#writersmonth2019

He called it in, getting a cleanup crew to deal with the mess in the kitchen. He stood to the side as they did their thing before paying them. When they left, he went back inside, planning out how he could make it like the executive went off the radar with his wife.

John began to set everything up, walking around to get an idea of what kind of man he was. He walked up the stairs and peeked through the open doors of the guest rooms until he reached the opposite wing where he presumed were the executive’s room.

He could hear the wife whispering to someone from one of the rooms. He crept forward, hand hovering above his gun at his waist, just to be sure. The closer he got, he realized that she was crying. It was a baby room.

“I can’t do this,” she cried, kneeling next to the baby’s crib, two small luggage next to her.

“You should be leaving,” John reminded her.

She jumped, wiping her cheeks and sniffed. “I… I never wanted children. Not yet, at least. Then, when I heard my husband had been cheating with me… one of the women that he slept with showed up to our doorstep and just left her. She’s not my child, but I’m not heartless enough to just leave her and I’m still not ready to take the responsibility of caring for a child while I’m trying to disappear.”

“Is there no one you can take her to?”

She shook her head sadly.

John sighed. “I might know someone. I’ll take care of it. Just hurry and leave.”

“Thank you,” she breathed, getting up on shaking legs before grabbing her luggage, sparing one last look at the baby, then left.

Now, it was just John and the baby girl who just started to stir in her sleep. What should he do now?

-

You were humming in the kitchen with a movie playing in the living room when you heard urgent knocking on your door. You set your knife down and made your way over, looking through the peephole. What the hell was John Wick doing here?

You opened the door for him, hands on your hips. “Now, what occasion brought you over… is that a baby?”

John stood at your doorway looking haggard as he carried in a baby sleeping on a baby carrier along with a few bags filled with baby stuff. “There’s more in the car,” he muttered, immediately turning once he put the baby carrier on the couch.

You stared down at the baby with wide eyes, then sifted through the bags that had baby diapers, baby food, toys, and books. John came back with a folded crib, a stroller, and two small duffle bags.

“Um, John, what is all this? Who’s baby is this? Why is that baby here? Why do you have them? Why did you bring them here? What-”

“(Y/n), we’re best friends, right?” John cut you off.

You took in a sharp breath. “You knocked someone up?” For some reason, that thought made you feel uneasy.

“No,” he answered quickly, “My client did.” You exhaled, relieved.

“And where’s your client? Was your task to babysit?” you asked sarcastically, waving a hand over to the sleeping baby.

“My client’s dead. There’s no one to take care of her. I trust you, so I brought her here.”

“O… kay. So…,” you exhaled slowly, trying to wrap your head around the situation you were thrown in. You scratched your head, looking around at your now crowded living room. “If you think I’m going to take care of this baby on my own, I will kick your ass. I can’t ask my friends for help with her because they’re going to ask where she’s from. I know nothing about taking care of babies. What are we going to do about her anyways? Keep her?”

John looked at the baby, then at you. “We’ll deal with that later. I can stay over if you want. Some of my clothes are still here, right?”

You clear your throat, looking over at the dirty laundry you had yet to wash, a few of his shirts and sweatpants buried in it after you have used them around the house and as pajamas. They were very comfortable and you or may not have smelled them to remind you of John when he was away working.

“Yeah, let me finish dinner while you sort all of this,” you gestured to all the clutter, “and put them in… I don’t know, my room?”

John sighed in relief. He didn’t feel good about taking the baby somewhere else anyways. He had been an orphan himself and he didn’t like the idea of leaving her in the system. You were one of, if not, the most trusted friends he had, so you were the first person he thought of.

As he set up the corner of your room for the baby while you cooked, you couldn’t help but think how domestic it all was. You shook that thought away, though. It wasn’t like that with him.

-

One month later, you got the hand of taking care of baby Joana, as you named her, while John practically lived with you if he wasn’t busy with work. He used to stay at his own house when he was busy with a task or were taking time to himself after he finished one. That was happening less and less as time went on. Even his dog would be left with you to help watch over Joana.

