Tell Your Dad You Love Him
A retelling of "Meat Loves Salt"/"Cap O'Rushes" for the @inklings-challenge Four Loves event
An old king had three daughters. When his health began to fail, he summoned them, and they came.
Gordonia and Rowan were already waiting in the hallway when Coriander arrived. They were leaned up against the wall opposite the king’s office with an air of affected casualness. “I wonder what the old war horse wants today?” Rowan was saying. “More about next year’s political appointments, I shouldn’t wonder.”
“The older he gets, the more he micromanages,” Gordonia groused fondly. “A thousand dollars says this meeting could’ve been an email.”
They filed in single-file like they’d so often done as children: Gordonia first, then Rowan, and Coriander last of all. The king had placed three chairs in front of his desk all in a row. His daughters murmured their greetings, and one by one they sat down.
“I have divided everything I have in three,” the king said. “I am old now, and it’s time. Today, I will pass my kingdom on to you, my daughters.”
A short gasp came from Gordonia. None of them could have imagined that their father would give up running his kingdom while he still lived.
The king went on. “I know you will deal wisely with that which I leave in your care. But before we begin, I have one request.”
“Yes father?” said Rowan.
“Tell me how much you love me.”
An awkward silence fell. Although there was no shortage of love between the king and his daughters, theirs was not a family which spoke of such things. They were rich and blue-blooded: a soldier and the daughters of a soldier, a king and his three court-reared princesses. The royal family had always shown their affection through double meanings and hot cups of coffee.
Gordonia recovered herself first. She leaned forward over the desk and clasped her father’s hands in her own. “Father,” she said, “I love you more than I can say.” A pause. “I don’t think there’s ever been a family so happy in love as we have been. You’re a good dad.”
The old king smiled and patted her hand. “Thank you, Gordonia. We have been very happy, haven’t we? Here is your inheritance. Cherish it, as I cherish you.”
Rowan spoke next; the words came tumbling out. “Father! There’s not a thing in my life which you didn’t give me, and all the joy in the world beside. Come now, Gordonia, there’s no need to understate the matter. I love you more than—why, more than life itself!”
The king laughed, and rose to embrace his second daughter. “How you delight me, Rowan. All of this will be yours.”
Only Coriander remained. As her sisters had spoken, she’d wrung her hands in her lap, unsure of what to say. Did her father really mean for flattery to be the price of her inheritance? That just wasn’t like him. For all that he was a politician, he’d been a soldier first. He liked it when people told the truth.
When the king’s eyes came to rest on her, Coriander raised her own to meet them. “Do you really want to hear what you already know?”
“I do.”
She searched for a metaphor that could carry the weight of her love without unnecessary adornment. At last she found one, and nodded, satisfied. “Dad, you’re like—like salt in my food.”
“Like salt?”
“Well—yes.”
The king’s broad shoulders seemed to droop. For a moment, Coriander almost took back her words. Her father was the strongest man in the world, even now, at eighty. She’d watched him argue with foreign rulers and wage wars all her life. Nothing could hurt him. Could he really be upset?
But no. Coriander held her father’s gaze. She had spoken true. What harm could be in that?
“I don’t know why you’re even here, Cor,” her father said.
Now, Coriander shifted slightly in her seat, unnerved. “What? Father—”
“It would be best if—you should go,” said the old king.
“Father, you can’t really mean–”
“Leave us, Coriander.”
So she left the king’s court that very hour.
.
It had been a long time since she’d gone anywhere without a chauffeur to drive her, but Coriander’s thoughts were flying apart too fast for her to be afraid. She didn’t know where she would go, but she would make do, and maybe someday her father would puzzle out her metaphor and call her home to him. Coriander had to hope for that, at least. The loss of her inheritance didn’t feel real yet, but her father—how could he not know that she loved him? She’d said it every day.
She’d played in the hall outside that same office as a child. She’d told him her secrets and her fears and sent him pictures on random Tuesdays when they were in different cities just because. She had watched him triumph in conference rooms and on the battlefield and she’d wanted so badly to be like him.
If her father doubted her love, then maybe he’d never noticed any of it. Maybe the love had been an unnoticed phantasm, a shadow, a song sung to a deaf man. Maybe all that love had been nothing at all.
