DISCLAIMER: I do not own these. As always, things you recognize aren't mine.


Lucas hadn't felt this alive in years.

Sitting next to Maya, his arm wrapped around her, holding her hand, he felt young and carefree and happy. Not that he wasn't happy with his boys and his life in Texas, but this was different. He couldn't quite explain it.

They had a lot to talk about, he knew. He assumed he would be moving to Greece. He didn't mind that entirely. He could probably get work on the mainland, though he'd probably need to do some testing and such first. Being so far from his boys would be hard, but they were in college now. Hopefully they would react well to this newest development. Andrew he was more worried about, but he had a feeling that he and Piper would get along quite well. The boy was as much a wanderer and adventurer as Lucas himself was, and apparently Piper, too. They could compare notes on their adventures.

He would have to go home this weekend like he was slated to, to start making the arrangements, to talk to Missy and the boys. It would be an adjustment, to say the least.

"Stop thinking," Maya whispered into his ear. He grinned and pulled her closer to him. Most of the wedding guests were dancing up a storm, but he was content here with her.

"How'd you know I was thinking, huh?"

"Because I know you. It's been twenty-one years but you haven't changed that much."

"I have changed, though."

"I know. The Lucas Friar I met was not so impulsive."

"I rode a bull."

"Because you fell off a sheep and needed to prove yourself. That was the farthest thing from 'impulsivity' I can think of, but keep trying. I know all your darkest secrets, Maddog. Can't pull a fast one on me."

"Only use that name if you mean it," he said, growling for effect. She rolled her eyes at him.

"I won't use it then. You don't seem like a Maddog to me."

"What do I seem like to you?"

"You know that lamb that Mary had?" He scoffed, but kissed her anyways, relishing in the feeling of getting to touch her and love her again. "I don't want to think about the hard stuff right now. You're here. We're together. I want this to be all that matters."

"But it's not. There's so much to think about. You're right; I'm not impulsive like that. This is stuff we need to think about and talk about. My flight home is on Sunday. I have to take it. I have to turn in my notice at work and sell my apartment and my car and work out custody with Missy and probably even more than that. It's a lot."

"Yeah, it is. But you're not gonna do it all alone. I mean, I have to stay here for a bit, but I can put a black out date on reservations for a week or so and join you, if you want. You've got me, from now on."

"Till death do us part," he whispered, and then he kissed her again, just because he could.

"God, you've been married an hour and you're already gross," Piper announced, standing in front of them holding three glasses of champagne. He almost reprimanded her for it before remembering the eighteen year old drinking age in Greece. If all else failed, he could lure his boys to Greece with the promise of alcohol. But regardless, he'd not protested this girl getting married this morning. One glass of champagne was nothing compared to that.

"I should've known you'd be a wanker about this," Maya said, taking her glass.

"A 'wanker?' Have you and Finley been talking behind my back?" Piper asked, sounding scandalized.

"That's British slang, right?" he said, glancing back and forth between the two, both wearing identical expressions of bemused irritation that made his heart swell just to look at them. His girls were peas in a pod, and the fact that he got to call them his made his chest feel tight and heart skip a beat for all the right reasons.

"Most of the people who pass through here are British. I've learned a thing or two, and so will you," Maya said. She turned to Piper then. "You really are okay with all of this?"

"Yes. Typical, isn't it? You ask for one dad and three come along all at once," she said, pointing over her shoulder at Josh, who was poorly dancing with some younger children who must've been the children of the hotel's employees. Lucas snorted. Josh had been much sauver last night, though grinding was a very different skill than actual dancing. Farkle was probably better than both of them. Andrew certainly complained about his dad dancing.

"Pipes, I need a serious response here."

"Mom, if you're happy, I'm happy. You deserve this. But I wouldn't mind if I could steal the cowboy for a second?"

Maya didn't say a word, and instead just nudged him so that he was forced to get out of his seat. Piper set her champagne glass down and took his hand, leading him to a corner where Farkle was already lurking, grabbing Josh along the way.

"I just wanted to thank you. For coming. For wanting to be a part of my life. And I know now that everything isn't going to just easily slip into place but… I want to get to know you all," she said. Josh threw his arm around her shoulders.

