Archive of Our Own

“ Busy old fool, unruly sun, why dost thou thus, through windows, and through curtains call on us ?” 

John was a heavy sleeper, Arthur thought. He wouldn’t wake up even as Arthur recited his poetry aloud. He could feel the warmth of the sun on his face, slanted beneath the curtains. John always pulled the curtains all the way closed, gathered on the window sill, leaving no room for intruder’s gaze. Arthur, closest to the window, would wake up every morning to pull them open the slightest, letting the sun whisper through between the wooden window rail and the bottom hem of the curtains. 

“ Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run? Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide late school boys and sour prentices, go tell court huntsmen that the king will ride. Call country ants to harvest offices. Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime, nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time .” 

Arthur’s upper left arm was going numb. It was not really a feeling he wasn’t used to. Another feeling he wasn’t unused to was the warm wetness pooling on his chest. John was asleep, common, snuggled in against Arthur’s chest and drooling. His arm was tight around Arthur’s waist, idly twitching against his side occasionally. A lot, in his sleep, John explored the scars. Feathery touches under Arthur’s shirt tried to find the raised stab wounds and suction scar, or the concave bullet holes. 

“ Thy beams, so reverend and strong. Why shouldst thou think? I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink, but that I would not lose her sight so long. ” 

John’s hair was a frizzy mess, tickling the underside of Arthur’s chin. John had said it was black as night and long, very. Arthur had braided it for him many times, attempted to teach John even more. He refused to sleep with his hair tied up, claiming it’d give him a headache when he woke up. Arthur woke up more often than not tangled in hair that was not his, but he wouldn’t give up feeling John melt, shoulders dropping and exhaling all his tension as Arthur worked the knots out of his hair. 

“ If her eyes have not blinded thine, look, and tomorrow late, tell me, whether both th'Indias of spice and mine, be where thou leftst them, or lie here with me.” 

Arthur wonders sometimes if John misses the life he led as a god. Life without worrying about his hands being dry because he’s been doing laundry too much or about if his hair is going to get in his way while he’s cooking. The glory of it all, flowing robes of silk and ethereal gossamer, gilded and glittering, it all seemed so much extra glorious compared to worn cotton underwear. Cultists worshiped him, Arthur thought sometimes. As he traced patterns onto John’s side, getting used to being able to feel his left forearm after so long, Arthur thought about how many people must have made shrines and altars to John. Carvings of thick tentacles and flowing robes without clear boundaries, and now skin, real human epithelial tissue that belonged to him and him alone. 

“Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday, and thou shalt hear, All here in one bed lay .”

No matter John’s feelings on it, on being demoted so, Arthur was happy to have him here. God or not. 

John inhaled quietly in his sleep, halfway to snoring. The noise seemed to stir him for a moment, and he grumbled a low complaint about having been roused. He pushed further against Arthur, trying to pull himself infinitely closer. 

“S he's all states, and all princes, I, nothing else is. Princes do but play us; compared to this. All honor's mimic, all wealth alchemy. ” If their places were reversed, if John was a disadvantaged and disheartened human running around in a world foreign to him. If Arthur was a shattered fragment of the emotions of some terrible King. Would Arthur be as happy as he hoped John was? He’d like to think he’d be, but maybe he wouldn’t. It’s easy to say that happiness doesn’t come from possessions and power. Maybe Arthur would wish to wield a city in his hands again. John said he wanted his own body, wanted to be human in all its conditions. Arthur didn’t want to be selfish enough to ask John not to want his city again, but he wanted John to want him alone. 

“ Thou, sun, art half as happy as we, in that the world's contracted thus. Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties to warm the world, that's done in warming us. Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere; This bed thy center is, these walls, thy sphere. ”

It’s easy to feel alone when you can’t see anyone. Without John pressed against his side, Arthur could argue that the whole world had been raptured and he was the only one left. Perhaps he wouldn’t mind. He knows John is here. He can recognize each and every atom of John’s body. It’d be nice with just John. 

