Time Will Tell
1. A Couple Minutes
pairing: baby daddy!Ryland Grace x fem!reader
word count: 2.5k
summary: You had fallen in love with Ryland, all before his whole life came crashing down due to a heated exchange at a certain conference. You break things off, only to learn that you’re having his baby. Things between you and him improve when your child is born, but the lines between what you two were and what could be are still blurred.
tags: fluff, angst, mentions of pregnancy and childbirth, co-parenting, domesticity, depictions of smoking, mutual yearning, unresolved feelings, eventual smut in future chapters
now playing: A Couple Minutes - Olivia Dean
series masterlist / main masterlist / cross-posted on ao3
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———
“Only have a couple minutes, it already kinda feels like
Back on your sofa / Of course, I still care
Love's never wasted when it's shared”
———
Ryland Grace was the love of your life.
You first met him through a mutual friend’s PhD graduation party. Your friend knew that both you and Ryland were single, so she introduced the two of you to each other and left so that you could chat with him in private. You quickly fell for his dorky jokes, incredibly handsome looks, and his exceptionally brilliant mind. Unlike the other snobby scientists you had met before, Ryland never made you feel dumb if you didn’t know about something that he knew. He always patiently explained it to you, breaking the concepts down into simpler terms if you were still struggling to understand.
After a year of dating, he asked you to move into his small apartment in San Francisco, and you agreed. You happily lived with him for two more years, working tirelessly at your 9-to-5 job to support the both of you while he was finishing his PhD. Ryland successfully defended his thesis that year and graduated with a Doctorate in Molecular Biology. Not long after, he found a prestigious post-doctoral fellowship position in his field.
Your relationship with Ryland changed for the worse after his outburst at the UNESCO conference in Denmark. When he returned home, he refused to share all the details with you, only saying that it was a complete disaster and his career in academia was over. You figured that it had to do with how the other scholars disagreed with the unorthodox ideas of his thesis, but you only found out what happened when you read an article online; a lead scientist mocked Ryland’s thesis, which led to him calling that scientist a “staggering waste of carbon” in front of everyone at the conference. He was promptly fired from his department after that incident and essentially shunned from his research community.
You tried your best to comfort and support Ryland while he was looking for another job, but he increasingly became more irritated and unstable. While he vowed to never lay his hands on anyone, especially not you, he did throw and kick things around your shared apartment in anger. He isolated himself in his room during the day, refusing to do the activities that he used to love doing with you. You had begged him to get professional help, but he never did. After enduring this for several months, you made the heart-wrenching decision to break up with him and move out of his apartment. On moving day, you placed your keys onto his palm and gave him a bittersweet goodbye kiss onto his cheek.
“Bye, Ryland. Take care of yourself, okay?” you muttered as tears threatened to fall down your face.
He silently watched you walk towards the front door and close it for the very last time.
———
You decided to move back to your parents’ house in the suburbs of a neighboring city. Not long after, you found out that you were pregnant with your ex-boyfriend’s child. After much contemplation, you decided to tell Ryland the news, choosing to meet at a local park.
His expression completely cracked when you told him that you were having his baby. You took his hands into yours, assuring him that he didn’t need to get 100% involved if he didn’t want to. He shook his head and gently squeezed your hands. He revealed that he started going to therapy after you left and wanted to support you in any way that he could. After that day, you both promised to prioritize the health and happiness of your child over anything else.
Ryland found a new job teaching 8th grade science at Grover Cleveland Middle School. It didn’t pay very well, but at least he was less likely to be fired. He had to move to an even smaller apartment and biked to work every day, as he couldn’t afford a car. Despite his struggles, he vowed to send a child support payment to you every month before you had even thought of the idea. Over time, he surprisingly found teaching to be an enjoyable career. Talking to kids was way easier than trying to communicate with pretentious researchers.
To your surprise, your parents retired and moved out of your family home to another city across the Bay. They passed the house down to you, saying that you and your baby would need it more than them. You were eternally grateful for their sacrifices and promised to take good care of the house that was now yours.