"Well good, because we wanna get to know you, too."

Lucas wrapped his arm around her from the other side, and soon they were all hugging. He heard her take a deep, shuddering breath, like she was releasing twenty years worth of tension. That made him want to hold her tighter, a feat he couldn't achieve while sharing her with the other two men in her life.

It was going to be a long road, and there was so much to discover, but he was undeniably excited to get started.


Farkle was quite pleased with how the events of this trip were working out.

If he was being completely honest, he had been fairly positive he had a shot at being Piper's father the minute he saw her. He'd imagined a girl of seventeen or eighteen, likely sporting a baby bump of one size or another, looking like she had just walked out of a Greek myth with tan skin and thick, dark hair. When Piper was strikingly none of those things, he had begun to wonder. He didn't know her age until the bachelorette party, but then it had clicked.

He befriended Riley and Maya fairly quickly. Riley had flitted in and out of his social circle for most of their lives, as their parents had known each other in school and became something resembling friends as adults, when they all landed in New York. Farkle himself had traveled the world as a child as his father's business took off. While New York was always his home and where he now taught, he couldn't deny his emotional attachments to Beijing, Capetown, London, and Prague, where he had spent most of middle and high school.

When his thesis experiment had taken him off and sent him to Paris for the summer, he had used it as an opportunity to return to Prague and London. Heading to Prague, he literally ran into Riley and Maya outside the Orly airport when Maya spilled her coffee all over him. The two were supposed to be heading to Greece but had missed their flight due to an airport mix-up— they had flown into de Gaulle from New York and it didn't occur to them to make sure they were still flying out of there prior to getting to the airport. He gave them the keys to his car and his address in Paris and told them to have fun.

They sent letters back and forth until Farkle himself could finally reach their elusive island prior to an event in Athens, only to find a crushed Maya and a Riley busy with a family reunion. So he took Maya to the award function and they spent the night staying up late talking about things he had rarely discussed with any one. She initiated their make out session on the ferry back, she pulled him into her room, and he didn't protest because he thought maybe he was falling in love with her.

Within four months of being back home in New York, she stopped talking to him. Riley told him she was dealing with stuff with her mom and then she, too, slowly reduced the amount of contact with him. It was okay, though. He was busy. They were busy. And he quickly realized he loved them without being in love with them— an important distinction for all involved.

Now he knew what she had been up to all that time, and he forgave her for not talking to him. He wasn't sure how he would've reacted if he had been told about it when it happened. Back when he was younger, he desired children solely to pass on what he had referred to as his 'superior genetic code.' With his sexuality realization and its impact on romantic relationships, the desire had waned, and he was content with his students being the people he had the most influence on. But at twenty-two, his career was front and center. He couldn't have done what his parents did and put everything on the line for a kid. He couldn't have been what Piper clearly craved so badly, but now he could be, and he was going to try his damndest to be.

It was nice to have Riley and Maya around again, though. They were still the same fiery duo he remembered, complementing each other perfectly. The new addition to their group, Isadora Smackle, was quite fun as well. He was fairly positive she was in his year at Princeton and studied psychology, possibly even was on the debate team with him, but she looked quite different than he remembered. While she worked as a researcher in psychology, she knew of his biochemistry accomplishments and could talk about them with him with ease. Their conversations had descended into less science and more general, in-depth connection type stuff.

It was nice, but terrifying. He couldn't figure out what Smackle, as she apparently prefered to be called, wanted from him. He knew it had to be more than friendship, because she was doing things like sitting close to him and twirling her hair and laughing at his jokes. After his coming out at the wedding, he figured that would be the end of that, and he would spend most of the reception catching up with Riley or Piper, or just sitting alone entirely.

Riley, as it turned out, seemed very interested in connecting with the bartender, who stood at her side for most of the night, a hand loose around her waist. Her eyes sparkled every time she looked at him and Farkle smiled. He and Riley were Facebook friends, so he knew about Evan and his death and her daughter, and he was glad to see that, at least for tonight, she was looking forward instead of back.

Piper was equally as distracted with Connor and all of her friends since it was, after all, originally her wedding. She made sure to spend time with him and Josh and Lucas, though, and talked with each of them. Apparently, she and Connor were going to be doing lots of traveling together and she hoped to come visit him in New York sooner rather than later. He couldn't deny how knowing that had made his heart swell.

