Head Over Heels Âœ“ 38 / hopes and dreams

september, age 27

The sky was as black as ink, stars pinpricking the dark canvas as though light was seeping through from another dimension, and the moon was but a thin sliver of a crescent that dipped behind the transient clouds, floating across the sky on a dream. Hardly a light was to be seen outside the window, every house resting in the four am darkness. Not a single car rumbled past outside, the wee hours of the night as still as they were silent. There wasn’t even the slightest hint of a breeze to disrupt the chill, the leafy trees casting static shadows across the wall.

Summer had come to an end. September was almost over too. After a surprisingly warm August, autumn had come careening around the corner and as October loomed on the horizon, the trees were beginning to change colour as the tips of the leaves faded to yellow. They’d be red soon. Some already were, showcasing nature’s rainbow before the life was sapped out of them and crunchy piles lined the pavements.

Lucas was conflicted about autumn. Part of him loved to watch the seasons change, mesmerised by the shift in nature, but he hated how the falling leaves messed up the garden, getting trapped in the gutter until the rain overflowed. As much as he loved the cooler weather when summer was too sweaty, he hated how the night settled in so early, how the sun rose its head so late in the day to highlight the fall. It was a perfectionist’s nightmare; it was Asher’s favourite time of year.

Come the depths of December, he would have to get used to the world being plunged into darkness when he woke up. He wasn’t ready for seven o’clock to feel like midnight, for eight to be a hazy semi-light, and he clutched onto autumn as the last stop before the year’s shortest days. But when he awoke with a stir, the sky was as black as it could be, the house as silent as ever. It couldn’t be morning. The birds weren’t even tweeting, not so much as the hoot of an owl.

Beside him, Asher slept quietly, the occasional snuffle as he dreamt. Lucas winced at the realisation that, although he couldn’t see the time on his bedside clock without his glasses, it couldn’t be any earlier than three or later than four. The most anti-social hours, he had always thought, and yet he was awake. Something had dragged him from the comfort of sleep, and he squinted into the darkness.

A creak. The shuffle of feet on the carpet. A whimper.

He propped himself up on his elbows, blindly squinting into the dark, suddenly alert. His shoulders twitched when a blurry shadow filled his line of vision, obscuring the weak moonlight that filtered through the window.

“Daddy,” came a tiny voice, then a warm hand on his arm.

He let out a sigh. “Hi, sweetie,” he murmured, dropping his head back onto his pillow. “Did you have a bad dream?”

A snivel and a nod, the soft scent of a sleepy child. She shuffled closer to the bed and Lucas shifted closer to Asher, making space for their daughter.

“Come here, hun,” he said with a yawn, helping his little girl onto the bed. “You’re ok, baby. It’s just a bad dream. It’s ok.” He stroked her silky hair as she burrowed against him, her knees poking his stomach and her breath warm against his chest. She had quickly caught on that there was no use going to Asher’s side of the bed when she had a nightmare: he was deaf at night, and a heavy sleeper on top of that.

Lucas didn’t mind being his daughter’s first port of call when the night scared her. Rather, he felt a sense of quiet pride when she crawled against him for comfort. It was the best kind of progress, a mark of success. Each time she buried herself in his arms, he felt a little more confident as a father.

Nine months ago, less than a week after their wedding, Lucas and Asher had become parents. Just in time for Christmas. When Lucy Ishikawa had become their daughter on the twenty-first of December, she had become Lucy Knight, and ten days later, she had celebrated her second birthday with her new parents. Her first permanent family.

Between getting married on the eighteenth and ringing in the new year as a father, there wasn’t a day that Lucas hadn’t cried. It had been a whirlwind fortnight, thrust from newlyweds to new parents at breakneck speed, but he wouldn’t change a thing: he could pinpoint the exact week that his life had truly felt complete.

The first two years of Lucy’s life had been spent bouncing around the care system. Born to a single mother, a Japanese immigrant who hardly spoke a word of English, she was abandoned in the hospital before she was even a day old. Five days later, her mother’s body was found in the river. By her first birthday, having lived with three different sets of foster parents whose families rotated like a merry-go-round, Lucy wound her way back into a care home.

