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When Stede and Ed decided to announce the news of the baby to the kids, there were any number of ways they'd envisioned this going.
This was decidedly not one of them.
Well, in all fairness, they’d technically announced it to the kids over the phone about a week before they were set to arrive for the summer break. Alma and Louis had been spending their summers with Ed and Stede on the Island for the past few years, a routine established not long after they’d first purchased this house.
Deciding against springing Stede’s very pregnant appearance on them for the first time in-person, they’d told the kids about it on one of their last video calls before they’d arrived, with sonogram pictures and dozens of answers for potential questions at the ready.
Louis seemed excited enough – well, there’d been an excited exclamation before quickly saying bye to continue on with his current lego building project. Stede had hoped for a slightly more enthusiastic response from his son, but he’d honestly take it. And besides, Alma tended to monopolize their video calls anyways, so Louis’ reservation wasn’t necessarily unreasonable.
At the time, Alma’s reaction had been unreadable. She’d seemed to process the words in silence, keeping her eyes averted for the rest of the conversation, albeit a much shorter one than they’d been anticipating, with her deciding to leave the call only a few minutes later with some mumbled excuse about finishing homework.
Stede had thought that maybe she was having difficulty processing the news over the phone, and that once she could see it all in-person things would sink in more.
But their airport reunion had only posed more questions than answers.
Again, Louis seemed entirely unaffected by the entire ordeal, asking Stede a couple of questions about the size of the baby in comparison to the ultrasound pictures, but otherwise seemingly nonplussed.
Alma, on the other hand, seemed to grow unusually quiet at the sight of Stede’s large belly. She didn’t talk the entire ride home from the airport, and had pretty much immediately locked herself away in her room once they’d arrived home. She’d stayed there for a couple of hours, until Stede had tried coaxing her out with the promise of some beach-time adventures.
After she’d shot down the third idea he’d proposed in the span of an hour, something in her finally seemed to snap when Stede tried yet again to entice her outside with the promise of tidepools and sand dunes.
“I don’t want to go outside with you, what is so difficult about that to understand?” She’d snapped, slamming the door shut in Stede’s face.
And, admittedly, were Stede not nearly seven months pregnant and currently experiencing hormones he hadn’t had in years, he might have been able to handle this entire situation better.
Perhaps he would have been able to calmly collect himself and walk away until his child was in a better mode to talk to try and get to the bottom of whatever seemed to be causing this attitude.
Maybe he would have simply turned back around to Louis, who was eagerly awaiting the promised exploration of aforementioned tidepools and left his pre-teen daughter to sort out her emotions on her own before trying again.
But because Stede was currently running on an absolute molotov cocktail of sleep deprivation and late stage pregnancy hormones, he had tears in his eyes before Alma’s door had even slammed shut.
And those tears quickly multiplied, becoming a steady stream as just about every emotion he’d been trying to keep at bay since last week came crashing into him.
He tried to swallow the sob clawing its way up his throat, but it escaped before he could get a hold of it. And once that one broke free, the dam came bursting forward as he struggled to push air through his rapidly restricting throat.
“Stede?” Ed was at his side in an instant, hands reaching out to steady him.
“It’s – I’m – fine, Ed,” Stede managed to get out, his vision narrowing as he struggled to stay present.
“Alma,” Ed called, knocking on the wooden door.
“It’s fine, Edward,” Stede tried to get out but lost half of Ed’s name in another sob. They could deal with this later, they could all talk about this later when emotions weren’t running so high and when Stede felt like he could actually breathe and –
“Al, please come out here,” Ed called again, voice leaving almost no room for argument. Stede vaguely processed Ed sending Louis out of the room.
The door swung open again, Alma standing in the doorway looking like she would rather be literally anywhere but here right now.
Stede had to use just about every ounce of strength left to pull himself back out of the impending spiral, preventing himself from digging even deeper into the refugee of the back of his brain that felt so much safer than whatever the hell was happening in front of him right now.
“What was that about?" Ed demanded, and Stede could hear him doing his absolute best at keeping his voice level despite the palpable frustration bouncing between his husband and daughter right now.
