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Even sound asleep, Steve hears the creak of the door, the stumble-stomp of tiny naked feet storming towards the bed. Acting on finely honed instinct – not that of a SEAL, but that of a father – he shields his face with one hand and reaches out with the other, speedily wrapping an arm around the blur of wiggling limbs that is his son. He manages to avoid the brunt of the collision, but still takes an elbow to the belly when Alika all but dive-bombs on top of him.
“Time to get up!” Alika shrieks, bouncing on the bed. (And, if the pained groan from the other side of the mattress is any indication, Danny’s kneecaps.) “Up up up!”
It’s a battle of wills to get Alika to calm down, one that Steve’s not entirely sure he’ll win. An escalating game of shushing each other breaks out, only coming to an end when a floppy pillow sails across the bed and lands on their heads.
Alika – who is currently going through a “side-with-Danno/drive-Steve-crazy” stage – immediately puts a pudgy finger to his father’s lips, slurping a final sssssshhhhhhhh through baby teeth. His determined glower is so reminiscent of his blue-eyed father that Steve’s heart speeds up a beat.
There’s a warm pocket of air in the middle of the bed, a snuggly cocoon between Danny’s body and his own. It takes a combination of stern words, gentle hands, and his Most Serious Eyebrows, but eventually Steve settles the baby into the gap.
At four years old, (four-and-one-quarter, mahalo brah) Alika’s not really a baby anymore, running and playing and sharing his opinions with the world. Nevertheless, Steve can’t quite train himself out of the name; a part of him suspects that he never will, will always consider Alika his baby boy.
Against the odds, those little blue eyes begin to grow sleepy. Normally, once Alika is awake, it’s straight to the beach for their morning swim, Steve paddling along slowly and correcting Alika’s form…
”Just let him have fun!” Danny calls, safe on the sand, his gaze casting about suspiciously for approaching sharks.
Alika radiates indignation from behind his Navy-issue goggles, shouting back, “I want to learn properly!” before Danny can get another word in.
Despite his charming bluster, it’s easy to see that his little arms and legs are growing tired. For better or for worse, he’s cut from the same cloth as Steve in this regard: he’d rather do something crazy than let his fathers see that he’s fading.
It drives Danny up the wall.
“I’m cold,” Steve brrrs, shivering exaggeratedly and holding his arms out. “Can I have a cuddle?”
Alika rolls his eyes, as though he’s being asked to perform an unbearable act of charity, but he’s swift to wrap himself around his father’s side.
… Between one breath and the next, Alika is out like a light. Steve can almost taste the prospect of more sleep, and he lowers his head slowly to the pillow, desperate not to wake the baby up.
He almost, almost gets away with it - but then suddenly Alika snuffles, rolls over and accidentally smacks his fingers across Danny’s nose.
Danny’s eyes fly open, his face scrunching as he lets out a yelp of pain; Alika jumps awake at the sound, Steve snorts at the sight of them both, and all sleep is lost entirely.
With a groan, Danny surges up, rolls Alika under his chest and flops on top of him, careful not to squash him. The art of cranky-tenderness is one that Danny perfected long ago, grumbly and growly and stupidly sweet.
Right on cue, Alika giggles. “Daaaaaddy,” he wails dramatically, tufts of hair poking out from beneath Danny’s white tee. “Lemme up!”
Danny catches Steve’s gaze from across their pillows. “Can you hear something?” When Steve shrugs, shakes his head, Danny carries on. “Where did Alika go? Someone must have gobbled him up for breakfast. Oh well, more sleep for me.”
If Alika’s stubbornness can be traced back to Steve, then his four-year old loquacious indignation is undoubtedly a gift from Danny. “Hey!” he protests, “I’m right here! This is my bit of the bed!”
Steve rubs his cheek against his pillow, settles in to watch whatever debate is about to unfold. Sure enough, Danny shifts up onto his elbows, peers fondly down at the little face beneath him. Blue eyes meet blue, strikingly alike - not through genetics, but rather a strange twist of fate.
“Isn’t this my bed? Mine and Steve’s? Isn’t your bed down the hall?”
“Yeah, but…” Alika frowns, pokes his tongue through a gap in his teeth as he thinks through his argument.
Danny waits, infinitely patient, the way he only is with children - particularly his own. He never rushes Grace when she has difficulty with her maths homework, always lets Alika organize his thoughts, put them in order and find the right words to express them.
Eventually, Alika’s face lights up, his tongue slithering back from between his teeth. “You’re both mine, so that means your bed is my bed.”
This time, Steve’s heart outright skips. It’s hard to argue with that kind of logic; not when the idea of belonging to someone so little and beautiful and stubborn makes him so happy. Before he’d become a father, he'd thought that children belonged to parents – he knows, now, that it’s the other way around.
With a sudden swell of love, he takes pity on those little blue eyes, reaches forward and wriggles Alika out from Danny’s clutches.
As soon as he’s free, Alika spreads himself out like a starfish, giggling as both fathers shift to the distant edges of the mattress. “See?” he asks, as they perch on their sides and tuck in their knees. “My bed.”