Work Text:
Two Days Ago
Terence found Dion standing in the doorway of the spare room again.
It had become a habit over the past few months—Dion would pause there in the evenings, looking at the little bed, the exercise bike and the stack of storage boxes, his expression carefully blank. The walls were yellow—gender neutral—it had taken eight trips to Sherwin Williams to get exactly the right shade. Every detail meticulously curated with love and care, now buried under piles of things to be taken to Goodwill. He rarely went inside anymore. Just stood there for a moment, then moved on like nothing had happened.
But Terence saw. He always saw.
"Thinking about reorganizing?" Terence asked gently, coming up behind him.
Dion startled slightly, then shrugged. "No point. It's fine as it is." His voice was deliberately casual, the way it had been for weeks now. "I was just—searching for something."
The envelope from Jill was burning a hole in Terence's nightstand drawer. Three days. He just had to keep the secret for three more days.
"Hey," he said, wrapping his arms around Dion's waist from behind. "Want to do something spontaneous this weekend?"
"Spontaneous?" Dion leaned back against him, but there was a heaviness to it. "That's not really our style anymore, is it? We're boring now. Established. Set in our ways."
"We're thirty-four, not seventy."
Dion pulled away, heading toward the kitchen. "What did you have in mind?"
"Disney World."
Dion stopped walking. "What?"
"Disney World. This weekend. Just us. Spur of the moment trip."
It was where they first met. Dion as the destitute Prince Philip—cast member, college student, and entirely too convincing in the role. Terence was his character attendant.
"Terence, we can't just—" Dion turned around, and his expression was complicated. Hurt, maybe. Confused. "We said we weren't going back there until…"
He didn't finish. He didn't need to.
"I know what we said," Terence said carefully. "But I think we need it. Need to get away. Remember how to have fun together. We've been so focused on waiting and—"
"And not being good enough," Dion said quietly. "You can say it."
"Don't say that—"
"Terence, it's been almost two years." Dion's voice was flat. "Almost two years of waiting. Of passing every inspection and background check and home visit. Of being the perfect candidates in every way except one. And nothing. Not a single match. Not even a ‘maybe' or a ‘we'll keep you in mind.' Just… nothing."
Terence wanted to tell him. God, he wanted to tell him so badly. To wipe that defeated look off his face and replace it with joy. But Jill's words echoed in his head—These moments don't come everyday.
"I know it's been hard," he said instead. "That's why I think we need this. A break. Something to look forward to that isn't—"
"Isn't 'the call' that's never going to come?" Dion laughed, but there was no humor in it. "Maybe you're right. Maybe we need to accept that this isn't happening and just…move on with our lives."
"Dion—"
"It's fine. I'm fine." Dion was already pulling out his phone, scrolling through something—probably work emails, his usual distraction. "Disney could be good. Nostalgic. We can remember when we were young and hopeful and thought everything would work out exactly how we planned. Put a headstone on the whole thing."
The bitterness in his voice made Terence's chest ache.
"Book it," Dion said, not looking up. "Why not? It's not like we're waiting for anything specific anymore."
/ / /
Three Days Ago
Terence had been in a meeting when his phone lit up with Jill's name. He'd excused himself, heart already racing, and stepped into the hallway.
"Jill, hi—"
"Terence." Her voice was different than it was for their usual touch-base. Almost excited. Like it had been with Florence. "I have news. Can you talk?"
"Yes, yes I can talk." He'd ducked into an empty conference room, closing the door. "What's going on?"
"Well, we have a match. A real match. And Terence—" She paused. "This one is different."
His heart had stuttered. "Different how?"
"Her name is Kihel. She's three years old. She's been in foster care since she was eighteen months, and here's the important part: her parental rights were terminated four months ago. It's final. There's no one coming forward, no relatives petitioning, no legal complications. She's legally free for adoption."
Terence had gripped the edge of the conference table. "You mean—"
"I mean if you say yes, if you meet her and it's a good fit, she's yours. There's no waiting to see if someone else appears, no risk of a last-minute custody claim or wondering if it's going to fall through. The state is actively looking for her permanent placement, and you and Dion are at the top of my list."
"Why us?" Terence had asked, almost afraid to believe it. "Why now?"
"Because you're perfect for her. She needs stability, patience, two parents who are going to show up for her every single day. She's been through a lot of transitions already—she needs people who won't give up on her. And I thought of you immediately." Jill's voice had softened. "I know Florence was difficult. But this is different, Terence. This is as close to a guarantee as you're going to get in this process."
