Pick your poison, babe, I'm poison either way

Whiskey's stretched across the dining room rug with the dishwasher humming in the background. You're standing at the sink, drying the same plate again and again as you listen to the wind chimes clink faintly through the open window in front of you. 

Sam notices you, because you haven't said a word in five minutes. He's at the table with his laptop open in front of him. "You planning on polishing that into a mirror?" He asks, leaning his head on his hand, elbow on the table. 

You glance down at the plate in your hands, sighing as you place it in the cabinet. "Shut up." 

He watches you quietly before turning to his laptop again, looking at the screen. You've been like this all week. He closes the laptop without another comment and then stretches slightly. "You wanna talk about it? Or you wanna keep standing there haunting the kitchen?" 

You glance over at him, raising your brows so high it’s comical. "I am not haunting."

"Yes, you are." He chuckles. "All you need is a white dress, a candle, and a little tuberculosis and I think you'd have it handled."

“Fuck off.” You almost smile. You turn your head back down towards the sink full of dishes. "I was just thinking." 

"Uh oh." He teases softly.

You roll your eyes and sigh, not one for it tonight. "Sam."

He pushes back from the table and stands, moving closer to you. He leans his hip against the counter and crosses his arms across his chest as he looks at you. "About what?" He asks softly.

You hesitate, but he knows. You know he knows. "I don't know." You sigh again, shrugging. "I just thought things would look different by now." 

He nods, inhaling slowly himself as he tries to find a response. All he comes up with is, "different how?" 

You shrug again, not looking at him. "I don't know… Like the house should be messier, louder. We should be tripping over toys in the hallway or something." 

He lets out that breath even slower now, "Whiskey leaves toys in the hallway all the time." He offers gently. Not the usual Sam you know. "I've almost eaten shit twice this week."

"That's not the same. You know it's not."

"I know." He agrees and shrugs. Silence envelops you again as the dishwasher clicks off. 

You tap your fingers against a glass sitting on the dish mat. "I just keep thinking that you deserved that. And I can't really give it to you." Your voice catches in your throat, annoyingly. 

He frowns, straightening his back as he looks at you. "Hey… No." 

You shake your head almost immediately, "it's not self-pity, I just—"

"It is though." He cuts you off, voice sharp. "And I don't like it." 

You raise your head to meet his eyes. Dark brown and pooling with worry. He lets them scour your face, looking for any sign that you're even more upset at his words. When he doesn't find that, he continues.

"I didn't get with you for your uterus." He says it flatly, more matter-of-factly than anything else that's dropped from his mouth recently. 

"Wow. How romantic." You huff.

"You know what I mean." He rolls his eyes, shifting his weight slightly. He uncrosses his arms, running a hand up over his head. "Ive pictured it too. I've pictured you yelling at me about car seats. I pictured stepping on toys at 2am. I pictured it, babe." He sighs, "But I've also pictured losing you once. Over there." He adds, a bit quieter. Then he shrugs. "And that one felt a hell of a lot more real. So if I have to pick which fantasy I'm giving up on? Easy." 

You stare at him sadly. 

He just shrugs. Like all of that is nothing. "I want you. I've already got the best thing. I don't need kids." 

Your eyes start to well up before you can stop them. He can't just say shit like that.

He sees it and groans softly, head tipping back as his eyes close. "Ah shit, don't cry. I'm bad at crying. I start saying stupid shit." 

"You're already saying pretty stupid shit." You whisper, wiping a tear from your eyes but a smile is tugging at your lips. 

He smiles a bit as he steps closer to you, guiding you around until you're facing him. Then his hands slide around your waist and slip into the back pockets of your jeans. "You think I'm sitting around here disappointed?" He asks softly. "You think I look at you and go, damn, shame about the statistical probability of that one?" 

You snort, though it sounds more like a cough. "You are such an asshole." 

"Yeah, maybe." He shrugs. "But you've yet to kick me to the curb so I guess I'm doing something right here." You press your face against his chest as he holds you, breathing in deeply. He lets you, running his hand up and down your back. After another minute or two, he exhales a breath against your hair and smiles a bit. "You know," he starts. "I used to think there was this checklist… back when we got together." 

You pull back slightly to look at his face, confused. "A checklist?"

"Yeah. A checklist." He nods, adjusting his arms so they're tucked up closer against you. "We graduate. I enlist. We get a house. Have some kids. Get a dog. In that order. Like we're supposed to live our life by some instruction manual." 

You almost smile at him again.

"I kept thinking if we didn't follow it exactly, it meant we screwed something up." He says softly. "I've done the almost-lost-everything thing. I laid in that hospital bed staring at the ceiling thinking I might never come back to any of this. Not you. Not this house. Not the damn dog shedding on my clothes." His mouth twitches up into a smile. "So if this is what we get? I'm okay with that. Our life is perfect just how it is." 

