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Rooster was a light sleeper.
He hadn’t always been, but years of getting woken up in the middle of the night for patrols or missions had ingrained a sense of readiness in him. Sometimes it was annoying, like when he was just trying to desperately sleep but was constantly woken up by random background noises. But sometimes it was useful, like that night.
Rooster cracked open his eyes and sat up, turning towards the door of his bedroom as it creaked open. Though sleep blurred his vision, when he spotted Caroline slip into the room, he was immediately up and alert, ready to swoop into action.
“Sweetheart, what are you doing up?” he asked his daughter. Glancing over at the clock on the nightstand, he noted that time—two in the morning. Way past Caroline’s bedtime.
“I had a nightmare,” Caroline mumbled out, staring up at him with wide brown eyes.
She rested her head on top of her stuffed animal. It was a yellow chick that Coyote had gotten her as a ‘welcome home’ present. Caroline affectionately called the stuffed animal Tommy. Rooster wasn’t particularly sure if she was naming the stuffed animal after her great uncle Admiral Tom “Iceman” Kazansky or the F-14 Tomcat, but either way, it was an ode to her aviator lineage.
“C’mere,” Rooster melted instantly.
Caroline trotted over to his side of the bed and Rooster scooped her up into his arms. Laying her down beside him, on Jake’s usual side of the bed, Rooster ran a hand through Caroline’s mess of curls. Caroline tucked herself into his side, Tommy the Chick squished between them. Rooster rubbed her back, trying to soothe his daughter.
“Do you want to talk about it? About your nightmare?” Rooster asked softly.
“It was about Daddy,” she mumbled out a few moments later.
“Oh.”
Rooster glanced at the empty side of the bed as he tried to lull Caroline back to sleep. Jake had left about three weeks ago for a short deployment—two months—in the Pacific. It wasn’t the first time that one of them had been deployed after Caroline was born, but maybe she was finally old enough to recognize the situation more and be emotionally impacted by it.
“What about Daddy?”
“That he didn’t come back,” Caroline replied softly.
Rooster’s hand froze for a second, and against his will, his entire body went rigid. Feeling him tense up beside her, Caroline tilted her head and glanced up at Rooster for some kind of explanation or reassurance. Rooster, after the initial jolt of shock passed through his system, pulled her into a tight hug.
“Your Daddy’s going to be fine, Care,” Rooster told her, pressing a kiss to the top of her head of curls.
Of course, it was always in the back of Rooster’s mind and sometimes even at the forefront of it about the possibilities. He’d tried so hard in his life to emulate his father that Rooster never grappled with the possibility of becoming his mother. And while there were many traits that Rooster was proud to share with his mother, he didn’t want to share her status as a widow with a young child at home.
“He’s too stubborn not to be,” Rooster continued.
“What does ‘stubborn’ mean?”
“It means that there’s nothing in this world that would stop him from coming home to you and me,” Rooster elaborated, causing Caroline to nod slowly.
“Sounds like Daddy.”
“Yes, it does,” Rooster mused, smiling down at his daughter.
“When can we talk to him again?”
Because Jake was on a carrier, communication wasn’t exactly easy to maintain. Everything had to be censored and Jake wasn’t allowed to have his phone. Rooster usually got an email from him every day or every other day, but actual phone calls were harder to come by. And video conferences were even harder to set up.
“His last email said that he’d try to call us tomorrow or the next day.”
“Okay,” Caroline replied before yawning loudly.
“Why don’t to try to go to bed, Care? It’s late. I’ll be right here if you have another nightmare and I’ll wake you up if Daddy calls, okay?”
“Okay, Papa.”
Rooster thought that pancakes were in order after last night.
Caroline sat perched at the table, drawing something with her crayons while she waited for her pancakes. Rooster flipped another one when he felt his phone start to buzz in his pocket. Pulling his phone out, Rooster nearly dropped the spatula when he saw the number.
“Care, it’s your Daddy!”
Rooster moved the pancake pan over on the stove and turned it off. Before he could turn to walk to the table, Caroline had already latched onto his leg, reaching eagerly for his phone. Rooster picked her up with one arm and answered the call with the other. The usual automated message rattled through before that familiar voice flowed through.
“Hello? Can you hear me?” Hangman called through the phone.
“We can hear you.”
“Daddy!” Caroline squealed as Rooster settled the two of them at the table.
“Hey, sweetheart. How’s everything back home?”
