. everything now

[Deleted]

He puts a hand up as if to shield her eyes from the hideousness of his signs of ageing. "I should be paying you per ego boost. What's your going rate?" Her pouting is almost too much to bear. It was hard to believe that this perfect creature was once his, he could never quite reconcile that someone as striking as Jada would a) also be as intelligent, and b) also be interested in him. By no means a particularly modest person, it wasn't so much that he felt undeserving as just very, very lucky. He squints at her suspiciously. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you want me asleep. What's your endgame, Carson?" Like a defiant child, her insisting on him sleeping makes him all the more determined not to. It's not easy though, his eyelids heavy, his brain begging him to shut down, just for a bit... then she lets him go and he groans, mimicking her pout. "Come on. That was such a tease, can't you give me a proper massage? Preferably without the humming."

[jada carson]

She looks back at him with her big almond shaped eyes, "Endgame? You just had nightshift with baby us. This is my gift," she says it innocently, her hand returning his gesture by tucking under his chin and giving his whiskers a gentle tug. The last guy she dated hadn't even fallen into the category of men she'd have a baby with. There were few, Finn being her number one and Ryan Gosling a close second. The last man she called a boyfriend made her miss Finn and everything they'd shared terribly. The want for a child and nostalgia for her ex husband aligned on her timeline. This of course made her feel more guilty, as though these intentions were wrong. Jada shakes her head in denial, "I can't do that." She's half joking, his request reminding her of her rules and giving her the strength to say no. "Do you want me to bore you into sleeping? I can tell you a story? What kind of story do you want to hear?"

[Deleted]

"You're right, you definitely still owe me." He scratched at his beard, trying to decide whether or not he was happy with it. "Be honest, do you think I should shave? Or at least give it a trim?" He's warmed up considerably under all these blankets and he can feel how hot he's getting, sure that his cheeks are flushed, though he has no desire to extricate himself from the situation. She refuses a massage despite kneading his back and he tilts his head at her, eyebrow raised. She didn't say so but he's sure this is her reaffirming the boundaries, and since he doesn't want them in the first place, he takes umbrage. "You, Jada Carson, are a tease. Here," he reaches a hand over, taking her shoulder and working his thumb in the nook under the blade. Immediately he can feel tension. "See! You need one too. Turn round," he says, holding up both hands, willing to do the job properly. "Let me sort you out, you can tell me a story as we go. Tell me about you as a teenager. Preferably something with a little girl on girl action, maybe some teenage rebellion, you know, keep it interesting. Maybe I'll turn it into a show."

[jada carson]

Jada looks at him admirably, turning his chin with her slim fingers and looking at his facial hair from all angles. "It's just that.. you set the bar so high for any man trying to grow facial hair. You're up there with Mr. Selleck. You are a marvel and I love it," her smile vanishes and she tilts her eyes seriously, "I do. You'd suit anything." She catches his amused expression and feels that he knows what she's thinking. She covers her face with the covers as if trying to shield herself from his mind reading, but it's no use. "I'm not. No, stop!" He hits a sore knot and she jolts away from his hands, becoming defensive. "No, no, I don't," she protests but turns her her back towards him anyway. She doesn't realize how uptight her muscles have gotten, and as he touches her back she squirms left and right. "Softer.. okay. Every little girl had a moment where they call their mom a bitch. I was fourteen, which I feel is relatively average for my generation. I'd just been testing out new lingo around town.. some F-bombs, asshole, gaylord - which is one I'm not proud of but it was the 2000's. I forget what had happened, but I'd been grounded for something I felt I shouldn't have been grounded for. I think I went to a friend's without telling her, I did that often. Anyway, we got into it. I stomped up to my room and muttered, 'bitch.' She heard, hauled my ass to the kitchen and fed me a bar of soap. She also added onto my grounding. I never swore again. "

[Deleted]

"I don't think Selleck is any more worried about me than Stevie Nicks is about you," he says with a grin, though he's glowing from the compliment. "But that doesn't help me. Did you know that whenever someone says Stevie Nicks I think of Stevie Wonder, and vice versa? I truly can't differentiate them." He can't help but laugh as she protests the massage even as she's giving him her full back. Like the rest of her, her back is perfect-- smooth, olive skin, baby soft to the touch. "Stop wriggling," he says firmly, though he lets up some of the pressure from his fingertips. The muscles across her back are riddled with little knots and he tries to work them out, cautious of not going too hard and causing her more damage than she had to begin with. It was obvious she'd been tensing plenty since the baby was born and he felt guilty for letting her. He grins as she starts to tell her story. "Gaylord. They said so much worse when I was a kid," he agreed, forgiving her. His jaw dropped as she finished her story, his hands pausing mid-massage. "You're shitting me. You've got to be shitting me!" He said, laughing incredulously. "Jada. I love you, I love your mom. But she's never being around our kid again."

