Calm after the storm (dad!Nathan x fem!reader)
Summary: dad!Nathan / ex-husband!Nathan and angst. He comforts your son during a storm. You were always better at dishing out comfort, but Nathan is trying his best to learn how. He’s had to, since you left him. If only he could get you to come home, after he pushed you so far away.
Author’s note: my 1st go at writing something emotional / angsty with Nathan. Different to my other Nathan stuff, so won;t be offended if you don’t like it! No-one asked for this but this popped into my head and ended me and I figured I’d drag you down with me. Will add taglists tomorrow :o) (If you DO happen to like it, please let me know! Writing has been so slow for me lately and honestly I’m just pleased to have finished something.)
Warnings: language, themes of children, divorce / separation, angst, alcohol abuse / misuse, parent!reader.
Warning that there is zero smut in this. Nathan is literally a father when I say daddy here. Just to be clear. Some may feel this is ooc (I may have used a bit of license with his character to achieve angst, but actually, I don’t think it’s too far from a potential truth?)? Mistakes etc. maybe, but I can’t look at this a second longer so here it is.
Word count: 8.8k (sorry!)
Nathan’s head whips up from his computer screen as he sees a tiny, shadowed figure appear in the doorway to his lab. He pauses his frenzied typing, but retains the frown weighing on his brow.
“You shouldn’t be out of bed, buddy,” he says sternly, bathed in a pool of blue light and looking at the child from beneath his lenses. Hell, when did it get so dark?
“I’m scared,” a tearful little voice says, and Nathan sighs, pushing back his chair with a small, thin-lipped smile as he regards the boy. His soft, dinosaur-adorned pyjamas have been twisted by sleep, and he is rubbing his balled-up fists into his cheeks, a pet lip trembling beneath. Nathan never did understand the kid’s obsession with dinosaurs.
Unlike father, unlike son.
Things long dead and gone? Nathan didn’t like to look back, after all. He looked ahead. Moved forward. There’s nothing for me over my shoulder.
With his headspace out of his work, Nathan suddenly notices the rain drumming down against the skylight. The rumble of thunder and flash of lightning carving the sky open.
“The storm?” he asks, rising to meet the boy as his little feet pad with trepidation across the cold lab floor to his father. The boy nods. He looks slightly uncertain, since he’s not allowed in the lab, but enters and sticks his arms up into the air all the same. He does that tentatively too, since Nathan hasn’t historically been generous with affection; and yet, this time, Nathan wordlessly scoops him up on to his hip, his heart clenching as the boy’s wet, grabby little hands fist into his Henley. His severe gaze softens instantly; though not all the way. The gesture is still a little rusty.
“That’s illogical, bud - it’s not gonna hurt you. Let’s get you back to bed.”
Irrational. Emotional. Unlike father, unlike son.
You were always better at the comfort stuff. Of course you were. Still, Nathan thinks he’s learning, without you. He’s had to learn.
Nathan quietly carries the little spider-monkeyed bundle back to his bed. He offers no words of comfort, but he does offer a firm and reassuring pat on his back as he walks. The boy smells of bath bubbles and baby oil, mixed-in with fresh detergent and that indescribable kid smell, and Nathan feels alarmingly soothed as he inhales the scent.
A flood of memories comes back, but he pushes them down. There is nothing for him over his shoulder, after all. Nothing in the past he would care to resurrect.
Carefully balancing the boy with one strong arm, Nathan peels back the covers and slots him back into his soft bed, the glow of the nightlight illuminating the boy in a blue halo.
Like father, like son.
The man securely tucks him in and smooths the covers, his eyes alarmingly gentle now, even amidst his stony face; however, the boy is still not entirely placated. His eyes are still wide. His bottom lip is still trembling.
Nathan sighs and lowers himself on to the edge of the bed, his genius brain struggling with this problem. Apparently, simply telling a 4-year-old they’re being illogical doesn’t cut it. Children; so inefficient. So tiny and fragile and…
The best thing I ever created.
Let’s hope he doesn’t grow up to stab me in the chest.
“Okay,” he begins, with a sweep of his hand over that buzzed head of his. “Do you know what static electricity is, buddy? One of the forces which attracts or repels things? Remember?”
“Repels. Pushes things away?” the small voice asks him.
I pushed her away. I’m a force. A force of nature. A storm.
Fear is often based on lack of knowledge. Nathan imagines if he explains the storm, he can demystify it. Take its power away. Still, the 4-year-old looks up at him in confusion, little fingers tightly gripping the edge of the bed covers. His mess of curls splaying over the pillow like a rolling black cloud.
Maybe you did get your mother’s average brain.
We can hope you got fuck all from me, kid.
“Come on, champ, we talked about this...” Nathan sighs, with mild impatience, and then he thinks some more – just like he’s always thinking, except algorithms make sense to him, and how could he hope to solve this?
Nathan shuffles up on to the bed until his back is against the wall, perpendicular to the boy. “Okay,” he says, slapping his palms gently against his thighs. “Remember when we were at Ankita’s party, and you rubbed that balloon on your head, huh? And then all of your hairs stood-up and it kinda tickled?”
The child giggles – a sound that punches Nathan in the gut. “Yeah, Daddy, and it didn’t work on your bald head.”
Nathan exhales through a small smile which doesn’t quite reach his eyes.
“So, you remember,” he nods, waving his hand in the air as he tries to find simple language to continue his explanation. “Well. It’s like the sky is having a party, and the clouds are rubbin’ up against each other, making all this static. Understand?” Nathan continues, and the child is rapt, listening to his father’s deep, steady, sandy voice. “But clouds don’t have hair-“ there is another giggle, and this time Nathan’s eyes do crease with his smile, “-so instead they send their lightning forking out in all directions. You got it?”
