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

"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."

I cough out a laugh, a knot suddenly lodged in the back of my throat, blood rushing right up to my head and my heart fluttering high up in my chest. Leaning in, a press a kiss to Flo's cheek and she squeals and squirms away, stomping off into the sand to babble about seashells and daddy and going swimming and I'm not really sure which of us she means.

"Yeah, of course I'll marry you. Jesus."

Edited 2009-09-30 16:38 (UTC)

"Jesus," Tom said, but it wasn't anything but relief and utter astonishment. He'd been a fiance once before, and they all knew how that had ended. This felt like something keeping, however, possible against the odds and as natural as breathing. Mack looked up from a sand flea she'd been inspecting and babbled at Flo, tottering off after her. All three daddies sat on the beach and Tom's face hurt from grinning.

"I love you guys so fucking much."

He does laugh, then, because the entire thing is the most ridiculous situation he's ever stumbled into, and he doesn't mind. Not at all. He curls a hand around the back of Neil's neck, leans in and kisses him hard, turns to Tom and gives him the same treatment.

"No rush, okay?" He looks between them, serious though he's still grinning. "If we're gonna do this, let's really do it right."

"I thought you meant right fuckin' now," I mutter, rolling my eyes and pulling Tom into a kiss, just because.

"No rush. Not that I know what doin' it right even means." Not the way I did it before, I know that much.

"That's okay," Tom said, feeling dizzy from adrenalin and two mouths and not so much change as he would have expected.

He grinned. The three of them, the girls, Peter, two dogs, a pig, and so much love.

"We do," he said, grinning. They'd come to it by committee if they had to. It was easy to believe they had all the time in the world.

He leans back a little, looking at them speculatively as Mack tries to tackle him and he catches her with ease. "Y'know," he says, wrestling her gently to the ground as she giggles, "I never knew what the hell to call you two. 'Lovers' just sounds stupid, so does 'boyfriends', 'partners' makes it seem like a business thing..."

He smiles. "'Husbands', I think I could get used to. Maybe."

"Bullshit," I say to Tom, rolling my eyes and kissing him again, "You don't got any better idea then I do."

I pull away, leaning back on my hands on the picnic blanket, stretching out nudging at Mike's hip with my bare foot. "Maybe."

"There's usually cake," Tom said, grinning a little. "And flowers. And a lot of white."

He smiled with one side of his mouth, one arm draped around Mike's waist, his forehead resting against Neil's cheek.

"Which....come to think of it...I don't think any of us can get away with wearing."