#char:grant

It was comfortable enough. He came from an upper-middle class family so he didn't really struggle financially and he was never lonely because Evangeline was always with him - she's his twin, and she just happens to be older by a few minutes, a fact that she never let him forget. He started playing the piano at the age of 3 (he's classically trained), and Evangeline took up the violin. As in all things, they were dynamic together. He's also trained in ballet - they both are - but you'll never catch him admitting that. He was good at school because it came easily to him. He decided to enlist after college, though, because he realized that while school was came easy to him, it wasn't his calling. His mother died suddenly while he was in BMT, and his father left the family shortly after. After BMT he married Elaine and sort of lost touch with his sister because of his tours. She moved in with him after Elaine's death to help take care of Lia Monet and neither have had any contact with their father since their mother's passing.

Ah Grant and romance 3

I’m tempted to say no, right off the bat. Let me explain: Grant and Elaine were for all intents and purpose the typical small-town couple. They knew each other since childhood, fell in love in high school, and were married shortly after. Elaine has always been a part of Grant in that no other girl could ever compare to her. She was a firestorm in a tiny package, all exuberance and contradictions. She was mature and level headed, but obsessed with Disney movies, and she brought out the best in him. 

Grant enlisted and left for his first tour just a few months after their wedding. Elaine got pregnant after the end of his second tour, and that was when he decided that his third would be his final. She went through her pregnancy alone, but he was able to attend his daughter’s birth. Grant was never really able to acclimate to civilian life even after taking a job as a security guard at the shipping lot, but Elaine, and now Lia Monet, were the lights of his life and he would gladly trade the adrenaline filled days of combat for a quiet life with his wife and daughter. 

I say no to a ship because he’s still very much pining after his wife. Grant is all righteous anger and vengeance. His attention is split between caring for his daughter (thankfully, he has his twin to help) and finding his wife’s murderer. Romance is the furthest thing from his mind.

but baby most of those are so cute.

Grant explaining to Lia that she'd never see her mother again

Grant taking Lia to her first day of school

Grant dancing with Lia on his feet

Grant and Lia laughing and making a mess while making dinner

Grant teaching Lia to play the piano

Grant bringing out the scrapbook and telling Lia about her mother, about how much he still loves her

Grant watching Disney movies with Lia because Elaine was obsessed with them

Grant threatening potential boyfriends

in which Grant meets his daughter for the first time.

The first time Grant laid eyes on her, he knew: from this moment on, this little girl would be the center of his world. Lia Monet Montgomery they’d decided to call her, a name that was both delicate and powerful or at least he thought so. It fit well in his mouth, wrapped around his tongue only to be whispered as a prayer of sorts, hallowed and too heavenly to be found in the mouths of mere mortals. She was an answer to his prayers, this tiny infant who fit so perfectly in his arms and depended so entirely on him. With eyes full of wisdom (a trait she’d clearly inherited from her mother), she reminded him of the innocence of the world. As a soldier tried and scarred by war, Grant had long denounced the existence of innocence. He’d seen and experienced too much, committing as many gross atrocities as the ones he fought, to believe in the divine. Yet, looking into his daughter’s eyes, he could almost swear that he saw the creator reflected there. She was poetry and beauty all wrapped into one – this daughter of his whose very smile could put the sun to shame – and she brought him to his knees. 

It was nearly impossible to believe that he’d had any part in creating so perfect a creature, but when she smiled Grant could glimpse himself in the turn of her lips and when she cried he saw himself in the way her face crumbled in on itself. Grant had never thought himself the poetic type; he’d never believed that he would be the father who would almost aggressively barrage strangers with pictures of his child, but he was so proud of this little being that he wanted to scream it to the Heavens; he waxed poetic. This should be embarrassing, he thought to himself, his daughter’s tiny hand wrapped around his pointer finger, but he couldn’t bring himself to feel embarrassed in any way. He was now a father and he had lost his heart to his daughter.