Terence shut his office door and leaned back against it letting out a long breath. "Does Dion know you're calling?"
"No. I tried his cell but he didn't answer. I wanted to talk to you both together, but—Terence, I need an answer relatively quickly. There are other families interested, and while I'm advocating for you, I need to know you're in before I can move forward with the paperwork."
"We're in. God, yes, we're in."
"Without talking to Dion first?"
"I'll talk to him. But Jill, yes. A thousand times yes. When can we meet her?"
"Here's what I'm thinking. I'm overnighting you the preliminary paperwork and her file. You'll have it tomorrow. Look it over, and if you're still sure, we can schedule a meeting for next week. But Terence—" Her voice had turned serious. "I need you both to be ready for this. Really ready. I need Dion to be ready. Because if you start this process and back out, it'll be another loss for Kihel. And she's had enough of those."
"We won't back out. I promise. We're ready." They'd talked about it so many times. Natural parents didn't choose their children, and neither would they.
"Okay. Then expect the package tomorrow—"
"No need. I'll come by and pick it up at lunch."
"Thats…perfect." The warmth was evident in her voice, "Terence? Congratulations. I really think this is it for you guys."
He'd sat in that conference room for twenty minutes after hanging up, just breathing. Processing.
Legally free for adoption. No relatives. No complications.
This wasn't Florence. This wasn't going to fall through at the last second.
This was real.
Terence accepted the parcel with shaking hands. Inside was Kihel's file—medical history, developmental assessments, photos. And there she was: serious blue eyes, hair in two little ponytails, clutching a stuffed rabbit.
Three years old. Loved strawberries. Needed a home.
Their home. Terence had read the file three times, tears streaming down his face. Then slipped it back into the envelope and into his work bag for safekeeping.
/ / /
Yesterday
Dion was quiet when Terence got home. Not angry, not sad—just quiet. He'd gone to work, come home, made dinner, and barely said ten words.
Now he was sitting on the couch with his laptop, ostensibly watching Shin Kamen Rider though clearly not paying it much mind.
Terence came up behind him, rubbing his shoulders. Dion tilted his head back and Terence dipped down to place a kiss on his forehead. "You alright?"
"Mm-hmm."
"Dion."
A long pause. Then—"Edda is back from maternity leave."
"From your office?"
"Yeah. She brought in pictures. He's… he's really cute. Eight pounds, six ounces. Full head of blond hair." Dion's voice was carefully controlled. "Everyone gathered around to look. They asked if we had any updates and I had to say no. Again. Like I have every month for the past two years."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be." Dion closed his laptop, peering at Terence over the top of the cheaters that had no right looking that good perched on his nose. "I just… I'm tired, Terence. I'm tired of hoping. I'm tired of pretending I'm not disappointed every time the phone rings and it's not Jill. I'm tired of walking past that room and seeing a box of donations where a crib should be."
"Maybe we should take a break from it," Dion said quietly. "From the adoption process. Just for a while. Focus on other things. It's clearly not happening on our timeline, and maybe that's the universe telling us something."
"Don't say that."
"Why not? It's been almost two years. If they wanted to place a child with us, they would have by now." Dion stood up, started pacing. "Face it—They're probably waiting for the perfect straight couple to come along for every single kid. We're just…backup. The option they'll consider if literally no one else wants—"
"That's not true."
"Isn't it?" Dion's eyes were bright. "Then where's our match, Terence? Where's the call saying ‘we found your child'? We haven't even had another false alarm. Nothing. Radio silence. What else am I supposed to think?"
"It'll happen." Terence caught his hand, pulling him closer and pressed his lips to the back of it. "I think you should think about how much you're going to love being a father. How good you're going to be at it. How lucky some little one is going to be to have you reading them bedtime stories and teaching them everything you know and loving them the way I know you will."
"You still believe that?"
"I've never stopped."
They stood there for a long moment, foreheads pressed together, and Terence thought about Kihel's picture tucked inside the envelope. About those blue eyes and the stuffed rabbit and the fact that in two days, the man in his arms would know that the wait was over and all his fears were wrong.
"Come to Disney with me," Terence said softly. "Please. I know it's bittersweet, but I think we need it. Need to remember us. Why we wanted this in the first place."
Dion pulled back, wiping his eyes. "Yeah. Alright. You're right. We need… something. And Disney is… it's us. Our place."
"Our place," Terence echoed.
"Who knows," Dion said, attempting a smile that didn't quite work. "Maybe a weekend away will help me remember how to be optimistic again."