At eighteen months, she was fostered for a fourth time. It seemed like it might have been the real deal, that fostering would turn to adoption, but after five months, she bounced back into care with a new burden to hinder her chance of adoption: a diagnosis of sensorineural hearing loss. Although she had usable hearing at the time, it would be gone before she left childhood.

The timing couldn’t have been much better. Asher and Lucas were top of the list, more than qualified to raise a child who would likely lose her hearing before she started school. Lucy needed a stable home. They had one.

For Lucas, the past nine months had been a throwback to his teenage days, when he had watched as his best friend’s hearing had slowly deteriorated. It wouldn’t be long before Lucy would need surgery, the same operation her father had had, but for now she was ok. To her fathers, she was perfect. She was the child they had dreamt of, an instant upgrade to their life.

It hadn’t been easy at first when even at such a tender age, years that she would forget, Lucy had clear trust issues. It killed Lucas to see how much her unsteady first years had hurt her, how wary his little girl was as though she was just waiting to be sent back into care, but she had slowly come around. Watching her settle into her new life was more than worth the effort it took to provide that for her.

On the first of May, she had called Lucas her daddy for the first time. Later that day, she had asked where her papa was. She had wanted both of her fathers to tuck her in. After she was asleep, Asher had cried. That had shocked Lucas, who was used to being emotional where his husband was rational. Lucy had been their daughter from the moment she had come home with them, but only then had she acknowledged that they were her parents.

After that day, trust issues had become attachment issues: Lucy’s wariness had become clinginess. Every night for more than a month, she had crept into their bed hours after they had put her down, and neither of them had the heart to take her back to her own room. When Lucas had mentioned it to his mother, she had laughed and reminded him that he had spent half of his childhood in her bed. It hadn’t broken him. It was normal, she had assured him, and for Lucy, it was necessary.

In the months since then, she had taken ownership of her grandparents too, once she had realised that her fathers’ parents loved her as though she was her own, that she had aunts and uncles and cousins to play with and adore. Sarah and Truman were granny and grandad; Cora and Floyd were nana and grampa; Ishaana and Bishop were lolly and pop. Ishaana loved the new moniker that didn’t make her feel as old as she was, and she cherished her granddaughter. Her first grandchild. Bishop had won that bet.

Lucy had never had a proper family before. Now that she did, she didn’t want to let them go.

*

When Lucas awoke again at a more human hour, he found himself teetering on the edge of the bed with his arm hanging over the side. At some point in the night, Lucy had wriggled her way between her fathers and now she was sprawled out like a little starfish in the middle of the bed with Asher’s arm draped across her back. Both were sleeping soundly on their stomachs. When Lucas found his glasses, he chuckled at the sight.

Already, it was growing difficult to recall life without Lucy. After eighteen single years, nine years with Asher, and six years of living together, his tunnel vision had narrowed to the nine months that he had been a father. Lucy had wheedled her way under his skin from the moment he had met her, curling her little hands around his heart, and merely the thought of life without her was a punch to the stomach.

Shuffling into his slippers, he dragged himself downstairs to put the kettle on, yawning his way to the kitchen. The rule was that whoever got up first had to make the tea though the task unfairly fell on Lucas’s shoulders when his daughter’s whispers or the sounds of life outside could wake him up. Asher, however, only woke up when his body had had enough sleep, or his alarm buzzed on his wrist.

Lucas glanced out of the kitchen window as he waited for the kettle to boil. Stifling another yawn, he watched the school run frenzy in the house that shared the fence at the bottom of the garden. That would be him next year, when Lucy started Nursery. If she did. He and Asher hadn’t made up their minds yet, weighing up the possibility of keeping her at home for an extra year. Asher hadn’t started school until Reception and Lucas recalled hating Nursery: the last thing they wanted to do was force their daughter into an unnecessary year of school, especially when they both had the freedom to work from home.

The kettle flicked off when it came to the boil. Swallowing another yawn, he drowned two Earl Grey teabags and added a splash of milk to each mug. It was cold, even for eight o’clock in the morning at the end of September, and he wished he had pulled on his dressing gown before leaving the comforting warmth of his bedroom.

