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A soft Persian lullaby drifted from the nursery, its melody low and tender, like a secret meant only for the night. Thomas moved quietly down the corridor, unwilling to disturb it, held still by the sound of Alastair’s voice—rich and warm, threaded with something ancient and aching. He lingered just beyond the doorway, waiting for the final note to fade.
Only when silence settled did he step inside.
Alastair stood by the cradle, one hand resting lightly against its edge, his expression softened into something Thomas rarely saw—unguarded, almost fragile.
Thomas came up behind him and slipped his arms around him, drawing him close, sheltering him effortlessly within his embrace. He pressed a kiss into his dark hair.
“You have a beautiful voice, joonam,” he murmured. “Your little brother is very fortunate to fall asleep to something so lovely.”
Alastair leaned back into him, allowing the closeness, the warmth.
After a moment, he bent to tuck the blankets more securely around the sleeping Zachary, then took Thomas by the hand and led him from the room, careful to close the door without a sound.
The moment they were alone, the quiet seemed to deepen.
Alastair all but collapsed onto the sofa, pulling Thomas down with him.
“I love him,” he said, a tired smile tugging at his lips, “but I confess I like him best when he’s asleep.”
Thomas huffed a quiet laugh. “I suspect that is a universal truth among parents.”
Alastair did not answer immediately. There was a softness to his expression now, a distant, thoughtful look that made Thomas still.
“We’ve spoken of it before,” Alastair said at last. “Children. You always said you did not want any of your own.”
Thomas shrugged, easy and unbothered. “I never had much interest in women, and it seemed rather a necessary condition for such things,” he said lightly, a crooked smile touching his mouth.
Alastair huffed faintly at that, but his gaze drifted, unfocused.
“Sometimes,” he said more quietly, “when I am holding him—when I sing to him, or watch you carry him on your shoulders—I think…” He hesitated. “I think it must be something very beautiful.”
“To be a parent?”
Alastair nodded.
“But then there are days like today,” he added, a touch more briskly, as though correcting himself, “and I am quite content that we are only visiting—and that we may return him to his mother.”
Thomas reached out, brushing his fingers gently along Alastair’s arm.
“Zachary has the best father he could hope for,” he said softly. “You.”
“And an excellent giant of an uncle,” Alastair returned, a hint of mischief flickering back to life.
They settled beneath a shared blanket, instinctively close, their limbs tangling as though they had always fit that way. The house was quiet around them, the kind of quiet that came after a long day—earned, gentle.
“I’m glad your mother returned here,” Thomas said after a while. “And did not remain in Tehran.”
Alastair’s fingers tightened slightly in the fabric of Thomas’s sleeve. “So am I.”
“We could come more often,” Thomas suggested. “I think it would do you both good.”
Alastair turned his head, his smile bright and immediate in a way that always caught Thomas off guard.
“Thank you, Tom joon.”
Silence fell again, but it was a comfortable one—full, rather than empty.
The kind that comes when nothing more needs to be said.
Curled together beneath the blanket, worn through with the quiet exhaustion of tending a restless child, they drifted at last into sleep—side by side, as though they had always belonged there, like parents who, for a little while, had borrowed a life that might have been their own