Chapter Text
“Daddy, we have a problem,” Oliver announced gravely as Roman secured him into his car seat.
It was the first thing Oliver had said since Roman had retrieved him from his classroom. He had been standing to the side of the coat hooks with his backpack already on when Roman had arrived, his little face scrunched up so ferociously in thought that Roman's cheerful greeting had sailed straight over his head, unacknowledged and unheard.
Usually, this intense expression meant Oliver was wrestling with something he deemed monumental. Back when he was a baby, it usually indicated he was cooking up a surprise for Cody and Roman in his diaper, but considering Oliver had been out of diapers for going on three years now, the latter possibility had been safely retired from rotation.
All Roman had to do was wait him out. Eventually, Oliver always cracked and revealed whatever world-ending issue had consumed him.
Sure enough, it had worked like a charm.
“Is it a solvable problem?” Roman asked, carefully reflecting the gravity carved into his son’s features.
There was another long beat where Oliver’s thoughtfulness made a brief cameo, before confusion marred the look. “I guess so.”
Roman hummed in quiet understanding. Once he made sure Oliver’s seatbelt was secure, he shut the back door and rounded the car toward the driver’s side. He slid in, pulled his own door closed against the afternoon air, and adjusted the rearview mirror out of habit. Oliver's face swam into view immediately, already staring back at him with wide, deeply concerned eyes.
“Tomorrow is International Women’s Day, Daddy, and I don't have a Mommy or a woman,” Oliver began, his explanation waffling along, as innocent and oblivious as a child could possibly be about the concept of women and mothers in general.
Roman’s finger froze en route to pushing the ignition button as a sudden grimace overtook his previously placid face before he could compose himself.
It wasn't that he and Cody hadn't anticipated this. They had talked about it at great and weighted length countless times, and each one of those times did not make it any easier for Roman to swallow.
Oliver was getting older, and curiosity naturally came with the territory. They had known, in the abstract, that Oliver would eventually begin asking questions about his mother, or about the conspicuous absence of one. Roman supposed he had simply been nursing a quiet, stubborn hope that the subject might somehow never arise. That Oliver might drift through childhood oblivious and unbothered.
The woman had abandoned Oliver before he was old enough to form a memory of her face, after all, and had not been seen or heard from since. Oliver, thankfully, knew none of that. To him, this was just another confusing gap in his otherwise very complete little world.
Roman's feelings on the matter were not complicated, exactly. They were very large, very volatile, and not at all the sort of thing to unpack in a school parking lot on a Tuesday afternoon. Oliver, however, was five years old. And five-year-olds came equipped with a curiosity streak that ran Burj Khalifa high, straight through the clouds, and with no signs of slowing.
He reeled himself back in just in time to catch the tail end of Oliver's elaborate explanation about how they apparently needed to acquire a woman before tomorrow morning. It had apparently blossomed, in the short span of Roman's inattention, from a statement of the problem into a fully developed strategic proposal. He hadn't caught the beginning, but what he arrived back for sounded very much like the opening movements of a heist plan with Oliver, outlining exactly how they were going to go about the business of securing said woman.
Roman snorted a laugh despite himself. Turning his attention back to the dashboard, he finally pushed the ignition button. The car hummed diligently to life, and Roman accompanied the mechanical rumble with a heavy sigh of his own.
“Do you really need to take a woman to school tomorrow?” he asked, letting the car idle while Oliver's face reappeared in the mirror.
“Uh-huh,” Oliver responded, his head bobbing along to emphasize the point. “Walter’s bringing his Mommies, cause he has two of them, kinda like how I have two Daddies. But I don’t have a Mommy, so we need to find a woman.”
Well, it wasn’t as though they were completely lacking for female figures in their lives. There were a handful of dependable women Roman could call upon in times of trouble, and he wasn’t even ashamed to admit that his own mother topped that list. If none of the candidates on his personal roster wanted to oblige, Cody possessed an even longer list of friends.
