Why do I exist?

Pairing: dad! Noah Sebastian x ex!hookup reader

Series summary: Noah didn’t expect that his one night stand from 2020 would keep a secret from him for years. But now, in 2024, as Bad Omens is back in Oregon, he wasn’t expecting to run into you while trying to buy some energy drink so he could endure the tour.

You looked even prettier, yes, but what caught his attention wasn’t your beauty, or the fact that you looked like you’d just seen a ghost just by looking at him.

It was, in fact, the little girl holding your hand, telling you she liked his hoodie. He really wasn’t prepared for was seeing himself reflected in that little girl who loved bees and cookies, not expecting to change his entire life for good.

author's note: I'm kind of insecure with this one cause I wasn't that inspired, I've been having some personal issues lately that gave me a hard time writing, but I gave my best <3 Hope you guys like it, EON is three chapters away from the end so I hope everyone likes the last three chapters that are coming!!

masterlist

The house, once bright and full of laughter, suddenly felt too small, as if the walls had inhaled sharply the moment that photo hit the internet and were now pressing inward, squeezing the air from your lungs.

The morning light that had felt warm and golden an hour ago now looked harsh, clinical, exposing every corner of the life you’d dared to believe was safe.

You stood frozen in the middle of the kitchen, arms hanging useless at your sides, the phone still burning in Noah’s white-knuckled grip. The image was branded behind your eyelids: Kara’s tiny profile turned up toward him, his own face softened in a way the world had never been allowed to see, the unmistakable mirror of their features side-by-side.

A stranger had stolen that moment and turned it into ammunition.

A small tug at the hem of your shirt snapped you back.

“Mommy?” Kara’s voice was tiny, threaded with that instinctive whine children get when they sense the emotional barometer in the room has plummeted. She was wearing crooked fairy wings, her cheeks flushed from sleep and leftover syrup. “Why is your face all scrunched and sad?”

Your throat closed. You opened your mouth and nothing came out.

Noah moved before you could, dropping to one knee so fast the fairy wings fluttered like startled birds. He scooped her up in one fluid motion, settling her on his hip the way he’d learned to do in the last few days, like it was the most natural thing in the world. His hand splayed across her back, big and protective, fingers spanning almost her entire torso.

“Hey, little bug,” he murmured, pressing his cheek to her curls for a second, breathing her in like oxygen. His voice was calm, trying to stay steady for her. “Mommy and Daddy have to do some super boring grown-up talking right now. How about we set up Bluey on the big TV with the special headphones? And…” he bounced her once, earning a surprised giggle, “I happen to know where the emergency gummy stash is. The good kind. The ones with the sour ones you like.”

Kara’s eyes went comically wide. “The green-and-red ones?”

“Extra green-and-red ones,” he promised solemnly.

She considered this bribe for half a second, then nodded with the gravity of a diplomat signing a peace treaty. “Okay. But Bee has to watch, Bun-Bun too.”

“Bee gets the best seat on the couch, so does Bun-Bun” Noah vowed.

He carried her into the living room, wings bouncing with every step, and you followed a few paces behind, feeling like you were floating outside your own body. He settled her into the mountain of pillows he’d started calling “the nest,” tucked the giant noise-canceling headphones over her ears as they swallowed half her face, and handed her the iPad already queued to the newest Bluey episode. Then he produced the contraband Haribo from the highest cabinet, the one she couldn’t reach even with her step stool, and poured a small, colorful mountain into a bowl shaped like a dinosaur. That mountain would undoubtedly rot her teeth but buy you the twenty minutes of desperate peace you needed.

Kara’s entire face lit up like the sunrise. 

She immediately shoved three gummies into her mouth at once, cheeks bulging like a chipmunk, and gave Noah a sticky thumbs-up. He kissed the top of her head, lingered there for a long second, breathing her in again, then walked back to you.

The mask slipped the moment he crossed the threshold into the kitchen.

His shoulders sagged, the calm evaporating like smoke. “It’s everywhere,” he rasped, scrolling with a thumb that shook. “Reddit, TikTok, Instagram… someone already made a side-by-side of her face and mine from when I was younger.”