/ / /
Now
The Florida sun beat down on them as Terence guided Dion through the crowds of Magic Kingdom, their intertwined fingers slick with sunscreen and summer heat. It had been twelve years since their first kiss in front of Cinderella's Castle, ten since Prince Philip pulled his attendant into the utilidors and ruined his character integrity entirely, seven since Terence got down on one knee under the fireworks—and five since they swore they'd never come back without a little one in tow.
They were back.
"I still can't believe you convinced me to come back here," Dion said, adjusting his Raybans.
"Well." He shrugged. "It's been a hard few months. And this is the happiest place on earth—so I've heard."
That earned a smile.
A hard few months. That was putting it mildly. Twenty-two months, actually, since they'd first applied to adopt. Twenty-two months of waiting. Twenty-two months of preparing a nursery that remained empty, of buying children's books they had no one to read to, of hope slowly curdling into resignation.
'It's because we're both men, isn't it?' Dion had said one night last month, staring at his overfilled wine glass. 'They just don't want to say it outright.'
Terence hadn't known how to respond, because some small, terrible part of him had wondered the same thing.
Now, watching Dion force a smile as a little girl in a princess dress ran past them, the envelope in his messenger bag burned hotter than ever.
"Come on," Terence said, tugging Dion toward Fantasyland. "Humor me a little longer."
They rode the teacups, Terence insisted, Dion complained about motion sickness but laughed anyway. They shared a Mickey pretzel and debated whether Pirates was worth the line or to do the Haunted Mansion first. For a few hours, Dion's smile reached his eyes again, and Terence was reminded why he'd fallen so hard for this man in the first place—as if he could ever truly forget.
As the sun began to set, painting the sky in shades of pink and gold, Terence led them back to Cinderella Castle. The same spot. The same bench where he'd gotten down on one knee seven years ago, nervous and sweating and absolutely certain that Dion was the person he wanted to build a life with.
"Why are we stopping here?" Dion asked, but there was something knowing in his expression—a flicker of recognition, of memory. "Let's do the photo tomorrow, I'm a mess—"
"Do you remember what I said to you?" Terence asked. "When I proposed?"
Dion's expression softened. "It was terribly corny—something about wanting to build a castle with me. Not this one—" he gestured at the soaring spires above them, "—but our own."
"One full of love and laughter and…and family." Terence's voice cracked on the last word. Dion's eyes were shining with bittersweet memory.
Terence reached into his bag with trembling fingers and pulled out the envelope. "I know it's been difficult. I know you've been losing hope. God knows I've had my moments too. But Dion—it's time." He held out the envelope. "I've been holding onto this for three days."
Dion stared at it like it might explode. "What is that?"
"Open it."
With shaking hands, Dion pulled out the documents. Terence watched his face as he read—watched confusion turn to disbelief, disbelief turn to understanding, and understanding turn to something that looked like the sun breaking through storm clouds.
"Her name is Kihel," Terence said quietly. "She's three. She loves strawberries and has a stuffed rabbit named Mr. Hop. And Dion, she's ours. If we want her. Jill says we can meet her next week."
Dion looked up, tears streaming down his face. "This is real?"
"It's real. We're going to be fathers."
Dion let out a sound that was half-laugh, half-sob, and pulled Terence into a kiss that tasted like salt and joy and the start of something new. Around them, tourists snapped photos of the castle, unaware that they were witnessing a different kind of magic.
"I can't believe you surprised me here," Dion said when they finally pulled apart. "I thought coming back would hurt—"
"I wanted to remind you," Terence said, wiping tears from Dion's cheek, "that every promise I made to you that day, I still mean. We're going to build that castle. We're going to fill it with so much love this little girl—our little girl—won't know what hit her."
Dion laughed, studying the photo of Kihel that was clipped to the paperwork—a serious little face with huge blue eyes. "She's beautiful. Look at her."
"She's going to have the best dad in the world," Terence said.
"She's going to have two of us," Dion corrected. "Both wrapped around her finger. Which means she's going to grow up to be stubborn as hell and probably too smart for her own good."
"We don't stand a chance."
They sat on that bench until the castle lit up against the darkening sky, making plans and dreaming dreams and falling in love all over again—with each other, with the possibility of tomorrow, and with a little girl named Kihel who didn't know yet that she was about to get the family she deserved.
The spare bedroom would need to be cleared out when they got home. The exercise bike would have to go. They'd need dust off those children's books and make sure Mr. Hop had a special place on the bed. They had much to prepare.