“We could ask Nona or Grandma,” Roman suggested as he carefully eased the car out of the parking space and toward the exit. “There’s also Charlotte and Alexa.”
Oliver’s face fell in slight disappointment, his small fingers found the buckle of his car seat, and he began fidgeting distractedly with it.
“I guess so,” he mumbled, in the same defeated tone he used whenever life failed to meet his expectations.
“You don’t want Nona, or Grandma, or Charlotte, or Alexa?” Roman prodded gently, his eyes darting upward to gauge Oliver’s reactions through the glass.
Oliver's nose wrinkled. “We’re supposed to bring a woman we find really cool and strong,” he explained miserably. Then, after a brief pause, he added with complete sincerity, “Grandma and Nona are old.”
The sentence had been delivered without malice or even a flicker of awareness that it might land any other way than factual that Roman couldn’t suppress the sudden bark of laughter that escaped his lips.
He supposed Oliver had a point. If the other children were going to be bringing young mothers and vibrant aunties, a grandmother or two, however beloved, might leave Oliver feeling quietly outmatched.
“Aunt Charlotte and Aunt Alexa aren’t old, though. Also, I think they’re pretty cool,” Roman pointed out, navigating the afternoon traffic. “Charlotte’s the queen, remember?”
He caught Oliver's small, grudging nod in the mirror and pressed on.
“And Alexa’s the goddess. Not to mention they’re your godmothers, so I’m sure they’ll be more than happy to go with you to school tomorrow.”
There was a brief, heavy silence in the back of the car before Oliver finally spoke again, his tone dripping with skepticism. “Daddy… are you sure Aunt Charlotte and Aunt Alexa are cool?”
Roman almost laughed at the suspicious little squint Oliver leveled at him.
“Yeah,” he answered with a shrug. “Charlotte has all those sparkly outfits. That’s cool, right?” He paused thoughtfully. “And Alexa has…” Roman trailed off, briefly scrambling for additional evidence. “Lily. Lily’s cool.”
Even as the words left him, he was aware of how spectacularly unconvincing he sounded. Oliver's expression in the rearview mirror confirmed as much; his nose was still scrunched, brow furrowed, entirely unmoved by the sparkly outfit defense. He looked very, very skeptical as he deliberated Roman’s woefully underprepared defense.
The expression stayed glued to his face for so long that by the time they were only minutes from home, Roman felt obligated to intervene before Oliver’s permanently calcified into a tiny judgmental aristocrat. Mox would never let him hear the end of it.
“You don’t want to go with Charlotte and Alexa?” Roman said, more statement than question.
“Not really,” Oliver replied, shaking his head tentatively, almost as if he were trying to be careful not to break his father’s heart with the rejection.
“Okay, then who would you like to—”
The words were barely out of Roman’s mouth when Oliver’s entire being lit up with a brilliant surge of excitement, his vibrating, energetic personality returning in full force.
“Aunt Rhea!” he volunteered, the name arriving before the question had even properly landed. He said it with both hands, somehow, even though his hands were physically occupied with the seatbelt buckle. “She’s the coolest woman in the whole entire world, Daddy, did you know?”
“No, I did not know, Chief. Care to tell me more?” Roman said, his tone softening with indulgence.
Oliver immediately launched into an extended, breathless history of Rhea’s supreme coolness, complete with vivid examples of exactly when and how that coolness had been displayed. According to Oliver, Rhea was strong, funny, scary-but-in-a-good-way, had awesome hair, and once carried him with one arm while threatening Uncle Damian at the same time, which apparently elevated her to superhero status forever.
Roman nodded along at each development, offering the occasional “hms” and “wows” with genuine sincerity.
Underneath the recitation, something in his chest gratefully unknotted itself at Oliver’s return to his usual happy self, the earlier tension quickly evaporating. Roman couldn’t help but smile and nod along to his son’s enthusiastic lecture, grateful with every fiber of his being that the conversation hadn’t veered down the painful path he had initially feared.
He had spent the drive dreading the fact that Oliver would ask, plainly and innocently, why he didn't have a mother, where she was, and whether she was ever coming back. A Roman had no good answer for.
