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Jon yawned, eyes blurring behind his glasses, which felt foggy. He also was sure there was a smear of peanut butter on them. Or rather, he hoped it was peanut butter. With the girls it was hard to tell sometimes. He reached up to pinch his nose, before pressing his index finger and thumb up and forward into his eye sockets, wondering how long he had been editing the Baratheon-Tyrell wedding. He raked his fingers up and through his hair, sending curls springing out and his glasses fell back to his nose.
He zoomed in on the husband-husband first dance, trying to blur out the sneer from the groom’s sister, who had been quite disgusted with the other husband’s sister-in-law, who had been trying to upstage the wedding. He moved over to another picture once he was satisfied and began working on some of the pictures of the flower girl, who had been very sweet and very concerned he would get photos of her scarred face, but he thought she was quite beautiful, especially the picture of her dancing with her uncle.
So focused, he didn’t notice that the door had opened, and he had a visitor, until he felt a sticky finger push lightly on his arm. “Ah!” he yelped, startled.
“Ah!” Rhaella shouted, equally started at his shout. Her lower lip immediately pushed out, tears welling in her large violet eyes. Her voice feeble, she mumbled. “Dada?”
Willing his heartbeat to return to normal, he immediately felt bad for scaring her. “Oh baby, what are you doing here?” he asked, reaching to help her climb up into his lap. He whipped his head to the door, concerned. “Where are your sisters?”
“Sleepy.”
Relief filled him. They had tired themselves out at the park earlier, taking turns pushing each other—and him—on the swings, creating an obstacle course to run, kicking their football around, and pretending they were wild girls who lived in the woods with their pet wolf for company, which meant running around after Ghost who just wanted to sleep in the sun. Too much of a good thing, he’d been thrilled to discover, resulted in them nodding off on the drive home and barely moving when he got them all into their beds for an afternoon pick-me-up.
It gave him time to work on the wedding photos, maybe even try to get a couple chapters done on his novel, and if he was really lucky—a nap for Dada.
Rhae cuddled against him, hugging her dragon plushie, and pointed at the computer screen. “Wha’ that?”
“A wedding.”
“Oooh,” she sighed. She loved anything that had to do with love, weddings, princesses living happily ever after. Her eyes lit up and she leaned forward, poiting to the picture of the young girl dancing. Finger pressed on the computer screen, she giggled. “I wanna’ do that.”
“You want to dance?”
“Yes!” She jumped out of his lap, rocking on the balls of her feet, determined. “I wanna’ dance. Be back.” She ran out of the room, before Jon could either agree, disagree, or try to get her to return to her bed to finish out the rest of her nap.
He glanced at his watch, torn between focusing on finishing up or entertaining Rhae. “Seven hells,” he muttered. He’d have to get the other girls up too, as much as he would love for them to keep napping. It was Thursday night, which meant Dany would try to be home early, so they could get everyone through dinner, bathtime, storytime, and asleep, then they could enjoy their evening the way a husband should enjoy his wife. He’d been lacking in that department lately, too tired himself. He’d almost fallen asleep with Dany over him a few nights before.
Almost being the key word.
Rhae hadn’t been very quiet, rummaging loudly in the playroom, singing a song to herself about dancing like a fairy princess, like Belle in Beauty and the Beast. She loudly sang the lyrics to “Once Upon a Dream” from Sleeping Beauty. It wouldn’t be long before her sisters woke. He went upstairs to their room, leaning in and smiling gently at his princesses.
Lya was already shifting about, sitting up and rubbing her eyes. She spotted him, smiling wide. The triplets were practically identical in looks, which tripped people up when they discovered they were in fact fraternal. It only took a deeper look at Lya to see she had inherited Jon’s gray eyes, unlike her sisters’ violet ones. She waved at him. “Hi Dada.”
“Hi baby girl.”
“What’re you doin’?”
“Waiting on you,” he answered. Aly was also getting up, climbing out of bed and rushing towards him. He picked her up and she instantly melted into him, while he ruffled Lya’s curls, which stuck up in every direction, her braid long gone. There was a grass stain on her elbow, probably leftover from the park. He sighed; he was positive he’d scrubbed them down of all dirt and grime before they’d entered the house.
Rhae popped into the room, arms thrown up into the air, screeching: “We dancin’!” She grabbed his hand. “But me first!”
Lya was instantly alert; she always had to be the first. “No, me.”
“You don’t even know what is going on,” he gently chided her.
"What're we doin'?" Aly yawned. She squinted, rather blearily at her sister, before rubbing her eyes and frowning.
Jon set her down, turning her back around to the nightstand. "Put on your glasses little wolf." She never seemed to remember them, even when she wandered about with her eyes narrowed, attempting to focus. He waited for her to return, shoving her pink frames on and took her hand, while Lya grabbed his other, not to be left out.