You were sitting on the playing mat with Joana when John came home. Joana had to work on her crawling and rolling, both of which she only managed a little. At first when you put her on her back, she would try to roll, but stopped midway and lied on her side. Now, she could roll onto her stomach, but not onto her back. Crawling was another thing, too. She managed to crawl an inch, but instead of going forward, she would keep turning in a circle. Maybe she was copying Dog, who’d spin around before he lies down.

John watched the wholesome scene before him, patting his dog’s head as he leaned against the doorway. You were reluctant to look after the baby, but now you enjoyed Joana’s presence. You said that his help made a big difference, as caring for one baby could be stressful.

You patted at the space in front of you, encouraging Joana to crawl forward. She giggled, trying to coordinate her limbs.

“Come on, sweetie, you can do it,” you told her with a smile.

Joana frowned, crawling forward one inch, two inch, three inch, until she was right in front of you.

“Good job, Joana,” John said, taking off his shoes and knelt next to you.

Joana giggled, wiggling in place. You scooped her up and placed her on your lap as Dog came over. John swallowed, feeling his throat tightened seeing you and Joana smile at him with his dog wagging his tail. It was like something from a dream. A dream that he never knew possible when picked up work again after Helen was gone. It was all peaceful and normal.

“Look who’s home, sweetie?” you cooed, bouncing her on your thigh. It was your turn to giggle as Joana pulled a frowny face, much like John’s when he was serious. “So how was work, sweetie?”

John smirked. “Sweetie?” he teased.

You shot him a glare, your cheeks heating up at your slip. “It’s a habit. I’ve been talking to Jo and Dog all day and I call them sweetie,” you explained, avoiding his eyes.

He chuckled, but didn’t tease any further. “Well, I was actually thinking of retiring again. I have more than enough money for us to get by and maybe I can buy us a bigger house,” he said.

“Us?” you teased back, earning a glare from John. You grinned, stopping your bouncing and had Joana lean against you. “It’d be nice to have a bigger house, but does that mean that we’re actually keeping her?”

John shrugged. “Why not? You like her and she likes you. We’re both getting a hang of caring for her. Her father’s enemies had stopped looking for her and his wife, so she’s safe.”

You stared down at Joana who was getting drowsy. “You think I’ll be a good mother to her?” you asked John softly.

“You already are,” he assured you, leaning forward to kiss your head.

You closed your eyes, sighing in content. “John, I-”

“Hold that thought, I’m going to shower,” he said, standing up. Dog wagged his tail and followed his human around the house until John turned to him. “Stay by (Y/n) and Joana and protect them, okay?” Dog made a noise, turning back to sit in front of you.

John made his way through the room, your shared room, rifling through his side of the dresser drawer, tossing his dirty clothes in the hamper with your clothes, and grabbing his scrubber. This was practically his home. Walking through that door and seeing you with Joana and Dog, he felt like he was home.

Tony didn’t have to wait long for another mini outburst to happen though. Dum-e had been rolling around, helping Tony with some tools and stuff, but now the robot was just wandering around. He eventually found his way to Peter, trying to get the teenagers attention. Unfortunately for Peter, Dum-e only really understood clear verbal commands, so Peter’s shooing him away and angry mumbles weren’t really doing much. Tony was about to call Dum-e away when Peter beat him to it.

“Go the fuck away!” Peter shouted at the poor robot.

“Hey!” Peter looked back at him, first looking a little taken aback by the shout, then glaring again. Tony was finally done with Peter’s attitude. He was going to get to the bottom of it and now. “First of all, watch the language. Second, that was rude, apologize to Dum-e.”

Peter gave him a look like Tony he had three heads. 

“It’s a robot, and it was annoying and not leaving me alone.”

“And you’ve been rude and coping an attitude since you’ve got here. So apologize to him and tell me why you’re acting this way.” Tony said as he walked to the couch where Peter was sitting. Peter just glared at him, closing his laptop before crossing his arms and glaring forward, refusing to look at Tony. Now it was Tony’s turn to roll his eyes.

