How Green Becomes Wood

Dark smiled quietly, crossing his arms looking down at his work, and said mildly, "It is less impressive than what she is doing. But I needed to do..." His eyebrows knitted together for a moment and he touched the wood, then after a moment he sturdied himself, "Thank you. The cradle is back there," He gestured to the stately swan, sitting serene on the painted water, "That one has wheels, locking wheels, so I really only need help getting it upstairs. It will be in our bedroom. But this," he touched the crib, "Yes, the nursery. We finished the wallpaper, so it feels safe to put furniture in there. Help me tip it on its side."
 
"You are really good at putting yourself down," Xander remarked and took hold of the crib. "Sideways we go! Come on, Alec, help me with this. It's heavy! What did you do? Carve it out of a solid tree trunk? Mahogany, maybe?"

"Black ironwood is supposed to be the heaviest wood in the world," Alec remarked between grunts as he tried to lift and steady the crib. He ended up doing most of the steadying while Xander did most of the lifting on one end with Dark on the other. It was a bit of an awkward struggle to get it through the door as they tried to figure out how to properly tip it. Once positioned correctly, it went through with ease.
 
"It is a dark teak," He replied, "and it is not a solid piece of wood, although it would have been easier if it had been." Along with them, he helped to tip it over and then lift it, grunting slightly with the effort. Thankfully, once it was up and ready, it was surprisingly not too bad to carry. By no means was it easy, but it was certainly doable.

Slowly they worked their way up the stairs to the nursery, and once they made it there, Dark urged them to carefully set it down and helped them to tip it back onto its proper feet. As soon as it was set where it needed to be, Dark carefully examined it to make sure it hadn't been scratched, and he was relieved to see it had not been, "I have the mattress out there, too, but obviously I do not need help with that, it is not heavy..." He said as he stood.

Then, he really recognized what they had done: The simple sight of his daughter's crib in that room, with the little woodland creatures in the wall looking down at them... His baby was going to sleep there. He felt like he had when they had first put the rainbow Alec had made (which sat pretty in the windowsill, since they still didn't have a proper shelf for it) and just allowed himself to silently cope with the reality of it. That it was real, that it was happening. Even to the twins, who had learned a bit more about determining his expressions, his face was blank as he went through all of his emotions at the bottom of the iceberg.

Then, at last, he said, "It looks nice in here. The colours go well."
 
Alec watched Dark quietly. He couldn't see the emotions, and that in itself told him something. Usually, he could see something in Dark's face. Now there was nothing. It was locked away behind a blank mask. Considering where they were standing, he could guess the direction Dark's thoughts were going. Xander was already heading out to go get the other piece of furniture, but Alec lingered. He reached out and very lightly rested his fingers on Dark's elbow.

"I don't understand what it means," he said softly, "not really, but I understand that it's heavy for you. It's a lot. I just want you to know that I... I think you deserve this. If it can be deserved, then you do."
 
Dark blinked and looked down at Alec. For less than a second, purely from the surprise at the touch, years of grief and trauma passed over his face before they were tucked away again. All of the miscarriages, his son, his own childhood raised by people who never would have bothered to put the slightest bit of effort into decorating for himself at so young and vulnerable an age, in a place too small to have had a space to decorate for him if they wanted to. And all of it was intermingled with the simple fact there would, sometime soon, actually be a baby--his baby--in this room they were so lovingly assembling, and she would grow and thrive and never need to be afraid of her parents.

But those feelings, or the ability to see them, were gone as soon as they escaped to the surface, "Thank you," he replied, and then turned towards the window, and pointed, "we want to have sheer curtains there, and have the rocking chair right in front of it. And this room faces west, so she can watch the sunset each night. And we are looking for a nice big rug for the center of the room, and I am making a mobile for the crib. Daizi knows about that, we are deciding together what to put on it."
 
The sight of the complete vulnerability frightened Alec, shaking him to his core. It wasn't that he didn't know about the pain - even if he couldn't fully understand it - but it was a different thing entirely to see it bared before him, if even for a moment in time. He held perfectly still, squashing the urge to run from the pain. Instead, he stood fast, watching Dark, letting him make the first move to turn away. The emotions were gone as quickly as he'd had time to register them, but the effect remained. Suc pain. Such grief. Such fear. None of that scared Alec. What scared Alec was the thought that flashed unbidden across his mind: Dark was afraid of himself. What must that be like? To fear not outward, external things but your own self? Now that was something someone could not run from.

