Who: Luke and Ella (+ Gus and Beth) What: Meeting in a park. Where: A park. When: Recently (when else?) Warnings/Rating: Cute children.
Normally, Wren had Gus during the day while Luke was at work. He saw his son in the evenings, mostly, in time for bathtime and pj’s and bedtime stories before tucking him into bed. Sometimes there were mornings, too, breakfast and brushing teeth and cartoons. With the dog, the puppy, and the cat, those were hectic times, with getting ready for work and everyone’s paths crossing and entwining before they went their separate ways. He’d known from the start that police officers didn’t work the standard nine-to-five, but only a couple months in and his schedule had been fairly consistent. But then he’d started working nights, cruising in a patrol car with another, senior officer, and that meant he had some days, days before Gus started kindergarten like a big boy, as he called it, and Luke wanted as much time as he had with him.
Today, it was the park. Luke was the delegated dog-walker, with the obedient Finch on one leash and the boisterous puppy on the other, while Gus scampered on ahead and babbled happily with a lisp he still hadn’t lost. There was a small playground, here, with benches close enough for parents to keep an eye on their children, and he found them an empty one, tying the puppy’s leash to the bars in order to give him room to move without having to worry about him running off. He sat, and he watched as Gus clambered onto the jungle gym, Finch settling down close by to keep as sharp an eye on his little master as Luke did. He smiled, and he called out careful a few times, and when Gus paused at the top of the slide to wave and holler Lookit me, Daddy, he waved back as any proud father would.
She’d woken in the new place - Max’s place, she thought of the house as someone else’s. The walls were fresh-clean-neutral, not sunshine yellow and rust red and the air was full of someone else’s noise, the quiet clatter of Laura waking up above, moving around across floorboards above her head and that was strange all by itself, someone else filtering inside her space like air seeping out of a bubble. Beth woke early, early enough for the cool of the night to thin itself down to the promise of damp heat all day long and she held out arms in small, despotic command. Ella, half-asleep after the late night at the new workplace, glitter in the back of her hair and a streak of something down her arm, sat the baby down on the floor of the bathroom through a shower quick as anything, damp hair and bare face and she scuffed into worn sneakers and headed out, no call out to Laura and good mornings. She’d bring back coffee, for the new roommate, she had enough cash in her pocket after last night to do that, and the thought of it - coffee, the innocuousness of paper cups and buying it, and the cash itself - spread warm and liquid through her, like a secret to hold on tight to.
The stroller was old and it wasn’t second-hand but third, maybe fourth. Beth kicked and wriggled, but once they were down the sidewalk, past all those clean-colored houses where trouble didn’t live, she was talking her own language to the sky, holding out hands and holding conversations with no-one at all. The park was real close, this side of things. It had been a bus-ride, maybe two, last place. They’d made it a couple times, but this was walking, until the sweat crept a little on the back of her neck beneath all that damp blond hair, until the catch of green, growing things in the air and the yellowish crisp of the grass scrunched beneath the stroller wheels. There was a place to play, older kids than Beth but maybe there’d be swings, something. There’d been groups, for women who’d all had babies the same time, but she’d gone to one coffee meeting, sat with her hand curled over her stomach, her wedding band bright and gold and flashy, and she’d seen them all look at her like she wasn’t meant to be there. There’d been no play-dates, just the shellshock of after Coop, and she’d stopped going. Maybe a play-park, a regular stop, and Beth would get to play with other kids.
There was a little boy, crowing some from the top of a play-set and Ella unbuckled Beth, wriggly once again and kicking like she wanted to get up and run, even if she wasn’t sure on her feet at all, and she grinned a little. That old, maybe she could picture it now, the way she hadn’t, when Beth was so tiny, she felt like she’d break.