Bella didn’t drool on me, Arthur thought to himself. Faroe did. Arthur smiled in the way that only parents can, reminiscing on the gross things they’ve had to do. He had memories of holding her in his arms, stretching her as far away as possible, rushing off to a basin because his adorable, glowing, smiling baby was covered in vomit.  She’d tried to nurse on Arthur once, the both of them half asleep. A nurse had mentioned that babies sometimes enjoy being skin to skin with their parents, and fed up and exhausted, Arthur had given it a shot. His eyes had just started to close, Faroe’s cries had just started to peter off and all of a sudden she bit him. 

Sitting up quick enough to almost catapult Faroe off him, Arthur had beget a whole new bout of crying and screaming, but at least he knew she needed a bottle. 

Bella didn’t drool, but she did slap him across the face, once, open palm. She was prone to talking in her sleep, especially during the early part of her pregnancy, and had been quite upset at a fantasy pursuer in her dreams. Arthur smiled to think about it now, but was quite upset at the time and spent the rest of the night on the couch, pouting. 

“That was a bad poem,” John informs Arthur, voice raspy with sleep, “I don’t like it.”

“Oh? Why?”

“Woke me up.”

“Understandable… John?”

The man grumbled meaningless complaints against Arthur’s chest but eventually settled on, “Yeah?”

“Do I do anything weird in my sleep? I’ve never thought to ask before.”

“Oh my god, you never shut up. And you play piano sometimes.”

“Really?” John moved his hands as if Arthur’s stomach was a row of piano keys. He patted his fingertips against them in a vague approximation of Für Elise, making the piano sounds with his mouth.

“Like that.” Arthur laughed heartily at the image, “It’s better when you do it, though.”

“I used to get in trouble in school for doing that when I was young. I don’t think I paid a minute of attention in certain classes-”

There was soft knocking from beyond their bedroom door, as if the guest was afraid to be heard.

“John?” The man hummed a noncommittal response, as was his wont most of the time, “I think there’s a terrible beast just beyond the door.”

“Mm?”

“Yes, yes, with huge claws and horrible fangs,” The door creaked open, protestations from old hinges, “Must be just the scariest thing.” The beast could hardly contain its giggling as it crept across the bedroom, trying to crawl low enough to not be seen by the bed’s occupants. 

“Quite,” John huffed. Arthur could feel John’s face shifting into a smile against his chest, “I can see it approaching, Arthur-”

“No, you can’t!” The beast cried. 

“I can’t see the beast approaching. It’s invisible, how awful. Nothing we haven't bested before, though.” John’s voice was deadpan, and Arthur could imagine him closing his eyes again to shield them from the monster. 

“Wait, John. Do you hear that?”

“Hm?”

“The beast… It’s gone still!” The monster sucked in a breath quickly, stilling completely, “Must be preparing to attack!”

“Ready yourself, Arthur… We don’t know…when… it.. will…” Arthur smiled at this little game. It made him so happy, the lot of it. 

“Attack!” The girl yelled, leaping up onto the bed and landing on John’s arm. He grunted, like a cushion deflating. He tried to twist around to capture Faroe’s side in his hand and flip her onto the other side of the bed. 

“No! I wanna lay on Dad!”

“No,” John said, pinning the girl under him partially as he rolled away from Arthur, “Your father is mine, mine to me.” 

“That’s mean,” Faroe declared, “We have to share.”

“Hmm,” John debated for a moment, apparently putting more of his weight on Faroe, as the little girl giggled, shrill and exceedingly loud. Perfectly childlike, “Acceptable. You shall have him when the sun is up, and I’ll take him at night.”

“That’s not fair to you, Mr. John.” John rolled over, back into Arthur’s embrace. Arthur laughed to himself as he drew his right hand the soft flesh of John’s side. He had no idea why Faroe had taken to addressing John so formally. He supposed that since they hadn’t told her what to call him, she’d have to come up with something. 