[jada carson]

She frowns at him, "did you really? They're completely different other than the name.. though I thought Ceelo Green was Stevie Wonder." She quickly flashes him her teeth to show him she's kidding, her face turning to face the window. She can see the clear blue sky and the way the sun beats off the pool between the slits of the blinds; it looks as though it's shaping up to be a beautiful day. He scolds her from wiggling but she can't help but jolt and squirm. She hadn't felt any prior aches, so the soreness of the massage comes unexpected. "Come on, I'm sure there wasn't that much of an advancement in ten years," she rolls her eyes, always hating how he made two low digits seem like wars between them. "You have to understand that my mom is a little older and grew up in small town Minnesota! She wooden spooned me too, but I never crossed her after the soap.. I'm still scared of her," she admits with a laugh. She winces and ducks from his touch, shuffling back around to face him. "Fine, have it your way. Spin around."

[Deleted]

Pushing her hair over her shoulders to give him more space to work with, he mutters, "racist," at her joke, though with a smile. He's willing his son to sleep through for just a little longer, surprised that the infant hasn't started screaming yet, determined as he seemed to be to ruin their fun. He laughs as she continues to fidget under his touch, rolling his eyes as she childishly squirmed. "You're really making this impossible, you're gonna wind up with a hunchback by the time you're thirty." He shook his head as she defended her mother, glad that he wasn't doing so within her eyeline. His own upbringing had been one of boyish roughhousing, both he and his brother having been raised by their dad. "Maybe I should have wooden spooned Savannah. What kind of parent do you think you'll wind up being, do you think you'll be as strict?" She relents and he's delighted, turning round and pulling his t-shirt up and off to give her better purchase. "Be as rough as you can."

[jada carson]

She wiggles even when he's scolding her for it, her face full of laughter and grimace at the same time. "It hurts so badly," she complains childishly, his soft touch managing to hit every little landmine on her band. In truth, Caroline had been a fair mother. She was a friend and a mother when she needed to be, her strict punishments rare as Jada barely fell out of line or got caught. Even after a night of teenage drinking, Jada managed to chew a mint and keep a straight face. She still wasn't sure if her mother turned a blind eye, or was legitimately blind. "I think Sienna would have killed you," she mentions, her body worming up as she stretches out. She barks out a laugh, "what do you think?" As stubborn as she was, Jada wasn't as headstrong as her mother. She was more passive like her father, who talked gently about the consequences of decisions. "No. I'll probably lose my temper one day, but I don't believe in negative reinforcement," he takes his shirt off and she pauses to eye up the faint definition of his back muscles. Her hands tease his skin with featherlike contact, "like this??" As she grins, the sides of her thumbs begin to press along his shoulders and moving down the grain of his back. She can feel the tension in his back just as he could feel hers. Her brow furrows and her fingers softly prod at knots when she finds them. "Etsy shop owner, folk singer and masseuse?"

[Deleted]

He scoffs at the suggestion that Sienna would have killed him for being so strict. In truth she thought he was much too soft on their daughter, more like an annoying older brother than a father... it occurred to him now that the age difference between he and Savannah was almost the same as the difference between her and Oliver, a harrowing thought. He really had been a child raising a child. The idea of Savannah having a baby, having these sleepless nights and the weight of all this worry, was too comical to comprehend. Really, it was a miracle that she had turned out so well.  He felt the muscles slacken under his fingertips, a satisfying result though his hands were getting cramped. "I think you'll seem chill but have an iron core underneath that... which is good, I'll be the opposite to balance you out. You can't let me spoil him as much as I do Sav." Fidgeting under her light touches, he laughs, trying to duck away. "That's torture. I'd rather be waterboarded, actually." She starts working and he breathes a happy sigh, enjoying the sensation even if it was tinged with pain. "That's it, you angel. Skip the middle one and you're onto a winner."

[jada carson]

She keeps an ear open for Oliver as she expects him to break their morning of indulgence any second. He must have wailed himself into complete exhaustion, as nothing but silence comes from his room. The guilt still plays in the background of her mind. She can picture herself as she runs her fingers along Finn's spine, and she's judging. The lack of her own parent seems to make boundaries lapse a little, as she wouldn't have been caught so much as carelessly flirting with her ex-husband while her mom was visiting. Jada is restrained, but a smidgen bolder. "Can we not good cop/bad cop? My parents always did and my mom hated it," she pleas, her hands working to find kinks along his outer back. Her mother had never admitted to Jada that she resented her father, but she can remember eavesdropping on an argument in which her mother asked her father to be more tough. She grins at his answer, almost tempted to start singing but afraid to wake their son up. "Are you satisfied> I think you are," she claws her fingernails gently down his back, "I'm done. That'll be twenty please." She takes her hands back and reburies herself underneath the duvet, "put your shirt back on."

[Deleted]

Finn half nods, half shrugs. "No one intends to do it. Usually it happens naturally-- either we disagree about something, or we both agree, but one of us has to be hardline. If we're both hardline we'll only drive them away, if we both take the softly softly approach then he'll walk all over us," he said, speaking from experience. He was only able to reason with Savannah by seeming less strict than her mom, whilst her mom was only able to keep her in line because she knew she had her dad's sympathetic ear. Keeping her in the grey area between full on rebellion against the regime and total indifference to her parents was key. "There's a reason cops do it, it's to win people over. But hey, I think you'll wind up being good cop, so don't worry about it." She removes her magic touch from his skin and he almost hates her for it. Still, he'll take what he can get and he stretches out, enjoying his newfound suppleness. "Sorry babe, don't have any cash... can I interest you in a McGriddle?" he teases, pulling his shirt back on and easing back beside her. They've really broken the touch barrier now and it gives him new confidence, leaning against her shoulder and nestling down. "I'm gonna pass out, sorry for the dead arm you're gonna end up with. Don't even think about waking me up to move it, thanks."

