A/N: If you haven't yet read my Wishes story, you probably don't know this, but I have a tendency to be far too detailed in my word-building. So if you were hoping to get right to the main plot, I'm sorry. I promise we're getting there. Probably the next chapter or the one after that, which I will upload as soon as it's finished, could be tomorrow, could be next week.

Disclaimer: ... yeah. Still own nothing, surprise, surprise.

3.

I rub my eyes, wondering if what I'm seeing is really real or if I'm still sleeping and this is all just a wonderful dream.
I was on my way to the dining hall for breakfast, the kids still in bed, they wouldn't dream of waking up this early on a vacation, and there he was.
Standing there, leaning against the wall with that wide grin on his face and that mischievous twinkle in his eyes, as if the last year never happened and I'm still living those glorious days when I could call him mine.
"I thought you hated this hotel, so how come you're staying here again?" he asks, chuckling when I don't answer and just stare at him, still trying to figure out if he's really here.
He walks over to me and stops just within touching distance, towering over me the same way he did back then.
He knew how much I loved his size – what can I say? I like big boys – so he always made sure to stand really close to me so he seemed even taller.
"ah...uhm..." I stumble, shaking my head in an attempt to clear it, but to no avail.
He takes another step so that he's almost touching me and smiles down at me, not doing anything else, still waiting for the answer to a question I've already forgotten by now.
I rack my brain trying to figure out exactly what I'm supposed to be saying or doing right now, but he's not exactly helping me in my endeavor.
He runs his fingers over my face and smiles that sweet half-smile I've missed seeing so much, sending shivers down my spine.
"it's cheap," I say eventually, taking a step back.
Being so close to him is dangerous.
It's just too easy to fall right back in love with him – when I've finally managed to fool myself into thinking it was over – and I need a clear head for this.
He frowns, but doesn't say anything about it.
"I heard you were looking for me," he says, looking a bit confused.
I don't blame him.
When someone you've dated – however shortly – comes looking for you after being separated for a whole year it's easy to assume they want to rekindle the old flame.
Not that I don't want that, but I need to tell him about Liz before I even think about anything like that.
It's just too easy to completely lose myself in him and forget I came here on a mission, not just to have fun.
I shake my head again and take another step back, making him frown again.
"right. I was. Um, we need to talk," I say, cracking my knuckles nervously.
This is exactly what I wanted, right? I found him and now I can tell him about Liz.
So why do I suddenly feel like throwing up?
"lead the way," he says formally, gesturing to the door of the dining hall, probably realizing whatever it is I want to tell him isn't something trivial like me wanting to get back together with him.

"so, I'm guessing you still remember me," I say, laughing nervously.
Of course he still remembers me, he even remembers what hotel I was staying in and how much I hated the place.
"I...uhm..." I rub my hands over my face and look at him worriedly.
"just say whatever it is you need to say. I promise I won't get angry," he says and I laugh.
"oh, anger isn't what I was expecting. Panic or disbelief on the other hand..." I say.
Then I shake my head once more and, in a moment of bravery – or recklessness, whatever you want to call it – I just tell him everything.
About how, when I came back from my vacation, I got sick and I initially thought I'd brought home a virus or something.
About how I went to the doctor and found out that I'd brought something back alright, but it couldn't exactly be called a virus.
About how I'd been meaning to tell him, but I had no way of contacting him and about how I came to find him after I'd finally gathered enough money for this trip.
The entire time he just looks at me, his face an expressionless mask.
I can remember him being such an open book.
When he was happy, he looked happy.
When he was angry, he looked angry.
I'm not sure what to make of his sudden expressionlessness.
When I finish talking I fold my hands in my lap and just stare at the table, too scared to look at him.
"you named her Elizabeth, huh?" he asks after a few moments of tense silence.
"yeah, I had to name her eventually, and since I obviously couldn't ask for your opinion on the matter,..." I say, shrugging and still staring at the table.
Suddenly he chuckles.
"Leila, look at me," he says.
I flinch and look up warily, only to find him smiling cheerfully.
"I told you I wouldn't get angry, didn't I?" he asks. "if anything, I'm thankful."
"thankful?" I ask, a bit confused and he chuckles again.
"you spent all this money to come here, when you don't have all that much to spend, just so you could tell me about this. And since you stopped talking after telling me about her existence, I'm guessing you didn't come here expecting me to take care of her or pay for her, you simply wanted me to know and let me decide for myself what I wanted to do with this new information. I'm sure that, if I told you now that I want nothing to do with the kid, you'd just take her and leave, never coming back," he says.
"so yes, I am thankful."