He didn’t need to be up yet. He and Asher had both worked out a new arrangement for their first year as parents, doing as much as they could from home. While Asher spent a day or two in the office per week, Lucas had headed into work even less. As devoted as he was to the job he adored, his daughter had immediately become his priority and he was lucky with his employers. Family was a core value of Chess House, the legacy that Ishaana wanted to leave.

Asher stirred when he felt the mattress dip. Already perilously close to the edge, he rolled over the wrong way and toppled off the bed with a gasp, laughing as he stood. “Every night!” he cried with a shake of his head as he put on his processors and gently nudged Lucy to make space to sit back down. “Morning, hun.” He leant across Lucy to kiss Lucas, taking the tea that he held out.

“Morning,” Lucas said, his smile lingering after Asher’s lips had left his.

“Thanks for this,” Asher said, his hand resting on Lucy’s back as she slept undisturbed by her parents talking. He idly curled a lock of her poker-straight hair around his finger and gazed down at her. She was so innocent in her sleep, as though the bed was unquestioningly hers “She’s gonna walk all over us, isn’t she?”

Lucas chuckled and nodded, blowing on his tea. “I think so,” he said, his heart swelling with love for his daughter. She snorted and shuffled, hugging the pillow she had stolen from Asher at some point, and she tucked her knees up to her chest, her bottom in the air. “Are you working today?”

“Mmm,” Asher hummed, nodding. “I’ve got a few things to sort out.” He yawned against the back of her hand. “Wish I could stay home but I haven’t been in for a couple of weeks and I’ve got a couple of deadlines coming up. I won’t be late back, though. It is Friday, after all.” Stretching out, he cracked his back and swigged his tea. “What’re you up to today?”

“Nothing much,” he said with a shrug. “Coffee with Tom and Mika, but I haven’t got anything else planned. We’ll see where the wind takes us.”

Asher raised his eyebrows a little, a quirk of a smile tickling his lips. “Who are you and what have you done with my husband?”

Lucas had worried that fatherhood would emphasise his paranoia and his peculiarities, that he would be exposed to a whole new world of things that upset the order of his life – and he had, but he had surprised everyone, including himself, with how easily he had transitioned into the life of a parent. His love for Lucy outweighed his need for a tidy kitchen. He had even come to terms with being late sometimes, and discovered a newfound appreciation for how his mother was ever on time.

“I’m trying out controlled spontaneity,” he said. “There’s a bag under Lucy’s pushchair that has everything I could need for any outcome, so I’m prepared to be impulsive.”

A laugh burst out of Asher and he sloshed a little of his tea on his leg. “There’s the Lucas I married. You scared me for a second.”

Lucy stirred at the sound of her father’s amusement, blearily blinking up at Lucas. Like a puppy who needed attention, she crawled onto his lap and pulled his arm around her, snuggling against his chest with her feet on his knees.

“Morning, sweetie,” he said, kissing the top of her head. She smelled like sleep, warm and soft and innocent. He loved that smell, relishing in his daughter’s innocent youth.

“Morning, Daddy,” she said, her voice small in the morning before she perked up. When she had first come home, she had been a quiet, timid little thing and it had taken a while to coax her words out of her; now they rarely stopped. It was as though she had been storing up her words, waiting for someone who would listen to her, and now she had two fathers who adored her every thought.

“How’d you sleep, hun?” Asher asked, reaching out to tuck her hair behind her ear.

“Good,” she said, resting back against Lucas, chewing on the corner of her blanket.

“Ooh, eyelash!” Asher carefully plucked a stray eyelash off Lucy’s cheek, holding it up for her to see.

“What’s that?”

“When an eyelash falls out, you have to make a wish, really quietly inside your head, and then you blow it away.”

“Why?”

Asher grinned, leaning close to whisper, “Eyelashes are magical and if you wish hard enough, and quietly enough, your wish might come true. Do you know how to do it?”

Lucy shook her head, her eyes wide as she hung off her father’s every word while gripping Lucas’s arm around her. “How?”

Asher set down his tea and shifted in his bed so he was facing his family, hunched over to be closer to his daughter’s level. “First of all, you have to close your eyes really tightly, like this.” He screwed up his eyes, wrinkling his nose.

