Disclaimer: I own nothing.
A/N: Another chapter for you Pheely lovers! Fluff alert, so beware. Sorry it's been so long, and now that school's started, I might not have as much time to write as I'd like to. But I'll try my best. Please read and review!
He gave a winsome smile and a nod before replying.
"Surprised?" he said, sticking his hands in his pockets and leaning against the doorframe. William was tugging on her sleeve to be let down, but she hardly felt it. She was too busy gaping open-mouthed at the man in the doorway.
"Mommy!" William said at last, calling Keely's attention to the little boy sitting, frustrated, on the changing table. Keely looked at him, and noticed out of the corner of her eye that Phil did, too. William gave her a very annoyed look before exasperatingly holding out his chubby little hands to be let down. She lifted him up and placed him on the ground, not looking at his father, instead watching as the two-year-old attempted to put on his pajama bottoms by himself. After several attempts to put both legs in the same hole, she helped him, suddenly feeling hot tears welling up behind her eyes. This was not how she had planned telling Phil they had a son. She couldn't even imagine what he must be feeling right now. William, now satisfied with his appearance, toddled over to Phil and just looked at him. Phil looked back, a slightly shocked expression on his face. Keely muffled a sob behind her hand. There was no denying it; even a random person on the street could tell William and Phil were related. After a few moments, William waddled into the waiting arms of his grandmother.
"I'll take him for right now, honey," Keely's mother said, lifting the toddler up and discreetly exiting into her bedroom. Keely heard the click of her mother's bedroom door, and felt a lump grow in her throat as silence filled the room.
They stood at a standstill for a minute, before Keely looked away at the rest of the room, and started to pick up odds and ends that had accumulated on her son's floor during the course of the day. The silence had become deafening, neither knowing quite exactly what to say. She picked up William's much-loved teddy bear off the floor, placing it in the crib, leaning over the wooden edge when she was done and staring intently at the sheets.
"Is he...?" Phil asked after a moment, and Keely turned to look at him. He didn't need to add the mine to the end of the question for her to know what he was asking.
"Yes," she said as she nodded. She wiped a tear from her eye, sinking down into the rocking chair next to the crib.
"How old is he?" was the next question.
"He turned two last month," she answered. She was on pins-and-needles, wondering what his reaction would be. While she was sure he had wanted children when they got married, she assumed by "someday", it didn't mean "tomorrow". While she thought he may have looked it up on the Giggle, she saw now that he hadn't. Phil came into the room, running his hand along the dresser and the edge of the crib rail wistfully.
"What's his name?" Phil asked, and she could see now tears shining in his eyes.
"William," she replied, rocking the chair with her heels. He turned his head towards her, the tears streaming freely down his face.
"They didn't even tell me," he said, his chin quivering. She stood up and took him in her arms, and he gratefully hugged her to him, his face buried in her neck.
"I've lost so much time," he said, his voice muffled slightly. She took in the relaxingly familiar scent of his aftershave, running her fingers through his hair. "And they didn't even tell me."
"Who didn't tell you?" she asked, just happy to be back in his arms again.
"The bastards who sent me back," he said, pulling back and leaning his forehead against hers. "They told me I was going back, two years after I was arrested. They told me something had happened in the time line, and it was because I wasn't where I was supposed to be. They said I would find you right where I usually would." Anger suddenly flashed in his eyes. "But they neglected to mention the fact that I had a son."
"I wish I could have told you," she said, looking down at their now entwined hands. "I had no idea whether or not you knew—" Her ramblings were cut short as she suddenly found his lips on hers.