“A party?” the boy enquires, still unsure. His hands gripping more tightly to the covers and his face inching further below them as a particularly loud rumble of thunder sounds overhead.
“Right. A party.” Nathan runs with it, pleased that he’s getting somewhere. Moving forward. Making progress. “And parties can be noisy, right? All that dancing and singing and scraping chairs around?”
The kid briefly looks at his father as if he’s stupid -a trait you’d always had nailed- but in the next heartbeat he seems to accept the explanation given, the fear in his eyes beginning to ease, though not entirely gone.
He’s still afraid.
Like father, like son.
It’s evident that Nathan needs to devise something even more soothing. He vaguely considers trying to explain the unparalleled lightning and surge protection in-built into this facility, but he thinks better of it. He instead plumps for something he dearly hopes the kid will understand somewhat better than he comprehends static electricity. “You’re safe here and nothing can hurt you,” he says, raising his eyebrows up from beneath his frames and delivering an intent stare, smoothing a broad hand on the boy’s chest and shoulder. “I promise, kid. Would Daddy let anything hurt you?”
“No,” the boy answers, peeking up at Nathan with big eyes, shaking his little head and rustling his curls against the pillow. It breaks Nathan’s heart that his voice wavers, as if he’s a little unsure of his answer.
“Exactly. Not in a million fuckin’ years.” Nathan says adamantly, his deep, dark eyes intense with conviction to emphasise his point.
“Daddy!” The boy gasps when Nathan curses, little palms rising to clamp down over the shocked “o” of his mouth.
“Ah, shit. Don’t tell your Mama I said a naughty word, okay?” Nathan sucks air through his teeth and delivers a sheepish half-grin.
“I miss Mommy.”
The boy blinks. His eyes sad, his emotions constantly unmasked. Feeling. Always feeling.
Unlike father, unlike son.
Nathan’s chest tightens. He scoops up the plush dog, Crunchy, from on top of the duvet and settles her in the boy’s arms, buying him some time to arrange his busy thoughts.
Thinking. Always thinking.
The dog is so named since it spent the boy’s early years crusted with dried-in food and mud and whatever else. Nathan had dubbed it Crunchy Mutt, and the name had stuck. Memories nip at his heels, but he doesn’t let you creep back in. Doesn’t fill the gaps.
Nathan emits a shallow sigh. He misses you too.
Like father, like son.
His eyes are almost soft, almost apologetic as they meet the boy’s again. He is sorry, in that moment, for depriving the boy of you for half of his time. He shouldn’t have to miss out on you. You shouldn’t have to miss out on your son. Nathan knew all this was because of him.
Nathan had sworn never to let anything hurt you, either. To look after you, and yet...
I pushed her away.
I’m a force. A force of nature.
A storm.
“Mommy’ll be here to get you in the morning.” Nathan says in a taut, gruff voice, his beard bobbing as his throat wrestles around a hard swallow. “To take you… home.” At that, finally the boy finally looks content and sleepy, stretching his little face into a big yawn. Still, selfishly, Nathan no longer wants to be alone in this storm - alone with himself - and so, he keeps talking. “You know, your Mommy loves storms like this.”
“Really? Mommy doesn’t get scared?”
“No.” Nathan shakes his head, eyes becoming burdened with memories. “We would sit out on the deck, wrapped in blankets, and watch the lightning. Listen to the rain.”
“It’s science 101, genius. You can’t work in the lab during a storm. You might create Frankenstein.”
“Fuckin’… how many times? It’s Frankenstein’s monster, sweet cheeks. Frankenstein is the doctor.”
“I know, asshole. At this point I just say it to rile you. Never fails. You stay here then, and play at creating life. If you want to play at living one, I’ll be out on the decking.”
“How about I do both?”
“What are you saying, Nathan?”
“What about we make something together, while the sky is fucking rife with creation?”
The boy springs up in bed, capturing Crunchy in a choke-hold in excitement.
Nathan raises himself to standing - beginning to backtrack, and snapping back to the present day. Compartmentalising you. Putting long dead things to rest. He knows better than to look over his shoulder for too long.
“Can we go outside and watch it, Daddy?”
“Nuh uh. I don’t think so, buddy. It’s way past your bedtime. Go to sleep now, okay?” His voice is sterner again - his gaze back to being more severe.
Still, he guides the boy back down to the mattress and plants a soft kiss on to his forehead, brushing his dark curls back. He kisses Crunchy on the head too, as he is routinely instructed to do.
“Night, kid. Night, mutt. Come on, off to sleep.”
His hands move to his hips, elbows cutting a sharp shape in the near-dark. The boy, however, looks wide awake, a smile playing at the corners of his lips, and an excited glow on his face.
“Please, Daddy?” the boy pleads, with big, puppy dog eyes. So closely resembling your eyes, which Nathan always was a sucker for.
Yep. He’s definitely your son.
Nathan is about to use his stern voice, and his finger is moments away from wagging. And yet…
“Fine. Quickly then,” he concedes. “Get your coat and shoes on. And find your little red hat with the Pom-Pom that you look fuckin’ adorable in.”
“Daddy! No bad words!” the kid scolds, even as a smile of glee bursts on to his face and he wriggles out from beneath the covers.
“Yep, sorry! Don’t tell Mommy,” Nathan repeats on autopilot.
The boy springs out of bed and zooms with enthusiasm to his little closet, while Nathan gathers up some blankets from a neighbouring chest.