Gus was still shy with other children, and Luke didn’t exactly go to parks or ice cream shops to make new friends. He wasn’t rude, no, he smiled at other fathers, their children a common thread woven between them all, but he wasn’t much for conversation either. A mother with a baby was hardly out of the ordinary, but unlike Finch the puppy hadn’t been very well trained yet and was still a boisterous, gangly thing who loved just about anything that moved. While Finch only glanced in the mother’s direction, dismissing the possibility of her posing a threat with a twitch of his ears, the puppy bounded towards the newcomers, barking happily even when his leash cut him off and kept him from actually reaching the pair. Luke sighed, and he called his name, the French clumsy and poorly pronounced; it came as no surprise when the puppy outright ignored him.
After ensuring that Gus had made it down the slide in one piece, and raced back around to climb the jungle gym again, he stood, turning his attention to the woman and her baby that the overzealous puppy seemed so intent on making friends with. “Sorry, he’s still young,” he began, but then he stopped, something like familiarity creeping into his expression. Five years was a long time, but he remembered people well and it wasn’t enough time to render someone completely unrecognizable. Still, he wasn’t sure, and the start of a half-smile reflected that uncertainty.
Beth was still slung across one hip when the puppy, a noisy, skinny thing all feet and tail and ears bounded close enough to bark, to wriggle, to express puppy-joy at the idea of people to play with. Ella laughed; there’d been no dogs at all at the home in Louisiana, but she’d thought about it, in New York where there were parks to walk in and she admired him now, yips and the whimpers of wanting to play badly enough to fight real hard with the curt stop of his lead. Beth, who had never seen a dog she wanted to walk on and touch, dissolved into scared grizzle on her hip, face pressed against her shoulder hot and damp, and she soothed, rocked and swayed whilst trying not to laugh at the puppy who wagged forlornly like a teenager stood up on a first date.
“She just don’t like them,” Ella said over the tow-blond head of the baby, and she stepped around the stroller toward the young man who had the lead wrapped around his wrist, who looked back over at the jungle gym like one of them belonged to him. He was young - too young to stand with the cadre of nannies and moms, she figured. Young enough that he was her age, or maybe a little younger, and her eyes lifted beyond the puppy and his clowning to his face. Ella looked much like she’d done when she was twenty; the soft white cotton dress was probably from back then and the same twisted up dandelion-blond hair was knotted on her head. There was something sharper about her own cheekbones, like the uncertainty of being young smoothing itself away but otherwise, she was as she had been.
Young men grew up in a hurry, eighteen stepped all the way over to twenty three and twenty four and there was substance there that there hadn’t been. But she’d gotten good with faces, seeing so many every day, and Ella frowned, looking for the places between the lines, the solidity of a jawline that hadn’t been there before.
“Luke?” Her own smile was hesitant-shy; Luke was New York, was Christmas spent listening to silences with him and Wren and occasionally, baby Amanda. He was words on a page now; she looked over at the jungle gym with dawning knowledge. “And Gus?”
Oh, god, of course the puppy they really hadn’t needed would go and scare a baby. Mothers didn’t always react well to dogs, full-grown or caught in that awkward in between stage, and Luke steeled himself for angry berating as he tugged on the leash, trying to coax the puppy away and back towards the bench. Familiarity was momentarily set aside in the struggle, as the puppy was all wagging tail and eagerness to make friends with the tiny human who wanted nothing to do with him. “Sorry,” he said, again, but then she looked up at him, and yeah, that was her. Blonde hair and the kind of dresses she’d worn five years ago, and her voice, too, rang a chord of bells that were impossible to ignore. The baby, too, she’d mentioned a baby over the journals, and when his own uncertain smile was met with one of her own and his name, that was all he needed to break out into a grin that was much more genuine. It had been a long time, but she was Max’s sister and there were no bad memories, none of the baggage that had come with Max’s arrival or the disaster that Thomas himself would bring in his wake.
