🍎☕️❤️

Okay, maybe from the outside it looked a little codependent and much less romantic, but to them it was everything good that they were looking for. Every problem that could come up they could solve, after all, they had already escaped the worst place they had ever known together. The other shit? It was easy. Jobs, befriending the neighbors, overcoming the fear of being loved by the other.

Easy. 

She doesn’t really know what to do when the test comes out positive. Two pink lines holy shit. Andrew is in the back yard setting up a pool so they can have a ‘mid summer backyard beach party’ and she is single handedly changing the course of their future.

Okay, not singlehandedly technically.

Walking over to the sliding glass door that led to the sight of all sights for her. The sun lighting up his back and him standing watching the hose fill up the dumb temporary pool with two stupid beach chairs. 

He must feel her gaze on the back of his neck because he turns to look at her and he smiles. It makes her heart clench painfully in her chest. Will he keep that same look on his face? It’s not like they’re married. There’s tension in how she’s carrying herself because he’s put the hose down and he’s stalking towards her with furrowed brows and a half formed question on his tongue.

Before he can make it all the way, Eris quickly slides open the glass door.

“I’m pregnant!”

–

Time flies when you’re busy and both of them don’t have time to remember what it was like before. From the actual pregnancy being nonstop morning sickness, to rearranging the house they had finally started to settle inside of, to signing a marriage certificate because neither of them could fathom being away from the other. 

Olivia Cody. A tiny, giggly girl, with dark brown eyes and curls that match her father’s with a color that matches her mother’s. Who wails like she could break the sound barrier if she just held out another second or two, who clings to the deer plush that her favorite pair of uncles had given her, who has only just started to learn to be so, so curious about the people who are her parents.

“Daddy,” a tiny hand pressed onto a scar on her father’s tummy where she was half propped up, both of them stretched out on a large towel on the grass. The sun was out and what better way to tire a two and a half year old out than running around with her outside? “Owie?”

Andrew’s eyes looked down at the scar she was pointing at. From one of the botched jobs that he hadn’t thought about in years.

“Not anymore baby Bug. Long time ago,” his hand drops to her back, rubbing up and down as she investigates further. The line is definitely there and the texture is different, not like how her tummy feels which is what she touches next, lifting her shirt. 

“Mmm…” Her head tilts, brown curls that are loosely tied back out of her face fall to that side. “Owie?” Another tiny curious point on another scar. “How?”

He uses his free hand to prop himself up, adjusting the squirmy girl in his arms to look at the other one she pointed at. Another story he couldn’t tell, not yet anyway. That part of his life should probably remain hidden for good, but he also didn’t want to lie to his daughter forever either, what kind of father would he be? Ever the savior, Eris appears behind them and curls over them with her hands on her hips.

“And just what are you two being so secretive about? Huh?” Her hands reach and tickle along the sides of Olivia before scooping her up out of Andrew’s arms. The ever endless dance of who got to hold the baby. An instant pout appears on her lips as she looks back down to her dad, sniffling.

“She’s fussin’ because I’ve got scars,” he stands himself up, dusting off grass from his knees as his hands occupy themselves with his two girls. One on Olivia’s back and the other on Eris’ shoulders. “She wants to know how I got ‘em.” Eris nods and presses a few soft kisses into her temple until she giggles again, flopping into her mother’s collarbone.

That made sense. Eris had scars that were relatively light and hard to see unless you were in the right light, so even with Olivia’s incessant poking and prodding, she wouldn’t have noticed. Andrew on the other hand, who preferred to run around in the sun and work in the yard in general shirtless, it was bound to happen sooner than later. 

Olivia reached and pressed against her mother’s cheek, pressing their faces together as she peered up at him. She has only ever known the man that picks her up when she’s crying, shushing her and wiping away her tears even as his own eyes get misty. That’s his baby girl crying! She has only ever known the man who holds her and her mother with a gentle touch, the man who helps her mother read bedtime stories, who loves her fiercely. 

She doesn’t know that the only scars he’s got from skateboarding are two on his left leg near his knees and a particularly bad scratch of road rash on his side that never quite healed right. She won’t learn for a long time that the scar just above his waist that she had pointed out came from glass shattering in a car accident, that the one above his elbow is from a fight in prison.

They know they can’t hide it forever, they know one day Olivia will be grown and online or someone else will look them up and tell her.

Did you know your dad used to rob banks?

They only hope by the time that happens, she’s proud of enough to be his daughter that she fires back –

LIFE CHANGING COMM from xiety on ko-fi!! oh my godddd im obsessed with it. i've been kinda bummed out lately bc of life stuff so i got this comm to cheer me up a little and ughhhg it's so good.

i love him so much i love him more than i can say... he's my everything