She counseled her sister, patting her on the shoulder. "We are dancin'." She paused, tiny brow puckering in a frown. "I think."
"Oh okay," Aly accepted. Jon chuckled, amused. Sometimes they could be absolute terrors with each other, pulling hair, screaming, and trying to one-up the other in a survival of the fittest (he blamed Dany's competitive streak seeping into them, particularly Lya who was the biggest triplet at birth).
They descended the staircase to the playroom, Rhae rummaging in the dress-up box. His heart flipped when she took out the white tutu that was "his." "Rhae..."
"You gotta'!"
"Yeah!" the other two shouted, running for the box.
He sighed, unsure why he needed a tutu, but he dutifully pulled it on over his jeans, adjusting his t-shirt accordingly as she fussed about him, poofing the shirt over the top of the tutu. Once she had finished and began squabbling with the others over which colors they should wear; ”so bossy”, he thought, Jon went through the playroom into the living room, studying his phone. He chose a playlist that he had to make after Aly sobbed uncontrollably once when he didn’t have “Tale as Old as Time” on demand. He smiled briefly at the playlist above, full of soft jazz, which he used when it was just him and Dany, when he felt like wooing her. She claimed he never did anything of the sort before, so now that they were married, he could show her what he would have done if he'd made the attempt.
He didn't know what the difference between woo, court, date, whatever meant. All he knew was he stumbled head over feet in love with her and before he knew it, he was on his knee proposing, shocked when she’d accepted. Whatever happened beforehand was kind of a blur. Like most of his life after Dany, he thought with a smile at his girls, who were doing their best attempts to stand on their toes, while Rhae held her arms over her head, serious as ever.
The other two were not, giggling as they tripped. He hit play, “A Whole New World” beginning to play through the house's Bluetooth speakers. Ghost barked, tail beating the arm of the chair he'd chosen to watch them. "Hush," Lya told him, holding her finger up. She giggled again, before rushing to hug him, Ghost licking her face in acceptance of her apology. "Be good Ghost. We play with you too."
“I wanna’ dance with Daddy!” Alysanne exclaimed, wearing a blue tutu and an astronaut helmet, barreling over Rhaella in attempt to get to him.
Rhae, the perfectionist, stomped her foot, hands on hips, Daenerys Targaryen in miniature. “No! That’s not how you do it!”
“How about we all dance?” he suggested, stopping the bitter argument before it began. Lya jumped off the chair and grabbed hold of one of his hands, the other arm going up, jerking in the air as she shouted about how she got to go first because she was the first.
He never should have told her she was the first baby to come out of Mommy. He was paying for it constantly. “Girls, you can all dance,” he said again. He smiled at Rhaella, who was narrowing her eyes, calculating how they would go about doing it. He moved backwards and then bowed. “May I have this dance?”
They laughed and only Rhae curtsied, while the other two spun in circles, Aly’s yellow Belle gown from last year’s Halloween a tad too small and falling off her shoulders over her Targaryen-Lannister Law Annual Softball Game t-shirt from the previous year. He adjusted the poofy sleeve.
As if on cue, “Tale as Old as Time” began to play, the soft sounds of the beginning notes setting the stage. He held his hands out to them. “Now, come here, get on my feet. I’ll dance with all of you.”
They clambered around him, arguing over how to get six little feet onto his two, their tiny pudgy hands dragging around to hold onto the hem of his t-shirt and grab at his hands. He smiled, waiting for them to get situated-- Rhae had one foot on his right, Lya had hers on his left, and Aly had one of each on both of his, gripping tight around his waist, giggling all the while.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Ready!” Rhae and Lya chimed, while Aly couldn’t stop giggling.
He rolled his eyes, unable to stop smiling and began to move, rather awkwardly, but it honestly didn’t matter. He could have been Frankenstein and they wouldn’t care, each one smiling adoringly up at him as he swayed side to side, taking careful steps and spinning around, all of them holding on like it was a roller-coaster, their bubbling squeals filling his heart with some much warmth, he feared it might explode.
Aly began to sing along, as this was her favorite song from her favorite movie—because Belle liked to read and so did she, she always told him—the others were a little more interested in the mechanics of dancing, although he could tell Lya was getting a little bored; dancing was a bit too slow for her energy levels. Rhae was in seventh heaven.
Their combined weight on his feet was killing his toes, which had probably broken by now and his knees ached from locking up to sway around with all of them and not fall. He was trying not to step on them either; they were so little and kept falling off, laughing the entire time. Except he wouldn't trade it for anything. Even if he succumbed to losing all his toes in the process.
