Chapter Text
“This stuff feels real small, isn’t she four?” John remarked, pinching the edge of a shirt Gale had picked up off the rack to get a better look at it. Gale draped it over his arm to thumb at the tag in the neck.
“It's the size Natalie sent- she said she's tiny for her age."
John didn't miss the hint of a frown on his face as he spoke, doing a precursory glance around before he leaned in a little closer, rubbing at where the bottom of his sweatshirt met the label on his jeans.
Gale titled his head just a little against the side of John's, peering up at him with hint of wariness in his eyes. "You wanna go look at shoes?"
"Mhm," John said, knowing somewhere in his head that the task delegation was because he needed a minute alone. Not because Gale was thinking he had some sort of hidden children's shoes expertise.
Pressing a kiss to the side of his hair before he walked away, John let his hand linger on his back till he was far enough that it dropped off.
He couldn't blame Gale for wanting some space, even if it was itching at him that he probably needed to push him a little to talk about what exactly was rattling around his head. What he could practically see growing roots in his cortex right through his eyeballs, ever since Natalie had sent them more information about the little girl that would be theirs in a little less than forty-eight hours.
"Her mom got in trouble for gambling." Gale said, eyes not peeling away from his laptop screen where he sat at the kitchen table. John froze where he was getting a water from the fridge, feeling a tightness in his chest as if he could sense whatever emotions were coursing through Gale.
When he shut the fridge door and turned to face him he still hadn't moved his eyes from the screen, pressing hard on the touchpad to keep scrolling through the document- chewing on his bottom lip.
"Don't have to read through everything tonight, Gale," John tried, sitting back down in the chair opposite him, and sliding him the water he'd originally gotten for himself. 'We have time."
Gale listened, though the shutting of his laptop felt abrupt. He propped his elbow up on top of it, curling his fingers inward and pressing them against his forehead.
"You wanna talk about it?" John said, getting a sigh in response before he got any words.
"I just want her here ," Gale admitted after a minute, reaching for his phone which was resting in his lap. "Do you think Natalie could arrange for us to get her sooner if we asked?
The answer to that was that Natalie was happy to- though it did mean they had a few days to get everything ready as opposed to two weeks.
John went back and forth on if he should've let Gale call or not.
"You gettin' our baby cowgirl boots?"
His husband's footsteps approached him from behind quick and light, John not realizing until then how long he had been standing there without actually picking out any shoes. He ducked his head down sheepishly, Gale patting the side of his hip with the hand that wasn't occupied holding a basket.
"Think we should?" He said when he'd come back to himself, scanning the area till he found the shelf for the size on the list they'd been sent.
When he grabbed a pair of boots Gale leaned over his shoulder to look at them closer, brushing his pointer finger gentle along the side of them.
"They're so little." He said quietly. "Gonna have feet this little stompin' around our house in a couple days,"
If he let it it'd make John uneasy, their emotional states having managed to somehow swap within the last few minutes.
But the lightness in Gale's tone made the reality of it all feel just a bit less jarring.
They got the boots.