"Edward, please," Stede tried to mediate, voice strained as he tried to soothe over the tension that grew thicker every second.
“Kid, you cannot talk to your dad that way,” Ed insisted, trying to pull them all into a discussion that the two leads wanted nothing more than to be done with.
Alma crossed her arms defiantly, leveling a decently formidable glare back at Ed. "You don't get it. The version of Dad that you know is not the same one I grew up with."
Stede tried again to control the room. "I really think we should all take a breather –"
" – Al, you can’t just bring up this stuff from the past when you’re pissed,” Ed cut him off. Stede groaned internally – it was bad enough having to deal with the unexplained emotional reaction of an actual pre-teen, he certainly didn't need Ed adding himself into the mix right now.
“I can when it’s about my family breaking apart!”
That sucked the wind right out of the room. “Woah, where did that come from?” Ed asked, looking between Stede and Alma.
"Can you just listen, please? You weren't there, Ed! Louis doesn't remember but I do." She turned to face Stede now, eyes wide and pleading and throwing Stede entirely off his axis.
“What does this have to do with –”
"When you and Mom were together you were both miserable. You were slowly killing each other and I know you tried to pretend in front of us but I could see it." She rushed through the latter half of the statement, not giving Stede an opportunity to interject.
Through the haze of processing the rapid turns which this conversation was currently taking, Stede was honestly more than a bit taken aback by the pinpoint accuracy with which Alma had summarized the majority of his first marriage.
He’d really thought that they’d kept most of their conflict behind closed doors, and he certainly remembers a very concerted effort to keep it away from the children, but apparently the walls had eyes and little ears heard more than they were supposed to.
"And then you two finally got divorced, and Mom started to be happy again, and you freaking disappeared. You left us! We didn't hear from you for six months."
He'd panicked under the seemingly never ending pressures being constantly added on top of him – first the divorce, then his father dying, soon after followed by the horrifying realization that his father actually had not written him out of the will as promised, making him the beneficiary of multiple estates, including a company that had about half a dozen more zeros on the bank account than Stede had ever realized.
Oh, and the whole gay awakening thing that came crashing into him like a semi-truck. That might have actually contributed the most to his downward spiral, actually.
In a moment of weakness that absolutely still kept him up at night, Stede had left the city in a near blind rush, moving out of Seattle down to San Francisco in what can only be described as a wildly conflicting grief-fueled mid-life crisis, where he’d used part of his inheritance to buy an embarrassingly large boat he’d had absolutely not business owning.
"And then you turned back up and expected everything to be normal again. Louis barely even remembers when you used to live with us. I cried for months after you left, and again when you decided to show up again. And you were different."
After he’d managed to get enough of his wits together to realize he was wholly unqualified and incapable of managing such a vessel on his own, Stede had desperately started contacting anyone with a connection to the marina he was docked in. And when the most beautiful man wearing impractical leather pants walked onto the deck of Stede’s impossibly large boat, it had pretty much game over for the both of them.
"Alma – " Stede tried feebly. This was still one of Stede's pressure points. Even with the many many conversations levied with the kids in the two years since Stede had re-entered their lives, there was always going to be a piece of him that never forgave himself for his actions in the months following the divorce.
"You're different now, and it's because of Ed."
She turned to Ed. "You made him different."
It had been Ed, actually, who’d brought Stede back here, helping him towards repairing the bridge Stede had doused in kerosene and set ablaze.
Once Stede had finally come clean about his entire history, throwing just about every skeleton out of his obnoxiously large walk-in closet, Ed had started to gently push Stede back towards his children.
He’d been there for that very first phone call Stede had made to a more than pissed off Mary, quite literally holding his hand as he took the first steps back into his children’s lives. And Ed stayed holding his hand through the entire journey, a beacon guiding him through the dark as he navigated rebuilding two of the most important relationships of Stede’s life.
"And it's good different!” Al hurried, not allowing either of them to interject. “You're like, so much better now, and I really am so happy that you're happy now. And I forgave you, because you earned it."
