forthedog | (no subject)

Entry tags:

hobbes,
twins

(no subject)

"Daddy, found tarfish," Mack calls merrily, crouched down in her sundress and poking at something in the sand. Mike leans over to peer at it, a greenish round thing, and shakes his head, grinning. Beside him, Flo is filling her hat with sand and shells with extraordinary concentration.

"That's a sand dollar, honey," he says. "Not a starfish. Leave it alone, it's alive."

"Kay," Mack says, looking mildly put out but forgetting all about it when a long conical shell catches her eye. She picks it up and turns it in the sunlight, blue eyes following its elongated spiral. "Pretty," she murmurs, and Mike tugs at her hat.

"You're pretty," he says, and she bats at his hands and laughs.

"Wan' lunch," Flo announces, looking up from her hat, and Mike ruffles her blond curls. It's not yet high noon, there's a fresh breeze, and the sun feels good on his bare back.

Perfect. Pretty much.

"Daddy Tom'll be here soon," he says, glancing back up in the direction of the boardwalk. "We'll have lunch then."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Didn't hurt any," he says, kissing the top of Mack's head as she sets about covering her face in jelly. "And the rat in Toledo. Your home cooking won my goddamn heart."

"Yeah yeah," Tom said, rolling his eyes. "It was you that shot the rat and squirrel, my big hunter man."

He grinned, making a spoonful of pasta salad do loop the loops before making a hopeful dive at Flo's mouth.

"Would have been eating twigs and leaves without you."

"Or the damn dog," he mutters, but it's all show and he's grinning. It's all comfortable. All pieces of a life that would have been unimaginable barely years ago, and maybe a short trip back to that life hadn't been entirely without value after all.

If nothing else, it's helped him to see some other things a little more clearly.

"So, uh," he says, picking at the pasta salad. "Neil was talking to me the other day."

"Really?" Tom said, grinning as he stole some salad out of Mike's Tupperware. Love. Jesus, sometimes this all still stunned him. Everything was perfect and new.

"I didn't know you two were on speaking terms."

"Well, you know, only kinda," he says, rolling his eyes and making a show of trying to bat Tom's hand away. he's not exactly nervous about broaching this subject, but it's not as though it's ever been something they've really discussed before.

Just always assumed it wasn't even an option.

"He mentioned you, uh, were talking about a wedding," he says, trying very hard to keep things casual, and grateful that the girls won't be able to understand the significance of most of what they'll say.

Tom arched his eyebrows at Mike uncomprehendingly. The conversation with Neil had been so casual, so distant, that it hadn't even left a deep mark in his memory. Just some more banter, teasing. It didn't really register as real.

"Wedding?" he said, shrugging. "Uh...not that I can think of. We know anyone that's getting hitched?"

"You tell me," he says, poking a fork into the pasta and sparing Tom a faintly suggestive smile. "I dunno, he just said you were talking about it like you liked the idea. Of the three of us, I mean." He snorts a quick laugh. "Or I assume you meant the three of us. He said you only mentioned him and you."

"Oh..." Tom said, confusing still clinging to his features. He cocked his head at Mike and gave him a little grin.

"I mean, well, yeah. Of course I do," he said, laughing a little. "I thought that was kind of...general knowledge, or whatever." He shrugged, leaning to wipe mashed peanut butter off Flo's cheek.

"It's just...you know. Not on the table." He gave Mike a reassuring smile. "It's no big deal. Really."

"No, I wanna talk about it some," he says evenly, forking more salad into his mouth. Somehow eating takes the edge off of things.

And he hadn't realized how hungry he was until just now.

"I thought it wasn't on the table, too, but Neil started talking about it and I started thinking... and I had a couple drinks..." He shrugs and smiles. "Didn't hate the idea. Didn't really hate it when I thought about it sober, either. I dunno, I just... I like what we have just fine. But I think, if you wanted more..."

Tom couldn't keep the surprise off his features and he paused in the act of unpacking water bottles and fruit.

He set everything very carefully down on the blankets and look up at Mike consideringly, chewing his bottom lip. There wasn't anything on the other man's features but sincerity and the faintest traces of nervousness. Tom didn't feel like he was being made fun of, but it wouldn't have been the first time he'd missed the joke.

"You're not the marrying kind," Tom said seriously. "You've been saying that since before here."

"Yeah, well, I wasn't the having-kids kind, either," he says, kissing the top of Flo's head. "And now look at me." He shrugs again, glancing out at the water, because the look on Tom's face is making him want to laugh, though not with any mocking. Which is probably exactly how Tom would take it.

"We live together," he says quietly. "We have the tattoos. The girls call you 'daddy', for God's sake, and it's just a matter of time before that's all they call Neil. And I know... I know I wanna be with you. Both of you. However long I got left, and if that's a lifetime, that's more than I coulda hoped for."