Lucy giggled at the face he pulled and she looked up at Lucas, who beamed down at her when she said, “Papa’s silly!”

“Papa’s very silly,” he said, “but he’s also very smart. Eyelash wishes are very magical.” He stroked her arm, smoothing out the wrinkles in her pyjama top. “Once upon a time, I made a wish on an eyelash, and it came true.”

Her eyes widened even more. “What … what you wish for?”

“You,” Lucas said with a smile. Asher opened his eyes, glancing up at his husband. Lucy’s face lit up, her lips pulling into a grin, and she turned around to hug her father, her little arms wrapping tightly around his neck. He held her just as tight until he spluttered a laugh from the force of his daughter’s hug.

“I wanna do a wish,” she said, plopping herself down onto his lap again and pulling Asher’s hand closer to see her eyelash. “How?”

Asher slipped back into his theatrics, pulling the same face. “So, first you screw up your eyes really tightly. Then you take a deep breath, and you hold it. While you hold your breath, you make a wish inside your head. Then you blow the eyelash away.” Opening his eyes, he asked, “Are you ready?”

Lucy nodded.

“Your turn, sweetie.”

She screwed up her eyes, scrunching up her nose, and when she took the deepest breath, she puffed out her cheeks and pursed her lips. For three seconds, she was silent until she blew hard and opened her eyes. The eyelash hadn’t moved, still stuck to Asher’s finger, but she grinned.

“It works!”

Asher pulled his eyebrows together. Nothing had changed. “What’d you wish for, Luce?”

“I wanted it to stay!” She grinned and clapped her hands together, overjoyed to learn that her father’s theory of magical eyelashes seemed to be true. “It worked. Another wish!”

Asher’s eyebrows shot up and he looked up at Lucas. “She just broke the system. I think she’s gonna be a genius,” he said with a laugh. Lucas chuckled.

“Good thing she has tiny lungs,” he said.

Asher just rolled his eyes at his husband’s reality check. “This one has to be a special wish, hun,” he said, “and you have to blow even harder, like the big bad wolf.”

Lucy took the task seriously, screwing up her face before she held her breath and blew as hard as she could, enough to send the eyelash disappearing over the edge of the bed. When she opened her eyes, she looked up at Asher. “What now?”

Asher gave her a dramatic shrug. “Now we wait and see. And we go and have some breakfast. I can hear hungry frogs in your belly.”

She giggled again and looked down at her stomach, her hair falling around her face. She pushed it off with both hands, though it only fell forward again when she let go. Lucas gathered it off her face, tying it in a loose ponytail at the nape of her neck with a bobble he always kept around his wrist. Lucy was always losing her hair ties, dropping them around the house and growing frustrated when she couldn’t find them, but both of her parents had a constant stash. Every time Lucas took his laptop out of his bag, a handful of brightly coloured scrunchies fell out too.

“Time for some brekkie,” he said, hauling Lucy off his lap to head downstairs with his tea in his hand. She grabbed his free hand as though she needed his support just to make it to the kitchen, and he squeezed her little fingers.

Asher stood by the fridge, drumming his fingers on the door as he surveyed the contents before he took out the milk and butter, turning around with a flourish. “Let me guess…” he said with a knowing twinkle in his eyes. “Cereal for my Lucy-loo and toast for my Lukie-loo?”

Lucas rolled his eyes and took the milk to pour Lucy a bowl of cereal. She’d had the same thing every morning for a few months now, going through an obsessive phase with cornflakes, and she sat ready and waiting with her favourite bowl. She had her own cabinet beneath the counter, where she knew she could always find her favourite bowl and plate, her two mugs and her sippy cups, and a tray of her cutlery. It gave her a sense of ownership and responsibility, and she loved to get her things out before each meal.

While Asher put the toast on with a grin, Lucas gave Lucy a hand with her cereal and he filled her beaker halfway with milk, his tea warming his hand. He slowly sipped it, his hand resting on the back of his daughter’s seat, and he crossed his knees as he watched Asher hum while he waited for the toast to pop up. Every now and then, he was struck by how lucky he had been, how his life had fallen into place after so many years of hoping for what he now had.

