So this took forever, I'm very sorry I've just been trying to focus whatever energy I have on Promises and Politics. No more excuses, I'm off all week so I WILL upload another chapter of this on Friday.
I hope this was worth the wait. I always forget how much I love this story until I start up writing it again, so it means an awful lot that people are continuing to read and enjoy it. As always, reviews and follows make my day- I can never thank you enough. Sometimes that email is exactly what I need to see to feel better when I'm having a rough time!
Teddy's POV, let me know what you think and check back Friday night! I love and appreciate any of you who read and follow this story, and I want to continue to make you all happy with it. It's pretty long, (7, 267 words!) so I hope that sort of makes up for the fact it took so long!
Victor had gotten worse since this morning, paler, and was now a shade of white that was practically bleeding onto the pillow he was lying lifelessly on.
Martha was asleep beside him on the bed, her body curled around his. The whole scene had Danny tearing up beside him, but Teddy couldn't conjure any emotion other than shock.
He'd never witnessed this type of affection when he was growing up. Was that part of the reason he found relationships so difficult? In his experience, a marriage was an intrusion, a distraction from work, a trap. Maybe that long-established mind-set was the reason he seemed so poor at it.
"I'll take her home," Danny offered, gently shaking Martha awake by her shoulders. "Hey," he said gently, when her eyes opened, calm and soothed instead of the wild defiance Teddy had found there earlier. "It's time to go."
Danny was offering because he wanted to force Teddy into time alone with Victor, but Teddy wouldn't have argued anyway: after all, Martha seemed to be more peaceful in Danny's company than his own.
He was doing it again—making this a competition when it wasn't, but he couldn't help it. It was like every time he and Danny worked their way to something more than casual acquaintances, every single time they made progress, Teddy's mind began to race with all of the ways he would always waver in comparison to Danny; when he got scared, Teddy tried to force a resentment for Danny that might take the place of the uncertain way he currently felt.
"Will you take care of him, Doctor?" Martha asked him directly, looking past Danny. She clutched Victor's hand. "If I can't stay with him, I want to know he's being looked after."
Teddy couldn't speak, couldn't conjure the words of reassurance she wanted. He swallowed hard and nodded as positively as he could.
"Of course we will," Danny cut in, edging closer to the door and holding it open for Martha. "You need to say goodbye so I can bring you home."
She looked from Danny to Teddy and then back again. "Can I come back tomorrow?"
Teddy exchanged glances with Danny over the top of his mother's head. Would Victor even be alive tomorrow? Would Martha be fit to visit him? Would they be emotionally capable of watching another attempt at goodbye between the two?
"We'll see," Danny said, so Teddy wouldn't have to. He nodded toward Victor. "Say goodbye."
Victor was too out of it for words right now—a fact that made the prospect of being alone with him a little less daunting to Teddy—but Martha had been holding conversation for the two of them for most of day.
Now, though, she seemed beyond words. She inched forward, leaned down and gently brushed her lips to his forehead. "I love you," she said, and when he felt Danny's eyes on him, Teddy blushed and looked away.
He made a point of coughing awkwardly, just to fill the silence as his mother inched away from Victor, and he couldn't decide if this would amuse or piss Danny off.
Regardless, he left within a moment, his arm on Martha's back as he guided her out the door—stopping her from looking back. He shot Teddy a look. "I'll be back after—" he motioned towards the now-confused woman struggling with her coat.
Teddy nodded, eager for them to leave so he wouldn't have to feel so awkward, but then they did and he couldn't stop himself from wishing them back. His relationship with his mom, his relationship with Danny…they were both in desperate need of repair, and work, and continued perseverance as they were probably the two most complicated people he had ever known, but they were also the only relationships he had here that were worth working at, that held any level of permanence attached. Even if between them it did seem they were silently conspiring to drive him crazy, they were also the people he'd missed the most when he'd left and as such, they were only ones who he'd felt anywhere near comfortable with upon coming back.
Victor chose this moment to crack open his eyes. "M-Martin?"
