Chapter Text
Twilight was tired. Not an unusual experience, given his line of work. But the difference for today was that he was tired and had nothing else to do except rest and recover. Sunday afternoon, and his reports (both espionage-related and not) were completed and sitting on his desk. The apartment was clean. The dog had been walked and fed. His daughter, in a rare feat of initiative, had finished her homework and chores and was now settling down beside him to watch cartoons. His wife, humming softly, washed the remaining dishes in the sink. She had shooed him out of the kitchen earlier with a smile he had not learned to refuse.
He really did not have anything he needed to do at this very moment. Which is why, to his surprise, he found himself allowing small, pudgy fingers to wrap around his left hand.
Twilight glanced down. Anya was examining his hand with her own, pressing the center of his palm, tracing the veins and folds, and bending his fingers. Her touch was gentle, quiet, and painfully familiar.
He had done that, once. When he was younger than she was now, sitting in church with his parents. His father’s hand had presented an interesting distraction from the sermon. He remembered testing his own strength against it, trying to force his fingers open. And his father had chuckled slightly, its sound echoed in the short laugh coming from between his lips as he watched Anya repeat his childhood actions.
“Papa.”
“Yes?”
“Why are you laughing?”
“No reason.”