Roman was certain Cody would have handled it with far more grace and gentleness than Roman could currently summon. Everyone knew Cody had a gift for finding the exact right words and delivering them in perfect words that Oliver could quietly absorb and understand. Roman, by contrast, felt only the old heat in his gut whenever he allowed himself to remember the cold janitor’s closet where Oliver had been abandoned as an infant.
He pulled into the driveway as Oliver concluded his dissertation on Rhea’s coolness. He bounced impatiently in his car seat, waiting on the edge of his seat for Roman to shift the transmission into park.
The moment the vehicle groaned to a complete halt, Oliver unbuckled his seatbelts like a fleeing raccoon and made a frantic dash for the front seat. He clambered directly over Roman’s lap, wrapping his arms tightly around his father’s neck as he pleaded soulfully.
“Can we please call Aunt Rhea, Daddy? Pleeeeeease? Daddy, please, please, please—”
“We’ll have to use your Papa’s phone for that one, Chief,” Roman grunted, unbuckling himself and exiting the vehicle with Oliver still attached to him like a limpet.
He shifted Oliver onto his hip more securely, trying not to drop him while the kid performed what could only be described as a full-body celebration dance in his arms. Roman gripped him tighter and reached back for the forgotten backpack with his free hand. He hooked it by one strap while Oliver yammered gleefully into his ear about Rhea's various attributes, most of which Roman had already heard twice.
Now, this was information Roman would gladly take to his grave, but Rhea was intimidating as hell.
Obviously, Roman hadn’t met many people in his life who could properly intimidate him – Cody’s mother, unfortunately, remained an outlier – but Rhea certainly knew how to give him a much harder time than most.
He would also concede privately that Oliver was entirely correct. Rhea was cool as hell. There would be a seismic shift in the classroom social order if Oliver walked through those doors tomorrow with Rhea by his side.
Still, Roman wasn’t going to be the one to make that phone call. No sir. Cody, with his bright blond, halo-like hair and universally inviting personality, was clearly the better candidate for this mission. Roman was far more likely to mess up the entire interaction with a single, poorly intonated greeting.
He kicked the car door shut behind him and started up the driveway, Oliver still narrating into his ear, pausing only occasionally to ensure Roman was keeping up.
Cody must’ve heard them pull in because the front door was already open by the time they reached it. Standing beside him was Pharaoh, his tail wagging expectantly against the doorframe.
Oliver was out of Roman’s arms and racing toward Cody like a stray bullet before they had even finished crossing the driveway. He crashed straight into Cody, with enough force to earn a startled, breathy “oof” from him as he caught Oliver against his chest, one hand immediately bracing against the doorframe to keep them both upright.
“Hi, Ollie, how was—what—?” Cody’s greeting tapered off into utter confusion. He looked down, dissolving into confused amusement as Oliver abruptly detached himself from the hug and began aggressively digging through the pockets of Cody’s sweatpants.
It was a hilarious sight, watching Oliver’s short arms disappear nearly elbow-deep into the oversized pockets while Cody stood there blinking down at him in baffled betrayal.
“Aren’t you supposed to at least buy me dinner before robbing me?” Cody asked weakly.
Oliver ignored him completely, his face lighting up in triumph as his fingers finally closed around his prize. A second later, he pulled his hands free to reveal Cody’s phone, validating Roman’s silent prediction.
Oliver immediately abandoned Cody and spun back toward Roman, who was just reaching the doorway. He thrust the phone upward in an offering to Roman, feet bouncing with barely contained anticipation.
“Daddy, would you please help me call her?” he asked, deploying the wide eyes that Roman had spent the better part of five years trying, and failing, to build immunity against.
Roman sighed in defeat, hitching Oliver’s small backpack higher on his shoulder where it dangled comically short against his frame. He took the phone from Oliver’s hands, diligently scrolled through the contacts until he found Rhea’s number, and pressed the dial button before handing it right back.
