Rhapsody

neptunestar: Thanks for taking the time to review!

Natalie: Ack! I can't resist the puppy dog face… ;) Thanks for reviewing.

bubbicup: Thanks! I'm glad I could make you happy…

valley-girl2: == That is speechlessness right there. I don't know whether to write you one response or five… The way you take the time to quote all the little things, even just to give the tiniest response as to your reaction while reading… there's really nothing to say to it except it's amazing. And of course, you rock. (Let's see… check off "I don't know what to say," the standard "You rock," and "Amazing, in some way, shape or form") I think that about covers it. Thank you so much for your little shout outs and for taking the time toe make one of your massive reviews.

Kiki: Oh wow… :) Thank you very much!

Liz: Thanks! I think we're all in love with Daddy!Vaughn… ;)
caz: There's no reason to apologize! Thanks for telling me which parts you liked and for reviewing. You know, over at SD-1, someone said the same thing as you did about skipping lines with this and Harry Potter. Huge compliment, strange coincidence. :)

Carma: Thanks so much for reviewing. Sorry this isn't really soon…

I'm really sorry this took so long guys. :( Again, I blame the papers, projects and exams that accompany the end of the semester (along with other… issues not conducive to writing fluff). And I'm not even sure if this is worth the wait, but here it is regardless. You've all waited long enough…

Chapter 7: Consummate

He couldn't stop it, couldn't prevent the words from issuing forth from his lips. It would have been futile to put forth the effort; trying wasn't even an option. His words were as automatic as his own heartbeat, as unpreventable as the steady ticking of seconds signifying the passing of day to night and back again. Without following any of the laws of physics, traffic, or protocol, three syllables screamed forth, somehow managing to come across as barely more than a rumbling whisper.

"Hey, buddy…"

Vaughn wasn't sure, but his voice might as broken, might have squeaked as it made its way out his throat and past any barrier of reason. Because suddenly it didn't matter that he was on a CIA assignment in Russia with at least three other officers and Eric Weiss in the room. He could have been in the middle of an important briefing with the president and all the members of his cabinet and the result would have been the same. All lingering thoughts of remaining professional sighed, shrugged into taunting laughter, and went flying out the window, hurtling themselves face first into ice and snow.

"Bahn, Bahn, Bahn…"

Repeating over and over, not an echo, but continually bubbling from the child's lips like water from a fountain, the occasional tear breaking the steady rhythm like pennies tossed from the hands of children, interrupting with a splashing sob before its echo rippled into nonexistence, stopped completely by the thud of tiny sneakers hitting the floor and pattering in his direction.

Vaughn didn't see one of the Russian officers turn to the other and shrug, didn't hear him mumble something that resembled his name in at least a halfway attempt at explanation. The place and exact circumstances may have been dramatically different, but the way the little boy ran to him, as if Vaughn were the only thing he had left in the world, his one source of comfort here to save him from the monsters of the unknown… It was exactly the same.

Except this time, Vaughn met the child halfway, scooping the tiny body into his arms before Ilya had a chance to cling to his legs and look up at him, begging, pleading with something much strong than words, with a trembling chin and two eyes that could jackknife their way straight though the core of his being.

He held the boy close, quickly adjusting to the size and weight that a few months could only bring to a small child, felt the rapid beating of a little heart against how own, hot tears sticking to the skin at his throat as the still so tiny arms stretched around his neck with a frantic grip. The child clung to Vaughn so tightly that the only reason his arms didn't steal the breath from him completely was the fact that, for a moment, Vaughn had even forgotten how to breathe, wouldn't have been consciously able to draw in and expel air for anything in the world.

Rocking the little boy back and forth just as he had his own son the night before, Vaughn whispered those words that everyone present could hear, but not a soul in the room save the child could understand.

"Shh, Ilya… It's okay… It's okay… Da…"

The words sputtered to a halt as involuntarily as they had first sprung into being, seeming to pull his eyelids at least partially open, not yet showing Vaughn where he was, but at least who it was that he held in his arms. Not his own son, not really and truly…

His mind chastised his heart with a painful beat, quickly amending his statement before he even had so much as the chance to blink, could spend too much time analyzing his near-Freudian slip. "I'm here, Ilya… I'm here…"

An awkward and halting conversation continued around him, one that he didn't hear, but which might have heartened him. It began with Weiss' attempt at some sort of justification, complete with gestures, broken by one of the Russian officer's halting and thickly accented English, his words to the effect that Vaughn's name was the first word that the child had spoken, the first thing they had heard from his little mouth since finding him the night before.