She looked down at the floor, digging her heel into the ground to avoid making eye contact now. Her voice softened, sounding much younger than just a moment ago, and Stede was reminded so much of the little girl who used to insist on playing pirates in the living room despite her mother's protests.
"But now...I just...I can see that you’re happier now with Ed than with Mom, and I just wonder whether you'll be happier with this new baby than you were with us.”
The next words out of Alma’s mouth were so soft that Stede almost missed them. “That you'll finally have the family you actually wanted."
It was like the wind had been punched out of him. Stede's eyes widened as he felt all of the air leave his body, unable to form any coherent response to that idea. He could feel Ed's eyes flash to his, felt the way the room all of sudden was too hot and too loud and it was all too much.
How – how could she possibly think that?
Stede felt himself blinking rapidly as an entire new onslaught of tears came brimming forward, his chest hitching as the breath was seemingly snatched directly out of his chest.
“And I can see how upset you are right now, which is why I didn’t want to even talk about this in the first place, so can I please just go back into my room?” Her voice cracked at the question, lip quivering as she pushed out her final plea, clearly as emotionally worked up as Stede was right now.
Ed looked between the two of them, eyes flicking back and forth between Stede and his daughter, neither one of them seemingly wanting to be the first one to draw.
“Go ahead, Al,” Ed eventually provided, voice much calmer than it had been even moments before.
She simply nodded in response, biting her lip as turned away from them. Stede didn’t miss the hurried motion of her hand jerking against her cheek before she closed the door.
Stede felt glued to the spot, his skin itching like it needed to be peeled back, a fire deep in his marrow that threatened to engulf him. His fingers found the soft skin of his collarbone, pinching at the flesh in a repeated motion as his mind struggled to process the flurry of information being thrown his way.
Alma thought that Stede didn’t love her, Alma thought that Stede didn’t want her, Alma thought that –
And just like that, hands were pulling Stede’s away from his throat, holding them firm between two calloused palms. Then there was a squeeze, a gentle pressure that managed to pull Stede out of himself enough to process Ed’s presence in front of him, holding him, talking to him.
“ – hear me, love?” Ed asked, Stede only catching the last part of the question. “Hey,” he soothed, voice gentling when Stede’s eyes locked onto his. “There you are, are you with me, Stede?” He asked, his hands slowly moving up Stede’s arms, applying that same deep pressure as he went.
“I need – I need to go for a walk,” Stede managed to mumble out, the only words in his head that made any sense right now. He needed to walk, if he just got outside and walk he would be okay, he reasoned with himself.
“Okay, yeah, um, sure, yeah, we can go on a walk –”
“Alone,” Stede insisted. Did the request actually make any real sense, if Stede thought about it for more than five seconds? Who fucking knew. What Stede did know was that he needed to go on a walk. Alone. Right now.
“I’m not sure that — “
“Please, Ed,” Stede pleaded, locking eyes with his husband again. “You stay here, with the kids, I’ll go. Just to the shore. I’ll be in sight. Just – now,” he insisted, forcing as many words out as he could to communicate the words trapped inside of his head right now.
Ed looked horribly unconvinced, but he let Stede go all the same. “Okay, okay, just, like, call – literally yell, shout, holler whatever the fuck, if you need anything, alright?”
Stede felt himself nodding, already halfway out the door by the time Ed’s words had fully processed through his muddled brain. The only thing he could focus on was getting out the door and making it to the warm sand, the feeling under his bare feet beginning to pull himself out of this spiral.
He kept pushing forward, seemingly on instinct, until the sand beneath his feet became damp, cooling as he approached the shoreline. Another two meters and his toes were touching the sea foam lapping against the shore, his feet carrying him into the water. He made it until the water reached his calves, stopping only then as the cold water pooled around his legs.
He stood there, bent with his hands on his knees in the water, and all of a sudden he felt like he could breathe again. Everything came flooding back in for him, the feeling of the ocean on his skin pulling him out of himself again. The salted air hit his nose at the same moment the sun became too bright, hearing the gulls overhead for the first time since he’d stepped outside.
