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They sit, father and son, barely acquaintances, side by side on a wall outside of the diner. It feels as if they should be smoking, with the sheer amount of surrounding cigarette butts, but neither of them are. They're just talking, appreciating the breeze and a rare still moment among the chaos.
“When’d you get so wise?” His dad sighs, somewhere between wistful and humourous, hand patting David's shoulder with the awkwardness of a man out of practice at being a father. Or perhaps out of practice at touch in general.
David scrutinises the man for a moment, considering his words.
Casper continues before he can say anything, a fumbled attempt at soothing whatever offense he thinks he's caused, “I mean, you've always been smart. Too smart,” he huffs a laugh, “but you're wise now.”
Never one to hold his punches when necessary, David's answer comes easy, light, “some time between the homelessness and the reveal of aliens.”
“Yeah,” Casper sighs after a moment. David watches with a practiced eye as he shifts his weight from one hip to another, a common movement for the old man, discomfort making him notice the ache of his joints. “Homelessness, huh?”
“What, did you think I had the money for a mortgage?” David laughs stiffly, the tension leaking from his dad into him as usual. Some things never change.
“...Nnno. I just worry. I- I know I have no right to, sorry.” This version of his father is so close yet so far from the one David used to know, the one who had him packing his bags and climbing out of his window into the great unknown those years ago.
Crossing one leg over the other’s knee and leaning his weight onto his palms, flattened out on either side of him, David releases a breath.
“Listen, Caspar.” The other man turns his head to look at him, listening in a way he never would have when David was young. “It's good, that you've changed. For you. And for me, it's nice getting to talk to you like this. But… I don't need you anymore.”
He waits for a response, some kind of combative demand for an explanation. Nothing comes, Caspar’s posture carefully remaining the same save for a slight tilt of his head, a sign for David to go on.
“...I learnt to take care of myself. I adapted. It's too late for… this.” He hears Caspar swallow faintly and shift again.
“This?” It’s faint, as if his throat tightens with not wanting to hear the answer, but forcing it out anyway.
Emboldened by the rush of being listened to, of being able to let out years of planned arguments he'd orchestrated during long nights of staring at the ceilings of friends’ houses, sleeping on their too-small uncomfortable couches, he continues: “It's nice that you're here now, but it's too late for us to be that, father and son,” the words feel wrong coming out. “I don't need a dad now - I needed it then. I learnt to go without. I don't need you anymore.”
“David,” Caspar tries, soft, but past the blurring wetness of his eyes, David needs to get this out.
His legs unfold again, the rising tension in his body giving him a twinge in his hips. Heels grind into the floor for some sense of being here and grounded, the conversation he’s fantasised for years falling flat, unsatisfying. Palms grind into his eyes for daring to wet right now, settling into his lap, gripped together as if that hides the way the adrenaline is making them shake.
“I needed you when I was coming to terms with being queer in a world that hated me. The kids at school would call me and my friends slurs and I'd find a way to fix it. Because you taught me that if I tiptoe in just the right way, I can manage anybody's emotions.” His voice is too sharp now, his mother used to tell him he sounded like his father when he got worked up. “I needed you when I had my first relationship, because it was a fucking dumpster fire but I didn’t know any better! I had never let myself care about anybody that much until then, he got close and then he left. And you? You yelled at me for having a messy bedroom.”
“I'm sorry, David.” His father promises, honest and infuriating.
“Oh my god, you seriously don't get it,” he chortles, sardonic and harsh. “It doesn't matter that you're sorry! We are stuck like this, you will never really be a dad to me! I am stuck like this!”
“I know,” comes the reply, weighty. David distantly commends the man’s composure, voice steady where it clearly wants to shake. “I… was given the choice to do it all over again. Make it so I’d never ruined things between us.”
“...What?”
“Space goddess, i- it was a whole thing, not the point. I decided pretty much immediately that I wasn’t going to take it. It was tempting, but the only way I could be your dad again would be to ruin everything for everyone else. If I ever got to see you again, have another shot at this, I wanted to deserve it. I got sick of pitying myself, David, of- of tomorrow I’ll be better and chasing a way to just fix it. Because it happened. And I am sorry. You don’t have to be my son, if you don’t want to, but I will always be your dad.”
It feels as if something clicks, then.
David's father is a deeply miserable man. The type of misery so long-lasting that it's made a home for itself somewhere inside of a person, wrapped tight in the dull warmth of their ribcage; a part of their own being. His father breathes misery, an endless drone of complaints and picking scathes. He holds it with more tenderness than he ever held him, thrives in despair and anger. It is a comfort, a thing to go home to, reliable when all else fails. It's weathered him, greying his hair and his eyes, slowly taking over. Even in his very best of moments, that dull ache drags him back down into the grey.
David is not a miserable man. He refuses to be, on principle. He has filled his life to the brim with love. He has friends he cares about and that care about him, causes that fill him with a productive but impassioned rage, art that brings joy to himself and others. He doesn't sew misery, he prevents it. Religiously. It's almost compulsive, the desire to fix - to take a bad feeling and mold it until it's good again.
And yet, here is this new version of his father. Older, softened. More sad but not angrier for it - not beaten down either. He's still carrying that sadness but it's alongside him now instead of inside of him. He smiles more, David has noticed, jokes in the face of teasing or conflict instead of raising his voice. It's funny, how his voice pitches up into a squeak several octaves too high for him whenever an argument seems to be brewing, immediately disarming.
If he looks at him just right, David almost doesn't even recognise his father. He can't see the man who tormented him into running away, who led him to pick the streets over a warm bed.
And yet it is that same man. He's just grown. Maybe that can be enough.
“Okay,” David agrees.
“Okay?” His dad asks.
David feels lighter, feels his shoulders drop and a breath release. This isn’t the conversation he ever expected to have about this, he doubts it’s the last one they’ll have. But it is a start. He nods decidedly and watches Caspar deflate, a mirror of himself.
“I can't redo it.”
“No, you can't.”
“But I'm here now.”
“...You are.”
“I'm sorry, David.”
He allows his weight to shift, tilting his body until Caspar is the one carrying it. Leaning on him, perhaps for the first time.
“...I know.”