Oliver gratefully accepted the device, pressing the screen to his ear with a hilarious level of gravity. His face shifted into a strictly serious expression as he immediately tried to elbow his way past Cody and into the house.
“Whoa there, young man,” Cody shifted sideways, blocking the hallway with his bulk. One eyebrow arched suspiciously downward at Oliver. “Care to explain what's going on here?”
Oliver pulled the phone briefly from his ear and fixed Cody with a look of strained patience. “I need a woman, Papa. You’re interrupting me.”
He tried, completely unsuccessfully, to shoulder his way past Cody’s leg. Realizing the direct approach was a failure, he outmaneuvered him altogether, ducking cleanly between Cody’s knees to secure his passage through.
An exasperated noise left Cody as Oliver disappeared into the house.
Pharaoh followed right on Oliver’s heels, enthusiastically utilizing the same route. Except he was significantly larger than Oliver and entirely unaware of his own dimensions. The impact sent Cody tumbling sideways with a small yelp, straight into Roman’s waiting arms.
He tipped his head back and looked up at Roman from this new, inverted vantage point. When Roman merely offered a smug smile in return, Cody narrowed his eyes, though the reprimand lost most of its teeth given the inverted perspective.
Roman chuckled softly, loosening his grip as Cody straightened himself back up. Cody returned to his footing with great ceremony, making a thorough production of smoothing his shirt and brushing imaginary lint from his sleeves. Then he turned to face Roman with his composure reassembled and his expression set to its most dignified register.
“Care to explain why our son suddenly sounds like a tiny pimp?” Cody asked suspiciously. “Because I'm fairly certain I put a sweet, normal child on the school run this morning.”
Roman stepped through the threshold, pausing to press a swift, easy kiss to Cody's mouth in greeting before continuing into the foyer. He dropped his keys in the bowl by the door.
“Tomorrow is International Women’s Day,” Roman explained simply.
Cody let out an apprehensive sound from the back of his throat, his eyes widening as he trailed Roman into the living room. “Roman, I was joking about the pimp thing—”
“That’s not what this is, Nightmare.” Roman waved the concern away. “He’s supposed to bring a woman he thinks is cool to school tomorrow. So naturally, he’s calling Rhea.”
“Rhea?” Cody asked, a thoughtful expression mirroring the exact focused look Oliver had been sporting during the car ride suddenly fixing onto his features.
“Do you know any other woman cooler?” Roman challenged, setting Oliver’s backpack down on the edge of the couch.
There was a split second where Cody genuinely appeared to be weighing his options before his entire frame deflated in defeat. “I mean, I would have expected your mother. Or mine.”
“Too old,” Roman reported, mimicking the exact gravity with which the verdict had been delivered to him earlier. “Your son’s words, not mine.”
Cody barked out a sudden laugh, confirming to Roman that his own sense of humor wasn’t the one that was broken here.
“Although I’ll readily concede that it was a stroke of genius having Ollie make the phone call himself,” Cody added, a haunted, entirely relatable look of relief washing over his face.
See? This only further proved Roman’s point that Rhea was intimidating as hell.
It had to mean something that the only person brave enough to ask her for a favor was a five-year-old child, while Roman and Cody – two grown men pushing forty by the way – were effectively hiding behind said child like cowards.
There was also the not-insignificant matter of Rhea being entirely capable of whooping both their asses should the mood take her. Which was certainly a bonus for Rhea. Less so for Cody and Roman.
The thought dissolved as Roman's gaze drifted toward the hallway Oliver had disappeared down, and the levity went with it.
“When he first started talking in the car, I really thought he was going to ask why he doesn’t have a mother,” Roman said softly, the words arriving without much preamble. “Thankfully, he was willing to settle for Rhea. But I can’t help but think about the day when he actually does ask.”
Cody’s face immediately softened, morphing into an expression of deep empathy. He edged closer until his side pressed against Roman’s, his hand coming up to rub comforting circles into Roman’s tense shoulder.
“When that day comes,” Cody said gently, “we’ll tell him the truth.”