He thought to the weddings he’d photographed over the last few years; it was a way to pay the bills while he focused on writing a novel. Then Dany and him decided to have children and instead of the one they’d wondered if they’d ever get, they’d been blessed with their three perfect girls. He had photographed so many father-daughter dances he hadn’t realized that one day he might be that father, holding his baby girl in his arms at her wedding.
Oh gods, he thought, gazing down at his three. He felt tears prick the corners of his eyes, like a fool. Seven hells! They’re only five you stupid arse, he reprimanded himself, taking a deep breath and focusing on the moment then, not the entirely hypothetical—and probably never going to happen because he was going to lock them in a tower the first time a boy ever glanced at them—future.
“Daddy? Are you sad?”
It came from Aly, his ever observant one. “Not sad,” he answered truthfully. He grinned. “Happy.”
“Happy?” Lya piped up.
“Yup. You three make me very, very happy.”
“Good,” Rhae said. She looked up at him, her smile wide, the little nub of her new tooth coming in glinting. She glanced at their feet. “I wanna’ dance Daddy. Like a ballerina.”
“Oh?”
“Yes and wear a pretty dress and we can dance and you can be like Beast or Prince Philip or…” She began to rattle off all the various Disney princes, although he suspected that he was probably equal to Beast than he was to Prince Charming. He’d have to confer with Dany on that one.
There was an annual Father-Daughter Dance at Winterfell, he remembered suddenly. It was part of the community engagements that his sister did to keep the estate running. In the old keep, they’d put sparkling ice statues and silver garlands up. He hadn’t thought of bringing the girls last year; they were so young. “Well, maybe we can make that happen,” he said. He’d have to dance individual with each one; that was going to be a nightmare.
She giggled. “Okay! I want to be a ballerina!”
“I wanna’ make music,” Aly said suddenly.
Lya yawned, bored of the quietness of the activity. She crawled over to Ghost. “Daddy can I ride Ghost?”
“No,” he answered; this question came up a lot.
“Poo.”
He had suggested horseback riding to Dany, each time Lya wanted to know about riding Ghost like a horse. Maybe they’d need to look into this for htem. He turned to Aly. “What kind of music?”
“Piano.”
It came so fast; he was surprised. “Oh?”
“Yeah.” She wandered to the piano Dany had, that belonged to her mother and she’d taken lessons on as a girl. She climbed on the stool, hitting the keys.
Rhae instantly let go of him, Lya leaping over and all three began to pound on the keys, fingers moving up and down, laughing as they tangled their arms together, trying to replicate the same melody as “Be Our Guest.” He went over to Ghost, ruffling his head, and moved to take off his tutu, when he heard a voice call through the room:
“Oh Jon, leave it on.”
The girls looked up with him and shouted: “Mommy!”
Dany moved into the room, arms uncrossing; she’d already taken off her suit jacket and heels and sometimes he wondered if the girls were getting taller or she was getting smaller. “Hello my loves!”
Jon moved towards his wife, to give her a kiss and ask how her day was, wondering why she was home early, but she answered for him, rising on her toes to reach his lips with hers. “Power went out at the office, I sent everyone home early. Tyrion of course wanted to keep working, but without computers I don’t know how he expects us to do most of our work, we’re not living in the Middle Ages.”
“Well lucky us,” he said, arm going around her waist. He frowned. “You want me to wear this tutu?”
“You look good in a tutu.” She wiggled her eyebrows and he grinned, leaning to kiss her again, but Lya pushed lightly on her. Dany arched her brow, warning. “Hey, don’t do that.” Lately Lya had seemed to get jealous of other women, whether it be her mother, aunts, or even the crazy next-door neighbor Olenna who had pinched his arse when he’d collected a basket of the tomatoes she grew and gave them often.
Lya said nothing, but pouted. He kissed the top o her head, turning her towards her sisters. “Go over there girls I want to show you a real dance.”
“Oh?” Dany wondered.
Jon went over to his phone, stopping “Kiss the Girl” and queued up the song that had become his and Dany’s, before he returned to her, and bowed, still in the tutu, grinning. “May I have this dance, my lady?”
Dany curtsied, as best as she could still in her tight pencil skirt. “Of course, my lord.”
The girls giggled behind their hands from their places on the piano bench, while Jon took his wife into his arms, hand pressed warmly against the small of her back and her arm up over her shoulder, hands clasped to the side and arms up, beginning to dance around the living room. He twirled her, dipped her, and at one point lifted her up into his arms and spun her about, all while the song played in the background.
As “Groovy Kind of Love” ended, he pulled her tight to his chest, and kissed her, just like he had when they’d danced to the song at their wedding, their first dance. The girls squealed, jumping off the bench, rushing over, and grabbed hold of them, stepping on their feet and jumping about, demanding to dance too.
Jon obliged, because the other answer would be ‘no’ and he was not sure he could ever say that to his little princesses.