forthedog | (no subject)

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darrow,
neil

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He waits a day. Not because he's particularly worried or hesitant, but because he needs the time to gather himself, to meditate on what this means, To the extent that he was thinking about it, he wasn't thinking about it as a real, imminent possibility, and now he needs to shift his thinking in that direction.

This is not just tossing some genetic material in someone's general direction. It was never going to be anything like that. This is the closest thing, since Florence, that he's had to a sister. Which makes this more than a little weird, not that it wasn't weird anyway.

So on the evening after the evening after, he feels ready. He's not sure of the outcome of this - there's all the difference in the world between vague, idle speculation and actually proposing a thing - but he's also feeling calm.

Family means different things all the time. Even as there's a core that never changes.

He leans across the center island in the kitchen, a pot of pasta sauce simmering on the stove behind him, to where Neil is seated doing something or other on the laptop. "So we gotta talk. If you have a second."

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"If I've gotta second?" I say, looking up from the screen, with a smirk tugging at my lips. I wasn't doing anything important, just looking through emails and shit, and what he says maybe oughta make me nervous, but I've gotten kinda desensitized to bad shit, lately.

"I dunno, I might be able to pencil you in."

"Great." He rolls his eyes slightly, reaches for the beer he's been slowly draining as he cooks, takes a bigger swallow. He doesn't want to drag out the Big Reveal, but he also doesn't want to charge into it immediately. It feels crass.

"I was talking to Andrea a couple days ago. You remember I mentioned she was thinking about having a kid?"

"Yeah, I remember," I say, closing the lid of the laptop and turning my full attention to him.

"You didn't impregnate her already, did you?"

And maybe I'm being kind of an asshole, but he's choosing his words so carefully, it's basically impossible not to give him grief for it.

"No," he says dryly, "I didn't impregnate her." The fact that Neil is joking about it might be good sign or it might not. So no reason to drag out out. "She wants to do it. And yeah, with me as the donor." He gives Neil a wry smile. "I did try to talk her out of it and everything. Gave her all the reasons why she could do better."

"Well, I can't really fault her on her taste or anything," I say, returning that little smile of his with one of my own.

"Do you wanna do it?"

It should be an impossible question. Not to answer, but to even parse. He kills. It's become one of the defining things about him, one of the ways he knows who he is. Death follows him. He wraps it around himself like a cloak. He eats it, he slides into it like a hot bath. He loves death.

But there's life there, too. So much of it. Discovering that he could help make life changed everything. Remade everything. Remade him.

He can't imagine turning away from it.

"Yeah," he says quietly. "I really do."

Edited 2014-04-23 02:14 (UTC)

"So, what would that mean? The kid would be hers and Spike's? Or all three of yours? Or what?" I ask, 'cause we never actually got this far in talking about it, when Logan and I were thinking about a surrogate.

Christ, that was forever ago.

"Hers and Spike's. Mostly. I mean..." He lets out a quick laugh - discussing this like it's a Thing started out weird and hasn't gotten any less so.

"I couldn't exactly just check out. I wanna be there. But it wouldn't be... It wouldn't be mine. Not like that."

"Right, I mean... I know you wouldn't. They're family, it's just..."

I'm having a hard time making sense of what I'm thinking, because it's a big deal, but it also doesn't feel like that big of a deal... Which makes no fuckin' sense.

"It'd be yours, but not mine," I finally realize, "That's just... sorta weird, you know?"

"Yeah, I know." It didn't take long to get there in his head. This kind of dynamic. He can't pinpoint the exact moment when he started thinking of Neil as the father of his children, but he knows that it's been true for longer than it hasn't. But this is different. This is a branch extending off from the tree and into new territory.

He reaches across the counter and closes a hand over Neil's. "Which is why nothing happens if you say no. I'm not saying that to put any kinda pressure on you, I'm saying it because I need that clear. If you say no, that's it. End of discussion."

"I just... I think I need to know that this isn't gonna be a part of your life that I'm completely shut out of, you know?" I say, turning my hand over and curling my fingers around his.

"It's not even that I think it would, I know Andrea isn't thinkin' like that, I just... I dunno, it feels kinda important to say." I lift my shoulder in a shrug. "But I want you to do it. I mean, I think you're all kinda fuckin' idiots, but at least we know Spike'd be like, Father of the fuckin' century."

He laughs again, softer and the tiniest bit incredulous. "I wouldn't shut you outta anything. I couldn't." He looks down at their joined hands and thinks again about children, a house, an older house that was always home to so many other people besides them, and before that, a wedding on a beach.

"This is all just... family. Y'know? None of it is cut off from any other part." He smiles. "And yeah, he would. He'd freak the fuck out at first, but I really think he would."

"I know, I just..." I shrug, feeling unusually slow fuckin' witted all the sudden.

"Like I said, it's just kinda fuckin' weird, you havin' a kid without me. Which is stupid, 'cause we're never gonna have a kid," I snort, rolling my eyes, "Or, whatever. You know what I mean."

He pauses. Everything in him isn't freezing, but it is slowing to a crawl as he begins to understand some things more clearly than before.

Family.

"I've thought about that," he says quietly. Not often, not too much, because there's not much that can be done. But he has.

"About what?" I say, giving him an incredulous look, "I hate to break it to you, man, but one of us is missing the right plumbing."

"I know." He rolls his eyes, just slightly. "That's not what I mean, you know that."

He hesitates again, looking back down at their hands. "I know it took you a while to think about the girls that way. How it is now... I wouldn't trade it for anything, you know that. But I know... Sometimes it feels... uneven."

My breath hitches and I look away, eyes falling onto the countertop-- the counter that we picked out. It's still hard for me to believe, sometimes.

