Chapter Text
Four years from now, Cody was absolutely certain they would look back at today with fond, wonderful, beatific memories. The only problem was the present, and the desperate, impatient prayer that those four years would hurry the hell up and get here already.
Hell, at this point, Cody would take the next two future hours as quickly as he could get them. He very much doubted that Roman would be able to continue his glowering for two more hours straight, but if there was anything his husband was tenacious certainly topped the list.
“We need to leave,” Roman said, finally tearing his gaze away from the screaming object of his discomfort.
Cody tore his own eyes away from the anomaly in front of him. “Leave?” he asked gormlessly, his brain feeling like it had been replaced with static. He let his head twist back to the plastic-and-fabric carrier sitting on the cold concrete of the floor. “And then what happens to the screaming baby?” he queried listlessly.
...
Today had started out as batshit as any other day that involved a roster full of wrestlers, which, when Cody really thought about it, qualified as business as usual.
There had been a PLE in which Cody was still sour that he’d lost his match, but Roman – fresh off the victory of his own and insufferably radiant because of it – had promised to share some of that joy with him once they got home. So Cody was very much looking forward to that specific brand of consolation.
Technically, if he had headed out immediately after his match had wrapped up, he might have been face-down in their bed by now, deep in an enjoyable, peaceful-slash-sulky slumber. But alas, Roman was the Main Event, and the contract of their marriage promised togetherness, love, and immense support – even when you were nursing a bruised ego and a sore back. So, he waited.
He waited through the celebration pyro, he waited through the post-match interviews, and then, he waited through the Ritual.
Roman had wrapped up his match, strutted into their shared locker room, and insisted on a twenty-five-step cleaning and post-match routine that had Cody banging on the bathroom door, demanding he get out, an hour and thirty minutes into his sequestering himself in there. By the time Roman was done, smelling of expensive sandalwood, pretty and looking his usual GQ-ready self, they were basically the last souls in the arena, much to Cody’s very loudly divulged irritation.
“Nightmare, I’ve already apologized. What else would you like me to say?” Roman sighed remorsefully.
Cody huffed his well-deserved indignation as they navigated the twists and turns of the hallways. Without the thrum of thirty thousand fans or the frantic scurrying of production assistants elbowing each other for passage-way, the arena felt like a tomb.
Yes, he understood Roman was genuinely contrite, but that didn’t change the fact that this was a deeply ingrained, endlessly repeating pattern, built on Roman’s unwavering commitment to the sanctity of his own appearance. It would almost be admirable if it didn’t come at the expense of Cody’s time, patience, and increasingly fragile goodwill. Cody figured the least his husband could do was halve that exhaustive cleansing process by at least a dozen steps. He wasn’t asking for a miracle, just basic mercy.
“The thing is, you’re always sorry, Roman,” Cody said, the bite in his voice fueled by the lingering salt of his loss. He was as much nursing his bruised ego as he was annoyed that Roman had squandered their exit time on a skincare regimen. “And then you proceed to repeat the entire performance the next time.”
Roman’s brow furrowed in genuine, if slightly dramatic, confusion as they navigated the bowels of the arena. “I’m confused. Do you not want me showering after matches?”
Cody inhaled slowly through his nose, resisting the very real urge to say something deeply unproductive and turn this into a full-blown squabble. “I would very much like you to cut back on the routine, especially when we’re not home and you know I’m outside waiting for you,” he gritted out.
There it was again, the double-headed monster of jealousy and annoyance rearing its ugly head at Roman, having won his match while Cody had lost his. It was a bitter pill, but Cody prided himself on being mature and rational. There was no sense in punishing Roman for a victory he had earned, nor for a loss he had no hand in.
“Hey,” Roman said softly, his voice pulling Cody out of his spiraling thoughts.
Roman came to a halt, gently setting his suitcase on the floor. He snaked an arm around Cody’s waist, hauling him into a soft, lingering kiss that communicated the full scale of his apology. Cody wasn’t in the least bit ashamed to admit it worked; he melted into the contact with a long, traitorous, and forgiving sigh, every last bit of his carefully maintained irritation dissolving on contact.