Sure - it was past the boy’s bedtime. Yes, Nathan had a lot of coding to rehash. But Nathan had lost you. He had let work consume him until there was nothing left for you. He was always looking ahead to what could be, and he didn’t pay enough attention to what he had, when he had it. He wasn’t going to make the same mistakes again. Not with his son. This time, at least, work could wait.
Once the pair are both dressed in their outerwear, Nathan hoists the boy up on to his hip again, and carries him out to the decking, on the side of the house with the best view of the storm churning over the miserable valley. He clings on to his son tightly as the pulse of lightning illuminates his awed little face, a perfect mixture of your features and his, and yet someone entirely his own. The boy gasps and shrinks back from the vast, roaring sky, nuzzling closer into Nathan’s chest, grabby hands fisting in his clothes again.
“It’s okay, buddy. It can’t hurt you, understand?” Nathan reassures.
The child visibly relaxes, absentmindedly tangling his fingers into the soft texture of Nathan’s beard.
He does that when he’s nervous. Seems to calm him down, Nathan notes, and files for later.
“Look, Daddy!” the kid points as forks of lightning raze through the blackened sky, sparkling eyes following the display.
“I saw it, champ,” Nathan confirms, as the storm lights up his child’s face in more ways than one. However, Nathan is more awed by his boy than the storm. By the boy you and he created, on a night not unlike this one.
He fixes his eyes on him as he grows in confidence, facing his fear of the braying wind and rumbling thunder. Being a parent is everything Nathan anticipated he would hate. Full of things you can’t control, and yet, he loves every way this boy surprises him.
Shit, he’s braver than me, Nathan thinks, as he cradles the boy in his arms, holding him just a little bit closer – a little bit tighter.
Nathan isn’t afraid often. In fact, in his adult life, he’s only been truly afraid a handful of times. On those occasions, he didn’t face it like the boy did. He tended to bury his fear, in a landslide of work and drunkenness and insults and excuses. To cocoon himself in his own self-interest.
Nathan was afraid when he fell in love with you, even despite his best efforts not to. He was terrified he didn’t deserve you.
He was afraid when you told him you were pregnant; he was terrified of creating another thing that hated him.
But Nathan has never been as afraid as when you left him, and took the boy with you. He was terrified that you would never come back.
You were brave. You were so brave that you never ran away from a storm, and yet you had fled from him.
What kind of storm am I, if even you ran from me?
Despite his fears though, Nathan was learning to be brave. He’s had to, since you’ve been gone. For his son, for you, he would fight off any foe or threat. Turns out, he would even do the hardest thing of all, and fight his own demons.
Yes, Nathan knew he was a stern man. Serious. Flawed. Unyielding. An asshole, a lot of the time.
He hadn’t been ready. To be humbled. By you. By the boy. Hadn’t been ready to face his shortcomings and his demons and look them in the eye.
He was afraid of creating something that hated him, but he hadn’t been prepared to create something better than himself. A child who was open, and kind, and brave, and loving. Who wasn’t afraid to feel, and to be kind.
Unlike father, unlike son.
The boy made him strong. The boy was just like you.
“Wow!” the boy gasps at another display of lightning, even though he jumps slightly as a loud rumble of thunder sounds. The shock makes him laugh - a sweet, musical, innocent noise that makes Nathan’s chest tear in half like the sky. The boy watches for a while longer as the storm tires itself out and the boy with it, the rain dying off to a pleasant lulling noise.
Nathan looks up at the sky too and he feels almost complete, until he looks to the other side of him; where you should be. Until he looks over his shoulder. To where long-dead things still haunt him.
“Mommy will be sad she’s missing the storm, won’t she Daddy? Can we send her a selfie?”
No tech after 5pm. Bed by 7pm. One of the co-parenting rules rings in his head.
It’s 2:30am, and he worries you will ride him for this, but surely this is an exception, right?
“Sure we can, bud,” Nathan responds, and he fishes his phone out of his pants pocket. The boy nuzzles into his chest in that adorable red hat, and gives a thumbs-up as Nathan extends his arm to grab a quick selfie. “Great photo. She’ll love it. What shall we tell her?”
“Hmm...” the boy thinks, and then he lands on the perfect words. “Say… I wish you were here,” he says with a toothy grin, unaware of the emotional sucker punch of his words.
Nathan’s chest tightens again, and he attempts to school the frown from his face.
I wish you were here.
Like father, like son.
Smoothing himself, he types out a message.
“Storm watching with Papa bear. Kid says: I wish you were here.”
“Ok,” he says softly, pinging the message away to you. “Done.”
The boy beams at his father.
“Will she type back?”
“Dunno, kid, she might be asleep.”
Tiredness hitting him, the boy nuzzles closer and Nathan gently rocks him on his hip, the boy’s eyes gradually closing.
When Nathan feels his phone vibrate, he lifts it back up, bathing the pair in a halo of blue once again. He is surprised to see a photo. There you are, wrapped up in a chunky cardigan and blanket on your new porch.
You’re watching the storm too, and god, you look so beautiful that it hurts him.
Beneath the picture, you have typed out: “Storm-watching, Mama bear edition. Wish I was there too, baby bear. I’ll see you in the morning. xxx”
He knows the smile and the wave and the words are solely for your son’s benefit, and not for him, but oh, how he wishes.
“Mommy’s watching the storm too!” the boy says sleepily, barely able to keep his eyes open in the comfort of Nathan’s warm, strong arms, as his soporific movements rock him back to sleep.
“Yeah, bud, she is.”