"you want nothing to do with her?" I ask, my heart shattering at the thought.
He starts to say something, but I interrupt him by standing up, slamming my hands down on the tabletop and leaning closer to him.
"but you haven't even met her yet! You have to meet her, at least. She's so amazing. She's really beautiful and she laughs all the time and she almost never keeps me up at night and..." I stop talking when he laughs and puts his hand over my mouth.
"Leila, darling, I never said I wanted nothing to do with her. That was a hypothetical worst-case scenario," he says.
I sit back down and smile sheepishly.
"oh, right. Sorry, I'm a bit high-strung right now," I say and he smiles.
"I'll say," he says. "but I don't blame you. This must be very stressful for you."
"you know, it's actually not that bad. Up until I saw you just now I just had this idea in my head that I was just going to tell you and be done with it. Of course, when the time came for me to put my money where my mouth is I freaked out, but now I'm okay again," I say, shaking my head and laughing when he raises an eyebrow in disbelief. "well, I'm better."
"so what comes next?" he asks.
I shrug.
"well, we could hang out and talk about 'the good old days' while we wait for the little ones to wake up, or I could go wake them up right now – though Alex would definitely be in a terrible mood all day if I did that – and then you can meet them," I say.
"and after that we need to figure out how we're going to make this work, if you want to see us sometimes, because I seriously can't afford to book a flight for every single birthday or holiday, even if I did have the time for that, which I don't, since I have my job to take into consideration."
"wait, stop, rewind. Did you just say them, as in 'multiple children'? I thought you said it was just Elizabeth? Who is this Alex? Is he also mine? Are they twins?" he asks, sounding oddly hopeful at that, and I laugh.
"Alex is my son, somewhat, but he is most definitely not yours, unless you had an affair with my mother eight years ago," I say.

"so is he your son or your brother?" he asks and I sigh.
"both and neither," I say.
"I raised him, I'm still raising him, but my mother is his biological mother. And Alex knows this, but he still calls his mother his grandmother and me his mother. Remember back when we first met? You asked me about my family and I told you that me telling you about my screwed-up family would effectively ruin both our nights? Well, it's still as screwed-up as ever."
"gossip and slander are tools of the devil," an annoyingly familiar voice says from somewhere behind me.
I sigh deeply and H looks at me questioningly.
"well, I guess now is as good a time as ever to 'meet the family'," I say, gesturing to my mother.
"meet the wicked witch of the west, also known as my mother."
My mother glares at me, but – because there are other people around and she doesn't want to make herself look bad – refrains from yelling at me and ranting the way she usually would whenever I say something insulting about her.
"you must be Herbert," she says, shaking H's hand and I smile when he looks at me in confusion.
"she's pretending not to know your name. I guess she's trying to convey her feelings that you are too insignificant for her to spend any effort into remembering even something as simple as a single letter," I explain and he grins, looking very amused by the idea that anyone would consider him insignificant.
"well, I don't particularly mind. I've been known by many names over the course of my life, Herbert actually being one of them. If you choose to call me that, then that's fine by me," he tells my mother and I can hear her gritting her teeth in annoyance, but there are still other people around, so she just smiles at him as politely as she can manage with her jaws clenched tightly.