Teddy resisted the urge to correct him, if only because it would take more words than: "yeah."
"Your m-mother…"
"She just left," Teddy replied, acutely aware of how sluggish Victor's speech had become in the time he and Danny had been gone. "She wants to come back tomorrow, though." The words were out of his mouth before he could try and take them back, but he felt himself blushing all the same. He twisted his hands together in his lap, wondering why in this moment, rather than all the others that they had spent similarly, it was now he felt like he had to stop himself from reaching out to touch.
It wasn't like anything had changed—earlier they had been civil to each other, passing cold-but-polite pleasantries more for the sake of his mother than for themselves, but they still hadn't had a conversation that wasn't filled with hostility and one-sided blame.
Yet, as he and Danny had left the apartment again this evening, Teddy had stood by the bedroom door and watched as his friend had tucked the blanket Caleb had kicked off in his fitful sleep back around him, watched as Danny hesitated, whispering something Teddy didn't deserve to hear and affectionately running his hand through the sleeping boy's hair.
It had been so quietly indicative of an intimate relationship between a father and his son, Danny's love for a kid, who by anyone's admission was one hell of a struggle at the best of times, was so blatantly obvious, Teddy's thoughts had turned to his own father.
Danny was naturally loving, the reason he'd adapted to father-hood so well. It was easy for him, a genuine skill he enjoyed rather than the instinctive re-learning it had been for Teddy. But not everybody loved as easily as Danny did, not everybody had an honest knack with kids, not everybody could re-arrange their life to revolve around a child like he had.
He didn't know much about his father's parents—they'd died before he was born—but he'd always assumed they were distant, detached, similar to his own. He knew this wasn't an excuse—Danny's parents had been abusive for God's sake, it wasn't like being a piece of shit parent was inherited—but he'd always believed you were pretty much a product of your environment, especially when life got tough and it became harder to make decisions for yourself. Why else had Nashville been such an escape for him, moulding him into an entirely different person?
The point was, it was the first time he'd considered the possibility that while both he and Danny had spent their lives as Dads intent on contradicting their own fathers, maybe Victor had been following exactly what he'd been taught.
When Maddie was born, Teddy was twenty-seven, but emotionally he'd felt like he was thirty-five. Any teenage immaturity left inside of him had quickly vanished after all he and Danny had been through, and that was enough to force him into finally growing up—once and for all.
Victor, on the other hand, had been married and a father by twenty-three, and while three years seemed so insignificant to Teddy now, when imaging himself at twenty-three he knew it was a big enough leap to make a difference.
While most guys that age were socialising, Victor was pouring himself into work, trying to learn how to be a parent and work his way up the career ladder at the same time. Obviously, one had demanded more attention, or had been able to keep him satisfied for longer, and that one hadn't been Martin.
So he'd chosen his career over his family, maybe because it was what he wanted, or maybe because it was what he'd been taught to want. It struck Teddy around this moment that even though he'd resented him so much for never trying to get to know him, he realised he didn't know all that much about his father either.
Maybe they were both a little guilty of isolating each other, maybe they had both slacked a little when it came to making a real effort, in different ways.
"Should I have called?" Victor asked quietly, the words coming out slowly but steadily now he'd had a moment to gather enough energy to speak.
He blinked. "What?"
"While you were in Nashville…should I have called?" He was barely managing to keep his eyes open—too weak to fight whatever drossiness his body was demanding. "I…wrote…"
He'd mentioned this before, but Teddy didn't point that out. "No," he said, and he felt like his throat had suddenly slammed shut. "No, you were right not to call."
Maybe it wasn't the right thing to say, but it was the truth. Part of the reason he'd been able to completely re-create himself in Nashville had been because he hadn't had somebody to hold him back—if he'd been fielding weekend phone calls from his parents back in New York, his new life would have seemed much more of a lie, much more unreal.
Still, whether it was true or not didn't seem to ease the blow. Before Teddy could evaluate the situation, there were tears on Victor's otherwise dry cheeks.
Only now did he realize how it must have hurt to hear from your only child that their non-existent relationship with you was likely for the best.