“Is it spider-man or something at school? Have you slept and eaten en-”

“Can’t I just be in a shitty mood for no reason!” Peter snapped, turning towards Tony. “I’m a teenager! We’re moody, and can be cranky, and people are allowed to have bad days for no reason! It doesn’t mean something is wrong or that I can’t take care of myself!”

Part of Tony understood what Peter was saying. It could get frustrating when people wouldn’t respect his bad mood. He wanted to dwell, and just accept that bad days sometimes happened for no reason. However, the healthy part of him, the part of him that had gone to a number of therapists throughout the years, currently seeing a therapist regularly, knew that deep down, there was always a reason for a bad day. They don’t just happen because of off days, something is always eating away at a person having a bad day, whether it's conscious or subconscious.

“You’re right, you’re allowed to have a bad day for no reason, but sometimes things exacerbate it, and fixing them can make the day a little less bad. So, first of all, take a deep breath because I am not the enemy here and I will not be talked to that way.” Tony explained calmly. Peter looked like he was about to argue for a moment, but soon turned away from Tony, let out a sigh, and took a few deep breaths. After a couple of minutes, he turned back Tony, look a bit less ready to kill someone.

“Thank you. Now, how much did you sleep last night, and when was the last time you ate.”

“Ummm, I had a toast with peanut butter and banana for breakfast this morning, but I overslept and didn’t have time to make lunch this morning. And I didn’t go to bed until around 4am, so I think I got a bit over three hours of sleep.” Tony had to bite his tongue to keep from snapping at his mentee, knowing that wouldn’t help the situation.

“Why didn’t you buy lunch? And why were you even up that late? Was it because of spider-man beca-”

“I haven’t gone on patrol for the past three days.”

That, Tony wasn’t expecting. Peter didn’t go out on patrol every day, but if he missed a day he always went the next day. Three days in a row was a lot for him to skip, not unless there was some outside factor playing into it.

“I’m not grounded or injured or anything,” Peter said before Tony could ask. “I just have this big research paper for English that’s been stressing me out. Like, minimum of 20 pages and 5 academic articles big.”

“Did you procrastinate or something? You’re usually pretty good about that sort of thing.”

“That’s the thing! We only got it a little over a week ago and it’s not even due for over a month! But we have to get our topic approved, and have at least 3 academic articles, and the last day to do all of that is tomorrow.”

“So what’s the problem? There’s plenty of research out there and you love reading journal articles. Why not something on spiders.” Tony was really struggling to see the problem when he knew his kid loved learning things more than any other person he knew.

“It has to be based on a humanities or social science topic. No hard sciences. And I had a topic that my teacher liked, but she said it was way too broad, but now I can’t find enough research to support a smaller topic,” Peter explained, looking close to tears from his frustration, and starting to speak more quickly. “And I was going to go talk to her today during lunch, but she was out so I went to the library to try and work on it some more. But that’s why I haven’t been on patrol because all my time has gone to trying to figure out a smaller topic and I keep changing the topic slightly to try and find enough articles except there’s never enough. And now I’m probably going to get marked down or get detention for not having this part of the assignment turned in and then I’m gonna fall apart on the rest of the paper.”

Tony’s heart wanted to break for the kid. Peter wasn’t one to struggle much academically, so this probably wasn’t something he was used too. But Tony also knew that it wasn’t something that a little problem solving wouldn’t be able to fix.

“Yeah, that sounds frustrating kiddo. Research can be finicky sometimes. What was your original topic on?”

Peter looked at him for a minute, cheeks getting a little pink, and voice just loud enough for Tony to hear.

“The impact of superheroes on society.” Tony wanted to laugh when he heard what Peter said. Not because it was a bad topic, it was actually a very interesting and important topic, especially when they didn’t really exist until about 10 years ago. But Tony definitely saw where his teacher was coming from. That was too big of a topic for any one paper, for a PhD dissertation or a study on it’s own, let alone a 16 year old just trying to write a paper for his AP english class.