Vaughn would find this out for himself only a few minutes later, too caught up in rocking the sweet child back and forth, trying anything and everything to dry his tears, calm his sobbing body. Somewhere in between that instant and the next, one breath and another, his world froze, all thought, emotion and action suspended, tinted and quivering in soft colors, like cubed pieces of fruit in blue Jell-O.

Alternating rays of light and dream refracted off the sleek surface, sound muffled, distorted into hums and sighs, low mumblings and soft whispers, blocked from finding its way in. In that moment, during the fraction of a blink in which his eyes were completely closed, the weight of the boy transformed into his own son in his arms, Sydney's was the breath he felt tickling his neck, and…

"Hey man…"

And that was all it took, the foot that stuck out before him, tripping him up and sending him head over heels. In an instant, Vaughn's precariously fragile gelatin world smashed to the floor, dreams and feelings wiggling like chunks of fruit and brightly colored cubes of gelled sugar, spraying in a thousand different directions before settling and sparkling like shards of broken glass never to be put wholly together again.

"… are we gonna go check out the house?"

Vaughn turned, following the familiar hand on his elbow up until it became an arm, a shoulder, and finally led to Weiss' face. A few years ago, Vaughn would have met his friend's strange glance with red cheeks and a sheepish smile. But now there was no sudden rush of color or embarrassment as he slowly swiveled to take in the surrounding faces before resting his gaze on Eric's once again.

"You go," he answered, as simply as if that had been the plan all along, knowing that there was no way he'd let Ilya out of his arms so soon, not when the poor child was still clinging to him so tightly, still so worked up. "I'll stay here and see what else they know. It'll go quicker that way."

Weiss nodded, glancing from this friend to the little boy in his arms and back again, honestly not remembering if this were something that the mission had entailed, wishing for the umpteenth time in the last five minutes that he had actually taken a second to read the damn thing. But it really wouldn't have mattered whether it had been outlined in the briefing or not. There was something in the child's eyes, and even in those of his friend, that screamed to him that this was the way things were supposed to be.

Watching Weiss leave, Vaughn brought a hand up to the back of Ilya's head, glancing down to where it rested against his shoulder. It didn't seem to matter that months had passed, that the little boy was supposed to be older; his thumb was still so tiny, still fit perfectly in his mouth, brought him comfort when nothing else could. They were picking up right where they had left off, as if the time that had passed had been no longer-lasting than the stain of hot breath against a mirror.

The rest of the mission whirred by in a rushing blur of sights and smells, Vaughn's impatient English fumbling next to the thick accents and a hurried Russian that he didn't even halfway understand. He didn't let Ilya out of his arms for a second, not at the police station, in the van, or during any part of the long flight home. But the little boy wasn't heavy, only served as a hindrance by steadily increasing the nagging, gnawing desire to have Sydney and Gabriel with the child in his arms.

From seeming like years, to days, to mere hours, minutes, seconds… Time passed, in that seeming slow motion known as reality, always slowest when it is least convenient. Ticking away through another agonizingly long, but not quite as silent plane ride, a few moments on the freeway, and a sidestep to the CIA building… and he was finally home.

Heart pounding fear didn't follow Vaughn this time as he turned the key in the lock of his apartment door. He couldn't put his finger on it, didn't understand how he knew that everything was all right now, when almost two days ago, he had been breathless with terror and anxiety.

Maybe it was because this night was not so dark, was not howling and weeping in warning and sadness, amplified by a gnawing fear that had been sparked by his almost oddly telepathic connection with Sydney, so close even when so far apart that he had even felt her dreaming. How she had known, how some sort of peculiarly coincidental link had connected her to the little boy and his grandmother across continents and oceans was still a mystery, one that tonight's bright moon and gently caressing breeze were not going to answer.

And maybe it was that same breeze and moon that made him feel so at ease. Maybe it was because he was almost too exhausted to think straight, let alone set aside the necessary brain cells to worry. Or maybe it simply had something to do with the little boy who lay asleep in his arms, legs dangling, tiny hands hanging limply at his side and his head carefully placed on his shoulder. Perhaps some things really were as simple as that.

