Through All the Dust

My house became the breeding ground for bacteria. It was bound to happen with six adults and two babies all crammed into one living space. Despite the fact that we'd rented ourselves a fairly far-stretching abode, it didn't make things any more comfortable when the sweaty men of Avenged came to stay.
They'd cancelled a week of dates to more thoroughly bask in the first few days of Brody's life. The sentiment touched at my heart but quickly grew old--they were so fucking messy that it was nearly intolerable. I reminded myself hourly that I'd miss them once they were gone again, and that I should enjoy the time while I had it...But then Johnny would spill something and I'd be stewing all over again.
It had been two days since I'd been released back into the world, faith invested that I could do the whole parenting thing. I still wasn't convinced, but Brody's sweet little face sure made me want to try. Lauren had been a godsend, doting on Brody and I as if we were in league with Owen. Brian wasn't far behind, ensuring that I had anything and everything that I wanted. I was sure it had a little to do with guilt, both that he'd missed a lot of my pregnancy, and that he'd be leaving again so shortly.
We'd all managed to have a civilized dinner together, pleasant chatter filling up the evening atmosphere. The excitement hardly phased Brody at all, which I assumed was because he was basically still a peanut and didn't give a fuck about the world yet. He slept through the antics and the shouting and the clanking of glasses. Owen, however, was not so lucky.
"I've got him," Matt assured Lauren as Owen let out a blood-curdling shriek and Lauren made moves to tend to him.
She smiled, giving him a soft nod before sinking back into her dining chair. Brian glanced down at our little bundle, stowed away safely in the thick of his dad's arms.
"Why aren't you fussing, huh?" Brian asked softly, a hint of a grin tugging at his face. "Did you inherit your mom's apathy?"
I snickered from across the table, rolling my eyes as Brian looked up at me for reaction.
"You're an idiot," was all I could offer.
He smiled widely, casting his brown eyes back down to Brody, "Hear that? Your dad's an idiot."
The way he coddled our son made my ovaries line up in an orderly fashion, each plummeting off the edge of a cliff to their deaths one by one. I'd always found him wildly sexy, but something about a man with a baby...I had to physically dab at the beads of sweat forming on my forehead.
"We should watch a movie," Zach announced. "Have a chill night; let Owen cool his fuckin' jets."
"He's loud like his dad," Johnny noted with a distinct smirk.
Lauren smiled a little, pushing the peas on her plate around.
Owen had been loud as all hell for days. She'd suffered from the endless screaming, apologizing repeatedly when Owen's cries would wake up the whole house. There was nothing to apologize for, though; babies cried. We all got it. They'd stumbled into our little house of horrors and damned if they'd try and complain about the experience. But the effects of Owen's discomfort were starting to show in the wear on Lauren's face.
The bags under her eyes were seemingly permanent, the shine in her hair had disappeared and left fray in its wake. She looked like she needed to sleep for a thousand years...and even then.
"Why don't you go to bed?" I suggested to her quietly.
Her weary eyes met mine and she shook her head, "Owen will be at it again within the hour. I'm going to outlast him. I have to."
I smiled sympathetically at her. Lauren was, maybe, the most stubborn of us all; she refused help from anyone. It had surprised me a little when she'd let Matt take Owen off her hands. But he'd finished his dinner, and she had not.
Oh, and I was sure that she secretly loved him. But that was neither here nor there--and I certainly wasn't going to bring it up to her in her current disheveled state. Brody had pretty well taken my death wish away.
"What movie?" Brian asked, distracting himself from our boy for a second.
Zach shrugged, "I don't care. Something good."
"Jacob's Ladder!" I called out excitedly.
I was met with groans and disappointment. Jimmy and I watched that movie on loop throughout our entire friendship; it was his favourite and, though I'd lie and say it wasn't, it had worked out to be mine too. Now I'd watch it and I'd think of him; I'd think, all the way through, "Jimmy's seen this" or "Jimmy loved this part"...We'd spent hours ripping the film apart bit by bit, searching for answers where there were none.
But, I supposed, we'd watched it so many times that everyone else was sick to death of it. Their loss.
"I vote Step Brothers," Johnny said from behind his beer.
"Oh! Yeah!" Matt's voice boomed from behind me, scaring the life from between my bones.
He leaned down to Lauren following his excited outburst and informed him that he was a savior and had gotten Owen to fall into a pit of exhaustion. Lauren was knackered with gratitude.
