Horatio sat with Edward in the shallows of the pool. The waterfall churned steadily down, but here the water was calm, the coolest place they could be on a hot day outside of the Compound
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Harry couldn't help smiling when he came across a baby splashing in the water. "That looks like fun," he said, half to the baby and half to the man with him, who Harry assumed was the baby's father. "Going to be a champion swimmer when he grows up, no doubt."
"That's certainly my hope," said Horatio, smiling at what he assumed to be praise. He lowered his voice into a register reserved for the conveyance of scandalous secrets. "His other father didn't learn to swim until he was well into his thirties. I won't have it."
"That is terrible," he agreed. "All children should know how to swim for their own safety, if nothing else." Although he wasn't sure he wanted to know, he couldn't help asking anyway, "His other father?"
"Yes, Detective Ray Kowalski." However long it'd taken Horatio himself to accept that life with another man was what he wanted, he often forgot it might be different for others. He and Ray had been through so much, endured so many trials together, that the thought of life without him did not bear contemplating.
As much as he wanted to back away slightly, Harry stood his ground. "Ah." He had learnt, given some of the people he'd met, that it was better to say nothing about that. Even though he really wanted to know where two men got a baby from, except he supposed it was the usual way and only one of them was really Edward's father. "He certainly looks happy and healthy."
Horatio had a great deal of experience with that utterance. Fraser had "ah'd" at him more times than he could count, but there was no reason to assume this man had put the same disapproval behind the word.
"He is both, yes," he said, choosing not to disclose how different things had been for them all mere months ago. "I believe that to be Ray's influence, I am told I myself am much too grave."
"Perhaps that's why children should have two parents so they get a bit of each. You do have to be serious some of the time, after all." Although he frowned, trying to work out if that all applied to children with two fathers and no mother.
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"My husband. And this is our son, Edward."
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"He is both, yes," he said, choosing not to disclose how different things had been for them all mere months ago. "I believe that to be Ray's influence, I am told I myself am much too grave."
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