Your throat tightens, and the inside of your cheek feels raw from biting at it. "I just don't want you to resent me."

"For what?!" He scoffs, "Not producing progeny that would inherit my temper and your stubbornness? Think you saved us all. That kid would've been a menace to society." 

"Sam." You repeat.

"I'm serious." He moves one hand and tips your chin up. "I don't resent you. I look at you and I see my girlfriend. The woman who wrote me letters every week when I needed them the most. The woman who dragged me home and refused to let me rot in bed." His thumb brushes the wetness under your eye away. "That's not lacking… and yeah, I'll probably always wonder what a kid of ours would've looked like or acted like. You will too. But wondering isn't the same as resenting. And besides, we've got Whiskey and she's like 2 toddlers combined." 

Whiskey suddenly jolts awake at the sound of her name. She looks around the room, spots you and Sam. She stretches when she stands, grabs her tennis ball, and trots over with her tail wagging hard enough it thumps against the cabinets with a thwack. 

Sam looks down at where she's sat at your feet and chuckles. "Speak of the idiot."

You let out a laugh at that, bending down to pick up the tennis ball before she shoves it into his leg. "She thinks we're being too serious." 

"She's right. Can we stop it?" He chuckles softly. You toss the ball down the hallway. Whiskey tears after it, skidding across the hardwood as she does. Sam leans back against the counter, watching you play with Whiskey. "We're allowed to be sad." He says softly. "I'm not pretending it's nothing, babe. I promise."

"I know you're not." 

"And if that means we get to sleep in on Saturdays," He shrugs, "and take spontaneous road trips, and maybe— I don't know— adopt another eighty-pound disaster at some point…" 

You raise your eyebrows as you look at him, "Another one?" 

He nods, "go big or go home, baby. Two of those dumbasses. Double the fur. We'll complain about vet bills but secretly love every bit of it."

"You'd lose your mind." You laugh softly, tucking back tear-stained hair behind your ear.

"I've already lost my mind, I live with you." Whiskey comes barrelling back down the hall then, nearly wiping out as she turns the corner. You lean into him again and he kisses the top of your head. "You're it for me." He says softly, his hand settling on your lower back as Whiskey stops in front of you.

Only now, you don't feel the burden you've been carrying around for weeks. All you feel is the love he has to share. 

The big door of the garage is rolled up, letting in the afternoon light. Eddie's got a rag thrown over his shoulder as he crouches in front of a tattered cardboard box that looks like it hadn't been opened since before each of the girls were born. His hair's tied back loosely in one of your hair ties, greying at the temples. 

Alice is sitting on the steps by the door into the house, leaning back on the palms of her hands. Roan walks back and forth slowly, kicking a loose bolt on the cracked concrete every time she passes. "This is insane, dad." Alice sighs, leaning her head back on her shoulders to stare at the ceiling above her. "You know that, right?"

Eddie shuffles around, grunts when he stands, and moves the box to another area of the garage. "Enlighten me." 

"You're famous!" She says, exasperated as she sits back up straight. She’s sure that one little detail should end this conversation right there. "You're rich! You could hire someone to do this." 

Roan nods, agreeing with her sister as she kicks at the bolt again, watching it bounce out of her vicinity this time. "Yeah, dad. This is a job for like… some guy named Gary. Not us." 

Eddie glances at them, raising his brows as he tries to find exactly where the audacity is coming from. This was just a regular Saturday in April back at Gareth’s for him, when Mrs. Mara Emerson would bribe them into a month’s worth of cleaning with the promise of their favorite burgers and a pineapple upside down cake. "Gary?"

"Yeah." Roan shrugs.

Eddie leans back against your car, crossing his arms over his chest. "That's pretty specific for two teenage girls who get anything and everything they could ever dream of." He shakes his head, "and also offensive to the many hardworking non-Gary's out there." 

Alice groans, loudly, in response, "daaaad."

"What?" He frowns and dips his head, throwing his hands up, palms to them. "Maybe I like cleaning my own garage."

"You don't." Roan challenges.

"You don't know me." Eddie chuckles and shakes his head, pushing off the car to move towards another stack of soft and worn cardboard boxes. "I’ve been gone for two months. Maybe I want to spend some time with my kids, whom I love and cherish and wish that I could see more. Ever think of that?"

Alice snorts, pushing herself off the stairs and then lowering herself down in front of the built-in shelving until she can reach the bottom shelves. "Spending time with us? Or getting free child labor?"

Eddie rolls his eyes, sorting through a bit of knick knacks, "You're welcome for the time you get to spend with your old man." 

Alice shakes her head, running her hands along the bottom shelf until she comes across a little blue tin. She pulls it out, confused, "I didn't know mom had sewing stuff." She shakes the tin, it doens't rattle in the way needles and thread would rattle. She looks at Roan.

