Chapter Text
Leon couldn’t take it anymore.
His next door neighbor had never been silent. The first day he moved in, he had slipped a note under Leon’s door declaring that he was a virtual fitness instructor, so he would make some noise from time to time. But it was always between 10 AM and 3 PM, and Leon was a nocturnal creature, so he didn’t really give much of a shit.
Then the asshole had somehow procured an infant, and oh how that thing screamed! Wailed like a siren at least twice an hour, sometimes the entire hour! Leon’s sleep schedule had gone from odd-but-consistent to nearly nonexistent! Hunnigan wouldn’t stop bugging him about deadlines, and he fell asleep in the middle of a Zoom meeting with his publisher. At first he was a few days behind, then a week or so, but before he knew it, he was a month behind schedule and his deadlines were looming.
He had to do something, or he’d never finish his first draft, let alone the damn book!
It was 3 AM when he pounded at the door to apartment 22, his heart set on either scaring the man into properly taking care of his spawn or punting the infant out the window. Whichever felt right.
The man who opened the door had seen better days. A week of stubble caked his jaw, and the bags under his eyes could have carried every copy of Leon’s debut novel ever printed. The baby carried on, wailing even louder.
“I’m sorry,” the man mumbled, failing to meet Leon’s eyes.
“Move it,” Leon huffed, shoving him to the side and making a beeline for the bedroom.
“Wait, what are you—“ The fatigued man watched as Leon stood over the baby.
“When did it eat last?”
“I fed her dinner.”
“When?”
“Six… ish?”
Leon blinked.
“Six-ish? Are you fucking kidding me? She’s going to shrivel up! Where’s the formula?” His neighbor simply pointed to the apartment’s small kitchen Leon mumbled. “Six-ish… moron…” He mixed up a bottle and threw it at his exhausted mountain of a neighbor. “Feed the damn thing.”
“How… How often should I be feeding her?”
“Probably every three hours,” Leon sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers. “How old is— Give her here!” He pulled the infant out of Chris’s arms. “Why on earth are you holding her like that? You’re going to break her neck!“
He cradled the baby’s head gently, slipping the bottle between her lips before frowning. “What nipple size is this?”
“There’s sizes?”
Leon didn’t know whether to feel sorry for him, or punch him in the face. A large part of him was voting for “both.”
“There’s sizes. This one is too small. She can’t get the formula out as much as she wants too. It’s probably frustrating her.” He glanced back over to his neighbor, who was sitting with his head in his hands on the edge of the bed and… “Jesus, are you crying?” Leon asked. He didn’t receive an answer. Leon sighed, leaning back into a desk chair. He looked down at the baby’s face, and a small smile tugged at his lips. “Fuckin’ cute,” he chuckled, watching her suck away.
When he finished, he sat the girl down in her bassinet, watching her eyes flutter shut as she drifted off. She wasn’t alone in dreamland, either. Her caretaker was passed out on the bed, his brows furrowed and his entire body enveloped in a massive flannel robe. Leon sighed.
He found a printer in the stranger's little home office, pulling a piece of paper from the tray and scrawling on it with a blue pen.
‘feed creature every 3-4 hours
If 6 mo. start purées
up nipple size by 1 or 2
change every 2 hrs if wet,
right away if she shits
look up how to hold a motherfucking baby
buy her some toys
lay on BACK to sleep
— Leon‘
He hummed, tapping the pen to his lips before adding an addendum.
‘ps. no screen time until 24 months’
That was everything, right? Everything he could think of at the moment, that is. He could finally go home, and write in peace. He never had to worry about the little shit (or the big one) again and could finally take care of his manuscript.
Right?
—
“Leon!”
He wish he had never told the fucker his name. The poor baby’s oversized body pillow was knocking on his apartment door so rapidly that it nearly sounded like a jackhammer. Leon almost preferred being woken up by the baby to the father.
“Leon, I know you’re home!”
“No I’m not!” he yelled, throwing a shoe at the door. “Go to hell!”
“I’m not leaving until you open up!”
That’s when the baby started fucking screaming again.
“Leon! Open up!”
“Okay! Jesus Christ!” Leon flung the door open, still in a pair of loose pajama pants and a stained t-shirt that proudly proclaimed ‘i survived my twenties and all I got was medical debt’ “What do you want?”