He turned the phone toward you. The numbers climbed in real time, obscene and dizzying. Quote tweets, reaction videos, conspiracy threads. Someone had slowed down an old Twitch clip of Noah saying he wanted kids someday and layered it with the grocery photo. Another account zoomed in on Kara’s little hand clutching his finger and captioned it “DNA doesn’t lie.”

Your knees buckled. You caught yourself on the counter, the granite cold under your palms. “They’re talking about my baby like she’s… evidence. Like she’s a plot twist.”

Noah’s jaw flexed, a hard, tight line. He locked the phone and set it face-down on the counter as if it were radioactive, a poisonous thing. “I’m calling Matt. Right now.”

He stepped into the hallway, and you heard the low, furious rumble of his voice. You caught fragments, sharp and clipped: “Do I really need to expose my baby to this?... I get it, Matt, I know it’s for her safety in the long run… no, we are not denying anything… yes, she’s mine, of course she’s mine… I will draft a statement within the hour… and I want that original photo taken down, I don’t care what it costs, make it disappear…”

Your legs could no longer hold you. You slid down the cabinet until you were sitting on the cool tile, drawing your knees to your chest, arms wrapped tightly around them as if you could physically hold yourself together. The unbridled joy of the last few days, the lazy mornings, the shared laughter, the feeling of a complete family, felt suddenly fragile, like spun glass. One careless stranger with a phone camera had shattered it, and everything you’d so carefully built in your little bubble was now exposed, laid bare for the world to pick apart.

Noah came back ten minutes later looking like he’d fought a war and only barely won. The lines around his eyes were deeper, carved with a new kind of exhaustion. He crouched in front of you, hands settling on your knees, grounding.

“Hey.” His voice was soft, urgent. “Look at me.”

You did. His eyes were red-rimmed, but blazing.

“Matt’s handling the takedowns. I’m writing the statement myself. No PR fluff. Just the truth.” He brushed a tear from your cheek you hadn’t realized had fallen. “We are acknowledging her. I’m acknowledging you. And then we ask nicely for privacy. And if they don’t give it, we go scorched earth.”

You laughed once, a broken, wet sound. “People are going to hate me.”

“Some people,” he corrected, his voice gentle but firm. “A very loud, very small fraction of people who don’t know the first thing about us. And the ones who matter? My friends? They’re already sending texts. They’re worried about her, they’re happy for me. For us.” He reached out, brushing a thumb across your damp cheek. “I’m not ashamed of either of you. I’m proud. I’m so damn proud it hurts. I just hate that the world gets to have an opinion on the best thing that’s ever happened to me before we were ready to share it.”

From the living room, the faint, tinny sound of the Bluey theme song drifted in, followed by Kara’s delighted, uninhibited giggle at something Bingo did. You both turned toward the sound instinctively, like flowers turning toward the last patch of sunlight on a stormy day.

“She doesn’t know yet,” you whispered. “To her, you’re just Daddy. The one who makes ceiling pancakes and lets her put sparkly clips in your hair and sings the bee song off-key.”

Noah’s smile was small, heartbreaking. “I want to keep it that way for as long as humanly possible. I just want to be ‘Daddy.’”

He helped you stand, arms sliding around your waist, forehead pressing to yours. “We’re still getting on that plane tonight. You go tie up your life in Oregon. And when you come back, we do this right. Out in the open. No more hiding.”

You nodded, breathing him in. “Okay.”

He kissed your temple, then rested his cheek there. “I’m in love with you,” he said quietly, like it was the simplest truth in the world. “You and Kara are my entire universe.”

The confession settled over you like the softest blanket and the heaviest armor all at once.

“I love you too,” you whispered back, the words trembling but sure.

He laughed once, watery, relieved and kissed you properly then, slow and deep and desperate, like he was trying to pour every promise he couldn’t yet say into your mouth.

The rest of the day was logistics wrapped in tenderness.

Noah wrote the statement in the notes app on his phone while Kara napped on his chest, her little hand curled around one of his necklaces, rising and falling with his breaths. When she woke, he let her “help” him type, her sticky fingers adding random letters and emojis until the draft looked like abstract art. He kept every single one.

He posted it at 4:17 p.m.

