Jude tucked his leg underneath him on the bed, observing the scene that was taking place on the floor. Maia was sitting in front of Connor, watching as he dressed Tiana. The doll was changed into a different one of her five dresses every time Maia switched outfits. After Jude had wrestled Maia into her clothing for the day, she had promptly put Tiana into Connor's arms, staring at him expectedly. The solider was experiencing more issues than he probably should be with a doll's dress, but he had finally managed to do up the Velcro attachments on the back of Tiana's dress.

"There." Triumphantly, Connor picked up Tiana from where she was lying face down on the floor and spun her around so that she was facing his daughter. He did his best to speak in a higher pitch when he asked Maia, "Do you like my dress?"

Maia clapped her hands together and then she stretched her arms out, reaching forward. "T! T!"

Connor handed her the doll. Maia plucked Tiana roughly from his hands and then she turned Tiana around, trying to imitate the easy spin that Connor had shown her moments before. Maia's spin was clunky as she fumbled Tiana in a circle, but she was still proud of herself when she beamed up at Connor.

"Good job, baby girl," Connor complimented her. Maia handed Tiana back to Connor, who immediately spun the doll in easy circles. Without taking is eyes off the enraptured Maia, he asked, "Are you going to come play with us, Jude?"

"Nah," Jude declined. "I think she just wants you right now."

Connor had lit up when Maia had chosen him to dress Tiana instead of Jude, as Maia had made it clear to the two of them that she wasn't completely sure where she stood with Connor yet. She'd let him cuddle her, but she hadn't let him help her with her morning snack of fruit, whining whenever he got near her while she was eating. And when Connor had tried to help Jude dress her, she'd almost had a complete breakdown.

A knock on the door interrupted Maia's playing.

"Come in," Jude called, immediately inching to the edge of the bed. Breakfast time.

Giselle opened the door. Seeing her friend, Maia bounced to her feet, abandoning Tiana with Connor. Connor watched his daughter greet the woman he'd never met with more enthusiasm than Maia had shown for him thus far, and once more, he couldn't deny the pain that spread through him. Maia reached up and seized Giselle's dark hand in her even darker one. Babbling excitedly in gibberish, she dragged the tall woman across the room to stand in front of Connor. Maia smiled up at Giselle and then pointed at Connor.

"D!" she announced excitedly. "D!"

"Is that your dad?" Giselle asked, and then she met Connor's eyes. "Hi, it's nice to meet you in person."

"You as well," Connor said, reaching up to shake her hand.

Behind Giselle, Tyler was leaning awkwardly against the door frame.

"Man, is this as weird for you as it is for me?"

"Yes," Connor replied without hesitation. "Tyler, this is my boyfriend Jude and this is my daughter, Maia."

"I feel like I know you," Tyler said as he stretched forward to shake Jude's hand. "Connor never shuts up about the two of you."

"Well, that makes me feel better." Jude laughed. "And Giselle talks about you a lot too."

"Not in too much detail, obviously, considering you don't look like you hate me," Tyler joked. He focused on Connor again. "You know, going to sleep last night, well, this morning, knowing that I wasn't going to have to listen to you carry on a conversation with yourself was one of the greatest feelings I've had in a while."

Connor snickered. "Nice to know you were thinking of me while you were with your wife."

"She loves me," Tyler said in way of explanation, and Giselle's adoring gaze did nothing to contradict him.

"She's also hungry," Giselle said. "Let's eat!"

Connor stood up and Maia held up her arms. He did as she asked and swung her up into his grip. Maia settled against his shoulder, staring curiously down at Tyler. She pointed at him and then looked up at Connor.

"That's Tyler," Connor explained as the little group flooded out into the hall. "Can you say 'Tyler'?"

"T!" Maia shrieked.

"Close enough," Connor decided.

They slipped into the elevator, pressing the button for the bottom floor. As they began to descend, Tyler glanced at Jude.

"Can I ask you something?"

Jude shrugged. "Sure?"

"Does Stevens always talk in his sleep?"

Jude nodded. "Yeah … His mom has a lot of stories about him being asleep while she was with friends and then he blurted out something entirely inappropriate. Like, this one time –"

"Hey!" Connor said quickly, nudging Jude with his shoulder. "Don't tell him anything. I'll never hear the end of it."

"Oh, no," Tyler quickly disagreed. "Tell me everything. Especially because I have another question."

Connor groaned.

"Is the dodo bird thing new? Or do you have to put up with that too?"

"No, the dodo bird thing has been around for a while."

Connor groaned again.

"Don't pick on him," Giselle chastised Tyler.

"I'm not picking on him. I'm gathering intel so that I can pick on him later," Tyler explained, wrapping his arm around Giselle's waist. "Picking on him would be if I said 'Stevens, I didn't know the army allowed dodo birds to fight'."