“Yeah,” he confirmed. “Ella and... Beth, right?” He smiled, a little softer, at the baby, and then he turned towards the jungle gym again. He called for Gus, once, twice, and when the little boy finally looked up, he gestured him over to come. “It’s been a while,” he said, turning back to look at her. “I mean, we’ve talked on the journals, but... yeah.” Luke shrugged, and then he a presence at his back as Gus clung to his shirt and looked up at the lady and her baby, half-hidden behind his father, wide-eyed and curious.
Gus didn’t know Max, really, but he knew Amanda, and Luke seized upon that. “Say hi, kiddo,” he coaxed. “This is Ella. She’s Amanda’s aunt. You remember Amanda, right? And that’s her daughter, Beth.” After a few more seconds of staring, Gus shuffled forward shyly, one small hand still tightly fisted in his shirt, while the other was extended in a tentative greeting. “Hi, Ella and Beth,” he lisped.
He looked, Ella thought, like he’d grown up fast. He didn’t look uncertain and he didn’t look young, but he didn’t look one bit like the tired eyes sought out the kinds of things she’d seen around town and for that, Ella was strongly and surprisingly grateful for one minute. New York was a world away, the New York she remembered that had had them both in it, but she had loved it in an instant of cold air and Christmas trees and ice-skating in the middle of a whole bunch of people she hadn’t known. She’d liked him well enough then and he looked like, with the soft shadows of someone who got up early because someone small did first and the strained-politeness that had slid over his face as he got up close looking mostly at the puppy, an adult in a way she’d not thought he would. Ella had expected the boy and she smiled now instead at the mite who stood on small feet with chubby knees and had the kind of manners she’d figured her niece might have, polite before the words came out right.
“Hi,” Ella said, and she didn’t spare a minute but she leaned low enough and careful that she didn’t overbalance with Beth still clinging on tight and whimpering about the puppy. “Look at you, you’re so big,” her voice was warm and pleased, the soft timbre of parents the world over, “How old are you, Gus?” She hadn’t seen Amanda, just heard her voice that one time but if Gus knew Amanda well enough to be used as context, then Luke and Max or Thomas must still be close.
“It’s been a while,” she said without looking away from Gus as she coaxed the baby’s hands from clinging, waved Beth’s hand for her, “But I could’ve recognized you. Y’all look older, but not so different.” A smile, tossed upward, brief and fleeting, “I just moved up a ways that way. I’ve never been to this park before.”
There’d been a time when Luke hadn’t been able to imagine being an adult, when it seemed he’d be stuck a perpetual teenager, too old and too young all at the same time. He felt older now, but there were still times when he barely felt a day over eighteen and ill-equipped to be the father of a four year old. Ella was, he recalled, his age or a little older, and while she too looked grown-up he could still see the girl she’d been when he looked at her. He marveled at the fact that they both had kids, now, as she smiled at Gus, who turned shy at the attention but managed to keep from retreating further behind his father where it was safe. The puppy strained at his leash, panting, but Luke kept a firm hold, keeping him at bay, and the little boy’s tentative smile became a proud grin at the mention of how big he was. When asked his age he held up four small fingers, and added “almost five” with a certain amount of satisfaction.
“Yeah, you’re the same,” Luke remarked, as Gus waved back at the baby. “Older, I mean, but not too different.” Finch, apparently wanting to join the action, padded over, calm and sedate in comparison to the puppy who wriggled even when he finally relented and sat on the grass. “We come here sometimes. Gus likes the park, and we can bring the dogs along,” he said. “Nothing beats the zoo, though. He really loves animals.” He smiled, fondly, ruffling the little boy’s hair as he spoke.
Adulthood had been something to laugh at, when the water came in through the ceiling or the pipe under the sink went again. Ella didn’t feel a bit like an adult, older or not and she was convinced that the hospital wouldn’t have let her walk out the door with Beth if they’d known exactly how young and stupid and terrified she felt doing so. Carefully, she wrapped long, pale fingers around the baby’s fat little fists, and she let Beth stand, lolling against her knees until the little girl had forgotten the dog in the absolute delight in her own marvelousness. Ella smiled over Beth’s head at Gus, a smile rolled in sugar and just for him, and she widened her eyes at those four fingers held up, like four was older than it was possible to be.