He looks back at Tom, and the smile on his face feels almost shy. "Seems to me like we're already most of the way there even without the ceremony."

"You don't exactly hook up and get married by accident, though, either," Tom said, raising his eyebrows to cover the fact that his pulse had just jumped up by a few dozen beats per minute.

"I...I feel like that too," Tom said, leaning forward, smudging his fingers down Mike's jaw. "Which is why...if you don't like the idea, I'm good as we are. You know that, right?"

"I don't dislike the idea," he says firmly, reaching up and closing his hand over Tom's. "I mean... look, I'd be happy to keep going like this, too. What I figured out is that I don't hate the idea of... of more. So what I'm trying to find out here is just how much you want it."

"I always wanted it," Tom said softly, looking up at Mike with wide, suddenly damp eyes. "I...."

He cleared his throat and abruptly looked away. The ocean was shrugging up onto the shore, just like always. He would always remember the dream of California, his blond haired grinning little girl. A father now, and maybe a husband. Maybe life ran in tighter circles than he ever realized before.

"I've always wanted it," he said again, rough and stilted. "You've thought about this?" he asked. "You're sure?"

"You think I'd be talking about it now if I wasn't sure?" He finally allows himself to laugh, quiet and affectionate, turning his head and pressing a kiss to Tom's palm. Somewhere, momentarily distant, the girls are laughing and swatting at each other with sticky hands.

"You want me to get down on one knee?"

"It was totally my idea first," Tom pointed out, grinning down at Mike, one eyes always fixed on the girls.

"Maybe I should make a production out of it," Tom said, "A dogtag in the middle of your sloppy joe, or something."

It didn't seem real. Not yet. Maybe it wouldn't, for a while. Maybe that wouldn't matter in the end.

"We're gonna need to figure out where to get rings," he says, laughing again. It shouldn't be this easy, but it is. It's very easy, so easy that it feels like it's already happened. Mack comes toddling over to him, waving her hands, and he tugs her into his lap.

"We gotta talk to Neil, too, I think. Since this kinda concerns him."

"Oh, yeah," Tom said, grinning and giddy and leaning forward to kiss Mack's nose on impulse. "That guy. I very nearly forgot."

He fidgeted, drumming his fingers on Mike's knee.

"He...he wants cos he wants it, yeah?" he asked, looking up at him. "He's not just...going along?"

He's opening his mouth to answer--yeah, dick, Neil is totally the type to GO ALONG--when he looks up and sees a familiar figure out on the sand and getting closer.

"I dunno," he says, grinning and nodding. "You could ask him."

I finish up at the station early and make my way down to the beach, knowing they've gone out there for a family fuckin' picnic. Two ex-soldiers and their beautiful daughters.

I see them there, spread out on a blanket, Flo trudging through the sand to get at me, and I break out in a face splitting grin, swooping down and lifting the giggling toddler into my arms.

"You two idiots talkin' 'bout me?" I say with a smirk, kicking off my shoes and dropping down onto my knees on the blanket, Flo still chattering away in my arms.

Tom couldn't hold back a nervous grin. They looked so natural, Neil always had with the girls, taking to it with the ease and determination that he did everything else in life. Everything, including Tom and Mike, dog tags, tattoos and all.

"Talking about us, actually," Tom said, red faced, blushing, hot blooded and ducking his head. "The three of us."

He glances at Tom and rolls his eyes, but it's all affection. It's just so... Tom. He leans forward slightly, Mack still in his lap, and grins hugely.

No sense in dancing around this one second longer.

"Neil," he says, and it's still all he can do to keep from laughing. "Will you marry us?"

I wasn't ready for it. Even though I was, I wasn't. I'd be a liar if I said it hasn't been on my mind the last few weeks. I'd be a liar if I said I hadn't gotten my hopes up, just a little.

I've done this once. It should be old-hat, by now. Boring, even. But it's not. I try to keep calm, looking back and forth between the two of them, Tom's red face and Mike obviously trying not to laugh. Of fucking course. It couldn't be any other way.

Turning to look at Flo, I say, "I dunno. What do you think?"

Tom barked out a peel of nervous laughter, rubbing his hands down over his face, feeling the heat pour off his own skin with another surge of hysteria.

"This isn't this easy," he said, but the protest, all to familiar in his own mouth, was barely even half hearted. They'd jumped off the ledge a long time ago, and this just felt like another inevitable moment of free fall.

"I mean," he said, looking up at Neil holding their daughter and fighting back a smile. "It is, I guess."

"Of course it is," he says. He reaches out, takes Tom's hand, holds it in his and lets that say most of it for him. There isn't even much to say that hasn't already been said a hundred times. All at once, he has no idea what he was so afraid of and he knows exactly what it was.

"I think," he says quietly, "if she had any idea what we're talking about, she'd say that you're daddy. For whatever that's worth."