“That is a huge topic, buddy. But I can imagine that there isn’t much research on it in general.”

“There’s barely any! And it’s too late to change my topic and it’s really one of the only things I can think of that I’m interested in, and I just don’t know what to do.”

“Well the topic hasn’t even been approved so it’s definitely not too late to change the topic, but also I think you have a really interesting topic. Have you talked to your teacher about how you’re struggling with this? Well, actually, first is she an understanding teacher or is she usually more of a stickler for rules and deadlines.” Peter shook his head.

“Nah, she’s really understanding most of the time as long as you haven’t abused her kindness. That’s what I was going to talk to her about today at lunch though, so I could get some help with doing the topic.”

“So assuming you’ve been pretty good in this class and haven’t abused her kindness,” Peter shook his head when Tony gave him a pointed glare, “Then I think we have a good place to start with emailing your teacher and seeing if you can get a bit of an extension. Then we can eat, you can probably take a little nap, and finally, I can help you look for some articles so you can narrow down your topic. And even if we don’t figure out a topic, you should go out on patrol for a little bit tonight. Not long because you haven’t slept enough, but an hour or two won’t kill you, and it’ll be good to release some of the stress instead of just letting it bottle up. How does that sound?”

Peter smiled for the first time that day, making Tony smile as well. “Yeah, that sounds pretty good.”

Ryan looks over the baseball diamond, basking in the glow of the sunset.  Graduation has come and gone, soon to be a tiny blip in his life, and now he's the only one left hanging around the school.  He had wanted to spend some time in the theater by himself, without Sharpay's suffocating presence of the energy of any other student.  He had to have time to say goodbye.  Now that that’s done, he’s taking a moment to collect himself at a place that he never actually got to play.

It's strange to consider that he's walked through the halls of East High for the last time as a student, and possibly his last time ever.  As turbulent as his high school years were, they were a significant part of his life, and it's strange to consider that he'll soon be across the country instead of in the desert.  If all goes as planned, he'll choreograph for Broadway someday.  That means that he'll only be back in New Mexico for family visits.  New York is going to be his permanent home.

He wonders if people at Juilliard have as much school spirit as those at East High.  He supposes that it isn't going to be the same kind.  There are no school sports there, and the East High school spirit is almost fully centered around being a Wildcat on a team.  As much as Troy's time with the theater department made the whole school more inclusive and finally put clubs and the arts in the mind of the student body as a whole, basketball still reigns supreme.  Not even the baseball team, which Ryan happens to know had an amazing season this year, comes close to touching the notoriety of the basketball team.  Not even when one of the best baseball players also happens to be the second star of the basketball team.

"Didn't think I'd find you here, Evans," said star says, breaking Ryan out of his reverie.

"Shouldn't you be in the gym, Danforth?  I thought the baseball diamond is reserved for dancing now," he replies.  Chad flops down next to him on the bench, sprawling lazily in a way that portrays all of the confidence and swagger that Ryan wishes he has.

That isn’t to say that Ryan doesn’t have confidence.  He definitely does, and he knows how to strut better than anyone on America's Next Top Model, but Chad wears the comfort that he has in his own skin differently.

It's undeniably attractive, to be honest.

"I saw you at some of our baseball games," Chad says.  "If you wanted there to be dancing, you should’ve been playing out here with me."

"You know I chose theater a long time ago," Ryan says, heart doing a slight flip.  "Baseball is fun, but it got hard to do both at the same time, and I wanted to excel, not be average at both.  A jack of all trades is a master of none, after all."

"Better than being a master of one."

Ryan looks at him out of the corner of his eye.

"You don't get into Juilliard by being mediocre at baseball."

Chad shrugs.

"If you say so.  Congrats, by the way."

"Thanks."

"You really deserve that.  You and Kelsey both.  The musical wouldn't have been anywhere near that level without you."

