Watermelon 30, Blue Raspberry 24, Green Tea 2
Author: Casey
Story: Nothing is Ever Easy universe, Post-NIEE
Challenges: Blue Raspberry 24 (lost in translation), Watermelon 30 (I’m never going to hear the end of this) & Green Tea 2 (morning)
Toppings & Extras: Caramel (superCaramel)
Word Count: 1,955
Rating: PG
Summary: An unexpected situation presents itself.
Notes: After writing the piece I posted the other day about Leigh’s plan to leave, this hit me and I couldn’t NOT do it. Welcome to Gen Way Too Many.
It was by sheer coincidence that William Darcy was even in Oakbridge that particular day. He’d come down with a nasty cold the day before and Colin had forbidden him to leave on his mission that morning, sending Miles and Bex to Hilltop to pick up Kaylee and take her along instead.
He sneezed hard just as Maggie poked her head in the door of the office. She had a strange expression on her face. “Hey, Will, there’s someone here to see you.”
His forehead creased as he grabbed his handkerchief and wiped his nose. “Who?”
“I think…that this is one of those times when you just have to come.”
“Is everything okay?”
“That’s a good question,” she said, still with that funny twist to her mouth. “It’s a Kelly Tanner.”
“I don’t know the name,” he said but stood anyway. “She asked for me?”
“Yup, she was…very specific.”
“Maggie…”
“Just come on, Will.”
He sighed and trailed her out the door. She led him, without another word, down a couple of flights to one of the small generic anterooms they used. Maggie pushed open the door and stepped inside. “Will, this is Mrs. Tanner,” she said as she slipped past the woman. The room was almost completely empty besides the three of them, except for two others: Colin, sitting crosslegged on the far side of the room across from a small towheaded boy, perhaps three, playing some sort of finger game with him. Maggie moved over and crouched down beside them, saying something quietly to her father. Colin glanced up, looking caught between amusement and horror, which was a hell of a combination. Will sneezed into his elbow again and returned his attention to the woman with a polite, if confused, smile.
“I’m sorry, I have a cold or I’d shake your hand.”
“I understand, Mr. Darcy,” she said primly and then motioned him to the opposite end of the small room from the trio.
“Can I help you with something?” he asked.
She studied him for a moment before nodding decisively. “I want to talk to you about your son.”
Will could only stare at her in complete astonishment. “Ma’am, I think you have me confused with someone else, I don’t have a-”
She turned to the boy. “Jackson,” she called.
The toddler looked up and Will sucked in his breath. The boy was, no doubt, a Darcy - he had Will’s mother’s eyes, the same thick dirty blond hair that both he and his sister had inherited and…well, Will had seen enough pictures Carrie’d drawn of him when he was little. “Yes, Kelly?” Jackson asked.
“Nothing, child, you can go back to your game with Mr. Lockholme.”
The boy smiled and, for an instant, there was someone else there, before returning his attention to the Lockholmes.
“I still think you’re mistaken. I’ll agree, there’s no doubt he’s related to me, but…when he would have been born, I was in a monogamous relationship and we didn’t have any kids. Bex, my sister, on the other hand…”
“You were in a relationship with Leigh Parker,” Mrs. Tanner said.
Will blinked and looked at her a bit harder, wiping his nose on his sleeve. “There aren’t a lot of people in this world who know that,” he said, feeling the same ache well up his chest that happened every time he thought of her.
“Jackson’s three, Mr. Darcy, Leigh gave birth to him on May 8th.”
It took a minute to do the math with his brain all fuzzed up due to the cold. Three years ago May, he would have been twenty-two and…and Leigh had vanished for almost six months with no explanation ever provided of where she’d been when she finally contacted him. “Gods’ Breath,” he whispered, head whipping around to stare at the boy again. “Why…I don’t understand, she never said anything, I…” He glanced again at Mrs. Tanner. “Why did you wait a year?”
“That’s what Leigh asked of me. She said until I contacted her or through a year after the world caught up to her, I was not to say a word and raise Jackson myself. It’s been a year yesterday, Mr. Darcy.”
