Chapter Text
Day One
Teresa woke up that morning, normal as anything. Patrick was already up as per usual, sipping his special tea. He shot her a happy, golden smile, making her heart melt. She wandered over to him, running her hand through his curls.
“Good morning,” he murmured, and handed her a cup of coffee, just the way she liked it. Somehow, he always made it better. She had a theory that he hid some really expensive coffee somewhere, but she knew he’d never tell her if she asked, and knew better than to try and find it. She’d never be able to outwit Patrick.
She sipped her coffee and smiled over the rim. “Hey.”
It was a quiet moment. Sweet, simple, and full of love. But then it was shattered with the sensation of water running down her legs. Teresa nearly choked on her coffee.
“Teresa, you alright?”
She shot him a look filled with terror, and placed a hand on her stomach. Her brain was short circuiting. She’d faced serial killers, guns, and knives without hardly a blink. But delivering a baby? Very new territory.
Patrick understood the message, and understood her inner panic. He quickly led her to their bedroom where he threw her some sweatpants and grabbed the overnight bag they packed a week ago while she changed.
She focused on breathing through the fear and pain as Patrick sped to the hospital, surprised to find she was grateful for his erratic driving for once.
At 1:37 PM, Cameron Angela Jane came into the world. She had eyes like her father and hair like her mother. Patrick cried, Teresa cried, Cameron cried (of course). In short, there were a lot of tears.
Teresa and Patrick had gone back and forth on names for a long time. She had wanted, of course, to honor Patrick’s late wife or daughter somehow, but Patrick had also been insistent on honoring Teresa’s family. They decided on Cameron, after Teresa’s mother, and Angela, after Jane’s wife. There had been tears then, too.
Aside from the first few minutes, Cameron was surprisingly quiet for a baby. Once she had been bathed and nestled into her mother’s arms, she settled instantly. The doctors had her nurse right away, and the little girl was asleep within seconds once her stomach was filled.
Teresa felt her heart shifting and swelling to make room for this beautiful, precious baby like her stomach had done for 9 months before.
She couldn’t take her eyes away.
“She’s so perfect,” she whispered, sniffling back a few tears.
“I know,” a quiet voice beside her said softly, and Teresa looked over at the only person that could possibly make her happier than the little bundle in her arms. Patrick.
“We did a good job, didn’t we?”
“Well, you did most of it, love,” he grinned, his eyes so filled with happiness and love, in such stark contrast to the sadness and bitterness that had filled them when she first met him.
She offered him the bundle of blankets, and watched tears fall as he took their daughter ever so gently and stared at her with such adoration and wonder.
Patrick tore his eyes away to look at Teresa again, and the hospital bed squeaked as she shifted to let him climb into it with her, carefully maneuvering so he didn't wake his precious cargo. She snuggled right up against his side, laying her head on his shoulder with a happy sigh. Feeling whole, and content, and incredibly exhausted, she let her eyes droop.
Patrick noticed, observant as ever, and gently kissed her forehead. “You should rest,” he whispered, and quietly started to hum until both his girls were sleeping peacefully.
One Month
Patrick and Teresa moved around each other like a practiced machine. Cameron (or Cammy, as they’d taken to calling her) was sleeping. But only for about another 45 minutes. They needed to get everything done before their world became completely absorbed by Cammy again.
Not that they would complain. They had created a habit of watching her sleep when they were supposed to be sleeping, missing precious time because they only got three hours at a time. .
“What is it about babies sleeping that’s so cute?” Teresa had asked one night as they stared at their sleeping daughter, twin looks of adoration on their faces.
“I don’t know. I was the same way with Charlotte, though. I’d stay awake all night just watching her sleep if Angela didn’t pull me to bed.”
He’d been talking about his family more lately, Cammy brought up memories of another little baby girl, and Teresa gave his hand a squeeze. She was relieved to see no sadness on his face, just wistful memories, and then Cammy yawned and he melted, and even the wistfulness faded.
But it wasn’t bedtime. It was naptime, and they were in mission mode.
Since bringing Cammy home, their normally (relatively) clean house had been a mess. Dishes left in the sink for days at a time, baby toys and blankets and diapers littering the floor, and their laundry hamper overflowing. But they developed a system, and Saturdays’ naps are for cleaning house.
Patrick grabbed the laundry from their room (tip toeing past the nursery) and Teresa took it from him with practiced precision as he continued down the hall to the kitchen. Once the wash was going, she started picking up the living room.
They finish and collapse onto their couch with 10 minutes to spare.
“We’re getting better,” Patrick murmured, sliding down so his head was in his wife’s lap and his legs hung over the armrest. Her hands started running through his curls of their own accord and he smiled softly as his eyes drooped.
The peaceful moment was broken 5 minutes later as cries began to erupt from the nursery, and Patrick immediately sat up. “I got her.”