Arthur began tracing infinitely looping spirals into John’s side, reveling in the way the man huffed and squirmed, ticklish. His skin was so soft, especially the pudgier excess around his waist. Arthur thought a lot about the contrast, his own scarred and pockmarked with stretch marks from malnutrition. 

“You’re not allowed to play at night. You have to sleep. I get more time to play with Dad. That’s not fair,” Faroe explained. She’d picked up a bit of Arthur’s accent, John noticed. She said ‘Dad’ with a funny twang that warmed up his chest.

“It’s alright, love. John would rather me be his pillow to sleep on than his playmate.”

“Yes,” John tilted his head up to kiss Arthur’s collar bone. 

“Well…If you think it’s fair.” Faroe scrambled around, climbing over John to lay flat on Arthur’s chest. He moved his hand to hold her tight, and brushed his fingers through her hair. 

“Arthur,” John began, very quietly, “I love you.” 

“I love you, too.” 

“I love you.” 

“I’m sure you do.”

“...Asshole.”

“Mr. John!” Arthur could hear the collision of Faroe’s wee baby hand with John’s back. He laughed, and Faroe bounced around as his chest shook. 

God. For once, Arthur could say he was happy. 

. . . 

“You need a haircut, child,” John informed the girl. Her hair had grown long, hanging in loose, heavy waves by her mid-back. It was the same as Arthur’s, down to the soft flaxen colors. Arthur’s hadn’t faded in the slightest, apparently his mother’s hair stayed its color without a hint of white until her death at 55. 

Her nose was similar as well, still mushy and child-like, but it had the same strong bridge and rounded-rectangular ala that Arthur’s had. He’d poked her nose once, a large finger pushing against the delicate structure, and she’d giggled and batted at his hand and he felt something he would not let himself label as paternal fondness. 

John had spent many hours staring at Arthur’s face, so much so that Arthur had learned to identify what type of silence meant John was staring at him. He’d studied Arthur’s dual-tone eyelashes, blonde at the root and turning a more substantial brown. He’d studied the bags growing under his eyes and the wrinkles around his eyes and mouth. He’d studied Arthur’s hair, the way it’d grown out since their first meeting, close-cropped and industrial. Arthur had pouted for a few days when they’d arrived in my cabin. 

“How am I supposed to work…It’s too much maintenance!” 

“I think it’s flattering.” Arthur stayed quiet for a long moment, fingertips fussing with the overgrown ends. 

“Maybe… maybe , I can put up with it. At least for a little while.”

Faroe’s hair, on the other end, was just a little too long for a young girl who had nothing to but play outside with mud and worms. 

“I don’t wanna cut my hair!” Faroe balled up her fists and stomped on the ground. John glared down at her. He would not lose to a little girl.

He was losing to a little girl. 

“At least put your hair up before you go out. Otherwise you’ll get leaves in it.” The girl glared up at him, asking for something. John tilted his head to the side.

“What?”

“Put my hair up.” 

“I don’t know how.” He wanted to. John looked at the little girl, the extension of Arthur’s body and soul and DNA, and he wanted to do her hair. Sat on the couch, Faroe on the ground between his knees. John’s hands worked a brush through her wavy hair, gentle undoing the knots at the very bottom. He smoothed the hair at the sides of her head into a high ponytail, securing it with a hair tie. John twisted the hair up into a bun, making it even more secure with another hair tie. Faroe smiled and when John put his hands on his legs, she shook her head violently, testing the fortitude of John’s handiwork. It held. 

In this perfect vision, Arthur comes in from the garden. He used his shirt to create a pocket for a litany of produce, cucumbers, strawberries, corn and carrots. His stomach scars had faded, barely a hint of rib or healing tissue, and John thought of how wonderful it’d be without even having to be glad that the injuries weren’t scarring. What if there were just no injuries?

Arthur put the produce on the kitchen table, expertly going around the three chairs and towards the sofa. 

