"She's perfect, Sweetheart." Melissa McCall said looking up at Stiles from the little pink wrapped bundle in the sheriff's arms. "Absolutely perfect."
"Of course she is. Have you seen her mother?" Stiles retorted with a sly grin towards his wife, lying in the hospital bed. Even with her hair in a messy pile on top of her head and no makeup masking the exhaustion on her face, she was still the most beautiful, make that the second most beautiful, thing he had ever laid eyes on. The first place title had officially been passed on to their daughter. As tired as she was, her husband, and no, after four years of dating and three since the wedding she still wasn't used to calling him that, managed to get a simultaneous smile and eye roll from her.
"She has Stiles's eyes though," said Scott, who even though he had held the tiny little girl couldn't quite believe that his best friend, hell, his brother now, was a dad. "But she's too bald to see if she's gonna have Lydia's red hair."
"She looks like a potato. A shrively, bald, squirmy pink potato." That comment could have only come from Malia. She sat, perched on the windowsill across the room, as far away from the baby as possible while still being a part of the group. Isaac, who had come back home a few years earlier and had immediately hit it off with the werecoyote, had his arm draped across her shoulders.
"No way," he replied. "Potatoes are not that terrifying. And that's coming from someone who is exposed to your lack of cooking skills on a regular basis." The sound of her fist connecting with his shoulder could probably have been heard all the way across the hall. There's was a special relationship.
The hospital room was packed full. Really there were only supposed to be two guests visiting at a time in the nursery ward, but when your father and stepmother, who happened to be a nurse at the hospital your baby was born in and the town sheriff broke this rule, nobody was going to say anything.
Along with Stiles's dad and Melissa, Isaac and Malia, Scott sat in one of the three chairs in the room, Kira on his lap. Stiles had the chair closest to Lydia's side, his hand only letting go of her's when he was holding their daughter. Braeden had taken over the last chair while Derek leaned up against the side. Lydia's mom had been at the hospital for hours, almost as long as Stiles and Lydia, only agreeing to go home and rest once Melissa's shift ended and someone else could take over grandmother duties.
"Guys, maybe we should head out and let these three get some rest." Scott said, catching Lydia's failed attempt to cover a yawn out of the corner of his eye. "We have the rest of this little girl's life to discuss whether she looks like Lyd, or Stiles, or a potato. Were not gonna miss much if we all go home and sleep for a few hours."
"Your Uncle Scott is right, isn't he?" Stiles's dad whispered to his granddaughter. "I guess this means Grandpa has to give you back to your Momma." He carefully handed her to Lydia and placed a kiss on each of their foreheads. More hugs and "love yous" were given out as the pack dispersed from the hospital room, one couple at a time. Derek and Braeden were the last ones there and before leaving the room he pulled Stiles into a hug, the first Stiles can remember in the history of knowing the man. "If any of you need anything, I don't care what it is or what time it is, anything at all, you call me, you got it?" Stiles could only nod, and taking the nod as confirmation, Derek took Braeden's hand and they too left, leaving Stiles and Lydia alone with their daughter for the first time.
She wasn't the first child to be brought into the crazy pack that they call their family, that honor was given to Ethan and Danny's little boy. They had been the first of the group to get married and as soon as they returned from their honeymoon they had driven to what seemed like every adoption agency in California. After countless forms, interviews, and potential leads that didn't work out, they finally got a phone call saying that there was a 3 week old baby boy and he was there's if they wanted him. They dropped everything and hopped in the car, called the pack on the way to let everyone know, only to realize that the only thing they DID know was that he was a boy. The amount of tears that were shed by everyone when the couple got to the center only to realize that by some divine intervention their new son's name was Aiden, were immense. He was now two and had every member of their crazy pack family wrapped around his little finger. Stiles couldn't wait for his daughter to grow up with so much love surrounding her.
"You want me to hold her for a while? Give you a break?" Stiles asked.
"I think everybody else has held her more than her own mother!" Lydia said with a laugh, reaching the little girl to her husband anyway.
"That's not true. You get to hold her the whole time she's eating," Stiles countered.
"You can't feed her. You don't have boobs," Lydia reminded him, this not being the first time they have had to have this conversation.
Stiles simply smiled down at the sleeping baby in his arms. "Would if I could, but I can't, so I won't."
"Whatever," Lydia said, laying down and closing her eyes. "Wake me up if you need me. Or I guess you could just call Derek instead, since he went all parental on you about OUR daughter."
