Watermelon

Author's Note: This was written as a challenge for Shimmerwings, and is terrifyingly fluffy. It also makes me feel bad for Sarah, which I hate. kicks Sarah smiles beatifically Bonus points for catching Lady and the Tramp and Calvin and Hobbes references!

Disclaimer: Newsies? Not mine. weeps

Sarah wrung her hands absently—a nervous habit—and stared at the floor. It was scuffed, the varnish worn away by the growing pains of three children. Here was the gouge from Sarah's first high heels, when she'd slipped and broken her arm; here were the twin lines Les' train tracks had caused, which had nearly given their mother a heart attack when she'd seen them.

David had left no distinctive marks, filled with memory; nothing but everyday wear and tear of childhood. He was always the mature one, the responsible one, the golden child. He could do anything. He knew everything. He got everything.

Well, just one thing, really.

One person.

Sarah looked up and scrutinized the men on the couch before her. She knew they were nervous; David had been uncharacteristically silent, and Jack was jumpy, distracted, his sentences fragmented and disjointed, his features tight as a drum. Their hands were clasped so tightly the knuckles were white. It looked painful, but she doubted either one noticed.

The words hung in her head, not unlike splotches of color she'd see after staring at a light and closing her eyes; she couldn't quite rid herself of them nor catch and thus comprehend them. Jack's voice, tremulous and wary as a wild thing (which he was, really, despite a decade of being civilized by the Jacobs family).

"Would you carry our child?"

Unbidden and deeply undesired came Jack's voice again, years ago, but with that same timidity in it, as if she were made of glass, or maybe spun sugar. "I don't think we should see each other anymore." And, on its heels, barely a year later, "David and I are—" and she'd stopped him, because she knew. Maybe had always known.

Now she looked at their entwined hands, ashen and taut, and know that it was their turn to be made of glass and that she could drop them from a very great height, if she so chose. She remembered David's meticulously constructed sand castles, contest-winning edifices; remembered wading through them in her Minnie Mouse bathing suit, kicking them to pieces. She'd always felt a giddy rush of joy at the sheer destruction of it all, at the sound of David's howls, fading only when their parents punished her. Sarah knew no one would think of punishing her now, and the power was thrilling; then guilt washed through her, and she felt a sudden urge to apologize to David for his castles.

They were still waiting, hunched forward, tension in their shoulders and their eyes and the air. Sarah longed to flee to the dining room, where her parents were scrutinizing Les' new girlfriend—and Matt, she remembered abruptly. Her boyfriend. Her boyfriend who she'd just moved in with last week. What would he think of her carrying her brother's child? Her ex-boyfriend's child? When she was fat and achey and sweaty with swollen ankles and cravings for chop suey and watermelon?

And with the thought of watermelon she was on the beach again, but this was not nearly as long ago because she wasn't wearing the Minnie Mouse suit, and missed it with a strange pang. No, she was a grown-up high school lady, wearing a bikini and sucking in her stomach and trying not to let watermelon juice dribble down her chin because David's new friend Jack was on vacation with them, and God, was he cute. She thought of cowboys every time she looked at him, vanished heroes who didn't even make it to the silver screen anymore, and she thought probably she'd be a good damsel for him to rescue.

She didn't wonder if he really wanted to rescue anyone.

David and his cowboy—no, her cowboy, as she was sure he'd be eventually—were running up and down the beach, tossing a football back and forth. Les squirmed beside her, torn between stuffing himself with watermelon and joining the game. Their father dozed contentedly beneath the umbrella—the Jacobses burned easily—while their mother read.

Jack was stunning in the sunlight, and a cursory glance at the other girls on the beach told Sarah that she wasn't the only one who'd noticed. (Unless, of course, they were looking at her brother, which creeped Sarah out too much to even think about.) Saltwater glittered on his lean frame and sandy hair, and he was all grinning perfection as he ran after David.

It was hard to tear her eyes away from him, but once Sarah did, she caught sight of David and couldn't help smiling. He was relaxed in a way she rarely saw, laughing though he was out of breath from running and glowing from exertion. She was happy to see him happy; for all their squabbling and picking on each other, he was still her brother, and she did love him, after all.

Jack caught up and tackled David and they went sprawling, David pinned on his back, the football tucked in the crook of his elbow. Sarah expected them to leap up immediately, maybe run for the water, or even—her heart fluttered at the thought—come over for something to eat.

But they didn't.

How long had they been there, pressed full length against each other in wet bathing suits? Sarah was sure it had been unnecessarily long, and something in her stomach twisted at the way they were looking at each other—like they were on the verge of answering a terrifying question. Stop. Get up. Stop looking at each other. But telepathy worked about as well as it usually did in the real world, and Sarah was forced to try another tack.

"Les, quick, get the football while they're down," she whispered in her youngest brother's ear, feeling only slightly guilty for using him to break up…she wasn't sure what. Les' eyes brightened as he threw down his watermelon rind and raced to drag the football from David's slack arm. It brought the older boys out of wherever they were; they jumped up and chased Les to the water's edge, the odd expectant stillness of the moment all but forgotten.

But there were glances here and there throughout the day; searching, confused, intense glances that didn't let up with the passing of the vacation or the summer or the year. Sarah lost count of the times she'd entered a room and broken up a heavy silence, a perplexed study that her boys conducted on each other's features and voices and bodies. She hated it, hated the way it made her feel sick to her very bones, hated the way it made her sure—she wasn't sure why, but she was definitely sure—that Jack would never loved her the way she wanted him to.

Sometimes then the rational part reminded her that she didn't love Jack the way she wanted to. Not like he was the sunrise and the tides and the gradual expansion of the universe. Just like he was hers.

But anyway, it didn't matter how she loved him, right? He was her boyfriend, and she did love him, after all. Why qualify it? Or quantify. She wasn't sure which word was appropriate.

A gentle cough from Jack brought her back to the present and she stared at her boys. She remembered suddenly how good they'd always been with Les when he was small, and the spare bedroom in their apartment that would look just right with a mobile and Mother Goose wallpaper. She remembered the small hidden nugget of gladness in her gut the day Jack broke up with her, and the larger joy of the wedding in Massachusetts, when she'd been the proud maid of honor. She remembered the softness in sixteen-year-old David's eye when he'd babbled incessantly at the dinner table about "my friend, Jack."

She remembered how that line about the sunrise and the universe had been part of David's vows.

She smiled.

"Of course."

Jack and David's expressions didn't change, and she waved a hand in front of them. "Boys? I said yes."

It was hard to know whether to laugh or cry at the shocked joy suffusing their faces. But Sarah didn't have much time to decide, as she was suddenly buried in a sea of JackandDavid; hugging her, kissing her cheeks, thanking her in babbling giddy nonsense.

It was enough. She wasn't worried about what Matt would think, or the logistics of the pregnancy, or how her work would suffer from maternity leave, or how closely she might resemble a hippopotamus with a gland problem. They were happy. They deserved to have a child. They'd be wonderful fathers, and she was a woman now (grown up and not made of spun sugar anymore), and helping it to come true, no matter what their history was.

They were her boys. Despite it all, they were still her boys.

And she did love them, after all.