A storm was on the horizon, and it reached her just as she made it onto the highway. Lightning flashed and thunder rolled. Rain poured down and flooded the road. Before long, Coriander was hydroplaning. Frantically, she tried to remember what you were supposed to do when that happened. Pump the brakes? She tried. No use. Wasn’t there something different you did if the car had antilock brakes? Or was that for snow? What else, what else–
With a sickening crunch, her car hit the guardrail. No matter. Coriander’s thoughts were all frenzied and distant. She climbed out of the car and just started walking.
Coriander wandered beneath an angry sky on the great white plains of her father’s kingdom. The rain beat down hard, and within seconds she was soaked to the skin. The storm buffeted her long hair around her head. It tangled together into long, matted cords that hung limp down her back. Mud soiled her fine dress and splattered onto her face and hands. There was water in her lungs and it hurt to breathe. Oh, let me die here, Coriander thought. There’s nothing left for me, nothing at all. She kept walking.
.
When she opened her eyes, Coriander found herself in a dank gray loft. She was lying on a strange feather mattress.
She remained there a while, looking up at the rafters and wondering where she could be. She thought and felt, as it seemed, through a heavy and impenetrable mist; she was aware only of hunger and weakness and a dreadful chill (though she was all wrapped in blankets). She knew that a long time must have passed since she was fully aware, though she had a confused memory of wandering beside the highway in a thunderstorm, slowly going mad because—because— oh, there’d been something terrible in her dreams. Her father, shoulders drooping at his desk, and her sisters happily come into their inheritance, and she cast into exile—
She shuddered and sat up dizzily. “Oh, mercy,” she murmured. She hadn’t been dreaming.
She stumbled out of the loft down a narrow flight of stairs and came into a strange little room with a single window and a few shabby chairs. Still clinging to the rail, she heard a ruckus from nearby and then footsteps. A plump woman came running to her from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron and softly clucking at the state of her guest’s matted, tangled hair.
“Dear, dear,” said the woman. “Here’s my hand, if you’re still unsteady. That’s good, good. Don’t be afraid, child. I’m Katherine, and my husband is Folke. He found you collapsed by the goose-pond night before last. I’m she who dressed you—your fine gown was ruined, I’m afraid. Would you like some breakfast? There’s coffee on the counter, and we’ll have porridge in a minute if you’re patient.”
“Thank you,” Coriander rasped.
“Will you tell me your name, my dear?”
“I have no name. There’s nothing to tell.”
Katherine clicked her tongue. “That’s alright, no need to worry. Folke and I’ve been calling you Rush on account of your poor hair. I don’t know if you’ve seen yourself, but it looks a lot like river rushes. No, don’t get up. Here’s your breakfast, dear.”
There was indeed porridge, as Katherine had promised, served with cream and berries from the garden. Coriander ate hungrily and tasted very little. Then, when she was finished, the goodwife ushered her over to a sofa by the window and put a pillow beneath her head. Coriander thanked her, and promptly fell asleep.
.
She woke again around noon, with the pounding in her head much subsided. She woke feeling herself again, to visions of her father inches away and the sound of his voice cracking across her name.
Katherine was outside in the garden; Coriander could see her through the clouded window above her. She rose and, upon finding herself still in a borrowed nightgown, wrapped herself in a blanket to venture outside.
“Feeling better?” Katherine was kneeling in a patch of lavender, but she half rose when she heard the cottage door open.
“Much. Thank you, ma’am.
“No thanks necessary. Folke and I are ministers, of a kind. We keep this cottage for lost and wandering souls. You’re free to remain here with us for as long as you need.”
“Oh,” was all Coriander could think to say.
“You’ve been through a tempest, haven’t you? Are you well enough to tell me where you came from?”
Coriander shifted uncomfortably. “I’m from nowhere,” she said. “I have nothing.”
“You don’t owe me your story, child. I should like to hear it, but it will keep till you’re ready. Now, why don’t you put on some proper clothes and come help me with this weeding.”
.
Coriander remained at the cottage with Katherine and her husband Folke for a week, then a fortnight. She slept in the loft and rose with the sun to help Folke herd the geese to the pond. After, Coriander would return and see what needed doing around the cottage. She liked helping Katherine in the garden.