Everything was so bright and so loud and just so perfectly there.
It was overwhelming and overstimulating and absolutely everything that Sede needed right fucking now.
The pull of the Pacific grounded him, bringing him back into his body as he continued heaving in breaths, every gasp further proof that he was here and he was alive and everything would be okay.
It was several hours later when Stede had settled himself on the bench swing on the back porch, book tucked into his lap while a pot of tea steeped on the small table next to him. Ed was just finishing the washing up inside from dinner – a relatively quiet affair tonight after the emotions of earlier – before he’d soon join Stede out back to enjoy that last remaining hour of daylight.
The kids were each occupied in their own interests, Louis curled up with a puzzle in the living room while Al had quietly slipped back into her bedroom after dinner. In another hour or so they’d start their bedtime roundup, and hopefully a good night's sleep and a brand new day would give them all another chance tomorrow.
Not long after Stede opened his book - the library was getting ready for some Banned Books programming, and Stede figured that if he was going to lead a book group on To Kill a Mockingbird he probably should re-read it first - there was movement in the doorway to the house, but instead of Ed’d frame filling the space, Alma stood just behind the threshold, as if afraid to cross some invisible boundary on the porch.
“Hey Dad?” She asked quietly, hands wringing together as she chanced a look up at him.
“Hi sweetheart, what’s up?”
“Can – can I come out here with you?” She nearly whispered, voice tentative.
Stede folded the corner of his current page in his book, closing it with a resounding thud. “Oh of course, love.” He gave her a smile, a gentle gesture that he hoped would ease some of the uncertainty he could see written clear across her face.
She nodded, crossing over from the doorway to the porch swing – Stede stilled his gentle swaying with the heel of his foot on the porch floor – before climbing onto the bench. Alma first sat against the opposite side, leaning against the wooden arm farthest from Stede, before seemingly making something up in her mind and scooting herself closer to her father.
With only a mild amount of wriggling required, Al situated herself against Stede’s side. He wrapped his arm around her, allowing her more room to snuggle in closer, resting her head on his chest. Her fingers picked at one of the buttons on his oversized button-down.
Once she’d settled, Stede moved his foot to resume the gentle rocking of the swing, listening to the sounds of the waves and gulls while waiting for Alma to share whatever was so clearly weighing on her mind.
“Do you ever regret it?”
“Pardon?”
“Do you ever regret marrying Mom?”
Well that was certainly not what Stede had been expecting to hear from her.
“Why would you ask that, love?”
“I don’t know, you two just never seemed happy. Nine years is a long time to be in a loveless marriage.”
He snorted at the declaration, finding himself wondering once again where this child had come from. “Well, I wouldn’t say that all nine years were loveless –”
“I do remember most of it, ya’ know?” She interjected, leaning back to look up at him with a skeptical expression. “You two were miserable. That vacation to the Sunshine Coast? I can’t believe you two made it out of there alive.”
And she…had a point, Stede was reluctant to admit. The photographs from that trip were beautiful, but in truth it had taken him years to be able to look at them without being overcome by the anxiety that had consumed him during that period of time.
He grimaced at the memory. “That’s…fair.,” he sighed, running a hand through his hair. “By the time you were six the writing was pretty much on the wall.”
It would take another year for them to say it out loud, and a year after for things to be finalized, but Stede and Mary had finally stopped lying to themselves that things would one day get better if they just stuck it out, which in and of itself was greater release than signing the actual divorce papers had been.
Once they were able to accept that they weren’t each other's only shot at happiness, once they’d both believed that they couldn’t be responsible for each other’s happiness, their relationship in general had taken a marked turn for the better, even outside of their now legally dissolved marriage.
And while Stede had certainly made choices he would always regret in the aftermath of the divorce, he would never be angry for the path it eventually put him on. Not when it led him here.
Because as Stede sat there with his two daughters on the porch, one at his side and one in his belly, knowing his son and the love of his life were inside of a house that he couldn’t have come up with in all of his wildest dreams, looking at a view that he would have gladly emptied his father’s bank account to attain, he knew there wasn’t anything about this that he would risk trading, even for a few unfortunate lost years of heartbreak.
