“Morning. So I was thinking for the next song—”
“Finn.”
“—what if we did something a bit different?”
Robbie blew out a breath, but he didn’t push. “Like what?”
Finn managed to keep them on topic—off topic?—for almost an hour, focused on choreography.
Of course, they couldn’t actively do that forever.
As they took a break, Robbie pulled out his phone and scowled at it. He typed furiously for several minutes, and Finn couldn’t take it. Couldn’t stand not knowing what had Robbie so unhappy. Just because Robbie wasn’t invested like Finn didn’t mean Finn could just stop caring.
“What is it?”
Robbie sighed and dropped his phone on his bag. “Questions from Eugene. He’s petitioning the judge to drop my parents’ request for custody before our hearing on the grounds that Sawyer doesn’t want to live with them. Which, you’d think should be straightforward since they deadname him and he had an anxiety attack at the thought of it, but.” He shrugged.
“I’m sorry you and Sawyer are going through this.” It sounded like a nightmare. Finn couldn’t imagine how much worry Robbie must be in right now, knowing that his status as Sawyer’s parent was in danger of being legally stripped from him, despite the fact that he, Sawyer,andSawyer’s biological father all knew Robbie was the best man for the job.
“The process is painful,” he agreed. “I’ve learned so much about custody cases in the past few days I could probably become a lawyer.” He set his water aside, dry rubbed his face, and sighed. “Oh well. Maybe it’ll come in useful again someday if we decide to go the adoption route.”
Finn’s brain screeched to a halt. He stopped functioning, forgetting about his mouthful of water as he stared.
Robbie, still lost in thought, frowned and said, “Wait, do you want kids? More kids? I mean,Icome with a kid—”
Finn sprayed water in Robbie’s face.
They stared at each other. Robbie’s face dripped with water. Finn’s burned with mortification. What the fuck. Oh my God.
Silence reigned for a small eternity. Was Finn going to laugh or cry? Or run away screaming? Maybe the earth would open and swallow him whole?
None of those things happened, though, and eventually he managed to get his mouth to move again. “Sorry—butwhat—”
At the same time, Robbie said, “Oh my God, I’m a disaster.” He buried his wet face in his hands for a moment and then pulled them away. “You’re so bad for my impulse control. First I call you babygirl—”
Finn made a small, wounded noise and gave in to the urge to cover his own face.
Unfortunately—fortunately?—Robbie kept talking. “—without meaning to or even checking with you, which thank God that worked out, but then just out of nowhere, ‘hey do you want kids with me?’ I did not mean to say that. I didn’t mean to buy an engagement ring either, these things justhappento me when you’re around—”
Finn pried his hands away from his face. Surely he hadn’t just heard what he thought he’d heard.
“—but I couldn’t justnot buy itonce I saw it. It was the ring I was meant to give you—”
“The ring youwhat?”
“Uh.” Robbie froze, eyes wide, cheeks pink. “Can we forget I said that?”
“We definitely cannot,” Finn said faintly. He felt like he’d lost the thread of this conversation entirely, like he’d woken up in a parallel universe. His heart was pounding and his head was fuzzy and literally nothing made sense; he needed them to pause for a moment so he could catch up.
“Like, I’ve never been in love or even really dated before, but even I know that’s too soon, right? So as soon as I bought it, I realized I was insane, so I got you a necklace to wear it on—”
Sure. Right. Robbie’s reaction tooops, too soon to make that commitment or drop that kind of cashwas to buy something else expensive to go with it. That made total sense.
“Just.” Finn held up a hand before Robbie could tell him he’d gotten Finn a dog and picked out their retirement home. He could panic about the wholein lovebomb later. “Can we rewind? Because I kind of thought—you said you had to prioritize Sawyer right now…?”
“Yeah,” Robbie said. He looked sheepish, and also a little on edge. Which. Did he just propose? With Finn’s spit-water all over his face? Finn could forgive him for being a little wild right now. “Uh, I meant I wasn’t going to have a lot of time to spend with you until the courts grant me permanent guardianship, not that I could only fuck you casually. I didn’t realize you’d gotten the wrong idea until your mom and Sawyer tried to give me the shovel talk.”
Gailhad gotten involved in this? Oh Jesus. “She saw my car in your driveway,” Finn realized, “when she brought Sawyer home.”