Alec brushed the thoughts aside. Maybe he was wrong. Afterall, it was nothing more than a split-second impression, and he wasn't a mind reader. Instead, he said, "I think that's going to look really nice and be quite tactile!"

Down below, Xander yelled up the stairs, "Hey! Is anyone going to help me carry this baby pedestal up, or do I have to do it myself and maybe drop it?"
 
"I think so too..." He sighed, keeping one hand on the ivy-covered crib. In his mind, Dark could vividly see how the crib would look when everything else was put together.

Then he left the room, saying, "I am coming, excuse me for taking a moment to admire my work," and went down to help bring the swan, "I decided we should put it into the nursery too, at least for right now. There is no point, I do not think, in keeping it in my bedroom unused for the next three months, it just takes up space. We can keep it there for the time being."
 
Alec stayed where he was, waiting until Dark was gone to breathe out a heavy sigh, trying to lose the heaviness that had come over him. He shook himself and patted his cheeks. This was not about him! He was not going to distract Dark from his moment of glory by doing or saying something ridiculous. He rounded up a smile that seemed genuine enough and followed Dark out.

Xander scowled at Dark, though there was no actual anger behind the expression, and jiggled the wooden leg he held. "You've had months to admire your handiwork while you were making it," he pointed out. "And why not wait until you have both pieces together to admire them? At the same time? And not when I'm standing here trying to lug it up the stairs?"
 
"It is different seeing it in its proper place," Dark replied, going down to Xander and helping him with the cradle, "and once the baby is born, or once Daizi goes into labour, I suppose, this will be moved into a different room, so it was only right to admire the crib while it was alone there."

As he helped bring it up, he said to Alec, "Can you go bring the mattress? They're just inside my shed, propped against the wall. You will not be able to miss them."
 
"Alright, I suppose that's fair," Xander admitted, lugging up the cradle. "Want to leave this in the hallway for a few minutes and admire it a little longer? Or, actually, seriously, want to stick this in your bedroom to see how it looks before we tuck it away?"

Alec saluted and scampered off to fetch the mattresses. They were easy to find, as expected, and he brought them back up in no time at all. He went ahead and set the cradle mattress off to the side and tucked the crib mattress where it belonged.
 
"I suppose we can put it in the bedroom first," Dark said, after taking some time to consider it at the top of the stairs, "Just to look. And it will be good for Daizi to see where it belongs, I think. And she can help decide where to put it, we need something downstairs too, since you cannot have the baby asleep on a different floor from where you are on, so she might prefer this be downstairs and we have something simpler in our room..." He ran his hand up the slender neck of the swan, "I do not care what goes where."
 
"I think there's a thing they sell so you can keep an eye on a sleeping baby. It's called a baby monitor?" Xander said dryly. "Some of them even have video so you can spy on her while she sleeps. Or you can get one of those V-shaped upright bed thingies I see around sometimes. It wouldn't take up nearly as much space."

Alec touched Xander's arm. "Be nice. He's just nervous. Let them overprepare, it's not going to hurt anything. What's the worst that can happen? A bigger yard sale or donation pile in a couple of years?"

Xander considered and shrugged. "Alright, just so long as I'm not tripping across the entire house. I would like to keep some space."
 
Dark frowned slightly at Xander, somewhat annoyed but not upset, "I am not being dramatic, it is for safety. And what do you expect Daizi to do? Give birth and then walk up and down stairs a million times a day? Infants wake up every two hours or so, sometimes more, so if we only have one bassinet, either she spends all day upstairs in our bedroom or we walk up and downstairs all day."

He went down the hall and opened one of the french doors to his bedroom, "It will just be one in the living room. And regardless of what we do the house will be overrun because we need play mats for 'tummy time' and a thousand other things. But I will not be making a third bassinet, unless Daizi asks me to."
 
"I didn't think you were ever putting her down, remember?" Xander pointed out. "She won't need a bed because she'll be sleeping in your arms, but, whatever makes you and her happy."