Although you both were busy working at your respective jobs, Ryland made sure to never miss any of your appointments. He was full on sobbing when he saw the ultrasound of your growing baby girl. After flipping through multiple baby name books together, you two stumbled upon a page with space-themed names. The fifth name said, “Stella - the Latin word for ‘star’.” This was it! You both decided on this name as a nod to your shared passion for all things space. For her middle name, you decided on Louise, named in honor of Ryland’s late grandma who raised him as a kid.
Stella Louise Grace was born one mid-August morning. Your parents drove you to the hospital, and you frantically called Ryland on his phone. He was in the middle of teaching his first period class when he got your call. He apologized profusely to his students and rushed out the door, calling a taxi to the hospital. He arrived at the hospital on time and ran straight into your assigned room, seeing you with your parents at your side. Interacting with them again after your breakup was awkward, to say the least, but he treated them with the utmost respect as if he was still their son-in-law. Ryland stayed at your side throughout the entire birth, letting you squeeze his hand when the contractions came and wiping the beads of sweat from your forehead.
Your daughter came into this world healthy and screaming. She was the perfect mix of you two: she had your beautiful skin tone and soft locks with your hair color, combined with Ryland’s dazzling blue eyes and his charming smile.
After you were cleared to go home, Ryland offered to visit your home and help take care of you and Stella while you were recovering. You doubled down on that offer and invited him to stay in the guest bedroom so that he wouldn’t have to commute back and forth every day. You even let him borrow your car so that he could easily drive to his work and run any errands for you. You took care of Stella during the day and Ryland took over parent duties at night, letting you sleep in peace.
You continued this efficient way of co-parenting until you were well enough to go back to work. You had previously quit your stressful job in the city and then found a part-time job that was closer to your house and allowed you to spend more time with your kid.
When Stella grew older, you and Ryland established a smooth routine of shared custody. During the weekdays, you hired your next door neighbor Mrs. Smith to babysit Stella while you were at work. She was a sweet and hardworking older woman who offered to babysit your kid when she saw you and Stella playing in the front yard, giving you a great rate that was way cheaper than the local daycares.
Every Friday was Family Night. Sometimes you brought Stella to Ryland’s apartment; you all ate takeout of your choosing for dinner and then dropped her off for the weekend. Ryland insisted that his daughter sleep in the only bedroom that he had while he slept on his spare air mattress on the living room floor. He wanted to make his cramped apartment as comfy as he could for her.
Other times, you picked Ryland up from his workplace and drove over to your house for dinner, his bike mounted to the back of your car. You liked to make a big homemade meal and then play board games or watch a movie on the couch together. By the end of the night, you usually dropped him off back at his house, or he biked to the nearest train station and rode home if Stella fell asleep early. Sometimes you insisted that he stay in the guest bedroom again if it was storming heavily outside, or if it was getting too late and you didn’t want him to commute in the dark alone.
This whole situation was incredibly heartwarming and domestic, even though you two weren’t together anymore. If they knew, Ryland’s students would’ve called this a “situationship”; Ryland scoffed at the idea, saying that you were much more than that to him. He still cared for you deeply and the thought of asking you out again had plagued his mind for a very long time, but he was also afraid of scaring you off if he did. Nevertheless, he was hellbent on getting you back, willing to do whatever it took for you to trust him again.
———
Today was another ordinary Family Friday night. You had picked Ryland up after his work and drove back to your house in time for dinner. Tonight’s menu was homemade mini pizzas; Stella helped you put the toppings on them, making a smiley face out of pepperoni slices on hers. When the pizzas were done, you all sat at the dinner table, discussing what you guys did during the week. After dinner, she took a bath and you both read her a bedtime story. She slept promptly at 7pm, leaving you plenty of time to catch up with Ryland.
Ryland excused himself, saying that he had to make a phone call outside.