"It didn't take me a while to think that way about 'em. It just... took me a long time to feel like I could say it," I point out, which maybe isn't much of a distinction, but it feels important.

"I always kinda figured if I had a kid, it'd be a mistake. A fuckin'... statistic. Or that I just wouldn't, ever. But I do. They are mine. I... I had them, all on my own, after you and Tom were gone. But they're gonna call me Neil for the rest of their lives, you know?"

"I know." What a pair they are, he thinks. Neither of them should even be here. It makes no sense. It never has.

So it's not like it has to start any time soon.

"Just tell me something." He reaches out and touches Neil chin, tilting his head back up. "Would you want to? You know we could."

"What, you mean like finding a surrogate? Who?" I say, giving him a look. I don't know why, but it just seems kind of crazy. And stupid. I've grown up... a lot, over the last seven or eight years, I guess, but what business would I have, doing something like that?

"Yeah, I guess." He shrugs, the look leaving him mostly unfazed. In any case, it's a look he's had to get used to. "I'm not saying we should, I'm not saying it's a great idea, I'm just saying... There's ways."

He sighs, feeling a pang of something run through him. "I can't just ignore this. Nothing has to change, I told you, I love what we have now, I just... I can't ignore this. Especially not now. It's on your mind, it's on my mind too. That's all I'm saying."

"I'm not sayin' you should fuckin' ignore it," I say, rubbing a frustrated hand across my forehead.

"This isn't... I didn't mean to bring this shit up, I don't even... It's not like I think about it, Mike, I just... You should do this, with them. For them, and I get why she wants it to be you, but it can't be because you wanna have another fuckin' kid and you can't do it with me. Like, even a little bit. 'Cause that'd be seriously fucked up, man."

It's like a slap, not because it's intended to hurt or because there's anger behind it, or even because it stings him in and of itself, but because he can feel the pain there, and a kind of loss that comes not when something is lost but when it's never possessed at all.

Sometimes he's a psychopath. And sometimes it would just be easier if he was.

"That's not it," he says quietly. "Not even a little bit."

"Okay," I say, managing a faint but honest smile, even as I swipe a hand across my cheek, and it's not often that I feel embarrassed in front of him-- in fact, I can't really remember the last time, but I feel kinda stupid right now, mostly because I don't know where most of this even came from.

"I would. Want to, I think. I mean, not right now, but... I would."

He reaches up again, gently cups the side of Neil's face and pulls them closer together. The island is still between them, but what the hell, he can lean.

Nothing is getting in the way.

"I can't even tell you how happy that'd make me."

"Shut up," I say, a choked hiccup of laughter catching in the back of my throat, and I pull away from him, but only to walk around the other side of the island, 'cause I don't want that much space between us.

"You're such a fuckin' sap, sometimes," I say, putting my own hand to his face, the other sliding around his waist, to pull him close.

Edited 2014-05-05 05:54 (UTC)

"I know, you keep telling me." He settles both hands on Neil's hips and leans their foreheads together. He's still thinking about it, a baby with Neil's strange young-old eyes, and for the first time in a long time he curses his own biology.

"So you're okay with this? Really?"

"It's worth repeating, asshole," I say, my hands framing his face and my eyes nearly crossing to keep focus on him.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm really okay with it. Go, jerk off into a cup or whatever. You've got my fuckin' blessing."

"Oh, Jesus." He rolls his eyes, lets out a sigh. He had known about the mechanics of this, of course, but that hadn't been the same as thinking about it as something that he will, imminently, do.

"That sounds like... the least sexy thing I will ever fucking do."

"It fuckin' better, man. Sterile, fluorescent lights, the whole fuckin' deal," I grin, pressing a kiss to the corner of his lips.

"You're serious, though? That you'd want us to have another kid? My kid-- black hair, squinty fuckin' eyes, the whole deal?"

"And I dunno if they'd have my preferred kind of reading material," he says dryly. Not what he'd be likely to favor these days.

"Yeah, I'm serious. Why the hell wouldn't I be?" He smiles against Neil's cheekbone. "I love your hair. I love your squinty fucking eyes."

Edited 2014-05-06 02:12 (UTC)

"What the fuck is your preferred reading material?" I snort, 'cause he's mostly flexible, these days.

"I don't fuckin' know. I'm just sayin'."

"No, seriously. You sounded kinda surprised." He pulls back enough to study Neil's face, one hand stroking through his hair. "Maybe I was just hearing things, but... So you didn't think it would happen before. So you thought it might be a statistic. I love you. That's not an accident. Nothing that comes outta that is an accident, either. I think about holding a kid that's yours, and I... It feels right."

"You're not the only one bringing a lotta bullshit to the table, Mike. That's... all I'm sayin'. It's not just that I didn't think it'd happen. I didn't really think it should, yanno?" I shrug, my own hands settling on his shoulders.

"I know we're not a fuckin' accident. It feels right to me, too, man. That doesn't mean I'm not fuckin' surprised."

"If only the people who should have kids had kids there'd be no fucking kids ever." He lets out a quiet laugh. Surprise doesn't really begin to cover it, but he doesn't suspect that he needs to say so.

But then something strikes him.

"So... Wait, are we shelving this thing, or are we actually talking about it like it could happen?"

"Like I said, maybe not right now, but it could happen? I mean, why the fuck not, right?" I grin, leaning in and catching his lips in a kiss, one that's quick and mostly just an affectionate touch because he's right there, and I can't think of any reason not to.

"No reason I can think of." He reaches up and closes a gentle hand around Neil's wrist, tugging the back of Neil's hand to his mouth and kissing his knuckles.

"Sometimes I think marrying you wasn't the worst fucking idea."

"Oh my God, shut the fuck up, man. It was the best fuckin' idea you ever had," I say, rolling my eyes at him, even though I don't try at all to pull my hand from his grip.

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