“I’m sorry,” Roman murmured, his lips brushing against Cody’s. Seeing the smitten, languid expression he’d successfully painted onto his husband’s face, Roman chuckled with a sense of smug fulfillment. He pressed a final kiss to Cody’s temple. “I will… reduce my after-match routine by at least twenty steps,” he begrudgingly acceded, eyes lifting heavenward as if the sacrifice were equivalent to pulling teeth.
Cody discovered he did not care one bit about Roman’s suffering. He had once again successfully whined his way to victory and secured a well-deserved kiss for his troubles. Roman could toss his eyes upward like tennis balls for all he cared.
“You promised to make me feel better after my loss today,” Cody sniffed with mock guilelessness, making a show of dusting a non-existent speck of lint from Roman’s pristine jacket.
“And I will fulfill that promise,” Roman reiterated, sealing it with a chaste peck before retrieving his suitcase. He offered his hand, and Cody took it seamlessly, their fingers interlacing as they resumed their trek through the dim hallways. “The moment we get home,” Roman added, a brazen waggle of his eyebrows making Cody snort undignifiedly.
They had just passed a particularly nondescript service door when a muffled noise made Cody stop in his tracks. He tilted his head, craning his ear toward the silence of the corridor.
“What is it?” Roman asked, halted by the sudden tug on their joined hands.
“Do you not hear that?” Cody replied, eyes darting around the empty corridor in search of the source.
He dislodged his hand from Roman’s, doubling back to the plain metal door. Pressing his ear to the cool surface confirmed the sound was indeed coming from within.
With a frown of deep suspicion, Cody stepped back and yanked the door open, eyes widening as the sound not only got louder, but the source became very visible, and even more unwanted.
Cody stood transfixed at the threshold, paralyzed by the sight of a crying child in a carrier, sitting on the floor of a cramped janitor’s closet. He watched the tiny face scrunch into an expression of extreme distress, skin turning a vivid, puffy red from… well, Cody assumed it was from all the screaming its little lungs were currently doing.
Roman sidled up beside Cody, face set firmly in disbelief as he edged the door open a bit more so he could stare into the closet as well. Contrary to whatever belief he might have harbored that his mere presence would magically restore order to the scene, it actually didn’t, and he was met with the same puzzling sight.
Cody stared at the wailing baby for an undisclosed amount of time. It was remarkably difficult to track the passage of seconds or minutes when a miniature, abandoned, and thoroughly pissed-off human being was colonizing your immediate vicinity. He turned to his husband – who, in this specific moment, Cody was willing to concede might very well be the smarter of the two – hoping for a shred of tactical guidance. But the uncharacteristically befuddled expression he found there made him swallow his question before it could even form.
Roman was glowering. Which was, admittedly, his default setting for anything that refused to slot neatly into the meticulously curated world that was his life, but this particular look was leaning into the realm of the comical, with a cocktail of high-definition confusion and sheer offense all rolled up in one. Cody couldn’t help the slightly manic bark of laughter that escaped him at the sight. The sound, however, was instantly devoured by the tiny creature’s ear-splitting wails.
Roman’s head – likely sensing Cody’s rapid descent into a psychological meltdown – finally snapped toward him. For a split second, his expression was a perfectly blank mask, before he scrambled to school into some semblance of barely-held-together integrity.
“We need to leave,” Roman said simply, clearing his throat when the words came out with a betraying hint of uncertainty.
His hand found the door, and he was in the middle of swinging it shut, when Cody wedged the momentum with his foot, staring in astonished disbelief at his husband.
“Leave?” Cody asked, aghast, before his head twisted back toward the carrier and its still-screaming occupant. “And then what happens to the screaming baby?”
Roman whipped his gaze back to Cody, wearing a look that loudly proclaimed Cody was the sole insane participant in this scenario. Cody did not care for that look in the slightest.
“Is it yours?” Roman asked, eyes narrowing in suspicion he didn’t even bother to disguise.
“Are you kidding me?” Cody scoffed, the sheer absurdity of the accusation momentarily overriding the noise. “Of course not.”
“So, if you did not cheat on me nine months ago to spawn this creature, please explain why you feel the sudden, inexplicable urge to take responsibility for it?” Roman asked, tone edging into something almost pleasantly cutting.