“What’s today?” Lucy asked when she had finished her mouthful. As messy as she could be, taking after Asher’s love of paint and baking and his hatred of cleaning, she had the most polite manners Lucas had ever seen in a child who wasn’t yet three, and he was so proud that child was his. She had developed a love of a plan: after so much instability in her life, she thrived when her days were planned out for her.

“Well, you and I going to see Uncle Tom and Auntie Mika in town,” he said. “Maybe we could go shopping afterwards. We’ll see, shall we?”

Lucy nodded. It wasn’t a full plan, but it was better than nothing. She liked to be kept busy, growing whingy on the days that her parents had no plan other than to tidy the house and get things in order, the days that they put in a few hours of work at home. “What about Papa?” she asked, looking over at Asher as he joined the table with two plates of toast.

“I have to go to work, I’m afraid, hun,” he said. “But I’ll be back before you know it: you and Daddy are going to have an awesome day and then we’ve got the whole weekend all together.”

Lucy’s face fell a little, her lips pouting, and her spoon went limp in her wrist. She hated when her family went separate ways, as though she was terrified that if she said goodbye to one of her parents, it might just be forever. “Ok,” she said quietly. She ate another couple of mouthfuls. Lucas cut each of his two pieces of toast into four squares; Asher didn’t bother, holding the whole slice in his hand.

“Alright,” Asher said when he had finished his breakfast and changed into something a little more work appropriate than his flannel pyjamas. “I really need to go now but I’ll see you later.” With his hand on the small of Lucas’s back and a smile on his lips, he kissed him. “Don’t miss me too much.”

“We’ll try,” Lucas said, his hand resting on Asher’s shoulder. Lucy jumped to her feet, wrestling her way between them. She always did that when there was a hug she wasn’t a part of, squeezing her way into the embrace. With a laugh, Asher picked her up and hugged her on his hip.

“Don’t go, Papa,” she said, pouting and poking his cheeks.

“I’m sorry, hun, but I need to go to work. But I’ll be back soon,” he said. “You’ll have fun with Daddy and time flies when you’re having fun.” He kissed her nose. “I love you, Lucy.”

“Love you, Papa,” she said, hugging his neck.

“I love you more,” he said with a laugh. While she clung to him, he met Lucas’s eye. “I’ll get back as soon as I can. I don’t have a ton to do, just a bit of housekeeping.” He managed to peel Lucy away from him, setting her down on the floor. “Love you.”

“Love you too,” Lucas said, his hand on Lucy’s shoulder. “How about you go to your room and find some clothes, honey? I’ll be up in a minute.”

Lucy headed upstairs, leaving her parents for a rare moment alone. Lucas brushed a crease out of Asher’s shirt, his hand resting over his heart, and he leant in for a kiss. His eyes closed, he savoured the moment with a happy smile.

“Love you,” he said again.

Asher beamed. “Love you too, Daddy.”

“Do you always have to ruin it?”

He laughed. “Sorry. I just love that you’re Daddy when you hate it so much.”

“No, I don’t hate being Daddy,” Lucas said, “when it’s Lucy saying it. She’s our child. I am her Daddy. I’m not yours.” He rolled his eyes and sighed. “Should I be worried that you like calling me that? Because from what I’ve gathered over the past twenty-odd years, you and your dad have a pretty healthy relationship.”

“My dad’s brilliant,” Asher said. “I just like making you blush, baby.” He kissed Lucas’s warm cheek. “I really do need to go now but I’ll see you later.”

“You’re a terror,” Lucas said. “See you later. Say hi to everyone for me.”

“Will do.” Asher saluted as he left, waving once he was outside, and Lucas headed upstairs after Lucy with warmth in his chest.

*

It was raining. After a still night, the clouds had arrived and the heavens had opened, heavy droplets splattering against the kitchen window and blurring the view outside. Lucas sighed. Rain was messy, but Lucy loved it. She loved to splash in the puddles, giggling as she jumped along the pavement in her wellies.

Lucy loved to pick out her own outfits, even if that meant nonsensical pairings, and her parents had given up trying to choose what she wore, aside from the insistence that cold weather necessitated a coat.