The grass turned gold and the geese’s thick winter down began to come in. Coriander’s river-rush hair proved itself unsalvageable. She spent hours trying to untangle it, first with a hairbrush, then with a fine-tooth comb and a bottle of conditioner, and eventually even with honey and olive oil (a home remedy that Folke said his mother used to use). So, at last, Coriander surrendered to the inevitable and gave Katherine permission to cut it off. One night, by the yellow light of the bare bulb that hung over the kitchen table, Katherine draped a towel over Coriander’s shoulders and tufts of gold went falling to the floor all round her.
“I’m here because I failed at love,” she managed to tell the couple at last, when her sorrows began to feel more distant. “I loved my father, and he knew it not.”
Folke and Katherine still called her Rush. She didn’t correct them. Coriander was the name her parents gave her. It was the name her father had called her when she was six and racing down the stairs to meet him when he came home from Europe, and at ten when she showed him the new song she’d learned to play on the harp. She’d been Cor when she brought her first boyfriend home and Cori the first time she shadowed him at court. Coriander, Coriander, when she came home from college the first time and he’d hugged her with bruising strength. Her strong, powerful father.
As she seasoned a pot of soup for supper, she wondered if he understood yet what she’d meant when she called him salt in her food.
.
Coriander had been living with Katherine and Folke for two years, and it was a morning just like any other. She was in the kitchen brewing a pot of coffee when Folke tossed the newspaper on the table and started rummaging in the fridge for his orange juice. “Looks like the old king’s sick again,” he commented casually. Coriander froze.
She raced to the table and seized hold of the paper. There, above the fold, big black letters said, KING ADMITTED TO HOSPITAL FOR EMERGENCY TREATMENT. There was a picture of her father, looking older than she’d ever seen him. Her knees went wobbly and then suddenly the room was sideways.
Strong arms caught her and hauled her upright. “What’s wrong, Rush?”
“What if he dies,” she choked out. “What if he dies and I never got to tell him?”
She looked up into Folke’s puzzled face, and then the whole sorry story came tumbling out.
When she was through, Katherine (who had come downstairs sometime between salt and the storm) took hold of her hand and kissed it. “Bless you, dear,” she said. “I never would have guessed. Maybe it’s best that you’ve both had some time to think things over.”
Katherine shook her head. “But don’t you think…?”
“Yes?”
“Well, don’t you think he should have known that I loved him? I shouldn’t have needed to say it. He’s my father. He’s the king.”
Katherine replied briskly, as though the answer should have been obvious. “He’s only human, child, for all that he might wear a crown; he’s not omniscient. Why didn’t you tell your father what he wanted to hear?”
“I didn’t want to flatter him,” said Coriander. “That was all. I wanted to be right in what I said.”
The goodwife clucked softly. “Oh dear. Don’t you know that sometimes, it’s more important to be kind than to be right?”
.
In her leave-taking, Coriander tried to tell Katherine and Folke how grateful she was to them, but they wouldn’t let her. They bought her a bus ticket and sent her on her way towards King’s City with plenty of provisions. Two days later, Coriander stood on the back steps of one of the palace outbuildings with her little carpetbag clutched in her hands.
Stuffing down the fear of being recognized, Coriander squared her shoulders and hoped they looked as strong as her father’s. She rapped on the door, and presently a maid came and opened it. The maid glanced Coriander up and down, but after a moment it was clear that her disguise held. With all her long hair shorn off, she must have looked like any other girl come in off the street.
“I’m here about a job,” said Coriander. “My name’s Rush.”
.
The king's chambers were half-lit when Coriander brought him his supper, dressed in her servants’ apparel. He grunted when she knocked and gestured with a cane towards his bedside table. His hair was snow-white and he was sitting in bed with his work spread across a lap-desk. His motions were very slow.
Coriander wanted to cry, seeing her father like that. Yet somehow, she managed to school her face. Like he would, she kept telling herself. Stoically, she put down the supper tray, then stepped back out into the hallway.