"I'm sorry," Teddy said, automatic reaction rather than a sincere apology.
"A-are you happy?" Victor's voice sounded small, resigned mingled with something resembling curiosity.
Teddy let the question sink in. He had been happy for a very long time with Rayna. Despite everything that had happened during the course of their relationship, they had genuinely cared about each other, genuinely wanted their family to be different from the ones they had been a part of growing up, genuinely loved their daughters and wanted what was best for each other for their sake—if nothing else.
But things were far from perfect and when Teddy had come to his senses and filed for divorce—before Rayna could, and that might have been pathetic but it was marginally less so than waiting around for her to ride off into the sunset with Deacon would have been—there had been an element of relief; a reassurance he would no longer have to compete with another man for his wife's affections; a resentful but honest happiness for Rayna now that she no longer had to pretend to be in love with him, now that she could be free.
And even if they couldn't see it right now, Teddy firmly believed their divorce had been in their daughters best interests too—a loveless marriage was no standard for any child to hold in high esteem. They were both adored equally as much as they had been when Teddy and Rayna had been living together, except now they got to see what it was like when their Mom smiled and meant it: how their Dad made decisions completely independent of others influences, something he had never really had the chance to do before.
Most of all, they had learned that love, marriage, life wasn't always perfect. That sometimes people made mistakes; fell in love with other people; couldn't agree on a chosen career.
Navigating Maddie's emotions regarding Deacon as her biological father was an ongoing struggle—one Teddy felt less equipped to deal with now Rayna was better and able to take a side that he doubted would be his (although she had sworn she wouldn't) – but spending this last few days with Danny and his kids had opened his eyes to see that you could feel like you'd lost somebody, but that doesn't mean you really have. When it came to your child, you didn't run out of second chances, and in turn, neither did they.
He might have been returning to two kids he had a lot of making up to do with for his leaving so abruptly, but that didn't mean their time apart and his lack of explanation would create a rift. It might take too much ice-cream and a few nights of staying up a half hour past bedtime, but he would have his absence made up to them sooner than he was allowing himself to believe; his love for them was obvious, there was no question that they would come around.
His job wasn't the disaster he'd thought it would be—it turned out, his role as Mayor was a more figurative than practical one. Sure, he made a lot of the decisions and proposed a lot of the ideas, but for the most part, he hadn't completely messed anything in the town up and surely that was all that mattered? Moreover, it was a job that didn't give him nightmares, didn't leave him wondering if somebody he loved was at risk of being shot and it turned out he kind of liked having his own office.
For the most part, his life was good, but it was the reflection upon it while being removed from the situation that had him seeing it this way now. If it hadn't been for Danny practically dragging his ass back here, he would have spent these last few days worrying constantly over Maddie's affection, fighting with Rayna and allowing his emotions to cloud his judgement.
He might have been alright before, but it was the space and time—and, okay, Danny—that had made him realize he was happy.
"I think so," he answered quietly, feeling like his head was suddenly going to explode. Too much thinking had taken place today.
It probably didn't present him a very good person to admit he was happy while his father was dying, but he hoped Victor was too ill to connect the dots.
"I—I just wanted you…to be happy. All along, that was…what I wanted." It was a lie for sure, but Teddy forced himself to bite his lip to keep from arguing. Every time he was in the room alone with Victor, he blew up, and so far all it had done was make the situation worse, make Danny angry at him and cause the nurses to eye him up and down suspiciously. "I knew you…weren't happy here."
That part was true: he had been miserable. He had let his boss down, let his team down, let his parents down. He was a mess who couldn't function, was too traumatised to pass any kind of psychological assessment to return to work but had never been good enough at anything else to try a different career instead. His best friend was getting married to somebody who was perfect for him, and all he could do was stand by and watch, hoping nobody could tell it was killing him. He couldn't see past his hurt enough to be happy for the people around him who were moving on, and that was only making him hate himself even more.
But Caleb was pretty messed up right now—so much so even Danny had admitted it-and his dad wasn't shipping him out of the state. Maybe Martin had needed a fresh start, but had Victor really needed to drive him 800 odd miles away to get it?