"That is the lamest thing you've ever said," Connor pointed out. "I'm not even bothered by it."

"I'll think of something," Tyler assured him. "Don't worry."

They took their seats around a table at the restaurant attached to their guest house, Jude settled Maia into a highchair between he and Connor. She was sitting directly across from Tyler, and he made a face at her. She wrinkled her nose at him in response, whining at her fathers, "D! D!"

"Dodo," Tyler encouraged her, a gleam lighting up in his brown eyes. "Can you say 'Dodo'?"

"No, she can't," Connor said quickly.

"Dodo," Tyler continued.

"D …" Maia said hesitantly.

"No. Do-do." Tyler slowed his speech down, and then he pointed at Connor. "Do-do."

Maia looked up at her father, frowning. "D ..."

"Do-do."

"D …" Maia said again. Then, "Do … do … do … do!"

"She spoke!" Jude cried. "Say it again, Maia. Say 'Dodo'."

"Dodo!" she shrieked happily. "Dodo!"

"Who's Dodo?" Tyler asked. "Where is Dodo?"

Maia stopped in the middle of her actions.

"Tyler, what are you trying to teach my kid?" Connor tried to sound annoyed and demanding, but he couldn't quite bring out that emotion, because it didn't matter. He heard his daughter say her first word. Not through Skype; not from a video sent from Jude's phone. He heard Maia's first word with his own ears in real time. He was sitting next to her for it, and he was able to celebrate it with Jude. It didn't matter that he first word was 'dodo' and not something overly meaningful, because her first word meant the world to him no matter what it was.

"Where is Dodo?" Tyler asked again, while Giselle put her hand on his leg, trying to tell him to take a step back. She loved her husband, but she knew how single-minded he could become.

Maia looked at Tyler when he spoke and then confused she looked at Connor. She pointed at him slowly. "Dodo."

Connor met Jude's eyes over Maia's hair, smiling.

"Well," Jude said, "at least we don't have to worry about finding you an alternative for 'Dad'."

Connor dropped so that he was eye-level with Maia. "If that's what you want to call me, then that's what you're going call me. But, everyone involved is going to pretend that Tyler had nothing to do with it."

Maia rested her hand against Connor's tanned cheek. "Dodo," she said seriously. She loved the way everyone lit up and reacted when she made that sound. It was different from how they acted to all of her other sounds, so this one was her favourite. And, somehow, she knew that this sound belonged to the father she was face to face with now.

"Yeah, okay," Connor agreed softly. "Dodo it is, baby girl."

Maia giggled and then she whipped around to look at Jude.

"Can you say 'Dada'?" Jude asked her immediately.

Maia awkwardly put her arm behind her to grab onto Connor. "Dodo!"

"We'll work on it," Jude promised with a smile.

In the background, Tyler took Giselle's hand.

"I can't wait to have that with you," she whispered to him.

He leant his head against her shoulder. "We'll get there … Someday, somehow."

(-.-)

When they arrived at the art gallery, the split into two groups. Tyler was interested on a display on the first floor, while Jude was drawn to the second. With promises to find each other at the café in three hours to decide on plans for the rest of the day, Giselle and Tyler went on their way, while Jude, Maia and Connor headed in another direction. Connor kept a firm grip on Jude's hand as they walked. He wasn't a huge fan of crowds and holding onto Jude made him feel a lot better. Maia was half asleep on Jude's shoulder, although the active scenery was beginning to perk her up. Every so often, she would look at Connor and screech 'Dodo' just to prove that she could. Although the name wasn't one that Connor might have picked (and he certainly wouldn't have expected it to come from Tyler, of all people), if that's what she wanted to call him, Connor wasn't going to say a word. It meant a lot to him that she had identified him first. He didn't think of it as a victory over Jude – the fact that she could call out to Connor with a name before she could do the same for Jude – but he thought of it as reaffirmation that he belonged in her life. That he mattered to the little girl who made up half of his world.

Connor let Jude tug him from painting to sculpture, sculpture to painting with little rhyme or reason to why they visited the pieces they did. While Jude liked to stand still and ponder the piece, Connor liked to read the little plaques that accompanied the art, sometimes pulling one of the pamphlets he'd picked up, out of the diaper bag to learn more about what he was looking at.

"Just appreciate things for how they are!" Jude insisted, accusing Connor of spending more time reading about the art instead of looking at it.

"The history makes things what they are!" Connor replied. "For example, if you and I hadn't been friends for eight years first, I doubt we'd be where we are right now."

