TITLE: A Tale of Two Fathers
FANDOM: Kung Fu the Legend Contiues
PAIRING: Kwai-Chang Caine/Paul Blaisdell
GENRE: slash
WARNINGS: Sap
SUMMARY: Blaisdell and Caine realise they share more than just a son.
DISCLAIMER: I don't own there characters, and I certainly don't make any money from them.
A/N: The first thing I've written in a lot of years, so concrit more than welcome.
A Tale of Two Fathers
"We share a son," Caine told him softly.
Paul Blaisdell looked at him, sure that Caine was telling him something important but certain that what he was hearing was not what the other man meant. Not that he ever really understood what Caine said - most of the Shaolin priest's metaphysical utterings went straight over his head. He had come to the conclusion, however, that understanding Caine was rarely as important as the listening – the listening and trusting. Today, however, he wasn't sure that listening was enough. Not when he thought he was hearing what he had wanted to hear ever since he had met the man.
Before they had met, he had wanted to hate Kwai-Chang Caine. To hate the other man in Peter's life, the man whom Peter had never stopped loving even though he believed his father dead. With Caine back in Peter's life, Blaisdell had been sure that there would be no place left for him and he had wanted to hate Caine for that. But once he had met the man he found he couldn't. There was no doubt that Caine loved his son, and that his life had been shattered, just as Peter's had, when they each believed the other dead for so many years, but he had still been willing to share him with the parents who had taken Peter from the orphanage. With the father who raised him, and loved him.
Caine had proved to be a better man than him. Paul wasn't sure that he could have been so gracious. In fact, he had only grudgingly gone to meet Caine when Peter asked. He thought he had prepared himself for the meeting but he was wrong. Nothing could have prepared him for Kwai-Chang Caine. The man was an enigma. An enigma that had fascinated him from the very first. He had found himself unwillingly drawn to Peter's father, drawn to him in more ways than he wanted to acknowledge. In ways that he thought he had left behind long ago, in the days when he had been a mercenary, before he had met and married Annie.
He had tried to distance himself but somehow Caine was always there. At first Peter had always been there as a go-between but then gradually they had begun to meet on other occasions. When Paul had been in trouble the first place he had gone to was Chinatown to seek out Caine. He had never doubted that Caine would help him, with no questions asked. After that, they had begun to meet for no other reason than to talk, and to just be. When Paul's past caught up with him and everything began to overwhelm him, he went to Caine, sure of his welcome and that Caine would make everything better. And just by being there, Caine chased his demons away. And he had been forced to face the fact that, despite everything, he had fallen in love with Kwai-Chang Caine.
With his son's father. The though amused him a bitter sort of way. How much more clichéd could it get? The orphan boy, his adopted father and the father returned from the dead. And here was Caine telling him that they shared a son. It had all the hallmarks of a bad TV drama where two fathers realised that they had more in common than a son and that what they really wanted to do was set up home together and live in domestic bliss. It would have been funny, except that Paul wanted to live in that fantasy land.
He had an almost overwhelming urge to reach out to Caine, to pull him into an embrace and make his half thought out desires come true. The only thing that stopped him was the fear that we would lose what little he already had.
He was startled out of his reverie by a gentle hand cupping his cheek.
"We share a son," Caine repeated. "And yet I think we share more than that." There was a wealth of meaning in that hesitant voice and it gave Blaisdell the courage to meet the Shaolin's eyes. What he saw in the seemingly ageless depths stunned him. There was knowledge and acceptance.
And desire.
Paul let his breath out and smiled slowly, his hand lifting to mirror Caine's action. Perhaps he really had understood for once.
"Yes, I think we do," he acknowledged.
As they drew closer together, mouths meeting in a soft kiss, Paul wondered in the small part of his brain that wasn't rejoicing at the feelings surging between them just what Peter would say when he discovered them. It wasn't a thougt that bothered him for long.
Between them, he and Caine had raised a good son.