The boys decided unanimously on a movie. I glanced over at Lauren for an opinion but she was half-asleep in her palms.
"Go to bed," I told her. "Owen's sleeping. Now's your chance."
"No," she insisted. "I want to be an adult. I want to do adult things."
I laughed, "Okay then."
Brian passed Brody back to me as he and the boys sodded off to scrape the plates into the garbage and toss them all haphazardly into the dishwasher. Brody nuzzled against my chest as my hand found his back, rubbing at it absently. I leaned against the doorway to the kitchen, watching my favourite beings buzzing around in all directions. These were the moments that made their chaos worth it. But I found myself filling in the Jimmy blank, plopping him into the scene from somewhere deep in the back of my mind.
After a fight broke out about which direction the plates should face, I took my leave. Brody and I collapsed onto the sofa next to Lauren, who had gone ahead and slid the disc into the DVD player. She was leaned against the arm of the sofa, nodding in an out of sleep. I knew better than to suggest the obvious again.
Instead, I used my free arm to grab the soft throw blanket from the back of the couch and drape it over my legs and hers. She smiled at me as she cuddled against my shoulder.
The boys eventually showed up with snacks galore. They dished the spread out across my coffee table and hit play. Zach switched the light off, letting the soft glow of the television cast our little world into peace. I think we'd made it ten minutes into the movie before Lauren was snoozing against my arm--and Owen against my chest.
"Want me to take him?" Brian asked from beside me, snickering quietly about Lauren's current position.
She was going to wake up with a fierce knot in her neck.
I shook my head, "I'm good."
He took my free hand into his, lacing his fingers with mine and let himself fall into the movie.
As the popcorn emptied and the drinks slowed to a stop, everyone slowly began to file out and off to bed. Johnny was the first, followed by Zach. Matt dragged Lauren to bed, insisting she sleep on a pillow and not my shoulder. She was confused and groggy but didn't put up much of a fight.
Brian and I cuddled up to watch the Catalina Winemixer, enjoying the time as a little family without the added stress of our extended family. I caught Brian nodding off a few times, his lids flickering under the weight of exhaustion. We'd grown old over night; it was just passed eleven and everyone was already tucked away in their beds.
Gone were the nights spend at clubs, stumbling down poorly lit streets and throwing caution to the wind. As my eyes found Brian, I caught myself thinking about the night we'd met. The way he'd followed me; the way he'd picked me up when my drunken legs had stopped working. Tyler had been so irritated with Brian and my shenanigans--and with Jimmy's, too. He didn't know that Brian was my future. He couldn't have known.
But if Tyler could have seen Brian now...His mind focused on staying up with me; to finish this damn movie so he could savor the fleeting time with our son and I...For the first time ever, I was sure Tyler would have changed his mind. He would have seen the way Brian loved me, and he would have loved him too.
"Bri?" I whispered, watching Brody for stirring.
He looked over at me tiredly.
"Do you remember the night we met?"
"When you were pouting?" he asked with a grin.
I rolled my eyes, "No. After that."
"I remember it all, Blair," he told me sweetly.
I let myself smile, "Do you remember going back to my apartment?"
"And we ordered the meat pizza. What the fuck is a meat pizza anyway?"
"I don't know," I laughed softly. "Jimmy wanted it, I think."
Brian nodded, "He was a cockblock that night too, if I recall."
"Maybe," I smirked. "But I'm glad. If we'd done anything differently, we might not be here right now."
"Woah," Brian laughed. "It's way too late to get deep like that."
I missed Jimmy. He didn't care about the hour; he'd get into anything and everything with me, the later the better.
"I'm feeling pretty good lately," I told my husband. "Revived somehow."
Brian smiled, pointing one tattooed finger down to the being at my chest, "That's how."
"That," I scoffed.
He laughed, "You know what I mean."
I nodded, letting silence fall between us again. It was comfortable...safe. So comfortable, in fact, that Brian was asleep within minutes. I listened to his light breathing, savoring the sound before I'd have to say goodbye to it once more. Once the credits rolled, I shook him as gently as I could until his eyes opened again.
"Go to bed," I told him.
"Are you coming?" he asked groggily.
I shook my head, "I'm going to stay up for a bit...Enjoy the quiet for once."
He smirked, "Okay."