He knew that all too well. For a moment, red hot boiling fury rose up in his chest, threatening to choke him. How dare she keep something like this from him, how dare she keep his child from… “Oh hell,” he breathed, all the anger sweeping out of him as quickly as it had come. He had a kid, a little boy, who was already a thinking, reasoning, speaking… “What do I do with him?”
“I realize, Mr. Darcy, that your job isn’t always the most appropriate for raising a child. My husband and I would be happy to keep him. Leigh was my best friend growing up and I would do anything for her or her child.”
Will stared at her, freshly dumbfounded. “I…” he started and then stopped. Even if he took Jackson, since there was really no denying a family connection, he would be pulling the boy away from the only family he’d ever known. “Can I talk to him?”
Mrs. Tanner smiled a little. “He’s your son.”
He nodded slowly and then approached him. Jackson looked up at him and, without bothering with hello, “do you know as many games as Mr. Lockholme?”
Will blinked and then sat down near him, only absently noticing Maggie and Colin get up and move over to Mrs. Tanner. “Probably not as many. Colin had to learn them all to play with Maggie when she was little.”
“Kelly an’ Harold don’t know a lot. I’m the only kid an’ they’re not my mommy an’ daddy.”
“Do you know who they are?”
“My mommy died when I was two.” He held up two fingers.
“How about your daddy?”
Jackson shrugged.
“Do you know why you’re here?”
“Cuz Kelly said we had to, bu’ we live in town.” He now pointed towards Oakbridge proper. “So it was easy. We jus’ walked!”
“Do you like games?”
The little boy beamed and, despite the fact Leigh would have never beamed, the expression was so fully her that Will’s breath caught. The way his enthusiasm just lit up his face was purely her. “Yes!”
Will swallowed hard and briefly closed his eyes.
“’re you okay, Mr. Sir?” Jackson asked.
Despite the fact they’d just met, that hurt a bit - that face and those eyes and not knowing him and Gods’ Breath. “You can call me Will, okay, Jackson?”
The boy thought about that for a minute. “Kelly says I gotta be polite to grown ups.”
How did one even start to go about telling a three-year-old that you were his father? Kelly Tanner came to his rescue, coming and crouching beside him. “Jackson, remember how I told you after your mommy died that someday soon I would take you to meet your father?”
Jackson frowned but nodded. “Yes.”
“Mr. Darcy is your father.”
The boy looked between them, squinting at Will for a moment. “He looks a lot like me.”
Kelly laughed. “He came first, so you really look like him, but yes, he does.”
Jackson mulled this over for a couple of minutes silently, looking between the two. “’m I gonna live with him now?” Then his eyes went huge. “’m I gonna live in the castle?”
“Um, well, if you want to live with me, then sometimes you’d come stay at the castle, yes, but I usually live in Hilltop, which is about a half a day away if you’re riding a horse.” He, Bex and Miles co-owned a house there in town that was quite the bachelor pad. He hesitated. “But if you want to still live with Kelly and Harold, I’d understand.”
Jackson frowned. “Can I…can I visit Kelly an’ Harold?”
“Any time you want. There will be times when I’ll have to take trips for work so you could go stay with them then if you want.”
“Will I get grandparents?”
“Yes, my mom and dad both live in Hilltop too. I also have a sister, so you’ll have an aunt.” Not to mention the rest of our ridiculous clan.
The boy grinned. “I’d like a sister.”
“Did you ever meet your mom?”
“Nope. Kelly says she wanted to keep me safe an’ she could only do that by stayin’ away.”
“I’m going to be here at the castle for a while.” He hadn’t been planning on it but he sure as hell would be now. Colin would understand and, more importantly, so would Dean. “If it’s okay with you, I can come visit every day and we can get to know each other before you decide where you want to live.”
Jackson tilted his head. “Aren’t little boys supposed to live with their daddies?”
Will smiled. “If they can, yeah, but…”
“I’ll stay with Kelly an’ Harold tonight to say goodbye an’ ‘en tomorrow you can come pick me up,” the toddler announced before Will could finish his sentence.
He blinked at his son. “Are…are you sure?”
“Yes,” he said, only a little bit of nerves lurking in his eyes.