There was a beat.
“So do you regret it?” she asked again.
“Not at all,” Stede didn’t hesitate in his answer this time around.
“Really?”
“Mhm.”
“Why?”
“Because otherwise I wouldn’t have you or your brother, love. It’s true, your mother and I were definitely an ill-fated match, and I do wish that we hadn’t hurt each other so much in the process, but I wouldn’t change anything that brought me to now, Al. I wouldn’t trade you and Louis for anything.” He pressed a kiss into the crown of her head, letting himself linger just a moment longer than entirely necessary.
“Even when you and Louis are being absolute grumps in the morning,” he murmured into her hair, heart soaring at the small giggle he earned for his effort.
“Well you’re not very nice in the mornings either,” she countered, pulling back to look at him with those bright shining eyes of hers that Stede adored oh so much.
“Exactly, how many drama queens do you think we need in this house?” He tossed back at her, smiling as he bumped their foreheads together, nuzzling his nose against hers. She laughed again before pressing a kiss to his nose.
Alma pulled back again, tucking her head against his chest as they continued slowly rocking in the swing, both looking forward as they shared a comfortable silence.
The sun hovered just above the water line of the ocean that seemed to stretch out endlessly before them, the burning orange and pink sky reflecting jewels onto the water. A cool breeze shifted through the tufts of beach grass dotting the sand leading up to their back porch.
No matter how many times he watched this scene, the years of starting and ending each day with this view, Stede didn’t think he’d ever get tired of it.
“I love you, you know,” he suddenly felt the urge to remind his daughter, interrupting their silent contentment. “More than anything in this world. More than words can say, really.”
Al was quiet a moment, but Stede could feel her nod against him. “I know,” she eventually returned, voice nearly a whisper. “I love you, too,” she tacked on, a bit more self-assured at that.
“And there’s no amount of new babies that’ll ever change that, yeah?” He continued, carding his hand through her long locks of flaxen curls.
He remembered when she was first born, her hair already a soft golden mane of curls ready to sprout forward at full force with just a little bit more time. They’d used to sit together, just the two of them, on the small balcony their apartment at the time had, her wrapped up in more blankets than was probably entirely necessary (in Stede’s defense he was brand new to the whole parenting thing and felt completely justified in his overzealous caution at the time) while he rocked them both on the small glider chair they’d kept out there.
That wasn’t a particularly happy period of his life, all things considered, with the constant emotional storm churning away inside of him as he did his best to keep his head above water most days.
Mary had done her best, she really had, to make their marriage as palatable as possible for the two of them, and the addition of the baby had seemed to help soothe over some of the turbulence between them.
His father was still a presence in his life then, too, a constant buzzing in his ear dictating the kind of choices Stede was allowed to make.
But for all of the chatter in Stede’s head coming at him from so many different directions at that time, those precious evenings with Alma on the balcony cut through all of the noise with a startling clarity. When he held her in his arms, staring at her little button nose and strawberry curls and eyes like a mirror, he felt peace. Like he finally understood his purpose in all of this nonsensical world he was doing his best to move through.
Downtown Seattle was certainly a different view than the one they shared now, but that same calm contentedness that he’d felt then was the same.
“You’ll always be my girl, my first, honeybug.”
Alma had made him a father, and it was one of the few roles that still seemed to make sense to him after all this time. Even when he felt like he was absolutely failing at it all, even in those excruciating months when he kept himself away from his children, thinking it was for the best for them at the time. And while he loved Louis and this new baby with an intensity rivaling that only of the sun, he knew that there would just always be something different with Alma. Not better, not more, but different.
They’d had to figure out this whole parenting thing together – even though brief, there had been a time when it was only her with Mary and Stede, just the three of them figuring all of this out together. She was the only one of his children who had ever not had siblings at some point.
