Chapter 11
Chapter
Eleven
“ J acks, I need you to hold still.” It was the day before Halloween, and Daniel was trying to get Jacks to hold still so he could finish taking in the little dragon costume he’d bought.
Thank the goddess, as Hayden always said, he had bought this costume too big because Jacks would never have fit into it if Daniel had bought him the size that he should have fit into by the time Halloween rolled around.
“Rawr!” Jacks made a sound like a hunting dinosaur. He would swear little sparks of fire flew out of Jacks’s mouth, but he was sure that was just a weird combination of static electricity and spit, maybe.
“I know you don’t like to be still, but if you will just be for a few seconds so I can measure this, then you can play with your blocks while I fix it. You are going to make the best dragon in the history of dragons.”
Jacks blinked at him, and his sweet boy launched himself at Daniel and hugged him tight.
“Aw, I love you too,” Daniel said, hugging him back. “Now hold still for a second. You’re growing so fast, buddy!”
Jacks burbled at him, jabbering. He was so sweet, mostly. Every so often frustration got the better of the little one, as it did with all of them.
He had to encourage Jacks to breathe a bit when that happened.
“How’s it going?” Rita had a bottle in one hand and a piece of something that looked amazing in the other hand.
“It’s going, he’s trying... What is that that smells so good?”
She beamed at him. “Mmm, apple spice cake. I thought it would be perfect for today, and I thought I’d bring a piece up for you. And I have something for Jacks, too.
She wiggled the bottle, but the baby focused on the cake.
“You don’t need that, buddy. It’s not good for you, it’s too much sugar right before naptime.”
God knew he needed naptime.
Of course, the “he” in that sentence was absolutely not Jacks. Daniel needed Jacks to have naptime. That way, he could get the costume finished and get some paperwork done to send to the agency.
He liked keeping track of all of the milestones that Jacks reached and making a plan for the month ahead, too, even though he understood one hundred percent that there was no way that this plan was ever going to work because Jacks, like every child, had a mind of his own.
A plan was good.
Jacks pouted, waving his little hands.
“No, Jacks. No cake.” He put in the last safety pin as he held Jacks in his arms, then slipped him out of the costume so Rita could hand over bottle and cake.
“He’s going to make you give him a bite of cake.” Rita winked at him and headed back out the door because it was like she didn’t want to get involved in that.
He rolled his eyes and did pinch off a tiny bite of cake for Jacks to gum on before he zonked the bottle in the kid’s mouth. “See? I can compromise, Jacks. Now I need you to compromise too and not pout anymore, okay?”
Jacks sucked his bottle, watching Daniel the whole time as he ate his piece of cake and pondered whether he’d done a good enough job pinning up the dragon costume. He felt like Jacks was always thinking, always contemplating what his next move was going to be.
Kind of like Hayden. He knew Jacks wasn’t Hayden’s biological child, but obviously little Jacks thought Hayden was worth emulating. Daniel couldn’t blame him; he sort of thought Hayden hung the moon and stars out himself.
“Okay, buddy,” he said when Jacks finished slurping down the bottle. “Are you ready for a nap?”
No.
He would swear he heard that word loud and clear ringing in his ears, but Jacks didn’t say anything out loud, so it couldn’t have been right?
To be fair, Jacks’s expression was absolutely a Big No with an exclamation point.
“Jacks.” He tried for patience and not sighs or grunts. “I really need you to take your nap so I can finish your costume. And you really need to take your nap so you can stay up tonight and watch that movie with me and your daddy.”
Daniel had found that Jacks responded well to bribery, and he wasn’t going to make himself feel bad for resorting to it. Jacks was a stubborn little beast.
Jacks let the nipple from the bottle pop out of his mouth and then tilted his head to one side and his little lips pursed.
“I know you want to go hang out with me and Daddy tonight, don’t you?”
There was no way Jacks could really understand him. No way.
This baby was six months old, even if he was the biggest six-month-old he’d ever seen.
And when he said “movie,” he actually meant a short cartoon, which hopefully Jacks would be asleep before it was over. Daniel was fairly sure he didn’t approve of Hayden showing the baby Disney movies yet. He was six months old, dammit.
Still.
Jacks seemed to love the idea of being with them together. He supposed they were his main family unit.
Sometimes he felt like his basis of comparison with the universe was beginning to become strange and unusual.
He guessed it didn’t really matter, mostly.
He was going to be here for a few years anyway, maybe longer because he really did like Hayden and the baby and, oh?—
Jacks’s eyes were still fastened on him.