Teddy warned himself to stop making the comparison. Everybody handled things differently. Danny had always faced things head-on; his father had preferred to ignore them until they blew up and then carefully dispose of them when it got messy.
The point was, Victor had done what he'd thought was the right thing—the only thing, and although he was now telling Teddy his reasons were purely based on what was best for his son, years of feeling rejected could not be forgotten that easily.
"I just…I didn't know how to deal with it," Victor was murmuring, and Teddy wondered why the dying man suddenly looked so wide awake and startled. "Your mother and I were raised traditionally, it was…difficult for us to….understand…"
It was tradition to send your emotionally damaged adult son to live with an old friend in another state? What?
"…and then the way you were…I couldn't stand what it was doing to you…not telling us and not able to talk to him and…"
Okay, there was no way they were still having the same conversation. "What are you talking about?"
A nurse chose that moment to check in. "How are you feeling?" she asked a rattled Victor, who was still muttering useless apologies under his breath. Teddy had to ball his hands into fists to stop himself from pushing her back out the door. "Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?"
He wasn't sure when this had shifted from hospital to hospice care—or if it had been that all along, and he had just subconsciously decided not to recognise it—but Teddy could read between the lines. Comfortable meant death was inevitable, and although Danny had pretty much made this clear from the day he'd arrived in Teddy's kitchen, for some reason this was only resonating inside him now.
When she left—realising quickly this was a private conversation she was not a part of and that quite possibly there was nothing she could do that would make this any easier for either of them—Teddy shut his eyes and leaned against the bed with his head in his hands.
"I thought you would…come back and then…when you didn't, I realised it must have been because you—you couldn't tell us—"
"—I don't know what you're talking about," Teddy said, a headache beginning to surface as he rubbed his temples gently. "But I get it, okay? It all worked out for the best. I love my family and I wouldn't have them if you hadn't brought me to Nashville. I'm good—I'm doing good. Maybe it wasn't how I would have handled it, but it—it was the right thing at the time and I guess it doesn't matter anymore."
He was giving in for the sake of giving in, something he had sworn he wouldn't do, but the fact that Victor was actually going to die was still swirling around in his mind, staining every inch of it with its permanence. Why did he suddenly care? Why did it matter now? They'd been as good as dead to each other for fourteen years—surely this change of heart was futile?
"I thought you'd come back," Victor said, after a moment, "when you were ready to tell us-"
Teddy felt exhausted, wiped out purely by the effort that this brief exchange was taking. "Tell you what?" he asked, but it was a formality—he was too preoccupied by his own thoughts to care about Victor's.
"—and then I heard you were married….with…children and I decided I must have made a mistake—"
Teddy wasn't sure what part of the whole thing Victor classed as a mistake, but he doubted he was going to get a coherent explanation even if he pressed, so he sat back a little in his chair and waited for the older man to finish, thinking of the fragility of life and how many other sons had sat in this exact chair and watched and waited for their fathers to die.
"—but I…promised I would…let you make the first move…and when you didn't—and now…with Danny, you two…he's a good boy." An awkward pause, and Teddy felt his heartbeat picking up—why was this coming back to Danny? "I've always been proud of you. You…couldn't have let me down…if you tried. I just…wish I could have…said this back when you needed to hear it."
The hair on the back of Teddy's neck stood up on ends even though he didn't know why. He couldn't understand how after all this time the words still held any amount of validation at all, but they did—and Victor was right, he had needed to hear this approval and appraisal before, but maybe, just maybe, he'd also needed to learn to live without it.
He had tried to live his life in accordance to what the people around him wanted—his parents, his co-workers, his friends, his wife. It was he who had put the pressure upon his own shoulders to do so, yet he blamed them when he fell short.
It had taken a lot of learning, but he'd finally grasped how to let go of that childish desire to please. Danny was the love he didn't need to work for; it didn't matter who he was or where he'd been or what he could or couldn't do— they could stand the test of time, he hadn't even needed to be there for Danny to go on caring about him. A friendship, a relationship, was much less daunting when it wasn't filled with one-sided expectations: it was comfortable, familiar, so far from the thin line he had navigated quietly in past relationships.