“Dad, Mr. John did my hair!” 

“Oh, I’m sure it looks beautiful!” Arthur put his hand down to caress her face and gently discover what hairstyle, “A bun, just like a ballerina.”

“You should do Mr. John’s hair in a bun,” Faroe declared, “So we can match.” That, as John understood it, was the highest honor among little girls. 

How he wanted this, John thought. Even as he called for Arthur, instructed Faroe to gather the supplies from the bathroom, John thought about how nice it’d be to be part of this family. Arthur sat on the couch, as John had imagined, and pulled Faroe’s long hair into a complicated braid, utilitarian but pretty. She beamed at her father and thanked him, before running out the door to presumably get covered in mud. 

“I oughtta teach you how to do her hair,” Arthur said. He placed a hand on John’s back, rubbing his hand up and down. 

“Hmm, perhaps one day.”

. . . 

“Does she know how to read?” John had asked once, whispering to Arthur as Faroe sat on the other side of the room, intrigued by the cover of their copy of “Pygmalion”. 

“Umm… I don’t… I don’t know.” It was hard to tell with these kinds of things. 

Faroe Ann Lester died in September of 1929, at 15 months old. She came back to the living world in June of 1935, with the maturity of a six year old. The math, John and Arthur agreed, made literally no sense. At six, Arthur supposed, she should have started learning how to read. Arthur had taught himself how to read around his fifth birthday, through sheer stubbornness. John had sheepishly admitted that he thought children learned to read much earlier than that. 

“English is just so difficult. Compared to other languages, it’s totally backwards. I just thought children would need as much time as possible to master it.” Arthur only laughed at him and kissed the man on the forehead fondly. 

“Either way, eight is too old. We should get some children’s books from the library.”

“Mm, maybe they have a book about how to teach her to read.” John’s voice was distant and dreamy, like he was thinking about the details of acquiring such a book. 

“Do you feel like you’d be able to? Teaching Faroe how to read.” Arthur ran his thumb over the prominent knuckles of John’s hand. 

“Me?”

“Yes? I couldn’t teach her. I can’t see the letters.” John turned to face Arthur. His eyes were directed at the middle-distance and a gentle smile graced his lips. His eyes never lost their golden shimmer, and it pulled John’s heart in a million different ways. 

“Well, I… She’s- Faroe is your daughter. It’s not my place.” The air around them died. Faroe had run off to John and Arthur’s bedroom, leaving the door open. John could vaguely see her pulling clothes out of his side of the cabinet, and wrapping them around herself like a dress, like the girl on the cover of their book. 

“John, I don’t-”

“She’s your daughter, the daughter you made with your partner, the family you made. I… I don’t know where I fit in with that. It’s like… It’s- Ugh,” John got up hastily, pulling away from Arthur’s hand-holding, “I’ll go to the library and see what I can find.” Arthur had never been so displeased to live in such a small house. In second, the door slammed shut behind John. 

“Dad, where has Mr. John gone?” Arthur could feel Faroe pulling lightly at his pant leg. 

“I… He’s going to the library to get something for you. A gift…I hope.”

. . . 

They had discovered a pond on the other side of the hill where their cabin was placed. Arthur liked to sit on top of the hill, resting just barely under the shade of a tree. John sat next to him, pulling long sturdy pieces of grass out of the ground. Eventually, Faroe had joined in their life, and she joined them on the hill, rolling down it towards the house, staining her dress with grass. 

“Let’s take a walk,” John supposed, “Haven’t gone into town this week, haven’t walked enough.” 

“Hmm, I wanted to lay down, but I suppose you're right.” 

“Well, you don’t have to come. You can stay here with Faroe or stay napping. I won’t go far.” 

“Sound’s nice,” Arthur moved his hat over his eyes and laid back, settling against the ground. John regarded him fondly. 