“Papa’s making pancakes,” she reported, swinging her little legs back and forth.
“Chocolate chip?”
“Of course,” Caroline scoffed at the absurd question.
“Right, excuse me,” Hangman replied teasingly.
“You’re excused,” Caroline returned.
“Anything else going on with you guys?”
“I had a nightmare yesterday,” Caroline replied, not beating around the bush. She had clearly gotten her bluntness from Hangman, which Rooster assumed would give him some large headaches in the future. But other times, it was useful.
“I’m sorry to hear that, sweetheart. Do you want to talk about it?” Jake asked, sounding immediately concerned.
“I talked about it with Papa,” Caroline stated, resting her chin on the table. “He said that everything will be alright.” Rooster picked up the phone and held it closer to him so that he could explain the situation to Jake.
“She thought that you weren’t coming home,” Rooster explained, wrapping a protective arm around Caroline.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Jake immediately replied as Rooster set the phone back on the table in front of Caroline, “you know that I love you with everything I’ve got, right? And if I had it my way, I’d be home with you right now.”
“I know,” Caroline spoke softly.
“I’ll be home in a little less than five weeks. And you know that big calendar that we have up in the kitchen?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, your Papa should have marked the date, so you can see when I’m coming home, alright?”
“Okay, Daddy.”
“How’s everything over there?” Rooster asked, resting his head on top of Caroline’s.
“Just routine. Finished up a patrol not too long ago but nothing even remotely exciting or dangerous has happened.”
“That’s a relief,” Rooster sighed. “And the squad?”
“I don’t like being the oldest one here,” was Jake’s immediate response.
“You’re really the oldest pilot?” Rooster asked, unable to contain his amusement.
“It’s okay, Daddy, Papa’s even older,” Caroline replied innocently. Hangman immediately burst out into laughter while Rooster frowned at her.
“Are you calling me ‘old’, young lady?”
“We told her to always tell the truth, didn’t we?” Jake joked, causing Caroline to giggle.
“You’re being a bad influence,” Rooster told Hangman, though his tone was clearly teasing. “One of these days, she’s going to make a blunt comment in public and offend somebody important and it’s going to be your fault.”
“She is my daughter. I doubt that it’ll be a surprising occurrence.”
“And you wonder why I’m starting to find gray hairs.”
“Because you’re old,” Caroline pointed out, as if it were obvious. She squealed with laughter as Rooster tickled her side in retaliation. “Not fair! Daddy’s not here to tickle you back!” Caroline yelled, kicking out her little legs.
“I’m sure that he’ll tickle me back when he gets home,” Rooster replied, righting Caroline so that she didn’t fall off the seat.
“I intend to,” Hangman assured his husband in a tone that Rooster recognized well.
“Do you?” Rooster shot back.
“I’d respond with something wittier but I’m currently sitting in a room with ten other people, and you have our daughter sitting there with very young and impressionable ears,” Hangman replied, almost sounding disappointed at the censorship.
“What does ‘im-press-shun-al’ mean?” Caroline inquired innocently.
“It means that you repeat everything that you hear.”
Both Hangman and Rooster thought back to the one little incident when they were visiting Jake’s mother in Texas. Caroline had been sitting with her grandmother on the back porch as Jake and Rooster fixed a leaky faucet. Caroline had dropped her glass of water, since the condensation made it slippery. But the moment was certainly topped when she shouted ‘shit’ at the top of her lungs.
Jake’s mother had practically fallen out of her rocker chair.
“You always laugh when I repeat stuff, Daddy,” Caroline pointed out to Hangman.
“Yes, and that’s the biggest part of that problem,” Rooster sighed, rubbing his face. “Your Daddy and I had a very long conversation about that.”
“My bad.”
They continued talking, wanting to use every second that they were given to actually hear each other and converse like they were all sitting together in the kitchen. But then Jake had to go to a meeting, and they were forced to wrap it up.
“I love you, sweetheart.”
“Love you too, Daddy,” Caroline replied back.
“I’ll be home soon, alright?”
“Okay.”
“I love you,” Rooster added, picking up the phone again.
“I love you too, Roo. I’ll email you when I should be able to sneak a call again.”
“Sounds good. Be safe. And don’t do anything that you would normally do. Please.”
“I’ll be safe. I love you both.”
“Bye, Daddy!”
“Bye, sweetheart. I’ll be home soon.”
And five weeks later, as promised and marked on the calendar, Jake came home to his loving family.