He went out to your front yard, grabbing his lighter and box of cigarettes from his jacket pocket. He pursed a cigarette in between his pink lips and used the small orange flame to light the end. He inhaled the pungent fumes and deeply exhaled, hazy white clouds leaving his mouth. He hadn’t smoked since his rowdy college days, but he chose to use nicotine to manage his stress these days instead of punching a computer that he couldn’t afford to replace. It was the end of the winter semester, and Ryland was swamped with grading endless assignments and preparing for his students’ final exam.
He glanced up at the night sky, trying to identify the constellations that he could see.
Three stars in a line make Orion’s belt… Find the Big Dipper first, then take the distance of the outer two stars and move five times that distance to locate the North Star, which is also the tip of the Little Dipper…
After twenty minutes, you decided to head outside yourself, concerned that he was going to get sick after standing in the cold for that long. You saw him standing in your front yard, looking at the night stars with another lit cigarette in his mouth.
“Since when are you smoking now?”
Ryland was startled by your sudden appearance, the cigarette in his mouth dropping to the ground.
“S-shoot! Sorry, sorry. I didn’t see you there,” he squealed, putting out the flame with his shoe and picking up the remnants. “I normally don’t smoke, I swear. It’s just that prepping for finals season has been stressing the heck out of me. And I promise to never smoke in front of Stella, of course.”
“Okay, that’s fine. Your business is your business,” you said. “Do you wanna come inside? It’s getting really cold out here. We can watch a movie or something if you want.”
“Yeah, that would be great,” he replied with a small smile on his face.
———
You both headed back to the living room and sat next to each other on the couch. You guys decided on a comedy movie that you both liked. You mostly sat in a soft silence with him, only laughing at your favorite scenes and making occasional comments on the characters’ dumb decisions. You had a dull ache in your chest, reminiscing to the time when you and Ryland had the same kind of movie nights at your shared apartment. Back then, you always snuggled up to him, relaxing your head against his chest. Now, you awkwardly kept your hands to yourself, not daring to cut the thick thread of tension between you and him. Half of your conscience feared that you would regret it if you made a move on him and let him in again. You closely guarded the walls around your heart in fear that Ryland hadn’t completely changed for the better. You vowed to put the well-being of your daughter first before your own feelings. Maybe you could relish in this feeling, pretending that you were still together for a few minutes before coming back to real life.
Sitting on the cushion next to yours, Ryland’s heart was clamoring inside his chest. He wanted so badly to reach out and wrap his arms around you, but he was too afraid to ruin his already-existing relationship with you. What if you freaked out and kicked him out? Would you hate him forever?
He settled for making quick glances at you when you were giggling at the screen, admiring your infectious smile and sweet laughter. Towards the end of the movie, you started to feel the heavy weight of sleep lull over you. Without thinking, you closed your eyes and leaned your head against Ryland’s shoulder. He turned his head to see you sleeping, and he swore he saw an angel sitting right next to him. He didn’t dare move an inch for the rest of the movie, scared to wake you up. When the movie’s credits finally rolled, he gently moved your head from his shoulder and set you down on the couch. He quickly ran upstairs to your room to get your pillow and blanket, gently putting the pillow under your head and draping the blanket on your resting body. He looked at you for a moment to make sure that you were sound asleep. It was only then that he placed a feathery kiss on your forehead.
“Good night, sweetheart. I hope you sleep well,” he whispered, almost like a prayer to himself.
He locked your front door with the spare key under the doormat and biked to the train station.
You woke up the next morning, the blanket still covering you. You looked around the room but Ryland was nowhere to be found. Then, you finally saw the sticky note on the coffee table next to the couch.
In his scratchy handwriting, he wrote,
“So sorry for not saying bye, I didn’t wanna wake you up
See you & Stella tomorrow
- R”
He was referring to your shared weekly tradition of meeting up every Sunday morning at the diner near his apartment. Stella loved their mini chocolate chip pancakes and the spinach & tomato omelet was your favorite. Ryland always ordered the same thing: two scrambled eggs with a side of crispy bacon.
You smiled at the note he wrote and his sweet gesture of tucking you in. It was the small domestic moments like these that you looked forward to every weekend.
