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WHO: Jack Callahan, Nate Davis, and their daughter Sadie
WHERE: Jack's at his place, Nate's at his place, and Sadie is in CA
WHEN: Wednesday, June 18th at 1pm and 11pm
WHAT: Sadie has traditions, and one of those is breakfast and dinner with her dads.
WARNINGS: Can't think of any!
WHERE: Jack's at his place, Nate's at his place, and Sadie is in CA
WHEN: Wednesday, June 18th at 1pm and 11pm
WHAT: Sadie has traditions, and one of those is breakfast and dinner with her dads.
WARNINGS: Can't think of any!
Sadie Davis-Roberts liked traditions. There was something soothing about knowing that something would happen at a set time of day, week, or year. Especially when her dad lived several timezones away, and the only way she could ever guarantee getting any time with him was to put something in their calendars that was immovable.
When Jack Callahan entered the scene, she could admit that she thought he would ruin things. After all, Jack had her dad’s attention every day, and got to be with him in person, something that Sadie only got on scheduled breaks.
But then she’d met Jack. And saw the way the two of them interacted, and how they never let her feel left out. Mostly, though, she saw how happy and relaxed her dad was with him, and that was really what had mattered, so it was easy to fold Jack into their traditions: Wednesday night dinners went from just Sadie and her dad to Sadie and her dad and Jack; the pre-dances video call to show off her outfits included Jack and his opinions; vacations were planned for three instead of two; and a third birthday was added to her calendar for happy birthday calls.
Neither of them ever told her they were a thing, but she didn’t need the verbal confirmation. Sadie went from one mom and one dad to one mom and two dads.
Then whatever had happened happened. She was still confused, of course, and neither of them seemed to want to tell her what was up. All she knew was that their ‘partnership’ had ended, the traditions fractured and now she had a weekly dinner call and a weekly breakfast call because Jack was as much her dad as her actual dad and she loved him just the same.
Maybe a little more because he got the breakfast call.
She yawned and looked at Jack through the screen. “You need a haircut,” she announced, pouring herself some cereal.
"No, I don't." came the reply immediately, because Jack tended to respond to opinions onto his person with contrary instinct. He resisted the urge to scratch the back of his neck, where his hair was indeed almost long enough to touch the top of his shirt collar.
"How's school?" he asked instead, choosing a safe topic that would likely inspire a long enough answer to last several minutes. As much as he loved their calls, there was a big purple elephant that wore Nate's face in the room (at least on his end) and for once, Jack couldn't wait for the call to be over. Hopefully without the mention of her father at all.
There were few people he could never really lie to and Sadie was one of them.
She scowled, adding milk to her bowl. “I don’t know how people deal with undergrads,” she griped. “This one guy started his essay on the Tudor period with ‘Henry VIII had mad rad rizz, yo.’ Who does that?” Disgust darkened her pretty features. “Kyle — that’s my boyfriend, remember? — had to stop me from writing a three page rant on how that sort of opening isn’t appropriate in a college class.”
The face Jack made listening to words like 'mad rad rizz' and 'incel's patron saint' stayed fixed and unyielding as he ate his lunch — beer-battered fish and chips from the pub — in a companionable silence, stewing the kind of quiet happiness of being apart of his adopted daughter's life. He still wanted to stare daggers into Kyle and his stupid habit of overexplaining everything but that was besides the point. Sadie was happy with Kyle and Nate acted like he liked the kid enough.
“And,” she continued, “he didn’t have mad rizz or whatever. He was a monarch, and saying no to him could literally mean death? I swear he’s like the incels’ patron saint.” Another shake of her head and a pause to take a bite of her Lucky Charms. “Anyway, I’m taking flight classes next week. I thought I’d get my pilot’s license.” Like you, she didn’t add.
Jack pretended to chew longer than he needed to, nodding along. He wasn't a pilot. Not in the way she thought, but explaining would only bring up more questions and the lie-by-omission that had started years ago just lived on. From the contextual clues, he had long ago figured out that Sadie believed he was a pilot in active duty with the current SAS. It wasn't that much of a stretch.
"You want to be a pilot?" he asked, surprised and inexplicably touched.