Cody eyed the baby again, performing some frantic, inexpert mental math. It certainly wasn’t a newborn; the proportions were all wrong for that. But it also didn’t look like it had crossed any major six-month threshold either. Look, the kid was really tiny… that was the extent of his diagnostic capabilities.
“A year,” Cody said, unhelpfully.
“What?” Roman reared back, his confusion deepening into genuine concern for Cody’s sanity.
“I would have had to cheat on you at least a year ago for the kid to be… however old this baby is,” Cody elaborated, gesturing a vague hand toward the carrier.
From the look on Roman’s face, he cared for the academic clarification even less than he had for the original accusation.
Cody sighed and stepped fully into the cramped room, reaching for the handle of the plastic carrier. “Look, Roman, we can’t just leave a person in a closet next to the floor wax.”
The baby seemed to settle slightly, its cries tapering off into a series of loud, wet complaints once it realized it was being granted some form of begrudging attention. Little legs kicked out in annoyance, and its cheeks remained puffy as it shuddered with the aftershocks of its tantrum.
“Cody,” Roman began, voice breathless with sheer incredulity. “You cannot just assume ownership of another human being! This is not a stray cat or a pair of shoes you can just claim and take home with you!”
“Do you see anyone else around?” Cody shot back, straightening as he lifted the carrier. He shouldered past Roman with a frown as he stepped out into the hallway, nudging the door shut behind him. “Whoever left this baby here clearly wasn’t planning on coming back anytime soon.”
“Oh! Well, why didn’t you say so?” Roman chirped mockingly, adopting an air of feigned, sparkling interest. “In that case, let’s just toss it in the trunk and head on home. I’m sure Pharaoh won’t mind sharing his bed with a screaming stranger.”
“No, we’re going to the police,” Cody said, rolling his eyes at the dramatics, which were dialed up to eleven today, even by Roman’s standards.
He reached into the pocket of Roman’s pants without asking, snorting at the fact that his husband could somehow still summon a low spark of interest even at this wildly inopportune moment. After fishing out the car keys, Cody strutted off down the hallway with the carrier swinging gently at his side, leaving Roman to scramble after him.
“Nightmare, you’re killing me here,” Roman muttered as he fell into step beside him, casting deeply suspicious glances at the baby, who had, in a remarkable turn of events, decided the best course of action was to attempt to consume its entire fist.
He sighed long and suffering before running a hand through his hair, which had somehow turned into an unruly mess in the ten minutes it had taken to find a baby and depart the stadium.
Under the watchful guidance of the stars and streetlights in the empty parking lot, Roman stood aside, taking a small amusement in watching Cody struggle to fit the carrier into the SUV.
It involved a significant amount of huffing, several muffled curses, and at one point, Cody looked like he was one frustrated tug away from crushing the plastic carrier, and perhaps the car door, with his bare hands.
To the baby, however, this was possibly the most entertaining comedy show it had ever laid eyes on. Instead of assisting in any meaningful way, the tiny traitor clapped its chubby hands in pure elation, squealing delightedly at every ill-timed swear word that escaped Cody’s lips with each failed attempt to wedge the carrier into the SUV’s back seat. At one point, Cody had to bat away a little hand that had somehow latched onto a strand of his hair and was yanking with surprising strength.
Thirty minutes and zero success later, Cody officially declared bankruptcy on his patience. He unclipped the tiny plastic buckles with a ferocity that nearly saw the restraints ripped clean off the frame, and hoisted the child into his arms.
The baby was clad in a plush green onesie peppered with animated crocodiles, a sartorial choice that did absolutely nothing to clarify the child’s gender. With one hand, Cody hit the key fob, shifting the squirming weight higher against his chest so he could snatch the now-offending carrier with his free hand. He marched to the rear of the vehicle and unceremoniously tossed the plastic contraption into the trunk, stabbing the button to initiate the power-close with enough force to nearly dent the interior.
Child still in tow, he strode up to Roman, who was currently waging a losing battle against a very entertained smirk, no doubt mentally cataloging a bulleted list of reasons as to why acquiring a child, accidentally or otherwise, was a terrible, career-ending idea.
You didn’t have to tell Cody twice; merely trying to install the damn carrier had thoroughly disillusioned him completely. That, and the lingering phantom ring in his ears from the ungodly screaming earlier.