Roman grimaced. “Do we have to?” he muttered. “It’s not like she did anything besides give birth to him.”
“She’s still his mother, Ro, whoever and wherever she is,” Cody pointed out gently, his gaze steady and unwavering. “And he deserves to know and deserves the right to reach out to her someday, should he ever want to.”
That sentiment didn’t sit right with Roman at all. The part of him that had sat up through fevers and bad dreams and learned how to sew, for the sake of Plushie Seth, wanted to say something sharp and final on the subject.
Here he and Cody were, putting in every ounce of the exhausting, beautiful, daily work – running the gauntlet from changing messy diapers in the middle of the night all the way to executing an emergency acquisition of a cool woman on short notice. The thought that, years down the line, Oliver might decide he wanted a relationship with the woman who had abandoned him in the first place felt like a phantom betrayal.
He was still turning it over, unpleasantly, when the thunder of little footsteps came thundering back down the hallway.
The living room filled back up with noise and life as Oliver appeared, holding Cody’s phone out triumphantly while Pharaoh trotted happily behind him, tongue hanging out lazily like he too had participated in the negotiation process.
“Aunt Rhea said to give the phone to my…” Oliver’s nose scrunched hard as he struggled for the word. He lifted the phone back to his ear with efficiency. “Aunt Rhea, what was the word again?”
Rhea’s tinny voice crackled briskly through the speaker. Oliver listened intently, nodding along to whatever sharp instruction she delivered on the other end of the line.
“Papa, here,” Oliver finally declared, pivoting and offering the device to Cody.
Cody had barely started reaching for the phone when Rhea’s voice barked loudly enough to still be heard from the receiver. “I said the dodgy one, Ollie. Cody isn't even half as scheming.”
Cody’s entire countenance shifted in an instant, his features pinching into a look of vehement offense. He angled a lethal frown-glare combination directly at the glowing screen, as if the sheer intensity of his displeasure could somehow travel through the digital connection and strike Rhea on the other side of the city.
“I resent every single word of that, Ripley,” Cody protested.
Amused by the predictable bickering, Roman stepped in and accepted the phone from Oliver’s hand. He pressed it to his ear, and when he spoke, his voice had arrived at something dangerously pleasant. “Yes?”
What followed was an entire string of profanity so blisteringly Australian that Roman only managed to decipher maybe every third word.
Part of that was because Rhea’s accent tended to climb toward something ferocious and almost entirely phonetic whenever she was sufficiently provoked. Roman tracked the first several seconds with reasonable success before the combined speed, volume, and vocabulary left him largely behind. He was fairly confident that a meaningful portion of what she was saying was not technically English, or at least not English as it was spoken anywhere outside of a very specific radius of where Rhea had grown up.
The tirade had a beginning, a sustained middle, what appeared to be a digression, and then a return to the central argument – and Roman found himself checking his watch somewhere around the ninety-second mark, simply to have data on the experience.
All the while, Oliver stood right at his knees, looking up with wide, inquisitive eyes, clearly trying to determine Rhea’s answer based entirely on Roman’s facial expressions.
When Rhea finally reached the end of what would undoubtedly go down as the longest, most spectacular verbal thrashing of Roman’s life, he could hear her panting lightly on the other end of the line. He generously let the silence stretch for half a minute, giving her just enough time to catch her breath, before asking pleasantly:
“So what time should we expect you tomorrow?”
“Fuck you, Roman,” was Rhea’s swift, venomous response. “You put him up to this, didn’t you?”
Roman gasped dramatically.
“Aw, Chief,” he crowed excitedly, his voice booming with exaggerated cheer as he looked down at Oliver, who was practically vibrating with anticipation, “she says she’s thrilled.”
Oliver immediately began bouncing in place.
“What? What the hell are you talking about?” Rhea snapped suspiciously through the speaker.
“I’ll make sure to tell him just how excited you are,” Roman continued smoothly.
“Roman!” Rhea barked. “Do not make me do this. Do not make me show up in a classroom filled with snot-nosed little squirts!”