Faroe looked up to John and extended her arms. The man bent down on his knees and turned his back to her, letting her hop up to straddle his broad back. His arms looped under her knees and John stood. He tossed her up a little, letting her adjust around him and bringing her close. She yelped and giggled, and they began their descent down the hill. 

As was the ascending side, the descending side was thin grass over top of rocky dirt, occasionally sprouting with flowers. 

“What is this one?” John turned his eyes to where Faroe was pointing. It was a snowy green sprout, with tiered triangular leaves and teeny tiny purple flowers. 

“I’m not sure…We can look it up when we get home. Arthur- uhm, y-your father has a book about plants and weeds. It’s probably a weed.” 

“Probably a weed,” Faroe mumbled, collapsing all her weight on John. They made it all the way down the hill, grass up to John’s knees, which is to say Faroe’s waist. Coming out from the hill, a flat plain against the slope of the hill, the pond was half hidden by thick reeds and grass. The muddy walls created a grotto that John thought was particularly interesting. He brought the two of them around to face up the hill again and looked at the water. 

On his back, Faroe wiggled around, trying to get down. He let her down gently, but distracted. He supposed that he was just as mesmerized by the pond as she was. Barefoot, as John was wont to be, he could feel how the water had started to soak into the earth. He didn’t exactly miss tentacles, but they did have a lot more receptors for feeling than human skin did, and he wasn’t about to limit his perception any more than he had to via shoes. Beside him, Faroe struggled to pull off her boots. 

“Wait, wait,” The girl looked up to John like she’d been caught, “Who said you could go in the pond?”

“Uhm…” Faroe pulled at the little bow on the waist of her dress, “Well, I really want to.” John looked back at the pond. He also really wanted to. He wasn’t about to tell this little girl no and then step into the water himself.

“You can go up to your ankles.” He watched the girl try to fathom where her ankles were. Upon learning, she seemed pleased enough. 

Slowly, John stepped into the water. It was very, very cold. The mud squished up between his toes and it was very, very unpleasant. But what joy was sensation at all, even unpleasant sensation, when before you felt nothing. 

All John heard, as he mused on the feeling of mud between his toes, was the pat-pat-pat of a little girl running steadfast into a pond, much deeper than her ankles. When he turned, Faroe was in up to her waist, pale blue dress now slowly turning navy as more water soaked into it. In another second, Faroe was up in the air, suspended by John, who held her up by her armpits. 

“Mr. John!” She was absolutely scandalized. John only leveled a stare at her, trying not to smile. She was just as disobedient as Arthur, but was yet to learn subtlety. 

“I said ankles .” 

“Well… I,” Faroe didn’t seem to realize, as John furrowed his brow at her disapprovingly, that disobedience meant consequences if you weren’t good enough to not get caught, “I wanted…” Her voice trembled and John understood the situation from her perspective a little. Held up about double her height being glared at by a man who had been, up until incredible recently, a being who drove men mad to look at, Faroe was obviously prone to fear and/or childish crying. 

“It’s,” He began, moving the girl to his hip and out of the pond, “about your father. He’s not fond of…”

“Fun.” Faroe huffed. When John kneeled down, she gathered her shoes and itty bitty socks out of the grass. 

“Well, yes and no. He- He doesn’t want you hurt, and water is very dangerous, sometimes. I don’t want you to get hurt either.”

“How is water dangerous?”

John did not like this conversation. He chose not to answer. Together, John holding Faroe so as not to lose her in the grass, they ascended the hill. 

“Dad!” Faroe wriggled out of John’s grip and ran towards her father, “Dad, we found a pond!” 

The man grunted and awoke, sitting up from where he’d leaned up against a tree. Arthur removed the floppy sun hat they’d found in the cabin’s dresser.

“A pond, hm?”

“At the very bottom of the hill,” John explained. Arthur began the arduous journey of standing. He gestured with his hat vaguely to Faroe, who put it on glady. 

“I’m going back inside,” she declared, “to dry off.” John noticed the slight twitch in Arthur’s brow as the girl ran away towards the front door of the cabin. 