Louis had been so different from her from the get-go, his addition to the family changing everything around. And with this new baby coming soon, Stede was doing his best to emotionally prepare himself for all of that to shift once again. But just like the last time, he was desperately excited to see what that brought with it.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered against him, gently tracing her finger along the back of his hand. “For what I said earlier about Ed and the baby,” her little voice wobbled, shattering Stede’s heart all over again.
“There’s nothing to apologize for, my love,” Stede soothed, pulling her in for a squeeze.
He understood that she was processing a million different thoughts and emotions right now, none of them her fault. So much was changing, and while Stede had obviously been present for all of it, Alma was only being let into the loop about it all now. She hadn’t had the time or space to put together all of the pieces yet, to understand the ways that her life would – or wouldn’t – change with all of this.
Stede had known, even if it took a frequent amount of repetition from Ed for him to feel assured in this, that everything would eventually be alright. That she would be alright.
She pulled back again, shifting in his arms to look up at him again, eyes widening in earnest.
“And I really am excited for the new baby,” she assured him, nodding along with her words to emphasize the point. “Since I don’t really remember when Louis was born, I think it’ll be cool to have, like, an actual baby sibling. That way I can actually teach them cool stuff.”
And Stede’s heart swelled at that, feeling impossibly full at her declaration. He brushed her hair out of her face, tucking it behind her ear before tapping her nose with his thumb.
“Of course you will, sweet girl. You’ll teach your sister everything she needs to know, I’m sure of it.”
Alma’s lit up at that revelation, her toothy grin spread wide across her face. And as if on cue, Stede felt the baby shifting inside of him, almost as if she was insisting on joining their conversation. She kicked a gentle flutter against his belly.
“Oh, I think she has something she’d like to say to you,” Stede grinned. “Would you like to feel her?” He asked, voice as soft as the delicate moment between them.
She nodded, tentatively holding out her hand against the opposite side of Stede’s stomach from where he felt that last kick. He took her hand in his, moving it across the (seemingly never ending) expanse of his stomach, holding it firm against the spot he’d last felt movement. And of course the baby seemed to settle then.
“You can try talking to her, you know. She can hear us from in there. Might even wake her up.”
Al looked uncertain, chewing her bottom lip as she contemplated, before leaning in closer to Stede’s bump.
“Hi baby,” she said, glancing back up at Stede for reassurance. He gave her an encouraging nod. “I’m really excited to meet you someday. I think it’s pretty sick that I’ll have a sister, finally. I’ve had a brother for a really long time. He’s pretty cool, though, and I think you’ll think so, too.
It took another moment, but sure enough, the baby kicked again, a firm movement against the two of their hands. Alma let out a small gasp at the feeling, eyes flashing up to meet Stede’s in the excitement.
“Woah.”
“You’re big sister Alma is very excited to meet you,” Stede spoke down at his belly, gently rubbing his hand across the stretched skin there. “We all are, Pumpkin,” he added.
“Pumpkin?” Al scrunched up her nose at the name, giggling at the thought.
“We don’t have a name for her yet,” he explained, “and she certainly makes me feel like a pumpkin right now,” he laughed with Alma, who tucked herself back into the crook of his arm, keeping her hand firmly pressed against his belly.
She hummed to herself for a bit, the noise she made when she was thinking through something. After a while, she eventually made an excited noise.
“I know what you should call her?”
“A real name or a nickname different from Pumpkin?”
“A real name,” Alma insisted, practically vibrating against him as she spoke. “Her name should be Charlotte. That has lots of nicknames, too, though. Like Lottie or Char or Charlie. It’s very versatile.” She added an emphasis on that last word, drawing a laugh out of Stede at the ten-dollar word.
“And would this name just happen to be inspired by any particular fictional spider?” Stede asked her knowingly, raising an eyebrow as he probed, despite her avoiding his gaze at the question.
Charlotte’s Web had been one of Alma’s – and Stede’s, quite frankly – favorite books for as long as he could remember. He’d first started reading it to her when she was a newborn, filling the air out on that balcony in the Seattle evenings with accounts of piglets and spiders and barnyards. As she’d gotten older, Al would ask for him to read it to her at just about any opportunity she could – at bedtime, during afternoon playtime, while they sat in the park and on the train and in the doctor’s office.