And Nathan tugs the boy into his chest, bouncing him on his hip and stroking his hair -as much for his own comfort as anything- until he is soothed too.
***
After the boy is safely back in bed, Nathan plods sullenly back down to his workshop, bathing himself once again in a blue halo. His fingers gravitate naturally towards the keys, and though he should work, his mind is very much elsewhere. His mind is wrapped up with long-dead things.
With a heavy sigh, he fishes his phone out of his pocket again, and spends a wistful moment staring at the picture you had sent him.
“Fuck it,” he says, and he lifts up the photo frame he’s had face down on his desk for some time now. For months.
Longer.
It’s a picture of you and him and the boy, out on a hike a few years ago. Nathan is carrying your son in a harness on his front, and you are side by side with them, clasping the baby’s hand in yours, and your head leaning on Nathan’s shoulders. You’re all smiling, though none of you had managed to look at the camera, only at each other.
The sight of it makes Nathan’s throat constrict. Lights a fire of yearning in the pit of him. A fire he’s tried to quell and resist for so long – hasn’t let himself feel, because he’s afraid of the power of it.
He stares at his phone again, so many things he wishes to say, but all he has the courage to type is:
“Just letting you know. Byron’s back to bed now, before you ride me for keeping him up. Woke up scared.”
Your reply pings back almost immediately, as if you were expecting him.
“Come on, Nathan. I’m not a monster. It’s a sweet picture. He looks happy.”
Nathan scratches the top of his buzzed head, and he sees the tell-tale dots disappear and reappear, signalling you are considering typing something further.
“Say it,” he types out to you, blunt and demanding as ever, and although the dots disappear for a moment, you come back - finding some courage yourself, perhaps?
“I wish I was there too.” He wonders if you held your breath while typing it, like he did when reading it.
This time, it is Nathan’s turn to convey nothing but dots to you, as he struggles to respond. As his pulse thrums in his ears.
“Say it,” you echo, just as plainly.
He takes a deep breath, knowing he’s going to curse himself for his stupidity even as he types the message. He has been earning your trust back. He has been rebuilding. He hasn’t pushed you too far yet, and yet he can’t help but plead with you now.
He says what he most needs to say.
“Come home.”
He stares at the phone, his heart hammering in his mouth.
But there’s nothing. No message. No dots. He throws the phone down on the desk.
Fucking idiot, he chides himself, launching himself out of his seat with a surge of nervous energy, and coming to rest his forehead and elbow against the cool window pane as he tries to steady his nerves. This is why he doesn’t let himself feel. Because when he does, it’s too much.
Nathan’s best quality is also his worst. He isn’t a man of moderation. He doesn’t know how to stop. When to stop. He never has.
Doesn’t know when to stop working, drinking, striving, fighting.
Loving.
He loved you enough to split the sky open, and god damnit, he doesn’t know how to stop loving you. How can he solve this problem?
I pushed her away and she might never come back.
He feels a tightening in his chest - worse than before - and he has thoughts of reaching for a bottle until he’s blackout drunk, or hitting the punchbag until his knuckles bleed, but he bites those urges back down.
He has to. He has to, because his kid is in the house. For him. For you. For his own good too.
Gradually, Nathan -who once naively believed he had already attained perfection, superiority- has become a lot stronger, and a lot braver. A lot better at feeling his emotions instead of pushing them down. He has learned it from the boy, who learned it from you.
Still, despite this newfound courage -or, perhaps as a result of it- he has his moments of weakness, just like anybody else. He’s not untouchable. Not a god any longer.
Nathan is weak when it comes to you. He loves you. And he doesn’t know how to stop.
Overcome by the impulsive need to hear your voice, and ignoring all reason, he tracks back to the desk and calls you.
You answer almost instantly, as if you were expecting him.
“Nathan...” you say, in your eminently familiar voice, and he can he the agitation and accusation veiled as you say his name. What are you thinking? Always thinking. He’s always thinking. Yet, no- this time, he is only feeling. Finally feeling.
Still, Nathan doesn’t respond until a taut pattern of breaths has been laid like a tightrope for him to walk across.
Then, with a deep exhale, he asks you again. A plea. His face sharp and contorted in the blue light. He is terrified of falling.
“Come home.”
“Nathan...” you say, again. What are you thinking? And the sound of his name in your mouth causes a lump to rise in his throat. He hears your discombobulated breath on the other side of the line, and it is all too familiar. You were always charged, rubbing up against one another, causing static. He was always a storm; the one storm that could drive you away.
Come home.
“I wouldn’t even know how,” you insist, your voice paper thin, syllables soft and measured and sorry like raindrops drumming against a window pane.
You were always his release. If he was the energy and commotion and anger behind the storm -the severe, withholding clouds- you were its beauty and majesty and release. Together, you created life, and you destroyed each other.
Nathan hunkers over on the desk, leaning his head in his spare arm for some morsel of comfort, his guard up over his face.
“Just walk through the door tomorrow and stay,” he says tiredly, as if it’s simple.
He hears you sigh again, exasperatedly - the sound he induced all too often, when you were together.
“It didn’t work Nathan,” you say through your teeth, like lightning might spark through them at any moment. “How would this be any different?” Still, he can hear the tell-tale break in your voice. A gentle plea. God, could you really want to come back to him? If he could find the right answers to your questions?
“I’ll be different,” he promises, all the muscles in his face pulled taut. His face and his body aching with the tension of the sky splitting open, creation or destruction imminent.
Fuck it. Fuck everything else. Enough of this. The measured conversations, the co-parenting, the negotiations. You are what he wants - his family back together; home.