“You love Oliver,” Roman said accusingly. Honestly, if the answer had been anything otherwise, Rhea would have hell to pay, no matter how intimidating she could be.
“Yes, Oliver. Specifically, one child,” Rhea stressed exasperatedly through the phone. “Not other children.”
“He picked you over my mother, Cody’s mother, Charlotte, and Alexa,” Roman said, the words forced through teeth that were tightly clenched in a forced smile to maintain Oliver’s blossoming excitement. “At this point, Rhea, this isn’t a request. It’s an RSVP.”
“Oh my God,” Rhea groaned. “See? This is exactly why you’re the dodgiest person I know. Blackmailing me with your own kid.” She clicked her tongue in annoyance. “How low can you possibly sink?”
“We leave at eight,” Roman said sweetly into the receiver, deftly ignoring the judgment. “Put on your coolest outfit.”
Rhea immediately launched into another argumentative rant that was cut short abruptly by the sharp dial tone of Roman hanging up on her. Roman looked down at the phone, filled with immense satisfaction.
“Did she say yes, Daddy?” Oliver asked eagerly, bouncing with entirely unrestrained energy where he remained wrapped tightly around Roman’s left leg.
“Of course she did, Chief,” Roman assured him easily, carding a hand through Oliver’s curls. “Like anybody could say no to you.”
“I’m gonna have the coolest woman tomorrow!” Oliver exclaimed, practically vibrating in place as the realization fully sank into his little chest.
He spun on his heels and bolted up the staircase toward his bedroom, his sneakers slapping against the floor. Pharaoh barked once and bolted after him, unwilling to be left behind.
“Did she threaten to kill you?” Cody asked wryly, stepping forward to accept his phone back from Roman.
“There were a lot of choice words in there that were technically worse than death, but yeah, she did mention a couple of graphic scenarios,” Roman admitted with a slight wince.
“Good.” Cody nodded solemnly. “Just so you know, you’re running the morning drop-off tomorrow,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest. “You’re the one who manipulated a violent Australian woman into attending kindergarten. Therefore, you get to be trapped in a car with a furious Rhea.”
“I will gladly take one for the team,” Roman responded just as solemnly, placing a dramatic hand over his heart.
“Mm-hm,” Cody hummed distractedly, his ear angling toward the second floor as he listened carefully for their son.
Above them, the muffled sounds of Oliver’s excited voice echoing down the hallway as he thoroughly explained the mechanics of his school day to an attentive Pharaoh meant they had a guaranteed pocket of peace. There would be at least ten minutes of free time – possibly fifteen, if the Rhea portion of the story required the detail it deserved. They had until then to savor the quiet until Oliver completed his monologue and made his way back downstairs to be his usual pestering, lovable self.
On confirmation that Oliver was temporarily out of mischief mode, Cody turned his full attention back to Roman. “So, what’s on the agenda for the rest of the afternoon?”
Roman’s gaze shifted immediately, a dark, interested gleam entering his eyes.
“I don’t know, Nightmare,” he drawled, stepping closer. “What would you like to do with this very rare, very precious free time on our hands?”
Oliver had only been in kindergarten for a little under three months, and Roman had spent every available afternoon enthusiastically reclaiming all the attention parenthood had redirected away from his husband over the last five years.
As a matter of fact, before heading out to retrieve Oliver from class, they had just come off an incredibly enjoyable round of sex that had left Cody utterly breathless and delightfully boneless on the bed.
Ten to fifteen minutes was, realistically, not enough runway for anything with genuine ambition. But Roman had always found that the suggestion alone had a satisfying effect.
Cody rolled his eyes at the coy, wicked look Roman was currently sporting, though a telltale flush crept up his neck. He turned on his heel to start back up the staircase. “You are insatiable.”
Roman followed directly behind him, offended only in theory.
“I, for one, fail to identify the intended insult in that statement,” he said, a scholarly finger pointed strictly in the air as he smoothly joined Cody to ascend the stairs together.