Her room was nothing like Lucas’s had been when he was a child: she had a habit of leaving things lying around, whether that was a teddy bear left on the floor after a picnic or an outfit she had shed before bath time. She loved bath time, splashing around in the bubbles with her rubber ducks while one of her fathers wrestled to get her somewhat clean, fighting to wash her hair as she played.

“So, it’s cold and wet today,” Lucas said, sitting on the edge of her bed. “What do you need to wear when it’s cold?”

“A coat,” she said, pulling open the doors and reaching for her coat.

“What do you wear when it’s raining?”

She frowned for a minute before her confusion cleared. “A raincoat!”

“Yes! Clever girl, Luce. Now, what else do you think you need to wear? Just a raincoat?”

She giggled as though he had said something hilarious. “No, silly!” she cried, struggling to pull open one of the drawers at the bottom of her wardrobe. When Lucas gave her a hand, she found a pair of tights and a t-shirt, tugging at another drawer for her underwear. Proudly independent, she changed out of her pyjamas and into her underwear and top with ease, but the tights were a struggle.

“Can I help?” Lucas asked. She didn’t like when it was assumed she couldn’t do something, but she would gladly accept help if it was offered in the right way.

“Yes, please,” she said, holding out the tights. Lucas turned them the right way out and when Lucy sat on his lap with her foot up, wiggling her toes, he bunched the tights up to pull them on and she jumped to her feet to tug them up to her waist.

“Hmm.” Lucas tapped his fingers on his lips. “It’s a bit chilly today, hun. It might be a bit too cold to just wear a t-shirt. How about another layer? What can you wear over your t-shirt and your tights?”

She turned to her cupboard, wordlessly taking out a thick, warm dress that she managed to pull over her head, stubbornly fighting with the sleeves until she got it on with a proud beam. “I like this,” she said, holding out the hem of the dress before she frowned. “Where’s the pockets?”

“I think you might have it on backwards, Luce,” Lucas said, a grin twitching on his lips. “How about you take it off and try again? Do you want help?”

She shook her head, fiercely persistent in her efforts to undress herself and do it again. The second time, she made the same mistake and her frown deepened with confusion, until she twisted around and found the pockets on the back.

“Here, hun, let me give you a hand.”

“No,” she said, her little voice confident. “It’s good.”

“You’d be more comfortable if you had it on the right way round,” he said, but she shook her head. Although she wasn’t yet three years old, she already had an independent streak and she hated to be wrong.

“It’s good,” she said again. She picked up the duck raincoat she had left crumpled on the floor. “I like it.”

“Ok,” he said, letting out a chuckle when she pulled up the hood . “Well, I think your dress is beautiful, hun. You look wonderful. Good job getting dressed all by yourself!”

Her cheeks pinkened with pride. “Thanks, Daddy.” She took his hand and tried to pull him up from the floor, grinning when he stood and she figured that was down to her effort. “I need wellies.”

Once she was wearing a pair of yellow wellies that matched her duckie coat, Lucas donned his own raincoat and got his umbrella ready for the downpour outside. It had weakened to a drizzle, but that didn’t make it any more desirable when he still didn’t drive and instead, he would have to fight for a space on the bus with Lucy in her pushchair. Although she enjoyed walking, she couldn’t yet manage a day without her buggy, no matter what she said.

*

Town was virtually empty. For the ten minute journey to the centre, Lucas stood on the bus with a gloved hand around the pole and another on the handle of Lucy’s pushchair, in which she sat watching the world go by. As active as she was, she was just as capable at losing herself in the world around her, fascinated by the life that whizzed by outside the window.

With his umbrella in one hand, steering the buggy with the other, Lucas wrinkled his nose at the weather as he strode towards Coofee. Lucy hopped along beside him, jumping in every puddle she found. The bigger the splash, the more she cooed her delight, even though she was getting her tights wet.

“Come on, honey. It’s nasty out here – let’s get inside,” he said, letting go of the pushchair to take her hand, easing her a little closer. He was always a little paranoid that she might somehow disappear, snatched from his side if she wasn’t in arm’s reach, but she almost always obliged. With one last splash and an infectious giggle, she skipped back over to her father and wiped raindrops off her cheeks.