“If it doesn’t work out with us, you can change your mind, okay?” Will said, although he dearly hoped Jackson wouldn’t. He had never dreamed that they’d had a child and had sworn up and down to his best friends that there were no kids when he’d blurted about the relationship, but now…
“Okay!”
“And you can still call me Will, if you don’t feel comfortable with Dad. That’s okay too.”
This caused quite a bit of thought on the little boy’s end before he finally came up with, “We’ll see.”
He smiled. “No problem, kiddo,” the nickname rolling off his tongue surprisingly easily.
Jackson turned to Kelly. “C’n I stay here an’ play?”
“Of course. I’ll come pick him up after lunch?”
“That’d be great.”
“Can I talk to you for a minute, Mr. Darcy, before I go?”
Will straightened and stepped off to the side with her as Jackson happily demanded another finger game of Colin.
“I want you to know upfront that Leigh didn’t keep Jackson from you because she thought you’d be a bad parent. She was afraid of what might happen to him, not from you or KIN but from other people who she had hurt. She’d come to realize, thanks to you, that her actions might not have killed people but that didn’t mean they hadn’t caused harm. I think what she figured is, if she died, and then Jackson just appeared with you, no one would think twice about who his mother was. Nothing personal, but they’d assume a fling. She wanted to protect Jackson and she wanted to protect you.”
Will swallowed hard, trying to keep back the lump in his throat. “I wish I could have known him earlier, but I understand why she did what she did. Thank you for telling me.”
Kelly smiled. “Leigh cared for you very much, Mr. Darcy, far more than she cared for most people in the world, myself included.”
“Please, call me Will. You really don’t mind that Jackson wants to come live with me?”
“Will, if that truly bothered me, you would have never known you had a son,” she said, holding his gaze.
He nodded slowly. “Thank you for everything.”
She held it a moment more and then turned to Jackson. “I’ll pick you up after lunch, okay, Jack?”
“’kay, thanks, Kelly!” he said with that heart wrenching smile.
She nodded to the Lockholmes and then disappeared out the door. Will turned back to his son. “How about a tour of the castle, Jackson?”
The boy beamed. “Okay!”
Story: Nothing is Ever Easy universe, Post-NIEE
Challenges: Blue Raspberry 24 (lost in translation), Watermelon 30 (I’m never going to hear the end of this) & Green Tea 2 (morning)
Toppings & Extras: Caramel (superCaramel)
Word Count: 1,955
Rating: PG
Summary: An unexpected situation presents itself.
Notes: After writing the piece I posted the other day about Leigh’s plan to leave, this hit me and I couldn’t NOT do it. Welcome to Gen Way Too Many.
It was by sheer coincidence that William Darcy was even in Oakbridge that particular day. He’d come down with a nasty cold the day before and Colin had forbidden him to leave on his mission that morning, sending Miles and Bex to Hilltop to pick up Kaylee and take her along instead.
He sneezed hard just as Maggie poked her head in the door of the office. She had a strange expression on her face. “Hey, Will, there’s someone here to see you.”
His forehead creased as he grabbed his handkerchief and wiped his nose. “Who?”
“I think…that this is one of those times when you just have to come.”
“Is everything okay?”
“That’s a good question,” she said, still with that funny twist to her mouth. “It’s a Kelly Tanner.”
“I don’t know the name,” he said but stood anyway. “She asked for me?”
“Yup, she was…very specific.”
“Maggie…”
“Just come on, Will.”
He sighed and trailed her out the door. She led him, without another word, down a couple of flights to one of the small generic anterooms they used. Maggie pushed open the door and stepped inside. “Will, this is Mrs. Tanner,” she said as she slipped past the woman. The room was almost completely empty besides the three of them, except for two others: Colin, sitting crosslegged on the far side of the room across from a small towheaded boy, perhaps three, playing some sort of finger game with him. Maggie moved over and crouched down beside them, saying something quietly to her father. Colin glanced up, looking caught between amusement and horror, which was a hell of a combination. Will sneezed into his elbow again and returned his attention to the woman with a polite, if confused, smile.
“I’m sorry, I have a cold or I’d shake your hand.”