The man had gotten a shave and a nap, but he still looked worse for wear, and he immediately dropped to his knees.
“Please help me again! She just woke up and I fed her and changed her but she won’t stop screaming and I don’t know why!” He folded his hands in a prayer-like posture. “Please! I’ll do anything!”
“Even stop bothering me?”
“Almost anything.”
“Fine.” He trudged into his neighbors apartment once again, eyeing the yoga mat on the floor that the baby was currently laying on top of and screaming. “How did this happen?”
“I mean… I didn’t have a play mat or anything…”
“I mean how did you end up with a kid?”
The man sighed.
“She’s not… she’s not mine. Her dad and I were friends. He…” He ran a hand through his bristly hair. “Last month. Drunk driver in a semi plowed through them. Found out I was named the godfather in Ethan’s will. Apparently I was ‘the most responsible bastard’ he knew. He trusted me, and here I am. Fucking up his Rose.”
“Rose…” Leon poked the girl’s cheek. “Chubby little thing, despite your efforts. What was your name again?”
“It’s Chris. How… uh… What are you doing?”
“Feeling for…” Leon was stretching his fingers inside the infant’s mouth, much to her protest as she squirmed. “Yeah, I thought so. She’s teething.”
“What do I do?”
“Go to the store and pick up some infant Tylenol. Unless you have infant Tylenol?”
“I don’t.”
“Thought so.”
Luckily for them both, Walgreens was just around the corner. It hadn’t stopped at tylenol, though. Chris also picked up some new bottle nipples, a few teething toys, and anything else the cashier recommended. Once he came back, Leon quickly measured out the dosage and administered the medicine.
“Works in a pinch,” he explained, “but try not to rely on it too much. Cold teething toys will do just fine.”
“How do you know all this?” Chris asked. “I mean… you get your groceries delivered to your door because you never leave.”
“Am I not the picture of nurturing and paternal?” A moment of silence. “That was a joke,” Leon sighed, to which Chris let out a small, forced chuckle. “Truth is, I kinda had to be good with kids. My cousin got her parents hauled away by CPS when I was fifteen. Both my parents worked, so I ended up practically raising Sherry. Then my sorry excuse for a college roommate knocked his girlfriend up, and I babysat while they worked their asses off, too. Before I knew it, I was in my twenties and running a small babysitting empire. Not that I can complain. It kept me afloat while I worked on my first book.” He idly tickled Rose’s tummy, drawing a giggle from the girl.
“You’re an author?”
“Yep. Leon S. Kennedy, at your service.”
Chris’s eyes widened.
“That’s you? You wrote ‘As Autumn Falls On Arklay’?”
“You’ve read it?”
“No,” Chris admitted. “I’m more of the ‘self-help audiobook’ type. But Ethan…” His eyes drifted to the infant. “Ethan was a massive fan. It took him months to convince Mia to name her after the characters.”
“Her name is—“
“Rosemary, yes. Rosemary Winters.” He sighed, sitting cross-legged next to the baby. “Looks just like her dad. Except when she cries. She has Mia’s angry face. God, Ethan would be so mad if he knew his favorite author lived next door to me this whole time.”
Leon let himself laugh.
“I’m supposed to be working on another book right now. Hunnigan’s gonna kill me if I don’t get something to her by Friday.” He watched Chris’s face twist into confusion. It was kind of cute, the way he furrowed his brows and tilted his head. Almost like a puppy. “My editor,” he explained. “She’s a force to be reckoned with. Might actually handcuff me to my desk if I don’t meet my deadline.”
“I’m supposed to be working too,” Chris admitted. “Told everyone I was taking a hiatus but when you work for yourself, you don’t really get paid vacation.”
“Don’t I know it.” Leon hummed. “Y’know, this could work.”
“What could work?”
“I can come over. Bring my laptop. You can do - whatever it is you do, and I’ll write and help take care of her.”
“How much do you charge?”
“One Diet Coke a day, pizza once a month,” Leon stated. “In return, as long as I am sleeping, you do not bother me.”
“Deal.” Chris reached his hand out, and Leon shook it, making a noise very much unlike a normal handshake. Significantly squishier. “… Leon, what’s on your hand?”
“Damn. Looks like spit-up.”
Chris made a gagging sound, rushing towards the sink.