“What do you say, man? I’ll rock you. We’ll sing. You’ll sleep.”
Jacks scowled at him. And he heard it again, No, no, no, no, no.
Well, that wasn’t going to work for him. He was still the nanny.
He scooped Jacks up, plopped the bottle back into his mouth, and went to the rocking chair. They were going to take a nap.
Jacks couldn’t exactly start wailing with the bottle blocking him, but Daniel got the feeling he would if he could. His little body was tense, and he was radiating heat like he often did when he was upset.
The little guy was going to combust one of these days. Boom.
No fire.
He looked down at Jacks, thinking he was superimposing his thoughts on the wee one. It sounded like Jacks was talking to him.
In his head.
Daniel scoffed. Nope. No way.
Up.
He kept rocking, his ears popping.
Up, up, up, up, up. Up! Up! UP!
The word was echoing inside of his head, rattling his brains against his skull.
He shook his head to clear his vision, lifting his hand to his nose, coming away with blood. “Stop it. You have to stop it.”
UPUPUPUPUPUPUP
Somewhere. In the depths of his soul, he screamed for Hayden. “Somebody, I need help!”
The heat pouring from Jacks was unbearable for a second, and suddenly Daniel heard a roar and a rush of air and energy, and the noise inside his brain stopped as if someone had slammed a door shut.
“Jacks, I said no. You’re hurting him. What did we say about that? You have to control your temper. Now, you go to your bed, and you stay there.” There was another roar, and then Denise was right there.
“I’ll watch things. You go, honey.”
Then Hayden seemed to just scoop him up and take him toward the bedroom, cradling him in his arms. Fuck, he was confused.
“Shhh. It’s all right, Daniel. Jacks doesn’t know his own power yet. It’s so hard at this age. They know what they want, and they just go for it. And they have no idea that someone might be hurt. Impulse control.”
The soft, soothing words poured over him, but they didn’t make a great deal of sense, really.
Daniel clung to Hayden, who undressed him and put him in the shower, following as soon as he was naked. The water felt too warm to start with, but then it began to cool him down, and Daniel shivered.
“He’ll be all right, don’t worry. Just trust me. I’ll take care of it.”
“I’m so sorry. He was supposed to go down for a nap. I swear I didn’t hurt him.”
Hayden snorted. “No, no, I’m not worried about that. I’m way more worried about him giving you an aneurysm. Thank goodness that Declan knew what the hell he was doing. If he’d listened to me, things would have gotten very bad.”
“I’m glad.” He didn’t know he even cared. He probably didn’t care. “The water’s cold.”
“No, it’s just you that’s hot. Trust me on this. Just breathe, hold on to me.”
So Daniel held on. What else was he going to do?
“I swear to you, Jacks didn’t mean to hurt you, and he feels terrible—not as bad as he’s going to feel because he’s not allowed to have you until he learns to control himself.”
“Hayden, you cannot use denying love as a punishment. That’s not fair.”
“I know, I know, but I can threaten it when he can’t hear me.”
Daniel started to chuckle suddenly, tickled. “Yes, just like every so often I can think I’m going to just drop him in a snowbank and see if it melts. He just wants what he wants so badly, he doesn’t seem to understand that you don’t always get what you want.”
“Impulse control is rough for toddlers.”
Daniel peered at Hayden through the water. “You know he’s not supposed to be anywhere near a toddler yet, right?”
“Yeah, we need to chat about that, honey.”
“We do?”
“Yeah.” Hayden made a face. “But for now, I just want you to be okay.”
He nodded, caught in that gaze that seemed to have flames deep inside. “Trust me, Hayden, I also want to be okay. I’m beginning to think that I’ve lost my mind a little bit. That’s a bad thing to have in a nanny. We should totally be in our right minds all the time.”
“Oh, you’re fine,” Hayden insisted, and Daniel shook his head.
“I don’t think I’m fine,” he argued. “I have to tell you — I think that the baby is growing really fast, and I also think I can hear the baby think, which is weird and also have you noticed that he’s really hot?
Like always hot? What if he has some weird genetic disorder?
Have you gotten him checked for that weird genetic disorder syndrome or something? ”
He sucked in a breath. “Also, my nose was bleeding, and my head hurts, and I don’t understand anything that’s going on, and I don’t want to do this anymore!”
Hayden answered him by kissing him, which didn’t answer any of his questions, but it did shut him up, and it made him feel better. So he accepted it because he was beginning to have the sinking suspicion that there was no making this better. Making this better was not a thing.