It was several minutes more before the king was ready to eat. Coriander heard papers being shuffled, probably filed in those same manilla folders her father had always used. In the hall, Coriander felt the seconds lengthen. She steeled herself for the moment she knew was coming, when the king would call out in irritation, “Girl! What's the matter with my food? Why hasn’t it got any taste?”
When that moment came, all would be made right. Coriander would go into the room and taste his food. “Why,” she would say, with a look of complete innocence, “It seems the kitchen forgot to salt it!” She imagined how her father’s face would change when he finally understood. My daughter always loved me, he would say.
Soon, soon. It would happen soon. Any second now.
The moment never came. Instead, the floor creaked, followed by the rough sound of a cane striking the floor. The door opened, and then the king was there, his mighty shoulders shaking. “Coriander,” he whispered.
“Dad. You know me?”
“Of course.”
“Then you understand now?”
The king’s wrinkled brow knit. “Understand about the salt? Of course, I do. It wasn't such a clever riddle. There was surely no need to ruin my supper with a demonstration.”
Coriander gaped at him. She'd expected questions, explanations, maybe apologies for sending her away. She'd never imagined this.
She wanted very badly to seize her father and demand answers, but then she looked, really looked, at the way he was leaning on his cane. The king was barely upright; his white head was bent low. Her questions would hold until she'd helped her father back into his room.
“If you knew what I meant–by saying you were like salt in my food– then why did you tell me to go?” she asked once they were situated back in the royal quarters.
Idly, the king picked at his unseasoned food. “I shouldn’t have done that. Forgive me, Coriander. My anger and hurt got the better of me, and it has brought me much grief. I never expected you to stay away for so long.”
Coriander nodded slowly. Her father's words had always carried such fierce authority. She'd never thought to question if he really meant what he’d said to her.
“As for the salt,” continued the king, "Is it so wrong that an old man should want to hear his daughters say ‘I love you' before he dies?”
Coriander rolled the words around in her head, trying to make sense of them. Then, with a sudden mewling sound from her throat, she managed to say, “That's really all you wanted?”
“That's all. I am old, Cor, and we've spoken too little of love in our house.” He took another bite of his unsalted supper. His hand shook. “That was my failing, I suppose. Perhaps if I’d said it, you girls would have thought to say it back.”
“But father!” gasped Coriander, “That’s not right. We've always known we loved one another! We've shown it a thousand ways. Why, I've spent the last year cataloging them in my head, and I've still not even scratched the surface!”
The king sighed. “Perhaps you will understand when your time comes. I knew, and yet I didn't. What can you really call a thing you’ve never named? How do you know it exists? Perhaps all the love I thought I knew was only a figment.”
“But that’s what I’ve been afraid of all this time,” Coriander bit back. “How could you doubt? If it was real at all– how could you doubt?”
The king’s weathered face grew still. His eyes fell shut and he squeezed them. “Death is close to me, child. A small measure of reassurance is not so very much to ask.”
.
Coriander slept in her old rooms that night. None of it had changed. When she woke the next morning, for a moment she remembered nothing of the last two years.
She breakfasted in the garden with her father, who came down the steps in a chair-lift. “Coriander,” he murmured. “I half-thought I dreamed you last night.”
“I’m here, Dad,” she replied. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Slowly, the king reached out with one withered hand and caressed Coriander's cheek. Then, his fingers drifted up to what remained of her hair. He ruffled it, then gently tugged on a tuft the way he'd used to playfully tug her long braid when she was a girl.
“I love you,” he said.
“That was always an I love you, wasn’t it?” replied Coriander. “My hair.”
The king nodded. “Yes, I think it was.”
So Coriander reached out and gently tugged the white hairs of his beard. “You too,” she whispered.
.
“Why salt?” The king was sitting by the fire in his rooms wrapped in two blankets. Coriander was with him, enduring the sweltering heat of the room without complaint.
She frowned. “You like honesty. We have that in common. I was trying to be honest–accurate–to avoid false flattery.”
The king tugged at the outer blanket, saying nothing. His lips thinned and his eyes dropped to his lap. Coriander wished they wouldn’t. She wished they would hold to hers, steely and ready for combat as they always used to be.
“Would it really have been false?” the king said at last. “Was there no other honest way to say it? Only salt?”
