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The apartment is silent when Ethan comes home after what could have been the longest day he has ever experienced. Kitchen - empty. Living room - empty. Without much thinking, his legs carry him - by instinct, by heart - to what used to be a guest room.
To the room that has become a nursery.
“That’t a badger, yes,” he hears Chiara’s soft voice even before he opens the door, and when he does, the sight that has quickly become the most beautiful one, welcomes him.
Three months old Matilda laying on her stomach, desperately trying to keep her head - seeminly too big for the small body, seemingly impossible to hold up on that tiny neck - up so that she can see the black-and-white picture of said animal.
Chiara, stunning Chiara - even with dark circles under her eyes and a messy bun -
(and Ethan wonders who came up with the saying that babies sleep all the time. He would like to meet the person. He would like them to spend a week in their household to learn that Matilda Nekane Ramsey has never slept through the day, not once in those 97 days of her life. He would like to show them how she wakes up at 2 in the morning and smiles - and then doesn’t fall back asleep until 6 AM.)
- laying on her stomach too, chin propped on her palm, while her other hand keeps pointing to the pictures and naming the animals, a badger and a bear and a fox, yeah this is a spider, look at all those legs!, so focused on her daughter that she doesn’t register Ethan’s presence.
“Hey,” he decides to greet them at last.
“Ethan!” Chiara turns around and smiles brightly, turning to Matilda a second after. “Look who is home."
Already kneeling down, Ethan kisses Chiara first before bowing down to kiss top of Matilda's head.
"How have you girls been today?" he asks with a smile - and no matter how sleep deprived, he has never smiled as much as these months - although the question goes unanswered due to Chiara's already retreating form and, well, Matilda's incapability to talk.
With Chiara now gone from the room - and Ethan wonders where she's gone only briefly - he takes her place on the playing mat next to Matilda, turning the cardboard page of the book to reveal new animals.
Just as he starts to talk about octopuses Chiara returns, a wide smile still on her face.
"Happy Father's Day," she kneels down next to them and kisses his cheek. "We love you the most."
Confusion overtakes Ethan's features for a while.
"I had no idea it was Father's Day," he admits at last.
"You never celebrated with Alan?"
He shrugs, gaze thoughtful. "When I was a little boy, perhaps. It's been long enough for me to forget about the day altogether."
Before any of them can elaborate, they are interrupted by Matilda's fussing - little fists angrily banging on the mat, lips warped in an almost comic way.
"Come here," Ethan smiles down at her and picks her up.
"I wanted your first Father's Day to be special - breakfast in the bed and all, but... you know," Chiara waves her hand between them and then around the room and Ethan knows.
Knows how tired they both are. Knows that planning anything with a three month old that sometimes cries for two hours straight, is an impossible task. Knows that their life now is not about dinners or breakfasts in bed or grand date nights - and knows that one day, it will be again. Not today, though. This Father's Day - his first, as Chiara reminded him - is about the person that made him a father and about her only.
And he couldn't have hoped for a better life.
"But we made you at least this little something," Chiara interrupts his thread of thoughts and puts something into his free hand.
It's a photograph - or, better said, it's a collage made out of five photos.
Photo of Ethan laying shirtless on a couch, one arm over his head, the other securing two weeks old Matilda in her white onesie, sleeping face down on his chest. Another one of Matilda curled in one of his arms (and they seem huge against her tiny body), while Ethan is captured laughing at something with Naveen who came for his first visit that day. Photo of Ethan with Matilda in a baby carrier, drinking a coffee from a paper cup (ah yes, there's nothing like a coffee to go when you have to walk around the block with your newborn in a carrier in order to get them to sleep). Fourth one - Ethan's terrified face as he spotted Jenner licking Matilda's face (and yes, Chiara heard a lot about taking a photo in that situation instead of taking care of it). The last one of all three of them sitting by the river, Matilda once again resting peacefully in Ethan's arms, Chiara smiling with that bright smile of hers and Ethan remembers Jenner being there too, in the corner of the photo, but the corner seems bitten off now.
"I didn't expect Matilda to take her part that seriously," Chiara chuckles when Ethan raises an eyebrow at it. "I was showing it to her and she used the corner as a pacifier for a few seconds."
A soft laugh escapes him as Ethan turns to Matilda with a smile, 'is that so?', he asks and laughs some more when she lets out an incomprehensible blabbering.
And it's then, in the middle of a nursery, with his daughter in his arm and Chiara by his side, that Ethan feels happy. Fully and so amazingly mundanely happy.