"Mommy?" came a little, lisping voice from the doorway. Phil and Keely broke apart as though they'd just been caught by their parents. William was peeking his head around the corner, his little fingers grasping the doorframe right under his chin. A slightly frightened look passed over the little boy's face, though his brown eyes were wide with excitement. He crept into the room, looking at Phil with a wary expression, finally latching onto his mother's leg. William had always been the type to be long to warm up to strangers. He was more the quiet observer of his day care group. He liked to examine situations, not actually be in them. He tugged on his mother's pant leg, a sign he wished to be picked up. Keely did so, soon feeling a small face snuggle into the crook of her neck. Phil had a pained look on his face, and she was sure he was thinking of all the wasted time. Keely reached up with her spare hand to stroke her son's soft hair. William stuck his thumb in his mouth and regarded his father with guarded curiosity. Keely wasn't sure he knew exactly who the man in front of him was. Sure, she'd shown her son pictures of his father, and told him stories of their escapades that never failed to put him to sleep. But a baby's memory isn't that great, and so it was doubtful William remembered the images. He looked up at his mother and then back to Phil.
"Da?" came the timid one-syllable word, slightly garbled as the little boy tried to speak around his thumb. Keely nodded to her son, choking down a happy sob, and William looked as though he was considering this piece of information carefully. He wiggled to get down, and his mother complied. He toddled in Phil's direction, the latter squatting down to his level. William gleefully walked right into his arms. The little boy giggled as Phil scooped him up into his embrace, and Phil thought his heart would melt right there. He hugged William tight, causing the little boy to wiggle around, a bit uncomfortable with the crunching feeling of his ribs being squished. Phil released his son a bit, and William rested his head on Phil's shoulder, his thumb making its way slowly back up towards his mouth. Keely watched he little boy's eye's droop until he was nearly asleep, completely comfortable with this man he had known only five minutes. All three of them remained like that for a few minutes, as if frozen in time, before Phil carefully walked over to the crib and lay his son in it, wordlessly wrestling a small bit of his shirt from the tiny fist. He took a blanket that was thrown carelessly over the edge of the crib bars and put it over him, barely able to contain his tears as he tucked it around the toddler. William instinctively reached out and wrapped an arm around the neck of his teddy bear, bringing it close to him as to be able to hug it and suck his thumb at the same time.
"Night," he said softly, around the thumb, his brown eyes finally closing and his breathing becoming deeper and more even. Phil said nothing, but stood leaning over the crib rail, staring at the sleeping baby.
"He's beautiful," were the only words that Phil managed to blurt out in a coherent manner. Phil had asked if he was the father of the child lying in the crib, but realized now that the question was one that didn't need to be asked. If Phil had held up a picture of himself as a toddler to William, it would have been hard to tell the two apart. He felt himself at a loss for words, and even if words had managed to somehow string themselves into sentences in his mind, he much preferred the silence. He fiddled with his fingers and wondered if Keely felt it too.
Phil was by no means naive in his approach to returning to the present. He'd only been overcome with a gripping fear upon standing on her doorstep that she could have moved on. A person could only hold on so long. And, he realized, his leaving had been an ending. He'd known there was going to be space between them, as there always is between people who haven't seen each other for a long period of time. He just hadn't known it could be felt. Phil felt it like a brick wall between them, expanding and wrapping itself around the room like a large boa constrictor, flicking it's tongue and taunting them. Time. Time was taunting them, as it had done before. Only this time, the wound cut to the quick. They'd both spent three years holding on. The question was, could they hold on any more, now that they were reunited?
"Maybe we should talk downstairs," Keely suggested, not really looking him in the eye. Even normal conversation seemed different. The adrenaline rush at seeing each other again had worn off, and in it's wake had left unease. Phil couldn't recall one time in their entire relationship where there had been this much awkwardness. He nodded to her, and watched with the sadness of a man watching his life play before his eyes as she turned off the overhead light, bent to flick on the small racecar-shaped nightlight, and leaned over the edge of the crib to place a kiss on William's forehead. The baby stirred slightly in his sleep, before rolling over, his legs tangled in the blankets, still clutching the teddy bear with his thumb in his mouth. She ran a hand through his hair, smiling, before turning and ushering Phil out of the room. She gave the crib one last glance before closing the door behind her as quietly as she could. She was relieved when she didn't hear a little voice mutter anything intelligible, but rather a small snore.