“You got yourself a houseful, right there,” she eyed the puppy as it flopped down in the grass with all the dejection of a juvenile rejected. Ella hadn’t had dogs growing up, she hadn’t had them around long enough for them to be anything but a skip of something like fear down her spine, delicate and wisping, not strong enough to be acted upon but just present. The voice - quiet, always, voice she called it but really, presence, surfaced as if from sleep, a yawn of his terror thrumming to the surface, thinning as it did so until it was nothing more than vague anxiety as she looked at the pair. “You planning on charging admission anytime soon?” But her voice was laughing, if she’d sounded nervous then maybe he could have noticed, but Ella had spent a couple of months banishing nervousness from her voice too often to be anything but good at it now.
Gus had played with children his age, a little younger, and the time spent in New York had been enough for him to become attached to Amanda, but he wasn’t often around babies and his attention shifted to Beth almost shyly. Bit by bit, he shuffled out from behind Luke’s leg and smiled down at the little girl, like maybe she was a new playmate or just someone new and interesting beyond the confines of his sheltered world. “We have a cat, too,” the boy lisped, looking back up at Ella when she mentioned having a houseful. “Pet-ti. He’s my maman’s cat, and Finch is my daddy’s dog, and Cygne is my puppy.” He beamed up at her, obviously pleased with himself.
“I’ve considered admission once or twice, honestly,” Luke laughed, as Gus’s attention went back to Beth and he attempted a version of peek-a-boo in order to make her giggle. “I’ve had Finch since Seattle, and Petti’s the cat I got Wren one Christmas back then. They were sort of a package deal,” he explained.
The baby was at that particular stage where she staggered between both Ella’s hands dangling there like a puppet between attempted walking that looked a little like a very drunk sailor trying for a straight line and failing. The little boy’s appearance was greeted by a stream of self-important babble, as if he were cause for particular celebration, and Beth reached and grabbed at the little boy, as if a new playmate were a wondrous thing. Pulling away from Ella’s hands to do so, however her steady stature wobbled, and she bumped down on prodigously cushioned bottom with wide, affronted blue eyes and began promptly to yell her indignation. Ella with the distracted care of a familiar occurance, slid her back up to standing once more and let her sob her indignity without over amounts of soothing.
“That’s a whole lot of pets for one house,” she said above the noise before sobs abated into heaving, shivery sighs and a quivering lip from the small one, “And they’ve got lovely names. Did you name them, honey?” she was looking at Gus but if Luke and Wren had a little boy that age and two dogs and a cat and a home, they had to be doing real well for themselves, despite Vegas, despite where they had been in Seattle. And that, that was more worry over the mess she was in shoved aside; Ella reached out one nervous hand toward the older dog, as if it might bite if she took her eyes off it.
Gus was often wary of adults but he liked children, perhaps sensing that tiny human beings posed no threat in the way bigger ones did. His expression lit up when the little girl reached for him, something like laughter bubbling up at her delighted babble, but he’d only tentatively begun to extend small hands when Beth fell, and he looked so crestfallen as she sobbed that Luke couldn’t not provide comfort, reassurances of it’s okay, kiddo, she’s fine and a quick hug. Gus looked up at his father, and then down at the little girl, wide-eyed and solemn as he tried to decide whether or not she really was fine and it really was okay.
