I've started writing a Hallmark-esque AU that may or may not be finished in time to post for Yule/Christmas/whatever vague holiday this fic is actually about. feat. single dad!Mouse, small town doctor!Will, and 10yo!Noah being precious and adorable and angst-ridden. Here are... some angsty sentences about them.
For a moment, silence lingered in the car under the gentle hum of the music from the radio. It was the first time during the entire drive that it had been so quiet, even during the intermittent naps there was at least the sound of heavier breathing. There were singalongs, and jokes, and stories about school friends, and a million other things, but not silence. Silence was rare even outside of school breaks, their small home usually filled with the sounds of cooking or homework or laughter and all of the other signs of life that they made together.
Silence was reserved for the darker times of the night. It only came about anymore after a particularly bad nightmare, or a bad day, when talking about things would only make them worse. They’d both fallen into the habit of savoring the good things and trying to ignore the bad. The only family they had was each other, and thinking about all the people they’d lost in the past would only remind them how easy it was to lose someone again. Avoiding that train of thought was the only way to make it through the day, sometimes.
But it wasn’t easy to completely ignore all of those past anxieties and fears.
“Do I have to sleep in my own room? I wanna sleep in a big bed with you.”
Greg bit back a frown at the words and took a slow, deep breath through his nose. For the first few months they lived together, Noah wouldn’t sleep anywhere alone, and it only got worse as they grew closer. It made sense – he'd only been seven years old on that family vacation, when he’d woken up in a rented house to blood and violence and loss that he couldn’t even imagine. He’d arrived in Chicago with two parents, and a little brother, and the promise of going back to Indiana in a week to share stories about the big city and its lake with his friends. Three years later, he had someone else he called dad, and the first family vacation since the one that ended so horribly.
He probably would have been more shocked if there hadn’t been such a request, when he really thought about it. As little as Noah could have done to save his biological family, or even protect himself more than he had, it made sense to want to keep an eye on the only family he had now when they were in an unfamiliar place. No part of him would want to relive the worst day of his life if there was a way to prevent even a fraction of it.
“Of course you can sleep with me.” He kept his voice soft, risking a brief glance toward the passenger seat as if that would draw familiar eyes toward him. It didn’t, with Noah almost pointedly keeping his gaze out the window and fixed on some imaginary movement in the distance. “We’ll sit together and watch a movie in the big bed. How does that sound?”