“A private photo of me with my daughter and her mother was shared without our consent. Yes, I have a daughter. She is three years old and the absolute light of my life. Her mother and I are committed to raising her together and ask that you respect our family’s privacy, especially our child’s. We will not be addressing this further. Thank you.” 🐝

He deactivated comments immediately.

Within minutes, the tone online began to shift. The ugliness was still there, it always would be, but it was being drowned out by an ocean of support from his true fans. They posted old Twitch stream clips of a younger Noah talking wistfully about one day having a family, created beautiful edits of him on stage with the bee emoji overlaid, and flooded the mentions with messages that simply read, “Welcome to the world, little one,” and “We love you, Noah.”

The original photo disappeared from every major platform by sunset.

You watched the tide turn from the couch, a sleeping Kara a warm, heavy weight against your side, her breath puffing softly against your arm. Noah sat beside you, his hand resting on your thigh, his touch a constant, quiet reassurance, as if he needed the physical contact to believe this new reality was real.

Later, as the sun bled orange across the sky, Noah drove you to the airport. Kara, emotionally wrung out, fell asleep twenty minutes in, head heavy on your arm, Bee clutched in a death grip.

At the terminal, Noah carried both suitcases and a cranky, half-asleep Kara who refused to be put down. He held her the entire time, through baggage check, through security, all the way to the gate, her little face buried in his neck, arms locked like a baby koala.

When the boarding call came, he finally set her down, crouching so they were eye-level.

“Okay, bug,” he said, voice gravel-rough. “Time for your big adventure with Mommy.”

Kara’s lip wobbled. “I want you to come too, Daddy.”

His breath hitched. “I know, baby. I know. But Daddy has to go sing for a little bit. And then I’m coming to get you, and we’re never ever being apart again for a long long time. Okay?”

Tears spilled down her cheeks. “Promise?”

He held up his pinky, still faintly purple from her crayon tattoo. “Biggest pinky swear in the history of pinky swears.”

She hooked her tiny finger around his and squeezed with all her might.

Then she launched herself at him, arms around his neck, and he caught her, holding her so tightly you saw his arms shake. He pressed his face into her curls and you watched his shoulders heave once, twice, a silent, wrenching sob he refused to let her feel.

“I love you,” he whispered against her hair. “More than all the stars, more than all the chocolate chips, more than-”

“More than bees love flowers,” she finished, voice thick with tears but steady.

“Yeah,” he choked. “Exactly that.”

He stood, and then it was your turn.

He didn’t speak. 

Just pulled you into him, one arm iron around your waist, the other hand cradling your skull like you were made of glass. You felt his heartbeat, wild, frantic, against your ribs.

“I’ll fix this,” he whispered fiercely against your ear. “Everything. I’ll protect you both. Just come home to me.”

You nodded, tears soaking his hoodie.

He kissed you once, hard, desperate, tasting like salt and promises, then rested his forehead against yours.

Kara slipped her small, warm hand into yours, looking back at him over her shoulder every three steps, her little face a picture of longing, until you finally turned the corner toward the jet bridge.

The last thing you saw was Noah standing alone in the middle of the terminal, tall and heartbreakingly still, hands in his pockets, tears tracking silently down his face as he watched the space where his whole world had just disappeared.

The plane ride home was quiet. Kara, exhausted from the emotional whirlwind, fell asleep again halfway through the flight, her head a comforting weight in your lap, Bee still clutched in a death grip. You stared out the window at the endless expanse of clouds, the same ones she’d once thought were made of cotton candy, and felt the full, aching swell of a love and a fear so immense it felt too big for your body.

Your phone buzzed.

Noah [8:12 PM]: Land safe. Call me when you’re home. I’ll be awake. I love you both.

You attached the photo you’d secretly taken at the gate, Noah crouched, forehead pressed to Kara’s, both of them laughing in their own private bubble.

Noah [8:14 PM]: Setting this as my lock screen. Forever. My whole world, right there.

You smiled through your tears and typed back.

You [8:15 PM]: See you soon, Daddy. 🐝

And for the first time in three years, the word “soon” didn’t feel like a lie.

It felt like a promise.

Specter

i LOVE IT. in fact, i love it so much that—

also, it's such a small detail but i love changing noah's contact information as reader's relationship with him changes