He slapped the keyfob into Roman’s palm, watching as his husband first inspected the device as if it were an alien artifact before lifting a single, elegant brow to leer at him.
“You drive,” Cody bit out, frustration bleeding into every syllable. “I’ll hold the baby.”
Roman watched him for a few long, contemplative seconds, all while the baby happily slapped at the side of Cody’s head, cooing absolute nonsense in wet, gleeful bursts. Then he let out a sigh of profound resignation.
“And we’re just taking it to the police, right?” Roman asked, his gaze darting warily from the slap-happy infant to Cody, who was already dreaming of the sweet, sweet end of this day.
“Right,” Cody nodded, capturing two flailing tiny hands in his own before they could find his hair again.
...
Wrong.
Police stations, as it turned out, were not equipped with overnight nurseries, 24-hour nanny services, or any form of immediate solution for abandoned infants that didn’t involve paperwork, waiting, and a deeply inconvenient timeline.
It was a Friday, as the very uninterested, barely-awake officer behind the desk had informed them with a soul-crushing apathetic yawn that could have powered a small city. Monday, apparently, was some vague bank holiday that Cody usually wouldn’t care for, as he strictly worked Fridays. The bureaucracy was closed; child services were backlogged, and Roman and Cody were the temporary guardians of a crocodile-clad stranger until Tuesday morning.
Cody watched Roman’s left eye twitch ever so slightly in irritation at the news, the movement so subtle and yet so telling it might as well have been a full-blown tantrum. He had to physically steer his husband away from the front desk before Roman could vault over it and throttle the poor man. They had a baby to keep alive for the next ninety-six hours; Cody was not about to add the logistical nightmare of bailing Roman out of a holding cell to his to-do list.
They were currently idling in the parking lot of an obscenely high-end baby boutique, the neon signage blaring down on the SUV like a divine judgment from the heavens. Cody was camped out in the backseat, the baby currently more interested in trying to lick the window glass than in the concept of personal space.
Cody had tried to intervene once, but the ungodly, high-frequency squeal that had erupted from the child’s throat caused him to surrender in seconds. He didn’t want Roman swerving the car into a structural pillar in a fit of sensory overload.
He sighed in utter exhaustion, tearing his eyes away from the glowing storefront to focus on Roman, who, despite the fact that they were parked, still had a white-knuckled death grip on the steering wheel. The car was otherwise silent, save for the occasional happy coo and wet blubber from the baby, who continued smearing saliva across the glass like it was abstract art, and the faint, panicked sound of Roman’s breathing.
“Hey, Ro…” Cody said gently.
He shifted forward, reaching out to ground his husband with a hand on his shoulder. The baby, apparently unimpressed by this new development, began to squirm and grunt in displeasure until Cody stuck his index finger into the child’s mouth. All he could do was pray the kid hadn’t developed teeth yet.
“Hey, you’re alright,” he murmured, sliding his hand down from Roman’s shoulder to rub slow, soothing circles over his chest, feeling the thunder of his husband’s heart beneath the fabric.
“I… don’t—” Roman breathed, the words fracturing in his throat. His voice was fragile, shot through with a raw, visceral fear that Cody felt in his own marrow.
“Tuesday,” Cody said calmly, wincing as the baby gnawed a little too enthusiastically on his finger. “It’s just till Tuesday, okay?”
Roman nodded slightly before unraveling his white-knuckled fingers from the steering wheel. One hand lifted to rest over Cody’s hand on his chest, feeling the shared warmth.
“We got this,” Cody said again, softer this time. “Me and you.” He watched Roman swallow hard, the motion almost audible, before unclasping his seatbelt.
They both ambled into the shop under the blaze of its too-bright signage, the painful feel of blunt gums still chomping down on Cody’s finger making him head straight for the teething toys and pacifier section. After sweep-hoovering enough silicone rings, chewable keys, and pacifiers to outfit an entire NICU wing, he and Roman drifted silently toward the diaper aisle.
Cody commandeered a trolley, gingerly settling the baby – and they really needed to determine a name and a gender, lest they keep referring to the child as it – into the designated infant seat. The child was now gleefully preoccupied with hammering a packaged teething toy shaped like a cartoon remote against the handlebars, demanding an audience for his percussion. Meanwhile, Roman and Cody stood frozen, staring in total stupefaction at an entire wall of diapers that came in a dizzying array of sizes, chemical compositions, and eco-friendly color palettes.