I followed Brian to the bedroom, letting him climb into bed without worry as I laid Brody into his bassinet. I looked back and forth between my boys, letting myself laugh quietly when I realized they were in the exact same positions. If only I'd had a camera on me.
With a quiet click, I shut the door behind me and filed back out to the living room. In went Jacob's Ladder and as the sound of helicopters flooded the room, I tucked myself back into the sofa.
I was undisturbed for a while; I'd made it nearly halfway through the movie before Owen's voice cut through the night. The tone startled me for a second before I figured out it wasn't my own child. Footsteps down the hall accompanied the volume of Owen's cries. Lauren appeared around the corner, shaking her head before realizing she had an audience.
"I didn't realize you were up," she half-smiled.
"I'm up," I answered.
She slid onto the cushion next to me, trying and failing to calm her son.
Sometimes I wondered if Owen was crying for his dad. I knew, rationally, that he had no idea he was missing anything. He didn't know what a dad was. But the timing was strange; Owen was typically the pinnacle of a happy baby. He was quiet and content at the worst of times. Since the Avenged family had come around, though, Owen had been out of control. Lauren was sure it was because he was simply overstimulated.
I couldn't help but think maybe Owen was more connected to us all than we thought. Maybe he, too, knew someone was missing. He was simply vocalizing the way we were all feeling.
But I wasn't an idiot--and I knew to keep that heart wrenching theory to myself.
Lauren's eyes flashed over to the TV and she sighed, "Seriously?"
"What?" I laughed. "I fucking love this movie."
"I know you do," she replied. "You and Jimmy used to watch it over and over and over...Fuck."
I gasped, "A midnight cuss! You must be tired."
"No kidding," she frowned, cringing as Owen screeched in her ear.
She tried walking with him. She tried bouncing him. She tried feeding him. Nothing was working. He was growing more and more frustrated with each of her attempts.
"Let me take him," I instructed her. "You go back to bed."
"No," she sighed. "He's my responsibility."
I straightened my brows at her, "Lauren."
"No," she reiterated. "He'll stop...When I die."
I tried my hardest to stifle a laugh.
Another twenty minutes passed and there was still no progress. Lauren had, at least, let me try to walk around with him. No luck.
"What's this kid's fucking problem?" I joked as Lauren snatched him back from me.
Lauren shook her head, "I don't know!"
Just as she was about to lose her mind, our hunky friend rounded the corner. His chest was bare, covered only in the ink he'd had carved into his skin. Lauren sank into embarrassment, immediately begin her ritualistic apologies. Matt rubbed at the back of his neck until she'd stopped.
"Give Owen to me," he instructed her.
She rolled her eyes, "No, it's okay. Really."
"Stop being so god damn stubborn," he groaned, stretching his arms out. "Give him to me."
"Fine," she relented, passing him over. "But it isn't going to help."
But it did.
Instantly.
Owen fell into a hush as Matt curled him up into his chest, toting a smug grin all the while. Lauren's jaw hit the floor as her frustrations reached their peak.
Maybe she just wanted to feel like she had some control; like she could do it all on her own and didn't need any help. She, like I, didn't like to ask for help.
"Now you go to bed," Matt demanded. "Owen and I are going to chill out."
She didn't protest at all, "Thank you. Thank you. Thank you."
He laughed, "Go!"
She waved goodnight to me before practically sprinting down the hall and back to her bed. Owen was passed the fuck out by time Matt climbed onto the couch next to me. His hazel eyes found the television, just in time to watch Jacob Singer tucking his son into bed.
"Missing Jim, huh?" Matt asked knowingly.
I shrugged lazily, "Always."
"Me too," he nodded, daring to look down at Owen before fixating his eyes back on the television.
"You're a wizard," I informed him. "We tried everything to get Owen to stop. You come out here and work your fucking voodoo and suddenly he's sleeping like an angel."
Matt chuckled, "He is an angel."
"What's your secret, Sanders?" I smirked. "Tell me."
"I don't have one," he offered lamely.
"Yes you do," I insisted. "And when you're gone, we'll be desperately trying to figure out what the fuck it is. Just help us sisters out."
He shook his head, "No secrets. I'd tell you if I could."
"Fine," I growled playfully.
I let myself fall back into the movie, relieved that Matt had decided to just to join in and not try and dictate a change of scenery. I hated when people would do that--come in late to something and then whine about it. Matt was better than that, though; he'd always been better than that. He'd do anything to make the people he loved happy. Even watching the same movie six thousand times over.
