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One of the bad things (of many, really) about having a fight computer in your head is that you’re really only good at one thing. Fighting. Killing and maiming and all that jazz.
Not that Midnighter doesn’t enjoy it. He does. He loves the thrill of a new fight, of a new opponent, of calculating and recalculating percentages and moves and what he needs to do to win. It’s great. He’s never pretended he doesn’t run off of attention and thrill and pain.
But kids?
Nuh-uh-uh.
It’s not that he hates kids. M doesn’t hate kids, besides maybe Dick’s weirdly smart little middle one who always sorta looks like he wants to study M. He’s had quite enough studying going on concerning his inner workings to last multiple lifetimes, thank you very very much. But— Red Robin aside, kids are fine. silly little guys without proper cognitive abilities and less than stellar motor skills, yeah, but they ain’t horrible.
Just… not for him.
Until Jenny.
Until Jenny died, and left behind a baby, and Apollo was the one to pick her up. Was the one to turn to M, holding a newborn, eyes sad and soft and M has never been sad or soft. He’s been angry. He’s good at angry. Not good at… kids.
But back on the carrier, he doesn’t really know what to do. The computer isn’t being any help, it’s just running through simulations of what he could have done better until Apollo puts a hand on his shoulder.
He’s still holding the little Jenny. Offers her to M, with a soft smile. “C’mon,” he says gently. He’s still sad.
Apollo is sad and Midnighter is angry.
M takes the baby.
She opens her eyes and stares at M and M scrabbles immediately, trying to pet at her head. “Don’t you dare cry,” he mumbles, “Do not cry, you’re too little to be sad too, don’t you—“
She giggles.
M blinks and baby-Jenny blinks back.
M hands her right back off to Apollo. “She’s freaky.”
Apollo takes her. “She isn’t freaky,” he chastises, “she’s a baby. She doesn’t cry 100% of the time. Kinda worrying that that’s your previous experience with babies.”
The computer itches and scratches at M’s skull with ways to get rid of the child, get Jenny back, and he does his absolute best to ignore it in favor of the newborn in his husband’s arms. “I have zero experience with babies. Because there were zero babies in the Garden.”
Apollo’s smiling a little more now, and M takes that as the win it is. “Whatever. We can— we can take care of her. Right?”
Oh god. “Is that what you want us to do?”
Apollo shrugs, suddenly a lot more sheepish. He looks down at Jenny and smooths a big hand over her forehead. M has no idea how he just knows these things. Knows how to hold her, how to make her calm down and go to sleep in her arms. “I mean. Can you name another good candidate on the Carrier?”
…No. He can’t.
“Point taken.”
——
Angie talks to the Carrier and it reluctantly puts forth a room for Jenny, complete with crib and bassinet and whatever-the-hell stuff babies need that M doesn’t know about because he’s never had to. He sits and listens to Angie explain it with as minimal annoyed facial expressions as he can get because apparently he’s a dad now, and he has no idea how to be that, and should probably learn. Even if Apollo assures him there’s no manual for any of it, he sort of wishes there was.
Apollo and M’s room is suddenly, conspicuously, next to Jenny’s. Neither of them mention it, and they’re pretty sure it wasn’t Angie’s direct doing.
M flops down on their new bed and groans. “Why did they make us the dads?”
Apollo sits down next to him. Carefully wiggles off M’s helmet, carding his fingers through M’s red-brown hair. “I think I made us the dads. Technically. The Carrier just knows it?”
M grumbles into the pillows.
Jenny whines and babbles from the bassinet next to their bed, which M put there because no way is a baby sleeping alone on a glorified spaceship, and he told Apollo as much. And ignored the way the Carrier groaned in offended protest, probably at being called a spaceship.
God, he lives on a semi-sentient magic shiftship that’s constantly traveling through something called the Bleed. What the fuck is his life.
Jenny whines louder.
M gets up and shifts over to her side of the bed, picking her up and cradling her as carefully as he can.
Apollo appears at his side in an instant. “No— like—“ he maneuvers M’s arms carefully until Jenny’s head is propped up and M’s hand is at her back. “Like that.”
“Alright,” M mutters, and stares down at the baby. Jenny has somehow managed to grab onto M’s hand and is busy chewing with toothless gums on M’s gauntlet and God, that’s weird. Should he take them off?
He tries to take off his gauntlets.
Jenny shrieks.
M does not take off his gauntlets.
The baby amuses herself with chewing on M’s gloves, and eventually it gets to the point where he squints at the newborn(????)’s mouth and can swear he sees little white bits out of the gums.
“Apollo?” He calls over at his husband. Gestures at Jenny. “How long does it take for kids to grow teeth? Do you know?”
Apollo comes over. Bends over. Squints at Jenny’s mouth.
“Angie!”
——
A trip down to the Engineer does confirm that Jenny is growing at a decidedly speedy rate. Jenny herself doesn’t seem to notice or care, chewing on the cables of Angie’s hair with a newfound vigor.
Angie ignores it.
“…So.” Apollo’s sitting, staring at Jenny on the table, and M is decidedly not looking at Jenny on the table because he hates the medbay to begin with, but seeing his daughter (when did she become his daughter) sitting on the examination table is a whole different and new sort of angry-sick that he really doesn’t enjoy. “So she’s— how fast is she growing? is that normal?”
“It’s more like she’s forcing herself to grow, I think.” Angie corrects. “Which she can… apparently do. God, i wish—“
I wish Jenny was here.
M resists the urge to point out that Jenny is sat on the table. He knows that’s not what Angie means.
“I wish Jenny was here, too,” he says carefully, “but she isn’t. We have a new Century Baby. And absolutely no frame of reference.”
“Is it hurting her?” Apollo stresses anew, rubbing a hand at his face. “It has to be. Right? Growing that fast?”
M gets the sudden, odd feeling of a half-memory of him in something, he can’t tell, but his bone and muscle and very being is screaming as it grows too fast and too thick and—
M shoves that away.
“Not as far as I can tell,” Angie shakes her head. “It’s just… what she’s doing. I think she’ll be okay.”
“Good,” Apollo breathes out. “Good.”
He stands and gathers Jenny in his arms and smiles a little bit at M as Jenny coos happily, and M smiles back.
—
And back in their room, Apollo lies on the bed with Jenny next to him and M lies down on their other side and they just sort of look at each other. And Jenny. And Jenny stares at them, too, beaming a little smile with a few more teeth than three hours ago and M smiles a little wider at the sight.
“This is so weird,” M mumbles, and Apollo makes a little laugh-scoff noise. “I’m serious! We’re easily the last and second-to-last people on the Universe’s list of Who Should Be Parents, Ever, and now—“ he gestures vaguely at the baby asleep between them. “Bam. Child.”
“With child.”
“Oh my god, don’t you even—“
And Apollo’s laughing properly, and M can’t help his own snicker.
So they lie there together. And eventually, Apollo begins to fall asleep. So M moves Jenny to her bassinet next to their bed, and he turns off the lights, and clambers into bed next to Apollo, and lets his half-asleep lover curl him properly against his chest.