Author's Note: Compatible with my long Return of Todd trilogy, but reading that shouldn't be necessary to read this.
Todd had always watched Blair.
He'd met the legal definition of stalker, actually. But she didn't mind, so that made it okay.
He'd watched her when she worked, when she sang, when she cradled their children in her arms, and when she slept.
He'd watched her because he marveled that she was his, because he mistrusted her, because she fascinated him, because he was afraid that she would disappear, and because he just plain liked looking at her.
Now, though, he watched her out of real concern.
He wasn't concerned that she was injured or ill; she fairly glowed with good health and focused energy.
He wasn't concerned that she was lying to him or hiding something. After twenty-odd years, they had finally— finally!— moved past that. She'd told him what was bothering her; an email from a charity she supported, one that gave a home to abused horses who weren't able to work or live with a family, had slipped into her spam folder. It was natural that Blair would want to support that kind of cause. She loved horses, and they owned four— three of them gifts from Todd to Blair and their sons, and one born right in their own stable the summer before after Jack had decided to breed his mare. It certainly didn't concern Todd that Blair cared a great deal about horses.
What concerned him was the depths of her obsession.
It wasn't that he hadn't always known that she could obsess with the best of them. That had been clear from the moment they'd met when she'd been weeping and drinking and wringing her hands over Max Holden. He had identified. Back then, there had been a broken desperation in both of them.
Blair had no reason to be broken and desperate now.
Did she?
The first few years after his return to Llanview had been difficult. The next few had been easier. The nightmares came less frequently. The challenges to his identity slowed to a stop. He and Blair were as in sync as they had ever been. Their businesses were prospering. Their home was theirs and theirs alone, as safe and as solid a sanctuary as either of them had ever had. To his total shock (because he hadn't thought such a thing was possible, really), their sex life had somehow gotten better now that they'd had years of uninterrupted practice. Their children were thriving.
That was what had triggered Todd's concern.
It wasn't so much that she'd laughed it off when Sage, their four-year-old post-incarceration miracle, had been escorted home from her friend Diego's pirate-themed birthday party with an admonition not to demand that other children walk the plank. They had always spoiled and indulged their children.
It wasn't even that she'd watched the latest video Starr, Hope, and Travis had sent from Alaska where they were doing God-knew-what on an ice flow with impatience to get back to what she'd been doing before. Starr's zoological adventures were a fairly mundane fact of their life at this point.
No, the final straw was the day Sam had stormed in complaining that his best cousin Bree had been "drown proofed" by her father, and couldn't they give Uncle Brody permission to drown proof Sam, too? Blair had said yes without seeming to acknowledge that Sam was basically asking to be tied up and thrown in a pool. Todd thought that perhaps Jessica had had another personality split if she had allowed Brody to do that to their daughter. Didn't anyone realize that actual grown men died during those training exercises? It took Todd quite a while to convince himself that considering the kind of trouble that seemed to seek out his family, it might be just as well that Sam had the lessons. Blair had never even blinked. She'd gone back to her laptop.
That evening, while Blair was saying goodnight to Sage and Sam, Todd took her pink laptop and her gold iPhone (kept in a clear case with a balloon pattern, of course) and hid them in the safe.
"Where's my computer?" she demanded when she came back down the stairs.
"Somewhere else," Todd told her casually. "We need to talk."
"Not right now, we don't," snapped Blair. "If you won't give it back, I'll go borrow Sam's."
"Why is this horse thing so important?" he asked, calling her bluff for the moment.
"It was a wonderful organization that did very important work," she said over her shoulder, heading for Sam's room.
He knew she'd thought that. He didn't even disagree. He also caught the operative word. "Was?"
"That was the email I missed. The woman who ran it, her husband had an accident, and if he recovers at all it's going to be years of therapy. He can't be left alone and of course she wants to be with him. From what I can gather, she turned the farm over to a couple who turned out not to be able to handle it, and they wound up re-homing the horses."
"That's unfortunate, but it doesn't sound like you getting that first email when she sent it could have changed anything."
"That's where you're wrong." She spun around to face him. "Now can I have my computer back, please?"
"Why am I wrong?" he prompted.
She sighed, finally resigning herself to the undeniable fact that answering his questions was going to be much easier than not answering them. "The records of which horse went where aren't great, and I was interested in one horse in particular."
"The one Jack wanted when he was sixteen?"
"Sasha," Blair confirmed. "He said that the horse was a lost cause and so was he, but I wouldn't let him bring Sasha home because he wasn't safe to have around the younger kids."
"And that's why we started donating money to this place, I remember."
"What am I going to say to Jack?"
"You'll tell him the truth. He's not… you don't think he still thinks about himself that way, do you?" Todd had practically begged Jack not to accept the athletic scholarship that had taken him 3000 miles away to play soccer, Todd's own experience with elite collegiate athletics being what it had been. Jack had been adamant, and Jack had been right— except about the 3000 miles away part, of course. There were plenty of good universities with good soccer teams on the East Coast.