But for now, they sat together in the glow of the castle lights, holding adoption papers and each other, and let themselves be happy.
Dion couldn't stop looking at the photo. He held it up to catch the light from the castle, then pulled it close again as though it might change if he looked away too long.
"Look at her hair," he said suddenly. "It's so long. Do you know how to braid? I don't know how to braid. There are techniques—French braids, Dutch braids, we can't just send her to school with a ponytail every day, Terence, write this down."
Terence laughed, still wiping his own eyes. "Write what down?"
"Hairstyles. We need to research them. And—oh god, strawberries. You said she loves strawberries? W-we need to plant some. A bush. It can grow as she does and we'll take a picture every year. "
Dion was already pulling out his phone with his free hand, the other still clutching the documents. "We need to find out if she has any allergies. Do we know about allergies? What if she's allergic to something in the house? We have to childproof…everything. Do we still have those cabinet locks we bought? I think I saw them in a box in the—no, wait, was it the Goodwill box?"
"Dion—"
"We may need to buy new ones. And Mr. Hop. What if something happens to Mr. Hop? We need a backup. I can find out what kind of rabbit it is from the photo. Maybe we can find an identical one, no three, just in case. Kids get attached to these things and if it gets lost she'll be devastated—"
"Dion, breathe—"
"I AM breathing," Dion said, though he definitely wasn't. "We need to get her room ready. Take everything out and repaint maybe? What's her favorite color? Does the file say? Wait! Don't tell me—we can ask her!"
Terence caught Dion's face in his hands, gently turning him away from his phone. "My love. My beautiful, overthinking, already-perfect father of our child. Breathe with me."
Dion took a shaky breath, then another. Fresh tears welled up. "I'm terrified," Dion admitted. "What if I mess this up? What if I'm not good at this? What if she doesn't like me?"
"She's going to love you," Terence said firmly. "Because you're already thinking about her hair care routine and backup stuffed animals. That's exactly the kind of dad she needs."
Dion let out a watery laugh. "We don't even know if she'll want to come home with us yet."
"She will. I know she will."
They sat in silence for a moment, just breathing together. Then Dion's eyes widened again. "Your parents. I have to tell your mother—oh god, she's going to cry." He pulled up his speed dial contacts.
Terence was laughing now, couldn't help it. He caught Dion's hand before he could hit the button. "We can call her tomorrow."
"We should go home," Dion said. "We have so much to do. We need to—"
"We need," Terence interrupted gently, "to sit here for five more minutes and let this be real. We're going to be dads, Dion. To a little girl named Kihel who loves strawberries. Just…be here with me for five minutes."
Dion deflated slightly, then nodded. He tucked himself against Terence's side, still clutching the photo but pocketing his phone. They could hear the opening notes of the fireworks show starting.
Then, after approximately thirty seconds: "Do you think she's ever seen fireworks? We should bring her here. Not right away, but eventually. When she's settled. When she knows we're not going anywhere. We could make it a tradition. Every year, or every other year, with the economy—"
Terence cut him off with a kiss, grinning. "I love you so much."
"I love you too. And I'm going to love her so much, Terence. I already do. Is that crazy? I haven't even met her and I already—" His voice caught. "I already love her."
"That's not crazy," Terence whispered. "That's being a parent."
Above them, fireworks exploded in showers of gold and silver, and Dion made a note in his phone about researching whether three-year-olds were afraid of loud noises while Terence held him and laughed and felt more grateful than he'd ever felt in his life.
Dion looked at him the way he had on their wedding day—soft and certain, as though Terence was the only person he'd ever stopped performing for. Then his expression shifted, slow and deliberate, his eyes going heavy-lidded and fond in the way that still, after twelve years, Terence had absolutely no defenses against.
Dion closed the distance. The kiss was unhurried and thorough. Terence brought one hand up to cup Dion's face. Dion deepened the kiss and it became something else entirely. Fireworks lit the sky above in gold and white, just as magical as the first time.
When they finally broke apart, foreheads together, Dion's thumb still tracing his jaw, Terence was fairly certain the fireworks were the least spectacular thing happening in this particular corner of Magic Kingdom.
"Hotel room," Dion said quietly, his expression somewhere between grateful and dangerous. "I believe I owe you a happily ever after that requires considerably more privacy—and I intend to spend the rest of the night on my knees delivering it."
"Yes, my prince." Terence smiled as he pressed his lips to the back of Dion's hand, and knew with complete certainty that he was exactly where he was supposed to be.
Their fantasy finally becoming a reality.