She shrugged. “I want to learn to fly. I figured it could be something me and you do? Like, an us thing.” The awkward hope in her voice made her feel like she was five years old again, choosing the special interest she would share with each of her parents. “Obviously, we don’t have to. I just, I don’t know, realized we didn’t have a thing that was just us, you know?”
Jack, in a rare moment of acute sensitivity, paused and frowned at her through the screen. "Of course we can. I just never realised that was something that interested you." There was a small problem with the idea — Jack jumped out of planes, but he never actually flew them — but that was a problem for future Jack, once the call was over. It couldn't possibly be that hard if Colonel 'Dumber than a sack of rocks' Warrick could do it.
Sadie beamed at him. “Good, because my other idea had to do with leprechauns and hunting rainbows,” she teased. “So, how was prom? Briony sent me photos of the two of you.” Briony had also very noticeably left any mention of her other dad out, which didn’t surprise her: her mom said that her dad would avoid formal events like the plague if he was given a chance. “You guys looked really nice!”
The smile on Jack's face froze at the mention of prom. Sadie clearly knew nothing and he was going to make sure that she carried on knowing nothing if it killed him. He could think of nothing worse than to drag Sadie into the mess between him and her father.
"Thanks, Briony's good at that sort of thing. It was fine. A little childish for a workplace but you know how HR can be."
“Yeah, I don’t think university HR is the same thing,” she replied, shaking her head. “But it would be a lot of fun, I think. A prom redo.” Her high school prom had been a disaster, but in hindsight, her date had totally deserved that right hook. “Do you guys do prom king and queen? Or prom royalty would be better, non-gendered. I can totally see Bri being a prom princess.”
"No, it's just a work party that gets called prom." Jack explained, suddenly very glad that no such tradition existed. He could just imagine how much drama that sort of thing would bring to the already fragile ecosystem of TEA.
He sighed, thinking about prom inevitably drew a dark cloud over the call. He pretended to look at his watch, "Look, kiddo, how 'bout we talk more next week, aye? I'm a bit busy this week and you need to focus on that test today."
Immediately, her gaze sharpened on him. Mentally, she ran a quick pros/cons list of pushing — of her two dads, this one was the pushover — but ultimately decided to cut him some slack. Now that she was really looking, she could see he looked a bit tired. “Okay,” she agreed, a little too easily. “We’ll talk next week. Miss you.”
"Miss you too, kiddo."
The test (which she had forgotten about until Jack had reminded her) went as well as it could with how little she’d studied. In her defense, she couldn’t care less about the Reformation and that wasn’t her area of study, anyway. If her advisor wanted to get on her about it, he could try.
And she had more important things on her mind, like the fact that Jack’s hair was longer than usual and he looked tired, and he didn’t mention dad at all.
Not that he always did, but everything together just made her suspicious.
The first thing she noticed when dad answered the call that night was that he also looked tired. Well, more tired than usual. “You know, you’re going to regret every night you didn’t go to sleep,” she parroted back at him, utilizing the phrase he’d always used on her as a kid when she fought her naps and bedtime.
Nate rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. I’ll go to bed after this, okay?”
Guilt prickled in her chest, remembering that it was close to midnight where he was. “Sorry.”
He smiled, but even that looked tired, a bit pinched. “It’s fine, Sades. How was your day, baby girl?”
She spent the next fifteen minutes catching him up, complaining about her master’s program and advisor. The usual update on her mom came next: “I don’t like Phil, but he’s proposing next week, so I guess I’m going to have to admit he’s not going anywhere.”
That got a frown from Nate. He and his ex-wife were still good friends, which had made co-parenting the way they had through the years possible, but she, like him, rarely dated. He wasn’t sure how he felt about the idea of her remarrying. Not that she didn’t deserve to be happy, but.
The guy’s name was Phil, for fuck’s sake.
“Just focus on being happy for your mom,” he told her even as he made a note to look more into this guy. “She deserves it.”
“She does,” Sadie agreed, looking him square in the eyes, pleased he’d taken the bait. (She didn’t like Phil, who couldn’t catch a clue that Sadie didn’t need a third dad, but that was neither here nor there.) “So do you and Jack.”