"Let's go talk in the living room," she said. On the one hand, it was something to say, and it also assured her and Phil some privacy. Her mother did not dare tread in the living room after everyone else went to bed—too many a night she'd uttered a few succinct curses under her breath after stepping on one of William's toys that had the uncanny knack of hopping out of their toy basket after being placed in it at the end of the evening. In fact, her mother rarely tread anywhere at night in the house, ever since Owen had given William a set of toy trucks for his second birthday. A few slips with those had kept her safely in her bed, where only a few of William's toys tended to migrate.
Phil nodded again, and moved to the side of the hallway to let Keely by. She padded down the carpeted stairs with Phil right behind. Her emotions were a whirlpool of odd thoughts as she flopped down on the couch. If her emotions were represented in colors, either the canvas would be tie-dye, or else the colors would have mixed to make the color of vomit. Either way, it wasn't pleasant, and she was starting to feel a little light-headed from tonight's events. She sat down on the couch. Phil chose to stand, shoving his hands in the pockets of his very twenty-first century jeans, the very way William often did when he decided to wait patiently for his mother rather than throw a temper tantrum. Which wasn't often. Phil blew a stream of air towards his forehead, lifting his bangs slightly away from his face for a moment before falling right back where they were.
"How?" her question cut through the thick silence with the precision of a chef's knife, her hands folded tightly on her lap. "How did you manage to come back?"
"Well," Phil took a deep breath, readying himself for a long explanation. "Apparently they screwed up the timeline."
"What?"
"Disappearances from time travel are fairly common. Except usually it's only two or three. When my family returned to the future, hundreds of people started disappearing. They managed to trace it back to me and you, and pretty much ordered me out of the twenty-second century before I triggered a chain reaction that would blow up the world,"
"What do you mean they traced it back to you and me?"
"I don't know how they did it. Apparently in the original, non-screwed up timeline, you and I have children. More than William," he corrected himself. He was still getting used to the fact that he—no, he corrected himself again, they had a child. "And it was the relatives of those kids that were disappearing."
"How does that blow up the world?"
"If the timeline is too corrupted, the wormhole that allows time travel collapses in on itself, creating a huge explosion, pretty much bringing on the next apocalypse,"
"Oh," Keely really didn't know what to say. Again, she was caught in that no-one-asks-about-what-to-say-in-these-places situation. She just sat there, gaping like a fish out of water, unsure of where to go next. She fiddled with the ring on her necklace. She'd yet to take it off, instead using it as a device at which to aim all of her nervous energy. She'd angered more professors during exams by sliding it across the chain, making the angry screech, screech sound than she cared to count.
"So, have you told anyone?" he gestured to the ring, as he pulled out his own from under his shirt.
"Only my mom," she said. "Before William was born. She was kind of upset that I was being very secretive. So, I told her. You?"
"My mom found out by accident. The necklace came off when she went to throw an old shirt of mine in the hamper. The ring had gotten caught inside. She went to hand it back to me when she realized what it was," he said. "And my dad found out when someone at the time travel board was explaining it all to me. And then, by wonderful powers of eavesdropping, Pim knows too."
"I haven't really told anybody anything," she admitted sheepishly. "No ones knows you're William's father. Well, except for Via. But that girl has powers of intuition that makes me wonder sometimes if she's psychic."
"Why didn't you tell anyone?"
"I don't know," she said, looking away from him suddenly and fiddling with a loose thread on the cushion of the couch. "I guess because it would have opened people up to ask so many questions. Who's the father? Why isn't he here? Most people just assume I'm some girl who made a bad decision. Plus, in this town? Any man who leaves his wife pregnant and alone is pretty much asking for a death wish."
