Archive of Our Own ^beta

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“When I look at you, I can feel it. I look at you, and I’m home.”
Finding Nemo

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Theia watches the lights as the car drives down the street, hears the engine cut out across the street, a single door opening and closing and one set of footsteps on the path all the way up to the back door. He never does come through the front. Not on nights like this.

He toes the mat aside to reach the key underneath, soles of his sneakers slipping on the porch before he puts it right back where he found it, coarse fibers nicking the skin on his fingers. He wipes his feet before he enters in a habit he’s never really lost.

Theia stays curled up on the sofa in the front room and doesn’t turn when the floorboards in the hall creak or follow the shadow as it moves up the wall and he moves up the stairs.

She’ll give him time.

He never asks for it, but she knows him; knows this is what he needs.

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Before the car lights on the Chicago street cams and the town fireworks displays that were the backdrop to their night raids overseas, he had this. Shapes that danced across the bedroom walls and lit up his boy’s face as he slept.

When he was home he’d lie in the crib with Jonathan draped across his chest and look up at the glow in the dark stars shooting across the ceiling. When he was away Theia would set up the videocalls in the bedroom and he’d sit glued to the screen watching over his boy; committing every part of him to memory under the soft amber comfort of his nightlight.

One side of his mouth rises the more he traces his fingers over the small globe on his son’s bedside table, his eyes following the illuminations as they journey around the room.

Even after all these years, it still brings him home.

“Dad?”

Greg turns at the greeting and sees Theia’s smile in the boy; no amount of sleep deprivation could dull that sight.

“Hey buddy,” he draws out the rasp in his voice.

“If you’re here for dinner, I ate it all,” Jonathan tells him, clearing his own throat.

He huffs out a laugh. “That’s what I get for being late, huh?”

He made the mistake once of asking if they set a place for him at the table, only to be met with the confused face of his son and the response, “’course we do” because, “there’s only space for you, me, Momma and Uncle Jay.” (Of course, Jonathan also looked at him like that when they were reading Harry Potter – the first time – and Greg tried to claim ignorance about what House he’d be sorted into if he went to Hogwarts. His boy had assured him quite matter-of-factly, “You’d be in Gryffindor, Dad. ‘Cause even if you think you’re good at all that other stuff, you’re actually best at bein’ brave.”)

He tried to say they shouldn’t go out of their way to accommodate him, which just made Theia laugh and Jonathan repeat, like it was the most obvious thing in the world and he didn’t get why Greg was even questioning it: “there’s always a place for you, Dad.”

So, now he figures it kinda goes without saying that he’s welcome for dinner the same way the door’s always open for him.

Jonathan pushes himself up from the bed. “How late is it?”

“Late enough that you should go back to sleep,” Greg tells him and reaches over to swipe one of his arms out from under him so he collapses back into the mattress.

His son’s head hits the pillow with a breath of laughter and the sound turns Greg’s mouth into a smile.

“Are you ok?” Jonathan asks, and he frowns at the sudden change, at how fucking intuitive his kid is to his moods.

As brightly as he can muster, Greg declares, “Yeah, I’m fine, I’m good.” He nudges Jonathan in the side and watches as his son curls instinctively into his touch. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Mhmm,” the boy murmurs, side of his face now pressed into the pillow as he stares up at the elder.

“I jus’ got caught up at work is all, lost track of time,” Greg tells him with no mention of the events that led him here. “An’ apparently that included your bedtime. So, come on, go back to sleep. I jus’ came by to check in.”

“You wanna lie down with me?”

His boy’s already shifting all the way over to make room for him in the bed, and if Jay was here he’d make some comment about not having to worry about moving that much, since between the two of them they probably don’t even take up half the mattress, the tiny tots. As it is, Greg’s still standing staring at the space his son’s created for him, wondering why he won’t just go to him already.

“We can watch the lights.”

The smile’s back on his boy’s face, his voice ringing like the hope a spindle of light can bring and – fuck. It all twists inside of Greg like the kid’s still in diapers happily kicking his legs in the air and staring up at him with big blue eyes, hands grabbing hold of fingers with no intention of letting go of what’s his.

That does it.

