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when you build your house then call me home

Chapter 4: THE SON

Notes:

Lal: Then why do you still try to emulate Humans? What purpose does it serve except to remind you that you are incomplete?
Date: I have asked myself that, many times, as I have struggled to be more Human. Until I realized, it is the struggle itself that is most important. We must strive to be more than we are, Lal. It does not matter that we will never reach our ultimate goal. The effort yields its own rewards.
Offspring, 03x16, Star Trek The Next Generation

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Jack was outside, watching the little frogs in the pond, when Daddy got home. 

 

Jack remembered vaguely, in the way he remembered all things from when he was a baby, when they first came here. They had lived in the small building that Grandma stayed in when she visited, which Daddy jokingly called the mother-in-law suite to make her laugh and Daddy blush. They’d had to tear the old house down, he remembered, because of the damage from the fire, long before he’d been born. But he could still feel the memories settled in its bones; the man who had lived here before them, bearded and grumpy and kind, and the two boys, just like him, who had learned to call this place home over the years.

 

This pond hadn’t been here when they’d moved in and the ground had been littered with parts of old vehicles which sang of memories of their past owners. Those cars were gone now, taken further down the lane, and now the pond was here and full of life. The frogs had come shortly after the pond. Jack wasn’t entirely sure how they had gotten here; he’d woken up one morning and there they were. But he had been dreaming about frogs just the night before after watching The Princess and the Frog. He suspected, and Daddy did too, that he himself might have put them there in his sleep. They’d made a silent promise not to tell Daddy. 

 

Now, Jack laid on his belly, watching the frogs and tadpoles in the water. The tadpoles had just started to emerge from their eggs in the last few days, little bodies almost invisible in the water. They had all watched the tadpoles being born and Daddy had dubbed it all ‘disgusting’. But he was sitting here next to Jack anyway, now, watching the tadpoles swim with him. 

 

“Did you name them?” he asked. 

 

“They’re called Jeremiah,” Jack said. He ducked his hand into the water. The tadpoles swam around his fingers, occasionally bumping into him. 

 

“What, all of them?” Daddy asked. 

 

“Yes.” Jack looked up at him. Daddy was sitting cross-legged, one hand on Jack’s back and the other holding his book. It was a long chapter book, one Daddy had brought back from his work along with a pile of shorter books for Jack. His favorite was The Dread Cat; it reminded him of the black cat that had started to appear on the back porch last summer, the one Daddy had fed so often she had never gone away. Jack called her Dread in his head, although she liked to lay around and watch the mice rather than chase after them. She still hissed at him more often than not when he went to pet her, but he didn’t blame her. She’d had a hard life. 

 

Jack had named the frogs after his favorite song on the mixtape Daddy had given him for his birthday last year. They’d listened to that song all night long, Jack doing his best leap frog jumps with Uncle Sam while Daddy cried with laughter across the room. 

 

“Did you want to name one?” he asked.

 

“Sure,” Daddy said, putting his book to the side. “Which one?” 

 

Jack thought about it, then pointed at one of the frogs sitting across the pond from them. He’d sensed that that one was not quite satisfied with the name Jeremiah. “That one.” 

 

Daddy squinted his eyes to stare at the frog. He had that special look in his eye, the one that meant he was about to make a very funny joke. “Which one?” 

 

Jack pointed again. “That one!” 

 

“Sorry, buddy, I can’t see it. Which one is it?” 

 

Jack picked himself up, standing to put his hands on Daddy’s cheeks to point him in the right direction. “Over there, that one!” 

 

Jack suddenly found himself grabbed and tugged into Daddy’s lap. His arms surrounded Jack, holding him tight while he pressed kisses and blew raspberries on Jack’s cheeks. Jack howled with laughter. 

 

“Daddy, stop!” Jack shouted, still laughing. 

 

Daddy pulled him into a hug with a grin, pressing another kiss to his hair with a laugh. “Yeah, yeah, okay. I think I see him now. How about Yoda, is that a good name? He’s kinda like a frog.” 

 

Jack looked back at the frog in question, leaning against Daddy’s chest. “I think he likes it.” 

 

Daddy snorted. Jack could feel him smiling against his hair. “Well, I’m glad.” 

 

A tingling raced up Jack’s spine and he looked toward the driveway. The wards Daddy had painstakingly put around the property had just been crossed. “Daddy’s almost home.” 

 

“About time. I swear, they keep him longer every night.” Daddy said that everyday. He’d complained before that Daddy could just fly home from work, that it would be quicker. Daddy always replied that he’d learned to enjoy driving and he wanted to enjoy the privilege of doing so. That always made Daddy go quiet and put a soft look on his face. 

 

It wasn’t long before they could hear the engine of the car rumbling down the driveway. The Impala came to a stop just beside the house and Daddy stepped out, juggling another pile of books in his arms. 

 

“We’re by the pond, babe!” Daddy called, absently pressing another kiss to Jack’s head. Daddy made his way over, gently nudging Dread out of the way as she circled his feet, meowing. 

 

“I told you shouldn’t’ve fed that thing,” Daddy said, like he always did. 

 

Daddy knelt beside him, putting the pile of books down on the grass beside him with a sigh. 

