long story short (chaennie)

i saw mommy kissing santa claus

Rosie wrapped the thick black belt around her middle, suddenly worried it might not stretch far enough to accommodate. Last year she'd padded herself out with a pillow, which meant she could cinch it in to get the thing to fasten. This year... not so much. Her belly was just as big, if not bigger, but there was no give to the swell of it. She pressed her hand against the spot where she most often felt their daughter's foot, and felt a gentle nudge back.

"She still awake?" Jennie asked.

"I don't think she ever sleeps," Rosie grumbled. At least, she never slept when Rosie wanted her to. She would be perfectly calm for hours at a time when Rosie was out and about doing things, but the minute she tried to settle and get a little rest, it was time for intrauterine martial arts. (It used to be gymnastics, but now it was far too tight a squeeze.) She contemplated the belt again. "Over or under?" she asked.

Jennie raised an eyebrow in question.

"Belt over the bump, or under? I don't think it'll go around."

Rosie appreciated Jennie's effort to limit her eyerolling to a single up-and-over. She knew her wife thought the whole thing – not just the dressing up, but Santa in general – was silly, but Jennie also knew how much it meant to carry on the tradition her father had started, that he would almost certainly would have continued with his grandchild – soon to be grandchildren – if he was around to do so. Since he wasn't, it fell to her.

"Under," Jennie finally said. "A man with a belly that shakes when he laughs like a bowl full of jelly wouldn't wear his belt up around his armpits. It would be a dead giveaway." She looked at Rosie sidelong, a smile playing at the corners of her lips. "Not that it's going to matter, since he won't see it."

"He might," Rosie contended.

"He's asleep," Jennie said. "And you know once he's out, he's not waking up for anything."

Rosie did know. She was counting on it when the baby arrived. Having an infant needing to be fed in the middle of the night would be difficult enough; adding a preschooler cranky from being woken up at all hours of the night into the mix was something she would rather avoid if at all possible.

Maybe they would get lucky. Maybe Jaemin's little sister would be as good a sleeper as he had been. When they'd first brought him home, they'd actually had more sleepless nights worrying that there was something wrong with him because he wasn't waking up all the time than because he was. According to Lisa and Jisoo, they ought to have been counting their blessings. Their daughter Lucy, born six months after Jaemin, had been colicky almost from birth, and hadn't slept through the night until she was almost two years old.

"Do you need help?" Jennie asked, sliding to the edge of the bed and reaching out toward Rosie.

Rosie backed up. "Oh no you don't," she said. "You're trying to distract me."

Jennie put on her best innocent expression – a complete lie – and held up her hands. "I would never!"

"You would. You do. All the time. I was late to work twice this week!" Rosie scowled, though she suspected a great deal of the effect was lost behind the big fluffy beard she wished she'd waited to put on.

"Only one of those was my fault!" Jennie protested. "The other one was because you couldn't find your shoes... or your feet." She grinned.

Rosie stuck out her tongue. "You could have carried this one," she said. "I would have let you." When they'd first started talking about having a family, Rosie had told Jennie she wanted the experience of pregnancy and childbirth and everything else at least once, and Jennie had immediately started researching options to make that happen. When they'd decided they wanted to have another, Rosie had wondered if Jennie might want to be the one to carry the second time around. She didn't mind doing it again; her pregnancy with Jaemin hadn't been easy, exactly, but it hadn't been difficult, either, and she had no reason to believe it would be worse the second time. But she hadn't wanted to deprive Jennie of getting to experience it herself if it was something she wanted.