Roan drops down beside her. "Open it." 

"Don't open it. Your mom doesn't sew for fun. It's probably some of her doll shit." He says automatically, not looking towards them. "And if it's something spooky she picked up from a yard sale, I really don't have time for that today."

Alice rolls her eyes and pops the lid on the tin despite the judgement. 

Roan tries to look over her shoulder, "what is it?"

"Pictures." Alice says and shrugs, reaching in to pull out a small bundle. The edges are worn and yellowing. She looks at the photo on the top of the stack. There's a red mustang in the background— much like her dad's that’s tucked away under a tarp in the second opening of their two car garage— the sun glaring off the windshield. There's a woman leaning against it with a little boy on her hip. She's wearing sunglasses, her hair dark brown and wild, just like her own. "Dad?" Alice glances over her shoulder at him. 

Eddie turns his head to look at her for a moment, before turning his attention back to the box, distracted. "Yeah?"

She holds up the photo, staying quiet. Quiet enough that it gets him to look up again. He squints and steps a bit closer. "Let me see that." He says softly, holding his hand out. Alice hands it over quietly. When his eyes fall over the photo, something in his face softens. His thumb brushes over the worn in edges of the photograph and he chuckles, almost to himself. The girls watch him quiet and curious. "Girls… That is my mom." He says softly, pointing to the woman. His smile is so kind, the girls aren’t sure if they’ve ever seen him look like that before. Then he points to the kid in her arms, "and that's me." 

Roan leans in, letting her eyes scan over the photo face. "You were pretty tiny."

"I was adorable once. Hard to believe, I know." He jokes softly.

Alice glances away from the photo and into the tin again, holding it up between them. "There's more in here."

Eddie glances down at it, "yeah?"

She nods and starts pulling photos out one by one. One's his mom, sitting on the hood of that same mustang in denim shorts. There's another one of her at a kitchen table somewhere with a man that looks a whole lot like Grandpa Wayne. His arm is slung around her shoulders and she has a lit cigarette between her fingers. In the final one they look at, she's holding who the girls decide is, Eddie, as a baby. He's cradled to her chest and she's looking at him like he was the best love she had ever felt in her life. 

Roan smiles at that one, taking it gently from her sister. "She's pretty." 

Eddie huffs out a breath that turns into another smile, nodding, "She is."

Alice looks at the photo, pinning down the kind brown eyes, dimples, and dark curls. The way she smiles, the same lines and dimples. "She looks like you."

Eddie laughs and shakes his head a little. "Other way around, kid."

Roan traces the edges of the photo in her hand as Eddie continues to peek through the stack. She bites the inside of her cheek and looks at her dad. "Why haven't we seen these before?"

Eddie leans his hip against the workbench along the back wall, not looking up from the photos in his hands. "Didn't know where they were." He says softly. "Thought I lost most of 'em when I moved out of Grandpa Wayne's before you girls were born, if I'm being honest."

Roan and Alice exchange a look, he hadn’t seen pictures of his mom in that long? “How did she die?" Roan asks softly.

"She got pretty sick." Eddie says quietly and leaves it at that.

Roan nods a little, looking at the pictures again. Her heart stinging for her dad's younger self. She knew her grandmother had been gone for a long time. But she couldn't imagine life without you, her mom, and she's 14. "How old were you?" She asks.

Eddie glances over where his own red mustang sits under the white canvas, "six."

Alice sucks in a breath and starts to stack the photos back up to place back into the tin. "That sucks."

It's blunt and honest, but Eddie nods. Laughing lightly at the way it’s said, as he shrugs. "Yeah, It did suck. Just a bit."

From inside, the three of them hear your voice call out the door for dinner. So Alice scoops the photos Eddie isnt holding back into the tin, carefully, and tucks it under her arm. She smiles at Roan, nodding her head towards the door to give signal to her to let Eddie have a minute. They make their way inside and the door swings shut behind them. Eddie sighs softly.

He pushes himself off the workbench and pins the photo of him and his mom in front of her car onto the board hanging on the wall, right next to a picture of you and him at his first big Corroded Coffin show, Alice's first day of kindergarten, and one of Roan covered in spaghetti from head to toe. All his favorite girls in one place.

He looks around, giving the garage one last once over, before walking into the kitchen. Cleaning this up can wait until Gareth’s free and until he can bribe his wonderful wife into making a pineapple upside down cake almost like Mrs. Emerson’s. He smiles at the family waiting for him at the table, the blue tin of photos sitting on the counter, waiting for him to comb through when the time is right. 

The couch cushions dip slightly under Mac's weight when he shifts beside you, his arm heavy and warm across the back of your shoulders. You've got the TV on, playing something that started off as a rerun of this morning's news and has devolved into a western you’re pretty sure you’ve seen Mac’s mom play. After about twenty minutes, it'd just turned into background noise as you soak in your husband's warmth. His thumb is dragging slow, absent minded lines along your arm as you sit. Then the front door slams open.

