Chapter Text
Mindy doesn’t notice it right away. She recognizes the hole of space on the top of Danny’s dresser, but she can’t really place what used to be there, and frankly, she can’t be blamed as she’s only averaging a mere three hours of sleep these days. She has a high hope that the missing object is the cheap cologne of Danny’s she keeps throwing out that keeps reappearing, but she knows it isn’t, the putrid smells still haunts her. She can’t put her finger on what’s missing, but her life is great now, she has an amazing son and a great fiancé, so she decides it doesn’t really matter. So, naturally, it’s a week later when she finally figures what used to fill the empty space on Danny’s dresser, Mr. Neck.
It’s a Thursday night and Mindy has been up for twenty hours. Leo’s been sick all day; his little body clammy and feverish, his coughs and sneezes shaking his small frame, and his cries so loud and shrill that the intensity of their desperation halts his breathing for a second. He’s absolutely miserable, and that means Mindy and Danny are absolutely miserable. And so is Peter, who Mindy has called in a panic in twenty minute intervals from the moment Leo started to sneeze, and in these late night hours, even Peter, has nothing helpful to say in his distinctly perverted tone, so now, Danny and Mindy are own their own.
Mindy wakes up to his cries for the tenth time that night and she wishes that she could do something more for her son because he’s in so much pain and she’s in so much pain watching him be in pain. Mindy made the observation about motherhood pretty quickly that the absolute worst thing about motherhood was that there is no way to ensure that her child will be fabulously happy all the time, and that children just don’t stick to the plans, even if they are well-laid and almost perfect as if Nora Ephron herself wrote them. As the cries permeate their room once again, Mindy groggily sits up in bed and clumsily slides her glasses onto her face; but, as she makes a move to get out of bed, Danny’s hand latches onto her shoulder. “It’s okay, I’ve got this,” he says to her. She smiles back at him sleepily, in a way that doesn’t quite reach her eyes, as he swings out of bed and shuffles towards the nursery.
Mindy lies back in bed, no longer focused on sleeping, but only on the sound of her son’s wailing. While it was quite noble and considerate of Danny to take Leo, and she totally deserved the sleep he was offering her, she just couldn’t take it. She needed to be with the baby right now, sleeping was nowhere near a priority. So as Leo’s cries begin to quiet little by little, she slips out bed, shrugs on her robe, and tiptoes across the hall. Leo’s cries have died down from hysterical retches to subdued whimpers, and in an effort not disturb the calming scene, she peers through the crack in the door.
Danny’s rocking Leo in his arms, pacing around the room, in what can only be described as a dance, the movement’s graceful with an oddly comforting sway that’s almost mesmerizing. As she watches him, a small smile dances across her lips and she folds her arms, resigning herself to stand back and watch her two favorite guys. It’s when Danny turns in her direction that she sees it, what’s been missing from the dresser, it’s Mr. Neck. Mr. Neck is balancing on top of her son’s small body, Leo’s finger clutching the giraffe’s neck precariously and one of the giraffe’s little nob-shaped ears suckled in his mouth.
When Leo’s whimpers cease, Danny’s whole body sags with relief and he looks up with a small lopsided smile on his face. Their eyes meet instantly, momentarily shocked, his smile deepens at the sight of Mindy’s face and the sounds his son’s congested snores.
“Hey,” he whispers. Mindy quietly makes her way into the nursery.
“Hey,” she smiles back, “That’s a cute little guy Leo’s got with him there.”
And maybe it’s because the rules of masculinity don’t apply in a nursery, or maybe it’s because nothing’s embarrassing at 1:35 on a Thursday morning while rocking your sick infant to sleep, or maybe it's because Danny’s the best father on Earth (Mindy thinks it’s the latter), but Danny isn’t embarrassed like he normally would be by the presence of Mr. Neck. “Yeah,” Danny responds, “This little guy was always watching over me when I was sick, and you know, I just figured he could watch over my little guy.”
Mindy steps forward and places her hand on Danny’s shoulder, “That’s so sweet,” she coos, “I love it.”
Danny smirks as he whispers his response, “Plus, Mr. Neck is the best-stuffed animal in the house and Leo deserves the best.”
Mindy takes her hand off his shoulder, she whispers offended, “How dare you? Brown Bear is clearly the most loyal, most sophisticated, most well-dressed, and best secret keeping stuffed animal in this house.”
Danny winks and retorts back, “Well that’s your opinion, isn’t it? But I think Leo agrees with me.”
Mindy gasps in mock horror, “Danny Castellano, how dare you use our beautiful, innocent, mixed race son, who clearly takes after me, in an argument against me?”
“Oh please, you use him to get what you want all the time, just the other day when you didn’t want to watch Ken Burn’s new film, you said I couldn’t watch it either because you didn’t want me to make our son a nerd.”
“I stand by that statement,” Mindy huffs quietly, and Danny shakes his head at lets up a breathy laugh, because everything is funny at 1:37 on a Thursday morning.
And that’s when Leo squirms, and from the once joyful banter of the room emerges a panicked quiet. Danny grips Leo to his chest a little tighter and Mindy stretches out her hand and runs her fingers over Leo’s tiny knuckles. Leo grips her finger lightly as he eases back into a slumber that Mindy and Danny both know will end sooner than later.
When Leo’s snores even, Mindy lets go of his hand and kisses his cheek and breathes an “I love you” into his skin, and then Danny lays him gently into his crib, moving Mr. Neck off the baby’s chest and in the upper right corner. “Watching over him,” Danny explains, as he straightens up and takes Mindy’s hand and they tiptoe across the hall to their bedroom. And as for Mr. Neck, he stays in that corner of the crib, and when the crib becomes a big boy bed, he stays there too, and he doesn’t leave Leo’s room again until Danny sneaks him into one of Leo’s boxes as he packs up his son’s things for college.