“I understand, Mr. Darcy,” she said primly and then motioned him to the opposite end of the small room from the trio.
“Can I help you with something?” he asked.
She studied him for a moment before nodding decisively. “I want to talk to you about your son.”
Will could only stare at her in complete astonishment. “Ma’am, I think you have me confused with someone else, I don’t have a-”
She turned to the boy. “Jackson,” she called.
The toddler looked up and Will sucked in his breath. The boy was, no doubt, a Darcy - he had Will’s mother’s eyes, the same thick dirty blond hair that both he and his sister had inherited and…well, Will had seen enough pictures Carrie’d drawn of him when he was little. “Yes, Kelly?” Jackson asked.
“Nothing, child, you can go back to your game with Mr. Lockholme.”
The boy smiled and, for an instant, there was someone else there, before returning his attention to the Lockholmes.
“I still think you’re mistaken. I’ll agree, there’s no doubt he’s related to me, but…when he would have been born, I was in a monogamous relationship and we didn’t have any kids. Bex, my sister, on the other hand…”
“You were in a relationship with Leigh Parker,” Mrs. Tanner said.
Will blinked and looked at her a bit harder, wiping his nose on his sleeve. “There aren’t a lot of people in this world who know that,” he said, feeling the same ache well up his chest that happened every time he thought of her.
“Jackson’s three, Mr. Darcy, Leigh gave birth to him on May 8th.”
It took a minute to do the math with his brain all fuzzed up due to the cold. Three years ago May, he would have been twenty-two and…and Leigh had vanished for almost six months with no explanation ever provided of where she’d been when she finally contacted him. “Gods’ Breath,” he whispered, head whipping around to stare at the boy again. “Why…I don’t understand, she never said anything, I…” He glanced again at Mrs. Tanner. “Why did you wait a year?”
“That’s what Leigh asked of me. She said until I contacted her or through a year after the world caught up to her, I was not to say a word and raise Jackson myself. It’s been a year yesterday, Mr. Darcy.”
He knew that all too well. For a moment, red hot boiling fury rose up in his chest, threatening to choke him. How dare she keep something like this from him, how dare she keep his child from… “Oh hell,” he breathed, all the anger sweeping out of him as quickly as it had come. He had a kid, a little boy, who was already a thinking, reasoning, speaking… “What do I do with him?”
“I realize, Mr. Darcy, that your job isn’t always the most appropriate for raising a child. My husband and I would be happy to keep him. Leigh was my best friend growing up and I would do anything for her or her child.”
Will stared at her, freshly dumbfounded. “I…” he started and then stopped. Even if he took Jackson, since there was really no denying a family connection, he would be pulling the boy away from the only family he’d ever known. “Can I talk to him?”
Mrs. Tanner smiled a little. “He’s your son.”
He nodded slowly and then approached him. Jackson looked up at him and, without bothering with hello, “do you know as many games as Mr. Lockholme?”
Will blinked and then sat down near him, only absently noticing Maggie and Colin get up and move over to Mrs. Tanner. “Probably not as many. Colin had to learn them all to play with Maggie when she was little.”
“Kelly an’ Harold don’t know a lot. I’m the only kid an’ they’re not my mommy an’ daddy.”
“Do you know who they are?”
“My mommy died when I was two.” He held up two fingers.
“How about your daddy?”
Jackson shrugged.
“Do you know why you’re here?”
“Cuz Kelly said we had to, bu’ we live in town.” He now pointed towards Oakbridge proper. “So it was easy. We jus’ walked!”
“Do you like games?”
The little boy beamed and, despite the fact Leigh would have never beamed, the expression was so fully her that Will’s breath caught. The way his enthusiasm just lit up his face was purely her. “Yes!”
Will swallowed hard and briefly closed his eyes.
“’re you okay, Mr. Sir?” Jackson asked.
Despite the fact they’d just met, that hurt a bit - that face and those eyes and not knowing him and Gods’ Breath. “You can call me Will, okay, Jackson?”
The boy thought about that for a minute. “Kelly says I gotta be polite to grown ups.”