"No." Blair shook her head, and sank down to sit on the stairs. Todd sat beside her. "No, I think he's proud of how far he's come, and he should be. But that horse. Whatever was done to him to make him too dangerous for a family, that wasn't his fault. If someone had been looking out for him like he deserved, it wouldn't have happened. He didn't deserve to fall through the cracks like he didn't matter. He didn't deserve to have to fight to learn to— just to learn to be a horse again, and someone… someone needs to make sure nothing like that ever happens to him again." Her voice was shaky and her eyes were full of tears, which she blinked back. "Todd, do you know what today's date is?"
He had to think about it for a second, but just for a second. "August 1, 2016."
"That date keeps staring back at me every time I look at my computer or my phone or anywhere else."
"What am I missing?"
"Five years," she said succinctly. "August 1, 2011 was the day of the premiere of David Vickers' stupid movie. It was the day I saw you again." She glanced at the clock. "Five years almost to the minute."
"And that makes you want to cry? These last five years have been pretty good."
"Better than pretty good. But what if they hadn't happened? What if you hadn't escaped, or someone had killed you before you could get to Llanview? What if the person Louie pointed you at hadn't been John McBain? What if I'd— what if I'd been too afraid to take another chance with you?"
"That last one wasn't going to happen," said Todd dismissively, even though he'd spent months back then terrified out of his mind that it would. "I would have convinced you. I would have hung around until you married me because you hoped that would make me go away."
"Flawless logic."
"I thought so."
"We wouldn't have Sage at all. I don't think Sam or Jack or Starr would be in the great places that they are if you hadn't come back to us."
"Jack is 3000 miles away, and Starr is 5000 miles away. Neither one of those places is great. Great places are the ones where I can get there in the middle of the night if they need a chicken salad sandwich on short notice or something."
"You know what I mean. A lesser father than you wouldn't have given them the courage to chase their dreams or the security to know they can always come back home. Believe me, I know. They had a lesser father for eight years."
"Well, that's Starr and Jack and Sam and Sage," said Todd. "What about you? Where would you be if I hadn't made it back?"
"Miserable," said Blair. "Missing a piece of me I was too damn stupid to realize was missing."
"Not stupid," said Todd, who after a childhood spent at Peter Manning's knee objected to anyone he loved calling herself stupid. "Willfully blind because you were afraid to admit that you deserved better and that I loved you more than anyone else."
"You were the one who deserved better."
"None of us deserved that mess." Todd leaned against the wall and considered the matter. "I mean, you and I deserved a certain amount of crap for things we did when we were younger and sillier, but we didn't deserve that. Turns out life isn't fair." He smiled at her as she peeked at him almost shyly through her hair. She rarely looked at him as if she expected him to fix something and it flattered and warmed him when she did. "But we will track down that horse tomorrow, all right? Even if we have to fly out and look for him in person."
"Thank you."
"Consider it an anniversary present."
"If anyone should be getting presents on this particular anniversary, it should be you."
"I'll email you a shopping list."
"It would help if I had a way to check my email."
He stood up and removed her phone and laptop from the safe. She immediately tapped open her email, and her face lit with delight. "Todd! They found Sasha and he's fine!" She flipped the phone in his direction so he could see a picture of a horse who looked much like any other horse.
He meant that as a compliment to Sasha, as it happened. After a lifetime spent drawing attention to himself, he found that he enjoyed being a man who was looked at much like any other man.
"Good," said Todd. "More time for you to get everything on the shopping list. Of course, the first seven things on the list you really can't buy in a store, although you maybe should take a couple of yoga lessons first just to make sure you're flexible enough to do the thing where—"
She kissed him until he lost track of what he was saying. "I am flexible enough to do the thing," she told him with just the right amount of disdain that he would even wonder (which he hadn't, really).
"And when you can get done with that," he said breathlessly, "you can start making your list of presents you want for the fifth anniversary of the day you fed Irene to a crocodile."
"I didn't exactly feed her to the crocodile," said Blair.
Todd was pretty sure that most wives never had to make that distinction for their husbands.
Maybe he wasn't quite like any other man, after all.
And that mattered not at all.
"The only present I want is you." Blair kissed Todd again.
"Sure," he said. "But pick out something from Tiffany's, too. Or I'll just get you a life-sized crocodile made out of gold." The thought amused him. "Maybe I'll do that, anyway."
"I will do the thing twice if you don't," offered Blair.
Todd Manning was a man who knew a good deal when he heard one. He took Blair's hand and led her upstairs to their bedroom.
"Happy anniversary," he murmured around the third kiss. "And many more to come."
The End
Author's Other Note: Last month I had a dream that I was posting soap opera fanfic online. I saw the ff.n interface very clearly. As if this wasn't weird enough, the fic I was dream posting was for a couple I had never written (Eric/Nicole) from a show I hadn't watched for almost a year (Days). So to make a weird situation weirder, I decided that if I was going to write myself a ficlet for Days, I should write one for OLTL, the show I actually miss. Then the Todd/Blair ficlet spawned the Brody/Jessica ficlet, and I decided that it would only be fair to have two Days ficlets if I was going to have two OLTL ficlets, so I checked in on Nick and Chelsea. Thus, four ficlets which are basically variations on a theme, so much so that I suspect they're rather annoying if all read together. But I don't think that will be an issue unless someone has precisely the same taste in long-defunct soap opera couples as I do. Hope you enjoyed reading!