"You're being childish, you know that, right?"
Ian didn't reply...not that she'd expected him to – the silent treatment was part of the childishness. He continued sipping his whisky like he hadn't heard her, his stare drilling holes in the wall with its intensity.
Emily huffed at his continued silence. "Fine," she said, throwing her hands up in the air in surrender, "Throw a tantrum. Whatever."
She turned on her heel to stomp off and leave him to sulk...but she only made it as far as the door before he spoke up with a sullen, "You didn't have to make me look weak."
She paused at the threshold, turned, and fixed him with a pointed look. "The only thing making you look weak is that you're acting like a baby because I happened to beat you at a stupid midway game..."
When Emily had taken her position with the BAU, she'd been adamant that she was going to devote one night a month to having a family night to make sure that Declan felt like a priority. (Ian was sometimes harder to sell on the family night – partly because he had been raised in an era where fathers didn't participate, partly because he was overly paranoid about his true identity being discovered. Between Emily and Declan, though, he found it awfully difficult to say no...)
Which is how they ended up at Six Flags...
The day had started off well enough. They'd let Declan load up on sugar from cotton candy and mini donuts. They'd ridden every ride Declan was tall enough to go on (they, in this case, meaning Emily as Ian had an inner ear issue that made him prone to throw up on any ride faster than a brisk walk)...though, even she'd had to draw the line at the spinning strawberries when Declan had insisted on spinning them within an inch of their lives.
The issue – such as it was – had erupted when Declan noticed one of the games (the one where you aimed a water gun at the clown in an effort to inflate a balloon) had a plush snail as a prize. They'd let him try a few times to win it, but then Ian, being ever an alpha male, had decided he wanted to try and win it (or possibly just show off to the cute college girl running the game...).
Apparently, it had never occurred to him that he might be unsuccessful...
Ultimately, Emily (who was exhausted and had sore feet from walking all day and just wanted to use up the last of their tickets) decided to try her hand at the game. Which was the source of contention, given that she'd been the one to win.
Emily was picking up laundry strewn across Declan's bedroom floor – pausing occasionally to sniff the garments to see whether they were actually dirty or whether he just hadn't been bothered to put it away. When she picked up the hoody that had been crammed under his bed, she uncovered the stuffed snail...
With a frown, she got down on her hands and knees, reaching under the bed for the stuffed animal.
"Mom!" Declan hollered, bounding into the room, causing her to startle, bumping her head on the bottom of his bed.
"Ouch!" she hissed, rubbing the growing lump on her head. Crawling back out from underneath the bed, she turned to Declan, brandishing the stuffie. "Dec, what have I told you about taking better care of your things?" she asked.
His cheeks flushed red with embarrassment and he looked down at the floor, scuffing his sneaker across the hardwood as he mumbled something. He glanced back up at her and saw that she was still giving him that look she had that said I'm not mad, just disappointed... "I was just hiding it," he repeated quietly.
She frowned in confusion. "I thought you really wanted it..."
"I did," he said, shrugging. "But I doesn't want Daddy to be bembarrassed..."
Understanding dawning, Emily smiled softly. "C'mere..." she said, settling on the edge of the bed and patting the mattress next to her. When he joined her, she wrapped an arm around his shoulders. "Schnecke, you're very sweet, but you don't need to worry about that."
"But..."
She shook her head. "Dec, your Dad is a grown man and you're just a kid. He is the one who needs to act like a grown-up and, right now, you're acting much more mature than he is."
He was silent for a moment, clearly thinking hard about something.
"What is it?" she asked, gently elbowing him.
"Is Daddy mad at you 'cause you winned 'stead of him?"
She sighed. "It's complicated," she said. He clearly wasn't satisfied with that answer, though... "Do you know what the word toxic means?"
"Like poison?"
She nodded. "Do you know what the word masculinity means?" He shook his head. "It means the way society tells men they should act. Toxic masculinity is when what society says poisons your mind. And the way your Dad was raised is really poisonous, so sometimes he thinks things that aren't true. Like that men should be better at certain things than women."
"So he is mad?" he asked.
"Maybe a little," she admitted, "But he'll get over it because he's a good man at heart."
A beat.
"Am I a good man?" he asked quietly.
"The best man I know."
