Work Text:
Harry stood in the doorway of CJ’s room for a few minutes, watching her sitting on a stool at her little table and bending studiously over a pile of construction paper and a mess of crayons as she drew. It was tempting, very tempting, to just leave her be, but he'd already put this conversation off for three days, and he didn't want to have her find out in her own.
“Hey, duck,” he finally said. “I gotta talk to you about something.”
CJ paused for a moment, then carefully set her crayon down and twisted in her seat to face him. “Okay.”
“Okay.” Harry took a deep breath and settled himself cross-legged on the floor in front of CJ’s little stool. Tiny as she was, they were still nearly at eye-level. “It's nothing bad,” he said quickly, when he saw her hand drifting up to tug at her ear, a nervous tic she had somehow picked up from Ben. “I just needed to tell you something.”
CJ nodded. “Okay,” she said again, more slowly. “Tell me what?”
Harry opened his mouth, then sighed as he found himself suddenly forgetting everything he had planned to say. “All right, first off. You know your mum and I both love you very much, right?” A nod. “And you know we love each other.”
Another nod. “As friends.”
He huffed out a laugh despite himself. “That's right. So your mum and I love each other like friends, but we're not in love. Do you know the difference?”
“Yeah,” CJ said with a shrug, like she couldn't believe Harry was asking her such an obvious question. “You love Mummy like you love Uma, like you wanna hang out, but not like how Gil and Carlos and Jay and Dude are in love, like they wanna kiss.”
“They're not in love with Dude,” Harry said first, because nipping that misconception in the bud seemed like the more pressing matter. “They love each other like they want to kiss, you're right, but they love Dude like a pet.”
“I've seen Carlos kiss Dude before,” CJ argued, and Harry wondered despairingly why this was the hill CJ had chosen to die on. “He kisses his head.”
“That's a different kind of kiss,” Harry said. “He kisses you on the head too, doesn't he? Does that seem like the same kind of kisses that he gives Jay or Gil?”
CJ thought it over for a few seconds, then shook her head. “No, it's different. Okay. Friend love and gay love.”
“That– oh my god.” Harry covered his face for a moment, laughing helplessly. “No, okay, they're not all three gay. Gil and Jay are gay, but Carlos is bisexual. That means–”
“Bicycle love,” CJ said.
“Oh my god.” He dissolved into giggles before tugging CJ forward and planting a kiss on her forehead. Before he could pull back, she grabbed his face and pressed a matching one to his in return.
“Okay,” he said when he sat back, still grinning, “so we'll try that explanation again later. But there's different ways to love each other, right? Like pets and family and friends and boyfriends.”
“How do you love me?” CJ asked, sounding genuinely curious, and Harry melted, just a little.
“I love you more than I love anyone on the planet,” he promised. “I love you more than all the other planets, too. I love you like my very favorite person and the best little girl ever born.”
CJ nodded firmly. “Good. I love you like the best daddy ever born.”
“Well, that's very sweet of you.” He grinned, then took a deep breath. “Now, you said earlier that I love Uma like a friend.”
“Yeah.” CJ shrugged. “Uma's your best friend, is why. Like Celia and Dizzy.”
“Well, she is my best friend,” Harry acknowledged. “But she's also a little different than that. The way I love Uma is a little more like the way your uncles love each other.”
CJ narrowed her eyes at him. “No, it's not. You and Uma aren't gay.”
Harry rolled his eyes, well aware that it was a horrible habit to teach his little sponge of a daughter but unable to stop himself from doing it. “No, it would be more like bicycle love for me and Uma,” he said. “Because we're both– well, I'll teach you that word later. Do you see what I mean, though?”
CJ’s eyes were still narrowed, and now her little brow was furrowed, too. “Like a kissing way? You want to kiss her?”
“Yeah,” Harry said. “Yeah, Uma and I love each other in a kissing sort of way. What do you think about that?”
CJ frowned. “She loves kissing you?”
“She seems to enjoy it pretty well,” Harry said dryly. “What would you think about me and Uma kissing sometimes? Would you be okay with that?”
“Did you and Mummy ever kiss?”
“Uh, yeah,” Harry said, a little taken aback. CJ had never seemed particularly interested in Harry and Audrey’s brief relationship. “Your mum and I kissed for a little bit before you were born. But we decided we loved each other better as friends than as…” He trailed off, grimacing. He was really going to have to think of a better word. “...Bicycles.”
“How come?”
He shrugged. “You don't always get to choose who you love or how you love them. Mummy and I just don't love each other in a kissing way, but we love each other a lot as friends, and we both love you very much. That's why I wanted to ask how you felt about me and Uma.”
CJ was frowning at her knees, and her hand drifted back up to her ear. Harry took her other hand in his and squeezed it gently. “Hey, what is it, sweetheart?”
“Did you and Uma kiss a long time ago?” CJ asked. “Before you met Mummy?”
Harry's floundered for a moment, mouth hanging open. “Who told you that?”
