Still In Bloom ↠ Twilight ✓

46 ; only so many hours in a day

Here's the thing: As much as Wallace wanted to wipe the memory of Alice ever bringing up his and his partner's sex life, he had to hold some merit to her comments about enjoying the stamina of being a newborn.

Because as Wallace rolled off of Bella, her legs untangling from his own as he watched Edward and Bella share a lingering kiss, he was grateful for the absent presence of sweat. That didn't stop Wallace from feeling like he should be breathing heavy though, as he slung an arm behind his head and relaxed on the cool bedding.

"Well, that was fun," Was Bella's eloquent response, tugging the blankets up to her chest to hide from view as Edward leaned off the bed to grab a pair of boxers. At this point, it didn't matter who they belonged to as long as they did their job. But judging by the fact that Edward didn't seem like the type to buy Batman boxers, they had to be Wallace's.

"I'm just surprised little man has slept as long as he has," Wallace replied, and it was true.

As he grew, Veran was getting more hesitant about nap time and even if he was agreeable, it was for little less than half an hour. His body and its rapid growth didn't seem to need sleep in order to continue but instead flourished despite it. It had, for a lack of a better term, had put their sex life on hold. Not that all three of them had been sexual fiends in the first place.

"Not so little anymore," Bella intones and there's a soft sadness there. The kind only a mother can have about her child finally growing up.

But even more so given that Veran was such an accelerated case. Neither of them wanted to comment on Veran's rapid lifespan and didn't even dare to mention the ending of it so soon after his entrance into their lives. The mere thought made Wallace seize with emotional agony, and so he pushed it away.

And he was right to do so because a few moments later there was a noise down the hallway, the sound of Veran whining to himself, surly about having fallen asleep. In bed, Wallace made a motion to his partners saying that he was going to be on baby duty, and stood up from the bed, slinging a pair of loose sleep pants onto his body despite Bella's wolf whistle.

In his bedroom, Veran stood tall in his "big boy bed" as Bella had put it. It was truly a crib type style, with a toddler bed and a gate on the side so Veran couldn't roll out or get out in the middle of the night. Not that his parents wouldn't know right away if he did anyway. On the navy bedsheets, Wallace's son sat, tiny toes digging into the bedding as he lifted his arms up in the air for the universal sign of wanting to be picked up.

Wallace did as told, groaning dramatically as he tucked an arm underneath Veran's butt and felt his son nuzzle into the side of his neck, bronze curls ticklish against Wallace's bare skin. Instinctually, Wallace bopped Veran up and down with shushing noises falling from his lips, letting his son settle back into a happier mindset after his evening nap. It was strange, Wallace often thought, how easily becoming a father had been for him. While Bella was pregnant, neither he nor Edward had read any parent manuals, and yet being a parent seemed easy in a way that Wallace couldn't describe.

And by that, he meant that he often hesitated with how to explain things in a way Veran would understand, of childproofing his words. But when it came to the loving moments of parenting, the ones that required patience, gentleness, and selflessness, they never were something Wallace struggled with. He found he never shied away from giving everything he could to Veran if he had it at his disposal, and he assumed that was what always caught him off guard the most.

Wallace had thought given his past that he would have to work to be a father. Would have to re-train his brain to lean into touch instead of away. To learn to bring his walls down for his son, to allow Veran to enter his personal bubble as most toddlers did without thinking. And Wallace knows if he asked his partners he would receive incredulous looks, as they had always known Wallace could do this. That Wallace could be the father that Veran was proud to speak of whenever he got older but to Wallace, it never failed to make his steps stumble.