[jada carson]

Jada listens to his reasoning, her teeth biting her lower lip thoughfully and her head giving a single nod. "Maybe you're right.. It's just that my dad always got in shit for it, I think because my mom was jealous that we were such pals." She and her father had been incredibly during her childhood and Jada always sought out his attention. She and her mother had been close, but had grown more together in her early adulthood - whereas she and her father seemed to have lost touch. She grins when the McGriddle comes up and flicks him with her index finger. That grin turns into a softer smile and her fingers pull the covers over his shoulder when he cozies back down. "Okay," she affectionately gives his head another stroke and turns her attention to the television. It's not too long at all before Finn's breathing has slowed and become sleepy. Jada is yawning but is in no state to fall asleep and so puts up with an episode for half an hour. When she's had enough she replaces her shape with pillows and tucks her sleeping ex husband in, pausing a moment to admire his exhaustion. In the following hours Jada manages to shower and dress before the baby monitor begins to stir. "Morning, good looking," she speaks to the blue eyed baby as he looks up from the crib, her hands lifting him gently and pulling him close to her chest. "Let's get you fed before you go off," she beams down at him, her rosy lips pecking him on his warm forehead. Jada moves quietly through the living room and to the kitchen to grab a bottle, carefully rocking Oliver to prevent him any discomfort that could set off alarms. From here, they find shade under an umbrella outside. Jada smiles down at the fair skinned baby as he sucks away at the bottle, she's in total awe of his creation.

[Deleted]

He nodded, understanding. Jealousy between parents was inevitable. Whilst Finn had always been the cooler, more fun parent and Sienna had been bitterly jealous of this fact, he had always been jealous of Sienna's lingering authority. The truth was that friendship between parent and child was cheap, easily won by increased pocket money or the easing up of a particular punishment. Respect was hard won, and lifelong once acquired. The product of a single father, Finn had feared and respected his dad more than anything else growing up, and that intimidation had matured into a lifelong sense of respect. If he could be one tenth the father his father was, he would be content. With his head on her arm, his resistance to sleep becomes futile. He's bundled up, so warm, so insanely comfortable, that sleep comes quickly, taking him almost by surprise. It's as if no time has passed at all, except when he stirs, groggy, one glance at the clock shows that he's been asleep for hours. Weighed down by the immediate after effects of slumber, Finn sits up slowly, reluctantly, irritated by his own consciousness. After getting up and brushing his teeth he feels slightly more human. Seeing Jada outside, he follows suit, stepping out into the blinding LA sunshine to take a seat next to her in the shade, a beer in hand. "Nothing better than a breakfast beer," he grins. His eyes go from hers to Ollie's, the baby content in her arms. It makes him so happy he think he might throw up. Putting the bottle down, he holds his arms out, needy. "Give me that baby before I snatch him off you."

[jada carson]

Unable to help herself, Jada leans down to once again dab her lips on the baby's head. While she was pregnant, she anticipating falling in love with her son. It was inevitable and obvious that she would love him more than she had loved anyone or anything. But now that he was two months and in her arms, she saw that she had been naive with the amount of love she thought she would have. He was everything and when she looked down at him, she thought her heart might jump from her chest. Even though all he did was sleep, eat and poop, she was amazed by him. Jada was constantly bewildered over the fact that they made this magical little screaming machine. She hears the door slide open and her glittering eyes break away from Oliver to see Finn. "I'm sorry," she apologizes for leaving her post. "You look better, did you have a nice sleep?" she takes him in, he does look freshened up. Finn reaches his arms out and she looks at him a bit wide eyed, hesitant to give him up. She gives in though, transporting him gently from her chest to Finn's. "Don't drop him," she kids, standing up to move her chair into the rays of the sun. She sits back down and stretches her limbs out in the sun, her hands pressing her short floral dress down. "I'm really glad you're not going, I can force you to pool party during naptime."

[Deleted]

He contemplates the question. "Actually yeah," he says, noticing how much better he felt now that he had shaken off the initial grogginess of his nap. Cobwebs had been cleared, he could see everything more sharply now. Her telling him not to drop him elicits a small laugh, she was such a cliche new mother. "Oh, ok, I was planning on chucking him in the pool, but now that you've said that..." He takes the baby in his arms gently, relishing his perfect weight, his little face, now more distinguished than when he was a newborn. He was starting to look like a little person and Finn beamed down at him, running a finger over his impossibly soft, smooth cheek. Ollie grabbed the finger and Finn looked up at Jada, wide-eyed, as if their son had performed something incredible. "Isn't it amazing how he does that now? He doesn't know how to let go, though." He grins, "bit like his old man that way."