"I don't remember people of old having tummy time mats," Alec murmured, seeming puzzled. "Where did all the stuff come from?"

"Living in a house bigger than two rooms and capitalism," Xander replied.
 
Dark couldn't help but smile a bit at his response, "I thought you said that was not feasible. But I do need to sleep sometimes," He went back out and took his part of the cradle and walked into his bedroom, "and I am sure you do not technically need a play mat, but the practice of laying your baby down like that helps them to strengthen all of their muscles and develop like they should, but a lot of babies also absolutely hate it, so if you make the mat they lay on fun for them, it makes it somewhat less miserable," He glanced at the twins, "Unless you would rather hear a baby scream and rage each time I lay her down."
 
"I've already invested in some noise-canceling earbuds, so I should be good whatever your decision," Xander remarked. He watched Dark set up the cradle, leaning on the doorframe. "So, you got the big stuff out of the way and all that. What about all the rest of the junk you think she needs?"

"It'd be nice if you didn't call it junk," Alec told him. "That's very negative."

"Paraphernalia?" Xander suggested.

Alec blinked. "I did not expect you to know that word."

"I do read sometimes," Xander told him. "Anyway, when is this sentient meatloaf going to be walking around? Should we be thinking about babyproofing stuff? How about a lock on our door?"

"With all the stuff he has lying around from his hobby, keeping her out of our room might be a safe idea," Alec agreed.
 
"She still needs more clothes, and toys, and a changing table... A carseat, a stroller... a high chair," Dark rubbed his temples with one illustrated hand, trying to remember it all, "the high chair she won't need right away, but will eventually, obviously. Baby shampoo, those weird bulb sucker things, bottles... Daizi came home yesterday talking intently about how we cannot forget to buy drool cloths, diapers, diaper rash creams... And probably a million other things I am still forgetting. The rocking chair."

He sighed, crossing his arms, "As for baby proofing: Babies begin to walk sometime between 10 and 18 months, I think, and they start to crawl closer to 7... In between that they learn to pull themselves up. I am not sure when they learn to do stairs, but we will have a gate at the top and bottom of them because she should not being going up and down stairs on her own until she is older. And that will help with babyproofing the upstairs, but we should start doing the downstairs soon, I suppose? It should be ready in advance in case we forget to do it, or she learns early."
 
"I thought pacifiers were really bad on the teeth. At least, that's what the ladies in the waiting rooms were talking about at Daizi's last appointment," Xander said, turning red when Alec gave him an incredulous look.

"If you have a list, perhaps you can assign times when you are going to go get certain things," Alec suggested to Dark. "The rocking chair sounds like it will be used sooner than the highchair, and the drool cloths and diapers are more important than babyproofing. Right?"
 
"Pacifiers also might reduce the risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, I read, so at least temporarily they are beneficial," he remarked, trying to remember when he had read that, and where, "and that is a good idea. Ranking everything like that. We already bought the changing table, we are waiting for it to be delivered... We need to look in-stores for the chair, so we know they are comfortable. And we have three months, the hard part of the nursery is finished. Although we still want more decor. Our I do. Come on, let us put this back together."

He gestured to the swan and then led the twins inside his bedroom and explained to them how cleverly it fit back together. Once it was reassembled, he gave it a few test rocks, and it moved beautifully, "And the stand out rests on has shelves so we can store important things and keep them close at hand."
 
In a rare moment of "reading the room," Xander decided not to mention that he'd also heard the women talking about SIDS and how pacifiers supposedly made it more possible. He'd had to look up SIDS - curiosity outweighing his discomfort - and in his brief foray, it seemed no one had any clue what actually "caused" or helped it. Still, Dark had likely done more research than him, and if no one actually did know what caused it, pacifiers or specific types of beds or literally anything else couldn't hurt, and it might help Dark act less neurotic about it. Instead, he helped put the cradle together and gave it a couple of pokes.

"How come only babies and little kids get cool stuff like this when they can't even appreciate it?" he grumbled to Alec.

Alec snickered. "It's more for the adults than it is for the babies, I think. Come on, it's almost time for her to get home!" He walked out, heading downstairs to wait for Daizi. A bit of flower still stuck in his hair from his foray in the flower bushes.
 
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