He moves to lie down on top of the comforter that his boy is safely snuggled under, and Jonathan blinks at him, mouth creasing into the pillow. “I wouldn’t worry ‘bout missin’ my bedtime, I think Momma changed the hands on the clocks again.”

Greg huffs out a laugh. That sounds like Theia all right.

Before he can get settled, a little hand shoots out and clocks him in the side. “You gotta take your shoes off,” the kid schools him. “’Else I’ll havta do the laundry.”

“Can’t have that,” he mutters, and launches himself upwards to pull his kicks off, dropping them onto the floor beside the bed.

The first one hits its target with a distinct thud, the carpet doing nothing to cushion its landing and Jonathan winces when the second one follows, apparently missing the quiet sanctuary of sleep already.

Greg lies back down and turns his head on the pillow to look at his boy. “Think that’ll give it away that I’m here?”

“Mom always knows when you’re here, Dad.”

‘Course she does.

“Tell me what you got up to today,” Greg says. Just because he knows he did the right thing today, doesn’t mean he can’t wish he was somewhere else instead.

“You always ask that.” Jonathan burrows deeper in beside him like the evasive maneuver will get him out of answering. It’s a solid effort, but Greg’s undeterred.

“’cause I wanna know what I missed,” he tells his son; and now who’s stating the obvious?

“You didn’t miss anything,” Jonathan says and winds both his arms around one of Greg’s, tugging it towards him like a security blanket.

He raises an eyebrow at his boy. “See now I know that’s not true.”

“How d’you know?” Jonathan shoots back, and looks up at him with that disarming smile that’s all his mother, “You weren’t there.”

“Nice,” Greg awards him with a nod of recognition.

“Yeah,” his boy sounds pleased with himself, “Momma says I get my smarts from you.”

Smart mouth, maybe.

Jonathan draws him in closer and Greg listens to his son tell him all about his day. If he doesn’t think too much about where he actually was, he can pretend he was here with his boy.

And the lights keep circling all around them.

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Greg doesn’t drive, not anymore, and Mina texts her around the same time he walks through the back door to say there’s a car parked in front of the house and the driver’s still inside. (Mina – who lives right across the street – terms it her “official warning” because it could be intruders looking to do God knows what to her and/or dedicated hitmen who obviously only have one thing in mind. She also tells Theia not to come running to her looking for someone to blame if one of her theories turns out to be correct – but she is allowed to seek shelter should she need it. Proving that sometimes having her own personal neighborhood watch doesn’t completely suck.)

Greg’s only ever brought one other person home with him.

And right now Jay’s taking his sweet time coming to the door.

Theia responds to her friend’s dramatics with: Calm down nanny-cam, it’s Greg and Jay.

The elder’s unimpressed reply comes through a moment later: Buy those boys a set of watches for their Christmas, for God’s sake!

Theia’s staring up into the brightness of the overhead bulb, head thrown back in laughter when Jay finally gets out of the damn car and decides to come inside.

When she pulls open the door, he’s standing on the porch, hand raised, ready to knock again.

One eyebrow lifts and she stares right at him until he drops his arm to his side, lips pulled together in a smile. Theia’s the youngest of their trio and the only one who didn’t expose her poor ears to months of unrelenting explosions and gunfire and God knows what else. She heard him just fine the first time.

“’About time you came to your senses and got your ass out of the car,” she says, “What would the neighbors think if I kept you sitting outside the house in the dark all night? You’ll give me a bad name.”

“Never,” Jay contests with more inflection than is necessary. “And Wilhelmina adores me.”

“Actually she thought you were here to have your wicked way with me,” Theia corrects, though she knows it’ll do nothing to dull his spark.

“And you didn’t put her straight?” He looks down at her, features prominent in the porch light, and shakes his head at what he claims to see there. “Man, suburbia’s really changed you, huh?”

“Shut up and get in here.”

Theia grabs him by the front of his shirt and drags him over the threshold. Jay stumbles inside, laughing as she sidesteps him to avoid being flattened against the wall of muscle he never seems to be without.

“Now you’re just playing into their hands.” His voice matches the look on his face, and the bastard’s positively gleeful. “I bet Wilhelmina’s scandalized by what she’s seeing you do to me right now. I’ve barely even set foot in the house and you’re already manhandling me.”