Fuck. He walked into that. “Sadie Jo.”
“He looked so tired today, Dad,” she continued, ignoring the warning in his voice. “And have you seen how long his hair is? He never used to let it get that long when he was with you.”
He did, but he doubted his kid would listen to that. (And he wasn’t going to think about how he used to let his fingers brush the too long strands when he would tell Jack he needed a haircut before realization had snatched that casual intimacy away.) “Jack’s an adult. Maybe he’s trying out a new look.”
But a small kernel of worry dug against his lungs.
Sadie rolled her eyes. “I don’t get it. You don’t want to tell me you were together and broke up, okay, fine. Or maybe it was like, I don’t know, one of those platonic romantic relationships? Whatever it was, you guys were happy and then you weren’t and now I have two sets of divorced parents. What am I going to do when Kyle proposes if the two of you are still doing this weird thing?”
God, he hated how astute his kid was. Made sense, given her parents, but it still made navigating things like this hard, so he zeroed in on the one thing that wasn’t Jack Callahan: “Wait. Is he proposing?”
His first thought was to text Jack, ask if he knew, and his hand was already reaching for his phone when he pulled it back, burned.
“We’re talking about it,” Sadie admitted, watching her father carefully for his reaction. “He hasn’t, though.”
Nate’s lips pressed together into a strained smile. “Well, if he does, I’ll be happy for you, baby. He’s a” terrible, annoying, boring “good man.”
She beamed. “He is. And don’t think I forgot we were talking about you and Dad.” Her expression softened into one of concern. “Just. I don’t know. Think about trying to fix things? I miss how things used to be.”
“So do I, kiddo.” He admitted, rubbing the back of his neck. “It’s just complicated, but I promise me and Jack will be fine, okay?” One way or another, they would be. He just had to stop wanting him in a way he could never have him.
Easy.
The way her nose screwed up told him she didn’t believe him, but she let the topic drop. “I was thinking we could do Greece this fall,” she pivoted. “Bring Briony with us.” And Jack. “We could go do that Greek mythos tour, see the temples.”
“Yeah,” he said, a yawn stretching the last syllable. “That sounds like a plan. Thinking over the break?”
They talked for a little while longer as Sadie ate and Nate nursed a cup of non-caffeinated tea (Jack’s influence; somewhere over the years, he’d started replacing some of Nate’s coffee with teas, partially for himself when he was over, and partially to encourage Nate to drink something that wasn’t going to send his heart into an early grave).
After they signed off, Nate stared at the ceiling, thinking about Jack.
When Jack Callahan entered the scene, she could admit that she thought he would ruin things. After all, Jack had her dad’s attention every day, and got to be with him in person, something that Sadie only got on scheduled breaks.
But then she’d met Jack. And saw the way the two of them interacted, and how they never let her feel left out. Mostly, though, she saw how happy and relaxed her dad was with him, and that was really what had mattered, so it was easy to fold Jack into their traditions: Wednesday night dinners went from just Sadie and her dad to Sadie and her dad and Jack; the pre-dances video call to show off her outfits included Jack and his opinions; vacations were planned for three instead of two; and a third birthday was added to her calendar for happy birthday calls.
Neither of them ever told her they were a thing, but she didn’t need the verbal confirmation. Sadie went from one mom and one dad to one mom and two dads.
Then whatever had happened happened. She was still confused, of course, and neither of them seemed to want to tell her what was up. All she knew was that their ‘partnership’ had ended, the traditions fractured and now she had a weekly dinner call and a weekly breakfast call because Jack was as much her dad as her actual dad and she loved him just the same.
Maybe a little more because he got the breakfast call.
She yawned and looked at Jack through the screen. “You need a haircut,” she announced, pouring herself some cereal.
"No, I don't." came the reply immediately, because Jack tended to respond to opinions onto his person with contrary instinct. He resisted the urge to scratch the back of his neck, where his hair was indeed almost long enough to touch the top of his shirt collar.
"How's school?" he asked instead, choosing a safe topic that would likely inspire a long enough answer to last several minutes. As much as he loved their calls, there was a big purple elephant that wore Nate's face in the room (at least on his end) and for once, Jack couldn't wait for the call to be over. Hopefully without the mention of her father at all.
