“Ah, well.” Jack frowned “we could always try and babysit.”
“Key word istry, yeah?”
“Hey, I’m not gonna pretend we’ll be super at it.”
“Appreciate the sincerity, mate.” He polished off his plate and went to leave it in the kitchen. Then he paused, sighing “I’m gonna go ask Raven if she wants anything. Then I’ll probably just…she won’t trust you guys to be left with her, so I’ll bring her up and try to nap or something. You sticking around, or…?”
“They can, uh…” Theo awkwardly looked towards Jack “stay at mine?”
I got the impression he was embarrassed about showing it to too many people. I didn’t know what he expected us to expect of a place bought off a minimum wage job.
“Sounds great.” I assured him. He shot me a small smile before turning to Stryker and adding “can I come back tomorrow morning?”
The teen nodded slowly “yeah. Yeah, come by. Bring the weed.”
They shared a grin.
Jack wasn’tparticularlyimpressed, as was painfully obvious from the way he crinkled his nose up as we entered.
He could besuchabratsometimes. I whacked him upside the head for it, narrowing my eyes in a way that I hoped got the message across.
Theo didn’t seem to notice, or if he did he ignored it.
“There’s a guest room.” He murmured “you’ll have to take the sofa. Sorry.” He said to Jack in a verydishonestway- I guessed hehadseen his expression, because we both knew that the guest roomwouldn’tbe used by me since I’d be sharing with Theo, which meant it was actually empty and he was making Jack sleep on the admittedly lumpy and uncomfortable sofa out of spite. Amusement kindled in my chest. Classic Theo.
Jack didn’t look happy about the arrangement but settled on scowling.
“If you’re hungry you can see to yourselves. There’s the kitchen.” He waved a hand over “and…well, it’s not a hard place to navigate.”
“No.” Jack muttered in agreement.
I rolled my eyes at him.
We didn’t fuck. It was a little weird- Theo never seemed to want to in his own house, though it may have been the simple thought that Jack was right downstairs- but we did snuggle up together in our usual position.
“I want a kid like S.” Theo yawned.
My eyebrows raised, momentarily uncertain what to reply before I settled on “really? They’re hard work.”
“Didn’t look like hard work.” Theo mumbled “she wasn’t doing anything.”
I chuckled at the naiveness of the comment. “Yeah, but you only saw her for twenty minutes. She’ll be a bit of a nightmare for her parents.”
He grunted. “Cute, though.”
“Hmm.”
We fell silent. I didn’t know if I could imagine Theo as a dad. Not yet, anyway. Stryker had more of the necessary maturity that was required, but I knew that he’d be committed to his kid if he were ever to have one. He was good with kids. They liked him. My little brother had liked him a lot the morning after the disastrous night where he’d stayed at my house and reduced me to a sobbing mess over him. I’d had to go and check on the toddler at the crack ass of dawn and ofcoursehe’d been awake and ofcourseTheo had been the one to tire him out enough to get him to drop off again before doing a runner back to the palace.
He shifted against me, tilting his head upwards and whispering “how are you?”
“What?” I blinked, a little lost at the question.
“With…your depression. How are you?”
My insides warmed. I found myself smiling like an idiot at the very prospect that he cared enough to ask. “Okay.” I whispered back “I’ve been okay.”
He nodded, nuzzling into the crook of my neck and pressing a kiss there “what’s it like?”