Another lesson time and independence and peace had taught him—another thing he would not have been able to see if he'd stayed in New York, blinded by the same people he had grown jaded trying to impress.
"Thanks," Teddy managed to say, his throat suddenly ridiculously dry. It wasn't much of a response, but he didn't know what else to say—so many times he had gone over the angry speech he would one day fume to this man in his mind, but now that he pieced it together he felt ashamed as how immature he had been, how he had spent so long angry with Victor for all the wrong reasons. Now, he looked up at a monitor that looked a little too chaotic for someone who was supposed to be dying somewhat peacefully. "Listen, maybe you should be resting—"
"—is that why you stayed away for so long?" Victor asked, ignoring him completely, but Teddy was too distracted to be offended. "Is that why your marriage didn't work out? Because…you thought you'd let us down…because of Danny?"
"Danny?" Teddy moved his chair forward now the older man's tone had lowered—it was barely above a whisper, barely audible at all over the constant beeping and humming of surrounding machines. "My marriage?" He frowned. "No, listen, that has nothing to do with—"
"You couldn't tell us," Victor murmured softly, a sad smile on his face barely enough to mask the appearance of fresh tears, "you couldn't…tell your mother and I that you…loved him. So you stayed gone."
Teddy swallowed hard. Was that what it had looked like to Victor? To his mother? Martin, too much of a coward to come out, chose to hide in Nashville instead?
For a split second, Teddy found himself questioning if it really was all that crazy. It might have been subconscious. It might have been that he'd been running from more than just the people here.
But he shoved that thought from his mind just as quickly—he'd stayed away because he had a life in Nashville that trumped that he'd left behind in New York; he'd married Rayna because he loved her on some level and wanted them to be happy together, even if it hadn't been for nearly as long as he'd once thought; when he thought back on the ways he felt Victor had let him out, not being approachable enough to come out to was probably not even in the top twenty.
"That wasn't it," he said automatically, but there was still some shock there, because he honestly hadn't thought his father had been aware enough to come up with this conclusion. "I stayed gone because my life is there now— no other reason."
It was true. When he'd left, the last thing on his mind had been telling his parents he was in love with Danny Taylor. It had once been a compulsive part of his thinking, but then almost dying and being traumatised by a hostage situation hit him harder than he expected, his best friend was getting married, he was losing the only job he'd ever been half-decent at and suddenly sexuality struggles seemed to rank much lesser on the scale of things he really needed to change about himself.
"But you—you couldn't tell us…"
"I couldn't tell him, either," Teddy admitted, and he still couldn't really, couldn't express how he felt towards Danny beyond all-too-brief kisses in corridors and subtle intimate touches in the car. But it wasn't because he was another man—it was because this was too important to screw up, it was because all good things took time, it was because Teddy was afraid that saying the words he longed to aloud would only make their inevitable—if hopefully temporary—goodbye all the more painful. "I had barely dealt with it myself. It was just…another thing I wasn't able to deal with back then."
It had never just been one thing, one person. It had been the entirely of all his problems, all his pain. It had been failure and resentment and anger and misunderstanding and fear all tanged together, suffocating him. Maybe he didn't think Victor had done the right thing driving him to Nashville in the middle of the night with a fake ID in the front pocket of his car, but Martin hadn't had a better alternative back then and fourteen years later, Teddy wasn't so sure he did now, either.
"How did you know anyway?" Teddy asked after a long pause. "About me and Danny. Did he say something?"
"It was seeing you…that day in the courthouse, after he testified. Watching you two watch each other." Victor stopped to take a long breath. "After…well, seeing how much he missed you…how desperate he was to find you…it made me realise there really had been more to it than I'd thought."
"We didn't—there wasn't—" this was perhaps the most awkward conversation he had ever had with Victor, and wow, was that saying something, "we weren't actually—"
"I knew that." Another faint smile, but he had stopped crying and Teddy was relived.