With a gentle push, the apartment door swung softly open and Vaughn stepped inside. He had barely shut it behind him and begun to tiptoe across the floor when a whispered melody echoed down the hallway.

"Vaughn?"

A sudden, inexplicable relief flooded him, a reaction that only her voice could garner, a warmth that surged forth, ebbing just as suddenly as it had washed over him, replaced with concern as to why she wasn't yet in bed, a question he didn't ask because he already knew that the answer was for the same reason he hadn't been able to sleep on the plane. They were a hopeless case: each unable to find rest without the other's breaths and heartbeats singing them to sleep.

Sydney's question had barely been loud enough to even be considered a murmur, but it must have been the father-holding-sleeping-child-reaction that made him put his finger to his lips, quiet moments treasured and few with a newborn in the house. She appeared in the doorway, and Vaughn smiled when he found his gesture unnecessary, saw Gabriel's sleeping body snuggling against her shoulder. Letting his wonder-filled smile gracefully stand in for his hello and knowing that his greeting reverberated in her ears as well as her heart, he watched her step closer, his own feet held down with Krazy Glue, incapable of squeaking even the tiniest amount of space forward.

She stopped before him, so close that the two children they held were nearly touching, the only two things that could keep her from springing to his arms. "They let you take him…"

Vaughn heard her words almost before she spoke them, surprise and something that might have been relief sparkling through the air in their wake. She took one of her hands from Gabriel's back and ran it gently through Ilya's hair, fingering the soft, dark strands, as if they were more precious than spun gold.

"Actually," Vaughn began quietly, lacing his fingers through her own and tugging them across the few inches that separated the little boy's head from his lips, kissing her fingertips simply because his lips were drawn to her, it would have been impossible for them to keep from her skin for a second longer. "I told them I was taking him and left."

And he had, staying at the CIA building barely long enough to give the required report, and leaving before anyone could tell him their future plans for the boy. He would have been under CIA protection one way or another, but… "It's okay, ri…?"

"It's perfect," Sydney mumbled, stifling a yawn as she tilted her head down to brush her cheek gently against the top of Gabriel's head and peered up at him. "You don't have to ask."

"I know. It's just with…" He trailed off, suddenly unable to recollect how he had even let the thought cross his mind. Of course Sydney would have, would have wanted…

But even that thread was snipped as one thought after another cascaded downward in his urge to tell her everything at once. Something else sprung suddenly to mind, something that seemed far more important than anything else that he could have… "He asked for you on the plane."

A breathing pause, one in which the words were allowed to sink in fully, to beat against eardrums and leave an echo, to hit against every cell in and nerve leading to the brain, so that they could both almost hear the little boy's voice as it had sounded that first time he had stumbled over her name.

"Really?"

She straightened, the smile that escaped her lips so dazzling, Vaughn was surprised that neither of the sleeping children awakened. It was the very same smile that never failed to render him weak in the knees, to make his heart skip not one beat, but at least three, and to clog his windpipe with a tangled, tangible form of what used to be air.

All the more beautiful because she knew it, all of this, knew that it was the most compelling weapon she would ever possess when it came to him, that she could effectively have him down for the count every moment of every day. But she would never, could never hold its power over him, didn't seem in control of the moments that that smile stole over her lips, immediately enlisting the help of her sparkling eyes, deploying her dimples and calling in the rest of her facial features to complete the effect.

It was captivating. It was gorgeous. And although it almost killed him, he didn't care, would have been content to live with no other purpose than to be brought from the dungeon for a moment each day and simply see her smile. He would live without light, comfort, food, water, air, if it were possible; would live without everything in the world but that one part of her.

Vaughn could only nod in response to her question, words escaping him, running off like bloodhounds at the sight of a rabbit, leaving him helplessly mute until they felt like tiptoeing their way back. Breath and heartbeat sprang valiantly to the rescue in their absence, mingling with all their might, attempting to mold themselves into something resembling speech, but coming out as nothing more than a soft sigh.