"You didn't even know I was coming back,"
"No. But I always hoped that one day you might," she quit playing with the piece of string and looked at him. Phil had turned away from her to look at the wooden armoire that held the television set, and the bookcases around it, filled with pictures of William. Her mother was big on documenting William's babyhood, probably, she figured, as penance for being so uninvolved in her daughter's childhood. He picked up a framed picture of William and Keely at the baby's first birthday party. It happened to be one of her favorites, with William covered from head to toe in cake, wearing a blue pointy party hat and grinning wide for the camera. Phil gave a sigh and set it back down.
"If I had known..." he trailed off before running a hand over his face. He looked so much older to her than he had three years ago. "Keel, you have to know, if I had any idea you were pregnant, I never would have left. I shouldn't have left in the first place. Not that I wanted to."
"It happened the night before you left," she said. "I didn't even know until a few weeks later. There was no way you could have known."
"God, I have the power of time travel, and I missed two years of my son's life," angry tears sprang to his eyes again, and he impatiently wiped them away, only to do it again. He felt useless—inadequate. He felt helpless, and there wasn't anything he could do about it. "Dammit!" It was the first time she'd really heard him swear, and the naked emotion she saw in his eyes tore her heart to pieces. She wanted to make it better, but didn't know how.
"And now," he said pitifully, voicing his true concerns for the first time. "I've ruined everything. Everything."
"What?" she was confused. She stood up from the couch and walked over to where he was. She put a hand on his shoulder. "What do you mean, you've ruined everything?"
"I left, Keely," he said. "I just up and left. For three years, I was gone. I missed out on everything. Being married to you. Saying our vows in front of our family and friends. The birth of our son. And now...we're not even us anymore. I've never felt awkward with you, Keels. Never. Not in all of our friendship, or dating. But upstairs...that was awkward." He looked away at the pictures again. "I still love you. I want a family with you. I just want to know if you still want those things...and if you do, is it with me?" He was drowning himself in misery, she could see, and she scrambled as fast as she could to throw him a life preserver. She put a hand on the side of his face and forced him to look at her. She took the ring from where it lay on it's chain, resting on top of the knit fabric of her shirt. She held it up to show him.
"I wear this ring every day," she said, tears forming in her own eyes. "Every day. Do you think if I didn't love you, I'd still be wearing it? I never stopped, Phil. Never. I was so...glad when William was born. He is the physical proof of our love for each other, and every bit of you I see in him makes me love you more. I don't care how you made it back, or when you made it back. The point is, you're back. You didn't ruin everything. Ruining everything would be going back a decade or so and never coming to Pickford at all. Because then I'd be walking around with only half my heart. I'd have this empty feeling and not know why." A tear ran down the side of her cheek, and he wiped it away with the pad of his thumb.
"And for three years, I've been walking around with only half my heart," she sniffed a little. "But at least I've known why. And you're here, in my living room, and for the first time in three years, I've been completely happy. I love you, and William does too. He's seen your picture around, and loves to sit on my lap while I tell him stories about high school. He thinks you're the coolest thing since sliced bread." She went to move away for a moment to grab a tissue, but it had been three years since she'd been in his arms, and he wasn't about to let go that fast. His arms wrapped tightly around her waist, bringing her close to him. He showered her face with soft kisses before capturing her lips with his. Three years of separation, and the wall of awkwardness felt when he first arrived were blown to pieces with that simple action, and peace fell over the Teslow household. Phil broke away with a smile.
"Here," he said, carefully unclasping the necklace from her neck and removing the ring. He gently took her left hand in his and slid it onto her ring finger. "Wear it here now." He did the same with his own, and she gave a smile and wrapped her arms around his chest, hearing the familiar thud of a heartbeat she could never get tired of.
A/N: So, Phil's back. After all the filler chapters, I think I'd put it off long enough. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this. And for those of you who think just because Phil is back that this story is nearing its end...you're in for a surprise. This story is just beginning. Keep reading to find out!