“I like puddles,” she said, holding onto the pushchair in lieu of a free hand to grip.

“I know, sweetie. It’s fun to splash, isn’t it?” Not that he believed that. Not even close. But the last thing Lucas wanted to do was to corrupt his daughter with the peculiarities that had plagued him his whole life.

“I love it,” she murmured.

When they reached the café, she darted forwards to hit the button to open the doors for her father, who thanked her as he steered the pram to a spacious, empty table before he spotted that he wasn’t the first to arrive. That was rare when he always did everything in his power to be at least a few minutes early, but Tom and Mika had already found a table. Lucy jumped over to them, recognising her aunt and uncle, and Lucas approached with a grin and a wave.

“Hi, guys,” he said, helping Lucy undo her raincoat’s zipper before he took of his own. She could almost do it, right until the zip got caught at the end.

“Hi!” Mika stood to hug him before he bent to hug Tom, and Lucy got a cuddle from her father’s aunt. “I love your coat, Lucy. I want it for myself!”

Lucy looked at the coat draped over the pram’s hood and up at Mika. “It’s too small,” she said. Mika laughed and cuddled her again.

“What a shame,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to steal your style, anyway. You’re the most fashionable little girl I know. Pockets on your bum? Genius.“

A few minutes later, there were drinks all around. Lucy sipped a hot chocolate, more warm than hot, out of her own sippy cup while her father drank his second cup of tea of the day. The sight of the rain outside was enough to make him feel colder than he actually was, shivering as he wrapped his hands around his mug.

“No Asher today?” Tom asked.

“Papa’s at work,” Lucy said, pulling a sad face. As much as she could appear to be thinking or doing something else, she was always listening, straining her ears to hear as much as possible before it got too difficult to do so.

“Just a bit of admin,” Lucas explained. “Still a few months to go before he goes back for good.”

“What about you?” Mika asked.

“I can work from home,” he said. “More easily than Asher, anyway. We’ll both be going back to work in January, technically, but not as much office time as before.” He sat with his arm resting on the back of Lucy’s chair, watching her as she drank. Mika struggled to tear her eyes from the little girl, the child she wished she could have. Almost a year and a half had passed since she had lost the only baby she’d ever carried, and she had yet to relive the euphoria of a positive pregnancy test.

“Daddy,” Lucy said, leaning right over to her father. “I need a weewee.”

“Ok, hun. Let’s go t-” he said, but Mika interrupted him.

“D’you want to come to the big girl loos with me, Luce?” she asked. Lucy looked up at her father for permission and when he nodded, she stood.

“Ok,” she said, reaching out for Mika’s hand, which Mika gladly gave her. She loved to spend as much time around Lucy as she could, living out her fantasies of motherhood through her best friend’s child.

“So, how’re things going?” Lucas asked once he and Tom were alone. The two of them tried to carve out some time each week, or at least every ten days or so, to catch up alone, but that was often easier said than done when both of their lives pulled them in a hundred different directions.

“Pretty well,” Tom said, nodding. “Physio’s going well, just slow. But, you know. Practice makes perfect.” He let out a slight sigh. Becoming resigned to a wheelchair had really knocked him for a six, stealing the wind from his sails right when life had been going so well for him. He’d had to take so much time off work that when he had eventually gone back a full year later, everything had changed. It had been too much on top of everything else, and he had quit his job.

Now, after several years in an office job, he was putting his incredible brain to good use at home, teaching himself coding in pursuit of the ability to create his own apps. With Mika’s support right beside him every step of the way, cheering him on and holding him up, the past six months had been some of the most optimistic of his life.

“You’ll be on your feet before you know it,” Lucas said. The sentiment wasn’t flippant: doctors had ruled that there was a chance Tom would be able to walk again one day, as sensation slowly returned to his legs and feet. Six months ago, he had been able to wiggle his toes again, and progress was slowly being made from there.

“Here’s hoping,” Tom said. “I must say, if anything, it’s given me a newfound appreciation of everything I took for granted before. Not least, obviously, the ability to actually walk.” He let out a dry chuckle. It had taken a while for him to find humour, but it had helped when he had at last. “I’d love to be back on my feet by the time Mika and I have a child. I don’t want to feel so useless when there’s a baby in the house.”