"You should be resting," came out as a scold, and Teddy blushed upon remembering they were still virtually strangers. He didn't want to give in after one conversation, didn't want it to have been this easy for Victor to gain a foothold with him again—but the man was dying, and they were both dragging this out needlessly. The past was the past and this time, when Teddy met Victor's eyes, he didn't feel a stabbing in his chest or a knot of anger forming in the pit of his stomach. He just felt pity, felt remorse, felt mournful that their relationship had been reduced to years of blame and misunderstanding each other.
Maybe all children had this moment of re-connecting with a parent—for most, it came at the peak of adulthood, when money was tight and relationships less than perfect and suddenly there was understanding, a quiet appreciation that real life was hard; that turning of age to legally make your own decisions did not mean you automatically knew every answer, just that you were expected to; that becoming a parent might have been a biological and emotional process, but it did not mean you were rendered incapable of making mistakes—rather, it only made those mistakes all the more detrimental, because now it was not just you who suffered.
Parents and children were destined to disappoint each other, Teddy supposed. Mothers and fathers were never the superheroes their kids needed them to be; sons and daughters would forever fall short of expectations, regardless of how loved they were. It was a relationship that was a constant power-struggle, the eternal battle of resistance. Parents were supposed to want what was best for their children above all else, but there came a point when that stopped being their job, when their child had to make their own decisions and all parents could do was hope they didn't make the same mistakes they had. But like every other relationship, it took time, it took mutual effort, and it took a lot of patience. Just because you shared DNA or were legally bound together for eighteen years you were not necessarily going to appreciate and adore each other, but it did mean you were obliged to pretend.
Teddy didn't want to ever have to pretend with his daughters, didn't ever want to become so distant from them that he could harbour assumptions for years that might eat him alive just because neither of them had been brave enough to try and talk it out.
It meant swallowing his pride, and it meant doing something he swore he'd never do, but Teddy was determined to be a better teacher than that.
Slowly, he reached out and threaded his hand together with Victor's. He lost his breath when he felt bones so prominent beneath the wrinkled skin; he bit his lip when Victor looked up at him with wide, shining eyes and told him once again he was sorry.
When you're a child, Teddy realized, you don't see your parents as humans who bruise and bleed and screw up; you don't speak their language of regret, you miss the glimpses of sorrow in their eyes.
They're adults- older, in control of their own life with the power of experience and knowledge, when in reality, they could be a lost twenty-something fresh out of college with a degree they don't know what to do with, you evidence of a drunken night out following the biggest heartbreak of their lives; they could have had you to desperately stuff their life full so they might forget that they're missing something else, hoping you might fill the hole the last person who left them left behind; they could be living under a false identity, running from demons they weren't mature enough to deal with yet.
Being a parent didn't mean you had become superhuman—parents were really just people who used to be full of hope, who had lived but never lived enough, who had loved and been broken so many times they surprised themselves every day that they still had a heart.
Ultimately, you became an adult overnight, and you became a parent almost as quickly or with as little warning. You would never be prepared enough; you would never have enough time or energy to be everything to your children at every moment. It was so easy to hold a newborn in your arms and swear you would never be like your own parents- that you'd be so much more attentive than they were, that you'd be more forthcoming when it came to showing love, that you would not suffocate them with protection but give them the space to live their own lives.
But then life would begin again, and work bled into weekends more than you had planned; you missed recitals and games and school plays in favor for a conference you probably could have gotten someone else to attend for you; you came home late some nights to find your kids asleep in bed before you'd even gotten a chance to kiss them goodnight; when they asked if they could go to a party or a four-day school trip, your mind was suddenly bombarded with every horrible succession of things you had ever seen, your instinct to keep them safe so much stronger than the memory of being thirteen and wanting your freedom.