After a few moments, Arthur’s arm curled around John’s back, leaning against his side, Arthur inquired, “Dry off? She didn’t-?”

“She went in the pond. I told her she couldn’t go to far in but she ran in anyways-”

“John!”

“What?”

“You let her in the pond?!”

“ Yeah . I told you that she was able to go in-”

“What if she fell- What, what if she-”

“She wasn’t going to drown,” John huffed. He wanted to say, “She wasn’t going to drown because I was keeping an eye on her, unlike you did,” but he didn’t say that. He wouldn’t make that mistake again. 

“You don’t know that!”

“Sure, but we can control the circumstances that lead up to that,” John tried to keep his voice level, despite wanting to snap at Arthur. He didn’t want to yell at someone about how to raise their kid, “We can be careful, extra careful.”

“Or we can just not let her near water!”

“That’s unfair to Faroe. You can’t punish her because of your-”

“My what, hmm? Go on…” John held his tongue. He ducked his eyes away from having to look at Arthur. His hands were by his sides, waiting for John’s response. They flexed, curling up into fists to keep himself angry, “Nothing? Good. Fuck off, John. Faroe is my daughter.” He left John standing on the hill, running off to get Faroe dry clothes. 

The breeze was nice on John’s face, tousling his hair. Below, far below, the sun glittered off the lake. 

. . . 

John was having what could generously be considered a super shitty day. He didn’t sleep well, tossing and turning and ruminating on all the things he could have said to Arthur, all the ways he would have won that argument. He was sure Arthur was upset about it too, considering he spent the whole night fidgeting, against the norm for the corpse of a human man. Of course, John was worried about him which only pissed him off more. 

It continued when he got up only to realize Faroe’s messing about in his closet had disorganized everything and his and Arthur’s shirts were strewn about. He picked up one, a pleasantly well-worn and soft thing from the previous owner of the house, and feigned knowing that it was Arthur’s. It was smaller than John’s clothes by a large margin but still hung off the other man. He was growing into it, though, John thought. He was happy that Arthur was recovering. Bringing the shirt to his face, John inhaled the scent of him and realized that he truly did love Arthur. 

Fuck that. He was mad at Arthur right now, not hopelessly swooning about how good he smelled. 

When John finally got over himself, and entered into the real world he noticed how fucked his outfit was. His pants had a hole in the knee that he was going to ask Arthur to teach him how to patch. That was before they decided they were mad at each other. In the meantime, John had forgotten and pulled them on anyway. 

His shirt was another story. It was a shirt that perfectly matched the pants, a deep blue that looked pleasant against the dark grey pants, but stepping into the sunlight revealed that the real blue wasn’t as dark as the closet led him to believe. They still matched just fine, but John was upset at having been lied to. 

See, Arthur always draws the curtains when he wakes up. But Arthur stayed indignantly “asleep” as John dressed. And John did not want to admit that he needed the sunlight to see. He was mad at Arthur. 

Faroe was asleep. She was curled up in the smallest corner of her bed, nestled among the pillows and stuffed animals her father heaped upon her. Sometimes, when Arthur was unavailable, John would tuck her in. He sat on the end of her bed and she giggled when his weight tipped her towards him. 

“Go to sleep, child,” he instructed. 

“No.” She grinned at him. Two of her teeth had fallen out last week. 

“If you won’t listen to me, listen to the cow,” John picked up the stuffed cow, folded to sit up, and put two fingers against the back of its neck. As he spoke, he bent his fingers to bobble the head around, “Faroe. Go to sleep.” John smushed the cow against the girl’s face and she shrieked and relented. 

“Sleep.”

“…Stay.” John would never forget this part as long as he shall live. She always asked him to stay with her. And he did. And he tried not to feel like her father, smoothing and tracing her curls as she fell asleep, comforted by the figure at the end of her bed. He was not her father, though.

