Scott eyes the mug in his father’s grip. For a minute he’d thought - but no, the mug is actually empty and Scott knows the pain of that all too well from the days he couldn’t escape the desk in the comms room. If it wasn’t for MAX, there’d be a little path worn into the floorboards between the desk and the kitchen like a sheeptrack.
“Sure, you should’ve said, I’d have got you a fresh mug. I’ve got distracting Virg from the sound of the coffee grinder down to a fine art, you just gotta…” Scott’s own chuckle gets wedged in his throat at the reminder of precisely where he found his dad and why Virg was so worried about him in the first place.
“Y’know what, I fancy cocoa instead. How about that? When Virg goes food shopping for the island he gets these mini marshmallows and hides them on the bottom shelf where he thinks I can’t see.” Little brother uses them as a bribe, Scott remembers that too late so he just stops talking because he’s not sure what to say. He hasn’t been a son for a while. He’s been a replacement dad.
Old dusty memories of dad reminding him to “Stay where I can see ya.” come to mind and Scott always thought it sucked at the time because he’d wanted to explore that big wide world out there. But now he understands more than he ever thought possible. How the heck did dad ever manage to let any of them spread their wings and fly when Scott’s started to panic at the sight of an empty desk?
Scott managed to loosen his grip on Alan over the years. He can let dad go too, even if he still sees the footage from the Zero-X every night in his dreams. One finger at a time no matter how much it scares him.
“There’s a Tracy Industries board meeting coming up on the third, I promised I’d go after skipping out on the last one for an earthquake in Japan. Am I going, or you?” he offers. It’s weak but it’s the best he can do.
“Someone say cocoa? With the little marshmallows Virgil hides in the bottom cabinet?” Alan looked up from the screen of his tablet. He had been going between a new quest in Cavern Quest and looking at some of the universities he was interested in–something he should have been doing the past year or two, but it had been a bit busy with The Hood and all.
When he saw who was with Scott, however, his face cracked into an even bigger smile. “Hey, Dad!” It felt so weird saying it. He had called Scott dad a few times and that was both weird and natural all the same. It was the same now for their own father, but in a different way. His father had been gone for about half of his life, he had been starting to forget things about him, and while he had always hoped they’d find him, he couldn’t deny that a small part already believed that they wouldn’t.
But now. Now he was here. In the flesh, and there weren’t enough hours in the day or stars in the sky, for him to ask everything he wanted to ask.
“Are you taking a break from work? Why don’t we sit out on the deck? It’s a nice day–” Alan looked behind him at the fading light. “–er, evening.” He smiled again, so big he had to close his eyes.
He jumped from his seat and closed the gap between them, taking his father’s hand and pulling him along. “Scott can get the cocoa and we can get a good seat.”
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