Title: No rose without thorns
Author: Juliana
Summary: no real plot, just a vignette
Genre: general
Rating: general audience
A/N: I just love the relationship between Rose and Bosco so I had to write this one.
"I still want grandchildren, you know."
"Ma!" he whined.
She was again down that road. She hadn't changed one bit in the past twenty years, always wanting him to get married and have children. If only things were that easy, he sighed.
"It's not like I can have them on my own." He looked at her pointedly.
"I'd probably need a woman for that, if I remember correctly from my biology classes."
She looked up from the counter she was wiping. She closed the bar at one in the morning and her son was now the only one there to keep her company. That became quite a ritual for them in the past couple of years. He stopped by almost every night after his shift before he went home. And no matter how glad she was to see him so often, she'd much rather he'd have some place else to be in a company of a much younger woman.
She saw now all the hurt that his last sentence brought to his eyes despite the fact that it had been pronounced as a joke. Her heart twisted with pain seeing her son like that. All she ever wanted for him was to be happy and he had never managed to achieve that. There was always something that went wrong.
"You'll find her, baby. I know you will."
He smiled absent-mindedly into his glass as he raised it to his lips.
"I've heard you say that numerous times before."
She washed her hands in the sink and then went to stand right in front of him. She leaned on the counter.
"Maurice, baby, you need to let her go first. You need to move on."
He returned her gaze and said softly, "I'm trying, ma. I am but I need time."
"You've had plenty of time. You went to her wedding six months ago and you hadn't seen her for almost five years before that. Don't you think that's long enough to forget her?"
She covered his hand on the counter with her own. She felt his fingers were cold and clammy from the glass of cold beer.
"Forget? I'll never forget, you know that. It doesn't work that way."
"You know what I meant, honey."
"I know and I said I was trying. It's just … Well, it's not the easiest thing I've ever done. But I'm working on it."
He squeezed her hand a lot more reassuringly than he felt himself.
"You should start dating again, Maurice. You won't meet anyone at work or here, not anyone worth meeting, anyway. You used to go out every night years ago. What happened to that man?"
"A woman broke his heart," he said almost defiantly.
She let her arms fall down to her sides dejectedly. Even when she tried to make him see the brighter side of it she obviously couldn't avoid the painful topic.
"Besides, I don't think I'd make a good father, anyway. Having that bastard's blood in my veins …"
Rose winced at his words. He was still convinced he was just like his father who used to beat her and their sons. She couldn't make him see that he was a totally different person.
"Maurice … I've seen you with Faith's children. I know you'd make a great father."
His face showed he was deeply in thought. Pleasant thoughts, it seemed, as a smile crept up from his lips to his clouded eyes.
"Yeah, it was nice being with them when they were still kids. It almost felt like they were mine when we took them out from time to time when her husband wasn't home or just spent time with them on their birthdays and for Christmas. Chuck was so adorable and Em … she was just like her mom. She still is, I guess. I almost didn't recognize them at her wedding. Chuck is taller than me now. The last time I'd seen him before that he was thirteen." His expression was so distant; he seemed totally immersed in the past as he recounted some of his most pleasant memories in a soft musical voice.
He suddenly smiled amused at a memory that crawled into his mind.
"I remember once we picked up Charlie from kindergarten because he was sick. For a reason I can't remember I ended up sitting with him in the back seat and Faith driving. He suddenly puked all over my uniform. Faith panicked because she was afraid I'd smack him for what he did but I wasn't even annoyed. It was weird." He shrugged unable to explain why he'd felt the way he had towards children that hadn't even been his.
"Yeah, I kept wondering back then whether it was the kids or Faith you loved so much to be willing to put up with that kind of stuff with such an unusual calmness. That was so unlike you," Rose smiled.
He just laughed before she continued.
"It was both, wasn't it? Or am I wrong?"
He continued to smile but said nothing.
"I guess they were the closest I got to having kids. I'm too old now to be running after a toddler and I'd be almost sixty before they went off to college. Who wants a parent as old as that?" he smiled bitterly.
She didn't know what to say to that. It would be pointless trying to convince him otherwise. She felt deep down that he would never be able to move on with his life. He already gave all his love to one woman and he never got it back. And that was it for him.
She tried to lighten the atmosphere a bit, saying, "Well, I've seen some progress. At least this time you didn't turn me straight down saying you don't want children, you found your excuse in not having met the right woman yet. So I'm still hoping."
"You never give up, do you?" he smiled.
She shook her head.
He stood up from his stool and went around the bar to her.
"Come here," he invited her and hugged her tightly. She leaned her head on his shoulder, her insides hurting deeply for her only remaining son.
"I love you, ma."