wasn't clear already. thank you so much for reading, i love you all!