So in the end, he was left sitting next to the brilliant, beautiful, wonderful Isadora Smackle. As the sun set and wine flowed freer, she leaned in to kiss him and he stopped her.

"I'm asexual."

"I was there."

"That doesn't bother you?"

"No. I know I have sexual desires, but I also have spent much of my adult life single and know how to handle them. I am not trying to kiss you, though. Right now I would like to be held by you. I do not like hugs or being held, but I want to try it with you. Because it has been such a short time and yet I already feel safe with you. And as I live in New York City as well, I imagine it would not be too hard to see you again, should I desire it and you desire it. I would like this to be a chance that we take. It's a hypothesis I have, and I would like your help with it."

He swallowed, but staring into her eyes, he couldn't deny that he had a similar hypothesis.

"May I hug you?" he asked.

"Yes," she said, hesitantly, as if revealing all of this to him had made it harder to do the physical action she'd planned in the first place. With equal hesitation, he wrapped his arms around her. They must've looked funny, and not at all comfortable, her quite stiff in his arms, confirmed by her quiet, "I don't like this at all."

"I know," he said, but she wasn't pulling away. In fact, she leaned in more.

"Don't stop," she replied, and slowly the tension disappeared, and warmth spread through his body.

"Okay."


Piper set her suitcase down next to the door and then walked the rest of the way into the tent, still pitched from last night, where her mother had decided to serve breakfast this morning. Many of the wedding guests had trickled in, in various states of exhaustion and hungover. Josh sat at one of the back tables wearing sunglasses and she snorted, walking over to join him. He smiled when she did and pushed the shades up his head, blinking once or twice.

"How are you, Pipes? Feel any different?"

"I'm not married."

"I know, but it must feel different. All this tension released."

"Yeah, it is," she said, staring at him, but she wasn't referring to her wedding, and his slow-spreading smile indicated he caught on. "You never did tell me where you're going to go after this."

"Who knows? I mean, I'll sail back home, stop along the way. Probably take a contract or two, sail around New England. Who knows? I went freelance because I could, and I don't have deadlines right now. I'm in the Mediterranean with my boat, and I got people to draw me out here more often. I can go where I please. Always have, always will. It's for the best that I never knew about you before now, I think. I couldn't have been a dad to you then, but I want to be now."

He reached out across the table and without hesitation she took it. It was nice. All of her dads were so different- Josh wild and carefree, Lucas careful and protective, Farkle intelligent and affectionate in his own way. She wouldn't have been able to suss out just one of them as her father, since they all had pieces of what she'd been searching for her whole life.

She sat with Josh for a while, and soon Riley and Charlie joined them, and then Farkle, Smackle, her mom, Lucas, Connor. They talked and laughed and swapped stories of each other until Connor tapped her on the shoulder and whispered that it was probably about time for them to leave. She nodded and they stood up slowly, catching her mom's attention.

"Are you two off already?" She glanced down at Farkle's watch and laughed to herself, standing up and pulling Connor, as he was closer, into a hug. "Wow."

"Wait, wait!" Josh said, and then he reached down and pulled up a familiar guitar. "I should return this. And I think it should go to you, even though it's technically your mother's. You'll get more use out of it."

"Hey!" Maya said, "It's true but don't say it!" Piper snorted at that, but took the guitar from Josh's hand.

"Thank you. I hope to get to play with Jam Machine someday," she said.

"Maybe Ranger Rick over here will bring out the banjo for you."

"You play the banjo, sir?" Connor asked, amusement dripping in his tone.

"I had no idea that was yours," Smackle said.

"Will you play for us before you go? Please?" Lucas asked. She sighed, but put the guitar strap around her neck and started to pluck a song she wrote years ago to a picture of a father and finding him someday, about the dream she carried with her that brought her here, to this, to all these lost souls finding themselves in each other, the best any of them could do.


A/N: Thank you to everyone who reviews, favorites, and follows. I'm on Tumblr as yetanotheremptypage; come say hi. Thanks for sharing this journey and go check out my other GMW stories!