Coriander wanted to deny it, to give speech to the depth and breadth of her love, but once again words failed her. “It was my fault,” she said. “I didn’t know how to heave my heart into my throat.” She still didn’t, for all she wanted to.
.
When the doctor left, the king was almost too tired to talk. His words came slowly, slurred at the edges and disconnected, like drops of water from a leaky faucet.
Still, Coriander could tell that he had something to say. She waited patiently as his lips and tongue struggled to form the words. “Love you… so… much… You… and… your sisters… Don’t… worry… if you… can’t…say…how…much. I… know.”
It was all effort. The king sat back when he was finished. Something was still spasming in his throat, and Coriander wanted to cry.
“I’m glad you know,” she said. “I’m glad. But I still want to tell you.”
Love was effort. If her father wanted words, she would give him words. True words. Kind words. She would try…
“I love you like salt in my food. You're desperately important to me, and you've always been there, and I don't know what I'll do without you. I don’t want to lose you. And I love you like the soil in a garden. Like rain in the spring. Like a hero. You have the strongest shoulders of anyone I know, and all I ever wanted was to be like you…”
A warm smile spread across the old king’s face. His eyes drifted shut.
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Decennial
(2,396 words)
Evan and Gregory, now age twenty-two, celebrate the tenth anniversary of their meeting in the comfort of their shared apartment.
Its already the afternoon when Evan meets Gregory at the couch in their shared apartment, smartphone in hand. Gregory glances up from whatever he was watching on TV, quickly grabbing the remote to pause the channel.
He doesn't even have a chance to greet him before he notices Evan's face. Worry quickly creases his brows, and he moves to get off of the couch. "Evan? Hey, what's wron--"
Evan tries to convey that everything's fine with no words. Because it's true. He just can't muster any up right now. When Gregory seems to understand enough, that's when Evan thrusts his phone into Gregory's line of sight.
Gregory shifts on the couch, taking the phone and studying the screen to no avail. Hes pulled up the calendar on his phone, the date reading March 4th, 2045. Gregorys brows furrow, then, "Uh. I dont understand."
Evan would have rolled his eyes if he weren't so emotional right now. He scoffs, tapping the screen and mumbling "The date. Look at the date."
It only takes another moment for Gregory to understand. Evan can almost see the gears turning in his friends head in the moments before he gasps sharply. "Oh!"
Gregory doesn't look away immediately, just taking it in as if it surpises him. "Its ten years since we met today."
Evan nods at that. A small smile stretching on his face when Gregory finally turns to look at him.
But he should know by now -really, it's been ten years after all- that Gregory knows him. Probably better than Evan himself.
"What's with that look?" Gregory questions, seemingly noticing how Evans smile doesnt quite reach his eyes. "You look sad."
Evan shakes his head immediately. "No-- that's not it." He replies, feeling a bit more fit to speak. "Its just..."
"Ten years?" Gregory prompts, and Evan nods. Gregory seems to get it. He sighs a bit, and Evan can tell hes not alone in reminiscing. "Jeez. Thats..."
"...A long time ago." "A big number." They say at the same time.
Evan joins Gregory on the couch, taking his phone back. Ten years. Ten years since he met Gregory. Ten years since Evan had been that little ball of anxiety. Ten years since the best thing that ever happened to him.
Nine years since their first holidays together. Eight years since they started high school. Four since they graduated. Three since they started college.
One year since they got their first apartment together.
Evan chuckles all of the sudden, loud as a jet engine in the seemingly silent room. "Do you remember what we always wanted to do as kids?"
Gregory only has to think for a moment. "You mean what we made a reality?"
"Yeah." Evan replies. "We got that apartment. Not exactly the college dorm we imagined, though."
"Psh. Are you kidding? Our apartment is way better than any dorm we could have gotten." Gregory scoffs. "We would have like. One room to our name, and we would have to share."
Its Evan's turn to scoff, this time. He smiles, the memories coming back easily. "You're acting like we didnt basically share your room when we were thirteen."
"You were always there." Gregory agrees, but Evan knows by now that Gregory doesn't mean it in a bad way. Never. That's one of the things that have changed since they met. Evan doesnt assume the worst first, and ask questions later anymore. "You got that right."
