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Patrick Turner was exhausted, and yet here he was, finding himself some water after getting ready for bed after coming home from a long delivery. Timothy and the man he loved, a social worker named Ben, were staying at the Turner's house for a little bit, while waiting for their the last residents of their apartment to leave. They had both gotten jobs to help the growing community of Poplar, after Timothy came out to Patrick and Shelagh, making sure that they were both okay with it before settling down.
While standing at the top of the stairs, hidden by the darkness that comes at night, the sound of Timothy and Ben's conversation slowly drifts upwards to him, making him stop in his tracks.
"If you could live any future you want, no matter how unrealistic, what would it be?" Tim asked, seemingly using one of those couples conversations cards they had probably found lying around that was a gift for the Turner's.
"Well, its good I've been thinking about this for as long as we've together, probably longer, if we're being honest," Ben laughed. "It would be you. You and me. In a house by the sea, probably on some island. And every day, you would come home from keeping the community healthy and I would be back from making sure that every child had a safe place to sleep at night, and we would come back to our own children. A girl, a boy, two boys, doesn't matter because they would be ours. And we would eat dinner together, put them to sleep, and then I would take you by the hand, and gently dance to the song that we used at our first dance at our wedding."
Tim smiled.
"Wedding? How'd we do that?"
"Oh yes, wedding. We would have been married before everyone that means something to us. You said it could any future I wanted, " Ben chuckled. "So what do you say? Would you live in my future with me?"
Tim pulled himself into Ben's lap, straddling his hips.
"Of course I would live in your future, you sap. A million times, yes. G-d, I'd give anything to live in that future with you." Despite his soft giggles, Tim's eyes shone with soft sorrow of knowing that his dreams would never come to be.
"Good, because you're kind of important there," Ben grinned. "Would you like to continue dreaming with me, in the land of dreams?"
"Is that your way of saying you're old and ready to go to bed?"
"Would saying yes mean that you would come with me?"
"Yes."
"Then yes."
Holding Tim close by the waist, they walked to the guest bedroom they were staying for the time being.
Watching them walk away, Patrick couldn't help but feel his heart break. He loved his son, and adored Ben as one of his own. He had been so worried when Tim had told him that he had something important to share, and in the world they lived in, it was pretty big news that was so often kept a secret out of shame. And he was glad that Tim had found someone as lovely and caring and kind as Ben to navigate life together with. But listening to their simple dreams, things most people took for granted like being able to get married at all, for goodness sake, made his heart hurt. He would give anything to make the world see that his son wasn't broken or unnatural, rather a sum of his wonderful, caring parts, that just so happen to include being gay.
But that wasn't the world they lived in, so Patrick just had to settle. Settle for just being abel to show that he loved Tim and Ben. That he didn't care that they were two men, rather two lovely, good people that had found each other. Settle for the slow bits of progress that seem so far in between, while continuing to fight for more. He wants to give his child, all of his children, everything, but something things he just can't. He can't make the government change and he can't replace the unkind thoughts people have about people like Tim. But he has learnt long ago not to worry about the things he can't control.
So he was going to focus on what he could. He would make sure that Tim would know he was loved no matter what. Make sure that his other children knew the same. Mae sure that any gay person that passed by his surgery doors would know the same, and that would have to be enough.
Because he was a father first and foremost, and if there were people that weren't his children that needed him to be that for them, he would be. For however long it took.