He waited for a fistful of stringing seconds, allowing a few more to link themselves onto the chain than he would have liked. But words were taking far too long, seemed to have lost themselves, found a detour, or were lollygagging, reluctantly dragging their feet through the return trip. Vaughn couldn't wait forever for the power of speech to find its way back, leaned forward to steal the smile from her lips before it could disappear of its own accord. The kiss was quick, awkward, with the cherished bundles they both held in their arms, but nothing had ever been closer to paradise, more fitting, more needed than that was at that moment.

Shifting Ilya so that he could comfortably walk with a free hand and entwining her fingers with his own, well aware that even the short walk down the hallway to Gabriel's room would be next to impossible if he was separated from her even by an inch, Vaughn allowed speech to leisurely trip its way back to him. As he and Sydney slowly wove their way down the hall, steps halting as they both unconsciously savored the moment, he murmured a few important details about the mission, told her how both their names had been the only two words the child had spoken, whispered that he had requested and been granted the next few days off until the CIA found…

Vaughn wasn't able to finish his sentence, and not just because he didn't want to think of what would happen when Ilya had to return to his family once again, to consider that maybe it wasn't a good idea to allow themselves to get attached to him all over again. The little troupe had walked into Gabriel's room, the nightlight illuminating the portable crib that had been set up right next to their son's. Ready with blankets and the stuffed dinosaur that they had both claimed to have forgotten to pack for the child, each knowing as well as the other that it had been saved as their one memento, had sat on their dresser not because they had wanted to remember to send it to the boy, but because it had been needed as a reminder in itself, to help ease the sting of sudden separation.

Sydney's shy smile added a soft glow to the room, dimming slightly as she bent to kiss the top of Gabriel's head and tenderly tucked the little boy in. Vaughn did the same with the child he held in his arms, smiling as the little boy sighed and snuggled under the covers. He stepped back and put a hand on the railing of Gabriel's crib, wondering if Sydney had put the two so close together for this sole purpose, so he could stand by both of them, see both children in one glance.

He wasn't even aware he had opened his mouth, only noticing when it shut itself after the last notes of the lullaby sung from within him, coming and going as easily as the breaths that the babes before him took in their sleep. So many times those words had left his lips, but he still wouldn't have been able to recite them on command. They flowed as smoothly as sweet honey from the hive, trickling down over everything, not in a sticky mess, but pure honeycombed perfection; only when the time was right. And there was no way any moment could have been more deserving than that one, could have been more…

Vaughn took a couple slow steps backwards as if to leave the room, but stopped, unable to tear his eyes or heart away from the scene before him. It was as if he didn't know how long it was going to last, was waiting for it to disappear before his eyes. He didn't know how long the two of them stood there watching. It couldn't have been more than a few seconds, a couple minutes, maybe. He would have gladly let it stretch to eternity, never missing an instant of either of the children's lives.

In the saccharine world of paradisiacal fantasy, that would have been possible in less than the blink of an eye, half of a twitch of that first muscle that pulls breath into the lungs or pumps blood too and from the heart. But reality wasn't quite so kind, had a much different agenda.

Exhaustion yanked at his muscles and limbs, the sweet scene before him acting as a weight on his eyelids, pulling them down and threatening to knock him into a dream-filled unconsciousness, one so deeply satisfying that he wouldn't even have felt the crack of his body hitting the ground.

He had felt Sydney press up against him, had known that they had been too close to not be touching, that the warmth he felt was only possible when she was with him. Preparing to move, he was surprised to find that his arms were held firmly in place, as if the moment had locked very joint in his body. Looking down, he realized that her hands were linked with his own, each one of their fingers wrapped around another in such an intricate problem that even if they had wanted to discern the one from the other, they wouldn't have been able to.

He didn't know who had initiated the gesture, who had been the first to reach out and find the other, draw the both of them closer together. But he did know that close contact with her was all that could have relaxed him so completely, that such a feeling of satisfaction tingling with rapture would have been otherwise impossible.

A quick tilt of the head and a glance in her direction uncovered the gleam in her eyes, revealing that she had been as clueless to their innocent union as he had been. But he didn't need to squint in the softly glowing light to judge her contentment, to know that the touch of his fingers, his skin, thrilled her just as it did him. That was spoken in her soft sigh, the ever so slightly increasing pressure of her fingers on his, her body twisting just enough to allow her to inch a fraction of a millimeter closer to him, the tiniest amount of space that made the grandest difference, more than would ever be possible to simply imagine.