"Thank god we had Vanessa to tell us what to do." Evan says. "We would be lost without her."
Gregory snorts, shuffling on the couch. Evan glances over, and strangely, being here, in this moment, even though its nothing differnet from what he and Gregory do every day, reminds him so much of when he and Gregory would just hang out together on his bed. Drawing, watching videos, talking and laughing... all of it.
"Its a good thing she told us to get an apartment while we still could." Gregory says. "We would have burned down the entire dorm."
Evan giggles at the thought. It wouldn't be the first time he and Gregory would make a mess in the kitchen. He still remembers how scared he was as a fourteen year old, when he had burned some of the food meant for Vanessa's 'Welcome Home' dinner Gregory insisted they make. The Fazbears house had stunk of char and smoke for days afterwards.
He was terrified at the time. If he had ever done anything like that at his old house...
He shakes that thought away. He does that often. Thinking back to his time alone with his father and brother. His biological ones. It's been a challenge, shutting down his brain when it tries to recall the memories.
Its another thing that's changed. As a kid, he knew nothing about helping himself and his anxiety. He didnt want to. He never saw himself as worthy of deserving relief, and it was so subconscious, little Evan never even realized it.
Now, it couldn't be more different. Hes never been healthier.
Who knew all it took was a best friend for life?
He looks over at Gregory. Who's still recounting some of their old childhood memories. Evan doesnt talk to Michael anymore. The damage he caused is too much to ignore. Evan... Evan doesnt want to see him anymore. Despite Michaels wake up call, it had been all too late. The damage had been done.
Michael missed his chance. Evan had decided that a long time ago. Maybe he should have had his change if heart earlier if he didnt want Evan to find the brother he always wanted in someone else.
Because that's what Gregory is. Its nothing new, they were having these revelations when they were only teenagers. Probably even earlier for Evan. But Evan never stops thinking about how much Gregory truly is his family.
That suprise and shock of the kindness hed received from Gregory from little Evan ten years ago is hard to shake when all hed been taught his whole life is how to hate himself. How he deserved to be treated badly, because if he hadn't been the way he was, he could have made himself worthy. A respectable man. Tough. An immovable rock. Real men dont show their emotions, or even experience them. Real men can defend themselves. Real men start to toughen up at the ripe age of twelve.
Evan is twenty two, now. So is Gregory. This life they'd built for themselves, with such a bright future... little Evan never would have even dreamed of. Little Evan had thought there was nothing there for him. Little Evan had thought there was no light at the end of the tunnel. That he had been doomed from the start. That his nature nipped his figure at the bud before it could begin.
This life theyve built for themselves. When Evan had ran to the Fazbears as soon as he'd turned eighteen with only a bag of clothes, a binder full of drawings, and yellow bear to his name. When he'd shared the room that felt like his own as well growing up with Gregory. When they'd spent those few months together until getting into the same college and choosing an apartment.
This life theyve built for themselves. That Evan would have only seen as a fantasy when he was eleven.
Theyve changed so much. It always shocks Evan every time he sees an old photo, or really remembers what it had been like pre-Gregory. Evan is growing out his hair, now. Before, all hed ever had was a months overgrown generic slickback. But he gets to choose now. Like how he paints his nails. Gregory has never really cared about his appearance, but he saw a photo of his Dad as a college student and immediately went to go replicate the blue streaks in his hair when it was time for himself to go off to college.
Evan almost laughs sometimes when he thinks about how much Gregory really is just an older version of who he was when he was twelve. He's different, like Evan is, but he's the same as well. A constant.
He knows hes the same, as well. Just with longer hair, bolder clothes, and the power of experimentation. Gregory has never been one to care much about his clothes, but to Evan, its everything. To be able to wear what he always wanted as a kid. To not be confined to whatever annual clothes his Father would buy him from the back to school section. Its freeing.
It's in that moment that he thinks back, really thinks back to his life pre-Gregory, and the contrast of the before and after.
It's all too much, in that moment. The memories and the sentiments and the nostalgia. In true Evan fashion, he cries about it.
Gregory has long since learned how to differentiate Evan's tears between his emotionality and a genuine issue. So when Evan begins wiping silent tears away, he just smiles one of those smiles he does, and pats him on the shoulder, pulling him in for a side hug.