While Teresa relaxed back into the couch, Patrick made his way down the hallway.
“Hey, little dove. Good morning!” he cooed as he opened the door.
The nursery had become one of his favorite rooms in the house. The walls were a beautiful, light mint blue, which made the white furniture and curtains stand out. (He’d insisted on the blue. It was Charlotte’s favorite color.) He picked up the sniffling baby from her crib and laid her on the floor to change her diaper.
“How’s my little angel, huh? Did you have a good nap?”
Cammy cooed in response, and Patrick couldn’t help but coo back. He smiled at his daughter. (His daughter!) And then something amazing happened.
She smiled back.
Forgetting about the diaper, Patrick called “Teresa! Come here!” He winces when he heard her running, panicked by the urgency in his tone.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to alarm you, but…she smiled at me! Her first smile!” he said excitedly, gesturing to their still bottom-naked little girl, who was flailing happily on the floor.
Teresa smiled at her baby. “Did you smile at your daddy, huh?”
Cammy’s nose wrinkled as she smiled again, this time directing her smile at her mother. Both her parents smiled back.
Three Months
Cameron had her mother and father completely wrapped around her finger. They both loved her more than they thought it possible to love anyone and would give the world to her if they could.
But that didn’t mean they didn’t want to hand her to someone else to deal with sometimes, too...particularly when she started screaming at 3 in the morning.
“Patrick, your daughter’s awake.”
“No, we both know she wants you, not me. She’s going through a phase ,” he mumbled, turning over in bed to face his wife, his eyes still determinedly shut. “And I got her last time, anyway.”
Teresa groaned as she got up for the third time that night, padding over to the bassinet at the foot of their bed.
Cammy had been sleeping through the night for the last month, much to the amazement and excitement of her parents. She’d nurse before she went to bed, then Teresa would nurse her before she and Patrick went to sleep, and she would be good for about 6 hours. But lately, she had been determined to not sleep for more than two hours at a time.
To top it off, she had, as Patrick complained, been going through a phase where she only wanted her mother. If Patrick so much as looked at her in the middle of the night, she cried impossibly louder until he handed her to Teresa, then she settled down into her normal volume of crying (which, spoiler alert, was still very loud).
In short, Teresa was exhausted.
“Cammy, I love you, but you are making me crazy!” she muttered, picking up the squalling baby.
When the same thing happened the next night, and the night after that, Teresa started to get really desperate. She’d had rough nights before, sure. Calls in the middle of the night to go to a crime scene, nightmares (hers and Jane’s), even getting up with her brothers when she was still at home raising them. But this had hit another level.
And Patrick could tell.
He tried, of course. He tried to get Cammy and pick her up, but nothing he did stopped her from crying. The only way any of them got any sleep was when he gave in and handed her to Teresa. He had no idea what to do, and it was a strange feeling.
Then he got an idea.
It came to him suddenly. Everyone loves to drive with me , he’d joked once to Cho. Driving had always been soothing to him, and he remembered Angela mentioning a friend had driven around to soothe her baby once. Cammy always fell asleep during car rides, anyway.
So, the next time Cammy started screaming, he quickly hopped out of bed and slipped on some shoes.
“I’m going to take her for a drive, see if that helps,” he said to answer the confused look his wife shot him. “Go back to sleep.”
She nodded gratefully and sank back into her pillows.
“Alrighty, little terror, you’re coming with me.”
Cammy protested her car seat. Loudly. But Patrick persisted, refusing to lose a battle to a 3 and a half month old. Once she was buckled, he began to drive. He didn’t pay much attention to where he was going, just hummed along to the classical music he had put on hoping to soothe his daughter.
Slowly, her cries decreased in volume, then turned to whimpers, then stopped altogether.
“Hey, princess, there you are,” he cooed at her, catching her eye in the rearview mirror. To his relief, Cammy shot him a gummy smile instead of her usual angry yell. “Oh, a smile, huh. Thank you. This car ride thing must really be working.”
He turned onto another street, then another, mostly paying attention to the way Cammy’s eyes started drooping and her head started lolling against the side of the car seat. She tried to fight it. Every so often, her eyes would close, and she’d determinedly open them again. But soon she had to give in.
“Finally,” Patrick sighed when her eyes closed and stayed that way. He glanced at the clock. 4:37.
After a few more minutes of driving around to ensure she really was asleep, he made his way back to their house and parked the car, but didn't get out. A car was definitely not the worst place he’d slept, and he didn’t want to chance taking Cammy out and waking her up. Besides, if she stayed in the car with him, Teresa could finally get more than 3 hours of rest.
Soon, he drifted off to the quiet sounds of Mozart and the snuffling sounds his daughter made, and decided they were some of his favorite sounds to go to sleep to.