You did whatever you felt you had to do provide for them, to be the best parent you could be. You tried carefully not to retrace your parents footsteps, but there would always be overlaps, there would always be days when your daughter looked at you the way you had once looked at your father. You loved unconditionally and pretended it was the easiest thing in the world; you tricked yourself into believing that the children at home made up for your dissatisfaction with your job or the fact you thought you'd know who you were by the time you were thirty-nine but don't, or the panging in your chest for the best friend you hadn't spoken to in fourteen years who was the only person who'd ever made you feel like you belonged somewhere. You put aside any thoughts of your past to make room for the future; you got lost in the domesticity of day-to-day family life and forgot what first kisses tasted like. You poured yourself into the role you were supposed to fulfil, and you aimlessly made up the rules as you went along, hoping nobody could tell you were still learning how to be a parent ten years into it.
You bit your tongue, but sometimes you didn't bite it hard enough. You had to step back somedays and others you needed to step forward- it was guessing when to do which that was the hard part. You ended some days feeling like you were superman, others like you were a waste of flesh, and others you were too exhausted to consider either a win or fail. You offered advice that might fall on deaf ears; you were honest when it was what they needed, you lied when it wasn't. You lost your temper and you learned what guilt tasted like when you saw tears; you let them take advantage too often too, realizing you were damned either way when they punished themselves instead. You buried insecurities in your mind along with the grocery list, telling yourself the example they needed was one that was strong and capable.
When it came to the end of your life, you would not be able to apologize enough for all the mistakes you had made that had impacted on them.
But that kind of relationship, that kind of love, was based upon forgiveness. While parents made excuses for their children's failings, kids needed to be out on their own, living faults for themselves, before they could justify that of their parents. Sometimes all it took was empathy and lots of it; sometimes all it took was making the first move. Mostly, it took time—there was a reason neither being a parent or a child were a 9-5 job. You couldn't retire from being somebody's whole entire world—even if it had only been for a little while—not even if you wanted to, not even if you thought you had.
You could put as many miles and as much hurt between you as you wanted, as humanly possible—there would always be a way around it, as Teddy now realized.
You could build the highest wall around yourself that you felt you needed to— if you had a father like Danny, he would love you enough to climb it.
You could be caught so fiercely between two parents (or three, in Maddie's case) pulled in so many different directions, trying to make everybody happy and failing and only really wanting to find the place you belonged— when the dust settled, and all was said and done, you knew where your home was, and most of all the fighting was just a testament to how precious you were, how loved, how wanted.
Turning his attention back to his now half-sleeping father, Teddy wondered if he would be able to slip out and call the girls again. They'd said their goodnights earlier, but they would still be awake, and right now all he wanted to do was remind them that things might be a mess right now, but that together they would untangle everything until all that was left were options and honest questions with no wrong answers and the assurance that he would always forgive them anything, that he loved them both too much to ever allow divorce or lack of DNA to erode their relationship.
Delicately, he eased his hand from on top of his father's, and this had Victor opening his eyes again.
"I thought you were asleep," Teddy said softly, allowing his father to take his hand once more. Victor swallowed, and Teddy could tell that had caused him some level of pain. "Do you want me to get a nurse?"
Victor shook his head, sadly and gently. "Your mother- I'm sorry she won't… be much of a comfort… when I'm… gone."
He could barely swallow around the lump in his throat. When he blinked, he felt tears on the tips of his eyelashes. He wasn't sure who he was crying for—his mother, his father or himself. All three, perhaps. This was a horrible situation all round.
"Not a single day…went by…that we didn't… think of you. I want you to remember that." Victor's other hand on his cheek, and it was shaking so much that Teddy had to hold it there. It felt too cold against his own warm, damp skin. This all suddenly felt so wrong, like everything was happening too soon. "You've made me… so proud. Just seeing you again… knowing you're happy…"
"Dad," he said again, and the word felt so foreign on his tongue, so strange, and he realized what while this might be the first time in years he had called Victor it, it was likely one of the last times he would, too. "Dad—"
"I love you, son." Victor's hand coming up to touch his hair, resting on top of his head, while the other continued to touch his cheek, all around his forehead, like he was committing Teddy's face to memory.