My mother sits down at our table uninvited and looks at H like a cow-breeder would look at a sick calf.
Something pitifully inferior that needs to be disposed of quickly, before its illness can spread to the healthy cattle.
H doesn't seem to mind.
In fact, he seems to be greatly amused by her contempt.
"you know, I would think you'd show a little more respect to the father of your granddaughter," I say when she doesn't let up and just keeps sneering at him over the rim of her teacup.
H still doesn't mind, though.
He's exactly as I remember him: easygoing and confident, not someone to be at all bothered by something as little as this.
"that bastard is no granddaughter of mine," my mother says, turning up her nose at me.
H's smile falls and he closes his eyes, breathing deeply in an attempt to calm his anger before he does something wonderfully stupid like slap her silly.
She herself doesn't seem to notice the thin, black ice she's walking on, though, and she continues on like nothing is wrong.
"I refuse to see that unclean thing as something born from my own flesh and blood," she says, building up to a rant despite all the people around us.
"Leila," H says, his voice sounding strained with barely contained rage.
"you and your children may come stay at my house for as long as you wish. This woman, however, is not welcome."
Of course that starts my mother off on a rant about how Alex is her child – seeing as she can use him to get something she wants – and he's not going anywhere without her.
I can almost hear the proverbial ice beneath her feet slowly starting to crack.
"ma'am, I suggest you stop talking before I do something we'll both regret," H says, turning his hands to fists to keep from reaching out and slamming her head against the table or something.
When my mother goes on to rant about how H is a tool of the devil and how he has seduces her 'oh so innocent little girl' into a life of sin, I realize I have to come up with something to diffuse the situation quickly or someone might die.

Luckily I know H pretty well and I know that a few jokes can go a long way for calming him down when he's stressed out or angry about something.
"you know, mother, if you keep this up, he might actually kill you. And when that happens, I'd sure want to go to your funeral, but it'd probably be on a workday and I believe in business before pleasure," I say, the first funny thing I could come up with.
H looks confused for a second, blinks a few times and then falls into fits of laughter.
"oh, I have to remember that one," he says cheerfully.
My mother glares at me and opens her mouth, but I hold up my hand, shutting her up.
"if you hadn't noticed: this conversation is over. Now, why don't you go upstairs, get out of those dreadful pajama's and slip into something a bit more comfortable...like a coma," I say.
H, who had finally stopped laughing, falls right back into hysteria.
He grabs a notepad from his bag and starts writing something down, probably my insults, shaking his head and mumbling something that sounds like 'genius'.
My mother gets up, her face red with rage, but since I said my 'magic words' she knows her allotted ranting-time is over, so there's no point in her staying any longer.
"well, that was interesting," I say when my mother has stormed out of the room and H has calmed down a bit.
"more," he says, making a beckoning gesture with his hands.
I laugh and shake my head.
"alright...how's this? 'Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I hate you, but if you were on fire and I had water...I'd drink it'," I say and he doubles over in laughter, taking a few seconds to calm down enough to respond, but right when he's about to speak I hear another familiar voice, this one not half as annoying as the last one.
"mommy?" I turn around and hold out my arms before even looking at him.
If Alex is here, Elizabeth is here.
He'd never leave her alone with my mother and I have no doubt that woman went straight to our room when she stormed out of here, which is probably the reason these two are out of bed so early in the day, trying to escape my mother's ranting.

"so that's them, then?" H asks, smiling at Alex – who shyly hides behind my chair – and Elizabeth, who laughs and babbles for a bit and goes back to sleep.
"yup, this is them," I say.
"this little brat is Alex. Don't let his innocent appearance fool you, he's a tiny devil in disguise. And this little angel here is Elizabeth, my...our daughter."
"may I?" he asks, holding out his arms at Liz, a look of wonder in his eyes.
"of course," I say, nodding and carefully laying Liz down in his arms.
She wakes up again and stares up at him with those big blue eyes of hers and I can see his heart melting for her in that moment.
"she will break many a man's hearts when she gets older," he says.
"don't look at her like that! You can't have her. She's going to marry me when we're all grown up," Alex says, glaring at H from behind my chair.
This is one of the few things in which he is predominantly childlike – this desire to marry a family members that so many children his age seem to have – so I never bothered to tell him that him marrying Liz would actually be illegal.
H just smiles and shrugs.
"you have a great taste in women," he says.
"don't encourage him," I mumble and he laughs.
Just because I decided not to kill Alex' dream, that doesn't mean I encourage it.
"so, are you going to be our daddy?" Alex asks as he tries to pry Liz out of H's arms, his earlier shyness completely forgotten.
H looks at me with that look in his eyes that never fails to annoy me.
He looks panicky, which is to be expected, considering the question, but I can tell he's not actually worried, he's just pretending to be, because he thinks that is what is expected of him.
Annoying, yes, but not nearly as bad as I'd feared his reaction would be, so it's fine.
"for now he's just going to be your non-stepdaddy," I say, and Alex nods.
"good enough for me," he says.
H just looks confused now and I laugh.
"long story," I say, shaking my head.