"Hey!" You start to sit up and twist your head, only to be met by a blur and the sound of footsteps hurrying down the hall. Your mother-in-law steps into view at the door and waves. You wave back, smiling.

"He's got his bag." She says softly, smiling like shes amused with herself. "Love you both." 

"Love you!" you echo as she pulls the door closed. Your eyes follow the line of the hallway where Waylon had disappeared, his footsteps fast and uneven. You hear his bedroom door slam shut a second later. Mac's hand stops moving on your arm.

"That was weird." He chuckles softly. 

You nod, frowning as you glance towards your son's room. "Yeah… He didn't even come say hi." 

Mac sighs and moves his arm from around you, placing his hands on his knees like he's about to stand. "Let me go check—"

"I got it." You say softly as you push yourself up. "You just got comfortable." You press a kiss against his head and head down the hall. You knock gently on the door before twisting the handle and peeking inside. 

He's kneeling in front of his bed, his eyes go wide when he sees you. "Hi." He says, trying his best to sound not guilty in the court of his mama. 

You let your eyes run over him, checking to see if there were any new bumps, bruises, injuries, hair colors, anything, and smile softly when you don't find any. But then you see something move under the edge of his bed. You raise your eyebrows, "Waylon?" 

He presses his lips together as a small orange head peeks it's head out. Then it's followed by a cream colored head. A tail shifts. It's two cats that are very much not supposed to be here. Waylon bites his lip, trying to tug his blanket over them before you can see. 

But by the breath you let out, he already knows it's too late. You bring your hand up to your forehead, eyes slipping closed. "You brought cats home?"

"They were out by the shed at Mamaw and Papaw's… they didn't have a mom and it's cold at night and Papaw said they just showed up and I thought—"

You sigh, turning your head towards the living room, "Mac!" You call. 

There's a moment of silence before you hear him call back, "what's up?"

You look at the cats for a moment and then your son's pleading eyes. If he would have asked. "You need to come here."

You hear the couch springs creak as he stands, and then the sounds of shuffling socked feet. "What'd he do?" He asks.

You lean back against the wall, eyes on the two furry companions, "just come look." 

Mac appears in the doorway just a few moments later, eyeing the situation unfolding in front of him. He notices the tails peeking out first, then the heads, and their bodies. "No, no, no."

Waylon scrambles up from his knees, "dad, they don't have anywhere to go—"

"Waylon." Mac cuts him off and drags a hand down his face. He sighs, looking at the big brown eyes of his son before letting his gaze flick to the cats and then back. "Did you bring them all the way from Mamaw and Papaw's?" He asks. Suddenly, his mom's amused little smile seems to be fitting. 

Waylon nods, cheeks bright red. "In my backpack." 

Mac sighs and looks at you, shaking his head in disbelief. "Jesus Christ, Way."

"They were gonna stay outside!" Waylon frowns, "Papaw said they're just strays, but they're friendly—"

"Yeah, and now they're strays in my house." Mac sighs. 

Waylon's frown grows sadder by the minute, "they're not strays… they're just little."

Mac sighs, crossing his arms over his chest as he leans back against the wall next to you. "This was a bad call, bud." 

Waylon's shoulders pull in a bit, his gaze dropping to the floor in front of him. You hear a sniffle, "but dad, they're gonna die out there."

Damn, this kid's big heart.

You sigh and step forward, crouching down in front of Waylon. You lift the blanket to peer down at the two kittens. You glance at Mac, who's cracking just as much as you are. Then you look at Waylon. "They can stay until they're a little bigger, okay? Then out to the barn. We'll set something up to keep them warm and dry—"

"We're gonna end up with ten of them." Mac sighs, letting his head thunk back against the wall. 

You just roll your eyes and smile at Waylon, "or just two that keep the mice out, that you're gonna take care of." You say and pat Waylon's hand. 

He looks up then, almost fast enough to make himself feel dizzy, "I swear I will."

Mac sighs, looking between the two of you. "You're both a pain in my ass." He jokes softly, which has you both smiling. "Go find 'em something to sleep in, we'll take 'em to the vet in the morning."

Waylon's on his feet before he can even finish the sentence and throws his arms around Mac's middle, hugging him tight. His head comes to just below Mac's chin now, that summer growth spurt showing off in it's entirety. Mac grunts under the impact, but his hand comes up and settles on the back of Waylon's head automatically. 

You stay crouched on the floor, smiling as you watch your boys. Love settling deep in your chest. Then a small weight bumps against your fingers and you glance down to see the little orange one pressing it's face right up against you. You sigh softly. You're never getting rid of these things, not as long as Waylon's around.