“Yeah, it is,” Luke agreed, to which Gus piped up his disagreement with a childish “nu-uh” which earned him a fondly exasperated look and a tweak to his nose that made him giggle. As for naming them, the little boy shook his head. “My maman did, but I helped,” he added proudly, and Luke left it at that. Explaining how the cat had been named after him, or at least who he used to be, a boy in a mask with a bird’s name who pretended to be something out of a comic book, like he wasn’t very much mortal and human and in way over his head, was too complicated. And Wren had named them all, following the trend of French and birds. On the surface, he knew, their lives must have seemed steady; he had a job, they had pets and a son and a nice house in a decent neighborhood. There was no sign of the years they’d spent apart, of how neither of them had been a part of Gus’ life until a year ago, or of the troubles they barely managed to overcome time and time again. But they were still together, still inseperable, and he thought that counted for a lot.
Finch wasn’t the friendliest dog in the world, but he wasn’t vicious either. He was wary of strangers and was more prone to baring his teeth than wagging his tail, but around those he knew and trusted he was as harmless as a teddy bear and as sweet as can be. Ella was a stranger, but she’d been greeted with trust and so he sniffed her outstretched hand as though deciding whether or not he approved; she wasn’t trying to harm his boy or his man and so he accepted her presence with a nudge of a wet nose and rough tongue against her hand.
Ella’s surprise was laughter, shaky as it skated up high and down low again and she dropped her hand abruptly, wiping it against the edge of her shirt as the voice in her head rolled over and shrieked alarm. Rabbit was silent most of the time and she liked it like that, didn’t like thinking of someone with values like a Victorian novel watching her all the darn time. The dog backed right off and Ella’s mouth pulled down like disappointment warring out with fear, and she turned her attention back to the chatty little boy who had Luke written all over him beneath the adorable mop of hair.
“Your maman, huh?” Ella had never spoken French but she had sung it, and the word came with the careful cadence of pronunciation from someone who had been taught to read the words as they should be shaped. “She must be smart, all those names up in her head like that. When I was your age, I wanted a cat,” Ella’s voice lowered like telling secrets, and her eyes danced as she looked at Luke over Gus’s head, “I wanted to call him Cat.” But cats were animals that did not follow orders, who walked over clean surfaces and drank from toilets and sinks if they were left unattended. There were no cats for the Main women left behind and no cat in a New York apartment, not right off and then never. She rubbed a hand over the blond fluff of Beth’s hair and she grinned at the little boy, blue eyes frank and true, “She’s fine, honey. She just yells when she don’t get her way.”
His evaluation complete, Finch settled down beside the puppy who was sprawled out on his belly with his nose in the grass. He would run and play and frolic with Gus and, though he’d had less and less time these days, Luke, but around new faces he was more of a quiet canine observer. Sometimes, just sometimes, he remembered the puppy he’d been, how he’d loved other people, and it made him sad that five years spent isolated and alone had required both of them to adapt, to become almost feral just to survive. He could be loyal and sweet, the dog, but he could be deadly too, and Luke often thought they had that in common.
Gus liked talking about his parents in the way children who still adored them did, and his head bobbed up and down in agreement when Ella remarked that his mother must be smart. “My maman is very, very smart,” he said proudly, and his eyes widened when she admitted that she’d wanted a cat too. In his mind, everyone wanted pets, and he didn’t understand why anyone wouldn’t. “Cat,” he repeated, laughing, and even Luke smiled. “You could name him chat. That’s French for cat. My maman is teaching me.” The little boy was a fast learner, too, and Luke marveled at the fact that his own son often corrected his own pronunciation when he tried to mimic Wren’s smooth words. As for Beth yelling when she didn’t get her way, Gus nodded, as though he understood. “Can she come over and play sometime?” It was a tentative lisp, and he looked up at his father for confirmation, in case he wasn’t supposed to ask, but Luke just nodded.