Its digging a hole in Evan's chest, this feeling. It's not bad. But it's not exactly good either. It's some kind of a loss, but a hope as well. Remembering how much he loved back then. As much as he loves right now.
"I--" Evan stutters, sniffling. Gregory hands him one of the many boxes of tissues they always have on hand in their apartment. "It... It feels like we need to celebrate, somehow. I mean... ten years is big."
Evans mind floats to a cake. Or a two person party. Or a collaborated drawing. Evan's mind floats to many things. Many options. Ten years is big, right? Something that big needs a big party. Something big to commemorate it.
But Gregory just hums, and lays eyes on the thick shelf of DVDs they have tucked by the wall right by their TV. "How about a movie night?"
Evan's about to interrupt, say something about the milestone, but Gregory continues. "Do you remember all our favorites as a kid?"
Evan stops himself short, almost scoffing, because of couse he does. How could he not, when he and Gregory had stayed up so many times to watch them together, alongside stifled giggles and ice cream straight out of the carton? "Of course I do."
Gregory gets off the couch, crouching by the bookshelf and picking out a select few movies. Evan catches the titles on the packaging from all the way were hes sitting. Every single one of them is special to him.
Gregory deposits the movies on their coffee table, three DVDs spilling out onto the glass surface. "Then I can't think of a better way to spend the night."
Despite Evan's attempts, he cant either. Despite watching these movies almost regularly with Gregory even now, opening the casing feels different in this moment. It feels special. Evan feels like hes thirteen again.
Before starting their marathon, they make a huge bowl of popcorn, pouring caramel on it just how they liked it as kids. As they continue to now. Evan gets the carton of ice cream out of the fridge, handing Gregory his spoon and taking his own.
All they need is a throw blanket and they're ready. It's the exact setup they've done for years. Starting ten years ago today. This tradition has lasted this long, and it will outlive the milestone.
It feels so familiar, Evan cant stop thinking. His emotions are dialed up to eleven tonight. It only increases when the sky darkens outside their windows. He remembers coming home from school with Gregory and just. Immediately piling onto his bed with snacks and pillows and turning the lights off before they'd dive into another movie. Only going to bed when Freddy forced them to.
Because that's what it was. Thats what it still is. Home. All Evan feels right now is home.
They laugh at all the same parts. They cry as well. They cheer. They point out the same things. Nothing has changed.
Sure, ten years is big. But Evan can't think of a better way of spending the anniversary than continuing to do what hes loved to do with Gregory throughout the years. This doesnt mark the end of an era, or a big change. It marks how long hes had the gift of his brother. His family. His real family. The fifteenth mark will, as well. So will the twentieth.
All the tenth mark says is hes had ten years worth of joy and growth. and He'll continue to do just that.
After the third movie, Evan takes a quick look at his phone. The numbers 12:03 look back at him from his lockscreen, a picture of him and Gregory. The date has switched to the 5th.
"You're my brother." Evan says suddenly to Gregory at the beginning of the fourth movie. Gregory pauses in stuffing his face with popcorn to look over at Evan's earnest face. "You know that?"
Gregory chuckles wetly. It seems Evan isn't alone in the sentimentality tonight. "Only since we were preteens."
Gregory pulls him into that same side hug he always does. "You're my family." Gregory tells him sincerely. "You always will be, too. Hell would freeze over before our family would ever say you aren't one of theirs."
Evan chuckles, eyes misty, because he knows its true. He can imagine his family's reactions so vividly. "I know."
They only sink further into the hug after that, the movie continuing on. Theyve long since stopped with the thank yous. Not since they got it through Evan's thick skull that they arent doing him a favor. They just love him.
It's in that moment that Evan realizes that tomorrow is another day. And there are more after that and after that. Theres more milestones to reach, more years to spend with his brother and their family, and he cant wait to experience them.
But right now, he's content continuing a ten year long tradition as a mundane celebration for a non-mundane achievement.
It's not mundane to him at all, anyway. It means the world to him.
Besides, he can't imagine a world where his family doesn't throw a suprise party for him when he and Gregory visit them tomorrow.
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