 

“She was hungry,” he said, simply, kissing Daddy. 

 

“She’s a mangy stray, of course she was hungry,” Daddy replied, before kissing Daddy again. Jack wasn’t sure why Daddy complained about Dread so much; he’d lost count of the number of times he’d caught Daddy sneaking her into the house for a snack or a pet. Considering Jack couldn’t count very high yet, maybe that didn’t mean much, but he suspected it did. 

 

“Hi, Jack,” Daddy said, stooping over to kiss Jack on the forehead. 

 

That, Jack remembered. Daddy hovering over him every night, kissing him, telling Jack he loved him. He’d seen it in his head, before he’d properly met Daddy, after Mommy was gone. It had been the first thing Jack had ever wanted, besides his Mommy. 

 

“Hi, Daddy.” 

 

“Watching the frogs?” he asked. 

 

Daddy grinned at him. “We’ve got a Yoda, now,” he said, pointed at the frog. 

 

“I see,” Daddy said, very seriously. 

 

“Daddy, can we have pizza for dinner?” Jack asked. 

 

Daddy looked at him, narrowly. “We’re going to have pizza for dinner tomorrow, remember? With everyone else?” 

 

Jack remembered. It was his birthday tomorrow and Uncle Sam and Aunt Eileen, Grandma, Aunt Jody and Aunt Donna, and Claire and Alex and Kaia were all going to make the trip to celebrate. Daddy had been griping and running around trying to figure out where they were all going to stay for weeks. 

 

“We can’t make my mom sleep on the couch,” he kept saying. Daddy would just sigh and remind him that the girls had volunteered to sleep in the living room, something which Daddy dubbed ‘a disaster in the making’. Sometimes, Jack thought he acted grumpy and said stuff like that just so Daddy would go over and kiss him. 

 

Jack was excited. His family visited often but not always all at the same time. It would be nice to have them all in the same place at once. 

 

But for now, he wanted pizza. “We can have pizza both nights?” he proposed.

 

Daddy, as he had known he would, backed him up. 

 

“We could have pizza both nights,” he repeated, looking closely at Daddy. He wrapped his arms a bit more securely around Jack, leaning over to balance his chin on top of Jack’s head. Jack put his bottom lip out, mimicking the expression he knew Daddy was making. 

 

Daddy sighed, looking at them both with fond exasperation. “What if we had tacos tonight? You like tacos.” 

 

“Oh, hell yeah,” Daddy said and Jack agreed, nodding decisively. 

 

They stayed by the pond a little longer, watching the frogs and tadpoles. He knew that most of the tadpoles swimming in the pond now wouldn’t survive into adulthood. It was sad, but Daddy had explained that it meant the time they had together now was all the more precious for it. It made Jack want to spend as much time by the pond as possible, staying out late with Daddy until the sun started to creep low and the crickets were singing and Daddy complained of not having enough light to read by. 

 

“Are you ready to be six?” Daddy asked him. 

 

“I think so,” Jack said. He knew that he didn’t really have to age, not if he didn’t want to. He’d thought about it, staying little forever; there were certain positives—he’d never grow so large that his Daddies couldn’t hold him or he couldn’t fit in Grandma’s lap or on Uncle Sam’s shoulders. Claire could keep calling him pipsqueak, although he suspected she might do that even when he was a big boy. 

 

But there were things he could only do when he was older—Daddy refused to take him to see anything beyond the Milky Way until he was a teenager and Daddy kept talking about teaching him to drive and work on the car, but he couldn’t do that yet. And it would probably be nice to stay up past eight, which Daddy never let him do no matter how many times he made the walls bleed (Daddy blamed that habit completely on Daddy for letting Jack watch The Shining once and only sighed deeply whenever he did it. After a while, it just wasn’t fun anymore).

 

Being six meant being in first grade. Jack had enjoyed kindergarten, for the most part. He didn’t always understand the other children and he’d found it hard to make friends. He knew most of them hadn’t had the experiences he’d had—losing a Mommy, losing a house, having people out to hurt him, or having two Daddies instead of a Mommy and a Daddy. 

 

But Daddy had told him that was normal, to wonder where he fit in and struggle to find his own space.  

 

“I never understood other kids when I was your age,” he said. “You just keep being you and you’ll be fine.” 

 

Being himself meant being an angel, a human, and most importantly, a son. He was his mother’s son and one day he would visit her in Heaven. He was the son of the father he’d chosen beyond that father’s comprehension, the son of the father who’d come to him just as skittish and stand-off-ish as Dread and cleaved just as closely. He was nephew and grandchild and bizarre little brother, at least according to Claire. 

 

When Jack had been young, so young he hadn’t yet been born, he’d saved his mother’s life. His world had been so small then compared to what it was now. His world had expanded as he’d grown, and would continue to do so for the rest of his life, however long that would be. And through it all, he would remain himself, with his family, and his house, and his little pond. 

 

Jack didn’t know who else he could be, so he supposed that was just fine. 

Notes:

I like to think it takes Dean literal years to figure out that Cas and Kelly were never together. Jack probably has to tell him.

You can listen to the mixtape that Dean made Jack on Spotify: JackTraxx