Ella didn’t know a friendly dog from a vicious one, had she known Finch and his history beyond the faintly canine whuff of a sigh as the dog hit the grass, shoulder first and stretched out in the lazy warmth of the sunshine then perhaps she would not have smiled as warmly (dogs at a distance were not close enough to hear Rabbit’s indignant yelping). Gus was adorable, the kind of little boy her momma had called smart as a new penny, and she twisted her fingers against Beth’s small shoulder wistfully as she listened to all that chatter. Gus wasn’t scared of his folks, he loved them right out and he spoke like they liked to listen to him too. It was, from the outside, an idyllic childhood and way to raise a kid and she looked at Luke, not Gus when Gus made his question and there was doubt in the blue eyes. Gus might be small enough not to see hand-me-downs and stains but Luke was old enough to maybe want to keep all that perfect unblemished, especially after Seattle. They had it tough with the doors, him and Wren but maybe it wasn’t so bad, if you you had a home to come home to like theirs.
“She’s little, honey,” she said and her voice was gentle, Ella spoke like Gus was as adult as anyone, “So she won’t be able to play most games. But she’ll try. And she’ll want all your toys if you’re playing with them.” A small, mostly hidden smile. “Y’all can tell her no but she yells. She’s still learning that that isn’t how it works.”
Luke could sit and listen to his son for hours, and sometimes he still found it hard to believe that he had a son, that the bright little boy who looked so much like himself at that age was his, his and Wren’s, when there had been a time during which he couldn’t ever imagine being a father. His own father had been a good one, Thomas not so much, and so he knew the kind of parent he wanted to be and the kind he didn’t. He’d ask Wren but he didn’t think she would have a problem with Ella and Beth coming over, not when Gus was so shy and he still so rarely asked for anything. It did occur to him that she might find it hard to be around a child so young, but if all else failed they could have their playdate while Wren was out. Gus was perceptive, but his innocence meant that he didn’t look at Ella and see hand me downs and struggles. Luke saw, but he didn’t care; before his job, before all of this, he’d been living on next to nothing after refusing to accept even one cent from Thomas. He understood, and it didn’t bother him. Money was nice and money was security, but money didn’t cloud his judgment. He smiled, all the answer needed in that gesture alone.
For one so small, Gus listened solemnly as Ella explained that Beth was young and wouldn’t be able to play a lot of the games he enjoyed. He contemplated the thought of sharing, potentially against his will, but the lure of a playmate, however young, was too strong. “Okay,” he said, and he nodded. “I’ll make up a game we can play together, and I can share.” Sharing was a recent lesson, one learned in preschool and enforced at home, and he was getting better at it.
That share come out strong, like it was a new word and one hard learned and Ella’s lip wobbled like she was trying valiantly not to laugh and nodded solemnly and vigorously instead. “Sharing is perfect, sugar,” and she reached out like it was nothing at all, like there was no thought there but that friendly face tipped toward hers, so very small, and she ruffed fingertips against the soft hair of Gus’s head. “She don’t know much about it yet, but I’m sure you can help teach her.”
And the smile she sent toward Luke was gratitude and it didn’t matter that the park had been something new and something tried to take a little of the new place for herself instead of seeing her sister every-damn-where, or that the dogs scared the voice in her head silly (say nothing for the reaction to the cat named Petit). Because it was something else, Beth who held out fat hands toward Gus and babbled something in the self-important tones of tiny queen communicating to a new and thus enlightened subject, knowing someone in the city that didn’t feel like a hard lesson she had to learn first, or like her sister’s life was something strange even opened up in front of her. “You can make up all the games you like.”
The touch made him freeze, albeit momentarily, but where Gus would have once tensed up and backed away to hide behind the safety of his father, he stood his ground and smiled a small smile. “I’ll help,” he agreed, and it was clear he liked the thought of teaching the little girl about the very important lesson of sharing. She was a playmate for him and for Luke, well, Ella was a familiar face, a friend even, and he hoped maybe she could be the same for Wren. He thought it might be good for her to have more normal friends, since MK was a disaster more often than not even though he didn’t blame her for it.
When she smiled, Luke grinned back, and he watched as Gus took Beth’s outstretched hands carefully in his own and babbled back at her in happy French, unconcerned by the fact that they were conversing in a manner no one, not even the two of them, could understand.