Thankfully, a shop attendant must have sensed their catastrophic confusion. She drifted closer with a wide, professional beam, practically burrowing through the two massive men to park herself between them. The woman was so petite that when Roman turned his dark, imperious glare down upon her, it looked like a deity pausing to judge a particularly persistent mortal.
“Anything I can help you with today, gentlemen?” she asked, her smile so wide Cody’s own face ached in sympathy.
“Yes, we actually do need help…” Cody replied, knowing Roman wouldn’t deign to speak until he’d mentally categorized the woman as a threat or an asset.
He squinted at her nametag to address her, only to hit an immediate, phonetic roadblock. The tag read Ehlaynhor, and Cody was somehow even more confused by it than he had been by randomly finding a baby in a janitor’s closet.
“Ehlaynhor,” the woman supplied helpfully, not losing even an inch of her smile.
“Eleanor?” Roman asked, one eyebrow arched to maximum unimpressed height.
The woman looked up at him, her smile taking on a slightly pained edge as she corrected him like he was the uneducated one. “No… Eh-layn-hor.”
Cody watched Roman’s face crumple into a mask of immense vexation, both at the correction and, quite possibly, by her continued existence in his personal space. Roman’s mouth opened, no doubt to verbally dismantle the woman’s entire genealogy, when Cody cut in with his most polished, media-trained tone.
“Thank you, Ehlaynhor,” Cody interjected before his husband could reduce the poor woman to a puddle of tears. “Yes, we need diapers, formula, and an entire wardrobe for the little one.”
Ehlaynhor twisted toward the trolley. The baby had given up on the percussion and was now trying to chew through the thick plastic packaging of the toy, his face scrunched in a desperate attempt to fit the entire remote into his mouth.
“Aww!” she cooed, once again shoving between Cody and Roman to reach the child. “And what is his cute wittle name?” she blubbered, voice shifting into a high-pitched baby talk. Roman looked immediately, murderously displeased by this development.
Cody, at least, was relieved to finally have the gender confirmed. Calling him “the baby” was starting to feel like a micro-aggression.
“He doesn’t have a—”
“Oliver,” Cody cut in smoothly, before Roman could send the entire store on high alert by implying they had no idea who the child was or who he belonged to. A high-end baby boutique was the last place to sound threateningly vague.
“We’re supposed to be babysitting little Ollie here,” Cody lied, gesturing to the child, who had taken to slapping the toy packaging against Ehlaynhor’s head. “But, uh, his parents’ luggage was lost on the flight over—Ollie’s bags included—so we’re here to replace the essentials.” He cleared his throat primly, watching Roman blink rapidly at the sheer smoothness of the lie flying from his lips.
“Oh,” Ehlaynhor said, her eyes traveling over them with renewed scrutiny. She chewed her lower lip, her nose scrunching as she took in their post-PLE sweatpants and simple t-shirts.
The shop was very high-end and expensive; Roman had made certain of that before they’d even pulled into the lot, because he refused to do anything halfway. Except, now that Cody looked around, the aisles were filled with the hoity-toity elite: affluent, upscale couples debating the merits of organic cotton, expecting parents in designer athleisure, and actual parents wrangling toddlers in tiny designer outfits that probably cost more than Cody cared to ask. To Ehlaynhor, they probably looked like two exhausted gym rats who had wandered into the wrong tax bracket altogether.
Cody clicked his tongue knowingly, already seeing where this was going. He reached for his wallet and slid out his black card, holding it between two fingers. He watched Ehlaynhor’s eyes widen, her skepticism melting into an immediate, shimmering puddle of servitude in real-time.
...
“She thought we were poor,” Roman said incredulously, maneuvering the staggering mountain of bags they’d acquired from their shopping spree while Cody wrestled with the far more arduous task of not squirming in visceral disgust as the sleeping Oliver – the name would be sticking – drooled a lukewarm, sticky stream all over his shoulder.
“She thought a lot of things, Roman,” Cody replied, voice low as he stalked through the front door, careful not to jostle the baby awake. “‘Poor’ was shockingly the kindest thing on that list.”