"you found him," the curious bartender says happily when I walk up to the bar, H right behind me.
"well, actually, he found me," I say, laughing.
The angry bartender looks at me, looks at H, and then storms off into a back room.
Huh, wonder what that was about. "thanks for your help. So, you serve fireshots?" I ask the curious bartender, deciding to just ignore the angry man's craziness.
"woman, I serve everything," the curious one says proudly, walking over to the other side of the bar and picking up one of the ridiculously many bottles there.
"I'm Dio, by the way. I just remembered I never introduced myself," he says as he's pouring my drink.
H stays silent and just watches me with a dreamy look in his eyes.
He's probably thinking about Elizabeth again.
After our talk in the dining hall of the hotel, H once again invited me and the kids to come stay with him in his house – or rather, his mansion.
Seriously, that place is huge – and this time, without my mother there to interfere, I accepted his invitation.
My mother really couldn't do anything about that, since I'd told her from the start that I didn't accept her as a family member on this trip and that we just happened to be in the same country at the same time, so I wouldn't take her into consideration for anything I did, or anywhere I went.
So I went to pack all our stuff and the kids and I got into H's car and drove off into the sunset.
Well, actually, it was only mid-morning, so it was more like 'into the sunrise', but whatever.
Turns out, H lives in this huge mansion and he has a dozen servants working for him, including a maid who was a nanny before she started working for H.
She agreed to take care of the little ones as H and I went out and got reacquainted.
But that was only half an hour ago.
Before then H flat-out refused to let Elizabeth leave his sight for even one second.
He held her for hours on end and smiled, a look of utter bliss in his eyes, every time she started babbling and laughing, which was every ten minutes or so.
Even in all the time we'd spent together a year ago, I've never seen H as happy as he was today. It really makes me feel like I did the right thing coming here to find him.

"you don't deserve him," the angry bartender says, suddenly standing right in front of me, on the other side of the bar.
"wow, where did you come from?" I ask, surprised.
I was pretty deep in thought just now, but I don't think I was distracted enough to not notice someone coming to stand right in front of me.
"you don't deserve him," he just says again.
I sigh and shrug.
"that may very well be so, but that doesn't change the fact that I have him," I say, looking around.
Where did H and Dio go?
They were here just a second ago.
"you're poor, you're not that pretty and you have few manners. You don't deserve him," the angry guy just says again and I sigh again.
"you're starting to sound like a broken record. Look, if he doesn't want you, it's because he is not into you, not because 'I stole him from you' or whatever stupid thing you've come up with to justify the fact that he doesn't want your oh-so-awesome self. So just lay off, will ya?" I say, though I suspect this guy doesn't know the meaning of 'laying off'.
"I don't want him," the guy says, but I'm calling bullshit by the way his face just turned lobster-red.
"u-huh," I just say sarcastically, looking around for H and Dio again.
This angry guy isn't serving anyone and there seem to be a lot of people trying to get his attention.
I thought Dio was the reliable bartender – as far as bartenders can be considered 'reliable' – so why would he leave the bar, knowing that he's leaving it in the hands of a man who doesn't give a flying fuck about customer satisfaction?
"if you think..." the man starts to say in a tone of voice that reminds me eerily of my mother, but he is interrupted by a stranger, who is suddenly standing right beside me, asking where Dio is.
"seriously, what is up with people popping in and out of existence today?" I ask no-one in particular, making the stranger laugh.
"if you mean me, then as much as I'd hate to disappoint, I didn't actually 'pop into existence' just now, I came from over there," he says, pointing behind him at a table where three young women seem to be impatiently awaiting his return.