There were few people he could never really lie to and Sadie was one of them.
She scowled, adding milk to her bowl. “I don’t know how people deal with undergrads,” she griped. “This one guy started his essay on the Tudor period with ‘Henry VIII had mad rad rizz, yo.’ Who does that?” Disgust darkened her pretty features. “Kyle — that’s my boyfriend, remember? — had to stop me from writing a three page rant on how that sort of opening isn’t appropriate in a college class.”
The face Jack made listening to words like 'mad rad rizz' and 'incel's patron saint' stayed fixed and unyielding as he ate his lunch — beer-battered fish and chips from the pub — in a companionable silence, stewing the kind of quiet happiness of being apart of his adopted daughter's life. He still wanted to stare daggers into Kyle and his stupid habit of overexplaining everything but that was besides the point. Sadie was happy with Kyle and Nate acted like he liked the kid enough.
“And,” she continued, “he didn’t have mad rizz or whatever. He was a monarch, and saying no to him could literally mean death? I swear he’s like the incels’ patron saint.” Another shake of her head and a pause to take a bite of her Lucky Charms. “Anyway, I’m taking flight classes next week. I thought I’d get my pilot’s license.” Like you, she didn’t add.
Jack pretended to chew longer than he needed to, nodding along. He wasn't a pilot. Not in the way she thought, but explaining would only bring up more questions and the lie-by-omission that had started years ago just lived on. From the contextual clues, he had long ago figured out that Sadie believed he was a pilot in active duty with the current SAS. It wasn't that much of a stretch.
"You want to be a pilot?" he asked, surprised and inexplicably touched.
She shrugged. “I want to learn to fly. I figured it could be something me and you do? Like, an us thing.” The awkward hope in her voice made her feel like she was five years old again, choosing the special interest she would share with each of her parents. “Obviously, we don’t have to. I just, I don’t know, realized we didn’t have a thing that was just us, you know?”
Jack, in a rare moment of acute sensitivity, paused and frowned at her through the screen. "Of course we can. I just never realised that was something that interested you." There was a small problem with the idea — Jack jumped out of planes, but he never actually flew them — but that was a problem for future Jack, once the call was over. It couldn't possibly be that hard if Colonel 'Dumber than a sack of rocks' Warrick could do it.
Sadie beamed at him. “Good, because my other idea had to do with leprechauns and hunting rainbows,” she teased. “So, how was prom? Briony sent me photos of the two of you.” Briony had also very noticeably left any mention of her other dad out, which didn’t surprise her: her mom said that her dad would avoid formal events like the plague if he was given a chance. “You guys looked really nice!”
The smile on Jack's face froze at the mention of prom. Sadie clearly knew nothing and he was going to make sure that she carried on knowing nothing if it killed him. He could think of nothing worse than to drag Sadie into the mess between him and her father.
"Thanks, Briony's good at that sort of thing. It was fine. A little childish for a workplace but you know how HR can be."
“Yeah, I don’t think university HR is the same thing,” she replied, shaking her head. “But it would be a lot of fun, I think. A prom redo.” Her high school prom had been a disaster, but in hindsight, her date had totally deserved that right hook. “Do you guys do prom king and queen? Or prom royalty would be better, non-gendered. I can totally see Bri being a prom princess.”
"No, it's just a work party that gets called prom." Jack explained, suddenly very glad that no such tradition existed. He could just imagine how much drama that sort of thing would bring to the already fragile ecosystem of TEA.
He sighed, thinking about prom inevitably drew a dark cloud over the call. He pretended to look at his watch, "Look, kiddo, how 'bout we talk more next week, aye? I'm a bit busy this week and you need to focus on that test today."
Immediately, her gaze sharpened on him. Mentally, she ran a quick pros/cons list of pushing — of her two dads, this one was the pushover — but ultimately decided to cut him some slack. Now that she was really looking, she could see he looked a bit tired. “Okay,” she agreed, a little too easily. “We’ll talk next week. Miss you.”
"Miss you too, kiddo."
The test (which she had forgotten about until Jack had reminded her) went as well as it could with how little she’d studied. In her defense, she couldn’t care less about the Reformation and that wasn’t her area of study, anyway. If her advisor wanted to get on her about it, he could try.
