Chapter Text
Roy’s morning started with Eleanor chucking her sippy cup of milk directly at his head. He ducked in time, but just barely.
“Nora,” he chastised, without any real power behind it. He was so, so tired. He’d stayed up too late editing an article that he should have finished with the day before. Nora had spiked a fever and the daycare insisted he come pick her up. Once he’d finally emailed the edits to the writer and laid down, his two-year-old discovered that not only could she crawl out of her crib from the lowest setting, she could also open doors. She padded into his room and cried until he finally relented and let her just sleep with in the bed with him. She was not a sound sleeper and neither of them got much rest.
Nora giggled, a particular giggle she saved only for when she was being naughty, stuffed a spoonful of oatmeal into her mouth, and then pouted.
“What’s wrong?” He asked her, trying to get in the last of his cup of coffee before his daughter found another projectile to aim at him.
“My milk,” she whimpered. “It’s gone.”
He gaped at her, speechless. Any other day he would have a talk with her about throwing and consequences but he just didn’t have it in him. He sighed and retrieved the cup, handing it to her as he walked to the counter where his phone was charging. He checked his messages and determined that Riza should be there in an hour if traffic was light.
He thought about maybe convincing her to take Nora to the park for a couple hours so he could sneak in a nap but he brushed it off immediately, feeling a little guilty. This wasn’t her problem, he scolded himself. He then felt worse for thinking of Nora as a problem. He rubbed his temples, trying to summon up some energy.
“Daddy?” He heard. Nora’s voice was tiny and apprehensive. He turned and saw his daughter clumsily pushing her oatmeal around in her bowl, face solemn.
“Hey, buddy, what’s the matter?” He went and knelt down where she sat at her little breakfast table. He smoothed a hand over her dark curls and kissed her head.
“I’m sorry I frew my cup at you, Daddy,” she said, seriously. “I’m sorry.”
He almost laughed but pushed the urge away and gave her another kiss, heart melting. “It’s okay, I forgive you. Let’s work on not doing it again though. If you want to throw, how about next time we finish breakfast and then we can play with the bouncy ball?”
She considered it and then nodded. “Okay.”
He looked her over. He’d given her a tepid bath the night before to try to get her temperature down but she had already acquired quite a bit of oatmeal smeared across her pajamas and face, a little in her hair as well. “Let’s do a bath. Because guess what?” Her large, dark eyes met his own. “Riza’s coming to visit today.”
Her grin made his heart twist with pride. She all but ran to the bathroom, her excitement barely containable.
Roy had just gotten her hair brushed and was working on the tiny button of her dress when he heard a knock at the door. “One second!” He called. He hated the tiny buttons. He finished it, pulled Nora onto his hip, and went to open the door.
Riza was standing there, smiling, holding a cream-colored teddy bear, her suitcase behind her.
“REEEEEEEZUUUUH!” Nora screeched excitedly, causing both adults to wince slightly. She was practically vibrating in Roy’s arms. Riza took her from him and started delivering kisses and “I missed you”s while Roy grabbed her suitcase and took it to the guest bedroom.
On the way back, he noticed the hampers were overfilled and the rug in the hallway needed vacuuming and thought maybe he should be embarrassed but he knew Riza wouldn’t judge him for it. She’d been there since the beginning, she was the one who got him through the first two months of Nora’s life, when he was so tired and so overwhelmed, he’d wondered if his brain would just snap in half.
Riza and Nora were on the couch, his daughter clutching her new bear like her life depended on it. Riza sat and smiled through the toddler babble and Roy took the time to study her. He thought maybe her hair had gotten longer even though it had only been two months since he’d seen her last.
Eventually he turned a movie on for Nora and she sat between them and watched, teddy tucked under her arm and thumb in her mouth. He had to break that habit, he reminded himself for the two hundredth time. He would. Tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow.
“Do you want some coffee?” He asked Riza quietly over Nora’s head.
“I’d love some,” Riza answered. “Everything where it usually is?”
He nodded but got up anyways. It didn’t feel right to make Riza brew her own cup. She followed him into the kitchen. Nora thankfully stayed focused on her movie.
She gave him a hug and then held him at arm’s length. “Oh, Roy,” she sighed. She took her thumb and reached up to trace what he guessed were the dark circles under his eyes. “You look like hell. Why didn’t you tell me? I could have come sooner if you needed some help with her. You could have called Maes.”
He didn’t know how to explain that he always felt like he needed help with Nora. Single fatherhood was not a path he thought he would be going down until it was his entire life. He couldn’t break down in his kitchen and tell her that he was scared he was failing his daughter and some days he wasn’t sure how he would make it to the next one. So instead, he busied himself with filling the kettle and scooping coffee grounds into the pour over cup.
“We’ve been fine,” he said. “She had some sort of bug yesterday and she and I didn’t sleep well. You can’t uproot your life for me more than you already do. And Maes has his own daughter he’s busy with.”
He scrubbed at his eyes, sighed, and then pulled the mug he knew was her favorite out of the cabinet. He suddenly felt like he might cry. Her concern for him made him feel raw, exposed.
“Roy,” she said, seriously. “I’m not ‘uprooting’ anything. I like coming here. I love Nora, I love you. You know that.” He looked at her and noted that her brow was furrowed. She was so earnest in everything she did.
His heart fluttered, not for the first time, hearing the words coming from her mouth. He willed it to stop. He knew what it meant and what it didn’t.
“Here, I know how to make my own coffee,” she said somewhat sternly, pulling the kettle gently from his hand. “I really want you to go lie down. At least for a couple of hours.”
“I have to do the dishes. Oatmeal is like superglue,” he sighed out with dismay, looking at the half-full sink. He never got around to doing them from the night before either, something he wanted to kick himself for now.
