Chapter Text
"You haven't seen Bambi? "
Tron takes a tone somehow even more incisive than usual. It is as if he is legitimately offended at this knowledge. As if Faker had just told him he thinks the earth is flat. Were the boy not busy stuffing a strawberry and whipped cream sandwich in his face, Faker has a feeling that he'd be complaining a lot more.
"Byron, at what point in my life would I have sat down and watched Bambi?"
"You have two kids! You're telling me you've never watched Bambi with either of them?"
This was a more difficult question to answer. At that sort of age, Kaito had seemed the type to be uninterested in such films. He was always a Star Wars type of kid- not so interested in the standard Disney filmography of sad animals. And Haruto… Well, their relationship had already been strained, and making him watch a movie with that sort of subject matter when he’d never gotten a chance to meet his mother felt cruel. Faker can’t help but visibly scowl at the thought, to which Tron clicked his tongue in disappointment.
“What are you doing on Thursday?” Tron asks, though it comes out as more a garbled “whddryadwingthrsdy” as he wipes crumbs and whipped cream off of his face with a handkerchief. He struggles for an extra moment to pull said handkerchief off of his face, as he is essentially playing tug of war with a vacuum.
Faker takes a long sip of tea and pretends he can’t see that. “I won’t be here on Thursday. It’s my day off.”
“I know that, ” pouts the boy, kicking his feet a little bit, indignantly. “I’m asking what your plans are. Like, outside of work. Unless you plan to be sitting in bed and staring into space for 24 hours.”
“I have a cardiologist appointment at 11 AM. They need to measure my INR levels again, since last m-“
“Ugh, yeah yeah, I get it, you’re old. ” Tron sticks out his tongue just a little. “What are you doing in the evening? You know, if you want to come over to my house, we can-“
“Mister Arclight,” Faker’s voice and face are now stern as he stares down at the little man across the table from him, “I believe this would not be the first time I’ve had to remind you of the rules around sexual harassment in the work place. As your supervisor, it would be unbecoming of me to-“
“God damn it man, do you want to watch Bambi with me or not?!” All at once Tron slams both of his tiny fists on the table, punctuating his sentence with the clatter of teacup on saucer and metal mask on granite. He looks harried. Like Faker’s words actually got to him a little. But mostly like a spoiled child throwing a tantrum.
Faker can’t help but laugh.
(After a moment, Tron cracks a smile. And then he starts laughing too, finally grasping how ridiculous this all looks.)
“Fine, Byron,” Faker replies, pausing to groan a bit as he pulls himself out of the lunchroom chair, “you win. I will watch Bambi with you. I’ll be over at seven.”
“Yaaaaay~!” The amount of sheer, childlike glee that seems to fill Byron Arclight in the moment is indescribable. In one swift action, he grabs his mask from the table, plonks it back onto his face, does a little twirl as he stands, and trots right over to Faker, barely with enough time to not get punted halfway across the room. And then he hugs him. Well, if you count ‘giving him a death grip around the knees’ as a hug. And with that big stupid smile on his face, he peers up at Faker and joyfully remarks, “Oh, bring some tissues.”
(Leave it to old money to be too cheap to provide god damned tissues.)