—
Leon didn’t have to be dragged over this time. He came voluntarily, wearing actual clothes with his laptop tucked under his left arm and several books under his right.
“Reference material,” he explained, spreading them across Chris’s kitchen counter. “How is she?”
“Better,” Chris admitted. “The schedule helps a lot.” A whiteboard had been hung on the wall, per Leon’s advice, and all of Rose’s needs had been meticulously charted out in Chris’s uncharacteristically neat handwriting.
Leon turned, and then froze. He had never seen Chris outside of that tattered flannel robe with the duckies on it, and now… Well, he saw why Chris was a fitness coach. The athleisure fit him snugly and Leon had to make incredibly intense eye contact in order to avoid staring at his chest.
“Don’t worry,” Chris said, and the tone of his voice sent Leon’s head briefly spiraling into a level of homosexuality he hadn’t experienced since all-boys summer camp when he was 17. He pulled himself back to reality with a quick pinch to his own arm as he zeroed back in on what Chris was saying. “— so if you stay over here, you probably won’t get in the shot.”
“Thanks,” Leon mumbled, taking the Diet Coke that was handed to him. He took a position on the floor, leaned up against a navy bean bag chair that Chris owned for some reason. Rose was on another yoga mat beside him, gurgling as she enjoyed some much-needed tummy time. He flipped open his laptop, staring at a nearly-blank word document like it had stabbed him. “How many yoga mats do you own?” Leon chuckled, trying his best to fall back into a more casual, familiar raport.
“Too many,” Chris laughed. “My friend Jill gets me one every year. I quit my 9-5 to flex in front of cameras and she will never let me forget it. The other side of that one is a collage of my mirror selfies from before I gained any muscle. I still don’t know how she got them.”
“I have a few evil friends of my own. I think my illustrator is out to get me. If I rush her, she draws all of the characters with comically large mustaches. The more annoying I am, the bigger they get.”
“I could never imagine you being annoying,” Chris scoffed, bending down to hook up some wires and giving Leon a view that he would have paid to keep watching. “I started reading it last night, by the way.”
“Reading what?”
“Your book. The one Ethan liked.”
That got Leon’s attention. He sat up, shoulders back and proud. ‘As Autumn Falls on Arklay’ may have been his first book, and it showed in some places, but he was still damn proud of it.
“What did you think?”
“It’s…” Chris clicked his camera onto a tripod, pursing his lips. “It’s kinda depressing. Almost overwhelmingly sad. And a lot of it kind of went over my head.” Leon’s face fell, before Chris continued. “But I still liked it.”
Leon must have looked confused, because Chris clarified quickly.
“I mean… seeing your perspective on the world. Even if it’s fictional. There’s a lot of ‘you’ in there, right?”
It was true. The book was an extremely personal work for him, loosely based on a series of incidents from his childhood and adolescence.
“Yeah, lots of me,” he scoffed. “That’s why it got such mixed reviews. Even though it sold well. I’m… kind of a difficult person to be around.”
“I don’t think so at all!” Chris bolted upwards, turning around. “I didn’t mean it like that. I don’t mind you being around. Neither does she!” He gestured to Rose, who had the hem of Leon’s shirt in her mouth.
Leon smiled in a way that didn’t quite reach his eyes.
“I’ve gotta start recording now,” Chris said, adjusting the camera angle slightly. “But for the record, I like having you here.”
Chris’s demeanor instantly changed. The slight weariness to his muscular frame was gone, the gentle look in his eyes replaced with a firm sense of energy as he led a workout session with no students. And Leon… well, he couldn’t help himself. Who could? He peeked every once in a while, catching a glimpse of rippling muscle, of stretched calves, of that ass which words could not describe. By the time Chris finished, Leon had fed and changed the baby, written a few thousand words, and strategically arranged his laptop in such a way to hide that he was at full mast just from watching his friend work out.
The camera turned off, and the ”real” Chris was back. The tired Chris, the gentle-yet-firm Chris. He had the next shift with the baby, allowing Leon to have some more time to really focus on writing.
When they changed shifts again, it was for Chris to edit his recordings. He had angled it to the best of his ability, but Leon still got caught in a few shots, reaching for something or retrieving Rose as she rolled over into the filming area. He wasn’t the best editor around, but he wasn’t sloppy either.
He was good enough to take the clips where Leon slipped into frame, and save them to his harddrive. Just in case.