Theia responds to his dramatics with an indulgent smile and a pat on the chest. “You’re too tall for me, sweetheart.”

“I know,” Jay laments, as she closes the door with her other hand. “Plus the wardrobe’s all wrong. Not enough button-ups.” He gestures to his own ensemble before he skips backwards out of her reach and moves without prompting towards the living room.

“Oh, you noticed that, did you?” she says as she follows after him.

“What’d he do? Come home one night to raid his closet and you caught him with the garden shears in one hand and the iron in the other?” He looks delighted with himself; eyes bright and face alight and she’s not about to stop him if this is what he needs right now. “Even the Desk Sergeant commented on his clean and pressed look. Asked him if he thought it was school picture day.”

“Parent-teacher conference,” Theia explains of the ironed shirts and cut and styled hair. She looks down, a smile twisting her lips. “Jonathan said if he had to go, so did Greg. And we’re all so looking forward to repeating that family outing.”

Jay’s sitting in the spot that’s always been his, looking at her with that shit-eating grin she’s missed seeing lately. “Sorry I missed it.”

“Oh you’re more than welcome to take my place at the next one,” she tells him from her place opposite, legs tucked underneath her and body stretching over the arm of the sofa as she retrieves her glass of wine. (It’s the same glass she brings with her when she stops by Jay’s place with a bottle – she doesn’t bring one for him when she comes, says if he can’t treat his guests right, he doesn’t deserve to drink her wine out of a proper glass like a civilized person. Watching her repeat that exact same exercise over all the years he’s known her is precisely the reason he’s never bothered to purchase a set of wine glasses for his apartment. He’s still waiting for the day when she forgets her wine glass and has to choose between drinking straight from the bottle or accepting whatever he has in his kitchen cabinets instead; he’s probably still got one of Jonathan’s old plastic sippy cups he can offer her to mark the momentous occasion.)

“How is the little guy?” he asks at that, flicking his head to the side to gesture to the stairs that lead to Jonathan’s bedroom.

Theia pauses before she takes a drink. “You know he hates when you call him that,” she says reproachfully.

“Well then he better get moving on hitting that growth spurt,” Jay says, with a wide grin and a bite of teeth. “You know if he had my genes he’d be a beanstalk by now. ‘Wouldn’t need to worry about being picked last for basketball or sneaking on a pair of orthopedic shoe lifts to go on the rides at Six Flags…” He trails off deliberately and at her tilt of the head and raised eyebrows, he finishes up with the cheeky addition, “I’m just saying.”

“An’ I’m just telling you that when he nails you in the crotch next time you two are having a kick around I’m turning a blind eye,” she says in response to that, with a smile that sits high and proud on her cheeks. It’s not difficult to see where Jonathan gets it from; not difficult to see how it could give Mouse another reason to want to see his boy happy.

“There’s such a thing as too far, you know?” Jay remarks, although he supposes he should be thankful Theia’s not encouraging retribution on the ice. The little guy’s a maniac on skates, nevermind with the added threat of wielding a big stick in his hands.

Theia’s response to his grumbling is an unfazed shrug; he should’ve predicted that. Make a jab at her kid’s inherited height and she’ll put your man parts up for target practice against the kid’s soccer ball (Jay’s just glad the penance no longer includes the kid’s cleats). He’d like to say it’s the first time he’s fallen victim to her particular brand of punishment, but he has a tendency to tease the kid mercilessly at times.

He shakes his head at her, chuckling. “Your parenting skills are second to none, d’you know that?”

Theia raises her glass in a toast to her own achievements. “He’s good,” she answers his earlier question rather than the one that’s clearly rhetorical. “Sees more of his Dad than he does you these days, but he’s good.”

“Yeah.” Jay sighs, scratching his hand through his hair, acknowledging his absence. “Sorry I’ve not been around as much; things at the station have been pretty dicey lately.”

She eyes him and takes a gulp of her wine (he’d term it generous; she would not and she’d also tell him since he refuses to give her wine choices the appreciation they deserve he has no room to comment). “If that’s your way of explaining away all those cuts and bruises on your face a few weeks ago, I can’t wait to hear how you’re gonna spin today’s events.”