He could very easily not say it back—Victor didn't look like he was expecting a reply at all, in fact. Twenty-four hours ago he'd been yelling at his father, now Teddy was crying by his bedside like the dutiful son he hadn't been for the last fourteen years. It didn't feel right, but neither had going away, neither had coming back, but both of these things had changed him, and made him a better person.
He doubted returning Victor's sentiments would have the same effect, but before he'd been such an integral part of Teddy's past, he'd been Martin's role model, the strongest man he'd ever known, his very first hero. They'd decorated Christmas trees together and he'd cheered for him at swimming meets and they laughed at the same cheesy jokes and shared the same half-broken smile. He was more than just his wrongs as a father. There had been nights staying up late in the family's cabin by the fire telling ghost stories his mother would pretend to be afraid of; there had been two solid months of teaching him to drive when he turned fifteen, when for the first time that Martin had been able to remember he'd felt like his father was being hard on him because he cared about his safety; there had been sincere and honest moments of genuine shared feeling, like when their family dog Brody got put down and he saw his father cry for the very first time, or when Martin graduated from college and his father insisted his mother take about a million photographs.
There had been good times—things he had overlooked in his readiness to blame someone, anyone, for the way his life had turned out, for the way only he had forced himself to feel. There had been so much good that if he really let himself think about it, should have overshadowed all the bad, but hadn't been allowed to.
Until now.
He guided the hand on the top of his head back down the bed, squeezing it gently with one of his own. Victor's right had stayed where it was, on Teddy's cheek, thumb working to wipe away tears as they fell.
"I love you too, Dad," Teddy said, and he'd spent the last five minutes fighting the sob rising in his throat, biting his lip to keep from crying out, but now, he let it all go. Seconds later, his shoulders were shaking and they were clutching each other's hands too tightly and Danny was due back any minute but Teddy didn't care. He buried his face in the bed sheets, Victor mumbling useless reassurances to mask the fact he was crying too. Teddy sobbed so hard his chest hurt, Victor cried until he had tired himself out completely, until he had fallen into another weak sleep, but Teddy kept on crying.
He was crying for himself, for the years he missed out on with his parents, for the relationship he'd been too stubborn at twenty-six to try and mend, for the impending loss of this perhaps unacknowledged, but always silently permanent presence in his life. He cried for his mother, for the way she used to be and all she had had to say goodbye to—enough to make anybody lose their mind, he figured. He cried for his daughters, for the memories they would never get to make with the grandparents they would now never have the opportunity to know. He cried for Victor, for all the nights he had been in this hospital room alone and in pain, for all the guilt and regret bottled inside that must have eaten at him all this time, for the years he'd spent waiting for the phone to ring or the door to open, for the years he had spent watching his wife deteriorate at the same speed he did, wondering if either of them would get to see their son before they died.
He cried until the tears just stopped coming, until the door behind him opened a crack and Danny quietly slipped in.
"Teddy?" said softly, a whisper, but the tap on his shoulder was enough to draw his attention. He turned his head to face the other man. "Are you okay?"
He wasn't capable of words, afraid to open his mouth again in case another sob came out and woke Victor. Danny met his eyes, nodded once, and seemed to understand. He inched closer and perched on the edge of the bed. He took the hand of Victor's that had fallen from Teddy's face in his sleep and clasped it inside his own. He did the same with Teddy's, the one he was trying to wipe his eyes with.
Danny sat between Teddy and his father, both of their hands in his lap and being periodically squeezed by his own. It made Teddy think about earlier that day, when his mother had held his hand as Danny had held onto her arm. They were connected, linked together once again, and it was the simplest way to wordlessly say 'you're not alone' that Teddy had thought possible.
His thoughts stilled, and now his eyes were heavy. He hadn't realized he was even the least bit tired earlier, but now there was a certain serenity about the way he felt—he didn't know if it was because Victor was asleep, or because Danny was here now, or even if it was simply the fact he had finally allowed this thing to break him apart, but regardless, it left him feeling about as content as conceivable in this situation.
It really wasn't all that much, but he supposed it was enough to get him through the next few hours. And if not, well, he still had Danny on his side.