Maybe Weiss was right. Maybe the two of them were a hopeless case, destined to be that bordering on annoyingly loving couple that somehow turned the heads of every person nearby, inciting jealousy, adoration, nostalgia, curiosity and wonderment from dozens of watching eyes and silent minds, simply with a love-laced glance, the linking of hearts and hands…

Or, as Eric had put it a few days ago, much less poetically: "You, my friend, are the pansy-assed laughingstock of every testosterone-filled male on the planet. You need to either get your damned pants back or start wearing Syd's dresses. You'll do much more justice for the drag queens of the world than you're doing for us, man…"

Either way… Vaughn didn't care.

It was moments like these when his heart clicked its ruby slippers and truly went home, when he thought that it must have been living in a refrigerator box on the side of some road before he had met her, wondered how he had been able to live so long without this sweet satisfaction, without the bliss and everyday wonder of her yellow brick road.

Unwilling to shatter the moment, but knowing that sleep would if he didn't first, Vaughn shifted so that she knew to follow him, and led her from the room, taking her not to their bedroom, as she would have suspected, but instead drawing her toward the living room. He knew that fatigue was softly starting to steal over them both, and as much as he wanted to curl up with her in his arms and slink off into slumber, he still wanted to talk with her, knew they stood a better chance if they were seated on the couch than they would snuggled up in bed; a small one, but still a chance, nonetheless.

Sinking into one of the cushions, he leaned back and pulled her gently down with him, her body falling flush against his own so that not a molecule of space separated him, so that she was very nearly seated in his lap. Vaughn was almost ready to lift her, pick her up and pull her that small distance so that she would be fully in his arms, but her murmured words caught him before he had the chance.

"You don't think she was…" Sydney began, pausing there, unable to find the right word, quickly giving up on her brief search and continuing, even though her soft, "Do you?" was unnecessary.

Vaughn knew what she was alluding to, had wondered himself if it were possible that the CIA had made such a treacherous mistake, had sent the precious little boy right into the claws of danger, if Devora Domaslavov was something other than the sweet, sad woman they had thought her…

He rubbed his eyes, forehead furrowing. "I don't know what to think…" Bringing his hand down as his words trailed off and automatically linking his fingers with hers, not noticing the two sighs of satisfaction that echoed in tandem to complete the action. "You should have been there, Syd… I didn't know what was going to happen, what to expect. But when I walked in that doorway…"

There was no need to finish, no words that could have completed that sentence better than the hum of stillness did. Sydney snuggled closer to him as silence descended and wove its way around their bodies, drawing their two breaths into one, squeezing their hearts so they beat in time with each other. Vaughn pulled her into his arms, kissing her softly, needing to feel and taste every inch of her, somehow able to do that with such a simple gesture, only a whisper of a kiss.

Sydney's head rested against his shoulder, her hand trailing down his neck and chest, absently fingering the buttons on his shirt as his fingers brushed back and forth through her hair. "Your mom called today," she murmured after a few minutes, her voice slightly muffled as her lips vibrated against his neck.

"Yeah?"

It was the way of most of their conversations. Her statements followed by his simple questions, asking for answers of mere repetition. The first few times, he had tried to convince himself that he didn't know what else to say and was purely trying to keep up his end of conversation, but he had since given in to the fact that he simply wanted to hear her voice in answer, a few extra syllables of her melody before they tumbled into one of their inevitable, understanding silences.

"Mm hmm…" Sydney responded with a tickling sigh, the sound more than sating his immediate thirst for her voice. "She wanted to make sure you didn't forget about this weekend, but…" She pushed off his chest suddenly, the chill of cool air hitting the space where she had been nearly enough to freeze him, but he resisted the impulse to pull her back to him, letting her lean back to look into his eyes. "Ilya."

He paused for only a second before shrugging and offering her a response, didn't even need that long to come up with one; there was only one natural thing to do. "We'll take him with us."

Sydney's eyes told him that she wanted it to be that simple, that she would like nothing more than to take the boy with them wherever they went, not having to worry about any consequences that might arise. "What'll we tell her?"

Smiling softly at her truly worried tone, Vaughn placed a hand on the back of her head, gently pulling her closer and kissing her forehead. "We can worry about that later," he murmured, his lips still pressed against her skin. "I'll call her tomorrow."