"Well, your dancing deserves some credit."

Chad laughs, loud against the empty field.  It's a nice sound.  Ryan heard a lot of it the past summer, and it's unfortunate that they both got so busy in the school year.  They didn't quite loose touch, but there are times when Ryan wishes that they spoke more.  They saw each other every day in class, and sometimes at rehearsal, and Ryan may have specifically been watching for Chad when he would make an appearance at a sporting event (not that Chad ever had to know), but he would have liked more than that.  Chad is cute and fun, and Ryan never got to explore it as much as he would have liked.

"Are you going to hold that dancing thing over me forever?" Chad asks.  Ryan quirks an eyebrow and tries to contain his smile.

"Maybe.  You did make a very convincing argument when you pranced to first base during that game last summer.  I saw some twirls.  It barely took any teaching to get you dancing like a pro in the shows."

"Well, it's easy when you have a good example to follow."

Ryan might be blushing.  Hopefully Chad can't see it in the light of the setting sun.  Maybe he can blame it on sunburn, even though he would never allow one to form.  He cares about his skin too much.

"Don't be getting bashful on me now, Evans.  Where's that signature family arrogance?" Chad knocks their shoulders together, and if anything that makes it worse.

"Sharpay has all of the arrogance right now.  Please check back later if you're still interested."

Chad chuckles again, and then silence falls between them.  It's comfortable.  More comfortable than maybe it should be, given their history.

Of course, now Ryan is thinking about his unfortunately persistent crush, and changing clothes with Chad after last summer's baseball game "in a show of goodwill and to go along with tradition."

He'll get over the crush while he's in New York.  But right now, he doesn't really want that.

He wants to see Chad a bit more over the summer.  Play a few baseball games.  Grab dinner sometimes.  Maybe, if he's allowed, hold a hand.

It's silly, because Chad is just another dumb jock and the world is full of those, but none of the other ones can meet Ryan challenge for challenge like Chad can, and none of the other ones have that shade of brown eyes.

Of course, Chad is straight.  Ryan has no reason to believe otherwise.  Sharpay has told him multiple times that he can't keep reading into each prolonged eye contact in homeroom or each slightly suggestive comment.  He knows this, but it can be hard to remember.

The sunset sky makes his hair look more like a halo.  Chad is already looking over at him when he turns.

"You busy this summer, Evans?" Chad asks.

"Just hanging around Lava Springs," Ryan says.  "Why, you want a job there again?"

"Absolutely not," Chad says.  "But I wouldn't mind some sort of rematch.  Maybe a few of them."

Ryan looks at him, considering, but there's only good humor in his eyes, not any sort of malicious teasing or joking.

"I'd be down," he says.  "But that's a lot of sports for someone who's going to Juilliard.  Since it doesn't sound like I'd get anything out of it besides the pleasure of your company, how about this: I'll give you that rematch if you go swing dancing with me."

"Swing dancing?  Evans, I thought you knew me better than that," Chad says, shaking his head.

"You don't dance?" Ryan asks.  "I think we both know that's not true, but you can prove it to me.  Swing dancing, Thursday.  I can pick you up.  If it's awful, you never have to do it again.  We'll play baseball all summer."

"Is this a challenge or a date?" Chad asks.  Ryan looks at the hint of a smile on Chad's face and wonders if he's been in denial this whole time.  Sharpay, after all, has never been shown to have accurate gaydar, as much as she tries.

"Why can't it be both?" he asks.  Chad's face splits into a full grin and Ryan's breath almost catches, but he tries to maintain his cool cover.

"Alright, you're on," Chad says.  “Thursday.  Swing dancing.  You can pick me up in your fancy car and we’ll see where the night takes us.”

Ryan's smile can't be contained anymore, and even though he tries to turn away to hide it Chad laughs and bumps their shoulders together again.

If swing dancing and the baseball game after go well, maybe this isn't going to be the end of sports for Ryan.  Maybe he'll have another reason to come back to Albuquerque.