And she had more important things on her mind, like the fact that Jack’s hair was longer than usual and he looked tired, and he didn’t mention dad at all.
Not that he always did, but everything together just made her suspicious.
The first thing she noticed when dad answered the call that night was that he also looked tired. Well, more tired than usual. “You know, you’re going to regret every night you didn’t go to sleep,” she parroted back at him, utilizing the phrase he’d always used on her as a kid when she fought her naps and bedtime.
Nate rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. I’ll go to bed after this, okay?”
Guilt prickled in her chest, remembering that it was close to midnight where he was. “Sorry.”
He smiled, but even that looked tired, a bit pinched. “It’s fine, Sades. How was your day, baby girl?”
She spent the next fifteen minutes catching him up, complaining about her master’s program and advisor. The usual update on her mom came next: “I don’t like Phil, but he’s proposing next week, so I guess I’m going to have to admit he’s not going anywhere.”
That got a frown from Nate. He and his ex-wife were still good friends, which had made co-parenting the way they had through the years possible, but she, like him, rarely dated. He wasn’t sure how he felt about the idea of her remarrying. Not that she didn’t deserve to be happy, but.
The guy’s name was Phil, for fuck’s sake.
“Just focus on being happy for your mom,” he told her even as he made a note to look more into this guy. “She deserves it.”
“She does,” Sadie agreed, looking him square in the eyes, pleased he’d taken the bait. (She didn’t like Phil, who couldn’t catch a clue that Sadie didn’t need a third dad, but that was neither here nor there.) “So do you and Jack.”
Fuck. He walked into that. “Sadie Jo.”
“He looked so tired today, Dad,” she continued, ignoring the warning in his voice. “And have you seen how long his hair is? He never used to let it get that long when he was with you.”
He did, but he doubted his kid would listen to that. (And he wasn’t going to think about how he used to let his fingers brush the too long strands when he would tell Jack he needed a haircut before realization had snatched that casual intimacy away.) “Jack’s an adult. Maybe he’s trying out a new look.”
But a small kernel of worry dug against his lungs.
Sadie rolled her eyes. “I don’t get it. You don’t want to tell me you were together and broke up, okay, fine. Or maybe it was like, I don’t know, one of those platonic romantic relationships? Whatever it was, you guys were happy and then you weren’t and now I have two sets of divorced parents. What am I going to do when Kyle proposes if the two of you are still doing this weird thing?”
God, he hated how astute his kid was. Made sense, given her parents, but it still made navigating things like this hard, so he zeroed in on the one thing that wasn’t Jack Callahan: “Wait. Is he proposing?”
His first thought was to text Jack, ask if he knew, and his hand was already reaching for his phone when he pulled it back, burned.
“We’re talking about it,” Sadie admitted, watching her father carefully for his reaction. “He hasn’t, though.”
Nate’s lips pressed together into a strained smile. “Well, if he does, I’ll be happy for you, baby. He’s a” terrible, annoying, boring “good man.”
She beamed. “He is. And don’t think I forgot we were talking about you and Dad.” Her expression softened into one of concern. “Just. I don’t know. Think about trying to fix things? I miss how things used to be.”
“So do I, kiddo.” He admitted, rubbing the back of his neck. “It’s just complicated, but I promise me and Jack will be fine, okay?” One way or another, they would be. He just had to stop wanting him in a way he could never have him.
Easy.
The way her nose screwed up told him she didn’t believe him, but she let the topic drop. “I was thinking we could do Greece this fall,” she pivoted. “Bring Briony with us.” And Jack. “We could go do that Greek mythos tour, see the temples.”
“Yeah,” he said, a yawn stretching the last syllable. “That sounds like a plan. Thinking over the break?”
They talked for a little while longer as Sadie ate and Nate nursed a cup of non-caffeinated tea (Jack’s influence; somewhere over the years, he’d started replacing some of Nate’s coffee with teas, partially for himself when he was over, and partially to encourage Nate to drink something that wasn’t going to send his heart into an early grave).
After they signed off, Nate stared at the ceiling, thinking about Jack.