True- love hadn’t come easily to him at first. He was an asshole, a misanthrope, a closed book. Sex came easily to him. Desire. Infatuation. Thoughts of you, bordering on obsession as they took over his busy mind. But love? That too came, in the end. But love as a verb- the act of loving?
Nathan had sworn he didn’t want love at all, but then, there was you. He has sworn he had no desire for the legacy of a child, and yet, then there was the boy. For all his arrogance and grandiose dreams of the ways in which the whole world might remember him, he was finally ready to admit that all he wanted was to be remembered by you as a good husband, and by the boy as a good father.
He had never wanted to create another thing that hated him.
It didn’t come naturally to him at first. He was withholding, stubborn, rigid, and self-involved. Still, when he was motivated, there were other, finer qualities Nathan possessed too. Dedication, focus, discipline. When he was motivated, he possessed those in abundance. Turns out, love is one hell of a motivator.
Turns out, sometimes it is still not enough.
“I’m doing better,” he offers as he is met with silence, clenching his fist in discomfort as he hears you sniffing intermittently through the phone.
“I know,” you enthuse, your voice almost sickly with sincerity. “I know. I’m proud of you, Nathan.”
But Nathan doesn’t want your platitudes.
“Baby, please. I love you,” he pleads, and even in his plea his voice is stern. He refuses to let it crack. He states his truth as a cold, hard fact. He loves you. It’s undeniable. It’s logical, that you should be together.
“You know…. You know that I love you too.” you say, your voice small and full of holes. A sigh billowing out of you. “Shit, Nathan…” You sniff on the other end of the line with greater frequency – definitely crying. Nathan knits his brows together, his eyes brimming with tears that he fights back.
He thinks of all the times you cried and he didn’t reach out to you. He would give anything now to wipe your tears away.
“Come home, then,” he pleads, bluntly, swirling with hurt like silt stirred up by the rains. It hurts. It hurts to feel things. “Fuck, why are you so fucking stubborn?”
You huff out air as he snaps and instantly, he knows he’s fucked it. He wishes he could retract the words but it’s too late. They’ve already become breath. Already thunder, splitting his sky in two all over again.
He throws himself back in his chair in defeat, his hand rasping over his buzzed head in some unconscious attempt to comfort himself. “Shit, look, I just-”
When your voice interrupts him, it is perfectly smoothed out. Cold. Withholding.
So that’s how it feels.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Nathan.”
There is a beat, and you soften. You always soften. “I’ll come get him later so you can have some extra time, okay?”
Nathan sighs loudly, catching a glance of his calendar on the illuminated screen.
“Fuck. I have a meeting at 11am- I thought you would collect him early so I booked a board thing-” he says tiredly.
“Fine,” you bite off.
“No. Wait, I’ll rearrange,” he backtracks. “Let me have more time,” he reasons, his voice softening. He tips up the photo frame – that blessed and cursed item- and brings it to rest on his thigh, torturing himself with your smiling face. “Please. I need more time.”
You are silent for a moment, and this time when your voice comes back, it is level, but infused with intentional warmth. He hates that tone. That tone where he knows you are placating him rather than speaking your mind, just so he doesn’t do anything stupid. He hates that it must feel like you have a guillotine hanging over your head at all times, because you feel like you can’t push him over the edge.
“Fine. Get some sleep, Nathan, okay?”
He huffs out air, a sharp, self-pitying guffaw, and he rubs his eyes underneath his glasses, the frames lifting from the bridge of his nose. “Right. I can’t even fuckin’ sleep without you.”
There is another pattern of breaths, and whatever tightrope Nathan might have tried to walk across to reach you snaps. “Don’t do that, don’t guilt me, Nathan.”
The worst thing is, you don’t even sound angry. You just sound… tired.
“I’m sorry,” he pushes out, muffled through a hand over his beard, and though this time he means it, the words come out sounding entirely insincere.
“Sure. ‘Night. Try and get some rest, okay?”
Now that -that sounded genuine. Sincere. You never stopped looking out for him. Even if you couldn’t stand to be around him any longer.
“Yep,” he says tautly, with little feeling, and he hangs up, tightening his grip on the photo frame in his lap before slamming it back down on the desk along with his phone.
He leans back in his chair for a moment and buries his face in his hands. “Fuck.”
I pushed her away. I did that. I pushed her away.
With a knot building in his chest, partly out of need and partly out of habit, Nathan drags opens the desk drawer where an ever-replenishing stash of vodka used to reside. Where instead, he has taped a picture drawn by his son. For moments like this.
It helps, but it’s not always enough.
Nathan knits his brows together, his face set with a stony resolve, and his dark, turbulent eyes awash with a storm of emotion.
The boy. He’s braver than me.
Somehow, because he has to, perhaps- because he’s had to learn how, Nathan smooths himself. He cannot solve the problem of how to bring you home, when this simply isn’t home to you anymore. So, instead, he bathes himself in blue light. He basks in the glow of algorithms he can solve, and works and works his mind until it shuts off. Feeling to thinking to nothing.
I’m a force. A force of nature. A storm.
He can do anything he sets his mind to.
And… fuck. I pushed her away.
Anything, perhaps, except bring you back.
***
The next day, you arrive to collect your son.
It is familiar by now. It is an encounter that Nathan both longs for and dreads, in equal measure. Today, especially so; especially both.
Byron runs down the hallway and leaps into your arms, the sound of your laughter scooping Nathan out from the inside as you pepper the boy with kisses, a toothy smile on his angel face.