And now, Faroe was asleep and John made note of this as he closed her door gently and went out to the garden. That door he was less inclined to shut quietly. 

Arthur came up behind him, eventually. He didn’t put his hand on John’s back or snuggle against him or rest his head against John’s back. Just stood next to him. 

“How are the pumpkins doing?” Arthur said, evenly.

“Good.”

“…Actually it’s well. Well is an adverb describing how they are doing.” 

“I hope you trip over your stupid pumpkin.” John pouted his way back inside. 

John ended up making breakfast. John wanted to rip Arthur’s throat out with his hands, but they had a goddamn schedule. 

He is mad at Arthur… He did not start making Arthur’s favorite without thinking. 

Arthur came in from the garden with the last of the cucumber harvest. He washed one off at the sink, under John’s extreme scrutiny, and chopped it while standing next to John. Not up against him, not giving him a peck before leaning away to get the knife, not even a fucking “Good Morning!”. 

John angrily got a pan. 

“John, can you wake up Faroe? I want to go to the farmer’s market before it gets too hot, so we need to get a move on.” Ordinarily, John would smile, say “Sure, love. The pan is heating up, can you just melt the butter when it’s done?” But instead he reached for the blunt butter knife in the cutlery drawer and hummed disapprovingly. 

“She’s your daughter, isn’t she?” He dropped a tab of butter in the pan and frowned when it didn’t melt instantly, “Why should I wake her?”  

“John.” 

“What? Your words, not mine.”

“ John ,” Arthur’s words were soft and full of worry. He tried to reach for John’s hand but missed. John offered it without thinking. He loved Arthur. He was mad at Arthur. Wasn’t he? 

“John, I’m sorry I said that.” Arthur pulled John a hug as best he could, with how stubborn John was being. He ended up just sort of desperately clinging to John. 

“Are you? I mean… It’s true. Faroe is your family. Not mine.” 

“Well…” John collapsed his weight on Arthur, despite being much taller, “Families change, all the time. All kinds of new additions and losses… Bella and I were two different families and we turned into one family with Faroe. You could join our family. Please, John. Faroe would love you to be her father too.”

John stayed silent, thinking. 

As much as Arthur made fun of John for talking a lot, he was just as guilty, “I’ve never had to share Faroe before. Most parents learned to be either a mother or a father…I had to be both. I don’t know… I don’t know how to let you also be her father, but I promise I’ll try. I’ll learn because I love you, and I love her, and I want you to do this with me, John.” 

…

They ate in silence. Even Faroe noticed the tension and did not speak. It broke Arthur’s heart to distress her so, and he could tell it hurt John as well. 

They ended up getting to the Farmer’s Market in perfect time, and they picked out some fresh fruits they didn’t have the means to grow in their measly Victory Garden. A vendor, who Arthur recognized and John did not, complimented Faroe’s dress. John held her hand and spun her, and the very edge of Faroe’s skirt brushed Arthur’s leg. It was a pink dress with a Peter Pan collar and a little white tie. Carousel horses had been hand-embroidered to the lapels and with some scattered about the bottom hem. They bought it second hand. John had dutifully detailed that the horses were of questionable quality and definitely not on the original dress. 

“They’re the same color as that pair of shoes Faroe likes.” On a previous shopping trip Faroe had found a pair of maroon Mary Janes that cost $1.50 but were a size too big. Faroe pouted against Arthur’s leg when she was informed that she didn’t really need another pair of shoes. Arthur couldn’t remember owning more than one pair of shoes at a time until his parent’s funeral when he bought a new pair of dress shoes. John bought them for her when he thought Arthur wouldn’t notice. 

“Quite the eye for style,” the vendor smiled, “Does your daddy’s nurse dress you?” Arthur tried not to frown too visibly. He hated when people called John that, and he hated seeming like he needed a live-in nurse. 

“Who’s my daddy’s nurse?” Faroe’s little voice was the pinnacle of innocence.