The tattered copy sitting on their shelves had at one time been purchased new by Stede while in university, needing to replace the one that he’d grown up with when the glue finally deteriorated out of the old paperback binding. Eternally grateful that he opted to splurge on the hardcover, the copy that Alma had grown up with was dog-earred and annotated to the point of being nearly illegible to anyone but them, and yet he still found her curled up on the beach reading from it as often as he had found her tucked away in the corner of that Seattle apartment.
Stede had tried re-reading it exactly one time since starting this most recent pregnancy, but when Ed had to pull the book out of his hands after he’d found Stede uncontrollably sobbing on the porch three chapters in, he’d decided that it would probably be best to wait until after the hormones had settled to continue.
“Do you not like it?” She eventually asked, having returned to tracing patterns across Stede’s belly with her fingers.
“Charlotte,” he tried the name out, letting each syllable dance on his tongue as he sounded it out. At his repetition of the name, he felt another kick from within him, a firm thump against his stomach. Alma felt it too, if her excited giggles were any indication.
“I think she likes it,” Al declared, self-assured to a fault.
“I think so, too,” Stede smiled, running his hands through his daughter’s hair as they continued their swinging, soon settling into a comfortable silence.
Alma allowed the quiet to continue for approximately five more minutes before launching into some story about all of the sea creatures she’d been reading about, ready to explore the dozens of nearby tidepools first thing tomorrow morning.
Any semblance of tension there had once been between them quietly slipped away, leaving behind a warm embrace where Stede could listen to his daughter’s rambling about hermit crabs and sea stars without worrying about any other noise to interrupt this moment between them.
They continued their gentle rocking on the swing, watching the last dregs of daylight drain into the glistening sapphire of the expansive waves. Alma’s quiet musings soon slowed, until she grew quiet all together, dozing off with her head in Stede’s lap.
Soon enough he would need to carry her inside and tuck her into bed, making sure that her brother was right behind. But for now, Stede could keep her here just a little longer, letting this moment stretch as long as the endless sea before them.
Ed eventually appeared in the doorway sometime later, his figure illuminated against the light coming from inside of the house.
“Hey – oh shit, sorry,” he immediately lowered his voice at the sight of Alma asleep against Stede. Crossing the short distance from the doorway to the swing, Ed swooped in to press a kiss to Stede’s forehead before ducking down for a proper kiss.
“Sorry for the delay,” he murmured against Stede’s lips, brushing their noses together. “Lou asked me for some help with his puzzle and it looked like you two were out here talking, so I didn’t want to interrupt.”
Stede hummed in appreciation. “Oh it’s quite alright, love. We had quite the evening out here just the two of us.”
Ed’s hand brushed over Stede’s belly, a seemingly absentminded gesture at this point. He was constantly finding ways to just – touch, quite frankly – Stede’s bump at all times, an ever-present reminder (whether for Stede or the baby was anyone’s guess) of his presence. And Stede found it hopelessly, maddeningly, endearing.
“She talked to me inside for a minute before coming out here to you, mentioned just a little bit of what she’s been thinking about. Told her you probably needed to hear it yourself.”
Stede’s heart swelled at the thought of Alma approaching Ed of her own volition, seeking his advice before coming to Stede. Both of the kids had taken to Ed amazingly well from the moment they’d met him – Louis might have actually been more excited about their engagement than Ed and Stede had been – but Stede still spent more time than he cared to admit worrying about them all.
He was just so close to having everything he’d always wanted, his perfect beautiful children and his amazing brilliant husband and a new baby bridging them all together, that he was worried he’d blink and everything would fall apart again.
But right now, in this moment, holding his husband and daughters between him, nothing could be farther from his mind.
Ed brushed a kiss to Stede’s jaw, tracing a gentle line up his cheek to press another kiss behind his ear.
“Everything alright?” Ed asked, keeping his voice low so as not to disturb Al sleeping between them.
And Stede nodded, feeling absolutely perfect.