In these encounters, the moments are always too fleeting; always slipping away too quickly. It seems to happen so fast that it’s a blur to him, his mind zoning-out and working through a million things he wants to tell you, and simultaneously hyper-focussed on every single aspect of you he’s missed desperately. He wracks his brain for the right things to do and say, as if desperately searching for the one remnant of code- the one function or command that will simply make you stay.
With effort, he tunes back in to the scene as the boy wraps his arms around his leg.
“Did you pack Crunchy?” you ask Nathan, as he hands over the kid’s weekend bag to your waiting, outstretched arm.
His mouth opens to respond, but you are already unzipping it and rooting through the bag, checking in amongst the clothes and tiny boxing gloves and dolls for the dear mutt. You find him nestled in there safely, and you smile softly at Nathan for remembering.
You shouldn’t be surprised, he thinks. He remembers things – he remembers everything. It’s forgetting he typically needs a little more assistance with. Maybe he does look over his shoulder more than he’d care to admit.
You ruffle the boy’s crow black curls as he clings to his father’s leg, snapping your hand back as if you’ve been burned when Nathan opts for the same gesture in the same moment.
You opt to fold your arms against your chest instead, casually clearing your throat. “What did you do with Daddy then, baby? Have you had a good time?”
“We watched the storm,” the boy begins animatedly, swinging around Nathan’s sturdy leg, “and we did boxing and I learned a new combo,” the boy looks up at his father who nods and smiles gently in proud confirmation, hoisting the kid up on to his hip – a gesture that is becoming increasingly less rusty- “and we did a new trail to the glacier, and, um, what else Daddy?” Byron asks, waving his up-turned palms in the air and turning to his father for guidance. Nathan dips forward to whisper a prompt in his ear. “Oh yeah! And we watched Trolls and I put lots of my dolly’s bows in daddy’s beard,” the boys giggles, and scrunches his fingers through Nathan’s wiry hairs.
The kid’s smile is infectious, even fracturing Nathan’s stony resolve, and it has the three of you joined in a smile for a moment, until Nathan sees your eyes mist subtly over with tears as you observe the father and son together. You quickly quell them, but they don’t go unnoticed.
“Oh yeah?” you ask, voice expertly smoothed, and a masking smile on your face. The strength of you. “Did he look pretty?”
“Yeah, I guess he looked pretty,” the boy giggles. “And this morning Daddy taught me about static electric.... um-” the boys stumbles over his words for a second, and again looks to Nathan for guidance.
“You got it -go ahead,” Nathan encourages firmly.
The boy gains confidence, brushing his black curls out of his face with a little hand before continuing. “Static electricity, right?”
“Right, champ,” Nathan says, and as the boy barrels happily through his recital of events, Nathan barely realises that he’s holding him a little tighter, because with each moment that passes, so fleetingly, he feels it’s getting increasingly harder to think about letting him go.
“And Mommy, did you know this whole valley was made by a glacier that crawled all the way along and carved out all the shapes of the hills and then melted, like, a super long time ago?”
“You know, I did know that, but that’s smart of you to know too, baby,” you say fondly, a tremble at the corner of your lips that the kid doesn’t see, but Nathan is sharp enough to catch.
And then, suddenly, Nathan has no trouble contemplating passing the boy over into your arms, because you look like you need someone to hold too. However, as he motions to do so, Nathan can see tears threatening to spill out of the corner of your eyes. You shake your head subtly at Nathan in apology as you brush away a stray tear, in a moment you hope the boy won’t see, so, instead, Nathan sets your son down on the ground. He crouches and pulls the boy’s shoulders squarely to face him, providing you with a discreet moment to compose yourself.
“Hey, buddy,” he says softly. “I remembered I need to talk to your Mommy about boring grown-up stuff. Gas prices and 401ks and… major yawn. So, hot tip, you might wanna go and play in your room for 5. That okay, champ?”
“Okay,” the kid says, unphased, and skips off down the hall.
That leaves Nathan and you in the hallway. He hover-hands his palm against your lower back and gestures, with his other arm, towards the living space, guiding you towards the seating area.
You sit on opposite sofas, positions stiff and formal, hands clasped on laps. Your gaze looking just past Nathan because you can’t seem to meet his eyes.
“Wanna talk about it?” he asks gently, feeling a lump grow in his throat. He hates this- how tense it is, when you used to be so intimate and relaxed around each other. “Why are you crying?”
Unlike Nathan, you were usually an open book, yet this time, you decline the invitation to share. You pinch your lips in between your teeth.
You’re so strong, and so brave that it breaks Nathan to see you succumb to tears like this. Plus, you’ve given so much already- so much love, and so much heart, and he hasn’t given you nearly enough back.
Still, he looks at you from beneath his lenses, gently encouraging, waiting until you are ready to share. Your gaze fixes on a spot in your lap. “I… It’s just. Seeing you and Byron together. Why in the hell couldn’t you have been this man while we were together, Nathan?”
Nathan’s heart aches at your words. Years ago, even months ago, he would have bristled. He would have snapped back at the insinuation that he was ever in the wrong. Ever less than godly.
This time though, he lets the sad truth settle over him like a dark cloud. And, as much as he wants to pull you towards him, he also- and he can’t believe he’s going to do this- he realises he needs to push you away from him one more time. There is only one way to solve this. To let you go. To realise it’s your choice. You are out of his control. Unsolvable.
He shifts his position, until he is perched on the coffee table in front of you, his palms resting on your knees and smoothing circles there. His dark, calculating eyes intent on yours, and for once unobscured by agendas. For once, he has things to say to you that aren’t intended to provoke a particular response, or establish a particular gain. He has things to say that he simply needs you to hear.