"Uncle Der is just protective," Stiles replied, half talking to the baby. "And besides. He couldn't help, he doesn't have boobs either."
This caused Lydia to burst out laughing and a few seconds later a nurse with a clipboard entered the room.
"Someone's in a good mood!" She said with a smile.
"Just discussing boobs." Stiles said nonchalantly while Lydia, who was too tired to bother putting her hand to her head, just cringed.
The nurse, whose name tag said was named Emma, seemed unperturbed and just grinned. "Ah. The old 'I would feed her but I don't have boobs," conversation. I hear that one at least once a week."
"See, Lyd! We are a perfectly normal, fully functioning family!" Stiles bragged as the nurse walked closer to examine the baby who, miraculously, had slept through her mother's laughing fit.
"She's a cutie." Emma said, pulling the blanket slightly away from the baby's face to get a better look. "If you two have decided on a name already we can go ahead and fill out the information for the birth certificate tonight."
"Sure, why not." Lydia sighed, sitting up in bed once again. She took her daughter from Stiles as he began listing off the answers to all Emma's questions. Once all his and Lydia's information had been written down and the baby's birth information was gathered by the chart hanging off her little portable crib, they came to the final two questions. "Baby's godparents?" Emma asked. "We have two godfathers," Stiles answered, "If that's ok."
"Perfectly fine. Are they married or just a couple?"
Stiles grinned, the pack would get a kick out of that question when he told the story later. "Neither. They are both in separate, heterosexual relationships."
"Oh! Sorry, ok." Emma apologize, slightly flustered. "That's just a little uncommon."
"Well, when we started talking about godparents we decided that our two priorities were that she would always know how much she is loved, and that she is always safe. The two people that we felt could do that the best just happened to not be a couple."
Emma nodded, "Well it looks like you thought this through. Their names are?"
"Scott McCall and Derek Hale." Stiles replied with a huge smile. It was official now. He couldn't wait to see the looks on their faces when they told them tomorrow.
"Ok. Last question and then we will let Mom and Dad get some sleep." Emma promised. "Baby's name: first, middle, and last."
Stiles looked down at his wife and daughter and gave Lydia a small smile. "We decided to name her after the women in our lives that she won't get a chance to meet here on Earth." Lydia began. "We had three that we really wanted her to be able to look up to, so she has two middle names, but we wanted her to grow up knowing that even though she doesn't know them personally, they were so important to us that they are a part of her too." She took a breath. "Her first name is Claudia," Lydia, who, in her tired and hormonal state was already crying. "That was Stiles's mom's name. Next is Allison, my best friend, whom we lost way too young. Last is Rain, which is a take on my grandma Lorraine." She wiped the tears from her face with the corner of her daughter's blanket.
"Claudia Allison Rain Stilinski." Stiles whispered, reaching out a finger and touching his daughter's tiny hand. "I know it's a bit of a mouthful, but look at my name, it runs in the family."
"It's beautiful." Emma said, finishing filling out the forms. "Absolutely beautiful."
After Emma left and baby Claudia had been fed for the night, she fell asleep in her mother's arms for the first time. Stiles snapped a few pictures, to add to the hundreds he already had from just this day alone. He dozed off in his chair for a few moments before hearing the baby start to stir. He jumped up and carefully maneuvered her out of Lydia's arms before she could wake her up, took her over the the changing table and fixed her with a clean diaper before trying to rock her to sleep.
She was still wide awake, whiskey colored eyes just like her Daddy's taking in all the sights of her new world, when the night nurse came in for her rounds. "Do you want me to take her to the nursery for you?" She asked Stiles. "It's late and I know you haven't gotten much rest and she doesn't look like she's going to sleep any time soon."
"No," he answered, not even taking his eyes away from his daughter. "No were gonna have a little talk." And so he began, the first of many bedtime stories. Tales about a little boy falling in love with the most beautiful red headed girl his eight year old eyes had ever seen. Tales of crossbow wielding heroes and magic trees, lacrosse incidents, fireflies and The Little Mermaid, and learning that being a monster isn't always a bad thing. Standing in that hospital room, looking up at the moon, Stiles told his daughter about the three women whose names she now carried. And his daughter, his Claudia, watched him the whole time; ever closing those eyes, so much like his own. And just like her mother, who was pretending to be asleep across the room, she was listening to every word.