“Mr. John, love,” Arthur said gently. He crossed his fingers behind his back that Faroe wouldn’t say anything suspicious like, “Oh! Nurses kiss their patients?” Or “Are nurses supposed to sleep with my dad?” 

“Oh, how cute. He’s almost part of the family,” the vendor cooed. 

John’s voice rumbled through the conversation like an earthquake, “Almost.”

It was a tense walk home. And a tense afternoon. And a tense dinner. 

Arthur put Faroe to bed. She did not ask why either of them had been angry or whatever sort of thing they were feeling. She did not ask Arthur to stay, with a wee hand grabbing his pant leg. She did not want to. That was something she shared with her Father, not her Dad. 

“How’s the leg?” John, Arthur’s live-in nurse, asked when Arthur finally made his way into the bedroom. Their bedroom, “Did a lot of walking today.” John liked to talk, liked to hear his own voice. Arthur could tell when he was peeved about something when his sentences got clipped and terse.

“S’fine. Didn’t take an aspirin with dinner. Don’t think I’ll need it.” 

“I won’t carry you around when it wakes you up tonight.” John’s shirt thumped against the hamper. Arthur could tell instantly where he was, and wrapped his arms around John from behind. And John is warm. Not for a second does John flinch or recoil. He understands the pious need for contact that plagues them both. Skin to skin. Physical to physical. It’s indescribable. 

From where he is curled into the crook of John’s neck he can hear the tears drip off John’s chin and onto his chest. 

“I love you so much that I fucking hate you,” his voice does not waver. 

“I know.” 

“It’s so much, sometimes.” 

“I know.” 

“It’s as if…If one tiny nerve ending on one of thousands of tentacles touched the very tip of how much I feel for you, good and bad, it would feel like getting struck by lightning.” 

“How imaginative.”

“I fucking hate you.” 

“No, you don’t.”

“No, I don’t.” John turned around in Arthur’s arms to help him shrug his suspenders off. John let his arms fall around Arthur’s waist so that Arthur could begin unbuttoning his shirt. It landed on the floor, instead of the hamper.

“Do I look ridiculous?” Arthur asked, gesturing with the suspenders hanging loose about his thighs.

“You always look ridiculous.” John ran his fingers along the bullet holes and other various scars. Arthur, ticklish, flinched and laughed. 

“Arthur, I love you.”

“I love you, too.” 

“I’m sorry that I was mad at you.” 

“Don’t be. I was being a fucking asshole.” John snorted. 

“Well…” 

“See? I was being a dick….I’m sorry for being a dick.”

“I was also a dick. But I accept your apology.” They kissed, as people do. 

“Sometimes,” John began. Arthur could feel the building of some great speech, “I feel so many things that I can’t function. It’s so much, so much more than He and I ever felt. It’s like,” John put his hands on Arthur’s shoulders and shook him around. Arthur laughed loudly, knowing that if they woke up their daughter, she wouldn’t worry, “Y’know?” 

“I do.” 

“Is that humanity?” John extended his hands to drape over Arthur’s shoulders and clasp behind his head. 

“Probably not, no.”

“Oh.” Arthur stretched up on his toes, and John got the message. He had to bend substantially to let Arthur kiss his forehead. 

“Let me brush your hair before bed,” Arthur said. 

True to July, the days were a disgustingly tacky heat, followed by a nightly chaser that could almost be considered cold. Arthur chose to sleep in his boxers and one of John’s long sleeved cotton shirts. John chose his boxers alone. Their blankets were just so soft. 

John settled in front of the bureau as he had thousands of times before. Arthur brushed his hair dutifully. He braided it loosely and made a sound like, “Hm? Just this once? So I don’t get hair in my mouth?” And John made a sound like, “Nope. Get bent.” Arthur kissed the crown of his head, undid the braid, and continued to brush. 

“Arthur?” John called, very nervously after a long moment of peace.

“Yes, my love?”

“Would you… Can you teach me how to braid Faroe’s hair?” 

“Absolutely.”