He needs to show you his fear. He needs to face the storm he was never too afraid to create, but was always quick to flee the wake of. Nathan imagines if he explains the storm, he can demystify it. Take its power away. Then, even if you don’t come home, at least there can be calm. Calm after the storm. Both of you able to move on, with all the cards laid out on the table.
With effort, he begins.
“I’m sorry,” Nathan says gently, and even with those two words a gentle sob wracks your chest, perhaps with the relief of a weight you didn’t know you were carrying. “Honestly, I don’t think I told you that and meant it yet. So, I’m sorry. About last night, by the way. But, shit, about everything that I did, and didn’t do…” Your hands come to clasp his in your lap, fingers gripping fingers tightly as his face contorts with regret. His dark eyes wander over your face as tears stream freely down your cheeks. Where once he would have shied away from you, in a state like this, now he has courage enough to be present.
“I missed you,” he continues, his voice tattered by emotion. “I miss you. I didn’t want to tell you that. Didn’t want to admit that I’m scared either. But I am. Of losing you. Scared that the best thing for us… the best thing for you, might be being without me. To get out of the black hole I suck everything in to.” Nathan tears his eyes away from yours as his vision becomes blurry with tears, his voice cracking. “I’m scared because I love you, and I love that fucking kid and I... I’m scared that I might get better, and be better… but that you, and him… that you still might deserve better. Better than me. So, I’m sorry. Actually fuckin’ sorry, for all the ways I’ve been a dick. Shut you out. Put you last. Made you hurt.”
“Nathan,” you breathe through tears, as if you can’t fathom this onslaught- this emotion tearing your chest in two, like the sky on that night.
He reaches up to fumble some tears away from your cheek with the pad of his thumb. “I need you to know that I finally see it, even if it is too late,” Nathan nods to himself, eyes fixed down at your hands clasped in his. “I see that if had to lose you to realise what I had; I never did deserve you. You’re so… fuckin’ unreal. And he’s just like you. And,” Nathan presses on, despite the mortifying ordeal of baring his heart to you. Despite the tears which finally spike out of the corners of his eyes too. “I need you to know. Even if it didn’t last forever… This fuckin’ family? It will always be the best thing I ever created. And if there’s one thing I want to be remembered for- any fuckin’ legacy I wanna have, I just… I need it to be known that I love you, and I love that fuckin’ kid. I want you to be happy, and I’ll always regret that I didn’t make you happy while I had the chance to.” He huffs out another small, self-pitying laugh “Guess in the end, I’m an idiot; not a genius. Guess I should have realised that when I got stabbed by my own AI…”
He drags his big brown eyes back up to meet yours from beneath his lenses, and your eyes are shining softly at him, brimming with bittersweet pain, and you tug him into you for a hug, holding him close and your tears wetting each other’s shoulder.
After a moment he pulls away and settles himself back on the edge of the coffee table, already missing your embrace.
“You did. You made me happy, Nathan,” you promise. “So, so happy, and so, so miserable,” you let out a small, self-pitying laugh too, and then suddenly you are both laughing, as bizarre at that seems, as you palm the tears away from your puffed cheeks.
When the laughter fades, you reach out and place your palm fondly on the side of his face. Nathan knew that even in all his years of marriage, he had never been so vulnerable with you as he had been just now. He knew that had been precisely part of the problem. He had thought it would feel horrible to open up, but he finds that he feels fresh, like ground after nourishing rain.
Your gaze flicks back to him, and he swears he can read the look in your eyes.
Why couldn’t I have been this man when we were together?
Then, it is as if you remember you are touching him. You snap your hand back from him, and back from the brink as if you have been burned. It would be so easy, Nathan thinks. So easy to just fall back into you. As if wrestling with the exact same thought, you surge up from your seat, wiping the remainder of your tears away and immediately putting some distance between the two of you. You track to the nearby mirror, leaning forward to fix your appearance a little, before the boy returns.
Nathan watches you fondly. Longingly.
You turn back to him again, a little more composed, and retake your seat opposite him – in the same spot, but feeling much further away this time.
You bite your lips between your teeth, gazing at that same spot on your lap again.
He wishes he could reach out to you. Take in the textures and scents and feel of you in all your glory. But he does not want you to jump away as if you’ve been struck by lightning.
“I miss you too, you know? I miss our family. When it was good it was…” your voice is small and you trail off, perhaps not wanting to look too far over your shoulder. With a visible effort, you seem to drag yourself back to the present. “Byron adores you, you know that? I don’t think I’ve told you this since we… but you’re a good father, Nathan.”
A pride ignites in Nathan unlike anything he’s felt before.
He opens his mouth as if to speak, and instantly closes it again, his throat bobbing around a hard swallow before he can push his words out.
“Just a terrible husband?”
You shake your head. “No,” you say, with a wistful expression on your face, and Nathan is surprised that you sound sincere. “No, not terrible at all.”
Nathan knew his flaws well enough, but you always reminded him of his attributes. You never poisoned the boy against him, even though the split was largely on him – a fact he had denied for a long time, because it was your decision. And, because of your strength and commitment to that, the three of you -oddly- had never made a better team than you do now.
He examines your face. Your beautiful face.
Come home. Please.
For your sake, he makes an effort to lift his thin smile up until it creases the corner of his eyes.
“I think you’re forgetting what an asshole I can be,” he smiles lopsidedly at you and succeeds in lightening the air. Lightening it a little too much. Enough that there is an alarming hint in your eyes of what used to be there for him. He hopes it is not the shining of false hope.
It would be so easy. So easy to kiss you.