"You're sure?" She asked when she pulled away, her dark eyes questioning; wanting, needing to sure. There was something more to this, something so slight that… "It is your mother, and…"

"Syd," he whispered, his voice hushing her own. He brushed a loose lock of hair behind her ear, allowing him to clearly see every inch of her face, catch the first glimpse of the dimples that were only beginning to cave in her cheeks just at the softness of his tone. "She'll love him. Just like she loves you…"

As he trailed off, Sydney's voice undulated through the air to his ears. He heard it as one hears shouts of laughter while underwater, a slight mumble through a pea-soup-thick thick haze. She was mentioning something about his mother, something that he should have been paying attention to, that could as likely as not pertain to a story about him that could have been relayed earlier…

But as hard as he tried, he couldn't focus, couldn't press the sounds into anything that had meaning. The sheer sound of her voice lured her away from the sense of her words. To pay attention would have been like a child resisting the pied piper; a snake, the charmer's eerie melody; an old man, the sickle of death…

There was something about… about the way Sydney looked at that moment… It was how she always looked, he realized anew every time, but it still managed to catch him off guard. At instants like this, innocence abounding, the air heavy, crackling with unspoken words, tickling emotions and cloudlike thoughts; when she didn't have to do anything more than exist and he would be too lost, too far gone for his own good. It captivated him, held him prisoner, and…

"How can you do that?"

Her question snapped him back to attention. It took a moment for her spoken words to jingle through his mind before reverberating as something that made sense, and it was only then that he realized that her earlier words had trailed off, that the two of them had been encased in a heartbeating silence…

"What?"

She smiled, a motion that was half shy, half amused, her head tilting as her voice rambled forth. "Look at me. Like…"

…like a day spent without her was far too long. Like he hadn't seen her nearly every other day for the past year, was just seeing her smiling face for the first time in decades, centuries, in more time than the earth, moon and stars had been in existence…

Not a single thought had passed through his lips, been allowed to leave the editing room of his mind and heart, the exact phrases never perfect enough, continually rewritten to match the moment, to near something that much closer to perfection, to the printing press of his tongue. He hadn't spoken a word, but hadn't needed to for her to understand. Her reply whispered to him like a breath of fresh air after a lifetime of suffocation, hardly a full word, nearly lost in her smile, all amusement gone, shyness, aided by wonder, taking over completely.

"Yeah…"

That one syllable, the way her head was tilted up to face him, how her eyes sparkled and the air between them seemed to become tangible, pose as too strong a barrier… The combined effort almost did him in, was potent enough to stop his heart with a single dose, barely enough to sit on the tip of an eyelash, the foot of a flea…

His thoughts ran rampant with images that couldn't be expressed, that not a one of the thousands of languages in the world had words, or even letter, symbols or sounds to express. And as he sat, gazing into her eyes, locking souls with hers, he realized that what he had, in his arms and in his heart, was something most others could only taste in their dreams, the sweet, spun-sugar that fairytales are made of…

"You're so beautiful…"

Three words fumbling from his lips on an outtake of breath that somehow managed to express every thought jolting through his mind and beating through his heart, while at the same time coming nowhere near their depth. The words themselves, though uttered in truth, were nothing'; but the breath of air on which they rode, pulsating with life, meaning and something completely inexplicable, something…

Something shattered almost but not quite beyond recognition by the desperate, childish wail of his last name; curling its way around his heartstrings, first gently plucking, then flashing to a sharp, jagged glass that nearly severed them completely. Sydney jumped up automatically, her heart fluttering at the sad sound of the child's frightened voice.

Three heartbeats, one deep breath of near silence, in which Sydney barely had the time to begin her sentence, much less end it. "I'll…"

And there was the wail they had grown so accustomed to hearing this past month, that would have seemed piercing, deafening to anyone other than the two of them, but which they somehow adored simply because of the child who uttered it. Followed by and quickly mixing with Ilya's sobs as Gabriel's tears frightened him further, because he had no idea where he was, couldn't place the shrieking that rattled through the air, didn't know why he had fallen asleep in Vaughn's arms and awakened to find him nowhere in sight.