He shakes his head, exhaling. “Nothing gets past you, does it?”

“Jus’ ‘cause I’m not privy to all the details doesn’t mean I don’t know when you’re downplaying what happened and spouting a load of B.S. as scripture,” she says, like he’s not learned over the years that she always knows more than she lets on. “And it was Jonathan that saw you. We gave Greg a ride to the station and you were standing out front with a woman, staring at the plaques on the wall. Didn’t wanna disturb you or I’d’ve sent him running over to you with a bunch of his cartoon superhero band aids.”

That gets him smiling again, although it takes a minute. “Bet you’d’ve blown me a kiss from the car window to make it all better too, right?”

“You know it.” She gifts him with a wink and a smile that dazzles him in the light.

He finds himself laughing as he points out, “You know he gets that cocky little shit act from you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Theia waves away his attempts to apportion blame, because she’s seen him play this game for years, and she’s only too happy to set him straight, “That’s a character trait he learned watching you and Greg together.”

At the mention of the other male in the equation, he tells her, “He’s doing good, Theia.” As if she can’t see that for herself. “Today proved that to a lot of people,” he says, “He held his own, like he always has. He did good.”

She nods; knows that’s about as much as she’ll get from Jay and honestly? Sometimes she doesn’t mind not being privy to all the details.

“And what about you?”

“If I can survive a beating without superhero band aids and a kiss from my friend’s fiancée, I think I’ll survive this,” Jay assures her with a crooked smile. “Plus we had a few beers before we came over, toasted to making it out of another standoff without any unnecessary bullet holes.”

She doesn’t want to touch that; reminds herself to keep breathing and pretends like it doesn’t faze her that they’re in no less danger on home soil than they were overseas, as she raises an eyebrow and curls her wine-stained lips into a smirk. “Oh, so what you’re saying is I should’ve been tossing a pitcher of water over you on the porch instead of just inviting your drunken ass in?”

“Says the woman downing wine like it’s water,” he tosses back at her and screws up his face; the thought of being doused in one of Theia’s ice cold showers is sobering enough without actually reliving it. “I still maintain that punishment is excessive.”

She lifts one shoulder, still giving off the illusion of amusing herself enough for the two of them. “Maybe. But it tends to be well deserved.”

Jay huffs out at laugh. “Guess I should be grateful you’re not threatening to shove me in the kiddie pool,” he tells her; incredulous that she could do such a thing.

“You big baby, that was one time and it was the height of summer.” She palms off this new attempt to make her feel bad; especially when the memory alone still makes her burst out laughing. She really wishes someone had caught the moment on camera.

“I was fully dressed and you deliberately waited until it was dark out and the water had gone cold and stale.”

“You need to learn to let it go,” Theia tells him, and her amusement is entirely genuine now; he’s not the only one who’s learned to compartmentalize. “There’s a song about that. Maybe you haven’t heard. You should give it a listen, ‘be good encouragement for you.”

Jay scowls at her and she just swallows the last of her wine. “If you start on that I’m getting my own pitcher of water and coming over there and dumping it all over you. I don’t care what it does to your good couch.”

She’s laughing now under the side light, glass quickly deposited on the table. When she catches her breath, she looks at him with a glowing smile and says, “Yeah, yeah, I’ve missed you too, Jay.”

His own smile only grows as he watches her stand and move towards him.

“Stay,” she tells him, cups his cheek and kisses his hairline and offers him a place to be without the expectation of anything more. “Your room’s in the same place you left it.”

She doesn’t need to say it for it to be true, for him to know.

This is his home too.

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The little globe turns on its axis and scatters its light across the room, illuminating the sight of Jonathan fast asleep, latched onto Greg’s arm and pressed as close as he can get into his side. If she had her phone she’d take a picture – or ten. As it is she commits the sight to memory. Sometimes these moments are few and far between.

“You’re staring,” he says, before he opens his eyes to look at her.

“Be glad that’s all I’m doing,” she tells him. “If I didn’t have such enviable self-restraint I’d be in there with you.”