You chew some words over in your mouth, and Nathan can see their failure to launch on a couple of breaths as you wring your hands in front of you.
“You, um. Last night… you asked me to come home.”
Nathan’s breath stalls in his chest.
“Did you mean it?”
Nathan can’t speak suddenly. He can only nod, slowly, tears sparkling in his eyes as he looks at you.
“I could… I could never just move back in. It didn’t work, Nathan. But… maybe…”
Nathan holds his breath, like a latent storm, the hint of a new energy buzzing in the space between you.
“Maybe,” you continue tentatively. “We could start over again. See if we can build something new. Not the same old patterns. No looking over our shoulders or trying to resurrect what’s long-dead. Instead, maybe we – I don’t know- try to create something… new?”
While the sky is rife with creation.
“You’re good at that. Building things,” you finish, fondly, everything about you tentative yet somehow hopeful, and Nathan’s chest constricts, his blood thrumming nervously through his body in a blind panic.
Just shut up, Nathan, and don’t fuck this. Just refrain from being a dick for five fuckin’ minutes.
The muscles in his jaw twitch. The vein on his forehead pops, yet his whole body is still. Breath bated.
“Like, fresh code?” he asks, with shining, hopeful eyes.
You nod, and it is the tiniest gesture, but one that means the absolute world to him.
A new way of doing things. Moving forward. Looking ahead.
“Sure, I guess - fresh code.”
Don’t fuck it up, Bateman, you fucking shithead.
“Yeah,” he agrees weakly, yet with all the conviction in the world. “How?”
Anything.
You nibble on your lower lip, thinking things through as you go. “Take me out for dinner. A first date. Somewhere away from this goddamn house. From everything that happened. All the… mistakes.” As Nathan’s eyes swim with guilt and regret, you squeeze his hand, dipping your head towards his to catch his gaze. “Yours and mine.”
“Yeah. Yeah, ok,” Nathan responds, his eyes glowing as they meet yours.
He immediately feels you withdraw from his burning hope, and so he consciously tries to reel his natural intensity in.
“No promises, Nathan,” you caution, firmly.
He nods, slowly. Outwardly disciplined and measured.
Don’t fuck it. Do not fuck this, you mother fucker.
“And please, don’t get his hopes up?” you say as a quick aside before delivering a broad smile over Nathan’s shoulder, signalling that the kid had arrived back in the vicinity.
The boy runs over and starts happily wheeling a toy news truck over Nathan’s thigh. The man unconsciously, automatically, winds his arm around his son and dips a kiss into his black curls, causing your eyes to shine softly in admiration. “I love you, champ,” Nathan says, the words heavy with the weight of his feeling even as he reaches to tickle the boy’s tummy, earning a chaotic giggle.
“Love you too, Daddy,” the boy replies, but Nathan pats him gently on the back.
“Time to go though, bud.”
“Yeah, baby. We should… go,” you announce, and yet there is a tug of hesitation in your voice. A rope binding you to Nathan which he is desperate to reel in; however, he pushed you so far away, and he knows that if you do come back to him, it must be on your terms. In your own time. He understands now.
Nathan leads the two of you to the door and helps pile all of the bags into the trunk of your truck. You strap Byron into his car seat, and Nathan dips to bid him farewell. “Ok, get out of here, kid. Look after your Mommy, you hear me? She’s special.”
There is a moment, before you open the door to slot into the driver’s side that Nathan comes to face you, his hands stuffed into his pockets, a familiar furrow in his brow and tight-lipped expression on his stony, impassive face. “When was the last time you had your tyres checked?” he wonders idly, shifting forward to poke at the tread on the front wheel and finding them satisfactorily safe.
He is surprised to find you smiling softly at him when he looks back at you. You seem like you can’t help yourself, but you lean forward and press a kiss into Nathan’s cheek, your face lingering against his as he closes his eyes and leans in to it, just a little.
You pull back from him, your hand clasped around his upper arm. “We love you, Nathan. Will you be okay?”
His eyes grow overcast. “Uh, don’t like it when you go,” he states plainly, his brow pulled down and cloaking his big, brown eyes with shadow.
You nod in understanding.
“Text me later. About dinner,” you add casually before you slot yourself into the truck. Still, he can see you tearing up, just a little.
“You mean it?” he asks, his stare intense.
“Dinner and we’ll see, okay? No promises.”
He had made you so many promises that were broken.
Nathan nods his agreement and you clasp the door shut. Reluctantly, Nathan steps aside as you swing the truck around, and he doesn’t stick around to wave you off, aside from a quick hand in the air for the boy.
He doesn’t like it when you leave.
He knew he had pushed you away, and now, just maybe you would come back to him. He feels hopeful- ecstatic even- at the prospect, but he can’t help but feel a little guilty. A little selfish too. He feels as though he’s sucking you in to a black hole all over again. He thinks maybe it would be better for you if you could escape him.
But, as Nathan settles back in his chair down in the lab, and gazes at the framed picture of his family, he knows that as much as he has grown and changed - because he’s had to, with you gone- that he will never quite be selfless enough to let you go.
I’m a force. A force of nature. A storm.
You had always revelled in storms. You were always happiest when it rained. Maybe this time, he could make you so, so happy, without the miserable.
Oh, how he hopes.
Don’t fuck it up, Bateman, he thinks, glancing at the picture one more time. Don’t you ever fuckin’ push her away.
This time, he pledges to stop looking over his shoulder, and looks ahead to something new.
That’s what he’s best at.
Fresh code.
He types away, and his chest feels lighter than it has in a long time.
The calm after the storm, perhaps.
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