“I heard Mummy talking on the phone. She said you two were in love and maybe you still were and she was worried and, and that's a kissing love, isn't it?”
Harry sighed. “Yeah, CJ, that's a kissing love. Uma and I kissed a long time ago, when we were a lot younger, but then we stopped for a while.”
“How come?”
Harry brushed his thumb over the back of her hand, trying to think of a child-friendly way to explain the disaster that had been his and Uma's relationship. “You know how sometimes your daddy's brain gets a little silly and doesn't work all the way right, so I take medicine to help me with it?”
“Uh huh.”
“Well, when I first knew Uma, I didn't have any medicine,” he said. “And so I didn't know how to keep my brain from being silly and making me think bad ideas were good ideas. One day I had a really bad idea, and it scared me and Uma a lot. We were so scared that we got in a big fight about it, and then we were so mad about our fight that we didn't want to talk to each other, so I moved home to stay with your Aunt Harriet.”
“You should say you're sorry,” CJ told him solemnly. “When you get in a fight with someone, you say you're sorry.”
Harry smiled a little and squeezed her hand. “That's exactly right. Uma and I took a long time to do it, but we did say sorry a few years ago, when you and I moved here. That was when we started to become friends again, and love each other that way, and now we've started to love each other in a kissing way again, too.”
“Have you kissed a lot now?” CJ asked suspiciously. “Are you gonna kiss all the time?”
“We've only kissed a little bit,” Harry promised. CJ finally let go of her ear, and he caught that hand in his other one, holding them both tight. “I wanted to talk to you about it first because I love Uma very much, but you're my most important person. I want to make sure you're okay with me and Uma kissing sometimes, because I don't want to do anything that would make you sad or upset. Do you think that would make you upset? If Uma and I had a kissing sort of love?”
“I like Uma,” CJ said seriously. “I love her in a friend sort of way.” Harry nodded, biting back a smile at the gravity in her voice. “And I like that, if you love her. That's a good thing. But, um.” She ducked her head, looking suddenly shy. “If you get in another fight, can I please be friends with her still?”
“Aw, duck,” Harry said softly. He lifted her hands to his mouth and pressed a kiss to the back of one, then the other. “Uma and I wouldn't get in a fight like that again. We were a lot younger then, and we didn't know how to talk about being scared with each other except to get mad about it. You know how sometimes when we get upset, we take a little break before we talk about it, so we can get our feelings in order?” CJ nodded. “Well, Uma and I didn't ever do that. We always talked about it right then, when we were both still scared and mad, and so we weren't always very nice to each other. Now we know better, and we know how to be polite even when we have a lot of big feelings. We might still get upset, and maybe we would even decide we don't want to kiss anymore, but I wouldn't make you two stop being friends if you didn't want to.”
“Not for anything,” CJ insisted. “You wouldn't make us stop being friends for anything.”
Harry pretended to mull it over. “Well, maybe if Uma… kidnapped a giraffe. And ran away with it to the moon, to start a zoo for aliens. Maybe then we wouldn't talk to her, but that would be more of a mobile service thing.”
“We could go with her!” CJ said, excited. “We could start a alien zoo, and you and Uma could kiss on the moon!”
“Yep,” Harry said, grinning. “That'd be really fun, wouldn't it?”
“And you could ride bicycles together.”
“Oh, god.” Harry dropped his head, forgetting that he was holding CJ's hands and pressing them to his forehead when reached up to cover his face. He let go, but she left them there, cheerfully digging her fingers through his hair to muss it up. “How about we say dating instead of riding bicycles, huh? Or going out?”
CJ's hands went still in his hair, and he looked back up to see her wrinkling her nose. “Bicycle sounds better. You said Carlos is a bicycle. Are you a bicycle?”
“The word is bisexual, CJ. Please never, ever tell your uncles that I called Carlos a bicycle.”
CJ shrugged and pulled her hands away. “Whatever.” She shrieked a little when Harry reached out and poked her in the stomach, giggling and slapping his hand away.
“Don't you ‘whatever’ me, young lady. Are we gonna call Uncle Carlos a bicycle?”
CJ sighed loudly. “No. Fine. Even though you said he is first.”
Harry smiled helplessly at her, stubborn pout and all. “I love you, duck, you know that?”
“‘Course. I love you too, daddy.”
“And you're really okay with me and Uma dating?”
CJ reached out and patted his shoulder. “Yeah. Because I love Uma. And you love Uma. So you're gonna kiss, and we'll maybe all go to the moon together sometime.”
Harry grinned, feeling just a little light and floating, and reached up to squeeze the hand on his shoulder. “That sounds like a lot of fun. Hey, you want to show me what you're drawing here?”
CJ turned back towards the table, and Harry sat up on his knees so he could look as she began to explain the complex, indecipherable scribbles that were, apparently, the three of them having a tea party with dinosaurs.
Dinosaur tea parties and zoos on the moon. Sounded like a good start.