Vaughn stood beside Sydney, all sound and time stopping for that one second his lips pressed gently against her temple, rushing back as soon as he pulled away, prodding them onward, pushing each of them instinctively toward one of the sobbing little boys. Murmurs of comfort mingled with breaths and tears, filling the room while they each held a child fast in their arms.

Showering the top of his little head with comforting kisses, Vaughn glanced up from where Gabriel had snuggled into his arms. His son had quieted the instant he had picked him up, instantly recognizing his father's touch and reveling in it, allowing Vaughn to direct his attention elsewhere.

Sydney and Ilya were a few feet away, the little boy's cries echoing through the room for a moment longer as he struggled to get out of Sydney's arms, quieting the instant he looked up into her eyes, recognition flashing over his own.

"T-Tyd?"

The one syllable caught on tears and clung to them, wavering as it trickled from his lips. He didn't wait for an answer before throwing his arms around her neck, didn't need one to know that everything really was all right now, that he was where he belonged.

Sydney smiled softly and Vaughn thought he saw the ghost of a tear sparkling in the corner of her eye. "Yeah, sweetie…" she murmured, kissing Ilya's head and rubbing his back. "It's okay…"

Vaughn watched her, enchanted, completely mesmerized by the onslaught of senses: Sydney's voice tapering off to a breathy silence; Ilya clinging to her, tightly at first, before laying his head on her shoulder and taking an arm from around her neck to stick his thumb in his mouth; the beautiful warmth and weight of his own son in his arms…

Eventually it all became too much, the air between them seeming to stretch out for miles. He crossed it in two small steps, pressing his side against her own, offering that pressure in place of the hug it would have been impossible to give her. As Sydney tilted her head to face him, her lips curled upward in a smile, seemed to want to open and let speech froth forth, but wouldn't have found any words waiting within; there was nothing to say in moments like these.

Letting the seconds tick by for a little longer, they were about to walk from the room, both in silent agreement that the little boys should sleep with them tonight, knowing that they wouldn't be able to let them out of their arms. But they froze back in place when Ilya's head popped up from Sydney's shoulder, his thumb leaving his mouth as he leaned forward, scrutinizing the child that Vaughn held in his arms. His dark eyes twisted in confusion, glancing from Gabriel to Vaughn to Sydney and back.

"It's okay," Sydney nodded when Ilya's gaze fell upon her once again in question. She kissed her fingertips, brushing them gently against her son's cheek and smiling. "That's Gabriel… Baby Gabe…"

Without a word, Ilya hesitantly reached out in Gabriel's direction, much as Sydney had done moments before. Vaughn turned so that the two little boys were closer, allowing Ilya to pat a hand softly against his son's body. Gabriel watched with blinking eyes, bringing his own hand down on top of Ilya's, grasping at the older boy's fingers.

Ilya seemed startled for a moment, still somewhat unsure of what to make of all this. But a second later, he sighed in soft satisfaction, leaving his fingers in Gabriel's grip, putting his other thumb in his mouth and settling back onto Sydney's shoulder.

Warmth and comfort washed over Vaughn and waves, beating in time with his heart with a force so overwhelming that it nearly knocked him off his feet. Throbbing with too many emotions to count, some that he could swear he had never felt before, hadn't yet been discovered or named; but that was the way he had always felt, first only with Sydney, then naturally expanding to include their child, and now…

The tears in Sydney's eyes came to life this time, one of them escaping and trickling down her cheek, an overflow of the emotion that she couldn't contain. She tried to laugh its existence, bringing a hand up to brush it away. "I don't know why…"

"Shh…" Vaughn interrupted softly, carefully moving so that the little boys' hands wouldn't break apart, wiping away that single tear with his thumb, knowing somehow that his gesture was futile, that the draw of emotion would squeeze others from within.

His hand framed her face, tilting her chin upward so his lips could capture hers, the completion of a perfect instant, a snapshot in the photo album of time that would burst with memory. They sighed into each other for two short seconds that unfolded into the stars, extended for millions of miles beyond thought and heaven, could have been bottled and sold as perfection.

Two seconds that inevitably had to end, but not indefinitely; the promise of more twinkling in the stars and lingering in the air. His hand found hers, completing their little circle as they meandered down the hallway, only breaking as the four of them snuggled into that one half of the bed, sighing off to a sleep more delicious than any of them had tasted in awhile. Four breaths and four heartbeats were all the words, all the lullaby that the night required…