"Blair," his voice caught me. "Can I...Can I talk to you about something?"
I sensed some seriousness radiating from the Shadows camp. Instinctively, I grabbed the remote and waned the volume down.
"What's up?"
"Something's been...bothering me," he said quietly. "But I don't think anyone will understand...You're probably my best shot. But it might piss you off if I don't word it right."
I was intrigued, if not a little hesitant to continue.
"What's up, Matty?" I tried again more persistantly.
He sighed, taking a second to collect his thoughts, "Well...You know that I love Brody."
When he didn't continue, I informed him that I did, in fact, know that.
"I'm so fucking happy for you and for Bri...and he's perfect," Matt smiled. "I'm totally in love with the kid."
"And?" I baited impatiently.
"Well," he paused. "Okay, here's the thing. I now have two very important little people in my life...But I've, uh, noticed something strange these last few days."
I sighed, "Oh my fuck, Matthew. I'm going to fall into a coma before you get to the point, aren't I?"
He smirked, "Patient as always."
"What are you getting at?" I pressed. "I'm dying over here."
"When Owen cries...I feel...I don't know--something. I feel something. Like I need to go and fix whatever the problem is," Matt reasoned. "But I don't feel that with Brody...Is that normal?"
I shrugged, "Yeah, probably. Brody has two parents...Owen does not."
"I think I'm just missing my fuckin' friend, you know? Owen is like a piece of my best friend that's come back...and I think I missed out on being there for Jimmy...so now I'm, like, indebted to Owen...I can't let anything happen to him...Not like it did with Jim."
While my heart burst for Matt's dilemma, pushing passed his casual way of informing me that he loved Owen more than Brody--not that it was a contest. It kind of felt like a contest at that second, though. Anyway, I let Matt have a second before bursting his bubble.
"Matty," I said slowly. "I...I think your issue might not be that Owen is a part of Jimmy...I think your issue might be that Owen is a part of Lauren."
His eyes dimmed.
"It's okay," I assured him knowingly, keeping my tone mindful of the little angel in his arms. "It's okay."
He shook his head, "I'm a really shitty friend."
"No you're not," I argued sternly. "Whatever's going on, it's okay."
Matt let his head fall back, his eyes wide as he stared at the ceiling for answers. I let him have his moment, fading into an introspective silence.
He let himself fall back down, his hazel eyes beating into mine and he frowned.
"Matty," I frowned back.
He shook his head, pursing his lips as he bore his honesty, "I'm hopelessly in love with her."
I fucking knew it!
I had to work overtime to hide my smugness. I'd called it from a mile away. I'd seen it coming like the moon rising up in the sky--it was just a matter of time.
"I know," I said, trying to remain calm despite my excitement.
"All I want to do is to make her happy," he told me with a great sigh. "I want her and Owen to have everything...I want them to have a good life. I want...I don't know what I want. But seeing her the day you had Brody...It changed everything. I saw her and it was like the first time--and then I realized that maybe I've loved her for a long time..."
"I know," I said again.
He groaned, "Jimmy would fucking hate me. He'd pummel me into the ground."
"Like he could," I scoffed. "With his twig arms? He'd break his wrist on your jaw."
Matt let himself laugh.
"Like I said before...It's okay. I know Lauren better than anyone...And I think whatever you're feeling, she's feeling too. There's a reason she trusts you with Owen--she doesn't even trust me with Owen like she trusts you and we fucking live together."
Matt nodded, floating away with his thoughts.
"It's been a rough go for her," I told him glumly. "Just give her time."
"Yeah..."
I started to wonder if I could make a career out of my psychic abilities.
"Okay," Matt thought aloud after a few seconds of quiet. "Let's watch this dumb movie."
I laughed softly, "You good?"
He nodded, "I'm always better after some Blair Peterson wisdom--Oh, shit. Haner. I'm never going to get used to that."
"That's okay," I smiled. "I probably won't either."
We snuggled into the same cushion, resting our weery skulls together as Owen slept soundly between us, his inherited crystal eyes closed off to the world.
Leave it to Jimmy to bring everyone together. It was almost like he'd never left.

Notes

Long live the power of Shair.

And maybe of Matren?...Lauratt?...Shauren?....Laurdows?... Oh my god.

xx