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but at the beginning of our relationship, wasn't it you who didn't want to focus on the little details, saying that the fact that we were together was enough?" Jude laughed as Connor gave him a side-long glance. Then, for good measure, he added, "You didn't even want to call me 'boyfriend'. Remember that?"

"I don't forget anything when it comes to you," Connor bragged. "Unfortunately for me, you don't forget anything either."

"You just don't like that because I always win." Jude laughed again.

"Only because I let him," Connor whispered to Maia.

Jude pretended not to hear. "Oh, look. It's Elegant Gestures of the Drowned after Max Ernst."

"That sounds cheerful," Connor agreed, and let Jude pull him forward.

By the end of the third hour, Maia was done. She was done with art, people, Connor, and Jude. She didn't want to sleep, she didn't want to eat. She didn't seem to want anything in particular. She curled up on Jude's shoulder and whined.

"She's just tired," Jude explained. "She's usually napping by now. It can't be comfortable trying to sleep on my shoulder while we're walking around."

"Do you want to go back to the guest house?" Connor asked. "We can watch a movie, she can sleep. Everybody wins."

"Sounds like a good idea," Jude agreed. "We should grab lunch while we're here at the café, though. I'm starving."

"I'll jump in line," Connor decided, nimbly stealing Jude's wallet from his back pocket.

Jude gave him a look, letting Connor know he wasn't entirely sneaky. Connor shrugged it off, passing Jude the diaper bag. Jude took it and sunk into the nearest available seat. It didn't take long for Giselle and Tyler to come sauntering in.

"How was your afternoon?" Tyler asked him.

"It was good. Yours?"

"Great. I love art. This place is like a slice of heaven!" Tyler's eyes lit up. "I think Giselle's bored, but she's been dealing with it well."

"I'm a little bored," Giselle admitted, taking the seat next to Jude. "Not as bored as Maia looks, though."

"She's cranky," Jude agreed. Maia squawked when Giselle tried to touch her. "We're going to head back to the guest house, take it easy for a couple of hours."

"Oh, good. We were going to ask you and Connor if you minded Giselle and me taking off again for a few hours."

"We should all meet up for dinner somewhere, though!" Giselle said.

"Absolutely," Jude agreed. "If you have any ideas, just let me know. Or if you want Connor and me to figure it out, we can do that too."

"It won't be for a while yet," Giselle said. "We'll see how things go around, say, seven?"

"Yeah." Jude nodded. "We'll meet up with you then!"

He stood up as Connor came back to the table. He tried to hand Maia to Connor, just so that he could have a little break from carrying her – it was only a few minutes to the car anyway – but Maia clung to him. He switched her to the other shoulder, passing the diaper bag back to Connor, who slung it over his shoulder. He put the sandwiches he had purchased in the bag.

"I bought you coffee," he said.

"It's official," Jude said. "You're not allowed to go anywhere, ever again."

"And it's not because he's happy to see me, it's all so I can get caffeine for him," Connor griped to Tyler.

"Spouses," Tyler agreed. "What're you going to do?" He leant away from Giselle as she good naturedly-swiped at him. He bounced back to her side, wrapping his arm around her. "You know I'll get you coffee whenever you want, babe."

"I cut out caffeine," she reminded him.

"I'll get you coffee," Tyler repeated, "because you're one of those weird people that likes the taste of black coffee and drinks decaf for that reason."

"So get on that," Giselle encouraged him. "Go, decaf fairy, go!"

Maia whined into Jude's ear.

"All right, all right. I got the message," Jude assured her.

He stood up, automatically reaching for Connor's hand before realizing that his hands were occupied with the coffee cups. He settled for wrapping his hand around Connor's elbow.

"We'll see you later for dinner."

"Bye!" Tyler called after them.

Jude and Connor headed out the door into the brisk January air. Maia whined at the cold – or maybe just at the world in general. She was that tired.

"Not that much further," Connor assured her.

"Hopefully she'll just fall asleep in the car," Jude said, although he was sure she would. Unlike David, who became more awake once he was planted in a vehicle, Maia was usually out like a light.

"And then have a nice nap and wake up friendly." Connor tried to tease her, but she wasn't having it.

"Nnn! Nnn!" she sobbed, her voice picking up volume as Jude finally had to put her down in her car seat.

He buckled her in and shut the car door behind her. He stretched his arms out, cracking his shoulders. He took his coffee and the car keys from Connor.

"Let's get back," Jude said, and climbed in the driver's seat.

Welcome back to my East coast time zone!

Reminder that you can find my anonymous review replies at: (dash) are (dash) of (dash) legend (dash) .com (slash) anon (dash) replies

The painting Jude references is: Elegant Gestures of the Drowned after Max Ernst by Steven Campbell. I don't own anything recognizable.

~TLL~