finishing in comments
Who: THE NOTT FAMILY
What: THE TWINS ARE HERE
Where: FRANCE HOSPITAL


Despite how Juliet had made him swear repeatedly that he would kick smoking yesterday, Rhys still found his coat smelling like fags and his body gratifyingly calmer as he slipped back into their hospital room. His wife was still seemingly asleep, but the two enfants next to her bed were very much not.

Rhys lips pressed together as he slowly approached them, taking extreme care as he reached over to pull one out of its crib.

Being a godfather and being a father were two completely different things, Rhys had realized very quickly. Of course he had known that, but for the past few months it had been easy to lull himself into believing that when it boiled down, it wasn't that much of a difference between titles. You still needed to feed the child, give him (or her) attention, and make sure the baby didn't go rolling away under a couch or eat a choke-able toy. But as Rhys held Aemelia (he didn't know who had been surprised more over their daughter's name, Juliet or himself--- Juliet for actually agreeing on it, or himself for hearing her say she liked it) in his arms, there was this unexplainable understanding that everything was one-hundred percent different now.

The secretly terrified part still hadn't kicked in yet thankfully, still being in the hospital helped obscure that. There was a whole building full of people that would come running at the slightest problem, so he had no need to worry.

But one thing Rhys did not appreciate was how stupidly this hospital identified the genders of the children. Was it really necessary to dress the children in head-to-toe blue and pink? They had name tags. With a grunt, he pulled the pink hair--- thing off his daughter's head and tossed it back into the crib.

It smelled like fags.

That bitter, tobacco smell was what caused Juliet's eyes to rise open, as Rhys' movement across the room wafted the tainted air over her bed. She grimaced, tasting it as she inhaled, and feeling suddenly very violent towards her husband, who clearly when left alone had failed at following her newly imposed rule of not. smoking.

Don't get her wrong--it wasn't as if she were worried that Rhys' smoking habits were going to brain damage the babies or something equally dramatic. It was more of a punishment, one that she felt he needed to go through now that she had gone through the living hell of carrying his children for nearly nine months. Why she had thought of it only last night when going through the horrors of labor, she did not know, but that part didn't matter. He was certainly going to pay for that fag later.

For now, though, Juliet was far too tired to properly abuse him over it. Instead she glared at his back in silence, watching him as he hovered over the bassinets in which the hospital had put the children. She wasn't sure what the nurses thought that they or the infants were getting out of being in the same room (Family bonding could hardly be understood at that age, could it? And as her children, they would have probably found it to be bullshit anyway, had they the mental capacity to understand.), because Juliet knew she had been doing little but sleeping during their very short time in this world. Unless Rhys had been paying attention to them, as he was now--but as this moment was the first time she had seen him pick one of them up (of his own will), she found that unlikely.

It was interesting, the feeling that she got at watching him holding Aemelia. It wasn't mushy or sentimental, because if there were two things that Juliet never felt, it was those, but---well, she didn't know. It was just... weird. That was their daughter he was holding, and he was holding her like he was her father, entirely different from how she'd seen him hold Henry or Theo before. Very, very surreal, and Juliet was honestly not yet certain whether she liked it or not. Everything had changed, hadn't it?

"Anneliese brought clothes," she spoke up as she watched her husband remove Aemelia's hairpiece. "The bag over in the corner. Dress them in something less disgustingly stereotypical."

Both of them? Dress both of them. Rhys turned slowly to face Juliet, his gaze dragging to meet hers. He looked at her intensely for a few moments, trying his best to seize her up. Obviously, his wife had been in not the greatest of moods for the past few months, so Rhys couldn't help but thread carefully here. While she had seemed more pleasant than usual yesterday, he couldn't go and ignore that some kind of drug the hospital had given to her had probably helped with that.

Rhys looked down at the child in his arms. She still hadn't moved much, or made any form of a loud noise--- which warranted the slight chance that maybe these two weren't his children; if they were, they would have been crying nonstop instead of just... sleeping.

"Later, they're still quiet now," he responded finally, giving a look over to Evan's bassinet before turning back to Juliet. Why did he suddenly feel like smiling? At her? At this? It was the strangest feeling, there was really no reason for it, but he felt like it anyway. Probably due to the lack of sleep, and nothing substantial when he had been able to close his eyes. Yes, of course, that was it, you always felt delusional after going hours of stressful insomnia.

"How are you feeling?" A simple question, hopefully one that Juliet wouldn't find too easy to gripe about.

Well, that was true enough. There couldn't be enough quiet where babies were concerned. Not that Juliet had experience with children--in fact, she made it a very strict duty of hers to avoid children up until this very point at all costs--, but she wasn't an idiot either. Babies cried, and they cried an obnoxious, unnecessary amount, and the second they got Evan and Aemelia home, Juliet had a feeling that she was going to be praying to be back in the hospital on this very day, when they were actually behaving themselves.

But she was still going to make Rhys change them himself.

When he spoke his question, she tore (not tore--moved, maybe. It wasn't as if she were attached to them or something) her eyes from the bassinets to her husband, looking a tad caught off guard by his question. It was, after all, somewhat strange, considerate words coming out of his mouth. Towards her, at least.

"Tired," she answered, shaking off that slightly altering feeling. He was probably tired too, the only reason she could imagine to explain why he'd appear to care. Merlin, if they went home and started to both miss out on sleep regularly, did that mean they might start acting... affectionate, eventually?

Juliet swore to herself right then and there to take as many naps as she possibly could in the next coming months.

"I guess Anneliese and Jugson finally left?" she asked, looking around. For all of the times she'd wished to have one of her friends in this god-forsaken country to keep her company, the second Anneliese came, she was relieved for her to be gone again. At least when it came to situations like this. "Or is she just hiding around a corner, waiting for me wake up so I can throw back at her yet more designs for birth announcements?"

A small smile formed on Rhys' face, not trying in the slightest to hold back. Yes, Anneliese could be--- was very annoying, especially with things like this when her voice went higher than most living animals and her mouth sped fast like it was hexed--- but at least she knew what she was doing. Children wise. Henry had been born nearly a half a year ago, and he appeared to be perfectly living. It would be unwise to completely shun her out, as much as he didn't want to admit it.

Not that Rhys had any doubt in his parenting skills. For fuck's sake, if his brother could keep a child alive, Rhys was fairly certain he could accomplish it just as well. "They left about an hour ago," he responded in a wry tone. "Had to go home and start unpacking sometime," Rhys shrugged, taking this opportunity to move and sit in the closest chair.

So Juliet wasn't in that bad of a mood yet-- toward him, anyway. That was good, that was very good, the longer he could keep Juliet like this the better. Maybe he should call Anneliese back here so Juliet could focus more on her friend than him. It was definitely worth considering later.

He looked down at the baby in his arms for a few seconds, still slightly amazed that she hadn't woken up or started crying. It would only be a matter of time... "I talked to the Healers, they said we could probably leave by tomorrow."