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Grant Ward thought he was prepared for the lack of sleep that came with being a new parent. He could recall - on several occasions - being awake for days at a time. This usually happened when he was on an important mission. If he could be awake for three days straight and still be focused enough to disarm a bomb, surely he could get up every couple of hours when his baby started crying.
Obviously, he was wrong. He jerked out of bed when the loud wail of his newborn daughter echoed through the house. As he made his way out of his bedroom, he noticed that Skye was gone and the monitor was off which meant she had gotten up sometime earlier to tend to their baby and turned off the monitor, hoping to let him sleep. He felt his heart swell a little. The amount of love he felt for this woman was immeasurable.
She had yet to return to work, so for the majority of the day, she was alone with their daughter and yet, she still tried to let him sleep when the baby woke up in the middle of the night. She was definitely the strongest woman he knew.
He leaned against the doorway of the nursery and watched Skye rock their little girl, shushing her every once in awhile. The baby - they had named her Madeline - stared up at her mother. Grant wasn’t sure he would ever get used to seeing this. There was a time in his life when he thought having something as amazing as this in his life was impossible. Skye liked to defy the impossible.
“You’re beautiful,” he said. She looked at him and smiled.
“Yeah right. I am the definition of a hot mess.” Her long hair was in a messy bun, the shirt she wore was much too big and had holes in it, and there were dark circles under her eyes. She thought she looked like a hot mess. He thought she looked beautiful. He moved to wrap his arms around her.
“I disagree. Motherhood looks good on you.” Skye snorted, but didn’t reply as she gently set their now sleeping baby back in her crib. She took Ward’s hand and let him back to their room. “I give it about 15 minutes before she’s up and crying. Want to take a shower together?”
Skye didn’t wait for a response. She smirked and headed toward the bathroom - shedding her clothes as she went. Grant stared for a moment before shedding his own clothes and following his girlfriend.
“About time. I thought I was going to be showering alone.” She teased as he wrapped his arms around her.
“Hmm...never,” he kissed the spot below her ear.
The shower lasted 14 minutes and as they were drying off and getting dressed, Madeline began to cry. “Told you,” Skye laughed. She kissed Grant on the lips and headed to the nursery.
By the time he got there, Skye was sitting in the rocker nursing Madeline. He made his way over to the rocker and kneeled down. This wasn’t how he was planning on doing this - he had actually spent weeks getting everything in order - but he couldn’t stop it. It felt natural to look up at her and whisper “marry me.”
Skye stopped rocking and looked at him. “Excuse me?”
He smiled and leaned up to kiss her. “This wasn’t how I wanted to ask, but I can’t wait anymore. I want to be with you for the rest of my life, I want to have many more kids, and I don’t want to wait anymore.”
Skye looked at him for a moment. Tears welled up in her and spilled down her cheeks. “How many kids?” she asked with a smile. Grant laughed and leaned up to kiss her. “Of course I will marry you, you dork.”
Grant stood up and began peppering kisses all over her face without disturbing his daughter. His tears of joy mixed with hers. “God, I love you.” He whispered against her lips.
“I love you too. And you know what else?”
“Hm?”
“It’s been six weeks since we had Maddie. So once she’s done eating and napping…” She trailed off with a smirk.
“Oh....OH! I’ll go set up!” He scrambled up and out of the room - nearly tripping on thin air in his pursuit. Skye just laughed before looking down to the nursing baby in her arms.