How did one even start to go about telling a three-year-old that you were his father? Kelly Tanner came to his rescue, coming and crouching beside him. “Jackson, remember how I told you after your mommy died that someday soon I would take you to meet your father?”
Jackson frowned but nodded. “Yes.”
“Mr. Darcy is your father.”
The boy looked between them, squinting at Will for a moment. “He looks a lot like me.”
Kelly laughed. “He came first, so you really look like him, but yes, he does.”
Jackson mulled this over for a couple of minutes silently, looking between the two. “’m I gonna live with him now?” Then his eyes went huge. “’m I gonna live in the castle?”
“Um, well, if you want to live with me, then sometimes you’d come stay at the castle, yes, but I usually live in Hilltop, which is about a half a day away if you’re riding a horse.” He, Bex and Miles co-owned a house there in town that was quite the bachelor pad. He hesitated. “But if you want to still live with Kelly and Harold, I’d understand.”
Jackson frowned. “Can I…can I visit Kelly an’ Harold?”
“Any time you want. There will be times when I’ll have to take trips for work so you could go stay with them then if you want.”
“Will I get grandparents?”
“Yes, my mom and dad both live in Hilltop too. I also have a sister, so you’ll have an aunt.” Not to mention the rest of our ridiculous clan.
The boy grinned. “I’d like a sister.”
“Did you ever meet your mom?”
“Nope. Kelly says she wanted to keep me safe an’ she could only do that by stayin’ away.”
“I’m going to be here at the castle for a while.” He hadn’t been planning on it but he sure as hell would be now. Colin would understand and, more importantly, so would Dean. “If it’s okay with you, I can come visit every day and we can get to know each other before you decide where you want to live.”
Jackson tilted his head. “Aren’t little boys supposed to live with their daddies?”
Will smiled. “If they can, yeah, but…”
“I’ll stay with Kelly an’ Harold tonight to say goodbye an’ ‘en tomorrow you can come pick me up,” the toddler announced before Will could finish his sentence.
He blinked at his son. “Are…are you sure?”
“Yes,” he said, only a little bit of nerves lurking in his eyes.
“If it doesn’t work out with us, you can change your mind, okay?” Will said, although he dearly hoped Jackson wouldn’t. He had never dreamed that they’d had a child and had sworn up and down to his best friends that there were no kids when he’d blurted about the relationship, but now…
“Okay!”
“And you can still call me Will, if you don’t feel comfortable with Dad. That’s okay too.”
This caused quite a bit of thought on the little boy’s end before he finally came up with, “We’ll see.”
He smiled. “No problem, kiddo,” the nickname rolling off his tongue surprisingly easily.
Jackson turned to Kelly. “C’n I stay here an’ play?”
“Of course. I’ll come pick him up after lunch?”
“That’d be great.”
“Can I talk to you for a minute, Mr. Darcy, before I go?”
Will straightened and stepped off to the side with her as Jackson happily demanded another finger game of Colin.
“I want you to know upfront that Leigh didn’t keep Jackson from you because she thought you’d be a bad parent. She was afraid of what might happen to him, not from you or KIN but from other people who she had hurt. She’d come to realize, thanks to you, that her actions might not have killed people but that didn’t mean they hadn’t caused harm. I think what she figured is, if she died, and then Jackson just appeared with you, no one would think twice about who his mother was. Nothing personal, but they’d assume a fling. She wanted to protect Jackson and she wanted to protect you.”
Will swallowed hard, trying to keep back the lump in his throat. “I wish I could have known him earlier, but I understand why she did what she did. Thank you for telling me.”
Kelly smiled. “Leigh cared for you very much, Mr. Darcy, far more than she cared for most people in the world, myself included.”
“Please, call me Will. You really don’t mind that Jackson wants to come live with me?”
“Will, if that truly bothered me, you would have never known you had a son,” she said, holding his gaze.
He nodded slowly. “Thank you for everything.”
She held it a moment more and then turned to Jackson. “I’ll pick you up after lunch, okay, Jack?”
“’kay, thanks, Kelly!” he said with that heart wrenching smile.
She nodded to the Lockholmes and then disappeared out the door. Will turned back to his son. “How about a tour of the castle, Jackson?”
The boy beamed. “Okay!”