There’s a half-cocked smile on Greg’s lips. “That doesn’t sound so bad.”

“What if I took a selfie to show your best man down the hall?” Theia asks, the remnants of her laughter easily carving a space in her cheeks for the curl of her lips.

In return, the light reflects the white of his teeth. “I’ve been perfecting my smile lately, he’d be proud.”

He throws his arm out across the comforter, and reaches for her hand. He jerks his head to the side and keeps giving her that smile that she fell for all those years ago.

“Come on,” he beckons, fingers tracing the metal around her ring finger. “You know you wanna get in on this, an’ there’s no way no how I’m choosing between you two.”

It’s times like this she gives herself a high-five for her awesome decision-making skills. Jonathan’s full-sized bed is a way better alternative (see: spacious and convenient) for impromptu sleepovers than bunk beds or a twin.

When Theia clasps his hand fully in hers Greg tugs her towards him with a triumphant chuckle. She lies down on the bed, curls herself into him, and rests her head on his chest as his arm wraps around her, their boy sleeping soundly beside them.

“So I spoke to this guy today. Marine,” he says, as casual as ever. “Well, he walked into the station with an M4 and locked me in a room with him, so I instigated a getting-to-know-you session.” He’s speaking so flippantly she wants to smack him, but she’s well versed in pretty much all things Greg by this point; this is a coping mechanism in its own right, albeit one that’s not come to light in quite a while. “Guy spent like the entirety of his daughter’s life either fighting a war of preparing for one,” he tells her, and the light catches in his frown as it makes the rounds, casting him in shadow when he shouldn’t be. “I never had that. I came back. I even brought Jay back with me.” He’s still frowning, wincing at the memory and his chest shudders under her palm. “But I couldn’t line it all up, ye know? Couldn’t get the day-to-day stuff down. Even for his sake.”

She knows this, because she lived it. He’s never had a problem knowing his talents, or even putting them to use; but that confidence and self-belief didn’t seem to translate to everything else going on in his brain after he came back.

“You love him,” she says, because it really is as simple as that. It has to be. “So you don’t hover over him every minute or every day, or tail him every time he steps out the door, so what?” She lifts her head and looks to their boy and he follows suit as she speaks; voice low, but firm, “You know his favorite cereal even though I swear he changes his mind every damn time we go grocery shopping. You know how many goals he scored last season even when you weren’t at the games. You know what his favorite reading assignment was this semester, who his favorite superhero is, the colors he’d paint every room in this house if we ever let him loose, not to mention every little thing there is to know about his best friend, my God!” She reigns in her hands that are desperate to back up her speech with their passion for animation and lays them back on his chest. “So you didn’t live with us when you came home, what does it matter, Greg? You came home. You love him. And he’d still take you to school for Show-And-Tell every damn day of the week if he could.”

That gets a smile out of him.

Only their boy would take his father into school and stand in front of his class and proudly proclaim, “My Daddy can break into the Government from space, what can yours do?” Discounting the culprit himself, their Grade-schooler remains the only one to consider that whole fiasco with the D.O.D. satellite, “so freakin’ cool, Dad, can you do it again? For me?” (and Greg probably would’ve too if she hadn’t glared at him for a solid ten minutes and threatened to change the locks if he so much as sat their boy near a computer screen).

Greg laces his fingers through hers and watches for the flash of color offset from the diamond ring she’s been wearing since before Jonathan was born.

“You know I couldn’t do any of this without you?” he says, and she knows he believes it even if she doesn’t. He was the one who brought Jay back; it’s just taken a little longer to bring himself back too.

“I love you,” Theia says, and presses a kiss to his chest; shirt still iron-pressed despite the events of the day.

“It all comes back to that, huh?” The side of his mouth shoots up with the words, his eyes bright with anticipation.

She smiles at him, and she absolutely means it when she says, “Don’t worry, I know you still love me too.”

Their boy is latched onto him on one side, and Theia’s curled into him on the other, and as he watches over them under the soft glow of his son’s nightlight, he knows this is what it’s been about all along.

This is home.

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“The light is what guides you home, the warmth is what keeps you there.”
Ellie Rodriguez

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The End.

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