"charming," I say sarcastically when one of the women lifts her skirt up high enough that her panties show.
"yeah, I might have to replace that one," the stranger says, sounding amused.
He stays silent for a while, but I don't say anything, suspecting what he's going to say next.
"interested in taking her place?" he asks, the question I had been waiting for.
"I might've been interested if you had decided to trade all three of them for me, but I'll try not to be insulted that I'm apparently only as valuable as one of them, and the least attractive one at that," I say, making the stranger laugh again.
Well, at least he's cheerful.
Well, that or drunk.
My money is on drunk.
"I'm Paolo," he says.
The angry bartender is silent, glaring at me, but not saying anything.
The look in his eyes when he looks at Paolo tells me he's the reason for the angry man's silence, though I don't know why. He seems like just another drunk playboy to me.
"I'm Leila, proud mother of two, so don't even try to treat me the same as you would those bimbos," I say, making Paolo laugh again.
"now, now, calling these lovely ladies 'bimbos' is a bit harsh, don't you think?" he asks.
I look back at the table again and see that the vulgar girl has taken off her skirt altogether and the other two seem to be getting very cozy with one another.
I say nothing, I just look back at Paolo and raise a disbelieving eyebrow and he chuckles.
"well, maybe 'ladies' isn't the right word," he admits.
I just nod and look around for Dio and H again.
Seriously, where did those two go, leaving me alone like this?
H wasn't like this when we went out a year ago.
Guess people really do change.
Or maybe, since he no longer has to seduce me into his bed, he just doesn't put in all the effort he did back then.
Well, that's a bit rude.

"so...how would you like to become the proud mother of three?" Paolo asks, making me choke and cough.
"ugh, that's...no," I say, shaking my head.
"just...no." Paolo chuckles again and shrugs.
"it would be a gorgeous kid, I can promise you that," he says, pointing at his own face.
Even I have to admit that he is, in fact, gorgeous.
Actually, I can't remember ever having met anyone as pretty as he is.
Well, maybe H.
Or Dio.
Those two are both pretty handsome.
Guess there's just something about Greek men that gets my blood boiling.
"well, I did read somewhere that a baby from two ugly parents has a good chance of being gorgeous...oh, wait...damn, I'm not ugly. Guess that won't work then, huh?" I say, making him double over in laughter.
What? Just because I think he's hot, that doesn't mean I'm going to admit it to him.
"you are interesting," he says, leaning closer to me.
The angry bartender apparently decides that since, for whatever reason, he can't keep yelling at me, he might as well start doing his job and starts tending the bar, leaving me alone with this dangerous predator.
At least with him there I felt like I had someone to run interference if Paolo got too familiar with me.
Sure, I know rationally that he wouldn't have done a damn thing to help me, but delusion is a girl's best friend, right?
But now he's gone, Dio's gone and H is gone, so no-one is going to help me get rid of this playboy.
I sigh deeply, making Paolo look at me questioningly.
"I came here with someone, but for whatever reason he popped out of existence, along with the other bartender, right when you and that angry dude popped in," I admit.
"I'm feeling a bit abandoned, I guess."
Paolo grins mischievously and I sigh again.
Great, I just admitted to feeling vulnerable, he'll never leave me alone now.
"well then, how about I send those bimbos packing and you come have one drink with me. Just one," he begs and I laugh.
"I thought calling them 'bimbos' was 'a bit harsh'," I just say, not remarking on the other part of the sentence.
He chuckles and points at the table.
"oh, yeah. Definitely bimbos," I say, watching as the vulgar one is sitting on some old guy's lap, her shirt apparently forgotten as her skirt was and the other two are doing things to each other that my mother would be too young to see.
"ugh, that's nasty."