Lucas raised his eyebrows, his eyes trailing after Mika. “Are you two having a baby?”

Tom shook his head. “Not yet, anyway. But we’re working on it.” He smiled. “We’ve only got one more round of IVF on the NHS. If that doesn’t work…”

“Would you adopt?”

He nodded. “I’d ruled it out before,” he said. “I just didn’t think I could raise someone else’s child, you know? Mika and I always imagined that when we had a baby, it would be our baby, and to be honest, the thought of adoption just never sat well with me.” He looked over his shoulder in the direction that his wife had gone with Lucy. “But now … well, seeing you and Asher with Lucy has been incredible. She’s yours, and it’s so amazing seeing you as a father. You’re so incredible at it, and she’s such an amazing girl.”

“She’s everything,” Lucas said. “You know I was nervous before we adopted, but I just can’t picture my life without her.”

“That’s what I want,” Tom said, “and I know it’s what Mika wants, more than anything in the world. She wants to be a mum so badly. If I can’t give that to her, then we’ll just find another way.” His eyes glistened, and he smiled to offset his emotions. “Sorry. It’s just been a struggle.”

Lucas knew that. He had been there for them through it all, doing whatever he could to help when Mika’s first IVF cycle had failed to take, when the second had devastated her in the same way. He had been there when she had broken down; he had been there when Tom had broken down; he had given them space when they had needed time to gather themselves, but it seemed to be Lucy who had helped the most. She didn’t realise it, of course, but she had given Tom and Mika hope that there was always another option out there.

The noise levels double when the two of them returned and Lucy clambered back onto her seat to finish her hot chocolate, shifting closer to her father to rest against him.

“Thanks, Mika,” he said.

“No problem,” she said, gratitude in her eyes. “Whatever I can do for my favourite little lady. What did we miss?”

“We were just talking about how cool Lucy’s wellies are,” Tom said. “They might just be the coolest boots I’ve ever seen. Do you think they’d look good on me?”

She laughed, tickled by the image of her uncle in yellow rainboots, and threw her head back against Lucas’s shoulder, looking up at him with sparkling eyes and a contagious grin. He swept her hair off her face and kissed the top of her head.

“She’s precious,” Mika said quietly, her chin in one hand, the other laced with Tom’s. “You’re so lucky.”

The words were weighty, more meaning behind them than she would let on without wetting her cheeks outside the comfort of her own home, the walls of which had seen her weep over her wish to be a mother far too many times.

“I am,” Lucas said. He couldn’t deny the same thing that he felt every day.

“Why?” Lucy asked.

“Because I’ve got you, honey, and Papa. That makes me a very lucky man, and I love you so much.”

“Speaking of…” Tom trailed off, nodding at the door. Lucas turned around to see Asher shaking off his coat in the doorway, just two hours after he had headed off for work.

“Asher?”

“Papa!” Lucy cried, almost slipping in her effort to race over to her father, who scooped her up to kiss her cheek.

“What’re you doing here?” Lucas asked. “I thought you’d be at work until this afternoon.”

Asher grinned. “Turns out I can work an awful lot faster when there’s such a compelling incentive to finish early.” He sat Lucy down and hugged Mika, kissing her cheeks, before hugging Tom too and returning to his husband for a kiss. Lucy climbed onto his lap as soon as he sat down, to stop him from leaving, and she beamed.

She had everything she wanted. Her fathers had everything they had dreamed of. Together, the three of them were everything Mika and Tom wished they could have. 

+ – + – +

thanks to getting back into the swing of writing this past week, i’m a tiny bit ahead of schedule (needing to finish before nano starts) and after yet another reevaluation of my plans, i’ve decided that 3 chapters of lucas and asher as parents just isn’t enough (for me, anyway, you guys may get bored of it!) so this book will now be 42 chapters. final count. i promise. also, have a cute as fuck gif of lucas as a daddy. i literally can’t stop watching this. 

also lucy’s cast pic (not the same girl from the gif of course, who is 9-y-o kang ji woo if anyone’s wondering)