“I’ll do them. Please go take a nap. For me.” He studied her, noticing that there was worry in the warm brown of her eyes.
“Normally I would say no,” he assured her, feeling like he needed to. “But last night was a rough one.”
She smiled and he could feel his cheeks growing pink. “You don’t need to explain anything to me.” She placed the kettle back down on the stove and wrapped her arms around him. He rested his head on top of hers for a moment before letting go. “Now, please. Go nap before you drop dead right here on the floor.”
He mustered a smile and then trudged into his bedroom, barely getting his pants off before falling onto the bed, wrapping his blanket around him. With sleep already pulling him in, he set an alarm on his phone for an hour and a half. That would be enough, he figured. That would hold him over until bedtime.
………
Riza got the dishes out of the way quickly and then joined Nora in the living room. She was still absorbed in her movie. Without taking her eyes off of the screen, she climbed into Riza’s lap and leaned into her arms. She grabbed a lock of Riza’s hair, rubbing it between her thumb and forefinger. She’d done it since she had the motor function to and it made Riza smile.
She pressed a kiss to the top of the girl’s head and noticed that Roy had changed her shampoo from the familiar baby one to something that smelled fruity, probably one for toddlers. It made her want to cry all of a sudden. The girl felt so heavy in her arms and her hair was already to her shoulders. She thought of Roy’s panicked phone call and rushing over to the squishy, snuggly newborn girl. It seemed like it had only been a few months, not two full years.
“Riza? Where’s Daddy?” Nora asked once her movie was finished, looking up at her with bleary, sleepy eyes. She started yawning before she could even finish getting her question out.
“He’s taking a nap,” she told her. “Are you sleepy too?”
Nora nodded, rubbing her eyes. Riza kissed her chubby cheek and stood, gathering the girl in her arms. She opened the door to Roy’s room as quietly as she could.
There was an alarm going off on Roy’s phone that he was sleeping right through. She silenced it before laying the toddler beside her dad. She couldn’t even keep her eyes open but still turned and cuddled into her father’s chest. Roy, still asleep, instinctively wrapped an arm around the girl. Her heart caught in her chest for a moment.
She slipped out of the room quietly and went to the living room to straighten up, grabbing the hampers from Nora’s room and the bathroom on her way. She started a load and then put the toys littered around the room into the pink toy chest beside the TV stand. She wiped down the counters and swept as much as she could, she didn’t want to vacuum and risk waking them from their nap. There really wasn’t too much to do. Roy was a tidy person.
She should have come sooner. She usually came once a month but she couldn’t make it work the month before. So many finals and papers had to be done. Not that Roy couldn’t handle things without her. He just got too overwhelmed, she thought. She sat on the couch to fold the first load of clothes, mind wandering to the time he called her in the middle of the night two years ago.
He and Nora’s birth mother had never been in an actual relationship, the pregnancy was an accident. But Roy was supportive, excited even. They planned out how coparenting would work. Riza remembered Roy updating her after appointments.
But two days after Nora’s birth, Roy answered his door to a tiny newborn sleeping in her car seat, a box of diapers and bag of formula cans beside her. There was a note on the car seat explaining that she just couldn’t do it and not to look for her. To Riza’s knowledge, he never did.
Riza still lived a few blocks away at the time and he had called her immediately. She remembered being so angry she couldn’t breathe. Her mother died when she was Nora’s age and she was raised by a man who, in the end, was devoured by mental illness. Roy was orphaned as a preschooler. Riza couldn’t imagine just…leaving.
It was the first time she’d seen Roy cry since they were children. She wrapped her arms around him as he cradled the newborn to his chest and tried to stop him from trembling. “I love her,” he’d told Riza, voice panicked and choppy. “But I didn’t know I’d be alone. I don’t know what to do.”
Riza shook her head, pulling herself out her thoughts and looked around the small but cozy three-bedroom house. There were pictures of Nora everywhere. Mostly Nora by herself, Nora and Roy, and a few of the three of them. The fridge was covered in sloppy crayon drawings.
Pride swelled in her. He’d figured something out and Riza loved what a good father he was. The only thing she regretted was moving away. It was for grad school and this was the only place she could afford with the scholarship offered. The guilt of going when she knew Roy wanted to but couldn’t crept into her mind often. Roy insisted it was fine and that everything worked out for the best. But she couldn’t help the awkwardness she felt trying to talk about school with Roy.
She finished the second load of laundry, put the folded clothes in the hamper, and went to Nora’s room to put her clothes away. As she was sorting the little clothes into their respective drawers, Riza wondered how often Roy picked her clothes out at the store or if it was his aunt or his sisters.
She quietly entered Roy’s room to put his clothes away. She knew the orders of his drawers by heart so it didn’t take very long. It had been an hour so she decided to wake Nora. She didn’t want her sleeping too long and then staying up at bedtime. She went to scoop the girl up and then at the last minute, sat down on the bed.
She stared at the two of them. They were both sleeping on their sides, facing each other. Roy had a hand spread protectively on the girl’s back and Nora had a chubby starfish hand pressed against the side of his cheek. Riza felt tears welling up and couldn’t figure out why. She allowed herself a couple more moments before gently prying Nora out of her dad’s arm.
“Riza?” She asked, sleepily.
“Yes, honey. It’s me. Are you hungry? Would you like a sandwich?”
Nora nodded. She rubbed her eyes as Riza carried her down the hallway, waking herself up. She gave Riza a kiss on the cheek and then requested to be put down. She walked immediately to her little table. “Riza? Can I have water instead of milk this time?”
“Of course, you can,” Riza said, opening the fridge. “Do you want turkey and cheese or peanut butter and jelly?”