The questioning looks and actual interrogation they had received at the checkout counter had been nothing short of invasive. They had ranged from wide-eyed awe at exactly how two men in post-match sweats could drop that kind of money on a single shopping spree to not-so-subtle glances wondering whether he and Roman were “brothers.”
Considering Roman’s very obvious Samoan heritage and Cody’s distinctly different features, Cody had no doubt the staff knew exactly that they weren’t. But when customers spent enough to fund a small country’s baby registry, people tended to bite their tongues rather than risk upsetting the very wealthy.
“We’re never going back there again,” Roman declared resolutely, setting down the heavy box containing the collapsible crib.
“Of course not,” Cody agreed, gently laying Oliver on the wide sectional couch. “CPS is coming to get him on Tuesday.”
He immediately began constructing a massive, plush moat of throw pillows around the child, even tossing a few onto the hardwood floor just in case Oliver turned out to be a secret junior high-flyer capable of vaulting the initial barricade and aiming for the hardwood. Once satisfied that the boy was not at risk of a concussion, Cody stood up, his spine emitting a series of audible pops. He groaned, his muscles feeling painfully unconditioned for the specific, static strain of carrying a tiny human weight.
Roman stood amidst the wreckage of their consumerism, staring at the gadgets Ehlaynhor had insisted were vital for keeping a child alive for ninety-six hours. Cody was about seventy percent sure they had been fleeced, but in their state of panic, they had bought the goddamn white-noise machine. Roman huffed in disbelief at the sheer volume of it all, looking at the piles of neon plastic and soft cotton, wondering where the hell they were supposed to hide it all when this was over.
“Do you think we should call your mother? Or mine?” Roman asked, his voice betraying a rare, fragile note of pure terror.
“Do you want to?” Cody countered instead.
The truth was, Cody was terrified of calling his mother. He knew the woman well enough to know she wouldn’t hesitate to use this as a springboard to convince him to either adopt Oliver permanently or start the process for their own. After only four hours with the boy, Cody was already developing a religious level of respect for parents worldwide. He’d always known his mother was a saint, but this brief, traumatic stint as a guardian had elevated her to a divine status. Looking at Roman, whose family tree was essentially a forest, Cody realized the matriarchs of his clan were literal titans to him now.
“I’m scared my mother will see him and start picking out a school for him,” Roman admitted, frowning at the mountain of plastic and cardboard.
Cody let out a tired chuckle because the gist was universal. “It can’t be that hard for two grown men to look after one tiny person until Tuesday, can it?”
He walked over and wrapped an arm around Roman from behind, pressing his forehead against his husband’s broad back and willing whatever little steadiness he had left into the man in front of him. Roman hummed, a low vibration that could have been agreement or a deep-seated prayer for strength, before rubbing his eyes with a heavy sigh.
“I need to assemble the… cage-bed thing,” Roman said wearily, gesturing to the crib box.
Cody’s gaze drifted back to the peacefully sleeping baby on the couch before he let out a sigh of his own. “Do you think—should I make him… dinner?” he asked, the words sounding absurd even as they left his mouth.
Roman reached into his pocket and unearthed his reading glasses, sliding them on with a grimace. He crouched down and pulled the crib box toward him, scrutinizing the diagrams like they were ancient, cursed runes.
“You just got him to sleep, Cody.”
“Yes, but what if he wakes up at three in the morning and demands a three-course meal because I skipped his evening feeding?”
“And what if you wake him up now for a bottle and he decides that 11 PM is the new 3 PM?” Roman countered.
Both their heads turned in unison toward Oliver, who chose that exact moment to kick one small leg gently in his sleep, snuffle once, and settle again with a tiny, contented sigh.
“I mean, if he was starving, he wouldn’t be able to sleep, right?” Cody asked, seeking any kind of logical validation.
“Right,” Roman nodded, though he looked entirely unconvinced. “I know I certainly wouldn’t.” He turned back to the instructions, intent on conquering the engineering feat before him.
At two-forty-six a.m., when a piercing scream exploded through the baby monitor Cody had strategically placed on their bedside table, Cody resisted the very visceral urge to render Roman unconscious with his pillow.